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The Paladin	By : Tcharlatan Category: > Toshiya/Die Views: 957 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of pure fiction. I do not personally know any of the members of Dir en grey, and do not profit from this work.

Chapter List
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June 6^th - 12:00 pm
Kaoru and Die sat on creaking swings, legs dangling listlessly as they rested from a long day of play. At only ten years of age, their faces were still soft with baby fat and the limbs exposed by shorts and tank tops were skinny and hairless. Die swung side to side slowly, occasionally bumping against Kaoru if he pulled one chain or the other a bit too hard. The park was fairly quiet for a sunny fall day, though the wind was starting to become a bit crisp.
“Father said… I start interrogation training tomorrow,” Die said abruptly, eyes fixed on the woodchips beneath his feet.
“…What does that mean?” Kaoru asked, though he knew the answer.
“I have to learn how to make people tell me their secrets by… by hurting them. Father says when you’re the boss, I’ll have to be your ‘bloody right hand.’”
Kaoru looked over at his best friend curiously. As he grew older, he was slowly gaining a healthy respect for the dark nature their lives would one day take on, but Die always seemed to maintain his innocent naivety. He wondered, not for the first time, if his gentle friend could ever bring himself to inflict violence on another person. If those bright eyes and carefree smile would ever harden into the steely mask Die’s father always wore.
“Kao?”
“Yeah, Die?”
“What if… what if I can’t do it? What if I’m not strong enough or… what if I can’t be your right hand? Would you replace me?”
Kaoru bristled a bit and grabbed the nearest chain of Die’s swing, pulling them closer together. “Never. If you can’t come with me, I won’t take over the family.”
Die’s eyes – always so expressive – stared at his friend with shock. “You wouldn’t be the boss?”
Kaoru nodded authoritatively, his overwhelming confidence foreshadowing the man he would become. “Yeah. We can go be famous soccer players or rock stars or something, I don’t care. But I’m not going without you. We’re going to be best friends forever.”
Die’s grin was brilliant and seemed to brighten the very air around them. Kaoru responded with his own smile and let go of Die’s swing to kick back and forth on his own. They were so wrapped up in themselves and each other that they never noticed the man approaching them with long, intent strides until he was only a few yards away from them. Die caught sight of him first, and his rapidly fading grin brought Kaoru’s attention up as well. Middle-aged with hard lines wearing deep into his face, the man carried himself with a barely-perceptible hunch, as if carrying a terrible burden or grief. A chill wind tugged at his long grey jacket and close-cropped black hair as he pulled a long knife with a curved blade and a gleaming ivory hilt out of his sleeve, frigid eyes intent on Kaoru as he moved ever closer.
“Sorry, kid. This is nothing personal against you.”
Kaoru’s eyes were wide with fear, but he fought to keep his voice steady. He’d been instructed how to deal with this moment since he was old enough to talk. “You… you won’t get anything for kidnapping me. They won’t even talk to you; they’ll just hunt you down and kill you.”
Die scanned the park frantically for his and Kaoru’s fathers, spotting them on the far side of the wide lawn along with Kaoru’s uncle. They had seen the man and were running full tilt towards them, the beverages they’d been enjoying abandoned in the grass. Die knew the effort was wasted. They would never make it back in time.
“I’m not here to kidnap you. Your uncle took my son from me… he needs to know the pain of that loss before he ever inflicts it on another man.”
The man moved forward with sudden speed, the knife lashing out like a striking snake, intent on the soft flesh of Kaoru’s throat. It was caught up bare inches short of its goal as it became imbedded in the thickest part of Die’s hand, slipping between thin bones to pierce through to the other side, splashing a few drops of blood across Kaoru’s face. His body followed just after, knocking Kaoru back and blocking the would-be assassin’s path, the blade trapped within the muscles and bones of his hand. Bleeding heavily and straining to hold back the force of the large man, the younger boy was absolutely livid.
The anger in Die’s soft eyes when he spared a half-second’s glance over his shoulder was more intense than anything Kaoru had ever seen on his friend’s face and even the man seemed taken aback, his grip on the knife loosening briefly. In that weak moment, Die’s bloody fingers closed around the blade and pulled it away, his other hand coming up to pull it from his flesh with a horrifying wet sound. He had spent a significant portion of his short life learning various forms of combat, hand-to-hand and armed, and his body seemed to know what to do. Which was good, because his mind was a gibbering haze of panic, pain, and fear. His uninjured hand lashed out once, cutting a clean line across the man’s throat, then again, driving the blade to the hilt between the man’s ribs.
The man dropped to his knees with a thud, then flopped to the side, blood rushing from him in a shocking torrent, dead before he hit the ground. Die stared down at him, panting; at the slack face with wide eyes frozen in startled confusion, staring off into the void. The hilt of the long knife was carved in the shape of a roaring tiger, claws outstretched, and the once-pure white ivory had taken on a deep red stain, almost black where the liquid congealed in engraved stripes. Die was equally soaked in the sanguine fluid. The boy’s eyes went wide as the severity of what he’d just done struck him. He had never seen more than a few drops of blood in his life, had never seen a man die in real life, and his hand… The pain of his injury washed over him all at once and his face contorted into the strained grimace only children can make, and he fought the urge to cry.
“Daisuke! Kaoru!” Shigeru Andou called, skidding to a halt next to them, kneeling to grab Die’s wrist and examine his wound.
“Son, what happened?” Kaoru’s father demanded, one hand on his son’s shaking shoulder.
Kaoru’s voice wavered ever so slightly, wiping the blood off his face and staring at it. “He said Uncle killed his son… so he was going to kill me.”
Tomohiro Niikura sighed and nudged the dead body with the toe of one shoe. “We’ll have to assign an escort to watch over you two… I never thought anyone would be so bold as to attack the family through you children, but it seems I miscalculated.”
Fat tears were falling down Die’s cheeks, but he was valiantly fighting sobs as he pulled away from his father and flung his arms around Kaoru. He didn’t see the pride in his father’s eyes, nor the satisfaction in Tomohiro’s, and he wouldn’t have cared if he did. His hand was bleeding profusely, and the pain was worse than anything he’d ever felt, but that didn’t matter either. His best friend was safe. Skinny arms wrapped around him securely and he knew in that moment that he would do anything – absolutely anything – for Kaoru; suffer or inflict any pain, just so long as he could be with his friend.
“I don’t need a escort. I have Die.”
Die ran a thumb over the scar hidden beneath scale tattoos; a nervous habit he’d never broken. Kyo had flown into a hysterical screaming fit after seeing the photo of his battered lover and Shinya had spent the better part of an hour talking him back down. Chairs were thrown, the table was over-turned, and the blonde now sat curled up in the corner, chain smoking and pretending to ignore the tears that fell every time he blinked. Shinya sat beside him, legs outstretched, one arm wrapped around his trembling shoulders. Toshiya was working with Akio to put the room back together, striving to remain unobtrusive in the face of the grief filling the room.
Die felt… numb, and a little sick. Whoever had kidnapped Kaoru had apparently done so for the express purpose of hurting himself and Kyo. He had been taken not because he was the leader of the mighty Niikura family, not because he was rich, not because he had committed some injustice that elicited a thirst for revenge. No, it was simply because Die and Kyo loved him, and someone hated them.
Hearing an ill-disguised sniffle from his younger blonde friend, Die allowed anger wash over him in a flood to cauterize his pain. How dare someone take his Kaoru from him? How dare they hurt him, how dare they mar his flesh, how dare they strip him bare and truss him like a common prisoner, how dare they make his lover cry? The anger was tainted with helplessness – he felt no closer to knowing where Kaoru was than he had been before they opened the box – but filled him with a fire that made his entire body quiver.
Toshiya eyed the redhead for a long moment, then moved to whisper into Shinya’s ear. Upon receiving a nod from the shorter man, he moved over to stand by Die’s chair, bending a bit at the waist. “Die?”
“Un?” Die’s head came up, startled. “What’s up?”
“Does this tower have an exercise facility?”
Die blinked, head tilting slightly.
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The Paladin