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August Montgomery Brinkman is a veteran. Sure, it's been a long time—no one will argue that point—but once a champion, forever a champion. If anything, his experience is worth more than any prize pool the Apex Games could ever hope to offer him. That hindsight is what compels him. Not money, not pride, not even fame (as much as it fuels him). Anything to spare his son—as strained as their relationship may be—from making the same errors he did.

Ballistic—as he is known—is making waves and garnering a lot of attention. Whether it's his age, his adherence to tradition, his tendency to subtly flaunt himself, or his honed gun skills on the battlefield, he has become absolutely impossible to ignore. Many respect him already, but not all Legends give such an honor so easily… Some even seek to exploit any sign of weakness their competition dares to reveal.

An undying metallic chassis rattles from above. Like a snake in the vast desert sands, no one is willing to approach him for his well-known venom… Ballistic is either a mongoose or a rat, and Revenant intends to find out.

Or read below instead:

Sons of Fathers

Notes:

Good luck.

- - - - - - - - - - -

"You know, it's quite rude to sneak up on a gentleman having a smoke."

August doesn't even bother to turn his head upward and away from the fireplace in order to address his stalker. He simply remains seated in his velvet smoking chair, feet up on the ottoman, enjoying his vintage tobacco cigar in his smoking lounge.

"I can at least appreciate your genuine interest in keeping off the fine Persian rugs, but—frankly—I'm not so sure I have any help competent enough to get metallic fingerprints off the ceiling, either." He pauses to take the tumbler of whiskey from the serving table, swirl it, sip it, and place it back down. He carefully stands up, his velvet smoking robe hanging down like a royal cape, and puts his back to the fire to face his towering guest of metal, now standing before him.

"Heh, so how'd you know?" Revenant's eyes glare down from their engineered perch, nearly six and a half feet from the floor.

Brinkman sighs quickly, turning away to place his cigar in the crystal dish on the table. It might be a bit of a conversation at this rate.

"At my age, it's quite normal to lose one's hearing, but… I don't like to think of it that way. In fact, I think it's quite the opposite. I didn't lose my hearing, I gained the ability to control the volume and hear more clearly than my ears could naturally." He turns back to face Revenant after placing the half-finished cigar down. Revenant stands tall and still, waiting for him to finish. "I do love the sound of the fire, so I like to keep the volume a tad high on evenings like this. Not to even mention that after our match last week, I would be hard pressed to simply forget the sounds of you crawling along any surface you please. Combine those two factors, and you have your answer. Any more questions, or did you simply come here to nag me about idle things?"

Revenant's yellow LEDs glow a tad bit brighter as they widen.

"No? No. Then I presume we're done here."

August doesn't turn away, waiting to see if the simulacrum will stand down now, or later.

"Is that how you'd speak to your son when he dared to ask a simple question?" Revenant's cadence gives away a deep, internal smile that curls cruelly at his own emotional stab. The prophetic glint of his incisors now gives a warning that he has no good intentions: he fully plans to see what kind of a man August really is.

August doesn't flinch externally at all. He continues to stand straight up, spine aligned, shoulders back, and face forward to his newfound foe. Snakes can be fearsome creatures to the uninitiated, but he is far from that.

"What, aren't you old enough to have had a proper, disciplinarian father? Tsk." He shakes his head for a moment. "And here I thought you wouldn't be as soft as the rest of them."

Revenant's visage protects him from giving away how quickly his internal smile fades, but his still frame indicates his hesitation.

August shrugs a little, now turning back to return to his seat. He looks over his shoulder for just a moment.

"Apologies, I shouldn't have expressed my disappointment like that. I forget none of you people seem to have had any experience with it before." He doesn't hesitate long before working his way back into the red chair. "Fathers these days… spoiling all the children…"

Revenant's metaphorical teeth glint again through a newfound scowl no father has seen in centuries, and no father will ever see again thanks to the metallic prison he finds himself in. This man is no rat… He is a mongoose, and Revenant is fully aware he just sustained a severe bite.

August baited him so quickly, so easily, yet Revenant cannot help the fiery wrath rising in what scraps remain of his soul. No wonder the Brinkman son went incognito after Ballistic was announced. Not only did August immediately cast a shadow so large that it shaded his own son from the spotlight, but he even managed to get his son cut from the Games entirely. The kid had no chance with a man like this for a father.

They're all the same.

"You know, you performed well last match. It was a genuine pleasure having you as a teammate. Playing off your rancorous attitude really sold it for the fans." He pauses to take a sip of his whiskey, gently placing the ornate glass back on the table before continuing. "You're not a bad shot in the slightest either. Perhaps a bit voracious for my tastes, but you're one of the few who can back it up. I'm sure your father would be rightly proud about that one, although given your… status, I'm sure he's not around to see it. Please accept my condolences."

Revenant's boiling wrath evaporates in a mere instant, despite his genuine wish for it to stay. He wants to be livid, seething, ready to live the fantasy of mauling the one man he could never meet eyes with… but then August had to go and say something like that.

It's a genuine compliment. It wouldn't be coming from anyone else, but it is coming from this type of man. Revenant relaxes his chassis, resigned to his sudden calmness. He touches his throat lightly, pulling his hand away to check on the reptilian blood pouring from his vitals. His metal fingers are clean, yet he feels it all the same.

"You're not a bad shot yourself." Revenant speaks, now confidently taking a chair adjacent to August, staring at the smoldering fire.

August scoffs.

"That's putting it lightly, don't you think? You watched me shoot a man perfectly between the eyes. You hit a few faces, sure, but nothing truly perfect." He recognizes a new aura to Revenant, who seems far less aggressive than before. Something new. Something calm. Something far more disturbing, somehow. He raises a glass all the same, refusing to show any concern. "That's my son's chair, be careful not to break it."

"Perfection is the enemy of—"

"Efficiency, you think I don't know that one?" August interrupts him. Revenant doesn't even shoot him a glare. He simply stares into the fire, letting Brinkman have his peace. "I wasn't born yesterday either, young man."

Revenant breaks his dazed look into the flames.

"I am far older than you, and far older than you could possibly know." Revenant's words have only the slightest touch of frustration left in them.

"Yet you faff about like you never escaped your twenties." August starts, Revenant returning his attention to the fire as he sits forward. Revenant pulls a cigarette from his utility pouch, already ready to work on forgetting he came here. "If you took a moment longer to think, maybe you'd come across as… by the—what is that?!"

August jumps up, making his way to Revenant's seated form, swiping the cigarette from between his claws before it could be lit. August begins making his way to a small box on a nearby wooden shelf, flush against the far wall.

Revenant remains in the chair, staring into the fire, letting his now empty fingers curl back into a relaxed state.

"If you want to be treated like a man with experiences worth telling, at least have the courtesy to smoke like one." August chides, busy at his shelf. He pulls open small metal canisters, making a bit of a commotion in the corner.

Revenant sighs aloud, only now bothering to speak.

"It's a lot harder for me to smoke a cigar, you know. Cigarettes are small enough that I can cup it over my face to draw from. I wasn't given the courtesy of a working set of lips." He remains factual in his cadence, only giving away the slightest hints of frustration.

"Could have fooled me with the way you flap them!" August jabs from his shelf.

Revenant doesn't bother beyond that, sitting back upright in the green velvet chair, covered in dust from what must be a decade of stagnation. He groans a little, now trapped in this losing game by his own inability to walk away. He has to know where this goes, even if it means taking more bites from the mongoose in his midst.

"Here, this will work for you." August is suddenly standing over him, holding out a tobacco pipe made of beautifully stained wood with a thin enough bit to slide under his mask and into his mouth cavity—something Revenant cannot even manage with cigarettes.

Surprised, Revenant pauses before taking it, his nonexistent blood turning to ice as he touches it.

"Where did you—?"

"Ah, so you are old!" August snickers a bit, leaving the pipe with him as he returns to his own chair. "You recognize it, do you?"

"My fa—" Revenant catches his initial words in his modulator, refusing to utter them. He corrects himself, then continues.

"It's a Sol by the Theodore Maxwell Company. Made with black locust wood from the northern hemisphere of Solace as they were making way for the initial influx of farms. Before the Great Fire did most of the job, anyway. The farmlands made in the aftermath helped establish the Outlands' agricultural independence." Revenant holds face. "Where did you—?"

"A private collector." Confidence in his impending victory restored, August picks his cigar back up, gently lighting it anew and working the flame evenly around the burnt end once again. He takes a brief moment from puffing oxygen through the remaining cigar. "Want to confirm the authenticity?"

Revenant perks up just enough to give away his interest.

August taps a button on a remote underneath his small side table, turning on the overhead lights. He presses a second button and the off white hue of the overhead lights fade to a deep, dark purple, eventually emitting a black light's glow.

As they do, the wood in the pipe shows streaks of bioluminescence, confirming its authenticity. Even moreso, the wooden flooring, the wood of the velvet chairs, and the wood of the shelves show streaks of an ethereal glow throughout. This whole room is made of Solace's old forests.

Revenant looks around, completely taken aback, but attempting not to show it.

August shuts the lights off yet again, leaving only the glow of the fire filling the room once more.

The room is silent for a while, Revenant once again locking eyes with the fire.

"At least you can appreciate it. Children simply find it 'cool' and don't understand the history anymore." August draws his cigar, holding it for a moment, then releasing the smoke into the air with a sigh. "It's almost entirely reclaimed wood from the old farmsteads of Solace that remained after the fire, of course. They were all made with it back then, since that's what was local and cheap."

"I remember." Revenant murmurs, still holding his unlit pipe.

August smirks, standing up from his chair in a victorious motion as Revenant watches him in intrigued confusion. He just sat down mere moments ago, yet he's already up again.

August stares directly at the snake who dared to enter his den looking for a fight.

"Checkmate. I guess you really are my senior after all." August relishes in the moment visibly, his stature as tall as he can manage. Revenant realizes his misspoken words far too late to rectify the situation. "Shame, really, you've been more fun than any of the children on that playground of a bloodsport, but your cadence and diction gave away your general area of the star map. Once I affirmed which home planet, the time period was just a matter of a few key points in history."

Revenant feels the mongoose's jaws around his head.

"Well over three hundred years old, from the farming era of Solace. You probably watched the remainder of the forests be burned yourself, or at least remember the older folks who lived it. For someone who will 'never know how old' you are, how did I do?"

Revenant stares at him in utter disbelief before reclining in the son's chair, defeated.

The mongoose drags the twitching body of the snake away, relishing in the blood of its worthy—albeit arrogant—opponent.

"I have some Solace spirits, sit awhile. It's not often I meet someone who can go toe to toe with me anymore." August relishes in his victory as he shuffles away, on his way to grab the aforementioned drink. "Matches are on your left!"

Revenant watches him turn a corner through a doorway to the side and disappear, a MRVN butler peering into the room after he leaves.

Revenant pays it no mind.

He holds the pipe upright, lifting it above his head for a moment to check the underside of the wood where the stummel meets the stem.

There's no carved initials there. It was a long shot, anyway.

Revenant pulls it back to his face, carefully snaking the pipe's bit under his mask, between his ceramic teeth, and into his mouth that has scarcely had a reason to open since his awakening. He carefully reaches over to a side table on his left. Without a box of matches on the table itself, he briefly opens the one drawer it has to reveal a box of old fashioned stick matches. With the quick flick of a phosphorous tip against the rough backplate of his metal hand and a couple careful touches to the tampered tobacco in the bowl, Revenant is able to carefully draw on the pipe.

The tobacco flavor fills his mouth cavity and is eventually picked up by his tasting chips in the back of his palate and where his tongue might be. The flavor is like a campfire in the woods, but with leather drying racks to the side and fresh tree nuts falling from the highest branches to be warmed and toasted. Somehow the tobacco even relays the sweet flavor of the woods after a mild rain: when the spores spread themselves, the amphibians run about, and the flowers drip fragrant syrups from their petals. Revenant carefully pulls the pipe from his mouth and exhales the smoke, letting it cloud around his face and hide his artificial visage.

He goes to take another draw, unbothered by the usual pace one has to keep with a pipe. He isn't sure if his body is successfully simulating a nicotine high or if the emotional toll of it all is causing him to falter, but he feels something. He is simply unsure if that "something" is a good thing or not, yet it's lured him in all the same. He knows it's a manipulative force that baits with the nectar of nostalgia, tranquilizes with the rare compliments of an aloof father, and crushes any spark of rebellion with old wisdom and wily tricks. It's antithetical to Revenant, yet familiar enough to traverse.

Revenant bellows smoke, having snuck a devious lungful while the old man isn't around to stop him. He'll be out of it in no time, assuming the processors can handle the slow descent into whatever hell he's slithered into. Blood drips down his scales as the pipe returns to his lips to lift whatever spirit he has left.

Revenant has already experienced this all once before, after all.

• • • •

August is already down half of a bottle of fine Solace bourbon and his slightly reddened cheeks show it. Revenant has long since stopped thinking about how much nicotine tar now lines his chassis internals, enjoying his processors' slowing and inebriated computations, unconcerned with the effects he can later shed off with his skin. The drunken game of mental chess has continued haphazardly for so long that neither party remembers the objective of the game anymore, sacrificing pawns and moving aimlessly across the board.

"And so, of course I told the kid he can't just 'join' the field of bloodsports, but of course he tried anyway—ignored all of my advice! To his credit, he did make his way in, but… I couldn't allow it to continue unimpeded." August finishes up his latest story about his son, Revenant listening carefully.

"Why not? He managed to qualify himself, didn't he?" Revenant asks, although somehow it sounds like it isn't directed to August at all.

"Why? It's simple, really. He may have qualified on his own, but I know full well he wouldn't make it past devils like you. He'd be delivered to my doorstep in a box in no time. We both know that." August removes his glasses for a moment to clean them. "I could never forgive myself if I watched him die, let alone be torn to pieces for live entertainment."

"You tell him that?"

"Hmm? No, of course not." He replaces the glasses on his face.

"Why not?"

"He knows it. After all, every half decent father loves his children. It doesn't even need to be said." August takes another drink, no longer bothering to sip and pace himself.

"And what if the kid thinks you've just got an ego too large to let him do anything on his own?" Revenant asks before starting a new bowl full of tobacco in his pipe, lighting it with a few flicks of a lit match. “What if the kid thinks you hate him?”

"That's ridiculous. Nobody is that blind." August sits forward, concerned at the thought, but too buzzed to consider it deeply.

"I dunno," Revenant draws deeply on the newly lit tobacco, filling his lungs yet again, pausing, and then letting the smoke be expelled through his nostril cavity, "I wouldn't have seen it that way."

August huffs momentarily to himself, humored by the thought.

"You speak like you've been in his shoes."

Revenant hums for a moment before falling quiet yet again, staring into the red hot and ashen logs leftover in the fireplace.

"And what would you propose I do for the boy?" August asks, not necessarily expecting an answer.

"Depends." Revenant's haunting tone returns, his LED eyes fading as they stare blankly into the ambient glow inside the husks of the logs. His voice directs nowhere and everywhere at the same time. "Will he believe you if you tell him it was for his own good? Or is it already too late and he's fated to revolve his life around proving you wrong?"

August groans as he stretches back in his chair, trying to offset the weight of those questions. Even inebriated, those questions do not sit well. What choice did he have? It was either to do nothing and lose his son, or save him despite himself. He wouldn't ever take back his choice. His son is too important, even if he will never understand that reality.

Revenant doesn't break the silence; he just draws more on the pipe to send all semblance of lucidity to a future chassis.

The fireplace crackles a bit more in the silence, only offset by the sound of the MRVN in the hallway dusting the picture frames filled with old family photos. Times no one can return to. Times that can now only be a memory.

"Was it too late for you?" August asks somberly.

Revenant feels a momentary rush of heat through the veins he doesn't even have anymore, followed by the cold, icy chill of an unspeakable wrath. The fire burns no brighter, but holds his attention even more than before.

"Forever the disappointment." Revenant mumbles quietly, leaning forward in the son's chair.

August huffs, wondering if his son might actually think that way. Sure, he is naïve and reckless, but not a disappointment. In truth, it's impressive how much he's accomplished for his age. The only thing August cannot stand is how close his son consistently comes to making the same mistakes he did.

Mistakes that cost him a life he cannot get back.

Mistakes he cannot forgive himself for.

Mistakes he cannot allow to repeat.

"And how do you know that? Have you ever considered some alternative perception?" August asks, piqued if something could be rectified here.

Revenant exhales, the room's circulation barely able to keep up with his pace.

"No. You know it when your father doesn't love you. It never leaves you." Revenant has not broken sight with the fire once. "Never."

The silence sits longer.

For a moment, they both wonder why they've been talking so frankly, but as quickly as the thought comes it is lost in the smoke and drink. Revenant wonders if his assumptions are wrong for just as long before it fades, and August considers if he should try to reach out to his son equally as long before it is forgotten. The inebriation only offers the gift of clairvoyance alongside the curse of forgetfulness, a pair so perfectly destructive.

“And are you anything like your father?” August finally asks, unhindered by any politeness not already ingrained into him.

Yet again, Revenant feels his neural networks blaze alive with a wanton wrath with no target to aim at, his eyes locked into the fire and widening with a hateful glow before cooling into the lingering silence. Something about the inebriation soothes the blow of such a question far too fast. Normally, a beheading wouldn’t be a punishing enough fate for such a suggestion, but at the moment there is no call to action embedded in his systems: just loathing at the need to consider such a question. As quickly as the flood of rage comes, it fades.

“Fuck no.” Revenant growls through his teeth.

“So he was a good man, then?”

An unspeakably hot mass of molten man lunges internally towards Brinkman, just as the metric ton of twisted metal cage holds him back. Revenant has shifted back into the chair, sitting like a rebel upon the throne of the late king after a coup that ended in regicide. He stares perfectly forward, no sign of humanity left in his stature. Only the tears painted down his static face imply any type of emotion, yet seem so cold and apathetic in their perfect shape.

The tar lining his chassis walls and covering every processor has caught up with him. A crueler line of code kicks in, rejecting the possibility of human frailty permeating the decision making process any further.

“I guess so.” Revenant growls in a voice far less impacted by any human emotion than the one moments before, standing up as he does so.

“Hit a nerve, did I?” August jousts, stopping Revenant short as he moves to leave, resting the still-lit pipe on the end table beside him.

The mongoose’s teeth are deep in the flesh of the snake, presuming it has long since bled out in the den.

The subsequent pause and the silence that endures even leaves Brinkman questioning the state of the war at hand.

“Brinkman.” Revenant’s voice is so mechanical and menacing, unlike anything heard up until this point. “Do you know how well black locust wood burns?”

August draws on his cigar, the glow of the butt burning as bright as the fireplace before him.

“Forests wiped out completely by the Apex Games’ firewall creation. Everyone knows it burns. It’s wood.” August pauses. “I don’t recall anything other than the property damage being quite severe. Maybe a death or two. It was some time ago.”

“The time before that—the Great Fire—back when Solace was almost entirely forests with patches of farmlands between, set ablaze to raze to the ground.” Revenant’s voice is lower.

August remains quiet, thinking back to the loose mention of that fire on Solace centuries ago. It was a mere footnote in most history books. It paved the way for the further development of Solace into farmlands; with no trees in the way, the only thing remaining to do was till the land and grow crops. The death toll was severe, but the Great Fire was severely overshadowed by the wars that bookended it.

Revenant’s LED eyes glow a deepening red as they face away from the fire, piercing into the darkness behind the father addicted to the limelight, searching for a meaning in the blackness.

“My childhood home burned so fast I didn’t even have to barricade the doors.” His voice isn’t human anymore as it whispers into the void. It drips with a malice and loathing that can only emerge from the maw of a demon. “The last memories I have of my father are his dying screams, suffocated by the smoke. Nobody was coming to save him, either. Just like he left me.”

August’s blood runs cold while the basilisk in his presence slowly begins slithering out of the den, every former fatal wound miraculously healed.

“Every single memory of that place burned to the ground. Nothing but ash. My father hated me. So I hated him more. All my siblings—his whole damn bloodline—straight to hell.” His voice hisses as his chassis disappears into the darkness. “The forests around the house, the nearby towns, the neighbors, everyone who knew him… They all burned. It spread so far I barely even managed to get away, but it was worth it. By the end, there was nothing left.”

August hears a match light behind him in the dark. He quickly turns to see the loosely illuminated visage of the monster behind him with a small fire atop of a phosphorus matchstick burning away.

“What would your son do? If he could have it his way, would he leave your legacy? Or burn it to the ground?”

The basilisk’s fangs shine in the dark, knowing there is no match for their bestial sharpness.

The match burns down as August watches carefully, locking eyes with the living accusation in the dark, waiting for the flame to fall to the ground and catch the rugs aflame. A single spark could burn the entire mansion to the ground, alongside every memory within it… but the match never falls. It burns further and further down until it extinguishes against Revenant's metal fingertips, once again hiding the fangs of the monster in the dark.

“I’ll see you on the playground, Brinkman.” Revenant’s hollow voice echoes from the darkness sounding further away than possible. August didn’t hear him as he retreated from the room.

August inhales deeply, realizing he is once again alone. The MRVN butlers move around the hallways, rooms, and closets. Not a single warm body warms the place but August’s. He sighs, bewildered by the whole evening as he ponders the omen.

August turns back to stare into the same fire that held Revenant’s attention the whole evening, wondering if the soul of his father still lurks around the remnants of his lost son to hear the vile venom he spits.

“You know I love you, right?” August whispers to the flame before him.

It crackles, but does not answer.

#ballistic #revenant #fanfic #love this

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