ORIGIN

Oliver turned to face it, ears back. Alpha made no move to rectify what it'd interpreted as a hint of fear. Instead, it did a somewhat in-depth once-over of the crow-dog. He hadn't had half of those wounds before, and it'd only been a day. There was no way they'd healed over so quickly. The orthoclase's eyes narrowed, more out of confusion than anything. Where'd those come from? Did it do that?

No, no - the little creature'd be shying away from it, then. It didn't know how Nemesis was faring (except for alive,) but it assumed the same of her.

Quills pricked at the lack of animosity, the questioning about what it wanted. Its needs were bare necessities. Creature comforts weren't among them - or so it'd conditioned itself to think. Socializing, as Pride had called it, wasn't necessary except to get what it was tasked to. There wasn't any task or goal here to focus on but whatever this little hybrid had in mind.

Alpha remained right where it was, awkwardly toeing the threshold of grass and dirt. Its shoulders rolled dismissively where it stood, and its resulting rumble was equally as noncommittal, "I'm fine." No injury but what it'd apparently caused. It didn't read too hard into the if you needed any help, and plowed right through the next offering: "I'm not hungry."

It hadn't eaten in a while, and knew that it reasonably should be; but, that twisting and churning feeling in its crop and stomach worked in conjunction to kill any real appetite. The orthoclase had no basis for it, but it pushed that personal issue aside and put suspicions of poisoning on the table. What reason did Oliver have not to do such a thing? Use fruit against it in a murderous plot? Its eyes narrowed again, and it shifted its weight onto either foot.

At least Oliver's request to talk wasn't outright denied.

The orthoclase's eyes narrowed and quills prickled with suspicion. Its head swung away from the crow-dog's gesturing, sweeping in a slow arc around the foliage. Every other body in Canis and near to Tunnel P blared in its vision, but there were no knife-wielding beasts in the wings waiting for it to cross the threshold. No dragons lurking around the corner. Alpha blinked with a huff, and fixed back on Oliver as he continued, shuffling back to make room.

It stood at the edge for a few moments longer, gathering up the confidence to stride onto the grasses with minimal amounts of the wariness it had rolling through its crop. Alpha eyed the edge of the grove, where some of the ground cover hadn't been flattened down by bodies yet, and decided there was a good place to stand.

That great task completed, it looked back at Oliver again. Angry at Nemesis - it's opponent. She'd been fighting fairly. No magic use, a contest of pure strength. Then, it smeared into a disgusting blur it wasn't fully-lucid for. It knew she wasn't dead - Vargas had suggested that much - but the best way it could describe the resulting feelings was mixed. Grateful in some ways (which it attributed to not having wasted her potential) and baleful in others (another witness to it's lapse in control.)

But, had it been angry at the wulfenite? Or completely out of its mind and lashing at anything that moved? It vaguely recalled setting its teeth around the Master's forearm. Alpha answered descriptively, "no." Quills prickled again with unintelligible emotion.

Alpha continued to be a great contributor to the hybrid's cause; it grunted a short, "I don't need to." Bait... taken, in a likely unhelpful way. Its eyes narrowed into another squint - the closest the monstrous being could get to a slight grimace.

"... you don't seem real happy."

Alpha's head jerked to the side, jaw setting with a grunt. It glared down at Oliver, but otherwise didn't move.

Happy: what a word. That was something that seldom crossed its mind as the abstraction and innate need that it was. That was a creature comfort it - no, it didn't need that - did it? ... did it? What kind of a feeling was happy? Tearing its claws through something and contesting it's strength didn't fit the bill; all of that adrenaline was just eagerness and gratification for doing what it was made for. Looking for fruit, as it was presently distracting itself with?

The monstrous hybrid craned its neck to fit its teeth around a citrus-like fruit the size of its fist. It tugged back, the branches rocking and whispering against one another with the abrupt movement. Chk! went the now-free fruit. Alpha stared at Oliver again. It lifted a claw to turn the citrus around on its teeth, gnawing off the skin and carefully avoiding breaking the individual fruit inside.

There wasn't any heightened state of being coming from presenting itself with a fruit - just a brief rush of enjoyment from the juicy texture as it bit in, but fleeting. It was the same as the adrenaline from battle. A moment's feeling... good. Well, capable, here.

(The entire time it was mulling this over, it was shifting in place, pacing a few steps, ruffling its quills, whatnot. Clearly signs of just contemplating in wary silence.)

If it had no description for how happy felt, was it happy? Had it been? Early on, in its younger days not spent pacing Tunnel P or guarding chrysalises or doing whatever it was that the title of Overseer entailed? That reality-bending witch's words flickered into mind. Alone. "I don't mind being alone. I can protect myself," it'd hissed back, then. Alpha took another bite of its fruit, not at all tasting the acidity or sweetness of it. All it felt was a vague numbness and the juicy chunks in its teeth.

Pretty figurative, if you ask me.

It watched Oliver for a moment, finished eating, and finally bit, "... talk?" Alpha squinted hardheartedly, quills imitating. Its head tilted just slightly, maybe too little to even notice it.

It hadn't even done anything to make the little hybrid cringe away; hadn't done anything but look at him. The toxic glow of its eyes was reflecting dimly, distantly in Oliver's. Looked like a mirror. Alpha gnashed its teeth, and averted its gaze to lick at its chops. Juice was practically dribbling down its chin, pinkish-red like blood mixed into saliva - it certainly didn't help the fearful situation going on closer to the ground.

The orthoclase listened without particularly looking, quills prickling like the idle twitch of a hide. It was still stuck on the question of happy, even though it had an answer for it. Dissatisfaction thrummed through it, and it looked for a loophole that wasn't there.

Unless... Alpha finally twisted to gaze at Oliver, most of the blank intensity in its eyes gone, now. It paced along the grove's edge and stopped where it'd come in. Lowering its head and its voice, it asked, "why don't I seem happy?" If it was one little error unraveling it for all to see, it could fix that. Polish up some broken bits and sweep aside that dissatisfaction. Problem-solving was the solution, and the solution was to find what vulnerabilities there were so it could cement them all away.

"Happy Gembound…" I'm not one, it thought with more confidence than anything else it had before. Not one of those fuzzy, emotional messes predisposed to impulsive decisions and mistakes. Self-fulfilling prophecies and all that; and the pressure to be perfect and the peak of creation. It wasn't shaped like Vargas's one spawn would be, pre-programmed with a purpose in mind — but it could pretend to be. What other choice did it have?

Smiling, laughing. Alpha set its jaw, looking Oliver up and down. He wasn't doing any of that. His eyes weren't morphing into smiling mouths. Wasn't bouncing up and down. It'd seen doggish grins before and overexcited eagerness from that annoying white dog with the paints. Preferring to look out, rather than in, it grunted a quiet observation, "you aren't smiling or laughing." Ergo, you're not happy, either. The orthoclase squinted as it continued to listen.

It hated how easily he could strike the nail on its head.

Alpha was thinking a lot in moments of quiet, was barely hanging on in moments of high activity and duress. Every little thing was glaringly obvious, even to a creature that'd never even met it before. Fucking wreck. Couldn't hardly demonstrate an emotion but every single one was visible. Claws curled into the dirt, and it trembled slightly despite every attempt to rein in that fucking instinct that said run, run, RUN! It wasn't was a coward. A pathetic one at that. Couldn't even hide its messes right. To Hell with cleaning them up.

Vision smearing briefly, the orthoclase lifted its head and swallowed once. Choking down that cottony feeling in its throat, it raked at the sod beneath it. Then, it set back to pacing like a shark; if it stopped moving, it might just die. The monotony and momentum steadied its own breathing. All the while, Alpha stared down the crow-dog, just about willing him to run off to its Master with this little bit, that words had it so agitated and stirred-up.

Caves, how tired was it? That brief moment of self-directed ire burnt out before it could get to the point of destructive behavior. It puttered to a stop, quills puffing and then drooping.

Gembound weren't self-serving enough to be liars and crooks. There were some here and there, but they never made it far. The whole lot of them were selfless fuzzy, emotional wrecks. They knew more than it in that regard. Alpha was intimately familiar with how its teeth and claws tore through flesh, what weak points were nearly universal across designs, species. It was not familiar with... the rest.

Alpha shifted towards the crow-dog, looming and crowding into his space. When it asked "how do I fix it?" it was in a monotonous low growl matched with a fiercely tired glare.