Maruko smoothed her skirt into place as she knelt, closing her eyes. There was nothing quite like the feel of her consciousness settling over Gaou's, her mind connecting to each nerve ending simultaneously as his consciousness gave way to hers, settling back into the recesses of his own mind to give her control.
Then she opened their eyes and blinked.
Two sets of eyes opened simultaneously, hers glowing faintly as her mind began to process things at a speed that rivaled most supercomputers. Looking at the world through Gaou's eyes was disorienting, but not because she was situating herself into the mind of a dumb beast, like many joked. Instead, she was suddenly looking down at things that seemed to have shrunk, while looking out of her own eyes and trying to reconcile the differences as she watched Gaou's back.
The two thugs in front of them snickered, thinking Maruko was settling in to wait obediently. As she sent Gaou's fist crashing down, the first never knew what hit him. The second jumped in surprise, skittering around like a wary cat, now that he knew not to underestimate Gaou's speed. He darted and dashed, feinting this way and that, but nothing escaped her eyes and for every move he made, she maneuvered Gaou accordingly, until it almost seemed that he was predicting his opponent's moves. The idiot tough had prided himself on his speed, but he was only mildly faster than a regular human to her sight - eyes that had followed Kobayakawa Sena were unimpressed, and a mind that had matched reactions with a girl like Kongo Agon was not to be outdone by the likes of this idiot. As he flitted behind Gaou, producing a hidden knife from a pocket, she went in for the kill. Gaou's hand shot back, around the street thug's neck, and tossed him out of the ring.
Easing her mind from Gaou's back into her own, she shut her eyes and opened them again as the glow faded from them. She rose smoothly but not gracefully, brushing off dust as Gaou turned to grin at her. She smiled back, collecting their money and her bag from the man beside the ring before they left the building. Fishing around in her bag, she took out a coke and tried to uncap it, but by then the tremors had started and her hands were shaking, the trembling spreading through her like a wave that threatened to take her down as it hit her knees.
"Let me," Gaou rumbled, relieving her of the bottle and taking the top off with a simple flick that sent a crack through the bottle's glass neck. Maruko smiled with clenched teeth as she forced her shaking body to obey her, her strides smooth and even. Only Gaou was close enough to see the way her hands shuddered slightly as she accepted the coke back.
Maruko was not the strongest, not by a long shot. That was why she had Gaou, so she could someday show her sister what the sunrise looked like from the top.
But there was no point in letting potential opponents know that, now was there?