middaeg | February/Feoveuer Catch All

Saori stared at that first page and took a deep breath. There is a sense of dread at first but she powers through. He gave her permission and this will only help to explain his behavior as of late.

She moves back to the kitchen with the briefcase in tow. After all, Bishop will wake up eventually and would appreciate a hot meal ready. All she'd have to do is heat it up when he's ready.

Besides it gave her a moment to let things sink in. "Shit, this really does explain a lot. I should write something for him," she pondered out loud to no one as she finished cleaning. Now she was off to find some paper and pen. It's only fair she told him more about herself after all of this.

"Sergeant Samuel Joseph Mercer" would be the first set of words to appear on next page followed by "Deceased" then his basic profile. Age, 18. Male. Single. Father, Eric Mercer. Mother, Charlotte Mercer. Both also being marked as "Deceased".

The documents continue, everything listed with the precision expected from the military, his exodus from New York to DC, his time in the slums, the death of his parents, his enlistment into the newly established military academy, the time he spent training and fighting, physical evaluations, psych evaluations, magic aptitude, overall evaluations, transcript of interviews with him, then his "death" being listed as "severe contamination" and "heavy injuries". From there they referred to him - not even as Bishop - but as OP06. Only once was he ever referred to as BISHOP, and that was only to reference his assigned mission callsign.

"You don't have to do that." He says leaning from on the door frame. "We can just talk." He sauntered over to the dining table, Stella now awake and heading over to him as he sits down. "I'm a light sleeper, always have been. It's not listed on those files but, out in the field it was either you learned to wake up at the drop of a hat or you don't wake up at all. Hi sweetie." He smiled weakly as the large cat jumped up on his lap.

"How far have you gotten?" He asked softly but shaky. "It's mostly accurate. I was, uhh....made Sergeant. Posthumous, which was nice. Don't usually give that out anymore. My funeral was also really nice. A little cloudy, but nice breeze and it didn't rain. Bigger turn out than I expected, I teared up a little. Nice plot of land too. Arlington, a national military cemetery where I'm from. They buried my...regalia-" He says gesturing vaguely to his body. "-and I asked them to list my friends, Kylie and Matt as the ones to receive all the goody-goody stuff...after my death." He leaned on the table, head resting on one hand while the other idly stroked Stella. "I hope those two are putting that money to good use."

Saori turns around and shakes her head with a chuckle. "And here I thought you'd be asleep just a little while longer. Serves me right for not considering your training. Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up."

She closes the file and places it right in front of him. She steps away from the table to get a glass of water for each of them and returns to sit across from Bishop. "I've pretty much read through this file alone and well, this certainly explains things." His expertise in fighting, his reaction to that ghost that blocked them from getting that pearl, and all that alcohol.

Of course she catches on about the funeral detail. "Ah, but were you watching it as a disembodied soul or were you watching a staged performance and you actually were alive and well this whole time?" She pauses to take sip. "Well, at least you had a funeral. No one would've been able to provide me one since there's not even a single shred of my human body left. I'm probably still listed as missing even though it's more than 20 years since anyone living saw me." Yes, Bishop heard that right. Twenty years. "Alright, it's only fair if I shared more about myself after all of this. You want the abbreviated version or shall we do this like an interview?"

"I was-" He takes a sip and moves the cat onto the table, the furry creature that eats his food plopping over. "-dressed as Mrs. Peralta who was visiting her daughter's grave nearby." Is he kidding or is he actually being serious? Hard to tell. "I would have watched quietly from a distance, under a tree wearing shades and black coat while standing next to my new employer who promptly told me it was time to go once the deed was done, but that would have been too cliche. I cross dressed as an old lady instead."

And another sip as he remembered that day. His friends knew he was nearby, but they still cried for him. He cried for them. The first people he left behind.

"Twenty years, huh?" He rubbed Stella's belly and she purred while stretching. "Let me guess, running from loan sharks? Abusive husband? Scary disapproving mother-in-law?"

Saori decided to take his word on it. Leaving a past life for a new one was never easy. At his guesses, she covered her mouth as she laughed bitterly. "Ah, if only. I suppose people would've thought loan sharks or the yakuza did me in. No, I was spirited away by a youkai, a supernatural creature. He planned to eat me as means to increase his strength. Ripped my soul out of my body just so I could suffer even more but got interrupted by my future husband. It's like every nerve in my body was struck by lightening. Unfortunately, my body did get eaten so it's not like I could act like it was a weird nightmare turned out of body experience."

She lets out a sigh. "If I had to guess, that youkai found me because I was at my lowest point, my brother Akira went missing only a few months before I died. Mom died a year or so after Akira was born. Dad...he was spirited away too a few years after that but I didn't know until much later. Unlike me, he didn't make it and when your soul's eaten, it's lost forever."

The light smile on his face slowly turned into a frown. Spirited away. He knows that phenomenon, he's dealt with it more than once in his career. Just like her case it never stops at one, and there's more bodies than there are survivors - if he could call them that.

"That's a nasty way to go." And he's seen all manner of death and mayhem. Then he's further reminded of her fury from earlier. Vanishing without so much as a trace, now he understands why she hated what he did so much.

"...I guess...you and I are kinda al-ouch!" He pulled his hand away from Stella who suddenly decided to take a quick swipe and play bite at his hand. "You little shit! Here! You get bitten by her now!" Said while sliding the sprawled cat over to Saori. "Cats." He'll never understand them. "One minute they love you and the next you're a scratching post."

Edited 2021-02-23 16:36 (UTC)

Saori blinks at Stella and taps her on the nose before standing up to walk to the counter. She opens one of the drawers and pulls out one of the toys she had wanted to give to Stella during the winter holidays. It's a simple thing, a stick with string on one end with a bunch of feathers and a bell attached to it.

"Well yeah, she's gonna bite you if you keep using your hand as a toy. Biting's a part of play for them, fulfills their predator instincts." She starts slowly waving just out of Stella's reach.

"But yeah, you're right, I guess we are even more similar than we thought. Though, I was a bit of a late bloomer in learning how to fight. After I found these spirited away cases were becoming more frequent, I couldn't really turn a blind eye on that. Learned how to fight, survive and grow a bit more in the afterlife. But what about you? What happened after that watching your own funeral?"

"But it's Stella! She has no predatory instincts!" Save maybe attacking his watch when he's using it, or maybe tracking him down when she hears the clanking of tin cans. If there is one thing he's learned about his cat, it's that she is the worlds friendliest cat and worst guard cat. If guard cats are a thing.

The aforementioned cat locks her big blue eyes on the bell and feathers then immediately starts pawing and swiping at it.

"What do you think happened? I got recruited into S.T.R.I.K.E and they ran about half a million tests to see what had happened to me and how much of me was human verses demon." He paused. "I continued to fight. I killed many demons and many people. I did it without question, believing that each mission made the world a better place. In a way....I did, but not for the people I meant to fight for." He sighed. Deep. "And I guess sometime between those tests, ops, and training, they found time to condition me pretty damn good." And it's that revelation from the file that pushed him over the edge.

Four kill switches planted in his psyche to carry out a specific kind of mission in a certain fashion. Each one triggered by a specific phrase, a series of numbers, and the name of the target. The worst is that when the switch is turned off, his memories are over written with whatever scenario they came up with to absolve the commander of liability. The perfect assassination tool.

"I can't trust my own memories anymore, Saori. What's real, what's fake? How much of my time did that....damn program take from me? How many of my comrades knew? Who were in on it? Sometimes I wonder, if I was ever really even Sam Mercer. What if those are fake and I've always just been some government project?"

"I don't know. Back home, we do have the means of viewing the memories of every soul's lifetimes, but even I don't know if we can restore or determine which memories were tampered. I wish I could help you figure that out. Still, I had to guess, given the nature of these programs, only a very small handful would know about it so it's possible your closest comrades had no idea or were lied to about it."

She quietly listens and after denying Stella a chance to catch the toy a few times, she let it fly from her hand and onto the floor for the cat to take down.

"I don't have any evidence to back me up on this but I think you are still Sam Mercer and not some government project. This is gonna sound cliche as hell, but even if you can't trust your past memories, you still have the ones from here and those have been real for sure. And, um, I'll call you by whatever name you feel comfortable with. If anyone says otherwise, I'll break their jaw like how I broke Loki's when he crashed my wedding."

The feline takes the chance to pounce, placing a stern paw on the toy and then keeping it there waiting to see if it will twitch to life.

"I take it you wear the pants in the family then." He'd sure hate to be her kid if she broke someone's jaw. Getting ground by her must actually be hell.

"Bishop...if you'd please." There's no point to going back to who he was, that soul has long since been buried. He fell silent as he mulled her words whilst a memory played in his head, a painful but tender one. "...There was an...incident. Where my commander, Queen, found out about a mission I had done secretly. Assassination." A beat. "Well I say found out but she actually cornered me and forced me to tell her. That was the first time I had seen her that furious. And that was before she beat the ever loving crap out of me. I think if I ever got close to actually dying it would have been that time." He chuckles whilst rubbing his neck with a shaking hand. "Really, that woman may have actually been a Rakshasa rather than an oni."

He paused once more. "She was also...incredibly sad. That was also the first time I saw her like that." The look of her hazel eyes staring at him, shiny with tears. "But she said something after which to me, at the moment, means a bit more than just some advice or encouragement. She told me to 'see past the shadows' and that I was 'the best' out of all of them. Maybe those memories are still there, I just need a way to...see past the shadows as she so cryptically put it." Cue scoff and eye roll.

"Anyway, now it's your turn. What's the deal about you breaking someone's jaw?"

"Sounds like her anger came out of concern for you. " Saori said and took another sip of water before she started her answer. "Trust me, I only do that if I'm incredibly angry and that son of a bitch tested my patience for years." In other words, Bishop was incredibly lucky she didn't throw him out the window earlier. Also, she is fair with her punishments if she does have to deal them out.

"I should back up a bit. When I died, my future husband Kenichi was the one to take me to the other realm where souls wait to be reincarnated but it's also home to all things supernatural and the gods. I stayed under his family's care as my future was being determined and turned out he's the son of Inari, one of the best known Shinto gods. Word got around so some of them got uppity that a 'lowly piece of trash' was living among them. Loki, yes that one from Norse mythology, was the worst of them. Always tried to antagonize me but could never do me in. So some years past and I not only accept Kenichi's proposal but agreed to take over the Inari title with him. A human becoming a god isn't new but it had been centuries since that happened. So Loki decided to interrupt the wedding and ascension ceremony to obviously object and I had just had it with him. I almost finished with the rites that would make me a goddess, but I didn't exactly consider my new strength when I decided to punch him and whoops I sent him flying." She takes a deep breath, now just watching Bishop's reaction since she has no idea how he'd react to that sudden revelation about his bond partner.

"Well, trickster god or god of tricks or whatever the hell his title is, testing patience is probably to be expected." Loki, even he's familiar with that name - mostly cause they're the father of that bastard wolf - but he doesn't believe in gods or goddesses in the sense that they're beings people should rely or put their faith in.

He listens quietly and tries to wrap his head around what she's saying. Shinto gods, Norse gods, it's a bit hard to believe even with the things he's seen and done and the only thing he has to go on is her word that this was all real. Any other day, any other person and he would have just nodded in quiet disbelief. But her story is so fantastical and the world, as he knows it, has gotten much much bigger that almost anything seems possible.

"Huh, that right?" He says, looking at her then to the cat that's been but background noise. He brings a hand up and rests his head, leaning onto the table as a moment passes. Then another. And another.....

"...So, if I install a wooden box, a big bell with a thick rope, at your door then drop five yen into said box and pray reeeeaaally hard, will I get finally 'Great Blessing' the next time I draw a fortune?" He grins. "C'mooooooooon~ Be honest. You got that goddess pull over those things right?"

Edited 2021-03-24 14:52 (UTC)

Saori held her breath as she waited for his reaction to her revelation. What would he do? Sever their Bond right there and throw her out? Shrug and dismiss it as nonsense? She only hid that from Bishop because of how polarizing her goddess identity can be for others.

What she wasn't expecting was...that. She tries to suppress her laugh, but she can't contain herself any longer. She wipes the tears from her eyes. "Believe me, I wish I could! I'm afraid that I've been stripped of my powers since arriving here, just like everyone else. That being said, I would like if you keep that part about me a secret for now. I want people to see me as Saori, and not as a goddess of a foreign land."

He couldn't hold his expression and laughs along side her. There was a bit of a sting in his side but he ignored it to hold this small, precious, honest, and peaceful moment between them. Even the cat starts to feel the tension lessen as she lies on her side, purring loudly almost napping.

"Don't worry, secrets safe with me. But-" He leans back, slouching as he lets out a breath. "-a goddess, huh? Honestly, I'm still trying to wrap my head around that but I don't really have a reason not to believe it. You haven't lied to me in the time I've known you, and I don't think you'd have a reason to start now." His lips curved into a tired smile, eyes idly drifting from her, to Stella, to the table, then wherever they may rest as his mind drifts.

"So. What now? I am very open to suggestions, mostly cause right now I think I'd struggle figuring out how to put socks on right."

Edited 2021-03-28 15:54 (UTC)

February/Feoveuer Catch All

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