Series: Gungrave (specifically Overdose)
Pairing: RB/Jyuji
Rating: SFW
Summary:
As the chaos from the factory heist dies down, Jyuji starts thinking about a lot of things.

*CLANK*


*WHIRR*


*HISS*


The gigantic factory roars to life with the sound of chaos— engines roaring, heavy automated pounding and metal grinding all echoing within the masonry walls.



Lingering between the vibrations of movement in the air, there is the scent of rust, blood, and burnt rubber. It's a familiar heavy atmosphere, one Jyuji Kabane has long since grown accustomed to.

Countless times he’s ended the day with this concoction of sensory assault, typically after long stretches of battles with humans and Orgmen alike. For him, this is the aftermath of a successful heist. The smell of fire and gunpowder fighting with the loud ringing ambience in his ears are rewards for his strength and prowess.

Jyuji exhales heavily, air escapes his lungs as if it's unloading the imaginary knot on his shoulders.



“Damn. Nothing to lead back to that bastard…”, he murmurs under his breath.



The sensation of something trickling down his chin catches his attention back from all the overwhelming stimuli. He brings up the back of his right hand to wipe the distracting substance away. The smell of iron is familiar but the viscosity is far different than regular human blood.

As adrenaline washes down, the red static behind his eye sockets also gradually dissipates. The burning feeling inside his veins disappears as soon he begins to recite the usual meditational script. The rhythm of his incantations reverbs internally within the dark empty void of his mind. The void existing to him only because his sight was taken away by someone a decade ago.




Jyuji has been blind for as long as his memories could recall. Telling what a days-old corpse smells like, noticing the enemy's body language as Hayate's barrell touches the back of their head, and even seemingly abstract concepts such as predicting the trajectory of a ricocheting bullet by its echo in a room- these feats are nothing more but mere common habits. Jyuji is now more of a beast than he is a regular man. Well, this despicable world never meant for him to be a regular man anyways. Not after his rotten luck had sent him to the hands of a sociopathic brat named Garino at the end of his first life, the exact guy who melted his eyeballs off.




Jyuji's mind starts running in full motion just from thinking about that bastard.

Garino Creale Carsione.

A name that will forever haunt him to the end of this burning wheel. And Jyuji knows a wheel never has an end, but that doesn't mean he can't be pissed off about it.



Garino Creale Carsione is the reason Jyuji flinches when his fingers graze the ugly seams on his skin.



Garino Creale Carsione is the reason why drilling sounds still ring behind his non-existent eyeballs.



Garino Creale Carsione is the reason he can't remember the taste of antojitos and a cold brew anymore.



And that Garino bastard is the motherfucking reason why he never gets to see the clear sky again for all eternity.




After his ill-fated encounter with the Carsione family, his body just never feels right to him. An erratic symbiosis between the prototype SEED and Necroraise procedure— brute forced into existence and currently barely strung together with his own meditation routine. A ten year old Garino once told him before, that the universe runs on a natural equilibrium, so his vision was simply to break it and maximize potential to his whims. Comfort in exchange for power, sanity in exchange for life.

Garino made a scientific abomination and he is the unlucky nimrod who has to maintain it. Some days Jyuji would laugh at his nemesis' overzealous handiwork, pondering who Garino is trying to impress by turning a shotgun house into a camelback. An undead hybrid running on the juice of his sheer willpower is just a sad existence. An existence where being consistent is a certain matter of life and death (for the second time). One slip up and Jyuji's entire body will explode into pieces; and him slipping up in his past life was the initial cause for this lifelong torment to begin with. It's a high pressure lifestyle and yet Jyuji isn't allowed to be stressed. He is denied every intense human emotion to express himself.


*BAM!*

A sudden heavy metal pounding from one of the machinery drags Jyuji out of his thought bubble. Today's heist has resulted in the same outcome as intended; but Jyuji senses that something is also a little different. In the midst of explosive destruction and the rush of adrenaline from their faceoff with the Orgmen earlier, he has lost track of his partner.

"RB?" Jyuji calls out, half expecting the usual southern twang replying to his half-assed tone.






But no response is rallied back to him.



Jyuji clicks his tongue. The clicking reverberates much louder in his mouth this time around. By now, his partner's velvety voice would have masked out the ambient noises that grate on his nerves.

He has to find him, Jyuji ponders. With a flick of his right wrist, he angles Tsumuji lower, just enough that the tip of his right hand gunblade touches the surface of the ground. Jyuji could walk like any normal sighted person on instinct alone but some days when the stimuli are intense, he would minimize the burden on his brain by turning anything on his hand as a makeshift walking cane. Tsumuji is especially useful for this need compared to its counterpart, Hayate as its blade faces the opposite end.

The air, heavy with the scent of oil and decay, strikes Jyuji's nose. He hadn't noticed how pungent everything in the warehouse smells earlier because he was engrossed in kicking asses around. But singling out a particular scent is a common capability for Jyuji. To move, Jyuji needs to listen; to know, Jyuji needs to smell.

And so he steps forward, softly tapping Tsumuji onto the rough gravel of the floor. Every surface Tsumuji touches—whether smooth, rough, or metallic— sends a different vibration up his arm. The echo of each tap bounced off walls, machines, and vague obstructions. Inorganic materials sometimes give out hollow sounds. Depending on how the hollowness feels to his bones, Jyuji can assume the density and mass of said material. Organic materials are slightly harder to tell though, unless it's something Jyuji can touch with his own finger tips.



Jyuji navigates his way out of the area he is in. Avoiding bodies of Orgmen he has taken out prior. The air becomes less muddling as his nose finally picks up a delicate trace of something familiar—something that obviously does not belong to the rest of the setting. He inhales deeply, head tilting slightly as if trying to focus on that elusive scent. It is faint but undeniable.

The clatter of his own shoes, the creaking of metal chains twisting and breaking, and the hissing of steam all blended together into a cacophony of sound. But through it, the scent he recognized comes to him like a whisper in the midst of a storm.




Jyuji steps forward, his blind eyes never wavering as he follows the scent, weaving through the opposing smell of humidity and decay. Tsumugi tapped rhythmically on the ground, a steady beat in his world of noise.



It never occurs to Jyuji to try and describe what RB’s scent is. His scent carries a refreshing note mixed in with Jyuji's own smell, given that Jyuji handles his electric guitar quite often. Kind of like smelling your own laundry that was left to dry under the sun after a rainstorm.



“Had yer' fun, Jyuji?” a voice says, low and familiar, cutting through the clamor.



Jyuji halts his step, eyebrows scrunch into a frown as he turns his head to face towards the direction of the voice. Instantly, Jyuji feels a set of observing eyes landing on him.



"Hey partner, looks like yer found ol' Billy in yet another dumpster.”



Jyuji scoffs at RB’s words, noting that there is a hint of something deeper beneath the humor he is attempting.



“You left me to handle business all alone? What gives?” Jyuji crosses his arms.

“Had to cover the 'posite end of the factory. I know ya' weren't listenin' to Mika’s location briefin’ earlier cause' in typical Jyuji fashion, ya' immediately went hound dog an' cleared out everythin' in one direction.”

RB's voice is a soft drawl, tinged with something that sounded like amusement, yet it carries a masked somberness that Jyuji couldn't ignore.



“Say, how did ya' even find me? I didn't even call out.”


"Your scent-" Jyuji pauses for a beat.





"...it's unmistakable."



RB then approaches Jyuji, though his feet never quite touch the ground. He is a poltergeist, a specter caught between worlds where his existence is anchored by his electric guitar as a host body.



“I have a scent? On a ghost? That's kind of wild.”



Hearing RB saying that statement out loud, Jyuji also ponders the possibility. Perhaps it's not RB that Jyuji smells, but rather his electric guitar the entire time.


As if on cue to Jyuji's pondering, RB fiddles on the lowest pitch string of his guitar mindlessly.


For Jyuji, while he's not sure if RB emits a scent, his partner's presence does give off a specific feeling to his skin differently than physically present bodies do. Vibration bounces off surfaces and Jyuji can determine relative distance to his position from said vibrations alone. There isn't a proper way to describe the exact feeling but Jyuji sometimes equates it to the humming of a refrigerator from long old nostalgia.




But spectral bodies are different.




The low E string’s vibration bounces off the body of RB’s guitar but seems to pass through his lack of form. Long ago, Jyuji has heard of the occult theory on how ghosts are capable of affecting electromagnetic fields around them. Maybe the subtle electric pinching is really what ghosts like RB naturally give off? But the man himself uses electric powers imbued onto his electric guitar accompanying his electrical combat performances, so those attributes might be a contributing factor. Oddly, Jyuji has never felt any pinching sensation in the presence of other ghosts. Hell, has he ever encountered any other ghosts besides RB?




“Hey, Jyuji?” RB chimes in.


“What?”





RB’s voice goes soft to a whisper, seemingly only being inches away from Jyuji's face, the familiar electrical pinch trickles onto his skin.





“Ya' look like ya' gots lot in mind today."





The way those words sound as if they were spoken through a grinning spectral mouth irritates Jyuji to no end.