Ronin Warriors Fan Fiction ❯ No Namer #2 ❯ Chapter 5

PART 1.5 THE JUNGLE KING!

Cooking sherry. It always started out with cooking sherry. It always ended, however, with sake. More importantly, it always ended badly.

Even more importantly, it always began with Rowen.

"Nu uh", "Sai stammered as he reached for a bowl of rice. With Sage working late yet again, they had taken over his kitchen. As soon as dinner was done and the alcohol began to pour, Nicole had fled to her room on pretense of needing more sleep after her illness. Most of the food was gone by now. Kento had won the eating bet by a very small margin, only, (so Rowen had said) because he'd skipped lunch. Kento called him a sore loser, of course. That had been hours ago.

"Aw come on, Sai," Rowen urged him, flopping a comradely arm about the brunette's shoulders. "One more won't kill ya."

"No more," Sai moaned, pushing away the drink Rowen was offering in lieu of the rice. "I think I'd like my next taste of rice to be the unfermented kind, please." He peered up at Rowen, azure eyes narrowing in blatant suspicion. "And why exactly are you so damn insistent on shoving more of that horrible stuff down my throat, eh? You like it far better than I, yet I haven't seen you touch a drop! Just how much has Kento had, for that matter?"

Rowen scratched his head and rolled his eyes innocently towards the ceiling.

"You're too cruel!" he exclaimed, spreading his hands in an exaggerated shrug. "To think that I would be up to something. To think that I would purposefully inebriate my friends while I remained sober, to think that…"

"Rowen.."

"What?"

"Where's Kento?"

"Um," Rowen stepped a little further away from Sai. "Last I saw him, he was in the kitchen."

"The kitchen?! Doing what?" Sai demanded, getting quickly to his feet. "The food is out here, and he can't cook, so…"

Before this could go any further, the kitchen door was kicked open and a very drunken Kento stumbled out, wearing only a dishtowel and a colander, and howling something about being the jungle king.

"MY EYES!!" Sai fell out of his chair and hit the floor writhing and clutching at his eyeballs. "OH GOD MY EYES!! DAMN YOU ROWEN!!"

"Heh," Rowen calmly reached under the table and pulled out a camera, snapping a quick picture before tucking it away again. "Now that's even worse than last time. My revenge for losing that fifty bucks will be carried out," he shook a fist in the air, his voice dramatically sonorous. "Once he's sober anyway. And why are you blaming me, I just got him drunk enough to do it, that's all."

"What's going on in h-ROWEN!!" Nicole came upon the sight, turned beet red, and turned around so fast her hair whipped painfully across Ro's cheek.

"Owwww," he whined, rubbing at his cheek with pale fingers. "How come everyone always starts blaming me?"

"Because you're always the one who really is to blame," Sai piped up, and promptly got kicked in the ribs by an innocently grinning Rowen as he tried to placate the smoldering Nicole. Kento continued to stagger about, bellowing like something out of a bad movie and almost stepping on Sai, who was laughing too hard to get up off the floor.
Nicole had to take action. Again.

Agreements were reached, payment discussed, and an unhappy Rowen walked off to finally get himself as drunk as he could. Nobody could chew someone out quite like Nicole. Kento had long since passed out on the couch, still in his…ensemble. Sai hadn't been too far behind him, curled up in front of the television, which seemed to have decided to actually work tonight. Spooky covered both with blankets before going back to bed herself, leaving Rowen to his own guilty devices.

Sage had come home at some point during the listless twilight hours of dawn, after even Rowen had managed to fall asleep. His presence was given away by the crowded set of keys that had been tossed on the dining room table. Nicole had found his bloodstained coat in the laundry room, merely flung atop the washing machine and left there. Usually, Sage was adamant about cleaning that thing for obvious reasons. She was growing ever more worried about him. Her concern would only deepen when, well into the afternoon, Rowen came stumbling into the kitchen rather than her cousin. Sage was an early riser, at least, he usually was.

"Java," the pale man moaned as he sank into a chair. "Java….black…now…."

"We haven't got anything like that," Nicole replied coolly as she sipped her own afternoon tea. "Everyone else has been up for hours. I have no sympathy for you at all."

"You're a cruel woman," Rowen let his forehead fall to the table with a thump. That was a mistake, and he fought down waves of dizzied nausea. He must have looked as bad as he felt. He hadn't bothered changing, and had slept in his clothes, which were now twisted and magnificently wrinkled. Deep sapphire eyes were dull and bloodshot, the marks under his eyes rivaling Nicole's. His nearly trademark headband had come off sometime in the night, leaving that wild nest of blue to spray in every which direction it pleased. He'd have to hunt down his favorite accessory later, once he could walk straight. "It's quiet in here. Where is everyone?"

"Kento and Sai went shopping to replace the food you guys ate last night," she replied, pushing a cup of tea towards him. "This will help."

"I'm surprised Kento could even stand to walk," Rowen took the tea with one hand, making a face. "He must be a far stouter drunk than I."

"He's only a drunk when you push it on him," Nicole replied in a dangerous tone. Ro took the hint and fell quiet, sipping his tea and avoiding that flashing emerald gaze.

"So uh…Sage at work?"

"No, he's asleep," Nicole replied in a quiet voice, gazing down into her teacup. "He came home around dawn. I think he was at the clinic the entire time." She sighed and ran her fingers through crimson tresses, biting her lip. "Things must be getting bad. Very bad."

"I guess it's too much to hope whatever this is is just gonna pass us by, eh?" Rowen took a sip of his tea and stuck out his tongue. "Ugh, what's in this?"

"Medicine," Nicole murmured absently. "And I don't think so. I think we're going to have to take action."

"Action against what? There's nothing to fight! It's just a bunch of people tripping over themselves and happening to land on scissors and crap like that. It's like, National Klutz Week or something." Nicole was silent for a long moment, staring back into her tea.

"Are people tripping into the scissors, so to speak," she explained softly. "Or are they being pushed into them?"

"Someone would have said something by now," Rowen shrugged. "If there was some sicko out there cutting people's brake lines and pushing them down stairs, someone would have seen him by now, don't you think?"

"Someone has seen him," came a soft, tired voice from the doorway. Rowen and Nicole both looked up to see a fatigued looking Sage approaching the table. He took a seat and slid down into it with a heavy, unusually graceless flop.

"You're kidding," Rowen blinked. "You've got to be, because I sure as hell was!"

"But it's true," Sage answered, rubbing his face with his hands as he tried to wake up a bit more. "A woman at the clinic told me so….right before she died. She was ranting about something killing her children. I checked into it later and found her entire household had been murdered by someone unknown."

"Someone? Maybe it was an animal or something," Rowen suggested.

"Animals can't pick up and throw kitchen knives, Rowen," Sage replied with a kind of irritated raise of tone. "The youngest child was pinned to the wall with what had to be every blade in the whole damn house." Nicole made a small, startled sound.

"How the hell did you get in, anyhow? Murder scenes aren't open to everyone who walks in off the street," Rowen asked, though any trace of joviality had drained from his voice.

"There were over five hundred and twelve murders in this one district last night alone," Sage replied quietly. "The police hadn't even gotten to that neighborhood yet, they were so overwhelmed. I got the woman's address from the neighbor that brought her in."

"Isn't that illegal?" Ro asked with a sidelong look, taking a sip of tea.

"I think the situation is severe enough that I'm willing to break a few rules."

"Dear God," Nicole bowed her head, eyes staring at the table. "Over five hundred people…and…children…children…who would do such a thing?"

"It has to be the work of more than one entity, then," Rowen said, becoming all business. "There's too much happening at once for it to be just one guy."

"Indeed," Sage sighed. "And tonight will be even worse."

"How do you figure?"

"Well, look at what has happened so far," Sage began to tally on his fingers. "It began as a series of `accidents' that led to just a few deaths. With each passing night, more people die, and the less it looks like accidents and more like murder. Whoever is doing this is either getting sloppy, impatient…"

"…or confident," Rowen finished in a chillingly clinical voice, his eyes half-closing as he sat in silence, digesting the limited amount of information they had before them.

"….or confident," Sage repeated. "Though these incidents seem to happen mainly at night. I think a dusk curfew needs to be placed into effect. That will cut down on it a little bit."

"I'm sure some higher-up already thought of that," Rowen replied, trying in vain to pick his hair back into place with his fingers. "But with the phones, radio, and TV all screwed up, it'll be hard to get that kind of widespread message out effectively. From what you've told me, the police are overwhelmed as it is."

"Then I suppose that leaves it up to us to figure things out and bring a stop to it," Sage stated blandly.

"Hey, it's our job to play hero, right?" Rowen asked with a grin that he didn't really feel.

"Right," Sage sighed. "Our job. Then where shall we start?"