9. Starlight and Steel

Kris managed to keep most of her screaming on the inside, though a little eep escaped through her clenched teeth. The bleeding man staggered towards her, his unnaturally pale face twisting through variations of desperation, pain, and fear. “...Please,” he croaked. “Help.”

He sped up as he approached, as though burning up what little life he had left, reaching out to Kris with a shaking hand. She froze, unsure of what to do or say as he drew near, but Tetsuya pulled her out of the way moments before the man walked right into the railing and toppled onto the dance floor. Screams. Commotion. Kris tensed, but before the crowd’s panic could blossom into chaos, a dark form blurred past her from behind, flowing over the railing and onto the floor.

“Halt.”

The voice was not particularly loud or threatening, but it carried perfectly through the room. It held a note of command that one instinctively leapt to follow, regardless of what your mind had to say. All around the dance floor, people froze in position. Beer cascaded down the chest of a man who’d been unfortunate enough to get caught in the act of raising a pint to his lips, its slow dripping the only sound in the sudden silence.

Kris felt herself lock up involuntarily as the command sank into her consciousness, but something in her rebelled, pushing against the invasive hold over her. Her body was a prison, but her mind was an unstoppable force, breaking the bars that held her. However, as the dark figure cast a glance about the room, Kris kept still so as not to draw its attention. She met its gaze out of the corner of her eye.

The first thing she noticed was the girl’s beauty. Hers was a face the old masters would have given their right hands to immortalize in art. Even the fresh blood staining her lips could not detract from her beauty - instead it only served to highlight the perfection of her features. Her eyes were piercing red, catching and reflecting the light like a cat’s, making them stand out in the dimness. She did not blink.

Neither did Kris, for fear of giving herself away. The girl stooped to pick the bleeding man up by his lapels - she was surprisingly petite, Kris realised, probably only coming up to her shoulder. Yet her delicate build belied surprising strength, as she single-handedly pulled the man, who was attempting to struggle away from her, back in her direction. His shirt tore, revealing a muscled chest and an impressive set of tattoos that spread across his torso and back, depicting coiled dragons in flight. She hoisted him to his knees with no apparent effort, speaking to him in a low undertone that Kris couldn’t make out. His response must not have been satisfactory, as she backhanded him with enough force that Kris heard the small bones in his face crack. She spoke again, louder this time.

“Take the deal already, ‘Guchi. You’ve seen what I can do to your men. Do you want to find out what we can do to your wife? Your kids? If I recall correctly, Ryoko’s about to start high school - sure would be a shame if anything happened to that pretty face of hers, wouldn’t it?”

The man gasped. “I’ll deal! I’ll do anything! Don’t… just please don’t hurt them.”

“I knew you’d see reason.” She smiled, but didn’t release the man as he continued to blubber and moan. “Oh, don’t be such a baby. Are those broken bones bothering you? Here, let me help with that.”

Her fingers skimmed over the bruises on his face - then dipped straight through the skin, as if she were reaching into the surface of a puddle. Her other hand rested lightly on the man’s throat, stifling his screams. She worked for a moment, then drew her fingers out, trailing blood and what might have been shards of bone. Kris fought down nausea as she saw what had happened to the man’s face - the bruises were gone and the skin was whole, but the area the girl had touched was puckered and sunken, as though parts of the skull beneath it were gone altogether.

“Is that better? Stop whimpering now, it’s unbecoming of a man of your status. How will you ever convince your Ryuusei boys to bend the knee at this rate?”

Something clicked for Kris. The man’s attire, his tattoos, that name. He was in the Ryuusei Clan, a yakuza group known for its involvement with the human trafficking trade in Japan. She’d sat in on a trial involving one of their members recently. The hardened, unrepentant look in the defendant’s eyes as he was held to account for his crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment had left an indelible impression on her mind - these men were career criminals, the worst of the worst. That fact stood out to her in the midst of the insanity she’d just witnessed. A Yakuza mobster, one of the most dangerous men she’d ever met, was getting thrown about like a ragdoll by a small girl.

That wasn’t quite right, either - while she looked to be in her early teens, her confident, sophisticated bearing and attire were clearly that of a mature woman. Kris thought she recognised some of those brands from Mom’s catalogues, but it was too dim to make out the details. Whoever she was, she was clearly accustomed to getting what she wanted, even if it meant breaking some bones in the process. She was also clearly not quite human - Kris didn’t know of any teenage girls who had the strength and speed this girl had just demonstrated. Performance-enhancing drugs, perhaps? Either way, she was out of her depth here.

The girl drew a phone out from her blazer pocket and made a call, speaking quickly and quietly to the person on the other end.

“It’s Scarlet.” She cut short the stream of invective that came over the other end of the line. “Your boss just agreed to deal. No, I’m not fucking with you - talk to him yourself.”

Scarlet passed the phone to Taniguchi, who muttered a few words, then fell silent, hanging his head.

“No further questions? Perfect. I look forward to working with you too. Bye now.” She hung up before the person on the other side could finish talking. “I love it when a plan comes together, don’t you?”

Taniguchi only looked at her hollowly, his expression one of purest misery. “Just kill me. You got what you wanted out of me. End me now.”

“You’re no good to me dead, ‘Guchi. Such a drama queen.” Scarlet was already moving away, typing on her phone with a businesslike air about her. “You live to fight another day, ‘Guchi. That’s what you should be taking away from this little kerfuffle.”

“You’ve ruined my good name, you fucking bitch. What do you think I have left to live for!?” He threw himself at her clumsily, his hands reaching for her slender neck. Scarlet batted him away almost casually, the barest flick of her fingers sending him reeling to the ground as she continued typing.

“That’s a good question, you know. What do you mortals have to live for? Family? Success? Power? You people have so many reasons for living, surely you can think of something. You have it easy. To us, your ideals are as fleeting and insignificant as a speck of dust, a trifle that might be lost with the slightest breeze. And the wind is only getting stronger these days, make no mistake about that.”

“Stop rambling and face me, bloodsucker. Give me my death!” Taniguchi charged at her once more, but as she stepped around his wild haymaker, his left hand struck out, holding a knife Kris hadn’t noticed a moment before in a backhand grip. As the blade approached Scarlet’s chest, she dropped her phone and grabbed Taniguchi’s wrist, wrenching it backwards with enough force to produce a series of snaps, crackles and pops as the bones within ground together and broke. She snarled, losing the cool composure she’d maintained throughout the exchange.

“Where’d you get that little toy, ‘Guchi? Which one of your dealers still has the balls to traffic in silver, huh?” Scarlet bent the man’s wrist almost all the way backwards whilst twisting his arm and shifting her stance, throwing him to the ground and holding him in a lock. She dug the heel of one of her stilettos into a spot along his back, eliciting a moan of pain. “There are a lot of things I could do to make sure you lead a long and miserable life. Give me some names and you won’t have to find out what they are. You can live with one eye, right? How about no eyes? No tongue? How about I leave you a cripple or a paraplegic so you can burden your family till the day you die?”

Taniguchi writhed in pain, but forced a reply through gritted teeth. “Fuck you.”

“Names.” Scarlet kicked him in the side hard enough to crack ribs, then drove the tip of her shoe into the wound, getting a strangled scream from him. “Or you get to find out what a collapsed lung feels like.”

“Iwai. Matsukawa...” Taniguchi panted out a list of names. Scarlet looked pleased at first, but as the list went on, her expression shifted to a frown.

“That’s all the weapon dealers in Tokyo, Taniguchi. Are you fucking with me right now?”

Taniguchi laughed hoarsely, and coughed blood. “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m serious. Maybe you vampires pissed off enough of us that we’ve stopped giving a fuck about your promises and threats. Do your worst. Like you said, I may be insignificant and fleeting... but even a speck of dust can blind you.”

Scarlet’s upper lip drew back, exposing her incisors, which had grown longer and deadly sharp. “Alright. You think you can defy us? You think you can stand in our way? Do not presume that you - any of you - stand on our level. You can be a tool in our hands, or you can be an annoyance to be disposed of. Speaking of which.”

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Taniguchi still held the silver knife limply. Scarlet’s hand wrapped around his almost gently, but at her touch skin darkened and flesh withered, reducing his hand to a shrivelled husk in moments. Kris shuddered at the sound Taniguchi made as his hand rotted, and had to stop herself from covering her ears - she didn’t want to draw Scarlet’s attention. Scarlet twisted Taniguchi’s hand, then pulled it free in one abrupt motion, so that she held his dismembered hand like a macabre glove around the knife’s handle.

“Just remember that you brought this on yourself, Taniguchi. This is what happens when you don’t fall in line.”

Scarlet cut away his clothing, and laid the blade against his shoulder. “Hold still.”

Taniguchi’s cries cut off suddenly, and his body locked up completely. Scarlet began to cut, making a thin incision that ran around Taniguchi’s shoulder and down his side. He bled, but somehow she stopped it with a touch, the wounds turning from raw red to scabby brown as she worked. The muscles in his throat strained to give voice to his agony, but her command held him fast even as she made a similar set of cuts on his other side.

“My, these are impressive. Must have taken a long time to get these done, huh?” Scarlet traced the dragons on Taniguchi’s back, nodding as she appreciated the artistry. “It’ll make a nice companion to the phoenix I’ve got hanging in my room. You remember Yoshio, right? Lieutenant of the Renge-kai? He couldn’t bear to part with his, but I got my way in the end. I always do, Taniguchi. Keep that in mind.”

She slid the knife smoothly under his skin, working it back and forth to part skin from flesh. Kris watched as Taniguchi’s skin slowly came free from the hips upward. His eyes bulged, his gaze shifting erratically as though searching for some sort of escape from this torture. Then he met Kris’s eyes. She started despite herself, and his gaze intensified. Help. Before she quite knew what she was doing, she was already in motion.

“Stop!” She ran down the stairs, weaving around frozen clubbers as she pushed her way to Scarlet and Taniguchi.

Scarlet shot a stern glance in Kris’s direction, not lifting her hands from her gory task. “Kneel.”

As before, the command hit Kris like a physical blow, turning her knees to jelly, but she’d been expecting it this time. She willed herself upright, gritting her teeth with the effort it took to keep her legs moving. She had no idea what Scarlet was doing to her, or what she was getting herself into, but she couldn’t stand by and let a man get skinned alive. Even if he was criminal scum.

Scarlet raised her eyebrows as Kris approached, standing up straight - as Kris had thought, she wasn’t particularly physically imposing, but her presence was a crushing weight. She cocked her head as she looked Kris up and down, as if examining a foreign specimen under the microscope.

“...Interesting. A human who can withstand my glamer head-on. What’s your Arcana, Stubbornness?”

“I… don’t know what you mean. Please, just leave him alone. You’ve gotten what you wanted out of him, haven’t you? There’s no need to be cruel, even to someone like him.”

“And there’s a difference between need… and want.” Scarlet’s eyes glittered in the dim light, her small pink tongue darting out to wet her lips as they curved into a catlike smile. “Shall I teach it to you?”

Kris wasn’t sure if Scarlet was threatening her or flirting with her, but either way every hair on her body was standing on end. “No, thank you. I’m sure we can resolve this like reasonable people, can’t we, Miss Scarlet?”

Scarlet chuckled at that, covering her mouth with her free hand as she rocked with laughter, her slender shoulders shaking with amusement. “Reasonable people, she says! Oh, kids say the darndest things, don’t they? And so polite, too! But you seem to have me at a disadvantage, young lady. You know my name, and I should probably kill you based on that alone. However, I’m sure you could make it up to me by giving me yours.”

Alright. Death threats aside, she’d managed to draw Scarlet into a conversation, which was the first step to de-escalating the situation. Now she had to try and build some rapport with her, and leverage that into getting what she wanted. “Fair enough. I’m - “

Scarlet looked up abruptly, and Kris’s words were cut off as a jumble of metal, cables, and glass fell onto Scarlet with a jangling crash. Kris jumped backwards by reflex and stumbled, almost falling on her back, but someone caught her by her shoulders, getting her back on her feet. Tetsuya. She suddenly realised she hadn’t been paying attention to him whilst she’d been caught up in the exchange between Scarlet and Taniguchi. He was breathing hard, like he’d just done something strenuous. Like unfasten a load of heavy equipment and jump down from the scaffolding, perhaps?

Staring at the debris with a feverish intensity, he whispered something she couldn’t catch, his fingers flickering in the air before them in a curious gesture. Thick fog began to billow from within the mess, rapidly spreading out to cover the dance floor. He pulled her away from the wreckage and turned, pushing her so she was ahead of him. “Run, now!”

“Wha - “ She began to ask what was going on, but one glance at his urgent expression told her he was deadly serious about the now. This was as panicked as she’d ever seen him, even when they’d faced down a thug with a knife in a seedy back alley. Then again, Scarlet was a thug with a knife elevated to the nth degree. Run first, questions later, then.

“Over there!” He pointed to a small door along the left wall, and Kris sprinted for it, barrelling through and holding it open for just long enough for Tetsuya to make it in after her. Looking around, she felt her heart sink - this wasn’t an escape route. It was the manager’s office, a small room with a drawer, a desk, and not much else - certainly nothing that would help them get out of here. While it was good to be away from Scarlet, this seemed like an out of the frying pan sort of situation.

“What... now?” One good thing about panting - you didn’t have to try and stop your voice from shaking.

“I’m working on it. Stand back.” Tetsuya held the door shut with one hand whilst tracing strange symbols against it with his other hand, running his fingers over the handle, the wood, the hinges, the frosted glass pane. He lay his forehead against the door, speaking swiftly and quietly, as though begging it for something.

“Tetsuya, are you… praying? This isn’t really the time - well, maybe it is, but it’s not going to help us. Maybe we can barricade the door with the desk?”

He looked back at her, his gaze intense. His eyes blazed with determination, and for a moment she could have sworn that they shone with electric blue brilliance. No, it had to be a trick of the light - she was adjusting to the white fluorescent light in here after the club’s dimness.

“Trust me.”

Kris was on the verge of pushing the desk towards the door, but his voice held a note she hadn’t heard from him before. She’d trusted him so far, with her evening, her purse, her heart. Had he let her down yet? Could she trust him with her life?

Outside, the debris rumbled, loud enough that they heard it inside the room. A low, menacing growl followed, growing in volume and intensity. She was coming closer. Tetsuya stood strong before the door, one hand placed lightly against it.

A thunderous crack resounded from the other side of the door, deafeningly loud in the confines of the room. Kris shuddered to think of the sort of strength one would need to strike such a blow, and what it would do to a simple wooden door. Yet the door held fast, refusing to budge, shake, or break. Kris held her breath in the beat that followed, and covered her ears as a hail of similarly forceful blows came down upon the door, on the handle, the hinges, the glass.

Nothing broke.

“Clever.” Scarlet’s hiss carried perfectly in the calm that followed the storm. That one word held volumes of scorn and fury. Tetsuya’s face darkened at her taunt, his lips little more than a narrow white line. Suddenly, a look of panic came over him, and he pressed his free hand to the concrete wall next to the door. Just as he did, a terrible blow came from the other side of the wall. Flakes of plaster rained down from the ceiling, but the wall itself seemed to hold fast.

“Not bad. But you can’t hold forever, girl. How long can you keep that spell up? I’ve got nothing but time here.”

Confusion was a refreshing contrast to terror. Kris waved to get Tetsuya’s attention, mouthing, What is she talking about? She thinks I’m doing this?

He turned to look at Kris, the determination in his eyes tinged with desperation now. He mouthed back, I’ll explain later. I’m getting us out of this.

He lifted his hands from door and wall, moving as though he carried an enormous weight. Reaching into his pocket, he produced a long, silvery key that gleamed in the bright light, transforming the bland harsh fluorescence to otherworldly radiance. There was something about his poise as he brought it forth, a certain air and attitude that Kris recognised. It was the same way a knight of legend might draw his blade to meet a challenge, an alloy of reverence and resolve.

Closing his eyes, he seemed to fight a war with himself before he dared open them again. She could not say what had won in him, but when he looked at her once more, it was as though he was seeing someone else entirely. His lips moved. Trust me. He flipped the light switch off, plunging the room into darkness.

No. Not darkness. It hadn’t been a trick of the light, or her imagination. Tetsuya’s eyes burned in the black, beacons of blue that cast the world around him into unearthly relief. The key in his hand caught and reflected his light, taking on an azure sheen. He covered the door’s handle with one hand, and brought the key to it with his other, pushing it in. Kris had taken a philosophy module at university, where she’d learned about shadows on a cave wall and the ideal forms of objects. What she heard now was the ideal form of a key sliding into the ideal form of a lock, infinite teeth meshing with infinite tumblers to arrive at the pure essence that was this sound.

It was absurd. There was no keyhole on this side of the door, only a latch. And yet, it all seemed to make its own sort of sense. Some part of her mind saw what he was doing, even if she couldn’t understand it.

“Kris.” She hadn’t realised how quiet it was until he spoke her name aloud. He said it like a promise, like an affirmation, like speaking the name of God. The capital, the emphasis, was not a matter of inflection, but of intention, something that was recognised without being heard. She was not religious, but she knew the feeling as soon as he said her name. “Do you believe in magic?”

“...No.” No, not even after everything she’d just seen. Just as before, some part of her was capable of accepting it all, of making sense of the absurdity, of recognising the tip of an iceberg of accreted secrets emerging from a sea of mundanity - but that was not the part of her that was speaking now.

Tetsuya smiled, as though he had expected that answer. He took her hand, drawing her close. The same warmth, the same presence. Despite everything, he was still the same man he’d been scant minutes earlier, the one she’d drunk with, danced with, opened herself to. The change was not in him, but in everything she’d seen in him until now, like a hidden picture puzzle - at first, you didn’t see it, but once you knew how to look...

“Do you believe in me?” He lifted his hand to her face, holding her gaze. Light danced endlessly in the space between iris and sclera, coruscating from the faded blue of the desert sky to the deep glacial blue of an iceberg’s heart, spanning entire spectrums she’d never imagined existed before she saw them in his eyes.

She nodded.

“Good. Close your eyes.” His hand tightened around the doorknob, and he turned it in one quick motion. She squeezed her eyes shut, and heard him pull the door open. Immediately, he thrust both of them through the doorway, but they did not set foot on the ground on the other side. As she crossed the threshold, vertigo seized her, the bottom fell out of her stomach, and with her eyes closed, she saw:

A yawning void that her consciousness expanded to fill, an infinite starry sky in which universes were born, blossomed, and burned before being born again from nothingness.

Countless doors thrown open on countless worlds, worlds layered and honeycombed on top and throughout each other, and herself slipping from one portal through another, caught in a scintilla of time and space, an infinitesimal interstice between one realm and all others.

An immense, blazing presence in the shape of a man, pulling her close to his side as he strode through rippling realities. His form shifted and stretched, a flickering shadow cast by an endless parade of lights, making it impossible to recognise him from one moment to the next. She knew him anyway. Tetsuya. As she thought his name, he came into sharp focus, disparate elements coalescing to form his face and body. He was skyclad, shaped from starlight and steel, a sculpted Adonis holding her to his side. The arc of his arm, reaching forwards, said more of beauty and perfection than anything she had ever seen in her life.

And beneath the sublime existence that was Tetsuya, Kris felt something familiar, like an echo of a long-forgotten song. She blinked tears from her eyes, then realised that she’d opened them. The world began to move once more, inchoate infinity crystallizing into concrete definition as her senses returned to her.

At first, there was darkness - then Tetsuya snapped his fingers, and the lights came on. They stood in a well-furnished, though somewhat cramped room. Every surface was cluttered with stacks of handwritten notes or half-built contraptions, including the rumpled double bed and overflowing bookshelf. Kris glanced backwards, trying to catch a glimpse of the otherworld they’d just stepped out of, but Tetsuya turned, firmly shutting the closet door behind her, cutting off any hint of the unreal experience she’d just been through.

“I didn’t imagine I’d ever bring you here like this, but here we are.” He breathed deeply, then smiled self-deprecatingly, gesturing at the room.

“Welcome to my place.”