He arrived on Gaea for a personal visit to Ash's facility.
Two times a month, he fights training robots and practices his markmanship in her arenas while she watches and provides him with critiques and observations to improve his skills. Initially, he ignored her, only using her for access to her arenas to satisfy his own insatiable bloodlust. Until she fought him one on one. It was then that he realized he had more to learn from hand-to-hand combat. Ash offered him more of a challenge. Because they were simulacrums, they had unlimited endurance, so she could keep up with him. He would spend the whole day and night training with her before growing bored and deciding he had enough before, eventually, returning.
He had visited her for almost six months, and as she observed him, he observed her. He quickly noticed certain...quirks. If she wasn't practicing with him, she would be in her lab pulling up dozens of videos and documents of notes. She would be analyzing and re-analyzing data from their past combat or recent Apex matches. She rarely stopped. It was as if she was a machine. He chuckled at his own analogy but it was the only thing close enough to describing her habits. And if she stopped, her "other" would surface. It was small things, a slight touch to her temple or a rapid twitch of her head. He actually stumbled upon her muttering to herself at one point. He thought it was amusing.
Revenant silently walked through the long corridor before entering her private lab. On one wall, there was a red, dusty couch and a side table. In front of the couch was a coffee table with papers and files scattered. On the opposite side of the room, she had her monitors, decorating the large space. He usually finds her typing away as she writes down data and codes. Today, the lab was empty. It didn't concern him too much. He knew she had gone to the arenas. He had seen her there before, and once she starts, it will be hours until she returns to the lab. He walked to her monitor and looked down at her keyboard. He pressed down on the spacebar and a live video appeared instantly. He released a heavy sigh before muttering a curse. He was correct. She was in the middle of a training match. She didn't know about his visit. Or any of his visits. He came in whenever he pleased and Ash never gave him her personal number. But he never asked. And she did the same for him.
He looked back at the couch and decided to wait for her. He took a seat, immediately taking out his communication pad to delete a large array of requests for his services. He propped his elbow up on the arm rest, and accidently brushed against something solid, knocking it off the table. He heard the thud next to his foot and his eyes glanced down, making no effort to pick it up until he saw it was a book, the back had a yellow sticky note and written in black ink was "Property of Ash". He reached down and picked it up. He saw that the book was old, with yellowing pages. He could tell it had been read many times over, the spine was worn and the pages were slightly torn at the corners. He turned the book, reading the title aloud to himself.
"Under the Solace Sun...huh?" He opened the book and his eyes immediately widened. It was a romance book. He had never seen Ash read a book like this. He thought it would be something boring. He snickered, shaking his head at the thought of her reading the book in her free time. He was about to close it when he noticed a handful of bookmarks placed in certain sections of the pages. He opened one section of the bookmarks and read the page the bookmark was attached to. "And he gently laid her against the hot sand, unable to hold back his passion as he removed his-what?...Their lips found their way to-!" He immediately realized that the bookmarks were all in the love scenes. He stifled his laughter with one hand as he flipped to another bookmark, curious to see what else she had saved for her reading pleasure. He grinned to himself as he flipped through each bookmark, knowing Ash had to save each scene and as he read, his laughter grew.
He was enthralled in another chapter when Ash returned from the arenas. She had heard the laughter echoing down her corrido. She walked in, calling out, "Revenant? What on earth are you laughing-AH!"
Ash shrieked in horror as she walked in and saw him holding her book. Her pet rat flew out of her hood, startled from her sudden scream, scurring to its hole. Revenant looked up from the book and waved it at her.
"Is this what you do in your free time, Miss Perfect? Heh!"
She quickly ran over to him, trying to snatch it from his hands. "Give me that!" She exclaimed. Imagining what her face would have looked like if she had been human, he pictured a red face. He chuckled and held the item out of her reach. Her hands desperatly clawed towards the book.
"Now hold on, I'm in a real good part. Monica is about to choose if she wants John or Michello, hahaha!"
"Return that to me at once!"
He pushed her back, getting up from the couch. She lunged at him again but he managed to hold her back with his arm. He opened the book again and began to read it out loud to her.
"And as she looked at the two men she had loved, she felt her heart yearn for-"
"Her one true love, the one who filled her with the most passion and warmth- hahaha! Oh! This is good!"
"Enough!" She snatched the book from his hands, throwing it against the couch. "Get out!"
"Now hold on..."He began, trying to stifle his laughter. "I..I got to know... which part was your favorite?"
"Because I really liked pg 62!" He released another roar of laughter, causing her to shove him out of her lab.
He was forcefully kicked out of her facility. But for the next few weeks, whenever they played in the Apex Games together, he whispered lines from the book under his breath. Only loud enough for Ash to hear before she became flustered.
