Description: Siblings can only get along for so long. Inevitably, K' and Whip come to fight-- very literally-- over how the imminent NESTS attack on the YFCC should be handled.
The day after he took Shurui in, K' began to keep a covert watch around the YFCC, waiting to see if anything would happen. Dressed down in a simple leather jacket and jeans, sunglasses hiding his distinctive eyes, K' did slow circuits in the area for hours. He'd discovered and quietly dealt with one or two NESTS recon personnel, but found nothing else of note; he went home slowly, watchfully, considering what their next move should be.
He lets himself in quietly-- it's nearly 9 PM-- looking around the apartment both to see who else is present, and also to make sure nobody that -doesn't- belong there is lurking around. Leaving his keys on the counter, he steps in slowly like he doesn't even trust his own abode... and sadly enough, in reality he really -can't-.
The apartment is dark and silent and warm, a safe, membranic little world in itself that stands apart from the rest of the city. But something doesn't seem right. All that embryonic silence sits as tediously as the calm before the storm... the twins' home is quiet the way a person is quiet because they are holding their breath.
Having generously donated her bedroom, Whip has already set up a makeshift bunk in the living room, though her new environs are about as sparse as the old. The only unpacking she's done is to lay down some bedsheets over the couch, no doubt to prepare herself soon for bed, though the linens have been tangled with cables, extension cords, and her closed laptop sitting as the centrepiece in all that messy technology. His sister has been working; she promised them security through surveillance, and she seems to be a step closer to the inevitable delivery.
But now the living room is dark and silent as the rest of the house, and strangely so. Whip is nowhere to be found. Not in the kitchen. Not in the bathroom. Not in the larger closet that has been delegated for extra storage. The apartment is holding its breath tensely, nervously; it's something else that breathes.
The tiniest gusts of wind blow in through the window, which has been opened imperceptibly -- wide enough not to lock, wide enough to be able to let someone back in.
Through that window and up, up, way up the lengths of winding cables, Whip is up on the roof of the building. The night wind moves her hair and ruffles the collar of her blouse as she works. She's still working, but not on surveillance. She's surrounded by an arsenal of weapons, and in the silent darkness, is systematically cleaning every one of them.
Frowning to himself, K' does the small, confused circle of a bewildered puppy in the center of the dark living room. Finishing a complete circuit of the area, he comes to a stop and just looks around himself one more time. Whip was obviously here recently... but where is she now? Eyes lambent in the gloom, K' glances towards the kitchen-- no one there-- and then down the hall towards the bedrooms. He pauses... and it's in that moment that a breath of fresh air touches his face. His frown deepens.
Silently, he makes he way over to the open window and looks out cautiously. -Someone- is on the roof. Eyes narrowing, K' steps up and eels easily out the window, his lean body slipping through the crack without a pause. Within the next few moments, he's peeking up over the roof, suspicious and ready to attack... at least, up until he sees that it's only his sister.
His sister... and what looks like the entire contents of an armory. Vaulting swiftly and quietly the rest of the way up onto the roof, K' lands in a crouch and demands, "What are you doing up here with that?"
Their building's rooftop by moonlight is a hidden beauty in a place like Southtown. It's grave and peaceful, the silence so total it's almost reverent, bowing in respect to something greater. So far up from the streets below, one becomes suspended in stars and endless black skies, lit dimly by the distant, warm, yellowy glow of the city. The wind is chilly but light. The air smells fresh and sharp of the sea.
And Whip was having a very peaceful time of it, up until two seconds ago.
Her back facing K', it straightens visibly at the sudden, fierce sound of his voice, her vertebrae moving under the fabric of her shirt. Wearing a blouse and old jeans, her hair let down, and her body arranged in a don't-give-a-damn way, Whip's having a picnic with so many of her closest friends. Her weapons are all rolled out, and she sits in the thick of them like a picnic, and caught now in the midst of polishing some heavy-handled, serrated hunting knife. The circular, waxing motion pauses.
That back facing K' sags with a breath out. Whip was hoping he wouldn't come up here. She was hoping he would have come home tired enough to go straight to bed, or hungry enough not to notice anything else. After a moment's pause, she doesn't turn to face her brother. She wants to be left alone.
"I didn't want to wake Shurui," she replies finally, her voice soft but toneless. Also apprehensive. Just around the edges. "I wanted some air and quiet."
Whatever beauty there is to be had up on the roof is completely lost on K'. The young man straightening up to a stand, suspiciously staring down at Whip, only has eyes for his sister and all her shiny friends. Ignorant of the serenity, ignorant of how he's probably interrupting when Whip just wants some time to herself, ignorant of her desire to simply be left alone, K' intrudes swiftly into her space, his suddenly-heavy steps drawing nearer and nearer.
His everpresent heat sears against her perception once he draws close enough, his presence robbing the air of its coolness. His silence, as he looks over the array of weaponry garlanding the rooftop, is thick and heavy enough to cut with the knife she's polishing. It's the kind of silence that says volumes.
I wanted some air and quiet. K' doesn't take the hint. Still standing over her-- he certainly doesn't have the modesty or propriety to kneel or sit-- he holds his silence for a time. "You preparing for something?" he finally asks, his low voice empty of emotion. It's sad... but he's come to be suspicious of Whip, primarily because she hasn't gotten into the good habit of ever telling him what she intends or what's on her mind.
"Someone has to," Whip replies suddenly, sharply, her head turning to glance at K' out of the corner of her eye. His natural suspicion is met with her natural defensiveness. She doesn't like his questions, or the tone of his voice, because she already knows what they're implying.
She ignores the fact that they're mostly justified.
Her head turning away once more. the Ikari sets the hunting knife back down, its cleaned blade perfectly reflecting the distant Southtown skyline. She picks up the next in her series of melee weapons. "Don't stand there and patronize me, K'. Privacy is an apparent privilege I've not yet earned, right? You've taken the time to find me out, so I'm sure you know what I'm doing."
"You think I'm not?" His voice has gained a sudden edge. When she turns to look at him, it's to find his expression teetering right on the brink of that famous anger of his. Her defensiveness triggers a like defensiveness in him, his suspicion melting away once it finds it's probably justified. "You think I'm just sitting around? I'm not, Whip. But I -know- what I'm preparing for. What are -you- preparing for?"
He maintains his stare on her, his aggressive stance, even when she dismissively turns away from him. She tells him not to patronize him, even while she dismisses his concerns as inconsequential. His eyes thinning, K' visibly tries to control his temper. The struggles becomes evident in his voice when he talks again.
"Privacy is a privilege none of us have, Whip. I come in, the lights are out, the window's open, nobody's in, no note. Do you want to know what goes through my head?" He leans forward a little, intensity stamped in his yellow eyes. "Somebody got in, either killed or took you, and now is probably sticking around to do the same to me."
"What the hell do you take me for, K'? A civilian? Do you have a single shred of trust in my ability? If someone got in with that sort of agenda, you would not be coming home to a clean apartment." Growing too irritated to continue her work, Whip sets her half-polished knife back down and swiftly rises, standing to her full height to close the distance on her brother. She refuses to let him loom over her for a conversation like this.
Turning, Whip crosses her arms the instant she faces K', her eyes hooded and her mouth already creased into its familiar frown. She levels him a look that could strip the paint off a car. She's sick of this same conversation, and it shows. "If you need some sort of outlet for that overbearing instinct of yours, impose it on Shurui, all right? She needs all the protection she can get. I don't need it, so stop trying to make it out like I do!"
Scowling, irritated over how K' has managed to irritate her so quickly, Whip rubs two fingers against her left temple. The wind moves her long, heavy bangs around her glaring eyes.
"You KNOW what I'm preparing for!" she snaps an instant later, bothered by his ignorance whether it's sincere or designed primarily to humour her. Whip's temper is making her suspect the latter. "I'm volunteering myself to intercept NESTS. It is the most practical choice. They don't have any designs on me, so there is least danger involved, and I should not be expected in Southtown. So will you leave me alone and let me do my job?"
Whip rises. Pointedly, K' keeps right on staring down at her, eyes thinned, a frown stapled permanently to his face, not backing down or relaxing in the least. "Nobody here," he replies tightly, "is talking about your ability except -you-. /I/ never brought it up. You want to know what it is I take you for? I take you for the only person I give half a shit about. So don't even-- BOTHER to tell me to go care about somebody else."
But Whip isn't done there. She's still talking. Volunteering myself to intercept NESTS. Most practical. Least danger involved. The words are perfectly clear, but nonetheless they somehow don't seem to register. K' just continues to stare at her, blank in the same way a slate-gray sky is still before the first crack of lightning, still in that one blissful moment of incomprehension before the "Wow, she really DOES mean it seriously," sets in.
It's testament to how much he's changed over the past year that he doesn't instantly explode in rage in her face. No, the buildup is a lot more slow and subtle these days. Still, he always manages to get there in the end... "No. I didn't guess. I didn't know." Each angry word sounds like a hammer on steel. "Because I didn't think you were that STUPID!"
Ah, there we are.
"Are you fucking serious?!" The temperature's already going up. "That's the most retarded logic I've ever heard, and I've heard a LOT of bullshit from NESTS. How is it most practical for you to go alone to a planned /NESTS assault/ and get yourself killed and captured? How does that involve no danger-- either to you, or to me? Or Shurui? Ability or no, you can't handle a full assault."
Raking an angry hand through his hair, K' does about all he can do in the face of such idiocy-- he laughs, the sound a short, humorless, and derisive bark. "You're incredible. You get angry at me for wanting to do shit myself. You get upset I don't want us to do this together. Then you turn around and plan suicide missions like this. You're fucking unreal."
Even when K' contests that her ability as a combatant, a weapon is put into question, Whip is swift to correct him, stepping forward aggressively to point an outraged finger in her brother's face. "You're implying it!" she accuses. "You're implying that I can't take care of myself! You listen to me, K': I'm here only because I choose to be. It's only because I /want/ to get to know my brother, and not because I think I need his help! I need you in some ways, but not to protect me! I've never needed that! You don't know anything about me and the things I've been through! So stop presuming about me!"
Whip pauses only momentarily to seethe, her teeth flaring through her sneer, but it soon becomes apparent she's stopped only to catch her breath. Her lips part, and she moves in again to tell him off--
But K' gets there first. His choice of words don't help her aggravation. "--Retarded?!" Whip sputters through K''s lecture, angrily and incredulously, but says no more until he is finished.
By now, her body is facing him, her shoulders are squared with threat, and her face is fixed with anger. Whether or not it was K''s intention, he's found himself a confrontation. "It's /practical/," she enunciates slowly, implying he's the deficient one for not understanding, "because you're the one NESTS wants. You're a lot of interest, so much they went and GREW a person -- a whole person -- just to bring you back! I'm a ghost on their radar, K'! I can survive it, but they wouldn't let you out alive. It's not a suicide mission. A suicide mission is hitting them on their own turf. They're playing the visitor in this game, K'. I can't get them let away with it."
"I'm not responsible," K' replies, startlingly coldly-- though that coldness has a killing edge-- "for whatever meanings you make up to put in my mouth, Whip." A surprisingly calm answer, considering this is K'-- but then, for the past few months, K' was savagely beaten every time he lost his cool. Geese's Pavlovian teaching style was very quick to beat its lessons into K', especially since he exerted none of his own considerable will to combat it. Experiment that he was, K' has never known any other kind of teaching.
But while he might not be exploding in incoherence, he's certainly not short on seething. His voice grates only reluctantly out of his throat, hard-pressed to make it out in an intelligible form past all the rage he's keeping down. "I never fucking said you can't take care of yourself. You said that yourself. I'm not implying you can get taken out by any two-bit fighter; there -are- people out there even I can't handle, and -that's- who I'm talking about.
"But hey, if you're so fucking insecure you need to look for what I'm implying in everything I say, I guess that's your problem. And I can play that game too, if that's what we're gonna do." He leans forwards, into her space; the fire in him responds to his anger, gleaming a vicious red under the malignant yellow of his eyes. "I can make all the assumptions you FUCKING want me to. To me, it sounds a hell of a lot like you'd just abandon me cause you don't want to put up with the responsibility of somebody giving a shit about you. And you can't just -threaten- me with that whenever I say something -you- don't like."
But he isn't entirely immovable against her words. When she mentions Kula, K' actually looks stung. He pulls back as if actually hurt by that-- or as if that was a harsh truth he didn't want to be reminded of. He didn't want to think about how his choices brought Kula into the world, not right now. At the least, Whip subsequently gives him a whole lot else to think about; the moment of discomfiture is brief, soon overtaken again by anger.
"...Fine. Then tell me." K' settles in visibly, his voice taking on a distinctly taunting, mocking air, waiting for her to explain it such that it makes sense. "Tell me what the point of you going is. Tell me what you're gonna accomplish. Are you going to stop an entire attack force by yourself, Whip? Gonna kill off entire teams of NESTS personnel, maybe Kula and K9999, maybe even Igniz himself, while I sit at home doing shit all? You talk a lot of shit about me overprotecting you, and then you turn right around and tell me to sit at home while you do all the fucking work. YOU'RE the one implying I can't take care of myself-- way more than -I've- ever done to you."
Whip doesn't even tic a muscle when her brother gets into her face. She stands her ground. She meets him straight in the eyes. Her only movement is when the fickle night breeze moves her hair. The soldier remains planted opposite of her brother, and it has nothing to do with fear or intimidation -- neither of which she feels for him -- only the simple drive not to let him with this argument and cow her out of her decision. She stands solidly, strongly, existing as a single point immune from the burn of K''s imposing will and stolen fire.
But her brother's front line insidiously switches direction. Instead of trying to move her physically, those choice words of his sink right in under her skin. When K' accuses her of shucking responsibility, of using her very responsibility as a meaningless threat, her irritation stokes into immediate fury like gasoline poured over burning embers. Whip's brown eyes have not the threat of fire, but they still find a way to burn. Her hackles are up. Her joints are locked. At her side, her right hand clenches into an angry fist. And she's about to lose her temper, in three, two, one--
That instant, K' reacts visibly against the mention of Kula Diamond, and it's that surprised, unexpected look on his face what saves it from her fist. Her hand relaxes. And she just exhales a frustrated scowl.
"I'm doing my job," she replies finally, breaking away from K' to cross the length of the roof. Whip wants space. Grimly, crossly, she occupies one corner of the rooftop, crossing her arms as she looks out over the dark city. "I'm a roughneck, remember? It's what I've been doing, and it's what I like doing. You don't know what that's like. You haven't had time to sit and figure out what you like doing. You've had to keep running. Isn't that right? If anyone deserves to sit at home, it's you. It's your god-given right. You've suffered in ways I'll never know. So it's not about overprotection. It's about it being my job and not yours. So will you please go back inside and leave me alone?"
"Maybe I -deserve- to sit out after all the running I've done," K' replies coldly. "But I don't want to. And you can't force me to, Whip. I'm not taking orders like that ever again." He stares holes in her back when it's turned on him, his temper momentarily cooled... but only in the sense that he's no longer yelling. "It's not your job to do shit. You don't owe me a goddamn thing. Stop acting like you do."
But he can see she's still determined to do this. And he knows that she's very likely to just up and do it without his knowledge, at this rate. He'll have to address this in a more drastic way... and, predictably, K' falls back on the one thing he understands better than anything else.
"...I'll give you one chance to prove to me just how capable you are of handling all this on your own." His head lifts in distinct challenge. "If it's your -job-... show me you're able to do it." He's already pacing towards her, his step distinct on the rooftop. And from the speed and purpose of his advance, it's entirely possible that if she doesn't throw the first attack, -he- will...
When K' informs her that she doesn't owe him shit, Whip turns a swift glance back, her narrowed eyes watching him blankly. It is nearly impossible to see it on her, through the dark and all of her visible anger, but the guilty apology haunts her face. She does feel like she owes him; sometimes she wonders that if she hadn't have lost her memory, if she had found him sooner, would she have been able to save him from all of that.
Eventually, Whip looks away again, set on ignoring her brother's existence entirely, hoping that the cold shoulder will encourage him back into the apartment and leave her to her thoughts and stubborn decisions. Standing there severely, arms folded and shoulders hunched forward, Whip frowns at the distant Southtown skyscrapers, waiting with that infinite patience of hers.
It goes unrewarded. Instead of leaving as asked, she only hears K' speak again, in a tone that now sounds changed. He's giving her one chance? She can't ignore him for long, and both curious and suspicious, Whip looks back to see just what that chance is.
She wasn't expecting that. His challenge makes her frown, her eyes squinting with an unasked question. She's not sure what he's implying.
And that's when K' starts forward, advancing the length of the rooftop towards her. Whip just stands there in that same patient way, her arms still crossed, her head still tilted with bewilderment. She looks on him with obvious confusion in her face, but makes no move against him; she doesn't raise her guard against the only person she trusts completely in this world. Whip isn't expecting K' to engage her, not like this--
"If you're so decided on going solo to face an entire assault team of NESTS-- something even I couldn't handle alone-- then you're going to prove to me why it is -you- can." K''s voice is calm now, but under that even tone is a distinct ring of steel. This probably isn't the smartest way to handle this, and somewhere in the back of his mind K' knows it... but it's the fastest way for him to make his point clear. To keep Whip from getting herself killed.
"You're going to prove to me why you're allowed to protect me, make me sit at home, and I can't protect you." He's close now. Whip's trusting confusion doesn't even faze him, a look that would have stopped weaker-willed people in their tracks out of sudden conscience and guilt having little to no effect on him. "You've got all your weapons up here already. Feel free to use them."
It's the last warning he gives before he moves, swiftly and viciously, one heel planting, his lean frame swiveling expertly around that pivot point. Whirling around in a full turn to build momentum, he snaps a sharp wake-up call of a kick straight towards her shoulder, aiming to knock her right back towards her array of weaponry as emphasis of his point.
In a way, he's proving, right now, his faith in -her- competence... in spite of all Whip's insistences that he thinks she possesses no ability. If he really did think she was weak, he wouldn't think her capable of soaking the kick he drives at her... and he wouldn't have thrown it at all.
COMBATSYS: K' has started a fight here.
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K' 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Whip has joined the fight here.
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K' 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Whip
COMBATSYS: Whip endures K''s Medium Kick!
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K' 0/-------/-------|===----\-------\0 Whip
Whip wasn't expecting it. Not in a million years. Given, she has not known her brother for very long; he has proven himself to be very violent, but never towards her. Even in anger she has struck him before he would ever strike her. She would have considered that the only way she'd feel his stolen fire is through a bout of friendly combat.
But this?
Whip is getting the sinking feeling that she thought her brother wrong when he mentions her weapons. But she does not move. Her guard does not raise. And only, for the briefest of moments, her eyes narrow. Their expression asks, rather candidly: What?
He strikes. Whip's eyes widen, the gesture finding some way to totally surprise her, and she doesn't have time to do anything but take it head on. She has only the briefest of instants to tense, her body automatically preparing itself for the blow, before his kick hits home. That light little frame of hers is bowled back, clearing the length of the rooftop and slamming, skidding back to where he first found her. Whip slumps on the spot for a surprised moment, before she looks up, fixing K' with a look that goes quickly deadly.
He wants proof? He's got it.
Sneering, unable to think through her own sudden anger, Whip snatches for the worst weapon she's brought out to the roof. Bypassing twisting, forking knives and gleaming guns, she goes right for her favourite bullwhip, unravelling Voodoo to its full fifteen feet in one sharp snap.
A snarl and two seconds later, Whip is lunging back to her feet and diving at K', her arm summoning her weapon to life. With an immediate precision, she cracks that whip of hers at him, trying to groove one deep, agonizing cleave of leather against her body. But she's not down. At the apex of the strike, her wrist twitches imperceptively, and like a boomerang the whip returns, cracking past the sound barrier as it bears back down. This time, it tries to snatch her brother by an arm, and if she does, Whip is pulling all her strength to HEAVE on the line and send him careening across the roof.
COMBATSYS: K' blocks Whip's Boomerang Shot.
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K' 0/-------/------=|==-----\-------\0 Whip
Under normal circumstances, all of K''s prodigious violence, all of his forcefulness, all of his tendencies to solve things by beating the opposition until they were no longer conscious... all of it would never find itself used against his sister. She could do things to him that no one else could hope to try without being crushed into a bloody smear, and he'd simply grunt and tolerate it with the absent air of a lion being clambered on by a cub.
Insisting upon putting herself in such grave danger, however, is the one thing Whip cannot do with impunity.
Straightening out of his strike, K' regards Whip with the worst sort of unreadable look miring in his yellow eyes. If he feels badly over her long skid, her shocked look, or her sudden anger, he shows no indication of it. He shows nothing at all. He simply exhales a breath, eyes narrowing past his dropping bangs, his stance open and ready. His hands remain steady at his sides, half-open... and for the time being, empty of that killing fire.
It's going to become clear, soon enough, that K' has no intentions of playing nicely or holding back with his sister. In his twisted perceptions, to do such a thing would only be an insult to her. Her attack comes snarling in and he treats it quite seriously, his arm snapping up to intercept the lash, heedless of the way it flays a deep and bloody bracelet about his forearm. A quick twist of his arm snares the length of leather in a tangle around his wrist before Whip can call it back for the second attack, K' asserting a quick control over the lash and then spurning it with an unwinding flick.
He moves into a second attack immediately after, attempting to capitalize on the way he's disrupted the rhythm of the whip. Leaving the ground, he lunges with the seamless, athletic strength of a well-tuned machine. His body executes motions as if were one smooth, unjointed unit rather than a collection of strung-together limbs and sinews; he seems almost to pause in the air, before his body whiplashes into another sharp kick, attempting to send Whip right back across the roof.
COMBATSYS: Whip dodges K''s Minutes Spike.
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K' 0/-------/------=|==-----\-------\0 Whip
Little by little, her face sobers of its white hot rage, her soft features steeling themselves into a professional's poker face. Whip forces herself to swallow her anger because she wants to remain focused. There will be no pulled punches from her side. She'll prove to him how effective she is. She'll show him that she can protect him.
By kicking his god damned ass.
Voodoo caught like a gnat straight from the air, Whip only allows herself a slight tic of her right eye as a response, because K' doesn't give her much time to indulge in otherwise. He gets a handful of her weapon, his rough and callous handling of it making her grit her jaw in a momentary surge of outrage. But his sister stays true to her renowned patience, keeping her ground and waiting for him to come to her.
That kick comes in, but Whip seems ready for it this time. Despite the discord in her movement, her recovery is so quick, so brief it seems unnatural. She widens her stance, and gives a demonstration of just how flexible she really is. The leg comes in, and Whip bows straight back to avoid it, her spine curling in a way it shouldn't. It passes harmlessly over her.
But then she's moving fiercely, vindictively, towing on their shared line of whipcord, immediately utilizing /K''s/ grip on it before he has the chance to let go. Wrenching forward, the action pulls her straight up and straight forward, where she tries to meet her dear brother with a pissed off fist straight at his face.
COMBATSYS: K' dodges Whip's Strong Punch.
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K' 0/-------/------=|==-----\-------\0 Whip
It'll come down to a battle of wills, then... because K' is just as resolute NOT to let Whip kick his ass as Whip is determined to hand it to him.
That determination is printed in the narrow of his eyes and the tightness of his jawline. In her swift and surprising avoidance of his attack, she proves just how quick she can be, and that knowledge reinforces the fact that he can't dick around with his sister. His momentum carrying him past her, he skids to a halt, turning back to face her as he does, preparing another attack.
Whatever he had planned, however, is preempted when she abruptly reels on her whip, putting him off his balance before he can let go. Stumbling forward, he's given about two seconds to react before Whip meets his face with her angrily-thrown strike. Jaw gritting, K' seizes the chi all around them, forcing it to drag him past her in a startling display of speed. The energy streaks him blackly in a blur, the boy seeming almost to pass -through- her strike so quickly does he move.
Releasing his black chi once he's several feet past her, spinning around to face her again, K' grits an annoyed sound past his teeth before he closes with her again in a sudden lunge. It's not clear -what- he's intending to do, not until the last few instants before he literally collides with her; if he's even allowed to get so close, his left hand lifts abruptly. It drifts for half a second mere instants away from her, seemingly harmless... and then it slams shut and slams forwards, driving across the mere inches with exacting force.
COMBATSYS: Whip blocks K''s One Inch EX.
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K' 0/-------/-----==|===----\-------\0 Whip
Even as her fist misses, and finding herself becoming witness to K''s legendary speed, Whip remains undaunted. It's her anger, her affronted outrage that keeps her focus filed to a needle point. She wants to win all her fights, but some more than others. And this one more than many. There is a principle behind the outcome of this battle, one that puts her very worth on the line: as a soldier and a sister.
And her anger appears to be paying off. Whip is usually so loath to fight close combat, preferring her enemies to remain herded back as fodder for her ranged weapons, but right now she's too angry to care. K' jackknifes straight back into her personal space, and she willingly foregoes trying to ward him of to receive his attack as it is. She trusts her body, its strength, and its better resilience.
His hand hits the hard, sharp bone on her forearm instead of somewhere much more yielding, as Whip brings up one arm to absorb the attack. It must hurt like hell, but she doesn't show it. Good poker faces must run in the family.
Those, and that damnable smirk that slides across her mouth, echoing K' as Whip returns him a taste of his most bitter medicine. She sounds bored as she asks, "That as fast as you get, brother?"
Then, with a sudden push, Whip renimates Voodoo with a sudden crack of its length, trying to inject distance between them by that stinging, shepherding leather. A turn of her arm suddenly guides the weapon forward, attempting to cross that little distance to try to snag K' viciously around the throat. If her weapon connects, Whip is going to make it painful. She wrenches on the line while leaping forward, politely and affectionately meeting her brother with a heavy roundhouse straight at the head.
COMBATSYS: K' fails to interrupt Strength Shot - Yuuetsu from Whip with Eins Trigger EX.
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K' 0/-------/-----==|====---\-------\0 Whip
It's that smirk that gets him. Like looking in a mirror, Whip flashes him back his own insufferable grin. Instant rage consuming him in spite of all of Geese's attempts to condition that impulse out of him, K' forces angrily forwards against his sister's guard rather than do the smart thing and give himself a little more room to deal with her. That mistake is, perhaps, what makes him a little too slow to intercept her follow-up.
He starts -something- as she lashes out at him, but Whip's last-minute push and an underestimation of the speed of her weapon ensures he's snared before he can complete it. Pulled off his balance and struck hard, K' finds himself knocked down on hands and knees with no clear idea of how he got there and a stinging, aching throat.
K' insisted to himself he was taking his sister seriously; and he is. But it's in accordance with the level of strength he expects from her, and he's placing that level far too low. He's never fought her before, never come close to laying a real hand on her. The only thing he knows of her fighting is what he's seen, and he's quick to discover that watching and experiencing are different things.
It's a little bit sobering, and a lot annoying.
Nonetheless, nothing has changed about his opinion. Nothing ever will change about it, for all he 'promised' to take her more seriously should she manage to beat him. One person is not and will never be enough to deal with NESTS. Hotaru wakened him to the folly of thinking he could handle NESTS by himself, and he's not about to let his sister continue to labor under the same foolish delusions he did.
Twisting around to fix her with a killing glare, swiping a trail of red from his mouth, K' spits the rest of the blood to the rooftop. Is that as fast as he gets? she asks, and K' makes a very simple reply: one rife with promise. Delivered to anyone else, it would be a very serious threat. "...No. It's not."
Whip lands smoothly, unable to neither mask nor lie to herself how good it felt to smash her brother across the face. She has all the time in the world to feel vaguely apologetic for it later; now is the time for deserved satisfaction.
Calling back Voodoo, Whip loops her weapon inside the air and catches its coils inside her right hand, letting it hang harmlessly at her side. She widens her stance and leans her other hand against her hip, her unceremonious stance betraying its underlying tension. She's good at looking like she's being terminally bored by all of this, but her guard is up, and she's ready for a swift reprise. She's already learned once tonight not to assume her brother won't take a shot at her. So she waits, remaining anxious and ready, placing all energy into that focus of hers that hasn't failed her yet tonight.
Looking down at K', watching him thinly as he recovers, Whip's short victory doesn't erase that anger that lingers transparently across her face. She's seething with it, aggravated for so many different reasons that, were she to truly think about why she's mad, Whip doesn't think she could give a surefire, single response.
She just wants her brother to acknowledge her as an equal and leave her the hell alone.
Still sounding distinctly unimpressed, almost tired, Whip intones when K' turns on her, "Are you going to take me seriously now?"
COMBATSYS: Whip focuses on her next action.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////// ]
K' 0/-------/-----==|====---\-------\0 Whip
Standing with a disgusted grunt, clearing the last dizzying cobwebs from his mind with an irritated shake of the head, K' fixes his eyes back on Whip. There's an anger to match her own still smoldering in his gaze. Whatever calm, bored attitude she's affecting, he isn't fooled by it. First she's flung her hypocrisy in his face. Gotten upset at him for giving a shit about her. Insulted him by implying he's so precious and fragile he should be left at home while she went off to do all the work.
"Whenever you start taking -me- seriously," he growls. "When you got pissed with me wanting you to stay out of it, I -told- you we can do it together. I don't get why you're going back on that now."
Fire ignites down his forearm, snarling as it unfurls down about his wrist. "You know the only thing you're proving to me right now? It's that you're a fucking hypocrite, Whip." In a sudden blossom, all those flames uncoil from his arm in a bursting ring, and K' slams a sharp strike directly into the center of that stolen fire: sending it all hurtling straight at the girl in a snarling bolt.
COMBATSYS: K' successfully hits Whip with Second Shoot.
- Power hit! -
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////// ]
K' 0/-------/----===|=======\-------\1 Whip
And that's when Whip makes two mistakes. First, she starts concentrating on her brother's words than his actions.
Second, she lets it get to her.
"What?!" she sputters back, the accusation making her flush across the cheeks. She's not looking so bored now. Being labelled a hypocrite is not being taken very well. Frowning severely, her sudden, virulent outrage getting the best of all her patient, assassin's concentration, Whip steps forward and clenches her free fist, snapping back abrasively, "I'm not a hypocrite! How can you call me that?! Didn't you hear a single thing I said?! I explained to you why things should be done this way! It's called being strategic, you idiot! And you haven't demonstrated to me ONCE tonight that you even understand the CONCEPT of th--"
Whip's angry words snuff out. Her eyes widen. The blood drains out of her face.
But an instant later, she's fumblingly trying to protect herself against the sudden blast of chi bulleted towards her. Whip's feeble attempts prove two things: one, she wasn't expecting that. Two, she doesn't know how to defend herself against chi.
BOOM.
Blasted across the length of the rooftop, Whip's head takes out the shelf of overhanging mortar as she's thrown straight to the edge and nearly right on over. It's with a desperate gasp, she reaches out in time, grabbing a scrambling handful of the edging to keep her body from going over. She looks down, meeting eyes with the dark, distant ground that watches her from storeys below. And despite all what she's been through, Whip's stomach turns a little. She doesn't like heights when they get this close and personal.
Pulling herself back to the roof with a ragged cough, spitting up her own mouthful of blood, Whip tries to catch her breath. Already she's scorched and in pain. But far from finished. With no sharp retort this time, she merely sets her jaw and forces herself back to her feet, letting her anger serve as her will to act. Grabbing her dropped weapon in mid-stride, Whip is immediately lashing it back out at her brother, attempting again to get its sharp, ripping length tethered around his throat...
COMBATSYS: Whip successfully hits K' with Strength Shot - Shouri.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////// ]
K' 0/-------/--=====|=======\==-----\1 Whip
...And PULLS.
And Whip, who detests closeness in the heat of battle, expends every bit of her strength to try to wrench K' in and trip him up, so she can furiously slam a foot down at his head.
It's probably a blessing to him from some patron saint that Whip, at so late an hour, was caught cleaning her weapons while bare-footed. All her other opponents are treated to the pointed heels on her boots.
"I'm worth LESS to them, you asshole!" Whip is snarling as her foot SLAMS down. "Even if they kill me, it'd be more humane than what they'd do to YOU! I'm not going there to die! I'm going there to do my job!"
For all his anger against her right now, all his rage and hurt and upset, all the retorts he has to throw back at her ridiculous attempts to justify her stupidity as strategic, K''s heart nearly stops when she nearly pitches over the edge. He's already halfway towards the edge, rushing silently to pitch himself off the roof if he has to in order to catch her, when Whip abruptly yanks herself back up onto the roof. Startled, K' tries to skid to a halt, but he's gotten far too close far too fast to avoid her angry follow-up.
Snared a second time, K' manages only one strangled sound before he's reeled in and -slammed- to the ground hard enough to stun him. But it's not the sudden ringing pain that -really- gets to him. It's the words he hears her saying while she's doing it.
He gets a little bit upset. And Whip had best get out of the way fast, because when he's upset... he generally lights on fire.
A sudden blaze consumes his arms, streaming over his shoulders, wreathing him in a searing corona as he pulls violently upright like an animal against a tether. He rears back angrily, heedless of whether she's still got him snared or not-- careless of whether his fire snakes down her weapon to scorch her hands. His temper finally lost, completely -gone-, his reply is more a howl than any measured, coherent words. "You're not worth less to ME, you bitch! 'Even if they kill me?!' How is it humane for you to do that to ME? How can you make me bury -you-?!"
COMBATSYS: K' focuses on his next action.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////// ]
K' 0/-------/--=====|=======\==-----\1 Whip
Though she should have expected it, Whip can't help but start at the sight of her brother going up in flames. She twitches nervously, every instinct in her pressing her backwards against the sudden, painful heat. It sears threateningly at every inch of exposed skin. Her beloved whip lights up, fire tailing down the old, dried leather, and the Ikari seethes audibly against the sudden, wicked burn of fire against her hand. However, her loyalty is too great to her weapon than to give it up; she soldiers through the agony long enough to make the weapon let go, freeing K' to step back and desperately shake and snuff the fire from her weapon.
Shocked and incredulous, Whip looks back up at K', her eyes creasing and watering against the sweltering heat and stinging light of all his fire. She tries to find his face through all the moving, fanning flames.
It's hard to even confront him when he looks like this, but she somehow finds her words. "You're not going to bury me!" Whip counters urgently, her voice a mix of anger and pleading. "It'll be fine! Just let me go, and I'll come back home! I promise!" She pauses a moment, her voice mantling again with that frustration that has never quite left her, "Haven't I already proven to you that I can handle myself?!" Her eyes narrow. "Do I /need/ to continue?!"
And that's as much warning as she gives. Desperate to convince him, or at least to painfully make her point, Whip lunges back at K', advancing on him fearlessly despite all that fire. With little mercy, she brings in her scorched weapon, and pressing what's left of her remaining energy, tries to unleash a barrage of fierce, unrelenting strikes on his body, her whip trying to cleave in through the crawling flames.
Her footwork is smooth and almost acrobatic through her offense, especially in a climatic spin Whip takes through her attacks. Suddenly, she's drawing Voodoo in with one hand, and inside the other, one of her knives is getting spun through the fingers of her left hand. She palms the handle in time to try to swipe a clean slice of the blade down his body.
COMBATSYS: Whip successfully hits K' with Sonic Slaughter DP.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////// ]
K' 0/-------/=======|-------\-------\0 Whip
"You can't promise that," the ambulatory flame that is her brother replies accusingly through the fire. "You can't promise shit. You know how I know that? You haven't kept any of your other promises. You haven't answered half the god damned questions I've put to you. You run out, don't come back for weeks, and when you do you think it's a great fucking idea to go solo to a fucking NESTS convention." A long sigh hisses through the flames. "You make me tired, Whip. Tired like I never was when I didn't have to give a shit." And from his tone, he's probably tempted to just go back to that state.
Frustrated, exhausted from trying to process more emotions than his stunted spirit can handle, attempting to figure out how to put it or what to even say further at this point, he has no good defense against her sudden, desperate bid for further proof. She tears into him time and again, letting blood, shredding into him, but his fire never really quells. It doesn't go out even when that final slice sends him stepping back unsteadily, a little trail of blood following him; it simply flickers into his wounds, stopping the bleeding, maintaining a consistent presence about him.
He touches the wide slash down his chest. He looks at the resultant blood, and then flicks it away. He doesn't look at her. His anger has burned so long and so hard it's finally cooled into something worse than his familiar seething rages. There's something unfamiliar about his cold demeanor now, something that tastes of a foreign influence. Wherever her brother is learning this cool, frozen variety of fury from, it's not from anyone she knows about.
"...I'm not convinced." He doesn't explain why, and nor does he reveal the criteria he's been looking for. He just judges her, and then holds his stance and his silence, his fire burning steadily about him.
COMBATSYS: K' gathers his will.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////// ]
K' 1/---====/=======|-------\-------\0 Whip
Whip can't even pretend not to be affected by those words. The cold soldier can only go for so long. In lieu of her waning energy, she taps into her frustration, her outrage, and her hurt to deliver those brutal strikes on her brother.
Soon it ends, and she retreats, a visible, fatigued hitch in her step. Whip hasn't paced herself this fight, not well at all -- but for her, this has not been a tactical battle, but one meant only to prove how hard she can hit, how well she can weather the hurt. She's put her all into it. And now Whip must suffer for it.
Breathing harshly, trying to ignore the strains and burning agony of her muscles, and especially the intensified hurt as she loses the adrenaline to buffer her many wounds, her focus cleaves in two under the stress of her injuries and the stress of her brother's accusations. Whip can only look upon him in a speechless, slapped sort of hurt, looking like she was the one who had a knife lacerating the length of her torso. K' telling her that he can't trust her promises hurts worse than a bullet ever could.
"That's my JOB, K'!" she snarls helplessly back, the tone of her voice changing. Less trying to argue, more desperate to convince him. "It's what I am! Why can't you..."
Whip's eyebrows furrow. Her jaw clenches briefly. Saying these words will condemn her the hypocrite what K' had accused her, but she can't help it anymore. She has to desperately plead of him: "Why can't you just let me protect you?! Why won't you trust me!"
Already half-forgotten of her violence, Whip is stepping forward not to try to attack her brother, but to demand desperately of him, "What do I have to /DO/?!"
COMBATSYS: Whip takes no action.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////// ]
K' 1/---====/=======|-------\-------\0 Whip
If he's affected by the clear hurt slapped into his sister's face, K' doesn't show it. He's far gone beyond open rage, far gone beyond temper tantrums; he's angry enough to have become something more frightening than that. Something as cold as his antitype's ice. "You proved you can fight," he shrugs. As if the combat component had, after all, been a mere afterthought in his agenda. As if her skill were something he already knew and needed no confirmation of. As if the real thing he'd asked her to prove is what he states next: "But you didn't prove -why- you should do it -alone-. You haven't," he continues, echoing her deliberately, "demonstrated to me once that you understand or care where I'm coming from."
He starts forward slowly. "-What's- your job, Whip? WHAT." His voice spikes suddenly in volume, demanding and harsh, spitting vitriol no one who ever actually cared about the feelings of another person would voice aloud. "To go take everything on yourself? To force me to stay out of it? To make me sit at home while you go and probably get killed when half of NESTS attacks the YFCC? Do I have so little worth I'm not good for anything but sitting at home? That you decided fighting NESTS together doesn't mean shit after all?"
His tone takes on a challenging note. He's daring her to explain this to him. "How is it practical? I'm the one NESTS wants, so you're just going to go throw yourself at them instead? They kill you, I'm still on the radar, nothing changes except you just SPIT in the face of everything about my life I worked to get back for three years. Or maybe they don't kill you. They -know- I give a shit about you. You thought that? They'll just use you to get me?"
What happens next is unabashed blackmail. K' doesn't in the least look like he regrets throwing it. "Because I'd come for you. Whatever trap they set with you in it, I'd come for you."
He's advancing faster. His fire is intensifying. And on the tail of his final words, he abruptly blurs forwards in a snarling line of fire. He tries to slam into her, to sink a hand into her shirtfront, to bear her across the roof in a flare of flames until he can slam her up against the wall of the roof access. To pin her in place so she's forced to listen to what he has to say.
COMBATSYS: K' successfully hits Whip with Heat Drive.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///// ]
K' 0/-------/----===|=======\-------\0 Whip
He holds nothing back when he crushes his sister against the weathered stone of the access wall. And once he's got her there, he leans in, wanting his point to be made, his fire still snarling sustainedly about his arm-- but now, mercifully enough, drawn back from doing much more than making Whip very uncomfortably hot. The gleam of murderousness in his gaze, held restrained just under the surface, might well be a prophetic answer to the last question he's got for her: "Do you -know- what I'd become if you were killed? What I'd do?"
He isn't even entirely sure himself. But he's certain the answer is 'nothing good.'
"My job," Whip is desperately pleading back, trying so hard to make him understand, "is to pr--"
She doesn't get the time to finish. Instead, she stands wearily on the spot and suffers all of her brother's impassioned rant, the sheer force and gravity of those words slowly poisoning her anger. Whip is having a difficult time feeling enraged; remembering that she is supposed to be feeling outraged, justified, vindicated. Now she can only feel vaguely disturbed, and tired, tired like K' had previously confessed.
Little by little, the violence dispells out of her stance, and without that blessed rage to numb the pain and keep her senses sharp, Whip staggers. She reaches her free hand, the one not numbly hanging on to her unmoving weapon, to rub her hair out of her eyes, just in time for them to immediately crease with a pained look when her brother turns the tables.
Whip is too sensible, too realistic a person to have truly romanticized the idea of dying for the sake of her brother. But she knows she would. She knows that the instinct would be automatic for her to trade her life for his, to end hers so he could possibly go on to live the kind of life she's always wanted. But to have that decision, that duty thrown back in her face like he does now?
She fixes a startled look on him when he implies that she could be used as choice bait. That, ultimately, even her most self-sacrificing of choices would end up with him dead. Whip looks so shocked, so horrified that she forgets the fight. Her guard drops, as well as her shoulders in a defeated sag. When her brother finally lunges toward her, she doesn't even stand a chance.
Her vertebrae make hollow sounds when she's smashed against the access wall. A hoarse breath gets punched out of her. And winded, hurting, and scorched around the edges, she can only, dully, look up.
Whip, like K', lacks even a single memory to connect what her life once was to what it is now. Without her memories, a family, a home, or a single scrap of anything, over the years she's learned to assess her own worth like a soldier: in terms of her usefulness. Her value as a person is based solely on her actions, and the outcomes of them. It was the success, and not the inclination, that she felt made her a better person. A worthwhile one.
Right now, with her body pushed against the building's unyielding cement foundation, Whip can only be reminded of the time Zero found her. He found her as he found all of the Cartel's traitors, beat the blood out of her, and had her pinned against a wall that hurt like this. Then he told her about how worthless she was, and how her defection was not even worth a footnote to notes, and how she would not even be worth the time and money it would cost to wipe her memory clean. She hates that she's being reminded of that day now, with the two people who have filled the most opposite sorts of roles in her life, but she can't help it. The underlying connection is too strong.
Does she have any worth at all?
Her stomach turns at K''s last question, that sensation so disturbing that she momentarily forgets that her heart is breaking. Whip doesn't want to know. She does not, does not want to know. She keeps telling herself that, and believes it. But she hears herself still asking: "...What?"
COMBATSYS: Whip takes no action.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///// ]
K' 0/-------/----===|=======\-------\0 Whip
Furious, violent-eyed, and still seething in that disturbingly cold way, K' pins Whip in place with a bruising strength, hunched over her, his arm immovable and a glare aimed down its length. But the more he looks at her, the more he's realizing-- past the blinding haze of anger that clouds his vision-- her expression. The look in her eyes. The way her body has slackened, all the fight gone out of it. He looks at her, actually looks at her, and his pinning arm begins to soften its grip.
Despite himself, he just can't keep his temper.
Can't she realize that what K' tells her now is the exact opposite of what Zero told her, those many months ago? Can't she realize that he's telling her she's worth more to him than anything else in the world? That even if she doesn't do a single other thing in K''s life, a single thing that could be quantified as 'useful' in the traditional sense, he'd still love her as his own blood?
Maybe she'll figure that out when K', for -his- own part, is finally able to accept that he has intrinsic worth of his own.
His anger finally breaking, his rage spent, K' no longer has any further desire to finish the fight he so recklessly started. He slackens visibly, his head drooping, his grasp relaxing until it's little more than a heavy touch resting against her shoulder. What, she asks him. And for a minute, he really has to think about it. He really has to imagine that scenario, and he has to guess at what would become of him.
"I'd want," he finally answers truthfully, a disturbing note crawling under the outwardly-harmless tiredness of his voice, "everyone to hurt as much as I would."
COMBATSYS: K' takes no action.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///// ]
K' 0/-------/----===|=======\-------\0 Whip
It's a truly heartrending feeling to learn that you may just be as worthless as you suspected. Ever since Whip found her only family in the whole world, a chapter of her life had turned and she had reassessed every one of her goals. Her original goal was finding her brother; now it is safeguarding him, and ensuring both his health and his happiness. But Whip's goals may not be going entirely as planned. Instead of making her brother happy, he tells her he's tired; instead of risking herself potentially to save him, she may just be condemning him to a worse fate.
Life has just become so much more complicated, introducing the greys into the black and whites what used to be her cut-and-dry world. But if there's any consolation to all of this, however badly Whip is feeling now... holds no candle to what happens when K' answers her question.
It's a truly /terrifying/ feeling to learn that you just may be that thin line that separates someone from total psychosis. It's a horrific burden to even consider that someone may be that dependent on you.
And Whip, who has always had the solitary life, who has never had anyone depend on her before, isn't sure just what to think.
She's always had faith in her brother, that despite all his violence and impatience and unintegrated misanthropy he seems to bear against so much of the world, that some inherent goodness in him would find a way to make a decent man out of him despite all odds. Whip feels so sure that he knows right from wrong, and that inevitably he'd find his place in the world, just as she did. She chose to become a soldier with honour -- a protector. And he has the potential to become whatever he wants.
But now he's implying totally the opposite; that her dying, even to protect him, really won't be saving him after all.
If not for K''s hand on her shoulder and the wall at her back, Whip may have teetered under the weight of this news. Her dark eyes cut away, and she bites down on her bottom lip, breathing shallowly and hollowly as she tries desperately to parse what he said. She can't look at him while she's thinking about this. If she does, his proximity will unnerve her. If she chooses to believe K', and that deadly, chillingly honest look on his face, she doesn't know what she'll do. The last time a close friend revealed his mental instability, she took off. And this time?
When Whip's eyes return on K', watching him warily, she knows immediately that she can't believe him. She can't possibly put any value into those words. She'll trust in his sanity to ensure her own, because she honestly doesn't know how she could accept even a brother who'd do such a thing. And he is her brother, which means that he has her good sense, her value of justice, her inclination to do the right thing... right? Despite the utter, cold conviction of his words, he could be speakiing only out of anger... that, or out of his need not to see her intercept NESTS on her own.
Whip exhales noisily, the action ghosting the last trace of resolve out of her body. She sags on the spot, feeling defeated in many ways, and not just because K''s last attack is making it hard for her to stay on her feet. "All right," she relents, tiredly leaning her head back against the wall. "We'll do this together."
It's clear in the first few moments when K' lets his pinning arm drop, leaning back and stumbling away, that he's -not- half so emotionally developed or morally grounded as his sister is. It's clear that he's still struggling to learn how to act like he thinks a normal human would or should act. It's there in the confused, sad look under his lashes: the one that, out of a defensive instinct, tries so hard to hide itself under a look of indifferent anger or frustration instead. In the world he used to run in, after all, any emotion but cold aggression was a weakness to be exploited.
Whatever it is he has the potential to become is far from being realized, and in fact is still being shaped. For all his adult stature and generally adult behavior, he is still a child in so many ways. He's better-socialized and better-developed than Kula, but in truth he isn't all -that- much farther away from being the amoral killer she is.
K' is too burdened under the weight of his own unfamiliar emotions and thoughts to even begin to notice Whip's, much less do anything to allay her concerns or soothe her hurt. He might really have meant what he said, or he might simply have said it as a scare tactic to convince her; K' barely even knows which it is, himself. He'd said the first thing he'd felt when she'd asked him what he'd be like if she died. He's too busy hoping that never comes to pass to do any more wondering about what he'd do if it did.
And just as Whip chooses, eventually, to simply not think about his potential mental instability, K' ultimately chooses to simply not think about the prospect of Whip dying. He looks up at her, tiredly, and the sight of her puts the thought of her death from his mind. He regards her as she finally relents, his yellow eyes piercing, before his gaze finally softens. He looks away simultaneous with that, as if still too wary to let people see that kind of weakness in him.
With just about anyone else K' would have been insufferably smug in his victory, that smirk making its reappearance once he'd won the argument. In any other situation, he might have tried to reclaim some semblance of control by acting his usual arrogant self. But now, to his dismay, he just feels too tired and aching to even manage much more than a nod.
Released, Whip sags immediately against the roof access, her knees buckling. All her exhaustion seems to hit her at once, not unlike the single and fatal drop of an executioner's axe, and all she can do is just rub the knuckle of her thumb against her forehead and try to relieve the pounding at her temples. Her brother put the total of her ability to the test, and she knows that whatever challenge was riding on their fight, whatever principle... she lost. Miserably.
With a grim, miserable sort of realization, she assumes that was the ultimate test of her skill and competence as a warrior, and one she must have failed in her brother's eyes. She proved nothing to him, except possibly that what confirms what Zero told her. She'd be worth nothing more than passing bait for the real prize. Even if her will is there, how could she possibly hope to protect K' even if she cannot match him?
Lowering to crouch against the wall, her knees braced against her body, Whip takes a moment to try to shake the burning out of her blistered hands, breathing slowly against her fatigue. She doesn't even want to think about the possible reality that she /is/ no more than one more errant worry for her brother, who feels obligated by his very blood to treat her like-- like a--
Whip can't even think the word. A soldier's worth is determined by their use, and at the moment, her's is being found particularly wanting.
Soon enough, she pushes herself back to her feet, going back to old training and moving with the utmost efficiency to keep up her strength. Somewhat pointedly, Whip doesn't even look back on K' after his last nod, and she hitches silently past him without a word. Keeping to herself, and with a strange distance, she begins to pack up her collection of weapons.
To tell the truth, K' isn't even thinking about tests or the failure thereof anymore. The very idea passed from his mind the instant the fight ended. He isn't even aware of any of Whip's miserable thoughts, and nor is he really aware of the emotional ramifications his challenge to Whip had on his sister. All he really knows, looking after her blankly as she walks on past him, is that something-- somehow-- isn't entirely right. She's acting a little more funny than usual.
On some level, he's aware she must be upset because he won the argument and she didn't. That's about as complicated as his understanding of the situation gets. Maybe he'd feel badly if he were fully cognizant of the fact that beating her into submission the way he did has caused her to question her very worth... or maybe he'd get angry with her again over such a faulty logic pattern.
But even if he were aware, he probably wouldn't precisely be up for talking about it. Nor would he be able to articulate all that well that she shouldn't predicate her worth solely on whether she can be useful. He would feel strongly that she shouldn't, though; he's spent a long time feeling he wasn't worth anything but the uses NESTS could get out of him, and he knows how miserable that feeling is.
And so, instead of doing or saying anything particularly useful towards amending that frigid upset of Whip's, K' decides that if they're going to 'do this together,' they should at least discuss what there is -to- do. In short, he tries to change the topic. "We don't know when they'll attack," he starts eventually, slowly becoming painfully cognizant of a new and unpleasant sensation-- that of incredible awkwardness-- "so I've been watching the area a little already."
Securing the last of her blades, and with one last fussing brush of her fingers against the scorched, darkened leather of her favourite whip, the Ikari rolls up her gunnysack with all her weapons inside, securing the burlap shut and tying its heavy belts. Standing slowly, her hip joints creaking from being forced to move despite their inflammation, Whip hefts up her sack and shoulders it, hooking one arm through a belt loop until its weight is saddled sturdily on her back.
Correcting her posture, she spends only the briefest and most detached of moments to look herself over, realizing very gravely that she looks about as good as she feels. Which is pretty lousy. Her blouse is burnt, her jeans ripped and bloodmarked, her hair tangled with some distinct lumps of blood at the back of her head, and her hands are stinging something awful. Same pains, different night, she supposes.
What hurts more than the cumulative total of her injuries is hearing K''s voice again, sinking into her like some dagger she wasn't expecting. Her misery resurges, and so does some of her anger. She doesn't even want to hear her only brother talk right now. She can't even look at him. It's hurting her too much to do so, at least until she can take some time to herself and get a better grasp on her own feelings. But, for now?
Whip's voice, when it returns, is surprisingly firm and sharp. "We'll discuss strategy when I have more appropriate intel to share on the matter," she instructs. In the last few moments, she's slipped back into that military mindset of hers, a cold soldier stepping in for the sister whose heart has been broken. "I will scout the area tonight and provide you my complete assessment oh-nine hundred tomorrow." She pauses for a heartbeat. "We'll go from there."
And, without a single look back, Whip hitches briskly across the roof, and if not stopped, is throwing one leg and then the other over the ladder at one edge, deciding to take the service access down to the apartment.
K' listens to her sharp voice. He seems to hear and understand her, outwardly acquiescing to her opinion and her snipped orders via his silence and his lack of argument, but the distant quality to his eyes-- even as they rest on hers-- suggests he's thinking about something else. Dimly, it occurs to him she's talking to him like a soldier, as if they were nothing more than strangers that met for the first time on a battlefield. But that's only a tangential thought. Something else is bothering him.
He finally realizes what it is when he watches her hands move briskly, lowering her back down to the apartment. His eyes narrow on them, and absently, he frowns.
K' has never been able to stay angry at his sister for long. In fact, she's the only person he can't hold his anger against. With all that driving rage gone out of him, he's clear-minded enough to notice that even though the argument is resolved-- in his favor, no less-- something still seems off. It's incomprehensible, unquantifiable, and it bugs the shit out of him. Anything else, /anyone/ else, he'd simply shrug and walk away. But the fact they're blood somehow makes that a little more difficult.
K' doesn't know how to talk. How to identify or deal with emotions. He doesn't know why Whip is upset; he just, in that intuitive way twins have, knows that she is. And he certainly doesn't know how to fix it, so he does the next best thing. He keeps himself too busy to dwell on it. He fixes what it is he knows -how- to fix.
There's very little sound to indicate when it is Whip is rejoined in the apartment by her brother... only the brief sound of running water in the kitchen, and then silence. When he intercepts her again, it's with very little warning, the boy approaching without comment or even a glance at her eyes. Reaching for her wrists, he pulls her burned hands forwards, gives them one up-close practiced look, and then, brooking no argument, sits her down at the kitchen table, which already sports a small basin of ice water. He sits opposite her, draws a cloth out of the basin, and-- still in that indifferent silence-- applies it her hands.
He says nothing. He doesn't even emote anything other than his usual irritated, put-upon mask: that infuriating expression that seems to think the world owes it something. He just works with a startling efficiency, frowning the whole while, offering no conversation.
There's a tube of antibiotic cream standing by. It looks very extensively used. And if Whip stops to think about that a moment, really think about it, she might realize that the only reason K' is so fluent in treating burns is because he's had to treat so many of his own.
Whip isn't listening for her brother to join her in the apartment. She's not sticking around for long. She's upset, even if she's not showing it, anger, even if she's not thinking about it, and is feeling her nerves fray for every moment she knows she's not by her lonesome. She feels terrible, but is sure that a few hours of quiet, solitary work will do much to temper her. She'll return home at twilight, get a couple hours' sleep in, and then be ready to start planning how they'll receive the Cartel's assault.
The bathroom light is on, and she is cleaning herself up from the fight, working silently as not to awaken Shurui. The girl has some frighteningly sharp senses, but Whip spent years performing assassination; it's her first instinct to be absolutely soundless. She stares gloomily at her reflection in the mirror, leaning in to wordlessly rub dried blood away. With little vanity, she wets the ends of her hair and washes out sticky gore from its tresses, then ties it back in a damp ponytail to be subsequently dried by the cool night air.
Two minutes and a change of clothes later, Whip exits quietly from the bathroom, wearing some nondescript t-shirt and a fresher pair of jeans. She cleans up surprisingly quickly, and surprisingly well; if someone were not meticulous enough to look at the bruises on her upper arms and the blisters that whiten her palms, they would not assume she had been fighting tooth-and-nail just minutes ago.
Stepping back into the main room, Whip hears water running. She ignores it. Making a short pit stop at the couch that has been delegated her new bedroom, she takes ten seconds to slip on a pair of shoes and about five knives onto her person. She also finds some way to remember her wallet.
Whip is on her way out the door when K' catches her. Set on ignoring his existence entirely, and set on him doing entirely the same, she's coloured surprised when her wrist is grabbed on the way to reaching for her coat. She tenses the same way he does when touched. Confused, and unable to keep up her coldness when that familiar heat is back in its intrusive proximity, she spends a moment just staring at her brother. He won't meet her eyes.
That tension finally, begrudgingly dispells out of her, Whip finding no reason not to completely trust her brother's strange actions, even despite the fact they were trading blows not so long ago. Frowning in bemusement, she watches him watch her hands, and realization hits her. Whip doesn't have time for this. She wants to be left alone. "K'..." she starts, her voice almost pleading, but then he's guiding her into the kitchen. She moves with him, only after some mild resistance, the movement finally given up for fear of waking Shurui.
Sat down at the kitchen table, her body language practically screaming that she wants to stand back up, that she really doesn't want to be here, Whip's frown is the only part of her looking set to stick around. She notices the basin of water and her frown just gets worse. "K', I--" she tries again.
But then he's treating her wounds, and Whip is trying to remember why she's supposed to be angry. She stops resisting. She stops trying to convince him otherwise. She just sits there tamely, lets her brother work, and watches him with a stricken, unreadable look.
Whatever sort of expression she's wearing, K' isn't looking at it. His demeanor has, inexplicably and unsettlingly, gone as cool as the cloths he's alternating over her burnt hands. He works with a practiced swiftness, cooling her hands, drying them, and applying the antibiotic. But then he gets to the stage of bandaging the burns in gauze, and he slows down noticeably. It's not for want of knowledge what to do-- it's clear he knows exactly how to bind a second-degree burn. It's for want of two deft hands to work with.
Visibly hampered by his shackled right hand, K' stubbornly continues to wrap with his left, his right sacrificed to perform less dextrous aspects of the task. A hint of frustration knits briefly at his brow, but he never displays it any more obviously than that.
She tries to speak again. He ignores this aborted attempt, just as he ignored the first. When she has something more substantive to say, he might respond to it. Up until then, she'll get nothing but silence until he feels -he- has something to say.
That moment comes a little more swiftly than perhaps both of them anticipated. When K' speaks, it's suddenly, like a knifethrust into the quiet. "You fight fine." The words are as clinical as any of the assessments Whip has received over the years. The occasional drip of blood from the wound across his chest intersperses the silence with proof of her skill. Maybe he thinks -that's- why she's upset, and believes that just telling her this will make things right.
It might just be the relief of icy water on her searing burns, or the curious novelty of having someone tend to her wounds in an indulgent manner like this, but Whip is rendered silent and speechless. She watches her brother closely, engrossed not in the action itself but that it is him doing it. It's slowly mollifying her. A minute ago she couldn't even look at K'; now she finds herself unable to look away.
Her hands are trusting and pliant as they lay palm-up to him, and she has delicate fingers for a Cartel assassin and an Ikari soldier. Whatever person she was intended to be before NESTS had found them both as children, nature had no designs to beget her into a life of violence.
Still, her life shows on those hands, perhaps even farther than she can remember. Whip has scars and callouses roughing her sunless skin, and a few of her long fingers angle oddly from old, unset fractures. Yet, despite all of that weathering, she still does not have the hands of a killer. They even flex a little sharply, painfully when their larger blisters are touched.
But soon enough, the permanent burn becomes salved, the antibiotic stepping in as the damaged nerves slowly warm of the ice water. The pain still radiates inside her hands, feeling as though K''s killing fire has not left her, and she grimaces around the corners at the first touch of bandaging. Still, Whip maintains her silent vigil, her head tilting as she finds herself realizing that her brother is having trouble medicating her with only one dextrous hand. She doesn't ask him out loud, or make a point of it, but her thumb shifts vaguely to help hold the gauzy cloth in place to assist his struggles.
Her brown eyes fix on K' when he speaks. Whip visibly starts at his choice of conversation, taken aback by the purpose in those words. She's not too sure what to think. What to feel. If what he's saying is actually true. Not quite lowering that strange, unusual guard she has up, the one that has been keeping the emotion off of Whip's face, she soon lets her eyes glance away. Her hands don't pull out of K''s ministrations, but the rest of her is felled by an unusual distance. For several moments, she is silent, thinking over his statement.
Whip is still looking somewhere else when she asks, "Do you-- really feel tired?"
It's possibly the most incongruous thing one could picture K' doing. Yet there he is, possessed of an uncharacteristic patience, one hand palming her smaller one while the other slowly works the gauze into place. He looks like this is taking a lot of concentration from him... and what he's doing is so antithetical to what he -is-, it might well be so.
Simultaneous with his oddly-skilled treatment, he's studying her hands. What he sees seems to sober him, his eyes tracing the signs of a violent life written across her fingers.
He's never doubted her ability to fight, though he'll forever be convinced that he's better at it. That's why he has no problem telling her he thinks she does it well. Her competenence is not and was never the issue. It's the impossibility of one person taking all of NESTS that is. It's the fact that he made such a -concession- as to consent to her fighting beside him, and now she's throwing that grant away to do it all herself.
His ministrations pause, however, when she poses that question. His hands still, his eyes shutting briefly, and for a moment he certainly looks tired. Soon they reopen, however, and when they do they bear their customary guarded sharpness. His voice cuts like her knife. "I was pissed off, Whip."
His ministrations resume. His eyes flick away from hers, back down to her hands. "You're what's -keeping- me from that."
It's a testament to how well Whip now knows K'; that voice of his, even at its most gentle, is the vocal version of getting grazed by a bullet. There's no traumatic injury, but it still hurts like hell.
It's impossible to be able to find anything close to consoling in a voice like that. But Whip knows where to look.
The rest of her guard drops, as do her shoulders, the tension leaving her like a dying's last breath. Slumped back into the kitchen chair, feeling a fatigued sort of relief to know that she hasn't made her brother's life hell on earth, Whip tries to fan her own lingering doubts away. They are wont to stay a while, and soon even she has to give up on trying the impossible.
Whip's eyes return on K', watching him steadily. Her own look a little raw, but surprisingly, the tears that always inevitably seem to find her are no where to be seen. She may just be too beaten and battered to find the energy to cry. Or she may just be refusing to do so.
Or she's just too busy thinking. With little warning, Whip's injured hand closes on K''s, moving suddenly like a fly-trap whose trigger hair has been disturbed by a persistent housefly. It's surely without doubt the gesture, which is attempting to make him quit his first aid and look at her, will annoy him. That's why she starts talking fast.
"Remember when we first met back in Metro?" Whip is asking out of nowhere. After everything that's happened, that night feels like it was twenty years ago. "You asked me if I... if I'd want to destroy NESTS. And I told you that I didn't. Nothing's changed, K'. I still feel that way."
But, the look on her face starts to suggest. It's not so simple.
"But," she continues, "it's hard to walk away when I know what Igniz has done to the both of us. And Shurui. And other people we may never even meet." Pausing slightly, Whip's eyebrows furrow as she adds in detachment, "I don't even want to think about what he's done to that Kula Diamond girl." It's the first time Whip even suggests she may feel anything aside from a cold disregard for that strange little girl; finding some way to be sympathetic for someone she had easily, mechanically attempted to assassinate.
Whip eventually continues, her eyes lowering and her hand squeezing against K''s despite her blisters. "When I think about it, I get so angry... and all I want is to destroy him. The anger gets so bad that I can't even think. It scares me."
She looks back up, some of that familiar, and very fortunate sensibility returned to her face. "I know I don't have the strength to destroy the Cartel," she admits, sounding pained to say it. "But I hope I have just enough to protect you, and to possibly help save anyone else from his reach." A sad, sincere smile threatens the corners of her mouth.
"All of this fighting..." Whip reveals, "I always told myself that once I found my family, I could easily give it all up. And if I knew you were completely safe, and happy, I would. I don't think I was built for destruction."
Her sudden motion triggers the expected result. His hand tenses in hers instantly, his eyes flicking up to fix on hers in clear warning. They narrow visibly, all the telltale signs that K' is gearing up for sharp words extending like claws-- and then Whip starts talking. K' hesitates.
Steel-eyed and expressionless, K' sits through her words, watching her as she talks. His head tilts slightly as he watches her, his eyes narrowing as if he's not entirely sure where she's going with this or what the point of it is.
He has to break it down to follow it at all... and even when he does, he still doesn't understand it. She's claiming she still doesn't want to destroy NESTS. And yet, she then goes on to say that she does. Puzzled, K' holds his silence, as if hoping that time will bring some more concrete answer.
It doesn't help when she mentions Kula. K''s expression immediately darkens perceptibly, but not in the vengeful, killing anger she might expect. There is fear there, and curiosity, and a sharp and unusual -guilt-... but primarily, K' just looks as if he doesn't -know- how he should feel about Kula Diamond, and doesn't like that his emotions aren't as simple as a desire to kill.
But out of Whip's entire confusing confession, there's one thing he does understand. Whip admits her crippling anger, and K' just... closes his eyes. The beginnings of that hated smirk tug at the corner of his mouth. A moment passes, and then he reaches up and taps at one temple. "Now you know what it's like up here. All the time."
One eye opens on her calmly. Ever since they first met, whereas Whip's begun to express K''s infinite anger, K' has learned a little of Whip's coldness. "It doesn't matter if you weren't built for destruction. Because I was. And I'll do enough of it for the both of us to keep what I've gotten back."
Log created on 22:51:40 08/23/2008 by K', and last modified on 06:01:55 08/28/2008.