(Akemi's POV)
The growl of my Kawasaki faded into the distance, carrying Ren and his little sister away. Away from this place. Away from the filth.
Now, I was alone with them.
The warehouse was quiet. It was the kind of charged silence that falls after a bomb threat is called in, a silence thick with the promise of imminent, explosive violence. The air was a putrid cocktail—the metallic sharpness of fresh blood, the sour reek of fear-sweat, the foul ammonia of urine-soaked trousers. Beneath it all was the foundational scent of rot and damp concrete.
It was a fitting tomb for the fifteen pieces of walking garbage that remained.
They huddled together against the far wall, a pathetic herd of trembling animals. Their leader, Kenji, was clutching his ribs, his face a pasty gray. The other two lieutenants were broken things on the floor, one dead, one wishing he were. The rest of them, the rank-and-file scum, were staring at me. Their eyes, just minutes ago filled with leering arrogance and casual cruelty, now held a new emotion: the pure, primal terror of prey that has just realized it is locked in a cage with a starved wolf.
I took off my light jacket, the one Ren bought me last month, folding it neatly and placing it on a clean crate. I wouldn't get it dirty. Then, I began to slowly roll up the sleeves of my t-shirt.
I didn't speak. The silence was my weapon. Let them stew in it. Let their imaginations conjure horrors far worse than anything they'd experienced so far. Let them feel the cold certainty of their doom creep into their bones.
One of them broke. A lanky boy with a stupid haircut bolted for the mangled doorway, his survival instinct overriding the paralysis of his fear.
Foolish.
I wasn't a whirlwind. I was an avalanche. Silent, inevitable, and all-encompassing. I crossed the fifty feet between us in what felt like a single, fluid motion. He didn't even make it halfway. I didn't tackle him. I simply hooked my steel-toed boot behind his shin and pulled.
The sound of his tibia snapping was a sharp, satisfying CRACK that echoed beautifully in the stillness. He went down with a high-pitched, girlish shriek, clutching his now Z-shaped leg.
I grabbed the collar of his cheap uniform jacket and dragged him, sobbing and scraping, back to the center of the room. I dropped him like a sack of garbage at my feet. The others flinched back, pressing themselves harder against the concrete wall.
"We'll start with you," I whispered, my voice calm. I knelt on his back, the pressure pinning him effortlessly. His pathetic struggles were like a fly twitching under a thumb. I took his right wrist in my hand. He'd used this hand to shove Samantha. I'd seen it as I arrived. I extended his index finger.
"You touched her," I stated. It wasn't a question.
"N-no! I didn't! I just—!"
I applied pressure. The knuckle popped, then the bone gave way with a wet, grinding CRUNCH. The finger bent sideways, grotesquely, pointing back at him. His scream was raw, animalistic, a sound of pure agony. Good. Let the others hear it. Let it marinate in their fear.
"This one?" I murmured, moving to his middle finger.
"NO! PLEASE! MERCY! PLEA—"
CRACK.
Hot tears and snot ran from his face, pooling on the grimy floor. He kicked his one good leg uselessly. I leaned in close, my lips brushing the shell of his ear, so my words would be his whole world. "There is no mercy for vermin. Mercy is a human concept."
I proceeded to break the remaining two fingers and his thumb, slowly, methodically. I made sure he was conscious for every tear of the ligament, every snap of the bone, every white-hot explosion of pain. By the time I snapped the thumb backwards with a final, sickening pop, he had thankfully passed out from the pain.
I stood, shaking the blood from my hand. The boy's ruined, swollen claw lay twitching on the concrete.
Fourteen left.
I turned to the rest of them. My gaze was a physical weight, crushing them.
"Strip."
Kenji, the leader, the one who had pissed himself, looked at me, his eyes wide with incomprehension. "Wh-what?"
"Your jackets. Your shirts. All of you. Now." My voice did not rise. It didn't need to.
One of the boys, braver or stupider than the rest, whimpered, "W-why?"
I moved. I didn't rush. It was three simple, economical steps. My hand came up in a blur, the back of my knuckles connecting with his jaw. It was not a slap. It was a demolition. I felt his mandible dislocate under the impact, a wet, popping thud. His head whipped to the side, and a spray of blood and chiclet-sized teeth arced through the air. He collapsed, unconscious before he hit the ground.
The others scrambled to obey, fumbling with buttons and zippers, dropping their pathetic attempts at fashion to the floor. Soon, they were all bare from the waist up, their goose-fleshed skin looking pale and vulnerable in the gloom. They shivered, but not from the cold.
"You don't deserve the dignity of clothes," I informed them calmly. "You're just animals. Meat. And meat should be properly tenderized."
I approached Kenji. He recoiled, falling back on his ass, scrambling away like a crab. I let him. I just stood over him, my shadow engulfing him.
"You remember what you said to Samantha-chan?" I asked, my voice a soft murmur.
He shook his head frantically, sobbing. "No, I don't, I swear, I—"
"Liar." The word was a slap of its own. "You said you wanted to taste her. You said you'd make her scream your name. You wanted to make my Ren watch." My voice was still quiet, but now it held the serrated edge of a hacksaw. "Ren, whose kindness you mistook for weakness. Ren, who is worth more than the combined miserable lives of everyone in this room."
I reached into a small pouch on the back of my belt and produced a blade. It was a simple tool, a leatherworker's skiving knife, six inches of razor-honed high-carbon steel. It gleamed, catching a sliver of moonlight, seeming to drink the light from the room.
Kenji's eyes locked onto it. A fresh wave of piss, dark and foul-smelling, soaked the front of his trousers.
"Here's what's going to happen," I explained to him, my tone as reasonable as a surgeon explaining a procedure. "You are going to take this knife. And you are going to cut off your own left ear. A souvenir. To remember this night."
He stared at me, his mind clearly unable to process the words. "I… what?"
"If you don't," I continued patiently, "I will start with both of your ears. Then your lips. Then I will flay the skin from your back in a single sheet. Then I will cut off your worthless little cock and feed it to you. I will do all of this very slowly, and then I will cauterize your wounds so you don't bleed out. You will live the rest of your short, miserable life as a noseless, earless, lipless, dickless thing that has to eat through a straw. So. Choose."
His mind finally caught up. The scream that ripped from his throat was no longer human. It was the shriek of a soul staring into the abyss. "NO! PLEASE GOD, NO! I CAN'T!"
"Five." I began to count down. My voice was serene.
"NO, NO, NO, NO!"
"Four."
His comrades backed away, their faces masks of chalky horror. No one dared to interfere. This was Kenji's personal hell, and they wanted no part of it.
"Three."
The terror won. Sobbing, he held out a trembling hand. "I'll do it! Okay! Okay, I'll do it!"
I placed the knife in his shaking palm, its handle warm from my body. He held the blade to the side of his own head. He couldn't do it. He just sobbed, his whole body shaking.
"Do it," I commanded, my voice flat.
He squeezed his eyes shut and began to saw. It was a clumsy, hideous thing. The razor-sharp blade slid easily through the cartilage, but he was hesitating, pulling back, then pushing forward again in a frantic, jerky motion. It wasn't a clean cut; it was a butchering. Blood, hot and dark, streamed down his neck and soaked the collar of his shirt. His screams became wet, gurgling things as he worked.
Finally, with a soft, wet plop, the ear fell to the concrete.
Kenji collapsed, howling, clutching the bleeding, ragged hole on the side of his head. I did not give him a second glance.
I turned to the boy who'd called Samantha a 'doll to be broken'. I didn't speak. Words were wasted on him. I slammed him back against a rusted support beam. Grabbed his arm. And began to twist. It was a simple Aikido lock, but I did not apply it with any finesse. I just twisted, putting my body weight into it, until his shoulder popped from its socket with a loud, wet tearing sound.
He screamed, his face turning white. Before he could fall, I drove my boot into the side of his now-useless arm's elbow. The joint hyperextended, then shattered with a sickening crunch. I let him drop to the floor, a broken doll of his own.
Twelve left.
I moved on. Another thug, his face frozen in a mask of terror. I grabbed a fistful of his greasy hair and smashed his face into the concrete floor. Again. And again. The bridge of his nose collapsed into pulp. Teeth skittered across the floor like pebbles. When I lifted his head, his face was an unrecognizable ruin of blood and broken bone.
To ensure he wouldn't run, I pulled a long, rusted nail from a rotting plank and, using a nearby brick as a hammer, I drove it straight through the arch of his foot, pinning him to the floor. I made him watch as I moved to the next one.
This one was crying openly. "Please… Akemi-sama… I'm sorry…"
I ignored him. I took out my blade. "You wanted to touch what wasn't yours," I said. I grabbed his hand, turned it palm-up. And with the tip of the knife, I began to carefully, precisely, peel the skin from his palm. Not deep. Just enough. Layer by layer. The tough outer calluses, then the softer pink flesh beneath.
His shrieks were a thing of beauty. He tried to pull away, so I stomped on his femur. I felt the bone crack, but not break, under my heel. "She was going to be forced to crawl, wasn't she?" I whispered as he screamed. I looked at his thrashing legs. With a flick of my wrist, I drew the blade cleanly across his right Achilles tendon. It snapped like a severed guitar string. He would never walk correctly again. He certainly wouldn't run.
The next one was an idiot. He actually tried to fight back, swinging a length of rebar at my head. I moved under the swing, the motion as natural as breathing. My fist drove into his throat, collapsing his windpipe. As he gasped and choked, my leg swept out, taking his feet from under him. He hit the ground hard. I drove my heel into his stomach, then his solar plexus. I heard ribs crack. He vomited, a pathetic stream of bile and fear. I knelt, used the tip of my blade to slit his cheek open from the corner of his mouth to his ear. The muscle beneath spasmed. He would wear that smile forever.
Ten left.
The next few were a blur of methodical, educational violence. I was an artist, and their bodies were my canvas. A dislocated jaw for the one who had made lewd comments. A shattered kneecap for the one who had kicked Ren's chair. I forced two of them to punch each other, promising to break fewer bones on the winner. They complied, weeping as they exchanged clumsy, terrified blows until one collapsed. I broke his jaw anyway. I lied.
One, a sniveling coward, tried to claim he never laid a hand on Ren. "I just watched!" he pleaded.
"And that makes you innocent?" I dragged him to a puddle of filthy water and, with my boot on the back of his neck, I held his face under. Not long enough to drown. Just long enough for the panic to set in. Long enough for him to feel his lungs burning, his body convulsing with the desperate, primal need for air. I pulled him up, sputtering and coughing.
"That is how my Ren felt," I explained calmly. "While you watched." I then broke both of his arms at the elbow so he could never stand by and watch anything ever again without being reminded of his cowardice.
I became a whirlwind of tailored punishments. A hacksaw from the wall, used to carve shallow, bloody lines into a boy's back, one for each insult he'd hurled at Ren. Pliers, retrieved from a rusted toolbox, used to extract the fingernails of a boy who had ripped Ren's shirt. I broke spines, but not enough to paralyze, just enough to ensure a lifetime of agonizing pain. I shattered pelvises. I ruptured spleens with carefully placed kicks.
The warehouse became an abattoir. The air was thick with the stench of blood, piss, and viscera. The sounds were a symphony of weeping, moaning, and the wet, rhythmic crunch of bone breaking under my boots.
Finally, there was silence. A new kind. The quiet of absolute, unconditional surrender. The fifteen of them were scattered across the floor like discarded, broken toys. Alive. But ruined.
I stood in the center of my handiwork, breathing evenly. My hands, my shirt, my face were spattered with their blood. I looked down at them, at the broken bodies and shattered minds.
I walked over to the whimpering form of Kenji, who was barely conscious. I knelt down, so he could see the utter lack of emotion in my eyes.
"You hurt the only good thing in my world," I whispered to him, my voice a dead, flat thing. "You thought he was weak because he was kind. You were wrong. Kindness is a luxury. A privilege. It is something people like Ren give to the world. And it is something people like me exist to protect."
I pressed the tip of my blade against his cheek, right below his eye.
"You don't deserve his kindness. You don't deserve mercy. You don't even deserve a clean death."
I traced a long, slow, shallow line down his face. Just deep enough to leave a permanent, ugly scar. A brand.
"You will live," I whispered as his last shred of consciousness fled. "And you will remember. Every single day, when you look in the mirror, you will see my face. You will feel my hands on your bones. And you will remember what happens when you touch what is mine."
I stood. The warehouse was quiet now, save for the agonized, shallow breathing of fifteen ruined boys. My work here was done. Justice had been served.
Not justice. No.
This was an education. And the tuition was their pain.