The bartender had several rooms at the back of the bar, one of them being the guest rooms he specifically set up for Apophis. In the guest room was a wardrobe full of Mark's old clothes, many of them oversized for the bartender himself. Considering how Apophis had a body stronger than titanium, they technically fit the guy pretty well.
The only problem was that many of them made him look like, as Apophis called it, a "fuccboi."
Walking out of the guest room with a graceless stride, Apophis revealed himself in tight jeans and a red flower shirt. The bartender simply raised an eyebrow.
"You look like Bob Marley if he really got out of touch."
"Shut up."
Apophis dressed himself up again, this time in a business suit.
"You're like Agent 47 except even uglier."
"Shut up."
This time, the ex-manhunter got into some Native tribe outfit, fully including feathers, bonetooth necklaces, and undergarments made of leather.
"..."
"Shut up."
"I didn't even- Wait, why is that even in my wardrobe?!"
After thirty whole minutes of dressing the man up over and over again, the redhead eventually settled for a dull-blue set of a hoodie and sweatpants. Beneath the hoodie was a hazy red turtleneck shirt that nicely covered a nasty gash spread across the side of his neck.
"Congrats! You finally look like a decent human being." Mark exclaimed as he clapped for the red-haired man. "Sangue's gonna love this."
"UghhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH."
Smacking the Apophis' back, the bartender laughed. "Relax, she really won't mind whatever getup you put on. She's kinda like that."
"That's not what I'm being pissy and edgy about," Apophis muttered as he walked over to sit at the counter again. "It's just... Something about this doesn't feel right."
"What doesn't feel right?"
Rolling his eye, the ex-manhunter glanced at the Bacardi the bartender slid to his direction as he snatched it and downed half of the bottle instantly. Slamming the bottle against the counter lightly, the redhead took a deep breath.
"This wasn't what I tried to be, y'know?" Apophis said, almost laughing at the irony of his situation. "I wanted to be a goalless and helpless psychopath. Now I'm a helpful psychopath with the goal of watching some girl grow up.
"Dropping all of the shit I caused back then all of a sudden doesn't feel right."
Nodding, the bartender poured himself some Everclear as he took a sip from his glass. The redhead continued on as he glared at his reflection from the bottle.
"There're probably still things that I needed to annihilate which are still alive," he seethed under his own breath. "I just KNOW I missed something important. I can still go back if I wanted to. But..."
As Apophis sighed, Mark shrugged as he put down his glass on the counter. "Well, think of it this way," the blond man said with a small smile. "Rather than focusing on what should be dead or alive like a massive edgelord, how about you just focus on Sangue and yourself? I'm sure you yourself could have a dose of innocence from something other than Miss Naga. You'll also be half the edgelord you already are if you do that, so why not?"
The redhead's silence was enough to imply that he agreed with Mark.
“Say what?” Apophis muttered, his slit grin seeming to threaten him into frowning confusedly as he stared at an eighteen-year-old Sangue in a peculiar fashion.
Without a second thought, the red snake repeated softly,
“…What’s… porn…?”
At first, Apophis wondered if he should tell Sangue what he actually knew about porn. There was the shit the peeps in society wanked the hell out to, and then there were the more “private” ones. He remembered accidentally walking into some fuck festival of kidnapped children in some sort of Red Room before.
Which was funny now that he thought about it, because he once thought that red rooms were as fake as stuff like “honesty” and the like.
“Well,” the ex-manhunter mused out loud as he looked around the bar they were in. Nobody was around as usual- except Mark. The blond guy was rich enough to keep a bar with so little customers running.
Turning to Sangue, he blinked several times, receiving several blinks from the girl herself.
This little shit’s expecting me to actually explain it, the man thought, wondering if a noose would be enough to kill himself. He then remembered that someone once cut his throat open with a chainsaw and nothing legitimately happened to him afterwards.
Yup. He might as well try to enjoy the hell of raising a brainless kid. If this was divine punishment for him, well… it certainly was an interesting way to eat away his what little of brain cells he had left.
“You see, Sangue…” Apophis began as he leaned over the table to the Naga. “Porn is something that requires physical contact for maximum immersion. It’s like… a mini movie, but without anything that makes a movie interesting aside from the shit related to sex.”
Sangue blinked. She barely knew what a movie was- Apophis had shown her a very heartwarming one several months ago.
“Sex…?”
Sighing, the red-haired man ruffled his already messy hair as he thought over how to explain something like porn to the girl. Literary descriptions wasn’t going to do it.
So he might as well show her.
His eye gleaming, Apophis grinned as he wagged a finger at the snake.
“Shall I show you?”
"Yes, is this the police? I'm just wondering if you can-"
"Don't call the fucking cops, Noxus."
Borrowing the hidden guest room in Mark’s bar wasn’t hard, but convincing Mark that he was teaching the “birds and the motherfucking bees” to Sangue took a bit more time than he expected. Sitting on the floor next to Sangue, the two faced a small square television in front of them as Apophis slipped in a compact disc into a movie player.
“Just a quick tip,” the ex-manhunter pointed out as he pet the movie player like a dog, “but old stuff like this is the classic way to go for watching... porn, I guess.”
Nodding quietly, Sangue turned to the television screen in wonder. Apophis promptly dragged himself next to her as music began to play.
“This is how hardcore pornography starts,” Apophis began explaining as Sangue simply watched a bunch of words and flashy things pass by the screen. “Shows off a bunch of shit nobody cares about before getting into the REAL deal. Here, I’ll skip it to the juicy parts.”
Fiddling with the remote control, Apophis skipped the incoming swarm of opening credits as the real content began to play.
A few minutes later, Sangue watched the video with wide and interested eyes. The way the two people furiously slammed and rubbed their bodies against each other as they swung their bodies to the floor so passionately… It really was different from the kind of movie she had seen before.
In fact, the suplex one of the men performed on the wrestling ring was perhaps one of the more painful-looking attacks she had seen in a while.
It was worth noting that Apophis did not give a shit about proper parenting. He wanted to have fun, and Sangue didn’t mind- not that she could. Instead of snatching some shitty porno, he settled for just grabbing a pro wrestling episode in a CD format- an incredibly outdated way of watching pixelated bullshit at its finest.
With a shit-eating grin on his face, Apophis pointed at the man who got behind his opponent as they locked arms. “They’re about to do the Doggy.” Shortly after he said that, the grabbed opponent was flung over the attacker’s head.
And soon, he pointed again when the other man retaliated by wrapping his thick and muscular arms around his foe’s waist. “That’s the Missionary.”
He made sure to explain things to Sangue whenever the men introduced a new kind of wrestling move.
“That’s the Sixty-Niner.”
“That’s the Triple Penetration.”
“That’s the Microphone Drop- er, I mean, the Blowjob.”
“That’s- wait, what did they call that move again?”
“That’s the Sperm Bank.”
Although Sangue continued to listen to him, her attention had mostly become set on watching the two men wrestle. She soon found out something about herself.
She liked porn.
“So whaddya think?” Apophis asked as they emerged from Mark’s room, ignoring the funny glare Mark gave him. After all, the ex-manhunter did say that they were going to watch actual porn. The fact that only the screams of men emerged from the room made Mark question Apophis’ personal tastes.
Sitting back down at the table they usually sat at, Sangue opened her mouth to say something, only to fall silent for a few seconds.
She then looked up at Apophis, and then at the table.
Silence.
Said silence was soon broken once she spoke.
“I…
“…liked it…”
With a pleasantly surprised grin, Apophis shrugged as he carelessly mumbled, “To each their own, I guess. I hate shows- I mean, porn in general. I’d rather do them myself if I really wanted to enjoy that stuff. More of a ‘hands-on’ guy myself, if you know what I mean.”
Oh boy, he was definitely a hands-on guy. He could do wonders with his hands.
Like making people go “pop.”
Falling silent again, Sangue reached for the cup of water she had left on the table as she took a sip. It seemed that she wanted to say something, but she clearly wanted to choose her words correctly. The last time she tried speaking without a second thought, she asked if Apophis was twelve-years old.
Like hell he was fucking twelve-years old. He hated that age. That was his breaking point. That was when he had enough of the shit he put up with- his parents’ fucked up fantasies did wonders for the hope he had in life. Never did he savor the sound of a Magnum revolver blasting apart the brains of the shitheads so much, ending both their domination-addicted roars and the screams of the dumbass Faunus in the bedroom. The human-animal hybrids were treated like abusable sex toys in the hands of spoiled human psychopaths, so shooting them was probably much better than leaving them traumatized.
The worst part was that he didn’t know what to feel about it. No pain, joy, or confusion- it just happened. That was the kind of “person” he was, if he even qualified as a person at that point. He just dealt with the incident like any other car accident in the history of Remnant.
He swore that he’d strangle Sangue if she ever mentioned it again, but he knew he wouldn’t in the end. The girl was just… unaware of so many things. Unaware of her own past, her potential as a Huntress, and… him.
Dazing off to his own mad world made Sangue’s next words a rather big surprise to him. For she soon put down her cup and mustered up the words she wanted to tell him.
“I…
“…I can… try hardcore… porn with you, if… you want…”
The sound of a glass shattering at a distance erupted as soon as Apophis began to process what Sangue had just meant.
Did she just think that he genuinely wanted to wrestle with somebody?
It was then Apophis realized that it didn’t matter if he had a generally fucked up life. Because the charm of Sangue’s naivety quite literally gave him hope that hilarious things could catch him off guard at any moment, and he definitely did not want to miss out on that.
“Well,” Apophis snickered as he tried his best not to explode like a lumbering fool on crack, “maybe another time, Sangue. Maybe another time.”
The girl known as Sangue Naga sweetened his life. And in all honesty, he didn’t mind letting things stay as they were. Maybe the initial goal he had when he started bringing the hatchet down was unreasonable. Maybe the absolute waste of his annoyingly abundant strength was something extremely disappointing from the viewpoints of others. Maybe one day, everyone in the world would hate him. Maybe even Sangue would end up hating his guts and want him left for dead.
But for that moment, all he asked from fate was to stay with the young, red snake for just a bit longer.
The sound of a Scroll being tapped at furiously caught Apophis’ attention as he turned to the bartender, who stared at him as if he were some creeper.
“…Don’t call the fucking cops, Noxus.”
Apophis decided that he'd hit the night at Mark's place until the next day. After all, things were going to get real hectic and annoying as balls for him at that time.
Sangue's attention towards the fruit and Gren made her miss out on the details of what had happened to the team that recently arrived, but she presumed that they were not in a pleasant mood to begin with. From the unfortunately injured man to the teammates who questioned leadership and the likes, something bad enough to express such serious thoughts let the snake know that they lost something- no, someone valuable to them.
The thought of losing someone in her own team made her freeze deathly still before she steadily brought herself to relax.
As the headmaster turned his attention to a "Mr. Solidor," Sangue stared at the boy for a few moments.
"Mr. Solidor," a dark-haired man with a very clean-looking fashion sense compared to herself. His bright white clothes caught her eyes easily as she stared at them for a while.
She would remember him as "Mr. Solidor" if she met him again. She'd definitely try to. It sounded like something she would not mess up in... but then again, she had gotten the name "Luke" wrong before. The woman knew she had to be careful.
A stream of fire caught Sangue's attention as she watched Gren heat up his weapon before... setting up a grill.
Her eyes became fixated on the food he brought out.
Time... ticked.
The mushrooms, and the meat... The sausages, and the meat...
Although Sangue's favorite food was not related to meat that much, she felt her stomach rumble like an earthquake at the enticing sight of food. She stared at the grill as if it were some sort of soda dispenser constantly spilling out sodas on its own. If there was one bad side to her weapons that had become almost a part of her fighting style, it was that she could not use them as cooking utensils as well as Gren's tools.
Maybe one day, finding a way to make her sword heat up would let her cook food like him. The comical thought of Sangue raising her sword to the skies as a bunch of fire burst out of it for no reason filled her with hope to see something like that in the future.
In the meantime, the food itself had her full attention. It didn't help that she hadn't eaten anything aside from the fruits Gren had given her.
Ignoring the frightened stares he received from the people around him, Apophis walked down the streets of Vale as a particular bar caught his attention. Without an ounce of respect to his "friend's" workplace, the man kicked the door open, startling everyone in the bar.
And by everyone, he meant the bartender and some random fuckboy who always visited the goddamn bar in the morning and afternoon.
"MARK!" Apophis roared as he walked over to the counter, glaring into the face of a smiling bartender. His sharp teeth grinding against each other, the ex-manhunter raised a fist...
...before sitting down and slamming the counter, shaking the entire thing.
"...I guess this is my cue to leave?" The customer next to Apophis asked as if he had already seen the same thing happen before.
"Ye."
Paying as quickly as possible, the customer fled silently, leaving only Mark and Apophis facing each other- the same way they always did. The blond stood behind the counter, and the Worst Adoptive Guardian of the Century sat while snatching a bottle given to him.
"I need your help with something," Apophis grumbled. "And if it doesn't work out, I'm going to kill you by the time we're done."
"Well, uh..."
Looking around, Mark raised an eyebrow as he asked, "How on Remnant can I, a regular bartender, help you, anyway?"
Apophis knew just what to say to make an idiot like Mark understand him.
Bluetommy
Danyel
Ookawa
Musoka
Simple Unicycle
Plank Sinatra
