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golden-mediocrity · 2 years

Text

Harm

-Do no harm.- The words echoed in his mind as he stood there meticulously washing his hands over the basin. The red splatters stained the white porcelain as the water gushed forward over his massive hands, bits of grey matter stuck to the cuffs of his robes. -Do no harm-. He could hear himself reciting the oath as he received his licenses and diplomas. But that oath could never supersede the one he made as a child. The same oath that brought him here, to the now dead man behind him, slumped against the wall and leaking fluids from the crushed face with the dangling, one-eyed stare at the back of Jian’s head.

He scrubbed harder at the viscera that soaked his pale skin, the rag he found wasn’t working as well as the stiff brushes he used before surgery, the prickly scratchy sensation that not only cleaned his skin, but could remove a few dermal layers as he went. He wanted to be clean, to pull on the rubber gloves and not touch it anymore. He had gone into research and biomedical studies because of what he had to do when possibly called on by the Moks in the middle of any random night.

It was always different, rarely the same. What was constant was its randomness and unexpected deliveries. An operative would show up virtually anywhere and stare, making the gesture with their hand held just above their diaphragm, over their heart waiting for Jian to notice. His reaction was always the same. His body tensed up, but felt a calm deep inside his core, a wind up and get ready type of feeling, like a spring ready to release, a hammer cocked back on a revolver, a symbolic click of a mechanism put in its place before the trigger pull and strike.

This time, he had been at a flashy Monetarist party, a decadent and wanton display of wealth, power, and depravity. Jian was sitting on plush pillows as the belly dancing Xaela was gyrating in front of him, she seemed to linger for a while, perhaps she was attracted to him, maybe she knew he had money, but when he finally looked up and gave her his attention, he saw the hand rise slowly, forming into the familiar curve of fingers and once his eyes drifted up, caught the near ultra violet glow of her limbals, the momentary dead stare of seriousness relayed the brevity of the current situation and his future task. As he watched her dance, she communicated to him, unbeknownst to the others that sat drinking and carousing and watching her face, chest, and hips as opposed to what the Ura observed. With a sign language taught to him at an early age, she relayed the information: A hit. A raen samurai, who was seated on cushions across the room from him Jian could see the man, he didn’t look like a samurai, other than the sword that was propped up against the wall behind him. He was a fully participating party to the event, seemingly drunk, two Miqo women in his arms he jostled around and sat on his lap. He was a big man, not quite as tall as Jian, but he appeared to be respectively built under his robes. Jian felt like he was just a normal person, they would probably have sake and a chat about philosophy or training in combat. The latter was what he would know more about, soon enough.

The dancer relayed the message, wait for the Raen to get up and leave the room, then remove him by any means necessary from the premises, end his life. Dispose of the body. -Do no harm.- It echoed in his mind as soon as he read the signal. He inhaled slowly and his eyes rose to meet hers once again. His steely-eyed look conveyed understanding to the woman before he looked across the room at the target. When he went to see if the dancer was still there, she wasn’t. There weren’t any more or less dancers in the room, but the dark blue skinned Xaela was nowhere to be seen and he had the ticking of the clock in his mind, from the sinister programming built into him during his childhood. Despite this urging to action, the massive xaela would bide his time. He drank his drinks, he laughed with the people around him, he watched the entertainment, and he watched the raen. When the man got up from his seat, Jian felt his destiny.

After waiting a moment, Jian finished his drink and set the glass down on the small table in front of his cushioned seat, then pushed himself up and stood. He meandered around the room, behind the seated guests and found himself walking through the same doorway as his target. He felt all of his senses alert and open, his horns felt for vibrations to see if he could hear the man, his eyes peeled down the hallway looking for any movement. As there was nothing to be detected, Jian started to move to different spaces, eventually he found what he was looking for. A half-hummed, half-sung tune in Hingan, something about whisky and lost love:

You love whisky, right? Let's talk a little more A common talk With that I'm fine now

A whimsical horoscope Let us meet casually And made us open a bottle Which contained a faded love

You love whisky, right? This restaurant suits you, right? You forgot That we loved each other

The words came floating out of a restroom that was a little farther down the normal path than Jian expected. As he turned the corner, he could see the man standing there, robes bunched up in front of him, the splattering sound of his urine hitting the back of the receptacle he was pissing in. There was a long sigh from the xaela as he knew this was probably where the man would cease to exist. He closed the door behind him, flipped the lock, and despite that impediment, the loud music and carousing could still be heard from all the way down the long hall and into the restroom. With the resounding thud of the lock clicking into place, the man turned his attention behind him, the blank gaze of the xaela he found may not have been from a familiar face, but the man knew that look all the same. He dropped the robes that he held up, and slowly spun in place. From habit, he reached down, but found that his sword was missing from his belt, there was a slow blinking expression on his face when he realized it was still standing up against the wall where he was previously sitting.

The room was cramped, with stalls and urinals on one side, a basin on the other, maybe three or four fulms wide, about twenty fulms between the raen and Jian. The raen looked as if he were preparing for a confrontation, Jian's programming took over. -Do no harm...- It flashed in his head for a blink, but he lowered his head and a smile cut across his lips exposing fanged teeth just before he took a few slow steps toward the other man. The Ura hadn't brought his hands up he just walked toward the raen who was set in a wide horse stance, fists up and ready. Jian up-nodded the man, a challenge to go first. Red eyes narrowing instead of jumping into action, a question surfaced first," What is this?" The voice of what Jian had expected to be a drunk one, was stunningly sober. There was no confusion in the question, just an inquiry of why it was going to happen.

With a shake of his head in the negative, he shrugged and replied, "You probably pissed off the wrong people. I don't know. I don't care. It's business." After that, the doctor had nothing else to say. His opponent initiated first, as Jian had hoped for, reaching up and landing a shot across his jaw. The usually gentle giant's grin grew wider and brought his hands up. There was no feint, no subterfuge in his attacks, he just threw a straight punch at the man, which was blocked and deflected up, the return strike hit the xaela in the stomach, then was followed up with another punch, this time an upper cut aimed under his chin. With the strike to the gut, Jian absorbed the blow, and as the punch came, he leaned his head back, causing the samurai to miss entirely. He knocked the arm out of the way with an outward block and grappled the arm, wrapping it up in his own, a brutal downward headbutt crashed into the man's forehead and he turned his body to break the hold, freeing his arm and spinning away from the giant. He wasn't that much smaller than Jian in height, but the smith's physique was apparently a major advantage the xaela held over him. He swept low with his foot, contacting Jian's ankle, before he swung the leg around and made contact on the side of the assassin's head, ringing the horn that the shin hammered into. It caused Jiantai to stagger back, and seeing his opportunity, the raen released a flurry of punches, and kicks, making Jian bring his arms up in defense. But he was patient, waiting for the other man to slow and recovery from the energy expended. Jian felt the bruising on his ribs and forearms from the contact, he was punched in the nose and the ringing in his horn was still blaring in his head. This wasn't supposed to go like this. It should have been over already, was he grappling with ethics or paying for something personally? He would push that thought from his mind.

Tired of being on the defensive, Jiantai stopped caring about getting hit and swung his long, sturdy arms in wide arcs, tossing haymakers at the other man, contacting with the sides of his head and pounding into the ivory horns of his opponent. But even as he did so, the other man slipped forward under the blows to get away from them, hiding inside the wide swinging range, bringing up a reverse elbow, followed up into another attempted knockout upper cut from a side facing position.

This time he was expecting something more than the elbow and moved his head back away from the attack, Jian reached for the wrist and wrapped his huge hand around the arm he had snatched out of the air, with his right hand he countered while also twisting so that the man's inner elbow was facing away from Jian, the open palmed strike went into the elbow with a sickening crunch, over extending it and destroying the joint, a yelp of excruciating pain was expelled from the raen's mouth, he knew his arm wasn't going to be much use any longer, and his left hand reached back behind him at his belt, pulling out a tanto blade that he used with a strike that landed in the lower part of Jian's abdomen, the flash of pain burned brightly in his vision, but he took it without a grunt or audible exhalation. Even if there was all that noise out in the party, he still controlled himself enough to not sound an alarm on himself, but that would soon change.

His blue eyes turned icy in that instant, it had become more serious than he had anticipated it to be, and the rage welled up in him to boiling over. With a loud growl, a hammer fist was brought down on the other man's wrist a knife hand to his throat, but he still held onto the dagger, yanked it out and struck Jian again in the shoulder and he pulled down trying to use it to open up his attacker, but it was embedded in his upper rib-cage, stuck and as he tried, he wasn't able to pull it free this time. Wide-eyed, wild, and completely out of control, Jian looked to be a man crazed and driven by battle in this life or death situation, his right arm came around and wrapped up the raen's neck, spinning him so that the choke-hold was under his chin, the throat trapped between forearm and bicep. Squeezing as hard as he could with just the one arm, it was still not enough, the raen stomped down on jian's foot, and he tried to get away from the hold, but as he attempted to push off, Jian reached out and grabbed him by the back of the head and used his own momentum to propel the man forward and bashed his head straight into the wall, shattering the porcelain tiles that decorated the room. Still not going down, the samurai turned, face bloodied and torn open by bits of ceramic that had cut deeply on his face, a shout of war from the pale scale signaled yet another attack, and he reached up for Jians' throat with his one good appendage. Jian replied in kind but used his hands to grip hard on the bone-colored horns. He felt the surge of strength the other man exerted on his throat, there was a calming focus as he used his leverage to try and bring those horns together. Slavering at the mouth and breathing through clenched teeth, growling like a wild animal, he applied more and more pressure.

Red eyes went wide as they realized something. The sounds he heard were the small micro-fractures on his skull, which eventually turned into crumbling fissures. The last thing the man saw was the pure rage and anger that had been held back inside the gentle giant... What roiled inside Jian was years of regret, self doubt, and hatred for himself and his inability to control the things he wanted to, all forcued into his control on this. He could exact his will on the man in front of him, and with one final guttural roar, another sick crunch accompanied by spurts of blood and an explosion of viscera splat across his face, covering him in bone and brain along with so much red. He had pushed so hard that the right side of the raen's face caved in, eyeball hanging out of one socket while the dead stare locked onto the still howling xaela. When he realized the life had left his target, he dropped the dead body on the floor and stood above it, breathing through clamped jaw and exposed teeth, lips curled in a rictus grin, spittle dripping from his mouth, blood falling from his chin... -Do no harm.- It echoed in his horns again, reminding him of his other oath, the one he would never be able to keep. As the animal left him and the doctor returned, he switched off the emotions, empathy, and worry. He went into a robotic mode, one that would allow him to process the next steps to dispose of the body, clean himself up, and find a way out.

The dreamy haze was still in his vision, he knew when he was under the effects of his programming, he had been studying hypnosis, mental tricks used to plant actions and loyalty into young minds... Jian felt like he was watching himself from outside as his body finished washing itself off, and then turned to begin the work of body removal. There was blood everywhere and he knew it was going to be obvious something gruesome happened in here. The cold, robotic Jian made a few decisions in that moment, then he executed his plan. He lifted his head up from leaning on the edge of the large Hingan bath in the SEO spa room. He must have been in here for a long time, he could feel his fingers wrinkling up and he let out a long, groan of a sigh. His shoulder and stomach were aching painfully, looking down he could see it stitched up along with another neatly done sewing job on his lower abdomen. He felt his insides were aetherically healed, but the closure needed to be manual. He was exhausted and in his auto-pilot state, must have had difficulties with channeling. He tried to forget all of it, dumping the body down into the Goblet ravine, setting the janitor's closet on fire inside the restroom, and his healing and self stitching of himself back together again. All he could hear was the crunching of the man's skull over and over in his mind, and the constant repeating of his own voice during his oath, *"I will do no harm...*

#ffxiv #xaela #Moks #Jiantai Ura #balmung #balmungrp

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