dear_mun | Loveless #9

[Obviously. Why else would anyone have two fighters? It's a pity violence does not thrill you, as it does him. But judging from your utter lack of enthusiasm, Seimei may have to break you in again. That should be fun~]

My fingers are permanently none of your business. But thanks for asking!

[He somehow manages to make a perfectly sunny, upbeat tone of voice convey "the second-best revenge for being tortured is getting completely over it." You can probably guess what he thinks would be perfect, but he doesn't have permission for that. Yet.

Seemingly very much as an afterthought, Nisei adds,]

You should be nice to me. I'm keeping track of Ritsuka, now.

[Soubi's body goes very rigid. His limbs are taut as bow-strings. His eyes go wide and frightened as if someone has a death-grip on his heart. For a few moments he's silent, and when he does speak it's in a strangled growl.]

If you touch a hair on Ritsuka's ears, I will tear your head from your body.

[Nisei is less than intimidated by your threat. To put it mildly.]

That's the first thing you worry about? I'm not interested in his ears, you pervert. Seimei still has plans for him.

[Oh, it was beyond rewarding to watch you get that scared. But Nisei has something else in mind.]

I've been watching Ritsuka since you left. What would you be willing to do, in exchange for information on him?

[It's devious, but politely open-ended. If you make it worth his while, maybe he'll feed your sad attachment to a sacrifice who is no longer yours.]

[Soubi's body does not relax in the slightest, but suddenly he's striding forward toward Nisei, and he doesn't look as if he's about to stop. Nisei will have to step back into the wall if he doesn't want to get run down.]

[Nisei sidesteps you before you get within arm's length of him. If you turn to try to run into him again, he'll sidestep again, in the same direction, so that now most of the room is at his back.]

Are we dancing, or do you really have no concept of personal space? System expansion.

[If after taking three steps away from you, you haven't taken the hint, he says,]

Shield.

[This produces a transparent magical barrier.]

[Soubi stops his threatening march forward as soon as the shield blazes in front of him. His jaw is set in a tense and angry line.]

It's shameful of you to fight without the orders of your Sacrifice, you know. Are you so afraid of me that you will break the rules of engagement?

[Standing behind his shield, without a hint of shame.]

I don't really care what you consider inappropriate. I'm on a longer leash than you are. And if you threaten me again, you'll get more than a wall in your face.

[Nisei slips both hands into the pockets of his jacket and tries not to pace. A part of him yearns to turn this into a fight, but he's keeping it more or less under control, for now. With an almost patronizing look, like there's something wrong with you for trying to attack him (again, honestly, like he'd let you), Nisei dissolves the barrier.

If you make him feel unsafe again, he will hurt you.]

Edited 2012-09-18 01:25 (UTC)

[Soubi finds that he really does wish Nisei would level a real attack at him, if only to feel the bite of a well-placed spell. Not that Nisei's spell casting is what it should be: it feels quick and sloppy compared to what he can do. He is so much better; so why did Seimei pick Nisei instead of him? Does the name of Beloved mean more if you're born with it? Soubi can't imagine Seimei caring one way or another if his Fighter really is Beloved. His eyes are narrow slits as he watches Nisei pace.]

Did Seimei tell you to watch Ritsuka?

[He wouldn't normally ask; if Seimei was in the room he wouldn't ask at all. But he can't shake the horrible clawing feeling at the back of his neck that this monster is spying on Ritsuka.]

[Soubi doesn't have to understand, and he isn't going to justify his place to a blank. You're going to put your head down and let your sacrifice's will be your law again, because that's what you do. In the meantime ... for a self-described perfect weapon, it's interesting how resentful and covertly rebellious you can be.

Nisei thinks, privately, that Soubi is as insecure as he is judgmental. That's not entirely your fault, because you were trained to think like that. But it is your fault. Because you think whatever you're supposed to think; whatever someone else put in your head and ordered you to keep, and that level of submission makes his skin crawl.

He smiles at your question, though, because he can guess where your thoughts are going. What to say?]

Oh, I'm not supervising a twelve year old in my spare time without orders. As pretty as Ritsuka is when he suffers, I only said that to wind you up. First introductions are so awkward! ♥

[And by 'awkward,' in this case, he means devastating.]

[Nisei's jab at Ritsuka makes Soubi's blood boil; it's a physical pain that comes with any threat to his master. Ritsuka may have started out as his master only under Seimei's orders... but he is so, so much more than that now. Soubi doesn't know how to rationalize this with himself and has no desire to try. The point is, at the moment, that Nisei is stalking Ritsuka under Seimei's orders. He takes a step forward again, his weight unconsciously settling on his back foot as if he's readying himself for a battle.]

What do you plan to do to him?

[It's a very devious question, in a way: Soubi is unable to ask even the most minor details about Seimei's plans, for a Sacrifice's agenda is not for a Fighter to know or to worry about. But Nisei is a Fighter too. His plans are not off-limits, and they are more likely than not plans given to him by Seimei.]

[That gets you a handsome smile, no less duplicitous than his others, but with more warmth behind it. Nisei can see through you, enough to know that this isn't appropriate. You should be asking because Seimei's plans, forbidden or not, are precious to you. But he saw you struggle through utter paralysis, when you thought he was threatening Ritsuka. When Nisei speaks, his voice is a dark whisper.]

Let go, Soubi. He's not your concern anymore.

[It's not a suggestion. He's loaded those few simple words with all the gentleness that Seimei never directs at Soubi, anymore. They're calm and final; without judgment. You might deny it, but you can't fight this. Reality's over here. Your owner? Is the one who can call you to his side with a word, no matter what your feelings are. He's the one you left that brat crying in a graveyard, in order to serve.]

[If Seimei or Ritsuka had said those words to him, in that tone, Soubi would have practically melted. He craves such kind and reassuring words, though he never expects to hear them.

But said from the mouth of Nisei, the words ignite a firestorm in his brain. The horrible feeling that he might be right makes him want to scream. There are no words he can say to Nisei, no words that are not laden with harsh and deadly magic. He runs at Nisei and strikes, his fist catching the other Fighter under the ribs and rocketing upwards. The force will send Nisei sailing backwards to the wall if he doesn't catch himself.]

[Fuck. Nisei clamps his teeth together to keep from cursing aloud as his body crumples slightly around the punch. His right foot and left arm go back, instinctively, to keep his balance, and he shifts his weight forward onto his toes. The second he stops skidding backwards, his other foot kicks you squarely in the middle of your solar plexus. Nisei is small and bony, but he knows how to fight when he has to. He moves again, putting more distance between you so that you can't corner him easily.]

Animal, [he spits, his voice full of disdain.] Look at yourself, attacking because you don't like what you hear. Is it any wonder Seimei doesn't want you around Ritsuka?

[Nisei's expression smooths.]

I think you need to be put back in your place.

[A great blast of dark energy whips into existence and fills the room, twisting sinuously past Nisei to wrap sharp, spine covered restraints around you. They're heavy and as restless as living things, like snakes twisting against each other. The energy clamps on to you, vise-like, over your clothes, but it shreds the bandages around your neck to coil against the name. You can barely breathe. But it's not lack of oxygen that's making the lights look faint.]

[This is what he's been waiting for. Soubi's posture changes as the energy whips around him; his tense body seems almost to relax into the familiar feeling of physical beating. It's a release, and not just because of his training. He's angry, and scared, and he needs something to fight against. Something tangible. His lips form a tight smile and his eyes narrow cruelly.]

A poor spell-user you make. Your insults mean nothing to me. I know what I am.

[Animal? That sounds about right. Not a pet, but an animal in the keeping of his master. A trained guard dog. A butterfly in his master's hands, sitting still for him to do as he will, but a vicious dog to all outside of their relationship. He knows his place. But Nisei -]

You, on the other hand. You need to learn your place. You lack manners.

[Soubi's words aren't nice, but he's still not fighting. The coils around him do not permit him to move, and he won't fight using magic. His insults don't need to be laced with magic to hurt Nisei, or to make himself feel stronger. The lashing movement of the restraints has ripped away his bandages, but without an expanded Fighter field, they can do little to his Beloved marking. Unless Soubi is directly using magic the name is, for all intents and purposes, just a scar. It will not bleed until Soubi fights. And he will not fight. He hasn't been ordered to. Instead, he waits for the next blow. Eagerly.]

[Nisei's spells are an extension of himself. It's so weird to feel the tension leave you, through them. People struggle when they're about to be hurt. But your training makes you want what you shouldn't, be what you shouldn't, around someone that you'd know better than to try and take comfort from, if you had any judgment at all. But ... he'll play. He doesn't bother answering you, because this isn't a conversation anymore. Power glitters in Nisei's eyes, contracting his pupils.

The bonds tighten without warning. Spines start threading themselves through your flesh, shallowly. It's an invasive feeling. A few lift themselves out again, and the sharp edge leaves a bloody cut in their wake. The rest merely threaten to. Nisei could retract them, if he wanted. Or he can rip them straight out, like tearing a piercing. It would be messy, apart from being excruciatingly painful.

The only untouched part of you is your name, and several inches of neck on either side of it. Seimei wouldn't want that collar altered. But the rest of Soubi is fair game. And actually, Nisei has something even more inventive in mind. Something ... he's been saving to try. The delivery mechanism isn't quite natural yet. It has to be injected subcutaneously.

Overhead, the lights flicker again, and then go very dim. Nisei arches an eyebrow and then walks right up to you. Nothing as contemptible as Soubi has a right to be so overgrown. He grabs two fistfuls of shirt and forces you to the ground, his magic a lead weight against your martyred refusal.]

Now. 'My name is BELOVED.' Say it.

[Soubi's skin yields easily against the sharp spines, which are far more solid than anyone watching this one-sided spell battle might expect. They penetrate his skin, quite deeply in some spots on his upper arms and legs. He feels warm, familiar blood coating the area around every cut, feels the bite all around him like the embrace of an old, cruel lover. As Nisei pushes him to the ground, predatory and dominating, some of the thorns dig deeper into him.

He doesn't take his eyes off of Nisei. He doesn't say a word. He only chuckles, darkly. I know so much more than you do. I am so much stronger. Your attacks can never mean anything in the face of my power. And Soubi believes it.]

[Bodies are only meat, when you get right down to it. They all feel about the same from the skin in - squishy, yielding, wet. Open a live one anywhere, and blood wells up to meet you. In this case, not very much, because the spines are almost exactly as big as the holes. But it's no contest. Even the weakest thorns can tear the toughest flesh. As long as they don't break anything vital ... Nisei clenches his teeth slightly as he pulls a few strands out of your upper leg and threads them back in, keeping them well away from the major, bifucating artery. If he could, he'd run you right through. Feel your heart struggle to function for the few, agonizing seconds it would take to fail, with literal holes punched through its thin walls. He's certain that 'if' is really a 'when.' Someday. If he hasn't come up with a more sadistic end for you by then. And, of course, if Seimei doesn't decide to kill you himself. That would be beautiful.

Nisei looks down at you for a long moment and lets you laugh; lets you earn the full measure of what he might do with your arrogant scorn. You have a way of playing right into your tormenter's hands, don't you, Soubi? Of putting yourself in a position where you'll be hurt, and blamed for what you suffer. It's absurd, watching you pretend to be unafraid and in control. One little slip of anger in Nisei's spells right now, and you'd never see your precious, pathetic Ritsuka again. But Nisei isn't angry. He's enjoying this; having you at his mercy, under his hands. He touches his fingers to the edge of the scars on your neck and the intact flesh between them, lightly dragging skin against skin in a caress. It's gentle, deliberate, cruelly knowing - I can touch you, and there isn't anything you can do about it. Disgusting traitor that you are ... maybe I'm the only one who will. He forgoes the sing-song, and the illusion that he's playing. Soulless eyes regard you as he says,]

"You're more vulnerable than you know."

[You can feel the pressure build relentlessly for a milisecond before your skin breaks. Nisei turns his head to one side just as two strands rip themselves simultaneously out of your forehead, leaving long, mocking cuts like a second set of eyebrows. Blood hits his face and jacket and glistens there. Nisei leaves it exactly where it fell. As the cuts start oozing into your eyes, they're joined by others - a deep one in your left shoulder, many shallowly cris-crossing your ribs, a long one on your right inner thigh that leaves blood running down your leg and pooling at the knee, where it touches ground, where your pant leg is soaking through. The attack is faster than thought, almost, as if you split open at invisible seams. The sharp thorns Nisei tore free are not a fraction of what's still embedded in your body, but as the light gutters and goes out, your pain receptors start to really protest in unison. He can feel them sounding the alarm, even as soft, useless scabs develop around the first spines that went in.]

[Pain is no more than another signal, Soubi thinks. No more than the body telling the mind in long, silent shouts that something is going wrong. Pain in and of itself cannot hurt him, cannot kill him, and cannot separate him from his master. But it has its uses. He thinks back to Ritsu-sensei's lessons, which have echoed in his mind endlessly and hatefully for years: Pain is a signal to caution. It is a shield, if you know how to use it. You must grit your teeth and bear it.

Yes, the lesson still holds true, though he has turned from the man who said it. Pain is his shield, and it must be felt to be used. He exhales in a sigh. He opens his mind to the attack, opens his body so that his muscles relax even further, his chest unfolding and his stomach going flat. He embraces and welcomes the pain. It lances through him everywhere, hot and wet and urging him to be afraid. But he will not be afraid.

His eyes gaze calmly back up at Nisei, the arrogant, ignorant, false Fighter. Watch him reach a hand out and touch him, stinging and utterly gentle, even as the thorns he created ravish his body. His skin is so sensitive that he can feel where every molecule of Nisei's fingers lie, on the tough scar tissue and on the soft, unmarred skin between the scars. It makes a pattern of Nisei's skin, like his own brand is burning itself into Nisei's fingers. Hurting him for daring to touch the sacred mark that is not his. He blinks as blood spatters from his head onto Nisei's face, drips hot onto his eyelids and makes his eyes water slightly.

Another exhale, from the diaphragm. His skin screams in pain and runs with blood; even drawing the breath drives the thorns further and it is an agony. His heart beats slowly like that of an athlete before a marathon. Pain is a shield. Pain is a shield. His eyes are locked on Nisei's.]

I am as vulnerable as I wish to be.

[The words come out slightly choked, and his throat convulses against Nisei's fingers. But he speaks calmly. This impotent Fighter can do no harm to him unless he allows it, no matter how hard he may try.]

[You poor fool. Nisei can see you have yourself convinced, but that's not enough to sway him. Not when your lies are resting on belief and desperation and air. Being a blank suits you in so many ways, doesn't it? You don't belong. You shouldn't exist. You've overwritten yourself so many times it's amazing you still have open space to write on.

Nisei drags his hand single-mindedly over your scars, eyes narrowed to slits, feeling the echoes of Seimei's knife through his fingers, and his own name charged, aching, and thrumming with magic. This is what you're controlled with. This is what you're obedient to. He'd hate you no matter who you were, for bearing these marks, but he hates you, specifically, for who you are. And yet ... he can afford to touch this. Though your reproach lances out at him, that can't hurt him. The pain he feels is temporary, and better still, utterly under his control. He could stop at any point and he doesn't, because he was born with the name that Seimei impressed on you; born with more of a right to identify himself as BELOVED than you will ever have.

You had no business daring to pretend that you were anything more than a replacement - a nameless fighter with enough power behind your spells to be worth claiming. That's all you have going for you, in practical terms. But he won't punish you for your impersonation, because you wouldn't be alive when he finished. There's too much anger there. Pulling out any of it would pull out all of it, and no. For all your brave talk about only being as vulnerable as you want to be, you like it when other people make choices for you. And continuing to exist isn't a burden he's going to relieve you of today. He'd rather watch you pine, and hurt, and avoid looking at your own face every time you pass a mirror. Such deep self-loathing under your defensive pride, but every time he's said as much, the fact that he can see it shocks you. It shouldn't. You're not hiding as well as you used to.]

I can't tell you how funny it is to watch you insist that you're fine while you bleed out on the floor. [Deadpan.] Everything you think you can keep to yourself, everything you're biting back for the sake of your nonexistent dignity ... I don't need it.

[Nisei takes his hand off your neck to mop the blood out of your eyes, and then pulls his hand back and hits you hard against the side of your head, an openhanded slap that rings out painfully inside your ear and makes the room sway dizzily. He leans down to your level, putting his head close enough to your other ear that his hair brushes against your shoulder, and says in a perfectly audible undertone,]

You're the lowest of the low, Soubi. You couldn't be there for Ritsuka, and your real master is disgusted with you. You know what you're good for? Sating my hunger for pain. You provoked this, and I know why. It's because you deserve this. Pretending you're better than me gives you a comfort you don't get to reach for. It wasn't ever okay, but now you've really run out of excuses. You're not the perfect anything. Not anymore. So don't.

[You couldn't be there for Ritsuka. The words echo in his ears, high-pitched and sparking in the aftermath of the slap Nisei planted against his face. He feels his body growing hot with the pain and tries to swallow the fear that is welling inside of his stomach. Not fear for himself - fear for Ritsuka. If he doesn't protect Ritsuka, Ritsuka is in danger from forces he doesn't yet understand. Seimei will protect his body, but his mind? Seimei... can no longer protect Ritsuka's feelings. Not now that he's revealed his true nature.

He feels himself gagging, his stomach bucking inside of him, the thorns strangling him from all sides. His eyes slide shut: he must stay calm, he must fight it. He must protect Ritsuka.

You couldn't be there for Ritsuka.

Soubi's Fighter Field expands suddenly outward, cradled deep within his body so that it explodes from him in a blast. The thorns seer and shake; there is static in Soubi's ears and ozone on his tongue. He cannot fight, not physically. He has not been ordered to fight. But he can use his own magic to defend himself. He can rebuff Nisei, just a bit. He must protect himself. To protect Ritsuka.]

Loveless #9

That's <i>more than understandable</i>.

Oh Nisei, what have you done?

Pissed Soubi off royally? That happens about once a conversation, doesn't it?

At least once, yep!

=D

Ooooh, I'm so sorry, Nisei. Not that you don't deserve it and all, but still. Soubi's so scary.

From Nisei's POV, Soubi is a dangerous lunatic. But (as usual) he provoked this.

To be fair, Soubi isn't actually very sane. It's just that... Nisei isn't quite sane either.

You're so diplomatic.

Aaand look who's late to tagging. I'm sorry; my schedule this week is so weird.

Aah, offline life. Don't worry about it!

<3! Luckily today is Yom Kippur and I don't fast.

Convenient. ♥

Hiiii there! I'm so sorry I disappeared. I hope we can keep going with this thread, as I love it.

Took me longer to get to this than I hoped, but sure!

Aaaand it took me a while too, again. >_> But I like this thread so much!

:)

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