Description: An assault on a warehouse believed to house Abobo is unleashed by the join forces of Hyo and Zaki as they look to put an end to the large man's rampage. While two groups split up to distract the enemy forces, Miu and Zaki are set to infiltrate the warehouse itself and get at Abobo. There is just the problem of things seeming too easy. Not enough men are guarding the place and once inside the duo they found have been duped once more. A dangerous declaration is made and those looking to stop whatever mastermind is behind the problems in Sunshine City might in fact be playing right into his clutches.
The plan was perfect. It seems Abobo was finally pinpointed even if he was never seen himself. Just too much activity was going through the old warehouse in the center of the Industrial Area of Sunshine City. They also seemed to realize nothing was being planned against them. A strike that would reach Abobo and finally take the gang lord down once and for good. Or at least Zaki and the others would like to think that would be the end possibility.
That all seems to change the night of the strike itself. Things just seemed wrong in so many cases. Where were the suited individuals that would normally be seen daily? Where is all the traffic going in and out of the warehouse itself in general? If anything it seems that the ranks are so thin that they don't even seem to care if someone got inside the warehouse proper. Even more perplexing is where has all the manpower gone that has been moving trough this area? It isn't like the group is dealing with ninja. A gang being organized is one thing, but seemingly moving such a large amount of people without being noticed? That is pretty bothersome.
There seems to be a few ways to go into the place. The main shutter doors that remain open where most of the traffic would normally go through according to Hyo's reports. There is no one there other than two men that rushed off when a ruckus in the distance was heard. Was that the start of the attack itself? There are some shattered windows that are low enough to probably jump up and crawl through. Shards of glass and rusted frames might make for some cuts there. Over on the right side of the building there is a piece of wall opened up where there must have been a battle. It is wide enough someone small and slender should be able to fit through. It is unguarded as well. Is Abobo just so damn confident he wants people to come in and attack him? Is he ready to show how monsterous he can be?
Explosions rock the rooftop of the warehouse target, the precision strike masterminded from the floating fortress above both alien and alarming to the thuggish residents of the industrial district. Or what surprisingly few there are. Resistance has been sparse-- far from the dozens upon dozens reputed to be patrolling this area, supposedly the heart of the snake-tattoooed operation.
For Zaki and Miu, the past several hours have held a distinctly militaristic air, the highly-organized nature of the operation upon Abobo's apparent stronghold quite unlike anything either of the Seijyun girls is used to. While Zaki purports to fight a waking war, spearheading five thousand angry young women, the sheer weight of resources - human and technological - brought to bear by Hyo Imawano is both surprising and troubling. At least to the sukeban. Her only distraction is the ease with which they have made their approach through old pipes and sewer tunnels, eventually emerging into moonlight some thirty yards from the targeted complex.
Neglecting to kit herself out in anything more than her usual ordnance, Aoi has been almost completely, uncharacteristically silent during their stealthy insertion. To either side, she's flanked by two similarly dark, though less brooding figures-- a crack ninja duo assigned to accompany them to break through the resistance not drawn away by the heavy rooftop assault. She'd have chosen not to bring them, regarding them with cold vulpine eyes as they've cut wire and darted ahead individually for reconnaissance. Zaki would have preferred a straight fight... and when they find themselves suddenly outside the lower walls of the warehouse, seemingly wide open with every last drop of resistance drawn away?
She doesn't seem elated, or even coolly smug. She just seems bitter, and very, very wary.
"This is bad, Kurosaki." Her voice booms behind the mask, carrying through the night air; though at this point, Aoi hardly thinks it matters. They're either walking into a trap... or Hyo has got it wrong, and they'll be finding their exit route is a lot trickier when half the district comes down upon them following the fireworks atop the warehouse. Abobo's men or otherwise. "Do you... sense anything? Feel anything?"
Businesslike thus far through the conflict, it's testament to how ruffled the sukeban is that she even cares to ask.
Miu has held her peace. Never known for being particularly open with her thoughts and feelings, it has been some time since she actually met Zaki. She disliked the forces brought to bear by Hyo as much - perhaps more - than Zaki. Because it is a symbol of what is to come. At the moment, these people are her allies; Zaki and Hyo. But neither of them are her friends. They have her respect, but not her trust. Of course, the future is the future. If there is one thing that the video she had seen had made excruciatingly clear, it is that the future can wait. The problem of the present must be solved. This boil on the face of Sunshine City must be lanced.
"We're being played." Miu says in response. This is not the temple. At least, not yet. She can feel no lingering touch of evil here, and there is no pseudo-religious atmosphere. Miu's skin prickles. If there were not lives hanging in the balance; lives which to some small extent she had helped to place there... she would be urging Zaki to withdraw. She dislikes situations she does not understand. It would be better in some sick way to be crashing against an impenetrable fortress; that at least would be a known quantity. This is not.
"But the time for games is passed. I do not sense any great power here. So let us see what trap they have set for us, and accept the sacrifices they have given us to send this message."
It is a surprisingly wordy response from Miu, and she waits for Zaki to press ahead. This is after all, the situation that she had warned Zaki it would be necessary to endure. If Zaki has been fighting a war, then this is a battle which may prove decisive for either side, or may be just be the next stage in a prolonged, grinding campaign of attrition.
Whatever the case, savagery will be answered with savagery, blood will be answered with blood, and when the dawn breaks to bear testament to their sins, there will be less souls in Sunshine City than there were the day before. Such is the fate woven by the schoolgirl's actions, and they must all of them bear it.
"Yeah," is Zaki's immediate, blunt response to Miu, the sukeban wasting no time on deliberation, "We are."
Dangled upon a string, either by Imawano or their quarry-- but thus far, has Abobo himself shown any particular willingness to manipulate her this way? At any point, she could have been fed a lead winding into the heart of the industrial district, and she'd likely have followed it. Driven to remove this blight from just from the city, but from her life and from the world, Aoi is at that nail-dragging precipice where she'll take anything. Tired and hungry, beleagured and ferocious in the manner of a cornered animal, she asks for emotional guidance from the Crow Girl because on a very fundamental level she /needs/ it. Trust? No. She doesn't feel it either.
The two people who come closest right now are Sakura and Miu, but Hyo's presence and the information he brought to this delicately-balanced battlefield, to a situation ready to either crumble or explode... too convenient. Those dark blue eyes burn and smoulder as Zaki considers both this, and the dramatic words spoken by the tiny, exceedingly powerful psychic beside her. Slowly she eyes the shinobi at either side.
"You two," she says suddenly, not acknowledging Kurosaki directly as she moves forward in a lashing of skirts, sweeping her arm commandingly aside. "Remain, and cover our tracks. If we don't come out within five minutes, follow us; until then you /do not move/. Any man that fails to obey will answer to my chain." Passionate as the declaration is, or should be, her voice is bitingly, bruisingly cold. Their apparent allies' faces cannot be seen beneath shrouding black hoods, but it's easy to imagine they at least cringe as they stand aside. Likely, however, they do not: Imawano's men are as unwaveringly confident as the silver-haired swordsman himself.
Drawing a harsh breath in through the choking leather of her mask, Zaki pauses before the inner sanctum, eyeing the broken glass around one bay window before she stalks forward and lifts a boot, sweeping the broken stuff away with an almost carelessly brutal lash of that foot.
"Miu, I want you with me. We don't split up for anything. If they want to deliver a message..."
Before ducking inside, she sends one last, piercing glance back over her shoulder, vulpine eyes flashing.
"We'll have our reply ready. Nobody plays us. Nobody."
Miu doesn't smile, she just nods her head. Internally, though, it is amusing. As though she would let Zaki tell her to go anywhere else. If Zaki gets herself killed, then the responsibility of holding Seijyun high together will fall on her. That is not something she has any interest in; least of all when every instinct she has tells her that the relative peace she had enjoyed following the end of the disastrous King of Fighters tournament is very much past.
She ignores Hyo's men entirely. Not because she is unaware of their presence, but because she can't help but feel they, too, are a message from their 'allies'. Hyo is strong. Justice High is strong. It is now necessary that she demonstrates Seijyun High is every bit their equal. Not because of school pride, but because any chance of avoiding yet more conflict will rest on the tenuous notion that this endeavor has not weakened them too much.
"If Abobo isn't here, leave at least two alive." The Crow Girl of Seijyun High responds, as the pair descend into the waiting darkness. "One to question, the other to question after they know what happens to liars."
Zaki's voice is cold... Miu's is disturbingly relaxed. There is little emotion in her, hardening her heart for what has to come next, as the young empath does all she can to divorce her horror and her fear from her mind. The head must rule the heart, or she'd never agree to come here at all.
It could possibly be a well laid trap, but Abobo isn't known for his smarts. He is a man that just survives through his sheer stength. That is why he has so many followers. They don't care that he lacks brains. They care that he can get what he wants and he has yet to bite off more than he can chew. This might of course be changing rather quickly. The building itself is shaken by the assault and the few cries of distressed gangers are coming off in a distance where they likely ran into trouble they were never expecting to deal with in their life.
Once both Zaki and Miu slip in they are met with a cold and dark conditions. There are faint flickerings of light among the hallways once they reach there, but the inside is quiet like a tomb. If there is anyone inside they are very good at keeping themselves hidden among the shadows and lurk quietly. Even the perceptive Miu cannot pick up any sort of emotions such as worry or anticipation. There is something that eats at the back of her mind. Some strange feeling similar to the way she felt at the temple. Not near as strong, but it is familiar enough to her.
Delving further starts to show the place does look abandoned. Any sort of loot that had been accumulating from the various robberies seems long gone and the only reason the various lights are still on is because they were perhaps rushing to get out of this place. Or if the two really pay attention they seem to be leading them on a path towards the main warehouse area and out of the office like rooms and hallways they were in. The large part of the warehouse is a mess. Broken crates, empty barrels and all sorts of debris are strewn across the floors. A few bags in one corner could be the ones that Hyo had seen that looked like they contained bodies. Thy do seem to still have contents, but if any actual body is in there it is likely nicely rotting at this point. Then again given how bad the area smells it couldn't really make things much worse.
Along one wall is various things spray painted with papers laying on the ground and taped up on the wall as well. That sense evil taint wells up in Miu's mind, growing a bit stronger now as they venture further inside the warehouse proper. For now there is no ambush or trap seeming to be set. If anything it almost seems more like a dead end. If Abobo was here he has been long gone and at best guest the small forces that were 'guarding' the area might have been the only people using this building as of late.
Emotionless? Cold? No. Beneath the chill exterior, Zaki is - in her own fashion - extending a hand of friendship to Miu Kurosaki at last, the plea to ensure that the Crow Girl follows her inward as good as any other young woman telling her she respects and trusts her, that there'd be few other people she would choose to stand here. The sukeban would never be so mushy; and there ARE a tiny selection of others, but at a time when allies are few and fewer can be trusted... it's an acknowledgement that even she needs /somebody/.
But she's not fearful, nor distracted. Quite the contrary.
Aoi couldn't be paying any more attention if she tried. Stepping into the warehouse, she's expecting either a fetid charnel house and a nasty surprise beside; or almost precisely what she does find. It may only have been a single day - perhaps two, she's unsure precisely - but if a sinister mind were at work either adjacent to or behind the brutish, monstrous legends surrounding Abobo and his punishing physical strength, that they would be so astonishingly quick to act shouldn't come as a shock. More worrying is what else may await.
The scarlet-haired sukeban does not penetrate beyond the initial line of bidding lights, immediately, stepping across the edges of the room, her stiletto-heeled boots clacking in the thick, forbidding gloom of the interior as she inspects the crates and boxes, enough pausing to toe open one of those burlap sacks. The stench that greets her nostrils even past the cloying leather causes her to turn abruptly away, muttering a curse as she returns to the centre of the room, glances at Miu and then continues in. She'll follow the line laid out for them to tread-- because she has little choice. They've pushed this far, and must continue to the end.
"Abobo isn't here," she responds at last to Miu's last words upon entry, voice resonating through the eerie near-silence marked only by their footsteps and the booming report of a single gun from somewhere outside; or possibly above. The sound plays tricks in here, as do the flickering lights. "If he was here, he'd fight. He's not hiding from us, Miu," her tone darkens, and as she continues through one of the abandoned offices, scuffing through debris and keeping her breathing carefully shallow, she flicks out her wrist. Her iconic chain unravels, snapping against her right calf before coming to rest in the air, polished links jangling. "He's being kept from us. There's somebody else behind this. This isn't the work of a mere /thug/."
She's been somewhere like this before, felt that dawning dread. There's more to this than violence and burglary.
"Tch. You still feel nothing? No visions? No black wings?"
Miu's senses are sharp. There are some who would say they are inhumanely sharp; but that is wrong. Miu's senses are sharp precisely because of her humanity. She can sense living minds and emotion, and with her attention fully on that, to try and avoid any disturbing ambush, there are perhaps only a handful of people in existence who could cloak their presence from her entirely. The darkness she senses here is similar to the temple, but different. There are no dark wings yet, but those had not come immediately last time, either. There is a nagging wrongness, instead.
Miu's eyes are closed, and the girl allows her power to unfurl. Dark black feathers tumble from her sleeves, inky-dark even in the shadowy warehouse. In a way it is just a natural reaction to the snapping chain of her ally. There is tension here, yes, but how much of it is spilling from herself and the Sukeban? They cannot afford to be jumping at shadows.
"There is danger, remember." She murmurs quietly, more to herself than anyone else. Clearing her throat, she opens her eyes again, having navigated her way in with the darkness of her own eyelids to cease any potential distractions from the surroundings. The mundane nature of which invoke a peculiar kind of terror from her.
"There is a wrongness here." She replies, calmly. Even though her teeth are set very much on edge. "I have... suspicions, as to the motive of this. But lets not... jump to conclusions."
Slowly, the Crow Girl starts to make her way around to the wall, the spray paint. Eyes open again, she scans them for any hint, any clue of what has been left behind... of where that discomforting sensation may find its source.
The sense of wrongness is just something that lingers much like it did at the temple. Whatever seemed to create it has probably sense moved on. More than likely the person that came to tell Abobo to move his forces if indeed the gang leader was being kept from Zaki and the others. It does seem like the logical conclusion. Abobo is a strong man that doesn't need to keep himself hidden. He has been known to always deal with things through brute strength. That is what has made him feel all that much more dangerous to those in town. He was still running rampant in the past, but much more controlled and less organized than now. It is like someone came in and just started to tell him what to do. It might be worriesome there is someone strong enough that Abobo would listen to them.
The markings on the wall are typical gang signs and the like it would look like. What is more interesting is the papers that are taped up around the various markings. All of them being missing fighters that had disappeared soon after the tournament began. Some are actually Missing posters while others are just photocopied photos of the various people. Faces without names to the girls.....aside from two.
Zaki certainly is very familiar with two of those faces. Hamada and Yokota are two of the pictures to be found and each of them seem newer than the rest. Both are not dressed like normal, but instead in robes and looking a unbound and far from being in a prison cell like they are reported to be in. Scrawled under each picture 'To Zaki, We have felt the black wing's embrace'. This is nothing from Abobo. Someone knew this place would come under attack and they are now just seeming to be having fun with the Sukeban.
Zaki's immediate conclusion isn't necessarily that Abobo is being ordered, rather manipulated. Perhaps even used, though in a contrary way to the games she feels have been played with she and Miu, with Sakura and Daniel, perhaps even with Hyo Imawano - if his coincidentally fortunate apparition is not a sign of the far worse, more frightening possibility that she's sold herself straight into the clutches of another of his masterplans. This war against Sunshine's chaotic denizens has wearied the sukeban, but she remains assured that she can break through one way or another, come what may. To take down the silver-haired swordsman...
It doesn't matter. Her thoughts linger because she knows not what to expect as she reaches the dead-end of their labyrinthine path this night, the photographs emergent upon the walls getting initially a scathing sweep before those familiar faces emerge on a partition wall before her.
No matter how prepared a warrior is, they can be caught offguard. But there are two possibilities as to how; one can be blindsided by something so utterly unexpected, so bitingly, harrowingly astonishing that it seems to remove the will to fight - burning away the very spirit into spitting ashes. Then there is the other form of shock, where so much slow-building adrenaline and anticipation results in a revelation that means so terribly little to the one observing it that their reaction might be rampantly explosive or...
Nothing. That bitter curdle already tasted at the back of Zaki's threat doesn't seem to intensify, so much as fall still and disturbingly tasteless, as a hollow feeling descends in her breast. She stares levelly at the confounding portraits, then takes in the writing beneath them with a faint, necessary squinting of vulpine eyes through the gloom. Like being led in a circle to a conclusion she'd already drawn, but worse, or at least different-- because she'd assumed the two missing girls were dead, perhaps even decaying in one of those bags. Instead they've been, what? Brainwashed? Turned by a conniving mind? Or merely neatly posed.
"What the fuck is this."
Her tone /is/ dead now, totally void of emotion beyond a malingering frustration as she continues staring flatly. Is there something they're missing here? Miu senses something in the air, the spike of her psychic powers teasing at the nape of Zaki's neck still, and that urges her to continue searching if only because they've come this far - to find nothing but a taunt is not merely frustrating but outright /annoying/. Like searching for your misplaced keys only to find the dog has eaten them and is staring at you with a big smile. Good luck driving your car now, bitch. Good luck getting to that important meeting!
"Keep searching. If there's nothing here, we pull out, but we make /sure/ first."
"Nothing we didn't know already." Miu says, calmly, as she observes the laid out information. Zaki's friends had been brainwashed - she'd assumed as much from the branding and the statement about ownership. Sick minds do not do that and then kill; they do it to claim, break and own. Presumably whoever is responsible for this would intend the same fate for herself and Zaki. It is how these things go. It is the cause of her rancor, of her caustic hatred for this place. It is one thing to kill. It is another to force one to live only for you.
She sighs, and shakes her head. "We're wasting our time." She says heavily, with a certain sense of resignation. "Let us instead review the situation."
She raises her head, and a finger for each point as she makes them.
"One, whomever is responsible for this is not Abobo. I suspected as much from the video, this is merely confirmation."
"Two, whoever is responsible for this has corrupted the local police forces."
"Three, we have an army of ninja and enraged schoolgirls."
"To put it simply, Zaki, every day which goes by is another day that this psychopath's corruption sinks deeper into the minds of our friends. He believes he holds the cards, and now we must prove him wrong. I did not want to have to press for such drastic action, but..."
She exhales slowly, and draws her power back into herself. Balling up her energy deep inside, because to even consider what she is going to say... to push towards it? It is the very kind of action which Zaki has been painted with wanting to commit. It is the kind of lunacy which one would associate with Vega, not with people ostensiably on the side of good. But the times are too drastic, and things moving too slowly to allow anything else.
"We turn our forces on the police. We capture, maim or kill every man who may possibly be associated with this monster. He owns this city. So we shall burn it, and salt the land, so that anyone who looks upon it may shudder to think what happens to those who would 'own' the girls of Seijyun High."
Her voice is actually shaking. Her eyes shining with a glimmer of terrible intent. The Crow Girl has built a reputation for creepiness; for being someone that others want nothing to do with. But this is the first time since she last had to kill for her own life, that she has touched upon the darker half of her power. Not the soothing empathy for others which Rose had gradually tried to counsel her towards...
But the psychotic madness, the terrible fury in the heart of all men, willing - eager, even - to lash out and commit any atrocity, to ensure their own survival.
So much anger and rage. It only seems to feed that malevolent force that lingers in the area. The vibes of such thoughts seem to just make it grow on, an almost dark chuckle mixed with some primal screech of something not from this world. In the end it is not Abobo or his gangs that are becoming the biggest threat to the city, but perhaps those that had come here to try and help it. At the same time it begs a question on who could be watching here. Someone who is smart enough to know what his opponent is thinking. Someone who knows just how to hit the right chords. He might not be straight forward by the likes of Vega, but his mind seems to be just as twisted. Even worse he seems patient and finds no need to reveal himself.
There seems to be no clues of where Abobo may have gone. Hell, was he even here to begin with? It is really getting hard to tell if this sort of place was just used to attract attention the whole time and when they know an attack was going to come they were quick to move. The gangs have to be having help, but from who? The police? As corrupt as they seem none have been able to get out of the inner parts of Sunshine for security purposes and trying to keep some part of town at peace.
An answer for who else might be involved could very well be in this place, but it all depends on where one could look. Anything useful that the gang could use seems to have been cartd off, but there are those bags. Ones that if looked at more closely do have a symbol on them. The markings of G Corporation are branded on them. Of course it could just be something else to further frustrate and confuse the likes of Zaki, Miu, Hyo, etc all the more.
She's reaching, the sukeban, and she's beginning to round from Miu to stride away and proceed in doing precisely that. Previously her rage was at boiling point, focusing her to a keen blade upon the eve of this walking abortion of an assault-- which so rapidly degenerated to that state. Little resistance to sate a bloody and vengeful mind, and least of all any payoff to the easy incursion save an absolute, emotionless void at the heart of the matter; frustration only exists because something must, and it's what Zaki is clinging to.
Until she hears the calm, resigned voice behind her. Miu Kurosaki has been the voice of reason throughout this conflict, asking the self-appointed leader of the Ladies' Team - and of Seijyun, besides - to stand down, to cease hostilities lest she bring greater fury down upon her peers. It wasn't something Zaki was ever going to be completely obedient too, but by their common ground she found a compromise, pushing savagely onward only when the stakes were raised by the actions of their unseen aggressor. Not Abobo; the other. His puppet master.
Where Kurosaki is shaken, the sum totality of her speech does something else to Aoi Himezaki. When she begins speaking, it's with a chuckle lacing her words, dark beyond all darkness; and absolutely, primally /her/. The mask and the woman have long been one, really.
And now they have their opportunity to fuse forevermore.
"Not just Seijyun High, Miu. This isn't about just us any more... fuck, maybe it never was." There's a grin on the face of the scarlet-haired sukeban, and it's one of the few times in her life that it not only reaches those vulpine eyes but colours every inch of expression to be found on what's visible of her face. She may as well remove the choking leather, and cast it aside, because Kurosaki's acquiescence to the darkest reaches that Aoi herself has considered striving toward... it's an absolute freedom unlike anything she has tasted. She has confessed to a family friend that she'd go to any length, professed her extreme convictions to others since. Now she is being handed, upon a silver platter, the chance to prove it beyond doubt. Perhaps to change the world in which they live; to make a bloody-fingered mark upon the filth that seek to drag them down...
It takes little time to make a decision.
"We have an army, and we have the conviction to use it. Every single day of our lives we've been pressed down by those who'd seek to mould us and shape us; by a world that's as caring for you or I as it has been toward Hamada and Yotoka-- no..." She tails off a moment, stepping to the pictures upon the wall and savagely tearing them away. They crumple within her gloved grip, and are left to fall as she looks around to Miu, meeting the Crow Girl's gaze with a bright, alert stare. "Toward Emi, and Eriko." Their real names. It's not that shocking; that Ladies' Team all have pseudonyms, but what follows is startling to the extreme, as Zaki drags the chain from her feet and brings it up before her, focusing on the wavering links now between she and the other girl.
"I've wielded this for years, Kurosaki. Just like I've worn this mask. There was a person I left behind, when I made that decision, who I've buried deep so that I'd never have to face reality-- who I was, who I should be. But I was kidding myself. My dreams, my desires, my ambitions? /They're/ real, and nothing else fucking matters. If you'll stand beside me, we'll burn the taint from this Earth. Cut it to the quick, and set ablaze the very core of the plague that infests not just Sunshine City, but every facet of the society we live in. Seijyun teaches us to adapt, to become one with that society, that we might one day assist in the ruling of it... the women both beside and even above the men who rule. Princess to emperors. Concubine to kings."
Suddenly she throws the chain aside, letting it unravel fully from her sleeve to explode against one wall. Photographs tear and scatterd to fragments as the weapon blazes with some of that native chi she harnesses, electric blue flickering and sputtering savagely.
"We've gone it wrong. We don't adapt. We reach out, and we change things. This is where we show the world."
She strides forward, stopping when she's a scant couple of feet from the Crow Girl, smiling at her askance.
"Miu Kurosaki, and Aoi Himezaki, are no man's puppets. This is our game. Our rules. Adapt, or die."
Those who would fight monsters should take care lest they become that which they set out to destroy. It is a pattern repeated throughout history. When Miu had stepped from the plane and landed in America, she had been certain that she could solve this matter simply. The elimination of one man, after which she would insist that Zaki come back to Seijyun high; may even have resorted to force to make that the case. She has her own problems, her own fears and challenges which she must overcome. She had no desire to be distracted in Sunshine City for any longer than absolutely necessary. She had tried to divorce herself from the Ladies Team at large... to try and avoid this very thing.
But to step into the world is to be changed by it. Zaki had never hidden her ultimate goal. The destruction of the current order, to rebuild something new from the ashes. To root out the evils of the world and (in Miu's mind at least) to replace them with her own evils. Throughout the speech, Miu listens. She is quiet. She does not even flinch when Zaki's chain explodes against the wall, though sweat does bead on her forehead. It is, an intense realization.
She has always been the sensible one, the calm one. The voice of reason, trying to chart a course through the waters of life which would cause as few waves as possible for others. But what sense is there in sanity now? This world is mad. If that is what it must be, then an insane response is the only logical course.
To accept another into her heart is a painful thing. It invites disappointment; the possibility of despair. Her brother's slow, lingering death... one of the very few people she has ever felt any connection to, and the agony she feels every time she thinks of him, and how she is failing him by being unable to ease his pain... could she add another to that list? Could she open herself enough to prepare for the possibility of a second wound in her soul?
The smaller girl is brought back to reality by the name. To hear Zaki refer to herself ... no, to hear Aoi Himezaki, speak for the first time. Miu's head is bowed, and her lips twitch upwards in a smile of her own. Her lips do not move, but her voice is an inescapable whisper besides.
~I stand with you, Aoi Himezaki~
~To the very end of the world~
The true fun can now begin. The pieces of this game are properly set and rattled. Now to see the outcome will be just what the person behind all this has wanted all along. Chaos and destruction. To see how easy it is to take anyone and make them think they are ones in control. Sunshine City will burn and more than likely Abobo defeated. Innocence has been lost to many and now with the belief of so much corrution many innocent lives will be lost as well. The little experiment is coming along nicely.
Of course the pair may not realize shrouded by the evil force lingering through this place there is someone watching among the shadows. A figure draped in black and crimson that only smiles as he listens. No need for cameras or the like to be here. Those can be traced. The power he wields is something more easily controlled as he just masks himself to where the uneasiness is felt as something familiar. The Ladies Team have really started to become lovely pawns here. Ones that will do more than Abobo or even his own forces would do to this city. He will have to be sure to thank them properly one day.
Slowly he slips off into a darkened room, the uneasy feeling that lingers seeming to fade away once more. The end is coming soon and the Black Dragon will watch the town turn red with nothing, but the biggest smile on his face.
Log created on 12:17:27 07/08/2012 by Johann, and last modified on 09:04:27 07/11/2012.