He was tired, he was irritated, and most of all, he wanted his fucking mom’s ring back.
The bat he grabbed at the safe zone dragged through the dirt, making a hollow metallic thump when it scraped against the occasional rock. He definitely had read the “hard” difficulty rating next to this Mistwood quest, but he was somewhat doubting its ultimate difficulty. They were monsters made of mist. He felt like that was maybe a little easy to take a swing at, right?
It was almost too still, here. The air was dead, not even a slight breeze to indicate any sign of life. Maybe there was a crunch of leaves every once in a while, but Ichiro hardly flinched, other than shooting a glance in the same direction. Each time, he thought he saw a flash of red. Each time, there wasn’t anything there. He was getting kind of sick of this shit.
He wasn’t expecting that one.
Ichiro’s legs moved before his brain had the ability to catch up. He crashed through the brush, one arm up to shield his face from whipping twigs. He came through to a clearing, seeing a beast of mist tussling with someone.
He raised the bat up, bringing it down on the creature’s head with a shout. Despite what he expected, the bat collided, and didn’t pass through the beast.
“TAKE THAT, FUCKER!” He bellowed, giving the creature a swift kick to the side to get it off the poor sod it was attacking.
He had to blink twice once he saw aforementioned poor sod.
“Kuko?!” He knew they didn’t have the time to get in a spat, as they were already a bit in the midst of one with this creepy mist thingy, but it didn’t stop him. He offered him a hand, regardless. “Get up, man, what the fuck are you doing here?”
The mist creep made what Ichiro could only assume was a groan in pain. He kinda got him good.
As the beast was knocked to its side, Kuko snarled as he slapped Ichiro’s hand away and got up on his own, brushing off his pants. Luckily he didn’t sustain any bad injuries, but he would be lying if he said the impact of his back hitting the ground didn’t make him a little sore. He let out a growl as he reached towards his his crowbar, looking over at Ichiro and feeling a pain in his heart that he wished he couldn’t identify. Frustration, fury, loneliness– why did Ichiro have to play the hero even NOW?
“Don’t tell me what to do, traitor!” he snarled as he took two steps back away from the other, his body practically shaking in anger. He grit his teeth as a familiar headache started to come on, but he chose to ignore it for now. It wasn’t unbearable this time.
“I should be asking you THAT– don’t you have some better shit you could be doing, like finding your brothers or kicking someone else that’s down?” despite his venomous words, there was a tinge of insincerity that he prayed Ichiro (or himself) wouldn’t pick up on. There were pressing matters at hand.
“Whatever. I’m getting the hell out of here, with or without you, got it?”