Negotiations (Spiral fragment 3 of ?)
Fragment: Negotiations (3 of ?)
Fandom: Spiral (Pre-Canon, and pre-Alive)
Genre: General (I don't know how to class it--but I think this chapter has some angst.)
Rating: T
Why: Yaiba always proves to need the T rating for some reason or another. In this case he's being blunt and swear-y. (He's not having a good day...though I doubt Yaiba ever has a good day. It seems to be difficult to have a good day when you're a villain.) Also, for the wonders of glance-by autopsy skill, referencing from last chapter's tabletops.
Notes: Tenser chapter, this one, but it's starting to fall into a little better. Er...don't really know what else to say about it. It has a different feel from the others. If I actually knew how long this would be, I'd be able to say for sure how pivotal it is. (Naturally I have an end in mind--that's usually not the problem. I can imagine a million different ways to sidetrack myself along the way. That happens to be the problem.)
Mushy-sama, if the timeline you've given me is accurate, and Hizumi doesn't remember his brother in canon Spiral, this should work. Not to mention, it feels in-character for Kiyotaka, and would make sense for him strategically. Yaiba's reaction should make sense, too, assuming I'm on-track at least.
Hoo. Assumptions.
I should just cross my fingers, I guess.
-o-O-o-
-o-O-o- Negotiations: III -o-O-o-
-o-O-o-
Yaiba's nostrils flared with a snort of bitter laughter. "...I didn't call you here." He said to the dark room. It was quiet a moment.
"...But it was my turn to bring muffins this time." Kiyotaka said, grinning. "And I did just climb over twenty flights of stairs so it would be a surprise."
Yaiba tightened his fingers into fists. "You're unpleasant as ever...I'm not in the mood." He grumbled, fixing him with an irritated serpentine eye.
"You? Not in the mood to anger your private physician? It's what you pay him for, isn't it?" Kiyotaka said cheerfully. He ignored the chair in from of the desk, walking to the side of it. Yaiba noticed and glared at him, but it didn't stop him. He glanced over him, at the head under his arm for clarification.
"Are you trying to get yourself run over?"
Kiyotaka just laughed. "You don't like frogs either?"
"I'm not an animal person, and I already said I don't want the muffins, much less a plague of frogs in my office." Yaiba snapped, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He seemed to tired to even keep up with his irritation for long, his voice almost a sigh, "Leave."
Kiyotaka stayed where he was, turning and busying himself laying out napkins, laying out a muffin at each spot. "...Is it really so hard for you to have faith in the human race?"
Yaiba didn't say anything at all. "It has nothign to do with faith. ...It's there...It's there, or it's not there. And if it's there I'm not seeing it." He murmured finally, sounding irritated, and glaring fixedly at a corner of his desk as though he could learn the secrets of the universe from it with the right intensity of glare. His gaze snapped up sourly. "And why are you still here?"
"Your dissection isn't helping you?" Kiyotaka smiled a little, sympathetically.
"The last thing I need at the moment is your arrogant gloating." Yaiba hissed, fixing him with a poisonous stare, dropping his hands from his face. His fingers gave an impatient drumming. "And what could possibly be taking you so long in your murder plans, anyway?"
Kiyotaka raised a thermos. "Tea?" he asked.
Yaiba stared at him. "I don't want to be fed. Least of all by you." He snarled finally. He stared even more as Kiyotaka just shrugged, and pulled the chair over to the side of the desk, setting his costume's frogs-head on the desk.
"...I don't believe I'd ask you a second time, but why the Hell are you still here?" Yaiba snapped finally.
"It's part of the plan, certainly." Kiyotaka said, then he smiled, setting his chin on his laced fingers. "But also because you might benefit from having another mind on-hand."
Yaiba stared at him. "...What a stupid suggestion..." He muttered, scowling suspiciously. "You mean to suggest you want to help me with my goals?"
"I have a goal in mind." Kiyotaka said, with another smile. "And the morality doesn't bother me. If I manage to beat you, after all, I'll be standing in the right in the eyes of the world, regardless of what I do. My actions will be righteous--you're rather unpopular after all, but it's probably just because you work so hard and don't even bother with the illusion of trusting anyone."
"You're mad..." Yaiba whispered, yellow eyes widening, making him look far younger.
Kiyotaka just chuckled. "Well then, you just have terrible taste in men."
Yaiba paled considerably. Kiyotaka didn't seem to notice at all, starting on his muffin. He looked up, smiling with his eyes. "It's hard to do things properly. Skill alone isn't enough. You need luck as well, and I have excellent luck. What could you possibly lose?"
Yaiba's hands tightened on his chair, and his mouth pinched into a line. "...You're attempting to make me depend on you. I see." The corners of his mouth twitched upwards, grimly. "How unusual. It won't work, though. And I refuse to let you join me. You've been chosen as my rival. I refuse to accept you on my project. You're no proper replacement at all."
"You'll feel better if you eat."
"I don't want anything!" Yaiba snapped, but he turned away and pinched the bridge of his nose again.
"I went to quite a bit of trouble making them." Kiyotaka added. "I'd appreciate you trying them at least. I usually win the station fund-raisers with my baking."
Yaiba stared at the window, unseeing. "...The trouble you went to was your own affair. I gave you no such suggestions. Attempting to cajole me into it won't work." He muttered.
"That's a shame. I'd hoped you would like them best out of anything."
Yaiba said nothing at all.
"Your dissection...what did you hope to find out? It was one of your children's corpses wasn't it?"
Yaiba paused a moment, "...If I ever find you information source, I'll have to pay them double what you do." he muttered, quirking his lip upwards almost ironically, but absolutely without humor. "Or possibly murder them myself."
Kiyotaka grinned. "Well I won't say I don't have any information sources, but it was just common sense on my part in this case. The corpse was 'six years old, and perfectly preserved', after all. And you seemed to be examining the brain with particular care, and the ribcage had been smashed through the right side, suggesting a rather grisly impalement. Most normal infants don't do anything to deserve that kind of malice, and then a fresh infamy as a trophey."
Yaiba peered at him. Kiyotaka just shrugged, grinning. "I'm a homocide detective, remember?"
Yaiba's eyes flickered over his smile, and his brow puckered in annoyance. "...You have blueberry in your teeth." He said sourly.
Kiyotaka just laughed at that, with perfect surprised pleasure.
"You won't be popular among your staff if they hear you're dissecting your own children." He said reasonably, running a napkin over his smile. "What you should do instead is meet with your offspring and talk to them. It's psychologically unhealthy for a child not to have a father's influence, especially at their age."
"Obviously I'm not at all interested in the psychological well-being of my offspring and never have been." Yaiba said coldly. "Attempting to sabotage my goals in such a way is in exceedingly poor taste, Kiyotaka."
Kiyotaka's eyes flickered up, and he gave a sudden grin. Another small victory. Too late, Yaiba seemed to realize, because he narrowed his eyes.
"Yaiba," Kiyotaka said. A muscle twisted in the other's cheek, grimacing, "certainly a mind as great as yours can grasp that some things can never be acheived by one person alone."
"My mind is the greatest in the age. It's not arrogance; it's simple fact. Who else could I possibly look to for assistance? No other mind would be capable of grasping the concepts, the subtle nuances. I have no patience for either incompetance or stupidity." Yaiba said almost carelessly.
Kiyotaka smiled, folding the leftover baking paper into a fan. "...Observation isn't so different from person to person, though. And the conclusions drawn are predictable when you take into account a person's tastes and inclinations. That can't be done by the dead. In this world you have to work with people to really get what you want. It's what it means to be alive."
"Not if what I want is to solve a problem, not hold a social banquet." Yaiba spat in disgust. "Why should I deal with others as though there's something worthwhile to them aside from a steady pair of hands, if it's so blatantly and obviously untrue? I have no patience for blind, fumbling idiots who only make a mess of their lives and expect those better than them to devote their every hour of life to cleaning up after them."
"And that's the beauty of your plan, isn't it?" Kiyotaka asked, smiling a little. "If it goes through, no more messes will be made--assuming your children follow in your footsteps and in your inclinations. But it's interesting, isn't it? Genetics don't seem to make personalities perfect, do they? And your children are hunted, even now."
"The worthy ones will survive no matter the adversity. What should I care?" Yaiba's mouth pinched. "Those too weak to defend themselves from those who should be weaker than them have no place in my legacy."
Kiyotaka chuckled. "You're quite the demanding father. And quite the demanding brother."
"I wouldn't know, since Hizumi is your responsibility at this point after you went to such trouble to steal him from me." Yaiba retorted, anger burning in his sulfuric eyes, bitterness sinking around his mouth.
Kiyotaka smiled a little, but it had sadness in the edges. "Children should be allowed to be children..." He murmured.
"Hizumi's no ordinary child." Yaiba hissed, and for the first time, there was an odd possessiveness, a strange loss in his face as he glared away from Kiyotaka. "But you no doubt know that by now."
Kiyotaka didn't reply, intently folding his little fan into an airplane. "...in the end, will it be enough for you, I wonder? Or will you have to purge your own offspring as well?" He asked.
Yaiba's face flickered.
Kiyotaka just smiled a little wider, looking up. "...Was that doubt I jst saw on your face?" He asked softly. He threw the airplane, and sighed when it plummeted like a stone.
The other raised a foot almost deliberately, and crushed it without looking. His fingers curling in on themselves again, eyes darting away at the shadowy corners of the room. His voice was laden with spent patience, flat as lead. "Doubt is nothing but weakness in resolve. Doubt is a virus on one's discipline." He muttered. His fingers came back up, half-hiding his face. "...I've told you to leave before this. Do it before I call security."
"I could help you." Kiyotaka said reasonably, dark eyes intelligent in his unsmiling face.
"I don't need help. I need to be alone. Please leave." Yaiba spat, turning his head away, and glaring fixedly at a wall through his fingers.
Kiyotaka's face flickered in surprise, and he nodded once, standing silently. "Alright." He said quietly, as he picked up his box of muffins, his tea, and put on his costume's head, hiding any expression behind a vacant, sewn-in smile. The other didn't move so much as an inch, letting him go.
"...Yaiba?" Kiyotaka said finally, his voice slightly muffled through the fabric.
"Don't be so friendly." Yaiba spat back.
Kiyotaka didn't laugh, instead he murmured, swiveling the costumed head to look at the other. "...You know...that's the first time I've ever heard you use the word 'please'?"
Yaiba didn't say anything for a long moment. "...You're delusional as well as stupid." He whispered finally. "I didn't say anything."
Kiyotaka didn't bother arguing, but he did say one last thing. "...Doubt only feels worse in solutide since in solutide all one can rely on is ones self or the promise of unseen others. You're doing a brave thing in asking to be alone, but I'm not sure it's at all wise, or what you'll really want."
"I can't hear a word you're saying through that rediculous mask of yours." Yaiba replied bluntly, not looking at anything.
The frog didn't turn to face him, not even in the elevator. The doors closed with odd finality on the green-furred back.
The silence was somehow unnerving.
Between his fingers, a single yellow eye twisted to stare at the solitary muffin left on the desk before him. His fingers snatched out, biting into the cake. "Bastard..." He hissed under his breath, blinking hard, and gritting his teeth. "Where've you taken him...? It would be unlike you to kill him..."
"Hizumi...where are you?"
-o-O-o-O-o-
Fandom: Spiral (Pre-Canon, and pre-Alive)
Genre: General (I don't know how to class it--but I think this chapter has some angst.)
Rating: T
Why: Yaiba always proves to need the T rating for some reason or another. In this case he's being blunt and swear-y. (He's not having a good day...though I doubt Yaiba ever has a good day. It seems to be difficult to have a good day when you're a villain.) Also, for the wonders of glance-by autopsy skill, referencing from last chapter's tabletops.
Notes: Tenser chapter, this one, but it's starting to fall into a little better. Er...don't really know what else to say about it. It has a different feel from the others. If I actually knew how long this would be, I'd be able to say for sure how pivotal it is. (Naturally I have an end in mind--that's usually not the problem. I can imagine a million different ways to sidetrack myself along the way. That happens to be the problem.)
Mushy-sama, if the timeline you've given me is accurate, and Hizumi doesn't remember his brother in canon Spiral, this should work. Not to mention, it feels in-character for Kiyotaka, and would make sense for him strategically. Yaiba's reaction should make sense, too, assuming I'm on-track at least.
Hoo. Assumptions.
I should just cross my fingers, I guess.
-o-O-o-
-o-O-o- Negotiations: III -o-O-o-
-o-O-o-
Yaiba's nostrils flared with a snort of bitter laughter. "...I didn't call you here." He said to the dark room. It was quiet a moment.
"...But it was my turn to bring muffins this time." Kiyotaka said, grinning. "And I did just climb over twenty flights of stairs so it would be a surprise."
Yaiba tightened his fingers into fists. "You're unpleasant as ever...I'm not in the mood." He grumbled, fixing him with an irritated serpentine eye.
"You? Not in the mood to anger your private physician? It's what you pay him for, isn't it?" Kiyotaka said cheerfully. He ignored the chair in from of the desk, walking to the side of it. Yaiba noticed and glared at him, but it didn't stop him. He glanced over him, at the head under his arm for clarification.
"Are you trying to get yourself run over?"
Kiyotaka just laughed. "You don't like frogs either?"
"I'm not an animal person, and I already said I don't want the muffins, much less a plague of frogs in my office." Yaiba snapped, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He seemed to tired to even keep up with his irritation for long, his voice almost a sigh, "Leave."
Kiyotaka stayed where he was, turning and busying himself laying out napkins, laying out a muffin at each spot. "...Is it really so hard for you to have faith in the human race?"
Yaiba didn't say anything at all. "It has nothign to do with faith. ...It's there...It's there, or it's not there. And if it's there I'm not seeing it." He murmured finally, sounding irritated, and glaring fixedly at a corner of his desk as though he could learn the secrets of the universe from it with the right intensity of glare. His gaze snapped up sourly. "And why are you still here?"
"Your dissection isn't helping you?" Kiyotaka smiled a little, sympathetically.
"The last thing I need at the moment is your arrogant gloating." Yaiba hissed, fixing him with a poisonous stare, dropping his hands from his face. His fingers gave an impatient drumming. "And what could possibly be taking you so long in your murder plans, anyway?"
Kiyotaka raised a thermos. "Tea?" he asked.
Yaiba stared at him. "I don't want to be fed. Least of all by you." He snarled finally. He stared even more as Kiyotaka just shrugged, and pulled the chair over to the side of the desk, setting his costume's frogs-head on the desk.
"...I don't believe I'd ask you a second time, but why the Hell are you still here?" Yaiba snapped finally.
"It's part of the plan, certainly." Kiyotaka said, then he smiled, setting his chin on his laced fingers. "But also because you might benefit from having another mind on-hand."
Yaiba stared at him. "...What a stupid suggestion..." He muttered, scowling suspiciously. "You mean to suggest you want to help me with my goals?"
"I have a goal in mind." Kiyotaka said, with another smile. "And the morality doesn't bother me. If I manage to beat you, after all, I'll be standing in the right in the eyes of the world, regardless of what I do. My actions will be righteous--you're rather unpopular after all, but it's probably just because you work so hard and don't even bother with the illusion of trusting anyone."
"You're mad..." Yaiba whispered, yellow eyes widening, making him look far younger.
Kiyotaka just chuckled. "Well then, you just have terrible taste in men."
Yaiba paled considerably. Kiyotaka didn't seem to notice at all, starting on his muffin. He looked up, smiling with his eyes. "It's hard to do things properly. Skill alone isn't enough. You need luck as well, and I have excellent luck. What could you possibly lose?"
Yaiba's hands tightened on his chair, and his mouth pinched into a line. "...You're attempting to make me depend on you. I see." The corners of his mouth twitched upwards, grimly. "How unusual. It won't work, though. And I refuse to let you join me. You've been chosen as my rival. I refuse to accept you on my project. You're no proper replacement at all."
"You'll feel better if you eat."
"I don't want anything!" Yaiba snapped, but he turned away and pinched the bridge of his nose again.
"I went to quite a bit of trouble making them." Kiyotaka added. "I'd appreciate you trying them at least. I usually win the station fund-raisers with my baking."
Yaiba stared at the window, unseeing. "...The trouble you went to was your own affair. I gave you no such suggestions. Attempting to cajole me into it won't work." He muttered.
"That's a shame. I'd hoped you would like them best out of anything."
Yaiba said nothing at all.
"Your dissection...what did you hope to find out? It was one of your children's corpses wasn't it?"
Yaiba paused a moment, "...If I ever find you information source, I'll have to pay them double what you do." he muttered, quirking his lip upwards almost ironically, but absolutely without humor. "Or possibly murder them myself."
Kiyotaka grinned. "Well I won't say I don't have any information sources, but it was just common sense on my part in this case. The corpse was 'six years old, and perfectly preserved', after all. And you seemed to be examining the brain with particular care, and the ribcage had been smashed through the right side, suggesting a rather grisly impalement. Most normal infants don't do anything to deserve that kind of malice, and then a fresh infamy as a trophey."
Yaiba peered at him. Kiyotaka just shrugged, grinning. "I'm a homocide detective, remember?"
Yaiba's eyes flickered over his smile, and his brow puckered in annoyance. "...You have blueberry in your teeth." He said sourly.
Kiyotaka just laughed at that, with perfect surprised pleasure.
"You won't be popular among your staff if they hear you're dissecting your own children." He said reasonably, running a napkin over his smile. "What you should do instead is meet with your offspring and talk to them. It's psychologically unhealthy for a child not to have a father's influence, especially at their age."
"Obviously I'm not at all interested in the psychological well-being of my offspring and never have been." Yaiba said coldly. "Attempting to sabotage my goals in such a way is in exceedingly poor taste, Kiyotaka."
Kiyotaka's eyes flickered up, and he gave a sudden grin. Another small victory. Too late, Yaiba seemed to realize, because he narrowed his eyes.
"Yaiba," Kiyotaka said. A muscle twisted in the other's cheek, grimacing, "certainly a mind as great as yours can grasp that some things can never be acheived by one person alone."
"My mind is the greatest in the age. It's not arrogance; it's simple fact. Who else could I possibly look to for assistance? No other mind would be capable of grasping the concepts, the subtle nuances. I have no patience for either incompetance or stupidity." Yaiba said almost carelessly.
Kiyotaka smiled, folding the leftover baking paper into a fan. "...Observation isn't so different from person to person, though. And the conclusions drawn are predictable when you take into account a person's tastes and inclinations. That can't be done by the dead. In this world you have to work with people to really get what you want. It's what it means to be alive."
"Not if what I want is to solve a problem, not hold a social banquet." Yaiba spat in disgust. "Why should I deal with others as though there's something worthwhile to them aside from a steady pair of hands, if it's so blatantly and obviously untrue? I have no patience for blind, fumbling idiots who only make a mess of their lives and expect those better than them to devote their every hour of life to cleaning up after them."
"And that's the beauty of your plan, isn't it?" Kiyotaka asked, smiling a little. "If it goes through, no more messes will be made--assuming your children follow in your footsteps and in your inclinations. But it's interesting, isn't it? Genetics don't seem to make personalities perfect, do they? And your children are hunted, even now."
"The worthy ones will survive no matter the adversity. What should I care?" Yaiba's mouth pinched. "Those too weak to defend themselves from those who should be weaker than them have no place in my legacy."
Kiyotaka chuckled. "You're quite the demanding father. And quite the demanding brother."
"I wouldn't know, since Hizumi is your responsibility at this point after you went to such trouble to steal him from me." Yaiba retorted, anger burning in his sulfuric eyes, bitterness sinking around his mouth.
Kiyotaka smiled a little, but it had sadness in the edges. "Children should be allowed to be children..." He murmured.
"Hizumi's no ordinary child." Yaiba hissed, and for the first time, there was an odd possessiveness, a strange loss in his face as he glared away from Kiyotaka. "But you no doubt know that by now."
Kiyotaka didn't reply, intently folding his little fan into an airplane. "...in the end, will it be enough for you, I wonder? Or will you have to purge your own offspring as well?" He asked.
Yaiba's face flickered.
Kiyotaka just smiled a little wider, looking up. "...Was that doubt I jst saw on your face?" He asked softly. He threw the airplane, and sighed when it plummeted like a stone.
The other raised a foot almost deliberately, and crushed it without looking. His fingers curling in on themselves again, eyes darting away at the shadowy corners of the room. His voice was laden with spent patience, flat as lead. "Doubt is nothing but weakness in resolve. Doubt is a virus on one's discipline." He muttered. His fingers came back up, half-hiding his face. "...I've told you to leave before this. Do it before I call security."
"I could help you." Kiyotaka said reasonably, dark eyes intelligent in his unsmiling face.
"I don't need help. I need to be alone. Please leave." Yaiba spat, turning his head away, and glaring fixedly at a wall through his fingers.
Kiyotaka's face flickered in surprise, and he nodded once, standing silently. "Alright." He said quietly, as he picked up his box of muffins, his tea, and put on his costume's head, hiding any expression behind a vacant, sewn-in smile. The other didn't move so much as an inch, letting him go.
"...Yaiba?" Kiyotaka said finally, his voice slightly muffled through the fabric.
"Don't be so friendly." Yaiba spat back.
Kiyotaka didn't laugh, instead he murmured, swiveling the costumed head to look at the other. "...You know...that's the first time I've ever heard you use the word 'please'?"
Yaiba didn't say anything for a long moment. "...You're delusional as well as stupid." He whispered finally. "I didn't say anything."
Kiyotaka didn't bother arguing, but he did say one last thing. "...Doubt only feels worse in solutide since in solutide all one can rely on is ones self or the promise of unseen others. You're doing a brave thing in asking to be alone, but I'm not sure it's at all wise, or what you'll really want."
"I can't hear a word you're saying through that rediculous mask of yours." Yaiba replied bluntly, not looking at anything.
The frog didn't turn to face him, not even in the elevator. The doors closed with odd finality on the green-furred back.
The silence was somehow unnerving.
Between his fingers, a single yellow eye twisted to stare at the solitary muffin left on the desk before him. His fingers snatched out, biting into the cake. "Bastard..." He hissed under his breath, blinking hard, and gritting his teeth. "Where've you taken him...? It would be unlike you to kill him..."
"Hizumi...where are you?"
-o-O-o-O-o-