[@banjoanjo]

[color=ed145b][i]Give it back.[/i][/color]

Nico jumped when the stranger suddenly snatched something from his bag and he instinctively turned to look at both the offender and whatever he had just grabbed, though he already knew the only thing the bastard [i]could[/i] have grabbed.

[color=ed145b][i]Give it back.[/i][/color]

A slip of vermilion poked out from the stranger's hand and Nico suddenly saw red. A lot of red. The red rings on his left hand, the red rings on the stranger's right hand, and the red threads in the stranger's hand.

His family didn't quite see him. He didn't quite see himself. In this place where he had hoped to see something more from a different Nico, this person couldn't quite see him, either. And somehow that silly skein of thread was all that helped him cope.

And the other length of thread--the one that kept him from misbehaving all his life--strained under the weight of being, yet again, an invisible Nico in a world of the visible and colorful. A place "to become someone truly great" and this was all there was for him? This stranger and this look like they saw only a faint outline of him? Was it the fury? He couldn't feel that unsettling calm anymore.

[color=ed145b][i]GIVE. IT. BACK.[/i][/color]

It strained.

[color=ed145b][i]GIVE! IT! BACK![/i][/color]

And Nico lunged, one hand looking for a throat, the other looking for his lifeline.