Fenton, the responsible one as always, used his ability to clean up the slime from the walls.

Ace blinked around the apartment, helping out as well, and Levi said, why don’t you let me just say everything is clean?

They said no.

If everything was clean, where would all the dirt go? Something had to go somewhere, as obvious from the last incident. The laws of physics still applied, for each action, there would be an equal and opposite reaction, no matter how grotesque it may be.

Levi returned to his room, sulking, and fell asleep on the bed, all his energy spent after using his ability non-stop, still unable to turn it off. Once he left, Fenton ran through the suite, caught Ace before he went to go meet him, and brought him in close, whispering into his ear.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Ace pried himself away, citing personal space .

“We need to leave. What happens when he wakes up and accidentally says something that could tear the entire town in half,” Fenton asked.

“He won’t do that, he was only upset earlier,” Ace replied.

“I knew you would say that.”

“Then why did you ask,” Ace chuckled.

“Good faith. If you don’t want to leave, then I have another idea.”

Two hours later, another brave delivery robot made its way up the elevator, down the hallway, and used its Bluetooth signal to ring the doorbell. Ace blinked to the front, apologized for the death of his brother, and took out the plastic package.

He blinked back to the bedroom Fenton was sitting in, and was grossed out, looking at the object.

“Have you been listening in on us,” Ace whispered.

“What are you talking about?”

“This is a rabbit watch. Sometimes I call him-”

“NO! God, no, stop!”

Ace laughed and Fenton made an exaggerated face pretending he was going to throw up while he tore open the package and took out the watch. He set the controls to neutralize, and paused momentarily when there was an option for shock, then put the key in his pocket, even more, worried because the instructions said it was unbreakable without it.

“These things are made for kids that can’t control their abilities, that’s why it looks like this. It was this or a baby chicken,” Fenton laughed.

“Yeah, I don’t think he’ll put it on willingly. I wouldn’t.”

“Who said anything about that?”

Ace snatched the watch out of his hand and blinked to the other side of the bed.

“Taking control of another's body without their consent is wrong,” Ace said.

Fenton nodded and was surprised that Ace was the one who was being sensible and smiled.

“What,” Ace asked.

“Nothing. You’re just not thinking with your dick anymore,” Fenton teased.

“Don’t be jealous because you’re single.”

They started jeering each other as usual, roasting each other until Fenton realized something important.

“If there’s a downside like earlier when all those words came back as ooze , what happens if we try something else?”

“We can worry about that later,” Ace mumbled.

“ No, we can’t! How could he even get a second ability this late in life anyway? We already finished puberty.”

“That...is a good question,” Ace replied.

“He’s lying about something else.”

“No way! He told us the truth...and it isn’t that great. What else can he be hiding?”

“Why don’t you just ask him nicely, it's not like he can kill us with a few words,” Fenton said sarcastically.

Ace huffed and blinked back to Levi’s room, tapped him awake, turned on the lights, and the severity of what happened was starting to settle in. Levi sat up, groaning, confused, and got back under the comforter once Ace started talking about trust issues.

“I’m trying to sleep,” Levi groaned.

“You can sleep once you’ve told me the truth,” Ace replied.

Levi did not come out from under the blankets, because he was now inside his own grave, and now he had to answer the truth, after going on his moral high ground earlier. Ace grabbed the blanket off him, threw it to the floor, and once again Levi was weak to his partner, nowhere to hide.

“Tell me more,” Ace demanded. “Tell me or else I’m never speaking to you again! What else are you lying about?”

Fenton, still nosy, always wanting to know what everyone was thinking, his psychic powers still not enough, listened outside the door, and he was somewhat touched by the revelation that Levi made.

“We met when we were ten. I’ve always liked you,” Levi confessed.

Fenton blushed, and then internally cringed.

Who liked someone for that long?

Ace found it quite romantic.

They were both sure they were always meant to be together, forever, everyone was against them, and the two idiots had a positive feedback loop, their love unstoppable. Fenton wasn’t sure if he was a pessimist or if Levi was a stalker, maybe it was a little bit of both, but once again his need to know everything had bitten him in the ass.

It was the gift that kept on giving once Levi explained why his father wanted a baby.

“You can’t tell anyone this or else my family will kill you,” Levi cautioned.

“I promise. I won’t tell a soul.”

“Good…”

Fenton lost his mind because Levi admitted his family was one step away from being wizards.

“All the Fealty Rings have pieces of just one astrals soul inside of there, he’s long dead.”

Ace laughed uncomfortably and he immediately took off his own ring and put it in his pocket, and then wiped his hands on the pillows.

“Why do you still have yours? You’re supposed to return it when you leave,” Levi said.

“Why return it?”

“We...can’t make more...They found out a long time ago to make their own celestials, but our own kind of suck, because they used people . My aunts and uncles won’t tell any of us, and they pretend like they lost the instructions. Liars.”

“Why wouldn’t they tell you? Isn’t there a reason?”

“It’s my dad. They’re all afraid of him! He keeps saying he has some ability that's so dangerous he can’t use it around others!”

Levi considered the possibility that maybe something worse than what he had, his father had, and this wouldn’t be good. Did he have the same ability? If his father was so terrified of his own power to use it, what would happen if they got into a simple shouting match?

“What does this have to do with a baby,” Ace groaned. He flopped onto the bed and muttered that Levi’s father was simply a filthy pervert.

“Ace. Think. My dad must have known, he must have known for years, that I could do this, and he said nothing. ”

“But-”

“Then! Then he set me up with Mary Jane, she has two abilities. She’s the daughter of the strongest person alive! Ace, if we had a child that wouldn’t be a person… I don’t want to know what it would be.”

Fenton pieced together the subtext.

That baby would be put into another object once its ability blossomed, and whatever abominable thing it could do would be obscene.

“Oh shit,” Ace whispered. “He wants to make a god?”

“I’m certain of it. No one should have these objects. They’re all cursed, we’re all cursed. ”

Fenton slowly got up, walked back to his room, and was cold all over, his life now would never be his own. He wanted to run away, but he couldn’t. He threw Ace straight into the arms of a sociopath and his deranged family.

Believing only he could rescue Ace, Fenton tried to understand what could have made Levi change so drastically, and he remembered.

The Rock.

It was still in the living room, the walls stained green, even with the slime pushed down the drain. It pulsed softly on the couch and turned yellow once it saw Fenton. All that was left was a hard, lumpy core, and when he picked it up, Fenton blushed.

“Am I holding your hand,” Fenton asked.

It let out the morse code for you’re holding something, alright, and Fenton quickly returned to his room, not wanting The Rock to think he was interested in it, uncomfortable at the very idea that this rock was very friendly, and it wanted everyone to touch it.

He left it on the bed and began interrogating it, bad cop, no doughnut.

He took the notebook and pen from the living room and again communicated with The Rock , using sometimes telepathy, but he wasn’t fond of it.

It was still trying to hit on him, and he wasn’t sure why The Rock was promiscuous and was confused as to how it even had a sexuality and told himself just go with it, because nothing made sense in his life anymore.

“What’s your name,” Fenton asked.

The Rock was silent.

It did not have one, and it turned blue, and it was sad, realizing after billions of years of sentience that it never had a name, and it was missing a sense of self.

“I-it’s okay. Can you tell me how you made Levi stronger?”

The Rock let out so many dings Fenton could hardly keep up, and it was a very long essay, some parts veering off into its life story, and Fenton was confused as to why it even had one.

After asking it to repeat itself several times, Fenton had several pages of evidence and immediately realized no one would believe him.

Who would believe a man that has spoken to a magical rock on how to obtain powers such as everlasting youth, reality-bending abilities, or best of all, to always be able to put the USB in the right way on the first try was sane ?

“I’ll just get the proof myself. Come with me,” Fenton told The Rock.

Fenton felt like someone was smiling when he looked at The Rock, but was nervous to touch it and used his telekinesis to carry it with him. He started to understand Ace and his qualms about personal space.

Fenton, always wanting to know everything, left on another quest for knowledge, back to his apartment.