WAR: WIIGF 25 (Patreon)

Chapter 25

The corner of the living room was a place he used to camp in growing up, his own little not-so-private area of the house. For the last couple days, though, it had also been his newest spot.Lying down here had gotten him some questions since last night but after passing out here around midnight while low on chakra a couple nights back…

Well, after dealing with some odd looks from his mom, he honestly couldn’t find a reason to go up to his room that much. 

Especially considering it was cramped in there.

Back firmly pressed into the intersection of two cheap drywall walls, it was a habit born long before the vampires and it was a habit he was getting back into. Lying flat on his back on the worn rug, phone propped up on his chest, a single white earbud fed the quiet voice of a dead man directly into his left ear.

"…ore of Jeet Kune Do is not accumulation, but the art of simplifying…" 

Calm, precise, and empty of the chaotic, screaming energy of the streets outside, it was a ghost broadcasting from a time long before Ken was born. 

"It is the art of hacking away the unessential."

On the spiderwebbed screen, grainy, washed-out footage of Bruce Lee from the seventies played back, the man's movements a blur of violence as explosive as it was controlled.

The Sharingan stayed active, chakra thrumming and humming behind his optic nerves as his energies flowed slow and clean. The single black tomoe in each bright red iris spun a slow circle, watching the video as much as it was devouring it. 

An active record of every movement fed its way back to his brain, each microscopic shift in weight and every single economical strike was pulled in and stored somewhere he would never forget it. Every second he watched, his red eyes broke the fluid motion down into raw data, executable information as Ken planned out exactly how to make sure it became one-hundred percent his own. 

It was necessary, now.

More necessary than training with Marcus and the Crosscutters. Not like I can get their help right now anyway. Those guys had been good, but Ken needed to be more than good if he had any hope of actually standing up against the things that went bump in the dark. The fight in the alley had been more than a wake-up call; more like a goddamn air-raid siren blaring right next to his ear.

He’d won, sure. 

But it had been sloppy as hell and it took a final fireball that cost him way more than necessary just to make sure the guy wasn’t getting up. 

He’d taken hits he had no business taking, and even after he’d eaten some magical food, his ribs had burned until the very moment he passed out. I’m really glad those Cheesy Poofs can fix broken ribs. On top of that, he’d wasted precious chakra on movements that were flashy, wide, and stupid. He’d survived entirely on the back of magic powers he only half-remembered from what he read and watched as a kid another lifetime ago.

Hell, his own body was moving faster than his brain could steer it half the time.

Sure, yeah, he had the hardware now, even if it was only the basic version. 

Basic as it was, his chakra took his normal old body and made it a high-performance engine and he could inject nitrous in there to push it even further. The Sharingan was software that could push that same hardware even further. But the operating system…

Ken bit back a groan, one hand scrubbing his face. Yeah, my OS is straight garbage. Trying to run a supercomputer on a copy of Curtains 99 was just a dumb idea. He needed more than a simple upgrade. Ken needed a style that wasn't just 'swing the pipe really hard'. 

As cool and as simple as that was, what it wasn’t was a strategy. 

Can’t go treating fights like a coin flip. Because eventually the coin would land on tails.

"…your opponent is a mirror, reflecting your own weaknesses…" Audio hissed with static as the voice continued. "To defeat him, you must first defeat yourself."

Real fortune cookie bullshit right there. But the dead man wasn't wrong. 

His weakness in that alley had been his own ego and all the trust he had in the raw dumb strength the chakra pumped into his muscles with reinforcement. He’d fought like a street brawler, not a hunter. 

All wild strength, zero skill. Like a Kiba, not a Sasuke. 

If he wanted to survive the Butcher, he needed to be both.

“Hey… uh, kid, Ken.”

Ken didn't physically tense. At least, not on the outside.

Inside, though, the warm hum of the chakra spinning in his gut cooled almost immediately. His tomoe spun into nothingness as he killed the Sharingan, the sharpness and color to his vision vanishing with it. Ken pulled the earbud out, slow and carefully, eyes drifting up to the shadow that fell over him, blocking the weak light from the wall lamp.

Harry stood there, his step-dad in a wife-beater and faded blue flannel, big muscles and dark skin seeming to suck almost half the available oxygen out of the living room.

He wasn't drunk. At least, not really.

That was the loudest alarm bell.

"What're you doin'?" Harry's voice was stripped clean of its usual sloppy drunken slur, but it was still thick enough that he could tell the man didn’t want to be here or talking to him in the first place.

"Watchin' videos.” Ken didn't sit up, not bothering to offer his stepdad the respect of a changed posture. Tilting his head an inch, he just looked at the man with half-flat eyes as he waited for the other shoe to drop. “Why?"

Harry grunted as he shifted his weight from one heavy work boot to the other, big and calloused hands shoved deep into the pockets of his faded jeans. He looked… awkward, above all else, almost uncomfortable in his own skin. 

Good. Ken bit the urge back to click his tongue. Squirm, you piece of shit.

"Your mother… uh…" Harry started up again for a second, only to stop after just two words. The man worked his jaw slowly, clearing his throat with a wet rasp. "Maddie. Your mom, she… uh, well, she wanted me to check on you."

Yeah, I bet she was. Ken kept his face a total blank mask, unbothered brick as flat as the wall behind him. "I'm fine."

"Yeah, well." Another low, rumbling grunt slid from free Harry’s mouth. “Just… just checkin’.

The silence stretched out again, quiet enough in the house that Ken could even make out the low plastic tick-tick-tick of the cheap clock hanging on the kitchen wall, each second landing like a physical impact against his eardrums.

He's trying to say something. His eyes narrowed just a little bit, green eyes sharp enough even without the Sharingan. Spit it the fuck out, Harry.

"Look, kid," Harry tried again, words rough and clumsy as they stumbled free from his mouth like he was trying to speak a language he'd completely forgotten. "About the other day.”

Other day? Ken blinked, brain sputtering. That was almost a whole fucking month ago, man. 

“That thing… with your mother. I, uh…" The older man pulled a hand out of his pocket and ran it hard over his face, Ken unsure if the guy was frustrated or exhausted or both. "I was out of line."

Yeah, definitely both. Ken just stared at him, still silent as he refused to offer the man an inch of grace on this. He just let the words hang there in the stale air, letting Harry actively squirm under the crushing weight of the silence.

An apology? From him? The thought just made him wanna spit the words right back in the big man’s face. Years and years of drunk shit from this dickhead and he thinks… 

Ken didn’t know what the fuck Harry was thinking, but it was wrong. This has to be a trick. A setup for a swing.

"I was drinkin'," Harry just kept going, words a too-fast mumble as he looked up to focus his eyes firmly on a water stain on the wall somewhere a good two feet over Ken's head. "Not an excuse. Just… a reason. Things get… heavy, y'know?"

Oh, I know heavy. He wanted to laugh, the feeling already bubbling up in his chest, but he choked it down before it could make it all the way up his throat. But you lie like shit, man. He could almost feel all that bullshit rehearsed insincerity, rolling off the man in waves. 

He didn’t know what the hell this half-assed performance was for. Maybe his mom had probably finally threatened to pack his shit in garbage bags and kick his ass out onto the avenue for good this time.

Whatever it was, it had the man as close to groveling as Ken had ever seen.

"You got a right to be pissed, kid. The way I acted… it wasn't right. And… and puttin' my hands on you… on your mother…"

Harry finally snapped his gaze down, looking directly at Ken. For a split second, Ken saw something genuinely dark flash in the man's eyes. Then it was gone, instantly buried back under the usual, suffocating layers of half-sober pride and bitter resentment.

"I'm… sorry, alright?" The words came out like he was shitting glass even as Kenneth just kept staring his way.

"It's whatever…" Ken shrugged, finally breaking eye contact. “Don’t worry ‘bout it, Harry.” He looked back down at the cracked screen of his phone, clicking his tongue. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his stepdad’s heavy jaw tighten, the muscles bunching up hard, a flash of that same anger back in his eye.

"...fine," Harry grunted again, the mask already slipping.

The man turned his oversized shoulders and walked away, pointless work boots only good for bar crawling thudding hard against the floorboards. The sound of the kitchen door swinging shut echoed loud a moment later.

Ken didn't move until he heard the heavy suction of the refrigerator door, followed immediately by the sharp clink of a glass beer bottle against the shelf.

Green eyes rolled in his head. Some things never change.

With a sigh, Kenny shoved the earbud back in where it belonged as the calm clean accented voice of the famous Bruce Lee sounded out loud and semi-clear. 

"…true mastery is a thing not to be sought as perfection. It is not about being invincible…" The voice on the phone hissed through the static. "It is about being adaptable. To flow around the obstacle. To be like w—”

“Kenny…”

Ken’s head snapped up.

His mom was standing in the doorway, halfway paused with a plastic laundry basket balanced awkwardly on her hip. She was wearing her old blue scrubs, fabric faded from a hundred washes.

“Hey, Ma,” Ken’s voice instantly softened, calmer and clearer than what Harry would ever get from him. “What’s up?”

“Mmmn, nothing much. Just wanted to tell you I caught Cece thinking she could sneak in and  out of your room again. Thought you should know.”

Ken groaned, genuine and exasperated older-brother annoyance coating his voice as he sat up fast, almost jumping to his feet. “That littl—!”

The word didn’t even clear his teeth.

The blaring polyphonic ringtone of his phone suddenly went off like a bomb, cutting him off completely. He yanked the earbud out, eyes flicking right down to the screen.

The caller ID flashed bright in the dim room.

Father Keane.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Formless Study – 100  NP

Use the Sharingan to record and analyze martial arts movements for future replication.

[ROLL: Jeet Kune Do – One Finger Death Punch] – 0 NPFounded in modern times, this hybrid school is a true everything-goes style. Using all forms of strikes and bodily movements, practitioners seek formlessness and no limitations. It draws inspiration from Wing Chun, Kickboxing and Fencing.

Nexus Points: 350