Trembling shocks ran through the earth by way of the accusation. However, they were not rumbling tremors brought by Kage's agonizing decree but rather the brewing tempest of a boy caught in his strangling guilt; heard after the denouncement.
His properly performed speech was so easily shaken, stirred by Kage's perception. Cleanly, his friend sliced through the mire with each layered word spoken, consequently able to understand the truth of the matter within the spindly boy's manipulation. This very fact riddled the boy with holes that poured vacuous muck which ran over them all. It was of a tint foretelling dangerously bridled detestation.
Teeth clenched to a sharpened point which dug deep into their molars, Gan seethed between stilted breath. "You care more for that boy than me? A fucking child you know not a year, yet have dedicated so much damned time to?" A wipe of his face washed away the mask which coveted it not long before. Thus, the glowering mug of another fell in place for Claire and Kage to bear witness.
"That weak homeless shit stuck to your side like a parasite bringing nothing along with him. He is a waste of oxygen that should have been cast to that very sea after the both of you touched eyes!" A lonesome thin finger pointed out to the rolling waves licking the sandy beach, slowly crawling higher, moment after moment. "That's what you would've done, so what stopped it? What the fuck do you see in that corpse dangling off your arm!? It can't be worth it, not this, and yet you still hold it rather than the one belonging to someone stuck back-to-back with you, brothers in arms."
The same finger that pointed, now, ascended to the sky to wave after a fleeting idea which ought to be conquered. "I alone realized this. I alone did something while the rest of these worms laid in their grime wriggling for approval. That boy softened you, made you something that you aren't!" Gan's breath fell with gulping inhales that extorted the width of his chest as his diaphragm contorted.
Kage spotted the center protrusion that flashed in the breaches of his pupils. It warned of a fearful loathing developing with each fervently spoken word. A mirrored response returned to the individual who barked before its master. "Then, what am I, Gan?"
Finally, Gan speckled his palette with an upturned frown, "Why, you're a monster, brother. Same as I, but as monsters we guarantee the teaching of the other. When you broke my arm in our first outing, that was my punishment for failing you. This," He motioned to their arena of coughing dust accompanied by the lampooning squeals of harm endured by Daniel, "This is yours."
The one titled as "brother" gazed far off into a place which required the notice. He wandered to this location while Gan continued berating him.
"You brought this upon yourself by every foolish whim you journeyed with this wasted attempt. It was valiant I thought. Taking in some stray pup to raise them as a great weapon for the future. But you failed." Gan scurried along the concrete, imprinting the soles of his boots into the surface. "You won't dare hurry to save your friend's life but would rather stick, maim, torture, and especially kill some low-level thugs for a rat!? What a sick joke of a person that you have become…"
There, in that sticking place, a swirling, twirling, amassing swarm within a tornado of blackened shards arose to encompass the night's sky. Dead at its center remained the last reminder of a person Kage buried before, forgotten, only to be awakened again.
"You came this way to save someone, right? SO, JUST DIE! Atone for all that you have done to us. To those you dare speak with love, to those you manipulated to be your friends, then me."
Its hazy shadow stared blankly into Kage's pools of blood, smirking as if remembering a companion long lost, however, returned. No, he had never lost this side of himself. It was weakly below the surface forever ready to be sprung back into its rightful position; claiming ownership as the madness brewed too great for the host to master.
Beneath were the makings of a killer.
Cold and apathetic.
"Just. Fucking. Wea-" The sentence ended abruptly as it would not be permitted to finish.
The speaker felt the punishment for committing such an egregious sin in front of the one who shook responsibility from the beholder.
In a precise as well as scarily accurate movement, Kage slipped one of dozens of scalpels he carried from his wrist's sleeve. This motion pursued the following which shot the pointed tip at the jugular sewn to the Adam's apple lumped from Gan's throat.
It was solely luck which allowed the other to catch the glint of the blade as an aimless fixture illuminated the sleek steel surface. Before it managed to insert itself, collapsing his neck, the boy stole the weaponry by use of his forearm, blocking its further travel while it punctured deep to the bone. Despite this hurried defense, more were already on the way decimating his relaxed posture into a common pose befitting one of martial prowess.
Three burned the air targeting two legs and his remaining arm. Only one fell without a clatter, sinking into the fleshy skin of its opponent. Gan chomped his teeth through his curled lip as the diamond tipped scalpel passed from one side out the other of the boy's thigh.
Even then was the barrage constant, with several more flying to his knelt form, reminiscing upon its injuries. The urge to collapse was eaten with a shove from Gan as he jumped over two more projectiles then, forcing the impact of another, unmissable, into the same forearm once more. Two heated rivers fled from their cracked holes while the tide churned behind the sharp tips of death on the other end.
Venomous hissing excavated from the crevices between his jagged teeth. This reprieve, barely long enough for three breaths to be taken, held for just a period allowing the expenditure of his ability, however minute.
Muscles glowed a vibrant red as they bloomed from their tiny size into massive husks of destruction. When they met their full size in his arms the propelled scalpels shattered as the extensor digitorum around their tips tightly crushed them. It was a process not unnoticed by Kage as he journeyed to cease its production.
A single jack-boot knife nearly struck Gan in the center of his nose but was deflected by his now hulking arms, cracking the metal to bits of dust. Yet, the object lived on as a distraction drawing his attention away from the floor while his opponent slid between his legs. The next moment burst with excruciating pain as seeping threads of fluid cut from his calves dangling onto the ground. This burning swollen lump only served to reignite his senses, turning them into an overdriven inferno.
Gan dared not acknowledge the harm which spread from the slices in his legs for that would be a mistake just as it had been before, when he nearly buckled beneath himself. Instead, he measuredly twirled to his right, subsequently facing behind his prior stance. Then, without thought, struck the concrete with his bare-knuckled fist. His action wrought groans from the earth as it shook in undisguised anguish. The instantaneous thought which encompassed him was to smash Kage's skull into paste prior to his escape from Gan's vicinity. If he allowed the viper to continue striking with such a calculated response, then he may be the one to moan in death's spiral.
'Fuck that!'
A wave surrounded Gan as the ground crackled under his fist. Kage then found himself sucked into the oncoming wave caught in its spiral which tossed him into a heap.
Rattled in the brain, he barely perceived the clenched fist coming his way. The aid of his foot placed behind his back, shot him straight through the attack landing in Gan's shadow. Coveted by darkness, a flick of his wrist produced the curved blade he used to strike at Gan's calves that still bled with an increasing fervor. It was the same that almost did him in when he brought Daniel for some practice long ago on a wintery afternoon.
Its green shimmer still resonated as a coating to the steel's blade. Soon it would take effect, however, many more successful hits would have to be placed before the lumbering beast could be stricken from its post atop the world.
Perching into a crouch, Kage routed all of his energy into his legs as he readied to pounce into Gan's unprotected spine. From there the blade would be inserted, striking through the cardiac muscle then near his heart. But because of his friend's ability the weapon would never come to the organ, instead being blown into particles of ash, just like the rest. This was of course the needed outcome as the poison would circulate through his bloodstream killing the foe quicker than any simple slash would muster.
There was no other concept that persisted in Kage's brain. His body moved according to this truth: Gan threatened the lives of both Daniel and Lisa. Gan must then die to keep them safe.
Nothing would desist him from continuing in his method.
'Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill…' It garbled with a lake of muck that bled into beady black dots that narrowed with his furrowed brow.
A millisecond passed in which the exhalation of his breath could solely be heard echoing along the warehouse's walls as he leapt for the killing blow. His right hand stretched forward, thrusting the blade between the trapezius and latissimus dorsi with precision as its guide while the boy's heart lay as the end post.
Yet, his movement stilled just as the blade punctured the tensed flesh. A sudden blast of air flung him across the open area into an opposing shelving unit that clattered to the floor from his exhausted weight. After his fall from the blast was recovered, he heard the coming wail of oxygen that brushed over them.
For a moment, he believed Claire turned against him, provoking him to position a second knife ready for her skull. However, that was far from the truth.
Claire caught the difference in musculature placement which occurred in Gan's body. A difference that Kage could not see from his position close to the floor. The boy's ballooning arm slithered its strength lower, across his abdominals into the bleeding calf of his right leg. Then, when Kage jumped, that foot shot with immense speed only superseded by Claire's sight, capable enough to react to its dangerous journey. An image conjoined just as fast as it was blown away of the deranged monster's foot penetrating straight out of Kage's skull, entering from his jaw then out the top of his cranium, ripping the cerebrospinal fluid from it.
A shrill noise crawled a path from her lungs as it sped from her mouth reverberating off of Kage, thus sending him into a ball while simultaneously forcing Gan to readjust as his attack missed its intended target.