altan trengsin (speerly) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-09-29 09:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | petshop of horrors: leon orcot |
Who: Altan Trengsin, Leon Orcot
What: Two teammates out on patrol during a mimic invasion... what could go wrong?
When: Now-ish
Where: The forest
Rating: Mimic violence, some swearing
It was honestly a pretty day for murdering monsters in the Vallo woods, if you were into that sort of thing. Altan was into that sort of thing, although you couldn’t tell based on the dour expression on his face. The fall weather was inviting with a light chill, especially out here underneath the thick canopy of tree branches that filtered sunshine to a pale yellow. Altan didn’t feel the cold, and in fact anywhere near him the ambient temperature was raised a solid eight degrees, a side effect of the Phoenix fire god he was bonded to.
That fire god wasn’t getting much in the way of fighting time even with all the mimics: Altan was on patrol with Leon Orcot, and he assumed there would be a lot of paperwork if he accidentally or purposefully burned his patrol partner to death. Luckily, he had his trident with him which went a long way to stabbing mimics to death once they’d revealed themselves. He was pulling his trident from a particularly gruesome mimic corpse now - it had pretended to be a toadstool. A too tidily perfect toadstool. And now it was gore.
He dipped the tip of his trident into the creek before pulling it back up to inspect it. Altan kept his weapons neat - he’d been in the army in one form or another his entire life.
“Ready for more?” he asked to the air, but it was actually to Leon. Altan just didn’t grace the other man with eye contact.
Leon didn’t have magic powers, or super powers, or anything else like that (unless someone counted the whole ‘talking to animals’ thing, he guessed, but that wasn’t helpful here). He had a gun, and he was decent at brawling, and so he wasn’t going to complain if Altan wanted to take care of most of the mimics. It was, in fact, just about the only thing Leon wasn’t going to complain about. He couldn’t believe he was out patrolling with someone who was barely older than a child (nevermind that Altan was probably about the age that Leon had been when he’d first met D). Altan’s whole attitude pissed him off. Worse, the fact that the temperature was actually warmer around the kid was obnoxious. He couldn’t get too close without wanting to take off his leather jacket, but then if he stepped too far away he was too cold. He’d probably acclimatize eventually, except for the fact that he kept wandering into this goddamn pocket of hot air.
Worst of all was that his leg was starting to bug him. When they’d first set out, he’d nearly stepped directly onto one of these things, disguised as a bit of deadwood, and had needed to kick it senseless before he’d managed to put a bullet into what he assumed was it’s brain. It hadn’t bothered him too much, except now with all the walking around, the familiar twinge in his leg was back and the limp in his gait was starting to become noticeable. Thankfully, it probably wasn’t noticeable to the kid, given the fact that he barely seemed to want to look in Leon’s direction.
“Gimme a minute,” Leon muttered, giving his right thigh an inconspicuous rub while he reached for his cigarettes. It didn’t take him long to light one, and he took a moment to enjoy the nicotine before he said “Good to go.” And then, because even talking to Altan was probably better than wandering around in annoyed silence, he asked, “You have shit like this where you’re from?”
Altan had in fact noticed Leon’s limp, but he had experience with dealing with a bunch of mercenaries who tried to hide their injuries. Old habits of the Cike. He wouldn’t comment on it unless it interfered with the mission. Likewise, someone else might have given Leon shit about lighting up in the middle of a beautiful forest, but Altan, who had come off his latest opium high only three hours before sunup and was already thinking about another, wasn’t going to be that person. What looked like disinterest on him he considered to be minding his fucking business.
His eyes slid to Leon’s general vicinity as he surveyed their immediate surroundings. Looked clear. “Looked” being the operative word. As he took a step forward, and then another, he mentally filed away the fact that Leon seemed to be the kind who preferred conversation to silence, and answered him: “Nothing like this. We have spirits. Monsters. Gods. But they’re usually immediately up front about the fact they want to kill you. These things are more subtle than I’m used to.” A pause, and then he asked: “you?”
He knew very little about Leon’s world, because it was so unfamiliar. Even Leon’s gun he had yet to get used to - it was loud like a cannon, and sparked like his own fingers did with magic. He couldn’t imagine having more than one person with a gun around. Talk about noise.
"I've got monsters too," Leon said. Maybe gods. He still wasn't entirely sure what D was, but he was leaning toward some sort of nature god. About twenty-five yards ahead, a girl with bunny ears stopped in front of a large rock - probably an actual rabbit, given their location, the colour of her clothes, and the fact that she was eating grass. "But no, I don't think-" He raised his gun and fired two shots into the rock that had just grown teeth. The girl started, wide-eyed and panicked, caught sight of Leon, and then dashed away into the woods. That was gratitude for you. "I don't think we have anything like this. Then again, who the fuck knows? Maybe D had one in his shop somewhere and I just never noticed."
There was a lot that had gone on in that shop that Leon hadn't noticed. Sometimes he knew, even then, that he was missing something, that something important had happened and no one was going to fill him in. But most of it just became obvious after D had left.
"People and things we're definitely not always immediately upfront about their desire to kill you back home."
Altan, having seen merely a rabbit run off, didn’t comment. He only stepped forward and double-checked to make sure that the mimic was dead with a violent thrust downward of his trident. “I suppose it’s easier where I’m from,” he said, wrenching his trident back up, “to just assume someone wants you dead. We’re in the middle of the third Poppy War, which translates to a lot of straightforward enmity.” And then, because getting much of anything out of Altan was like pulling teeth, he added: “D is the person you were looking for when you first got here? Still think he’s around?”
His tone very much implied that he would have hoped that Leon had given up on that, and that if not, there was probably pity involved.
Leon frowned, glancing sidelong at Altan. War, at least, wasn't something Leon hadn't had to deal with directly. When people tried to kill him, it was a lot more personal, but it was also a lot less frequent. And wars over drugs - he had to assume something called the Poppy War was similar to the Opium Wars of his world - tended to be ugly. Not that there were really any wars that weren't ugly.
He started walking again, keeping an eye out for anything that looked out of place, trying to focus on keeping his gait equal. "I didn't really think there was much of a chance of D being here in the first place. I had to look, because if he was here and I missed him, I'd be kicking myself. But this isn't really the kind of place he normally targets." This forest, largely untouched, was proof enough of that. Vallo was a huge city, but it seemed like a city that was more willing to embrace a coexistence of the human world and the not-human world, instead of humans just bulldozing over everything they couldn't control or understand. "Once I figure out how to get off this goddamn island, I'll start looking again. This war of yours: been going on long?"
Once I figure out how to get off this goddamn island. Altan wondered where Leon intended to go. Back home? Altan would rather not even think of what was waiting for him back home, although he did feel bad about it. The Cike would be in Fang Runin’s hands. Either way, there was nothing for him to go back to but a waiting grave.
“War of mine,” he answered, his tone sharp, but there was an edge of ugly amusement to it. Oh, if only the war was his. “Three years, give or take. I joined after school.” Such phrasing made it sound as if it was his idea, when no, it had been required. He was Altan Trengsin, the Speerly, the last hope. The child prisoner of war. When they said jump, he flew. “Just where are you trying to go? Duck.” The mimic that had been impersonating a tree had been leaning ever so slightly over Leon’s head; Altan shoved his trident where Leon had been only moments before, goring it. Satisfied that it was dying, he shifted his weight and offered Leon a hand up, again not remarking on Leon’s leg.
"Sorry," Leon said, grimacing. Normally, he didn't mind too much when his mouth got him in trouble, but 'your war' had been insensitive and he'd evidently touched a sore spot.
"Back to my world." He dropped into a low squat easily enough, but then winced. Normally, he might have thanked Altan, but his leg screamed in protest when he tried to rise, and he had to place his hands on his knees to push himself back up. His voice, when he started again, had a strained edge to it, though that wasn't much different than usual impatient way he spoke when he was annoyed. "Ideally back to 2006, but if I've gotta go to 2021, then that's fine. Maybe D'll be off his guard if I've been gone for sixteen years." That guy on the Network had said there was some Leon clone running around back home, but that sounded like something from a horror movie so he wasn't going to think about it. "I just missed him in Tokyo, so if I went back to when I'm from, I'd probably have to find some under-the-table work in Japan," which didn't seem terribly likely, unless Lau Wu Fei was willing to give him work in that mall D had set up shop in. That entire building hadn't seemed above board; Leon suspected it probably had some sort of connection with the Chinese mafia, but he hadn't looked that far into it. "It'll be a couple months until I can catch a new lead on where D might have moved to."
What Leon needed was somewhere to sit, just for a couple minutes, and he started looking for something like a fallen log or a tree stump as they walked. "I take it you're not too eager to return home?"
Leon was referencing all kinds of time and places that Altan had no knowledge of as the other man explained his various potential futures. It wasn’t easy to keep up with him, but Altan didn’t show it on his face, or so he hoped. However, a few moments later something registered: Japan. That was right. Japan was the Federation of Mugen, back home. The enemy.
“You’re from Japan?” he asked, and although he tried to sound disinterested there was a bow-string-pulled-taut tension to his voice. It wasn’t the same, he knew. Not the same empire that had ravaged Nikan in a series of invasions, not the same empire that had killed his family, that had destroyed his childhood and taught him to be a weapon first, person second. Altan, for all his failings (and there were many), knew better than to lash out at Leon for merely being from an alternate version of the country that had been his enemy. But oh, it was tempting.
He looked away then, eyes flickering red and heat roiling off of him as he forcibly controlled his temper; the gods knew he’d had enough practice at it. “I didn’t realize,” he said with a wave that waved off a lot of ills. Leon didn’t look Mugenese. But, he supposed, he didn’t know anything about Japan. Perhaps it was very different. It didn’t matter. Vallo was neutral territory. He exhaled again, deliberately ignored Leon’s question about home, and flicked his (literally, actually) smoldering gaze around the woods, a frown gracing his features: “...did it get real fucking quiet to you, or is that just me?”
“What? No, I’m from America. Do I look Japanese to you?” Okay, maybe he did, wherever Altan was from. Just because Japan was pretty homogeneous in his world didn’t mean that it was in every world. Either way, it was pretty clear to see that he’d hit yet another nerve - even if Altan had been able to keep it out of his voice, which he hadn’t, the sudden heat spike would have told him. Leon might not always be bright, but he had been one of LAPD’s best detectives for a reason. He resisted the urge to either take off his jacket or step even further away from Altan. “D had set up shop in Japan so I followed him there.”
He scowled, pinching his cigarette just below the cherry and pushing it out, stomped the smoldering embers out, and slipped the butt into his pack. Then made sure he had easy access to a fresh magazine. “Maybe everyone decided they didn’t want to hang out in a fucking sauna, and so they made like trees and left,” he snapped. Despite his complaining, there was still a taut readiness to his posture, because now that Altan had mentioned it, it was strangely quiet.
Not Federation, then. Not even a strange otherworld Federation. Altan gave his eyes a roll at Leon’s description of the scenic wood being a “sauna” - really, this guy was good at bitching; it was amazing - but took another steadying breath and got his shit together because honestly, how unprofessional of him. The forest in their immediate surroundings returned to normal forest-in-September temperatures as he did so, a chill back on the breeze.
He didn’t apologize; he never did. “You look Hesparian,” he said after a moment, trident poised, ready to attack. “Light skin, blond hair. They’re from the west in my world.” A flick of a glance back at Leon. “Also assholes, but nothing like our version of Japan.” Altan was joking with Leon, there, at least about the asshole part. He wasn’t good at joking around with people - his jokes were all insults with claws ready for the soft parts - but he was, at least, attempting some semblance of an olive branch. There was a relief in the guy he was supposed to be fighting with not being from any Federation, alternate or no, no matter how stupid he knew the impulse was.
“Let’s fan out a little,” he suggested after a moment, and started moving slowly, deliberately right. He could swear he felt eyes on them, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“I don’t know what that means, but yeah, I’m from the West in my world too,” Leon said. He snorted at Altan’s joke. “If they’re assholes, must be where you’re from too.” Okay, maybe it was an elementary school level insult - I know you are, but what am I? - but Leon didn’t want to go for the throat. Altan might annoy the hell out of him, but right now, they were partners. They were supposed to be watching one another’s back, and intentionally pissing off the guy who was supposed to be protecting you wasn’t a great idea. Leon had had a few partners back in LA that he hadn’t liked as people, and who probably didn’t care much for him either, but he was still supposed to be looking out for them.
Which is why the idea of fanning out made Leon frown. It wasn’t a terrible idea, per se, just… “Well, stay within line of sight,” Leon said, and started heading left.
His gaze swept across the woods, looking for anything suspicious. He glanced back at Altan, just to make sure the kid was still safe, and then looked again, and nearly sagged in relief. He wasn’t sure who the genius was that decided to put a bench in the middle of the woods, but he sent up a quiet prayer to God, Buddha, and the cute redhead he’d seen on TV the night before for their foresight. He glanced back at Altan, just to make sure he could still see him - Leon could still shoot while he was sitting - and then limped over to the bench and, with a heavy sigh, sank down onto it.
A second later, he yowled with pain and surprise as the bench bit him on the ass.
Altan had barely gotten farther than ten feet - hadn’t even reacted to being labeled an “asshole”, a word he had been referred to enough that it has lost all its sting - when he heard Leon’s surprised sound of pain.
At least they still had the line of sight. He turned around quickly enough to see what remained of what looked like a bench with teeth moving to engulf his Defense Squad partner entirely, and he reacted without thinking, hurling his trident through the air in what he knew was too far to be a killing blow, but Leon had that gun thing or whatever it was and seemed to know how to operate it. Distraction would have to be his contribution in this immediate moment. He’d use fire if he needed to but Leon’s proximity to the target was a concern. He didn’t think a rescue attempt counted if your attempt melted both attacker and victim.
Sprinting over, hands hot, he hoped for that strange sound of thunder that meant that Leon was uninjured enough to use his weapon.
Leon had had several things try to eat him in his lifetime - his ass had been a favourite snack for T-chan, D’s weird goat-tiger-dog thing - but never before had he been actually consumed by something, and when he was suddenly surrounded in a warm, damp darkness, he was momentarily stunned into paralysis. And then the creature jerked as if it had been hit by something, and Leon was brought back to his senses. He didn’t know which way was up, but he took a guess, and emptied his clip into the creature. Evidently, he’d picked right because the pulsating mass of wet flesh shuddered and went still.
He punched blindly until his fist erupted from the mimic’s mouth, and then a second hand burst through, and then he was pulling himself out of it. He spit a mouthful of slime - it was better to think of it as slime than what we it actually was - onto the forest floor, and then cried out, “I fucking hate this goddamn nightmare of an island,” followed by a string of curses as he pulled himself the rest of the way out of the mimic, prepared to shrug off any help if it was going to come, and finally ending with a, “And you, shut the fuck up!” to the bird or the squirrel or whoever it was that was howling with laughter somewhere above them (there was a final peal of laughter, followed by an “idiot” and a flutter of wings as it took off).
Then he turned his murderous gaze at Altan as if daring him to say something, too. The effect was rather lessened by the layer of slime that flattened his hair to his head and dripped off his chin.
Altan was silent for a long while, although his sharp face spoke volumes: there was incredulity, certainly, threaded through with something that looked like muted relief. Frustration was certainly present, along with its constant mate, irritation. There was disgust, because Leon Orcot was covered in a truly impressive amount of slime and blood, and a smidge of restraint because Altan wasn’t much of a boy who laughed, even at the truly funny display in front of him. He waited a moment as a heavy glob of what was likely saliva fell from Leon’s pants to the forest floor, observing Leon with that cool expression of mixed impulses.
Finally, he turned on his heel and picked up his trident from where it had struck the mimic, and walked in the vague direction of town. “I didn’t know,” he said blandly, “you could speak to animals.”
Leon sighed, relieved when Altan didn’t really do anything but stare at him. D would have definitely called him an idiot human, and probably would have yelled at him for killing the mimic instead of just letting it digest him. Jill would have rolled her eyes and probably scolded him for sitting on a - in retrospect - very suspicious bench when they were in the middle of trying to find creatures that could turn themselves into anything. Chris… Well, Chris wasn’t seven years old anymore, so he was unlikely to burst into tears about the whole thing. So Altan’s reaction was… well, it was kind of nice.
Even if Leon might have felt a little better if Altan had yelled at him for falling into the obvious trap. At least then, he could yell back. There was nothing better after a near-death experience than to have someone to get into a screaming match with.
He had also hoped that he could just have a few more minutes to lay here on the forest floor, getting his breath back and giving his leg a chance to rest, but that obviously wasn’t happening, so instead he just took a half-minute to change the magazine in his gun, reached for his cigarettes only to discover - to his dismay - that they were completely soaked through with something it was better not to think too hard about, and then struggled to his feet. Once standing, he took a moment to catch his breath, and then managed a lopsided half-jog to catch up with Altan.
“Yeah, well, it’s not really the kind of thing you introduce yourself with,” Leon said, gruffly. “Hi, I’m Leon Orcot, former police detective, and I argue with birds.”
“There are all kinds of weirdos here,” Altan observed mildly. “But I understand not wanting to give up your life story all at once.” He hadn’t. Granted, his life story was the kind of life story that generally led to pity, which he wasn’t interested in, but still. Talking to birds was hardly the weirdest shit here in Vallo.
“I assume you told the Commander,” he said, referring to Sara Lance by the same title he’d once used. Altan had been military too long to imagine a world where you kept your abilities from your superior officer. “...because with your leg the way it is, I figured they’ve got to know you can do other stuff. Are you going to be good to get back to the city?” He wasn’t trying to be insulting; being blunt to the point of being an ass came naturally. Altan wasn’t keen on the idea of carrying Leon (and indeed they weren’t far from one another’s general height and build, so it’d be a pain in the ass) but he also wasn’t about to abandon him here, either. He had similar notions of partnership that Leon did, in that regard. At least they had the journals, which he’d been told could be used to signal for assistance.
Leon grimaced, not through pain but through guilt. He probably should have mentioned his leg, but it hadn’t come up and he hadn’t thought of it. All he’d thought of was the opportunity to meet D before D had gotten his bearings and found some magical way out of Vallo. Assuming D ever showed up in this godforsaken place. His leg was normally fine - squats and runs every other day were part of his routine, and now that he had regular access to a pool he’d been able to run laps in it too to help keep it functional. So long as he didn’t try to push it too far - or, evidently, didn’t try to kick something senseless - it normally didn’t bother him.
But it had still made him a liability, and there was a very real chance he’d put Altan at risk because of it.
There was a definite trace of guilt in his voice when he said, “I assume Adora probably relayed the whole ‘talking to animals’ thing when she got me a spot on the team. She and Catra both know about it.” Catra, because Leon had thought she was an actual cat when he’d first met her, and Adora, probably because they were dating.
“I”ll be fine getting back to the city. If worse comes to worst, I can find a nice branch to use as a walking stick.” Of course, now that he said it out loud, he’d have to be extra sure that it wasn’t some mimic that had been eavesdropping on them. “Listen, I’m sorry. I should have told you when it started bothering me. It’s been a while since I last had a partner, but that’s no excuse for putting you at risk.”
Altan was about to answer that he was going back with Leon - no way was Leon going to go back by himself when he’d clearly messed up his leg - when the apology gave him pause. Altan wasn’t used to apologies. He was used to people yelling “sorry!” in moments of panic on the battlefield, sure, but that wasn’t quite the same thing. Answering it made him feel awkward and strange, so he gave a slight nod of acknowledgment and verbally plowed past it.
“Let’s just get out of here, and report on how many were out here,” he said glancing left and right. Theoretically, they’d cleared a path, but he wasn’t going to be taking any more chances. All these people and their decency. Altan had no idea what to do with any of it.
Leon wasn’t going to complain if someone didn’t want to go wax poetic about one of his apologies. He generally made them because he had to, not because he particularly wanted to, and if people were willing to just acknowledge and move past them without making a big deal out of them, that was just about perfect for him.
“Deal,” he said. And maybe, if he was lucky, Altan wouldn’t mention the whole leg thing to Adora or Sara.