Hitokiri Orange Road
10. Opening Moves
Kyosuke's feet struck the pavement in the same heavy rhythm as his chest. He moved with his best impression of a cop from an American TV drama, ducking in the alleyways between the mass produced homes and kneeling behind abandoned cars. A dark shape flickered at the corner of his eye. Kyosuke dove between a pair of houses.
The boy waited for the attacker to round the corner with his gun blazing. The chill cinderblock echoed his rapid heartbeat as he waited. No one came.
"No good, this is no good," the boy gasped. "What if that was Ayukawa?"
He peeked around the corner and saw the back of a schoolboy's uniform disappear down the block. Kyosuke looked at the distance that he had covered and despaired. His starting point was still in sight.
Kyosuke peeled his trembling fingers from the boxy pistol to fumble awkwardly for his water bottle. After a few tries, he managed to trap the bottle between his cast and ribs and unscrew it with his good hand. Several gulps of the tepid water helped to ease the tightness in his chest.
He pulled open the map. The in-bound region enclosed a rough oval area centered around the high school. Several symbols dotted the map: red daggers represented weapons, green crosses were medical items, and yellow symbols were miscellaneous equipment. The equipment densified toward the school and the park in front of the school.
Kyosuke snuck to the mouth of the alley and located himself on the map with a street sign. The park was five blocks in the direction that the other boy headed. The map could have been printed in a video game magazine, and if it were a game, the players would head toward the center to get the most power-ups. He reasoned that Ayukawa would head into the heart of the action. As long as he had known her, she never backed down from a fight. He picked a path to avoid the other boy.
He repacked and slung his bag over his left shoulder. The boy gulped several deep breaths before darting from the alley. The alley opened onto another narrow street of cookie-cutter houses. Through the first block, he took cover at every house, but that took too long, so he skipped one house and then two at a time. He rounded a corner and followed another street. A four lane intersection brought him to a dead stop. He flattened against a cinderblock wall in anticipation of an ambush.
The lights blinked in their fixed timing, unfazed by the stillness. The way seemed empty. Kyosuke pried a chunk of loose cinderblock from the wall and lobbed it into the road. The cinderblock clattered with a small sound in the wide street. He rushed across the street, doubled over his gun. The only sound was of his pounding feet.
Kyosuke scampered down another half of a block before the pop-pop of gunfire resounded through the streets. He ran toward an open gate in front of a house. Just inside of the threshold, a black uniformed student stood with an automatic in his trembling hands. The other boy was topped by curly red hair, and his bulging eyes scanned about wildly.
On the other side, Kyosuke had moved often to escape their neighbors' suspicion about their powers. When his family finally settled down, Komatsu and his large friend Hatta had been the first guys to become his friends. They had eaten together, laughed together, and torn the shrink wrap off of innumerable girly magazines together. Now, Komatsu stood before him with a pistol shaking uncontrollably in his hands.
"K-Komatsu," Kyosuke pleaded. "It's me, Kyosuke."
"W-who the hell are you?" Komatsu yelled.
Though Kyosuke's head realized that this was a different Komatsu, he still froze at the sight of his best friend aiming a gun at him. Kyosuke belatedly dove to the ground as a poorly aimed shot zipped over his head. He frantically scrambled back to his feet. Two more shots flew wide.
"Get him Hatta!" Komatsu screeched.
Gun fire rang out from above Kyosuke. A fat boy with thick square glasses stood in the second story of the house across the street. Another bullet whizzed past him from the red head's direction.
Kyosuke dropped his bag and rushed toward the open gate under Hatta's vantage point. Komatsu's gun barked out after him. A dry click sounded from the red-head's gun. Kyosuke turned around and pulled his trigger. His safety was on. He flicked it off with his cast.
The delay gave Komatsu enough time to catch up with him. The red-head abandoned the spent pistol and drew his survival knife. Kyosuke fired. A dark spot blossomed at Komatsu's belly, but his attacker's desperation persevered. Kyosuke slammed in the ground with Komatsu landing on top. Komatsu pinned Kyosuke's gun hand to the ground and stabbed downward with his knife.
Kyosuke desperately parried with his cast. He got a part of his attacker's arm with his cast. The knife tip stapled through his ear. The boy punched awkwardly and managed to jam his cast into Komatsu's eye, but the red head hung on. The knife descended again, but Kyosuke managed to deflect the blow to the pavement.
"Damn you, damn you," Komatsu grated between grunts. He was mottled purple. Sweat glistened on his forehead. "Hatta, help me! Hatta, get your ass down here!"
Komatsu's lips twisted into a cold smile as heavy steps pounded down the stairs. The front door flung open to reveal the fat student. Hatta gasped from the exertion. Kyosuke tossed and bucked with all of his strength as Hatta aimed.
A loud blast exploded. Kyosuke clenched his body at the expected impact. The bullet never struck. Instead, Komatsu stiffened; his mouth worked dumbly as dark blood welled at his forehead. Warm droplets splattered across Kyosuke's face. Hatta froze.
Kyosuke pulled his gun hand from Komatsu's slack grip. He used both hand to aim from his back and pulled the trigger again and again. Hatta convulsed as three impacts blossomed across the wide expanse of his chest. The heavy boy collapsed backwards through the open door.
Kyosuke levered Komatsu off and grimly took aim at Hatta. He hesitated for a moment until his former friend unsteadily raise his gun. Kyosuke fire until the pistol clicked dryly. One bullet tore through Hatta's nose. The next tore the glasses off of the moon-round face. His right eye disappear in a plume of gore as glass shrapnel and the twisted frame clattered to the ground. Hatta's head fell back onto the tile floor, flooding the foyer with blood.
"It's OK, it's OK," Kyosuke mumbled. He held his ear, which stung vaguely through the pain killers.
His stomach roiled at the smell of blood and spent gunpowder. Komatsu's blood anointed Kyosuke's brow and soiled shirt. The boy stumbled to the corner of the enclosed yard where the sour taste of bile flooded his mouth. Komatsu and Hatta were dead, and he had killed them.
"They weren't the same," Kyosuke argued. Each time he pushed away the images, they came back to him. "They tried to kill me, they tried to kill me," he repeated to himself.
His guts kicked with dry convulsions. He bent over, waiting to purge everything from inside of himself, but nothing came out.
Kyosuke unbent with some effort and retrieved his bag. The queasy feeling lingered, but he could move. He poured water over his face, wiped up as best as he could, and swallowed the remaining mouthful of tepid water. In front of the house, Komatsu's empty eyes stared blankly at the sky. The sight made the boy's skin crawl. Kyosuke draped his stained kerchief over the ruined face.
The corpse still held onto the survival knife. Kyosuke knelt to pull the knife from the body's slack fingers.
A/N: Revised thank to causeiambetta's tips. Thanks. 07-28-07.