So, the plots taking a while to pick up. All the more room for angst, and for my inherent laziness to work its magic! Updates should be coming fairly steadily for a while, seeing as I'm STILLLKLLLL LKSDHFC:ODHVN:ODIVHN:SOIF FRICKIN UNEMPLOYED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -stabs in a fit of fury until the rage subsides- Okay, better now. Waaaaahhhh, I miss money!!! Oh well, less work, more productivity. It's even cooler because I don't really sleep anymore! Woot for productivity!
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She must have been one of the disbanded fanclub members. She followed him with this puzzled look, recognition just a footstep away, almost sure of his identity. She would have gone unnoticed if her target had been someone other than Ken. It was hard to catch an assassin unawares. Even in the sterile, brightly lit aisles of a grocery store, one had to be on one's guard.
Ken wondered how nearby employees would react if he threw the half-gallon container of ice cream at the girl's head and ran. Probably negatively. It would be absolute hell of she was one of their ex-groupies and she somehow or another found out where they were all holed up. It would be a wrenching farewell to peace and quite.
He slowed, left his cart near the end of the pasta aisle and deliberately knocked over a pyramid of tomato sauce cans, making it look as much like an accident as possible. If given the chance, his rotten luck would have knocked it down at a later date anyway. Little maroon shirted employees scurried from all sides; he disappeared into the early evening crowd, circling around to the front of the store, sneaking up behind the dark haired girl. She was scanning the crowd, completely unaware of his new location.
"How long did you plan on following me?" Ken struck a careless pose, hiding an unpleasant smirk as the girl whirled around, eyes huge.
"Where the fuck did you come from!?" She gasped, "Oops!" Her face flushed, one of those annoyingly attractive blushers. "Where did you come from?" She rephrased her original question. Ken found himself disliking her a tad less for her bluntness and her use of profanity.
"That question could be interpreted in any number of ways. Why have you been following me?"
She flushed again, giving him an embarrassed grin. "I was trying to figure out where I knew you from."
"Last name's Hidaka, first name's Ken. Burnt down flower shop. Ring any bells?" He told her the truth out of sheer perverseness.
The girl shook her head. "Actually, you nudged my faulty memory when you snuck up on me like that." She grinned. "My last name's Rinjin, first name's Kakaria. Related to a crazy old woman who wants to marry off all her living female relatives. Ring any bells."
"Rinjin?" Ken squinched up his eyes, mentally going through the hanging filefolders. "You're related to that crazy old bit-I mean Mrs. Rinjin, my neighbor."
Kakaria threw her head back and laughed. "My grandmother IS a crazy old bitch, but in a frighteningly humorous sort of way." Ken was abruptly hauled into a enthusiastic handshake. "Sorry about the stalking thing, I just could not for the life of me figure out who you were! I probably recognized you from one of your many house fixing ventures out of doors. I try to visit my grandmother once or twice a week, she gets lonely in that big house all by herself."
A few moments of silence as all the readily available conversation topics had been exhausted. Ken rubbed at the back of his head. "Well, I've got three more hungry people waiting for me to get home with groceries. It was nice bumping into you here. We should get together sometimes, discuss false marriage plans in front of your grandmother for our own twisted amusement."
"Or we could go out for coffee in the near future."
She smiled, conveying some nameless quality Ken felt he'd been searching for most of his life. He smiled back. "Sounds like a plan. How about tomorrow when we're not bogged down with frozen foods?"
"Five o' clock, the coffee shop down in the east business district, the one on Blecker Street." She extended her hand again; Ken shook, smiled in a most idiotic fashion and forced himself to let go of her hand.
"Let's bump that back another hour, to avoid the evening rush. Six?"
"It's a date!" Kakaria made a fist and mock-punched Ken's arm. He wandered back to the mostly forgotten scene of disaster, retrieved his cart and maneuvered around the dented tin cans he'd knocked to the floor earlier.
The guilt didn't hit until he was in the checkout line. He created a mental conversation for his own benefit. 'Yeah Omi, I'll be out for about an hour, the neighbor's granddaughter and I are going out on a quick date, do you want me to pick anything up for you while I'm out?' Shit. What was he thinking?
Thinking with his cock, really. Only excuse a male really had when it came down to it. A valid excuse at least. He'd admit that he certainly had found her attractive, worthy of lust, definitely. A certain strength of character not usually found in those of the female persuasion. Unabashed. That was the word for it. She'd blush when she got caught doing something silly, but still admit it and be not the slightest bit repentant.
"Paper or plastic?" Snapped the checkout girl. Judging by her less than patient tone, Ken was willing to hazard that he'd probably been asked that same question several times over.
"Plastic will be fine." He put down money on the counter, not paying attention to the change he received. Ken was fairly certain he'd just made yet another one of those incredibly stupid decisions. Joy.
The question now was 'What to do?' He didn't know where Kakaria lived, didn't want to try and reach her through his neighbor. Old Mrs. Rinjin really was quite scary. Not in a humorous way at all. She'd trapped him once, in his own kitchen, told him stories about her many wonderful, unmarried descendents, trying to interest him in any of them. For several hours.
Shit, he honestly wanted to go though. He'd also promised Omi that he'd try to be a better person, try to stop being such a jerk. Going on dates with other people probably fell well into the category of 'Jerk'.
Ken loaded all the grocery bags into the trunk, drove towards the mall. Not somewhere he'd go on purpose. He'd dropped Omi off an hour earlier so he could find some piece of software or another. Hopefully Omi hadn't gone wandering too far, or the frozen food in the trunk would suffer. In the back of his mind he noted that the temperature outside would actually be sufficient to preserve the food for a while, but that point could be ignored for the sake of argument.
He kept his head down, tried not to brush against anyone. It wasn't a day for getting trapped with some random being who wanted to make small talk with him. His own worries and thoughts were enough for now. Would he ever wind up doing the right thing at the right time?
No Omi in the first software store he peeped into; lots of enthusiastic, bespeckled, gawkish looking teenagers, but no Omi. "You see a short blond kid, about yea tall, he was wearing a dark blue jacket?" Ken tracked down one of the employees.
"Yeah, he left a while ago though. Didn't even wait for his change, seemed to be in a big hurry."
Ken frowned. "Which way did he go? Did he say where he was heading off to?"
"He just grabbed his bag and dashed off. It's a weekend, man; he just disappeared into the crowd. I'd be willing to guess he headed right though, not much the other way, just the exit."
A deep sigh and he was off again. There went the ice cream... He couldn't avoid acknowledging people by this point. It was hard to find someone if you were concentrating wholly on your shoelaces. It wasn't as if Omi blended into a crowd when you really looked, not too many blondes in Japan, more so than usual in the younger crowds, but few of those natural.
He barely saw the crowd parting before a small body all but knocked Ken over backwards. He readied himself for the battle it would take to keep from becoming frighteningly angry with someone's ill behaved child. He frowned down, holding his assailant away from him; he was greeted by a familiar pair of blue eyes.
"Where have you been, I've been looking for you?" Ken grumbled, steadying an off balance Omi.
Omi was out of breath, trying to gasp something out. "We... we have-have to get out of here. Now!" He put a hand to his heaving chest. "Now." He repeated himself.
"I'd say so! I've got a trunk full of food trying to melt into a useless pile. That's a blatant waste of money. Let's get going."
"Ken I saw-"
"Talk in the car, we need to get headed home, the mall's going to close in a manner of minutes and as I said, the food is calling." He grabbed Omi's upper arm and started to drag him towards the entrance.
"Not this way! NOT this way!" Omi pulled back, wrenching his arm out of Ken's grasp, eyes a tad wild. Ken realized with a twinge of annoyance that they were officially making a scene.
"Fine. I'm not going to turn us into some sort of entertainment spectacle. You want to go out another door and walk in the cold for a few more minutes, fine!"
"The groceries won't melt if it's that cold." Omi pointed out, the voice of reason, as he hurried after an irate Ken.
"Oh, shut up." Ken slowed it down a notch, arms at his side in that aggressive manner he was employing more and more as the days wore on. He refused to speak, stomping along at the fastest pace he knew Omi would be able to keep up with. Omi, still out of breath from running around held his tongue. If it got him out of here in good time, nothing else was important. He could explain when they were safe in the car.
The door opened to the dark winter sky and the crowded parking lot.
"Slow down Ken! I can't keep up!" Omi dashed a few steps, clung to Ken's hand. "Please wait for me! We have to talk now, it's important." He knew he was starting to sound a bit pathetic, but he didn't like being left behind, it made him feel forgotten. Nobody likes to be abandoned, not even in a chilly mall parking lot.
Ken shook him off like an unexpected insect alighting on his sleeve. For one blinding instant, he wanted it to be anyone BUT Omi at his arm, anyone, first choice would be the lovely Kakaria, but if not her, ANYONE. He looked over his shoulder, saw Omi standing there, head drooping, perfectly illuminated by one of the lots street lights. He looked like nothing more than a discarded toy; something used up and left in the owner's ever distancing wake.
He turned, the guilt back to the point where it almost hurt to breathe. It was like shouting at an abused child, just so it would be submissive and quick-to-please when you stopped being mad at it and turned around to give it a reassuring pat on the head. A few steps, a pair of arms acting independently of his body, that shivering body folding into his.
"I'm doing it again. I'm sorry. You've probably got a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this. You don't do irrational things like I do. I'm sorry." More worthless apologies.
"Quite right. He did have a perfectly reasonable explanation, and if you'd listened to him from the start, none of this would have to happen. What a cute little tableau. I almost feel guilty coming to kill you. Illogical, though, seeing as I'm merely repaying a debt."
Ken and Omi both made an involuntary jump back as a man all but materialized out of thin air.
"You see, I was waiting by the entrance you'd both come in through, if you hadn't put up such a fuss, you might have made a clean get away. Too bad. I was so looking forward to another bonfire." The man smiled, teeth gleaming, the only white thing about him as he stood outside the circle of the lamp's casting.
Ken frowned, trying to pick out distinguishing characteristics. That voice was vaguely familiar. Someone he'd tried to kill?
Purposeful footsteps as he stopped forward, trench coat flapping around his ankles, expensive suit matching his expensive looking face, country club facial features. A sudden flash through Ken's mind. That same mocking grin speeding past with the superimposed image of Ken's fist. A blood strewn office building, twenty-seven floors of human slaughter; caused by him, by Aya, and by Omi.
"I killed you." There was no room for question in Ken's voice. "I killed you. Even if I hadn't smashed your brain into pulp, you wouldn't look like that. You can't be. You are dead. I killed you." The man had to be dead. He'd killed him, killed all of his cronies. Twenty seven floors of them. They had to die, they'd kidnapped Youji, given him horrible nightmares they all woke up hearing the shouting from.
"You'll find I, much like my comrades, am not that easy to kill. Ko-ishi was largely annoyed by your show of ingratitude. He spared your lives when he razed your house. One good turn deserves another most men say. We will show you no leniency from now."
Omi gasped, taking another step back as the man's identity finally sank in. "You were all dead. We searched for survivors." Ken's arm was a matter of inches away, but the gap may as well have been a mile. Omi would find no protection from those quarters. He pushed out his chin, falling back on old patterns. When one is trapped between a rock and an uncaring space, all you have is yourself.
"So, you're back from the dead, zombies of the night, inhuman beings." Omi snorted, voice sounding more slipshod and amused to his ears than the actual emotions he harbored. "Blah, blah, blah. So, you've made your dramatic entrance, what now? Are you going to 'slay' us? Give us a taste of your wrath?" He curled his hands into fists, braced muscles for a sudden surge of movement. He was better with physical confrontations then he was with emotional ones, this was a safe old ground.
He moved so fast neither Ken nor Omi saw him coming in time. A few well placed elbow jabs and flailing feet and both wound up sprawled on the ground, entire feet away from their original starting positions. Omi pushed himself up, well and truly angry now. Rushing adrenaline, narrowed down focus, that inhuman surge of absolute rage. It felt decidedly nice. Maybe he could sympathize with Ken's temper after all.
Skinned elbows, exposed through torn jacket sleeves were nothing but a minute nagging. Even as his hands grasped for his weapon of choice, part of him was noting that he was unarmed. Time to put those years of training to use. While Ken was still looking stunned and surprised, Omi was forming fists and launching himself straight at their attacker. "I'm going to knock you back into the afterlife."
He didn't share Ken's belief that this was in fact the same man he'd originally seen, but if that was what Mr. Anonymous wanted to pretend, he'd be perfectly willing to come up with one-liners revolving around that assumption. Omi's fist swung into a perfect right hook, spreading the newly christened Mr. Anonymous's lips out across his teeth.
"You little bastard." He spit blood out, lips definitely mangled, his foot lashing out and catching Omi by the throat, actually picking the boy up and throwing him into the lamppost. Ken was on him in an instant, fists pummeling with that same shared rage, fueled by a protective spark this time.
Quarters were close and neither had much maneuvering room. Ken realized after a matter of moments that he was going to be the underdog of this fight; he was at a disadvantage concerning muscle weight and simple hand-to-hand combat skills. His weapons or perhaps a gun would be rather helpful right now.
"He's dead, now it's your turn. Your friends will roast as they sleep." He smiled in Ken's face, teeth a particularly gruesome shade of dirty pink from the blood filling his mouth. He kicked Ken's legs out from underneath him. As Kens' head cracked against the asphalt he caught of glimpse of Omi slumped against the light's pole, blood in his face, limbs loose, officially doll-like, and lifeless.
He'd fucked up yet again, for the umpteenth time this day. He should have been protecting Omi; Omi deserved that, just for sticking with him for all this time and putting up with endless rages like a saint. Blood ran down from Omi's hair, a trail of red making war paint patterns on his shadowed features, pooling in all available hollows. He didn't move, not even to breath.
"You son of a bitch!" Ken managed to rasp out as he catapulted up, all personal hurts thrown aside. He was an assassin, one of the best. Years under his belt, he wasn't going to be beaten down by some weaponless dead man. His hand caught up Omi's shopping bag, heavy with a square, boxed shape. Eight pounds at least, heavy and blunt, an improvised weapon. Omi wouldn't care anymore if his new purchase were damaged, that thought in itself was all the incentive he needed to grind his teeth together as he smashed the bag up into the man's face, leaping out of the way of startled flailing.
He was going to keep going for the face until the man was down and out for the count. He had to get Omi out of the parking lot. He wasn't just another body to be left in his wake, and then he had to get home, get Aya and Youji out. Omi was dead now, wasn't breathing, wasn't moving. He wasn't going to let the same thing happen to his two remaining friends. He'd had enough of loss by this point to last him the rest of his natural life.
His assailant chose that moment to pull a knife, slashing Ken across the upper arm as he continued to blindly attack, eyes running with blood. This was starting to get frightening, the adrenaline souring in his veins to cold-sweat fear. The man simply would not lie down and gurgle his own blood. He was more bodily fluids than face, but still unwilling to cooperate with Ken's ultimate design.
The man ran at him again, bull-in-a-china-shop charging. Ken caught him and used his momentum to throw the man head over feet, he whipped around in time to see a pair of horrified faces, shoppers coming out for their cars in this deserted area. "Run." He told them, unwilling to spare more breath for a long-winded warning. Definitely a word to the wise, as the man was already getting back up again. "Why won't you die?" There wasn't any resentment behind the question, just simple puzzlement.
"Because I have a debt to settle." He grasped air next to his side, expecting to find the handle of his knife. Ken gave him an almost-smile, flipping the missing weapon in his hand.
"Not my usual choice of execution, but in your case it will have to do." Another blank almost-smile, frightening in its total lack of all tangible emotions. His arm snapped back, a well-learned motion, the blade dancing away from his fingertips, finding a new sheath in the nameless enemy's throat. He was gurgling now, teeth truly red now, not a watered down salmon color. Fingers scrabbled at his throat, desperate to remove the weapon, and still he was coming. Ken bashed the heel of his hand into that gruesome face, reclaiming the stained blade in the same motion.
Crossing mental fingers he plunged the weapon into the man's lower abdomen, dragging the blade up, holding down the contents of his own stomach by will alone as steaming ropes of intestines spread on the pavement, hot against his shoes. Shuddering with revulsion, he tried to back away from that swaying horror, a loop of intestine actually catching behind his ankle and pitching him backwards.
"Fuck!" He backed away, using his feet and hands to try to remove himself from all of this. Shouts were starting near the less used entrance; the escapees must have called in the big bad boys in blue. Time to leave, enemy dead or no. He certainly didn't need to be incarcerated for something like this. Omi wouldn't be happy... He stopped. Omi wouldn't be anything.
Stumbling, he ignored Mr. Anonymous's inevitable collapse, falling to his knees next to Omi's still form, pulling a limp hand up to his lips. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I fucked up big time. You can't be dead! I'm sorry Omi."
"Yeah." Omi agreed, eyes fluttering open for a fraction of a second.
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I was going to make this a cliff-hanger where you wouldn't know if Omi had pulled through or not, but I figured you Omi fans might wig out and disappear if you thought he was going to no longer be a player. Was that less boring for you all? I gave you blood and mild gore, is good? -crosses fingers- Let me know what you think, give me a feedback! Give me an e-mail, I'm always available at darkhunter@ijustdontcare.com though there might be a day or two's wait, or try me at akainobaka@mchsi.com, I'm somewhat lazy when it comes to computer obligations. DIE COMPUTER OF MINE! Well, to quote the IMMORTAL SPINNER DUNN (front "Death to Smoochy" of course!!!!), "Uhn… I'm gonna go get drunk now, uh, oh-kay!" -BAM!-
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She must have been one of the disbanded fanclub members. She followed him with this puzzled look, recognition just a footstep away, almost sure of his identity. She would have gone unnoticed if her target had been someone other than Ken. It was hard to catch an assassin unawares. Even in the sterile, brightly lit aisles of a grocery store, one had to be on one's guard.
Ken wondered how nearby employees would react if he threw the half-gallon container of ice cream at the girl's head and ran. Probably negatively. It would be absolute hell of she was one of their ex-groupies and she somehow or another found out where they were all holed up. It would be a wrenching farewell to peace and quite.
He slowed, left his cart near the end of the pasta aisle and deliberately knocked over a pyramid of tomato sauce cans, making it look as much like an accident as possible. If given the chance, his rotten luck would have knocked it down at a later date anyway. Little maroon shirted employees scurried from all sides; he disappeared into the early evening crowd, circling around to the front of the store, sneaking up behind the dark haired girl. She was scanning the crowd, completely unaware of his new location.
"How long did you plan on following me?" Ken struck a careless pose, hiding an unpleasant smirk as the girl whirled around, eyes huge.
"Where the fuck did you come from!?" She gasped, "Oops!" Her face flushed, one of those annoyingly attractive blushers. "Where did you come from?" She rephrased her original question. Ken found himself disliking her a tad less for her bluntness and her use of profanity.
"That question could be interpreted in any number of ways. Why have you been following me?"
She flushed again, giving him an embarrassed grin. "I was trying to figure out where I knew you from."
"Last name's Hidaka, first name's Ken. Burnt down flower shop. Ring any bells?" He told her the truth out of sheer perverseness.
The girl shook her head. "Actually, you nudged my faulty memory when you snuck up on me like that." She grinned. "My last name's Rinjin, first name's Kakaria. Related to a crazy old woman who wants to marry off all her living female relatives. Ring any bells."
"Rinjin?" Ken squinched up his eyes, mentally going through the hanging filefolders. "You're related to that crazy old bit-I mean Mrs. Rinjin, my neighbor."
Kakaria threw her head back and laughed. "My grandmother IS a crazy old bitch, but in a frighteningly humorous sort of way." Ken was abruptly hauled into a enthusiastic handshake. "Sorry about the stalking thing, I just could not for the life of me figure out who you were! I probably recognized you from one of your many house fixing ventures out of doors. I try to visit my grandmother once or twice a week, she gets lonely in that big house all by herself."
A few moments of silence as all the readily available conversation topics had been exhausted. Ken rubbed at the back of his head. "Well, I've got three more hungry people waiting for me to get home with groceries. It was nice bumping into you here. We should get together sometimes, discuss false marriage plans in front of your grandmother for our own twisted amusement."
"Or we could go out for coffee in the near future."
She smiled, conveying some nameless quality Ken felt he'd been searching for most of his life. He smiled back. "Sounds like a plan. How about tomorrow when we're not bogged down with frozen foods?"
"Five o' clock, the coffee shop down in the east business district, the one on Blecker Street." She extended her hand again; Ken shook, smiled in a most idiotic fashion and forced himself to let go of her hand.
"Let's bump that back another hour, to avoid the evening rush. Six?"
"It's a date!" Kakaria made a fist and mock-punched Ken's arm. He wandered back to the mostly forgotten scene of disaster, retrieved his cart and maneuvered around the dented tin cans he'd knocked to the floor earlier.
The guilt didn't hit until he was in the checkout line. He created a mental conversation for his own benefit. 'Yeah Omi, I'll be out for about an hour, the neighbor's granddaughter and I are going out on a quick date, do you want me to pick anything up for you while I'm out?' Shit. What was he thinking?
Thinking with his cock, really. Only excuse a male really had when it came down to it. A valid excuse at least. He'd admit that he certainly had found her attractive, worthy of lust, definitely. A certain strength of character not usually found in those of the female persuasion. Unabashed. That was the word for it. She'd blush when she got caught doing something silly, but still admit it and be not the slightest bit repentant.
"Paper or plastic?" Snapped the checkout girl. Judging by her less than patient tone, Ken was willing to hazard that he'd probably been asked that same question several times over.
"Plastic will be fine." He put down money on the counter, not paying attention to the change he received. Ken was fairly certain he'd just made yet another one of those incredibly stupid decisions. Joy.
The question now was 'What to do?' He didn't know where Kakaria lived, didn't want to try and reach her through his neighbor. Old Mrs. Rinjin really was quite scary. Not in a humorous way at all. She'd trapped him once, in his own kitchen, told him stories about her many wonderful, unmarried descendents, trying to interest him in any of them. For several hours.
Shit, he honestly wanted to go though. He'd also promised Omi that he'd try to be a better person, try to stop being such a jerk. Going on dates with other people probably fell well into the category of 'Jerk'.
Ken loaded all the grocery bags into the trunk, drove towards the mall. Not somewhere he'd go on purpose. He'd dropped Omi off an hour earlier so he could find some piece of software or another. Hopefully Omi hadn't gone wandering too far, or the frozen food in the trunk would suffer. In the back of his mind he noted that the temperature outside would actually be sufficient to preserve the food for a while, but that point could be ignored for the sake of argument.
He kept his head down, tried not to brush against anyone. It wasn't a day for getting trapped with some random being who wanted to make small talk with him. His own worries and thoughts were enough for now. Would he ever wind up doing the right thing at the right time?
No Omi in the first software store he peeped into; lots of enthusiastic, bespeckled, gawkish looking teenagers, but no Omi. "You see a short blond kid, about yea tall, he was wearing a dark blue jacket?" Ken tracked down one of the employees.
"Yeah, he left a while ago though. Didn't even wait for his change, seemed to be in a big hurry."
Ken frowned. "Which way did he go? Did he say where he was heading off to?"
"He just grabbed his bag and dashed off. It's a weekend, man; he just disappeared into the crowd. I'd be willing to guess he headed right though, not much the other way, just the exit."
A deep sigh and he was off again. There went the ice cream... He couldn't avoid acknowledging people by this point. It was hard to find someone if you were concentrating wholly on your shoelaces. It wasn't as if Omi blended into a crowd when you really looked, not too many blondes in Japan, more so than usual in the younger crowds, but few of those natural.
He barely saw the crowd parting before a small body all but knocked Ken over backwards. He readied himself for the battle it would take to keep from becoming frighteningly angry with someone's ill behaved child. He frowned down, holding his assailant away from him; he was greeted by a familiar pair of blue eyes.
"Where have you been, I've been looking for you?" Ken grumbled, steadying an off balance Omi.
Omi was out of breath, trying to gasp something out. "We... we have-have to get out of here. Now!" He put a hand to his heaving chest. "Now." He repeated himself.
"I'd say so! I've got a trunk full of food trying to melt into a useless pile. That's a blatant waste of money. Let's get going."
"Ken I saw-"
"Talk in the car, we need to get headed home, the mall's going to close in a manner of minutes and as I said, the food is calling." He grabbed Omi's upper arm and started to drag him towards the entrance.
"Not this way! NOT this way!" Omi pulled back, wrenching his arm out of Ken's grasp, eyes a tad wild. Ken realized with a twinge of annoyance that they were officially making a scene.
"Fine. I'm not going to turn us into some sort of entertainment spectacle. You want to go out another door and walk in the cold for a few more minutes, fine!"
"The groceries won't melt if it's that cold." Omi pointed out, the voice of reason, as he hurried after an irate Ken.
"Oh, shut up." Ken slowed it down a notch, arms at his side in that aggressive manner he was employing more and more as the days wore on. He refused to speak, stomping along at the fastest pace he knew Omi would be able to keep up with. Omi, still out of breath from running around held his tongue. If it got him out of here in good time, nothing else was important. He could explain when they were safe in the car.
The door opened to the dark winter sky and the crowded parking lot.
"Slow down Ken! I can't keep up!" Omi dashed a few steps, clung to Ken's hand. "Please wait for me! We have to talk now, it's important." He knew he was starting to sound a bit pathetic, but he didn't like being left behind, it made him feel forgotten. Nobody likes to be abandoned, not even in a chilly mall parking lot.
Ken shook him off like an unexpected insect alighting on his sleeve. For one blinding instant, he wanted it to be anyone BUT Omi at his arm, anyone, first choice would be the lovely Kakaria, but if not her, ANYONE. He looked over his shoulder, saw Omi standing there, head drooping, perfectly illuminated by one of the lots street lights. He looked like nothing more than a discarded toy; something used up and left in the owner's ever distancing wake.
He turned, the guilt back to the point where it almost hurt to breathe. It was like shouting at an abused child, just so it would be submissive and quick-to-please when you stopped being mad at it and turned around to give it a reassuring pat on the head. A few steps, a pair of arms acting independently of his body, that shivering body folding into his.
"I'm doing it again. I'm sorry. You've probably got a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this. You don't do irrational things like I do. I'm sorry." More worthless apologies.
"Quite right. He did have a perfectly reasonable explanation, and if you'd listened to him from the start, none of this would have to happen. What a cute little tableau. I almost feel guilty coming to kill you. Illogical, though, seeing as I'm merely repaying a debt."
Ken and Omi both made an involuntary jump back as a man all but materialized out of thin air.
"You see, I was waiting by the entrance you'd both come in through, if you hadn't put up such a fuss, you might have made a clean get away. Too bad. I was so looking forward to another bonfire." The man smiled, teeth gleaming, the only white thing about him as he stood outside the circle of the lamp's casting.
Ken frowned, trying to pick out distinguishing characteristics. That voice was vaguely familiar. Someone he'd tried to kill?
Purposeful footsteps as he stopped forward, trench coat flapping around his ankles, expensive suit matching his expensive looking face, country club facial features. A sudden flash through Ken's mind. That same mocking grin speeding past with the superimposed image of Ken's fist. A blood strewn office building, twenty-seven floors of human slaughter; caused by him, by Aya, and by Omi.
"I killed you." There was no room for question in Ken's voice. "I killed you. Even if I hadn't smashed your brain into pulp, you wouldn't look like that. You can't be. You are dead. I killed you." The man had to be dead. He'd killed him, killed all of his cronies. Twenty seven floors of them. They had to die, they'd kidnapped Youji, given him horrible nightmares they all woke up hearing the shouting from.
"You'll find I, much like my comrades, am not that easy to kill. Ko-ishi was largely annoyed by your show of ingratitude. He spared your lives when he razed your house. One good turn deserves another most men say. We will show you no leniency from now."
Omi gasped, taking another step back as the man's identity finally sank in. "You were all dead. We searched for survivors." Ken's arm was a matter of inches away, but the gap may as well have been a mile. Omi would find no protection from those quarters. He pushed out his chin, falling back on old patterns. When one is trapped between a rock and an uncaring space, all you have is yourself.
"So, you're back from the dead, zombies of the night, inhuman beings." Omi snorted, voice sounding more slipshod and amused to his ears than the actual emotions he harbored. "Blah, blah, blah. So, you've made your dramatic entrance, what now? Are you going to 'slay' us? Give us a taste of your wrath?" He curled his hands into fists, braced muscles for a sudden surge of movement. He was better with physical confrontations then he was with emotional ones, this was a safe old ground.
He moved so fast neither Ken nor Omi saw him coming in time. A few well placed elbow jabs and flailing feet and both wound up sprawled on the ground, entire feet away from their original starting positions. Omi pushed himself up, well and truly angry now. Rushing adrenaline, narrowed down focus, that inhuman surge of absolute rage. It felt decidedly nice. Maybe he could sympathize with Ken's temper after all.
Skinned elbows, exposed through torn jacket sleeves were nothing but a minute nagging. Even as his hands grasped for his weapon of choice, part of him was noting that he was unarmed. Time to put those years of training to use. While Ken was still looking stunned and surprised, Omi was forming fists and launching himself straight at their attacker. "I'm going to knock you back into the afterlife."
He didn't share Ken's belief that this was in fact the same man he'd originally seen, but if that was what Mr. Anonymous wanted to pretend, he'd be perfectly willing to come up with one-liners revolving around that assumption. Omi's fist swung into a perfect right hook, spreading the newly christened Mr. Anonymous's lips out across his teeth.
"You little bastard." He spit blood out, lips definitely mangled, his foot lashing out and catching Omi by the throat, actually picking the boy up and throwing him into the lamppost. Ken was on him in an instant, fists pummeling with that same shared rage, fueled by a protective spark this time.
Quarters were close and neither had much maneuvering room. Ken realized after a matter of moments that he was going to be the underdog of this fight; he was at a disadvantage concerning muscle weight and simple hand-to-hand combat skills. His weapons or perhaps a gun would be rather helpful right now.
"He's dead, now it's your turn. Your friends will roast as they sleep." He smiled in Ken's face, teeth a particularly gruesome shade of dirty pink from the blood filling his mouth. He kicked Ken's legs out from underneath him. As Kens' head cracked against the asphalt he caught of glimpse of Omi slumped against the light's pole, blood in his face, limbs loose, officially doll-like, and lifeless.
He'd fucked up yet again, for the umpteenth time this day. He should have been protecting Omi; Omi deserved that, just for sticking with him for all this time and putting up with endless rages like a saint. Blood ran down from Omi's hair, a trail of red making war paint patterns on his shadowed features, pooling in all available hollows. He didn't move, not even to breath.
"You son of a bitch!" Ken managed to rasp out as he catapulted up, all personal hurts thrown aside. He was an assassin, one of the best. Years under his belt, he wasn't going to be beaten down by some weaponless dead man. His hand caught up Omi's shopping bag, heavy with a square, boxed shape. Eight pounds at least, heavy and blunt, an improvised weapon. Omi wouldn't care anymore if his new purchase were damaged, that thought in itself was all the incentive he needed to grind his teeth together as he smashed the bag up into the man's face, leaping out of the way of startled flailing.
He was going to keep going for the face until the man was down and out for the count. He had to get Omi out of the parking lot. He wasn't just another body to be left in his wake, and then he had to get home, get Aya and Youji out. Omi was dead now, wasn't breathing, wasn't moving. He wasn't going to let the same thing happen to his two remaining friends. He'd had enough of loss by this point to last him the rest of his natural life.
His assailant chose that moment to pull a knife, slashing Ken across the upper arm as he continued to blindly attack, eyes running with blood. This was starting to get frightening, the adrenaline souring in his veins to cold-sweat fear. The man simply would not lie down and gurgle his own blood. He was more bodily fluids than face, but still unwilling to cooperate with Ken's ultimate design.
The man ran at him again, bull-in-a-china-shop charging. Ken caught him and used his momentum to throw the man head over feet, he whipped around in time to see a pair of horrified faces, shoppers coming out for their cars in this deserted area. "Run." He told them, unwilling to spare more breath for a long-winded warning. Definitely a word to the wise, as the man was already getting back up again. "Why won't you die?" There wasn't any resentment behind the question, just simple puzzlement.
"Because I have a debt to settle." He grasped air next to his side, expecting to find the handle of his knife. Ken gave him an almost-smile, flipping the missing weapon in his hand.
"Not my usual choice of execution, but in your case it will have to do." Another blank almost-smile, frightening in its total lack of all tangible emotions. His arm snapped back, a well-learned motion, the blade dancing away from his fingertips, finding a new sheath in the nameless enemy's throat. He was gurgling now, teeth truly red now, not a watered down salmon color. Fingers scrabbled at his throat, desperate to remove the weapon, and still he was coming. Ken bashed the heel of his hand into that gruesome face, reclaiming the stained blade in the same motion.
Crossing mental fingers he plunged the weapon into the man's lower abdomen, dragging the blade up, holding down the contents of his own stomach by will alone as steaming ropes of intestines spread on the pavement, hot against his shoes. Shuddering with revulsion, he tried to back away from that swaying horror, a loop of intestine actually catching behind his ankle and pitching him backwards.
"Fuck!" He backed away, using his feet and hands to try to remove himself from all of this. Shouts were starting near the less used entrance; the escapees must have called in the big bad boys in blue. Time to leave, enemy dead or no. He certainly didn't need to be incarcerated for something like this. Omi wouldn't be happy... He stopped. Omi wouldn't be anything.
Stumbling, he ignored Mr. Anonymous's inevitable collapse, falling to his knees next to Omi's still form, pulling a limp hand up to his lips. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I fucked up big time. You can't be dead! I'm sorry Omi."
"Yeah." Omi agreed, eyes fluttering open for a fraction of a second.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I was going to make this a cliff-hanger where you wouldn't know if Omi had pulled through or not, but I figured you Omi fans might wig out and disappear if you thought he was going to no longer be a player. Was that less boring for you all? I gave you blood and mild gore, is good? -crosses fingers- Let me know what you think, give me a feedback! Give me an e-mail, I'm always available at darkhunter@ijustdontcare.com though there might be a day or two's wait, or try me at akainobaka@mchsi.com, I'm somewhat lazy when it comes to computer obligations. DIE COMPUTER OF MINE! Well, to quote the IMMORTAL SPINNER DUNN (front "Death to Smoochy" of course!!!!), "Uhn… I'm gonna go get drunk now, uh, oh-kay!" -BAM!-