Skull the Soldier

I've got a feeling (ooh, oooh)

It's the day after his nightmare, and the other former Arcobaleno can tell that something has him on edge. He had been shifting restlessly all throughout their morning training sessions,  and lunch, and, finally, at the afternoon "bonding" session that Yuni forced them into, Lal slammed her hands on the table, red eyes glaring at the violet-haired man.

"All right, Skull! What the hell has you so fucking antsy today?" Skull's eyes widened before he relaxed in his seat, muscles lax but ready to move at a moment's notice, (this alone told the other Arcobaleno that Skull felt that something was wrong) and responded.

"Nothing concrete, yet. Just a kind of... pulling... feeling in my gut." He paused before saying, seemingly out of the blue, "Remember that one mission we had in Monaco?" The Arcobaleno straightened in their seats. How could they forget that clusterfuck of a mission, the first and last time Skull had tried to warn them about how something felt wrong with the entire thing. 

The mission had started off rather normally for them: Luce giving them all their information packets they were to memorize, then shred, then burn, and they were sent a set of coordinates that they had to be at by such-and-such a time. That went as it was supposed to. Halfway through the mission, though, Skull calls everybody on the com link they share and told them something felt wrong with the entire thing. Sure, they had gotten into the Base, but Skull mentioned that it had felt too easy. They ignored him, until they all were ambushed and herded towards the middle of the Estate.  Skull was already there, with blood matting the back of his head and a body at his feet, looking at them with eyes that just screamed, 'I told you so.' Everybody was at least a little rumpled and/or wounded; Lal had a hole in her shoulder that was slowly seeping blood, Verde's lab coat was torn at the edges and singed, Viper looked almost unruffled, but the dark stain about stomach height told a different story, Fon's normally perfect braid was unraveling, and Reborn had a slash in his upper arm that had left that arm virtually useless until stitches could be applied, even with his Sun flames. Skull, though, he looked the worst out of all of them, with slashes and bullet holes scattered throughout the top half of his suit, roughly eighteen slash wounds on his chest from different blades, and, while all had been or were bleeding, at least three of those gashed were clearly poisoned. 

When they got back to the Mansion they shared before and after missions, all of them basically collapsed in the Drawing room, where Skull pulled out his Deluxe All-purpose First Aid Kit (TM) and tended to all of their wounds, though he was unusually silent, violet eyes shadowed, as if seeing someone else in their place. It may have only been their thirteenth mission together, but they already knew to let Skull do his thing; it had become some sort of ritual for all of them.

Lal finally asked the question that had been pestering her since Skull stitched them up the first time. "Where'd you learn to patch people up this well?" She knew, intimately, from her time in COMBUSKIN, that skill like that... that was practice. That was experience. That was long nights being surrounded by wounded comrades when you cared more about making sure that Renaldo from Palermo made it back to his wife and unborn children than making sure that you got back to an empty apartment and microwave meals. 

"If you haven't noticed, the Incredible Skull-sama is kind of clumsy outside of stunt riding. Believe it or not, I was worse as a kid, and had to learn how to patch myself up a lot if I didn't want infected wounds or tetanus." Skull grumbled the next line, although everybody could hear it. "I swear, I haven't decided which is more the more painful way to die: Tetanus poisoning, blood poisoning, or cancer."

Yes, they all remembered that mission, and Skull's warning. The fact that he felt the need to remind of his warning and his... well, feeling, spoke volumes about how off-putting something was, even if that something couldn't really be identified. 

"What about it, lackey?" Reborn asked in that low tenor of his.

"I don't know what it is but... Be on guard. Something is up and... it almost feels like the very Earth itself is holding it's breath for something." Skull warned. 

The other Arcobaleno nodded, then went back to what they were doing. Skull, however, sat in silence, fingers tracing invisible lines on the table. He knew the feeling this time, unlike that time in Monaco. This... Was a feeling he only got when numerous lives were about to be extinguished within a short time frame at the same location. He had gotten it too many times to count, and that was just focusing on 9/11 if it happened in whatever version of Earth he was living on.

Lots of people were going to die... and one of the Arcobaleno might be among that number if Skull wasn't very careful about the next few weeks.