lieutenantantichrist | [30] [Video] "I Don't Know How Many Years I Got Left. I'm Going to Get Real Weird With It."

[Blake comes up on screen looking contemplative. It's an unusual look on him.]

Fifty. Five-oh. That's when you get the senior discount at Ben and Jerry's. That's when the numbers come out and say, "Hey, you. You are officially counted as old."

You know what the funny thing is? I never thought I'd get there. I would've bet you the farm that somebody with a name like Crowbar or Joey Butterfly would've gotten me first.

Butterfly like the kind of knife. Not the bug. Or maybe butterfly bandages. I don't know, I never asked the guy. Wonder if if somebody capped him yet.

It's been a while now since I've been back. Years. Lots of things can change. I might not recognize the place. Hell, plenty of people wouldn't recognize me.

[He won't let his face get too maudlin. It gives you wrinkles.]

I'd be bringing plenty back. Same as the rest of you, must be. The people you meet, the things you do... You don't spend a couple years bashing trees with faces out of the road without changing some.

Anyway.

Point is, I'm an old man now, and that means I'm wise. I've been through just about every variety of shit you can imagine, and I'm one of the handful of people around here who's ever jumped a car, fixed a leaky faucet, or cleaned out a rain gutter.

[He spreads his hands.]

So any kind of advice you need - all the shit you ever wanted to know about life but were afraid to ask - now's the time. Shoot.

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How do you find people when you can't find them?

_{[Wrath cuts RIGHT TO THE CHASE, apparently.]}

[Now that's one he can handle no problem.]

The first thing you do is put out an ABP - I mean, a message that tells all the other cops to be on the lookout. Then you want to check their last known location and talk to anybody who's seen them lately. You want to establish whether they took off on their own or somebody else grabbed them.

_{[Wrath nods, slowly. As scatterbrained as the kid is on a fairly regular basis, there is a brain in there, and it's not a bad one. He's thinking carefully about every word Blake is saying.]}

Okay.

Um, I don't know any other cops.

_{[He knows the JENNIES, but they're BAD and no Team Rocket member worth their salt would EVER talk to them unless it was necessary for cover purposes. But then again, Al and the scarred man's disappearance had nothing to do with Rocket business. Did the team's rules apply when it was personal matters?]

[He's a little scared to ask.]}

And I already talked to the people who saw them last.

[The kid's listening, that's good. It's getting clear now that this is serious, not a hypothetical or a hide and seek kind of thing.]

You told me. That's a start.

[The cop instincts in him lurch to their feet, creaky yet reliable as an old man getting out of bed.]

Give me a name, description, when and where you last saw them, and the names of who you talked to.

[He thinks a moment more.] Did you call their phone? If it's disconnected, they went home. If it just rings a lot, then they're missing or they lost it - or they just stopped picking up for weeks on end, like somebody.

_{[The pointed comment sails right over Wrath's head. He doesn't exactly do subtlety.]}

Al-phonse Elric.

His hair is gold and his eyes are brown. He sometimes wears a red coat. He's nice to everybody except for Envy, or when he's trying to help his brother, because then he will rip peoples arms and legs off. He's a kid, like me.

And the other one is Scar.

He's got a big scar on his face.

_{[The last questions, he doesn't even answer. There's only room in Wrath's head for so many things at once, and also he's naiively hoping that Blake will just be like 'Oh yeah, those guys! I saw them yesterday.']}

Edited 2016-04-24 20:18 (UTC)

A kid who can rip people's arms off? [Wrath doesn't mean it literally, of course. He's just saying this guy's one of those people who doesn't get angry often, but when they do, it's a big event.]

Scar? I know that guy. X on his face, growls a lot, no sense of humor? He was giving you trouble?

[A frown comes over his face.] Come to think of it, I haven't seen him in a while. You try their phones?

_{[Someday, possibly someday soon, Blake is going to meet the Wrath that could shred a man to pieces using his bare hands and literally leap buildings.]

[But today is not that day.]}

No, I'm not good at remembering numbers.

But Lust says they're both gone and I haven't seen them since before she got back.

She's very sad so I want to find them as soon as possible.

[If he ever meets that Wrath, he will be terrified. And still tell him to get out of the damn garbage.]

I can give it a try for you, but I wouldn't hold out hope, kid. Odds are they went home.

Wait, you know Lust? The lady with the great--

[talking to a child here, Blake]

--hair?

Edited 2016-05-10 09:19 (UTC)

_{[As he should, really.]

[Wrath tilts his head, blinking. Blake's near-slipup fortunately soars straight over Wrath's head. He's never had any reason to think too hard about Lust's AMPLE BOSOM.]}

Yes.

She is a Homunculus, like me.

[He had just barely managed to keep himself from gesturing accordingly.

He frowns at the word. He feels like he might've heard it before, but he's not sure.]

A Hummin-what?

A Homunculus.

The damned result of a person committing the ultimate sin of human transmutation.

Lust killed me once but I forgave her and we're friends now. She does have very nice hair.

[Okay most of those words are going to go right over Blake's head. He tries to disentangle the jargon into something he can understand.]

Human mutation? They did some kind of science experiment on you?

[That would...Jesus. Blake's face pales. Who would do that to a woman and a child?]

She can't have killed you, kid. She wouldn't do that.

[There's a plaintive note in his voice.]

Transmutation.

_{[He corrects Blake more as though the ex-policeman had just made a slip of the tongue rather than not having any idea what he was talking about.]}

And-- well, no, when I was created, it was just from someone trying to bring me back. She knew what she was doing, so it wasn't an experiment.

But the soldiers did experiments, later on.

I hate soldiers.

_{[He reaches up to idly scratch behind one ear like a monkey, and goes on as he does so.]}

Lust definitely killed me. She's killed lots of people. So have I, but she was faster that time.

We don't do it anymore, though.

She says that's because this is a "new beginning", where we can "be whatever we want to be".

I want to be a thing that has friends, but I can't do that if I don't know where my friends are. That's why I asked if you knew.

[There's a wide, dark gap of silence as Blake tries to absorb all that.

What he gets: the military experimented on Wrath. Or on both of them.]

You've killed people. Both of you.

[It's hard to imagine, harder to make himself think about. But Blake's learning more and more that there's a lot of things that don't fit into the way he thinks the world works.]

They made you.

Christ. Another child soldier.

_{[He nods. Because yes, they had. Of course they had. In the end it was pretty much all they were good for. Even the information-gathering part of their duty still led to dead humans in the end.]}

They weren't the ones who made me.

I think they wanted to know how I worked.

I don't know why else they would have done those things.

_{[Blake may not always put the puzzle pieces together quite the way they should be, but he's a cop for a reason. He's on the right track.]}