Difference between revisions of "Logs: Introducing Nika Rumyantseva"

Revision as of 02:24, 6 October 2012

Sep 8, 2011, Part 2.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

Summer vacation is /over/. Autumn is infant, barely progressed; it will be another month or two before the heat of summer relinquishes its hold on the humid island nation, too stubborn to die without a fight. The home stretch of any race is the most difficult, and for Izo -- whose personal modesty requires him to overdress throughout the summer months -- this is usually a time of weariness and impatience, waiting for the world to turn enough that the oppressive temperatures become bearable to him again.

If this year is proving to be an exception, that's only because he's preoccupied with a bevy of concerns slightly more serious than matters of personal comfort.

A little over two weeks out of the hospital and no longer beneath the critical eye of medical personnel, the stitches that would otherwise still be zippering closed the right side of his body are no longer anywhere to be found...but the impact of the violence that brought them about still remains a point of rawness. It preoccupies him. It is changing him. It is changing /Dakini/.

Perhaps it's for these reasons that he's slightly less aware of his surroundings as he makes his way from Sumaru University's campus back toward the unremarkable student housing building he temporarily calls home: his eyes are on the pavement, and he is doing his dead level best to ignore the hammer of the sun on his shoulders and the top of his head, or the tickle of sweat inside of those miserably long sleeves.

<Pose Tracker> Nika Rumyantseva [NWO] has posed.

EARLIER

Izo has one new message on his phone.

<<Looking for cat still? Think I found it. Meet where?>>

He presumably gives a vague but common enough address to engage this stranger and get the missing cat back.

Presumably.

NOW

The heat of the sun is barely tolerable, despite the creeping touch of autumn adding some very slight cool to otherwise oppressive heat. Many people are still clad in short sleeve and thin material. Izo Imaizumi is looking very much out of place. Understandable, considering he's very likely cooking himself in his clothing.

"Yo~!" A female voice calls out to the young man. It's a leggy blonde in a short skirt and gauzy long sleeve top. She also has a dark black pillow case in hand with a lump sagging the bulk of the material downward. Presumably this is a cat.

Presumably.

"Imaizumi-san, yeah?" she calls over to the man, waving a hand eagerly over. "I found kitty-cat. You were looking for it, yeah?" The bag in hand is gently hoisted.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

Presumably.

A detour from his trip home takes him to a small green space somewhere between campus and apartment, where he waits for this unexpected philanthropist to arrive.

What Nika can't know, of course, is that the LOST CAT posters were a lie -- a trap, which he set for entirely a different girl, albeit one similar enough by the standards of the area to make the circumstances worthy of an arched eyebrow. At home, Izo lounged on his sofa, stroking Napoleon's head and waiting for the inevitable arrival of the cat's legitimate mistress.

He finally got a replacement door yesterday.

As he pivots to the sound of his surname, his features are composed, impassive, without suspicion. Eyes dark as inkspills flick over her pale figure, but they lack something in the way of the usual salaciousness. If he has a 'tell,' perhaps that's it: there is no reflex indulgence in the way he looks at her, in those brief moments of study.

Then, the polite smile, close-lipped and slightly cool. "That's me." A thumb slides beneath the strap that crosses the breadth of his chest on an angle, hoisting the messenger bag up, across, over to the side. The bag touches down on the ground with a soft thump, heavy with books. Slanted sidelong and down, one of his brows ticks slightly upward. He doesn't close the distance. "You put him in a pillow case?"

<Pose Tracker> Nika Rumyantseva [NWO] has posed.

Unwise to Izo's clever ruse set for an entirely different foreigner, the blonde girl just smiles brightly as Izo greets her with a cool-as-cucumber sort of gesture. There's a nod of her head in reciprocation of his acknowledgement. She tilts her head to the side as he sets his bag down.

The he asks about the cat in the sack.

"Da," she replies with a single nod. "I had nothing else to carry kitty-cat around in, so pillow casing was best option. I did not want to carry little koshka to be the scared." Her Japanese is at least passable. She doesn't appear embarrassed at her grasp of the language, at least.

"Sorry if it offend you, but is only way I have." She pauses a moment to consider the situation before she holds her free hand up and laughs. "Ah, not looking for reward, if you wonder. Just want to give." She holds the case out to the young man.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

"'Da'," he repeats, slowly, as though tasting the foreign flavor of the word. She reminds him of someone, though it takes him several moments to think of whom. Yisa is dark-haired, after all; dark-skinned, and her accent is different, if perhaps it shares a few similarities in its characteristics, with sounds for which the English and Japanese alphabets have no analogue. Alone, it wouldn't have been enough.

It's her resonance that triggers the thought -- not the crawling sensation of imminent threat, nor the crushing gravity of the Red Queen's monarchy, but the smell of /food/. Of tea and jam, of breakfast cakes. For better or worse, Izo's appetites are nigh-on unsatiable, and /this/ is the quality of Yisa's resonance that he senses most strongly. He pulls it out of Nika's own, and the sheer similarity of the two is enough to set his teeth on edge.

So he smiles, just a little. It's a quick, sharp flash of hard white in otherwise tawny features, struck like flint against the tinder of his gaze as he stagger-steps, straight-legged, nearer, the casual gait of someone long-limbed, full of a slacker's disregard for formality. "Well, good. I'm a poor University student, so you'd have to go home disappointed." He extends his hand toward the neck of the pillowcase, but the positioning of his hand is just slightly off, as though it were warding rather than inviting. "Besides, I'm not sure what I'd be paying for. Why don't we open it up and have a look?"

<Pose Tracker> Nika Rumyantseva [NWO] has posed.

While Izo remains on the edge, as it were, rightfully cautious of the unfamiliar but outwardly less-than harmful looking young woman, she smiles. The bag remains loose in her pale grip, waiting for Izo's claim. She remains completely oblivious to his awareness of her resonance.

Eventually he gives her a smile, however fleeting it may be. She returns it with an enthusiastic nod, the bag in her hand bobbing lightly. "I can understand," she acknowledges. "I'm not in business of getting money from people looking for lost kitty-cats."

When his hand extends, waiting for the dark pillowcase, Nika is glad to oblige. It is carefully passed over, mindful of its contents before she gives a single nod of her head. "There," she cheerfully offers, taking a step back from Izo. Her hands come together at her chest.

"Happy day. Reunited!" she chirps. "Feel free to take look. I don't mind. Or take look at home; either way, glad to help."

When he opens the bag there's a funk. It might be dirty cat. A nose accustomed to the stink would recognize the scent of blood, and it isn't her resonance.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

He keeps his gaze affixed to her as he opens the top of the pillow-case. The false humor in his expression wanes, returning to lid-eyed tautness, with that first breath of foul, trapped air as it escapes from the pillowcase. The pendulous weight in it is not moving. The desire to look down into the shadows within it is non-existant. For two beats he stands there, holding the pillowcase, as that regrettably familiar odor tangs like rust in his nose and steadily corrodes the cheerful brightness of the day.

Awareness pops like electricity along the skeins of nerves that web his frame, concentrated in his hands. He feels the urge to act well up into coiled spring tightness in sinewy shoulders, and resists -- for now. She could be crazy. Mentally ill. She could be playing what she thinks is a game. It doesn't have to mean anything; not everything is connected. Not all things are portents. The world, Izo Imaizumi, does not revolve around you, and gives no shits about your personal problems.

Nevertheless, all of her cheer breaks like wavelets against the seawall of his seriousness, expression and tone flat.

"What is this."

Even lacking in inflection, language barriers notwithstanding, the meaning is clear enough: he's asking about the meeting, about her, about the circumstances, and not necessarily just what might actually be at the bottom of that pillow case.

<Pose Tracker> Nika Rumyantseva [NWO] has posed.

The response of Izo does not go unnoticed by Nika. Her head tilts slightly, green eyes widening a bit before she offers a quiet, pensive 'hmm,' gaze shifting to the bag he holds, now open, in hands. His demeanor has done a complete 180; Nika just appears perplexed by the sudden change, but makes no efforts to do other than just stand there.

What is this, he asks--no, demands, more like. The foreigner blinks twice before she takes a step back and away. "What you mean, what is this?" she wonders, sounding dimly perturbed by his sudden tone. Her thin blonde brows tightly knit before she just lifts a hand to her face and...laughs.

And laughs.

And /laughs./

"Yamaguchi-gumi aren't very smart. You put up add, what you expect? Cat?" Another fit of laughter, Nika presses the palm of her hand firm against an eye. The other, not obscured, is boring a hole right through Izo's very soul.

"No, you not get cat. Open up! Look at gift! I'm sure you'll recognize it! Or maybe not. Too big for own good? Yamaguchi-gumi, that is. Go on! Take look! I insist!"

If he decides to oblige and dump the contents of the pillowcase out a pair of hands and feet fall out. The pairs of hands have tell-tale Yamaguchi-gumi marks tattooed on them. Who the belong to, well. Who knows? But they certainly seem grotesquely legitimate.

If he looks to her, Nika is just there, grinning like the cat that's caught the canary.

"Like??"

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

He does dump the bag. Her laughter, all of that somehow manic presence, only serves to heighten the difference between the two of them: his stony lack of outward expression and Nika's more supple mood, his dark complexion, hair, and eyes, and hers as fair as the deadly snows in the north of her motherlond: they could not be less alike.

And yet. He watches her with those hawkish eyes as he slowly turns the square of material, to hold it by one corner as its grisly contents tumble out and roll across the ground: bloodless hands like pale spiders in the grass. He flicks his gaze down, then up. The muscle that binds the hinge of that square jaw pulses once, and then grows still. After a beat, he drops the pillowcase. The possibility that they might be discovered here doesn't seem to worry him overmuch. To all outward appearances, on almost any given day, he's just a student -- one with strangely modest taste in clothing even by Japanese standards -- who turns in his assignments on time, makes excellent grades, and has a reputation for being quiet and keeping to himself. His classmates would probably not know how to reconcile that big, aloof, seemingly harmless first-year with this darker figure, whose expression registers not shock at the macabre stink of human meat, but an icy detachment that runs right down to the very marrow of his bones.

"Oh...I don't know," he says, quietly. He's moving forward, now, but not quickly; it's the muscled stalk of a more patient predator that starts to reclose the distance between them. "I never lost a cat, so I didn't expect much. Turning up an enemy of the family -- that's an unexpected perk. What's your name, beautiful? I didn't think the Bratva were interested in what we get up to. /Da/?"

<Pose Tracker> Nika Rumyantseva [NWO] has posed.

Despite her seemingly manic demeanor, the Russian is observant enough to watch what reactions she can stir from the Yakuza youth. Much to her surprise, his response is cold and detached. It isn't the passionate fury of seeing a fallen comrade's decapitated extremities. She didn't expect him to freak out. She expected anger. Rage. Passion.

He doesn't know, he replies. The amusement in Nika's expression falters slightly. The cat was a ruse. The whole thing was a sham. The blonde's thin, pale brows furrow slightly in response. She takes a half-step back as he decides to move in with that predatory gait. It's a gesture she is familiar and intimate with.

Yet the blonde smirks. "Bratva? Hah. Foolish boy," she replies. "You jump to conclusion? Thinking my skin and hair defines my loyalty?" Another laugh escapes her lips. "Not even /close/."

Name--he wants a name? "Nika," is her response. "It's Nika. Sumiyoshi-kai. Only, sort of." Her pale hand reaches up and half-wobbles midair. "Is not important detail, but detail you should be familiar with for purpose of this engagement."

She moves, circling the opposite direction of Izo if he's so inclined to stalk her. "If you were wondering, your comrade is still alive. I can tell you where, if I'm feeling generous. So far, though, I'm not." She looks to the discarded, disembodied hands and feet before she gently scoffs. "Not that one would want to live like that."

Looking back up to Izo with an intense balefire gaze, the girl wonders, "The question now becomes, 'does Nika kill you, or does Nika just rough up a little?' You look like guy who enjoys a bit of roughing up." Cue playful grin here.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

If it was a reaction she wanted, she might be gratified by the impact of the words 'Sumiyoshi-kai': a subtle but clear surprise dawns in his expression, followed by a flash of something difficult to describe -- anger, maybe, or eagerness -- that he quickly crushes out, reinstating the iron lock he has on his expression so forcefully and deliberately that it serves to say as much as any other expression might that she's struck a nerve.

It runs more deeply than just his concerns that Sudou's recent self-elevation would complicate his life here further. Someone's been maimed -- or very possibly killed -- in order to make the point that Nika's apparently come here to make. On his account. Nobody joins the Yakuza without knowing what they're getting themselves into -- that there are risks -- but even so, he feels the weight of those body parts in a fresh way. /His/ mess. /His/ history.

His gaze narrows, and the brief hitch to his approach doesn't hold him in place for long. When he starts forward again, he's equal parts more cautious and more determined; something in his distribution of weight has changed -- those years of boxing, sliding to the fore. "There's a cease-fire," he says. "So unless your house is openly declaring war -- I guess that makes this personal. You're welcome to try to do both of those things, Nika-san, but somebody tried recently, and as you can see--" He spreads his hands, palm-upward, "I'm still here. Why would you want to tell me where he is?"

<Pose Tracker> Nika Rumyantseva [NWO] has posed.

Her stalking comes to a slow, gradual stop. She's aware of the subtle shift in his expression, and is certainly glad to see it. It's quick, but it's there, and the amusement of it all is clear on her face. The heel of her stiletto boot idly kicks into the soft ground beneath her feet.

"Is there cease-fire? Hah," Green eyes shift away from Izo, looking toward one of her hands. Long bony, calloused fingers flex absently. "As if thing like 'cease-fire' means anything to me. Besides..." Her gaze sweeps upwards, fixing intently on Izo.

"Your boss decided to piss off Sumiyoshi-kai, so I'd say it's now open season."

Shifting her weight from one heel to the other, the blonde just continues to smile. "Whoever tried recently didn't try hard enough, clearly," is her response to his good health. "And why would I not tell you? Don't you want to save comrade? Or are you, how they say...lone dog? No, wolf."

She moves swiftly, taking several elegant strides forward. A keen fighter's eye would sense not a shred of offensive intent in the motion; she's just trying to close in. And if she's allowed she will draw her face in close--really close. Mere centimeters from his, nearly mouth to mouth with the Yakuza.

"Part of me does not want to hurt you. You are handsome man. But the other part of me wants to rip every single piece of you into pretty flesh ribbons."

Still, she doesn't make a first move. "How lucky do you feel today?"

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

Every last inch of him tightens when she advances, and the strength of will required for him to keep his hands at his sides is immense. Whatever this latest brush with death has begun in him -- a change that seems destined to continue, evolving with time -- his body is animal, flesh and blood, and the dominion of the mind extends only so far over the viper's nest of his instincts. He came close, then. It's only through his assailant's caprice that he lived at all. His nerve endings spark with the desire to keep her at a distance -- or crush her when she gets close enough.

Instead, his fingers twitch beside him, even as he leans in to meet the boiling intensity of her approach, jaw set, the way he might go chest-to-chest with a man.

Her affiliations strip her of /much/ he might accord any other woman.

Close, his resonance is at all odds with the moment: it bleeds off of him like serenity made manifest, softly ringing, redolent with the fragrance of some remote monastery. The dark eyes are nevertheless like black knives...and whatever complicated cocktail of feelings roils in him over the confrontation, fear is not a part of them.

"The Sumiyoshi-kai," he says, voice low enough that it might be felt at this proximity more as a rumble in the breadth of his chest than heard distinctly by the ears, "have threatened to kill my family...and you want to come here and play at being /offended/, gaijin?" One large hand slowly lifts, and barring her decision to intervene, slightly-calloused fingertips intend to interpose themselves between her mouth and his own -- not touching, but poised as though to touch, as thin screens of lash lower to hood his gaze and his focus slips to the curves in question. "I don't want to fight you. If I wanted that, I would already be doing it -- fighting people more important than you, for better reasons than yours. But...if that's what you really want..."

The statement hangs He waits.

<Pose Tracker> Nika Rumyantseva [NWO] has posed.

She is as aware as she is alert. She's kicked the proverbial hornet's nest with one word: Sumiyoshi-kai. His entire demeanor has flipped itself like a switch. She moves in close, testing the limits of his very patience. There's a smile on her face--the slightest motion of her muscles can practically be felt at such close proximity.

He treats her less like a woman but more a man--an equal, in some bizarre way. That only serves to further amuse and delight her. "I like you lots," she tells him in quiet tones, her breath warm.

Play offended? She laughs softly. "Play? No," she shakes her head. "I use that as excuse for violence. My loyalties are with Sumiyoshi-kai, but only as...how you say...a part of my other loyalties? Does that make sense?" She tips her head, appearing puzzled.

He doesn't want to fight her, he says. For better reasons. Against more important people.

That causes her expression to shift into a feral sort of snarl.

"You think you superior?? You think of yourself as better than me?!" That pounding resonance of hers amplifies, the trepidation and rising pulse and shrieking steel offends the senses. The stink of blood just grows more powerful than the pleasant smell of tarts and Earl Grey.

"I will give you reason to fear me," she promises. Something foul rises from the depths of her psyche; a woman in rich but tattered silk garments, rotting arms bound at the breast by chains at her throat. A porcelain mask veils all but her jaw and pale, doll-like mouth, a crown of jagged floating metal hanging over her hooded head. She looms like a shadow over Nika's shoulders.

"Cry," she whispers to Izo. "Cry and scream. Let me hear it."

The woman behind Nika opens her mouth, inky black fog escaping her red lips. The darkness stretches, reaching out, becoming a pair of wispy arms, seeking to grasp Izo's face. Should they touch an intense pulse of gut-wrenching terror and fear will overwhelm the nerves and senses.

COMBAT: Nika Rumyantseva uses Evil Touch on Izo Imaizumi for 15 Mind (Strong!), applying Fear! COMBAT: Nika Rumyantseva has ended her turn.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

/Oh,/ says his expression, aloof and fascinated in a clinical way as she spits and snarls, and her resonance blooms into a dark omen of violence. /That's interesting/.

Hermits: fast learners.

There are downsides to being preoccupied with understanding and even cataloguing the world. Observation -- /taxonomy/ -- leaves one open to certain things. Witness the way in which he watches the beautiful process of her terrible persona's manifestation, a sickness temporarily purged by her will, given form and function. He lifts his gaze off of her for perhaps the first truly significant time since their moment of meeting here...

...and so he's looking directly at the Queen when those vaprous limbs reach out to grip his head, and the world goes quite suddenly black, shot through with a silver spike of terror.

Dakini oozes from his skin in droplets of blue light, as though sweated from his flesh, to coagulate. Nika has no prior experience with his persona, and thus no reason to mark the changes in her -- the clarity of her featureless feminine form, the light that emanates from within her, or the cold stars of the three empty eyes of light on her mask-like face. Her hair spools off into the sky before evaporating, weightless, liquid, and her response to this grave assault on Izo is a counter: spring-clear fingers grasp the back of his head, and a gout of light pulses down the length of her arms...and then into his skull, out through all of the orifices of his head, in direct combat with the darkness that infects it.

COMBAT: Izo Imaizumi uses Charmdi on Izo Imaizumi for 0 Heal, applying Amrita and Energy! All Ailments Cleared! COMBAT: Izo Imaizumi has ended his turn. Healed 12 HP from his regenerate passive! Energy expired.

<Pose Tracker> Nika Rumyantseva [NWO] has posed.

There's a cursory moment where Nika seems genuinely surprised, as Dakini manifests into being from the flesh of Izo Imaizumi. The girl and her Queen retreat only a half-step, hesitation evident as the creature grasps his head. She expects the worst, but gets ...nothing that poses an immediate threat to her being.

The blonde just smiles a vicious, scimitar sneer in response.

"So, you can too?" she wonders, though it's a question that she's by no means begging an answer for. The Queen looms, hanging like a spectre from her thin shoulders, that mask fixed on the young man a few feet from her.

"No matter. I am not afraid. Waste your time, kubik l'da. There is no fear."

She reaches behind, drawing something from her gauzy garments, from the waist of her skirt. Drawing it forward, it appears she has a pair of...garden shears. Ornate ones. Lethal ones. She brings them to the fore and spreads them. There's a vicious SNAP of the blades as the steel is brought together, before it's opened again.

"Only glory."

She pushes off a heel, ground kicking up as she charges the man and his guardian. With zero concern for her own well-being and berserker-like enthusiasm she attempts to take the shears and gouge him thrice with their sharp pointed tips in the chest.

The Red Queen looms.

COMBAT: Nika Rumyantseva uses Blade of Fury on Izo Imaizumi for 28 Slash, 26 Slash, and 27 Slash! COMBAT: Nika Rumyantseva has ended her turn.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

Flashlight rays of supernatural light incinerate the smoke that fills his headspace, slicing through it like moonlight blades from his eyes, his nose, his mouth. When the light fades, he turns his head to spit out the taste of his own fear, as though the Queen's psychic assault had left a bitter taste behind...and afterward he fixes her with his gaze sidelong.

'You can too?' she asks, and all he can do is smirk, barely an upward twitch at the corner of his mouth while the rest of him resonates with a predator's readiness.

"Surprise."

As she launches at him he steps backward, less a retreat than a controlled withdrawal -- but he's half of a second too late to avoid the slashing blades. He feels them bite into him three times -- deep enough each time to leave holes in his shirt, and scent the air with blood fresher than that of his fallen associate's discarded hands and feet. The first one earns a wordless sound and exhale from him at the sudden sting, the others he takes silently, but with puffs of breath for each.

Her assault may not come without cost, however; for every impact that succeeds, there's a rough palm-strike angled to the wrist attached to the offending hand, movements that seem far too swift and precise for a man of his general size and physical description...but whatever force he may use, they are still at heart simply /defensive/ gestures.

"If this is your idea of glory, you lack...ambition."

COMBAT: Izo Imaizumi uses Kill Rush on Nika Rumyantseva for 40 Strike and 39 Strike! COMBAT: Izo Imaizumi has ended his turn. Healed 12 HP from his regenerate passive! Energy expired. COMBAT: Momentum self-applied!

[OOC] Nika Rumyantseva says, "i regret nothing" <Pose Tracker> Nika Rumyantseva [NWO] has posed.

Surprise, he says.

He counters her assault with one of his own, his skill shining through the threat that Nika imposes. There is a vague expression of surprise on her face as he does, her wrists struck and summarily knocked off their true course. How irritating! But--

Nika actually smirks at that. "Yes, I think I like you," she decides, her arms easing down, a defensive stance held as she recoils from the assault and counter-assault. There's a deep, sharp breath taken in, her body giving a soft shudder before she exhales raggedly. "The smell of krov' is amazing," she declares with a soft voice. "Velikolepno!"

With a too-enthusiastic laugh the leggy blonde charges again, the shears in hand actually ripped in twain, producing not a busted pair of scissors, but two separate blades- -lengthy knives, one of which she attempts to use to slash him horizontally across his stomach.

Across the hem of his pant line. At the waist. Where his belt might be, you know, holding his pants in lace. She's trying to hurt him, yes, but she may also be trying to disrobe the nevernude.

COMBAT: Nika Rumyantseva uses Straight Slash on Izo Imaizumi for 72 Slash! COMBAT: Nika Rumyantseva has ended her turn.

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

"Well, I'm sure glad that you feel--"

/That way/, Izo doesn't get to say, because she rebounds from her momentary retreat. It isn't easy to surprise Izo, but it's clear that he didn't expect the shears to /come apart/. Without any weapon of his own to counter armed attacks moving in both directions, all he can do is attempt to twist out of her way -- and he does avoid being collided with, but the drag she'd feel in one of the blades in her hand and his own wordless exclamation of pain both serve to state that she's soundly hit her mark. He stumbles backward with a hand clutched to his abdomen, and though the outer shirt is dark blue and barely registers the blood she's been spilling, the white one beneath is rapidly being stained with blossoms of red.

And his belt? His pants?

His belt is cloth, snapped in half and hanging, pants sliding down with the inevitable pull that gravity has on the amount of denim required to preserve the modesty of a man over six feet tall. His wide stance keeps them from falling too far, but there's time enough for this much: the ragged smile she's opened in the flat span of muscle between his hips, the crease in the left side channeling blood enthusiastically down over unremarkable black boxer-briefs to a tautly cabled thigh...

...which is wrapped in ace bandages.

The jeans slide just that much further, verging upon the inappropriate, easing slowly down toward his groin, and then--

And then light blasts out of his crotch.

Literally. Not just his crotch, of course: Dakini, behind him, seems to explode with diamond-hard brilliance, eclipsing the silhouette of the man in front of her with searing luminescence, holy light that goes off in the small space like a flash-bang grenade.

When it's over, he's just finishing tying the slack end of his belt to the broken side. It's a rough knot -- but really. Fighting with one's pants around their ankles is completely unfeasible.

COMBAT: Izo Imaizumi uses Baikouha on Nika Rumyantseva for 65 Light (Strong!), applying Light DOT! COMBAT: Izo Imaizumi has ended his turn. Healed 12 HP from his regenerate passive!

<Pose Tracker> Nika Rumyantseva [NWO] has posed.

Quick work done, the Russian bears back, giving a bit of distance between herself and the Yakuza--if only to admire her work. The pain, the blood, the rapidly-failing modesty--the blonde lifts a lightly-coated blade to her mouth and presses the lethal tip to her bottom lip. She bares her teeth only slightly, to gently bite at the blade--

Then he shoots a piercing shot of light from his crotch.

That isn't how anatomy works. Not at all.

Knocked back by the burst of light, there's a quick recovery from Nika, shaking her head gently in response. "Stung, only little," she assures, a toothy smile his response. She observes briefly as he makeshift ties his cloth belt back into place before pouting. "What a downer."

Kicking off with her back foot, the young woman moves with fluid grace, her upper body held in a low and forward fashion as she pursues the Yakuza once more. She'll aim to attack directly--only not really, as she'll seek to feint, only to weave aside and leave a lasting slice with one of her two daggers along the span of his ribs.

COMBAT: Nika Rumyantseva uses Mid Attack - Vdovodel on Izo Imaizumi for 29 Slash! COMBAT: Nika Rumyantseva has ended her turn. Takes 12 HP from Light DOT!

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

The blades are becoming...a /problem/.

Izo wipes his hands on the hips of his jeans, but they're hopelessly stained, and the bleeding, though it seems very slightly less enthusiastic than before, does not wholly abate -- not from any of the wounds she's given him. Adrenaline sings in his veins -- but it remains crystal clear, a clarion voice of reason and calm that did not previously exist for him, when these heated moments of combat plunged him into the red mists of a berserker rage. In that way, this is a fight unlike any other in his memory -- and he regrets the involvement of those blades. They hurt too much. There's too little to be done about them, unarmed. They'll end things before things can really begin.

He's watching for them now. Even across the distance, he can feel their position, their edges, with every last nerve ending in his body...as though he were a radar attuned to the frequency of whatever harm she might try to do him. Would that it were enough: she lunges at him and despite his twist catches him in the side with one of them. Rather than retreat any further, he turns with her, reaching out to try and grasp her wrist in one of his hands and wrench it, using her momentum against her, in the hope that it'll force her to abandon one of the weapons.

COMBAT: Izo Imaizumi uses Mid Attack - Bare hands on Nika Rumyantseva for 89 Strike (Critical!)! COMBAT: Izo Imaizumi has ended his turn. Healed 12 HP from his regenerate passive!

<Pose Tracker> Nika Rumyantseva [NWO] has posed.

Though the blades may prove to be a problem, but it's clear he's well-acquainted with close-quarters combat. She moves, utilizing speed and swiftness to feint-and-gouge; he counters, using his hand and momentum of Nika to painfully wrench her arm out of place. The blade in her hand clatters to the grass at her feet with a muted thunk and hiss of steel.

She's cast aside shortly after.

Her wrist is screaming. Through clenched teeth she levels her bitter green gaze on the swift boxer with unyielding determination. She won't give up. Never. Not yet. Not ever.

"I am not through with you!" she cries, spittle flying from her lips in anger as she takes the one blade in hand and charges, seeking to take its vicious tip and dig it--deep--into his stomach and pin him like some pretty little butterfly.

COMBAT: Nika Rumyantseva regains her balance! COMBAT: Nika Rumyantseva uses Zan-ei on Izo Imaizumi for 106 Slash! COMBAT: Nika Rumyantseva has ended her turn. Takes 15 HP from Light DOT!

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

He has time to briefly feel relieved when his maneuver achieves what he set out for it to -- the grappling and deflections of force that a background in certain standing martial arts has afforded him familiarity with. Her passion, her /ferocity/, are not matched by anything in him but his gaze, which burns with the twin incentives of physical pain and a personal history filled to /brimming/ with bad blood.

"It doesn't have to go this way. Why do you want to risk your life to get involved in something that doesn't concern you?"

His answer?

A blade to the stomach. He vaults backward, but strikes the hard surface of the wall into which he earlier tried to corral her as they circled around one another. Moments after that impact, she connects with him...and that nasty implement in her hand punctures his stomach with a sound and sensation akin to the bursting of a crisp apple in one's teeth...and sliding in deeply enough for the heat of his frame to warm her curled fingers, the wound still too full to bleed. It causes his breath to catch in his lungs, and suddenly they're at intimate proximity again, and she can probably see the way in which the muscles in his throat contract, adam's apple dipping as he draws a shallow breath, reaching down for the hand that holds the blade that pins him -- as though Nika were the world's unlikeliest lepidopterist -- at the wall. His hands are large, sticky, all-encompasing; his gaze is pain-wrought, but curiously serene. Disappointed, perhaps.

"You know," he says, barely intoning the words that hitch sickly around the blade sunk into one of his lungs, "you...remind me...of someone."

Gaze lidding, he seems somehow detached from what follows: Dakini's light and liquid glisten in the space around him, drizzling like rainfall that rinses him -- and though his clothing obscures most of its work, she would almost certainly feel the supernatural pushing-out of the blade in her hand, as his body reknits itself.

COMBAT: Izo Imaizumi uses Parabola on Izo Imaizumi for 143 Heal, applying Energy! COMBAT: Izo Imaizumi has ended his turn. Healed 12 HP from his regenerate passive! Energy expired.

<Pose Tracker> Nika Rumyantseva [NWO] has posed.

He asks a simple question. Nika's retort is a simple one: a blade to his gut.

Burying the blade's tip deep in his stomach, the blonde just sneers up at the tall Yakuza, green eyes aflame with the passion of adrenaline and combat. She is in the moment. She is enjoying every second, ever pulse of his pounding heart that oozes blood from the wound, down the blade, onto her pale hand.

"Oh, but it does," she assures in a quiet, ragged whisper.

"It always has concerned me."

He speaks in quiet tones. She reminds him of someone. Dimly there's a ping of curiosity in the woman's eyes. It is quickly snuffed like water on angry coal. "I don't care--!" she exclaims, her blade seeking to twist deeper into him. That's when he calls upon his goddess to mend his wounds. The blade buried deep is pushed out by way of supernatural force.

"Again you waste time! AGAIN!" she seethes, green eyes wide as his wounds seal. "It is like you enjoy the time with me! You want my company, da??"

Pause.

"Not today."

She takes a step back. Then another. Then another, before she crouches, picking up her fallen blade. "No, I do not think you deserve it all. Not yet." The two blades are brought together, crossed near the hilt. There's an odd click, as they latch into place before they're snapped shut like scissors. Her wounded arm hangs languidly at her side.

"It has only begun, kubik l'da. Is only beginning. For you. For Irie. For all of you."

Then, anticlimactic in its execution, she walks away, a hand waving lazily over her shoulder.

"Do svidaniya."

<Pose Tracker> Izo Imaizumi [K] has posed.

He barely moves, but it's enough for anyone who knows how to size up an opponent: it wasn't just a little bit of mending. He watches her step backward with eyes that have regained their weighty, stony focus, and peels himself off of the wall behind him, leaving behind only vague smudges of blood that ran from wounds that no longer exist.

When she stares with wide-eyed indignance at his recovery, he makes a sound that at first seems as choked as the one he made when she had her blade slid between his ribs...but it becomes a short cough, and then a rough laugh. The hole is gone, but there's still blood in his lung. It doesn't stop is eyes from glittering, though, or erase the half-smile that threatens. "I told you I was hard to kill."

He could go after her now, of course. Strategically, that would make the most sense; attack her when her back is turned, and punish her for thinking that he wouldn't. It's an option that does not go unconsidered -- particularly as he's able to see the remains of one of his brothers still lying like refuse in the grass...but no.

But no. Not tonight. Retorts crowd his tongue, but he bites them back, silences them. His days of prideful verbal onslaught are (he hopes) behind him.

Better to watch her leave, until her resonance wanes to quiet.

Better to retrieve his cellphone from his pocket, kicking the body parts on the lawn into a pile as he sends a quick text to Irie:

--I understand you've been making friends. I think it's time.--