Description: A chance meeting in the present between ghosts of revolution future and past. The Devil of Koga and The Scion of Ryouhara meet once more in the shadows of war. What propositions do the two have for one another? And what is this new player in the form of Nakatani Suzume? What great power does this secretive, frigid woman hold over the fiery Ryouhara? And what does this power awaken within Marise?
White walls. A clean black board. Desks in neat rows. A shelf of books containing the committee agreed upon truths of the world.
So this is where mediocrity begins.
The cost-efficient fluorescent ceiling lights remain dark. The murky, soulless room illuminated only by the windows lining the far wall away from the door. One window long since boarded shut - A casualty of a stray hardball from the school grounds below and the poor school budget could not afford repairs this semester. Another window yields a series of spider-webbing cracks and a red stain.. Yet to be cleaned. Several of the desks remain over-turned, notebooks and book-bags scattered over the floor. Reminders of a chaos that occurred not long ago. The screams and gunfire can almost be heard even still, if one listens long and hard enough.
The silence here is profound, but not perfect. The NESTs and Shadaloo machines of war parade nearby. The grounds below converted into a mustering field. The lower rooms have been converted into munitions depots and barracks. The hallways just outside the door echo with distant marching footfalls and barked orders. Of technology and steel.
But even these militant voices are quiet compared to the sounds that filled these halls nearly a month ago. Teenagers chatting amongst themselves. Bragging. Joking. Flirting. Poor and tough children they might be, hardened by ruthless streets.. But children none the less.
Now, this class room is a mausoleum. A grim testament to the macabre silence in the aftermath of war. A Devil's wake.
It is in a gruesome place such as this, that the Devil of Koga can find peace.
The dark creature looms before the window. Her back to the rows of tombstone-desks behind her. For long hours she watched the congress of forces below, performing their modern tribal war-dance in practiced sequences. Now her eyes are closed. Somber face obscured in shadows with her hands ensconced within the sleeves of her dark kimono. Head tilted as if focusing on a distant, faint music. Basking in this morbid silence.
Blessed silence.
Shadows and ash are the Devil's trade, but silence is her reward. Her quest. Her master. She serves it as much as it serves her. Vastly different from the horror of the timeless dark she was once banished to, this quiet represents tranquility. Balance.
Justice.
Few moments are as satisfying to Marise as the solemnity of death's aftermath. From the bloodied rivers and burning houses of Manchuria to the ruined beaches of Iwo Jima. Recently the savage jungles of Thailand and now.. The shattered world of Gedo High. The Devil basked in this triumphant quietude. A meditation born from the dissolution of the fearful, the weak, or those who think themselves righteous.
This is the hour of reckoning. Marise knows. Though it may have been decades in the making - the torch of conquest carried by those not of high blood - But finally, a blow has been struck. Against those who would put the soul of this great nation under its yolk. Against those who would shackle their betters beneath their so-called civilization.
At last. The great war has come again.
He would feel some pity for the routed students of Gedo High. He would feel it for those children who had been beaten in their own school and mourn their broken bodies, as they lay on the smooth steppe before the great mountain that is the Syndicate on the plains. In some fashions, they were a victim of circumstance. As is anything concerning the Syndicate--in the wrong place at the wrong time. He would feel remorse for these children.
But ambition--and the strength borne by the students here--was their own undoing. Their strength, or lack thereof. Ambition and sacrifice go hand in hand, and though that young man Ryouhara feels the slightest touch of annoyance at the little ants crawling all over his country, he does not mourn those who went before.
If they are remembered by their own, it is enough, and he is here for another reason.
Though jury-rigged technology limns the halls like creeping vegetation, and the sound of bootfall finds its way to every wall of the school, it seems only quiant in the face of ninjutsu. The passage of a breeze, faint and uncomfortably hot even in the air conditioned expanse of the halls, is barely detectable by soldier and electronica alike. The sweep of each camera, the wax and wane of attention in each soldier is noted, jotted down in some mnemonic that commits the knowledge to memory.
Angry red lines creep over the chalkboard in the secluded classroom, twisting off and wilting the paint around it in darkening cracks, rendering green into a luminescent emerald around the incursion zone, like a long parched wound. The lines curve around the chalkboard in paranoid circular patterns, steaming lines revealing terse targetting grids and seals as in the center, the largest circle completes its path--entitling to the board a set of three swirling leaves in the wind.
Ryouhara does not so much walk through the wall as melt through it.
He lands as if he has flown all his life, his body only becoming truly distinct in that landing, the white sleeves of his haori draping behind him as if the wings of a dove. He lands, and his arms go slack, still committing to memory various bits of data. But he is silent, the only true 'activity' about the boy evident from the way his eyes snap from desk to desk, the ruined landscape parsed neatly and methodically for threats, a score of which he has disabled already in his search of the area.
This was a seldom used zone of the school, which would be perfect for setting up his tactical jutsu without risking discovery. But unfortunately, it would seem it is seldom but yet still used.
He is forced to look up.
An interest then, that the sharp eyes of the ninja engineer settle on the only other present here.
The Devil of Koga across the ways looked upon by the last ghost of the Ryouhara. Imagine then to be looked upon as if he'd found a vaguely interesting detail in the rough and dust of the after mayhem. For Ryouhara, there is no justice present here except the length of steel at his back. Even that does not hitch from sheath. He stands across from the window without ever really truly 'moving' from his landing point.
His voice, calm and level, fills the space.
"A lone kunoichi without a crowd is exposed," he points out.
A warmth transpires in the still air.
Though the presence of this intruder is too subtle for the distracted, belligerent forces arrayed within the former school grounds to distinguish - For those attuned to such things, it is a calling card as clear as day. It is not unlike the Devil's own spiritual mien, only diametric in opposition. A disquieting heat, compared to her sobering chill. A heightened awareness, opposed to her gloomy serenity. Even before those incriminating brands carve the intruder's path of ingress - The Devil fully knows who graces her with his regal seeming.
He is curiously late to this party.
The Devil does not rouse from her saturnine vigil. A more polar opposite of her reacquainted beholder could not be imagined. As pristine and white as his haori shines.. Her Kimono is black as pitch. A force of heat and light, motion and energy. An object of cold and dark, silence and oblivion.
Little wonder they keep tripping over each other regularly.
"A lone shinobi with hesitation has failed." She replies.
Only then does Marise display a sign of life. Turning slowly, degrees at a time. Her ebon silks disturbed not at all by her ethereal grace, "Ryou..Hara.." The name repeated slowly for flavor, tasting every syllable with her tongue. Familiar golden eyes catching the toothsome young man with a surreptitious side-long glance. Plush, violet lips pulling into a coy smile, "I was beginning to think you weren't coming.."
Finally. The missing player shows himself at last. Everyone on the board had all been accounted for.. Save one.
Her inhuman gaze continues to the seared portal beyond the poised scion. Eyebrows lifting in unspoken appreciation of this spectacle. ... He certainly does know how to make an entrance.
"Come to offer allegiance.. I wonder?" The Devil's purring tone clearly pleased at this turn of events. After all.. Why else would he be here? Surely he, of ALL people, would be taking advantage of this unfolding splendor?
In the past they have been enemies, but the Devil is not concerned about such transient matters as those. Though, Marise would admit, he did not expect him to cross paths with her in such a direct manner.
No.. This must be an accidental occurrence. A chance encounter.
There's serendipity again. She's been kind to the Devil of late.
GLaDOS says, ""
To refer to him as regal would be a task in nihil. A matter of court hilarity. As far the boy was concerned, there is no such thing in this world anymore, princes and lineages long since gone the way of taint and sequester. If he stands tall and bright in the room, the eye of history's dissent, it is only from pride, from familial piety.
There shall never be any surrender.
A heartbeat passes as Marise responds, gentle and keen as always with that sbutlest of observations in the noblest of breathes. The Devil riles her nation's ghosts, and nonexistent though he is, silks wind through the air in feverish knots as he closes space with the inhumanly graceful kunoichi. Each step seems a heated thing, slag trailing from the methodic shift of his hip to vaporize in the warped and distorted air that follows him.
It seems a touch hotter around the two of them, dichotomous as they may be.
You know, they used to burn witches at the stake.
"Allegiance..?" he asks finally, though as the words pass his lips one can read from his lightly hooded eyes and the bored tilt in his voice the question is more voiced for the sake of Seishirou's own temperance than any real need for an answer.
He comes close enough to hear Marise if she were to care to whisper to him again what she said. But no move is made for her, the constant brimming of heated derision about him making him seem as always to walk in danger's shadow. He merely looks over Marise once and twice, his lip tilting in a sly smirk that -- by his own wish -- betrays his hand. "What point is there in that?" he asks.
"I've got better things to do."
Against her rasping purr, Seishirou's matter of fact statements are silken smooth, a bedroom drapery hiding the razor behind it. Though she speaks against him, from the subtly lazy shift of his idle and gait, it's truly hard to see how much the boy is even affected by it. He'd calculated the likelihood of her surviving her so-called death at the hands of that alliance so long ago. Is there any less reason to suspect that he's done the same here? Thoughtfully, he looks up, inky bangs of tousled hair framing the deadly look in his eyes just so. Inhuman eyes though she may have..
He seems relaxed, but there is always that look in his eye. Something that's never really truly going to relax, something constantly at war. That is beyond Marise or her comment. That drive of his.. Is he late? Hardly. He was at war long before this misbegotten coup was ever ceonceived.
"You above all should know what happens when you don't burn the forest. Did you imagine it'd be any different? That we'd fall in line with the highest bid? Brought in by vagaries of triumph and enchanting intentions to topple that criminal empire? ... tch."
The half dried crimson on the nearby window pane begins to pop and boil.
"... not that easy.
The question was, of course, rhetorical. Not precisely comedy but definitely not what most would intepret the words to mean. Face value has no meaning amongst their kind. However, the maiden was curious to see just what reaction he would have to such an outrageous thing.
That his reply was predictable is almost disappointing. Almost.
As the equally tall invisible warrior approaches the woman she does not back down nor flinch. The contrary, she steps towards him. A single step to bring them perhaps a bit closer than the young man would otherwise intend. Milky hands fall from her sleeves, a graceful movement as they hang loosely at her sides. A hip shifting with subtle weight, a shoulder curved just so. Boldly those striking eyes scan downwards, taking in the fullness of his symmetry with unabashed appraisal.
An approving purr escapes her lips of darkest mauve, "So abrupt. So uncompromising.. You are indeed Hiretsu's grandson.. Yess.." The corners of her mouth pull upwards, followed by her chin as she spies him askance. Monstrous eyes half-lidded, "Your grandfather was a dashing man.. You know.."
She need not voice the implications of that association.
Unquestionably, she is relaxed now. In some ways, the moment of greatest caution has played out. Seishirou is not a man who suffers indecision. Had he intended to strike her down, she would be struck. Her counter movement would be engaged. And curiously enough.. Their mutual tone would change not at all.
"Pish posh." The Devil replies to Seishirou's precise rebuke. Her gaze unendingly searching his own, visible attempts to peel back behind those lenses and see what may be stirring. Fascinated with the nothingness there. Always enticing to speak with a man whom was dead before he was born. Such fatalism is common amongst men of action such as he ... But rarely so earnest.
It may be a useless gesture, but Marise sometimes enjoys useless things. Though the young may not appreciate the rote vulgarities of play, but one finds pleasure where one can. Most especially during business. Regardless, she fabricates a lighter tone as she adds, "The forest is refuge of the cunning. There is yet much culling to be done before such efforts are required, yes?" And then, she sniffs. A demure sound beneath a snort but above a laugh. Shoulders rolling a moment, augmenting her amusement as she adds with a flutter of eyelashes and a dry tone, "An interesting perspective coming from a house of weapon-smiths. But I suppose the Ryouhara are not often marketing their wares these days.. Are they?" The woman inches closer. Close enough for her chilling breath to be felt. Visibly caressing his skin in white mists, due to the atmospheric clash of heat and gelidity. "Merchant cum visionary? You. Do. Fascinate me."
This war? She's been fighting this war since before Seishirou's father was born. One must recognize and capitalize on opportunity upon occurrence. Of course, she doesn't seriously believe Seishirou missed what this all implies.
Rather, she's curious to know what he's been doing about it all this time.
Hmmmmm...
He looks at Marise as if levelling the wall behind her.
Seishirou is as always of a level of perfect composition, a certain rectitude to his demeanor, a correctness that belies the endless filtering of psyche that the shinobi is underwritten to. To that, he makes no move to assault Marise, and to that the woman can find herself secure in her languid means. Proud, in guessing Ryouhara's methods and styles; the decision to eliminate Marise while she was alone was made a minute ago, long before Marise had ever begun to speak.
It would seem that someone of his nature isn't one for changing direction.
He is solemn, quiet as Marise steps into the zone of absolute heat the shinobi radiates, just a step closer than--he--would like? Inside the force of that corona, the heat is almost crushing. Marise, with those inhuman eyes of hers, may be one of the first to identify it--it's hardly the uncontrollable rage of some fighters. Its true nature is fuuinjutsu, emanating from somewhere at Ryouhara's back, a protective chi technique meant to passively crush people who are standing in about the range that Marise is right about now. A strangling jutsu. It was also the reason why the blood on that pane was crackling.
Hence why Ryouhara doesn't move, and doesn't flinch when the woman so boldly breaches his comfort zone. Unlike the delicate cream of his so-called elder's hands, Seishirou's never breach the fringe of his haori, limp at his sides and unmoving. They remain in that fashion even as Marise goes so far so as to catch her breath on the wall of energy, exhalation being knotted away into so much fine sweltering fog in the air, the smallest bit of moisture misting on his neck and collar.
He raises the corner of a lip in a smooth derision.
Seeming to vacillate between disgust and retention, it is only with the former that he humors her. It was prior and even now that calculations and observations concede her strategy.
A girl.. obvious.. cannot be denied her amusements.
But it finds no purchase in the shinobi's manner.
"Ryouhara Hiretsu," he speaks, manner in point of eerie homage to him, "is dead."
It's something Hiretsu himself might have said, had he still lived. But as Ryouhara continues on, he makes it as clear as day. "That clan is long gone. There are no merchants left and there are no visionaries. Only their memories and their ghosts remain, and amongst those.... I'm the strongest."
He steps forward, even closer to Marise than is needed.
It's just centimeters shy of physical contact.
His eyes narrow in a deadly keen that seems more intent for Marise's neck than her curves. Shinano's wolf, as natural as can be, in this fathom, could not be blamed for his attentions when so greatly baited. When he continues, his voice teases as much as it threatens. A game Marise plays that Seishirou is all too aware of. "Or is that something you've forgotten... 'sensei'?"
He hasn't forgotten Marise's history any more than she's forgotten his.
"There is no point in the past," he lies simply, in a solid tone just a degree off from harsh, and definitely not too far from inciteful. It is as if his mean is to stir away that story to better eclipse the present. "Only now and onward." Progressive as ever. He pauses, thinking. Not every word he could say is said, a meaning remaining unspoken in the deadly intimacy Ryouhara shares with the wretched thing that he could faintly detect the scent of fresh grave upon. Instead, the subject turns from that.
"Come now," he starts, a white fringe of light dancing past his lips as he reveals a single canine fang to that woman. "Have you really just allowed yourself to fall in with another pack of apes? Is it your love to serve them?"
He lets that word, 'serve', dance in the air for a moment.
"It's foolish to think there's not a little more than that.."
He measures Marise's behavior closely underneath those engineer's eyes of his. The soft, questioning sound of his lips submit the air to gently elicit at the end of it all. 'Mn?'
Just as Seishirou is not without layers of ambient defense, Marise's presence is likewise imbued. The cold, crispness of the air in her proximity. The deadening of the atmosphere and umbral creep. Theatrics some would consider them, but they are deliberate efforts. A differing perspective of the same tact. The weakening of light and dampening of sound serves stealth well. The cold forces movement in her enemies, a tremor there or twitch there. The natural inclination for equilibrium forces their hand and betrays their intent. Subtle things, but readable. Often deciding encounters with lesser beings before enemies realize they are already undone.
The intermingling of these auras produce visible effects. Condensation appears on the window, near the broiling crimson. Motes of steam appear hither and yon, dampening the desktops nearby though never touching the duo themselves. The room itself endures convection currents, a stirring of air at their feet and above. The heat rising as the cold sinks.
"As is Ryouhara Seishirou." The Devil again smoothly replies in a conversational tone. No threat exists in those words, as she repeats no ideas that the boy has not himself proclaimed. In fact, as he completes that very idea she is forced to agree. A lifted eyebrow and mused coo wordlessly offers acquiescence.
The boy plays this game of one-upsmanship well. Intruding her space in turn, standing within a non-existant personal space. She could kiss him then, by accident alone if he but leaned a fraction more. There is some space between their eyes, if only due to the contours of her barely silk hidden symmetry. A delighted smile deepens, replying lowly, "..Not at all-"
The milky flesh at her shoulder begins to smolder.
Tch.
Well now. Embarrassingly awkward, this. Her own aura is no match for the younger, potent ghost. A visible sign that his own energy flows over power her in such proximity.. But alas, an unavoidable display.
He could burn her to cinders if he'd care to. And there is little the Devil can do about that. For now.
Violet smile gaining a self-sardonic edge. Eyes glinting in wordless concession as it is she who looks away first. Replying to that satisfied smirk with a quixotic mutter, "You speak as if service.. Is not our calling." The scion's razor cut at her love affair with history is not missed. Nor does it go without consequence as her aureal vision slides to him once more, metallic color glinting as an inch of bared steel, "We ghosts have greater masters than the simian. Do we not?"
Her efforts redoubled. The Devil then lifts her clawed hand. To the mundane, it would be an abrupt, threatening gesture. To Seishirou, its a gentle and slow thing - Telegraphed with such listlessness she all but asks permission ten times over. Bared palm hovering over the junction of throat and shoulder, fingers spread with faint curl.
Already her fingertips begin to burn at the proximity, but she cares not.
"We serve. Not flesh. Not steel. But what could be.." A brightening flash of gold, "..What should be."
Fingers stroking the empty air, arm threatening to coil over his shoulder. Never touching, yet sifting her fingertips through his heated aura. The acrid scent of searing skin greeting his senses. "Do you not agree.. These are thrilling times.. Come again?"
There was only a few more minutes left.
But that is the nature of perception. With a proper lady, a lifetime is a second. With a proper knife, a second is a lifetime. Time seems to stretch impossibly long in the moments in which Seishirou is direct opposite to the Devil. His breath long, hot and evened against her cheek and past the lengths of her long tresses, Ryouhara seems at once a young boy in a daring moment. A moment in which everything is bargained for just one taste. It is the most salacious game that can be played. What deeds can be committed before you attract too much attention.
Not to say he has no defense. Hardly. The aura that suffuses him with that livid heat combatting with the chill meandering aura of Marise's own is only the first of many layers of defense. The haori, reacting chaotically less with the breeze and more with the force of energy, is one. Another is some ninkou weapon or another concealed beneath his tight knit shirt. Shinrou Kiritsu. Byakuren Hagoromo. Senbon Garasen.
But for all of the things staying Ryouhara's hand, it is only gall and tenacity that are the worst of them. A temperance and a fortitude both, Shinano's last wolf reacts little to Marise's cloying intentions, her teasing words and ways. He is still, a pillar of dueling natures against the other ghost here. He watches her smoulder, and notices she cares little for it.
His mouth moves.
"Aa. Even him," he agrees.
Though he is not blind.
But the simple fact is. Someone who doesn't exist can't be threatened, because he cannot be killed. He cannot be reasoned with, because he wants for nothing. That's why he moves only in the faintest bit, his lowered chin shifting abruptly the moment Marise's shoulder moves, but his eyes trailing the delicate-seeming limb as she loops it about him. There is no protest at all, a boy watching the constrictor wind tighter about his neck, with only the blandest of glances to give her, with no responsive twitch of his own.
A large part of the problem was, as he'd calculated, she was no fool. Marise has probably already devised a means of informing the guards around every corner of his presence. Already had a means of getting out. Any engagement here would end badly for him and though answers existed, somewhere in the back of the shinobi's mind, he was painfully aware of that fact.
Instead he holds her company as long as he finds it needed, asking lightly of the nature of "that servitude.." beneath the breath. Louder, he continues. "We are the servants of change." Agreement comes as simple as a breath. "As always, the world is steeped in war and misery. A necessary cost for the future that we envision. But I'll see the future through on my own means. My own methods. Letting someone else dictate the terms of change to me... is just allowing them to dictate what the future will be. Another way to see more oppression."
War is sacrifice. But only for him. For others, it was an exalted occaision.
"The world I designed in tribute will be free of that pointless nonsense. It is my wish that someone like you remain to witness what this ideal of mine will accomplish."
"...but."
The floorboards beneath them.. shift.
Ryouhara's expression remains unchanged. But he is out of patience nonetheless. Energy begins to trail from his form and into the boards around them, marking down various innumerable calculi in the angry red lines of an articulate's brush stroke, the same as before. If Marise knows what's at stake, he won't bother using Shinrou Kiritsu. This time Seishirou's intention is less to melt through a wall as to use himself as the epicentre of a massive explosion. Somewhere on his body, the triggering seal already existed. But this close, his aim is just to make the entire room disappear in a conflagration. All easily read in the unfurling instructions around him. The suggestion, however unspoken, is enough. He'll alert everyone in the vicinity. Imminent, the outlay continues.
Though his voice truthfully changes as little as his expression, circumstance renders his bedroom-low tone all the darker of intentions, all the more deadly. When he's done, there's going to be nothing left of this room but a glowing red crater.
"...I think that you indulge in thrill a little too much..."
Most importantly of all..
Someone who doesn't exist doesn't know anything about fear.
Disparate personalities haunt this room this bleak evening, each with their own unwritten signature. One burns the very air with his presence, and thrums the senses with heat. The other chills the air down into utter stillness, drenching her surroundings in the cold nothingness of the sepulchre. The last, though she has been present for thirty seconds already, does nothing at all; her existence barely even dents space. Like any good kunoichi, she is as folded away from the world as a bolt of marred silk: placed carefully in a drawer out of sight, blemish down.
"Enough."
Suzume Nakatani does not exist up until the instant in which she speaks that one word. Her voice is as soft-spoken as ever, but a razor edge lurks on its fringes. The kunoichi emerges out of the shadows draped heavily in the opposite end of the room, movements soundless save for the inevitable rustle of cloth... and the slight, telltale rattle of a blade. A black, floor-length cloak obscures her entire frame; it is clasped shut, but every so often-- when Suzume moves-- a hint of white shows from beneath.
Suzume's black eyes bore into the movement of Marise's hand. They sear along the inviting, almost salacious way in which the Devil sways in close to Seishirou. Nakatani's lips tighten, the vaguest hint of an expression-- notable only because it replaces utter blankness-- threatening her face... but it falls away before anyone has a chance to guess at what it might have become. Impassivity returns to roost upon her face.
"You are," Suzume says abruptly, "behaving entirely too boldly." The silence stretches on, an unrolling bolt of silk: when Suzume speaks again, her voice is the precise clip of scissors cutting cloth short. "Step back." The order is accentuated by the click of a katana clicking slightly out of its sheath, pushed loose in preparation to be drawn. The weapon is hidden beneath the obscuring cloak Suzume wears, but the sound suggests the image: a precise inch of bared white steel, gleaming between a tsuba and the throat of a scabbard.
Suzume's eyes slide over towards Seishirou. Something electric flickers tensely in them, her entire stance seeming as if it holds itself back from walking to his side. "And you. Inform me of how a massive conflagration will serve any purpose here..."
Jealousy is a difficult emotion to conceal.
Caustic envy burns behind the Devil's vision as the boy stands with unfettered resolve. The ghost's caressing fingers pantomiming what would be a lover's touch scant inches from Seishirou's fevered flesh. Yet, truthfully in part, it is the arsenal of lethal Ninkou encapsulating this youth. He is a young man in his prime, nearing the apex of his power. Named weapons wreath him as raiment of a warrior king.
The Devil's own lie dormant beneath her skin. Hideous, terrible weapons embedded within her. Ancient. Weathered. Broken. Ruined.
To say she misses wielding such glory of old is understatement. And here Hiretsu's reincarnation stands. Taunting her from beyond the merciless ravages of time.
To love him then, would be to love her old self by proxy. The intoxicating notion alone nearly drives her upon him then and there, heedless of searing consequences.
Sometimes.. Burns are worthwhile..
"..A necessary cost.." The Devil whispers in breathless agreement. His stoic words touching her ears. Salaciousness reflected in wicked slits of gold, her head tilting just so.
His own means. His own methods.
Those words sting her, giving pause to her advancing intent. A breath held in her throat then, even as her cheek generates a thin whisp of smoke. Marise's slithering arm and vincinal body freezing a hair's breadth from contact and coming no closer.
The jarring, utter rebuke from Ryouhara's Heir provokes venom from the Devil's fangs. A statement is caught with the audible click of teeth at the edge of the ghost's lips. Eyelids spreading slowly then, threatening what words she would have with him then.
Oh. There are things she could say about 'whom dictates fate to who' and how comical that denial sounds coming from him.
There's a reason he's the last of his breed. After all.
But even she knows when not to push. There are verbal lines that are not to be crossed without killing intent. A fight is the last thing she wishes to pick with him, in the here and now. Both due to her own well-being... And for his. She'd rather not risk Seishirou being captured at this time by the recently immigrated powers. That he cares nothing for her methods and demeanor is, ultimately, inconsequential.
He will do as his nature, as his duty, demands. Seishirou will live up to his name. The name of fire.
And as his surging aura would suggest - A name that is less discrete than one would otherwise assume.
As floorboards crack, Marise flinches. What amusement that adorned her lovely features has evaporated. Her arm falls away from the faux embrace, taking a single sauntering step away from the conflagating scion. A choleric stare lingering upon his gaze.
Nothing more need be said.. Then.
'Enough.'
The word arrests the Devil from immediate flight. What animation she exhibited a moment ago falls away in an instant. Monstrous eyes focus their dreadful attention upon this new factor of the equation.
The fact that even Marise did not notice her presence until several seconds prior is proof alone this is kunoichi of merit. Kinmagan processing this invisible spirit with a moment of curiousity.. But there is little time to think of such matters. The facts at hand are self-evident.
If this newcomer meant either of them ill, she would not be bothering with such verbal commands. The cloaked woman's order happens to double for sagely wisdom in this instance - Of which the Devil is quick to comply. Marise takes yet another, further step backwards and away from the detonating Ryouhara. Prepared to enact one of several escapes depending upon the hundreds of vectors Seishirou may unleash his incandescent might.
That look is not missed. Nor the abruptness of her chastisement of her advances on the Scion.
Nor that inch of naked steel.
Slowly then does her gaze follow the intruder's own, gaining fragments of its former amusement until it returns to the fiery Seishirou again. "...She raises an apt point..."
Well well now... This is an intriguing new development.
Despite his even dead man's nature, his heart races.
It would be done, the affair of instants. Ryouhara would level this ground immediately. The blast, of course, this close, would be difficult even for someone as sinuous as Marise to escape, or so he believed, to within a certain margin. After all, for Seishirou it seems only a gift. A discretion of the fire; to burn everything. Seishirou's was a fair chaos, biased for nothing but those strong enough to overcome. You see, this blast would threaten his life as well, using his own body as the epicenter, but he was focused. He can--and would, overcome.
The world seems to distort around him--from pure heat. He steps forward, one methodical step following the Devil as she slips away from him. His boot hisses on the boiling laminate. Though he hardly knew just how close he'd come, his intentions were now clear. It was little more than a whim, a test. The truth was, he really didn't find himself caring too much if Marise actually died in the blast or not. If she survived.. well.
Some people just needed to understand certain things.
And for a ninja, not understanding..
He blinks, stirred by a voice.
"I didn't expect you to meet here this early...Suzume."
He rarely speaks anyone's first name, if he has a last.
With that, the spell of fate is broken. Marise is no longer wrapped around him as if he were a fly in a spider's web, but his calculations and algorithms seem more the literal encompass of that simile, stretching out to the window. He is caught in midstep, lazy but menacing all the same. But at that word, aggression, and the nigh-suicidal conflux of fates leaves the shinobi's shoulders. That drain takes the form of a shortened breath outwards. As if it really were all on a whim.
He notes the audible sound of a blade bearing, his gaze dipping low and to one side, but never quite meeting the cloaked form behind him. His sleeves never show his hands, he never turns. Darkness dipping over his eyes, he is silent a moment, taking in the rebuke as well as its echoed agreement. For a moment, he is unreadable, those lines of force in the ground still crackling with livid power.
...Before they slowly begin to recess.
They leave not even scorchmarks in their wake.
".....Aa." he concedes.
Then it is as if it never happened. Looking back up to face Marise with a new light, Ryouhara gives a disarming smile to her, less dangerously than he had only moments prior. Suddenly, from words and that smile alone, it seems there is no hostility at all from the Ryouhara shinobi. One would question whether it was ever there to begin with. He shows more grace and patience towards the woman in a moment than he has shown the world in years.
"I should be more mindful of my grandfather's acquaintances. Forgive my impertinence."
But his voice and his eyes remain as chilling as ever.
Black eyes rest square on Marise's own for the few instants it takes the Devil to speak. It's clear that Marise's curiosity is palpable to Nakatani, but the kunoichi makes no elucidating comments and evinces no reaction save for that level, impassive gaze. Soon enough, Suzume blinks away, glancing back towards Ryouhara as if her eyes are drawn by a magnet.
For all that her cool, controlled distance forms a stark contrast to Marise's close, winding obscenity... there is nonetheless something very similar about the intensity that dwells in her eyes as she looks upon Seishirou now. She stares at him as if she could nail him to life-- could banish that momentary suicidal impulse-- with her gaze alone. Seishirou speaks her first name-- something she knows full well he rarely does-- but even that small favor does not bring her to flinch. Her gaze merely intensifies.
"I am always on time," she replies eventually, her eyes eventually half-lidding-- the gesture killing some of their intensity-- "...for occasions where I am needed."
Silence follows that pointed comment. Once Seishirou has pulled his claws in, Suzume proceeds towards him as if reeled in on a string. She drifts along more than she strictly walks, her floor-length clothing concealing many of her movements, and when she comes to a stop she is still several feet away from Seishirou-- but nonetheless, firmly on his side on the room. Her glance turns back towards Marise.
"An acquaintance of your grandfather?" Suzume repeats the odd, improbable phrase with about as much shock or interest as one might comment upon peeling paint. For a few moments, she fails to react; then, as if following a manual and realizing what it is she ought to be doing, she smiles languorously. The expression is neither warm nor pleasant. "Perhaps you should introduce her to me..."
That inch of steel, now quite purposefully visible, is still bared.
To proclaim Seishirou insane would be a height of hypocrisy even Marise could not stomach.
That the youth proves to be this tetchy at the Devil's proximity, however, is mildly surprising. That she was responsible, in part, for a percentage of his hardship in the previous year does not go unquestioned. Sooner or later a reckoning would be had, for such matters.
Its as if he's taking this personal-like.
That the Ryouhara would seek to bathe the Devil in fire is not so far from his intentions to any in this world. Marise was hoping.. Though..
Though, it would appear there is one individual, at least, the scion has no intention of searing with such laconic rancor.
The altered mood. The concession. Standing down as the woman orders?
As waves of heat recede into non-existence, the Devil quietly returns to a similar non-chalance of minutes ago. Unlike the cold, ruthlessly neutral Suzume or the ardently superior Seishirou, Marise is most comfortable with emotive expression.
A bemused half-smile returns to her painted lips. With an idle gesture her thumb glides over her smoldering cheek, erasing that seared mark readily and completely as Ryouhara's wrath that invoked it. In moments, the remainder of her visible pearlescent skin returns to its former deathly palour.
Such sudden grace. Such genteel apology. The Devil accepts his contrite words with the elegance of a high-class courtesan.
Seishirou has never been more vulnerable than in this moment.
Who is this girl?
The boy is either deathly afraid of her or...
...No. Noooooo. Kyah HAH!
Marise's haughty, returned smile does not waiver or embellish. Her pale hand resting upon her hip as she watches Suzume grace the Ryouhara's side. The grace they share would be at home in Noa Theatre for all its precision and sublime pageantry. Whole volumes have been recanted for the Devil's benefit, now. There is no question, as far as Marise is concerned. This girl's destiny plays out before her unbidden.
The Devil would weep for her.. Had she tears left to give.
"Yess, Hnn." The dark maiden muses, rousing from her momentary distraction meeting the newer kunoichi's gaze. "This humble one, Marise, is pleased to be of your acquaintance." The Devil offers her given name and does not repeat Seishirou's familiar tone with the girl. Etiquette of the thing is important, after all. The dark creature bows her head a perceptable fraction in greeting.
No family name has ever been given for this creature. Nor will it be.
Names have power. After all. While some wear them as badges of forgotten esteem.. Others keep them buried, like hidden knives.
For Ryouhara, his moods are legion. A matter of minor legend amongst those who know him. As soon to aid as he is to sabotage efforts, even a mind as calculating as his needs only a spark to be set off in a conflagration of pure impulse, the driving factor of interaction. People like Ryouhara will seldom lose a game gone to the brave; there is simply nothing for him, no value in self. Only trust--absolute and uncompromising--in his way. The way of his family. He is only an actor. To that, his move was less an outright attack, less a reaction to proximity, and more the most fervent of invitations to Marise.
Join him and see who's method will carry furthest.
After all. Playing with fire ends only one way.
With his invitation so gracefully rejected, Ryouhara seems a frigid one. His chin lowers, bringing low the everpresent inky virulence in his eyes until he looks at Marise from somewhere behind raven black wisps of hair. That bright and chipper smile eventually fades to the grim facade for which Seishirou is commonly known; less a tangible thing and more a calculated obviation of kindness.
A peculiarity of the light betrays his eye in a single glint; a languid direction of the eyes lingering elegantly upon that bared steel, slipping only inches beyond that coat. How long that glance lasts cannot be measured.
"Aa." Comes the murky response, only a moment later. "I once studied at a martial academy which was open to all disciplines of ninjutsu." He needn't say much more to explain Marise herself. "My grandfather taught there briefly. As did she.." The details lay in every word. If she knew his grandfather, a man whom Seishirou himself has not even met..
Though Marise regales Suzume with her courtesan's manner, Ryouhara seems at once in comparison the most rough-hewn of the group. That glimmer of social eloquence, however surprisingly well he takes to it, fades hard and fast. Nonchalance and method, instead, are his chosen manners. There is no tell in his eyes. With it in mind, he takes a single step towards Marise, partway of her attentions upon Suzume. No ephemeral glide persists in the Ryouhara shinobi's movements, no fringe of cloth to conceal his drifting movements. Deliberate in movement.
It seems a random thing, almost.
It is so until slim fingertips ghost into view beneath the silks of his right sleeve, a hand opening and giving a single opened gesture of peace.
"My meaning might have been lost," Seishirou guesses, his customary dark tones as polite as he can manage them. "I was simply extending an invitation to her as a token of my family's respect. Again, Marise-san, your forgiveness. Myself and those closest to me are often expressive by nature."
Narrow eyes like the edge of knives look over the fallen maiden.
To Suzume;
"She seems to have declined me... there is no more need to trouble ourselves."
Suzume's eyes change instantly when Seishirou takes that step forward. They alter from their impassivity into something hard, endlessly sharp, and watchful, focusing down on Seishirou with pinpoint attention. Wariness lives in those black, hawklike eyes. Wariness both of Marise-- who most certainly is not as she appears, if she was a peer of Seishirou's grandfather-- and of Ryouhara himself, who she knows to be very often... volatile.
The introduction is heard out in polite, if cool silence. Suzume inclines her head slightly in response, though she grants the Devil little more than that... and her blade never quite resheathes itself fully.
"If she has declined you," Suzume eventually responds, her cool voice smoothing the ragged, dirty air, "then perhaps we ought to take our leave." Suzume's eyes finally tear away from Seishirou. They appraise the dark school around them, Marise herself, and then for a short time regard nothing at all as they half-lid in thought. "Unless..." she begins again after a pause, rousing as if from an absent trance, "You still have business here."
Suzume trails. But though her voice fades, she finds other ways to speak. The rattle of her blade is almost imperceptible: a tiny, minute sound. But to Seishirou, well-versed in her nonverbal subtleties, it would be as loud and clear as words. What it asks is: "Is her death your business?"
Who is Ryouhara Seishirou to suggest that Koga Marise has not been burned nearly enough?
Perhaps this makes him a noble spirit, The Devil's villainy is legion - self-admittedly.
Trial by fire? Feh.
The ancient maiden looks upon the youthful ninja now with the same severe reproach an elder might look upon a mischievous troublemaker in class.
A look Seishirou is undoubtedly familiar with from the Leaf Academy.
For what she offered him.. He responds with antics and childish trials by fire?
Hmph. Maybe he is not so like his grandfather as she had thought. His own man, as it were.
A pity. Marise really did like that boy.
Spurring affections and adorations is never without consequence. As the Ninkoujutsu Master looks upon the Devil with increased taciturnity, she replies with a soft sniff. Off-put stance continuing perpetually, slight tilts of her face the only animation as she trades her aurean attentions from one to the other. Not bothering to admit to the unfolding details, nor does she deny them. They are true enough, as far as this kunoichi need be concerned with.
Considering the measure of ill the Ryouhara scion intended with his last advance, this version is met with equal caution as the last. A visible concern as her hand slips from her hip smoothly, returning to the darkness of her long kimono sleeve as her posture straightens. Relaxed, yet now balanced.
"Respect." The Devil echoes that word. A mechanical recitation from a creature that knows the text-book definition.. But not its meaning. Not for anything worldly. "Your family offered enough of that.. Already." Words cloaked by the obvious, with enough subtleties to imply the deeper. As any good shadow, never surrendering true understanding quickly.
Suzume's presence does not go unaccounted. She is, at once, both the chaotic x-factor and fulfilling prophecy.
One ninja is foreshadow.
Two ninja is omen.
Three ninja is providence.
It is entirely possible Seishirou was here for Marise. It is more likely he was here for Suzume, however. It could very well be he's here for them both. In either regard, the Kunoichi unveils his true intentions.
No wonder why he's being exceptionally cagey in her presence.
What 'business' they might have does not take a body linguist to decipher as far as what meaning could be hidden there. To this, Marise continues her gaze to Ryouhara as if echoing Suzume's question to him in turn. No further words need be spoken on her account. After all, if Marise intended to betray them to the local establishment, this conversation would have been over several seconds ago. Though Seishirou may or may not have decided what he thinks of the Devil.. He seems most uncertain what to do in this new Kunoichi's vicinity.
This could be interesting...
It is something Ryouhara rarely shows.
The perfectly balanced single step he takes is in several ways the highest order of aggression someone like him could reasonably show. With his mercurial nature lashed down securely with hemp, it seems a struggle even to express that much of what proper emotive seethes beneath the surface. It all exists behind the cooling eyes of that casual glance, softened with the contemplations of absolute revolution.
He faces Marise as she gives him the look of dignified reproach that he had at one point been entirely familiar with; his old academy sensei's teachings meted out with ever more inventive means of sabotage. But it is hardly the abject misery of a boy scorned that Seishirou responds to Marise's effusive disdain. Hardly so. Moved only slightly to those old days, Seishirou's eyes slide shut only once. It's a thoughtful act, not reflexive. In truth, seeing his eyes now, watching Marise as he has, it is difficult to tell when he has truly last blinked.
As decisive an act as it is boneless, his arm drops to his side again, hand disappearing in a bolt of white silk, the folds of faintly iridescent fabric dipping his hands in the night.
Someone who doesn't exist, does not have consequence.
"...It isn't like it was before..." he corrects, after a moment's thought.
He caught the meaning.
All of them.
"History won't be the vector for this new righteous world of mine. There is no heat that has existed before that will be like the fire that sears through the future..." Marise is painfully not his teacher. Neither is anyone in the academy anymore. There is a reason for that. The clan is the only thing that has meaning anymore. Do you imagine burning anything has to do at all with her villainy? With his nobility? To imagine that anyone anywhere will have ever tasted what Seishirou offered to Marise in that one bright moment..
..it is amusing to him.
A soft distortion of light crawls up Ryouhara's silhouette as he begins to radiate.
"To taste it... would that be so immodest for someone of your abilities?"
Having to speak these words seems to incite his capricious nature. As someone who has built dreams only to burn them down in blasts brighter than the noonday sun, Seishirou would invite Marise warmly to teach him everything she knew about the burn. His manner is hardly cautious as it may be caustic. Consequence is cost gladly pai. Not for a moment does he bear mind the put off manner of the kunoichi standing before him. Tragedy is written in every fold of that woman's ill worn black kimono. If she knows sacrifice, if she knows the only respect that the Ryouhara clan now has, then why does she recoil from him so abjectly...?
Another step forward.
History can be made tonight. Gedo High could burn easily. In the confusion, many important members of the alliance that now plagues the Syndicate could be assassinated, if there were enough moves. The one thing transcendant of individual strength is fire. Once the blaze goes past a certain point, you can't just stop it with a Psycho Crusher. The crawling inferno would consume every divine project and unholy experiment that dealt here. Fire does the work that an army cannot, consuming scores, maybe even some of his own, and righteously so--
Ryouhara stills.
A voice soothes the distorted air at his shoulder.
The shinobi seems chilled by the suggestion, his shoulders rising only slightly, nigh imperceptible in the darkness of the classroom. The weight of the woman's expression falls squarely on his shoulders, and if only for a single moment, it shows. He is momentarily simply unable to justify endangering everything around him simply to prove a point, a fact which draws the faintest of frowns from the shinobi. For the first time, he breaks sight of Marise--and looks behind him. His eyes lingering only a moment, his expression is unreadable--because there is nothing to read. He doesn't look at Suzume for any reason logically explicable. There is no hidden message in the drawn and suddenly wearied look of the Ryouhara's last. THe look lasts only a moment or two. A subtle glance, fast and guilty.
"Aa," he is forced to agree again.
The wordless question written in the shift of her blade goes answered in the decisive way Ryouhara turns heel on the scorned maiden, showing her the kamon of his clan emblazoned so nobly upon his back. As if a boy suddenly deciding he is tired and retiring to bed, he walks away from Marise, past Suzume. "It is a shame;" he remarks. "Maybe next time, we will have an excellent conversation.."
"Accompany me," he asks Suzume simply, speaking few words even for him en passant. He moves back to the ruined blackboard. There are no complex equations this time. No sight unseen movement. The entire mass simply melts before him in a glowing mess of dripping molten plaster and stone, as if blasted from existence without a sound. Moving uncustomarily slow for his body, Ryouhara simply walks past a wall that no longer exists.
That is history.
Suzume's black eyes, resting on Seishirou in clear questioning, never move. It is left to Seishirou to meet her gaze with that turn of his head. The expression he beholds is a calm, emotionless one, a look that does little more than seek a clinical answer. But when Ryouhara's gaze changes, briefly drawn with guilt and weighted with tiredness, for a moment Suzume does reflect that instant of humanity. Her eyes briefly gentle from their hawklike regard.
The moment is so short as to be easily attributed to mere imagination.
In the next instant, that wall of implacability goes back up. The kunoichi's head lifts slightly, gaze freezing over, as Seishirou turns and begins to make clear his intent to leave. Once the shinobi has passed her, she begins to turn precisely in an almost military gesture, orienting to follow him. Something gives her pause, however. She stops-- to call the pause hesitation would be to mischaracterize it-- and her gaze briefly tracks straight back to Marise.
Suzume is, as always, completely unreadable. For the first few moments, at least. Then, in an uncharacteristic loss of control, the kunoichi actually displays enough unfettered emotion to let her eyes narrow. The look she nails into Marise is one of general, unswerving, and fearless challenge. And it never bothers to elucidate what it is challenging the Devil about: if there even is anything, in specific.
The look swiftly smoothes over into the indifference of a millpond. The kunoichi finishes her turn and follows Seishirou out as if she had never stopped at all.
History.
The Devil's imperious stare is returned to her by the Radiant Shinobi's wearied neutrality. An insightful glance that borders uncomfortably upon the realm of pity. An emotion that sears Marise's already charcoal heart, reigniting a glint in her monstrous gaze. His words of revolution ... Oh. She has heard them before, to be sure.
She was there when Emperor Showa declared Seisen upon the Manchurian. The world would be remade into the image of righteousness valor and the barbarian hordes would burn to ash.
She fought for such things in the dark places there. For all the evil that found residence in her heart ... She had believed. They had almost won.
To Marise, Seisen is far from over. Perhaps, in Seishirou's eyes.. The very fires that consumed much of the world could alight once more. She had courted within the Parliament of conquerors of a bygone age ... She knows that look well.
The Last Ryouhara could not know just how much his disdain infuriates her.
At Seishirou's taunt of her 'abilities'... The Devil can say nothing. Painted lips pressed to a line, eyes hooded to golden slivers. Such a boast borders upon pettiness she never suspected from the boy. An uncouth joust she cannot answer in kind.
Her 'abilities' have long since departed. She is a vestige of glory. Upon a time she could ... She could...
But she cannot. Not yet. Not now.
She is not ready to confront such flames, for she knows what it requires to survive. One day ... Yes. There will come a day when the Devil will stand exalted once more and all shall come to understand the true meaning of Hell.
That is not this day.
Unlike the name Ryouhara .... The Devil of Koga can afford to be patient.
History is being made this night. Conflicts that consume the whole of the world start with far less than this full-scale assault upon a great city. Nanking burned and half of the world ignited in holy war. Millions were consigned to the deep or purged by fire. Will Southtown be any less, ultimately?
Not if Marise has anything to say about it. Though Seishirou speaks of the past with derision, if there's one thing near immortality has taught the Devil ...
History will return.
"Be well. Ryouhara Seishirou." The Devil answers at last. A deep, melodic voice cast in an sea of arctic poison. Standing with poise and dignity, even now. Discarded as she has been by the path of flame. There will indeed be another time, another place. This will not be the last meeting of nameless shadows and dust. Content she is, to leave it at this.
Though, there is one last indignity to suffer.
With Ryouhara incandescently exaunt, a moment then is traded between the two kunoichi. The younger's brief look is met and registered with golden beast eyes, unveiling a fraction more. The young thing's challenge echoes with grander resound than her previously whispered steel, and unveils the girl's intention yet more.
A taunt then. Keh. The girl effortlessly wields that which the Devil so ardently covets.
Marise tilts her head a fraction then, the corner of her lip tilting into the hint of a smirk. Speaking volumes from the intensity of her eyes, but speaks no words.
Words would pale before the litany of heralded battle that had just taken place.
Yes, laugh now girl. Laugh deeply and all you like behind that frigid facade. Laugh while you can.
As the courts of Heaven and Hell as Koga Marise's witness, she will laugh last.
(OOC: This last Omake line brought to you by Kagero and Ryouhara Industries, 'We Bring Good Things To Explode')
Seishirou says, "sei just y_ying around "i don't care I blow you up!!!""
Log created on 02:32:36 04/05/2009 by Marise, and last modified on 04:05:25 04/18/2009.