Description: See. Yamazaki doesn't forgive. And when it comes to stuff like punching him in the street, Yamazaki certainly doesn't forget. In the dead of night, Yamazaki pays a little visit to Jiro's squeeze, with all the worst intentions in mind. Except for that one. Maybe. It's not clear. K' ruined it, and now we'll never know. Damn it.
To tell the truth, Yamazaki hasn't really been OK for quite awhile.
Ever since that bitch put the bolt through his eye, Yamazaki has been really sore blooded for quite awhile. It's been ages (read: a week or two) since he last really lit into anything like a dojo in some time. Business has been slow, as it always is about this time of year. It's telling when even making bystanders vomit on SNF isn't really satisfying for him. Every moment that passes is another itch that Yamazaki just can't scratch.
The guy who cut him off this morning.
The butcher who stiffed his driver .02 lbs.
Just a few in the latest of a long laundry list of problems Yamazaki has lost track of, with no real satiation anywhere to be seen. His hand is getting frosty. Even with the practice he's been getting.
Even with Chun-Li almost dying.
Good times.
But til he can really get out of control here, until his hand can really taste some serious blood, he's been having a little trouble sleeping. Fitful and restless, the mercenary raged silently as he stormed out of his apartment in the middle of the night.
He remembers one thing that was satisfying.
He remembered beating Jiro to within an inch of his life.
Nine minutes and 88mph later, he arrived at the Futaba residence, sliding smoothly out of his car, straightening his jacket and running a oiled comb through his hair.
Bleach blonde trash-head stalks among the various works of art and beauty, a creature well out of his element, a leviathan gliding silentily amongst the minnow. He is hardly stealthy--he spat in the eye of the last person who told him to quiet down--brand new work shoes making loud sounds over the finished walkway as he stops for a second to glare at one of the stone birds enjoying her bath under the fountain.
Three seconds later, a hunk of stone shatters against the oak door.
The next second, the door itself goes, one half ripped clear off its hinges in one blow, the one one canting wildly enough to smack inside against the far wall.
A hand, cast into the open abyss, loosens only for a moment before locking into a claw.
One eye dark and the other bloodshot and ugly, catlike pupil slitting as it heals, Yamazaki saunters in atop the thing, growling in a winnowing rasp just barely human into the open air beyond. Hand in pocket. "Avon calling.."
In all the years since the Futaba estate was built, it had never been attacked; never been broken into; never been burglarized. From the day it was constructed, a little less than a decade ago, on the expensive loft in one of the most wealthy districts in all of Japan, the property had been occupied by Yunfei Futaba, renown Kenpo master, and his son, a rising legend in many circuits, Gato Futaba. If one didn't know that the two powerful martial artists resided there on reputation alone, the squat, traditionally styled dojo off to the side of the main building should have been enough of a clue to any wouldbe ne'er-do-wells that you didn't step foot on this property without invitation unless you were ready to get your s*** broken. Years passed, times changed, but to this day a martial artist of some fame has lived under the roof of the house and that alone was enough to keep it from being appealing for any trouble makers.
The intruder would find the property well lit, even at night. Motion detectors activate ground lights along the walkway as his footsteps come down against the concrete. Colorful blue and green lights highlight the fountain, a Christmas gift to Hotaru's mother one year from a doting husband. Times were different then. The estate was more alive back then. Instead, while the landscaping is aglow with lights, the building in front of the figure sits silently, all its windows black, darkness within would almost beg the question as to whether any where awake... if it weren't well past the hour for anyone with normal sleeping habits to be asleep.
The ornately carved, gold trimmed oaken door shatters inward, the sound it makes a cacophony that echoes throughout the house. Directly inside is an entryway. With the lights from outside providing a degree of illumination, it is possible to make out the priceless artwork that adorns the walls. Tapestries covered in ancient Japanese art, depicting wars and feudal life of a bygone era are mounted behind protective glass and frames of black, polished steel. Two Chinese bamboo wall scrolls portray beautiful plants drawn artistically only to be bordered by two real life plants of the same species growing out of inlaid planters with their own built in, discreet, automated irrigation systems. Carved Chinese vases, their surfaces covered with dragons and flowers, each one's value spanning way into the six figure price range cover intricately designed glass tables; accompanied by small crystaline figurines that bend what little light makes into the entry like tiny prisms. A wall aquarium, full of tropical fish of all colors, occupies the back wall of the elaborate entry room.
Winding stairways lead up from both sides of the entry to the next floor of the Futaba Estate. It seems whoever designed it had a taste for Western architecture, making it the very opposite of the detatched dojo sharing the lot with it. Such a large house for one girl to occupy all alone. Helpstaff arrive every morning; cleaning, cooking, maintaining the property, but when it gets to be this late, the house closes down, falling quiet, lights shut off one by one, until only the young heiress remains.
The initial impact of stone against wood reveberates throughout the large house before the double-doors are ended. Upstairs, down the hall to the right of the balcony, on the right side of the hallway in a room with a bedroom facing out over the front lawn, a girl sits up in her bed with a gasp of surprise, eyes, not needing to adjust to the darkness, staring wide at the closed door to the hallway, her hands clasping her sheets, holding them up to the level of her neck without even thinking about it. Why is she awake? A dream gone foul? A nightmare having run its course culminating in a soft shriek of sleep-disrupting terror? Her heart races but she isn't sure why. She just needs to take a look around and calm herself down, the girl decides, releasing the sheet and shuffling to the side, sliding off of the rather tall bed so that her feet land on the floor. It's nothing, she repeats to herself silently.
Reaching out with motions reduced to rote habit over the years, she lightly touches the base of a lamp atop a bedside table and the light turns on at its lowest level of illumination. Her sleepware consists of sky blue cotton pants with a matching cami-style top. Still moving on autopilot, her right hand sweeps out to draw a long, brushed cotton, pink robe from off the back of a comfortable chair near her bed. Already striding toward the door, she slips her arms into the robe before her hands idly fiddle with the fluffy belt to tie off the robe at her waist.
Exhaling as she glances at the clock on her desk she shakes her head, her nerves already calming down. For whatever reason she can't remember what woke her up, she decides she'll have a look around all the same. Slowly she shuffles over to the door of her room, slipping her feet into a pair of slippers the color of her robe sitting next to it, and pulls it open, pausing, head bowed, eyes open, listening for a moment. Did she just hear something moving downstairs?
Motion sensors are usually configured to pick up on things heavier in mass than about 60 pounds, that way random birds and shit don't set them off. But they pick him up. Oh, he wants them to. Yamazaki is slow and silken in gait, best described as glacial.
The glacier slams into the house and runs the thing aground.
A long, large and dark form against the bright lights of outside, he clambers over the massive weight of that door and walks inside, holding onto the other door as it wobbles back to him on the rebound.
Unfortunately for the Futaba blood, Yamazaki wasn't disparaged in the slightest by the potential presence of a martial artist on the grounds. That was sort of the point of it. Yamazaki's disgustingly high retainer fee. Why Yamazaki could afford the things in life that most people just shouldn't be able to. Why Yamazaki can stride past a crystal dragon worth more than most insurance policies write out on a /human life/ and vaguely consider the merit in just tipping it over. He's earned every last penny. There is a difference between a thug and exactly what Yamazaki is.
One of the key facets of that is that Yamazaki just has. no. fear.
Lit by motes of light dancing off that statue and pupils contracting in the dark, the mercenary has himself a look around, his newly but barely functional eye rolling a little lazy almost into the back of his head as he takes a look around. The difference between rich and poor was often hardly a matter of trinkets... anyone can buy a sculpture or two. Grow a plant. That was just a matter of budget--wealth was in size. In what truly wasn't required. Case in point--
When you're this rich, you don't /need/ shit that most people rely on.
Like lamps.
Most of the stuff on that count is in the end a dog show. Just for looks. Just for convenience. Ornamental--but you can bet damn well sure it'll cost more than your college education. Track lighting. Spot lighting to accentuate those elaborate paintings with a warm glow. All the business lighting was overhead--you need a fucking sixteen foot steel ladder to change a lightbulb. But often, rich kids don't have to. All they have to do is flick the switch and frown expressively when it doesn't work.
Yamazaki is rich by most people's standards.
But there's just no point in some shit.
Yamazaki glares up at the high ceilings, aggrieved.
He should have just killed the power. Oh well.
Bamboo scroll set between a pair of exquisite and expertly manicured rhododendron shrubs snaps apart, lacquered wood cracking and lines snapping under the stress of the mercenary's thick fingers sinking into it. His claw chews past three coats of paint and molded orange peel texture that they just didn't /sell/ at the local hardware store anymore, sinking into and cracking the fibers of drywall underneath, sinking into and cracking a stud that was really only for the convenience of hanging pictures--until his fingernails hit steel, drawing furrows in the metal and pulling curling shavings from it. That alone can tell him what he needs to know about the house.
There.
He doesn't bother with the stairway.
The mercenary sets a foot on the wall, looking up with a grim expression.
Funny thing. By the time Hotaru even manages to get down here, most(!) of the overhead lights in the main entry hall, most of the circuits on what was probably a six-or-seven switch panel sitting somewhere Yamazaki wouldn't really bother to guess about will just simply not. work.
Yamazaki drops Notice: Walk on. Unauthorized loiterers will be eaten. >:O - Love, Yamazaki.
Hotaru Futaba had never known what it meant to want for money. Oh, sure, she saw it in others. The way the Sakazaki's would look at each monthly mortage payment on the dojo with that forlorn, worried glint in their eyes. The way Kentou Ondori worked so very hard every day of his life just to help the old man that had taken him in run a tiny little shop out on the docks. She knows what it means for others to not have the means to buy whatever they want. But not herself. Daughter of a powerful martial artist in a long line of Kenpo masters and a mother born into a wealthy Japanese business family with interests throughout Japan and China, the girl could live her life off her inheritance and never work a day for it.
But those who meet her so rarely know that side of the young Futaba. They might notice if it they look closely. The pristine white outfits she wears to fights - each one replaced the moment it becomes stained with blood, frayed by high speed impacts, or slashed by the blades of unsavory opponents. Custom tailored, right down to the expensive blue designer fabrics that go into her tops; the prints of flowers visible at certain angles, embroidered by bands of gold. The fact that she attended Seijyun High, where the uniforms alone cost more than some family's weekly income, or the way she was often chauffeured around Southtown when the weather was too unpleasant for taking a walk in. The clues were always there if one gave them much thought. But with the way Hotaru carried herself around others, it was rarely obvious.
But a look inside the estate she now calls home ever since her stay at the Sakazaki dojo ran its course settles the matter rather easily. The entrance now being torn into by Yamazaki is more valuable than several houses just a couple miles closer to the heart of the city. While such a home would be considered a cottage to the Kanzuki's and Kagura's of the world, the Futaba Estate still places Hotaru's comfort of lifestyle within the upper percentiles. A comfort that has left her not used to the sounds of movement in her house well past midnight. No rodents or unwelcome pests ever traipsed down these halls before.
Instead, it is pink slipper-clad feet that step along polished wood floors covered with expensive, hand woven persian rugs. She doesn't reach for lights. She knows the lay of the hall well enough; where the occasional table sits, where an ornately carved armoire hogs a section of the wall, circumventing them each in turn with no need to actually see what's going on. She would even walk down the stairs in the dark without giving it a second thought were it not for the noises - no, wreckage going on in the room downstairs.
As that steel-strong claw rips into the wall, shreding wires and sheering support beams designed to withstand severe earthquakes, the lights overhead flicker on then die and for several seconds, the wall aquarium glows with blue-green ambience before it too becomes black. It must be a burgler is the only thing she can think. A clumsy one at that as the sound of a clay vase worth more than most people's salaries shatters against the wooden floor. The girl takes in her breath, holding it, slowing her pace as she edges to the balcony. Her hand slips to the side, the back of her finger brushing against two switches responsible for bringing light to the room. One bulb flickers on the light bank above, lending a strange, slanted shadowing to the room. Confused, the young resident reaches for the dimmer to make sure it is at maximum. It is.
Eyes wide, the girl glances over the railing to the space below, seeing a shadow move just outside the dome cast by that single stalwart bulb. Freezing mid-step, mouth slightly agape, breath held up until then, the girl speaks up, her voice steady in spite that uneasy feeling that she's getting into something over her head. "You had better get out of here." Her fingers brush over the strangely non-responsive switches again, just to make sure. They're up. A foot descends slowly to the first stair. "This house isn't empty."
The crystal dragon wobbles, causing the dancing of the light. Shifted by a stray breeze, moved perchance whne the door was blown in? A car might have gone ridiculously offcourse and careened into the door, perhaps. After all--what really could rip a door like that off its hinges without some manner of locomotion being involved? Are burglars doing their business by siege now? Of course.. meaningful examples of one man homewreckers do exist.
One presupposes that people like her don't have to think hard for a few.
The dragon wobbles, threatening to fall but never really managing to do the deed--it's too heavy for the leather jacket hung off of it to really upset it. Wait, what? It's true. The large men's jacket is hung off of the elbaorate creature's head as if a lowly coatrack. A jacket that, while new, is hardly the sort of thing the designer-downed Futaba would even dream about wearing.
It's visible due to the way the tilted singular light casts over the room. Jacket's plenty pricey, of course. Genuine leather. But not in the fashion that you can get at Walgreens for $10 during the back to school season. Fresh leather, with the scent of old tannin, aniline dye and ash still on it. Heavy full-grain deerskin of a designer label, with the scars on the animal hide who was skinned to make it faintly visible.
The jacket shifts the thing, never quite coming to a standstill, but never quite tipping the statue either.
Yes, hardly a drunk driver or even a particularly ballsy hoodlum. A burglar.
At least.
While it would have been preferable for Yamazaki to just go on and tear every lighting rig off the wall, that would have made an awful mess too soon and furthermore drawn attention to himself. Instead, he had to find the closest cables in the wall and rip them out. Copper was going for quite a price on the national market lately, due to China's industrialization efforts--the Syndicate was making a killing on shipping what their guys could rip out of abandoned buildings and people who didn't pay their protection fees out the walls. Some idiots even try to yank the copper out of power lines and usually end up as roasted hot dogs.
There was kind of an art to tearing a live power line out of the wall without dying. Of course, some were better at it than others simply for the fact 110V or so is just a tickle.
A little bit of plaster falls out into the abyss, not feet from Hotaru's head as she glances over the railing.
"...No.. no it's not," a voice growls, echoing against the floor instead of the ceiling.
A looped and live cable hangs in the air free just behind Futaba.
A flick of the wrist and it will be about Hotaru's neck, if she isn't quick.
A flex of the arm, and Hotaru will be talking to him face to face, suspended in the open air beyond the railing, much further out over the bottom floor than the initial drape of the cable would have suggested. She will be hung by the neck as if Yamazaki was his own personal lynch mob. Hanging from the dark portions of the ceiling with only one arm piled into a log jagged line of ripped up masonry, his free hand is more than enough to manipulate Hotaru's feather weight as if she were a rag doll. She's gonna talk to him face to face. And Yamazaki is gonna grin.
"You got some splainin to do," he growls.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki has started a fight here.
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Yamazaki 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: Hotaru has joined the fight here.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Yamazaki
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki successfully hits Hotaru with Quick Throw.
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Hotaru 0/-------/----===|-------\-------\0 Yamazaki
Eyes take a moment to adjust to the unexpected flicker of light from the ceiling light two stories above the entry below. But the more she takes in, the less any of it makes sense. The doors were smashed in, one ripped clean off its polished hinges. That isn't the way someone trying to be sneaky would enter. That must be what woke her up, she realizes, grogginess melting away as her heart begins to race again. Eyes shift to the jacket next, able to make it out only because the sparkling dragon on which it rests illuminates the wall behind it with light refracted from outside, casting a soft glow over the discarded garment. Even with shapes being lost in the shadows, one thing is abundantly clear. That long coat belongs to someone quite tall...
Plaster falls down in front of her, but she didn't realize what it meant in time. Who would ever conclude that the threat was coming from above? Not until there is that voice laden with menace and forboding. She lifts her chin, eyes rolling up, reacting instinctively with such little warning to work with. Why is there a-
The loop ensnares the lone resident before she can even fully set eyes on the invader. That proves to be irrelevant as she finds herself bodily hefted off the ground by her neck, a gasp of surprise cut off as the constricting cord tightens. Hoisted up and pulled around, she's brought face to face with the owner of that growl, his lone arm more than capable of keeping her suspended in the open space over the entry below.
Her hands go to her neck in a futile effort to find purchase there, her feet flailing, a single pink slipper falling to the floor down below with a light thud. Silently, but for the sound of cotton cloth swishing as she struggles, and the soft grunts and hisses of failed attempts to breath, the girl dangles helplessly. Whatever cloudy thoughts occupied her confused mind from being woken in the middle of the night evaporate in an instant as she realizes that she didn't wake up from a nightmare. She's IN one.
Face flushing red, she has, to no surprise, nothing to say to Yamazaki. She sees a flash of blonde as his face veers briefly into a shaft of light cast in from one of the large windows over the front doors - a white light outside's beam straying inward due to being knocked out of alignment by Yamazaki's passing. For that moment she sees that face with that grotesque eye staring back at her, and the denial of one who merely wishes to be dreaming flashes to the forefront of her thoughts. It would be nice to wake up right about now, still safe in her bed, covered by her sheets, not dangling over her own smashed entryway like a prisoner facing execution.
She isn't going to bank on that though. Hotaru may never have been ambushed in her own home like this before, but she is a survivor. And she does have years of combat training. And, well, this isn't the first time someone's tried to strangle her. Though it is the first time it's been done with the wiring to her own house.
There's not so much explaining to be done as there a need to try and breath again. The body can only go so long like this. Deprived of that essential oxygen, she'll go weak, muscles shutting down before her mind slips shortly after. Not if she can help it though. Useless flailing comes to a stop even though she continues to swing a little from the momentum built anyway. Small hands reach up and grip the cable tightly before the girl pulls herself up by arm strength half the length of the cable. Another split second and she's gripping Yamazaki's wrist, no longer hanging freely. There's a reason prisoner's have their arms bound. There is a way to save oneself from being hung to death.
Two things happen so close together as to effectively be in unisen. First, a breath is taken, a quick, sharp inhale as that cable slacks just a little, revealing the red, abraded ring around her neck. Second, a knee is brought up, going straight for the teeth of that visage she was forced to stare into. Said knee may be padded by a cotton robe and cotton pants but that is likely to do little to diminish the impact.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki blocks Hotaru's Light Kick.
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Hotaru 0/-------/----===|=------\-------\0 Yamazaki
He can't really blame her. It's not something most people expect, to be attacked from their own roof. It's part of his business. To step from angles that most people just don't think about. Sneaking up behind someone--that's harder you'd think it'd be. Most of the people Yamazaki was sent after had an eye in the back of their head, slept with it open. All it takes is for one of those fleet footed ninja assholes. The type who think they're cute and can run behind you at any time. After a few minutes with one of those pricks, you start to learn to pay attention to what's behind you.
But nobody really pays attention to what's going on above their heads, specially if they just woke up. How often is it really people can fly?
He comes at you sideways.
You can see him if you really want to. But who's gonna expect something that big to be hanging from the light fixtures? You don't look for lions in the cupboards. You just don't.
Right now he's glaring at Hotaru, face inverted strangely as the blood swells into his cheeks, making him seem much redder than he usually is form flush alone. One might expect the scento f cheap booze to fill the air as he speaks, but it doesn't. Oh, he's perfectly level..
"You know, I don't usually come out this late--" Yamazaki mentions to the struggling girl, "But you know, I met that little twerp, and word around town is, you're his main squeeze." He sways as if he didn't even care if he fell--how high is this ceiling again?--the whatever amount of feet onto his skull on a hard stone floor. He sways, as if intentionally making it harder for Hotaru to get her bearings and to climb his arm as he knows she wants to. Well, with one hand it's always a little rough to really restrain someone, but more importantly, he didn't really have enough feet of cord to really get into a rousing game of kinbaku with Hotaru here... though it was an idea he dog-eared for later.
"And I thought about it!!" he declares, swinging Hotaru wide with his free arm as she clings for dear life. He doesn't really defend himself, but it's arguable he even notices the knee meant for his teeth as it clips his temple roughly. "How the FUCK is that jellybean getting /any/ from /anybody/ without paying them!? Without paying em /twice!?/" "So best's I could say is, you must not know better!" His hand twists, releasing the cable. The only problem with Hotaru hanging off of his bicep is that it requires being entirely too close to his hand--and an attempt to sink his drywall-encrusted talons past her fluffy bathrobe and through the designer lace ensemble right into the soft bits of her stomach. To set her up on the ceiling too.
"So Professor Zaki's gonna show ya a thing or two!"
He lifts a shoe off his perch on the ceiling, shifting his mass and pulling up with all his weight with his anchoring arm, the fibers of his bicep twisting as he just creeps forward. His knee touches his shoulder. And then the gangster yanks his arm free, dropping the hammer of his foot with all his weight. Even though there's technically nothing holding him up there in that one instant, he's aiming to swing Hotaru into the ceiling. And then drop his boot into his midsection in an inverted stomp rough enough to knock a set of track lighting off it. To send plaster raining down from each slashing punchhole he made in the wall.
"DARLIN'," he roars, "you're in for a hell of a night!!"
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki successfully hits Hotaru with Yakiire.
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Hotaru 1/-------/=======|==-----\-------\0 Yamazaki
The entire experience is disorienting to the point of being disabilitating. Barely managing to get a grip on Yamazaki's arm before he starts swinging her about, her knee glancing off his temple without making much in the way of impact. She swings her leg again, but by then he's already moved her out of range and from her unsupported, dangling position, she really can't put up much of a fight. His words are heard, the message loud and clear. Jiro had gone and caught the attention of the wrong sort've trouble. Again. Only, this time, that trouble has come to haunt her by association.
Lungs enjoying those fresh gulps of air restore her strength slightly. She has nothing to say in return. No threats, no warnings, no pleading. Her mind focus on a single thing - survival. She's never claimed to be a hero. Oh, sure, she's gone out of her way to help those in need. But right now, given a split second of freedom, she'll bolt. Some might call it cowardice, others may call it the smart move. For Hotaru, it's the /only/ choice. Living another day has so often be her priority above all else. To date, that has never been at odds with anyone else's well being. Hopefully she never has to make that choice.
She's barely got her breath back when his hand claws forward. She attempts to tuck her legs up, hoping to intersect the strike with her knees. But she can't pull it off before steel-like paws pierce directly through the easily yielding cloth into her stomach. In a feat of dexerity that seems so out of place on a creature of his stature, he whips her up against the ceiling, sending plaster raining down in chunks to shatter against the wooden floor below. The pain forces a cry as she helplessly folds over his hand, an arm more powerful than her entire torso crushing her into place.
Arms dangle as the young martial artist finds herself imbedded into her own ceiling. Her complexion pales - sick in her gut from the crushing blow and an unprecidented amount of dread. Mouth agape, that precious breath just claimed is lost all over again, her second slipper falling loose to slap lightly against the floor below a second later. That he isn't here for money, to steal some expensive trinket or other, makes things all that much worse. He's here for her. Which means no desperate offer is likely to abate his rampage. Her only hope is try force.
Pinned into an all new impression, she can't even reach him via any normal means. Her hands claw at his arm, but there isn't the force or leverage necessary to pry herself free. Pulling together wherewithall to attack at all is an accomplishment unto its own as she falls back on her last option in such a position. In the interior barely lit by a single bulb and what light makes its way from outside, the sudden cerulean glow along her right arm casts a spark of illumination across the ceiling. Giving up trying to move that trunk-like arm of his, she swings her right hand for his face, fingers extending to unleash that bolt of blue across that minimal distance that spans the difference.
It's all she can do - try to shake his hold on her. Maybe it will simply enrage him further, but maybe it will loosen his hold. Perhaps she'll be sent falling straight down, or he could fling her to some side wall. What happens next will have to be figured out when that moment comes. Step by step, instant by instant, whatever it takes to free herself, whatever it takes to survive.
COMBATSYS: Hotaru successfully hits Yamazaki with Hakki Shou.
- Power hit! -
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Hotaru 1/-------/=======|====---\-------\0 Yamazaki
You'd think she'd have some experience with this kinda thing.
Oh, the tapes are all lined up, in four foot high stacks piled around Yamazaki's widescreen plasma at home, a veritable pile of Saturday Night Fight and tournament footage, and he recalls, dimly, a fight awhile back that required her to fight just this way. Of course, she didn't do /that/ well. Don't get flattered, now--Yamazaki knows things because he makes it his business to know things. He didn't really do any research at all. He doesn't /work/ that way.
But he sure does love to watch people kick the shit out of eachother..
Anyway. The situation's a little different now. Yamazaki slams Hotaru into the ceiling, first with his claw, then with his boot in a kind of unrelenting one-two that rains plaster and fuzzy slippers from the air. She's tough for a little kid, Yamazaki could read that much pretty easily. Though hardly little in the juvenile sense, everyone in their 'prime' nowadays is just kind of a kid to him and this particular one? Yeah... he's broken more than his fair share of spines in his day.
Her boyfriend was a little harder to beat up, but then again, Yamazaki didn't try to hang him in his own house before. He knows she lives alone--that much was information he had to work for, albeit in the kind of meandering curiosity kind of way after he woke up from his post-Jiro nap. So there sin't anybody here to ruin this little sport of his. Yeah, that's right. Drink in the shock. Let it bleed off slow. It always happens just after he draws just a little blood. The realization sets in, he can almost smell the seriousness filling her skull. She should be tough.
More fun for Yamazaki.
But that doesn't explain it. That doesn't answer his curiosity.
One eye rolls back into his skull in that twisted moment of vertigo holding between the two. He rightfully should be looking to get another handhold about now as the momentum that kept him briefly attached to the ceiling reverses with her body embedding in it. Rightfully, he should. But he's paying attention to something else. Like a cat noticing a light pen, he sees the energy crawling up her arm, bright light the shades of the open sea. "Nh?"
She hits him. Full on. In the face.
Eyes briefly shot in full dialation by the bright light, Yamazaki is literally blinded, his form rocking back with the force of the bolt and dropping him off the wall, his grip loosing Hotaru downwards as he flops around slowly in a rather unbecoming free fall in the air.
He breathes in, long and hard.
"JUST LIKE I THOUGHT!"
It's hard to move that kind of mass, especially in this kind of situation where Yamazaki just can't see where all of his limbs are in relation to the air or the ground at all, his ears popping with the sudden change in pressure as he drops like a brick. But that weak ass knee before didn't do anything to Yamazaki that he doesn't do to himself regularly--this blast right to the face... that... that is enough. That can get his blood pumping.
The mercenary, still blinded, begins to pump the air with his hands. Slowly at first, but faster and faster, driving him forward. He is not so much swimming gracefully, throwing his aerodynamics into just the right cant to slow his fall. Hardly. He's speeding it up. Pumping the air wildly, you can hear the crack of wind as his hands blur, driving him down and to the side. He's homing right in on Hotaru's position in the air. He doesn't need to see--he never has. Not when he can smell. With the crack of wind and the speed of flesh, his hands are just fucking lightning bolts. Yeah... with this much?
It won't matter how much he's driven away.
It doesn't change his plan. If he can catch up with her..
Yamazaki is just going to pummel her all the way down.
His current exchange rate is a fist for every foot. That's 1:1.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki successfully hits Hotaru with Snake Tamer.
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Hotaru 1/-======/=======|=======\-------\0 Yamazaki
From the end of her hand, all that built up aura is unleashed, discharged directly into the face of her assailant. Too close to be accurately described as a projectile, it impacts with pure, confussive force, before splashing away and fading. It, at last, forces this lopsided violence into the next stage. An inevitable freefall from the ceiling toward the floor below. The energy coursing over her forearm fades, having fullfilled its purpose for now.
And then they fall. Her diaphragm no longer compressed and torn by that clawed grip and subsequent crushing boot goes back to that vital task of trying to draw air into the panicked girl's lungs. Adrenaline courses through her system, every fight or flight impulse firing off simultaneously. She's free of his grip for now. Immediate objective accomplished. Unfortunately, it doesn't buy her much.
His voice roars, easily audible outside the manor. But Hotaru's nearest neighbors are well over two acres in any direction. On the other sides of walls. With their own acerage adding even more distance. No one will hear it. No one will hear the screams of pain as Yamazaki descends with the free falling girl, his arms pumping through the air far too fast to even be seen. Each blow hits home even as she scrambles to fend them off. Attempts at defense are futile as the power behind the blows vastly exceed her capacity to strike.
The velocity and force is more than that poor robe can handle. These are not the durable, carefully crafted fabrics she attends her bouts in. It isn't even the heavy material of the Seijyun High blazer she has to wear during school days. Pink fuzz goes flying as if a pillow stuffed with the soft matter had just been hit by a .50 caliber rifle round. It rains like pink feathers as the front and side of her robe nearest to Yamazaki is destroyed. Two ribs find themselves pulverized from the blows. The only saving grace is that her light weight results in her being slammed through space as inertia does little to keep her trajectory stable. She lands with a sickening crunch against the wooden floor, having had not even the slightest chance to take control of the two and a half floor high plummet. On her back, arms sprawled, vision blurred, pink robe reduced to unrecognizeable tatters and traces of blood seeping through her sky blue pajamas - she has nothing. When faced with overwhelming, impossible force, options shut down faster than she can think them up. She's no longer in his grasp, but she's in no condition to run either. She needs to buy more time.
An arm shifts, an elbow pressing down as she starts to sit up, head lifted, eyes squinted closed. Her head is ringing, pain registering from so many directions it's impossible for her mind to even distinguish it and catagorize it as originating from severe or /EXTREMELY/ severe injuries. A gasp of breath is taken in as sapphire blue eyes open wide. She's not out yet. Almost. But not yet. She can't paralyze herself thoughts of what is in store if she can't move anymore. She needs to keep going forward as she always has. Buy another fraction of a second. Then figure out where to go from there.
Rolling onto her side just enough to fix Yamazaki's position relative to her own, she hooks her leg out, seeking to slip it in behind his nearest ankle. The intent is to use it as leverage to pull herself back in close on him suddenly, rolling into the motion before literally scrambling up onto the Southtown Syndicate killer like some kind of climbing wall. Hands would seek to get a grip on his clothing in places, or even his hair, while feet and knees serve only to harm him in any way possible in the very act of moving over him.
A stomp against a knee, a knee between his legs or into his gut, the much smaller fighter seeks to scale the Yamazaki all in a bid to get behind him, wrapping her arms around his neck tightly and simply dangling there against his back as she tries to stangle him. No shot is too cheap when survival is on the line. It isn't a solution to her situation and she knows that. But it's a chance to buy another second if she catches him off guard enough.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki interrupts Hantentou from Hotaru with Bomb Headbutt.
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Hotaru 2/<<<<<<</<<<<<<<|=======\==-----\1 Yamazaki
Yamazaki doesn't so much beat Hotaru as he simply erodes her. Little bits of bloodied fluff fly everywhere and Yamazaki never really thinks to stop. Most people's fists are just blunt objects that they propell into others. Yamazaki's are spears. Past a certain speed, his knuckles aren't so much cutting or thumping moreover tearing from the speed he can throw them at, from their sheer weight in relation to most. He raises this sort of thing to a high art. The kind of high art you get from tearing the Mona Lisa in half. That delicate robe is ripped to shreds on fists that don't so much bruise as split flesh. If it wasn't for her careening away, the impact wouldn't even stop him. He goes like an engine.
He drinks diesel.
He hits the ground hard, the wood flooring buckling beneath his inertia--unlike Hotaru's, considerable--once and then again as he drops to one knee to absorb the shock, his cap slamming into the polished surface and snapping wood fiber more surely than any axe ever could. The light from outside suddenly cast on the Southtown mercenary in startling relief, Hotaru can now see every detail of the massive beast, from the veins standing out in his wrists to the veins standing out in his eyes. When she finally hits the ground a little ways away from his own landing point only some ways later, the mercenary rises. And his shadow falls on the staircase behind him.
Still blinded from that blast, he can only see Hotaru when she stares, wide-eyed.
Yeah, show him those pretty sparkling eyes.
His hand slides into his pocket.
He still has a lot of work to do..
The mercenary isn't so much jumped over more /scaled/ like a mountain. She squirms on the ground like a worm, catching Yamazaki's attention in only the most primal of ways as he is aware of a weight on his ankle, causing him to slip wide, his arm going out to stabilize himself as she starts to pummel him with her legs and all of her force. Knees, his groin, all of the really painful places are stomped in, kneed in, Yamazaki grunting in annoyance, tilting dangerously as she slings herself around him, dangling like an adoring fan.
Her arms wrap around him--encircling his tense neck and strangling with all her might, cutting off his air supply, choking off his roar. From that angle she can smell every scent imaginable from Yamazaki--sweat, bleach, hair oil, bile, blood and god knows what else he's been into for the past week. The slick movement of arms against his flesh, his eyes bug out comically, as it agitates his bad eye, causing the entire thing to well with blood. His vision blurs, fading in and out as soon as it even returns.
"You..." he struggles to say..
"....gotta be KIDDING ME!!"
In choking staccato gasps, the mercenary doesn't so much laugh as just choke harder, his nasal passages snapping and cracking with snot just barely contained from the motion. Yamazaki's knees bend. His spine bends, straight back. Further than should even be realistically possible for someone like him. You can almost hear the crack of his spine as be propells his shoulders back and down. He knows where Hotaru's head is. It's right behind his.
Most people would call it a suplex.
But not many can do that with their hands in their pockets.
No. Yamazaki is going to propell the back of his skull into Hotaru's nose with force the moment she runs out of open air behind her, forcing all of his weight into it, forcing the heat and unrepentant rage boiling deep inside his spirit all right there. His head won't exactly land on Hotaru. That would be a terrible description of it. He's going to pound her skull into the floorboards like a nail underneath his weight.
And then, in a spray of blood that's not entirely hers, he's going to /detonate/.
The clock's ticking. Even as she scrambles up and onto Yamazaki's back, doing her best to hurt him in every way possible in the process, she knows she's running out of strength to keep stalling him. Everything he's put her through is taking its toll. Her vision is blurred even as she gets into position, arms wrapped around his neck as she struggles to hang on. There is little anticipation of being able to knock him out this way. It won't take long for him to simply slam her into a wall or something equally problematic. She just needs to watch for it and spring out of the way when the moment comes. Let him slam himself into a wall while she takes the chance to flee at last.
There is the question of how far she might get. Bleeding, injured, her skin broken by the sheer force of impact behind the crushing blows he's pummeled her body with, let alone ribs that shoot agony screaming along every nerve in her body even as she moves. That she even made it into the stranglehold is practically a miracle of its own and testiment to her determination. But resolve can only take one so far. And even as she hangs there, she feels her strength dwindling.
When his retaliation comes it happens far too fast for her to move. Even in the best of condition she might not have been spry enough to avoid this one. And in her current state, it's beyond impossible. The back of his head smashes into her face, driving the back of her head against the floor with more than plenty of force to fracture the boards. Her arms lose their grip immediately as the smaller fighter flattens out against the floor again.
The prolific nosebleed is the least of her worries right then and there. The realization that she might not have any say at all as to whether her body surrenders to this abuse hits her like a point blank shot to the face. The young fighter's strength dwindles, her hope dying with it. She's still moving, but it's almost on reflex, muscles mobile of their own accord, her mind reeling from so much damage delivered in so short a time. Arms shifting, palms pressing down against the floor boards slick with blood.
As her eyes close, she pictures those she'll leave behind. Kentou will be taken care of - she had already made arrangements with her accountants should something ever happen to her. His training may have to rest with Frei at that point, but at least the boy will survive. Her friends... they'll have to get along. They'll be fine. A small mess of a smile works its way across her lips as the overpowering euphoria of simply letting go and hoping for a quick death works its way into her thoughts. She doesn't want to imagine what the monsterous man has in mind. She just doesn't want to be alive for it.
She shifts a little more, one now-bare knee bending up. No, Hotaru tells herself. She isn't giving up like that. She has to try again. This isn't just some fight where she can concede defeat and limp off thinking about what she learned to do better at next time. This is her existence on the line. "No," she hisses through gritted teeth, muscles tensing, energy building. "No. I'm. Not." A foot is drawn back, her hands pressing hard enough to heft her up, the girl rolling up into a crouch for a millisecond. One arm extends out from her side, while her other arm refuses to cooperate so easily.
It happens in an instant - that explosion of energy channeled in from the world around her through the girl's body - lending her the power to propel herself into a fearsomely fast flip kick directly into her assailant. With crushing force she tries to smash through his guard...
COMBATSYS: Hotaru can no longer fight.
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Yamazaki 1/-----==/=======|
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki interrupts Ten-shou Ranki EX from Hotaru with Sadomazo.
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Yamazaki 1/--=====/=======|
Twisting to stand the moment she breaks contact in a kind of odd Jackson-esque whirling kind of way, he peels up off the ground, regarding the shocked girl. That's the problem with being crushed against the floor. You don't get a chance to think about it like you do when the guy just kind of falls over himself trying to hit a wall or something to bash you off. Just another one of those niggling little details that separates Yamazaki from a thug. He kicks at the blood pooling on the floor, feigning disdain.
You have to have a sense of class about these kinds of things.
He only barely pays any attention to the warm trickle down the back of his shirt or the pounding in his skull, his impact softened only incrementally by the softness of Futaba's face before he bounced off her skull. He had to give it to her. Your standard kid's face would have just caved in at that point. Do you know what happens when your /face/ caves in? Well, that is, if you survive--assuming your brain isn't crushed. They have to take it apart. Remove every little piece of bone and meat. And figure out just how the fuck you go back together again.
Oftentimes, it's easier to just tell the parents their kid's gonna die.
Little details like that, Yamazaki just knows.
"Now, this is a fucked up thing to wake up to," he admits. "...not as fucked up as waking up to that fruitcake boyfriend of yours.." Seriously, who the hell just comes out of nowhere and punches him? You know, he's buried people for less than that. ".. But either way, you ain't dead yet," he observes, honestly pegging her to be one of those types that he was just going to have to spend all night with. "Quit playing around..." he growls, "or I'll break you like the toy you are."
She snaps awake, that grin and that slow lift of leg passing each in turn under the murderer's dim eye, the thin lines of age on his face crumpling as he grins right back. That was more like it. He tilts over and presents her with his face.
"Come on, sweetness," he rumbles.
"Come on over here and give it to me.."
She lights right into him, a woman scorned, energy-bred force ramming into him with all of the desperation it entails, a survivor born and bred, hitting him and driving him back, snapping whatever thought of defense he had straight in half as she is literally inside his guard with her full weight before he can even think about--
He's not.
What?
He's not fighting it at all.
The blast of force and power that Futaba summons from whatever wells of power come close to crushing his shoulder and chest beneath it, knocking him almost off his feet--until his claws intervene. Rills of dark rending force trickling off his hand, it lances through the air, slipping past Hotaru's guard as he goes to work. Sinking his fingers right through the tatters of whatever's left of her robe, he'll try to catch her right there just above her hip. Dirty claws will find purchase not on fabric in flesh, trying to just twist into her side with his bare hands in the most ugly way imaginable--
"Fucking hurt," he murmurs idly, rolling his shoulder.
He's heard of some people who can do this, and if she doesn't wiggle /too/ much he can do it too.. Lifting her up, he'll /bleed/ her right here. His fingers tense and sink deeper, not satisfied until it's fountaining in greater spurts.
He's breathing hard, fatigue setting in like a kind of exhilaration. You'll forgive him if his first few words are breathless. "You know..." he comments, "I think you might be a little weaker than him. Cus I called him some shit ages ago--that crazy fuck hit me--" he chuckles darkly. "--they're probably still scrubbing bits of his face off the sidewalk. I'm getting a little carried away... Pity he ain't here right now. You two'd look pretty good together.." Pause.
"Well, after what I did to him, /you'd/ look good at least."
He'll spray her blood on the ground.
Kanji will begin to form out of that spray.
"I guess this isn't anything really personal, sweetheart..."
mu. sa. betsu. satsu. jin. indiscriminate killing.
"YOU'RE JUST THAT FUCKING SPECIAL!"
Ripping his hand down and free, his other arm pistons forward to sink into Hotaru's chest like a freight train. Throw her clear across the room. He's sure she's not even paying attention to details like this anymore, but he would be aiming for the crystal dragon across the way. No, he's not gonna leave until he's broken every overpriced piece of shit in this place and pounded it into dust.
Starting with Hotaru.
She's stopped short. The fount of cerulean continues on with her, rising up into an arc before it dissipates, cascading back down partially then fading all together. It's creator is simply stuck in place on that taloned claw ripping into the soft flesh between rib and hip. She blanches immediately, the pain making her immdiately nauseous. If she had eaten not long ago, Yamazaki might well be wearing the meal at this point. Falling quickly limp, she puts up no further fight, arms hanging down, body held up only by his hold.
Not that she's unconscious. Not that she's dead. Yet. She glares back at that twisted visage, eyes burning with seething hatred. Ryu had tried to teach her of the nature of man - that some simply weren't raised right, or didn't have the right guidance when they were young. That to decry people as monsters only denied them any hope of the help they would so critically need to be guided back away from the path they had wandered down. In this moment, however, as she glares back into the face of her killer, she calls bullshit.
There are monsters. She's looking at one right now. Her body trembles, growing weaker at the loss of blood. And with each drop, with each cafefully pained kanji, she becomes more and more convinced that there are some creatures far beyond the point of being human anymore. Monsters. Demons. Horrific errors in human development. If she had it within her, she would reach out and grab his face and unleash /that/ technique directly into his eyesockets. Without hesitation she would open a orafice from hell itself and spew caustic, malefic chi directly into his mug. She had never struck anyone in the face with Maou Satsujinken. And right now one of her fleeting, final thoughts is spent wondering just what it would do were she to.
People like this deserve to die. And she would do it herself if she could. For a moment her teeth grit, fingers clench, but it is a passing folly fueled by anger, a defiant spasm before she becomes completely still. By the time he sends her crashing into the crystaline dragon, sending a thousand sparkling tears into the air at the point of impact, she isn't even aware of anything at all.
Landing, the girl slumps to seated, then simply keels over, lying against the floor admist the ruin of plaster, stucco, glass, crystal, wood, and blood.
There wasn't nothing about Yamazaki's upbringing that particularly bothered him to any great degree. Parents were never there, raised by the street--typical urban brat. Nah, it's everything that happened /after/... now that's where the real fun began. Most people--like Ryu--might try to psychoanalyze Yamazaki, telling him it was his boss dying that made him flip, and that he needs to be gently beaten back into the fold. He needs to be forgiven.
He sucks his teeth, and spits blood to one side.
Fuck that.
Over the years, Yamazaki's learned a few things about power, about fear.
The creature stalks across the light of the doorway, bloodstains soaking his shirt all the way through to his torso. He could smell it clearer than a bell. He slides that free hand into his pocket as his other arm sways loose, hunched over as his oiled and bled combed spikes of blonde hair shine oily in the light.
It isn't always necessarily about respect. Greed is something that Yamazaki guzzled. He knows what he talks about and past a certain point, greed can overcome respect. You think someone's lost it for even a second, the moment you start to think you can predict them--you're gonna go for it. That Shihong Mao thinks she can just utter a couple words about Geese and Yamazaki'll just stand down...
No, it's only when people really got that mortal fear--the idea that you can do anything you damn well please and there isn't a fucking force on this earth that's gonna stop you if you really lose it. Yeah, it's only then when they really start to step shy. Greed'll let em interact with ya. But only just so.
See, /Jiro/ thinks that there won't be any repercussions if he just attacks Yamazaki in the street. Cus of what? He called him a couple names? Flaming queer? Yeah, when you're that young, you got a sense of invincibility. The pointlessness of trying to act like the tough guy hasn't set in yet. "Some fucks just don't know when to let sleeping dogs lie," he mutters absently, as a rogue thought actually occurs to him.
"Guess being special's not really your thing, huh?" he talks to her, as if she can still even hear at all.
First, he beat Jiro until he ran out of quarters.
But nah, if that alone coulda convinced him, Jiro would have known better than to jump him at all in the first place. He didn't really 'get' his place in the world yet. That is, underneath the boot of people like him.
His shoes crunch glass and plaster to powder as he approaches.
He stands over Hotaru's limp form. Yeah, he could smell that hate, even for the one second. That brief wave of shock and indignation that hits all the really rich girls when they start to really bleed. When they realize immortality's not something you can buy. And you know, it wasn't a bad response. Perfectly appropriate, you ask him. Cus while some folks tell you not to be judgmental, the truth was--he picks her up in that one boneless, meaty hand by what's /left/ of her pajamas--the truth was..... Yamazaki wasn't acting out. He wasn't rebelling against the world for taking Daddy away. This ain't Beverly Hills 90210.
His blood is boiling. She'd be really indignant if she could only hear what he was thinking right now. And this time, it wasn't rogue at all.
There's no point, no need for angst here. Yamazaki's just lived long enough to know better. He's /always/ been like this. This is the only way to live. He loves it. For that brief shining moment, he only exists to make you miserable. And over time, he's just gotten better at it..
"Yeah, the first time? That's for that queer fuck. I'm gonna kill him in time, but not til I've had my way with his entire existence." Yamazaki does not forget. "But, see, me and you, darlin'.. we ain't finished yet. Seein as how I'm here and you're--not? I should probably entertain you too. I'm gonna have to show you what it's like to be treated like every other piece of meat out there.." He slams her into the wall. Pinning her there, he takes only a distracted moment to kiss her daintily on the cheek in some bit of rancid humor. Then he gets to work.
Roughly, he works his fingers back into that gaping side wound.
The first time was for Jiro's benefit, for show.
This time, Yamazaki's gonna go for a world record.
She's gonna wish she did vomit earlier.
He whistles a tune. Doobie doobie doo..
A thick silence descends over the ruined estate. The only sound to be heard now is Yamazaki's casual whistling as he worries and gouges at the body of his prey. In the half-lit gloom, the madman looks like some kind of wolverine that's just finished brutalizing a hapless creature and is settling in to its meal. And with the estate abandoned as it is, isolated as it is from the rest of the world, who is there to stop this beast from whatever he intends?
There's something to remember about beasts, however. It's that there's always a hungry killstealer lurking around for every predator that scores a kill. And it's about the same time Yamazaki crushes the last choking cries out of Hotaru that the estate's second trespasser for the evening lets himself in through a third-story window and starts a prowl down the stairs. He's winding his way swiftly down towards the dwindling screams.
K' had intended to make a far more genteel call upon Hotaru-- as genteel as a frantic demand for information in the middle of the night could be-- but the sounds of screams and chaos had put a swift end to any thought of ringing the doorbell. He had made his decision swiftly; he needs Hotaru. He -likes- Hotaru, as much as his bitter cold heart can like anyone. He will not suffer her to be killed.
But when he finally looks out over the handrail, at the top of the stairs, and takes in the destroyed room-- the way Yamazaki mantles over the girl's ruined limp form-- it certainly seems to him that death will find Hotaru unless he acts instantly.
K' freezes. His mind snaps first into stunned dismay, and then into sudden blinding anger at this interference-- at the way Hotaru -looks-. He needs the girl, needs her to find people who can help him overcome the Syndicate forces holding his sister captive. Time is critical. He is not about to lose his sister through her death and his own inaction. Moreover, if he can get Yamazaki here, maybe even -kill- him here, that's one less Syndicate powerhouse he'll have to deal with in trying to retrieve Whip.
And on top of all that? K' really fucking hates Yamazaki. Even more so, now.
The young man detaches from the darkness swathing the top of the stairs, scaling into an agile crouched balance on the handrail and judging the distance. He looks at Hotaru again; at the sight, his hands shut hard on the railing until it splinters. And with the silent, furious loyalty of a dog lunging to avenge one of the only people who's ever been kind to him, K' pushes off in a swift pounce, gravity helping him clear the distance and get up force.
"GET OUT." The enraged howl slashes the air as K' twists sharply, trying to slam a carving kick into Yamazaki's back to send him skidding facefirst to the ground: and then -landing- in a deep crouch with a cruel precision, driving both heels and all his weight towards the spine hard enough to crush even most fighters' backbones. There is nothing remotely conducive to continued life about what he's trying to do; the mental switch of restraint he'd put in place for sanctioned fights, the one that keeps him from simply killing opponents, has been flicked off, the efficient assassin flooding back to the forefront of his mind.
COMBATSYS: K' has joined the fight here.
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Yamazaki 1/--=====/=======|-------\-------\0 K'
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki Toughs Out K''s Spot Pile!!
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Yamazaki 2/<<<<<<</<<<<<<<|==-----\-------\0 K'
What.
The fuck.
It was one moment. Therein, he could almost hear Hotaru's whimpering--he wasn't sure if it was in her subconscious or his, but the pain he could inflict casually, almost boredly to Hotaru was more than enough to give her nightmares fangs for at least a week. The things he indulged in for fun were the kinds of things that would make soldiers faint. But then.. he catches another scent. Familiar--but not in this context.
It was another moment. He could almost roll his eyes as he hears it. An enraged scream of a teenager slamming into the back of his spine with brutal intent to kill almost rivalling his own. "Hoourgh!" It sends the huge mercenary toppling over with his soft charge in tow. No, he's like a pitbull. He doesn't drop her, not while she's like this. The sadomasochist slams into the ground facefirst, chin grinding on all that glass and plaster until his bad eye drains tears. There are four drums to the set--claw hitting the ground, one knee getting underneath him, a body being used as a handrail, and finally one thick-soled shoe slamming into the fractured boards.
Though he can see from both eyes, his vision doubles and blurs as he rises, Hotaru still clamped firmly at the hip in one hand almost larger than her entire torso. His face is a bloody malfigured thing, one eye reptile yellow and slit. For a moment, Yamazaki seems very much the cobra, a boneless thing suspended in the air by forces simply not explainable. Look into his hood.
"... don't know what it is lately ... but people around here just don't know when to mind their own business.." the mercenary growls, gravelly voice echoing off the pretty roof.
His vision turns red.
Yamazaki is calm. Not even bothered at all. "I thought I might've had a shot at the fuck who hit me, but not this late. Kasagi wouldn't even know what to DO with this--" he points out roughly, shaking Hotaru's body at K' like a doll, his fingers still sunk in flesh. He watches, measuring K's weight of attention on her. "...but it's the boss' pet pig instead." The bastard came from the stairs, not the door. "That's more like it. I knew that queer wasn't enough. Shit--if I'd known, I might've went a little harder on her!!"
His pulse quickens.
".... Let me get to the pOInT." He steps forward. "Nobody, not even the boss' pet, fucking tells me what to do. There's a cost for that kinda thing. And you ain't got that kinda money." He grins.
The floorboards start to crack from an unseen force. Pooled blood bubbles.
"You want her?" he snarls.
He bolts forward, FLINGING the body at K', sending Hotaru flying through the air like a soft brick aimed squarely at K's face. In the end, it's just a distraction. Even at the same time as the body flings high, he explodes forward with more animal speed than was ever realized before, the creature careening into ranges of the NESTS assassin--he floods into him, and his arm shoots out like a lightning bolt, fingers aiming to tear through leather and sink into flesh, to grab K' by his fucking /kidney/ and drag his skinny ass over.
"I'LL START A TAB!!"
It was this moment.
You seem to like the subject.
Let's talk a little bit about hate..
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki successfully hits K' with ...!!.
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Yamazaki 0/-------/---====|=======\-------\0 K'
A distraction. Just a distraction.
Absently, he snatches Hotaru out of the air again, teasing K' by snapping her back so quickly you can hear the snap of her wet pink robe. Yeah, give it to him K', HATE him--he's going to have some fun here if it kills all of them. His hand inflicts crushing force on K's innards at about the same time his jaw distends, just shy of unhinging as he sinks incizors and canines into K's shoulder, whipping his head about savagely, as if not intending on stopping until his teeth meet or he tears K' in half at the hip.
One or the other.
He'll pick up and carry the little leather kewpie doll though a $60,000 ming vase on its marble pedestal, trampling it flat. He'll slam him against the wrong side of the staircase until he snaps the bannister into spears and shards, bending K' in a stark L shape over it the wrong way. Then and only then might he rip free--
Only to slam Hotaru into him, like a piece of furniture.
Once. Twice. And again. And again. He'll gnash, and he'll grind, unsatisfied until the scent of her blood sticks to K' for a month--he wants K' to feel that against him, that warm flesh of someone who showed kindness, someone -still alive- but rendered not much more than a handy blunt object with which to batter him. He just keeps. going.
To render him /impotent/ to use any of that savage 'violence' he has in him--HE DOESN'T KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD!!--through pure animal cunning. He doesn't care if he snaps every bone in Hotaru's body getting the point through to K'. He doesn't care if he tears her in half across K's body. His blood is just screaming right now. He's gonna make a point to K' and leave him bleeding in the remains of his own little toy. He wants K' to feel that, and /get/ why he's still just a fucking kid.
Hate him?
Thing about hate is. It's pointless. It means nothing if you can't rise to the occaision, and you can't destroy whatever it is that makes you hate. It's poison.
And Yamazaki is gonna drown K' in it.
Most people would simply /die/ once K' made up his mind they didn't need to exist anymore. But Yamazaki is far, far from being most people.
One vicious grind of his heels and K' knows it isn't enough: he aborts swiftly, cutting off that attempt before it turns into a chance for Yamazaki to seize him. He twists and springs clear in the next moment, moving agilely off and away from the towering madmana, skidding to a halt on all fours-- but rising to a stand in the last moments of his backwards momentum. A snarl seizes his features as Yamazaki talks. Mind his own business? "This IS my business."
He makes no other reply. Yamazaki's taunts, his mocking reference to K' as a pet, his lewd insinuations of why it was K' came down Hotaru's steps at 2 am... none of it seems to register, beyond the focusing effect it all has on the fury blazing alongside the stifled flames in his veins. His expression twitches, however, when Hotaru's thrown. He knows this trick. He USES this trick. And yet--
His eyes flick to Hotaru. He should catch her. If she hits a wall at that speed--
If it weren't for the heavy leather K' wears, he'd have been eviscerated by that first cleaving strike. Choking back a howl, he snaps his teeth together hard to kill the sound as Yamazaki whiplashes Hotaru right back into his grip before K' can grasp her. His jaw grinds painfully as Yamazaki sinks teeth into his shoulder and savages him clear across the room, scattering blood, splitting flesh, rending the young man's body across the walls and floors until the banisters get a fresh new coat of red paint, but he doesn't make another noise. And all the while, all that agonizing pain seizing in K''s mind steadily translates not into fear, but into hatred. Seething, enraged, howling hatred. Far more readily than Hotaru, far more swiftly, and far more virulently, K' grasps onto the hatred in him with both hands and welcomes it in like the old friend it is. It's been a long time.
It takes a bit to filter through his dazed senses. But eventually, one other thing starts to come through the pain. It's the feel of blood... the feel of Hotaru's limp light body moving violently against his. He can taste her blood. He thinks he's going to be tasting it for weeks, a ghost of it left on his tongue long after the blood has gone. If he had time or the brain to devote to the reflex, he'd choke from the feel of it-- her blood invading his senses to a point far beyond easy forgetfulness. Hotaru can't take more of this treatment.
His hands move, abruptly. He shuts his arms around Hotaru when her limp frame comes reeling in once more. Wrenching her away, K' falls back and rolling several feet across the floor with her. The both of them skid to a halt, K' mantled over the broken girl, and he forces himself to push up to one hand to look anxiously down at her face. But there isn't much left to see past all the blood, and he hasn't got time to try and wake her now.
He half-shoves, half-rolls the girl away across the floor with a strangled sound, pushing her out of Yamazaki's immediate range. It looks callous, the motion rough and abrupt, but K' hasn't got the time for care, and he's as gentle with her as he can be given the situation. Dragging himself back to a stand, a bloody hiss seethes past his teeth as he fixes yellow eyes on Yamazaki.
"I'm not here to TELL you what to do," K' growls past a throat full of blood, the scarlet liquid crawling past the vicious sharp white of his snarl. He forces himself to move in the next moment, stalking forward as if he hadn't just been hit by something akin to a freight train, bristling and furious and practically red-eyed with hate. The fire is showing in his eyes. He's forgotten to fear it, to doubt it: forgotten to let it be the master of him, rather than the other way around. "I'm here to MAKE YOU."
He's experienced before what it is Yamazaki can do. He's only half the fighter he would be with his fire. And yet-- on the heels of that typical teenage defiance-- he still bolts forwards to a refrain of crush
He's experienced before what it is Yamazaki can do. He's only half the fighter he would be with his fire. And yet-- on the heels of that typical teenage defiance-- he still bolts forwards to a refrain of crushing glass, moving fast enough his lean figure wavers and briefly smears into a streak of black. Finally leaving the ground in a flickering confusion of a lunge, he attempts to shut his hands in Yamazaki-- /in Yamazaki/, not just in his clothes, or around his arms, but IN the man, trying to claw his hands straight into flesh. Ratcheting himself sharply upwards, he aims to slam a knee up into Yamazaki's throat: hard enough to fold his trachea in half.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki Toughs Out K''s Knee Strike EX!!
[ \\\\\\\\\ < > /////////////////// ]
Yamazaki 0/-------/=======|=======\=------\1 K'
Yeah.
Suck it in.
Yamazaki tries to pound K' flat through the railing with the body of the girl, making pointful use of every upturned artful facet on the chattered columns. Every detail and pointless forged crescent fills with blood, Yamazaki simply loses it, trying to break apart all three at once--K', Hotaru, and the stairs themselves. He feels like he could tear this entire place down and rip it down to the foundations. Arguably, the only thing stopping Yamazaki was the weight of Hotaru's family--this place was built to rock in.
His face is a mask of rage, his lips open in huge gaping arcs, his teeth grinding together in a rictus grin of fury. Dark brows arch high and his bad eye twitches noticeably, bleeding in huge spurts.
When K' latches onto Hotaru, the man almost doesn't even seem to care, from the twist of his bicep telling that he simply wants to lift K' and Hotaru up and smash them both, it doesn't matter. But when K' exerts wrenching force, he scrabbles briefly at her before the slickness of blood finally overcomes his latching fingers, his hand making a grotesque sucking sound as it wrenches from her body.
Yamazaki might have been calm about this only moments prior, but the gangster is well past the boiling point now. He sinks his fingers into the surface of the stairs as K' rolls away, roaring some vile incomprehensible curse they invented in Shanghai about K's mother and six sailors, though given all the clarity of Yamazaki's voice now, the concept is porbably lost in the execution, though certainly some of those folks acres away find the faint incomprehensible noise certainly an interesting topic for late night discussion during Scattergories--
"Oh, you think so!?"
His arm pulses--there's no real other word to describe it, a ripple of strength in transit from his shoulder seizing every fiber in his thick barrel of an arm until bits of bloodied lacquer break up from the stair. He hauls himself up into his full size, stepping with the same motion in pursuit of K', a veritable mountain getting up after him, Hotaru momentarily forgotten as just another corpse--
His sides rip as K' lays into him, his pima cotton muscle shirt becoming pointless as the little black blur grips him by the twisting fibers in his chest. K's knee goes off like a cannon into his throat. His trachea collapses. K' LANDS in him with the full force of his knee, Yamazaki's barrel chest just folding underneath the vicious pinpoint attack. Even kittens can be mean when they're cornered strays. Yamazaki convulses in time and tempo with the move, unable to breathe, his eyes bugging out with the movement.
An /instant/ later, Yamazaki's meaty fists are gonna clamp down on K's temples.
K's indomitable rage. The viciousness of an assassin. You think it's gonna stop him for a minute? Fear and the paralyzing weariness of fatigue just hold no sway over him when he's like this. THere is no chance to stop, no chance to gather yourself. No chance to compose. The creature seems not unhinged at all that he's currently this shy of suffocating--his voice pounding huge drums in his chest to the song of choking and spittle spraying off of the gangster in all directions. His voice will rip free of his throat, in a bloody frothing wave, forcing the collapsed airway open in moments--
And if K' isn't fast, he's liable to get sprayed on while Yamazaki is trying to scream in his face.
"TR--GHRK--GRRHNK--HAA..HARDER!! WHERE'S YOUR FUCKING MITTEN!?"
His skull pumps downward as Yamazaki's full weight drops with the forceful motion. He's gonna try and yank K' up face-first into his dropping forehead, splitting skin against the soft parts of the defiant teenager's face. His head whips back, his hair whipping dirty plastered oil everywhere. Oil that will catch fire when Yamazaki's /skull/ explodes with insane force the second time his skull drops like a sledgehammer, force enough to knock bamboo scrolls off the walls.
211 pounds of rage.
COMBATSYS: K' blocks Yamazaki's Bomb Headbutt.
[ \\\\\\\\ < > ///////////////// ]
Yamazaki 0/-------/-======|=======\==-----\1 K'
K' scales Yamazaki. There's no other way to describe it. In height the two aren't even that dissimilar, the gangster claiming no more than three or four inches on the former assassin-- but in actual SIZE? Yamazaki might as well be a fucking Everest put next to the lean whipcord of a teenager.
Too choked with rage and hate to really register or acknowledge the fear running sick panicked circles in his stomach, K' sinks his claws a little deeper when Yamazaki simply roars through his attack, spraying blood and spit everywhere as he howls that nearly incoherent question. Seized in that iron grip, K' simply sneers straight back into Yamazaki's horrifying ruin of a face, teeth bared in a horrible, mocking snarl. Where's his mitten? WHERE'S HIS -MITTEN-?
"I don't fucking need it," he hisses, his voice stamped through with conviction, even as Yamazaki drags him upwards.
The young man twists suddenly in Yamazaki's grip, slipping free with the deftness of a cat. His arm interposes briefly between his face and Yamazaki's forehead as he escapes, taking all the force of that attack for the space of an instant-- and in the next moment, K' is gone. He sways himself sharply to the right and whips around Yamazaki in one agile movement, swinging up onto the gangster's back like a leopard climbing a cape buffalo. He balances there, high on adrenaline, running on pain, fury, and a hint of crazed fear.
"I don't NEED IT!" he repeats. His right hand claws shudderingly. It pulls back. K' hesitates, old doubts coming back to the surface like drowned corpses-- and then he thinks of Whip. He thinks of how much easier it would be to save her if he killed this monster right here: kept him from going back to stand as an obstacle to her rescue-- or worse, to pay her a visit. He thinks of the time he's wasting here. He thinks of Hotaru, and the way her blood feels drying on his skin.
K' doesn't hesitate anymore. He pierces his half-shut hand forward with a sudden precision, striking with such speed and force he seems to be -aiming- to put a hole straight through that most vulnerable spot in the back of the neck, right at the base of the head. He doesn't hold back. From the way he strikes, he seems to want nothing more than to see Yamazaki impaled on his arm.
And emotion always did resonate strongly with any kind of energy use. Natural, unadulterated synchronicity of pure desire and committed action was always what it took to bring that sort of power out. Some would tell you that, for the sacred Kusanagi fire, that kind of control is the only kind that truly works. But K', at this point in time, would only be able to tell you that-- for a brief instant-- he felt as if every vein in his body ran with fire instead of blood. And it seems almost as if that fire used all he felt as fuel, because in the instant directly after, K' doesn't feel or think a single thing.
His hand is unprotected. There isn't even a glove such as Kyo would wear upon it, to guard it against the flames. And so, when the backed-up flames in him abruptly react and explode off his hand like a bursting dam, K' -howls- a brief, strangled note of pain, agonized by the sudden unexpected burn: but he doesn't stop his strike.
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki endures K''s Heat Drive.
[ \ < > //////////////// ]
Yamazaki 1/-----==/=======|==-----\-------\0 K'
He lands in Yamazaki's neck.
Nothing else that happens before that even matters. Yamazaki almost chuckled at K's insistence. He sure needed Geese's help to make him stronger. This don't seem like the sort of thing the boss would even be teaching. But that's alright. What bothers Yamazaki incrementally more is the fact that K' climbs him too--he's gonna have to fucking grease himself next time--and even more importantly, his hand forever alters the terrain of the back of his neck, Yamazaki's mass shifting as the gangster lights on fire, spraying a typewriter's zig-zag of blood across K' like a kid's super soaker fight.
And when his mass moves, it moves. Stumbling over a table and breaking the thing as he roars blindly to fling it to the side, he /burns/. The oil and grease and blood that the killer is raimented in is just fuel for all that long held mastery and rage, K's fire licking high up into the air of that mansion, pierced through the murderer's worn-out natural force like a pin.
"AAAHHH!! GOD --DAMN-- THAT HURTS!!"
He is tired. Really tired... Yamazaki doesn't really notice it, but burning like he is, enraged like he is, he doesn't make the connections he normally would, connections that would normally prompt him to just leave, like he knows better. But no, the table goes flying and smashes against the wall into splinters and fragments, forcing the mercenary to keep his feet underneath him.
He is /still burning/
He is /still standing/
"IT ALL YOU GOT?! THAT ALL YOU GOT!??!" he shrieks.
Fuck it! He forces it, the will deep in his titan's heart boiling every spare inch of awareness in his body, his vision almost opaque with the red tint now. Clenching his hand into a claw, he forces it. Teeth squealing as enamel grinds, he forces it. Until his skin peels up off his arm, he forces it. Until it tears up his arm, he forces it. He burns, and instead of screaming, or roaring, he fills the area with a high pitched squeal of a different kind; the shrieking dreaded buzz of his own personal drill, whirling about his arm and flaying away tissue, ekeing out small cuts in the floorboards beneath him. Whirling out the fire around his arm.
The boss wouldn't teach the kitten shit like that.
But that's alright. School is now in session.
His vision is dimming rapidly, but he didn't care, as the agony burnt him to a crisp. He didn't need any bloodline, any glove, or any training at all to do what he does. This isn't sacred at all. It's exactly like he says it to be. Yamazaki is himself. And over time.. he's getting better at being him.
Suddenly lucid, the one-eyed gangster laughs cruelly.
/still fucking burning/
"Come on, kid..lemme show ya what ya really need..."
The entire floor shakes when Yamazaki throws himself at K' bodily like a flaming rocket. Like he was never even fighting at all--he is just a missile fired armlong at K', space seeming to just stretch for the kneebreaker alone, a blur of speed that just seems longer and taller than it was before, stretching out to land in--and if K' doesn't move his ass, THROUGH--his midsection. For a brief moment, Yamazaki doesn't even seem to register the grievousness of his exertion and injuries at all. For a moment, Yamazaki is only focused on drilling a hole in K' longer and deeper than Manhattan.
He'll try that.
And then crash into one of the two stairwells, blowing through it and collapsing face-first somewhere within, still and not visibly breathing.
....he's still fucking burning, by the way.
COMBATSYS: K' fails to interrupt Yondan Drill from Yamazaki with Quick Throw.
- Power fail! -
[ \ < > ////// ]
Yamazaki 0/-------/-----==|=======\-------\0 K'
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki successfully hits Yamazaki with Yondan Drill.
[ < > ////// ]
Yamazaki 0/-------/=======|=======\-------\0 K'
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki takes no action.
[ \\\\\\ <
K' 1/-------/=======|
COMBATSYS: Yamazaki can no longer fight.
[ \\\\\\ <
K' 1/-------/=======|
[ \\\\\\ <
K' 1/-------/=======|
COMBATSYS: K' has ended the fight here.
Satisfaction. It blazes through K''s mind, hot and cruel, when he feels his hand sink into flesh. Leaning into the blow even as blood sprays luridly free across his face and chest, the avid cruelty twisting his emotions fuels the brief, white-hot sputtering of flames that gouts about his wrist. It lights the gangster up viciously, eating his skin and flesh away in the blaze. Yeah? It hurts? Good.
Somewhere in the midst of Yamazaki's blind thrashings, K' loses his perch. He doesn't choose to-- he's too drunk on the drawn blood to leave voluntarily-- but he's tossed free nonetheless, his hand ripping free with a disgusting sound and a gout of scarlet. Skidding backwards on the slicked floor, K' circles warily as Yamazaki howls and shrieks, the sudden whine of a drill sawing through the air.
Still infuriated, K' makes the grave mistake of NOT trying to get out of the way. Hissing out a wet growl, he lunges as Yamazaki spears straight towards him-- but the other's momentum is far too great for K' to leverage it in the manner he intends. The drill burrs into flesh with a horrible flesh-rending, bone-grinding sound, causing a catastrophic amount of damage to K''s side in the space of moments. K''s howl cuts halfway through into a scream; the agony of the attack compounds with the burn of his sputtering, dying flames, shocking his system beyond all ability to bite back the instinctive cry of pain.
Gasping a wracked sound, K' tears himself off the drill before he can get carried along with Yamazaki into the ruin of the stairwell. Collapsing a few steps away, he takes a few moments just to -breathe-... and then, he's moving, forcing himself to his feet, stumbling in his own blood-- but standing. He's felt worse. He's recovered from worse. NESTS built him well, for all they decried him as a mistake. He can still go on. Even if it hurts like a -bitch- to do so.
Swaying like a drunk, K' crashes into a nearby window more than he walks towards it, his hand grasping the curtain desperately. None of his injuries are too grievous, all amounting to slashes, blunt trauma, and punctures-- except for that horrible drill wound, an ugly tear blowing away a ragged section of his side. Tearing the curtain from its window, K' binds his wound tight to keep the blood in. Normally he'd burn the injury to stanch the bleeding, but his fire will not return and he does not have the mind to wonder why.
Instead, he turns his attention to Yamazaki. With a massive heave of effort driven primarily by adrenaline, K' tears the gangster's body from where it's fallen, dragging it cruelly across the floor and out the door. Yamazaki is disposed of some distance away outside, thrown out either to live or die; he's too dangerous to be left in the house, and K' foresees himself needing the place clear of rabid threats for at least several hours.
It's with a considerably gentler touch that K' lifts Hotaru's body out of the wreckage in which it lies; but the eyes that look down at her are hard and cold. Part of his mind, the cruel and rational part, screams for him to leave her, that he hasn't got -time- for this with Whip kidnapped; but the rest of him, for some reason he can't articulate (but which, he will soon learn, is called conscience), is unable to just leave her lying here. He imagines Whip's face if she tells her that he left a girl to die. His jaw tightens.
He's not in any condition to go rushing straight off to confront Whip's particular captor, anyway. Oh yes, he knew who it was-- Seishirou had been able to inform him of that much-- and he knows that to go against him now would be suicide. As long as he'd gotten himself into this mess, he would take care of things here.
Eventually, he finds a bathroom in the empty mansion of a house. Laying Hotaru down on the bathmat, he starts tearing through the neat and tidy organization of the bathroom instantly, going through the place like a whirlwind. Towels are dragged out of a closet, soaked, and left to one side. A first aid kit is ferreted out. And then, calmly-- with all t
Eventually, he finds a bathroom in the empty mansion of a house. Laying Hotaru down on the bathmat, he starts tearing through the neat and tidy organization of the bathroom instantly, going through the place like a whirlwind. Towels are dragged out of a closet, soaked, and left to one side. A first aid kit is ferreted out. And then, calmly-- with all the emotion of a surgeon-- K' turns to Hotaru, splashing her face with water, wiping away the excess and washing away the blood. His hands shift downwards, pulling the remnants of the robe out of her open wounds and discarding them. He doesn't even flinch as what's left of the robe comes away; right now, in his eyes, Hotaru is little more than so much flesh to protect from impending infection.
She already didn't weigh much to begin with. And right now, some of her diminutive mass is strewn all over the entryway; kanji in blood on the smashed and burned wooden floor; a pool of crimson seeping outward from where she was lying during the all of few minutes that transpired from the time he wrested her away from that horrific claw and the moment he hefts her from the floor. She's still in his arms. A bloody mess and what skin is visible is pale. She's been pushed to the brink before. But she hasn't had someone twisting his talons into her abdomen and tote her around by her guts before. Or use her as a bludgeoning weapon, whipping her unconscious body around while her muscles are limp and not supporting her twisted limbs.
Without help, without some kind of intervention, there is little chance of her surviving. Even with a constitution strengthened by years of training and recovering from harsh fights time and time again, there are limits. And right now, she's well past them. To abandon the girl now would be to leave her to die. There is that sickening question of what staying with her means for his sister, however. Given his condition, and the menace that waits for him back where Whip is held, he might not have a choice /now/.
He had a choice earlier when he jumped in though. A choice to save the girl from the clutches of a predator. Someone who has no knowledge of currents in motion being torn apart by a monster of the very Syndicate that K' has been working for - he had a choice to make and in that moment, forged this path that brings him to carrying the girl all about her excessively oversized house.
All those rooms aren't doing her the slightest bit of good. Each floor seems to have a kitchen even though the only one that's seen use in the last five years is on the main floor. Walk in closets, dens, an indoor gym, a library... at last a bathroom. Spacious, the entire room covered in white tiles with white grout, there's plenty of floor space for the young man to lower Hotaru and begin tending to her. The cupboards beneath the double-length sink - faucets and handles trimmed with real gold - are full of towels of all sizes and colors and they all come piling out as he tears into the stacks.
A red plastic box presents the first kit he sought, tucked to one side of the under-sink storage space. A house full of martial artists pretty much necessitated a number of those kits to be tucked here and there. The water he splashes over her face pours down rivulets, spreading over the white tiles in pools of expanding pink. The nose bleed has stopped, and and as he explores the injuries along her body, digging the pink, obliterated cloth free or exploring where the rent blue cotton fabric pajamas cover some wounds, he'll find that most of them are the types of abrasions one would expect to find from high-impact, concussive force. The ring around her neck, where she was nearly hung to death, doesn't appear to be bleeding either though the bruising around it is none too pleasant.
But no, the real problem is that gaping hole in her side, just above her hip. Brushing aside pink, bloody ribbons will even expose a glimmer of white pelvic bone. His initial care tenders no result. The girl's lungs are operational as she is breathing so very softly. But beyond that, the ex-NESTs experiment is given little in the way of results for his effort.
When she comes to it is hardly a gentle process. No slow opening of her eyes, no deep breath taken as if awakening from a deep sleep. No, the girl awakes violently. A gasp, eyes opening suddenly, a sharp, short, gurgling scream that gets cut off almost instantly as Hotaru rolls onto her side, curling up, dry heaving bloody bile onto the side of the mat. Her insides feel twisted up, her head pounding like someone was actively jackhammering her temples, and her vision, for the brief moments she can keep her eyes open, merely spins in a constant blur.
But she doesn't just lie there, rolling right back the other way, one arm wiping across her mouth, her other arm flailing at the air as if to defend herself from an unseen assailant. Fingers seek to grasp hold of some part of the person next to her. She can't make out the details, but even a silhouette seen through mists of red is more than enough to know that the person next to her isn't the killer that had his hand shoved into her side.
"Hurry," she whispers, weakly but ugently, "We have to make it to the-" Hotaru coughs, curling up again, her hand dropping back to the floor, "We have to hide..." she murmurs, eyes half-lidded, focused on nothing as she looks ready to just roll back onto her back and fall asleep again. "...panic room. Before /he/ finds you... the demon..." She doesn't pass out though, her breathing rough, wet, sickly sounding. But she doesn't say anything else for a long moment, simply staring straight up, unseeing, as her hand lifts up to explore her damaged body, fingers drawing near to the hole in her side before resting at the edge of it. As her fingers trace the edge of the wound, images flash into her mind.
Pictures of her blood, spilt carefully to spell out words across the floor. The sensation of feeling so very tired, of being ready to give up. The scent of burning flesh and of voices roaring as a battle was wrought between an angel of fire and a devil of poison in the distorted dreamscape of her blood-starved mind. Her hand recoils, not probbing the wound, her breath taken in for a moment of further thought before at last she whispers, "K- K?"
at the beginning of stuff that's supposed to have a newline at the beginning of it and let fly"
at the end, then another sp to start the second pose."
It's at the back of his mind. The choice he'd made to get himself involved here at all. Sure, he had wanted to use Hotaru to help him in saving Whip. Sure, losing her would have fouled his plans a little. But in the end, the girl's help had been something he could take or leave.
Nonetheless, at the time he'd first looked in, the plan he'd hatched that included Hotaru was so fixed in his mind that seeing it threatened had sent him into a panic. He hadn't stopped to think. He'd simply attacked. Perhaps it'll turn out to be a mistake, yet.
But none of that matters now. What's done is done. Now, K' simply works with a rapid, practiced efficiency, not thinking about anything but the ministrations Whip would want him to give. Stripping the shredded robe away, leaving the thin blue cotton beneath largely untouched, he cleans Hotaru up for a closer inspection. He touches the strangle mark corded about her throat critically, judges it of no immediate concern, and moves on down from there. Most of the injuries are internal, but mercifully what's broken inside her doesn't seem to have pierced through the skin. She'll live, as long as he does something about that ugly wound above her hip-- and as long as he keeps her from going into hypovolaemic shock.
Turning Hotaru on the bathmat, he swiftly elevates her lower body to help drain what's left of her blood to her heart. Opening a bottle of disinfectant, he splashes it into Hotaru's injury, washing it clean. Gauze goes in instantly once the area is prepped, packed to stanch the bleeding and encourage clotting. He leaves it be a moment, to let natural coagulants work, and sees to stabilizing the rest of her... resetting what bones he can, and cleaning the slashes left by Yamazaki's claws. He returns to the hole in a few moments to layer in more gauze, and while he's at it he thanks God he's got the full use of both hands. Even if shedding the glove seems to have cost him his flames.
It's not until that preliminary care's rendered that he pays a little attention to himself. None of his bones were broken this time by some miracle, but he just knows he's going to be nothing but one big bruise in a couple of a hours. Unwrapping the curtain holding the blood in his torn side, he grimaces as blood and God knows what else splashes out against the tile. Quickly washing his hands and stripping his jacket and shirt off, he cleans out the slashes along his stomach... and then, he cleans the ugly wound in his side. It's not a hole like Hotaru's-- more like a chunk taken out of his side-- but that's only because K' ripped himself off the drill once it'd gone into him.
He packs it with gauze, and is in the middle of winding tight bandages about his torso when Hotaru suddenly comes to. K' looks up, regarding the girl with a narrow-eyed look, as she rolls to her side and tries her best to be sick. He watches her in silence, making sure she doesn't choke, but does nothing else to try to reassure or help her. Her hand suddenly flops out, grasping towards him; it drops onto his knee, and clutches onto it. K' still doesn't move.
It's not until she speaks that he slowly finishes bandaging his side. Leaning forward, his hand shuts around her wrist, and he guides her grasping fingertips away from her injury. "No need to hide," he finally rasps in his rough growl of a voice, his tones even harsher now after having expressed nothing but utter enraged hate for the past ten minutes. "He's gone. I fought him--" He pauses.
He thinks back to the ravaged look of Yamazaki: the extensive burns, the heavy injuries... the horrible ruin of his neck and throat, where K' had struck twice with full intent to kill. The way the gangster wasn't even -breathing- when he threw him out. He hadn't been certain then, still high-strung and nervous enough to think the monster might rise from the dead, but-- "...I killed him." Best to set her mind at ease.
He pulls away, sitting back impassively as she regains her senses. She recognizes him, and he essays a slow nod. "Yeah. It's me." He's silent a few moments after that statement, toying with the roll of bandages in a right hand that revels in its newfound dexterity. He doesn't seem to know what else to say. "I need to bandage you," he eventually settles for warning, before he reaches forward.
Shifting in his seat on the cold tiles, he pulls Hotaru's upper body into his lap, leaving her legs raised up on the bathtub rim to help her failing circulation. The reasoning is twofold: one, it makes it easier for him to wind the bandages if she's off the ground; two, Hotaru needs to be kept warm to forestall life-threatening shock, and K' is the warmest thing in the room right now. Yanking his jacket back and wrapping it around Hotaru's shoulders and chest to hold in some heat, he then reaches down to tug what's left of her light shirt up just a few inches. He needs some room to work.
Every move of hers is feeble; a cruel mockery of the agile, graceful girl she normally is. A trembling arm finds itself guided away from the packed injury in her side. Her skin on the surface is cool to the touch except near her wounds where the steady gathering of blood brings with it much of her body's fleeting warmth. At first his words go unrecognized. Eyes shift rapidly across the ceiling, replaying things in her mind, her vision providing her with nothing to make sense of what is happening.
But when he says he killed him, the damaged girl calms visibly, shoulders dropping flat against the red-stained floormat, a soft exhale escaping her lips. Those who only know Hotaru from the television, where she's garnered a reputation for being patient, level headed (Outside of a span of a few months many fans are still trying to make any sense of), might expect her to be mortified. She's cast as the ever-nice, eternally-kind, self-sacrificing gentle girl. Advertisers play her up that way and entire SNF matches have been designed with her demeanor in mind.
But as she exhales, taking in K''s words, staying silent as he confirms the identity she had surmised through frazzled thoughts, her mouth closes into a tight-lipped expression, eyes closing again. "Good." Something that vile, that deranged and evil just doesn't deserve anything but to be given the ultimate punishment - to have its life taken so that everyone else may stay safe. K' is a hero in her mind. Not just for saving her - that part is still sinking in, gratitude welling up gradually - but for ridding the world of that monster. "...good." she whispers again, calmer, her voice softer now.
He warns that he needs to move bandage her and her heavy eyelids blink open again, this time actually glancing to the side without moving her head, searching for a moment before coming to rest on the young man. She's quiet, having nothing to say, no opinion regarding what he needs to do as he gently pulls her shoulders up onto his lap. She gasps, wincing visibly as she's moved, hissing as the wound in her side is troubled. But she doesn't voice any complaint, rather compliant with her lack of struggle or recoiling.
A shiver courses over her and one hand reaches up to shift his jacket over her shoulders a little further, but otherwise she provides no obsticle to his medical ministrations. For a moment she glances down at her tummy, getting a glimpse at what K' is tending to there, but she looks away quickly. She seems content to just stare at her bare feet sticking up from resting atop the edge of the marble bathtub. After a while, however, she rolls her eyes up to take a look at K', turning her head a little when peripheral vision doesn't suffice. "Thank you..." Her eyes stray over his own signs of injury.
He saved her. She barely remembers anything. It's all a blur. Being hurled around. Smashed against the floor. Choked. And then having that hand moving around in her abdomen. The rescue wasn't easy if what she can discern is anywhere near as bad as it /looks/. She only wonders why or how he is here for a fleeting instant. It doesn't really matter how. Only that it happened. She bites her lip at something he does, looking away, staring back at the tub, not even conscious of the tears rolling down her cheeks - something she would stop had she the power to do so.
She's still alive. Her purpose not lost, her goals still out there waiting to be reached. It may not have been her own abilities that made this possible, but it's going to be up to her resolve to recover from it. "A-are you going to be okay?" She didn't miss the fact that it seems her own curtains are helping K' out with a messy wound of his own. What unfathomably horrifying attack did /that/ to him she doesn't want to know.
K' doesn't seem surprised or disapproving of Hotaru's gladness over Yamazaki's 'death.' He liked her all the better for feeling that way. There had always been a distinct edge to the girl, hidden beneath the gentle surface but visible to those who cared to look, and that glint of steel had caught K''s attention early on enough that he didn't simply write Hotaru off as yet another nauseatingly stupid girl, prancing and playing at fighting in the spotlights of commercialized violence.
She's in those lights for many of the same reasons as he is. She struggles with some of the same things he does. And for that, she eventually managed to win his grudging respect. But old habits die hard, and because of them K' still paused to deliberate with himself when it came to Hotaru's life. He was never a heroic sort. Never the type who would rush in if there was more risk of loss than gain. And certainly not a young man guided by a distinct idea of things that are -right- and things that are -wrong-.
It's progress enough for him, really, that his deliberations in this instance were very short. It's a good sign for him that it didn't take much for him to want to defend her-- this girl who was one of the first people to ever touch or speak to him kindly. And though this might turn out to be a mistake in the end, with Whip kidnapped and her life on the line... K' can't bear the thought of her face if he rescues her only to tell her he turned his back on Hotaru.
None of this makes him any better at being personable, however. He holds his silence as he works, letting her relief sigh out into the air as he works her into his lap and starts binding her wound. His eyes don't avert from the careful work until Hotaru suddenly turns her head, tilting it to look up at him. His glance flickers to hers briefly, yellow eyes watching hers with all the emotiveness of a hawk as she thanks him.
K' looks at her a few moments longer. Then, his eyes shift back to her wound. Grunting a noncommittal, wordless reply to her gratitude, not seeming to know how else to take it, he focuses on the work of his hands instead of her. When he speaks, it's as sudden, dry, and awkward as a beam falling in a dusty attic. "I didn't like that fuck anyway," he gravels, as he draws the first bandage tight.
He makes no mention, for the time being, of why he came here in the first place. His mind is working away at his original problem even as he binds Hotaru up-- even as her tears start dampening his dark jeans. With Yamazaki out, that leaves Kane and Big as the last real threats still hanging around Southtown-- and Kane, it's rumored, hasn't even been in town the past few weeks. If it's just Big, he might be able to get Whip back alone. He might not need to get ahold of Chun-Li, like he'd intended by coming here. It's not like he'd have to fight through the Tower, after all: or wherever it is Whip's held. Nobody in the Syndicate'd think to stop Geese's little pet from poking his head in to have a look at the captive. Just about nobody in the Syndicate COULD stop him.
Hotaru moves in his lap again, slumping back down and turning her eyes away from his injuries. K' switches his glance back to her eyes, pulled out of his thoughts, when she asks if he'll be OK. Almost carelessly, he lifts a shoulder in a dismissive shrug. "Yeah. I've felt worse." And if Hotaru needs any proof of the truth of that statement, she need only look at the veritable -network- of scars carved across his torso. There isn't a lot left of K' that hasn't been torn open and healed back up again at some point or another.
% "/You/. You need a hospital, though. Called an ambulance out here already." His tone turns sharp, but only in the wry, brutally-honest sense of a playing cat's claws. He's being very candid with her. "I haven't got all night here. I came for a reason. And that reason can't wait."
Few could see it - that edge, that muted fire that would spark when she felt like she was getting stepped on or over, ignored, or mistreated. That hint of ire, a touch of deeply rooted, unshakeable resolve, that forced her to push herself harder and harder, never relaxing her training, never stopping to study every aspect of her art. At one time, it pushed her over the edge but she's changed a lot since then. Even now having forgotten that moment of raw hatred she felt for Yamazaki in the final, fleeting moments of consciousness. It will come to her again later, when she regretfully thinks back on the entire encounter, probably while recovering in a hospital bed, having little else to occupy her thoughts... But for now, she's calm, which is good, given her condition, K''s assurances that he killed the monster enough for the time being.
His grunt of acknowledgement to her thanks is sufficient, the girl looking like she wants to smile as he explains away his decision to act, "Friend of yours?" she asks. There's a touch of humor in her voice that struggles to be heard in her strained tone. But there's something else too. Something that hints that she's asking for real. Asking if K' knew who that was because she sure didn't.
She grunts a little as he binds her wounds, blinking her eyes as she tries to force away the tears that refuse to be so easily stopped. She can't help but keep picturing the assault over and over in her mind. Only when she manages to glance weakly at the young man tending to her does she put it out of her mind for a brief moment. She looks up again as he shrugs, vision blurry at first but settling slowly, this time on the matrix of old wounds. "Hn..." she muses, one eye narrowing, her hand slipping up from under his jacket to poke at an unscarred point at his side before retracting back beneath the leather 'shawl'. "Missed a spot." This time that subtle smile of hers makes it to the surface before fading fast as she looks away, too weak to keep her head turned up.
She can't argue with the need for professional medical treatment. He's patched her up, but for the cavern clawed into her side she needs surgury. She would nod if she didn't think it would hurt too much. Instead she speaks, keeping her motion minimalist. "What do you need?" She doesn't sound hurt or offended that he came for something. If she gave it some good thought, she'd realize that there's almost no reason for him to have been there to intervene in the first place.
"Friend?" K''s ministrations slow perceptibly, the boy surprised by the question. Surprised in the way most poeple are when they are asked something that is so critically unthinkable as to take several seconds to sink in. His eyes half-lidding, he doesn't reply for a few moments; and then his head cants sardonically to one side, a breathy chuckle sighing out of him. The sound is without warmth or humor.
"Mn... I knew who he was. Had to 'interact' with him a couple times." The quotes around that word are blatantly audible. "And because I knew him..." K' leans over Hotaru a little to wind a bandage under her, a faintly unpleasant laugh rasping in his throat. "...once I get done here, I'm gonna go back out where I left him and ram something sharp through his eye. Just to make sure."
Finishing off his binding, K' leans back out from over her again. Once he's not obstructing the light, it comes flooding back down in Hotaru's face. It might make it hard to see the cold amusement still lingering in the young man's expression, which is probably just as well. "Besides. He can't tell on me if he's dead."
Flicking away the roll of bandages with a toss of his wrist, K' turns back to check his work... and pauses when he feels her touch his side. He stiffens instantly, tensing in a guarded sort of way, and it isn't until Hotaru makes that little quip that he relaxes. Over his short life, nobody ever touched him unless it was to hurt him; and now, when he's finally starting to get close to people who touch out of affection or love, he's finding it hard to turn off the automatic instinct to defend himself.
He looks down at the spot she touched. It's one of the last parts of him that isn't marked by the violence for which he was built. "...something'll get it. Sooner or later," is his dour response, before he eases Hotaru out of his lap and pushes back to a stand with a quiet grunt of pain. Pulling his jacket off her, he wraps her up in a couple towels instead, his hands moving at a swift and businesslike clip. The ambulance should be here any minute now, and he has no intentions of being around when they arrive.
He's just about done when she finally breaks the silence to ask what it was he wanted. He pauses in the middle of balling up his ruined shirt, thinking over the question in silence. "...I was gonna ask how I could find Chun-Li. Or somebody like her. Figured you're better keeping in touch with people than I am." A lean shoulder lifts in a shrug. "Might not matter anymore. But there's somebody I need to get back, and--" This part is painful to admit. Forcing himself to say he might not be enough is too hard... so, naturally, he rephrases. "...I thought it might be best to get somebody else in just to make sure it goes smooth."
She doesn't seem surprised that K' knew who Yamazaki was. Though, really, she doesn't seem much of anything right now. The girl is clinging to consciousness; she's not a healthy color right now and her eyelids seem perpetually heavy. "Nn," comes her neutral response. Who K' knows, given his background... there's just nothing to be surprised about there. She has no idea what circles he exists within. She will probably think on it later.
She musters a nod when he talks about going back outside to finish the job for sure. It's a good thought. It probably isn't going to change the fact that for the forseeable future she'll be sleeping IN the panic room tucked behind a hidden door within the mansion - a steel safe with its own air circulation, food supply, and amenities. Even if K' sticks a stake through the demon's eye, she won't feel safe in her own home for a long time. No doubt nightmares haunted by stick-eye Yamazaki's will be on her mind now as she starts to drift in her thoughts.
Her interaction with his tiny scar-free zone keeps her awake for a while longer though, and his retort brings a soft grunt of amusement that would probably have been a short laugh or giggle were she in better condition. Shifted out of his lap, the girl exhales softly, lying still as he wraps her up in the towels. But she forces herself to stay awake, shivering for that brief time in which her shoulders are uncovered. She can tell he's itching to leave. Something important must really be weighing on his mind.
'Somebody'. She rolls her eyes over to him at his broken sentence, staring up from the floor, bringing her arm up to rest across her torso.
She blinks thoughtfully as his awkward request for help is presented. Chun-Li. She actually kind of just LOOKS at K' as he speaks the name. As if the fact that he KNOWS the Tai Chi master is just so very hard to digest properly. He wants to find /CHUN-LI/. Whatever he needs to go do is serious business then. And he's not dropping details. He might wonder if his request even registered with how quiet the young martial artist is for the longest while.
Slowly she exhales, "I wish I could help more," she states quietly, turning her head to look around the bathroom. Given that there's several bathrooms in the house, she needs to identify exactly which one they're in so that she can give directions. The white color scheme and style of cabinets narrows it down for her. "Make a left into the hall. Three doors on the right is my bedroom." She exhales again, closing her eyes, clearly starting to drift. "...my desk. Cell phone there. Take it. Security lock is..."
Her other arm comes up, resting across her eyes. How she just wants to go to sleep. But K' needs her. "Eight, three, two... four..." She falls quiet then, her breaths coming slower, more steady, but her body perfectly still. Truth be told, she isn't really sure if the number she has in her contact list WORKS. It's not like she had ever called the Strongest Woman in the World that she idolized so. But there is a number she had added in a fit of fangirlish amusement when coming across it in one of the YFCC's databases.
"... be careful." her soft voice comes after a moment. Not so asleep after all. Not yet anyway. "... don't need more scars." Her mouth curls just a little, her arm remaining over her eyes as she starts to lose her focus to an excruciating headache.
K' hasn't even fully disclosed the exact kinds of circles he moves in to his own blood sister. It's no surprise he isn't exactly forthcoming to Hotaru that his life is an odd juxtaposition of the altruism of the YFCC and the utter amorality of the Syndicate.
He certainly doesn't tell her the exact circumstances under which he knows Chun-Li, either. Not a good idea to tell Hotaru that he met Chun-Li while violently stopping her efforts to halt a drug deal... even if Hotaru continues to be surprisingly copacetic with K''s casual ruminations on cold-blooded murder.
Looking at her, though, it's easy to see why she wouldn't be too troubled at the thought of Yamazaki being extra-dead. She's so badly ravaged even K' feels a little bit of pity for her state. Standing up after he's finished wrapping Hotaru to keep her warm, shoving the open first aid kit away with a careless heel, K' falls into a restless pace around the bathroom, his tall figure prowling back and forth at the edges of her sight. Three... two... one...
The sound of sirens hits his senses. K' exhales a breath.
Twisting smoothly and doubling back to Hotaru's side, the young man kneels down next to her. "Don't go to sleep," he warns lowly, giving her a last parting order. She tells him to be careful, but the only real responses she gets to -that- are a cocky smirk and a short, "Yeah? Well, stay awake. -You- don't need to be dead. It'd be rude after the work I put in." His smirk widens.
He straightens up, throwing his jacket and ruined shirt over a shoulder, and heads for the door. For a few minutes, it seems that's all the words he'll leave her with, even after all he's done for her tonight. But when he's halfway out into the hall, he suddenly, unexpectedly adds coolly: "Of course I'll be careful." And then he's gone.
The paramedics are already swarming the place, shouting to one another once they find the injured girl, when K' steps into Hotaru's bedroom and finds her phone. He flips it open with a flick of the wrist, probably intending to just take the relevant number and leave... but the sound of rushing steps approaching distracts him. He turns an alert gaze towards the door, listening like a deer, and then crosses swiftly to the window, yanking it open and slipping out.
Landing quietly in the backyard, K' quickly vanishes into the dark. He's going to find Yamazaki, drag him where no paramedic will ever find him, and then kill him -again- just to be sure... and then, he'll move on. He has a vigilante to call on.
Log created on 00:42:15 09/26/2008 by Yamazaki, and last modified on 00:59:58 10/09/2008.