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The Four Dark Gods of Destruction hunger. The shrillness of their cries pierces the still bleak air to strike terror anew into the hearts of any man who hears.
So Gundam is on his hands and knees in the garden of the Strawberry house, picking seeds for their fodder as they hunker down inside his scarf.
Their disquiet seems to echo his own, as though his mere guise of mortal flesh were not sufficient to allow its full expression. In his own hunger, it's difficult to find the clarity of thought even to select seeds suitable to satiate the Dark Gods. And yet he needs the clarity, now more than ever, for it falls to him to prevent this cursed oubliette from marking the limits of their fate.
Only in such a state could Tanaka Gundam, possessed of the heightened senses of the evil eye, ever fail to detect the presence of another behind him. Certainly it's only in this state that a mere tug on the end of his scarf could have him leaping into the air, letting out a stunned cry manifestly unsuitable for the king of the underworld.
"Star Destroyer Grey Fox Sun-D!" he shouts. "Have I not told you to spare me these pranks while I am at my labors!"
"Oh, I'm sorry," says a voice which even in his most wretched delusions he could never mistake for Star Destroyer Grey Fox Sun-D. "Did I startle you?"
If ever a mere mortal could have the right to look down on him, that fortunate one would be the Princess Sonia Nevermind. Nonetheless, he gets to his feet, looking away to spare her the consequences of his baleful gaze.
"Never fear," he says gruffly. "A being such as I does not get startled. I was merely...taken unawares."
"Oh, is that different? How fascinating!"
"I have no time to spare for temporal matters," he says. "The Dark Gods hunger, and I must prepare their feed with all haste, lest our sinister contract be broken."
If anything, Sonia only brightens. "Oh, then can I help you?" she asks. "I'd love to see how you prepare it, and I'm sure they'll be fed faster with two pairs of hands."
This is...too much. Too much presumption, that is, or why else would his face have grown red merely to hear of it. "Their fodder must not be tainted by the touch of human flesh," he replies. "But. Well. In circumstances as extreme as these, I suppose I could...lift the veil on the mysteries of its preparation."
He sits on a narrow ledge and begins to shell the seeds in motions made swift and sure by long practice. Sonia really does sit with him, though, and peers at his work with real interest, so he slows down just enough to allow her human eyes to comprehend the process. She seems not in the least put off by the occult workings.
"Oh," she gasps, with the astonishment appropriate to witnessing a ritual of such moment, "I haven't seen animals fed this way before! I'm certain we have nothing like it back home."
"The powers I have been granted allow me much," he agrees. "But there is always a price to pay. Your Novoselic sounds...a fine place. I would have liked to see it, would not my presence have been enough to invite ruin to the land."
"Oh but I'm sure we could withstand it. After all, I haven't been destroyed yet, have I."
She actually beams at him. He quickly looks down at his work, lest her brightness disrupt the chthonic ritual.
The Dark Gods are as vocal about their eagerness to devour as they had been about their earlier hunger. Still, he feeds them the seeds by hand, that they might not gorge themselves on the heady mix.
"I gotta say, I could almost envy them sometimes," says Sonia, watching intently as the Dark Gods slake their hunger.
Gundam nods. "It's only natural for one of the impotent flock to yearn for true heights of dark power--"
"Oh, not that," she says. "I mean that they're so well taken care of. Not just the food...ah, if only seeds could feed humans like sachertorte. But no, the way you take such care tending them...it's very sweet."
"...Oh," is the single paltry syllable that Gundam utters.
"Well, I suppose dark power might be nice too," Sonia continues after the silence has stretched between them. "I mean, in a situation like this. It doesn't seem like much else is likely to be of help."
It's not like her to sound so despondent. Ordinarily Sonia's nerve and persistence seem like to outreach her fleshly self. And that is it, the full measure of the wrongness of this place, that should steal from man as well as beast that vitality with which they are endowed from birth.
But such a thing cannot befall the blood of demons.
"Then you need not fear," Gundam declares. Watches carefully as Jum-P nibbles a seed from his fingers, takes the vitality it holds for his own. "For the power granted to Tanaka Gundam alone is more than enough to lead us from this place. Nay, though where we fall may be the very chasms of hell, we shall not be held here."
And no word uttered by the voice that commands the infernal legions could hold anything but truth.
He chances a glance up, sees Sonia smiling at him with that keen softness peculiar to her. "I suppose we'll just have to put our trust in you, then."
She looks more exhausted than he's ever seen her, even through the fell days they've lived through, and behind her outward cheerfulness is a resignation that ought never to have sullied those features. More than anything else, it's that which makes the ire rise within him. Very well, then. He will require it, if he is to be resolute.
"No," he says, reaching out one hand toward hers. "It is for all of you...to pick your own path through the pits. For all my infernal sovereignty...in this I can be but the guide."
Just in time, Gundam pulls his hand back. He mustn't forget the curse upon his skin, liable to chill the flesh from any mortal who dares touch it. He replaces it with the bowl of seeds just as Sonia reaches out her own to take it, and she ends up with a handful of seeds clutched in her delicate fingers.
"Would you. Er. Like to try feeding them?" he asks. "I hesitate to ask such a task of a mere human, but I sense...that if any of your kind can achieve it unharmed, it would be you."
It's as though the foulness that encumbers her mind were struck from her face in that instant. Gundam feels warm all over. An unexpectedly pleasant feeling, it seems, for one who has flourished in the chill of night.
She reaches out a seed to Cham-P with a look of glee and a grace almost as though she were herself one of the noble beasts hoping to draw in her prey with a lure. As always, Cham-P recoils from the scent of mortal flesh, but...not as far as he might. Not as fast.
"Rejoice," Gundam says softly, "For you may yet meet with the approval of the Invading Black Dragon."
He can't avoid taking her hand for this, curse or no, but his senses tell him that she can withstand it. Indeed, even the surprised glance she casts at him is coupled with the same mischievous grin, as though the baleful forces within him were hers to toy with, and for a moment he could even believe it were the case.
But all he does is extend her hand, cupped in his own, towards the ravening beast, with all the caution that such daring demands. Appeased by the familiar taint of the underworld on his flesh, Cham-P steps towards them - his golden fur gleaming to rouse Gundam's pride even under the unwholesome lights of the funhouse - and warily sniffs Sonia's fingers.
Gundam rests a hand on her shoulder to keep her from jumping. "You must keep still, or the Dark Gods will spurn you in your weakness."
Sonia doesn't even twitch, though, her hand extended almost haughtily, and Gundam has privately stopped believing she could ever be truly weak. Cham-P nibbles at the seed in her fingers, first cautiously and then with all the eagerness of a hellbeast set on its prey, and Sonia's laugh is a peal of music to pierce even the miasma that taints the air around him.
"The powers of the underworld are so much nicer than they sound," says Sonia, taking up another seed. She nestles further into Gundam's hand around hers, though she hardly needs the assistance; she takes to the command of such fearsome creatures as though it were natural to her. "It's comforting, really, to be able to feed them. Even when we're so hungry ourselves."
Gundam holds his silence for one momentous span, because the unprecedented proximity of her earthly body wreaks turmoil on his demonic faculties. As well...it's very warm. He finds he has no objection.
"It may seem paradoxical," he says at last, "that the consummation of such fell fury as my own should be in the advancement of life. But yet there is no greater force known to the magecraft of this earth."
"It must be an honor," she says, and Cham-P suffers her to stroke his head with one fine finger.
There could be no better way of putting it. "...Yes," he agrees. "Though the arcane workings may yet be beyond your comprehension...I am glad you understand this."
She is silent for a moment as well, during which Gundam becomes yet more aware of her hair against his face, finer than the thread with which their damned fate is woven. Her pulse beating against his hand, quick and tiny and all the more precious for its very delicacy. Never before has he had occasion to recognize such things about one of the mortal race.
When she looks up again, her visage is once again graced with that sharp grin. "Beyond my comprehension," she scoffs cheerfully. "We'll see about that." And she picks up another seed and holds it out as the Dark Gods cluster. Her sounds of summoning, though improvised, are more than deserving of their respect.
They do the same with Maga-G, and again with Sun-D, until the Gods of Destruction have eaten their fill from Sonia's hand and the gravity of his chosen fate starts to wear on what is left of Gundam's earthly soul. He pulls away from Sonia only with reluctance, summons his Dark Gods to their customary places guarding his person.
"I can remain here no further," he says, "for there are yet many more black rituals I must complete."
"Well, I wouldn't keep you from that," she says. "Do you, well, want to meet here tomorrow? Assuming that we're all still...that we're not..."
Her hesitation suits her ill. "Should all of us be hale," Gundam replies, invoking a fate that shall never come to pass, "no power of this world or the next could hinder me from such a meeting."
"Great!" says Sonia. She doesn't pull away from him, however - if anything, she's only leaning closer, and Gundam finds himself looking into her face, nearly close enough to touch, and his heart galloping in time with the hooves of the horsemen of the apocalypse, or, perhaps more aptly, with her own.
Were he to kiss her, he would drink her soul along with her breath. So he brushes the hair from her forehead and presses his lips there, instead, for a few priceless moments before standing to depart.
Her smile is strong now, though her face is as tired and wan as any of them, and as she waves to him, he is relieved of all fear for the fate of the rest. Even in such frail mortal hands, it could be nothing but secure.
"We shall meet again," he declares - that, at least, shall yet be truth - and lets his coat billow on the winds of Gehenna as he strides towards the doom he has chosen.