I'm a lazy idiot. And I've also lost track of my plot map for this fic…damn. I've still got it vaguely in my head, but…grr.
And I realized how hideously the last chapter was written. (cringe) Let's see if I do any better with this one…
Trunks is here. Sorry 'bout that. Take note, Trunks is NOT the good guy. More on his status in the end-notes. I didn't pick the name Holly because I like it.
Coming in the next chapter: Things actually get started! Yay!
"We only take cash," I snapped coldly, peering up at the hard-looking woman with a barely interested expression.
"What the hell do you mean you only take cash! It says right there on that sign you take checks!" the woman shrieked, pointing one claw of a fingernail at a tarnished, crooked sign above my head on the wall.
I leaned back in the chair and grabbed the offending square of aluminum off the wall, crushed it, and dropped it into the trashcan underneath Raymond's desk.
"We don't anymore," I sneered icily.
The woman's malevolent glare was laughable in its attempt to intimidate me. My sister, on a good day, could have done better.
"Bunch of fucking assholes!" she snapped, performed a near perfect about-face on a stiletto heel, and marched out the door, and slammed it behind her.
I smirked.
Raymond's days off could be amusing.
"Who was that?" Louis asked, and walked into the office, cleaning oil from his hands with a rag.
"What do you think?"
Louis shrugged.
"Hey, have you talked to that Avery chick lately?"
I stiffened.
"No."
In fact, it had been several days since I'd last seen her or the miserable brat. I was enjoying that.
"…You really need to get laid, man."
What the hell?
"…No, I don't."
Louis regarded me critically with his one eye for a few moments.
"…You're a fag," he declared flatly, as if in a moment of epiphanic realization.
It was almost like he tried to get me to kill him.
"You're on the clock, Louis," I hissed dangerously. "Get out of my sight!"
Louis, completely unaffected, shrugged.
"You really should. It'd do wonders for the stick up your ass."
I remained silent, peering at the human with a look that could kill.
"Get back to work!"
Louis raised his arm in a mock salute and snapped his heels together.
"Yes, sir!" he bleated, and walked off laughing.
Stupid human, I thought, my lips curling into a snarl. I glanced at the clock on the wall, which read 1:48PM. I had only been half-lying to the whore--we took checks, but only when we knew they wouldn't bounce.
Bored, I stood up from the chair and stalked into the garage.
"He's probably gay," Louis was saying, obviously without the knowledge I stood ten feet behind him. Louis was bent over underneath a hood, working on God knows what with the engine of a black SUV. "But I ain't sure. I'm gonna try to hook him up."
I balked suddenly, and Joe, who was across the opened hood, also working on the same engine, caught sight of me and went still, quite surprised. Then shook it off as a conspiring smile spread over his face.
"With who? This Avery chick?"
"Yeah, I just gotta find out where she lives." Louis reached in a little farther. "Hang on, I jus' gotta go get a rag or something…"
He stood up, and turned around--and then let out a rather unmanly yelp.
"Uh…Juunana! Didn't see you standing there!" He grinned stupidly.
My arms crossed, I fixed him with a cool glare; one which in an earlier life of mine had caused a certain purple haired brat to piss his pants. Louis swallowed nervously and sweat trickled down his throat.
"Hey, man…you got to admit, she ain't half bad, and you're gonna die a virgin if som'n doesn't happen pretty soon…"
How did I miss this idiot! He's not smart enough to get out of the way of a ki blast!
My eyes rolled skyward and I let out a sharp snort of derision.
"Stay the hell out of it," I snarled icily, causing everyone but Louis' faces to pale to white. It wasn't often I was actually angry, and I had no compunction against killing.
"You're red, man!" he crowed, and pointed at me, grinning some more.
"Louis, shut the hell up!" Vincent suddenly shouted, and stepped between Louis and I.
Omar had come to stand at the doorway, watching me with a cool, observing expression. Joe was rigid, like he was waiting for the cue to run like hell.
It took Louis a moment to realize Vincent was dead serious, and he backed off with a fairly confused expression.
"Hey, man…I'm sorry," he offered. On some level, the human actually thought I was his friend.
Ignorant fool.
"Finish your job," I snarled curtly, and marched out of the garage, my back completely rigid. Without saying a word, I went outside and walked to the edge of the lot, where I leaned against a lamppost.
I let out a long sigh I hadn't been aware I'd been holding. I lifted my eyes and glanced down the street, between the double rows of brown bricked apartment buildings, at the mass of brightly colored preparations for the anniversary parade. It was scheduled to begin there, and end in front of the town hall.
Overhead, the thunder rumbled softly, threatening another rain.
"How come I have to learn this stuff? You never went to school!" David demanded, eyeing Avery's hand, which held down a math book, and weighing the different outcomes of stabbing her with his sharpened pencil. He sat on the floor, bending over the coffee table.
"Cause of the androids," she growled out. "I'm too old to get into school again, and I don't have time for it, anyway."
He stared at her mutinously.
"Now, shut up and practice this stuff."
Avery edged away from the table, eyeing the open book with a suspicious, almost hostile expression. About all she knew how to do was to keep a stranglehold on the finances, and most other kinds of practical math. If asked about things like derivatives or integrations, her dark eyes would glaze over and she might ask if you had been drinking recently.
David, for his part, was a clever boy, quite capable of teaching himself when he had been pinned down and forced into it.
"What's the point? I'm not gonna live long enough for it to matter." He tapped the eraser on the table, glaring at the equations.
"They say half of healing's in the head," she sighed, her voice bitter and tired. "Would you shut up and just do it, already!"
David's retort stuck on his tongue. There were times to press Avery, and times when it wasn't wise. For the past few days, she had been especially tense and angry, since she had returned early that one morning, shot and exhausted. He lowered his head and began to work on the problems.
While Avery's attention to his education tended to come in waves, he knew he was already more book-smart than she. What Avery knew only extended to her immediate range of experiences. She knew all about how to survive without anything but her wits to guide her, but she would have walked right out of a classroom.
It was a sensitive point for her, and the eighteen year old had found herself in multiple situations where she had completely embarrassed herself due to this lack in education. While she considered it a personal mission to somehow ingrain knowledge into David's head, she was far too proud to sit down and learn with him. If it had to do with history, then there was a chance she would, but nothing else interested her.
"…How is it?" David asked, referring directly to the injury that kept Avery flinching at every turn.
"It's better," she said softly. "Are you working or looking for a way to avoid it?"
"I'm just asking," he shot back quickly, and wondered how in the world there could be negative numbers as well as positive ones. They seemed redundant.
Ah, but he was skipping ahead.
"Do you want spaghetti, or pizza, tonight?" Avery asked.
It was the middle of the afternoon, and the two had been under a tenuous, fragile truce since that morning when David hyperventilated after trying to shout Avery out of her sulking mood.
"I don't care," David replied shortly.
"Pizza then, I'm fucking tired of pasta," she said succinctly.
David mumbled something to an affirmative effect, and then lost himself in his math work.
Avery, who had busied herself with cleaning the apartment and fumigating it, went back to hand washing the dishes.
She grimaced as the caked, rock-hard remnants of lasagna came loose and drifted away in the water.
Her problems were only temporarily kept at bay, and she had sacrificed her complete autonomy from the syndicates to do it. Most people in Halgrove had some connection to the yakuza, and she had done her best to avoid it. They were dangerous things to get mixed up in, and while Avery was by no means an easy target, she stood no chance against a syndicate backlash.
She had faith that Langdon wouldn't betray her, and it wasn't Langdon she was worried about. As an outsider, she was fair game for retribution, and mouths talked.
Then there's Juunana to worry about, I hope they don't go after him…not to mention David, as well.
The guilt she felt at getting them mixed up in it was painful. If either of them were to be killed by the syndicates…
Avery shook her head, trying not to think such unpleasant thoughts. Her left arm throbbed painfully, and she flinched, but said nothing.
Outside, the rain began to fall, slowly.
"She's an audacious bitch," the black haired man snapped, leaning back in the chair with his feet up on the table. The fine black leather footwear gleamed, almost reflecting their owner's fat, corpulent face near the toes. He wore a suit of inky black, and a crisp white shirt.
"That's enough out of you," said Eris, a tall man with graying brown hair, and rimless spectacles. He despised his subordinate. "And get your fucking feet off my table. You'll get dog shit on it." Eris looked, for lack of a better term, like an pencil-nosed office clerk turned yakuza boss.
He was an unlikely one for the job, possessing no taste for pomp or circumstance, or even fine footwear, though he could have afforded a mountain of poncy shoes. He was, instead, a calculating, cruel, and vicious man, who thought before he leapt. Those qualities were what earned him his place as head of the White Snake syndicate.
"There's more to this than what meets the eye," Eris stated flatly, feeling perfectly safe telling Morgan, the fat man, what was on his mind even though he knew that there were ten different ways Morgan's pockets were being lined on the side. "And revenge has its place. But for now, we'll wait."
Morgan's glassy eyes widened in irritation, but made no protest. Eris was famous for his seemingly pointless and stupid actions--which later turned out to not be so stupid or pointless at all. He would wait, too.
"Get out," Eris snapped coldly, and Morgan trundled out of the office.
For a man of Eris' stature, his office was small but well appointed with an ebony desk, with a comfortable black leather swivel seat sitting behind it. In front sat two black chairs, not quite as comfortable as Eris', but decent. There was a potted plant in the corner. Two sides of the room were entirely made of glass, and there were ceiling-to-floor blinds that cut the light to a minimum. A sofa sat on one side, but otherwise there was nothing except for the materials on his desk and a painting hung on the wall of a mountain in the Northern range.
It had started to rain, and the already muted light from the half-opened shades had grown dimmer.
There was something strange about last night, something for which Eris had no explanation, and he meant to discover what it was before stupidly plodding ahead with the thought of killing that girl, Aubry, or whatever her name was. He would have to tread carefully, on two fronts, to bring this to a closure. He could not have other organizations getting the impression of weakness.
Throwing a glance at the closed door, Eris went and stood next to the window, and pulled down a slat of the blinds. The parade was shaping up quite nicely, he noted.
It was a happy day in the Western Capitol for one Trunks Briefs. There was no sign of the rain troubling the eastern half of the world, and the sun shone brightly over a clear day.
"You will?" he breathed, absolutely thrilled, as the pretty young woman sitting across the table blushed bright red and giggled.
"Of course!" she said, and leaned forward, smiling happily. "Of course I'll marry you!"
After returning from the past, and killing both the androids and Cell, Trunks had set about helping to rebuild his world. Using Capsule Corp.'s resources, which were still considerably vast, especially considering the Apocalyptic hell the world had just emerged from, they had made fast progress.
Trunks, used only to hiding and fighting for survival, had at first been very uncomfortable in his diplomatic role as Vice President. He quickly adapted, and was fast learning from his mother's business examples.
On an excursion to Pepper City, he had met a friendly, cheerful girl named Holly, and things went from there. Some might say their relationship had moved far too quickly, but Trunks didn't make any decision without thinking it through as deeply as any other man.
His mother would be thrilled; Bulma liked the brown haired young lady quite a bit.
The restaurant was a newly built one, part of the effort to repopulate the Western Capitol after the city's population had been virtually exterminated by the androids very near to the beginning of their reign of terror.
It was brightly lit, with crème colored tablecloths and china on the table. The dining area was a large circular room, centered around a fountain in which a dancing cherubim poured water out of a jug; and a row of flowers lined the outer edge of the fountain's sides. The curved walls depicted the countryside on a beautiful day, and the large skylight overhead was made of clear glass, giving the diners a good view of the sky above.
The waiter overheard the proposal, and in a few minutes returned, smiling, with a piece of chocolate cake and a lit candle stuck in it.
Trunks grinned, color rising to his cheeks, and Holly laughed and turned bright red.
"Oh, this is wonderful! Thank you!" Holly said, smiling happily at the waiter. She turned to Trunks. "This is great!"
The two of them finished their meal, paid, and tipped the waiter generously. They walked out of the restaurant laughing, towards the new, partially built headquarters of Capsule Corporation.
It never once entered the lavender haired young man's head that he would be dragged back into old blood in a matter of days.
I have stolen the name "Holly" from my friend's old roommate, whose nickname was "Hollymonster." She's quite condescending in later chapters, though you can't tell from her introduction.
Yes, I'm having fun depicting Trunks as I am. I'm not very good at it, but he's supposed to come off as arrogant and high-handed. Maybe I just haven't written enough of him, yet, to get that across. You're not supposed to like Holly, either.
Eris is evil, he is not pleasant and he's not a "good guy." Expect no mercy or pity from him.
We're still getting into the meat of the story, so stick with me, please!
Nekogurl: Thank you very much! 17's a neglected character…most people think he's a girl at first…Oy. Lol, thank you for your review.
Jess: Thank ya kindly!
Bishi-gojyo: Hoo, boy. Avery and Juunana relationship-wise? Yeah, someone's going to get shot at, along the line. (laughs)
Dacheran: I had meant it more along the lines of "He has certain prescribed pre-dictations about the way a human should act," than anything else. Sorry if that wasn't put through very well, heh. Don't worry about Trunks' appearance, he's not the protagonist in this story. I've always tended to think of the "Z-senshi" as being over-righteous on some level, so this is where I'm going to explore those thoughts of mine, heehee. And I think with 17 slipping every now and then…well, we all know how he loves games, lol. That's just one more that he plays, with death. Nah, you don't need to keep your keyboard shut at all! I like hearing nice feedback. You haven't seen any of those fics? Heh, feel blessed, lol.