Pyrrhic
Warning:Slight gore, mature themes, altered storyline, tragedy.
Disclaimer:All rights to Hideaki Sorachi.
5.
It is raining – it always is.
Days will pass but the cackling firmament remains its incorrigible gray like it always has.
Her mother is sleeping. Her brother is out.
She watches her father's figure descend down the dingy lane for the last time, the echo of his promised return still reverberating in her ears.
Five.
A stubborn age, although her stubbornness did transcend her growth. An age eclipsed by saccharine smiles and unfettered naiveté. Inadvertent kindness and perfunctory truth. Knowing little but feeling all.
She is young when her father leaves her.
When he places the weight of the world on her lithe little shoulders and abandons her without telling her how to take the first step.
She asks her brother every day when their daddy will come home.
Soon. He will say as he stoops down and ruffles her already tousled locks of fiery vermilion hair. Soon.
She is only five.
But that does not mean she fails to recognize the steel that seeps into the deepest crevices of his sea storm eyes when he flashes her that brilliant smile.
Funny how soon sounded like never.
7.
Her mother is dying.
Her limited comprehension allows for her to grasp only the thinnest fibres of the concept, but she knows that dying entails a sempiternal goodbye.
She can only sit helplessly and cling to the shreds of her voice, her scent, her warmth as time withers away with her lungs.
Mommy is leaving soon my darling. You have to be strong for your brother alright? Make sure he doesn't fight.
She nods, turning to the young boy standing next to them, masquerading beneath a smile that only grows increasingly plastic.
Seven.
A selfish age. No longer quite as innocent. Characterized by resolute curiosity, and vagrant events of sporadic neediness. Inarticulate fears and seamlessly performed bravado. Knowing more and still feeling all.
She can only sit helplessly and cling.
To the lies that hum untruths in her heart.
Her brother is especially good at telling lies.
She watches as he hides his wounds; the purple skin, the torn ligaments, the shattered bones. How he abandons truth without hesitance or encumbrance.
Her brother is such a good actor.
She wonders if she'll be a good one too.
13.
Her mother is dead. Her father is gone. Her brother will be home soon.
Her world is crumpling—she is alone.
The men feast on her vulnerability like vultures seeking death.
They come in hoards. Smiles brighter than malice that clearly corroborate their Machiavellian intent. They have come to challenge the successor of the strongest yato in existence, and are greeted with a little girl.
They are ugly and crude, and they spit in her face and shove their grimy fingers into her hair. But when they grope at her developing body she breaks their leader's jaw with a punch that could splinter the very earth. She watches as their expressions melt to bile and dudgeon instantaneously, and regrets it.
She is scared.
She lets them bash her small head into the cracked concrete and use her lithe frame to shatter the formation of wall after wall; she lets them beat her endlessly to a moribund mess of flesh hanging off bone.
But when her mother's grave is tampered with it is too late for them to obliterate the insanity unleashed in a violent conflagration within those once innocent, crystal depths.
She murders them all.
Rips apart their innards and fashions herself in their blood. Sings along with their heart-wrenching screams as she gratifies herself with creating serpentine illusions through broken bone.
When she realizes what she has done she is bereft of any sentiment other than complete and utter wretchedness.
As she buries their bodies and sobs endlessly the blood staining her hands is slowly washed away. She wonders if the rain would also be able to wash away the crimson now marring her soul.
That day she is born a monster.
And she vowed to fight it until she breathed her last breath.
She looks upon her broken home and kisses the single flower above her mother's grave before she turns her back and walks away.
: To be continued.