"As always, it's an absolute pleasure doing business with you, Miss Heckmatyar."
Koko shook the man's hand, pleased with the deal. Europe has always been her stomping grounds, and she made sure to keep it that way for nearly 30 years now. So today's deal, on an airfield in Eastern Europe, was just another day on the job.
"Oh no, the pleasure's all mine." Koko replied before turning the HCLI plane with Jonah right by her side, only for the pair to suddenly come to a halt, neither fully comprehending the sight before their eyes. "Uh..."
"My apologies for the sudden appearance like this, but I do believe I heard your surname was Heckmatyar? You must be Koko, am I correct?"
Even her army client was gawking at the spectacle, not even he'd noticed anything amiss beforehand, and he'd been facing the plane the whole time!
"That's correct. Now correct me if I'm wrong... but are you perhaps... Odin?"
"That I am." Odin, the massive silver haired wolf, nodded his head, still seated on the plane's ramp. "And seeing as you know my name, you must likely know the request I was about to make..."
"I'm dialing right now." Koko already had her phone out and called the one person in the world that needed to be informed of these circumstances.
Tobias was meticulously cleaning all of his guns on a table made of ice when his phone started ringing in his pocket, drawing the gazes of Rachael, Yuuki and Sheva, who were likewise cleaning the three Colts - Valentine was busy working late on the Nightfall in person - alongside him.
"Hello Koko, how may I help you?" Tobias put the phone on speaker as he continued to work on The Beast's cylinder with a wirebrush.
"Right number, wrong name." The last voice that Tobias ever expected to hear suddenly came through the line, and Tobias' face was one of utter shock.
"You son of a bitch..."
"That is technically true, yes." Odin chuckled. "Koko's already lined up an R&R trip to LA for this coming weekend, I'll be joining her, of course. It took far too damn long to recover from that avalanche, and even longer to reach you."
"I..." Tobias was speechless, and Odin could tell.
"Save it. I'm coming home, starik. Best be ready for it."
Koko's voice replaced Odin's. "Our flight departs at 9:30am your time on Friday. If all goes well, we should be at LAX by about 4pm, and on our way to your place by 4:30."
"Thank you, Koko... This... This means a lot." Tobias' hands were shaking as he hung up, unashamed as he just slowly put his gun down and started to cry.
Sheva knew better than to ask who Odin was, but somehow the sight of Tobias crying wasn't a sad one, it looked and sounded more like relief, like he'd been worried about Odin very deeply.
"Odin's... my wolf. T-Virus from my body was injected into him back in Raccoon City, gave him the ability to speak, made him bulletproof like me... he went MIA during a BSAA mission over in Eastern Europe about two and a half years ago. Caught in an avalanche..." Tobias explained he forced his tears to freeze on his face and just left them there for a moment to collect himself. "I don't know how he survived, but he did... And now he's coming back home."
Sheva nodded in understanding, smiling to herself. That was a deeply personal moment she was privy to witnessing. Deeper proof as to not just Tobias', but the entire family's humanity. Right now, Tobias must feel a great weight being lifted from his shoulders. She couldn't imagine what it was like for him to lose Odin in the first place...
As Koko lowered her phone, Odin bowed his head in thanks. "I deeply appreciate your assistance, Koko."
"I have no problems helping you out. Tobias is a close friend of mine, the least I could do was not fry his brain by just showing up unannounced with you by my side."
Odin smiled at that comment as they boarded the plane with the rest of Koko's staring crew. "And where's the fun in that? If I was in your shoes, I'd do just that for the unfiltered emotional reaction that he was holding back. I have no doubts that right now he's crying with relief."
"I'm not short circuiting in my cyberbrain, right? There's a big silver wolf talkin' to Koko right now, right?" Lehm asked Wiley with a concerned stare at Odin.
"I see it too, you're fine. Getting a real Tobias vibe off him, for sure." Wiley replied with a nod.
"Picked up on that too, did ya?" Lehm removed the magazine from his Magpul Masada, which was the same one that Koko issued to the unit the year before she'd had her first ever meeting with - at the time only 18 years old - Tobias in England for the strange XOS-3 Exosuit deal with Atlas, DARPA, and Umbrella... before Umbrella went tits up, of course.
By four thirty on Friday, everyone was assembled at the Darkwood residence; Alice, Serenity, Kaneki, Tabitha, Hinami, Motoko, Stella, Jake and Sherry joining with Rize, the twins, Valentine, Sheva and of course, Tobias as they waited with bated breath for the fateful reunion.
"If Odin has a mate and puppies... I want one." Serenity knew it was unlikely due to the T-Virus, but she couldn't help but imagine a small, fluffy and absolutely adorable version of the sassy silver wolfhound.
"I highly doubt that'll happen." Alice cracked a smile at the similar mental image she'd just had of an Odin puppy. "You do realize that Odin's personality is just like Toby's, right? He wouldn't have just mated with the first female wolf he found."
"But... But... Odin puppies..." Serenity pouted in defeat.
"Remind me again... How big is Odin?" Stella, who was barely over five foot six without using her four inch heelblades, had only been told that Odin was bigger than a normal wolf. Even Motoko, at five nine, would have to slightly look up for eye contact when Odin was at full height with his head up.
"Taller than you, for sure." Rize teased as she sipped some coffee. "Five feet tall just at his shoulder. If he has his head up properly, he's easily Yuuki and Rachael's height. Everyone except for Toby will have to look up at him."
"Even us?" Yuuki and Rachael both raised an eyebrow at the slight contradiction.
"I didn't say he's exactly your height, did I?" Rize smirked. "You two will still look up at him, even if it's just a little bit."
"Six foot three with his head and ears up, two hundred pounds." Tobias spoke up suddenly, having been quiet for a good twenty minutes. "Bulletproof, can regenerate, he can eat anything like a normal canine since he doesn't have my RC Cells, just my T-Cells, immune to cold like me, but does still have my old weakness to fire, sadly."
"So he's basically a dog the size of a horse that can talk, right?" Stella concluded.
"Pretty much, yeah."
"And I hear through the grapevine that a certain someone rode him like a horse when she was a little adorable loli..." Stella leaned over to tease Yuuki, who flipped her off as she drank some of her coffee.
"I'll have you know that every woman in this house was once a 'little adorable loli', even you, Miss Mato Kuroi!" Yuuki countered, but Stella slinked right up close to her and snaked an arm around her lower back.
"That's Mrs. Mato Kusanagi to you!"
"Alright, that's enough you two..." Motoko quickly intervened, forcing herself between the pair by boldly groping both of them on a boob. "Now's not the time to be fighting, especially with the camera crew here to record this whole thing."
She was right, since it wasn't Monday, the camera's for Darkwood were present, two active cameras - one in the living room, the other at the top of the stairs to view the entrance where a few of the assembled were gathered due to lack of seating - and the usual crew members were in the building, and the camera's were indeed recording as she said it.
"Hey, I'm curious, did Odin ever deal with my old man?" Jake asked Tobias, who shook his head.
"I wish. Would've enjoyed watching Wesker get mauled just a bit too much, y'know." Tobias smirked at the comment, since yes, the sight would've been great to see, but of course, Wesker would've still survived it.
At that moment, before anyone else said anything, Tobias' phone rang and he saw that it was Koko's number. He put her on speaker.
"Hello, Koko."
"Hello, Tobias. Just calling to let you know we'll be arriving in fifteen minutes."
"See you then." Tobias replied, and then hung up, internally debating to have one of his cigars, but then remembered that Alice was sitting across from him and she didn't like that he smoked.
"I can see it in your eye, Toby..." Alice spoke up. "Just this once, alright?"
Tobias chuckled as he shook his head. "No... Not yet. I don't want to have a lit cigar around Odin. He's still got my old fire weakness."
"I want to make a hot dog joke, but that'd be a moot point now." Serenity quipped, earning a laugh from everyone. "And besides, mocking someone for something like a burn just isn't cool... Fuck." She facepalmed at her unintentional double jab at Tobias' old face burn and his Cryokinesis' weakness to heat.
"No, no, that was a pretty good one." Tobias chuckled again in amusement. "If anything, that was better than the hot dog joke idea."
Amidst all the chatting and mixed conversation, rather unsurprisingly, Valentine and Sheva were just sitting close together, slightly away from everyone else, but still within sight. Sheva had her organic hand against Valentine's stomach and her head on his shoulder while his arm was around her shoulder and his own head rested on top of hers. It was truly a cute sight that Sherry wasted no time in sneaking a picture of... from several angles.
Suddenly all nine of the T-Ghouls stopped talking and perked up with attentive focus. They'd all heard three vehicles stopping outside. One glance at the time revealed all they needed to know...
Heeled footsteps and heavier bootfalls approached, and a knock at the door sounded a moment later. Tobias was already reaching for the handle when he - and the rest of his family - sensed that oh-so-familiar T-Virus aura...
The next thing that happened went so fast that not even Tabitha, the fastest out of everyone there, or even Motoko or Stella with their cyberbrains saw it take place. All they saw was Tobias open the door and suddenly he was knocked back several feet, with Odin's violently wagging tail swinging back and forth behind himself as he hugged Tobias with his huge front paws, towering over everyone on his hind legs.
"Man's best friend, huh? More like words can't describe the connection those two share." Up above, the producer was jotting down notes, speaking out loud as she wrote.
"We both have some explaining to do, I see..." Odin held Tobias at arms length with his paws on Tobias' shoulders. "A lot of new faces with your damn hair, and more than one cyborg too..."
"And you have some war stories to share, smartass." Tobias had tears in his eyes, but nobody could tell what emotion they were from. "But first things first... Get off of me, for fuck sake!"
"Fight me." Odin challenged, and with a laugh, Tobias just hugged him around the neck with a smile on his face.
"You know I'd win."
With the addition of Odin's large stature and Koko's group of ten, everyone relocated to the backyard, casually sitting on the grass to listen in on how Odin survived the avalanche nearly 30 months earlier.
"So for about a week after being swept away by the snow, I was legitimately dead." Odin began, now laying down to speak to everyone as a group. "I don't know what kickstarted the T-Virus back up to revive me, but whatever it was, I'm grateful. Problem was... I wasn't regenerating for some reason. On top of that, though only a minor inconvenience at the time, I was buried in the snow. But, being ice-based, I took no issue with it."
"So what were your injuries like?" Tobias asked.
"Broke way too many bones to be able to move very much without making things worse for myself. One leg was fine, so I used that to dig myself out and drag myself across the snow. After that, I was stuck in a valley for months, mostly survived on the occasional curious creature and water from melted snow. By the time spring came, my regeneration was slowly beginning to kick back in. It was slow going for the first month, but I wasn't able to actually stand up again for a whole year. Winter had set in again by the time I was on my paws."
"No wonder we didn't find you during the S&R." Tobias nodded. "We searched for the initial week while you were dead, then I called it off and you were deemed 'Presumed KIA' and we continued the entire campaign."
"After I got myself in better shape by actively hunting for food, I decided to find a way back to the nearest city and find a way to get ahold of you. Problem was that the valley then received a sudden influx of snow from another avalanche, and I got delayed by two more months. The snow was all loose powder that was at least twenty feet deep, I couldn't walk on top of it, nor could I make it up the other cliff faces since they were coated in ice with some of that damn powdery snow on top of any footholds."
"Let me guess... Come spring that valley flooded?" Koko suddenly asked, and Odin nodded.
"Exactly." He replied. "But, I did make it out of the dangerous area and began my hike into Bulgaria, then across the border into the Balkans. That took up until a month ago." He turned to Koko. "I wasn't lucky for a while, but then I saw the HCLI logo on her plane and knew I had a chance with her, since you'd done business with her for the BSAA before. We spoke, had our phone call, and now here we are... Home."
"Fuckin' right." Tobias agreed, then turned to Koko. "I owe you another favour for this, Koko. You know how those go."
"Tobias... I'm gonna have to turn that one down. I was already on my way here, so consider it a freebie from HCLI to transport some precious lost and found back to where he belongs."
Tobias let out a short exhale through his nose. "I can't... You deserve something for this... I can't just let it slide like that."
"Tell you what..." Koko clambered to her feet. "How about me and the crew come visit you in the morning, you figure out what it is you want to offer, and we can all enjoy a relaxing day together. Deal?"
"Business as always, even on R&R..." Tobias laughed, but then nodded. "Deal."