Through the Velvet Clouds I saw (Arty, Marl+Invite)

It was dark in the Note. The lights where always subdued, the décor suitably gothic and the open room itself almost crypt like in its construction. It was the type of place you'd expect to find in a macabre fair tail. Pale skinned beings, inked and pierced from head to toe, sporting hair styles and clothing that made them look like some twisted futuristic race. The fall of humanity...

Truth be told, humanity had fallen fifteen years ago. The day they had unleashed the SPX-15 bomb that had atomized Central America they stopped being rationale, thinking, peoples and became nothing more than animals. Kids with guns that were the heralds of their own destruction.

Norongachi had wandered this world for 200 years and every year, every day, he saw more and more of the darkness that lay in the hearts of men. Always he questioned why he fought for them, always he wondered why he didn't just leave them to their fate and then...

At the bar a young girl, her head shaved except for a talk brilliant blue mohawk turned toward the door in the leftmost corner of the room. A man, tall, thin, and sporting a leather jacket covered in various patches walks in. Sal watched them from his corner booth, his drink half finished on the circular table. He watched the man walk across the room, never uttering a word, and kiss the girl.

"I'm gonna be a dad!" The punk yells and twirls the girl in his arms, the rest of the bar erupts in cheers and shouts.

...They did something like that. They show that the darkness exists but theres something more, there is kindness there, compassion, love and all those other things that could be classified as 'good'. The Glaswegian keeps fighting, two hundred years and every day he has to remind himself that the good is there and it should be fought for, it should be bled for, and by fuck it should be killed for.

Sal picked up his glass and allowed a smile to pull up the side of his lips, his hand reached for his glass and he toasted the couple.

Just another day.

Artemis wandered into the gothic pub behind a young man in patch work jacket, as soon as he came through the door he took the cigarette from his lips and put it out in the palm of his hand. “I’m gonna be a father!” the young man shouted and twirled a girl with a bright blue Mohawk. Artemis cheered and bought a drink for the couple before he made his way back to the shadowy table where an old friend sat drinking alone.

“What you didn’t buy another drink for your company you young punk?” Arty looked over at Sal and grinned as he pulled out another cigarette and offered the pack to the drunken excuse for a shinigami. “Don’t you dare tell Terra I am smoking it is sort of a guilty pleasure.” He said lighting it up then after a long drag he continued, “It has been a long time hasn’t the last time it was just you and I together you burnt down my dojo in Kurakara town.”

The young waitress came by and asked what he would like to drink and Arty ordered two double whiskeys and grinned as she walked off, “Oh I am sorry you wanted a drink as well didn’t you”? He chuckled as he leaned back in his chair.

The air in the room quivered under the strain of a new and frightening power. A dull haze, utterly unperceivable by the mortal eye, seemed to shimmer across his vision, to dance all around him like a visual static.

The Shinigami looked up at its source, although he had no need to- his attuned supernatural senses had determined the cause. The dragon moved through the bar with the carefree attitude of a predator on safari. To look at Artemis there would be no one in this world or the next who would class him as anything other than a cocky asshole with an ego. Sal, however had seen what lay behind that easy smile, that mocking glint to his eyes.

"If I liked the company," Sal responded his voice a baritone growl that had the consistency of rocks clashing. "Maybe I would have."

Arty took his seat and ordered, the young waitress showing signs of conflicting feelings about the pair. On the one hand they were the hardest looking bastards in the place, which despite all their harping about 'nice guys' women seemed to find utterly irresistible, on the other she felt the power emanating from them- A power her mortal mind could not comprehend.

"You don't kick a Glaswegian in the balls and walk away mate." Sal smirked, recalling their very first meeting the waitress returned shortly after and laid two whiskeys between them.

"Ya know, Dragon-born or not, I could still barbecue you." Norongachi said calmly and then procured himself one of the glasses of amber liquid. They lapsed into silence for a moment and Sal found his eyes drawn toward the door again, only to return them to Arty disappointed.

"Is this fucker ever on time?"

Arty’s eyes were calm and fluid as blew the tainted smoke from his lungs, unlike humans for a dragon smoking was natural but unless he wanted to start a panic he always kept a pack of Cigarettes. “Personally I have no idea who the hell you’re talking about, he was your friend after all, and he isn’t late yet just a little tardy.” He grinned having the experience from dealing juvenile students, deciding it was best to change the subject he picked up his whiskey.

“So I hear from my sources that you’ve been given quite the promotion in the last 200 or so years…Captain Commander that isn’t too shabby are you sure you won’t lose your temper and kill everyone?” Arty lifted his drink to his lips and downed half of it, Human booze is almost like water…I gotta remember to slow down otherwise I might start to attract attention.

Sal laughed, actually laughed. The sound seemed boom from his mouth and his brown eyes closed as the sensation enveloped his body. The amusement subsided and he let out a final chuckling sigh before picking up his drink and taking a mouthful.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence bud," He smiled genuinely. It had been far to long since he had been in the company of friends. You didn't garner many when you were branded an exile, you garnered even less when those around you who were supposed to be comrades thought you a crazed psychopath. Arty on the other hand had been one of the very few to see through all the bullshit and appreciate that he was just a guy in a shit situation that needed help.

"Well, no point standing on ceremony eh?" Norongachi said with one last look at the door, he'd get here when he got here. "Barman! I want one shot for every man and woman in this bar lined up and twenty more for me and this lizard looking fucker!" This generated much joy from the drinkers who all shot for the bar like it was handing out gold bricks.