Returning to No Applause, Only More of the Same

His voice was not how George had remembered it. Not that he remembered it well. There were videos of Kreig, of course, but both George and Sam avoided them.

This voice… was not Kreig’s. It was much too deep, much too old, much too unlike what a child should sound like. That was what Kreig had been when they last met. A child, barely even grown. And here was a man who had happened into a situation much different than what he should have been in.

“Is-, is that so-,”

“Kreig,” Sam said, stepping up to stand beside George. “What have you been up to these past years?” Kreig just sort of stared at her, breathing deep, conscious breaths. “Oh, me? Well, I’ve been here and there, you know, did my time with drugs and all, the whole situation and everything really got to me, heh, um, did you know that the otherworld organization forgives any drug charges that any Fighters come in with? Yeah, real strange, you know, but they also gave all these other benefits, like all of a sudden you become a citizen of the world and you can travel and settle down wherever you-,”

“Sam, keep quiet for a second,” George interrupted her. “Can I ask you something, Kreig?”

If he’d been younger, if he’d been the same boy he was when he left, Kreig would have smiled innocently. At this age, at this moment, he merely stared back. “Of course,” he said. “Anything.”

A straight finger was pointed through the window and at a single painting, mounted on the wall like the head of a lion. Kreig turned slowly to look at it. The painting was finished in every sense of the word, only lacking a suitable frame. The man portrayed was white in every dimension. White hair, white skin, white lips, white fingertips, white eyes. He was a rare sort of human. Not an albino. There were albinos in that world, yes, but this was another kind of creature, born from drinking an elixir distilled from a sort of mushroom far rarer than the Messiah’s Egg. “Who’s that?”

Kreig looked into the eyes of the old man pictured. In his heart, only gratitude remained for this man. “The White Pope.” Kind eyes, gentle smile, warm hands that touched his heart.

The man who had roused faith in Kreig, a faith he had never once abandoned.

George sneaked a peek at Darius, who shrugged in turn. Nobody knew who that person was, or who 99% of anybody else on Kreig’s walls were. It was all unknown people with unknown connections to Kreig. Even if they asked other prisoners who they were, unless the prisoners came to Earth around ten years ago, chances are they wouldn’t know who anybody was in the least. The only one who knew was Kreig, and his lips were sealed, not that anybody had the gall to try to pry the information out of him.

George pointed at another painting, portraying a refined, slender man, wearing beautiful robes and a dazed expression. He seemed like a lord of some sort, especially with his sea-weed like hair. “-And who’s that?”

“My former lord.” A title fitting that sort of man.

George pointed at another painting. “And that?”

“The sub-leader of the royal guard.”

“And-,” George’s finger froze mid-point, hovering just in the air. His eyes widened. Wasn’t those paintings supposed to only portray unknown people? People from the other world that nobody had ever known? Then, why was-,

“Peter,” Kreig said softly. “The Priest.” Indeed, although the garb he wore was odd, it was clearly that of someone divine. And although he was older than George remembered, although his eyes were weary and his smile was strained, it was Peter alright. The boy that sometimes came home with Kreig for a round of some action game they used to afford. One of many. Kreig had been rather popular, after all.

The question here was: why was he wearing that, and why was he a painting on Kreig’s wall? Kreig answered him before George could so much as ask.

“I didn’t go there alone.” Simple, to the point, and only devastating in the words that followed. “Though my return was lonesome.” Peter’s fate went unsaid, but the implication was clear. Looking at all the other paintings, all the dozens and hundreds of portraits and sketches and pictures of people and humans and only that, George came to wonder what kind of life Kreig must have led without them. The people he’d met, the sights he’d seen.

He almost felt tempted to think that this might not have been such a bad thing, if it wasn’t for the fact that he couldn’t consider the man in front of him to be Kreig in the least. Forget his size, forget his sheer aura of intimidation, forget that he was locked up on an island for Otherworlders. His voice was off. The words he said were unlike what Kreig would say. His body had changed, and in that malformed body, an equally malformed soul resided. George had seen Fighters who had entered portals with humans in them. Who had to kill famine-ridden farmers who had wandered into portals.

He had also seen killers who had stepped beyond the first horrors of murder, soldiers who had grown so used to the act of death, so used to committing it onto others, that the thought of their own death wasn’t even soothing. Merely mundane.

Somehow, this Kreig seemed to exist in all three of those forms. The young Kreig, the mere child of his youth, could never possibly have grown into such a form.

And yet, here they were, under strict orders not to question his identity.

“I’m sorry,” Kreig said. George looked up, meeting the larger man’s gaze. “I don’t mean to frighten you. Or make you unhappy. I understand that I appear very different from how you may remember me. But if you were to wish me gone, I can disappear. Not just from your lives.”

“No, no! Not at all!” George exclaimed, shaking his head. “Of course you shouldn’t! We’re-, we’re happy to have you. You’re our brother! Even if you’ve changed, you’ll always be our brother. No matter what.” It was a lie. Not a complete lie, not an evil lie, just… A white little lie told to everyone there, including George himself. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but at the moment, his doubts were so deep and heavy that he couldn’t possibly admit that this man before him could possibly be related to him by blood.

“...Thank you.” Kreig turned away. Somehow, despite the lack of any physical markers for it, he seemed slightly flustered.

It was a human act, one that made Sam only feel a little less nervous. Her brother didn’t feel it. Not a lick of it. He couldn’t tell from a glance that this person was barely human. If even that. His race wasn’t human, his level wasn’t human, and to hear her brother talk to him as if he was only made her hair stand on edge. She wanted to point this all out.

But she couldn’t. After all, now she knew the use of those guidelines. No human on Earth had a true sense of what ‘999+’ meant, including her. But she knew that if they did something wrong, if they let their amiable masks slip for only a second, God only knew how much damage would be caused, how many lives would be lost. She had to stick to the guidelines, had to make sure she didn’t say anything wrong, had to keep Kreig calm-,

“Where are mother and father?”

His words were softly spoken in mere confusion. There was no underlying intent, no prying need, merely an innocent question. The worst kind.

After all, it was a question they couldn’t answer. Don’t cause grief. Don’t cause intense emotion. Those who had prepared the meeting knew what would happen. Darius knew what would happen. Frank, who silently raised his hands in preparation for a battle of any kind, knew what would happen. Sam and George, who now turned to each other, mouths dry and glued shut, did not know what would happen. They swallowed and tried to smile, but it came out as forced and alarming.

“They-, they couldn’t make it,” Sam lied. “There’s so much work to do nowadays, sometimes, we just can’t keep up!”

“...” Kreig lumbered off to his chair and collapsed into it, a sigh of relief escaping his shut lips. “Thank God. Thank God, I was starting to fear the worst. Tell me, how do they do? I cannot remember their names. Will you tell me how they are? Do they yet work or have you taken their need for work? Letting their weary old bones rest?” The slightest hint of a smile hovered around his lips and his eyes seemed to dance.

There was no way they could tell him he was wrong. No way they could tell him that their parents had died in the most painful of ways possible. “Of course we have,” George said, his own smile trembling. “Sam’s a police officer. A Fighter, even!”

Kreig nodded sagely.

--------

He knew they were lying. About something. He wasn’t sure what though.