Chapter 5: Attacj
Jack’s roar wasn’t human. It was the shriek of tearing steel, of overloaded pistons, a sound ripped from the core of his chemically-forged being. He didn’t charge Yujiro. That would be suicide, and even in his rage, Jack’s animal brain knew it. Instead, he used Yujiro’s own momentary distraction—that split-second glance back at Baki—and launched himself not at the Ogre, but past him.
His target was the sofa. His target was the sleeping, vulnerable form wrapped in a blanket.
He moved like a scorpion strike, all unnatural speed and malignant intent. Yujiro’s eyes snapped back, widening a fraction in genuine surprise. He hadn’t predicted this. He’d expected a direct assault, a brawl. This was predation.
Jack’s hand, each finger thickened and strengthened by countless synthetic hormones, scythed through the air. It wasn’t a fist; it was a spear, fingers rigid and aimed straight for Baki’s throat as he lay defenseless on the cushions.
Time didn’t slow. It fractured.
Yujiro moved, but he was a fraction of a beat behind, his own power working against him as his massive body began to pivot from the wrong position.
The sound was wet and terrible.
Jack’s rigid fingers punched into the side of Baki’s neck, just above the collarbone, missing the trachea by a whisper. But the damage was catastrophic. There was a crunch of cartilage, a horrific shluck of penetrating tissue. Blood, shockingly dark and immediate, erupted from the wound, pulsing in time with Baki’s startled, aborted gasp.
Baki’s eyes flew open, confusion and white-hot pain obliterating the last dregs of sleep. He tried to scream, but only a wet, gurgling hiss escaped his lips. His hands flew up, reflexively clutching at Jack’s invading wrist, but his strength was that of a sick child against a hydraulic press.
“You take everything!” Jack screamed into Baki’s face, his spittle mixing with the blood now cascading down Baki’s chest. He twisted his hand, digging deeper, seeking the carotid artery, the spinal column, anything to sever.
Then the world exploded.
Yujiro’s hand closed around Jack’s head not like a hand, but like a industrial vise. There was no grab, no pull. There was simply an application of pure, directional force. He yanked Jack backwards with such violence that the tendons in Jack’s neck screamed in protest. Jack was ripped from Baki, his fingers tearing free with a sickening pop, leaving ragged flaps of tissue behind.
Yujiro didn’t throw him. He used Jack’s own momentum, now reversed, and drove him downward. Jack’s face met the polished concrete floor. It didn’t crack. It cratered. A spiderweb of fractures erupted around the point of impact, and the sound was that of a melon dropped from a great height. Blood—Jack’s blood—joined the mess already on the floor.
But Yujiro was already gone from him. He was a blur of motion back to the sofa.
Baki was convulsing, his body arching off the cushions in a rigid spasm, his hands pressed uselessly against the fountain of his neck. His eyes were wide, fixed on the ceiling, already clouding with shock. The blood wasn’t just flowing; it was pumping in short, weakening spurts. He was drowning in it, internally, his lips turning blue.
“No.” The word from Yujiro was flat, final. It was not a plea to a god; it was a command to the universe itself. He tore the blanket away, his hands moving with a terrifying, surgical precision. He placed the heel of his palm directly over the geyser of blood and leaned his entire weight onto it. The pressure was immense, brutal, designed to collapse the torn vessels shut from the outside.
Baki’s back bowed off the sofa again, a silent scream locked in his throat. His fingers scrambled against Yujiro’s crushing arm.
“Look at me,” Yujiro growled, his face inches from Baki’s. His other hand came up and gripped Baki’s chin, forcing his lolling head to stay still. “Look at me!”
Baki’s panicked, drowning eyes flickered, struggling to focus. They found Yujiro’s. The world narrowed to that dark, furious, terrifyingly focused gaze.
“You do not get to leave,” Yujiro said, each word a hammer blow. “You hear me? Breathe. Through your nose. Slow. You will not die in my living room.” His voice was absolute, a law of physics he was enforcing with his will. The pressure from his hand was a tourniquet of pure force.
Behind them, Jack stirred. A low, wet groan bubbled from the crater in the floor. He pushed himself up on shaking arms. His nose was obliterated, his cheekbone shattered, one eye swelling shut. He grinned, a crimson, broken-toothed rictus. “See…?” he slurred through the blood and broken teeth. “See how he… looks at you? That’s mine. That focus… should be mine…”
Yujiro didn’t even glance over. “If you make another sound,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet, still locked on Baki’s fading eyes, “I will peel the skin from your muscles and cram it down your throat while your heart still beats. Be silent.”
Jack froze. It wasn’t the threat itself—he’d faced countless threats. It was the tone. It was the complete, utter lack of attention. Jack was less than an insect in that moment. He was background noise. The totality of Yujiro’s being was focused on the act of forcing Baki’s life to remain in his body.
Baki’s struggles were growing weaker. His breaths were shallow, whistling pulls through his nose. The pool of blood beneath the sofa was spreading, a dark, glossy stain on the light concrete.
“Kureha,” Yujiro muttered to himself. Then, louder, a barked command to the empty room: “I need a clotting agent! Sterile gauze! Now!” He was not asking. He was summoning aid from the very air.
Baki’s hand, slick with his own blood, fumbled weakly and found Yujiro’s wrist, the one crushing the wound on his neck. He didn’t try to pull it away. His fingers just closed around it, a feeble anchor.
Yujiro’s jaw tightened. He saw the light in Baki’s eyes guttering. He leaned down further, his forehead almost touching Baki’s. “Listen to my voice,” he commanded, his tone shifting, becoming lower, more resonant. “Your body is mine. I decide when it breaks. I decide when it dies. You do not have permission. Your heart will keep beating. Your lungs will keep filling. You will obey.”
He was using the Demon Back, not for power, but for biological dominance. It was a subliminal pulse, a direct, primal command from the apex of the food chain to a wounded member of its pack. Live.
Baki’s eyelids fluttered. A single tear, diluted pink with blood, tracked through the grime on his temple. His grip on Yujiro’s wrist tightened, ever so slightly.
From the doorway, a stunned, rasping voice. Jack had managed to sit up, leaning against the shattered door frame. He watched, his one good eye wide with a dawning, horrific understanding. He saw the look on Yujiro’s face. It wasn’t just anger. It was desperation. It was raw, unvarnished fear. It was a look Jack had never seen, never dreamed could exist on the Ogre’s face.
And in that moment, Jack Hanma understood the true, devastating depth of his failure. He had not just attacked his brother. He had attacked the one thing Yujiro Hanma had ever visibly cared for. He had forced that care to the surface, made it undeniable, and in doing so, had proven himself forever, irrevocably outside of it.
He had made himself the enemy of this new, terrifying facet of his father.
Yujiro’s head snapped toward him. “I told you to be silent.” The words were ice. “You have five seconds to be gone from my sight. If I ever see you again, I will finish what you started here today, on him, and I will do it slowly, with your own eyes forced to watch.”
Jack dragged himself upright, his body a symphony of new pain. He took one last look at the scene: his brother drowning in red on the sofa, his father a monolith of concentrated will holding death at bay, the intimacy of the horror more binding than any embrace.
He stumbled into the ruined hallway, the taste of his own blood and the ashes of his purpose thick in his mouth. The fight was over. He had lost something far greater than a battle.
Back in the apartment, Yujiro’s focus returned entirely to Baki. The bleeding was slowing under his relentless pressure, but Baki’s breathing was becoming shallower, his skin clammy. Shock was taking him.
“No you don’t,” Yujiro snarled. He shifted his weight, keeping one hand locked on the wound. With the other, he tore open Baki’s blood-soaked shirt. He placed his ear against Baki’s chest, listening. The heartbeat was thready, frantic. One lung sounded wet, shallow—likely filling with blood from internal damage.
Yujiro knew what he had to do. He had seen Kureha do it in the clinic.
He positioned the heel of his free hand over Baki’s lower ribs. He took a controlled, precise breath, and struck. Not a killing blow, but a sharp, percussive thrust. Baki’s body jolted. A gasp, followed by a cough, and a bubble of bloody froth spilled from his lips.
“Again,” Yujiro commanded, to himself or to Baki, he didn’t know. He struck another precise spot. Another weak cough, more fluid.
He was performing battlefield medicine with the terrifying efficiency of a butcher, his every action calibrated by an innate, predatory understanding of anatomy. He kept talking, a low, continuous stream of words against Baki’s skin.
“You will live. You will heal. And then you will be stronger for it. This is just another fight. A stupid one, caused by a jealous fool. You do not lose to jealous fools. You hear me? You do not lose.”
He listened again. The heartbeat was a fraction stronger. The wet rasp in the lung was less pronounced. The hemorrhage was controlled, for now.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Yujiro eased the pressure on Baki’s neck. The blood seeped, but did not spurt. He ripped a length of fabric from the ruined blanket and packed it against the wound, holding it tight with a firm, unyielding grip.
Only then did he let his own breath out, a long, ragged sigh that deflated his colossal frame for just a second. He rested his forehead against Baki’s, feeling the terrifying coolness of his son’s skin.
“Stubborn boy,” he whispered, the words raw in the silent, blood-drenched room. “See what you made me do?”