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...
Craig Warrendale
...

Age: Fifty-seven years.
Height: 6ft 4 inches
Nationality: Australian [unknown]

Modifications: G.H.O.O.L engineering,
conducted during army service
Career:
Pre-War: Economist,
Post-War: Ex-Major General of ANZAC & Asia-Pacific
United Armed Forces
Profile: Head Gangster of prominent Criminal Organisation-
[Dubbed: King of Lake Darling, King of the Ghouls]

...

"I know she's been getting worse," Craig's wound throbs, the effects of the adrenaline in his system thawing. That little bastard Hito is a nasty brute who needs to be taken down a notch.

Akimitsu is about as shitty a father as he is. 

"Who jumped you?" Violet asks, turning to the kitchen fire as she wedges a throwing blade into the coals. She hasn't been home all week to know that there's been another power cut, but she just assumes the worst and relies on the fire. She shoves the second blade in, not bothering to check if he wants to take care of the wound correctly. "Two or three?"

Craig leans on the counter, gritting his jaw so hard that blood rushes to his face as he peels the Ghoul Jacket off. 

"Three." He knows he should talk to her like she's his daughter, but instead, he snaps at her like one of his men.

She wedges the third knife in the pit, her raven hair and fair features an exact replica of Craig's brother, Wayne. He died in the war; the lucky bastard didn't get to see any of this hellscape. 

Vi starts washing the grit from her hands, but the chill on the air makes her forearms prickle into goosebumps. If she's uncomfortable treating his wounds, she makes it look like she doesn't care. But that's how she's been her whole life, concealing every thought and opinion until they burst out in a flurry of tears or violence. Her brooding little features were his biggest amusement, her ability to pick a fight made him proud, but now, the wall of ice has come to feel like a dagger wedged between his ribs. Because he put it there. 

"What happened?" She repeats.

"Where were you?" Craig rips through his shirt and dumps it on the kitchen floor, clearing his throat gruffly. 

Violet arches a brow at the window, but he watches her irritable features through the reflection, "Wall duty. What happened?" She fuels a glare at the fire, rolling her shoulders out like she's trying to stifle some burst of irritation.

Craig and Vi know he has the power to get real medicine but when Craig was a soldier, he was genetically engineered. The tech was old though, so it only triggers a dramatic healing response when there's extensive trauma to the region. They designed it that way so that when soldiers got blisters from their boots, they'd form callouses, instead of the wound healing that night. A burn on top of the gash will make sure it's gone in the morning. "The army dropped solar panels on our side of the border, so Akimitsu's trying to dispute our claim and now there's gon' be a war over it." 

She looks concerned but vindicated. Like she already knew?

"I figured," Vi mutters, "I saw graffiti on my way back." 

Craig signed off on the wall roster himself, so he knows she's lying, but he had assumed it was something delinquent in nature. However, if she saw the border tonight, then she's either sleeping with someone from the wrong gang or... or what? He don' like that he don' know much about her anymore. "The army would have known a drop like that would cause a fight. But why? Are they distracting us from something?"

Craig gets the inkling that she's leading him to say something, so he narrows his eyes.

Are they distracting us from something? He had asked himself the same question.

A Manic tribe named the Voytek's attacked the army stronghold near Lake Darling... would the Manics waste time seizing Lake Darling next?

His city is not worth the effort to be honest. It's filled with working men and that's all. Factories pay less and less but estate prices and living costs rise higher all whilst the bomb zone crumbles around the citizens. The homeless suburbs are so overpopulated that they're swelling up like zits.

But what does Vi want him to say because she can't know about the Manics? "Any military personnel inside the walls are on Michigan Duncan's pay roll, so it's hard to say. Don' know if it was Duncans who put the solars in the drop, or if it was Commander Morizzi. But if it was Morizzi you could be right." He concedes.

"Morizzi? He'd only do that if the politicians in Newcastle told him to." Morizzi wouldn't give anything more than what the law demands. Monthly supply drops and quarterly hospitals are the only obligations the government owes to a RED ZONE.

Craig was there the day they released the laws— he can still remember holding an infantile Tokyo to his chest as they stood in front of soldiers and a stage, "An emergency piece of legislation, termed an 'interim declaration of economic proceedings'."

The Government seems to have deemed the last two decades as an appropriate interim. 

"Who did it?" Vi points at the wound as she dips a clean rag in some freshwater. Big deal to scratch up the King of the Ghouls. Bigger deal if he lets it go, but only two people know, plus his secretive daughter with the cold eyes.

She hands it to him stiffly, "Hito." He utters. Even uttering his name makes Craig's stomach twist with guilt... because after Hito glassed him, they made a terrible bargain.

"No surprises, huh?" She remarks, and they fall quiet. Hito is Akimitsu's son, the Yakuza heir. She grins suddenly, "You know I heard a rumour that people think his G.H.O.O.L mods came out so well that he'd make a better Ghoul than any of us." She chitters out a laugh, and he grins.

When was the last time he heard her laugh?

Akimitsu Tanaka was an Asia-Pacific soldier like Craig, so Hito inherited G.H.O.O.L genetics like Tokyo and Vi did.

Genetic Host Optimisation Scheme for Operative Logistics... G.H.O.S.O.L became the G.H.O.O.L Scheme the moment modified soldiers hit the ground. Not every second-gen G.H.O.O.L turned into a roided-up prick like that brute, Hito.

His daughter for one isn't strong like most G.H.O.O.L men, but her body can endure hunger and stress without losing much muscle mass. She mostly inherited her mother's cosmetic engineering, though... Hope was from a rich family who paid to enhance her beauty. Should've fixed her brain first.

Craig used to teach Vi about things from before war. He told her stories about what Sydney looked like, how perfect Hope was before the bombs gave her that head wound... the brain trauma was a decent explanation for some of her more, quirky, personality traits, and to be fair, she'd been seeing a psychiatrist before the war for other mood related issues.

Lamotrigine, rizatriptan, zolpidem, temazepam, escitalopram, olanzapine. He remembers the name of every medicine he'd collected from the pharmacy however many decades ago...

But what Craig never told anyone, is that amongst the scars set into her blonde hair, lays the teeth marks of a human bite. When that Manic bit her skull it unfortunately harboured a potent dose of active R.V.I which has been chewing at her brain ever since, causing the psycho-physiological disorder, M.A.D. 

They make eye contact in the window, but after a moment of prickly regard, Vi looks away. The Manics are his sworn enemy... ironic that he's married to one. Now he and his daughter tip toe around the secret they both know.

Craig should've kept telling her things about his life, at least. Even with all of the things that happened last winter, he should've tried to keep talking to her.

As if he deserves the pain, Craig digs a shard of glass out of his wound and flicks it at the sink. It pings on the old basin as she wraps a cloth around the hilt of a red-hot blade, drawing it from the neon coals, "Anything else?" She gestures at his cut, but it sounds more like she's poking for information... he gets the impression she wants him to mention more. 

He hasn't mentioned the hit on Crippy's tent, but he needs to keep it silent for now. Tonight was the official beginning of his alliance with HERATIX, but some bastards sabotaged the deal and now he's standing with his dick in his hands. 

Those guns were the only thing that would keep the city from being eaten alive, but now they're gone and he don' know where they are, or worse, who has them.

Could it be Crippy? He's a loyal man to a point. But who could have paid him more than what Craig had on offer?

Craig doesn't say anything so she approaches him, letting the shattered tiles grind underfoot as the perpetual haze of dust and smoke flitters through the air. Vi's raven black hair is tucked behind her ears, like she used to do as a girl, and her sleeves are hiked up to her elbows. Mostly though he watches her face, her doe eyes which are narrowed into a hard and disliking glare. An unreadable, cold expression. Her features are blank of emotion, blank of anything to discern, and her straight shoulders are hiked back, her chin tilted up slightly like she's warding off any scent of weakness.

Where did she go? She disappeared for so long... but in truth, though he doesn't know the exact story, Craig is smart enough to have boiled a conclusion of his own. She can't have been in Lake Darling, she can't have been in Holders Bay whilst he was liaising with the Heratix, which has been going on for the last six months, so she had to be running with Manics. He's guessing she was in Holders for a bit, but it mostly had to be with Manics.

She lifts the knife to his cut, glancing at him for permission.

He nods stiffly. 

Hiss. 

Hot, agonising pain grips him and he grates out a seething noise. Vi dumps the blade in the dirty water bowl, and a string of water sloshes over the edge, splatting on the coals before they hiss and flare. 

He tries to recover silently, but eventually, he snarls out a feral grunt of agony, "You still talk to that kid Vinnie?" He snaps, needing to talk. 

"Vinnie? Like, Hounds Vinnie?" She balks, offended at the insinuation. 

The Hounds are a gang from the Docks... The Docks is the worst suburb in the city, filled with rebel gangs. They're smaller than the Ghouls, but maybe they had something to do with the hit on Crippy tonight.

"Word is he's sweet on you." Craig accuses, but she recovers from the nasty tone by pressing the next blade to his wounds.

"Sounds like his fucking problem. Why?" The cut rises into angry red bubbles, and the vein in his forehead bulges, "Sorry." She adds soothingly, but he sneers like a rabid wolf. It'll be better soon. Genetic engineering on first gen wasn't perfect, it's why his healing response is so delayed, but at least his kids came out well. Some people had babies that were disfigured.

"Two is enough." He grates, gesturing her away when she tries to collect the last blade. Instantly her brows pinch, assessing the uncauterised portion of the wound doubtfully. 

"Dad-."

"I need you to attend the party tomorrow night."

She frowns. "What?"

He remains silent, bored with explaining himself. 

"Party? I thought it was just some, some initiation." She squints.

"It is, we're welcoming Reid Myers back-."

"Reid Myers?!" For all she knows, he's just a traitor. In her eyes, he had something to do with Tokyo's enlistment. "I hate that prick, why do I have to be there for him?" 

"Not for him. I'm formalising a deal with Hito and it concerns you."

"Hito?" Her voice is low. She dumps the blade when it starts to burn her hand through the bloody cloth. "Why do I need to be there for you to formalise a deal?"

A dull alarm flickers inside Craig's chest, but he grits his jaw through the gnawing guilt and focuses on anger. Why does she argue? And lie? And behave like he hasn't spent his whole life trying to secure a future for her? "This is not something you can argue."

"Why?"

"V-."

"No, I'm-." She snaps.

He smacks the table and she stiffens, her face going blank before she slouches back on the counter and folds her arms. The cold rage crackling across her slender features is ripe with attitude, but something worse bubbles under the surface. Some poisonous thought that she no doubt wants to vomit at his feet. But last time she told him what she thought he lost his shit and made an example of her. 

He simply meant to embarrass the brat out of her but, but it nearly got her killed. He can tell by her face that they're each thinking about her disappearance again. The wound between them re-opens.

"You're going." His voice is lower, defeated.

"What, you gon' put me in the cage if I don't?" She shoots the elephant in the room, and the accusation slaps him in the face. 

"Violet, I," He clears his throat, "I wan' you to know I'm proud of you."

She blinks twice rapidly, taken aback.

"Is that your way of-."

"I'm saying I never meant for it to happen. But I know you wanted to prove that regardless of what I thought or did, you had yourself handled. And you do. I'm proud. Tokyo would've keeled over and died if he'd-."

"Don' bring him into this!" She looks like she wants to scream, but instead, she shoves her hair back and looks at the ceiling. "Do you get how fucked up that is?"

He does. He really does. 

"Let me finish." He orders, but she glowers harder. "I'm not proud that you didn't let me help. Because that was weak... I had to find out from that youth Ibis. By mistake. You chose to trick me into thinking you were dead to protect your pride-."

"Pride?" She snarks. "They nearly drowned me in the fucking Reservoir, I couldn't think of anything except dying for weeks." That's how she got sick. Because the poor folk in the city use the reservoir to dump bodies... actually, to be fair, he's probably dumped a good portion of souls in there too.

Every disease known to man couldn't compare to the bacteria coming out of that stew of shit and piss. The reservoir is infested with a parasitic species of catfish that feeds on flesh. Born in the Amazon Basin in South America, the fish worms were introduced accidentally, but now they thrive because of all the bodies. After the climate changed, and all of the bio-hazards caused the animal kingdom to go haphazard with modifications, the world changed.

He shakes his head, standing to his full height, "I don' need the play by play. That don' matter no more, you're home, and most of all you're safe. But when I say you put on a nice dress and smile at Hito, you fucking do it, or you can bury the bodies that come from this war." He'd sounded dismissive, but the truth is he can't bear to imagine her spewing bloody bile up.

Vi's jaw slackens, eyes glassy, "Nice dress." She quotes, so floored that her flood of rage hesitates, "Nice, fucking dress. So that's what this deal is, huh? You're, pimping me?!"

"Wha-."

"Who the fuck do you think you are?! To Hito-."

"Don't be fucking ridiculous. I'm orchestrating a set of eyes in the enemy camp, for gods sake you are so pig headed sometimes. Fuckin' irrational." He snaps.

She stomps out all of her fire in one blink, gritting her jaw. Irrational. Irrational. Craig looks down at her, but she holds his eye calmly. 

Violet tugs the mask strung around her neck before, in a movement that surprises them both, she stabs her brother's knife and the mask into the fire pit. 

Craig stares, shocked. In every official sense, she denounced his gang. 

Enemy to the Ghouls. 

He doesn't notice when she takes the last knife, the hilt burning her fingers. "Goodbye." She prowls off, but he tries to grab her arm. She scalds him with the last knife, and he jerks away, shouting in shock.

Violet flings it at the gap between his ear and neck, letting the heat graze close enough to warn him. Craig stiffens, shocked at her precision and malice. 

Who trained her to do that?

"Violet!" Does he really know his daughter anymore? "Violet, take it back!" He almost pleads. Anyone who denounces the Ghouls is an enemy to the king.

She just told him to kill her.

Vi trudges away as Craig shouts again, but she slams the door in her father's face. "Violet!" He bellows, muted behind the wood.

With shaking hands and burnt fingertips, Vi stops against the wall, listening for an aching moment. Her bottom lip wobbles like she needs to cry or something, but she grits her face into a glare and sobers up. 

"Fuck!" He belts out, then a crash comes from inside. She flicks her hood up and jams her hands in the pockets of her puffer jacket.

...

hiyaa <3 <3

ur extra fkn cool if u can guess what yt vid that's from^

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