4th Trial, Ymiden, Arc 718
South Etzos, Outer Perimeter
11th break
South Etzos, Outer Perimeter
11th break
He was older now, and when he wanted to do something, he put some thought int it first. Which was not to say he'd been the opposite when he was younger... well, aside from a handful of occasions. One in particular that had changed the course of his life, in one blinding break of rage and hatred and fire and blood. There was no thinking there. His mind barely even worked, didn't even remember what had transpired until the next morning.
But the rest of his life, there had at least been a pause. A moment where he'd held himself back, tried to analyze and predict, use that tactical acumen that had been born in street fights and honed in the Black Guard.
Where he departed from many of his ilk, though, was that it wasn't just thinking. Not just folding his arms and frowning and puzzling it out. No. In his case, when possible and applicable, he opened a book.
"Fuck me, there's a lot of 'em, aren't there?"
The cat twisted around to peruse the painted-and-printed page the hairy little man was poring over, and quickly decided it wasn't worth her time. Kasoria snorted as Bella yawned nice and wide, making the empty socket on her right side pucker for a moment. Then she got up and lazily hopped off the table. He watched her saunter out the back door, side into the sun pouring into his tiny backyard. Then he looked over her and saw the training dummy on the wall. Still and silent and torn and waiting for him.
"Fine," he muttered, tearing a chunk off the roll that was his lunch. "Don't need yer help anyway."
He looked back down at the book he was reading. Well, "reading" was pushing it a little. It wasn't a novel or history that one devoured from front to back, raising grand battles and romances from the pages into the mind's eye. It was a textbook, really. A repository of useful information that could be picked apart as the situation allowed it. Kasoria smiled to himself and imagined if this... Algernon Hirsch (and what fucking sadist would name their boy "Algernon"?) ever imagined his great work of anatomy would be put to such a use as he intended.
"Car... Carotid... artery..."
He wiped his hand on his breeches and traced the line of red on the picture under it. A human was staring back at him, covering most of the page, and within him was what looked like a city's worth of streets and alleys and thoroughfares. That they were inked with red told even a casual viewer all they needed to know about their nature. He was on Chapter Four - Human Blood Channels - and he'd found what he was looking for.
The big ones... on the side of the throat. Carotid. There we go.
He massaged his hairy neck, roughly where the lines were in the book. He could just barely feel a pulse under his fingers, when he paused long enough. But they weren't in front, where the breathing tube and speaking box were. No, they were at the side. Almost under the ears. He frowned and kept tracing down, following the flow of the ink and captured human innards until he found similarly thick, tempting targets.
"Fem... Femoral arteries."
Insides of the legs. Under the balls.
The assassin stood up and felt where the picture told him to, and was damned grateful he was inside. He could only imagine the queer looks he'd be getting if he did that in the bookstore. He couldn't feel a pulse, not through his breeches or the muscle of his legs... but he knew they were under both. He'd been in enough fights over twenty-five arcs that he'd seen every flowing tube a man possessed severed at one point or another. Now he could collect all those memories and give those tubes names, know where they were and what they went to.
He put down his roll, still chewing and knowing damn well that one of those fucking moggies would be all over it as soon as he was outside. It didn't matter. His hand came back up and when it did, there was the slight sound of metal and leather scraping across the wood. He looked down at the karambit in his hand, and measured as best he could the length and curve of that lade. Eight inches, maybe less. More than enough for what needed to be done.
He'd had the weapon a long time. Not as long as his gladius, not even close, but... it was different. This had been claimed, as a trophy from a man who'd given him a fucker of a fight with it. There were aged but still ugly scars criss-crossing his torso, made by the very blade he held in his hand. But he'd fought through the pain and the surprise and the spewing blood and tore the cunt apart. Then he took his knife.
Because it was a damn good weapon, and his own body was a testament to that.
"A'right," he said, wiping the crumbs from his beard and flipping the blade around his finger by the ring at the end of it. "No time like the present."
Clad in naught but his breeches, Kasoria strolled out into the blinding suns, ignoring the scampering creatures that snaked around his feet. Ignoring him in turn, focused instead on the soon-to-be-pilfered remains of his lunch. He looked over at the dummy. Flexed his fingers loose and then tight around the handle of the karambit. He blinked and for an instant, the image of that painting was superimposed over the dummy.
Carotid arteries. Side of the neck.
Femoral arteries. Insides of the thighs.
He walked slowly. With each step, his gait seemed to become more of a shamble. Foot dragging. Head low. Shoulders slumped... and blade behind his back, where it would usually be sheathed. He was not Kasoria, nor was he "The Raggedy Man" he'd heard those denizens of the underworld whisper about. He was nameless, faceless, without coin or status; he was the mask he wore in the night, and on the streets. Below attention and respect and, thus, suspicion. Even when he got close and looked up, his jaw was slack, eyes vacant.
Just another derelict, drunk, useless, beggar, only he got close and-
-his arm swung up-
