[h2][center]Geralt of Rivia & [color=BFBFBF]Zenkichi Hasegawa[/color] With Goldlewis[/center][/h2]
[center]Sector 7 Slums[/center]
[center]Lvl 10 (185/100) -> Lvl 10 (188/100) [/center]
[center]Lvl 4 (44/40)  -> Lvl 4 (47/40) [/center]
[center]Word Count: 2,265 words[/center]

Zenkichi and Geralt missed the chaos behind them as Goldlewis and the others behind them stopped, with the former Secretary stopping the flaming Motor Ball in its tracks. They pair continued onwards, hitting the boost pads and making solid time downhill. Before long, they had reached Sector 7 with the rest of the Seekers, Sandalphon's crew, and the tagalongs from Vandelay. With Chai, Peppermint and Korsica heading their own way, that left Sandalphon, 2B, 9S, as well as Clara and Svarog as their newest recruits. They'd have to make sure the androids, as well as Clara and her protector were freed of Galeem's influence, but for now, they made their way to the bar Zenkichi had stopped at after the Machine battle, everybody setting off to relax. 

For a little bit now, Goldlewis had been contented to sit by himself, cooling down in silence with a glass of ice water. He'd picked a seat that gave him a good view of both everyone else and the door without even thinking about it, hung his suit jacket over the back of his chair, loosened his tie, and scarcely moved from that spot since. At one point he knocked on his coffin, which he'd set up next to his chair, and the entity within cracked open a lid to hold up a mirror so Goldlewis could fix his hair. Other than that, the heavyset giant mostly just enjoyed his well-deserved break, but it wasn't long before he began to grow restless. Feeling like he ought to do something, now that he formed part of a team. He ended up setting his sights on Geralt, since the man happened to be nearby. After clearing his throat, Goldlewis spoke to him.

"Good work back there, hoss," he began. "I reckon you were pretty out of your element back in Vandelay, seein' as the whole place was Black Tech top to bottom. I was a little worried, but it looks like y'all pulled through." His brows knitted together slightly. "N-now, I'm still strugglin' a little with everyone's names. Awful hard to keep track sometimes. You weren't with the group I met back in the desert, and we only really fought together down in the tunnels outside Sector 06. It was..." Goldlewis grimaced. "Guh...Garrett or somethin' of that nature, wasn't it?"

Geralt, having more consciously chosen a spot with fairly good sight of the exit, turned slightly and gave Goldlewis a half-nod to indicate he was paying attention as he started talking. He didn't know what 'hoss' meant, but ignored that particular quirk of speech. "Close. Geralt." Humming a moment as he looked around and took a sip of ale, he continued. 

"You might be surprised to hear it, but I had [i]some[/i] idea of what was in this world before Galeem brought me here. I mentioned last night that my daughter, Ciri, is a worldhopper. She went to a number of different world trying to escape an army, hunting her to try and use her power. She explained a world with people who had metal in their heads, waged war from a distance with strange, magical weapons, and people had their own personal flying machines. I thought she was joking." 

Sighing, Geralt took another sip of ale. "We also have elevators in my world, but they don't look quite the same. Usually no more than some rope, a pulley or two, and a platform for hauling goods up a cliffside. It's not unheard of for a worker to go up with the cargo, but just using them here for going up a tall building...that's what's strange to me. Everything else, I just try and roll with. It isn't always easy, but I don't have to understand how it all works. Just that it does."

"Interestin'," Goldlewis murmured, ruminating on what Geralt said about Ciri and the otherworldly perspective her dimension-trotting exploits provided. Unless the phenomenon encapsulated multiple 'worlds' from Geralt's 'world', it rather flew in the face of one of the veteran's assumptions--that prior to the universal extinction event, there had been no intersection between different worlds. Goldlewis knew of other planets, of course, but never entertained the possibility of other human life coming to be on other planets.

When the Witcher continued, Goldlewis slowly nodded his head. "I use my world's magitech same as everyone else, but I don't got a magic bone in my body. All wizardry to me, an' I mean that literally. That's just how it is everywhere, I reckon. Standin' on the shoulders of giants so we can see an' reach even farther."

Not meaning to was philosophical, the veteran chuckled. "So, ah, it's Geralt. I gotcha." He stroked his whiskers. "Or...maybe I should call you Sir Geralt? You don't exactly strike me as a knight, beggin' your pardon, but I don't mean to assume."

Geralt nodded at Goldlewis' explanation that he was similar. "Ironically, I'm considered fairly adept at wizardry for somebody who isn't a sorcerer in my world. Not as good as some other Witchers I know, but Signs are simple, if intensive, magic. Few unmodified humans can perform magic, though, and only the most basic of Signs. Some are inrinsically attuned to magic, and become sorcerers or sorceresses. Though their numbers, as well as those of Witchers, are on the decline."

When Goldlewis mentioned Knighthood though, he chuckled for a moment. "I am, actually, a knight. For a while it was mostly a title I claimed to sound more official, on the advice of a mentor. Geralt of Rivia. A bout of fortune, ill or not is up for debate, resulted in me and my group coming across the Queen of Rivia as her and her guard were being attacked by Imperial soldiers. We helped her men fight them off, and she knighted me for my assistance."

Taking a sip of his ale, Geralt shook his head. "And then I left despite her orders to remain at her side, and from what I've heard, she's cursed my name since. Though I managed to...somewhat...clear it up with her son."

[color=BFBFBF]"Oh, hey, we talking magic?"[/color] Zenkichi asked, having been passing by with a beer, taking a seat with the other two men. [color=BFBFBF]"Gotta admit, the tech, magic or no, is pretty nuts here. Kind of invasive, too. I don't think I ever liked those stupid ID tags they put on us, but now? I like them even less."[/color]

Geralt's recollection of the events surrounding the Queen of Rivia and his knighthood piqued Goldlewis' interest. The seemed like a veteran, not necessarily of the battlefield like him, but of countless quests and misadventures, with a stockpile of stories to match. If so, that'd be something else the two had in common. Right about the same time that Geralt wrapped his anecdote, Zenkichi stopped to join them. While Goldlewis might not be as inclined to indulge in day drinking as the detective, understandable though it'd be given the circumstances, having Zenkichi around felt right. Though from vastly different worlds, and more wildly disparate in age than appearances might suggest, the three were ultimately old career men. It was more than happenstance that brought them together.

"No kiddin'," the former Secretary of Defense agreed. "I've been 'round these parts for years and I still ain't got fully used to it. It's like a whole alternate history, if the Original hadn't discovered magic back in 2010 and things just kept goin' the way they had been. Lookin' at Midgar now, though, I'm grateful. Things weren't all sunshine and roses back home, far from it, but I could still see it over the horizon, like a sunset over the western frontier--America the Beautiful. And as long as I kept that dream alive, I could keep pushin' forward, no matter how bad things got. Here though...it's just plain awful. Not just the Ever Crisis, but how folks treat one another, like human life ain't worth anythin' at all...it's enough to make a man sick." He chuckled mirthlessly.

[color=BFBFBF]"Right, I remember you mentioning America. I'm from Japan, myself, if the name didn't give it away."[/color] Zenkichi replied. [color=BFBFBF]"Though, I've never heard of magic, at least, not outside the Metaverse. It's a sort of...collective consciousness alternate dimension mirroring the real world."[/color] He gave in the way of explanation, taking a small sip of his beer. [color=BFBFBF]"Inside it, Persona Users like me and the Thieves can summon a companion, a sort of inner self, called a Persona, and use it to fight. We're stronger than normal in the Metaverse, and get crazy weapons like my sword and revolvers. Noir has a grenade launcher for Christ's sake!"[/color] Chuckling, he sighed. [color=BFBFBF]"Damn I hope those kids are okay. You mentioned that they got separated in the Metro, right?"[/color] Geralt nodded in response. [color=BFBFBF]"Maybe I'll head out and go looking for them after, or they'll find us after. I owe them. I owe them a lot."[/color]

Geralt nodded, thinking on his own search for Ciri. From what it sounded like, they were both missing their respective charges, though he was curious how a man like Zenkichi had wound up with the others. They were barely adults by his reckoning. He was likely a guardian of some sorts, though, and it wasn't like Dandelion was much older in comparison to Geralt, even if he was supposedly a man grown. "For what it's worth, it isn't much better on the Continent, where I'm from. Tensions are only just simmering down after a major war. All sorts of folk, different species, trying to get along together. It's...troublesome. Lot of hate. Folk not appreciating that we're all sapients. Main difference here is the scale, way I see it." Sighing, Geralt took a long draught of his ale. "Your world sounds downright idyllic to me. I'd love to see it."

For Goldlewis, it took a moment for Zenkichi's stated origins to really sink in. [i]Japan?[/i] In his world, the island nation had been nothing more than a gigantic hole in the ocean ever since the Gear called Justice obliterated the entire country as her opening salvo in her war on humanity. That had been back in 2074, over a hundred years ago, meaning no man yet lived who could claim Japan as his home. In that calamity's wake, the few Japanese survivors scattered throughout the world had been more or less declared as national treasures, to be protected at all costs. Very briefly Goldlewis considered passing this grim chapter of his world's history, but as far as fun facts went it was pretty lacking in the 'fun' department, so the veteran decided to keep it to himself.

He could comment on the Phantom Thieves, though. "Those kids are tough by themselves, but together they're one hell of a team." He remembered fighting alongside them in Al Mamoon against the so-called Resistance, and the impressive Personas they summoned. "I reckon they'll be just fine."

The idea of his world being idyllic made Goldlewis chuckle. "Well, maybe there's a piece of it in here somewhere." That wasn't how he'd describe it by any means, and few had a better idea for how deep America's flaws ran than the Secretary of Defense. And that didn't include the Gears or anomalies like Happy Chaos. Of course, he couldn't level judgement at the state of Geralt's world himself. Midgar had proved that other realms could be far more screwed-up from a far more fundamental level.

Goldlewis shifted his weight, restlessly drumming his leg on the floor. As his attention shifted back to Zenkichi, he remembered a poignant detail that scrunched his brows together in concern. "Both o' y'all got it awful rough. Riskin' your lives day after day, away from your families, your li'l girls. Never knowin' if you'll make it back, if they'll be okay. Gotta weigh on ya somethin' fierce. Wouldn't blame y'all if ya left this fight to folks with nothin' to lose."

[color=BFBFBF]"Yeah, I'm sure they will be. Just gramps being worried..."[/color] After a moment's pause, he clarified the title. [color=BFBFBF]"That's what they like to call me, on account of my being more than twice their age. Little punks..."[/color]

Geralt chuckled, shaking his head. "Can't imagine what that'd make me." If even a piece of Goldlewis's world wound up here, if he could speak of it so fondly, even as an ideal, a dream of what it [i]should[/i] be rather than what it was, it sounded like a good thing. When the former Secretary of Defense brought up their particular parental lots in life, Geralt just shook his head. "Couldn't. Having something to lose is all the more reason to stick around." Besides, as much as he hated Yennefer throwing it in his face, as much as he denied it to himself, Geralt [i]did[/i] have a habit of sticking his nose in places where his help hadn't been asked for. For better or worse. 

[color=BFBFBF]"Yeah, no way am I gonna sit back and just let other people solve the world's problems while I have the means to do it myself." not again...[/color] Zenkichi added, the last bit with not a small amount of a self-deprecative tone. [color=BFBFBF]"Besides, it's personal for me. Konoe...I thought I was done with him. He'd cofessed his crimes, I was right there when we arrested him. No, I'm in this for the long haul."[/color]

For his part, Goldlewis nodded and raised his glass. "Well, then, to savin' the world." Zenkichi and Geralt joined him, each raising their own drinks with a soft 'clink'.