ᴀꜱᴛʀᴀ―ꜱᴛᴇʟʟᴀʀɪꜱ―; an independent, highly-selective, and private roleplay blog featuring 𝘈𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢 and 𝘈𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘶𝘴 𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘴 as written by anu. dash only. established on 24 July 2021. archive here. this blog is 18+ and contains heavily triggering content. this blog is labeled: ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴅᴏᴠᴇ.
nav: carrd. tumblr nav. muzan. personal blog.
ᴀ ʟᴇɢᴇɴᴅᴀʀʏ ᴀʟʟᴇɢᴏʀʏ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴅᴇꜱᴄʀɪʙᴇꜱ ―
the change trauma can bring and the way trauma impacts one as they grow -- or don't. the indomitable will of someone who refuses to break to someone they despise. a soft heart can remain so amongst so much cruelty. fighting one's own nature to make themselves better than they were before. morality in the face of ever-changing circumstances changes through empathy or lack thereof. one's own limits and their hunger for more, or less than they're offered.the satisfaction one can gain through little moments. the darkness... or light... that hides amongst the opposite.
His laughter echoed through the trees, sharp as the snap of a bowstring. He spun the arrow between his fingers, relishing its weight, the power it held, before lazily nocking it against the string. The freckled slave’s hurried footsteps had faded, but distance was irrelevant when the hunt was this delightful.
"Like a rabbit, such fun!" He mused aloud, tilting his head as if he could hear the forest itself revealing the boy’s whereabouts. "No, no, rabbits are faster." The huntsman beside him, still gripping his bleeding thigh, kept his eyes glued to the ground. His grin broadened. Fear was a more exquisite taste than wine.
The freckled boy didn’t reach the next clearing. His arrow struck him in the back of the knee, sending him crashing into the dirt with a strangled scream. He thrashed, clutching at the injury, but he was already on the move, casually, as if wandering through a area, toward his next prey. A huntsman shifted nervously, and his gaze snapped to him like a wolf detecting weakness.
"You!" He said, grinning. The man froze. "Bring him to me. I want to see his expression when I tell him he’s free to leave." The huntsman hesitated just a moment too long, and his smile became razor-thin.
"Or would you rather take his place?” As he was brought to him for him to lean down and slit his throat, free as in free from this worthless life.
As he cleaned his fingers on the sleeve of a quaking servant, leaving streaks of dirt and something darker on the luxurious silk. The freckled boy had ceased his screams minutes earlier, now he merely whimpered, huddled in the dirt like an injured hare. He let out a breath through his nose, feeling bored. The hunt had been entertaining, but the conclusion always felt prolonged.
"Dragons don't pursue scraps." He declared to no one in particular, flicking a speck of dried blood from his thumbnail.
"Clear this mess. Incinerate the bodies. And someone fetch me wine."
He extended his arms wide, his fingers grazing the low-hanging branches as if to claim them as well. The hunt had been fulfilling, not exhilarating, never exhilarating anymore, but fulfilling in the way a finely honed knife is fulfilling. Predictable. Effortless. His boots scraped against the moist earth as he turned toward his horse, the creature sidestepping anxiously at his approach. He grinned. Even animals recognized their superiors. As he saw Astra and smirked.
“Father does not like me taking chances, but perhaps, armed slaves would be thrilling, there is no better knight than I in all seven kingdoms, dragons, don’t lose after all. Set it up to happen next month then.”
「 ― And, she was left to watch him fuck up a perfectly good day. Astra, in and of herself, hated when people wasted things. Time, silk, human lives. How was the world to progress when there was nothing worth saving? How were they to do all this when there was nothing worth fighting for? The morale was to simply disappear and then this boy who was soon to be king would be left with nothing and then throw a fit over it. But, maybe it was simply because no one had ever told him 'no' or given him the experience of setting him on his ass for being a twat.
But, then again, he didn't just see her as a simple woman. There were no complaints about her dress, or her sword, or her abilities. That, and he was an excellent fighter, though he treated people more like objects, rather than things that should have been protected.
"The stink will bring animals," she muttered, "And the pyre will burn for at least a day, maybe three. This isn't good if you want to keep a decent reputation." His charm could only go so far and his father's influence could go only a smidge further. Regardless, she pulled at the horse's reins again and she heard it stomp on the ground a few times. Once more, it was protesting him. And she couldn't blame it.
"I know a place," she said, "That gives more than slaves with weapons." This would test him, surely, and if he died, he died. She could disappear just the same as the next person and no one would be the wiser. "I participate quite often, but I usually dress as a boy." They only knew her as a boy that killed people, but that was just what she needed. "It would be a real challenge for you, I believe. Are you up for that?"
Her head tilted, and the horse underneath her whined. At least his fury would be set upon something that could fight back, or something that was trained to fight back. "Your father is worried about you, but he can't protect you forever. It's best to learn before a man stands above your bed with a sword and a pocket full of gold wrapped in a slaughter-contract."
This was unofficial. She would require no set up.
"They have a fight every two weeks, and the next is in a week and three days."
Her head turned, and though she didn't smile, the corners of her eyes softened a little.
He quickly navigated through the underbrush with the nonchalant confidence of a man who believed he possessed the very ground he walked on. The foliage crunched under his boots, yet he remained unfazed, branches recoiled as he passed, as if they were repelled by his presence. His hunting companions followed at a respectful distance, exchanging furtive glances whenever he turned his back. None dared to walk alongside him. The air was heavy with the aroma of moist earth and pine, but he only breathed in the imagined stench of his own superiority.
The arrow hit the stableboy squarely between the shoulder blades with a sickening thud, causing him to collapse face-first into the carpet of leaves. He lowered his bow deliberately, relishing the sight of the boy's body twitching like a fish on a line. "Too slow, this is meant to be good sport." He whispered, though the servants were well aware of the unspoken rules, there were no rules. The hunt was simply his stage, and today's act required blood.
One of the younger slaves, a freckled boy with straw-colored hair, made the blunder of gasping. His head whipped around to face him, his lips curling back to reveal his teeth. "Do you disapprove?" The slave shook his head vigorously, but he was already preparing another arrow. "Run." He suggested, sweet as honey laced with poison. The boy took off. The hunting party collectively held their breath as Aerion aimed carefully at the fleeing figure, then suddenly redirected his bow toward a huntsman, releasing the arrow into the man's thigh. "I said he runs!" He shouted, as the huntsman stifled a scream.
The forest had fallen into an unsettling silence, as if the trees themselves were too frightened to move. He selected another arrow from his quiver, rolling it between his fingers like a noble might play with a wineglass. "My grandsire hunted rebels this way." He reflected, although everyone there knew his family from the past had favored wildfire. "A tradition worth reviving, wouldn't you agree?" He didn’t wait for a response. Somewhere ahead, the freckled slave was crashing through the underbrush, his frantic breaths audible even from this distance. He took a deep breath, as if savoring the boy's fear in the air.
“Come Astra, move, the hunt is on!”
「 ― This man was absolutely insane.
That was the conclusion that she had come to. The hunting of humans through the underbrush, servants that had lived and waited on him for years, who had given their lives to him out of a king's reverence were now running for something else: a hunter's perverse satisfaction of watching something die, something that he should have never had power over. She found this man absolutely disgusting, but then again, what in that moment could she do.
Her face was carefully controlled in a way that she usually employed when she was attempting something most careful.
Her sword still hung at her side, unused, clear of an innocent's blood until this point. Eventually he would push her, but right then she could sit back and play the part of someone slightly uninterested ― someone who was most certainly used to better opponents... that could wield weapons and fight back with fervor. This situation... certainly was not that at all. Innocents. People untrained, unable to fight back.
She pulled at the reigns and her horse stomped forward two paces, and then back one, whining as if it were showing her own feelings. But, then again, this horse was smarter than any person she had met... and it could at least read her enough to understand what she meant and what she was thinking.
But, then again, they knew she was more... honorable, when it came down to it.
"Perhaps next time, we may face trained opponents?" She asked, "I would participate. I would paint the ground in a most satisfying way, with my sword being used as the brush." Her work was terrifying to behold, and efficient. She doubted that he had ever seen her pushed to a limit, but there was an offer that he could catch on to, if he wanted.
Rebels would always be. And right then, this would have been an excellent time for them to attack. The King was busy with something else, completely preoccupied with a death that could have ramifications that he would have never considered. And, he would not listen to her if she were to caution him. In this moment, all she could do was follow and deal with a fallout... if there were to be one.― 」
"Will you be my dad? You look like... you like sleep..." And yet, the little thing is half-snoring as he speaks. "And will you help me get home? I'm lost..."
“A man of god, no. The god’s left this land a very long time ago, but someone important is buried there my brother, so I spend my mornings there, tending to the small shrine, I neglected it for such a long time, I have to make things right, as foolish as that may sound.”
He dropped his head down and looked at the table. The scratched metal surface reflected his face in jagged fragments, here a sliver of his left eye, there the curve of his mouth. For a dizzying moment, the scars on the table merged with the battle marks he'd carried since the Edo period. He inhaled slowly, counting the seconds as his diaphragm expanded, four, seven, eight, the same breathing pattern Yoriichi had taught him in their childhood, before everything fractured.
“I thank you for the honesty, truly I do, but I don’t want you to stain your success rate with a hopeless case like this, you cannot win, I am guilty. I did kill those men, and I don’t regret doing it, and I have killed more as well than what they have arrested me for, I think you should know that.”
Once more the fluorescent light flickered, a stuttering heartbeat in the sterile interrogation room. He watched the shadows writhe across the table like the demons he'd slaughtered. He knew with absolute certainty: if those cell doors closed behind him, he'd never see daylight again. Not because the justice system would condemn him, but because they would ensure his silence. The thirteenth corpse had been someone well known. A prosecutor. One who'd worked with the demons, he had to cut off there human servants, killing demons was simple, but they can be created again, quickly, killing humans, the demons would have to search for replacements, new servants and begin to pull them in withy promises of wealth, power and eternal life for there aid, as powerful as demons are, this land was still ruled by humans, a system for humans, by humans, and nothing the demons did could change that, they had to play by human rules as well.
“I didn’t kill those people, I only kill those who work for … them.”
As he cut himself off, the less she knew the better, if he told her the truth, demons, a world in darkness, she would think he was insane, and besides he knew he was on borrowed time, not the stretched-thin centuries of his unnatural existence, but the brittle minutes before the interrogation room door groaned open again. He watched a water droplet slide down Astra's untouched glass, its path wavering as it absorbed fingerprints and dust. Time moved differently here, in this fluorescent-lit purgatory where seconds dragged like wounded men crawling across battlefields.
“I suppose, if you have not left now, you won’t leave.”
He looked back up at her and he really looked at her for the first time since she'd stormed in. Not at the crisp lines of her suit or the way her hair caught the sickly light, but at the faint scar up her arm. A katana's kiss, if he'd ever seen one or something just as dangerous. Too precise for accident, too deliberate for barroom brawl. His pulse thrummed against his ribs, once, twice the old rhythm of spotting prey that didn't know it was being hunted. As he sighed and shakes his head slowly.
“Then I want you to help me, the longer I stay here, the more I am at risk, if they put me in prison with the general populace, I’ll be killed before the end of my first day.”
「 ― "Many would argue for and against." She leaned back in her chair, her eyes never leaving him. Not for a single moment. She was analyzing him and trying to figure out where and when things would happen. More... well, what could happen. If he were in it as deep as he said he was, then things wouldn't be easy for either of them. Him, because he would be targeted, and her because she was defending him. But... that was only if he were in too deep. Maybe he was. A lot of the evidence looked... not too hard to make or fabricate. But, it could have been actual evidence.
"Stop that. You're my client, so you're getting treated like my client. And that is that." It was already decided. "So stop fighting and don't you dare admit to anything to anyone else." She would have pointed at him a few times if she knew him better, but instead she could only sit there and stare at him with a glare that would have peeled the paint off the wall.
"That's what I was implying. People with the same goal as you are being killed." Slaughtered. She was lucky to be flying under the radar as much as she was, and more than that, her family were trying to put it together without being slaughtered along with them. There were no outward moves, but internally... her father wasn't sleeping too well, and it would likely be asked of her within the next year to take over. Ugh, responsibilities. "Perhaps it's a pattern."
She watched his eye catch on the scar on her hand.
She remembered tracing the lightning-given one with the edge of her blade in hopes of purging it from her body. But that obviously didn't happen.
Most people were too upset to. They were indignant, they were furious.
He was different, though.
"They'll announce your bail tomorrow morning at your hearing. Unfortunately, short of me breaking you out of here, you will have to exist. I cannot petition for them to place you in confinement. In public, you would at least have room to defend yourself. In solitary, it would just be you, and a room, and whoever decided they were going to kill you. It's normal to hear screams, there. Not so much in populace."
She leaned forward.
"Tomorrow morning. Live until then."
There was a loud rapping at the door.
Their time was up.
"Be careful," she warned. "And say nothing. To no one." Not a single person. Or things would be ruined before they began. ― 」
「 ― The next morning, she awaited him in the courtroom with a list of things she worked on the night before. Money, for bail to be posted, contracts, the like. More evidence was showing up and she had a feeling that whoever was doing this was doing their best to not only kill Tsugikuni Michikatsu, but to bury him beneath the earth in a way that she hadn't seen in a while. Maybe there was more truth to what he was saying.
She would still be fighting his case, though.
She was intrigued.
"Morning," she greeted, though... to her, it looked as if he had one hell of a night.
It was time for the hearing. "I have the petitions for bail filed, as well as a few other things. Just plead not guilty for now, and if they offer a plea, once more. Not guilty. I want to see... I want to understand. There's more to this than a normal case. If anything, it'll be a nice challenge." ― 」
He sat there with his head down, not in submission, but in calculation. The weight of centuries pressed between his shoulder blades, heavier than any armor he'd worn in battle. His fingers tapped a silent rhythm against his knee, not the nervous fidget of a trapped man, but the measured tempo of moonlit katana forms practiced until muscle memory outlived empires. He had been a demon for so long, curing himself and becoming human and then turning his blade against what he had once been, had lead him right to this situation here.
The fluorescent light flickered overhead, casting shadows that slithered like the demons he'd spent lifetimes hunting. As his eyes shifted and looked around, he was not used to this sort of thing.
“I own very little, I won’t be able to pay for my bail.”
As he closed his eyes and breathed out, a slow, measured exhalation that carried the weight of centuries. The scent of industrial bleach morphed into the iron-rich musk of battlefield mud beneath his sandals. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he could still see the exact angle at which Yoriichi's blade had caught the moonlight during their last duel, that impossible, flawless arc that had haunted him through four hundred years of borrowed time.
Now, now Yoriichi's words had finally hit him.
Only now, was he trying to make things right.
“I work, handy jobs, but I spend most of my days, at a shrine, praying to an old friend.”
The sight were he killed his brother, four hundred years of pain, regret, sorrow, anger, hatred, a misguided sense of what he believed to be right, and how Yoriichi … had always been right, about everything, what was his legacy? Blood? Death? Pain? Sorrow. Yoriichi's was kindness, generosity, strength that could crush the entire land, but only used to defend the weak, and he had once laughed in Yoriichi's face at such a thing.
“You have no idea, how much trouble I am in.”
The porcelain teacup shattered against the interrogation room floor before he even realized he'd moved. Steam curled from the shards like the last breaths of the men he'd killed, twelve in total, if the prosecutor's documents were accurate. But of course they weren't. There had been thirteen, but the thirteenth corpse had dissolved, he had gotten rid of that one. He didn’t want to kill humans, but so many, knew the truth, this entire country, this entire fucking country was in the hands of a demon lord, who controlled everything.
“Fun? I don’t know … I’m not sure, that is wise, right now, I have twelve murder charges staring me in the face.”
As he sat down and held his head in his hands, fingers digging into his temples as if he could physically press the centuries of memories back into his skull. The cheap plastic chair groaned under his weight, or perhaps it was the weight of history itself settling onto the flimsy furniture. Through the gaps between his fingers, he watched a single drop of condensation slide down the interrogation room's water glass, tracing a path as deliberate as the blood trails he'd left across three eras.
“You cannot win this case, you know that?”
His fingers stilled against his knee. He knew the truth, demons didn't just lurk in alleyways or abandoned temples. They walked in daylight, wearing human skin so that you would never know what they are, limited as it might be, the world now, provides them a means to walk in daylight, for minutes or even hours without dying. The country's veins pulsed with their influence, their tendrils wrapped around every institution from police precincts to courthouses. The detective currently flipping through files? His pupils dilated just a fraction too slowly in changing light. The prosecutor who'd signed his arrest warrant? She hadn't blinked once during their brief encounter.
“I did what they claimed I did.”
He knew he was fucked. Not the exhilarating, blade-to-blade kind of fucked where death sang in his veins and the moon painted silver trails across his katana. No this was the tedious, bureaucratic fuckedness of the modern age. Paperwork fucked. Chain-of-custody fucked. The sort where they’d take his fingerprints and the database would cough up years of dead ends and missing records. His reflection in the interrogation room’s glass stared back, a face too young for the exhaustion in its eyes, the kind of weariness that came from remembering the weight of feudal armor when everyone else had forgotten what iron smelled like. He knew, they had footage, DNA, fingerprints, everything, because he had been cutting his way through, the scum of demons and humans, working with the demon ruler.
“I cannot say much, but the people I killed, were scum. Killers, fanatics, insane, the things they done, and how they were protected, I had to kill them, I had to stop them.”
「 ― Astra's eyebrows rose. Well, that was strange. ― 」
「 ― The bounties on the people that he killed could have kept a small country afloat for a year. But, she hadn't said that and couldn't. Not right then. "Then I'll work on it, myself." That way they could have a conversation, or she could spring him out. Either way, it would all be taken care of. The woman was going to give him a few things that he had been lacking, or missing. Maybe he felt he didn't deserve it. She didn't know.
But this wasn't going to stand.
"You're devout, then. I wouldn't have taken you as a man of god." Her eyebrows had risen, though surely it wasn't at a Christian alter at which he prayed. No, something else. Something more... old. She could see it in him. It was like she was looking at an old ink painting, made alive, and that... was a strange thing to consider. Her eyes were yet to leave him, moving over his features as things changed.
And then that little bit of fury happened.
She didn't flinch, and she didn't blink as the tea splattered all over everything. She could hear it drip off her chin onto the table, and then she could hear it drip down the wall behind her. That hadn't been aimed at her... but it was a motion of nothing more than pure frustration. As if whatever happened... was simply... over. That something was being taken away from him.
"I'm not going to lie to you," she finally said, "The evidence is slightly damning. There are a few angles I can take with it, of course. But... the thing is, there's so much more. These corporations that your targets have ties to are currently being investigated. And the investigators are currently dying." Of which, the investigators were disappearing like flies in a room of pesticides. It was a simple matter of public record, that. "And... they're alleging that you did this. Don't claim it. Not yet."
"... Tsugikuni Michikatsu, I have a seventy-five percent acquittal rate. You're lucky to have ended on my docket. I am Dr. Atria Astra Stellaris, psychiatrist. I have my hands in quite a few things, but mostly, I take cases like yours." She leaned forward over the table, her eyes sincere.
"I know. The world is changing, and has changed, as of late. I can't say more to you," not there, not there in that tiny room, "But these are the cases that I specialize in." If she could turn the case to a bigger fish, he would either be given a slap on the wrist or a commendation, depending. And, more, he may get a comrade in the shape of a well-connected, beautiful woman.
"Work with me," she continued. "And we'll figure this out. Call me Astra, please, and give me what I need to extract you from this. It's going to be hard. But you have to do this." If you want to keep going, was left unsaid.
Usually she manipulated tougher clients. She was going to see where this went. If it were true, and he was mixed up in something that he couldn't deal with on his own... well. That meant that something else was happening. If he truly was unhinged, that meant that she would disappear his body into a barrel somewhere.― 」
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a sickly pallor over the holding cell. He sat cross-legged on the concrete bench, his posture rigid, his fingers tracing the phantom weight of a sword long lost to time. The stench of industrial cleaner couldn't mask the underlying odor of sweat and despair. The young detective with a coffee stain on his tie peered through the bars. "You're telling me this guy claims to be a direct descended of a samurai?" His partner snorted, flipping through a tablet. "Forensics says the victim's wounds match no known weapon. Clean cuts, like... like a katana. But no blade was found." Their whispers carried too loudly in the echo chamber of the precinct.
As he just sat there and closed his eyes, letting the fluorescent hum of the precinct fade into the distant chirping of cicadas from another lifetime. The scent of industrial bleach twisted into the memory of blood-soaked tatami mats, the iron tang fresh as yesterday. His fingers twitched against his thigh, not the involuntary tremor of someone who had seen battle, but the suppressed muscle memory of a swordsman who'd spent years honing reflexes faster than thought.
“Hm.”
He knew he was in trouble, big trouble. Not the kind that came with demons lurking in alleyways or rogue swordsmen challenging him to duels at midnight. No, this was modern trouble. The kind with fingerprints and security cameras and police databases that didn't believe in samurai anymore. His reflection in the interrogation room's one-way mirror showed a man who looked thirty at most, his black hair still thick, his posture unbent by time. Only his eyes betrayed him: twin pools of exhaustion that had witnessed the birth and death of eras. As he knew.
He had been caught, several murders, and many more were about to be charged against him for the things he has done.
「 ― This one was quite different, wasn't it? This case looked thicker than any other she had ever seen. The file had been transported to her office in boxes and boxes, and when she opened it and read, she sighed. The list of offenses were long, and the way to... escape it would be nearly impossible. Her specialty was in the mind, and in law. Her family had been nothing but interrogators, but she had branched out from them and pushed into a world they never dared to step into. Instead of providing the evidence, she was now arguing for it and against it. ― 」
「 ― This interrogation was simply a formality, and one that he was being put through without a lawyer present. Once she was given that information, she arrived as quickly as she could. The door banged open with the force of her entry, and the glass shook as the door swung partway shut behind her. Though, she, herself, looked unbothered.
"Stellaris." The interrogator's hiss was harsh, her name said as if it were some type of curse.
"Dr. Stellaris," she corrected. "You're interrogating my client without me present, though... that's par for the course with you all, isn't it?" The second seat, next to her client, was yanked back quickly. She sat down next to him with her palms flat on the table, her eyes intense. Eventually, they turned to look at him... Well. He was quite handsome, but more than that, he did fit the build that they were looking for. It was a shame that he had been found by something so simple, really.
"My client will say nothing to you. There is a court date set for tomorrow. I demand, as is his right, to have a private consultation with me." Though such a building... she never trusted it. The glass, in and of itself, was one that she knew all too well. It was a mirror on one side, but on the other... people watched and listened. "In a private room. Posthaste." The threat wasn't exactly veiled. ― 」
「 ― "As your attorney, as long as we are in this building, you are not to admit anything." The walls had ears, and they recorded things.
"But, I have to ask if you have anyone that could do anything to assist you. Collateral for bail, or something like that. Your assets have been seized, but the only way we can ever do anything about this is if we have a conversation outside of these walls." Though, he didn't quite look like the type to fight. His eyes seemed dull, and his body language told her that he was close to giving up.
She knew the signs of depression when she saw it.
Her work was definitely going to be cut out for her.
"So tell me about yourself. Your likes, dislikes, what you do for fun..." She listed the things off. "We'll start with this. And then move forward after that. I need to be able to have this conversation with you today in order to deal with the judge tomorrow morning." Whoever wanted him buried was certainly trying to do so thoroughly. If she hadn't been thorough in checking over the dates, she would have missed both.
"Whoever wants you gone is certainly doing their best. I got your file two hours ago, and I barely got here in time. Can you give me a name, or an organization to look into?" That was the most important thing. If someone was trying to end him, her first order of business was information gathering.
Well this was now out of control, a lot quicker than he thought.
Honestly, a little rusty as he was, he was a little in way over his head, but this was the plan. The warehouse floor groaned beneath his boots as he dragged Astra forward by the collar of his own turtleneck—now stretched and smeared with grime—his grip just shy of bruising. Her limp body scraped against concrete, the sound like raw meat on a butcher’s block. He hated the performance of it, the way her head lolled when he jerked her upright to prop her against a rusted support beam. The welt on her collarbone had darkened to a stormcloud purple under the flickering fluorescents. Perfect.
He breathed out slowly, the exhale fogging the cold warehouse air between them. The scent of damp concrete and rusted metal clung to the back of his throat, mixing with the coppery tang of Astra's split lip. Her mother—because of course it was her mother—stood silhouetted against the flickering industrial lights, her designer heels clicking against the stained concrete like a metronome counting down to disaster.
“It is what I do best, I take the contracts, that people say are impossible and I get the job done, always.”
As he turned his head and looked around—really looked—and realized two things simultaneously: the warehouse wasn't abandoned, and they'd walked into a fucking gallery.
“If you know anything about my days doing this, then you know if you wanted something done, you should have come to me first.”
As he narrowed his eyes—not at Astra’s mother, but at the walls. What he’d mistaken for shadows were frames. Dozens of them. Each contained a photograph of Astra at different ages, each image surgically altered. In one, her face had been grafted onto a corpse in a morgue drawer. In another, she knelt beside a man with his throat slit, her hands painted red. The most recent showed her sprawled across a bed, a revolver limp in her fingers, the sheets dark with what the lighting suggested was blood. The craftsmanship was impeccable. These weren’t crude Photoshop jobs; they were evidence crafted by someone who understood forensics, who knew how lighting pooled in crime scenes, how blood dried in specific patterns. Someone who clearly held a grudge and more, fucking complete and utter hatred for someone, that was meant to be one of there own.
“You know what the Tsugikuni do, so don’t waste my time.”
He closed his eyes and breathed out—slow, deliberate—counting the pulse points where his own heartbeat betrayed him. The warehouse air smelled of damp concrete and something sharper: photographic chemicals, the acrid bite of freshly printed ink. Behind his eyelids, he mapped the room—thirty-two frames, each precisely spaced, each a meticulously constructed lie. Astra's mother had orchestrated this like a director staging her magnum opus. The realization settled like a blade between his ribs: this wasn't just blackmail. This was a eulogy in advance.
The blade kissed Astra's throat before she even saw him move—a whisper of steel that made her mother's breath hitch. Not deep enough to draw blood. Just enough to prove he could.
"Tell me then." He murmured. “Exactly which part of 'licensed attorney' made you think I wasn't dangerous?" His cufflinks—the onyx ones Astra had watched him remove—were now embedded in the warehouse wall beside her mother's left ear, pinning a strand of platinum hair like a butterfly specimen. The third cufflink rolled lazily across the concrete between them, its sharp edge glinting under the flickering fluorescents.
“I’ll kill her before you then, but I need to know, why. I never take a job on, unless I have all the details and the reasons, like to know as much as possible, call it insurance if things go badly and you try and blackmail me or sell me out.”
「 ― Things always did have a habit of completely spiraling like that. This was never easy. And it was only going to get harder. ― 」
「 ― She did her part well. The flopping, her closed eyes, not even a single flinch when her head smacked against the beam. She was... exactly as she said she would be. He had to know, though, that she was still there and if things decided to turn for the worst, she would be up and ready to fight before he could take his next breath. Yes, it was hard to keep herself so limp and her breathing even, but this was something that she had trained a long time for. Even if she was a little out of practice.
With her eyes closed, she didn't see the macabre photos on the walls, though... she would have claimed that they were more paintings than anything else.
It was her mother's voice that echoed, though, and she wanted to open her eyes, stand and slaughter her right there. Ezra was a woman in which she despised more than any other. She had facilitated something worse than death for a lot of people, and as far as she knew, more than a few people were yet to be recovered. That was disgusting. Horrible. And she could do nothing but put her trust in Michikatsu.
Her head flopped as he raised the knife to her neck. She didn't pay attention to what he was saying, only in what he was doing. If he wanted her dead, he would have killed her. If he were working for her mother, then this would have happened long before that night. He didn't seem the type to tell anything about himself unless he were at least a little bit attached to someone. Though, his words were so convincing that if she didn't know him, she would have been worried.
"Ah, so you've determined that you want the bounty, instead." Ezra's tone was soft and surprised, though the mix of copper red and silver hair was showing her age. "Smart man." Her tone was approving, and the teal eyes in her mother's face, in contrast to Astra's were a little more cruel, hard and calculating. Whereas Astra's were neutral, the look in her mother's was nothing more than outwardly malevolent. "This is quite perfect, actually."
She took a few steps forward, brazen and unafraid of what was to come.
"She's going to die, anyway. But, I would much prefer for her to be awake, and for it to be by my hand. Though... I will entertain you. You deserve to know why she's dying, after all. Such a messy trial... and all of the evidence... was simply fabricated." Except it wasn't. "Do you see how easy it is? Look at the walls around you."
This was to be a resting place. A mortuary for someone who had wronged someone else, and the photos on the wall would have been evidence of why she was killed.
"Atria Astra is a snake. A cruel little thing. My brothers asked for her to accompany them to their cottage on the sea, and she killed them in return." She was leaving out the part of what happened to that little girl during that night, or the way she had sobbed afterwards, or the way that she had never wanted any of it to happen. "My elder twin brothers were simply there, and then the next morning after the storm, their bodies washed up upon the beach like discarded trash, with their home still burning. She truly did a number on our family that night."
"I must admit... that there was some jealousy for her on my part. My mother favored her. Her father favored her. As soon as she was born, she had them wrapped around her little finger. She could ask them for anything, and they would do so immediately. The crying, gods..." She shuddered, "But that quickly came to an end." After what happened.
"My husband... distanced himself from me because of her. He couldn't cope with knowing that our child had done something so heinous, and he left. He sent us to another place to live, and took his own manor for himself. I saw fit to punish the girl, and then when she was fifteen, she found the ledger. My brothers were gambling addicts. We had began selling contraband to earn money for it, and... well, it turns out the contraband happened to be humans. Not that I ever knew. Or them."
She rolled her eyes.
She did know they were human, though. There were accounts of their names in the ledgers, in the writings, in everything. Though, it wasn't as if the Tsugikuni had the unredacted files, right? There was no way. The only way he could have gotten them is through petitioning the courts, or talking to Astra, and that was... well, he was asking for the bounty. Why else would he be doing that? She was so very sure of herself....
"He divorced me, investigated me, and had me thrown in jail... because of her. Because she took him the ledger, and because, once more, she lied to them. All of them. And I don't doubt, for a single moment, if she were awake, she would have you believe her, as well."
"I am a victim who has lost everything. My mother, my brothers, my husband and my son, and this will be my revenge. I want her broken before she dies. She deserves it for taking everything from me. My station, my love, my family. I want her to suffer in the same way that I did. I escaped for that reason. She was simply too happy with playing the housewife, following her husband around. I saw her in the paper with those charity dinners for abused and exploited children. Disgusting. I cannot allow her to continue portraying herself as something that she is not."
Astra and her mother were two sides of the same coin, in that regard. Astra wanted her mother away from her. She wanted to live and smile and be happy, but her mother, in contrast, wanted her to suffer even more than she already had as a child.
He was dealing with someone who did not view her daughter as a daughter, but someone who viewed her daughter as something. As a thing inhuman, as something to be looked down on and hated.
She provided no proof. She wouldn't have to. She was, after all, the one that had been wronged. The one that had been hurt. What happened to Astra was deserved simply because she had fought back that night. If she hadn't, her life would have been so much simpler. Maybe she could have even escaped.
But that time was over, and now, Astra was to be punished further. ― 」
