The Anti-Siren
Kazuma Asougi × Original Character
SPOILERS FOR THE GREAT ACE ATTORNEY CHRONICLES ~ Read ahead at your own risk!
Rating: T
Word Count: 0.9k
WARNINGS: amnesia, psychosis, physical violence, intoxication, racial slurs, suicidalism
Summary: When the foreigner among whites is met with a barbaric display of bigotry, something buried deep within the psyche of his travelling companion that neither she nor himself were aware of bears its thorns.
Masterlist
He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten into this situation. Why his feet were now hanging inches above solid ground while this mountain of a man in front of him held him up by his bruised chin, sneering up at him, nor why his arms and legs refused to cooperate.
His body hit the deck with a resounding crash and his lungs ceased to function.
Was this it? Had he reached the end of the line at last?
A clumsy kick to the skull had his ears ringing loud enough to briefly drown out the never-ending din within. He couldn’t make out the words of the voice anymore. The whole world had gone fuzzy, tipping and trembling to and fro.
His life could have at least flashed before his eyes before he closed them. What a predictable disappointment.
“What are you doing?! Get away from him!”
His eyes opened unexpectedly when he was propped up on someone’s knee.
“Miss Gardner…?”
“Oh, you’re alright.” Her blur of a face filled up with colour where a frightening paleness had set in. “Thank God…” A drop of warmth pattered onto his chest, immediately followed by a second. “Can you stand?” She slung his arm over her shoulders and teetered a bit before managing to bring him to his feet.
“What’s the big idea, poppet?” jeered the assailant. “Don’t tell me you’re really gonna side with this outcast.”
“Excuse you?” she snapped. “I’m not certain what definition you yourself have assigned the term, but in my eyes, this man is not the real outcast in our midst.”
The Goliath scoffed with a crooked smirk. “What’s that supposed to mean? Look at him! He’s…he’s a chink.”
“Do you know what you are?”
No sooner than she’d spoken those words, the sun dimmed as a mass of clouds passed in front of it, casting its shadow over the Vitesse.
“I know your type,” she continued. “You, sir, are a miserable old shag-bag with nothing better to waste his time doing than to go about causing trouble for those who have it any better than he does.” The one caught at the end of her piercing glare shifted his stance, but stood his ground. Cecelia shook her head. “I’d go so far as to say you’ve never received an ounce of love from another person your entire life.”
“Oy! Wh-What’s it to you?!” He stepped back, voice cracking, and her relentless eyes narrowed. “And, what’s a bitch like you gonna do about it anyhow?”
“I could let the whole crew know what a pathetic piece of shit you are, if you’d like. Then we’ll see who here is more the ‘outcast.’”
She hadn’t moved an inch from where she’d steadied her companion upright, and yet the great drunken coward was already on the retreat. His cornered gaze darted between the two, sweat running down his all but hairless head. Then his calves made contact with the deck railing behind him. He was not pushed, nor threatened, nor thrown off balance. The man simply fell backwards.
Moments later, there came a cry from the sidelines of, “Man overboard!”
Cecelia and the still reeling Japaneseman remained where they stood while those around them rushed to fish the drunkard back out safely. In the end, he didn’t resist the efforts to save his life, but the look on his scraggly face the instant before his dive had been unmistakable.
“Are you alright?” she finally asked after a jerk of the head. “Nothing broken? No bleeding?”
“Yes, fine. Just—ah.” He winced when she came across a ghastly bruise on his shoulder.
“Sorry!” She tore her hands away. “I’m sorry. Damn it—I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s…it’s fine. Don’t worry,” he pleaded, part of him almost missing that hellish air she’d had about her until just then. “That was…incredible.”
She sighed, staring down at nothing with a knit in her brow. “I only wish it didn’t need to come to that. It’s strange; I’m not usually one to get so vicious.”
This made him crack a slight smile. “You’d call that ‘vicious?’”
“Well, relatively speaking.”
“Relatively speaking, it was nothing compared to brutes like him or what God knows I might’ve done to him if he’d been beating y—”
The words caught in his windpipe.
Time screeched to a halt as she waited with her tender eyes boring straight into the space between his and making the voice in his head pour out and all around him. “N-Never mind…” His erratic heart rate levelled out as he gathered his thoughts. “What I mean to say is…you were only putting him in his place. He tossed himself over.”
The empty smile that came and went across her lips planted an ache in his chest. That or it was merely an after-effect of having the wind knocked out of him earlier. “It did rather seem that way, didn’t it?”
“Therefore you’re innocent, as far as I’m concerned.” This time her smile was genuine and aimed at him, turning the ache in his chest into something else entirely. “Well…oth-other than utterly humiliating me by coming to my rescue,” he added, returning her smile and averting his gaze.
A sunny little laugh bubbled out of her at that sentiment. “At least now we’re even. Right?”
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