[closed] black and blue

[foeyay]

WHO: Kamui (foeyay) and Kei (livingimpaired)
WHERE: RAMEN
WHEN: Late March
WHAT: Kamui pays Kei a visit after getting punched through a brick wall.
WARNINGS: Blood, also everyone involved, eye gore


RAMEN's front entrance inched open at a painfully slow pace only to not close afterward, drawing all eyes to see what strange person had decided that the doorway was the best seat in the house. The sight that met any poor customers of the not-so-ramen shop was that of a young man slumped against the open door. His legs were shaking under his own weight, and he was clutching his stomach with both arms. A plip plip against the otherwise spotless floor emphasized the deep red color of blood that had soaked through the back and side of his shirt. When Kamui lifted his head, the ghostly pallor of his skin contrasted the blood on his lips in a terrifying way. He smiled up at Kei like he'd just come in to browse the menu.

"Yo."

Comments

[livingimpaired]

"Thank you for your business."

On occasion, he would actually give a reasonable goodbye to customers. His head tilts slightly in a respectful half-bow. But there is a sudden hush that comes over those in the restaurant -- those leaving and those just almost finishing their meals. It is a tense silence that makes the whole space feel heavy with anxiety.

The customers that he wished well are shuffling around Kamui and immediately making their hasty escape out the door. Kei feels his shoulders slump as the remaining are already getting up and leaving with the same nervous energy trailing after them. Money is hastily left on the table as they hurry out.

"Kamui." He responds to the greeting with his own (sounding mildly worried, strained) but he is already hurrying to the front door to turn the sign to closed and lock it. His steps are equally hurried as he walks back to him, leaning down to look him over. "Did you run into someone stronger than you, finally?"

His tone sounds almost scolding rather than mocking, as he quickly guides Kamui to take a seat at the nearest available chair. It wouldn't do for the reputation of his restaurant if he were to let Kamui remain as he is. Furthermore, he presses his lips into a thin line. "Your mother is going to worry." He bends down to start looking him over a little more throughly.

[foeyay]

It took a bit of coughing before Kamui could force his voice out again, yet when he did, he wasted it on proclaiming his victory. "He was stronger than me," he affirmed in a hoarse hum, "but I didn't run away like he did, so I won." Because that was what was important. Kamui was a bloody mess and he knew it, but his guts had won out, so it was all worth the pain.

At least as long as those guts stayed put inside him.

The trek to the nearest chair was thankfully short. Sitting down was what proved difficult. It stretched the many gashes on his backside, carved by the edges of dislodged brick and mortar. The skin over his left ribs was scraped raw and bloody, and an ugly, hand-shaped bruise was already blossoming in the center of his chest. Kei would not have to survey his patient long.

"If you d-" He paused, sucking in a painful breath. "If you don't tell her anything, she won't have to."

[livingimpaired]

"Did you provoke him?"

The question was completely rhetorical in nature. His head was already tilted in a disapproving manner, lips pressed together into a thin line. "That said, are you an idiot?" He lifted his eyebrows higher as he assaulted Kamui's intelligence. If Kei did not have the new healing that he did, he would have told the teenager that he had only come to die. No, that is dramatic. I could probably still have done something.

"You're holding me to secrecy, then?" Reaching out, he decided to start with the ribs. That was the most immediate problem that he saw. The rest would be to check how the insides were, but these wounds needed to be fixed first. "There is going to be some discomfort. Both in what you're going to see and the amount of pain that you're going to experience." Yet there was something beneath the words that said -- However, you've resigned yourself to this.

But he still hesitated. Is it not heretical? This is something regained but it is something my other self sought after. Why? Is not magic considered heresy? But warm blood washed over the top of his hand as he rested his hands on Kamui's ribs, not yet doing anything. I see. If I do nothing... and there is no way to move him to the clinic now. Did he corner himself subconsciously so he would have to use his powers?

Kei decided to let that thought go as his hands grew transparent. "Brace yourself." It was the only warning that he gave before he thrust his hands forward through Kamui's body into the young man's soul. It was to slide his hands over the ribs to heal the damage done over the chest and left side primarily through the soul itself. But he could only imagine the level of pain and hallucinations that Kamui was now experiencing as he worked. And this was only the first half of the treatment.

[foeyay]

Of course Kamui provoked him. He was, after all, an idiot of the highest caliber.

Kamui didn't waste his breath on the questions Kei already knew answers to. What caught his attention were not Kei's questions but his statements. Certainly, the man had never warned him about what he might see while being treated before. The pain he was willing to handle, whatever may come, but if Kei was going to drop his pants or something, Kamui sure as hell wanted to know ahead of time. His blank stare rose from Kei's hands to his face as he opened his mouth for a wisecrack.

Then everything changed.

Kamui's breath hitched as cold steel slid smoothly through his ribs and out his opposite scapula. Blood bubbled in the back of his throat as it hit him that he had been skewered by a fucking sword. He tried to vomit a bloody protest, but before he could, he was rocked by a second burst of agony, this one piercing his chest. He could feel the moment when it tore through his lung as if in slow motion. All other senses shattered in an instant of pain that simply wouldn't end. Two more blades stabbed his abdomen in unison, a third ran through his throat. His limbs followed, then his head. As a thin, rapier-like blade penetrated his open eye with searing, melting accuracy, he finally heard a sound over the cacophony of his own racing heartbeat.

Someone was laughing. He should have been dead, but he wasn't, and someone was laughing at him. Kei, his mind supplied through the sensory overload. A man materialized around the rapier's handle, his smile a twisted, enigmatic joke.

Kamui screamed, thrusting his hand out for a bone to snap.

[livingimpaired]

A sharp cry immediately follows.

Kei found himself on the ground, on his side. "Found" had the connotation that it was a soft surprise. There was nothing soft with the loud, wet sound of his body crashing onto the floor of his restaurant. Nor the added plip, plip of blood that was rushing down the side of his face. His nose was broken and he blinked trying to regain his dazed senses.

He spit red as he pushed himself up to a sitting position, looking at Kamui. Blood that was running down the side of his face, over his ear, now ran down toward his chin. His expression was less than pleased at having been violently struck -- and he slowly pieced together what had happened in his addled mind.

"I did say brace yourself." His voice was surprisingly nasally, and unsurprisingly pained. Holding his hand against his face, he closed his eyes in quiet agony. "At the very least, your ribs should be fine. The rest will need another go." There was a very quiet, mumbled "ow" after.

Indeed, the ribs had been mostly healed over. There would still be some minor bruised feelings -- and he had no intention of reaching back in to fix the problem. Bruised ribs were better than fractured; bruised was also better than seeing the white of the bone peeking through the skin. The next problem would be to deal with the mortar and brick.

[foeyay]

The pain vanished from his muscles like so much steam out a window, and Kamui was left to stare blankly at the unarmed man now bleeding on his restaurant floor. This was RAMEN. It was Kei on the floor. Where were the weapons, the throbbing that threatened to tear him apart, the entrails? Kamui dropped his head and felt for entrance wounds, but there were none. He gulped down air like a man possessed, only just managing to catch Kei's wry "I told you so."

Slowly, he turned to his ribs, where Kei had first placed his hands. The would had closed over, scraped skin and muscle having rebuilt itself in record time. It did still sting and bruising was visible, but after what he'd just experienced, Kamui couldn't call this sensation pain. The gap was no less than the difference between an alligator and an ant bite.

"I..." He had to catch his breath before he could continue. In the process, he decided it would probably be a good idea to refocus on Kei himself. That poor nose was definitely broken, and he obviously hit his head when he fell. Kamui hadn't meant to do that. "I'm not the one who fell."

Another breath, another moment to stall. It didn't work. He still didn't know what expression he was supposed to make right now.

"You did that."

[livingimpaired]

"Explaining what it was would take too long in your previous condition."

Kei closed his eyes in pain before he decided that Kamui should see what he did. Resting his hand on his own face, he breathed out hard -- more blood pouring down his face in the process. It was a second later that his hand grew translucent as he dug his fingers into his broken nose. His soul trembled and violently shook at his own touch. Even if it was himself, he could not accept something touching his soul.

His eyes widened as he envisioned himself ripping his own face off, feeling the yield of flesh as it peeled off bone. The pain matched the hallucination before he pulled his hand free. "Ow." Already, the memory of the agony he put himself in was fading. It was like it never was. Looking back up at the teenager, his nose was reset. No, it was completely fixed to the degree that it looked more like someone had poured red all over Kei's face rather than it came from his nose.

"A regain of mine that I have been wondering if I should master or not." A beat. "It seems like it would be better to work at it than allow it to sit. If I can get better, perhaps, the pain that accompanies it will lessen, too. For... as you can see, one cannot argue with results."

[foeyay]

Watching the act from outside the hallucination felt more surreal than the damn hallucination, if only because the display was so mundane and short-lived. That was all Kei had done, and yet Kamui had died at least ten deaths before forcefully ending it. The contrast between fiction and reality made him feel small for having lashed out, especially when Kei had subjected himself to the same treatment without so much as a scream.

Kamui had never allowed himself to feel small for long, however, even when he was beaten bloody. All this meant was that he still had to get a bit stronger. He straightened himself out on his stool and allowed himself a moment to let his frozen facial muscles relax into a challenging smile. Then he tossed Kei his tattered shirt.

"For the blood." Sure, he'd broken Kei's nose, but he'd also given him a dirty shirt to wipe his face with. Now they were even. "If that's all this was, I don't mind being a guinea pig every once in a while. It's a little like taking an extreme endurance test."

[livingimpaired]

"Thank you?" Kei understood the gesture, at least, as he wiggled his nose at the tattered shirt now in his hand. He tried not to look too ungrateful as he wiped his face clean -- he also tried not to breathe in. Both were done with marginal success as he stood back up.

"Don't agree to being a guinea pig so easily." He was already sighing as he stepped closer to him. His hands on his hips as he looked him over carefully. Right, the next problem ahead of them -- "You can talk about the endurance test all that you like, but I still need to look at your back. Your endurance test is not quite yet over."

He touched his face once more as he worried, for a second, about being headbutted from behind by Kamui. The young man really did not know how to hold back his strength -- but he decided to forgive him about it. This was a sort of reaction that he had not humored. There had only been a few people that he treated with his power, after all. Most seemed to remain still as they hallucinated whatever horrific vision that their mind was conjuring up. "Of course, you had to be different from them, Kamui."

A small sigh. "Turn a little and we'll finish off your healing... then you can talk more about how you want to be a guinea pig." Which was to say that Kei liked to believe that once Kamui suffered the same healing twice within such a short period of time, that would be enough of a deterrent. It was really wishful thinking, and he knew it, but he allowed himself the fantasy all the same.