Cynthia finally settled down in her little camp with Garchomp, Roserade and Milotic. Everyone had already eaten… except for the champion herself. For her part, she had made herself some sushi for the night made of the fresh fish from the sea. She even cut everything herself.
That being said, something was a little… strange about the fist that Bede brought back. Usually, she would receive a Qwilfish, a Magikarp and a few others; however, this Qwilfish was a little… strange. Usually, she'd like to compare the Pokémon to something like a Great Ball, but the one that she was given was… mostly white with blue tips on its spines. For a moment, she wasn't going to use it and decide to ask Seth to get her something instead; however, Bede looked so excited when gifting it to her, like he found something cool. She can't just send it back into the ocean now….
Cynthia ate one of her sushi pieces in a single bite. Hm. The taste is just as odd this time.
"So, Garchomp."
Garchomp looked over at her trainer.
"So, I've been thinking." She ate another piece. "What if we can convince Caitlin to stay with us here? She did enjoy it here."
Garchomp tilted her head. Yeah, more like she'd love how easy it was to sleep here.
"...What? Don't—" Cynthia coughed before eating another piece of sushi. "Don't give me that look."
Garchomp rolled her eyes and let out a cry.
"I'm serious! Plus, you still wanted that rematch with that Gardevoir that Diantha gave her." She ate another piece before drinking some tea. "We could possibly schedule that for you whenever you'd like."
Garchomp perked up. She let out another cry, but this one was far more enthusiastic.
"Oh? Getting a change of heart now, hm?"
Garchomp huffed. She just wants a worthy opponent.
Cynthia giggled. "I'll make sure to tell Caitlin about your next playdate with him." Cynthia stopped laughing to cough again. This one sounded a lot more violent than the others.
Garchomp looked back at Cynthia. She seemed worried.
"N—no. It's… it's fine." Cynthia shook her head and coughed again. "Just… went down the wrong pipe, is all."
Garchomp tilted her head. "[Gar?]"
"…" Cynthia sighed. She sipped her tea again. Maybe she shouldn't eat any more of that sushi, though she's sure that it's probably just food poisoning coming on at worst. She'll be fine.
> Sollux, get impatient with this hospital service.
> You can't remember how long you've been waiting here but after waiting for so long. The mediicullers don't come back and you were out of Jello. In fact, the hospital is awfully quiet. The only sound you can hear are some faint clacks of heels walking.
> You start to get a bit anxious and you decide to get up only for you to immediately go back to sitting down when you see who the person is who's wearing the high heels is. She may not be wearing sneakers now, but you can tell that from the smirk she has, there's a reason her heels were still a bright crimson. When you see her you are absolutely dripping in visceral hate. Your fists even begin to ball when she speaks to you.
"You know when I saw.. that you got checked into the hospital, I aaaabsolutely laughed my ass off Captor. I mean getting checked in for passing out like an idiot in the middle of snorting cheese? Talk about pathetic!"
> You don't even hesitate to pull out Dirk's Katana from your inventory as you have the tip against her neck. Nobody insults your cheese snorting habits... Except.. just about everyone. However you weren't going to take it from a troll who's done unforgivable things to you.
"Well...? You know why I'm here don't you? You could do it! Get it over with. Get your childish revenge on me for making you kill the love of your life or whatever. God this is sooo dramatic. Aren't you even going to say hi to your old pal Vriska?"
You keep your stance steady, frankly you're glad you weren't wearing the hospital gown anymore.
"Are you still crazy or is the fact that you've been chasing me for the past nine months your sick form of saying hello?" You say bitterly.
"You know in all fairness you never did stop and bother to ask who sent for you! I was only returning the 8 years of silence with a bit of a warm greeting." She sent a helicopter armed with missles to destroy the shifty motel you were staying at.
> You didn't want to argue, in fact, you didn't even want to hear her voice.
"Still crazy. Got it." With a twist of your ankles you swiftly slice straight through the muscle of her neck. For a brief moment you see her head fly clean off... But you blinked and as fast as that head fell.. it was right on her shoulders and your glowing eyes widen in horror.
"Not crazy. A bit pissed. But no.. not crazy. In fact I'm not even here to kill you! And neither is he." She says as he points behind her shoulder. Your mood gets from bad to worse when you see those aviators.
"Yo. Can we chill with the whole beheading thing here its like one of those pompous medieval parties except we don't have dragons and Game of Thrones is already a lot more interesting than whateve-"
"No. no no no no no fuck THIS. Fuck this shade wearing, time bending *prick* and most importantly fuck *you* for at the very fucking least not giving me the satisfaction of killing you after all these years." You don't care about whatever this is, you immediately don't want any part of whatever is going on.
"What. The fuck do you want?" You angrily say to them both, still maintaining that firm grip on the hilt of Dirk's katana.
"You know. We really wouldn't be here had it not been for you asshole. You're the one who decided to cut themselves off and made it this hard to find!" She shrugs as she walks back and stands beside Dave.
"We're here because we need to tie some loose ends Sollux. We're here because we need a certain expert in a certain coding language to bring back our dead and permadead friends back from non existance."
You're very quick to shut her down. "No. That's.. no.. do you hear yourself? You want me to mess around with the coding language that caused the destruction of not one.. but *two* universes. In the slightest attempt that we can possibly bring back the fuckpods that got themselves killed when we got here? No. Fuck no." You say.
A moment of silence washes over the room and a brief exchange of glances were shared between Dave and Vriska before she smirks.
"We weren't asking." She says as she lifts her fingers. However this time you're quick with your reflexes and cut right through her wrist.
Despite this, it wouldn't be enough as again with a brief flash, her hand is back and attached. This time you growl and lunge for Dave with the Katana. However within a brief moment he already has his own sword out, sparks clash powerfully as the metal scrapes. Stupid time powers.
"This sword isn't even yours bro, at least fight with your flashy lasers instead of using something that doesn't belong to you." That's when you snarl. Dirk handed this to you personally on the day you last saw him. "You clearly don't know anything about him if you think that." You respond. "Don't know anything? Who do you think was gonna spin beats at the wedding reception?" When he says that, it catches you offguard. It's in that brief moment of hesitation that you realize something.
You had lost.
The sound of a snap would be the last thing you hear as you were forced into a deep slumber. Just like before in your apartment.
It wasn’t something so silly as a fancy dress party or a masquerade ball. Nick was a man of many things, but cliche’s weren’t what he dabbled in. No his mask served a more practical function. To see if the ones he’d assembled before him were willing to follow regardless who would lead. Whether they had the same burning fire in them to drive a wrecking ball in the heart of this all too clean and tidy Chicago and allow it to drip back with it’s former seedy bloodied streets. Where any man was free to rule his street corner for as long as he could hold it. Before rules and obligations bestowed upon them by self-proclaimed overloads had driven them into being so ordinary and simple.
If Gerry had done her job, and she had so rarely failed, all the people he had carefully handpicked over the years would be assembled in the currently empty bar for him, with only each other and the dim lighting of the closed establishment for company. They had been guided only by a simple pain envelope that had the meeting place, time and one parting message. Filled with promise.
It is your time.
He pulled down his mask, gazing at his reflection in the clean glass of the office mirror, one last check before he went out. His beard was reduced to simple stubble, his stern jawline in view for the first time in many years and dressed in a suit more formal than anything he wore most of his work days. You could barely tell it was him. Nick Caruso. Bartender on the outside, but soon to be brilliant mastermind. With a final breath, he turned away and down the hall, opening the door that lead to the bar, emerging without a word into the open.
He didn’t pay mind to what his company had been doing or even if they’d noticed his appearance. Instead without a word, he pulled out a crate from under the bar and stood on it, his slim figure now visible to the whole room. “You are all here because you want something. You want freedom, or money, or maybe you just want to kill. You’re all here because one group stops us from doing this. The Lucianos.”
“I am here because I want one thing, I want to kill them. I want every Luciano and all their allies died. The Belmonte, the Novaks. I want them all gone. I want Chicago to be free to be a shit hole without these slick fuckers controlling us all and using use.”
Not even pausing in his actions or words, Nick drew a vodka bottle from behind him, smashing it against the stop, glass and liquor slipping and spraying everywhere. “Anyone who disagrees...”
He placed the broken half of the bottle, held by the neck, down on the counter top, stepping off his crack and offering a smile. His dark eyes intensified the whirling intensity of his look, a man in pure darkness, with the grin of a murder about to make a fresh kill. “If anyone disagrees, here’s the bottle to kill me. Otherwise get the fuck out. The rest of you, if you want to do something. You stay, and we party, because this is a new dawn.”
“We are the motherfuckers who are going to bring the walls of this city down on all of them.”
The streets of Midgar were abuzz with the news of the world. President Shin-Ra senior was dead, whispers about men in black capes and the return of Sephiroth, the reformation of the terrorist organisation AVALANCHE and much closer to home, the destruction wrought when the Sector 7 plate collapsed. Genesis had thought the Wutaii War was a turbulent moment in history, but how wrong he was. Not even his desertion and following domino-effect could stand to this.
Gaia was in dire trouble and it suited the ex-SOLDIER just fine.
He was able to walk with his head tucked down and no onlookers to speak of. There was a panicked excitement that gripped the public. What would happen next? What would they see on their televisions tonight? This distraction was a divine blessing for a fallen face of fame.
He’d checked the few hidden stashes where he’d kept his Gil in secret. Some had already been discovered and cleared out, but the surviving sum of 20,000Gil would be enough for him to live comfortably for some time. He planned on escaping the city to find somewhere quieter to settle down. He needed time to reflect, and considering he’d barely survived his own fate he wasn’t eager on weighing in on Gaia’s latest crisis -- he only had the public knowledge of events, which he knew would either be fabrication or propaganda, how could he possibly help when he didn’t truly know what was happening on Gaia?
Hands in his pockets, he didn’t notice the blonde until their shoulders clipped. “Oh-- Sorry, ma’am.” he softly murmured, turning to see if she was alright. He still had a SOLDIER’s strength, he didn’t want his accidental bump to have sent her flying backwards.
Genesis could feel a cold sweat being surrounded by so many MAKO tanks. He had an.. aversion to being submerged under water, let alone MAKO, the liquid substance being painful to breath in. His heartbeat quickened at the idea and a basic instinct of fight-or-flight had him more on edge than to begin with. Good. One could never be too cautious in Professor Hojo’s playhouse.
He moved quickly to the main control system and lo and behold there was no passcode key required. The Professor was a cocky old bastard. “Hang in there, Zack.” he murmured, eyes flicking to the blonde-haired cadet. “.. you too.”
They didn’t have much time. A distraction at the Nibelheim reactor would only buy so much time, most of the Professor’s scientific reseach was conducted in the ShinRa Mansion and he’d return post-haste to his tinkering of horrors. The MAKO was draining steadily and all Genesis could hope for was a little patience if either of them awoke before the tanks could be completely emptied.
The thrumming of power grew with each step Genesis took inside the MAKO cave and his jaw tensed with the anticipation firing off Adrenalin through his system, the MAKO in his eyes reacting with a flash. It was evident that he was on edge and ready for a fight. Minerva had guided him to the cave through her will, had shown him the path he needed to take through visions she bestowed upon him. His objective was to eliminate Sephiroth.
His glove audibly curled around the hilt of his Rapier with a squeeze. He’d expected to see his friend stood tall and proud with a damning look in his eye, to recite about the world’s end and a personal mission borne of desire to appease a false-Mother’s wish. He remembered Sephiroth’s swordsmanship well. To call him anything less than a master was an insult, the silveret honed his skill to perfection. Genesis was... a little nervous, he knew his limitations and how his friend had surpassed him for as long as he could remember. He could only hope that his restoration had given him a little more strength.
The ex-SOLDIER hesitated when he reached the MAKO pool and his destination. This.. hadn’t been what he expected. Not this. His hand loosened and fell away from his weapon -- Gaia, he’d never forgive himself for attacking someone who looked so... broken. “Sephiroth..” he approached with slow steps, though didn’t completely close the distance. A small part of his mind knew this could be a trap.
Genesis side-eyed the student known as Ace, walking alongside him and being escorted by the blonde to Classroom Zero. He couldn’t figure out why he’d helped him, he was adamant that he deserved to be part of the elite in black and red and he wouldn’t have been accepted into the ranks without an intervention from the young man who had come to the Central Command just in time to plead Genesis’ case. It was evident he had eye-witnessed him wielding fire magic while the Milites Empire still had their crystal jammer in effect.
“You didn’t have to help me.” Genesis defended haughtily. He was miffed that he hadn’t been able to prove his worth without the help of anyone else. “I would have joined your class all the same.”
Genesis entered Clay’s apartment in a huff, carrying with him his textbooks and scripts. “I can’t do this!” he complained for... perhaps the 7th consecutive day in a row. “Father expects me to fulfill this blasted law degree and follow in his footsteps, but I’m an actor, Clay! I was born for the stage.”
He threw himself down and reclined with an arm over his eyes, books strewn over Clay’s coffee table. “I have what it takes to act, why can’t he just understand that my talents are wasted?” he was largely upset because if he didn’t manage to maintain good grades he was under the threat of being cut off from the university trust that had been set up for him. He didn’t want to sink into debt over a degree he didn’t want nor care about.
“Clay!” Genesis sat bolt upright without warning and threw a decorative cushion at the man’s head, lips pushing out in a sullen pout. “I’m upset, comfort me!”
