Description: In this lonely world, a man can cherish many things. One is his pride, another his honor. The works he does, the things he accomplishes. He can cherish an object, an idea, a vice. But nothing is more precious in this world than the love of another, an existence of self comensurate with another. Family in this case is the closest analog. Some of us are newer to the idea than others. Some will have to fight for it ever the harder.
The exchange between K' and his sister had been brief. The young man was not in a mood for extended conversations. He had gone upstairs only long enough to ascertain that she was all right... and the fact that he discovered a girl who was MORE than all right had immediately deepened rather than assuaged his suspicions.
She'd been under the mistaken impression that he had sent the medic that'd healed her injuries, and when his confusion established pretty conclusively that he wasn't responsible... she'd gone strangely quiet, her demeanor changing.
K' had, to his discredit, barely noticed. He assumed that the implications arising from some mysterious person randomly coming along and healing her up had simply sparked a paranoia in her to match his own. Besides, he had his own ideas about where he was going to go to get to the bottom of this... and after making sure Whip didn't look like she was just going to run off again, K' excused himself quietly and went straight back downstairs.
Who was that medic, and who sent him? K' intended to find out. Circling to a halt on the landing one flight above, he glanced down... attempting to appraise whether the other was even still there.
His scent still lingers.
The lingering tease is perhaps one of the more familiar aspects of the young doctor, had one had the dubious pleasure of meeting him more than once. It is not something he would usually trouble himself to indulge--a matter of practicality above all--there is a barely detectable hint of myrrh incense in the air, a humble, bittersweet smell. Though it cannot be read easily, it is there. He is not far.
As may have been expected, the young doctor no longer resides in the meditative position of his former location, but the apartment door he sat next to is still adjar, perhaps wider now than before. Inviting, that scent is. The apartment holds nothing of notice, though a cluttered ring of keys is still suspended openly in the doorknob by a single solution, swaying ambiently in the silence.
A soft click.
Issei stands in there now at the closed window, setting his small medicine chest on the sill. Each clasp of that latch flicks open. Other than he and his chest, the room would otherwise be empty. Not even a curtain graces the window whichhe stands before, the greens and browns of shaded suburbia outside lending the depressing excuse for a paintjob--pea green wipe-clean enamel thrown haphazardly onto the apartment's walls--a somewhat warmer tone.
There is no evidence of a smile on his face.
Yellow eyes track first to the empty spot where the medic once was... and then to the slightly-ajar door. K' descends to the ground floor in quick silence, drawn-- perhaps predictably-- by the sight of those keys hanging invitingly from the door. K' is not beast enough to be able to track by scent like a dog. But his senses are keener than the average man's to the point where noting and following that scent of incense is extremely simple.
It strengthens when he gets closer to that empty apartment.
K' pauses just outside the door, holding himself just to one side of the crack so his lean frame won't blot the light. In silence, he momentarily attempts to consider the situation. The man did nothing but come upstairs and heal Whip. Now, he does nothing but linger around. For what reason? To what end? There are several ways in which K' could deal with the matter, but of course he opts for the direct approach. A touch eases the door open.
"What do you want." Promisingly, his tone has sobered and leveled out from the earlier snarling with which Issei had been confronted. This young man come out of nowhere, healed Whip clean... and then, lingered to aggravate K' with dropped hints and veiled taunts. Whatever his aims are... will they harm them, or help them? At this time, it is impossible to tell.
Despite his rogue nature, Issei is not one to lie. He was truthful in that he could have healed Whip's pain much more effectively with his tools. At least, that was the thought before his technique interacted with her body in a manner even someone like him could not have predicted. It was a reaction he would have to carefully ascertain and analyze to make use of later.
Regardless, the array of vials that are removed from the chest are hardly that of the healing hand. The labels, somewhat unexpectedly, identify them clearly. Chloroform. Sodium bentobarbital. There is even a vial that is distinctly glowing, though it is mercifully unmarked. Issei doesn't look up.
"Initially, I wanted you," he explains, that sad cheer in his voice an enduring property. There are still indeed some medicines he lay out on the sill after that. Benzocaine, hydrocodone/paracetamol, powderized morphine sulfate, several bags of medicinal herb concoctions, a vial filled with black powder and an array of broad spectrum antibiotics. The entire tray is lifted out once every piece is removed meticulously. These too is set aside. "I had an encounter the other day, with someone who wasn't quite human," the story continues, as the doctor draws a longer white coat from underneath the tray, something folded up in a layer underneath the first level of the medicine chest. "I'll admit. In our first fight, your nature eluded me, as something that was more roughly engineered than that young one. But comparing the two.." he looks up, his eyes flicking over his shoulder. Dire brown, dark enough to be indistinguishable from the black.
They are familiar. ".. I /don't/ miss something twice."
"I was originally going to find you," he explains simply, "and kill you," he asides, removing his medic's jacket and revealing a dark knit undershirt, with a silver chain looped twice at his throat. There is a symbol there, a silver blade of leaf shape. "After I'd learned what I needed to learn, such as the location of the laboratory of your creation. I could retain the knowledge there with a glance, and burn it," he concludes simply.
He pulls on the long white sleeveless coat. "After all. There can be no forgiveness for a group who sends such exquisite trash science to kill me." After that, he slides an arm into the jacket, wearing the thing open and over the coat. "What use is artificial life without meaning?" he asks openly, though he really expects little answer from the young man. "To create things with self-awareness but no meaning is an insult to creation. Trash science," he repeats.
"So. I found you. But after watching you for awhile, I determined you were carrying more supplies than one person needed for a week." He undoes the tie at the back of his head and shakes out his hair. Long bangs, waved from their long period being tied at the back of his head, spill out over his eyes, and his face.. softens. Though the red streak at the side of his hair is new, the face is not. He has the ability to appear exactly as he wishes to appear at any occaision, with a minimum of facade needed. The spirit itself is a better facade than any other thing.
"I was going to kill you," Issei repeats again.
"But what should I find?" he asks finally.
".. a sister." the warmth she enjoyed is gone, replaced only by the cold intensity of a Ryouhara.
"So. Are you real? Is she?"
Silence. The shadow just inside the doorframe looks unsurprised, not even a flinch given as Seishirou explains himself. It holds its silence, and it holds its stillness. It's sad... but K' is used to being told these things. On some level, he fully expected it. No one enters his life like this without him being the sole creature of interest; and no one takes interest in him without wanting to either kill or dissect him.
With a patience he has only recently learned, K' lets Seishirou speak to his finish. It's only when the nin has drawn to his final concluding question that the boy moves. K' steps fully inside at that point, passing the threshold and advancing inwards. One hand slides back as he enters, settling on the door knob: he pulls the door shut, and locks it after him.
Are you real? Seishirou asks. It's only then that K' bothers to reply. "Did it make it more acceptable for you to kill me if I wasn't?"
Yellow eyes fix on Seishirou's. "Compare us again to those dish-grown, fake NESTS dolls," K' starts, his voice shockingly level despite what's being said, "and I'll kill -you- for the insult, Ryouhara." Yeah, he recognizes him now. That recognition both makes things clearer... and elucidates nothing. The last time he met Ryouhara, he had drawn nothing from the encounter that might make him think he'd have to worry about the ninja's attention. But it seems that for whatever reason, Ryouhara and NESTS have intersected... and now, K' is being unwillingly drawn into the mix.
He could kill somebody for the inconvenience. Instead, he just narrows his eyes on the ninja. "Looks like you got a problem with NESTS, so you thought you'd come ruin MY day over it. But I left NESTS a long time ago. You want to kill me to get back at them? Find out about them? You'd do them a fucking favor and learn nothing..."
He's out of patience for hearing Seishirou's longwinded musing. He doesn't have the time to waste on it. And this is what prompts his next words: "I won't ask you again. What the fuck. Do you want."
"There is no such thing as a life that is acceptably taken."
The disconnect is stifling, but Seishirou doesn't even blink.
He doesn't blink, nor does he twitch in the slightest when K' locks the door behind him. But he doesn't move forward, he does not seem to want to risk K's ire right now. Is he wary? Not from the capricious glint that crosses his otherwise still face. "NESTS?" he echoes K'. "... The only thing that I didn't know already." He regards K'. "Do you think I don't know where those thawing wounds came from?"
"Your sister was and still is obviously in danger from that group." The necessary examination of Whip. Though it would be trite to say it meant nothing to Seishirou, the reason he had to have her body underneath his skilled hand is hardly the reasoning a droll person would have imagined it to be. Her body was studied extensively by him at the moment she relented to his touch. He could determine the extent of her injuries. And through that work, it did not take an engineer of the Ryouhara clan to ascertain just who on the very short list of ice chi users could have hurt her that badly.
You see, killing K' would do nothing. "That's just it. Despite what you seem to think, you are an artificial life, just like them. But you're different," Ryouhara admits but only grudgingly. "'Us,'" he minds of what K' has already said, reading into his every word as habit. "You have a will to protect that which is important to you. To protect your loved ones. That makes you an important person, to love, and to be cherished. Unlike the princess, you are to be celebrated as something of worth to life."
He does not miss a beat. "But for the lack of knowledge your sister shows of your proclivities, even this soon you've failed."
He quietly turns, and twists two wood knobs at opposing sides of the bottom of the chest. They click, quietly, and extend slightly, leaving two wooden handles. His eyes are only barely cognizant of the small detail, finding them through the touch of his rough hands alone. "I found you easily. I found her easily. Were I the loved princess, or even the dirty child, you would have come home to a butchered corpse, if anything at all..."
Slowly, nondescript wooden hilts give way to steel, hissing from those notches. Double curved blades, longer than a dagger but shorter than a shortsword, they lock into place as Ryouhara draws them from the chest. "A creation's worth is determined," he continues on. Ryouhara is out of patience for the incompetent. If K' will not listen, he will kill him anyway. "By the ability to uphold its master's ideal with its strength. You are living, so you are your own master, as a man alive. But I don't really think you get what protecting something important to you means."
He repeats it simply. "When someone like her is hurt, the world is worse off for it."
It is not a facade.
He was never 'wary' of K'. He steps forward, pointing one of the double kodachi at him. "I'm going to beat you for every minute you waste on anger that is pointless. In lieu of NESTS bumbling, I'm going to teach you what is actually important to know. One day.. your life can be celebrated as it was meant to be."
His eyes could pierce right through the beast of fire.
"You will fight me, and you will /win/," he hisses.
An instant later, Ryouhara's blade trailing a heat haze is embedded up to the hilt in the wall behind K's head.
COMBATSYS: Seishirou has started a fight here.
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Seishirou 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: K' has joined the fight here.
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K' 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Seishirou
The blade hums to a stop in the wall, a few strands of cut white hair slipping slowly from its edge... but K' simply isn't there anymore: his lean form replaced with only a cloud of blackness, through which the blade pierces. In one abrupt flex of chi, K' seems to simply slip -through- that impaling length of steel, subsequently racing towards Seishirou in a blur of heated rage. A kick powerful enough to snap any normal man's neck instantly fires at Seishirou's jaw: all pretense of prudence or foresight lost, everything whited out of K''s mind except the incredible urge to tear the insolent ninja clean in half.
Seishirou just might have touched a nerve at his assertion that K' had failed his sister. He still has very real problems with feeling like a failure, and he does not need Seishirou spouting his misinformed opinions on why he IS one.
"Shut up," K' grinds out, every inch of him enraged beyond measure, infuriated beyond recovery. He hasn't been this angry since he saw Kula mantled over Whip's bleeding form. "SHUT UP. Who the FUCK do you think you are? Who the fuck are you to teach me shit, to give a shit about her, to interfere in our lives? You don't know dick. You don't UNDERSTAND SHIT. You don't GET to tell me what I AM, you sanctimonious FUCK."
Whether he hits, misses, is -struck- himself... K' doesn't give a fuck. He's beyond caring. "You'd better defend yourself, Ryouhara," he's warning, a definite promise slashed into his low, snarling voice. "If you don't, I'll kill you."
COMBATSYS: Seishirou endures K''s Minutes Spike.
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K' 0/-------/------=|===----\-------\0 Seishirou
The thunderous crack is heard like a gunshot throughout the small apartment, significant of about 160 lbs tipped in rough cowhide and rubber colliding with the relatively smaller ninja's jaw, whipping his head through to the side and throwing the shinobi off-balance and kept on his feet only by the favor of his bound blade. In normal circumstances, Ryouhara would not be able to withstand it. He was simply not built for that kind of brawling.
Glaring, his eye flashes yellow.
He hisses. "...Baka."
"Wasting your time on self pity. Authority is illusory.." He does not fall. The ninja flips up straight, using the momentum gained to free his blade and set himself flying for K's throat, an explosion of motion leaving only the vaguest blur as an indicator that he was even there at all. Unlike K's cloud of blackness, Seishirou's movement seems to warp space with heat itself, as he moves to catch the beast about the neck with his elbow, and drag him in a spray of boiling blood from pure tearing heat and ripping friction from one side of the apartment to the other, in a rough bodyslam that will carry K' straight into the next wall. "Anyone can come at any time! It doesn't matter who I think I am--"
"There is only reality! You. Your ideal. And your _ability_."
Seishirou will not just defend himself.
He intends to harm K' immeasurably.
There is a difference.
"You think you can kill me?!" Ryouhara snaps, "Prove it!!"
COMBATSYS: Seishirou successfully hits K' with Shunshin Ghost.
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K' 0/-------/----===|=====--\-------\0 Seishirou
Caught about the throat when Seishirou reacts with surprising alacrity, K' has only the breath to snarl: a wordless reply to Seishirou's own anger. A SLAM heralds the sound of K''s shoulders crashing into the opposite wall, Seishirou's impetus smashing the both of them against the unyielding surface in a sound that doubtless scares the shit out of all the neighbours in the building.
Seishirou just. Keeps fucking talking. And K' finally loses it completely, everything he's been taught in the past few weeks flying from his mind: only the severe desire to /hurt/ left in his consciousness. "What do you CARE? What is the POINT? Fucking answer me... what DO YOU WANT." The infuriated howl comes punctuated with K''s sudden attempt to slam a fist forwards and -rearrange- Seishirou's organs: taking advantage of their proximity to attempt to -impale- Ryouhara, and striking with crushing force even though he's only got a few centimeters' worth of clearance for his attack.
Why is Seishirou here? Why does he give a fuck what happens to either of the twins? Why does he keep TALKING, spouting all this useless bullshit K' already knows? K' doesn't know the answer to any of those questions, and the Ryouhara isn't being in the least helpful.
COMBATSYS: K' successfully hits Seishirou with One Inch EX.
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K' 0/-------/--=====|=======\=------\1 Seishirou
Seishirou slips back, but it is too late. K' literally punches a /hole/ in Ryouhara--tearing literally through old bandages and other fabrics--through wounds that were on their way to healing, almost vaporizing internal organs that he might particularly need. Despite the blood, the shinobi, to merit, grits his teeth and--merely--slumps toward K'. Those fangs are bloody right now, tainted from internal injuries that had rent Seishirou long before he even got to the apartment. He had not left Afghanistan wholly in one piece.
His blades limp at his sides, the ninja looks up, a fierce white in his eyes.
"I have them.. isn't that enough? What does it matter?" the ninja murmurs in the close quarters. "What comfort would reason give you? At the end of the day.. /they/ will still be out there.."
His blades, ninkou proper, harness the thick heat energy that boils through the user's body, the steam curling up to his vision. To contrast it, it's almost like water envelops K's fist, as if Seishirou's anatomy were a mutable thing. The ninja still stands in front of K', pinioned on his fist, but another 'instance' of Ryouhara appears behind it, flickering as if still in motion even while still. He advances, moving steplessly, bonelessly, inexorable like an executioner. His blades raise--
"And if you don't believe in it... you don't STAND. A CHANCE!!"
No longer is the bleeding Ryouhara in front of K' real.
He never bothers to explain what 'it' may be. From one shoulder to one hip, Seishirou will cut /through/ his copy in a dual flashing haze of red fire and steel, tearing it apart in three neat pieces of white fabric to break the ex NESTS creation against that wall with nothing short of the pressure exuded from his twin blades alone.
The heat from them will carve furrows in the pea green wall clear across its length, enamel paint weeping and peeling from the cheap drywall in the lingering haze of his ninkou's touch.
COMBATSYS: K' fails to interrupt Prime Tactics from Seishirou with Eins Trigger EX.
- Power fail! -
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K' 0/-------/=======|=------\-------\0 Seishirou
Perversely enough, there's something about the sheer -violence- he does on Seishirou in that moment that actually mollifies K'. Some of the utter fury starts to bleed out of him, just as surely as the blood drips out of Seishirou's reopened wounds, and with a marginally more level mind he attempts to consider just what the hell is going on. He still has no idea why Seishirou gives a fuck, and Seishirou's just pretty much said outright he won't be telling.
He attempts to seize his temper-- trying to harness the fury such that it can sharpen his mind in that way he -knows- he's felt before. But he isn't quite calm enough for that yet. That razorlike focus eludes him still, and when Seishirou speaks again... it slips irrevocably out of his grasp.
Ryouhara talks about conviction. About belief. And those are the things K'-- void of self-esteem, a master of self-loathing-- doesn't have. For all his determination to survive, to get by, to someday bring NESTS down... he /doubts/ his capacity to do so nearly every moment of his waking life. Some days it takes all he's got just to not hate himself: his own doubt, his own fears, and his own thoughts that he might never feel like somebody real. Like all the normal people he sees around him, every day. It's the reason he shows such arrogance. The reason he acts out so aggressively.
The reason he hesitates just a moment too long when Seishirou cleaves forwards with those convicted words.
Instants too late, K' snarls a deep note, fire flaring to life with a violent tearing sound about his right arm-- but he severely misjudges the time Seishirou needs to swing-- and the -distance- from which Seishirou is capable of attacking. The attack /rips/ into him, slashing him back against the wall and giving the peeling, faded surface a fresh new coat of lurid crimson. Blood splashes widely in that instant before the heat comes razing in, searing the ugly wounds shut with a clinical cleanness.
Coughing a frustrated sound of mingled fury and pain, K' literally bares teeth in a soundless snarl. His temper slightly abated from his earlier killing fury, he'd thinking a little cooler. And if Ryouhara isn't going to tell him what this is about, then he's going to just guess. "What... you gotta prove something to me? You gonna teach me a lesson?" K' barks a laugh, the sound coming out bloody. "You think it's worth getting yourself even more fucked up just for that? Congratulations on engineering the most fucking pointless exercise I've had to endure in years. You haven't said SHIT I don't already know."
"I thought you might know better than that.."
Beyond that much, he seems content to allow K' the excuse he's guessed, he does not object to it, nor does he feel it necessary to correct it. There is only one observation he makes..
The blood trails off of the edges of his twin blades, leaving a crescent trail all through their wake. These blades are shaken fast and rough, slinging the worst of the blood off of them and leaving the rest to evaporate on the boiling steel. In truth, Ryouhara's gaping wound is almost large enough to see through, ragged bandages already ruining his pristine white uniform. The way he treats it, it's only a price to him, one he gladly pays.
"You keep saying that," the ninja observes mildly, pointing a kodachi. Close enough that this would not be possible with a normal length blade, Ryouhara frowns. "But you don't get it."
"Words. Are. EMPTY!" the shinobi snaps. For a young man whom speaks primarily in sotto voce and midtone, he has a surprisingly loud bark. The paradox is stifling. Stepping forward, his knee snaps out. He'll hit K' right in the double slash marks his flashing blades cut into him if K' doesn't move. The movement is marked brutal, efficient, and with little attention to subtle mercies. Almost militant they seem, the movements is so sterile. His voice is the disconnect from his motions. "The /will/ is everything!"
K' spotted it himself. Ryouhara's suffered massive internal damage. But there is no sick humor in his voice. There is no enjoyment of the sight of K's blood. There is no rueful humor that tugs at his bloodied lips. Ryouhara moves onward, despite the holes punched through him. Other men would not be standing right now, but he still pushes onward, literally daring K' to do something with every fiber of his being until he could taste it.
It's almost like he has a death wish.
"If you think you know, teach it to me."
He doesn't have time to repeat himself. He was pretty clear. Prove it.
"Or you can keep running your mouth and just fail!"
The knee will come a second time like a sledgehammer force into K's newest weak point, if he hasn't moved against him.
COMBATSYS: K' interrupts Light Kick from Seishirou with Heaven Drive.
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K' 0/-------/----===|======-\-------\0 Seishirou
Seishirou talks. And K'... lapses into silence.
Anybody who knows the first thing about him would recognize that this is far from being a sign that danger is past. Quiet from K' just means that the danger is ramping up to deadly levels. When aggravated, enraged, howling fury and striking wildly, K' is easier to manipulate. Easier to control. But when he's shut his mouth on his grievances, he's generally thinking and focusing. Putting into practice all that he's learned from Geese Howard in the last painful few months.
That, or he's seething over the words that've been said. Failure. Willpower. Empty words. A lot of people have called K' on this in the past: his tendency to talk shit and put on a show of arrogance. They've asked him to actually -deliver-. All the while, only a few of them have ever known the real reason he acts like that. It's because he doubts, and he doesn't want anyone to ever see that.
A lot of people think he has confidence. What they're really seeing, most of the time, is utter lack of care.
In this moment, however? He cares. Seishirou moves forward, aiming to slam a strike right into K''s injuries, and K' doesn't move. He doesn't try to get out of the way. He just takes the blow, along with the words that accompany it, folding slightly in involuntary pain around it. He might almost seem defeated-- that is, until he looks up, yellow eyes narrowing, his entire lean frame coiling like a spring. You never dare either K' or his sister.
K' tears forwards before the second strike can fire. Flames ignite down his arm, pooling in his half-open hand, flaring to life so fast and hot they snap audibly in the sudden silence. A sharp twist and K' lays into Seishirou with consummate force, striking violently at an upwards angle and spinning to repeat the motion a second time. K' rakes Seishirou clear into the air, following him up: only to roll over in the air like a fighter jet and slam a sharp, blazing kick into the ninja to introduce him to the opposite wall.
"I've humored you," K' growls, "long enough. Get a point... or get out."
Yes, hurt him.
Show him that you have that strength. Ryouhara operates on levels most people can't even begin to conceive, dealing in ideas and abstracts. It is in some ways, his nature as part of who he is. As K' will burn, Seishirou will think. To speak on either side is a hilarious display of discordance. Neither really spoke the same language--Ryouhara in his world of ideas and numbers, K' in his world of feelings and practicalities. But.
They did have one particular..common..tongue.
Seishirou is laid into with purpose as K' collides with his airborne body a second time like a mack truck. The first is not even noticed by the ninja, so fast it is, so deep he is in his own mind. Absently, it occurs to the ninja, from the pain that is currently ripping open his torso and spraying god knows what all over, that he is bleeding. He is choking out a shout of pain. He is /sailing/.
Spiralling the slow lazy sort of spiral that a thrown rag doll might, the ninja comets into the far wall, his body folding up against it as it -- buckles -- against the force moreso than his weight--the wall falls into the adjacent apartment, but only extending therein by a few inches as wall studs absrob the rest of the broadened impact. The slant is just enough that Seishirou can land on his feet, and still remain--leaning against the wall--barely standing.
Agonizing in the methodic, Seishirou's lashes spread wide as his eyes hitch open, rolling from the back of his skull to blink twice, regaining focus slowly as he becomes aware of the extent of the damage.
Perhaps for once since he left Whip in that apartment, Ryouhara grins.
".. Still got it," he affirms quietly. "... But the strength of your fist alone won't prove you know a thing."
And to the strength of that fist, he seems almost grimly satisfied. His voice hitches, wavering. Right now, the damage associated with Seishirou's prior fight is catching up with him as well as this new retinue of entrails. His vision blurs, a vagary he attempts to blink away. Once again, he is grim.
"Was she okay when you left? Did you even think to move her before you came to face me?"
He lifts his hand up, to run it against his slick skin beneath his torn knit undershirt, partially to ascertain the exact extent of the damage and partially to make sure he isn't disemboweled. The thought occurred to him only idly. "It's not all about what you think and what you feel. You're new to the family thing.. so I'll cut you slack..." he breathes slowly, as if staving off unconsciousness. His opposite hand claps over his mouth and he coughs, loud and long, the blood spurting from the gaps between his fingers. When he finally gets his lungs back, it's with an old hand, as if he shook oil from some contraption from his hand rather than his own blood. "...And... tell you this much:"
"If you fight to avenge something... you've already lost it."
Even now, he is calculating, standing slowly off the wall to regain his stance, as energy slides into his nerveless legs once again, the strength that can only be defined as his ideals. He is figuring on his next move, if one needs to be made. If it does, he will not hesitate, even in his condition. "Pointless vengeance is not protection." He speaks with a distinct unease, especially in the cadence of the next.
"Life before family is simple. Life after is not bearable for someone like you."
The bloodied wreck looks over across the way at K'. For the unearthly growl that K' fixes him with, Seishirou's voice is in contrast barely more aggressive than a young child's on Christmas morning.
"If you fuck it up, it won't just be you that pays for it."
COMBATSYS: Seishirou focuses on his next action.
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K' 0/-------/----===|======-\-------\0 Seishirou
K', a creature of instinct and emotion. Seishirou, one of abstract and rationality. The two would never have cause to even meet or interact significantly... were it not for the common language of violence which they both speak.
Unfortunately for the both of them, it takes a vicious and bloody few minutes of this particular brand of discourse before things begin to fall into place.
K' knows how badly he's just hurt Seishirou. He'd have to be blind not to see the way the other young man is -torn open-, bleeding profusely both from the injuries sustained over the course of their 'dialogue,' and from the half-healed wounds he'd come here already bearing. But he doesn't express even the slightest shred of remorse or dismay over it. Not only is it not in his nature to feel mercy, remorse, or pity, but the ugly, half-seared gashes torn deeply into his torso-- which have begun bleeding with a vengeance again, ripped open by his violent movements-- sort of militate against any substantial softening of his heart.
What Seishirou says, however, finally does calm some of K''s infuriated temper. If only because it makes things a lot clearer than they were five minutes ago.
Seishirou asks if K' bothered to move his sister-- to ensure she was all right-- before he came down here. K' says nothing. He had made sure she was intact, certainly... made sure she wouldn't be going anywhere while he came down to handle this matter. But it had not occurred to him to move her. To take that kind of precaution. Seishirou notes sardonically that K''s new to having family, and yellow eyes half-shutter in something almost a flinch. He holds his silence. He hasn't got shit to say. Not about -that-, at least.
"My vengeance isn't without point." At the least, his voice isn't raised anymore. The neighbours are breathing sighs of relief. "It's to -protect- our futures. I have to destroy them. We can't -live- until that happens." But Seishirou goes on. It's not just about how you feel. If you fuck up, it won't just be you. Frustration sears back into K''s demeanor, threatening to upset the tenuous calm that's snuck into the interaction. "You think I don't think that every day? Every minute? I fail, and now I lose -more- than just my life. It's -hard-. But I don't need you to tell me it. Why did you -bleed- for it?"
The next move that Seishirou prepares for never comes. K' does nothing; it's as if the very urge to fight had suddenly drained clear out of him. The deepest trenches of the Pacific will be fully mapped before anyone ever figures out a rhyme or reason to K''s moods.
COMBATSYS: K' takes no action.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////// ]
K' 0/-------/----===|======-\-------\0 Seishirou
That body of his is one known intricately by Seishirou. His physiology is finely honed, an amalgamate of agility training, survival practice and pain tolerance indexing, as obsessive a construct as any of his ninkou. At top condition, staying up for days at a time was nothing to him. As of right now however, he is currently measuring out his consciousness in the hours. At best. He won't fall here--that's not something he can do. He holds his ground as surely as he holds his arm tightly over one wound of many. Pressure will staunch the flow, as will the soft sizzling of flesh heard from just behind his arm. He stares evenly, blade is still held loosely in his alst two fingers moreso than his first from there.
His stance is low, knees bent, as if he could spring at any moment.
There is zero waver in his stance, not pitch or sway to betray the spreading blur and darkness at the edges of his vision. Lightheadedness suffuses him. That body of his is known intricately by him. And as far as he acted.. he was merely in nominal condition. There. Is. No. Weakness.
"To protect an ideal," he murmurs, "sometimes destruction is a neccessity. But that requires substantial amounts of belief in that ideal. Belief is not something you can have in something you have already lost. Vengeance is never protection," he repeats, as if pounding a sledgehammer into concrete. His voice.. is only faintly labored.
"My reasons aren't important," Ryouhara responds, without even thinking. "Only that there is worth in it, and that I bleed for it gladly, every day of this life given to me.. you should think of it simply and not concern yourself." As he says this, he stands taller, beginning to move tenderly over to to the medicine chest. Transamin...did they bring it? Riko mentioned something about the aprotinin running out again. Fucking FDA...
A bloodied kodachi slams into the sill harder than he'd like to admit he planned. He begins sorting through an interior drawer of the chest.
He is no longer facing K'.
"Simply," he repeats, busying himself with the task of searching for a procoagulant, "It's enough to say... that given what I've seen.. I believe in you."
K' holds his silence. With a quiet regard, he watches as Seishirou grits his teeth and burns his own wounds, stopping the bleeding the best way he can-- for the time being. With a sort of eerie thoughtfulness, he hears Seishirou out as the other finishes the thought-- the message-- that has been unspooling this entire time. The boy says and does nothing, much of the tension and fury that had suffused the air now defused. The neighbours breathe a collective sigh of relief at the sudden and ringing quiet.
"I protect," he eventually replies, "and believe in my freedom." And he leaves it at that. The reasoning falls into place well enough on its own without him explaining. His liberty is something he has only recently gained, and it is something he will kill for. But as for his vengeance...?
Seishirou is right, in part. Revenge protects nobody. But to say it accomplishes nothing would be far from the truth; since, were K' to accomplish his vengeance, the world would be spared the predations of NESTS.
Seishirou opts to keep his reasons to himself. To explain nothing. And for once, K' does not push for an answer to his questions. He could already ascertain that, for some reason, NESTS and Seishirou had problems with one another. And that could be enough for him... for the time being. The Ryouhara expresses his belief in K' and the latter makes no reply, his head dipping slightly such that his eyes lose themselves in the shadows thrown by his bangs. Funny, he thinks, how things can change so fast. Ten minutes ago he'd have gladly killed Seishirou-- and now?
When K' finally does speak, it's a complete topic change. His voice remains flat and gruff. "You're not going to make it twenty feet out of here. If you're really in shit with NESTS, it'd be a perfect time for them to kill you. You healed my sister. I don't doubt she'll want to pay you back." It's a tacit invitation. "Besides. You really want to know shit about NESTS, you don't have to -kill- me to get it. -Ask-."
It's a huge concession for K' to relax his paranoia enough to let such a stranger as Seishirou come upstairs. While Seishirou IS a douchebag who can't seem to phrase his points or express himself in a way that doesn't piss K' off... K' knows that, whatever Seishirou's motivations, whatever is really going on here... for the time being, he and Whip owe the shinobi a debt.
He finds the small vial of milky suspension, fixing the thing as a cartridge into a bizarre type of syringe with a needle that's at least two inches too long. This he jabs into the side of his neck without looking back. The surgical steel lances his skin without delay, finding the jugular vein with a sniper's like precision. He presses down the plunger, a thick, weighty thing. The reality of it is, it seems to be a throwing syringe. The vials of morphine and sodium pentobarbital seem to take a whole new meaning in that context.
Speaking of, the impacts in the room seem to have knocked the latter vial onto the ground. Crushed glass on the floor a side effect partially of the fall and partially of the weight of Seishirou's own boot.
The injection takes long enough for an uncomfortable pause to be only natural. Unfortunately, neither of the two here are quite natural.
Perhaps Seishirou would agree. After all, was it not so long ago he orchestrated the grandest plot before the fighting world all for the purpose of cursing one man and one man alone? Perhaps he would agree. Perhaps. The burning need for vengeance is a thing.. even the shinobi is acutely aware of. But ... his clan's nature in itself is one that is acutely aware of the price of spite.
"That will need to be enough," Seishirou says. But he never specifies as to what he refers. A love of ambiguity is magnificent. Along with the word, he draws the gleaming steel from his neck, absently licking the excess crimson and bitter from the end, sliding a cap back over the sharp and sorting the used needle into a different compartment before shutting the chest drawer. His breathing is slower now, as if he wills his heartbeat to slow, despite the ravenous burn of _bled_ over all of his body.
He says nothing else of K's belief, packing his chest by one vial and the next, setting the tray back into the thing, and clicking kodachi back into the side grooves on the chest, heedless of the flecks of red that litter the hilt, caring only for steel that is now as pristine as when he first drew it (!?). He left the black vial and the one that glows. "Nineteen hundred forty two."
He pauses.
"With all necessary actions, I'll make it nineteen hundred forty two feet before having to rest," he corrects. "That much is fine enough for my purposes." For his watch, it was obviously necessary to set up an observation post within a mile of the location he tracked K' to. He turns, the black sheen of his hair draping over his darker eyes and shielding them from view. His look.. is pensive, and it has little to do with the suspension in his veins. "She.. doesn't need to be troubled with my presence." He cannot be healed by hands like those. "Look after yourself, first."
"I'll contact you about them when the time comes. This NESTS is a strong organization, but they've already tried to catch me once. In that situation, they had the advantage of surprise and my distraction. This time, they don't."
He raises a hand towards K'.
"A group like that cannot find something that does not exist."
Stepping on one half of the white cloth that used to be his body double, he snaps his fingers. The black powder vial explodes into a curling mass of dark smoke, thicker, more obscure, and more pervasive even than oil. It boils into every corner of the room, and K' might be aware of subtle motion around him, though it is not accompanied with even the slightest sound. There is only scent. Acrid smoke, boiled blood. That -- slight -- hint of myrrh.
When it clears, the blood that spilled all over the floor is gone. The chest is gone. The glass shards. Only the rupturous slash in the wall, the body impacts remain. In but a few moments, the entire site was scrubbed clean, a faint haze of steam curling from the ground.
Seishirou himself is gone.
The door.. is still locked.
It is as if he were never here at all.
K' e_ea "Ass."
Log created on 19:46:45 07/19/2008 by Seishirou, and last modified on 22:01:56 08/02/2008.