A/N: Yes, a new multi-chapter story. I could be working on so much other stuff right now (like studying and essays and updating stories) but this idea is calling to me.
So after watching K (which left me a sobbing mess) and K: Return of King (which left me an angry mess because of the weekly episodes), I decided to write a fanfiction on it. I'm truly and utterly sorry, I have benchmarks and essays and tests and more stories to update, but my mind is filled K and I cannot stop myself .. K has definitely saved itself a spot in my part, especially Fushimi. Yep, definitely Fushimi. I did not write this story because of my love for Fushimi. Nope. I have an open heart, kids.
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN K PROJECT
Enjoy~
Instigator
Ch. 1: Kidnapped
.
.
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She knows a lot of things.
She knows every pressure point in the human body, knows where to paralyze and where to hit, and she knows which carotid artery to sever in order to lead to terrible, terrible things. And blood. Lots of blood.
She can also cook. And clean. And perform supervised surgeries despite her age. And despite all of her achievements, her sense of direction leads her nowhere near a single good bar in Shizume City—
"Hirari-san, alcohol clouds the senses, but also soothes the pain."
—Which would actually be a bad idea. She is riled and hot and angry at the world, and despite being an underage nineteen year old and a complete lightweight, she needs a fucking drink. Today. Especially today.
The phone in her pocket buzzes, and despite being in her irritated haze down memory lane, she has the decency to fish it out of her pocket and open it without so much as looking at the caller.
"What?"
The other voice on the phone yells something into the distance, and then coughs, "Hey—! You still up? It's like, one in the morning."
"No, I'm sleeping."
"Meanie~," The other voice on the phone fakes a pout, loud music plays in the background. "Totally wasting my time here."
"Ha, that's funny," she laughs with a sardonic smile, huffing away some of her irritation from before despite the growing distress in her stomach, "Minori-san! It's like, gasp, one in the morning!"
"Hirari-chan," the voice berates, "Be nice!"
Hirari sighs and continues walking, "Minori-san—"
"You okay?" Minori interrupts suddenly, causing Hirari to stop in her tracks and rework her jaw. And then, heavy and impending, as if the world went silent and the camaraderie began, the ball drops. "You know, I know I don't know most of it, but if you're feeling down, why don't you come over and tal—"
"Nope." She says smoothly. Her footsteps are heavier than usual as she clicks her boots across the pavement and clenches her hands into tiny little fists, "Just fine and dandy." Minori's a smart girl, and sometimes that's dangerous. "Besides, you're at a party now, aren't you?"
"Yeah but—"
Hirari breathes a curse, frost biting through her mouth and rebounding across her scarf and that does nothing to calm her down whatsoever. Goddammit. "You should get some sleep, Minori-san," she stops, and then trails her eyes to the right, down the alleyway with shadows splayed over the brick tiles like blood splatters in one of those serial killer movies, "I'll call you if I have any trouble. Promise." She adds.
Minori sighs, static rippling and the wave in Hirari's stomach settles, "Right then. . .I'll see you tomorrow. Call me anytime." She adds. Hirari can't help the workings of a smile on her face.
"Thanks, you too." She breathes a sigh of thanks heavenwards and closes her phone, tucking it into her back pocket before gritting her teeth and quickening her steps again. Fucking bars, she thinks.
"Come on," she feels her nails digging into her palms. Her shadow walks beside her as the fluorescent lights illuminate her in a show of white and yellow stardust, reflecting off her raven hair and bland sweater and old jeans; something nice, something pretty.
She laughs, and then brings a hand up to her face and pretends to wipe off dirt as she brings her hand an arm's length away, breath wisping away into clear frost and eyes trained on the cuff of her sleeves, looking for something on there, something convincing.
It's dry.
She then realizes that she has stopped in her tracks, the urge for a good bourbon fading for a moment before returning in a full blaze of glory, forcing her to wrench her hands away and her feet to start the click, click, click, descent down the deserted street. She's desperate now, and her mind is bordering on the mindset of even going to HOMRA for a good drink. But then she shakes her head, brings her hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose, and then retreats back into her scarf. The summer breeze hits her full force as she contemplates the options. She'll take anything, anything but HOMRA.
Hirari shudders, a chill sparking from the bridge of her spine and rippling through the top of her back like ice. Yeah, anything but HOMRA. It's best if she doesn't involve herself with them, best if she separates her life from the abnormalities of—well—that.
She brings her mind back to reality, listens to the click of her sandals, makes a left turn into an alleyway, and breathes.
"Shit! they burned my leg!" A man bites back a curse. Hirari bites back a footstep.
"We got the girl. That's all that matter right now."
"What about Shin?" A raspy voice speaks frantically, "We left him behind—"
"Quit your squabbling, dumbasses! We'd best get moving or else they'll find us!"
Hurry up and leave, Hirari thinks as she ducks back into the corner. This alleyway is particularly nasty, with trails of blood serenading the walls and painting them in a dirty, dirty red and the rapes and kills and fights and death. She's seen it on her way several times. Just like everyone else.
But she is not so kind to be the hero of the day, to save someone precious or garner something special out of it. It is hardly even her business, to butt her head into a smaller piece of a bigger puzzle. Child-smuggling is an organization. If one child is saved then another child is kidnapped. Nothing changes.
Besides, no one came when she cried wolf.
"I'm here."
"You think she'll sell for a good price, Boss?"
"Positive."
Her breathing is quick and even, but then she catches a glimpse of white, and suddenly the corners of her eyes turn back to take a full double-take. The little girl slung across the one man's shoulder is small, doll-like and made of porcelain and China tea sets (from what she can make out of the darkness), but that is not what makes her stop. She ignores the way her heart clenches and how her toes curl into herself (she curses her weakness as well), because as she watches snowy white hair, reflecting light in psychedelic colors of sparkling snow and billowing like oceanic waves in the summer breeze, she swallows down bile and bites back memories, a sudden cacophony of images flashing across her eyes and spiraling into beautiful, beautiful madness.
"You couldn't even get this right."
"Mama no. . ."
"Hirari-san, it does not matter what they think of you. Rather, it should be your actions, but they do not pay attention to that. You observe and listen. They do not. Amongst the millions of voices screaming in the distance, the one who screams the least is the strongest, and the most pained. Forgive me, for not realizing this sooner."
The little girl in front of her groans, and before more memories can bombard her mind she swears a string of colorful madness and berates her own fucking stupidity at what she is about to do—The hell am I doing, she thinks—slowly letting the adrenaline seep into her and engulf her in a swarm of deep, deep euphoria and azure frost.
"Ack!—What the fuck!" The first man releases an ear-splitting scream that is drowned out by the oblivion around him, and Hirari stops, ducking back to the wall and watching as the girl—HOMRA's Princess awakens from her slumber, wide-eyed and shaking and writhing out of the first man's grasp, kicking and scratching and fighting. A deep red seeps through her body, enveloping her into an embrace of red infernos and bloody sunsets and burning, burning crimson as the fire incinerates the man's clothes and rips apart his skin in angry bursts of burns.
"Mikoto," she says shakily as she is gracelessly dropped to the ground—Hirari doubts the girl even registers her drop—the first man favoring the decision to stop, drop, and roll as Anna Kushina—Hirari believes to be her name from word on the street—looks around dazedly, in a trance-like mindset, shocked by the situation, scared of the men, and then she says it. The one name that is burning her tongue and lighting up like it's some sort of life line; she says it. Again, and again, and again.
"Mikoto, Mikoto, Mikoto—"
Hirari is flabbergasted, this beautiful girl whipping her head around in search for a red king, calling out his name in tandem with the tears threatening to spill down her face as her eyes dart from the wall to the floor. She watches with wide eyes as the girl tries to stand up but ends up becoming a marionette with loose limbs and cut strings; a girl who believes that he is going to come and get her. But that does nothing to justify the fear in her eyes. They don't reflect the men. Her spiral of red flames are not protecting her whatsoever as they spark out of control and shoot jolts of lighting red crimson up into the heavens.
And then Hirari knows. Shit.
"Mental instability causes weakness. A firm mind is a sword. Muscle is simply the first layer."
Her powers are going out of control.
"Goddammit!" the second man says, and before Hirari knows it the second man, pale faced and disturbed, pulls out a pocket knife and aims it at the girl's back, ignoring the first man's shouted whisper of "No, you fucking idiot!", and then Hirari begins the countdown.
Five, four, three, two, one.
The record-breaking time between her kicking off the ground and the men's screams are unfathomable and glorious and horrifying—and it makes her mind go blank and a searing cold feeling creeps up her fingertips as she wrenches out a hand and pulls out two scissor blades from her pockets and feels cold creeping onto the blade and the slick and smooth sensation of a severed carotid artery with a sschmikk, and a splatter of bloody galore on her clothes. The cold numbness transferred from her blade the man's throat takes him a full minute to register what has just transpired before his quiet screams echo through the alleyway. The girl looks up, red flames licking at her skin and searing her clothes and making her white hair reflect a red that reminds her so much of fire.
"Mikoto?" she utters in a moment of dazed fear, clutching her sides with trembling little fingers.
"Mama?"
"You've been a bad girl."
"Forgive me, Hirari-san."
Hirari pauses for a split second, adrenaline unfurling, breath steady. She twitches a brow, and then shakes her head, "Sorry."
And then she's gone.
Her smile is not there, her smile is locked in between "mama no," and "I'm sorry daddy," and the real her is replaced with something porcelain and dainty and powerful, but it all shatters the moment her hands grip the last man's neck and she discards her blades and instead transfers the cold in her fingertips to the man's jugular, watching as the blue sparks mixes with the bright lighting of veins and arteries before the man drops to the pavement with a wordless scream. A sick, almost delightful smile is on her face.
Power. She is power.
"Power is not measured by strength."
It's slow—the process of time between her slipping back to reality and finally realizing what she has done as she tries to find her resolve but instead finds the wall and leans against it before retching demons out for the longest time, waiting for the wave to pass and for her mind to quickly find its resolve as she does one last dry heave and wipes her mouth, and then looks to her right. Immediately, almost mechanically after that she steps away from her pool of demons and dashes to the little girl, who is writing on the floor again, mouth wide open in a silent wail filled with distress and magicked sparks and flaring the alleyway in her beautiful inferno of crimson ashes.
Hirari then quickly grabs her scissors, thanks the heavens for her majoring occupation as a surgeon, remembers all the other times she has seen blood, and then stashes them back into her bag before making a pitiful show of trying to wipe the blood off of her face, but it only stains an ugly color. Her hands, as she looks at them, are a lost cause, but her mind is not thinking about that right now, her mind is on how to stop this girl from going out of control and using her powers and gods the firefirefire.
"Mikoto," she cries in an echo of a whisper, "Mikoto, Mikoto, Mikoto—"
"STOP!" Hirari can feel her voice crack as she quickly makes the decision to push her hands into the barrier of flames and grips Anna's shoulders. She transfers ice-cold temperatures into her hands to repel most of the flames, but the heat mercilessly rips away at her clothes and burns her skin and reduces her sleeves to piles and piles of ash. She flinches at the burns, watches as the leftover fire begins to make its mark, but she tells herself to toughen through it.
"Anna!" She thinks it's the girl's name, she's heard it enough on the streets before to know about her connection to HOMRA, so she says it again, and watches as Anna turns her head up and looks into a bloodied face, but there is no fear, only confusion, and the feeling of her icy fingertips seeping into this little girl's skin. Anna seems to register what is going on as a look of bewilderment crosses her face, watching as the pulsating blue in Hirari's hand is pushing itself into her red.
"Hey," she says, and at the same time she pushes more of the cold and lowers the degrees in her body temperature into the little girl, the blue light extending as far as the sky and Hirari prays that this girl will cool down. "It's okay," she says, immediately when the girl tentatively touches the tips of her freezing fingertips, colored in a haze of azure.
"You ugly monster."
"Daddy why."
"Do not judge the cold, without knowing the warmth of the shining sun. It would be best if Kuroh-kun learned this faster, no?"
"I'm the same," Hirari whispers to the girl, hoarsely and clenching at her shoulder as she releases a breath through her scarf, watching as Anna stops her trembling and marvels at the frost wisping through her mouth despite it being summer. "I'm the same."
The flames on her little body recede with every time Hirari gives her an influx of cold, and then before she knows it Anna's arms are around her torso and they both collapse onto their knees and the little girl's hands grip her ashen clothes while Hirari wraps her arms around her shoulders, and then it's quiet.
They stay like that for a while, for a few precious minutes, just listening to the music of heartbeats and staggering breaths, and then Anna pulls back, her shaking gone and her clothes ruffled, and HIrari tries to not spout a raspy "what the fuck" when Anna brings a red marble out from her pocket and uses it to peer into her soul.
"Pretty," Anna says. And then her mouth quirks up into something that is a sigh of relief and some other emotion, but she still can't believe it.
"Pretty?" Hirari repeats dumbly, words threatening to spill from her mouth but she locks those away and casts them into the corners of her heart. This doll, this porcelain girl made out of rubies and flames—called her pretty?
Anna nods, her hand against her chest and her heart bleeding out sorrow onto the gravel floor, "and cold—," she adds, pauses, and then pins a stare at her, solemn and melancholy and she wonders if this little girl might cry again.
"—and sad."
There is silence on her part, nothing but the sounds of crack crack crackkk and alcohol bottles shattering in their symphony of glass, and something inside her stirs.
She looks down, energy spent and downright tired. Goddammit, she was supposed to be getting a drink, a fucking drink, not unraveling herself to this girl—no, HOMRA's princess.
Something inside of her compels her to give up. Maybe it's because of Anna's eyes, or maybe it's because of her flashes down memory lane—it might be a mix of both. "Guess so."
Anna opens her mouth again, forming words and sounds and most likely something about pretty reds and blues, but then the world flashes by, and Hirari's sight is engulfed in another swarm of red, whizzing by her in the form of pointed knives and red flames. She wastes no time in ducking her body and twisting her torso—releasing a sigh relief once she sees Anna pressing her back against the wall—, hearing the chinkchinkchink of the wall behind her crack as red-lined daggers sit two-inches deep.
She hears a tsk in front of her and Anna's inaudible intake of air a few feet away. A man around her age stands in front of her, illuminated in pretty blues and a rapier in hand and the Cheshire Cat's smile reflecting ugly intentions on his face as the shadows cast false blood splatters wherever it touches.
"Kidnapping is a hefty charge for an unauthorized strain."
Anna utters a name, inaudible to Hirari and registering out of her ears as a symphony of sirens goes off in her head, and somewhere in there, she knows that this situation has gone horribly wrong.
Karma, she thinks. This is fucking karma.
He lines the length of the rapier to his face. "Fushimi—"
Hirari feels the rush of cold in her bones and transfers it to her scissor blades, feeling the numbing cold and remembering Anna and her tiny hands and her "pretty's" and "red," and then crosses them over her chest like a heavenly prayer. They quickly slip away, Anna's words, her consciousness; the only thought in her mind being the feeling of her heart quickening and oh shit they found out.
"—ready for battle."
A/N: Phew, so a tidbit of Fushimi/OC at the end.
Hope you guys liked this chapter! Leave a review or PM me if I made any mistakes. Critiques are greatly appreciated.
Til next time~