The violence suited him. The brutality of each slice and the way in which his blades sunk into flesh or cut bloody swathes through undead was a delight he could not hide. It was painted on his face with a confident, wide grin. His enjoyment of the reverie of violence was always a point of self-loathing, and yet Bushi partook of it all the more. It was everything he’d ever known and everything he’d ever be. His entire existence was that of a life-taker. Before he was given thought, he took lives; after his ascension from thoughtless Kami to walking god, he continued to take life. Everything he knew was some form of violence.
The undead proved challenge-less as Mia placed him in charge of combat. He knew that, had circumstances been different, he would have been able to purge this building on his own. With a group of capable beings, the task was almost insultingly easy.
“Get do…”
Then everything exploded.
It wouldn’t be accurate to say that
everything exploded. Only one thing exploded, but it exploded in such a way that everything changed: either being obliterated in a ball of fire or, in the case of the five Peacekeepers, hurtled out of the building’s thirtieth story window.Bushi was catapulted away from the rest of the group’s freefall: he had been in the thick of the violence and ahead of everyone else. Leading to him getting a big brunt of the explosion.
That led to him flying further away from Robin and Angel and Cerulean and Mia and, perhaps most importantly, the building.
Bushi was a powerful person, but his skillset was limited. He couldn’t fly, and he couldn’t right himself mid air. He saw that he wasn’t going to get close enough to a building that he might be able to rappel down. He reached for something at his belt, as if it might save him and then he just...plummeted to the ground, seemingly out of everyone else’s sight and mind. It would be accurate to say he was the first to hit the ground, if it wasn’t for exactly where he landed.
Bushi’s freefall ended with him crashing into the roof of a parked car. The twisted metal crumpled under the weight of the body, seemingly wrapping itself around Bushi, like a hand had reached up and crumpled the metal and flesh into a fistful of paper.
Most people who fell thirty stories down and landed on top of a car were picked up in multiple body-bags. Some of them were suicidal, some of them were homicidal.
Bushi wasn’t most people.
If someone wandered over to the destroyed car, they would see a body: seemingly broken, but slowly shifting in mass as it repaired itself. For thirty seconds, Bushi remained still before his eyes shot open and he took a deep lungful of air.
“SonofaButtery Crumpet. If I find out which stupid motherFried Fish and Ducker set up an exploding Fried Fish and Ducking undead American sodahole…” The translator in Bushi’s ear transmited the tirade of angry Japanese into a very strange mix of food and anger. He looked down to the thing he’d cradled before hitting the car: It was his replacement gourd. He pulled off the cork and took a swig of liquor before getting out of the twisted metal carnage.
“Ow…”
He was across the street from the rest of the group, and in that time, they had gathered around something of interest. They had their backs to him and he saw the injured body of Robin on the floor. His face twisted into one of melancholy. “Someone is going to pay for this.”
The ambulance arrived quickly and Bushi turned away from the broken form of Robin. He wore his fury on his sleeve, walking over to the group and eventually hearing the order to take to the humvee. He obliged, taking periodic swigs from the Sake gourd and not offering any to share.
...Someone was going to pay.