#Zhalia just wants to beat lucas up tho

[weirdponytail]

“The Lucas Problem” pt 1 (Huntik Fanfiction, SnT drabble)

(A/N: Part one of that Lucas drabble I’ve been bashing out. Everyone is a little OoC, Lucas is a rude and grumpy jerk, and Zhalia sets him straight about toying with the Fears brothers abandonment issues. Dante is just as protective of the brothers as his girlfriend is, and Lok and Sophie take their roles as ‘big happy family don’t mess with us’ quite seriously. Feel free to critique the parts with the Casterwill team, I’m still very shaky on how to write them. :3 cheers!)

THE LUCAS PROBLEM

It was a rather crowded week at the Venice Casterwill Townhouse.

See, there had been a bit of emergency remodeling at Dante’s house. The various attempts by Blood Spirals to break his home defenses had, in a final cosmic act of petty vengeances after their defeat, managed to collapse the shields two weeks after the defeat of the Betrayer.

And it also collapsed part of the plumbing. So until further notice, Dante and Lok were crashing at Sophie’s place.

To make it even more crowded, not to mention slightly awkward for Harrison, Zhalia had appeared with the Fears boys. She had an order from Foundation HQ to move out of her apartment because of multiple threats on her and Harrison’s lives. Due to a few being anonymously sent from what appeared to be low tier Casterwills and even a few Foundation foot soldiers, not to mention the remaining Blood Spirals, the former spy thought it best to take refuge with the actual Casterwill leader.

With Sophie’s influence and protection, Zhalia would actually sleep a little better than in a hotel, knowing that any carried out threats from Casterwills would be met with something they feared worse than death: Excommunication. Harrison would be safe with the team and Zhalia watching him until they found a suitable apartment that would quickly be rendered safely invisible via ‘Does Not Exist’ Foundation blacklisting.

Then Lucas showed up, Dellix and Lane at his heels. “Family time,” he had said. Though honestly, it looked as if one of the other Casterwill elders had pinched his ear and told him to get to know his sister a little better now that they weren’t in danger of being shot at every few minutes. Seeing as Sophie hadn’t heard a word from her brother since the final conflict, it came as quite the surprise.

The team had all groaned a bit when they heard that Lucas was going to be around. Sure, he was a little more tolerable than when they first met, and everyone was quite fine with Dellix and Lane hanging out, but Lucas was still just a tick below insufferable in his high and mighty attitude. Even Sophie was nearly fed up with him by the third day of his visit, biting back some rather unladylike language she had learned from Zhalia whenever her brother sneered or commented on how LeBlanche’s way of cooking wasn’t exactly how a ‘proper Casterwill’ would have done it.

Poor Harrison and Den caught the brunt of the young man’s rudeness. Just bordering the edge of statements that the original Huntik team could justifiably call him out for, Lucas took nearly every opportunity he saw when around the boys to make snide comments about traitors and his team’s successes in hunting down the remaining Blood Spirals. Once he learned that they had grown up in an orphanage, instead of eliciting empathy as someone who had also lost both parents, Lucas seemed to view them with even more disgust than before.

Dellix and Lane, on the other hand, were near perfect houseguests. They helped with meals, joined in on any group activities the Huntik team happened to have going on, and were all around funny and enjoyable to have in the Townhouse.

‘The Lucas Problem,’ as LeBlanche had stiffly called it in a private conversation with Sophie one evening, reached a head by day four.

It was nearly lunchtime, and LeBlanche and Cherit had offered to make a refreshing summer meal for the group. Everyone else was gathered in one of the Townhouse’s split reading and media rooms. Dante and Zhalia were at one of the tables, scrolling through various activity reports and mission offers on their Holotome and Technomicon respectively. The younger two-thirds of the Huntik team was playing low volume video games on the massive TV that graced the wall above the fireplace. Dellix and Lane had taken the last remaining seats at opposite ends of the couch, cheering on whoever struck their fancy as they waited for a chance to swap in.

Lucas had decided to grace everyone with his presence half an hour ago, taking up one of the armchairs that tilted away from the television to read one of the Casterwill manuscripts he had dug up from the library shelves. Lok, ever good natured even to wet towels like Sophie’s brother, had invited Lucas to join them for a round but had been shot down more harshly than even Zhalia had managed before her betrayal. Dellix and Lane had quietly apologized, and soon it was all forgotten as the next match got underway.

Forgotten, that is, until it was time to pick a new game.

After three hours of Left 4 Dead co-op and verses, the play style was getting a little stale. Sophie opened up the cabinet filled to bursting with games for various consoles– all bought after much pestering from Lok and then Den later on– for them to peruse and was immediately mobbed by the Fears brothers.

��Smash Bros Brawl!” Den crowed, snatching the case from the shelf. “This’ll be great!”

Harrison shoulder checked his elder twin to the side, an impressive feat for such a boney boy. “No way! You know all the exploits!” He picked up the battered Game Cube case for the earlier version of the classic game. “Smash Bros Melee!”

Den’s eyes narrowed as he straightened from where Harrison had shoved him. “Brawl.”

Harrison bristled right back. “Melee!”

“Oh dear.” Sophie sighed. Lok grinned widely and patted the empty space on the couch beside him. “Here they go again.” The Casterwill heiress sat beside her boyfriend and leaned against his side. “You’d think they would have let go of this sort of thing after nearly killing each other.”

“Sophie, I gotta tell you.” The mirth was evident in Lok’s voice as the growled stand off between the twins grew to shouting. “When you actually grow up with a sibling…sometimes you don’t ever grow out of this kind of thing.”

“Hey.” Zhalia didn’t even look up from her Technomicon. It was nearly three weeks after the final battle with the Betrayer now, and she had learned to let Den and Harrison settle their differences in whatever way they saw fit. Taking sides or shutting their arguments down just led to miniature replays of the night the two had been separated, and brought up feelings of abandonment and betrayal. Letting the boys duke it out to vent their emotions over the trauma of the previous months ended up being the healthiest option she and Dante had found so far. “Keep it to an unpowered level, guys. I’m not cleaning up another busted window with you two.”

The twins grunted in acknowledgement and had the respect to place their argued game cases in the moderate safety of the cupboard…before launching at each other and ending up in a scrabbling knot of limbs and teeth and nails as they viciously wrestled on the rug in front of the fireplace.

Dellix and Lane had become used to the occasional spat between the two brothers during their visit. They sat back with Lok and Sophie on the couch, watching with amusement as the boys used every dirty trick available to them in attempts to gain the upper hand. The noise level increased exponentially, echoing down the halls and filling the room with mangled hybrid sentences of English and Dutch swearing.

All of a sudden, Lucas’s voice cut through the din.

“If you two don’t be quiet and act like civilized human beings, that woman is going to take you back to where she found you and bloody leave you there! I’m trying to concentrate!”

Lucas looked rather smugly satisfied at the abrupt silence his words had brought.

If he had taken the time to glance up from his musty old book he would have seen what a massive mistake he just made.

Den and Harrison had both frozen in place, wide eyes locked together in a look of shock and deeply ingrained fear of losing their home again. Sophie and Lok were both on their feet, and despite Lok holding Sophie back with a hand on her shoulder as she shook with tight lipped rage, the Lambert boy had blue sparks flicking off his clenched fist.

Dante’s glare was literally as powerful as fire. No one had noticed, but a tiny flame had burst to life on the table, which he had quickly smothered with his palm before turning his smoldering gaze to the elder Casterwill.

Even Dellix and Lane knew that their commander had crossed a line. The dark skinned swordsman subconsciously moved his hand to the sheath that rested against his knee, feeling the tension in the air thicken to a nearly unbearable level. Lane shifted uneasily as her fingers drifted to the amulet at her neck, ready to call Wildwood Druid at a moment’s notice if things seemed out of hand for her larger counterpart.

Zhalia had stopped at the sound of Lucas’s words, finger hovering over the final keycode rune to unlock the database entry she needed. If Dante seemed angry, then the woman across from him was at a level well beyond rage. She was at a point that surpassed any outward betrayal of the emotion, face deadpan as she slowly closed the lid of her Technomicon and stood.

Her voice, low and just barely containing the pure feral wrath that only Dante could feel rolling off her in heart crushing pulses, cut through the heavy silence like a razor bladed knife.

“Lucas. Sparing match. Outside. Now.”

Lucas waved her off, still engrossed in his book. The very idea of fighting Zhalia seemed to bore him. “I’m in the middle of a manuscript. Maybe later.”

The Casterwill elder let out a yell of surprise when an unknown assailant grabbed a fistful of his shirt on each shoulder and roughly yanked him over the back of the armchair, manuscript flipping from his hands and sliding across a nearby table. Dante wrenched the younger man around to bring him eye to eye, moving his grip to clench bunches of fabric so tight under his throat that it forced the Casterwill to lift his chin so he could keep breathing normally.

In an icy wave of realization, Lucas had the distinct feeling that he was looking a very angry, very protective, and very deadly lion in the eye.

And all that anger was focused on him.

“It’s rude to turn down a dance from a lady.” Dante growled. “But at any rate, she wasn’t asking, Lucas.”

A white steel sword suddenly appeared at Dante’s throat. In a flash Zhalia was at her partner’s side, and put herself between the bristling Dellix and seething Dante. Unafraid, she pushed the back of her hand against the flat of the blade, ready to deflect any ill-advised movement against her boyfriend’s neck.

“You had better put this away before I make you eat it, Dellix.” Zhalia’s soft voice held the fine edge of what was very much not an idle threat. “I’ve got nothing against you or Lane. I just want a chance to give your little leader a lesson in manners on the sparring field.”

“Oh, he’ll fight you alright.” The locked together foursome looked over when Sophie cut in. “Lucas, you went too far. This match isn’t a suggestion, it’s an order. From me.” Her green eyes flashed. “Dellix, Lane. Stand down. Zhalia and Lucas, you both have ten minutes to prepare. Meet in the courtyard and we’ll discuss the rules of the match. Dante’s referee.”

At the Casterwill leader’s command, Dellix stepped back and sheathed his blade, though a little reluctantly. Dante kept his gaze on Lucas for a long, tense second before shoving the young man back and letting go of his shirt.

As the Huntik team gathered itself up to head downstairs, Zhalia took a moment to slip past Lucas, getting very much in his personal space.

“I’m going to mop the floor with you, kid.”

Lucas was sure the woman had hissed those words in his ear as she passed, but hadn’t even glimpsed her lips moving. Despite the disturbing finality the statement had, he straightened his shirt and marched off to retrieve his amulets.

He was a Casterwill, after all. And no one would defeat him on his own ground.

(posting this on ff.net tomorrow morning because my eyeball is trying to explode. Friggin migraines, man...)