Description:
Rose's apartment is not terribly ostentatious, but it's in a nice building. There is even a doorman late at night, although he is not well paid and is usually doing his homework from college rather than, for instance, doing much in the way of actual work.
The elevator has no music, and indirect lighting. Rose lives, in defiance of expectation, on the fourth floor, although there isn't a name on the apartment plate, perhaps to deter the stupider assassins.
Visitors MIGHT be surprised to find that the door is unlocked, but then, they might always just knock first. There are lights on, though; the sort who are visible from the street.
The city is never boring at night. Somewhere around midnight, all the boring people scurry off, and the only ones left out always have a peculiar reason for it. That's likely the only reason Iori hasn't tired of his nightly habit of walking the streets of Southtown; he always runs into someone who provides a nice little distraction. Just recently, he ran into a Frenchman who wants to murder Geese or something because of his dead father or something. The stories blur together after awhile.
Tonight, however, things seem a bit more quiet. The subway was empty, bereft of even Old Pappy, the one-eyed bum who told Iori stories about his days fighting in the American Civil War. Deprived of entertainment such as that, it comes as no surprise that next on his list is someone just as eccentric.
While a lack of engaging conversation may have been the reason, in truth the redhead didn't even think of Rose until he recognized her apartment. He hadn't talked to the strange woman much, though had heard bits and pieces of who she was from Chizuru. Iori's most vivid memory of her is from Thailand, which is saying something considering he was crumpled in a bloody pile on the floor of a helicopter while some girl was, hopefully jokingly, trying to get him left behind. He mostly remembers the hair.
And the flight of fancy brought him right to the door. Trying the knob without knocking first is a habit of his, mostly because he always gets a kick out of surprising people who don't make good use of their locks in a city like Southtown. Sometimes it pays off, like it happens to do just now. The door swings open with a healthy creak that one comes to expect from the abodes of mystical sorts.
"Hey, witchy woman. Are you home?"
The American civil war, Rose knows, was at least fifty years ago - possibly as many as a hundred. Her hair, however, just doesn't quit.
The door opens to a hardwood-floored living/dining room that Iori may find vaguely familiar, because Rose didn't redecorate. There's a table over there and a leather couch containing Rose over there; the light seems to have come from a lamp behind the couch. Rose herself has a book in her lap, and a pair of thin-lensed glasses on her nose.
She looks up towards Iori, blinks once, and says in a solemn and serious voice, "Wrong building." She then smiles, slightly.
The book gets a bookmark placed in it, and set aside. "I had thought you might drop by some time, before long, although I admit that I had expected you tomorrow. Are you doing well?"
Iori glances over the apartment, not out of a desire to see it but because of habit. It's a strange thought. His hand absently rubs his chin until Rose speaks up, which prompts him to shove his hands into his pockets. There's a slight pause as the redhead considers the situation; despite what outward appearances may tell, he is actually slightly intimidated by the older (technically, younger) woman for reasons that she has just reinforced.
He steps inside and the door closes behind him. The hardwood floor is an unexpected boon, his boots clunking against it make him feel a little more confident in the face of the supernatural.
"You expected me to show up, huh? What exactly for?" he brushes aside the pleasantries.
"I didn't know," Rose says, straightening upwards and reaching behind herself to fluff out some of her hair which had gotten crimped against her back. (Apparently it does that... thing... naturally.) "I didn't feel anything negative about it, however. Would you like something to drink?"
She steps towards the kitchen regardless of Iori's answer, pausing as she passes relatively nearby to gesture around at the several chairs. "Please, have a seat. I did get the feeling that you didn't want me to check the cards..." After this she heads in, and from the sound of it she is getting bottled water out of the fridge.
/Foriegn/ water.
Unlike Kyo, Iori doesn't have Japan Pride. Probably because he was never on Team Japan; their team building events must have been comprised of sitting around a campfire and bitching about Kyokugen betraying the fatherland to be Team Mexico. Foreign water goes unpunished.
"No," he says dully.
The redhead studies the chairs for a moment, and then, instead of doing what is expected of him and kicking his feet up somewhere that will have to be cleaned, he neatly sits down at the seat offered to him. He hunches over, resting his elbows on his knees as he waits for Rose to return.
Mexico, it is said, is the happiest place on Earth. Who it is happiest for is another question entirely.
Rose comes back with the bottle of imported water; she lifts it up to take a sip from it, and then moves to settle back where she had been seated, facing towards Iori. After settling in, she asks, "Did you recover well from your injuries? You seem to be moving about easily enough, but walking is rather simple."
She tilts her head to the side. "I never got the opportunity to thank you. What you did - no one asked you to, unless I misunderstand Chizuru's way of... dealing with others. And yet, you did it, anyway." After this, she takes another sip of water, swirling what's in the bottle idly afterwards.
"May I ask you why?"
Iori shifts his posture before he answers, leaning back and crossing his legs, one arm draped over the chair next to him. He tilts his head upwards slightly, enough that he looks down his nose at the psycho-power user.
"I've been worse," he lies unconvincingly. Not because of something in his voice, but because if he had ever been worse, he wouldn't have all of his limbs still. It's one of those little statements that is let go in polite company.
Honestly, the redhead still isn't sure about the last question. That much is apparent in the little changes in posture -- he hunches forward slightly again, lowering his head, though it's not exactly spelling things out. "He was horning in on my territory. If he hadn't gone after Kusanagi, I wouldn't have been there. Isn't the truth disappointing?"
Rose chuckles slightly and tilts her head forwards. This hides her eyes for a moment. Perhaps she's weighing how to say something, but it comes out rather light. "Is that really the case? I had seen, of course, that you were fighting," which is something of an under-exaggeration, "but why would you have stepped in there?"
She sips the water, before pointing out, "Vega was certainly powerful enough to kill him; thanks to his actions and the nature of his power, he was at the peak of his strength. I cannot, easily, think of any one man or woman who could stop him. It would have been simple for you to allow him to die there - if anything..."
She chuckles. "I suppose it's morbid of me, but no one could have even claimed you acted improperly. Your own life would have been in equal danger."
The big surprise when dealing with Iori for an extended period of time is that he's not really a raving lunatic, at least not as much as television makes him out to be. There's a certain killing instinct lacking in his eyes that you might find in those of, say, Vega. He looks more tired than anything.
Except for just now. Iori's gaze hardens suddenly, though perhaps not directly at Rose so much at a memory. It really does look like he could leap up at any moment and try to strangle the purple-haired woman to death.
"You don't understand. I won't let Kyo be killed by anyone else. That is my feud, and no one else has a right to it."
"You're right," Rose says, "I don't understand." She doesn't get up, although she does lean back in the couch slightly, letting the scarf around her shoulders fall back without moving to correct it.
She continues. "Feuds like this... they are rare things. I have never seen one, myself, although I have been in conflict of a similar sort for as long as I have lived. I would end it - I almost had the opportunity." Her head tilts slightly forwards; "Of course, it has not worked."
She looks back up towards Iori. "But why? Neither of you have histories of horror and blood, as far as I know. Neither of you seek to rule the world, and if you may forgive me, I do not believe you would term it a 'feud' if you sought revenge for something he had done to a friend of yours."
Iori stares at Rose -- it is not a glare, and not intrinsically threatening aside from the possibility of violence. It's how one fighter looks at another when they're waiting for the first move to be made. Nothing but an empty mind and reflex. Freeing your scarf is not an aggressive movement, but there's just a... sense.
Luckily, Iori blinks first, turning his head to the side and leaning back in his chair with a quick exhalation of breath in a muffled sort of laugh. He soon repeats himself, and eventually begins to giggle, putting a hand to his forehead so his fingers thread through his hair. It quickly turns to a full-fledged laugh, loud and forceful, as he leans back in his chair.
After a moment of collecting himself, the redhead hunches over again and lowers his head. "Well I guess Chizuru doesn't trust you as much as you trust her."
Rose smiles during the laugh. She sits and waits, during it, and after Iori speaks, she says, "Or perhaps I have never heard her speak of a feud."
Maybe she's asked Chizuru and heard everything. Maybe the topic's never come up. Either way, Rose crosses her legs as she settles back and takes another sip from the swiftly-emptying bottle of water, swallowing it before she says, "Please, though - go on. Unless you would rather I speak first?"
"Oh," Iori looks back up at Rose, conveniently missing the smile. "Far be it from me to take up all the prime speaking time myself. Go on, say what you've got to say. I don't have to be anywhere."
And that's true. Part of him is slightly reticent to speak about this subject to someone who's not of the families, but then again -- what's the problem? Like she's going to use it to cause problems for him.
Rose looks up to the ceiling for a moment and considers how to explain this, stymied for a moment by Iori's lack of psychic power beyond the native 'intelligent life form' quantity. Her lips purse. A full explanation in detail would take days and she suspects Iori will have an attention span of perhaps fifteen minutes.
"I do not know if you saw the film of 'The Lord of the Rings,'" she says, having decided on a topic. "But the idea of it - was an evil lord, who could only be stopped by the destruction of a ring in which he had placed so much of his power. The evil lord could be slain and overthrown a thousand times; even so, as long as that ring existed, he would return. If the ring was destroyed, so, too, would he be."
She takes a sip of the water. "It is like that, I suppose, with myself and... him. Unfortunately, he has the luxury of being the ring." She doesn't explain further, perhaps to see if Iori can connect the dots.
Fear is something fighters don't usually feel, compared to normal people. Especially not fighters of the highest caliber. When you're one of the most deadly men ever to walk the planet in all of history, being scared doesn't come naturally. But for Iori, it's a matter of inevitability. First comes that piercing feeling, like ice water is running through your veins.
And ice water is what he gets when Rose hits a little too close for home. Initially he assumes Rose is speaking directly of his circumstances; as long as the descendents of Orochi lived on, it too would survive indefinitely, never to be defeated. He manages to not ask how Rose came by this information until another possible meaning becomes apparent.
Iori clears his throat, licking his lips as they have suddenly become very dry. "That's how it is with you and him, huh? Linked by death."
"And in one direction only, I think," Rose says. She sounds - peculiar about it. It is not quite sad and not quite relieved, although Iori may be deaf to this sort of subtle tension. She takes another sip of the water which turns into a draining of it, and sets the bottle aside with a sigh.
"The details are complex," she says. "But I suppose that you are not unfamiliar, with this sort of thing?" She does seem more sad now than anything else, glancing over towards Iori with a slightly upraised eyebrow.
Iori takes a moment to think on this. He doesn't want to press with the questions as he is himself a very private person, but has come away with the impression that should Vega die, Rose would as well. It makes sense, that way, her tone and her certainty that he was still alive. It certainly puts what she said back in Thailand into perspective. As someone facing death, it's a fate that can be empathized with.
However, no matter how much Iori can appreciate Rose's willingness to face death head on, he is not the type to give everything about himself away. Despite her friendship with the Italian woman, Chizuru chose to keep her in the dark, a decision that the redhead can put some amount of faith in. Just a little, maybe -- just a little so she knows she's not alone. If he was in her position, that's what he would want.
"Yagami-ryu and Kusanagi-ryu have been practiced for thousands of years. They were perfected eighteen hundred years ago. There was a... matter," Iori says thickly, as if he were spitting the word out of his mouth, "between my clan and his. It has fallen on me to destroy their family."
Full of holes, to be sure. It's easy to sense the anger rising off of him and from that envision many things left unsaid.
Rose raises an eyebrow slightly.
"I see," she says, in a tone that implies disbelief, or at least a certain degree of skepticism. She doesn't press it for a few moments, though, instead looking up at the ceiling in more or less companionable silence.
"You know," she says, "I have always thought that it is tragic, how so much in life is decided by history. In a way, we are all living under the tyranny of fools who have been dead for a very long time indeed."
Her head tilts to the side, although she continues to look upwards. "But, I suppose, in a way then - they are not dead."
That sort of thing is something Iori picks up on quickly, out of experience. He sits upright, a half smile, half sneer pressing his lips thin. In a normal state of mind, he might have reflected upon how little it took from him to go from sympathetic to aggressive, but you can't really muse on something like that when you're right in the middle of it.
"Yeah, more ways than you'd think of."
Iori stands up, pushing the chair away with his foot so it makes a loud scraping noise along the floor. Once more he shoves his hands into his pockets, adopting his usual slightly hunched forward posture as he turns towards the door.
"You should go ahead and get it over with," he says over his shoulder. "You can't hesitate about your destiny. If you're fated to die, that's it. All those... regrets, will just make things harder when you're on your deathbed."
He didn't knock before entering, and he doesn't say goodbye before leaving.
Log created on 23:38:09 08/13/2007 by Rose, and last modified on 01:28:50 11/16/2007.