✕. le marchand !

The fingers of that hand flex at his side absentmindedly, then curl into a loose fist. He turns his eyes from Zacharie's mask to look down the street from where he came.

Even without seeing him, he feels the Batter's gaze leave. They gaze down the street together until Zacharie's interest in it wanes. When he turns back, the man is an angular profile looking toward where he came, intense as always. And Zacharie takes the opportunity to study him for a moment, this unfamiliarity of the Batter staring ahead with no goal to reach, how strangely human of him it is. ❝ Down the road? ❞ Zacharie asks, his brows lifting behind his mask. ❝ That about makes us neighbors. ❞ It's a fortunate placement, he thinks. The other wards are entirely foreign in comparison to the zones they once called home. Perhaps the Batter will acclimate somewhat better here than elsewhere, as much as one can when brought back from the dead, anyhow. ❝ I had wondered how long you wandered before finding me. No matter the game, it seems I can't be too far. Eh eh eh. ❞

Hackles lower, fury simmering down. The Batter pulls his collar back up. There's still a flicker of frustration and confusion across his face, and instead of speaking he reaches his hand out. Slowly. There is no hesitancy, but he still watches the other closely. Even with the mask hiding his expression, his eyes say a lot.

Zacharie watches and waits. It is Batter that crosses the distance between them with a hand outstretched. The poise of its palm and appendages as it approaches is like a grapple, and though Zacharie draws the quick conclusion that its aim lies locked on his neck, he allows it to take him. His first thought is that the Batter's hand is cold against his much warmer skin. The second is that the fit of him, light yet firm above his airway, is strange though not unwelcome. There's no hostility in his energy, though the gesture itself is innately so. One closed fist is all it would take to strangle him. And still, Zacharie doesn't move away. For a moment, it's them in silence, his pulse moving thin and vulnerable from his throat into the Batter's thumb with their gazes united. Then, the Batter lets go, and Zacharie breathes again. His expression is indecipherable, though Zacharie tries to decipher it, regardless. It's not an act of caution, but one of intrigue instead. ❝ Not even slightly. After that, I can decidedly say you're not spectral at all and are most definitely of flesh and blood. ❞ Zacharie chuckles and runs an absent hand over his throat, before he looks out to the city beyond them.

Memories of what happened before he ended up here come in bits and pieces, a whirlwind of fur and violence, until his tender throat was torn open by feline fangs and he was left there convulsing, choking on his own blood, staining the white of his uniform.

Their memories are the same, then. Zacharie's silence feels more complex—heavier to him, too—as he grapples with several thoughts at once. It is some relief to know that they recall the end the same way, though it's comparatively meager in the shadow of his subsequent realization that this means, somehow, the Batter has returned from the dead. It was his same corpse that Zacharie stood over when the world remained lifelessly alive, only reanimated by the powers of the new one they see themselves in now. His same absence that Zacharie had felt once he was left to exist in it. The proof is in the scar on his neck that he exposes by pulling down his collar. And as the Batter stares him in the face, cold with rage, Zacharie could almost think him like a vengeful spectre—a bitter irony to his holy purpose. ❝ … No, ❞ Zacharie finally answers. ❝ I was never your adversary. ❞ Nor was he ever intended to be. He's known his role from the beginning; that they've transcended the barriers of their world and its rules matters little to him.

It's hard to say if he ever fully trusted the merchant. Their conversations had been fine, mostly professional; Zacharie had been the friendly one. He never pried too much. The Batter appreciated that. But trust was in short supply. Still, he had a mission to complete then, and he was willing to cough up the credits in exchange for things that made his job easier. Maybe he'd come to enjoy the merchant's company, in a sense. As much as someone like him could. Everyone needed a break sometimes.

The Batter was never one for words. That he neglects a greeting entirely is very much like him, and so Zacharie chuckles, the sound his signature, as he stands aside so that the Batter may overlook Fibonacci himself. ❝ The shorter answer would be the city of Spirale, on Radiale Island. Where we stand now is the Zone known as Fibonacci. They call them, instead, wards. ❞ Zacharie dismisses the specifics with a wave of his hand, as though it were nothing of great importance. ❝ But that is hardly what you mean. Right now, names are effectively meaningless. Without knowing the basics, it may as well be nonsense. ❞ Through the eye-holes of his mask, the merchant brings his gaze toward the people he had been watching moments before the Batter's arrival. They are, in essence, the city. Without them, it could hardly be considered a world at all. ❝ We're in something of a hub. Most of the residents are just like you and me—pulled past the boundaries of our respective worlds and dropped here, in another altogether. As for why… Well, I'm afraid that's as far as my knowledge reaches at the moment. Eh eh eh. ❞ The conversation lulls—though it was rather one-sided to begin with, as is often the case when the Batter is one's conversation partner—and Zacharie's jovial nature dims somewhat. The four eyes locked on him have closed to a mere two, less fraught though still expectant, and Zacharie knows he has to ask it to answer him.

You can cause enough damage with any object if you swing it hard enough.

To this voice, Zacharie does not flinch but instead tilts an ear. His recognition had been instant—few walked with steps so heavy, and even fewer supposedly guided by faith. The shadow of a baseball hat's sloping bill cast over him is all the confirmation he needs, and so the merchant hums, a smile beneath his mask. ❝ But of course. I told you once before: I'll always find myself in places you're going to visit before you arrive. Someway or another. ❞ In their world or some other, true to his word. Zacharie shrugs on his backpack and turns away from this overlook of the city, where people move about like countless ants. The space reminds him of the highest point in Zone 2, only not nearly so high as the library there. And yet, the residents themselves could still almost be Elsen, swept up in their own mundane lives, all of them the same. The Batter looks at him with all four eyes, unblinking and seemingly at some loss. Zacharie wonders if it is perhaps the glaring absence of his strings: the Player he most often addressed, now nowhere to be seen. For a moment, he observes the novelty of it. A puppet freed of its puppeteer, roaming without aim. In the next comes nostalgia. The last time he spoke with the Batter, it was also directly, just like this. And then he had been slain, his mission failed, and the world was left to exist washed of its color. Everything was much bleaker after that.