Geez Louise, not this guy.
Mugen stepped casually between Mickey Mouse and the sharp-featured New Babylonian that had stumbled upon their little excursion into Pepsiman’s shop. The diminutive fighter pulled out all the stops to keep himself from rolling his eyes. Once he’d run into the icy warrior, it became much more likely that others from his previous universe would show up, but still… of all the Pepsi joints, in all the comets, in all the multiverse, why the heck did someone like this guy have to walk into this one?
“Unfortunately,” the former desert-dweller smirked, “my business is with the Mouse alone.”
“I’m sorry, pal,” Mickey finally piped up. “I’m not actually sure I remember your name?”
Victor’s expression grew… visibly frustrated.
“Victor Wolfe,” he sleazed, straightening his spine and placing his hands behind his back. “As it is, I have little trouble remembering the Terror of Nippur, Mickey Mouse. I assume destroying our Golden City didn’t slip so easily from your miniature mind?”
“Nippur?” the ronin repeated, “sounds a lot like ‘nipple’ if you ask me.”
As Mugen guffawed at his own joke, Mickey leapt up and perched on the samurai’s shoulder. “No need to be crude, Mu,” he patted his friend o the head, eliciting a sideways glance from the boy, “I’m sure Vicky here has a perfectly good reason why he’s interrupting our nice, refreshing, Pepsi break.”
“Perhaps he’d like a refreshing Pepsi himself?” Pepsiman chimed in, shoving his arm over the counter and holding out a bottle for Victor. The three warriors shot a look the cyborg man way, and the blue-and-silver arm carefully retracted.
Victor scanned the pair before him, taking in a breath before his smirk expertly reformed. Mickey would hand it to the New Babylonians — they certainly knew how to flout charisma, whether it was through some gritted-teeth diplomacy or Gilgamesh’s more… ‘righteously furious’ (emphasis on furious) approach. Victor, it seemed had been trained in the art of defusing tension, perhaps to fill in some gaps where the Golden King left something to be desired.
Dang, he was slimy, though. Mickey didn’t know if he just wasn’t good at hiding it or his previous scattered encounters with the dude were informing his current observations, but looking now at Victor Wolfe standing before him, the man just oozed it. The mouse vaguely knew Victor had been responsible for a particularly dramatic backstabbing way back during his first run-in with this crazy death tournament. He honestly didn’t know how the guy had managed to deceive whoever’d ended up on the receiving end of that betrayal, because he knew right here, right now that he couldn’t trust this Big Bad Wolfe as far as he could throw him.
And being a tiny mouse, he probably couldn’t throw him far.
“Hmmm, y’know,” he squeaked, placing a hand on his chin, “I think some ‘sgetti sounds great! And you can for sure come, Mu. You’re payin’, right, Vicky?”
Victor’s grin grew wider. “It would only be polite.”
Mickey crossed his arms and smiled himself, appearing ever hospitable, and rode along as Mugen followed the New Babylonian across the small plaza into Olive’s Garden. A purple-skinned woman with two tentacles looping out of her cranium led them to a booth in the back. Mickey slid in first, Mugen placing himself between the mouse and any surprise disturbances from the outside; Victor took a seat across from the pair.
The mouse reckoned privately with the bigger implications of Victor’s appearance. If he was here, and already going on about Nippur, did that mean that… all of New Babylon had made the jump to the Crossroads as well?
He decided not to dwell too much on the specifics of this inter-dimensional travel, but certainly whatever had plucked him out of that big purple tunnel of time and space had seen fit to pluck a few others from the other dimension, and Mickey had to wonder what that meant about the part he was supposed to play in this galaxy’s future. He was beginning to feel like the last place was more of a test than anything else, preparing him for bigger and badder threats and extraterrestrial or otherwise omnipresent beings. Did Gilgamesh’s rabble have something to do with all of this?
He and Gilgamesh may not have ended their time before on altogether bad terms, but the mouse knew that when it came down to it, the two Kings were not on the same side.
As he scanned the fancy menu, he broke the silence. “Before we start, I just wanna say,” his eyes flitted up to meet Victor’s, “I think the ‘Terror of Nippur’ is a bit dramatic.”
Victor leaned back. “You would,” the assassin mused. “I assume you still view your crusade as a just one?”
“Hey, fella,” Mickey let his eyes glare fully at the man across the table, “I’ve reckoned with what went wrong there. Me and your dear sweet leader had a whole heart-to-heart about it, and you should know I feel just as bad as anyone about the whole him-getting-possessed-by-a-demon shebang. So why don’t ya go have words with good ol’ Gilly if you’re still mad, huh?”
“Demon possession?” Mugen asked, throwing an arm around his miniature companion. “You’re getting more and more hardcore by the minute, Mick.”
“I ain’t proud of it, buddy,” Mickey sighed, returning to the menu.
“Unfortunately,” Victor warbled, “our beloved King is not around to relay or confirm your claims of peace.”
At this, Mickey’s interest was piqued, but he did his best to keep his head down and look uninterested. So Gilgamesh hadn’t made it to the Crossroads with the rest of his lackeys?
Nice to know.
“As it is,” Victor continued, “the burden falls to me to represent my people, both on a wider scale and here in this competition. You can imagine that finding out our nation’s biggest stain is within reach means I can’t come home empty-handed.”
Mickey’s eyes remained transfixed on the menu, the picture of unbothered, despite the anxiety bubbling up inside him. Ah, so he’d managed to scrape by without Kopaka remembering he’d wanted the mouse dead, but now good ol’ Vicky — and, he supposed, any other New Babylonian that had teleported their way onto this goshforsaken comet — wanted to see his big ears on a pike, instead. Nice, nice, nice. Did these guys have no concept of how he and Blues had worked to help Nippur out? At least that had struck something within Gilgamesh.
He almost hated himself for it, but he half-wished the boy was here to set his subjects straight.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, man,” Mugen relaxed into the booth seat, manspreading ever so slightly to try and appear more threatening. Victor didn’t seem too concerned with the samurai’s grandstanding, but before he could respond, the same tentacle-headed waitress had slid up next to their booth.
“So, what can I get you boys?” she deadpanned. It seemed she’d had enough of voracious competitors already.
“I’m really likin’ the sound of these unlimited breadsticks,” Mickey said, “maybe you can bring some of those and gimme a to-go bag full of ‘em for me and my buddy to have in the barracks tonight?” He winked at Mugen, and flashed a cute smile the waitress’ direction. It did not succeed in brightening her mood.
“Of course,” she droned. “Paper or plastic?”
Mickey looked to Victor and stifled a knowing giggle. “I dunno, Vicky, what do you think?”
