Match of the Millennium

Description: After being healed by him on two separate occasions, Whip is still unsure how to classify the elusive Seishirou Ryouhara: a ruthless terrorist or an errant kindred spirit? Nonetheless, she is forced to make a decision when she eventually hunts the shinobi down to find him injured, and possibly dying. Is he someone worth saving? (Alternate title: "Whip Likes to Surround Herself With Jerks.")

The remains of Byakuren Hagoromo finally drifted to earth about a mile away.

The tattered fabric of the haori, now not much more than a sad pointless strip of dirty white silk, was caught on the sharp edge of a 'Samurai Joe's' restaurant sign. Fluttering in distress on the wind, the only thing that remains to identify it as former ninkou at all is a fragment of the Ryouhara mark. Three leaves in the wind now only two in number. The flag flies nobly, but ruined.

Somewhere upwind, someone is having a very bad day.

After using the haori to absorb enough shock that his insides didn't liquefy, the youth had very little left to save his fall. Careening out of the sky as the difference in levels of 'judgment' became apparent, he was at least mercifully unconscious before he hit the ground.

Somewhere in a dirty alley in a portion of town no rich man would even think about going into, he made landfall.

The car alarm shut off after only a minute or so after impact. Though it was made to shut off after three, battery acid leaked ambiently out from underneath the thing's undercarriage, sizzling red spattering the ground, impaled on the ornamented polygonal sword that cleaved through its hood and pinned the entire thing to the concrete underneath it. The entire mass of steel was crushed like a sandwich. Modern crush zones on vehicles focused on side, rear and front crash ratings. Not objects falling from above. As such, the entire driver's side compartment is smashed near flat, tilting the entire conveyance one way on its shocks.

Ryouhara's leg hangs off the side mirror.

The youth looks like he'd been in the blast radius of a bomb that seemed not to like him personally most of all. Though still dressed in shinobi fatigues of his clan from the waist down, most of the wool and bindings that sheathed his upper half are worn down to a tattered nothing, an iron mass that used to be a collar ripped open and laying some ways away. It seems to be the only thing that stopped his neck from snapping. He is intact, his jugular safe, the silver looped necklace he wears thereabouts still glinting in the coming of the dawn's light.

Despite everything, Ryouhara is still breathing faintly.

But the dingy red that collects underneath the driver's side is not battery acid at all.

Someone snatches the ripped remains of the haori free.



Half rappelling off the side of the restaurant by her favourite whip, half hanging peacefully in the air, Whip dangles with one boot braced on the wall, seemingly content to hang there as she takes a moment to examine the material. Her eyes narrow with thought. Her lips tighten up.

Then, with a surge of strength from her other arm and the bit of a sigh, she pulls herself back up, stepping back up to the roof. A bemused flick of her weapon frees it from the iron scaffolding, and she loops it over her arm. Her full attention is on that prize in her hand, that familiar piece of fabric that she knows she's seen before. Turning it over, Whip stops when she finds the torn mark, and with her other hand -- flexing it absently to get used to the newly-healed skin -- pulls a folded piece of paper from her coat pocket. She was right the instant she noticed it. It's a match.

But she's not sure how it got there. But she decides that any clue is a good one.

It's been a while since she's been forced to track someone, but it amazes her how old training always finds a way to come back. As though it refuses itself ever to become forgotten. Years ago she would follow and find a person through the faint, organic trails that all people unintentionally leave behind, all to eventually have them murdered. Her goal may be different these days, but the handwork is essentially the same. Dressed darkly, informally, choosing nondescript dark colours to keep her blended, and weighed with a collection of weapons and helpful military technology, Whip has taken the night off to find someone. And she seems to be on the right track.

She crouches, looking back down on the restaurant's flickering sign, mentally processing the geometry behind the garment's eventual fall and snag on its corner. She glances toward the direction of the ocean, Southtown's greatest supplier of a constant, directional wind. Time to go upwind.

After moving rooftop to rooftop, with only her PND, night vision, and gut to guide her, Whip's not sure which one of the three encouraged her to look down. But she does, and directly down in the alley below she sees someone dying.

An instant later, Whip drops from the rooftop and lands in a silent crouch, pushing the goggles away from her eyes. The action reveals the surprised, sickened look in her dark eyes. She was looking for Seishirou Ryouhara... and it seems that she's found him.

She's not sure how long he's been there, or what could have even left him in such a mess, but she knows that he's in dire need of help. For an instant, she pauses, almost reticent to help someone who has revealed himself as both possible ally and potential enemy to her, but soon a simple fact rises to the front of Whip's mind. He's healed her twice now. He found her and fixed her. At the very least, it's time to return the favour.

A second later, she's at the fallen shinobi's side, immediately checking his vitals and feeling relieved to find him breathing. Feeling for his pulse, pinching the ends of his fingers for a motor response, Whip's already assessing Ryouhara's ability to be moved. Her initial thought is to take him home, but her own logic stops her. It would be dangerous. It would be additional stress on K'. And, importantly, even though she intends to rescue this terrorist, it does not mean that she has come close to trusting him. She doesn't want him anywhere near Shurui. It's time to settle for second best.



The story of Ryouhara should have ended hours ago.

The young leader looks as if he's been hit by the cowcatcher of a small freight train, ripped and ragged areas of purple swelling throughout his whip-thin chest. Small areas of scorching are prevalent throughout his trunk and all the way to an old scar at his hip. He lays at an odd angle, likely the result of his impact, but the shift of his body halfway from his cradle across the slick steel seems to indicate he has already moved at least once.

As if he tried to get up already.

Small but developed musculature in his trunk contracts. His breath is slow, methodic, as if merely resting for a time, but the faint hitch in his inhalation every two or three breaths suggest that the impact endured snapped at least one rib like a popsicle stick. Likely, many more. Internal bleeding is almost a given in that kind of situation.

The scion's skin is dusky, the normal faint tan complexion of the shinobi growing a little more ashen with what have been an epic loss of blood at the time of impact which has only gotten consequtively worse as time passed, the trauma now just shy of full later hemorrhage. Normally, skin that would be fiercely warm to the touch--Ryouhara's blood burned a little hotter than most, not unlike K'--is cool to the touch.

When his lids are pulled back, Whip can see it again. The heterochromia shown during that tense moment where she tried to strangle him in the hospital was not a hallucination at all. Nor was it at all heterochromia. Seishirou's irises, both of them, shine a dull unseeing gold when light shines into them, a detail simply not noticed by most because of the fact that the shinobi's eyes have been dark brown in every official record that's ever existed of the shinobi. A lie?

The thin scar drawing right down from his eye is plain.

That scar has been there for years, but no one has ever seen it.

It should have been a nonissue. He should be dead.

But his vitals tell a different story entirely.

Bizarre though his eyes are, they respond in the expected fashion to stimuli. Pupils contract, evident of brain stem function. Despite the blood loss, his heartbeat is slowed, even, measured in his chest, as if will alone kept him calm. It is likely the only reason he remains alive--the drop in pressure means his blood would have ruptured out all the faster. Tachycardia seems beyond someone with ice in their veins.

He twitches faintly when his fingertips are pinched. His reflex seems almost violent compared to most, his hand snapping as if stung. Working some jutsu that does not exist anywhere but inside his subconscious. When that hand settles, it settles slow and uneasily, as if distrust were wired into Ryouhara at a biological level. Brainstem, upper spine are OK. Even with the obvious movements he appeared to attempt earlier, he seems nominal in that area--that area alone.

Even near death he lay peacefully at rest. His fingertips lightly contact the cool steel as if remembering the touch of another. As if wishing to grasp a handhold firmly and stand on his own. Isolate even in rest, his brow furrows only faintly at memories flicking through his imagination, absently searching for answers to his predicament.

"I .. will .." he murmurs darkly, his voice chilled.

Through and by any means necessary, Ryouhara will stand on his own.

Alone, he will realize the destiny of his doomed family.

Everything under his eye. It is all within his reach.

For them, he will seize control of everything.

-Everything.-

Still unconscious, Seishirou begins to violently bleed out, blood pooling underneath him.



If Whip bore any hatred for the shinobi, she is sure now would be the time she would feel it, when he is injured and she is healthy, and he is entirely at her mercy. But she feels nothing of the sort. On the contrary, something pangs strangely in the mercenary's chest as she methodically assesses his vitals and body, her amateur first aid instructing her that he is alive but not stable. Possibly critical. Possibly dying.

She's not sure what to think, looking into his carefully-opened eyes, finding her attention straying from his pupils to the strange colour of those irises. So she closes them again, breathing out quietly, anxiously. Then her breath holds the half-minute it takes her to time his pulse, her fingers feeling for the carotid artery. Whip, and especially her hands, are always on the cool side, as though her body temperature were consciously trying to reflect her temperament. But Ryouhara feels so much colder.

She finds herself straying, letting her hand ghost away from his pulse to creep higher, letting her steady, callused palm cradle one side of the shinobi's face. Tilting her head, Whip stares down in curious vigil, perhaps surprised to find so much expression on his face. Usually people are so quiet when they are dying. They let the worry relax out of them. There is nothing more to care about at that point -- nothing more to hide.

And then he speaks.

Startled, Whip leans back, her dark eyes widening, her joints locking up as though her body were unsure to raise its guard. But when it seems he is unlikely to say more, unable to move, she exhales out the tension, and finds herself replying him in a low, automatic soothe of, "Shhh." She'll take care of it now. Or she hopes--

And then he bleeds.

"Shit," she says breathlessly, her eyes widening at the distinct, sharply-familiar smell of blood. She's already losing time. She takes her hand off his face and digs into the pocket of her coat. One moment later, Whip is flipping open a tiny black cellular phone and pressing it to her ear.

"It's me," she says into it, her voice dark and rushed with no time for hellos. "I need you to do this for me, K'. Get my med kit and my laptop. Take it to..." Whip pauses, her other hand digging out her PDA and turning it on. The satellite uplink connects her to her present location, and she busily searches the map for the nearest, safe accomodations. It's a dirty side of town. And she ends up repeating the address to one of its rancid motels into the phone to her brother. "I can't explain now. Do it fast."

She ends the call.

Immediately pocketing both devices to her jeans, Whip is shrugging out of her coat, immediately packing it up into a neat little bundle. Carefully, and with infinite ease, she reaches in to slide an arm under Ryouhara, gritting her teeth with nervousness as she tries to pull him close, looking around him to find the source of that draining blood. Her suede coat is immediately ruined the instant she presses it up against him, but the material is lined, and it's thick and dry enough to keep him from bleeding out until she's got him stabilized on her own.

Now it's time for the hard part. Whip is only grateful that she's always been on the strong side -- far more than she looks. The dying terrorist feels strangely light for his size, but he's still a heavy bundle, especially if she is going to be carrying him with arms alone. But it's well within her power and ability to do this. The very fact that she is on her feet now, healed, able to move effortlessly... it is all because of him. She's not about to let him die.

Easing the shinobi against her body and into her arms, Whip tries to position him, supporting his legs with one hand and using the other to maintain pressure over his bleeding. His gore is already staining her up and down. She doesn't care. She just takes one last moment to let his heavy head find her shoulder before she hefts him off the battered car, stepping lightly to avoid the distinct, nauseous smell of leaking battery acid.


With gentle eyes and that worried, enduring frown of hers, Whip starts her quick-footed trek to the coordinates she supplied to K'. With any luck, she'll have a room ready and a makeshift traction station set up by the time he gets there.

And luck is all she has.



He is oblivious to the details of the phone call. Though for all the world Ryouhara seems the attentive shinobi engineer, scourge of the Ryouhara clan flaying back the skin of history, it is illusory. The existence known as Ryouhara, along with the ideal of 'familial pride,' is lost in a hall of mirrors now, dim reflections in his sharp mind's eye of a long-haired child with curious gold eyes furiously climbing glass walls. All the santeijutsu in the world cannot separate the gap between himself and the man he fought. It could only be a test of his ideal. The ideal that he sees just beyond that wall. He could see it.. Destined to change the world, he will meet him. And surpass him.

At least his spine is intact.

Ryouhara is light, true. Even now moreso than other times. Part for the fact he naturally has very little mass--fitting, for someone whom proclaims not to exist--and part for the fact he is no longer carrying half as much weight in blood and steel as he normally does. Limp, the terrorist slides into the smaller soldier's arms, limbs dangling like a rag doll. He is like a sieve. But near the strange lotus-shaped scar at his hip, the greater injury is overfolded in it. The major sources of bleeding can be--and is--staunched there. But from so many blood wells and lacerations.. well. it is as if he'd been burned, ripped and smashed, by the same thing at the same time. No matter what she does, shortly it won't be suede alone that gets ruined by the living corpse.

His cheek settles at her coat's arm, the shinobi's lips parted, barely visible beyond the rumpled waves of blood-matted dark hair. He seems fearful, as if only warily accepting the comparitive warmth of another body because of his predicament. No other choice... were he aware, were he mobile, ire would be called for.



The sudden phone call had put K''s nerves on edge, and Whip's lack of elaboration had only exacerbated his irritation and concern: especially when she'd had the audacity to hang up right in the middle of him trying to get an answer out of her. He had had literally no time to question her, or to get a word in edgewise; he'd picked up, she'd spit directions at him, and by the time he'd recovered enough to get angry and start making demands, he found himself on the line with a dial tone.

It was fortunate he was home when the call came; it had been a simple matter to get together what she'd asked for, and to depart immediately for the location she'd specified. The entire time, thoughts of what could have gone wrong coursed through his mind. The idea that it's a trap is quickly ruled out: K' knew that bait to bring him in would be the last thing Whip would ever let herself become.

She didn't sound as if she'd been hurt over the phone, either... but K' knew from long experience that Whip was capable of hiding pain from her voice. So what was it? he had to ask himself, as he sped down the darkened streets. Had she discovered someone else in need of care? Who could they possibly be so beholden to as to make this an urgent matter?

His flames are still gone from his reach... a fact that has troubled him endlessly for the past few days. Though he is still quite capable without the fire, he nonetheless feels defanged and declawed for their lack... and as such, his approach to the specified door is taken with even more caution than usual, the young man appraising his surroundings apprehensively before finally demanding admittance with a rap.

He's got some harsh words ready to fire the instant it opens. Depending, of course, on what he sees.



The door opens, and K' sees his sister standing there, covered in blood.

She looks like some reject stunt double from Carrie who had to stand under the prom bucket a good ten or so takes. She's covered in it, her jeans and blouse little more than a gory write-off, and her arms are stained crimson almost up to the eyebrows. She's also got swathes of it painting up and down her face, even ringing under one eye. It's even in her hair.

Staring at him tiredly, bloodily, Whip exhales audibly in relief. But it's not so much to see her brother standing there -- but what he's brought with him. She seems to spend only a moment watching his face, before her eyes immediately drop, and she's reaching out to help herself of that medical kit. With a firm insistence, she just tries to yank it free, and the instant she can, she's already turning away to head into the motel room.

Every window is closed and every curtain has been drawn to close the rest of the world from this tiny motel room. It is cheap, dirty, and only sparsely decorated, furnished with only king-sized bed, a solitary, bible-containing night table, and an adjoining bathroom that wishes painfully to be put out of its misery. The room is old and crusty, and the bed easily looks to have seen better days. Better decades.

However, with about thirty years of God knows what must have happened on that worn-down king-sized mattress, this is probably the first time it's had someone near bleed to death on it. The sheets have been stripped clean and shredded, recycled into makeshift tourniquets that adorn the motel's second occupant.

It's the hamburgered, barely-breathing body of Seishirou Ryouhara.



His first thought is that the blood is hers. But just as quickly, he realizes that Whip doesn't have the wounds to account for that much gore. Ever efficient, his eyes thus immediately pan past her, dismissing her to survey the surroundings: glancing suspiciously over her shoulder even as her own divert down to the kit he's holding. He sees first the dingy surroundings... and then he sees Ryouhara. His eyes half-lid in an unreadable look.

Pushing in after his sister, he circles restlessly through the entire motel room. He looks in the bathroom. He cracks the blinds just a little to glance out the window. And then, reluctantly, he turns back towards the bed, the ninja on it, and the sister who is doubtless already attending to him. His mouth thins to match his yellow eyes.

K' circles closer with the wary step of an animal that's found something new in its territory, and doesn't like it. Leaning over Seishirou-- as much as he can, anyhow, with Whip doubtless wanting him out of the way-- the young man emotionlessly inspects the shinobi and all his grievous wounds. Ultimately, K' simply grunts a noncommittal, unimpressed sound from the depths of his chest, leans back, and prowls away again. For a time, he just lets Whip work.

"You found him like this?" he eventually asks, his rasping voice breaking the silence of his own brooding. "...You know the circumstances?"



Whip is already seated dutifully at the unconscious Seishirou's side, occupying one spot on the bed. She's leaning over, half-buried into her forty-pound medical kit, pushing through it with a latent memorization for every single one of its hundreds of contents. She knows her way around her field kit because she's used it that many times.

Leaving her brother to storm the perimeter and prowl distrustfully around the small room, she snaps on a pair of latex gloves and gets to injecting the shinobi with a series of emergency medicines, namely mannitol and hemostatic agents. Looking pale underneath her covering of Ryouhara's blood, Whip's eyes are fixed with seriousness and her lips are moving silently, rehearsing old instructions of field triage and making deliberate points of what to do. She already seems to have forgotten K' is even here.

At least until he's leaning into her peripheral vision and personal space to get a look at her would-be patient. Annoyed, she tries to shoulder her errant brother back, demanding room to work.

Whip's field kit is about as prepared as an emergency paramedic. She digs out her an emergency oxygen kit, and after reassessing his airways, with exquisite care, pulls it over the shinobi's silent face before connecting the tubing to a small, mobile tank. Then she's digging for her only spare intravenous line.

"Yeah, I did," Whip replies mechanically through her desperate work, her voice distracted and distant. She pauses briefly. "And no, I don't. Not entirely."

It's probably why she mentioned him to bring along her laptop.

"I won't be able to handle this if he goes into hypovolaemic shock. I think if I can get him conscious, he'll be able to fix himself." Whip is finally explaining her intentions fully to K'. She means to save the shinobi's life. "I hope."



A flicker of annoyance crosses K''s face when Whip shoulders him brusquely out of the way. Bristling halfheartedly like a disgruntled cat, K' eventually allows himself to be dislodged from Whip's personal space, retreating to spread his brooding from a more remote corner of the room. He watches her work, simultaneously admiring the speed and precision of her hands, and wondering if there'll be any good to come of their current activities.

He doesn't ask what he can help with. He doesn't say he's here if she needs him. It's not in him to say those kinds of things, and if Whip needed him, she'd ask for him. He holds his silence as he hangs back, and while Whip occupies her mind with saving Seishirou's life, K' occupies his with the potential dangers that could come their way because of this.

Eventually, he stirs. Pacing over to the nightstand, which is pretty much the only flat surface to be had in the entire dingy area, he one-handedly drags it over to the foot of the bed in one swift movement. Perching on the far corner of the bed, about as distant from Whip and her patient as he can get, he props the laptop on the nightstand and flips it open. The sound of it whirring to life eventually greets the senses.

"I've gotta wonder," he says presently, not looking over his shoulder at Whip, "where this is gonna go. Can only hope he ends up more useful alive than dead." Though this seems to -feel- like the right thing to do-- and K', never having had a normal upbringing in morality, only has pure instinct and his sister to guide his moral compass-- K' has seen just enough of the world to know that the right thing isn't always the smart thing.

That, and he can't quite get over the way Seishirou coldly labeled everything in the world-- including them-- as mere tools for his own use.



"He's not going to die," Whip replies with her usual stubbornness, refusing to think, act, or be anything but hopeful.

It's probably for the best that K' occupy himself with the laptop monitor, and not the way his sister is staring down into the sleeping shinobi's face, watching him with an abject tenderness that is a mixture of pity and something else.

At the moment, she concerns herself with getting oxygen and water back into Ryouhara, who is looking a couple shades from having bled himself right out. Hopefully by the time she gets that stabilized, his major wounds would have hemhorraged under her tourniquets, and she can begin mending them by hand. She's trying to put out of her mind the distinct bruising and abnormal lump she felt out on his torso, suggesting a broken rib. He could be internally bleeding right now, perhaps even suffering terminal organ damage.

She just doesn't have time to be thinking fatalistically. All she needs to do is get him awake. He's a doctor. Well, Issei Miura was a doctor, but whether that kind, gentle doctor was a cold guise or a genuine facet of this terrorist, it means he should know something. He may be able to fix himself, or at least guide her through the more complicated procedures. Whip's own expertise never quite accelerated past field triage. The Cartel taught her to take bodies apart; not put them together.

Still, despite the years of training that have instructed her hands to be merciless and deadly, they work now with an exquisite, unparalelled kindness, working with such profuse care not to aggravate Seishirou's many injuries. She's careful as she tapes the intravenous needle into one of his metacarpal veins, suspending the bag on one of the bed's unnecessary bedposts. Countless politicians have probably been handcuffed to those cast iron bars by their respective hired mistresses. Now the bedframe is being utilized for a medical purpose.

Whip resituates herself at Seishirou's hip, frowning determinedly at that first wound that still wears the remains of her suede jacket, which have not been removed until now, when she has her suture picked out and the antiseptic armed to completely flush the wound before closing it.

She is so gentle, so careful when she ties the first knot. Whip amends K''s statement late. "And this isn't about usefulness."



K' doesn't look at Whip. Perhaps on purpose. Part of him is already disquieted with the way her attention is fixing so avidly on Seishirou-- the way care steeps so deeply in all her actions. The last thing he wants her to do is get attached to this shinobi... especially knowing as he does that the ninja is little more than a ruthless, cold creature bent on achieving his own goals at any cost. Or at least... -thinking- that he knows this.

Funny that Whip, who alone saw him in his Issei persona, probably has a better idea-- if only through instinct-- of Seishirou's true nature than K'.

He would be lying if he said the thought of simply killing Ryouhara hadn't crossed his mind. There is a cruel, cold part of him-- a mechanical part, that sees only in risks and necessities-- that will never quite be abolished from his mind. But one look at Whip-- one declaration of determination from her that the shinobi shall not die-- and he knows that the mere suggestion would have his sister up in arms instantly.

Right now, he doesn't feel like arguing with her. It exhausts him.

No guarantee killing him would do any good, anyway. He's a risk because he possesses that same callous nature that's driving K''s thoughts right now, sure... but not only has he saved -them- twice, he could prove useful down the line. He weighs the thoughts back and forth, but he still can't arrive at a conclusion. He doesn't know what to think, and that's usually never a problem for the direct K'.

"Isn't it?" K''s reply is hard, like the cold glance of light off a blade. His eyes have turned to rest on Whip, the young man's stare almost tangibly heavy. "What -is- it about, Whip? I'm as glad as you he saved you twice. I'm as confused as you about the times he talked like he actually gives a shit. But then he told me he did everything just cause he thinks everybody was put here for his use. In accomplishing -his- goals. What am I gonna think?"



"It's not about what you think," Whip replies sternly, the emotion in her voice forcing her administering hands to pause for a moment. She's not looking at K', nor is she even facing him, but he doesn't even need to look at her to know she's frowning. The expression is burned into her tone. "It's about doing the right thing."

And for her, the right thing appears to be rescuing someone who may very well prove to be their enemy. The simple fact is that Whip refuses to believe that. From what she had discussed with K', it seems the shinobi is no different than what they are. He has lost something too. Maybe it's left him angry like K' is. Lonely like she is. She can't believe that Issei Miura was little more than a well-formed mask. There was something sincere in the way he acted towards her... something sincere in the way he healed her.

And she's curious. She wants to know what it is.

She works quickly, as though time were of the essence -- and it is -- but upon future inspection, Seishirou may find that Whip's nimble hand has imparted him very neat, meticulous stitches. Despite the gravity of those wounds, they will leave faint, even minimal scarring, if any at all. There is a transparent cursive of tenderness and care written into her sutures, something far more meaningful than the trained, textbook hand of a clinician.

She's already finished the first wound, throwing her sooted suede coat from the bed and replacing the closed wound with a fresh layer of dry, sterile bandaging. She begins to repeat the process to his countless more wounds, pausing only to assess his vitals and time the shinobi's pulse.

And to wipe some blood from his face.

Whip continues, her voice dreamy and distant, all of her attention poured into trying to fix something broken. "And I'm doing the right thing."



"The right thing usually gets you killed," he's quick to rejoin curtly. "I've found 'what I think' generally helps me live longer." Whip might expect him to nag more, but mercifully enough... he just goes silent after that. It's fortunate, really, that the idea Whip might be a little taken with Seishirou doesn't even enter into K''s head (even despite the little signs), because if it did K' would certainly not let the argument go as easily as he's about to.

But he really -doesn't- want to argue with her. She's one of the few people he'll ever just let have her way without a fuss. And so, if she insists on these ministrations, then she can give them. With any luck, Seishirou will be human enough to demonstrate a little cognizance of reciprocity.

K' ignores the fact that he himself, by his very consideration of simply putting Seishirou down right now, seems to have trouble with the idea of reciprocity too. He always did have a talent for glossing his hypocrisies.

Her final assertion garners little more than an irritable shrug. For a few moments, he simply sits and watches the stitches go in, each underlaid with so much gentle care. His expression darkens visibly at the sight, though into -what- exactly it's not clear, and he turns away sharply: the abrupt motion like ripping off a bandaid. He busies himself invading her laptop instead of watching her care so thoroughly for somebody else: pulling up any recent data he might be able to find on Seishirou's activities, if only for clues as to why the shinobi might be in this state.



K''s nagging retort earns no rebuttal. Whip is finished speaking for now, too involved in her task to rise to her brother's half-hearted remarks. Her narrowed attention seems impenetrable.

And it nearly is. It takes the sudden, emphatic movement from her brother to catch Whip's eye momentarily, her nerves frazzled enough to make her stop, if not startle, to anything cutting abruptly across her periphery. She awards her moody brother half a thought, then ignores him for now, having neither the time nor concentration to spend on him while another may be possibly dying. Soon enough, she relaxes her guard, unconsciously transferring the better vigil and sentry of the motel room to K'. She trusts him implicitly to be keeping his constant eye on the rest of the world so that she does not have to. Her focus transfers totally unto Seishirou.

Minutes may pass in this time. Many of them. Whip is spending them all in constant, uninterrupted work, systematically stabilizing, cleaning, and then suturing shut any critical wound she can find on Ryouhara. She fixes him tirelessly, her actions as impassioned as the words she told K'. She remains blind and deaf to the rest of the room as she tries so hard to heal and remedy, and she works until all that blood has had the time to dry over her arms, on her face, and into her hair and clothes.

Soon enough, the last atraumatic needle lands into her makeshift biohazard bucket, and Whip exhales tiredly as she applies the last preemptive layer of gauze to the final lacerated injury she can find. She spends the remaining time painstakingly dressing the wounds that are less critical, are no longer bleeding on their own, and do not require surgical suture. She's careful and thorough with disenfecting every inch of his trauma, knowing God knows what could have crawled up into it, before packing it down with overzealous layers of bandaging.

It's only when she's finished with her temporary triage that Whip, tired and bloodstained, looks a little lost. She keeps glancing meaningfully at the shinobi's quiet face, perhaps expecting him to miraculously burst to life the instant her ministrations are finished. But the motel room is quiet, and she's starting to feel a little useless. So the hopeful mercenary, still looking like a mess herself, dips a bit of gauze into the basin of water she had previously filled, and begins the arduous process of wiping the blood clean from his face.



K' doesn't stay looking at the screen for long. As expected, it's next to impossible to find any information about Seishirou; he shuts the machine and sits in silence for a few moments, before he notices the bundle of abandoned possessions by the bedside. They all look to be confiscated off Seishirou... and, equally importantly, they provide something else for him to do while Whip pores over the battered shinobi.

He stands abruptly, crossing to kneel and go through the assorted items. Nothing among them looks particularly dangerous or immediately incriminating, but then again a full third of them also escape his comprehension entirely. He checks, very thoroughly, for anything that might be remotely suspicious: finding nothing, he abandons the pile, walking away again to pace restlessly around the room.

He moves back and forth between the door and the window, periodically looking out of the latter. Left alone with his thoughts, his own racing mind quickly becomes almost too much for him to bear. Concerns and doubts rise until they choke in his chest. He begins to feel pent in, isolated, restless at all this uncertainty hanging in the there. What if...

He turns around to find Whip finished, seeming now to have nothing better to do than something Seishirou could do well enough by himself when he awakens. K''s eyes thin as he looks at the gore caking her. "Get yourself cleaned up," he says, a little waspishly, but nonetheless almost relieved to focus on speech rather than his own grim thoughts. "There's no more you can do." And God knows what's in that ninja's blood.



Whip has already finished her careful cleaning of Seishirou's face, leaning in a little to study his features with a particular inquisitiveness. They look different to her. Different than when she's seen him in both guises, both as the innocuous Issei Miura and as the less scrupulous terrorist. But she hasn't yet had a chance to study his face at this sort of closeness, and her curiousity gets the better of her.

Tilting her head, she's begun tenderly cleaning the blood from Seishirou's throat when her brother's harsh, crisp voice cleaves open her reverie. Looking almost guilty like she's been caught staring at something she shouldn't, Whip turns a sharp look up at K', blinking almost owlishly at him. Her cheeks colour a little, but the blood on her face hides it well.

There's a visible trace of hesitation in her body, but she eventually complies, tossing the bloodsoaked gauze away into the same bucket and finally stripping the surgical gloves off her hands with audible snaps of latex. Whip bundles them up and throws them in after, her expression strained as she finally contemplates the actual order in K''s words. She had just been listening to the better, more disapproving sound of it all.

When she's reminded that she's done all she can, Whip just looks all the more tired, and just a little sad, like she's been reminded of a prevailing sense of uselessness. She exhales noisily. "I know. But... I think I'll wait. I'm scared of something happening, and I want to be around." She pauses slightly, then focuses her tired eyes up on her brother. "...You didn't bring anything to drink, did you?" she asides wonderingly, hope soaking her tone.



He seems different.

That much is true. For Issei and Ryouhara Seishirou both, there cannot be any description of the entity known just as 'Sei.' There is no word for that thing, long since shoved into a closet and locked away. His expression is softer now than it ever has been in the waking world, treated and cleaned so skillfully by a caring hand that Seishirou has never actually known. The scorched ice is receded, replaced with something curious. Something childlike. Something.. indescribable.

But it shouldn't be mistaken for complacency.

Even as a child, he thinks still. He lay as if incensed. Though now peacefully unconscious, his brow and his lip are set as if his mind grinds away at something just out of reach.

His satchel pack long since stripped of him--K' can examine it as he pleases. There are precious few 'identifiable' items in there that could satisfy his one and only calculated interest of identifying threat. For him, there is a measure of acceptable threat--most of what is in his satchel are understandably weaponry and tools of kinds. Picks, wads of clay marked with seals, a bundle of silk, powders and vials of liquid that glows. A rolled up scroll amongst other things sealed twice, a brush, bloodletter and well of ink. Bundles of needles. At least six throwing knives. Folding paper, some of which is scribed on in codes. Something that resembles a miniature bento that doesn't seem to want to open. A bag of coconut clusters.

The usual tools for making war. But nothing that would interest K'.

Discarded it is.

Even now, Ryouhara's legs are slung over a sheathed blade, two kodachi, and an empty leather sheathe, all slung low from his hip, tucked mercifully out of Whip's way, who would surely had thrown the entire affair aside onto the floor had it even for a moment gotten in her warpath.

He is armed for the fight.

But he is still silent.



Nothing in the satchel is anything that can be dangerous unless Seishirou gets his hands on it. Accordingly, K' picks it up, and removes it to the most distant corner of the room.

He has no eyes for the nuances of Seishirou's expression, nor the softer lines of his face. When he comes to Seishirou's bedside, it's not to try to see in him what Whip does, but simply to strip all the blades from his side. He doesn't even look at Seishirou's face as he works, behaving with a cool professionalism: as if he handles an object rather than a person. He is gentle, so as not to disturb Whip's bindings, but that's about all he is.

"I rushed here," K' replies Whip mid-motion, his words curt, swift at the least to kill her hopes, "as you told me to. I didn't have time to stop." He unbuckles the scabbards rather than simply unsheathing and discarding the blades-- perhaps he has some knowledge of how not to treat a weapon, after all-- and carries the weapons over to the satchel. He pauses before setting down the last one: lifting it, he draws the blade partially, looking at the tempered steel. Perhaps he's curious. Perhaps he thought he would find something. Whatever the case, he soon resheathes the weapon with a sharp *snick*, letting it come to rest against the wall with the others.

"I'd get something, but I don't think I should leave." His eyes turn back towards her, taking in her tiredness and the gore smearing her face. They half-lid unimpressedly. "And I don't think you should drink from the tap."



Whip seems to sag right on the spot, unwilling to give up her bedside audience to the unconscious, possibly critical Seishirou Ryouhara, and looking terminally uncomfortable for it. She swivels her head from one side to another, a muscle pulled in her neck from all her studious work, before her eyes lower and she ultimately gets her first good look at herself.

The mercenary just exhales at the lot of it. She wipes demurely at her bloodstained blouse, and ultimately ends up reaching over to soak another piece of heavy gauze to clean the shinobi's blood from her own hands, as if that simply remedy will help how she must appear to the world. It doesn't. Her eyes drift momentarily back to her brother when he's quick and surgical to dash her hopes, even going so far to remind her of her cryptic phone call. Whip glances away from him, back on Seishirou, and she can't find it in her to regret it. She watches him silently, making sure that he's still breathing.

Her frown deepens. "Everything's fine. I think there's a soda machine out there. I can't go outside like this," she deadpans, with a slight edge of frustration creeping into her voice. "Or at least get something from the ice machine? I swear I'll owe you."



K' watches Whip as she looks over herself... and then tries the futile task of cleaning some of the gore away with a mere bit of gauze. His eyes slide shut once she gives up on her efforts, the young man still managing to look deeply troubled even in that meditative stance. He maintains his spot in the corner, near Seishirou's gathered things, and he doesn't look prone to leaving anytime soon.

At least, he doesn't up until Whip reminds him there's probably an ice machine right outside. K' frowns to match his sister, but there's no arguing with that. Pushing away from the wall with a heavy sigh, he paces slowly towards the door. "I'm coming back in four minutes, whether or not I find a machine," he warns, clearly unwilling to leave Whip alone with a half-dead international terrorist, before he slips out into the hall.



"Thanks, K'," Whip affectionately calls after her brother, a sincere appreciation laced into her words. She watches him leave, the old, frazzled bedsprings of the mattress creaking as she leans back on her hands. After sparing another worried glance at the shinobi, her attention soon returns to her own sorry state. She frowns thinly, and runs her fingers over the dried blood caking the front of her blouse.

Her hands then turn, almost decisively, but Whip finds herself reflexively pausing. She's not one to do this often, especially in public, but it seems more foolish not to. Tiredly, she begins unbuttoning her ruined blouse, pulling her arms free from the sleeves and stripping to the camisole she wears underneath. Even in civilian clothes, the soldier likes to wear layers. Of course, contrary to how harmless she may look in civvies, that dark satin camisole of hers is ensconsed with a shoulder holster, as well as the concealed straps that carry several knives, winding once around her waist and crossing over her shoulders. Blades of all designs freely hang from her.

She bundles her stained blouse busily, thinking it no more than garbage now, and uses the fabric to wipe dismissively at a dried patch of blood on her wrist.



Did he attain it?

The youth scrabbled until his fingernails were bloody, carving furrows in that sheer surface with his bare hands. It is possible to climb a glass wall, if your will was strong enough. If you could handle it.. anything is within your grasp. It's a little surprising even still, when the long-haired boy wrapped a hand over the apex of the barrier, and got to his feet atop it. There seems to be no more ground, only empty, inky blackness--he was that high. Sacrificing the earth to acend to heaven though--seemed a price gladly paid. Dull golden eyes could see everything in the sky at that point. A brief glimpse of what was really possible. The puzzle solved, everything lain out before him in motes of light in the star-filled dark. He can taste everything.

Yes. That potential is limitless. But..

When that boy looks around, looks behind him, he saw nothing. No one. There was no one here to celebrate his victory. There was no grand festival to recognize the accomplishment. When you stand on the shoulders of giants, there is no one left to look up to. There is no one at all. Only a door, that will never open again, no matter how long you wait.

He blinks, saying nothing.

For him now, there is only fate.

The cracking sound echoes deep in his heart and spirit, as he looks down fitfully, spiderwebs spreading up his lofty perch until the cracks spread beneath his feet. Slowly, the world falls away beneath him and worse yet, there was simply no where to run. No where to go. Glass rained from heaven, and the boy who climbed up to it could only vainly reach--as he fell back to reality.

On the weird springs of that mattress, Ryouhara's lips part, murmuring something just on the edge of hearing.

"A.. arinori...nn..su.."

His eyes half-lid, then snap open.

The process moves lightning fast. He recognizes that he's been disarmed immediately after awakening, and that he's been moved. Eyes render not so much /images/ in the warm light as much as shapes, defined simply in three categories. People. obstructions. Weapons.

If even a moment passes where Whip wonders if what she heard was even real, a hand will slip about her waist and liberate one of the knives stowed in her undergarments. Cradling her just underneath an arm, the point of the blade will curve over her chest and press into her throat as Ryouhara pulls, to offbalance and rest her weight against him--the pain will bloom in his body. It is an expected thing. He needs her to sit still just long enough to do what he needs to do.

He whispers quickly.

"Ryouhara ninjutsu--Katon, Ryuuouin."

Then his opposite hand will slip around her other side, hovering over her heart with a milky white substance.

His lips move in sotto voce, just an inch from her ear. Though wet and ragged with internal bleeding, the concept of 'Ryouhara Seishirou' is very alive in that youthful voice. It is critical, deadly, and low.

"This jutsu is an assassination seal that burrows into the body," he explains, looking along her body dimly with dull eyes that simply do not really see. "If it is placed on you," he continues, "it will sear through your ribcage, settle on your heart, and then generate enough power to detonate your internal organs. Speak quickly and truthfully. One: who are you. Two: where am I?" he recites.






Two moments ago, she was tiredly, almost detachedly rubbing dried blood off the inside of her arm.

Then, without warning, Whip stops moving, and her eyes narrow thinly. She's sure she heard something--

She has only one second to crane her head to one side. Then, quicker than a snake bite, someone's hand steals a knife from her belted straps, and then someone's arm loops around her waist, pulling sharply and strongly backwards. Her weight displaced, she has no choice but to fall back, her lean weight pressing back against someone's warm body. The young Ikari offers no resistance, her muscle memory instructing her almost instantly to forsake her struggles for something much more effective.

When Whip falls back, her hand is already on her holstered gun. She is one nerve impulse from drawing it when she feels the cold, sharp, familiar burn of her own knife's edge against her throat. The movement aborts, but she does not let go, the soldier in her already determined to engage without surrendering. Remaining still and unmoving against the knife's edge, her breathing already correcting itself into a regular, methodic burn that keeps her muscles and brain adequately oxygenated, she is busy preparing when to strike. She is sure that he will not expect resistance, and she can twist so not to nick any major arteries. She'll be able to turn her gun on him and it will be over--

--when it's only just begun. A familiar voice talks but a breath from her ear, and Whip's eyes widen, realizing exactly who it is that grabbed her. The dead have arisen, and they... are now threatening to bomb her from the innards out. Her hand lets go of her gun. The rest does not move at all. She wants very much to swallow raggedly, thickly, but she's sure the movement would bisect her trachea.

Staring helplessly forward, her dark eyes blinking constantly, Whip forces herself to calm enough to hear out the reawakened Seishirou Ryouhara's demands. His first question makes her face twitch with confusion. But she answers as directed. "It's Whip," she replies, her voice soft and measured as always, though now it sounds particularly strained. "You know me. You--you're at a motel. Downtown Southtown. I found you. You were dying."



Somewhere dimly in the youth's mind, instinct operates almost on as deep a level as inspiration. His mind snaps quick, dredging information reflexively. No resistance or shock. That means his target is used to this act. This is someone experienced--someone trained. Ryouhara has held quite a few people at knifepoint before, and most of them were the sorts most commonly do not think can be surprised. Target is female, and has access to many weapons. Maybe he should break her fingers...

His eyes narrow. "....nh? Not right."

The entire stream of information simply does not agree with Seishirou's knowledge as it is summoned by pure force of will, fast and hard to his mind as he calls for it, region by region. The boy wakes up hard and forcing his mind to work fast on any other level than what is known most closely to his heart is not an easy thing. His impressions simply do not agree and it is this his otherwise sharp mind latches onto first.

Suspicion.

Whip might be able to feel his heart beating fast as he squeezes her tight to his chest, that knife shifting but never actually moving, for fear of the point breaching the skin he has it pressed into. His hand is experienced with knives, as if he's been playing with them since early childhood. Holding knife in his left his right is experienced with jutsu, the milky white matrix of energy curling between his fingers and bringing a soft glow to Whip. Thought snaps quickly, but Ryouhara doesn't act on it. Not yet. Something--/something/--stays that experienced hand.

His impressions--do not agree.

Whip would not have saved him.

"Not right," he repeats. "...that person hates me. She should.."

Does she take him for an idiot?!

That person tried to kill him. Many people do. More importantly, he wanted her to. That was his place. To be hated. Reviled. Distrusted. It keeps him focused and sharp. People who trust too easily are useful. Something deep in his mind was repulsed-on a very basic level--by the idea of trust. He didn't want that for them. It is a dangerous thing. Ryouhara's gold eyes half-lid momentarily. There was something else. Something he was missing. It was in her scent. And the sound of her voice. Something.. he couldn't quite place.

He blinks.

"--I /can't/ die," the shinobi suddenly hisses, deadly low.

It's hard to tell if he misunderstood her words as some kind of threat or was insisting on some fact that he simply /knew/ deep in his heart. Either way, the ninkou shinobi lifts the swirling matrix higher. The implication is that Ryouhara considers this 'Ryuuouin' a more sure fate than the knife.

"Your name!!" he repeats, his voice dropping low. "Are those all my tools!?" he asks of the pack he's already spotted on the opposite side of the room. He's been disarmed. But even in the face of that fact--something nags at the hazy, lightheaded shinobi. There is a detail he's missing. She seems familiar to him. She /is someone he knows/.



Three and a half minutes after K' left the room, he comes back. He hadn't bothered to go look for a vending machine; there was an ice machine right down the hall, and K' was far too wary of leaving his sister alone to go any farther.

The errand is quickly forgotten, however, when K' returns to the room's door to hear little but a weighted and deadly sort of silence. Long since trained never to carelessly walk straight back into a vacated and potentially dangerous room, that old conditioning is now supplemented by a wariness derived entirely of instinct. Something changed while he was gone. He can feel it.

He slowly puts the ice aside, in the hallway. He listens, very briefly. And as soundlessly as possible, he eases open the door, glancing quickly within to discern-- Seishirou sitting up. A concentration of chi. A knife. His sister, captive and threatened by both of the foregoing.

No other details, perhaps mercifully, reach his perception quite yet.

"Ryouhara." K' makes no sudden movements. He's simply within the room in the next few moments, eeling around the partly-opened door, slipping in-- with all appropriate pauses, should Seishirou startle and begin to carry through his threatened actions-- and stopping just inside the door. "Let her go."



The unnatural, pearly glow of that killing chi makes Whip's pale skin gleam all the paler. Under that light, her eyes look black and the network of veins webbing her wrists, throat, and eyelids colour an impossible blue. She is staring at that hand that threatens her now, watching the way it cradles the air an inch from her heart, and she swears it's so close she can feel the heat burning from its palm -- that and something else. Twin images of that recoiling limb and its burning jutsu reflect in her widening eyes.

She's trying so hard not to feel afraid. She doesn't have time to be.

"I /don't/--" Whip hears herself answering sharply, too quickly, as Ryouhara's voice cuts through her fearful thoughts straight to the quick. She pauses noticeably, pulling the fearful emotion out of her voice, "--hate you. I can't. Please," she continues, suddenly encouraged to appeal to him again while he may be busy with thought, distracted inside his own head.

But the razor edge of her knife -- one of many that Whip meticuluously sharpens twice a weeks -- shifts against her throat and shuts her up. She squeezes shut her eyes briefly, the motion almost pained, and she tries desperately to center herself. When her eyes open again, any peace she regains does not last long. She's too busy watching that hand of his, emulsifying chi and slow, torturous death, move closer. She grits her jaw and locks her joints to choke back a shudder. She doesn't want to die -- not like this.

Whip starts when Ryouhara demands her name once more, all of her nervous energy doing nothing to help her confusion. Her added frustration just carves an edge into it. "It's Whip!" she repeats helplessly, afraid that if she doesn't speak now she'll never have a chance to again. "That is my name! I don't know what my real one is! You know who I am! You healed me--!"

The door opens. Whip's eyes turn, and almost mindlessly, she finds herself staring forward at her brother. She looks almost surprised to find him there -- and she is. She forgot about him entirely. But now he's returned, and now he's making demands. "K'," she rasps quickly, her voice only forced to soften when the knife's edge pricks at her throat. "--It's OK."



Dead even.

Ryouhara offers no solace to Whip, no opening with which she can use--anyone can use--to overpower him when K' enters the room. His gold eyes are dim and incomprehensibly wary. Very much so the rabid animal, disoriented and simply not sure what to do after almost dying.

"K'?" he recognizes the face.

"Stay there," he orders.

He doesn't ask why the experiment is here, truly he doesn't even think about it. Though uncustomary, Seishirou is currently not thinking that way if he is truly thinking at all, a ball of nerves. knives and ninjutsu.

The words he spoke still ring absolute, a mandate handed down from the highest power of 'that organization'--a full-blooded crown of the Ryouhara ichizoku. Built on the foundation and force of false information and half-truths that compose his consciousness, the shinobi find strength to be deadly serious even when pain wracks his body and his wakeful is measured best in seconds.

She begged. Please.

She soothes K' even now.

Something within Ryouhara responds, irrespective of his will.

His adrenaline ebbs briefly, and Ryouhara is aware of that expected, blooming pain. He gasps faintly, massive gaping amounts of crushing agony known. Everpresent, but only now realized. Echoing torment--most of all in his chest belt him one soundly. But aside for a sudden unconscious -twitch- of his knife hand, the only physical indicator of the massive distress that ruptures the young man's conscious mind right then.

"--can't trust you," the shinobi blurts, his mind finally finding the words.

"I--"

He recognizes the scent, finally.

Though it was faint when she was strangling him over the cocktail of hospital smells, it was distinctive. It was the same scent he caught during his first visit. It is a scent that Miura, at least, knows entirely too well.

His heartbeat skips.

He doesn't move. He doesn't release Whip from his tense grip. His knife still presses to her throat as if the shinobi simply has no other concept of what to do in this kind of situation. A bead of cold sweat traces down his brow as his eyes lid the rest of the way. The white killing ball in his hand becomes more diffuse, until finally it is gone.

Ryouhara is silent.

The question stirring in his mind at that moment may be one never heard, never spoken.

Why.



K' isn't accustomed to obeying orders. But most people giving orders don't have his sister at knifepoint. And chipoint.

He doesn't move. He doesn't even twitch when Ryouhara bursts out that he can't trust them. All that happens is that his eyes narrow, faintly. His hands twitch, the usual flames that would have consumed them now far from his conscious grasp. His jaw tightens, visibly, the nervousness in him expressed only through the way his chest can be seen to rise and fall with shallow, tense breaths. "Then you know how I felt," he finally replies, his voice short. How, for that matter, K' -still feels-.

He doesn't move forward. He only turns his eyes, briefly, towards Whip as she tries to console him. His eyes lose some of their narrowed quality, widening, pupils dilating just a little, the look in them stating quite clearly: no, he's not consoled. And no, it's not OK.

His gaze knifes back to Seishirou. There is little pity or sympathy in his suddenly-slit eyes for the shinobi's confusion. "/Ryouhara./" The prompt is harsh, his voice catching roughly on every 'r' in the name as it snarls through the silence. "You don't need that." He should not have to say what it is he's talking about.



Whip doesn't smell like young women her age should. While so many of them dress themselves up with playful, luxurious smells, this young soldier only bears the smells of her weapons: the leather of her whip, the sharp, cloying acetone she uses to polish her knives, and the faint, but everpresent smell of gunpowder. She also smells heavily of blood -- Ryouhara's blood. But lying in wait beneath all of her efficient, military unit scents, and known only to those who have ever shared an intimate distance to her, she always smells strangely like rain on fresh earth, like green and clover.

He smelled it once when she hugged him like an old, dear friend; again when she leaned in close to murder him like a hated enemy. And now, this third time occurs while Whip is held silent under the threat of a sharp blade and something much worse. Her face is gentle and unlined, almost serene, betraying awesomely the wreck that is no her mind. She's torn into so many directions that she can't keep her thoughts straight. She's afraid of Ryouhara jumping the gun and moving his hand over her heart. She's really afraid that if this is going to be her death, it will occur with her brother as an audience.

But there's no time for fear. She's the one that started this. And she's got to find a way to diffuse it.

Her nerves walk an edge that feels sharper than the knife pressed to her throat; Whip almost feels as though she's been cornered, trapped in between a pair of scissors. At one side is a confused, disoriented, unremembering, and potentially murderous terrorist. At the other is her twin brother renouned for his hair trigger temper, who is giving her looks that make her feel both anxious and guilty. With a pair like those two, she thinks that it's less a matter of who attacks at all, and more who will do it first. Because both of them will. There's a thousand permutations for how these next moments will carry out, and nine hundred ninety-nine of them forecast to be deadly.

So count her surprised -- no, relieved -- when the universe rolls the rare one that has Ryouhara snuff out his chi. Even with the knife still pressed to her neck, Whip looks grateful to see that strange, dangerous energy fade from her assailant's other hand. With him pressing her so close to his body, Seishirou can feel her joints relaxing ever so imperceptibely.

Whip's dark eyes are still on K', watching him steadily, though every once of her words are directed on the shinobi she cannot see. In a voice far more gentler than her brother's, she replies him, "You can trust us. It's OK. We're all safe here. I... I tried fixing you."



Potential.

That was the word. Though the blade toyed with in his left hand is dormant, Ryouhara's senses are alive twice over, even with his eyes closed. His mind twists and does flips, but his fingers still hold the blade fast against Whip's neck, even when she slackens. Idly--some part of him realizes that by releasing Ryuuouin he has subconsciously betrayed his mental state. Some part of him thinks it a pity.

A flash of dull yellow reveals itself, a dusky tainted light in his eyes that shoots across the way to K'. He finds the edge of the knife, as if only remembering it himself, and a faint flush comes to his cheeks as he realizes exactly his plan in crystal clarity. His voice is hollow when he finally does find words.

".... Yeah," he agrees, finally, with K'.

It's unclear to what he is referring.

He keeps the knife, but the weapon lifts gently from Whip's throat, the Ryouhara scion watching the two the whole time. Without any of his ninkou, he would be force to rely on other facets of his techniques to stay in one piece. There is no time to waste. He allows Whip her weight back, at once slipping out from underneath to try and slide his way off the bed.

When he does, he hits the ground hard, his breathing hitching. The knife still in hand. The knuckles of that hand scrape cheap shag carpet.

He never fully stands straight, his back arced terribly as he forces himself to breathe evenly, despite bones broken, despite the damage he's sustained. He is forcing himself to get up. To walk, beyond all measure and health. To look at him, the attributes and capacity of his physical body simply are a nonissue. His body obeys his will. It will function for as long as he needs it do. When it does not, he grits his teeth in aggravation. Lightheadness accomapnying the forced shift in pressure.

Whip's words reach his ears.

It's safe to trust. She tried to fix it.

Ryouhara's pupils contract.

(there has to be a page..)

"You can't fix it," he concludes coldly.

He stands up straight. His movements are slow, methodic, and his jaw never quite stops wringing itself in tension. Every word, though measured and calm, comes from someplace forced.

"There is nothing to fix."

Blood spatters on the ground, weeping from a stitched wound at his midsection.

He regards the drop the way one might a bug. Yet, he is still silent.



K' doesn't realize he's stopped breathing until Seishirou finally releases Whip and pulls that knife away. When it restarts, it's abruptly, and it hitches a little into a sharp warning sound when Seishirou moves. That checking sound doesn't work to stop Seishirou, however, and the shinobi soon ends up dumping himself onto the ground... likely undoing much of Whip's hard work.

It's telling that K' is more irritated by this waste of his sister's earnestly-given effort than he is concerned about the wounds opening up again. If Whip's going to blow all this attention on somebody else, then that somebody else better fucking appreciate it.

"Stay still." His voice remains sharp, in contrast to his sister's gentle, calm voice. Stalking swiftly across the room, he beelines immediately for his sister, catching her by the shoulders and leaning down to check her for injuries. It's when his hands touch skin instead of cloth that he finally notices her button-down is gone; he hesitates visibly, his eyes fixing with a confused lack of comprehension on her, and then he lets go as if she'd scalded him and pulls back.

"What happened?" he demands. His eyes arrow instantly to Seishirou, and there discover something else he doesn't like: the fact that the shinobi is standing again. K' stands straight to match the other young man, circling slowly around the bed in an attempt to get between Seishirou and his sister. A frown infects his features.

"Idiot," K' declares in a growl. "You're not in a condition to stand up." His eyes track towards the blood working its way out of Seishirou's straining stitches. "Lie down and stop wasting all the time she spent on you." Perhaps sensing that his sister would be annoyed if he said it aloud, he leaves this as an unspoken addendum: do it before I -make- you.



The moment Ryouhara removes the knife and forcibly evicts himself from the bed, Whip immediately pushes to her feet, turning around and backing away. She lifts one hand to her throat, rubbing at the flesh as if to smear away the lingering sensation of a knife's edge. Exhaling noisily, she lifts an eye towards the fallen shinobi -- and then her brother is suddenly getting in the way, moving in close to inspect her. Her shoulders taken, she startles briefly before realizing who has grabbed her this second time. She relaxes visibly, relenting to his vigil with some distracted impatience. Then, the instant he looks at her face instead of her scratched throat, Whip gazes back, perfectly mirroring her twin's expression. She looks uncertain.

Swiftly released, she blinks once or twice in residual confusion, but the thought itself doesn't last long, not with Seishirou Ryouhara still across the room. Finally looking back at her former patient and captor, Whip looks surprised to see him on the ground, and pained to see him bleeding once more. It looks like the last couple pints of his blood ended up on her. She's covered in it.

Whip's breath cuts sharply in through her teeth, her jaw steeling with a flicker of frustration. But she doesn't try to move for Ryouhara, and allows the obviously-disoriented shinobi his personal space; all the while keeping an eye on K' who seems more inclined to warily circle the perimeter of it. Still rubbing numbly at her neck, she doesn't seem inclined to move much at all. Or even speak. When Seishirou informs her that there is nothing needing fixing, hurt flickers across the mercenary's face. There's no telling how she chose to parse the metaphor. She just looks tired, dispirited, and a little sad.

Eventually, K' asks the question before she can, the one that both of them want to hear. What happened to him? Letting her hand fall from her abused throat, Whip glances up, curious and expectant for a response. Her expression looks as exposed and vulnerable as an open wound -- just waiting for someone to rub the salt in. Emotion only flickers over her face when K' speaks again, and she glances minutely his way. His warning growl implies how hard she worked to save Seishirou, and she colours a little in the face to hear it, looking embarrassed. But, as if to punctuate the point her brother makes, Whip invites the shinobi to lie down by backing farther from the bed, thinking that her physical proximity, or lack thereof, may encourage him to consider his wounds. A perfect foil to K''s harsh, threatening growl, Whip's voice implores gently, carefully, "You're still hurt. You can trust us... you're safe here."



Blood spatters on the ground.

His vision dims.

From that proud profile of the Ryouhara, he falters. Slumps, his stance wide forcing him to stay balanced and level. Darkness creeps up on every periphery of the ninja's vision. In that much, Whip's appearance was correct. Ryouhara could sense it. There wasn't a lot of blood left in his body. In addition, judging from the crushing pain in his chest, there was internal bleeding. Shit. At this rate he won't, can't--

"...no."

His free hand twists into a closed fist, knuckles cracking in time.

Darkness recedes from his vision.

The room seems to grow just a touch hotter.

From that vantage and without a shirt, the whip-thin youth's back can be seen clearly. The kanji 'ATSU' -- pressure -- is raised on his skin in thick and even black lines, just at the cusp of the small of his back, surrounded by the cryptic unmistakable rills of fuuinjutsu. The calligraphy is picture perfect, not done by anything tawdry like a knife, but seeming to have been seared into the shinobi's skin as if by a brand and brush--cold ink and hot iron. It is this that seems to owe to the effect--steam curls faintly from the mark.

One must wonder if the pain is worse than what he feels now naturally.

He twirls the knife in his hand as if reciting some childhood mnemonic. The oiled, razor-fine steel flips about between his fingers as the shinobi concentrates intensely on it, forcing his mind to work in split. He was missing a lot of blood. That would be bothersome if he got into an altercation here--there's not enough to use for his higher powered ninjutsu. That leaves the knife in his hand, and the ninkou in his satchel. This knife is no Erikiritou, the execution knife he keeps by his bedside, but it is sharp. It will suffice.

Seishirou is not quite showing off, from his intent stare as the steel flickers and casts bright flashes about the cheap motel room. He's testing the extent of his reflexes.

K' interposes himself between the two of them, and Ryouhara seems not to mind it overmuch, stepping back amiably. It seems he's done with hostages for now, walking away from the two, the light steps he takes slow, methodical. Is K' really going to stop him? He does move towards the packs at the other corner of the room, though it mattered little. Seishirou is the kind of person who is a weapon irrespective of the weapons he carries. If K' were given to irony, he might appreciate that much.

"What do you mean..?" Ryouhara asks quietly. While Whip doesn't notice the meaning--the real intent of K's line of questioning, he knows better, even with his mind weak now from its ordeal. He could read the situation at a glance. "Do you mean... why she was in her state of predicament? Foolish. You should know that much without having to ask," he mentions to K'. "If you mean what happened to me... that much is simple." Drowsy still, the shinobi still has enough ice and fire in his veins in equal mix to force easy steel into his voice. "I asked a god for inspiration. And I got it."

His bangs hood over golden eyes and scarred face as he considers the oiled blade in his hand. Did she do this much for him? The care, the hope in her eyes he could read, spot only for a moment before he turned away into the darker corners of the room. Silent, he touches the blade's edge to his tongue briefly, just a faint nick, enough to draw a weep of red. He draws the length of his tongue in slow and exacting measure up the chilled steel, warming it with the soft pliant heat of his breath. Sealing jutsu glows as Ryouhara elaborately runs the length of the knife with his attentions, and a broken leaves in wind design reminescent but not similar to his family kamon can be seen. Ninkou Chikuzoujutsu - Seishin Bakuha.

She did not hate him.

"...What is that wary hope in your eyes?" Seishirou asks quietly of Whip, his knife hand dropping to his side. He doesn't look at her, but he he doesn't need to. He can see the aggravation in K's eyes, the insistence of trust from Whip falling on his ears but eliciting not a blink from the shinobi. "I'll tell you. Someone believing in a dream that cannot exist. Nothing--it means nothing. This world as it is now.. judges harshly those who live in dreams."

"Unlike some of us, there is an ideal I must pursue. That is the separation between you two and myself. And it is the difference between weakness and strength. It is pointless--to believe in something that doesn't exist."

He looks up.

"Nothing to fix. I will not die."

K' is going to make him?

He's only gonna say this once. To K' or any other.

"I will not lay down for anyone."

White steel flashes in the light.

Once again, he moves for his satchel.

Want to test his resolve?



Neither of them, in the end, are right. One asks if K''s inquiry as to what happened concerned the knife at Whip's throat. The other thinks he's interested in what happened to Seishirou. The truth is, K' already knows why the former happened, and does not care in the slightest about the latter. So long as Seishirou's injuries bear no relation to them, he couldn't give a shit if the ninja lived or died. Even despite what the shinobi has done for them on two occasions now.

Why? Because K' believes Seishirou helps them for no reason other than to use them. And K' is all too glad to reciprocate that kind of attitude.

He stands in silence through Seishirou's reply, his eyes level through the needlessly cryptic and expectedly dramatic words. They begin to half-lid about halfway through Seishirou's talk about ideals and separations. K' could not care in the least about any of that, and it's obvious in the way his lashes lower when he stops paying attention.

His mind is on other things. One steel will can recognize another, and he's thinking now about what to do. As Seishirou heads slowly towards his things, K' realizes in a moment of clarity that to force Seishirou into anything, at this point, is an exercise in futility and a violation of the free will which he has come to venerate. Moreover, it would serve only to waste his and Whip's time further. His eyes drift aside abruptly, a derisive note flickering under his lashes.

There's only one thing he cares about. He turns his head to slant a glance at it over his shoulder once Seishirou is done talking. "...There's no point stopping him," he tells Whip shortly, turning shoulder on Seishirou with a dismissive sound of irritation. His gaze fixes intensely on his sister's eyes, wordlessly trying to convince her she's already paid her debt to him. "You did what you could. Leave it at that."

His glance slants coldly back at Seishirou. "Let him go die in whatever way seems best to him. That seems to be what he wants."



Slowly, she steps forward, walking around the perimeter of the bed until she reaches her brother's side. Whip brushes in close and stops there, reaching out wordlessly to try to clasp K''s closest hand in her own. Instead of giving him a glance, she imparts a brief squeeze to his fingers before letting go, the simple touch conveying her desire to cool his anger and to dull that sharpened look in his eyes.

Soon enough, her attention returns to Ryouhara, her chin raising and her jaw setting when he accuses her of having hope in her eyes. The very insinuation seems to encourage her, validated by his very argument that should be giving her pause, stripping her will down.

"The only difference between dreams and ideals," Whip replies firmly, "is that you have your eyes open for one of them. Dreams are what taught me how to make something of my life. Dreams also helped my brother find me. I wouldn't be trying to dismiss them so fast." She stares for a moment more after her words finish, her eyes narrowed with indecision. Resolve then smoothes over her face in a perfect fit. She tries to step closer, past her brother and towards Seishirou, trusting something more than the weight of the guns and countless blades on her body. She doesn't even glance at her stolen weapon that moves inside the shinobi's hand.

She continues crispily, "I don't believe there's a separation between you and us. It's why I brought you here. It's why I tried to fix you up. It's why you've helped me -- helped us, when you didn't have to. I think we're all the same. More than you realize. So don't lay down. Stay standing," Whip invites, as she dares another step closer. He moves for his satchel, and she moves for him. "But let me finish looking at you."



Seishirou doesn't question or disagree with K's mind on the matter. The copy was easy enough to dissuade. Him and Seishirou were in many ways similar and think along the same patterns. K' is used to being used. He is used to thinking in terms of the cruel world that Seishirou describes. For people who truly do not care, all they need to be given is a reason to abandon whatever goal is foisted upon them unwillingly. It is that much Ryouhara counts on. That.. is a comfortable understanding.

Not challenged, the ninja is free to do as he pleases. As expected. Leaning over, the shinobi picks up his belt, his multitude of sheathes, to secure them around his waist once and again, cinching and tying the sash at his side without facing either of the two. Byakuren Hagoromo was destroyed in the blast, he realizes, but Senchakiri should have been able to withstand it. Absently, his mind's eye could already detect that the blade was nowhere near. The attunement seal worked both ways. Byakuren wasn't a problem--another can always be made. Senchakiri, though..

On the other hand, Whip...has a certain belief in her mind.

Seishirou blinks slowly, startled out of his reverie. Whip chances a step closer, and the shinobi's eye slips to the flooring just inches ahead of her toes, his bangs waving with the snap motion. The glare is held there for only a moment. Only a moment before his eyes shut.

"...And what, exactly, have you made of your life?" Ryouhara asks faintly.

He opens a hand. "You huddle together like rats terrified of the rain. Terrified of your past. And when you try to move beyond it.. you fail." he observes coldly. The manner is dry, as if he recites from some long-practiced text.

He moves towards the door.

"That's the problem with having your eyes closed...you don't know if what you're seeing is real, or an illusion."

He tries the latch once, frowns when it doesn't work, then tries again.

"It is my intention to face the father of NESTS to realize my own goals. Helping you was natural, for my own sake." Ryouhara finishes, finally realizing the trick to the doorknob that most simply intuit. "Hate me. Forget about me. Live in dreams... you're too weak to walk in the waking world."

The main difference between the two..

K' is wary of that world.

Seishirou seems to revel in it.

K' and Seishirou were polar opposite.



It took longer than usual... but K' finally loses his temper.

The brief grasp Whip maintained on his hand was calming, but all the same insufficient to rid him of his growing irritation. And so, when Seishirou makes his short reply to Whip, K''s annoyance flares into sudden anger as swiftly as a leaping flame.

K' is lunging before he can catch or stop himself, arrowing forward like a bolt from a crossbow, attempting to bodily snare Seishirou with his momentum and pin him against the wall. If he damages Seishirou even more in the course of doing so, he doesn't seem to care.

"You think you can talk to her like that?" Her brother's voice is surprisingly level, even as a millpond, but the snarling tone of it constricts like a snake. His head tilts in a horribly strained way, the tension in the movement testament to how much he's holding back for his sister's sake. A sneer slowly bares sharp lines of white teeth.

"If I knew it wouldn't get her upset," he continues on in a low, emotionally-void voice, "I'd fuck you up so bad they'd have to wire your insolent mouth shut for a month."

And then-- he backs off. But from the stifflegged, bristling way in which he does, it seems he'd really rather have stayed in and started breaking an apology out of Seishirou's fingers.



Whip's slow, hesitant steps draw to a stop. Her dark eyes never lose their sharp intensity, but her stare flickers under the weight of Seishirou's words. She's trying to hide it, but her expressive face has always had trouble disgusing sincerity. Hurt slices into her soft features.

But she's not left to ruminate on her feelings for long. K' all but detonates forward in explosive movement, and his sister widens her eyes, reaching one hand forward with a startled bark of, "K'!" Whip recoils against the hollow sound of the shinobi slamming against the wall, pushing away from the bed and rushing for them. Her right hand rests on one of her holstered guns, the reflex conditioned too strongly in her to otherwise ignore, and she's already half-expecting, half-fearing a fight to break out between the two, one that neither of them need. Her brother has lost his fire, and Ryouhara nearly his life. It's not the time for this.

But K' has thankfully stepped back when Whip reaches his side, and she grabs his nearest arm while shooting him a shocked, indescribable look. It seems too nervous, too distracted to look angry, at least for now. She tells him nothing, but her hand refuses to let go of him should she manage a snaring grasp of his forearm, hoping to leash him from any further retaliation.

"You talk about dreams," Whip says instead, slanting Ryouhara a look from her brother's side. A familiar frown begins to germinate along her mouth. "Dreams like what? Like Issei Miura? I think he's as real as any of us in this room. And that's why I can't hate you."

Giving her head a shake, she lets go of her still-holstered gun with one hand and K' with the other, bringing in her arms to cross them sternly, guardedly, and demandingly. She doesn't try to intersect herself in any subsequent attempts the shinobi tries to take out of the motel room, but she's not about to let him leave so easily, so cleanly into the night. Her brown eyes level him with a watchful look, and there is no hatred in them as she had told him so. There is no anger. The only sharp edges about her are the knives strapped to her body. The look in Whip's face is patient, almost kind, when she adds: "I think saving your life at least entitles me to one answer. What was it you lost that made you this way? Or should I ask... who?"



He remains even and calm, even as hurt shows plainly on the serious woman's face, his words lighting into her and cutting to bone. His eyes are empty, as if he truly and utterly feels nothing.

His heart almost slows to a standstill.

Though the latch opens partially, it ratchets shut again Ryouhara's body is twisted and slams into the wall. K's weight carries the light shinobi into the doorjamb with a shuddering crack that likely leads the occupants of adjacent rooms to question what exactly is going on in that tiny room. A few of his wounds snap, the fine wire giving way from the pressure differential from K's attack, and blood drains freely from them. Throughout the explosive motion, Ryouhara makes no attempt to fight K', slinging about like a ragdoll--but the entire time, the uncaring shade of that 'eye' of his does not change.

"Speaking of insolence.." Ryouhara mentions mildly, wetly.

Wasting words on K' would be pointless.

In that moment, it would be easy to slide the knife between K's ribs, easy to trigger the ninkoujutsu that ruptures his internal organs and give Whip something more important to worry about and all truth told, the shinobi considers it. K' threatens him openly, rage and force locking the shinobi to the wall. And yet, all Ryouhara dimly considers of is how best to paralyze a target.

...But the moment passes, and the shinobi slips to the ground like an eel, his well-worn body slumping as he works to remain standing. "...It would seem that believing in dreams is common," he observes, straightening himself by force of will. Towazu thought he proved quite a bit. Even now, Seishirou maneuvers intellectually, carefully choosing his words. They will determine his final act.

"...In the end, it remains the same."

You can't trust an ignoble dog with the war if he only won a single battle.

"No matter what."

In this situation, he can't entrust it all to dreams. Not even his.

"Dreams can't survive in the real world."

In a sudden, piercing silence, his hand slides across the doorknob again. "Don't be trite," he finally snaps. "You saved Miura. We believe what we see, but what we see can all too often be a figment of our own hopes. You saved ...nothing." He opens the door. He will need to find Senchakiri before someone else does and kills themselves with it. He remembers where he was last struck. If he can calculate the force vectors from memory, he should be able to extrapolate his landing site without help.. "Nothing of value, nothing that exists."

He pauses, stepping over the threshold, his eyes shutting, his teeth gritting.

His hand tenses on the doorframe. _fuck!!_

"....Foolish," Seishirou hisses through his teeth, his patience ripped to shreds. "For someone without a name, it's impossible to comprehend. Asking pointless questions like that--it is the destiny of the Ryouhara clan to lose.. /everyone/."

The door slams in the shinobi's wake, hard enough to crack the jamb.



The smell of blood, oddly, seems to calm K'. He's been trained, after all, to shut down higher processes-- to go cold, singleminded, and deadly-- when confronted with it. He makes no reply to Seishirou's quiet words, his narrowed eyes saying pretty much all that needs to be said; his shut hand simply grinds into the ninja's collar with longing force. He is aware how easily Seishirou could strike at him, and that's why he's seized Seishirou's collar such that a mere increase of force could fold the shinobi's trachea in half.

Seishirou might kill him, but he'd take the shinobi with him.

Ultimately, it's Whip's voice that breaks through that cold, weaponized autopilot. K' visibly pauses at the sound of her voice. His eyes flicker. Reluctantly, he steps back, bracing for the touch he expects to come: her hand shuts around his wrist, pulling him back further and tethering him like a leash, and K' neither startles nor resists. He simply holds himself back, returning her shocked look with a blank and guarded glance: one that clearly says K' doesn't regret what he did in the least.

As Whip speaks, K' continues to hold his silence. Suspicion and hostility linger in his gaze; he doesn't seem to be listening closely to Whip's points, whatever sympathy or interest he might have had in Seishirou largely nullified by the latter's unforgivable behavior towards Whip. K' doesn't quite express the hatred Seishirou clearly desires, but perhaps the shinobi will settle for dislike and distrust instead.

It's obvious K' doesn't have a problem believing that Seishirou only concerns himself with them in order to use them. The concept of being a mere tool is not new to him, after all. Perhaps he's afraid Seishirou, like NESTS, has a habit of throwing out tools he can no longer use.

He remains tense until Seishirou slams the door behind him. And once the ninja is gone, he doesn't relax from his vigil for some time. It's a few minutes before he finally turns back towards Whip, and when he does he doesn't meet her eyes. He just walks silently past her, heading to the window, parting the blinds and looking out for a few moments. "You did what you could," he eventually repeats, still not looking at her. "And I wouldn't expect anything more from him than that." He does not want Whip troubling her mind over Seishirou's lies, rudeness, and base ingratitude.



The door slams shut. Hard enough to make her eyes blink.

Then Whip just sags on the spot, a heavy layer of anxiety falling off her body like a shed skin. She relaxes muscles she didn't even realize she had tensed. Blowing out a breath, rubbing a hand through her blood-matted hair, she replies to no one in particular, "I don't believe in destiny."

The subsequent moments of silence is spent in the exclusive company of her brother. Ryouhara is no longer there, no longer bleeding in front of her, no longer the single source of her attention and worry, and in his sudden absence she is reacquainted with about ten new white noises within the motel room. Turning her head to the sounds of dripping faucets and settling drywall, narrowing her eyes as if realizing them for the first time, the barrage of stimuli begins to press a headache behind her right eye. She disengages from the spot, compelled to become busy.

On her short journey back to the bed, Whip pauses twice. Once when she notices a trail of fresh blood across the floor, more than likely from Seishirou's reopened wounds, and twice when K' breaks the silence to speak to her. She looks over her shoulder at him, but he isn't quite looking at her. She watches him watch the world outside the window, her staring eyes only creasing and looking away when she hears his tired consolation. Something about his words makes her heart pang. Ryouhara's old words return to her, and Whip flexes her hands to fight off the sting of hurt and frustration.

Occupying herself at the side of the stripped, bloodsmeared mattress of the bed, she just nods silently. The fall of her hair hides her face from him. Wordlessly, Whip just starts to clean up the bloodied supplies left behind in her makeshift triage.

Log created on 15:23:09 09/14/2008 by Whip, and last modified on 05:21:20 09/24/2008.