"Heya, man!"
The greeting came almost the moment the door was opened, cheer and mist alike radiating off the yellow-eyed figure outside. "Thought I'd drop by while I'm in the area - I brought snacks!"
The multicoloured contents of the wicker basket in his hands rustled enticingly as he wiggled it at the man within the house, dyed paper packets shuffling against each other with the force of his action. The yellow-eyed went so far as to wiggle his eyebrows, even; nevertheless, the one within the house was unaffected.
"Cloud." The greeting was bland - the acknowledgement of a common name and a flat, unimpressed face. Relaxed shoulders but arms crossed over the chest, lazily-lidded eyes peering out between ill-kempt locks of black hair; the one at the door could barely have come off more aloof if he tried.
Which made the question he asked next all the more damning, if the one named Cloud was at all honest.
"What have you done this time?" the dark-haired one asked, inflection bled dry from his voice, and Cloud would have raised his hands in mock-surrender if they'd been free. As it was, he settled for widening his eyes, pushing his mouth into a pout.
"C'mon, man, what makes you think I've done something?" he asked, injecting the slightest whine to his voice - just enough to be audible - and was rewarded with a blank stare and the raising of a singular eyebrow.
"You've always done something," the dark-haired one said, matter-of-fact and dull, as if it was a simple fact of life. "And even if that wasn't the case-" he nodded his head vaguely in Cloud's direction "-you're obviously coming off a power high."
"I -" Cloud began to protest, but a glance down at his hands drew a groan and a bitten-off curse from his lips. His eyes flashed - really, truly, with golden light and not just emotion - and the smoke emnating from his body bleached itself to a pure white, more reminiscent of his name than the vaguely grey-violet haze that had been enveloping him mere moments ago. "Darn it, Blackout," he cursed - though his mouth still bore a half-smile. "Have you always been so observant?"
Blackout, for his part, just shrugged. "Probably." He paused, just for a moment, the slightest glint appearing in his dark eyes, before speaking again. "Maybe you're just getting sloppy," he said, the teasing accusation carried by the slightest twitch of his lips, and Cloud promptly made a face that conveyed no useful emotion but drama.
"But Sh-"
The motion to cut him off was immediate and nigh-supernatural in its swiftness, Blackout clamping a hand over the other's mouth firm enough to cut off any attempt at making noise. "Not out here, idiot," he growled, grabbing him with the other and dragging him inside like an errant child or a particularly wimpy hostage. "Get inside, we'll sort it out there."
He kicked the door shut as they crossed the house's threshold and released Cloud from his hold none-too-gently, turning towards the hall, before he paused for a moment, glancing back at Cloud's unmoving form. "Those had better be the good snacks, by the way."
Cloud just smiled back at him. He didn't step forwards; instead, his feet left the ground, just barely, and he floated off into the house. "They're his favourite sort - or they were, last I checked. That good enough for you?"
Blackout just grunted in response - affirmation, probably - as they passed into the kitchen. It wasn't particularly large by any means, framed by a staircase to the right and a door to the back garden at the left, and composed of a table with two chairs, a coldbox, an oven, a stove, and a sink; and even if it had been large, Cloud's longtime familiarity with everything from the striped tablecloth to the upside-down icebox magnets would have made it feel cozier, anyways. He perched himself on the edge of the sink and let his legs melt into mist, and Blackout sighed to himself, untying a ribbon from his wrist with deft, well-practiced motions and beginning to pull his hair away from his face.
"I'll go get the canary, then," he said, without preamble. And then, even though the notion was ridiculous, "Try not to scare the cat."
Cloud just tilted his head and watched as Blackout strode off towards the staircase, making it two steps up before he vaulted bodily over the banister, landing with a loud thump somewhere much closer to the top. The jump was several metres, and totally unnecessary. "Show-off," Cloud snorted - terribly hypocritically, but that was in no way the point - and turned back to the kitchen, dropping the basket of snacks. White wisps swirled around it, pulling it across the room, and he turned away before he heard it set down on the table, instead turning his focus onto the contents of the sink. It was a curious little tuft of fluff that was gazing at him from its vaguely soggy seat, and Cloud was perfectly happy to gaze back.
"Your mom's left you at the sitter again, hmm?" he asked the cat.
It blinked at him, glowing white eyes obscured and revealed in moments by translucent fur, and then, with surprising speed for something so still, it was leaping onto the table, snagging one of the brightly coloured packets from the basket and escaping back to the sink with its prize, where it proceeded to bat it around the bottom of the metal tub with a quiet but reverberating noise. Cloud smiled.
"Still haven't got the fear of gods in you, huh?" he asked with a snort, and the cat rumbled like a storm, picking up the packet in a mouthful of gleaming needles and tearing through the wrapping with a sharp jerk of the head. A deep brown biscuit flew out the end and broke in half against the water faucet in a splatter of cranberry-coloured filling, and Cloud hummed to himself as the cat immediately busied itself with a piece.
"Maybe I let a little too much chaos in the mix, huh?" he mused. "Should've warned Nem about you before I handed you over."
The cat paused in its violent evisceration of one half of the biscuit, turned to fix its insolent, pupil-less gaze onto Cloud for a moment, and then promptly turned back to its job. The noise became louder, the spraying of crumbs and red messier. Wisps of cat fur splashed everywhere, evaporating into mist as if such effort was somehow required for eating snacks.
Little monster - not that Cloud could judge much.
In the end, Cloud was saved from having a one-sided conversation with a biscuit-stealing piece of fog by the re-arrival of Blackout, his promised companion arriving right behind him in a flash of warm blond and glossy feathers.
"Yo!" the man cheered, waving his arms in excitement, voice raised in pitch and volume with obvious excitement as Blackout slipped past and onto one of the chairs. "Oboro! You haven't been back in ages! Who'd you beat up?"
Cloud threw his hands up in mock-despair. "You too, 'Zashi? Why does everyone think I cause problems?!" he asked, as if he didn't know the answer, and the blond squawked with laughter.
"As if you're not constantly thinking of morally dubious things to do in the name of those kids you adopted," he said, jumping onto the other chair and perching on it as if it was some sort of branch, and Cloud rolled his eyes.
"I didn't adopt them, Pulse," he grumbled, putting emphasis on the by-name in an attempt to ignore the bit about moral dubiousness. It was deeply unsubtle, but it'd probably work.
"Yeah, of course," Pulse snickered, leaning over and grabbing a packet from the basket. The vivid pink of violently crushed bugs gave way to golden-brown as he tore it open. "You're just like Shō, honestly." He paused, biting into his snack. "So, what needs cleaning up?"
As much as Cloud liked to joke around, he really had come for help. He sighed, leaning back against the wall of the kitchen. A cat-propelled biscuit crumb flew past him; he ignored it. "Y'know how Four Season District's been locked down for a few days now?"
Blackout paused halfway through picking his way into a blue packet, eyes narrowing as he focussed on Cloud. "I thought that was unusual. That was your lot?"
Cloud winced, tilting his head from side to side in a vague gesture. "Sort of? Locker pointed out that any God who tried to attach themself to another is probably pretty damn weak and you know how it is with these sorts of ideas. Distaff and Dabi especially - once they've got an idea in their heads it doesn't let go."
He swallowed, wondering how to continue his explanation. Blackout and Pulse were both watching him intently but not accusingly - not entirely business, but hardly casual, either. They'd picked up the implication, then. There was nothing for it.
"So," he said, "We tracked down the Noumu Heart," and any remains of hope, the slightest bits of belief that Cloud might be about to say something halfway reasonable, drained from Blackout's eyes like water down a drain.
"Yellow and Black," he cursed; beside him, Pulse's eyebrows climbed up towards his hairline and stayed there.
"And you had the time and emotional capacity to bribe us with food?!" he asked; Cloud sensed it was Pulse's trust, more than anything, that stopped his tone from tripping from incredulous into disbelieving. "You're all - you all got away? You're all okay?"
Cloud hummed, wiggling a hand in a so-so gesture. "Mostly. I mean, Spinner got hit pretty badly, but dragons are hardy enough, so he'll be back on his feet soon. Dabi - well, he went and pushed until his jugular re-opened, and everything else with it - so he's not great, but he's definitely been worse." He paused. "And Distaff won't stop throwing up, but we think that might just be a bad reaction to the stew..."
"But you all got away," Pulse repeated, and Cloud winced, meeting his eyes. They were odd ones, even for a magical being - red as cherries and full of concentric rings. Not nearly so piercing as Blackout's; the perfect cover, in their unusual nature, for the fact that Pulse was just as perceptive.
"The Heart," Blackout said, when Pulse didn't continue, "Doesn't let you get away."
"It doesn't," Cloud agreed. Paused. "Didn't."
"How long?" Pulse asked, and Cloud shrugged.
"About a fortnight?" he hazarded. The other two men stared at him, and he smiled wonkily, making jazz hands. "Surprise?"
"You're insane," Blackout told him bluntly. "All of you. The Heart should have killed you."
"But it didn't," Cloud said, almost smugly.
Pulse shrilled something incomprehensible, running a hand through his hair. "And you - were you going to tell us?" he got out, finally, and Cloud blinked at him, slow and borderline insolent.
"I just did," the sink-percher pointed out, and received a snack packet to the face for his troubles.
Blackout sighed the sigh of a man who was far too put upon and not about to do anything about it, and crammed the majority of his biscuit into his mouth, cheek puffing out like a lopsided squirrel. "You want us to clear away the Shards," he said, and Cloud nodded, letting the smile drop off his face.
"If you could."
"I expected worse," Blackout told him, biscuit still crammed into one cheek. "Shards... they're not easy, but they're easier."
"And edible," Pulse added. With the topic resolving, he was becoming cheerful again. "No offence, but I'm kinda surprised you're not taking them down yourself. How many are there left, anyway? Twenty? Thirty?"
"Twenty-three," Cloud confirmed, with a nod of his head. "Mostly concentrated in wolf-heavy areas, but there's a few hanging around the nymphs too." He scratched his head, mist whipping half-immaterial around his fingers. "As for finishing the job ourselves..." He shifted uncomfortably. "Shadow was - bad to be around. I know the Shards are only - well - I guess going through rigor mortis would be the best way to put it - but none of us want to go near that again if we don't have to. There's something about them that's just - it's -"
He paused, waving his hands as if they could draw the answer out of thin air.
"They're too close to you for comfort, and too different for you to recognise," Blackout said, painfully gently, and Cloud sighed, nodding.
"Yeah. Pre-built corpses meant to rot and pretend to die." He took a deep breath. "We all agreed - the Heart was scarier but Shadow - it was worse. It wouldn't have gotten to me if it wasn't."
There was a brief silence.
"Well," Pulse said, before it could get too long. "Leave the job to us, man, a couple of dozens' no issue. Any chance the essence is uncontaminated?"
Cloud furrowed his brow in thought, fingers tapping against the sink. "It should be. I know I didn't let any of mine get close - although Twice has always been a bit loose since the incident... we didn't try to subsume him or anything! We're reckless, not stupid."
Blackout snorted at the last statement. Cloud elected to ignore him.
Pulse hummed, seemingly in approval of Cloud's assesment of the Fingers' status. "You know, 'Boro," he said, "Your lot have got some pretty good timing, coming into town now. You staying for the party?"
Cloud blinked at him for a moment; the crease that had just come out of his brow worked its way back in. "Party?"
Pulse glanced at Blackout and the latter frowned at him. "The Turning party?" the dark-haired man asked. "The one tomorrow night?"
Cloud perked up a little. "New vamp? That's cool. First any of us have heard of it, though." He looked at the others, excited - and the emotion promptly died a horrible death as Pulse and Blackout shared a look.
"...so Dabi didn't know," Blackout muttered, more to himself than anyone else in the kitchen. "Of course not, he probably didn't know they existed, it would be illogical to let him interfere and he's the only one powerful and rebellious enough -"
"Shō," Cloud interrupted, sharply but not unkindly. "You're talking bad things. Who died?"
Blackout's gaze flickered away for a moment, and Cloud felt something dull in the pit of his stomach, too vague to identify, and just specific enough to hurt.
"They've been calling the little one Firelight," Pulse said, slowly. He looked ill; his wings twitched in agitation, loose feathers flitting to the floor. "That'll probably change, though. He's young."
Cloud leant forwards. "How bad is it?" he asked, and Pulse exhaled, hard.
"He had another kid." Pulse didn't bother to clarify who "he" was; the context would be enough.
"Wish I knew how they managed it, this far down the track, but they did. The kid's about... fifteen? Skinny little thing. Red hair and blue eyes - couldn't be more one of them if the poor kid tried."
"You'd think he'd have jumped at the chance to show off another kid as soon has he got one," Blackout said; his teeth flashed, the barest hints of a derisive sneer. "Especially one that can barely logically exist. Then again, we thought he'd at least have told Dabi-"
"And he didn't," Cloud finished. Grey wisps flickered at the edges of his vision. "Yellow and Black, what the hell am I meant to say to him? We only got the tears in his face closed up this morning - and Summer clearly doesn't know either, goddamnit, our medic's gonna -"
"Slipping, 'Boro" Blackout reminded him, gruffly, and Cloud sighed, letting his head drop backwards and thump against the kitchen wall, reigning in the violet Shadow that threatened to eat him alive.
"It hate this," he said, flatter and duller than he'd spoken to them in years.
Pulse chirruped, comfortingly.
It didn't make him feel much better.