Chapter 8:
A/N. I know I am the meanest sorry for the wait and so you don't have to wait any longer to FINALLY read the 8th chapter the full apology is after.
Disclaimer: I don't own but in my absence I have been working on acquiring the right ;P.
Well that's complete hogwash. Mikowa was definitely a better liar then he appeared at school, but the red clad girl could tell that he wasn't telling her the real story.
Standing outside the dinning hall, Ruri watched as Mikowa start to sweat. His fellow waiters were squirming under her powerful scowl, edging themselves away from the somewhat anti-social girl.
Pouting she turned herself around, walking towards the swinging door that lead back to her unfortunate situation. Once Mikowa-san and the other waiters had left the room oka-san had launched into her campaign for this ridiculous partnering.
Hearing the door swing back and forth Ruri straightened her shoulders, schooling her features into an un-amused slightly irritated mask. With the way she was actually feeling the mask came easily. Sitting down Ruri quietly ate the remainder of her meal; the bacon had been crunchy and salty perfectly off setting her pancakes and eggs with toast. Sipping at her Ice tea Ruri peeked over the rim. Her grandfather was sending her glances, silently asking where she had been with that meddling smile of his, and raising one of her brows. He obviously knew. So there was no point in saying it out loud.
She had just gone outside to get away from the current discussion, which was still going she saw as she shifted her attention to them.
"Ruri-chan is the best swimmer at her school, she once won a race with a sprained ankle. She's also quite the intellectual." Her mother was boasting, or should I say selling; her talents it seemed. Kami, why was this shit happening? If you want to torture me, please just make it quick, she thought. Or I will. I'm not ending up with someone I have to have prerequisites for. Shaking her head the dark haired girl dropped her glass back down onto the table.
Thump.
Unfortunately her placement when she had set down her cup had been uneven. The glass tipped, drenching both the table and her skirt. Glancing at the stain, Ruri could feel the liquid start to seep through the layers of cloth. The sticky tea felt itchy on her skin, letting out a small growl she grabbed for her napkin.
"Excuse me, Mikowa-kun would you be able to lend Ruri-pi some clothes. She managed to spill the entire contents of her drink onto herself." Musashi giggled, "Though the table too did suffer also." he said as an after thought, "Well they are both covered in tea, so would you be able to lend her some clothes and then escort her home. It seems she has reached the limit of her patience; and you know what happens after that." The old man said quietly chuckling while he rubbed the back of his head.
"Of course Musashi-san, and yes I do know." He said with a wide smirk. Ruri could become quite unreasonable when annoyed. The waiter walked back to their dinning room, snatching up a cleaning cloth from the cart beside the door before going to the table.
Having cleaned up the table and apologizing for the wait Shu motioned for Ruri to come with him. The dark aura surrounding the girl was darkening her surroundings.
Yeah that control wouldn't have lasted much longer, and she would have started breaking things. Bones, vases, cartilage tableware, Shu sighed at the close call. He really didn't feel like spending the rest of his holidays 'redecorating.'
"So you are a waiter here." Ruri pointed out, breaking the silence as they ascended the stairs.
"Yea, my mum owns this place." He said normally gesturing to the building around them.
"Oh," she said looking around again at the walls with their curved delicacy. His mother must be the odd one out in his family.
Father must be like Mikowa and his mother would be the sane one of the bunch. Ruri had no clue as to how wrong she was at that moment.
Reaching the top of the stairs Shu turned down a corridor off to the right of the stair landing. Following the teen Ruri found herself standing outside a white tall single space door. Opening said door Shu quickly rushed in and closed it.
Feeling her brow raise Ruri didn't know how to react. Placing her knuckles upon the doors wood she was about to knock when the intended rapping target swung out of reach, opening and showing a panting Mikowa-san.
"Come in," he said out of breath. "I just had to clean up a bit." He continued wiping his brow of perspiration.
Ruri walked forwards, past the panting strawberry headed boy.
The room was white walled and had a dark gray carpet with a slight blue tint. The room looked clean, and not the rushed clean but just normal it looks like this all the time clean. This had Ruri wondering, what did he have to hide?
The dark haired teen stood there in the middle of the room a large bed sitting to her right with white sheets and coverlet harshly pulled up to meet the pillows at its head. The room was sparsely decorated with a kind of cool indifference to it. Not anything like she had expected, there weren't walls of colour and photographs everywhere.
So the boy at school was a fake? That's how it seemed, Ruri thought observing the room.
Walking over to his draws Shu rummaged through the first draw of the window length unit. Pulling out a cream sweater and a pair of work out pants that ended at the knee. Turning back to his little guest, he found her standing in the middle of his room looking at the white walls like they were hiding something, concealing a grin he approached.
"Here," came a voice, Shu stood behind her, hand extended and a creamy soft looking fabric held within it. "I'll leave the room, so go ahead and change." He said after she took the sweater, "I need to go and tell mum that I'll be taking my long break now." With that he left.
Ruri held the knit fabric, holding it up to her body, it dwarfed her the hem sitting on her mid thigh. It was a cream coloured knit sweater; the neck was a short v and stopped just above her breasts. Despite its size the fabric clung to her hips and thighs, mushrooming over the edges.
There seemed to be no need for the pants. Turning toward the door Ruri's eye caught ahold of a book lying open under a pillow. Padding her way over to it Ruri lifted the pillow and picked up the book. The cover was teal and silver, opening the book to the front page Ruri found a picture of a women and a small boy with orange hair. Shu and his mother she guessed, he was smiling the same smile he openly spread about the school. Sitting back on the mattress Ruri looked closer, finger tracing the edge of his smile. Bemused by her actions the raven-haired girl flipped the page; another photo greeted her on this one, a note sliding down the slide of the page as well.
"Shu at age six, what was I thinking?" she read aloud, the boy in the photograph stood on the edge of a big imposing door, he was dressed in a pink shirt and dark blue jean shorts. Flipping through more pages Ruri took in that this book was a photo diary, a place to visually memorize the days gone by.
Of course a stalker would document life this way, she thought grimly continuing to flip through.
"WHAT THE HELL!" she exclaimed, shouting loudly at the picture in front of her.
Suddenly Shu rushes in, wondering what could have could have caused 'that' reaction, looking to her he saw the book in her hands, feeling the hairs on his neck spring to attention he carefully stepped closer to the girl, that held his collection in between her palms.
Ruri was staring gob smacked at the image of her bare faced friend shirtless and covered in sweat, the caption to this glossy graphic was, 'Just won second place in mixed martial arts comp. Raku sure didn't go easy on me in there' with a smiley face at the end with a cheeky cat curl to it's lips.
Ruri had never thought Shu was into that kind of thing, he seemed my like the kind who would obsess about manga and fly small airplanes around a park in the afternoon.
Taking another breath Raku spoke, "These beasts are at best are slovenly dogs that don't fight up front," another breathe this one stronger then the last shaky exhalation. " I propose a hard counter, take them where they have the least knowledge, they attacked us first with a bomb. It claimed lives so they will assume that neither this unit nor I can stand and fight. My father died easily and that's what they anticipate from the rest of us. I will show them they are wrong and that we can fight and will do so directly." Raku's voice rang through the phone line like lightening, striking and with a dangerous radiance to it, the line was still all Raku could hear was the hiss of the phone and Adelt' breathing.
The man had been rendered into shock, Raku; a boy he had known for most of his adult life, did not sound like the boy. He was his father without the jovial tone and cheeky smile, even through the phone Adelt knew that the dark haired young man, who sought for something other then the life he had been born into, would never arise from his morning place by his father. The Raku born of Rikiku' death was, in the simplest words. A general. Ready to take the helm and overwhelm his enemies.
Responding softly he said, "I will follow your lead."
Members of the cities gangs crowded to his house, assassins and people who Raku had never fully met before were now assembled, waiting for the raid on Te no Yami.
Raku stood by the door of the meeting hall, a place to address, and plan. Sliding the door to the side Raku strode into the room.
Looking out he could see every cutthroat in Tokyo milling about the room stop, they bowed, each one at varying heights showing their respect in this terrain of flesh and floor.
He could feel the way the area seemed to shake, waiting for his first words as a leader.
"They attacked us in our grief, and then fled when they did not attain victory. Their assault upon us has told me an important factor in their ring; the Te no Yami do not fight in close-quarter ranges, not unless they believe they have the upper hand and even then they have a path to retreat. We must corner them, cut off their surroundings, make sure that they are so frightened that they understand!" catching my breath I glanced to Chitoge and Ryuu, they were off to my side standing on the platform before the stairs.
Chitoges worried eyes bored their crystalline way into my mind, she knew that I was different and she was right as per usual.
I felt like I had lost the side of me that was temperate, I could not be that 'boy' any longer. A gentle heart could be exploited and broken. Raku promised himself that that side of him would return one day but not today. He just couldn't see it through the smog of burning emotion that was currently riding him.
Their forces rallied Raku sat upon the slanted roof of his house, the red tile glowing with the last bit of sun that day.
Below him stocks of warriors' sharpened blades and loaded guns. His plan to catch them was simple; the opposition had picked a remote hide out, farther away from the city center then a terrorist would go. Probably because they thought that it would be harder to find, but there lied their worst mistake. In a city you're surrounded by people and so surrounded by the long arm of the law, but it also gave you places to hide, blaring noise to cover any sounds your crew or a hostage would make. In a place off the beaten track, say the outskirts of town like these regular geniuses had decided on you'd have to be more careful because only a rookie criminal would set up in a place like that, and its where the cops look. Too many crime shows and no sense lead to these types of things.
Idiots.
The building was an abandoned warehouse, the metal walls where rust covered and torn to pieces, in a word-condemnable.
It had just gone dark, light fading and the night markets around the block created enough noise that the sound of their rocket launcher being fired could barely be heard over the routine ruckus of the markets. That was, until the missile connected with it target.
The building alight and Raku's forces stormed the wreckage.
Fire spread over the ground, blood and limbs strewn around.
Hearing a growl, he looked to his left, gun pointed at a middle-aged guy with dark brown hair that was blown to the right like a real kamikaze wave.
"Dude your Mohawk looks a little windswept." He said staring at the man, a smirk playing at his lips as he adjusted his hold of the semi automatic in his hand.
"Yeah some arse-hole decided to shoot at us with a rocket, I think that would..." clack. Suddenly the other mans tirade ended rather abruptly, as a bullet shot through his brain that is. Splattering parts of the organ across the concrete floor.
Smirking more then before Raku returned to his hunt.
"I guess I did, didn't I?" he muttered as he shot two more.
Ryuu stepped next to Raku, his sword sheathed as his side in favor of a 9mm nighthawk T4. The gun was a beauty and he couldn't shake the feeling he'd seen it before, but not on Ryuu.
Letting louse his curiosity he asked, "where'd you get that from?" he questioned pointing with his chin at his seconds gun.
"From one of the beehive members, they said it was their best gun. Apparently it is Claude-sans preferred semi-automatic." Ryuu replied with a quick smile as he rounded a corner, returning a second later as a volley of shots rained in from around said corner.
Planting his back against the half erect wall of the corridor Raku thought to himself. 'Of course you've seen it before it has been shooting at you almost everyday for the past two and a half years.' No wonder it was so familiar, but he had to admit it was a pretty splendid little gun.
"On the count of three," the teen said looking at the older man leaning next to him. "Three." Raku and Ryuu peaked around the wall, spying three more men –not a very versatile gang now was it? Two of them looked to be in there teens, maybe university age; one with copper hair and brown eyes wore a orange shirt with the words "suck it" written across it in English and the other had dyed white hair and molten orange eyes.
The other older man was standing before the others with a shorn off shotgun strapped to his back and an MK47 tucked up in his arms.
Hastily shuffling back again another barrage of bullets flew by, courtesy of the gun toting wannabe gangster.
'To risk firing at them and maybe getting shot, or something else.' His mind ran, folding in half as he strained to come up with a solution. Glancing the way they had come, Raku noticed a distinctly familiar silhouette marching to his and Ryuu's position. Her blonde hair was plaited and swayed as she approached.
"What are you doing here, you Gorilla women?" he half shouted in aspiration, Chitoges body was clad in a pair of khaki cargo pants, black long-sleeved shirt decorated with a bee and the words 'sting like me!' printed along the right arm in yellow lettering and combat boots as well as a bulletproof vest just completed the outfit, her ribbon tied tightly to the end of her braid.
"What I want, beansprout." She countered pulling the gun she'd borrowed from Claude out of her waistband; the T4 gleamed as she checked the barrel.
"It is good to see the young Master has such a brave love!" Ryuu exclaimed causing the two to erupt in a case of red faces.
Looking at the scared bodyguard the blonde halfer felt tired, this man had too much energy fixated on this non-essential tidbit she thought. Feeling a bead of sweat drip down her face she turned to Raku.
"So why aren't we advancing?" she asked.
His answer came a second later after he'd stuck out his hand past the barrier of the wall. Shots rang in pellets, the fire light lighting the turn.
"Ok," she mumbled, "well is there another way around?"
Shaking his head Raku explained their predicament, recounting their weapons numbers and formation.
Hearing him out Chitoge leant on the wall with them. The concrete wall wobbled, the grey mass shuddering. Turning Chitoge eyed the at first deceivingly secure divider, they must have been arranged to make up rooms by the looks of it, but it was shotty workmanship and would probably fall over without much effort eventually.
'Well that's an idea.' she thought tapping Raku and Ryuu on their shoulders, pointing around the corner with her hand they followed.
Chitoge lead them around through more corridors sliding her hand along the makeshift walls and clicking her tongue as she mapped out the possible diameter of the room that the wobbly wall and junction to death formed.
Survivors on there opposing side were getting slimmer and slimmer as the trailed their way alongside this wall. The men stumbled a bit to giddy and pleased for their most resent work as they joined up with the Chitoge Raku and Ryuu, soon all had assembled behind them as the wall ended short of a corner. A doorway? Yes, it seemed to be a doorway; chairs and TV's and all manor of ridiculous lounging's were set out.
Seeing that there were no men to kill a few of their leashed murderers happened to be quite put off by this. Their assemblage looked to each other, most wondering what they were doing in this room. That didn't last long though as Chitoge walked over to the far wall and 'gestured' to it –like the lady on The Wheel of Fortune would- that seemed clue enough for every member rammed into the forty metre slab.
And saw it came tumbling down.
The space this opened up let their company drive forwards. What they where greeted with brought a callous grin to Raku's face, "Here looks a man ready to piss his pants." Raku sneered, he steeped forwards nodding to the men he had placed around the boundary.
"I see my instructions weren't ignored, that is good." He said in a rather calm voice; made frightening by the freezing stare he held with the dim haired forty years old.
Shiki nodded along with his brother Ino and sister Karagi as they backed away from their prisoner.
"I said I wanted to have a chat, with you. So they weren't allowed to kill you." Raku muttered softly as he kneeled on his knee, sharing height with the man who took his father away from him.
The other man tried to shuffle back but the tightly woven ropes around his wrists and ankles may have limited his ability in doing so. The ebony haired young man slipped a small tanto from his belt the sharp blade easily slithered through the shoulder of his enemy's shirt and under his skin.
Do any of you know the trick where you take a pin and you squire the flesh on either side of your fingernail? Well think of that, just a bit deeper and burning its way through the muscles in you bicep –your still seeing the 'pin' but it's just out of reach.
Smiling Raku asked, "What's your name? I don't think I looked to hardly at that part of the file we have on you." His voice sweet and pleasant as the blade slithered another inch under his skin, he was screaming Raku noted, "Oh no it's just us, no need to shout." The tanto slide further.
"It's Takashi, Takashi Hamada." Takashi exclaimed, panting and whimpering.
"Oh then Hamada-san, I just need one more thing from you." Raku politely said his attitude was scaring the blonde. She knew that he would take his fathers worth from this Hamada's hide but she couldn't watch him advance this torture himself any more.
She felt tears spring to her eyes as Raku asked him his name, asked him why he had killed his father. The answer didn't help anyone.
"I wanted power." The man cried, "I just wanted his power." Hamada was a pitiable waste of space and none in this warehouse thought otherwise, he could die and she wouldn't care at all. But what she saw in Raku's face as she watched him drive the dagger deeper in.
This was killing him.
"Raku." She called, her voice small, again she tried.
Again.
Again.
Again, she cried for him to hear.
"RAKU?" she cried this time latching onto is arm as he went to plunge the knife even deeper into Hamada's other shoulder. Both biceps were bleeding profusely, Hamada knew every time that the probing blade would dig deeper, flaying the tendons; and he would tense his arms. The muscles would stress and bleed more, while the loss of some strained the ones that remained. He was in so much pain that the arsehole was hardly conscious.
"Raku, I know you have to do this," she cried into his shoulder the coward crumpled at her feet forgotten, "but not like this, d-don't torture yourself. I can see what it is doing to you! And I cant watch you die alongside this scumbag!" she cried her eyes spilling a lake.
Raku felt her cry; the moisture soaking his over shirt drew his attention outward. He had been blindly pressing for over half an hour now and he was drained. Of everything, no emotion would run through these dry streams.
Drawing the blade out Raku wiped it on Hamada's neck, the blood pooling in his collar before the teen re-deposited the tanto in its holder.
"Call Commissioner Tachibana, tell him we have a new rat for his maze." His tone was dull not amused or regret filled, just empty.
Chitoge led him outside hopping in a car Claude had arranged for them, it wouldn't do to have the boss be around when cops showed up, no matter if they would turn a blind eye in respect for an old friend and his son it was just better this way.
"Thank you." Raku said his eyes dipping as all the adrenaline wore off and his acts caught him. Chitoge shifted closer to him, arranging his head to sit in her lap just like on Christmas.
"You sure are the most sensible and yet overbearing gorilla girl ever." He said with a smile. He meant it cute so she decided she wouldn't kill him for those adjectives, which he had used to describe her.
"Uh huh." She replied absentmindedly stroking his hair as the car woke.
"I don't think I would have stopped and you knew that…" he paused, "you knew I wouldn't be me if, if I had done what I'd planned. Thank you. You know I kind of think I might actually love you?" he said oddly.
"I already knew that," she exclaimed shortly, huffing but her face was seven shades brighter for him having said it.
The end.
A/N. hey I am so unbelievably sorry for the longest wait EVER, I wont do it again. Sorry again because this is the last chapter, I will be making a follow up story for Shu and Ruri with Chitoge and Raku chapters as well, which will take off once I am settled into uni.
Thank you everyone who has liked or favorited/followed my story I really couldn't have done anything and probably wouldn't have spent my entire day writing this chapter if I hadn't seem every single email saying somebody faved, followed or reviewed my story (yes I keep them, to get me out of a funk or writers block which has been the last couple of months, so thank you all and if you haven't seen the new chapters of Nisekoi read them now!
P.s.
PM or review me a message if you want anything in particular to go into the new fic for shu/ruri raku/Chitoge.