Logs: Introducing Yisa Taimiev

IC Date: May 30, 2011
Who: Izo Imaizumi, Yisa Taimiev
Location: Atom Bar, Sumaru
What: Yisa storms Izo's workplace, bent on vengeance.

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

Seasons turn.

Sometimes they go with grace, departing with one last blush of heat or flurry of snow, like a goodbye kiss -- fleeting, easily forgotten, merely an echo of what came before -- and sometimes they struggle, keening and furious, refusing to release their stranglehold on the passage of days in something akin to an ugly, spiteful petulance. That might be said of this particular spring: in merely a handful of days, the region's students will put away their current uniforms and exchange them for the uniforms that they'll wear throughout the island nation's humid, traditionally sweltering summer. One would never guess, from the current weather: tsuyu rain spits down out of the sky, chilly and bleak. The heavens have yet to open up in full; such a release of weather, culminating in an actual storm, would be far too cathartic for this sullen display. Instead, the rain has slapped out of the sky at intervals, waiting until hopes rise for a break in the clouds before beginning all over again.

Moods in the bar are accordingly low.

Calling the establishment a 'club' would be overstating its offerings, while merely referring to it as a 'bar' would be selling it somewhat short. The truth lies in some awkward space between: it possesses fairly state-of-the-art light and sound equipment, and offers two (public) floors for its guests, each with a different ambiance, a different DJ, a different floorplan, a different set of cocktail waitresses...but all of that technical opulence seems out of place against the old, time-worn fixtures, booths and bartops just a little bit too plastic, vinyl, linoleum and lucite to seem anything but what they are, which is cheap leftovers from the discos of decades previous.

There are reasons for that strange contrast, of course, and one can find them scattered around inside, if one looks. This is a Yakuza establishment. Hot electronics are easy to come by for free through illicit means; venues less so...and who cares what they look like inside, as long as people pour yen into them?

This is Izo's new home away from home.

Lucky Izo.

It's someone else's shift at the door. He's holding up the wall by the bar instead, feeling damp despite the overhang that shelters the bouncers outside, seeking artificial warmth inside of a shot glass.

<Pose Tracker> Yisa Taimiev [DS] has posed.

His name is Arima Yasunari, and he likes to hit his girlfriend.

It's certainly not his only crime, but it's the one he takes the most pride in. He's just a kid, a student barely hacking by the classes in Sumaru University, and no one is really sure he's going to make the year. He doesn't seem the care. He just got his initiation in with the Yamaguchi-gumi, and he's finding himself on the horizon of a promising career. Now he only ever steps foot back on campus to sell drugs to certain students and pay respects to his devoted girlfriend with the back of his hand. Especially when she had the silly idea to tell him it was over.

Then the day happened when some stupid gaijin approached him on campus -- with skin so dark even he took a step back -- told him in his own language what she's seen him doing, and warned him never to do it again.

Really, the nerve of the broad?

He forgot it easily within an hour. And two weeks later, after she succeeded in pissing him off again, his sweet little Saoko was attending classes nursing a new black eye.

Now it's night, and that rain falls out of the dead dark sky. Where the cold is sharp and razory outside, the bar slips on like an old shoe: hot, stuffy, and just a little rank. The humidity makes the room feel heavy, and one can taste the smells of sweat and alcohol on the back of their tongue. But it hasn't stopped a long table of yakuza initiates from drinking it up tonight, and Arima is among them as he hacks loudly and swigs back shots of alcohol.

He's in the middle of telling this story about this cute thing his girlfriend does, or it's really what he does to her, when he spreads her legs as far as they will go and --

-- his face suddenly slams home into the table. It makes a meaty sound.

There's a hand fisted in his hair. It belongs to the gaijin who's suddenly standing over him, a young woman no older than they are, looking as polished and pampered as someone's expensive cat except for the venom that burns in her green eyes.

The rest of the kids at the table just sit there, dumbstruck. Like they've never seen this sort of thing happen. Like this is a complete first, and hell if they know what to do.

A split-second later, a wide-eyed waitress is rushing to the bouncer at the door, whispering fearfully of a commotion inside.

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

Some men like to talk with their hands.

Izo isn't one of them. He isn't one of them because he /is/, or could be -- but he knows the type, at least; there are plenty of vulgar men in the Yamaguchi-gumi, and no shortage of them in the seedy club. That, like so many other things, is not his business. So long as the knuckles aren't popping skin against /his/ jaw, his job -- his only job -- is to make sure the peace is kept, or whatever semblance of peace will keep the eyes of the law from lingering a little bit too long on the venue.

Enter Yisa. The sound of face meeting table can't be heard over the deep thump of the bass, but strangely the silence that crashes in after the impact -- that expands outward from it, like an invisible, almost-tangible brisance -- is enough to get his attention immediately. He turns his head to look over his shoulder, features in hard profile, while one nighted eye affixes to the shocked audience.

He looks at the bartender, his glass. He drains the latter, then sets it down atop the slick-scarred surface of the bar with a flick of the wrist and snap of the fingers that sends it spinning like a top on one edge, drawing a deep (resigned) breath as he pushes himself upright, turning back to the table. Five strides, he estimates. Less than ten, even if people get in the way -- which they usually don't.

He also pushes his sleeves up. At school, around town, he goes to great lengths to divorce himself from this lifestyle, even going so far as to gently insert space between himself and the Irie heir in conversation. Here? Those markings have power -- though of the opposite stripe than what they depict, images of the Floating World in all of its blissful, surreal pleasantry. Koi fish and water ascend shoulder-ward on the left forearm; sakura blossoms and petals spatter the right. The subject matter is not intimidating. The inference can be: 'You know what I am, and fucking with me would complicate your life,' is what they say.

Usually.

<Pose Tracker> Yisa Taimiev [DS] has posed.

The music blasts the place like a wrenching hot heartbeat, the bass high enough to be felt pushing against one's eyes and pulsing inside their teeth. Wild, unrestrained house music knocks the walls with an unrelenting double measure, or maybe it's just the sound of Arima Yasunari's face as the gaijin smashes it repeatedly down against the top of the table.

Again and again and again.

Her lips move, but it's hard to hear her over the sound of the music. The tips of her incisors flare against every meticulous syllable she forms. Like she's talking nicely. And slowly.

"You had your warning," she says to him and the stunned stares of his friends at the table. One even seems to have forgotten he's still holding his shot glass.

Her hand wrings tighter into his hair, the violence of the action reflecting in the widening of her green eyes. "I told you that the campus is under my protection. I told you to leave Saoko alone. You filth. Now it's time for you to apologize."

He's not apologizing. The kid is too busy trying to catch his breath, which is sounding a little too wet now to be healthy. Even under the dimmed, crimson lights of the bar, the greasy streak out of his mouth against the table is not easily confused.

"Wh-- what the fuck are you doing?" one of his companions finally snarls, snaking the rest of them out of their mass daze. They glance all amidst each other, unsure of who will take the first step, until the angriest, drunkest one of them all pushes violently to his feet. The rest follow suit.

And the gaijin finally deigns to look up.

Just, as if on cue, the bouncer demonstrates an excellent sense of timing.

As Izo's presence brushes close, it breaks up the high noon happening across the table, the young woman meeting eyes with what looks like a brawl eighty-five seconds away. Eyes turn, and his larger presence stalls them.

And with a swing of her spirally black hair, pulled back into an inky ponytail, Yisa turns to aim her furious, warning stare right on (and up, and up) at Imaizumi. It might be hard to place her, looking an antithesis of what she did days ago, now dressed in jeans and a belted leather jacket, and with her right fist full of Arima's head.

She doesn't seem to recognize him, not in the dusky shadows of the pub, not when she's reading his tattoos more than his expression.

But she holds her ground solidly. Every inch of her carries itself like a rival apex predator. And she says, lowly, almost diplomatically, "I'll just be leaving with him--"

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

If they pause for Izo, it's decidedly not because of his stature -- though that helps, no doubt.

It's his mystifying presence. It's his question mark.

No one knows yet what to make of the tall Tokyo transplant: who he is, why he's here, why he's inexplicably attached to the Irie heir. Is he in trouble? Did he fuck up? He has all of his knuckles. Is he some sort of wunderkind? Iriesama doesn't demand prison audiences with grunts, as a general rule, or foot the bill for their living spaces, or pay for them to attend university.

It's the uncertainty in which he's shrouded that affords him their wary distance, and cools -- even if only temporarily -- waters that were rapidly coming to a rolling boil.

Izo is not above taking advantage of his grace period. He slants a brittle stare around the table, meeting other pairs of eyes just as starless and dark as his own, before completing the circuit and returning to the odd pair out, Yisa's greens, discolored in the jeweltone flashing lights. What she says jumps dark brows slightly upward, though they're quick to settle. Hands on hips. Too relaxed. "'Just,' he repeats. Doubt plates the neutrality of his tone. His voice is a baritone, as befits his stature, but quiet; it's the depth of it that lets it carry well, even through a fuzz of ambient noize. If she missed the skepticism in his subtle intonation, she might catch it in the way a deep, slow breath carves out the hollow of his throat. He clears it. Itches beside his chin with the nail of his thumb, squints.

As though Arima weren't in a vice grip, or maybe even there at all.

"I don't think they're going to let you do that, miss," comes the speculation, with a tilt of his head toward the table. "'Just.'"

<Pose Tracker> Yisa Taimiev [DS] has posed.

Head almost twitching back, the Chechen slants Izo a glance like he'd gone mad.

She's barged into a yakuza pub in Yamaguchi-gumi territory to bodily drag out one of its initiates, and she thinks he's mad.

Yisa's expression is transparent in its confusion and suspicion, a vengeful, passionate sort's total inability to parse people who can remain calm in these sorts of sitations. And Izo's full demonstration of borderline Zen is offputting to her. She's tense like she's not sure how to take it, or trust it.

BUt she's still not standing down. Neither is she looking eager to relinquish her prey. Whether fearless or foreign or having forgotten her own sanity, Yisa holds her ground with the arrogance of someone who doesn't just think, but utterly believes, she owns the place. Like she's lived a life so fantastic that no one has ever walled off her path and denied her a single whim.

Like the expectation still runs high.

Already her jaw bucks stubbornly, a prideful frown infecting the set of her mouth. Those eyes of hers hood.

"Perhaps you can explain to them," she snaps back in her foreigner's strangely-accented Japanese, "that their comrade is reprehensible and beyond mercy. He has trespassed on my territory and harmed what is mine."

She can't be for real; that's the obvious thought mirrored against every gaping face at the table. The table and beyond. A couple waitresses are staring nervously. Only the DJ looks like he doesn't care what's going on.

One of the youths is drunk enough to slant Izo a vivid, incredulous look -- isn't this his job?!

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

She can't be for real. Izo's face is a subtler play than most of the others at the table, but the look is there, and even intended to be seen: his brow cocks slightly upward, its opposite drawing in, and he dares to flick dark eyes away from her, around the interior of the establishment -- which does not look like a Russian Tea House, or much of a Russian anything. The beat is brief, and pointed.

"So this is -- what, an eye for an eye, sort of thing? He pissed on your --" On her /what/, exactly? Beneath his glacial calm, he's all cables drawn taut, under high tension and promising volatile results if snapped. Given that, there isn't usually much room for dealing with more than defusing a situation with a minimum of explosive violence, but the thought nevertheless occurs to him: what could she possibly have that would constitute 'territory', and be important enough that she felt the need to not just kick the hornet's nest but crawl into it first for good measure?

"-- whatever -- so you decided to come in here and do the same?"

Incredulity limns the tone of his voice, like a thread of something gilded. The brows knit a little bit further. He dips his head, angling for a confidential sort of tone when he asks, with every indication of sincerity and an utter lack of rhetorical flippancy, "Are you stupid?"

<Pose Tracker> Yisa Taimiev [DS] has posed.

"Absolutely!" she answers him in her imperious air, her voice mantled with the entitlement of ancient royalty. "My warning was ignored. If it takes force to elicit a response, then I will provide it. Whatever it takes."

There is almost something military about her, with the slow bleed of dignity coming off her in the same volume of what is oozing out of poor, half-conscious Arima's face. Looking down at him, it takes everything Yisa has to suppress another surge of anger. Beneath all her prettied words, she feels electric with her rage. It's the only thing that brought her in her. No plan. No plot of assault. Just the conviction that she will drag this trash back to his ex-girlfriend and beat the guilt and remorse out of his body.

He will be her first example. She has claimed Sumaru University. It is her land. There will be no transgressions made against its innocent.

Exhaling, she turns her thoughts away from her stoking temper, her sharp eyes slanting back on the readied table of Arima's friends. They're still frozen in place. Half of them are probably so drunk they don't even know what's going on. The others are still dumbstruck.

And the crazy gaijin exhales away her rage just in time for Izo to ask, sotto voce, if she's stupid.

The look Yisa gives him could strip the paint off a car.

And in one sharp, startled movement, her right hand lets go of Arima's head, letting it thunk heavily back down to the table. She rounds on the bouncer, even if he is nearly a foot on her and many, many pounds heavier, meeting his incredulity with her own. Her mouth moves wordlessly at first, like a flinch of her upper lip, and her hands flex before they fist at her sides.

There's nothing explosive about the way she speaks. On the contrary, she just appears to go quiet, her voice thin and sharp like the swipe of a razorblade. Half-choked, she rasps, "E- excuse me?!"

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

Not much about Izo moves when she turns that way, but there's nevertheless a /sharpening/ that takes place, as though the air immediately gloving his person had grown a little bit more dense than the rest -- some sort of tightening, of vague readying, a movement without a muscle. His expression barely changes, but his lashes may flicker, lids lowering, slightly, as if in brace. The breadth of his chest holds a single breath, until the split second window of time during which all of her potential violence might have become kinetic has passed -- at least for /this/ moment. True, she is smaller; true, she is outnumbered. Neither of those things were enough to prevent her from storming in here like some sort of avenging angel. Izo takes nothing for granted.

When he does exhale, it's in a low reverberation of ambiguous sound, also low in the chest. He glances down at Arima, who is being more or less ignored by the more lucid of his tablemates, by dint of the fact that he's not nearly as interesting as the unfolding...confrontation? A waitress is getting ice and a cloth behind the bar, but nobody else appears particularly interested. At least she's let go of him; that is, he thinks, a start.

Almost in defense, Izo splays both hands upward, open, broad-palmed and articulate. "Well? It's that or 'death wish,' and you look too pissed off for Option B." Hands return to hips. The table gets a flicked glance, but Yisa has most of his attention. There's something in the atmosphere around her that's tickling his nerve endings, and it's not frisson. That, more than anything else, earns a mild frown. "Lucky for you, I can tell the difference. These guys, maybe not so much. I like a quiet shift. Let me walk you outside, before they ask me to do something I don't really want to do."

<Pose Tracker> Yisa Taimiev [DS] has posed.

'Stupid.'

There are few who would ever have the audacity to insult a Taimiev. In her country, it was simply something that did not happen.

It's the shock of it, more than anything else, that leaves her breathless, and even her dark skin can't disguise the visible way blood rushes to her cheeks. Unhead to anyone but the two who square off against the pulsing beat of the bar, the sound of ticking, timing clocks amplifies under the music. Tic tic tic tic.

Yisa can feel the violence crawling under her skin. Like a carpet of ants moving between her flesh and bone. There's nothing she wants more than to unleash it, to feed the starving dog of her temper, to just give into the satisfaction of letting go--

--but a twitch of her eye catches movement against her peripherals. It's of a waitress, unsure as she hugs a serving tray close. Yisa notices a couple more of them standing a distance away, watching the stand-off against an obvious foreigner and unsure of how to take it. They're not the only people here. There are patrons. A bartender. All innocent... innocent in her eyes.

Glancing back on Izo, Yisa even admits to herself that he, too, is an innocent. He may be obstructing her, but it's only because he's doing his job. Those who have not committed wrongs are innocent. If she can't hold herself together, they could become collateral damage. What kind of leader can she be if she cannot protect the innocent from herself?

So the Chechen takes in a deep, seething breath and mechanically lets it go, forcing the fury to exhale out of her like an unwanted ghost. Her eyes settle back on Izo, green and prideful and narrowing slightly against his open-handed gesture of peace. It only seems to aggravate her more. And his words--?

Even more.

Without warning, she leaves her target behind and the table, marching a stiff-legged beeline straight towards the bouncer. Yisa appears to have no such respect for personal space, and she happily attempts to invade his, pushing in recklessly close to bring her face near his. He's larger than she is, but she doesn't seem to notice or care, reaching one hand forget to try to press its manicured nail into the young man's chest.

"You listen to ME," she snaps, with all the ferocity of some undisputed alpha who has always gotten her way, "I will warn you only once not to impede me! You seek to shelter that dog?! Who hurts others?! Unacceptable! I will not allow this!" Yisa's lips pull into a sharp, fierce frown. "Now get out of my way before I--"

Her voice slowly dies off. Her eyes crease. Her head tilts to one side. Then, like an epiphany, her eyes widen.

Just enough light casts Izo's face in the darkened club. And she's just close enough to see it.

And recognize it.

She's seen him before. The Culinary Festival. The tea cafe. The maid outfit. The frills. The flesh of her thighs.

Serve... with a smile.

Mouth left open, the blood drains out of Yisa's face.

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

Only the stupid or completely-oblivious could possibly fail to notice the frailty of Yisa's current hold on her temper -- if one can even rightly call it that, when she's just finished testing the tensile strength of the table with a man's face. Izo is neither stupid nor completely oblivious, as a general rule, so her sudden onrush does not take him by as much surprise as does the fact that it ends not with a slap or something even more spectacular, but merely a finger, printing the crescent image of its nailtip into his sternum. His hands stay exactly where they are, caught in the almost viscous air; to move them might be to incite some tightly-wound response. This is hardly his first stand-off. He knows better than to provoke, even accidentally. He does tick his gaze down at that accusatory point of contact between them, and lifts it to begin speaking before she's finished, his tone one of world-weariness, resignation, and 'this is simply how things are -- what can I do?'

"Hey, listen. Your business with him is /your/ business. If you have a problem with him, that's fine -- I don't care. It only becomes my problem when you bring it in /here/. I have enough problems of my own, okay? I don't need you to be one of them, and I'm pretty sure that you don't want to make me one of yours...or anyone else in the bar. Or /everyone/ else in the bar. Because that's what'll--"

She stopped talking, but not because he was speaking, he realizes, midway through congratulating himself for finding a reasonable approach to the situation -- one that he had believed was getting through to her. Puzzled, his own sentence clips to an end, and his brows slide veeeery slightly together. There is silence.

Except that she stopped and looked at him that way once before, stunned. He might have missed it, otherwise: he spent more of his time that night looking at thighs than faces, if one is to be completely honest.

She might be able to actually hear the circuits connect, when they do -- a flipped switch, a snap or click, the way his puzzlement hardens in an instant and he presses his lips together, just a /little/ bit too late to prevent the rare grin that wanted to surface. He knows that laughing would be the worst possible thing to do, but the tension wants to /go/ somewhere, of course, and he desperately wants it not to, so he stands there, lips pressed together so hard that they barely exist anymore, the font of his laughter forced to well up past his mouth into his head and express itself by dancing in dark, sly eyes. He can't even talk. It would be a disaster.

<Pose Tracker> Yisa Taimiev [DS] has posed.

It's him. By all the odds, she saw him at the cafe. She served him at the cafe. Why didn't she realize? She barely noticed him there. She was so angry. Of course she would have missed it...

She'll get Suzuno for this. That cafe. That outfit. She knew she'd never live it down. She knew it was a mistake.

And now...

Yisa allows herself only a heartbeat of hope. It's dark. There's no reason he could remember her. There's no way. She's a crusader. She's a hero. There's no way the powers above would ever subject her to a humiliation like--

--this.

Contrary to the stormy thoughts in her head, Yisa is frozen into silence, joints locked into position and eyes staring into Izo's. It's as if she's too afraid to move, speak, or even breathe the wrong way, as if the littlest of motion would rouse his memory to a day she'd best never recalling. In that precious moment, her shocked, weak stare is silently imploring him, almost pleading in silence, for him not to place her face, for him not to remember her in some skimpy maid outfit, for him to not to--

Do what he does right now.

That simple grin says volumes. Yisa's heart falls, and desperation chokes her up. She immediately, almost flinchingly, takes her finger back as though Izo were scalding, and as her lips press together, the young woman's cheeks burn scarlet. The world narrows under her pride. She's already forgotten why she's here. What she came for. And for good reason.

She's absolutely mortified.

"D- don't --" she starts to command, voice a little too brittle. It doesn't last. His lips purse, and horrified, Yisa notices it. She realizes what's about to happen. She looks down at Izo's mouth and then back up to his eyes. In that moment, she knows what he's doing. What he's just barely swallowing back. Pure terror registers across her face. There's only one thing she can do.

Her blush deepens. Her temper snaps. And, abruptly, fiercely, Yisa tries to crack her palm straight across Izo's face.

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

Would he have been able to swallow his laughter? Maybe he could have managed it eventually, in far longer a span than is comfortable for discourse between strangers, if left unmolested. He has a formidable knack for self-control, after all.

That is not destined to happen. What does happen is almost more or less what he expected to have happen, save earlier rather than /now/, and the absolute absurdity of its sudden arrival /now/ -- with a sound that pops like a gunshot even in the muzzy bass that fills the room, his head snapping to one side -- rather a minute ago, when he asked her whether or not she were stupid, is enough to fracture, strain, and then bust the iron bars he's tried to forge around his urge to laugh. When that restraint breaks up, so does he.

These fits of laughter are even more rare than the grins that herald them, because they take him over as completely as his fury, whenever he's pushed too far. Despite the palm print etched in beestung pins and needles on one angular cheek, despite the tears forming in that one eye -- which have nothing whatsoever to do with laughter -- and the very real risk of more of the same from her for daring to laugh, he can't help himself. He laughs, almost silent, but from the belly up. It reels him back dizzily, one of his hands extended very slightly into the space between them as though to guard against further assault, the other lifting first to the side of his face, then lowered to his stomach, which is where it's needed. It would have him leaning against the wall and belting out loud if it weren't for the pressing need to try to maintain some semblance of self-control, lest the crazy woman decide that one was not enough. He can take one. One is funny. One is fine.

"Uh," he says, struggling, "Are you -- are you /sure/ you don't want to let me walk you out?"

<Pose Tracker> Yisa Taimiev [DS] has posed.

There's little a sheltered noble even knows what to do in a situation like this.

So Yisa just rears back and lets her hand deliver the most poignant retort imaginable -- the worst insult any member of the nobility could ever receive.

But it doesn't quite have the same effect here. In the wake of that fierce crack of her hand, she holds her ground and stares daggers -- only to find her very temper derailed when the first bark of laughter escapes Izo. She looks down at her palm as if it had betrayed her, then back up at him, balking at the incredible sight of a grown man crippled in pure, near-hysterical laughter.

The sight of it turns every head in the bar. Startled, it even sends the fearless Yisa stumbling back a step, completely at a loss of what to think, feel, or do. After that vacant moment of shock, the anger brands back against her face.

"Stop it!" she snaps at him, but her voice falters, broken under her own embarassment. Her blush may as well be tattooed against her cheeks. It's not going anywhere.

But Yisa, descendant from centuries of princely warriors, finds a way to soldier on. "I said stop!" she keeps shouting helplessly. "Stop this right now! Listen to me when I speak to you! This is unacceptable! Intolerable! I won't suffer --!!" Head twitching, eyes blinking, Yisa's jaw snaps shut as she stares at Izo's extended palm. Her hands slowly flex close at her sides. Their fists clench. A couple knuckles pop.

The coil of Yisa's temper turns tighter and tighter. All it needs is--

--for him to say just that.

Her face red, her hands shaking, her dignity positively in shambles, Yisa just spits back, "You --!!"

And she tries to smack past the guard of his hand, so that she can mirror her last movement and try to crack her own hand a second time across Izo's face. Only this time her fist is closed.

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

It will connect, because the sum total impact of everything she says -- all of her flustered, furious remarks -- is simply a worsening of the circumstances. Every time she interjects with a half-finished exclamation or a demand that he, of all things, /stop laughing/, the stop-and-go efforts on his part to compose himself take another beating, eroding like a seawall will erode against repeat assaults from patient waves. Things -- they just get worse and worse and worse, with no conceivable end in sight. If she's not careful, she might win this little battle accidentally, putting him in the hospital -- but with cramps. From laughing.

It's not even the fact that she wore a maid outfit that's funny, in the end. The first laugh was almost accidental, a product of the volatile circumstances, the improbability of meeting here, this way; his continued laughter has more to do with her response than anything else, and as such was destined to doom him.

Needless to say, he's distracted when she aims to clean his clock -- which she does, successfully. He feels his lower teeth, which are already pressed against his lip tautly thanks to that million-megawatt smile, cut into his cheek, a lance of sharp pain altogether different from the slap.

And that will stop his laughter, to be sure. Success number two.

The moment turns on a hard pinpoint fulcrum. Izo may have noteworthy self-restraint, but much like his place of employment's unexpected guest, there is something else that shares occupation of his chest with that fundamentally gentle heart, and it is not at all good company. It occasionally reacts to provocation without much thought on his part: witness the way one large hand extends with a snap to collar, or attempt to collar, her throat, and drive her back against the wall at the end of a very long, very strong arm. Even if he manages to grab her, he won't squeeze. It is a grip like iron in velvet, something that suggests the potential for great force without employing any of it -- yet.

His mouth tastes like blood. That was never one of his favorite flavors.

<Pose Tracker> Yisa Taimiev [DS] has posed.

Her knuckles are pulsing something painful, but Yisa can neither ignore nor deny the pleasure grafted in that small agony.

It is the feeling is total and complete satisfaction.

The foreigner does not do anything so unbecoming as shake out her hand; the laughter stops abruptly, like a door slamming, like the needle pulled off a scratching record, and she straightens back into her regal posture, hands on her sides and heels clicked together. The young woman hoods her eyes and opens her mouth, no doubt to say something annoyingly imperious--

But he moves fast.

For all her force of will, Yisa Taimiev does not have the physical strength to dismiss the strike. Neither does she have the weight to rebuff it. Her dignity is still so injured that she has the capacity to look surprised, even shocked, when Izo's hand steals around her throat and seals her body back against the wall. The unyielding cement forces the breath out of her lungs.

But where Yisa does not possess exceptional strength, she finds herself grateful for her constitution. Beaten into her by her great grand-father, she does not seem to reel against physical confrontation. Her cheeks still burn from her humiliation, her breath comes thin and shallow, and her mouth curves with a rigid frown that speaks of anger and unparalleled disapproval, but there's a sea change in the Chechen's green eyes. Something new has sparked in them, alert and intent, as if some reptile, visceral part of her is enjoying this.

Or what it promises.

Back against the wall, her throat still caged in Izo's hand, Yisa meets his eyes in a silent showdown. Eventually, a hand rises to try to curl around his wrist, her long fingers pressing down firmly in equal warning. But she makes no further movement against the man's visible threat. "Let me go," she says, and sounds like she believes he'll listen. "Or must I correct you again?"

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

The wrist is no more yielding than the arm, or the chest she prodded earlier. For all his streamlined build, he is dense -- as though he were filled with something more than flesh and blood. Like concrete.

That isn't true, of course, as he proves when he unhurriedly turns his head and spits a red gob on the floor, gingerly lifting his thumb to his lower lip to check whether or not the blood has escaped. It has not.

Satsified, he shifts his focus back to her, looking not into her eyes but at the hard curvature of her frown. As inconvenient as his height occasionally may be, its value is never more apparent than in situations like this one, when limb length gives him a comfortable distance from whatever it is that intends to do him harm -- in this case, a very angry Chechen.

"I have been," he says quietly, taking great care to enunciate the syllables, "extremely patient with you, I think. I asked you nicely to leave after you assaulted one of our patrons, and probably broke his nose. I didn't even call you a hypocrite for assaulting /me/, given what you seem to have come in here angry about. But my patience...is running...out." The last word is the quietest. Behind closed lips, his tongue runs across the pearled crescent of his now-aching teeth.

"You are making it very difficult for me to be a gentleman. At this poing, I'm well within my rights to--"

The tattoos on his arms, the location -- a Yamaguchi-gumi bar -- all suggest a myriad of conclusions to that sentence, and he lets it hang in the air, perhaps to give her time to finish it for herself in her imagination, selecting from a choice panoply of fates.

What he ultimately says is, "--call the police." Pause. "You probably do not want that. Am I right?"

<Pose Tracker> Yisa Taimiev [DS] has posed.

Her eyes, half-hooded, follow Izo as he spits blood down on the floor. She stares down intently at that small pool of crimson longer than should be necessary.

He speaks. Forcing her eyes back up, Yisa meets his recklessly once more, her gaze burning with impatience. Either hit her or let her go, her instincts seem to scream. She can't take this.

But despite all her aggression, she seems to possess the diplomacy enough to listen, even though Izo's words crease the corners of her eyes and draw a twitch against her stubborn, prideful jaw. Her frown deepens. "A hypocrite?!" she snaps back, pushing once against his hand when her temper flares. "How dare you! That was deserved. You are out of line. But he -- " that's right, the reason she came here at all... Yisa blocks momentarily on the name. "-- He -- has hurt an innocent too many times. I promised her protection. You ask me to undermine my honour. I won't be insulted!"

But as Izo continues, Yisa goes silent save for the visible narrowing of her eyes. Her hand doesn't leave its manacling grasp around his wrist, even though her fingers are not so long enough to be able to encircle it. But the young woman ignores that. She just braces against what she expects to be a threat. She has received threats. She can deal with threats. She--

The police?

Despite her anger, Yisa's expression knots in expressive confusion. Her jaw clenches briefly. The police. She doesn't care a whit about the police. She's certain her family name can tie any department in so much diplomatic red tape that they'd sooner let her go than deal with the mess. But then her father would find out--

In response, the Chechen just exhales a long, harsh breath, too proud to agree. "Warn your ally that I will find him. In fact, warn them all, the filth who will follow his example. My name is Yisa Taimiev, and Sumaru University is my territory. Its people are mine." She pauses, then adds, quite disparagingly, "And if you call that filth a comrade, you should rethink your allegiances."

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

"Yes, a /hypocrite/," Izo insists, not quite ready to let her go. That may be a mistake on his part -- she offers him an 'out' -- but Yisa isn't the only one given to making situations more complicated for herself than need be when her blood's running hot. Calm as he may be outwardly, the impulse that compelled him to pin her to the wall is still in residence, and if he had a pressure gauge, the needle -- which most often sleeps, at his bidding -- would still be trembling, hovering slightly above zero, at the line marked 'ticked-off'.

Besides -- violence comes, he knows, in a variety of guises. The sort that leaves marks is sufficient on occasion, but in this case? It would be hard to miss the note of something kindred in her. Ever the scholar, he considers himself an adept when it comes to discerning the proper weapon for the job, so to speak.

It's what has him narrowing eyes as dark and sharp as chipped obsidian down at her, to remark dryly, "Maybe Arima-san thought that innocent deserved a bruise or two for laughing at the wrong time too, eh? As far as I know, you're no better than he is." A pause. "And if I were to judge strictly from the evidence? You might actually be worse. Arima's never drawn /my/ blood before. In light of that, I'm not sure I'm too gutted by your estimation of my allegiances -- as if you could know much about that." Playing with fire, of course: this is where he lets her go. The thought that follows may cosmetically appear unrelated, but is not: "You smell like money."

Sniff. Spit. This clot is less red than the last. "I'll give him your message, /Yisa Taimiev/, when he's sober enough to hear it. Just make sure you remember to handle your business somewhere that it won't become /my/ problem. And," he adds, not without some wryness, "I'm sure I'll see you on campus sometime."

<Pose Tracker> Yisa Taimiev [DS] has posed.

A fist across her face could not have elicited a better reaction.

Because Izo Imaizumi has just said possibly the worst thing anyone could to a creature like Yisa.

It shocks her so much that she momentarily relaxes against his hand against her throat, so dumbstruck that she loses any capacity to be angry. Her hand slackens against his wrist. Her pupils shrink to pinpoints, her lips open in the smallest parting of flesh, and she holds her breath.

He's a perfect stranger, someone whose name or identity are unknown to her, a man whose presence would otherwise be lost on hers any other day. But he says something so direct and so cutting that there is no way Yisa will ever be able to forget this moment. It hurts because, despite him not even knowing her, Izo's struck upon one of the Chechen girl's most virulent fears.

There's that part of her that wonders, herself, if he's right. Is she really a monster? A monster who tries to do good things? A monster trying to dress herself up as a human being?

Let go, not even Yisa appears to realize it. His hand leaves her throat, but she remains frozen in place, leaning almost dully against the wall.

No. She can't be. There's no way Allah would entrust this power to a monster. She just has to prove herself...

Yisa straightens back to her feet. Her expression locks itself back up. She looks back up at Izo, and despite him having a hand at her throat a minute ago, she uses her new freedom to immediate insert herself back into his personal space. Her arms remain at her sides, all of her violence funnelled up into her glaring eyes.

"You only demonstrate how little you know. I'm nothing like him," she declares, her voice low and papery. A corner of her mouth tics. "Insult me again and I'll make you regret it."

Her own threat only barbs back on her when this strange, nameless, bar bouncer reveals -- himself to be on her campus? The implications are many.

Yisa just frowns -- very, very deeply.

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

He is not above being petty. It was a petty sort of thing that drove him to say what he said -- because it is simultaneously true and probably not true, and he is aware, even during the short span of this meeting, of both of those things; Arima's personality can hardly be a secret to him, after all -- and it's a petty kind of satisfaction that he takes from seeing her struck so obviously dumb. He dislikes the part of him that takes pleasure in it, but this Hermit is self-knowing down to the depths of his skull's blackest shadows, and like it or not, he must acknowledge it.

Perhaps it's for that reason that he seems to somehow soften, or at least /relax/, despite her advance; there isn't any indication that he intends to put his hands on her again. (Maybe he's aware, too, that he's pushed her across a line, and there's only likely so far that people are willing to be pushed before they snap in a more serious sort of way -- maybe.) He does listen, and eventually he splays that hand, a mimic of his earlier gesture, something like a shrug. One of his shoulders even rocks a little, casually, as though his skin were not scarlet on one side, and his lip were not already swelling, imbalancing his face's symmetries. "Okay, you're nothing like him. Then don't act like him. That's all I've been asking you since you got here."

<Pose Tracker> Yisa Taimiev [DS] has posed.

There's a slight purse to her lips and a minute furrow to the young woman's eyebrows; Yisa's able to parse the slight mollifying in Izo's presence, but she has little talent to parse it. It leaves her own anger a little aimless; a dog knows how to mindlessly chase a moving car, but God knows what it knows what to do when the car stops and stands still.

Her own redirected anger just leaves her feeling tired and frustrated. She chances a glance past Izo, back at the half-broken form of Arima Yasunari, and half-considers just muscling past to collect him. Her darker nature is begging her to do just that.

But even Yisa feels her convictions lacking, disheartened by Izo's eerily accurate assessment into her own fears. She's doubting her own hands, even if she's denying it.

Eventually, a short, near soundless sigh escapes her, just about the only evidence Yisa will provide that Izo is getting under her skin. Messing with her own thoughts. Leaving this place never seemed a fortunate option.

Almost in a small capitulation, she finally takes her eyes off Arima, her attention sliding back up to Izo. Yisa watches him almost cautiously as he speaks, sure she's not going to like anything this strange bar bouncer has to say. And her instincts are right.

Only this time, her temper doesn't strike. There is no threat of anger haunting the exotic, foreign features of Yisa's face. Something rare, rare as Izo's laughter, crosses her features in her fury's absence. And in that single moment she just looks exhausted.

"That's not how things work." She glances away briefly, down at his blood on the floor, then back up. Her stubborn frown returns. "Remember my warning."

And with that, and not a word more, Yisa whirls with a crisp turn of her heel and swing of her heavy black ponytail, striding fiercely for the door. Unless stopped, she'll leave without a glance back.

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

There may be some grumbling at the table when Izo allows the girl to leave unmolested. It won't come from Arima; he knows what he did to bring this down on himself, and he's too busy having his nose tended to by a waitress with a dishtowel filled with ice from behind the bar, anyway, trying not to choke on the blood running down his throat from his (definitely broken) nose.

Izo ignores it. This is his job. He gets to decide how he wants to go about it, and it is, in many ways, a cross to which he'll repeatedly nail himself, testing and retesting his own fortitude, like a constant affirmation of his ability to be a Good Guy. They are more similar than he could possibly know, in that respect.

Tonight's efforts were hardly beyond reproach, but after a moment of consideration, watching her stalk out of the venue with her head held high, he decides that this counts for an overall win. It could have been much worse for everyone. Less complicated, admittedly, but 'simpler' is not always 'better.'

He lowers his head once she disappears, and checks his lip with careful fingertips, squinting. What doesn't sting is already numb and distorted, swollen. That'll be true even tomorrow in class -- and his knuckles had only just begun to heal. The bruise on his jaw will pile atop the hole still healing in his stomach.

"I'm a mess," he says to himself, squinting at the door one more time. Whatever thoughts transpire behind dark eyes, they are abruptly interrupted by the arrival of a second cloth bundle with ice inside, timidly offered up by a woman who doesn't know him well enough yet to not be afraid. He accepts it with a nod, returns to his spot at the bar, and -- finds that someone has finished his drink while he was distracted. Sighing, he settles on the creaking stool, leans forward, and closes his eyes as he rests his head against the ice pack, listening to the early opening refrain of an epic headache.

It's going to be a long night.