Description: In which Ayame discovers shooting darts at the lion only serves to enrage it. She also discovers that others are willing to get between her and that lion to uphold their promose to help her. Or out of a very strange love. And just what are those memories she's beginning to have?
Life has been one strane adventure as of late. It's a strange sensation... around every corner lurks the chance that she may run into someone else with an axe to grind, a vendetta to met out, a past memory or event to dredge to the surface of her scattered thoughts. Viewing her life as through a mist covered mirror, the girl has been retracing steps, clinging to every fragment of the life she once had.
The smallest treasures provoke those strange feelings of nostalgia, as if having found a chest in a dusty attic with all of her childhood accomplishments chronicled. Except they're from only months prior, not decades, and the dust has yet to settle on them. It's surprised her what can provoke those memories. An empty lot in south Southtown; a broken PDA that looked like it took a bullet somewhere; a small earing in the shape of a cross, and a silver heart locket attached to a chain are among the many talismans of bygone experiences she's found over time. What each of them mean she isn't certain - but that feeling of connection is there all the same as she's come across each in turn.
It's all she can do. Chain together places that come to her at times. Small, vague epiphanies. More like just 'ideas' than really knowing why she should go to them. She found her room that way, and recovered her staff - a precious piece of her identity. She found a place she used to train and discovered other ornaments of her life there. Piece by piece, bit by bit, one clue leads to the next.
The next, in this case, is the eastern docks of Southtown. The great gate of commerce. During the day it's busy with ships loading and unloading, people coming and going, trucks arriving to deliver or haul off some cargo or other. It is into this zoo of rapid trade that one teenaged girl wanders. Her destination is uncertain to her - a sensation she's slowly getting used to. What is certain is that she's retracing a path she once trod. To find a warehouse a bit removed from the busier portions of the harbor. Slowly she weaves between buildings, slipping around corners and over crates with a certain natural dexterity.
Lithe, she has the build of a cat burgler but clothing too ostentatious to pass for such. Plaid reds and blacks decorate her skirt, while her blouse is a simple field of black bisected by the blood red tie around her neck. Her long, strawberry-blonde hair is kept only barely in check by the black ribbon tied into a large bow behind her head. One forearm is hidden beneath a concealing, black cloth wrap, while a shorter wrist guard covers a portion of her her other forearm.
Chains dangling around her neck bear small silver crosses, and along her left forearm is another chain wrapped, a heart locket dangling from it, swinging freely on what little length her wrapping allows. Brown eyes, alive and curious, study each of the building she passes. How will she know which is the right one? How will she even know if she's on track? Ah well... she hasn't anything pressing to get to anyway.
It's like the sky is bleeding.
It's hard to tell what nature is thinking sometimes. The sky is cloudy, but not enough to interrupt the schedule of sea freight and the cloud of people coming and going across the harbor like so many hurried flies buzzing around a carcass. Especially around some of these ships. It's not really something indulged in by the higher ups of the Syndicate. Of /course/ they had their hands in every aspect of shipping here. What don't they have some influence in? But when you get right down to it, you aren't going to often see Geese Howard hob-nobbing with the local freight inspectors out this far. The day to day was kind of like going to the local meat plant. You stock it in the deli section, but if you don't have to, do you really want to go out there and watch the cows file into the gate one by one?
Some of us do.
Yamazaki stands heads and shoulders over most of the clustered Japanese present milling about. Despite being of that particular blue blood himself, the man is kind of like a giant wandering around comparitively. Though one would expect size alone to not be a determinant factor of anything, there's a certain berth he commands about him, though it cannot be called any realistic function of size or weight. It's the fact that he is probably closer than most people will ever be to reaching out and popping someone's head like a grape.
Comparitively speaking, he's in a good mood today.
Curious, you might call it. The mercenary tends to loiter around these parts when he's feeling bored--sailors are always pretty good for entertainment when the taste permits. Further, if he's going to be someplace to relax, it might as well be someplace that shouldn't have a lot of kids hanging around. Not that he's ever really gave more than a shit about who's around. Sheep.
It's just kind of pointless, anyway. Isn't it?
Yamazaki just so happens to be here because he wants to be at the harbor. As far as most anyone else is concerned, that's a closed subject. And nobody, in recent recollection, has demanded an explanation yet for why he does what he does. Good thing too. Yamazaki is pretty indecisive when it comes to that kind of thing. But he is pretty decisive about when there's killing to be done. Fortunately for him, he wants to be here for a reason. he just so happens to have prepared a written out list of instructions today as to why he is here. Most appropriately, he's looking for someone.
He'd slept for at least two days straight--literally, 48 hours without waking up--after flattening the kid with the hoodie, what's-his-face. Not out of any particular need to sleep but a vague sense of self satisfaction. He'd always hated paid parking spaces. Anyway. When he woke up this morning, he'd remembered something. He found a nice pen. Then, he made a point of making a to-do list for the day. After becoming frustrated with and eating that list whole, he worked on a second. And that, at least, seemed like a good plan. That is the current version written down on consequtive pages of the 2-1/2x5 spiral bound notepad he holds up in the air right now, squinting at critically. He's already flipped over the plastic cover, so the first page is clearly displayed.
If Yamazaki has a taste for anything, it's the pointlessly expensive and elaborate. In the pen he used, it's like a professional calligrapher took about an hour with a pen and a brush just to put down one line of text right smack in the middle of the page. Three words.
1. Find the bitch.
That's pretty easy. He's seen her catting around Geese's holdings.
So he can just about /smell/ her a mile off.
Unfortunately, most people don't have a sense of smell that evolved. She might need to pay a little attention to the sky and the crowd around him feeling like it just spent a little too long shaving. Else, when Yamazaki takes a step shy of the crowd, it'll be like the masses vomited something very vile and unnervingly well dressed right onto your favorite sheets. He's swathed in shades of jet black and smoke grey. He's all expensive knit wools and slacks, his silhouette larger and obscured by a long coat with a stripe of fur of something that used to be living a happy life in Africa probably not much longer than two or three weeks ago. Also, he bought a new pair of shoes. He blocks her immediate route. However familiar it might be to her. And he grins. He probably means for it to be pleasant.
Probably.
"Hi, darlin'," he drawls thick, lowering the notepad.
"Let's talk."
Corner after corner she turns, winding her way through the maze of buildings, walls, crates, and offices. Were she more cautious, she would be more difficult to find; sticking to the roof tops when possible, peeking around each corner before rounding it. If she knew something like Yamazaki was looking for her in the area, she wouldn't be there at all. The girl of three months ago knew the roster of South Syndicate inside and out. Oh, sure, there were some small fries of no importance she might not have known about. But any member of the King of Southtown's army that was worth being aware of, she knew. And knowing of Yamazaki would've kept even the daring, headstrong girl out of anywhere he might be without a second thought.
But the skinny girl that meanders through now knows nothing of such dangers. Wary only when confronted, paranoid only when presented with something to be paranoid about, she goes where her dimly shrouded memories take her, and thinks little of anything else.
A door is stopped at. It belongs to a large warehouse. The building used to belong to a mecenary group that no longer seems to exist - there and gone like a flash of lightning in the big scheme of things. Slowly she reaches out for the handle, taking a step in close to the door. Fingers touch against the handle lightly, eyes narrowing as she strains to dig distant memories to the forefront. She remembers being here before. Meeting someone...
She crouches down, fishing a set of lockpicking tools out from her handguard. They're hers. She used to be able to use them to great effect. /Used/ to. For now, she fumbles with the lock, her fingers occasionally slipping over the torque, or the rake just utterly failing to find the pins like she knows it should. "Che," the girl grunts, dropping the torque and having the rake slip back out in the process. Leaning in, she presses her forehead against the door. More images flash into her mind. A woman, middle twenties, white hair. She has to get inside. Perhaps she'll remember more.
Slipping the useless lockpicks into her wrist guard, the girl rises to standing, whirling to face the alleyway to the side. Maybe there's another door... an unlocked garage entrance or neglected window left unsealed... Carelessly she heads on, turning the next corner, her view blocked by another. She thought she was alone. She was wrong.
Brown eyes do a pass over the towering man, but she doesn't know him. A fact she confirms quite clearly. "I don't know you." A hand comes up, a dismissive wave, and she turns to the side, ready to turn back the way she came. It's hard to say what would even be the smart thing at this point. Running may very well be futile, only encouraging him to move even faster, like a found spurred on by fleeing prey. Staying put, however? Not an option.
Even as she turns, her mind reels. He didn't seem to be looking at her as if he had no idea who she was; the hope that their one sentence exchange was merely a weird, random encounter fades really fast in light of rational reasoning. What... exactly has she walked into now?
If he'd known the idea of his presence alone would have repelled skinny young headstrong girls, he might have been flattered. Well, he might have laughed. Hard. And then gone to get something wet and stiff to drink. But don't think the altogether explosively malevolent leer he fixes Ayame with misses the lack of recognition on her face. You see, over time, the good-ol-boy has grown to be something of a connosieur of facial expressions. When you work in the business that Yamazaki indulges in _nightly_, you tend to look at certain things that would shock others as almost routine. One of those things are the various flavors of concern and alarm, long a subject of intense interest. At least, when Yamazaki was sufficiently drunk enough to be interested in anything.
Anyway.
He knows she's who he's looking for. He often makes a point of knowing a lot more than most people expect him to know. And he's very very sure of that strawberry blonde hair. What gives reason to the hired killer's knowing snicker now is the result of long and careful study. Mostly of shot glasses stacked up in pyramids, but between that he's noticed that the more aware someone is of just who you _are_, the more they try to play it off. False bravery doesn't really fit in until after the third, or fourth meeting, or about an hour long conversation about how soft and pliable you were compared to the Syndicate. Yeah. It takes real bravery, he finds, to turn your back on the Syndicate. That, mixed in equal parts ignorance. She only really confirms what he already could tell at a glance when she insists she doesn't know him. Yeah. Definitely the smart and stupid type. Kind of like a bag of kettle corn.
By the time she turns away, he's fully engrossed in tearing the notepad page off its spiral binding, crumpling the exquisite writing like it was nothing more than an interesting way to pass the time and discarding it. He doesn't take the time to look at it quite so closely this time--the motion is merely symbolic.
The next page is equally terse and almost as fastidious to detail. Yamazaki did like to have things just right before he got to business, but it looks like this page was a victim of his relative impatience. Though the penmanship was still fine, it slipped up in a few places, stray pen marks sliding here or there.
2. Ask some questions. Maybe.
"Huh. No?" He wonders. He takes one step. He doesn't directly step into her path. There's no point in it. Yamazaki isn't quite as thin and fragile as she is. As a matter of fact, last he checked, being _over twice her size_ counted for a lot. For one, his legs are longer. All he needs to do is just /be ahead/ of whichever direction she's thinking about going to get his point across. No, he's pretty well and interested now. Getting away politely isn't really something he'd tolerate for very long. "My name?"
"Ya-ma-za-ki," he pronounces his name precisely. "Remember it. I'm only going to give it once. And you're in entirely the wrong part of town to not know better. I suppose I could ask you what you think you're doing snooping around all these warehouses. I could ask you how you could have worked for us and not known who I am." His eyes narrow. She was known as a tricky type. She could be lying.
".. but, truth is, I don't care."
Yamazaki is a connosieur, as noted. He picks and chooses what he's going to be interested in at any given point in time. And it's safe to say that him caring would require that he actually cared at all about her wellbeing. If he were interested in a case of the idiot seeping into her skull, he'd probably be doing his level best not to beat it out of her right now. ... ... Sorry. That's a lie too. He'd probably not be doing his level best. Not at all.
Though he wears that huge coat about himself, it's only draped about his shoulders, so the thing hangs in such a way that if Ayame stands still while Yamazaki steps forward to lean over her pointfully, she's probably going to be at least partially inside the coat with him. Though even for someone without an evolved sense of smell, the 'new coat smell' is overpowering. A heady, mixed cocktail of leatherscent, tanning solution, and -- blood?
"What you should worry about right now is.." Oh. He could see it in her face. He knows she knows this. "I ../know/ you. And I am not the kind of person you want to run out on before I'm done." He just needs to helpfully remind her.
And Yamazaki is nothing if not helpful.
"So. Are you gonna be daddy's good girl?"
While she lacks the impressive array of data that she would normally draw upon when figuring someone out, the girl still possesses a real knack for reading people she's been meeting or re-meeting. Some skills don't fade, aren't so easily forgotten from a nasty experience or two. Unlike lock picking. Damnable locks and their refusal to be picked! That's what has her turning her shoulder to the imposing figure in this alleyway now. A lock that refused to be picked.
What she reads spells trouble in every language under the sun. Whatever he wants to talk about isn't for her own good. Whatever interests he has will not help her at all. That look, the one that sends a chill down her spine, tipping her off that he's bad news. She's going to leave. Right now. She's small - she can escape into cracks he can't follow. She can find the paths he won't be able to, and scale the walls she suspects he would be slower to traverse, she believes. And she's about to test that theory when something catches her attention.
It's the sound of that paper being ripped off the notepad. A page dedicated to Step 1 being discarded to give way to Step 2. What's step 2? That's the thought that rings through her mind. That pithy saying that curiosity killed the cat is about to have another account added to its foundation as the girl freezes. What is on that page?
He gives his name. Yamazaki. 'Mountain Promontory'. Given his stature, it fits. She doesn't even have to look his way to consider his height, his image forever ingrained in her memory that, until a shore while back, had always been flawless. She should have run - have taken her chances. They'd have to be better than what could possibly happen from standing still. She hasn't always made the best choices in life with regards to self-preservation however... After all, she's /here/. And Yamazaki was looking for her. That should be indication enough where her choices have gotten her before.
His coat sweeps in around her just slightly, the girl rooted in place, a mixture of burning curiosity, fear, and indecision keeping her there. Her mind races as he speaks, trying to pick apart every nuance, every sylabol. He's deliberately menacing. It's how he conveys himself, how he carries himself, moving in close like that. He's commanding a superior position and he knows it, given his use of patronizing names.
"Nn," the sound escapes her lips, as equivocal as her difficulty in making up her mind. "So what do you care about?" she asks back, her tone steady, her voice even. Her capacity for biting back that fear, to sharpen her mind against succumbing to nervous stuttering or instant panic carrying her a little bit further. For now.
"Eheeh.."
The sound carries the feral growl that is custom to Yamazaki putting a voice to his urges. He laughs accomodatingly, but it carries the weight of a bag of lead shavings. Breaking the air of almost seductive force, his voice flanges mid-chuckle. For just a moment, the gangster's deep and rough bass cracks and warps, not unlike a sixteen year old boy's when he sees a girl he really, -really- likes...
Yamazaki does not seem to notice this appreciably.
All he notices is that Ayame asked a question.
"That's a... great question, kid."
Blinking slowly, methodically, Yamazaki seems not to even notice or internalize what Ayame was playing at. Right now, he has a much deeper and more primalized focus. 'Focus' and 'attention' seeming to be elements that Yamazaki has in spacdes right now. But this close? Every word he speaks is accompanied by hot and humid bales of his breath, acrid and sickly sweet with the scent of something that used to be a very fine alcohol several days ago.
And some form of meat.. "See. If I were any kind of gentleman, I'd ask you about what you thought you were doing, fleecing our boys downtown like you did awhile back. That sort of thing gets under the skin of proper businessmen. But .. that ain't somethin' I am. Proper. Or a gentleman, sweetness."
Oh, he menaces. And he means it intentional, she's right about that much. But the critical difference is whether at this point Yamazaki even pays attention to it anymore. His heart is slow, unroused by the cat and mouse game Ayame is so so brave to play. Instinctively, he seems to lurch over her. He's not paying any direct attention that he's turned a lot of his side towards Ayame to make a kick to the groin a relatively futile prospect. It's something deeper, going on in a deeper id of Yamazaki's debatable state of consciousness. It's not with any poetry or obsession that he continues, though he can make it seem /so/ like he's been planning this for months. See.. to him. Obsession is kind of a meandering thing. To him.. well, he just happened to need a way to waste some time today.
This close up, if Ayame were to look, she might be able to count the blood veins in his eyes.
"Instead. I'm just gonna ask you about a rumor I heard."
Her curiosity does not go unnoticed by the savage, but what accomodations he makes for it are fleeting and teasing. His hand rolls, flipping the page of his notepad over. Though Ayame could see the second page of Yamazaki's Special Memos--ink soaking through the paper to show as a mirror image of what he wrote, Yamazaki's glance strays to the page facing /him/ for only a moment.
It might be best she didn't see that much just yet. It's a very clear notice of intent totthe next step of Yamazaki's three minute/four hour plan. Yamazaki spent about half an hour calming down after eating his first notepad in anger, and then he started anew. He has /exquisite/ penmanship if he sits down and pays attention. But for the interests of that much time investment, the idle doodles from before grows increasingly terse and feverish. The obvious intent was to capture some of the stately professionalism from the first and second pages, but the lines are less distinct, drawn over several times and there's a scribble in the corner of the page where the ink wouldn't run smooth enough. That about led Yamazaki to break the pen and find a new one under his couch somewhere. The memo is clear on intent, and only has one order.
"See, there's some coworkers of mine. A set of foxes that--" he pauses to breathe evenly, "--have formed their own little gang for...." he pauses. "... whatever it is those kinds of girls /do/ at night ..." A light grin. It would be a cheerful expression. Were it not coming from him.
"--Anyway."
"I hear things." Quite a few more things than anyone ever really expects the almost perpetually lazy Yamazaki to hear. It's not something you think about, really, is it? "I hear tell you've been offered a spot. I'm gonna guess a lonely kid like you jumped at the chance, eh--"
Reaching over her, he /slams/ the notepad-carrying hand into the door behind Ayame without even thinking twice about it. The action is like a thunderbolt--he's hitting the door with weight enough to crack a window somewhere up on the second or third story. His fist twists against the steel, tight enough that you can hear the leather of his fingerless gloves distending around his knuckles. "LOOK AT ME," he roars loud and low, like a boy throwing a tantrum.
She's not paying enough /attention/.
His hand is wringing tight enough to crinkle the page, warp the cardboard backing of the memo pad, and tear right through what is currently passing for his penmanship. That one word.
3. Enslave.
There seems to be more writing on the next page underneath it, but details are hard to make out.
In close like this, his side turned toward her, he may be immune to an obvious cheap shot. But the teen, in her prime, would take any opening she could see. Like, say, shoving a poison tipped needle into a kidney. Or with a flick of a wrist, creating a seemingly harmless slash across someone's gut, only for them to realize that she's left a hole in their abdominal wall and the sudden need for medical attention becomes far more important than anything they wanted to bug her for. There's even a flicker of a memory of flaying open a tall individual when he got close to what he assumed to be a harmless girl some time ago.
She doesn't have any of those tools on her though. Not that she is unarmed, but she lacks the /right/ tools for this precise predictament. He brings up her past. One she knows nothing of. Hitting businessmen, from the sound of things. With her back still turned, she winces. What kind of idiocy... what kind of /obvious deathwish/ would it take to make an enemy of whoever this man works for? For a moment she hates that girl - the one that left this infinite trail of trouble that she can't seem to escape. For a moment she hates herself, or the person she ways.
But he isn't going to talk about that. He has something else on his mind, it seems. Her heart skips a bit in the time it takes for the topic shift to sink in. A rumor? He flips to the next page and she glances to the side furtively, her breath practically held as she makes out the inky image of page two. She needn't study it, looking away the instant she lays eyes on it. She can make out the words from the image emblazoned in her mind. Questions, huh. That's what's up now. Who the hell dedicates an entire page to just a couple words in a TODO list? This guy does, apparently.
There is a twitch in her neck, the girl seeming like she's going to turn around and face him when he mentions a 'gang', as if she already senses where he's going with his questioning. But she doesn't go any further than that. Just a fidget of recognizing.
The slam against the door gets her attention however. It gets the whole damned alley's attention. An echo reveberates. A gunshot could not have possibly garnered less attention. The girl continues to hold her breath. Not moving. Tense, horribly wound up. But not moving. Surely a noise like that will bring people calling - curious dockworkers, maybe a good samaritan or two, or maybe just some slackers thinking there's a fight going on for them to see. She'll take any of the above. Or anyone at all, for that matter. And that hope occupies her thoughts for fleeting moments. But that hope is answered only by the sound of broken glass dancing along the ground at her side, fallen loose from the window pane above. No one is coming.
The coat-clad barbarian roars and Ayame is a blur of motion, taking a step forward, taking her two feet away from Yamazaki, as she whirls around to face him in the same instant. A gasp accompanies the motion, her brown eyes wide by the time she stares back at him, mouth open, heart racing. She doesn't seem to know where to look in that moment; eyes straying over his face, his muscular chest, then over to the notepad, crumpling beneath crushing levels of force, glimpsing it just long enough to make out that one word step and better know, if only slightly, just how dire this predictament is.
"Maybe I did," she snaps back between quick breaths. "Why does it matter?" If he knows of Shihong... then how are things escalating like this? What piece is she missing to make sense of it all? She opens her mouth, as if about to press with another question or throw off some sarcastic remark about it not being his business. But some glimmer of survival sense kicks in and she closes it, leaving her question to stand on its own.
Oh, someone heard alright. Someone definitely heard Yamazaki damn near tear the door off its hinges. They heard him roar. But see--that's one of the benefits of Southtown. You get this far out. You roll in these circles. You also forfeit certain things. Like group safety. Some people just don't want to see the kind of thing that goes on in dark alleys this far. Especially around the kind of places Ayame--and Yamazaki--prowl. The toll is discordant and twisted by the sound of warping metal--the entire mass of steel warped and dented in underneath the sledgehammer force rendered by his hand in one explosion of nigh childish rage. The spiral bindings of the notepad twist in his feverish grip, the gangster not really even seeming to pay it even the slightest hint of attention anymore, much heaped unto the notepad's various collection of ills. Page three begins to rip noticeably.
But he has her attention.
Oh, he has her attention now, doesn't he?
He has no illusions that in normal situations, she was uncommonly full of that nauseating vitality and strength that so often made him sick. See, that kind of thing often made him just sick to his stomach in ways he couldn't explain except through a rousing session of broad interpretive violence. It is in fact, one of the few things that did make him sick, as the darkly sweet rotting smell of his last meal curling in the air might prove. But this isn't really that kind of situation. In the end, stancing against cheap shots is just incidental. You can do .. whatever .. you want to him. Yamazaki finds people. And then he does what he wants with them.
No limit. No rule.
That's what he gets paid for.
He keeps her in his figurative embrace, thick wiry arm still thrust into steel far over her head. His chest rises and falls in an even, measured pace, to match the quickened pace of the wide-eyed rogue's breath. When he seems to think enough to breathe at all. "See.. that don't sit well with me," he explains. "So I.. had this thought." At this point his words hitch in pace a little, the momentary calm breaking down. If she saw that page, if she really internalized it, she knows what he's gonna say next. "From now on.. I'm gonna have you work for /me/. Before you get anywhere with them--they're gonna know what I think of their little girl's club.." He matches her steps, his entire body as tense as truck cables as he closes at least half the distance she worked so hard to create, almost fairly pinning her between Yamazaki and a hard place.
If Ayame's prodigal sense of detail can keep track, between the time she moved away and Yamazaki followed, the number of veins standing out in the white of his left eye has nearly doubled in count.
At this point he just drops the notepad, the thing flopping into a blossom of bleached pages as it hits the ground, simply unnoticed by Yamazaki anymore. There's no more pretense associated with anything Yamazaki does. He just /does/, guided by only a vague desire and memory deep in his mind of what he wants. And that page is telling of exactly what kind of morning Yamazaki had--dropped in a puddle of stagnant rain, ink leeches out of the third page with that one ominous 'enslave' order, attached to the pad at a right angle, and only by a strip of paper barely longer than one's fingernail. It leeches even moreso out of the fourth, the last page Yamazaki made it to.
His hands move preternaturally fast. Yamazaki's right arm snaps out like a pincer to try and catch Ayame by the collar--not by the tie she wears, but the very collar of her blouse, to hold it tight and twist the fabric until he was squeezing her entire torso in his iron grip. He'd love to strangle her where she's standing with that cute tie of hers, but Yamazaki has had historically bad luck with ties. The last three or four were just clip-ons. He had to chase that fucking accountant damn near across the building before he got a good headshot in with the CRT monitor he was carrying.
Come to think of it, that was fun. --getting off track.
If he can get a good enough grip on her, he'll drag her into the air off of her Doc Martens, all those hundred pounds seeming like he was just lifting a bag of rice. Then he will slick a long meaningful line from her strangled collarbone to run all the way up following her jugular and tracing the soft line of her chin with his tongue. Every speck of industrial dirt she's had on her this morning, every bead of salted harbor sweat.
He wants to /taste/ it.
There is a discordant rumble, vague and roused, deep in his chest. "Your first job is, you're gonna be my message. ... I'm thinking there's some fun I can have here...yeah?" he asks. "...Yeah?!" he snaps.
The last page in Yamazaki's notepad is infinitely worse off in the stagnant water. But from the looks of things, the only recognizable or legible text that had ever existed on the pad at any point is the number 4. The rest of the page is filled with incomprehensible scribble and inky fingerprints, and what seems to be the rest of what was in the well of the pen Yamazaki snapped in half.
Nobody's coming.
He could cut her into slices right here..
The surface of the door wrinkles around that crushing claw of Yamazaki's; demonstrating without a doubt that the steel surface held no barrier to his level of strength. The hinges warp as the door approaches the breaking point. He's closer to her already. She wants to step back further, knowing full well that he will only close the gap again. Her eyes stray along his piston-like arm pushing the dent further into the door before shifting back to him. She doens't know, really, what levels of menace she has been able to contend with before. Suffice to say, she can't handle /this/ now.
Complexion paling, her shoulder blades press against the wall, legs threatening to grow weak as she looks back into the face of madness. The intensity, the increased pressure made manifest by the additional capillaries webbing across his left eye. The notepad's text melts into the dank puddle, but the long haired teen is no longer giving it the slightest thought. Her foot comes up as she begins to protest, intending to take another step backward - a step aimed at buying that precious space before she will run. "Wait, but I-" she retorts when he says what he's found out about doesn't seem to sit well with him.
And then he has her, caught up by her top, the cloth twisted tightly before she's hefted up off her feet. The tie is quite real, but had he gone for it he would have found that the knot, on the other hand, is not. A trick knot that gives way at any strong tug - a change the girl made after getting hurled about by her choice in neckware one time too many. But her collar - that holds fast, and without her feet on the ground, she's suspended by it, her retort cut off with a choking 'Grk.' No one is coming. It's just the man who identified himself as Yamazaki and herself.
Her hands press out, reaching for his chest in attempted struggle, but she doesn't even have the reach necessary. She changes tact, both hands coming up to wrap up over his lone arm in order to support herself and buy just enough slack in her collar to take in a much needed gasp of breath. A breath taken just before he brings his face in closer. Powerless to stop him, she's certain he is going to bit into her neck and just end this. With no help in sight, how far can she hope to get with her throat missing a mouth-sized chunk of flesh?
Given what her first dread was, that slow, testing trace of his tongue is almost a stomach churning relief. Sickening but not fatal, and figuring out how to live another minute matters more to her than anything. Another thought lucks in the back of her conscious mind. A little voice that whispers a demand for vengeance. It is a demand masked by the fear more present on the surface, but it is there all the same. Beat her? She never forgets; never forgives. Well. Current circumstances aside. But that doesn't matter right now. Right now she doesn't know where he is going to go with this. If that first taste was a preface, a foreward to things to come, then survival needs her attention first and foremost.
She pulls with her hands, lifting herself up, feet swinging out in the empty air beneath her as she fights to lift herself up just enough... Her hand releases, leaving her supported by her choking collar and the grip of her left arm. Her right arm wipes across her mouth just long enough for her teeth to clench over the end of the red and black cloth wrap concealing it, letting her pull that wrap back halfway up her arm, exposing a strange little device strapped there just behind her right wrist.
If speaking were an option, or even worth the expenditure of strained breath, she might issue some sort of terse demand of release as she extends her right hand out directly toward Yamazaki, fingers clenched into a fist. But she'll have to let actions speak for now. The sound of a latch released, a small, short whirring noise, and the wings of a mini-crossbow extend almost instantly into firing position. There, parallel to the girl's skinny arm, a single bolt is locked in place, its sharp point directed right for that vein marred eye a mere half foot away. The fingers of her right hand tense, the tips pressing into her palm, applying light pressure to the crossbow's trigger as she holds the small projectile launcher aloft. Just a little bit further and that bolt will launch. He'll kill her for it if she shoots. Of that she is certain. But maybe he was going to kill her anyway and it won't matter.
It isn't a brave standoff by any means, but a desperate resort. Her arm trembles, her knuckles are white, and perspiration rolls down her temples from her hairline as she finds it increasingly hard to breath. It may be a pea shooter facing down a charging elephant. But even elephants have soft spots. If he wants to have fun, if he intends to leave her torn to ribbons, dead and forgotten to the world... she intends that at least one person will remember her for the rest of his life - that there will forever be that reminder staring back at him from any reflection he sees - that empty spot where his left eye once was.
Were it not Yamazaki, it would be seductive. The taste of the fine salt grit mixed with the slurry of a young girl's soft sweat steeped in a fine epic dread. The base corruption of valor and temerity. It's really something he hasn't tasted in some time... Panic? Oh, sure. Pain? Every day. But someone dreading the scent of him. The touch of him. That's a fresh sensation, one he really has to work to get. He can almost taste the breath in her throat...
It's not enough for Yamazaki.
Not anymore.
There's not enough bleeding going on--
You can see Yamazaki's eyes travelling to watch the crossbow deploy and level on his face. He's /seen it coming/. His hand, fast though it may be, doesn't move. For a moment, Yamazaki's expression is just short of hilariously quizzical, like a dog that's been shown a bone that lights up. LEDs what? What's that toy--
About a second later, a crossbow bolt punctures his cornea.
...and doesn't stop until it hits the nerve.
Yamazaki's rather uncommon high-pitched shriek is legend.
"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"
Yamazaki's head tilts back, red and humor flicking high in the air.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhh"
He stumbles around. But like a pitbull, he is just /not letting go/.
"AAAAAAAAAAUUUUURRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHHHH"
The bolt twists, piercing into the gangster's sinuses.
"HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
This creates an epic nosebleed, mixing with spittle he almost chokes on.
"AAAaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAaaaAHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
Then he starts to shake his head rapidly, red froth spraying everywhere.
"AAAAAAAAAAHHAAHAHAAAAAAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!"
The entire red mess spraying and dripping everywhere, he roars.
"--SOME FIGHT IN YOU, YEAH!?"
Oh, there is so not enough bleeding going on right now!!!
He flicks Ayame by the blouse airborne. An instant doesn't even get the chance to pass before his arm blurs, seeming to cross an unusually long amount of space before he can catch her by the throat /proper/ this time. There's not even the intent to menace here, he's gonna whip around with that same motion to slam her bodily into the raw edge of a dumpster on the other side of the alley. Metal /can/ distend by Yamazaki's fist alone, but for fun, he fully intends to use Ayame's body to accomplish the same effect.
"You must wanna suffer!!" the gangster barks loud with the full masculine volume of someone who has just been very, very provoked. He holds her at full arm's length. But not to keep her away from him. He hasn't even bothered to tear the bolt out of his skull yet. He hasn't even bothered to /disarm/ her. "You Must Wanna Die!!" He needs to avoid tearing her in half here--and if he gets any closer--if he even catches a scent of her body right now...
Suddenly, Yamazaki gets real calm, real fast.
"... but I'm gonna be nice," the one-eyed creature states.
See, she gave him an idea.
Hand quivering as if a 17-year old boy's exploring the willing body of a 22 year old woman, his thumb, first and second fingers spread like talons, settling over Ayame's head, fingertips probing into her optic cavity and exerting the /gentlest/ pressure on her eye. He breathes hard, flecks of red still dripping off his jaw. His skull still pounding with what must be an intense amount of pain. "No.. NO! We.. are going.. to start slow," Yamazaki mutters tersely, more assuring himself than anyone else. "Gonna enjoy it.." You know, snatching out someone's eye instantly was something the gangster could do easily if he was focused enough. The idea just never occurs to him until someone really pisses him off. He's starting to grip her by the eyeball..
The last few times he tried this, it was more like digging jelly out of a hole.
Let's see how he does this time.
*SHINK* The bolt flies. She doesn't even remember the point at which she decided to unleash it. To apply that final centimeter of pressure necessary to press the trigger into giving the little projectile its wings. There just came a point where she determined it didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered now. Not lost in this dreadful, final alleyway. In her mind, it is a moment of serenity. That decision to simply fire her only shot and accept the terminal consequences.
In the real world it is nothing of the sort. Struggling, feet still swinging in vain, arm trembling, fingers slipping from off his arm as she strains to keep herself lifted up. And then that crossbow discharges that small shaft, sending it into the eye of her killer.
There was that fleeting hope that his grasp would weaken in the shock that would assuredly follow. Hope seems to have a short lifespan here, however, for his grip remains sure, shifting jarringly into a toss that sends her skyward. She starts to spin, dexterity kicking in during that brief moment of release. But it ends abruptly, caught by her neck with irreverent ease, before she's whipped around into the edge of the trash container. The initial impact provokes a teeth gritting gasp, her arms dropping to hang against her sides, her body forced against that metal as she closes her eyes and waits for it to be over.
He vociferates statement after statement, his voice reveberating in her skull, but to the pained girl, it is a steady roar of noises that go undeciphered. Until his final shout. That part she does understand, on some level, even though she isn't focusing on his words. He accuses her of wanting to die. Maybe he's right. Maybe, somewhere deep down inside, she does just want to die. The incrimination just may very well be true. Maybe she was suicidal before she forgot everything. Maybe the whole story Saint told her - a story she's come to suspect as a cover for the truth - was to hide the horrible reality of it all. Maybe she lost her past in an utter failure of a suicide attempt and here and now, Yamazaki is going to finish it. Maybe that's why Saint didn't tell her the truth...
'Whatever.' she tells herself, hissing in a breath, strained as it may be by his hold on her neck. Maybe that girl had a death wish, but /she/ doesn't. Screw that. She wants to live. More than anything, she wants to live. Her arms, deadened by the impact against the dumpster, begin to move swiftly again. Her mind speeds up, the world around her advancing, as if in fast forward, to the moment he begins to ply his thumb into her eyesocket.
The initial dread of what is about to come is nothing next to the pain when it really happens. She knows exactly what he has in mind as gradually more pressure is applied. But her arms are free to move... thus it is her right finger slip behind her left wrist guard; reaching into the same place where her lock picks are tucked; only this time she draws out a single, small, all metal, slightly dusty throwing knife.
She doesn't even know what to do with it at first. Trying to think of anything besides the mounting pressure on her eye is an exercise in pure willpower. Her breaths have been struggled gasps bordered on subconsciously forced whimpering. The pressure continues to increase, growing to be too much to even bear. Her mind's eye sees nothing but blinding crimson, the color of red that escaped from Yamazaki's own eyesocket before the world went dark.
When she finally twitches into action, it is accompanied by a sound unlike any she had ever made before. A bloodcurdling scream of pain and horror escapes her mouth as her right hand moves up, bringing that small blade to bare, straight for the wrist connected to that crushing hand, targeting tendons as she attempts to literally severe his ability to control that crushing vice he calls a hand.
The two dance in a sinful exchange of 'love'. They harm one another, they bleed on each other, they scream at each other. There is pain, not only felt in the body, but in the air. It can be felt. It can be smelled. It can be -tasted-. Animals, they say, can feel emotions and intents. They even say humans can, as well. Instinctively, the animal - human or otherwise - can feel wrongness in the air. Fear, blood, death, pain, whatever it might be, the emotions being emitted by people in desperate hurt, desperate pain, can be felt by those receptive to it. They might not realize what it is, certainly. Perhaps just a quickening of the heartbeat that they can't interpret. Maybe a feeling of unease. Maybe just a strong desire to no longer be in the area. Whatever the case, the alley in the harbor was most certainly producing such an effect right now, for there was very much no one here, despite the sun still being up. Sane people wouldn't linger in a place of criminality, of wrongness, of death. Would they?
Certainly, then, the man singing into the fading light of the afternoon was not sane.
"I don't want to set the world, on, fire... I just want to start... a flame in your heart~!"
The light tenor, quite pleasant really, can be heard clearly through the sound of the harbor. But perhaps not admist the two screaming within the alley. After all, what are background noises to ones enjoying the fruits of each other's love? The world can end about them, but lovers will be oblivious to all else until it is necessary for their love to cease, and even then the parting will be quite bittersweet. The regret of it needing to stop, the promise of when it'll begin again... yes. 'Love' was in the air tonight, Saint could feel it, though he wasn't quite aware of the fact it was actually happening. It just... FELT right. He felt he could sing all day, if he had to. Ah, but if only Aya was here...!
"In my heart, I have but one... de-sire... and that one is you, no other will do!"
As his voice trails off, however, in preperation of the new verse... there it is. It wasn't quite right. It was a sound unlike any the girl might've made before, certainly, but Saint had heard one astonishingly like it before. Where had he...? Yes, yes, he had heard it... from the lips of his beloved. Yet this was not the screams of one receiving the -height- of pleasures only 'love' can bring. No, Saint had been the one to do that (so he thought). This was subpar. Still, hearing it, his head gently lifts, red eyes opening to peer up at the blood-stained clouds of the afternoon. His expression is rather calm for having heard a scream of such bloodcurdling quality. He felt no surprise at it... but rather, he was determined to figure the location of it. It sounded as if...
Starting off at a slow stroll, the priest twirls his cane in his hand, beginning to sing again. Slowly, step by step, he approaches the alley, his voice carrying well ahead of him. Step... step... step... pause. His shadow falls across the alley, at its mouth. He turns his head, his eyes peering down the alley in curiosity. And there, he sees it. The two fighting. A large man... and Aya. The sight doesn't change his expression any. It's as if he were seeing something normal, like two people talking normally, perhaps about the weather, or the excellent tea of the little shop down the road. The last verse of his song spills from his lips as he looks.
"I've lost all ambition, all worldly acclaim... I just want to be the one... you love..."
His voice trails. His cane settles onto the ground lightly. The priest's narrow eyes take in the slash Ayame does for the larger's man's wrist, a vicious strike, one meant to debilitate. One meant... to inflict serious pain. And what was the man doing to his beloved? Why, poking out her eye.
The sight makes him sigh, his head lowering a touch.
"My, my... I leave you with your space, and what do I find you engaged in behind my back?" Saint's voice doesn't actually sound angry, even though his words have t
"My, my... I leave you with your space, and what do I find you engaged in behind my back?" Saint's voice doesn't actually sound angry, even though his words have the slant of a jilted lover. Strolling, almost casually into the alley, his huge shadow flooding what light fills it, he makes a gentle admonishing noise, tsking softly. "I shall forgive you, my dear Aya. But you, my good sir... I should take offense to you moving in on the keeper of my heart. Gentlemanly honor, I believe, states that I must challenge you. Shall I carve your heart from your chest? Mn, no... I cannot fault my dear for attempting to find love, when I've been so inattentive recently. Yet even so, my good sir... I must warn you that you are harming my woman."
His cane snaps up, pointing straight for Yamazaki. "That's -my- honor." His red eyes are open slightly, coming as close as he's ever done to glaring at someone else. A frown settles onto his face. No indeed... this -will- not stand.
Now, he's told, that there are a few other guys in the Syndicate that can do this clean with a knife in about 2 seconds. There was kind of a trick to it, mostly in the wrist and the thumb. You might slip, but you slip wide and cut the eyelid. If you nick the sclera, you're screwed, there's no fluid pressure anymore. You might manage it, but in the end you'll probably end up having to use a spoon. Yamazaki isn't one to lack confidence, but he doesn't want to invest that kind of effort right now. This is gonna be relaxing...
The prick of his fingernails can clearly be felt as they dig a little bit. While far from a particularly dirty person, it's clear Yamazaki doesn't take the best care of his hands. These are the sort of things that are easy to notice in quasi-euphoria when someone's about to tear out your eye. This is gonna be delicate...
"Shhh, shhshhshhshh," he soothes. Yamazaki is more or less silent in small questionable mercy, his elbow angled up high to exert the proper pressure on his index and middle fingers from above. His coat, having hung on for dear mercy throughout the whole ordeal finally gives up, falling off to gather in a swath of bloodied white at his feet. His lips twist back in a kind of feral grimace of forced concentration and effort as he snorts every so often to keep the fluid runoff through his sinuses under control. He sights down his gripping arm. When you only have /one eye/ this makes this sort of thing harder, but the gangster seems only spurred on by the small gasps and whimpers from the waif as he feverishly holds her skull in place against the cold steel at her back. Yosh. This is gonna be quick...
He would hum, but it turns out he's already got a soundtrack.
Yamazaki pauses, intensely dismayed.
What is that 1930s shit? Ink Spots?
Who the fuck sings that of all things!?
He looks up.
And then he gets his tendons slit.
It might be the interruption. It might be the bad singing. Regardless, Yamazaki does not sound happy this time. Roaring something loud and long and only vaguely representative of human language, Yamazaki's one good remaining arm drags the girl off of the dumpster with an alarming suddenness. "CHEEKY LITTLE WITCH--" Lifting her up with that arm, every muscle in hos body stands out as he rushes to slam her into the pavement beneath him, right over that coat, and right into the brackish puddles littered therein. He's going to batter every single hidden weapon and toy out of her, or break while it's still on her. He has full intents to drag/piston her up again, to not stop beating her into the concrete until there's not even one spot left of white on his nice new fur coat. Maaybe he underestimated her ability to ruin his fun a little. Maybe. Let's see how clever she is when he tears her limb from limb.
Maybe she can still hold a crossbow--hold a knife--with her tongue!!!
Yamazaki is about to stomp Ayame into a pancake with strawberry blonde topping worthy of IHOP when the source of that **god** **awful** singing speaks up. Someone wants to be thrown a funeral.
Yeah, in retrospect, it was more probably the singing that set him off. He looks up, his one remaining pupil contracting as he looks at the dapper dan across the way, saying his peace. He sits long and low over the waif's body, one arm taut aside from the hand, rather comically limp, the other arm engaged in the starting processes of smashing her into a fine paste. He even knows--? For a moment, Yamazaki doesn't even know what to say. If his hand worked well enough, he'd scratch his head. He looks all the moment like a man caught in the middle of a affair with a woman he didn't even know was married.
".... you /are/ a wild date," he concludes of Ayame.
Then without another thought, he lobs the waif bodily at the stick figure like a rotten tomato.
The gangster stands, black form straightening. "Alright!!!" he decides in that authoritative fashion of his, ruined hand sliding into his pocket. If he had a headband, he'd tie it around his head right about now. He's got some work to do here, he sees. The remaining hand, a claw powerful and fierce, raises over his one-eyed face, tensing before removing the bolt hanging out of it with a muffled curse. Almost like an afterthought. Yeah, yeah--one eye, one hand. It doesn't matter. He's a lion of the street. This is gonna be fun.
That rabid claw lowers to his side.
His voice drops to a terrible, obscene growl. "...Threesome it is."
Scratch that. This's gonna be /messy/...
Everything moves at an agonizingly slow speed as that pressure continues to build, his nail digging in little by little. She's about to get a lesson in empirical anatomy that she never wished for - how far before it bursts? How long before his thumb digs in and puts out that eye for good. The upward slash of that small but razor edged knife is the only thing she can think to do. It's practically on instinct. The song drifting along the alleyway doesn't even register - nor do the words that follow it. It's not that she doesn't hear them. And sometime later, should she survive this encounter and think back on it, she'll recall the words - strangely soft, polite, but intense all the same. Ironic given her predictament. With a memory as sharp as any digital recording, she'll remember those words. Some other time.
For right now the featherweight is being pulled away from the dumpster, arm flailing, right hand still gripping that small, now blood-tipped knife as her whole body hits the ground with a sickening crunch, sending droplets of water spraying up from the disturbed, shallow pools of leftover rainwater. She gasps as the murky water soaks into her clothing, her scream cut short then, for lack of breath, for lack of strength. Up she goes again, only to be slammed down a second time, this time not even managing to utter a grunt.
Disoriented, she's starting to lose track of what is even happening. The small throwing knife goes spinning out of her grasp as her hands lose their white knuckled grip, landing some feet away with a small ringing noise against the pavement. And then everything pauses. Eyes closed, her right eye throbbing something fierce, she just lies still where she landed, only gradually becoming aware of another present. Her mind reels, backtracking, then leaping forward, attempting to fix her position in time and space and make sense of what is even going on.
The monster roars, his voice challenging and confident. "Who..." she gasps, braving to open her unmolested eye slowly, her vision blurry at first as it starts to make out the figure just a short ways off. The cleric. Saint. What is he doing here? Is she in a hospital again? Is he having to recover her from yet another violent assault? Confused, she closes her eye, hands starting to find their strength again as she begins to reach for Yamazaki's arm.
She doesn't quite get the sought grip, however, before she's hurled through the air, chucked as easily as a toy ball and as graceful as a sack of grain, the girl limply sails in the trajectory assigned her by the brute.
The slamming of the strawberry-blonde girl into the muddy alley ground is less seen by the priest, and more heard. Perhaps even -felt-. He's rounding the corner just as Yamazaki tosses the girl down and is preparing to make himself some pancakes. Normally, when one sees their professed 'love one' being held down by a very large man who has intent on hurting them, their blood gets boiling. Indeed, even if one were to understand Saint's warped way of thinking, they would believe he should be getting his anger provoked, because, hey, Ayame is cheating on him. Saint may be warped, but even he understands something about this situation. Pain was love... but there were instances, where inflicting pain was not a declaration of love. It was taking of it. A personal perversion for one's own pleasures. To say Saint wasn't angry was wrong. There was only one way to tell it, though. Just how angry he was.
But it's so simple.
Hand held to his hat, cane raised, the priest's red eyes were staring down the alley at Yamazaki. Normally, one could describe his gaze as rather hard, which wasn't uncommon. His eyes betrayed a lot of what he was like on the inside, and if they were visible most of the time, his whole farce, his 'act' at being friendly would be an impossible dream. But normally he was smiling when he looked at someone with those eyes, a contradiction of emotion on his face.
He wasn't smiling now.
As Ayame is thrown to him, the priest shifts his footing, putting one foot back to brace, and then he 'catches' that rotten tomato, or perhaps in this case, rotten strawberry. Though he does it in the most peculiar way. Rather than reaching his hands out to grasp for her, he merely intercepts his body to where she's flying, and lets Ayame more or less slam against him, which would've almost certainly knocked him down if he weren't prepared for it. As it is, his hand holding his hat swings around to wrap itself around the girl's body, careful that his black-gloved hand doesn't touch her. Even then, the runaway miko could likely feel that power flooding him, seeking ways to escape, to infect. An unclean, dirty energy that fills the priest's body, even though none of it can find a way into her.
"My dear Aya... you seem a mess! Can you stand? I would prefer it if you could walk away from here, back to the house. I can deal with... him. You needn't fight any longer. You needn't be taken from," Saint says. Despite his eyes all but glaring at Yamazaki, his tone is soft, even concerned. If only the rogue girl remembered, precisely why those words were so very hypocritical. Saint doesn't move, however, merely holding Ayame steady, his cane turned to the Southtown thug, ready to defend his 'love'.
"Hold it right there, Kakashi.."
Yamazaki kicks his coat to one side, the soggy bloody thing smacking into the wall of the alley before flopping over like a dead bird. The gaping hole in his head seems all the more normal to someone like him than it might be to someone else. You know, that's sort of the problem with Yamazaki. Professionally, he cracks his neck as he rolls his head, holding onto his shoulder with his free hand. For anybody else, that sort of thing might be a nuisance. Even for a trained fighter, the absolute loss of depth perception and a whole new blind side is going to be troubling.
"See. Your little darlin' over there? She wants to die," he comments, bass, low and meandering with the barest of chuckles withheld on his breath, "But she works for daddy now. And cus of that fact and that fact alone, she ain't gonna die. But if she's gonna pay any attention at all to what anyone else says before me, she's gonna have to ask herself some questions."
It's talking about quality of life. The weeping thing in Yamazaki's head, though intact, can't really even be called an eye anymore. Kind of ruins your ability to play skeeball. Anybody in the world would be bothered by that, on some narcissistic level at the least. But for the gangster, even outnumbered and disabled twice over when he steps forward, it's with the confident swagger of a man who is about to go to work. As a kid who has a really gruesome tattoo he'd like you to see!
"First. Can you kill me? Cause if you can't, I'm gonna butcher you like a rack of beef. And then I'm gonna find her. Like I did once already."
See, Yamazaki isn't as much interested in looking in the mirror as he is intrigued by the idea of forcing others to look at it. That is, assuming that something like that is even enough. Assuming that things like that even have much meaning to a man like him. Even if that eye were lost forever. If he makes a big enough mess of that cream pop over there, every time he looked in the mirror thereafter, he'd wouldn't think of it as a mistake at all. See, he'd smile.
"And I'm gonna bring two whole armloads of pain with me for my trouble."
He is a lion.
He drinks suffering.
And in the end he has just. felt. worse.
"So, no. She's gonna stay right here. And if she don't wanna join in, she can just watch what I do to you. Cus it ain't gonna be even half of what I'm gonna do to her for fighting me. And.. if you can't trust my word on that one.."
His fine and new polished shoes grind across the grimy harbor street as the gangster's massive frame hunches over, that single tensed claw of his low enough for his knuckles to kiss the street. His eye widens. Bloody and wet teeth squeal inside his maw as he grins wide, fangs showing clear to Saint and Ayame. his jugular pulses in his neck faintly in time to his heartbeat. It's rapid, as Yamazaki's heretoforth critically unfulfilled desire hits a fever pitch. The drum pounds in his skull as his eye rolls evenly across the two women.
His jaw almost unhinges with an audible crack as he opens it and roars.
"LET ME SHOW YA!!!"
The entire mass of a killer explodes down the alley in one fevered motion, every muscle of his twisting as he just shy of literally detonates with force and intent. Burgeoned on by momentum that is his strength and his weight combined, he's really only concerned with inflicting the maximum amount of pain for even having to go through all of this trouble. It's personal. This is the /street/ and in the street, a man's property is the number one thing!!! His one good hand, vised tight into a fist, cracks air as he shoots it off like a thunderbolt, whipping across an almost unreal expanse. That hand is literally a blur of motion, faster than anything large enough to grab your head has a right to be. He's going dead for Saint. He's going to demonstrate for Ayame and Saint both the absolute truth of his word first.
By whipping his fist right around Saint's adorable cane defense and aiming to hammer him with full force right between the eyes. Right in his unhappy, angry face.
Yeah. Now it's time to make it ugly.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki has started a fight here.
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Yamazaki 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Ayame has joined the fight here on the left meter side.
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////////////////////]
Ayame 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Yamazaki
COMBATSYS: Saint has joined the fight here on the left meter side.
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////////////////////]
Ayame 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Yamazaki
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Saint 0/-------/-------|
The thrown girl gets caught in the most awkward of ways as Saint braces himself to allow her to collide with his chest. Bewildered and disoriented, it barely registers with her senses that her landing was softened. Until his arm sweeps down and catches her around the waist just before she would fall to the ground like a broken doll. Suspended, she hangs there for a moment over his arm, her own hands hanging down limply as if actually quite unconscious from the punishment rendered thus far.
This close, however... she can feel it. That presence within him. It's different than when she awoke to his care at the cleric's abode. There he had not been riled up like this. There was no need for anger then. But now she can sense the difference, and in the process, it triggers another memory. She had watched, in recent times, that video of a SNF battle against this very samaritan. Watching it play out, forced to wonder at the strange words exchanged between them, she had been startled at the way she had reacted late in the fight at what seemed a simple touch.
But right now, folded over his arm, the girl begins to remember. The fight that transpired in the unseen chambers of her mind against that touch of Saint's. It's only a flash, a flicker of horrors best forgotten. Of grotesque faces and twisted goblins. But it's enough to shock her into consciousness, brown eyes wide before her right one squints closed again, her complexion paled as her feet find traction and she begins to stand on her own. By the time she glances toward Saint again, that moment of clarity has faded and with it her surprised expression, the girl looking at him levelly through one eye. "You can't deal with him alone," she states back firmly. She was able to fight Saint. Of course, she was a lot better back then, but all the same - the gap that exists between the two of them and this Southtown Syndicate hound is extreme.
Maybe she should run. Uncertain about her 'help' and most definitely uncertain about what Yamazaki will do if their combined efforts are insufficient... maybe she should. Whirling toward the monsterously large man, her left eye narrows as she studies him, digesting his words, deciphering the implications and calculating a long series of risk verses reward equations in her mind. In the end... she really can't determine, exactly, if it's worse for her to take her chances helping Saint or surrender all hope and just wait for the inevitable. But that uncertainty is precisely why she makes the decision that she does.
Yamazaki's roar vibrates the class of that broken window, causing a few more glinting shards to shatter against the ground. It more than masks the sound of a hydraulic hiss of a titanium staff being extended in the teenager's grip, held at a defensive angle in front of her. "I'm not the fighter I used to be," she warns Saint, trying to open her right eye slowly but closing it as another throb provokes a wince at the effort. "But I won't leave you alone with that. Whatever happens..." she pauses for a moment as their foe becomes a blur bearing in on Saint with all the murderous power of a runaway freight train, "... consider my staying a token of thanks... for what you've done."
A step forward is taken, the girl's staff slamming out from her at the side as she braces her feet against the ground. It's an action intended to place the polearm in the path of Yamazaki's feet, potentially forcing him to correct or adjust at the last instant before reaching the clergyman. It might suffice, should fate smile on the two younger souls, to buy him time to defend himself.
COMBATSYS: Ayame assists Saint.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////////// ]
Ayame 0/-------/---====|=------\-------\0 Yamazaki
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Saint 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki successfully hits Saint with Snake Tamer.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////////// ]
Ayame 0/-------/---====|===----\-------\0 Yamazaki
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Saint 1/-------/=======|
Certainly it would be hard not to notice the energy within the priest, and more than merely its presence, its wrongness. But there's of course a reason why Ayame had never felt it before - or at least never remembered noticing it before. Their interactions at the home were always quite pleasant. Whenever the strawberry blonde girl wandered back in from the street, he was always very nice, supportive, but never asked too many questions; he gave her her space to remember who she was. More than that, any time he'd offered her anything, such as food or even his wallet in the one case, he'd always set it down some place so they never had to be touching the same object. Doing so would've almost certainly transferred the energy through such an object into her.
But now, it was quite impossible to ignore such energy, and likely another piece of the puzzle to Ayame's missing identity fell into place. Why he'd never so much as comforted her with a touch on the shoulder, or allowed anything to be held between them. But that was something for another time. Another time when, you know, a big guy who had simply shrugged off getting an eye taken out as though it were a common daily occurance, or indeed if the thought of being permanently blinded in one eye was no more a bother to him than a fly buzzing about. Ayame's comment of 'being unable to deal with him' is met with only a smile.
Deal with him? There was no way anyone could hurt him any more.
The man might be the most powerful alive, for all Saint knew. But it would be impossible for the big man to hurt Saint more than he'd had been. After all, his entire life had been spent being hurt. "It doesn't matter to me whether I can or not, Aya. The only thing that does, is if you can get away." After all... he loved Ayame, did he not? And it was quite commonplace to get hurt, even die, for the one you loved. Yet even so, when he hears that hydraulic hiss, very familiar to him now, his angry gaze faulters a bit, blinking a few times as he looks down to the younger girl. 'Not the fighter she once was' hm? She seemed to have recovered some of herself, it seems. But this wasn't what made him finally smile again. It was the fact... they'd be fighting together. Hurting together.
What could be more romantic?
Turning his attention back to Yamazaki, the man's roar is met without a single bit of fear. Nor even when the thug runs forward, his fist lashing out. His cane isn't meant for defense, it seems, because he doesn't try at all to block the incoming strike. Instead, he gets punched, straight in the face, despite what Ayame tries to do for him. And the impact is grave indeed. Staggering the much thinner man, he lets out a strong grunt of pain, taking several quick steps back, faultering, then falling to his knees in the muddy alley, eyes wide with the shock of pain. He's still for just a moment, apparently stunned. ...And then, predictably, he begins to laugh. "Ha ha ha ha! -THAT-, as they say in this country, is what I am speaking of!"
Gaining his feet again, the pain inflicted on him - he may indeed have a loose tooth or two - simply drives the priest to rush forward. His cane whips backwards, being held in a reverse grip, for him to launch forward with the other hand, seeking to grasp Yamazaki's face. If he should connect, psycho energy flows through him violently, seeking to rush out at the bigger man, and flood his vision with first darkness, then four ghostly visages, horrible misshapen things that look to grapple his limbs... and twist, giving him the impression of all four limbs shattering at the same time.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki Toughs Out Saint's Parade of Ghouls!
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ////////////////////// ]
Ayame 0/-------/---====|======-\-------\0 Yamazaki
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Saint 0/-------/----===|
Yamazaki's fist lands home like a cruise missile. This was no loud movie-soundstage thwock from a plucky hero. Fuck, no. The .. little .. 'detail' is the kind of thing that sticks with you. The muffled crack of bone smacking on fat.
And you know what? Yamazaki enjoys it.
From a connosieur's standpoint, the level of puerile, childish satisfaction is about the same as when little Kotaro Oe finally got the courage to stand up to Zo the school bully for taking his lunchmoney every day and finally knocked him out in front of the whole school. Only, you know, in this situation, Kotaro's fist vaporizes Zo's face and traumatized half the girls in third grade. Nobody really talks to Kotaro after that..
Now, Zo never really causes any trouble anymore...
Now to look at the two, as one of the few people out there who seemed to have a height advantage over him, Saint should have had a huge reach advantage over him, but barrelling through, Yamazaki's arm seems to cut that distance that half through speed alone. But when Ayame interposes her toothpick, it kind of breaks up Yamazaki's stance. He sees it--can move around it in the barest of ways--but it cuts his stancing short, and gives Saint the chance to just soak his fist. The Southtown killer's lip raises as he just faintly considers Ayame, at that exact moment blood whips through the air.
Then Saint laughs his fool head off.
-- May I have your attention please.
"Oh /yeah/!" he snaps, lurching forward to bleed off his excess momentum, "that's more like it! STICK AROUND!!!" he shrieks at Ayame, turning eyes to Saint, "we're just about ready for a real party now!!" He doesn't know about this asshole's taste in music, but he likes him!
One eyed. One handed. Stick in his way. Yamazaki can't really defend anything in this situation.
And he doesn't even try.
Saint grips his face hard, showing the unhinged mercenary all manner of nightmare and horror as in his own mind twisted things appear around him. Energy suffuses him fully and Yamazaki gets it like a bad acid trip. His breath is hot on Saint's palm as he mutters to himself, only barely audible. Come on, give it to me..
They grip his lower legs.
Come on, give it to me.
They grip his arms.
COME ON, GIVE IT TO ME!!
...Shatter.
Yamazaki screams loud and long, the perceived pain of his entire body shattering in one instant flooding every nerve, filling every nook and cranny in his skull. It forces the mountain of mass to bend back, his entire self shivering with every mote of trauma that racks his psyche. Do you think ill of him? He drinks it in. He revels in it. He was just broken in half in an instant--but he could still move. He doesn't bother to think of the how, or even the why. It doesn't matter. He is inspired. That one claw canting back, Yamazaki doesn't even bother to grab Saint by the arm. No. His jaw pistons open. He is going to taste blood today.
Bite the hand that feeds.
His goal is going to be simple. Snapping slavering and bloodied jaws shut, the one eyed creature aims to grind through the soft flesh of Saint's hand and arm until it squeaks like a chew toy or alternatively, he hits bone. Then, he's going to yank the priest onto his waiting size 13 to shut the expanse, polished leather rocketing up from his hip aiming to break Saint's jaw. And then barreling over Ayame's telescoping rod, his 211 lb frame lurching with grim finality, Yamazaki's leg will curve down with all of his weight. You see, yeah. The scarecrow /is/ taller.
But that don't really matter if Saint's on the ground and Yamazaki is doing his level best to grind his kidney ouit of his body and into the pavement.
The exchange of power between Yamazaki's fist and Saint's face is staggering to contemplate. Somewhere in the back of the teen girl's mind she subconsciously calculates the probable number of Newtons of force that just got dropped off via special delivery before she shakes her head and drags herself back to the horrifying present situation to consider. Drawing her staff back, she whirls it over head, moving with a natural ability to control the long weapon. Lessons of years past seem to keep her moving as if on instinct, the girl tapping into instructions given by an older man that she can only just barely make out at the peripheral of her mind's eye. Who is that? she ponders, only realize that in that very vision she, herself, is clad in the traditionalist style of a Shinto priestess. A delusion, she decides with a grunt as one end of her weapon smacks down against the wet pavement.
Saint reaches for Yamazaki and visions of that same arm extending for some time ago flicker through her thoughts. "Che," she shakes her head, attempting to focus on the here and now. Let the past alone for now. She'll have time to think about it when she isn't trying to keep the one person she suspects may be able to answer some very direct questions alive. If only she could do all those neat energy tricks she's seen in her fight videos. Ah well, she'll have to make due with what she can pull off here and now.
Hands slip along the staff as Yamazaki comes back for Saint a second time. A blur of muscle, menace, and murder speeds back at the young man. Experience has just taught her that trying to stop Yamazaki directly isn't good enough. She's going to take a crack at stopping him from behind. What frenzied power has Saint drawn to the surface? And what can she possibly hope to do to compare?
Probably nothing really. But she'll make due. Yamazaki barrels past her, going for Saint once again, and the girl turns her titanium weapon on him, leaping from behind. That metal weapon whips up over head with enough speed to be heard due to forcing its way through the air before Ayame brings it crashing back down toward the upper back of Yamazaki's head. Should she connect, the intent is to use the force to vault herself up and over the tall man and land somewhere on the other side from where she jumped, just to throw him off a little... maybe. It may not be enough power to crack skull, but it may be jarring all the same!
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki successfully hits Saint with Yakiire.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////////// ]
Ayame 0/-------/---====|=======\-------\0 Yamazaki
[ \\\\\\\\\\ <
Saint 1/----===/=======|
The gloved hand connects to Yamazaki's face, and that perverse psycho energy just floods out. Memories of his, Saint's, life-long bullies bubble to the surface, clear as day, as though the priest had experienced the pain not minutes beforehand. Those memories fill him... then flood out into Yamazaki. They attack his brain, flooding -him- with the perception of villains long past breaking bones, of snapping them like dry twigs, all while laughing, all while loving. Those visions fade... and Yamazaki is not even a moment deterred. The man's teeth sink into Saint's arm, and the pain is so much - and so new, as he'd never felt -that- before - the priest can do little but choke out a cry of pain. There's some feeble attempt to bring up his cane, to jab it into the blonde thug's teeth, to get him to stop, but none of it works. And Saint is brought on for a ride.
Slammed in the jaw, not quite breaking it, but definitely causing the bone to fracture in what'll undoubtedly be a very painful way - with lovely painful dental work needed to correct all of it - and then no sooner has that happened, but the foot jammed under his chin is brought down, with force behind it, kicking rather than throwing Saint into the mud once again, and not just with the intent to throw him into the ground, but to -stomp- him into it. Another choked cry is issued, unable to get any air behind it to make it out of his throat. Flopping on the ground a little like a fish as the pain floods his body, there's no laughter this time from the pain... but only because he simply doesn't have any air to make the appropriate sound with. As it is, the psychotic priest makes rapid gasping noises that sound eeriely -like- laughter, but only if they were uttered from the raspy, dusty throat of a corpse.
Yes. Saint was in a world of hurt. But he'd been hurt before. It was no big deal... at least, not yet. Even if he couldn't stand that much pain for very much longer, he's not extremely concerned about that. So, he rolls back to his feet after a moment's pause, gasping for air. A few vocalized chuckles escape from him, and then just as Ayame launches her attack, so too does Saint. Lancing out with his cane, he seeks to not just strike Yamazaki, but BATTER the shorter man with repeated blows on his person. And though probably quite unintentional, as Ayame attempts to vault herself up from behind the thug, Saint performs a rolling turn to try and get behind the man, trading spaces with Ayame, so he may try to connect the second part of his attack. White-gray lightning crackles about his hands suddenly, a memory so potent it begins to leak into the surrounding area, rather than merely being show to only the one who gets hit by it. Hand once again palms the back of Yamazaki's head, and then his cane jabs itself into the man's spine. And then?
It's the electric chair for Yamazaki. Only, in this case, being administered as a pain-filled false memory by a mad priest.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki blocks Ayame's Fierce Strike.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > //////////////////// ]
Ayame 0/-------/---====|=======\-------\1 Yamazaki
[ \\\\\\\\\ <
Saint 0/-------/----===|
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki endures Saint's Crawling Chaos.
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////// ]
Ayame 0/-------/---====|=======\=------\1 Yamazaki
[ \\\\\\\\\ <
Saint 0/-------/----===|
This guy wasn't bad. If he had to admit one thing, these two looked good together. They worked well together. The skeleton beat him about pretty handily with his cane, ellicting a somewhat embarassing series of grunts and stumbing gaffes from the gangster as he stumbles around from the momentum of having to stomp a mudhole in the stick figure, temporarily drunk from the warm-bodied blood that slakes over his tongue and drips like so much liquid candy from his rancid maw.
On top of it, that raking staccato wheeze from the priest's enjoyment of his treatment still echoes in his ears. A lion can recognize a cub when he sees one. The size is smaller, but the thirst is all the same. Isn't it?
As Ayame goes airborne, Saint slips behind him quickly, with agility that the mercenary simply doesn't have the patience to summon up. He grips the back of his skull. It takes only a touch from that cane to his spine to set off the imaginary execution, the sensation and brief mercy of a sponge and cool water soaking into his hair briefly before 2,000 volts of alternating current is applied through his skull to stop his heart. He roars loud and long, a lion set afire as imagined electricity crawls off his body and as if obeying the illusion, every hair on his body stands on end with the fatal charge. It's so real, Yamazaki could almost swear he smells the scent of his own flesh being cooked.
But it would take a lot more than 15 seconds at 2,000 volts to kill Yamazaki.
About the time Ayame strikes down with her skullcracking blow, Yamazaki bends back at an awkward angle as he fries in his own mind, his roar canting high into a fever pitch, a fire deep inside him stoked until the coals fell out and set the house on fire. He feeds on it. When Ayame drops at him, the beast explodes with force and rage, erupting around him with force enough to crack the concrete beneath him as he whips his arm up to absorb the shock by slapping the thing out of the air. The force of murderous intent alone is enough to drive anyone back, but something primal and calculated deep in Yamazaki's psyche--the only thing in him that is still /thinking at all/ right now.... a detached thing has made a single observation.
They worked /so/ well together...that it reminds Yamazaki faintly of that adorable girl's club.
His sole remaining eye twitches, a vessel breaking and filling the white of his eye with blood.
Yeah. Time to destroy something beautiful.
His claw flicking out, if Ayame isn't lucky, he'll take her real low out of the air by the inside of her hip with that one astonishingly fast hand, fast enough to leave long ragged slash marks where his fingernails graze and dig into her flesh. It's occupying a space of time even before Ayame is hitting the ground. But he doesn't hold her for long, if he can, no. He's going to snap her out of the air and throw on a trajectory decided by him with brutal clarity and calcluation almost bordering on the serene. Every nerve of his is alive with pain from that crawling sensation. He'll barrel her right into the wall with full force. If you're gonna kill him--you're gonna have to try harder than that!!
COMBATSYS: Ayame fails to counter ...!! from Yamazaki with Bright Renewal.
[ \\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////// ]
Ayame 1/--=====/=======|==-----\-------\0 Yamazaki
[ \\\\\\\\\ <
Saint 0/-------/----===|
An instant thereafter, Yamazaki is in full pursuit. The overbearing mercenary executes as if reading from a playbook. He bolts away from Saint, a missile. He doesn't approach Ayame yet--no--he's just on his way. As he slams into the dumpster, steel buckles against the lion's weight, rocking the entire foul mass against his one hand. He sets a shoulder to it, his shoes digging into the ground. The stick fancies her? He loves pain!?
He chuckles darkly. He'll show him agony.
It's not a rollaway. The entire thing sets up a horrendous shriek as the receptacle skids across the alleyway as Yamazaki slams the entire mass into the waif's body, aiming to just pin her against the wall. He arches back, his heartbeat pounding like a kettle drum in his skull as his ruined nervless hand drags out of his pocket, arching both hands wide as he screams a definite howl of /property/ to the sky. Let's see what kind of pain you can take!!! Yamazaki doesn't attack Saint. No, as fun as it is, he's had enough of hitting nothing the priest cared about. It's logic born straight from the street. Honor's for chumps!
Yamazaki doesn't really punch the receptacle. That would assume he's focused enough to do so. He more.. erodes the thing like an angle grinder with really freakish bleached hair, pummeling the thing mercilessly into the wall, the force of every blow transmitting into the hard place that Ayame is trapped inbetween. Hundreds of blows are delivered in just seconds, Yamazaki ramming his hands bloody against the steel until it tears before his flesh gives out. He pummels, tears through the weak steel like it's paper, sending all manner of foul half-consumed trash and debris flying in every direction, fluids that used to at some point be pizza and soda draining onto the ground as Yamazaki climbs into the dumpster, ripping the entire thing in half with pure force. Boring through the thing like a drill in just seconds of deverish violence, he crumples the dumpster like a soda can against the warehouse--and the waif.
Unless Saint's fast with the distracting..
He's gonna get to Ayame.
And then he's going to eat her -alive-.
The long end of her staff rebounds off his arm but the girl seems comfortable with adjusting for that. It seems so natural, she realizes, to control her positions by shifting her grip on that weapon and twisting herself through the air just so-
The epiphany is shortlived as a claw wrests her from the air with a vicious swipe and her trajectory is changed in an instant, her back crashing hard against the wall, shoulder first. Something pops and her left hand releases its hold on her polearm, the weapon swinging down to hang at her right side. Jarring as the punishing slam was, the way she starts to shake her head suggests she's still plenty cognizant. For now.
The punishment has just begun, however. Just as she starts to rise, that large garbage container takes flight, smashing into the small fighter, concealing her from sight as it crashes to the ground at her feet after crushing her further into the wall. She starts to drop, and would have fallen easily, except for the way it plows back into her a second time as the Southtown Syndicate's monster rips into the thing from the other end, blow after blow.
Shrapnel and debris go flying, the girl spattered with blood - some hers, some that exuded from the man's blooded fists. Time and time again, the crushing pain, ribs and other small bones the first to give as she starts to crumple. 'When does it end?' she asks herself. 'When you're dead.' she snaps back with vehemence. So this is how it's going to go. At least she got her hits in before the grand game that has been her strange life concludes its final chapter.
'You might have a shot.' her own voice whispers, the girl's mind fraying as rapidly as her abused body. 'He's getting closer... He is going to finish you now... There will be one chance... You need your arm.' She isn't sure if it is acting on subconscious instinct or deliberately that she moves in the space of a split second between blows. She twists to the side just slightly as the next slam comes and that shoulder, disjointed upon first impact, pops back into its socket - the pain of such a correction not even registering above the agony being delivered by the collapsing dumpster.
The memory was an old one. Back when it was first learned the name 'devil's child' was NOT just some monkier applied to him by his mother, or by the bullies at school. They were scared of him, but he didn't know that. What he did know was that having your body strung up in a dimly lit room, your feet in a bucket of icey water, with a car battery rigged as an impromptu torture device designed to shock you was pretty damn painful, particularly when it didn't -stop-. But now that he thought about it, it was rather intimate, wasn't it? A dark room, some candle light, some questions of a personal nature... sure. It was intimate. And Yamazaki got these flashes, too, as all that psycho energy, tainted by painful memories, floods into him.
Only thing is, Yamzaki's definition of romantic and intimate is the same as Saint's, and he shows it by throwing a dumpster into Ayame.
Staggering briefly after the blow is delivered, Saint seems momentarily stunned by the own use of his power. Such powerful memories, not to mention the strength with which he called them, by actually touching another human, were painful for him as well. So the attack Yamazaki does to Ayame isn't at all really registered for a few precious moments, until the priest's vision clears again. Looking up, he's treated to exactly the sight Yamazaki /wanted/ him to see. That of his beloved in pain. And it has the predictable results. It's perhaps the only time, ever, Saint's ever actually vocalized his anger... by growling, his eyes glinting hard. If this were a novel or movie, people would see this, and see his anger as normal. Reasonable.
Few would realize his anger is brought on by the fact, to his mind, only /he/ was allowed to hurt Ayame.
So, rushing forward, the priest snaps his cane forward, and drives the edge of it for the back of Yamazaki's knee, intending on stumbling the man. If it works, he steps past the mercenary, then takes his cane in both hands, and making a full sweep of his cane, he baseball bat-like swings it directly for the monster's back, right at the small of it. But the fun isn't over yet. A tell-tale *click* is heard, and then finally, after a long wait, the blade is loosened. Drawing it from the 'sheathe' of his cane, the blade is pulled free - and rammed directly into Yamazaki's back, through it, and into the dumpster. Through it, visions of pain flood the thug. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of molten red tips of iron pokers jab into him. THROUGH him. The blade itself jamming through him is like a fiery needle of hell, all of it raining down on his back in a torrent of pain.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki interrupts Liber Ivonis from Saint with Sadomazo.
[ \\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////// ]
Ayame 1/--=====/=======|===----\-------\0 Yamazaki
[ <
Saint 1/------=/=======|
He pummels steel. Slowly--even Ayame can feel it, in that detached, sexy way of hers. His fists are getting closer--the chainsaw-like pace of the mercenary quickening as the receptacle crumples and wet sticky entrails spill out of the thing's belly. Rendered in bagged salad long since rotten, soaking mold-infested drywall and used tissues, he wades through it all like it's just so much sand, scattering sludge and muck everywhere, the smell more than overpowering at this point.
Hands pounded bloody scrabble against the back wall of the dumpster, finally finding the one spot against the steel that doesn't give when the mercenary's fists collide with it, the one soft spot, pummelled out roughly into the shape of a human torso, as Yamazaki commits to his work with the unholy fervor of a madman--he grips the weak steel while it's still hot from the friction of his flurry, ripping it open to reveal--
"SURPRISE!!!!!"
They say the creature known as Yamazaki is not entirely an animal. See, the thing you have to look out for is the fact that Yamazaki doesn't act purely from his emotions. Those drive him, they form the intensity that is his day to day desire to fight and to kill. Looking at him, it seems his actions are just random, vacillating wildly between targets as they're presented, alternating maniacally between cold calculation and frenzied violence. Only someone who really understands will get this much.
Yamazaki is always rioting.
But he is always.. /always/ in control.
For the most part, everything goes according to plan. Saint breaks Yamazaki's stance, causing the massive man to falter just as he's wrapping his nerveless mitt around warping steel to get to the exposed cream of Ayame. A moment later, about an inch from the left side of Ayame's head, a blade pierces through the steel of the receptacle, coated and dripping red. It only breaks down at the moment of that howling declaration, Yamazaki whipping around with his opposite hand. Baiting Saint every step of the way, sucking him in. Forcing him to show him some of his best and most electric pain. He'll take the priest's blade with him all the way, pinioned to steel that ultimately is simply not an impediment. He wants it to hurt. He wants Saint to think he has the upper hand. That's gonna make it all the better. If it means he can get his hands on someone--even for a second. He'll hurt all he needs to.
Yamazaki wants to hurt.
Because he knows how to make it hurt more.
He'll whip around and grip Saint by the skull.
An instant later, a small dent the size of a human head will form in the steel to Ayame's right, accompanied by the sound of the receptacle being struck like a gong.
Cocking back a bloodied, limp and loose fist formed of nerveless flesh, Yamazaki's bicep strains at the ruined deviled-egg-and-cream stained black shirt he wears. His fist is levelled at Saint's face. His grin is manic, wild, free. For that alone, Ayame gave him this pain. THat fist begins to crackle with explosive force contained within. He'll have to double it. "Good night, prince!!!"
On the other side, the head-sized dent doubles in size.
And the steel's paint flakes off with the force of the explosion.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki has left the fight here.
[ \\\\\\\\\ <
Ayame 1/--=====/=======|
[ <
Saint 1/------=/=======|
COMBATSYS: Ayame has left the fight here.
[ <
Saint 1/------=/=======|
Trying to have a single coherent thought when being pulverized vicariously by dumpster is practically impossible. Even instinctual responses are limited. Panic, fear of death, frustration at not being able to save herself all blend together into one noxious mixture of confusion. One jarring bash blurs into the next, and for a time death seems the only possible reprieve.
'Trapped by slowly shreaded dumpster' is not a scenario she had ever prepared for. The black sludge of weeks old refuse splatters against wall, ground, and body, mingling with the blood pouring from open wounds forced open by the ongoing assault. Beyond screaming, beyond even breathing, the girl's right hand tightens against that titanium polearm smashed against the wall right along with her.
And then with a roar, it stops. Closed eyes force themselves open slowly, the sound of meaty hands crushing into her wouldbe rescuer just before a new dent is added to the forest of dents already present in the twisted metal. Saint. Bleary eyed, the teen amnesiac has a moment of amnesty to make her next move. The question is - what the hell to do? Is she in any condition to run at this point? Has Yamazaki been at all injured enough to slow him down? And what of Saint? Abandon him to his death at the hands of the beast from hell? Maybe she should just give up; curl up and die. What is she even fighting for anyway? For a life she can't even remember? For the blank slate she's got for an 'existence' now, laden with scattered thoughts and half-memories?
Her eyes close again. More memories flash through her mind. Foggy images shrouded in red mists of agony. She remembers another time she almost died years ago. Tied to a post, surrounded by kindling. They meant to burn her alive. Names, faces of teachers, people she never expected to turn on her, surrounding the intended fatal pyre, waiting for the end to come. Waiting for the evil to be burned away. But it wasn't to be. They needed to feel God's love just as she had; to share in the experiences of the believers of ancient times; to be reduced to squalor and ash just like Job of old.
She walked from the fire to the screams of those gathered. Now they knew what she knew, her grand epiphany shared by all. It was more than they could endure, each collapsing in turn. But at least they did not die in ignorance. Slowly she approached a bejeweled cistern of holy water from which to wash the ashes from her face. Only the reflection in the water's surface was not hers at all... staring back up at her out of the water was a young man, his hair a lovely platinum blonde.
One eye opens wide as Ayame gasps, the breath accompanied by pained coughing. That memory wasn't hers at all. It was his! A red glow occupies the narrow space between brick wall and shattered dumpster side. There is the presence of something heated that she can't quite place. A slow glance to the side with her unswollen eye discovers the furious burning red coursing over her trusty weapon, her staff begging to be put to use one more time. If she is to die here, it won't be without putting that dear friend to use one... last... time.
It is with strength she didn't even know she had that Ayame explodes through the flimsy remnants of the dumpster, tearing a path directly toward that blooded monster, a trail of all that surplus chi left in her wake as she aims to collide with Yamazaki directly with that burning weapon. Spinning into a whirlwind of staff swings, violent, burning chi issuing forth, trailing off at the ends of the weapon like lingering, sharp edged blades of a double-ended scythe, the girl strikes again and again, each blow meant to rend, bash, bludgeon, shread, and maim. This is all she has. Her last shot to drop the monster. She tried to take his eye, leave his hand nerveless. Maybe she'll get another ounce of flesh before the end.
A hurricane of fire, a whirlwind of motion, blurring red and glinting metal, Ayame aims for every last possible crippling blow she can manage. There is no hope of retreat, only of continuing to struggle, to desperately hang on; just like she's always done.
Things don't go as planned. Though the intention was to slam -Yamazaki- against the dumpster and add dents - or indeed, a slice wound - to the sheet metal of the refuse bin, Yamazaki is, if nothing else, a fighter. Even though one would think he would be wrapped up in harming Ayame, the blonde thug has by no means forgotten the platinum-haired priest, either. Some attacks connect, others fail, all so the priest's head can be grabbed, gripped, and simply slammed into the side of the trash bin, forming yet another dent in the metal construct. But the painings aren't done being dealt yet, as the bigger man's fists just slam into Saint's head, driving him to see nothing but red, whether from blood seeping into his eyes from the outside, a blood vessel being popped from the sheer strain of it, or from the rage that usually accompanies pain.
Whatever the case, the beating stops eventually, and Saint at least has enough presence of mind to stagger off, but such is his world view that everything seems to be spinning at the moment. Nothing makes sense. The world is upside-down, the world is sideways, the world is red, sometimes black, sometimes gray, sometimes polkadotted with dancing, twinkling silver spheres. He finally places his hand against a wall and manages to steady himself... or as much as he can. His breathing is haggard, his face covered in blood, and one eye, at least, while not closed, seems to be fairly useless for now, sightless due to being squeezed up against metal that was beginning to dent into points. He hurt, he felt nauseaous, he felt dizzy, and even as he stood there a moment, his stomach attempted mutiny, dry heaving from the simple pain.
Yet, all he could think of, when his ability to think at all came back to him, was: "I have not felt pain like this in years!"
Glancing over his shoulder as he hears Ayame beginning her attack, expending her energy in one final desperate push, he simply has to grin. A bloodied grin. /She/ was still fighting... why wasn't he? He could still move! He still had energy. And maybe it had something to do with Ayame's recollection of -his- memories... maybe it was simply the strange energy that eddied and swirled chaoticly inside of him reacting to the fresh, horrible pain that had been inflicted onto him... or maybe it was simple blood lust. Whatever the case, he felt it. The need to use it.
He brings his hand up to his mouth, and with his teeth, tugs the glove off his hand.
Turning, he walks slowly towards Yamazaki, stumbling forward almost. His approach is slow, even zombie-like. He tugs off the second glove in much the same way as the first, discarding both black gloves in the alley. His hat was gone, knocked off somewhere in the last assault, and his cane had likely joined it. All he had now were his hands. Horrible, disfigured things. Misshapen, broken multiple times and healed incorrectly too many times more. They lacked skin. They lacked nails. But, as Ayame finishes her assault, the priest is there. Standing behind Yamazaki. What his hands did not lack... was power.
He reaches up to touch one bare hand against the back of Yamazaki's head.
...And then he palms his own face with the other, beginning to laugh, howl, all with the desire to return the pain. In ten, a hundred, a thousand fold. Every painful memory he'd ever experienced, ever had inflicted onto him. They rush into Yamazaki... and into /him/.
COMBATSYS: Saint can no longer fight.
[ \\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////// ]
Ayame 0/-------/------=|===----\-------\0 Yamazaki
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki dodges Saint's Wake the Sleeping God.
[ \\\\\\\\\ < > ///////////// ]
Ayame 0/-------/------=|===----\-------\0 Yamazaki
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki fails to interrupt Final Solstice from Ayame with Sadomazo.
-+- CALCULATED HIT -+-
[ \\\\\\\\\ < > ////// ]
Ayame 0/-------/------=|====---\-------\0 Yamazaki
Yamazaki drops Notice: Walk on. Unauthorized loiterers will be eaten. >:O - Love, Yamazaki.
You're damn right.
If nothing else in the world, Ryuji Yamazaki is a fighter. Born with brown water in his blood, cigarette butts in his gut and scars on his fists, Yamazaki is a creature from the streets before anything else. And these two might actually threaten his dominance now. Now that it even has a chance to register during one of his comparitively lucid moments, the concept of his own injury occurs to him somewhere in lurid consciousness. This elicits a dim blink as his claw disengages from Saint's throat, just after doing his level best to leave little shavings off the priest's skull all over the side of the dumpster. Yeah.. can't have too much fun, they say. You'll go blind.
The game just got a little more serious.
Looking up in a combination of bloodstained dismay and bleary euphoria, Yamazaki very much seems the perplexed dog as it becomes rampantly clear he beat something out of Saint's skull but hardly bone fragments. Saint reaches out for him with freaky mutant hands, forcing even Yamazaki to blink in surprise. He was supposed to be dead. His hands certainly lookedl ike they were halfway to hell as it is. --Shit, no. He's got something to prove still. He'll get back to the scarecrow in time--
It's like watching a mountain crack in half.
Yamazaki explodes out of the dumpster like a pouncing cougar, arms turning in the air before he lands with a bone-jarring thud into the alley opposite, standing with that bloodied hand rammed into his pocket again like he might be looking for loose change. He leaves Saint there. Nah, *that* kid was some kinda head trip that Yamazaki would love to take a few more hits off of... but it's like he said.
He's still got a little more breakdown he needs to do tonight.
Stalking back in towards the two, you can just about hear the barking on the wind. It's not a lonely howl like some of these other silly wannabe samurai that can't take a punch out there, nah. Tell the truth--it's a fucking -din-. What happens when one dog sets to barking and pisses off the rest. One more joins in, then ten. All of a sudden the entire neighborhood's alive and breathing hard, pissed off at something mean and burly coming down the road with your address and place of business in his pocket.
Guess who it is.
Yeah, come on, hit me.
Covered in blood and used peanut butter, smelling like eggs and god knows what else, he stalks towards the dumpster one-armed as Ayame tears the rest of it in half with all her will. It's all her pretty trash-limned fury like a whirlwind of calamity, red force spinning off that staff like a killing spiral. It reflects in Yamazaki's eyes, and the mercenary glowers.
Come on. Come on, hit me.
His Ayame-crushing hand tenses.
HIT ME.
Ayame slams into him with all the force and genius of a fighter alive, cutting into him with that thing like it was a knife, slicing him up proper. It cuts his shirt to ribbons, bludgeons the mountain and wears at it with just water, cutting him deep and sure. He braces through it all, his eyes briefly glowing with what he wants to make Ayame put her lips around. In an instant, his fist rises. Nah, she ain't strong enough to--
The massive fighter... is forced back.
A blow rings through. She isn't done?! Another. Then another. With the peppering of beat-cutting, Yamazaki is overcome, the mountain knocked back, falling from the sky with the kind of dread that you might look at when a palletful of stone block skids off the forklift 16 feet up. When Yamazaki hits ground, it's with a roar. Three tons of rage spill everywhere, red spattering at Ayame's feet. His boots skid across the wet pavement for purchase, as he snarls in disbelief, bleeding and trying to get to his feet. It's true, he didn't expect that much--not from Ayame, and damn sure not from a Christian. --You know what? Fuck it.
He's gonna get up, and he's gonna change her religion.
She barely even has any idea what she's doing as she moves in on Yamazaki. Acting on instinct, exercising rote patterns practiced for years as a child, striking, sweeping, stepping in and out, whirling around him like a banshee unleashed, the chi emblazoned weapon is put to work in every way conceivable as she attempts to weather down the towering menace.
She's only vaguely aware of Saint stumbling around with some kind of grotesque semblence of life. If she were better off, she might have a chance to wonder at his condition and worry about getting him medical health. She isn't doing so great though. Even her own staff-dance leaves her dizzy as hell, her vision swimming as she stumbles out the final strikes that manage to knock Yamazaki back at last.
She'd keep going if she had it in her. But her young body can only be pushed so far, and eventually the combination comes to an end. The red flare of chi churning over her weapon begins to flicker as she comes to a stop a mere three yards away from the SouthSynd killer, gasping for breath. The chi cools, dimming, the energy near the base of the staff dripping off as if having taken liquid form - drops of crimson that vanish before they reach the ground at her feet.
The sound of metal against concrete echos as she plunks one end of the weapon against the ground and leans heavily against it, clinging to it desperately with both hands for support to keep herself standing. Broken ribs, compression injuries, bleeding, raw marks covering her skin all begin to register with her nervous system at once and the girl begins to cough anew, at last collapsing to one knee, the weapon held upright at her side, resting against her shoulder.
Staring back at him, one eye swollen closed, her other half-lidded, Ayame struggles to find the last bit of strength in her to act one more time. Ayame has one religion - one belief: Her own survival surpasses all other considerations. And right now she has a heretic to deal with - an unbeliever to outlast. Everything depends on it.
COMBATSYS: Ayame focuses on her next action.
[ \\\\\\\\\ < > /////// ]
Ayame 0/-------/------=|====---\-------\0 Yamazaki
Saint's hand reaches out - and grasps air. Or one of them does. Regardless of this miss, the priest still grasps his own face. This brings no extra power to him, or anything of the sort. He's simply crazy enough, at that point in time, being so consumed by pain and the need to expel as much as he's taken in, that giving himself a backlashed dose of the wash of a lifetime's worth of memories of torture seems like not such a terribly bad idea. Yamazaki escapes this by simply avoiding the hand, but with Saint, no such thing occurs. And considering the man is forced to relive his memories upon transference to another, and now he's also touching his own face...
To describe the pain would only demean the sheer torment of it. But he's lived through all of it. Even being made to relive it - twice in the span of a few seconds - it's still nothing he can't survive. Which doesn't mean he's still a picture of health, of course. But the pain is such that he doesn't cry out, he doesn't scream, he doesn't even really do much of anything. He simply... sits down, his hand against his face, his eyes wide and staring. He doesn't move any more, he doesn't seem inclined to do much of anything. Eventually, his hand moves away from his face, and he collapses backwards, his back resting on the wall of the alley while he sits in the filth of the street. But the priest is quite out of it for now, his mind... somewhere else, while Ayame continues to fight.
He stands slowly, shaking shredded trash off his bleeding body, one good eye rolling in his head as he scans the alley. Saint seems to have cooked his own brain, the priest lost in his own little field of mushrooms that Yamazaki won't even start to get into. He seems like the type Yamazaki could have fun going out drinking with. If, you know, he didn't just do what he did to Ayame and all.
Speaking of.
In the dusk, everything stretches. Becomes sharper, more hostile. Everything skews just a little and becomes a little lonelier. Saint's down. And Yamazaki's up.
The criminal's shadow falls over the tired out youth, a long and hunch-backed thing, his teeth glinting red in the light--some of the priest's blood still spreading the taste of salted iron over his tongue. It's just fuel. He is bleeding, but he will never get tired of this.. "I gotta say," he admits, his voice a low, feral growl, "that /wasn't bad/. You two were loads of fun. But--" His claw wrenches shut into a fist, tight enough for his knuckles to pop audibly in series. "There's something different I'd like to do now."
"It's just you and me again, sweetheart. End of the line."
His hand blurs, his fist flickering like lightning for the worn out little girl's throat--
When shit hits the fan in Southtown's harbor, it doesn't take long for the eyes and ears of the city's underworld to cue in. What started out as a fight between two became a fight between three, and word of the fight between the three spread among dockworkers. Soon enough, wouldn't know you it? Word gets back to the Syndicate and other organizations when there are perceived 'troubles' on the horizon.
And who wouldn't suspect trouble? With the loud, feral howling and screaming and blood-curdling screams coupled with wrenched and ripped steel filling that area of the dockyards, it actually began to scare a good number of after-hours workers for the Syndicate. So much so they felt it necessary to get in touch with the 'higher authorities,' their employers.
But worries and fears of mere dockyard workers aren't precisely on the higher end of the concern scale for the 'upper authorities' of the Syndicate. Responsibilities shirked and danced around, the task--to go out and 'handle' the matter--eventually fell into a pair of surprisingly eager and capable hands.
The hands of Shihong Mao.
So a road trip later, the woman pulls in to the harbor docks in the confines of a sleek black Sedan, black eyes peeling over the area. Soon enough frantic dockyard workers come into view, men scurrying about and hurrying AWAY from the commotion in a nearby alleyway. It startles the woman slightly, her foot hastily applying the brake, drawing the car to a screeching halt. Almost immediately the Chinese woman exits the car, the door slamming shut as a pair of workers hurrying up to the well-dressed woman.
She blinks, obviously surprised as they point toward the alleyway and explain the situation as best as any frightened bystander can: very poorly. Half-heartedly she listens, nodding her head absently before she simply pushes past them and heads in the direction they'd guided her toward. How bad can it be? Really? Surely it's just another scuffle, and nothing more.
Shihong really wishes she was right.
The sight that greets her is something nightmares are made of. As she was told, three people are present--one against a wall--all of which are bloodied, bruised, cut up and covered in filth and grime. The very stench from the alley is enough to gag her, black eyes wide as her late lunch threatens to introduce itself. What's perhaps most important is the fact that two of these faces are very familiar. And though she knows one only through reputation, the other...well.
To Shihong the weapons prodigy girl is kind of important to her.
And it's that girl--the girl she said she'd help, that she'd be there for if she ever needed anything, even HELP--that this hulking, bloodied behemoth is advancing on. Oh, that doesn't settle well with the Enforcer. Not one bit. Not at ALL; so much so has her face begun to twist and contort, eyes widening as her lips pull painfully tight across her pale face.
For once, possibly the first time in her life, Shihong Mao looks REALLY pissed off.
Without a single word the woman in black tears off, her approach heralded by the sound of stiletto pumps clicking furiously against damp, grime-covered concrete. She ignores the fallen man, the priest propped against the wall, and even the man as he encroaches upon the much smaller girl. For what reason?
She's putting herself in harm's way, between the hand that snakes for Ayame with every intention of what appears to be snatching it out of thin air...
COMBATSYS: Shihong has joined the fight here on the left meter side.
[ \\\\\\\\\ < > ////// ]
Ayame 0/-------/------=|====---\-------\0 Yamazaki
[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Shihong 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Shihong interrupts Snake Tamer from Yamazaki with Savage Tiger EX.
- Power hit! -
[ \\\\\\\\\ < > // ]
Ayame 0/-------/------=|======-\-------\0 Yamazaki
[ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ <
Shihong 0/-------/---====|
The hand, the force--Yamazaki's strength is without a doubt a force to be reckoned with.
Shihong Mao learns this first hand, when she intercepts the large incoming appendage. It nearly breaks her grasp, long pale fingers struggling fiercely against the sheer force behind such a nasty assault. But the woman, driven by her anger and rage, perseveres. She pushes on--she feels she has to.
She made a promise to the girl, after all. Her own well-being be damned.
Yamazaki's hand scrapes her throat, fingers leaving a nasty gash across her pale neck, but Shihong's grip somehow proves stronger. Somehow--a feat she's likely to mull over in sheer disbelief later--she lets her body drive on pure adrenaline, her long, well-manicured nails fiercely gripping into the man's snared forearm. Eyes usually black are now an odd, almost unearthly hue of fiery red, her pale face flushed and devoid of color as she twists his arm and wrenches it painfully to the side with little more than a grunt of strained effort. He has considerable muscle to fight against.
But she does not wait; instead, those sharp stiletto heels suddenly leave the ground, planting fiercely and viciously into his front as she literally ascends the mountain of Syndicate meat, her body swiftly and hurriedly carried along while she maintains grip on his arm. And when she reaches the apex of her ascension, when she hangs in the air just above his shoulders...
She comes down with those three inch steel stiletto heels. Hard.
The ensuing collision of steel heels and flesh results in a fiery burst of vermillion red psychic energy--energy with which Saint is intimately familiar with--as the woman DRIVES the Syndicate mercenary into the pavement below before she twists atop him, wrenching the arm savagely to the side, to add insult to injury.
And to make it all the sweeter, she lifts a foot and stomps it against his back, to deliver another fiery burst before she leaps off and lands in front of Ayame, her face positively furious as she fearlessly roars:
"WHAT THE /FUCK/ ARE YOU DOING TO A WARD OF THE SYNDICATE?!"
Yeah, she's pretty pissed.
Saint can't help anymore, seated off to the side, his body limp, his mind lost in the fields of pain his memories of agony bring to the surface. He's done his share. He saved her eye. So far at least. Swollen and pained from the bruising it got from Yamazaki's thumb, but in tact. But for all her effort, for everything Saint did to him, the man continues to move. On one knee, her other leg bent, using her staff for support, the girl looks up slowly, hair falling in to frame her face and drape over her shoulders.
The weapon she leans on for support remains red in places even as the chi fades. Blood, her own, covering her hands, dripping from open wounds, gashes, and tears. Some of it /that/ man's. Drying in places, damp and sticky in others, her staff a reflection of her own miserable condition as she struggles to keep from falling over in surrender. And then it comes - that fist snaking in with speed so fast as to defy sight, and the girl closes her eye.
The sound of contact reaches her but the force does not, and the teen bandit opens her one good eye to squint at the sight of a woman clad in black intersecting that arm on her behalf. It's the second unexpected face to see in this horrific ordeal. A woman stepping out of no where in a time of ultimate need with all the savageness of a tigeress defending its cub, her neck clawed in the process of defending Ayame from the fearsome strike meant for her throat.
Behind Shihong, she doesn't get to see that red glimmer in her eyes or see the expression of anger on her face. But she hears it in her voice as she finishes wrenching the predator's arm to the side and roars in fury against him. It's the Southtown Syndicate woman. The one that invited her into a team, offered her a sense of belonging, and, ironically, possibly set this entire encounter in motion unintentionally once word of the change to Asura reached Yamazaki's attention. How fitting for her to bring it to a sudden end.
"Shihong..." she whispers the name of her second savior in one evening. The world has a way of bringing people together like this the girl thinks, her head starting to bob as she tries to stay upright. Her other leg drops to a knee as well as she sinks down further. At last this long ordeal can finally end she thinks with silent relief.
His claw whistles as it cuts air. Fist parting into five individual lengths of gouge, his fingernails bite into flesh savagely, aiming to sink in deep until he can feel the muscular tube of her throat directly. His fingertips sink--but they gain no more purchase, for the interference of two thin hands wrapped around his thick ram of an arm. He's a little more tired than he thought--for all of the force Yamazaki can exert, it seems like his fingers can't even..
He pauses, his blackened vision taking notice--only then--that his target has been interposed with someone else. Someone real familiar to him. His chin lifts.
His lip raises.
"..Anh?"
It's been a long enduring evening, but Yamazaki's blood is still pounding, raging, infuriated by the intrusion. He dimly makes out a face. Almost painfully asian, with candy-coated lips that could stop a train in its tracks. Yamazaki pauses, and his good pupil contracts to a fine point, sharpening his vision. The biological response is clear enough. Yamazaki's teeth grind as they meet, twisting against themselves so hard that you can hear his molars cry. Go away.
"MAO!!!" he roars, the woman climbing him like a ladder, explosions of not-quite-red-but-goddamnit-it's-red energy rupturing all over his body in a long staccato beat, his body flexing into it as his arm tries to suck Shihong in. It's pointless--she hovers. Yamazaki gets a good look at her heels before he takes it in the face, with the sound of reinforced steel lancing down into his chin and body, knocking the entire mass of male down into the street, his skull cracking against the pavement as he goes.
He is twisted, and he is stomped, his spine warping around the blast.
He lays there a moment, contemplating her question in the same way a potted plant might. He is still conscious, but barely so, the combined attack of three different fighters at their best finally, mercifully enough to take the criminal down. But it isn't over yet... no.. hell no. See. Yamazaki has just enough left for one more party in him. Hooking a leg further and farther than anything that large ever should go, his shoe hits the ground somewhere near his ear, dragging the trash-headed maniac upright again.
"Was... eegh.. was wonderin' when you butterscotch candied yams would show up." He snurfs loudly, wiping a gush of blood from his lips and nose anew, before chuckling harsh and wet, proving the effort almost immediately futile. His voice is vested in both efforts to rasp and avoid choking. "Was hopin' it would be a little later.." After he got a chance to write his little love letter to the divas.
"After all this time. Still green, still a pointless idiot," he refers to Shihong, absently ripping off an annoying strip of fabric that got shredded up on his bicep. He stretches his back, to work out the nasty bleeding kink Shihong /just/ put in it. He groans. Oghhh. Anyway, his contract with Geese was pretty clear about this sort of thing. Not that it mattered if it wasn't. "Ain't heard nothin' like that. Don't recognize friends of friends. --And she ain't a ward of shit til she's signed the /big/ contract.. Til then?" Working the socket that Shihong just crushed by turning his arm in the air a bit, he jams that hand into a pocket as well. For all of his enjoying pain, all of his anger and sadism. Whether it be from the accumulation of injury or something else... invoking the Syndicate seemed to have some sort of a chilling effect on his rapidly dulling mania. Right now, Yamazaki seems genuinely dissuaded from attacking Shihong. A cat who's just been hit with the spraybottle.
But that don't mean nothing if she keeps pushing buttons.
The details were in the devil. Yamazaki leans in close to the raging, /fearless/ woman and lets her get a good look at him. At the gaping, bleeding hole in his head. The sardonic, noninvolved grin plastered across his face. He lets her have a deep, good whiff... there was one last implication that he was gonna need to make transparent. He's only gonna say this once. As far as he's concerned? Til that day comes?
"She's just. fuckin'. food."
She told Ayame--no, Shihong made a promise to the girl, that day in the city.
She would protect her.
And if protection meant throwing herself in harm's way, right into the maw of the dragon itself, she would do so. To the woman, Ayame was a teammate now, perhaps something like a little sister of sorts. There had always been something about the girl she'd been fond of, and now more than ever the confused girl needed help--the help Shihong promised her.
Fearlessly, the Chinese woman does precisely that. Shielding the weapons prodigy from that incoming grasp, the woman intercepts and unleashes her anger upon the raging Syndicate mercenary. Step after step, burst after flaming psychic burst she lets loose her ferocity, each stab of stiletto just a little nastier than usual, to emphasize the point. Even the wall-rattling roar of the man goes ignored as she slams her heels down into him, driving him into the ground; right now, all Shihong wants to do is HURT him.
With one last stomp into his backside the woman parts, heels clicking against the cracked concrete with a surprisingly calm and dainty click. Her head crooks only slightly as the man somehow stirs, lips pulled tightly over her porcelain-white features. And then, he speaks.
"Shut UP!" the woman yells, red eyes wide and angry still as the battered merc pulls himself to his feet, bloodied and battered mercilessly by all parties. Even the grotesque display isn't enough to jar the woman from her anger. How dare he? How DARE he do this to her? An eyelid ticks, pearly white teeth clenched painfully tight behind her thin red lips as the woman stares upwards at the gangster.
Blinking thrice, the woman shakes her head lightly and glances over a shoulder, toward the girl shuddering behind her, propped feebly up by the titanium pole she's come to rely on. With now-black eyes she briefly regards the girl, her features flat...before she offers a weak and painfully apologetic smile. She owes the girl BIG now. "S-sorry," she quietly replies.
When the Syndicate gangster speaks, however, the woman's head whips forward once more, eyes hooding sharply as he outright insults her. Green? A pointless idiot? "Watch your damn mouth," she hisses, hands clenched painfully at her sides. He may be a retainer and years stronger than her, but right now Shihong Mao is driven by her anger and adrenaline. She is just not afraid of the truly imposing man she dares to face down.
Fortunately, she remains somewhat rational. "She's under contract of HOWARD himself," the woman warns, still glaring at the gangster. "He asked her to look into some circumstances for him for the time being." He moves and so too does Shihong, her body side-stepping a bit more, keeping her body suitably imposed between the barely-conscious Ayame and Yamazaki. "So as far as I'M aware, that makes her a member of the Syndicate." Pausing, her features sour considerably.
"Which means you keep your /goddamned/ hands off of her."
But then he leans in. For all the anger and adrenaline fueling Shihong, there still lies beneath the line a little fear. And it shows briefly in her black eyes, when the man suddenly leans forward and lets her get a look at his gnarled face and the wounded eye. He's got the look of nightmares, his monstrous form all but saturated in blood and gore. The sights, the smells...it makes her stomach turn. But she fights it, the fear of a man twice her size and strength that looks like he ENJOYS being mangled. She bites her proverbial lip and stands firm, hands pulled into tight fists as she glares right into his mangled eye.
When he speaks, she finds her resolve once more, features warping, her eyes widening before she herself leans forward. Regardless of the awful stench and blood, Shihong stares unflinchingly back into the face of Ryuji Yamazaki. Food, he calls her teammate.
"She is not food. Keep your hands off of her and GOOD distance from her." A cold chill washes over Shihong as she realizes what she's doing, but it doesn't STOP her. Instead, she remains determined to protect the girl as best she can from a predator like the Syndicate's hired muscle. Sporting a painfully thin smile, the woman replies, softly, "Next time? If you're really this bored?
"You pick on me, instead."
After all, she made a promise Ayame.
"And maybe drag your ass to see a goddamned doctor. You look like shit."
She's left to kneel behind Shihong, all capacity for defense or offense drained by the loss of blood, the encroaching loss of consciousness. She's awake enough to hear the words spoken, even if not cognizant enough to respond or even digest them in the fullest. The angel in black glances over at her, an apology whispered from her lips, but all Ayame sees through that single good eye of hers is the trickle of blood on the woman's neck - claw marks from when she intersected the attack meant for her.
The teen criminal can only see that - trails of red on slightly pale skin, blood in a field of snow. Shihong says she's sorry, but all Ayame can think is that she did that for her. She bleeds for her; she took that hit for her. It's not unlike the platinum blonde male off to the side, lost from the present for now. He's bloodied and broken because of her, another who took the pain meant for her own abused body, the pain that monster who now addresses Shihong had so delightfully intended to dish out.
More words drift into her consciousness - contracts, Syndicat member. Thoughts flicker into her mind's eye of meeting the man behind it all - Geese Howard, Southtown Syndicate's royal Highness. So that's who Shihong took her to meet after their title belt free for all those months ago. The girl's lip trembles into the faintest curl of a smile at another puzzle solved, another question answered.
Shihong continues to instruct Yamazaki, the words becoming harder to distinguish for the battered girl. Not food. Keep a distance from her. Hands off. She can make out some of it between the loud throbbing in her aching head or the ringing in her bleeding ears, but it's hard to comprehend, right up to that offer - as if offering the slavoring beast a bone to disuade it - if he wants to pick on someone, she'll take it if it means leaving Ayame alone. The girl starts to shake her head. It's too much for someone to promise that. She can't even understand why someone would offer that. Trying to open her mouth to protest, she finds herself speechless, her lips sealed with crusted blood.
She lifts her head one more time to stare at Shihong's back then shifting her one-eyed glance toward Saint, marvelling at the lengths gone to for her benefit by people she can't even remember. If there were people like this in her life before, how did she turn out like this with so many enemies around every corner?
Her smile wanes, the pain overwhelming, and at last her fingers slip loose from that supportive staff. A metallic ring echoes as it rattles against the hard ground, its owner slumped over to her side, eyes closed, at last succumbed to nightmare laced sleep. She doesn't have to keep fighting to survive right now. Someone else is doing that painful job for her. As distant as she might have tried to be from others all her life, right now, she's willing to accept that arrangement just fine.
COMBATSYS: Ayame has left the fight here.
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Shihong 0/-------/---====|======-\-------\0 Yamazaki
Lost from the present? In a sense, he was more than that. In the 'here and now' he was lost because he was not a part of the business at hand. He was not friends with anyone here other than Ayame - and even that, if the strawberry blonde girl had her memories, would very likely be untrue as well. He was not a part of the Syndicate. He was not actively engaged in fighting. Indeed, he wasn't even standing up, hidden behind the remains of the dumpster, more or less, other than the top portion of his ruffled platinum hair. This tiny world was moving on without him; it had no need of him, and he was not a part of it.
But more than that, Saint was lost from the present in a sense no one could see. His mind, flickering through images as though he were looking through a photo album of memories past. Yet these were not mere pictures to evoke the memories. No. These were memories so strong it was as if he were there, reliving them. He saw his childhood years, where his mother tried to strangle him, and from that day on, swore he was a demon and took every opportunity she could to try and kill him. He saw his years spend at the Catholic boarding school, where rumors of him being a 'demon' circulated wildly, and were found even to be true. He was beaten and tortured for being different, for being a demon. And it cumulated in a baptism by fire; a cleansing of sins, but also a cleansing of doubt. More years, more faces, more pain, more horror.
And then he lived it once more.
Twice these memories flooded through him. And then, when they were done, he sat in the filth of the alley, covered in dirt, mud, blood, and worse, seeking to seep into his open wounds. And yet, while the new addition of the Chinese woman attempted to talk Yamazaki down from murdering all three of them in the alley, his reddened eyes merely stared. He lie perfectly still, his mouth open slightly as if he were in the midst of trying to scream, when something had simply frozen him. One horribly disfigured hand hovers over his face, not quite touching, but obscuring most of his face.
Eventually, however, he regains himself. His memories fade, and the past gives way to the present. The stink, the pain, and the sense of desperation that clung over the alley. Yes, he remembered this place. He remembered why he was here. He was also aware of other things... things that he'd never before considered. Thoughts sprang to life. The entity within him, that psycho power which he knew by no name, but only by effect, seemed to have changed somehow... or perhaps, he had changed his perceptions about it. Something new... something he'd never considered. He could sharpen those memories, perhaps... yes... he would need to test.
Saint's thoughts were his own, but the priest feels no need to share them. Nor to share anything else, apparently. He stands, silently, and looks to the ground. Retrieving his cane, he turns and begins to walk out of the alley, his hat and gloves left behind. Before she drops into an unconscious slumberland, likely only Ayame would see him leave, as he simply silently walks out of the alley with nary a word, a pause, a noise, or even a nod of his head.
As he began to walk away from the alley, however, he begins to sing, just as he had done when he'd walked towards it. His voice is low, almost muddered as he walks off in a near haze, covered in grime, covered in filth, and covered in blood. "Under blue moon I saw you... so so-on you'll take me... up in your arms, too late to beg you, I cancel it... though I know it must be... the killing time..."
Yamazaki 500 lbs
"Really."
Yamazaki lurches over the defiant little Shanghai woman, leering at Shihong with his one good eye at an order quite a few notches beyond the boozed up fellow at the bar who couldn't stop talking to your chest. There isn't a word in the book for what Yamazaki commonly thinks of men, let alone women.
"See, it's funny.. That's not what I heard," Yamazaki comments, his voice sizzling with languid anger. Something that was looking for the right reason. "See...problem is.. I got a good memory. And I can't remember for the /life of me,/" he emphasizes, "the part where what you say ever meant shit." Pause. "Anything other than that you're wagging that cute little tongue around in that head of yours..." He grins.
"So between you, me.. and the rack of lamb?" he starts, pointing out the fitfully sleeping rogue behind Shihong, "you'd better hope you're coincidentally right.."
Mercifully, he turns, walking away from the two slowly, his footfalls now audible in the piercing silence. They're a little softer than one might expect. But then again, he has been climbing through layers of grim for the past ten minutes. Still, he doesn't get too far before he pauses. Impulse, and that alone, drives him to add something else, low and boldly threatening like nothing else prior.
"Otherwise. I'm gonna take you up on that offer. Twice. And you're gonna be the one who needs to see a doctor."
Thankfully, despite everything., his hands never actually left his pockets. Does there actually exist a limit to what the mercenary might do?
Whatever the reason might be, it seems Yamazaki is convinced to keep his hands to himself for now. For some reason, it seems that despite his altogether horrific condition, being convinced not to go on a blind rampage seems to count for a lot where Yamazaki is concerned. Despite appearances, he wouldn't have lived this long if he didn't have at least some sense in his head. "Ah, what a day.."
He's almost starting to black out...
He'll need to go grab a room for the night somewhere.
He cuts his eyes. He remembers something he failed to notice earlier.
Did the brain case leave singing? What was that?
/Somewhere/ in the world, Saint is singing.
And he is singing more bad music.
"HEY!! SHUT *THE. FUCK.* UP, TINKERTOY!" he bellows angrily into the sky, loud enough to scare pigeons off the roof of the warehouse two blocks down.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki can no longer fight.
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Shihong 0/-------/---====|
Log created on 21:48:42 09/07/2008 by Ayame, and last modified on 04:10:09 01/04/2009.