190 Gesellschaft? More Like Genitalshaft! Ha! Ha!

Gesellschaft base, Germany, February 22nd, 19:45.

"So, how did you meet Lusia?" The abrupt question catches Nutcracker's attention as her and Harlequin casually stroll down a wide hall, having entered it by simply walking through the outside wall.

"Why do you ask?" She returns, wondering what brought upon the older woman's sudden curiosity.

"Well, it's just that you were both in the Nine right? Like Cerberus, Diversity and Chibi." Nutcracker doesn't so much as flinch at the reminder, being far too dead inside to react anymore, "but it's my understanding that two of them were already in the Nine when Lusia joined, which means you didn't just meet by being in the same group. So I'm curious as to how you met, for you to follow her like the others did?"

The two of them walk in contemplative silence for a couple of minutes after that. Occasionally the silence is broken by a startled German having the misfortune of crossing paths with the two, leading to them either being incinerated if they are far away, or simply reduced to flesh piles if they are nearby.

Eventually however, Nutcracker continues the conversation as if there was no pause. "She killed my brother in front of me."

The words hit Harlequin like a physical weight thanks to how bluntly they were delivered, but Nutcracker continues without noticing.

"Then she basically talked my foster mother into killing herself," Harlequin almost stumbles at the equally blunt admission, only to trip over herself further as she keeps going, "after that she killed my other brother in front of me too."

Nutcracker comes to a stop alongside her words which Harlequin is so distracted by that she almost kills herself by walking into the death circle around the younger woman.

Turning up to Nutcracker's face as she turns slightly, allowing the two to lock eyes, Harlequin for the first time is able to truly appreciate just how dead the younger woman's eyes are as she speaks her next words in a completely flat tone, devoid of all life. 

"And now we're best buddies."

She holds eye contact for a second longer before simply returning to her previous pace, walking around the building and occasionally taking a step to the side, 'shattering' a portion of a wall into dust, while Harlequin also moves to place a bomb on a wall every now and then.

They continue in more silence for a while longer, until Nutcracker once more picks up conversation as if there wasn't a lasting silence since the last words spoken.

"What about you?" She says, getting a questioning hum from Harlequin, "how did  you meet Lusia?"

Her question actually causes Harlequin to let out a single low, almost self deprecating laugh. "She killed a couple friends, hurt some more."

Though she can't see it, Nutcracker's lip twitches upwards slightly at their similar encounters, and that twitch turns into a brief smile when she hears the older woman mirror her own earlier words.

"Now we're best buddies.~"

The rest of their walk is done in silence, until soon enough, they have circled the whole building, killing just about everyone working inside in the process, and just as casually as they entered, the two of them take their leave, walking a good distance away before turning around to face the large building.

"You gonna do the honours?" Nutcracker asks as Harlequin pulls out a detonator.

"We could both press it together?" Harlequin returns, offering the device out to Nutcracker, who rests a finger over the button with a smile.

"Sure. On three?" She asks, and they both agree to count down together.

"One."

"Two."

Booooom!!

===

Standing in the street opposite a 'closed' library in Berlin, Fool can only wonder if being here on a Sunday is a good fortune or not.

On one hand, there won't be any civilians or heroes getting in the way, but on the other hand that means that the guards won't be distracted.

"You ready?" A voice calls out from behind him, and when Fool turns around his brows start twitching as he takes in the sight of a hundred copies of No Face.

Gathering himself, Fool reaches up to double check his mask before responding. "Uhuh, and you? There should only be a few capes if our info is right, but even with an army of you, you're only human."

"Don't worry about it," a different No Face answers, and Fool knows for a fact that he's doing it on purpose just to be creepy, "I'm actually pretty good in a fight, lots of experience see?"

Rolling his eyes, Fool starts walking to the library's front door, idly thumbing the Tinker-tech gun in his waistband that is specifically designed to be incapable of jamming. "Sure sure, just don't forget, the moment we walk through those doors, everything that can go wrong will."

"Well then, it's a good job there are so many of me," No Face responds blithely, a dozen of him moving to be the first through the door as another takes the previous one's place and continues talking in a sarcastic tone, "why it's almost like  someone wanted you to be partnered with somebody expendable.~"

Fool can't deny the smile on his face at his friend's words, even as he watches the swarm of No Faces shatter the glass at the front of the building and start rushing in.

"Just don't bother with any guns, they won't work."

The motion lights turn on immediately, and a door further in opens, with a janitor poking his head out to investigate the noise, only to get clobbered over the face by a No Face wielding a metal pipe.

It doesn't take long to locate the door that leads to the back, which should be where Gesellschaft keeps a lot of the physical copies of their private data, but the moment the door is opened, a sudden gust of ghastly, blackened wind shoots through the opening, causing boils, bleeding and blackened skin in all of the No Faces that it touches, though none of them scream out as the fall.

But the other No Faces, despite feeling the same pain, do not so much as flinch. Instead, the nearby clones simply strike the infected ones from behind, killing them quickly and efficiently removing the dead weight on the hive-mind.

Fool and his partner all take cover from the door, but no one comes out to fight them even after a solid minute of watching the door.

"I get the feeling they want us to come in," Fool says, giving a No Face a glance.

"You know, I've got that same feeling," he responds, before another No Face on Fool's other side continues, "it's a sound strategy. They clearly have some cameras or something looking at us, so they know we have the advantage of numbers so they make a chokepoint and guard it."

Fool nods at his assessment, not responding or taking eyes away from the door, clearly deep in thought.

A pair of No Faces simply stare at him for a minute before glancing at themselves and shrugging. "You got any ideas? I'd rather not recreate the Battle of Thermopylae from the perspective of the Persians, no matter how 'expendable' I am."

Fool waves a dismissive hand in No Face's direction. "Don't worry about it.~ Instead, ask yourself this; do you wanna see something cool?"

"Always," No Face responds with a raised brow.

"Dope, in that case, one of you follow me," Fool says, walking to the corner of the wall holding the door, and taking out his gun, "would you like to know something interesting about my power?"

Fool waits until No Face actually nods his head affirmative before continuing, just to return some annoyance.

"Well, as you know, my power makes people unlucky, myself included. But since my power effects my opponents and myself equally, it should realistically have no bearing on who wins in a fight, right? Wrong."

Raising his arm, Fool starts lining up a shot against the wall, swaying the barrel side to side slightly.

"Because with both of us being unlucky, who wins really depends on who can deal with the bad luck the best and, well, I'd say I have the most experience in that," his arm comes to a stop, steadying it's aim at one point of the wall, "I'm going to shoot randomly through this wall. If I kill the smoke guy, then you can punch me in the face."

Immediately after he finishes speaking, Fool pulls the trigger, his gun not making a bang but a whining hum before a thin laser appears, melting a small hole through the wall and disappearing in the same instant, shortly followed by a muted thud.

"And voil-" Before he can finish speaking, he is knocked to the ground by No Face socking him right on the jaw.

"Ow, fuck you."

"Hey, you said I could," No Face responds teasingly, offering his hand to help Fool up, which he accepts with no hard feelings, even as dozens of No Faces rush into the room.

Fool quickly shakes his head and follows after them, getting greeted to the sight of a half dozen heavily armed men about to be swarmed and beaten as their guns all simultaneously jam, alongside a group of three capes, one on whom has a hole in their head.

The other two, a man and a woman, are struggling to fight off the No Faces, the man simply being out skilled and having the metaphorical shit beaten out of him by three No Faces. Fool assumes he is some kind of combat Thinker, or a low Brute or something.

The woman is doing better, but only because she seems to be a small scale shaker, and none of the clones can push hard enough to actually touch her, so Fool just raises his arm and shoots another shot between her eyes, and then through two more No Faces who were coincidentally standing in the way just at the wrong time.

Right after his shot was fired, all the No Faces that aren't beating up the normals turn to face him, but he only shrugs at them all. "Expendable  remember?~"

"Yeah yeah, whatever, let's just go see if there was anything useful in here in the first place." No Face says as he finishes off the normals, all of them moving deeper into the base until they end up in a massive hall filled with shelf after shelf, each filled with countless files.

"...Well it's a good job there are so many of you, isn't it?" Fool says as he looks around for any kind of service station, logbook or anything serving a similar function.

Not that he can read German, but if No Face can, so he'll just give it to him anyway.

The closest thing he finds is a pinboard with some papers attached to it, and he walks over to it with a No Face, while the others all start flipping through file names, looking for anything interesting or something specific.

When they reach the board, No Face starts reading through the papers attached while Fool pretends to do the same, bringing a finger and thumb up to his chin as if he can understand anything he's looking at.

But then he suddenly let's out a  gasp! Causing No Face to abruptly turn over to him. "Did you find something?" He asks, and Fool responds by shakily pointing to a sheet of paper, as if it holds revelations that could shatter a man's faith.

With a whispering voice wavering from shock, Fool shares what has him so shaken. "That word means beer... they've been drinking on the job!!!"

With a supremely unimpressed sigh, No Face takes down the paper he was pointing at and reads it, letting out a light chuckle once he does. "This is an advertisement for alcoholics anonymous. They've been doing the exact opposite of drinking on the job."

"Or they've been drinking on the job so much that someone felt the need to hang this up," Fool counters.

"What are you, Sherlock? If you really care, go get blood samples from their corpses and I'll test them for alcohol content later." The moment he finishes speaking, Fool immediately takes of like an excited kid, making him let out an amused sigh. It's not like he'll be helpful here, not knowing the language.

Meanwhile, Fool is fully planning on mixing the blood he collects with a little bit of alcohol so that he's right for certain.

=================

A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

Another two down, three to go.

Also, I must be doing horrible things to my heart. Today I have literally only eaten white chocolate, and I've been up for about 11 hours now. I haven't eaten actual food in days, just white chocolate and biscuits, because I ran out of sausage rolls a few days ago, and I can't be bothered to cook the bacon I have in the fridge.

My chest does actually hurt a little now that I focus on it, but I'm getting hungry again and I still have 2 or 3 white chocolates left, so imma have another and prolly run out tomorrow. On the bright side, I've been downing multivitamins still, so that should balance things out right?

Also, if you read my A/Ns then I value your opinion, doubly so if you comment, so lemme know which you would prefer once I finish this fic. Would you rather I stick to uploading one fic till completion before moving to another, or to post multiple fics at the same time, keeping in mind that upload speed will be the same either way, it'll just be a chapter at random for the latter.

(5+)Advanced chapters with the links below!

pat/reon.com/user?u=41732867 (get rid of the first slash or check the description)

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