Vein of Ice [Catherine, Isamu]

The line spat that familiar gruff voice that rung in her ear with the receiver pressed so close, it may as well have been talking inside of her head with how it felt.

"Yesss, yes Farfar it's dead. It's dead as dead can be," She almost bit her tongue as she spoke the stumbling of words, lips turned up in a painfully forced grin, "Hooves, teeth, mask. Yes I know. I'll get it. I promise."

That seemed to satisfy him, as the line went dead shortly after, dropping the phone at her side with a lacking of intention. Her heartbeat was vicious enough to make her second guess if her insides were tearing each other apart out of bitter hatred.

Quickened breath and burning eyes were what convinced the bloody woman to take a moment, lying against the cold fur of the creature she'd just slain. The kill was less decisive than typical of her, more of a struggle present in the area, her self muddied. She could feel her skin itch and nerves tingle with the foreign substances on her body, a fervent desire to scratch the horrid itch only held back by logical reasonings.

Did she take too much? Were her dosage times off? Why was she having such an averse reaction to her stimulants? Sometimes it happened and she just didn't have an answer. That was what risk she ran using substances processed from hollows, she supposed.

Just lie back, lie back and look at the stars explode and swim in the sky like flickering bugs. Breathe. It'll be gone. Empty your head.

Isamu was no stranger to familiar faces, but he found it humorously ironic that his life always somehow prominently featured Catherine in it. No matter the mission, no matter the circumstance, he tended to find himself inevitably crossing paths with the woman as though destiny had some strange fixation on bringing them together.

Even in the States, a place he frequented in search of entertainment in high places, he felt the familiar pulse of energy, gravitating toward it swiftly out of sheer curiosity. After all, he could only wonder what the woman was up to. Had she slain another beast for some quick cash? Killed another human?

Traversing the area with the poise of a seasoned assassin in his element, he approached the woman lying across the dead creature with a curious eyebrow. Waving his hand above her face, he tilted his head. He stole a glance at her eyes, recognizing that familiar detachment from reality he usually subjected himself to. Was it a high? If it was

"And here I thought ya always told me you prided yourself on bein' clean and efficient, bloody Mary. What're you doin' here in the States, Cath?"

He posed the question with a wave, his hand dancing over her face to dare a reaction.

The first thing her dilated pupils focused on was a hand reaching in front of her face, spoken words nothing but a monotonous slurry of sound to her ears as she reacted before thinking, her large hollow bone knife pulled from her waist and pointed at Isamu's throat, teeth grinding as her nerves woke and lit themselves with a shock, twitches visible as her mouth forcibly parted,

"You think you can kill me? You think you can catch me unaware? You're wrong fucker, I smelled you coming miles and miles away!" Words were spoken with haste and anxiety, hazel eyes taking a dark grey tone under the moonlight, "You're not stealing my kill you jackass, i'll gut you fi.. firs..t..."

Her trigger finger reaction melted a bit as she recognized the face through the haze of red, but she didn't let her guard down, "I-I-I-If this wa-was your target it's already dead, it's mine, mine already. I'm faster than you bastard!"

Teeth ground and chattered as they clashed together with her speech, she damn near looked like she was going to take her tongue off a few times as her heart and nerves made her ears roar with blood and pain, panting and grunting as if she'd just ran a marathon.

"Whoa, whoa. Easy now. I ain't here to steal your kill. If I was, my timing was shamefully subpar. Mind puttin' the blade down for me, Cathy?"

Isamu spoke with a leveled sense of ease as the woman held the knife at his throat. His leisurely gaze remained as it always did, a neutral expression that displayed little emotion beyond the smallest hint of amusement. He would have found her stuttering cute were it not for the frantic chattering of her teeth and the anxious expression on her face. As it were now, he felt slightly unsettled. Only slightly.

What did she inject into her system that had her on edge? Sighing softly, he slowly strode toward her to examine her skin for a moment, his eyes silently exploring her form for any remnant. His brief search brought him no noteworthy answer. Thus, he posed a small inquiry instead, his eyes wandering over the area.

"What's got you so on edge?"

Her wild expression and seeming unwillingness to drop the blade maintained a tense air, until her arm suddenly dropped with the rigidity of a machine's movement. It felt like her heart was going to explode, but she had to breathe and focus, she had a job a task something to do, she couldn't let him or the itching of her nerves distract her. Sharply turning around, she'd turn the blade downward to pierce one of the hollow's hooved feet, forcing the blade through bone and meat to carve and scrape the pierce off.

"Hooves, teeth, mask," She'd speak in a hasty, hushed tone to herself repeatedly, as if a mantra to keep her focused as she relieved the corpse of it's feet, only remembering to give the man behind her an actual answer a few moments into her dismembering, "Nothing, go away, your eyes make me itch."

As if she didn't stop that mantra was kept up as she had moved on to prying the thing's teeth out.

"Shame. And I here thought my eyes made the women melt. Why do ya wound me so, Catherine~?"

Isamu maintained his calm air during her initial refusal. He felt himself quick enough to avoid an attack if it occurred, but that didn't mean he desired to allow her to strike him and draw blood, either. Inwardly, there was a growing sense of amusement that compelled him to remain here, much to her chagrin. Was it the morbid curiosity to see how she operated during a state of this magnitude? No, perhaps he simply enjoyed toying with his rival far too much to ignore the situation.

"What're ya doin' with this deceased animal, anyway? Trying to fashion its body into weapons you can use for the future or somethin'?"

These were reasonable questions to pose to one of a sane mind, but Isamu knew that Catherine had long since passed that point. Even so, at worst, the only thing that could happen is conflict, or her continuously ignoring him while she hacked away at the deceased beast's body.

The sound of his voice clashing with the jarring cries of insects felt like nails on a chalkboard, her grip on the bony machete growing so tight it looked like she'd start bleeding, dragging a filthy hand through her hair in frustration before realizing what she had done, and only got more restless, suddenly stabbing the blade into the ground when she was halfway into cutting it's mask free from it's body. She wanted to scream and vomit but held her tongue, his presence behind her pushed her to the edge, her mind couldn't stop coming up with all manners of scenarios and problems pertaining to him, a scale dipping far into irrationality.

"What i'm TRYING, to do," She practically sounded like she was gasping for air with every second to third word, fingers twitching and shoulders rigid beneath her bright locks, "Is get my JOB done so I can GO HOME and-and-and clean myssself becaussse.. B-becaussse it feelss like theres insects under my skin so shut up, shut up before I gouge your eyes out, stop looking at me stop being behind me, stop, stop, STOP."

Knees hitting the floor, she'd dry heave after choking on her slurring breath, "I just wannaaa bee in water... Water..! Already..!"

Well now... that shouting told him all he needed to know. The shift from her frantic yet somewhat tempered hostility, to what could only be described as a panic attack, removed any notion that this was simply Catherine at her ideal state of mind. Now, he always enjoyed teasing her when she was properly in the right headspace.

There was a sort of endearing charm about the sharp mood he was typically accustomed to, but this wasn't her at all. Not in the slightest. It was here that he felt it was best to actually help her before her condition worsened. After all, his sense of competition with the woman wasn't going to let her fizzle out at the hands of a violent high.

"Man, now I really wonder what drug you took with side effects like these..."

Moving around to face her entirely, well aware of the danger, Isamu spoke more earnestly and less playful, presenting his hand as an offering to assist her, to display that he was moderately trustworthy at least, his gaze turned to the side. He intended to take her to the closest body of water, or even perhaps, the woman's household. Not that he believed she would relay that information under any circumstance, let alone one like this... but desperate times called for desperate measures. Come to think of it... did she even have a household nearby?

"As much as ya want to be rid of me, I ain't exactly in the business of lettin' my rival suffer a violent high, especially with there bein' money to be made on the horizon. Come on. Let me help. I can bring you water, or take you to water. You want to swim in a river? I'll take you there. Hell, you got a bag around here? I'll bring you a bottle of water. You want to take a shower? I'll drag you to your household. At least let me do that much will ya, Catherine?"

There was no longer any notion of the playful agitation he held earlier. His expression was serious, his focus set squarely on her wellbeing. If she refused, there was grabbing her and dragging her, but that came with its own share of 'fucking around and finding out." Either way, he wouldn't simply leave her here to rot. He supposed that's what he got for following her energy until he found her in a forest. Curiosity's a bitch sometimes...

Worries, concerns, ponderings, thoughts of all walks wormed behind her eyes and threatened to drown out her forced attempts at grounding her self to a task; this just happened when she overdid it, several torturous hours that she'd have to muscle through with sheer will and force, she probably was going to keep running into this problem as her body grew tolerance to the foreign reiryuko swimming in her veins - that was something she'd accepted for her line of work.

"Venom from a Hollow," The answer to his question flowed from her lips as easy as water down a slope; maybe she hoped it'd put him off and get him to go away, maybe she hoped it'd compel him to do something. Both were some measure of possible when her brain felt like it was inside out.

"NO!" She shouted so intensely she almost gagged on her breath, "I don't NEED your help, I don't WANT your help, I can do this by myself! I can do this ALL by myself! I haven't needed anyone before and i'm not going to fucking lower myself so you can feel better about YOURSELF!"

The knife would come down and carve a considerable part of the mask free from it's body, chunks of flesh and visera still attached to the humbly sized feature. She grunted angrily with that sloppy of a cut, Farfar's gonna shit talk her for the next six months for sure, she could already hear that bitter old voice in her ears.

"You think you're better than me," A turn and glare directly at Isamu for once was given, but from the distance the two stood at it'd look like there was just some dark smudges on her mouth, "You're probably thinkin' 'oh, poor little girl can't handle her baby high, let me swoop in and take care of everything for her so I can hold it over her forever, so that she owes me, so that I can force her down and make her do whatever I want, maybe even put a boy in her like Farfar wants so he'd have that fucking proper heir he wants so bad and can throw her in the trash like the bag of whore garbage she is'!"

Upon getting closer, the moonlight reflecting on her face would reveal what he was actually looking at - her lips were so dry they were chapped and cracking, blood running down the fissures of flesh. Her eyes were wide, bloodshot.

"Well guesssss what, big guy? I'd sooner kill myself than let that happen."

"This is well beyond "a baby's high" if you're talkin' about owin' me anything, much less puttin' a baby in ya for an old man I don't even know. If this is the result of hollow venom? No thank you, I'll stick to my baby drugs. Holy shit."

Whatever the hell she ranting about, Isamu could only observe the woman with an upturned eyebrow. True, from his point of view, the proof was in the pudding. He was no stranger to the behavior one displayed when they were high. Hell, he tended to act pretty damn uncharacteristic himself.

Nothing she said made any sense, there was no semblance of the glacial composure she normally carried herself with, and her eyes were bloodshot. Whatever. She could continue to curse him out as much as she wanted. Words were no longer reaching her, action was now required. This was an emergency.

Manipulating the airwaves around his feet, he shot forward in a single stream of movement, driving his arms under her own in an attempt to seize her body. Whether or not the grab proved successful was another matter entirely, but in the event she did move to resist, he would chop his hand forward against a pressure point on her neck. Subsequently, if he achieved the first step of his attention, he moved on to the next by making a beeline for the nearest river.

"For the record, I think pretty highly of ya'. Ever since you entered the game, I feel like I have to stay in optimal shape to keep up. Ain't nobody forcin' anybody to do a thing, but the water is no longer an offer. Sorry in advance, Cathy."

He naturally expected a struggle. But, as sappy as it sounded, he was willing to endure the pain for her sake. He was a gentleman at heart, after all, and she was a good business partner set to join him on future endeavors. Didn't need her being compromised before the big payday, right? A lot was riding on her being in tip-top shape.

And maybe, just maybe... he cared about her. But he wouldn't dare go admitting that shit to her...