Chapter Text
Quatre Asselin’s life hadn’t been a sheltered one, despite his parents’ best attempts making it so. As a particularly curious child, he’d happened upon his fair share of disturbing scenes wandering off the grounds of the family’s countryside estate. They had never involved actual people, but the Lieutenant argued this premature exposure had, in a way, inadvertently prepared him to stare down the much worse kinds of horror his military career would have in store for him.
Even before active deployment, watching blood spill from his own gut after a misfired shot had pierced it during live-fire training had left him more frustrated than anything else. He had, indeed, been extremely cross at Renard for that - but, at least according to Renard himself, not an inkling of panic had crossed his slightly paler visage.
Yet, despite this relative apathy towards deathly matters, Quatre Asselin was now holed up in that same estate all by himself, a creeping sense of dread as his only company in an otherwise placid summer night. A sense that, just out of sight, the hunter puppeting Renard’s corpse could be waiting for him in the dark. It was an admittedly silly thought, considering the kind of defensive garrison that stood between him and that monster, but it hadn’t left him since he was rushed out of the complex.
In truth, he had expected for the thing to breach containment there and then: lay waste of those mercenaries like a hungry wolf in a chicken coop, slaughter the fools that had tried to contain him and then, and only then, slowly turn to him and rip him apart with that familiar smile of his. Somewhere in his mind, in a deep, dark corner he generally tried to keep quiet, he’d even felt like he deserved it. A fitting end to the life and times of the Great Defector.
As he downed another glass of Lutetian red, his gaze darted from the telescreen he’d turned on to fill in the silence, to the larger one showing a composite view of his villa’s security network. Nothing wrong there, exactly as it had been ten minutes prior. And ten minutes before then. And yet another ten minutes before then. After all, he’d be warned in case of a security breach. They’d kept him in the dark about the mercenaries for some reason, but he was still a priority asset. The Union wouldn’t let him get mauled by their own monster, would they?
He let out a sharp exhale as he turned towards the sudden buzz of his PDA. An audio message from a friend - one that was still alive and fully human. A war buddy of sorts, even though they’d been on opposite sides. He tapped on the screen a few times, letting it play out to the half-silence of the estate’s empty living room.
“Yo Quatre, I heard you’re spending the off-season in the old haunt, yeah? ‘Cause I’m done settling things with the corp, so I could come visit in like a week or so - Avignon’s a long way from the Core unfortunately. Lemme know if you got room for one more, man! I could go for some huntin’ down in the sticks with you!”
His gaze turned to the pair of shotguns hanging over the rarely-lit fireplace, a tiny smile forming on his lips - if only for a moment. A visit from Sergio Cortada, former arena rival and only mercenary he trusted, would indeed be very welcome. He was the kind of guy that would have met Quatre’s current concerns with a kind of optimistic bravado he sometimes envied.
For what he knew, his solution would have likely been to “kick the thing’s ass if it shows up”, or something along those lines - and the Lieutenant knew he would have done so with zero hesitation, if that monster somehow ambushed them in his own home. He would have raised his shotgun, emptied it on the beast and likely died anyway, laughing like a madman all the while - because that was just the kind of person Sergio Cortada was, and Quatre Asselin couldn’t help but respect it.
As he began typing up a response however, his thoughts were dashed by something he hoped he’d go all night without ever seeing.
Movement.
One of the backyard cameras, the one looking over one of the old shacks on the edge of the villa’s grounds, suddenly picked up something scurrying by. Something creeping around the unfamiliar space as if hoping not to stir anyone.
Something humanoid.
Quatre froze, then considered his options. Slowly, he put down the PDA and went for the telescreen’s remote, killing the audio. His sidearm, a 44 caliber revolver, had been uncharacteristically left on the coffee table in front of him - loaded as well, “just in case”. He tucked it in his belt and himself crept across the room, quietly getting one of the hunting shotguns off its rack. Neither had been loaded for years, but he had brought over a couple boxes of shells from the garage as soon as he’d returned home - again, “just in case”. As one shell and then another slowly slid into their chambers, the Lieutenant’s gaze turned again towards the cameras. For one, stressful moment, the figure was nowhere to be found - until one could make out its faint silhouette slithering around the villa’s garage - significantly closer than before.
Once again, Quatre considered his options: if this was, indeed, the Union’s little experiment coming to take his due, he likely had very little chance of actually surviving the encounter - because, if it had actually escaped the killbox he’d been chained into, one man with a hunting shotgun wasn’t going to make much of a difference. As such, he could flee upstairs, lock himself in his bedroom and wait out his potential doom in a puddle of tears and regret, or he could try making a break for his car, hoping two barrels of buckshot would buy him enough time to speed away into the night.
By the time he had made the decision, he was already out the door.
As the wood of the shotgun’s stock pressed against his shoulder, the Lieutenant became painfully aware he could hear his own heartbeat slightly louder than his own footsteps - a state of things which, in turn, reminded him of his first time hunting with his father. The irony wasn’t lost on him, fully aware of his status of prey this time around.
The shuffling of footsteps on grass interrupted his musings. Coming from behind the garage, Quatre reckoned he’d alert it if he triggered the garage’s automatic doors right away. As such, he needed a distraction - something simple, to lure it away. Even a pebble could do it. A low moan, something closer to a growl, once again interrupted his train of thought - although there was no doubt now: the intruder was indeed stalling (waiting?) behind that garage, and whatever it was it barely sounded human.
The Lieutenant threw the first pebble he found and waited.
The intruder went silent, before footsteps could be heard again.
It fell for it.
With zero hesitation, Quatre rushed for the garage’s side door, hopping in his car and triggering the main doors in one, surprisingly fluid motion. As the coupé roared awake, the Lieutenant’s hands gripped the wheel with anxious strength. He was almost out of there, just a few seconds more. He was going to run. He was going to live.
The moment the garage’s door locked open, a royal purple slipper slammed the accelerator of the equally purple sports car, thrusting the machine out of its concrete den in an admittedly stylish half-powerslide. If he floored it, it would have only taken a minute to reach the front gate. He just needed to breathe in and ignore whatever was absolutely about to give chase.
Then, he felt a thud on his driver side window, and he just about screamed - before instinctively slamming the car door into the intruder’s torso and reaching for the shotgun on the passenger’s seat. That’s when he realized he hadn’t even turned to look at it, and that whatever this intruder was, it was now writhing on the ground. Unexpectedly so.
In a moment of morbid curiosity, Quatre lit up the weapon’s flashlight and bathed the thing in white halogen light - revealing what was indeed a humanoid figure, one covered in open wounds and assorted dried-up bloodstains, but also…fully decked in what the Lieutenant could only recognize as tattered streetwear, complemented by a full suite of outlandish jewelry - mostly inverted crosses and other occult symbols.
That…was not the monster he’d been expecting, although he definitely looked like a stereotypical undead. One that had escaped from the set of a music video, from the looks of it. Or, more importantly, one that was now covering his face, begging him not to fire in a voice that was not only human, but carried a heavy Shardanian accent.
“Oi, oi, hold it’ere man! I’m not fuckin…ooow…I’m not tryin’ to fuckin’ rob ya! Fuck…just, just don’t shoot man! We’re cool here, I swear…!”
Quatre kept his shotgun trained on him, tension dying down as he slowly made sense of the situation. He waited a moment, letting him writhe a little more as he steeled his nerves, then spoke up.
“So, to what do I owe the pleasure? You’re certainly an unusual guest.”
The “guest”, noticing the slightly more jovial tone despite the twin barrels still very much trained on him, slowly sat up, propping his back against the garage’s wall.
“Yeah uh I…look, I’m gonna be honest, man. I uh…well, I’m in like…a crew? Like, in the city, ya know? As for why I’m here, I was like…doing a video. It’s like…a thing we do, urban exploration, sorta. Breaking into bougie places to spook people and such.”
Quatre slowly lowered his weapon, relatively convinced by this explanation - mostly because he’d ran into this kind of video on his Vidstar feed. Never quite looked at it, but from its viewcounts it appeared to be pretty popular. Ah, to be as hopeful as a fame-chasing youth once more.
“So like…we didn’t actually know it was your place? Or rather, I didn’t know, I was sent out on my own cause uh…I sorta messed up? Long story, don’t worry about that. Just…ow…looks like I was the butt of the joke this time around.”
The Lieutenant extended a hand, helping him back up. It felt good, being in control again.
“It’s alright, I understand. I used to wander off too, got into a whole lot of trouble when I was your age. Your makeup looks wonderful, by the way. Extremely convincing.”
The prankster let out a cough, then straightened up and ran a hand across his hair.
“Heh, I bet. Any more convincing and I’d be a fuckin’ splatter on the pavement, ah?”
The image briefly flashed before Quatre’s eyes - although the target looked a lot more like the Renard-shaped beast. The Lieutenant sighed, before resting the shotgun on the roof of the car.
“Not exactly. You’re not quite what I was running from. That said, if it helps with the video, we can record a little extra where I say you were. That should make for good views, I reckon.”
The prankster let out a hearty laugh, before turning away and discreetly pumping his fist in excitement.
“No fuckin’ way man, let’s go! God, how come they always book you as the villain in those 'mech fights? You’re bein’ a fuckin' bro about this! Prime good guy material!”
As Quatre patted his new guest on the shoulder, letting out a laugh of his own, snapshots of a darker past than he’d ever be allowed to admit occasionally slipped out from the neat mental archive he’d locked them into.
Being the “good guy” had never really worked out.
Not for him.
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