[[continued from "A gesture of good faith"]]

“The Yak was personal,” she observed once they had returned to the car. Pavel’s leather gloves were tugged back onto his raw hands, and it must have stung like fuck, but she didn’t offer to drive. He’d only have shrugged her off, and she wasn’t in the mood to placate his sensibilities. Her brother hadn’t liked Zixin; his various nuances of stony expression were as open to her as a book. For her own part Sofia was as yet undecided. Zixin had displayed an open amount of ruthless relish for the way he neatly snared the Yakuza he’d made Pavel beat into the ground. She might have admired it but for the fact she did not appreciate also being on the receiving end of his machinations.

“I wish you hadn’t seen that,” he said, but she only shrugged and pulled her wallet into her lap. It was late, but she had some arrangements to make.

Zixin Kao wasn’t the only one who could make a statement of deed.

Focused. That was Zixin as he was positioned in front of an enormous mirror that ran the length and height the wall. Rubberized mats spread black across the floor. Lights beat down from overhead and a row of all sorts of weapons were stored on racks off to the side.

His arm had that pleasant burn of exertion. Sweat slicked his skin, dripped around the collar of an ironically sweat-wicking athletic shirt open down the back. His hair was wet with more. Behind eyes intense on the mirror in front of him and the image of his own reflection embedded within, he was counting.

Ninety-nine. One hundred.

With a flourish, the nunchuck’s tirade swirled, and the second wooden handle came to rest in the fold of his armpit.

That was just the warmup for his wrist. He steadied his breath and switched hands. There were many more rounds to go. After a moment, the counting began fresh. It took less than two minutes, but the blood was fresh in his fingers afterward.

The warmup was the same all his life. Each weapon had its own sequence. Had its own basic movements. Its own steady heartbeat. Nunchucks moved in eight directions: four cardinal and four diagonal. They were fucking fun, but nothing as grandiose as what was coming up next.

After the workout that planted the roots of muscle memory a little deeper in his brain, he moved on to the next weapon. He brought his own, being very particular of the belongings. There were three swords propped along with the mound of his gym bag. The Jian was a straight, double-edged sword mainly used for stabbing. He moved this aside to grasp the other style. The mian dao was a single-edged sword, slightly curved, and mainly used for cutting. In the west, most assumed it was the Japanese katana despite the fact they looked completely different to his trained eye, but the former was brought to fame by twentieth century martial arts movies. Zixin brought two dao blades with him today.

He returned to the open floor, this time with his back facing the mirror, and began to warm up smooth and slow.

"To be slow is to be smooth; and to be smooth is to be fast."

It quickly became apparent that he had mastered the art. He ended the sequence with a backflip twist and a sweep of the blade outward, gripped from the long handle behind.

Breathing hard, he left the floor to grab a towel and water bottle. Next was body-training.

Hour one: crushed.
Hour two was up next.

Stalking a boy was always fun, specially when she wanted to get caught.  And Stalking Cruz Vega had been a blast.  But then any time Roza spent with Esper was grand.  Even times like now where Esper just watched her play the violin and make pretty lights dance on the air.

Her gossamer dress in all red fluttered in the air with the black velvety cloak flowing around her, almost a reverse little red riding hood to go with the fantastical tune she played.  The dance was her own, but one Roza had derived from the dances of their ancestors, and the lights accompanied were those of twinkling ballerinas like Rasputin might have conjured back in his day -- for surely he was like her.

Esper and Roza had taunted Cruz with stickers of skulls around the boys life.  And they had waged a war with another poster on the bulletin boards.  Of course they were digital and theirs were stickers but it was amusing none-the-less.  They expected Cruz to find them on his light day.  He was too busy otherwise, so they didn't even attempt to follow him.  Besides it was good to work the crowd, though her mother had forbidden Roza from picking any pockets.  She sat in her tent watching as Roza fiddled away on her violin.  Roza laughed with her own human and smiled at those passing buy and dropping coin in her case.  

How long were they going to have to wait?

[[Continued from Meeting of Families]]

Eido walked for a long time, her hand wrapped around the warm weight of the wallet in her jacket pocket. She meant to pause long enough to contact her brother, to find him, but shame and guilt overburdened the intention so that she only kept moving. The seams of her felt like they might split if she stopped. She was homesick for a world barred to her. Estranged from every duty she had dedicated her life to. Kōta urged her to live; but live for what? Even if she accepted the right, whenever she considered the possibility it fluttered her stomach with nausea. Because it always followed her, that shadow: what she was. What she would always be.

Shadows pooled around the yellow light spilled from streetlamps. Eido walked fast, like she had somewhere to be, chin tucked into her collar. A frown furrowed her brow. Her eyes kept low, breath tight in her chest.

Without her, Kōta could have started again long before now. It was her own lack of Custody legitimacy that forced them to live in shadows. A thousand streets like this. A thousand slums. Six years of exile.

He ought to be the one living.

Shame led her in circles. Eido kept walking.

She realised she was being followed with an abrupt prickle of awareness, when the residential areas began to recede to old warehouses. For a moment she was genuinely afraid it was the stranger from the bar, but the fear fizzled as irrational almost as quickly. She was neighbourhoods away by now. And whatever followed mirrored her footsteps too perfectly.

It wasn’t human.

Her eyes swept low, seeking somewhere with advantage. The options were poor, and when she realised the foolishness of her mistake her heart began to beat insistent and loud in her ears; more so for how silent she realised everything was around her. Without a pause she opted for the darkness of an alley mouth. Obscured for a few precious seconds, she slipped the jacket from her shoulders, unsheathed the small knife, and took a breath. It was unlikely to be enough to save her. But maybe that was fate. She found her peace.

She swept under the first lunge. Eido was fit and agile, and instinct still smoothed her movements. An old sense of calm flooded her with a welcome stillness. But it had been years since she’d trained. She held her own for a moment. But only a moment.

Her wrist slammed into the wall. Something pinged in a blaze of pain that made her cry out in surprise. She gripped the blade still. Just.

The first hit was so shocking, Maksim barely felt it. The sound echoed in his head, and he only registered that it it was his own skull because his vision swung around with the blow. After that, his entire body felt like rubber. If there was adrenaline, it wrung every ounce of strength from his limbs. He didn’t fight back. Didn’t even try to retaliate, but even if he wanted to, he wouldn't know where to begin.

It was like slamming his knee into the coffee table, only instead of his knee, it was his face. and tingles flung all the way around his temples. His arms flung up defensively after that, but Pavel’s fist slammed into his ribs instead. He gasped as air escaped his body like a punctured balloon. He already lost just because he woke up that day, but when he was on his hands and knees, he tried to bury his face low. Above, Pavel ordered him to stand and take it, but when he didn’t immediately stand and take it, his hair was wrenched back and the decision made for him. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed the stranger watching. Part of Maksim’s hiding was sheer defense; the rest was mortal embarrassment. 

He tried not to groan when the paramedics helped move him to the gurney. At least it came out more as a grunt.

He waited in the warehouse until the ambulance was out of sight. As soon as it was, he called Zixin Kao.

“He’s on his way to the hospital,” he said.

“You’re welcome. Bet that was the highlight of your day, Ryker!” he laughed loud into the speaker.

“You won’t believe it, but Pavel Vasilev did it. Wouldn’t let me touch him,” he explained.

“No shit?” Zixin sounded impressed.

“No shit,” Ryker replied. If video was enabled, the heat in Ryker’s gaze would have been apparent.

“Your special guest on his way?” Ryker followed up.

“Indeed he is. You’ll like him. Real life of the party!” Zixin laughed again. The sarcasm wasn’t lost on Ryker.

“It’ll be a party for sure. I told him to bring no more than two guys. No idea who he will chose. Doubtful it’ll be the old man, though. I promised we’d bring the same,” Ryker said. Pavel seemed to want to keep all this quiet. Involving old man Konstantin would be like admitting there was a problem he couldn’t contain. He had too much pride for that; pride that made him weak and predictable.

Zixin snorted. “With you there, might as well be two-hundred. See you then,” he said and immediately ended the call.

Ryker slipped the wallet into a pocket. Zixin was right about that.

He left soon after.

True to his self-promise, the door alerted him to a delivery just as he was wrapping a towel around his waist. The shower was long and hot and he rubbed out a good wad built up after the last however long he’d been in prison. A giant case of beer had arrived, already chilled, and he hurried to the front door, water still dripping down his back when he opened it.

A delivery woman stood there with a dolly and three big boxes of bottles. She wore tight pants, a button down uniform shirt and a matching cap. Her eyes went a little wide when she realized the occupant was staring at her so immodestly dressed. He felt her eyes stick like a fly on paper to the web of scars that populated half his body.

He’d not even seen a woman the whole time in Butryka.

He reached out to take the handle of the dolly, but she interrupted.

“I have to do it, actually. Liability reasons. Where do you want it?” she pushed the dolly past him.

“Kitchen. Through there,” he pointed and followed.

The space wasn’t large. Ryker honestly spent little time here, but it was where he came to sleep, shower, fuck. The basics. Nor was it particularly rich. He had money, but when he spent it, it wasn’t on decor and fancy appliances.

She was busy moving the boxes off the dolly when he pulled a knife from the butcher block.

The power swarmed her head with the red that bubbled up from his arm. Then all he had to do was stand there as the girl’s face fell blank. On one hand, it was much faster to mind-control her, but on the other, he enjoyed at least a little resistance. Next time. He was feeling impatient.

The first crack of his palm on her skin was satisfactorily loud.

Hours later, he was feeling much more like himself. He might have taken things too far, but she’d not remember anyway. He had to clean up the blood though; not all of it was his.

It was during this time that he contacted HQ for intel on the current situation in the city. Shit must have been boring around Moscow with him off the streets, but the news of Yun Kao’s death stuck out like a bloody thumb.

Who the hell killed her? Now he was intrigued.

The usual contacts filtered out into the void, and soon enough, a message filtered back. He dressed and hurried out to make personal contact. Things were going to get interesting.