受信箱

[newpest]

武 Лев Ковач

VIDEO | AUDIO | DISCO

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[newpest]

Kovacs doesn't move. He just stares studying the man before him. Smarter than most he's dealt with in the last few weeks, but that's like giving him an award for not sticking rocks up his fucking nose.

"We're all hypocrites. It one of the wonderful things that unites all humanity."

It's fun, quoting Quell at times like these.

[hiddenblade]

"So what? We are not talking about all of humanity," Ezio replies, shrugging. "We are talking about you. What you have done. Would you willingly be one over something you feel so strongly over?"

[newpest]

Hackles raise on Ryker's face. Kovacs glowers, a primal show of teeth.

"Have you read my file? I got one, right?" That's how shit works around here, isn't it?

[hiddenblade]

It's easy to be calm, in his own cabin, armed, all-too assured of his own skills. He is certain it could be frustrating. Salt in the wound. He carries himself as such anyway. Tenacity matters more.

"I have it," he confirms.

He's paged through it, taken in the broad strokes. He'd given Larry weeks with his to absorb it first, in the name of respect for his privacy, but he hasn't yet decided if that's needed here. From Kovacs' anger, perhaps not.

"I wanted to know your mind first. Would you like to read it yourself?"

[newpest]

"Then you know the fucking answer to that question," Kovacs growls. "You get off making me dangle like that?"

How absurd-- hypocritical-- to play the wounded party, when he'd courted it. Yet he still feels ill used. Will he ever not? It's been a very long time, and the feeling's never stopped.

[hiddenblade]

"The file does not express your motives or feelings on what you have done," Ezio replies, with a dismissive hand wave. He repeats: "Would you like to read it yourself, Kovacs?"

[newpest]

"With a ch, motherfucker. Kovach." Now he's just being petty. He holds out his hand for the file. Give it up.

[hiddenblade]

"Kovach," Ezio confirms, and he strides across the room to take the file from a drawer. He hands it over.

[newpest]

Kovacs scans it quickly. He doesn't really want to see what it has to say on him. Yet, for the image needing to be broadcast, he lets out a petty snort. "Forgot about that," he murmurs, before handing the file back.

"It's accurate."

[hiddenblade]

Ezio picks up a bottle of wine out of a cabinet and takes a seat in one of the chairs while Kovacs reads, pouring them both a liberal glass.

"Va bene," he replies, and despite Kovacs plucking at him, he adds, with a hint of humour: "The Admiral should have added that you would enjoy trying my patience."

[newpest]

Kovacs drinks the wine in one shot, as though it were vodka. He only just stops himself for slamming the glass down for the hell of it. Play nice for now. Get violent later.

"This is all it takes?"

[hiddenblade]

Ezio's eyes narrow slightly.

"You implied you eagerly killed civilians for money you scorn," he replies. "It should test me. But do your worst! You will find me hard to break."

He gets up to fetch dinner from the other room.

[newpest]

"So, scorn makes it okay?" He holds out his unsmashed wineglass. More? "I'm not here to break you."

[hiddenblade]

Ezio seems genuinely puzzled by that leap, but he pours more wine. For now, anyway. He looks hardy enough to hold it.

“You can pick out all the words you would like,” he replies. “Rip them from their arguments. Would you rather fight? You are spoiling for one.”

[newpest]

Kovacs' body language changes, going from rigid to languid. He takes the wine and drinks it, thinking. This is obviously a trap.

Sometimes, the best way to disarm a trap is to walk into it.

"You're on."

[hiddenblade]

Ezio thinks, with a touch of disappointment, that the food is going to go cold. But so be it –– there are better things to attend to.

"To the foyer, then," he replies, taking a step backwards, beckoning Kovacs to come with. A little wry: "Unarmed? At least to start."

[newpest]

Kovacs is already taking off his suit, the thin white shirt following swiftly, revealing long panes of scarred muscle. "No shoes either. Kućagoro style."

[hiddenblade]

Ezio unbuttons his doublet, unhurried, and then unbuckles his wrist guards, removing the thin metal sheaths from the underside. He rakes an eye over Kovacs, scoping out what he’s working with. Worse scars than he usually sees; it’s hard to heal from anything like that.

“Unusual, but fine. Where is that from?”

[newpest]

Kovacs takes note of the blades, and squirrels the information away for later. It's clearly some weird fighting style, and he'd like to see it later, but for now?

"Where I am. It means 'around the house'." Translating Serbian or Japanese is hard. Translating the pidgin that comes from only Harlan's world is a pointless task-- it's only there for them, why spread it? "No weapons, no shoes. Won't break the furniture."

[hiddenblade]

He sets his things down and yanks his shirt over his head. Dramatic shoulders and arms and a wide trunk, largely unmarred save for a deep stab wound on his side, and a bullet scar on his left shoulder.

“My mother would have appreciated that,” he replies. The boots go off next, and he sweeps them out of the way with a foot. He grins. “Show me what you do, then.”

[newpest]

His sleeve has the build of an acrobat-- hard muscle, well built and compact. Kovacs, stuck in Ryker's gangly sleeve, feels like some kind of long-legged ghost in comparison.

Of course, he loathes the idea of striking first. He'll be playing right into the man's hand; this Ezio guy clearly has a monstrous strength behind him. He squares up, but he's not as compact as he'd like to be, for this fight.

Fuck it.

A slide to the left, a quick movement to get his leg under a fancy chair, kicking the thing in Ezio's direction. A feint after a feint-- Kovacs is right up there, waiting for a moment of distraction to hit Ezio squarely in the gut.

The face is for chumps. In a real fight, when you're trying to send someone down, the face is purely trophy shit. Knock the wind out of someone, and the move's worth its weight in gold.

[hiddenblade]

It’s been a long minute since he was last in a fight, much less one for a fight’s sake, and he moves into it with a cool head. He barely bothers to take a fighting stance until the chair is skittering his way, and he catches it by the back and twists it aside him.

But here he comes.

Ezio shifts to brace his weight on his back foot and lifts his other hand rising to catch, to redirect Kovacs’s blow off-center and let his own force carry him beyond.

It’ll be hard, against a man that big, but nothing he hasn’t handled before.

[newpest]

Motherfuck, this guy is strong. Just as suspected, it's like being slapped by a brick wall. A brick wall who doesn't think you're shit, nothing personal. The urge rises to go for that fucking nose, but it's anger talking. This is their first fight (he doesn't consider for a second it'll be their last), he needs to show... something.

What?

That he's serious.

So Kovacs is off center in his ridiculous gaijin body, but he still has the momentum. If he's fast-- and he always tries to be-- he can catch one of Ezio's stout legs with one of Ryker's gangly ones, trying to pull them both off course.

[hiddenblade]

Ezio feels his lip curl as they connect, some cheerful mix of thrill and pride. His sixth sense comes to life with a barrage of information, too fast to process mid-fight, but snatches of it come to him: a surprising clumsiness, a flare of anger, a resilience.

He's opening his mouth to bait Kovacs again when his leg gets swept, forcing him to take a hard move forward to stay upright, but it throws him off balance. He seizes upon Kovacs' arm, redoubling his grip; if they go down, they'll go down together.

[newpest]

So they go down together.

This won't be the first time Kovacs wrestles without intent to kill. It's almost charming in its familiarity. Envoy instincts have him cushioning his own fall before he's even aware of it, and then he has his hands at Ezio's waist, pulling at his trousers, kicking for leverage.

Something no one ever expects is a dangerous move: Ryker's giant forehead crashing into Ezio's face. There's the nose.