Passing beneath the archway of those humming and thrumming walls, Val, Foofy, and Tavras entered New Gate. Her eyes lit up at the buildings surrounding her, what with how much time had passed since she had last seen civilization.

"Tavras, I want to get a new charger for my phone as the first thing that we do! Where will we be living while we are here? Can we buy all sorts of food?" Val clamored in her questions, excited to know what her life would be like here immediately.

"Val, shut your mouth for a minute." Tavras spoke in an unduly harsh tone. "We have company. Let me do the talking." His eyes bore out to some other people who were approaching them on the street, a man and a woman each with hair of flaming hues, red and gold respectively.

Foofy let out a growl at the duo, but Val quickly hushed him up.

"Tavras!" the man shouted in greeting. The arms of his huge wingspan were spread wide in welcoming. He walked with a sideways smirk, each step laid out as though he owned the world. More accurately, his father was the one who actually owned the world, this man being the favorite son of Suvier. While Val might have been too stunned to recognize Tavras, god of water, the Sea Itself for their initial meeting, she identified this man at once. He was Arius, god of war, the Ravager, also known as the right hand of Suvier.

In a cheerful voice, Arius said, "It is so good to see you again, you old coot."

Tavras's eyes flitted away, almost a roll, but not quite. "Not even I am in the mood to joke around. Cut the crap. We hate each other. Let's leave it at that." His arms wrapped around his midsection, defensive but also a silent threat. Tavras had his right hand where he kept his knife and a flask of water at his hip.

Arius stood immediately in front of Tavras now. He was only an inch or two taller, yet he looked so much bigger given his more muscular frame. Where Tavras had the lean body of what one would expect from a hermit--albeit an undeniably handsome hermit--Arius had his muscles sculpted as one would expect from a god of war. While Val should not admire someone who Tavras had so bluntly declared an enemy for her sake, she could not deny that Arius was a much finer male specimen than even Tavras.

Aside from his sheer physique, Arius's intense presence made him more imposing. Similar to the supernatural appearance of Tavras, one look at Arius gave away his divine blood. His hair was red--not the natural, orangish shade of red that mortal people had--but blood red. Straight and sleek, his hair was pulled back in a long ponytail which went down to his back. Apparently men liked their flashy hairstyles once they had ascended to godhood.

Her thoughts flitted to her own long hair, sorely missed, yet hers had never looked as good as neither Tavras nor Arius's hair. She supposed that when men could grow these luscious locks, so obviously exuding power from their divine blood, they naturally opted for longer hairstyles. It was a weird tangent for her mind to drift away on, but it served the purpose of reminding her to keep her strongest Mind Shield up.

The eyes of Arius bore into Tavras with their deep brown color, almost tinted in blood red as well. He looked like something not quite human. Likewise, no one could expect the Ravager to behave in a way that was quite humane. "I suppose that after what you have done these last few days, you would not be in much of a joking mood!" Arius's exuberant countenance showed his obvious enjoyment in this interaction with Tavras. A twinkle of good humour could almost be seen in his eyes--almost.

Marking a transition, a sickly feminine voice said, "Ah, hello darling." The woman who approached to join at Arius's side must have had to fake her voice, in order to make it drip in that way.

Nevermind the men's hair, Val had just met her newest hair idol. This woman had long, blonde hair. Otherwise straight, the edges of her hair curled around her knees. Her hair literally sparkled and shined like the golden shimmer of divine blood. Already, Val would have hated her out of pure jealousy. The fact that she could recognize this woman as well did her no favors.

She was the woman from her vision of the past, the one who had been involved romantically with Tavras: Evalaite, goddess of love. Her title did not come to Val off the top of her head. In her own defense, she was justifiably distracted at the moment.

Did her boobs somehow get larger since the time of that vision? In this regard, Val could not even say that she was jealous. Without a doubt, Evalaite must have back problems. Any mortal woman who was unfortunate enough to grow breasts that large would almost certainly opt for a reduction surgery, yet it seemed that Evalaite must take joy in modifying her body to the extremes.

Frankly, too big should be a thing. Evalaite looked absurd as a living, breathing human who had been photoshopped to some impossible sex standard. Apparently she attracted the men around her though. Both Tavras and Arius had been her conquests.

Her intimate relationship with Arius could be fairly assumed given her demeanor towards him. Evalaite entwined her slender hands onto Arius's arm. She leaned into him, quite obviously pressing his arm right at her cleavage. "I would say that it is a pleasure to see you again Tavras, but it so seldom is." Her voice lilted around like honey with a toxic edge, making her cruel words all the more pronounced.

This was Tavras's ex-girlfriend, clearly so merciless as to flaunt herself on the arm of some enemy.

Val could feel her brow knitted up, not too drastically since she remembered to keep the more stoic, neutral face of a young man. Still, she could not resist looking up to Tavras in pity. Maybe she did not have Evalaite's impossibly beautiful body, but in her own opinion, Val could treat someone right if given the chance.

Much to her surprise, Arius looked down to Evalaite with mortification as if his arm had just been assaulted. He pried his hand away from her grasp and cleared his throat. "Anyway, I would like to extend a personal thank you on behalf of my old man--which is, you know, pretty fucking impersonal given how he sent me instead of coming here himself." Despite his crass way of speaking, Arius stooped himself into a bow. Dramatically, he had one arm bent into his chest and the other extended from his side. "You should feel honored, though. I came all the way back from Gon, and Suvier said if I ever happened to see you, I ought to extend his thanks. Sincerely, thank you for the act of wrath that you have leveled on the coast of Gon."

With a huff, Tavras looked away. "Yes, I committed an act of wrath against Gon. By my own free will, might I add."

"Ah," Arius said with a tutting finger, "but it aligns with our goals. You do not level tsunamis against the homeland, even when they deliberately dump toxic waste into the ocean. You just go quietly and clean it up like the little bitch that you are. In part thanks to you, we will have Gon pressed under our thumb in no time."

"Hey, I mean, politics aside, I would like to personally thank you too," Arius continued. "Suvier called me back on leave when you struck Gon. That will be more than enough to leave them crippled for a long while. We cannot have a war ending too quickly, now could we?"

The war with Gon simmered so quietly in the background. Anything eventful always happened on foreign soil, so Val amongst many other civilians could easily forget that there was a war going on in the first place. It had never occurred to her that the war was being prolonged for any explicit reason.

There was not a response from Tavras save for the slight shifting of his jaw. The grinding of his teeth could practically be heard. The immense anger that he contained could be felt by Val through the air. Never, had she imagined Tavras to be a man with much rage or restraint in his personality yet he displayed both of these things now.

Arius continued to get into his face and taunt him. "Let's see, you old geezer…." From his pocket, he pulled out a phone and started scrolling away on it. "Have you seen the headlines? A physical newspaper would be too high tech for you, so allow me to be a good man and help a senior citizen out."

All the while, Evalaite stayed at Arius's side, smirking up at Tavras. She seemed to be here just for the good show.

The light of a cell phone flashed in their faces. Ignorant to the contents on the screen, Val's heart leaped with excitement, merely seeing the blue gow of a modern device. Quickly, she understood that she should not feel so happy over what she stared at.

There was a headline of bold text along with the picture of a coastline in devastation. Arius read aloud, "Over 200,000 dead by tsunami as act of wrath by the Sea Itself along the coast of Gon. That is quite the front page story that you made, I must say!" he said. "Even me, I don't up and kill a fifth to a quarter million civilians in one night just because I was upset. Personally, that's where I would draw the line. Taking innocent lives… I would consider that a war crime." Though he spoke seriously and of such serious things, Arius laughed. "It has been a while since you took lives like that. Did you take joy in it, I wonder?"

All of his taunts went unresponded too.

Tavras stood still as death, but he still had those shallow breaths rising and falling from his chest. The people whose lives he had taken would move no more, not at all, except to have their corpses carried away of course.

On the same night that she had confessed her crush to Tavras, that man had gone and killed 200,000 people. Val's head spun as she tried to wrap her head around this. The more that she thought on it, the more appalled that she became. The bright and cheerful man who she had come to appreciate possessed a much darker side to him, as it turned out.