Hey people. Silver here. As I promised, this story is getting special treatment; I think I'll skip updating my other stories (with the exception of "Walking Through Dream", which will get an update after I post this) until I'm through with this one. And now, to let you in on a secret...
Tiger already knows about this, but I've decided to share it with you guys as well. I'm planning on opening a second BR story that will be a sequel to this story and a prequel to "Whisper in the Winds". The story will probably begin this winter, when I'm through with most other fanfics, and the current working title is "Truth and Lies". The title, like most aspects of the story, is only a hold-over until I get a better idea.
Now, for reviews:
Tiger5913: (picks Bakuryu up, dusts him off) Hey, Tiger, I need this guy for my story! C'mon, lass, put the pianos down! (ducks pianos hurled by insane Tiger) Ack! (runs away, comes back with ax) Bad Tiger! Bad! (Chops pianos up).
Whew. As I was saying....
You got something wrong in your review. I think you thought Stun was going after Kenji- he's not. Kohryu is. Stun is a GOOD GUY in my story, despite the fact that you've convinced every other BR author on ff.net that he's evil! (glares at you) Seriously, if you had any idea of the influence you've wielded in the realm of BR fanfiction, I think you'd faint. I read a review once stating that the reason everyone hates Cronos is that (and I quote) " Tiger making fun of hinted Uriko/Cronos romance in BR. Since we all like to play follow the leader, the rest of us hate him too." Sheesh, woman! What have you done to deserve accolades like this?!? I wish I could control an entire genre on ff.net too... (cries)
On another note, the blood on the floor wasn't Kenji's; it was from the needles that were stuck in his arms. They painted the floor, not him. And as for bottling things up- true!
Don't worry. Kenji may have lost his will to live, but ol' Baky hasn't... (evil grin)
Thanks for kudos, and I'll try getting on AIM, but I'm usually typing these things at nine p.m. or so, and putting them up at eleven p.m., so by then you're probably asleep (three hour difference makes it one o clock over there, I think). And if you're not, then you should be. :)
By the by.... my weapon of preference is a longsword. (sharpening noises) Update soon, 'kay? Or suffer the consequences. (anime sword-drawing "ching!" noise)
Soundwood: Wow! Another new reviewer! Yay! (dances around) Don't know how you heard about this story, but I'm glad you found it. Thanks for your reviews and especially your compliments on Shen and Long. And about leaving a bunch of reviews- do it please! It inflates my ego. (sound of ego swelling in background)
I understand what you say about moving while you read- I do it too. Makes it hard to finish Stephen King books (I'm his biggest fan, by the by :) but I find that I just can't sit down when I read.
By the by- the comment on Long's virginity actually isn't mine, it's Tiger's. Read her BR fanfic "Unleashing the Beast" (or something close to that... my memory's quite bad:) and you'll see where I got the idea from.
(reads the above) Heh heh... Guess I play "follow the leader" too... Ah well. All hail Tiger! (snappy salute)
Indigo Siren: (grabs forks) One for you, one for me, and one for Hannibal Lecter. Dinner time!
Uri-chan: Thanks for reviewing!
Okay, enough of that. It's....
"SHOWTIME!"
Chapter Eight
Fervor of the Insane
Nonomura house, near Our Holy Mother Medical Hospital, Tokyo, Japan. 2:50 a.m., Night of the Mark.
We flit in, silent as shadows, and our presence disturbs nothing in this house. Yet, despite this complete inconspicuity, the creature inside turns its head and snorts, mumbling somthing to itself as it does so. Unable to perceive more of us than it already has (and did it perceive us? Or did some random portion of its mind jerk at just that moment, causing it to look around?), it turns around and continues its search. As the creature looks about the still-lighted household (Alice and Uriko forgot to turn the lights out in the subsequent events surrounding Kenji's attempted suicide) we watch it, and our horror grows. This is something straight out of nightmare- and not something we were prepared to see. Whatever this thing is before us, it is completely beyond what we expected to see.
Its skin is broken and distorted, revealing muscle in some places, bone in others, and in the most horrific place of all, the torn skin that would have covered the back of its left hand is open and shows a hole through which we can see the creature's skeleton- and the wires and gears that go through all of it. No blood flows through this thing, for it is dead, as dead as the bodies in the cemetery where Xion changed and became the Unborn, as dead as the dreams that poor soul may once have had. A continual low-grade, almost subaudible whirring sound emits from the creature, as gears that should never have been built spin and give rise to the strange jerks and sudden motions the creature goes through even as it searches. The creature mutters to itself constantly, its voice a distorted, thick, slurring thing through which we can distinguish no individual words, just a sense of continual murmuring. Its teeth are long and sharp, and some of them- bone covering worn off or otherwise lost to the depths of time- are revealed as the hunks of metal they really are. Saliva constantly drips between them, thick and runny, seeming less like spittle and more like acid from a serpent's fang. Two ears- or the remains of two long ears- float above its, but they are twisted, blasted, and torn as well, the small antennae inside them revealed in the patches where the skin is gone. The eyes blaze red, and as we float around this creature, attempting to gaze into its mind, they seem to track us, following us as we float about it.
This thing gives us the chills, and well it should. This is Kohryu, a freak that Busuzima actually did not help create until the very end of his Zoanthrope project. Busuzima despises robotics and advanced cybernetics, thinking of them as mere mechanical copies of biology that can never match the original. He jokingly told a colleague that it was the humanity's ultimate "play God" profession, an attempt to create new life rather than modify old (he said this with full understanding of the irony in his statement; he, after all, was playing God in far worse ways than any mere roboticist ever could). Kohryu was built as a first-generation cyborg by a sister company of Tylon's. Busuzima, bored one night with his current subjects (a young Kenji Ohgami was there, along with a small girl named Uriko Nonomura), went over to the nearby lab and looked in on the projects there. Kohryu, body torn apart as the scientists placed wires in him, lay there unattended (the night guards were unconcerned with Busuzima, who had been given the highest level of clearance in Tylon and was considered a resource of the company.) Busuzima had been struck by an idea, and soon after wheedled his way into putting Kohryu, half-finished mechanical parts and all, into his program. Afterwards, the world's only cyborg Zoanthrope was constructed. Kohryu was an immense failure, and Busuzima never experimented with cybernetics again... though he often thought of his "metal zombie", as he jokingly put it, especially wondering what had happened after he let it loose to roam the streets. After the ZLF and other failures, Busuzima caught Kohryu again, but lost him several weeks ago. The loss didn't bother him much; Kohryu was, at best, an iffy weapon and at worst a severe liability. Kohryu's insanity prevents him from having much use to Busuzima, who likes solid results. Henceforth, when Kohryu disappeared from the sewers where Busuzima had been keeping him, Busuzima was more glad than worried. If he'd known who had stolen him, he might have worried more; the Mishiyama Corp., under orders of it's CEO, had stolen Kohryu. The CEO had received a few messages (and I shall not tell you more, save to say they were written in the blood of a child) that Kohryu might be useful to him; and so Kohryu remained in the Mishiyama Corp.'s headquarters, on the top floor, until tonight. When he was let free to hunt down someone that Xion (in a telepathic conversation with the CEO, an hour ago, which we would have heard but for the little incident that took place there) had identified as being a potential threat.
Kohryu looks around and sniffs, his broken down and bleeding body identifying the smell as Kenji's (in his black, twisted mind, Kohryu thinks of nothing so complex; he merely identifies the smell as "Target") and begins to follow it. The rain that is now washing through Japan has not washed away all the blood, and now there are many more scents for Kohryu to follow: Alice's, Uriko's, Yugo's, the men on the ambulance, the ambulance itself....
Kohryu turns, and the shaking, ambling form walks out the door. It stands on the pavement, bends its knees, and then leaps high into the air, crossing enormous distances with bounds that shake it's ailing body and threaten to make the entire system shut down. But the creature continues to work, as it has for many years now, working because it has no other choice but to work.
We lift our wings and follow it out. The door of the Nonomura house flutters in the wind behind us.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Holy Mother Medical Hospital, near heart of Tokyo, Japan. 3:00 a.m.
We fly far faster than Kohryu leaps, and hence get to the hospital a few minutes before he does. We sit here and wait, quite uneasy, wondering when Kohryu will enter this scene... wondering what will happen after. As I said before, the future is a great and winding thing, and there are so many paths it could take... our heroes could crush Kohryu within seconds, or Kohryu could best them all and slay them here. And then there are all the paths in between; Kenji slain but the others unhurt, Yugo killed while a crying Uriko bests Kohryu, Uriko slain and a half-mad Kenji tearing Kohryu apart. A million different futures, stretching out from this one moment.
We wait, while Yugo and Kenji talk. Uriko is sitting on a nearby bench, her mind still filtering out all she heard from Kenji and listening to him and Yugo with only half an ear. Even in our worry, we perform our mission and listen.
" We don't blame you," Yugo says, spreading his hands helplessly. " You were just a child, Kenji. All of us have done horrible things. Long was an assassin too, and he doesn't beat himself up about it! No one's perfect. No one should be. We just try to live our lives the best we can.... try to float on when life attempts to sink us..." Yugo shakes his head, unable to think of anything to say, and as this jester, this king of words, stands mute, Kenji speaks.
" But... what if you can't float on? What if you've sunk and there's nothing left to do but fall... isn't it better to sink quickly? To try and spare those you love the pain of watching you slowly fade away... isn't that better?"
Yugo shakes his head, tears threatening to shut him up permanently, and before they can do so, he manages to say, " But Kenji, that's what we're here for. What friends are for. To pull you up when you sink. To help you get back on your feet. That's why we're here! You're not alone!"
With this, Yugo breaks down, and tears flow from the normally valiant boxer's eyes. Something else breaks down too, causing everyone in the room (including us) to cry out in surprise. The window shatters, and in leaps Kohryu. The jerking, shaking form turns its head surprisingly fast, and its eyes lock onto Kenji's. With a leaping, shuddering movement, it launches itself at him.
But someone else has lauched themselves as well; Uriko tackles Kohryu, her pretty mouth twisted into a snarl, hair flying as she grabs his legs with her hands and knocks him backward towards the window he just came through. Kohryu falls onto his back, and Uriko rears up, body already changing as she prepares a backhand blow. A full-fledged snarl emits from her newly-fanged mouth, and the light of change comes over her. When it finishes, mere milliseconds after it starts, her prepared backhand fist is now a claw. She swipes it over Kohryu's face. Four small white lines appear in the dead flesh of its face; it takes no notice.
Kohryu's entire form jerks, and Uriko is thrown off it. Kohryu gets up, and mutters something into the dead air. A small flame appears before Kohryu, and as Kohryu concentrates its half-dead, half-mad facilities, the flame spreads and becomes roughly the size of a basketball. Kohryu mutters something else, and the flame hurls across the room towards Uriko. She ducks it, and the flying fireball strikes the bulletproof Plexiglass wall behind her. The wall hisses and sizzles as the flame melts it.
Yugo has recovered from his former surprise and tears, and hurls himself across the room at Kohryu as well. He leaps over Kenji, who is both shocked and yet strangely unsurprised at Kohryu's entrance; it seems that some part of him was expecting an attack of some sort, ever since he woke up from his attempted suicide. Unbeknownst to him, the knife line on his left hand has reformed itself into a Crest. The one clean line has become three jagged claw marks, and they are starting to glow. Nobody notices this in the heat of the situation but us, though.
Yugo punches Kohryu, falling easily into his boxer's pose, teeth exposed in a growl as he slugs at the monster before him. He changes in mid-attack, and finishes a simple left-left-right combination with a claw swipe that knocks Kohryu into a nearby wall. The jittering monstrosity looks at him and opens its mouth, emitting an unearthly scream that is so high-pitched it is impossible for normal humans to hear; in his beast form, Yugo can hear it just fine, and the scream's sheer intensity drowns out all thought in his mind. He staggers back, clamping his claws over ears that are starting to bleed. As he falls backwards, Kohryu finishes his scream and stands up, jittering. He begins advancing for Kenji again.
Uriko is up, however, and she launches herself across the room at him again. She lands on his face, clawing and scratching him to pieces, and when he tries to shake her off she valiantly hangs on. Kohryu falls back, body shaking and jittering even more as he tries to remove the stubborn half-beast from his face. The back of his legs quickly comes into contact with a bed, and in something that is much like a flash of inspiration for this creature, he comes up with a plan. It grabs the lamp that is sitting by the bed and slams it into Uriko's forehead, bulb and all. Uriko cries out as her hair begins to smolder from the hot embers now blazing in her hair. She falls off Kohryu, onto the floor, and rolls out of harm's way before stopping to brush her face off as fast as she can. As she shakes her head and wipes away the painful shards, Kohryu begins heading towards Kenji again.
Kenji watches Kohryu advance with an almost dreamlike acceptance. Here, finally, is the death he has been looking for. Here, finally, is a way to die and leave this world without shame. He is already wounded; it would be acceptable to the others that he simply did not have the strength to fight. It would be an almost honorable way to go.
As Kohryu advances, the spell is broken by Uriko. She leaps onto Kohryu's back, clawing and screaming, and when Kohryu lifts her up and slams her into a wall, Kenji wakes from his daze.
[ Uriko!] his mind cries out. [Uriko, I'm coming...]
Kenji raises himself up, determined to fight now, not fighting for himself but fighting for Uriko, and as he raises himself up to fight....
he falls, because he really is too weak to fight. Laying there helplessly, feeling the weakness in his arms, Kenji can only watch as Uriko and Kohryu fight. Uriko is strong, well-trained, and stubborn; but she is also no match for Kohryu. The cyborg Zoanthrope, despite the fact that it clings to some form of consciousness with only a thread, despite the fact that it lacks true self-awareness, is incredibly strong, and resistant to most forms of attack; even now, as we watch, Uriko launches into a flying kick that would have completely crushed the intestines of any normal human who happened to receive it (and would have greatly damaged any Zoanthrope in the way) and which has almost no effect on Kohryu. His innards are mostly gone anyway, replaced by wire and metal. Kohryu strikes Uriko with a backhand slap that sends her spining away. As she falls, we see blood glitter in the air, along with a small fang that could only be one of her teeth. Kohryu's form twitches around again, ready to slay Kenji. The hospital bed Kenji was sitting on is suddenly in the air and striking him before we can blink. Kenji had leaped off the bed, grabbed it, and swung it in the time it took Kohryu to turn around.
We blink. That ninja boy is fast. Though Kenji thought he had lacked strength, seeing Uriko's blood has given him new strength. As Kenji lunges forward, hands moving in the odd circles and symbols of Ninjitsu, he is little more than a blur even to us, we whose sole purpose in life is to watch and record that which we see. As Kenji attacks, we watch with our interest somewhat dimmed; it is almost a guarantee that Kenji shall win this fight.
But almost is not certain; for even as we think this fight is over, it starts all over again. Kohryu's form jerks once, and the light of change comes over him. Metal shrieking as the body and form it had been made for changes, Kohryu turns into a strange, shelled beast that almost looks like a refugee from one of the giant robot animes that are so popular in Japan. That, however, is not our main concern. Our main concern is the enormous claws that have replaced its hands. Busuzima gave Kohryu's dead form Kenji's Zoanthrope DNA, seeking what he had believed at the time would be the smallest change from a human form, so as to prevent too much damage to the internal cybernetics when Kohryu transformed. He was wrong, of course; the enormous mutated claws which are the hallmark of Mole Zoanthropes the world over are the least of the major changes the body undergoes. Kohryu looks impressive in this form, but he may actually be weaker while mutated; the metal in his body is now compressed and shifted, close to the breaking point. A few well-placed blows may crush this creature and end its unnatural life.
But Kenji is not strong enough to do that. He strikes and strikes, staying in human form, hands becoming knives or fists or spears, circling his target and keeping the undead beast off-balance and unable to counter, but still he cannot kill the creature- cannot even harm it, for his blows are weak and lack strength. Desperate, Kenji flies through the air and kicks the creature's face, and receives nothing but a claw swipe in return. Dodging it with a backwards flip, Kenji lands on the ground, glaring up at his opponent, one hand on the ground and the other thrown behind him, reaching for shuriken that are not there (Kenji's training is taking over in his panic). His body aches and his mind burns. His breath is coming out in short little gasps that do not give him enough air. Desperate, he clings to consciousness.
Kohryu twitches again, and as it raises a claw to wipe Kenji's face off with, Yugo barrels into him, snarling and biting. The wolf receives four claw points in the gut and howls with pain (though he can't hear his own scream; Yugo has been deafened by Kohryu's scream). As Yugo is thrown back by the monstrosity before him, Kenji feels consciousness slip away, and his hand slips. He falls.
Laying on the ground, he looks over and sees Uriko spit blood out of her mouth and shakily stand up, ready to strike Kohryu as soon as she sees an opening. She leaps, claws out, and is thrown back down again as Kohryu slams Yugo into her. The two Zoanthropes collapse in a heap.
Kenji, with the part of his mind still capable of thought, turns to the one person in this room who has yet to participate in this fight.
[ Bakuryu!] he screams with his mind. [ I need you!]
- R & R please!
Tiger already knows about this, but I've decided to share it with you guys as well. I'm planning on opening a second BR story that will be a sequel to this story and a prequel to "Whisper in the Winds". The story will probably begin this winter, when I'm through with most other fanfics, and the current working title is "Truth and Lies". The title, like most aspects of the story, is only a hold-over until I get a better idea.
Now, for reviews:
Tiger5913: (picks Bakuryu up, dusts him off) Hey, Tiger, I need this guy for my story! C'mon, lass, put the pianos down! (ducks pianos hurled by insane Tiger) Ack! (runs away, comes back with ax) Bad Tiger! Bad! (Chops pianos up).
Whew. As I was saying....
You got something wrong in your review. I think you thought Stun was going after Kenji- he's not. Kohryu is. Stun is a GOOD GUY in my story, despite the fact that you've convinced every other BR author on ff.net that he's evil! (glares at you) Seriously, if you had any idea of the influence you've wielded in the realm of BR fanfiction, I think you'd faint. I read a review once stating that the reason everyone hates Cronos is that (and I quote) " Tiger making fun of hinted Uriko/Cronos romance in BR. Since we all like to play follow the leader, the rest of us hate him too." Sheesh, woman! What have you done to deserve accolades like this?!? I wish I could control an entire genre on ff.net too... (cries)
On another note, the blood on the floor wasn't Kenji's; it was from the needles that were stuck in his arms. They painted the floor, not him. And as for bottling things up- true!
Don't worry. Kenji may have lost his will to live, but ol' Baky hasn't... (evil grin)
Thanks for kudos, and I'll try getting on AIM, but I'm usually typing these things at nine p.m. or so, and putting them up at eleven p.m., so by then you're probably asleep (three hour difference makes it one o clock over there, I think). And if you're not, then you should be. :)
By the by.... my weapon of preference is a longsword. (sharpening noises) Update soon, 'kay? Or suffer the consequences. (anime sword-drawing "ching!" noise)
Soundwood: Wow! Another new reviewer! Yay! (dances around) Don't know how you heard about this story, but I'm glad you found it. Thanks for your reviews and especially your compliments on Shen and Long. And about leaving a bunch of reviews- do it please! It inflates my ego. (sound of ego swelling in background)
I understand what you say about moving while you read- I do it too. Makes it hard to finish Stephen King books (I'm his biggest fan, by the by :) but I find that I just can't sit down when I read.
By the by- the comment on Long's virginity actually isn't mine, it's Tiger's. Read her BR fanfic "Unleashing the Beast" (or something close to that... my memory's quite bad:) and you'll see where I got the idea from.
(reads the above) Heh heh... Guess I play "follow the leader" too... Ah well. All hail Tiger! (snappy salute)
Indigo Siren: (grabs forks) One for you, one for me, and one for Hannibal Lecter. Dinner time!
Uri-chan: Thanks for reviewing!
Okay, enough of that. It's....
"SHOWTIME!"
Chapter Eight
Fervor of the Insane
Nonomura house, near Our Holy Mother Medical Hospital, Tokyo, Japan. 2:50 a.m., Night of the Mark.
We flit in, silent as shadows, and our presence disturbs nothing in this house. Yet, despite this complete inconspicuity, the creature inside turns its head and snorts, mumbling somthing to itself as it does so. Unable to perceive more of us than it already has (and did it perceive us? Or did some random portion of its mind jerk at just that moment, causing it to look around?), it turns around and continues its search. As the creature looks about the still-lighted household (Alice and Uriko forgot to turn the lights out in the subsequent events surrounding Kenji's attempted suicide) we watch it, and our horror grows. This is something straight out of nightmare- and not something we were prepared to see. Whatever this thing is before us, it is completely beyond what we expected to see.
Its skin is broken and distorted, revealing muscle in some places, bone in others, and in the most horrific place of all, the torn skin that would have covered the back of its left hand is open and shows a hole through which we can see the creature's skeleton- and the wires and gears that go through all of it. No blood flows through this thing, for it is dead, as dead as the bodies in the cemetery where Xion changed and became the Unborn, as dead as the dreams that poor soul may once have had. A continual low-grade, almost subaudible whirring sound emits from the creature, as gears that should never have been built spin and give rise to the strange jerks and sudden motions the creature goes through even as it searches. The creature mutters to itself constantly, its voice a distorted, thick, slurring thing through which we can distinguish no individual words, just a sense of continual murmuring. Its teeth are long and sharp, and some of them- bone covering worn off or otherwise lost to the depths of time- are revealed as the hunks of metal they really are. Saliva constantly drips between them, thick and runny, seeming less like spittle and more like acid from a serpent's fang. Two ears- or the remains of two long ears- float above its, but they are twisted, blasted, and torn as well, the small antennae inside them revealed in the patches where the skin is gone. The eyes blaze red, and as we float around this creature, attempting to gaze into its mind, they seem to track us, following us as we float about it.
This thing gives us the chills, and well it should. This is Kohryu, a freak that Busuzima actually did not help create until the very end of his Zoanthrope project. Busuzima despises robotics and advanced cybernetics, thinking of them as mere mechanical copies of biology that can never match the original. He jokingly told a colleague that it was the humanity's ultimate "play God" profession, an attempt to create new life rather than modify old (he said this with full understanding of the irony in his statement; he, after all, was playing God in far worse ways than any mere roboticist ever could). Kohryu was built as a first-generation cyborg by a sister company of Tylon's. Busuzima, bored one night with his current subjects (a young Kenji Ohgami was there, along with a small girl named Uriko Nonomura), went over to the nearby lab and looked in on the projects there. Kohryu, body torn apart as the scientists placed wires in him, lay there unattended (the night guards were unconcerned with Busuzima, who had been given the highest level of clearance in Tylon and was considered a resource of the company.) Busuzima had been struck by an idea, and soon after wheedled his way into putting Kohryu, half-finished mechanical parts and all, into his program. Afterwards, the world's only cyborg Zoanthrope was constructed. Kohryu was an immense failure, and Busuzima never experimented with cybernetics again... though he often thought of his "metal zombie", as he jokingly put it, especially wondering what had happened after he let it loose to roam the streets. After the ZLF and other failures, Busuzima caught Kohryu again, but lost him several weeks ago. The loss didn't bother him much; Kohryu was, at best, an iffy weapon and at worst a severe liability. Kohryu's insanity prevents him from having much use to Busuzima, who likes solid results. Henceforth, when Kohryu disappeared from the sewers where Busuzima had been keeping him, Busuzima was more glad than worried. If he'd known who had stolen him, he might have worried more; the Mishiyama Corp., under orders of it's CEO, had stolen Kohryu. The CEO had received a few messages (and I shall not tell you more, save to say they were written in the blood of a child) that Kohryu might be useful to him; and so Kohryu remained in the Mishiyama Corp.'s headquarters, on the top floor, until tonight. When he was let free to hunt down someone that Xion (in a telepathic conversation with the CEO, an hour ago, which we would have heard but for the little incident that took place there) had identified as being a potential threat.
Kohryu looks around and sniffs, his broken down and bleeding body identifying the smell as Kenji's (in his black, twisted mind, Kohryu thinks of nothing so complex; he merely identifies the smell as "Target") and begins to follow it. The rain that is now washing through Japan has not washed away all the blood, and now there are many more scents for Kohryu to follow: Alice's, Uriko's, Yugo's, the men on the ambulance, the ambulance itself....
Kohryu turns, and the shaking, ambling form walks out the door. It stands on the pavement, bends its knees, and then leaps high into the air, crossing enormous distances with bounds that shake it's ailing body and threaten to make the entire system shut down. But the creature continues to work, as it has for many years now, working because it has no other choice but to work.
We lift our wings and follow it out. The door of the Nonomura house flutters in the wind behind us.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Holy Mother Medical Hospital, near heart of Tokyo, Japan. 3:00 a.m.
We fly far faster than Kohryu leaps, and hence get to the hospital a few minutes before he does. We sit here and wait, quite uneasy, wondering when Kohryu will enter this scene... wondering what will happen after. As I said before, the future is a great and winding thing, and there are so many paths it could take... our heroes could crush Kohryu within seconds, or Kohryu could best them all and slay them here. And then there are all the paths in between; Kenji slain but the others unhurt, Yugo killed while a crying Uriko bests Kohryu, Uriko slain and a half-mad Kenji tearing Kohryu apart. A million different futures, stretching out from this one moment.
We wait, while Yugo and Kenji talk. Uriko is sitting on a nearby bench, her mind still filtering out all she heard from Kenji and listening to him and Yugo with only half an ear. Even in our worry, we perform our mission and listen.
" We don't blame you," Yugo says, spreading his hands helplessly. " You were just a child, Kenji. All of us have done horrible things. Long was an assassin too, and he doesn't beat himself up about it! No one's perfect. No one should be. We just try to live our lives the best we can.... try to float on when life attempts to sink us..." Yugo shakes his head, unable to think of anything to say, and as this jester, this king of words, stands mute, Kenji speaks.
" But... what if you can't float on? What if you've sunk and there's nothing left to do but fall... isn't it better to sink quickly? To try and spare those you love the pain of watching you slowly fade away... isn't that better?"
Yugo shakes his head, tears threatening to shut him up permanently, and before they can do so, he manages to say, " But Kenji, that's what we're here for. What friends are for. To pull you up when you sink. To help you get back on your feet. That's why we're here! You're not alone!"
With this, Yugo breaks down, and tears flow from the normally valiant boxer's eyes. Something else breaks down too, causing everyone in the room (including us) to cry out in surprise. The window shatters, and in leaps Kohryu. The jerking, shaking form turns its head surprisingly fast, and its eyes lock onto Kenji's. With a leaping, shuddering movement, it launches itself at him.
But someone else has lauched themselves as well; Uriko tackles Kohryu, her pretty mouth twisted into a snarl, hair flying as she grabs his legs with her hands and knocks him backward towards the window he just came through. Kohryu falls onto his back, and Uriko rears up, body already changing as she prepares a backhand blow. A full-fledged snarl emits from her newly-fanged mouth, and the light of change comes over her. When it finishes, mere milliseconds after it starts, her prepared backhand fist is now a claw. She swipes it over Kohryu's face. Four small white lines appear in the dead flesh of its face; it takes no notice.
Kohryu's entire form jerks, and Uriko is thrown off it. Kohryu gets up, and mutters something into the dead air. A small flame appears before Kohryu, and as Kohryu concentrates its half-dead, half-mad facilities, the flame spreads and becomes roughly the size of a basketball. Kohryu mutters something else, and the flame hurls across the room towards Uriko. She ducks it, and the flying fireball strikes the bulletproof Plexiglass wall behind her. The wall hisses and sizzles as the flame melts it.
Yugo has recovered from his former surprise and tears, and hurls himself across the room at Kohryu as well. He leaps over Kenji, who is both shocked and yet strangely unsurprised at Kohryu's entrance; it seems that some part of him was expecting an attack of some sort, ever since he woke up from his attempted suicide. Unbeknownst to him, the knife line on his left hand has reformed itself into a Crest. The one clean line has become three jagged claw marks, and they are starting to glow. Nobody notices this in the heat of the situation but us, though.
Yugo punches Kohryu, falling easily into his boxer's pose, teeth exposed in a growl as he slugs at the monster before him. He changes in mid-attack, and finishes a simple left-left-right combination with a claw swipe that knocks Kohryu into a nearby wall. The jittering monstrosity looks at him and opens its mouth, emitting an unearthly scream that is so high-pitched it is impossible for normal humans to hear; in his beast form, Yugo can hear it just fine, and the scream's sheer intensity drowns out all thought in his mind. He staggers back, clamping his claws over ears that are starting to bleed. As he falls backwards, Kohryu finishes his scream and stands up, jittering. He begins advancing for Kenji again.
Uriko is up, however, and she launches herself across the room at him again. She lands on his face, clawing and scratching him to pieces, and when he tries to shake her off she valiantly hangs on. Kohryu falls back, body shaking and jittering even more as he tries to remove the stubborn half-beast from his face. The back of his legs quickly comes into contact with a bed, and in something that is much like a flash of inspiration for this creature, he comes up with a plan. It grabs the lamp that is sitting by the bed and slams it into Uriko's forehead, bulb and all. Uriko cries out as her hair begins to smolder from the hot embers now blazing in her hair. She falls off Kohryu, onto the floor, and rolls out of harm's way before stopping to brush her face off as fast as she can. As she shakes her head and wipes away the painful shards, Kohryu begins heading towards Kenji again.
Kenji watches Kohryu advance with an almost dreamlike acceptance. Here, finally, is the death he has been looking for. Here, finally, is a way to die and leave this world without shame. He is already wounded; it would be acceptable to the others that he simply did not have the strength to fight. It would be an almost honorable way to go.
As Kohryu advances, the spell is broken by Uriko. She leaps onto Kohryu's back, clawing and screaming, and when Kohryu lifts her up and slams her into a wall, Kenji wakes from his daze.
[ Uriko!] his mind cries out. [Uriko, I'm coming...]
Kenji raises himself up, determined to fight now, not fighting for himself but fighting for Uriko, and as he raises himself up to fight....
he falls, because he really is too weak to fight. Laying there helplessly, feeling the weakness in his arms, Kenji can only watch as Uriko and Kohryu fight. Uriko is strong, well-trained, and stubborn; but she is also no match for Kohryu. The cyborg Zoanthrope, despite the fact that it clings to some form of consciousness with only a thread, despite the fact that it lacks true self-awareness, is incredibly strong, and resistant to most forms of attack; even now, as we watch, Uriko launches into a flying kick that would have completely crushed the intestines of any normal human who happened to receive it (and would have greatly damaged any Zoanthrope in the way) and which has almost no effect on Kohryu. His innards are mostly gone anyway, replaced by wire and metal. Kohryu strikes Uriko with a backhand slap that sends her spining away. As she falls, we see blood glitter in the air, along with a small fang that could only be one of her teeth. Kohryu's form twitches around again, ready to slay Kenji. The hospital bed Kenji was sitting on is suddenly in the air and striking him before we can blink. Kenji had leaped off the bed, grabbed it, and swung it in the time it took Kohryu to turn around.
We blink. That ninja boy is fast. Though Kenji thought he had lacked strength, seeing Uriko's blood has given him new strength. As Kenji lunges forward, hands moving in the odd circles and symbols of Ninjitsu, he is little more than a blur even to us, we whose sole purpose in life is to watch and record that which we see. As Kenji attacks, we watch with our interest somewhat dimmed; it is almost a guarantee that Kenji shall win this fight.
But almost is not certain; for even as we think this fight is over, it starts all over again. Kohryu's form jerks once, and the light of change comes over him. Metal shrieking as the body and form it had been made for changes, Kohryu turns into a strange, shelled beast that almost looks like a refugee from one of the giant robot animes that are so popular in Japan. That, however, is not our main concern. Our main concern is the enormous claws that have replaced its hands. Busuzima gave Kohryu's dead form Kenji's Zoanthrope DNA, seeking what he had believed at the time would be the smallest change from a human form, so as to prevent too much damage to the internal cybernetics when Kohryu transformed. He was wrong, of course; the enormous mutated claws which are the hallmark of Mole Zoanthropes the world over are the least of the major changes the body undergoes. Kohryu looks impressive in this form, but he may actually be weaker while mutated; the metal in his body is now compressed and shifted, close to the breaking point. A few well-placed blows may crush this creature and end its unnatural life.
But Kenji is not strong enough to do that. He strikes and strikes, staying in human form, hands becoming knives or fists or spears, circling his target and keeping the undead beast off-balance and unable to counter, but still he cannot kill the creature- cannot even harm it, for his blows are weak and lack strength. Desperate, Kenji flies through the air and kicks the creature's face, and receives nothing but a claw swipe in return. Dodging it with a backwards flip, Kenji lands on the ground, glaring up at his opponent, one hand on the ground and the other thrown behind him, reaching for shuriken that are not there (Kenji's training is taking over in his panic). His body aches and his mind burns. His breath is coming out in short little gasps that do not give him enough air. Desperate, he clings to consciousness.
Kohryu twitches again, and as it raises a claw to wipe Kenji's face off with, Yugo barrels into him, snarling and biting. The wolf receives four claw points in the gut and howls with pain (though he can't hear his own scream; Yugo has been deafened by Kohryu's scream). As Yugo is thrown back by the monstrosity before him, Kenji feels consciousness slip away, and his hand slips. He falls.
Laying on the ground, he looks over and sees Uriko spit blood out of her mouth and shakily stand up, ready to strike Kohryu as soon as she sees an opening. She leaps, claws out, and is thrown back down again as Kohryu slams Yugo into her. The two Zoanthropes collapse in a heap.
Kenji, with the part of his mind still capable of thought, turns to the one person in this room who has yet to participate in this fight.
[ Bakuryu!] he screams with his mind. [ I need you!]
- R & R please!