Nova + Artemis: You're Alive!

[taking_names]

Who: Nova and Artemis
When: Thursday, week 38
Where: Nova's house
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: Idle talk of murder?



Artemis was in extremely foul spirits. He'd finally managed to get himself home, but not before exhausting all of his contact options and coming up empty-handed on every single one. The Khshathra, not responding. The Mazda, not responding. Nova, not responding. Even Marlene, Ravindra, Ashtaroth, and anybody he felt even remotely inclined to contact in the event of an emergency were all coming up empty.

By the time he hit his last resort--his player--he was frustrated enough to leave an irritated voicemail before giving up and resigning himself to an arduous trek to the nearest civilization. Hours later he'd finally made it back to his home in Khaharet, having deftly avoided what looked like a huge commotion in the center of the Nenakret that he didn't have the energy to bother navigating.

When he got home, he went straight to the shower and then straight to bed. He was through with attempting to warn anybody. It was probably too late by now anyway, and he'd tried. Whatever happened was their own fault for tuning him out.

Morning did not see his mood improved. He checked his phone to see a return voicemail from Duncan that he decided not to listen to just yet purely out of spite, and went on about his day in an attempt to recapture some semblance of normalcy after a week or so in captivity.

When he went to his desk to pick up his schematics, he found them buried under a veritable mountain of dragonmails. He sank into his chair with a sigh and started to dig through them. Nova, Nova, Nova, Nova... Most of them were from Nova. As he dug backwards through the chronological strata he found them decreasingly urgent, revealing a growing panic the longer Nova went without a reply.

How irritating. If he'd cared so much, why hadn't he answered Artemis's attempts to contact him?

But it was enough to inspire him to confront Nova in person about it. So it was that roughly thirty minutes later he was standing at Nova's door, looking just as immaculate as he ever did, but significantly more irritable.


Brushes with death were exhausting, and always left Nova contemplating the merits of never venturing outside ever again. He needed to, of course; his phone had been rendered a brick after the attack on Las Vegas, so he would have to get a new one, and the search for his missing friend could not be called off just because seemingly peaceful cities could erupt into wartorn chaos at any time. (Or maybe it could just for a little while)...

What it all came down to is that he was getting a late start -- if he ever did bring himself to get a start at all -- and Chisaki had already gone out. He was using the internet on his tablet to get caught up on the previous day's many disasters when he heard the knock. He set the tablet down on the coffee table and went over to see who it was.

At the sight of Artemis (Alive! Whole! Pre-emptively annoyed with him!) his face broke out into a huge smile. They had never really been on a hugging basis, but Nova tackled him to the ground with one anyway, unconcerned for the consequences. You don't even understand, Artemis, he was checking hospitals expecting to find you as a vegetable! You could have been lost in the wilderness, forever and ever!

"Art! You're okay! I thought you were dying in a ditch somewhere or manipulating the machinery of reality!"

(Assuming he even still was okay after that maneuver.)


That was unexpected.

Unprepared to be hugged, much less tackled, Nova easily took Artemis to the ground. Left stunned by the sudden assault, it took him a moment to catch up with what had happened, and a longer moment to become annoyed about it.

Being called 'Art'--despite his understanding of why Nova had no other choice--made it that much easier to find his outrage.

"Get off of me!" he protested, trying to shove Nova away.


Nova had not bothered to stop and think what he was expecting to happen after tackle-hugging Artemis, but if he had, it probably would have been something like that.

He pulled back to give Artemis room to get up, but still grinned at him warmly.

"Welcome back!" he said, not ignoring Artemis's irritation, but not acknowledging it, either. Really, he was pleased to see it again too. "Where were you?"


He shoved himself into a sitting position, brushing off his sleeves and fussing with his cuffs, scowling all the while. That scowl turned on Nova when he asked where he'd been.

"If you'd answered my calls yesterday, you'd know that I'd been kidnapped by terrorists," he snapped.


"Yesterday wasn't a good day for answering calls." Nova paused, as the full statement sunk in. "Kidnapped by what?! Are you all right?"

Had it been a ransom thing after all?


"Apparently!" There was a disproportionate amount of force and indignation in that single word. Of course Nova had no way of knowing it was because none of Artemis's contacts had answered.

He hauled himself to his feet, brushing off and straightening out his clothes. "By terrorists," he repeated darkly. "Who then abandoned me in the middle of nowhere, from whence I was forced to walk home because someone," or no one, "would not answer their phone."


"Didn't they want a ransom?" Nova asked, trying to put the story together despite Artemis's obvious disinterest in it compared to the fact that Nova had missed his calls. When Artemis got up, he made his way to his feet as well, so he wouldn't be towered over in addition to being scolded.

In his own opinion, he had a pretty good excuse, so Artemis's frustration wasn't having much of an impact. It sounded like a terrifying experience overall and a pain having to walk, but Nova wasn't exactly sure what he was meant to have done about it anyway... Maybe Artemis had really just wanted to talk to someone? That felt like an overly ambitious speculation when it came to Artemis, though.

"The city I was in yesterday was attacked and something disabled all of the earth technology. My phone still doesn't work."


He opened his mouth to shoot back another angry reply, but stopped before anything made it out, realization slowly dawning on his face.

It was followed by an expression Nova had never seen before. A sort of reluctance that hinted toward guilt. "You don't say."


"I do say! It was really kind of horrifying! I was chased by warhounds and fell off a building!"

Artemis almost looked appropriately troubled by this story. That was weird.


"Warhounds," he repeated, as though he wasn't quite sure what to make of that information.

And then, quite suddenly with no discernable source for the shift, he asked, "Could I take a look at your phone?"


"Warhounds!!" Nova repeated, waving his arms slightly for emphasis. Whatever had gotten to Artemis seemed to have passed; maybe it was only sparked by some unrelated thought while Nova had been ranting? When Artemis responded by moving on to a befuddling new topic, he sighed and deflated a bit.

"Sure, I guess..."

He finally led him inside, then, and went and found the dead phone, which he offered to Artemis.

Perhaps he was still so focused on the missed phone calls that he required visual proof that the phone was inoperable.


He took out his jewelcrafter's screwdriver as he followed (of course he carried a set of tools with him at all times, why wouldn't he?), and the instant Nova handed him his phone, Artemis proceeded to dismantle it with no preamble or explanation.

When he saw the innards, he was able to confirm that the phone was well and truly fried, in the way only a sudden power surge could manage. He'd seen that before. Made it happen so he'd know what it'd look like, even.

"You--" he started, looking up at Nova, but cut off just as suddenly. There was an urgency to it, and something that seemed like a reasonable facsimile of concern.

He inhaled deeply, exhaled sharply, and started over. "I was kidnapped along with several others for the purpose of building a weapon which would do precisely this." He flipped the open phone case around for Nova to see, pointing to the burnt-out circuitboard with the screwdriver.

The damage was pretty technical. Nova may not even have been able to tell how it differed from the phone's natural state.


It was true that Nova couldn't see what was wrong, but he was able to follow Artemis's meaning. The ones who had kidnapped him were the same ones responsible for the attack.

"Ahhh," he said, drawing it out while he considered the implications. Did Artemis feel culpable in what had happened? He almost sounded as if he did. The moral transaction in his own head regarding the situation was fairly ruthless: he preferred that Artemis had not resisted, since he might have been killed; the attack would have happened even if he had; and Nova and Chisaki had made it out, anyway. The evidence he had seen during the chaos that countless others had been less fortunate was sad, but a bit of a sidenote as far as he was concerned.

Was that even the sort of thing that would trouble Artemis?

Maybe he was overthinking it. Maybe Artemis was sorry about his phone.

"I'm doing pretty well as a swindler," he said, reassuringly. "I can afford to replace it."


"Please, if I were concerned about your phone I'd fix it myself." He pocketed the screwdriver and set the phone aside on the nearest hard surface, not even bothering to piece it back together. "If I'd called you first, perhaps my warning would've gone through."


Nova took a moment to re-imagine the day with a hasty exit in the nick of time, instead of a frantic effort to escape from the city while it was being sacked, and gave a little sigh. "That would have been nice..." he said.

Wait.

"Who did you call first?"

Artemis talked to other people?


"The Khshathra, of course," he replied, perfectly nonchalant. His expression soured a moment later as he realized Nova wouldn't be able to understand that. "My guild leader," he clarified.


Nova waited patiently for Artemis to clarify, and then his brows knitted as the answer proved difficult to process.

"My player?" he asked. He sounded uncertain enough that it almost sounded as if he thought Artemis might have some other guild leader he didn't know about.

He was too blindsided even to wonder whether he should be offended. Why did Artemis have his player in his phone? Had he just decided to start collecting all the players once he had Heimdall as a start?

Did they get along? Did they talk about him behind his back? Or worse, did they not talk about him behind his back?


Oh no, was Nova going to be difficult about this? Artemis was pre-emptively annoyed. (He was always pre-emptively annoyed.)

He folded his arms and fixed Nova with a frosty look, daring him to raise a fuss about it. "Yes, your player."


Nova looked at Artemis expectantly, waiting for the story, but nothing happened except a warning sort of a glare.

"I'm not angry or anything," he grumped, "but I feel like you starting to get to know my player well enough to call her in a crisis is the sort of thing I ought to get to hear about."

He folded his arms. Angry? No. Petulant? Yes.

"She doesn't even talk to me anymore."


Good. Because if he'd been angry about it, Artemis was in no mood to humour that.

He wasn't in the mood to humour petulance either, unfortunately. "In the case of an impending terrorist attack, it would seem to me that the Sharifa is the first person one should think to warn," he replied icily, looking Nova straight in the eyes.


Nova frowned. He hadn't even meant to be complaining about not being the first person Artemis tried to warn, but come to think of it, it stung! Since when did Artemis care about the welfare of the general population?!

"Yes, all right, but I'm not even talking about that! Why didn't you ever tell me you met my player? That's an important development for me to know! She invented me!"

Even Nova wasn't entirely sure how the one statement logically followed from the other, but he was totally certain that it did, somehow.


Since he had cause to do it out of spite, that was since when. The best way to get back at Acher would've been thwarting his plans entirely, but nope, that was simply not to be.

He folded his arms and arched an eyebrow at Nova. He didn't feel like justifying himself on this, because the reason he hadn't told Nova was to avoid having this conversation in the first place. "Would it make you feel better to know that she was apparently terrified of me?"


"No, but that's a start, tell me the rest! How did you meet her? What did you think of her? I've been sort of catastrophically embarrassed and disappointed since I found out about her, but you probably gathered that. I met all sorts of players and would have liked almost any of them better than mine."

He might have considered revising his opinion if she hadn't totally disowned him after the whole murdering incident. What a jerk player.

"Do we have anything in common? I know I can count on you to be brutally honest."


"She called to meet with the head of a specific project for a collaboration effort without realizing that the person in question was myself." Which hopefully clarified for Nova that their acquaintance was strictly business and Artemis had made no effort to instigate a meeting with her.

He unfolded his arms to adjust the cuffs of his sleeves, the slightest hint of smugness on his face. "She dove under her desk as soon as she saw me. Terrified that I would say something mean, she said."


Nova did, in fact, feel better knowing that their acquaintance was professional -- and an accident, apparently. At least they weren't cutting out the middleman and becoming friends without him or something. (Nova how is that a realistic prospect).

He found the part about his player hiding from Artemis delightful in a mean-spirited way, and instantly appeared to be in a good mood again.

"Did you say something mean?"


"Of course not. That would be inappropriate," he replied, folding his arms again. That catlike smugness, however, did not fade. "I merely expressed my concern over our country possessing a Sharifa who could be sent into hiding at the prospect of a few mean words."


"I bet she loved that." Maybe Artemis and his player hanging out wasn't so bad. The thought of Artemis casually torturing her with factual observations that just so happened to also be crushing criticisms was great.

"I think I'm all right with you two knowing one another after all."

Not like Artemis would have cared either way, but whatever!


"Thank goodness for your approval," was his dry reply. The meaning was clear: he didn't actually care what Nova thought, so long as he wasn't raising a fuss about it.

"At any rate, there were in fact several people that I called before you. Don't tell me we've a need to repeat this for each of them."


"Probably not," Nova replied breezily. He couldn't think of anyone else he'd object to Artemis knowing. Maybe if Ashtaroth had gotten a call before he did... but he had probably pushed Artemis enough as it was.

"You were trying to warn officials so you could prevent the attack? Or at least mitigate it?" The 'that's so unlike you!' was unspoken, yet somehow still audible.


She hadn't. By a very, very thin margin, though.

Satisfied that Nova wasn't going to whine about it, Artemis gladly let the subject pass and made no attempt to elaborate on whom he'd called before getting down the list to Nova.

He was all too happy to elaborate on his supposedly out-of-character behaviour, though. "I was trying to warn officials so that the man who abducted me and then insulted me for being an academic while in the same breath demanding I build him a bomb would not have the pleasure of success."


"Ohhh."

That actually explained everything quite tidily. He couldn't help wondering if having an enemy might be good for Artemis in his efforts to make sense of post-awakened life. Nova could certainly vouch for revenge being useful as a goal to strive for. If... temporary. Maybe a mild desire for revenge would be less destructive, though.

"Who was it? Do you know? Well-- maybe that's a useless question. Can you describe or explain who it was? Do you know what the organization was?"


"Tall, brutish, not particularly bright. His name was Acher, I believe. Led a band of mercenaries out of the old hunter's guild building and would rather kidnap men of science to do his dirty work than simply hire them for the same." His disdain for the man dripped from every word he said.


Nova brightened at the name, disproportionately proud of himself for understanding it.

It sounded like Acre, and not only was it a name he could make sense of and remember, it belonged to someone he knew.

....Oh. Him.

"I know him! I tried to kill him once so we're on very bad terms. He was created by the spellsword leader and absolutely hates her -- she wrote a story about him that told him how his life was supposed to turn out, and most of his past was erased when he woke up. He wants to take back the world from the earthers, last time I heard. And that involves sacking cities and kidnapping people to help him, it looks like."

Nova's feelings on Acher had actually been fairly neutral the last time he gave him any thought -- the man scared the hell out of him, but he'd sympathized with the wish to tear down the merged world. ...Well, except that he was part of the merged world now, and Acher destroying it was a threat to his life and -- clearly -- his friends. Did that mean he ought to hate him, now? It wasn't coming readily. Oh well, sticking with fear and sympathy would probably be fine.


His eyebrow rose as Nova spoke of Acher. He didn't care for the man's life story--literal, apparently--and was unable to find any sympathy for him.

"A shame you were unsuccessful. That certainly would've saved everyone some trouble." Mostly himself.

Finding himself growing irritated again, he retrieved the pieces of Nova's phone and took a seat at the table to begin dismantling it further. Tinkering gave him something to distract himself with and funnel his annoyance into. "I sabotaged his bomb," he muttered, glaring at the miniature screws. "I hope his idiotic undertaking got him killed."


Nova shrugged as if to say 'what can you do.'

"I thought I would leave it up to fate, so I just made him sick during a battle instead of poisoning him. I guess fate was on his side for some reason." Sadly, Acher had never seemed to appreciate the consideration Nova gave him by not attempting to murder him outright.

"That was clever of you! I'm not sure, he might have died..." Nova hadn't been able to glean that much from the news reports, particularly without names attached. He didn't even know if he wished Acher dead or not. He certainly wanted Acher very far away, but he saw all of Acher's destructiveness as an unpleasant result of the trauma of having his idea of who he was crumble out from under him one day. Some people took it in stride and some people went on homicidal rampages. Who was Nova to judge? Maybe it wasn't too late for him to have some sort of epiphany and stop himself, instead.

But he had let one thing sidetrack him after another. Artemis was intact and behaving normally, but he always behaved normally! Even when his life had suddenly crumbled out from under him one day. The little flashes of anger he'd been showing could be the Artemis equivalent of a regular person curling up into a ball and sobbing. Who knew what sort of experience he'd had!?

"But besides all that, are you all right? Were you treated badly while you were captive? You should take it easy for a while. I can make you tea or hot chocolate... are you hungry? Cold?"


"I am neither," he replied darkly and distantly, focused instead on the innards of Nova's phone. It was well and truly unsalvageable, all the electronics were fried and fixing it would require replacements for nearly every part. It would be more cost-effective to simply replace the phone.

He finally gave up with a sigh, letting the mostly-empty case drop the short distance to the table, to join the rest of its parts. "What sort of fool insults the worth of those around whom his entire plan revolves? He's lucky the thing worked at all instead of detonating in his face the instant he stepped out of the building."

He paused, his eyes narrowing at some point across the room as an annoyed growl sounded in his throat. "I should have done that, instead."


Well, that reaction wasn't surprising. Artemis had never been an easy person to comfort. Maybe his dignity really was the greatest casualty in the whole incident. That might still be serious, since dignity was one of the few things that actually seemed important to Artemis.

"He did seem more brawn than brains when I knew him," Nova said. "He's probably just that stupid. What did he say about you, exactly?"


"I told him he could've achieved the same result by simply paying me instead of resorting to kidnapping, and he said--" Artemis paused briefly, his face twisting into a scowl at the memory. "He said, that he saved his coin for men who kill and not men who waste their lives thinking.

"Erjil knows he's certainly never spent any of his time on it," he muttered.


"That's an odd policy," Nova said, forgetting himself and humoring it instead of criticizing it automatically the way he'd planned to. "Why would killing be a better use of time than thinking? I wonder where nonviolent physical labor would fit in... would it be more valuable than thinking but not quite as valuable as killing? Like if he wanted construction work done he wouldn't kidnap anyone, but he'd short them on their pay."

He remembered he was trying to be supportive of Artemis' venting, and added a hasty, "I mean, if he shuns thinking, that makes his opinion sort of worthless by definition, doesn't it?"


He propped his jaw in his hand and glowered at Nova from the table while he mused on the implications of Acher's insult. Artemis did not see any purpose in humouring the statement as an actual position and taking it to its logical conclusion. It had obviously been spoken in condescension, not as an axiom by which Acher lived his life.

It was the sort of ridiculous nonsense one should expect from Nova, and he couldn't tell whether Nova was trying to make him feel better or simply getting lost on a tangent.

When Nova turned the rambling around and directed his response toward Artemis again, he replied, "I am offended by the reality that people with such opinions even exist. And that they have seen fit to interject themselves into my life."


"You could always mail him some poison," Nova suggested brightly. Sure, he was sympathetic toward Acher, but if it would help Artemis feel better to kill him off, that was different.

"That wouldn't solve the problem of other people like him existing, though. There's likely an endless supply of those."