Every Day's A Struggle (by Seth Shimura)

Seth was gone for most of the day, sitting outside the theater as people gave either money or food to the pitiful teenager. One woman, in particular, placed a brand new, black hoodie on his lap. He nodded in thanks and proudly wore it for the rest of the day, even inside the theater when he returned.

Kei didn't pay much mind when the kid disappeared from sight- he tended to do that anyway, and he didn't mind the silence. When he returned, however, he looked up from where he sat in the front row of the theater chairs. 

"Where the hell have you been... and what is that?"

Seth froze where he stood, keeping his gaze away from Kei. He frowned and trembled, not knowing what to answer. Instead, Seth fled to his room, closing the door behind him. The biggest mistake he could ever make.

By the time he shut the door, it was like a timer was set... no doubt his not answering was enough to trigger Kei, and it was a matter of time before he was going to come in and blow the door off its hinges. On top of that, the man was injured, drugged, a little buzzed, and just downright irritable.

"...When I ask you a question, you fucking answer." 

SLAM. Kei's fist on the door. It swung open a moment later, the mercenary's pure aggression in his movements enough to make up for that expressionless face of his.

"Answer me. NOW. Where the hell did it come from!?"

By the time Kei kicked the door down, Seth was curled up in a corner, clutching his hair and closing his eyes tightly. "Nowhere!" Seth yelled back with a broken voice.

The sound of his boots coming closer was evident. All of a sudden a hand grasped the boy's throat, and he was pulled up onto his feet and shoved against the wall. His hand kept a rough grip on his throat, forcing his jaw up to face those hollow sockets of his.

"You little fucker, Don't  you dare lie to me." He growled.

"A GIFT! IT WAS A GIFT!" Seth shrieked, trying to keep his answer clear despite his hands clasping his neck. He was on the verge of tears, keeping his eyes shut, refusing to look into Kei's eye sockets. Seth's hands grabbed Kei's wrists

Kei pulled him away from the wall, only to push him back against it hard enough to rattle his brain. 

"From WHO?" He yelled, which would echo through the theater through the open door.

"A woman!" Seth cried, tears rolling down his cheeks. His grip on Kei's wrists loosened.

"Her name. What did she look like?"

He snapped, relentless in not giving him hardly any time between questions... not that he didn't have a clue already to who it was. If he was right, he hadn't seen said woman in a long time. The question lingering in his head now was why.

"I-I..don't know! Silver hair...in a dress!" Seth was a mess in his hands, weeping and sniffling. He remembered that the woman mentioned something about his biological mother.

"Mama..." Seth muttered with a sniffle.

Kei snorted before he could continue, his grip still just as tight. A venomous snicker came from his fanged jaws that could only mean terrible things to follow.

"You call her a mother? Let's face it, kid, she fucking dumped you here! Like it or not... I'm the closest thing you've got, and you aren't going to get any pity from me because of it." 

One last hard shove back and he released the boy, letting him fall to the floor. He turned around and walked out, letting the door slam behind him as he stormed off.

Seth curled up and wept on the floor after having pulled the hoodie off of him. He would lay on the floor, cold and shirtless. "Not a mother....dumped. " Seth repeated these words until he fell asleep where he lay

Karma Has A Name

KEI HAD NEVER BELIEVED IN MANY THINGS. 

If there were a god, he was bound to never meet them. If there were a god, he was almost certain that he wouldn't want to meet them. If there was a devil, well... he knew the bastard was probably rapping their fingers against their desk, just in wait for him to arrive.

No matter what way you could put it, he saw no point in believing in something that just wasn't cut out to work in his favor. 

...HE DID BELIEVE IN ONE THING.

A little thing called  KARMA.

Something where, 

if it were the truth, and if it were to catch him, hell itself would turn tundra within an instant. The wrath of it would come down on him harder than anything ever had before with the list of sins under his belt. If one were truly keeping count, the devil and god might even step back and bow for karma to do her own lawful justice.

"Do unto others, what shall be done to you."

Kei had done a lot of things, unto a lot of people. 

-/-

It was something never meant to happen. Never in his wildest dreams, nor his worst nightmares which, was more believable than the prior. Not in a million years. When the time came, Jason's face had fallen with a look of near-horror. Who knew a few words or so could even do that? Words in which, to the say, he still wishes he had never heard. 

"Jason... I'm pregnant. It's yours."

Blue eyes stared towards Naomi for a moment that seemed like an eternity. The gaze started off as vacant. As time passed the intensity grew with the seconds. 

It was supposed to be one drink. One drink between friends.

After that, it was supposed to be one night.

A night, which come morning ended in horror on their part. 

That's another story, kids.

HE SHOULD HAVE REASSURED HER.

He didn't.

He should have had a hand out to help her. Instead, that hand was clenched into a fist at his side, along with the other. He should have kept his mouth shut, but hell knows he couldn't have done that. No. He should have just gone home for the night. But he didn't. He was ruthless. His words were spat with toxicity laced within them. Not an ounce of anything remotely close to compassion came from the man.

WELL, IT TURNS OUT, 

Karma really is a cold-hearted bitch. 

A force to be reckoned with. 

Karma also has a name. 

Her name... is AGNES.

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A REGULAR HUNT. 

But it wasn't. He couldn't fully recollect just what happened when he woke up in a dimly lit room. First instinct at realizing he was sitting upright, he tried to move. He couldn't. As he came to, Kei soon realized he indeed was upright, sitting in a chair. The texture of cold metal under his arms solidified that reality as he looked down to see his wrists bound to the armrests in front of him. As were his ankles to the legs of the chair. 

This wasn't good.

"HELLO, PRICK."

A figure had approached and to his immediate surprise-

She bore the same hollow sockets as he, inky blackness peering towards his own vacant stare. Deep down, if Jason would have shown his blue hues, disoriented. Startled. Nonetheless, this skulled appearance gracing his presence was not of feline. It was a different beast, all the same. It soon withered and faded away just as his own skull had the tendency to do.

Her mother's overall appearance, subtle yet traceable features from her father. Crimson eyes laced with malice that had some unsettling feeling seeping into his person. Excitement? Most startling of all, however, were the old, rusty, heavy framed metal scissors that rested in her hand. Kei's ears had flattened against his skull.

-/-

"Do you think it would have changed anything, if I were there or not, kid? Do you think I asked for this to happen? Your mother cut my goddamn heart out of my chest that morning and you think I would give her any goddamn sympathy? Hell, you should be thanking me for even being here."

Kei's frustration and anger did wonder in hiding the fear in his voice, an area where his curse would do little wonders. What the skull did mask was his vision, boring down on the scissors resting looped through the girl's fingers.

Whatever was about to happen...

it was going to hurt.

"I don't owe you a damn thing, prick! And you're not my father. At least I would have had the chance to know for myself if it was better or worse, but you left her to do it herself! I was on these streets alone when I was eleven years old when she kicked me out!  Do you know what it was like, do you!?"

-/-

HIS ENTIRE BODY TENSED AS SHE DREW NEAR.

His hands clenched on the chair.

His head tilted back against it as if to brace himself early for whatever onslaught was to come from her footsteps coming nearer and nearer to her, scissors raised now.

Holy fucking shit...

He watched onward helplessly as his fingers were pried apart no matter whether he resisted the action or not. fuck. His ears pinned close to his skull as she succeeded. There was no stopping her as-

METAL SHEARED STRAIGHT TO THE BONE.

The initial wound brought a jolt of pain through the mercenary's nerves, a chill running down his spine only to be replaced by something far worse. It was like fire to his senses as he howled out in pain a mere second after she had begun. While Agnes took her time, she also would not slow for him. Soon the scissors moved to level themselves to the next. 

Then the next. 

Then the next. 

Kei's body seemed to go into shock each time bone was crushed, his daughter's strength likely inherited from the demon blood gifted by her mother. Said strength meant that appendage by appendage, Kei's body shuddered as they were cut cleanly through. The mercenary would not cry out nor beg for mercy... for some reason or another he deemed it to be no use. 

-/-

His eyes had permanently shut after so many fingers, or rather, the vision behind those sockets had dimmed to darkness to the like effect. His chest heaved, slumped in the chair breathless as blood dripped in thin strands into a bucket upon the floor, each finger to cause a small thud within it at his feet. He was stuck somewhere between numbness from shock and the red-hot throbbing pain of the fresh wounds.

When he would try to look upwards again, he was greeted with darkness. By now, even as his curse had been suppressed his vision was dark as something covered it. Something metal. He couldn't be certain to what, nor were the words she stated afterward remembered. His chest rose and fell heavily before-

JASON'S ENTIRE BODY SUDDENLY JERKED TO LIFE.

Only muffled yelling was heard as echoes underneath the metal bowl that had been used to transfer the voltage through him. The screams carried on for several minutes on and off before power was finally cut and the now-broken man sat slumped in the chair, still. The metal bowl was lifted to show a grotesque appearance beneath, eyes half open, face contorted in something well past pain. She had been smart to begin with. Stopping at his brink of consciousness either by luck or trial and error. Who knew. His eyes caught the glimpse of her standing before him yet. The only differerence was the object now settled in her hand. 

A sledge hammer. Settled over the girl's shoulder ever so casually. 

SLAM.

The utterly sickening sound of metal crunching bone on its way through. This was the last view Jason remembered as the end of the hammer drew closer and closer. The briefness of an unpleasant sensation, then black.

-/-

Jason awoke in an all too familiar setting. Trees overhead marked it to be wooded region. He recognized it as the area between the city and the old Shimura residence, where Naomi had lived since long before the event had ever happened between the two. Sitting up from the ground where his body had been dumped haphazardly, he shook violently as hypothermia had set in from laying waste upon the ground for so long. How long had he been there, anyways?

-/-

THE DOOR OPENED, THE DOOR SHUT.

To his relief, the woman would not come downstairs to check for some unannounced visitor at her door. He wouldn't have known what to do if she had. Upon searching through the closet just inside the main doorway of the two story house, Jason found what he was looking for. A long, black trench coat was eagerly pulled over his shoulders within the span of the door opening and closing. Soon enough he had begun the long walk back to the city again. 

This would be the last time he would ever approach the old house again.

KARMA has a name. 

And to Kei,

Her name is AGNES.

Death By Alice

It was weeks before that Alice had entered Kei's city, on the hunt for whatever reason that the Hunter Society brought her there. Face to face in an abandoned apartment building, weapons in hand, there was only one real outcome to expect.

He should have been territorial.

She should have taken him out.

They should've killed each other.

But that just didn't happen, did it?

-/-

 Fast forwarding to a few weeks after,

It was a routine call for Alice. Kei watched her pick up her phone that had buzzed, read whatever was on the screen before she'd be looking at him with a wicked grin. There was always one thing Kei was certain of. He knew he was fairly mentally stable. He did everything for his own reasons, it wasn't a matter of illness.

Her?

There wasn't a doubt in his mind something was askew in that blue-haired head of hers. Something that was twisted enough to unsettle even him.

She heard two small rings from her phone and she brought it up. Glancing down at the dimmed screen and scrolled over a small message. The HSHQ was quick for another hunt run. A curve pulling at the corner of her mouth and she looks at him.

"Wanna go on a hunt?"

They both knew that was hardly a question.

Kei nodded his skulled head anyways in response. "...Let's see what we can find."

-/-

The hunt took them to a place vaguely familiar to Kei.

The abandoned building was once an old high school. When he was young, however, it served as an elementary within the city- one that he had spent part of his human life attending, long ago, up until about the6th grade or so. Not that he went that often, that final year.

Slipping through one of the broken windows on the first floor, they were soon inside one of the classrooms at the end of the hall.

"Ya know teens to like to explore dank places and such. That is what this was known for. But when they didn't come home and police were alerted then it became a problem. HSHQ saw the signs, suspected to bein' a ghoul. So careful; ya may just be runnin' into a kid er something. Possibly some druggies. Try not to pop em, yeah?"

"Ain't a huge loss if I do pop 'em." Kei replied with a snort. Careful, Kei. You were one of 'em once.

He followed her out of the room, taking the opposite hallway. He held up a pistol in the meanwhile. After all, he knew little of ghouls- his job was to kill the living and not join the deceased, rarely mixing those two things. In the dark, his skulled eye sockets were oddly more keen than that of a human's eyes. His ears flicked subtly as he headed down the hall, from one room to another.

Alice was sure-footed. Looking along the dark halls of the distant school. Taking the last moment to pull her flashlight from her backpack before plopping it near the window. Holding the light and her dagger up in an attack status. Beginning her prowling in the halls. If this wasn't the place the ghoul was at then she had no clue where else it would be. This was a hot spot. If it wasn't' just a ghoul than there had to be something else lurking. The rotting smell of wood and possibly bodies wasn't missed. So surely there must be something.

The place smelled of blood and something rotting... there was no mistaking that they were in the right place.

-/-

Alice kept eyes peeled. Searching for any sign or bone crunch of a ghoul. Or anything that might lurk the halls, to be honest. There was a lot that could be hiding in here. That and the HSHQ thought that it was a ghoul. Pray to fucking god it was. Anything else and she might not have the things to kill it.

Crack.

Alice froze; then snapped her flashlight towards the noise sharply. Eyebrows knit together shapely and her eyes became daggers. Inching her way forward to a classroom door that was open. She held her breath, shining the flashlight into the room then went slack-jawed. That wasn't a fucking ghoul.

Nope.

Alice turned off the flashlight just in time for a blood curtailing roar to hit the air and for her to book it out the fucking room like a bat out of hell. It wasn't a ghoul, it was a Broodmother. And her little flesh-eating babies nursing off of her very dead, very rotted body.

Kei would hear thundering footsteps down the hall, and it wasn't just Alice's, though she was in front of the flood of four dozen or so of imp-like creatures. They looked bubbly on their skin and were milky-eyed and sharp-clawed. They chased her, and in turn of her, they would be chasing him pretty soon. Basically, they needed to get the hell out, or else the trick Alice had up her sleeve would have the building come down on them.

Meanwhile, Kei's own search had lead to be rather anticlimactic. He turned back around to go down another floor, although the scream of a creature made him pause... something wasn't right. The vibrations of her running made his ears twitch... she wasn't alone. Ghouls didn't sound like that, did they?

He turned down the hallway they were coming from, gun raised to chest level. When she turned the corner with the whelps following behind at high speed his ears flattened to his skull abruptly. Ah, shit... they were undoubtedly outnumbered, and he wasn't in the mood to wake up in some old schoolhouse after they had torn him apart.

"O'Malley, I hope you have a fucking plan!"

Kei hissed, following suit with her current plan of taking off running towards the exit as quickly as he could. Several paces ahead of her, his ears listened to see if she still followed as he bolted towards the open window, breaking out the shattered glass with his elbow when they got there.

"Got one!"

She yells over the writhing screaming of the darkspawn behind them. But he was headed for the window, and when he bursts through it she took the moment to grab her backpack that was sitting there then swung out. Tumbling for a moment then she stopped on her knee, rummaging through her bag and grabbed handcuffs and a grenade. What the hell were those for?

She looked at Kei, then the building, then back at him. Doing this several times then she groans. Turning to Kei then gripping the cuff of his shirt and pulling it back sharply to knock him on his ass. Grabbing his wrist next she cuffed that side then his opposite ankle together. She gave him an apologetic look. APOLOGETIC MY ASS, O'MALLEY. Placing a hand on his head with a smile. "You like burgers? I'll get you a burger." 

She then took the loop of the grenade in her teeth and pulled it. Shoving it into his hollow eye socket forcefully so it would stick.

Shit.

She was using him as bait. 

 She then snatched her bag and ran for it. Away from him and the obvious amount of monsters that were now swarming out the building. The Broodmother flopping out the window with her babies and going for Kei.

That itself would be torture. Those lil shits had razor sharp teeth, and their bites burned and malfested the flesh.

"I'LL GET YOU EXTRA CHEESE!" Alice calls at least ten yards or more away. She was a fast bitch. 

Kei flinched as his ass hit the concrete when she jerked it back, spewing a few choice words as he tried to get up quickly. Before he could, he was already cuffed. "What the fuc- DAMMIT O'Malley, are you fuckin' kidding me!?" He hissed.

Frantically trying to undo the cuffs he hardly had the time to worry about it before the spawn-like creatures were upon him. His body was engulfed by the creatures soon enough, the screams of the mercenary heard as he was torn at- chunk by chunk.

Suddenly...

BOOM.

When the grenade went off, pieces of flesh flew in all directions from the explosion. There was a shriek from the Broodmother that only lasted a moment- nothing came from Kei, of course...

When the smoke cleared, the front yard of the school was a mess. Within the mess were pieces of Kei, scattered here and there. His skull had all but shattered into a million pieces from the impact, soaked in blood and brain matter.