Corruption

Breaking Bonds

Miranda joined him in his room, as he sat down, letting his eyes cool down. He wasn't entirely sure how he'd done it before, but he had an idea. It hadn't lasted very long, in fact in ended immediately after they inevitably accepted him into their ranks. Most of Urzuhg were talking about her success now, he noticed, now that he could understand what they were saying. They still couldn't refrain from calling her ugly though. They really couldn't stand the way humans looked. He wondered how Miranda was Mari's daughter, but he hadn't asked her yet because he thought the question rude, and she often got upset when talking about her dad. Now that the mutation was over, he found his eyes very sore and his senses were a little all over the place again, though not nearly as bad as the first time since Miranda was here now.
"Well it's good you figured it out, but you need to be careful," she told him. "You could go blind." Nelson nodded. He wasn't keen on the idea of going blind. "I didn't really mean to do it, but I kinda caught on to what happened," he explained to her. "I'll get you a blind fold so you can just keep your eyes closed for a while without using them," she said thoughtfully, "They should heal right up according to Qunitz. I'm not sure how long it'll take but I'm betting you'll be able to tell." "Yeah," Nelson agreed. "It seems that your missions have been going really well so far," he commented, "I'm happy for you." She smiled a small smile. "I suppose so," she said, "Here, I'll be right back." She left to go get the blindfold she mentioned. Nelson sat on his bed and meditated, keeping his eyes closed and trying to focus on being in control of his senses.
She returned not too much longer with a black blindfold. "Here you go," she said kindly. He accepted it and as he put it on, he realized his dreads had grown quite a bit. They were a bit below his shoulders. He hadn't expected such growth, even in the month-ish that he'd been a mess after seeing that video Miranda showed him. Maybe those pills had something to do with it. "Your hair growth surprising you?" She asked him, as he'd paused in putting the blindfold on. "Yeah," he said, "It's kinda weird." "Since their kinda long now," Miranda said, eyeing him curiously, "Would you mind if I tied it up for you? I used to have allot of fun playing with my mom's hair." Nelson shrugged. "Absolutely, go ahead." He stood up so she could stand behind him, and she began gathering his hair behind him. He got goosebumps when her fingers would brush against his neck as she gathered his hair. She let out a satisfied sigh. "It's a little bit different from what I'm used to, but it's still satisfying," she said contently. She had put his hair into a long ponytail hanging down his back, with only one or two dreads dangling in front of his face, and she even tied his blindfold for him, which wasn't necessary, but he certainly didn't mind. "Appreciate it," he said. "Not a problem at all." It was weird not being able to see at all. "Not being able to see should help you get used to using your other senses to get around, and hopefully get them in check," she said hopefully. "In fact, I have an idea. Think you can follow me?" "I don't know," he admitted, "It's not really as bad as I thought it'd be. I can kinda tell where you are by your voice and your aroma. But I don't know about the walls." "That's where your ears come in handy," she said, "Humans Can already echo locate, but you should be able to take it way further than them." He still wasn't very sure of his ability, though. "Well," She said quietly, "If you want.. you can hold my hand so you don't get lost. That way... you know.. um, you're always right by me and you don't have to worry about running into anything, and you can just get used to it." Nelson felt himself get a bit nervous. He wasn't sure why. "Sure, that sounds like a really good idea. Thanks." "Mmhmm." He reaches his hand out somewhat blindly, and she gently grabbed it and held it softly. Her hands were surprisingly soft to the touch. Given her history (from what she told him) he expected much rougher hands. He also found himself feeling butterflies in his stomach. He was a little surprised at how he was feeling towards her.
He followed her, trusting she wouldn't allow him to run into anything. They went through various levels of the ship, he felt. He could hear his the sound of their footsteps bouncing off the walls around and them, and he could smell her in front of him. He was also aware of people passing by, but he wasn't sure he could navigate through wherever they were on his own. Holding her hand gave him a nice warm feeling that he found soothed his senses from going in and out. In fact they felt a bit consistently stronger right now, he believed. Eventually they got to wherever they were headed. He sniffed the air as it immediately smelled more intensely like Miranda, and the air got much more comfortably warm in comparison to the rest of the cold ship. He heard the door slide down behind them. "This is my room," she said. "I want to make you a few little small obstacle courses you can practice walking around. Nelson nodded, and commented, "You know you're room is so much more comfortable of a temperature? And it smells like you in here, which you know I guess is to be expected but it's still nice." "Thanks," Miranda said, a shy tone in her voice. They hadn't let go of each other's hands yet. "Oh I'm sorry," Nelson said awkwardly, letting her hand finally go. "Anyways," Miranda quickly muttered, "I umm.. yeah I'll set this up. Just a few little things. You'll probably trip over them a few times, but focus on your hearing. You should be able to tell where they are by the sound of your footsteps echoing off of them, and eventually, also by the fact that they smell different from the floor. I personally use all this information to create a kinda image in my mind." "Interesting," he murmured, concentrating. "I'll see if can't figure something out." "And don't worry about falling anyway," she reassured him. "I'll catch you."
         He completely trusted her. Admittedly by this time he already could 'sense' where she was, but he was she was a special case. He didn't think sensing everything else would be easy. Once she'd set it up, she had him walk in a straight line back and forth. He of course almost immediately tripped over something. Miranda, true to her word, did indeed catch him before he hit the ground. "Thanks," he told her, completely at ease with her holding him, "I think I'm thinking about it too hard." He practiced for a long while, at least for a few hours. He wondered what he was tripping over. He could kinda tell where they roughly were, but he was off by just enough to make him stumble. And as soon as he started picking up on it, she moved them around, so he couldn't rely on muscle memory. After a while, he heard Miranda yawn. "Are you getting sleepy?" He asked her. "We can try again later." "No," she said, "Well I mean I normally rest at this time, but being half Urzuhg, we don't have to sleep at all. But also being half human, I can still benefit from it. So I like to do it sometimes. But don't worry about me, I'll wait until you master it." "What if it takes a while?" He asked. "I'll feel bad." "Don't worry, it's okay," she said warmly. It took him a long while to figure it out. What with all the different variations of the obstacles he had to maneuver, such as going in zigzags instead of straight line, hopping on one leg, increasing the amount of things for him to trip over. It felt like ages. But she caught him every single time he fell, just as she'd said. He never hit the ground once.
           He didn't know how much time had passed, but he eventually perfectly maneuvered through everything. He wasn't sure how to describe it, but it was like with his hearing and sense of smell combined just right, he could just tell subconsciously where everything was. He turned around to face Miranda. "You did it!" She said excitedly, "Think you can high five with that blind fold on?" He nodded. Curiously enough, he could actually hear her hand moving through the air, and smell the disturbance it made in the air, and was able to use that to accurately high five her. They let their hands hold on to it a bit longer than necessary before letting go. "Thanks to you," he said happily. He felt like his senses were completely under control. "Don't mention it," she said. "Might I take this blindfold off?" He asked her. She nodded. He was able to tell without even looking now. He smiled and took it off. He was pleasantly surprised to see her smiling back at him. He also got to see her room for the first time. It was pretty well decorated, likely with things she'd collected throughout the centuries, and it was also softly illuminated by a pink orb floating beside her bed. He first looked down to see the things he was tripping over were ordinary stones. To his left was were the door was they'd entered from, and to his right was her bed, which was a bit larger than a Queen size with purple sheets. In front of him was another door, with a holographic square floating in the middle. Behind him was yet another holographic console. He also noticed she still had that teddy bear from a long time ago, tucked in under the sheets. "This is quite impressive," he said looking around, and with a teasing smile, added, "I see your little friend there has been living more comfortably than me." She seemed confused at first until she saw him looking at her teddy bear. She blushed a bit. "I always keep him," she said quietly. "No judgement at all," Nelson said, "I was just making a joke. So do you like teddy bears and stuff like that?" She shrugged. "A little bit, sure," she admitted, fiddling with her fingers, "That one is kinda important though." "Why is that?" He asked curiously. "It's one my favorite gifts from my dad.. from back when.. you know." "Oh," he said. "It- he looks quite comfortable. You give him a name?" Miranda hinted at a smile. Before she could answer, Mari suddenly opened the door, surprising them both.
          "Miranda.. human," Mari said nonchalantly. He spoke in Urzuhg, but Nelson almost didn't realize it as the language had begun to sound as familiar as English. "I'm not going to lie," Mari said, crossing all four of his arms. "It's kinda weird seeing you in here, human." Nelson wasn't sure what to say. "Uh.. yeah man," he said awkwardly. He thought he saw Mari stifle a laugh. Miranda seemed a bit surprised. "It's just kinda funny," Mari explained, "You speaking our language like this. Anyway. Since your with us now, I guess you listen to this too. Those humans in that alien resistance group are beginning to interfere with our experiments. We already killed those Quiddlings for revealing too much information on us, and the king thinks they're trying to piss us off and get our attention. I don't think they're that smart though, to act against us in this way. Not with that new human in charge." "Quiddlings?" Nelson asked. "Oh yeah I forgot you don't know those," Mari said absentmindedly, "They kinda look like.. squids do on Earth, in the marianna trench I think you call it." "Oh," Nelson replied, still not having a single clue what he was taking about. He didn't know any aliens were working with humans. "King suggests you take some sort of action to shut them up," Mari continued. "But he left it at your discretion. Just hurry up. We're about ready to mount our forces against the Martians." Nelson felt an uneasy feeling in his stomach thinking about everyone back down on Earth. Everyone on Earth he felt bad betrayed him. Miranda cast a worried glance at him. He gripped Nightmare in its sheath, which he'd adjusted to go behind his lower back because it was easier for him to grab with his reverse grip style he preferred. "I think we should kill them," he said quietly, trying to refrain from sounding as upset as he was. Mari seemed surprised at his response. "Is that so?" He merely replied. "I'll do it," Nelson volunteered, feeling a desire for vengeance building up inside of him. They were his friends, he considered them like family, he had fallen in love with Anora. Whenever he thought about the bad things on Earth, they had subconsciously reminded him that there were still good people. It hurt him in ways he couldn't quite describe to find out they were bad too, just secretive about it. Snakes. He didn't feel bad about killing humans anymore, so if they were willing to hurt him so badly, why shouldn't he do the same? He didn't want them to feel like they'd gotten away with hurting him, like there were no consequences. He bet they were just having a great old time down there, Anora and Kelly included. He gripped Nightmare tighter, his pain turning to anger, his anger to a desire for revenge. Mari stared at him observantly. "I didn't expect you to be so eager to kill your old friends," he said, an odd edge to his voice, "You always seemed like a nicer human than that. It's just a surprise." He sighed. "Humans are hard to understand." "Maybe it's because you're trying to compare me to those humans," Nelson said, his eyes flickering between green and they're normal brown. "I hate them." His voice was quiet, but it carried allot of pain and anger. "I hate all the living walking breathing ecosystem destroying ignorant things that pride themselves as the dominate species in that planet. They're as good as dead. And I'm not bothered by killing them anymore. They're just evil. Good riddance, if I have anything to say about it." Miranda eyed him, a hint of sadness in her facial expression. "I see." Mari blinked a few times, clearly thinking. After a moment, he said, "Well, like I said, it's left at your discretion." He exited the room, the door closing quickly behind him. He sat on the edge of Miranda's bed, a deep feeling of hurt in his chest as he tried to crush the memories he had suppressed. Miranda sat on the bed beside him. "Nelson.." she said gently, "I could hear the pain in your voice. Are you okay?" Nelson nodded. "I'm great," he lied, now highly upset to the point of tears. "Nelson," she repeated, "It's okay to be hurt. I won't think any less of you, and you don't have anything to prove." She pulled him into a warm hug, rubbing his back gently, yet reassuringly. He hated himself for crying again, especially since he thought he was okay now, but he couldn't help it. Eventually as she hugged him though, the pain slowly began to recede. Then he was just left empty. "I'm sorry," he muttered quietly . That was when she surprised him by wiping his tears off of his face. "Don't let them upset you like this," she told him, "You're such a nice, silly guy. You deserve to be appreciated. You deserve to feel respected. Admired.." she cut herself off, blushing softly. She let her hand gently slide down his face from wiping his tears, down his neck and rubbed his shoulder comfortingly. The emptiness he felt earlier was replaced by a warming feeling. He felt butterflies in his stomach, and he got goosebumps. "But.. you know.. if they can't see that then.. it's just too bad for them. But don't let them rile you up. If anything, that's letting them win by getting under your skin." She smiled warmly at him. "It's okay, I promise," she reassured him, "As a matter of fact, I'll go get you some more chocolate while I'm down there since you didn't get to enjoy it the first time. Just relax, I'll feel out the situation, and then if you still want to, you can take care of it however you see fit. Is that okay with you?" Nelson couldn't help but smile at her. He put his hand on hers, where it was resting on his shoulder. "Thank you," he said, "You're really amazing, you know that?" She giggled awkwardly. "Uhm.. yeah no problem," she said, still blushing. Damn she's really growing on me, he thought, thinking about how much he was liking her. She stood up, and pointed to the door with the holographic square in the middle of it. "I'm sure you might want to get into some different clothes, since you aren't being held against your will anymore," she said. She fiddled with the controls, and the door opened. "There are some stylish Urzuhg clothes I have set as a preset in case you wanna use it. All you need to do is step inside, and it'll dematerialize you on the atomic level, and re-materialize you without all the atoms from the dirt and such that you may have collected overtime, and in whatever clothing you want." Nelson looked down to see he was still in the robes that Inu wore from way back when they fought the skin walkers. "That's great actually," he agreed. With a smile he added, "So does that mean I'll start smelling all beautiful like you now?" She giggled shyly before replying, "Don't worry, I have a masculine preset for you. I'll be back soon." "Oh by the way, how long have I been in here?" He asked her, "Since I was blindfolded? I've been having a hard time keeping track of time." "You get used to it," She told him, "And I'd say easily two or three days." Damn, we've been doing that training for three days?? He thought surprisedly.
*******
He did ask Miranda suggested, and calmed down to make sure he was thinking properly. He knew he at least wanted to strike fear into their hearts, or at least send them some sort of message that he would never forgive them at best. Maybe he shouldn't kill all of them. The machine he stepped into re-materialized him into a venta-black robe with a surprisingly long hood. He sat on the edge of her bed, reevaluating his life decisions. The soft pink light emanating from the floating pink orb next to the bed, he found to be quite soothing. He also found himself daydreaming about Miranda.
Mari entered the room a long while later. "Damn human," he said in Urzuhg of course, "I'm surprised you stayed in here for an entire two days without getting bored." "Two days?" He echoed, not realizing how long it'd been. His patience must have really gone up, or his perception of time was really thrown off. Maybe a side effect of the heightened mutation? "Yeah," Mari said, "Anyway, Miranda is back, and she wants to know what you want to do about the human's interference." Nelson nodded. As he followed Mari, down the winding gray corridors of the mothership, he asked him, "Hey, so since I'm not with the humans anymore, will you ever stop calling me human? I don't really want to be affiliated with them. They kinda suck to me." Mari crossed two of his arms. "Really now? I mean, I guess it makes sense, but you haven't even completed any missions as one of us yet." "What about after this mission?" He asked, "What would my name even be in this language?" Mari shrugged, blinking his four eyes a few times. "I don't know. Neruzo or something like that." They arrived at the docking area and went onto one of the flying saucers. Miranda was waiting there. "Samuel is the new head of the EED," she said in a confirmatory voice. She crossed her arms and frowned. "They're basically just trying to find me and kill me, in particular. Guess because they know I was spying on them for the longest and they feel stupid." Mari nodded but didn't speak. "What do you want to do?" She asked Nelson. He sighed. "I'm going to kill them," he said. "Well at least some of them. I'm sure I can get a point across to scare them." "That might actually work," Mari said thoughtfully, "I redirected an asteroid towards them, and poisoned it. I would expect them to try to shoot it in space before it impacts the ground. This will cause debris to fall into some of their lakes and streams and rivers nearby, which should flood into their oceans too. The interesting part is that it's specifically designed to impact humans, so they won't detect any disease in the fish. It'll give them a disease they shouldn't be able to counter very easily and that should stop them from bothering our experiments. Once it's killed off a good amount of the population we'll remove the poison, so we can still have some humans to study." "I'm sure they'll have some sort of plan in place to try to kill or capture me," Miranda said, "It might be smart to let me go down there first, let them use up their resources, and you can just finished them off however you want?" Nelson nodded. "I think I'll test out this second stage of my mutation too. I know it's completely overkill, but I just want to try it out." He put the blindfold on, to let his eyes rest a bit before activating his heightened mutation, just as Qunitz had suggested. "So you'll stop calling me human after this?" He asked Mari, looking directly at him with his blindfold on. Mari sighed. "Yeah, I guess whatever," he said, "But I sure will miss calling you human. It just has a nice ring to it." "What will you call him now?" Miranda asked her dad curiously. "Looks like it'll be Neruzo."
He meditated and waited on Miranda to signal them to come down. They would use the beam at its full power, which would make it slam into the ground. Apparently it was meant for war situations, but in this case it would be used to frighten them. He prepared himself.
Shortly afterward, they heard the loud beep echo through the ship that indicated it was time. "Looks like they prepared a little better than she expected," Mari commented. "There's no way they're gonna beat Miranda," Nelson replied, "If they even managed to put a tiny scratch on her, then I'll kill every single one of them." He would be pissed off if they'd hurt her. He put his hood on.
They beamed themselves down, landing steadily on the chaotic runway of the airport. He could tell he was beside Miranda immediately. He could smell dozens of people, but he couldn't exactly single them all out yet. He did hear someone hold their breath and rustle in the trees a little ways beside them. They smelled familiar. He frowned. Anora. That must mean.. He took out Nightmare, already anticipating the incoming sniper shots. Back in the day she always held her breath before firing to steady herself. He enhanced his senses as greatly as he could to detect any disturbances in the air caused by bullets. He imagined she would try aim for Miranda's head. He knew he would be able to block them in time though, he felt so light on Earth now after having been on Aidugh that he practically felt like he was weightless. He easily deflected all four bullet shots. "How typically rude of you humans," he said in English, projecting his voice for all of them to hear. They weren't going to lay so much as a pinky on Miranda as long as he was standing there. The longer he was here, the more he could tell who was who, and where. He hoped he would be able to single out Kelly. He wanted to kill her first. He took off his hood. It was time to start breaking bonds. He twirled Nightmare unnecessarily before sheathing it again. He was beginning to feel its effect on his personality.
"NELSON!!!" He heard Anora's voice call out. "Tsk," Miranda muttered, seemingly annoyingly. It bothered him, hearing her call his name like that. But it didn't matter anymore. He focused on Nightmare's effects. "Who the fuck is that?" He asked in a curious tone, hiding any trace of uncertainty from showing. "My name is Neruzo."
"What the hell!" Samuel suddenly outburst, surprising Nelson. "What the hell are you going on about?! What have they done to you!" Nelson smirked, tuning Samuel out as he felt the raw power building up inside him. The second mutation was ready. It seemed Nightmare had some sort of effect on that as well. It seemed excited. He turned to Miranda, and said, "Excuse me, kind lady?" He believed they were under the impression that he was being controlled or something. He wanted to demonstrate this was of his own free will. He also wanted an excuse to talk to her. He sensed her turn to talk to him. With his second mutation already active, he found he could not only locate people by smell and sound, but he could also get a hint of what they were feeling too. He mostly smelt fear, but he couldn't tell what Miranda was feeling. He decided to leave the blindfold on a while longer just to show off.
"Are these humans bothering you?" He asked her. "As a matter of fact they are," she replied. He could sort of tell she was smiling at him. "They're ganging up on me." Mari chuckled. In their own language, he said to Miranda and Nelson, "You're really having a good time with this aren't you?" He sensed Miranda nodding. Amongst the fear that everyone else was feeling, from Anora's direction, he sensed something else. Anger? Jealousy? That's what she gets, he thought. Samuel and the group in front of him were all just afraid though. He sniffed the air some more. Come on, Kelly's got to be around here somewhere, he thought, itching to kill her. He'd brought his favorite gun along just for her. The one he used on the SkinWalkers that left a huge crater in its wake. His ears pricked up to the sound of babies crying. Those must be Samuel's children. He focused in on their location. He smelled two other scents. Male and female. The female must be Kelly. Got her ass, he thought, But first..
       He pointed at Samuel. "You afraid?" He asked him directly. "H-huh?" Samuel stuttered, stepping backwards. Yep, I can definitely smell their emotions, at least a little bit, he confirmed in his mind. He had focused his senses in on Samuel's location. A female started talking to Samuel, though he didn't know who she was. "Sam.." she said quietly, as though he wouldn't be able to hear her, "Come on Sam.. we gotta stay strong. We can capture him now." Is that his new bitch? He thought, Guess everyone just started fucking around. "Good luck with that," he said to them, just to let them know they didn't have any sort of privacy. He also noticed a crowd of humans watching in the distance, in the same direction as Kelly. I'll just kill all of them since they're stupid enough to stand there, he thought with disgust. They were in the way of him killing Kelly. "How about we make this fair," he said, focusing in on her location in the distance, and grabbing that obsidian box technology that he used at skin walker ranch. He was just going to blow them all up. "Interesting choice," Mari commented quietly. He aimed it at Kelly's location. "Wouldn't want them getting in the way now would we?" Nelson continued coldly, ready to take his revenge on Kelly. The less humans the better, he thought, and charged it up and fired it. The glowing green ball of energy zoomed over Samuel's head and smashed into the crowd watching, as intended. The explosion was just as destructive as he remembered. He was certain he'd killed his targets and more. He sensed a few bodies being blown away as well, but he was interested in hunting them down.
It was time to test out just how much this new mutation enhanced him. Someone shot at him, but he moved over there so fast he was behind the person before the bullet had reached where he used to be standing. He snap kicked the person into the distance without paying much attention to who it was. Another human tried running away but he had already gotten Nightmare out and sliced the human's arm off, the person stumbling and falling in pain. He hadn't immediately killed the person because he wanted to further scare them with the sight of blood everywhere first. Another human down, he thought silently, getting ready to chop him up. "STOP!" Samuel's voice cried out from behind him. "What are you doing...!" Nelson turned around, facing Samuel. He made sure to keep a blank face on. Would he decided to kill Samuel too? Even if he turned his back on him, he seemed to feel pretty bad about it. It was hard to tell because of all the overwhelming sadness and distress radiating from him clear as day. "I'm killing him," was all he nonchalantly said aloud. "They're using you!!" Samuel yelled, "You're supposed to be one of us.." "A human?" Nelson asked calmly, though he was tired of being associated with these humans. He closed his eyes and reached for his blindfold. "Does I look human to you?" As he removed the blindfold, he heard a bullet fire at him. He easily moved his head out of the way. He couldn't believe how fast he was, especially with this light gravity. It was too easy. He had to hold back allot more than he expected to. He made sure to remain as expressionless as possible. Like Miranda was telling him, he didn't want them to see how hurt he was. Samuel was clearly taken aback by Nelson's new appearance. He couldn't help but frown as he saw Anora in the distance, patching up some girl, or at least trying to. I can't believe she did me dirty like that, he thought, trying not to think about it too much. He was snapped back to reality when Samuel exclaimed, "ANORA I NEED YOUR HELP!"
Nelson made no comment, and didn't change his expression. But his heart sank. He didn't want to kill them, and they were now getting ready to try to kill him. Samuel apparently could transform his new robot hands into blades, and was trying to slice at him, but compared to this new mutation, he was moving his slow motion. Nelson had to dodge slower so Samuel could see where he dodged to, to swing again. Anora fired a single sniper shot in their direction, and he watched it fly by them. It wasn't even close. Maybe she didn't have the heart to shoot him? He'd never seen her miss anything before. EVER. It sort of made him feel better. He decided he wouldn't kill them, and just chopped Samuel's hand off with Nightmare, spun around and backhanded  him out of the way. Now to deal with Anora. He zoomed almost instantaneously over to her location, startling her. "N-Nelson..." she said aiming her Sniper Rifle at him. She dropped it, and fell to her knees. "Please... why... you.... please stop..." He merely stared at her, his face serious. Miranda cast a worried look in the corner of his eye. Could she tell he was having doubts? "You don't have to do this... just come back..." he grimaced. He thought he heard a tiny heartbeat.. a second heartbeat.. coming from Anora's belly. Was it his..? If it was...
She had already practically immediately slept with someone else when he was abducted, was it possible that.. she had also done so.. nine months ago.. before all of this started? He didn't know. His pain welled back up to the surface. "Y-you.." Nelson muttered, staring at her belly. "That.. is.. that couldn't be someone else's....?" Anora immediately caught on to what he was saying. She was always really smart. "Nelson wait..!" She gasped, starting to reach out toward him. "You don't understand, this isn't what you think! This is y..." he kneed her hard in the stomach before she could finish. It made her throw up. I'm not about to listen to any fucking excuses! He thought angrily. He wanted to kill her for having cheated on him twice, with both genders! Was he a joke to her? Even so, he couldn't bring himself to finish her. He put his blindfold back on, deactivating his mutation and letting his eyes rest. Most importantly, to make sure no one saw him cry. He rejoined Miranda and Mari, and they were beamed back up into the mothership. "Are you okay?" Miranda asked. Nelson didn't reply. After a moment he just slowly nodded. He couldn't tell if his eyes were sore because of using his second stage mutation, or from how many tears he was struggling to keep from falling out.