Daily Grind

[Komosatuo]

((Closed))

Night.

Ask any Ninja what his favorite time of day was and they would all answer the same. Night, and what a perfect night it was.

Komosatuo sat perched on the edge of a rather drab and plain looking building, his body completely shrouded in the long shadows of the night and he breathed a sigh of relief. It was good to feel at home, in the night. He wished at times, that the sun never rose, he would always be in paradise. He inhaled another deep breath of the cool night air and abruptly began coughing.

It was a choking cough, worse than any he had ever had before, he felt his legs begin to weaken. A common side affect of the choking cough, weakening of your outermost limbs and then striking home, for the heart. This only happened on rare occasions, and at most left him incapacitated for a few hours, this however. . . This could very well kill him! Air began to rush past his face and he opened his clenched eyes to find himself staring at the ground.

He was falling. Another fit of coughing caught him and he twisted in pain, staring instead back up at the night sky and the beautiful white half-crescent moon; he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand straight on end as he felt the ground draw closer. . .

Closer. . . Closer. . .

"Ky'dia Iki Na!"

He sat bolt upright from his curled position against the peeling wall of a local merchant building. He inhaled three sharp breaths, instantly taking in his surroundings; he was still in the place they called Scara Brae, his heart still beat (if not at a very accelerated rate), and he still had all his belongings. He had only enough time to relax his arms and legs before a blinding pain exploded from within his stomach and doubled him over with his head between his knees.

"Iya Altia Synima!" Tears formed on his eyes as he began to rock back and forth, his leg and arm muscles clenching to the point of knotting as he squeezed himself into a very tight ball. The pain was immense; he could never recall feeling this, not even during his fourth year of training when he was forced to endure four hours of punishment from each and every student of the compound. Nothing could compare to. . .

As soon as it had begun, the pain was gone. He didn't uncurl though, he found that he couldn't. His arms and legs were knotted so tight that it hurt to try and relax. He was stuck, stuck in a fetal position. He did the only thing left to him; his mind cleared and he focused on his inner most soul, seeking solitude within himself, shutting out the rest of the world, concerned with only one man, Komosatuo.

Slowly, painfully, he began to coax his muscles from their knotted positions. He rubbed them free of their knots, shook them free of their harnesses, beat them out of their bindings. Six and a half minutes after he shut the rest of the world from his mind Komosatuo stood smoothly to his feet and stretched.

It felt good to be able to move once more. The pain was only a memory now, as if it had happened to someone else’s body, in someone else’s lifetime. He did however, feel emptier than before. As if a very important piece of him was missing, temporarily misplaced. A common side effect of using ones Lykn, one that he had long since grown used too. He stretched his neck and turned around, glancing up the alleyway, and then out at the bustling traffic of the near by market. He twisted his mouth in disgust, although no one would have seen it so, and turned away from the crowd, longing for the deeper darkness of the alley beyond.

Except, there was no alley beyond, it was a dead end. Again he twisted his mouth, but this time into a frown, and looked up instead of straight. If he couldn’t go forward, perhaps he could just go up. Grabbing hold of a near by wooden beam, sticking from the side of the building like a bent and dilapidated arm, he pulled himself up to lay on his stomach, before swinging himself backward to straddle another beam between his stomach and his legs. He reached forward to grab hold of another beam and pulled himself forward until his knees rested on the first beam. He then paused to catch his breath, as pulling himself around in that awkward position had drained much of his remaining strength. After a few seconds rest he continued his climb, repeating the same process of straddling and then pulling himself forward until he had scaled the three stories of the building and was standing on its roof. The next part would be tricky.

Thankfully the alleys were narrow, so it made it that much easier. Backing until he was close to the center of the buildings roof he readied himself to jump. Taking three quick breaths, then bouncing a little on his toes, he sprinted forward shot his left foot forward to catch the far edge of the ledge circling the buildings roof and vaulted himself into the air, arms and legs kicking and pumping to allow him maximum distance. He landed with a skid on the adjacent building, about four feet shy of the ledge. It was close, but it would have to do. He could perhaps jump three more buildings before having to rest for more than half a minute. He set himself up again, readied his breathing, and repeated the same process.

In the streets below people moved and bustled together, going about their daily business, oblivious to the man leaping from rooftop to rooftop over their heads.

[Smoker]

Night.

The black of his cloak blended into the black of the cloudless sky, and that was just exactly the way Dusk liked it. The busy marketplace took no notice of the insignificant man, but he certainly took notice of the busy marketplace. Gold changed hands just as briskly as it did at mid-day, for who had time to sleep when there were goods to be sold, bargaining to be done, deals to be had, and profits to be made.

Interesting that they should give up comfort to attain more wealth, but spend the wealth they gain in an attempt to make themselves comfortable. They might as well just save themselves the bother. I don't know if I'll ever understand people.

Oh, but he had to try. That was, after all, the only reason for his excursions. The study of such interesting creatures had always fascinated him. To decipher their contradictory and paradoxical behaviors, find a pattern in the way they act and speak, unravel the mysterious way they think. To push people to the edge just to watch what they would do, arrange events to put a person in a difficult situation, to delve into the very darkest aspects of the human soul just to see what's there.

I'm an explorer. His eyes tracked a woman holding hands with two small children, one on either side. Just the sort of specimen he had been waiting for. Time to go exploring.

In a crowd as large as the one surrounding the marketplace, it was easy to get around undetected. The constant shuffling of people, the ebb and flow of a giant human tide made it easy to lose oneself among the waves. Unfortunately, it also made tracking difficult, as the intended quarry gained the same advantages. She seemed to vanish in the crowd, swallowed by the ever-moving ocean. Dusk was unperturbed by this turn of events and continued battling the current to reach the spot where he last spotted her. He had all night, and was in no great hurry.

Hurriedly finished research is of no use to me. Dusk slowed his pace as if to prove the point. The woman was long gone by the time he reached the edge of the crowd, but he still showed nor felt any emotion towards the subject. Drawing his cloak even tighter about himself, he pulled back against an old building, simply standing and watching the crowd once more.

For just a second, he heard a dull thump coming from the building, as of someone jumping or stomping loudly. He brushed it off as mere imaginings and sharpened his awareness of the undulating crowd. As it got darker, a few of the less dedicated shoppers began to disperse, among them an elderly woman cradling a baby. Dusk allowed the faintest touch of a smile to brush his lips before wiping his expression blank once more.

He spared a second in his hunting to check his surroundings. There was a small alley which turned a corner behind the building and scurried out of sight. He couldn't have found a more isolated spot if he had planned for it.

Turning his attention back to the new target, he stood as still as a statue, waiting for her to pass by. She didn't even glance at him, and the very second she stepped past, Dusk made his move.

One hand over her mouth to smother any screams, he shoved her into the alley and around the corner. It was a tight squeeze, and the walls were damp though no rain had fallen that day. The woman fought back violently, struggling as hard as her muscles would allow her, but Dusk had the advantage of leverage.

"Don't wiggle around so much, woman, you might drop the child."

She stopped struggling almost instantly, resigning herself to the worst with a pathetic whimpering sob.

"Turn around."

Utterly submissive, she turned to face him. She looked down rather than at his face, and Dusk made a note of that as slightly unusual. Trying to decide what exactly to do next, he stalled by escorting the protective mother further into the darkness of the alley, hoping to evade notice.

Time to begin to seriously study the behaviors of a "loving" mother...how will she react if I...?

[Komosatuo]

Komosatuo sagged heavily against the elevated ledge of the building he had just finished jumping too. He had come close to missing the edge completely, only just making it by mere inches. He slid down the edge of the ledge to sit on the roof of the building, jumping and running he had just done seemed to have taken a good portion of his strength, and he needed to rest. He smiled gratefully as he lifted himself to flatten out on the ledge. He let his head roll with a jerk to the side so he could stare blankly at the moving sea of people below. A few minutes past and he was about to roll back over when two people entering the alleyway caught his attention and riveted his eyes onto their bodies.

One was a woman, perhaps a few years past her prime, cradling a small child tightly in her arms. Perhaps a casual passerby would say it was too tightly, but than again, judging from her new companion, one would come to the conclusion that it was for a good purpose. The second was a male, slim built and not very tall, shrouded in a dark cloak that effectively hid most of his body in the lengthening darkness. Hid it, that is, to the untrained eye. Komosatuo sat up from his perch, all thoughts of rest evaporating as he watched the two struggle into the alleyway. The male had the obvious upper hand in the struggle, he could control all to woman’s movements, possibly from a well placed hand just above her jaw, below her nose; in affect, covering her mouth. To prevent screams. Komosatuo leaned forward slightly, watching the two.

The woman put up a valiant effort in fighting the man and looked to possibly win, until she froze stone cold when the man said something to her. Komosatuo strained his ears to hear what the man had said, but the words became lost to the winds and sounds of passing bodies almost as soon as they had left his mouth. He instead directed his straining to his eyes and forced them to try and focus on what was going on below, trying to see every possible detail.

The woman turned around when the man said something else to her, and Komosatuo began to hear her muffled sobs. The woman cast her eyes and head to the ground, refusing to gaze into the others eyes and the man pulled her deeper into the alleyway. Komosatuo straightened from a leaning position and cupped his chin in his hand. The man was going to probably assault her, rape her, possibly murder her child or take it ransom for later use, then rob her and leave her for dead. Or they could be a disgruntled couple, arguing over the child. Or. . .the possibilities were endless, but it all pointed at the same thing. The woman was going to get hurt, one way or another, and when the woman got hurt, so would the child.

Komosatuo leaned back and twisted around to gaze into the darkness deeper in the alley, but couldn’t make anything out. Perhaps if he got closer to the ground? Not wishing to waste any more time, Komosatuo began to move. Hooking one leg back over the ledge he twisted himself until most of his body was hanging over the edge of the ledge, his hands gripping the far edge, preventing him from slipping off. Then he laid his elbows flat on the ledge and lifted his other leg up over the edge and then laid it too against the wall, flat instead of straight like his other. He slowly inhaled two breaths and gave a steady count to five before letting his hands slip from the edge.

Immediately flattening his body against the wall and using his feet as a brake, Komosatuo slide silently down the wall, his arms outstretch to balance his body against it. Just before he reached the ground he pushed all his remaining flesh against the wall and slowly to a halt just inches above the ground; he let himself slide the remaining inches in dignity and slowly stepped to the center of the small alleyway. He could barely make out the two shapes of the man and woman beyond and he pointed an exposed finger of his left hand toward the two.

“Unhand her,” he said in crisp tones with an obvious foreign accent. These people here spoke a slow, laboring tone; his was fast and clipped at the ends. “Or I will have to use force.”

With his free hand he reached into a small pouch just above and behind his right hip and pulled free two throwing knives, the cold iron feeling good against his three exposed finger tips. If the man made a sudden movement to harm the lady, or harm Komosatuo as well, the two daggers would find themselves lodged in some portion of his flesh. At this range, even a child would find it hard to miss; the darkness of the alley proved to be only a minor set back, he could make out the distinct shapes of the two, there was no mistaking them.

[Smoker]

"Unhand her, or I will have to use force."

Dusk was startled by a foreign voice in his ear and cold steel pressed against his back. Something had to be done, and fast. No time to think. Time only to react...

The Cat stirred inside him, begging to handle the situation. The survival instinct and reflexes would be useful, but Dusk quickly decided against surrendering his control. It would be his human intellect, not his animal instinct, which would be most useful to him.

And his human intellect rapidly came to a conclusion. If this "hero" was interested in protecting the woman, it only made sense that he would be interested in protecting the baby as well. And if the unseen adversary was busy protecting the baby, Dusk could go pursue his research elsewhere, safe from whoever was threatening him now. His own safety, after all, was tantamount to everything.

Whirling quickly, he snatched the baby from the mother's arms. He hoped the sudden movement would catch everyone off guard, not give them time to react. He braced himself for the pain of a knife, but didn't feel anything...yet.

Holding the baby in front of him like a shield, he began to back slowly away. The screaming mother who tore at his clothes, however, made such a strategy impractical, more of a liability than an advantage. The Cat hissed inside him again, begging for the chance to deal with the situation. He fought it down, relying on his human intellect once more.

And then it came to him. An act so callous he almost felt bad for deciding to do it. But it would save him, and that's all that mattered.

Gathering his strength, he snapped his arms forward to hurl the crying baby away from him, watched it sail through the shadow. He didn't want to find out what happened.

He turned and started to run.

[Komosatuo]

Komosatuo cursed.

The man was a fool, a great fool. Komosatuo snapped into a rapid spin and before the startled cry of the child, who was now air born, could even come from its mouth, threw both of his knives in a side armed fashion, sending both of them spinning forward like a bullet. Almost instantly there was a thud as one of the daggers hit home, followed by a startled scream and then the sound of a body collapsing to the ground; Komosatuo cursed as he caught the flying child as he settled into his original stance once again. He didn't know where the second dagger had gone, he had only heard the first sound announcing that it had hit something; the woman’s screams now drowned out any chance of hearing the second.

Then the child began to scream.

It sounded like a dying rabbit. Although most people associated the sound of a dying rabbit with the sound of a crying child, Komosatuo had only hurt rabbits, so that was the sound he compared it too. He had to rid himself of this child, and fast. He took three steps forward and ran straight into the foot of the kicking mother.

"Ky nassa!" He yelped as the foot hit him just above the groin, it was a miracle the child didn't become air born a second time. Komosatuo reached up to catch the second attempt at kicking him, and shoved the baby down into the woman’s lap. "Your child," he reached forward and found his dagger without having to noticeably grope the woman, then yanked it free. The woman screamed and kicked again, the shot was wide however, and missed Komosatuo.

"You fucking bastard! You were supposed to hit him, not me!" She kicked again but he was ready and danced deftly away from it.

"Give my thanks to your child when he grows. You will remember this day as the day I saved his life by scratching you on the shoulder." Then he turned his back on her and started walking away.

She spluttered and said tried to something else but it was lost to the shadows, for he was already gone.

As he walked he sheathed his dagger and pulled two fish darts from his left hip. This man wouldn't run unless he was afraid, or just eager to live. Komosatuo wasn't going to take the chance that this man was going to go and try this stunt again.

He stepped over the body of a street bum laying in the alley and descended deeper into the darkness. He couldn't have gotten far.

Komosatuo started running.

[Smoker]

Dusk grunted as the pain slowly set in. His shoulder began throbbing as he ran, and he looked down to discover a knife protruding from it. He hadn't noticed initially being hit, but as he tried to pull it out, pain exploded up and down his arm. He quickly decided to leave it there and deal with it later, when he had plenty of time.

Unsure of exactly where the alley would lead him, Dusk bumbled on a little farther before hearing that strange man who had appeared out of nowhere. Despite running for what seemed like several minutes, he could still hear his voice just behind him.

He heard the voice of the woman, too, and she didn't sound grateful for her lucky rescue. Ah, perhaps my new friend's aim is not entirely accurate. Dusk grinned. And perhaps I should find this same woman again some night and observe her...just to see how all this has changed her. Such a traumatizing experience, the poor soul. The sarcasm was thick even in his thoughts, but he didn't have too much time to waste mocking the victim.

Footsteps were softly approaching, and the sound of metal scraping against a sheath, though whether it was a sword being drawn or put away, Dusk couldn't be sure. No, he couldn't take any chances. He glanced wildly around for an escape in the darkness of the alley, but found none. The footsteps came nearer.

He could sense the man approaching, and he could just barely make out the shape of some sort of weapon...more daggers, most likely. Not finding any better alternatives, Dusk collapsed to the floor and laid still among the refuse.

The smell was enough to advise any sane person against dwelling in the muck too long. Stagnant water mixed together human waste, rotted food, and other things Dusk could not begin to guess. He shivered violently as he thought of how the desperate hungry beggars would eat the food they found in the alley. He never thought much of it before, but now it seemed utterly inhuman. No wonder there were so few beggars left in Scara Brae.

He continued to lay as still as he could, while at the same time, prevent himself from retching, which was no easy task. He tensed as the strange man stepped right over him and began running down the alley, well past Dusk.

Standing quickly to escape the veritable sewer, Dusk began running back the way he came, hopefully avoiding his zealous pursuer altogether, though anything was possible in this maze of alleys.

The Cat was quiet within him, though Dusk did have a strong urge to lick himself clean. He continued running and ignored the impulse, which would be just as disgusting as being covered in this sewage. The odor clung to his clothes, and he lamented the loss of his robe. After tonight, he would certainly be needing a new one.

[Komosatuo]

The dark of the alley enclosed him and he knew immediately that something was wrong. There was no noise. Even at this hour there was still some noise, but that was mainly from the main marketplace. Here in this alley, there was usually silence. Usually. This time there should have been noise; running feet. There was none.

Komosatuo's run turned to a five-yard dash as he skittered to a halt amidst the dirt and debris that littered the narrow path. Even as he finally came skidding to a halt, he was straining his ears, searching for the man through the impregnable veil of darkness. He saw nothing and heard almost as much but a small scrap behind him betrayed his adversary’s position.

The man was behind him. But, how?

Komosatuo spun on the ball of his left foot and planted himself firmly in place, fully expecting to be punched with all the strength the man could muster. Instead he was greeted by the running back of the street bum he had jumped over. Komosatuo grunted and resumed his natural pose and was about to turn around when the bum turned and something metallic glinted on his shoulder.

"Hach!" Komosatuo cursed as he immediately sprinted forward. That bum was the very man he had begun to chase; the knife lodged in his shoulder telling him exactly that. He had stepped right over the fool and hadn't even known it. He was becoming soft.

He reached the corner where the man turned and twisted his body to take the turn at such a speed. He slipped a little as he came around, causing him to have to push himself lightly off the far wall, but as soon as he had regained his footing he was once again sprinting after the retreating back of the running man, fully intent to see his adversary caught. As he ran, splashing and kicking through the debris littering the alleyway floor, Komosatuo had one concern on his mind; making sure he didn't accidentally step on a nail as he ran.

[Smoker]

A flicker of fear surged through Dusk as he ran, but was quickly quieted by practical logic. Fear would only serve to make his thinking irrational and desperate, the last thing he needed at the moment if he planned on escaping in one piece. He could hear his pursuer behind him, telling him to "halt" in a strange accent.

I wonder where he comes from...?

But his idle thoughts had no place as he ran for his life, and it was forgotten almost instantly as he came to an intersection in the alleys. He was still being chased rather eagerly, but perhaps this simple corner would give him an oppurtunity to reverse his fortune.

I need to make a stand sometime, why not when I have the advantage?

Taking the turn at a reckless, headlong rush, he stopped himself by painfully using his left leg as a brake. Limping slightly, he went back to the intersection and leaned against the the wall, ready for the strange man to follow him.

An ambush was perhaps one of the oldest tricks in the book, but it was certainly one of the most effective. Dusk just wished he had a dagger or a sword, or could even hold his own unarmed. Then it would be an even nastier surprise to turn the corner and find him waiting there, ready to fight.

The Cat seemed to raise his head, almost as if he was called. Dusk wasn't a very good fighter, but the Cat had the speed and reflexes he lacked...as well as wicked two-inch claws.

Will you do it? Dusk thought quickly to the Cat. A soft purring inside his head was an affirmative answer. Surrendering himself quickly, he gave himself over to the Cat completely, and settled in to watch.

Intelligent enough not to waste a perfect ambush, the Cat waited quietly, leaning against the cold, slightly rotted wood of one of the poorer tenement buildings. Curved claws sprang from between each of Dusk's knuckles, three on each hand. He shivered inside just imagining what they could do to a person...something quite dreadful, he was sure.

He waited almost gleefully for this would-be hero to turn the corner, anitcipating the epic battle that he was positive would ensue.

[Osato]

Due to inactivity this thread has been closed. If you wish for it to be opened again PM the moderator who closed it and ask them to reopen it. However, do so only if you are going to actively roleplay in it again.

Thanks,
~Osato