Revival

[Kenpachi Zaraki]

On the other end of Tier 6, the bespectacled scientist shuffled restlessly around his cluttered laboratory. His dingy lab coat had been discarded in favor of an equally dirty tweed jacket and his thick spectacles replaced with a pair of smudged bifocals. His workspace was no messier than it typically was, though something within drove his hands to wander across the many books and doohickeys that cluttered his desks. Shaken from his anxiety-driven trance, Jack Fabre stopped his fidgeting abruptly at the sound of a sharp ping from across the room. His loafers swished quickly across the floor as he opened the display on his outdated laptop.

Email: Vincent to Jack Fabre

Jack pushed his glasses up from the bridge of his nose and nibbled at his bottom lip as he finished the memo. Something about the strange cloaked Prime compelled the doctor to help, though he had no obligation. To Jack, Vincent’s emotional and psychological pain was almost palpable in his words and mannerisms. Though he was no longer a medical doctor, he could never resist the call to assuage pain. Though the elder had little experience with the Dataverse or really anything beyond his hovel in the veritable bowels of Coruscant, he would endeavor to assist. There remained but one issue: how would he find the man’s companion? The individual could be in any of the various locales spread across the Omniverse, and this was assuming the being was still alive.

Fabre sighed, plopping himself down in a creaky computer chair. Though the professor was far from overweight, the broken seat groaned under his burden. Ignoring the chair’s cries of anguish, he wheeled himself across the lab toward a set of metal cabinets. Much like the rest of Fabre’s living arrangements, clutter was abound. He always reminded himself of the quote by the famous physicist from back home: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” Jack smirked as he popped the rusty door of the first cabinet open, beginning to rifle through a tall stack of audio-video recordings. Though recording such material was strictly banned by Emperor Palpatine, there’d be no stormtroopers slogging down to Tier Six to apprehend a tired old man.

As Jack slipped the first of the surveillance tapes into the media player, he heard an unfamiliar chiming from atop one of his less cluttered desks, a discolored oak one a few yards from his seat. The doctor ignored the beeping, dismissing it as another of his odd projects doing somesuch thing. He constantly found himself starting up yet another project every few days, each never to be finished. The man’s mind ran in circles constantly, always hatching some new ‘brilliant’ idea. Such distractions would have to wait, if he were to find Vincent’s companion. “Hmm...Tier Three perhaps?” He muttered the question aloud, though no other stood by to answer.

Briiing, briiing.

Fabre allowed the device to continue its tune for several minutes before he finally dropped what he was doing and stood to examine the troublesome device. He cocked his head as he recognized the widget, scratching his head as he began to puzzle over why it could be alerting him. He scooped the phone from amid the pile of half-organized paperwork and returned to the creaky office chair, tapping a few buttons and opening the display.

Call From: SYNTECH

Jack let out an audible grunt as he tossed the phone back into the sea of paperwork. “Peh, if he thinks I’m ever answering his call again, he’s got another think coming.” The phone continued to chime as he spoke to no one. A moment after the tune finished its loop and went silent, it began to ring once more. Fabre continued to ignore the call for a few more iterations before he finally brought the receiver begrudgingly to his ear.

“Look, if you think I’m going to be doing any more contract work for your little murderfest, you’re dead-wrong.” He ignored the unintentional pun and continued. “I’ve got enough blood on my hands to last a lifetime, so stop calling!”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line before an unfamiliar voice met the doctor’s ears. “...Hello? I’m looking for Vincent Valentine. Do I have the wrong number?”

The elder nearly fell from his seat as he fumbled with the communicator, rising quickly to his feet just as the broken chair collapsed under its own weight. Jack paid no attention, instead absorbed in his conversation with the voice on the other side. “Y-yes, this is the right number. I apologize, I thought you were someone else. Are you by any chance…” He paused, trying to keep his phrasing polite. “...A red lion?”

The reply came instantly, the caller’s voice laced with a mixture of curiosity and excitement. “I’m a crimson beast known as Red XIII to most, yes. Where is Vincent? Is he alright?”

Jack quickly crossed the room to his computer, navigating to his email client and bringing up Vincent’s memo. “I believe he is, yes. He sent me a message quite recently asking for me to find you. As luck would have it, you seem to have saved me the trouble. I’ll send you the coordinates that I gave to Vincent. You’ll find him there, on Tier Six, Coruscant.”

The professor quickly relayed the needed information to Vincent’s associate, assuring him that the man was in fine health and waiting to hear from them. As he said goodbye to the feline, Jack sat at his computer and began to compose message. Though he was unsure how the two would take to his idea, he had a feeling the duo would need all the help they could get.