there's more than meets the eye, there's more than meets the price [OPEN]

[its_dad_sanzo]

Who: Koumyou Sanzo, OPEN
Where: Carriage J: Music Carriage - upstairs, in silence
When: Forward-dated to Jelly 4!
What: Sneaky solo martial arts practice a couple days before the next mission. Folks are welcome to catch him doing his thing, despite his effort to be secretive. If you ask for lessons (in anything, ever), he will almost certainly say no... but folks are totally welcome to try to convince him. (Also if anyone wants to just ATTACK, he'll adapt accordingly.)
Warnings: Otoha thread has some sensitive topics (warned in the comment titles). Devero thread same and same, but also some kinda graphic self harm injury shit from Koumyou etc.

xxxxxif you can't see the sky there's too much artificial light

Muscle memory requires rote practice. Patterns mastered, then broken, to keep one's actions independent in a real fight. Even at his level, Koumyou needs to sharpen the blade once in a while, lest he lose his edge when he needs it most.

Koumyou Sanzo has picked a time when most of the train seems otherwise occupied. Maybe it's the middle of the 'night' and they're sleeping, or perhaps this is a typical meal time in the dining car. One way or another, he's gone out of his way to have as few witnesses as he can, tucked upstairs in the silent music car.

He stands still in the middle of the stage, and checks one last time that the room is truly empty, at least here at the start. Satisfied, Koumyou drops his center of gravity, bare feet sliding into position. One hand tucks against his shoulder, the other out before him, fists loose.

Breathing carefully, in through the nose, and out through the mouth... slowly, he lets his eyes slip shut.

And then he begins to move.

A block, a duck, a shift to one side. Another block; flowing, diverting an imagined attack away with the edge of an open hand. A step back, one kick at the level of a stomach. Spinning to the right, his braid and the long ends of his clothing flutter behind him. Fluid, each graceful movement morphing into the next without hesitation or pause.

There is nothing rigid here. Not until it's needed. A fist tightens at the instant of impact, not a moment before. The snap of force in the air, even without a real target, is audible in the quiet room.

If one watches him for more than a second, one can almost see the invisible opponents rushing him. They come from all directions; some are even armed. With a knife he side-steps, with a sword that he ducks beneath to rise again with the arc of an uppercut palm-strike. To a chin? A nose? ...A throat?

He flips as though it's easy, as though up and over someone who had been rushing to tackle him from behind. Landing, the heels of both palms snap out in a strike to their back, his whole body behind the movement. And then he's gone, rolling backwards, momentum changing directions as fast as a stray gust of wind. Up with another kick; that foot comes down, and he spirals out and up into a spin-kick aimed even higher than his own head.

Sometimes, he gets quite close to the drop off the stage. But he never actually touches the edges, and he certainly never falls.

Koumyou's braid whips behind him as he moves. His long sleeves flutter behind each sweeping attack or diversion of his arms. The hem of his robe skims against his bare ankles with every wide movement of his legs. Light though it is, the bamboo breastplate on his chest barely shifts on his thin frame. The sutra certainly doesn't go anywhere, though the ends and the back both flutter as if it were real paper.

It would be easy to turn this into a dance, and it would be equally easy to turn this into death. There is not a single second in which he isn't moving, flowing, striking, diverting.

If left alone, this will go on for a while longer.

His eyes do not yet open; his movements do not yet slow.

He will not lose his edge.

Comments

[bakegarasu]

"And a jet. Only when I can use my armor though, which I can't do here."

He chuckles, tugging a bit harder. "Wouldn't be the first or last time. I can just pop it into place again, it doesn't hurt."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"That's fucking bananas."

So says the guy wearing the very concept of creation on his shoulders.

"...I mean even if you dislocate it, I don't have to let go."

It's not even going to gross him out. He's felt plenty of joints give out, both his own and others'.

[bakegarasu]

"Hmmm. Okay."

And he jabs his knee upwards for a groin shot.

[its_dad_sanzo]

Wow, rude!

The blow lands, but Koumyou moves which means it can't hit him full force. Thank the gods for small favors, there. His pain tolerance is ridiculously high, but he still feels it!

So now he's just sitting on Otoha's stomach, iron grip still locked on his wrists. Like you do.

"Excuse you! I'll let you up if you're not going to keep attacking me!"

[bakegarasu]

He just laughs. "Fine, fine. I won't attack you." Not now, anyway. Later, maybe. Depends on if the opportunity arises for a spar.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Okay, good," Koumyou says with obvious relief, and climbs off the guy, letting go of one wrist and keeping 'hold of the other to drag him back up to his feet.

Absolutely effortlessly, despite his own very wiry build under those robes.

"You know, there are people on the train who would be willing to spar, I'm sure."

[bakegarasu]

"I know." He quirked a slight smile, before frowning. "... You're a priest, huh? ... Got a question for you."

He faintly knows Buddhism, but only in the sense of being dragged along to the occasional ceremony. Same with Shinto.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"You know, I never end up enjoying it when a question starts off that way," Koumyou sighs, tucking his hands into his opposite sleeves once Otoha's upright. "Shoot, I guess."

[bakegarasu]

"Tell anyone any of this and I'll kick your ass." The threat is fairly toothless given what just happened, but there's still some faint threat there.

"Obviously different worlds and all of that... but... what happens when you die? If... if you were part of an organization that did bad things but you were a fundamentally good person..." He pauses. "... Not me. My situation's different. But..." He glances away, suddenly finding interest in the floor.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Generally speaking, a person's karma is only their own," Koumyou says simply, "whatever he's personally done, or willingly allowed, is on him. But the greater organization's sins would not be his to shoulder."

As for what happens, "After death, reincarnation allows one to face the karma their soul has accumulated in the past. It's what lets them grow, as all living things should grow."

[bakegarasu]

"... He tried to get me out of the organization. We were going to run away. Took some of their money that they'd gotten and we were heading out and... they shot me off the fire escape. Captured him... I rescued him and then my father shot him off of my back..."

He clenches his fist tightly, trying to will himself to not cry. "I couldn't protect him... I couldn't keep the one person who gave a shit about me alive..." Otoha sniffs and curls his lip at his own weakness before continuing on. "... Maybe he'll get a more peaceful life next time..."

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou... hesitates, and then pulls a hand free of his sleeves, and attempts to set it on Otoha's shoulder. He doesn't do this part of his job very often, isolated as he usually is... so it's a little stilted, but he's trying.

At least the horror of the story doesn't faze the priest. He is also from a very brutal world where such things are all too common.

"He sounds like someone who deserves that more peaceful life," Koumyou says gently, "I hope he gets it."

[bakegarasu]

He freezes at the touch but doesn't move away, suddenly feeling like his chest is collapsing in on itself. He's not sure what's going on, but he knows that he doesn't like it. It's hard to breathe and he tries to calm himself.

"It's only been... five days? Six? Rocket launchers they sent after me probably cremated him but he deserved a better resting place..." His voice is a bit strangled and he scrubs at his face with his sleeve. No. No tears. He can't cry.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"...I can help you set up a little shrine for him, if you want. On one of the worlds we visit? Or somewhere on the train, maybe, if you want to be able to tend to it?"

It just seems like the kind of thing that might matter, to this guy? Might bring him some comfort? And that's all such things are good for, in Koumyou's experience. It certainly can't matter to the dead, or to the gods.

[bakegarasu]

"... Maybe. I... I don't know. I've never... I mean I've been to funerals, yeah, but no one I cared about." No one who'd mattered. No one who'd actually tried to be his friend, to reach out to him as a person rather than a tool.

He sniffs again. "... Shouldn't be bothering you with this, I'm just some newbie asshole who doesn't fucking matter."

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou's hand is still on his shoulder, and he squeezes. "No one doesn't matter."

And he tilts his head to one side, slightly.

"...I'm a priest," and the moon. "Listening to people's pain comes with the territory, sometimes. It's fine."

[bakegarasu]

"... No. Some people don't matter. My role matters. Me? ... Nah. Not someone who's been called a monster so much. No pain, no fear. Just a killer."

He's heard it so often that he sometimes has a hard time not believing it.

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou regards him steadily.

"Others' opinion doesn't make it so."

cw: incest and also bad things to babies

[bakegarasu]

"Yeah? Just the facts of my birth make me a monster." He shrugs. "... My brother's also my father, who never wanted me until I was useful. Told me he should have flushed me down the toilet the day I was born."

He's doing an okay job of keeping his voice steady - there's no love lost there, apparently.

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou takes that entirely in stride, like Otoha just told him his favorite color or something.

Similarly, what he says next is with the same certainty as plain fact.

"No one chooses how they're born, it certainly doesn't make anyone a monster."

[bakegarasu]

"... Most people would consider someone who kills for a living a monster. Someone who doesn't care about the lives he takes."

He pauses. "... Well. Other than my father. That was satisfying."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"And the context, for those killings?"

Is Otoha just a serial killer, or does he have a purpose behind it?

[bakegarasu]

"... Told to. Rival groups on our turf, occasionally nonfatally roughing up someone who wouldn't pay protection money... usually other groups, though. They let me go wild and totally destroy the place and the people."

There was no remorse in his voice whatsoever.

[its_dad_sanzo]

Remorse in his voice isn't needed, because Koumyou has the rest of this strange, unexpected chat to pull from for context. "And you consider yourself a monster for it."

Which, yeah. That's pretty fucked up, Otoha. But so is a lot of things in Koumyou's experience.

"Would you still do it now, if you were told to by those same people? After your friend tried to break you free of it?"

[bakegarasu]

"... I have a different job. I'm the city's guardian now. The will of the city herself made me that when I was dying after protecting Reiji. And those people? They're scum. They're endangering the city and its people."

He pauses and shrugs. "I knew that when I was in it, but didn't know any other life or other responsibility. And I have to balance life for the humans and the yokai of Shinjuku. So they've got to go. The rival gangs have to go."