I'M BACK AND I'M SO SORRY FOR BEING ABSENT FOR SO LONG, I HAVE RETURNED!
Based off this prompt that I found on Tumblr: an immortal who doesn't shy away from photos or paintings. Draws self portraits on cave walls. Photobombs everything with a pout and a suave pose. Commissions numerous portraits of themself as a literary Romantic before faking their death. Tries to be at least slightly famous every time they have a new identity. Creates a conspiracy blog linking all their past photos together before mysteriously disappearing in mysterious circumstances. Mysteriously. Usually only disappears for 10 to 20 years after ""dying"" before making another appearance. Everyone else in the immortal community lowkey hates them. "Ah, fuck. You'll never guess who's resurfaced again." "Fucking… Dave?" "Fucking Dave."
Disclaimer: I do not own any characters besides Keith and my own version of Hojo. All other's you recognize belong to their respective owners.
-o0o-
It had been ten years since Genesis had dropped off the map.
Again.
Not that anyone knew his real name, the community knew him as Dave.
Dave the Fucking Troll is what they called him, (but he liked to call himself a diva, Dave the Diva).
Genesis was a pain for the entire community, threatening to expose them to the world, and there were very few who knew how to rein him in. And when Genesis started up again, those individuals would be very hard to find, not to mention they barely stayed in contact with the community due to their wacky experiments and spontaneous desire for adventure.
Because Genesis was a self – proclaimed diva, he took every chance he could to be in pictures. Be they paintings, photographs, videos, as long as his image was captured in any sort of medium, he would be absolutely thrilled.
Then use those pictures on his conspiracy blog, that he made about himself.
Kinda narcissistic don't you think?
You see, Genesis was part of a community of immortals.
None of them knew how they got their immortality, only that they couldn't die.
You could maim them, shoot them, cut them, drown them, starve them, boil them alive in a vat of acid, kill them in any possible method imaginable.
But they always came back.
Well, not like instant regeneration.
The ways they came back differed.
One guy was known for his flesh body dying and then turning up naked in the nearest river or body of water. There had been the one time when he appeared in a public school's swimming pool, and had to run from the cops, but that was someone else's story for another time.
A few also had to dig themselves out of their own graves after a few days of their body healing the damage, which might have been the reason the concept of zombies first came into existence. Luckily none of them had been cremated, that was a messy business in itself.
There were few of the immortals that had the ability of instant regeneration, but they happened to be the ones that liked to keep their ability under wraps. However, Genesis happened to have that same type of immortality and was as slippery as a snake, so he had pulled off his many deaths rather convincingly to those who weren't in on his *immortal* secret.
But back to the matter at hand.
It had been ten years since Genesis had dropped off the map.
And that meant that he would be turning up again soon, and that, caused a lot of anguish for the immortal community.
Because most of them loathed his very being.
And also they really hated his conspiracy blog, once he resurfaced he would load that site up with new information and generally annoy the heck out of them as they would have to scramble to dissuade the many followers that the information was false and there was no way this new and upcoming actor looked anything like that famous poet who died twenty years ago in a tragic opera fire where no one found his body in the charred remains of the building.
A fire which Genesis might have lit in the first place.
No, he definitely lit it in the first place.
(Genesis was known for his love for fire and was a fervent pyromaniac, something that he hinted very blatantly in the conspiracy blog through linking many of his various supposed deaths that had involved some form of fire in its various forms).
The moment they heard the notification of a simple and boring *ping* of a bell, they all knew what was coming. (Because Genesis was such a diva, the only way they could get back at him was by making noises related to him as boring as possible.)
"Ah, fuck."
Rosie muttered under his breath, already pulling up that page that they all hated and wished would burns in the depths of hell.
"What's wrong?"
Evelyn asked as she glanced to the older man who was her supervisor, having only joined the immortal community a few months ago after she had been killed in a house robbery.
"You'll never guess who's resurfaced again."
That caused a groan from the other techies in the room, and one sandy haired teen (who had been stuck as a teenager since he first died about 200 years ago) answered in a hesitant voice.
"Fucking . . . Dave?"
(They would take every chance to insult the auburn haired man as they could, none one in the community said called the man 'Dave' ).
"Fucking Dave."
Rosie's voice was grave, and utterly full of malice as he showed the monitor for all of them to see.
Dave the Fucking Troll was back, and was going to cause hell for them all.
-o0o-
Sephiroth was all too well aware of Genesis' return.
He was quite familiar after 2000 years of knowing the man, and hearing about some new and blooming author writing novels full of angst and such tragedy, it obviously had to be Genesis.
Genesis thrived off angst and tragedy, he lived for drama.
He had been hell to deal with during the time of the Greeks and Romans, Genesis was practically treated like a god when he introduced the concepts of theatre to the citizens of Greece, and when it spread to Rome . . .
Things got way out of hand.
Sephiroth had long since decided to wash his hands clean of Genesis, and only interacted with the diva when Genesis turned up on his doorstep. Angeal still tried to rein Genesis in but with little success that sometimes lead the usually calm and patient man to actually drink himself to sleep to deal with having to dissuade Genesis when he got ideas into his head.
And there was absolutely nothing that could deter Genesis when he decided to do something.
Unless they managed to wrangle Keith into dealing with him, who was the only one that the whole group actually feared from their years in SHINRA. Only Omael wasn't deterred by Keith, those two were basically blood brothers in their love for chaos and mayhem, which caused the two of them to disappear most of the time and they were impossible to contact once they started on a project.
Cloud and Vincent tended to stay out of the way when Genesis popped back up, the two brooders of their rag tag group didn't like the attention that Genesis brought upon himself, and so avoided everyone else entirely while trying to live their life in seclusion. The last time he had seen the two, they were taking sanctuary at some sort of monastery that was in on the whole 'immortal' shtick.
Zack and Reno weren't any help when Genesis decided to throw himself into the spotlight, Sephiroth had a sinking feeling in his gut that they were part of the reason why Genesis got popular so quickly all the time. Reno had been one of the best computer techies in SHINRA during its prime, as well as one of their best hackers (a reason why he had been recruited by the Turks in the first place), so he was probably helping monitor and run Genesis' conspiracy blog (Genesis preferred books, and rarely touched the computers unless it was for a report or he was actually that bored to abandon his beloved LOVELESS copies).
Zack was obviously a people person, and PR had been his specialty.
He always got into jobs relating to PR, a friendly face for the new recruits but certainly not suited for political functions, the younger man had a loose tongue, even though he was quite observant and could read the environment and its mood. Also his lack of focus wasn't a good factor in his youth, before Angeal became his mentor.
Sephiroth was pretty sure that Zack was working for some popular publishing company at the moment. No doubt he was probably Genesis' editor, after all Zack had picked up books as a pastime while he cooled off from public appearances after dying in some sort of gang warfare he had gotten involved in about seventeen hundred years ago if he recalled correctly.
There hadn't been many books at that point in time, but it was a good way to get Zack to focus on a quiet activity.
Genesis had leapt at the chance to recommend certain novels and plays to the bouncy raven, which formed a friendship between the two. It had been well known to not leave those two alone amongst the SHINRA employees, Zack had a knack for pissing Genesis off (so it had been quite terrifying to see the two getting along splendidly after a few centuries of conflict between them both).
However, there was soon to be a meeting between the members of the community, and Sephiroth was willing to pray to the Goddess that Genesis so often spouted poetry about, that Keith turned up.
He didn't want to deal with the Council asking him to do something about his diva of a friend.
-o0o-
Luckily for Sephiroth, Keith was in town for the meeting, as was Omael.
It started off as usual, checking which immortals had recently died and if they were abiding to the unspoken rule to lay low until a reasonable amount of time passed before they could resurface (the minimum was fifty years, which was why Genesis' blatant disregard for the rule was such a pain in the neck).
Once that had been dealt with, they got onto the problems on hand that really mattered.
Which was of course the matter about Dave the Fucking Troll.
Genesis of course knew about the meeting, but wasn't stupid enough to actually attend it when he had resurfaced only four months ago. The others would be out for his blood.
Just because they were immortal didn't mean that it didn't hurt.
Funnily enough it was the Viking immortals that were the angriest with Genesis for breaking the rule out of the entire community, despite being the ones depicted as barbarians in history, they did have a sense of honour.
And don't even get him started on the Japanese samurais and British knights.
They all wanted a swing at Genesis, despite the fact that Genesis had been a quite famous rapier wielder at some point in time during the time of King Arthur.
While the samurai and knights were more pissed off that Genesis had no sense of honour (Angeal got along very well with them), the Viking's did have concrete and legitimate grounds for their grudge against Genesis.
Genesis had gone around parading as the resident god of fire during the age that the Viking's were prominent, and the Viking's did not take his impersonating their god Loki very lightly.
(Although Keith technically had a greater claim to the title since he lived to create chaos and sow trickery).
The few immortals from that age happened to be the ones that caught Genesis' pretending to be one of their esteemed gods, and the next time they happened to see Genesis was when they had just joined the immortal community.
Many of the few residents had cheered when they saw Genesis running away screaming from the axe wielding barbarians, who were shouting in Old Norse and cursing in their ancient tongue, vowing to spike his head on a stake and offer it to their gods as revenge for his slur to the God Loki.
Genesis happened to be slightly terrified of the Vikings due to that experience, although he was mostly terrified because Keith had helped the Vikings back in that age to enact vengeance for such sacrilege to a culture.
Also, he happened to be very good friends with the Vikings, especially amongst the taverns.
The Vikings had been so impressed by Keith's ability to drink them all under the table, they thought that perhaps he had been blessed by Aegir, the brewer to the Gods of Asgard as well as the God of the Seas.
Keith denied the claims, jokingly stating that perhaps they were the lightweights, which would start up a whole new round of drinking in which he would triumph yet again to no one's surprise.
Occasionally Keith met up with the Vikings for a drink, and they would drink the bar completely dry.
Which was quite unfortunate for the poor bar owners when they had to deal with a bunch of rowdy Vikings, but Keith would quickly herd them out and to another bar.
(They would be infamous among the bars of cities they were currently living in at the time for a number of years).
Which was another reason why Genesis didn't show up at the meetings, he knew that Keith would side with the Viking's anytime so that they could celebrate his defeat over a couple mugs of ale.
The immortal community also learned to not underestimate the bonds between drinking buddies, especially since the Vikings were made for warfare, they were the size of lumberjacks (which was the profession most of them pursued since they looked like the stereotypical lumberjacks and had the strength for) and well trained with bladed weapons.
Despite Keith's lean figure, he had shown more than once he could handle the Viking's weapons with finesse and absolutely crushing brute strength.
(He had been quite the figure head during the Viking age, although there were very few mentions about him during that part of history as he preferred to be a supporting character, so he let others take the credit, but made many brothers amongst the clans he drifted to and from).
Keith was currently having a light drink with the Council members, but Sephiroth had heard him promise the Viking immortals that they would go drinking in the local tavern after all the pleasantries were over.
Perhaps he would join them, he hadn't seen Keith in about 500 years, and he did want to have a talk with the man who had sort of been an older brother figure to him in his youth.
Omael was talking with some other immortals who were science driven (either it was their own personal interest or perhaps they had been immersed in the subject during their time when they thought they were mortals), eagerly discussing formula's and theories that went straight over Sephiroth's head.
Sure he was intelligent, but if he didn't' feel like devoting himself to a subject, he would pretty much half – ass it. Something that Omael hadn't been very happy about during his childhood, but Keith managed to keep him interested *cough* motivated *cough* enough to get passing grades.
But back to the matter at hand, Keith had been well informed that Genesis had resurfaced, and the Council were appealing to him to deal with the dramatic and irritating troll before he caused things to go way out of hand. More or less Sephiroth knew that Keith would take them up on the offer, as it was better to deal with it sooner than later, because Genesis would surely drag this out for a while unless he was stopped before he came up with more ideas.
Genesis was like a rolling stone, you had to stop it before it gained momentum, and right now Genesis certainly was on the tip of gaining that momentum.
But first, they had to find him.
-o0o-
Keith both loved and hated Genesis.
It was fun to watch the chaos the man created, but at the same time that meant when Genesis started causing trouble, Keith would have to deal with it. Which was something that he really didn't want to deal with because most of the time he was with Omael making discoveries or experimenting in another country.
Both he and Omael had a tendency of becoming wayyyy too focused and obsessed over whatever project they decided to devote their time to, the tunnel vision was a bad habit they both had to address. So every other time Genesis had gotten up to some mischief, he and Omael had been too distracted to answer any calls from the immortal community who were practically begging both of them to come and help out with the problem that was 'Dave the Fucking Troll'.
This time Genesis was some new and popular author, writing some angsty fantasy series full of heartbreak and complicated love triangles, a rivalry between three friends (which certainly was the type that Genesis would write), and a tear wrenching plot that would appeal to most audiences.
Keith had yet to have a look at the books, as he had read some of Genesis' drafts before when he was making up stories for the Greeks and Romans, he knew the man's work was good, but to reduce a large amount of the readers to cry?
That was a feat that Genesis hadn't been able to achieve before.
Perhaps he should grab a copy and see what the fuss was all about.
Zack was more than happy to pass him a copy, Keith had recently been in contact with the Puppy who was making a name for himself in his editorial department, so it shouldn't be too hard to get a copy free of charge.
In hindsight, Zack really shouldn't have given him that copy.
-o0o-
A/N: Hey guys! Sorry for being a hermit for so long, I had a few weeks were I had to steamroll out an essay per week, and then exams happened. I'm currently on my break, so I'll be trying to update what I can, although it may be slow as I'm starting to get into a routine of taking a run every other day (because my stamina sucks and my younger self would be horrified to find out I rather stay inside than enjoy the sun).
Hope you enjoyed, and I'll try to pick up the pace again!
LiulfrLokison out! :3