kage laid limply in Kens arms as he carried him through the air to the hot spring. Oblivious to everything around him until his body hit the water, within seconds his eyes shot open. Reaching forward suddenly his hand became charged with electricity, arcing across his wet hand and off the surface of the water before realising that he was no longer where he thought he was. Gleam was nowhere in sight, and he was in a pool of water.
"Wha-" Kage gasped, looking around as he dispelled the hado from his fingers, "W-what happened? Where am I? Where's Gleam?"
Ken was still standing there behind him. Leaning back and looking straight up he could see the shinigami, for once not merged with his spirit. Ken seemed happy enough despite everything they'd done to each other, or at least Kage had done to him. Asking once more Ken filled him in on what had happened with Gleam, leaving Kage with a deep sense of disappointment in himself that he hadn't even been able to carry out his final blow. He was disappointed with himself, and he knew that Soifon would have been disappointed as well. He had to finish the job though.
Kage pulled himself up, or at least tried to, , resting his arms on the stone edge of the spring. He only pulled himself up a couple inches before falling back in again. Still exhausted, he had no strength yet, but oddly enough, the longer he remained in the water, the more he felt it returning to him at an accelerated rate. Rather than try to rush it too soon, he gave it a while, closing his eyes and sliding down into the water a bit more til his head rested on the edge. Just a little while...
A half hour later Kage woke up again. At some point he fell asleep in the pool, but it didn't look like that much had changed so he couldn't have been out that long. Ken was gone, back with his partner he supposed as Kage got up, pulling himself out of the water in his wet clothes. He'd have to do something about those later, but right now he had things to do. He took them all off long enough to wring the water out of them before he left. He had no intentions of strolling around naked, but he also didn't want to be sopping wet either. They were far too heavy. Once that was done though, he used his newly restored energy to flash step across the training center. It was time to face Gleam.
The drider spirit was right where he left her, still bound in the bakudo web he'd thrown over her. She was no less friendly either, sneering at Kage as he approached her.
"So, have you come to finish me off now that you've had time to patch yourself back up? You should consider yourself lucky, if these ropes hadn't bound me I would have finished you off without a seco-"
She didn't get a chance to finish her statement before Kage slapped her across the face. He held his position with his arm across his chest as the shock sunk into her. Her eyes were wide at the audacity of it.
"Shut up, you miserable old spider." Kage told her. His attitude changed in the moment he left the spring and returned her her position. Her eyes still fixed on him, Kage readied himself for exactly what he needed to say.
"This is how things are going to be from now on" he stated, "First, you are MY spirit and as such you are going to do as I will you too. I am not going to live in fear of you another day. Ever since you came into my possession, you've haunted me, tormented me with nightmares and in my meditation. Never again."
Gleam sneered at him and opened her mouth to speak, but Kage cut her off before she could say anything holding up two fingers.
"Secondly, in response to the first point, from now on, I will not sit idly by when you decide to play with me. From now on, and this is a promise, I'm the alpha wolf and you're just another dog in the pack. I fully intend to have you in the hunt, but from now on you will follow my lead. If I want your consult I will ask for it but I will not be led on by you anymore, and if you so choose to try and force me to through your suble, passive-agressive or outright murderous attempts on my life, I swear to god I will kill you myself regardless of what happens to the both of us. Do you understand?"
Kage held his hand up as he gave her a chance to answer him. She didn't vocally, instead just giving him the smallest possible nod of acknowledgement. Kage scowled at her. This defiance against him was not going to remain. Electricity arced over his hand before he thrust it up to her neck, stopping mere fractions of an inch away as the forked electricity licked at her bare skin.
"I said, do you understand" Kage ordered her.
"Yes." She answer, that sneer still present on her face.
"Good." Kage said as he dispelled the hado and lowered his hands. Gleam pulled at the bindings again, the glowing ropes shifting but giving nothing.
"Now let me out of here" she demanded as she glared at him. Kage folded his arms across his chest.
"Why? You already tried to kill me, consider this a fitting punishment." he told her, before stepping forward and getting up face to face with her.
"THink of it this way. For the next...two and a half days, I have the power to destroy you at the slightest whim. In case you can't put two and two together, that makes me the predator, and you the prey. And make no mistake, if I so much as hear a whisper that you have so much as threatened any of the other shinigami, I will stretch your death out for as long as you have this manifested form and make you suffer every remaining moment of your short, miserable existance."
Kage kept his eyes fixated on hers. Staring into those pupil-less whites was like staring directly into her soul, and as he did he thought he felt a very real chill run through her. For once, maybe for the first time, she got a dose of the fear that she fed on. She didn't respond, and Kage didn't wait for her to either. Stepping back, he then turned away from her, leaving her to suffer in her isolation. He gathered his energy and stepped back across the training center.
His step ended back at the spring. So far it still just seemed to be Ken and his spirit, and his robes that Ken had taken the courteousy or removing before he put Kage in the water. Walking over he picked them up and threw them on, his clothes still damp but mostly dried out by now. Once his robes were on though and he fixed the scabbard in his sash, he looked over at the bathing shinigami.
"Hey Ken" Kage said from the other side of the spring, "Look, I know we don't see eye to eye on just about anything, and I also don't know what happened for the last...well, I'm not sure how long, but whatever did happen, and whatever you did, thanks."
