#did you all know 'concerningly' isn't recognized as a word?

[kirayaykimura]

live fast die young

It wasn’t unusual for Shirayuki to see a stray spray of blood she wasn’t expecting in one of the back areas of Izana’s club, but the amount of blood she encountered upon rounding the corner to her office gave her pause. The bodies littering the floor gave her another. 

“Hello?” she called. When she received no response, she quickly scanned the hallway, finding a mix of familiar and unfamiliar faces. The darkest part of her was relieved to find no one she was incredibly close with. There were a few security guards she passed by on a semi-regular basis and a woman on the finance team. 

Shaking off the thought, she stepped into a puddle of blood next to the closest man - one of the unfamiliar faces; young enough that his cheeks stubbornly clung to their baby fat - and bent down to feel for a pulse. When she found none, she sighed softly. 

“May you find peace in the next life,” she told him, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze before moving on to the next. 

In total, she found only one with a steady heartbeat. Torou, thankfully, had pulled through. Though Shirayuki had never been very close to Torou, she had been dreading having to pass along the bad news to Obi. With a bullet in her shoulder and a through and through in her calf, Torou wasn’t doing spectacularly, but she’d make it. All she needed to do was survive Shirayuki hauling her off to the medical office a few feet away. At the first tug, Torou let out a faint, pained moan. 

“Good,” Shirayuki said. “You’re still with me.” 

As soon as she said this, Torou gave a sharp cry of pain before fainting completely. Alright then. At least she wouldn't need to be careful anymore. Though Torou was not a large woman, dead weight was always a challenge. Usually she had help, but help was not a luxury Shirayuki could afford to wait for at the moment. She needed to get Torou somewhere safe and somewhere without a bunch of unknown blood around an open wound. Through sheer force of will and the muscles she’d gained hauling soil to and from her tiny garden at home, she managed to get them both into the safety of her office with minimal issue. Then, she quietly locked the door and did a sweep of the room. At first, it seemed as if they were in the clear, but then a hand raised up over the desk in a clear sign of surrender, causing Shirayuki to jump. 

“Hey,” Obi croaked a moment later when it was clear no weapons were going to make their way to his face. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” 

He peeked over the desk at Shirayuki, and even in the dim lighting she could tell he was pale. With the cabinet behind him open, she could only assume he’d been shot as well and was attempting to stitch himself back up. She was about to scold him for trying to fix himself again when she was right there with actual training to be able to do what he was attempting when his eyes fell on Torou at her feet. Impossibly, he went more pale. 

“She was out there?” he asked. 

“You didn’t know?” Shirayuki asked. 

Obi shook his head. “I was dealing with a few guys in the front, then a couple more in Zen’s office. After that, I took the back way in here to avoid bleeding all over the nice carpet.” 

Shirayuki wanted to tell him he deserved to bleed wherever he needed to bleed, but that was never going to come out right and she did have more pressing matters at hand. Namely, seeing if she could dig the bullet out of Torou’s shoulder before either it migrated or she woke up. It was so much nicer to do surgery on people who weren’t awake and screaming in her face. 

She set Torou’s feet down and rounded the desk to find her suture kit open on the floor beside Obi, everything still neatly in its place. The only evidence it had been tampered with at all was the streak of blood along the edge of the kit and the needle and thread Obi was currently holding. 

“It’s like I knew you were coming,” he said, holding out the needle and thread to her. The needle was unthreaded. He was likely shaking too hard to thread it, judging by the way his hands jumped in hers when she took everything from him. Even if he could patch up the giant gash in his thigh, the steadily oozing wound in his side would be too awkward to reach by himself, especially in his current state.

“Did you cauterize this?” she asked, already knowing the answer. 

“As the poet M.I.A. once said, live fast, die young.” 

She took a lighter out of the kit and lit the nearest candle. It would be nice if she got to light them when people weren’t bleeding out on her floor, but she supposed she knew what she was getting into when she agreed to work for Izana. 

“You need to sterilize things before you stick them inside yourself,” she said. 

“I was kind of working on borrowed time, miss. Wasn’t exactly thinking straight.” 

Shirayuki just gave him a look that said, I know but I’m not accepting that excuse, as she held the needle over the open flame for a few more seconds. She’d do a quick patch up of Torou’s leg before diving into her shoulder. 

“I’ll do you next,” Shirayuki told Obi. Since he was alert and nothing appeared to be currently lodged in any part of his body, he’d have to wait for her to circle back to him.

His lips twitched the way they did before he was about to tell a joke, and then he suddenly went still. A moment later, she understood why. Footsteps and faint whispers echoed from down the hall. 

“Hey,” Obi said, voice softer than usual. “Shirayuki? Can you do me a favor and run? Fast as you can.” 

Shirayuki’s fingertips went numb. Faintly, she said, “You called me Shirayuki.” It was not the part of the situation she should have been focusing on. She should have focused on the way his smile slipped deeper into a grimace the longer she looked at him, or the way he was less leaning against the desk than letting the desk keep him upright. There were clearly more pressing issues to be worried about, but what came out of her mouth was that. 

He shrugged through a grimace. “I’m selfish like that. Now go.” 

Well, that certainly wasn’t happening. Not when things were so dire here. Not when he was saying nonsensical things like her name and losing blood and being serious. No. She went into the medical profession to be able to save people. There was no way she was going to walk away and let Obi fight a battle he clearly didn’t think he would win. 

“Give me your gun,” she said, mind made up. 

“Miss-” 

“Give me,” she said, holding out her hand expectantly, “your gun. Please.” 

“You should go. Save yourself.” 

She simply stared at him, palm open and waiting. 

Obi caved first. He always caved first. Especially when she put what he called her no nonsense face to good use. With a sigh that was, concerningly, much less dramatic than normal, he said, “I don’t have a gun.” He gestured to the bloody tear in his side that meant something had clipped him at a very high speed as he flipped a knife up and out of his pocket with his free hand. “Brought a knife to a gun fight like a rookie.” 

“Well, don’t do that next time.” 

Obi snorted, then winced. Right. Not the time to make completely valid statements she knew he would take as jokes. 

“Do you know where we could get a gun?” Shirayuki asked. She crawled over to press an ear up against the door and heard a faint thump, followed by a less faint, “Goddammit.” Under her breath, she said, “We could probably use one pretty quickly.” 

“Are they outside?” Obi asked just as quietly, leaning around the desk to eye the door like watching it would keep whoever was on the other side out. 

“Do you have a gun stashed anywhere in here?” Shirayuki whispered. Though Obi’s weapon of choice was a knife, she knew for a fact that he still stashed guns for other workers in various locations throughout the place. She’d never accidentally found the one in this room, though, so he must have hidden it pretty well. 

“I don’t have one.” 

At her look, he said, “Honestly. None of us keep a gun in here.” 

“Why?” 

“It’s dangerous.” 

“We’re actively being shot at now. This whole line of work is dangerous.” 

“And I was trying to make it less so. Not having surprise guns around was part of that process.” 

“We’ll talk about this later. Do you think Torou has one?” 

“Probably not. If she-” 

Shirayuki skimmed her hands along Torou’s legs and found a small one strapped to her inner thigh. She rolled Torou safely into a corner before deftly removing the gun, checking to make sure it was loaded, then aiming it at the door. It was lighter than anything she’d ever handled before. Hopefully it wouldn’t take her too many practice shots to figure out how to compensate for the difference. There was no telling how many people were outside, and surprise could only give her so much of an edge. 

“Whoa,” Obi said, watching her test the gun’s weight against her palm. “You look pretty comfortable there, Annie Oakley.” 

“My grandpa started teaching me how to shoot when I was about five. It’s been years, but I think the muscle memory is still there.” 

“You’re gonna protect me?” 

Shirayuki didn’t take her eyes off the door as she said, “Of course.” 

This turned out to be the right call because the person behind the door chose that moment to kick the door in. It took them a couple of tries, door frame splintering under the force, and then Shirayuki was face to face with someone she had seen once. Only once. 

She shot him in the knee. 

It had not been a good first impression. She was determined to leave a worse second impression. 

The man howled in pain and dropped to the floor. She made quick work of the other two, giving them all non-fatal injuries. Well, non-fatal if the injuries were treated soon enough. That was up to them, though. 

“Are you going to try to shoot us again?” Shirayuki asked, kicking away everyone’s visible weapons. She didn’t drop her guard, though. She still had one bullet left in her gun and it was going in the head of anyone who tried her again. She only received pitiful moans, but no one reached for anything hidden so she was counting it as a win. 

Just as she was trying to decide how to tie them up before tending to, well, everyone bleeding out in her office, she heard the frantic steps of someone not trying to sneak up on her. 

“I know that run,” Obi said. In her periphery, she watched as he finally succumbed to everything and fainted while Zen rounded the corner, stopping just long enough to breathe a sigh of relief that she was okay. She, in turn, breathed a sigh of relief that Mitsuhide and Kiki weren’t far behind him. Finally, some help moving bodies. 

____

Hours later, once everyone had been stitched up and declared stable, once everyone who had tried to break in had been sent off to be dealt with the way club owners dealt with these events, once Shirayuki had at least cleaned her hands and changed her clothes (though her shoes were a lost cause; that’s what she got for wearing white Keds to work), she sat next to Obi and said, “Next time you want to call me by my name, just call me by my name. You don’t need to die for it.” 

Obi was silent for a long moment before he said, “Okay.”

[iliveforyouilongforyouvesuvia]

Vesuvia Weekly: The Marketplace Incident

~ my little written sketch for @vesuviaweekly's prompt "How Things Went Wrong (feat the Arcana familiars)". Enjoy an afternoon from the perspective of my fandom self-insert :3 ~

Word count: 1.5k

The marketplace really is the best spot to write in. The bustle of afternoon shoppers in the sunny square is a soothing view from my shaded nook, tucked between Selasi's booth and an alleyway of stairs. The steady sea breeze makes the parchment in front of me flutter, carrying the smell of spiced bread as it tousles my hair from my forehead.

"Need a refill?" The baker leans on the stone wall above the low table I'm pretending to draft my next story on. "Maybe it will help the ink flow better."

"Thanks, Selasi, but I'm afraid I've barely had a sip." I gesture to my mostly-full clay cup. "It's a good blend, though - what did you use for it this time?"

"A craftsman never shares his secrets." He hunches closer, not-so-subtly trying to sneak a peek at my handwriting. "What is today's writing about? More of our six friends' adventures, by a friendly young man whose signature is a rotting brain?"

I roll my eyes at his teasing smile. "Okay, using the moniker 'brainrot' doesn't automatically mean gruesome physical decay -"

We both jump at the sudden cat's yowl from the direction of the baker's counter. A fuzzy orange blur streaks to my corner, tiny claws digging into my shirt as it uses me as a ladder to get to Selasi's shoulder.

"Pounce? What is it, little one?"

"Bad dogs!" Faust's face pops into view, her body slowly unwinding from the cloth umbrella over me.

I barely have time to stabilize her plop onto my arm before I catch sight of two more barking fuzzy blurs tearing around the corner, a screeching raven flapping frantically after them. All three start heading in my direction as soon as they see me stand up to intervene. "Mercedes, Melchior! Come here!"

As ill-trained as I know Lucio's dogs are, the half-finished roll I hold out in their direction is more than enough to convince them. They slide to a halt in front of me, paws and tail still skittering from side to side, eyes trained on the treat. The flustered raven descends on my shoulder and Faust scoots onto Selasi's arm to give him more space.

"It's rare to see these fellows here without their owners ..." The baker runs his hand over Pounce's bushed-out tail in a soothing arc. "Did something happen?"

"What didn't happen?" I mumble in response. I don't think I recognize the strange goop Faust has left on my shirt, or the hooped earring in Malak's beak, or the concerningly pleasant smell wafting off of the dog's silky coats. I hold out my palm in front of the bird on my shoulder. "Give me the shiny, please. Which friend did you take this from?"

"Took it when I squeezed!"

"Who did you squeeze, Faust? Was it Julian?"

"Stinky count. Stole my fishies!"

The hissed voice clearly belongs to a cat, but it's not coming from the trembling ginger tabby in Selasi's arms. Pepi lopes into view on the wall above me with a smug look on her little face. Oh, right. I keep forgetting that she learned how to talk ...

"Lucio ... stole your fish?"

"Pepi earned the fishies - Pepi was a good cat and caught all the rats! Went to the docks to get the fishies, but he took them first!"

I try to piece the narrative together, noticing what looks like a pearly white owl listening in from the roof of the booth. "So ... Portia went to buy Pepi some fish, but Lucio bought them first? Where did the earring come from?"

"Master tried to help!"

"Oh, did Asra try to trade their earring for the fish? I thought his piercings closed up years ago."

Malak caws loudly in protest. Faust wiggles and bobs from her perch on Selasi's shoulder as the distant owl takes off for a different corner of the marketplace.

"Not Master's earring."

I study the golden hoop, finally catching the protective gleam in Malak's eye. "Ohh, this is Julian's, isn't it? Okay, from the top." I watch five pairs of animal eyes point back in my direction. "Portia went to get fish for Pepi, but Lucio bought them first. Asra tried to intervene, and then Julian offered an earring that he apparently owns to bargain for the fish with. Is that right?"

I almost miss the variety of nods when a thick coat of fur unexpectedly brushes across the backs of my knees. When I look down, it's right into Inanna's bright green eyes - and the torn bag of rice in her mouth. She drops it at my feet, spilling the grains across the ground and sending Malak into a flurry of indignant squawks. The wolf curls up for a nap at my heels, completely unfazed. Selasi gently sets Faust on my abandoned parchment and returns to his oven with an amused "good luck!"

"O-Okay." I drag my hand down my face and do my best to analyze the mess. "So why do the dogs smell nice, why is Faust slimy enough to smudge my ink, and why am I the one currently holding Julian's mystery hoop?"

"Squeeze the thief! Rescue the shiny! Run away fast!"

Faust bleps her tongue proudly, while Pepi takes a smug seat on the stones and the dogs begin to growl. One warning huff from the large wolf pretending to sleep behind me quietens the impending ruckus.

"And ... do I want to know about the slime and the fruity smells?"

Pepi yawns above me, slowly succumbing to the sun-warmed wall. "Beauty stall."

Faust curls herself elegantly over my story draft in an attempt to flaunt her shiny scales. "Moisturize."

"You're practically glowing, Faust. Such a beautiful girl!" Asra's trotting in my direction, a very sweaty pair of Devorak siblings close behind and a red-faced ex-count bringing up the rear. The magician scoops her up off of the table, my freshly hydrated parchment going with it, as Pepi uses the top of my head as a springboard into Portia's arms. Julian gives his judgemental raven a sheepish look before brightening at the earring in my palm.

"Did you leave us the rice trail, Faust?" Asra scritches the serpent's chin.

"Wait - rice trail? What rice trail? Is that how you knew where you were going? Where did they get - my rice!"

Inanna gives the shocked doctor a guiltily amused look, nudging the torn bag with her nose and watching the last of the grains spill onto my feet. Lucio straightens from where's been fussing over his perfumed dogs, finally catching his breath.

"Hah! Serves you right for trying to take my fish!"

Portia bristles and turns on him as Inanna slinks off to the large figure skulking in the shadows several booths away. "Your fish? That vendor and I have been friends for three years, you heard him say that I'd get first pick!"

I can't tell if Lucio is grinning or gritting his teeth. "Does it matter? I already paid for those things, they were the least smelly ones!"

"Enough!" The Countess's firm voice rings across the corner of the square, effectively halting the brewing squabble that's hijacking my writing corner. Chandra reassumes her perch on the baker's booth roof as Nadia rubs her temples in resigned frustration. "I have already paid for a year's worth of cosmetics. I have no interest in paying for your argument with a headache as well."

She heaves a tired sigh as the familiars settle in with their owners, sparing me a comforting glace. "Considering the paperless state of your table, I trust there were no writing casualties involved?"

Portia scurries over with a worried look. "Oh, I'm so glad you hadn't started yet!"

"Well ..."

"I think we did interrupt him, unfortunately." Asra's already taking a seat at my table, holding a fresh bowl of rolls in one hand and my smudged paper in the other while Faust hides guiltily in their shirt. "What's a 'ringtone'?"

Julian helps himself to the paper. "Allow me - perhaps I can shed some light on - ah!"

I've already given up hope on restoring my draft, so I don't wince nearly as badly as my friends do as a sharp, golden hand snatches my handwriting and rips it in the process. Lucio's pout deepens the further he reads. "I'm not in this."

"He's probably not finished it." Nadia holds her hand out, impervious to Lucio's begrudging surrender, and carefully offers the paper back to me. "We should leave you in peace, or you'll never meet your deadline."

Portia takes the cue and begins herding Lucio back to the docks for a fresh round of fish. Nadia gives Asra a pointed look, resulting in them stuffing the last of their roll into their mouth and rising from the cushions. They leave the last two pieces of bread for me.

"Julian," I call as he turns away, "one more question."

"Ah - yes?"

"What's the story with the earring?"

"Oh!" He flushes unexpectedly, fumbling the hoop away into his pocket. "... it, ah, it doesn't go in my ear. Adieu!"