A black haired teenager rode past the big apple, pushing his skateboard and taking shortcuts through the alleys. His brown eyes narrowed in concentration as he dodged a few pedestrians by a hair.

He huffs as he gets closer to his apartment. "I swear Casey Jones, if you're not home tonight I'm going to kick your ass." He mumbles under his breath, the area had become deserted and no people strolled through the sidewalks from this point.

He rolled his eyes, rich people. He stops his skateboard by placing a foot down onto the concrete. He lurches but doesn't fall off balance, getting off, he plucked his board from the floor and tucked it under his armpit.

He rushes up the small set of stairs and opens the apartment door by jiggling it a couple times. The raven haired teen closes the door behind him before running up the large steps, two at a time. He gets to his floor and curses at the noises coming from his apartment.

He frantically twists the doorknob, knowing that the keys wouldn't be in its usual hiding place. He starts roughly pushing and pulling but the door doesn't give. A high pitched scream echoes through the room and his eyes widen. "Suzie!" He yells in alarm, placing his weight on the door.

It doesn't give and there's no sign of his little sister opening the door, instead the cries become louder. He runs his hands through his hair. "Shit." He hisses before running down the long flight of stairs again. He bursts the front door open and rushes towards the next building over.

The boy throws his board up into the lowest fire escape and then jumps up. He grunts in effort but manages to hold on, shuffling his hands up and swinging upwards swiftly. He manages to get up onto the fire escape and grabs his board, tucking it back under his arm again before rushing up yet another flight of stairs.

He is panting by the time he gets to the top but decides to shove his skateboard into the back of his shirt and into his pants. "Here goes everything." He sighs, jumping up yet again and pulling himself onto the roof.

He turns on his heel and eyes the windows that accessed his adopted family's apartment. "For Suzie." He whispers, bracing himself. He takes a running start and jumps, catching himself on his room's tiny ass balcony. His entire body jolts and he feels his shoulder nearly dislocate and he groans at the feeling. "Fuckfuckfuck." He chants like a mantra, climbing up and through his open window.

He takes a moment to breathe on the floor, crumpled and pained. "I have really got to practice that landing." He pants. He hears glass break and girlish screams again, quickly reminding him of his objective.

The teenager takes out his skateboard as if he was unseathing a weapon and holds it up in defense. He kicks the door open and tenses, ready for an attack. The ruckus comes from the kitchen and he braces himself for what he'll see before charging into the living room.

There, he sees Mr. Jones yelling at his adoptive sister. Suzie lets out a hopeful cry of his name, "Huro!" Fury bubbles up in his chest for his adoptive father and he runs forward, striking the man in the back. Fear overtakes him as he realized what he'd done.

Mr. Jones turns and directs his attention towards him. "Come at me you bastard." Huro challenges, holding up his board threateningly. Mr. Jones is able to snatch the board away at the moment of hesitation that he gives and throws it across the room.

Suzie scrambles backwards towards the bedrooms, whimpering, silent tears rolling down her face. Huro directs his eyes towards Mr. Jones and the man seizes his neck. His grip is crushing and Huro holds back the urge to cry out, pushing his fingers under the older man's hands. He makes a shrugging motion, ducking before being hit in the stomach by a flying fist.

Huro flies and lands in a ceramic pot. Its blue and white pieces digging into his back. The teen holds back tears but can't help but gasp from the pain. Huro rolls over onto his hands and knees, and promptly gets kicked in the side which pushes him into the wall, digging the ceramic further into his flesh.

Huro's vision blurs and all he can think about is to not fight back, the pain coming to him in waves as he chokes from the pain. His eyes land onto a shaking blob of pink and baby blue. His mind switches, thinking only about getting Suzie out of the situation, in his inattention he gets caught off guard by Mr. Jones stomping down on his left ankle, he sees stars.

Finally, Huro closes his eyes and musters the strength to put up a calm front to look at Suzie. He hears a masculine yell and mouths. 'Go to my room.' The little girl nods with tears in her eyes, getting up with her white little bunny plushy and glittery red and white backpack.

Her footsteps clap against the wooden floor as she runs past them. Before Mr. Jones could chase after her to take out his aggression on the little girl he slams his palm into the elder's crotch. His foster father cries out and bends down, squeezing his face in a bruising grip before slamming him in the wall once again.

Huro coughs, all the air in his lungs knocked out. "Please." Huro wheezes, hoping to appeal to Mr. Jones's humanity, the man lets go of him and lets him lay stomach down on the floor. Finally, several punches later the adult backs away. His foster father walks out into the hall and he limps, following closely behind as silently as he can, not wanting him to get to Suzie.

As usual, Mr. Jones turns left and goes into his master bedroom, slamming the door shut and locking it. Huro presses an ear to the wood, listening intently as the floorboards creak before a heavy thump. He waits with baited breath until snoring protrudes from the door and he sighs in relief.

With much effort, Huro limps over to his room, knocking on the door in a specific pattern, thud thudthud thud, thud thudthud. The door cracks open to reveal Suzie, who clutched her white bunny plush tightly in her small 6 year old hands. He opens his arms and the little girl shoots towards him, almost knocking them both onto the ground as she sobs.

He carefully nudges the door open with his foot and gets in his room, closing and locking the door. "I'm here, I'm here Suzie. He can't hurt you." He whispers false reassurances. Huro knows that even if he was here Mr. Jones could get to his little sister no matter how much he hated the fact. His daisho and katana hang on his wall, gleaming in the moonlight, reminding him that here he had a defensive measure. 

Suzie sniffles, breaking him from his train of thought. She hugs the doll in her arms closer as he sits with her onto his plain grey blue bed. "Where's Casey?" She asks, nose runny and tear tracks still wet. Her big, bloodshot eyes broke his heart as he racks his brain for an answer.

Huro fakes a smile. "He's alright sweetheart, just caught up at hockey practice." He lies through his teeth. Truth is, he had no idea where his adoptive little brother was. Though he swears on his life that Casey was going to get chewed out for leaving their little sister alone with Mr. Jones.

Suzie seems to buy the lie and sets her head down on Huro's chest, cuddling her plush closer. He starts running a gentle hand through her black hair as they both calm down. The adrenaline from the fight -beatdown- was waning, making him feel the true pain of his wounds.

Suze breaks the silence with a hushed question."Why does daddy hurt us Huro?" She questions, sadness evident as she clutches the little bunny in her hands tighter. He falters, trying to find an answer. There is no reason, no justification for hurting your own children like he has. Such a bright, beautiful little girl being subjected to the abuse of her own biological father and a neglectful biological older brother who runs away any chance he gets.

(Who was he to imply that they were bad? Surely he wasn't any better.)

He takes a deep breath, reminding himself of the code of bushido. As he speaks the bitter, ugly truth to the small child who's doe eyes were full of such innocence. He didn't want that to be squashed by the cruel world. "I don't know Suze, but we'll get out of this soon, it'll all be over soon."

It didn't take long for the little girl to fall asleep, humming along with his heartbeat that he took deep breaths to steady. She starts drooling on his stained black T-shirt and he chuckles quietly at the sight. Gingerly, he picks her up and lays her down on his bed, pulling off her headband and hair ties, placing them both on the empty bed-stand. He lets out a small smile as he covers her with the duvet and tucks her in.

Now, the real work had to start. Huro strips off his shirt as he treads out of his room and closes the door to his room, treading to the bathroom. He starts lathering his shirt and scrubbing, watching the water turn pink and go down the drain.

Some spots are crusted over with the blood that he can't get out. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." He curses, slamming the clothing into the sink to soak and dumping soap into it, leaving it to let the fabric absorb the mixture. Huro crouches down and retrieves the almost empty med kit. He swears he had more bandages than this.

"Whatever, doesn't matter." He growls, taking it out and bringing it on the couch. Huro sat on the filthy brown couch, shirtless with a pair of black sweatpants and white drawstrings were stained in a dark crimson. He bends over and blindly pours on hydrogen peroxide, wincing at the burn. When he thinks he got all of it he pops the cap back on and exchanges it for the tweezers.

"This is going to hurt." He warns himself, positioning himself in front of two mirrors, angled to be able to look at his back, he stuffs a rag in his mouth. It takes a few tries to get used to the maneuver but he is able to get most of the shards out with only a couple of muffled cries to show for it.

Then, finally, he gives up on the tiny shards that would be too much to get out and grabs a roll of bandage. He places an end of the bandage in his mouth, holding it with his teeth while he maneuvered the white cloth around his chest, grunting as a few tears slip from the pain of circling it around his body as much as he could. Looking at the thin bandages left he decides to brave having a couple of open gashes and stuff them back in the med kit, he'll get more tomorrow.

A coppery smell filled the room as his leg buzzed in leftover adrenaline and anxiety while the wounds from the earlier encounter forgotten as he waited for Casey to get back. His head pounded as his ears strained to listen to his surroundings and only hearing a couple cars whiz by in the distance.

It was four in the morning.

He holds back the urge to yell at the top of his lungs in frustration, not wanting to wake Suze -or his adopted father. Finally feeling his patience run thin, he fishes out his phone from his pockets, no messages or missed calls to be found from his missing younger brother. With an exasperated sigh, Huro scrolls down his recent phone numbers and taps his icon.

He presses it to his ear. It rings, he doesn't pick up. He tries again, it rings, he doesn't pick up. "It seems the person you are wanting to call isn't at the phone right now, please leave a message after the beep." The message becomes damn infuriating after the third time and so Huro hangs up and silently seethes in anger for a moment before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. "Dammit Case, where the hell are you?" He mumbled to himself, finally standing up to pace.

Taps on the window interrupt his flurry of thoughts, ignoring the pain flaring from his cuts and bruises as he marches to the window and hauls it open. Huro turns his head, spotting the form of Casey Jones outside the window in fucking full hockey gear with his strange face painted mask and whatever the else he had on him.

With the rage of a thousand suns Huro slides the window up as hard as he can without causing noise to wake anybody in the apartment. The older teen steps back, letting the younger enter the apartment as he whoops in celebration of something, jumping around and trying to seemingly get rid of the adrenaline coursing through his veins.

Huro did not share this enthusiasm. "Where were you?" Huro hisses, slamming the window shut, too angry to fucking think about anything else, ignoring the murmurs and noises of other people outside - who were probably his hockey team and the thought of those idiots makes him even more pissed off and for a fleeting moment he considers getting a glass cup and chucking it out of the window just to teach them a lesson. He refrains.

"Come on H, don't be like that." Casey complains, starting to strip out of his gear and leaning his hockey stick on the couch, Huro's eye twitches at the nonchalance and he swears he almost pops a vein. He sharply sighs and massages his forehead as his nose flares in fury. He laughs bitterly.

"Don't be like that. Don't be like that?" Huro repeats him mockingly increasingly getting louder, he slams his hand on the couch, making a muffled thump loud enough to startle Casey. "How about you don't be 'like that.' I told you I was going to be late because I had to go to my job after school, you know, the one that pays for your fucking hockey equipment whenever you snap one of those twigs in half?." The older one explains before chuckling angrily as he starts to pace around. "And what do I find when I get here? A crying Suzie as your father yells at her." He explains, sarcasm lacing his tone as he stops and turns at the hockey player.

"You're so goddamn lucky I got here before she was hurt." He seethes, slamming a finger roughly into the hockey player's chest, his breathing becoming more heavy as he remembers the fear in her gaze as she scrambled to hide when he got to the house. The way that she ran, the way that she wailed in fear while he tried to soothe her as her father went on a drunken rampage and was finally able to convince her to hide in his room before things got ugly.

Casey seems ashamed, all earlier oomph from whatever game he won now gone and ground into dust as he realizes just how badly he screwed the pooch. "How bad?" Casey finally asks, his brown eyes full of guilt and concern, slicking his hair back and looking around to observe the trashed living room with light pants in his voice,

Huro doesn't speak, instead, he turns on his heel, hearing as Casey gasps in horror at the sight of his back, a couple of the gashes were not covered in bandages due to shortage of medical care equipment but the rest was bandaged and a stark red pierced through the white. He can only feel crestfallen at this, and so fucking exhausted.

(Huro painstakingly cleaned his own cuts and bandaged everything with what limited supplies they had by himself, thanks for nothing Casey.)

"Enough, it doesn't matter. All that matters is, is that I trusted you with Suzanne's health and safety and you didn't come through. What the fuck am I supposed to do with you Case? Going off at whatever time you feel like it, ignoring your responsibilities and not protecting our little sister? You've done this before and I've been willing to forgive and forget but enough is enough Casey. I clearly can't trust you with Suze, the fucking light of our life, so don't expect to be." Huro replied, bumping his shoulder against Casey's as he walks to his bedroom. He didn't see five figures drop into their apartment and start to comfort Casey, only hearing it was enough to make him frustrated again but refrained and went back into his bedroom.

Huro goes to the closet and fishes out a hammock that he uses whenever this happened and hangs it near the door, with a final glance at Suzie he stares at the ceiling and listens as his little brother goes to his room later on.

He didn't sleep that night.