Blood Under the Floorboards [Lukas/Alastair]

THE CITY OF LIGHTS
As hurried as ever, Lukas made his way to the grand master's office. Hallway opening to a lobby, eyes slipping across empty chairs. No appointments today; that was good. New management, but the same staff; the receptionist already starting to tell him off before he cut her out. His hand pressed onto her desk, tilting off the floor and towards him.

"Lady, we've done this before." Lukas' voice was calm, his eyes anything but as he passed the receptionist's desk. "I'm going in." A finger pointed towards the doors, momentary pause as she looked at him. Some mix of frustration and helplessness filling her voice as she pressed a button on her desk.

"You have a visitor." With a fake smile, Lukas stepped away, desk rattling as it met the floor. Pushing through the doors, he let them swing shut behind him.

"Grandmaster." the one-armed man stated coldly, approaching his desk. "We haven't met, have we?"

Scraping loudly against the floor, Lukas seated himself in a chair facing across the man. His jacket missing for a change, chest barren if not for the white and blue quincy-cross emblazoned tanktop he wore, leaving the bandaged nub of his shoulder bare to the air. Teeth bared themselves in a smile, silver eyes glinting against the light that streamed behind Alastair. "My name's Lukas."

Alastair was still sitting behind his desk as Lukas entered, the vast empty space that the Grandmaster's office possessed affording him ample time to assess the other Quincy as he approached. He did not rise to greet him, nor did his gaze even linger upon the man for much time at all before he turned back to his workstation. His hands typing away at the computer before him with mechanical precision, filing away something that certainly seemed to hold his focus more than the invading party in that moment.

"I do not believe we have, Mister Ätherisch, nor did I believe I had any appointments this afternoon."

With a final few keypresses, reaching a point where he was happy to pause, the Grandmaster looked up at the man who was dragging a chair across the floor in some inefficient manner. They were strangers, yes, but word traveled and this small metropolis was hardly a place where one could lie low without attracting any attention. Alastair was an attentive man when the occasion called for it, so being aware of exactly who was bursting in through the front door was some small comfort.

"So, enlighten me on your reason for dropping by my office."

Dull orange eyes bore into Lukas as he made to sit before Alastair. His tone was as dry as ever, but his gaze carried the unmistakable weight of a man who had no fondness for timewasting. A heavy, probing, look that was looking to deal with this matter as quickly as possible and carried with it a wariness that this was all irritatingly irregular.

THE CITY OF LIGHTS
"The shoes are a tight fit, aren't they?" Lukas' eyes met with the grandmaster's, violence dancing amidst his pupils. "Can't say Cyrus coulda pulled my name out of his ass, not that he had to." Resting deeper into the chair, Lukas' arm slid across his chest, a gesture that would've preferred feet propped on the desk in front of him.

"I want to know what your plans are for getting soldiers up to snuff." His head tilted back, an attempt to adjust hair he no longer had. "Started a semi-official training regimen for some of these recruits, but between my reputation and the circumstances we're in, the numbers don't work. Not enough, by what I'm sure you've noticed is a long shot."

Lukas made no attempt to gesture towards his deformity; he felt it spoke loudly enough. "And right now, that's not something we can afford. Whatever rumors of my suggestions and concerns you might have heard, we're decidedly past 'I told you so'."

His hand made some facsimile to air quotes, smile having faded to a stern expression. No reservations were left of what Lukas was, or what he had been, not to him. If he had to become someone, something else to keep the Quincy from another massacre, he would. If his words couldn't convey that, Lukas dared that his unwavering gaze could.

The arrogance of the man before him was astounding. The notion that they was here to lecture him was enough to curl Alastair’s lips into a curt frown even before Lukas had finished speaking. He had expected as much of the Directors, those who had once been his superiors, but now a Personnel sought to do so without any provocation. This lack of discipline was truly disappointing.

“You would do well to refer to Master Auramazda with respect. He may have stepped down from his post but you will not speak of him so informally.”

His eyes narrowed a shade, wondering perhaps if this was some elegant form of ruse, but he could not see through it. Lukas seemed to act like this was a purely military organisation whilst also showing a complete lack of awareness for the chain of command, which struck him as entirely backwards.

“Your concern for your fellow soldiers is admirable, but that does not warrant any further disclosure of information. I have every faith that Director Armstrong and her subordinates will be handling matters in a manner that she deems appropriate.”

He didn’t know about these suggestions or reservations though, that was something else that he found quite novel. Had he and Cyrus already had these meetings and somehow avoided this outcome? The idea that Cyrus had been so lax seemed quite surprising.

“When they are ready, information shall be clearly distributed through the standard channels. If, at that point, you still have concerns then I encourage you to raise them with your direct superiors.”

THE CITY OF LIGHTS
Informally my ass. It's the man's name. Lukas bit his tongue at the thought, but the frustration still poured into his voice.

"What direct superiors?" Lukas cut back, brow tightening with distinct aggression. "The nameless, faceless people I submit reports to? As far as the Todgestalten is concerned, I'm an asset, a tool. The same way my sword is. The same way your bow is. There is no one listening for swords." He responded in kind to Alastair's eyes, daggers flying innumerable. Leaning forward as he spoke, his fist clenching tight.

The Vandenreich had changed - he knew it had changed, but to shift so much from what Lukas had lived through, lived for - and he was far from adjusting properly. The genociders and abominations in their ranks, he could almost learn to justify. They needed the bodies, and at worst they would help prepare their other forces for the enemies to come. But inaction? The rank placidity, he couldn't stomach it.

"Armstrong will have her own plans, the Albedochriffen will have their own plans, the Todgestalten will have their own plans. I am asking you, because at the end of the day, what you say will matter more to not just the Vandenreich, but the Stadt, than any of them combined." Lukas' expression filled with anger as the words spilled out, but it did not crack, composure returning as he'd sit further back.

"Me being here should be enough evidence of that."

A lack of respect for authority, that was all this was. Alastair did not take any pleasure in seeing a failed attempt at rehabilitation, but the facts spoke for themselves and he was far from naive enough to believe that every sinner could be redeemed. But one more failure did not fragment his faith in the system, they were doing their best with the resources they had been given.

"You are at the rank of Personnel. There is your coordinator, your administrator, and even your director are all tasked with managing you and your fellow Todgestalten. You may have some degree of personal strength, an impressive amount judging by your combat reports from the African Incident, but you are still beholden to those rules and regulations just as much as your regular peers."

He had not meant to say regular, the word just slipped out as he was handing out the curt dressing down. But hindsight was a blissful thing, that provided only agony if you dwelled upon it too much. He pressed forward with little more of a pause, meeting and matching Lukas' intensity though it was disappointment rather than daggers that lingered behind his gaze.

"Mister Ätherisch, if you believe that barging in here and attempting to make demands of me will get you the answers you seek then I regret to inform you that you are mistaken. I have told you as much information as your rank permits, to tell you any more or less would be a mark of failure on the part of our administration that I have no intention of causing."

THE CITY OF LIGHTS
The look in his eyes - far from alien. Familiar. They looked like his father's, at those moments of hesitation. When his blow was not deep enough, not fast enough; not certain. Those doubts were long discarded, a trail of dead in his wake. A lesser man would avert his eyes, feel some kind of shame, but be it for the memory, or the life he led now; it was nothing but disgust that filled Lukas' gut.

"That'll go great on a gravestone. 'A mark of failure on the part of our administration.'" The words dour, cold with venom.

"I'm not here to demand answers, I'm here to make sure my efforts for the Vandenreich aren't lost in a sea of inaction. One man. No matter what strength I've built up, clawed through life for, that's all I am. One man. You might look like the same, but that changed the moment you took that chair. At the snap of your fingers," Raising his arm, Lukas snapped his own; "you could change the history of Quincy from this ever elongating downward spiral. Instead, you politic. Delegate. Paperwork and procedure, a slow crawl into extinction."

Somehow managing to not send spittle flying across the desk in his rant, Lukas' eyes screwed shut, pinching the bridge of his nose with nearly enough force to break it. A rise in his chest, breathing in as the hand dropped, a furrowed brow twisting the frustration in his gaze to anger.

"Our enemies move and act now. Not after the directors have made up their minds, consulted with administrators. We are forced into conflict after conflict, reactionaries to the attack of monsters, relying on our genociders to be anything but. Continuing to lick wounds we should've already stitched shut." In a blink, Lukas stood, his chair scraping on the floor underneath.

"My 'rank' is a black field operator, Grandmaster. And ever since fucking Ichigo showed up?" His hand circled in the air, a gesture at the world around him as he turned back to the doors. Taking a step towards it, his words turned plain, stained with the ache of a man who felt unheard.

"We've been living on the field."

"A sea of inaction, is that truly what you see? I see an organisation coming together as one to triumph over a dangerous threat at a great cost. Working together with the Gotei United and other, smaller outfits to achieve something that would have been impossible a decade ago. We are slowly turning the corner, putting a legacy of isolation and indignation behind us to actually achieve something tangible."

There was his spark, that fiery underbelly that he could not simply quell. Alastair believed wholeheartedly in the direction that he was taking the Vandenreich, and he would rise to defend it against any comers. Especially those who knew only vitriol and spat hatred for hatred's sake. Insults against him were hardly worth acknowledgment, but to undermine the effort that had been put in and the lives that had been lost? That would draw a rise from him, especially here.

Then, as suddenly as he entered, Lukas was making to leave. Alastair had been about to reply once more to his outburst, but the sudden choice to leave without dismissal was perhaps the final straw against a decision that he had been considering from the moment this conversation had begun. It gave him no pleasure to do this, but his voice rose in volume to address the man clearly as he made to withdraw.

"I stood on those same fields and would gladly have called you my comrade, but now you forget yourself and your station. So I will do you the greatest kindness I can and relieve you of those duties, for this burden has weighed too heavily upon you. Rest, recuperate, and in time perhaps we will see about reviewing these circumstances again."

THE CITY OF LIGHTS
Lukas laughed.

It started small, a half hearted chuckle. Mounting into a chest squeezing, breath monopolizing roar; stopped in his tracks. An older conversation, sunk in a hospital bed and held together by bandages. Dogs and their leashes.

The laugh cut away as quickly as it had erupted, a shallow breath as he shook his head, tugging at the corner of his eyes, mocking the idea of tears. There had been a time where he considered making change himself - come in here, cut Cyrus' head off, see what happened. It's not like they were particularly capable of stopping him, a fact that still hung in his mind. Alastair would be more difficult, but not impossible.

But it wouldn't matter. The Vandenreich he knew was dead and gone. Buried under the corpses of another generation. Something they seemed keen on repeating, if this was how it was.

Continuing to the door, he spoke with a continued lack of regard. "There are people who become great leaders because they see what needs to be done, and act. The rest?" Lukas' head turned over his shoulder, outright hostility rippling in his eyes. "Pomp and circumstance."

Pushing the door open, Lukas turned back to his front, dissapearing between the blinks of an eye.