Private i want to crush you in my jaws

[Komorebi Rin]

A cat that likened herself a spider. She ran her little spindle, turning gold to wheat as silk fell from thin fingertips and grazed the ants below. She laid forward along the rim of the rooftop - some outlet, a place she often enjoyed sleeping atop for the lull of machinery down within - and watched each shape that walked by, so high up on her perch, and danced her little fingers. She looked maestric. A majesty of performance if not nobility. She wouldn't be caught nine times dead with her sweet hum, trailing her head back and forth in slow bobs that timed rhythm with the lilt of her hands. Three, one, two. Red, green, blue. Threads of chakra - her own webbing - teased and toyed with every creature not on her predatory slant.

It would be nothing more complicated than a tug if not a trip, passersby eager to their next destination and momentarily disturbed by something - somewhere - that had caught on their neat clothes. They would wipe her thread away and she would let them, moving to the next. Petty toying for petty girls. Entertainment graced by the light of the moon; and it laughed along with her, every beam casting a kindred sliver just vying, too, to catch someone's attention. Nanaka slipped her tongue out to taste the night air. Sucked in the taste of untroubled winds & laughter lingered from a world she hadn't ever belonged to. It buzzed the tip of slight pink, scaring it back inside with a roll along her cheek and a chuff from her nose. These city nights had always tasted the same - and just like them, she settled into her role.

She played puppets with her citizenry and wiled away hours until she figured she was expected to return 'home.' Shin hadn't seemed strict with her - or most of the Chikamatsu children, thus far, she noted. She'd spent precious little time around them and precious more slunk in her alleys. You couldn't take the gutter out of the trash. She coiled her neck, stretching and popping with a warm tone, and moved to pull her remaining hand back - only for it to snag. Prey caught in her web. A fish in silent waters. Yet, oh so very yet, it hadn't escaped. If anything ... oh, if anything, the warden was met with revolt.

Oh, oh, oh.

"Hello, handsome." She purred.

 

[Shikabane Ryo]

A quiet night, boring as any other - Shiki took to the streets. The king gracing the citizenry with his presence on a bustling night. They had no idea of his eminence of course, so he would be gracious enough to absolve them of the crime of not bowing. His kingdom dwelled in the nadir of rabble and rubbish, unknown and hushed from the ears of common folk. Still, he carried himself with the poise and flourish befitting his majesty regardless of his official recognition. He'd been faking his importance for so long, that the fraudulent coronation had become his reality- a delusion made manifest. There was nothing that would impede path - not the current truth of the world or this...

This filthy web that had entangled him. His eye twitches - the audacity of the ingrate that wrapped their filth around him, the foul stench of the gutter permeating the strands of chakra. A revolting red string of fate that could only corrupt anything it touches and yet, Shiki was fascinated to look upon whoever had the gall to lick with such a venomous tongue. HIs eyes follow the trail to its nest on the rooftop, as the girl purrs. His eyes pierce through her with crimson scorn, his estimation of her worth: less than trash, but alluring all the same. A predatory temptress. "Fine, little stray. I will allow you an audience." He scoffs, flipping his hair with exaggerated movements.

He hops into her domain intent on claiming it as his own, looking down at the little kitty with hungry eyes and sneering with bared fangs at his prey. "Now that I get a better look at you... hmmm... not bad for street trash."

 

[Komorebi Rin]

Oh. This was going to be too easy.

That realization almost made it boring -- but for the tune of his steps and the tenor of his voice; why, that made a dance worth following through. Beneath this moonlit sky a cat and a dog began their little games: between spiderthread and royal decree, entrapped in a realm solely of their own making - every shape below cast out from the new status quo. The 'world' off the rooftop was monochromatic - only two figures stood in color. And what vibrant shades they made! Pale and olive, black and red, strick in bolts of purple that unspooled the last of the weave. What a tapestry. What a design! Gods, Nanaka could not wait to tear it down.

"Hello," she breathed again, her voice carried on the sound of a rumble until the inclination became the operandi. She shifts just a little, pulling her legs in and leaning back on her bottom so that she was no longer dangled off the roof. Oh, how she understood his game. She wouldn't rise to challenge him. A thumb would run her cheek, pushing in with a soft pop of her lips. "Young lord, I'm so very sorry to have troubled you." Every word flowed. It was inconceivably fluid. They dripped saccharine. "You seem to have gotten caught in one of my games. And what a catch, truly," a caress of black lashes over passive hazel, brushing strands of dirty tresses from eyes that glowed. "But a mistake nonetheless. If I had any intent," her head could only lower. It could speak only in dulcet. "surely you would have sensed that and responded before my web brushed you, yes? An accident, then." An unspoken challenge. He couldn't admit he had fell in her trappings - and therefore, he couldn't charge her for the inconvenience.

"I was making light of much smaller company. You understand the need, don't you, young lord?" A smile. It didn't show teeth, fanged and eager at the inside of her lips, for she knew what spooked common mutts. "What brings you to our entertainment district?"

 

[Shikabane Ryo]

Amusing.

Shiki thumbs across his lips, hiding away his smirk. The stray was clever, every shift and sound barbed with an intoxicating poison. The type of flower that lures victims with provocative dance and feigned, euphonious words. She was a fatal dose of wolfsbane. She knew exactly how to appeal to the king, - insolence in prostration, something the pretender king was quite adept at. He would stand, towering above her, re-evaluating her worth. She was attractive, brandishing her skin and body in a comparable way to himself and a demeanor that flaunted a status far above her station. Her ebony feline ears perched and twitching as her tail stirs behind her lithe angled frame. He should disdain her very existence, but there's a degree of... not kinship. Was it pity? He would play with the stray a little longer. Her charm had successfully bought her that much.

"What kind of lord would I be if I ignored an alley cat's mewling? You wanted attention, yes? I am merely granting your request" He grins, taunting the feline as he leans over to stare into her eyes. He knows she'll continue to play the part. This masquerade ball that they were both dancing to was satisfactory to the young lord. As long as he received his due recognition, he would tango with the belle chatte. "I decided a night on the town around the common rabble would give me... perspective." Even on this rooftop amphitheater, he had to be the star of the show, stabbing pointed claws into his partners sides. He was the leading man and she would tap-dance to his authority.

He tilts his head, eyebrows raise as he brazenly admires her like an exemplary work of art, a single fang peeking slightly beneath parting lips. "A better question is... what are you doing out of your alley, little stray? Boredom, perhaps? Or were you just hoping somebody like me would notice you?"

 

[Komorebi Rin]

Her laughter was toxin in perfume guise - it slipped so sweetly from such soft lips to fill their space with lighthearted mirth; only for it to linger, just a little too long, and put weight on strange shoulders as if to bring you with her into the intoxication. Smothering. Her form moved fluidly - far too fluidly - to lift itself at less-than-full height; oh, she knew her place quite well, young lord. She would never seek to topple your divine insight, young lord. I'm just a silly little cat and here I slink, beginning my trail around your majesty, but in full light: such so that you worried no betrayal. She knew exactly how to move. She knew exactly how to speak. It was a game they were playing, cat and dog. Neither would lose.

She met his eyes only briefly - shy hazel in a bashful glance, oh, but oh, there was a dark light speckled within those lavender depths. A dirty sheet among the clean spread. She mused with a slow purr, every step taking her another languid direction in her roundabout. "You grace us, young lord." She murmured. She'd tap her fingers - on her skin, on the air, on everything but touching him directly. The blasphemy that would be. Black-painted nails glittered like their own skies beneath the moonlit night. What would a dirty stray do with grubby paws around divinity?

Why, drag him down, too.

"Did you gain your perspective, then? What do you think of us? Our revelries and our virtues - our dimness and our vices? Are you having fun? I am," her next rumble glided in a slow half-step, turning in something that might have been a twirl if the light didn't catch the slow turn of her head - and the look in her eye slant, catching him from the corner. Only that briefest moment. Her hands graced sky. "It's a beautiful night for strange fellows, my lord. Sometimes I seek the same. I like the way they move. I like the way they talk. I like the ... performance. I'm only sorry," and she stilled, tracing her chin with the tip of a claw until it popped over her lips again. A grin. Oh, a grin. "I'm only sorry you were inconvenienced - but mouth to Heaven, young master, I'm not terribly sorry to have you here."

"You know ... I think I've seen you before," a considerate mewl. "Around, on missions. Are you ...,"

Left empty for so many answers to too many questions. What tile would you x and which would you o?

 

[Shikabane Ryo]

Submission. Reverence. Power. It made no difference to Akizuki Shiki how he obtained them. The fact that the stray was playing his game at all was already a sign of submission. This tango where he was the lead, skittering across her web while she kneels before him, placating every whim he manifests while explicitly invading her nest. He would stand there as she makes a show of encircling his Majesty, the moon and stars catching the crimson glow of his eyes as she passes around, always appraising. Always imperative. Oh how he wished she would dare to run her fingers along his skin. - if not for the chance to prick her fingers with his thorns. They were both pernicious, barbed flowers veiled in a beautiful veneer, just waiting to jab their thorns into the other. His will was to seize this flower in his hands, thorns stabbing into fraudulent flesh until...

He would collar this stray.

"I have gained a new... appreciation. The revelry of the strays. This never-ending hedonistic carnival that you all subjugate yourselves to. It is fun." He chuckles, waving his hand in a dismissive demeanor as he walks, mirroring her movements in an eerily identical two-step. He never stops looking at her as anything but a conquest - a hungry werewolf hunting his prey under the full moon. "Apologies are not necessary, stray. You've sufficiently intrigued me. I quite enjoy your... performance." His voice hangs on a rumbly growl as the last word escapes his lips - not one of anger or aggression, but a purely primal come-hither command. Strings of chakra silently wrap around her lithe, obedient frame, cascading down her arms as they stalk each other. The irony of it would surely not be lost. "Hm? Oh, yes. I would have already graced your presence if you're a shinobi." It was almost an afterthought, just brushing it aside, an irrelevant stepping-stone to his much loftier goals - a means to an end.

Shiki swipes his hair to the side, a sleight of hand, as he completely ensnares the tempting kitty, hidden chakra bristling against her graceful fingers and with a swift pull, she is in his clutches. His hands swallowing hers as he pulls her in tight, starting off in a tango, leading her to move at his step. There was an thrum of tranquility in the discordant bramble.

"Congratulations, little stray~ I shall reward you with my name. Akizuki Shiki." He trails off, giving her a little twirl before plucking her back into his pointed embrace like a subjugated marionette, leaning in to whisper in her ear. "You're worth playing with. Tell your lord about your virtues and more importantly... your vices."

 

[Komorebi Rin]

Her laughter was as light as the fog it hung over, every breath an exhalation of toxins from the sweetest smelling rafflesia. "A carnival, is it, my lord? Yes, I suppose we are quite entertaining." She would arch and step in a slink to see him mirror it, tongue pressing against the roof of her mouth and then rolling down like a red carpet for her voice. Ladies and gentlemen, I present: her. "The little ways we move. The little sounds we make. Entertaining, oh, but hardly to your calibre, my lord? A young master like you, well ..." She conceded to the strings that tug none-too-gently at her lithe frame; not the tremble of a puppet under its ministrations but the easy, fluid interpretation of a dancer. She slipped so effortlessly into a two-step with a partner. Go ahead, lead. Go ahead, take control. You'll find nothing up my sleeves - I'm so very dutiful, my lord. "You might be the most captivating of all."

Chest to chest, ankle to ankle, pit to void. A dance within the abyss of a single quiet night. Two forlorn souls in their eternal rondo - not in penitence, but hedonism. Her fingers, a phantom, didn't so much as brush his skin where he didn't place them - but they did skim. She tapped the air to an invisible rhythm, all the same with heels on stony surface. She would play along in their performance, but she didn't make the dance itself simple for him - there had to be some resistance, lest there not be any pull. She'd step back and then back in, shift on a foot and goad him to follow, fall into his grasp then twine a hand and tilt her head back. She never broke his tempo, but in the most subtle of ways she took his guidance and shifted it ever slightly off course to her whims. "Akizuki Shiki," she purred. His name was a prayer on her lips. It was gossip and gospel in equal measure. How quaint, every syllable. How unholy. "I wouldn't want to trouble you with the name of a stray. Call me in your name, my lord, and I would be sure to answer."

Her smile was so sharp despite its lack of threat. Something omnipresent in the languid curves she moved in. "However, I'd be remiss to be impolite." She did, however, pause for a moment, trailing her thumb down the bend of his shoulder: invisible air away from contact. "Chikamatsu, I suppose. Chikamatsu Nanaka. You would have heard of my foster parentage, I'm sure. In all of your exploits as a Shinobi." She wouldn't call him out - how exactly she recognized him - because what fun would her hand be with every card on the table? "As for vices ... well, could you think I'd ever do anything wrong, young master?"

Ha. "I'm only on my best behavior."

 

[Shikabane Ryo]

His grin extends ear to ear, a nefarious delight in moonlit revelry. He understood every bit of her was tainted in a malignant veneer, her sweet scent a lethal dosage of baneful poison and yet he wanted nothing more than to inhale it. Even a king could be unruly, yes? The profound curiosity of a wolf is almost ironic in this instance. If anything could make him better/worse it would be this stray and he hungered for the answer. She knew exactly how to play into his games and did so willingly. A quiet rumble is caught in his throat, the dance of two beasts in a passionate tango. "Yes, naturally, I am the leading man. And you?" Strings delve a little deeper into flesh. "Rejoice~ You've been hand-selected as my leading lady." He observes her every facial movement, curious to how she would react as he kicks off, dragging her along to his rhythm.

There was a degree of leniency he allowed the stray. The entertaining diversion had bought her that much. A great service to royal whimsy. He licks his fangs hearing his name spoken with such a reverent purr. Shiki always intended to call her by whatever name he deemed fit, but having a name to go along with her alluring visage was... oddly satisfying. He admired how she tried to influence his pull ever-so slightly only to be put back in her place with the biting snap of strings against flesh. "Worry not. You might be collared, but a stray is always a stray. It rolls off the tongue and you're already trained to answer to it." A slight twirl as her heels click along tiled floor, whisking away her bag of bones into quick steps. "I've probably heard the name Chikamatsu before and just as quickly forgotten it. I have no interest in placeholder nobility." He maneuvers his marionette, his eyes burning hot with desire for more. An unquenchable appetite to reveal all of the captivating feline's secrets.

They glide hand in hand, twisting and contorting to each other's impulses as their lunar waltz comes to its climax. A snarling finale. Shiki sweeps her off her feet, literally, wrapping her in claws that catch and scrape into exposed flesh. He leans in, with a ragged whisper, his other claw consuming hers as they stretch outwards, soaring towards the moon. "I'd be... a bit disappointed in you... if you.. weren't rotten, too."

 

[Komorebi Rin]

She wouldn't dare express this to someone so desperate for this vision of themselves - and the one they're being fed - but there was dark inclination within playing the serf in this production. She was the leading lady to his man? Oh, of course she was. Every intent - every tap - every purr and soft-spoken venom, leading the show performed as easily as she desired. Why, if he had fought their fabrication, there might not be much of him left to express his distaste. It was better for both of their enjoyments if they played just / like / this. A wry, teasing smile. Canines so carefully tucked away between the red of her lips. It barely matched the sharpness in half-shut hazel, apprising his every moment as if in worship and not mirth. "Of course, my lord."

A silence within the silhouette of the moon. Two actors bleeding black and white on a stunning stage. "My name is the least of my interests. Actions do always speak louder, don't they?" Her voice was a whisper. Not dry, not shaken - stirred through the ministrations of her tongue, filling that short space between them (almost none of it left) with miasmic pervasion. She felt the needling of his claws - so sure, so ascendant - and she flexed a willow of muscle into the touch. Blood pricked. It stained the tips of royal fingers, the lightest brush with dangerous morality. Daring eyes shaded in the darkness of her lashes, like the glint of moonlight in them - twice refracted - might devour him before he could her.

And a twitch of her wrist unraveled the threads that pulled at her, each replaced or doubled by a fiber her own. Every cloying tap and step, every motion she had made since they began their circular, flared to life and vision around them in strands of white - glittering under spotlight. A drawn spindle from a spider that carved its web into their very air. They wound his wrists, his ankles, his chest, the necks of both adjutants - they trapped the two in this cocoon of transparency. Debauchery in a challenge, not sensuality. Fingers still twined with his, wiring a rosary of blasphemy until she could gamble speech. "I'm always on my best behavior, young master."

"But what's a little indulgence to a stray if not nature?"

 

[Shikabane Ryo]

A finale for the nocturnal serenade, the maestro stepping aside for his leading lady - the captivating belle of the ball. If his act was the finale, hers would have to be the curtsy and the bow, accompanied by dazzling fireworks. An unforgettable closing for the two reveling in each other's debauchery under this moonlit carnival. He'd waited for her. Oh, how he had hoped. From the moment he ensnared her in the marionette strings, he was in suspense, wishing she would try to entangle him in her webs.

He was euphoric. In an instant his strings were unraveled and the itsy bitsy spider came out to play. There was only the briefest of glimpses in the shifting moonlight. A shift within a shift where he felt like he got a taste of her true self.. A transient petal bleeding tainted pollen. His body was bound tightly, together with her, so close that either could just snap at the other. He relished it. The boldness of it all. Just enough to surprise him, but not enough to shatter this volatile masquerade. The urge to bite subsumed by the unquenchable hunger in his eyes and yet he desired nothing more than to praise her. She'd successfully become a permanent fixation for him, one worthy of his regal attention. He devours the paw holding the two, claws slowly puncturing as he twists to restrain their bodies tighter with bared fangs and hungry scarlet.

"Your lord, agrees. A stray should indulge themselves every once in a while~"

[Topic Closed]