Breathless.
Izou had woken from the strange sensation of cathartic sleep only to be greeted with unfathomable news and a irksome, forced task. Doubles? Otherworld statis? He didn’t care about any of that crap, but if someone was impersonating him and there could only be one... well. An Assassin like himself would have no trouble tracking someone even with the clink of metal at his side.
Reckless.
His double had been waiting for him. That’s what he felt, in any case. A presence like a chill along your back, like a dark blaze ready to set aflame and consume him the very second he turned his gaze. The cornered alley was littered with objects and obstacles and darkness -- and Izou couldn’t help the desperate, wicked grin from crawling across his features, because beyond everything he knew -- in the deepest reaches of a heart that only beat thanks to the energy that gave birth to his own life, he knew his own double would be just as vicious.
Another world and another life wouldn’t change that. Come prepared, come vicious -- was there any other way for Okada Izou to live? Without a trail of blood in the wake of everywhere he went?
He didn’t know his double’s circumstances. He didn’t know of the peaceful ways, the hands that would hold his and support him instead of chastise. For Izou, Okada Izou would and always would be a wretch. A killer. A man who stared at the empty sky and wondered how everything had come to be.
A flash of light.
“Bring it!”
A war cry.
And it happened so quickly -- the gunshot and the soft slide of his own blade into flesh. Before him was a someone he would never know, eyes wide with the very same fury and resentment. There would be no tie between the two who fought for their respective lives in the only way they knew how. Changeless, and deathless was Izou as he shoved off the double whose life had been snuffed out like a flame... -- and then, he too had begun to collapse. The goal wasn’t to kill the other. But it’s what he knew. You didn’t duel someone and come out lossless. ”Shit... "
He gripped at his side, at a scrape that would normally heal so effortlessly without treatment. Right. Izou had dodged it, and yet... -- he pushed against a broken box to break his fall, to stop everything from swimming. There was a heat that accompanied it, and he knew what was happening without anyone telling him. Hard to forget the feeling of losing yourself when you’d already died before. Died... died for what again? This time it was... -- heavy lids scanned the area and a lifeless body that still gripped tightly to a pistol as if to say it still had some fight left in it.
Idiot. Had that world of yours really been so worth it? Izou let out a choked, wheeze of a laugh in his final moments.
He’d never know.
