justonetruth | (no subject)

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There's the black suited Kazuha again. Though it might be you hear here before you see her. Not that she's shouting this time. No, it's more the ragged breathing and the stumbling down the hall, mostly moving along with a hand against the wall. Sometimes gripping the light fixtures and turning to press her forehead against the wall and letting out a long, low keening sound, like a whine really. Her free arm is pressed against her stomach, looking almost in pain.

Though the most worrying fact is the large amount of blood on her face. Mostly it's on her face and slight smatterings on her neck and along the top of her shirt. It also seems her suit is oddly singed.

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She moves much faster than he expects, but Kaito has always been quick on his feet, and he's tense and poised to push her away to protect himself. But when she stiffens and does his job for him, he stumbles backwards a few steps, eyebrows shooting up and expression flickering into bewilderment.

"What--" It's then that he realizes she has no obvious injuries that would leak that much blood. And with the way she's grabbing at those lights, talking about food...

... oh hell.

A deep breath, and he holds his hands up, palms forward, gaze affixed on her staggering form carefully. It's clear she's dangerous, but she's also a friend, and he knows he can't just leave her. Aoko would have his hide if he didn't try to help her-- nor was he the type of guy to not render assistance just because something was dangerous. "Oi, Toyama," he continues, ignoring the improper name for now (she's too incoherent for him to correct her), "... I don't think I can give you what you want, but there might be something in the kitchen."

And he'd have to figure out a way to turn off those lights, too.

Kitchen, food, safe food, not people, not blanks, not people she's supposed to protect.

"Where...?" Her voice is desperate, begging for him to tell her, and she is ready to bolt as soon as she knows where she needs to go.

"Down the hall," he answers without hesitation, "To your left."

He's ready to bolt with her.

And without another word, she turns and she's running. Or, well, running as well as she can. She's still stumbling. It's only to be expected, with what her body went through. Even the healing itself was rather taxing on it.

Pain and difficulty didn't matter. All that mattered was sating this hunger before she lost all sense of control.

She didn't ask, didn't slow down, and wouldn't even let Kaito help her because he smelled too good for her right now. All that mattered was getting to the kitchen and she burst through the door and almost fell over from the move. Eventually managing to stumble to the fridge and nearly ripped the door off the hinges.

It didn't matter WHAT it was. Kazuha just grabbed it, ripped open the packing, and started eating.

Kaito was right behind her, kicking off from the ground and falling into step behind her, keeping pace as best as he can (and with her stumbling and his natural speed, it isn't that difficult). He follows her into the kitchen, silently glad that she didn't run into anyone else along the way, and as she bursts inside he hovers around the entrance, both to keep an eye on her and to make sure no one else enters without proper warning.

A frown is tugging down the corners of his lips, and as Kazuha raids the refrigerator, he reaches up to flick off the overhead lights.

What did you get yourself into, Toyama...

Was she eating raw meat there?

....yes, yes she was. Doesn't seem to care much.

Half of the contents of the fridge would be emptied before she finally stopped, still breathing rather heavily. However, for the moment, that hunger was sated. At least enough for her to think again.

Mansion, she was in the Mansion.

...and still smelling blood.

She doesn't even close the fridge before moving to the counter. And immediately pulling off the suit jacket, shirt, and tie. More oddities would be apparent now. For one, while she was wearing underwear, it was more like a wrap that women might wear for support a good few centuries before the invention of a bra. There was also rather extensive scarring along her shoulder on some side, like some large beast had taken a bite out of her, with more clawed scratches along her arm.

She is also immediately putting her clothes she just took off on the stove and setting them on FIRE and throwing them in a pot to burn before moving to the sink and scrubbing the blood off her face and neck rather intensely.

Whatever she got herself into, shame was far from her first concern in dealing with it.

Embarrassment is the farthest thing from Kaito's mind at the moment, and as an avid traveler who often had to settle for less than ideal accommodations, it was something he had become rather desensitized to over the years.

The scars were the most worrying, and the frown etched in his features deepens-- but as a Kaito with a Kazuha he knew had been seriously injured in the past (tomb raiding was far from a safe profession), they didn't necessarily surprise him. "Hey..." he says as he closes the kitchen door behind him and approaches her cautiously, "There are extra, clean clothes in your dressing room downstairs. And a shower will clean you off better than the sink will."

Kazuha keeps scrubbing with copious amounts of soap for another minute or two before answering, but there is a slight turn of her head to say she heard. Just talking with soap and water over your mouth doesn't work too well.

She only finally stops when the over powering smell of some lemony scent and burnt fabric overtakes any smell of blood and only then does she let out a breathe and relax a bit.

No blood smell, probably ate too much for her stomach, she could fight the influence now.

She finally looks at Kaito, still looking pretty worn out by the whole thing. "...too old and too well fed. A Kaito-san, right? Sorry, I was...kind of not all there," she said, looking a bit sheepish and trying not to think about Vulpecula because thinking about Vulpecula was a bad idea right now.

She looks at her clothes burning on the stove. "..." Well, it did get rid of the blood. "Dressin' rooms are downstairs, right? No, ya said that," she said and shakes her head. "I should get new clothes, yeah."

Too old he understood-- he was at least five years older than almost every Kaito he had seen in the mansion so far-- but too well-fed?

A hand slides over her shoulder again, meant to be comforting, turning her slightly so she was facing him. Coherency... this was much better. Despite what had happened to her, Kazuha was still in there. "Kaito-san is right," he answers with a slight grin, an attempt at lightheartedness to ease the tension, "Or Kuroba. Or, and this one is usually your favorite, 'That thick-headed idiot.'"

He tugs against her shoulder lightly to lead her toward the door, assuming she needs the support. "You should. I'll walk with you."

Kazuha let out a weak chuckle at the joke. "Ah, that was yesterday. I actually still owe that idiot another hit," she said. "He had the gall ta limit one per conversation." Yes, joking was good. Joking meant not thinking about how she's probably going to need to beg for Jinx's forgiveness when he finds out what she tried to do and what she did.

She nods. "That'd be helpful. Everythin' is a bit....shakey. I kind of got put through the rin'er back where I was."

Coherency was definitely returning though.

"... I can tell," he responds as he leads her out, checking the hallway to make sure it's clear before continuing downstairs, "What happened?"

Why are you ASKING THAT?

"...explainin' means explain' the amnesia deathcave a bunch of us stupidly agreed ta goin' ta."

Who knows, maybe he wouldn't want to know after saying that?

... it might have worked, if the person she was talking to at the moment hadn't been a Kaito.

"The hell are you doing agreeing to go to a place with a description like that?"

"I don't remember yet."

Well, she DOESN'T. Thus the amnesia part.

"Pretty sure I followed Heiji."

It was a fair enough point, so he gives it to her, though not without giving her a Look as well.

"Hattori?" a snort, "Funny, it's usually the other way around where I come from." A beat. "Explaining is up to you, if you'd rather keep it a secret."

"Is it? About time. Does look like I'm always followin' him. Or I get kidnapped," Kazuha said with a scoff. She's decidedly not amused by this fact.

"...Sabra La Tau isn't a pleasant place. And sometimes there are affects from thin's in that place that lin'er. Blood and me....don't go well together. Even when I'm perfectly fine, it gets ta me, and thin's were already difficult before that," Kazuha said. Vague, but sort of getting to the point. Just the whole being cursed by a god of a dying world would probably need context. As well as the nightmare.

And almost eating the teammates for the Kaito in that place.

Extremely vague, but he thinks he might be picking up on the gist of things.

"... 'don't go well together' doesn't seem like a proper description," he noted, steering her toward a staircase that lead downward, "Unless you mean that in the sense that blood has always made you... well." H-handwave. "Hungry,"

"...exactly. It makes me hungry," Kazuha said, following along. "Depending how I am, the hungry for 'what' gets looser and looser restrictions."

He just had the luck of running into her when the restrictions were just about nonexistent.

"... why?" Curiosity laces his tone, with just a bit of wariness. He's already made a guess (while he doesn't believe in the existence of vampires back home, it is at least a possibility in this place), but hearing it from her would set straight any misconceptions.

"Because it BUILDS and it forces ya ta do whatever it takes ta satisfy it. It doesn't matter what, just so long as it's edible, even if it-"

And that's the point where she has to acknowledge that she did actually eat human flesh back there and pulling away because once you remember that, you can't not be sick.

He lets her pull away, the gears in his mind turning as he draws conclusions. He is no detective, but he isn't stupid, either.

"O-oi, there's a bathroom--" he reaches out to push open the nearest door, hoping it leads to a bathroom as he does so.

It's lucky that it is, because she's hurrying inside and all that food really will be going to waste.

OhgodohgodohgodIdidn'tpleasetellmeIdidn'tactually-ONE OF THEM WAS A KID.

He stays near the door frame again, flickers of concern breaking through his normally neutral demeanor as he watches her.

"Kazuha..."

She doesn't answer. Really can't, because she seems determined to completely empty her stomach. Even before all the food, it was THERE, it was inside her and she was digesting parts of SOMEONE ELSE and no, no, no, GET OUT NOW.

She doesn't pull away until she's only able to dry heave. Even if her throat burns and the tears are coming, she can't let herself think to much about it. Can't, can't, can't, Kaito is not the person she needs to turn to for something like this. Even if it's a different one....

"...we need ta go back to the kitchen. Need...need somethin' else after that."

Sometime during all of this he had moved from the door to crouch down next to her, one hand running soothingly across her back while the other kept her hair out of her face.

"Can you walk?" he asks once she speaks, because she sure did look sick and weak and pale after that.