[h2]Sasaki Kirima - Relapse Part One[/h2]

As he was thrust into the ground like nothing more than a mad dog to be put down, the tall student couldn't help but feel a warped sense of complacency. It was like he wasn't entirely there. As if it were all just some surreal situation and he was just watching the events unfold from the outside, detached from his mortal body and helpless to stop anything even if he wanted to. There was no resistance, just the familiar feeling of his body being subject to pain designed to incapacitate mundane men with fragile constitutions. It hurt, but it far from crippling. 

Sasaki's lips curled into a small, grim smile as his body was dragged into a storage room and isolated from the outside, from his friends and allies. With every fiber of his being, he desperately hoped that they'd all come out of it unscathed, that the price for his mistake wouldn't be paid by his friends.

Sasaki was pushed into the center of a circle, four armed terrorists encircling him like vultures while the other four stood away, like their own little island of evil. The storage room smelt of decayed flesh stuffed in a pantry, but moreso the decomposing tissue now that he was in an enclosed space fenced in by assailants. The smell didn't help much with the headache he'd received from the anarchist beforehand. The room itself was sparesly decorated, shelves lining the walls, themselves lined with all the usual materials one would expect a cafe to stock. The titan's stomach growled. [i]'Thinking about food at a time like this,'[/i] Sasaki thought, [i]'How pathetic of me.'[/i]

The Iron Giant lay crumpled on the cold storage room floor, like a puppet with cut strings. Though his powerful frame took the free blows nicely, his joints still ached and his arms were dislocated by the precision strikes of these terrorists. His two arms hung uselessly at his sides as he counted down the long seconds, paying close attention to the sounds of the outside. There were no gunshots or screaming, that was a good sign at least. He could take solace in that fact. Even so, Sasaki couldn't help but feel surrounded by a bitter sense of despondency. [i]'...What are you doing, Sasaki? Clinging desperately to an absence of noise like it means anything? Thinking naive bullshit like 'everything will be okay so long as I don't know for sure that they're dead'? How pitiful. It's just an excuse. Another shitty justification to wash your hands clean of guilt.'[/i]

[i]'That's right. In the end, I'm just leaving them behind again.'[/i]

Sasaki's empty eyes began flickering to life, his thoughts permeating his very being like some kind of warped rationalization. [i]'I want to save them, right? Why am I doing this? Why am I allowing this to happen? Why am I keeping everything under wraps? For justice? Without my strength I can't save a single soul, help a single person. For those I turned my back on? The dead cannot forgive the living; they don't care what happens. For the sake of my newfound friends? Hah. Admit it to yourself. You're afraid of loss. You're afraid, so you're denying who you are so you can pretend that it's all okay. You're ust playing around. Playing at fighting. Playing at friendship. Playing at youth. You're just using them. They're your excuse.'

'In the end you haven't changed one bit, have you?'[/i]

The giant's mouth was a firm line, eyes directed at the ground, staring holes into the tiling.

[i]'...Am I really happy with the way I'm living?'[/i]

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

...No. 

He hated it. 

He hated it from the bottom of his heart.

He hated his strength. He hated how he was a two-faced monster who couldn't do anything but hurt, rend, and destroy. He hated how no matter how hard he tried he could only [i]just[/i] keep it all from boiling over, from turning everyone away from him. But more than that, he hated having to smile when he was unhappy. He hated how he had to lie to his friends, how they were just one misstep from disappearing forever. He hated the way he was living. He hated it a lot, but he wouldn't live like that. He couldn't live like that. Not anymore. 

[i]'That's right, there were only two ways this was ever going to end.'[/i]

Sasaki lifted his head, eyes scanning the room. There were eight of targets in total, four roughly three meters in front of him, and four in his immediate vicinity. Of them, six of which were equipped with assault rifles. Kalashnikov's, of course. Why was he even surprised? His gaze fell upon the rocket launcher brandished by a Clown in the further off group and moved to the one with the revolver. Those two would be his main targets; nobody walks around with a gun like that unless there's a trick, and a rocket launcher fired incorrectly at this range would bring the entire damn building down. He tensed his legs and rotated his pelvis. Good, even with the wounds he could still run. 

Glass shattered elsewhere in the building as Sasaki heard what vaguely sounded like some kind of shounen pre-combat one-liner. But that was his chance, their attention was broken. This battle would be decided in the next second. 

Not even bothering to stand completely, the oni kicked off from the ground, a sizeable crack left in his wake. His aimed at the launcher-wielding terrorist, having made it about two meters in when his foes regained their senses. The sound of gunfire filled the storage room, but was rendered silent as Sasaki altered his charge to avoid the incoming rocket, the gunslingers attempting to get away from the resulting blast zone. As the explosion rippled through the area, sending dust, debris, and a single enemy flying everywhere, Sasaki slammed his shoulder into the now-unarmed heavy weapon user and then into the wall behind him. There was a loud [i]CRACK![/i] as the Clown's spine shattered on impact with the cracking wall, the reactive force driving Sasaki's humerus back into his rotator cuff. He rotated his shoulder experimentally under the cover of dust. It hurt, but it would do. Now for the oth-

Bullets cut through the dust cloud, sending white-hot pain shooting up Sasaki's body. His dislocated arm had sustained three bullet wounds, his left leg two, and his clothes were torn by bullets he'd avoided by the skin of his teeth. He tossed the body to the side to momentarily distract the gunmen in the confusion, taking cover behind the contents of a fallen shelf. He mentally counted down the shots, throwing a stone or two to incite further waste among their ranks. But the cloud of dust was quickly fading away, rapidly stripping the giant of his concealment.

Sasaki picked up series of stones and threw them like fastballs at the Clowns as he charged, striking at the closest one with spear-like fingers. His forefingers tore into the Clown's ocular tissue like needles through skin. The warm, almost jelly-like constitution crumpled under his fingerd he hooked them along the bottom of his victim's frontal bone to hold up the thrashing, screaming body. A swift knee to the forearm resulted in another loud crack and the clatter of a rifle on the floor. Sasaki slammed the poor bastard headfirst into the ground as his companions finished reloading.

[i]'Three down, five to go.'[/i]