Ambrose had you pinned to the ground, with the full weight of his body holding you down. This position put you in a clear disadvantage, and so, you did what any good sibling would do.
You kneed him in the balls.
"Fucking bitch!" he cried out, doubling over slightly. It gave you just enough wiggle room to bring your leg up high enough to kick him back, and you hurried to rise to your feet, placing a bit of distance between the two of you.
"This is stupid," you insisted. "I know we don't get along, but you're not actually going to kill me, right? I'm still your sister. I've known you my entire life."
Ambrose grimaced, but despite his tender balls, still didn't look willing to back down. "I've hated you from the moment you were born," he spat. "Mother and father always treated you differently from the rest of us. Even though you're nothing but a bumbling fool, they coddled you and let you have everything you ever wanted."
"Coddled me?" you repeated, eyes wide with disbelief. "Are you forgetting that they literally banished me to a whole different world?! Sure, I was naturally strong, and they saw potential in me, but they hardly showed me any real affection. Our parents are pretty crappy, let's be honest. They're not exactly all that nurturing. But that isn't my fault."
"That's what you think, and yet, they acknowledged you the most out of any of their other children," he scowled. "You're completely and utterly ungrateful. A little brat like you has no business ascending to the throne. That's why I'm going to kill you and make sure you can't ever take what's rightfully mine."
You were fed up with this conversation. You'd already told him you could care less about becoming the next monarch, but he clearly wasn't listening to you. He was paranoid and desperate beyond measure, more so than you'd ever realized.
It looked like you were going to have to kick his ass to make him see reason again.
"Fine, dipshit," you sighed. "Time to talk with our fists, I guess."
You had always been stronger than your siblings. Ambrose was the oldest, and thus, he'd had the most time to develop his strength. Even so, you'd sparred with him quite recently before your banishment, and you'd won. Now that you thought about it, you recalled his expression being remarkably bitter, but at the time, you'd just assumed he was being a sore loser.
But you knew better now. In that very moment, he must've been itching to kill you.
Unwilling to let him get the jump on you again, you lunged at him and swung your leg out in a roundhouse kick. You were fast, but Ambrose was even faster. He easily evaded you, and retaliated with a kick of his own. Thankfully, you managed to put your arms up in time to block it, but it still hurt and pushed you back.
Is it just me, or is he faster than I remember him being?
Nearly a year had passed since you'd come to this world. It was entirely possible that in that time, Ambrose had honed his strength even more. The fight was only starting, in any case. You weren't about to get tied up in the details and allow yourself to be discouraged.
You took a deep breath, focusing all your energy on the asshole in front of you that you had the misfortune of being related to. The next time you clashed, you opted for a punch, putting every ounce of your strength into it. And to your relief, the punch hit Ambrose square in the jaw.
But based on how quickly he recovered, you may as well have just flicked him.
Ambrose wiped a hand across his swollen lip, chuckling darkly. "What's going on, [Name]? You're so much weaker than I remember. At this rate, killing you won't even be fun. I'm not sure what mother and father were thinking, naming someone like you as their heir."
You considered stringing together a few protests, but before you could, Ambrose was already breathing down your neck. He was so fast. Too fast. Almost as fast as that Nomu thing from USJ. He never used to be this fast. What in the hell was going on?
You didn't have time to deliberate any longer, because he'd already kicked you so hard that you went crashing into the side of another building. The impact was forceful enough that it shattered part of the wall, chunks of bricks and dust spilling over you as you gasped for breath. Your head was spinning. Goddammit. That last hit really fucking hurt.
Ambrose approached you with a cruel smirk. "This is hilarious. I never thought I'd see the day when you would be completely at my mercy like this. To be honest, I didn't much care for this world when I first showed up. I could feel that my strength had been depleted. The unfamiliar environment left me feeling awfully weak. It was a truly disgusting sensation, but after feeding on enough humans, I was right back to normal. And then I realized something. I don't belong to this world anyways, so why should I obey any of its laws? Back home, us vampires are bound by contract not to drink more blood from humans than we require, and the royal family especially must uphold that standard. But here, I'm free to drink all the blood I want. And in the few days I've been here, that's exactly what I've done."
You watched, horrified, as Ambrose's smirk morphed into a manic grin.
"Never in my life have I had so much blood all at once," he cackled gleefully. "The humans here also taste especially sweet. I must add that I quite liked their desperate expressions and the way they hopelessly tried to push me away, right before their eyes rolled back into their skulls and they went completely limp in my arms. It brought me a satisfaction that I can safely say I've never experienced before."
You winced while peeling yourself away from the broken wall, then gritted your teeth at him. "Are you saying you've killed people? What in the fuck is wrong with you? How can you hope to become king after committing such despicable crimes? You're a murderer now, Ambrose. Do you even realize that?"
"So?" he shrugged. "This isn't my world. And it's not like mother or father will ever find out, because you certainly won't live to tell the tale."
"You can't just kill people! It's despicable! How can you even stand to look at yourself after what you've done?"
"Quite easily, as a matter of fact." He paused, cracking another grin. "I'm quite handsome, if I do say so myself."
Holy shit. Your brother was a bigger lunatic than you could ever have imagined.
Ambrose scrunched up his nose. "In any case, I think I understand what's going on here. Thanks to all the different conditions, we require a much higher volume of blood to operate at our full capacity in this world. And since you're so weak... you must not be drinking enough. You're purposefully limiting yourself, even though here, without mother and father to intervene, you're now free to do the thing you love most. Quite frankly, I expected you to have killed more people than I did."
"I will never kill someone," you hissed. How could he speak of such things so casually? You were still traumatized by the incident that had landed you in this world to begin with. Your own friend had nearly died by your hand. Remembering it was enough to make you nauseous and lightheaded.
"My poor, stupid little sister," Ambrose sighed. Not in a way that conveyed sympathy, more so disappointment. It was almost like he would've been proud of you if you had killed before. "Well, I suppose it's easier this way. You're a pain in the ass when you're at your full strength. Anyways. Do you have any last words? I'll humor them, since I'm such a good brother."
You could feel tears forming in your eyes, both from rage and disgust. "Fuck you."
"Well, that's not very nice."
The next moment, you found yourself bracing for impact. Ambrose let out a delighted laugh before assaulting you with a barrage of punches and kicks. The most you could do was keep your guard up and block, waiting for an opportunity to strike back, but his attacks were nonstop. They just kept coming, growing faster right before your very eyes. Forget letting you retaliate-he wasn't even giving you a chance to breathe.
"Stupid bitch," Ambrose kept cackling. One of his punches broke past your guard, and your arms briefly separated from the sheer force of it all. He took that moment to clamp a hand down on your skull, then slammed your face against the nearest wall. You tried to knock him back again, but he'd taken almost no damage so far, and you were already starting to feel the hurt.
You spluttered, horrified when he began running while dragging your face across the wall. Your skin was fucking burning. A strangled scream left your lips. The friction, coupled with how forcefully he was gripping your skull, felt like a form of torture straight out of hell. You couldn't shake him off, not from your current position, so you just kept on screaming.
Your vision was gradually getting blurrier. The alleyway you were being dragged through was starting to look like nothing more than a dirty smear. It was all blending together, to the point that you could hardly make sense of it anymore.
"Die," you could hear Ambrose gritting out. "Die, die, die! Hurry up and fucking die already!"
Blood stained the length of the wall he'd just dragged your face across. With a hasty gasp, you barely managed to keep yourself from falling unconscious. You spun around and elbowed Ambrose in the face, but just like before, it didn't do anywhere near enough damage.
Before you could collect yourself and try another attack, he positioned himself behind you, looped both arms around your waist, then started squeezing-hard.
You could've sworn your internal organs were about to burst. Ambrose was taller than you, so he was able to lift your feet off the ground as he kept on applying brutal pressure to your insides. You choked and flailed out, desperate to try and latch onto something to get some leverage, but everything was out of reach.
"S... top," you wheezed, tears pouring down your cheeks. "A-Ambrose... please. I... can't... I'm scared. So s-scared..."
Ambrose didn't stop, because your desperate sobs may as well have been music to his ears.
Since crushing you to death was taking longer than he'd hoped, and he was by no means a patient man, he decided to opt for a simpler approach and repeatedly bash your head into the ground.
You could now say that you completely understood the pain Aizawa had experienced during the USJ attack. You found yourself in the exact same position as him, except instead of a gruesome creature pressing you down to the ground, it was your very own brother.
Over and over again, your skull was bashed in. Blood splattered everywhere, and your durability was perhaps somewhat of a curse, because it was taking quite a while for you to die. You actually wished it would be over with already. The pain and the taste of your own blood filling your mouth... it was just too much to bear.
I'm dying. My own brother... is really going to kill me.
"Alright, I'm starting to get tired," Ambrose sighed, finally letting your head drop to the ground on its own. "This is quite a workout. Can you hear me, [Name]? You're dying, aren't you? I hope it's incredibly painful. That's exactly what a miserable piece of shit like you deserves."
You were too weak to possibly muster up any words. Even though you couldn't see what you looked like, you doubted it was a pretty sight. Your face was slick with blood. It was dripping down your nose, your mouth; some of it had even gotten into your eyes. Your vision, blurry enough already, was now stained in a dark red hue.
So, this was death. It was so horrifying that you couldn't even put it into words. You could feel your body growing heavier by the second, as though an unseen force was trying to drag you through the ground. No matter how hard you tried to fight it and remain conscious, death was eager to claim you. It was completely suffocating, and the fact that you knew there was no chance of survival made your struggle all the more pointless.
It was true what people said about your life flashing before your eyes, because all sorts of memories wandered up to the surface. But the most notable one was by no means happy. Once again, you recalled your friend being limp in your arms, on the brink of death. They had probably experienced the same all-consuming fear that you felt right now, except they had lived, and you were going to die.
Perhaps you deserved this. Your parents did say that you needed to learn to appreciate the meaning of a life. It was just rather ironic that you were having this revelation right before your own life came to an end.
Ambrose lifted you up by your hair, but by this point, you were so numb that you could hardly feel anything anymore.
He took a few moments just to look you over one last time, then punched a hole straight through your stomach. Your body's natural reflexes made it so that blood bubbled up in your mouth after being impaled. It hurt, but no more than earlier. You were already so close to death, after all. So heavy and completely still.
Ambrose chuckled while pulling his arm out of your stomach. "How fun," he mused. "I would've liked to rip your heart clean out of your body, but I suppose this is still a fitting end. It's every bit as delightful as I had hoped it would be."
He threw your body down to the ground, blood spilling out of the crater in your stomach. At the very least, you'd landed onto your back. You could hardly see anything through all the blood in your eyes, and you were gradually blacking out anyways, but at least you could die while staring up at the pretty blue sky. It was such a nice day. Warm, but not to the point that the heat made you uncomfortable, and the clouds looked extra fluffy and white.
"That should just about do it," Ambrose hummed, staring down at you and admiring his handiwork. "I could put you out of your misery right now, but I like the idea of letting you suffer for a while longer. I'd better be on my way. Now that I know the throne is guaranteed to be mine, my chest feels a lot lighter. Goodbye, my dear little sister. Don't worry. No one in the family will be torn up about your death. You were never that special."
Your body was convulsing every so often, and all you could do was gurgle helplessly, choking on all the blood stuck in your throat. Ambrose had already started walking away. He didn't look back at you, not once. He didn't feel the slightest remorse. He could honestly say that he'd never loved you, and you doubted the rest of your family did either.
You were going to die with a hole in your stomach, with your face all ripped up and bloody, with your skull nearly bashed to bits.
It was a cruel fate, but you were far from perfect, so you had no choice but to accept it.
But as it just so happened, you didn't have to accept it.
"Wow. What do we have here? It's a good thing I decided to follow you."
You couldn't lift your head to see it, but a man had emerged from the darkness. The same man you'd run into not long ago. Chisaki Kai.
His steps were slow at first, but once he realized just how dire your condition was, they seemed to get a bit quicker. He walked all the way over to you, then stopped to stare down at your mangled, bloody body. You were on the brink of death, eyes glassy and unfocused. The only indication he had that you were still alive was the subtle way your chest was still rising and falling.
"You're in a terrible state," Chisaki muttered disappointedly. "Absolutely filthy. I can't even begin to fathom how you ended up like this. Honestly, I can hardly bear to look at you right now. But don't worry."
Right before everything faded to black, you knew you saw him removing one of his gloves.
"I can fix you."