Inferno
an X one-shot
I don't own X or Yuuto.
We begin to die as soon as we are born,
and the end is linked to the beginning.
Marcus Manilius
The skies were being scorched, flames were eating up the clouds, and it was getting consumed, bleeding. Bleeding… Tears kept on blurring her vision, and she was tired of blinking them away. It didn't matter—she could barely differentiate between illusion and reality. But what she did know was that the former was more beautiful, basically because it wasn't now.
Taking a breath as deep as she dared to, the woman felt the bones beneath her chest strain, and then crack, a definite schism. Lips against the asphalt, she managed a sudden expulsion of air, hoarse, parched throat eliciting a groan.
She never imagined she'd die like this.
It was really, incredibly, understated. And of all places, Shinjuku. She could use some nail polish but then again the blood was enough to taint them permanently.
"Karen Kasumi," the smooth, composed voice intoned calmly, after another building's foundations inudated and collapsed, shaking the very ground she was sprawled across. "You really do have a doll's figure. Just like a rag doll now."
She blinked, gazing with a single green eye past strands of bloodstained pink. Right shoulder shattered, and left knee contorted in an inhuman fashion, she did look like a discarded toy, flung carelessly aside.
Kasumi sniffed, scarlet lips twisting into a distorted smirk.
"Better a doll than soulless man without a reason to live or die," she rasped, the words coming out a short, abrupt wheezes.
He laughed, before viciously kicking her midsection, sending her crashing against a fire hydrant. Her head hit the cover, and a sickening sound confirmed the concussion. She felt the world spin as it knocked all the wind from her, and she slumped down against the road again. This time, the excruciating anguish was deluging her psyche in tsunamis of silence.
She could barely scream.
"I've always wished," Yuuto Kigai continued, slipping his burnt, skinless fingers into the pockets of his suit, "that we were on the same side."
Tsk. "You tore my dress," she hissed, venom seeping insidiously into her strained breaths. Her wine-colored halter dress was barely there. "It's too ungracious to forgive."
Why didn't you wait for me, she thought, her heart contracting. Baka.
Yet she knew he needed to fight, there and then, to protect the family he dedicated so much love and heart into. Gosh. Good men like that are really hard to find. For a moment, Kasumi felt the pain ease. She was numbing away now.
She had tried her best. After watching Aoki Seiichiro's kekkai fade into oblivion the blinding rage that ignited pillars of billowing flames incited the inevitable. It was no surprise that her nemesis was her counterpart. Fire with water. Elements of power, both equally destructive, and neither was dimmer in talent nor prowess. Playtime was over, and now life and death weighed precipitously on the balance.
To her, the outcome wasn't so until she won.
To him, Lady Luck was already his mistress.
And what did it matter?
"You knew I would win," he said, deadpan now.
Swivelling an eye to glare up at him, Kasumi remained silent, waiting.
"Why did you come?"
Such as we are made of, such we be.
"I came," she murmured, feeling herself finally relax, relinquish her strength. "To save the world."
Wrath seared through him, and he withdrew, ferociously gathering his ki.
It was about time.
The hydrant exploded in a violent upsurge of water, just as the gargantuan fireball, spiralling from the combusted carcasses of a nuclear powerstation, and propelled by the final shreds of her strength, pride and determination, collided with his stunned form.
The image of his arrogant figure engulfed in the consuming inferno amidst the blackened skies was the last image she saw.
Ah, Tokyo. I said I liked this place. But more than Tokyo, this is for you, Aoki Seiichiro. I think you've always known that. Good men are worth it, don't you think?