Old Habits Fund New Hobbies [Mantis]

The bender of the past couple of days had been epic, to put it mildly.

Mantis remembered it in increments, but it was mostly a combination of a haze, a blur and a black abyss. He’d been staying at his Numbani apartment, one of the nicer lofts he had acquired, and just gotten fucked up to the umpteenth degree. Usually he would credit indulging in this type of behavior to his research, but this wasn’t one of those times. He had hardly touched his chemistry set since arriving to the city, so he couldn’t even try making that excuse. He had just wanted to forget – about everything that had happened.

The edge of it all had, however, ran a little deeper than he’d anticipated. Even the generous amount of cocaine he’d done in the trendy drunken stupor of this place didn’t feel quite enough. It sure made him feel more physically keen about his surroundings but it didn’t make him inclined to dance or search for company, which it usually did, on the rare occasion he indulged in it. This being, subsequently, one of his more sober nights, the reluctance to engage with anything had lead him to observe the crowd while idly nursing a drink.

Being a heavily augmented information merchant with a data archive the size of his certainly made it a hobby of interest, even when he was too high to actively look for tags or warrants on people.

Whiskey had been idly keeping track of the crowd, a few in particular sparking mild interest; he always liked to see omnics and the augmented wandering around, was like a where's waldo of the interesting people. One of the more intriguing individuals was both for his prosthetic nature and the skin tone; he stuck out like Whiskey did among the darker skinned natives of the region. He observed him for a while, before his target showed up. Perfect.

All he'd have to do was wait for the man to get settled with the bottle service and a girl and he'd take his chance. Easy job, almost clockwork in execution so he risked a little extra entertainment.

"Not from around here, are you?" He asked of Mantis, as he leaned forward on the bar still with his untouched drink. The voice would be earily familiar to the man, though of a more youthful pitch. "Look like you've been enjoying the nightlife, hear there's enough narcotics flowing around here to kill an entire pasture of horses. Not as wild as I was expecting of Numbani's nightlife." He gave a light laugh, the way he carried himself, confident; secure and aloof.

The droid dragged his finger over the rim of his glass. "Doesn't even sing, here I thought this place might actually have crystal, pretty cheap for the price of the drinks. Shame." Not that he needed to drink anyway, nor really could he. Sure the droid had taste but it was a nasty task emptying the resevoirs, so he simply avoided it. Whiskey didn't care to pretend he was human as acurately as possible, just enough so no one would question.

"Oh well, can't ask for everything I suppose." Whiskey's droids were of a slender, but not overly lithe form, young. Looking at most 20? Probably a little younger, since he was always getting asked if he was even allowed to be here. Forged IDs took care of that.

At first he figured it was the drugs. Given how many non-existent things he’d heard and seen in the past couple of days, that would have been the most obvious reasoning, right? However, Mantis’ trips, no matter how wild, were usually also rather precise when came to re-imagining things from memory. Mainly because his head was constantly linked with his vast data archive.

And he didn’t remember Dr. Reginold’s voice quite like this.
Almost. But not quite.

Still, beneath the crisp new jacket he was wearing, he felt an uncontrollable shiver move the plating on his spine. He felt his posture straighten over the drink he’d been apathetically poking at just a moment ago. The initial reaction was just … well; no. No, no, no, no. The ‘you have to be kidding me’ kind of a no. The ‘he wasn’t ready to do this again’ kind of a no.

Mantis turned his gaze, cautious, face slightly illuminated by the reflective fabric inside his fancy jacket hood. For a fracture of a second, he had a surprised, almost mortified glint to the artificial green orbs of his eyes when they measured the kid in view. But then, after a couple of disbelieving glints, he seemed to relax and went back to his drink.

No. It couldn't be him.
Too young, for starters.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered under his breath and took a generous swig from the drink, previously left untouched. “Clearly I have had too much or too little if you start appearing.”

Whiskey had watched the man go from shocked, to mortified full on to desperate, and all at the sound of his voice. He glanced at the bartender how wasn't paying attention and then to the man again. What did this guy recognize him from somewhere else? That'd be grand, no one usually recognized him unless they were looking for him. There was a moment or so of him wondering if the man would say anything or not.

Maybe he was more faded than Whiskey realized? He had that wild eyed look to him of a drug binge. Not that Whiskey could complain he was only the way he was thanks to an excessive amount of drugs and gene therapy.

"Right, first time I've gotten the cold shoulder, feeling a bit dejected; oh well," he said after a few moments wondering if he'd maybe bring this guy out of it. "Maybe I ought to start with my name then? Reginold, Reginold Shepard if it matters." He tilted his head trying to parse what the guy was on.

Cocaine? Didn't seem like ecstasy, maybe an opiate too?

"What was that? Did you say something?" He asked in the wake of the man muttering. Now he was down right curious. That kind of reaction piqued his interest.

At this point, his body had remnants of so many different substances he couldn’t say where one trip ended and another began. So far, however, this was not one of the good ones. Not even if (what Mantis perceived to be an illusion of) Reginold was a lot more like the type he’d usually take home with him - compared to the his real life counterpart. Not that he was event entertaining the thought after burning his ... well, burning himself once already.

‘Reginold. Reginold Shepard.’

Mantis let loose a mirthless chuckle and gave his empty glass a little shake to get the bartender to fill it out again. While he didn’t remember doing stash ever giving him hallucinations this vivid, having a stiff shot of Vodka usually helped with unwanted side effects. And this sure as hell was one of them.

“Yeah, I remember. You left a pretty lasting impression,” he said, bitter and amused at the same time. His claws curled around the sweating glass and swirled the clear liquor before taking a hearty sip. “I’ve been on a bender of my life because of your bullshit.”

Well, technically it was Mantis’ own bullshit too. But to his credit it had started with the whole angel thing, which was Reginold’s bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

He raised his brow slightly at this thought and glanced at the kid again. Yes, it was still there. Charm, smooth skin and all. The UI layer around his vision was trying to tell him something about this Reginold but it was all a fuzz at that point.

“But then, you probably kind of knew about the bender part,” Mantis hummed, relaxed now that he’d accepted the kid as a hallucination. “Good times.”

Whiskey only got more and more intrigued the more he listened to the doped up man, he'd pretty much forgotten about his little mission to secure funds, he had to know what this guy knew. Remember? How could he remember someone he'd never met? This was too bizarre, did he know someone who looked like him?

Reginold let his glass be taken by the bartender, he wasn't going to drink it so no sense having it. As he listened to the man ranting on it was fascinating. He had to curiously nod along with Mantis and finally spoke up after a moment. "So Where did we meet? I honestly don't recall," he inquired as he leaned on his arms, putting his hands under his chin as he curiously examined the spymaster. He was trying to recall where he might have met him. Was he a former business partner? Certainly not. Whiskey wasn't one to deal in the drug trade, so it wasn't like he'd been dealing with this guy.

"Bender of your life because of a stranger? Very odd choice, do you often go on drug binges because of someone asking about you in the bar? Fascinating; what a bizarrely human thing to do," he hummed. "Tell me, what do all of those drugs feel like? What are they making you see in me?" Might as well add to his human experience database.

Whiskey just focused on Mantis intently, smiling a bemused grin the entire time. "You must remind me of your name, I'd like to record it down for posterity. Surely you have an alias I can call you by?" He brushed a bit of the lose hair from his face. Oh Reginold seemed to have manifested freckles too. Eyes were a little more almond shaped, nose a little thinner. It was a good likeness if nothing else, though it didn't quite capture the doctor's gruesome look. "Come on tell me about it."

He just had to know at this point. He could steal funds from a hundred different corporations, but meeting a man who KNEW him but whiskey didn't know in return was unique. "How did we meet?"

Bender of your life because of a stranger?
Yes, in this case you could say that. But this was an isolated case rather than a common practice for Mantis.

“No, I save myself for those special somebodies,” he jested joylessly, nursing the last leg of his drink slower than the first. “I’m old fashioned like that.”

The amount of questions this particular trip was asking made Mantis lift his brow curiously as he observed the youngster through a set of what looked to be almost painfully dilated pupils. How did they meet? His alias? Mantis took note of the insufferable, bemused demeanor young Reginold deployed while asking all this. It would have certainly been easier if the good Doctor had been this kind of an asshole instead.

“I think I’m done reliving that garbage fire of a night.”
Or, he’d very much like to be. Implementation of this was still an ongoing process.

His hallucinations rarely spoke, especially to this degree. But even if a bad one, the trip was still one of his own and he would address it how he chose to. Not that he usually did. This wound was just too fresh to leave unattended. And hey, ‘how do all those drugs feel like’ was the closest anyone had come to asking Mantis how he was doing in ages. There was also that.

“The first day was good but now I might as well just snort some dry wall,” he said matter-of-factly, making it clear that nothing felt much like anything at the moment. Or at least, nothing he’d hoped it would feel like.

“And this particular trip-,” Mantis begun and leaned back, seeming more exhausted than buzzed for a moment. “-feels pretty fucking terrible right about now.”

“But it sure makes you look like a-,” he quickly assessed the boy again from the corner of his eye. “-like a teenager.” Mantis shuddered. “I don’t know what that says about me.”

Whiskey found this all riveting, if for no other reason but because it was utterly foreign to him and had been for a decade at least at this point. Humanity was so odd, he recalled being part of it but their little microcosms and tiny lives were so insignificant. This man here was burning his life on both sides, for seemingly no reason. Or maybe he was emotionally compromised? Lots of people turned to drugs for comfort.

"Isn't that quaint," mused the droid. "Old fashioned, and reliving a garbage fire, I haven't any idea what the latter means but I suppose you've suffered quite the experience." He took a small step closer to observe all of Mantis' body language more intently as if recording it mentally. He even sort of mimicked it in some senses, if he was going to be doing parties maybe he ought to do as the Romans.

He nodded curiously, seemed the more you took the more you resisted the effects that was the general consensus by every study. "I see each high is less and less intense, requiring more and more of the substance. Must be expensive," he mused as he look elsewhere.

So, someone that looked like Whiskey, had the same name and...The expression of realization dawned on his face, eureka of course. It was so obvious. "Right, I know why you think you know me, I'm Reginold Shepard the 5th; you must have met my father, Dr. Reginold Shepard the 4th, that makes a lot more sense. Of course I look like him, and of course you'd know my name. Well that must have been quite a shock no wonder you were so disturbed. I must look like I've just walked out of his past. Joys of good genetics."

Whiskey settled his chin on his palm. "I don't suppose your time with my father was pleasant? He's been a bit of a mess since he and I got reacquainted, and well since all of his projects were hijacked, his life stripped away and all of his friends killed by Talon...guess that might cause anyone some stress." So matter of fact about it. Casual to a fault, like it was just an interesting aside.

Isn't that quaint?

“Yeah, isn’t it though,” Mantis sounded utterly joyless, like he’d taken a good long look at both the condition of his body and his life a couple intense highs ago and hadn’t much liked what he’d seen.

“I could have probably retired to Bali by fucking you up, but instead I let you fuck me up,” Mantis mused bitterly when the topic skirted his finances, thinking of how unfortunately literal his statement had just been. “Though I guess it was more or less a joint effort.”

The step the young Reginold took towards him wasn’t left unnoticed. Mantis didn’t much care for the close proximity, but having decided that the boy was a figment of his imagination, he didn’t make an effort to move away. Whenever the spymaster glanced at his direction, however, there was a notification on his UI that popped up, trying to alert him to something. What was it exactly?

Everything was so hazy and glitchy he couldn’t quite tell.

Then, when he was about to finish his drink, the boy said something that made Mantis feel like time around him slowed down and stopped. Like he was suddenly sucked into a vacuum of time and space, only to be spat out in the moment where Reginold had said something along the lines of ‘I was going to have my son take a look but...well he's busy as I used to be.’

So he wasn’t tripping as badly as he’d thought. It was only the reality that was catching up with him by being even more severely fucked up than the drug laced stupor Mantis had been trying to lose it in.

Turned out that vodka up the nose didn’t feel quite as great as some other substances. Or so Mantis discovered when he had to give a couple of coughs so he wouldn’t choke on the last sip of his drink that had just been going down. The sounds was muted and subtle, unlike the wide eye’d look he gave Reginold the … 5th, was it?

The doctor’s son.
Oh for the love of-

“God,” the word came out of him in a bitter, disbelieving bark of laughter and Mantis leaned his forehead to his hands, previously floating leisurely above the counter. “Of course you are. Of course you fucking are.” Still in shock, the man managed to sound utterly exhausted and resigned.

Mantis had practically been around half the world in the last week and a half.
And this man’s mess of a life wouldn’t stay out of his.

Whiskey had to wonder at just what his father had done to this man to make him run off on a week long bender; and end up talking to him like hewas some illusion of his father. He knew the good Doctor had quite an effect on people, he'd noticed that through out his life, this was the most extreme example of that effec the'd ever seen.

"What did my father do to...ahem, fuck you up?" He had to ask, the drama surrounding his father never ceased to entertain. Of all the human disaster he'd met, Whiskey was convinced Dr. Shepard was the worst of them. So much he'd snatch others into that whirlwind. "Joint effort, goodness, that sounds dire."

Young Reginold has his arms crossed on the counter, still leaning his weight on them. Out of the corner of his optics he saw his target, sufficiently inebriated. He'd have to act in the next half an hour before the man was too surrounded by women looking for a good tip. He set a timer up in his HUD to ensure he wasn't late for his meeting, and bit of sleight of hand. Watching Mantis' reaction was something.

The man seemed to be shocked sober by that little reveal. "Didn't you know he had a son? He's got a tattoo on the back of his neck, with a pretty R for me, and a pretty pair of wings for my eh....we'll call him my brother; he used to live at my house now and again, my Father called him a son," he mused as he tapped his chin. "God that was years ago, now I've been tracking him down like some kind of cryptid monster." He leaned back a bit.

"Oh well, smarter than my father these days. Or as he says, we have different disciplines." A laugh. "So who are you then? Love to know Dr. Shepard considers a friend these days."

When the shock of this Reginold not being a hallucination started to settle in, Mantis felt too sober to handle it. In its wake was everything he’d tried to get away for the past couple of days. The Archer, the Angel and what had eventually went down with Los Muertos was all and a days work, but the compromising emotional stuff he wasn’t ready for. Not yet, and maybe not ever. How pathetic was that?

For a moment, he merely sat there, leaning his head into his hands. Then he let his metal digits slide down his face and sighed through them. A further indicator of his resignation. A part of him just wanted to get up and leave right then and there. It would most certainly been the easiest thing to do. But the other part of him, the one that just anticipated some other aspect of Reginold’s mess of a life to follow him no matter where he went, took precedence.

He leaned back in his chair and pushed the near empty vodka glass further from him, as though disgusted with it now. No matter how many of these he drowned they wouldn’t make this young sleek Reginold disappear. No use having more.

“Maybe you should contact your dad and ask,” Mantis said eventually, not wanting to have the ‘I did the nasty with your dad’ conversation. “I’m not good at telling kids about that type of stuff.” But it wasn’t like the matter wasn’t left out there in the open for educated guesses.

A moment of silence as Mantis considered.

“And the guy seems to miss you,” he added, slipping a little deeper into thought and turning his gaze back to the young man. There had been a certain fondness in Reginold, a certain regret, perhaps, when he’d discussed his legacy - biological or otherwise. “I’m sure he’d be delighted.” Mantis’ signature sharpness was making its way back to the tone he used, making it apparent that the truth of the situation – while not welcomed – had been accepted to some degree.

Ah, so that was the significance of the tattoo. Mantis remembered it. How it had felt beneath his fingertips. The fact that this thought even occurred to him made him want to gag.

“I wouldn’t call myself his friend,” more like – what? An acquaintance? One night stand? Something else? Mantis couldn’t muster an answer to that. “More like collateral damage.”

“Collateral damage that tried to make a living but got swooped into this whole mess with him and some circus clown of a thug instead. It was a huge mess,” he sighed eventually, taking a subtle poke at what the kid had just said. “If you’ve been tracking him down you likely know all about it.” Reginold had said something about the youngster and computers, yes? If he was going to stay and indulge this asshole with a conversation, he might as well poke around for some tidbits. And potentially try and make a game of forgetting about them later by getting smashed beyond belief.

Reginold held up his hand a moment. "Oh I'll talk to my father when he's back on grid; right now he's busy running and I respect that as a fellow off grid individual," he mused as he and his timer was counting down close to 10 minutes for his window. He cleared his throat. Also he didn't really want to talk to the good doctor, he wasn't over the whole thing. His father finding him, seeing what he'd become the brief mental contact. It was all a little fresh for him yet.

"Delighted is...a word," he said vaguely, rotating his hand at the wrist with a shrug. "I can't exactly go to him though, he'd have to come to me. HAve to let that happen naturally." Whiskey sighed and rolled his eyes. "He's a bit dangerous to have around while he's tagged by Talon. I'm working to remove that tag, but he's decided to take hiding into his own hands for now."

Collateral Damage

Perhaps Whiskey could identify with that, he wouldn't be in this perdicament given different circumstances.

Huge mess, thugs; oh right the Los Meurtos activity surrounding two individuals. He tapped the skin of his arm near his wrist and the mechanism opened up projecting a com screen he tapped through it. "Lets see, man only ever identified as "Mantis" and one Dr. Reginold Shepard; tagged in a night club, seen fleeing together from Los Meurtos, including their kingpin," he said thoughtfully. "I have quite the file on you then, I do love your work...Nepal wasn't your finest though, my agents out played you. Bad luck that, but I've an appointment, please feel free to stay. Maybe I've got a bit of cash in it for your troubles."

He stood up looked right at his target and moved over to the man's table. He briefly said something in french? Yeah french, and he was allowed into the booth. There was some little words exchanged, his hand under the table expertly removing the id card and slipping it into his pocket before he excused himself, motioning towards the empty glasses. Whiskey sighed as he stepped back towards the bar, listing objective complete on his hud.

He's a bit dangerous to have around while he's tagged by Talon.

Mantis let loose a mirthless chuckle. If Reginold the 5th wanted nothing to do with 4th, even if only for how dangerous being close to that man was, Mantis’ couldn’t blame him.

“To put it mildly,” he concurred as bitter as ever. “Scratch a matchbox close enough to the man and everything lights on fire.”

There was a subtle lift of the brow when the com screen appeared and something in Mantis’ head clicked. This Reginold was a synthetic. And that’s what the hazy notifications at the edges of his vision had been trying to indicate. While this realization dawned on him as a surprise, it didn’t show up on his face anymore. Many people wore extensive augments these days - to the point of having the appearance of a full on synthetic on initial inspection. That, and it couldn’t outplay the shock of having just found out who this youngster was. Mantis was, behind the resigned, exhausted expression he wore, still feeling the aftershocks of that.

And hey, the information the boy managed to pull was flattering enough to offer a distraction. Even if Mantis wasn’t really used to meeting people who had anything on him, unless they’d been deep enough into the network. This meant that Reginold’s spawn was either an information merchant, thief, assassin or a hacker. Or a mix of all or some of them, like Mantis was.

“Always happy to meet a fan,” he deadpanned. “Though you got me there, Nepal wasn’t exactly the highpoint of my career.” With this, he gave the boy a pointed glance while slouching in his seat. “Had I chosen to turn that offer down, I might’ve been spared the fun of the past..,” a pause as he tried to call back the past couple of days. “...however long I’ve been doing this, and having to explain it to you.”

While his tone was overall displeased, the way young Reginold said ‘my agents’ peaked his interest when Mantis was invited to stay. So the kid was associated with Overwatch. Good. This could open up avenues he might want to explore further.

“I don’t have a need for any pocket money,” he said. “But I’d love to send my regards to the older Shimada.” Mantis’ voice revealed only tip of the iceberg of what was the seething under his skin.

With this he merely observed the show that youngter put up. And he had to admit, it was rather amusing, like observing professionals at work often was - even if this conduct wasn’t exactly acrobatics when it came to their, at least overlapping, field of work.