[center][url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5278655][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/617914243760783381/866258589646323732/thumbnail_yuuya.png[/img][/url][hider=Recommended Listening][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYAhNUaHwYQ[/youtube][/hider][/center]Yūya soldiered along the wall and tried the next door, and the next and the next. He had no choice. Hesitate and he’d start asking questions; questions which would ferment into doubts in his gut, and sit there heavy and leaden like stones; doubts, which would slow-release suspicions, and theories, into his bloodstream, the worst of all poisons for someone like him, just trying to follow orders and get back home mostly intact.

Theories like [i]Tamura ain’t showing up.

Tamura was never supposed to show up.

Ishida made sure you’d be going up against whatever’s in there alone.

This is Ishida’s way of getting rid of you for all your grumbling at his meetings.

He didn’t want anyone getting in the way. Not someone who pities the outnumbered underdog like Toronaga. Not an “ally” like Umeko.[/i]

Umeko … if it was an ambush and there were two, three, ten guys in there, was keeping his promise to her even possible anymore? From where Yūya was standing, only if he deserted and didn’t show his face around school for a while. But the entire weight of the mission—whatever the hell it even was anymore—rested on his shoulders now, and his alone. But how could he know in the moment the exact importance of it all? Was he walking into the jaws of death or was he bravely (albeit stupidly) carrying a Sarayashiki torch behind enemy lines? Was he a soldier; or the sacrifice?

Maybe Tamura’d had the right idea after all, avoiding this shit-show altogether. But of course; if she wanted to keep her little Mary-Janes shiny and her white, starched button-up clean, the most efficient way wasn’t to wade out from the scandals and skirmishes in some elegant, blaze-of-glory way. It was to avoid these situations completely.

Suddenly, Yūya, like he was the anchor at the end of a chain, was ripped away from his daydreams and his trance, as his hand enveloped a doorknob which answered in a different language from the rattling rigidity of the others. This doorknob rolled leftward with a heavy click. And it let the door it was attached to whisper open with a creak. Yūya looked up; the gymnasium’s wide walls, high ceiling, and heavy windows glared back at him austerely and menacingly, no longer a place of entrance ceremonies, brass bands, and home games. Soon this place would be a battlefield, where either he, or some other unsuspecting kid or two, would be beaten, broken, and exiled into the night a loser, the lowest of the low, the dregs at the bottom of the dregs.

To believe in the cause, Yūya would have to know what the fuck it [i]was[/i] first. So all he had to fight for right now was not wanting to be that loser. For all the naysayers and doubters back at school, that reason for fighting hard, as ignoble as it was, would simply have to suffice.

He hunched himself through the door, and eased it closed behind him.

The weight of the baseball bat on his shoulder proved a solitary source of comfort in its sureness; its loyalty in simplicity. No moving parts which could seize up at just the wrong time. No thoughts of its own which could conspire to abandon him behind enemy lines, or throw him to the jackals of another school. Just a lump of metal at the end of a handle. Yūya wouldn’t find much more kindness in this place; in fact, already he was beginning to hear sounds from the darkness of the wide, empty auditorium, which his brain didn’t know completely how to process. It sounded like … a thumb flipping through a wad of thousand-[i]yen[/i] bills? Through the pages of a coloring book? [i]Something[/i] frivolous and papery called to him from across the room. He squinted into the shadows behind the [i]tatami[/i] mats piled against the wall, and spooled under the bleachers, and spanning deep into the lengths of the room; but the thought of all the enemies laid in ambush among these shadows dizzied him, so he only focused on scanning what he could see, and not getting jumped from behind.

The voices came next.

A male one first, hushed but urgent: “Oy, they’re here. Play your game later.”

“[i]Karuta[/i] is done when it’s done.” The replying voice, dripping with the tone of a spiteful, scolded child, was younger, less gruff, and decidedly female.

“Don’t you need a second person? … You know what, never mind. Just have my back when shit goes south.”

“Hey,” said Yūya, “can we get some light so we can do this thing?”

“Huh?” the male replied. “Oh, sure. Sorry, bro.”

As rubber soles, definitely not belonging to [i]uwabaki,[/i] squeaked away to a corner by a chain-locked door, Yūya strained his ears for breathing, for shuffling, for the shifting of weight onto another foot; any clue at all that someone else laid in wait under the gym’s most esoteric shadows. A moment later, fluorescent bulbs began flickering awake high in the rafters, submerging the room in a blinding, pale-white hum. There were two of them.

The girl had chosen to stay in her school uniform, one of those newfangled blazer-styled ones with a ribbony cravat. She had her hair up in two more mismatched ribbons, and her gaze slid up, drenched in an annoyed expression, from a handful of playing cards clutched in her tiny hand, and a few dozen more spread out over the floor just before her. Yūya supposed she was cute, as least as far as such a vicious sneer allowed. As for her partner, Yūya wondered whether the scars sliced into his forehead were real, or put there just for show, a trembling hand scooping them out in front of a bloodied mirror. He wore a Cuban chain and a fur-collared jacket, the latter unbuttoned to show off just enough pec through his wifebeater.[center][hider=Faceclaims][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/617914243760783381/884125843885023232/unknown.png[/img]
[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/617914243760783381/884088442743578654/wfejZCbmJbxCAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg.png[/img][/hider][/center]”So where’s the rest of ya?” asked the Scarface wannabe, wringing his knuckles so hard that his leather gloves squeaked as if in tortured protest.

“She’s, uh, on her way,” Yūya replied.

“You see that, Kageura-chan? These Saranasha-whatever pricks are underestimatin’ us.”

Yūya narrowed his eyes, but made an effort not to shift around too much anywhere else in his body, lest he looked ready to lunge into an escalation. “I’ve got a question about that,” he said. “How do you know who we are?”

The wrinkles sent the hereto-unnamed Keiko boy’s forehead, sheened with sweat) and bristly with close-cropped hair, sliding a few centimeters across his skull. He guffawed, and floated in his shoulders. “A real good question, too, champ. Some dumpy little backwater-school like you? Believe me, we wouldn’t know ya if we hadn’t been expressly told to expect ya.”

“Well? Told by who?” Yūya growled. He would’ve glared too if not for how the lights still ached his eyes, forcing them into a burning squint. “And which a’ you is the Diamond, anyway?”

“Bwa ha ha ha! Where do you dumb fucks keep coming from?! No, my friend, [i]they[/i] come to [i]you;[/i] and the Diamonds got no reason of being here. Not until one o’ you or one o’ me has been … chosen.”

Yūya could tell that the other guy could tell: he’d just struck the perfect nerve. “Chosen for what?”

“My, my. Sounds like someone doesn’t trust you very much.” The Keiko boy effected a great heaving shrug of his shoulders, and an exasperated, damn-it-all sigh. “Tell you what: I'll tell you whatever ya wanna know. That is, if you can beat it outta me.”

Looking him up and down, Yūya searched for a holster, a bulge under his jacket or down his pantleg, anything to betray his opponent’s … methods. When that failed, he asked outright: “Weapons?”

“Not really my style!” The way this guy shrugged and cackled made Yūya think that he and Ikue must’ve taken the same seminar on pushing buttons and, well, overall, being smarmy little shits.

“Rules?”

“The usual gentlemen's engagement: no eyes, and no genitals. Anything else goes. Whaddaya say?” said the Keiko boy.

Yūya released his grip on the bat, a noise which rattled to the gym floor and bounced sharply off the walls in turns. “Fine by me,” he said, running a fistful of fingers through his pompadour. “Just keep that tongue of yours greased and ready to squeal. Don't make me rip it out.”

Scarface took a defensive stance with his ankles spread and his fists raised, his gravity undermined by an unquenchable grin. “Big words!” he giggled. ”But are you the type who’s all words and no action? Please. Try not to disappoint me like the last one.”

“Oh, an optimist!” Yūya said, crescendoing into a roar. “Enjoy it while it lasts, ‘cause there won’t be a ‘next one’ after I’ve finished this!”[center][hider=Recommended Listening][youtube]https://youtu.be/eLWXUYJIuHU?list=PLNzvP_1n68VsBnGZjLRZV6ADnpMPWSzi_[/youtube][/hider][/center]He sought to close the distance fast, and to get his answers just as quickly. The meters contracted between them as Yūya rushed forward with his chin down and his arms up. Scarface gave less ground than he thought he would, but this didn’t faze the attacker, nor stagger the coming assault; kilograms and kilograms of muscle collided at the crossroads of Scarface’s elbow and ulna, raised just in time to block his neck. He replied with a kick, which if nothing else forced Yūya back a pace, and an early end to the attack as he glanced the torpedo-like foot to the side and away from his vitals, redirecting all his offense toward this, this grinding halt in momentum.

Scarface smiled and winked, and at once Yūya wanted to grind that smug little smile under his boot, so he advanced again and with twice the fervor. The exchange played out a second time, and in much a similar stalemate, including a second kick easily deflected away from Yūya’s organs.

[i]He seems to like those flashy「Hollywood」moves … If I can get him to do that kick again, maybe I can ...[/i]

Yūya hadn’t noticed before, but his advances had forced his opponent against the wall. As he moved in again to trap him there, Scarface circled around, and in passing managed to clip Yūya in the head, then skittering backward just in time to avoid retaliation from a wide haymaker.

[i]... But thankfully it’s as I thought: those showbiz muscles of his sure look nice, but they’re not all that [b]powerful[/b]. Just can’t let him goad me. Patience.[/i]

That smug little bastard, pretending he was so nonchalant and omniscient … that intense, focused gaze, as if he was scouring Yūya’s very brain … He had to stop Scarface from reminding him of someone, else he’d keep rushing into his traps like a fool for sure.

Think; he had to turn the tables on this guy. How? It had to be tied to that jacket he refused to shed in the summer humidity … the phony scars he’d given himself to look cool.

… So he needed to be taken seriously, huh?

As if the revelation galvanized him, Yūya at once straightened out and stiffened. He dusted himself off, and began to preen his messed pompadour back into place. “Alright,” he said, “outta the way. I’m done with you.”

“... Hah?”

“So, little girl,” Yūya said, “think you can put up a better fight than this twerp?”

“‘Little girl’?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s this bullshit?! Bro! If you wanna chicken out, just say so; none of these excuses, man!”

Yūya suppressed a smile. He’d expected neither the intensity nor the quickness of this reply. “You think you’re gonna get ‘chosen’ like this? You’re a waste of my time, ‘bro.’ Let your baby sister handle this one.”

Scarface opened his mouth to say something, but Yūya had already turned ninety-some degrees to saunter over toward the bleachers; more specifically, the seat where Kageura had perched herself, and splayed out her playing cards how a magpie displays its pilfered bobby-pins and shirt buttons.

“How about it, baby?” Yūya said with a hum. “Wanna have a [i]real[/i] go?”

She scoffed, scowled, and averted her gaze to the right. “If this is your attempt at being smooth, maybe land a few more punches first. Oh, and a little less … KIRA, LOOK OUT!”

“Too late.” Yūya didn’t have to turn to look or even listen out for the pitter-patter of his [i]jika-tabi[/i] to know that Kira wasn’t going to heed his partner’s warning. He timed it, he watched Kira in the corner of his eye, reeled in the waist and shoulders, and …

Yūya’s body wasn’t much to look at, but unlike one puffed up at the gym, his was sculpted from work; from toil and grime and sweat, earned everywhere from sending splitters to the outfield to gutting carburetors in the forty-degree afternoon broil. “Kira” wasn’t interested in heeding a warning from the very girl he had been spurned for, and when his cheekbone connected with Yūya’s fist, it cracked like a bullet leaving a gun. He didn’t know when he staggered backward faster than his legs could stumble. When he landed ass-first and face-up in the layup section of the basketball court. Or when Yūya finally couldn’t take it anymore and cracked a smile which had been itching to get out for a whole minute before that. The concussion was setting in too quickly, or maybe just the all-familiar rattling shock of having just gotten his own ass handed to him.

Yūya crossed his arms and waited, both watching the girl and letting Kira put himself back together. It wasn’t over, after all, until he spilled everything. Whether he had to lose his blood, his teeth, or his fingernails before he’d start explaining what the hell was going on at this school.

“Had enough already?” Yūya said, though being honest, the arrogant act was superfluous by then; that punch should have more than sufficed in incensing Kira’s honor. He’d want revenge for the rest of the fight, if not the rest of the damn school year. He’d get reckless. Then, if Yūya still hadn’t yielded a haymaker or two to him before they went home, he’d get desperate. “Take your time, ‘bro.’ I’ve got all night to wait for you to recover from one little love-tap.“

“Sh … Shut the hell up.”

“You want me to shut up, then get over here and shut m—whoa!”

“WITH PLEASURE!” Kira swung a right hook which Yūya almost didn’t dodge, eating about a meter of ground just on the backward stumble and recovery alone. And to neither his surprise nor (seemingly) Kageura’s, Kira kept up the assault, chasing right hook with right hook, even resorting to wild haymakers when he just couldn’t put a crack in the Sarayashiki fuck’s armor. Unfortunately, that single punch, stiff and merciless, had already softened Kira’s sense of balance, his speed. And it was Yūya’s turn to play his hotheadedness against him. Every time he baited his prey in, he’d provoke him with a jab; quite worthless in the delivery of pain and injury, but devastating to the pride. And just when Kira had gotten sloppy again, forgetful of what punishment his eagerness had earned him mere moments before, Yūya would remind him; in the ribs, in the stomach, in the throat, in the jaw, he would remind him.

Soon Yūya had earned a few bruises himself, but nothing like Kira, reduced to little more than a sack of spongy, flesh, dead blood, and tender ligaments, seemingly only barely held together by bones and skin. He had to admit: Kira had spirit. Even in certain defeat he didn’t want to back down. And until his fighting partner forced him to, he probably wouldn’t, not even under the screaming protests of his own body.

Speaking of Kageura, Yūya hadn’t heard the shuffle of her deck of cards in a minute or two; and Kira’s eyes had just shifted slightly to the left, as if looking [i]past[/i] Yūya instead of [i]at[/i]—

[i]Thwump.[/i] Like he’d just been gored by a stag or shot by a cannon, the force of a blow to his left kidney sent Yūya gasping, sweating, and tumbling to the side, struggling to stand on his own two feet as if they had turned to bamboo stilts.

[i]C-Crap. Ugh ... Of course. Should’ve seen it soo—oomph![/i]

She was close enough that her skirt brushed against his pantleg, and her breath misted on the back of his neck as she sucked in air and readied herself for attack after relentless attack. So it wasn't a [i]bokken[/i] or a bat. And yet when she punched him, it was as if she had peeled the skin away from her knuckles, and she was punching him with raw bone. The power! Brass knuckles, maybe? Yūya was too busy getting his ass kicked, however, to be disgusted with their trickery (“Not my style,” indeed)—or even impressed with how elegantly she’d turned the tables.

By the time the beating was over, all he could do to stop from dying then and there was keep breathing; through the jagged shards which were his ribs, through the sputtering of the blood in his lungs. Though they seemed a kilometer away, he heard them bickering over what may as well have been his corpse.

“Kageura, what the hell?!”

“You said ‘Have my back when shit goes south.’ And shit went south.”

“But, interfering with a man’s duel … !”

“They’re the ones who chose to send this loser by himself,” she said in a cold, clinical tone, apathetic to his indignation. She kicked Yūya over to look into his clenched, already-swelling eyes. And for good measure she aimed such a kick at his jaw, just to make sure he couldn’t get up again and try another trick. “It’s not our fault they underestimated us.”

“I [i]guess,[/i] but what do we tell Sachimoto? That we had to cheat to defeat them?”

“The truth: we won, and they lost. That’s all that matters here.”

“... Tch. I guess,” he muttered again, but Kira couldn’t help spitting off toward the bleachers. Heh. If the red strings of fate had crossed differently, Yūya probably would’ve been friends with this guy, conquering the halls of Keiko together, their backs pressed together amidst an overwhelming host of pompadoured, punch-permed rivals.

As they walked away in silhouette, his posture more hunched and limping than hers, and propped against hers for support, too, something unfurled from the girl’s fist. It was a long, thin piece of something, like a chain or a strip of studded leather. She folded it neatly away into a pocket, and closed the door behind her latest victim, locking him in the harsh white burn of the gym lights. Hazily, somewhere in the wine-cellars of his mind, Yūya knew that the school day was only a few hours away, and that he’d better be far away from Keiko Lower High School before even the earliest rheumy-eyed teacher turned up for work. Getting to his feet on sore, trembling legs, with swelled-shut eyes and a pounding head for balance; that was the first emergency to handle, right at the top of the list. As for operating a clutch lever with a busted hand … As for getting home before the old man woke up … As for looking Akina-chan in the eye at school tomorrow ...