tushanshu_logs | [Closed] Unto the Living Ones

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[Closed] Unto the Living Ones

Characters: Bakura & Costigan
Date: May 1st
Location: Fire Sector → FI-3A
Situation: Reviving from being killed by the Mandarin, Costigan checks in on Bakura after the thief didn't get the answers he wanted about a Foreigner wearing black armor.
Warnings/Rating: Likely a warning for language.

The last thing that Bakura had remembered was the awful sensation of icy cold water rushing into his lungs, paralyzing him. It had even made the sharp pain of having his torso ripped open seem tame. He'd opened his eyes in an unfamiliar room with the kedanese healer Milyn tutting over him, wads of bloody bandages in her hands.

"Well, well!" she had scolded him primly. "What a mess YOU were! Don't do that again!"

The thief had divested himself from her care as soon as possible, blatantly ignoring her insistence that he should be at rest, that she wasn't done healing him (and given the deep gashes still marring his chest, he'd snapped waspishly at her that he had noticed) and let himself out of the small clinic. The walk from the Water Sector to his suite in Fire had been painful and felt as if it had taken twice as long as normal; his vision was swimming by the time he'd let himself inside. A part of him reasoned that being in his assigned suite, where he was most easily located, was possibly not the wisest idea but he was in no shape to reconsider. He'd set the Trap Barrel Behind The Door and fell into a feverish sleep.

Ha Unas an sem-nek as met-th sem-nek anxet...

Waking had let him get some proper perspective on what had happened. He'd been caught off-guard by his attacker yes, but his traps and spells had been woefully ineffectual on the black-armored figure. That in itself was worrisome and he'd turned to the consoles, only to discover that first, more days had passed then he'd initially realized and second, that there were much larger things at work. So Malicant makes his move. Could the person who'd attacked him been one of Malicant's lackey? But no, the attack was very focused, enraged, and felt very directed at him.

Bakura didn't know who'd killed him and he didn't know why. Given his past experience, that was less traumatizing but still aggravating. When his initial inquiry to Costigan had yielded no information, he resigned himself to doing some more in-depth research which probably wasn't a bad idea while he recovered and planned. If that black figure thought they were going to get away with this, they truly had no idea who they were dealing with.

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Costigan noticed the gesture while failing to recognize its significance. He was oblivious to the ring beneath and, instead, it only reminded him of the religious medallion he always wore on a chain around his own neck. Saint Jude, patron saint of desperate cases. His father had understood his future better than he ever would.

"Most of us want to go home," he replied without much concern. The implications of Bakura's words did not go unnoticed. They didn't deserve acknowledgment. "What do you want to do with the armored guy?"

"Don't mistake my desire as homesickness," Bakura said dryly, though he was glad that Costigan had caught the implied.

"What do you think I should do to him?"

"Wouldn't dream of it." It was certainly an interesting and somewhat unexpected clarification. Costigan filed it away under more facts about the guy, the same as, he expected, Bakura often did with his offhand remarks. The undercover slid his hands from his pockets only to cross his arms.

"I think it depends on who it is and how they learn." He didn't mean to sit them down for a lecture. The violence was insinuated in his tone. Rough 'em up a bit versus shooting them through the head, torch their suite versus make sure they find themselves in a bad situation. As long as no one innocent got hurt, they could figure out the rest.

Costigan's assurance was refreshing and also less of a hassle for Bakura, who was already short tempered that having to deal with someone he vaguely counted as an ally because they'd developed a sudden moral quandary would have compounded an already very bad week.

"And if it's someone you know?"

"Doesn't matter if I know them unless I like them and the people I like wouldn't have murdered you." A beat. "Unless you started it, in which case maybe I'll shoot you myself."

It was all said with a surprising level of nonchalance. It was refreshing, getting back into old roles. Costigan tried not to think too much on how comfortable it felt, how it was just as easy to talk about murder as about saving a kitten in a tree. Carrying it out would be something else, but he didn't care much for scumbags. As long as they stayed away from extensive torture, he could look the other way for a lot of things.

Bakura uttered a sharp laugh at the statement, not in dismissal of the threat but in agreement of it. Yet underneath the gallows humour was pensiveness as he thought back to the attack, searching his memory once again in case he'd missed something from his wordless attacker that might hold a clue. It wasn't that he felt he wasn't guilty of enough to warrant it but... in the midst of everything that had been going on? It seemed so out of place.

"Perhaps they didn't like my keeping that building from falling in. Miracle Dig turned it into a rather ugly stone mushroom."

The laugh was appreciated. Costigan missed his candor at times, caught behind layers of trying to play nice and comfort people. The truth was that he didn't like doing it, even though it often needed to be done and he was there to do it. He preferred not talking about things, preferred threats and violence. They were easier to deal with.

"What do you mean?" His chin lifted a hint with sudden and sincere curiosity, his arms falling away to slide into his pockets again.

The inquiry struck Bakura as unusual, if only because Costigan seemed so incurious most of the time. Hell, the thief had to literally drag the question of his stealing others' memories out of him word by word. So it was partly based on that to which Bakura assumed that the undercover meant the state of the building, rather than the method he'd used.

"In the Water Sector, a marketplace. One of those bombs must have taken out a support pillar inside, because the whole of it began sliding inward." He used his hands to demonstrate the walls folding inward on a center point, then reversed the angle as if something beneath had pushed it upward and outward. "Kept it from collapsing."

Costigan pulled both eyebrows together in an exaggerated expression of confusion and suspicion. It was certainly unexpected to hear the guy was helping people, that much was true. The full effect of his features was heightened for effect, however, and to ensure that Bakura knew just how much the undercover doubted his words. Costigan remained otherwise still, watching and looking for signs of deception, wondering if he could spot them even if they were there.

"You. How? More importantly, why?"

Oddly enough there's no sign of deception or, for that matter, anything else in the thief's posture and expression; zero reaction to Costigan's overt surprise and skepticism other than to throw a sidelong look at him. Either he had been expecting such a response or he simply didn't care what the reaction was going to be, for good or ill.

"Miracle Dig is a Spell," he answered the first portion with something almost like boredom, though the inflection on Spell and not spell could be discerned. "As for why?" Bakura shrugged. "There was no reason to let them be crushed."

Costigan couldn't distinguish a spell from a Spell if it was spelled out in front of him and he was quite pleased with that fact. Accepting magic was hard enough. Trying to cater to or learn about it was something else entirely. Too much, maybe. Whatever the case, he ignored the bit about the spell's name.

"And no reason to save them," he countered. "Unless you have a conscience after all."

A thoughtful moment's pause while Bakura decided how to answer that, and then he replied, "We both know there are many types of monsters in the world, Costigan. Some people can be more than one kind; in my case, a variety. But I'm not all of them... not today, at least."

"Hopefully not any day," he answered evenly. He liked that Bakura kept him on his toes. The guy gave him a challenge no one else here had and he appreciated that refreshing view, even if it was a pain in the ass at times. But really, Costigan hoped he could help ease Bakura to the better side of the line, even if he crossed it occasionally, much like the undercover himself was.

"So you saved the people and then he attacked you, is that it?"

Sedjart, you wear optimism like it ill fits you, Bakura thought privately to himself.

"Yes," the thief answered, tone turning brisk and efficient, getting back to the purpose of the original conversation before they'd strayed into philosophical tangents. "Though I doubt, in all truth, the two actually had anything to do with each other. He appeared and attacked, used water to trap me then turned it to ice."

One hand raises again to the edge of the bandage and with a faint wince, realizes that when he'd said he'd change them soon, the 'soon' appeared to be upon them already. The sly tête-à-tête with Costigan had been a fine distraction from the pain but ignoring it further would be unwise. So he motioned for the man to follow, moving through the kitchen door to a smaller room that, given the suite's layout, probably could have been an office. There were clean rolls of bandages on the desk and he began unspooling them with deftness suggesting he'd done it many times before this injury, and apparently fine with patching himself up while continuing the conversation uninterrupted.

"You've been here longer. There's no record of anyone having armor like that?"

Costigan mentally took note of the method that the attacker used. Partially it might be useful in finding the perpetrator, but he was also interested in knowing how Bakura could be stopped when push inevitably came to shove and they found themselves on opposite sides. It was something the Bostonian really didn't want. They would both be foolish to think it never would though.

The undercover followed Bakura down the hall and into the other room without comment, watching and taking everything in like he usually did. It was interesting to see a man who could bandage his own wounds. Costigan might have thought military if Bakura wasn't.. well, how he was.

"There are no records. You know that as well as I do. Have people seen him? Maybe. You want to make a public post asking about it?" It was a genuine question. He got the impression Bakura would want to leave his murder on the down low. If not, that made both their jobs easier. "Otherwise, we look the old fashioned way and ask around in quiet circles."

"No Foreigner records," Bakura amended, partly in clarification and partly in thoughtful musing. What he wanted to know was if Evandau, who oversaw all those brought to the turtle, had any viable information.

"As for an announcement like that..." He didn't outright dismiss it, for it was something he'd considered. Most waking hours had been spent turning the battle over in his mind, the way he did with every duel, every right; it was just the way Bakura was. He never failed the same way more than once. And while certainly there was a part of it that was pride, there was also a careful consideration of the potential benefits verses costs.

"Not just yet, I think. Eager as I might be for a rematch," said with a razor smile and no trace of sarcasm, "I think with everything that's going on right now, there's still a chance they may make a reappearance on his own."

Even as he spoke he was removing the layer of linens, stained on their undersides with blood, to reveal the five deep furrows that marred his torso. The claws on the armor had been sharp -- too sharp, he thought darkly, to have been any normal metal -- and they'd bitten deep. Even if he hadn't drowned, he'd have lost so much blood that he would have succumbed within minutes anyway. The gashes had been stitched though, neatly and evenly and not in a way that suggested he'd done it himself; the thread was an almost silvery colour, glinting in the light.

"I woke up in the clinic of that chatty healer woman, the kedan one," the thief said offhandedly as he worked, explaining the strange stitches. "Who, by the way, had the gall to rebuke me for dying."

"No foreigner records," Costigan agreed. He wasn't about to offer his connections to help them though. Even if he wasn't exactly playing the role of a criminal as of late, the undercover was never particularly keen on the idea of revealing his affiliations. If Evandau's plan of his being on a council came to fruition, he could deal with it then. For now, he was another random foreigner.

He nodded with the man's decision not to announce the event publicly. Although easier, he worried about the mistrust it might breed. Hannibal was bad enough. Costigan would warn Evandau and leave it at that. People didn't need to start turning on each other because a few assholes couldn't keep their grudges - or whatever the hell it was - to themselves.

Costigan's brow furrowed with the reveal of the wound. He seemed to recall Bakura mentioning drowning. The wound he hadn't even connected as exactly relevant, or the fact that it had remained even after the man's return, until he saw the wound before him. "What the hell happened to you?"

He knew it was the same attack. That much was obvious. The question was what had caused the injuries and, to a lesser extent, remained a question of why Bakura had provoked the attack. But that was something only the man in black armor could answer.

"I told you," Bakura said, with a slow exhale as he peeled the gauze packing out of the wound. It hurt like fire, but this was an ill advised time to have is senses dulled by painkillers between Malicant's activity and the possibility of the armoured one returning. Besides, he could deal with pain, knew how to use it as focus. The scent of antiseptic filled the small room as he cleaned the edges before beginning to wrap them up again. "They were keen on doing as much damage as they could."

"Are those teeth?" Costigan's face scrunched up in an expression equal parts skepticism and displeasure. Whatever did that to Bakura wasn't something he particularly wanted to endure. In his day, people beat the shit out of each other with things like coat racks and plain knives, not whatever the hell those were. People used to have decency.

The undercover remained where he was through the process, watching, without comment on the process itself. He didn't offer to help, confidence Bakura would ask if he needed it and just as confident that the man wouldn't need any help at all. "And why the hell isn't it healed if you died? You should have a new body."

Clones and all.

Costigan's expression actually got a laugh from Bakura, the pain caused by the action worth it for a moment of amusement at the appalled reaction. In his day they used to beat each other up with dark magical soul monsters, but it was never decent.

"Claws, not teeth," he answered. He finished wrapping the bandages, the ends tucked secure without any fasteners or pins and he pulled the shirt down again to cover them; they'd been done so that the clothing covered them entirely, disguising the injury unless one knew it was there.

"As for healing... that kedan woman seemed insistent I stay and let her finish mending me. After I got here and heard about manufactured bodies, I suspected there was more to it than that. This isn't an exact copy of the form I was using when I was brought here... but neither is it a copy of what is my real body."

Putting the medical supplies back in the drawers and tossing the used bandages into the trash, Bakura held his arm out for the undercover to see. Along the inside of his forearm were two small, dark blue lines, the pigment beneath the skin not unlike a prison ink tattoo. "I added these a few weeks after arriving here. If we're getting new bodies, why include these on the replacements? I can't speak to before now, but it appears they've gone to more of a recycling method."

Costigan scowled at the laugh, though whether it was a caring chastising or a passively annoyed response was difficult to tell. With the answer, his expression evened again and he gave a nod. The injury being entirely hidden didn't surprise the undercover much. It was a smart move, given how many might use it to their advantage. He also recognized that it was very telling that Bakura had allowed him to see it.

"If your body isn't yours or anyone else's, then what is it?" This was the first time he'd heard of someone being less than exact. Even Bruce Banner has expressed both confusion and admiration of the kedans' ability to replicate his complex DNA, with all its.. peculiarities. It was something to ask Evandau about, at the very least.

Costigan's gaze again turned to one of confusion and concern as he stared at the lines. It was an important piece of information, one he wondered if Bakura knew the significance of.

"Thanks." For showing me. "Most of the scientists I knew are gone, but I can ask around about that too."

"Something in the middle," Bakura answered with traces of uncertainty at the reply before it changes to something more mischievous, and he looked much closer to the age he appeared. "It's not something you want to hear the details of, else your face will get that scrunched look where you try to block out certain things."

It wasn't as though Bakura had planned on dying while in Keeliai but the fact that he'd put the marks on his arm suggested that he considered it a viable enough possibility to make contingency for. Whether his body was cloned, created, or any other combination thereof ultimately didn't bother him as much as it would some people. He hadn't had his own body for centuries -- getting up in arms about where this particular one had come from was beyond trivial to him.

"But ask around of you want, the armor is more pressing to me... that is what I am after."

Costigan scowled again. He knew the guy was right and couldn't care less about making the face. It only worried him that Bakura had been paying enough attention to notice. If he could survive Costello, the undercover was convinced he could survive pretty much anything. But Bakura certainly wasn't going to make it easy.

"Try me." It sounded every bit the challenge it was meant to be. He was keen to ignore magic when he could, sure, but it was also becoming more apparent that he couldn't always do so. Everything else was reasonably fair game, even if it was gruesome or obscene. Costigan didn't mind those topics so much.

"I know the armor's your priority. It's mine too right now." He was surprised to realize how just sincere the sentiment was immediately after he said it. Without noticing, Costigan had made it one of the more important pieces of information to follow up on among his contacts.

Well if that wasn't an invitation, nothing was. Bakura regarded the undercover for a moment and then with a wicked grin, extended his hand towards the center of the room. "Summon Archfiend Mirror," he spoke.

From a swirl of shadows accumulated across the room and drawn to the middle, a hunchbacked reptilian figure coalesced into existence. Its skin was green and scaled, had a whip tail and long talons tipped with knifelike claws gripped a large round mirror. It issued a sound like a hissing growl, snarling at Costigan from its place though it didn't move. Bakura approached it without hesitation and, as if the monster as tall as he were nothing more than a decoration, passed his hand over the mirror's surface. The glass darkened for a moment and then cleared to show two figures standing side by side.

The one on the left was Ryou Bakura, standing with quiet sort of sadness as he faced the viewer. Though Bakura successfully emulated the teen's mannerisms, now that Costigan could compare they were very different even though the bodies themselves were nearly identical. On the right side of the mirror was an image of the Thief King, scowling at the viewer. The prominent scar on his face stood in sharp relief to the dark complexion. Hair much shorter than it was currently and he was visibly a few years older, between 20 and 25.

Edited 2014-05-17 19:09 (UTC)

Costigan had a pretty good sense of knowing not to ask a question he didn't want the answer to. He also had a knack for getting in over his head, beginning to choke and drown before he realized he'd stepped foot in water. Such it was as the large creature appeared in the room with them and was hissing at the undercover.

He had his weapon drawn in the blink of an eye, safety off and leveled at the creature's head. His posture and form suggested some form of professional training, military or police, but there was a sloppiness to it and an imperfection that neither organization would normally accept. That quick reaction alone told volumes about him and he was immediately aware of that.

His gun remained where it was as Bakura's hand moved over the mirror to reveal the two people. The undercover spared a glance, then another, dividing his attention between the 'archfiend' and the image in its mirror's surface.

"A warning would have been nice," he said finally, clearly unamused. Costigan lowered his weapon part way, raised it again, then finally lowered it entirely. He still held the Walther PPK in his hand and used to to point in the direction of the mirror. "So which are you?"

The guy before him clearly wasn't the one on the left, despite visible evidence to the contrary, but Bakura hadn't said that it was someone else's body either.

[Closed] Unto the Living Ones

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thanks for the reference pic

Np!

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