Kanan Jarrus (spectre01) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-05-15 06:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, kanan jarrus, yue katou |
Who: Kanan, Katou and NPC!Hitmen
What: Someone is looking to force Kanan into permanent "retirement", but Katou turns the tables
When: May 1st
Where: Chateau Katou
Rating/Warnings: High - Violence, NPC!character death and foul language
Status: Complete!
It was funny how life worked out sometimes. Kanan had come to Orange County to do a job for an old colleague and had reconnected with an old friend he hadn’t seen in years. Originally he had planned to stay only until Lina had her baby, then it was back to traveling the country smuggling goods to those who paid the price for them. Oh, sure he’d planned to come back to Orange County, drop in on the wee demon baby, be that cool uncle with the wild stories and seriously awesome gifts, but he hadn’t exactly planned on staying. At least not at the time he’d made his promise.
Now, though, things had started to look different. Kanan had never had a place he could call home before. Not since he’d been a little boy. He had been running a long time. Too long it was starting to seem. But now he didn’t feel as though he had to run. With all of it’s crazy and weird-ass shit aside, Orange County, and the people there, was starting to feel comfortable. Like home. Kanan was starting to be able to see himself staying here somewhat more permanently. He was already thinking about selling his condo on the east coast, maybe using the proceeds to buy a car instead of renting a new one every week and set down roots. It was all kind of exciting.
It was getting close to eleven pm and he was about to text his decision to Carolina and Dutch and get their opinions on the matter when something caught his attention. At first he thought it was a noise that pulled him off the couch to step outside, but as he stood out there in the darkness, he realized it hadn’t been a noise so much as a feeling. A weird feeling.
There was nothing out front of any note or importance. His car for the week and Katou’s motorcycle sat undisturbed in the driveway. Kanan had been giving the kid riding lessons and Katou had seemed to take to them well. Their neighbor’s homes on either side were dark. An upstairs light was on in the house across the street. Everything seemed normal and yet Kanan couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
Kanan took a few steps into the yard. “You’re being paranoid, Jarrus,” he muttered under his breath. Maybe all this thought about settling down in Orange County was making him jumpy and his subconscious was so used to running it was trying to think up ways to scare him into running some more.
Kanan chuckled and shook his head. Not this time. He had just turned to go back in the house when he froze.
Kanan! Pay attention!
It wasn’t a voice so much that he heard in his head than a thought that had been, well, forced in. As if the universe itself had given him some kind of order and was urging him to...to what? Pay attention to what?
Kanan soon had his answer in the form of a wire slipping around his neck and pulling tight. Panic set in and the instinct to survive soon followed. He clawed at his neck, trying to wedge his fingers between his throat and the wire, but it was tight against his skin, digging in a deep furrow and pulling him back into a solid form behind him Kanan was only now becoming aware of.
Get away!
Forcing himself to think despite his lungs burning for air, Kanan jerked his elbow behind him and was satisfied when it connected with the solid form trying to strangle him, burying deep into what he hoped was the asshole’s diaphragm.
The wire loosened and Kanan was able to slip free. He fell to his knees, coughing and wheezing, trying desperately to draw in a full breath. He barely had the chance to look up when he was kicked hard in the side once, twice, a third time when he felt something - a rib or two most likely - crack. Kanan could yelp this time and yelp he did as he crashed back to the ground.
Run, Kanan!
“I’m trying,” Kanan wheezed. He had to get to the house, get inside, get his gun, stand his ground. He scrabbled along the ground, trying to shake free of his attacker. He caught glimpses of more than one set of legs in the light cast from the living room window. Two sets? No, three?
Kanan lashed out at one of the sets of legs, grabbing hold and pulling its owner down so that he could get up again. As he tried to pull himself up onto his feet, something cold and metallic sliced his back and then found a home buried between his shoulder blades for a moment before it was yanked free again. Pain like fire had just started coursing down his back and through his arms when a boot to the face caused him to see stars.
For a moment he teetered on the brink of unconsciousness, He heard voices dining around him, but couldn’t make sense of what they were saying. He recognized at least one of the voices, but his brain refused to work well enough to put a name to it. All he seemed capable of doing for the moment was drawing his arms up defensively around his head shielding it as best he could from getting punched and kicked again. His body instead took the blows.
There was still a blade present, Kanan was aware of that too when he felt it slash his arms and torso. He tried reaching out again, this time to hit his attacker and kick them in one of those knees that surrounded him. He was rewarded with a grunt and a snap. Again, Kanan scrambled, this time managing to stumble to his feet and made a dash towards the door. Adrenalin slogged through his veins. His only intent was to get inside and to safety.
He felt as though he were running in a dream. His body didn’t quite want to obey what his mind was screaming at it to do, which resulted in a kind of drunk-like weave towards the house. He thought he may have made it, if it hadn’t been for one of his attackers slamming into his back, causing the two of them to go crashing through the front window.
Katou’s dreams were always kind of a crap shoot nowadays. If he was having his Dreams, they weren’t so bad. Not if they involved him and Setsuna and Kira all together. And even the bad ones didn’t surprise him anymore. But it was the normal nightmares that got to him. The ones where he saw Kira being torn to shreds before his eyes on a constant loop, or where he saw Lucifer rising up from the bloody pool that was filled with chunks of Kira’s body.
He was almost relieved when he was jerked awake by the sound of a window smashing. The relief didn’t last long though, because immediately Katou became aware of the killing aura in the house. They were humans, a few of them, and Kanan, and their desire for murder made itself known to him like a red mist permeating through his consciousness.
He grabbed Shiranui, Kira’s sword, from it’s place of honour hanging above his bed, and dashed out into the living room, not bothering to add a shirt to the sweats that he was sleeping in. He took stock of the situation inside, making a quick note that Kanan already seemed pretty fucking battered and that there was broken glass all over their goddamn living room. He rushed over to where Kanan was struggling with his attacker, and with very little effort lifted the man up with his left hand and unceremoniously defenstrated him.
“Friends of yours?” he asked, sounding nearly bored, though he didn’t take his eyes from the outdoors and his knuckles were white from how tightly he was gripping his sword in his right hand. A good fight was exactly what Katou needed right now, but a dead roommate (boss? Friend? Family?) was rather further down the list.
Unconsciousness was threatening to take Kanan by the hand and pull him into a world of darkness. His head throbbed and swam. His he was having difficulty breathing and keeping his vision focused. He could feel a stabbing pain in his chest and face – glass shards from the window. There was another stabbing pain in his side to compliment the pain of his broken ribs. He glanced down to finally lay eyes on the handle of that knife, now imbedded in him just over his hip.
Brilliant.
He heard someone breathing heavily and forced his eyes to look upwards. His attacker had managed to get to his feet first and was looming over him. That face. That face. Kanan knew that face. He had seen it only a couple of weekends ago when he’d made his last run up to Vegas for Janus’s old friend. That face – Richard Applegate – was the Old Man’s favorite and most trusted bodyguard. Kanan and Applegate were colleagues of a sort. They’d always gotten along before, in fact they’d shared a drink during Kanan’s last trip to Vegas to deliver the Old Man his goods. Kanan stared up at him unable to understand. What was Applegate doing down in Orange County?
He caught sight of the gun at Applegate’s hip, and suddenly Kanan became all too aware of what was happening. This was what people in corporate business called a “hostile take-over”. Kanan’s eyes darted back up towards the man looming over him. Nothing personal, Jarrus, the look on Applegate’s face told him as he moved to draw his gun, just business.
This may have just been business, but Kanan had never rolled over for anyone before in his life. Not when he’d been Caleb Dume, and certainly not when he’d become Kanan Jarrus. Applegate had a gun, but Kanan had a knife. He was just about to free said knife from his side when out of fucking nowhere came a streak of metal and blonde hair. Kanan stared up in a kind of stupid wonder as Katou picked up Applegate and tossed him out of the broken window as if he were a toy.
Kanan continued to stare at Katou when the kid asked him if these were friends of his. He nodded slowly and tried to push himself up to his feet again. “Could say that,” he said. He coughed and tasted the bitter taste of copper in his mouth. He swiped the back of his hand over his lips. “Might call this a business dispute. Namely, they want mine and I’m not willing to be bought out.”
It was then that the associates outside had apparently recovered from the shock of being tossed out by a kid and opened fire on the smashed window.
Katou was fast, though not faster than a speeding bullet. A bullet ricocheted off his metal arm and another grazed against his right shoulder, but then with superhuman speed he threw himself on top of Kanan. After the initial spray of blood, the blood from his shoulder oozed slowly from the wound as though it were sap, and he rolled his shoulders with barely a wince.
“Black market dishware a hot commodity, eh?” Katou asked with a sardonic smile before he bothered to roll off Kanan. Who was more injured than Katou had originally thought he'd been. Shit. He hadn't even noticed the knife in Kanan’s hip before he knocked him down, and while he hoped he hadn't jostled it he figured a jostled knife was better than a bullet in the brain. What was worse is that Katou had never fought a bunch of bastards with guns before. The war in his dreams was found entirely with steel and astral powers and the occasional monster. He was pretty sure that, despite his increased speed, he couldn't outrun a gun, so that meant he was going to have to take them by surprise and close in fast.
“Stay down,” Katou muttered, and made his way to the front door. He could tell how many there were and had a rough approximation of where they were standing, just by sensing their auras, but Katou had no idea where they were facing. He hoped they were all paying attention to the window. “Don't do nothing,” Katou warned Kanan, adjusting his grip on his sword and placing his hand on the doorknob. “I'll be right back.”
Instinct was a funny thing. A few months ago, Kanan’s first instinct would have been to dive for cover. Now his first instinct was to call upon the Force for protection. He threw up one hand, palm out towards the window in an effort to slow down, or better yet stop the bullets. Unfortunately, his command over the Force was weak in it’s still developing stages. A few of the bullets slipped through and struck Katou. A few more slipped through and hit Kanan. However, he was extremely pleased to see that the at least a third of the bullets entering the house had, in fact slowed down.
That is until Katou slammed into him, knocking him to the floor and effectively cutting off Kanan’s concentration. He heard the sound of bullets slamming into walls and ricocheting off one of Katou’s guitars and Kanan absently hoped the thing wasn’t damaged.
For a moment Kanan had no wind to respond. Finally he managed to wheeze out a “Yeah,” when Katou rolled off him. Kanan was relieved to see the kid wasn’t hurt too badly. An injured shoulder he was apparently shaking off without too much effort. How...how was that possible?
The tackle to the ground had done nothing to help Kanan’s already battered body. A couple more ribs had been injured and the knife had torn a larger hole in his side. But all that was preferable over getting shot in the head. Kanan had to commend the kid for his quick thinking. Even using the Force, Kanan hadn’t been able to slow enough of the bullets down and would have likely gotten shot in the head instead of the torso. He made a note to talk with Ahsoka, maybe get the training his Dreams apparently didn’t feel he needed to be reminded of.
Kanan was in no condition to get to his feet and with the Old Man’s associates outside slinging lead into the house, he had no qualms about staying on the floor. He would have liked to have had his gun, though, or even his damn blaster.
He watched Katou get up. He wanted to ask where the kid thought he was going. He wanted to tell him to stay put, that these men were fucking dangerous, to go get his gun out of the bedroom, to not put himself in harm’s way, dammit!! This was exactly what Kanan had wanted to avoid. However, there was blood in his mouth and his lungs felt too full to breathe, let alone speak. He watched in dumb silence as Katou slipped outside before sliding into unconsciousness himself.
There were three men all together. The one Katou had thrown out the window, Richard Applegate, appeared to be the one in charge. He still had his gun drawn and was reloading. He motioned to the man on his left to go around to the back of the house to prevent any escape from the rear. He motioned to the one on the right to cover the driveway.
With his two associates covering the possible escape routes Applegate approached the window again cautiously. In the state he was in Jarrus wasn’t going to be putting up much more of a fight and should have been an easy target now. It was that blond Asian that was going to be a problem. Just who the hell was he? Jarrus didn’t have any family and the kid was too young to be working with Jarrus. From what Applegate had seen, Jarrus’s vices - as plentiful as they were - centered around booze and women, not teenage boys.
Teenage boys. Applegate wasn’t so sure of that. No teenage boy he knew had the strength to pick up a full grown man, much less toss him out a window. And what the fuck was up with his arm?! Applegate had no idea, but the hair on the back of his neck was on end. The sooner they took care of this job, the better.
The guns seemed to have gone quiet, which was Katou’s cue for action. Especially when it seemed like the three men outside were separating from one another. He couldn’t let that happen.
He very quietly twisted the door handle until the door was no longer latched, and then he threw it open. He ran first at the man on the driveway, who didn’t have time to react before Katou was upon him, cleaving his skull in two with his blade. There was a spray of blood and brains, and inexplicably, Katou started grinning.
This is what he’d been missing from his dreams. Now, more so than he since his dreams had ended, Katou felt as though he was actually doing something. He wasn’t just some punk kid struggling to get by and trying to wrestle with a drug addiction. Now, he was someone formidable. Someone who would do anything to protect the people he cared about, even if it put himself directly in harm's way. The thrill of it ran right through Katou, and his heart was pounding.
Katou was powerful. Katou was useful.
The commotion drew the attention of the guy on the left, who was surprisingly quick. Katou had just enough time to twist and to swing the man’s cloven comrade in front of him to absorb the bullets. Then, with a grunt of effort, Katou threw the body as hard as he could at the man before rushing to close in with the man who’d attacked Kanan.
Once he was close enough, he grabbed Applegate’s gun with his metal arm and forced the barrel of the gun skyward, and positioned the tip of his sword directly under the man’s chin, pressing against it just enough to draw a drop of blood.
“Man, do you know how goddamn expensive that window’s gonna be to replace?” he asked Applegate with disarmingly cheerful smile. He tilted his head slightly toward the other man, who was stirring, but he didn’t take his eyes off of Applegate. “You’re just gonna wanna stay under your buddy there unless you want another body to join him in the dog pile,” he chirped.
Applegate had never seen anything like this before in his life. He had seen a few of the bullets he’d fired slow just as they had breached the house. But he had been ready to pass it off as some kind of trick of the light. What was not a trick of the light was this fucking punk holding him up by his gunarm, grinning in his face and popping off quips like he had zero fucks to give. And goddamn this Asian fucker was strong. Applegate had grappled with people who relied on prosthetics before, but he’d never experienced anything like this kid’s arm. Prosthetics weren’t metalic, they didn’t provide the full range of motion this kid had. And they certainly were not strong enough to practically tear his arm out of its socket.
Just what the ever loving fuck was going on here?! This was not what this job was supposed to be. Applegate hadn’t fooled himself. He knew bumping off Jarrus wasn’t going to be a cakewalk, the guy knew his way around a fight. That was why Applegate had taken three other hitmen with him, had opted to attack at night with the element of surprise. A garrote around the neck and a well placed knife in the back all to ease Jarrus into an early and permanent retirement. That was what what Applegate’s boss had wanted. With Jarrus gone and the culprit seemingly lost to the wind, who else would be there to take over Janus Casmir’s trade? It would fall onto an old and trusted colleague, who with the heaviest of hearts, would gladly step in and assure Casmir that the business he had spent his entire life building would remain in good and experienced hands. Casmir could remain in Florida, soaking up the sun and enjoying his golden years and Applegate’s boss would have a corner on the black market trade in the desert southwest.
Applegate himself had no real beef with Kanan Jarrus. As far as he could tell the guy was good at what he did and he had never screwed them before. Nothing personal, just business. But this fucking Asian asshole was screwing everything up!
Applegate’s eyes darted around the kid to his other two associates laying in a bloody heap on the ground. One of them was dead, that was more than obvious and Applegate felt his blood pumping hard. The dead guy - Alphonse Gerome - was a skilled bodyguard and hitman. His skill had been the reason why he’d been selected for the Jarrus job and the Asian had killed him in a matter of seconds. A matter of fucking seconds. Who the hell was this guy?! What was he to Jarrus? Some kind of psycho guardian angel?
“Who are you?” Applegate stared at Katou with wide eyes. Yes, the bodyguard was afraid and he had no shame in showing it. Anyone else in this situation would be a liar if they claimed to be otherwise. “Who the fuck are you?!”
Katou twisted the man’s wrist until he dropped the gun. Katou dropped his arm and without letting his eyes leave Applegate’s face he plucked the gun out of the air before it could get much more than halfway to the ground. Then, he winked and lowered the sword to Applegate’s Adam’s apple so he could freely move his head. The guy was obviously terrified, which made Katou smile wider. If he wasn’t a complete idiot, he wasn’t going to try anything.
“I think we’re gonna have a friendly chat inside,” Katou said. He was getting worried about Kanan now, and why he wasn’t at the window now that everything had settled down.
Besides, while Katou couldn’t sense anyone nearby just yet, no doubt someone was going to walk or drive by soon, and he knew he couldn’t explain why he was holding a sword to someone’s neck or why there was a corpse bleeding on the lawn. For just a second, his eyes flicked over to said corpse, realizing that he was going to have to do something with it. That wasn’t something that had really come up in his dreams. It being a war, they tended to just let the bodies lie where they fell.
“Who knows, maybe we’ll broach the subject.” He tilted his head toward the other man as he addressed him again. “Why don’t you get up and bring your buddy inside, hm?”
Neither Applegate and his remaining associate had any desire to accompany this kid inside the house, but neither of them were exactly in any position to negotiate. Applegate gave a nod at his associate. “Pick up Gerome, Toomey,” he said.
Toomey did not look pleased by this order, but did as he was told, slinging the dead weight of his eviscerated comrade over his shoulders. Applegate turned his attention back to Katou. He was fairly certain once he and Toomey were inside the house, each of them would meet an equally gruesome end. However, he too had noted Jarrus’s absence now that things had quieted. It was likely the man was dead, or close to it. At least that part of the job had been completed. Perhaps once inside, Applegate could find a way to escape. The boss would want to know about this kid, if for nothing else to retaliate.
He motioned for Toomey to go inside and followed after, keenly aware of the sword still at his throat and the metal claw that looked as though it would tear each of them to shreds if given half the chance.
“If you let us go,” Applegate said over his shoulder, “we’ll leave and you won’t hear from us again. But if you kill us you’ll have the entire wrath of a syndicate down on you. It won’t matter how fast or strong you are, kid. They’ll find a way to kill you. Is the life of one smuggler really worth that to you?”
Once everyone was through the door, Katou nudged it shut with his foot. He had no intention of killing the other two men, providing they didn’t give him cause. He wasn’t sure how to get rid of one body, and he was pretty sure adding two more to that pile would just make things harder. Of course, Jarrus had the final say in that matter.
His eyes glanced over at Kanan, and what he saw didn’t bode well. His boss looked rough, and all Katou really knew about first aid was if they didn’t respond when you kicked them in the ribs, it was a bad sign. He turned the safety on on the gun that he’d confiscated, and stuck it down the back of his pants like he’d seen in television shows, grateful that Wash’s lessons had taught him that much before he accidentally shot himself in the ass. He slowly circled around Applegate so he was standing between him and Toomey, and, before Toomey could drop the corpse, Katou rammed his metal elbow into the other man’s nose, which broke noisily, and while he was distracted Katou relieved him of his firearm too. Then, he backed towards Kanan, keeping the both of them fixed in his gaze, Toomey’s gun trained on Applegate.
He mulled over Applegate’s words thoughtfully, looking nearly unconcerned despite the fact that every muscle was coiled to pounce the second either of these two bozos tried something dumb. “I don’t think I’d fare too well against an entire syndi-whatever, you’re right,” he said. Then he glanced at Kanan who was now at his feet. He jabbed him with his foot. “So I guess we’d all better hope this one smuggler survives, or I guess we’re all toast.” Katou frowned thoughtfully. “Oh, but if I kill both of you and my buddy here croaks, I don’t know how your boss is gonna know that some punk high school student had anything to do with it. Oh.” He stuck his sword in the floor point down. |Wendy would probably kill him for damaging the floors, but the house was already looking pretty rough. It was just one more thing he’d have to deal when he cleaned the place tomorrow. “And I can do this.” And then he peeled away his face, revealing an exact replica of Applegate’s own face.
“So the way I see it is that right now, you two got more of a reason for keeping Kanan alive than I do. Because even if you guys somehow manage to get my name or picture or something to your boss before I rip your heads from your necks, I can just disappear.” And then he was back to looking like himself, with a feral grin on his face. For extra effect, he made sure to think of his teeth being sharpened to razor-sharp points.
Applegate’s eyes flickered downward when the punk nudged Jarrus with his foot. The guy looked like hell. Going through the window face first had sliced him up but good. Applegate’s knife was still in his side and his blood was everywhere. For a moment Applegate thought Jarrus was dead, until he stirred slightly at the nudge and his eyes fluttered open for just a few moments. He was alive, but barely. It would have been easy to finish him off. That is if Applegate had any desire to do so at this point. At that moment his only concern was his own survival and the survival of his one remaining comrade.
He looked back up at Asian, prepared to make whatever bargain necessary, but his words died in his throat when the kid literally tore off his own face like a mask to reveal Applegate’s own underneath. Applegate stared, slack jawed.
Next to him he heard Toomey practically scream, “The fuck is this, Rich! This is crazy! All of this is fucking crazy! We gotta get outta here! We gotta get outta here, Rich! Let’im keep Jarrus. It’s not worth it!”
Applegate wasn’t as quick to panic as Toomey was. He had seen and done a lot of crazy ass shit during his time as a bodyguard, but this had crossed the line from crazy to downright surreal. Applegate didn’t believe the Asian was some high school punk as he claimed. He had grown up in a strict Christian household, made to believe that God’s wrath was a very real and fearful thing. Applegate had always considered himself a level headed man, not prone to the same fits of hysteria his own mother had been, however, he wasn’t about to deny the beast that stood right in front of him. He did not know if the Asian as angel or demon, but he certainly was no high school student. How he came to know Kanan Jarrus, Applegate could only speculate at some later point. At the moment he was inclined to agree with Toomey. The job was a failure and would be left as such.
He raised a hand to silence Toomey before his panic ramblings got them both run through. He kept his eyes leveled at the Asian beast. “Our business here is finished. Neither one of us will raise a hand to Kanan Jarrus again. If we promise this, will you let us go?”
“If either of you tries to leave this house without my permission, I’ll rip your heads off with my hands,” Katou growled at Toomey. He actually wasn’t sure if he could really do such a thing, at least not without using his claws, but it sounded like a good threat and he had the feeling that these guys would believe he could eat them in one bite if he tried. It was actually getting a little difficult to not laugh heartily at them. If it wasn’t for Kanan, he probably could have.
“Well, the way I see it, Rich, is that I don’t know you from a whole in the ground, and I generally ain’t keen on taking promises from people I don’t know. Especially when they just tried to kill me. I’m sure you understand just how cheap promises could be. I mean, I bet if I promised all sweet like that I wouldn’t hunt you down at some point in your future you wouldn’t believe me neither.” He had no intention of doing such a thing. He’d never hunted someone down, but it seemed like a lot of hard work. But the idea of Rich and the guy who was probably very close to pissing himself checking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives was one too good to pass up. “So, I think we should all just wait here until my boss here wakes up and tells me what to do.”
That being said, Katou squatted down next to Kanan and turned his attention to the man. He wasn’t looking at the hired guns anymore, though he was very aware of exactly where their auras were. When Katou had woken up bleeding to death a few times, Wendy and Jack had always applied pressure to the wounds until help could arrive, which seemed like a good idea, except he wasn’t sure if he should remove the knife from Kanan’s hip before he did something like that. After all, it seemed like it was probably plugging up the hole pretty good so that Kanan didn’t bleed out.
He considered calling Zatanna - he had her on speed dial these days - but he didn’t exactly want to invite her over when there were people who were trying to kill him hanging around. “Oi! Kanan!” Katou shouted next to his ear. “Wake up!” And then he slapped him across the face a couple of times for good measure.
When Katou shouted in his ear, Kanan groaned and his eyes fluttered again, confirming Applegate’s assessment that he was indeed still alive. He was brought around more with a couple of slaps across his face, which stung like hell. “”M awake,” he mumbled quickly and jerked his arms up in a fumbling way to get Katou to stop hitting him. Jesus Christ, every inch of him fucking hurt. It took a moment for Kanan to remember what was going on. The knife wound in his back between his shoulders, the blade in his side and a few broken ribs were a fantastic reminder. As were the sight of two pairs of feet that didn’t belong in the house.
Kanan raised his eyes upwards towards Applegate, a snarl in his throat. “The fuck...are you... doing here...Applegate?” He wheezed as he tried to push himself up off the floor. He had no idea how or why Applegate was in the house, but considering the last thing Kanan had been aware of the asshole had been shooting them, it couldn’t have been good. At least Katou was alive.
Kanan would have liked to have gotten to his feet, but all he could manage was rising up on his knees. His arm felt like a thousand pounds as he dragged it away from his side to hold it out in front of Katou as if he could somehow keep Applegate and Toomey from attacking the kid. He leveled a glare at Applegate. “What…” he panted, “what do you want?”
“At the moment, all we want is to leave, Jarrus.” Applegate calmly told him. “Call off your guardian angel.”
“...What?”
It was then that Kanan became aware that Applegate no longer had his gun. The hitman wasn’t looking at Kanan either. His eyes were trained behind him, at the young man there. It was at this time, Kanan also became aware of Toomey’s near incomprehensible whimpering. Kanan glanced at the man and saw him practically cowering against the wall, at his feet a mangled body. Kanan stared stupidly at him a moment before looking over his shoulder at Katou, completely at a loss. “What...?”
Katou let out a heavy sigh of relief when Kanan started talking. That seemed like as good a sign that everything was going to turn out alright as anything else. “You probably shouldn’t move around too much,” Katou said gently, though he didn’t make any moves to restrain Kanan. He was a big boy, he could make his own decisions. But guardian angel. He had to admit that he liked the sound of that.
“Your pals here say that they’ll leave us alone if I let ‘em go, but I wouldn’t exactly call them the most trustworthy of sorts,” Katou said, shrugging. “Want me to just kill ‘em and be done with it?”
Kanan had no idea what the hell had happened between the time he had passed out and now, but between the way Applegate was looking at Katou and the way Toomey was blubbering, he could draw a few conclusions and none of them made any sense. Kanan stared at Katou in such a way one could almost see the cartoonish questionmark over his head.
He was starting to feel woozy from the effort it had taken him to get up on his knees. Something was going to have to be done about the bleeding hole in his back and the blade in his side, but first he had to deal with the two remaining hitman in the house. Kanan turned his attention back towards Applegate. When he spoke, though, his words were aimed at Katou. “It won’t matter if you kill them. They aren’t the ones who are attempting to take over my business. Nah, they’re errand boys.” Kanan took a bit of satisfaction in seeing Applegate bristle at the term. “I know their boss. He’s an old friend of my former boss. Even if you kill them, it won’t stop him from sending more after me.” His eyes fell to the body by Toomey’s feet. The Old Man would probably send his hitmen after Katou as well, and that just wouldn’t do.
Kanan leveled his eyes at Applegate. “This is what’s gonna happen, Richie, so listen closely. We’re gonna let you and Toomey walk outta here. You’ll take your buddy’s body with you. We don’t have any use for it.” And Kanan had no idea what the hell they would do with it either. Best let Applegate clean up his own goddamn mess. “Then you’re gonna take a message to your boss. You tell the Old Man that the deal he had with Janus is over and unless he wants a fucking war at his front door, it stays over. Then you and Toomey over there are going to go on a permanent vacation somewhere. Don’t care where. Go somewhere nice and tropical. Treat yourselves. Get comfy wherever it is, because you’ll be staying there. The minute either one of you sets foot on U.S. soil again, my ‘guardian angel’ will be on you in a heartbeat.”
Kanan had no idea if that was true, in fact he only now understood that there was a lot about Katou he had no idea about. A lot of very powerful and scary things at that.
Katou returned Kanan’s with a shrug and an almost quizzical look, as if to say ‘I don’t know what they’re so afraid of,’ even if there was a glint in his eye and an amused turn to his lips that said otherwise.
Katou thought the answer in that case was obvious, though he didn’t say anything. No doubt if Katou started talking about killing the big boss in front of his grunts, then word would get back to him and this old man was likely to take even more drastic steps towards getting rid of them. That was a conversation for in private, he supposed.
Instead, Katou stopped pointing the gun at them snatched his smokes up from where they’d been sitting on the end table as Kanan laid out his offer, and lit one. He was pretty sure Wendy would consider this whole situation one worth smoking over, and besides, the lack of a window seemed likely to help air out the house quickly anyway. As an afterthought he lit a second cigarette and offered it silently to Kanan.
It seemed as though he had nearly stopped paying attention to what was going on, but when Kanan mentioned him as a threat, Katou grinned wolfishly at the two men; tendrils of smoke slowly wafted out from between the sharpened points. “You got it. Wrath of God and the whole bit,” he sneered. “You should count yer lucky stars that the boss here’s willing to let you go.”
Applegate narrowed his eyes, clearly not impressed with the offer, especially considering said offer was being made by the man he had been sent to kill. However, any attempts to negotiate were quickly squashed when Toomey practically squeaked from his place at the wall. “You got it, Jarrus. We’ll go. We’ll go! You’ll never see us again! Right, Rich??”
Kanan slid green eyes from Toomey back over to Applegate, a raised brow as if to ask the same question. His offer was reasonable and sound, and given the circumstances, down right generous considering what Katou had already done. It was tempting to try and use a little Jedi mind trickery to persuade a still uncertain looking Applegate. However, Kanan wasn’t sure of Applegate’s will was weak enough for the trick to take hold.
Finally, though, the hitman relented. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll do as you ask, Jarrus. My boss, however, will not like this.”
“I’m under no delusion that he will.” Kanan answered. He motioned towards the front door. “You know the way out.”
Applegate gave Kanan one last frown and Katou one last weary look before he collected his blubbering comrade and the dead body of the other. Kanan kept a watchful eye on them both until they were out of the house. It was another moment before he could relax. With a loud painful grown he flopped back off his knees so that his back was propped up against the couch and accepted the cigarette Katou had kindly lit for him. Tired and injured, the smuggler turned towards his employee. “Just what the fuck did you do? I swear to God, Toomey looked as though he was going to piss himself.”
Katou couldn’t help but laugh loudly at Kanan’s question, and part of him hoped that the two men outside were still close enough to hear his laughter through the broken living room window. “He really did, didn’t he?” he asked. “Thought the poor bastard was gonna burst out crying or some shit. ‘Wahhh, mommy, heeellpp,’ or something.” That Applegate guy, he had a better handle on things, and it didn’t really sit right with Katou that they’d just let him walk. It wasn’t his place to question Kanan’s orders though.
“Anyway, I didn’t think I was that bad. I just showed ‘em what a nice little monster I was.” He paused thoughtfully for a moment. “Though, I guess I did make him lie under his dead pal there for a bit while me and the other guy had a chat. You want me to call someone, Bossman? You really should get some of that shit looked at, you know.”
Katou’s laughter coaxed a tired smile from Kanan. He and Katou hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time talking about their dreams with each other. That is to say, they had spent barely any time talking about them at all. At least face to face. As a matter of fact, it was safe to say that Katou knew more about Kanan’s other life than Kanan currently knew about Katou’s.
“Monster. Right,” he laughed. The laugh turned into a wince and then a moan. Laughing didn’t make his broken ribs feel any better. Applegate had called Katou a “Guardian Angel”, which was about as far away from “monster” as Kanan could think of. Guardian Angel was appropriate, however. Kanan was convinced that if Katou hadn’t been around that night, Kanan himself would no longer be breathing. He owed the kid his life. It wasn’t an altogether unfamiliar position for Kanan to be in. However, the last time he had found himself owing his life to someone else, he had ended up working for that person and becoming his pseudo-wart. That was unlikely to happen again in this situation.
Kanan pressed a hand to his side. “Do you think you can drive me to the nearest hospital, Katou?” He asked. “All of this shit needs to get looked at.” And then once Kanan was not in danger of bleeding out or succumbing to some kind of head injury from being kicked in the face, he and Katou were going to have a long talk. Not just as employer and employee or roommate to roommate, but as two individuals who were caught up in some pretty weird shit, both mundane and...otherworldly.
He was starting to feel as though consciousness was slipping away from him again. He was sagging against the couch, the cigarette burning away between his fingers. “Thank you, Katou.”