#HHHHHHH IM SO not normal about john wick au mizu let me TELL YA.

[kiraman]

Killing Strangers PART II, must read PART I. first. Read them back to back if you can for the full experience.

JOHN WICK AU. death/blood/violence cw / Mizu x female oc

wordcount: 3,905 / soundtrack

People don't understand the word ruthless. They think it means 'mean.' It's not about being mean. It's about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from A to B. The line that goes from motive to means. Beginning to end. It's about seeing that bright, clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. Not caring about anything else but the pure, absolute, unbridled perfection of it. – K.A Applegate.

No one's expecting the girl who burned to rise from her ashes. She is not her; she is neither here nor there, she's a ghost, he's smoke smoke smoke, it slips through your fingers; ashes and embers; consuming and resuming herself. They do not know they have been promised death by her hand. But she does. Smoke does. And a promise made, Must be honored.

She does try to stay in the shadows at first. There are 10 million dollars hanging heavy over her head, and she will not fill anyone's hands with them; blood money. Stained by fear; weakness; desperation. She does not care that the world is hot on her trail, death dogging her every step. Like smoke, she slips through the cracks, filling their lungs with her death; a pistol cold in her hand, silencer on, bullets flying; precision; effectiveness. No witnesses left. They come for her, and she takes down five men in a back alley, stitches half torn open, snarling fiercely, growling her rage; she does not shed blood with her knife this time, only with her gun. She does not stop to watch who's chasing after her shadow.

She knows where to find him now; and that is all that matters to her.

It's New Year's Eve and the Cellar, (what they call the obscenely large space Violet uses to throw sinfully lavish parties at his mansion where he lives with his wife and daughter, half way across New York where the core of his group operates. ) is thrumming with life, packed full of people,  all flushed, decadent exuberance and loud techno music blaring through the night, filling the air with its hollowness.

Mizu stares through the windows, letting the flickering strob-lights blind her until it's time to move.

With swift, controlled movements she pulls her jacket on, black, slick, bulletproof. She readjusts the holster of her dagger, strapped at her hip. Neon light glints off her sunglasses, neatly arranged onto her nose as she moves.

Like a shadow, she delves into the depths of his lair, unassuming, swift, like smoke, like the wind, unfathomably quick, unerringly, expertly infallible in her calculations.

Crowds throng her way, pulsing with music, swelling, swaying in the rhythm, the low, droning sound of it. She pushes her way through the throng, the grimy light of the club casting her in silhouette as she ascends the stairs to the second level. Unarmed, no guns are allowed here, in the club; still, she takes down the man guarding the door to the second floor; he grunts, a vicious, wounded sound torn from his throat as she wraps her arm around his throat and squeezes the life out of him; he thrashes violently against her, but she calmly covers his mouth with her other hand and squeezes viciously against his nose, not giving way, until he slumps over, heavy with death. She tosses him aside, and reaches for his gun, frowns when she notices it doesn't have a silencer.

Fuck it. So be it. Loud it is.

When she shoves her way onto the second floor, she sees him; sitting across from her. The strobe lights overhead cast his face in strange half-light. He is here, alive; throbbing darkly, darkly; she cannot see past his hand, curled around some young girl's waist; that same hand, stroking her hair; Mother dead in the bathtub, drowning in her blood; she cannot see past his face, dark, head thrown back in laughter, and everything around her fades away.

Smoke— ?

a man snarls somewhere near her, surprised. She looks his way, hand on her gun; his eyes fall to her hand. — You working?

Everything around her freezes, becomes smoke, fades away with her breath.

No. Not tonight... You?

Yes.

They stand, like this, motionless, stiff, breath thick in their throats, something dark trembling at the very edge of the room, and for a moment, the whole world seems to stop spinning, comes to violent halt to stand right in front of her.

She is faster than him, gun flashing under the lights as she lifts it and fires, shot after shot piercing the air, cold, metallic. Glass shatters, an explosion of metal and light as she shoots at the glass ceiling overhead, bullets riddling the mirrors flashing under the strobe lights, smashing them onto the floor and onto the bodyguards guarding the stairs leading to the third floor. Pure adrenaline washes over Mizu, and she is at her feet, growling as they hurriedly carry Violet away; his name poison in her mouth as she calls out to him, amd he looks back, pure terror in those dark eyes before he's ushered away to safety. There are throngs of people screaming around her, scrambling for the exits, but she does not even see them, her eyes, dark and terrible and dark, honed in on him; she kicks out powerfully at a man running towards her, swings and disarms him, ferociously snapping his wrist and twisting his hand towards himself, emptying his own gun into his stomach, then with a sharp, sudden twist of her torso, plunges the last of its bullets into the head of a second guard launching himself towards her.

The rasp of a door breaking open on its hinges crackles in the air, and metal floors squeaking from the men rushing in. Mizu quickly stands and turns, viciously collars the woman running by her, Violet's daughter, with her left hand and lifts her out of the grasp of her bodyguard clean into the air, unhesitatingly shooting him in the face. Snarling breathlessly, she hoists her in front of her body and turns towards the door, kicking out and ducking, shooting at another man at her left, kicking him back down and crashing his skull with her boot, and then the men from downstairs are flooding in, their rifles pointed in at her and the first man pauses as he comes through the hysterical crowds around them to take in the sight of the girl hanging in the air in front of Smoke and in the moment of his hesitation Mizu, unflinchingly, shoots him dead. She uses her body as a shield, relentlessly firing round after round until the dance floor is littered with bodies, sticky with their blood.

Another one she recognizes as one of Violet's right hands rushes in, and she throws her dagger at his chest, unerringly piercing it open. The man’s legs collapse from under him and Mizu drops the girl into a swing and launches her into the air at the other man taking aim with his gun and the man recoils in horror as the daughter of his boss flies towards him, drops the weapon to catch her as she crashes into him and Mizu is already on top of him as they fall to the ground and she smiles into the man’s eyes and fires the last round left into his head. She looks up towards the stairs leading to the third floor, and takes the man’s rifle, swings it smoothly upwards on the ball of her foot and then she is out the door and after Violet, leaving his daughter behind, unconscious but alive.

It's dark in the hallway, the low drone of the music coming from underneath, vibrating through the floor. She holds her gun tighter, loaded and cocked. It is so quiet she can only hear her own heartbeat, a distant humming, static, electric, the fan overhead, whirring in the smoky air. The walls that line the hallway are made of glass,  reflecting the light pouring in through the windows back onto one another, a narrow strip of low-light. She walks, noiselessly, ears pricked, until the slightest motion pierces the dam of the silence surrounding her, and she is furiously ducking, flying onto the floor as she expertly fires a bullet through two of the men laying in wait for her around the corner, sending them smashing through a glass wall. Glass shatters all around her, and she groans, blood streaming down her face and into her mouth, but she does not feel it, she can't feel anything past the rage in her blood. She is angry.

She cocks her rifle and empties it into the vague shape of a figure that she can see running along the hallway on the other side through the glass, and the wall shatters, shards of glass exploding, raining down onto her head; she tosses the empty rifle aside and quickly, too quickly, turns around, gathering a fistful of glass, sharp shards of it that she unerringly throws into the throat and neck of a second guard running down the stairs towards her, shooting blindly. With a cry derived far more from anger than pain, she head butts the other bodyguard that comes pouncing towards her from the shadows -shattering his nose, his face instantly crimson with blood- before slashing the last of the shard of glass in her hand wide, severing the bodyguard's artery. She reaches for the gun of the first man and loads it; she is angry; she can't see past the blood trickling down her cheek, beading at her neck. She throws herself onto another man, swings her legs around and wraps them around his throat, squeezing until his spine breaks as she uses his body as a shield, expertly shooting another five men dead with no more than six bullets; shot after shot after shot, she sends them all crashing into the glass walls, each with a neat bullet hole through their spines and the arteries lining their thighs. Spitting out blood, she is on her feet and ducking behind a marble statue just as she hears more men running up and down the stairs; she is angry; she reloads another gun she took from one of the dead men while running over their bodies, and stills her breathing to near motionless, laying in wait, blood pounding at her temples; silence. Shards of glass crashed under the heel of a boot; her breath, slow, tight in her throat; pulse beating in her neck;

This is death hanging on an infinite number of miniscule mischances.

Anything could tip the world around her, here. Someone coughing in the dark, a distraction. A variation in the low light filtered through the glass, a deceptive shadow.

She is angry. She lifts her gun and waits, silent, invisible, unseeable; they round the corner and with a twist of her body she powerfully, flawlessly swings onto her feet around the marble statue and riddles their backs with her bullets; blood sputters and stains the glass, streaming down the walls; one of the men, growls, furious, and pounces, throws himself at her from the dark, she had not seen him, and Mizu, gasps, shocked, ripping her shoulder away from his hand and furiously punching her elbow into the side of his throat.

Having already thrown her empty gun aside, her hands are free and her fingers, extended in a leap, dig into the edge of his jacket. The man loses his balance; the tug bends him backwards, forcing him to totter back. He struggles furiously, violently rips the jacket off his shoulders and frees himself. Too late. Mizu spins him round by hitting him in the shoulder with her right hand, then immediately strikes him in the neck under the ear with her left. The man - Violet's highest ranking assassin, she realizes; the Jackal- reels but does not fall. She is furious; her eyes, flash, a low growl of pure, uncontrolled rage thrumming in her throat; Jackal digs his fists low into her ribcage where her stitches have torn and she groans, anger flaring up inside her like a flame that explodes, shattering the world around her. Mizu grabs him by the front of his shirt, spins him violently and throws him to the ground. She clenches her fist and thumps him from above. Straight in the mouth. His lips split like blackcurrants, blood filling his jaw and chin, teeth smashing. She growls, moans against the sting of his fingers still digging into her side; one of her hands holds him down by the throat, viciously, like a hammer, like a knife, the other one breathlessly reaching for the gun thrown near them, spinning around and shooting another five, six, seven men down, a bullet through two lungs, a bullet to the side of a neck, then right through a skull, one, two, three shots, a bullet to a thigh, then chest, ripping it open; blood spatters, splashing her face. She reels around, draws her hand back from his throat and punches him again.

She is punching him, over and over, her hands a flurry, a black blur. His face is hot and stinging as boiling water. She is angry; she sees him, black suit, black coat, black sunglasses, a black tiger tattooed on his wrist, emerging from the fire. Mother dead in the bathtub, drowning in her blood.

She punches his face into a pulp, then draws back, groaning, clutching her side. She wastes no time; with an almost frustrated groan she pulls herself to her feet, and staggers down the hallway.

The shattered glass walls shake, vibrating with the distant music coming from down below. She bends and picks up the dagger she had thrown to a man's throat, cutting it open, finds a gun amongst the guts and blood.

She walks slowly down the hall; her face is covered with blood, and her lower lip is split open. Blood is spilling through her shirt where her wound has been ripped open. She does not care; she does not feel the pain.

She's close so close; her hands are cold, precise, calmly, furiously, ruthlessly holding her gun.

And then, she sees him, there, black suit on, immaculately pressed, sat at his desk under a glass ceiling, and she is sunk for a few seconds in the strangest calm of her life. There, within her reach, sits him; him who has violently ripped her life away from her; he, who has plunged her into that fire that still burns inside of her with a rage that nothing could ever snuff out.

His eyes are open and stare back at her with something frighteningly calm in them. Except for the irises, which are of flecked grey so that they seem smokey like the hoar mist on a winter's morning, his eyes are dark. Black. It takes Mizu a few seconds to realise that they have no expression at all.

She steps forward, her boots, slick with blood, making soft, strange noises as she walks towards him slowly, her mouth twisting into a terrifying snarl. Blood trickles down her chin. She licks it away, eyes unblinking, piercing him through with their rage.

"you won't make it out alive... kill me, and then what? you think you'll somehow walk away from this unharmed?"

Mizu does not answer. She cocks her gun.

"there is more coming..."

"—let them." she snarls, calmly, a dark edge to her voice.

She is furious. Her pulse shatters in her throat.

He blinks, and she can see the fear rising in those eyes; he looks behind her, into the hallway, the floor littered with bodies. There's no other coming.

He huffs, reaches for the bottle of whiskey set somewhere near him on the desk, pours himself a drink, then another one, presumably, for her.

Pathetic.

He gulps thickly, his left hand twitching.

She is furious; her blood is pounding at her ears, each beat bringing her closer to that fire, that flame that burns everything inside of her to ashes and from it, rises only smoke, smoke, smoke.

Silence; the clink of a glass against the bottle; his breath, hard, riven with fear. Her heartbeat, furious, dark, thrums in her throat.

Mother dead in her blood. Fireworks lighting up the sky, exploding into flames.

"no one, not even you, can kill everyone. you are not God." he sneers, a hideous glint in his eyes. His fingers twitch.

"I am your God." she coolly drawls.

Silence. Her breathing stilled to near motionlessness. She hears him swallow and the sound makes her sick.

He reaches for the whiskey, his ring clinking against the bottle.

Mizu pulls the trigger.

His head jerks back violently, splattering the desk with blood.

Mizu stands in the blackness that surrounds her and watches his head loll to the side, the glass of whiskey slipping from his hand, crashing onto the floor.

Blood from her nose spatters the floor nearby.

Outside, fireworks explode, lighting up the sky.

The year must have changed.

Silently, she turns around, and walks away.

She does not look back; she does not look back again until she's at the door, reaching for the knob;

A bullet comes whizzing right past her left ear, and she turns around, furiously, hand on her gun, cocking;

There is a boy stood at a door, near her. He can't be more than seven. His hands, tremble as it raises a gun he's taken from one of the dead guards upstairs, no doubt, and aims it towards Mizu.

Shock floods her system; she did not know Violet has a son; had a son.

Mizu's hand curls, twitches. She hesitates; she hears his little breath, sharp in his throat; hears his feet scuffle against the floor. She feigns a smile, says, it's alright... it is alright, then pounces, easily removing the gun from his hand. She calmly, too calmly, pulls back the slide, locking it all the way to the rear, and empties the chamber, pouring the rounds out onto her open hand, before tossing the magazine aside. She lets the boy watch her, lets him look into her eyes as she loads her gun. Lets him memorize the shape of her face, sharp and horrible in the shadows; she blinks at him for a moment, blankly, silent, not seeing him but his father in those small, dark eyes of his, and, then, without so much as a second glance, walks away and into the night.

Into the cold night air, the wound in her side is continuously sending sharp jolts of pain right through her. She clutches at it, hissing, walking away swiftly, in control, slick, dark jacket soaked with blood. Distant sirens pierce the silence, and there is police crawling all over the streets around her. She turns a corner, heaving for breath; her steps are calm, measured, but quick, hurrying away. There’s an unmarked car idling in the alley—there always is, she doesn’t know where she gets them—

Mizu blinks and suddenly she’s beside her, a warm shape in the dark. 

"Took you long enough." Geraldine says, breathless, her cheeks scarlet with rouge, cold from the wind lashing against her as she stands in the night, waiting for Smoke, and then, "come on- hurry..."

Mizu pours herself into the backseat, groaning. When Geraldine leans over to click her seatbelt into place, her hair—loose and spilling over her shoulders—falls against Mizu's torn cheek. She shuts her eyes, a pained sound dying off in her throat, breathing in the faint smell of warm skin and her perfume, something sour and sweet; smoke and lilacs.

When she opens her eyes again, Geraldine is sitting in the front, furiously driving away. The light of the GPS casts her face in strange half-light, occasionally sliced-through by the flash of the streetlamps through the window. She could be carved from marble, impossible and cold under her hands.

Not that she has ever touched her.

“I thought I defrauded more money for you than this,” Mizu says archly, feeling the car speed up dangerously. “No, Smoke." Geraldine sighs theatrically, exasperation in her voice. “No. You did not. shame on you. Hold on.” she shifts gear, and the car flies down the street, like a bullet, piercing the night.

“Right,” Mizu says, and lets her head loll back against the leather. She can feel the beginning of an ache, behind her eyes— her blood is hot in her veins, it's lava; live coals; she is still burning. “Yes.”

She stares out the window, letting the flickering street-lights blind her until she falls back into uneasy sleep.

Her phone rings, tearing her from her sleep.

She blindly reaches for it and answers, but does not speak.

She blinks through the pounding in her head; she is still in the car, it's still night outside; Geraldine is still driving.

She can't have been out of it for more than, what? Half an hour?

This isn't over. a cold, sharp voice on the other side of the line growls low in her ear.

Mizu does not answer. Geraldine flicks her eyes over to her, watches her through the rearview mirror. Her eyes are so bright; burning with something furious; fierce beauty and hunger,

Mizu does not know why she notices right then; she stares right back at her through the mirror, blindly, listens to the man on the other side of the line breathe, waiting for her answer;

when she does not give it to him, he says, fury in his throat, you think I'll let you walk away from this? you think we won't come after you with everything that we've got?

As she listens to the voice on the other end, Mizu remains still... stoic.

Yeah. Yes... I would not know how to respond to this either.

Mizu does not react. Geraldine's eyes in the mirror reflect the light; like flames, dark, carnelian; she blinks, a frown lining her face.

The man on the line is cut off by an intercom which squawks to life in the distance, a screaming voice reduced to panicked static. He laughs, and there is nothing in that voice; it's dead, cold. Empty.

Fowler. Can't be anyone but him.

But you betrayed him-

...and she betrayed us.

They are not our friends - Geraldine had said, laughter in her voice; silk; smooth, tickling her ear; no one is our friend.... everyone is our friend.

Why? What could we have possibly —

Realization washes over like a tidal flood, adrenaline bursting through her veins, ears ringing. Mizu cuts him short, hanging up; the line goes dead.

There is fury in her eyes now; and she says, move over, and Geraldine screams, says what the fuck, Smoke? as Mizu climbs her way into the front and hurriedly makes her switch seats with her so that she can drive down the harbor, furious, enraged, a hurricane, tearing the veins of the city open.

When they park outside the Cabinet, the flames have already consumed it whole, floor to ceilings, and Geraldine pours out of the car in shock, screaming her throat raw, sinking to her knees amidst the ashes. Her father looks down on them blindly, throat sliced open, hanging, dead and heavy, from the rooftop, swaying in the air.

And for a moment, only for a moment— Mizu forgets how to breathe.