#(partially brain rot stemming from an certain thread)

[godzexperiment]

realizing how much nix jokes about being an angel,etc and how that is before he knows about humans depictions of angels (his initial horrified/that becomes less common 'what the fuck that isn't how it went- angels aren't like that' followed by the amusement)

im just- not him probably having verses+times where he prepares his version of: b̷̼̭̉̏̉e̶̜̻͇͔̭͌̀ ̸͇̩̮̫̦̦̀̊͘n̴̡̻͍̬̫̠̂͒̚o̵̢͈̭̭͚͐̀͝͝ṯ̶͔̜̞͐̉̀̆̓ ̵͍̊͆ä̴̳̻̤͖̇̂̕͘f̷͈͔̹̱̬̯̏r̴̢̲̩̦̩̿̉͠͝ă̴̢̨̙̥̭į̴̪͚̂̉́̄̋d̵̩̰́́̀̃͘

nix: okay so angels typically announce they aren't an threat, usually by being moderately threatening! i need to do that, it's the socially acceptable method only to do it and the other party gets scared (him feeling terrible) or he does it only to get met with 'lol that's a neat party trick'

[handlewcaare]

Art credit: @kajuhz

Since the time he crawled out of his grave at the laboratory, isolation was the best company he could make. Anyone who approached him with well-meaning intentions were shot down. Mistakes were bound to happen, but he would have been a fool to make the same one twice.

Once he returned to the little hole in the wall that was his agency, he ensured to keep a gun wherever was accessible for a friendly genetist. Was it paranoia? He didn’t know, but he thought he was desensitized to it all. What one man’s fatal wounds were his blisters and mild annoyances.

That had been the exact reason as to why the Association wanted him.

Several years after he retired from being a lab rat, his agency ran slow. People would hire him for small investigative work, nothing that he usually did in the golden days. It was honest work, he wouldn’t complain, finding a stalker within the bushes and seizing him got his mind off it. However, with the rapid development of caped crusaders typically found in comic books, what good was an old gumshoe?

It wasn’t until a monster had destroyed his agency that he comprehended why people regarded them as a persistent menace.

The fault was his own for leaving his agency unlocked, but after seeing years of evidence for cold cases left in ashes, his regrets immediately flourished to rage. Furor was not a typical characteristic of his, but after seeing his furniture destroyed, the maps and photographs partially charred or shredded, the malicious being only grinned at how he set down his groceries by his feet and locked the door.

The aroma of burning flesh against the lashing tongue of a conflagration never bothered him. How his muscles and ligaments were shredded under the velocity of the being’s claws never hindered his own onslaught. How he had to pry his own intenstines out from his peritoneal cavity to prevent him from tripping over it never evoked a sense of horror. He would give credit when it was due, the doctor certainly enhanced his healing factor.

As it turned out, a Griffin-like being with a flaming head was harder to swat than he anticipated. From a bucket of water, to using the fire extinguisher before bashing it’s skull with the end of the empty canister, he didn’t know how long the fight lasted until it was a new record.

Seven days. Four hours. Twenty minutes.

As someone once said, “time flies when you’re in an adrenaline rush.”

Not even after he hobbled out of the destroyed agency with the singeing aroma of salt, copper, gasoline and rotting flesh, was he greeted with the cries reserved for the victor. Gasping and cheering onlookers could only watch in wide-eyed wonder and admiration at how he stood in grotesque triumph. Being in the limelight never gave him comfort, in fact, he nearly shuffled to escape the crowd as soon as possible.

“We could use someone like you,” a man in a well-tailored suit said, “I’m part of this association and—”

“No,” a harsh refutation, he knows, but he knew better than to hand out his trust like brochures.

In spite of his protest, the intern attempted to chase after him, “but, sir! That monster was a threat level—!” Demon? Dragon? Dog? Who knew. It wasn’t until his arm, the one hanging by a thread of rotting muscle, fell off his shoulder that he was finally left be. The suppressed disgust did not go unnoticed.

“I don’t care.”

Not initially. Had it been his choice, he wouldn’t have even dreamed of being regarded as a poster boy. Since being confined in a pseudo-cage match with just about every abomination Genus could conjure, joining a group of Boy Scouts would have heightened his sensitivity to something he encountered often.

He could barely stomach analyzing a pallid, frigid reflection of himself projected onto a stranger. To envision that scarlet thread lay limp between their finger and his own—a relationship he could best describe as acquaintances—only served as an irritant he couldn’t scratch out. Though, that might have been amplified by the constant attempts to recruit him.

At this point of his life, the private investigator would resume his work. He always did, even after spending a quarter of his immortal days chained to a wall with nothing but his thoughts and his weapons to keep him company.

His last case was what prompted him to apply.

He didn’t know who hired him, but he did know that someone managed to figure out the address to his homely apartment. When asked whether he knew who the handwriting belonged to, none of them would have matched the description of the writer.

Lollipops?

The private investigator couldn’t help but be a bit dubious, but it was better than getting harassment calls and emails from interns. He read somewhere that people ate sweets to stimulate their thinking, but he just assumed it was a quick way to get a sweet tooth.

What the hell, he needed to get some coffee anyway.

As instructed, he took the public transit to Y-City. Folks were more kinder, a bit pompous, but it could have been due to the fact that he was a walking carcass that made headlines already—save for the idol hero, Anal Mask or whatever the hell his name is—but college kids were quick to point out where Doctor Hajime’s lab was. “He teaches my robotics class,” was the usual answer.

By the time he encountered the front door, he counted how many seconds he would have to escape. Chances were there was gonna be a cyborg or a robot to try and pin him down, inject him with something to make him black out. He had his machetes tucked under the collar of his shirt, his dessert Eagles were holstered at his hips and he had a handsome fire axe within the bag of lollipops and candy apples. He had time to escape, he would ensure that he would, least he opt to shove himself into the nearby wood chipper to finally do himself in.

What he anticipated from the opening door was an older gentleman, someone with a bow tie and unruly and snowy hair. His countenance would have been cobwebbed with age, his shoulders hunched to pronounce a spinal compression. Yet, he would offer a smile as dulcet and as mannerly as any other kind old man.

Instead, the private investigator was greeted with a boy with vibrant tawny eyes and a little auburn curl at the top of his crown. He had to be no older than nine years old. He couldn’t have been any taller than the door knob.

In an instant, he snuffed out his cigarette against the masonry and knelt down to the kid’s height. An instinctual response from someone who was once an uncle—father?—in a family who had long forgotten about him. “Hey kiddo,” the investigator began, “you seen where your dad went off to?”

As incredulous as the kid was, the investigator nearly assumed he went to the wrong place. That was until the boy spoke, “Considering I haven’t seen my father in nearly four years, I’m afraid not,” he paused as he offered a small, wistful smile, “but trust me, you’re not the first person to ask me that.”

Safe to assume that the child genius was much more hospitable than the private investigator was accustomed to. Then again, as he presented a lollipop to the child, those tawny eyes flourished as he hastily accepted the treat from the detective’s grasp. “Thank you, sir!”

“Don’t mention it,” whether or not he was aware of it, there was a smile that aligned.

As the two of them enjoyed their sweets, Hajime elucidated further about the technological black market. What routes they typically took and how he managed to figure out their patterns. The kid truly did have a good head on his shoulders.

“I have a hypothesis that these robots that are being trafficked underneath City W, X, Y and Z aren’t really used for security.”

“And why do you think so?”

“Well, Z-City has a lot of manifestations of monsters. If basic security-Trons were sent off to handle the threats, it would be a waste of resources. I mean, it’s carbon and bismuth—it’s elementary stuff.”

The boy paused as he used his watch as a hologram to present the blueprint of one of the robots. The private eye wasn’t exactly ‘technologically savvy,’ but Hajime called it ‘basic’ so he would just have to take his word for it.

“But that’s not what caught my attention,” he elucidated, as the boy extended his fingertips, the robot’s physique separated by segments of its parts. When he pointed toward a certain adapter, the private investigator couldn’t help but furrow his brows a bit.

“That’s a cranial nerve implant.”

Hajime paused, as if he had fully prepared an exasperative and long-winded statement, “you’ve encountered them before?”

When implored, he suppressed the urge to visibly quake under the phantasmic impulses of electricity that had once trailed down the expense of his brain stem. It was a way to analyze how fast he developed increased intracranial pressure, he remembered Genus saying.

“Friend was a doc,” a decent lie that Hajime seemingly overlooked, though the private investigator felt an acrimonious taste in his mouth. “She said something about how it’d use electricity to wake up dead nerves.”

His russet glare narrowed as he brought a hand to caress his own chin, “thought they’d still be in development...”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking!” For a moment, the boy’s joviality made him appear exactly his age.

Ah- now it’s starting to make sense.

“From what I know, Z-City has monsters just about every corner,” the investigator began. His baritone suddenly lost it’s intrigue once he mentally assembled the puzzle pieces the best he could. “With monsters, people tend to be more scared than they should be. What do you think being scared means?”

The boy’s eyebrows raised, “they’re paranoid?”

“And—?”

“They...” while it was easy to assemble a mechanical enigma to guard civilians, it was harder to provide a baseline to something as fluctuating as human response. Hajime eventually restored to shrugging his shoulders, “...they’re desperate?”

With that, the private investigator pressed a finger to the tip of his nose before he pointed at Hajime. “Desperate people tend to do stupid. If I’m a single father living in Z-City, you think turning into the terminator wouldn’t be my go-to?”

Such analysis didn’t seem to satisfy the boy. Whether or not it was a challenging diatribe, it was enough of a refutation to make the investigator think a bit, “but you know it’s permanent right? I mean, the cranial nerves aren’t exactly something you want to tamper with, especially if those implants can get into your cerebrum and alter you entirely.”

“Well, you—the kid genius—might know that,” he deflected easily, “but what about me? I’m a single father with a degree in underwater basket weaving. Do you think they taught me about cranial nerves while I was trying to make a basket?”

One could hear a pin drop until the boy piped up, “I mean- if you’re scuba diving and you’re weaving the basket—”

“Just finish your lollipop, kiddo.”

Several weeks had passed when they finally traced a call to one of the robotic manufacturers. It was certainly much more handy than to thread scarlet yarn along what tabs had pinned photographs. Then again, doing things the old fashioned way made old habits die hard.

Needless to say, the private eye could understand the boy’s fascination with his toy-like projects. From a giant action figure he kept buried within the depths of the earth to the robot dogs that served as a pseudo-trump card, it was like assembling legos for him. As the two of them took the public transit to Z-City, the two of them settled into a comfortable silence, save for Hajime’s need to tamper with a Rubik’s cube.

Unlike the other Alphabet cities, the ambiance around Z-City felt calloused and empty. It was but the abyss that stared upon them once they left the transit and it gave the private eye an eery sensation that crept along his vertebrae. It must have been that paternal instinct.

“Stay close to me,” he cautioned, though he should have known better that Hajime didn’t like to be talked down to.

“I can take care of myself.”

“—and if I can’t take care of myself?”

Reverse psychology seemed to do wonders, as Hajime’s vanity subsided for the need to have his partner’s back. Should anyone ask, the detective wouldn’t admit the presence of his little smile.

The call had declared that the deal would be set in the alley nestled next to a udon stand and an apartment complex. It was an easy hole in a wall and, considering how the civilian was late, he and Hajime had to play their part. Between himself and no one in particular, he preferred it that way. The last thing he wanted was for someone to die in front of the boy.

“Oi,” the thuggish chirp resounded from the maw of a strange man who looked mechanically modified. His brows were too close to his eyes, accenting a crueler look. The detective fought every urge to usher Hajime behind him. “You Hammerhead?”

He silently reprimanded himself for not bringing a hammer.

“Yeah,” the detective’s response was nonchalant, a lethargic drawl that could have remained hidden within a thick penumbra of nicotine.

“Who’s the brat?”

“Mine,” short and concise, though he let his russet gaze nearly puncture into the dealer, “you want the money or should I show you my wedding photos?” He went in too eager, though that was exactly the point with desperate people. Fortunately, the dealer turned out to simply comply at the mention of money.

“Seven thousand yen.”

It was agreed upon with a shaky baritone by the real customer prior. However, it was a game that the detective often played prior to meeting Dr. Genus. Once he began to thumb his fingers along the bills in his pocket, the dealer swiftly interjected the detective’s counting.

“I-I meant Seventy thousand!”

“Oh?”

Seventy thousand it was that was instantly slapped into the dealer’s hand. However, there was hardly a moment when the dealer abruptly seized the detective’s arm and held him hostage at gunpoint.

Needless to say, one should never underestimate the strength of a man who wanted to make civilians into cyborgs. With an irritated sigh, the immortal felt his head jerk to the side as a bullet pierced through his temporal lobe. Albeit, the moment his body should have sprawled limp was the instant he seized his machete and took a blind swipe. What astonishment and pure horror from the mechanical marvel only wrought a hand to catch the blade.

Fortunately, the fist that veered to deck the detective never came to deliver. Rather, a tendril that emerged from Hajime’s backpack seized the mechanical marvel’s appendage into a tight lock. It was but a split second when the detective retrieved the machete’s twin and severed the appendage.

“Shit—!” The hydra hydrolauics swiftly seized ahold of the being and attempted to suspend him in the air. Hajime’s hands braced tight to his backpack’s straps, though the dealer proved to be a formidable foe, as he laconically wrapped his free arm around a tendril to toss the brat.

Safe to say that the detective prioritized catching the kid than the dealer. Both had landed with a harsh grunt against the asphalt before the detective hastily retrieved his desert Eagle and fired. Once again, it was a null chance, given how he was abruptly seized by his throat and tossed through the brick masonry of the neglected library.

What sanguine from the brunt trauma coagulated and the flesh wounds he sustained, he could only instinctively block the blow from the mechanical marvel. Regular fisticuffs was a fond favorite of his, typically because of how seldom he did it. What reciprocating strike had been enough to swivel his head evoked him to land a brutal bite of his axe into where his opponent should have been.

“Mr. Detective!”

It was but a moment that the private eye peered over to see Hajime with a snapped tendril, it’s cobwebs of electricity was a big enough hint for him. The instant he distanced himself, the dealer had not a moment to abstain when his back arched under the brutal conduction of carbon and lightning. His howl was guttural, ripping through the empty ambiance before he collapsed at their feet.

What should have been a victorious high-five was but a dreadful beat of anticipation. Hajime could only stare down at the beaten villain, “did I kill him...?” His murmur was rather hushed, as monsters were not the same as modified humans.

For the sake of the boy’s anxiety, the detective brought the tip of his shoe to budge the dealer. The somnolent twitch of his countenance wrought a sense of relief to weigh into the boy’s sigh.

The private investigator offered a high-five for the boy to make. The gesture was slow, as if cautious, but the kid genius managed to reciprocate it. “You did good,” he didn’t know it then, but it was a compliment that Hajime would hold to his heart later.

On taking the transit back to City-Y, the detective opted to intervene the silence. An odd thing for him to do, but it was just them and a few others coming home late.

“So, your parents—” it might have been too sensitive of a subject, but he opted to continue, “—did they uh...” it would have been easy to assume they did die. After all, it was how every hero was sculpted.

Hajime only shook his head, “no,” he said before he retrieved a little Rubik’s cube from his backpack. His fingers fidgeted the slots as his hazel gaze lingered toward the trinket, “I mean, they’re overseas. They send me birthday cards sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” The private investigator couldn’t help but raise a brow at that.

“When they remember.”

Had the private investigator known about Hajime’s profession outside of being a teacher then, he would have been more than happy to demand what the hell was more important than their own kid. Did they know he was handled by suits who depended on currency than their own workers? Even if one of them—two if he counted Badd later—was a child?

Even if he didn’t know it, his furor was quiet enough to make him try to huff out a sigh. His jaw clenched along the curses he would have hissed under his breath when no one was around. Fortunately, Hajime was a quick study.

“What about you?” He must have thought it was a witty comeback, considering how his nose wrinkled a bit, “where’d your parents go?”

“Can’t say I remember,” he knew he had them, but he didn’t know what he did with them. Were they around when he died the first time? Longer? All he could afford to do was wander aimlessly as a phantom without a shell. “Been around since the A.D’s.”

“The A.D.’s??”

As it turned out, Hajime was fascinated with history. The boy’s queries seemed to be rapid fire initially, such as whether or not Shakespeare was a real person (he was), how far has technology gone (far enough), or if the crusades were as brutal as written (it was, but he never had the pleasure in fighting in the wars). The boy’s excitement seemed to tucker him out quickly unfortunately.

Just as the private investigator began to describe what Feudal Japan was like, Hajime nodded off and slumped against the detective’s shoulder. Their stop only prompted him to gingerly scoop the boy up into one arm and carry his—surprisingly dense—backpack with the other. Fortune came in technological wonders, as the lab seemed to unlock its hinges at the presence of their creator’s facial recognition.

The time was late when he finally tucked the boy into bed. Hajime’s backpack slumped against the masonry. There was a strange and phantasmic ache at the base of the detective’s chest, something he hadn’t really felt since he last died.

Prior, he often wondered if it was better to be alone or to try and have a family. He was told he was good with kids by their parents who would hire him to find them. To imagine himself as a father was frightening nowadays, as he could envision that bastard trying to pick up his kids for experimentation.

With Hajime safely in bed, the detective’s thoughts drifted to the newspaper that detailed the triumphs of S-Class Hero Child Emperor against the dreadful turnip monster that interrupted his robotics cla—

...They seriously named the kid “Child Emperor” huh?

The detective contemplated on the transit home just as hard as he was contemplating it back home. His glare lingered toward the shredded up business card. It took every increment of his pride to collect the pieces, but the heroes association weren’t exactly child-friendly.

Did that mean he couldn’t try to do better? For the first time, he felt a sense of balance when handling the dealer. His agency was going to go nowhere and he needed the money, that wasn’t including the fact that Hajime would have ended up, perhaps, the only sensible person there.

he hated being right at times.

He needed to do better, not for the sake of spiting Genus, but to be better for himself.

After he called the intern’s number, he waited until there was a ‘hello?” At the other end of the line.

“Hi,” he says, “I’d like to file a hero application. Do you mind walking me through the process?”