[Ghouligan]

“You’re telling me your shaft isn’t hard enough?”

[minutes of conversation later]

“So, what about the balls?”

Antoine grabbed the ridge of his nose, let out a deep breath, and tried to find all the strength within him not to walk out the goddamn door. Unfortunately, he needed Bernie and his resources to get his equipment up to date.

“Same issue. Not durable enough. Might think about different kinds of properties, too. Even if I didn’t have to hold back, some of these people I’m fighting are impossible to take down. Explosives, cryogenic, I don’t know. I saw things in cartoons.”

“Well, I think I know who…” Bernie sighs. “This phone is a one-time use. After you’re done with your new toys, you’re gonna find me another one. I have big projects in store.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Meliora,” Bernie says. His fingers are moving a mile a minute. “I’m sending where you need to go. Take your mask. And if anyone finds you there? Kill them. And if, somehow, her life is at risk? Protect her.”

“This wasn’t our deal.” Antoine didn’t like how confident Bernie was. Their deal allowed him to stop death, not send him out like an assassin.

“This isn’t a deal,” Bernie says. “It’s a favor to me.”

“Got it,” Antoine says, taken aback. “I’ll… do that.”

---

Kushiki Kioko

[Kushiki Kioko]

I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP

AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP

Another night. Another warehouse. Business was booming. Sometimes literally, though Kioko had no indication of what this client’s request revolved around. As long as it didn’t violate what few morals she still had left, Kioko didn’t particularly care either. Blood money paid the bills better than any mundane job she could get with her civilian identity now.

Kioko shifted atop the crates of supplies she had brought with her. Well, with them. “Almost time,” Rhys said from across the room where he leaned against the wall. They had sequestered themselves in one of the back rooms with the materials, her laptop, and the quicksilver snake coiled around the base of the former. Kioko’s eyes flickered momentarily to her former bodyguard and chauffeur. Granted, former was starting to be less and less relevant as he had been following and driving her around since he had encountered Kioko paying respects at her mother’s grave.

“Will you leave if they’re late?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I have a certain reputation to uphold as…”

“As Meliora?”

“Yes.”

Her gaze returned to the screen that was monitoring the designated meetup location through a camera hidden earlier in the day. She mulled over the oddity of bringing pieces of her past into the present. How did Rhys reconcile the young girl set on being a Hero just like her mother with the villainous woman Kioko had become? He was surely yet another on the long list of people Kioko had disappointed in the last couple of years, but the way he looked at her didn’t match how he should have given the circumstances. Nothing had changed in his icy blue eyes when Kioko met them once more. She shifted again, this time out of a different kind of discomfort, then resumed waiting and watching for her newest client.

Notes & Tags: Ghouligan | Outfit + Mask

[Ghouligan]

An umbral specter steps into frame.

They’re a walking silhouette with whisps of inky black smoke slinking off them. Adorned on their face is a white mask with distinct, red markings across the eyes. A four-link chain dangles off the beast's abdomen. And with a suitcase in hand, he carries everything she’ll need to make the improvements he’s looking for.

Ghouligan isn’t familiar with Meliora, but he can tell they were thorough. Anything less and Bernie wouldn’t have worked with them. But even without him as a reference, he could see her caution through how they conducted themselves.

When Bernie wants you safe and protected, you must be worthwhile. It was only moments before the meeting and he didn’t see anyone in the vicinity. Either they were late or he’d have to fulfill his promise to Bernie.

---

Kushiki Kioko

[Kushiki Kioko]

I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP

AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP

“Showtime.”

“Mmm,” was the only acknowledgement Rhys’ comment received from Kioko. Her focus was on the apparition darkening the monitor. Three lines of logic immediately presented themselves as an explanation behind the wraith. They were a mutant that couldn’t turn the effect off. Had the meeting taken place in the daytime, it would have been the least likely option due to how easy it would be to track and monitor someone like that. Utilizing a middleman would be safer.

The other two options were equally rooted in opposition and similarity. A veil of pre-existing hostility or a cloak of caution? Kioko risked her life every time she made such a judgment call—which was every time she took underground work on. If she didn’t well and truly need the money, the display would have cut the ties of her professional interest in favor of self-interest and preservation. As things were, Kioko descended from the throne of boxes and swept from the room, her quicksilver construct called to heel like a faithful dog at the whim of her mind. A display of power of Kioko’s own hidden beneath the falsehood of a pseudo-sentient companion.

“The code.”

The order served as an announcement to the Quicksilver Queen’s arrival, though nothing so mundane as words were needed to convey her presence. It demanded attention as thoroughly as Kioko demanded an answer with scant more effort on Kioko’s part other than existing in her normal state of being. She was a living monolith. Towering. Taciturn. Terrifying. The figure across the room might have been radiating actual shadowy tendrils, but there was no denying the darkness in the aura that emanated from obsidian and silver adorned titan.

Notes & Tags: Ghouligan | The code can be whatever you want it to be but it must contain whatever alias was used to arrange the meeting.

[Ghouligan]

Ghouligan didn’t fear death.

When you’ve taken as many lives as he has, you don’t have a right to. He could not fathom the hypocrisy in doling out his brand of justice only to preemptively mourn a life that hadn’t yet ended. If he were to feel anything about the matter, it’d have to happen after the fact. Until then, he’d live until he couldn’t. Make no mistake he understands that fear is not a wholly cognitive process. While some of it comes from understanding actions and their consequences, they are insurmountable, unknowable truths that haunt humanity’s every moment. The most anxiety-inducing is the very nature of a post-death experience — what happens when you die?

He worried not about the unanswerable questions. It’d detract from everything worthwhile he offered the world. Even if he weren’t otherwise preoccupied with an easy enough question before him, prompted by what he presumed to be Meliora and their mercurial familiar.

The code.

The dreaded moment.

Ghouligan had not given an alias. The entire meeting had been prompted by Bernie — a man who knew better than to expose himself with any details of his career or personal life. But when it was Antoine on the line, covered in black umbra that hid his true identity, he would gladly undercut his overly serious, obsessive persona.

If he wasn’t wearing a mask, and if underneath that mask he was capable of making discernable faces, he would have still remained stoic despite the word escaping his lips.

“Lovesnack.”

---

Kushiki Kioko