@Eklispe If Sangue won the lottery she'd probably just use it to buy a few tasty treats before sharing it with people she knows of xD She's the kind of snake who'd swallow a bunch of food when nobody's looking.
@Prince of Seraphs BASL as a whole is interesting! o-o But I'm happy to hear someone likes Sangue :D
@Guess Who At the age of eighteen, Sangue found out Santa wasn't real!
@Prince of Seraphs Sangue's past isn't the brightest! xD (I still like Saph more in different ways tho o-o;)
Sangue's background is relatively grim in its own way (there's some things that affect her more than losing an arm!), but it's oddly in the hopeful side once she becomes a teenager and learns a barely distinguishable language that eventually evolves into her current odd way of communicating.
Also most of her posts are surprisingly oriented to ironic humor because of how unintelligible she is in society xD
@Lugubrious Can I make an introduction post for Apophis soon? I'd like to show him a bit before the family day arrives! He'll be alone before the eventful day o-o;
Her considerably long, yet short summary of the loss of her arm did not annoy Gren thankfully. As she drank from the apple cider, she noticed Gren handing her some sort of odd-looking green ball of... something. Only until he explained what it exactly was did she remember seeing something similar to it being eaten by people. From what she could recall though, those things were called-
Watermelons. Gren seemed to know them to, as his words implied that what he had was not exactly a watermelon even if it tasted like one. Sangue only ever had a taste of a slightly rotten watermelon when she found trash near the outskirts of the mountain. It was among the oddest items she managed to scavenge outside of her home when she was much younger. There was only one bite of the watermelon left, and it tasted like sour water. At the time, she considered it to taste very good.
Now that she thought about it, she could have tried out a watermelon after she received Lien. She must have forgotten about it when she ate bread for the first time.
It was probably one of the best things she ever tasted at the time, so it only seemed natural for an oddball like her to forget about watermelons.
Remembering the taste of the watermelon she had eaten long ago with a rather vague memory, she bowed as she received the mini watermelon thing from Gren. Watching Gren take a bite out of it, she took a bite out of the peeled fruit.
...
...
...
Her eyes glowed at the taste of the small thing. Why it was so sweet, she did not understand, but it tasted great. Her hunger from before didn't help either. She slowly bit at the fruit until only a one-fourth of it was left in her hand.
"...It's good..." The red snake said to herself quietly, eyeing the fruit with a hungry gaze like a child.
Another question from Gren caught her attention as he asked her what Apophis was like. She turned to Gren, then at the fruit in her hand as she wondered how she could exactly describe her "guardian."
"...He... doesn't talk... too much," she began, her expression more sentimental than before. "He knows... a bit more about... people than I... do...
"...
"...I think..."
It felt like a long while since she saw her guardian, but that may have been because she used to meet him almost on a weekly basis before she enrolled into Beacon. So when Gren brought Apophis up, she could not help but feel lost in her thoughts for a bit. She was quick to recover, however, as the red snake went back to talking with the green boar.
"He... wants me... to have fun sometimes... And in other... times, he... would drink... with me... when I feel... lonely...
"And... he makes... jokes sometimes..."
The red-haired woman continued to remember the things that made Apophis easy to remember for her. There were the superficial details, but there were also things that made him valuable to her. He may have used a rather vulgar language, and she even found some of his ways of fighting to be absolutely frightening to witness, but...
"...As scary... as he could be... he could also... be a wonderful... person..."
Sangue stared at her unfinished fruit as she remembered one of her saddest memories with Apophis, which happened to be his happiest, as her peaceful expression became solemn.
He had slaughtered a group of bandits on his own before he met up with Sangue again at the bar they always met in.
It had been three years since Apophis took a twelve-year-old Sangue out of her home, which had dragged all kinds of dangerous people- including Apophis himself. With her under his wing, his activities as a manhunter had severely decreased as his targets became limited to simply "people who got in his way." She never saw him fight too much, but whenever she did, it was hard to forget.
The way he moved with anything but grace, humility, and respect. He had no such things, and instead only carried raw determination, iconic bloodlust, and silent, yet extreme concentration that somehow surpassed everyone he met. He fought in a way that only one who lost far too many things could. She could tell that it was not anger that drove him to paint the skies red, but rather, the sheer joy that had completely replaced what should have been natural angst.
He was not compassionate in anything aside from doing the only thing he learned how to surpass almost everyone in- battle.
Since Sangue was not old enough to drink, Apophis and the young girl sat at a table instead of the counter. The bartender had technically closed the place, though he always permitted the two red snakes room to sleep in whenever they had no place to stay at. He owed Apophis a huge favor apparently, though he refused to tell Sangue what it was.
Staring at his bloodshot eyes as his fingers tapped against his left cheekbone, the mysteriously hollow sounds that came from his completely empty eye socket made Sangue feel tense. Apophis had the tendency to tap at the left side of his face whenever he felt like strangling something. As much as he helped Sangue far more than he needed to, it still made Sangue concerned over his health.
So she decided to make the most of the words she had learned from the city.
"...A...pep..."
"...? Y'called?" Apophis asked, his unnaturally widened eyes peering into Sangue's. She could almost see the insanity of the battle he just fought in- after all, he literally smelled like blood at that very moment. He had yet to wash off his bloodstained clothes.
The bartender ignored all of that because he was a civilized individual who knew how to live longer than others.
"A... pep..." Sangue whispered again.
"Y'called?" Apophis parroted himself.
"A...re... y...ou... ok...ay...?"
"I'm feeling fantastic, Sangue," the man grinned with a hollow smile. The stitches that were usually on his mouth had been ripped off by the bandits, making his smile far more sinister than it should've been. But Sangue could not see anything sinister about it, for she simply worried about his extreme excitement from the battle he had gone through. No wounds he inflicted on himself were accidental, and the only "wound" he actually had was his stitches being ripped off. It was nothing considering how he killed slightly less than a hundred in a few minutes or so without preparing a weapon beforehand.
But the thought of losing him to bloodlust or even wounds... was not a pleasant thought for the young snake.
"D-...Don't..."
Her expression growing softer, a rare sad frown replaced her usual idle expression as she spoke with her weak voice,
Apophis stared at her with a frozen expression, his thoughts completely unreadable for that very moment. For a moment, Apophis, one of the most arrogant manhunters of Remnant, was at a loss of words for what a young child told him.
And suddenly, he burst out laughing. He roared and howled as he genuinely laughed, a tear rolling from his only eye as he cackled. Confused, Sangue blinked as she asked him "Are... y...ou o...kay...?"
But soon, she realized how rare of a sight she was seeing. For a minute, the young teenager saw it.
'He's... happy...'
For a brief moment, she saw a person in the man who made himself out to be a savage. She saw a person, just like any other member of society, unlike herself. Unlike herself, who lived entirely in the wild, Apophis had the face of someone who once knew of the warmth of love.
He understood how to comprehend love, even though he claimed to hate it so much. Unlike Sangue, Apophis had things to lose in his past, and he lost every single one of them. It made sense, for after all, he always mentioned how even he had a family at one point.
It... was sad to see him so happy after years of watching him find nothing to be peacefully happy about.
For a brief moment, Apophis looked like he was one the nicest hero in the world, laughing with everything valuable still by his side. And she could not help but feel a sting in her heart as she realized that that may have very well been the case at one point in his life.
It all faded quickly as he returned to grinning again, though his eyes had noticeably relaxed.
"Kaboom, huh. Trust me, I know how NOT to go kaboom while destroying a mountain by myself. No need to worry about this Gary-Stu-as-shit-levels-of-power asshole, Sangue."
Despite his insistence to remain pessimistic, however, he soon talked about things aside from slaughtering bandits. She could tell he felt better after she showed concern for him.
Love and care was needed for everyone. Apophis gave her care, but he knew nothing of love.
If it meant to piece together whatever pieces that once made him a normal man, she would gather as much of it as she could. She would let him feel beloved, even if whatever she could bring to the table was small or worthless.
That much was all that mattered to start breathing life into a broken man once more.
"He... stays at a... temple... a lot now... He throat chants and meditates... and cleans the temple... by himself..."
"He was... a scary fighter... but..."
"...He is... someone... who deserves... appreciation... and love... for how... much he changed... for my sake..."
Sangue made a small smile as she bowed to Gren.
"Thank... you for... listening..." The red snake spoke softly as she quietly finished the rest of her fruit. After she swallowed it, however, she grew curious of the man next to her. He seemed like a very nice person for not only listening to her, but also giving her free food. The tasty fruit seemed to make Sangue feel more comfortable with Gren.
With a quiet voice, she asked,
"If... I'm not r...ude by asking... What... are your... friends like... to you...?"
Bluetommy
Danyel
Ookawa
Musoka
Simple Unicycle
Plank Sinatra
