Description: Intent on enacting revenge upon all the invaders of Southtown, an unstable Hotaru slowly cuts a violent path of punishment through the city. Informed of the change that has befallen her in the wake of Shadaloo's experimentation on her, K' confronts her in what is, for him, an ironic task: putting a stop to her unfocused vengeance.
She had wandered away from the compound after Seth vanished from her sight. The final exchange had transpired in an eye blink. His energy crashing into her own reflective barrier before being slammed back into him and forcing his premature departure. By the time the dust settled, she had forgotten almost everything that had happened. The man responsible for her circumstances was a loathsome thing. His escape was unfortunate. But, the girl had reasoned as she had turned to the treeline of the park, there was an entire city full of people just as guilty as he that she could go find.
And so it was that she began to carve a slow path through Southtown. At times her direction seemed aimless as the girl wandered through the streets. She would find food and places to sleep come night, then resume her journey come morning. Syndicate thugs out fighting the war against the invasion were encountered and beaten savagely, the blue eyed girl blaming each of them for the wrongs that had befallen her hometown and friends with each brutal punch or kick. Uniformed soldiers of 'R', Shadaloo, and NESTS were similarly dispatched whenever the girl came across them. The cries of pain or sounds of broken bones were met with merely the cold assurances that this is what they deserved and that the same would happen to anyone and everyone associated with them.
She had sustained cuts and bruises from her ambushes from the shadows and rooftops but was otherwise not harmed. As long as the fights were ended quickly enough, she felt no ill impact, the burning within her subsiding before it could begin to consume her completely. Non-combatants were generally ignored though she would glare at any of the few civilians still in the streets as if she suspected they were perhaps likewise due for punishment; as if waiting for them to make an anticipated wrong move and justify why they should be dealt with harshly as all the rest.
Her path through the war zone was erratic but as time passed it became clear that she did have a goal. Like a lost animal driven by base instincts into the steel jungle, Hotaru Futaba was slowly making her way home. And woe be to anyone unfortunate enough to get in her way. She shuffles along with a not entirely steady gait. She felt and looked exhausted but determined even though she wasn't even sure where she was heading on a conscious level. She had a mission of vengeance. Her body would last that long, she reasoned. No reason to slow down. Skyscrapers turned to suburbs which turned to rows and rows of neighborhoods as she slowly made her way closer to her destination.
The Shadaloo supplied outfit is much the same as it had been. She did, somehow, manage to lose one of her boots along the way, perhaps having wedged it too far into some brute's ass to bother taking with her. She wouldn't right remember even if she were asked, her partially stockinged foot practically bare from wear. Small cuts in the fabric from a stray shot or errant knife slash mar the surface of the black leotard and the skirt at her waist has slashes in places, but none of it explains the bloody streaks along her right arm, her skin split and fractured in places
A patrol of Shadaloo soldiers canvassing Southtown Village is encountered. Six men, dismantled in an instant, only managing to get useless gun shots off, sending bullets ricocheting off nearby walls in futile desperation. An assault rifle is broken in half as the girl lunges shoulder-first into the last one standing, only to drive him back against the wall hard enough to powder the brick behind him. The self-described avenging angel shifts position, her right hand going to the struggling man's neck, holding him in place as she eyes him grimly, "You people ruined everything... Justice demands you be ruined in turn."
One of the other soldiers rises, not quite harmed enough to keep him from standing. Without even looking, the girl turns her side toward him and side-kicks him in the neck, pinning him against the opposite wall with her foot as she releases the first to crumple to the ground. Strained gurgling noises are a all he can muster as Hotaru stares at him along the length of her leg, standing on one foot, watching him try to push away her heel from his neck with what little strength he has by comparison. "Should I kill you here, little worm? Would you even ask the question if you had one of my friends at gunpoint?" She presses her foot harder, forcing his neck precariously close to the breaking point, "Would you even hesitate? Why should I?!" she hisses at last snapping her foot back and twisting into a savage roundhouse kick to his temple to send him unconscious to the ground with his comrades.
A soft exhale is followed by a cough then a glance over the broken men at her feet, and then the girl continues toward the alley exit.
K' has been watching Hotaru for the past few hours, shadowing her steps and watching her cut a path of vengeance through Southtown. In those hours, he had made the acquaintance of a stranger who-- though she wore Hotaru's face and form-- in her behavior resembled... him. Interest had warred with disgust, had warred with disappointment, had warred with a hint of guilty amusement-- almost pride.
There was a part of him that wondered why she shouldn't be able to have some measure of revenge. Who he, of all people, was to stop her from taking it. Why vengeance was even wrong. But then, he would remind himself what it was Hotaru had done to those she had promised to protect. And K' reminded himself that even he, in his most depraved moments of hatred and vengeance, had never so much as laid a hand on anyone he professed to give half a shit about.
Besides. While he had already resigned himself to existence as a ruined, spoiled creature consigned to such base urges as vengeance and punishment, he had always expected a lot more from Hotaru. He had always expected her to be better. That she's showing herself not to be unsettles him in a way he can't exactly explain.
Standing atop one of the last buildings with any decent height, before the shorter rows of houses that comprise the bulk of Southtown Village fully take over, K' looks over the edge and into the alley that's quickly filling up with bodies. Folding his arms and leaning on his elbows in an almost childish attitude of vague half-interest, he watches with steadily-increasing, distant disapproval as Hotaru contemplates killing the man she's got under her heel. Well, disapproval-- and grudging interest.
He doesn't interrupt her. Part of him is curious if she'll actually do it. As far as he's seen, she has yet to actually kill anyone, and he couldn't have gotten there fast enough even if he'd wanted to stop her, anyway.
It's not until she starts to leave that K' finally moves to do more than just watch her brutalize half the invading force. With the deft, soundless swiftness of an animal who has long since made the ins and outs of Southtown his habitat, K' scales down the side of the building, weaving his light way sometimes along a fire escape, sometimes down bare brick. He drops square in the girl's path, blocking her way out of the alley, and doesn't immediately rise out of the low crouch he lands in.
"Didn't realize you wanted to be that much like me." As always, K''s voice shows itself to be a sudden thing, breaking silences with no preamble or warning. It fires off like a bullet grazing right past the jaw: harmless, but only by an inch. The experiment's cold yellow eyes appraise both the location and the heaped figures, his gaze the only thing about him that's moving other than the vague ruffle of his hair whenever the wind starts up. "Picked a bad person to emulate."
He's quiet a long few moments after that dubious greeting, slowly standing up-- and eschewing his usual careless slouch. His arms slowly fold across his chest in a contemplative manner as he persists in looking everywhere except at Hotaru herself. When he finally does look at her, it's quick and direct. His gaze, heretofore inspecting the way one of the six soldiers is oozing blood, snaps back to rivet on Hotaru's; and once it's locked, it doesn't stray.
"Where do you think you are you going?" The question is phrased with a deceptively soft slowness.
Her left hand reaches over to her right arm, grasping it tightly near her wrist. She didn't have to exhert herself hard in dealing with that group caught by ambush in a poor location. She didn't have to aggravate the aching burn in her forearm or cause her arm's skin to split along dry, painful cracks this time. It's good. She needs to conserve her strength. There's still so much work to be done. So many guilty to find.
She stops a half-step before the young man lands as if in her condition a heightened sense of awareness gave her just enough of a warning. Her left hand slips from her right wrist. Concern about the pain she struggles to bite back vanishes the instant she finds she isn't alone. She's tense and her focus seems a little off, as if keeping her eyes on K' only serves to exacerbate a near-blinding headache. She winces a little, looking to the side, then back toward him, her azure eyes searching, as if trying to place him in her memories and not entirely succeeding at it.
Too much time passes and she opens her mouth, ready to demand he explain himself before his words ring out in the otherwise near-silent alley, cutting her short. She looks at him again, leaning forward, her expression betraying a degree of the confusion fogging her mind. "Like you..." she echoes back. She knows it should make sense to her - what the stern young man means by the comment, but she can't make sense of it. "Do you seek revenge too?" she asks, taking a step back, seeming to relax slightly in the presence of this apparent kindred spirit.
The girl reaches back for her right arm again, gripping it tightly. "It hurts, doesn't it." Her voice is strained. "Doing what other people /won't/." Hotaru exhales, her eyes settling back on K' at last. "Someone has to though." She takes a step back, as if proximity with him is uncomfortable, her hand releasing her arm a second time as she seems to focus off somewhere behind him; beyond the alley.
"I'm going wherever I need to... it doesn't matter where." She extends her left hand, gesturing generally to the world past him, "This whole city is full of it. The stench of iniquity." Her hand clenches tightly shut as she closes her eyes. "But I won't stop until I've finished. Until they have all paid the price for what they have done." She draws her hand back, running it through her hair to brush a length of it back over her ear as she opens her eyes again and looks at K' squarely, no longer seeming to find him difficult to focus on.
"You look like someone who understands." Her mouth curls into a fleeting smile, "So you understand why it is you need to get out of my way." Her smile fades, her demeanor nothing but grim acceptance of the mission she's given herself, the edge to her voice suggesting that her statement is not merely a request but a demand.
At first, that implacable figure blocking Hotaru's way doesn't do much of anything. He doesn't even reply her, not right away. He just listens, without rancor, mockery, judgment... or even, come to that, any particular interest. And at the end of it all, he simply lifts a brow in wordless, eloquent query. It's as if he's asking her: "Is that all?"
Someone has to, she insists. "Someone," that dark young man blocking her way agrees. In the dimness of the heavily-shadowed alley, his obscured face shifts the coils of its expression in something that could be called a smile. What's visible of the look is not pleasant. "But not you."
Not a lot of things actually get at K', despite what one might at first assume based upon his ready temper. But Hotaru's clear amnesia-- the results of the experimentation done upon her-- are getting at him. He finds himself unable to face her quite straight, now that she's demonstrating she doesn't remember him, now that she's acting just the same way he did when he first crawled out of NESTS's labs: unfocused, enraged, vengeful, and above all... very clearly wounded in more ways than the physical.
It's bringing back memories. And though most of the time K' just counts his blessings he has any memories to recall at all... in this instance, none of what's coming to mind is stuff he wants to be reminded of. It's almost enough to make him resent her, making him have to do this.
"You never were about revenge. Or doing what nobody else would." Still, he's refusing to move out of her path. "Never thought you would lose it, just over this..." An articulate shrug includes the entire situation of Southtown in that word 'this.' Emotionlessly, he turns his eyes to regard her obvious pain when she clutches her arm and tries to find a kindred agony in him over such vengeful behavior. She looks in vain. "Revenge doesn't hurt me anymore, cause I got nothing left to lose. But you..." K''s eyes narrow. "Yeah. For you, it would hurt."
He doesn't step forward, but his entire demeanor shifts immovably in a way that seems to suggest such. "Don't lie to me. You're going home. I will not allow that."
He declares that she's not the one that should be doing this and Hotaru pauses, eyes widening slightly as if to hear something like that from one she seems to feel is a fellow vigilante. The shock fades to umbrage. Does he think to judge her unfit for the war that must be fought? Her right hand clenches then unclenches, her fingers twitching slightly.
"I know that," she replies as he explains that she was never about this wanton, aimless revenge at the world before. Hating everything and everyone that has the misfortune of being in her path. Her tone is hostile but guarded, the memories he brings to the surface of her thoughts unpleasant in this new mindset. "And a lot of good it did me." Both her hands tense now along with her jaw, eyes narrowing, her demeanor shifting closer to the realm of hostility. "I didn't do enough before, and my friends paid the price for my ways... Now all I can do is execute revenge for what happened."
She stands up straighter, starting to take a step forward. She's going to be on her way, after all, as she so clearly stated. But K' isn't budging, responding instead to her words. About the pain she's in. "It- it doesn't?" she sounds surprised again, almost alarmed. Here is somoene who acts the way she does yet doesn't experience the soul rending agony? "You don't?" she asks, still confused, taking a step back, left arm raised horizontally as if to guard away the idea entirely. "You don't?"
She closes her eyes tightly, raising her fists, head bowed slightly, "Then that's the key..." What is she holding onto that causes this pain? What does she need to give up so that she can have nothing to lose either? What is even left at this point? He doesn't move from his position, but just his shift in posture is enough for the girl to open her eyes and fix her attention back on him. "H-home..." she stammers. How could she go home? Her mission isn't even finished. "I don't-" she begins to assert as he utters the words that she remembers above all else he's said: Will not allow it.
Her teeth grit, her body shifting instinctually into a ready stance, her right shoulder toward him, her arms raised, her feet slightly apart. "You had your chance but I will not be swayed from avenging my friends. The streets are full of people guilty for their deaths. Their wars, their fights, all small pieces that lead to my friends falling in battle..." her tone has dropped to a near-growl. "All of them... will pay."
She says nothing else as she launches forward, taking steps to close distance before slamming her left hand forward, palm first, her right hand following suit as she twists into the attack from the opposite direction in an attempt slam the young man out of her path. "Out of my way!!" she shouts.
COMBATSYS: Hotaru has started a fight here.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: K' has joined the fight here.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 K'
COMBATSYS: Hotaru successfully hits K' with Aggressive Strike.
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Hotaru 0/-------/------=|=------\-------\0 K'
K''s eyes half-lid as he watches Hotaru's expression change from shock, to insult, to alarm, and then finally to anger. Throughout, his own expression never changes from its faintly judgmental air. All she can do now is enact revenge, she declares, and K' just lifts a brow again. "Running aimlessly around, attacking everybody in your way with no thought about smart targeting, leaving the people you said you'd protect totally unguarded..." K''s voice, as he lists off her behavior, is completely flat. "Is that really 'all you can do?'"
A derisive breath huffs out of him as he shakes his head lightly. "Thought you were a better person than that. Smarter, at least. Maybe not."
She expresses surprise that he doesn't feel much of anything when he behaves the cruel, vengeful way he does. K''s eyes narrow, the boy somehow visibly offended by her shock. "I was made to do this. Engineered," he snarls, though it visibly grates him to talk about his origins. "It's not in me to feel the same way about this that a real human like you does. You -want- to throw away everything you got to become something like I am? It pisses me off, seeing you just throw out what I work so hard to get."
What is he talking about? What is it he wants? It's that coveted quality of normality. Of being raised normally, with normal values, normal emotions, and normal reactions. To see Hotaru disavow her life and actively look to become what he is... it offends him gravely in an odd way. It almost makes him feel Hotaru trivializes what he is. Does she think it's so simple to become some kind of soulless avenger? Does she think it's something to play around with?
This entire encounter is proving difficult for him. Logically, he knows what it is he should be telling her-- to be a good person, to cleave to her virtues, other saccharine shit of that nature-- and yet, part of him whispers that it sees little wrong with her vengeful urges other than her total lack of prudence and focus. His nascent conscience knows it should tell her to stop her thoughts of revenge entirely... but his truer nature just wants to tell her to do it a little bit smarter.
But he's soon given a chance to push the mental debate aside-- for the time being. Hotaru lunges into action, and-- caught in his momentary indecision-- K' doesn't react as fast as he normally would. She catches him sharply, forcing him several steps to one side with the impact of her strikes... but with a growl, the young man soon recovers and retaliates instantly. Intent that she should not leave this place, K' leaps into a snapping kick aimed square at Hotaru's front, seeking to smack her straight back into the opposite wall of the alley.
"Your 'friends'--" K' almost sneers the word, "--are still paying the price for what you're doing now. And one of them was a girl I gave into -your care-!"
COMBATSYS: Hotaru effortlessly blocks K''s Minutes Spike.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-----==|==-----\-------\0 K'
Her strikes connect, one then the other in rapid succession, exercised with a touch more force than she would have exhibited in the past. It budged him, but not enough to clear the path. She's going to keep swinging until it works. Another step forward before K' proves how little he was affected, springing back at her with remarkable speed, sole first. A snap guard raised at the last possible second guards her from the full brunt of the attack as she brings K' to using force to stop her from moving on from this place.
Even guarded, she stumbles back, arms flailing out from her sides for a half-step, not having the footing or stature to withstand that kind of direct force. She hisses, springing back a step beyond that to buy her time, the young man's words sending her mind reeling. "And I thought you understood," she snaps back, extending her right hand to her side, a surge of sapphire hued flame coursing over her limb as she clenches her fist. Perspiration appears at her temples as the strain of the power coursing through her begins to manifest itself.
Her left hand clenches and unclenches over and over as she powers her next attack, drawing heavily on the world around her but paying a price with the agony it puts her limb into. She shakes her head, closing her eyes for a moment before opening them again, focused back on him. "How do you know of my friends?! People like us... we wouldn't be like this if we still had anyone left in the world!!" She growls, turning her left shoulder to him as the flame continues to course over her right arm. "Are you lying to me? If... if one of my friends was also yours, then you would be doing the same thing as me!!"
Anger seems so foreign to that voice of hers so often used to sooth or comfort others in need. The scowl on her face out of place as she surrenders herself to the base instincts of survival and fear-driven vengeance. "You're an imposter!" Hotaru steps forward, twisting her right shoulder toward the young man as she slams her hand into the air between them, unleashing a meteor of concussive, burning chi directly back toward the NESTS experiment, its azure lumination glinting off the sparkle of tears at the corner of the girl's eyes.
COMBATSYS: Hotaru successfully hits K' with Hakki Shou.
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Hotaru 0/-------/----===|====---\-------\0 K'
"Don't understand?" A cold sound starts out of K''s throat, the noise derisive and sharp. His hands clutch at his sides, but the motion is less one of impotent frustration and more a preparatory precursor to violence. "Don't dare tell me I don't understand this. I lived this." He's gone through -worse- than she has, and yet she has the nerve to try and tell him he doesn't understand it? The confusion? The hatred? The urge to make everyone else hurt as much as he does?
The only thing he doesn't understand here is how she can continue to delude herself that she has nothing left. Because she is far from hitting the rock bottom he's hit in the past.
Those mingled feelings of anger, confusion, and the unpleasant sting of personal memory all take their toll on his concentration. The desire to put Hotaru right-- to force her to once again be the exemplary creature he respected her as, and the moral guiding hand he -needs- her to be-- wars with the everpresent question in his mind: 'what's -wrong- with wanting to make these invaders suffer?'
Absorbed briefly in the impossibility of answering that question, he starts his guard too late to fully protect himself against the retaliatory chi. It drives him back a few steps, and when his defending arm finally lowers, it's to reveal a brief snarl of irritation. "I know about them because I talked to them," he grates, his patience clearly running thin, "and your behavior's going to -guarantee- you won't have them for long..."
His eyes fix on Hotaru. K''s racing mind is visible in the sharpness of his gaze and the tenseness of his stance. He maintains his immovable stance... blocking her, harrying her, but not yet actually trying to badly hurt her. "To be what I am... that's to cut yourself off from the world. Where I am, what I am... that's not for you. I won't let you join me there. And I am not allowing you to return to the estate while you're like this." K''s head lifts, a sardonic look curling his expression with scorn. His next statement reveals why he's not usually renowned for his tact. "Who knows which of your 'friends' you might hurt next if you do?"
COMBATSYS: K' focuses on his next action.
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Hotaru 0/-------/----===|====---\-------\0 K'
Her cerulean chi blasts against him but Hotaru looks none too pleased with the result as K' is still standing between her and the streets of Southtown that she feels driven to get back to wandering. Every second the passes her enemies are free to move about. Every minute that passes, another atrocity is no doubt committed. And only she can do anything about it. Only she can stop it all. And she would, too, but for this... stubborn... individual in her path. She thought he felt familiar; that he must share a similar ambition to purge the city. But maybe... that's not why he seemed familiar.
The girl holds her ground, eyes narrowing as she examins K' studiously. Why does he keep talking about her friends so much? The ones she knows died in battle? Who else is there? Her breaths come harder now and her right arm sports new cracks in her skin; a cost of the charged bolt she hurled his way seconds prior. She winces, left hand reaching up to rub her left temple as if trying to asuage a blinding headache. She's spent all this time wandering, thinking only of her mission, but not of the logic or reason behind it. And the more she tries to think that way, the more she runs up against the brick wall of drug induced conditioning...
She pulls her hand away, keeping her focus on K' as he holds his ground, still blocking her way. She could, in theory, go back the other way. She doesn't know of his speed; his ability to slip through the darkness like he was born of shadows and at home in their shroud. She could go the long way around, perhaps hope to lose him in the city. But that would be away from her destination - the final point to which she has been slowly making her way this entire time - and the thought of veering course feels alien to the girl's addled mind. No. She'll go through this guy.
Hotaru shakes her head, raising her arms, her right hand trembling slightly as she stays focused on him. He says he's already there; where she's going. "My friends..." she stammers, the anger having ebbed slightly. "I-... I won't hurt them." She squints her eyes closed, scowling, "I won't hurt my friends! How can you say that?!" The black-clad girl sprints forward, dropping into a lower stance from a yard out before lunging into K' shoulder first, aiming to drive him back with her body and leave him vulnerable to a crushing palm-striking finishing blow. "I'm doing this for them, so that they can sleep safely at night!!"
COMBATSYS: K' interrupts Soushou Shin from Hotaru with Crow Bite EX.
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Hotaru 1/----===/=======|=======\-------\1 K'
It's not that K' doesn't share an ambition to purge the city of certain of its invaders. It's merely that his own vengeful drive is far more levelheaded (as much as any vengeance can be said to be levelheaded, anyway) far more targeted, and far more in line with proper justice than Hotaru's unfocused, wild, and violent flailings. K''s still mentally smirking to himself over the irony inherent in the situation... that he should find someone who makes his own rage look tempered and intelligent.
He never expected it would be Hotaru. Hotaru, who was a help to him in achieving control enough to remove his glove. Hotaru, who had always been gentle, understanding, and full of faith. He has to wonder what it was she saw that drove her to this. Could she actually have seen people die, other than the false alarm of Shurui? But even so, even if she did witness atrocities, it's not an excuse for her to lose touch with reality to such a degree as to blindly harm the girl who had been placed in her care.
Hotaru's gesture of pain, however, starts to present K' with an entirely separate suspicion. The sudden thought tilts K''s head, yellow eyes narrowing suddenly on the way her eyes squint in confusion. "...They -tampered- with your mind," K' accuses, leaning forwards aggressively. So it's not quite as he feared-- Hotaru herself isn't responsible for her loss of touch with reality, as some kind of defense mechanism. That experimentation Shurui was talking about... it wasn't just physical. The amnesia he observed earlier may well have been induced.
The thought adds fuel to his anger. And the solution he comes up with? To detain her by force. To hold her until he can put her confused mind back on its proper course. Mere words won't shake her programming... not while she's still got strength enough to resist them. And besides, Hotaru herself is ensuring that this confrontation can't end in anything but violence.
She rushes at him again, aiming to slam her shoulder into him. K' braces for the rush... but what she -says- as she lunges to attack sparks his temper badly enough to trigger a far more violent response than his previous passiveness. "How can I say that?!" K' answers his own rhetorical question with a sudden roar and snap of fire. Flames sear down the length of his arm as he leans straight forward into Hotaru's charge, soaking the brunt of it into his chest before he twists sharply and overpowers her momentum. "Because you have ALREADY hurt one."
K' slams gathered fire and a carving, upwards strike straight across Hotaru's body, driving a blow into her with force enough to launch her straight back against the far wall of the alley. "And I think they'd sleep more safely once you were back to normal..."
"Yes," she cries back when he speaks of tampering. "No!" she corrects herself almost as quickly, sounding conflicted, uncertain, as if she needed to convince herself moreso than him. And then she is rising into him, shoulder first, trying to combine the entire strength her body can muster augmented by the power coursing through her from the experimentation into a single, coordinated strike. And as it connects, she thinks she has him. She need only touch down, plant her feet, and lean into a palm strike every bit as crushing as the shoulder charge.
She has to fight. It's the only way to prove that she's right. It's the only way to clear the path to her goals. He must be removed from her way by means of force her fevered mind insists. And with that madness inducing determination, she springs into the fire that errupts around the young man. In clearer mind, she might have realized he wasn't as off balance as she had hoped in time to do anything about it. But she doesn't even try to correct, switching from the shoulder lunge to her palm slam without hesitation, blind to the retaliation coming for her, his shouted words ringing in her ears.
The counter attack stops her short before driving the girl easily into the air. "Ah!" Her upperback hits the wall hard enough to send crumbled bricks to the ground beneath her before she too slides down to join them. The legendary Kusanagi flames - the gift K' never wanted - ripple over her body as her own aura, strained to the breaking point by her present condition, tries to fight it off. She lands in a seated heap, propped up by her hands against the gravel, glowing if only because of the light of the flames still flickering on her before they at last fade. An angled scorch mark across her uniform would be more visible were it not black to begin with. But in places it is burnt through, her skin beneath red from the exposure to the fist-powered inferno even if but for an instant.
Eyes closed, her hands clench, her right arm bleeding from the wounds she had before this altercation even began. "I-..." Her voice is weak, the girl lost to a state of mild shock. "I would never..." She shakes her head, her unbound black hair drapped over her shoulders. Her left hand lifts, resting over her forehead and left eye like a claw as her nails press into her skin. She tries to remember; tries to make sense of such a horrific accusastion. Hasn't she done all this for them? Hasn't she shown that she'll go to any length, even sacrificing her own health or happiness to make the proper people pay?
He might feel it from any range at first - an invisible presence, resonating from the position of the kneeling girl as if small shockwaves of unseen force were emenating out from around her, as her body begins to draw chi from the world around her only to turn it into potential for far more devastating techniques.
Her breathing is strained, accompanied by an unhealthy sounding gurgle deep within her lungs. As she lifts her face to glare back toward K', blood seeps from the corner of her mouth. How did she get here? All of her thoughts, all of her memories revolve around the battle at her home. The battle where she watched her friends fall to the ground alongside her. Flashes of being restrained in somewhere hot come to mind, fitting with the perspiration rolling down from her hairline, but it was hard to link the past to the present. How did she get away from SIN? Where has she been for the last few days even? She shakes her head, dismissing the thoughts as unimportant. All that matters is her mission. "To think that I would... that I would hurt my own friends; the people most important to me in the world..." her tone is a growl.
She stands up suddenly, hands clenched at her sides, shoulders squared, feet slightly apart as she takes on a stance more fitting a berserker than the graceful Kenpo artist she was supposed to be. "You must be one of them! One of the ones trying to manipulate me!! I will make you stop!!" Hotaru exclaims before she bolts forward. That chi ebbing from her goes from invisible to fierce blue flames in an instant, a wake of power left in her path as she spans the distance between her and K' in an instant.
She fights like a savage, aiming to barrel into K' like a force of wrath, attempting to literally tear him to the ground with strength augmented by an unhealthy quantity of chi unbridled by anything resembling control or inhibition. A crushing, chi-laced double palm press would be her opening attack, attempting to stun the NESTS escapee... her forward momentum would carry her onward however, as she would take to the air and literally try to tackle K' to the ground, intending to come to a landing on his chest, her hands at his throat like a devil's talons...
COMBATSYS: Hotaru successfully hits K' with Ten-shou Ranki EX.
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Hotaru 0/-------/------=|=======\==-----\1 K'
A maelstrom of violent chi whips around her as she does so, literally crumbling loose segments of the wall and sheering the rusted bars from a fire-escape several yards above, so powerful is the magnitude of her energy. Her eyes are empty as she stares into his face as if not seeing him at all, vacant of life or soul as she seeks to sustain that breath-robbing chokehold. "No... you aren't trying to manipulate." She pauses for a half-breath as if her stressed mind has taken a different track all together. "It's just that... if I did hurt one of my friends... it must have been necessary... You understand, don't you? ...sometimes that's the only way to help them..." she murmurs, regret weighing her voice down, her tone shifted toward a calm strangely out of place in the midst of so much devastation.
The hurricane of chi would be brought crashing down then, the girl's body used as a focus by which it would be funneled directly into the young man should he be caught up in the worst of it.
Mercilessly, K' watches Hotaru struggle with her own pained confusion. He knows, from personal experience, that people like them-- people who've had their minds and memories messed with-- never really know what's true or not. Never really know what and who to trust. No outside source seems safe-- after all, just about everyone in the world has some ulterior motive-- and yet, one's own mind provides no help or guidance. It's frightening to realize that one's own self is little more than an unreliable blank slate.
There is no real way to 'help' amnesiacs save with hard proof. And K' has none on hand. He has only what he can say. And he knows, from his own example, that Hotaru is unlikely to be receptive.
"You don't remember," K' eventually offers, eyeing Hotaru as she tries to make sense of what she would or would not do. What she has and hasn't done. "You don't have any fucking idea who you are, or what the person you should be would or wouldn't do, or why you have to do what your mind's telling you so loudly TO do. You're just following what you've been -programmed- to do..." The weight of personal experience rests heavily on his voice. K' is telling Hotaru something he has told almost no one else, something he has heretofore only really shared with his sister: how it feels for him, living as a programmed weapon and an amnesiac and knowing he may never get back what has been erased.
He can sense the buildup of energy. He knows what's coming. The alley is too narrow for him to maneuver adequately to avoid the onrush... but he does brace himself, his aura shifting in preparation to soak some of the force. She shouts that she'll force him to stop... and in response, K''s expression shifts not into one of anger, or fear, or even apprehension... but one of sardonic amusement. "You sound," he concludes, wry and amused and, above all... disgusted, "like me."
The girl slams into him. Having braced himself, the strike-- and the subsequent skidding impact against the ground-- is less punishing than it could have been, the subsequent maelstrom of chi ripping at him but not robbing him of his alertness or readiness: but the sheer amount of force still takes its toll, his rudimentary snap defenses unable to completely spare him the damage. Hotaru's nails draw blood when her hands shut wildly around his throat; the edges of K''s eyes flinch. He stares narrowly up at Hotaru, listening to her try to reason even while trying to kill him.
One of K''s hands shuts around Hotaru's wrists, crushing down in a clear bid to cause enough pain to open her hands. K''s heretofore blank expression mutates into a snarl as his grip contracts. "Yeah," he rasps in a sudden, surprising agreement, his voice mangled into a growl by her attack. His grasp tightens until it seems her wrists must break. "You're right. /Sometimes/, the only way to help someone -is- to hurt them."
K' abruptly releases her wrists. But the gesture is only a distraction for when his other hand slams forwards from point-blank range, the young man firing off a violent strike straight towards her center of mass.
COMBATSYS: K' successfully hits Hotaru with One Inch.
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Hotaru 0/-------/-======|=======\====---\1 K'
She accused him of not understanding. If only her drug addled mind could understand... There might not be anyone alive that could understand it better. The confusion, the paranoia, the thirst for revenge. But where he had years of assassin's training to better forge his quest, she had nothing of the sort. Her life had had its challenges, but it was a different set all together that she had to cope with and had ill prepared her for a life of this mindset. She didn't have his instincts and the hatred driving her is a fresh thing only recently born rather than nursed over years of time in the cage of NESTS. It's no wonder she's overwhelmed, confused, and poorly able to control the psychosis induced by amoral minds.
Her explosive chi is partially dampened by the power of K''s aura, shifted in a precision manner to counter the severity of the magnitude of her brutal attack. By the time it has finished, she should be exhausted. In a normal fight, such an attack would have been practically beyond her capacity to even /do/, let alone continue fighting afterward. But Hotaru seems not to be slowed in the slightest, her grip still tight as she sits over K', eyes glancing back and forth as if she's searching for something yet unable to find it.
She gasps when his hands seize her wrists. Even in her state, his physical strength overpowers hers, forcing her fingers to release their grip as she suddenly seems to focus on him, a flash of confusion in her eyes, as if the girl was trying to figure out who he was and why she was sitting on him with her hands at his throat. Surprise is replaced by a flash of anger as she struggles for an instant against his grip, teeth gritted, eyes fixing on his yellow iris'd eyes for a brief moment.
Even so close as she is, K' finds a way to dish out crushing force. The punch designed for intensely close combat comes in handy here as with a single blow he drives his fist into Hotaru's sternum. The force is more than enough to send her flying off of him, arms flailing as she hits her back against the wall once more, a pained exhale her only sound as she drops to the ground again, landing even harder this time.
"I can't help but think..." she coughs, head lowered as she seems to be weakening at last. Perhaps the expenditures are starting to take their toll. Or the power behind each of K''s attacks is starting to add up. She lifts her face to look back toward him, "That had we met sooner..." Her arms strain, trembling as she pushes herself at last, finally upright again, her left hand resting at her sternum, rubbing it a little. Something might be cracked. She thinks it probably should be after a strike like that. She's too numb to feel a thing. Which might be why she can continue moving her right arm in spite the horrific condition the limb seems to be in. "... we might have been friends."
She closes her eyes for a moment before opening them again, her vision swimming, the girl only having a vague sense of what the young man is doing or where he is standing. She should be bedridden in her state but she continues to move with strength unslowed. "But right now..." She starts in his direction again, sprinting forward with that same relentless speed, "You're in my way!!"
She leaps again, going for his neck once more, as if her first attempt at strangling him wasn't enough to satisfy her. This time she lacks the chi to back her assault, but the intent to tackle K' remains the same as all attention to skill, acrobatics, or Kenpo arts seem lost to the blinding determination that rules her mind!
COMBATSYS: K' interrupts Ten Ranku-Tou from Hotaru with Heat Drive EX.
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Hotaru 1/---====/=======|=====--\-------\0 K'
K''s hatred, his paranoia, and his vengeful nature were all tempered and honed by time in the service of NESTS. By the time he finally chewed free of his trap and ran off to begin his vendetta against NESTS, he had had a long time to nurse his grudge: to think of how best to execute revenge. But even with all that preparation, when he first tasted the freedom that NESTS had deprived him for so long, the sudden rage he felt against NESTS almost did overpower him as well. Exposure to morality and societal norms had only underlined the utter wrongness of what had been done to him, and for a while he had raged as mindlessly as Hotaru does now.
It had taken help for him to eventually focus his hatred down to a more deliberate, cold one. Now, the anger serves him as a driving, motivating force. Unlike Hotaru, hate has defined his life since the first moment he became self-aware, and it may well follow him until his eventual death; he's used to feeling it, and-- ironically, with Geese's help-- has also become used to harnessing it. Using it.
To Hotaru, however, it's too new an emotion for her to be able to control it and bend it to her use. And that confusion creates holes in her fighting... holes that K' can easily see, because he left all the same kinds of openings whenever he let his own rage overtake him.
Once Hotaru is clear of him, K' recovers slowly back to a stand. Hotaru, however, is even slower by dint of her wounds; he watches as she struggles to rise, struggles to even -speak-, little pity for her condition in his implacable face. Again, she demonstrates her shattered memory. And K' lifts a brow. "No. We wouldn't have been," he replies evenly. "People in your state don't make or keep friends." Again... the heavy weight of personal experience lies beneath those simple words, the implication very clear that K' knows because he has been where she is now.
With her subsequent actions, she only proves his assertion that to those blinded by hate, there is no such thing as allegiance or friendship. She lunges to attack again, heading straight for his throat like a crazed predator. She impacts him harshly, driving him a step back... and then, K''s heels dig in, cutting her momentum even as fire leaps to life around his arm again.
In a sharp reversal, K' forces bodily forwards against her assault, catching up her smaller frame in the middle of its leap. Throwing his arm forwards, K' slams Hotaru right back against the wall from whence she came with a fire-laced hand. The flames snuff after a few moments, but his hand remains: holding her in place, at the shoulder, in an odd echo of the way he once did before he kissed her months ago. The constant reprisals are an unspoken and violent way of making it plain to the girl that she will not be leaving. She will not be going anywhere.
He's in her way, she declares. "Yes," K' affirms coldly, staring down the length of his arm at her, immovable determination narrowing his yellow eyes. "I am in your way. And I intend to stay there until you get yourself under control."
Again she tries to slam into him, and again K' rebuffs her assault, driving the smaller, more fragile fighter back fiercely. The suddeness of the impact robs her of any forward momentum, and even the thought of trying to correct for it doesn't even have the chance to cross her mind. His arm slams into her, flame coursing over her bruised shoulder as she's once again driven into the wall at her back.
She spasms upon impact, her breath forcibly expelled from her lungs in a pained, burst-like gasp. For the next several seconds, she shows no signs of letting up as both of her arms lift, seeking a tight grip on his own forarm. Her fingers lock onto his flesh, grasping his limb tightly even before the young man draws back the flames and contains them with the control he had worked and suffered so hard to master.
"Shut up!" the girl barks the instant she has the breath with which to utter anything at all. "Shut up! You can't control me! No one can!!" Her tone a vain attempt at being commanding when she lacks the positioning to expect acquiescence from him. She tries to twist her way free, but success isn't to be found when trying to force his hand off her shoulder no matter how hard she pries. She swings one of her legs out, trying to kick his shin away, but leaning as he is, he has her at range and nothing she can muster is threatening enough to dislodge him from his position. But that doesn't keep her from moving wildly like a desperate animal caught by a hunter's trap; hands trying to claw at his arm, futile kicks, random in their execution, failing to make an impact. "You're just as guilty as the rest!" Her shouts reaching the level of panicked hysterics now, the vain 'commands' already forgotten.
She writhes, not surrendering to his superior strength so easily. Tears are at her eyes, whether from the intensity of the pain that she's only vaguely conscious of, or the frustration at having her mission thwarted by this stubbornly efficient and controlled 'stranger' is hard to say. Like a tantruming child, she swings, claws, and kicks, to the point that she may very well be hurting herself in the process, pushing her muscles harder than is healthy. If his hand wasn't in just the right place to keep her from accomplishing it, he might half need to worry about the crazed girl trying to bite him. "Go away!! Get away from me!!" Wild-eyed, she's undone, her mind, her thoughts fraying apart at the seams. She wants to hurt him on any level possible. How dare he get in her way!
Her right hand flares to life again with that burning chi she exhibited earlier. Sapphire blue flames ripple over the arm of a girl not attuned to controlling anything so vengeful and free as unpredictable fire, and the damage it does to herself is impossible to miss as her skin literally burns. Lifting her arm, she prepares to aim it as if her arm was some kind of shotgun. She'll use that power to blast him in the face, to force him to let go, to make him leave-
Leaving was the last thing she had wanted of him.
The thought shoots through her mind; a sniper's bullet of awareness so sharp that it hurts. A winter's eve, the heat of his proximity, the quiet, sobering conversation in the lobby of her home... When was all that? Where was that? Hotaru's eyes widen as she falls silent and the chi coursing over her arm expands, losing form and focus as it fades out entirely. Limply, her right arm drops to her side like a dead thing and the girl ceases to struggle against being pinned against the wall. Her complexion pales, the firey indignation melting away as if it were ice exposed to the heat he commands. "N-no... back then..."
He'll feel the tremble in her body easily. "I asked that you don't disappear forever." She blinks, then blinks again, trying to stay focused on him before at last breaking her gaze away to the side, a nausiating sensation of horror overcoming her as her memories flood her mind and she sees her actions of late as if through a mirror of the finest crystal; each and every detail, each moment adding more crushing evidence to the magnitude of her own guilt.
The strength leaves her rapidly. Even her head becomes hard to hold up. "No... Shurui..." She closes her eyes, shaking her head with what little energy is left in her. "I'm so sorry. Chun-Li too, they tried... you tried too..." Another tremor passes through the girl. "...so sorry... I'm..." So much pain, so much agony, so much remorse. "I'm very sick." So much regret. How could she have done all this... The last weeks of her life rushing through her mind with vivid recollection. "...so sick..." she utters, her words choked out. She goes limp against his hold, her legs no longer serving to keep her upright.
COMBATSYS: Hotaru takes no action.
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K' 0/-------/--=====|
COMBATSYS: Hotaru can no longer fight.
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K' 0/-------/--=====|
The arm holding Hotaru in place might as well have been made of steel, for all it moves or flinches in the face of Hotaru's wild struggling. Most people would have relented at least an inch or two, seeing such desperate pain and confusion. Most people would have weakened... and would have then regretted it, once Hotaru broke free and continued her self-destructive rampage.
K', however, doesn't even blink even when her nails score deeply into what's exposed of his forearm. In fact, his grasp even tightens when she insists wildly that he can't control her, the slight pressure serving as an unspoken answer: oh, yes, he can. She howls his guilt at him, and he just waits. She shouts for him to get away from her, but he doesn't go anywhere.
Dispassionately, he watches the amount of damage she does to herself, gauging the stress she's placing her body under... warily examining the blue flames when they emerge. His body tenses as she makes to aim the scourging flames at him, his free arm lifting slightly. He's fully prepared to simply knock her out before she can hurt either herself or him any further--
--but then, Hotaru abruptly quiets. K''s eyes flick sharply back to meet hers. His gaze is hard, wary, and cold, but as she talks... the sharp edges slowly wear away. Soon enough, his look is merely neutral; and when she confesses how sick she is, something very like pity finally enters his yellow eyes. It's the first time, during this entire altercation, that any such sentiment has appeared in his expression, and that gentling of his demeanor remains confined to his eyes. His stance, his hand bracing her upright, the set of his jaw... all the rest of him remains as featureless and cool as stone.
He remembers her asking him that. That much is clear. And after a long pause, he replies tonelessly, "I keep my promises."
He is acutely, personally aware of the kind of suffering she's going through right now... fresh out of experimentation, still trying to recover her own mind after scientific tampering. And that awareness stirs an unusual sympathy. The pity is a foreign emotion: it makes him uncomfortable, and his discomfort shows through in his subsequent silence... in the way he quickly starts to stifle any display of it.
He doesn't try to answer her apologies, or indeed anything else she says. He has always tended to speak through actions rather than words, and so when Hotaru's strength finally gives out, K' abruptly shifts to pick her up. Gathering her carefully, mindful not to aggravate either of their injuries, K' turns an eye down on her. In stark contrast to the overwhelming-- perhaps even soothing-- heat of his presence around her, his gaze remains quite cool. It's struggling its way back towards total detachment. "Yeah. You're sick," he finally says. Sick the way I'm sick, he thinks to himself, and I doubt there's any real cure.
The understanding that briefly existed in K''s expression is evanescent. His face soon completely chills back into its far more familiar lines of emotionless control. She helped him. He helped her. She helped him again. So far as he is concerned, his debt to her is now paid; he tries not to think about it in terms beyond that. "Taking you home," he tells her tersely. He pauses a long moment, and then a hint of his familiar smirk pulls at the edges of his expression. "...Consider us even."
COMBATSYS: K' has ended the fight here.
Log created on 22:34:06 04/22/2009 by K', and last modified on 13:01:18 04/26/2009.