The Man With Red Eyes
Rinne ran through the alley which Sakura had likely taken. She was running into dangerous territory. He ran for a bit, looking for freshly scuffed dirt, or a startled cat, which would have meant Sakura had, just ran past. Around a corner, he caught a glimpse of a braid, and the blue shoes Sakura had been wearing.
This area was long past the help center. She had run directly into the epicentre of trouble. He knew right away the girl did not have her wits about her. She had gotten lost only two blocks off from her normal route yesterday, how did she ever expect to find her way home this way?
He stopped when he turned the corner and saw Sakura panting.
"You," he swallowed, trying to catch his own breath, "weren't trying to get away from me were you?"
She shook her head.
A loud 'BANG' shook the both of them. 'A gunshot?' Rinne thought. A cat ran away from the sound, but Sakura stood straight and started jogging towards the sound. She really didn't have any sense. He had no choice but to try to stop her.
"Stop! Now!" He called.
She kept running. He sprinted after her.
"Have you no sense woman? Have you never heard that sound before?"
He thought on it for a second. The closest she had likely come was the sound from TV. He caught up to her, tackling her to the ground, and sliding across the ground right to the heels of a man carrying a katana in his left hand.
"What are you doing? Let go of me," Sakura struggled.
Rinne held fast. He was more frozen than anything as the man turned to the pair. He smirked.
"Well, well. If it isn't Sabato's kid."
The voice of the man drew Sakura's eyes to him. Rinne shuffled away, but at that moment, the door the man had been guarding flung open.
A man with greying hair stepped out and into the light. He held a gun in his right hand and Sakura saw that his sweater's sleeve was spattered with a red substance that made her heart pound. The man rubbed his cheek where a bruise was forming.
"That bastard hit me. Can you believe it? I didn't plan on finishing him, but he'd wasted the money anyway, so he was really of no use to us," he seemed not to notice the two children in the road until the other man pointed them out.
"And how much did you two seee… Ah, the lost boy's showed up. Come to visit daddy, eh Rokudo?"
Sakura glanced briefly at Rinne, who glared at the man above them, but still held onto Sakura.
"C'mon! You got two minutes to get this place cleaned out," a man shouted from inside the room, as another man stepped out.
"Oh come now, Hiro, there's no need to be quite so harsh," the last strange man said. He wore a yukata, not the strangest thing in the world, but what was strange was his hair. Red as blood, and except for a slight waviness, very familiar to her. He opened his eyes, exposing the red orbs Sakura knew she had seen before.
The man caught sight of the children and gasped aloud. A smile, less devious than his partner's, curled his lips.
"Oh, what a joy, my little boy," he spoke, and the way he did so made any rational person realize how untrustworthy a person he was. His tone wasn't mocking, but it held that sort of air.
Rinne's muscles snapped back into motion after sitting frozen for too long. He leapt to his feet and pulled Sakura by the arm.
He didn't feel or hear anything as he ran. He rounded corner after corner they way he had run just minutes before.
A shrill "LOOK OUT!" finally snapped him from his state.
A knife flashed in front of his face. He halted his pace and looked behind him.
Strangely, none of the men from the building had chased him. The man with the throwing knives was the city worker. No, the man disguised as a worker. The man known as "Kumo Akuma."
Another blade flew past Rinne's face and dodging it turned out to be no better than being hit by it. The man closed the gap between Rinne and himself at a blinding speed. A short sword was pulled from the man's fluorescent vest.
In a flash of metal, red blood coloured the grey pavement.
Sakura screamed.
The sound of screeching metal, like nails on a chalkboard, filled the air.
The muscles of Rinne's arms quivered. He, however, remained unharmed. His muscles, in fact, strained against the katana blade with a blade of his own.
The man held his bleeding side with one hand, and pushed the blade with his other. Even against the man, both matched by one hand as Rinne held Sakura behind himself, the immature muscles of a sixteen-year-old were no match for a grown man with years of training to become feared by the entire underground. Especially considering how pissed off he was at being deemed a lookout for the day. Rinne's wrist strained awkwardly as his pocket knife was forced further and further back towards him.
He kicked out the man's leg from under him, only causing the trained man to become slightly unsteady, but allowing Rinne an opportunity to kick the katana from the man's hand.
The enraged man grabbed the boy by the hoodie front and punched him with his bloodied left hand. Rinne was sent flying, finally releasing Sakura. The force of the blow hadn't successfully knocked the boy out, but Rinne's vision blurred and his thoughts became likewise.
The man stood to his full height, and glared down at the boy.
"I don't care if you are that bastard's son, this here is where I keep my promise, boy."
"Or perhaps," he lifted his hand to show the blood from his side, "I'll just kill you, instead of just cutting those hands off."
Sakura had to act fast, she didn't know how, but she had to stop this man. She grabbed onto his ponytail as he leaned over to retrieve his blade. She pulled him to the ground as he snarled in pain, and she kicked the blade as far away as she could. He reached up and grabbed hold of her wrist, but she scratched his face with her nails. He trapped her elbow with his chin and shoulder and flipped over to force her to the ground. He pinned her with his own body.
She just glared as her arms were trapped now.
"Don't worry girl, I don't have a taste for children," he said, now standing above her.
He grabbed her by a pigtail. "Doesn't feel good eh? You should really think before grabbing people's hair like that, you little bitch."
He looked around for his katana, but noticed first that Rinne was nowhere in sight. He spun in a circle, seeing no hide or tail of the boy.
"Oh, kiddo?" He called mockingly. "You've got a long way to go to become a man, you know that? Leaving a helpless girl to old Naraku like this."
He laughed. "Though if I had my way you wouldn't have a chance to become a man to begin w-augh!" he cried out. A throwing knife, one of his own, had found it's way into his back, near to his spinal cord.
Behind him, the boy who had thrown the knife emerged from the midday shadow of a tall rundown apartment complex. His face was bruised, and his hand had been cut by his own knife in his fall. The man released the Sakura and frantically dug for the knife in his back.
Sirens were audible in the distance, not that any of the three heard them. Sakura ran towards Rinne the instant she got to her feet, but it was that second the man removed the blade from his spine and threw it right back at the girl. His aim was bad this time, but he still managed to catch her in the shoulder. She fell, holding her shoulder.
"Sakura-Mamiya!"
The blade clattered next to her. The wound wasn't deep but it hurt. Rinne dropped to her level.
"Stop right where you are! All of you!"
The two males turned towards the voice from the edge of the block. Sakura hurt too much to look. A young police officer stood there, gun drawn, and aimed directly at the older man. A spark of recognition narrowed the officer's eyes.
"Well if it isn't Naraku. Bested by a pair of twerps eh? Losing your touch as you age?"
Naraku grit his teeth. The whitish haired cop could speak for himself, as he wasn't much older that the teenagers crouched on the ground. Probably just out of high school, despite his odd hair colour.
"Kain…" The man growled.
Three police cars pulled up, cops jumping out with guns drawn.
Naraku growled, and threw a tiny ball, smoke flooding the street and masking him as he made his escape. Rinne and Sakura coughed as the smoke dissipated.
For some reason, the pair had been split up. Sakura in the back of an ambulance, and Rinne in a police car.
"What? Jail? Why?" Sakura squealed as Rinne was put into cuffs.
"From the looks of it," Kain looked at the bloodied ground, "we could charge him with assault, or attempted murder-"
"WHAT? He was defending himself and me-"
"Slow down," Kain told her, "I said we could charge him. Mostly we'll just be asking him questions."
That was something Sakura wanted too. She wanted to ask Rinne a lot of questions. She was sure she knew a few answers, but she needed confirmation. One of these which she believed she knew was why the name Sabato sounded to familiar. Compounded with 'Rokudo' made Rokudo Sabato, whose name she had heard on the news lately. And 'Rokudo' was what that man called Rinne. Considering the similarities also, the only explanation in Sakura's mid was that Rinne was the son of a crime boss.
Kain backed out of the way of one of the paramedics jumping into the ambulance. "And after you heal up a bit, we'll ask you some questions as well," Kain nodded and the ambulance doors shut.
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