Proditione

Eugo had been living a pretty content life for the past few days, part of this peace made him want to visit Ilken. He hadn’t seen the young boy in too long and felt that after last time he was obligated to visit again. 

He was improving though, according to both himself and Fiz his shovels had become significantly less scuffed.

Wanting to let his mind rest before he visited Ilken, Eugo decided to take a slightly longer walk than usual. As of recent Eugo wanted to in a sense improve himself, this included (for whatever warped reason) the ability to map the entirety of the dome. 

So, he took the chance to get himself absolutely fucking lost. Eugo noted that when most of your notable landmarks include a single castle and everything else was “steel… as far as the eye can see, which is about two feet ahead.”

“Ya say something Mr?” Chirped Fiz’s curious voice from behind. Eugo found that even after spending so much time visiting her, he still couldn’t match Fiz’s dazzling eyes when she saw something new.

“Nothing… don’t worry about it.”

“But it sounded like ya don’t like the steel Mr? I mean, lookie there so much of it, that one in particular. With a piece that nice I could…” Before Eugo could even blink his partner had snatched a sheet of metal double her size.

“What exactly are you gonna be doing with that?”

“Using it to build a steam engine of course!”

“We won’t be getting home any time soon Fiz?”

“I’ll be fine, you know I once spent two days hanging upside down off a steam pole!”

“That’s… impressive but won’t exactly help you carry a giant slab.”

“You don’t get it Mr; I no longer get dizzy if work several coal cycles without sleep. I can go on forever!” The girl triumphantly attempted to sprint ahead of the boy, suffice to say her face proceeded to slam into the ground.

“I’m fine Mr! Don’t worry about me.” Ignoring the advice, Eugo hauled his eccentric friend back to her feet.

“Mr! … Thank you.”

“All good Fiz, now hurry up I don’t want to make Ilken wait...”

“Sure thing Mr, I promise to not grab just anything I like the look of.”

“How bout you grab nothing.” Eugo paused for a moment realising his slight change in speech… the boy was fine with it.

“Ok… Fiiiiiiine.”

Sometime later the duo arrived at the desert, Eugo dully noted that not much had changed since his last visit. It was still extraordinarily bland and lacking any real sights other than the boy ahead draped in snow.

“Fiz, you wanna talk to Ilken with me, or explore…”

“Mr, I’m sure you know me pretty good by now. I’ll see you a bit later!”

“Ok… sure thing Fiz.” Muttered Eugo admittedly slightly dejected at her departure. His thoughts were interrupted by a comparatively more mature voice coming from the child ahead.

“Hi Eugo, who was that?”

“A friend… she’s a bit, well, optimistic.”

“She’s currently tearing metal apart using her bare hands Eugo.”

“Don’t worry about it. How have you been Ilken?”

“I should be asking you that… are you still ok with everything I said.”

“I just want to make sure you’re ok, but I’ve been doing fine. Spending a lot of time with a bright little flower.”

“You mean the girl?”

“More or less.”

“I see… I never saw you as the type who’d pique an interest in others.” Said the younger boy grinning.

“Well, you’d be right until a few weeks ago, I’ve probably changed a bit. I even took up shovelsmithing!”

“Well, we’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

For the moment Eugo was just glad to see his friend back to normal, maybe he had done something to help. The two boys spent some time catching up, conversing about shovels, meat blenders and crucifixions. Although after some time they moved onto a slightly more important topic.

“Eugo… I may have joined a ummmm a group.”

“A group?”

“I joined a Scorcher group.”

“Sorry what?”

“They’re a small group of revolutionaries who were formed after the explosion some weeks ago. I met them waiting for you out here one day, and I… agreed with a lot of the stuff they were trying to do.”

“Revolutionaries? But…” Eugo wasn’t sure what he didn’t like, maybe it was seeing his friend sentencing himself to what Eugo saw as certain death. Maybe it was the disruption to his newly found peace or just a distaste at the thought of death, he’d seen enough of it lately.

“I joined them after… you know what happened. They were full of people like me, alone because of the Spotless. We get along really well and… they want to make me the head since I can get them into the castle. We’ve been building up our forces in secret, and sometime soon we’ll attack the castle with our full force. Yeah… it may not succeed but I promise Eugo it’s the right thing to do, what happens in the castle is horrific!”

“I know what happened Ilken… but surely tt can’t give reason to this…”

“Eugo, I was going to ask if you wanted to…”

“Sorry Ilken… I don’t want to get involved in something just related to violence. I want to live a life of peace. I won’t be joining in some mindless violence just to maybe burn my home to the ground… All I can say is that I wouldn’t want you to join… I mean I’m glad you found people to relate to but… I just don’t understand why you would resort to violence.”

“Eugo, I… it’s really not that bad.”

“Ilken, I don’t really want to talk about it, I’ll come visit you another time. Just know I’m still your friend...”

Not wanting his slightly unresponsive body to resort to violence he left. Had he not heard her distinctive haphazard cluttering about, he probably would have forgotten about Fiz as well. 

Heading back to find her, he noticed Ilken was already long gone, part of him knew that he was too harsh. At the same time if Eugo hadn’t said what he wanted he didn’t think he’d get his point across.

“Hi again Mr… Oh dear, you’re off in the clouds again. Don’t worry lil ol me will guide you home, promise I won’t get us lost, I think so at least.”

“Thanks, Fiz.”

“Always happy to help… Eugo.” It was probably his slightly delusional hearing, but Eugo thought he heard Fiz call him correctly by his name.

The girl dragged him back home, making sure to prod him every now and then, making sure Eugo was still alive. Eugo found that Fiz also seemed a lot more peaceful than usual, she certainly wasn’t going off tearing random chunks of metal at least. It made him happy.

§

Fiz had spent quite some time with Eugo up until this point, she sort of treated him like an assistant to all her adventurous creations. During this time, she noted that he would always recess into some form of depressive state for a few minutes. 

From the odd experiment here and there, she noted that the most effective methods of restarting his brain were finger prods, vigorously staring at him and in extreme circumstances slapping him. 

She’d only used the last resort once, and she was pretty sure he was just asleep. Still watching him wake up on the floor completely disoriented and confused was fun to watch.

At the moment, Eugo was probably in a state only comparable to when she first met him, part of her slightly intellectual brain deduced it may be because of the same person. 

She had heard them arguing on the other side of the desert, unfortunately, she knew that toxic positivity didn’t solve absolutely everything.

Although now she had all the time in the world to cheer up her essential counterpart.

“Hey Mr, I can’t keep dragging you allll the way you know.”

“Mmmmmmm.”

“You would want to end up at… Georg’s place, would you?”

“Heh… no I wouldn’t, and it’s George.”

“What do ya hate so much about him anyway, Georg can’t be that bad right?”

“Well, you haven’t met him Fiz, not only is he a complete asshole, but somehow he’s one of the most upfront people I know… although that’s usually a bad thing.”

“Well, you’ll have to take me to him some time Mr! I’ll look forward to meeting your friend.”

“He is not a friend!” The sound of Eugo’s voice echoing throughout the dome signalled to Fiz that she had achieved her mission. She smiled.

Later that day after Fiz had cheered him up a suitable amount, she found Eugo peacefully sitting back in his home.

§

Thinking clearly once again his new goal for the next few days would be to stop Ilken from descending even further. Even if he knew it was selfish, he at least wanted to try to find out Ilken’s reason for joining the revolutionaries. Maybe that way he could offer him something far better in place of it.