((AUTHOR'S NOTES: Hrm... not a lot to say this time. Not everyone is what they seem, and their motives may not be what you think. And if anybody is wondering, yeah, Kurapika is being a bit of a jerk here, but frankly, Ryozha deserves it for being a complete moron))
The next few days passed with agonizing slowness for the bedridden Ryozha. He alternated restless sleep with fitful, easily-exhausted wakefulness. During his brief bouts of lucidity, he trawled the 'net relentlessly, scanning carefully for the slightest tidbit of information that would relate to his Hunt.
Leorio, Senritsu, or Kurapika kept a constant watch over him, rotating in shifts, although attacks were weirdly lacking. His time with Leorio… while he was awake, at least… was filled with laughter, swapping stories about Gon and Killua, outrageous tales about Ryozha's earlier hunts, and Leorio's stories of University life in Landinium. If Senritsu was there, much talk about music was had, and the little music-Hunter pored fascinatedly over Ryozha's weird player, while the latter just shrugged and repeated his vow to ask his Nen-Tech guy, Ping Lee, about it someday.
Kurapika's sessions, in the meantime, were filled with little but long, uncomfortable silences as each tried to pretend the other wasn't there. Finally, on the afternoon of the third day, Ryozha looked up from where he was prodding abstractedly at his laptop.
"Your family name is Kurata, right?" he announced abruptly.
Kurapika raised his eyes from his book and gave Ryozha a hooded glare. "Clan name, yes." he said, his voice carefully neutral.
Ryozha tilted his head to one side, looking at the other curiously. "So… the only Kuratas I can find anything much in the way of a record for are the legendary tribe of hidden warriors whose eyes turn red when they get excited."
Kurapika simply nodded.
Ryozha raised an eyebrow. "So..?" he asked eventually.
"So what?" Kurapika riposted calmly.
"Why is a warrior from one of the hidden tribes working as a mafia goon? Won't the rest of your clan disapprove?" Ryozha asked.
Kurapika glanced up as his eyes flashed, red faintly visible around the edges of the iris. "You presume too much, brat."
Ryozha, poking at his laptop and oblivious, responded "No I don't... I've seen your eyes turn colours, I think. It's hard to tell with the contacts you wear, but I could swear I've seen them go red when you got mad at me."
Belatedly, the Speed Hunter caught onto the massive increase of Nen-pressure and Kurapika's glare, and looked up, startled and almost frightened. At the look of near-fear on the younger boy's face, Kurapika restrained himself, jamming his nose into his book and grabbing ahold of his self control.
After a moment or two, when violence failed to ensue, Ryozha settled back a little from where he had started up, shoving himself to a half-sitting position and closed his eyes, his nen strengthening and smoothing. After a moment or two, he began to shift it around, using the training excercise much like a stress-ball, Nen flickering back and forth across his body, splitting into two to shove near-Kou-levels on his hands, then rejoining across his chest to slide down his body to split again down his legs, Nen-force making the sheets flutter.
After a moment, the strobing Nen-patterns caught Kurapika's attention, and he watched silently over the top of his book for a few minutes.
Eventually, he commented "You're better at that than I would have expected."
Ryozha jerked violently, Nen-light spasming randomly in all directions as his concentration shattered.
"Although your focus could use some work." Kurapika added drily, coming close to being amused in spite of himself.
Ryozha glanced up for a moment, then returned to contemplating his navel, shifting his Nen about once more, although with far less smoothness or speed now that he was splitting his focus.
Reassured by Kurapika being the one to initiate communication this time, Ryozha spoke again. "Seriously, though… what is someone like you doing in the mafia, if you're really from the Kurata tribe?"
Kurapika counted slowly to ten, then growled "Do you ever follow the body trafficking business?"
Ryozha blinked and looked up for a second, startled, as his Nen flared and flickered all over the place. "No… eeeeeww!" he exclaimed.
The Kurata gave him a stone-cold glare. "Treasure your innocence, brat."
Ryozha barely caught the comment, though, as he had already returned to doing Nen excercises.
After a moment, he abstractedly asked "Oh, hey… do you know of any Kurata artifacts that could go into a museum? I am a treasure-Hunter after all, and that would… be…"
His voice trailed off as Kurapika lurched to his feet, breathing heavily. "The only 'artifacts' I have to my name are a broken sword-pair and some clothing I outgrew when I was far younger than you."
With that, the Kurata swept out of the room, bashing the door open and furiously ordering Leorio in on guard duty, storming out before the other could protest or even respond.
Scratching his head, the premed Hunter wandered into the pokey little back room, where Ryozha was still staring in slack-jawed shock at the door Kurapika had just stomped through.
"… seriously, kid, what'd you say?" Leorio said after a minute.
Ryozha threw up his hands, ignoring the dirty look that Leorio gave him for moving around so much. "I DON'T KNOW!" he said.
"What, your short-term memory's that bad..?" Leorio responded, "Maybe you got whacked harder than I thought…"
"Oh, ha, ha." Ryozha snarked. "No, I mean I don't know what I said that pissed him off."
"Well, go back over what you said, whether you think it pissed him off or not."
"Uh… okay, well… I asked him why a Kurata warrior was working for the mafia… and I think I wondered why he wasn't getting in trouble with the rest of his clan. Oh, and I asked him again why he was working for the mafia, then I asked if he knew of any Kurata artifacts I could take to a museum… that's it, I think."
Leorio blew out a long, low whistle. "Kid, you couldn't have said more wrong things if you'd tried. That's just about every one of Kurapika's buttons, except maybe trying to hurt his friends. You see…" he started, then stopped when Senritsu tapped him on the shoulder with her flute.
"It's not your story to tell." she said quietly, and Leorio's shoulders sagged.
"You're probably right…" he said, "but…"
"Do you have any idea how annoying this is?" Ryozha demanded, cutting through whatever Leorio was going to say next.
"Probably about as annoying as constantly being interrupted…" Leorio grumbled, but was ignored.
"Everybody keeps saying that Kurapika is special, or something happened to him, or some such stupid thing, but nobody will ever tell me what it is! I don't want to make him mad on purpose, but I'm tired of having to tiptoe around every single bloody subject because I don't know what happened or why he's so mad all the time!" Ryozha exploded.
Senritsu gave him an appraising look. "I heard most of what you said to him… and… I'm sorry… but it really was incredibly stupid. I guess you couldn't know, though. Of course, I heard what he said to you, as well… you have all the hints you need to figure it out, if you're even a fraction as good as you think you are."
Ryozha stared blankly at Senritsu for a moment as she shoved Leorio bodily out of the room, then his gaze hardened as he managed to process what she had just said.
When Senritsu just returned his gaze placidly, he eventually muttered "You're serious."
She simply nodded, stepping into the room to retrieve his laptop and hand it to him. "Leorio was saying you needed something to occupy your mind, anyways- you shouldn't move around too much yet, but your head should be clear enough to do some thinking."
"But take it easy!" Leorio yelled through the door.
Ryozha and Senritsu exchanged a set of quick, lopsided grins, and she eased out the door.
"Shoulda just opened it quickly and knocked him onto his butt!" Ryozha called after her, and was rewarded by a quickly stifled giggle and an outraged "HEY!"
Then he propped his laptop open, staring it as it flickered through the booting screen. "All the hints I need, huh..?" he mused.
------
Six hours later, Leorio was slumped against the wall with his hands pressed to his ears when Thorny Rose barged in. "Right, that's the eighth customer that wanted to know who I was machinegunning to death in the backroom. Can't you get the brat to stop?"
Leorio wearily shook his head. "I don't think he can even hear me at this point. You can't even see his fingers!"
Rose snorted. "Your little friend with the flute had the right idea, she's long gone. Sheeze, this is like listening to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre part of that movie on a loop again."
The premed Hunter looked at her warily. "Again?"
Rose blinked, and actually started to blush. "Yeah... Light was a big fan of it, for some weird reason. He thought it was really exciting." she said offhandedly.
A blank stare, then Leorio cringed. "That was way, way, way too much information." he groaned.
"Hey, you asked. Where's blondie?" Rose said, unsubtly changing the subject.
"No idea. He was pretty angry when he left... I think Senritsu went to find him."
------
Perched on a rooftop overlooking the fog-shrouded Landinium streets, Kurapika glared out over the city, eyes glittering red in the dim light of the halo-ed streetlamps.
"You're getting far too good at finding me." he said coldly.
Senritsu eased out of the shadows behind him. "It's not hard when I know your heartbeat so well." she answered calmly. "You haven't found them yet, have you?"
"Am I really so transparent?"
"The rhythym of your heartbeat is one of anger and confusion; it's not hard to know why. Ryozha was insensitive and a little stupid, and the anger you were already feeling at knowing the Ryodan are here in town got all mixed up with that."
Kurapika turned just enough to glare at his small partner-in-crime. "You have no right..." he started heatedly, then put his forehead in his hand and sighed. "Now isn't a good time." he said after a minute.
"It never is." Senritsu observed. The two fell silent, staring out over the silent streets.
------
Ryozha woke up feeling very odd... even more lightheaded than had been usual for the last few days. He glanced around, then shuddered a little. He had forgotten to slide on his Zetsu-armband before falling asleep, so intent had he been on tracking tiny scraps of data across the aether.
After a moment or two of trying to pin down the elusive feeling of 'wrong', he blew out an annoyed breath, and twitched a little when he realized he could see it. His aura was writhing around him like a live thing, gold streaked lightly with red. Frowning, he rolled out of bed and grabbed his clothes, dragging them on as he slid out the door, hoping to avoid chastisement from Leorio.
This, as it turned out, would probably not be a problem. Leorio was passed out on the floor from heat exhaustion, the hallway so hot that the edges of the magazines littering the floor were curling and brown. The heat didn't last as Ryozha's aura thirstily drank in the molecular motion, the hallway chilling rapidly. Ryozha reached out in alarm for Leorio, then shrank back as the chill intensified, the premed Hunter's lips turning blue and his teeth beginning to chatter, his hand shaking enough to drop the celphone he still clutched.
Backing away rapidly, the Speed Hunter glanced around, trying to figure out what was going on. There hadn't been any open flames he could see, and the floorboards were… not exactly cool, but they lacked the blazing heat of something concealing an open inferno, merely radiating heat like pavement after a hot day. He stood up, then leaned on the wall, the motion too fast for his still-recovering sense of balance, the fact that his kinetic batter hadn't drained the floor into chilly emptiness driven out of his head by the spinning room.
Once he had steadied himself, he closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating hard. His Nen stabilized a little, coming a bit more under his conscious control, and he opened his eyes, the sharp glow of Gyo illuminating his surroundings.
Pale orange Nen-light infused the walls, every surface glowing gently as they pumped heat into the atmosphere. A brief frown, and Ryozha slipped back into the scrubby little back room that was, for the moment, 'his'. He came back out carrying his anik-cored jointed staff, swinging it loosely in one hand, and prowled out through the building like a hung-over panther.
-----
Kurapika sat listlessly on a ledge above the Eastward face of the Great Westlavra Clock, the Westlavra Palace itself stretching out behind him in an orgy of gothic architecture. Neither snappish words nor sullen glares had been enough to drive Senritsu off, and, given that one of the reasons for his initial tolerance for the little Music Hunter had been her ability to keep up with him, he hadn't been able to simply ditch her instead.
Some small part of him was considering mean-spiritedly waiting until the huge clock chimed the hour and escaping while Senritsu was disoriented and partially deafened- the massive bells on the tower were loud enough to be heard for nearly fifty miles around- when his phone buzzed.
Irritated, he pulled it out and snapped "Yes?"
Dead silence greeted him, aside from the faint sound of laboured breathing. Frowning, he looked at the face of his cel, to discover that the call originated from Leorio's phone, then the call dissolved in a wash of static.
"We should get back." Senritsu said from behind him. "I think Leorio was trying to say 'hot', although I'm not sure... but the parlour seems to be under attack."
Kurapika looked at her wordlessly for a second, then nodded, leaping down from the giant clocktower and bounding off through the rooftops of the palace.
-----
Ryozha had found the scruffy little tattoo parlour to be empty, save for Rose' unconscious body, and the unresponsive form of a goon whose name he didn't know- he had had some vague awareness of the man as a figure moving about the shop on errands of dubious import, but beyond that, no clue. And through it all, the pale orange Nen-light glowed with dim malevolence.
He huffed an annoyed breath and set to work dragging the other three occupants of Rose' shop outside, moving as quickly as he dared. In the few minutes this took, the temperature in his half-frozen room had risen to the roasting point, although his thirsty Kinetic Battery quickly took care of that.
Once Leorio, Rose, and the goon had been deposited outside as safely as he could make them, Ryozha sagged against a tree for a minute, spots dancing in front of his eyes from both the physical exertion and the concentration and force of will it took to keep his currently heat-devouring hatsu from adding hypothermia to their list of problems.
–Still weaker than I'd like, looks like.- he sighed to himself. –I recover from injury pretty quick, usually… guess I was either hurt worse than I thought, or I'm just more vulnerable to getting whacked over the head than other stuff… which would make sense, I guess, given how dependent my abilities are on being able to concentrate.-
Ryozha realized that his thoughts were wandering, dragged himself off the tree, and started to stalk around the building, his head throbbing in time with the psychedelic beats of Pink Floyd's 'Flaming'.
-Bleh… this is both helping and hindering my concentration simultaneously. That's vaguely zen… or at least ironic on some level, but at the moment, it's just annoying.- he thought.
Glancing around, he noticed that he had left the door open. With a frown, he moved over to shut it, fearing that the oxygen inflow could result in open flames. As he got closer, he found that the pale orange Nen really was flickering, and it wasn't simply a trick of his throbbing head. All around the opening, the Nen was shrinking back, shattering and peeling away like old paint as the air inside cooled.
Ryozha watched this for a moment or two, then turned on his heel to stalk around the building, tracing the strongest flow of Nen as it crumbled away. As he rounded the corner, a shadowed figure jerked back from holding his palms flat against the building as the flaking Nen reached him, cursing as some sort of bizarre aura-feedback shocked him.
As he did so, he moved more into the light, and the Speed Hunter frankly stared. Whoever this was, he looked like someone had taken a stereotypical 'hard biker', all burly physique, sunglasses, tattoos and long hair and beard... and stuffed him into the loudest Hawaiian shirt ever conceived of by man and a pair of ugly Bermuda shorts. And combat boots.
Said apparition was sucking his fingers and swearing indistinctly, an aura of the same pale orange Nen flickering around him like flames. Ryozha watched him wordlessly for a minute, leaning on his staff.
Then the tourist-biker registered his presence. "So, the brat shows himself!" he exclaimed, whirling to point dramatically.
"What is it with everybody calling me 'brat' lately, anyways?" Ryozha complained, remaining unmoving.
"Hah! Because y'are one, kid." the interloper laughed. "An' you're not getting away from ol' Thybault Vii."
"… Thybault?" Ryozha echoed a bit incredulously.
The putative Thybault glared. "Yeh." He made a winding-up motion, which Ryozha watched tiredly. "So, kid, ever dance with a demon in the misty moonlight?"
As he finished the quip, a fireball lanced out from his fingertips to explode spectacularly around the Speed Hunter. When it cleared, Ryozha hadn't even twitched. If anything, he looked bored.
The tourist-biker stared for a moment, then his brow furrowed as Ryozha muttered "That's it? Stupid movie quotes you can't even get right and mediocre fireball-tossing? Feh. I'm going back to bed."
And with that, he turned and stalked off. Inwardly, though, he was thinking hard.
-Lesse... from the kinetic jolt from that fireball, he wasn't trying to go full-on lethal; I'd have been slightly cooked, and it would've sucked if I'd been inhaling at that point, but it prolly wouldn't have killed me. Different bunch from arm-boy, then?-
His train of thought derailed slightly and he grabbed at his headphones as the wailing guitars of 'Through Fire and Flames' started revving up.
-Ow. Dragonforce not good for headaches.- he managed, wincing. -Good for speed, though. Three... Two... One...-
Then he whirled, uncoiling like a home run hitter shooting for the midfield stands in a Major League Baseball game, to clout the lunging Thybault upside the head with a hundred and twenty pounds of joint-locked, metal-cored staff.
The fire-wielder bounced once, landing on his feet with surprising agility for so stocky a man, and spat to the side.
"Not bad, brat." he said, one eye already starting to swell shut.
Thybault tossed another fireball. Ryozha simply stood there once more, looking vaguely disaffected. When the fire cleared this time, the Speed Hunter calmly swayed around the punch that Thybault threw after having used his fireball as cover to close in.
Unfortunately for Ryozha, the punch had been a feint, and he found himself in a heap three feet away, wheezing for breath. Grinding his teeth, he scissored his legs, whipping his staff around in a whistling arc to try and take the fireball hurler's feet out from under him. Thybault anticipated it and hopped just enough to get clear... only to have the abruptly-unlocked jointed staff flick an end upwards just enough to land a smashing hit across his ankles, landing him sprawling.
The blow to the fireball-hurler's legs was enough to slow his getting up, and Ryozha had enough time to recover a little, sucking in air as he fought to stabilize his breathing. By the time he had steadied a little, Thybault was up and circling, a little more warily. Ryozha shook his head gingerly, then, with a brief twitch of his whole body that cycled kinetic energy into the dial on his player, accelerated.
A blurred instant, and the Speed Hunter was past his opponent, who was looking the wrong direction in befuddled astonishment, and, a half-beat later, in pain, as the knee to the jaw Ryozha had administered on the way by registered. The touristic biker whirled, flame spraying from his fingertips, but Ryozha had already started moving again, another hard, straight line.
This pass left Thybault doubled over and clutching his head from the combination kick-to-the-stomach and staff-to-the-head that Ryozha had picked this time 'round. The fire-wielder braced himself for another hit, then blinked a bit as he realized it hadn't come before he could straighten up.
The Speed Hunter was leaning heavily on one wall, panting. –Not good. I'm in no shape for a long fight, and this guy's too tough for me to drop quickly.- A brief frown. –And all this open flame and hot pavement really aren't helping things… the air currents are too scrambled for me to pick up anything reliably with my motion sense. And of course, I completely suck at en.-
Thybault moved in carefully, wary of another sucker-punch and launching periodic fireballs. Ryozha did, in fact, lash out, but misjudged the distance and missed entirely. Realizing with a spurt of panic that he had let his enemy close in too tightly, the Speed Hunter launched himself forwards once more, a screaming blur leaving a wake of tortured air, his control faltering to the point that he wasn't even able to properly contain his own shockwaves.
Buffeted by the screaming winds, Thybault nevertheless made a picture-perfect judgement, a knee-height sweep taking Ryozha out of his rush and sending him tumbling across the narrow courtyard.
The Speed Hunter rolled limply to a halt, barely managing to absorb his own momentum before he snapped his own neck. His anik-cored sansetsukon was still clutched in his hands, and he whirled it in front of himself to try and stave off any attempts by Thybault to close while he scrabbled to his feet.
When the fireball-hurler closed from the left instead, Ryozha lunged, a frantic streak across the courtyard… only to slam himself into an unforgiving stone wall as he misjudged the distance in a haze of pain and nausea. His jointed staff tumbled from numb fingers, and his only shocked thought was –One more inch, and I would have shattered every bone in my arm!-
Then Thybault was there, hoisting the Speed Hunter by the front of his zippered hoodie. "Sorry kid. Demon wins."
Ryozha writhed, but his kicks were casually deflected and his kinetic battery still too drained to be of any use, having had no way to recharge it after his fight with the Nen-armed assassin, Sadaso.
His twists got steadily feebler as his internal temperature rose, a feverish flush appearing on his cheeks as Thybault's Nen ability slowly roasted him from the inside out. Ryozha's Kinetic Battery could blunt some of the effects, greedily swallowing up the heat generated, but the original Nen-fires could not be absorbed.
"You're not bad, kid." the touristic biker commented offhandedly, apparently oblivious to the fact that the target of his comments was sliding into unconsciousness. "But you rely way too much on that funky hatsu of yerk..!"
Whatever the rest of that thought was was destined to remain forever unrevealed, as a loop of chain descended out of the smoggy night and wrapped around his neck, jerking him off his feet and into an unyielding fist.
Kurapika dumped the attacker aside like a sack of garbage and hoisted Ryozha roughly off the ground, hesitating and arranging him to be carried a little more gently as he realized what Leorio would probably say if the Kurata's carelessness aggravated Ryozha's injuries.
A murmur of protest from the younger Hunter, then a shocked gasp. Kurapika turned just in time to see Thybault vanishing upwards into the mist, clutched in a huge claw of Nen.
Ryozha tried to say something, but mercifully passed out before he could do much more than mumble. Kurapika shrugged and hauled the younger boy inside.
------
The past few days had been busy for John 'Cutter' Graves. For one, he'd managed to cow one of his gangmembers into finding him a more comfortable throne.
From atop his frankly magnificent agglomeration of gold and plush, the ganglord looked out over his domain. The junk that had clogged the warehouse was still present, in some forms… but now, it was carefully arranged for clear firing lanes, chokepoints, and barricades. The interior walls glistened with military-grade armour plate, turning the unprepossessing warehouse into a hardened bunker, weapon ports ready to slide open at any given moment, commanding a field of fire that encompassed every angle around the building... including the roof. 'Cutter' wasn't about to dismiss the Special Air Service, after all. Nobody sane in Landinium did.
Overall, though, this was a good day. One of his boys... Jackie the Rat, actually -That one's turning out to be a valuable intelligence asset. Who knew?- passed through his mind briefly... had managed to track down Ripper Jack's surviving Boys. Somewhat to his surprise, they had agreed to a meet.
The talker for the Boys had introduced himself as Harry the Mouth. "Simple deal, guv... you beat Shy Tim here..." a wave of his hand at a gangly youth standing quietly behind him, while John Graves, holding his mace loosely in both hands, briefly thought -All these nicknames are becoming tiresome...- "an' you're the new Ripper Jack. You lose, he's th'new Rippah, and we're shut of you."
John Graves stood up, shouldered his mace, and gave 'Shy Tim' a small, humourless smile. Given that this smile was coming from a man holding what was clearly a metal-sheathed armbone with a half-molten glob of metal, complete with fingertip 'spikes' jutting out of it on the end, the effect was considerably less than he anticipated.
Shy Tim just nodded slightly and pulled out a balaclava, tying it around his face as a mask. Then he pulled out a heavy, high-tech gauntlet with blades jutting out of it and slid it on. A flex of the fingers, and the gauntlet roared with electricity for a moment, bright lightning arcing out to ground on the concrete floor of the warehouse-base before it stabilized into the occasional ominous crackle.
-Hmm. No aura. Small wonder he's called Shy Tim; either he's a naturally gifted stalker, or…- John Graves thought.
On cue, Shy Tim's aura blazed to life.
-I suppose it was too much to hope for that I wouldn't run afoul of any other Nen-wielders…- Graves started to think, then blinked as a wash of raw hatred tried to surge up his arm at the thought of an aura he recalled only dimly from his night of destroying members of the Nostrad famiglia.
Graves suppressed it sternly, focussing in on the matter at hand. –Smooth flow, fairly good control… he's either had some teaching, or is one of those rare 'naturals'.- came the thought. Graves didn't question where it came from, merely releasing his own aura.
The two stepped into a clear area of the warehouse as the two gangs, governed by whatever universal instinct oversees such matters, formed a loose 'fighting ring' around the two men. The Devil Hooligans were behaving appropriately to their name, hooting and hollering and pumping their fists in the air, but the Boys were strangely quiet. Apparently the choosing of a new Ripper Jack was a serious thing.
Graves noticed none of this, except peripherally. He was thinking carefully.
-If this one can be turned, he would be of excellent use to me; Ripper Jack's Boys value fighting strength above everything. If I prove myself decisively stronger, Timothy here will most likely follow without question.-
The mace came up to block a swing from the bladed gauntlet, and Graves grunted slightly as electricity sought to earth itself through his body.
-I could likely kill him in a matter of seconds, or simply maim him, but rendering him unable to fight for a long period would mean that I could not employ him in the coming battles.-
The gauntlet swung again, dazzling arcs of electricity reaching hungrily for Shy Tim's opponent, and Graves parried it calmly, wielding the super-dense mace with the kind of casual deftness you'd expect more from a master fencer than from someone wielding a heavy bludgeoning weapon.
Then he was on one knee, trying to figure out what just happened over the searing pain in his gut. Shy Tim's aura told the story, a truly impressive amount gathered around his left fist, the one that was gauntlet-free.
-So, the boy can think tactically as well.- Graves thought as he slid forwards under another gauntlest-strike that knocked chunks out of the concrete floor, diving between Shy Tim's legs to flick the mace at the small of Tim's back.
-Difficult to get used to this style of Nen-fighting; I (I?..) was trained in a style that focussed almost all Nen on one's weapon, to maximize striking power, moving aura to block only as needed, rather than the apparently more conventional method of keeping one's Nen constant over most of the body, to be shifted as needed. It's difficult for me to bring up the needed aura for defense without instinctively bringing that around my mace to lethal levels. Hmm...-
Tim lunged forwards as Graves went under him, dissipating most of the force of the casual-seeming flick of the mace and absorbing the rest with his Ren and a grunt as he did a forward handspring, spinning in midair to land facing Graves. Then he lunged forwards, blades trailing a blazing arc of electric fire.
Another casual dodge- both fighters were swaying arhythmically, intricate footwork making the battle look more like a dance as each sought an opening. Then Graves broke away, clearing some distance between them. Tim tried to close, and Graves gave a ryu-enhanced stomp on the floor angled towards Shy Tim, a radial blast of dust and concrete bits that had the 'audience' members on that side of the impromptu ring shouting in protest and pain.
Tim ducked his head slightly to avoid the worst of the blast, and Graves chose that moment to strike. The gauntlet was up, blocking, which Graves had counted on as he brought his mace around in a smashing swing, snapping the two topmost long blades off. Somewhat to his surprise, Tim didn't even blink, merely adjusting his stance slightly for a short jab that managed a shallow cut along Graves' forearm.
-Not bad. However, his reach has been diminished somewhat.-
Shy Tim circled, his guard closed and his eyes narrowed. As far as Graves could tell from reading body language, the boy (-Boy? He can't be much more than six or seven years younger than me!- flashed through 'Cutter's' mind) was aware that he was outmatched, although uncertain by how much.
There was another inconclusive exchange of blows, one of the protruding fingertip-spikes tearing a brief line of blood across Tim's cheekbone as Graves stabbed it forwards in an bizarre lunge, which the mace seemed rather less than suited for. There were murmurs from around the circle, several of the more melee-oriented Boys trying to figure out Graves' style, which, while true to proper cudgel-wielding for the most part, incorporated moves which a mace should be theoretically incapable of, or at least useless at doing. Somehow, though, he remained dangerous throughout.
Then Shy Tim broke away in turn, sighed, and touched a control on his rather thick, metallic belt. Abruptly, the gauntlet glowed brilliantly with power, electricity in a constant cascade off the fist of the gauntlet like a very, very localized lightning storm.
-If that's battery-powered, as the belt control seems to indicate, he's only got a few minutes of this. It opens up an opportunity for myself, though.-
Shy Tim leapt, trailing a lethal curtain of electricity. Graves stepped into the lunge, catching the blazing gauntlet with the handle of his mace and shoving hard, growling as he was shocked, but continuing to push.
Tim went down, pushed off-balance by Graves' aggressive 'block', and tried to slap out in a standard breakfall... but Graves kept on him, maintaining a powerful shove against Tim's arm all the way down, pinning it inwards. Shy Tim strained, but Graves had leverage and weight on him, and the gauntlet-wielder found himself hoist by his own petard as his electrified gauntlet was forced against his own chest.
Shy Tim convulsed a few times, then went still as Graves released pressure against his arm, a final twitch splaying him out spread-eagled. Graves rested the head of his mace lightly against the hollow of Tim's throat on the off-chance that he was shamming, and glanced around at the massed gangs.
"Anyone else want to give this a try?" he questioned.
A few murmurs... most of them about him not even being out of breath, in all honesty... went up, but no-one stepped forwards.
Harry the Mouth pushed his way free of the crowd once more and shook his head. "Not th'way it works, guv. Our lad Tim here was the next claimant f'r Rippah. Means he beat th'lot o' us at one point or another; you beat him, yer th'new Ripper Jack, an' no-one else gets a go. 'Tis genuine that simple." He paused. "So, word is tha' y'ere th'lad to talk to for finding a good scrum. You're th'Rippah, get y'self to thinkin' about a bloody fight."
John Graves walked forwards slowly, hands clasped behind his back and tapping himself lightly on the back of the neck with his mace-head in a pensive fashion. The 'fighting ring' cleared nervously out of his way as he strode calmly up the short dais to park himself on his throne.
After a moment, he cleared his throat. "Rippers? How'd you like a go at the Number-men?"
------
The mist curled lazily, lent an eldricht glow by the moonlight, as Jackie the Rat disappeared into it. Andrej, Zenji's high-fashion enforcer, watched him go, his lip curling slightly.
"He's nearly as dishevelled as you, Zeechik." the fashion-plate said. "Although he seems to carry less vermin."
Andrej's bug-wielding partner faded into view.
"I don't like that one." he said. "He's playing too many sides. If he gets caught..."
Zeechik let the sentence trail off, and Andrej pointedly ignored him, producing a mobile phone.
"It's time for us to check in, anyways." he said.
Zeechik nodded and produced a similar phone.
"What's taken you idiots so long?" Zenji's voice roared from the other end the instant the connection was established.
"This is the same time we always check in." Zeechik said neutrally. Andrej merely sniffed.
"So, you have the information?" Zenji demanded. At an affirmative from his men, he smiled wickedly. "Good. I want Nostrad's men crushed, you hear me? If we can break his power in Landinium, he loses the whole of Grabradagne. And without Grabradagne, he'll lose his foothold on the continent entirely. The only port of importance that he has assets in otherwise is in Nordslaand, and getting to the rest of the continent from there would require passage through Bederusse. And Bederusse is my territory."
He paused, and his two enforcers made affirmative sorts of noises into their phones. "Get rid of those piddling local gangs first. I don't care if the streets run red with blood and the city is levelled, nobody who isn't part of my group has license to operate in that city. No-one, you understand me? NO ONE!"
Another pause, this one punctuated by heavy breathing. "I'm smuggling men and arms into the city over the course of the next few weeks. Based on what we know about Nostrad's operations there, Landinium doesn't have enough men loyal to him to withstand a tenth of what I'm sending you. You two, I want murdering every gang member you can find... and track down that blonde girl who held a knife to my throat. She's there; I want her head."
A final affirmative murmur, and Zenji broke connection abruptly. The two mafiosi exchanged glances.
"It would appear that it is time to go do some murder." Andrej commented.
The two faded into the night, ready to begin their gruesome work.