WHAT: Katou tries to take on too many fire elementals by himself, Gamora talks some sense into him WHERE: The Forest WHEN: Backdated to August, shortly after the disappearances of Cloud and Joel WARNINGS: Self-destructive tendencies, but otherwise not so much STATUS: Complete
Katou stood on the cliff’s edge, lunging far enough forward that his left forearm was resting on his knee. He held his sword in his right hand, and a cigarette hung out the corner of his mouth as he stared down at the scene below him.
The fire elementals had made a mess of things down there, and capered merrily along the burning trees and crops. The farmer whose land they currently destroyed had put out a decent bounty on them, and Katou, with nothing else really going on, figured that he might as well take it. It looked… Well, it didn’t look like it was going to be as easy as Katou had initially assumed it was going to be. There was a lot of fire down there, and more elementals than he’d been expecting. But whatever, this was fine. He’d been itching for a good fight. He’d managed to clean up good at Fight Club, but that hadn’t made him feel much better about Cloud taking off.
And now Joel was gone too.
So maybe murdering a bunch of fucking fire demons would help.
He took one last drag of his cigarette before flicking it into the burning field below, took a couple of steps back, and tensed his muscles to take a running jump off the cliff and into their midst.
And just like that, someone had grabbed Katou by the back of his shirt, like a lioness picking up a cub by the scruff of their neck, and pulled him back before he dove feet first into a crowd of wild sentient flames.
Gamora enjoyed the Defense Teams most days. It didn’t bring the excitement of traveling through the stars – seeing their deaths from a distance, maneuvering through asteroid fields and hopping from one planet to the next – but it gave her a sense of purpose. Guardians of the Galaxy was a moot team when they weren’t moving around in the galaxy, and from what they told her, most of them had gone their separate ways anyway.
So the opportunity to defend some place filled the hole. Not entirely, but enough to take the edge off (and not spiral into an existential crisis about her death, Thanos, her bones left behind on Vormir, how her family moved on in her absence, this other Gamora that refused to join their ranks). These creatures that embodied the basic elements had gotten a little unruly, and it kept the patrols busy. Civilians often needed help. A team mate sometimes requested back up.
And, occasionally, a teenage idiot might need to be stopped from doing something rash.
“Don’t do that,” is all Gamora said.
Katou’s feet lifted off the ground as he attempted to run forward while being held in place, but once they hit the ground again he twisted, ready for a fight, and then… stopped.
He recognized Gamora, had even spoken to her a couple of times, but he didn’t really know her. He frowned. “Why the fuck not?” he asked. “You want in? We could split the bounty, I guess, but I was kinda counting on doing this on my own.”
“I’m not here for a bounty,” Gamora answered cooly, setting him back down to the ground. “I’m on a patrol shift. Fighting those,” she gestured towards the fire elementals wreaking havoc below, “is a stupid move by yourself without someone to bail you out in the scenario they best you. You couldn’t bring a friend with you?”
“I brought a friend,” Katou said, gesturing with Shiranui. “And no, I couldn’t bring no other friends. All my fucking friends have decided to fuck off back home.”
Okay, that wasn’t true. That wasn’t even close to true. El was still in Vallo, and she actually would have been really good to drag around to fight fire elementals with. Syd probably less so, but she’d have had his back. He had… well, a decent amount of friends in Vallo who could hold their own in a fight.
But that wasn’t the point.
“I doubt all of them,” Gamora pointedly replied and finally released her grip on his shirt. Katou wasn’t someone she was deeply familiar with but she had an idea of who his people were – and she had an idea of who he was missing. “You were friends with Cloud, hm?”
She walked towards the cliff, her stride lazy and casual. There was a holster for a compact knife (really, her sword, it was just easier to carry in this form) that she patted to reassure herself of its presence. “I did a few jobs like this with him.”
Katou hesitated, but nodded after a time, looking away from her. “Yeah, Cloud. We did too, sometimes.” It had been nice, having a buddy to fight with. Someone who also liked to swing a sword around – albeit, a much bigger sword than Katou’s – and kill shit with.
He looked down at the fire elementals and sighed, rubbing this side of his head. “Guess taking ‘em on by myself would’ve been a little dumb,” he admitted after a moment.
“Oh, it would have been very dumb,” Gamora pointed out, crouching down at the ledge. The wind carried the heat from those fire elementals up at them, and it was like being in front of an open oven for a few seconds. “Imagine being overwhelmed on your own and not having someone that could pull you out to safety – or call for backup.”
Katou scowled. There really was no good way to respond to that; at least not in a way that didn’t make him sound like some sort of edgy, emo teenager. He knew better than to think that he was invincible; he’d died way too often to think that, and even if Syd could bring him back, he didn’t want to put that on her. He’d seen her in that stupid future where she hadn’t been able to bring him back.
“Alright fine, whatever, back-up’s alright to have, I guess. You gonna kill these fire monsters with me or are you just here to ruin a good time?”
“Didn’t you know?” Gamora hummed, cocking her head to the side while making a quick assessment of the numbers below - there was a lot, she was fast, presumably this kid could handle his own well enough without tripping on his face. They’d most likely survive. “I’m only passing through to make comments without any helpful contribution.”
She rose to her feet, pulled Godslayer free and with a flick of her wrist, extended the blade with a pronounced zing.
“Of course we’re going to kill these things,” she scoffed, and then leapt down into the fray just like Katou would have - if she hadn’t interrupted.
Katou snorted, but he couldn’t help his eyes widening just a little, impressed by her blade, and grinned a little as she jumped down.
Some small, petty part of her, still somewhat annoyed that she’d spoiled all the fun of jumping in blind into a crowd of fire elementals by himself with absolutely no plans or a single thought in his head, was almost tempted to just sit and watch and see what happened. But it was only a small part of his mind.
He did stand around for a moment to watch her take down a couple of the fire elementals, but he wasn’t about to let her have all the fun, and when he did leap down from the cliff, he managed to split one of the creatures that had been sneaking up behind her in half.
It wasn’t easy with Gamora, but he managed to come out the other side with only a few minor burns; he knew that it would have been worse if Gamora hadn’t been there to watch his back. It wasn’t long before Katou had run through the last of them and it died in a flurry of sparks.
He wiped some sweat from his brow.
That all proved to be more bothersome than expected, and Gamora didn’t have qualms in admitting that without a second person, she might have had more trouble. Fire was violent. Flames licked at her skin, threatening to consume her. Avoiding some of them took precise, careful moves, otherwise parts of her body would be scorched. She wasn’t always successful, and the leather clothes (that were a terrible idea to wear when it felt like she was fighting through the circles of hell with all this heat) on her body came out with singed holes.
Overall, they lived with all their heads still on their head and zero disfigurements. It was a success.
“It’s hot,” Gamora stated plainly, knowing damn well it was obvious but it was a deadpan complaint. Godslayer was strapped back to her thigh, hands free to perch on her waist. “You did well. How are you not part of a Defense team? It’s the perfect opportunity to let some steam out with violence and get paid for it.”
“I am getting paid for this,” Katou said. “There was a bounty out on these fuckers. Pays more than Defense.” At least, in this case, it did. But Katou always threw himself into these fights as a way to blow off steam, and most of the time he didn’t get paid for them. “I ain’t really a ‘Defense’ kinda person,” he said once he was done scowling. “Ain’t a whole lotta people I really care about defending, if we’re being honest. Besides, I ain’t much of a team player. Not so big on rules or like, following orders.”
Not necessarily true. Katou was at his best when he was following orders. But there weren’t a lot of people he’d take orders from. Back home, there was Kira, and then later, Setsuna. Here, there was El, and maybe Syd sometimes, though neither of them gave him a ton of orders to follow.
“I’m not talking about this,” Gamora snapped, her temper a bit tested with his attitude but she reeled it back some. “In general is what I meant – you seem pent up. And from the sounds of it, you must have at least one or two you care to defend. They all live here, don’t they?”
It was all about defending Vallo, this strange little pocket they found themselves involuntarily stuck in but it was monumentally better than death. Some people (like her family) had something to go back to.
She didn’t. So if she was here, then she’d put her efforts into keeping this place safe.
“Not all of them,” Katou muttered darkly. Kira and Setsuna had never made it here, and neither had Uriel or Kurai, though he thought that they all would have had a good time if they had. Maybe not Uriel; Uri wasn’t really the type to ‘have a good time,’ though maybe he’d loosen up once he got away from that whole Angel of Death thing. Cloud was gone, and Joel, and Persephone and Hades. There were a lot of people who Katou’d let himself care about, only for them to fuck off to God knew where.
“But yeah, alright, some of them are here. I can do better protecting them if I’m just trying to protect them though, not this whole damn … country? Island?” He frowned. “Is Vallo a country?”
He’d just graduated from a Valloian high school. This was probably something he should have paid attention to.
“Don’t think so,” she told him, hands on her hips. “I doubt there’s much beyond this mainland and surrounding island clusters, but I’m no expert. I refer to it as a ‘world.’ Try not to think about it too hard. It’s just where at least some of your people live right now is what I meant. Defending it is also protecting them.”
Gamora wouldn’t push past that argument. The job gave her purpose, and she was grateful for it, otherwise she’d lose her damn mind.
“And I think the main rules for it are ‘don’t do something stupid and die,’” she added, lifting her brows at him. “Is that too much for you?”
Katou was under no illusions about what kind of person he was. If burning down the whole wide world would, in some fucked up way, protect the people he loved, then he’d do it. He would raze the island into the sea. He wasn’t a good person, no matter what some people wanted to think, and he was… he was okay with that. Most of the time.
He wouldn’t go ahead and pretend to be something he wasn’t. Sometimes, he was heroic. Sometimes he saved people, but only the people he liked. He wouldn’t go and join the Too Heroic For Their Own Good Club.
He tilted his head to the side as if thinking hard about Gamora’s question, and then nodded. “Yeah, probably.” He shrugged, palms up. “I mean, I’ve already died like, five times? Mostly from doing something stupid.”
Gamora stared at him. It was an unimpressed, deadpan sort of look. She didn’t expect him to actually have some kind of response to that, proving that yes, actually, he was that idiot that would do something stupid and die.
She ultimately sighed and turned her body towards the direction of the nearest dirt path. “I hope your luck never runs out then.”
Katou fell into step beside her, Shiranui balanced casually on his shoulder as he walked. “Man, I ain’t never been lucky, so you don’t gotta waste your hope on that,” he drawled. He took another couple of steps, waffling back and forth for a moment, before he finally said, “but hey, thanks for the assist I guess. You gonna want any of the bounty?”
“Generous of you,” Gamora smirked, stepping on a pile of embers to smother it under her boot before continuing, “I’m good, though. It’s all yours. I’m about to head out towards the next reported hot spot if you want to offer an assist there, I guess.”
Katou hesitated for a moment. On one hand, he wanted that reward. On the other…
Well, the reward could wait. He wanted to kick some more ass. “Oh come on, you’d be totally lost without me. Lead on, Elphaba.”