In Harm's Way

Having taken down the leader, Shugo then turned his attention to the three who were all but petrified where they stood, silently daring them to attack.

"Bastard!" screamed one of them as he charged forward, sword raised high.

'…Dammit!'

Shugo let out an involuntary cry of pain as he responded with a reflexive rising block. While he'd just narrowly stopped the attack from reaching his head, the blade instead dug deep into his right forearm, and Shugo could tell from the extent of the bleeding just how close the punk had come to chopping off his arm below the wrist. The youth glared at the gangster through bloodshot eyes that flashed red, before uttering a single word in a voice that was no longer his alone:

"FEAR."

Shugo shoved his would-be disarmer aside with his uninjured hand before walking past. He didn't bother sparing a glance as the gangster fell to his knees, clutching his head in both hands before throwing it back with a bone-chilling howl of terror. While he didn't know exactly what the older man was experiencing at this moment, the youth nevertheless felt a rush of vindictive pleasure knowing that the man was now trapped in his own personal hell. Though Shugo hadn't so much as laid a finger on him, the way the man writhed and shrieked in terror on the ground was nevertheless a strong indication of the kind of suffering he was now going through.

'Enjoy it while it lasts.'

Shugo glanced back at the man now writhing in agony on the asphalt, before pulling the sword out of his still-bleeding arm with his good hand. He felt the bleeding stop as his arm healed itself, but if the way the pain continued to pulse and throb was any indication, Shugo had a nasty feeling it'd still be there to greet him when he woke the next day.

"Don't mess with us!"

One of the remaining hoodlums lunged at him at that moment – his empty gun lying forgotten on the ground behind him – only to be met with a vicious strike across the gut with the blade's blunt edge that sent him flying a foot or two away and was likely to have cracked his ribs in the process.

"BEHAVE," he growled, not even looking back as he walked menacingly toward the remaining gangster who slowly sunk to his knees and was now quite literally grovelling at his feet.

"You'll find the kid in the trunk," the man offered desperately, his forehead almost touching the asphalt as he begged for his life. By now, both Shugo and the spirit bonded to him could taste the mortal terror that now consumed the miscreant who, together with his peers, had attempted to shoot him to death just moments ago. 'It'd be so easy to kill you right now…'

"Please, just let me go! You'll never see me again, I swear!"

Shugo's sword hand itched as he eyed the grovelling man with barely concealed disgust. More appropriately, he felt a powerful urge to plant the sword right through the man's skull who, as it turned out, had been complicit in an act of kidnapping. The youth took a deep breath as he raised the sword high, letting it out in a roar of righteous fury as he plunged the blade downward-

'…No.'

…Only to stop dead just an inch from the cowed miscreant's head before lowering the weapon to his side.

"ON YOUR FEET, ASSHOLE," Shugo spat contemptuously, the look on his face one of murder as he watched the miscreant get to his feet.

"Please don't kill me!" begged the man a second time, his eyes visibly darting in all directions as he desperately sought a way to escape what was likely to be his impending demise. "I don't wanna die!"

Shugo said nothing as he looked over the gangster like a predator eyeing its prey. Once again, he felt the urge to run his sword right through the older man's gut. And once again, he exhaled heavily as he restrained himself from indulging that impulse. As it was, the way he glared at the miscreant just might have been enough to burn him to ash where he stood.

"GO GET YOUR FRIENDS AND GET OUT OF MY SIGHT. I WON'T LET YOU GO NEXT TIME."

Shugo simply stood there, savoring the righteous justice he'd just meted out along with the feeling of repaying evildoers with their own coin. He paid no attention as the cowed criminal ran past him to where his two peers continued to twitch in anguish, with whom he would undoubtedly attempt to flee. Several moments later, he heard the spirit's voice in his head.

"Only one remains."

------

Ayato sat huddled on the asphalt as he leaned against the rear bumper of his companions' vehicle, opposite from where the youth they'd shot up just moments ago was now breaking them down one by one.

'How could this happen to me?'

It seemed like a good idea at the time. His friend Haru had talked him into joining in one of their side gigs which he claimed was an easy way to make money. As all Ayato had to do was to serve as a lookout while his companions did the heavy lifting and the dirty work, the end result was that he'd get to keep his own hands clean while still getting paid no less than the others by the end of it.

"We've got you," Haru had assured him. "Consider it one of the perks of ending up under a nice boss."

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Ayato had met Dan a week ago, and as Haru had said, the older man was surprisingly nice considering his line of work. Not only had he treated the two friends to an upscale all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant somewhere in their commercial district, the man even gave Ayato enough money to buy a month's worth of groceries on top of the medicines his younger sister desperately needed.

"No pressure, Ayato," Dan said a night ago. "You're not gonna be in harm's way."

It wasn't a lie, either. At no point was Ayato required to even set foot in the compound, much less get directly involved in the job. Instead, all he had to do was sit at the fast food establishment just across the compound, from which he was to watch for any pursuers who might attempt to chase his companions once they'd secured the package. Once he'd made absolutely sure they weren't being followed, he was to meet them at a pre-arranged location, at which point they were to deliver the package to their client.

In all fairness, the smoothness with which the job had proceeded clearly proved that Dan had been at this for a while, and that he knew what he was doing. It was just Ayato's luck that the one gig he joined happened to be the one where they crossed paths with what was basically an unkillable demon out of hell.

Needless to say, what seemed like a good idea at the time proved to be anything but.

'Damn you for dragging me into this mess,' Ayato inwardly cursed his friend who, at the moment, was writhing and screaming on the road from whatever it was that their would-be victim had done to him. If the words he'd heard earlier were any indication, the 'package' they were hired to deliver was, in fact, a person. And while there were many things Ayato was willing to do to earn money, he drew a line at kidnapping and other heinous crimes.

'Damn you for dragging me into this life.'

In his defense, Haru had been a friend of Ayato's since childhood, he'd always stood by him and Ayaka, even when everything else in their life seemed to be going wrong. When that plane crash took their parents from them, and when the grandparents who took them in died in a fire barely two years later, Haru was one of the few friends who was at the wakes and the subsequent funerals.

"C'mon, get real, Ayaka," he told his sister just a week ago, after having just laughed off her latest plea to sever ties with his childhood friend. "Haru's stood by us ever since we were kids. He's always been there helping us get more money when we barely had enough to stay afloat. He's the one you've got to thank for those medicines of yours, and he's the reason we've got enough groceries right now to last us a month! Really, aren't you girls being unfair to the guy?"

The girls constantly warned Ayato that his friend was bad news and could very well get him killed one day, but he never really took those warnings seriously until now.

'Thanks for getting both of us killed, asshole!'

It was only now, as he struggled to make his peace with his impending demise after the job Haru had gotten him on board had gone wrong, that Ayato finally realized just why both his younger twin sister and his girlfriend never seemed to approve of the friendship between them, and why they never missed a chance to urge him to cut ties. Somewhere along the line, Harusaki Ayumu had gotten involved with some really dangerous people, and he, Ayato, was about to pay for it with his life.

'Whatever he did to you, I hope it hurts,' Ayato thought bitterly as he shot a contemptuous sideways glance at his childhood friend.

"Found you."

Ayato's blood froze in his veins as he looked up at the youth – still bloody all over with bullet holes all over his clothing – who was now eyeballing him with a curious look in his eyes.

'Ayaka... Erina…'

'…Forgive me.'

And as Ayato squeezed his eyes shut and waited for death, it was all he could do to pray to whatever higher power existed that the loved ones he was about to leave behind would be properly cared for.

------

Shugo carefully considered the man who'd curled up into a ball at his feet as he raised his sword just in case.

"I find no guilt in him," the spirit stated simply in her contractor's mind. "Inflicting pain on him, or forcing him to fear, would serve absolutely no purpose."

Even without those words, Shugo could sense as much. While he could feel the man keeping his fear under control in what was presumably an effort to face death with dignity, even more telling was the distinct lack of the malice and ill intent that the others possessed. Instead, the man at his feet seemed to radiate a sense of worry and concern about something. Though Shugo wasn't quite clear as to what it was, what was clear to him was that the man was neither a threat nor a target.

He then lowered the sword he held in his right hand back to his side after several seconds, before carefully dropping it on the ground.

"Get away from the car," Shugo finally said, this time in his normal cadence rather than the echoing and menacing blend between his voice and that of the spirit. "And find a new crowd. You might not be so lucky again."

Shugo watched for a moment as the other man got to his feet and did as he was told, standing aside to the right in order to allow the masked teen to open the door to the SUV's rear. When he was satisfied that the older youth wouldn't try anything rash, he turned his attention back to the trunk - and even then, Shugo didn't dare take his eye off him just in case he got any stupid ideas and decided to act on them.

He opened the trunk…

'What the literal hell?'

…And as he did so, Shugo was greeted by the sight of a young boy whose mouth, hands, and feet had been bound with duct tape, and who was now staring back at him with eyes wide with terror.