A/N: I listened to Mercy by Alberta Cross ONE time and before I knew it it'd got dark out and I was 1.5k deep. Defoe looks kind of like this (but a little younger).
Four of the languages referenced are Russian, Italian, French, and Latin, and the last is either Czech or English but I'm sooooo indecisive.
"Pyotr Modestevich Defoe,"
Metz looks up from the paperwork to address the young man currently sat in his office. He can't be much older than 25. His mousey hair falls straight around his face and skims the breast pocket of a battered grey combat jacket. He's giving Metz a strained look over the rim of his tinted glasses, posture suggesting a developing back problem.
"Just Defoe is fine. Thanks."
Defoe fidgets with the hem of his jacket and diverts his attention to the papers that Metz has been absently flipping through. The neatly printed subheadings make his own spiky cursive look even more awkward than normal. He'd filled everything out as best he could, an estranged family and net-0 friend count didn't leave a lot of options when it came to outside points of contact.
He'd noted that - on top of his seeker abilities - he could speak five languages, and that he was a decently skilled chemist.
In his head, his own claims were ridiculous. Mixing experimental salves and homebrew toxins in a garage lab hardly constituted him "being a chemist", but he'd take stretching the truth over never getting another opportunity to make something meaningful of himself.
Really, the whole situation was ridiculous.
If he'd been asked a few days prior if he thought he was going to be scouted to join a covert society of seekers operating out of his home city he would've laughed.
Well. That was then.
It had been by accident, really.
He'd only been trying to run a few errands. It should've been quick, should've been easy. Had he not taken several wrong turns that might've even rang true, but the situation he found himself in was quite different to how he imagined his day going. While in his confusion (and his not looking where he was going), he'd turned into a backstreet and ran headfirst into half of a rather ugly argument between a young woman, perhaps his age, red faced from crying; and a much angrier, physically imposing man, who had until they'd collided been hurling names and curses and gods know what in her direction. Were he any more nihilistic, he might've tried to calm the situation enough to flee, but seeing it laid so bare before him twisted something in his gut.
He didn't often like putting himself in the line of fire, least of all for other people. He drew the line at this.
The man turns and looks at him like he's just been spat on, lips pulled back into a teeth-baring sneer. Defoe snaps.
"Wh- what do you think you're doing?" His confidence swells to a point where he doesn't feel like he's ever been a coward in his life, "-leave her the fuck alone."
The man's face twists in genuine surprise, if only at the thought of being physically threatened by someone who should have no business doing so.
He laughs in Defoe's face.
"Oh, yeah? Leave the bitch alone?" He gesticulates wildly at the girl and then grabs Defoe by the collar, easily manoeuvring him into a more prone position, "What's it to you what I fucking say to her, eh?"
Defoe fights to keep his hands at his sides, power springing to life in balled up fists that want nothing more than to close around the man's neck.
"I just think that- gh- men like you- ach-"
He stumbles, jerked forward by the shirt,
"-you're fucking pathetic."
Defoe's hands explode, trapping the man in a crackling violet Jacob's ladder. The girl squeaks and runs, and Defoe is silently relieved at having one less thing to worry about. The man groans in pain, bare skin fried in the lightning, but he doesn't back off. Defoe reasons he might actually be more angry than before, and reacting out of time feels his world turn a hard 90° to slam against the floor.
His attacker towers over him.
He drops to a knee with intent to keep beating Defoe senseless, but the impact of his fist goes straight through to the concrete. He howls in broken fingers and tries to work out what just happened. Defoe's body flickers where the man's knee sits, half inside his chest in a grotesque mirage. Defoe halfheartedly tries to scramble his way clear through his slipstream but still isn't fast enough to get out of reach. The man grabs him by the ankle with his good hand, tripping him, forcing him to his knees. His amulet bounces forward out of the confines of his jacket.
In this moment, Defoe panics.
With barely a touch and nary a word, Kreutalk manifests. The hideous, leathery, bat-ray-thing is on his assailant almost immediately, drooling acid and holding him three foot off the ground. He flips himself over, ignoring his jarred ankle and watches as his titan sinks tooth and claw into the man's arm.
"Kreutalk! STOP, KREUTALK-"
Kreutalk is not listening. He tears a chunk out of his bicep. The man's writhing, Defoe thinks, is uncannily insectoid. He picks himself up, wincing over the welt on his head and the twinge in his foot.
No. No, no, no.
This was not the plan.
Defoe hurls a boltflare at Kreutalk, who screeches and drops the bloodied and very-much-passed-out man to the ground. The titan turns to its master and flies toward him in a rage. Defoe throws up an honourguard, tripping over himself and skittering backwards,
"Kreutalk, please! Stop! Please!"
The more he backs into the wall, the closer the pteroray is to melting through his shield.
"Enough! ENOUGH!"
Defoe practically screams. His head feels like a bomb's hit it. His will clearly wins out, because Kreutalk recalls; sucked into its amulet like a ghost. Defoe drops his shield and lays there in tears he didn't know had started coming.
He sits forward, tries to get a better angle on the situation. He pulls the leg of his cargo jeans over his bad ankle and attempts to concentrate enough energy into a half hearted everfight to reverse some of the bruising. It never comes.
He stares at the downed man. He can't even comprehend what he's supposed to do with him. Despicable or not, leaving a casualty - a casualty he created - to bleed out in a back alley seems such a cruel fate. He forces himself to look and lets out a sob, and stares back at his hands fruitlessly.
He's really has never been any good at healing spells.
The tone whistling out of the radar suddenly pitches up dramatically.
"Whoa- Ok, hold on,"
Even to an outside observer, the setup in the room is bare bones. Piles of books and vellum are stacked high in odd positions on and around a beaten up wooden table, which seems also houses a heavily modified Holotome; too many wires, things sticking out of it that seem unlikely to actually do anything useful. It looks like a marvel that it works to begin with. In the hollow inside the paper fortress a man sits, taking notes and readings off the hologramatic screen. He's blonde, with a moustache and distinctly sharp features.
He jerks forward at the fluctuating squeal, scrambling for the Holotome.
That's odd.
That's very odd.
He picks up the phone and punches in some numbers, setting the reciever to his ear,
"Hi, yes, it's me- Listen, do you know who's fielded today?"
The response seems to stir something in him because he jumps out of his chair, phone in hand, knocking an empty glass onto the floor in his fervour,
"Then this can only mean..!"
The man throws the handset back down and pulls on a jacket, turning on his heel to run out of the door.
"Grazie, Metz!"
Defoe barely recognises when the footsteps approach him. He's still slumped against the wall, but at least he's stopped crying.
He feels a hand on his shoulder and instinctively recoils into a defensive position. He notices there's a slightly older looking blonde man peering down at him, slightly hunched over, arm still outstretched where he'd been shrugged off. When Defoe goes to speak it comes out more like a croak,
"I- euh- Who are you?"
"Who I am doesn't matter," The man crouches down to his level, "I'm more concerned with who you are."
Defoe doesn't say anything. Better to keep his mouth shut for now than risk making this more trouble than it's worth. The mystery man huffs slightly and turns to the rest of the scene in front of him. He whistles sarcastically.
"Did you do this?"
"No." Defoe spits it out a little too fast, and the blonde man gives him a knowing look. He can only watch as the man places a hand square in the middle of his chest and whispers something. His hands glow hot and orange and Defoe is enveloped in light and then he realises what this is, face stricken with awe and fear and wonder; he's just like him. By some sick miracle, he's just like him. He almost wants to cry again.
"Look, I'm just going to patch you up. If your readings were impactful enough to throw the radar off then you must be doing something-" The man pauses and takes a better look at his amulet, "Ah... I see... That would explain, well, this..."
He doesn't seem to be talking to Defoe so much as to himself (or perhaps through him). Defoe feels sick at the thought Kreutalk getting back out but he swallows the fear in the moment and just nods.
"We can deal with-" he gestures again "-this; but if you'll allow me, I have somewhere I'd like to take you."
He reassuredly pats Defoe's arm.
"You'll like it."
"Forgive me sir, my, uh," Defoe falters in his sudden reminiscing, looking at the patched together forms strewn about the desk and suddenly feeling very out of place, "my references aren't exactly... recent. Or substantial at all, actually. But I swear, I will do everything in my power not to fail you. I only ask that you give me a chance." He nods at his last point, a reassurance more for himself than to put Metz' mind at ease.
"Pyotr- Defoe. Please. I appreciate your being straightforward, but you don't have to be so formal," Metz gestures empathically, "The Huntik Foundation is a coalition of minds working together to further a common goal. We work-"
In saying this, Metz stands up to gesture to the complex tapestry on the wall behind him,
"-to uncover the truth of our history. We work to protect the world from people who would do it harm. We want to understand ourselves. We help each other, and we can help you to learn to control your titan. I have no reason to doubt your skills or the fact that you'll be valued here; Eathon said as much when he called for me. You're not going to be alone anymore; not if you don't want to be."
Dare he even think it, Defoe's heart almost flutters. He'd always gone on the assumption that any other seekers that existed were so far flung that he'd never find someone else like him. He'd clung to it in resignation, like a certain type of mollusc clings to a rock; he'd tried to not get washed away in a tidal wave of his own false hope. He'd never dared himself to think of an eventuality where he could confront his past.
Someone knocks on the office door and he nearly jumps out of his skin.
Defoe looks to Metz, who seems to be waiting for him to say something.
"Well, I... I'm here, and you haven't outright rejected anything... if you'll have me..?" It sounds far more pathetic out loud than it does in his head, but Metz nods softly.
"Thank you! I mean, uh- Thank you." Defoe reins himself back under control "Now should I... Ah."
He stands and starts to collect his papers into a pile on the desk.
Metz stifles an already quiet laugh, "I can handle those; you're free to go. You'll be filled in on the... finer details over the next few days. It's good to have you. Thank you."
Defoe nods back, thanking him again, and stands to his full height. It's funny, he was always tall but he never really felt it. Now his nervous confidence seems to be making him hyperaware. He sidesteps the chair and makes his way to the far door, taking one last look back at Metz (who is, to his credit, organising the papers he'd offered to stack). He leaves, letting the door shut behind him.
Defoe walks out of the Foundation headquarters into the early evening breeze and gives a heavy inhale. He turns through the several backstreets it took to get here and steps into the sun, which is only just cresting over the row of buildings on the far side of the canal. He leans against the guardrail and rummages in his top pocket for a cigarette. It's lit with a snap of his fingers.
"Well, Defoe,"
He looks down, speaking directly to his reflection on the water. His alternate self stares back with a tired face that can only return the same lax expression,
"Welcome to the world."