Grimnir: The "I'm gonna kick ass" section was meant to come out of nowhere, as strange as that may sound. Sure, we've seen that he's an angry person, (who the hell punches down a tree?) and we've seen him practicing, but we never got to see him cut loose. I didn't do an entirely great job describing it, since fight scenes are actually one of my weaker areas of writing, but what better way to demonstrate his ability than a need to fight after so long without doing so?

I didn't want to use it as a flashback, though the thought was there, because that's not really the KS style; I'm trying to stick to that as much as I can.

Without going into too much detail, since I have a chapter to write, Slae'im has a lot of battles under his belt. He's been training since he could walk, and fighting since the age of five. He averaged about 100 fights a year, and never lost any; his pursuit of power was blinding, always driving him to greater heights until his final victory. He's changed in the months since then, but no fighter (who can still fight) is ever content to rest upon their laurels. There's always another opponent, always someone who's left to be beaten. Learning more styles means having more opportunities to win and prove his power.

Maybe the song references (and changes to those songs) are over the top. I'll be honest, for a couple chapters I was abusing lyrics and lyric changes to reach above my "minimum word count" so that I wouldn't just be posting a short chapter. I might do it again at some point, but for now you're safe.

Thanks for the compliment, and I might take you up on that offer if I'm ever over in that direction.

Cannibal Corpse is a great band, man.

...with that taken care of, let's get this trainwreck moving.

It wasn't the smart thing to do, the right thing to do, or even remotely close to either of them. By all rights I should have apologized to Miki, explained why I did it, and tell her that I'd try not to let it happen again...but I have to stay true to who I am.

I have to be "me," because there's nobody else who can fill that role. Furthermore, I don't really want to change. The number of differences that have appeared since I arrived at Yamaku are startling, and at times they seem flat-out frightening.

That's why I left. I'm not sure where I went, and I'll need to go back eventually, but for now...for now, I'm taking this motorcycle for all that it's got. The wind is shooting past me, here on the open road, and for these precious few hours I can be free from everything except the asphalt that lies ahead.

I think I understand Mondo a little bit better now, too. This sort of running away from your problems, the kind that doesn't harm your body the way that narcotics or alcohol can do, is relaxing. It's fun. Hell, it'd probably turn into an addiction.

"Way out on the highway..." I mumble, unable to hear myself, "...heavy metal thunder."

There's nobody here, nobody coming either way, and so I decide to push the motorcycle farther that I have been; at this point, it feels like the pedal is about to fall off. For all I know, it might be close.

"I was born free, born to be wild, the wildest wild child. I was born a dead man, and a fighter I became, death and glory are one and the same. I will leave this world as I was born: bloody, screaming, and from the void torn. I was born to rule, and I'll be king, the champion fighter of the ring."

It's no song, I'm just making poetry up to distract myself.

Part of me wants to just drive off the side of the bridge coming up, screaming for death at four hundred miles per hour, so that I won't actually have to deal with the consequences of what happened earlier this morning. I want to cry out, to be utterly destroyed in a spectacular explosion of metal and flesh, so that the world can pass me by and remember me only as the man who could not be beaten.

The fact that I pass over the bridge in two seconds just proves that I'm a coward.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I drop my speed until it's at the upper limit of what's legal. After moving like I was, this feels like a snail's pace.

It's time to begin the journey back.

Three in the morning. That's the time I get back.

Three in the goddamned morning.

The bike's quiet, now, as I pull into the driveway. This is her house, right? I should say I'm sorry. I should...yeah. Sorry.

Like that would ever make a difference after what I pulled. Hopefully she'll forgive me.

I open the door, and something's wrong. This isn't Miki's house. This doesn't smell like Miki's house.

Fuck. Oh, fuck. Of all the places to subconsciously come back to...why here?

I'm silent, closing the door and creeping downstairs. No sound, no sign for anyone paying attention that something should be wrong.

Nothing except the fact that my younger (middle) brother is wide awake, playing some video game or another.

They turn around, and the non-sound that happens next is more alarming than if they'd yelled.

"Hey, James."

"Hey."

"You here for a while? Mom and dad don't come down here anymore, so it's just us."

"I can't. There's stuff I need to do."

"What, like what happened yesterday?"

Well, he got me on that one. "No. It's sort of related, but it's different."

"Whatever you gotta do, man, then do it. That's what you taught me."

"Yeah."

"You want to stay for a few minutes, though? We haven't seen you in a long time, and the way I figured it..."

He really is smarter than I've ever given him credit for. He knows I didn't really intend to come back, that he probably shouldn't be talking to me right now, that this is likely to be the last time I see him until he leaves this house.

"Yeah, sure. I can do that." I sit down, pick up a controller, and start playing the game with him. Unsurprisingly, I start winning.

Still, it's nice to be able to do something like this again. I'm enjoying it.

"How's school?"

"A drag." He answers. "I'm like you, I coast by on tests. It's too easy."

I refrain from telling him that that's not a good idea for his future, since I ended up needing to go to a school for the disabled. Not a whole lot of good can come from hypocrisy, either.

He wins a match, but I win two or three for every time he can beat me. He's gotten better since we last played.

"Anything exciting happen?"

"When word got out that you were gone, a couple kids thought they could pick on me. I got suspended for breaking one guy's jaw and another's arm."

"That's my brother." I smirk. "Anything else?"

"Em's moved out, started some pre-university, pre-high school program. A boarding school kinda deal, you know?"

I know. I'm at a boarding school, so something would definitely be wrong if I didn't.

"So it's just the two of you...what goes on here?"

"Mom works twelve hours a day, dad does about the same, and they manage it so that they're never home when the other is. It's just me and Jake, most of the time."

That's no way for them to live.

"How is he?"

"He misses you. I won't tell him you were here. He keeps saying that he hopes you'll be proud of him when you come back. He's started picking fights in school, and he wins, but...it's not the same, you know?"

"Yeah."

I set the controller down. It's around nine, at this point, and I can tell that the only reason he's still awake is because I'm here.

"Get some sleep, man."

"Not yet."

I look to him, a little confused.

"I'm not dumb, I know that you're not coming back. I just...there's a lot I want to say, and not a lot of time to say it, so I'll sum it up as best I can."

I nod.

"You've been a great big brother. You're a good man. Everything I know, I learned from you or because of you. You proved all of the things you ever told me with your actions, and I am who I am because you've always been there for me. I...I'll miss you."

I can see, and feel, just how hard those last three words were for him.

We clasp hands and pull at one another, until his head is over my shoulder and vice versa.

"This is not the end. This is a goodbye, yes, but it's not the end." I tell him. "If you ever need anything, go to the Crazy Diamonds and tell them that I sent you. Mondo will do what he can."

We separate, and I raise my fist in preparation to punch. So does he. Our fists smash together, and both of us know that we won't be seeing each other again for a long, long time. If I don't leave soon, though, then I won't be able to leave at all...so I bow my head in respect and start walking away. "Before I go, though...for what it's worth, you were a great little brother. Give 'em hell, kid."

With that, I'm up the stairs and out the door and gone into the mid-morning buzz of the city.

I celebrate my "return" with a variety of people, in several different places. Moriya's pizza shop, the mall, a couple arcades and other restaurants around the city. It's a good day to be me, a good day to be alive. I know I'm just delaying the inevitable, keeping myself from returning to Miki's house, but for now I'm okay with that.

Every so often, I'll spot a picture of myself hanging up on a restaurant's wall. Moriya has a couple, there's a cafe downtown with one, and a couple others are just sort of "there" in the city. Each place that has one, I was a regular visitor or a good friend to someone related.

Each photo is from a victory, and each pose is different. In one, I'm just a little kid raising his fist in celebration. In another, it's the corna. A third shows a full-body profile shot with an outstretched, bloody fist and a serious expression on my face, my other fist pulled close to my gut.

In a way, they make me sick. I didn't ask for publicity, I just enjoyed fighting.

It's a big city for the region, but still a small town when compared to places like Tokyo. Even if I don't like it a whole lot, I don't think it'd be right of me to strip away their version of a claim to fame.

Finally, after a long day and a half of running, I'm back. It's Miki's mother, thankfully, who opens the door.

"Don't tell me, tell her." She says when I open my mouth. "And remember what I told you about her acting strong."

I nod. If there's a time to be serious, this is it, regardless of whatever else I might be feeling.

I walk up the hall to her room as quietly as I can, and I manage fairly well given that I don't know which floorboards are creaky yet.

I close the door behind me so that, if nothing else, her mother won't hear the storm that might happen.

"I'm sorry."

She looks at me angrily, and for a second I'm taken aback at the vehemence in her eyes. "Are you really?"

"Yes and no."

There's confusion and sadness, now, with the anger.

"I was doing something that I thought was right. I didn't...I wouldn't have known it would make you that upset." My words come slowly, but just connected enough that it's clear the silences between sentences aren't meant to be too long. "I hadn't fought in so long, I felt like I needed to, and the opportunity presented itself and I just-"

I stop myself, realizing that I'm speaking a little too quickly now. If I rush the words, they won't make any sense.

"Mondo's been a friend of mine since before he and his brother founded the Crazy Diamonds." Daiya was run over by an eighteen-wheeler a couple years back. I helped Mondo carry his casket at the funeral. "I never joined, but when I called him and he said he was getting ready to fight...I was in. That's what my friendship with him is, it's an all-or-nothing kind of deal. I'd shove him out of the way of a bullet, I'd catch a grenade for him."

I'd trust him with my brother's life. I'd trust him with Miki's life.

"But he's a..."

"Hoodlum? Gangster? Good-for-nothing drain on society? The world could learn a lot from him, Miki. He's rough, he's tougher than leather, but he's a man of honor and he keeps his word. He does what he can for his friends. He fights a lot, but it's to protect what he sees as his. He's loud, he doesn't really know how to deal with girls, but he's a good guy."

It's not like I'm expecting her to have a total change of heart, but I want her to understand. I want her to know why I did what I did; that's how I'm apologizing.

"What I want to know, though...on the way here, when I asked you about being from here, you didn't seem surprised to know I was from here. Did we know each other?"

"I knew you. You...scared me. You only cared about who you were going to beat up next, what prize you'd win. You just wanted to cause as much pain and suffering as you could."

She's not correctly interpreting my actions from back then, but I don't know that anyone would unless I explained it to them.

"And now?"

"You still scare me sometimes. That first night was terrifying, and seeing what you did on the news..."

"You were the one throwing rocks at me."

She ignores my words. "After seeing that, it was like you hadn't changed at all. Like nothing we'd done meant anything, and you'd gone back to fighting at the first opportunity."

In a way, that was true. I'd been the one to call Mondo.

"You do mean something to me, though. What we've done, us, together...I don't know exactly what it can be called, but I care about you. Beyond anything else, I want you to be happy. If I need to leave now, and not talk to you again, not even when we get back to Yamaku, I will."

The final offer. She looks like she's tempted, but I can tell that she's not seriously considering it. Now that she understands why I did what I did, she isn't angry...or isn't as angry...that I did it.

"Do as you will." She finally says.

I cup her face in my hands and kiss her.