First of all, I just wanna say thanks again! I come home completely brain-dead from exams and I'm mumbling in a cross between broken German and Spanish and when I open my inbox, what do I see? Reviews! Awesome, awesome reviews! So I say thanks for the encouragement and thoughts. Enjoy the new chapter, the intensity continues.
Disclaimer (I haven't done this in a few chapters): I do not own Gravitation or any of the characters portrayed. However, I have half a pretzel stick!
"You can call me Mao," the man said, bowing slightly. He was met with the demanded silence. He looked over the group again and again, his eyes darting back and forth.
K and Tohma shared a questioning look.
"Role call!" Mao belted out. "When I call your name, say 'present'!"
"Tohma Seguchi!"
"Present."
"Hiro Nakano!"
"Present."
"Shuichi Shindo!"
"Present."
"Suguru Fujisaki!"
"...pah-present."
"Claude K Winchester!"
"Present, and so is Sakano."
"Ryuichi Sakuma!"
"Here."
Without breaking expression, Mao lifted his gun and fired, a rewarding bullet lodging into Ryuichi's shoulder. He screeched out something incoherent and sunk to the floor, his leg with the injured knee stretched out in front of him. Ryuichi put a hand over the wound as the blood seeped through his shaking fingers.
"Why did you shoot him?!" Shuichi demanded, stomping his foot. Hiro put a hand on his friend's chest and pushed him back against the wall.
"Don't!" Hiro quietly insisted.
"I said say 'present' and he did not. There has to be repercussions for misbehavior." Mao said, giggling wildly and clapping his hands together.
"Now, Eiri Uesugi."
"Present." Yuki stared at the floor, his face was was turning purple and he was sweating profusely.
"All here," Mao sang exaggeratedly. "Now, time to pick an assistant, me thinks!"
"But before we start, any pleas?"
There was a hesitated silence.
"Can't you just leh... -hah– let us go?" Suguru pressed, trying to keep his eyes open and his voice still. He knew that his suggestion was useless.
"Of coarse not, silly boy!" Mao said, "If I did that, then I wouldn't have anybody to go with!"
"But we have families and lives that you are disturbing," K tried to reason.
"Think of how much you would be hurting them if you hurt us any further," Hiro added on.
They all kind of figured that this kind of begging was probably meaningless to somebody who was willing to shoot people at random and then laugh in their faces.
"Bullshit if I've ever heard a good load of bullshit!" Mao teased.
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a deck or cards.
"Count out eight," Mao demanded, throwing the deck of cards to Yuki, who didn't even make a move to catch them.
Tohma reached down and picked them up after they spread over the floor, he shuffled them back into a pile as quickly as he could, then counted out eight and handed that stack as well as the original stack back.
"Looks like somebody has their own personal bitch, Mr. Yuki. How precious. Especially that bitch being the head of a big and powerful company!" Mao sneered, cackling like it was rib-splitting.
He chucked the excess cards behind him, they scattered everywhere.
Taking one of the eight cards, he approached the group, waving his gun around to show his authority.
K had every intention of pouncing on Mao and ripping every muscle in his body out, but he stayed still as the gun pointed at him numerous times.
Mao stepped up to Yuki and jabbed the flat end of the card in Yuki's open wound. Yuki's eye twitched, but he kept himself quiet, he didn't dare make a noise. When the card was well soiled in blood, Mao laid it gently on the floor, then put the rest of the cards face down around it, he turned away so that the group could not see how he was shuffling them.
After a moment, he stepped back and motioned to the pile of cards, "Everybody gets one." He pointed as Suguru, "You will pick for them. Go over there."
Suguru glared at Mao and Hiro spoke up, "Please, can't somebody else pick? Suguru is hurt! He might be dying."
"Then he will die if he needs to, but he will be the one to pick the cards, now go or I shoot Tohma." Mao laughed, pointing the gun at Tohma's temple.
"Okay!" Suguru wailed, "Just don't shah- shoot him." Sucking in the best breath of air that he could, he got on his knees and dragged his weakened body to the cards. He fell onto his side and panted heavily.
"Pick for yourself," Mao said, "Then Tohma, then Yuki, then Shuichi, then K and we will see who goes after that."
Suguru nodded slightly, he picked up a card, it was a joker. He showed Mao. Then he picked up another one, three of hearts. Then an ace of spades. When it came to be Shuichi's turn, he pulled the card that was soaked in blood, the red queen.
"Ding ding! We have a winner!" Mao hollered, he danced in a circle, "Just the one I wanted!"
He went up to the group and linked arms with Shuichi, pulling him away from the wall. Shuichi made a surprised noise and stumbled when Mao yanked his arm. "What do I win?" Shuichi mumbled, he was very worried about what the prize could be.
"The journey of coarse! You are going on the journey with me!"
"What is the journey?" Hiro demanded.
"The next life," Mao said, the words standing isolated, making everybody cringe.
"No." Yuki sharply whispered. "Pick somebody else."
"Sorry, rules are rules." Mao chuckled, shrugging his shoulders.
"Please don't do this!" Shuichi pleaded as he began to cry and whimper, "You don't have to do this! Don't, please, don't."
"You can't change my mind, come on Shuichi, goodbye to the rest of you." Mao laughed.
Shuichi began to struggle, pulling away as hard as he could, but his thin figure was nothing compared to Mao's husky one.
"I said pick somebody else!" Yuki barked, pushing off the wall and storming up to them.
Mao put the gun to the side of Shuichi's head and held it there. "Uh-uh. Everybody is going to stop resisting me, now."
Yuki stopped in his tracks. This decision was too high for him. Go after Shuichi and risk him getting shot then and there, or let Shuichi be taken by Mao and shot there. He couldn't make himself move.
"Can't you reconsider?! Please." Hiro began to beg, tears springing to his eyes.
Mao lifted the gun and shot Hiro twice. Both in his midsection.
"Hiro!" Shuichi screeched, pulling on Mao even more.
Mao held Shuichi tight and smirked, "I told you to stop resisting."
Hiro's mouth fell open, he brushed his hands over the wounds before falling unconscious and crashing to the floor before anybody could catch him.
"Hiro, wake up!" Shuichi sobbed.
Mao pulled Shuichi out of the room, "You are all staying here until we are done. When you hear two gunshots, you are free to leave, but if you make a move before that, well then more of you will be dead before it is all done. Tah-tah, we will be in the room over." He reached back into the room and shot the phone on the wall.
"Get back here!" Yuki bellowed, he pounded on the door as Mao shut it.
K and Tohma held Yuki back, "No!" They both said, keeping him away from the exit, "You have to stay here or who knows who else will get it."
Yuki was grunting because he was breathing so hard, he was growling too, and there were tears running down his face, completely unnoticed by him. Tohma pulled him into an unbreakable hug and gently stroked his hair. Yuki didn't calm down, every few moments he would try to get away by jerking backwards, but Tohma shushed him and held him there. Held him safe in his brother-in-law's arms. That is how it had always been.
K sighed and kneeled down by Hiro, he took off his his first shirt and started to apply pressure to the heavily bleeding bullet holes. Hiro coughed, blood shooting forward and onto K's undershirt. He ignored the blood that was staining through, onto in stomach and held the clothe on the wound tight. This had to be over soon.
Lets gets this all straight.
Hiro has been shot twice in the midsection, Yuki has been shot in the side and arm, Shuichi has been taken away by Mao to go on the journey, Ryuichi has been shot in the knee and the shoulder, K is taking care of Hiro, Sakano is blacked out, Suguru has been shot in the stomach, Tohma is holding back Yuki, and we are all in magic cheese land!
What did you think? I'm just trying to help everybody keep up with all the characters.
Was it predictable that Shuichi was the one picked to be taken? Probably. Oh well.