A/N: I apologize for the lateness of this chapter, we're relaying the floor in my house, so I hope you enjoy this chapter, because I'm writing this while practically delirious with exhaustion. Please R & R
Test
Onibus, 13 years before the Dollhouse Incident, year X770-
The boy flopped limply on Robin's shoulders, so weak he could barely hold on to his knife. Blood was staining her clothing a dark red that showed easily on the white and gray that she wore, but she didn't mind. The shape shifter glanced back over her shoulder, and her mismatched eyes met multicolored ones for an instant before she whipped her gaze away.
The stare was inhuman. That bloodlust was something that only wild animals should have, and yet the boy….
She pitied him.
She arrived at the space where the dark guild White Noize was hidden. On a shack at the edge of down, deepest into the ghettos of Onibus, a white music note was painted. Robin muttered a few words, pressed her hand to her ankle with some difficulty, and then pressed her palm to the note on the building. Her guild mark glowed yellow as the mark on the wall glowed white, and she was allowed access. A hole in the ground opened a few feet away, stairs spiraling down into the gloom.
She entered the passage way, and came to a large door. They were a mile underground, and it was warm, with a damp, earthy smell that mingled with the scent of both tobacco and wood smoke with the underlying aroma of stale alcohol. A low, steady rumble of many voices came through the door. Taking a deep breath, Robin eased the door open, hoping she wouldn't be notice.
No such luck.
She opened the door and slipped inside a large, fire lit stone chamber with earthen floors. Tables were strewn about, and hundreds of thieves, murderers, pickpockets and the like milled around, some talking, some gambling, some drinking, some fighting. On a higher platform, above the ruckus, sat the guild master on a red velvet cushion, sprawled out with a drink in hand as she watched the scene below with hawk like eyes, her son kneeling beside her.
"Robin," Ai Shirodesu called from beside her boy, Kirai, "Welcome back."
Robin slid the boy further down on her back in hopes to hide him. The bloodstains all over her clothes wouldn't be a problem, as she had been sent to kill, but if the boy said anything, the master might notice, and kill him.
"Ah…. Yes, Master," Robin answered with a nervous smile.
"So you killed Wild then?" the woman asked. A tall specimen with deathly pale skin and white hair, her golden eyes were as piercing as a wolfs'. Her son had crimson eyes that were if anything, more unnerving. Having both sets trained on her at once, Robin fought off the urge to tremble.
"I-"
"Wild?" The boy. The boy was speaking. He was as good as dead; Robin's shoulders drooped. "WILD?"
Robin was forced to drop the boy as he thrashed out, knife humming through the air. He dropped to his feet like a cat, and stood beside Robin despite his broken leg. Some of his wounds had reopened, and sanguine trickled from the corner of his mouth as he smiled, exposing bloody fangs.
"I killed that bastard!" the boy howled, "I killed him!"
The guild was totally silent now, every eye trained on the boy. Ai narrowed her eyes, and Robin sucked in a breath of fear.
Then the guild master started to laugh.
"Did you, now? Is this true, Robin?"
"It is, Master," Robin told her, relieved that the woman was not angry, "Wild-…"
Robin cut off as those furious, ringed eyes flashed at the sound of the man's name.
"My target beat this boy to death, but the boy got up and killed the target before I had a chance to do anything. I brought him back in case you were interested in his abilities." Robin said into the quiet. Kirai gazed at the boy with an empty stare. The boy stared, but took in no information. Robin always had the impression that the child was staring through her. It was almost funny, however, that Robin's master was named 'Love' and her successor 'Hate'.
Yeah, funny.
"You say the boy was beaten to death?" Ai said skeptically, "How is he here then?"
"He definitely died…" Robin announced, "Because he stopped breathing. But he kept getting back up…."
"What is his name?" the master asked, leaning forward in interest. Ai's eyes flickered to the boy as he took a buckling step forward.
"I have no name," the boy hissed, "But I am the child of Cyrus Mielus Jax, called Aroata by my late mother. That is not my name, because I'm not Aroata Mielus anymore. I'm better… I'm not weak,"
"You're the child of Cyrus? As in Cyrus the Deadman?" Ai Shirodesu sputtered on her drink, nearly choking in excitement.
"That was his name. I never knew him," the boy smirked.
"Of course, of course, he disappeared when you would have been much younger… but... is that his blade?"
The boy glanced down at the gore spotted knife in his hand.
"Yes," the smirk widened into a grin again and Robin had to suppress a shudder. The looks being exchanged by the boy and the Master where less like the stares of human beings and more the threatening glares between beasts.
"Of course, that would explain…. Okay boy," Ai stood, and waved a hand at the guild. "Go back to what you were doing," she called to them, and in sets of twos and threes they turned back to their activities, all, no doubt, discussing the child of the Deadman.
Robin had heard stories of a pale man with copper hair and feral eyes that could take ungodly amounts of punishment and live through wounds that would have killed a thousand ordinary men… Some said he had sold his soul to the devil, others that he was the devil himself, and still others that he was the son of a demon and a mortal. He had belonged to the very guild where she stood now, but one day, for inexplicable reasons, he had been sent on a job and never come back. Most held to the story he ran away from his duty at the guild, but a couple spoke that he had died by choice to get out of any commitment at all.
Apparently that he been a trait of his, avoiding commitment if at all possible, but never breaking promises already made.
"Robin, could you pick up our young Jax again? He seems to be having trouble standing…. So like his father. You're his image, you know. Same hair, same eyes… same deadly look." Ai murmured to the boy as Robin started in surprise. She hadn't noticed Ai's approach. Behind his mother's skirts, Kirai narrowed crimson eyes at the Jax boy. The boy, in contrast, widened his grin and his eyes in anticipation of a fight, but Kirai simply turned and followed his mother when she started to walk. Robin went to lift the child back onto her back, but he brushed her away.
"I can walk," he said brusquely, taking lurching steps after the master.
"Shall I call Rorik?" Robin called after Ai. The woman stopped and cocked her head.
"His services would be appreciated… he only listens to you, so yes, go fetch him."
"Yes Master," Robin regretted saying anything for Rorik's sake, but she also couldn't bear to see the boy suffer more than necessary.
Robin became a raven and fluttered back up through the tunnel and into the night.
….
"Boy," Ai called softly as she stopped in front of a wooden door, "I'm going to test your skill."
"Skill?" he asked blankly.
"You're going to kill what is in this room, do you understand?"
"You can't watch," the boy said flatly.
"What?" Ai was angered, but she took great pains to hide it. She could watch through Kirai's eyes anyway, but being told she couldn't do something was something she was unaccustomed to.
"When I kill. You can't watch."
"Why not?" Ai questioned, a bit more sharply than intended.
The boy smiled insanely.
"Because if you're in the room, I'll kill you too."
…..
The door to the cell creaked open, and Delboro looked lazily to the entrance, wondering if it was dinner time already. The shadow cast in doorway seemed to be a child, broken like a toy played with too roughly. One of the legs tilted at a crooked angle, and the dim silhouette wavered. The man in the cell was confused.
The tall blonde had pissed off Ai by disobeying orders and exposing himself to try to catch more action. Delboro brushed his long hair out of his eyes as he stood.
"What do you want, brat?"
"…. Heh," the boy snorted, taking a shuffling step forward.
"If you want to redeem yourself, Delboro, kill the boy," Ai's voice drifted into the room as the door shut, causing the candle to gutter against the wall.
Kirai's eye rolled beneath the door, flipping itself into an optimal position. On the other side of the door, Ai smiled as vision into the room filled her mind like a television.
"All I have to do is kill you? This is ridiculous; who does she think I am? I'll stomp you into a pulp and walk out without a scratch."
"Will you?" something flashed in the semidarkness, "I wonder?"
Blood sprayed from a deep cut in Delboro's bicep. The man grabbed his arm, and turned, realizing that the boy was fast despite his injury.
"Fine, stupid brat!" Delboro took a hidden blade out of his boot and hefted it in one hand, "Let's go!"
That flash again, but Delboro caught on quick. He swung a bit late, but still caught passing flesh in his blade even as his own ribs were sliced open.
The boy staggered, a new wound slashed deeply into his back, added to hundreds more scars. Delboro started to laugh as the boy sank to his knees. He'd enjoy cutting the kid up immensely.
Then the brat started laughing. It was more of a scream of insanity, hardly recognizable as laughter, but laughter it was, mixed with hatred, bitter resentment, and desperate bloodlust… and the strongest will to live that could have possibly existed.
Feral eyes glittered in the shadows as the boy lunged again, this time snapping Delboro's Achilles tendon. Delboro sagged on his feet and shouted with pain. In his moment of weakness, dozens of cuts appeared all over his body. Blood splashed in rivers down onto the earth floor, churning up red mud as the man staggered.
"You…. Bastard!" Delboro screamed in fury as he threw his knife. In a moment of blind luck, the blade caught the boy in the sternum, thudding nearly hilt deep into his chest. The kid stopped in his tracks and fell to the floor, dead silent. Of course dead silent, no one could live through that.
Delboro swore loudly and started laughing for real. He'd won, of course, there was no way that he would have lost to a kid!
The bone handled knife that had been in the boy's grasp now found itself between Delboro's ribs. In an instant, all the tendons in his hands and feet were severed, and the man became immobile. The boy now stood swaying, blood pouring out of his chest in torrents, Delboro's knife in his left hand.
"How… how…. H-ahhhhhhhhh!"
Ai grinned as the boy in the room laughed, splashing in puddles of blood. When she was sure that he had finished with Delboro, she opened the door. The child looked at her from his perch on Delboro's bunk. A knife in each hand, he was as besmirched with blood as a painter was with paint after an artistic frenzy.
"Welcome to White Noize, Shredder Jax," Ai Shirodesu greeted pleasantly.