It's HIMITIME! Chapter 2

Himiko Toga woke to an unfamiliar ceiling.  Or she would have if someone hadn’t put a sticky note on her forehead, obscuring her line of sight.  It was a strange thing to experience after the last week she’d had.  Between the homelessness and the… the thing, which she didn’t want to think about right then, and then the fight…  it was all kind of a blur at the end there, and she didn’t really have the drive or ability to parse it right now.

If she were being completely honest she had been expecting to wake up in a padded room, or a jail cell.  Or her… room… but that wasn’t where she was.  The lack of restraints tipped her off to that.  So did the feeling of cotton sheets on bare skin, which, admittedly, was a bit off-putting but she’d had worse encounters.  Well, kind of.  She still had her underwear, which was good, and she didn’t feel particularly out of sorts.  She knew the difference, and to be fair after a solid week hiding in alleys and digging out of trash cans she really couldn’t blame whoever it was that had stripped her down for doing so.

She wouldn’t want some random hobo girl ruining her good sheets.

Mother wouldn’t approve.

Himiko shuddered.

Still, that left her with a number of questions as she reached up and grabbed the bit of paper off her  forehead.  Little things, like where she was, and who took her, and how long she might be able to lounge in this comfortable bed curled around a Gang Orca plushie nearly the size of her torso.  Because really, you don’t appreciate the little things until you spend a week on the streets in your once-high-quality school uniform, trying to wash in public restrooms and sleeping on benches.  Still, she was getting distracted.

Glancing at the note, she couldn’t help but hike an eyebrow.  It was definitely written by a boy, given how barely legible the scrawl was, but it did answer a few things.

*Sorry for taking your clothes.  They were kinda bloody.  Put them in the wash outside the shower room.  Should be dry by the time you wake up but if not, left some of mom’s stuff for you to use.  Bathroom is two doors down from mine.*

*If you feel the need to escape, please open the window.  I don’t want to explain why I need to get the glass replaced.  Again.  Thank you.  Tetsuo*

That was it.  Clothes, shower, please don’t break my window.  If she had the emotional energy for it she might snort, but that would be unladylike.  Even in the recesses of her mind she refused to let that out.  Privacy never really meant private.  She just didn’t know where the cameras were, yet.

Besides, if she was going to escape she’d do it the proper way.  Out the front door.  Possibly after stabbing whoever Tetsuo was for good measure, though she might put it off till she got that shower.  Her hair was an oily mess and she didn’t need the clumpy reminders and matted hints to tell her she desperately needed a wash.  A girl shouldn’t be able to smell herself after all, and she… really, really did.

She’d get up in a minute, she decided.  It was a really nice bed.  Big, too.  She could spread out if she wanted and that was a real treat.  So what if she gave the monitoring devices watching her a show?  It’s not like her captor(?) hadn’t had ample time to cop a feel or a peek and it wasn’t any worse than when Father’s police friends came over and got drunk, the grabby assholes.  Either way it was whatever.

Eventually she managed to pull herself from the luxurious western-style mattress, maybe half an hour later.  She still felt grimy, even without the week-old clothing clinging to her skin, and god did it leave her in a real mess.  It’d been too long since she was able to exfoliate and her skincare routine was absolutely ruined.  The less said about what she was still wearing the better, and without the covers blocking the worst of it her own scent had her gagging.

How it was worse now than it was when she was huddled behind a dumpster she didn’t know and frankly, she didn’t want to know.  The little, repressed part of her mind howled in dismay at it, but it was what it was.

The shower, thankfully, blissfully, was where the note said it was.  The little washer/dryer in the foyer had already run its course, and her clothing was warm and, for a given value, clean.  She didn’t touch them yet, if only to keep them from getting contaminated again, but she was glad they were where they should be.

But that wasn’t the main attraction.  That was reserved for the decently sized bath/shower combo that called to her with its siren song of cleanliness.  She didn’t even realize she’d shucked her nasty leftovers until she was seated in front of the spigot, a wide array of shampoos and conditioners just waiting to bring her back to a level of clean she’d almost forgotten could exist.  She even considered using the nightmarish shampoo/bodywash/conditioner that clearly belonged to some heathen male in its economy sized squirt bottle.  They liked rougher soaps anyway, and she needed a good scouring.

She reached out, her fingers barely brushing against the first of the soaps when she paused.  Her breath hitched, even as hot water fell around her, turned up to an almost boiling heat. Her eyes locked onto her nails, dried, crusty, red from things she didn’t want to think about as they dripped crimson all over the tiles and down the drain.  Her hands were so rough, and her wrists so thin.  There were so many bruises, so many knicks, so many little hurts that she tried to drown out as she tried to swallow her feelings, just like Mother taught her, but her throat hurt too much.

She didn’t even realize she was crying until she noticed her hands shaking.  Didn’t feel the tears until she hiccuped quietly, as those blood-drenched fingers curled around her knees, pulling them close under the spray of the water.  The nearly silent sobs that wracked her were almost lost under the sound of water hitting tile, and the steam obscured her too-thin frame, ribs and spine jutting out against her sallow skin left her panting, gasping, even as the tears came harder.

She didn’t even know why she was crying.  Why despite everything she knew and all the harsh lessons on how a proper lady should act and all the painful reminders that she shouldn’t, couldn’t, let the utter agony show, she just… couldn’t hold it in.

It had all gone so wrong.  She couldn’t keep up the mask.  She cracked.  Turned into the monster her Mother and Father always knew she would be.  No matter what she tried, no matter what she did, it just… was never good enough.  And she still didn’t know why it all disintegrated like sand between her fingers at the end of it all.

She didn’t mean to hurt anyone.  She was a good girl.  She had to be a good girl.  Only good girls were worthy of love, and bad girls needed to be Disciplined.  And she just… she just…

Didn’t understand.

Her chest hurt, her skin feeling too tight across her muscles as she lost everything she tried to subsume under the porcelain mask, pouring out in an unsightly mess across the bathroom as she lost control over her stomach, her knees hitting the tile hard as she sobbed in between the agony that ripped at her throat.  It was all too much, just… just everything.  She never meant to hurt him.  She didn’t want to.  She couldn’t help herself.  Couldn’t keep it down.  She was just… so hungry, and it smelled so good, and it was so salty and hot in her mouth even as she tried to drink it all up, tried to not make a mess because Mother would Punish her and Father would Discipline her and she would deserve all of it.

Because she was an awful, terrible girl.  Because she was a Monster, hideous and ugly and twisted and sick and perverse.  She was every horrible thing Mother ever called her as she twisted and bent her joints, as she dug her nails in, as she… as she…

Himiko tried to vomit again, but her guts were empty.  But her eyes weren’t, and the tears and weeping gasps started again, and again, and again as she just… she just…

She sat under that water until it went lukewarm, and then cold, and then, after she rubbed her skin raw and her hair clean and her face she stood.  She stared at the door.  Stared at the warped reflection of herself in the once clean tiles of the bathroom, and just felt empty.

It was all so pointless now, wasn’t it?

She was never going to be a good girl again.

That was all she could think as she sloppily dressed.  What did it matter?  What was the point?

The carpet in the hall was soft under her feet, but her flesh ached from the wash, and it felt like needles against her too-sensitive skin.  Her clothing was loose on her body, the uniform still warm from the dryer, the shirt rumpled and the blazer unbuttoned, her skirt loose on her hips.  It felt odd without the undergarments but there was no world in which she was wearing those until they got washed.  Or burned.  Either was fine with her.

Her stomach rumbled, but it was an old, familiar feeling.  Nothing compared to the other thing that gnawed at her.

Her… her need whispered to her like a cancer, and she licked her fangs, those terrifying, unsightly things, and her soul wept as her broken heart somehow managed to keep pumping.

Those same fangs her Father paid to have ripped out of her mouth, even when they grew back, until it was clear, five, six times later that they would just… never go away.  The proof of her evil.  Of her taint.

And the most depressing thing?  He was right.  They both were, and she was just… Himiko.  The monster.  The beast.

The unwanted.

So what even was the point?  She had crossed the hall.  Seen the door out.  It wasn’t barred, or blocked, or locked.  Wherever she was, whoever had taken her, clearly they either didn’t really care or… or what?  The idea of a choice was so foreign to her it made her head ache.  Could she just… leave?  Just go?  Go where?  Why?

She turned to the kitchenette.  The least she could do is get some of those blueberry waffles the giant was making.  That was a choice too, wasn’t it?  She didn’t know.  She wanted waffles.  She also wanted blood but for the moment waffles would do.  She could worry about what came next after she got something in her stomach.  Something that wasn’t stolen out of a store or fished out of the trash.

Yes.

Waffles were good.

She took a moment to gather herself, taking the time to focus on anything, anyone, besides herself and her own thoughts.  The man in the kitchen kept working in silence, though, the massive slab of muscle and bulk moving with a surprising agility that his heavy frame would have belied, his short, cropped black hair messy in that strange way boys could just wake up with it, his thick limbs and sausage fingers delicate with the whisk in his hand even as it engulfed the little kitchen utensil.  He wasn’t fat, she could tell, but he was padded.  Barrel chested, she thought the term was, but he wore it on his exceptionally tall frame well.  The sleeveless top and sweats doing little to hide his figure as he moved.

She didn’t need help in identifying him as the man who had confronted her… yesterday?  This morning?  She didn’t know.  Time was a frustrating blur between then and now, but he seemed oddly at ease with her in his home, all things considered, and that… she felt oddly affronted by that.  She was dangerous, dang it!  If she brought a crazy, blood-covered girl home for whatever reason she’d be wary of her!  Ugh.  Boys.

Then again he’d also handily disassembled her when she took her shot at him, so maybe he didn’t have a lot of reason to be afraid.  He’d just… left her to her own devices earlier and she didn’t know what to make of that.  Clearly he didn’t have any reason to keep her, aside from letting her clean up and asking her not to break his window if she decided to leave.  He clearly wasn’t looking to stop her from going out the door but…

The giant didn’t seem to notice her at first, as he added another set of the delicious-smelling breakfast cakes to a stack that, quite frankly, seemed beyond excessive, but who was she to judge?  She just slipped in, towards the chair against the little central counter that the man probably three times her size and four times her weight worked.  It was strange to watch, given how as soon as she crossed that barrier his body language shifted.  Not in the, the, how would she put it.  Not noticeably.  Just all the small twitches, all the little shifts, they twitched differently, shifted unnaturally to something else.

She knew he knew she was there despite how silent she was.  She was good at that.  Sneaking in, slipping around, hiding until she was Required, but he sussed her out without even looking at her.  So she sat silently.  Waiting.  Hoping some of those waffles were for her but a lifetime of Father’s rules warned her away from asking.  She spent enough meals just watching everyone else eat.  She didn’t want to be hungry again.

“Good shower?”

The words hit her like a bullhorn.  Not because they were shouted, but because they broke the silence, the background noise.  Talking during a meal was unheard of.  Mother and Father didn’t like hearing her at meals even as they Required her presence.

His voice was light.  Not childish, but not mature either.  It didn’t have that reverb that Father used when he berated her.  It was something she found odd because, quite frankly, given how stocky the towering boy was she’d have expected something… something else.  It was weird.

He also seemed oddly relaxed, despite the fact that she was vaguely sure she’d tried to knife him.  She’d tried very hard, and given the few bandages that covered his bare arms she’d definitely scored a few nicks.  Yet here he was, putting a -holy that was a lot of waffles plate in front of her, with butter and syrup and a fork and a butter knife before doing the same for himself.  His stack was much, much larger than even her cornucopia too.  Like he was going to eat at the very least her metric weight in fluffy blueberry waffles.  She believed he could, too.

“It-” She began, only for her stomach to rumble in the most embarrassing way, making her freeze.  He gave her a look that could only be described as amused as he poured what was probably a gallon of syrup on his meal before offering it to her.

“Hungry?”  He asked, his lips twitching into a wry smile.  Himiko just nodded, feeling a level of sheepishness that she had thought was beyond her, ducking down as she accepted the squeeze bottle.

“I- yes.  I am.  Thank you.”  She said, at a loss for what else to add, before tagging on, “It was good.”  Her tone was subdued.  Almost a whisper, really, but he seemed to hear her just fine, the butter knife in his hand cleaving his stack like a butcher’s blade through a leg of lamb -and oh god she was drooling in front of him as she quickly ducked down, hoping he didn’t notice.

He definitely noticed.

“Well, eat up.  I didn’t make those waffles for nothing, eh?”  He said in that same airy tone.  She cut off a sliver after adding a drop of syrup, just to taste, and in that moment she experienced nirvana.  For the next ten minutes the only sounds were those of her inhaling the dozen waffles like she’d never had a meal so rich and filling.  Mostly because she hadn’t, but he didn’t know that.  He did drop another dozen in front of her though, even as she finished the first.  Where he’d gotten them she didn’t know, as his pile was slowly consumed with the inevitability of a glacier crossing the frozen wastes.

Didn’t matter though.  Waffles.

She barely noticed the box of tissues in front of her as she reached out to dab at her eyes.  When had she started crying again?  Because she had.  She had and she’d gotten snot on herself and her lips tasted salty and she just…

“It’s going to be okay.”  He said, and there was no judgement there.  How could there be no judgement there, she asked herself helplessly as she coughed out another sob.  Because the way he said it… no, no it wouldn’t be okay, but she wished it would be.  He sounded so confident.

“It can’t be…” She almost didn’t recognize her own voice.  “Ever-” she hiccuped, “Everything is so… so… fucked…” The word felt filthy in her mouth.  If Mother or Father heard her say it they would have Disciplined her right there, but the giant just watched her patiently, eating his waffles.

“It is.”  He agreed amicably, taking another bite.  “But this too shall pass.”

Himiko didn’t know what to say to that.  She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.  So she put a bit more waffle in instead.  It was… really good.  Silence fell again, interspersed with the sound of silverware hitting plates and her occasional sniffles.  They weren’t dainty sniffles either, and her Mother would have lost her mind listening to snort like a pig, but honestly?  She couldn’t bring herself to worry about it.

“I…”  She said, halting, “I tried… to hurt you.”  She forced out, finally.

“Mmm.  Yeah.  Good effort, too.”  He said in that same disarming voice.  Somehow he’d halfway cleared his plate in the interim and it was distracting her.  Welcomingly distracting her, but… why was this so hard!?

“I killed… I killed that other guy!”  She said, desperately, finally, “Why are you doing this!?”

“Doing what?”

“Doing this!” She swept the butter knife across the table, barely missing him.  He didn’t even flinch.

“Making breakfast?  I was hungry.  Was a bit of an active night last night, you know?”  He actually smiled!  “Figured you might be in the mood for something too, all things considered.”

Tetsuo tried not to laugh as a genuinely gobsmacked expression crossed the girl’s originally dead glare.  He was glad that he’d been able to get that nap in while Finch handled the mechanics of morning meals for him.  He’d been up watching the girl tossing fitfully in his bed after he gently stripped her out of her very bloodstained uniform.

It was definitely one of the more uncomfortable things he’d had to do, but the truth was the thing was a nest of filth even before the blood got involved.  He was probably going to have to burn those sheets, and Mr. Orca was going to need a real scrub after this, but it was better than just leaving her there.  In the alley.  With the body.

The body he was desperately leaning on Finch’s ability to keep him stoic enough to process now that the adrenaline was gone and things were running on The Next Day rules.  All things being equal he was glad for the older presence feeding him what to say as they both watched the girl like a hawk.  It had taken everything in him not to duck when she swung that butterknife high enough to take his nose off a moment ago.  Fortunately she seemed to not be in murder mode, but it didn’t make things much easier if she had been.

She might not have realized it, but she had been screaming in the bathroom earlier.  Ugly crying, complete with wracking sobs and shouted words about being a monster and all the inadequacies and how she didn’t mean to hurt anyone and about the blood thing.  Her voice carried when she was going shrill, and between the two they’d managed to puzzle a few things out.

Not that it seemed to help much as the girl went wildly from one emotion to the next, going from euphoric hunger, to crushing depression, to anger, to euphoria, to sobbing, disjointed rambling.  For all he’d read up on the topic, Tetsuo never imagined he’d see what cognitive dissonance was like in action, and it was both fascinating and horrifying to watch.

He’d gotten her name from the tag on her uniform, earlier.  Himiko Toga.  He wasn’t familiar with her school or her name, but a quick bit of searching on the ‘net got him the name of St. Herebiki’s School for Young Women.  Apparently an old, rich, strict private finishing school for girls covering all levels of education, up to the collegiate.  Big money went in there, and big names came out.

Which just added to the mystery that was Himiko Toga.

“Look,” He began, “I don’t know why you stabbed that guy.  I don’t know why you attacked me.  I also don’t know why you look like you’ve taken up the hobo lifestyle.”  He held up a hand when she moved to say something, and that motion made her flinch, and flinch hard.  Concerning.

“I don’t know a lot of things about you.  But I do know one thing.  I know you needed help, and Heroes help people.  So I decided that I was going to help you.”  He said, taking another bite of his rapidly dwindling stack.  “Because someone had to.”

“It’s not- not that simple!”  She said, between a sob and a snap, and he just put his silverware down on an empty plate.

“Of course it isn’t.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna try anyway.”  He gave her a smile, a real smile, and she didn’t know what to make of it.

The level of honesty in that smile made her stomach clench.  Made her mind skip a beat.  Made her stumble as the giant wall of flesh, muscle and, by volume, waffle looked at her as guilelessly as he could.

Everything in her life told her he was lying.  That he wanted something.  That he… he had to have some kind of motive.  Clearly it wasn’t something she had, though.  He could have had her body any time during the night and honestly?  She probably would have let him.  It hurt less when you didn’t fight.  But that wasn’t what this was.  He just… didn’t trigger that alarm in her brain.

It also wasn’t the weird clinginess that some boys got when you gave them too much attention.  If she didn’t know better she’d say he really believed what he’d just said.  Which was insane if true.  Nobody thought like that.  Nobody.  Not her family, not any of her nominal friends from school, not the stern-faced teachers who refused to listen to her, or the police who just told her Father what she was telling them.  Not anyone.  Because that implied they cared, and nobody cared about her.  The thought was almost laughable.

“Who…”  She started, her doubts plain on her face.  “Who even… who even talks like that?  Who are you?  What even is this?”

“My name is Tetsuo.  Nobuyuki Tetsuo.  And I do, because I’m going to be a Hero.  And Heroes help people.”  He said, as solid as the Earth was round, as absolute as the change of the seasons, as resolute as the tides of the sea.  It was such a ludicrous line that she couldn’t help but laugh in his face.  Laugh long, and laugh hard, and laugh desperately and sorely and hysterically as everything that had happened in the last week hit her like a sledgehammer to the chest.

She almost fell out of her chair, she laughed so hard. In that moment a strong pair of hands caught her shoulders.  She didn’t mean to do it.  She didn’t even think about it, really, as her lips clamped around that tree-trunk arm and her fangs bit deep into his wrist.  Then she drank.  She drank on reflex, on impulse.  She didn’t think about it until it was too late, and then she was on him.  She expected him to slap her.  Or hit her.  Or scream out in pain, pull away, fight her, push her off, something, anything but what he did.

He just… let her drink.  And drink.  And drink some more because it was just… the waffles were euphoric, but this was… sweet, dark and rich and salty.  It was like someone had taken chocolate and ice cream and blended it with the best orgasm she ever had and then mainlined it into her pleasure center with a heroin needle full of distilled joy.  She drank like it was the last bottle of water in the desert, with the desperation of an addict kept from their fix for too long.  The bit she took from the man last night was nothing compared to this thick, rich, complex interplay of flavors.

Until she let go, satiated.

Until she looked up at him, noticing how he was definitely paler than he was a second ago.

Until she saw the four weeping holes in his arm.

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.  An apology?  Maybe.  Or maybe just begging for him to understand her.  Or just… just to not… not what, hate her?  She didn’t know.  She wanted to run, wanted to sprint for the door, to get away, to hide, to scream and cry and… and… and she didn’t know what, but she just stood there frozen as he grabbed a towel off the table and wrapped it around his arm, the four spots of crimson leaving a trail across the tiled floor.

“Feel better?”

The words shook her.  She stared at him with her slit eyes dilated to the point of pain, his blood dripping from the corner of her mouth, even as he sat heavily on the chair she’d left.  She could almost feel when Himiko.exe finally gave up the ghost and crashed completely out, though the welcome darkness only took her after she felt a pair of strong arms catch her falling body as Tetsuo’s eyes widened.

“Well.”  The large boy said, staring at the limply hanging figure of Himiko Toga before plopping her on a nearby couch.  “Shit.”

‘I thought that went about as well as it could have, kid.’  Finch whispered as the man seemed to be reclining in the hammock of Tetsuo’s mind.  ‘You really picked up a mess though, didn’t you?  Any regrets?’

‘Many.’  The teen thought back, before slumping back anemically.  ‘Pretty sure she took like, half my blood there.’  He ‘spoke’ as he took a look at his forearm.  The four holes had already stopped bleeding, though that didn’t stop Himiko’s little lamprey impression from doing some damage.  Fortunately the meal from earlier was already doing wonders for his health, replacing the lost blood in a wave of dizzy relief as he moved back over to the kitchen.  He still had enough mix for another plate of waffles and like the old saying goes, waste not want not.

‘Consequences kid.  You got 'em.’  Finch said wryly, before taking a more somber look at the girl.  ‘This is deep, Tetsuo.  Deeper than you’re ready for.  That girl is an exploding gas station mixed with a train crashing into a school bus full of nuns and twice as chaotic.  Did you see how she kept swinging back and forth?’

‘I’m not blind, Finch.  That was… that was scary.  It took everything for both of us not to kick her off when she clamped on.  I don’t even think she realized how close she was to going overboard.’  Tetsuo sighed tiredly.  He wanted another nap and it hadn’t even been an hour since his last one.

‘Mokoto and Hanzo won’t be back until Tuesday.  That’s how long you got to get things in order, kid.  Not even four days.’  Finch whispered into his thoughts, setting a mental timer for him.  ‘You have any idea what you’re gonna do with her?’

‘First, it’s always weird when you call mom and dad by their first names.  Please stop.  Second, I’ve been thinking about it since last night.  You remember that one place?  By the junkyard?’  Tetsuo asked, only to ‘feel’ Finch nod in his mind, having the decency to not point out that they shared a memory.  ‘I was thinking about it.  It still has its water and power hookups and nobody lives there, as far as I know.’

‘Not the worst place if you have nothing else.’  Finch paused, and he could feel the man giving him a look.  ‘If she wants to go.’

‘If she wants to go.’ Tetsuo agreed.  He didn’t touch on the fact that, for all his big, bold statements he didn’t really have any idea what to do about the girl besides get her out of his family’s apartment.  Taking her here had been a huge risk as it was, and while he wanted to help her, he also wasn’t an idiot.  Mostly.  Kinda.  Shut up Finch.

Truth was he didn’t know what to expect from the, as he now knew, vampire girl.  It did explain why she was covered in blood before, he guessed, and boy wasn’t that a fun can of worms to work through.  Still, he’d made the commitment.  He would help her.  He would.  He just… was a little fuzzy on the details, he admitted quietly to himself as he watched the sleeping blonde.

Crap.

What had he gotten himself into?