Difference between revisions of "Logs: A Dark Hour"

Latest revision as of 01:22, 7 October 2012

Aug 20, 2011

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

The Dark Hour has come to Sumaru City. While interested in the phenomenon on an intellectual and 'feeding ground' level, Kyo didn't really care to LIVE in it, so the fact it descended over Yumezaki and not Rengedai was, all things considered, a relief. He'd have to deal with the original Dark Hour once he returned to Port Island for school; having that extra morbid hour sapping his energy every night even during the summer would have been a little egregious.

Nonetheless, every so often, Kyo does wander to Yumezaki just before the Hour hits. He had a vague idea that hunting and consuming Shadows contributed to his strength the same way the Velvet Room had when he still used a Persona... and besides, the activity was just 'fun.'

He waits on a sidewalk bench, leaned back with an arm slung across the top of the backrest, watching the crowds go by. He never gets tired of watching midnight transform all that hustling life into the sepulchral vista of the Dark Hour... every last person changed into a coffin within moments of the stroke of twelve.

Even after the changeover happens, Kyo doesn't immediately get up. There is a full hour ahead, and the ward is not so large as Port Island. A few more minutes pass, as Kyo pensively regards the unnatural moon from his seat.

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

One second without error into the midnight hour, and all of Yumezaki is locked into the blighted stillness of that unnatural hour...

Or nearly all of it.

While the various factions of the city reel in the aftermath of attempted apocalypse, and squabble with one another over which slice of the area's pie belongs to whom, this infant Dark Hour continues unmetered, unregulated -- insofar as anything of this kind can /be/ regulated -- and without regular patrols. It exists in a state of supernatural lawlessness that no doubt appeals to some of Sumaru's persona-enhanced individuals, like a frontier filled with nightmares, and inevitably there are gunslingers of a kind who fancy their odds, couching their desire for violence within the questionable guise of 'doing one's part.'

Number Izo among them. The last several weeks have been alternately harrowing, infuriating, and deeply frustrating, each of those emotions intensified by a feeling of helplessness in the face of each. Stability is difficult to come by in his life: his family at no little remove, his friends each involved in a kind of personal crisis, and even those he holds at arms' length -- like Mariko -- seem determined to inject an element of random chaos into his day-to-day. Such is the assault that even the somewhat monastic lifestyle he's adopted has not been enough to keep him on an even keel, and the self-mastery that he values above (almost) all of his other qualities has begun to rust and erode, as his explosive lambasting of Yisa two days ago is ample evidence of.

He needs, he thinks, to blow off steam: and here he is. Hunting.

The end of the kanebo marks out time like a walking stick as he travels not more than a block from where Kyo sits in repose, the only sound in an otherwise soundless, alien night.

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

There's another thing about the Yumezaki Dark Hour. As of yet, no one patrols it. No SEES to dodge. Kyo remembers very well what happened the last time SEES cornered him in the Dark Hour.

Kyo is not, however, silly enough to imagine that the Dark Hour will be entirely empty of people. Any number of Persona-users already live in the Ward-- Kyo knows of at least two-- and besides, that same unregulated, unpatrolled element to the hour that drew Kyo himself will doubtless draw others. Some with vigilante-style hearts that would prove troublesome to such wanted individuals as Kyo.

In fact, there's one of them now.

Kyo's head turns at the sound of tapping in the oppressive silence of the Dark Hour. He draws in a breath past his teeth... and then smiles. "Imaizumi!" he hails, the complete silence carrying his voice effortlessly down the blocks where normally, the rush and bustle of life would have hushed it before it got five feet. "What a coincidence..."

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

The tapping stops. Through the thicket of regular, morbid angles that comprise this coffin-studded street, the wedge of a broad back comes to a slow halt, almost as dark as the environment around it; the green light saps almost all hue from his attire.

That /voice/.

It has followed him for two weeks now, mocking, furious, threatening, dismissive by turns, but whatever the intonation it has been a bitter /goad/ -- and now recent events have honed its efficacy to an even sharper edge. In a sense, the first blow has been struck even from that distance: the pieces of internal armoring that usually serve as Izo's bulwark against psychological aches and pains have been worn threadbare. On any other night he might keep walking.

Not tonight.

He turns slowly, with the inevitability and gravity of a planet, the orbit of which is interrupted by some other heavy mass. The nauseous light does nothing to make his expression less impassive, and his features are stony and hard as he starts back toward the bench on which that predator lounges, smug and self-satisfied.

/You shouldn't,/ he hears -- not just his voice but the voice of the Dakini, too...that embodiment of his better nature, his control over his darker nature. /There isn't any use. Why cut the Taimiev heiress loose if you didn't intend to shut him out of your life? Wasn't that the point? To protect yourself?/

Yes, he thinks, but closes the distance anyway.

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

Kyo turns his head lazily towards Izo as the other boy approaches. While he is unaware, perhaps, of the -full- extent of the events which he set in motion for Imaizumi in the past week, he can guess that what he did to Yisa and Mariko alike has left its mark, in turn, upon Izo. Imaizumi reacted so furiously, after all, to Yisa's protection of him. And Izo had taken some kind of responsibility towards Mariko, who Kyo had left a bloody heap.

Yes. All the confirmation Kyo needs that he has seriously fucked with Imaizumi comes when Izo's face-- the expression on it-- comes into view.

That on any other night, Izo might have kept walking, does not occur to Kyo. He has almost never goaded someone and failed to see them respond. His own features attain that sort of emotionless, bland smiling, inhuman and remote, that so many people have come to hate. It is such a tepid, emotively-shallow, /empty/ expression. It is remarkable that despite that, it still generates such mindless rage in the breasts of others.

"There are a few girls in your care who have gone through very trying times recently," he says mildly, as Izo draws closer. "You have, presumably, much more contact with them than I do." His hands fold in his lap. "In the spirit of concern, I would like to inquire about their health."

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

"They're not 'in my care,'" Izo parries, drawing to a halt with a thunk of the kanebo on the cracked, bloody pavement beneath his feet. He can feel the anger boiling in his stomach, volatile and incendiary, but he's had a week to simmer: it has compromised his self-control, to be sure, but a low level of ire is something to which he's become well-accustomed, and his stomach knots around it like steel cabling. His eyes narrow.

"I bet," he says softly, "you're /really/ pleased with yourself. I bet you think you're /incredibly/ clever. But all I see is that you're unable to get what you want from anybody who isn't already broken, somehow. Somebody who's already limping on the hoof. A junkie...a naive, self-righteous ojou...a timid little spotter. You put yourself out there like a predator, Enda, but you seem more like a scavenger to me. Maybe you should reconsider taking on a hyena for a shadow, hm? Then you can grin while you clean up after the messes made by time and circumstance and other bigger, badder things."

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

Kyo listens mildly as Izo rails against him. "I get plenty of things I want from people who do not fit that sorry description," he rebuts calmly. "You simply don't see them. I'm getting something I want out of you right this minute, in fact. But I doubt you'd describe yourself as someone made broken and weak by circumstance."

He pauses. Then, with gentle apology, "Unless, of course, I've misgauged you."

He blinks dismissively. "In any case. I /am/ quite pleased with myself," Kyo says, his gentle, soft-spoken voice-- as always-- terribly incongruous taken alongside the empty-souled threat in his eyes. "I /am/ quite clever. What I don't know is what -you- are, Imaizumi-san."

Kyo sits back, relaxing into thought, an ankle propping up on his opposing knee as he folds one arm over his stomach. The other lifts to prop a hand under his chin. "A talker, I think," he finally concludes. He angles a glance at Izo, a slight incline of the head, as if tacitly seeking a confirmation. "You certainly talk a great deal. All the few times we have met. Trying to understand me. Failing to understand me. All the while, doing it through thought and words."

Just as quickly as he assumed that thoughtful posture, he unravels. He leans forward, and his eyes narrow. "But I have yet to see you do anything. Is that mouth of yours all you are?" He smiles again. "If I anger you so much, why don't you do something about it?"

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

So many things Izo could say. That he thinks he understands Kyo just fine; that his mistake was in assuming at first that there had been anything complicated that /required/ understanding -- the same mistake that he's watching Yisa make, and failing to prevent her from accepting.

Or that his anger is his; that it can't be coerced out of him, and whether Kyo wants it or not is immaterial, because he gives it for his own reasons, and cares very little about Enda's.

Or that giving in to 'doing something about it' would compromise his moral position and, what is possibly worse, imply that he finds Kyo worthy of the trouble, of enough significance to merit it.

So he thinks, in that flash-fire second. So he hears, in his voice, paired curiously with that of the Dakini. He knows all of these things, and believes them to be true. He has spent years of his life avoiding the mistakes that come with the catharsis of anger: that white-hot flame may cauterize tender wounds, but it also incinerates everything else into ashes, and leaves behind a fallow wasteland where no fragile things can thrive.

So he knows, but -- in shocking regression -- he ceases to care. It's as though in a slow-motion dream that he feels movement in the humming cables of his body, watching as though from behind and slightly above himself as he simply picks up the kanebo and swings for the white gleam of Kyo's smile like a batter swinging for the stars.

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

There it is.

Kyo wasn't lying when he said he was getting plenty of what he wanted out of Izo. Ultimately, Kyo exists to entertain himself, and one of the finest forms of entertainment is watching the strong agonize when their weak protectorates are preyed upon. Izo's rage, his internal struggle, and his ultimate surrender to the anger burning within him... all of it quickens Kyo's blood, and makes him forget the echoing, lonely silence waiting for him in the idle spaces between activities.

Much like a shark, Kyo drowns if he stops swimming.

Kyo knows this song and dance very well. He knows, the instant Izo's body cords and tenses, what Imaizumi is going to do. Interestingly, he makes no effort to move, save to turn his head with the blow in order to save his teeth. The kanebo slams point-blank into his jaw, and for a long few moments Kyo reels visibly, spitting blood, a mark that will definitely require some healing already telling a story of thousands of devastated capillaries.

Kyo grunts, a sound halfway between a growl and a sigh, shaking his head to clear it and standing up. His head sways again, a little drunkenly, and then tilts distinctively to crack his neck. "That," he says, his voice wet from crawling through all the blood, "is better."

Shadows are already crowding close to pay court around Kyo. "Look at how wound up you are. Here. Why don't you get it all out? Punish me." His voice twists, flanging, the horrible feline shape forming at rapid speed. His unremarkable human form disappears under the familiar leonine form. "I'll do you this favor. Same as I did Yisa the favor of my company the other night."

Kyo laughs through his fangs. "She was so lonely. She just needed someone to understand her."

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

The impact of the heavy oni-favored weapon travels like a bullet up through the iron-corded wood, shocking through his hand and the muscles of his arms like a pulse of electricity that stabs him straight through the brain -- through the dorsal striatum, in fact, where satisfaction is born. His blood lights up with it, blazes like glass tubes filled with gasoline rather than corridors of tissue and plasma. Some quieter part of himself, the repository of all of his hard-won wisdoms, closes its eyes and sighs, grieves for his loss of the high ground...

But it's a very small, very quiet part.

The rest of him revels in it, /rejoices/ in the sight of blood smeared on Kyo's pretty-boy face, like the fulfillment of a hundred violent fantasies he's had in the last week alone. Adrenaline pours into his system, sharpening the outlines of /everything/ even in this counterchange ambiance of queasy light and shadow. His heart beats more slowly than one might expect: the slow, strong, regular beats of a young man in the prime of his physical life, a mindless but rock-solid engine. With that first step taken, all of his obligations to Be Good, to Behave, are lost in the conflagration of his temper. The hurts of his failures in the last week disappear, cauterized, just the way he knew that they would be -- and all that remains is the bloodthirsty desire for /vengeance/.

He brings the kanebo up, and then with all of the strength of his mass, brings it down on an arc, aiming for the top of that gigantic lion's head, as though to cave the skull in.

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

Izo's doubts, morals, and determinations burn away in the sudden flare of raw anger and desire for revenge. The intensity of it is so heavy in the air Kyo can almost smell the ash as Izo's reservations char away.

In the first few moments after every change, there is always that slight moment of disorientation as Kyo adjusts from being 'a reasonably tall human' to 'being a monstrous cat.' Izo lunges right into that space, bringing the kanebo down again, the heavy weapon slamming home right between the eyes and unsteadying Kyo enough that his front end stumbles and crumples. By instinct, the lion Shadow bares its fangs in pain and anger, showing teeth half the length of Imaizumi's arm.

A moment later, those teeth flash forward. The Shadow's horrible jaws hinge open, an exhale of utterly featureless air only emphasizing the mockery of life it is, and they try to close again around Izo's torso.

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

The kanebo is an excellent, heavy weapon -- and also a very /long/ one. Izo can almost hardly believe it when the metal-studded end of the thing connects a second time, and far from satisfying his thirst for revenge, it only adds fuel to the bonfire. Unexpected successes buouy him up: /finish it/, is the thought that isn't a thought, because in this animalistic state thoughts are more like instincts than conscious fragments of sentience. /Finish it and him/. That Yisa would hate him forever does not even enter into the equation: she hates him already, what would it matter?

He's drawing the kanebo upward again when Kyo lunges, and its weaknesses as a weapon are immediately evident. It's as much as he can do to /try/ to block the onrush with it, and even that fails; he feels the heatless jaws full of pale knives close around his ribs /and/ the club, the taut apple-skin popping of his skin breaking on their points. It's probably only due to the weapon's presence against his chest that Kyo doesn't puncture Izo's heart and lungs immediately -- those fangs sink into his flesh like hot blades into butter, and his outcry is a comingled snarl of pain and rage as he struggles to get the breath being crushed out of him, reaching for whatever features he's able: in this case the lion's eyes and ears. Should his hands find purchase, his instinct will be to plant his feet on that broad, feline chest, and use the leverage to rip and tear whatever folds of flesh he can.

It's pure vitriol that inspires such malice in him -- not, as one might expect, a drive to survive. Somewhere inside, he suspects he's already dead. What he desires is to do as much harm as possible before the lights dim. That, and that only.

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

The thing about being /that big/ is that, no matter how agile you are relative to your size... you're still a pretty big fucking target. Izo lands his second blow without much of a hitch, as a result. Unfortunately, with his Shadow activated... Kyo is much more able to soak the damage and recover quickly.

The result is fangs buried in Izo's body.

The lion's massive breathing, lukewarm and sterile, hisses around Izo, carrying a vague rumbling suggestion of a sound that might mean pleasure. The impression becomes stronger when Kyo grinds his jaws down, the gesture palpable proof he's enjoying the feel of skin popping between his fangs. Under Izo, the coarse tongue is already reaching raspily forward in anticipation of the let blood.

Then Izo retaliates, tearing at the most delicate flesh within reach: the spot just below Kyo's right eye. The horrible cat drops Izo instantly with a deafening roar (unfortunate there's no one around to hear), retreating a step or two before lashing out wildly with the back of a clawed forepaw.

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

At the nadir of the closing of those jaws, Izo feels fangs grit against one of his ribs near his spine, and his perception of time becomes unreliable as his consciousness stutters. He has a vague impression of a deep, rolling threnody, of hot rills of blood -- or possibly saliva? -- slicking down the trench of his spine, following the creases in his abdomen to his hips. A snapshot of snarling gums. A snapshot of one razor tooth scoring the wooden pole of his club. A snapshot of blood on his hand -- but not his own, or at least he doesn't think it is--

And then he hits the ground with a thump, the kanebo rattling on the pavement, loudly but not loudly enough to compete with the sonorous sound of Kyo's fury. He sucks a breath in to replenish what he could not draw in the beast's jaws, then extends his hand toward the weapon, only to be struck and sent rolling some distance further away -- well out of reach of of the kanebo. He comes to a halt on his stomach, and despite the trembling in his arms he pushes himself up again, there isn't any sign of flight in him. His body is riddled with lattices of pain...but like the bulls of Spain, it only serves to incite him to further bloodshed. He stalks forward and grips the metal cage of a trash bin with one blood-ribboned hand, and two steps further along gives a powerful whipping forward of the arm, hurling it at his oversized adversary to try and drive him back.

If he'd known what this evening had in store for him, he'd have brought a chair and a whip.

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

Izo swatted away, Kyo takes a moment to shake his head and rub at his wounded eye with the back of a free paw. The gesture is oddly human, a reminder of what really lies at the core of the monster.

Afterwards, the paw descends again-- and lands heavily on the kanebo, claws digging heavily into the pavement. His leaned weight props one end of the weapon up-- enough that he can seize it in his jaws and -pull-, snapping the thing into halves. The pieces are flung away in a rage (though doubtless, if Kyo knew Thora made the thing, it would be with joy as well), and Kyo turns back towards Izo...

...in time to see a trash bin hurtle towards his face. Kyo snaps, teeth closing on the object with a godawful squealing protest of metal, and even as Izo stalks back towards him, Kyo grinds his jaws down, flattening the metal until it's a caved lump.

The bin is dropped. Kyo growls softly. "Stupid," he says, the first time he's spoken since he lost himself in his animal shape. "Even now, you're holding back. Aren't you? It's a good way to get yourself killed..."

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

"Are you going to monologue now? Really?" Izo's voice grates out of him between shallow, pained breaths, velvets graveled by pain and the potent chemical cocktail that keeps him on his feet and advancing rather than backing away or fleeing for his life. Outwardly he barely looks worse for the wear; the evening's queer light conceals the worst of the obvious bloodstains, the puncture wounds in his shirt appearing no more menacing than little puckers in the dark fabric. The truth is altogether different, of course; the smell of his blood is thick in the air, and his torso curves slightly to the left, muscles sheltering the worst of his wounds.

"Don't bother. We both know that if you kill me tonight, you'll just prove...that I was right about you. All along." And, saying so, he flings himself again at his opponent, given a burst of speed by the Dakini.

/That/ is bravado. He's not sure of any such thing. What he is /sure/ of, the only thing that he's sure of, is that he hasn't finished /hurting Kyo/, and he needs to stay alive long enough to do that to his satisfaction. His bull rush takes into account paws the size of manhole covers, and jaws he's become only too familiar with. There is no 'ideal' approach, head-on into a lion...but he's going for the throat, even so, and he'll tear it out with his entirely too human teeth if he has to.

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

"I don't understand you people," Kyo sighs, "and your obsession with me proving you were 'right about me all along.' So what if I do? I don't give even one shit about your proofs. The last moralizing laughs of dead men don't keep me awake at night. The ability to claim the high ground against me is nothing more than the smugness of people who can't find any better way to separate themselves from me."

He steps forward. The ruined bin trundles away, down the street. "And all of you call ME smug."

Kyo takes another step forward. "Understand this. I can kill you tonight. And the only thing you will be is /dead/." His eyes half-lid, active malice so strong in the yellow gaze that it has an impact all its own. "Who will take care of her then?"

Who is 'her'?

For all that, Izo's sudden charge surprises Kyo. The massive cat is slow to get out of the way. His size becomes a disadvantage, as Izo finds the route under those crushing jaws to be clear-- even easy-- to travel. He cannons into Kyo's throat full speed, cutting off that hated voice, and-- in addition-- makes himself suddenly much more difficult to target. Not that Kyo doesn't try-- a paw lifts, claws raking furiously at Izo.

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

It is a /ridiculous/ position to be in: he gets his arms around a giant cat's throat and his legs around one forepaw, for the most ungainly fighting position in the history of battles (outside of the sport of wrestling), and still it only nets him a minor shield against harm, as Kyo has wholly another leg replete with an equally nasty number of claws -- and that is not even beginning to count the ones in /back/.

"It's not my knowing who was right that matters! It's that you'd prove it...to /them/." Even getting that sentence out on its own is a trial; for all of his body's physical strength, he is dealing with an /enormous lion/, and the war of raw muscle against the same is one he's destined to lose, sheerly through attrition. His ribs are on fire. There are proverbs that ask what one is supposed to do once they have the bull by the horns, or the tiger by its tail, and they all make a very compelling case for never attempting to do either of those things. He's in it now, though, and somewhere inside of that bullish neck there is a pulse, and he means to tear open its conduit if it /kills/ him.

The question that Kyo asks may be intended to draw attention to Yisa's circumstances, and initially, it does. It seems like sheer chance, the firing of a synapse that --

(Evening in Golden Gai. Tokyo stretches away into the foggy distance, alive, while below jazz clubs filled with artistic elite do a brisk business, but up here, on the roof of an apartment building that fits their broken family like a shoe two sizes too small, they feel alone. Exhaust pipes flicker, blades spinning; ventilation roars, subdued. They hang their feet over the side of the building and invent lives for the people who pass by below, oblivious)

-- brings him an unbidden memory of his little sister. Like a shard of cold glass, it spikes down through the red haze of his fury. For two precarious seconds he freezes, all of his survival instincts surging back into place (what is he doing? How can he be this selfish?)...and then his fury expands exponentially. His wrath for Kyo...but also for himself. For the circumstances that landed him here, away from his family; at the young woman he permitted himself enough affection for that he felt anything at all about the danger she's placing herself in; for his inability to control his temper. For the world's continued attempts to end, and his feeling of helplessness in stopping it...

But mostly, for his sister. For his failure to protect her, his continued failure to protect her --

He is never wholly aware when it happens. Inside, something clicks like a switch, and the world ceases to exist save in a series of impulses, aided by the Dakini. Blue light ripples over his ungainly grapple with the shadow, and what follows he would not be able to later say, save the tearing and the snapping of bones -- Kyo's or his, who can say? Does it matter? -- that steadily drains him of both strength and awareness.

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

However ridiculous it may be, it seems effective; Kyo is initially unable to really get at him, not without taking the time to shift his balance, and that time is time in which Izo tears at his throat maddeningly. He seems to have no rebuttal this time for Izo's muffled outcry, whether because there is none possible, or just because the breath is still knocked out of his throat by that initial charge.

His only answer is to finally lift his other paw and rake Izo with those claws, trying to peel him off.

Yet Izo doesn't let go. It seems impossible, but Imaizumi simply refuses to be dislodged. Kyo thrashes, annoyed, ready to tear at Izo again, harder-- and then Imaizumi taps whatever lies at the very center of his anger, sparking a flash of blue, Persona-indicating light that-- if only for a moment-- causes Kyo to still.

Some part of Kyo's mind, still clinical and examining even in moments like this, finds it interesting that such a well of berserker rage would hide under the skin of someone like Izo Imaizumi. The wild, unchained strength is enough to knock even the huge cat back, first off his balance-- and then off his feet, the leonine Shadow-Possessed slammed back into the brick of a building face.

He breathes shallowly, afterwards. His yellow eyes reopen and turn balefully on Izo. Kyo is hurt, but not critically. And he seems angry about it.

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

It is the time to /strike/. Any tactician worthy of his salt would know that: you cannot press such a ferocious attack and then /stop/, else what have you bought with your attempt?

And yet--

And yet.

Izo is beyond pressing his attack. The massive shadowform's claws have opened up his body in innumerable places -- armpit to knee, nape to hips -- and, when combined with the wounds he's already sustained, this fresh company of injuries might be more than enough to explain why he doesn't rally and instead staggers, and finds himself on his hands and knees, head uncertain as to whether or not it can remain aloft. The world swims in and out of focus. His body flirts with the possibility of unconsciousness.

It's more than his wounds, though -- it's a purging of some deeper sort of reserve, of spiritual energy, of vitality. While it may be difficult to quantify that element, no doubt a predator knows perfectly well how to sense when its prey is on the brink of passing through that veil between life and whatever lies beyond it. Blood puddles on the ground beneath his hands, drools from his mouth -- Kyo's, or his own? -- but still he sways there, even on his hands and knees, and makes no effort to advance, or to retreat.

Izo is his own crucible.

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

For a long, silent few moments, Kyo's massive form lays against the brick where it has fallen. The only movement from him is the way his yellow eyes watch Izo stumble and sink to hands and knees... the way his side rises and falls steadily.

The way, eventually, he licks his bloodied jaws.

Izo never does manage to get up. Kyo, however, does. The lion-Shadow pushes back to a stand, and slowly approaches Izo with the limping, but leisurely air of a predator that knows its prey is now wholly unable to fight or flee. His claws even retract, in a final insult to Imaizumi's lost ability to do him any further harm.

"I suppose I did tell you not to hold back," his gentle voice says. Izo might not be able to lift his head, but the way that soft voice gets louder and louder is indication enough Kyo is drawing closer. Soon enough, the blackness of the Dark Hour gets even darker as Kyo's shadow swallows Imaizumi's prone form. "I didn't think, however, that you would ever do so in a way that left you unable to finish the job. Whatever else I thought of you, I did think you had /some/ sense."

A paw descends on Izo. It isn't crushing, or clawed. It just sits there, a perfunctory pressure to keep Izo still. "When you set out to destroy someone," Kyo instructs, his voice still gentle-- almost kind-- "the attempt must destroy them utterly." The heavy paw pinning Izo down is velveted. The weight and vague warmth could almost be soothing. "You cannot leave loose ends. You cannot leave them standing. You cannot leave /anything left/ for others to avenge."

Kyo pushes lightly, trying to turn Izo onto his back so he can look up and see the impending lesson. "Let me show you," Kyo offers. And just above Izo, his jaws open wide, exposing the hungry blackness at the back of his throat.

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

As careful as the paw on his back is, it's enough to collapse him onto his stomach fully. Instinct prompts him to slide his bloody hands up over the gritty pavement to shoulder height (while his punctured, rent muscles scream with molten fire) as though to rise...a folly, in the end. He feels gravel biting into his cheek. His bleary eyes focus on his splayed right hand, where blood that looks brown in the pestilential air of the Dark hour is spattered like some sort of macabre Rorschach design. Beyond, down the darkened street, march rows of coffins that were -- are, he supposes -- people. The scene is so surreal that in his state of shock and blood loss, he experiences a dizzying thought: that none of this is real. That this is all a nightmare he's been having since that night in Golden Gai. Maybe he's in a coma, lying in a hospital somewhere, dreaming strange dreams...

But his body is lanced with a thousand pains. As tempting as that delusion may be, he cannot embrace it wholly enough to find comfort as he's rolled onto his back -- the pain of his wounds, of grating bones and stinging flesh on asphalt, is almost enough to take his consciousness from him then and there -- and finds himself staring up into a horrifying array of teeth. He barely processes the words, but he understands their significance well enough.

He closes his eyes as a pang knots his throat.

/I'm sorry/, he thinks, feverishly.

And also, /Maybe it's better this way./

<Pose Tracker> Kyo Enda [U] has posed.

A long few moments hover in the air. Nothing in particular happens.

Eventually, should Izo reopen his eyes, it will be to see Kyo studying him from much too close-- but now, thankfully, with his jaws closed. There is something in those luminous yellow eyes that mingles puzzlement and recoiling distaste... as if Kyo had imagined himself to be biting into a bit of candy, only to suddenly realize it's a rotten scrap of fish instead.

There was, perhaps, a little too much relief and acceptance in Izo's reaction. It certainly seems to have soured Kyo's stomach on the matter.

"Perhaps," he comments, after a long moment of thought, "our lesson should be about accountability instead. People certainly seem eager to attack and beat me over my supposed lack of it. Well, allow me to return that favor. We have engaged in the requisite violence. Now you must go and be accountable."

He pulls his paw away and steps back a pace. His body flickers, shadows warping over his form to change it as he twists another Persona into prominence. The leonine form seems to splice with that of something humanoid, androgynous features making Kyo into something oddly Sphinxlike. And improbably-- something very like healing eases Izo's injuries, ensuring he will not die.

"I'm not going to take you, and let you escape what messes have shit all over your life. That would be easy," he says, his flanged Shadow voice now echoing with running water rather than the familiar lion's growl. "No. Go clean the chaos around you up, Imaizumi. If you even can."

Kyo turns without further ado, and begins to walk away. "You'll live, for now. I understand that for many, life is the hardest thing to face."

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

Everything. Hurts.

For the time being, Izo is too damaged and drained to feel much in the way of emotion. That single cramp of regret -- of love for a sibling whose present situation is no less than his fault -- was followed by the numbness of his resignation, and though Kyo is repulsed by it, it lingers even after he seems to change his fickle mind. For once, Izo has no lucid replies to what he's told, either verbally or mentally. He feels that spiteful suffusion of healing energy -- enough to tug his awareness just a little bit more deeply down into the wrecked shell of his body -- and all he can manage by way of answer is to roll his head, focusing his gaze on Kyo's retreating figure...and lift his hand from the ground, fingers trembling...

...to flip him off.

Everything after that is a blur: he sleeps for a while, or doesn't; he's discovered at twelve-oh-one in the morning, the victim of an animal attack (dogs, they'll suggest uneasily in the ambulance -- Yakuza attack dogs?); he's stripped of his clothing by nurses and doctors who are bound not to discuss his unclothed state thanks to convenient patient confidentiality ethics; he's anesthetized, oxygenated, washed, sewn up, and thrust into the depths of a blissfully dreamless morphine sleep.

Accountability will have to wait a /little/ while.

Message: 19/38 Mauled Student - Gangland Tensions

A Sumaru University student was found mauled on the streets of Yumezaki ward just after midnight this evening. Eyewitnesses say that he appeared to have been attacked by an animal, and an anonymous medical source confirmed their story, going a step further by noting that the student may have had criminal ties, and been the victim of escalating tensions in the Yakuza. Authorities are asking anyone with information to report activity in the ward that may have involved a number of large dogs.

The student is listed as being in critical but stable condition at a Sumaru hospital, but police have asked that his name be withheld in order to avoid exacerbating any possible gangland elements of the situation.