Summary:
The first person Shamal kills is with the Sakura-kura Disease. It's not an odd, but cute-sounding illness. At least, it hasn't always been that.
Disclaimer:
I don't own KHR! or the cover picture.
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He's 13 and desperate.
Oh, and a professional doctor who just so happens to have had the ill fortune of skirting the edges with some Mafia matters.
Ill fortune is the story of his sickly, recently-stabilized life, he reflects grimly.
Gallows humor, or at least sardonic humor, seems to be the only humor he can afford nowadays.
And it all started with him foolishly agreeing to a little favor for an acquaintance.
Apparently, healing someone meant to be murdered- silenced, in the delicate euphemisms of the Underworld -is a very dependable way of attracting all the wrong kinds of attention.
(Saving a life doesn't always equate not ending a life.)
He can't deal with that sort of 'you're either with us or against us and if you're against us you're also set to be silenced' attitude, not yet, not now, because while he's good at his specialization, he's not good enough to survive being hunted by all sorts of Famiglia wary of an unaffiliated and valuable resource.
He has to get better.
Later, of course, since there isn't much time to get better at anything while fleeing for your life, except maybe improving at the speed of your run.
So he's 13 and desperate and probably not going to live past this encounter because whoopdee-fucking-doo, the assassin chasing him just chased him into a dead end alley.
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Shamal glances up, swift, before quickly darting his unsteady gaze back onto the figure rounding the corner.
It just has to be an innocent full moon bloated on a perfectly clear summer night, doesn't it?
Damnit, the assassin's a hot chick, too, the very same one he'd been chatting up at the coffee shop today.
'Probably staked the place out once she sighted me in town,' he berates glumly, annoyed at himself for missing the obvious, too-convenient set-up.
Woman are rarely that happy to see him, or that receptive to his flirting.
'Intel collect, duh. Shamal, you are losing your game.'
She slows down as she gets closer, partially suspicious of his stop, partially confident in her kill, partially casting an inexperienced eye over the scene in case of a prepared ambush, or a last-ditch attack.
'Around my age, a fresh greenhorn,' he categorizes. ''Course, no need to waste money on a veteran assassin for offing a defenseless doctor, right? 'Cuz everyone knows the healer, medic types are the softies.'
Shamal isn't a softie, he shouldn't think; he treats people, yes, but he treats people with diseases that have symptoms countering other symptoms.
They are still diseases with dangerous strings attached by themselves.
He's never... actually killed someone, but he accepted that the chances of him living an entirely legal life had been destroyed years ago, once he finished 'curing' himself and regained control over his Mist Flames, so the possibility of taking another's life is something he's made his peace with already.
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The assassin advances, leaping forward in a smooth, not-quite-perfected strike, a silver glint appearing in her gloved hands, and he can't help it, he panics, okay?
All his prior plans and rationalizations may as well have been nonexistent; stress makes him send out the first trident-mosquito he comes into contact with, survival instinct makes him dodge to the right with his heart lodged firmly somewhere in his throat as the knife slams two-inches deep into the dirt-wedge between shabby cobblestones, and pure adrenaline-spurred fear makes him overload the mosquito's injection with his still-unrefined Mist Flames.
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Sakura-kura Disease's development is sped up by the involvement of Mist Flames, a property unique to that particular strain he'd carefully cultivated and personally bred, a strain he hasn't had time to test on anyone afflicted with Peach-leech Disease yet.
Different Mist Flames cause different mutations, with minute, innumerable outside factors playing minor roles in the fickle fate of it's final outcome, intent being a key element.
The assassin never stands a chance.
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She staggers heavily to one side, teetering awkwardly like a sledgehammer-hit birdhouse clinging to the supporting post, one hand reflexively slapping over the injection point in the right side of her face.
Then she goes down, abrupt, unceremonious, doubling over with a wordless cry revealed by the ugly grimace on her otherwise classically pretty features, crouching on one knee like some strange reverse-proposal, the other hand as well as the arm it is attached to flinging protectively around her undoubtedly roiling stomach.
More vulnerable than whoever taught her has taught her to be.
In the next minute, Shamal regains his wits and solemnly, with a sort of quietly sick fascination, watches her die, inching closer.
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He made a promise to himself, at that moment when he'd accepted the need for his future morally dubious kills, that moment in the far-off past.
He promised he'd watch the first person he kills die, and he intends to make good on that promise.
This is something he needs to see, to understand.
(Is it really?)
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It is a slow death, all things considered.
A soft death, in terms of sound, not questionable brutality.
She, the assassin whose name he can't remember for the life of him, begins simply enough by vomiting up flowers.
Sakura flowers, naturally, to represent their obvious namesake.
Pale pink and ladylike in their demurely rustling petals, starkly fluttering to a rest on the grayed ground, they are gruesome five-winged butterflies, each new curve, new bend merely a precursor to a morbid ending.
A few at a time, then more, picking up pace with a feverish intensity, coughed out and spewed, muffling any words- or, far more likely, curses and pleas and sobs -amid their forceful expulsion.
Her nostrils flare, trying to breathe in without choking on the endless, relentless hemorrhaging of pink, pink, pink, both hands now shakily clawing at her throat, trying to end it somehow.
It must hurt, he muses distantly, to have tiny roots strangle your organs and tiny trunks entangling your lungs while tiny scratchy stabbing branches unforgivingly poke through any way they can find, searching for fresh air, searching for a bursting point.
It must hurt a lot.
Eyes are next, wide-open eyes, very blue eyes wide with shock and lack of breath, peeled-back eyelids peeling back even more, even further, peeling off into an intermittent rainfall of droplet-speckled petals, petals bathed in salty tears of renewed pain.
Lashes and all.
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That leaves just her eyes, entirely exposed, unattractive spidery prominent veins included.
Still so very, very awfully blue, until, with agonizing slowness, a pink pinprick dots her pupil.
Expands leisurely.
Takes over her pupil, a solid circle of pink.
Lines show up, lines revealing rounded edges and an uneven circumference, a flower bud poking out of it's restraining circle.
The blue is present, but it's shrinking now, scared and frightened, shying away skittishly from the invading prods and protrusions of rosy hue.
Cherry tint.
Blooming fully, there is a heartbeat of hesitation, and then the pretty pink parasite shoots over the whites of both eyes, plastering the eyeballs with petals.
Another heartbeat, and they-
s-o-l-i-d-i-f-y.
It is a losing battle right from the start, especially with the problems of trying to breathe in and breathe out at the same time.
Namely being, you can't, not really.
Or perhaps it's the internal sacks of squishy icky goo, finally ripped apart by the ruthless roots.
Or even a stray branch finally poked it's way up, up into her skull, into a brain that didn't take kindly to being smothered with quite very much indeed physically existing flowers.
Whatever, whichever, whomever it is, the assassin spits out on last, distinctly slobbery and bloodstained petal.
A rather disappointing finale to the regurgitated flood of veritable bouquets.
With a sigh that might've been relief, she allows herself to slump down onto the cold paved alley, hitting it at a strange angle and rolling onto her back.
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Tentatively, Shamal picks his way through the floor carpeted by pastel blooms with a serenity in all likelihood involving the interference of his Mist Flames.
They 'whoosh' lightly under his footsteps, ghostly exhales, faint copies of their host's last breath, already rapidly withering and crumbling away.
The large Sakura blossoms filling up her empty eye sockets have deteriorated to dust around their raggedy rings, revealing streaks and traces of bright, vivid red against the otherwise slick bone underneath.
He knows, because he pauses and bends over to examine her face for a long minute.
A shorter minute is spent straightening up and gazing at the quickly disintegrating petals all around, feeling as curiously empty as the sockets.
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He supposes this proves that you can get better while fleeing for your life.
Provided your definition of 'better' fit what had just happened.
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There is still an innocent full moon bloated on a perfectly clear summer night when a young teenage boy strolls silently out of an innocuous alleyway in Italy.
Nobody is around, and nobody discovers a corpse rotting of a flowery, exotic scent until three days later.
The forensics experts decide it must have been her perfume.
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Clarissa Lianne Verns, a relatively useless freelance assassin, is not missed by anyone.
She had been disposable in life, and thus unimportant in death.
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That Hibari kid is stubborn, Shamal thinks.
Also has massive Flame potential.
Yeah, he'll survive the modified strain of Sakura-kura Disease.
It's not like he'll get into a fight with an active Mist-user before it wears off naturally by next week, right?
And if, against all odds, that still happens, no worries.
He's already severely weakened the strain of Sakura-kura he carried around with him; the stronger strain having been 'retired' to cryogenic storage, only for the rare assassination mission requiring particular viciousness or vengeance.
Hibari should be perfectly fine.
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Yup, no, he totally wasn't.
But I guess Hibari ended up okay in the end... so...
I have no idea where this one-shot came from.
Note: The person he cured as a favor was a man. The person he had to kill because of that was a woman. From then on, Shamal decided in a fit of rather childish pique to refuse to cure anyone but woman, and maybe the occasional child-with-a-good-enough-sob-story, since treating men was too troublesome.
An universe over, Shikamaru sneezed. And then decided it was too troublesome to wipe his nose.
Ino yelled at him for that.
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-Review, please.-