Description: Chasing the same fake rumor about their forgotten pasts, K' and Whip encounter one another in a rainy Irish town. Their tentative sibling bonding gets interrupted, however, when the trap is sprung and K9999 accosts Whip: inevitably drawing K' out to attack him vengefully. In the aftermath, the wounded siblings drag themselves off; bickering at first, but eventually settling down and getting along surprisingly naturally, despite how they're supposedly "strangers." Ultimately, they pact that if ever they find any information about their pasts worth investigating, they'll tell one another and look into it together.
Another day. Another destination. Another dead end.
And the first thing Whip does when she returns to the temporary home of her rented apartment is upset the entire front table in the foyer, suddenly and angrily shoving the furniture straight over. It crashes against the floor with the heavy weight of old antiques, spilling its rolling contents all over the hardwood.
And that solitary woman just clenches both her hands, huffs airily to herself, and leans bodily against the front door, the hinges creaking under her exhausted weight. Frustrated and fumbling, she claws both hands through her short, brown hair, pushing it off her face as her body lets itself compact and collapse, sinking down against the door until her weight settles on her heels. There she crouches and stares at the mess she made, frowning distantly at it, trying to make sense of thrown keys, pencils, and loose change littering the laminate floor. The tears come and blur the sight every so often, like rain against a car's windshield, but Whip is used to their appearances. She cries too easily and too much not to be used to it. She just wipes them away.
It's not fair. It's not fair that she has to keep putting her life on hold to go chase rumours, slips of information, word of mouth; a whole, unreliable labyrinth that may or may not lead her anywhere near her missing memory. These rabbit holes have taken her to so many places around the world, different locales whose only similarity is that they all lead her to the same end. And they're starting to take their toll. She leaves feeling all the more unfulfilled, all the more fractured, and all the more reminded of how incomplete a person you feel when you can't remember. It makes her so angry. It makes her so tired.
Whip stares a long time down the disheveled foyer and the physical remnants of her sudden, and uncharacteristic surge of temper, but she realizes very quickly that the bangs and clatter of upturned furniture have done no good for her mood; they gave her no relief against her anger. She feels more foolish than vindicated.
Her shoulders sag, and her brown eyes pinching a little at the corners, the young woman rubs awkwardly at her temples as she looks on, a little guiltily, at the fallen table. She feels a little bad for it. Then she sighs, her face returning to its usual, softened expression, and she pulls herself up to step over and clean up her mess.
Picking up loose coins with her careful fingers, Whip resolves that she shouldn't spend tonight alone. It might be grey and moody and raining in Killarney, Ireland, but it's not going to keep her from a drink.
Rumors, loose ends, slips of information that might or might not be true. To an amnesiac, they're tantalizing, irresistable leads... but all too often, they're leads that go nowhere in particular. K' knows this as well as Whip does. He's done his share of searching, and he's met his share of dead ends.
One of those leads pointed him to Ireland. As such, he'd taken a few days away from the center he's supposed to protect, the fights with which he fills in the holes in his empty life, and come out to a country he'd never been to in search of something he wasn't even sure the specifics of. Walking down the streets of Killarney had brought feelings of deja vu, certainly-- hearing Irish voices had stirred his husk of a memory in some small, indistinct way. But he feels deja vu everywhere he goes, and he sees familiarity no matter the place; this happens frequently, so much so that he can barely trust himself anymore.
He wonders if, when they took away his memories, NESTS left behind fake thoughts to confuse him as to his true origins: little slips of false memory of no worth or truth, each of which could pull him in any number of wrong directions. He wonders if it's just that he just hopes so hard he'll remember that he starts tricking himself into thinking any place he visits could once have been his home.
He had seen her completely at random, just as she disappeared into that rickety, one-floor tenement building. He hadn't even been certain it was her-- a lot of girls have that build and brown hair-- but nonetheless, hope and a strange longing for her company spurred him to follow her. He entered hesitantly, and his steps became even more hesitant when he realized he had no real idea which of the doors he was presented could possibly be hers. His eyes half-lidding, he considered backing out and just leaving, cutting and running while he had the chance. Stupid. It was embarrassing. Foolish. Trailing a girl to her doorstep... who does that? This wasn't even -safe- in the slightest-- not for her, not for him. She could be with NESTS, trying to draw him into a trap; NESTS could be tailing him, and he'd lead them right to her. What did he even want from her anyway? A few minutes of company from the only person who he can talk to honestly-- the only person who understands him? No-- it's too dangerous. Too stupid. He turns around to leave.
A sudden crashing noise assails his senses. K' is at her door before he can stop himself, a sharp and demanding rap the only courtesy he affords before he just knocks the door in question -off-.
In the back of his mind, a constant litany of worry unspools: his already-taut nerves gone haywire with the acute fear of an animal in a trap. Maybe NESTS tracked him here, and they got her instead. Maybe she's here on business and whatever she was mixed up in decided to bite back. But overlaid over that incessant sense of worry is a strange, stronger emotion: complete bewilderment at why he cares about a girl he's only met twice.
It's at that instant Whip had finished carefully, gingerly righting the end table to its legs, letting her hand swipe along the dusty varnish as a final apology to its previous assault. She doesn't know where that flare of temper really came from. It's not like her. It certainly didn't make her feel any better.
But the young Ikari isn't allowed a moment more to consider her feelings, when that sudden, insistent knock batters her front door. Like an instinct asserting control, she reflexively cools into her soldier's mindset, her posture immediately stiffening, her body instantaneously on guard, and her hands suddenly opened at her sides. She watches the door coldly, surgically for five seconds, the look on her face as blank and unfurnished as the apartment around her.
Her intuition tells her something is wrong. She doesn't know what, but she doesn't like it. The knocking was too firm and too fast. When she soon finds herself able to think again, Whip reasons that it may be a distressed neighbour responding to the noise and mess she just made. But it still seems off. The knock was faceless. Nobody is asking any questions through the door... nobody is threatening that they may have already called the police.
It's reason enough for the young woman to reach up, under the back of her suede jacket, and slowly, quietly draw her gun, the steel of her heavy, wicked-looking Desert Eagle glinting dully in the heavy, overcast light. She lifts it between her eyes and the door, staring carefully forward as she checks the clip and kills the safety, lifting the monstrous weapon in one hand to aim it. She aligns it precisely at the door before her, her years of training in lieu of those missing memories allowing her to correctly estimate where someone's head would be on the other side.
After a heartbeat, Whip hears her own voice echo inside her apartment's foyer, speaking clearly and crisply and mechanically unlike herself, "Who's there?"
K' listens through the door, even his sharpened senses finding themselves stymied by the thick wood and yards of distance between himself and the occupant(s) of the room. A breath hisses out of him in irritation, his concerns mounting higher. His right hand slides off the door, uncoiling from its insistent fist. It prepares to rip the door clear off. It's about to do so when its owner suddenly gets hit between the eyes with a demanding, mechanical question.
K' considers his answer a while. Finally, he just settles on a nondescript, "You know who it is." His voice alone should identify him; it's quite clear, and it matches hers in detached crispness, despite his fears and concerns. He is as afraid and unsettled as she is, but hiding it equally well. "Are you alone? I heard a noise. I was--"
A long pause. The sound of something coming to rest against the door, as in exhaustion, substitutes itself for the 'worried' that should naturally have come next. K' never finishes his sentence-- he just opts to start a new one.
"...Don't worry. -I'm- alone. If anyone was following me, I'd have been killed or tied up already." A sardonic chuckle and a heavy, resigned sigh breathe out of him at that concession, even as he tenses immediately in wary preparation. He's made the first move, giving up the fact that he's unaccompanied; if she's in there with a bunch of NESTS operatives, if this is a trap for him, she'll probably be less shy about siccing them on him now. "Do you mind if--?" Another long silence. "I thought someone might be--"
Fuck, this sounds strange no matter how he puts it. He decides to just stop there. With any luck, she'll solve his dilemma and just open the door for him on her own free will.
That voice. She's heard it before.
Whip knows who it is.
Behind the aiming of her gun, she just gapes. Her jaw hangs and her head tilts, and all four corners of her face corrugate up to fix the door the most broken of expressions. Her left eye twitches a little in its socket. In the ensuing silence, Whip just tries to get her sanity back. But she's not offered much time.
As the disembodied voice starts back up, explaining itself through the front door, she lifts her free hand to scrub confusedly at her eyes and forehead. The other seems to have forgotten about itself, and the gun she's holding, still aimed with a sniper's precision at her suspected aggressor.
It's that guy, K'. He's here. He's got to be fucking kidding.
The door finally opens. K' is not greeted into a traitorous roomful of NESTS agents.
His fate is far worse.
Whip stands there, all by herself, busy staring increduously up into her brother's face. Her soft brown eyes are sharp with murder. Her teeth grit so tightly a muscle flickers in her jaw. She doesn't look impressed.
He would be lucky to be facing a room of armed agents; instead, he's treated to her particular brand of hospitality, one that reaches out furiously to grab him by the coat, wrench him inside, and push him fiercely up against the wall, while her left foot absently kicks the front door closed.
One arm trying to corral him still with her forearm braced across his chest, and the other holding a familiar-looking, vicious gun that aims away toward the ceiling, Whip glares balefully up at K', her narrowed eyes far more watchful and far more dangerous than any gun barrel.
"What the hell are you doing here?!" she spits at him, irritated at having been caught off-guard. She squints at him, one corner of her mouth twitching, and just starts shaking her head as if she were honestly trying to disbelieve this is really happening. If she had a free hand, she'd probably be burying her face in it. "How did you find me?!" She pauses, then her voice gets softer, thinner, and angrier. "Have you been following me?"
K' wishes he was just kidding. He seriously does. This level of serendipity doesn't sit well even with him. This entire situation with Whip-- how he seems to share a lost past with her, how he keeps running INTO her-- is starting to unnerve him deeply... something he starts to realize while he's waiting for her to respond. He tries to force the disquiet away. He really doesn't need it right now.
He's sort of expecting the look he gets when the door finally wrenches open, and he's had a couple moments to prepare for it. So when Whip finally appears framed in the doorway, aiming a murderous glare straight up into his face, K' himself is busily wearing the most innocuously blank look in the history of mankind. But sadly, Whip's apparently going to choose to disbelieve all his studied innocence, because the first thing she does is fist her hand in his jacket and introduce him to her wall.
Once he's got his wits and bearings about him again, the first place his yellow eyes flick is the gun she's holding. K' gives his old enemy a decidedly baleful, wary look, squinting a hard glare at it, before his gaze immediately scours over the rest of the room. No one else here-- anymore, at least, or within sight. Mollified for the immediate moment, his eyes slowly return to his sister and her furious questions; they narrow immediately, but he makes no move to escape her pinning weight.
Now this is a situation he can deal with better. Talking to a door, trying to explain himself, isn't one of his strong points. Talking to an angry person snarling into his face is; if only because he provokes this kind of scenario far, far too often, and has seen it many times.
"I got a tip about my past," he manages, a bit breathless in between her sudden hospitality and the harsh arm that even now nails him to the wall. "It brought me here. I didn't find what I was looking for, I never do, but I saw -you- ten minutes ago. I came in after you, but it was dangerous-- I was going to change my mind and leave until--" He pauses. His yellow eyes drift downwards. "...what the hell happened here?" He's noticed what little evidence remains of Whip's burst of temper (a temper he received the lion's share of, no doubt): little items still scattered across the floor, a scuff mark where the table's corner dragged along the hardwood floor...
His voice sharpens, the surprise leeching out of it. It deepens to a growl as K''s own temper gets stirred. "...Did someone come in here?"
There's little doubt that this mean, stern frown of Whip's was the last sight for many men, shades of her old assassin days creeping into her features like old habits, giving her dark eyes a razor's edges and the crook of her mouth marinating with impatience. K' stands a good half foot taller than her, and he's already demonstrated himself a competent fighter -- one that exceeds even her ability -- but she doesn't really seem to care about that. She glares. She surls. She tightens her hand around the lapels of his coat. She...
...mollifies when he mentions exactly why he was here, searching for a past just as misplaced as her own. The anger drains out of her face, leaving only the intensity behind, confusion set into her face as she marvels the sheer luck -- or lack thereof -- that they ended up chasing the same white rabbit all to find each other, face-to-face, at the same dead end. A more suspicious person could have no problem doubting K''s words, and believing the sheer coincidence that pronounces it.
But Whip... just sighs raggedly and lets him go. She steps backwards to give them both space, her right hand deftly replacing the safety on her gun before she reaches around herself, lifting her short, brown suede jacket to holster it at her back. She adjusts her clothes briefly, her appearance really no different from the last time he saw her: jeans, cowboy boots, a black t-shirt that says JACK DANIEL'S, and her battered jacket that's probably seen better days.
She looks up, sharply, from holstering her gun, the look on her face suggesting she just might pull it right back out. "What? Nobody was here," she replies K', irritated. She follows his eyes to the remnants of the mess she had made, feeling her mood sour all over again. She looks back up at him, peering dangerously, not quite liking the tone of his voice. They barely even know each other, and he feels privileged enough to follow her home and question her capability? "And even if there was, it's none of your business."
She exhales a moment later, turning away and disengaging from the young man, letting her arms cross tiredly, her belligerence appearing to have passed. "So you didn't find anything?" she remarks, her voice softer but not yet neutralized of all its bitterness. She half-mutters to herself, long-suffering and self-deprecating. "That sounds awfully familiar."
A more suspicious person might even start to question how it is tips about their past-- even false ones-- could bring them to the same exact dead end at all. A more suspicious person might question whether there's some other reason their respective searches for their past keep crossing other than mere chance. But the thought occurs to neither of them. At the moment, they're too busy scowling at one another: frowning intensely in that quarrelsome, bickering way they might have done had things been a little different and they'd stayed brother and sister.
K' pries himself off the wall when Whip finally lets him go, moodily shrugging his jacket back into some semblance of order on his shoulders and straightening back up to his proper height in a rare moment of nonslouching. He frowns intensely at her as she brushes herself off, concern warring with irritation at being manhandled, and when she opts to get irritated over his gruff question he ducks immediately to a sharp defensive.
His own expression sours a bit, angry at being caught giving a damn about her. Far too accustomed to losing things-- to not having things in the first place-- K' tends to hold on like a vise when he finds something he likes; and he doesn't always consciously recognize his own reflexive overprotectiveness in these regards. "I guess not," he surls, turning his back on her strict regard like a scorned child. "Whatever. That's fine..."
He doesn't seem to register the real, more subtle reason she's upset-- that she's offended over his seeming belief that she can't handle herself-- both because he doesn't actually hold that belief (not much, anyway), and because he thinks she's just angry over his having shown up at all. Somewhat embarrassed about it now himself, he opts to just scowl fiercely and let her look at his turned back a while. It's better than letting her look at the awkwardness that's no doubt writ subtly in his face.
But when her mood passes, her voice altering to a more gentled tone, K' risks a wary peek at her over his shoulder. The tenseness drains out of him a little, and his shoulders slacken into a decidedly weary posture. "Nothing. I hit a dead end yesterday. Today was just... wasting time before I have to start over." He pushes an irritable hand through his hair, the unusual white strands ruffling, and sighs a long breath: eyes downcast. But that defeated attitude lasts only an instant before the line of his shoulders hardens: shrugging off that moment of weakness with decided distaste. "So how long have -you- been coming up with nothing?"
Whip isn't looking at K' when he dares that first glance back; leaned up against a wall, she's busy staring down at her own hands, watching as she picks a bit of dirt out from under her thumbnail. She lets her hand drop when she's finished with it, hooking her thumb on her leather belt and stooping ever so slightly. There she shrugs an answer to K', the motion moving a stray lock of her brown hair to escape from behind her ear. "A while now. Before I even joined the Ikari. It's strange that we both managed to end up in the same place. Strange and sort've sad. I guess we're the two most unlucky people in all of Ireland."
Pushing off from the wall, Whip steps audibly across the hardwood floor with her heavy boots, kneeling bemusedly to pick up a couple spare keys and fallen papers that escaped her first cleaning when she'd brutally shoved over the foyer table, bothered in the back of her mind that her new houseguest had managed to spot and deduce her last five minutes with incredible ease. She arranges and rearranges small, shiny little objects in her palms as she begins to speak, her eyes hard and staring right past them, right through them. Her voice is steady, conversational. "And sometimes I wonder if it's all worth it. You know? If it's all worth putting my life on hold to find the last one. If it wouldn't be easier to just, I don't know, let go, start over. Maybe you're supposed to forget something for a reason. But..." she lets a long breathe go, sighing as she braces a hand on her own knee and slowly stands up. "No. I don't end up believing any of that. And I just keep waiting for a sign, a good day, a bit of luck. And I don't know why I just told you that."
Her careful monologue ends on that wry, wondering note, her dark eyes finally turned over and up to slant the boy a strange look. Whip looks neither awkward nor offended, but rather confused in a detached way, objective enough to audience herself. It doesn't last long. She gives her head a shake, not quite in the mood for headaches, pawing at her dark, uneven bangs before she hooks both hands on her own hips.
She stands straight and regards K' directly now, pursing her lips and letting her eyes narrow kindly, like the good cop in an interrogation room. Her body language relaxes, relenting, and she finally adds on a semi-humoured note, "Despite first impressions, I'm a little glad to see a familiar face, K'." However, she pauses briefly, her expression quickly gone stale. "Even if I do remember telling you that we shouldn't see each other again. You know that this is dangerous for you."
K' frowns absently to himself, still regarding Whip over a shoulder. Distantly, he thinks over the implications of her words. It -is- strange how they both ended up here. It is strange that hints of their past, however false, would still lead them to the same place... unless someone wanted them to keep meeting up, and planted false trails to facilitate it. "Funny how our trails led us to the same place..." He frowns.
Something nudges at the back of his mind, insistently-- a hint of memory that wasn't entirely erased-- but his consciousness cannot grasp or place why it is he feels disquieted.
He finally turns around, pushing it out of his mind, when Whip stoops to distractedly clean up what little remains still scatter across the floor. Letting his arms cross loosely over his chest, he leans his back against the wall and watches her work. His head dips slightly, feathery bangs half-obscuring his keen yellow eyes: a slight tilt cants his head as she talks. "You told me," he replies quietly, "because I would understand."
He's quiet a while, his long silence a marked reminder of how unaccustomed he is to speaking: especially when the subject is so abstract and emotional as this. "I already thought about whether it was worth it. I already decided it would be easier not to care. But I determined already-- I can't let it go. Even if what I find out is something I don't like, I still want to know."
He shrugs. "My new life pisses me off most of the time." Putting up with kids and Almas is just terrible. "But that's not why I don't mind putting it on hold. I could let myself get complacent about it-- but I can't. Something got done to me. I need to know what. I lost a sister, and I don't even know if she's alive or if she exists. I don't know what's true of what I do remember." He ruffles his hair agitatedly, letting out a long sigh. Seemingly utterly exhausted by that uncharacteristic burst of verbosity, he lapses into silence. Now he's wondering himself why he said that much-- but something ineffable about Whip just invites confidence.
Her confusion, her weariness, her sadness-- he can deal with those. He knows how to handle and respond to all the negatives of human emotion. What he's unprepared for is her sudden kindness. She directs a softer look at him and he pauses visibly, recoiling slightly into the wall as a reflex: unsure of what just changed, or how to respond. When her first comment comes out, he blinks once-- slowly-- before his tensed body unwinds slightly, warily. Tentatively, he... relaxes. "..." he starts, laboriously, before he ventures a stiff, grumpy, "Glad I didn't piss you off too much." What he -wants- to say, but which will go unsaid due to his inability to articulate it: Yeah, I was glad to see you too.
Her next, cautionary statement is far easier to reply. K''s moment of awkwardness folds up and disappears instantly. "Dangerous for me," he chuckles humorlessly, one-handedly cracking the knuckles of his right hand with a flexing of long fingers. A shoulder lifts in a shrug. "My whole life is dangerous. I put myself in danger the minute I left NESTS. One more hazard isn't gonna matter." He squints a severe glance over at her, letting his gloved hand fall to his side. "I'm more worried about something happening to you. You might be under the radar now, but..."
"But what?" Whip replies briskly as she steps forward, towards K'. Her face comes in frowningly close, and she watches him steadily, dead serious, as she reaches around the taller boy to check the locks on the front door. "Do me a favour, K'. Don't worry about me." Satisfied with the deadbolt and chain secured, she steps back, turning her back on K' and walking off, finally letting the corners of her body soften and relax. This is her indirect way of inviting him in to stay for a little while. Actions speak louder than words, at least in Whip's case.
"If you're as half as important to the Cartel as what you've told me," she continues, her voice taking an lecturing edge as she shoulders out of her suede coat, "then I'm the last person you want to be around." She tosses the broken-in, worn piece of clothing on the arm of a couch, letting it drape haphazardly there. The tenant apartment is near-bare, a step up from a motel and a skeleton of what a real apartment should be. Inside the living room, there's that battered old couch that looks two popped springs away from a landfill, a tiny dinette set, and a television with old bunny-earred antennae. It's not much, but it's enough for Whip.
She goes on to demonstrate how well she can multitask lecturing with... everything else. As she pulls off her gun and holster and kicks out of her boots, she explains onwards, "I'm not a hard person for them to track down. They've done it before, and I still don't know how I managed to escape with my life. Who knows, maybe I'm living on borrowed time." And she might be. Free of that heavy Desert Eagle, Whip doesn't catch herself letting herself indulge in a stretch, her torso elongating briefly and an inch of skin momentarily blinking between the hem of her t-shirt and her dusty jeans. Most of it is heavily scarred. "There's being optimistic, and then there's just being smart, and I could probably calculate my own eventual inevitability when it comes to crossing paths with NESTS. And I like you, so I'm not prepared to put you in the middle of that."
She pauses a moment, then sets her gun down beside her disheveled coat, pretty much deciding she trusts this mysterious K' with all her heart, since about two minutes ago when he told her his story and mentioned his sister. It's the reason why she hasn't pushed him back out the door, at least not yet. She is going soft.
"Besides," Whip adds as she retreats into the kitchen, "I think I'm bad luck."
Whip steps in frowning, getting up close with her sincerity, and K' visibly stiffens. Her proximity is instantly unsettling to him, and K' tenses a little like he wants to back away. And he almost -does- twitch away when her arm abruptly lifts; not because he expects to be struck, but because he can barely even handle a mundane touch. He only relaxes when her hand merely reaches around him to check and secure the locks. He watches her blankly as she settles back, her stance relaxing, and turns her back on him.
That, more than any word she could have spoken to him, assures him that she trusts him... and trusts him to stay a while. The kind of people Whip and K' are don't turn their backs on others unless they're certain they won't grow a sudden knife between their shoulderblades.
But what? she asks. His reply is slow in coming. "...but I don't want to see you back on it." His response comes out reluctantly, roughly, but it does. "Even if you're easy to find, right now they've got no reason. What happens when they do, Whip?" His yellow eyes cut through her lecturing tone, willful and stubborn in their overprotective determination. "I'm willing to risk seeing you, because other than Maxima, you're the only person I know who went through something like what I did. I take the consequences of knowing somebody I can actually talk to." He silences then, but there's another part to his determination not to stop seeing her. It's the part that's resolved to stop any bad consequences rebounding on -her-.
His eyes follow her movements, indifferent and clinical in their regard. She goes through the motions of making herself at home-- perhaps, by doing so, subtly inviting him to do the same-- but he doesn't do much more than take a few more steps into the apartment so he isn't standing right in the entryway. "Besides," he continues darkly after a long pause, his head lifting at a stubborn tilt as a humored smirk pulls at the corner of his mouth, "I don't like people telling me what to do. I'll worry about what I want."
He watches her vanish into the kitchen, and only then does he let his gaze drift away. It scans the apartment again, his eyes narrowing in that everpresent wariness. After a time, his everpresent paranoia satisfied, he finally opts to comment on her parting words. His brow furrows slightly in bemusement. Bad luck? "...why?" is his judicious inquiry into the matter.
Why? he asks.
"Coffee or beer?" Whip answers, peeking her head out of the kitchen and smiling pleasantly. She pauses a moment, both her dark eyes aimed on K', watching him stand there and prepare to give a bunch of two-by-fours lessons in stiffness. She exhales noisily, amused. "You don't need coffee."
She leans back and disappears again. There's a small rattle, and the telltale sound of a refrigerator door opened and closed, and Whip resurfaces, intent on her mission to make K' something of an alcoholic. At least for stout. As she walks past, she reaches out to stuff a cold lager in his hands -- Guinness as always -- before she beelines directly for the couch, sinking right into it like they're already good friends. The old springs creak, but she doesn't seem to mind, lifting her legs to rest her socked feet on the living room table. Her rented apartment infested with K''s or not, Whip intends to relax.
"Hmff, you know," she intones dryly as she leans forward, bracing the lid of her lager against the coffee table, lining it up very carefully before she smacks down against it with her heel. "...You're a bit of a brat." The bottle pops open, and she takes a deep, grateful drink of icy beer, relishing in it as the sound of rain hits the curtained window panes behind her. "It's silly to worry about me. I'm a soldier. I choose the lifestyle. But you're right about there being consequences. And I don't think I could protect you from them," she explains casually, matter-of-factly, though her eyes avert away. Her voice lowers into a half-mutter, not meant for him to hear, even if he still can. "I can barely protect myself some days."
Exhaling, she drapes an arm over the couch, propping her chin up with her knuckles, taking some time before she finally glances back to K'. "Listen, I'm not sure why I trust you, but I do. If you don't have a place to boondogle for tonight, you're welcome to crash here. My previous warnings notwithstanding, I don't think we're going to be facing the ninth ring of the Cartel in Killarney."
...that wasn't the answer he was expecting. K' looks almost taken aback for a moment when Whip peeks out of her kitchen with that pleasant inquiry, a blank blink his sole response. Before he can get his bearings again and bristle over the sudden change in topic, she's already assessed his tightly-wound state and wisely decided on a depressant rather than a stimulant.
In the next moment, he finds himself holding a bottle of lager, and Whip comfortably ensconced on the couch. He frowns at the hapless object in his hand a moment, brow furrowing with a strict intensity at it, before he gives up and gives in to his sister's attitude of determined, laid-back relaxation. Still, the manner in which he circles around the living room table is a little stiff, and when he settles on the couch himself-- keeping a decided distance between himself and Whip-- it's only because there's no other furniture in the room.
Seizing the lid of his own bottle in his right hand, he shifts his grasp about a little in a mildly-experienced manner until the lid catches on a seam in his metal glove. Ratcheting his grip firmly shut, K' manually pops the lid clear off with a quick upwards wrench. Don't ask how he figured out he could do this, but it's one of the only things the glove is good for (beyond preventing him from sending up his surroundings in a blazing inferno, anyway). Disgruntledly, he takes a drink-- right about the time Whip calls him a brat. Instantly offended, flaring irritably, he somehow manages not to choke... but it still takes him a second before he can level an angry glare on Whip.
"What? How the hell does that make me a brat?" he demands. "And this isn't about you protecting me. If anything, it should be me--" He stops, knowing it's futile before he even finishes. She's already shot his argument about protecting her down, and he knows it. She -did- choose the life of a soldier: a life of danger, a life in the crosshairs, a life that accepts it could end at any minute. But nonetheless, there's something that's been worrying at him, and slowly, haltingly, it eventually comes out, his voice a reluctant grit around emotions that-- for once-- aren't just self-serving and selfish. "I don't want them after you just cause I talked to you one too many times."
He falls into an echoing kind of silence after that. A moody, deep-seated frustration with this turn of events paints its way across his features, his confused nature at war with itself behind his narrowed eyes. Eventually he just lapses back into what's most familiar to him, for lack of knowing what else to do: a studied, cool nonchalance. A shoulder lifts in a shrug. "I don't know why I trust you either." Or why he feels a lot of other things when it comes to her-- things which well up treacherously out of his blanked memory from some unknown source. "But-- I will." A long pause-- and then, a sardonic, amused breath. "At the least, if something does happen... I'll know about it fast if I'm here."
Though she's far from admitting it, Whip is intensely curious about K', and can't even help herself but witness his unusual way of cracking open a lager. Good-humoured, it doesn't take much to make her smile, but she stops herself before making a wry comment about the display. She likes him, so she feels less inclined to bring up that bulky glove of his. It's got to be a raw subject, one that doesn't deserve her poor attempts of humour.
Despite the beer in her system, she feels suddenly sobered, almost chilly along her arms, as a familiar shyness starts to creep in. Whip preoccupies herself with staring at her own hands, and not the strangely-familiar boy beside her. At least until he gets all sputtery. And that breaks the ice that was threatening to form; she can't snuff the first and instantaneous laugh that pearls out of her, to quick for even the palm she quickly raises to her mouth. The look on his face is priceless. She peeks back amiably through his glaring, her grinning starting out apologetic before it gets its belligerence back.
"You're a brat," Whip clarifies gladly, "because you're still arguing with me when you know I'm right." Without thinking, she reaches out to give his shoulder a friendly squeeze, his token earned for making her laugh. Even with the Ikari to loosen her up over the months, this mercenary touches others very rarely.
Taking her hand back, she relaxes once more, imbibing more of her beer and settling into the rickety couch. She leans her head back, her dark hair fluffed a little against the canvassy fabric, the white line of her exposed, and somewhat scarred, throat leading a highway straight up to her eyes, which stare directly up on the ceiling above.
"Hey," she asks after a heartbeat, when it's settled that he's going to be her company for the rest of the day. "Tell me something about yourself, something you remember, or something you learned about yourself along the way." She pauses for an instant, and only one, still gazing straight on up. But a sudden thought hits her, her face creasing with a faraway expression, and Whip doesn't give K' time to answer her, because now she's asking something else. "Tell me about your sister...do you remember what she looks like? Or is it all you know, or swear by your gut, is that she exists out there?"
It's a good thing Whip has the perceptiveness not to ask too many questions, despite her understandable curiosity about her moody, mysterious new companion. An intensely private individual, K' doesn't handle inquisitiveness well, and prodding inquiries about his glove in particular tend to get him angry fast. If ever he wants to talk about the thing that's shackled around his right hand... he'll bring it up himself.
He doesn't seem to notice the girl's sudden attack of shyness, nor the awkwardness it engenders, instead attacking the contents of his bottle with a hilarious sort of determined focus. He'd never been much of a beer person, by his own admission, tending to prefer harder liquors and the kind of stuff that tasted like burnt tires, but Whip might convert him yet. Long as it's porter, anyway.
And then she teases him-- and laughs at his indignation. K' bristles immediately like a spraybottled cat, his jaw tightening and his brow furrowing in irritation. "Hmmph," is his articulate response, the boy settling sulkily into a deep slouch and licking a stubborn bit of foam from a canine. The couch complains a bit as he virtually crushes it beneath the weight of his slumped, scowling disapproval. "Think what you want. It's not gonna change -my- mind."
He stews there a moment in his own delusions of correctness, toying with his half-empty bottle, when he suddenly feels that touch on his shoulder. He twitches out of pure instinct, his eyes flicking immediately over to see what it is that's got ahold of him; he registers that it's just Whip, and after a few tense moments he gradually, cautiously, relaxes. He watches the hand warily as it retracts, but oddly he doesn't seem to object to it having been on him in the first place. A rarity, to be sure, when dealing with K'.
Choosing to forget it happened, he lets his eyes shift back front and center. Eventually, they drift closed with a heavy sigh. Settled on his end of the couch, long legs splayed carelessly before him in the space-devouring lounge characteristic to all tall boys, he almost... feels secure enough to let down his perpetual guard. Almost. But the sudden sound of Whip's voice again, breaking the silence, stirs him out of what could have been the start of a doze.
He doesn't even have time to think about her first question before she asks another, one that sobers him instantly. His gloved hand tightens slightly on the bottle with a minute *clink* of glass against metal. "Since I got out of NESTS," he starts, after a long and troubled silence, "I'd have dreams sometimes, about memories from when I was a kid. There's always a little girl in them... always crying--" a breathless, bleak chuckle, "--and always calling me her brother."
His eyes crack open slightly. A hint of muted gold peeks from beneath his lashes. "I don't know if it's real, or if it's just something that got planted in my mind. I read that people like us, people with amnesia, they -do- remember things from long ago better than they do things in recent memory. But I don't know." He shrugs, helplessly. "I just don't know for sure."
Another few moments of silence. Breathing out a long sigh, K' leans back and lets his eyes travel over to Whip. He watches her a short while, before he decides that it's her turn to share. "What do you know about your brother?"
Very studiously, Whip looks away as K' speaks, her face turned away from him. Her head leaned against her hand, her lips pressed against her knuckles, she busies herself with staring a hole through one unpainted wall. She nearly regrets asking him about his lost sister, because hearing the story hits her harder than she realized. It's got to be the beer hitting her; her finished lager bottle rests inside her other hand, leaned emptily against her leg.
But drunk or sober, she's always hated how easily she cries. After all she's seen and all she's done, crying should be the last thing she'd ever do. Soldiers don't cry. But the tears always seem to find her, and with her head turned away, she wipes discreetly at them, otherwise quiet.
His last question resonates loudly; it's only fair that she answers. Whip pauses before doing so, both because she's reluctant to say and that she can't seem to find the words. She's never told anyone about this. She's never ever gotten the chance to discuss such a thing, to be able to have someone sitting there who would be able to understand. It's enough to give anyone cold feet.
"I don't know anything," she confesses quietly after a long time. She still doesn't dare look his way, her own dark eyes hidden as they gaze far away. She frowns against her knuckles. "I don't even know what he looks like. I might have passed him on the street and never known. Isn't that silly?" She laughs a little, in a sad way. "But I know I have a brother. I've known ever since that first moment when I was alive. I've never dreamed about him, but he's kept me sane through some hard times."
K' waits on Whip to be ready to talk, patient in a way he almost never is except when around her. If he notices her tears, they go uncommented upon, his yellowy eyes resting solely on her hair because her face is so determinedly turned away. He watches her a while, not because he holds any particular understanding or astute perceptiveness about what he can see, but because there's very little else to do in this cramped apartment.
And maybe, he's just as curious about her as she is about him.
When she finally, haltingly confesses what little she knows, he listens in silence. Isn't that silly, she asks him. And despite it being a rhetorical question, he answers, and a bit shortly at that, with a curt "No." He shifts a little in his seat, moodily, his gaze skating away to linger half-liddedly on the carpet, before he continues. "You know already that I know how it is. I can't remember what my sister looked like, either. I can never make that girl out. All I remember is she was there."
Time passes, soundless moments ticking by. K' says nothing. But when he finally talks again, his weary voice seems to string through with a new sort of resolve. "I've got tired of wondering. Got tired of just knowing things and not having them-- of having things, and not knowing why." His head dips thoughtfully, bangs obscuring his eyes as he muses visibly, that grey mist sinking in his eyes. "If I could get back in a NESTS facility... see if they had a file on me. See what was in it..." He shakes his head. "They -have- to have records. -Somewhere-."
That sort of talk earns her attention. Whip, with her eyes still looking a little raw, turns a surprised glance over on K'. Her expression is heavy and grave. She frowns like old men do, the kind that have lived enough to know better.
"That's a suicide mission what you're talking about," she replies slowly, carefully, her uneasy voice walking along thin ice. "First of all, it'd be like finding a needle in a haystack. And then, second, you have to realize that the level of information on that scale would be secreted so far down... you'd have to go right into the belly of the beast. I got into one of their facilities. The things I saw in there..."
Whip needs another beer. Right now. She rises determinedly, pushing off from the couch with a bit of a ragged sigh, voicing the complaints of some of her more tired, alcohol-soggy muscles. She crosses the living room briskly, making her way back to the kitchen and talking the entire way. "And just say you find this place, which could be anywhere on the globe, and you, through sheer luck, manage to get in and find what you're looking for. How do you get back out?" she asks as she disappears behind the corner, her question punctuated by the sound of the refrigerator opening.
"Getting in and getting out are two different roulette draws. And the second one is..." her voice dies off.
Whip squints at her emptied refrigerator. Well, emptied of beer. She frowns, leaning briefly against the door in irritation, closing it and stewing a moment before she remembers her sentence. "--A whole lot deadlier."
A moment later, she ambles on back out, distractedly tying her dark hair back with an elastic, her messy bangs and some too-short tresses escaping to frame her softly-featured face. "If you ask me," Whip returns with that lecturing edge, always so full of unsolicited advice, "this way might be the long road, but it's a safer one. And you don't escape NESTS just to lose your life to them in the end. I'm sure--" she continues, before her own voice hitches. Wrong choice.
Whip tries again: "I hope--"
Still not right.
"I have faith... that we'll find what's been taken from us." She slips him a quick, almost apologetic glance as she admits this, reaching for her coat and shouldering it back on. "It's just going to take a while."
Even in the face of Whip's world-weary, incredulous skepticism, K' never lets go his resolute, hardened look. Head lowered such that his chin nearly rests on his chest, eyes narrowed straight forward in a piercing focus on something intangible, K' seems lost in that fixated, willful intensity that is so foreign to Whip: a girl of quiet moderation. He broods quietly through Whip's hesitant words, neither trying to discredit the truth of them, nor admitting she's completely right.
No, he only really has one response he can give.
"I know," he says eventually, his voice faintly sharp and endlessly bitter, "what they have in their facilities. I was the product of one. I was kept in one until they felt like letting me out... I ran away from one in order to get to where I am now." And considering how hard it was that time-- when the facility was poorly-staffed, his movements less restricted, and his defection unexpected-- he knows it'd be virtually impossible for him to get out of one were he to invade it as an unwelcome, high-profile traitor.
And he admits it. "So I know it's stupid. Impossible." He finally glances up as he notes her departure from his side, his eyes watching her puttering around the apartment with an unusual sort of attentiveness. There's no indication of it in his eyes-- no softening, no gentling, nothing that would give it away-- but somehow, it looks like he's gotten attached to her.
He breathes out a sigh as Whip shrugs on her jacket. With an indifferent tilt of his head, he shrugs off her glance and its implicit apology: making no effort either to stop her leaving, or to accompany her. "I just don't know if I can live with ifs," he finishes, eventually. "And I definitely know I hate waiting."
"You can. You'll learn," Whip advises, imparting sage advice around a quiet smile that doesn't look any older than twenty years of age. She arranges her holstered desert eagle and finishes buttoning up her suede coat. Slipping into her cowboy boots, she shoots K' a final glance, her voice relaxed into less careful conversation. "And speaking of waiting, I'm just going down the street to grab some more beer. Maybe pick up dinner for us. Make yourself home, all right? I shouldn't be any longer than a half hour. If you get bored, kick the T.V until it works."
The young woman disappears momentarily into her bedroom, retrieving a heavy, battered handbag whose contents get checked surreptitiously. Then, with no further preamble, she briskly walks back to the front door, grabbing a handful of keys and tossing K' an amiable wave over her shoulder. Soon, she's gone.
And Whip is grateful for the first fresh breathe of air she gets out of that apartment. It was getting pretty heavy in there.
Ten minutes later, and it's still raining hard in Killarney, Ireland. The skies are a heavy, gunmetal grey, and the old, thatched houses with their peeling paint look darker, bleaker when weighed with water. There's few bodies about, most of them armed with umbrellas, all except for Whip. Looking much like the unprepared tourist, it's more that she doesn't really seem to mind the pouring wet. After the seasonal torrents in South America, you're prepared for anything. She walks along the streetside, hands in her coat pockets, her handbag drooping off one shoulder, a bagged parcel hanging from her other elbow, and her dark, ponytailed hair soaked wet. Still, she's smiling curiously to herself, her dark eyes trying to pick out the cleanest-looking fish and chips market from all the pubs.
And she's not alone. Oh there were passerbys hurrying on their own way and quickly vanishing again into apartments, stores, the like, never lingering long to keep her company. But there was another who had forgone the use of an umbrella, embracing the rain without the kind of joy she seemed to garner from allow it to soak her through. Perhaps she found something enlivening in the crisp chill of it, where as the youth with slicked dark hair seemed to draw nothing but an acceptance that very little in the world was more than this dank wet depression of trapped supression. His gaze left little to guess just who it was he watched, the intensity behind it almost on par with a feral kind of obession. The person stood in her way, in the middle of the her path, the brightness of his clothing at odds with the general atmosphere and aura lurking about the teenager.
There was nothing friendly about him, infact, there was every reason to have her hackles up and on edge. His mouth was thinned and drawn down, a hand tucked into a pocket, there was nothing at ease about his stance. He was coiled not unlike a spring but there would leave little doubt in Whip's mind...This boy, he knew her. He knew and was waiting.
K9999 had recognised the agent from the pictures, not entirely familiar with just who she was, the clone wasn't exactly the poster boy for reading up in advance when he could avoid it. But he knew the important facts, she stood between him and K' who was here. Just the little difficulty of the exact location...following her was an option naturally, but then. K9999 was more of a direct individual, skulking was far less enjoyable than beating the answers out of another. Whatever their connection, he hoped it was strong...
So he could hurt K' all the better.
Whip has always been someone ruled by her mind. Gut feelings come and go and intuition was something she never had the patience for; in the end, she relies on little more than her own common sense.
And she doesn't even need that to tell her something is very wrong. As she strides contently down the street, using her forearm to rub rainwater off her forehead, the mist rising from the pavement soon parts enough to show her another figure, the outline of one, unmoving and watching her. A cold shock spiders down her back, and within a heartbeat, Whip has gone from easy-going to edgy, every muscle in her body going taut, every joint trying to lock down. She narrows her eyes, trying to make out the figure -- the young man, it seems -- ahead, and not liking a single word written by his body language.
Killarney could have been a trap, she thinks, as she keeps walking, keeps on heading slowly towards him. She can't back off now; it'd be too conspicuous, if her paranoia is right. She most certainly can't lead him back to the apartment. She has to keep going forward, and make her decision in the next few, crucial moments whether it's going to be her or him who makes the first move.
Or, if she's got any luck left at all, neither of them. But who is she kidding.
There is no deliberate, ovart change to Whip's slow walk, no quick steeling of her casual display. But her face is guarded, and her eyes are watchful, and as she grows closer, she makes a single, discreet movement, one hand sliding from her coat pocket and reaching under the jacket at her side, unclipping the holster around her hidden weapon.
"Where is he?"
His voice rang out with no hint to a request, it was an accusation, an order, it demanded with the roughness of one who lacked impatience and barely hung onto it by a threat. K9999's eyes bored into that of the young woman, perhaps a familiar enough hue of crimson, difficult to tell if she could see this from her closing distance and the curtain of rain. Either way, it wouldn't be difficult to make out his question and just who it was addressed too. If he was bothered by her reaching for something, it didn't show, instead he was focusedo on her face. If she made to continue walking, to sidestep, he would block her by intercepting, keeping ahead and infront of her.
"Answer me truthfully and I might spare you." He had no such plans. The clone intended to beat someone into the pavement today, and if it wasn't K', then Whip would suffice, whatever her ties. Besides, he had to be sure that he had the correct information, and if she'd lied to him...then he'd gotten the pain in before. It worked out all very neatly in his head.
This was probably the only chance Whip would get, K9999 couldn't be reasoned with. Not by her. His past failings had been far from pleasant when reported, NESTs wasn't a gentle overlord. The rewards were there for a job well done, but more often than not...it was the stick not the carrot. The hate lay etched within every sinew of his being, the heat behind it far from quelled in the wetness of the rain. If anything, it only enhanced the unyielding edge, the sharp contrasts a promise of what was to come.
When Whip makes that last step forward, and this suspicious young man moves to block her path, her decision has been made. She stops in her tracks, her eyes narrowing, and not because of the pouring rain that is rolling down her face. She stares at K9999 with a patient sort of resolve, her lips pursing, her stance straightening imperceptively, and her free, unpocketed hand hanging at her side.
NESTS or not, someone's found her, and they're not intending to make nice. And what's worse is she knows immediately she won't be protecting just herself today. There's also K'. This isn't good.
Then K9999 speaks to her. That threat absolves her of any remaining indecision of what needs to be done. Whoever he's working for, whatever he wants, there's only one way to find out. Her teeth grit a moment.
One moment later, she's suddenly, skillfully reaching backward for the holster hidden under her suede coat, making a thousand-time-practised movement of drawing her monstrous Desert Eagle to try to aim straight on the boy.
"How about I ask the questions, freak," Whip entreats before she fires at him.
COMBATSYS: Whip has started a fight here.
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Whip 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: K9999 has joined the fight here.
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K9999 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Whip
COMBATSYS: K9999 fails to slow Desert Eagle from Whip with Get out of my sight!.
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K9999 0/-------/------=|-------\-------\0 Whip
What felt like only moments behind the crack of a gun being fired, the air rain swept up in a rush at odds with the direction, steaming slightly as if being run through a sudden surge of temperature, but whatever had caused it never fully came through to fruitation. By the time it would reach whip, it was like a summers caress, a hint to the warmth of the season and not the vicious firey blast of a volcanic desert. The youth's body snapped around as if struck by some invisible blow, staggered back a step as his right shoulder wrested behind him. He remained standing, his chin turned down along with his gaze, his hands open with fingers slightly curled. Suprise flickered briefly across his features as a faint bloom of red began to form before it was washed into a thin trickle down his chest, barely getting a chance to stain the virbant orange of his fitted shirt.
The pain was nothing to him, but the angered that had sputtered only in that brief interim interrupted by the suprise, returned in full force. The bitch had /shot/ him. /Shot/ him! "Is that all?" His voice deteriorating into a raw snapping snarl, he laughed briefly, rough and abrasive. "You think that's going to be enough? Not NEARLY ENOUGH!" The last a yell, "I'm under no obligation to take orders from you. I'm going to enjoy this, I hope you can last long enough, questions or not." Whatever she needed to do, clearly, Whip would require more than just one shot to the teenagers chest. As if this was unexpected, if K' was any measure of the kind of persons he would have hounding him...she was certainly in for a fight.
The Desert Eagle sure has a kick, but Whip aims it one-handed, already introducing herself the type that shoots first and asks questions later. It's the only sensible way to survive. She angles her stance, immediately going on the defensive, expecting a sure reprisal for her boldness. And though it doesn't quite come, not this time, she sure feels what is no doubt in store for her, if she makes a mistake in these next crucial minutes. She can feel the unnatural heat against her arms and face, and tries to see through the mist it makes of the cold, Irish rain.
But Whip doesn't let her nerves reach her face. Is that all? "Not nearly enough," she replies curtly, still aiming her gun.
Then her new aggressor then tells her that her smoking gun is far from enough. At that, Whip's mouth haunts with the ghost of a smirk. She replies matter-of-factly, "I was hoping you'd say that. Try to keep up."
In one brisk movement, she's reholstered her gun, her hand exchanging it to swiftly reach into the handbag on her shoulder. Whip tosses it away after she retrieves the coiled, blue length of a bullwhip, its heavy leather slapping down on the wet concrete. Voodoo has come out to play.
Quickly, savagely, there's little time before she makes her next move, following up her promise with a snap of her arm. That long whip suddenly animates, cracking into life and swung towards K9999. She tries to aim a stinging strike at him, the sharpened end of the leather attempting to catch and wrap around his neck. If it manages to connect, she gives the line a vicious wrench, aiming to try to reel the boy on in for a brutal roundhouse kick aimed at the face.
COMBATSYS: K9999 blocks Whip's Strength Shot - Yuuetsu.
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K9999 0/-------/------=|-------\-------\0 Whip
She must be so sure of herself, Whip's confience no doubt stoked by the success of her initial forray. K9999 had already forgotten the hole where the bullet had lodged itself , just high enough to prevent him from hacking up a lung just yet. She didn't want to kill him dead just yet, probably wanting answers as much as he...the difference was, perhaps, he was more willing to kill her without getting them. How hard was it to find a tanned white-haired leather wearing youth? With enough money to throw around, not too.
Drawing his lips back in what could have been a smile, instead he bared his teeth in a manner more akin to a snarl, he also made no attempt to avoid the snaking sinuous length that snapped out towards him, finding the area of his neck and catching the 'collar' he wore, or odd scarf. It remained tucked away, instead pressing against his skin. He was wrested foward in a manner that to trained eyes promised he'd allowed himself to be drawn in, stepping willingly instead of hauling back like a stubborn animal. His arm came up to meet the other's leg without any rush or hesitation at all, pinning her with a glare.
"You'll learn..." Was all he said, the arm he'd held behind him literally unravelling. The black bands reformed into a wicked point, a spear where his fingers and hand should be and this close, ensnared by her namesake he drove it foward without bothering to take careful aim. Being hit anywhere with that would hurt more than fierce.
COMBATSYS: K9999 successfully hits Whip with Shut up!.
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K9999 0/-------/-----==|====---\-------\0 Whip
Whip can already feel her attack going wrong, and she doesn't like it. But there's no time for cold feet. She can't stop her own momentum and pull that kick she has aimed on the youth. He blocks it with apparent ease, already foreshadowing the fight she has in store. She sneers in reply to his quiet promise, already trying to disengage before he demonstrates an action to back up his words.
Then something happens. Whip has seen quite a bit in her life, but she's never, ever seen anything like this. His arm seems to come to life of its own, like life breathed into a monster, and it mutates with a sickly sound, rearranging itself before her eyes. They widen, the angry, severe look on her face replaced with shock. What the hell is he? What the hell -- is that?!
Giving Voodoo a tug to disengage it, she tries to step quickly, already planning not to let his arm -- or whatever it is -- get anywhere near her. But she's brought herself in too close. The raining sidewalk is slippery under her boots. And K9999 is fast.
Whip only has the time to cough out a surprised, pained sound as his transformed arm punctures into her, burrowing right into her shoulder. The force of the blow skids the young woman backwards, her frame trying desperately to absorb the shock of it as she drops to one knee. Blood wells up, already staining her suede coat. And she hisses, gritting her teeth against the agony of it, already telling herself to get back up and keep moving.
"What -- the hell -- ARE you?" She tries to spit out, her eyes still flared with disbelief. Gritting her teeth, she tries to move forward, wanting to free herself of that arm-turned-spear more than anything else, to make space between them and fast. She can't let him get this close again. Grimacing, and unable to call Voodoo back to life just yet, her other arm moves quickly, pulling a hidden knife free from her own body and making a desperate swipe, trying to plunge the blade at K9999's abdomen -- anything, just long enough to pluck herself free from his arm and move rapidly back.
COMBATSYS: Whip has saved the state of this fight.
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K9999 0/-------/-----==|====---\-------\0 Whip
A struggle of life and death unfolds in the soaked streets of Killarney. The rainwater streaming through the gutters starts to run red, copious blood already drawn.
MEANWHILE...
Lightning cracks the sky, and several blocks' worth of distance away K' startles visibly. He's quick to relax, though, an exasperated, embarrassed hand slapping over his face. A muffled curse works its way past his fingers.
For the first few minutes after Whip had stepped out the door, K' had maintained his uncomfortable, slouched seat on the far right corner of the couch with a nervous, pulled-in sort of stiff formality completely out of context, given he's totally alone. K' has been -trying- to relax-- but like a cat suffering a sudden and totally unexpected bout of separation anxiety, he just can't seem to unwind. He keeps fearing some trap that's yet to be sprung. He's on edge for so many reasons he can't even articulate them to himself. He's nervous something will happen to her, nervous something will happen to -him-, nervous because he's alone in a girl's apartment and he has no idea what to do with himself.
His eyes half-lid. Several more minutes pass in which he studiously inspects the opposite wall. Then, in a deliberate sort of way, he huffs out a self-castigating scoff and stretches languorously in a decidedly feline manner, folding his spine and raking his limbs forward with a gusty sigh. He slumps into a hunched-over seat afterwards, elbows rested on his knees, one hand reached up to mess his silver hair agitatedly. It flops right back into place as soon as his hand pulls clear, and irritatedly K' blows a loose bang out of his right eye.
She said thirty minutes. He'll give her exactly that long before he goes looking for her, just in case.
That decision made, K' seems to calm down... marginally. He squints at the TV balefully a moment, as if debating trying to get it to work; but deciding he doesn't feel like making a fool of himself by kicking at the dilapidated set, he gives up on that avenue of diversion.
A few seconds pass. Furiously, he thinks.
Eventually he sits up straight-- hilariously alert for the space of a few seconds-- and peers around the bare apartment. Nothing of note. He subsides back into obscurity, almost self-consciously, seemingly cowed by the unresponsiveness of his surroundings.
Good thing Whip didn't leave anything embarrassing lying around.
Inevitably, K'... gets bored. Pent up like a housecat, he does what most housecats would do in such an unexciting situation as this. He tilts over sideways, gone loose-limbed with the sudden contentment that accompanies abandonment of all pretense, and sprawls all six feet of him on his back across the couch.
COMBATSYS: K9999 has saved the state of this fight.
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K9999 0/-------/-----==|====---\-------\0 Whip
COMBATSYS: Whip successfully hits K9999 with Medium Strike.
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K9999 0/-------/---====|====---\-------\0 Whip
K9999 was laughing openly now, enlivened by the bright splash running down the length of the realigned arm. He could feel the warmth of it trickling down before being washed away by the rain. He yearned to feel that again, his eyes gripping hers even as she sought to escape the deadliness of his proximity. "What am I? Why I'm flesh and blood, human...just like you." His voice all lighthearted and near bouncy died to a trickled razor across flesh. Those last three words seemed to hold some kind of bitter irony for the teenager and by the way he'd wrench his arm free even as she surged foward, he had a lot more planned for the woman. You'd think he were accustomed to the shock anyone would show after witnesses his abillity to literally shape-shift his limbs, there might have even been a bit of pride...but the reminders of just what he was always came at its own price.
A price he liked to exact on his foes, and victims.
So preoccupied was he that he realised too late the other's vicious physical rebuttal, his arm unable to block in its unravelling reforming-state. The knife plunged home and he choked, falling back off of it as he clutched the new injury, water scattering when his foot skirted the ground. If looks could kill. "Bitch!" He spat, blood dissipating in the puddled water, "I'd considered just beating answers out of you before, now, I think I'm just going to leave your body as a message." That self-same arm writhed again, this time seeking out a shape that would put her little gun to shame...
"DIE DIE DIE!" Each screeched chant puntuated by the explosive rounds of chi fired in a blitzing strafe. Woe for any nearby buildings or shops.
COMBATSYS: K9999 successfully hits Whip with You get lost too!.
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K9999 0/-------/------=|=======\===----\1 Whip
It hurts so much. She feels heavier with that drillbit arm gouged into her. Glaring back balefully, only taking the littlest, most flinching of glances off her new aggressor to survey the area, the young woman grimaces but otherwise holds her ground, a mix of her shock, the cold rain, and the ongoing fight allowing her to forget some of her pain.
She forgets the rest when she parses what he said to her. 'Just like her.' Confused, feeling suddenly colder, Whip can only just stare at K9999 through the rain, her face pale, her eyes hard. What the hell does that mean? She's not sure, but she doesn't like the sound of it. "I doubt it," she spits back venomously, "especially if you're part of the Cartel."
And she moves. Leaving behind one of her hidden knives, Whip grimly, crisply extricates herself off K9999's arm, freeing herself with a sneer of pain and a gout of blood. She backs away quickly, one hand pressed against her bleeding wound, the other lashing Voodoo to call the whip back, winding it deftly around her forearm. Breathing shallowly, shaking her head to clear the rainwater out of her eyes, she readies herself, knowing she probably has moments before he thanks her for the knife.
And he does.
That arm reforms, and squinting, she swears it looks just like a -- oh shit.
Her eyes widened, Whip moves fast, trying to skid across the pavement and escape the exploding chi rounds behind a parked car. But she's just not fast enough. The volleying shots rip past, tearing through her clothes and biting into her body with sprays of blood. Instead of finding herself slid behind the car for safety, she finds herself thown against it from the onslaught, pressed there and forced to take it until the attack is over. There she chokes, both from surprise and sudden agony, slipping down to her knees and letting a mouthful of blood hit the pavement, quickly diluted into the rain. Gasping, she slowly looks back up, blinking her eyes until they can finally focus on K9999. Her mouth purses. Contrary to his requests, she doesn't look ready to die just yet.
She has to move. If she can't beat this guy, then she's going to have to start leading him away. She has to do something while she can still move.
Smearing blood away from her mouth, Whip finds her mouth to gravel back, "...Gotta catch me first."
Calling forward stamina she doesn't even know how she possesses, Whip pushes herself to her feet, Voodoo unravelling as she takes fierce, running steps toward K9999. She tries to charge the youth, and perhaps even past him, as through her momentum she flexes one arm and brings her weapon into play. Her whip curls viciously through the air and tries to catch him, again, around the throat. Hoping for it to connect, she's already reefing violently on the line as she runs, attempting to haul and throw the boy overhead -- right through the side of the nearest building.
COMBATSYS: K9999 dodges Whip's Zed.
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K9999 0/-------/------=|=======\====---\1 Whip
Shattered glass, shattered car, a body not quite broken, but it would be. It would be. The chanting had faded away to a crazed yell, only halting when the rapid gunfire silenced itself. K9999 was breathing heavily now, the swell of chi having since been channled away towards and into the unfortunate Whip. This time though, he was ready when she retaliated, his arm having since slipped back into the dark plated metal like gloved form. His mouth was twisted into a mockery of a grin, the basest kind of primal pleasure from another's suffering. And the hate, that, that never truely left.
Cocking his head to the side, K9999 watched her struggle, "No cries for mercy? Not going to beg? Good. You're not making this any easier, more fun this way." Taunting her, he laughed again at her challenge and waited till she approached. The snaking whip darted through the air, but he twisted his body away as he dove into a roll, coming back up to his feet to her flank. He grunted at the pain such a move caused, but he took it in stride. "So how much as he told you?" No doubt about who 'he' is. The merest reference to K' was enough to up his anger enough, the frustration at being thwarted at every turn for exacting his vengence on the ex-NESTs agent. This is why this was so important here. This...woman, mattered, even a little.
"Are you his girlfriend?" Were they close. Very close. The more he thought about it, the more the air itself seemed to turn in on itself, and the veins at his temples wanted to throb. Building, all of it, building. "Funny, I didn't think he bothered."
COMBATSYS: K9999 gathers his will.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////// ]
K9999 0/-------/--=====|=======\====---\1 Whip
A sneer plays momentarily along her bloodied lips as Voodoo misses its mark, the young woman skidding to a stop along the raining pavement. She hunches slightly, forcing herself not to hold her bleeding side, not to favour a single limb, not to let any sensation touch her except for the fear and the outrage that will keep her head clear.
But the mention of K' doesn't seem to help that. Whip feels a quick, undisguised anger course through her; it happens on her so quickly she can do little but react to it, her expression darkening, her hand tightening on the handle of her weapon. "Forget about him," she replies sharply, already decided on protecting him, despite having only spoken to him about three times, to the best of her ability and her last conscious breath. "Everything I know I learned myself. I used to kill for the Cartel. Not until I realized how easy it is to walk away. NESTS is a joke."
A bitter smile haunts the corner of her mouth. Whip inhales sharply, giving her head a shake to scatter rainwater and the stinging pain, focusing to demonstrate every single one of her words to K9999. She ignores his question about being K''s girlfriend -- if she were not fighting for her life, the comment would seriously rankle her for reasons she's not sure of, but for now, she doesn't care about what isn't important. And what matters is doing the right thing. Whip didn't promise K' that she could protect him, but she's still going to try.
Voodoo snaps through the rain, a sudden twist of her arm calling the weapon to attempt a first strike at K9999. "Forget him and worry about ME!" Whip snarls as she charges forward once more, her weapon striking forward already to kill the distance between them. Out of nowhere, she transforms into a literal storm of stinging lashes of that whip, called back again and again and again by intricate turns of her arm and deflections off her shins and other forearm, her lean body twisting as she tries to redirect a flurry of blows the youth's way. She tries to go on and on at him, literally trying to rip into his body with her weapon, and not looking near finished until she hopes to paint the streets with his blood.
COMBATSYS: Whip successfully hits K9999 with Sonic Slaughter KW.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////// ]
K9999 1/------=/=======|-------\-------\0 Whip
Oh? So he'd hit a nerve! And a strong one at that. K9999 wouldn't forget, realising just how much deeper ingrained the two were with each other than initially thought. Any tool to use against K' would be grasped, and then there was that extra-- "You worked for NESTs?" Brief supise, the clone almost laughed again, "Wonderful!" Two birds with one stone. Anyone who escaped the 'cartel' was begging to be punished harshly, because they did what he could not. Not yet atleast, they'd never let him go, not like Maxima and K'.
The first whip crack, the teenager hunkered down on himself, pulling his body in to make it less of a target and he sought to close the distance. An attempt she make extreamly challenging with her unexpected storm of snapping lengths-- not once, not twice, but several times the sharp tongue scored his clothing seeking out the softer flesh beneath. Were it a dryer day, she might have met her goal of painting the street with his blood, instead it lightened immeadiately on hitting the gathered water. No matter the blows he weathered, he pulled in near enough to make her acknowledge him-- the light behind his gaze almost feverish. "You never walked away." What?
K9999 charged, sweeping in with a decoy kick as he spun on his heel, the real attack a metal-plated like fist to her cheek. "They let you because you weren't good enough!" As for K', evinced by his presence, K' was good enough.
COMBATSYS: Whip blocks K9999's Strong Punch.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////// ]
K9999 1/------=/=======|=------\-------\0 Whip
When her repeated attacks finally finish, the young woman punctuates it with harsh, ragged breathing, already feeling her body begin to tire. She staggers, her exhaustion bringing a new, exquisite edge to her pain, dragging one leg as she pushes one hand against her bleeding abdomen. The rain and her blood have already begun to stain her suede coat crimson.
She looks up, feeling a flare of despair to find K9999 still standing after her best attack. He's stronger than she first assumed. Could K' stand a chance against him? She's not sure. She doesn't want to find out. Whip refuses to be finished just yet. She refuses to have NESTS take another pound of her flesh.
Despite her tiring limbs, her eyes are still sharp, and she reads the deception in the youth's next attack. Instead of backing away to try to escape that kick, she steps foward, bringing up an arm and fiercing catching, and dissuading his punch with her forearm. His words just make her snarl. Whip starts to spit back, "Son of a--"
Then she kicks forward, firmly, trying to disengage their bodies and push him back far enough to allow her to call Voodoo forward, the whip snapping harshly before she redirects it to viciously, violently crack against his body. She turns her arm at the last moment, the end of the leather line attempting to catch K9999 by the leg. If she manages to connect, she reefs hatingly on her weapon, making a combination attempt of trying to trip him heavily to the ground and slam her boot right down at his face.
COMBATSYS: K9999 endures Whip's Strength Shot - Shouri.
[ \\\\\\\\\ < > //////// ]
K9999 1/---====/=======|===----\-------\0 Whip
Why should she be suprised? In her time working for NESTs she should have managed to garner a good idea of just what kind of machines of destruction they had been breeding. K' was no flowerpuff, he was as much a monster as K9999...or rather if he'd been left trapt there, worse. Whip didn't yet know that the two had already met, with the youth being the loser, that didn't make him any less determined. Sooner or later he would learn to control the power lurking in the depths of his genetically created body, and when he did...
K9999 hit the ground hard on his back, almost cracking his skull against the hard ground. Instead his breath was only knocked out of him, staring up at the blanket of grey skies, and then the battle-wearied Whip with no less determination etched across her features. He drew back his lips in a silent snarl, trying to roll away from her heavy boot...and only succeeds in having it land in the knife-wound. He spasmed at the suddeness of it, eyes widening as his organs bruised further.
His hand whipped out to try and grab Whip's leg, and hold her fast. The other one already beginning to shift again...except this time it wasn't anything focused, nothing as defined as the wicked spike or multi-muzzled gun. This was...sheer chaos. "You're worthless to us." Gasping out, his eyes were wild, crazed and simply unhinged. "But not to me...you'll send that message, ughh," the mess of flesh, bone and metal-wires interwoven between exploded with the strength of a train at full-tilt towards Whip, "WITH YOUR BROKEN BODY!" Howling out.
COMBATSYS: K9999 successfully hits Whip with Power... losing control!... YAH!.
[ \\\\\\\\\ < > ]
K9999 0/-------/-------|=======\=------\1 Whip
Whip can feel the heel of her boot sinking into that wound she gouged out of him. Her eyes narrowing, her bleeding mouth crooked, she punctuates it with a vicious twist. Anything to try to keep K9999's attention solely on herself. She tries to disguise her own encroaching fatigue, her body already signalling to her that she's pushed it as far as it wants to go. Her mind is getting fuzzy. Her eyes want to blur over. But she can't stop yet.
Despite her exhaustion, she feels herself sober the instant K9999 grabs her leg. Her eyes flare wide. Her lips part. Naked surprise slaps across her face. Whip seems to realize instantly what's going to happen. It was a ruse. He was luring her in. Oh shit--
Hearing that familiar slither of his other arm, seeing it shift at her peripherals, Whip makes a desperate struggle, getting a little frantic around the edges as she tries to free her leg, tries to get out of the way--
--but it's just too late. His arm suddenly festers and frankensteins into a giant, writhing, putrid mass of WHAT THE HELL IS THAT, and Whip is caught in the eye of it, the last breath she'd use to cry out choked out of her. It railroads straight into her, and there's little she can do but get thrust backwards, flung back through the air and straight through the window of a shop.
Glass smashes explosively, and the young woman skids backwards from the impact, leaving swathes and smears of blood in her wake. She crumples. People peek at her silent, and seemingly lifeless body as the crouch and try to hide under tables.
Reality doesn't return to Whip slowly and gently; it seems to strike her, fast, like a knife between the ribs. She opens her eyes and inhales sharply, coughing, hacking out blood, the taste of it making her remember where she is, and what she's up against. She lifts her head, one eye focused intently on K9999, trying to see him through the blood pouring out from the gash along her temple. Get up, a voice keeps telling her, even if Whip doesn't really know where it's coming from. Maybe her head. Get back up and keep going. You're not finished, soldier. Get the hell on your feet.
"Not... broken... yet," she gasps suddenly, raggedly, her voice a little wet as she pushes herself back to her feet. Her body is a soaked mess of blood and broken glass, the rest of the shattered window crunching underfoot as she limps forward. Voodoo drags from one clenched hand. "My body has only one message... and it says fuck you. And fuck NESTS."
She moves. Whip charges forward, vaulting out of the shop, snarling mindlessly as she forces her failing body into a run straight at K9999. She swings her arm in, Voodoo immediately lashing inwards to try to intercept him, and there she tries to impart him another storm of furious, unending strikes, as she tries to use her last, remaining few seconds of consciousness in trying to lash and barb and whip the blood out of him.
COMBATSYS: Whip can no longer fight.
[ \\\\\\\\\ <
K9999 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: K9999 dodges Whip's Red Whip Genocide.
[ \\\\\\\\ <
K9999 0/-------/-------|
With the last sickening squelch of flesh squirming back into place, K9999 gripped his shoulder, his fingers clenching a couple times as if to work back the proper feel into them. His tormentor had been brusquely removed without much ado, her body flying the distance to ruin someone's insurance premiums. The clone regained his feet with the kind of indomitable assurance of someone who was not through yet, his features twisted into one of hatred, a message for him instead? How presumptious. In her weakened state however, Whip was no threat, easily avoiding her frenetic last attempt to abuse him. He was there this time when she collapsed, her endurance finally succumbing and he gazed down at her, smiling. Oh what a smile.
He knelt, 'gloved' fingers cupping her face, all the better if she were unable to move but aware. "Worthless to the end, I hope you enjoyed the taste of futility." Glancing up at the worried onlookers, he shouted, "You tell him we're coming, tell him his bitch can't save him!" Roughly shoving her away he rose, "Give him my regards." No doubt at all who this 'he' was, atleast for Whip. Those who peered through the wreckage, well. They might figure it out.
COMBATSYS: K9999 has ended the fight here.
At about the ten-minute mark, the moment Whip laid eyes on K9999, K' had started getting restless and anxious, too nervous to sit still. He was feeling it in the back of his mind; something wasn't right. Sitting up warily, glancing around, he'd eventually pushed to an impatient stand and fallen into a cagey pace. He was starting to get concerned. Starting to second-guess his initial decision that it'd be safer she not be seen in his company. Thirty minutes, he tells himself. Thirty minutes and I'm going to look for her.
Ultimately, he doesn't even end up waiting that long. At twelve minutes K9999's first hit slams into Whip, and even so far distant, K' twitches and starts for the door; at thirteen minutes, a small cadre of NESTS agents decide to invite themselves in. As a unit, they enter the apartment as invaders; a few violent moments later, they leave it again as bodies.
Someday, NESTS would learn that sending these people after him was pretty much a waste... the functional equivalent of pouring lives down the drain like so much cold tea. However, the cartel does have other resources it can bring to bear-- dangerous, engineered creatures, much in the same vein as K' himself-- and K' -knows- any attempt on his life won't come without at least one of those resources attached.
Whatever desire K' had had to protect Whip by not being seen in her company evaporates instantly, replaced by a sudden certainty that she can't be safe unless she is -in- his company. He's out the door the moment that revelation sinks in, gone in an instant down the soaked streets in a hunt for the inevitable conflict, and it only takes several blocks before he starts seeing traces that replace his numb fear with fury.
K' arrives on the scene at a dead sprint, urgency and grim purpose written in every line of him. But as soon as he takes in the -details- of what's happened-- namely Whip's battered state, and the identity of the person responsible for it-- those initial, comparatively benign emotions get blasted to cinder by mindless rage. His anger crests in the last few yards between himself and K9999, K' lunging so fast he can feel the strain pulling at the few bullet-wounds he took from his earlier scuffle.
K' doesn't just want NESTS' latest fuckup to hurt for what he's done. He wants him to die, and he's more than willing to arrange for it.
K9999 receives very little warning that his message had been received far earlier than anticipated. K' is near-soundless in his initial lunging pounce, his lean frame carving forwards like a cat slamming with bone-cracking force into prey. As he bites a hand towards K9999's throat, seeking to vise a stranglehold on him with enough force to take the lighter boy clear off his feet and slam him into the ground, Whip's enraged brother seems to finally find his voice.
"If you really wanted to die today," K' informs K9999 in a deep snarl, "you should've saved yourself some time and come straight to me."
COMBATSYS: K' has started a fight here.
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K' 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: K9999 has joined the fight here.
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K9999 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 K'
COMBATSYS: K9999 blocks K''s Strong Throw.
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K9999 0/-------/------=|-------\-------\0 K'
The clone didn't mind having the message sent to K' with efficiency in the slightest, on the other hand, not even he expected it to have reached /that/ quickly. Already battered and bleeding, the pain frim his lower abdomen had reached the point where it was a hard to ignore constant thrum, numbing almost. He'd lost quite a bit of blood already and it was in his best interests to find one of the NESTs medics, get patched up, then go hunt down the ever elusive but now so close ex-agent. To put it on obvious terms, he was in no state to take on the invigorated and freshly incensed K' today. A fact that would be a strong reminder today, not to mention, an even more annoying state. Couldn't K9999 catch a break? And /enjoy it/ for longer than a minute?
Answer: No.
Whirling about not because of any splashes in the water K' may or may not have made, but the inherant instinct someone on his level couldn't fail to ignore...the hunches, the nail running down the spine in warning...things that no raw fighter would discard when it came to a matter of life of death. K' still hit into the weakened boy like a tank, almost succeeding in throwing him clear off his feet. His uninjured arm slammed into his chest where the other gripped instead of his throat, skidding. Blood etched eyes widened in suprise and then seemed to glow with a reflection of the other's anger and...quite possibly hate. He spat, not bothering to try to avoid missing K'.
"I was, but the bitch took a little more time than I expected!" He snapped out, his lips pulling back into a bared smile that was more snarl than any. Enough charge took to the air, to cause goosebumps and a static, K9999 shook his head sharply once, straying his attention for a second.
And it returned with the force of a wall of pressure.
COMBATSYS: K9999 successfully hits K' with Get out of my sight!.
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K9999 0/-------/-----==|=------\-------\0 K'
Unsympathetic to K9999's plight-- it's not like K' can catch a break either-- the ex-agent plows into K9999 with vicious force. The other thwarts his intended stranglehold, remaining upright rather than slamming to the ground, but by this time disappointment is little more than a useless emotion K''s left lying in the back of his mind. All he focuses on now is that overwhelming desire to hurt that pulses at the forefront of his mind, urging him to vise his grasp crushingly shut on whatever purchase he can get.
The defiant, scorning spit is largely ignored. K' doesn't even try to avoid it. It splashes against his left shoulder, drooling down in long streams; K' barks a violent laugh, teeth baring in the aftermath of the sound, his heels gritting into the ground as he forces forwards against his grasp. "Heh... well, at the least," he starts, his voice grinding out of his throat, "nobody can say you didn't die without some--"
The one and only time K' might have paid K9999 some kind of compliment-- dubious as the actual intention behind it is-- gets cut off when K9999 snaps those words back in K''s face. Yellow eyes flick wide in immediate killing anger at the way K9999 refers to Whip, the look of surprise soon sharpening itself into an outright snarl. But that moment of distraction, in which K' let his legendary temper get the better of him, is telling; in that time, K9999 gathers enough energy to thrust a blast of force forwards, knocking K' back solidly and breaking his grip.
With a hissed breath of disgust, K' narrows yellow eyes on K9999. There is no hint he's trying to control or harness his anger; it's running wild and unchecked. "Don't fucking call her that," he warns, right before he lunges: snapping a sharp kick at K9999 in an attempt to break his face in.
COMBATSYS: K9999 interrupts Minutes Spike from K' with Drill Fist.
- Power hit! -
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////////// ]
K9999 0/-------/---====|====---\-------\0 K'
Each second was telling, K9999 felt himself weakening as blood that should be staunched was allowed to run free again by his actions, and would only get worse the further he pushed himself. Yes, he was created as a weapon, born to fight and do little else, but even the rapidly aged clone had his limitations, and for all the wild power he had at his uncontrolled disposal...the body to wield it was going to be running on empty soon. K9999 didn't want to run though, he didn't want to leave when he had the source of all his ills right here just begging to be beat down, but for all his beserker tendencies, he knew. And to the pit of hades, he wanted to be the winner. This fight wouldn't end this way, and the failure would only result in his having to try again anyways...That is. If K' didn't succeed in carrying out his not so thinly veiled threat.
The laughter was scornful, and perhaps a bit unhinged. Did he just try to order him around? "I'll call the slut whatever the fuck I want!" He roared back, the laughter cutting short abruptly as he flung the words at K'. Even K9999 recognised what the insults was doing on the other's psyche, how well he manipulated it though? Probably not to its fullest potential. But every bit of anger he managed to evoke from K' was like the icing on the proverbial cake. And now for the cherry... He dove in, his arm whipping back as he threw himself low beneath the kick, the point of his fingers fingers no more...but a cruel hardened length that had become a dark spear.
A spear that he'd gleefully seek to plunge in the other's body and wrench it back out again. "No one's safe." Once in close he uttered it like a fevered promise of a fanatical mind. "I'll come back and finish her, I'll find any others you care for..." The threats rough. "You're not free." The last a curse that carried over to even himself.
Ticking. K' is a ticking bomb. Every curse and thrown insult is a little jolt that shaves seconds off that countdown; that regular tick briefly halts in the white flash of rage triggered by each barb, only to jump ahead those few critical notches once the initial surge of temper has passed. Every name the abomination calls Whip is another nail slammed into an already near-nonexistent concentration. Maddened at the latest taunt, K''s attack wavers. It swivels like it wants to change to something deadlier mid-flight.
K9999 is under him in that instant, ducking under his wildly-thrown, rage-driven kick, stabbing that once-organic steel spear into his left shoulder and ripping it out just as rapidly. K' twists in the air with a howling roar of mingled pain and fury, hitting the ground in a low stance and skidding backwards, blood splashed in a wide arc. He pants in a breath and fixes his eyes on K9999's, the hatred lurid in his gaze as the other makes his threats.
"I'm freer than you are," K' snarls as he straightens, fire lighting about his wrists in a blazing rush of heat and sound. The flames sear a long line up his arms, crossing his shoulders, searing that ugly wound and stanching the bloodflow. "And I'll kill you before you come near anybody I know again."
COMBATSYS: K' gathers his will.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////////// ]
K9999 0/-------/---====|=======\-------\1 K'
K' hadn't managed to land solidly the last kick, but that retort hit home sure enough...sending K9999 into his own spiraling bout of rage. His eyes twitched, freer, than him? No laughter this time, instead he hunched over, the blood not even washed away yet by the continuous downpour before the long spiraled spike unfurled and snapped back into his hand. But not for longer than it took to fully form the five fingers, like a whip crack it unravelled again, settling into a more familiar appearance...if the large gun werent coincidentally mounted on the arm of his. K''s sister had learnt the devestating extent being caught in its strafing fire could cause...and the mute testimony lay reflected in damaged cars.
"Sad to say, you gotta get your head out of the clouds." Grabbing a hold of his upper arm, he braced himself as he took vague aim, the bullets of chi didn't require precision to be damaging, "You're going back, I'll see to it, I'll see too it even if I have to take your fucking dead body back in pieces myself!" The round of explosions shattered the ear as surely as their yelling did. Word of their fight had already gotten out, though his confrontation with Whip is what had carried farthest...and to his benefit. The endless supply of chi was there, waiting to be used, but even this grasp on it was slick not unlike with oil. Just threatning to slip free from his bare control.
COMBATSYS: K' blocks K9999's You get lost too!.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////// ]
K9999 0/-------/------=|=======\-------\1 K'
K' doesn't even bother shooting a reply. There wouldn't be time for it anyway. That sharp report of explosive gunfire cuts the air, and K' steps into the assault with a wide, clawing downwards swipe. A swathe of flames surges to life in a curtain of snarling energy before him, scattering and destroying some of the chi bullets that blast towards him and cutting the damage he takes; but impatient to strike K9999 as he is, he bolts -forwards- before his defense is even fully complete, tearing through his own flames, enraged beyond measure.
"Just try," he dares lowly, before he snaking a rough grasp towards the front of K9999's shirt. If he can get any purchase on the other at all, he's dragging him off-balance with a savage yank, pulling him forwards. Soon after he'll let go, but only so he can whipcrack his entire body in a sharp spin and crack his heel down harshly on K9999's spine, aiming in that vulnerable location just between the shoulderblades.
COMBATSYS: K' successfully hits K9999 with Spot Pile.
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K9999 0/-------/---====|=======\=------\1 K'
He just did. K9999 didn't expect the other to as simply dismiss the hail of bullets with almost contemptous ease, perhaps a little more trouble would have been nice but then he'd already realised that K' long ago was a different caliber. But then, as he might argue anyways, so was he...Just that in this case, after having gone at it with Whip less than a few minutes earlier, he was in no condition to prolong it. K's swift barreling through his own flames to successfully grasp a firm hold on the clone-- not where he wanted this time, was added proof of it. That and the pain. He barely had enough time to brace himself with a hand, fallen to the ground where crimson spread beneath him. His breathing was laboured now, fatigue setting in. Still he clung to his anger, the only thing keeping him from sinking into unconciousness from his injuries, that and the hatred for the man standing above him. K' represented everything in his life he'd come to despise, and just thinking about how the other would believe he had the upper hand...
"I didn't kill her. This way I'll get to hear her scream again for me, maybe you'll still be around when I do." He was grinning, "Bitch had a good scream." Probably not the right things to say to totally in control K'! Maybe K9999 knew something he didn't.
COMBATSYS: K9999 gathers his will.
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K9999 1/-------/=======|=======\=------\1 K'
A dark mirror of K9999's anger, K' does not back up or try to open distance as he usually might after landing a hit. He just stays in close, standing immovably where he's come to a stop, staring holes down through K9999's back and listening quite closely to everything the other has to say. He lets the anger induced by those words rise in him, overwhelming and choking, urging him to give in and just lose it. To spit violent words and loose his temper wildly, without regard or control for what and how he struck in his fury.
Instead, he seizes the emotion by the throat. He twists it into a razor-like attention, a minute care taken in watching the other, and he starts to premeditate. He notices all the places K9999 is already injured, letting his eyes linger on those places it would hurt most to be hit. And in the midst of that, K' leans down a little. The look on his face is blank of everything except cold anger, rage lurid in the fire-laced yellow of his eyes.
"Yeah...?" The rhetorical question is gritted, growled out of a tight throat. K''s right hand twitches, fire bleeding to life in the space between himself and K9999. It sears higher and hotter, becoming a swarm of violent flames that lashes towards K9999 with a hiss, and K' cuts a sudden sharp kick at the boy through the fire. "Let's hear yours..."
COMBATSYS: K' successfully hits K9999 with Second Shell.
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K9999 1/----===/=======|=======\=------\1 K'
If K9999 had been ascribing to some kind of tactic, having K' lose his control to fight blindly probably would have been a good one. Instead, the other went the other direction and behaved in a more directed manner, a fact that could rapidly prove more than troublesome for the clone. Still, seeing how K' was in understated terms, upset, was a victory in of itself and that left K9999 privately pleased. The pleasure would cost him with pain instead, and inspite of himself he choked off a yell, ending in a harsh hissing grunt as he fell onto his side with the force.
A hand curled about the freely bleeding area, and his vision swam and darkened at the edges. He coughed and tasted blood again in his mouth, not having bled from where he was struck earlier by Whip, but from the damage he was acruing within. Even he recognised that he couldn't take much more. People were watching from afar, already having cleared space from the chaos wreaked earlier. Shop windows broken, cars trashed...K9999 was now in the road, struggling to get back onto his knees. The blood was pumping through his veins, straining to compete against the falling pressure, and a massive headache built.
"She'll never be safe..." So soft it was almost a whisper, "You can't protect her." His shoulders shook silently, "FAILURE!" a howl, the air reverberated with the sudden crackling roar of chi blazing to life and out in swirling hemispheres about him. If K' had kept close, it would be to his detriment, he'd have had to have been anyways to hear the quiet mad message.
COMBATSYS: K' endures K9999's Moon....
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K9999 0/-------/----===|=======\=====--\1 K'
Snapping back into a readied stance after that callous motion to crush in K9999's ribcage with exacting force, K' tilts his stare down at his coughing, struggling 'pseudo-brother' with the worst sort of cold contempt. His violent anger had long since transmuted from that wild, explosive rage that carried him to the scene, sharpening itself down into a pointed fury that sought to inflict as much sheer -hurt- as possible before it destroyed.
It's that complete rage that makes him fearless... insensitive to the danger presented by K9999. That power gathers palpably about the clone, thrumming in the air and building in threat and strength, but K' ignores it. All he takes in is that soft threat from K9999-- that sudden howled word that hits him between the eyes with sudden shaming force. And both affect him horribly.
K' lunges abruptly, surging straight into that blast of force. It rips into him, punishing his light frame with its concussive power, straining his frame nearly to the breaking point. The incredible pain registers only dimly, however-- K''s own fear, doubt, and renewed self-hatred hurt him far more than any physical blow ever can, setting their claws where no material damage can reach.
"YOU'RE the failure!" he roars back blindly, his voice certainly not lacking in volume and ferocity-- but sadly lacking in conviction. "And you are never touching her again--" His voice cuts out into a snarl, K' already busy focusing on carrying out that grim promise. His speed increases, that simple lunge turning into something far faster. K''s lean frame blurs and goes indistinct, the boy attacking so fast he clears the distance to K9999 in a blink.
When he resolves again to the eye, he's already halfway through a crushing blow smashed towards K9999's chest. Should he manage a connection, what he immediately tears into is not the usual chained sequence of attacks he would display in so-called 'polite society.' That assault, which was already unspeakably violent in the eyes of normal people, gets all its inhibitions removed here. Each ripping blow arcs to kill, and each attempted attack gets thrown with a full murderous intent behind it.
COMBATSYS: K' successfully hits K9999 with Chain Drive.
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K9999 1/------=/=======|=------\-------\0 K'
The blast rocked the wreckage and picked up debris and flung it meters away as the rippling coalesced chi dispersed, sending onlookers scattering for better cover. And to think K' had been at the center of it all, charging through the unforgiving crush to deliver his own impacting blow. K9999 was under no delusion that he could escape the repercussions, and though he tried to steel himself to accept it to his benefit...his response was more than lacking. K9999 was at his end, his body refused to respond how it should and though the heart was willing, even his tenuous grip on the vast stores of power that brimed even now slipped away.
his chest caved in, that was the best way to describe it, cast aside like a rag doll to lay practiclly broken in the puddle-gathered road. On the barest of movements, the flicker of his staring eyes, the twitch of a hand proved he still lived, demonstrating that the creations of NESTs lived up to their durable name. They could take as well as they dished out. K' might well have had the last words here today, K9999 was incapable of offering up any bitter reply. He had heard it though, and it only served to deepend his unrivaled hatred for K'. And a promise to keep, a promise, K's, to break.
One might wonder how he would think he would be able to do any of this at all, nothing stood in K's way of making his condition permanent, except the screech of tyres breaking around the corner. Had the police arrived at last? Had the ambulance? There were no sirens however, just the rumbling roar of an engine kicked up a notch as it leapt foward even more, barrelling through and hopefully right through K' on it's way to the fallen NESTs agent.
With half the team taken down, and easy enough to follow the authority broadband, finding the errant K9999 took no genious...The black escalade, cliche it may be with its tint was armoured enough for war...from windows, to bumper. An ordinary pedestrian would be roadkill.
COMBATSYS: K' blocks K9999's Random Weapon.
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K9999 1/------=/=======|==-----\-------\0 K'
Panting shallowly, his strength and vitality already heavily taxed by the force his errant 'brother' could bring to bear, K' flags in the wake of the series of punishing attacks he lays into K9999's already-battered frame. That last, fire-riddled blast was sufficient to cast K9999's bloodied form back a considerable distance... a distance K' was not yet prepared to steadily cross. His expression is dark with a violent hatred, but for the moment-- fortunately for K9999-- K' does not have the requisite strength to act upon it.
It doesn't take him too long to recover. Eventually he straightens, his shoulders coiling, his hands clawing, his yellow eyes turning instantly on K9999's largely-unresponsive form. His reaction is devoid of mercy, beneficience, or indeed anything save a cruel focus that starts coldly ticking off what he has to do now. He could take a minute to kill the brat before he goes back for Whip. It wouldn't hold him up too long, and he would never have to see that twisted image of himself again.
What he had not counted on, however, was the fact that K9999's remaining support would show up quite so soon. The sound of the gunning engine alerts K' instants before that vehicle slams towards him, and K' turns straight into the headlights and braces with a snarl.
It's a good thing K' isn't really an ordinary pedestrian. The very corner of the bumper slams headlong into him, but K', prepared for the contact, catches and reduces the impact as best he can. He bites his hands down, stance twisting and opening, almost looking for a moment like he has a mind to try and forcibly -stop- the plunging car's momentum; but in the next instant his stance twists just a little too far to the right, and the vehicle swerves past him, continuing towards the fallen experiment.
With a hiss, K' shakes out his stinging hands and complaining wrists, straightening slowly. Robbed of his chance to kill K9999, his thoughts turn back to Whip, and fearful concern splashes back over his mind like a douse of ice water. Did he leave it too long? Has she already bled out? If he pushes himself any further here, will he be in any shape to defend them if they're attacked again?
In this instance, his attachment to her-- and those practical considerations-- manage to override his anger and desire to kill; he hesitates a moment, but eventually just retreats with a huff of disgust.
COMBATSYS: K' takes no action.
Death would have to wait another day.
Touch and go for a second there, the tyres protested K's stalwart obstruction pressing ahead enough to fishtail past him. NESTs couldn't afford to lose the clone here today aswell, their orders were clear. K' wouldn't have to worry about fending off the rear-bumper of the escalade once it was past him. A man in an unmarked suit reached out, not bothering to leave the car but grabbed the prone and semi-comatose teenager, hauling him up and in. A flash of silver barely noted through the back passenger area with the door open hinted that there was some heavier equipment in there, equipment K' wouldn't challenge them to use today.
He had enough worries of his own, with the removal of the source of his ire gone...Whip needed tending too before she succumbed herself. One thing was for certain, the obessive nature K9999 had demonstrated in the past was a guarrantee that it was only a matter of time...before he would seek to carry out his promises. K' might find himself in a race to beat him to it.
Hissing a sharp breath between bared teeth, K' has no choice but to watch the agents retreat with the focal point of his killing mood. He backs a few slow steps away, still watching, before he finally turns and circles into a lope towards Whip. There is a violent promise of his own written in his slitted yellow eyes. The next time he sees K9999, he will be attacking with full intent to kill: right from the start.
But in the here and now... he has to make sure he and Whip don't die. He'll probably be fine, with time... a clean hole in one shoulder, a couple bullet wounds, concussive injuries from being blasted with chi. He could feel the ache lingering in his right leg in particular, setting a limp into a limb already, no doubt, flowering with bruises. But Whip...
His first thought, once he returns to stand over her, is that there's so much blood. It's kind of an unusual thought to go through the mind of someone who has seen-- and drawn-- copious blood himself, in his own violent past. But it's the first thought that comes to him now, and it's the only thought that stays with him as he stares blankly at her. It rattles around in his numbed mind, repeated like a broken record. So much. She's so wounded. It's because he wasn't with her.
With all his potent, searing fury drained out of him-- the one target he truly wanted to wreak his hatred upon now gone-- he feels emptied and tired, emotionally spent: exhausted from all the worry and guilt and self-castigation that's started flooding in to supplant the rage. It's his fault. He shouldn't have let her go alone. He'd thought it was safer if she wasn't seen with him, safer if the association with him wasn't made clear-- but in the end it was just another wrong choice. His latest mistake.
Letting go a long breath, K' drops to a kneel in the wreckage beside her and reaches his left hand for her. He tries to brush some of the blood from her face, but his hand shakes and just smears it more, spreading the wet redness. Choking down a sound before it has a chance to form, angrily swallowing it with a surge of disgust at that instant of weak frailty, he stays frozen an instant: and then, he finally stirs, reaching down to pick her gently up out of the wreckage.
He's been quiet up until now, his usual reaction to stress and trauma to just shut up and bottle everything: pushing it down until he could feel it poisoning the deepest parts of him. But once he gets her slight weight in his arms, her head against his chest, something changes. "Whip," he urges quietly. "Wake up. Whip--" The both of them being so injured as they are, they're soaked in their shared blood in short order.
It's dangerous here. He can't stay. He doesn't know if those people will come back. Her wounds need attention, and he can't give it to her until they're somewhere safer than this.
Without knowing, precisely, where it is he intends to go, he drags back up to his feet, holding his sister against him. Blindly, limping from wounds and exhaustion alike, he just starts running. He needs to get to the fringe of this town, to some more remote place. Some place he can hide her.
Spending the last forever slipping in and out of consciousness, Whip isn't sure how long it's been. Maybe hours. Maybe days.
In reality, it's only been minutes, and the young woman in his arms has been trying to convince itself for the past couple of them that she is still asleep. But, she's awake, and the condemning evidence is the pain. Things don't hurt in dreams. That's why confused folks pinch themselves to help figure it all out. She hurts. Her head is pounding, her eyes burn, her hands sting, her heels are excruciating, her forehead itches, her elbow tingles, her collar hurts, her wrists are painful, her neck is horrendous, her throat's scratchy, and she's got a distinctly broken nail. Her mind is hazy, and she tries to find something to concentrate on. Dimly, she searches for one part of her body that isn't painful. She's pretty sure it's the little toe on her left foot, but as she tests it out in a wiggle, she discovers she must have stubbed it.
Dismayed, her eyes crack open, the light burning and the stinging rain rolling into them. They squint shut as they've done many times before. And again, they stay closed and seem apt to remain that way. The rain is cold but something against her feels distinctly warm. She thinks she can hear someone's heartbeat. It makes her feel so safe. It almost reminds her of--
'Sarah?'
Whip's eyes open.
'Whip?' she hears instead, spoken on a voice that shouldn't sound so familiar. But her eyes stay open, this time for good, blinking filmily before they slowly, painstakingly turn up on K'. Whip squints at him a moment, through the rain, staring as though she's not sure where she is, or who she is.
Then it seems to hit her, all at once, in the way things usually do.
"Kay?" her voice slurs back, stuttering out one-half of his designation. "Whuh-- what's-- where--?" She turns her head, trying to lift it, and is rewarded for her efforts with swirling dizziness. Her eyes close momentarily, humbled. But she soldiers onward, turning her eyes to try to make something out of the world, treading through bleary images as she waits for her memory to return. Killarney. NESTS. K'
He's carrying her.
Gritting her teeth, she sobers by the moment, blinking her eyes and trying to move one arm -- Jesus H. Christ her shoulder hurts -- to rub the feeling back into her face. When she shifts uneasily, the movement wells more hot, greasy blood up out of the many holes gored into her body and it wrings a tired, frustrated wheeze out of her throat. Her expression knots with pain. It takes her a moment to find her voice. "K'... where are we? What's -- going on?"
K' holds Whip like she might break at the slightest mishandling. His arms, engineered as pistons of brute force, cradle her with an infinite care; his hands, made to kill, maintain a sombre sort of light pressure upon her shoulder and waist, holding her firmly in place. The principle is not dissimilar to how a wolf's jaws are built by nature: powerful enough to crush bone, and delicate enough to hold an egg.
But sharp disapproval writes itself perceptibly into the supporting lines of his arms when he feels her start to shift. His hold on her tightens. He doesn't look down quite yet, his eyes busy watching the houses blurring by get more and more infrequent, but he addresses the troublesome behavior with an abrupt rasp.
"Don't move." His voice comes out more curtly than he strictly intended; he goes silent a moment, before he resumes. When he talks again, he's not quite so short-- but he's still kind of cold, the experiment never having learned to gentle his voice. "You were attacked. We're going somewhere safe-- or safer. I couldn't kill him..." His voice deepens. It poisons itself with a bleak and mirthless humor. "...but not for lack of a desire to."
He slants his yellow eyes down at her, watching her with an frozen, indifferent carefulness. But this time that hard impassivity is a false display. It's a cover to hide the guilt, the confusion, and the strange terror-- hidden beneath all the rest-- that he cannot name or place.
He doesn't talk about his own injuries. He just moves on to the next topic that needs to get covered. "We," he suddenly begins, talking as if to fill the silence, "are gonna figure out what happened and what to do whenever we get where we're going." And with that, his jaw winds shut on further words, his face hardlining back into that grim look that borders so closely on a smoldering, infinitely-dangerous anger.
Don't move, she's told, and the girl replies her orders with a heavy sigh. But she defies them almost instantaneously, shifting one shoulder and freeing her closer arm with a bitten-down wince, moving to hook it slowly over the back of her rescuer's neck. Her fingers dig up a handful of his coat, clinging on; she's trying to help balance out the weight in his arms, even if it really isn't all that much.
Whip isn't good at being pliant.
"Mmph," she gravels back with her usual eloquence, trying to prop herself up enough so she can look at anything that isn't K''s chest. "I meant that I need coordinates. Give me a sitrep." Her head leans against the cradle of his shoulder as she finally peers out at the world, which still looks distinctly like Killarney. All that green and gunmetal skies... it doesn't get more Irish than this. She grimaces briefly, reflexively, feeling her cold, wet clothes for the first time, but her better logic gives the senation the warmest of welcomes. It means she's not in shock. That's a good thing. Let's try to keep it that way.
"Listen. The weather's shitty. That means half of the vacation homes are going to be vacant. You just need to pick a single family residence where the grass is grown and the drive gravel isn't upturned. Somewhere outside the town. And I can--" her voice breaks up with a sudden, harsh cough, half-coagulated blood oozing from the corner of her mouth when she's finished. Whip doesn't seem to notice. "--Feel you limping. You... idiot, you shouldn't have done that. Let me down. Let me walk."
She starts trying to move again.
If there's one thing ready to break at mishandling, it's Whip's patience.
A resigned sigh breathing out of him as she stubbornly insists on moving, K' just leans his head forwards slightly to accept her arm hooked behind his neck. He tolerates her further squirming with a thin silence, displeasure with her recalcitrance still printed in his sulky frown. Fortunately, that disgruntlement remains silent, for the time being, and he doesn't bother arguing.
He just lets her lean against his shoulder as she demands coordinates and a sitrep-- like he was some kind of soldier. Or a machine. "You won't be getting either out of me," he warns tiredly-- but with a hint of intractability still edging his voice beneath all that exhaustion. "I don't know our coords and I'm not one of your soldiers. I told you already. NESTS... and another of their clones. You got hit by the worst of it. I handled the rest." And it's pretty obvious what 'handled' means.
An irritable shrug lifts his shoulders, K' seeming to think this all the information they really need to dwell upon. He falls silent-- at least until his sister inevitably argues with him again. By now he's got them both somewhere closer to the edge of town, where the houses are fewer and far between, and his attention is taken up looking more actively for someplace that fits Whip's curt description.
He has to admit, at the least, that she's right in her assessment of the kind of place they need to hide in.
Then Whip notices his injuries, and starts struggling to get loose from him and walk under her own power. K', grimly, just tightens his grip with a bleak sort of humorless laugh. "Look, if I didn't even have the strength to do -this- when injured, then I'd be even more of a waste than NESTS already thought I was. Stop moving, you're not going anywhere."
"Like it or not, you've volunteered yourself as one of my soldiers when you went against all logic and did this," Whip fiercely reminds K', her fimly, airy voice still finding a way to sound angry. She gravels accusingly, "That was stupid, K'. That was so god damned --" her words strain when she gives a spirited stuggle, going against his orders and her own pain to try to unhook her body from his arms. Her mood sours further when they only tighten down. Left unsuccessful and feeling only winded from her attemps, Whip finishes through grit teeth: "--Stupid."
For a moment, she sags, breathing heavily, her body going dormant as it's carried along. Her right hand remains fisted in his leather coat. Her dark eyes stare off annoyedly. "Did you hear me? That was stupid. You have all the Cartel jonesing after you and you jump right through the fiery hoop to center ring. For all we know, they tracked me here to find you. Do you know what you're up against? If they find you again, you'll be wishing they'd have killed you. And I can't protect you. And you're sure as hell not protecting me. I never asked for it. I don't want it. I can stand on my own legs--" she starts to rumble...
"...If you'd only LET ME!" Whip snarls, her voice catching, her body giving a sudden wrench that hurts so much it makes her eyes water. As if she doesn't cry enough already. Her other hand lifts suddenly, soundly, leaving a smear of blood as she tries to snag a fistful of K''s collar, to prop herself up and force her face close, within inches of his, staring threateningly at him even if she's still hanging inside his arms. The rain trickles down that face of hers, washing off everything but that determined look. "Listen!" she snaps, her voice misting hotly against the cold air, her mind appearing to be set. "Just drop me off here and keep walking. I can handle myself. You need to get out of the country while you can still walk. You get me, soldier?"
K' keeps right on ignoring her. It's easy, for him. He deals with almost everything he doesn't want to handle by shutting it out and receding into his own mind. He turns his back. He walks away. The difference here is, the instigator of his determined ignorance is something-- someone-- he isn't willing to walk away from. She can call him stupid all she likes, impugn his actions as the highest of follies. She certainly isn't the first, and even the boy himself wouldn't necessarily contest her. He is reckless and he is a fool, and he knows it. He's suffered enough times over his scant years to learn at least -that- much about himself.
And one of the other things he's learned about himself is that he's got a temper. It sparks immediately when Whip so graciously starts to explain the exact details of his purported idiocy, and K' just... kind of snaps. "So it's my fault. Go ahead. Pin it on me! Yeah, it's my fault you got involved. My fault they came here. My fault you got hurt. I fucked up. I came up short again. Go ahead and tell me that. It's not like I'm not fucking used to it." Low-voiced, K' talks furiously even as he stops in his pace to survey the blank landscape around them: breathless and narrow-eyed with focus.
But then, she just has to phrase things like that. 'I never asked for it. I don't want it. I could stand on my own if you let me.' At those words, K''s yellow gaze falls back on Whip like a bird shot out of the sky, and for the space of a few rare instants he looks shocked to the core. The look of him is the kind of look people get when struck by a bolt of sudden perspective-- of memory-inducing, unpleasant parallels. He's struck utterly silent a few moments, staring at her with a wide-eyed, stricken sort of look; and then, his expression spasms. It twitches back to its more familiar controlled fury, the mask now serving to hide some other strange emotion. He drops her quick, letting her regain her own feet with a sudden finality.
"Fine." His voice is a little thick. "You didn't ask for it. I won't do it. You stand on your own..."
There's a 'but' virtually stapled onto the end of that phrase. As if trying to shrug off the disquiet of his earlier shock, K''s stubborn aggression kicks into overdrive. He leans into that little 'but' with a savage sort of smugness, his stance a posture of clear and willful dominance. "...but you can just -try- and make me leave."
After all, he has to draw the line -somewhere-.
"What the /hell/ are you talking about?" Whip snaps right back at him, the look on her face making a butterfly's metamorphosis from surprised to confused to outraged. She doesn't know how he pisses her off so quickly, so easily, but he does. And she rises to it. "Idiot! None of this is your fault. It can easily be mine. Fault implies responsibility, and what I've been trying to say is that you don't have any responsibility over--"
Whip doesn't regain her feet. But she does regain the sudden, greasy taste of blood in her throat when her body slams down and heaps along the gravelly road. The pain is hot and sharp like feeling a hot poker twisted in her abdomen... but she did ask for it.
The girl curls reflexively, clutching at her side, leaving behind blood and picking up dirt into her gored shoulder as she begins the arduous process of picking herself up. But she doesn't curse K' once for her agony; Whip grits her teeth, bites her tongue, and gets back up. It takes her a couple tries, but she manages to plant herself on her two feet, half of her effort because of adrenaline, and the other half just to prove K' that she can god damn well do it. Standing, she turns an aggravated look at him, composing herself with a hitched step backwards, one hand pressed down permanently on her wounded side.
But she seems assuaged -- or as much someone can be while walking wounded -- that he's stepped down and followed orders. She knows it's for the best. She doesn't know why he's like this, why this strange boy seems to have stepped out of nowhere and became so intent on protecting her, but it's going to get him killed. He's exactly as she is. He's even missing his memories. And he deserves to find them, and his sister too. He can't get hurt for her sake.
It's that moment Whip seems inclined to follow through her previous threat, dragging one leg as she starts to turn shoulder on K' -- and stopping when she hears his final addendum.
She pauses. Limping, struggling, she slowly turns back. She doesn't look amused.
She could try. Try to make him. She can still feel the weight of her gun on his back. She could force him to go. She could--
Whip sighs, all sorts of thoughts exhaling out of her. She's seen enough blood for one day. She doesn't want to hurt him. "It's not your fault, K'," she says instead, again, really wanting him to know this. Even if she can't really look at him while she says it. The girl looks away, frowning as she teeters and bleeds into the rain. "But you can't put yourself in danger for someone like me. There's someone who needs your protection, and it's your sister. If you died... on account of saving me, or something like that, and you never got to meet her? I couldn't forgive myself."
K' just looks down at her when she drops in a heap at his feet, impassive and stonefaced in his regard. In a way, he's almost pettily satisfied, getting that marginal sort of revenge for her saying something that made him feel just like NESTS... even if she couldn't possibly have intended the bad memories in the least. Even if she couldn't have possibly intended the connotations he instantly took out of those usually-innocuous phrases. But whatever mean-spirited feelings he might have nursed in the first few white-hot moments of reflexive anger, they're instantly gone once he watches her essay her first try to get up out of her own blood.
Remorse isn't something that hits him often at all-- he is a vindictive creature-- but now, it hits him hard and fast as he watches her eventually make it to her feet. Still, he refrains from trying to help her up. He won't do her that insult right after he just said he wouldn't force anything she never asked for on her.
But there is one thing she has not asked him to do that he will not-- cannot, for whatever cryptic reason-- let her have her way in. One thing he will insist upon. And that is being by her... -especially- while she is too injured to defend herself. He is not a shining example of morality, nor even all that great a human being in the least: he kills without compunction, he is selfish, standoffish, and cruel, and he nurses a detrimental taste for revenge. He meets very few people he likes, and even fewer he wants to keep close. But once he finds someone he -does- like, someone he wants to invest his loyalty in, that loyalty is near-unshakable. Just ask the cyborg who, to date, has yet to be able to get rid of his sulky friend.
Whip is going to have an equally-hard time getting rid of K', now.
Case in point. Whip turns shoulder, as if trying to leave; K' just follows her when she makes to go, taking one grim step after her as his final insistence manages to get -her- to stop in her tracks. When she looks back, it's to that familiar, intractable frown. She can shoot him all she likes, the added bullet-holes won't get rid of him. He seems impervious to her insistences it's not his fault. In his mind, it's already a nonissue whether it was or not, though he's probably convinced himself somewhere deep down that it was: at least, in part.
The thing is, he knows he deserves to find and protect his sister, to discover his own memories. That much is true. But Whip deserves the same things. She's missing memories. She's missing a brother of her own. And besides... Whip is trying to protect him about as much as he's trying to protect her. Pot, kettle.
"I look for my sister without even knowing what or who I'm looking for." His tone doesn't fit the words he's saying. His voice is sharp, faint: almost waspish. He's deeply irritated at her recalcitrance and stubbornness. "I'll find her. Or find out about her. But until then, if I want to, I can be by those I give a shit about here and -now-."
A long pause. "And I don't always need to be responsible to give a fuck." So -there-.
Part of Whip wants to turn on K', wants to ask him just what she's exactly done to demand this sort of loyalty out of him. They've met less times than the fingers on her hand. She barely even knows him. And yet she... almost feels the same way. And she doesn't know why.
But, in the end, she says nothing. The fight seems to exhale out of the young woman as quickly as it built up, all her irritation, all her pride, and all her rancour traded in for pain, wet, and starting to feel very cold. Her shoulders sag, K''s last remark the last weight they're able to bear. With a heavy sigh that rattles at the corners, she turns her back on him again, but this time not to go. Instead, Whip limps her way to the side of the road, letting the remainder of her strength focus towards slowly, carefully letting her body sit down in the grass. The very action tells the story of her stubbornness. She can't walk. She can't even remain standing. But she'll both just to prove him wrong.
Whip only, and very reluctantly, gives into her body when she decides she doesn't want to throw up in front of K'.
Instead, she just sags there among the soaked Irish green, breathing slowly and heavily, arranging her long legs with infinite care. Her free hand, the one not stapled against her side, reaches to swat some drooly beads of water out of her eyes. She looks away, squinting off in the rainy Killarney distance, glowering back at the distant town. She frowns at it instead of the boy before her, her stern face giving the rest of the world a good staring contest.
But, in the end, the world wins. Whip looks away, annoyed, but aware of her defeat. She just lets the rest of her anger go in one last sigh. "You're... a piece of work, K'. You've got to be the most stubborn..."
She shakes her head, finally looking up at him, her face tired where it's not bruised. "You win. You win. Let's just find a place and... we'll figure something when we've stopped bleeding."
Even if she turned and asked him, point-blank, why she merits his loyalty-- why she merits, for that matter, anything more from him than the passing unimpressed glances he gives the rest of society-- he wouldn't be able to answer her. He has no clue himself why she touches such a chord in him. All he knows is that she does, for whatever deep-seated, forgotten reason.
It helps that she's one of the only people he can really relate to in regards to what's happened to him. K' is not the sort who really needs to talk about his issues-- far from it-- but even the most withdrawn people sometimes like to feel like they're not alone.
Now, if only he stopped undermining all that by being such an ass.
K' pulls back slightly at her final concession that he wins, but it's not because he's taken aback. It's so he can square his shoulders and straighten to his full height, tilting his head to one side in a smug cant. An infuriating look settles on his face as he smirks to himself, the brief expression insufferable. Nothing satisfies an inveterate bastard faster than being told he's right.
He's stubborn, is he? "I told you I don't like being told what to do," he points out with a literal accusatory gesture of his gloved hand, his expression finally sobering back to its usual faint, annoyed disgruntlement. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he gets back to more important matters: considering Whip moodily, and gauging her wounds. She doesn't seem in danger of bleeding out. Not yet. If she had been, he'd have put his fire to use.
After a while, he lets his eyes drift shut on his assessment. Limping his way over, he sits himself near her in the grass, affording her the rare gift of his close physical presence. Grumpily, he fishes into his mostly-ruined jacket, extracting a miraculously-intact bloodsoaked pack and tapping out a cigarette. He regards the slightly-bloody thing morosely a few moments, before he shrugs and sticks it loosely in his mouth anyway, a flick of fingertips lighting the still-dry tip. He just showed some discernable non-negative emotion, he needs something to calm his nerves.
A few moments pass, before-- without looking over at her-- he rasps deprecatingly, "...You gonna let me carry you now, or what?"
His shit-eating look is met with a roll of her dark eyes, Whip deciding to look away lest her irritation make a sequel. She mutters something to herself, the words low and imperceptible for a reason, and then decides to finally busy herself with her own body. The young woman drops her eyes and opens one side of her suede coat, the movement slow and deliberate, not unlike how Pandora must have nervously unlidded a certain box. These particular contents make her grimace. She lets her coat go, looking away with a tired frown, her face tightened with that look old veterans get when it's the fifteenth bullet hole and it's a same old pain they're already sick of. But both her natural resilience and her stamina keep her sitting up, something not even the girl herself even knows why. Since she can remembers, she's always been on the tough side.
But Whip looks up when she hears K' stalk closer, quickly and smoothly letting her attention turn away from her own injuries. She probably just doesn't want to worry him. She leans an elbow against her own knee, squinting through the light, sharp rain as she watches the boy follow suit and take root to the earth at her side. And she remains oddly quiet as he does so, her anger long past, her fatigue and her pains making a docile girl out of the rough soldier. And Whip is rewarded for it.
He says nothing, she says nothing, they both sit in the grass, the Irish skies rain down, and it's pretty peaceful. And if Whip wasn't bleeding out of at least seven places, she'd also think it was nice.
Out of nowhere, and with no warning, K''s rare gift is met with an equally rare return from Whip, as she lets her weight slump over, her body propping up against his side, her head leaning against his shoulder. She lets a noisy breath go, then reaches in to pluck the cigarette from his lips. She steals a puff, exhaling smoke as she relents, "Hi ho, silver."
K' startles briefly as he feels Whip's weight come to rest against him, and he almost pulls away. But at the last moment he stops himself. His tensed body relents, inch by inch, and K' slowly relaxes enough to let her lean in against him without objection. The stiffness slowly unwinds out of the shoulder supporting her tired head.
He smokes in moody silence, letting the slight buzz calm his usual nerviness about being touched. On top of that, there's something ineffable about their surroundings that kind of wears the edge off his grumpiness. He knows from experience that just about any place on earth could feel 'familiar' to him if he wished for it hard enough. He could fool himself into thinking half the cities of the world 'felt like home,' if he wanted. That is the heavy price of amnesia; never to know which feelings are true, and which are not.
He thinks he's feeling that phantom familiarity again with Ireland. This is the first time he's ever been to the island, and already it feels kind of like home.
It helps a little that he's currently in the company of the only person he's come to trust... other than Maxima, anyway. Tolerating her even when she swipes his cigarette, he tilts his head over and slightly downwards to eye her with a baleful regard as she steals a little drag.
"...che. You're annoying," he assesses, but without his usual bite. "Come on." Picking himself off the ground with a deep sigh, he leans down to gather Whip again, hefting her with comparatively little effort considering his injuries. "And give that back." He means the cigarette.
He walks some distance, the lack of pursuit thus far seeming to embolden him to be less urgent... to take more care in thoroughly covering his tracks. And just outside the town, he appropriates somebody's vacation house, picking the back door and slipping in without too much of a hitch. It fits Whip's predicted description-- it's been unused and unoccupied for some months, with grown grass and settled gravel out front and a thin layer of dust on the inside-- and while it's barely more than a few rooms, it's got running water, and it's a place for them to stanch their injuries.
It becomes obvious that there's more than one reason why she slumps against him. She hides it well, but Whip is shivering. A more mechanical part of her, one that realizes shock may be just around the corner, tries to get warm the only way it can.
But there's no degree of cold that would freeze the bite out of Whip's voice. "Ha, you're one to talk," she retorts to K' around his cigarette, her voice finding a way to sound dry despite all the rain, her mouth smiling despite the pain she must be in. Testament to good faith, she lets him pick her up, her lean body docile and light and freezing cold, her joints locking to soften most of her shivers. She lifts her better arm to hook it back along his shoulders like before, weaving the same hand through to snag the cigarette, however reluctantly, from her mouth to plant it back in his. She lets her last smoky breath go with a slight, laughing hitch.
Otherwise, Whip remains a pretty cooperative parcel for the rest of K''s journey, her own fatigue beginning to set in by the minute. Her eyelids sink to half-mast. Her head tries to make a pillow from his chest. She huddles against him a little, unconscious of it, desperate for warmth.
But soon relief comes to her, her estranged brother and savior finding sanctuary for two wounded runaway traitors. At the first step he takes into the cottage, she is looking around, the dusty, unlived surrounds pulling the most relieved of sounds out of her. "Good -- eye," Whip compliments, her voice a little short circuited through her shivering. For the first time in minutes, she finally moves, giving a slight push of her legs to gesture she wants to be put down, her body much more gentle about her demand this time around. "I'll look for a bathroom. Maybe you can see about finding a fireplace... a wood burner maybe. Doubt there's central heating in something this old."
And K' is a good source to seek out, if one is looking for warmth. The perpetual fire under his skin makes him feel considerably warmer than most. Leaning against him is like leaning against a radiator. Perhaps subconsciously realizing this-- realizing the danger inherent in letting her get cold-- he lets Whip huddle close. He essays no further argument, either to her contact-- he has chosen to allow it-- or her laughing retort.
Instead, once enough time's passed, he just decides it's time to move on. Picking her up again, he wordlessly accepts his cigarette directly with his mouth, a muted "Hmph," let slip as a crotchety substitute for the more verbose 'About time.' The fire in his blood makes him into a pretty good hot water bottle, one which keeps Whip warm enough as they travel on.
And once they get where they're going, K' lets Whip down even a little before she indicates she wants to be. Exception to his usual rules she might be, he still doesn't really like tolerating close contact quite so long if he can help it. Her compliment goes verbally unanswered, though K' seems to visibly respond well to it; his expression flickers briefly from its customary guarded hostility, letting a hint of mollification peek through. K' has heard too few words of approval in his life.
That brief moment is gone quick, disappearing as he steps away and moves into the main room. His disembodied voice-- by now controlled and disaffected again-- comes drifting back a moment later. "There's a fireplace. Clean your wounds for now. I'll be back." And with that he disappears right out the front door, circling around to the tarp-covered firewood piled by the side of the little cottage.
Eventually, as promised, he returns. The wood gets tossed carelessly in the fireplace, no concern at all as to proper laying or any need for tinder or kindling; kneeling by the fireplace, K' just palms a sudden burst of intense fire from nowhere, reaching forwards in a gesture almost like he's 'putting' the sparked flames onto the wood. He holds his still-burning hand against the sticks a minute, letting the fire properly take hold, before he finally pulls back and watches the flames persist and grow: momentarily lost in some brooding thought.
It takes Whip to call upon all her training to stay on her feet. She wouldn't be able to do it otherwise. She tries not to think about the journey but the destination, going immediately on auto-pilot, ignoring the heaviness of her limbs and how god damned hard it keeps getting with every step. She goes on search for the bathroom, leaving a soggy trail of water and smears of blood.
Her staggering step finally reaches success. Whip was never really the vain type, but as she hunts predatorily through dusty drawers and empty cabinets, she can't help but glance at the mirror. She regrets it. She looks like hell.
A minute later, Whip seems to have struck oil, hitching back toward the main room bearing the many gifts of towels, blankets, a first aid kit, and most unusually, a sewing basket.
She's beginning the slow and tedious task of making herself sit down when K' returns, choosing a plot on the hardwood floor for her roust. His footsteps bring her to look back reflexively, and reminded of his presence, Whip forces an additional twist into her movement, turning her back fully on the boy. She doesn't reveal why. Maybe a sudden case of the modesty. Maybe she doesn't want him to see more blood than he has to. But the girl sags, propping her wounded shoulder against the wall with a grunt, more to brace it than anything, her pressing mass allowing her to use both hands while she still can. Flexing her icy fingers to work the feeling back into them, she begins the impossible task of shedding her suede coat. It's easier said than done. Wet suede sticks like a skin graft, especially to her untreated wounds, and it hurts enough to make her eyes water as she hones all her strength into pulling one arm free. She can't seem to find the energy to rid the other sleeve, so she just lets it hang.
The soldier is reaching for the first aid kit when light hits her peripherals and heat hits her turned back. She immediately orients to it, turning her head, catching K''s demonstration of fire the instant it happens. Whip stops, her own pains momentarily forgotten, staring at the boy as a distant expression crosses her face. It reminds her of that night she met him in Metro. Her eyebrows furrow, and she watches him a moment more, her face heavy with that weighed look people get when they have questions they're not ready to ask. Turning again to put her back to him, busying herself with opening the medical kit, instead she says, "Thanks."
Whip turns her back on him. K' keeps his to her. Preoccupied with the fire, he doesn't immediately note she's there, and when he finally stands up it's not to acknowledge or speak to her. He doesn't even turn around.
With a matter-of-fact candidness, he sheds his battered jacket and drops it to the floor. The ruin of his black shirt soon follows suit, K' one-handedly yanking the torn material off over his head and discarding it in a heap with his coat. Unlike Whip, he seems not to care about protecting his companion from the sight of his wounds at all, his blunt nature making no secret of the fresh injuries that mingle with his numerous old scars.
A canine shake of the head and a ruffle of the hand do absolutely nothing to solve his messed hair. Giving up and palming his face with a sigh, he eventually leans over to snare a couple of towels. He disappears with them momentarily, and shortly thereafter there's the sound of running water.
A couple minutes later he returns, bare skin damp and cleaned of most of the blood. Tossing what wet towels are still clean over to one side, leaving them there for whenever Whip wants them, he sits himself next to her and eyeballs the sewing basket. He considers for a few moments.
"...Give me that." And with those perfunctory words, he just reaches over and takes it himself without even waiting for her to agree, pawing through the basket in silence and eventually fishing out a handful of sewing needles. He seems to know what she wants to do with them, because his next move is to palm the needles and light his hand on fire: calmly scorching the metal sterile.
K' doesn't at first answer Whip's thanks, his eyes on the cleansing flames burning impossibly in the cage of his fingers. Eventually he just answers with an articulate sort of grunt, a diffident sound that stays deep in his chest more than it actually comes out as any kind of reply. "...You let me stay with you," he eventually shrugs. "Even though it was dangerous." The flames go out. It's clear he's still, on some level, feeling he's to blame.
Ever his strange little antithesis, Whip hunches and clings to her privacy as K' all but discards his, and his shirt alongside. He dismissively rips off his battered clothes; with infinite patience, she gently rolls up the hem of her bloodied tee-shirt to the bottom of her bra, discreetly tucking it under, biting down when she most pull the sticky fabric out of her coagulating wounds.
She goes silently to her task like she's done this a hundred times before. And she probably has.
Her body is a much of a mess as she predicted, riddled with a few small, but deep, clean holes where K9999's chi had slugged into her, caked in half-dried blood slathered where the rain missed it, and garnished with blackened flesh from broken ribs. She humours her own state with a short, unimpressed frown, but gives it no further thought, her actions becoming crisper and much more mechanical. After sifting through the first aid kid, she begins going to down on herself with disinfectant, the distinct, sharp smell of alcohol beginning to permeate through the small room. Already a small hill of used, bloody gauze begins to landfill at her side.
When it comes time for her to close up her smaller wounds, she reaches for the sewing kit -- only to have K' nab it first. She follows his arm up until she finds his eyes, the young woman staring curiously, a sudden reluctance capturing the look on her face. But any question she has is cauterized inside the sudden fire of his gloved hand, as that mysterious, strange boy does something so nice as sterilize her makeshift equipment.
She exhales, long and hard, her expression seeming to let that last wall down and completely mollify. Her body relaxes a little more, sagging back against the wall, her brown eyes gentle as they watch him. With a resigned sort of humour, she continues on where he left off, "And you probably saved my life. I'm sorry I yelled at you back there. It wasn't right." Her eyes drop.
Whip had meant simply to avert her gaze, but without really intending it, she catches her first eyeful of K''s injuries. She frowns distractedly at them. "I'm just angry. Angry at that kid... whoever he was... that he put me down so easily. Angry at myself. I was caught off-guard. I may've well just led them straight to you. It was sloppy of me. So I... if we don't cross paths after today, and we shouldn't, I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry."
It seems she's his foil in all ways except when it comes to placing blame. Guilt must be in their genotype.
When the flames have long gone out, and the metal has given its time to cool, Whip reaches to take a needle, doing the impossible of managing to thread it with cold, shivery hands and half-bleary eyes. Sometimes being an Ikari pays off.
That same severe frown lingers moodily on K''s face as he watches his own fire work. It neither sharpens nor abates with her quiet apology. He doesn't bother addressing whether she was right or wrong, doesn't bother answering her implicit thanks, doesn't even bother looking smug about her sudden contrition. All he really does is lift a shoulder in a universally-understood 'whatever,' and cut the flames.
He's quick to sidestep around that heavier stuff, shifting to talk instead about her reference to K9999. That, at least, is something he can understand and discuss. "I ran into him before. I know what he can do. And I figure he was made for the same reasons as me..." His tone, in discussing his 'manufacture,' is entirely too clinical; it's almost sad -how- cold he is. "...so I wouldn't waste the energy feeling bad about it. We were made to tear people apart. It's all we know how to do."
He won't, however, necessarily go so far as to say 'it's all we're good at.' No failure, no reject, deserves to call themselves 'good.'
His cold evenness can't last forever, though. He's got a hairtrigger of a temper, and though it's not always -malicious- when it's set off... the fact remains almost anything CAN set it off. And that temper of his stirs a little as she tries to outdo him in self-blame. "Stop blaming yourself," he demands irritably, somewhat hypocritically. "It's not like you caused it. NESTS was always after us. NESTS always will be after us. The fact they came when we were together doesn't say shit; they would just as happily attack me, or you, any other time. As long as they exist, we'll never have normal lives no matter how hard we try to fake them.
"So why shouldn't we cross paths? Why deprive ourselves when we could die any minute anyway?" K' stares hard at her, finally meeting her gaze with those strange yellow eyes. "They already knew about you. They already went after you a couple times. You weren't safe then, you definitely aren't now. After this, they might go after you -more-. Same goes for me." He shrugs, shutting his gloved hand unfeelingly about the sharp needles he holds. "After this, it'd be stupider to split up and go it alone then it would be to... to watch out for each other."
He bites the suspiciously-hitched sentence off annoyedly. He'd wanted to add that he can't -protect- her from NESTS if he never sees her, but he knew she'd bristle instantly if he gave away that protective instinct as a reason they should keep contact. There's a long pause before he talks again, and in the interim he just occupies himself sticking the needles one by one back into their pincushion. "...Besides, even if you DO attract NESTS personnel, maybe someday you'll lure somebody who I can actually beat -useful- information out of."
It's a cocky thing to say... but then again, this IS K'.
"I suppose only an idiot would pass up good bait," Whip drawls, drier than a martini. But she can't seem to hold the straight man act for long; a beat later, her mouth quirks into a good-humoured smile. There's little actual self-deprecation when it comes to her realizing of her ability as a fighter. She knows she has a long way to go. Deluding herself won't help her reach her goals. It's up to being smart and working hard.
And, most of all, not dying, so she promptly gets to work on closing the initial of her many, many puncture wounds. Propping herself against the wall, and taking a deep breath that she exhales silently, her expression falls and her face lets itself cool as the initial stings begin of pushing the threaded needle through bruised skin as her makeshift suture. Her eyes half-lid, humouring her task with a gentled sort of patience, seeming like she's only paying partial attention to it. Her hands move crisply on their own. Muscle memory.
Whip lets her thoughts drift back to K9999, and what K' mentioned of him. Made for the same reasons. She should have figured that freak kid would be one of NESTS' little pet projects. But that is so far beyond the cloning she knows about, and what Krizalid had going on. Has going on. Did he have a hand in this too?
She thinks she feels sick to her stomach. And looking over at K' doesn't help. She can't imagine what the Cartel must have done to him. She wouldn't know where to begin.
Knotting her last wound shut with a practised dexterity, Whip forces her mind off dark thoughts. She's too tired to feel properly angry. And if she frowns any harder, she's going to open the split in her lip.
Instead, she focuses on other things, better things, her second glance on her strange companion much different, much more light-hearted than the first. She considers him with a long stare, his face reminding her of what he had said to her. Soon enough, Whip looks away, reaching to rummage one-handedly through the sewing basket, grimacing noisily when her bending pulls against her new stitches. Thread isn't as malleable as suture. It feels like a zipper's been made out of her body.
Sitting back tiredly, and with only the tiniest traces of regret, she begins to slowly cut open the collar of her soaked t-shirt, giving wide berth to the massive, open wound that's been gouged out of her shoulder. As she works, she stews, her distant eyes and the distinct way she's biting her lip revealing that Whip is thinking further than how to scissor through wet cotton.
After enough time, she builds up the nerve to ask K' an important question. "Why... are you so concerned with protecting me?" She pauses distinctly, perhaps considering her phrasing. She seems to approve of it enough to continue on. "It shouldn't worry you. And I'm not just saying that to be..." her voice hitches when she accidentally pulls on fabric stuck to her wound, "...diplomatic. Aren't we still strangers?"
K' had not... meant it precisely that way. But he doesn't seem to try to contest or object to her rephrasing. It's not because he thinks she's -right- in her talk of being 'good bait.' It's just because he can't be bothered to waste breath rebutting something he trusts Whip isn't idiotic enough to actually believe in the first place. It's because he expects a little more practicality than that, from someone he's come to tolerate.
She is, in fact, someone he's sneakingly come to respect. His respect is a gift far rarer even than his already-rare bequeathals of his limited tolerance. K' can tolerate, for limited periods of time, even those for whom he bears no respect-- but to actually gain his grudging esteem is something else entirely. Whip has managed it.
Part of it might be how unflinching she seems, even now: possessed of strength and fortitude even while stitching shut her numerous terrible wounds. He watches her work, without really seeing her movements. Her deft stitches just amount to so much visual white noise, for all the actual attention he pays. He's thinking.
"...huh. They started doing some strange new things to clones ever since I left," The sudden sentence is, rather obviously, in reference to the mutations of which K9999 is capable. "Used to be it was just the fire. Just the fire and the enhancements. The 'refinements.'" A grimace, mixed with a half-snarl of disgust. He was half-conscious sometimes, those months and years they kept him under. Those flashes of awareness-- of waking to conscious thought stripped, strapped to tables, submerged in liquid like some kind of insect in amber-- are some of his earliest memories now, aside from the faded-photo images from his presumed childhood which he sees in his dreams.
K''s voice gets kind of brittle, and he stops talking. He lets that avenue of discussion die in the air, and backtracks into an echoing silence. He lets his gaze stay on the floor as he works over his wounds with alcohol, his breath hissing out of him periodically as he weathers the bite of the chemical. He doesn't look up to see the way she looks at him; but though he doesn't try to meet her gaze, he seems cognizant of her regard nonetheless.
But at her sudden candid question, his movements still. Presumed awareness transmutes into a very real, frowning stare at the hardwood floor. Why -is- he concerned with protecting her? By all rights she should mean nothing to him. She's a stranger. They've only met how many times? Two. Three.
But nonetheless, ever since the start, protecting her just felt... right. Right on the visceral level. He couldn't explain it, couldn't push it down or rid himself of it; he just had to contend with it, for he felt it too strongly and instinctively to just dismiss it and put it aside. "I don't know," he answers her honestly, blunt as always. "By all rights, you ARE a stranger. I shouldn't have to-- WANT to give a shit about you." He shrugs. "But I just feel like I do."
With that, he just leans back. He does not seem to feel himself obligated to explain himself in any great detail.
Pulling away the shoulder and left sleeve of one of her favourite t-shirts, Whip's soured mood get hardly consoled by the sight that awaits underneath. The cradle of her shoulder has been holed into, the flesh ragged and tattered by K9999's macabre drillbit arm. It's probably through the grace of whatever higher power that's looking down that the NESTS experiment managed to miss her lung.
Fortunately, as brutal as the wound looks, the bleeding has stopped, and the bruising has already taken on a darker, sicker hue. Whip is a lot more resilient than she looks. Her body has already on the heal. She appraises the tattered wound with a distracted frown, already gauging it too deep and too messy to even attempt to close it. Instead, she rigs it with antiseptic and packs it with gauze, one-handedly grabbing a roll of bandaging and using her teeth to rip off a long strip. She may as well cover the wound and let it abscess until she can find a doctor.
Though her wounds are apparently all tended to, Whip still gives them a second look-over. She's not doing this to be thorough. It's the only diversion she has left to keep from immediately replying, much less considering K''s words. She told herself she'd regret asking that. And she does.
And looking at him would be even worse. Whip hardly knows K', but she thinks he looks pretty lost. It makes her insides twist and her heart hurt in ways it shouldn't. Soldiers are supposed to be hard. Moral, but still disciplined. Would it be right to try to build a friendship with this boy? Would she do him any good? And would he do her? At the least, she knows she definitely would have a lot to learn from him, be it NESTS or otherwise. But he's still so wild... barely-restrained. Like one wrong word could make him snap. Her gut feeling -- and Whip really, really detests gut feelings -- tells her that she can trust him. But is it because she feels sorry for him?
When Whip realizes that checking her wounds over for the fifth time is sort've overdoing it, she bites the bullet and lifts her head, her dark eyes turning on K'. They immediately crease upon seeing the look on his face. She shifts a little uncomfortably, her first movement realizing that half her discomfort is due to the face she's still wearing wet clothes. If she's got any luck left in her to wring out, there had better be some dry clothes left in this place.
"Maybe," she finally replies, her voice grunted out as she sets on standing back up, using the wall to brace her slow journey. "We can find a compromise somewhere. If either of us ever gets posted on new information, be it juicy or a dud, we tell the other and set out as a team. Whatever happens, after it's done, we go back to our own homes and lives and oath not to worry about each other."
Slumped lazily against the wall, K' shifts his position with a tired, pained grunt, letting long legs unfold and easing his back into a lean that won't grind his spine against the wood. He watches her take care of her wounds a while, a neutral look in his eyes; and then, presently, he looks away. He starts worrying with his left hand at the few gunshot wounds he had taken, paying them a disproportionate amount of attention considering they're some of the LESS serious injuries he sustained.
One of them, a wide and shallow wound along his chest created by an angled shot, seems to still have the bullet in: lodged near the surface at the terminus of the injury. As if entirely too accustomed to dealing with this sort of thing, K' just tilts his head back-- not looking at the wound-- and works the bullet out with very little in the way of a wince or flinch.
"...Not supposed to do that," K' surls with all the long-suffering grumpiness of somebody four times his age, a careless flick of his wrist discarding the bullet across the floor. His words seem reinforced by the fresh trail of blood that inches in a soundless ribbon down his chest and stomach; he pays it little mind. "I know. But I hate feeling them in there."
And with that, he subsides into silence. He's not much of a conversationalist. Instead, he just broods there in relative quiet, not paying her gaze any mind... nor noticing that slight pity that creases her eyes.
There's indeed a lot to pity when it comes to K'. His entire life is fraught with bad fortunes: years spent powerless and used, altered and then derided as a failure. But any attempts to actively show that pity would run up against his fierce pride and violent insecurities. It's fortunate Whip doesn't show just how much she does feel sorry for him.
He does start paying attention, however, when Whip proposes a compromise. He flicks a gaze up at her as she stands laboriously, not lifting his head, and for a long few moments he just considers her words. It's a sensible suggestion. They probably wouldn't have much reason to meet outside of shared purpose, anyway, and much as K' grudgingly likes her he's not the sort to enjoy 'hanging out' just for its own sake for protracted periods of time.
He's not really a personable sort, and he knows it.
"Fair enough. I guess," he eventually shrugs, eliciting a fresh outpouring of blood from his opened wound. His tone turns sardonic, K' grinning a little to himself-- entirely humorlessly-- as he lets his head dip and looks bluntly at his own injuries. "But it's not like I got a home or life to occupy my time with outside of this."
Log created on 01:46:35 02/15/2008 by K', and last modified on 22:08:34 03/14/2008.