Chains That Bind Us

II

Two days.

Two days of quiet, domesticated life was all I got.

Early in the morning I got busy with usual stuff, housework, selling my leftovers on the black market, feeding the stray cat that visits sometimes. I sat on my couch that was falling apart in front of my TV that only sometimes worked. Ah well, if you want a place to stay without them doing a background check or using official paperwork, it can't be a palace. Or even decent.

"The CCG is still looking for the ghoul who took the life of Rank 2 Investigator Ahito Ugami." The news anchor stated and a familiar face was plastered on the screen. It was the investigator I killed and in the alleyway two night ago. After my encounter with Uta, I finished my meal to replenish RC cells.

I sighed at the announcement. It was such a hassle whenever someone who would be avenged died. Now I'd have to  watch my tail, make sure to only kill those who were weak. Especially those with weak friends.

The noise of the floorboards creaking drew my attention and I turned around, ready to attack the intruder. My kakugan flared, but I saw no one. Still on edge, I began to spin in a circle, taking in my surroundings. When I made a full 360 with no signs of another life from other than the giant cockroach on one of the walls, I decided to abandon my eyes for my ears.

Before I could process anything, something flipped down from my ceiling. I saw bright red and yellow before it hit me full speed in the face. On the ground, I looked up to see the one who assaulted me, hanging by his knees on my ceiling.

"Boo."

"God fucking damn it..." I mumbled as I rolled over to keep Uta from landing a jump from the roof onto my chest. When he landed on the ground inches away from me, I reached out and grabbed his shoulder. Using all my available power, I pushed him over and pinned him underneath me, my hands holding down his wrists and my ankles holding down his.

"You should at least buy me dinner first." He said, making a joke of our current position. With an unreal quickness, even for ghouls, Uta jerked his head upwards and bashed me in the face, in the same place he hit last time.

I recoiled and used my hands to hold my now bleeding nose. Using this as an opportunity, Uta pushed me over and was now on top of me. Because of the way our legs were before, now they were in an even more provocative position. "Oh how the tables have turned~" he said.

I snaked my hand our of his grasp and grabbed a phone book I'd been using to try to find a decent paying job, and I hit him in the head with it. He slouched over and I jumped to my feet. Uta followed suit.

Uta ran at me and I tried to dodge, but it seemed like I was doing exactly what he wanted me to do. He hooked his hand onto my throat and kept running, throwing me into the paper partition screen I used to give my makeshift bathroom some sense of privacy. I fell onto the toilet and Uta stood before me.

He kicked out and I moved to the left to dodge it, his foot making a large hole in the wall behind me. He spun and kicked again, and I moved to the right, a similar hole spawned a few centimeters away from the other. He spun and kicked yet again, this time I used my hands to block.

Once his foot hit my forearms, I twisted them so I could get a good grip on his ankle. I stood to put pressure on his knee with the intention of breaking it. Uta, however, did not want his leg to be broken, for he used my grip on him as leverage to leap into the air and use his other foot to kick me in the jaw.

I hit the ground and felt Uta pin my leg to my back and held it there with the weight of his body. Leaning down, he whispered in my ear. "Scream and I  might go easy on you."

"Well, then I guess I should stop going easy on you."

Against the pain in my knee, I kicked at Uta's chest and pushed him away. Once he was off of me, I hopped onto my feet, having to block three speedy punches from Uta. On the last punch, I grabbed his wrist and twisted his arm. Once there was a good amount of tension, I slammed down on his elbow, snapping the joint.

"You really don't like that arm do you?" Uta said with a surprising amount of calm about him. It took me a second to realize what he was talking about. The arm I just snapped was the same arm I tore off our last encounter. I hadn't noticed before, but in the two days since we last fought, his entire arm regrew.

Ghouls are made to regenerate, I even healed the gaping hole in my stomach, but this feat was big even on ghoul standards.

With me preoccupied with his now broken arm, Uta used his other to get a handful of my jaw length, silver hair and slam my head into the corner of the couch. Black spotted my vision from the excessive blows to the head, I tried to reorient myself before Uta's next attack, but I was too slow

I felt a familiar pain in my stomach and my vision cleared enough to see Uta's kakugan centimeters from my face. I couldn't stop my lips from curling slightly at one corner.

"What is it?" Uta tilt his head in question.

"I- I just noticed," I said around the blood pooling in my throat, a few drops trailing down my chin, "I'm taller than you."

Uta's hand went in a bit deeper and I winced, "only by a bit, I'll still kill you."

"It's quite a lot more than a 'bit', I'd say almost seven centimeters." I felt a large stab of pain and I concluded that Uta had pinched one of my internal organs. Hard. "Wow, I don't like your arm, and it looks like you really don't like my stomach." I said, referring to our previous meeting.

"Well," he spun his arm in me like a drill, "I am a sucker for washboard abs."

As subtly as possible, I slowly tried to free my kagune, and I stabbed into Uta's stomach with it.

He seemed unfazed, he only said, "an eye for an eye."

"In that case," I said before slamming my head into his nose. Blood tricked out of his nose, and the effects of my kagune being in his abdomen took affect and more blood spilt from his mouth, dripping onto the floor.

"Oh no," Uta said, his face that was as steady as a metronome stared at the ground, "that might stain." And his hand left my stomach. Skeptical, I slowly pulled my kagune out of him.

"This place," Uta said, walking away from me, towards my door, "it is far too small for a serious fight, and there are a lot of things we could break. I will be departing now to go make a woman watch as I tear her abdomen open and then gouge out one of her eyes to make a lollipop out of. We should finish this at my place. Ta-ta~"

And with that he was out of my small, broken down apartment. A black card lay on the ground where he left it for me. In white writing was an address, a date, a time

And a hand drawn heart?