newtongieszlers. 

in-manu-dei: SORRY ABOUT MY ASSHOLE DOG, CARLOS. HE WON’T SHUT THE FUCK UP. 

your character has passed away, and my character is having trouble coping, so they keep calling your muse’s old cellphone. Send me ◘ for the last voicemail my character left.

    There is a slow intake of breath over the line. "I know you're looking down on me right now. You always did, huh? You've got that smug smile on your lips, your eyes are glittering with that malice and love--ha! Love. Who would have thought that when you died, I'd be lamenting it. I thought I'd be happy. I thought I'd be free. 

   "Instead, I'm just lost. I'm alone, Allie's gone, she's got some lug of a man on her arm now, I'm sure. And I'm alone. I don't know who to talk to anymore. I guess that's why I keep calling. I always keep coming back for more, even when you were at your most cruel. 

   "Shit, Hermann, I sometimes wish that you would have just killed me. It would have saved me a lot of misery and grief. But, uh, that's just your way, isn't it? You wanted me yours and you were willing to go to any lengths to get it. Congrats, you got it. And then you fucking left me. You promised me--you promised you'd take care of me, Hermann. Well--where are you now?!" There is bitterness in Tendo's voice, a shaking and acrid tone. 

   "Sometimes I try to remember what you were like before. How couldn't I have seen it? I don't know, anymore. I just don't know. Were you wrong? Or was I? I can't even tell. I hate it. I hate what you've turned me into. A sniveling wreck. And I'm lost without you. I'm alone and it's terrifying. After so long, being your 'pet'--being your creature--the prospect of living, or going on without you is one that I don't care for much.

in-manu-dei

"This isn’t what it looks like," was the first thing Hermann said as he became aware of Tendo’s presence.  He had a man - non-descript, forgettable, so plain no one would notice him - pinned beneath his knee.  He pressed it harder against the nasty gunshot wound, smirking at the cry of pain it elicited.  

Tongue flicking out to wet his lips, Tendo's eyes flicked from Hermann to the man under his knee, flinching at the pitiful sound that Hermann elicited from him. He swallowed hard, quickly averting his eyes and carefully not looking at Hermann. That smile was unsettling. He didn't like it. "Not what it looks like?" His voice rang with a note of hysteria. "Not what it looks like, Hermann? Because I think that it might be exactly what it looks like. And to me, it looks like you just--you just--" His voice cracks and his hand closes around his rosary. 

Hermann woke up to a soft sound and slowly opened his eyes, only to nearly jump out of his skin as he saw Tendo at his feet.  ”Tendo, what are you doing?  And what’s this?”  He reached out to brush the man’s catlike ears.

Hannibal Chau was not a man easily conquered. He had felt the storm of fire coming. Stockpiles of goods had been put away for that eventuality. Resources were precious. The walls built to keep kaiju out were crumbling, looted for metal -- eaten from the inside like the swarm of humanity. 

The inland waters were flocked to. The oceans contaminated by radiation and Kaiju Blue. Island nations fell to the slow poisoning. 

Hannibal Chau ruled now in the once-great Detroit, which was beginning to grow again, thrive again as the pulse of humanity entered the city. Fresh water. A city ruled by the corrupt. Well, everywhere was now. The world had begun the descent into chaos.

The building had once been great, before time and neglect had rotted the insides and chaffed the outside into powdering dust. Chau's symbol was carved along the roadside and painted in an intricate grafiti mural outside of the building. It was his new base of operations. The inside had been built up, it was grand as ever was any of Hannibal's lairs. 

He was older now, not that it showed. There was a fresh scar that traced down his temple and dragged at the corner of his mouth. A finger was missing on his left hand and the top half of an ear had been lost. His presence still commanded respect, his hidden gaze still as sharp as ever.