They had found the perfect target. Or rather, Cato found the girl leaning stiff against the sooty wall with the air of someone with more than a few cups over her limit. She was rather easy to see, even in the dim nighttime, in her gaudy chartreuse-
"Ligh' yellowish green, Cato, and cut 'e drama."
"Killjoy."
Point was there was a girl – young woman more like – eyes closed and back to a tavern wall. Not a particularly shady tavern, but a tavern nonetheless. At her feet several scraps of fine parchment pooled, along with some debris from the non-stop frolicking from the building she was resting against. Her eyes were slightly glassed over; hands held almost in a self-embrace and tinged a pale, pale blue.
Cato looked her over, while Raoul voiced over several complaints – "She ain' pretty li' ee others, paler 'n dead people, she's… I've a better ches' 'an her, I tell you… gnome-sized, could fit her in m'pockets…" True, she was plain for a girl – sort of wide-set eyes, a large nose and lips slimmer than Raoul's close-to-skeletal fingers. Shoulders fit for the odd epicene boy or two, and a lack of hips that the dress failed to disguise. Large hands, where her pallor mingled with the bluish tinge in such a way it might have passed as natural. A thick ring hung on her right hand thumb with a hollow for a gemstone that was currently beaming up from the ground along a long golden-orange hair ribbon and some strands of long-for-a-boy sickly blonde hair. The items he picks up – he might need them later, and it makes it look as if she just walked away without a hitch.
It looks to be a match for her. Good – Cato dislikes the girls who can't hold their own ground, Raoul won't stand for someone too passive either. He is picking her up now, and Cato watches the back of the blonde's head bob nervously along with the enthusiastic words from his friend's mouth. Cato would also act that way, he supposed, if the bulky guy with a thick salt-and-pepper beard began rattling off at high speed and loud volume about his 'nice little place, an' how 'bout you come with me, I'll show y', barely a couple block-thingamajigs from this here tavern…'. Raoul waves one hand in dramatic motion, almost managing to threaten the smaller figure. To her credit, she remained calm, nodding along the conversation.
Although, if the awkward swaying is an indicator, she might have had too much to drink and simply isn't registering the cheerful banter as she is led off through more streets and alleys than either of them can count. Raoul has wrapped one of his arms around her waist, Cato has her shoulders and she holds them in much the same manner. Up close, she is still unassuming, though Cato can catch a hint of smudged make-up and a snarl or two in her short hair.
Talking all the way, she is delivered to what looks like a run-down manor, complete with dried up ivy meandering up the walls and broken windowpanes. Raoul mutters something apologetic, then booms out in tones that still astound Cato:
"Hey! Grigori! Get yo'-"
"Careful with the vulgarities, we do have a most charming lady here!"
She nods in quiet assent, gaze focused intently on the weed-spotted ground.
"Fast then! It's un-nice-ly to keep a lady waitin' ou' on the col'!"
Cato rolls his eyes, then stage-whispers to the girl leaning now on his chest.
"Don't worry he's always like this but he's the most kind man this side of Brill, you'll see."
Right now, the bulky man may certainly look the part, holding the wide double-door open with his right hand and beckoning them in with his left, even pausing to brush his coarse lips against her hand and wink at Cato.
"Ah, so the Casanova makes his move?"
"Y'be the cas'nova, I jus' like flirtin' wi' m'lady."
Cato shrugs then bumbles through an apology to the girl still pressed against him. Both men escort her through a couple of halls, in eerie quiet.
Another man meets up with the group, frazzled and bespectacled, the lenses amplifying his eyes to fly-like proportions. He wears a patched and stained lab coat and wields a pair of test-tube tongs as if they were adhered to his hand.
"Such fine company you keep now… ah, so unlike the old days…"
Raoul snickers, earning him a glare from Cato and a bemused hazy stare from the girl on his arms. Between the two of them, they set her on a sterilized surface, fixing her arms down from her chest and taking the time to smooth her hair.
She still wears the bemused stare from under the closed translucent lids, rich light brown eyes just looking forwards. Grigori leans over her, pushing the eyelids back with a bony finger and eyeing the detail in the front and center of the chartreuse-
"Ligh' yellowy green, tol' you a'ready!"
"Tsk, a proper lady like to have the exact shade of her gown noticed, Raoul… I once left with two beauties hooked on my every word after telling them the exact shade of red they were wearing…"
"Is she workable?"
"Oh yes, most useful. See the cyanotic markings on her hands? A most intriguing mixture of ice and arcane magical residue… pity they don't seem to be of much aid to this most charming lady, no offense meant…"
Grigori fiddles with the hems of the sleeves (torn, bloodied, orange-on-green), the details of the gown, the intricacies of joints and the (common, so common) pallor. Declaring her 'most vivacious', he turned to a table laden with assorted tools of the scientific trade.
"Now, which of you chaps will be doing the honors today…?"
"M'turn!"
"It most certainly isn't, Raoul Azemandias, you had the honors of Jorys!"
"An' you had Amanda's, Mirlecia's, Alphonsines-es, Lorphelias-es! 'side Jorys wassa boy. Doesn' count."
"Well then, need I mention the time I ended stuck with Elphias? Adelbert? Or when you got that beauty, whatdjamacaller… Gabriella? And-or Delicia?"
"Meh, las' year-"
"Month-"
"Or so. Y'allays ge' 'em fine lassies 'nyways…"
"Grigori, I get the honors."
"Some pansy called mista' Whitborough b'getting 'em honors, shmonors…"
He got handed an odd vial, a glob of gel squirted on his open palm, a slim blade barely caught between his fingers. He actually dropped it, hearing it clack and clatter on the stony ground over quiet sniggers and tsking noises. Another got sent his way, in a much milder way.
Striding over calmly to the lady prone on the table, Cato mumbles some words that sound like they are reassuring. Probably nonsensical or whimsical or at least ending in –cal sounds.
He slices down the middle of the dress, and notes the way that the blade cuts crisply through instead of feeling more like meat. A look at Grigori and he somehow signs 'frozen' to him. A magical backfire, perhaps, or a fight against a stronger mage.
Well, considering her location, he wouldn't have dismissed any of those or other less savory options.
There is a small patina of frost even to her insides, grayish red and overly liquid. He applies the goop, face falling slightly. This is the bit that he hates of the honors, the spreading of medical restoring gel to organs that are (mercifully) in the beginning stages of putrefaction. Raoul looks over interested – at the exposed flat chest or the freshly-coated innards, Cato doesn't know.
This method is much slower than the new val'kyrs and such methods, but it is a surer method for the more isolated regions, or those perilously close to other settlements. The town they picked her up from hasn't even noticed the doings of the people in this grand house, and they live here, whereas everyone in this place rotates in and out.
Next step is the contents of the vial. Cato lets a long plume drip from it, then hurriedly makes zigzagging motions over the closed slit in her chest. It solidifies into something of a web, solid and raised along the scar.
She won't heal from it, after all.
"Catch"
Another vial comes to his hands, to be imbibed by the girl as she finishes waking up. For now, the table where she has been laid upon whirrs. Needles probe out from its sides, jabbing hungrily at the air. A shimmering barrier is set up, and the metallic appendages make a sickly sky-blue mist flow over the girl's body.
It is a most delicate process, a balance of magic, science and chance. She looks healthy enough to endure it – from Raoul's accounts, he was found in a similar state.
The mist finishes fading inside the girl, and she is apparently struggling to…
Blink?
An unusual first action, but he's seen weirder. Raoul claims he whistled at the pretty assistant, Grigori tells him his first action was an obscene word whispered loud enough.
The girl sits up, looking as dazed as any alcohol-blitzed girl should look like save for the amber gleam to her eyes that simply isn't human, or the rip in her dress decorated by a scar.
"Be welcomed again to the world of the living…" A quick check to the items he picked up, a piece of crumpled parchment "… Regina… Luwis? Well, that's your name; I suppose… there are about three in here. Never mind, Regina dearest. You might not remember."
"'Course she minds, 'ts 'er name y' talkin'bout. I don' wanna be named som'ting like… dunno, Isalbert or Demian or Cato-"
"They do sound awful, those names."
"Ah, so the lady speaks. It pains me to hear you think so lowly of my name, Miss Regina. I am Cato, the uncouth oaf in the sofa is Raoul."
"No kind words about he who…?"
"The scientist is Grigori, mortician in turn. As I was saying, be welcomed again to the world of the living. Such wonders await the not-truly dead…"
The face on the newest members is priceless, and the usual squabble for the tell-tale signs of life is one of the most entertaining shows-
Wrist. Neck. Chest. Hands. Shoulders. The last always rot off soon – or are gnawed off by the rats. She could hide it in long sleeves if she so pleased.
A snap of her fingers, a flickering blade of snow.
"Well, at least that's alright… mister Cato."
"Pleasure. Will you take a stroll on the grounds…?"
At a later time in the day, Cato receives a newspaper from a town crier, who proclaims in the loud tone of someone with good gossip that a girl has gone missing.
Sure enough, it's a picture of Regina in the frame, but…
"Oh my, I do seem to have made a most grievous mistake… ah well, that girl is quite dead anyhow."
A.N. – yes, this is merely a one-shot… still, just got a random idea. Can't really believe that the only guys risen by the undead come all from the same zone et cetera, and much less all from battlefields (even though there are many…)
That said, thanks for reading!