Chapter 6: Forgotten And Furious And Ready For A Fight

The next day dawned bright and extremely hot. Rael groaned as he slowly got up off Giriko's floor where he'd spent the night on a blanket. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "How can it be so damn hot already? It's only 8 o'clock. Whew!"

Giriko had been snoring away relatively peacefully but at the sound of Rael's voice he sat bolt upright in bed and would have jumped right into a fighting stance if Kess hadn't stopped him. "Cool it, sport. It's just me."

"You're still here, huh?" Giriko mumbled as he rubbed his eyes and his muscles relaxed. "I thought you were just part of some weird dream."

Rael laughed loudly. "Sorry. 'Fraid I'm real. Guess I can see where you might think that though. You've always had weird dreams like that, ones that were hard to tell apart from reality, I mean."

Giriko's brown eyes were wide as he stared at the younger man in disbelief. "What the hell? How do you know that?" His voice cracked slightly as he shouted excitedly.

The man calling himself "Ace" smiled and winked at the human chainsaw. "I told you yesterday. We've met before, remember? I know all sorts of stuff about you, Giriko."

"That's impossible! If I'd ever met a crazy freak like you I think I'd remember! Besides somebody could have told you that thing about the dreams." He was breathing hard and looked more than a little unnerved even if he was doing his best to rationalize it all.

"Like who?" Rael shot back. "You don't have any family, do you? I'd also be willing to bet that even though you love to talk that isn't the sort of thing you usually tell people, is it? So how would I know that if I don't know you?" Rael was breathing hard now too, having let himself get caught up in his own excitement.

"I don't know!" Giriko shouted, his voice breaking even more obviously. "Hey, what so damn funny?"

Rael was laughing so hard that tears were welling up in his playful gray eyes. "You never grew outta that? Poor Giriko!" This was met with a pillow to the face as Giriko cleared his throat awkwardly. Fortunately for Rael the pillow had been the nearest thing to his brother's hand. If it had been something heavier or deadlier he would have undoubtedly thrown that.

Rael finally managed to stop laughing and wiped the tears from his eyes. Giriko had his back to him and appeared to be sulking. He hasn't changed a bit, Rael thought.

"So you're somebody that knew me growing up?" Giriko said thoughtfully after they'd been silent for a while.

"Given what I said that would seem like a fair assumption," Rael replied with a nod.

"Where are you from?" his brother asked seemingly out of nowhere.

"Pardon?"

"I said where are you from? You didn't get that stupid accent around here."

Rael stuck his tongue out at Giriko in a childish manner. Perhaps his brother wasn't the only one who'd never grown up completely. "It's not stupid. I'll have you know some people think it's sexy." Giriko snorted but Rael just ignored him. "I'm from New Jersey, you know in the USA."

"Then that settles it. I didn't know anybody from America when I was growing up. I barely even knew any English. We mostly just spoke Czech in Loew village." Giriko was grinning triumphantly at having finally bested the strange card player. Rael was about to answer when a funny look crossed Giriko's face as if he'd just thought of something. "You know, that card-blade thing does seem vaguely familiar though. Wonder why."

That did it! Something in Rael snapped and he began screaming at Giriko in Czech. "Giriko, you friggin' idiot, what the hell's wrong with you? How can you not know me? It's me, you moron! I'm Rael, your little brother!" Angry tears were streaming down his cheeks. "How come you can't recognize me?" he whispered, changing back into the English they'd been using. "I knew you right away."

The sound of Rael's voice yelling in their native tongue shocked Giriko as did hearing Rael's name, one he hadn't heard in years. This annoying young man was really his annoying little brother? This was insane! His amazement was quickly replaced by anger, however, as his attention shifted and he realized that he was being screamed at and insulted by this little punk.

"Of course you did," Giriko screamed back at him, his speech becoming a strange mixture of English and Czech. "I haven't changed but you, you're nothing like the scrawny kid that disappeared. Besides why would I have even thought of my brother as a possibility for your identity when everyone thought he was dead? You vanished when you were eight years old…"

"Ten. I ran away when I was ten."

"Whatever. Point is you were just a kid. Most people thought you'd been kidnapped or something and if you had run away, well no one thought you could survive on your own out there, let alone that you'd ever make it to America and pick up a stupid accent…" Giriko picked up a strand of Rael's shoulder length red-brown hair. "…and a lousy haircut," he muttered as he dropped the hair back onto Rael's shoulder. Now he was just trying to piss Rael off and it was working.

Kess ground his teeth together. "There's nothin' wrong with the way I talk or that I wear my hair a little long. Besides your hair's a disaster too."

"Why the hell did you run off anyway?" Giriko asked, ignoring his little brother's comments.

"Oh that's an easy one," Rael snarled, "because I had a father who knocked me around all the time, a mother who didn't give a shit, and an older brother who never had the guts to stand up for me and then bullied me himself into the bargain! Sometimes you were just as bad as our father! If I wanted to see my eleventh birthday I had to get away from the two of you!"

"Oh poor baby!" Giriko mocked. "Do you really think you're the only one who got smacked around by the old man? That you're the only one who suffered? He beat me too, you know!"

"What are you talkin' about? He hardly ever touched you! He liked you best!"

Giriko's voice became tremulous and cracked once again as he shouted, "What the hell would you know about it, boy? You weren't there anymore. Things changed. When you ran off like a coward he started in on me instead! We'd shared it before but now I had to go it alone! Don't act so pathetic! I suffered too!"

"Oh don't act like a damn martyr! You could have run away too," Rael said rolling his eyes.

"Only cowards run. I've never run from anything in my life."

"Well whatever. If you were stupid enough to stay there and suffer that ain't my fault. I just did what I had to."

"You're bitching and whining at me because I didn't keep you from getting hurt but you don't give a shit that your cowardice earned me just as much pain as you ever got? Get off your high horse, Rael! You're no better than me!" By this time Giriko was screaming in his face.

"Don't you dare try to blame me for what happened to you! I was just trying to…"

"I don't want to hear your excuses, boy! Besides if you hate me so much why the hell did waste your time trying to find me?"

"I wish I knew," Rael moaned and threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat. "Guess I was hopin' you'd changed. Maybe I figured that since you were the only thing I had left in the world that maybe you were alone and in the same boat. Maybe I figured you'd be lonely, that you'd be glad to see me. I don't know." He hung his head and sighed miserably.

"Guess you don't know as well as you think you do," Giriko said with a smug look.

"Yeah I forgot how much you like bein' a loner."

"Bet you're regretting being dumb enough to play your stupid guessing games with me."

"I sure as hell am!" Rael cried, his anger raging inside once more, as he hauled off and punched Giriko in the face as hard as he could.

Giriko staggered back a couple of steps but quickly regained his balance and stood, one leg raised, chains visible, ready for battle. His nose was dripping blood on the wood floor. This meant war! "You want to fight, little boy?"

"Oh yeah," Rael said. His voice was quiet but intense. "I've waited a long time for this. I was either gonna make up with you and be your friend or I was gonna kill you. Guess now I know which one it is." There was an ugly sneer on his face that was every bit as blood thirsty as the one on Giriko's. "Let's do this!"

"Hell yeah! It's been a while since I got to kill something!" The chains on his legs roared to life and he made a dash across the room towards Rael. He was out for blood!

"Stop!" Rael yelled, making a time-out signal with his hands. Giriko was so surprised that he stopped half way across the room and stared wide eyed at his gray eyed brother.

"What the hell? What's your problem? I thought you were going to fight me?"

"I just thought of somethin'. If I'm wanted for breaking parole and you… well you've gotta be wanted for somethin'," he said with a shrug, "then the last thing we wanna do is make a ton of noise and attract attention to ourselves. If I can find you because of rumors and what not, so can other people. Same goes for me. If people start talkin' about a guy who battles with cards then Lord Death's little minions can find me too."

"What's your point?" Giriko snarled impatiently. He was looking forward to kicking Rael's ass and now the damn punk was stalling.

"My point is that we can't fight here. We have to go someplace where we aren't goin' to attract attention, some place private."

"That's stupid," Giriko said rolling his eyes.

"No, it ain't. I don't want to go back to prison! I'm sure as hell not goin' back because of some dumb fight with you. I'm perfectly willing to fight you, in fact I'm totally psyched about it, but just not here."

Giriko thought for a moment. The kid did have a point. If Rael could find him then his enemies probably could too. Maybe attracting too much attention was a bad thing. "Alright, if that's what you want. I just want to gut you and then detach your head from your shoulders, but it's no fun if you don't fight back. If this is what it'll take to get you to fight me, then fine. I know just the place."