Notes - For a prompt-fest that I recently posted. Moonstar102 wanted Fubuki and Fiona under the prompt of "paperwork". Set in the Archie Sonic universe, just before Fiona gets Finitevus's help to rescue Scourge. I'm sorry that the use of Fubuki in this is really weak, but I was scratching my head for a long while about how to get the character combination to work and this was all I came up with.
"You can't be that desperate to get our help on this job if you're willing to waste time like this first," Fiona commented, eyeing the mess of papers, books and who-knew-what-else that Finitevus had horded around this current hide-away of his.
"All things are worth taking time over, yes?" Finitevus replied, smiling at her in his mild-mannered way.
"I… suppose so," she muttered.
She knew that he was just using her as an excuse to clean up his 'office', she just knew it! He was testing her patience. But more than that both of them knew that he was her only way to get to the No-Zone and rescue Scourge. If she wanted that then she had to listen to his whims, be they getting the Destructix to help him with a job when all this was over or apparently filing papers…
"Then I shall leave you to it. I do wish you the best of luck," he commented, exiting via the warp rings she wanted so badly to obtain.
"Creepy jerk!" Fiona spat, as soon as she was sure he was gone, "Well I better get to work if I want this over with…"
The books and papers she sorted through were filled with text that Fiona wanted nothing to do with. Finitevus was a logical monster who took great pleasure in toying with chaos energy, so it wasn't surprising to see that he'd put so much effort into researching the mystical aspect of Mobius. All of these papers were covered with his own annotations and after glancing at a few Fiona soon figured that it was better not to read them at all or dare to ponder what it was they meant.
But after a while she couldn't help but notice that there were more to some of these than just Mobius. She'd never dared question how much of the Cosmic Highway Finitevus had explored, because who would want to track him if they didn't have to do so? He seemed to have gathered information from all sorts of world though.
However, there was something… sinister about one set of papers in particular.
He might well have ripped them from a book or even written them himself, she wasn't sure. The first one had a large drawing of a mask on it. It was an eye-mask, mostly black with other markings on it and she could just tell that if this was more than just a picture the eyes would have been glowing. They had that look to them.
Above it was written 'The Mask of Darkness'.
Sounded exactly like something Finitevus would get himself worked up over. How fitting.
At first she dismissed it as just another one of these evil artefacts that he was looking into, but as she shuffled through the papers she came across a list of victims and couldn't help herself but read through. The mask took hosts. It had several hosts over the course of its history. The one that grabbed her attention was a boy called Fubuki Tenjoin.
He looked… like a really fun guy.
You had all of this sinister stuff about a dark mask possessing hosts and among it there was a photo of this guy, a teenager dressed in a Hawaiian shirt with hippy-length brown hair and a goofy grin on his face. He was so out of place among all this it was almost laughable. Right up until you read more into it. The boy had been lured into some sort of ritual, his body had been forced full of these… she could only describe them as blob-like black creatures and he had been made a host for this Darkness thing. Sure, he had broken free, but it always kept on grabbing at him later in his life.
If she had an ounce of caring for people she didn't know then Fiona might have felt bad for the poor guy. But as it was she just saw him as being a dumb, easy target. Still, it was a little unnerving to think that a being of darkness would choose such an unfitting host…
"It is simply fascinating, isn't it?" came Finitevus's voice from behind her, making her jump, "I can see why it caught your eye."
"I have no interest in your occult junk!" she spat, shoving the papers onto the shelf where they belonged.
"More the pity. It would be quite pleasant to have someone to discuss the power of Darkness with. But I suppose you're not the one. Not at all…" he sighed.
"Look, I've finished your work now, so just pay your side of the bargain or else!" Fiona snapped at him.
"You've paid half of your side, young lady, do not forget that. And once you have removed that mongrel from his cell be sure to return to me so that you can finish the job," he said. His face was smiling, but she knew what the tone implied for if she would dare to double-cross him.
"Sure, whatever, we'll be back," she said dismissively, "Just give me the warp rings; I don't want to spend another minute in your chamber of horrors."
"But of course," he purred, passing across the item she'd worked for, "I hope it serves your purpose."
"Oh, it will," she said, grinning for the first time today.
There was no 'goodbye' in her departure, Fiona simply left. They were both villains using each other for their own gain, so why would they waste time on trivial matters like that? All she knew was that she wanted to gather her team and put as much distance between herself and this man as possible. Scourge was evil and twisted too, but on such a primal level, Fiona could understand what he wanted. Flying Frog was even… creepy, let's leave it at that. But he didn't have the same sort of mystical powers as Finitevus did, so she could never take him as seriously. Neither of those two had anything that could make her skin crawl quite as much as the echidna did.
Once she was gone, Finitevus just hummed and returned to his desk.
"I don't think she would have been a good host to you anyway, my dear Darkness. Not your style, not at all," he commented, stroking the mask that Fiona had so dangerously overlooked.
Finitevus had his fingers in many pies when it came to dabbling in the occult, but he wouldn't have it any other way.