https://archiveofourown.org/works/16260419
The note has a badly drawn doodle of a checkered top hat and a home address. Skull’s home address to be precise. How very like the nosy bastard to keep tabs on them. Years of practical enslavement gone, his Cloud nature let loose and best of all, years and years of useless searching for answers…coming to fruition at long last. He’d played the role. Now it was time for Checkerface to pay up. The note flutters on the dash of his motorcycle as he blazes to the airport. Skull can barely hold himself together as he suffers through the necessary niceties to get his express ticket to China, ridiculously high price or no.Skull settles into his flight seat, note pressed into his chest like a prayer. Soon. --- What greets him is an empty apartment. Dust still coats every surface, chasing rumors and preparing for the big showdown had left him switching safehouses multiple times and fewer still those that involved allowing him to return to the comforts of his home. The lump in his throat thickens and Skull finds it hard to swallow. He’d expected the untampered door, Checkerface had his own ways of entering buildings, but the undisturbed state of his home leant more to the idea that no one had been present, rather than any play at secrecy. No. Skull drops his bags at the doorway, measured steps giving way to harried running. His eyes subconsciously flicker into each and every nook and cranny, only allowing him to turn away when they register as safe in his mind. No one is in his home. No. His brain is numb, ice creeping through his veins as he clutches at doorways and cupboard doors, looking for a sign, anything, anything at all, of the Checkered Asshole’s presence. Already, he can feel his centre leaching from him, the dampening of his Flames, making his presence even smaller in a house that is still too big for him. No.No.No.No.No.Nononononononononono-! Skull sinks to his knees in the middle of the kitchen floor. The inferno shrinks to a bonfire, shrinks to a blaze, shrinks to a candle flame. The last wisp of flame flickers. Something clinks onto the kitchen table. Skull whips around so fast, he can hear his neck creak. Several objects are laid out in a neat row on his table. Just above them, a mist portal wipes out of existence. That fucking Bastard.
.
Dear Skull, It’s me! *messy doodle of a checkered tophat* I hope you like my present. :)They’re all your things after all. I found you like this, you know. You’d let off a blast of flames wide enough to drive off every other Cloud user for miles around. I knew I had to have you~ So I took your things.And dropped you off in a hospital. Aren’t I nice? :) But you didn’t remember anything. Messed up my plans a little there you know. Not very nice of you. But I do uphold my bargains. So enjoy. P.S. I don’t know who you are either. Ta~ :) --- The dining table hit the living room wall and burst on impact. People around the block said they’d noticed an eerie purple glow illuminating the street the entire night long.
