Elbow deep in Coals (open)

[Deleted]

There was a good deal of things that Ronan didn’t know. He didn’t much know about love, honestly the though petrified him worse than the thought of losing his hands. He was always slow about learning things as far as socialization went, yeah he knew for a fact that he was better with his creations then he was with actual carbon life forms. He knew that he had gotten that from the man, who had claimed him when he got into camp, Vulcan wasn’t good with getting along with people. Not that Ronan didn’t get along with people, he was just overly cautious. It probably also didn’t help that he had such horrible experiences with people from such a young age. But the things that he did know was what helped him survive here at camp. Ronan knew that he was good at building things, more specifically Automatons were his forte, but his hands had created some good things. Right now he was working on a side project. He had managed to get some pewter and he was currently working on making something special for someone. A good many people only wondered in awe how his huge hands could make something so delicate and tiny. He examined the pewter chain as he then gave it a tug. It held fast and it looked like the tiny circles he had crafted into a chain were going to hold up pretty well no matter what anyone threw at it, or pulled for that matter.

Ronan heated up the pewter and melted it down before snatching the cup out of the forge flames and pouring it into the mold he had made. He had put a good bit of care in the things that he made. There was something that could be said when love was put into your craft. Ronan found that it made his creations last longer and were a good deal more durable when care was woven into the things you made with your hands. The heat didn’t bother him; neither did the flames that licked against his skin in a feeling akin to a dog licking at his hand. There was no pain. There was never any pain, but a slight tingling sensation somewhat like your hand falling asleep. His blue eyes were soon closed as he took a deep breath as he poured the liquid metal into the molding and clamped it shut with his grips. Quickly he shoved what he was working on into a water barrel. Ronan let out a breath that he didn’t realize that he had been holding. Ronan turned his attention to the bellows. He reached up and dabbed at the sweat on his forehead, this perspiration wasn’t from the heat, no, it was from the physical labor that he had been putting in the last few days. He constantly had to do things repeatedly; he hated having to do something like that. Three new repair bins in three days, nine new sign-up sheets for the forging classes and to top it off, and his blacksmithing hammers kept disappearing. This was the seventh hammer he had to replace this month. He was going to have to start chaining his things down or at the very least work out a puzzle lock that could keep out nearly any thief. Ronan had a few good ideas of whom he could test out these locks on. That would be fun to have someone walk around with a lock attached to their nose because they couldn’t stay out of other peoples things. After this necklace he had another idea of what he wanted to create.

Ronan felt a bit of cold air blow against his back. Someone had opened up the forge door. More than likely it was probably someone wanting a repair job or maybe it was even Tessa, the girl who was constantly in the forge. Not that Ronan minded people, he just didn’t care for being around a whole bunch of them at the same time. The other day he was surrounded by like four people and it took all of his willpower and his self-control to not bolt like a scared deer. He had been made fun of many times before for doing something like that. So he tried his hardest to not let his panicked state get in the way of being a soldier. Not that he spent a great deal of time with the other people, no he preferred to keep to himself in the Forge. There were plenty of people that would pass through, but none stayed long enough save for Cinny, the ever loveable paper/shredder/companion and Tessa. He had even been getting a bit worried about Edmund even though he wouldn’t say anything openly since that seemed to be well…. A no no. One could be too protective over someone who clearly didn’t care for being around other people. Ronan had heard some stories and rumors about him, but Ronan knew to only believe half of what he heard and none of what he saw. The light was dim and the only bit today was coming from either the forge or whomever had left open the door. Ronan looked over his shoulder to see whom was bothering him or what the other person wanted. Maybe it was one of the random animals that liked to make their home in the areas of camp where their owners frequented. One of these days Ronan was going to build himself a pet, he couldn’t figure out what to do with one of those real live things. He wanted one, but didn’t know if he could take care of it. Ronan often went days with forgetting to shave till he woke up looking like some kind of mountain man. He didn’t think that he could remember to keep it fed.

[Deleted]

credit to these-times-will-pass.tumblr.com

For four years, it had been near impossible to get Edmund Simons, the antisocial, near mute, to even come out of the forge. After turning thirteen and forcing himself to start working in there, he practically lived there. Sure, it being the Legion he had to leave periodically to train, but then would come straight back to the fires, trying to avoid as many people as he could. Eating and sleeping came last in his "to do" list. Probably not the most healthy life style, but his body became accustomed to it; anything difference set him on edge and teetered him off balance. That "difference" came in the form of breaking his arm. Suddenly, Ed's word was turned upside down. He was made to stay in the infirmary for two weeks with only Kyoto (and occasionally Yates) as company. He was half certain that the head medic was trying to drive him insane. Kyoto could have probably guessed from day one of his rib appointments that Edmund had some kind of aversion to the infirmary. Being in there for ten minutes caused him to have a mini panic attack. Being in there for two weeks had set him back eight years.

It was almost like he was nine again and trapped in the hospital for a month, only worse. When he was nine, the doctors had ended up deciding to tranquilize him often. Most of the time, he was in a stupor so that the flashbacks from the PTSD wouldn't get too bad and so Edmund would stay still. Here, it was different. Edmund was left alone with his panic and his PTSD for stretches at a time. He couldn't distract himself at all since there was nothing he could do with his hands. Kyoto would only come in to force feed him; the tranquilizer would last for a few minutes, and then the cycle would start all over again: stare at the wall, try not to panic, try not to think, try not to dream, try not to do... well, a lot of stuff. Try not to do all that stuff, fail, and then have Kyoto to come in, only to fight with him, get tranquilized, and get force fed. Inevitably, it left him backtracking.

Presently, the month had passed. Edmund survived two weeks of isolation with Kyoto and had even survived a month in a cast, but it had all left a scar in Edmund's brain. A scar that had to be reopened from eight years ago. For two weeks and a month, he had kept his silence. Completely shut down. At least for the month he could draw. Drawing as a distraction had probably been the only thing to keep him from going totally insane. Now that he thought about it, he probably did go insane while in the infirmary without even knowing it. He had tried to wood carve but each time he tried to do it, it had looked like a piece of junk. Honestly, he couldn't do anything productive with just one arm. He was useless. It just took a month in a cast to shove it in his face. He had tried going into the forge, multiple times, but each time ended in failure (what else should he expect from himself? It was a repeating pattern). The first time he went in, was probably the longest time he was there. He stayed to read Weingarten's letter and ended up burning Metal Bird. While watching it burn, he thought he saw the weights of his grandfather clock. He ended up running out and, ever since then, hadn't been able to stay (or be) in the forge for more than three minutes. Hopefully that would change today. Maybe. He only had a week to "get it together", but he didn't see the point. He'd leave, maybe die. If he did survive though, it would be a while away from the forge and this would have to start all over again. The hell with his life! He was going to kill those damn immortals.

With three, linked repair bins in tow (and of course, the things repaired inside it), Edmund silently walked out from behind his recently claimed bush on the edge of the forest. Okay, so he had lied to Redpath when he had asked if Ed knew what had been happening to the repair bins. Then again, when had Edmund ever been truthful? Opinions, all the time. The regular goings on of day to day life? Not so much. Ever since he had been cleared for his left arm, he at least wanted to try to be useful. If he couldn't do it in the forge, he'd do it elsewhere. Cinny, his all purpose shredder, happy to finally spend some time with Edmund, was rolling happily alongside his Creator. The shredder had missed Ed's company, but had been wary leaving the parameters of the forge. He had wanted the human to come back to the forge after his long absence, but it didn't happen. It happened for random bursts of a few minutes, but it never lasted for constant hours on end like it used to. At least this time Edmund was able to convince the shredder that it was okay to come outside the forge; Cinny had been hesitant for a while, especially since the demigod had kind of programed the shredder to also be sort of a forge guard. Edmund followed the familiar path, but once the towering building came into view, he halted a few meters away from it. Cinny continued onward and then stopped when he failed to ping Edmund's footsteps. why wasn't his human following? Instead, Edmund was doing what he had taken to doing recently: staring at the door.

This was becoming ridiculous. He couldn't even step foot in there without having a mini heart attack and flashback, yet he had to get back there. He had things to repair and special orders to do... and he only had a week to do it before he went off to die. How had he done it last time? How had he convinced himself? Suddenly he felt a nudge at his legs. Cinny had grown and was gently pushing him towards the forge door. Go. In. It's. Not. Going. To. Kill. You. Of course that was the rational side of his brain. The irrational part was screaming that the entire building was going to do down and he was going to get all burned up again. What was his problem? (Wait, don't answer that, you could go on for a month). He could face a battle field without batting an eyelash but he couldn't go into the forge? A place that he had practically lived in before the whole infirmary mess? Behold. His argument back and forth with himself every single time he tried to convince himself to go in; practically every day for the past week or so. Before he knew it, he had let Cinny push him a foot away from the door. Ed inhaled, staring at the handle, reaching out. He had things to do. Things he told the others he'd make. Last things to tie up before his potential death. Yes. He was going to do it. He had to do it. He had to make himself stay in there. Before he could change his mind, Edmund took hold of the door handle, opened it, and walked in.

Heat. Fire. First two things noticeable about the forge. The heat didn't bother him, even if he was wearing long pants and a jacket; it was the fire that was going to potentially make him run. The second noticeable thing was the second forge occupant, Redpath, staring at him. Edmund set his gaze on the forge floor. Redpath had been here when Ed was trying to make himself get in here at age thirteen. The older probably knew by now that Ed had a fire aversion, and this was the second time that he had to live through Ed's freak outs. Gods, yet another reason that Edmund hated this. The seventeen year old gave a slight nod to the second forger, avoiding looking at the fire. If he didn't look at it the wrong way, he'd be fine. Hopefully. Edmund unlinked the bins, left them alongside the forge wall, and walked over to his desk and took out the starts of Aiden's ebony bow, trying to continue his work like the last month and two weeks had never happened.

OOC: I... am SO sorry ._.
You don't have to match that at all >.>
IC: 1,435

[Deleted]

Ronan blinked, his mind barely registered the brother he had walk in and nod at him, his particular frame of mind was distant and not currently in the present time. Edmund was someone that he felt a bit compelled to protect and watch over, but that was something over someone who didn’t even want to be called a brother or take the claim of their father. No, Ronan couldn’t really blame him, who really would want to be claimed by a man or woman who split on their mom or dad to go frolic around with other mortals? While he disliked carbon based life forms, he at least knew how delicate the demi-god(or human maybe) psyche could be. Ronan was a broken man. There were things that had happened to him that he couldn’t change and was still healing from. He knew the feeling of being an outcast just because you were a little different and he knew that children could be mean. Children were always blunt and mean to those that were just barely different. Come to think of it, there were demi-gods who could be just as bad in their torture and tormenting of others. He swallowed as he stared hard into the fire, watching it lick at the sides of the forge. The smelter was coated in black but underneath the soot, it was still quite so beautiful. Ronan could attest to the state of the forge. While blackened and ugly looking on the outside, there was much more on the inside that could get a good deal of use out of it. People saw a jumbled pile of shattered metal or something that was considered to be a broken piece of armor, no there were still endless possibilities that could be seen about that broken armor. It could be melted down and fixed to where it was another piece of armor, a necklace, or something useful. It could always be changed and fixed to where it wasn’t useless anymore.

People were a different story. Ronan knew of Edmund’s aversion to fire. He didn’t mean to stick his arm in the forge coals up to his elbows; he just did it out of second nature. It was more a bother to mess with the tongs to root around the white hot coals for the metal heating up or a blade that he was heating up. He felt bad that the fire was tied to the feelings that he had. While he knew that he had feelings, Ronan preferred to lock them away. They had gotten him in trouble more than once before. The fire had destroyed the only home he had, albeit the worst one he could live in. The camp was the only place he really had to go. Ronan knew that there were a great deal of people that were like him and had no other place to go. He was alone. Figuratively of course, but no two peoples problems were the same. Edmund was having problems with fire, Ronan had issues with rocks. The kids always threw rocks, he had the scars that showed how cruel other people could be. Ronan knew that his place was here in the forge, here he was safe, or at least he felt that way. HE was in a small dark place with fire and weapons at his disposal if he should ever feel threatened, he could protect himself easily. It was never good for him to feel threatened. Ronan blinked as he could see himself on that particular day. The kids had been throwing rocks again, he had been sitting in the head of the houses office and was getting the proverbial stitches on his eyebrow. The doctor had wondered if Ronan had a concussion, but the lady that watched him and the other kids assured him that he always had that stupid look on his face. He frowned but that was something he was used to. He was allowed to go downstairs and wait for dinner in the living room with the other kids. There were about fifteen others crowded around the fireplace. It was cold, the snow was drifting down. Three of the older boys spotted and immediately ran over, grabbing him by the shirt and the jacket, trying to drag him over to the fireplace. ‘let’s see how he will look with no hair on!’ they shouted. Ronan struggled, but they held him fast as they started to shove his head towards the fireplace. He felt the fear well up in his heart, they would let him die, he knew they would. ‘no!’ he shouted as he pushed away from the brick laid fireplace. Then in an instant, the fireplace exploded. The heat washed over Ronan as if it was a warm bath he had sunk into. He heard the screams of the other children but the fire saved him, caressed him as if it was a long lost lover hugging him, holding him tight to her bosom. It was the safest he had felt in the longest time. The screams of those boys that tormented him were satisfying. That was what scared Ronan the most, how satisfying the feeling was that he had burned the three boys to a crisp. He had killed and he didn’t like feeling so powerful. It wasn’t natural and it wasn’t right. It didn’t sit right with him.

Ronan looked around trying to find a particular mold for a sword. He tried hard to bring his mind back to the real world, despite how much he didn’t like the real world. Ronan tried to quell his breathing and keep his feelings in check. He didn’t want to cause the forge flames to flare up and give Edmund another panic attack. The flames licked at the side of the forge, a little bit stronger than usual, reacting to the emotions that Ronan kept walled up in his chest. The flames died down, going back to their usual coloring and intensity. That was a good reason to not invest in a good bit of things emotionally; it always caused problems in the forge. “Sorry,” Ronan mumbled to Edmund. He detested letting the emotions get the better of him. He continued to poke around the boxes, looking for the particular mold that he needed for the sword. Ronan knew the ingots were close at hand as well as the extra hilts and leather strips ready at his desk beside the anvil. Someone kept moving the molds he made around and it was starting to get slightly annoying. Everything had a place for a reason. He paused for a moment to watch Edmund. Then he returned his attention to the shelves where he kept the molds. Mass produced weapons were good for those who were starting out, but anyone who had been in the legion for a good long time had their own special order weapons. Those were the ones that he enjoyed making. Even if he used the same mold, there were many differences between the weapons he made. They were each crafted lovingly.

Ronan continued to watch Edmund on and off for a brief moment. He wondered what it was that Edmund was working on. It looked like the start of a bow, but when it came to the children of the forge, you could never be sure of what they were making until they were finished. Sometimes the finalized project would surprise you, like a bow that turned out to be a double bladed sword or something strange of that nature. Hmmm…. Maybe he would have to see if he could do something like that. “What are you working on?” Ronan asked as he tilted his head to the side, watching the other occupant of the forge.

[Deleted]

credit to midstorm.tumblr.com

Redpath didn't even seem to notice that Edmund had walked in, that was more than fine with him. One of the last things that Edmund had ever wanted was attention. Redpath acted like Edmund had never left the forge. Had never run out of it (which the younger had... multiple times). Even though Edmund was internally freaking out, he made himself stay there. If he could just get working again and only look at the fire when absolutely necessary, he'd be fine. Baby steps. The first month would be hell for him in here. It had been horrible after he had turned thirteen. Thing was, he didn't even have a month to get semi-used to it in here. He had a little under a week. Then he'd go off to the quest. If he didn't die, he'd come back to the forge, only to realize that it freaked him out again. Ridiculous? Hell yes, but he couldn't exactly stop the PTSD or panic attacks. At least one of the good things about the other forge people was that they were almost all the quiet coexistence type. People acting like nothing had happened was probably he best for Edmund now. Besides, none of them would care anyway; that was the way he wanted it, and that was the way he hoped it would stay.

At least in here he wouldn't be a total, complete useless, waste of space. Here he could actually make a tad bit of difference. He could be somewhat useful: he could make things, repair things, try to keep the forge in a semi-order. Even with that though, Ed could die and nothing would change. Practically anyone in the forge could do what he could do and better. At least they didn't fear the element that they were supposed to feel the most comfort around. Having no aversion to it probably helped; so did starting early. Most of them probably came into the forge much sooner than him. Edmund had learned as fast as he could, and he supposed that he was kind of successful. He knew how to hold his own and look out for himself. That much was already built into him when he entered the Legion. Years of getting pushed across school hallways and impromptu wrestling matches with older kids would do that. He had little to do but learn how to defend himself, although that kind of changed after he dragged himself to summer school with unhealed skin grafts. Ha, how he would love to verse those guys who had beat him up before... Half the school thought he was dumb. Edmund probably could have gotten decent grades if he had wanted, but by the time he had gotten to where grades actually mattered, he didn't care anymore. Too many kids had pushed him, and too many teachers had written him off as troublesome. His definition of helpful wasn't theirs.

It was so unfair. How much a broken heart and five seconds could change a person. He hated it, but it wasn't like he could change anything that happened to him. Most of his life events had made him into who he was: a useless, antisocial, monster of a forge monkey who could help anyone; who was terrified of hospitals and fires; who let his emotions get the better of him, causing an electrical box to explode and his family to be killed. They had determined the fire a freak accident, but Edmund knew the truth. The truth came to him that night, and then just solidified itself after tapping deeper into his technokinesis abilities during his time at camp. Getting angry enough at Jolly had caused a light bulb in his bunker to short fuse. Take another strong emotion like fear; find the only, functioning electrical thing in the house, and BAM. Explosion. Add all the wires and circuits sparking. Use the walls, bookshelves, books and his entire wood workshop downstairs, and get a fire. He had killed his family. The only ones who had ever loved him fully and unconditionally.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the flames leap slightly. Edmund froze in place, forcing himself to breathe slowly. Very slowly. What he thought was slow, was actually his normal speed. The last thing he wanted to do right now was to have a panic attack in the forge. He didn't want to run out again. He wanted to believe he could keep himself in check and control himself as much as he had when he was thirteen and trying to get over his fears the first time. After what felt like forever, the fire burned down and Edmund was still staring straight through the bow he was trying to make. Pretending that the fire wasn't a few feet away from him. "It, It's fine..." Edmund muttered back, not trusting himself enough to speak more than two words at a time. He knew Redpath didn't mean to. He had been around long enough to notice that the fire reacted to his feelings; albeit it didn't happen often. Redpath could control fire and was totally immune to it, yet seemed wary of being able to do so the same time. Not like the forge monkey who was afraid of fire was going to bring that up though. They all had their different battles to fight; they all went about them differently.

Finally, Ed relaxed enough to continue on with his bow for Aiden; relaxation by reminding yourself to breathe. At least he didn't have to do the paper bag method they had forced on him at the hospital. Yup, he had a couple things to do before going on a potential suicide mission. He couldn't afford to run out of the forge or be a chicken just because he was terrified of fire. At the sound of a voice, Edmund looked up and over at Redpath. The fire was behind him. After a second of reminding himself that the fire wasn't just going to leap out and kill him, Edmund decided to open his mouth. "A bow for Jaxon..." he murmured, looking at the older male's supplies. "You?"

OOC: OMGODS I'm horrible D:
I'm soooo sorry about that wait.
IC: 1,052

[Deleted]

Ronan tried his hardest to not actually care about people. It was hard and really, truly, he did. He couldn’t stop himself from caring about people. He didn’t want to hurt them or hurt them by pushing them away. IT was always best if he just kept to himself. That was the best and it kept people safe. HE didn’t want to make them hurt by letting them in and then hurting them physically or emotionally. It was hard. Humans were social creatures, yet, Ronan hated social interactions. He wasn’t antisocial, technically, but he was getting there. His little brother, or coexister in the forge (Edmund would never call Ronan brother), was someone he cared about. He had watched the kid grow from the sad and depressed little boy, to a man. Ronan had changed a good bit too. A lot of the children of Vulcan seemed to have problems. Ronan always chalked it up to the fact that their father (whether or not his children admitted to it) had been tossed off of Mt. Olympus. It could have mostly been a coincidence, or not, but there had to be something about the antisocial children of Vulcan. Ronan focused on the materials on his desk, thinking about what exactly it was that he was doing. Sometimes he didn’t even know what it was that he was doing, his hands just made things a good bit of the time. He had to be doing something otherwise he felt like he would go crazy. It had gotten him in a good bit of trouble in the schools that he attended. ADHD is what they diagnosed him as. Didn’t get along well with the others at the schools or was constantly bullied because he was so big and massive, but more gentle than a teddy bear. IT had gotten him tortured and tormented.

Ronan didn’t want to admit it, but he was a bit scared for his brother. Somewhere up there, in the great beyond, had it out for themselves. An idiot would have put Edmund on a quest for the gods. He knew that Felicity openly detested the gods too. Why would they put them on a quest to retrieve an item that may or may not help them? Only an idiot. His stomach rumbled and Ronan looked up at the clock and realized that once again he had skipped a meal. He pulled out a bottle of water from his desk and started to chug the water. He always had to keep hydrated but that was because his high temperature made him dehydrate a good bit quicker than another person. Looking around his desk, he had found an apple. He sniffed it, yeah it was still good. Fresh, he might have brought it over yesterday as a snack. He took a bite and it was almost instantly that he felt the relief of the cramping stomach. Finally there was something in there that could keep his stomach from eating his spine. Yeah that was an important body part that he needed. Though Ronan doubted that a little thing like lack of a lower body would stop him from building. He could see himself in his minds eye rolling around in a wheel chair like professor X. Ronan had a few mishaps in the forge, but it wasn’t anything that was too bad. More like smashing his hand with a hammer or ramming his knee into an anvil. Sure he had falling into the fire more than once, but now that he was bigger, it didn’t happen as often. He was still a bit of a klutz, but it was getting easier to not knock things over or trip over things. HE was tall, and big, width wise of course. But it never stopped him from getting the grace of a drunken bull in a china shop.

He quickly tried to quell the flames that had reacted to his emotions. He apologized to Edmund. He hated loosing control and the flames of the forge jumped. The Forge had become his home fire, his centering base of operations. He bonded to this flame in particular. It was warm, comforting and just as familiar as his own heartbeat. Edmund muttered about working on a Bow for Jaxson. She was a child of Apollo that Ronan had seen around from time to time. Ronan had never actually talked to her, she was too busy hanging out with her own friends. He gave a mental shrug, not even wondering if his shoulder responded to his brain signals. He wasn’t sure if his body really responded to what he was thinking any more. What was he making? Ronan wondered exactly what it was he was doing himself. He looked down at a pile of scrap metal and wires. He blinked as if he wasn’t really seeing what it was in front of him. Then he remembered what it was he was doing. He pulled out the sketchbook and a pencil. That’s right, he was making a personal assistant. He needed something to help keep his projects in line of importance. “Personal assistant. I think.” Ronan pulled out his screw driver and some tweezers as he started to connect wires to the circuit board that he had sitting on his desk. He really hadn’t put much though into what it would look like. He blinked as he tried to think about what he wanted this automaton looked like. He had made so many of them over the years but when it came to one of his own, he didn’t know what he wanted. He doodled a thing or two on the sketchbook as he tried to figure out what he wanted this thing to look like. “I don’t know what I want this stupid thing to look like.” Ronan said with a growl.

[Deleted]

credit to silver-crown.tumblr.com

Edmund had learned, early on in his life, to not care what people thought. To camp, he had earned his reputation as an antisocial jerk. Did he care? Not at all. He didn't even believe in reputation. Demigods were half humans and humans were walking contradictions and paradoxes. Someone may have known a person for what seemed like forever, but in all reality, no one ever knew another entirely. Humans were subject to change. All the time. Considering "in" and "out" of character, a person could react to the same thing quite differently after a certain event or time lapse. Perhaps a trauma or maturity. Whichever the case, no one could ever, truly have someone pinned down to a logical science. Not unless they were a robot, which, at times, Edmund really wished they were. No changing factors, no mysteries, and always fixable no matter how many times they broke. Perhaps that's why he got along better with gadgets that held mechanics rather than with organisms with blood. A gadget could sit there, oh so quietly, and not have any need or want to for social stimulus. A person? Most of them hated silence. Didn't know what to do with it. Felt like they had to fill it. They even came up with the term of "awkward silence". Idiotic and unnecessary; silences weren't awkward at all, they were just... silences. They were necessary in life.

Most of his forge co-existers were the silent type. For that, Edmund had one thing to be grateful about. He wasn't sure if he could ever survive in a type of environment where he wanted peace and quiet while other people wanted noise and talking. Here, he could fix, make, invent, and deconstruct things up the kazoo and the normal forge crowd wouldn't care. They wouldn't so much as bat an eye lash. They wouldn't call him a freak. They would think it was normal. Something that no one else seemed to do in the mortal world. There it was stare, call him a freak, and/or get him expelled. It never exactly helped that he went from school to school labeled as a troubled child with attitude problems (gee! wonder where he got those from...) and special needs because of his slowness. Seriously? ADHD didn't make Ed slow; on the contrary, it made him rather fast and hyper, mostly in his fingers. The other part of ADHD, the attention deficit, towards the teacher, caused a lot of problem. A refocusing every five minutes, just to realize that Edmund wasn't focusing on the lesson, but rather on a complex origami figure. Dyslexia was just a who different animal. Edmund had liked books on tape before; sure, he had a hard time reading actual books (it took a lot of concentration and blinking and trying to find methods to get the words to stop moving), but that didn't mean he was dumb. Or a trouble child. Okay, maybe slightly troubled, but they had built it up way more than they should have. Most teachers were expecting a kid from hell. Noisy, rowdy, trouble making. What they got was an introvert, silent, finger hyperactive, dyslexic, angry seven year old.

The seventeen year old, damned demigod stared ahead, through Jaxon's bow, counting backwards from fifteen. If he could survive the fifteen seconds, then he could stay in the forge. At least, he would force himself to stay in the forge.... at least, that's what he told himself. He could have hit himself. Four four years he had been building forge resistance. Resistance to hyperventilating and flash backing. He had been doing rather well during his fourth year in the forge. His coping methods had dwindled down to freezing for a moment before continuing on if something went wrong or if he looked at the fire the wrong way. Compare that to running right out and Ed could say that he had been doing well. Sure, there were some hard days, but Edmund would always plow right through them... until a few weeks ago, when all those four years went to waste. For the first time in three years, he had run out. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Just because he was out for two weeks. TWO FREAKING WEEKS. Then the two weeks turned into a month... yeah, he probably shouldn't have let that happen... but he couldn't bring himself to go back in. It was finally getting assigned to the gods forsaken quest that convinced him that he had to get his head spun on straight again. He had things to do, things to make, orders to fill, before dying. Even if he did come back alive the cycle would start all over again. Too far away from the forge for too long. He'd hyperventilate, he'd flash back... and he'd run. When, and if, that happened though, he hoped that it would take him less than a month (and a death sentence) to get him back in.

He have a slight nod as Redpath said he was making a personal assistant. Interesting... nothing that Ed had ever really considered making. Instead of things to personally help him, Edmund decided to make an all purpose shredder that acted half cat, half dog and would terrorize people. All in all, Cinny wasn't that bad. He was a great help and a good forge companion, unless you were on his "chase and eat" list.... Edmund ducked his head under his desk; the shredder, now in it's tissue box like form was resting, letting out a gentle hum. Perhaps Ed could take Cinny with him... that would take some rewiring, but why not? It could come in useful. A sound of pencil against paper reached his ears for a few moments before Redpath's outburst. Edmund looked up, the expression on his face unchanged from before, and offered a semi shrug.

OOC: Ugh (1) So sorry for the wait (2) Sorry that Ed didn't talk >.>
IC: 998