Trigger- Drabbles and Thoughts: Eyes on Me- Part 2

 Fork’s hit plates as Kyanoko and Ginger finished their own meals. Trigger had sort of beat them to the punch, having the advantage of being able to eat while Ginger caught up on what she’d walked in on.

                “So… are you going to explain now?” Kyanoko pressed her palms against the table, trying to look more composed than he imagined she might be internally. He couldn’t quite help giving her an crooked grin and impishly responding.

“Honestly? I was kind of waiting to see if you two would elaborate on your theories. I’m kind of invested in the scrying magic one.”

She flicked a pancake crumb at him, and he chuckled as he brushed it off his shirt, leaving a small streak of syrup he’d deal with later.

“Very funny. Please can you explain though? It’s…” She grimaced. “Quite a request and I’d like to know more about what I’m being asked. I have every respect for cultural differences bu-“

“Oh this… isn’t cultural. It’s just me. I mean I think it’s just me, there might be others but I’m assuming they’re not portal jumping.” He winced as he cut her off. “Sorry. Uh. Let me grab the check and maybe we can go talk about this outside.”

“I mean I think the Waitress has already decided we’re alarming…” Ginger provided, ears wavering in uncertainty. “Thankfully that’s all.”

He sank slightly in the booth, as much as he could shrink down without accidentally banging knees with Kyanoko and Ginger, which felt too intimate and too awkward. The booth already felt smaller as is.

“Ugh. Fine.” He grumbled, scrubbing the side of his face with the heel of his hand. It earned him a flickering glitch from the artificial eye, a frantic scramble as it tried to figure out what mode it should be in before it reverted to normal. He grimaced. “OK so… you know my left eye is fake, right?”

Blank stares met him from across the table.

Ok. That was…

“Uh. Ok. Starting over.” He dropped his hand, debated trying to flag down the waitress for more coffee or some pie or something. Decided it would be rightfully called out as a dodge. “Hi. Good morning, by the way… my left eye is artificial. It works… but it’s artificial. I… kind of thought that was slightly more obvious than I guess it is.”

Kyanoko and Ginger exchanged looks he didn’t know how to read.

“So it’s… like a prosthetic?” Ginger asked, surreptitiously sliding some of the jelly packets into her overalls. Probably a treat for the nightmare of a giant wasp

“Ye-no? I mean yes but… no. I mean… people get prosthetics to fill in something they…didn’t have or lost… and I… got this on purpose. I can explain what was going through my head later, but … later? I just… it was built to be weaponized. It’s working about half as well as it used to but I just. I gotta know that someone out there has my back making sure no one gets the chance to try and reverse engineer it if I’m… not available to stop them.”