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"Womp womp."
- Finnegan Vanhorn
- Finnegan Vanhorn
Corruption:??????????%
If he wasn't marked as Depraved yet, he had a feeling he will be inevitably.
Whatever sort of God-Entity that was setting him up had the power to do so after all, just as it did fucking up every other part of his life thus far. It was almost laughable to think anyone in this plenum place would spare enough empathy or common sense to realize something was wrong. No, instead most of everyone he thought would understand either turned their noses up in disgust, disregarded him like some lowly insect, or tried to hide the fact that they thought him a lunatic if it wasn't obvious from the get-go. He was right. God, he was right. All of these people didn't see him as a person. Just an object to use as they needed then discard when he outlived his use. The machine was half tempted not to break his fall. To just put himself out of his misery there and then.
But knowing his luck, God-Entity wouldn't let that happen. At worse he'd survive somehow and be left writhing in pain as punishment.
At best...
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”What's better than a devil you don't know?”
— “Penumbra”
— “Penumbra”
Finn's fall abruptly stopped. He found himself landing in the arms of...a monster? Some sort of ghost made of darkness???
"Hah. It really is raining men!" Penumbra chuckled to herself at her joke, tilting her head as she looked down at him. "Though you're a little bit young to be falling to your death. You're... Timekeeper, aren'tcha?"
Oh brother.
"Eugh, if you want to kill me too at least don't pussyfoot about it?" Finn groaned, squirming to get out of her hold soon as they were close enough to the ground.
"Why would I wanna do that? You were a stroke of luck for us!" The assassin slowly returned to her physical self. Though before she could explain further, she noticed the boy still had his earpiece. She tapped her own ear to signal him about it. Finn reached up to pull it out of his ear, then dropped and stomped it into the ground until it was nothing but pieces. He didn't have any more use for it now. Penumbra nodded in approval and continued talking:
"Someone was trying to pull Miss Meteor off Tony back there, but your attack helped him escape and kept her from recovering? You got some skill, kid!" She grinned at him.
Though Finn did perk up when, for once, someone had told him he had done something right, he sighed in response. "You do know I hadn't meant to do that, right?"
Penumbra tilted her head again, folding her arms behind her back. "Well I mean... maybe part of you did."
"I don't follow?"
Maybe it'd be better for the two of them to talk somewhere less likely to be eavesdropped. Penumbra nudged the Timekeeper forward, silently urging him to walk with her.
...
...
"So I maaaay have overheard your little argument back there. You don't see eye to eye with the rest of the little scraps of GEMINI that still call themselves a team, don't you?" She spoke. "And yet they still believe they can gain the upper hand in this turf war of ours, it's almost cute. Doesn't seem fair for them to put so much blame on you for them not being able to co-operate with each other though. Or for matters of circumstance."
...Right. He was only doing as he was ordered. He was just trying to do the right thing. And yet either way he was still blamed either way for the simple act of trying?
"If it's any consolation, you did do a good thing protecting the trains. And about that Dante guy-"
"I ACTED OUT OF SELF DEFENSE-"
Penumbra quickly raised her hands up at the Timekeeper's quick response. "Heyheyhey- Not saying you hadn't! Jesus, no wonder you're so tense. No one's really cared to listen to your side of things, am I right?"
Finn's silence said enough. Penumbra nodded. "Sounds to me like the community that once glorified you was ready and willing to throw you under the bus. I don't blame you for going against them." She shrugged.
"...How much do you all know about me?" The boy couldn't help but ask.
"Enough. You have been a person of interest for some of us since before Von Carnage was slain." She explained to him. "Me, well, I'm just catching up on things." She glanced back down at him with a smile. "But let's skip to the chase. If it's alright with you, I can put in a good word with you with the higher ups and arrange for you to meet."
Ah. Finn did have a feeling this was where she was going. He quietly thought for a moment. This was the path he was supposed to take, wasn't it? He already got on Maverick's bad side for siding with GEMINI; even before he join for real, GEMINI ended up treating him like shit, and him attacking Regina wasn't gonna bode well with the Freelancers no matter how they decided to twist his actions.
The Hand was the last option he had beyond pure depravity.
... They all really wanna make a monster out of me? Fine. Let's make this more interesting.