Cutscene: Deviancy, Partition B
Dec 16, 2012
Unknown Location
The TV crackled incessantly, casting an erratic light over the confines of the spacious room.
The length of his scarecrow frame was thrown haphazardly over the bed, like a fallen tree. The plush, king-size expanse of the bed dominated even the luxury breadth of the bedroom. Yet it was still too small for someone like him, who was a haphazard sleeper at best. Of course, extenuating circumstances applied, and it was rare that someone like Mikiya Ryouhara could be accused of an eventless night.
Blood drips from the last blade, 'Saigotou,' embedded in the wall across the room. The unconscious, broken body of some famous Tokyo prize fighter lay in the corner, bleeding slowly into a pool at his hip. He would live. Maybe. Possibly. The onmitsu, as they referred to him, didn't really know. The importance of the thing itself had lost lustre in the hours that followed. Rows of drained bottles of liquor lined every flat surface. If that fighter didn't make it through the night, he would die not feeling a thing. It would be a good death to have. Still, Mikiya had been lenient for the sport's sake. He imagined he would live. Or so he told them.
Slacks bearing a Chinese design and the term "ETERNITY" slipped over his legs, unbuttoned and secured only in the most superficial way with a length of unfastened leather, the onmitsu was otherwise bare to the chill of the night. His midriff was pillow to the first woman he'd come across that night, flaxen hair pooling about his waist. A slender Russian, one of the controllers from the organization. She seemed annoyed even while asleep. The other woman, who slept quietly on his arm, was nameless to him. She had been involved in some long-standing bid for power from the same company that sponsored the fighter. Or so the story had went.
Neither woman was much more dressed than he. Details were by and large, pointless. Tomorrow would likely just be more of the same.
The dried blood from the fight ran gritty with the perspiration from the night's other excursions. The color and pattern of it clashed with his extensive ritual tattooing over the length of his arms, chest and back, resembling a dark fire whipping across his body. The patterns flexed and moved with every slow breath he took, seeming some great living thing.
But for all of the relentless "physicality" of it all... when Mikiya stared at the ceiling, his eyes were glazed, blank. His voice was empty when he spoke to the other man in the room, another agent of his mother Order.
"Scold me," Mikiya said, "or try your hand at killing me." Either way, the result would be the same, his unfocused eyes said.
"There's no need to fight me," the agent countered. Mikiya dimly recognized the voice as belonging to a man only known under his codename, "Kunlun." One of his handlers from the Nest. "I'm only here with information," the agent suggested, lifting one of the half-drained bottles from a table nearby. He made a face after he sampled the acrid odor. "Your little Maboroshi scheme hasn't been kind to you, has it?"
A current of unearthly whispers flooded Mikiya's mind. "Maboroshi..." he responded meaninglessly.
"You know that little girl's parents disappeared, correct? The intelligence group suspects the Taimiev group of involvement. They are likely no longer alive. And... after Department 4 entered the Midnight Channel, they seem to have been unsuccessful in retrieving Nakashima intact," he said simply. A moment passes before he clarifies. "The intelligence group believes Yoko Nakashima is now shadow possessed."
The young girl had well been known to be one of Mikiya's myriad but ultimately most persistent fascinations. Though it was well known by now amongst his handlers that investigating too deeply into Mikiya's habits and interests had gotten several of their number killed, it was felt that perhaps an appeal to his hatred of shadows and his former protectiveness over the girl would produce some measurable reaction. Rouse the flock...
A slow blink met Kunlun's report. "Ah, it seems that nothing of life is ever kind to those near me, nya ..."
Time twisted in the glass. It wasn't easy for Kunlun to wait, to not say more. He was selected for his extraordinary resilience; it was the source of his name, but Mikiya's moods and attitudes had cost more than one person their ability to eat solid food. A few of those had been friends. Some part of Kunlun was pleased to be giving the moody onmitsu the bad news about the little girl he once doted on.
"But what would you have me do, Kunlun-sama?" the onmitsu asked from his resting place. Though words were desolate, his voice was always sweet, always polite. His eyes never strayed from the ceiling, a vacuous, mindless stare.
"There is no one who I can drag back from that brink."
"They say," Kunlun interrupted, "That it happened under Katsuya Suou's charge."
To that, Mikiya was silent. He lifted a hand. For a moment, Kunlun dreamt that the onmitsu might move, might rise. Two terms as a political bodyguard had made the agent an old hand at assassination attempts. He tensed, ready to respond at the slightest sign of action. But nothing would come of it; the shinobi merely ran his fingers through the slumbering Irina's hair, thoughtfully winding the light strands around the silver ring he wore. That ring bore the word 'life.'
"I entrusted everything to him in the end," Mikiya mused aloud, "thinking that Katsu-sama might be able to succeed where I'd failed. But, regrettably, there's really nothing to be done anymore, nya...?" For all the world knew, it seemed that Mikiya could not be bothered at all to care. The cold-bloodedness of it struck the agent as wholly unnecessary. He had no principles, no loyalties. He was no better than an animal. Kunlun began to wonder if the shinobi really had anything he cared about at all.
Insensible to the train of thought his conversation partner was pursuing, Mikiya laughed, lightly, lifting his hand free and staring at the blood still gathered in the well of his ring, the glimmer of the metal outpacing the ruddy flecking. No matter how dark the night got, silver still shined just as bright. Cruel, really.
"I guess.. it might be better if I took these terrible hands to my poor, unlucky child..."
