Post by Satoru Alabaster on Oct 20, 2012 15:57:42 GMT -5
If there was one thing that Satoru would never be able to forget about his time in the mob of New Tokyo, it would be the screaming.
It didn’t matter what day or what time or where, there was always someone screaming or crying. Pain, sorrow, pleasure, the contexts changed but the noise was a constant ever-present grating on his ears. He could have dealt with all the gunshots in the world; they were mechanical and almost soothing after growing up under the pounding gunfire…
But screaming was all too human for the russet-haired teen to properly deal with.
“Oi! Toru!” a gruff voice snapped Satoru out of his musings. At nineteen he was jaded and a true deadpan snarker no matter what the conditions, and his eyes glanced up from the wall at his old friend and mentor, Ryota Yamamoto. A grin forced its way onto Satoru’s face.
“What is it, ya windbag? Got MORE work for me?” his question was met with a wheezy chuckle from around the area of his mentor’s graying muzzle. The beard took up most of Ryota’s lower face, and for a forty year old man it was almost too gray to be believed. You aged fast in a warzone, though.
There was a tapping of a worn boot on the concrete floor of the armory where they stood, one of Ryota’s many quirks. “Not from me, Brat.” He replied, jerking a thumb toward the doorway almost lazily. “Gonna have another raid, big one. Boss’ orders.”
Satoru nearly laughed as he hopped up from his chair and kicked it aside. “Let’s not make his Majesty wait then, eh?” Ryota chuckled at his protégé’s enthusiasm. Still so young, and already nothing pleased him more than the thought of blowing someone’s head off. The elder would have been concerned if it weren’t for the fact that this was life for most of the citizens in New Tokyo. This was how they stayed alive.
It wasn’t long before the two stood alongside their fellow mobsters in the main room of their base. All the men present were armed, and from what Satoru could tell it looked like they were making a big move against the shoddy government that was being reconstructed. An organized police force? Now that just wouldn’t do… A few closing words (commands) were said (barked) by their leader. A piggy-eyed man with brown hair and a face so laced with scars he looked like he had been in the losing end of a fight with a cheese grater named Takanabi Hatake… Honestly Satoru had never liked the man, but he had seen them through some tough times and given Satoru a place in the mob as a child.
And suddenly there was action, suddenly there was a raid and alarms blaring and confusion in the main room. A sneak attack? An act of sabotage!? Satoru was shoved to the side by a man with only a few real teeth left in his mouth, narrowly avoiding on of the bullets that had been shot into the crowd. Someone else screamed in agony, and the nineteen-year-old wished beyond anything that it just could have been a silent shot to the head.
Like lighting, his own pistols made their way into his hands. Veruka and Tonio, he called them. Lovely little machines, and almost more deadly than a machine gun in his hands. He rolled behind a few crates and peered out at the conflict, picking out his targets.
The sound of guns managed to obscure the screaming as Satoru fired off rounds upon rounds into the throng of approaching enemies. Heads exploded against walls, leaving new stains. Blood dyed the floor red, enemy and friends life mingling in pools. Satoru almost took a moment to think on that one before a bullet grazed his shoulder, ripping the fabric and flesh in a searing moment of pain that snapped the gunslinger back to reality.
That was when he noticed they were winning. The opposition was slowing and starting to lose ground. Time to get out of cover and double the assault…
At least that’s what usually would happen. He was about to abandon his cover and continue wailing away on the rival gang, but something caught his eye.
Ryota. The corpse of Ryota. On the floor with half his head missing and the remainder of beard stained red. His brain, a sopping mess of gray matter was splattered behind him on the ground. There was a sickening lurch in Satoru’s gut. He had seen others fall in the ‘line of duty,’ but Ryota? The man he had looked up to like a father?
There was a flash of agony in his right leg, as if his very bones were being ripped to shreds and Satoru collapsed with his own painful scream, his guns falling to the ground and skittering through pools of blood as he blacked out.
When Satoru awoke in a hospital two weeks later, he was twenty years old with a shattered leg. Honestly, he was surprised he had been left alive, though he knew that it might not have been luck but a desire to send a message to other gangs about the decimated group. Through the newpaper he discovered that Takanabi had been killed…
It was another few weeks before he was able to even limp out of the hospital on crutches, but there was no place for him in New Tokyo as an unarmed cripple. Especially not with the police gaining a foothold these days… So he left, making tracks with what meager funds he had managed to hide on his person to a city on the other side of the country named Hastu Itonami.
It would be years later that he got enough funds to purchase two new guns, a run-down building, and a few acres of land in the city outskirts. It would be longer still until he met a drunk Swede medic drowning his sorrows in alcohol, and a young woman about to be raped in an ally and made a semblance of a family out of them. And eventually he would think back to that particular train ride to a city he knew nothing about, and smile fondly at the first time in his life when the screaming had stopped.
It didn’t matter what day or what time or where, there was always someone screaming or crying. Pain, sorrow, pleasure, the contexts changed but the noise was a constant ever-present grating on his ears. He could have dealt with all the gunshots in the world; they were mechanical and almost soothing after growing up under the pounding gunfire…
But screaming was all too human for the russet-haired teen to properly deal with.
“Oi! Toru!” a gruff voice snapped Satoru out of his musings. At nineteen he was jaded and a true deadpan snarker no matter what the conditions, and his eyes glanced up from the wall at his old friend and mentor, Ryota Yamamoto. A grin forced its way onto Satoru’s face.
“What is it, ya windbag? Got MORE work for me?” his question was met with a wheezy chuckle from around the area of his mentor’s graying muzzle. The beard took up most of Ryota’s lower face, and for a forty year old man it was almost too gray to be believed. You aged fast in a warzone, though.
There was a tapping of a worn boot on the concrete floor of the armory where they stood, one of Ryota’s many quirks. “Not from me, Brat.” He replied, jerking a thumb toward the doorway almost lazily. “Gonna have another raid, big one. Boss’ orders.”
Satoru nearly laughed as he hopped up from his chair and kicked it aside. “Let’s not make his Majesty wait then, eh?” Ryota chuckled at his protégé’s enthusiasm. Still so young, and already nothing pleased him more than the thought of blowing someone’s head off. The elder would have been concerned if it weren’t for the fact that this was life for most of the citizens in New Tokyo. This was how they stayed alive.
It wasn’t long before the two stood alongside their fellow mobsters in the main room of their base. All the men present were armed, and from what Satoru could tell it looked like they were making a big move against the shoddy government that was being reconstructed. An organized police force? Now that just wouldn’t do… A few closing words (commands) were said (barked) by their leader. A piggy-eyed man with brown hair and a face so laced with scars he looked like he had been in the losing end of a fight with a cheese grater named Takanabi Hatake… Honestly Satoru had never liked the man, but he had seen them through some tough times and given Satoru a place in the mob as a child.
And suddenly there was action, suddenly there was a raid and alarms blaring and confusion in the main room. A sneak attack? An act of sabotage!? Satoru was shoved to the side by a man with only a few real teeth left in his mouth, narrowly avoiding on of the bullets that had been shot into the crowd. Someone else screamed in agony, and the nineteen-year-old wished beyond anything that it just could have been a silent shot to the head.
Like lighting, his own pistols made their way into his hands. Veruka and Tonio, he called them. Lovely little machines, and almost more deadly than a machine gun in his hands. He rolled behind a few crates and peered out at the conflict, picking out his targets.
The sound of guns managed to obscure the screaming as Satoru fired off rounds upon rounds into the throng of approaching enemies. Heads exploded against walls, leaving new stains. Blood dyed the floor red, enemy and friends life mingling in pools. Satoru almost took a moment to think on that one before a bullet grazed his shoulder, ripping the fabric and flesh in a searing moment of pain that snapped the gunslinger back to reality.
That was when he noticed they were winning. The opposition was slowing and starting to lose ground. Time to get out of cover and double the assault…
At least that’s what usually would happen. He was about to abandon his cover and continue wailing away on the rival gang, but something caught his eye.
Ryota. The corpse of Ryota. On the floor with half his head missing and the remainder of beard stained red. His brain, a sopping mess of gray matter was splattered behind him on the ground. There was a sickening lurch in Satoru’s gut. He had seen others fall in the ‘line of duty,’ but Ryota? The man he had looked up to like a father?
There was a flash of agony in his right leg, as if his very bones were being ripped to shreds and Satoru collapsed with his own painful scream, his guns falling to the ground and skittering through pools of blood as he blacked out.
-----------
When Satoru awoke in a hospital two weeks later, he was twenty years old with a shattered leg. Honestly, he was surprised he had been left alive, though he knew that it might not have been luck but a desire to send a message to other gangs about the decimated group. Through the newpaper he discovered that Takanabi had been killed…
It was another few weeks before he was able to even limp out of the hospital on crutches, but there was no place for him in New Tokyo as an unarmed cripple. Especially not with the police gaining a foothold these days… So he left, making tracks with what meager funds he had managed to hide on his person to a city on the other side of the country named Hastu Itonami.
It would be years later that he got enough funds to purchase two new guns, a run-down building, and a few acres of land in the city outskirts. It would be longer still until he met a drunk Swede medic drowning his sorrows in alcohol, and a young woman about to be raped in an ally and made a semblance of a family out of them. And eventually he would think back to that particular train ride to a city he knew nothing about, and smile fondly at the first time in his life when the screaming had stopped.