Why you should never kick Muraki in the balls
Chapter Two: Numb
A story by Kelly
Kelly says: Well, what do you know? Chapter two. Much love to all who reviewed! Pray for the success of this story as this is the first time I'm writing a YnM fic with the original characters as the main cast. May heaven help me.
Summary: It's nearly a year after the Kyoto Arc and Muraki is slowly losing himself to despair. This is a story about love, angst, humour, rage and why you should never kick Muraki in the balls. All will be explained. Soon.
Pairings: Not saying.
Warning: Will contain slash, graphic murders, traumatic recollections and the much-needed angst. Slight OOC. Read at your own risk.
Review Replies:
Twylise: Thank you, I love the title myself. I got inspired thanks to a SMS from Sakusha and the title just refuses to leave me alone. I had to write something down! This is a rather experimental foray into the twisted psyche that Muraki is. And no worries, I think by the time you read this, I've already uploaded Chapter 22 of EOTW.
Keleih, Sakusha-san, Literary Eagle, Izy Clover, neloMoon-chan. EmpressXu, Machi: Yay! Thank you! *bows* I aim to please. And really, the reason for the title will come up. ^__^ Machi, are you a fan of that Taiwanese hip-hop group with the same name by any chance? They did a really cool remix of Missy Elliot's "Work It".
Shortchan: Oh dear, why did you almost not click the story because of the title? How did it put you slightly off? But I'm grateful that you overrode the compulsion to not give it a try! Er, unfortunately, this chapter is not that humorous *cringe*. I needed to start giving some groundwork for the inevitable Muraki explosion *Hint! Hint!*. But I hope you'll continue liking it!
panatlantic: Wan! A review from one of my all-time favourite YnM ficcer! Thank you! ^^ May I say here that I think your fics; "Eureka" and "While you were sleeping" are truly masterpieces of YnM humour!
Quotable Quotes From The Questionable Sanity of Kelly;
"I'm not really into voyeurism actually. I'm more of an active participant myself."
~Muraki Kazutaka~
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Something has been taken from deep inside of me
A secret I've kept locked away, no one can ever see
Wounds so deep they never show, they never go away
Like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they play
If I could change I would
Take back the pain I would
Retrace every wrong move that I made I would
If I could stand up and take the blame I would
If I could take all the shame to the grave I would
~Linkin Park, "Easier to Run"~
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Muraki scowled reflectively at the sprawled form at his feet. Long hair twined about his white leather shoes like limp tentacles, the ends soaked in rich red blood. The body was slight in form, what grace she had in life carried through to death in the delicate bones of the wrists and the shapely waist and hips. She lay like a goddess waiting for her worshippers to paint the exquisite beauty that death held, though the frame of this canvas was ground sparsely sprinkled with tough grass and slowly congealing blood.
He lifted one foot almost delicately and nudged the limp form.
No response. She had finally given up her hold on her life, the struggle she put up when he'd plunged the knife through her brief and in vain.
A wry smile curled his pale lips as he fingered the blood-soaked blade of the knife he held loosely in one hand. It's ironic really. Just 11 months ago he had been stabbed in the guts by a knife as well. And now he was dealing the same kind of death to those who crossed his path, intentional or otherwise.
Truthfully though, tonight's murder had no real purpose other than the fact that the urge to kill had risen in him again. He thought it must be due to seeing Tsuzuki and the boy Hisoka the other day. For a brief moment, a very brief moment, he had felt alive again. But now all he felt was a certain detachment from the scene, the burning joy at seeing his puppets again drowned out by the ever-present dead weight that settled deep in his chest.
Grimacing slightly as the memories of that night surfaced thanks to the pair, he let the knife fall negligently to the ground, sinking point-first into the damp earth. The blade quivered for a moment, reflecting broken beams of moonlight that gleamed red as well.
Stepping smartly over the body, he strode briskly away from the murder scene, stripping off the white leather gloves that were too stained to be of any use. Stuffing the soiled leathers into the pocket of his trench coat, he got into his car and gunning the engine to life, roared almost defiantly away into the night.
He drove aimlessly around the streets of Tokyo for almost two hours. He hated it when the memories of that night surfaced. It reminded him of his failure. Of his failure to complete the revenge that had driven him beyond the brink of obsession and back for more than 20 years. It made him want to howl in thwarted anger and frustration, while at the same time, laugh until he cried with mirth that after years of careful planning, Saki had the nerve to come out of the whole debacle as the ultimate winner, again. The fact that Saki had been the mere remnants of the boy that had haunted him to near madness was trivial. He had lived for revenge. Had wanted nothing but revenge. Had drunk it to its bitter dregs and swallowed the bile, only to be foiled by a filthy great snake and a man who was possibly as insane as he was.
Maybe more.
He supposed that it was his own fault, really. He had underestimated Tsuzuki Asato. He had thought that he had broken the man beyond repair. Well, he had, come to think of it. It just surprised him that the broken puppet had chosen to cut its strings in such a way. He guessed that he had pushed maybe. . .a bit too far?
And to put the icing on the proverbial cake, after recovering from the near-fatal wound thanks to the ministrations of an Oriya who was too happy to see him to scream his ear off about how abysmally stupid he was to go and get himself stabbed of all things, he had drifted through his life with an alarming apathy. The underground lab had been damaged beyond repair, thanks to that infernal Touda. Any chances of recovering even bare traces of Saki's genetic leavings were dashed to pieces when all that was left of the lab were mere ashes and timbers blackened to coal hardness.
So left with nothing but thwarted revenge, Muraki had gone through the motions of recovering and dispensing his duties at the Tokyo General Hospital. His apathy had not gone unnoticed by Oriya, curse the man and his over attentiveness. Oriya had been his one and true friend through his life, a steady presence from the earliest memories of his childhood up to when he was completely engulfed by insanity and darkness. Oriya had been his rock, his anchor that he used to pull himself back from the abyss again and again. But this time, even Oriya could do nothing as the very force that made Muraki the charismatic and enigmatic killer that he was, dwindled into nothing more than a flickering flame.
A horn blaring jerked him back to the present with a rude wrench. A black sedan was barreling down on him, the lights blazing and the horn still blaring furiously. He had drifted in to the opposite lane without realizing it. With a hard yank, he twisted the steering back to the left and it was by mere inches that the sedan passed him, the driver flipping him the bird.
Blowing out a noisy sigh, he moved out of the traffic and parked at a curb. Letting the engine idle, he rolled down the window and lit up a cigarette. Exhaling a plume of white smoke, he was disappointed to notice that the trembling from the sudden adrenaline rush had lasted barely a minute. Apparently, even brushes of near-death experiences could not fully shake him out of this wretched apathy he was locked in.
He was on his second cigarette, the white cylinder now only a bare stub, when his cell phone rang. Flipping the phone open, he glanced at the lit up screen. Oriya.
Muraki sighed pensively. It was another sign of his changing personality that strived as he might, he could not avoid. He never sighed. Not really.
"Yes?" he greeted Oriya with a neutrality that he knew drove the man crazy.
True enough, Oriya himself let out a sigh that was as heavy as his had been earlier. "Where are you?" he snapped, the line practically crackling with the tension Oriya radiated.
Muraki gave a cursory glance around. "Still alive unfortunately," he replied wryly.
"What do you mean by that?"
He shrugged, though Oriya could not see it. "Nearly had an accident. And I'm fine, not one scratch," he added, anticipating the next question.
Muraki could tell that Oriya was holding himself back from letting loose a tirade that would encompass heaven and hell, trying to pound it into his head that he better take care of himself, that there are people who care about him, that. . .the only thing stopping him was that he knew from experience that the minute he let loose such a tirade, Muraki would only retreat further into himself.
Another sigh. "What have you been doing tonight?"
Muraki gave another unseen shrug. "Just killed somebody."
The sound of grinding teeth was audible. "Well then. You're coming to the KoKakuRou tonight." The tone brooked no arguments but for old time's sake, he tried anyway.
"I am?" He lifted a sardonic silver eyebrow.
"You are." The menace was simply pouring in waves, promising dire retribution should he worm his way out of the 'invitation'.
"You do realize that it'll take me three hours on the train to get to your place."
"Then you better get a move on. Don't want to miss the last train do you?"
Muraki was silent for several minutes, letting the last of the cigarette die in fading smoke. The rushing of cars and people around him, horns blaring and voices shouting only served to ram in the reality of the world he had created for himself. A world that had only him and a blankness that terrified him out of his mind but with no one and nothing to pull him out. Not even Oriya Mibu.
"Why are you doing this?" He asked softly, head bowed till the silver-white fringe hid him from the real world.
Oriya's reply was immediate and heartfelt in its sincerity. "Because you're my friend. Because I care about you." His little world seemed to tremble slightly on its foundations.
But not enough. Never enough.
"Yo, bon."
Hisoka looked up from the heavy tome he was reading, setting it aside with the page he was reading bookmarked with a pencil. Tsuzuki beside him looked up as well, puppy ears sprouting up in the hopes that Watari had brought cakes. Seeing nothing in the blonde's hands, Tsuzuki whimpered pathetically and with a glare from Hisoka, dove back into the mounds of paperwork that littered his desk. Hisoka had already threatened him earlier with a week of no office doughnuts if he didn't finish the reports by 5pm.
"Yes, Watari-san?" Hisoka asked politely. He too checked Watari's hands carefully for entirely different reasons than Tsuzuki. He was checking to make sure that the scientist had no suspicious liquids waiting to be poured into hapless coffee.
Oh, goodie. No beakers. And no suspiciously over-genkiness gushing today. They were safe.
For now that is.
"How's the report-writing going?" Watari smiled easily and slid into the chair opposite Hisoka's desk.
Hisoka rolled his eyes theatrically and lifted an eyebrow. "I've finished mine two days ago," he replied with another glare to the drooping inu.
Said inu gave another pathetic whimper which Hisoka cruelly ignored.
"Ah, you'll finish soon, Tsuzuki! I'm sure of it!" Watari patted inu's head cheerfully. "Who knows? I'll bet if you do it really fast, you might even finish by the end of the year!"
"Watari," Tsuzuki transformed back looking serious, "do you realize how absolutely cruel you can be sometimes?"
"It's my innate charm," Watari deadpanned.
"So what can I help you with Watari-san?" Hisoka interjected before the conversation could degenerate into something else.
"Nah, just passing some time before the meeting," Watari waved abstractedly.
Meeting? Frowning, Hisoka glanced over to the whiteboard that listed the day's office activities as well as the staff's current status such as 'Investigating', 'On leave' or occasionally, 'Cinnapon Sale!' for Tsuzuki. True enough, under the office activities section was listed 'Meeting: All staff members' in Tatsumi's elegant scrawl. He must have missed that when he came in this morning with Tsuzuki.
"Do you have any idea what it's about?" he asked curiously. General staff meetings were usually due to some new office policy or directive from either Kacho or Enma-Daioh and in some rare instances, deaths that warranted the entire Shokan's attention. He wondered which of it was the reason for today's meeting.
Watari shrugged negligently but there was no mistaking the sudden tension in the carriage of his shoulders. "There's been a recent spate of murders throughout Tokyo and Kyoto. The human realm can't seem to solve it."
At the mention of Tokyo and Kyoto, both Hisoka and Tsuzuki tensed. Shooting each other wary looks, Hisoka asked, "Why? The souls didn't turn up?"
"The souls turned up intact despite the rather violent entry on the Kiseki but it's the way the murders happened that's getting us involved."
"What do you mean?"
"Our preliminary investigations showed that there were large amounts of magic unleashed at the murder sites. A rather. . .familiar brand of magic I'm afraid," Watari frowned.
"It's not. . ." Hisoka hesitated, a feeling of dread lurking deep in the pit of his stomach, "It's not Muraki is it?"
Large, golden amber eyes blinked slowly behind glasses as Watari tucked back a stray strand of wavy hair that escaped his ribbon. The eyes were filled with a kind of regret and apprehension for both Hisoka and Tsuzuki as he answered.
"I'm afraid it is."
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to be continued
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Kelly says: Ah, this chapter was rather grim comparatively from the first. Had to do it I'm afraid. The scenes are setting the way for a future confrontation. But it is still interesting. . .right? *whimpers* Oh, me and my fragile ego! How can I continue without glowing praises? How? I ask you, how?! *cough*