Clubhouse Beatdown

 The effect was immediate.

Wasn't every day a man turned into a monster in the middle of your clubhouse, after all.

"By the sun goddess—!"

As intangible fur like flowing mist sprouted from his skin and cast him in shifting shadows, the group of yakuza at the table stumbled back, jerking up guns and knives. Movement in the corner of his eye and shouts told him others around the room had leapt to their feet— He didn't give them a chance to fire.

Snapping forward, he chomped down on the shoulder of a man holding a knife, not breaking the skin. With a flick of his head, he tossed him straight into the two on the left, whirling low on the trio to his right just before a shout and a bullet whizzed right over his head, his clawed hand cracking the handgun out of the shooter's grip and sending him spinning to the side. Smoothly switching tack, his fist blurred into the face of the next, crunching into his nose and throwing him against the corner of the table like a rag doll.

For just an instant, the last man's eyes blew wide enough to reflect twin yellow-green glows and the yuurei flowing with his form like a fur cape, its teeth his teeth, its eyes his own, its ears flicking at a cry behind him.

He slammed his head into the man's skull and sent him crumpling to the floor.

"He's an oni— a demon! Shoot him! Shoot him!"

Bit unfair. He ducked, shrinking down to a smaller, less ugly target, a buzz clipping his ear. "Demon" was pushing it a little. With a jerk, he heaved the table up and tossed it into the four or five on the other side, screams joining the frantic gunfire.

A flicker of the men at the bar moving to vault over the counter for cover caught his eye, one kneeling to take potshots at him. Swaying to the side, he planted his foot, flipping out his pistol. Barely a glimpse down the sights lined him up perfectly, and the gun sparked out of the man's broken hand, shots cracking down the line systematically, faster than thought, sending three down with broken shoulders.

One managed to dive over, twitching just quick enough to avoid him, his pal already slipping out of view. Damn eels.

A pair of impacts tickled his side like midge bites. He sent a bullet whizzing over Shimizu's head for that, the man scrambling for the couches in the stoner corner, his mates—now using the table for cover—forcing Lachlan to switch his focus. His shot sent chips flying off the heavy wood, making them duck, shooting blindly instead.

Unfortunately for them, cover tactics wouldn't work on him.

He launched forward in a blur, low to the ground, gunfire breezing his hackles, and leapt over the edge, deliberately clipping it to force them to hold it up or be crushed. A revolver crunched under his teeth, its owner screaming. Another flew out of a hand as he kicked out, glitters of blood catching the light where claws tore skin.

A knife slashed past his face, nicking his cheek, but his own knives slashed deeper, ripping bloody ribbons across the man's head. Messier than he'd like. He curled his lips, choosing to smack the last shaking arm trying to aim a revolver at him with the back of his gun-hand instead, hearing a faint crack under the force of the blow.

The man curled on the ground half under the table, gasping, the room suddenly quiet. In the silence, he straightened, turning towards the corner, and met Shimizu's frozen expression.

He cocked his head. "I thought you'd know an obake when you saw one. My mistake."

The smalltime yakuza leader screamed incoherently in response and fired yet another wild round of shots, his stoner friends joining in.

Lachlan simply vaulted back over the slightly canted table, crouching low to the ground and waiting for the bullets to stop. If he really wanted, he could bulldoze through the lot, but best not to—injuries might not affect him much now, but he'd pay for being too reckless later.

Of course, he caught a cracking pair of shots from the side, because he'd forgotten about the two behind the bar, hadn't he? Shit. He flattened himself as a bullet grazed his shoulder, snapping one of his own off, a bottle exploding in a mess of sharp glass like a grenade, drawing muffled yells.

Wouldn't keep them down for long though, and that'd been his last bullet. No time to reload.

Gritting his teeth, he took out the jar of glimmer and smashed it on the ground, pressing his hand into the glowing puddle. Time to find a use for this stuff after all.

It burned, sizzling and spitting like egg on a hotplate against the ghostly surface of a hand that wasn't quite human, and he snarled under his breath, throwing up a glowing shield as the gunfire started up again. Another hand slammed in the puddle, and he sliced out with a sharp wave faster than any bullet, a pair of screams greeting him, hands slapped over faces, maybe eyes.

Two down.... Turning his cracked shield on Shimizu's little holdout, he took one last sizzling handprint of burning glimmer and pulled his rifle over his shoulder. And only four to go. Ignoring the burning of his hand as best he could, resisting the urge to squeeze the barrel in a death-grip, he sniped cleanly through the collarbone of the man who'd held the girl earlier, dropping him.

The shield shattered into light motes just as he chambered the next bullet and clamped the bolt down, a barrage of bullets forcing him to duck down.

"You just don't know when you're beaten, do you?" He called over the noise, clenching his vibrating hand and biting very firmly back on the desire to snarl at the lot of them.

Shimizu screamed something along the lines of, "Die, gaijin demon!" He would've heard it better if he hadn't taken the opportunity to dart across the room.

Skidding on the wood, he dug his heels in and leapt onto the back of one of the couches in the corner amphitheatre, rumbling in the face of the startled yakuza who'd twisted to follow him, Shimizu and the other still miles behind. A shot snapped off next to his face just half a moment before he grabbed the hand holding the gun and flung him away. The one next to Shimizu took a glowing arrow to the face that shattered on impact and left him writhing on the floor.

And that just left one.

He prowled forward, never taking his eyes off the man's ashen face. Hand shaking like a leaf, Shimizu snapped his empty revolver up, the weapon clicking twice before he seemed to register the obvious and whipped out a knife instead.

Casually, Lachlan swiped it out of his shaky grip and took another step forward—

A screaming yakuza leapt at him from the side, slashing wildly at his head with a knife.

Suicidal maniac— Gritting his teeth, he caught the wrist wielding the knife, fighting off the urge to sink his teeth straight in the man's neck. He snarled instead, yanking the arm violently to the side and snapping it out of the socket, kicking him back into the wall with an ugly crunch.

He snapped back on Shimizu and threw the last of his glimmer in a blunt projectile, knocking the revolver he was desperately trying to reload out of range. "That's enough."

Flexing his hand to ease out the ghostly echo of the sizzle fading off his skin, he stalked forward and snatched the yakuza before he could try to turn and run. Ignoring his cursing and ranting, he cut him off with a gasping wheeze by slamming him into the floor.

He leaned in, both the man's hands clenching around his arm in a futile attempt to lift the pressure off the base of his throat. "Anything to say for yourself, Shimi? Do I have to spell it out for you?"

"You're— a foreign— g-ghk— demon."

"Not the answer I'm looking for." He pressed harder, Shimizu squirming and spitting curses at him. "Let's start with 'no, I won't ever be an idiot and bother Hironaga or his family again, I'm so sorry, Lachlan-san'."

"What— do you want from— from me?" Shimizu hissed.

"I'll take that as a rhetorical question, because I know you must've heard me." He eased off just slightly in case he'd gone deaf and not stupid. "I want you to leave Hironaga-san, his family, and all his possessions alone. You or your people touch him, his family, or anything else he owns, and I'll burn this place to the ground like you lit up his boatshed."

Shimizu made a choking noise, his eyes glaring death threats.

"Oh, and if you think you can sneak by me—say, if I'm out of town—and hide from me...." He let the tips of his claws prick through the man's skin, just below his bobbing Adam's apple for a moment to demonstrate, and then finally let him go completely, standing and returning his hand to a more human state, rubbing it on the fabric of his pants. "Then next time it'll be my teeth in your throat instead of my hand. I'm sure you can understand that."

Shimizu scrambled up and back against the couch, holding his bleeding throat, his own teeth bared in a shaky sneer. "Go— go to hell, gaijin."

He responded by casually taking his pistol out of his belt, replacing the magazine, and resting the muzzle between the yakuza's eyes, letting sharp canines show in a smile. "Don't make me want to shoot you worse than I already do. If you step out of line, I will hunt you down."

"Why defend the old man anyway? His life is worthless."

"I'm not asking for your opinion, I'm asking if you understand." He narrowed his eyes. "Do we, or do we not have a deal? Are you really going to make me kill you?"

The insufferable bastard's dark eyes flicked between his face and the gun, face ash-grey and twitching like he wished he could grow a nice set of fangs himself. "You are a fool—"

"Last chance." The hammer clicked back.

"Fine— fine! I'll leave the old man alone, you bastard pig!" His voice cracking a couple octives rather spoiled the insult.

Lachlan let the barrel drop back to his side, holding his gaze. "You'd better. Because you know I'll be back if you change your mind."

He left, striding unchallenged through a room that would've been deathly quiet if not for the muffled sounds of pain. Only Shimizu's glare hounded his back, and the near-silent whimpers of the woman who'd curled herself in the corner.

The teenager who'd been with Shimizu when he entered—Taiki again—must've braced himself under the bartop at some point, hiding out the firefight, because when Lachlan retrieved his sandals and moved to head out the back, he found him shaking with his arms shielding his head, the two men who'd been sliced with glimmer moaning pathetically nearby.

He paused a moment to study him, the boy twitching one eye up through his arms and freezing.

"You shouldn't get involved with these people. I know your dad would agree with me," he said at last.

Taiki didn't reply, just buried his face in his arms, shuddering, and Lachlan moved on again with a sigh. He'd make his choices, but at least he'd been warned. If he chose to make trouble again, there'd be consequences.

He slipped out the back door, avoiding any potential official attention hanging around the building, not that they'd dare try to intervene in disputes with yakuza. Should've parked further down the street.

He sighed, scrubbing up under the loosely-tied mop of hair on his neck. Hadn't thought about that at the time, but waiting an hour or two wouldn't hurt him.

Leaning back against a wall in the shadows of the narrow back street and thumbing the decocker of his pistol, he put it away and slipped his hands in his pockets, feeling his yuurei still thrumming in his veins as he gazed up through the powerlines cutting across the stars. It'd have to stay there for now since he didn't have the glimmer to bolster his strength if he dismissed it. Without his spirit form keeping his body from realising it'd just been through a war, he'd probably collapse from the shock of instantly healing about five fatal shots.

A soft shuff against the concrete caught his ear, and he turned his gaze down the street. Clutching a shawl around her shoulders, an old lady in a kimono shuffled obliviously down the dark alleyway, and he wasn't using the full extent of his sensory capabilities, but she looked an awful lot like Yuka. What's the old lady doing this time of night...?

Slowly, he straightened, squinting at her, an odd prickle chasing across his hackles. She'd always seemed a little strange, but he'd never poked at the feeling too deeply....

"Oni-kun." She made casually straight for him without changing course at all, her gap-toothed smile greeting him. "There was so much noise around here earlier— it sounded like the oni were invading! I hope you weren't hurt."

"What a nice old lady act. Bit different from the creepy crone I usually see you wearing." He raised an eyebrow, daring to draw a bit more on his senses and the air he was picking up from her.

"Ah, of course, you're still wearing your wolf like a coat, aren't you, young man?" She conjured a stick from nowhere, tapping the centre of his chest right in the bullet hole. "Strips a lady's disguise right off. How shameful."

He let her do her poking, squinting a bit. "Are you... a kami?"

"My, didn't you guess already? Haven't you learned your folk tales?" She grinned, smoothly changing form—less like mists falling away and more like liquid, a weird sight to see—until a... very curvy, mostly clothed humanoid fox with multiple tails stood in front of him.

He did try not to stare. Her smirk told him he failed. Probably did it deliberately to get that reaction, too. "Well, there are plenty of old ladies out there who aren't secretly sexy kitsune in disguise."

Should've... probably left out the "sexy" part. In his defence, meeting a fox with breasts was probably one of the strangest things that'd happened to him. His mother might've laughed if she could see him now. Rial definitely would've.

The fox lady did, twirling her stick in her hands and replacing her incredibly expressive and slightly disturbing fox grin with a human one instead, the fur disappearing with it. He really wasn't sure if that made it better or worse. "Well, luckily for you, I am Kyubi, and I am very intrigued by you."

"...Glad to hear it?"

"You should be, because I'm here to give you what you want most."

He flicked a glance over her and raised an eyebrow.

She laughed again, the fox ears she hadn't gotten rid of twitching, and leaned down to poke his nose with her finger, abruptly drawing his attention to her height. "You want to join the Nihonjin National Defence, don't you?"

God, this was getting weird. She had to be at least six foot. And was... recruiting him? Flirtatiously? "I... might."

"Seven tries counts as 'might'? Well, you're very dedicated at throwing your paperwork around on a whim, then. They'll never take you, though." She watched him. "I think you know that."

He narrowed his eyes. "How're you planning to get me in, then?"

Her sly smile revealed sharp canines. "Ever heard of the Shadow Corps?"