Chapter Text
Kabbu didn't know how he felt about yellow.
Yellow was the color of troublesome things, like sand, and the color of sickening things, like hemolymph. But yellow was also the color of nice things, like sunshine and stars and honey.
And it was the color of beautiful things, like Vi and the trim that hemmed Leif’s wings.
But if he could be certain about one thing, which to be certain about anything seemed harder than ever, it was that he would have to get used to seeing it, because he’d done it again.
It had been a good, long while since he'd done it. The thought passed him by once or twice, yes, but not once did he ever act upon those familiar urges. Perhaps he was too scared, too much of a coward, to do so.
But tonight was different. Tonight wasn’t like other nights.
Which was why Kabbu was now staring at a fresh, gaping wound on his arm.
To be honest, he really didn't know what had driven him to do it. There were no outside forces he could think of, because he had had a great day. Any day was great if it was spent with Leif and Vi, and this particular day happened to be so. He and his teammates had enjoyed a fun day of play and relaxation in the Golden Settlement today, so why was it that when Kabbu climbed into bed, he was swept up by an irrefutable wave of sadness?
If there were no outside sources, then that must mean Kabbu created his problem by himself. He orchestrated and conducted it. Just like most all the problems in his life.
As he tried to drift away into sleep, his mind kept interrupting him with a picture it had painted of Team Snakemouth’s day out today. With a few minor changes, however. The most prominent being that Bit and Master were right there with the three of them, now turned five. Six, if you included Chompy, sitting in-between Leif’s antennae. Everyone was smiling. Everyone was laughing. Everyone was happy.
“The only reason this isn't possible,” his mind had reprimanded him, “is because of you.”
And, well, things had just slipped out of his grip from there.
He was aware of how unreasonable it was to impulsively decide on a whim that his life would have turned out that way had they lived. He knew that his life would look so much different if they had. He might not have ever met Vi, let alone Leif, never mind Chompy. But Kabbu had never needed a reason to be unreasonable with himself. He had reasons up the river as to how he could be so unforgiving of himself.
Once again, Kabbu wasn't quite sure why he finally did it tonight. He’d had bad nights before. He’d had bad days before too. So many where he was haunted by that day, by his own mistakes, by his weakness and how he abhorred how weak he truly was. Moreover, he was probably haunted by it every day. Just that some were worse than others.
But his restless mind had been relentless tonight, and Kabbu found himself agreeing with all the loathing, debilitating messages it was digging up. They were all true. He was nothing, he was worthless, he was a coward, insignificant and a waste of energy. He deserved to be punished for all he did, and what he would do in the future. That being continuing to waste everyone’s time.
Eventually it got so bad that, well, Kabbu decided to dish out his own punishment. One quick swipe of his horn was all it took, and that's how he got here.
Inspecting the gash, it was only surface deep. That wasn't exactly a good thing in Kabbu’s eyes. What he should've done was cut deeper, cut farther, so it would’ve hurt even more and hurt even longer. Because of its lackluster depth, it would heal…eventually. Fresh hemolymph pooled in the middle, some of it overflowing and spilling out onto his chitin. The sickening yellow liquid had encrusted itself around the perimeter of the wound, flaking off whenever he moved his arm, and peeling off if he picked at it.
It hurt to look at. That specific shade of yellow always made him queasy at best, and somber at worst. It wasn't anything like the bright, bouncy yellow that Vi boasted, or the spots of yellow that complimented Leif’s hue of blue so well. The ones that provided him with such light in his life. No, the dark, sallow, nauseating tones of hemolymph always forcibly triggered him to think of that day.
He had to look away. For a moment. He could feel himself sinking dizzier by the second. If it was that bad for him to see it, to gaze upon these wounds, then why did he put it upon himself?
Oh. Never mind. He did know why.
He never said that it didn’t hurt. It did. Which is exactly why he did it. Tonight, and all those other nights in the past. Those nights had been so long ago, though. Not that long ago, but, long enough. He’d made so much progress in that time. There were nights something like this one, where instead he had refused to give in. To not go resolve back into those ways, because he knew what it could trigger if he did.
But here he was, tonight. Having given in.
It almost felt a little strange to do it. He was out of practice. But when he pulled his arm dangerously close to his horn, and began charging, preparing for the strike, his muscle memory returned to him. It felt so easy in that moment. Why had he ever stopped? He could deliver himself that punishment which he so craved, which he so deserved, whenever he wanted to. He had the weapon on him at all times. All he had to do was use it.
Kabbu suddenly tensed up. He could hear a stirring in the bunks behind him, and he promptly hid his arms behind his back. Turning around to glimpse who it was, the sound stopped with a somewhat resolved sigh. All it had been was Vi readjusting her position on the top bunk.
The beetle sighed a sigh of his own, though its emotions could not be as clear-cut. Now he remembered why he had stopped.
Because of them.
Vi and Leif didn’t want him to do it. They never told him so, because of course, Kabbu had never told them that he used to, er, still did this. But he knew all the same. And so Kabbu had vowed to himself to stop, because he would do anything they asked of him. Anything at all. On those previous nights where he had been tempted, it was that memory that had blocked his horn from piercing. The two of them didn’t know it, but they had shielded him from so much strife and scars over the years.
Yet all of that progress was lost today.
All of those nights of debating with himself, of standing up against those thoughts, of rejecting to travel down that path again. Worthless, now. Not as much as him, but still worthless. They didn’t mean a thing now. His streak, that he had coddled and tended to for so long, was dead. And he had killed it. Those pushes and impulses that he thought he had buried had risen up and burst out of the dirt to latch onto him and suck his life out yet again.
He was going to have to start all over again.
The wound stared back at him, almost tauntingly. Dragging him through the mud, rubbing it in his face that all of those nights of denial were wasted. And that he was the reason why. He wasn’t strong enough to overcome the pressures this time, the pressures that, for whatever reason, had been so overwhelming today, and had weighed on him enough to finally crush him underneath their magnitude.
Not being strong enough seemed to be a running theme of his life.
A river flowed beneath him. He trudged forwards through the rushing water trying to topple him into the flood and drown him. He waded aimlessly, grabbing blindly for his streak, his feet just barely regaining balance after nearly missteping onto pebbles and roots. He could see it, he could feel it getting closer to him, closer to home. It hovered tantalizingly above the torrent, reflecting brightly, like a medal. A medal, that he could pin onto himself, and recover his streak, and revive all his progress.
Yet as he reached out for it, attempting to snag it, the current grew stronger, and overpowered him, sending him tripping into the roaring flood. All he saw was black for a moment, before he stumbled back upon his feet, his eyes blinking to clear only to see that he had been set back an uncountable amount of steps. He began the trek again, yet the stream only swelled in anger and rage, throwing him back down into the wet dirt and the cascading water, where it thought he belonged.
One time, the last time, he fell face first again, splashing into the wrathful water, lost in the deluge, losing any and all advances he had made. Yet the world didn't turn black. No. It turned yellow.
Kabbu stood dizzyingly back up, and fearfully looked down at the water that coated him, and trickled right by him. It wasn't water anymore. It had transformed, been matched and mixed, into a specific shade of yellow. And it felt much more viscous, much more vicious, much more familiar against his chitin. It wasn't water anymore. It was hemolymph.
It was merely a stream that went with the flow of all the drops of hemolymph that Kabbu had shed over the years. Some from himself, and as he knew, most from others. The medal, his streak, wasn't visible anymore. It had disappeared. Maybe it had bled, too.
Kabbu thought perhaps he wouldn’t even try to start again. Because if he had broken such a prolonged dry spell, why wouldn’t he break the next? All those nights of constantly teetering over the edge, why shouldn’t he just fall? He had earned it, anyway. It’s why he had started in the first place. All these wounds, all this pain that he forced upon himself, should’ve been his to start with. All he had been doing was putting it off, delaying what hopefully was inevitable. He had merited all of it with his actions in life. He was just going to have to be the one providing it, because no one else, or nothing else, would.
He could control when he received his doses of pain, the doses that should be on a prescription. He could have it on demand, whenever he wanted, so long as he was alone. He wouldn’t have to wait until he was in some fight with Vi and Leif, and endlessly taunt his opponents so they would only go after, only hurt him. He could enter a battle with himself, and beckon his horn to swipe, all while he did nothing to stop it, the only bracing he would be doing being embracing the sharp affliction that would be soon to come.
He could see yellow whenever he looked at himself. Not his favorite shade. Far from it. But it was the shade he deserved. And he could double, even multiply, how often he viewed that tone. The harsh tones that he should be seeing, listening to every day, all over his pointless body, encompassing his soul.
He wanted a perfect body, he wanted a perfect soul. He’d wanted both for as long as he had lived, and he’d want both for as long as he did. But he’d never have one without the other. As long as his soul was flawed, imperfect, then marks would be imprinted onto his body. And as long those wounds pestered, and festered, then his soul could never heal. Like a river that fed into itself.
But it really didn't matter. His soul would never, could never be perfect. He already ensured that ages ago. The river would flow, eat itself, and greedily lap up its own water forever.
Often he pined to escape from it all. In his younger days, rooted in the desert, before he had started the streak he had just shattered, he wanted to strip himself of breath, become a breathless piece of flesh. Within the darkest pits of his dreary, defective soul, sometimes he wanted nothing more than to find a nice rock, a big, strong, beautiful, pointed boulder, and toss it high into the air, scuttle underneath the shadow that grew larger and larger, larger than him, larger than his life, and let it crush him into nothing more than dust, with no remains to be recovered. No memories to be remembered. Or, better yet, bash his head against it, again and again and again, until it cracked open, and he would be free.
But there would be what would remain after the fact. The guilt, the grief, the misery and sorrow and endless amount of tears that he knew Vi and Leif would harbour. All for his sake, all in his memory. He wished they wouldn't cry for him. But they would. And, selfishly…he would miss them. So that had always been out of the question, even more so now. He didn't think he would want to do something so…drastic now, anyway. Kabbu never wanted to be the catalyst for why they would feel any kind of negative emotion. The very idea of it revolted him.
Besides, he had promises to keep. Doing something like that would snap his vows. And Kabbu was never the type to break a promise, even to an acquaintance. Breaking a promise to Bit and his Master was completely off the table.
He wished, in that case, that he could just disappear, without any of the consequences. He was aware that it was a foolish idea, deeply and interwovenly foolish, much like himself. Every action had consequences. He knew that nearly more than anyone.
But in those same moments, he wished, naively, that he could just slip away in the middle of the night, and run. Run and run and run until he didn't know where he was, he didn't know who he was, and he had lost all sense of awareness and time and location and sense. And that when Vi and Leif and Chompy would awaken in the morning, they would only wonder, only briefly, for a second, where he’d gone, before shrugging and moving on with their day, moving on with their lives. Move on to someone else, who would be that other perfect companion that they deserved, and replace him fully, completely, ultimately.
Once he’d run, he didn't know what he would like for his fate to be.
He’d been staring at them for a while now. At their bunks. Vi pulled her sheets tighter against herself. Leif kicked one of his blankets off.
His eyes wandered down to his mutilated arm. He held it up for a closer inspection, nearly retching at the sight. He jolted his gaze away for a beat, then went back. Peeking between both his arm and the bunks, one thought ran, flowed through his head.
He couldn't let them find out.
He picked an awful spot to do it, then. He hadn’t really thought any of this through, had he? Did he ever think anything through?
Still, he needed a way to get this into hiding. Under no circumstances could he let them discover that he’d done this to himself. They’d never forget it. They’d know forever. They’d care, they’d worry, about him, forever.
He knew they already did. But he couldn't add something else about himself for them to juggle.
Creeping up on a desk tucked away against a wall in their house, praying to anyone who would listen that none of the floorboards would squeak, he cautiously, delicately opened the one drawer out of the four that belonged to him. After a moment of tense searching, his claws touched upon a soft feeling tucked away somewhere within the drawer. He pulled them out, using what little light the moon outside provided to study what he held in his grasp.
Once upon a time, during a team visit to the Bee Kingdom, he, Leif, and Vi had been testing the waters with accessorizing themselves more. Chompy couldn't have all the fun, after all. What Kabbu had walked out with that day…were these.
Two bright yellow armbands.
They would do. They would have to do.
He hasn't worn them much, if at all, and if he had, not in a while. It was hard to stick to a new style, particularly after you’d been accustomed to the same one for so long. But perhaps he would start sticking now.
He snuck his arms into the holes, adjusting the one on his harmed arm to perfectly cover up his still weeping wound. He gazed upon his work to find it seamless. There was not a trace of sickly yellow to be seen. It was just green broken up by the presence of a much sunnier, happier, buzzier tone of yellow. The kind that he didn't deserve, but the kind that they did.
Even still, the cut still stung.
He drifted back towards his bed. It was times like this that he was especially glad that his bunk was on the bottom. He clambered carefully back onto his mattress, shivering a tad as he laid his head on his pillow and wrapped himself up in a blanket, grabbing his Green Bug Ranger plush up off the floor and holding it against his chin.
He’d try again, and start again, tomorrow. Tomorrow was not far away.
***
Tomorrow, and the week that followed, was one of the most stressful of Kabbu’s life.
The morning after, Vi and Leif asked him about it immediately. Why wouldn't they? It was unlike him, it was unfamiliar. But he had been able to wave it away just by saying that he “wanted to try something new.” Him always being the first to awaken was surely helpful that morning.
They seemed to believe him. He had no reason to think otherwise.
But throughout the week, especially with them, he was nervous, skittish, and above all else, jumpy. He could not live normally without the back of his mind worrying incessantly about his cut. It was, after all, the first time he’d done it since he met them. And so, every second spent with them felt like waiting for a bomb to go off, without even the privilege of a timer to count down to know exactly when.
He kept anticipating the horrible moment when one of them would grab onto the band on his wounded arm, and pull it down, or snap it up to peek underneath it, and then gasp, and then spiral.
It was completely irrational. There was no good explanation for why either of them would do that. They appeared to believe his cover-up, most likely more so as the days passed and he was still consistently wearing them. In their minds, what would they be looking for, anyway? They didn't have the faintest clue about his past, present, and future with this kind of thing. There was no reason for it.
Still, he was terrified.
There had been a specific instance, maybe multiple throughout the week, where one of Vi or Leif had brushed against his arm, and he instinctively jerked it away from them. He never had a good cover for that. After the fact, Vi always stared at him with one or two narrowed eyes, and Leif always simply studied him. All the while, Kabbu chanted a mantra in his head, asking that they would not pursue further.
He knew that every increasing moment like that one, he was running out of time. But he knew the cut was healing, too. He checked every night while they were asleep, before quickly snapping the band back. It was only a matter of what would happen first: Vi or Leif getting too suspicious for their own good, or the wound healing. It felt like a race against time. While he knew it was on the mend, it felt to him that the process was dragging, kicking its feet, paddling upriver, while for all he knew Vi or Leif were getting ready to interrogate him at any waking moment that one or both of them were together.
He was beginning to feel like this cut was more trouble than it was worth. He didn't even feel much better having done it. He still felt unsatisfied in a way, empty, all while his guilt and anguish continued biting, gnawing at him. And it was all his fault, too. Again. So what was the solution to that? What would be his comeuppance for that?
The only thing he could think of was repeating what he had already done.
Then he always remembered the pain that he so badly craved, that he so badly deserved. But then he recalled how badly he did not want them to find out about it. What was the right balance to strike between the two?
Maybe it was that he just liked the pain, while disliking the mark and inconvenience it left with him. There had been a couple things that he had grown a distaste for this week. Like the fact that his footsteps were audible. Announcing his presence, letting the whole world know that, yes, he was still here. Perhaps unfortunately, he was still here. Each step every day sounded louder than the last. He wondered when the sound of them would grow too much for him to bear.
That darkest part of him began sowing a dislike for the fact that he had such a presence in Vi and Leif’s lives. That they deserved someone so beautiful and special and perfect to be teammates with, to be friends with, yet they were stuck with him. He, who was an excuse and a disgrace for a bug. And since they were unawares of how much better they deserved, they’d grown so attached to him, flaws and all.
Someone as special as they were would be perfect for them. But, if he could just be normal, then that might suffice, too.
But…he did love them. That had always been, and always would be, true. He just wished that all this combined love had, somewhere along the way, made him into the bug he ought to be.
Most of all, he was sorry that they loved him.
He was sorry that he had wedged himself into their lives, carving their hearts open to pry inside and make himself a lair, a hollow for him to scheme and plan and perfect his dastardly ways.
Maybe it would've been better if he had just dug himself defiantly into the yellow sands, deeper and deeper until he rooted himself within them with no hope of ever surfacing again, and became lost within them, becoming one with them.
He was still running those sands, in a way. Only in the darkest parts of his mind. It was barren there. He was alone. No beasts or creatures to flee from, no foes to fight. Nothing else living. No moth to save him when he wants to give up, no town to replenish and refresh him. No promise of a far off land for him to explore, nothing to hinge the last of his motivation and hope and ambition on.
It was just an endless stretch of desert, burning his feet and engraving his entire body with the memories of everything he’d ever done that he wished not could just be buried under the sand, but could be undone wholly and completely, within him and without him.
There was nothing for him there. Luckily, that part of his mind was not the section he inhabited most of the time. Usually, nowadays, whenever he was led astray off the beaten path and found his way to those deserts, it was that bee and that bluer, colder moth that took his claws and guided him gently back to where they thought he should be, following a bouncing red plant.
But he was trying his hardest to prevent them from reaching him. Because no matter how many times they show him or tell him otherwise, if he wanders too far, and spends too much time in those wastelands, it becomes harder and harder for him not to believe that this is where his waste of a body and soul belonged.
He’d been there in those wastelands for far too long recently.
He guessed he shouldn't think like that, like he had been doing. But it was becoming so very easy to do so.
It would only gradually get better being around Vi and Leif. He was aware of the fact that he had consistency on his side, as it wasn't like he’d ever stopped wearing the bands since that night. The longer he wore them for, the less suspicious they ought to get. None of that knowledge particularly quelled his sprinting mind, however.
He still smiled at them, laughed with them, did everything he used to do with them and was supposed to do with them and wanted to do with them. But he was still now and then and again incised, painfully and mournfully, by the mere idea and presence of the outcomes and consequences that his own head had dug within him.
He couldn’t feel completely safe around them, totally and perfectly comfortable around them. It was an entirely foreign feeling to him. He’d never before felt like he was in danger when he was with them. Like they were something he had to evade, to avoid, to dig below the earth and hide from so as to protect himself.
He absolutely hated the feeling. Every time he remembered and realized that it was now a notion so often in motion for him, he felt sick. Physically and emotionally. A sense of nausea would crash over him, as if he could feel the world trembling beneath his feet and it was moving much too fast and much too quickly. The same as whenever he took that first terrible inhalation of the arid swampland air, the same as when he would witness hemolymph pouring out of an open wound.
He could barely even look them in the eyes. He didn't deserve to peer through their windows, gaze upon their souls, and he didn't want them to look through his.
Kabbu always felt comfortable with them before. It had always been a simple fact, so clearly and obviously that it could be scientifically defined as factual, written down in books for everyone to know. It had never been questioned, let alone ever been infused with the inflection of a question. Now it was obscured by muddy and murky waters, ink washed away on soggy, submerged papers. Worse still was the fact that he himself had held the books underwater, forced them under until they drowned. This, all of this, had been created by himself. All these feelings and sensations that made him sick, that pricked at him and cut him and chased away his smiles, had all been crafted and stitched by himself and no one else.
Of course, that wasn't new to him. He was quite familiar with doing that again and again and again. He could never get out of his own way. He could never get out of anyone else’s way. If he ever tried to finally get out of everyone else’s way, he’d get in his own again instead and stop himself. All he was, all he’d ever been, all he ever would be, was a boulder too tall to scale, too heavy to move, too wide to go around. An obstacle, an impediment, a blockage that prevented anyone that had ever been near him to move onward and upward and forward, and move on with their lives and onto better things, better bugs than himself.
They were his teammates. They were his friends. They were practically his family. So why didn't he feel safe around them? Why couldn't he feel safe around them? They were fine around him. They hadn't fundamentally changed their approach to him or the way they looked at him or the way they talked to him. And Kabbu couldn't be fine around them. And he was the only reason why. He changed things, everything, for himself.
Kabbu wanted to change so much, change so many things about his life and himself and everything and everyone around him, but every time he tried to change something it turned out wrong, it turned out twisted, it turned out dead on arrival, and he didn't want to change anything because of that, but still he wanted to change, but there was no way for him to change without him giving permission for it, he was tired of the way he was and continued to be but he was petrified of trying to turn anything about himself into a positive in case it would still turn out a negative like so many and most other parts of him already were.
His only respite from it all, from everything, was when he was asleep. But even then he wasn’t truly protected. He was still exposed, buried under nothing. His dreams were prodded at, never left fully to rest, digging open holes he swore he’d filled.
He wanted to change nothing and everything. He wanted to keep nothing and everything.
Perhaps he was just continually in pursuit of all he could undo.
That not only could life go on without him, could everyone else’s lives go on without him, but that everything he’d ever done could be reversed and rewritten so as to remove him and his actions and thoughts and movements, as eliminating him from every situation he’d ever been involved in was sure to result in far better outcomes, far happier and brighter emotions for everyone else. Every scar that he was the reason for would be healed, every body that had been broken would be put back together, every mind he had sucked the life out of would have its lifeblood restored and would be lively again, sharper than they used to be, sharper than he’d ever be.
Every cicatrix he’d ever had wouldn’t have needed to ever exist, so long as his body had never emerged.
At some point, why did he even do anything? By cutting, he caused all of this, but if he didn't cut, he would never learn anything. And that was a fruitless endeavor, because he should've learned by now that he would never learn to be what he should. He ruined everything he touched. He killed everything he touched. Even any positive things he might have ever done, like making his friends happy, wasn't as good as it should be solely because it was coming from him. It should be coming from someone else, someone that they deserved over him, someone that deserved them, because he’d always known that he certainly didn't deserve them.
A certain part of him screamed at him that maybe the only solution, the only solvent, was to keep cutting. To slash until all his chitin had been ripped off and apart, his elytra were frayed at the edges, his exoskeleton displayed his internals, for only his eyes to see. Until all his green, all his gray, all his black and white and every color that made him was overrun, overcome, and overpowered by yellow.
But the rest of him didn't want to resort to that just yet. A part of him wanted to hold out, to hold on. Assess the situation then, and see then what would be best for everyone else.
The days went by.
Vi appeared to have cast away any doubt she may have had, as she was her usual bubbly self around him, something that infused him with a much-needed boost of joy. Chompy had been, for the most part, undeterred. There had been a time early on when he petted her, only for her to start intensely sniffing his more important left armband before turning her head up at him and whining. That had been quite the fright for him, but luckily no one else had seemed to notice it.
Leif…well, Leif was a different story.
He didn't appear to be “suspicious” of Kabbu, really, but he often gave the impression that he knew something was up with him, and he just couldn't prove it or what exactly it was, if the random offshoot glances said anything. He himself never said anything about it, at least not yet, and at least not to Kabbu. However, he was undeniably skeptical.
Kabbu hadn’t the faintest clue how, or what was giving it away. Leif had always been astute, but this was something more. Like it was instinctual, familiar. He had to then be extra careful around Leif, something that truly started to detest. When had he ever needed to be careful around him? Why was he now? Only because of himself.
Still, the days went by.
One particular day was a bit different. And not in the way that the night had been different however many days ago. It was different in a happier way. The sun was shining, the air felt nice. He felt a little bit better about things. So long as he didn't glance at his bands. That still spiked him with anxiety, and the recognition that what those bands covered still lingered over him. That wouldn't go away until they healed, he knew.
But he also knew he was getting close.
He had another nice day with them today. Everyday with them was a blessing, even if it was a blessing he had never justified, but that was besides the point. He talked with them and laughed with them and did everything he was supposed to do with them. He played with Chompy and they all went for a walk around the plaza, even though Vi had complained about it being boring. On his own travels, Kabbu helped a bug find their berry bag, listened to a new song that Samira had composed, and gave Stratos and Delilah a burly berry when he bumped into them, since they needed it for…something. It was a simple, carefree, troubleless day. Whether it would be rained upon by a problem he created remained to be seen.
It was night, now. Everyone had gone to sleep. Well, everyone else thought that everyone had gone to sleep. With the aid of the moonlight pouring through the window, Kabbu had crept out of his bed, once again thankful he had the bottom bunk, and trundled, as quietly as he could so as neither they nor he could hear his footsteps, to the window.
Kabbu gently discarded the band, clutching it tightly with his unharmed arm. Surveying the cut, it certainly looked much better than it had a week ago. The fact that it was only chitin-deep now seemed like a blessing in disguise. Maybe he really had thought it through. He touched it, and he didn't even wince. All it would take was another week or so, and it wouldn’t be discernible anymore. He wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. He wouldn't have to worry about them worrying anymore. He could handle a few more days, couldn't he? He could handle a few weeks or moons without creating a new one, couldn't he?
As he bargained with himself, looking upon his gambit, the air chilled. Kabbu’s exoskeleton followed. It could only mean one thing. The beetle whipped around, throwing his arms behind his back again. He hoped he didn't notice.
“Kabbu,” Leif, who he was now face to face with, spoke. His voice did not give it away, but in his snowy eyes, Kabbu could eke out one of the emotions he least liked to see in his friends’ eyes: worry.
“Leif! I, I…”
“Show us your arm,” Leif instructed coldly.
He’d noticed.