Angry Ikari

Diary

Ikari stood at the lip of the Fight Pits with the vein in his temple already throbbing like a war drum that never learned the war was over, laughing loud and mean at Itsuki because laughing at someone else's ruin is easier than looking at your own. "Anger is the only samurai left standing," he roared, quoting some dead sensei he half remembered, then flirted with death itself by taunting the crowd, the ropes, the gods, anything with a pulse to fight him. He meant it as sport, the way he means most things, but Itsuki took the mockery like a blade to the ribs and never really got up the same, and now the man who once held a stance sells himself on the streets for scraps while Ikari's fists still shake with unspent fury and nowhere to spend it. Some nights Ikari sits alone sharpening a sword he never draws, muttering that a warrior without an enemy is just a man yelling at weather, and he knows discipline is the one opponent he keeps losing to, again and again, gloriously, furiously. He tells himself tomorrow he'll find Itsuki, make it right, maybe even apologize, but tomorrow he'll probably just find another crowd to scream at instead.