WHEN: 2044 or thereabouts
WHERE: Seiiki District, abandoned house
WHO: Ichi and Naoki Sato
--
There was little space in the yard of that old, abandoned house. It was open enough, the well that once stood at its center long gone and filled. Ichi stood with his back to the gate that separated his father's hideaway from the Seiiki streets and met the eyes of the silver-haired Jikininki across the yard. Between them a risen corpse wavered on its feet, each forearm mangled to wrap around the blade of a kodachi.
"Don't waste energy on controlling the corpse. Don't try to take command of it from me with necromancy. My name and my rite are carved on its skin - you won't be able to," Naoki explained, the voice hollow and rattling through the gaping maw stretching the lower half of his face. "Not yet anyway."
Ichi's command of the art was fresh and uninformed despite his natural inclinations for it. His father was a master of it by then, not something to take lightly. Luckily he'd had learned some of Lex's patience; he did not rush the ghoul, waiting instead for its limbs to stiffen and tense as Naoki's more finessed control of its movements took hold. It came at him in a circling charge, approaching from his left side at startling speed. Ichi blocked its first downward slash with his forearm, a blade of his own running alongside his skin formed of his own blood. He hesitated though after blocking the blow and gave the ghoul enough time to thrust the other arm at his abdomen to force a quick leap back.
"He's teaching you not to rush into action," Naoki observed. The ghoul crouched low as he watched his boy recovering into a more combat-ready posture. "Sometimes you won't have time to think." The ghost of a laugh trailed after his words and Ichi let a sharp exhale out through his nostrils.
He ran this time. Ichi was fast, quick steps feinting a step to the right to prompt a low parry at the side. He jumped above instead, twisting to smear the blood that had once been a blade across the back of the corpse's shoulders. When he landed he pulled on the deep red coils, severing both arms at the joints.
"I needed to see how fast it was," Ichi stated plainly. "I was learning." There was tightness to the way his face moved around the words that marked the slight irritation at Naoki's contradiction of his Abba's teachings. Leaving the ghoul to wobble armless on its feet Naoki stepped forward to come face to face with the boy. Humanity reworked itself onto his own features to mask the Jikininki's monstrous visage, leaving just a thin line of impassivity at his lips.
"You're a bad liar," he remarked cooly. Naoki walked past the boy to reach in under the corpse's ribcage for its liver, expert fingers ripping it out intact. It was freshly dead. Its blood was still warm and the flesh preserved by Naoki's own mix of bloodworking and necromancy. The scent of it carried to the Jikininki's son, dilating the pupils in his pale blue eyes. Despite his discipline his stare fixated on the liver in his father's hand but he did not move to take it.
"When was it? Your last hunt?" Naoki asked, turning to face Ichi again. He recognized the look on the boy's face immediately. When his son refused to answer it confirmed his suspicion that it had been some time.
"Hunger will be a constant companion," Ichi began, the tone and cadence marking it as an obvious repetition of one of his lessons. His eyes followed the trail of red through the air as Naoki pulled intestines from the corpse to puppet them and the liver in a circle around him.
"And a distraction," Naoki added.
Ichi turned quickly and came face to face with the open maw of the ghoul, teeth bared and ready to rip out his neck. Instead of biting the jaws kept opening, widening until they split its head and spattered the boy and his otherwise pristine clothing in red. Naoki came abreast with the mangled corpse and held out a hand for the liver to come and sit itself on his palm.
(( TBC ))