Blood

Chapter 12: Crimson Snow

By Fool's Gold

Disclaimer: Garou Densetsu (Fatal Fury), Ryuuko no Ken (Art of Fighting), The King of Fighters, and all related characters are the property of SNK-Playmore. No profit has been made from this fic.


"Father..."

Hotaru faced the man she once thought dead, lost for words. She hadn't thought she'd see this day; it should have been a dream come true for her, to see her father alive and in the flesh. But she could not bring herself to feel anything more than loathing and disgust for the man who stood in the snow.

Blow after mental blow had pounded into her, leaving her reeling. She would have collapsed long before, but it was fear that drove her on: she just knew, irrationally, that Rock was in dire straits. Now her father stood before her... and impeded her progress.

She had so many questions to ask him: Why kill for a living, and why did Brother follow the same path as you? Why did you trick us into thinking you were dead – why did you forsake your family? Why did you fight Brother that day? What good could come out of all this killing? And why did you choose to help destroy this city? But none of them left her lips. Her only word was the first one that had formed in her mind: "Why?"

Her father sounded exactly like he had in the old days, lecturing his children gently – but the subject matter was far, far darker than any child would be asked to comprehend. "If you're asking me about my actions, Hotaru... I'm afraid you wouldn't understand."

"What's there to understand?" she cried, incapable of holding herself back. "You kill for a living; you work for Kain; you were involved in destroying this city. That's all I need to know."

"So you do." Goto didn't deny her accusations. "Did your brother tell you all this, or did that Howard kid spill the beans?" He caught the look of despair on her face at the mention of the latter name. "Well, it looks like that boy has more spine than I gave him credit for."

The sheer callousness of his admission horrified Hotaru – and all the more because he said it with his ever-present smile on his face, as though he was proud of it. She had never thought her father capable of such depravity... "And killing is just another job to you? What about Brother, the one you nearly murdered? What about Mother? You killed her as surely as if you'd been there, choking the life out of her! Do you value life at all, Father?"

"Your mother's death was regrettable," he replied coolly, intoning the words without any apparent feeling in his voice. "Your brother, on the other hand, chose his own path... and it was inevitable that we would have to meet along it sooner or later."

She would not accept his explanation. "And so you just decided to kill each other?"

"You're too naïve, Hotaru."

It was those words again. Mrs. Yardsley had said them that very morning; she'd turned aside Hotaru's objections with that phrase, saying that the real world was more accepting of ambiguity than her idealistic stance.

It was the "real world" that had killed Katherine Yardsley. And now, her father was repeating the very same words from the other side of the divide; it was something which she could not accept.

"Do you know what I saw?" She held up her hands, her fingertips still stained with her employer's blood. "I saw an innocent woman die in front of my very eyes, and I couldn't do anything! Nothing at all! And now my own father, the man I respect and love, tells me that her life was without value?"

Goto stared at her as though she'd just said something completely illogical. "The dead are history, Hotaru. If people deserve to live, then they'll survive no matter what. And if they die... they die. That's all there is."

Hotaru had heard enough.

Up until that day, she had thought her father a kind, decent man and a loving, if strict, father. He had turned his own son out of the house, of course, but she had always believed it to be a misunderstanding. And when he'd died, she'd shed tears for him, for the untimely loss of a good man. But Rock's delivery showed otherwise. It had all been a sham – one that had fooled herself and her mother completely, but not her brother. It was her father, ultimately, who had torn their family apart; he was the one who had caused the death of her mother and her brother's disappearance.

"Murderer." There was a tremor in her voice as tears began to stream down from her eyes, drops of impotent rage that were wasted on the cold ground. She could stand it no longer; she screamed at him, her voice cracking from the rage and disgust that she felt, "You... you... you're not my father! The father I knew died long ago; you're nothing but a mockery of his memory!"

"You're right about that," Goto freely admitted. "The father you knew never really existed, although it would have been better if you had maintained that illusion. Now, I have a question for you: why are you here?"

"Let me through, or..."

"What do you intend to do, Hotaru? Fight me?" His pose was relaxed, but Hotaru could feel the latent threat in the words that he spoke. He took a step forwards, and for one gut-wrenching moment, she thought he would actually strike her down. But he didn't. His hands remained at his sides, waiting for her to make the next move. She stood still, feeling the cold wind tear at her exposed face and freezing her tears, not daring to act...

"She needn't bother," said a voice behind her. Hotaru stepped aside, stunned, as Gato walked past her to face the father who'd disowned him. He brushed by her side, stepping in between the two with cold disdain.

"Ah, Gato. You're here at last," Goto said, seeming rather pleased at the arrival of his estranged son – and then he sprang forwards like a tiger, lashing out with a heavy blow at his son. Gato tipped his head back, the fist passing through the space where his head had been a moment before, and pushed his father's arm away forcefully, looking back at his sister as he did so.

"I'll take care of things here." He returned his attention to the fight just in time to defend against the next deadly punch; Gato barely parried the blow with his forearm and countered with a kick of his own, which Goto deflected with the shin of his upraised leg. They each took a step back, staring each other down after the initial exchange of hostilities; then Goto's hands shaped themselves into fearsome claws as he leapt at his son again. The talons stopped an inch from Gato's face as he caught them at the wrists, straining to keep them from raking him to pieces.

"Brother..." Hotaru forced, astounded by the manner of Gato's sudden appearance, and he didn't deny the title that she accorded. He turned his head, gazing away from the fight for one last time, and gave her a smile that seemed almost kind.

"Go! Someone's waiting for you at Heinlein Tower..."

Hotaru didn't wait to be asked twice. Her vision was clouded by tears and the descending snow, her steps faltering even as she turned away; yet she ran, heedless of everything else, into the darkness and away from the last remnants of her family.


Gato thrust his father's hands away, pushing him back several paces. The two fighters adopted their stances once again, circling each other warily and waiting for the other to make one crucial mistake.

It was Goto who spoke up first, his voice rising sonorously across the space that separated father and son. "How interesting. I'm degraded in her eyes, and you've redeemed yourself. So, whose benefit was this charade for? Hotaru's... or yours?"

"Hmph," Gato snorted in disgust, deigning to answer. He bounded into the air with a powerful leap, slamming his foot down – but his father countered it with a rising kick of his own, and he fell back, frustrated.

"More 'why's' from you, Gato? You were never the type to seek reasons." Goto's voice was emotionless as always, but the words that left his mouth now took on an icy tone, in contrast to his previous casual mood.

"Just one." The son folded his arms across his broad chest arrogantly, casting a disdainful eye on the man he once called Father. "Why ally with Kain?"

"Oh, so you're still sore about your loss three years ago? Petty, petty," Goto taunted. "And you should have learnt by now: it's not just raw power that determines the outcome of any fight, but the way one uses it. These are the results: only the strong will survive." He slammed his foot into the ground, catapulting himself into the air as he threw a shockwave down onto the ground. A spray of snow flew up, temporarily blinding Gato; his vision cleared just in time to roll away from the descending kick that would certainly have taken his head off. He struck low, swiping at his father with a sweep, but the older man simply leapt out of range. "And if you don't mind, I've got a question of my own for you."

Gato got up quickly, never letting his guard down. "Shoot."

"You do know that you've just sent Hotaru to her doom, don't you?" His father struck out with another crushing blow, this one aimed at his son's chest.

The façade fell away all too easily. "You were always the sentimental fool, old man. You were never capable of attaining the assassin's ideal that you talked about so much – or the scars on my back would never have returned to haunt you." Gato sneered, parrying his father's lunge with a violent swipe – and for a moment, he thought he sensed a slight increase in the killing intent behind that stroke.

"It's not like you're any closer, Gato, with all that rage limiting your effectiveness. You were never worthy of borrowing my name. After all, you're no assassin – you're just a skilled thug." The other fist shot out, aimed at Gato's midsection, but he caught it in his grip and wrenched it hard. Any resistance would have caused Goto's arm to pop out of its socket, but he merely followed the path of least resistance: in an instant, his body was spinning in midair as he lashed out with another kick. Gato released his grip as he fell back, the attack missing his face by inches, and Goto landed lightly on his feet. "It looks like I'll just have to finish the job I started."

"Big words, Father," Gato mocked, "but you won't need your name any longer. Not where I'm sending you, anyway."

They continued to fight in the middle of the blizzard, enduring even the severe cold that descended across the city for the sake of settling their feud. Both fighters refused to back down, pride and hatred forcing them to decide, once and for all, the victor.

"You never should have trained me, Father." Gato's voice called out as their fists met in a brutal collision.

"I see we both agree on something," Goto replied dryly. "You were merely a waste of my time. And I had such high hopes, too." He threw a jab directly at his son's face, obstructing his line of sight. Gato blocked the blow, but the lapse bought the older man enough time to increase the distance between them.

"If you think you're good enough to steal my name, you'll have to earn it." With that, he laughed and began to run – away from the fight.

Gato was enraged. Is he mocking me... or does he have a trap up his sleeve? The memory of his father's sneak attack three years before still burned in his mind, tempering his fury with caution. Still, the possibility of a trick failed to discourage him from giving chase.

"Coward!" he roared, pursuing Goto through the falling snow.


"Are you sure my friends will be okay?" Dong Hwan asked sceptically, wondering about the fate of the Illusion's staff and unlucky customer. His fingers held on tightly to the spotlight, which gave off the occasional spark as it tapped into its 'walking battery'.

"Of course they'll be fine, idiot! I run a tight ship, and you won't find any place on the island that's safer." Jenet was highly irritated, forced as she was to depend on Dong Hwan as her guide. She pulled the furs closely to her body, keeping out the cold as it increased in intensity. "Anyway, I don't see why you couldn't find shelter. You've got houses aplenty, all along the streets..."

"...and nobody wanted to let us in," Dong Hwan finished for her. "It's not like we didn't try, but everyone's got their doors locked and their cupboards against the windows – and I don't blame them."

"So much for the inherent goodness of Mankind," Jenet muttered indignantly, but there was an unfamiliar ring to her voice that reminded Dong Hwan of Rock's moping. In fact, having heard too much of it earlier that same morning, the sounds of griping actually sounded very familiar. Just to make sure, though, he decided to test the waters.

"You know, Jenny baby," he drawled ingratingly, "the current trend in philosophy at the moment seems to be 'every man for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost'. Besides, they have no way of telling whether you're really a victim or, say, a pirate captain out to loot and plunder..."

He would have continued in the same vein, but Jenet fixed him with a murderous glare that shut him up almost immediately – even through the darkness, he could feel the withering aura of her anger. It wasn't that he was intimidated, though; rather, he felt as though he'd hit a nerve, and there was definitely more to Jenet's fury than a girl's mere irritation.

He wondered if the ruined state of the city had shocked her into the loss of her bubbly character, but decided against repeating the obvious.

The silence that fell over the surroundings was starkly absolute: the only sound that they heard was the shuffle of their own feet against gravel as they travelled further into the disaster zone that Second Southtown had become. Dong Hwan swung the spotlight in a narrow arc, sweeping the surroundings in search of their destination, but it didn't help much – everywhere he looked, he only saw barrenness and destruction. It was getting hard to pick out one ruined street from the countless others that branched out from the main road. At this rate, we'll never get to... "Hey, where'd you say you were headed?"

"I told you, I need to get to the west side of the island – or if you want more specifics, the industrial plants in that area. The only reason I happened to be in Second Southtown was because I was hired to fetch a client..."

"A client?" he interjected. "What moron would still want to meet up after what just happened... and more importantly, what moron would go out in this weather?"

"We're out here, aren't we?" Jenet snapped back. There was a decidedly shifty look in her eyes, Dong Hwan noted, and her muted response only confirmed his suspicions: clearly, she wasn't willing to reveal her real reasons.

He kept his thoughts to himself and continued to lead on. There was no sense in ruining a perfectly good night with a beautiful woman, even if it had to take place in the middle of Catastrophe Central.


Jae Hoon awoke slowly as the world around him spun and swirled in a dark haze. He heard muted sounds of speech from all around him, and his vision gradually came into focus, resolving the dark shapes that drifted before him into familiar faces and shapes.

"Be careful, Jae!" He recognised that anxious, worried voice as his mother's. Gingerly, he propped himself up into a seated position against the wall of his house – how had he ended up here? He remembered a faint memory of the blow that had brought him down; then his father had come across his body, and...

"Dad!"

He sat up straight, feeling a terrible tearing pain in his side as he did so. He looked down, only to see rivulets of blood dripping from his body: a fair-sized chunk of flesh had been torn from his waist. Freeman's sneak attack had, fortunately, missed his vital organs, but the bleeding hadn't stopped in spite of his mother's valiant efforts.

To her horror, he lit up a small fire in his hand and plunged it into the gaping wound in his side. He clenched his jaw against the pain as he cauterised the injury, feeling the raw edges of the laceration seal up under the heat. Through gritted teeth, he forced out, "I'll be fine. Where's Dad?"

His mother could only look helplessly at the window.

Jae Hoon struggled to his feet, his mother supporting him as he walked to the far wall. Through the snowfall, he managed to make out two moving figures in the street, locked in combat where they stood. Red sparks flew where their attacks collided, flashes of scarlet lighting up the battleground as the snow rose in a flurry around them. Then the two pulled away, and he could see that both were hunched over, their bodies streaked with the same redness that stained the snow around them.

He recognised them instantly.

"Dad's out there. I need to help him..." he began, fighting to reach the door, but his mother moved towards him and caught him by the arm. He tried to pull away from her grip, half-expecting her to forbid him from going out in his injured state.

Instead, Myun opened the door for him. "I know," she answered bravely, in spite of her tears. "Dong Hwan isn't back yet, and Jun went to get help... We heard news of a police landing at Blue Wave Harbour, but there's no telling when she'll get back."

"Mom..."

"Take care of your father. I want all of you to come back safely."


Red blotches marked the spot where Kim stood, his blood dripping slowly from the many wounds that covered his body. He felt the numbness in his feet start to creep up his legs, and realised that he had already wasted too much time in the snow. His age made him vulnerable to the chill, while his opponent – a living corpse, it seemed to Kim – didn't seem to feel the cold's effects at all.

Across from him, Freeman licked the blood from his fingers, smiling cruelly at the Korean's futile struggle. He, too, was drenched in scarlet – but the blood was not his own, and the lust for killing remained unquenched even after the evening's slaughter. There was no option to retreat; Kim knew that if he backed down, the murderer would still kill them all. He couldn't allow himself to lose...

Freeman sensed Kim's desperation, savouring the fear he perceived in the man's eyes. He lifted his hand in a mocking salute, raising it before his face, and swung his arm outwards in a backhanded sweep. From his fingers, a crimson pulse of energy materialised into the form of a blade, cutting through the air as it winged its way swiftly towards Kim. The taekwondo exponent saw the attack coming, and tried to dodge it – but the cold had slowed his reflexes too greatly. The arc of dark power sliced past Kim's chest, opening up yet another wound in spite of his vain attempts to evade. He felt his skin break, fresh blood welling up in the cut and congealing almost instantly in the cold air.

There was no question of making a counterattack – Freeman had already retracted his arm in preparation for another blow. But instead of attacking, the pale killer stood in the snow and stared at Kim with his beady eyes, dark pools of emptiness that knew nothing except death.

He knows, Kim thought. He knows I remember the past. The pang of fear that shot through his gut exacerbated his own doubts; he found that the ground beneath his feet was suddenly shaky, as though he couldn't even control his own body. His hands trembled as he relapsed, consumed by the terror that had resulted in his loss that first time...

"Dad!"

Jae Hoon's voice rang out clearly in the night, breaking the hypnotic effect of Freeman's gaze. Kim kept his eyes fixed firmly on his enemy, not daring to look away, but the spell had been broken. The fear that had lodged in his heart had suddenly vanished. "Jae Hoon! What are you doing out here?" he exclaimed, not wanting to put his injured son at any further risk.

There was the hissing sound of steam as Jae Hoon approached, a shield of fire coating his feet as they cut through the snow with ease. Kim watched as his son stood beside him, raising an arm to support his battered frame. "Are you okay, Dad?"

"I've been better," Kim confessed. "Are you sure...?"

"Don't worry about me, Dad." Jae Hoon stood up, the pain in his side banished by the righteous anger that flowed in his veins. He turned his eyes, burning with fury, to their tormentor. "We'll see that Freeman pays for what he's done."


"We're here." Dong Hwan brushed the snow out of his eyes, taking in his surroundings with the seasoned eye of a native. He seemed unsurprised to see that the factories in the area were largely intact, if completely deserted. Jenet's mood, on the other hand, was one of deep-seated unease, even after they took shelter in the nearest empty building.

"That's good," she replied, eager to get rid of her uninvited guide. "So, I guess you don't need to hang around anymore..."

"What, you don't want me around?" Dong Hwan wailed in mock despair, a tactic which succeeded in annoying Jenet to no end. On seeing the peeved look on her face, he smirked. "I hate to disappoint you, but I can't."

"What're you talking about?"

In response, Dong Hwan simply set the spotlight down on the ground and stood up.

The light died almost instantly, the surroundings sinking into inky darkness. Almost instantly, the pirate's screech bounced off the walls, nearly deafening its sole target. "WHAT?" Her hands shot out where she'd seen Dong Hwan barely a second ago, finding purchase on his shoulders, and she began to shake the life out of her hapless victim. "The spotlight batteries were dead too?"

"Y-y-you've got it, sweetheart." Light suddenly returned to the surroundings; the spotlight had returned to Dong Hwan's hands, and his voice regained its regular consistency as Jenet released her grip. "I don't like being used as a human battery either, but let's face it – unless you want to sit around in the dark for the next couple of hours, I guess I'll have to stick around for a while."

Inwardly, Jenet was rattling off a blue streak of swear words, cursing herself for having apparently missed all the batteries on board the submarine during the quartermaster's inspection; that put paid to her boasts of "running a tight ship". But her vulgarities only materialised as a despairing reply. "Your friends are on my sub, you realise," she muttered, trying to put some semblance of a threat behind her empty words.

"Yeah, so how else am I going to find them if I don't follow you back to your ship, huh?" Dong Hwan shrugged and grinned at her. "Look like we have ourselves a Mexican standoff, ladies and gentlemen. But then again, you're a nice girl, and I don't mind being in the company of fine women... so," he continued, moving towards the nearest wall, "let's talk."

Jenet followed suit reluctantly, but kept her distance from him. "You're an ass, Kim Dong Hwan, and a heartless one to boot. Besides, you don't have anything to gain by staying here... so why bother?"

"On the contrary, milady, I do." He waved a finger admonishingly at her. "As a matter of fact, I'm rather interested in your actual reasons for being in town. Your aforementioned client, for one thing..."

He had the satisfaction of watching Jenet's eyes narrow in unconcealed hostility. "What are you insinuating?"

Dong Hwan decided to bait her a little more before confronting her directly. "This place was closed in the aftermath of the Zero Cannon. Some say that underneath these factories lay a secret NESTS base, where the rogue agent Zero made his last stand. My dad knew better – he actually saw the fight. The actual place was located somewhere else... and the Zero Cannon nuked it, so there's no chance of finding any secret data, tools of mass destruction, or whatever it is that black marketers buy."

"Your point?"

He gave her a dangerous smile and began to expand on his speculation. "You will find, however, that the place belongs to Kain, and that he never welcomes intruders onto his property... unless he knows they're coming. Or did you have a prior appointment with Mr. Heinlein already?"

He could feel the heat of her anger from where he stood. Warned by his fighter's instincts, he suddenly took a step back, feeling her fingertips brush past his cheek as she lashed out at him with an open palm; there was the smack of flesh colliding with concrete, and Jenet was left clutching her bruised hand as she drew it back. Dong Hwan winced. Bingo.

"You know, a simple 'yes' would do..." He walked over to her side, and surprisingly enough, she didn't try to hit him again. However, when he tried to look at her injury, she pulled away.

"Fine," Jenet hissed. "I was hired to smuggle Kain R. Heinlein out of Second Southtown. What can I say? He paid well... and that cash would keep us afloat for at least half a year. But he never told us anything about destroying the city on the way out."

"I thought you hated the man."

The pirate laughed bitterly. "I do. As a matter of fact, I'd like to keelhaul him personally. But believe me, fool, treasure hunting isn't all fun and games. It's wonderful when you've got a well-paying assignment and the money rolls in. But when you've spent your third straight month on board the submarine, and the food and fuel are running low, anything goes. We're talking about day-to-day survival here."

"I know. My brother told me about the smuggling op he walked in on the other time. I don't see you starving, though..." Dong Hwan eyed her appreciatively.

"I'd like to give that stage a wide berth, and that means taking whatever jobs you can get your hands on... including such work as this. And we have a rule on board our ship: once a job is accepted, we never back out. So what're you going to do about it?" She released her wrist and stared at him in defiance, daring him to make a move.

But Dong Hwan only laughed. "If you think I'm going to give you a lecture on justice and righteousness, you're wrong. I am the black sheep of my family for a reason..."

Jenet's jaw dropped in amazement.

"What, surprised?" He chuckled drolly, watching the expression on her face change. "Not that I condone this whole mess, of course... but if Kain wants to get his sorry butt out of Second Southtown, I say we let him. We're better off with the pansy gone anyway."

Jenet was incredulous. In spite of the fact that it only worked against her argument, she could not resist asking back, "Your hometown lies in ruins, hundreds of people have just died, and now you're saying about the guy who did this, 'Let's let him go'? What are you, thick?"

"Probably, but what's done is done, and Second Southtown's got more immediate things to worry about than our friendly local megalomaniac." The smile never left his face. "It's not that I'm unconcerned. Jae, my parents, Rock... heck, they might be dead for all I know, but I can't do anything about it right now. The same goes for Kain: if he suddenly popped up on us right now and wanted to get out of here, I wouldn't be able to stop the two of you anyway – and even if we caught him, it wouldn't undo any of this mess. So why worry?"

The pirate captain watched him speak, her lips frozen in surprise. Inwardly, the unease that she felt about the job was only amplified by Dong Hwan's fears for his family – it was now that she realised the cruelty of rubbing her insistence on completing the job in his face. There was no sense in holding up her part of the bargain after what had befallen Second Southtown; it would be so easy to just return to her ship and sail away. She could've just walked out of the arrangement...

...but she couldn't, even if the money that she'd receive now began to seem tainted to her eyes. A deal's a deal, she remembered, having agreed to Kain's offer, and her decision had been made the moment she'd shaken his hand. And the fundamental rule of her occupation was that you stuck to your word, no matter what happened: there was no business without trustworthiness.

At that point, though, it seemed to Jenet that Kain was not the most trustworthy of men.

Over the howling wind, Dong Hwan's voice continued in its nonchalant tone. "I'm not stopping you – you do what you have to do. I make bad jokes to stave off my fears; you get Kain out of town to make a living. Just make sure that you can live with the consequences, otherwise... what's the point?"


A glowing projectile sailed across the length of the floor towards Kain, but a wave of his hand – and the corresponding sheet of energy that was thrown up – deflected it back at Rock. The crazed youth slipped aside, dodging it, and burst through the barrier with a vengeance, his fist smashing down like a sledgehammer. Kain raised his forearms to block it, sending up a shower of sparks.

Interesting. He repelled the attack forcefully with a blast of his own power, but Rock leapt away as the beam passed by harmlessly. In an instant, his hands were transformed into a blur as they struck repeatedly at their target, forming a deadly assault on his uncle. But Kain's hands moved with consummate elegance, his speed on par with Rock's as they parried every single blow. Denied, Rock could only seethe in rage as he pulled away, his violet aura radiating out to fill the space before his uncle's eyes. He drew his hands back over his head, gathering his power, and then he swept his hands out as he hurled another gigantic bolt of energy at Kain.

To Kain, his nephew resembled one of the bombs that had gone off earlier that evening – raw, unbridled power without any control behind it. There's no sense in attacking if you can't make it count, he thought, dodging the wild blast with ease. The wave travelled past him, tearing a huge chunk out of the wall on impact, but Rock had already rushed in recklessly for the next assault: he charged headlong, his entire body ablaze, and tried to floor Kain with a violent tackle.

Kain never lost his cool composure. The experienced fighter simply watched Rock race towards him, the blinding speed of the charge reduced to a crawl in his analytical mind, and stepped aside at the last instant. Rock overshot his mark, sliding past his target as he stretched out his arm in a swipe, but Kain simply shifted a little, watching the flaming claw drift past, and viciously plunged a spike of energy into his nephew's back.

The impact was sufficient to send Rock skidding across the length of the hall, his feet losing their purchase on the ground as he careered into the wall behind – and then he literally bounced off it as he reversed his momentum to power his next attack, unfazed by the hit that he had taken.

Kain knocked Rock away with a fierce thrust of his hand, deflecting the larger part of the attack's impetus away, but he still found himself reeling from the residual force that remained. He was suitably impressed. So, it looks like I've got him adequately riled up... In a move that defied logic, he toned down the power that he manifested, reducing it to little more than a violet sheen on the surface of his skin.

Rock failed to reciprocate, his eyes dulled with madness as the duelling bloods in his veins fought for release. Precipitated by the slightest provocation and sustained by the resonance that existed between those who possessed the Heinlein blood, the frenzy would continue unabated until either the source of his aggravation was suppressed – or he burnt himself out. For now, neither option was anywhere near realisation.

It didn't matter to Kain. In his view, life was all about taking calculated risks: he would never have kept a loose cannon in his ranks for an entire three years, only to release him onto the streets of Second Southtown, if he had thought otherwise. This was no different.

Let's see how long we'll last, Rock Howard. A cryptic smile appeared on his face – the cards were all in his hand, and all he had to do was to make the play.


Notes:

It's hard to capture the full gamut of emotions that the characters would feel given the various situations they're in: I tried, but frankly, it's hard to put such abstract things into words. Chances are that you (the readers) will have to fill in the blanks where I've failed. Until then, enjoy the ride... while it lasts.