Gunpoint Kiss- The Roleplay Before the Writing

His breath deepened at the rhythmic rolling of her frame against him. A now familiar burn started building in his crotch, which brought yet more pressure between their bodies. Kazuo lifted away somewhat when he felt hands at his collar; his gaze flickered down at them, but his brows knit a little. He shoved Setsuko over suddenly to the ground. They were outdoors. He didn't want to take off his clothes, and especially not his bulletproof vest.

Still, after a careful glance around, he followed after her, dropping to his knees and then all fours to crawl overtop the girl. He let his bag and Uzi slip off, though he made sure the submachine gun was just beside him, easily in arms' reach.

Leaning closer, his breath sifted through her hair again, before his teeth reached her ear to drag his canines down its outer curve.

The sudden force of his push and her impact on the ground only caused her to get warmer...wetter. Setsuko still followed the first instinct to get up, but she watched her companion crouch down to crawl on top of her. The pressure and weight of his body caused her to be pushed back down, and that only excited her further. She closed her eyes before she became totally at ease on the ground. A sharp, but pleasured hiss escaped her throat when she felt his teeth on her ear.

It was like a few needles were teasing her ear, and it felt nice, but it was not without a strange, prickly feeling. Her fingers grew gnarled with excitement and pleasure, and caught some of his hair and clothing in a gentle, yet firm grip. She tilted her neck further, a side of her lip curled into a satisfied, yet lustful smile. Even with some of the weight from her companion gone, her hips continued to move, like they were begging for his touch.

Kazuo felt a shiver race beneath his skin, all the way from his scalp to the base of his spine, when Setsuko's grasp clutched into his hair. Being pulled closer aggressively egged him on; heat poured into his groin, driving him to bite suddenly harder at the girl's ear and then at the tendon trailing down her throat just under it. His teeth would sink into her skin to be closely followed by his lips clamping down over them, and so the pattern continued down her throat toward the back of her collar.

He crouched close with one forearm supporting his front weight, while his other hand felt over Setsuko's frame blindly. He initially gripped her shoulder, but then his hand clutched over her collar and then a breast, then her waist, then her hip, almost indecisively, like he needed to touch her but wasn't sure where. Eventually his grasp reached her thighs, clutching onto her dress there before starting to reel the garment hastily upward.

Setsuko involuntarily sighed through her mouth and nose. It sounded more nasal than throaty. Each neuron and receptor inside of her body reacted when she felt the soft warmth of his lips against his white teeth, and her eyes rolled upwards as her eyelids fluttered shut. She rewarded Kazuo with more breathy, dazed moans as he continued with his ministrations. The steady notes of her throat were interrupted by gasps of surprise that came from the top of her mouth when his hands went down.

Despite her hazed senses, she could feel the cool air against her legs and the rising hem of her skirt. Her chest began to rise and fall with increasing depth as if she was becoming tired; but it was exactly the opposite. Vigor seeped into every sinew within her muscles. Once the skirt of her dress was pulled up, Setsuko shifted somewhat to pull down her undergarments. After she discarded them on the grass, she pressed her thighs together and blushed, as if she was a little self-conscious to show him her body. She saw that he did not pay much attention to her body, before, yet she still kept herself hidden, almost coyly.

He started to frown, however, upon noticing more of his companion's sounds. He lifted away somewhat to gaze down at her, his face still rather dazed, though also a bit perplexed and a bit sour - not unlike someone rudely awoken from a nap. He brought a finger to his lips to signal for her to be quieter. They were outdoors, after all, and-- he stopped then. Kazuo couldn't stop to think about what he was doing or how dangerous it was in his particular situation.

Still, he continued. He rose to his knees to undo his belt and pants, shoving them down haphazardly with a vaguely anxious expression. Now that the danger of his environment had crossed his mind, his attention had gotten stuck on it, and he felt significantly more nervous. But he persisted before his desire waned, pushing his boxers down only as much as necessary before lowering back down overtop of Setsuko. His face still looked worried; but his breath was heady, and his eyes grew hazy again as he carefully positioned himself inside her with a short groan.

Feeling more practiced by then, Kazuo was rougher. His hips quickly became insistent and relentless, and he felt more confident multi-tasking, so his hands wandered from grip to grip across her frame leaving bruises in their wake, and his bites were hard and hungry. When her sounds began to pick up again, he clamped his hand over her mouth, where it remained firmly even as he pounded into her and his own breath started to carry hints of his voice.

His hand clutched her jaw as if to crush it when his pleasure reached its height, spilling out in rhythmic waves before his frame fell lax and he finally removed his hand from the girl's mouth. He lowered to rest on top of her with a long, tired sigh, his back moving in slow, steady heaves with his weary breath.

She looked up at Kazuo when he rose, and clenched her jaw as he signaled her to be quiet. Setsuko pouted a little and looked at him with disbelief, as if he had just told her a far-fetched secret. It was going to be hard not to make any noise. Yet she nodded, even though she knew that she would go unacknowledged.

The skepticism in her eyes faded as he undid his belt. The tip of her tongue was shy as it swept over her wounded lips. Her eyes became glassy and expectant, and the surge of thick warmth jolted through her core. Setsuko adjusted her hips as if she was uncomfortable, and shivered at how open and hot she was. A small smile curled the edges of her lips when his weight –and heat- returned. A soundless moan etched the air between her lips when she felt him inside of her; Setsuko’s grip on him tightened.
Her hips moved forwards to meet his own head-on in a steady, yet frantic pace. She did not meet his force or speed, but it was enough to pull soft, pleasured mewls. She did not cry out at the sudden bouts of his tightening grip that spread all over her body, something that would have terrified any normal girl into an eerie stillness or a rush to get away. She remained still except for the desperate bucks of her hips.

Slowly, the urgent thought that she had to be quiet faded from her brain, and her noises picked up again. They did not last long, though, as a constricting hand covered her mouth with a forceful grip. Setsuko protested at first by lightly biting at his fingers, but then stopped to smirk through his hold. Her abdomen and waist were on fire from the constant movement; they soon stopped and pressed against him as her inner walls tightened around him in an ecstatic rapture. She moaned into his hand and clung to him tighter when his hold on her jaw tightened.
Soon, her mouth was free, and her senses were slowly returning. The cool air brushed against her skin and her ears rang with cloudiness. Her gaze lingered on the boy on top of her, and it followed him as Kazuo rested on top of her. The girl’s chest accommodated his head well, even with its tired rise and fall. She kissed his head and started to toy with sections of his hair; her fingers dug towards the scalp to run upwards. She held him closer with a gentle pull, and her fingers had not stopped enjoying their activities.

Kazuo found his drooping eyelids drifting shut at the fingertips combing over his scalp. It gave him small shivers down his spine, but felt... as much as he would hate to ever admit it, heavenly. The girl's warmth and hold on him felt more comfortable than he would ever have imagined lying on top of someone would feel. But just as he started to doze off, he lifted away, withdrawing from Setsuko and closing his pants before sitting on his knees and holding himself somewhat as if cold.

He felt even dirtier. He wanted to bathe and change clothes, but that was really not an option for him. He wiped a hand over his face wearily, then glanced over to his things, grabbing the strap of his Uzi to pull back over his arm. The feel of the cold metal was a comfort to his hand as it grazed over the submachine gun, just as soothing - if not more so - as the warmth of his companion's frame.

Setsuko smiled a little to herself as her fingers continued to run and comb through his hair. Her breathing had normalized and her chest was not as heavy, save for the desirable weight of his head. She kissed him on the head, and he lifted away soon after. As he clothed himself, she lay there. Nervousness stabbed her with its icy blade as she felt his warmth trickle down her core. She sighed shakily before feeling around for her smallclothes to pull them on.

She did not look back at him, until a rustling noise caught her attention. Kazuo was gathering his things, and she stood up, only to kneel beside him. The ground was somewhat hard on her knees, but she paid it no mind. She leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. It was a strange gesture: it was gentle, despite how violent sex always was. Setsuko felt odd pressing her bloodied lips against his skin, but it also felt right.

As he was gazing at his Uzi, he was caught off guard when Setsuko moved closer to deposit a kiss on his cheek; but he didn't flinch, only looked at her with a rather indistinct expression. His face was blank, but his expressive eyes were as intense as ever, and silently seemed to convey a very subtle question as if her kiss had perplexed him. But another second, and he noticed something left behind on his cheek , and wiped at it with his jacket sleeve almost like childishly wiping off her germs.

The boy grabbed his bag then before rising to his feet. A vaguely uncomfortable expression crossed his features at a lingering stiffness in his hips, after all the exercise they were unaccustomed to. But Kazuo anticipated that it would wear off as he walked.

He started off again at a leisurely pace in the same direction they had been heading. Sure enough, his muscles relaxed as he strode; though he felt certain they might be sore again after some rest later, he would worry about that when the time came, if it was anything to worry about at all. E4 wasn't far when noise caught his attention - Kazuo froze like a cautious deer to listen. There was a loud, albeit rather distant, metallic banging and then slight screeching... as of something heavy being loaded and pushed into the back of a truck. Kazuo tilted his head somewhat, brows knitting a little. Why would anybody be loading something like that? Was it government officials working on something in the middle of the game..?

Voices soon after were enough to convince him to investigate. Kazuo took off in a brisk jog, not wanting to sprint knowing he might have some distance yet to cover - but moving with enough speed to disregard Setsuko's ankle as he went.

There was a modest amount of distance after all, but not enough that the run had exhausted him. Still, he panted softly through his nose as he slowed where the trees began to thin and the warehouse he had been headed for came into view. Various cargo littered the yard around the dirt driveway, and at the start of said driveway in front of the open garage sat a truck... where three boys stood talking. Watching vigilantly, Kazuo lowered into a predatory crouch and crept closer, out of the woods and between piles of crates until coming to the end of the driveway, where he hid behind some barrels, peeking between them to eye the group ahead. Being outnumbered made him more cautious than usual, especially when he didn't know what weapons he was up against.

The trio's talking suddenly quieted, and one of the boys said something while pointing in his direction. Kazuo bristled readily. He must've been spotted. His hand flexed over his Uzi, just as he watched another one of the boys jog out to the middle of the driveway and wave a flashlight around as a beacon.
"Oiiii! Nanaharaaa!"
Kazuo barely heard the name called before slinking swiftly from his hiding spot to stand at the end of the driveway, opening fire at the young man who had approached. The shorter boy's body shuddered and danced briefly at the bullets that riddled it before dropping to the dirt.

The feel of his skin still danced on her bleeding lips, and so did his taste. Setsuko resisted the instinct to embrace him and remain on the ground –it was instinct, or a desire to make her think that he cared, in any way-. He had already wiped the blood from his cheek and grabbed the nearby bag before he rose. She blinked resignedly and followed suit. Her arms lifted stiffly in the air as she stretched, eventually looking at him from the corner of her eye. As she was about to follow him, she stopped and looked over her shoulder. The wakizashi and the white box were still discarded on the ground. She rushed to pick them up and then continued on her way.
Their hunt was uneventful. Of course, with the number of participants dwindling, that was no surprise. But that thought kept her on edge. Her thumb stroked the delicate curvature of the sword’s handle, and over time, it wandered down to reach the hilt. The incessant twiddling ceased when a distant sound clanged through the cool air. Her eyes narrowed at the sound, and then the reasons changed. She was surprised that she did not recognize the metallic sound immediately. It was a bang...and then unhuman wailing. Nothing more than industry. But it was industry that didn’t belong. Was it the army, or was it a participant readying something?

Just as Kazuo took off, Setsuko’s eyes became bigger and she called out to him helplessly, like a bear cub hurt by a hunter’s trap. She instinctually broke out into a run, before the cartilage and bone of her ankle protested by hitting her with pain; it was worse than the previous pangs...this was different. The agony itself seemed to displace her motion, and she quickly lost her balance. She felt her stomach hit the cold ground, and soon after, the grass tickled her chin. Her tongue had been caught between her teeth and there was a sharp pain in her mouth.

She lay there, immobilized as if invisible hands were holding her in the dirt. Her ankle gave out... The girl breathed in and looked around, even though her line of vision was horribly obstructed. Kazuo was not around...for now, anyway.
But her ankle was too far gone. Sure, she could try her best to bandage it tighter, but it wouldn’t change anything. Her sporadic bouts of sprinting over the course of time only made it worse. Setsuko pushed herself up with her hands, and her arms began to shake from weakness as she looked over her shoulder at her ankle. The area was still bandaged well, and it would stay that way; there was still a wound underneath the gauze wraps.
She lowered herself again, and lied there. Her legs were limp and so were her arms; each appendage was bent subtly at their joints. The cool earth and grass cradled her cheek in their pliable hold. Her eyes stared out into the dark. The brown pupils were as cold as the stars that were beginning to shine in the sky. Narita Setsuko looked dead.

Any passersby, if there were any to be had, would have thought the same. She was unmoving in a tragically beautiful tableau.

Setsuko slowly became alert as the sound of typewriter-esque gunfire tore through the silence. It was Kazuo. She wanted to stay on the ground. He would definitely notice that her ankle was much worse, now...and end her. But she pushed herself up, not without several, agony-filled grunts and sighs.
She had to find him.

There was more urgency in her drive to search, moreso than the other instances when he ran off and left her. This was different. Very different. This time, it felt like something was going to go wrong. The girl tentatively put her foot on the ground, only to flinch and hiss as pain clenched her ankle in its claws. Despite that, she began to walk with the teetering grace of a toddler. Pain was nothing new to her. After all, she had suffered worse at Kazuo’s hands the previous day. She smirked and felt the dark purple bruises at her sides and shoulder.

Setsuko was quite silent for being in so much pain. Even though her trek had just begun, each step became a new level of agony on an almost-unfamiliar spectrum. She moved slowly, but picked up speed whenever she could. It was as if fire was burning in the center of her chest rather than a heart.

Kazuo watched the other two race off to scramble for cover behind the truck, firing after them but holding his position at the end of the driveway warily. The second he had to pause and turn his gaze down to reload, a solitary gunshot burst out after him. Kazuo scurried aside haphazardly, glancing up after where he had practically heard the bullet whizz past - oblivious to the small, bleeding cut in his lip where he had in fact been grazed in the process of glancing up. There was a second shot that he also managed to step out of the way of before he finished reloading, raising the submachine gun again to fire after the duo some more. It seemed like only one of them had a gun, or there would've been more shots by then…

He heard a third shot but it seemed to miss altogether. Just as he resumed firing, one of the two boys rushed out from behind the truck only to get promptly mowed down. Kazuo watched the last of them step out after his friend, but had to reload again before finishing him off.

By the time he glanced up again, he spotted the tall, spiky-haired youth leaping for the front of the truck.

Kazuo barely had time to piece together what was happening. He only fleetingly glimpsed the large canisters strapped to the front of the truck as the other boy rushed for them, and thought back to the sounds of something heavy being pushed onto the back of the truck. It was enough to make him resume fire frantically; the other boy had reached the front of the vehicle, but Kazuo was loading his tall form full of bullets. The boy squirmed and flailed as he fell back to the ground. Kazuo watched his adversary's arm raise up, gun in hand--

Too late, too late, too late, too late. Kazuo lowered his weapon and turned to rocket for the nearest cover, a row of barrels, and saw a light erupt before he even reached the ground behind them. When he hit the dirt on his side the world had gone white and hot. The force of the explosion sent him rolling back across the ground into the foliage, the barrels he had ducked behind toppling after him. It did not sink in that he didn't hear anything; all he knew was an overwhelming heat that engulfed him, blazing across different portions of his frame, and an endless span of white light, and vague sensations of the branches and ground he was tumbling through.

There was a searing pain in his head that he thought might burst his skull open, and then everything went black, silent, and still.

Boy number six lay alive but completely unconscious partly in the bushes. His school uniform smoldered. Bits of flame gnawed at scattered branches of the foliage, fire skittering through the dry grass around the explosion site and crawling up trees. Flames clung to the side of the warehouse nearest the black, withered remains of the truck, and already were slithering inside like practiced invaders. The night had gone quiet but for the hungry crackling of the fire.

Setsuko had covered some ground, but the gunshots were still different. She followed the rhythmic shots. They were still far, and interrupted by infrequent shots that were from another sort of gun. This caused her to move faster, which meant more pain that sent electric shocks to her brain. On one of her steps, she put too much pressure on her foot and she fumbled enough to lose balance, and it took her some time before she got up again. The girl limped, and learned to take longer strides despite her current impediment.
The sporadic, steadier gunfire had ceased, and there was nothing else but the all-too familiar shots of the Uzi.

Suddenly, it all stopped. There was a much louder sound, a boom, and Setsuko’s head tore towards its direction. It was far enough that the sound was not too loud. She saw a brief flash of orange and dark, thin smoke rising from the trees towards the sky. Her entire frame seemed to become as still as a statue. The girl’s eyes were blank and she craned her neck forward as if to hear more typewriter-esque firing.
None. None at all.
Her movements were slow, at first, as if she was recovering from petrification, but her pace picked up, and the steady pillars of smoke and fire acted as a beacon.

She looked on the sight in horror, and even though all of her weight was planted equally on both legs, the pain in her ankle seemed to go forgotten. A constant, yet volatile orange light set her skin and eyes aglow and killed the coolness that the air had to offer. There was fire, a ravenous fire that wasn’t that big; yet it grew, with the hunger to swallow the world. Heat killed all of the coolness that the night air had to offer. The flames licked the grass and started their ascent up any tree in its wake. It was not a terrible fire, though. Not yet.

One of Setsuko’s fingers wandered up towards her face to feel the smooth, now-dark skin under her eye. It was wet. Awareness hit her, and she realized that she was crying. Her face did not contort into painful sorrow.
“Kazuo.” Her voice was soft against the crackling inferno before her.

The girl moved towards the building, her eyes hastily moving around despite that she was squinting. She forced herself to move faster, stumbling over onto her knees once the pain in her ankles became too much to bear. She held herself despite the heat, and kept her frantic search while she was useless on the ground. The girl stopped in a double-take once something caught her eye.

Setsuko cried out as she forced herself up. She faltered only once before she was perfectly balanced and straight. While her muscles were obviously tired from the constant agony, there was something else that drove her. There were barely any complaints as she strode over to what she saw.

It was him.

He was a slump on the ground, and was not moving. Kazuo was in the bushes and her eyes widened. She had to move him away. She rushed over to him and knelt beside him. She was too scared to even check if he was alive, the first thing she did was grasp him under the arms and dragged him away from the flames as far as she could – which was only a few feet – before she collapsed. Setsuko’s breathing was hard, and labored. There was no way that she could move, now...not extraneously. She watched the flames spread over the scape with a tired, hopeless glance before returning to him. Her fingers tentatively stroked his hair. Her eyes scanned his features, trying to look for anything that she could attend to immediately.

Faint, blurred, abstract colors sifted through the blackness without sound, as if his mind was trying to busy itself. He had no thought to where he was, what had happened, or that he could not hear or feel anything - as of the oblivion of a dreamless sleep. He had no sense of urgency to wake.

Kazuo's face was deeply troubled, even pitiable, like a child in the midst of a nightmare. His eyes did not stir with any sign of consciousness whatsoever, his body perfectly limp. His uniform was singed in various places that continued to smolder somewhat, and torn in great rips where branches had snagged the fabric, and dirtied from the roll across the ground and the ashes and debris that had been blown over him.

His bag lay entangled back in the foliage, his submachine gun a little ways off though resting in the dirt clear of vegetation.

Every shred of hopelessness and dread flooded into her eyes as she remained by his side. Setsuko looked around pleadingly to search for help, even though she knew that it was long gone. She closed her eyes resignedly before opening them again. Her gaze flew towards where she thought that the medical kit and wakizashi would be, but they were left behind in pain and panic. A heavy breath caused her chest to expand, and the girl wished that a breath would cause her lungs to be pierced by her ribs.
She blinked through the tears that she was holding behind her eyes, within her skull and mind. He still had a few medical supplies in his bag.

After locating them, she shuffled from his side. Setsuko did not move without reluctance. She came to a full pause before looking over at him, and then she scurried to get his bag that was lying away from the flames. Her lips pursed when she also saw the Uzi, but her hand grabbed the rough strappings of both and she pushed them towards him before making her way. The girl had to shove them along before she was back by his side.

Cold, shaky fingers unzipped the bag hastily. Bits of bread and water bottles were cast unceremoniously to the looser recesses if the bag before she happened upon the supplies that he took the day before.
Only gauze...the cream and stitches.

At the moment, the boy looked more dirtied and singed than wounded, and there was some blood that decorated his lips. Nothing to bandage up, for now... If there was a deeper wound, she would spot it through his clothes eventually.

She could only look at his face, which caused her heart to well with stinging pain. This boy, who had caused her so much pain, yet made her feel alive, looked more like a scared child than a killer. Setsuko inched closer towards him to plant a kiss on his forehead to comfort him, despite that she knew that he probably could not feel it.

She remained with him, her fingers going through the motions of his hair with the fire at bay.

Eventually, after an indiscernible amount of time, a growing discomfort started to rouse him. It was warm. He felt uncomfortably hot, like he had fallen asleep in direct sunlight or under too many blankets; it created a groggy, sweaty feeling over his skin. He wanted a shower.

A long, soft, tired sigh drifted out of the boy, and his breath seemed to carry wakefulness through his muscles as his frame slowly tensed and seemed to hold more of its own weight.

He felt hot. His head hurt. His eyelids felt heavy, as if he had been asleep too long and his eyes had gotten stuck in place. But when he tried to stir them into opening, he realized his eyes hurt, too, and it made his head hurt more in turn. Finally, Kazuo moved to sit up; it made his body tingle like a limb that had been asleep, but the numbness then built into an uncomfortable ache, and a wave of dizziness through his brain sent him reeling over sideways - into somebody. But Kazuo was too disoriented to be startled. Instead he clutched onto the person's arms to try to hold himself up clumsily. Fuck, his head hurt - he felt dizzy and his head hurt. And just as he realized he wasn't hearing anything, he started to notice a ringing in his ears that grew steadily louder, soon escalating to a painful intensity.

He crumpled into the figure supporting him, clamping his hands over his ears as the ringing threatened to split open his head. He could feel his voice building in his throat - Kazuo started to scream, but he couldn't hear it. He curled forward and gripped his head and screamed at the horrible, painful ringing in his brain... and only after a minute, when the ringing began to quiet and he could pick up on his own voice did he start to quiet too, his scream dying down into hard, exasperated breaths. Still his hands hovered over his ears, and his eyes kept shut while he took a moment to gather himself again.

Setsuko hovered over him with the vigilance of a watchdog, and did not stop her sifting through his wild hair. Her eyes were half-lidded with exhaustion, yet they danced alive with pain and worry. They became wide at the sound of a drawing breath...

She watched him struggle up, unsure of how he would react if she would touch him. Her hands reached for his shoulder and pulled back reflexively, as if she was facing down a feline with its claws splayed. But when he stumbled, she did not back away. The pressure of his sudden hold on her arms made her inhale sharply, and she looked down at him. Setsuko’s breaths became quick and deep.

Just when it looked like he was about to sit upright, he fell against her. Her eyes got painfully wide before she looked down at him, with her lips parted. Heavy breaths became quicker in her chest as the sound of his voice erupted into the smoky night sky.

“Kazuo...” She said, even though she was well-aware that her voice would be inaudible.

As his scream died, she burst into tears and held him close, without a strong grip. Her face buried into his hair, which was now unfamiliar because it smelled of smoke.

“You’re alive...” She sounded relieved, although she knew that he was before he even stirred.

His breath picked up somewhat when arms snared him closer, but he was too fatigued to panic. And the hold began to feel familiar in a way that did not feel dangerous. His mind slowly pieced together who was holding him as Setsuko weeped into his hair, and where he was and, dimly, what had happened... Still panting, he rested his head back against the girl with a short, soft sound akin to a whimper. His head hurt. He almost wanted to be unconscious again until the pain went away.

Finally, with a moment of concentration, Kazuo managed to peel his eyes open. They felt horribly dry, and the heat of the air burned at their surface, making him flinch and shut them again at first before blinking a few times.

But something was wrong. He felt his eyelids moving. He felt the open air at his eyes and the heat irritate them. But he only saw blackness, and scattered, dim, flickering lights at the corners of his vision which, once he paused to register the sounds of the crackling flames, he presumed to be fire. He blinked repeatedly in succession to be sure of the sensation of doing so, and to feel sure his eyes were wide open. His head shifted, though the blurred hints of light taunting in the darkness he saw made him dizzier when he tried to look around at them. He desperately gripped what his hands could reach of Setsuko to try to sit up again, blinking and turning his gaze all around in a growing panic. His breath built into hyperventilating, with whimpers at first scattered and then regular.

Kazuo's pitch dark eyes were a hollow, milky white. His gaze was empty, naked of its venom or intensity, and unseeing.

His expression turned inexorably broken. A pained cry choked free from his throat, followed by a longer wail. His shoulders started to heave with exhausted sobbing. Kazuo may have been crying then, but his eyes had no tears to spare, dried out by the heat that had incinerated their vision - and with it, all his hopes of winning... and surviving the deadly game he had volunteered for.

Setsuko hated feeling useless, even though she knew that she could not really do anything. Yet she told herself that there was something to remedy the situation.

Her thinking stopped as she felt the pressure at her chest deepen. Kazuo made a sound of discomfort, and she autonomously combed her fingers through his hair to alleviate him. She wanted to tell him that everything was going to be okay...but Setsuko could not bring herself to do it. It scared her.
The girl paid careful attention to the movements and fluctuations of his frame. She grew uneasy when the boy became absolutely still, as if he was suddenly becoming focused on something; that did not stop her combing. Her frame became rigid when he started to blindly grab at her. Cracked, bloodied lips motioned his name with no sound; her first instinct was to grab him and look at his face, but she suppressed it. That would scare him...
Instead, she craned her neck to the side to look, and what she saw made her heart sink.

The cold dark of his eyes were now white, and nothing more. She saw faint grey circles in the center of the white, which used to be black. Setsuko was about to pull away, but then she saw the expression that dawned on Kazuo’s face, and then the sobs and wails that he emitted made her stay.

“Kazuo.” She repeated softly, hating how useless she was.

Her arms wrapped around him tighter and she leaned towards him, holding back her sobs as if to comfort him. Setsuko wanted to speak more, but for once, she was speechless. There was only crackling of the fire and dead air. Her lips found his forehead, not in a kiss. Just to touch and smell.

He heard his name faintly. The arms from before coiled around him tighter, reeling him in to hold against Setsuko's frame. Kazuo's face and breathing was wracked with anguish - his sounds an intermittent blend of hyperventilating, breathy sobs, and wails which continued even as his voice grew hoarse. He cried into his companion, fingers clutching at her dress until slowly moving up to wrap his arms around her torso and return her embrace just as tightly.

Still, his face remained dry by the time his sobbing withered into soft, periodic whines. His head seemed to ache all the more after his bout of grief; he felt dizzy and faint, so he kept hold of Setsuko as if to keep from falling over as the world shifted and spun drunkenly. His breathing gradually quieted, but agony continued to linger in his features.

Each sound Kazuo made caused Setsuko to pull closer to him. She was able to stay quiet and strong, even with his desperate hands that clasped the grey dress as if he was searching for his sight. However, when the girl felt him responding by holding her back, she could not take holding back any longer. Her tears started up again and she lowered her head towards his shoulder and stifled her sobs no matter how much her throat hurt.

Even as Kazuo’s sounds started to dissipate, she held him just as strongly. Their bodies parted at the chest, but only a little, when she escaped to look at him. Dark, almost black blood had started to crawl down from his eyes towards his jaw. Her eyes filled with pain, she shut them and closed the space between them. Not with a kiss, but by putting her forehead and nose against his own.

With the heat of his skin, Kazuo didn't even notice the warm, dark blood seeping out from the outer corners of his eyes. Though its pattern resembled that of tears, his crying was not its origin; if that was the case, the blood would have been coming from the inner corner of his eyes... The fact that it was blood and was not coming from his tear ducts brought on the suggestion of significant physical trauma, perhaps in the boy's eyes, skull, or even brain.

Soft whimpers continued to escape with each short, shuddering breath, and he flinched a little when Setsuko brought their faces together. He blinked once, slowly, to reaffirm his eyes were open, but he couldn't see his companion's face at all, and it was literally just in front of his nose. His pained expression creased into somewhat of a scowl, and he wriggled free of Setsuko's hold to stagger away from her, though he dropped to all fours in just a couple of steps. His fingers dug into the dirt and ash and dry grass that made the ground.

His lips parted, soundlessly at first, like a gasping fish, before the choked remains of his voice crawled free. "... I want my gun," he said flatly.

Setsuko continued to feel the cold stabs of fear and sadness as his whimpers died into the crackling of the fire. Just as she was about to move closer to him, there was a sudden struggle, and she let go. The girl fell without support, and landed on her forearm.

She rose to follow him, too quickly to really think about her ankle. When she remembered her injury, it was too late; she could not stop herself from planting both of her feet on the ground. A small whimper became a cry and she crumpled into the ground, sending a small cloud of ash and dry dirt above the earth. She saw that he had fallen, too, albeit in a more comfortable position on all fours.

Setsuko looked at him expectantly. When he spoke, her eyes became downcast and hurt flooded the oculus of her eyes.

“No.” Her voice was sudden and alarmed. “You’re in no condition to move.”

"Shut up," his voice came as a low, hateful hiss. "I want my FUCKING GUN." He went from a growl to, for once, raising his voice just above normal volume - though it cracked somewhat at the effort.

A hand raised to press his palm against his forehead, his breathing growing hard and heavy with the strain of keeping himself in some way composed. Kazuo had no idea how far Setsuko might have moved him while he had been unconscious, no idea at what point he had lost his equipment or if Setsuko had even confiscated it herself, no idea what fucking direction he was facing. But he couldn't stop to think about it. There were three other participants left. He wanted to kill them, and win, and go home.

“And what are you going to do?” Her voice was not as stable as it was before, as if sorrow had finally caught up with her. “You’ll...you’ll-” Setsuko shook her head violently and her hands drifted up to clutch the hair on the sides of her scalp.
Still, she pushed herself a few feet to the side, where she had discarded the Uzi and his bag.

“But since you want it so badly,” she hiccupped. “I have it here.”

Even though she grabbed and held the submachine gun in her hands, the girl had it pressed against her bosom with as if it was chained there. After some reluctance, she crawled towards him and took the weapon with her. She hiccupped once before she buried her face into the burnt hems of his blazer, near his shoulder.

“Please...”

Kazuo continued to breath hard, a soft sound escaping him once something between a moan and a sob, though he caught it in his throat before it finished. He tilted his head a little to listen carefully through the crackle of the flames for his companion's movement, and managed to pick up the faint rustling of her frame and even the subtle, metallic sounds of the weapon being moved. There was a pause, but he waited patiently, wary of scaring her from handing over the gun - though his breathing continued to lend itself to his silent fuming.

He heard her shuffling closer then, but still jumped a bit at the gentle pressure on his shoulder. He sat up slowly on his knees. The boy's hand lifted, reaching tentatively for where he guessed Setsuko to be; his fingertips grazed her wet cheek and pulled back reflexively, before lowering to reach her collar, then following it to her shoulder, which he grasped for a moment as if to assure himself it was real. Then his grip suddenly solidified, and he pounced haphazardly sideways to pin her by her shoulders to the ground. His breath was still hard, panicked almost. His cloudy eyes shifted restlessly as if looking the girl over, though they failed to see anything.

Finally, he freed one of her shoulders so his hand could feel down her arm, following the bent elbow to her chest until he felt the familiar, smooth metal beneath his fingers, warm from the heated air. He clutched onto the weapon as if it was his soul, feeling across its frame desperately until reaching its proper hold. There he ripped it free, pinning Setsuko by the shoulder for leverage.

He let her go then and raised back into a sitting position, holding the weapon close against him just as she had, like a mother reunited with infant.