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 Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 10:01 pm
Bigsby kicked through the tall grasses of a park around the corner from his house, the tall stalks of green seldom cut due less to abandonment as to negligence. There MUST have been a groundskeeper somewhere, somebody in charge of caring for the park, but it seemed as though the grass only got cut once or twice a year, when nature had nearly reclaimed the land. As it stood, it climbed up to about Bigsby's thighs in some places, and just above his ankles in others, seeming to be longer where nobody tread. Bigsby was kicking through the taller stuff.
Lost in thought. Bigsby had never been one for deep thought or introspection, and some might even say he lacked a certain capacity for it at length. He'd had a dream, though. A nightmare, really, but not a nightmare made up of the fiction the brain can conjure; rather, it was a memory, a reliving. Back in the maze, when he'd chugged that potion... He'd grown so much bigger, so much stronger. Up to that point, the dream was a happy one. But he had grabbed Malo, nuisance that he was, to taunt him... And had punctuated it with a flick to the boy's forehead.
Oh, how he had screamed and cried. In reality, the boy had wriggled away and been gone, and that had been the end of it. In his nightmare, though... Nothing so merciful. Trapped in dreams, the litwick didn't escape, he just screamed and screamed, growing in volume and desperation until it had split Bigsby's ears. The other infants, his friends, the Dormouse, Philip and James and a variety of others who hadn't even been there, all stared at him with the silent accusation that Bigsby couldn't deny: He'd done something wrong, he'd used his strength to hurt someone weaker than him. Someone who couldn't fight back.
He awoke from the dream with a great clenching feeling in his gut, a pit of shame.
So now he walked through the neglected park, all the pieces he needed to pull a lesson out of this, with none of the life experience or skills to put them together. Shame hung over everything. Bigsby waded on, his usual bouncy distractedness forgotten, his steps slow and heavy, an incredible sadness drawn across his face. He had no destination, just the three feet directly in front of him, all that he could see with his head hung low.
A sob from his left. A little ways off. Back towards the middle of the park, where the trampling of regulars had stomped the grass flat where it wasn't short or dead. Bigsby pulled his head up with no small effort, gazing at what had made the pathetic noise.
Two boys, serpentine in appearance, a Seviper and an Ekans, stood over a third boy, a Ratatta, who was down on his knees looking up at them. On his face was pure despair. From the hand of the Seviper hung a toy, small and stuffed and painfully cute, a staunch companion in any dire situation. It was also very obviously not his, judging by the way the Ratatta boy looked. Words flowed between them that Bigsby couldn't hear, for they lost definition at distance.
Bigsby didn't need words, though. Bigsby was already moving.
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Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 10:02 pm
The Phanpy, his melancholy temporarily forgotten, drew up to his full height behind the serpent boys, fire in his eyes lost upon them. He was significantly taller. Before they were aware of him, he whipped the toy, a stuffed penguin, from the Seviper boy's hand and dropped it into the ratatta boy's arms, who clutched at it desperately, all in a fluid chain of actions that occurred in no more than three seconds. The two bullies looked to Bigsby, instead, as he placed himself between them and the boy.
”Don't look like your penguin, lads.” Bigsby said, his face grave. ”If it ain't yours, yez must've taken it.”
“What'sss it to you, bozo?” The Ekans hissed at him, backing away a step, nearly in tandem with his Seviper companion. Bigsby hadn't scared them off just by opposing them, but he'd come close.
”I'll tell'yez what's it to me,” Bigsby replied, crossing his arms loose over his chest, ”'Dis bucko don't look like he wants'is penguin taken. So youz don't get to take it.”
“And who'sss going to stop us? Your hat?” The Seviper had found some verbal ground, and the two laughed in unison, a rough sound that Bigsby didn't think he liked at all.
Bigsby smiled, then, and tipped his hat to the two boys. ”You's got it, lad. The hat, and 'da Scrapper what's wearing it. Mainly the hat, though.” Bigsby raised a fist, then, and in a motion he'd never attempted before, threw it forward, planting it firmly in the center of the Seviper's face with all his might.
Except... he didn't ever connect. Like magnetic repulsion, Bigsby's hammer-fist was redirected to the side, sending him spinning with all the force he didn't transfer into the snake-boy's fanged, slit-eyed face. He nearly fell, but somehow managed to keep his footing and stood up straight, confused. See, what Bigsby didn't know was that Wonderland itself didn't allow infants to fight, and it would take measures to ensure they didn't. Tumbling and rolling around, as Bigsby had done countless times before, was all great fun, but this wasn't playtime. Infants couldn't harm each other.
The two snake-boys, though, caught the message, and slithered away wordlessly, fearfully. Bigsby watched them go, his breath, which had quickened at some point into great heaving hisses through his nostrils, slowed to silence again.
”U-uhm... Thank you...” Bigsby wheeled on his heels to look at the Ratatta, the speaker. The boy held up his penguin and flapped the wings a few times. ”Pengy says thanks, too.”
Bigsby smiled at the Ratatta boy, and held out a hand to help him up. ”Up ya get, come walk with me!” He offered.
Bigsby might just have figured it out. He wouldn't stand for another bully, nor would he ever bully anyone again. Not like he'd bullied Malo, not like the Ratatta boy'd been bullied. Ain't no honor in that.
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