Welcome to the clan, Ignus. And a nice collab out of you and Alph. I haven't gotten around to reading the new chapter of Bloodlines yet, because I wanted to get a few things out of the way. First thing's first, I'm starting to shift away a little from Dante as the primary lead in my stories, but just to be clear, nothing is really happening to him in terms of his character. He's going to keep doing Dante stuff in Dante-land for a bit and if you want to do a story or collab with him hit me up and we can work it out. At this point in Dante's story, it's still January, and some things have happened between his last few appearances that we're still a little vague on. For one, Dante asked for some vacation time, and we can assume he had a happy New Year's. There's still a collab or two I'm trying to work into that timeslot.
But yeah, I wrote another one shot gap-filler to lead him more into February. That's what's in the spoiler tab down below.
[spoiler=]January 22nd, 2017
8:02
Dante Rockwell was sitting at a computer wearing his own merch. His grey lettermans, emblazoned in white and navy blue stripes at the cuff and collar, would be hitting the market in the coming weeks, and he’d been trying out the new look after the first shipment had been sent in. Under the jacket was one of his limited stock Delta symbol tees, not unlike the one he’d gifted Ethernu not four weeks back.
He was starting to feel comfortable here at home, staring at the monitor of his Spectre-fitted CPU whilst clad in custom-built clothes and newly needed readers, but not just that. He felt old -- old and sleazy, and that’s exactly what the fuck he was at 8:02am of January 2nd in the year 2017. He wanted breakfast, and new better than to bother to ask. It would come. Like clockwork.
8:34 and eggs were sizzling in the other room. The pretty bird Astor had found his way to his perch in the minutes prior. Dante hadn’t seen him enter, now or ever. Ever the dynamic duo, Astor tended the nest whilst Rhami seasoned the omelets.
Saturdays were like this -- Sundays too. The mornings started early as ever, with sweat and bruises before sunrise, hot showers and achy lethargy. Sometimes the order varied, but these days it usually ended this way; Dante looking one way, Rhami another, and Astor off doing Astor things. Halle had left them some time ago, and with most of Sanctuary and the Coils off elsewhere, the house felt empty.
As if on cue, though more to Dante’s dissonance, Rhami pulled up a chair and quietly announced that breakfast was ready in the other room. Rhami, meanwhile, was ready in Dante’s office. Closing his browser and turning to her, he nodded and fumbled with his glasses. Rhami, Astor and Dante were not used to Dante’s new glasses. Astor thought he looked strange in them.
For whatever reason reserved with her thoughts this morning, Rhami continued to speak ambiguously aloud. “Astor, would you mind?” she asked, keeping her gaze on Dante and the computer screen.
Astor didn’t seem to mind, having taken human form and walking off to the kitchen to fetch the three their plates, as Dante didn’t seem to have moved from his computer, and Rhami didn’t seem to have moved from Dante. Having never properly removed his new readers, Dante lowered his hand from his head. He could tell what she was here to ask, he thought, and glancing from her to the computer, he cleared his breath before speaking.
“So uh,” he began, “Halle and the others are where we last saw them. Sanctuary’s still… y’know, Nehushtan’s still-“ he gestured, “-But I did… run those leads you gave me on Absconsa. And Spectre was just saying that we might be onto something with that. Across the board, whether it’s.. like.. the chaoid missions, the.. Ne -- the coup, y’know, from Viktor, even down to the NCO stuff that Al was ranting about, it’s-“
Astor was back with three plates of scrambled eggs, bacon, and veggies, and Rhami still hadn’t said anything.
“There are anachronisms, y’know, like – how did this happen so quickly compared to this thing, or this event here – we don’t really know what caused it, or where this came from or that, and it’s usually small things, very small things, but across the board it feels like.. in certain instances people just seem to be drifting off into who knows where, or obstacles seem to be appearing, that are preventing people from doing the sorts of things that from what you were saying, and we were just talking about – about Absc-“
Rhami took a bite of her breakfast.
“-Absconsa, there’s like.. a pattern, to it, consistent with – Absconsa, I guess, so, well..”
Astor took a bite of his breakfast.
“Yeah.”[/spoiler]
