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There is a woman's voice.
Kim-does not know where he is or how he got here. There was-wasn't there the Yong-jin building? And then, there, the slaughter. His own men. The stone. However, he knows now-it looks the same, but he knows he is not there. Or is he in S Corp again? (Has he come home? No. He can't have.)
There were many fighting against him. There are two who have survived his assault, and one who he slaughtered before yielding his flesh-a slicing of the ropes which bound her odachi to her back had her guard down as she whirled to save it and he severed her head.
(That isn't right. That's not honorable. She was a fellow warrior. She respected her sword.)
But the soft woman's voice in his head speaks, There isn't any difference, Kim. Isn't that what you've come to realize? Violence is violence. Slaughter is slaughter. When has honor ever done anything for you?
The room is covered in blood. Two have survived. Both are dressed in the style of his Lineage. One of them-one of them-
One of them wears the bamboo hat and robes of a coward and a failure, of a man who could never do anything to protect the ones he loved. He deserves to suffer.
The woman is bleeding severely but still lurches in front of her companion to protect him. She is a side object. Her arm yields to him, severed cleanly like the head of a blossom. The failure is on his back on the ground.
Make him suffer, says the woman in his head. Give in to your desire.
Kim has no interest in desire. Or rather-desire is an interference to mastery of the blade, so he ignores it.
The man is reaching for his sword, so Kim severs his hand. The tendrils of his body-what is his body now, the rightest body, /this is how he was meant to be/-sever the man's tendons cleanly. He is a failure and...his face is changing.
The failure meets Kim's eyes with pained, impassive green ones. Eyes which are not his.
If the man is Kim, he is a failure. He deserves to suffer. To be defiled. To be punished.
But if he is not...?
He's taking advantage of your pain, the woman in his head says. Don't be fooled by him. Besides, it's only the killing that matters. Slaughter and slaughter again. That is the purest way of the blade. The others are distractions. You know what you really are.
She is right. The man is taking advantage. Kim's tendrils slither towards his mouth, but it is closed. He has lost his blade-fool. Coward. No proper member of the lineage, no warrior, loses their blade. He must suffer. He must be punished, because this man has failed to keep those who are important to him safe.
His blade is not to be dirtied with the affairs of the flesh. (This is wrong, he knows this is wrong, but the Voice is so enchanting...) Kim places it away from the failure as his tendrils, with edges just as sharp, slice through the leather of the man's vest. His breathing is quick and his face pained and pale but he does not react to the humiliation, nor to the impending defilement of his body.
There is movement behind him. The woman is clumsily holding a gunblade in her offhand, which she clearly does not know how to fight with. Loyal subordinates, wasted on a worthless man.
The man beneath Kim does not react as he grips his sword with a tendril of black smoke and draws it for her, and that infuriates him. This man does not hold respect for those beneath him, though they would risk their own lives for it. This man is vile, disgusting. He disarms her with an easy movement, piercing her hand and pinning her-a sheath for his blade. For the moment, whether she lives or dies is irrelevant.
Tendrils of black razor-mist force the man's mouth open, cutting into his lips. The woman gives a strangled shout. Kim gathers his mist into a shaft, something that can be used for filthier matters. To put this man, who does not even care for those he fails to protect, in his place. It pierces into his mouth-he lets it take a sharp edge, pierce his tongue and slice across it-a mangled grunt at that, his chest rising beneath Kim's groin-before softening it so he can force it back into the man's throat. He gags around it, eyes widening in something like pain, like suffering-good, he has to suffer. Kim fucks his throat with a lack of discipline he would have corrected in any of his disciples-frenetic and brutal, lost in desire to hurt. This is fitting. He is a failure.
Something black and dripping oozes from the man's lips lewdly and Kim realizes that he has been rutting his hips against the man's chest. He couldn't have, but he had, or was it him? A surge of shame and disgust hits him, what is he doing, /what is he doing/-
There's nothing to feel ashamed about, Kim, the woman in his head says sweetly. The world is what you want, you shape it and your body how you want. Don't let yourself be afraid of what you want.
Nevertheless, it is still wrong.
You know what this is like. Right and wrong don't matter. To be right only is punished. This man deserves it. You saw how little he cares for his subordinates.
Yes. Yes. Because he's like him. This is what he deserves for not being able to protect his students. Tentacles slice through the man's pressed slacks, exposing his thighs. Lacking scars. He has scars on his wrists, nowhere else-and even those are not proper scars won in a fight, they are the marks of manacles.
Kim will not slice his skin. He will not grace this man with a scar to go into death with. He rolls his hips against the hard muscle of the man's abdomen-that's not right, it's not right, his stomach is nauseous, something here is wrong, but the sweet voice in his head reassures him everything is fine, this is what you should be doing-as he forms another shaft, one that forces itself dry into the failure's ass. He seizes in pain, his teeth biting down, and he sputters, psychosomatic tears in his eyes. Something spills from where he has bitten that Kim isn't aware of, cloudy and black and semi-liquid and filling the failure's mouth. He tries to retch it up, but Kim does not allow him, fucking it back into his throat. Here, his face, for the first time, contorts in pain and fear as Kim fucks him from both ends. His hand is reaching down and he did not choose to move it, but the Voice was beckoning him on-
Is it your body that's a problem? You can change it, shape it however you like, the voice in his head says. I could help you.
The body is an necessary intermediary between the mind and the blade-Kim has trained it, but never given it much attention. This is not about anything wrong with his body, it is about the man beneath him, the pain on his face, which is...which is...
(It isn't honorable, it's not good, he has no quarrel with this man, he should have killed him and the other one cleanly, this is a violation of the man's will and it is something that Kim should hold himself in shame for.)
You can use his body more directly if you like, says the kind voice. You deserve to feel good.
He does not.
But this man doesn't. He has to feel pain.
That was true.
(Was it?)
The pace of the tentacles has slowed down. The man beneath Kim manages to free his head and retches something oily and black onto the linoleum floors-smoke rises off of it.
No.
He was running away. Like a coward. Like a coward who could do nothing to punish those who had killed his master, like a coward who had failed and failed again, like a coward whose flesh would only yield and yield and yield. As it yielded for Kim now, the tentacle swelling thicker as he stabbed into the man's throat, as he forced the tendril inside of him even further, deeper. The man's body convulsed and he gave a scream strangled by the intrusion into his throat. The shadows coiled against Kim's genitals, a cool stimulation that brought him higher and higher.
He wanted to come. (Did he? What was he doing?)
And you should take what you want, the voice said. Good boy. Kim must have done something, reacted somehow, because she continues, her voice a caress, soft, kind, gentle like something long forgotten, something he doesn't deserve: You're a good boy, Kim. Such a good boy. You've done so well for me.
He gasps, needy and desperate-he doesn't deserve it, he doesn't deserve this-as his smoke brutally violates the man beneath him. His orgasm is surprising and goes through all of his body, the shadows that are a part of him now spilling the same black liquid that the man retched up onto the half-conscious woman and deep into both of the man's holes, tainting him. They dissolve, spilling out of him, and the man is violently retching acrid smoke and liquid.
Kim moves to sever his head, but the voice in his head reminds him: He deserves to suffer, remember? A slice across the stomach. (If any of his students had done such a thing, he would have beaten them. It was dishonorable, it was cruel, and moreover it was simply inefficient, because an enemy in agony bleeding their guts out was still alive.)
He straddles the man's groin as his organs spill out and he breathes hard, blood staining what tattered scraps remain of his clothes and pooling around them on the floor. The man has the dignity to at least not beg for mercy or moan, only struggling for breath as somatic tears of pain run down his face. Kim's legs are shaky, and he waits until he is sure he can stand to do so.
He turns to see the woman. She is barely alive yet, half-conscious from shock and blood loss, bleeding from half a dozen wounds before he'd severed her arm. Yet she still struggles to glare at him with golden eyes that look at him with purest hate even with her face, body, hair wet with ichorous black discharge.
She is a better subordinate than the man he raped, who is struggling to gurgle out miserable breath after breath, deserved.
She shouldn't get away unhurt, don't you think? says the voice in his head.
And even as part of Kim's mind is screaming that this is wrong, this is wrong, this is all wrong, his tentacles are coalescing again towards the woman as he bends to remove the sword from her palm.