Despite Thea making the claim that she would be back in only a few short minutes, she ended up leaving Malachi in the training room for a few hours.
But he didn't even realize it himself.
The entire time he'd been trying to break the glass block created by Thea, Mal had hardly moved from his spot even by a couple of inches.
Next to no progress had been made towards the goal of shattering the glass.
The most he had been able to do was imbue a few cracks into the block, but even then he just had to watch it repair itself seconds later.
'Ugh...'
Malachi finally noticed that he was running a bit of a fever.
He felt something wet running down his snout and brought his hand up to investigate.
"A nosebleed, huh..? Haven't had one of these since B made Anna that leather-"
"Bu?"
Camille, lured by the smell of blood, approached her father silently and without tipping him off.
Her head tilted to the side curiously as she seemingly waited for her dad to finish his sentence.
"U-Umm. Nothing, munchkin. Dad is just reminiscing to himself a bit. About some very... very good times."
Camille seemed not to understand what Mal was talking about in the slightest.
"Bwa?" Ignoring her father's degeneracy, Camille pointed to her own stomach that was awakened by Mal's impromptu nosebleed.
He quickly checked the time and he realized that Cami should have been fed thirty minutes ago.
"Oops... Don't tell your moms about this, yea?"
Camille looked like she wanted to ask, 'Well what do I get out of this?'
"...Ten extra minutes to your hour of tablet time a day."
"Bu!" (Thirty!)
"No way in hell. Your mothers would wring my neck." (And deprive him of affection)
Sei, Luna, Jo, and Bianca were the most concerned about Cami having proper development.
Anna, Mal, and Nadine had to be monitored carefully by them, or else Camille would have ended up even more spoiled than she already was.
"Bu." (Twenty-five.) She argued.
"...Twenty, but it has to be animal planet or something else educational."
"...Aba." (Deal.)
Mal and Cami shook hands like two crooked business partners.
With their deal struck, Mal sat down on the ground and reverted back to regular size.
"Everyone j-just calls me Eddie, sir. I-I mean-"
"Come sit down for a second, Eddie." Malachi beckoned.
Eddie absolutely did not want to sit anywhere near Malachi.
For one, he was 6'5 and wildly intimidating even when he looked 95% human.
In addition, there were three supersized animals lying on the floor around him.
Eddie was practically positive that if he so much as breathed too loud, they were going to bite off his head.
He timidly came towards Mal and the sleeping animals.
Because he was concerned for his safety, he elected to only stand a few feet away from Zazu since he seemed the least intimidating.
Malachi sighed deeply as if he was struggling with the words that were about to come out of his mouth.
"I'm sorry, Eddie, but I can't help you like that again. It's not good for either of us."
"W-What..? What does that even mean??"
Malachi occasionally got requests like this from members who were having difficulties with PTSD.
His ability to eat the negative emotions of individuals is kind of like a band-aid.
The euphoric happy effect eventually wears off and needs to be re-administered after a time.
Mal didn't know if that side effect was accidental or intentional so that he would always have a fresh 'battery' waiting around.
Oddly enough, the one who helped Mal see the dangerous implications behind his power was Joanne.
As someone who had her own personal battles with addiction long before Anna was born, she knew better than else the kind of slippery slope that his power could lead to.
Joanne was relatively laid back and she didn't particularly ask a whole lot of Malachi, but she did make him promise that he would never use his power on her, or anyone else, more than once.
It made for hard conversations with some of the members sometimes.
Some reacted poorly to his refusal.
They would either cry and beg, or become irate and storm off.
The most desperate offered their body to him.
But all of those things only reaffirmed his decision not to use them.
If things were this bad after just one use, he could hardly fathom just how much worse they could get.
Mal explained all of this to Eddie calmly and carefully without skipping over a single step.
He could tell that it was taking some time for him to process everything in full- and Mal waited anxiously for the next critical moment.
As mentioned, some take his refusal alright.
Some do not.
Mal had no clue which side of the line Eddie was about to fall on.