Description: "Dear Diary, He was going to figure out it eventually, I guess. The way I stopped hunting him. The way I would avoid confrontations with him. He had to be suspecting. But now he knows. I'm not out to kill him anymore. I can't. Not after promising his sister. I warned him about the upcoming YFCC attack. I thought maybe it would distract him. I'm not sure what this will lead to. What if he tells my secret...?"
Kula's life isn't all public fighting. There are other things she has to attend to. Missions, assassinations, or sometimes just providing backup for operations that expect to encounter resistance of some kind. The latter is what brought her north. On loan from the Southtown office, after a manner of speaking, the young operative still represents one of the most powerful forces the Cartel has at their disposal. Not that attempts aren't being made to produce more like her... but the costs and time required are significant. And there's certain things they wish to... reaquire before they go through with it.
It seems out of place, perhaps, the way everyone is always supposed to keep such a close eye on her. On some level, if Kula wished to part company with the squad of operatives she is assigned to for the week, there's literally nothing they could do to stop her. And if someone came along that posed a legitimate threat to the ice princess of NESTs, there... would be little they could to stop /that/ either. So really, the efforts made to keep Kula in sight seem largely unnecessary. At least, that's how one handler seems to think. A middle aged man in charge of keeping the naive young thing out of trouble for the day while the rest of the team follows up on some intel...
The on going search for the Ryohara has brought them here to Russia, with thin evidence trails connecting the fugitive ninja to the region. Details are scarce, solid leads even harder to come by. But they think they're on to something this time. Something to do with the Russian mafia. Something that could get dangerous if they poke into the right places. But until that point, Kula is basically being babysat. Dragged around a small, bustling harbor town on the coast, just south of the point at which the ocean is too frozen over to sustain any type of water traffic, she's kept busy with trips in and out of trinket shops, lunch, treats, and basically being patronized by the brown haired, trenchcoat clad operative in charge of taking care of her for the day.
"Do you think we'll see penguins?" she had asked, looking north from the edge of town at one point, seeing nothing but artic tundra. "Maybe Milton's family is out there..." She got no answer. "Do you think we can get a pet whale? Maybe?" No answer. Glancing over her shoulder, the brown haired girl realized that her 'keeper' was distracted, several paces behind her, speaking into his cell phone in hushed tones. Releasing a petualnt sigh at being ignored, the young agent skipped ahead another half a block, only to glance over her shoulder to see if he was hurrying to catch up. But he didn't even seem to notice her growing distance.
Skipping ahead another block, she turns around and waves, looking for attention from the distracted man, but he's still not looking. "Hmph." Kula declares, turning around and rounding the corner of the building at her side, vanishing from sight. She'll teach him to ignore her!! The change in direction takes her down an alley leading a bit further into the harbor town, squat, three floor buildings lining both sides.
Clad in a knee length, red and white coat, the black leather body armor she has on beneath goes unseen. But what can't be missed are the curious yellow gloves of special design. Clasping her hands together in front of her, the perpetually cold girl wanders along, rounding another corner onto another street less populated than the last, blinking a couple times. Hm... maybe she should go find her handler. Best not to make him TOO worried when he realizes he's lost his charge.
The cold is pervasive and ever-present, up here in the wilder corners of Russia. It compounds the chill that already suffuses the poor girl's engineered body, entombing the world, stifling any and all sound until a wasteland of maddening silence is all that can be perceived for miles around. But curiously enough, something soon begins to change in the atmosphere, as Kula wanders farther and farther from her handler. The ringing silence develops a certain tension, mutating into the sort of held-breath silence that reigns over a frozen river just before April thaw puts the first splitting crack in the ice.
A sort of familiar warmth insinuates into the atmosphere. It nudges at Kula, tugging at memory, attempting and failing to warm the cold girl under the heavy coat. That warmth, however, is neither kind nor soothing. It's the sort that bakes flesh, that sickens with its heat... that radiates against the skin with unwavering intensity.
K' has been following Kula for some time, and it's only now he's gotten close enough his presence can be felt. Ever since he learned from a fortuitous encounter (it's a sad fact that not every tongue can be forcibly coaxed to loosen, even despite his best efforts towards that end: however, this had gone well) that the girl would be loaned out up here, he'd settled in to stalk her movements with the sort of dedicated, rapt attention that only best friends and best enemies grant one another.
He kept telling himself that it was imperative he kill her at the first opportunity-- but a quieter voice under that murderous insistence noted that it'd first like to know the answers to some questions. Just a few answers-- and THEN, he could kill her.
But he's not stupid enough to jump out at her immediately, especially since he knows he can't hide his presence forever and has therefore probably already broadcast his location. Instead, he pauses in the deep shadows of a side street, a few streets away from the girl, and lets his eyes shut. "You can't," he grates, talking entirely to himself, "forget what she -did-." And self-castigation complete, he shakes it off, shrugging, slipping his sunglasses back on and shouldering out into the street to follow after her.
It's perhaps ironic that the more encounters they have had with each other, the harder it has become to sneak up on each other. Their power resonates with one another. While at first it could be hard to pin point without intense concentration, as time has gone by, it comes easier, perhaps unpleasantly so. The young teen comes to a stop, turning to face a glass shop window, admiring the beautiful, colorful coats behind the window pane. She holds the ends of her own red and white coat, looking like someone's dressed her up for Christmas in the middle of summer. She just needs a fluffy red and white hat to complete the image. Then she glances back up at the coats behind the window, leaning forward to press her face against the glass, hands cupped around her eyes.
Something tingles along the back of her neck, running down her spine. A nervous, uncomfortable feeling that interrupts her inspection of the beautiful array of coats. She doesn't do anything immediately, just staring into the glass, violent eyes studying the reflection there for any sign of ambush as her survival instincts begin to take priority in her mind. It makes no sense for him to be here, she tells herself. There's no reason... except for her.
If he's here to catch her, he'll find that she's in her own element. Howard's people discovered this just weeks prior, finding that the girl, placed in an ice cave, was an unholy terror of raw, unlimited power, drawing from the frozen world around her without slowing down, without showing signs of wearing out until late into the battle. The ever-winter wasteland of the north would be similar. Reaching forward, the girl's hand traces along the glass, nothing in the reflection explaining what she can't help but believe to be true.
He's here. His very presence presents a conflict. Months ago she would turn around to chase him. She was made to hunt him, her ice to nullify and end his fire; engineered from before birth to be his bane. She shouldn't have to consider trying to elude him. She should be chasing him this very moment - catching him in a moment of carelessness as he tries to put an end to his hunter preemptively. Finish the job, fullfill her primary purpose once and for all. But she told someone that she would not. It was a choice she made, with everything on the table, and while she had regretted uttering those words that perhaps only she ever heard, she also felt she couldn't take it back. It was Her Choice. Not to be discarded so carelessly.
She has questions of her own, but she doesn't think he'll answer without the exercise of some persuasive force. No... she isn't ready for this. Hugging the coat closer around herself, Kula turns and resumes her walk along the sidewalk, though at a slightly faster pace this time. She turns right, off the street, at the first available corner, chosing then to begin to run... and run... thinking little of the directions chosen but rather the need to get away. Twists and turns, streets and alleyways... darting through the bottom floor of an apartment building...
In the end she comes to a stop, walking into an intersection in the older part of town. A large, abandoned church rises over a courtyard defended by a wrought iron fence. A stone fountain, frozen solid, sits out in front of it, decorated with birds and forever-laughing children. The property is frozen over, what must have once passed as plant life now nothing more than ice laced sticks and twigs. The child pauses there, breaths visible in the crisp, cool air. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one sees her, Kula leaps the fence easily, and slips inside the old, dusty building, closing the heavy oak door behind her and leaning back against it, catching her breath, hoping that she has lost him for good.
One would think, by that logic, that K' would be at his best in scorching deserts and volcanic craters: in his element in the midst of a blaze, or in the sweltering heat of an oven. But while he's extremely resistant to heat, he bears it no particular love at all. It's the frozen wastelands he likes, the bite of freezing temperatures. The cold is the only thing that can soothe the unbearable heat in his blood. It's the only thing that can calm the everpresent burning of the uncontrollable fire in him.
Kula's presence, however, transforms that cold into something deeper and more powerful. For a few moments, before he can stir the fire in his veins to counteract it, K' -shivers- in his leather, the unaccustomed and rare sensation thrilling down his spine. He tells himself it's entirely unrelated to the eerie sight of the little girl standing there, wondering and innocent: as much a casualty of the cartel as he is.
She almost killed your sister. He reminds himself of that, quickly, like an interrogator forcing a recalcitrant face back into ice water.
All thought of how cold it is, however, vanishes instantly when Kula abruptly bolts. This was not something he had expected. He had expected her to turn and attack him, to stand her ground-- to say /something/, at the least. Perhaps she's simply leading him into a trap, he ruminates: but nonetheless, within the next moment his lean frame has withered away into a black shadow of pursuit. Chi stains the air in his wake as he follows after the source of that feeling that tingles, every so often, in a cold-- but ultimately familiar-- pulse in his chest. All the paranoid governments in the world never made a better tracking device.
K' moves without sound. Partially out of his skill in such subtle swift motion, and partially because of his distance from her, the only thing Kula will be able to hear is her own effort not to make too much noise. His presence flickers in and out of perception, the spaces of empty static between each pulse of fevered heat down her spine coming more often and lasting longer, and when Kula leaps the fence and darts into the church as if seeking sanctuary, he finally flatlines out of her senses.
A few long minutes pass. An inventive imagination, such as the one Kula has, might be picturing K' nosing around in ever-shrinking circles, searching inevitably for her like some particularly zealous bloodhound. Eventually, as if on cue, there is a minute sound from the back of the church. Another pause, and then a voice comes crawling out from the vicinity of the altar.
"Running." K' leans out of the thick shadows and ruined beams garlanding the altar. The dust swirling through the watery sunlight streaming in the stained glass swirls about, eddying as his movements disturb the currents carrying it. His voice is a deep, promising snarl: the kind that starts in the back of one throat, and ends up sunk deep into the arteries of another. "That's a new one. What, not time to kill me yet...?"
Safe at last. Sanctuary. Perhaps the building had been that for someone in times gone by. A sanctuary. The bitter cold from outside is barely mitigated with. Drafts blow throughout the aged structure, boards creaking as the winds shift and pry at the building that has stood a few decades too long. In some corners piles of snow have frozen though the means by which the ice even got in isn't immediately obvious. Kula's breaths linger in the air in front of her mouth. A phenomenon that would happen anywhere in her excited state, let alone in such a severely cold environment.
She remembers the words he said at the SNF weeks ago. How could she forget? The menacing threats, stated directly or simply implied by that malevolent aura about him. At first contact, he had tried to just brush her off, walk away, ignore her. While she doesn't precisely long for that time again, there has got to be something better than what exists /now/. Shaking her head, she reminds herself that he should hate her. "I'm supposed to kill him," the girl whispers, alone in the dark. That's her /job/. Her purpose.
She closes her eyes, leaning her head back, then slowly sinking into a seated position against the heavy door. She can't feel him anymore. She lost him, in the winding streets of the small port town. Of course, she lost herself too. But she's less worried about that. She'll be getting buzzed on the communicator hidden in her ear any minute now anyway. As soon as her evaded handler gets desperate enough to resort to taking the fact that he lost her to the comm channels, that is. Until that happens, she has some peace and quiet to catch her breath.
She slowly rises, turning around, gloved hand clasping against the handle of the door as she moves near its edge. Carefully, slowly, she cracks it open, peeking outside. A sliver of light enters the building through the door just slightly cracked open, as Kula surveys the cold, empty streets and the strange fountain that has probably not worked in ages, as if a relic from a time when this town once saw real summer thaws.
There's a noise. A rustle, far back in the church, and Kula gasps, slowly closing the door with a solid click before turning around, resting her back against it, violet eyes widened as she stares into the dark recesses of the large meeting hall. Perhaps rats. Or a cat. A cat would be cute, she tells herself, feeling hopeful at the prospect.
But when K' slinks into view, such bright thoughts scatter to the harsh truth. He's found her still. He points out that she ran, rather than face him. Strange actions for one made to kill him, programmed and engineered to that end from the beginning. Hugging herself as she leans back against the door, finding her body chilled, from her own power swelling in resonance to his proximity, the bitter conditions, and something far more natural - uneasy fear.
"If you plan to attack me, then it /will/ be," the huddled girl states, forcing herself to stand up a little more straight. "It's just not why I'm here... I have other things to do," she attempts to dismiss her attempted evasion. A faint halo of white emanates from around her right hand as she unclasps herself, "But if you insist..."
Sauntering forward with a brazen, aggressive confidence, K' leans lazily against a shattered pew, as nonchalant as if he weren't faced with a girl engineered specifically to kill him. It's nearly impossible to tell outwardly how deep that confidence really runs, or whether K' feels any fear at coming within range of his potential executioner; he's worn this mask of casual, indifferent strength so long that it's become second nature to maintain it even in the face of dire threat.
That said: K' -is- afraid. But his fear is mostly directed inwards, at himself. He doesn't fear people or things; he fears his inability to handle them. He isn't afraid Kula will overpower him; he fears that he won't be strong enough to overpower -her-. The phrasing makes all the difference. One concept paints the situation as something he cannot control, and therefore renders him incapable of failure. The other...
I've got other things to do, she says; but if you insist, she says. He doesn't move from his position. In fact, he doesn't move at all. There is a difference being completely nonchalant and being completely stupid. "Please. What could you possibly have to do that's more important than me?" An unpleasant smile flickers about his mouth, before it fades; but though his eyes still stay hidden by those shades even now, there's a distinct impression that that smile didn't vanish so much as it just slunk up to lurk, disguised and unseen, behind those opaque lenses. "They -made- you for me."
Kula then lifts a hand in defense, and K' chuckles at the sight of the white chi bangling her wrist. He cuts a dismissive motion at her, the same sort of impatient wave a parent uses to shut down a particularly silly child. "Put that away," he enjoins. "You don't need it. Yet. What we're gonna do here depends entirely on how you answer me."
And for a time, he's silent. Whatever questions he might be referring to are, for a long while, simply not asked. In that long stretch of wordlessness, a grave cast smoothes away the nasty edges that had lingered about his demeanor. "You can't do it," he eventually says. He isn't specific about what 'it' is. "Just like I couldn't. Not after what I saw after NESTS let me out of the labs."
His face tilts towards her. Slowly, he reaches up and pulls his shades down just a little lower-- he hesitates, and then slips them off entirely. His startling yellow eyes-- which he tries his best to hide from most people of the world-- fix on Kula's, perhaps finding in those reddish eyes another hollow anomaly that wants to be real.
"...You didn't finish my sister." It's not really a question. The tone of his voice makes it quite clear that, after some careful rumination, K' has finally realized the implications of Kula's appearance and behavior when he caught her leaned over his sister's limp body.
He speaks up, asking what could be more important than dealing with him. Reminding her of the fact that she can never forget. She was created... not born, but engineered, deliberately, every step of the way, to deal with him. To suggest there's another priority, when staring right at the NESTs escapee, is preposterous, a flimsy excuse.
He waves his hand, telling her that she doesn't have to fight him. Yet. The remark causes her to bristle a little. She should /want/ to fight him. She should be taking her shot, lunging for him here and now. Perhaps her trip home from Russia could be as a victor, a girl who has fullfilled her purpose and is ready to reap the promised reward of freedom. Beneath her Christmas colored coat, she shivers, trying to make sense of the struggle of emotions within her.
He falls silent after that and she is quiet as well. A child staring back at him, wide eyed even after her vision has grown accustomed to the dark interior of the old building. A drop of water falls from the lower ceiling overhead to land on her cheek; an icicle over her head slowly starting to melt in the company of K''s presence. A second drop falls, lands on her cheek, and promptly refreezes into a small spec of white that she leaves in place.
The wooden roof overhead creaks with the shifting of frozen weight. Outside it has begun to snow, the wind picking up, traceable within by the chilling drafts that whirl about the two occupants' feet. And then K' breaks the silence, just as a third drop falls and lands on Kula's shoulder. The fourth drop is already on its way down before he finishes, bringing up the way he found her near his sister, having attacked her viciously to the point that she was close to death.
The fifth drop is avoided as Kula finally shuffles to the side just half a step, leaving it to splash against the floor at her feet. But her eyes never leave his, staring right back at those unnatural, yellow irises. As unnatural as the crimson tinted, violet eyes she has. How dare he suggest she can't do it. She's killed plenty of people, in cold blood... Had the Ryouhara heir proven just... slightly less resourceful, he too would now be among those killed by the frightfully young assassin. How can he say, just like that, that she can't 'do it'. She knows exactly what he means. The girl grits her teeth, feeling trapped there, against the old oaken door.
If she tells him the truth, she is giving up. It's over then. She can't declare that she's made the choice not to killl him, out of regard for the valiant petition on the part of Whip. Once she says that, he'll never take her seriously again. He can't know that. He... already seems to. "I wasn't assigned to kill her," she replies, lowering her hand at last, letting it rest against her side, the aura of white fading. "She attacked me, I defended myself, that was all." She blinks slowly then. She's replied to his assertions, yet she's managed to say nothing in the process. The equivocal neutrality of her speech is more than most even expect of the girl. She's not supposed to be that clever with words. Maybe she's growing faster than they know.
"You're different," she states. The implication is subtle but there. She HAS been ordered to kill him, after all. "You should know I can. And I will." she continues, her tone a little more firm, the girl's conditioning kicking in to keep her from faltering. She knows it's a lie. But it might be convincing enough. She thought, perhaps, she could walk the fence. Harry K' when necessary, but avoid him otherwise. No one would be the wiser. It seems that course may be not so possible after all.
The truth is, when he stated she couldn't do it, K' wasn't talking about her ability to kill. He knows very well how capable she is of killing. After all, if that was what he was referring to, he wouldn't be able to say that he couldn't anymore, either: he's got almost as few compunctions with killing as she does.
What he's questioning is her ability to bring herself to fill the purpose NESTS intended for her. To limit herself to being nothing but a servant to the will of that organization. The way he sees it, she's had any number of clear shots-- this being just another one of them-- to do as she's been told and kill him. And she hasn't taken a single one.
How could he do anything but assume that, for some reason, she's become recalcitrant to do her job? Guess that she's made that particular choice?
Were K' aware of Krizalid's relationship to Whip, he might not find it so strange that NESTS would restrain Kula from killing her. From where he's standing now, however, it makes little sense. "NESTS puts so little value on life they can't use," he replies, "I'm shocked they -wouldn't- condone you killing her off. Even if only just to SPITE me."
He pushes away from the pew. His hands hook into his belt loops like weapons sheathing, and he starts off in a slow, measured pace towards the girl. "And from what I've seen of -you-, it's only direct orders that would stop you from killing people."
He comes to a stop. Unless she's moved, he's now standing mere feet away. He hasn't lifted his hands, hasn't straightened up-- hasn't done anything overtly aggressive at all. For a change, he doesn't even look judgmental. "So, Kula. What's stopping you?" Calling her bluff? Maybe.
Her words spoken, Kula remains silent, the girl staying put next to the door, as if it were a solid wall behind her back. She can see the wheels turning in his head. Without his glasses on, the young man is a bit less inscrutable than he can be at times. It's clear he's figured out a lot. Been doing some serious thinking. And she's having to try and come up with a cover excuse right on the spot. To say that she's not ready for that would be putting it lightly.
"Her status was unknown to me." Kula states softly, her tone making it clear that she's still puzzled about that. Why she, of all people, wouldn't know about Whip has been something that's confused her for some time. "I didn't know who she was. At first..." Her voice fades out as he continues. He is right in that regard. Life has precious little value to the girl. Or, at least, it used to. Her techniques in SNF hold nothing back, coming close to potentially killing one or two of her opponents in recent weeks yet she felt no remorse. Only NESTs instructions that she not go out of her way to kill her SNF opponents due to the controversy it would cause has stayed her hand at all.
He draws nearer and she visibly tenses up. He's going to force the issue. His actions make no sense to the girl. Why force her hand? Why does he have to know so bad? Her eyes widen as K' keeps advancing. What does he expect to get out of this? A spear of ice through his chest? A confession? The /truth/? The girl's eyes lower to the floor, only to slowly glance up the NESTs escapee's form, coming to rest on his yellow eyes. But she can't keep the eye contact, breaking her gaze to avert attention to the side instead.
This wasn't supposed to happen. Isn't he supposed to be running scared? That's how things were supposed to be. Why did she make that awful choice? Why did she make a choice that would put her in a situation like this? Every second that passes is another moment spent fighting her programming. In the back of her mind, algorithms have been actively guaging K''s proximity, his readiness; evaluating when and where to strike for maximum damage. But still she doesn't move, head turned to the side, eyes lowered, that drop of water from moments ago affixed to her cheek like a frozen tear.
"I-" she finally opens her mouth, "I told her-" Her voice cuts out then, her right hand snapping up to rest against her ear, the girl finally being buzzed by her deseperate handlers, wondering where she is. "I'm fine," she states, head turned to the side. An ironic assertion, given she has K' towering over her just a couple feet away. She feels anything but fine. "I'll come back soon. Just checking into something..."
She glances back toward K', her eyes working their way back to meeting his. "I was at the youth center yesterday." the girl states quietly. "Igniz wants something from it. He'll be going back to it soon." Apparently attempting to shift the topic away from why she isn't directly lunging at him right then and there. Maybe he'll conveniently forget about it!
To be fair, this wasn't how K' had expected things to be, either. This wasn't what was supposed to happen on -either- side of the fence. He had thought he'd feel only the fear of a hunted animal, and the hateful anger of a brother who was nearly robbed of a sister. But it's not quite as clear-cut as that. Beneath the cold, immovable exterior he effects, it's clear to see what else he's feeling: profound confusion as to why she's continually failed to take her chances to kill him, suspicion as to what that could mean, and-- even despite the mind that -wants- to remember only a vengeful hatred-- a hint of actual pity.
She's his fault. A fake life brought into an existence in confusion and slavery because of his decision to run. That knowledge is always at the back of his mind.
At this point, he -does- want to force the issue. He wants an explanation. He wants the truth. Her actions make as little sense to him as his do to her, and he wants to know, concretely, just what is going on; because right now, he doesn't have the first idea whether he has a chance to turn her away, as Maxima turned him away, or whether she's just acting like this to make him let his guard down.
Her truncated statements just raise even more questions; he focuses in on the most troubling one. "You told her -what-?" he presses, only to be cut off when her communicator goes off. He tenses, and goes silent-- only to find there's no immediate reason to fear. Yellow eyes narrow. It's clear that mind of his is working again. Those who would write K' off as a mindless brute or unthinking creature would be in for a rude shock if they ever met him. Witless fools don't evade major shadow organizations as long as this. They don't -survive- in major shadow organizations to begin with. And Geese's training has only augmented that survivor's cunning.
Well, whatever Kula's reluctance to kill him is, it can't be NESTS orders. She's just lied to them over the communicators as to what she's doing. If there were outstanding orders concerning his capture-- the only thing he can imagine NESTS has in mind other than his death-- why is she -hiding- the fact he's here? It reinforces his suspicions about her rather than abating them. Therefore, it answers no questions.
Of course, then Kula is cunning enough to bring up the issue of the youth center. Whatever small headway she might have made past K''s unforgiving, vengeful nature begins to dissolve. The faint gentling of his attitude towards her is quick to disappear, encouraging signs of pity replaced swiftly by suspicion, hostility, and sudden concern. His eyes sharpen. Why is she telling him this? Who did she kill while she was there? What has she precipitated?
He doesn't ask questions too specific. He doesn't say what's on his mind-- that he has to go back. He doesn't even explode, as might be expected; Geese's constant beatings and teachings over the past few months actually have sunk in to some degree, and now they seize control: calming his immediate impulse to snap and cooling his reaction to a mere calculated, cold stare. Instead of erupting on Kula, he just says, unnaturally calm: "Well? You know what he wants, don't you?"
If she had any idea that bringing up the YFCC would melt away any weakening in his animosity toward her, she would actually be relieved to have stumbled upon it. The idea that he's softening toward her would only be further proof that she's lost whatever edge she once had over him. If he doesn't think she's dangerous, he'll be able to dimiss her easily out of hand. She'll be worthless then. It wouldn't be long before those who take care of her picked up on it - that she no longer held any menacing influence over the escaped project. What then? What use is a counter that is no longer effective?
But now she has his attention. And she isn't forced to respond to his demand that she speak about what she told Whip. She doesn't want to say it. No one else in the world even knows. She doesn't even suspect his sister knows, as she was nearly dead at the moment the words were uttered anyway. If K' knew... How could she have almost told him? Eyes widen a little as his refocused attention zeroes in on what she may or may not know.
"I don't-... I don't know for sure." she stammers, leaning back against the door again, hands planted against its oak surface. "It wasn't to get you. We knew you weren't going there anymore." He shouldn't be surprised that the place was monitored extensively after he was first discovered at the location. "They didn't tell me what for. I just know something bigger is coming."
She studies him for a long moment. Just why is she telling him this? Is it to get him to drop what she said to Whip? To take his mind off of why she isn't attacking him? Maybe she's trying to provoke him into attacking her - it's easier to retaliate with all the deadly force she can muster if he's hurling those grafted in flames of his her way. Or maybe it's to get him back to the YFCC. Put him back into a predictable location. It could be that she's just trying to be deceptive, driving him back to that familiar place... "If he isn't looking for you there, then... he must want something that's already there." the girl states finally.
"I didn't kill anyone." she states after a moment, her tone a bit neutral on the subject, leaving it hard to tell if she didn't because she was thwarted or didn't because she wasn't supposed to. "But it was important to see what kind of defenses they could muster."
She falls quiet then, staring back at K'. She can't really tell him any more about the YFCC or what is going to happen to it. Igniz, nor anyone under him, has mentioned anything else. And now she's resolved to not speak another word about what she told Whip. Her jaw is set, her expression strangely defiant in spite her non-combatative approach to this encounter. "I do what I'm told." she asserts after a moment. "Next time I see you, I will be attacking." It's a threat, a warning. Maybe she's even going so far as to try and goad him into attacking her on the spot.
If K' knew those concerns of Kula's, he'd have one very simple question for her: why should her entire worth as a person be predicated on her usefulness in one solitary task? That was the question K' had been posed, a year or two ago... and the answer led him to where he is now. Which is, apparently, listening in complete contempt as Kula stammers that predictable 'I don't know.'
"Of course you don't know," K' huffs in a derisive snort, revealing his earlier question as entirely rhetorical: and entirely mocking. "A gun doesn't need to know why it's fired." He lapses into silence briefly, brooding over Kula's words without questioning why they've been given. His sharp yellow eyes remain settled on her, but are now slightly unfocused. The young man is clearly processing the information, quickly sorting through it and deciding the various implications they hold.
Kula might almost become uncomfortable with the silent rumination, so long does it go on. But eventually, K' suddenly stirs out of his thinking with a startling abruptness, leaping from distant pensiveness to focused speech in the space of an instant. His next words crack the silence like a shot of lightning. "But I'll tell you why, since he won't. He wants the children. He wants to do to them what he did to me. Take them away from their families, away from their lives, and then wipe their memories away. Put them up on a rack as tools to use, right next to you... or use them as experiments. Like me."
He leans back. His cold gaze never leaves her eyes, no matter how much they try to avoid his stare. "Maybe you should talk to a few before you do that to them."
And he turns shoulder on her. The motion looks promising, as if he's about to turn around and leave; but he stops, and he holds his ground, and after a few moments he speaks again. I do what I'm told, she claims, and he just replies shortly: "Do you?" A pause. "Should you?"
The questions are rhetorical. He moves on quickly. The warning receives little more than a bland, thankless look, her gracious threat garnering little reaction. She's not attacking -now-, and he can't fathom why not. "'Next time,'" he picks out pointedly. "What, you'll have the notarized authorization by then? Cause that's apparently what it takes. Attack me, and I'll kill you. But I admit, I'll kinda miss this thing we got going of leaving each other the hell alone. You know why?"
"I should kill you. I should -want- to. But the truth is, I just don't." There's a ring of truth in those words: his earlier sardonic tone has gone, replaced by a bitter note. It's hard, even for a spiteful creature like K', to hate something mindless: something that's just a tool. Something that just sits there, doing nothing, until it's interacted with. "I'm the reason you're alive, and being the reason you die doesn't please me half as much as I thought it would." He lifts a shoulder, the motion the very epitome of 'now you know.'
"Now. You're telling me," he reminds, "what you could possibly have had to say to my sister."
He doesn't sound surprised that she doesn't know the particulars behind Igniz's interest in the YFCC. It's no surprise she's kept in the dark about most things outside of who to attack and when. Even her intel on why she was supposed to kill that pesky Ryouhara amounted to having overheard what he had done to K9999's arm. It wasn't mentioned anywhere in her briefing. He knows how it goes. He used to have her job title. Pet killer for the people with the real power at NESTs.
She can sense the derision with the way he responds then stares at her, an intensity burning in those revealed yellow eyes of his. He's smart. However smart he may have been before, surviving on his own has honed his cunning, his senses, his instincts and ability to study a situation far beyond her own. He comes to the conclusion that she could not, feeding her the angle she never would have discovered until it played out before her eyes.
The children, of course. NESTs interests have always been in that direction. Younger minds, younger, still growing bodies to genetically modify with their experimental treatments and drugs. He speaks with knowledge and certainty. After all, he's describing something frightfully close to his own experiences with the Cartel. The children. The instant he says it, Kula averts her eyes to the side, no longer able to maintain contact with his. He says she should talk to them and she murmurs softly, "It isn't /my/ fault, it's not my plan..." Protesting the idea that what might happen to them should rest on her conscience.
But as he turns away, she looks back up, hopefull that he's going to leave then. But when he snaps back out at her, attacking her loyalty, she shrinks back. He's turned back on her in the end, however, pointing out that she has yet to attack in spite opportunity he is apparently providing to do just that. The girl bites her lower lip, eyes tracing back up over the taller young man. He tells her that if she attacks, he'll finish this by killing her, and she doesn't flinch. Maybe he can. Maybe he can't. Her experience suggests she has the edge if she's serious. It's that if that's the problem.
So he doesn't feel too keen about killing her. It's... not as relieving she might think. It's clear he basically feels sorry for her. Or at the least, mildly responsible that she exists. It's a little... bit of a downer that your primary nemesis, the one you're made to defeat for your mighty Cartel, thinks you're not worth taking seriously. That he expects he can just keep making demands that she answer his questions is starting to get to her as well.
Drawing her right hand back, she closes it into a gloved fist, standing up a little more straight even though she remains trapped against the door by K''s imposing presence, "No." Kula declares. "I'm not telling you." She can't tell him. Everything rides on him not knowing. /No/ one can know. She draws in her breath, waiting, holding still, the temperature around her dropping swiftly as she teeters on unleashing that inner seal that keeps her power at bay until needed. "You can't make me." she adds defiantly, violet eyes focused on him. Maybe she seeks to force his hand, to make him fight to get what he wants.
She can't surrender without a fight - to tell him everything he wants to know.
She did replace him, really. She did inherit his job. Pet killer. Assassin on call. The other experiments of his batch who succeeded went on to better things: positions of power, posts of influence... Krizalid preeminent among them. But K'? He was a failure, but not a useless one: and so, he was simply corralled away, penned up with the throngs of mindless machines that had been engineered solely to kill.
And so, he understands more of her position than she might expect. He understands her more than HE thought he would. But that doesn't mean he'll condone or turn a blind eye to what she does. "You help enact it. You carry it out. It's your fault, as much as theirs." He talks without emotion, without inflection. An odd coldness has claimed his features, hollowing his voice until it doesn't ring of anything but hard truth. "Don't tell me you have no choice. I am evidence of your other choice."
He half-turns away from her; but as Kula soon discovers, that hardly means he's finished talking. He says what he has to say, and she-- predictably-- has nothing to say in return. He doesn't expect her to have a rejoinder; and he doesn't even try to press her for one. He knows that she's little more than a doll with a pullstring, and so he already knows what'll come out of her mouth once he tweaks that cord.
As for not taking her seriously... well. Much of that is pure bluff. In truth, he has few doubts she could kill him were she to get over her odd reluctance to strike first. He is careful around her as he's careful around very few others. However, it's simply his way to posture, to show no weakness or fear, and to externally present a far more imposing image of himself. He goads her now simply to judge her limits, to see whether her reluctance to attack is real, to attempt to discern the reason for such nonaggression-- and should she actually attack, he already has an exit strategy devised.
It's to run like hell at the first opportunity.
No one would be able to tell from how he reacts to Kula's show of defiance, however. Seemingly fearless of that surge within her, he turns back to face her. He leans forward... and then falls easily into a slow advance, exhibiting that odd talent of his to loom without even standing straight, aggressively pushing into her personal space like a crocodile languorously dominating a small pond. You can't make me, she says, and his very presence, heavy and oppressive, seems to reply: '-Can't- I?' And then, at the crux of all that built-up tension, he notes--
"...You're right. I can't make you." He leans back, all that sudden menace draining out of his stance, settling back quietly on his heels in much the same way a hawk sits back and folds its wings after a threatening mantle. "Nobody can make you do anything." And with that, K' simply turns around and begins to walk away.
The dripping icicle above Kula's head has long since refrozen solid as she seems to be readying herself for a fight with the flame weilder. Maybe this will be the destined fight. The one that has to happen someday. But what's the outcome a fight to the death when neither is interested in killing the other anymore? He calls her excuse, not letting her off the hook. The attack on the YFCC, or anywhere else, may not be her plan. She may not come up with the idea. But she's an instrument in carrying them out, and that makes her culpable he states. The girl doesn't look like she's thought about it that way, with the manner in which she shifts her gaze to the side.
He cites himself as the example of another choice she has made and Kula's eyes snap back to him even as he turns to the side. She opens her mouth as if to say something, then closes it again. Perhaps cutting herself off from uttering something that she would only want to take back in the end. Or maybe keeping herself from parroting another lie that he already knows to be false.
And then he's close once more. It would be easy then. Unseal that divine ice and skewer him through. Not enough to kill him in one hit, but enough to put him in a painful position to defend himself from following strikes. Her killing algorithms begin iterating scenarios, contingencies, solutions in the back of her mind, each of them vying for supremecy over her conscious thoughts in order to push the young assassin into fullfilling her purpose - the purpose she has been conditioned for all her short, young life.
As he draws near, a tremor courses over the girl as she draws back against the door. Not one of fear, but of struggling, fighting that endless war in the silent chambers of her nearly empty soul. He's going to attack. She should attack first. Her hand tightens, the leather of her glove creaking as it shifts accordingly. Preemptive strike - a devastating, stunning blow. She needs to act. He isn't leaving her any choice, looming over her like that. A glimmer of perspiration forms on her forehead before evaporating in the frigid dry air.
He's going to make her attack. No choice. No alternative. Her arm trembles, that frightful, deceptively deadly power of hers ready to be unleashed; put to use. In this frozen tomb of a building, the energy she could manipulate would be severe. Her whole body tenses, ready to lunge, to draw a spear of ice from empty air. Still, she holds back, waiting for him to act, for a flare of flame to unfurl down his arm; for him to become that threat that must be put down for her own protection. Hunching up, her body mostly hidden by her coat, she is ready to put her lightning speed reflexes to the test. She is going to win this quick draw. And she is going to make him go first.
And then he speaks. He leans back. That formidable presence of his drawing back as he does. Kula blinks, violet eyes widening a she stares back at the escaped experiment. That failure, that project gone wrong. She doesn't even take a breath, doesn't even move, her body still wound up, ready to spring, ready to strike. Her eyes search his as he speaks. No one can make her do anything. Even in that moment he wasn't able to get her to attack him. He turns to walk, leaving the girl with her epiphany.
She says nothing, the only sound escaping her lips is a gasp as she at last begins to breath again, the tension bleeding out of her body as she leans back against the door and sinks down to the frozen, stone floor. Staring into the darkness in which K' is headed, toward whatever exit he found to sneak in, she opens her mouth to call after him. She should tell him. What she told Whip. That secret she can't tell anyone. It's his right to know for certain what he already clearly suspects.
But the words don't come. A static chirp in her ear, her handlers chiming in for another update on her whereabouts. Kula's mouth snaps closed, the girl bowing her head as she stays seated, her hair falling in around her face. A deep breath is taken as she presses her hand against the door and slowly starts to pull herself back up to standing. By the time she lifts her head, a forced smile has found its way to her lips. One hand comes up to brush her hair back over her shoulders as she answers the insistant demands, her voice full of feigned cheer, that innocent, naive tone they expect from their little ice princess, "I'm almost there. Don't worry so much. I'm fine!"
She turns, pulls the heavy door open, letting the white brilliant light of outside spill into the dark building. A glance over her shoulder back toward the shadows, violet eyes searching, her pretend smile gone - and then she slips out, letting the weighty door close behind her with a solid thud.
Log created on 00:26:01 08/09/2008 by Kula, and last modified on 05:01:30 09/01/2008.