Fly High, Burn Bright

Chapter 43

I was almost sad when the villain fell beneath me. It had felt so unnaturally good to finally make the person that haunted me for ten long years feel the same pain that my sister had felt. At first, it was just the shocked expression as I dodged every single attack that was directed at me that left me with a smug, satisfied grin. Then, it was the way their face contorted with pain every time my daggers ripped through their skin and left them with another open cut that oozed with a never-ending flow of blood. Their pain gave me comfort, the murdering crave of revenge finally becoming a little less needy after so long. 

Still, it didn't seem fair. They gave up too easily. They deserved to suffer more for what they've done. I barely even started - the injuries I'd given them didn't even start to measure up to the ones my sister had suffered from, much less to the collective damage that the villain had caused. Stopping now would be almost as bad as letting them walk away without so much as a scratch. How had this scumbag even managed to kill someone as strong as my sister? Or was she not as strong as I made her out to be? Or perhaps I'm just that much stronger than she's ever been. Her mercy made her weak, after all. Either way, it didn't matter, because the villain barely felt even a fraction of what I went through. They needed to feel more anguish, more blood-curling, murdering pain until they were screaming and begging for mercy. They didn't even deserve the sweet relief of death, oh no, they'd made me go through too much for that. 

I needed to hear them shriek as I carved those same cursed runes into them as they'd left on my sister. I needed to see them lie in their own blood as they tried to keep it from drowning them. I needed to see them be punished for the hell that they'd turned my life into, for murdering a young innocent hero, for scarring the mind of a hopeful little girl that wanted nothing more than to protect her best friend. I needed to see them squirm and writhe from the unbearable torture that they'd inflicted on others before, so that they could finally see what it was like. I needed to finish getting my revenge. I needed the revenge for my sister. I needed the revenge for myself. Most importantly, I needed the revenge for Keigo.

Keigo.

It was like I was pulled back to earth from my crazy delusions, and the red tint of rage that had been clouding my vision seemed to get a little fainter. Focus, Kira. Think about Keigo. He's in danger. Save Keigo first, and then you can do whatever the hell you want to this piece of shit. With an annoyed growl, I forced myself to loosen my grip around the villain's neck, instead forcing them flat against the ground with their back pressed against the shards of a broken beer bottle that littered the already-sketchy alley. They winced slightly at the sudden impact of glass digging its way into their flesh, but still refused to let out the screams that I oh-so-desperately wanted to hear. I leaned over them, trapping them in place with a knee shoved against the center of their chest and one dagger hanging dangerously just above their throat.

"I'll ask you one more time," I snarled, a murderous gleam in my eyes. "Where is he?"

"As if I'd tell you," they spat back, and my eyes narrowed slightly first in annoyance, then in satisfaction.

"Fine." I pulled back a little, just enough to give them room to breathe, but when the villain made the smallest of moves to indicate that they'd try to escape, I slammed the hilt of my knife into the side of their neck. "I suggest you start talking, though. I'm not going easy on a waste of oxygen like you." Before they could even come up with a retort, I kicked them back into the ground, knocking the wind out of them, before grabbing the collar of their shirt and pulling them off the ground. With all of my strength, I hurled them towards the wall of the abandoned shop that made the alley seem a little more narrow, the old bricks groaning from the impact and the villain coughing up blood. 

"You sick, crazy, psychotic little bi-"

A knee straight to the solar plexus shut them up, and I tossed my knife into the air once more, catching it by the hilt and expertly placing the tip of the blade right over their ribs. They let out a pained hiss as I carved one long line down their torso, watching in satisfaction as the blood immediately started to seep through the ragged cloth of the shirt. "Where is he?" Silence. Another line, angled in a slightly different direction. "Answer when I talk to you."

They howled in pain as I dragged the blade over their flesh, now three straight lines gushing with blood, and I grinned, finally hearing the desperate screams that I so longed for. They deserved this pain. They ran for ten long years, but they were finally getting what they deserved. They struggled weakly against me, trying to push me off, but they didn't have the same amount of stamina that I did, and they lost too much blood to be anywhere near their full strength. "Get off me, you dirty whor-"

Another long cut, this one deeper than the last, forced them to shriek even louder than before. "That's not what I asked. Tell me where he is. Now." Still no answer. Another red line over the torso. I was enjoying their pain too much. I needed to stop, I knew that. But I couldn't. I couldn't stop now, not when I still didn't know where Keigo was and when I was just barely starting with giving them what they deserved. I wasn't even done giving them the same branding as they'd given my sister. Even if they told me everything about where Keigo was, I couldn't stop now. They deserved more pain.

Their yelps and sobs shattered the deafening silence that took up the rest of the alley, and the pleas for mercy were all I could hear, or maybe everything else just tuned out for me. All I could think about wasn't even Keigo, but how good it felt to finish carving the seven-pointed star into the flesh of the person who tortured my mind with the same symbol for years. It just felt so right, as if I was finally closing one chapter of my life and starting another. Maybe I'd be able to look forward now that I got the revenge that I thirsted for so desperately. Maybe I'd know what it was like to be able to sleep for seven nights straight without having to suffer from yet another nightmare.

Only once the seven lines were all connected, leaving a gushing star on the torso of the villain, did I pull the dagger out of their skin, watching as drops of the red blood slid down the blade. Another cough rattled their body as even more blood spewed from their mouth, and though I should've been disgusted by it, or terrified of what I'd done, I laughed. I threw my head back with a manic chuckle, the sight of someone that I'd feared for so long be at my mercy making me feel like I'd overdosed on the world's strongest drug. So this is what power feels like. I wasn't even done with them, and they were already so defeated. Perhaps I was just that much stronger than they were. 

"Still won't tell me?" I asked once my head cleared slightly, my voice still riddled with the hints of a laugh, but my eyes were deadly serious. I slipped the dagger in my left hand back into its holster, but the right one dug into the flesh just above the star's top point. "A shame," I whispered sweetly, punctuating the words with another push with the blade until half of it was buried in their body. Then, oh-so-slowly, I pulled the dagger around the star to make a complete circle, the symbol that had adorned my sister's body now engraved into her torturer. The whole time, they never stopped screaming and moaning from the sharp pain, but that only made me happier with the results. I yanked the knife out of them, admiring as the blood dripped through the cloth of their tattered shirt and onto the already-dirty pavement below us, leaning forward as I pressed my elbow into the newest cut just to make it a little more painful. "Want it to stop? Then tell me where the fuck you took him."

"F-fine," they gasped out, tears flowing freely from those cold gray eyes. "The t-third b-building down th-the alley on the l-left."

I smiled pleasantly, finally letting go of them, and without me holding them against the wall, they immediately dropped to the ground, curling inwards in an attempt to stop the bleeding. I dropped to a crouch beside them, pulling their chin up to force them to look me in the eye. "There," I grinned, "that wasn't so hard now, was it?"

They spat at me, the mixture of blood and saliva landing on the ground in front of my boot. I sneered down at them, drawing myself to my full height and giving them one last kick in the face for good measure before tearing down the alley.