"Mal. You can't get out of this conversation."

He grasped them tightly, propping them up against his arm, and the pair of them walked out of the small house, and began to go down the packed dirt street.

Mal wasn't bleeding egregiously, but Dale was positive that everyone else was watching them.

He could feel it, and he knew that in this case, it was probably his coworkers doing the majority of it. Since the small Greenpath family were two rather visible members of the community, people knew when he was at his workplace, and when he was often… elsewhere. Consistency leads to assurance, which leads to people being more willing to work together to create harmonious outcomes.

…This was usually helped by having the incredibly intimidating man the moderator for your low stakes argument.

….

"When did you learn you had it?

Exactly when? Or just the first time?

Meg noted that my best path was full honesty… but arguing further would lead to more bleeding, so even if the path changed… I can't really DO an-

Dale barked out "You're stalling! Move it!"

"Aw hey. Got into a pit."

… Oh he wasn't meant to know that.

Mal started near-cursing themselves. The similarity of the event here was far to similar to have them not draw conclusions to their first task.

… Though that time he was the one carrying the person he had to protect.

Of course, as #496 broke one of the rules incredibly fast, it led to the previously mentioned pit-throwing circumstance. From this, #496 was one of the only people who successfully killed a supervisor. They didn't use any non-participating people after that. Just… the antlered man.

#496 gave a grim mutter. Wish I killed that bony antlered monster before all that happened.

We came to a dead stop.

"Mal. WHAT pit?"

Mal shimmied themselves back into a standing position, with their broken arm still secured by Dale's arm.

They gave as blank a look as they possible could. Innocent was too difficult.

"Mal. WHAT PIT?"

Dale held his far shoulder. "What EXACTLY did you remember?"

… They walked.

"I threw myself down a pit. I'm not even sure if it was the first day or first week."

"I saw my chance to just have a choice, and I took it."

Dale kept supporting him as they went.

"I took the supervisor ordering us around with me. Grabbed them and we went down."

…

"What did you do?"

… "I didn't die."

"You're here now, Mal. I meant what were you made to do?"

… "That's hard to… explain completely."

"Then just do it as easily as you can."

….

How do you explain what we went through?

Four hundred and ninety nine people forced to struggle, only to eventually show off the worst of mankind and die in repeated segments of suffering.

All to torture one man.

How do you explain that? How is that torment coalesced to one simple explanation?

….

Dale heard one word, whispered with as much hatred he ever heard from a person's voice: "Entertainment."

"So… like a performer? You… How does that lead to… What rules did-"

…

Mal froze in rapt attention. In his mind, a white masked face whispered What's the rules?

Dale noticed the stiffness and tried to find out what went wrong with M-

Mal whispered. "Any task given. Any solution viable. Anything goes."

"Mal. Calm down."

"Everyone is gifted."

"Mal."

"Everyone is numbered."

"MAL."

"Everyone is dead."

…

Dale ran. He ran as fast as he could. Everyone was definitely watching now. He didn't care anymore.

Who cares about anything irrelevant when the person you care about needs help?

He made a very careful effort to stop running. His feet flickered with a soft tint of brown, and he walked with even strides to his office, past everyone that stopped moving as their eyes paused at the scene. He sat his son down in his office room, moving the two chairs he used for visitors, and sat opposite of Mal. He sat silently for three seconds, then looked down.

Small sprouts slowly grew around his feet in the packed dirt road. Dale nodded in satisfaction, then glanced up.

The two of them were sitting in front of his desk. Dale now had to sit, having not done this many times before, and he was afraid to touch him while watching his son face whatever demons haunted him.

… but he could still speak.

"Mal. Count down. Any number."

"Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaagggg-five hundred."

"Fou… Four hundred nine.. ninety ni-"

… "Four-"

"Mal. Keep counti-"

Mal whispered "Dale." Good. I must be getting through to them past all the mental noise.

"Mal. You need to relax yourself. Here, I'll do it instead."

… Mal closed their eyes.

…

Dale smiled slightly, "Ready?" he said.

"Four hundred ninety eight."

"Dale."

"Four hundred ninety seven"

"Four hundred nin-"

"DALE."

"Yes, Mal?"

"Dale. You're not allowed to count the failures."

...

Mal's head was arched down to a perpendicular angle compared to the floor. Dale tried to continue counting, but-

"No."

"Four hundred-"

"Dale, stop."

"-Ninety-"

"Dale."

"Then answer my other questions. You are ill and I want to help you."

"I'm not c-"

"Answer or I can force you."

….

The two sat at a dreadful impasse for a pause.

….

He began with a calm voice. "Mal. What did you have to do, when did you start using Aura, and what caused all your current physiological issues?" Dale waved his hands in a comforting swinging. "There's no failures to count. No rules to-"

The words came out in nearly an imperceptible blur, "Any task given. Any solution viable. Anything goes."

"Malady Greenpath."

Malady first gagged, dripped out a few drops of blood onto their hands, and muttered something Dale hadn't heard before:

"Megan, give me perspective."

… Was Mal religious? Did they suddenly remember something else? Dale wasn't entirely sure, but he had to get answers.…

-Then, he noticed what was so strange about the scene:

Mal used both hands to cover their dripping.

….

Oh. Dale noticed it by now. I mean, five hundred is up. I wasn't really hiding it today.

"Mal. Your arm is healed."

I waved my hands as emotionally as possible. It was a sad little "hurra". I may have lost all my joy today from that horned demon busting into my life again.

Then… he kept counting and I wanted to beat him so badly.

Megan had reminded me that wasn't the path.

Be Honest.

….

"It's a miracle, Dale! This is…"

Dale… didn't look too happy. He didn't move out if the chair, just… stared.

"That's not Aura."

"Dale. I said supernatural power. I know what Aura is."

…

"You meant semblances."

I chuckled softly, Soul powers tied to your self, awakening in life or death situations? That was every task for every day that ended in "y", not that we knew the path of days very well back then. "Everyone is gifted, after all."

The room was silent.

...

I noted a clarification was in order, "Though… this isn't exactly my special thing. It's just a work bonus."

Dale furrowed his brow at that. "Mal. What were you made to do?"

… Full honesty.

"Any task given. Everyone is numbered 1-500, and we do any kind of task for the torture of a single man."

Dale raised a hand, seeming to notice late that it was a clenched fist, and opened it before holding out a finger towards me.

"You were a torturer?" Dale asked.

"Us dying, or nearly dying in countless ways of suffering is what tortured him. Not exactly us, you see. Slightly different."

I never thought I could make Dale want to kill someone. Now I might have managed to get it to 2 today.

"Aura? Got it via the pit."

"Mal. Explain the healing first. That… isn't possible. You'd have to have the power of… maybe a kingdom's worth of Aura or something."

… I'll explain the gory parts later.

"Dale. Should I give you a physical examp-"

"MAL. NO."

He stood up and went over to my chair, wrenching both my arms apart from each other.

"NO." He sighed after a second or so, "Just tell me what it is."

"How my…"

"Earlier. You said you tested yourself. How does it function? What's the limi-"

"I heal in 500 seconds."

"Heal what in 500 seconds?"

"Anything."

Dale gasped, then breathed slowly.

"It keeps us going longer. More usability out of 499 people if they keep coming back when you don't kill them fast enough.

… Dale seemed shocked, so he forcibly sat down by my chair and held my hand. I looked at the desk's paperwork.

"What is your ability?"

"Well, I basically can't die."

"I know the healing now, Mal. What's your ability?"

… Eh? I did thoug-

"Wait, Mal."

He seemed to think of how to clarify.

"… You used too many weird terms when trying to explain. Your semblance?"

"It's just… hard to explain. Mostly because I… named it… uh… Aura?"

Mal flinched away from a snort, as Dale laughed quietly.

"I… You're ridiculous. I can work with that though. Describe it as well as you can."

…

Mal was trying incredibly hard in order to not do any weird terms.

"If I'm injured, my Aura, this meaning my defence, strength, speed, etc, all become better."

He commented, "I think I heard of someone that had a semblance like that during a trip to Vale. Maybe I can get in touch with them, and have you learn more about yours in a safer environment."

Oh. That's pretty interesting.

"… Sorry for trying to hide it."

Wait.

What I just described… is just the same effects as the Aura he described to me. This actually is normal to him. I just… described the same thing twice. There's nothing to hide.

Mal stood up and really felt he needed a practical showing of the power in action to really hammer home the actual strangeness of his ability.

… Then remembered he had a better thing than breaking another limb.

Megan. Toes, if you don't mind. Also, will he have a breakdown over the third question?

…

Mal seemed calm. Good.

"Please don't do anything like that ever again," he requested.

"No promises. May get in an accident or something."

… This reduced his worries quite a bit, knowing his son had such an incredible talent.

… Now he had to investigate whatever this horrifying group was.

…

Mal seems ca-

… Dale stood up alongside his now much notably calmer son, and was going to quickly resolve his last question-when he remembered:

"Mal. What caused everything else?"

… because Mal's feet. They are bleeding.

Heavily.

….

Mal looked at their red soles. Dale looked in horror at another possibly drastic injury.

The main worry is how long this injury has been there. He hadn't noticed it at all! This entire time the only thing he noticed was the arm! Was it intentional misdirection? Was he just… that inattentive?

No time was ready to waste. Where was the nearest medical facility?

… Across town.

"Brothers," he groaned.

This is going to hurt later.

Dale grabbed ahold of Mal, and started walking through town. Everyone was paused in the streets, shops, houses.

Dale was the only moving thing here. As the two of them went across the street towards the small medical clinic, Dale realized he made a slight mistake in how he was holding Mal.

Both his hands were, foolishly occupied by his son, and he couldn't get open the notoriously jamming pull door. It was nearly enough to break him off the trail.

"Dale. Can you move me a bit closer? I can open it."

Dale nearly choked in surprise. This… never happened to him before.

… This direct breaking of one of the longest lasting truths of his life going to distract him. He'd have far too much to do balancing his job with taking the necessary time investigating the hell his son was trapped in before he found them, so he ignored the doubts he was having about his abilities functioning right to get them both in a hygienic medical facility so he could properly address these health problems. All of them. His paranoia and constant fears of something going wrong led to him doing much of the necessary research and support into helping his son in his house, isolated from the town.

This meant that he only called in any medical practitioner to only help with the injured areas, thus, clearly preventing any possible risks to any other part of the already injured body. He now knew that there was a far more insidious history behind his child's ill health, and his son was preventing him from knowing a far larger deal of information.

He was going to get Mal healed, and his worries could gladly be evicted from his mind without any further problems on his part.

The two of them jointly opened the door, and Dale walked them both into the small hallway leading to the patient's check-in area. After very carefully doing the required information paperwork and still accomplishing it in undefeatable record times, Dale checked his feet, saw the sprouts, then calmly looked at his destination.

They both waited, Dale refusing to stop holding Mal.

Mal started hissing as soon as Dale finished his semblance.

"Dale. No medical checks right now."

"Mal. You're literally bleeding out of your feet."

"Just wait ten minutes!"

"Why? I'm planning to get you a full medical che-"

… Mal gave a look of "What. Are. You. Doing."

Mal quietly mouthed out the number "500"

"Ah."

"Well, you must know there's a problem there. That still just fails to remove whatever is causing this, correct? I'd say if it did work on everything, you wouldn't have this problem so much."

…

… Moment of truth.

"Soo…. Dale."

….

Dale gave the most blank look of "What. Did. You. Do."

Now that Dale knew their child's unusual secret, he felt had his suspicions of every dangerous situation proven to be perfectly justified.

So, Dale believed it was perfectly acceptable to pull out his most judgmental face of horror, dawning disappointment and almost definite disapproval.

… Mal had to muster up the courage to answer the hardest, most embarrassingly complicated question of them all…

They very narrowly managed, after much effort, to get it out and ask Dale…

"What… would you say if I said I was on my period?"

….