The Salle, Monday Morning

[bitchprince]

It was a Monday.

It had been a normal weekend.

Arthur, ergo, was in the salle, practicing his staffwork for once. He did have a battle with Mat due tomorrow which was going to be pushed towards next week due to a sudden case of the fox, SPOILERS and it wouldn't do to show up in anything but perfect fighting shape.

He made for a few impressive sweeps through the air as he practiced, showing off for his (Merlin-y) audience as usual.

[[ open! ]]

Comments

[bitchprince]

Arthur's mouth may have creased just a bit more, there, but he said nothing about it. Yet. "How many."

[puppy_fair]

Zack's eyes were now on his lap. Because the ceiling was getting boring, supposedly.

"Everyone except Angeal's mother. Including two of our Turks."

[bitchprince]

He nodded once or twice, quiet affirmation to himself.

His mouth... was not losing that crease, but his eyes darted towards Zack. "Did you find his mother?"

[puppy_fair]

More nodding. His head was far more eloquent than his mouth today.

"When she was still alive," Zack replied. "She wanted to know what was going on with her son. And I... Didn't know. She was fine when I left her there. She wanted me to take care of Angeal."

[bitchprince]

Arthur chewed on his lower lip for no reason at all. "I'm sorry," he opted for, at last, reaching to put a companionable hand on Zack's shoulder.

For his standards, that was downright soppy.

[puppy_fair]

Soppy, but much appreciated. He nodded (again), sighed (again), and glanced Arthur's way.

"We found the missing SOLDIERs," he noted, idly. Because this was totally not a big deal and they could move right along without getting into this bit, honest.

[bitchprince]

"What state were they in."

Arthur had heard phrases like that a few too many times not to ask.

[puppy_fair]

Zack was now tracing random squiggles on the floor with his toe. It was very productive, honestly.

"Alive, kinda."

The key word there was pretty obvious, wasn't it?

[bitchprince]

Details. He was lucky Arthur actually caught that one, because five times out of ten he might not (different circumstances, though. Maybe it was just a... war thing). "Sounds terrible."

[puppy_fair]

Zack was nodding his agreement as the toe-floor-squiggles started to take on a more definite shape. A weird kind of boxy figure that one might recognize as the emblem of SOLDIER, or, at the very least, 'that little pattern on Zack's girdle-thingie.'

"They weren't themselves anymore," he noted, his voice picking up a little, his eyebrows furrowing. He was getting angry again, thinking about it. "Their minds, their faces. They stopped being them, completely."

Which sounded like crazy talk, and he was well aware of that fact.

[bitchprince]

Well, spending time in Fandom did a few things, and Arthur may have winced slightly. He was trying not to consider any of the images that flashed at the thought. "Some kind of-- madness, then," he surmised, slowly. "Someone poisoned them."

[puppy_fair]

"Close," Zack agreed, his hands balling into fists. "Genesis stole ShinRa technology, that lets him make copies of himself. Using SOLDIER members."

A beat.

"And monsters."

It was weird, how the melancholy managed to seep back in, even around the seething.

[bitchprince]

Yeah. Okay.

Processing that, not so much.

"...Copies."

Skepticism, here you are. Even if it did come accompanied with a sudden and acute recognition of Zack's rage.

[puppy_fair]

Zack was no longer tracing anything into the floor. Zack had both feet firmly planted, and he was clenching his hands into fists so tightly that his arms were shaking.

"Copies," he agreed. "Human copies. At least, their faces are. I don't think there's a bit of their mind left to them, though. They just... stand there. Twitching. And then they attack, like they just want to do whatever their master wants them to. Or maybe because they just want to kill."

That last bit seemed entirely too likely.

[bitchprince]

Arthur's eyes flicked up to Zack's face. Searching.

He found something. He wasn't going to divulge.

"Sounds almost... inhuman," he said, not entirely recognising his voice. Possibly because he was still too-- whatever. About everything. "Time for a fight."

[puppy_fair]

And at that, Zack's anger cracked again entirely, and once again the floor had become enthralling.

"Like I said," he sighed, "it works on SOLDIER and monsters."

Because suddenly, there didn't seem to be much of a difference in the two.

[bitchprince]

Arthur snorted. His hand reached over to pat a shoulder. There we go. "Monsters have no honour," he said, "They just maim and hurt to kill and nothing else. They know nothing of pride or dignity or decency."

[puppy_fair]

"Neither does Genesis," Zack noted. He managed to suppress a shudder at that thought, mentally grabbing on to the little bit of comfort he could find in the pat to his shoulder. "I... don't know what's up with Angeal, lately."

[bitchprince]

"Things have been troubled," he noted, "Anything in particular that springs to mind about him?"

[puppy_fair]

"Well, there is that whole part where he let Genesis attack me with a dragon," Zack noted, almost dryly. "That part was kind of on the dishonorable side."

A smidgen.

[bitchprince]

Considering that one day Arthur was going to attempt to murder his father for the release of certain knowledge...

"A bit," he noted, finally. "But you handled it."

[puppy_fair]

There was a long pause, then, while Zack bobbed his head slightly, trying to puzzle out what he was supposed to say from here.

After a while of completely failing at words, he opened up his mouth and added, not quite in a pout;

"It was a really big dragon, too."

[bitchprince]

Arthur's mouth curled up into a smile, and he managed an amused noise despite the levity of the situation. "I fought a dragon once," he confided, "in Canadia. Merlin blew it up."

[puppy_fair]

"Blew it up?" Zack was grinning a little, now. Because... there was something about exploding a dragon that was kind of funny, damn it. "Sounds effective, at any rate."

[bitchprince]

"I was fighting it off," Arthur spoke, thinking back to it, "Merlin kept babbling about me getting in the way, so I told him to get rid of it. And then he asks me, of all things, 'What can I do, short of blowing it up?!'."

He snorted. "I don't know, Merlin. Maybe blowing it up would actually be a good start."

... this was Arthur's way of trying to cheer someone up. Fear.