[Kushiki Kioko]

I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP

AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP

The fastest route between any two points was a straight line, but that wasn’t the path Kioko took from the police-raided bar to the nearest subway station. She opted for stealth over speed in case either officer or the so-called reporter she had met before all hell broke loose tried to follow her. Serpentine maneuvers carved a winding trail through streets and alleyways alike until Kioko arrived at her destination.

A glance over her shoulder confirmed that no one was shadowing her. At least no one who was so poor at the act that they were caught. So she descended into the depths of the subway. The aches in her body that protested taking the stairs reminded her unnecessarily of the night’s events given that unlike her body, Kioko’s mind had never fully left them behind.

In spite of everything that had transpired, Kioko had learned neither the man’s name nor exactly why he had cornered her in the first place. She could guess since she had called him out as a journalist which he had had confirmed, or at least gone along with, but still never told her why he wanted to talk to her. Her thoughts extended through the initial meeting and past the fighting all the way to their departure. Kioko recalled both the look he had given her and the comment he had made.

Had he actually been a journalist or was he…

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The words were out of her mouth as soon as she reached the platform and saw what was waiting for her. Apparently Tuesday had come early and clearly Kioko had jinxed herself by saying never. That or the universe was punishing her for, well, everything.

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The closest distance between two points was a straight line. Well, provided you knew where all the lines were, which ones were actually straight, and which ones led to dead ends.[break][break]

Luckily for Levi, Japan's public transport system was in a much better state than his home. Unluckily for Levi, the wobbliness of his legs failed to subside in the aftermath of the events prior. He had initially dismissed it as a pulled muscle from attempting to jump through the seedy dive's window, but the chances of pulling a muscle in both of his legs at the exact same moment seemed slim. On top of it all, his stomach felt as though it was wading around in the shallow end of a kiddie pool.[break][break]

I didn't drink that much did I? ... Hell, did I drink anything? His thoughts drifted as he remembered taking a free glass of gravity-assisted whiskey from the top shelf of the broken bar, but dismissed the thought. He wasn't the world's heaviest drinker, but he had barely finished the glass. His mind seemed a bit foggy with the details, but those would come around in the morning. As would finding Kioko again and finally getting a chance to talk to her. Thankfully, she wasn't around to see his staggered approach to the train station.[break][break]

Levi paused at the top of the stairway leading into the subway. Blurred memories played as he took a moment to recognize that, unlike the trains in Chicago he had been familiar with, these stairs appeared to go down instead of up. His pause lengthened. "... Oh, underground..." he finally rationalized. The second issue seemed to be that the stairs were moving. Levi attempted to focus his gaze, honing in on the stairs and attempting to remember the details of the whiskey he had snatched. "... Escalader."[break][break]

All in all, he handled entering the escalator fairly well in his mind. In reality, his legs had separated, with one two steps in front of the other as the motion-propelled stairway threatened to force him into the splits. Nausea spurred his stomach's flips on as the motion rioted against him. He had only made it halfway to his destination before he decided he could fix this issue.[break][break]

"Ok.. too much.. hold on a moment..." His inadvertent command caused the feeling in his forward-placed foot to fade, control of the escalator passing to him as the stairs abruptly stopped. The lack of feeling in his foot, combined with the unreliable nature of his legs at the moment, propelled Levi headfirst into a flip. He landed squarely on his back, skidding the rest of the way to the bottom of the stairs.[break][break]

Expletives escaped his lips as he made his rapid descent, stopping only when his body did at the bottom. He reached his arm behind his head, feeling for blood or open wounds as he opened his eyes slowly. "Fucking stairs, you're not an elevator..." His ramblings made little to no sense as he noticed, across the platform, a surprisingly recent and familiar face.[break][break]

"Oh shit! Ki.." He caught the smallest bit of vomit in his throat as he attempted to announce his presence. "Ki.." Again. Something about the letter 'O' didn't seem to be agreeing with him. I know how to solve this.[break][break]

"Kiki! I made it! The stairs are ou.." Another heave interrupted his statement.[break][break]

Do Japan's subways have bathrooms?

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[Kushiki Kioko]

I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP

AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP

“Pathetic.”

Disdain in her tone echoed that written across her face. Commuters passing by on their way to or from the trains shot glances Levi’s way with similar opinions held within their eyes or whispered to companions. Albeit their scorn was diluted in comparison to that of Kioko’s. Few were as pointedly judgmental as she. To date, only a certain Tanuki could compare.

Her icy gaze shifted away from the spectacle. She had no desire to see him retch onto the platform nor be in the vicinity when it happened. That was all that saved him from the otherwise hostile response he would have normally received from calling her something so ridiculous. It reminded her of Sebastian — someone else she had poisoned out of annoyance more than once before.

A knot, small though it was, of guilt coiled in her chest. Kioko clearly wasn’t above poisoning people. Or worse. Yet she had never left Sebastian helpless in a public space. Then again, she was actually friends with him. For some very strange reason. Nevertheless, she had a reason to care about Sebastian. This guy was just a stranger and a reporter on top of that. A bloodthirsty shark that wanted information about the misery that was her downfall. And he had hit her in the face with a glass.

Her heart hardened as did her resolve. Sharp retorts from each step of stiletto heels punctured the ambient noise of the subway station as Kioko went to move past him. Avoiding him completely was impossible. Circumstance had planted him directly in the path she needed to take.

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I think you handled that smoothly Levi! Surely she's going to come to your aid now![break][break]

Ever the hopeful moron.[break][break]

Levi lay on the ground, sneering at onlookers nearby who had somehow managed to manipulate gravity in such a way that they remained at a horizontal level. Well, horizontal from his point of view at least. Witchcraft. Clearly.[break][break]

Yet still, he couldn't help but consider how lucky he had been in the universe. Here he was, needed to finish his conversation with Kioko in the middle of a subway station in Japan, and there she was ready to be conversationed with in a subway station in Japan! What were the odds?![break][break]

Yet Kioko's look at his 10 out of 10 entrance and landing was not a look of adoring pity, such as one would look at a puppy. Nor was it a look of wistful longing, such as one would look at a puppy they'd like to adopt. He almost seemed to sense... contempt... such as one would look at a Chihuahua that hadn't stopped yipping in over 17 hours.[break][break]

"Kiki, wait! Train'll be here quick!!" He felt that avoiding the 'O' sound was in his favor, considering the butterflies tying knots in his stomach. "Take me!" He was doing excellently at getting his point across efficiently.[break][break]

As Kioko moved to walk past him, Levi knew he'd only have one chance, one shot, to make sure he didn't lose her into the night for good. His timing was immaculate as she stepped close enough to his wrist, her heel in the perfect place for him to attempt to grab. With as much strength as he could muster (which was admittedly almost nonexistent), his hand reached out, attempting to wrap around her ankle. A thin trail of purple liquid shimmered around his palm, her master's pleas falling to her alone as Skylark attempted to make up the difference.[break][break]

His thumb and middle finger barely managed to form a circle, with Skylark slyly closing the gap to hold them together. Much like a singular handcuff closing, she had heard his command not to lose Kioko and done her part.[break][break]

"See?? Friends!!" He shouted loud enough to reassure the passersby that this was a totally normal occurrence for the duo. Most importantly, he shouted it for Kioko in mistaken hopes that she would not leave him behind.

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[Kushiki Kioko]

I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP

AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP

Ignoring people was a specialty Kioko had honed in high school and in prison. It was remarkable how similar the two could be. Levi’s continued pleas fell upon intentionally deaf ears. Until he had the audacity to reach out and touch her.

She froze. Not with fear, but rage. He had seen earlier what happened when people violated her personal space, yet here he was tempting fate with a reenactment of her wrath. Her head turned ever so slowly to look down her nose at the man. Slitted pupils narrowed so severely they nearly disappeared into the silver backdrop of her irises. She hissed, forked tongue snaking past fangs and frowning lips in annoyance.

Were there not a myriad of onlookers bearing witness to the exchange, Kioko would have pulled her foot back. Not for freedom, but to kick him squarely in the face. Alas, there were people watching and once again, Levi’s saving grace was Kioko’s desire to not catch another charge. But if he kept acting a fool, someone was bound to call the police. Even if it was done on her behalf to rid her of the man clearly harassing her, Kioko didn’t want to deal with them or their questions. Not to mention the inevitable news articles that would arise from it with or without the so called reporter clutching at her writing his own story.

The hiss turned into a sigh. It seemed the quickest solution to rid herself of this pest was getting him wherever he was going. Preferably in one piece now that people had seen them together. Unless she wanted to be implicated in whatever misfortune befell him.

“Fine. Just stop calling me Kiki, you buffoon.”

She reached down to grab him by the collar. Her mercury from the earlier bar fight was still hidden beneath her clothes. Kioko used it to aid in pulling him to his feet. “What line are you taking,” she asked as she tried to lift him. Hopefully it wasn’t so far out of her way that escorting him would take all night.

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C'mon Levi, she's gonna leave you behind! You can't lose her now![break][break]

Thankfully, his mind was holding together well enough to attempt to formulate a plot. His body, however, mushed about on the floor like the puddle he felt his mouth was about to produce. She had only taken a singular step as his hand wrapped around her ankle, but the force had been enough to slide him forward. His body ragdolled limply behind as Kioko stared him down.[break][break]

He would have loved to see her face looking down on him with pitiable admiration or with the tender gaze of a nurse about to care for her patient. Instead, his view was of cold white tile pressed into his face as the drag brought him nose-first with the platform. The snakelike hiss of a train pulling into the station oddly seemed to be coming from above him, weirdly enough as though it were coming from Kioko herself![break][break]

He felt her hand grasp around his collar as Skylark released from her ankle, forcing him to the feet as the ground left his immediate view. "yay" he softly muttered as he was raised, his feet flopping beneath him as he was righted. Curiously, the witchcraft of the onlookers surrounding seemed to fade, as they too returned to normal gravity positions.[break][break]

"Fine, I'll just.. *urp* I'll say friend. Name hard." One foot shuffled in front of the other, only just, as Kioko dragged Levi to the platform. Deep down, he was truly thankful she hadn't left him behind. Deeper down, he contemplated burning the bar that had put him in this position to the ground.[break][break]

"Line? Uhhh..." He had to think fast. He knew which line would take him home, but how would he convey the message effectively?[break][break]

"Red bad. Green? Also bad. Blue awful. Silver nice, line bad."[break][break]

Damn, he was getting good at this.

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[Kushiki Kioko]

I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP

AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP

Kioko had years of experience when it came to deciphering idiotic speech. Sebastianese in particular, as it had come to be called. Between that and her mind constantly unraveling the world around her for information, it didn’t take more than a second or two for Kioko to understand what the pseudo-drunkard was trying to say and exactly why he was having to do it in a roundabout manner — he couldn’t say Os. With those realizations came another though. If she was right, which she usually was, then that meant the strange man was taking the same line as she was and that meant there was a possibility he lived near her own apartment.

“Orange.”

The word came out as a statement rather than a question and was punctuated by another sigh. Her grip shifted from his collar to his arm in as much of a vise grip as she could manage given physical strength was just an illusion cast by her Amazonian figure. She pulled him toward the correct platform without even waiting for a confirmation.

“Pathetic,” she stated once more even though his condition was her fault. She could have painstakingly extracted the diminutive amount of mercury she had injected into his bloodstream, but he still deserved his suffering. And perhaps she did too. Having to babysit him had to count as karma for her crimes.

Their short jaunt concluded at the open doors of a waiting train. At least their timing had been on point. Kioko shoved him forward over the threshold and toward an open seat.

“Sit.”

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