Author's Notes: Yeah... it’s been a little while since I’ve update this, once again. School’s been a killer. I’ll also admit to indulging myself with a larger dose of rps lately...
The Past is the Past
Chapter 11
~When everything’s at stake
It can be better to yield...
Thus the cliché in the past
Is finally revealed...
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^
“Split up, soldiers,” commanded one of the armed Tekkenshu. He knew Lei and the intruder couldn’t have gotten far at all in such a short amount of time.
Meanwhile, down one of several hallways stemming from the central labs, Yoshimitsu and Lei were in the process of making their efforts to get as far away from the soldiers as possible. For the time being, at least.
Running as fast as his body would allow in its weakened state, the detective was suddenly jerked to his left slightly by Yoshimitsu for no apparent reason.
“What was that for?”
Yoshimitsu sighed, continuing a somewhat fast pace down the white hallway. “You were about to run into a wall.”
“...Oh. Anyway, do you have any idea where Boskonovich is being held?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s on this floor, which is the basement level.”
“No wonder Heihachi hasn’t had so much of a hard time keeping his experimentations secret from the public,” said Lei between breaths. Even though they’d only been jogging for a mere thirty yards, he already felt like he was about the pummel over.
“We need to find the location system around here,” the Manji stated.
“I thought those were generally located up front?”
“True, but knowing Heihachi, he’d sadly be smart enough to keep hidden ones around here somewhere.”
“Yes, but he’d also be smart enough to have a network password set on the laptops at the same time,” Wulong remarked, “If the local area network hasn’t already been disabled in this case.”
“We won’t need a password to at least generate a map of this personal fortress Heihachi’s established.”
Before anymore could be said, both men came to a sudden halt when reaching what appeared to be the end of the rather long hall. Or at least a set of automatic sliding doors, which came together to meet each other right in the center of the blocked path.
“This place is like something right out of Star Wars,” Lei spoke. Still, he was actually somewhat thankful for a break after all the running.
Yoshimitsu’s attention caught the small box of illuminating buttons in an instance. Without any form of hesitance in the slightest, the ninja began reaching one of his hands forward to open the doors. For some reason, Lei couldn’t help feel something wasn’t right here. Though he and Yoshimitsu hadn’t gone very far in this place quite yet, it seemed awfully odd they hadn’t encountered at least one Tekkenshu along the way. It was as if...
“Don’t open the—”
Too late.
The adjacent doors parted to reveal one soldier after another. What appeared to be the head Tekkenshu up front immediately grunted at the sight of Yoshimitsu. “You’re the same guy who led the subversion of that break-out earlier!” the armed man growled, raising his gun a few inches.
“Officer!” a single woman exclaimed, sprinting down the hallway the Tekkenshu were currently blocking the path of. “We’ve just received word that there’s been another intruder.”
“Can’t some of the other guys take care of it for the time being?” the lead soldier remarked, annoyed. “Right now, I’ve got my mind set on mounting this cyborg’s head on my wall.”
“That’s just it,” the young woman continued, who also appeared to be a solider of some kind. “The solders who confronted him were all taken down in a mere amount of seconds...”
“Um, officer?” a shorter man who stood next, and slightly behind the leader spoke.
“What is it?”
“Eh, didn’t there used to be two guys here just a second ago?”
“Shit! He’s right!” the officer cursed out loud for not having been punctilious in the situation. By this point, Yoshimitsu already had his sword out and ready for use. One of the many soldiers wasted no time and took the opportunity to fire several bullets right at the ninja. With a smirk, Yoshimitsu spun his rather long sword right around in a fluent, clockwise motion, blocking the bullets just like that. Almost a split-second later, the Manji continued to surprise the Tekkenshu still more; disappearing right before their very eyes...
“What the hell?!!”
Lei, meanwhile, had proceeded to fulfill Yoshimitsu’s suggestion of breaking away during the distraction, in order to hopefully discover the location of the elder Boskonovich, if not the doctor himself. This was all too familiar to him. The detective could automatically relate all of these twist and turns down unknown paths to the many alleyways in various cities he’d run through so many times before, and just like in those cases, you never knew what or who you would run into around each and every corner of the way.
Coming to a fork of paths before him, Lei stopped to view the silver-coloured tags displayed along the entrance to each hall; debating. They each all-in-all seemed to lead to different lab and testing facilities of the sorts. The long-haired man was about to take off down the left path, when a scream and a few gunshots emanating from down this hall changed his mind in an instance. Lei instead turned around to head down the right path, hoping he wouldn’t meet the same occurrence around the first corner he came to. However, before Lei even reached another split in the hall, the solid walls had now crossed over into glass. Bingo. Just from taking a quick glance inside, Lei could already tell this was a workstation. Wasting no time whatsoever, Lei proceeded to enter the huge room’s thankfully deserted confines.
“Let’s see...” Lei murmured to himself in brief contemplation. Spotting a small office in the corner of the room, the detective hastily sauntered in its direction.
Upon entrance, Lei sighed in definite relief of a large laptop right in front of him. This would hopefully make things to come a whole lot easier. Taking a seat in the spinning chair to his front, Lei proceeded to search the laptop’s many files. It didn’t turn out to be too hard all in this case, as Lei went to the main computer desktop before running the search engine. All that was left to do now was wait for the results, though he didn’t figure it would take too long.
While just sitting in the silence, many thoughts once more began to race through Lei’s clouded mind. He was especially concerned whereas the matter stood on how the battle was going with Heihachi, Kazuya, and Jin at this time. What would happen if Heihachi succeeded? Of course. It would be exactly as the treacherous Dr. Abel had earlier stated. The world would enter ‘The Age of Darkness’, and death would spread like a pestilence throughout the entire globe. The thought itself was too horrible to comprehend, causing Lei to involuntarily shiver at the mere thought of this outcome. All he could do was hope. Jin had to come through...
“Where are you, Jun? If you were still alive, I bet none of this evil would have ever progressed so far. If only... if only Kazuya had of won that final battle those twenty years ago. Your angelic light was the only force powerful enough to overcome the darkness in Kazuya’s soul,” Lei whispered to himself. “Gods, I loved you so much...”
“How touching.”
Lei knew the voice, but didn’t turn around just yet... “You always know how to sneak up on someone, don’t you, Fury?” he voiced out, though in a more silent tone of whispering.
“Turn the fuck around.”
Lei did as he was asked, or more ordered in this case, spinning around in the chair he sat in. “What do you want?”
Bryan stepped more into the light, causing Lei to tremble at what he now saw. It was the sign of irrevocable detriment. Fury’s arms were completely covered in dark crimson, which was obviously not his own. Other random splotches of blood, both dry and fresh, also covered him in random places. “Don’t play stupid. Blood is what I want. Your blood, which will soon soak my hands and every fucking inch of this office.”
Lei trembled still more in fear, though he did rather well in hiding it. It was hard, though... Fury looked purely horrifying. Still, Wulong made an attempt to stand up, but was then pushed to the side in a quick motion by the other man, landing back on one of the wall-lining desk.
“Evil bestows evil, Bryan, as well as hate more hate. Death for death...” Lei stated with effusion. “You’re only digging your own grave. Doing as one will with what one can isn’t always the answer.”
Bryan growled, slapping Lei right across the face in a ferocious backhand. “As long as I have the power, I’m going to use it,” the scarred man chastised with anger. “Now, let me take a moment to decide on the most painful way I can kill you.”
“You’ve already done that...” Lei murmured.
Another slap.
“Don’t you dare look at me with sympathetic eyes!” Fury said, seemingly enraged. “Hate me, goddamnit!”
The Chinese looked away from the American, sighing in the hopelessness of his present situation. “I’m tired of all the hate...”
Bryan grasp his right hand around Lei’s throat, having to restrain himself from crushing it right then and there within his palm. “Hate is the only thing I’ve felt for so fucking long now.”
Lei continued to stare into Bryan’s gaze. His warm, caramel eyes locked with Bryan’s ice blue ones. Their frozen depths seemed to bare endless wrath. “Even so, at least you’ve felt something. Some form of emotion,” Lei continued, feeling the grasp around his throat begin to tighten. “A human emotion...”
Bryan’s cold eyes were narrowed to the max, his teeth fully clenched, and his grasp on Lei shaking slightly from the amount of strength building up inside. The strength to crush him once and for all. Still, this continued for what qualified as more than just a reasonable amount of time – the silent pause.
Lei couldn’t help but close his eyes, knowing this was most certainly the end of the line. The death of Bryan Fury would turn out to be his own death after all...
...However, rather than feeling a tighter squeeze on his throat, Lei instead felt something else. It was the feeling of warm lips upon his own.
What?
Fury’s grasp then intensified still more around Lei’s hollow throat, causing Lei to gasp for air in reaction just to be able to take in a breath. This gave Bryan the opportunity to push his tongue into Lei’s mouth, tasting the confusion. Before the detective could even gather his thoughts enough to react, he felt himself being pushed further down – his back slamming hard against the smooth surface of the metal desk.
“So what is this?” Lei asked, though knowing all too well. “You’re yet again having a hard time deciding if you’d rather kill me or fuck me?”
Bryan leaned down further over the Chinese, between his parted legs on either side of him. “It’s irrelevant, but which would you prefer?” Fury whispered into Lei’s right ear.
Embarrassing enough, Lei started to feel a burning sensation in both his pants, and his eyes. God, when did he become such a crier all of a sudden? Or at least feel the urges to. To just for once let it all out. Still, if the detective had one thing left in this world to hold on to, it was his pride. Even as broken as it was.
“I’d rather die.”
“Is that so?” Bryan whispered with a dark laugh. “Well in that case... I don’t believe you.” Fury then bit down onto Lei’s earlobe, fairly hard.
Fury once more laughed in his exceedingly dark voice. “That sounded like a moan to me.”
“Get off of me. I don’t have time to put up with anymore of your shit,” Lei criticized, knowing he was most likely signing his own death certificate. Fuck it. He didn’t care anymore. “I put up with enough of it when I was forced to endure your crap all those years on the force.”
“Trying to convince me to kill you,” Bryan mocked.
“I’m not afraid to die. It’s you that are.”
The criminal growled in uproar in response to the detective’s previous statement against him, then grasping Lei’s chin in hand in order to make sure the other man’s eyes were redirected to his. “You little shit. Who do you think you’re talking to? I know, Wulong. I know what it’s like to slip into your own death, and to be greeted by no such paradise as so many people in this world anticipate so much.” Bryan continued, looking into Lei’s fear-stricken eyes. “And not one fucking day goes by when I don’t wonder if this is my hell.”
“I... I never knew...” Lei admitted, equally touched and surprised by Bryan’s sudden confession.
“You wouldn’t have. There’s no point in thinking outside the box if you refuse to see through its walls. You’ve always been the true prevaricator between us.”
Impulsively, Lei arched his neck upwards in a sudden motion, capturing Bryan’s mouth with his own. It wasn’t until this moment that Lei truly apprehended the fact that he himself hadn’t made one move in this... relationship whatsoever. Until now.
“You’re right.” the detective once more admitted. “Sometimes the truth is just so much easier to avoid than accept...”
Bryan’s eyes remained narrowed. “Then accept it.”
The taller man then kissed Lei both forcefully and passionately, proceeding to advance upon him. Knowing all too well this would be the last time.
Outside the office, a figure stood. Staring. Looking in on the view splayed out through the partially cracked blinds inundating the thin layer of glass.
Yoshimitsu was frozen.