Midnight Run [Catherine, Isamu]

A slightly ill-intentioned smile was thrown his way, returning that bump with a quick elbowing, "Yeah Mr.Addict, you take harder shit than I ever have. At least i'm being pragmatic about my consumption."

Human beings required roughly eight hours of sleep a night, she was plenty aware of this. But she wasn't human, now was she? Even the abilities she kept developing, reminded her again and again how far away from that she's getting... Far away. No, she kept it in check, she was aware of herself, she would be fine - any distancing just meant she was closer to her goal.

Then, he went on to speak more her language - a challenge huh? He really wanted to be proven wrong so badly? A grin crept across her face at the proposal, "Fine then. If I turn out to be right, you owe me dinner and you lose the right to bellyache about my health, which is tip top, by the way."

---

The sun sank past the horizon as a fire crackled to life with her expertise; the grounds they were on used to be some sort of temple, it'd gone into disrepair after the neighboring population had fled the demonic invasion forever ago. Sure, the town slowly regained it's population, but not a soul came up to this temple. All except for the Hollow that was spotted traversing the area around it, spiriting away weary travelers.

Biting into a fish she grilled, her lack of interest in resting was apparent by her refusing to even pack so much as a bed roll. Even as Isamu went down to rest, she simply brushed off any comments and kept to sitting in the cloth chair she had on hand, looking up to the explosive array of stars above her.

The countryside had that same view... Just like the sea.

---

It had been hours. The fire had cooled into dull embers. It was quiet, far too quiet.

Catherine had gone from her seating, for just a little too long. She was nowhere to be seen in the temple's clearing.

"Oh, piss off. A man likes what he likes, alright? I'm not an addict... Anyway, fine. You're on. Dinner and we don't ever discuss any of this again."

Moving past the fact that he was a man clearly in denial, they arrived at the location in short order. Since there was no clear time where this hollow might appear, Isamu clearly wasn't going to spend it by remaining awake for hours on end. He would simply be proving the ginger-haired brat right, and his pride couldn't let that happen.

No, he would ensure he came out on top in this bet of theirs. And so, he ate when it was his time to eat, and rested when it was his time to rest once the sun sank down to slowly welcome the moon and her endless band of stars. There was nothing complicated to his routine.

It had carried him this far, and he no doubt believed it would carry him even further in the future. The ringing of a firefly in his ear would wake him from his rest as he yawned loudly. Stretching his arms, he cocked his head upward to notice a peculiar reality. That is, Catherine was not currently present in the clearing.

"...What the hell?"

Where had she gone off to? Was there a change in game plans? Had the ghost already appeared? No, that couldn't be. He was spiritually sound enough to recognize if something was amiss, and he was assuredly certain that she would have slapped him across the head if it appeared. Rising from his bed roll, he grabbed his prized katana, Kotetsu, darting forward and away from the clearing to explore the area, using his reikaku to pinpoint Catherine's location.

"Where the hell did you go, Cath?"

There wasn't anything particularly strange about the night outside of her sudden disappearance; the night sky was hung above them lit with a cold array of lights that brightened their surroundings, cicadas chirped, and other sounds of the mountain passively swept through the trees that overgrew the grounds. But there was a stillness to the air where Isamu would eventually exploit, disturbingly quiet as the only presence appeared to be Catherine's own, a light mist developing the area.

A degree of search would find her, leaning on a tree and slightly hunched over, her figure relaxed all apart from the tight gripping of her machete. She hardly reacted to the man's presence, an oddity in behavior alongside murmuring something under her breath, her fingers gently flexing to dig into the wood.

"..Papa." Was the loudest word her listless tone spoke, her head canted forward enough for hair to fall over her face.

"...Papa?"

Isamu could hardly comprehend what prompted her current shift in behavior. Knowing how alert she was at all times, he didn't put much weight into the theory that a hollow had gotten to her. In fact, he removed the possibility in his mind altogether. Did it sneak up on her? Or had she injected her system full of drugs to keep herself awake again?

Spinning several possibilities in his head, he carefully set his katana down as he exhaled softly. Shit, he should've brought a bottle of water if she was gonna pull this again. Sheesh. At any rate, the only way he would be able to discern anything is by approaching her. Her listless tone was a little unsettling, but he hardly let it phase him much as he approached her, leaning down to observe her, his body prepared in advance for the likelihood of an attack.

"Hey, are you alright? Why are you here of all places and not at the shrine clearing? Were you feelin' restless or somethin'? Or did ya take a drug to keep you awake again?"

Even the shine of the moon didn't fully penetrate this fog, but it was just enough light to draw focus to her bright hair, and more notably drops rolling off her face - tears. Her head lifted in a slow way as if haunted, glassy eyes looking directly toward Isamu when he spoke. Her expression didn't change past it's strange calmness, a moment of silence with her tired eyes boring into him.

"...Where.. is.. Papa..?" The hand tightly gripping her weapon twitched a bit to the side, as if a movement was planned to be taken, her tone soft and child-like, she sounded as if in a dream, "..Took.. Away.."

Somehow, she was gripping the blade all the tighter, tension running up her arm as the blade shook with it. The listless dreamy appearance boiled into something else, something angrier, the weapon rose as her stance changed...

...Only to bury itself into her own bicep.

Pained yelling occurred, from both her and something unseen, Catherine's own agonized grunts were fought through to raise that injured, free arm, raking it across her own flesh in an unnerving move, something that appeared ghostly and fox-like peeling from her flesh who's white face was contorted from the injury, the redhead screaming to then bury the machete into the creature's neck. Repeated stabbings burning with hatred forced it to emerge from her flesh and run off with the weapon in it's neck.

She herself fell to her knees shortly after, coughing and gagging, a billowing of mist exiting her throat that she held fast. Even after she was sputtering, her mouth dripping saliva and her throat burning.

"..I'm killing that fucking bastard," Was the first thing her hoarse voice got out, pushing herself to her feet and clambering back to the camp if she wasn't stopped.

Isamu was truly at a loss for words here as the series of events unfolded before his eyes. The glassy gaze was bone-chilling, her tone doubly so, momentarily giving him pause.

His onyx eyes widened the moment she lifted that machete and suddenly stabbed her arm with zero hesitation. Then, there was what only could be described as a unified scream, shared between Catherine and whatever had attempted to invade her body.

Whatever the hell it was, it certainly didn't want any part of Catherine anymore. He would've followed after it to finish the job, but that wasn't important right now. He had a more pertinent issue to address at the moment. Without wasting a second, Isamu rushed to Catherine's side before she could get any further, grabbing onto her to hold her in place for a moment. At the very least, she needed to give herself a moment to breathe.

"You're not killin' anybody or anything with the state you're in right now. Come on. I'm carryin' you back to the clearing so you can recover for a moment. And I'm not lettin' you tell me no, either. Are we clear?"

Heaving breaths shook her shoulders, a tingling weakness in her limbs, her eyes burning from having been wide open for a prolonged period. Her thoughts, previously mired in fog and memory, were lit into a furious blaze of bloodlust and confusion. Her head was pounding, the wound on her shoulder splurting blood with only gradual signs of stopping. Sick fucking creature wanted to eat her inside out, huh? Then she was terribly eager to rip inside of it herself..! Her dragging footsteps and growing sense of mania at the mere imagining of that creature's fate kept her moving - that was something any ordinary person would have been knocked unconscious over, but she'd experienced this and more... She just had to kill it.

A sensation akin to lightning raked her spine as she felt herself being grabbed, in the disorientation she almost threw a punch at the man's head, stopped by his grasp and forced to look at him, to hear him speak... He was stopping her, no, no he couldn't stop her, he couldn't fucking do that..!

She struggled against his grasp, pushing and struggling, "Let me go, I have to kill that fucking thing right now..! There's no time to rest, it could be here any minute, or it could run away!"

It hardly sounded like she was breathing properly, yet she stubbornly kept spilling words as she struggled, blood staining her uniform, "This is why I don't work with people! You all get in my way, you all tie me down..! I would have been fine all by myself but no, no you had to give a fuck about me! You're supposed to be an assassin, you're not supposed to care about what anyone else is doing, especially a destroyer like me, with nobody left! Hah, I wouldn't be shocked if your next contract is to off me! You would do it, wouldn't you? Because at the end of all this shit, it's only a matter of who's giving you how much goddamn money! So quit pretending already!"

Her face, having curled into a cruel, desperate smile through her rant, slowly retreated as a realization dawned on her gaze. Panting, breathing, she stopped struggling, her body loose and limp in his grasp...

"..Shit, Hah... Oh shit this stuff is messed up... What a horrible ability, you damned hollow..." After her brief moment of shock and soft laughter, she'd erupt into another fit of coughing, slowly subsiding, "..Just take me, Isamu..."

"Hm..."

Isamu expected her to reject his assistance, to stubbornly turn him away and attempt to wrest herself free from his grip. That was characteristic of the woman he had come to know for some time. Someone who was, at once, a rival and business partner.

Now? She was someone he simply couldn't allow to suffer freely. In some aspects, her rant was justified, but if she wanted him to treat her so nonchalantly, she certainly shouldn't have gone out of her way to perform an act of kindness on him and his mother's behalf.

As it stood now, her words amounted to little than the ramblings of a woman who was clearly shaken and infuriated by whatever that foxlike creature did to her body. He couldn't imagine it was a pleasant experience, and so he simply walked forward, lifting the woman into his arms as he looked at the blood pouring out of her bicep. He needed to wrap that up soon before she passed out. Focusing reiryoku around his feet, Isamu paused for a moment to answer her violent ramble.

"What about you, huh? Up until now, I thought I meant little more than piss in yer eyes until you decided to help my mother by crafting a healing agent to combat her illness. If you wanted to treat me like an assassin, why not pay me in money? Movin' past all that, if I someone put a hit out on you and told me to take you out..."

He exhaled softly as he turned his head to the side, grumbling to himself as he found himself faced with revealing genuine feelings that weren't hidden beyond a veil of nonchalance. God, this sucked so much, but he was here now. Whatever.

"I'd turn it down without a second thought. I care about ya, alright? I know you love talkin' about how no one can be trusted in this line of work, and I get it. People fuckin' suck. I got crossed pretty badly myself a few times, but that doesn't mean I'd go back on my word. Like I told you before, I'm here when you need me, and unless want me out of yer life, I'm not gonna change my stance. Anyway, let's hurry up before you bleed out on me. Maybe finally you'll get that damn rest I keep talkin' about."

In a stride somewhat akin to a flash step, Isamu darted from his current position to the camp within the space of a few moments. When he returned, the first thing he did was gently set her down on his bed roll, carefully pulling her arm up as he grabbed a medical box. He prided himself on being a man of resources.

Did he expect either of them to get injured? Maybe not, but it always helped to be prepared in his books. Observing the wound, he figured the best he could do at the moment was wrap it up tight enough to stop any more blood from pouring out freely.

"Here, relax for once, will ya? I'll keep watch just in case that freaky hollow comes back. Though, I don't expect it to be approachin' you any time soon after the way you ruthlessly tore it from yer body. Heh, yer a real battleaxe of a woman, ya know that, Catherine?"

...Of course he'd remember that, for as long as he'd live possibly. She knew that damn well, she just told herself otherwise for her own comfort. No amount of time apart would've made a difference here. Good ol' refusal to face the consequences of her actions, that was what that exercise was at the very end of it all.

This was what not taking responsibility for her choices landed her. What a pain... Her gaze drifted about as she focused on not throwing up and steadying her breathing, pushing her feelings of embarrassment aside - yet again, that advice rang true; the first one to lose composure lost, and this time it was her. She let herself be carried back and lied down, making little effort to fight it. The edges of her vision were black, yet she forced herself to stay conscious - several days without sleep and it felt like the venom in her system was simply gone, she wouldn't be shocked if that was the reason the hollow didn't go to feed off her soul immediately. Still, she felt disorientated and weak...

She didn't speak until a moment or two after Isamu's humorous comment, gaze fixed to the sky. She wasn't sure if it was that fog still messing with her head or not, but...

"Anise. It's... Anise Andersson," A calm correction came from her dizzied speech, "Before you wrap it... Open the outer pocket of my bag... There's a jar of yellow-green ointment, smells awful. Put it on my wound first..."

The sudden revelation of her true name temporarily stunned him. Unsure of whether or not this was the result of that hollow disorienting her system, he simply coughed softly to avoid looking like a deer in headlights, his hand following Catherine's instruction.

Well, formerly Catherine. Had that been a false name this entire time? Why was she revealing it just now? His hand explored her belongings until he found the ointment. The minute he opened it, he certainly understood what she meant when she said it smelled awful. Furrowing his eyebrows for a moment, he exhaled softly as he ignored the strong order, applying a studious amount with gentle precision.

One hand kept her arm held up, while the other smoothly handled her wound without applying any pressure that might cause her to wince. Drawing up the words in his head, he offered a genuine opinion on what he thought of her true name.

"Anisse, eh? Pretty name. I think it sounds nice on ya. Here's where I'd reveal I got some other name, too, but uh... nope. Hagane Isamu. That's my country-born name through and through. Why're you suddenly droppin' yer real name on me all of a sudden, Ca- I mean... uh, Anisse?"

Honestly, it was going to take him some time to get used to that if he intended on referring to her by that name exclusively. Here she was again, slapping him in the face with revelations out of nowhere. Goddamit.