I know what you did last summer

[lasergrenades]

Characters: Pepper Potts, Yami no Bakura, Bladewolf, Raine Sage and you!
Date: Throughout March 2017
Location: Around Keeliai and Hatal
Situation: Let's start a government! And so on and so forth.
Warnings/Rating: Mentions of death/murder


A. Jade Dojo | Early March | Bakura
The truth compulsion last month had largely been innocuous (if not outright positive) for Pepper, with one glaring exception. Gene had admitted to something that was very much Not Good. It was upsetting to hear, but she's continued to remind herself that Gene has changed. However, that admission bears discussion with Bakura, seeing as he was the subject of Gene's actions.

"I heard something interesting at the truth party last month," Pepper ventures after they've finished sparring for the day.

B. Around Keeliai and Hatal | Throughout March | Open
Pepper is still working on building support for a new government, and based on advice she's received she's hoping to find herself a lion to go to bat for democracy.

Hatal is still a major attraction, and she continues to visit a couple of times a week. Window shopping hasn't gotten old, but Pepper is also spending time oohing and aahing at some of Hatal's technology.

C. College campus | Early March | Bladewolf
As promised, Pepper is meeting with the turtle's newest resident AI, who also just happens to be an enormous metal hound. While she might think that's pretty cool, he's might startle the kedan if he just walks into a classroom. Some of the researchers probably would take a more fascinated stance, but in any case orientation is in order. She's waiting on the edge of the campus for him, bouncing on the balls of her feet until he arrives.

D. Earth Sector | March 1 | Raine
Things are once again rife with drama at House Iron Dragon, and this time it's both Gene and Bakura on her mind. What do you do when you find out your best friend killed your other friend? Pacing. There was a lot of pacing. Also some crying. But neither of those things resolved much. The next clear step is to reach out to another friend, one who probably already knows about this event, and who has proven time and again that she can handle the heavy stuff.

And so Pepper is back at Raine's apartment with hunched shoulders and a rather dour expression on her face, knocking quietly.

E. Sky Sector | Before the earthquake | Abigail

As promised, Pepper is suited up and ready to take another of her friends for a spin around the city. Abigail had seemed just as fascinated than Raine, if not more, probably because she's more of Tony's scientific bent. Pepper isn't much interested in the mechanics of how the suits work, but she's more than happy to show them off. For now, she's left the faceplate open while she waits outside her house in the Sky Sector.

(OOC: Feel free to make your own starter or to ask for one over PM or plurk.)
 

Comments

[lasergrenades]

Pepper slides her thumbs across the wood of the staff in her hands, more to give her something to do than the meditative rhythm Bakura employs.

"I mean, I heard a lot of things from a lot of people. One of them involved a lot of yelling and leaving." She exhales slowly. "Gene told me what he did to you."

[denyamenti]

"Did he now?" the thief said, raising an eyebrow. "That's a surprise. After how it went with Tony, I'm surprised at that."

[lasergrenades]

"He thought I deserved to know; didn't want to keep it a secret any longer, I guess, and with the whole truth compulsion thing..." She trails off, frowning. There's anger around the edges of her tone, but it might be obvious that she's more confused than anything else. "I'm a little surprised you're okay with him working here."

[denyamenti]

"Why?" Bakura questioned, sounding genuinely curious. It reminded him of Solomon and Skulduggery tracking him down in the days following that incident, both of them far more concerned about his murder than he was.

"I came back, that was what mattered. That was the sixth time I've 'died', biahbenat. And though I didn't know it at the time, I did find out that he thought he was doing it for a good reason... one I'd have done it for, had it been me. I've killed for less, in the past."

[lasergrenades]

There were at least three things in that statement Pepper doesn't like, and another six that she's downright aghast to hear about.

"I- That- Six? Just because you've died before doesn't make dying again any less serious," she argues, gripping the staff tightly. "Like, sure, yes, I can understand why he did it and even understand why he would ever do something like that." Gene had told her what his stepfather had done, and now a lot more made sense about his behavior in general. "And maybe Keeliai is the kind of place where you can just get over being murdered. But what he did was vicious, and I know he still feels guilty about that, and he probably always will, but... You have to wake up every morning and see what he did to you." She glances down to where Bakura's scars are beneath his shirt. "How does knowing why he killed you make remember that any easier?"

[denyamenti]

"Seven now," Bakura replied dryly, appearing disturbingly relaxed about his permanent death in his own world. "Apparently that was the magic number. Given there being seven Items, there's something more than a little ironic about that."

He rested his bo across his knees to regard pensively Pepper at her outburst; he hadn't realized she'd be upset about it on his behalf.

"It was vicious," he said eventually. "I won't deny that. It was a very unpleasant way to go, and I've got some experience in various unpleasant ways of dying. You know, when he came to me to apologize, he expected me to kill him. I told him it was pointless, and more than that, cheap because death isn't permanent here. I said it made it too much like a business transaction, one for one."

[lasergrenades]

Seven. There's something completely dumbfounding about that fact, something absurd for all it's veracity. It's horrifying, and for once she doesn't want to know the details.

"That sounds like Gene, all right," Pepper acknowledges, shaking her head. "Or how he used to be, anyway. He doesn't think he's worth very much."

She sighs, clamping down on the urge to justify or explain why Gene is the way he is; she's still too angry about that to speak of it calmly. A life for a life; that would be how Gene was taught. Still, Pepper is struggling to grasp how the two of them reached a resolution.

"What did you want from him, then?"

[denyamenti]

Bakura knows... a small portion, of why Gene is the way he is. Certainly not the whole tale of it, but enough to know why Gene's misunderstanding that he'd done something to Bianca had been taken the way it was.

"No, he doesn't," he agreed. "And realizing that, was part of my decision."

He gave Pepper a ghost of the grin he'd given Gene when the younger one had asked what he wanted: hard, and not kind. "I was going to put him in his own mind for a while," he said. "You've seen the way the Shadow Realm tests people, now imagine it doing that with the intent to break someone."

Malik's darker half had tapped into that, to trap Jonouchi and Mai, and even Malik to an extent.

[lasergrenades]

Pepper whitens at Bakura's answer, looking aghast. She's not unfamiliar with how dangerous the thief is, and the lengths to which he would go, but there was something infinitely more disturbing to see that power suggested on a personal level. When she glances down, it's not to his scars but to the Ring.

"That would've destroyed him," she says, barely above a whisper. Would have, because if Bakura had actually followed through on it, Pepper can't see that Gene would be any more than a vegetable right now; dead or shattered mind, living body. She tries to find the energy to be angry, but all she musters is more sadness. As with Gene, Pepper knows quite a lot now about why Bakura is the person he is and has been.

"You could've tried empathy or pity. That might almost have been worse for him," Pepper remarks dully, her shoulders sagging.

[denyamenti]

"Empathy or pity," Bakura echoed dispassionately. "For someone who found out he'd murdered me in error, and decided that since no one who could expose him was pursuing it, it was fine to go about life as normal. If the khaikheben and the cat-woman hadn't confronted him, he'd have never done anything about it."

He stares at her for a moment, as if giving her time to consider just how much of a stretch it would be to disagree with that... but then he shrugged.

"But they did, and Gene apologized -- poorly, but that's inexperience -- and I recognized that he was doing worse things to himself than I was planning to. So I told him to knock it off, and get his head on straight."

[lasergrenades]

"That's- that's not what I meant," Pepper replies, shaking her head. "Just that if the idea had been to hurt him in a way that he couldn't understand... 'killing with kindness,' have you ever heard that phrase? From Shakespeare."

She does actually laugh a little at his last comment, but it's a strangled sort of thing, like her throat is being squeezed.

"It sounds like you kinda did that anyway." Gene's guilt still lingers, that's for certain, but he seems to have learned at least something from the experience. "Who're the khaikheben and the cat-woman?"