Post
by Ducks » Mon Jan 05, 2015 4:45 pm
A moment ago, Kyo had held the power. She had killed Shiro, emptied one of the roughest joints in the city, and sent a gang of hardened ruffians cowering. So why did she feel so helpless now?
She had expected the gang to splinter apart, to run in terror, to beg for mercy. Now her naivete was becoming evident; one cockroach had been squashed, and another jumped up to take its place in the sun. For a moment, she considered finishing what she had started, starting by putting a kunai through this smirking stranger's windpipe and finishing by bashing the heads of every man left in the restaurant until there remained only cowards and cripples left to tell of the terrible night the she-devil decimated the toughest gang in Daiura. But she couldn't. Her muscles, so tensed and ready a moment ago, suddenly felt numb and weak. A bucket of sand put out in the fire in her belly, and the coppery taste of blood became nauseating on her tongue. Fear overtook her, and she knew that if she fought then, she would die. I have to get out. I HAVE TO GET OUT.
Without another word, she turned and hurried for the exit, the ruined door allowing her an easy escape. She managed to get a street or two before she was overcome by nausea, and she emptied her stomach in a dingy alley. She stayed there for over a quarter of an hour, hands on knees, breathing hard as she struggled and failed to fend off further waves of nausea. Once there was nothing more for her to lose, she wiped her mouth and staggered out of the alley. Night had come, and the disturbance of not half an hour prior had already settled down. Kyo moved quickly, though clumsily, through the streets, determined not to spend another night in the city, nor a minute of time more than was necessary. She took an alternate route, so as to not even pass Hibiki's shop; she was not needed there.
Soon, though not soon enough for her tastes, she emerged from the walls of Daiura, near breathless. She did not stop, however, but rather struck out into the desert, back to Suna. She had walked for over half an hour when she came upon a tiny oasis, little more than a puddle, three sad looking palm trees, and a little protrusion of rock. She stumbled down into the minor concavity that held the oasis, and collapsed. Lying there, sprawled facedown on the earth, she could hold back the tears no longer. There, Kyo Kouseki, kunoichi Chuunin of the Hidden Sand, sobbed into the sand, wetting the earth with bitter salt. She cried for Osamu, brave young boy, lying dead on the floor, staring up with dead eyes, bathing in his own blood. She cried for Hibiki, old, crippled, and now alone and grieving. She cried for herself, for the stabbing that was only now beginning to truly hurt. She even (or especially) cried for Shiro, whose helpless body she had reduced to pulp, and whose blood and brains she had tasted on her mace. She retched, but lost nothing more, as there was nothing to lose.
After a time, the tears slowed, and she sat up, quietly weeping instead of sobbing. Soon, she stopped making noise altogether, and simply sat there, staring at the mace she held in her two hands.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEGAAAYAAAAAAAAAA!" Fury contorted her face, and she struck the oasis's rock with her mace and all her strength. The boulder cracked, then shattered, some small fragments exploding out to strike her flesh and armor, which she hadn't bothered to remove. She barely noticed that, though, her attention being drawn by the sharp crack from the weapon in her hands. She stared at it dumbly, and saw two cracks, one perfectly bisecting the handle, the other directly below the mace head. A light tap to the ruined remnant of the rock finished the job, and the once proud weapon split cleanly into three. The two pieces of the handle remained, one in each hand, but the head of the mace fell with a soft thud into the dirt. She knelt to pick it up, but recoiled as if bitten once she felt the sticky gore that coated it. Shivers wracked her body, and she suddenly felt so weary that she could scarce remained standing. Even so, driven by a sudden terror of the place, she fled the oasis in a stumbling, tripping gait, until she collapsed a second time. Mumbling and whimpering, she drifted off into a troubled, restless sleep, in which Osamu and Shiro were killed a hundred times, though by her hand or another's she could never quite tell.