Description: After their Neo League fight Kurow drags Azrael to an empty classroom...
COMBATSYS: Kurow has ended the fight here.
Kurow, having ditched the blindfold by this point, has dragged Azrael's semi-conscious body to a small, unused room in Taiyo -- specifically, at this time of day, one of the math department rooms. (The Kirishima boy, for obvious reasons, keeps meticulous tabs on what rooms are not used when at each school. It makes his life easier.)
The first step he takes, of course, is to check whether or not Azrael's conscious. This is, to be certain, a very important first step; the second, which he does roughly concurrently, is to pull out his flute. Azrael is in a good position to serve many of Kurow's interests at once, and Kurow isn't about to turn down low-hanging fruit.
Azael isn't awake for the duration of the trip, getting dragged around not doing much for the sake of becoming conscious. Once he is in the mathematics room, however, his head begins to lull slightly from side to side, and his eyes slowly blink open. His first action upon waking up is to press his hand to the vicious wound in his chest, still slowly oozing blood into his tattered shirt. "Ugh..."
As Azrael begins to stir, Kurow steps back a little from him, taking his flute in hand and, without saying anything to Azrael, starting to play. He can communicate -- and more importantly, be understood -- entirely using the flute, so why bother with words? The music starts out slow, the commands easy... and even some of the most willful people in the world, after a vicious enough beating, have a hard time not following.
The first command is very, very simple, once Kurow's done trying to lull Azrael into actually following them. If he verbalized it, it'd be two simple words: 'stand up.' He knows how much of an undertaking this would be with the kind of pain the formerly-dead youth is in, which is exactly why that's his litmus test for if it's working as intended.
This is probably one of the reasons the Kirishima's having such good ears. Azrael hears the flute as nothing but music to begin with, but very quickly he can tell there's something strange about it. Immediately after, before he can so much as think of what might be strange, the powerful music takes hold.
Normally Azrael would just ignore such an order, but the command is powerful, invading his mind and taking over. He begins to stand, bracing his hand against the floor to try and push himself up, and then promptly collapses to the ground. Even with that failure, he's going to try again, and this time be a bit... smarter about it. He reaches out to a nearby chair, and grips onto it, using it to drag himself to his feet and giving it a nice smear of blood in the process.
This brings a smile to Kurow's face. On the one hand, he'll have to be careful about cleaning this up; on the other, he could just say that he stopped here, fatigued from carrying Azrael, and set him down briefly. Yes, that'd do -- this does mean he'll have to take him to the nurse's office eventually, but it'd almost look remiss if he /didn't/.
Kurow keeps on playing, the music getting a little faster and more even in its rhythm, as he starts layering the commands a little more. They're still /direct/, at least, and short; Kurow needs aces up his sleeve at this stage in the game, not full-on 'zombies'.
'When you hear this (brief interlude) sequence of notes, even distantly, attack the nearest Taiyo student. Come up with your own reason.' 'If asked by a member of the Kirishima family, report on any weaknesses -- physical or psychological -- that you think are important about other Taiyo students.' They're getting less /simple/ than a mere 'stand up,' but conversely, they're likely more useful. Here, Kurow tries to gauge Azrael's reaction -- does anything look like it's not 'taking'? He thinks he's left a good pair for his purposes, so if they stick, he might actually proceed to try having a brief /normal/ conversation with the other high schooler.
The wheels inside Azraels mind begin to turn as the two new orders are introduced into his mind. These ones, obviously, aren't meant for now, and he has to take a moment to memorize the set of notes Kurow has given him to mean attacking a fellow student. During this time his eyes sort of glaze over, and he nods slowly. "I understand."
Everything seems to be working out as planned; in all likelihood if he was able to resist the mental commands he'd be lunging and trying to rip that flute out of Kurow's hand; hurt or not. Another slight wince as pain from his wounds moves through him, but the bleeding has thankfully stopped, by now.
Kurow decides at this point that it'd be best to 'close up shop,' as it were, and with his usual diminuendo, he finishes with Azrael, letting him go back to his normal functioning, orders left in his subconscious; he doesn't want to interfere extensively in the other student's life. This is something that's best kept unnoticeable.
"... sorry," he says, if it looks like Azrael's starting to get back to normal functioning. "Fighting you... took a lot out of me. I had to stop for a minute. I hope you don't mind." He's all smiles and conciliatory remarks now -- it's as if Kurow Kirishima, leader of the Darkside Student Congress, never existed.
Azrael begins returning to normal, and becoming somewhat confused because of it. He passed out on the roof, that's understood, and now he's in some room with Kurow, that's understood. The thing that really sticks out is... why the hell did he wake up standing? He doesn't remember taking a blow to the head, so he'll have to figure that one out later.
"R-right..." Hand still on his chest, he lifts it up and sees the blood. ...yea. "Not a problem. Kind of a funny place to stop, though." The next thing that sticks out in his mind is Kurow himself. Is he just a complete rat bastard when fighting and normal otherwise?
That's a common conception of him -- some analysts think he just tries really hard to be a heel, like a lot of old-style wrestlers. His in-ring persona and out-of-ring persona are completely different. ... it's not a bad analysis, if one that assumes one flawed thing: namely, that the 'out-of-ring' persona is the real one.
"I needed somewhere I could set you down for a minute. You seemed really out of it when you woke up a little, too -- I guess I took a little too much out of you with that draining assault... anyway, the nurse's office is down the hall, right? Let me help you the rest of the way." He gestures for the other fighter to put his arm over Kurow's back and support himself.
Whatever the case may be, Azrael is still too hurt to worry very much about it. If Kurow wished to harm him further, he'd have done it already (ho ho ho). He's definitely going to be looking into Kurow a little more once he's recuperated though, that's for sure. In all likelihood he'll run into that analysis and believe it.
"Yea, maybe that's it. Might explain why my head's a little fuzzy." That's how he describes waking up while standing, at least. "Sure, thanks." Not very talkative, but walking is a bit of a painful procedure at the moment. He puts his arm over Kurow, thankful for any help he can get.
"Drink lots of fluids and try to eat something with some protein," Kurow says as he helps Azrael out of the room; the nurse's office really isn't that far away. "You've lost... well, a moderate amount of blood -- it's nothing that's going to kill you, but it's probably going to have you a little winded for a few hours to a day. Try not to do anything too strenuous for a little while. Stay off your feet, do some people-watching." Kurow looks away from Azrael a little after he says this, and smiles.
"Fluids and protein? Not a bad idea. Even if I hadn't lost so much blood I could do for some food." It's pretty unlikely that the nurse is going to have anything like that, but she'll probably be able to help him a little. At least keeping the wounds from getting infected, at least. It's probably not going to be the first time she's going to find claw marks like this, but maybe it'll be one of the few times there was a good reason for them.
Given a few moments to get his feet under him with some help, he's able to move along at a decent pace. "People watching... not a bad idea, I guess, if I'm going to be chair-ridden."
"Like I said, it won't be too long -- a day, at most. I spar with my sister the same way, so I wouldn't do it if it were /that/ bad, right?" This assumes a lot of healthy (and wrong) things about Kurow's relationship with his sister, but since those are usually default assumptions, Kurow is happy to abuse them.
As he leads Azrael the rest of the way to the nurse's office, he turns back to him with that genuine-looking smile. "You'll be all right. Have a good evening... and excellent performance out there. I think there's something important in your future."
Luckily for Kurow, simply speaking of his sister in that manner essentially forces the mind to assume that he has such a relationship, and Azrael goes along with it easily enough. "Yea, I guess that's true. Your sister might be a whole lot stronger than I am though." He's hazarding a bit of a guess there, since he doesn't know Yurika is his sister. He's actually met her, and she was indeed stronger.
He removes his arm from Kurow once they make it to the office, by now at least able to stand and walk on his own without falling over. The nurse is probably going to be annoyed, though. Weren't there Neo League medics on hand to take care of this? "Yea, I'm sure I will. You're strong, but I've been battered worse." Namely the time he ran into Billy Kane on the street and got savagely beat down. ...three times. "And thanks, you did pretty good also." And with that, he heads into the nurse's office to get patched up.
Log created by Azrael, and last modified on 06:05:30 04/25/2007.