… "I'm Megan," she said, while gesturing towards her body.

"#398, titled as Oracle. We haven't physically met. You know me through our personal relationships to Alexander."

… The silence continued.

"Sorry for such a bad first impression, Dale. I'm responsible for the bleeding all over the place."

Dale went over to her, and grabbed her shoulder tightly.

"Mal. What's happened to you? Is this a coping mechanism?"

"Split personality?" Marigold suggested.

… Megan smiled. "I'm Megan. I see the future in return for the loss of my life."

"-that being eventual death through extreme blood loss?"

Marigold's pretty good at this.

…

"Mal. Does this mean you were intentionally killing your self in order to predict the future?"

Her mind prickled in a jolt of fear

Don't. Do NOT say yes-

"Yeah. I've been backseat supporting Alex all day to prevent you all from dying."

…

….

"Kid. You were doing what?"

Marigold quietly tried to extricate herself from what was turning into a private family matte-

Mal gestured her back to her position, calling out "Marigold. You qualify for this too."

"To put a very VERY long time of question dodging out of the box once and for all the two others here…"

Mal flourished, slipping slightly on orange pulp, wincing as she clapped her hands together.

"We're both one person. He's the body, I'm the extra tenant since a couple of inhuman frankensteins didn't let us die. We are nearly the textbook definition of genderfluid."

"Also, us not being honest led to a likelier chance of our deaths, which is why I suggested this."

…

It was a long silence, only broken as Mal began to idle. When it got too awkward, after grabbing a bandage and broom from two cupboards, nose bleeding as she did so, Mal swept up the orange viscera and covered her hand.

…

"Tough crowd?"

Just… let's let them think through all the insane information I gave them today.

…

Dale Greenpath spoke first. He's been weirdly good at getting back to stability, hasn't he?

"Mal. Are you saying that you believe you are two separate semblance possessing individuals?"

"Yes."

… Mal turned as she heard a rather quiet voice emerge from Marigold.

"This… This is unprecedented."

Mal looked unnerved at Marigold's sudden expression changing from blank unresponsiveness to… whatever that face was. "Rictus" was probably the best way to describe it.

This prompted Mal to start started hissing quietly to herself.

"…. Alex."

"Hey, Alex!"

…

"… Is this girl a pervert?"

Mal burst out laughing without warning, making everyone jump.

She writes groundbreaking medical papers on the weird injuries we get

… Mal whispered in horror. "WHY are you on first name terms with another mad doctor?"

She's nice.

….

Dale was still bewildered by today's events.

Despite that, he cleared his throat, and reiterated something from earlier that day.

"Mal. You're still grounded. I'd also like to request you stop using the ability that makes you bleed yourself dry."

"That makes sense."

…

"So, we're going home?"

Dale sighed. "You're going home. I have work to do."

The two of them went for the door, Dale giving apologies to Marigold for increasing her workload.

"Oh, no! It's perfectly fine!"

… Dale paused in confusion at her.

Really, Mari?

You… looked dead from work when we started.

She now looked gleeful, slightly quivering as they went to the door. Marigold appeared to be trying so hard to not break her professional habits and sprint to her desk to start writing.

"Mari, you can go."

She whispered "Thank you." and turned, leaping three steps in a go up to her rooms.

Dale smiled slightly, and the two Greenpaths went out, walking along the dirt path once again.

Mal, not knowing what to do, decided to disassociate. They laid on the floor, expecting to snap back to reality in a few hours or so. It was a method to pass the time when healing in their room. Ill advised in combat, but useful in times where nothing bad was happening.

… They were only actually zoned out for an hour when they remembered what Meg had said they had been doing all day. With a jump up, they began to watch the paths, eventually realising that they were not, in fact, in any kind of safe situation at all.

"I've been preventing you all from dying."

"Megan. How likely was that chance of us dying?"

Every rapid-fire path they tried to take to prevent disaster was blown away in rapid succession. There was nothing they could do to prevent the town from ending up in the "Grimm Casualties" section of history books.

… This led to about ten minutes of incoherent bloody screaming trying to find a solution, then, starting to resign to fate, Mal realised Dale would definitely have something to say about this mess they were in right now.

Then, there was a picture. A weird one, but it was so out of left field that they broke away from the visceral screaming of agonising tragedy.

… "Meg. I'm not making tea in the middle of preventing a Grimm attack."

Signals, you idiot.

Mal Greenpath stood off the floor, noting an issue with the picture.

Mal sat on a rooftop, holding a boiling kettle while looking up into the sky.

"That's not even our kettle. Dale doesn't make tea. He just drinks it out of politeness."

Mal stood, now trying to put together meanings behind a new repeated flicker of shots.

A grass trail in their old park.

The old kettle

… A… red gem?

"Meg. Just talk."

Mal stood there, then eventually gave a loud annoyed groan, "Fine, I'll start it off all by myself. You need to do the actual implementing though."

Mal huffed, walking with loud steps over to their large, boxy stovetop, barking out an order.

"Headbutt it."

What in the-

"Headbutt the stovetop, then grab it. You can do the rest. I need to eventually start watching for things, not guide you like a little fairy."

…

Mal shook their head, but followed along. After starting their "semblance", their body flinching slightly from the minor pain, they wiped off the stovetop and looked around for…

There.

… Mal chuckled slightly at the small ruby inside the stove.

Da na na na naaaaa.

"That's a good one."

They reached in to grab the red crystalline mass they saw. Mal noted, with some interest, that this both warm to the touch, and most likely a very volatile amount of Dale's dust. They honestly had forgotten this was a method of power in the early days of living with Dale, just heading back to assuming everything worked in their old ways of electric power sources. It wasn't a good way to deal with the world, but they had been living in a horrible place, and had just wanted to ignore anything that could have been triggering.

When Mal eventually became an interacting member of their new hometown, they put it aside and slowly began to acknowledge the new changes with Dale's slow lessons.

It was quite easy for them to play an amnesiac, since there was so much they wanted to forget.

…

What's the problem?

Grimm will attack, leaving everyone dead. They were the exception.

Megan, any help here?

Megan stayed silent, but they inadvertently dropped the stone while trying to stim out an idea.

"Oh. That's weir-"

Dust activates on contact with Aura.

Oracle and Adrenaline both count as Aura.

Do we really want a bomb blown up in Dale's house?

Mal stopped trying to reach for the highly flammable rock, instead trying to define the last two images.

A grass trail is just a non sequitur…

Megan. Anything besides a grassy green pa-

Mal just stared.

"Megan. You're a genius and I hate you for it."

We're going to Dale now.

Two out of three pictures answered, Dale, probably since he did town guarding and stuff, and red dust, for something probably explodey.

Mal searched around for a container to carry the dust, just choosing to filch a drink canister of Dale's that wasn't too annoying to carry, strapping it around their shoulders.

"Macguffin, check. Now to go talk to Dale!"

Let's just completely ignore the fact that this breaks the grounding. We get a saving-the-day free pass.

They ran down the path to the guardhouse at the end of the street, bounding with each step, occasionally pausing to avoid colliding with large groups of other people, charging off whenever they had the chance

"Mal, are you… okay?"

"I'm fine, Mrs Mason!"

… Mrs Mason was surprised at the cheerful response of the lad."

"You DO know your ears are missing, RIGHT?"

"I'm good!"

… Mason's ears twitched in disturbed sympathy for the child. At least they've begun to feel better about their appearance. Little things that count.

...