Bracelets for the soul

"Did you just say you think insults are an attack on somebody?" Aberdeen turned their head, outwardly confused by the woman's response. "You really think words are the same as being beaten to a bloodied pulp? Words are the same equivalent to being punched, kicked, and having your body being battered beyond belief? Wow. Just wow." Aberdeen was honestly astonished at the woman's response and turned away from her.

"You can get angry all you want, your words aren't gonna change my opinion. If people don't change in a week, like you said, then you sure as hell aren't gonna change me in a matter of minutes. Soooooooo the fact that you're trying so hard says a lot more about your intelligence than it does mine. Hell, you've been arguing with someone who doesn't have a brain and have STILL been losing." Aberdeen passed their hand through their own smoke trail for emphasis. 

"It's pathetic. Almost as pathetic as considering somebody who sits behind a desk on the battlefield a soldier." Aberdeen became more solemn for a moment. "Being a bartender, you get a lot of soldiers coming in after their service is done. Resorting to alcoholism to numb the horrors and atrocities they've seen, having horrifying flashbacks of the battles they've fought in and trying to drown it out with more alcohol until they either pass out or die of liver failure."

They turned back to Galystris, their aura fading back to its normal color. "I could never respect a person who sent their men into a hell like that. If talks don't succeed first, keep trying. You can always talk and negotiate. You can never bring the lives of fallen soldiers and civilians back. You can't justify the deaths of millions just because two world leaders didn't talk it out long enough." They sighed.

"I'm done arguing with you, though. You're not making any valid points that have made me think any better of you. This isn't a place to discuss the morality of war and whether its necessary or not. This is to get help and fix relationships." They stated, not intending to drag this any further out than they'd already had. "Neither of us are going to budge, so drop it."

Albany pointed her reclaimed pen towards the man, eyes narrowed. "Don't even think about it." She glanced around the room for good measure. "No one is allowed to leave until this session is over. We don't run away just because we don't like what we hear. We stay, we talk, we figure it out. I don't intend to have anyone else running off."
She pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a low sigh. "Perhaps I was too quick on the draw. I apologize, that was unprofessional." She returned the gaze of Alti and Cyrus both. "Allow me to back track a bit--Alti, how would you feel if someone were to attack Cyrus? If someone were to hurt him without HIS consent? How would you feel if one of your friends wouldn't listen to you, and would continue to abuse him despite your involvement?"

"You two!" Albany said, her voice raising to the tone of an angry mother. "I said we're done! Both of you are on talking time out from each other! If you're going to continue to fight rather than come to an understanding, then I will have my son escort you to one of the fine corners of this room, since everyone here is clearly too violent for me to persuade otherwise. One more word about wars or politics and so help me God I'll do it! We are moving onto the next topic! SO SHUT! UP!!" She slammed her notebook shut.

Vale raised an eyebrow at this, but shrugged. Dealing with this many shouting people would be getting on anyone's nerves.
"I would ask you refrain from further attempts at directing the conversation," Albany said, probably more coolly than she meant, "there are already too many conversations and questions being asking, I don't want things to be getting anymore complicated than they already are. But please, Maicy. Continue with your story. And once you've finished, I have a question directed at the whole group. Perhaps one to help us get back to the root of these issues instead of these small arguments."

"Hold on, I just.... need to prepare myself."

Maicy took a few more deep breaths

"I know during the beginning if, you would all think I'm just crazy but I would like for you guys to hear me out."

She took one last deep breath before continuing

"Now, during that time, since I joined the company, I became a lot more confident with a lot of things. Though granted, I was an arrogant asshole. Which may lead to a particular downfall of mine. During December of 2013, me and my friend, Celesthy, who at the time was more of my rival heading towards friend, were on this mission that we..... well... mainly I almost fucked up in. My other friends Heremia and Junkyo were with us as well. Faiman and Yapaiko were sadly in the crossfire. It was when I shouldn't be surprised of anything anymore. We fought against a really fucked up expiriment called 'Jinaya', which at the time, towers this building we're in. Luckily, Jinaya's physical existence in last to long but sadly, my friend, Yapaiko was possessed in the process. Well we were trying to stop her from corupting everything, Celesthy and I........ kept getting into arguments. Sometimes over the stupidest shit that we did in the missions. When we see a Jinaya possessed Yapaiko near the end, we were struggling to get her back to the way she was but it felt like there was no chance what so ever. And me and Celesthy got into an argument at the worst possible time. Pertinently, that is what triggered Yapaiko to get back to her old self before Jinaya.... was going to..... to................" Maicy felt hesitant to continue but managed "......fuck up everything that works in the world. Like, I was not too sure how life would've been if Yapaiko didn't get to that point. Anyways, once that mission was over, our boss, Wendia called us and.... oh.... was she mad as hell. She was mainly yelling at me and Celesthy for screwing shit up. But..... she pinned most of the blame on me, saying things like "Do you honestly believe starting fights with Celesthy will solve anything?" and that.... is what broke me into my apologetic state right now. I had so much regret at that moment that I broke down saying 'I'm sorry'."

Maicy looked down.

"I had to take one of the missions to redeem myself. I was going to take more but..... my company got bankrupt, which, not gonna lie, I was sad and salty about for a long time. I wanted to redeem myself to be a good person again. That's why I apologize and blame myself alot."

Piami frowned

"Maicy....."

Aberdeen rolled their 'eyes' at the screaming woman, letting out a long sigh and leaning further back into their chair. "Yeah yeah, whaaaaaaaatever lady." They waved at her. "I already said I'm done arguing, jeez. Don't blow a fuse." They said as their head evaporated into smoke. "It ain't even that big a deal, like damn. Start asking questions, lets move on."
"Hm." Aberdeen looked over to their partner, not having much to say. Maicy said 'company' as though the things she was talking about were normal things that a corporation dealt with, but to be fair Aberdeen had never worked a desk job and thus had no frame of reference. Of course, there was no way 'crossfire' and 'experiments' and things of that nature were something other companies dealt with.

"Going through these 'missions' wouldn't redeem you." Aberdeen spoke up again. "You don't need redemption. Redemption in and of itself is subjective. The only important part is that you strove to be a better person. As long as your making an effort to be better, it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks." Aberdeen added.

"You could spend your whole life trying to fix what you had done, and it could never be enough in someone's eyes. Meanwhile, from someone else's viewpoint, you've already done whatever was necessary to 'redeem' yourself and are now just overworking yourself. Fuck your boss, fuck your friend, fuck that company. What they think of you isn't important. So long as you've tried bettering yourself, that's all that's necessary." 

Aberdeen shrugged. "In my opinion, at least. I don't think you need to apologize anymore. Clearly you're a way better person than you were back then."

---

Amil scowled and shook his head. "Its not like I COULD run away, even if I wanted to." He grumbled to himself. "Not that I have anything left to figure out."

    Alti blinked in mild surprise once the scientist spoke up, his cheek flushing a light pink at the realization that his answer wasn't as right as he had initially hoped and that a point apparently had been severely missed. He took a second while the other man continued speaking to let the heat on his face fade before slowly turning his head back to face the therapist, however his gaze remained fixed shamefully at the ground. He listened to his soulmate's attempt at breaking the blonde's questions down in a way he could understand, abruptly turning his head to face his partner and piping himself up to defend his 'buddies back home' as soon as their behavior was questioned, but soon found himself catching his argument in his throat once the man continued to break his point down even further. 


    He stared at Cyrus, his external barricade weakening a tad as he forced himself to process those unsettling thoughts from the previous night all over again. He glanced between the two and frowned, slowly turning back to the center and leaning back in his chair. With his eyes still focused on the ground, he tightened his crossed arms and gave a light shrug before making the decision to speak.

    "I'unno..." he grumbled quietly. "... Not great, I guess...."

"Alright," Albany nodded, liking this response much better than the previous one before Cyrus's clarification. "Now, allow me to push this a bit further before we move on. That not great feeling you have at the thought of your partner getting hurt? That's how HE feels with the knowledge that you could get involved in further acts of violence, with the possibility of enjoying such acts as well. You are the friend, Alti, or in this case soulmate. The one that is hurting Cyrus." 

Now that she'd managed to get that point across at least, she turned back to everyone else. "Let's move onto the deeper stuff now, yes? I apologize to Maicy, who has already opened up to us, but many of you I'd like to know more about. Issues tend to arise at an early age, 'glitches' if you will that can cause a person to have certain undesirable traits. This is by far not an easy question, and there are many I would like to start with before leading up to it, but we're running out of time. We don't have time for, as Aberdeen pointed out, more 'starts'. It's time for a breakthrough." She took a deep breath, avoiding looking at her son when she said the next question, directed at everyone:

Maicy wiped the tears off of her eyes as Albany asked another question, taking a deep breath to regain her senses in order to answer her question.

"My homelife is the one part of my life I hold no grudge against." Maicy shrugged "I was a little down when my parents had to work alot, being the only child in my family but it's all cool for the most part. My parents are pretty chill with me."

Maicy looked at the ceiling as her eye twitched a bit.

"Though I wish my dad would cool it with the Dad jokes. Eheheheh" Maicy chuckled nervously.

---

"Um...." Piami looked down, not feeling very comfortable

"My home life..... it was okay.... until 6th grade for me."

Piami looked further down.

"My parents had a divorce around that time."