Deathwish: MPC-025-02 [Language Warning]

"I was twenty-two years old. A hard-on with a pulse, wretched and vice-ridden. Too much to burn and not enough minutes in an hour to do so."

There was really nothing like it.

That feeling. That sensation. That utter, gushing, overwhelming, and entirely engulfing base emotion. No; not an emotion. Far from it. Instinct. A primal part of the human chemistry, one of the things which made a man a man. He had struck the kid and the kid had gone down. Simple, binary facts. Fist into jaw, jaw into two pieces of jaw, a scream into the air, a spray of spittle and blood spattering the ceiling and a soft, heavy, satisfying, fleshy thud as the target hit the floor. Then there was that one lapse. That one, singular moment. To him it was the apex. A single, solitary moment, outside of time, outside of space, where the referee moved down, checked pulses, flipped the fallen over, and looked up, and nodded, all in slow motion, as if the world was taking a quick falter in its temporal structure all for him. Reinforcing what he already knew: that the world-- no, that the universe owed him a goddamn living.

It was that single moment. The moment where there was enough gaseous blood, sweat, and energy in the atmosphere, all intermingling together in the stale air of the Shibuya strip club basement, where he just... waited. It was like the spark was inches from the powder keg, the lit match thrumming with flame and ready to hit the line of kerosene. Silence. Awestruck silence. His perception went into overdrive. Specks of scuffed-up and overturned silt and grit had been pushed into clouds, and now, flickering before his pale, grey eyes, the teen boxer could see them. Throw a Beethoven symphony behind it and the whole thing could have been adequate basis for some bullsh*t developmental affair. Time became non-linear. Space became irrelevant. Life became pointless. It was all just about the fight.

And then, of course, the arena exploded.

Cheers, lurching grasps, degenerate gamblers reaching forward to scrabble up their yen notes that they'd slapped down on "the 'uge friggin' guy" and eagerly collect their winnings like a wizened, old vulture leaping down to collect the profits of the lion's kill, picking at the guts of the gazelle til it was full and there was nothing left but decaying flesh and splintering bone, chipped and finished. Whichever coach he was playing for this week threw a towel over his shoulders and gave him a fake smile. The boxer tugged the bloody masking tape from his hands, discarded it without a word, wrapped his bruised and broken knuckles around the neck of the half-bottle of Jack he'd left waiting for him on his table - none had dared take it - and the colossus waded through the scrabbling hordes back to the washroom where he had left his things.

Half the golden liquid went down his throat. Adrenaline did not nullify the burn of the spirit as it hissed his way down his gullet, as fearsome as he was, but encouraged it; it openly welcomed the warmth in the throat and in the stomach. The other half he splashed over his hands, his broken and slashed hands, blunt impact splitting the skin over every knuckle save for the purple bump on his right pinkie. The boxer slapped a piece of tape over his broken nose for good measure, downed the last of the bottle, then cast it at the wall, tugging on his shirt as shattered glass and residual Tennessee moisture trickled down the bathroom wall, flashing a murderous grin at himself in the mirror momentarily before he left.

He stuffed the yen notes from his sponsor's hands into his pockets eagerly and silently ascended the stairs with a grin on his face. Payday had come around again. The drunken glaze over his cold eyes felt suitable; it added a new tint, a new lens to the way the boxer saw the world. And with that, he tugged his jacket on, pulled it tight, and pulled his way out of the hatch, like the child of blood, fire, and anguish that had to tug its own way out of the dead mother's womb and fight for the life someone else had wanted to give it. Countless cries of "Oh, but Mr. Kumo, will you not stay for drinks? On the house!" and "Please, Mr. Kumo, just a moment to talk about Thursday's fight!". Daichi Kumo shrugged them off, kicked the door open, and emerged back into regular society.

It was ecstatic. Walking down the street just felt different, now. And it wasn't the fight; no, the adrenaline did wonders, but that was one thing where it was only a factor as opposed to a cause. He felt like a celebrity undercover, propping his shades on and walking through the street, somehow keeping his half-drunkenness readily contained. It didn't matter what people thought as they flashed a glimpse at the titan lumbering by, bruised, broken, and slashed to ribbons, fresh, warm blood still whetting his face yet. He knew what he needed to. It was binary. One man had hit the floor and he hadn't.

The phone in his pocket he had forgotten belonged to him in all the anarchy and confusion thrummed with a ringtone he swiftly remembered was his. Eclectic and overpowering drum beat, impossibly fast riffs, miniature solos thrown into every other bar and guttural vocals he had forgotten his ability to identify with. Daichi pulled the device from his pocket and slid the touch-bar across to "answer". Someone hissed into his ear words he couldn't make out through the haze of epinephrine and whiskey. "...party... your place... you said... alcohol... fifty people..." He checked his watch and flexed his knuckles. The less he thought about it, the less they hurt. He had broken his pain. So many hit the wall. He just charged through it, unstoppable. 6:30PM.

"Party starts in half an hour. Bring whoever the f*ck you want." And that was that. He hung up the phone, pressed it into his pocket, and paused for a moment as he caught a glimpse of his image in a shattered shop window. Gingerly he ran a pair of oddly steady fingers over the bruises and bumps along his jaw, before locking grey orbs with grey orbs. The man in the mirror. Something different? Something more? Something less? An illusion or an aspiration? A lion or a fox? Daichi rolled back his lip into a bestial snarl and shook his head. Even if there was a monster behind the musty glass, he told himself every story needed a beast. Red Riding Hood needed the Big Bad Wolf, Beowulf needed Grendel,

Fast forward to seven. Thrumming bass. Idle chatter, which ceased as the bruised titan stumbled past. He remembered grabbing a girl, pressing his mouth onto hers, grasping a bottle... and some endless drink-feed-repeat cycle of that. A storm struck, the lights went out, and all he could see was an eclectic maze, orange trails of burning cigarette stubs flying through the air as the rich, smoky, sexy, alcohol-laden smell trailed around. It was all the same to Daichi. It all fell into some satiating, hopelessly satisfying, mediocre cycle. Sex, alcohol, cigarettes, music. Add a good fight and the Kumo boy, a beast renowned now for only longing after vices of the flesh, seemed to be content and complete.

Fighting topped it off. The other requirements were... auxiliary. The adrenaline was fading; and all he could do was top it up by slinging more alcohol down his throat or pressing himself onto willing, promiscuous girls with their comparatively tiny bodies pressed up against railings, radiators, sinks, mirrors... this was the place he had grown up in, and now his parents had abandoned him for weeks on end without a care in the world - any problem, they could solve by throwing money at - he was desecrating it by partying, smoking, drinking, f*cking, all within these halls that he had fleeting and fragmented childhood memories of stumbling about as a fat little toddler within. So much for growing up.

He set the bottle down next to him and perched himself on the table, tugging an ornate mahogany dining chair around with his feet to rest them on. Daichi pressed the filter of a Marlboro against his lips and pulled out his lighter, rolling the flint. Shhhhk. Nothing. Shhhhk. Still nothing. "Goddamn it..." Shhk-FOOM. Perfect. Flame hit tobacco, tobacco singed and let off an entropic upwards spiral of virginal, deoxygenated smoke, and he took that toke.

That first, crisp, smooth, Marlboro toke. The makings of a smile touched his face as he cradled the cigarette between his bloody knuckles and took the smoke back with a sigh, before hissing it out through his teeth. His lungs burned, they burned with that little fiery sensation, almost negligible, that little strain. Self-destruction was the pinnacle of twenty-first century existence. Bashing your head against the wall was the newest form of success. In solitude, he could appreciate one of life's most plainly and obviously harmful yet most forbidden and condemned pleasures. "Hey. Big guy." Until some spineless little f*cktard came along to ruin it.

As he glanced over the kid and his entourage - two "tough"-looking kids in leather jackets, Daichi grunted in ignorance and pushed his head back down. "I'm enjoying myself." He sighed, taking another drag. Behind the music and the ambient chatter, the cigarette crackled. "If you want to keep your health, try to leave me that way." An agile, gloved hand leapt forwards and swatted the cigarette from his mouth, down onto the floorboard, where a boot crunched it into nullified existence beneath his heel.

"Enjoying yourself on my alcohol," Daichi locked eyes with the little piece of pondscum and furrowed his brow. This was going to get ugly. The kid was maybe five-eight, five-nine on a good day, wearing bike leathers and shades. Shades inside? Kid was a moron. The thumb he had been jerking to the bottle the Kumo boy had his hand on moved behind him. "And enjoying yourself in the bathroom with my girl a few minutes ago." Well, f*ck. This was definitely going to get ugly.

"Well if your girl's going around f*cking other guys, limpd*ck, maybe that says something about your ability to give her what she wants," Daichi stood up, unfurling the complete, towering, colossal extent of his form. "As for the Jack, my party, my rules." The giant cocked his head and looked down at the kid. "Seriously? Have you got a f*cking deathwish?" The boy shuffled back, putting up his hands as if to abstain from violence, realising the error of his ways. Confronting him and maintaining his masculinity in a drunken slur of anger had seemed like a great idea, but damn, Kumo was huge. His entourage had already moved out of fist range, but it was too late. The boxer had made his decision.

In a fluid motion, he spun the unsealed bottle upwards, splashing whiskey all over the floor, and brought it down in a powerful arc upon the boy's head. Once more; there was that moment again, brief and recurrent, where everything ceased. People stopped dancing, stopped drinking, stopped smoking, stopped talking, as the felled boy with the shards of glass embedded into the back of his scalp began to bleed profusely onto the floorboards. Daichi tossed the half-bottle away with a grunt, looking down. The kid was grunting and sniffling, trying desperately to regain his balance and maintain consciousness. Everyone was looking at Daichi, and he knew it. What was he going to do? Leave, or carry on? The Kumo boy had his reputation, after all. A kick in the ribs later and he felt his face redden as he screamed down at the bleeding, unconscious moron on the floor. It had begun but it was far from finished yet. "DON'T GET BLOOD ON MY F*CKING FLOORBOARDS!" And then, a kick in time with each word: "YOU..." Thud. "STUPID..." Thud. "LITTLE..." Thud. "C*NT!"

With that, he turned around, lit up another smoke, and pushed his way past crowds of people converging to check if the kid was, at the very least, still alive. And through it all, behind the rage, behind the indomitable will, behind the pure, furious aura that was radiating from him, it was then, in that precise, drunken, hazy, yet totally memorable moment, kicking open the front door and standing on his porch with a cigarette and a newfound bottle of import-strength beer, that he grinned to himself, looked up to the sky and realised something. He had a gift. Some people could control a room with words. Others with trickery and illusions. After that, there were those that could control it with images, or with music, with sport... people who could drain all the noise from a room and turn it into an apprehensive vacuum with everybody just waiting for what was going to happen yet. And Daichi?

Daichi's gift was that he could control a room with his own little talent. Violence. Nothing shut a crowd up like beating the ever-living f*ck out of someone.

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OOC: Posts please. ^_^ Sorry if the language is a little bit colourful - censored what I thought as necessary. Reposting on V5 for ease.