Wow…I updated!
Yuppies…here's the second chapter! Again, I would like to say a huge thankees to Emily for the basic idea! *huggles*
And also to everyone who read and reviewed last time! ^_~
Anyways…I did take my time *sweatdrop*, but here it is!
The second chapter!
Hope you enjoy it!
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Rays of sunlight illuminated the otherwise dreary gray of the dull buildings. Across the city, the streets were bustling with life- people on errands, people rushing to work, and people just strolling leisurely through, eyeing the rows of stores' vibrant displays.
Among this crowd, a dark figure stood rather inconspicuously. He walked with a slow pace, unhurried. Unrushed.
And the figure was Kai Hiwatari.
And he was deep in thought.
It seemed that that was all he did these days.
Think.
He smirked as he remembered what Tala, rather pathetically, had said to him in his jealousy:
"You act as if you're all alone. And you act as if you like it. But one day, this will all come back to you. And you'll regret ever shutting everyone out. You'll regret the way you've treated me and the others."
Of course, Tala said some other things too. Of the four-letter variety.
Which served only to increase Kai's amusement at him.
Because of course, if anything, Tala was the one who was selfish. He would do anything, Kai had discovered, to make sure he was the ultimate. The apex.
And most of all, he wanted to beat Kai at what he did best: 'blade.
Unfortunately for Tala, Kai was in no hurry to change the way he was.
Because he'd learnt long ago that the only way to get through the hellhole that was life, the hellhole which was his life anyway, was to depend only on yourself.
Just like he had been doing for years.
The results of having a self-dependent way of life was that if you messed up, then other people weren't to blame. And others wouldn't get hurt in the process.
And you were also less likely to be hurt by other people.
Kai caught a glimpse of himself in the window display of a particularly busy store window.
And what he saw…
He was strong. There was some kind of presence about him. His hair was dark, even against the dreary grey of the buildings. His silky white scarf blew softly behind him with the icy breeze.
But the thing which Kai could not correct, the thing which no matter how hard he tried, he could not change, was his eyes.
There was some kind of…almost…wounded look to them.
As though he had seen something which ordinary people could not even imagine seeing.
Something dark had happened in his life.
And what troubled him was, he had no idea what that something was.
This was what bothered Kai.
The fact that no matter how hard he tried, no matter how many lonely nights he'd spent in the abbey thinking…
He had no idea of his childhood.
All he remembered were his hours of training, blading, practising.
The rest was a black abyss. A void.
He screwed his hands up tightly.
The fact was, what had happened was so traumatic, so horrible…
That he had blocked the memory.
Deleted it.
Erased it.
And the fact that it disturbed him so much as to forget it…
It scared him as to what that memory was.
Suddenly, his thoughts were interrupted by a crash.
He whirled around, and saw some sort of commotion in the baker shop next to him…
Bastards, he thought, as he saw the scenes in front of him.
He could distinctly see four black-clothed thugs surrounding the elderly owner of the baker's store.
He sighed softly to himself.
A raid…
Another burglary attempt. In broad daylight.
He groaned inwardly. These thugs were obviously not professional. No one would be so stupid as to rob a minute baker's in the middle of the day, during peak hours, as unprofessional thugs.
So he did what he would always do in a situation like this.
He walked into the store.
"Give us your money, you old man!" one of the thugs snarled at the elderly owner, his voice muffled by the black cloth covering his mouth.
Kai sighed distinctively this time.
"Leave the guy alone," he murmured quietly.
The thugs whirled around to look at him.
And one of them laughed.
"Hahaha! What's this? A kid trying to protect this old geezer from four guys? Maybe you ought to go home and cry to your momma, hey, pretty boy?"
The other thugs laughed heartily at this statement.
Kai's eyes narrowed at the thug who was obviously the leader. The one who said everything, while the rest just agreed stupidly to whatever he said, or did.
"You'll be surprised," he answered, his voice still quiet.
The leader straightened himself, and proceeded to glare at Kai, his eyes visible from the opening in his balaclava.
"Hey…what do we have here? A smart-ass kid? Why, do you really think you could take on four guys at once? Four armed guys?"
And with that, he drew out a long, wooden, heavy stick.
"You know what this is?" the leader asked, twirling the stick tauntingly at Kai. "It's a baton. As in, I'm going to kick your sorry smart-ass until you can't wake up."
And with that, the thug hurled himself at Kai, his stick raised, ready to strike.
Kai only took a second to react. His body was trained for things like this. He'd long ago acquired the skills to deal with such situations.
He whipped out his 'blade, and launched a scathing attack at the thug's baton.
The wooden stick fractured into a million fragments, a shower of wood flying everywhere.
Score.
"What the f-"
The guy's voice cut off as he realised the situation he was in, his wild eyes staring at where he once gripped a wooden baton.
Kai's eyes, he knew, were now deadly. Dark. Icy.
"Let's get out of here!" the thug yelled.
Kai watched, rather amusedly, as the four thugs ran out of the store, their arms flailing, trying to get out as quickly as possible.
Kai turned towards the door.
"Wa….wait! Please! Young man!"
Kai slowly turned around to face the person who he had just stopped from being robbed.
"I want…young sir…" the elderly owner looked at him, gratitude plastered evidently on his face.
"Thank you. If there's any way I can repay you…"
His voice trailed off, as Kai once again turned towards the door.
"There's no need," Kai answered softly.
And with that, Kai made his way out into the bustling streets of Moscow's city high street, walking just as unhurriedly. Thinking.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
*~Some time before~*
He watched him intently.
His eyes were narrowed. Deep in concentration. Analysing.
Just like the subject was.
"We must now proceed to Stage Two of the treatment," a man, dressed in a white lab coat, said from the control panel he was in front of.
He narrowed his eyes further, and didn't reply.
"Sir?" the assistant repeated, concern in his voice. "Sir, we must proceed soon. Pardon me from asking, but if we don't hurry, then the treatment will be insufficient, and all previous development will be negated."
He gripped the metal bar in front of him more tightly.
"Sir? Again, I must stress that we proceed. I can only do so with your wor-"
"I KNOW!" he shouted out, his voice drenched in fury.
"I apologise, sir, but we must-"
The assistant's voice broke off again, as he watched his leader swipe at the table in front of him, knocking piles of glass to the floor in a deafening shatter.
"Why, sir-"
His voice was stopped by the leader's icy glare.
He gripped the bar even more tightly, his knuckles white.
"Do it."
Shakily, the assistant nodded, and pressed the button on the control panel in front of him.
The enclosed chamber in front of them was suddenly filled with a lightning blue energy.
There was a deafening whirring from the machine.
All the leader could see, was blue.
A stinging, glaring residue. Burning. Acidic.
And he could hear the wild, bestial screams coming from the subject in front of him.
These screams…
They were so deafening. Agitating. He tried to block them out. But all he could hear was the wild animal-like screeching coming from inside the glass chamber in front of him.
He thanked God that the blue light rendered him blind of what was happening to the subject.
That he couldn't see what the subject looked like.
That he was unaware.
Because he knew that he couldn't cope if he had seen what was happening.
"Sir," the assistant's voice sounded in the leader's ear piece. "We must now increase the electro-magnetic pulses."
"Increase?" the leader hissed, whirling around to face the assistant that he now hated. "Why didn't you turn it to its maximum in the first place?"
He could see the assistant's eyes narrow behind the specially coated mask he was wearing upon his face.
"I apologise. But this is more effective."
Angrily, the leader turned back to the wild screams emanating from the chamber.
"Sir?"
"Just do it!" he yelled.
What the hell was he doing? What the hell had he just allowed?
Because the fact was, as the screams became even more inhuman, even more disconcerting, he knew that there was no way in hell that he wanted this to go on.
It needed to stop.
Cease.
End.
He gripped the metal bar in front of him so tightly that he could barely feel his fingers.
As he heard the subject cry out, an excruciating, pain-drenched cry, he broke.
It ended here.
The screams…the suffering…he could stop it.
Just as he was about to yell for it to be stopped, just as he was about to end this damn project, the assistant finally switched the bastard machine off.
The whirring ceased.
The lightning blue glare slowly faded.
It was silent.
A metallic smell could be detected in the air.
It was wrought. Almost tingly. Unpleasant.
Then he remembered where he was.
He ignored his baffled assistant, who was now frantically writing up the treatment's notes.
Instead, he ran into the chamber, flinging open the door, and rushed in to face the subject.
"Sir! Sir? What are you doing?" he heard his assistant yell.
But he was oblivious to him.
The leader ran up to the subject.
And instantly regretted ever starting the treatment.
"Sir? Why are you in the chamber? There could be residual electro-waves or radiation in there!" his assistant warned, staying outside the chamber.
He stared at the subject.
"Sir? Sir…"
And the leader noticed the assistant no longer had a tone of urgency in his voice. Instead, it has been replaced with some sort of suspicious tone.
Accusing.
Malicious.
He knew that his job title was in danger. His position risked.
And he knew that he did not want this to go on.
As he stared at the subject, he only realised he was crying silently when his tear fell to the floor.
Luckily, his back faced his assistant. If he saw his tears….well, it would all be over.
For him, and for the subject.
He swore under his breath.
Why the hell was he lying?
Because the truth was, it had been over for the subject a long time ago.
The subject, his project, his creation had been doomed from the start.
The boy.
The boy born as part of the plan.
And his tears fell as he watched the small young boy crying softly, his faced etched in agony, clenching his fists tightly, his face pale, his hair dishevelled.
And he knew he had to stop this.
For once and for all.
He had to save the boy.
He had to stop his project.
He needed to escape.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Kai was walking, again in his slow stride, back down the street he had stopped in earlier.
It was now growing late. The sun had started setting long ago. The horizon was bathed in a rich, purple- black.
Again he had spent the whole day walking around. He hadn't a destination.
He had just walked.
Escaped.
Because no one could survive the prison and enclosure of the abbey.
He was now approaching the store in which he had stopped the burglary.
That incident had played on his mind all day. Sure, he didn't go around looking to stop crimes. He wasn't Private Eye Hiwatari or anything clichéd like that.
But man, did thugs annoy the hell out of him.
But something was wrong. Normally at this time, the streets would be completely opposite to its busy exterior earlier in the day. Instead, it was usually quiet, with few people, except for the odd criminal walking in the side streets.
But for some reason, there was a large amount of people.
His acute analysing skills quickly took in the scene around him.
He could see that there was some sort of commotion. People were heading in one general direction, and they appeared to be gathering…
And then it hit him.
They were gathering near the store.
The baker's.
The store that he had been in earlier that day.
And he cursed under his breath.
It looked like the thugs had come back. Come back to try and finish their job perhaps?
He had thought that that was highly unlikely, particularly because those kind of thugs, who were unprofessional and probably only raided a baker's because of a dare, or something as facile as that, would almost never return to a scene where they had attempted a crime, and been busted.
But apparently, he had underestimated their nerve.
Or maybe underestimated their stupidity.
Kai quickly made his way towards the front of the store, moving through the assembling crowd.
"He was just a frail old man…"
"Never did anything to anyone…"
"I can't believe they would attack someone so innocent…"
Murmurs and gossip filled the area.
There were police and medical persons everywhere, rushing around.
Something big had happened here.
And then he saw it.
The scene. There was a body…
It was wrapped up, and being carried into an ambulance on the side of the street.
Chalk lines marking where the body had lain adorned the floor.
Murder.
The owner had been murdered.
Kai's jaw tightened.
If he hadn't let them get away…
Then this could have been prevented.
"Excuse me young man, but move back please," a policewoman asked him firmly, gesturing for the crowd to move back. "Give us some room! There's nothing to see here!"
But Kai couldn't hear her.
He was oblivious to the failed attempts by the police to convince the crowd that there was nothing wrong.
Because his eyes were on the writing on the wall.
The red, smeared writing on the wall.
And for the first time in a long time, Kai's heart quickened.
His jaw tightened even more. His fists were clenched tightly.
"Kai, I am coming for you," read the writing.
Smeared purposely.
Deliberate.
Addressed to him.
In the blood of the murdered baker he had only just saved.
"Someone's watching you…"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Case #1790
TOP-SECRET FILE. IF YOU HAVE STUMBLED UPON THIS BINDER BY ACCIDENT, THEN REPORT IMMEDIATELY.
Supervising operative in attendance: Dr. H.
Subject: 8/
Operations carried out: Intensive psychoanalysis. Insertion of second samples of adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. Insertion of Q-strand.
Diagnosis: The test received the designated treatment required. Tests on first embryo were successful. Tests on the X-embryo were also successful. Fusion of embryos was successful. Insertion of Q-strand successful. Growth of embryo was successful.
Notes:
By Dr. H.
This is the first Subject to receive the Q-strand.
Unfortunately, it has not gone according to plan.
To date, the Subject displays overly aggressive brain patterns. The Subject has indeed a remarkable ability to interpret and analyse situations. However, any possible developments have been negated by the fact that the Subject is irrational, and displays signs of idiosyncrasies and erratic anti-social behaviour.
Therefore, the Subject is rendered as failed. It must be terminated.
Already the Subject has refused to cooperate. It appears to possess certain obsessions and compulsive behaviour towards third parties, including the hospitalisation of one team member.
Again, termination of the Subject is stressed.
Prognosis: There appears to be no way of correction or solution to the Subject's drawbacks. Termination is recommended.
Future Actions: The Subject will be terminated if given order. Surveillance and monitoring are crucial at this stage while the team awaits further action. Anymore injuries or deaths to third parties will be prevented. Unfortunately, the Subject may prove too ambitious to supervise for a long period of time.
We urge the decision to be made quickly.
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Thankees for reading!
Reviews will be most welcome as always! ^_~
