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Being the new kid wasn’t the best thing in the world but he made it work.
Maybe he missed his friends and the other school where everyone was nice to him, unlike this place where they were the opposite, but he was 11 and full of positivism.
And he knew it was worth it when he met his neighbor.
He was friends with the 6 year old son of the couple that lived next-door in his previous house and knowing that there was a kid the same age here as well, he couldn’t hide his excitement.
Kids his age were all “older” to want to play with toys and such, he preferred playing with someone 5 years older anyway.
The family welcomed them into the neighborhood with a basket of muffins (his favorites!) and he showed the kid his dog, Lucy.
He named the other kid Skeppy, because he named her Rat instead of her actual name, then he named him Bad in exchange. A silly swapping names game that became their internal joke among the years.
The school was still worse than his previous one, but Skeppy was there as well so it was ok!
Skeppy helped him with get distracted from the rude kids while Bad helped him with homework. That made each other’s lives easier, in a way, and they were happy with it.
And none of them were ashamed to claim that they were best friends, even with the age difference.
Bad’s family was powerless while Skeppy’s mom had wings (white, like an angel) and his father had some Ether control abilities that none of the boys dared to understand, and so Skeppy had chances to have some powers himself.
Bad was always there to support any training, listen to him when he wondered about what he could have and distract him when they failed another power test.
“Power tests” being something they invented, starting to force some element control, since Skeppy didn’t seem to have a Physical power. It was a weekly thing, in the nearby park.
And every time they ended up playing a random game that Bad started only to cheer up Skeppy.
It always worked, somehow, even if it was harder every time (Just a little, because the now 7 year old was always up to a game and that was stronger than his frustrations).
40 attempts. More than 9 months of weekly “training”.
All of them failed.
And test number 41 didn’t seemed different at all. So Bad decided to start a game plan.
Skeppy was about to have a headache when Bad started a silly game of tag.
Of course, he knew that he had everything to lose because the other one was a little taller (and older) and that challenge was what he loved the most.
The childish need to show that he can beat someone older distracts him immediately but it was fun so he didn’t care that much.
Until he got bored of not winning. Bad noticed it in the way he stopped thinking in strategies, already assuming the loss, and so he slowed down a little, enough for it to seem that Skeppy, in fact, won on merit.
And, sensing that there was a possibility, Skeppy took it without hesitation, running the last bits that separated them, touching Bad's shoulder shouting a glorious "gotcha".
Until the happy laughs turned into a horror scream when Bad’s body fell limp into the ground.
Their parents appeared seconds after the scream, just in time to actually see Bad’s ghost come out of his body. In a literal way, not metaphorical.
Now on days they know it was his soul and not anything else, but back then there were more important things to think about instead of the name of the thing.
Given the rarity of the case, the ambulance that Skeppy's parents called was in charge of contacting the power’s test centers and both kids got sent to one of them, without parents.
Skeppy was frightened, some adults started blaming him for killing his best friend while others demanded him to repair whatever he did.
Alone, in front of the body of his best friend, trying to bring him back while not dehydrating himself while crying in the process.
The only kind words that he received in the following 12 hours were from Bad himself, well, Bad’s soul actually.
He reassured him that everything was ok, that he was still there, that this was actually a good thing because it meant that he, in fact, had powers and that everything worked at the end.
After trying so hard and failing, the scientists separated him from Bad’s body, taking him in the actual lab from the place.
Usually, kids were not send there, that was more of a torture place than anything else, something that should be illegal but, for some reason, wasn’t.
Maybe because only a few were sent there and, usually, they died in the process and nobody could do anything to prove that the workers killed them instead of the power they were trying to control.
With Skeppy, they started by giving him a dog. He didn’t understand at first but he was grateful. The dog was very cute and friendly. He named him Fluffy. He regretted completely getting attached to that dog.
Because Fluffy was actually an experiment dog, an animal bringed to the place for him to train his powers on, to do the same thing he did to his best friend.
They made him try to kill him.
Then run on a treadmill, and try again.
Then jump obstacles on a track, and try again.
Then, because that didn’t work, force him to stop breathing with a weird mask, almost to the point of almost passing out, and try again.
And again. And again. And again.
He didn’t want to hurt Fluffy, nor Bad, for the matter, but they kept putting him in machines and trying new things to activate his flight or fight instinct or whatever and he didn’t have any choice if he wanted them to stop.
He couldn’t see his parents, they barely gave him food, and the only thing keeping him determined to continue was Bad.
The soul was with him at all times, he even tried to stop the bad guys but he couldn’t touch things, just scream at them to stop and nothing more. Skeppy appreciated the attempt anyway.
And he really wanted to get him back, so he kept going.
The doctors and scientists didn’t seem to care that he was a kid- Or a sentient person in general, they just wanted to solve the problem, the only reason for them to stop was death.
Which almost happens on day 6.
It was late at night, you could say it was actually day 7 in some way, Skeppy was really tired, trapped in the red room, where Fluffy was not welcome but where the torture was worst.
He was hanging upside down from the ceiling with something he called red eggs (They were red hot charcoal ovals, emanating a heat that could cook him alive) on the floor.
And Bad knew that, if they didn't stop him in time, Skeppy would die.
He tried to go to the other room, separated only by a window where they monitored everything, and begged them to stop. He also knew that it was pointless.
So he stayed next to Skeppy, even if it was painful to just watch him there, and tried to calm him down and breathe slowly, no matter if it was burning hot air, and think calmly in a better scenario.
He made him close his eyes and imagine that they were at the park on a summer day, that he was in the top of a monkey bar, hanging by the feets because he figured that he could do it.
And he saw Skeppy smile.
For the first time in a week, Skeppy was actually smiling. It wasn’t much, but it was a pleasant scenario for him to be focused on if he was going to die.
And Bad started crying.
He couldn’t even cry, that wasn’t something souls do, he has no body to produce tears, but, in a way, he was crying.
He even tried to hug Skeppy, knowing that he would just pass through him, but he closed his eyes and did it anyway.
This time he did felt something.
This time, a soul hugged the soul, and when he opened his eyes, Skeppy was looking at him with big and shocked eyes, his body hanging a few inches from them.
The adults looking at them from the other room started cheering and immediately removed the eggs with a strange type of vacuum cleaner. Then, they entered the room and took Skeppy’s body to a stretcher.
“Now, come back” They demanded.
“I don’t know how!” He pleaded, but Bad took him in between his arms and calmed him down.
It took them several minutes of Bad reassuring him that he was going to be ok, that he got this and that they were going to be ok.
Meanwhile the doctors and scientists tried hitting the body, looking for a response that they didn’t get. Thankfully, Skeppy couldn't feel his body this way.
That didn't stop the pain from coming back to him suddenly when, finally, he managed to come back to himself.
Hopeful, the adults bringed Fluffy to him and forced him to do whatever he was doing to the defenseless dog. Which he successfully did by sheer luck.
Given the positive, they took him away from the small animal and dragged him to the room where Bad's body was still waiting for him.
And he tried, and tried and tried without success.
He tested in himself one time and he did it, he even put Bad in his body for a moment, but he couldn't place him in his. He couldn’t get in either.
An actual doctor noticed the problem immediately.
The body was dead.
Bad was still there, he was alive, but the body stopped working at some point.
Later on, he would learn about something called rigor mortis or whatever, that explains that a body only survives 36 to 48 hours until its temperature gets low and the muscles stiffen and he couldn't do anything to change that.
Bad’s body was dead, their parents were jailed for trying to destroy the place looking for answers about the two children locked inside, and he didn’t know what to do now.
Bad didn’t got mad at him for what happened, he didn’t blamed him for anything, he even tried to convince him that he got enough punishment for his actions when he expressed that he couldn’t forgive himself.
Skeppy offered him a body, told him to pick however he wanted, as if it was a kind of supermarket of people, but Bad refused.
He never left his side though.
Even when their parents were freed, even when they went into a trial to close the damn thing that hurt him so much, even when they lost it, even when they moved, even when he became a hero.
They were an inseparable duo and, together, they learned about each other again and how to live with the heavy weight of what happened.
They never got back to a test center but they started to say that Skeppy’s powers were a mix between physical and the ether element, the soul to be more exact.
He also made sure to only use his powers on somebody for 24 hours max, just in case, not trusting living bodies again.
It was sad that Bad had to be the failed experiment, the try and failure needed for the learning, but, in the end, they understood that it was best that way because, this way, Skeppy’s death would be the one to free them both at the same time.
Not that they would have to taste that in a long time, anyway.