Kagura and Mio giggle as Zett shoots Tokatti a warning glare.
"Don't mess them up," he intones in his best Emperor of Darkness voice. Tokatti looks slightly more nervous before but still reaches over and starts separating the hair at Zett's right temple for braiding. The girls have finished the other side, and now it's his turn to show how well he's learned what the girls have been teaching him. Kagura's usual pigtails have been let down and braided on either side by and the fact that the two were accomplished by different sets of hands is not too overt. So if Tokatti can manage to keep his wits about him, he may survive the evening after all.
Right smiles fondly and brushes a stray strand of ebony hair behind Zett's other ear. The strand of hair has escaped the combs holding the left half of Zett's hair swept back away from his face. The comb secures the ends of the braids Mio and Kagura have just finished, its complicated filigree of wrought silver encrusted with small glittering gems were truly fit for an emperor. Right holds its mate ready in his other hand.
Zett often keeps his hair up in combs now, twined into complicated braids that are both held by the ornamental combs, and help give them something to stick in. Right wonders if it's simply because he never thought to wear them before, or if it was just that there was no one to offer to braid his hair for them. The extraordinary combs are a world away from the one that Right first slid into place what feels like a lifetime ago. That had been a simple plastic comb, snatched from Kagura's open play-jewelry box.
Then and now, the ToQgers were hosting a sleepover on the rainbow line, as they often did since the war with the Shadow Line had finally ended. Also as usual, since then, they invited Zett. Inviting Zett served a purpose that was three-fold. Firstly it served to reinforce the truce with the shadow line to make nice with their emperor. Secondly, having Zett around meant that Akira wouldn't be the only shadow. It was a little like when Kagura and Mio invited Hikari along that one time they took Tokatti shopping with them - so that he wouldn't be the only guy- or so Kagura says anyway. Thirdly, and finally, if Zett is with them then he isn't sitting all alone in the darkness of the empty castle. It's apparently something he's found himself doing a lot lately since most of his generals are dead, though still not nearly as much as he did before when he lived in the deep darkness.
With the most zealous shadows dead, Zett's command for peace has gone largely unchallenged. The shadows have stayed in their homes at the edge of the deep darkness living off the natural, daily strife of humanity as they had before, their ambitions of conquest at least temporarily defeated. Zett remains, alone in the castle except for the couriers and delegates who pass through, delivering news or seeking an imperial decree on some matter. They rarely stay the night, and even the cleaning staff keep religiously to themselves and by nature of their station carefully avoid interaction with the emperor.
It took some time, but ultimately this came to the ToQgers' attention. They had invited Zett to a picnic lunch. The invitation was slightly formal, sent by rainbow line post. The small car fired into the darkness the same way they had sent letters to the ToQgers family when Piladies Shore was still swallowed by darkness.
They were hosting a picnic in (somewhat arbitrary) celebration of the two week anniversary of the truce (Wago insisted on a party and no one could deny her). The spot was carefully chosen, at the edge of a forest clearing where the sun shone warm and golden on the grass, but with the blankets spread thoughtfully in the shade of the broad-leafed trees to accommodate their guest.
Hikari, ever the most observant, notices the red blisters on the emperor's hands during the meal when the shadow reaches to take a juice box from Mio, fingering it gingerly. Favoring discretion, Hikari waits until the others were distracted by Tokatti accidentally putting his hand in a plate of devilled eggs when he goes to take his own. He leans over and mutters his observation to Right - who lacking any sort of subtlety whatsoever, promptly blurts them back out to everyone in the form of a question.
"What happened to your hands Zett?"
Zett looks slightly taken aback, reflexively turning over his hands to look and inadvertently revealing the red marks there to everyone else at the blanket. Under other circumstances he might have cooly deflected or declined to answer. But given his present political situation, and the several pairs of questioning eyes currently pinned on him, he feels that perhaps it would be prudent to answer.
"Your invitation," he says simply, shifting his obsidian gaze to Tokatti as he speaks because he knows it unnerves him, and that is a small amount of power Zett can still revel in.
"W- What do you mean?" Tokatti stutters and Zett is mildly impressed that he manages as much, though he doesn't show it.
"The little train car you sent?" The ToQgers all nod, following so far. "It burned me." Zett's expression twists ever so slightly, with what might have been sheepishness from anyone else. "It was very…" he searches for the right word for a moment. "... bright... when it arrived in the throne room. Eventually the castle's darkness would have… cooled it down, I suppose, but…" here he trails off and shrugs, an elegant roll of the shoulders, and drops his gaze from Tokatti.
Zett mostly misses the horrified looks shared universally between the ToQgers, occupied as he is with experimentally flexing the bendy straw in his juice box. When gentle hands take his wrist he jumps slightly, and nearly snatches his arm back in reflex. Kagura is examining the blisters which mark his palms and the pads of his fingers, her brow furrowed with concern.
"We're really sorry Zett, we didn't know the mail car would hurt you. If we'd known that we would have sent Akira with the drill car or something!" Right says with the sort of conviction Zett has only previously heard during battle when the red ToQger was declaring that he'd win. Zett is shocked by the apology, and uncertain what to do about it. The only time people apologize on the Shadow Line is usually when they've screwed up and are groveling for his forgiveness, and that's just because they're hoping to spare their worthless skins from his wrath. He is equally unprepared for the flurry of questions that follow, and finds himself answering them automatically.
He's emperor, doesn't he have people that read his mail for him? They're all gone.
Where are they? With the other shadows.
He can't be all alone in the castle, though right? Pretty much.
They insist on treating his hands, dabbing ointment on the red places and bandaging the worst places that have blistered slightly. This sort of care and concern are so deeply foreign to Zett that he finds himself sitting compliantly, puzzling over it all. The ToQgers for their part, silently contemplate the fact that Zett's arrival at the picnic means that he must have opened their invitation even as it burned him - that he has come to sit amongst his enemies, who for all he knew, hurt him intentionally, and did so as if it were nothing.
After that the invitations come more regularly, and it is Akira who comes to hand deliver them, adding postman to the steadily growing list of jobs he's held. The stationary still sparkles, and Zett can feel it tingle beneath his fingertips, but unlike the mail car, which had been energized and shot out of Rainbow Line weapons, it's harmless.
Zett goes on picnics and sleepovers, and sometimes movies, and evening festivals with the ToQgers, and all manner of other things. Perhaps as emperor he should be spending more time worrying about the affairs of the shadow line, and less eating popcorn and having his hair braided by nimble fingers. Nonetheless though, Zett grants audience in sable braids and glinting silver combs. And in that form he wears the kindness and the care of others like the crown he could, but never asked for and so has never chosen to wear.