Description: Zach finally washes ashore after the attack of the Ichabod. He is discovered by none other than Athena Asamiya. A discussion is had, and if he had not realized it before, he realizes just how fall he's fallen.
Zach Glen has had a rough week. Three attempts on his life, three people dead, a good dozen people injured, hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage. The last attempt on his life ended with him in the river, which he could have sworn had turned to blood. (It is no longer blood.)
Currently, Zach is floating on his back down the river, seemingly unresponsive to anything around him or in his path. He may or may not need some help here...
It was rare that she ever opened her mind to the world around her deliberately. The experience of suddenly being exposed to so many emotions, sensations, and fears at once could be debilitating if she wasn't prepared for it and headache inducing even on a good day. But there are times as the young celebrity starts to drift off to sleep - that narrow window when consciousness slips away all together to be replaced by the darkness of slumber - that she would become more privy to the heartbeat of the society around her than she would like.
Tonight was one such moment. Thirty minutes ago Athena had leaned face forward against a text-book laden desk and started to drift off, homework-scribbling pencil still in hand. It had been another busy day and there was so much homework due the next morning... A short little nap wouldn't be so bad, she cajoled herself. Just a brief reprieve then she'll be back... to... studyyyyy...
Athena had sat up with a start, eyes wide open, hands pressed against her desk, the tip of her pencil broken. What was that? Her heart is racing, her breath held. That flash of dread horror, of nightmare incarnate. A bad dream? A premonition? No... this was something happening /now/. And, as she searched her memory, she had a feeling she knew where too.
Twenty-five minutes later, a long, black luxury sedan pulls up on the street overhead, not visible from the concrete river bed down below. Headlights illuminate the area through a chainlink fence. The backseat door opens and a figure slips out. "Lock the doors until I get back." This part of town is really no place for a car like this. It is especially not a place for the car's passanger.
Athena moves toward the riverbed, flickering forward a moment as she passes through the chainlink fence. Dressed in her school clothes still, she wears a red jacket over a white shirt and blue skirt. Her arms don't actually go through her jacket, with her left arm folded against her stomach in a sling. Damage from a recent bout, naturally... There's a reason she isn't allowed to schedule fights the same weeks as concerts!
Finding a ladder, she climbs down into the recessed cement banks of the dank, fetid river. What does she expect to find here? She doesn't even know and with each step, she looks about her carefully. There is still something horribly wrong about this area, her instincts tell her.
Athena may be drawn by an aura she has encountered once before, from a Neo League match a while back. She finds herself drawn to a small lump that kind of... sticks out from the rest of the scenery. It's a person, and judging from the numerous rips and tears, it is a person that has been in some kind of fight recently.
The current of the river pulls and tugs at the person, eventually washing the ballcap off of them. Vibrant purple hair, oddly colored by the car's headlights, flows from the person's head. Purple hair can be managed by various dyes and such, though. That may be indicative of nothing at all.
And then the body moves, pulling them... no, it is definitely a 'him'self, judging from the fairly muscular build revealed by the torn clothing. The youngish man picks himself up, not opening his eyes, and drags himself out of the river proper. He trudges a couple of feet up the bank before falling face first into the dirt.
That she isn't alone she is certain of, as she lets down more and more of her psychic shielding. And gradually, her focus improves, shifting her attention to something that doesn't quite look like a person admist all the debris and floatsom bobbing along in the water in this run down area of Southtown. Sucking in her breath, there is a moment where she wonders if she's seeing the body of someone recently deceased. The rumors about this area of the ghetto being used for dumping bodies aren't unfamiliar to the teenager.
A few more steps forward are taken, her breath still held, as she hurries forward. She's still some yards away when Zach departs what passes as a river and collapses against the ground. She doesn't have time to contemplate the familiarity of his nature as the girl takes some more steps forward, slipping a phone from her jacket into her hand and activating it. "Don't move," she urges, "I'll call an ambulance!"
She's finally at Zach's side, crouching down, knees against the ground as she takes a closer look at the young man. Her left hand holds the phone to her ear, "Come on, come on..." she whispers. A faintly audible 'Hello?' can be heard coming from her phone.
"A-ah, yes, I need an ambulance down at the Gedo river, western section.. I believe the cross street was 14th Ave." As she speaks, she's looking Zach over, trying to figure out the nature of his situation. Was he just drowning? How'd he end up in the water? No one goes there /willingly/!
Zach rouses a little bit at the sound of the voice. His eyes open slowly, revealing dull emerald irises. He groans a bit as he rolls over. He's not /bleeding/, so he has that going for him. He looks like he's been chewed up by bugs and vermin... Athena may or may not spot a snake bit in a few places. There is what appears to be the start of a wicked scar just below his ribcage that /must/ have been a cut from a large bladed weapon, to say nothing of the bruises covering.
"No," he gasps. "No ambulance..." Zach coughs weakly as he tries to reach for the phone. He looks like he has been through hell, /then/ chewed up by its minions on the return trip. "...might be followed..." he says softly.
"I'm not sure, maybe drowning-" Athena's voice cuts out as Zach protests the help of an ambulance, giving him a rather puzzled look, the phone still at her ear. Pressing her thumb over the mute button, she hisses, "What are you even talking about? You need medical attention." She breaths in then exhales, lowering her phone for a moment.
"What were you doing in the river? If you jumped off a bridge or something, you need more than just medical attention. Don't worry, the experts will know what to do." She hesitates for a long moment after that, brow furrowed. She has what looks to be the victim of some kind of attack and near drowning on her hands here, but he doesn't want an ambulance? Hrn...
"Are you in some kind of trouble? Don't want to get caught for something? You should worry about all that later - after you get help!"
A voice can be heard coming from the phone, barely audible again, asking if anyone is there, and Athena lifts it back up to her ear, lifting her finger off the mute button for just a moment, "Aaah... hold on, I might have overreacted. Give me one moment to find out please." She looks at Zach expectantly then, giving him a brief opportunity to convince her to call off the medical professionals.
Zach's eyes narrow as he regards the young lady talking to him. Things are... starting to come back into focus. "Athena? Athena Asamiya?" Zach croaks. He starts to pull himself to his feet, looking a little wobbly. He shakes his head back and forth, like a large dog trying to get its head out from under something. "The... the hospitals may be watched," he says quietly, and very quickly.
He looks around, as if looking for something. Satisfied that he hasn't found it, yet, he continues. "Someone's doing things to fighters. Twisting them somehow," Zach says after another moment. "Antoine Huang, Amy Thompson, Ken Masters" Zach's eyes stray down towards Athena's arm in a sling. /Great/, he thinks. If these guys hit us here... "But that... that's only part of it."
Zach looks around again, wobbling a bit before continuing. "They're part of some kind of cult, and I think they are hunting psychics down."
"That's right," she replies as he starts to pull himself to his feet. She stands up with him, moving bit close when it looks like he might fall for a moment, but as he seems to stay upright okay, she backs off a step. She's quiet as he speaks, eyes blinking slightly as she takes in his words.
Finally she lifts her thumb off the mute button again, "I'm so sorry, it looks like everything will be okay. Thank you though. No, really, I'm sorry. No need to send anyone out. Yeah. We're fine here. Thank you again. Good night." The phone is flicked off and pocketed, her eyes still on Zach.
Now that he's at least standing, he looks less critical, even if she still suspects he needs medical help of some kind. He had rattled off some names of fighters being twisted and while two of them didn't ring a bell with her, one absolutely did. "Ken Masters... is afflicted by something?" she whispers thoughtfully. "How did you find out about this?" It was something she had determined herself after facing the American martial artist. But to hear someone else might be able to shed at least a bit of light on the situation... now this is valuable.
She considers the rest of his words as well. Some kind of cult hunting down those with a reputation for having psychic abilities? That certainly puts /her/ on any such list. Have her security services just been doing a good job at keeping such crazy people away from her? Possibly... "Is that who threw you in the river? These cultists... are they trying to kill you??"
Athena squints then shakes her head, "A-ah, you must be cold." She shrugs her jacket off her shoulders with her right hand and holds it out toward him. "Let's go talk in my car. Will you be able to get back up the ladder? It will be warmer there."
Zach shakes his head as he follows Athena to the fence. "Someone... unrelated I think, I... /think/ he threw me in the river." He checks his belt... the sword, the Miraitou is surprisingly still with him. Perhaps the wakazashi knows its master. "Antoine... he was my teammate for King of Fighters. He told me..." Zach eyes the ladder for a moment before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Athena can likely sense the stirring of his own psychic talents going to work, trying to prop up a body that needs food, rest and shelter. "He told me that he encountered one of the people who fought Ken before... before things went crazy." Zach carefully makes his way up the ladder. "The /other/ person did his level best to kill me..." Zach thinks. "...Monday night. Don't know how he found me, I didn't think anyone but Rust knew where that warehouse was."
Zach stares up the river, visited again by the memory of what /he/ had done. Even it /could/ be argued that Zach was only defending himself. "The explosion there... that..." Zach stares at the ground, "That was me. I was trying to defend myself... I didn't..."
Athena waits at the base of the ladder, letting Zach go up first. Maybe she thinks to catch him if he loses his strength and falls! Only once he has reached the top does she climb up after him. She is, however, paying rapt attention to everything the young man has to say. She feels a bit bad for questioning him so much, but the information he's sharing is directly connected to her own investigation of what happened with Ken Masters.
"So it was someone Ken fought recently... and your friend encountered them as well, and since then, he has been twisted in some way? Antoine... Huang was it?" The girl gestures toward her car, the sound of the doors unlocking audible as the two get closer to it, a driver visible in the front seat.
"So someone else attacked you besides the cultists?" Of all the horrible misfortune, she considers. One thing after another for the guy! It's only when he mentions something about a warehouse that Athena stops in her tracks, staring toward her car, not looking at Zach directly for a moment.
Wait... warehouse... Explosion Monday night. Something was strange that night - she could feel it even in the waking hours when her pscyhe is the most closed off. Her brow furrowed, Athena slowly turns to look at Zach. The expression on her face is different now; strained, pained even. "The warehouse you mentioned, you don't mean the one where... the one they're calling a gas leak now... where those people died? You don't have anything to do with that, do you?" her voice has taken on a very obvious urgency now.
"****ing Ichabod," Zach says before catching himself. "Sorry... I... Anyway," he continues, apparently starting to feel a littl more himself, if only sluggishly so. He handles the ladder okay. "Some... /guy/ wearing a Jack-o-lantern and a trenchcoat with a really big scythe. I... don't think he's connected to this." Zach looks worried as he mentions this, but it isn't fear for himself. "I... I think he's a psychic, but... something is very /wrong/ with him. I..." Zach shakes the thought off as Athena gets to the elephant by the car.
He can't meet Athena's eyes. He cannot even /look/ at the Psycho Soldier. "...it wasn't a gas leak."
Everything else he's said is lost to her mind now for she can think of nothing else but account of what happened at the warehouse. The story had seemed fishy, and her senses told her it was something else... but she hadn't even had time to look into it further. Now she chides herself for not having done so. Maybe she would have felt his lingering psychic signiture and figured it out before now. But what then?
"Zach... Zach you're..." the girl wrestles with what he just told her. "Tell me what happened there." Athena's voice becomes stern now, her demeanor shifting from shock to something more determined, more certain.
"What happened to those people there... was that your doing? Was it your power that got out of control? Tell me!!" She wonders, idly, who this Rust person is he mentioned. A witness? One of the victims? Someone else out there that's similiar to Zach? That isn't as important right now. Understanding just what Zach did is.
Zach frowns. The questions are fair. He looks at the young woman with tired eyes. Eyes far too old for someone who appears to be so young. "I bought that warehouse because it was a fairly isolated location. Not a lot of traffic, fewer people," he explains. "In case I needed a place to be away from other people. For their safety more than mine." Zach sits down on the ground, slumping over a little bit. He considers. "I need to rewind a little bit. After our King of Fighters match, I was visited by an old lady. She... gave me something that she asked me to use. Claimed it would help focus my abilities," Zach tugs at the collar of his shirt to reveal an oddly-colored choker with a serpent motif. "She... wasn't completely honest with me. Whenever I use my power, when I /project/ it, I get more than I bargained for. Sometimes I suffer from some kind of backlash. It's worse than any headache I've ever had in my life. Sometimes..." Zach gestures vaguely up river. I can't figure out how to get the damn thing off of me, and it's not for lack of trying."
Zach punches the ground, hard. "So when I got back to Japan, I moved myself into the warehouse, thinking that if... /when/ I had to release some energy, there'd be no bystanders getting caught in it." Zach punches the ground again. "Rust and I... Rust's a friend of mine. He's not a psychic, though. We were comparing notes," that's putting it diplomatically, "When we were attacked by Carrol Jayne," Zach says. "He... it was easy to make him talk. He's working with the old lady who visited me. Tomoko Kimura. Jayne and his... I think he was some kind of cultist. They both used some kind of energy. Felt... /wrong/ somehow. Jayne tried to cave my chest in with a sledgehammer..."
Zach punches the ground again, harder. "I defended myself. I... Jayne was there to kill me, and probably Rust just for /being/ there. So... I defended myself."
She stares at Zach but stays quiet as he speaks. He will get no sense of judgement, no sense of condemnation while he recalls the horrible experiences of that night. The warehouse was his. The police reports probably had that much information on file. She should have at least checked into it, to satisfy that nagging sensation that she should know about the incident. "I never knew... that your power was so dangerous..." she muses quietly... "That your control was so undeveloped... you never should have been fighting," she contemplates. He might get the impression for the moment that of all the people she might be upset with, it's herself.
Her eyes stray to the choker then back to Zach's face. "You accepted a short cut. A crutch offered by a stranger... and now look at you..." She sounds saddened.
He speaks about Rust and Athena nods her head slightly, offering a slight, cautious smile. "It's good to have friends, but I wonder what he is going through now... He is all right, yes?" He explains some of the names. A Tomoko Kimuar. A Jayne Carrol. All good to know, even if the additional facts don't make her feel any better about how she's gained this information.
"You defended yourself, but at such great cost..." Now her mood shifts. If one ever wanted to know what divine judgement felt like, Zach might get a glimpse of it now, as Athena lowers her eyes, exhaling softly. "Is your life so much more important than theirs? You took the lives of people who's only fault was being too close. If you can't control your power... such destructive power..."
Athena looks up, right hand tightening at her side. "Look at you now. Your life is forever changed. You have to be held accountable for what you did! You have to turn yourself in, Zach." the volume of her voice rises then. Zach will probably want to rethink that invitation to get into her car right about now.
"I accepted the collar," Zach said, "Because Takuma Sakazaki was coming after Rust. Yuri... had gotten it in her head to sneak off and join our team against his wishes," Zach explains. "There was no way... even /with/ Ryo there I would not have given odds for us coming out of that in one piece. So I made a choice. I traded what control I /did/ have for the power to stop Takuma."
"I do that, they will lock me up," Zach says dully. There is no life in his voice, in his eyes. Divine judgement is a relatively minor thing compared to how badly he's been beating himself up over this, but... it still bothers him. "I'll be as good as dead. If they come to make another go of me... when I know I'm surrounded by people..." Zach brings his fist up to strike the ground again. "...I won't defend myself. I won't be /able/ to."
Zach looks up at Athena, regarding her with those dead eyes. "Outside of the people who attacked us, you're the only one who knows Rust was even there," Zach says with a weak voice. "He's... he's a teacher at Pacific High. If he gets caught up in this, they'll fire him. That..." Zach shudders. "It would /kill/ him, Athena. I..." Zach deflates a little more. A tear slips from his eye.
"...I didn't even know they were there," he says. His gaze locks on the ground. "I chose that place because people don't even /go/ there..." It seems like he took as many reasonable precautions as he could. Luck... simply ran out that night. It all came crashing down around him. The fist lowers. He doesn't look up. "We shouldn't be out here like this," Zach says numbly. "If they come back... you don't look like you can fight with your arm like that." Zach is a jumble of guilt, confusion, and grief at this moment.
Athena extends her uninjured arm, reaching for Zach for a moment, but withdrawing it before making contact. She shouldn't touch him. Not with that choker of unknown power. How might it react? She doesn't want to find out. Slowly, she shakes her head. There's no point in extrapolating on the mistakes he made. She can tell by the look in his eyes that he has already contemplated the depths of his errors. "I'm so sorry..." she murmurs.
He talks about what would happen if he were confined and the cultists came for him again. The girl bows her head slightly, hand coming to rest at her chin as she thinks about that for a moment. He's right, in that regard. If people came to finish the job and he was locked up... he would either have to let them kill him, or fight back and risk harming so many others in the process.
"I understand. For now, you mustn't be caught. Not until these fanatics are dealt with." She isn't going to stop him, it seems. He talks about Rust and she is quiet. Teacher at Pacific High... "There, there. I won't let that happen. You can rest easy about that." she offers with a quiet smile. "I'll check on your friend, okay?"
Zach mentions that he didn't know the people were near the blast range of his powers. That much is to be expected. She definitely didn't think he was a killer at heart... it had to have been an accident. That will be mitigating circumstances, right? She wonders. "You're right." Athena exhales. From her jacket she pulls a small card and holds out for him, "To reach me... I can tell you'll need more help. When that time comes..." The card bears an email address and cell phone number. She's quiet for a moment longer before adding. "You should go."
Zach takes the card, staring at it. Normally, he might make a joke about scoring the digits of a seriously popular idol. Tonight is not a normal night. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a card of his own to hand to her. He slowly pulls himself to his feet, trying to think of where he could go.
"Here," he says quietly. "In case you need a walking bomb." Something about the way he says that... almost as if he thinks that is the totality of his ability: to blow things up and kick the snot out of people. Granted, he has pretty ample evidence.
Log created on 20:58:01 03/24/2011 by Zach, and last modified on 00:11:56 03/25/2011.