Visual Kei

One gunshot rang through the frozen, empty warehouse before Kiiro had pounced on Ray. He had been chasing him through the stacks and stacks of metal containment vessels, attempting to avoid the bullets while trying to get close enough to Ray to do some damage. When Shinji and Rei had attempted to cut in and help, Kiiro growled at them, demanding that they remain in their places—that this was his battle, and his alone.

Now Ray slithered out from beneath Kiiro’s grasp, dancing off to the side with an inhuman grace. That was one thing he had received from his mother. Kiiro followed quickly, dodging another bullet, and forced one of the guns out of his hand. It fell to the floor and Ray tried to shoot at him with the second, but the shot didn’t connect. Kiiro attempted to wrest the second gun from his hand, but he ducked out of the hold with the weapon, leaping up onto the nearest stack of steel containers, putting distance between him and his opponent. Kiiro chased him, his hands finding easy holds in the ridges of the reinforced crates, and hauled himself up and out of our view. Two gunshots sounded and my heart thumped wildly. Had it hit him?

Before long, Ray’s blond mane popped back into sight for a moment, his arms hefting him over a single container. However, he disappeared as if yanked to the ground. Another gunshot rang out and he leapt over the crate easily, his boots noisily carrying him across several feet of frosty cement. Kiiro skirted a row of taller stacks of crates, his noiseless strides keeping him unnoticed. I noticed from here that a small blotch of blood had appeared on his dark t-shirt. His silent pursuit soon brought him close enough to Ray to attack, and he took the opportunity to leap. Ray attempted to dodge at the last moment, and the intended blow glanced off his shoulder, knocking both men to the floor.

Ray struggled to his feet as Kiiro deftly vaulted backward into a low crouch. Ray shot at him and hit his arm twice. Before he could get any other shots in, Kiiro lunged and tackled him to the ground. They wrestled for leverage, but Kiiro’s supernatural strength made it no contest. He rolled him onto his back and pinned him violently. He struggled in vain, his cold eyes fixed on Kiiro’s face. He grinned down in triumph, twisting his wrist to snap it and toss the remaining gun aside. At the look of pain that flashed across Ray’s face, his cruel eyes flashed with delight. Ray began to look desperate. His flailing began to grow frantic rather than measured and sure. His broken wrist hardly held back his thrashing. With a swift gesture, Kiiro crushed Ray’s elbow. I felt a stab of pain in my own elbow, courtesy of my strange form of telepathy. Ray mentally screamed. The bones there cut through the flesh like shards of porcelain. Still, he did not cry out.

I looked at Shinji and Rei, who intently watched the torture fest with the coldness of silent spectators, wishing that they would try to stop Kiiro’s violence. I felt sick, on top of feeling tired, faint, and angry. Dizziness washed over me completely, bewildering me more. “Please… stop,” I whispered. “I can’t watch this.” No one seemed to hear me.

With that horrible smile on his face still, Kiiro crushed Ray’s other elbow, and again, I felt a hollow echo of the sensation. He shifted his weight, swinging a toned leg over Ray to place at his throat, holding his battered body to the cold floor. Then he started on his legs, shattering each kneecap. Now Ray closed his eyes, tears beginning to leak out despite his taut jaw. I could feel that he was about to faint with the pain. I hoped he would faint soon. Kiiro looked into his eyes with scorn and a hint of satisfaction. Then he lifted Ray’s head by his neck, preparing to bash it against the ground.

“No!” I screamed at last, unable to hold back. His eyes snapped up to regard me, narrowed in his hate for Ray, before turning at last back to him. “Please, Kiiro… don’t do this!”

“And why not?” he snapped, glaring at the still form beneath him. “It,” he growled, fingers digging into his throat, “has done more than enough to merit this.”

Ray’s breath shuddered in his chest, coming out in a wheezing rasp. It punctuated the silence and disturbed me greatly. I’d killed things, but never mutilated them. To have such disrespect for a life was, to me, a form of sacrilege.

“You have done enough atrocity,” I said in nearly a whisper, shivering. I swallowed uncertainly, gathering my affront and fear into a little mask that would have to suffice for confidence. “Leave him. He will not follow us.” I was afraid of what Kiiro had become—what he could become. I knew he wasn’t exactly unicorns and sunshine, but this?

He looked down at Ray once more, his eyes brimming with malice, before lowering him and dropping him the last inch to the floor. He stood mechanically, turning his indignation on me with a single glare that seemed to pierce into my soul. Then he turned, taking measured, silent strides away from the bloody concrete where Ray lay. Shinji and Rei balanced me between them, their arms looping around my waist, and followed him wordlessly.

As we passed the unconscious body, I looked at him. I no longer felt the anger I’d felt earlier, or the sadness, really. All I felt now was pity and horror. I closed my eyes to the tears that sprung forth and hung my head to avoid the questions and conversation that I knew wouldn’t happen anyway.

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I began to switch between sleep and wakefulness. And the things I remembered didn’t fit together anywhere. When I woke first, I was being carried by Shinji, my head nestled into the hollow between his shoulder and jaw line. He was warm and gentle in his strides, not as jerky as Kiiro’s were. My wounds tingled a bit, but they didn’t hurt anymore. I think that was a bad thing. No one spoke. Kiiro whipped open a pocket knife and began to dig into his arm with it. The bullet popped out and rolled on the ground before stopping, lodged into a crack in the street. I slipped into sleep.

When I woke next, I was resting my head against Rei’s shoulder and Shinji was sitting beside me. We seemed to be on a train, but there weren’t any schoolgirls, businessmen, or ganguros. Glittering skyline passed by. Shinji stared out the window. Kiiro sat in the seat in front of us beside people I didn’t recognize. The train was nearly empty. Rei didn’t look over at me, and I thought he was asleep too before I looked up and realized that he was staring at Kiiro as if he hardly recognized him. Kiiro was glaring out the window.

“Rei,” I mumbled, my tongue thick with sleep. “Where are we going?”

“Home,” he said with a small smile. He looked as tired as I felt. I wondered if his arm hurt as badly as my thigh did.

“Will Chino and Tsurara be there?” I asked.

“Yes.” The smile disappeared. He returned his worried gaze to Kiiro briefly before glancing back down to me. “You look tired. Sleep, and I will wake you when we arrive.”

I did. But when I awoke, I was lying on a couch, covered with a thin blanket. The men were gathered in another room, but their voices drifted out and I could hear them fairly clearly. No light came in through the blinds, and there were no lights on in the house. Somehow, I felt more comfortable in the darkness, though.

“I don’t care,” Kiiro growled from the other room.

“You should!” Shinji replied, chastising. “You scared her badly.”

“She knows what I am and what I do. If she is afraid, it is as it should be.”

“That isn’t what scares her, Kiiro. You went above and beyond the typical angry vampire stereotype today. Gore and maiming may be acceptable to you, but while we’re in her company, we need to avoid it. It only upsets her. We have lost her once, and we can’t lose her again.”

Kiiro snorted.

“Chino would say the same thing,” Rei offered, as if it would help.

“The hakujin bastard deserved everything I did to him,” Kiiro snarled.

“Maybe so, but Alice didn’t deserve to be a witness.” When he didn’t respond, Shinji continued. “Try to keep the mutilation to a minimum. That’s all I’m saying. If you care about Alice at all, you will be willing to make that sacrifice.”

I could almost feel the bitterness in the air when Kiiro didn’t reply. “I thirst,” was all he said. I listened to his step, heavier than the others, cross the room. He slid open the door to the balcony. In the dim starlight, I could see only his silhouette as he leapt from the roof and into the abandoned street. I heard soft footsteps across the room and into the kitchen, but didn’t bother pretending to be asleep. I was faced away from the kitchen, anyway.