doggone

[repeatedprayer]

[In the time following his departure from Tabito and Manabu's company, the alias "Grey" has wound up sticking.

Not that everyone calls him that, he's used a few other aliases since then, but it's what he's wound up thinking of himself as. If Grey had taken the time to think about it a bit more he might have picked something with a little less connection to Rezo's name, but it's still leagues better than thinking of himself as "Rez- wait, no, just a copy." And maybe that's why he's felt significantly calmer since he left Sairaag.

By his own standards, Grey has been laudably well-behaved; sure, he's been mostly doing under-the-table psychic work, often on behalf of criminals, but! He's been trying to keep a low profile so it's usually things like clairvoyant spying rather than anything violent, and he's been making a point of not doing anything that directly impacts the galaxy railways.

It would be extremely awkward if Manabu Yuuki had to try and arrest him, after all.

He's found himself frequently thinking about Manabu, much to his annoyance. He has no serious expectations of ever seeing Manabu again, so it's simply a waste of mental bandwidth to find himself wondering what Manabu is doing right now or where he is, or to reminisince over their incredibly brief acquaintanceship. Grey can only suppose that because Manabu was the first reasonably normal person he got to know after leaving Sairaag that Manabu is going to stick out in his mind for a while.

And it's probably because of the real estate that Manabu is hogging in Grey's mind that he's been very aware of every mention of the SDF that crosses his path. He hasn't exactly been tracking the SDF's activities deliberately, but he does pay attention to the news and the SDF frequently winds up in there, even if Manabu's name in particular isn't normally dropped.

Until the day it does.

SDF Officer Taken Hostage By Pirates]

* * *

[It's taken several weeks of investigating, but Grey has been able to track down The Huntress's client, a Dr. Parish and associates. It must be a small galaxy, because Dr. Parish is someone Grey knows. Sort of.

Rather, Dr. Parish was a colleague of Rezo's who collaborated with the man on chimera research (and other unsavory things) in the past. Not only that, the man was an ardent admirer of Rezo's superior psychic prowess, and desperate to improve his own meager abilities.

He'd had quite a shock when Grey approached him in town, but after the initial surprise it had been sickeningly easy to convince Dr. Parish that he was the real Rezo. Grey can only surmise that the man wants to believe too badly to let himself be properly suspicious. It had only taken a day for Grey to be invited to tour Parish's laboratory.

The lab's located on the grounds of a former Marquess's estate, a ways out of town and secluded by trees, a high wall, and a long drive. Grey's done a little recon before, but actually being here is different, especially since he has to navigate by cane at the moment. Grey is doing his best to politely nod and smile as Parish guides him from room to room, explaining their work and occasionally handing him things to examine himself.

But evidently Parish realizes that "Rezo" isn't entirely interested, because he stops partway through an explanation of some stem cell experiments he and a few others have been working on to say "Of course, the really interesting specimens are kept in the basement floor."

Grey already knows this. He hopes his expression seems the right sort of eager.]

Interesting?

["Something along the lines of what we did in the past. Would you like to see them?"]

Nothing would please me more.

[Grey can practically hear Parish's delighted grin. To soothe the surge of irritation, Grey reminds himself that he's going to kill this man before the end of the day and allows Parish to guide him out into the hall and to the basement entrance at the back of the building.]

Comments

[repeatedprayer]

[Blink.]

I didn't take it here but it looks fairly ordinary. It's not very busy, and most of the personnel appeared to be robots.

[siriusly]

Mm... [so likely not developed enough to have a strong SDF presence, let alone the SPG...]

It's a mainly human settlement, right? Or is this one of the cohabitated planets with another species?

[repeatedprayer]

Mainly human. None of the indigenous species are considered sapient.

[They're just like, weird birds and mammals and things.]

[siriusly]

[dang. so no chance he can get away with just...having this stuff on him.

he sighs, head bobbing back against the wall as he looks at the ceiling. his tail lightly thumps on the mattress a couple times.]

Right...hat...tie it down... [can't just sit around in his skivvies the whole time!]

[repeatedprayer]

[Ah. So that was why he'd asked.

Grey considers pointing out that even if there were other species living on Ruvinagald, the odds of them resembling humans but with animal ears and tails is somewhat slim, but decides not to kick the dog while he's down.

He'll go ahead and fill in some backstory for Manabu instead.]

Ruvinagald used to be a colony in the classical sense of being subservient to a primary nation. The early population was a mixture of adventurous sorts hoping to make a fortune and prisoners sent over to be punished with hard labour. Things changed when there was civil unrest in the mother nation, and the Prime Minister fled to Ruvinagald. He resided here for a long time until it was safe for him to return home but by then he'd had a son who was born and raised on Ruvinagald and who wanted to stay.

The population had also expanded enough that they wanted independence from the mother nation, so the minister's son joined up with the burgeoning independence movement and established a constitutional monarchy with himself as the new King. But the monarchy collapsed very shortly- his son was the second and last King of Ruvinagald. A military coup d'état overthrew the second king, and Ruvinagald has had a president instead ever since.

[siriusly]

[Manabu listens, but his head tilts back down so he can check on his search results. Dr. Parish...

...that looks like just a general practice.

on a completely different planet. no dice there.

new search. Rezo...

while that's loading up, he looks over:] How long ago was that? Is this place still pretty shaky as far as governing bodies go?

[repeatedprayer]

[Oblivious to what Manabu's doing, assuming he's looking up general Ruvinagald news, Grey answers the question easily enough.]

Not long at all. I think it's been about... Oh, twenty years? Long enough to establish the appearance of stability, but with plenty of ambitious tycoons vying for dominance over the system. I expect the military hasn't forgotten that they were the ones to overthrow the previous government either.

[So yes, still kind of shaky.]

[siriusly]

[he hums out a thoughtful note at that, looking back down.

he blinks, eyebrows lifting. then he squints.

then he looks to Grey, then back to the tablet.

eh??]

...

...Huh...

[they're the spitting image of each other. kind of? this dude's eyes are closed, so the visage is off (missing that signature glower Manabu's grown to know, y'know).

this Rezo guy...a famous healer...?]

[repeatedprayer]

[Manabu hasn't shown much of a reaction to whatever he's looking up before now, so the squint and the vocalization pique Grey's curiosity.]

Find something interesting?

[Grey scooches in to lean over Manabu's shoulder- and is confronted by the last face he ever wants to see.]

...!

[He grabs the tablet, yanking it away from Manabu's hands and prying eyes, and clutches it to his chest.]

You- Why are you looking him up, I told you he was dead, didn't I?!

[siriusly]

He-hey! [the sudden hostility catches Manabu by surprise, makes him flinch, ears flattening.] I was curious! He was connected and all, right? I didn't know you guys were actually--

[CLONES?????????


no of course not:] Related! You know? How would I?

[repeatedprayer]

[Grey scurries off the bed so quickly he nearly falls, still clutching the tablet so that Manabu can't get a glimpse of the screen.

He couldn't have felt worse if Manabu had barged in on him while he was jacking off or something similarly exposing- that's the closest approximation to the rush of humiliation and rage that comes over him at the thought of Manabu seeing Rezo, seeing Grey, comparing their faces...]

That doesn't- You don't need to know! You don't need to know about any of this!

[With shaky hands Grey fumbles with the tablet, closing down any open tabs with information pertaining to Rezo.]

[siriusly]

[Manabu is coiled up, ready to jolt or flinch at a strike he was unconsciously expecting to come with that heightened volume and emotion (totally normal, definitely not weird).]

Grey, that freaky doctor was doing what he did to me for him! Why? Especially if he was dead. How is that something I'm not going to need to know at this rate?

[repeatedprayer]

It doesn't matter!

[Manabu's words are logical enough but unfortunately, logic is not the system Grey is operating on right now.]

He's dead and- and you can't fight him so you should just forget about him! He doesn't matter anymore!

[siriusly]

[what the hell...

this is the most upset - genuinely upset Manabu's ever seen him. and as much as he's apt to fully barreling forward against friction, the matter has a few factors that make it tough.

matters of dead brothers often do.

does...Grey mean that because it's true? or because thinking about Rezo is too hard right now?

he doesn't vocalize the ask, just staring hard and searching Grey's expression for the answer. shame Manabu's never been good at reading nuance.]

[repeatedprayer]

Don't-!

[Don't look at me like that!

Even when he closes his eyes, Grey can feel Manabu's gaze on him- searching, assessing, comparing, finding lacking... He can't bear it, he has to get away.

His eyes snap open again and for a moment, his gaze darts towards the apartment door. He could tear it open, bolt down those stairs, Manabu wouldn't be able to chase him in the state he's in. He'd be left completely helpless. With nothing and nobody to protect him if anybody came by looking for a missing test subject.

Grey can't just run away, but he feels damned defenseless himself in front of Manabu. His gaze darts to the other side of the kitchen, to the bathroom. Good enough.

Grey practically throws himself into the bathroom, and slams the door shut behind him. He locks the door for good measure, then collapses onto the floor, cramped between the sink and the wall.

Damn it, damn it, damn it-!]

[siriusly]

Grey-!

[he reaches, but there's really no chance of him being able to reach and stop the guy from going as he does. it leaves Manabu with his heart hammering in his throat, hand slowly dropping to his lap, skin tingling for want to do something.

obviously, Rezo's absence hits hard, and in that vaguest of senses...Manabu gets it. to some degree (just not the degree that is actually true to the situation, of course)...

he sighs, rubbing at his face. pressing on him won't help matters, and he surely won't learn anything useful, only make him angrier, make things harder...

he stares up at the ceiling. what...what is he supposed to do...?


Manabu doesn't do well idle, so he swings his legs over the edge of the bed, taking a few breaths before pushing himself onto his feet.]

Ngh-!! [so dizzy... thankfully, he can keep a hand on the wall for balance and breathe through the nausea.

he takes careful steps, hand staying on the wall or piece of furniture along the path until he can get his back against the wall beside the bathroom, leaning against in with a huff.

he knows he can't just apologize or talk his way out of Grey being pissed, that's for sure. at least he...did something useful with his time while feeling rotten?]

[repeatedprayer]

[It's difficult to think around the pounding in his chest, but in between surges of rage and misery Grey is lucid enough to know one thing: He has fucked up. Any idiot can tell by how he reacted, is reacting, that there's something going on with his connection to Rezo. Something more than a few shared genes.

He doesn't know what he's going to say to Manabu now. Part of him still wants to throttle the man for prying into Grey's secrets, but the longer he sits there the more he remembers what Manabu said. "...that freaky doctor was doing what he did to me for him! Why?" Of course Manabu would be curious. Of course it would be relevant to Manabu's situation.

Isn't that just typical? Grey can't have a single area in his life that isn't touched by Rezo's influence in one way or another. Even with Rezo dead, the man's legacy had been enough to reach out and snare Manabu within his grip.

It feels a little surprising, once there's room for other emotions, that Manabu genuinely seems to have no recognition of Rezo's name. Then again, it is Manabu...

And that feels like another mark against Rezo, and by extension, Grey- that Manabu's innocence is being sullied somehow by learning all this.

After an extended period of time of just sitting with his head in his hands, Grey's finally able to bring himself to look up. The tablet's in sleep mode, lying at his feet on the cheap linoleum. Grey picks it up the way someone might pick up a bomb, and stares at it.

If Manabu looks up Rezo online, he certainly isn't going to find information about Grey. Or much about Rezo himself, outside of thousands of articles about this bit of altruism or that. Rezo had kept his personal life as private as possible, and the narrative available to anyone looking into it is pretty straightforward- abandoned into foster care shortly after his birth, with the eventual Cinderella-esq twist of being adopted by a prestigious family and proving himself as a prodigy, blessed with both a genius intellect and phenomenal psychic powers to compensate for his blindness.

He'd grown up, gotten married, had a child, then his wife died of cancer- and that's where any mention of family, by blood, marriage, or adoption, disappears. Asides from that it's just decades upon decades upon decades of Rezo playing the role of benevolent angel, researching only the most benevolent of causes and swooping in to save people wherever he travels.

Hard to connect all of that with the kind of person who would kidnap, drug a man, and graft animal parts onto his body. And Grey's not sure how many gaps he can fill in for Manabu without compromising himself. He can't tell Manabu his story- but he can't leave Manabu behind either.

Eventually Grey's able to get to his feet and go to the sink, where he splashes some water in his face. It doesn't help his weariness much, and he winds up spending more time staring at his reflection in abject loathing... But even that, he can't do forever.

All told it's a few hours of brooding before Grey emerges from the bathroom, but emerge he does, tablet in hand and looking rather subdued.]

[siriusly]

[a few hours alone, forcing himself to not engage or poke the bear brooding in the bathroom...all while recovering from months of medical torture. it does rather limit the options, doesn't it? Manabu can't even properly pace the room to get energy out, because just a few paces away from the wall feels like he's walking on high beam between skyscrapers! he's never had a problem with heights before, but the way his head spins now...

he lingers near the door for a half an hour or so, debating on whether or not to engage. his impatience wants to, but his better instincts say to leave it - what good can he do or say, honestly? he's not sorry for looking, just...sorry Grey's tied up in this at all. it's his fault.

as is often the case when left to his own devices, Manabu moves to find ways to expend energy - even energy he doesn't have to spare. he makes a slow circuit around the apartment and grabs a shirt still set out (sorry Grey, he's tired of being just in his underwear), and goes to look out the window. this isn't the concrete basement, but it's hard not to feel some of the anxiety that came from being trapped down there again when he knows he can't safely go outside, go on his own, go anywhere...

the moment that dread hits too hard, he moves again, nausea be damned. wall push-ups, water drinking, a few squats (bad idea, whew), some stretches...frustration mounts as he finds himself so feeble-feeling and exhausted, not really giving himself the grace that should come with being tied down for actual months! he wants to get better faster, which ought to mean moving faster in a perfect world, but alas.

by the time the fated moment comes where Grey reemerges, Manabu's curled up on top of the bed, weary and tense. his head hurts. his back hurts. whatever he'd been snowed with for all that work was flushing out of his body and leaving him feeling rawer to the changes that grafting left him with. but his ear still perks at the sound of the door, and he lifts himself partly up to look over.]

Y-you okay? [said the strung-out, sick guy.]

[repeatedprayer]

[Seeing Manabu is a relief, but it also causes a little flutter of anxiety in Grey's chest. No more avoiding the consequences of his outburst. It's perhaps gracious of Manabu to break the silence first, although Grey winds up staring at him for a long moment trying to comprehend the question.]

...Fine.

[(Because you know, it's weird that Manabu might be concerned about Grey after he freaked out and locked himself in a bathroom for hours.)

Manabu doesn't seem to be doing all that great himself. He looks- and sounds- terrible, in fact. Grey's gaze traces over Manabu's form, wondering if he's doing worse because of Grey's outburst. Surely not? Surely...

Then the shirt situation finally clicks and Grey's hit with a curl of internal heat at the realization that Manabu's wearing his clothes, wrapped up in Grey's scent, like something that belongs to Grey. He wants to stride over and peel it off, run his hands over Manabu's body until the man goes limp and acquiescent.

Manabu would probably punch him if he actually tried that.

Grey shakes his head and scrapes a hand through his hair, trying desperately to obtain some semblance of composure. He can complain about the shirt later.]

About earlier...

Grey swallows, hesitates a beat, before stepping over to the bed and setting the tablet down on the edge of the mattress.]

...It won't happen again.

[God he hopes he's telling the truth.]

[siriusly]

...

[there's a weird twinge that comes from being silently scrutinized - especially since Manabu can't tell if his expression is neutral displeased or actual displeased. the fine definitely doesn't sell any reassurance, and leaves the truth pretty hazy, so the unease lingers.

he scoots to sit up a bit better as Grey approaches, watching uncertainly as the tablet is set down.]

...Didn't know it was a sore spot. Sorry. [he can research it on his own time, without Grey around.]

[repeatedprayer]

I know.

[Grey turns and sits on the edge of the bed, facing away from Manabu. Maybe not having to look directly at Manabu will make everything a bit easier.]

I don't want to- I'm not going to talk about him. Or, at least, my relationship with him.

["Relationship" seems like the wrong word to use for it. But it's probably the best one to use when it comes to Manabu's impression of the Rezo-Grey connection.]

But if you want to research him, I won't try to stop you.

[With a grimace, he admits:]

I'm honestly surprised you didn't recognize the name. He's actually quite famous. Or perhaps that's changed?

[siriusly]

Er-- [Manabu's mouth twitches.] If he's not famous in baseball or the SDF, I...probably wouldn't know. I don't keep up with celebrities.

[repeatedprayer]

[Grey huffs a feeble attempt at a laugh.]

You're a sensible man, then.

[siriusly]

[Manabu's face goes red.]

Y-you don't have to tease me about it, okay? Nobody's ever called me sensible before and meant it.

[repeatedprayer]

You know, in this aspect I think you really are.

[He's almost as surprised as Manabu at that.]

Parish and those other scientists were completely in awe of Rezo's reputation, even though most of them had never even met him. And Parish hardly knew him that well either. But they'd convinced themselves that they knew Rezo, could trust him, and when they believed I was Rezo it was entirely too easy to convince them to let me in on their secrets.

[And then kill all of them.]