Dimonyo-Anghel: You're very welcome! I hope you enjoy this one too :)

Loveless Raine: Heehee I always seem to end up bashing Kogure around a lot in my fics! Whoops ._. ! Although to be fair he is still Mitsui's superior so he does deserve some awesome moments, particularly after all I've put him through...

Addicted to SD: This was supposed to be a simple story, but I'm quite glad it got as complicated as it did, because I've had lots of fun meeting new characters from SD who I haven't used before (I tend to stick with Shohoku + Sendoh) – I'm really glad to meet the Kainan boys :) Particularly Jin! He's been so much fun!

Anita: OoooH I'm glad it's just your computer – I was worried! Hm originally I was going to take the Senru further in the last chapter, but in the end it just didn't feel right. I realised Sendoh wouldn't do that, so I edited it all out, and I'm glad you think it's better that way :) Definitely pushing ahead with the story now so things should start moving forward a little faster!

Thine Own Palace
Chapter 21

Time swims.

Bakes itself hard and dry in the sweltering heat of summer, when even the tables in the shade are too hot to touch. When the ground is dry with dust and stones, and even spilt blood soon turns from a splash to a stain.

There was no hint, none at all, of the drama that was to be soon played out in that hot, stagnant place.

Yes, the summer was a hot one.

Flies buzzed through the sweltering dining hall, crash landing lazily to sip and suck at salted skin, greased hair and the hot stench of bodies.

And the weeks echoed with Stanley's silence.

In one place, deep inside the relative cool of the cell block, there was a small service corridor. It ended in a locked door to a store room that was no longer used. There, in the corner formed by the wall and the locked store room door was a unique sight within the prison. A small slot, barely ten centimetres wide, high in the wall, and filled with glass such that in this place, and this place only, there was what might be described as a window. It was bared and dusty but through it one could see a tiny patch of blue. A small square of sky.

It was this place that Sendoh found, and in this place where he sat, staring silently upward, imagining that if he were truly lucky he would be able to fly out of there. Sitting and watching and wasting away.

He felt, quite irrationally, that this small vantage was a way of watching for Stanley's arrival which, he felt sure, must come. Any day. Any day now. Certainly it wasn't much of a view but it was superior nonetheless to the endless internal corridors full of cells, not a single window to tell if it was night or day.

The inmates who spent mealtimes in the open air dining hall suffered the unpleasant effects of the maddening summer heat, but had an access to the sun, to the sky, that Sendoh found himself craving. A concrete cage of electric lights was no state for a soul. Sometimes he felt the place would drive him mad.

But the window calmed him.

In the evenings he returned to Sakuragi, the only person he ever saw any more, and would stare up at the ceiling of the cell, delirious with hunger and with half-remembered plans, sinking ever further into a lethargic depression.

Today, as he did almost everyday now, Sakuragi passed him some salvaged remains of the evening meal. A soggy fist of over boiled cabbage and a thin crust of bread. Sendoh devoured them with gusto. A couple of weeks ago he had still been sensible enough to feel guilty for taking a potion of Sakuragi's already meagre meal, but he was long past that now. If the lack of sun didn't drive him mad, his hunger would. He pressed a hand against his stomach bracingly.

Even riders got to eat.

Sakuragi's eyes were pitying as he watched Sendoh suck the last traces of cabbage from his fingers. Sendoh did not meet his stare. He knew he was without options. He had chosen this path. Now there was nothing left to do but to follow it.

It had been weeks, and there had been no noise. No stirring. Nothing to break the monotony of days. Unusually, Norio had not been seen. He, whose hold over the prison had been so absolute, seemed to have retreated. Disappeared. Gone from this place that had once been his playground.

Gone? Sendoh didn't truly believe it. Not in the least. But it didn't bode well at all. Because if Norio was hiding, then what had happened to Kaede?

Though he hated to think it, even Sendoh had to face up to the fact that Norio's retreat suggested only one thing - that Kaede was dead. No matter how he looked at it, he always came to that same conclusion.

Whenever thoughts of Kaede entered his mind, he would plant his palm against the rough concrete wall beside him as if to steady himself. As if something solid would protect him from the clouds of uncertainty that obscured his vision.

Not knowing. Not knowing for sure. It was agonising.

It had been only weeks, but it felt like centuries. Sendoh had hit Kogure when he'd found out what he'd done. How he'd sold Kaede out to Ishizuka on a hope, a vain hope, a whim. All he'd seen at that moment had been rage and burning bridges. Of course logic told him that Kogure's choices had been limited. Of course he knew that Kogure had had to make a difficult judgement in a short moment of time. Perhaps it had even been the right one. Perhaps, given the same set of circumstances, Sendoh would have done the same. A gamble that had had to be made.

But he just couldn't accept it. Hated everything and everyone for all the risk, all the gambles, that fell on Kaede's neck alone. Why was it Kaede who had to pay the price for every move they made? Why was it Kaede who suffered so much? Kaede - whose death was the price of their one and only chance.

He couldn't accept it. Couldn't bear it. Not at all.

It seemed obvious to him that Norio was retreating in the face of Ishizuka's blackmail, probably seeking to erase what evidence he could. Right now, the likelihood of Kaede still being alive seemed hopelessly remote. Norio would be a fool to keep him alive now.

Sendoh rolled over and pushed his face into the mattress as the nightly alarm ran once, shrilly throughout the crowded cell block. It was followed by the mechanical clunk of the electronic locks sliding into place for the night, trapping Sendoh and Sakuragi inside their cell. The guards trawled casually round to confirm that everyone was in their proper places, and then five minutes later a second alarm sounded, and all cells were plunged into heavy darkness.

Sendoh closed his eyes and made a futile effort to relax his overly stressed mind. He did little more than doze as he plunged in and out of nightmare after nightmare. Things chased him - huge, dark shadows hounding his steps. Sometimes he turned and fought, sometimes he fled. But he could never save him. Every dream showed him the same thing: Kaede's death, Sendoh's failure.

It must have been a little after midnight when a noise woke him. He opened his eyes to see that there was light entering the room, and turned his head to see that Kyota was standing in the doorway. This time, however, there was no Kaede behind him.

"Get up" Kyota said bluntly. "Jin's called us all in."

Sendoh's head felt improbably heavy as he lifted his body from the bed. He was coated in cold sweat. His arms trembled under his own weight. "What does he want?"

"I don't know," Kyota replied, "Just move, will ya? I have a lot of doors to get round."

Sendoh felt unsteady on his feet as he got up and made the two short steps towards the door. His joints ached and his head rang. I'mdying, he realised, though he remained eerily nonplussed by the fact. It didn't seem to matter much.

He felt eyes on him, and turned to see Sakuragi watching from the upper bunk. His eyes were two black pinpricks of suspicion in the darkness.

"Coming?" Sendoh asked.

Sakuragi's response was to sniff haughtily, and roll over to face the wall.

"No." He replied shortly. "Fucking numbers business nothing to do with me."

Sendoh shrugged.

"Sakuragi." Kyota acknowledged the other man with a casual greeting.

"Kyota" the reply came gruffly, without a look back.

Sendoh and Kyota shared a quick glance, and without further words, left the cell.

They all met in one of the bathrooms; a large and unpleasant space with hard edges, cold sinks and the lingering echoes of persecution. Sendoh hadn't dared to step into a bathroom since leaving the Yunta gang. As far as trouble went, the bathroom exceeded even the dining hall as a threat to an unaffiliated inmate. Sendoh could sense that he wasn't the only one made ill at ease in a place such as this.

It was dark and full of whispers and shadows. The only light filtered through from the corridor. The dark tiles were uncomfortable to sit on, but they were all used to discomfort by now. Sendoh noticed that all the people around him were filled with hollows. A spectrum of thin and unhappy faces. The Kings were on their knees. He felt guilty, sitting there, knowing that he had had a hand in bringing them down to this. Feeling that they all probably hated him.

Sendoh noted Mitsui and Kogure among the gathered, but sat away from them. He felt poisonous. A space appeared naturally around him. Suspicious looks were sent his way. It seemed others thought him poisonous too. He didn't belong here.

Jin walked to the centre of the room, silencing the whispers and drawing all attention. The ghostly heads of showers protruded menacingly from the walls above him like shrunken heads on pikes.

"This" Jin began quietly, "cannot continue."

The silence was rapt. Desperate. They hung to his words as if he could save them.

"We are forced to meet in the dead of night. Our right to gather in our own territory, even to eat, has been taken away from us. We hide in the shadows and scavenge like dogs. This cannot continue."

He paused and looked round at them all, his eyes deep in shadow and anger.

"Have we forgotten what we are? We are the strongest fucking gang ever to have existed. This prison? We ruled it. This isn't some fucking unknown section, this is T-Block. This is the birthplace of the numbers. Don't you remember?" He glared round at them all. "Yes, things have changed but we are still here. We are still skilled, strong, organised." He licked his lips compulsively. "Are you really just going to starve to death in the shadows?"

There were mixed mutterings about him, but Sendoh's attention was riveted to Jin. He seemed... different. Yes, he had always had that small, slender form and eeriness about him. That frightening, almost homicidal loop to his eyes that make him seem somewhat deranged, a malfunctioning mind. Yet now he seemed something more. He seemed to somehow... know himself.

Truly, Sendoh realised with a small smile, Jin had found himself a place. Here, like this. A man who was born to lead. Born to fight against adversity. Another time, another place, and perhaps history would have sung of him. Sendoh could picture him waving a flag on the French barricades, walking on the Salt Satyagraha, or standing proud among the students of Tiananmen Square. But Jin was to be denied historical immortality. He was trapped here, with the rest of them, and the shine of his existence was doomed to rot on the rubbish heap of humanity. The rest of his life had already been forfeited. And yet somehow, in this small and hopeless place, he still found a way to know who he was. To be who he was. And Sendoh could only admire him for that.

Watching Jin he suddenly remembered Kaede's words – Be thine own palace.

Be thine own palace, or all the world's thy gaol.

Watching Jin he closed his eyes and felt his chest clench painfully.

Yes, I get it. I understand it,now. What you were trying to tell me...

...Kaede.

He reminded himself that Kaede was dead, felt the familiar rise of frightened panic in his lungs, and tried to force himself to listen to Jin's words.

"Tomorrow," Jin was continuing, looking around at each of them in turn, "we put a stop to this. Tomorrow we are going to enter the dining hall and claim a new territory for ourselves. We are not going to hide any longer."

The looks exchanged across the dark bathroom were mixed. Would Jin's words be enough? Sendoh looked around at all the faces of uncertainty.

It was true that these men had once been greatly feared, but it was also true that they had been spectacularly broken. Most of them would have seen their friends and their allies literally torn apart in the violent riots that had punctuated the numbers' fall. Most of them would have come close to death themselves. Sendoh's eyes flickered towards Kogure and he felt it. That fear. He could feel it built up like walls in their eyes. And he had no right to judge them. Because he knew exactly what it meant... to be afraid. To be terrified into total paralysis.

"They," Jin spat the word with venom, tossing his head vaguely in the direction of the dining hall, "they are all just morons. Idiots. Squabbling among themselves, totally unaware that they are Norio's pawns, trapped in his game. They have nothing but brute force and stupidity. They hate us, but they fear us too. And there is no reason to play by their rules. We don't need to fight fist for fist. We have enough skills here, in this room, to run rings around any of them. All we need to do is plan, unite, make our move and reclaim our place at the top of this godforsaken hell hole."

Sendoh glanced around and saw that heads were lifted slightly. Hopeful. Jin certainly sounded like he had a plan, something that would work, and that had managed to ignite just that small feeling of possibility. Perhaps. Perhaps Jin alone might be enough.

"There can no longer be uncertainty" Jin continued quickly as the atmosphere began to take on its own momentum. "What we need is unity." He paused, and then said; "Kogure Kiminobu."

Jin's stare went directly to where Kogure sat by Mitsui, and all eyes in the room did the same.

Somewhat surprised by the sudden, intense attention, Kogure shifted, startled.

Jin spoke; "You and your student Mitsui are invited to formally join the gang of the kings. You will acknowledge the leaders of the gang, receive its protection and be expected to devote the same energy and loyalty to it as you did the numbers gang, of which we still form a part."

Kogure glanced only briefly at Mitsui for confirmation before inclining his head. "We accept."

"Then I charge you to complete you duties as befitting the numbers you bear."

They both nodded this time. "We will."

Jin barely allowed himself time to nod before he spun sharply on his heel.

"Sendoh Akira."

The name sounded heavy on his lips. It seemed as if his words to Kogure had merely been preamble to this, his real business.

The tension increased as the gathered gang mates shuffled and strained their necks to get a good look. Sendoh ignored them, and kept his attention firmly on Jin. His heart was suddenly beating frantically against his ribs.

"No one," Jin spoke seriously, "in the past four years has been initiated into the numbers gang. However, I would like to offer you that chance now."

The silence did not break, but Sendoh felt the swift, excited exchange of glances going on around him. He swallowed. He felt ill.

"The numbers are a gang of murderers." Jin continued. "We accept no failure. We defend our rules with blood. Join us, and we will protect you and provide for you beyond your imaginings. Betray us, and I will take great pleasure in killing you myself."

There was just a flash of anticipation in Jin's eyes. Sendoh did not doubt his words. He nearly shuddered; the thought of dying at Jin's mercy was somehow terrifying.

But then, he reminded himself, he was already dying slowly. So what the hell did he have to be afraid of now?

"What would this... initiation... involve?" he asked.

Jin smiled, a long stretch of thin lips to reveal pretty, square teeth and an innocent face turned hungry. A spider watching a fly.

"It was very long and complicated. I've shortened it, but the most important element is still the trial."

"Trial?" Sendoh waited for Jin's explanation, but recalled what Sakuragi had already told him. Onekill.

"You have to kill a person - someone who I choose. Others can help you, but you must strike the final blow yourself."

"And why is this necessary?"

"It is to show you are ready to do whatever it takes. I have already told you, we do not accept failure or half-heartedness. If you want to be a number you need to put aside irrelevant ideas of morality. There is only one law in prison: kill or be killed. We didn't make that rule, but you can't deny it's the truth."

"So... which person?"

Jin's eyes darkened. "Tetsuo."

Sendoh sucked in his breath quickly, and when he spoke again, his voice came out strangely weak. "I know that man," he muttered.

"He deserves to die," Jin replied coldly.

"Yes," Sendoh replied heavily, "yes, he does." That, at least, Sendoh could agree with.

"Then, that is the nature of your trial."

"I'm going too!" someone suddenly spoke up, and Sendoh looked across the room to see that Mitsui was on his feet, his hands balled into fists. "I'll be damned if I let fucking Sendoh kill him before I've had a chance to pound that bastard's fucking face in."

Mitsui's outburst seemed to break whatever spell the room had been under, and all at once enthusiastic discussion broke out throughout the bathroom. Jin looked displeased that he had lost his audience, but was momentarily at a loss over how to recapture them. There were several outspoken complaints about the wisdom of allowing Sendoh to join them at all, in voices that carried loudly against the echoing tiles, filling the midnight space with the chaos of sound. The meeting dissolved rapidly into disruption. And in the midst of it all, Sendoh closed his eyes and tried to ignore them, and to think.

It wasn't an easy thing to do.

After a few minutes had passed, the eruption of conversation died back somewhat, and Sendoh finally opened his eyes. In a voice that quietened the room again, stated: "I have one more question."

Jin turned back towards him.

"I want to know what gives you the authority to initiate me into the numbers gang." Sendoh asked. "The gang is, after all, completely scattered. No one here is one of the six leaders. If I do join, will the other numbers in other blocks really recognise me as being one of them?"

A ghost of a smile flickered on Jin's lips. "You are questioning my seniority among the numbers, Sendoh Akira."

Sendoh looked back at him and, after a moment, nodded. Jin may have managed to become the leader of the kings, but as far as the numbers were concerned, he was just a junior. He was nothing.

"It is not my rank that gives me this authority, but my number," Jin answered, in a distinctly cool voice. He moved his arm to reveal his inner wrist and the elegantly set twenty tree written there. "Twenty threes handle all elements of numbers law, including recruiting new members. Even the lowest twenty three - such as I - has the authority to recommend a candidate for initiation. My offer is, you see, entirely genuine."

Sendoh swallowed slightly. He had offended Jin in asking the question, but he had his answer now. There were no barriers. Nothing at all standing in the way between he, and what he had wanted so badly.

"In that case," Sendoh replied with all certainty, making up his mind and meeting Jin's eye straight on. "In that case... I refuse."

Back in his small service corridor, gazing up at his window, Sendoh had the chance to ponder whether or not he had made a mistake. He tried to imagine them, what they would be doing now - preparing themselves, no doubt, for whatever scheme Jin had had in mind. Perhaps it was already in action. Perhaps there was fighting in the dining hall right now.

He hadn't said anything, but Sendoh couldn't help but wonder in hindsight whether Jin had been counting on his support. Whether he'd let him down at the last minute. Let him down, even after everything Jin had done for him.

After all, it wasn't as if killing Tetsuo were beyond him. True, he'd never killed anyone before but he felt sure - quite sure - that in Tetsuo's case he could make an exception. Besides, he realised, there was no logical way he could have performed any so-called trial so quickly. It had been a formality that Jin had had to follow, and the truth was that Jin had probably simply wanted him there, today, at the moment when they needed him the most.

He wondered if he shouldn't go and find them. Throw himself in in support at this late hour. Would they welcome it, his interference? After he had betrayed them so thoroughly? It had been rude, he realised. It had been utterly rude of him to refuse them.

Everything just seemed very far away. The prison, all its inmates, had taken on an insubstantial, distant quality. Sendoh felt lethargic. He just couldn't bring himself to care about anything any more. He was tired. And Kaede dead. He tried to keep telling himself that, trying to get used to the idea.

He frowned unhappily. The truth was that he hadn't joined Jin because of Kaede.

Kaede.

The reason for everything he did these days.

Kaede was a twenty three, the same as Jin, but he had never, not even in his most lucid moments, mentioned that Sendoh ought to join the numbers. Quite the opposite in fact, Kaede seemed filled with regret over the things he had done, what he had become. Somehow, Sendoh found himself believing, Kaede wouldn't want him to make those same mistakes. Kaede wouldn't want him to take that road.

Sendoh shuffled his feet closer together and put his forehead on his knees with a sigh. It had probably been a terrible mistake. If Kaede was already dead, what was he supposed to do? He was entirely without motive, without aim, and now even without the one gang that might have accepted him. Alone. Utterly alone.

Refusing - he felt more and more certain with each moment that passed - had been a fucking stupid thing to do.

Perhaps he really should go and find them. Go and help them. Perhaps there was still a way to earn their trust back.

He lifted his head, half intending to do just that. He saw with despairing eyes his hugely reduced world - one empty corridor, one locked door, one dirty window and one solitary soul - and he felt his isolation more keenly than ever.

He could do it - he could kill Tetsuo - but then he would die here. The real reason no number had ever left the prison apart from Stanley Q was because the real price demanded by the numbers' infamous trial was not simple morality. The kill was superfluous. It was the life sentence you got for it that really made you a number.

He turned his eyes to the window and tried to think clearly. Except there was nothing, nothing at all that he could think that could solve his problem or sooth his mind. He was so panicked, and so out of options that at first he didn't even notice what he was looking at.

It was several minutes, in fact, before he finally he saw it. His heart skipped a beat. He got up slowly, his eyes fixed on the new sight, he mind frantic to identify it and what it meant.

Smoke.

At first a little, then increasingly more, pumping from some source somewhere in the grounds of the prison, black and ominous.

He felt suddenly excited. Could it be Stanley? Had he set fire to a part of the compound somewhere?

He craned his neck to try and see the cause of the smoke, but what with he being so low and the window so high, he could make out nothing. Yet he had to see.

A thought struck him. Wouldn't he be able to see more clearly from the dining hall? With its open sides it was as close as he could get to outside without Kyota to open the external holding doors for him. With a sudden rush of adrenaline in his veins, Sendoh forced his starving body to run.

He clattered around corners, his feet flapping against the concrete floor, cells flashing past him as quickly as he could make them, yet not quickly enough. The corridors suddenly seemed endlessly long. Was it really this far?

He ignored his sickness, the dizzy feeling that lightened his head and weakened his knees, causing him to stumble and graze his fingers on the rough wall. He took no notice of anything but what he needed to do, where he needed to go. If Stanley were there he had to meet him, needed to take him to where Kaede was, help Kaede to escape. It didn't matter that just a moment ago he had thought Kaede already dead. All that was forgotten now. He'd never truly believed it anyway.

Sendoh didn't have a plan beyond getting to the dining hall. All he had to do was find Stanley and then somehow – miraculously – everything would work out. Kaede would escape. Kaede would be free. Whatever might happen after that did not concern him. Whether Sendoh should be killed, or tortured, or forced into every kind of humiliation didn't matter any more. There was only one promise that he wanted to fulfil. Only one way to counter the terrible prophecy of his dreams.

He took the final corner at a run and skidded into a world he hadn't entered since he'd watched Kaede snap a man's neck. That sweltering hall that constituted what passed as a society in this warped place. It might have been momentous, his dramatic return, but nobody noticed him at all. They were all looking at Jin.

The ringmaster.

Jin had a shank between his teeth, and another in his hand. There was blood streaked across his cheek, and running down his forearm. There were three bloodied, crumpled bodies at his feet. He looked so absolutely mad that even Sendoh stopped in his tracks.

Maki stood right behind him, utterly colossal with bruised, bleeding knuckles and wild eyes. Sendoh had not seen him since his expulsion, but he might have known that Jin would be hiding him somewhere. Jin was all together too good a strategist to let such a powerful fighter simply disappear.

It seemed they had succeeded in taking the dining hall by surprise. Not unexpected, Sendoh felt. After all, they were unfamiliar faces suddenly appearing from nowhere. A reasonably large and experienced gang that most of the inmates hadn't even realised existed. Small wonder they could cause such confusion simply by showing up.

The kings had wrested control of one of the benches from the Splinter gang, whose members were now either standing aside in furious disbelief or moaning on the floor in agony. The kings stood around their new patch of territory possessively, glaring at anyone who looked like they would dare to speak out or challenge them. They were not, Sendoh noticed, making any show of their numbers. There was no point, he realised, in adding any fuel to this fire.

The room was nonetheless filled with smoke. Some sort of explosion seemed to have blown the table in the far corner, that which had once belonged to the Yunta gang, into nothing but smoking shrapnel. No doubt another part of Jin's pantomime. But the smoke in the dining hall was not the same smoke that Sendoh had seen from the window.

He took only a brief moment to survey the carnage the kings had wrought before remembering his real purpose and looking up towards the thick boundary wall. The thick smoke was issuing from something burning just beyond the perimeter of T-block. He could just about make out the flames over the top of the wall, pumping out a rising column of black.

As he looked, his whole body turned utterly cold.

He didn't need to see the source of the smoke because all of a sudden he knew exactly what was burning. That now-familiar block. That dark, hateful building that had housed all of Kaede's agonies.

No, it wasn't Stanley causing that smoke signal; it was Norio.

It was the last vestiges of evidence burning rapidly to the floor.

And for the first time, Sendoh began to truly believe it. Not just a matter of logic and reason, but in his soul. It was as if the light in him had finally guttered. The realisation that Kaede was really gone, and that he had truly failed.

He found himself at the wire fence, clawing at it desperately, totally unaware of anyone around him. He wrenched furiously at the metal, suddenly overcome by a violent, angry grief. And he was screaming. Screaming his name until his voice broke. The wire rattled violently, like some thrashing metal snake under his hands, but the brackets did not give way. He was yelling and he was crying until all his energy was exhausted and he fell to the floor in an agony. There was movement around and near him, but he didn't know. He didn't know anything. It all had ceased to exist.

The only picture in his mind was Kaede's body lost among those flames. Ash. Disintegrating to nothingness. Every single remnant of him... lost. Ceasing to exist.

It is doubtful that anything would have been able to reach Sendoh in such a state. No physical comfort or harm or voices of mockery or condolence. He was beyond all that. There was only his pain and the one irrefutable truth – Kaede was dead.

He could have lost himself for days in the stupor of his torment. He could have fallen there, his fingers still linked in that fence, never fulfilling the legacy Kaede had entrusted him with. Never bringing justice to the man who had caused so much suffering. So easily the story might have ended there for Sendoh Akira.

But it didn't.

There was a gunshot. A loud, unmistakeable crack. And his eyes were open.

It seemed Sendoh had commanded so much of the attention that no one had noticed the group of five unknown men who had simply walked into the dining hall. However, they certainly noticed them now.

The men were all armed, like a guard might be, but there was nothing official about their look. They wore casual clothes, leather and rugged, and a couple of them had cigarettes dangling from limp lips. They looked more akin to the prison convicts than to any guards.

Taken totally by surprise, the inmate of T-block looked at the newcomers in utter bemusement.

"Dogs!" The front-most man shouted to them all, gesturing emphatically with one hand to gain their attention. "Listen the fuck up. Do what I say or I'll put a fucking bullet in your skull. I am not bullshitting you."

With a casual motion of his hand he turned towards the closest inmate - one of the displaced Splinter gang members - and without any warning whatsoever fired a shot straight into the man's thigh. He went down immediately with a howl of pain. The rest of the inmates flinched in surprise, and turned wary eyes upon this new, unknown adversary.

"Now you are all, and I mean all of you, going to put your hands on your head. Now!" The man brandished the gun at them threateningly and, with nervous glances towards one another, all fifty of them slowly lifted their hands as they were bid. Sendoh remembered thinking to himself how, if they rushed all together they could probably overpower the five men who were holding them up. It was a futile thought. No one was prepared to risk facing such guns on behalf of each other. They were all of them enemies. Even those in the same gang competed with one another. A truly fragmented society, exactly as Norio had envisioned it. They were left powerless by their divisions.

"Good" the man sneered, and turned away for a moment to glance behind him. "All set" he called out.

Like the group who had so easily ambushed them, the man who entered the hall now was unknown to seemed a little older, perhaps thirty or forty, with a thick head of bleached shoulder-length hair that was streaked with grey. He walked with a limp, but seemed otherwise strong. A long scar stretched from his forehead, down across one eye to end on this cheek. The eye socket that it bisected was empty.

This man strode confidently into the centre of the hall and, ignoring all evidence of chaos around him - the smoking ruin of a table, the moaning wounded on the floor - went directly to one of the remaining benches that seemed to take his fancy. With casual surety he thumped one thick, black boot onto the seat and swung himself up to sit upon the tabletop with an agility that seemed to defy his age and build. He settled himself there, as if sitting up on a throne, and glanced around at the place – the concrete ceiling, floor and wooden tables with cold consideration.

"Well now" he sneered, and under the lift of his lip, Sendoh saw two gleaming rows of golden teeth.

The man crossed his legs with casual arrogance and proceeded to remove his jacket, laying it aside. Underneath his clothes he wore a vest top, revealing arms and chest that were solid muscle, a powerful wall of strength. But Sendoh's eyes focused only on one thing.

The tattooed twenty three that stood out on the side of his muscular neck.

"Isn't it good to be back?" Stanley Q commented with a smile that set all the hair on Sendoh's neck on end.

He understood finally the mistake he had made.

Compared to Stanley Q, Norio had been a mere inconvenience.

Here, he realised with a feeling of abject cold, was an enemy.

~tbc

ANs: NaNoWriMo 2012 starts TOMORROW! I'm all set to go (not really... not at all...) and I'm going to be uploading my efforts this time to FictionPress! You can find me through my FictionPress pen name Star711 or check my profile page for the link. I will be trying to upload my attempts every day (in their unedited, unfinished state), so feel free to follow along!

This does unfortunately mean no work on Thine Own until December (sorry sorry! And it was just getting exciting too, right?). On the upside, we're pushing into the closing arc so yey! I'm looking forward to the conclusion of this story :) I hope you are too!

See you in December!