Welcome to Gaia! ::

The text came an hour after midnight, setting his phone off in the dim of his basement room. At first it had been unusual; the number of people that texted him were very small, and most of them would rather come to his door, or left a twitter message for perusal at a later time.

But this number was different than both America and Taym's. (And Mimsy's, too.)

Instead of replying, Kostya set an alarm for 8 AM sharp, and proceeded to arrive at the appropriate destination 30 minutes prior. He stood next to the portals, phone in hand, in case another text came in.

For better or for worse, he was very...trusting.

At first, Kostya had missed her entrance, looking for someone grander, or perhaps someone with a more dramatic entrance.

"Please," Kostya said, offering her a nod and a bare hand to shake, "Konstantin is being fine. Is nice to be meeting you."

Afterwards, he stood at attention, hands clasped behind his back. "am hope to be of use to division. Vill do anything to prove."

Perhaps it was in his file, that he did not often emote. Perhaps not. Either way, Jane's acknowledgement of his potential curved Kostya's lips, although it didn't change the blank, almost dead-eye stare behind his glasses.

Dangerous, gullible, willing.

(He knows he has to jump but he doesn't know how high, but the insistence is there. The spikes grow longer.)

Obediently, he took the first step through the portal. Upon arrival, Kostya drank in the scene, cataloguing the temperature, the climate, the species of trees. Most of it was useless, and most of it would be discarded. Syntax sleepily sifted through various data-points, but found nothing of interest, and went back to sleep with a chiptunes style yawn.

He did not summon his weapon.

He followed, keeping step with Jane, his pacing measured and even. At the mention of pacifism, Kostya's brows drew together for a single, brief moment.

"DETH," Kostya repeated, filing the information away for further perusal. Syntax seemed intrigued by the idea of humans being treasured pets, and chittered excitably in a way that seemed to encourage a similar sentiment. Perhaps more the latter, than the former. "I see."

To Syntax, Konstantin was like a PC tower: made of parts, in need of an upgrade, and replaceable, in case anything too egregious happened to him, that might break him beyond repair.

The park seemed abandoned, and very little was stirring in the surrounding forest, leading to an almost unnatural silence. "Excuse for ignorant. Vhat is 'Bloodline Program' being?"

He imagined lines of blood being tested, literal ones, in the labs.

Wordlessly, Kostya filed this new information away, too. His only external acknowledgement was a quick, almost horrified shake of the head. "No need. Have no interest in, ah. Vhat is vord? Legacy."

The uncanny placidity was methodically working its way under his skin. Places with life didn't contain such a distinct immobility, the white-gauze wrapping of still.

There was a tang, in the air. Sharp, metallic. A sharpness, too, like burning ozone.

Relieve them of their suffering.

Oh. He understood. Hesitantly, Kostya offered Jane an unsteady nod.

In his time at Deus, he had offered a great deal of obedience and loyalty to the powers that he chose to be his higher calling. To a cruel mad woman and to a force of nature, respectively. In either case, Kostya had never truly had to do anything that unsettled him. Unsavoury and tedious, perhaps. But they had always been the logical steps to take.

Offer to hide the body. Destroy the evidence. Submit. Obey. Serve.

But it had all been...easy. Second nature, in fact, and as far as doing questionable things went, Kostya's veritable slate was clean.

Relieve them of their suffering.

It was a direct order, from the division he longed to become a part of. To assimilate with. With a calm and steady gait, Kostya made his way towards the first trailer to his immediate left, the crunch of snow beneath his heavy combat boots thunderous in his ears.

Syntax appeared on his arm with the same comforting blue glow he always had, warming him, whirring in place. Systems were online.

The door opened onto a sea of corpses, torn and bloodied and ravaged. He waited for a gag response from himself, but none came-- only a wave of disappointment. Blood was streaked along the walls, as though someone had pressed a hand into an open chest cavity for a fistful of red to paint with.

Unsanitary. (Somewhere, further away: harrowing. We are not the monsters. The monsters did this. We are the aftermath, the clean-up crew. Relieve them of their suffering.)

The first corpse was middle-aged, her greying hair still in curlers, her neck cut in an awful way that was uglier than it was deep. He went for her wrist, two bare fingers against it, waiting to hear a pulse.

She was gone. he closed her perpetually shell-shocked eyes with two fingers.

It was the first dead body he'd ever interacted with in a personal manner, outside of trials. (Outside of dreams, hazy and far-off, unremembered. A weight upon his shoulders without a name, without cause, without anything to offer but insomnia. They were just nightmares.)

The scratching caught his attention immediately.

The walk had been silent. The park had been silent. The world, here, was dead and the dead didn't move. Kostya deduced that it must be a survivor, and he hoped that they might be young enough to be of use to them. That they would be healthy enough to be worth saving, rather than a part in need of an RMA.

Kostya slowly navigated towards the bathroom door, blood tacky against the bottom of his boots. Syntax played for him an image of his footprints in the snow, blood red, vanishing with a chirp of code:



It was a suggestion, pressed forth with the same eagerness a puppy might lick at a window, if there was someone on the other side that it was dying to see. Parts for salvage, Syntax pressed, breaking into song inside Kostya's head, build it better faster stronger do it make it makes us stronger.

Kostya knocked on the door. "Hello?" he called, loud enough to be heard through it, "is somevun being there?"

Kostya looked down. Had this been a dream, wings of hands-- skeletal and rotted and clawed-- would have fanned out behind him, blotting out the sun. His glory was in his ability to be ever so obedient, to the causes that demanded it.

This was not a dream. He did not remember. This was not a drill.

A real, breathing person, broken beyond repair, laid before his feet.

He did not, and would not, ever ascribe to the idea that hunters were something besides human. They were all too mortal: enough hunters had died in his periphery to know that they were far from infallible. They were not so fundamentally different that they were monsters at the core. Instead, they took up mantles, fulfilling given roles as assigned by Division leads and more. They were, above all else, the eternal guardians. Hunters protected the world and its inhabits that were so, so unready for the world beyond its known walls.

The gears in his head began to turn.

Relieve them of their suffering.

Humans were delicate, crushed from the most minute pressure applied to them, unable to defend themselves in any significant way against the cruel machinations of a creature comprised of fear. They were organs packed into suits stretched thin, bags threatening to burst from the pressure.

That much was obvious, now. Blood ran slick along the bathroom's faux-tile, peeling and dry against the walls. (Red would have been his favourite colour, if he had such a thing.) Quietly, he kneeled before the struggling man, soaking his knees and shins in the blood without a second thought.

"Is okay," Kostya whispered, a beatific smile creeping onto his face. It was too dead-eyed to be soothing, but too calm to be worrisome.

Relieve them of their suffering.

The audible whine of a charging blast ratcheted upwards in pitch, accompanied by a series of giggles from Syntax, ecstatic.



No, he thought, the gears spinning and spinning and spinning still. He is precious. But he is weak, and he is dying. We can take that suffering away.



It means that we're his guardians, Syntax.



This was not a hunter. There would be no bouncing back: he would bleed out, here, in the cold, if the shock didn't kill him first. He would die in this bathroom, surrounded by the bodies of loved ones, unable to move. If, in the off chance that an ambulance arrived fast enough to save him, he would likely be finished later.

Either by whatever had caused this, or by someone less recalcitrant to do their job.

The one task that Kostya had been given. He had already hurt his chances by turning a key into dust in the wake of Caelius' request. Perhaps it was wrong to kill someone, but in him, there was not a clear definition that could point him in the correct direction. In place of a moral compass, there was only a single question in his core, and its answer justified all means.

Is it useful?

No. This man would never be useful again.

With his bare hand, Kostya reached out to touch the man's face, caressing his forehead like his mother used to, during the worst of a fever before it broke. Comforting. The touch of an angel.

He whispered: "Is all going to be okay," and fired twice.

Relieve them of their suffering.