[b][i]Two Weeks, Two Days, After the Midnight Tournament[/i][/b]

((Collab post between Gentelmanvaultboy and Letter Bee.))

[b]Note:[/b] This is set a day or so after the 'Present Day'.

[hider=Shattered Illusions]
It had been some time after he, Wolf, and Aram had explored Mephisto's abandoned laboratory, and William was still troubled. First by his' guilt at allowing Andras and Vera to be almost taken by Galbrek's minions, then by Galbrek's minions' plight themselves, then by the situation with Vittorio. He needed to save both the young man and the other Mephisto's students from Mephisto himself, not only for their sakes, but for the sake of the city. For the Evil Greater than the Ancient Evil was approaching Rhea, and the best and brightest were stuck in feuds among themselves.

And with that, William Ascot looked for another connection to form, a mutually beneficial bond that would allow him to forge another link in the protective armor of Rhea. In the early morning before classes, the boy would wake up a few hours earlier than usual, drink some extra strong coffee, and stroll to a park close to St. Lucifer's in civilian clothes. Other than said civilian clothes, he did not declare himself, but he did not make any further efforts to hide his identity, either. He would also carry a white flag of parley, which he would pull out of his backpack and wave around every so often...

He wasn't there for very long before he heard a shout, a yowl, and a resounding explosion shook the trees around him.

A cat, old, scarred, full of piss and viniger and still slightly smoking from the tips of its blue ears suddenly tore ass around the corner like the devil himself was chasing it and bounded into a nearby tree. The rythemic thuds of heavy footfalls resounded around the park, followed by the appearace of something that might very well be the Devil to the delinquint scum that attended St. Lucifers. Bak's heavy frame skidded into view, he gun already spinning up still apsent its counterpart on her bandaged arm. She leveled it at the cat. 

"Is nowhere to be running now, blue eyed mongrel!" She shouted, ignoring William, tunnel vision seemingly focused on the enemy in front of her. The cat stared back, it's glassey blind eye refelecting only scorn for its pursuer. It cocked its head, seemingly taunting the girl, then began cleaning itself in its private areas. 

This disrespect seemed to enrage the metal girl. "You and your horde of skanks will never darken the doorway of St. Lucifers again!" She opened fire, the bullets ripping through the tree and scattering its branches around the base. The cat, homever, had other plan. With a graceful leap that should have been impossible for something that looked so much like roadkill the cat tumbled out of the tree, leaping from falling branch to falling branch, a bridge that led it right to William. With a final tumble in landed directtly on his shoulders, and he could feel the fleas in eminated as it raised one paw and placed it uncofortably close to his neck.

Bak had followed the creatures trajectory, but seeing it land on another person gave her pause. She stared intently at the cat as she let her gun wind down, and held her hand up in the universal sign to be calm. "Do not make a sudden move." She said, in the voice of someone trying to talk another person through defusing a bomb. "Do not turn your head. Do not look at it in the eye." The artiller guns on her shoulder slowly lowered downward. "Turn, slowly, till the animal is facing me if you want to live."

The briefest of nods, before William turned around as slowly as possible, resisting the feeling of gnats on his skin, until the feral cat faced the girl's artillery. [i]Bak Tsarvena from the last tournament. The name itself sounds like it came from The Tsardom of Yekaterina.[/i] Once his back was fully turned on, well, Bak, he would wait for the sound of gunfire.

He didn't have to wait long. The cat let out a low growl as her turned, looking between him and Bak, before she let out a "GAH!" that caught its complet attention. As it fliched she let lose with both barrels, catching the beast in a miniture explotion by Williams head. Its claws were yanked out of him as it tumbed end over end, landing in a momentary heap before wriggling back to its feet and bounding off into the underbrush.

Once the thing was off Bak wasted no time and running up to asses the condition of the boy. She held him by the shoulder to steadie him. "Are you allright? You are lucky, I have seen him slice a students nose in three."

William laughed good-naturedly, smiling widely at Bak. "That was awesome! Such precision is to be envied. And yes, I am all right; thank you."

[i]Well, this is new. It seems that like most people, Ms. Tsarvena has a different side than she shows in battle.[/i]

"No, no, it was nothing." Bak said bashfully. "I do this most mornings. His guts are not fit to string violin." She took her hand off his shoulder, then scowled at it. Little red spots had sunk into the glove, and when she looked back at his sholder the reason became apparent. Old One Eye's claws had sunk in deeper than she'd relized. "You are bleeding. This should be dissinfected. I have alchohol in first aide kit. I will go fetch this. Stay right here." She started to stomp off, hurrying toward the gym. There was no telling what was on that old mongrels claws. He could be dying of going insane at any moment from some yet undiscovered strain of hyper-rabies. 

Besides which, he hadn't flinched when she'd walked up to him. That deserved some special treament, didn't it?"

[hr]

Bak handed over the kit, basically shoving it into his arms. "There. I am not so good at bandaging, so you will have to do it yourelf. Why were you out near this place so early in the morning? Normal students avoid area around St. Lucifers like it is plague infested. It has well earned reputation." Despite the fact that she seeminly spent every waking moment fighting agaist that reputation it was impossible to miss the hint of pride that crept into Baks voice when she spoke of the seedy underbelly of her school. Suddenly an idea struck her. "Were you meeting girlfreind? It would be so romantic to tell her you braved danger such as Old One Eye to see her so early!"

As William cleaned his wound and bandaged it, he felt at ease around Bak, before saying, "No. I have a boyfriend in the school, but he'd rage at me in worry if he knows I went anywhere near it without protection. Said boyfriend is a brown-skinned hottie with ice powers, by the way."

A smile at that. "No, I came here for the sake of the city. I need to meet more people from all three factions if I am to...expand my horizons." A pause. "The fighting between all three factions; two schools and a private group, it's gone beyond friendly competition to a blood feud. That is dangerous for us all, especially if there [i]is[/i] a Greater Evil than the Ancient Evil, or just new machinations by the latter. Then again, I might just be seeking meaning beyond the conflicts and causes presented before me.

"Point is, I came here to meet someone, and that someone seems to be you." William then faced Bak. "Life is more than just tournaments and battles between superpowered students."

As the boy talked about his hot boyfreind Bak's eyes wandered down from his face to his flat, flat chest. The gears turned in Bak's head as she put two and two together, recieved an error message, and rounded back down to one. [i]Good gods, she is even more unfortunate than me.[/i]

The rest of the speech, though, was something else. Fighting for the city? A blood feud? A greater evil? What was all this all of a sudden? Wait, no, before any of that, "You were here to meet with us?" She asked, then she arrived at four. "So you knew we would be around here?" She asked, a little more suspitious. That meant this person knew where Mephistos was. At least the area. That was...unusual. Had she made a mistake? 

"I..." she started, nervously. "I do not know anything about great evils or creatures like that. If you would like to know about such things, Tovari-, Clara would know more than me. If you can find her."

William blinked as Bak stared at his chest, and decided to head off a rather humorous misunderstanding in the bud. "I'm a boy. Who likes other boys. And girls too. As for Clara...I can't do that; we've never met, but she'd regard me as an enemy the moment she sees me. More to the point, I don't plan on revealing myself to her yet. The other two of 'The Triad' already know of my existence but hold me beneath notice; Clara won't."

A pause before he resumed. "Clara, King, and Alto - yes, I said his name - are either the linchpin of the city's defense or its main weakness. They are the triple suns that the planets - and by planets, the superpowered children and teens of the city - revolve around. That is dangerous as they're trying to undermine or destroy each other, or at least Alto and Clara are. And King is enigmatic, a mystery. I do not feel comfortable just waiting for the mystery to be revealed."

[i]Saying such words, do I look like I am craving the same position of importance that they have? That I want to be the Sun that the superpowered people of Rhea revolve around? Am I really such a narcissist and all my desire to protect just a cover for it?[/i]

He then remembered how sad Vittorio looked, and the sorrow that the young man held, a sorrow and brokenness that wrung tears from his heart. He remembered Christine (Baumann) as she agreed to an adoption she was skeptical of. And he looked at Bak herself, and saw the kindness in her voice and actions.

Another smile. "You're a kind person. That's why I want to protect this city." 

Bak's head was sort of spinning. A whole lot of concepts were being thrown at it all at once that she wasn't really comfortable with parcing.  She was a simple, straghtforward sort of girl. She shot at things. It's all she did. It's all she was ever going to be able to do. Protect the city? That wasn't in her range. Her bullets didn't fly far enough for that.  She could only protect this, here, the life that was right in front of her. That was within her range.

She struggled until she found something to latch on to, like a sailor adrift in a storm. "How do you know Tovarish thinks you are enemy? You say yourself you have never met. How could she hate you then? It does not come from nowhere, if someone hates you you must have done something to them first."

The laughter from William's tone was loud, clear, and lasted a few seconds more than what was comfortable. "You actually think that? This world is more complex than you give it credit for. People hate each other for all sorts of petty reasons, like what powers they have or don't have, where they live, what language they speak, and even what clothes they wear! And Clara hates me because of the school I go to, the people I am studying with, and if she watched Galbrek's dumb video, my name."

He then faced her. "William Chekova Ascot. Of St. Laurel's. That's my name. And if you hate me because of this, even though I haven't done anything to you...well you know what that means."

The spinning suddenly stopped, the world coming into sharp focus as the boys laughter dragged across her confusions throat like a knife in the dark and left it choking on its own blood in some forgotten gutter. The whole girl seemed to stop, eyes raising up to look at him with none of the kindness he had seen in them before. "You are wrong." she muttered. "You have done something to me. And now you should leave."

William knew not to press further, and made to turn away, but not before saying this: "Make sure to make friends other than your 'Tovarish'. Vittorio desperately needs a connection to this world. And if you decide that the city - all of us - are more important than this current feud, have Vernon call me. And now I should go."

And with that he began to walk away. He felt the impulse to run, to stew in guilt over what he [i]had[/i] done to Bak. But illusions had to be shattered; he can only hope it was worth it.

Bak watched him go. She wanted to scream out that there was no need for him to tell her that. She was already doing everything in her power. But she could only watch in silence, fuming. He wasn't a bad man, she didn't think. Not like Galbrek made him out. If he had been brainwashing her she would never have gotten so mad. But they were never bad people, were they? 

The villagers wern't bad people.

Her parents wern't bad people.  

She just brought out the worst in them.

The boy stopped as the girl's silence got to him; a signal that something was wrong. Turning back to Bak, still finding her within shouting range, he would say: "And if you don't hate me forever because of what I did, I just want to say: You're not  a bad person! So think for yourself and all will be well! Also, if you want a [i]proper[/i] kitten, ask Vernon if I can smuggle you one; I know a place!"

And with that, William Ascot would run off into the sunrise. 
[/hider]