pillar of salt (vague whitewulf)

15 July 2024

The timing is downright terrible, of course. Not two, three months earlier and it could have actually been useful; they were still at Providence, then, with its well-funded labs and its secure cells and its interrogation experts. Different targets, different enemies. But of course Six waltzes in with this EVO like a dumped dog he'd found on the side of the road now, when the most he can do is endorse Dr. Holiday's hopeless attempts to corner it for a physical exam. It would be Six's responsibility, then, and if it acted out it isn't as though any of them were particularly out of practice in putting EVOs down.

When he tells the thing that it'll have to prove its worth to stay around, he thinks that it growls. White Knight had never particularly cared for animals.

The EVO stares at him any time they're in the same room together. It's impossible to read. White Knight prickles just having it near. The monkey was bad enough.

He sends it with Six to investigate an EVO sighting, a mission that's one part routine and one part investigative, keeping an eye on Providence's response. It comes back with blood on its claws, and White Knight can't deny that it's nice to get unflinching results, sometimes.

He forgets about it for a while, or tries to; it accompanies Six when Six goes out into the field, which is only somewhat more reassuring than sending Six out with the monkey, at least until the mission where they go dark on comms halfway through and White Knight is left gritting his teeth and considering leaving the base himself until, twenty-three grueling minutes later, Six comes back on and tells him the situation has been handled. And of course he won't acknowledge White Knight's demands to know what the situation was until he and the EVO come back to the base, when White Knight can drag Six bodily out of the situation room and get some fucking answers. White Knight bites down on the reprimands that he is still in control here, that Six still answers to him, because even he can't pretend like that hierarchy hasn't fallen completely to pieces. "What happened back there," he asks instead.

Six glances between them, where White Knight's hand still grips his arm at the elbow. He doesn't answer until White Knight lets go, and then it's -- disappointing. "I had it handled."

"It didn't sound especially handled." It had sounded like radio silence, something of which White Knight was not a fan unless it was his own decision. He sees Six's mouth thin in that minute way of his. "I need an answer."

"We had some disagreement on how to run the mission," Six says. And because Six never says just what he means - even now, to White Knight, despite everything, which is something White Knight cannot consider right now - White Knight can take it to mean that what happened out there was a disaster. This is the way that White Knight would have reported back on their own missions in the early days, which is a memory so jarring in conjunction with the present that he has to force it out of his head. The close quarters of this base is playing games with him.

"So you had to do damage control." The whole thing had been Six's idea to begin with, which White Knight doesn't point out here. He almost wishes that he had, because Six's mouth tightens again, calculating, and White Knight hates when Six goes calculating against him, turns all that sharp-edged brilliance against him.

"It's no worse than it was with Rex," Six says.

Six is going soft, he wants to think, instinctually. It isn't the truth. And Six never says precisely what he means, not with the way he's eyeing White Knight. Damn it.

He'll have to talk to the damn EVO.

Telling the EVO that if it can't handle itself on the very long leash he has afforded it he will have no problems putting it back on the curb where Six found it goes over surprisingly well. It's the first time Biowulf speaks to him directly. On occasion the situation requires a firmer hand, it seems.

The current situation is, in a word, fucked. They came in on bad information, a single EVO sighting in a low-density neighborhood, and what they've got now is a rooftop fight against something that can split itself like a cell with the Consortium's Providence coming closer in the air - Holiday had put them at 15 minutes out. White Knight had sworn enough times under his breath that Six had told him off for chatter on the comms. But it's better that he's here rather than back at base, useless, listening in for the crunch of bones or a Providence bullet landing too close to Six's earpiece. They need the numbers, imbalanced as they are against the five scuttling monsters.

He doesn't want to admit it, but they could really use Rex in times like these.

One of the EVOs splits again, a disgusting peel and squelch of flesh, and White Knight takes the opportunity to blast it with laser at his wrist, exploding it into a mess of slime and exoskeleton. He crushes the head of it underfoot when it twitches. The things have too many legs and drip something potentially acidic, the way almost every unstable EVO does, no visible eyes, no logic to their shape. But what one can sense, the others apparently can as well; he can see Six plant a sword into the side of one and another of the monsters veers off-course to attack him. It's less like fighting five disparate beasts and more like fighting one creature with five sprawling, independent limbs.

In a way, it's exhilarating. In a way, he wishes he had gone into a different business.

A spiny projectile screams over his shoulder and he ducks down away from it, the knee of his suit cracking to the roof, but he can hear the monster spitting up a second one behind him, so he twists, knowing he's still going to take it in the shoulder no matter how fast he moves -- the EVO, their EVO, leaps past and catches the monster just as it forms the second projectile, claws piercing through its mass. Biowulf tosses the thing off the roof, leaving him covered in the yellowish goo that passes for the thing's blood. When he turns back, the bullet - or egg, or whatever these things are firing - has embedded into his middle, the spines flexed out to drive into his skin. Biowulf pulls it out with a low grunt, then throws it at another one of the EVOs as it skitters by.

"Nice catch," White Knight says, pushing himself back to his feet. Something shifts in Biowulf's posture as he says it. White Knight checks the time; they've got nine minutes until Providence closes in.

"Time to wrap it up, people," he calls out, and Biowulf falls in next to him.

He steps out of his office, if you can call it that, at 3:15 am and Biowulf is tucked against the railing of the platform, eyes only dimly glowing red. White Knight allows it.

He draws the short straw when it comes to explaining what happened with van Kleiss and Rex, or rather, Six and Dr. Holiday make it clear that this will be his responsibility -- and then Biowulf lets himself into the office for the first time to ask, in his own way, what it is he hasn't been told. White Knight has had the uncomfortable task of reporting a Providence employee's death to their family before, but it's not entirely the same as telling someone that the person to whom they had dedicted their life in service had vanished entirely. He'd never had to stick around for the aftermath, either. Biowulf goes somehow distant as he takes it in, and White Knight finds himself telling him to sit down. Biowulf sits on the ground.

White Knight allows it.

Rex comes back. Comes home, if he's being honest; he can play as aloof as he wants, but it's a relief to see the kid in one piece. There's something close to joy in the dam for the first time in months. They have a fighting chance again. None of their weapons or knowledge or finely-trained skills were quite enough without Rex. Rex settles in like he'd barely left, making fun of their sense of decor minutes before he calls it 'cozy.'

White Knight lets Six and Holiday handle the boy, since he basically belongs to them at any rate. In the quiet after they usher him away to find him his own space, he hears - just barely, somewhere across the base - the slide of a door. He tenses until he realizes how dark it was, outside the office. No pinprick red glow.

He finds Biowulf on the outer platforms of the dam, almost to the railing as though he's planning to leap down. Biowulf freezes the minute he hears White Knight behind him, hackles raised.

"Abandoning your post, are you?" White Knight asks him, and Biowulf crumples inward a little. He grabs the railing with his oversized claws, scraping against the metal with a soft sound.

"You have your EVO," Biowulf says, glancing back toward the door of the dam. Past White Knight, maybe, to the warm spot that had wrapped around Rex. "There's no need for more."

White Knight should have let him go. He should have shrugged and watched Biowulf drop down off the ledge and leave, or else shot him through the skull because he knew more than they could afford for an EVO with a flight risk. He shouldn't have cared, and in the end, he doesn't, really, because having Biowulf there neither improves his life nor enriches it, but his jaw tenses and Biowulf turns his stare onto him. There's no good reason he can give himself.

"Don't be stupid," White Knight says finally, and Biowulf looks at him for a long moment. White Knight hates the unshifting weight of it. Eventually, he turns and steps back into the base, and he hears Biowulf's footfalls behind him, and he does not look back to check.