Description: Leaving France behind, Frei begins his search for Kyo Kusanagi... and fails. So what does he do? He goes to Jamba Juice, and then runs into Kyo on a mall bench on his way out. He's prepared for the most harrowing interrogation of his life... which kinda doesn't happen. But that doesn't mean it's not helpful...
After recent events, Kyo Kusanagi has decided officially that 'boats' are his least favourite mode of transit. Not because he gets seasick, or because he has an immature reaction to the idea of being surrounded by so many seamen... No, because nobody should ever have to travel with a recently-battered Iori Yagami, and because no journey should ever begin with an encounter with Kain R. Heinlein on sinister steroids.
Anyway, what's /important/ is that Kyo is now back in Southtown after an only moderately disconcerting series of events in Rio de Janeiro, and surely he has nothing to worry about now that he's safely in the familiar territory of the fightingest city in the whole wide world, which is only occasionally overrun by the combined forces of an alliance of comic book supervillains.
As spring develops in the southern reaches of Japan, going outside has become more and more viable, even for people who aren't supernaturally tough professional fighters. Of course, those guys can go outside too. You would think that after having just been in /Brazil/, Kyo would be bemoaning the less than beach-worthy weather, or the lack of bikini-clad girls around every corner, and you would actually probably be right, but eventually even he gets bored of that.
As such it comes to pass that Kyo Kusanagi, World Warrior champion, onetime King of Fighters champion, former (undefeated) Saturday Night Fight champion, is... Sitting on a bench not far from the Southtown Mall, dressed like an everyday normal young adult, and eating a brand name white cheese flavoured popcorn-esque snack food (guess which one).
Look, not every day is the end of the world, okay?
When he left France, after his meeting with Ash Crimson, Frei felt... if not cheerful, then at least hopeful that something might come of it all. The Frenchman was as slippery as he expected, and revealed as little as Frei assumed he would, but even if this story about the Orochi and the imperial treasures is some... folktalk fantasy he cooked up to get Frei off his back, there's no harm in pursuing it. The worst that happens is that he finds Kyo Kusanagi -- or, despite Kula's warnings of dire peril, Iori Yagami -- and they don't like what he has to say so they melt his face off.
On the plane home, however, he realized that no, that was merely the worst outcome *for him*. The WORST outcome is that Ash is right, there's an all-devouring eight-headed mythical serpent god out to kill everything that lives, and unless the right people can be marshalled to stop it the world as humanity knows it is going to end. That would, indeed, be pretty bad.
But then he got back to Southtown and realized he didn't really know how to get in touch with any of these people. He'd hoped to catch Kyo at whatever venue his own round one KoF battle had taken place at, but with the weeks having passed, it was clear that the Kusanagi scion had long since left Rio. As for where he would go? Frei had no clue. Presumably he had a home in Japan, but where, and how would they greet a gaijin-looking yutz who shows up at the front door asking about the mystical power to control fire, and have you heard of this Orochi guy? No? That's cool, can I try again in a few days? No? I see.
Yeah. That scenario is dumb.
Resigned to the fact that he would have to wait for the next round to see where the Hero Team would be fighting and head Kyo off at the proverbial pass, Frei decided to settle in at home, treat himself to junk food and a few days off, and think about the situation. As it stands today, he spent the better part of the morning with a big blank sheet of paper, drawing a flowchart of names, connections, and possibilities that, when he was done with it, looked like the conspiracy theory of a complete lunatic.
Needless to say this is when he chose to leave the house and get a snack.
And perhaps, the same person who led Ash to Frei and Kula's table is still smiling upon him, because as Frei walks back to his apartment he sees, sitting on a bench, the very person he had given up hope meeting in a timely fashion, eating popcorn.
This stops him dead in his tracks just a few feet from the park bench. In his surprise, Frei does two things: he says, out loud, "I don't... believe it," and he also drops the smoothie he was carrying, which splashes mournfully onto the sidewalk. RIP, strawberry banana blast.
Sometimes, coincidence just decides to show up, bursting in through the front door like the wacky neighbour on a sitcom, and then everybody pauses for a moment to let the audience or canned applause die down. It... Actually that analogy sort of ran off on its own, didn't it?
Kyo seems to be pretty content sitting there, unmolested by fate or by destiny for a change, and enjoying some snack food. The worst part is that he's usually so genre savvy; usually he would know to expect something he absolutely doesn't want to have happen exactly when he's at his most relaxed. Right now, as he sits there on the bench minding his own business, this is the exact perfect moment for something completely terrible or possibly just terribly annoying to happen to him.
'I don't... believe it,' says a voice Kyo doesn't actually recognise at all.
"Yeah, I get that a lot," Kyo says, now sitting there on the bench with his feet lifted up in order to keep them out of the splash radius of Frei's dropped smoothie, proving that if nothing else the Kusanagi heir keeps his reflexes even when eating popcorn. "Although not usually until I've started taking my clothes off."
Kyo holds up his bag of popcorn, open end towards the monk in an oddly uncharacteristic gesture of sharing and, possibly, caring. "Try not to spill anything else on the sidewalk," he says.
So maybe not caring.
Taking his clo--
Stop envisioning it and come back.
Sadly Frei doesn't look like he's doing that quite yet, because proffered popcorn or not, smoothie explosion or not, he still has that sort of dumbstruck look for a moment as if he can't believe this is happening. Reason: he kinda can't. Still, he's nothing if not resilient in the face of shock, and so he gives a kind of helpless laugh, running a hand through his hair, before giving a little sigh and actually dipping into the bag of popcorn with the ohter hand, taking a few kernels and popping them in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully, with a semi-muffled but perfectly audible "Fank oo."
Then he has a seat, leaving plenty of room. He doesn't ask, because in his mind he's already committed to a potentially suicidal course of action. If *bench sharing* is on Kyo's Kill On Sight list, this is going to go very badly. "I don't blame you for not remembering me," Frei says, tilting his head up to look at the sky for a second, before dropping it back down and half-turning to Kyo. "But we've fought a few times in SNF and such."
There's a pause, and then Frei extends his hand (not the popcorn hand), taking a deep and audible breath. "My name's Frei, and I... have some very invasive questions to ask you, Mister Kyo Kusanagi."
It would probably ruin any visual running through Frei's imagination to have seen Kyo as he was dressed on the way out of Rio, in his incredibly obnoxious Hawaiian shirt and his cheap sunglasses he picked up in the lobby gift shop of his hotel. It really was completely the opposite of totally studly.
Putting his feet back down on the sidewalk now that the smoothie situation is less explosive, Kyo peers curiously back into the bag of cheesy popcorn, which is about when Frei decides to make himself right at home, sitting down on the bench with him. /Fortunately/, no, bench sharing doesn't generally drive Kyo into a fit of murderous fury, although he does glance over at the other man, wondering just who he thinks he is, sharing a bench with /greatness/.
Helpfully, Frei introduces himself.
"Is this some kinda 'end of the world' thing?" Kyo wonders, eating some more popcorn. "Because I gotta tell you, nobody ever asks me how my day was anymore, or how I was feeling. It's all about destiny and fate, like I'm not a /person/." The Kusanagi heir stays silent for a moment, before speaking again. "Anyway, get to the point. And if you call me Mister /anything/ again, I'll punch you inside out, got me?"
The wan smile on Frei's face suggests that he knows exactly what Kyo's talking about. That, and... well. The Scion of Flame doesn't look 'abused' but he does look 'slightly mishandled.' Frei's fought this man before and knows how strong he is... meaning Kyo either took a serious beating in KoF itself, or sometime afterward. Given that mood... well, it might be 'sometime afterward' is the clear winner. Kyo's tone also suggests, however, that it is clearly None Of Frei's Goddamned Business. So he leaves it at that.
"'Kyo' it is," is what he says, brushing off his shirt for a moment, before clearing his throat. Now he looks uncomfortable, and it's genuine annoyance at having to bug this poor man about this stuff when it's clear he just wants a few minutes in peace. Still... "Well. It IS an end of the world thing. Maybe, anyway. But if you want I can engage in some small talk, first." Frowning, Frei's eyes lower a bit, and he lets out a sigh of consternation. "For what it's worth, I'd rather be anywhere but here bugging you about things you probably don't feel like talking about. If I had anyone else to ask, I'd try that, but..."
Here, he looks up and chuckles, genuinely amused this time. "I doubt K' would tell me anything, and the other option was apparently Iori Yagami... let's just say, I was warned off of trying that one."
The match itself was actually fairly low-impact, despite Shingo's surprise entrance on the part of the 'New Face Team', and subsequent surprise display of skill and strength, even after Kyo totally hit him so hard most people would have outright died. No, it was pretty much entirely the incident afterwards, when Kyo was heading to the harbor, that shit went and got all /real/ on him.
And it was the worst kind of real, too. It wasn't even the battle against a suddenly even more powerful than usual Kain that really got to him as much as it was the implications thereof, of the normally tightly controlled fighter's murderous fury and the information he felt compelled to convey to the scions of the Kusanagi and Yagami clans. It's becoming distressingly more and more clear that whatever is going on, it's not something he can laugh off with a joke, not a situation he can deflect with a pop culture reference or by calling somebody's mom a hooker.
And that makes him grouchy.
"Yagami? No way, he's a big ol' puppy dog. You should go ask him whatever you need to know, and then help him hug out his abandonment issues." Kyo is probably not actually trying to steer Frei into the path of Iori's terrible rage or anything. He's just funnin'. "So anyway, Orochi, right? World of men coming to a close, strange phenomena, yadda yadda."
He might be a straightforward speaker himself, but only a total fool wouldn't read Kyo's description of Iori Yagami as being wholly consonant with Kula's oddly-expressed but very sincere fear that should Frei confront him, Iori wouldn't bother with sarcasm and would head straight for ripping the chi sage's face off with his bare hands... and if the man is a rival to so formidable a fighting presence as Kyo, then he would probably have no trouble doing just that, even to a fighter of surprisingly great fortitude as Frei is. No amount of feat slots is going to give him the power to take on an Orochi-tainted bloodline flame wielder.
And then Kyo just THROWS OUT the word Orochi, the word that he had to all but pry out of Ash with a crowbar and which, even then, seemed more fairy tale than possible reality. Just... drops it in the middle of a conversation like a ten ton boulder in a backyard pool, sending the normally still water of Frei's thoughts into a cascading torrent and leaving the pool all but empty. "Whadja..." is the most coherent thing he can say, before... well, before he starts laughing.
"Oh, wow..." the redhead says carefully, bringing both hands to his forehead and sweeping up his long bangs, pulling them back. It's the universal sigh for 'oh, geez' and he doesn't bother to hide it. "You know? I... I've had to deal with so MUCH lately. This whole 'bloodline flame' thing was a lot to handle, then hearing from Kula about her background, and Ash Crimson telling me this tall tale about the Orochi and mentioning the Kusanagi name... I keep expecting Ashton Kutcher to leap out from behind a mailbox and assure me I'm being punk'd," the young sage says at last, expertly removing the 'e' from 'punked' the way the kids said it back when that show was popular.
Letting his bangs fall back in his face (and, somewhat, in his eyes) Frei gives Kyo a questioning look. "I hoped I'd catch up with you and you'd have some... convenient explanation, and none of this would be real. Mutant powers, Xavier's School for Gifted Fighters, whatever. Unless you and Ash Crimson are in on the joke together but... you know, I just have this feeling you're not."
As Kyo is a being of infinite patience and superior wisdom, he waits out Frei's surprised laughing fit by eating some more of his popcorn, as if this were the most normal and natural thing in the history of the entire world. He looks at one kernel, only half popped, with a critical and judging eye, before he gives a shrug and then just eats it anyway. People sitting on benches eating cheese-flavoured popcorn snacks have no cause to throw stones. Or waste potentially delicious morsels.
The Kusanagi heir hardly seems to listen as Frei talks about bloodline flames, and Kula for some reason, mentioning Ashton Kutcher and Ash Crimson in virtually the same breath in the process. That actually might be considered an accomplishment from some perspectives. When the monk finishes, Kyo turns to look at him, faintly confused.
"What the hell is an 'Ash Crimson'?" Kyo wonders, as if the guy hadn't helped him repel an invasion of insane superpowered cultists in his home. Look, he can't be bothered to keep track of these things. "Anyway it might all be bullshit, who knows? It happened like... A thousand years ago or something, if it even did happen. So there's a bunch of people all hopped up on the idea of there being an /actual/ Orochi and some Buffy the Vampire Slayer garbage about the world ending, big whoop. If it wasn't for that legend they'd just have some other grave threat to humanity to harp on about, for or against. Like they'd be... I dunno, Santa Claus cultists, or trying to get me to save the world from the terrifying threat of Scientology. Psychos are going to be psychos no matter what their rationale is, and some of those psychos are going to have crazy superpowers. It's math, or something."
Kyo chews on more popcorn, thoughtfully.
"Though Blondie said something about a 'Messiah of Orochi' who gave him some kinda extra power, supercharged the ol' copycat flames. Made him angrier than an old guy in a room full of unprogrammed VCRs, and it turned his skin dark and his hair white... Whiter. Glowy shit in his eyes, too. Then he blew up a pier and vanished, so who knows about his mental state?" Kyo sighs, crumpling up what's left of the bag and tossing it casually into a nearby trash bin, where it lands so precisely it would make Ghandi want to punch Kusanagi right in his smug face. "Lotta crazy assholes in the world."
That news is disconcerting. Frei has no idea who 'Blondie' might be (thankfully, as Frei's own experiences with Kain would make the idea of a superpowered version seem... disconcerting) but that story does not bode well in any way. 'Messiah' certainly isn't a good word, either. But there's no way he can discount the story of Orochi now, because superpowered freaks are not known for their sanity, but if they're empowering people who can do a number on Kyo Kusanagi, then this is A Serious Problem. Grimacing, he glances off to the side. "It does sound crazy, doesn't it? But... it might be true. There's a... a presence, under Sunshine City," Frei explains, making vague gestures with his hands. "I felt it there a few months back, and I don't have any way to explain it other than... something in the dark. Hungry and waiting, just below the surface. I don't know if it's 'Orochi'? But... well."
He shrugs, then leans back against the bench with a sigh, glancing up to the sky again before canting his head to the side, looking at Kyo sidelong, genuine curiosity evident in his tone when he speaks. "It sounds like you don't believe any of this," he says carefully, being very particular about his wording. After all, at the end of one of her show's seasons, Buffy DIES saving everyone else from a mad god. "I don't blame you. It does sound far-fetched... but you have to admit, the gift that you and K' -- and supposedly Iori -- all share doesn't have a ready explanation. I mean, if it weren't for the fact that they did it to me too, I wouldn't even have believed Kula's story about clones in the first place."
But that one was an easy sell. Frei looked 27 identical copies of himself in the face, felt their authenticity first-hand, and then participated in their eventual deaths. Whatever ELSE doesn't make any sense here, that is an unassailable truth.
"I don't really know what to believe anymore. When Ash told me that story, I assumed it was as much fiction as... well. You've met him, you have to have." He pauses, putting his hand out parallel to the ground, palm down. "About yea high, French, talks like a first year debutante? Uses green flames..."
Even if he were called on it, Kyo would never admit to actually /watching/ Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except possibly because of girls in tanktops and, later on, /lesbians/.
"Look... I grew up hearing about this stuff, okay?" Kyo says, dusting off his hands to ensure any remaining popcorn or cheese debris is dealt with. "Mostly from my dad, who I'm still not convinced doesn't have dementia. I've heard some pretty outlandish variations on what 'really happened' back then, and the fallout from that... But I also know there's some weird-ass shit in the world. So I'm not quite writing anything off yet... But that doesn't mean I'm going to go all Dungeons and Dragons and go slay the horrible monster."
The implications of even /knowing/ that there's 'something' under Sunshine City doesn't sit well with Kyo, because he knows there's a horrible possibility that his vestigial better nature will be stirred up as a result, and he may end up having to find out what the dilly yo is on that subject. Even worse, he may find himself compelled by cruel fate to have to actually go do something about it. This is why he hates getting involved. This is why he's lazy, and kind of an asshole, and refuses to graduate from highschool.
Well, aside from just naturally being lazy and kind of an asshole. But the point is he doesn't want the responsibility. He wants to stay apart from it, aloof and removed. And people keep /ruining/ that.
When Frei describes Ash, Kyo's brow furrows in thought for a moment, and then: "Oh, that guy. Yeah, we fought some crazy cultists who wanted to kill me for the sake of their mad elder god. You know, the usual."
Wait, there's a cult?
Actually: "Wait. There's a cult?"
This is news on Frei. Bad news, too. But the more he thinks about it, the more he has been hearing rumors. The 'Cult of Gaia,' or something like that... worshippers of some new-age religion that Frei, who practically does religions (plural) as a _career_, didn't pay all that much attention to. It doesn't have a beat and you can't dance to it. But 'cult' and 'Messiah' go together, perhaps a lot better than 'Ash' and 'altruism' do. Sighing, Frei shakes his head. "Before this is all over," he says quietly, "they're going to demolish the lobby at the YFCC. I just... I just KNOW IT."
Sometimes, mundane concerns are the best concerns.
"Well..." Frei says, after a long pause, regarding Kyo carefully. Hearing it from his father? Well, they are 'bloodline' flames, right? Certainly, the power is probably inherited, though one wonders where Iori got his. Frei does remember all three treasures -- the sword, the magatama, the mirror -- but he can only match one up to an actual person: the guy in front of him. And for a moment, there is a look of genuine, kind sympathy in Frei's expression as he regards Kyo, realizing that this young man really doesn't seem to want, or know, how to deal with a situation he never asked to be part of.
"Well. It's not my place to tell you to go save the world if you don't want to," Frei says at last, and he means it. What Kyo does is Kyo's business, after all. "But... I need to get involved. I guess I already AM involved. That thing I felt... it haunts my dreams, Kyo," and here there is a genuine note of terror in Frei's voice. "I've got to find SOMETHING I can do. But I don't know where to start. That small group of people who could use 'true' fire... that was my only link, and it led me to you."
Grinning faintly, the redhead adds, almost as an afterthought, "If you know someone else I can bother, it'll get me out of your hair that much sooner."
"Yeah, a whole bunch of dudes with robes and knives and crazy claw hands and shit. Some really scary-looking chicks, too." Kyo frowns a bit, scratching his chin as he glances skyward, thinking back to that weird and extremely annoying day in which he was woken up from a perfectly good nap by a bunch of people trying to murder him, and tactfully not bringing up the time he was used blasted through the front facade of the YFCC by Vega. "Oh, and they burst into flame and vanished when they got beat up. That was pretty weird." It was, honestly, one of those things you don't see every day... Not even when you're Kyo Kusanagi, whose life is often pretty crazy.
Even better, Kyo could pretty well point Frei at exactly who stood in for which of those 'treasures', although one of them practices being hard to find and cryptic like it was an olympic event, and the other is an unstable guy with an unfortunate propensity for setting people on fire when he gets angry, which he does pretty much at the drop of a hat. Especially if it's his hat. Don't drop his hat. Kyo wouldn't want that sympathy, so luckily he's not looking Frei's way when that look is direct at him. Instead, he just snorts as, in counterpoint to his own desire to /not/ get involved, the monk expresses a /need/ to involve himself.
But directing Frei to someone else he can bother? /That/ is something Kyo Kusanagi can do.
"Try Reiji Oogami," Kyo says. "He's on my team, and he might be able to point you at something useful you can do with your time. 'course... You might regret it, you know."
His fingers are laced together, and Frei pushes his connected hands up and over his head in an arc, stretching without standing up, face briefly scrunching up in the way that it often does when stretching in that fashion. But it's also often a precursor to standing, which is exactly what Frei does. He made a sort of tacit promise, after all: Kyo gives him a name, and Frei does what he said he'd do, which is leave. At the warning, however, the best he can do is a sort of rueful smile. "I keep hearing variations on that phrase, you know. 'Frei, you'll regret not leaving this stuff alone.' 'Frei, when you find out the truth you might regret it.' 'Frei, don't approach Lu Bu.'" With a shrug, Frei puts up both hands in a 'what can you do?' gesture. "I might regret a lot of things, but I feel like I'd rather regret trying to find out what I COULD do, than regret what I DIDN'T do, while being eaten by an angry serpent god."
The message is couched in oblique terms, but it's not hard to unravel: a tiny admonishment, perhaps, that of the two paths Kyo himself could follow, one of them might be a little better. Not that he would judge, either way.
"Reiji... Oogami," the redhead says, as if committing it to memory, which he is in fact doing. "The second round of the tournament... it's got to be coming up soon. It's not as if *my* team has much used for me, anyway," Frei adds, but in a pleasantly amused sort of way. He wags a finger a bit, then scratches his cheek with it. "Adelheid, Alma and... Seishirou Ryouhara. Doing their own thing, I'm sure, as the official idealists and heroes. Me, I'm just a guy." This is the sort of understatement that Kula appeared to be attempting not to roll her eyes at, but Frei believes wholeheartedly. Working behind the scenes... that's alright by him.
"You, uh... you didn't have to help me, and you could have blown me off, but you didn't," Frei says to Kyo at least, brushing himself off a bit and preparing to go. "I doubt my thanks mean much to you, but thanks regardless."
In truth, Kyo didn't mean it as an actual warning... Mostly just a reminder of an important fact. Deep down, the Kusanagi heir knows better than to really expect to warn anybody off of doing anything stupid, because of his naturally callous and uncaring temperament which does not disguise any good guy instincts whatsoever, and also because he knows full well that it takes a certain type of temperament to actually reach the level where people consider you 'a fighter' and not 'that guy who does Taekwondo down at the YMCA', a temperament which demands a certain stubbornness to overcome the barriers between normal people and guys who can punch cars into spare parts.
"What, seriously?" Kyo says, a look of amused disbelief on his face. He didn't pay attention to the team rosters. "L'il Rugal, Benimaru's buddy and Naruto Marx? That's not a team, that's the setup to a joke you can't tell in polite company." The Kusanagi heir is, as usual, sort of dismissive of other people in a way he, at least, thinks is enormously amusing. "Sweet Aunt Jemima, that's like... A team made half out of future supervillains, you've got bigger balls than you give yourself credit for, guy."
When Frei actually starts to thank him, Kyo naturally falls back on being /entirely/ too cool for school. "Yeah well, just don't spread it around, I don't want people getting any funny ideas that I'm a nice guy, or something. Don't get killed, huh? S'not like I'll be around to save your ass if you get in trouble."
That gets a laugh out of Frei, in spite of himself. He doesn't dwell on the implications of 'Lil Rugal' too hard, and as for the rest, well... Frei's been preparing for the day when he either finds Alma and Seishirou dead at each other's hands, or naked together in bed. Possibly both if his timing is good. The cheerful yet practical redhead is, among the Einherjar team, the brave little toaster, by comparison. It's not a label he has a problem with, either. "Don't worry," he says, "your secret is safe with me." And then he's gone, to do two things: start finding a way to track down Reiji Oogami... and start prepartions now for the inevitable lobby destruction at the YFCC.
It's pretty much a guarantee to happen, at this point.
Log created on 20:16:38 03/29/2011 by Frei, and last modified on 01:11:53 03/30/2011.