.

.

Too many dumbasses run this place.

Security has gone lax. Well, that, or Golzine is too busy being horny somewhere with his latest victims and didn't leave anyone clear instructions. Ash manages to disarm and knock out the two guards outside his old bedroom door. Nobody else rushes in to help them. What about the cameras on him? Is anyone there?

The jade-stone feels unnaturally heavy in Ash's earlobe. It hurts.

He slides a hand through his gelled, bright blond hair, ambling through the corridor and whistling merrily at another security guard. Ash keeps his eyes on the guy's pistol.

A crashing, thudding noise.

They end up inside the nearby closet, causing more damage and breaking apart equipment, as Ash furiously kicks the door shut and locks an arm around the man's windpipe. "Where's Golzine?" he ask with an eerie amount of composure, wrestling the loaded pistol out of struggling, meaty fingers.

Through the slits of light, Ash can glimpse the beads of perspiration rolling down his temple.

"You little SHIT—"

"I'm pretty sure I asked you a question," Ash says, lowering and resting the pistol's muzzle against the security guard's balls, "Would you like it if I jogged your memory for you?"

.

.

He wasn't sure about the bulky, attached silencer working on this type of pistol.

It does muffle the single shot fired, but leaves a odor like dark, pungent vapor chasing after Ash's nostrils. He leaves the man's newly dead body in the closet, exiting quietly and grimly, looking around.

Golzine headed upstairs in his mansion. Third floor, east. Last door on the left.

For privacy.

He valued that kind of luxury above anything else, along with discretion and power. Ash's teeth clenches around the tip of his slippery, pink tongue until there's an remnant of a metallic tang. Ash adjusts the finely tailored suit the other men forced him in, unraveling a silken, black bow-tie.

As soon as Ash recognizes the ornate door, a code-number flashes brilliantly in his mind. He instinctively checks over the magnum revolver also stolen from the guard and then types it in frantically.

0-6-8-1-2-LEFTARROW

Holding Dino Golzine at gunpoint while figuring out Shorter and Eiji's location sounds like a decent plan. Killing him will come after making sure Ash has got his friends to safety. But he's looking forward to it.

With a light, insistent jiggle, Ash gets the master-bedroom door to budge a crack. He hears Golzine speaking blandly to someone. To whatever poor helpless soul he now has in his clutches. Ash pities them. If they beg for it, Ash may grant them their wish and end the torment before it latches onto their very soul.

There's purple heartwood accents to the brown decor and walls. Plush, purple carpeting. Warm lighting. Ash unfortunately does remember this same bedroom from Golzine's "time" with him.

"You would do well to remember… you are nothing but a toy to be used for my enjoyment…"

Golzine sheds the fleecy, purple robe around himself, completely focused on his task. He kneels over his equally naked victim, gripping onto Eiji's muscular thigh and spreading him open.

"Ash will know the deepest and most profane suffering through your misery for all to witness, boy." Eiji squints his tear-glistening eyes, turning his reddened, mortified face away and cringing, as Golzine leans in nearer and mouths over his throat. "And then… I will kill him. I may allow you to see it."

It… it feels like Ash has been submerged through heavy, slow-churning water, fighting to control himself.

He enters into the bedroom with the guard's revolver raised high. Golzine scrambles back on his feet, the two-tone purple robe clinching around his ugly, pasty form. Ash has no idea what Golzine yells at him, muffled out like the silencer. A bullet flies out, lodging into Golzine's upper chest, and another bullet whizzes into his skull.

Dark, crimson-colored gore and bone fragment explode into the air, splattering onto a wall.

His mouth fills with vomit-tinged saliva. Even at the cost of getting sick on himself, he does not regret it. Ash walks forward, at a steady pace, gazing down pensively at whatever carnage is left of this glorified pedophile on the other side of the room. He's still intact in other places. Ash turns his vacant stare to Golzine's exposed penis, shooting it as well for good measure. It's what rapists and abusers deserve in hell.

It's what this fucker deserves for taking away the pieces of childhood Ash had left.

Any potential of a normal life before Eiji showed up.

Eiji…

Ash snaps out of his cold murderous rage, turning around. A sweaty, panicking Eiji has his wrists bound to the headboard. He looks up purposely at the ceiling, starting to hyperventilate and quiver.

Golzine's blood shines on Eiji's torso and his arms, dripping over his hairline.

Eiji is not him. Eiji is not seven years old, left to fend for himself in the wake of a monster preying on him. Eiji does not wield his rapist's gun off the nightstand, and does not take fate into his own hands out of pure desperation, but he does soak in that blood regardless, stunned by this and paralyzed.

Tucking the revolver into his waistband, Ash undoes the ropes, giving back Eiji the use of his hands.

He hurries to shuck off his dinner jacket, watching as Eiji gradually realizes what has happened, and that there's a dead body near him, sitting up. His blood-flecked lips thin together. Ash worries about being found later. Nobody would patrol this end of the mansion until another hour at least.

Eiji sobs, his mouth hanging open. He quivers harder as Ash shushes him gently, wrapping his dinner jacket around Eiji's shoulders and crawling to him, hugging him, nuzzling his lips tenderly into Eiji's hair.

Hearing Eiji like this, seeing him broken, feels like a multitude of iron nails piercing into Ash's heart.

"You're safe now," Ash whispers dully, to Eiji, to the 7-year-old and the 11-year-old and to all of those ghosts haunting his past threatening to overtake him.

"It's over."

.

.

Banana Fish isn't mine. This is a coda of Episode 9 and Episode 10 reimagining if Shorter had not been injected and was alive and Ash escaped sooner inside Dino's place. WELL WE HAD BANANA FISH FLUFF WEEK 2019 SO,,, I GUESS IT WAS TIME FOR BANANA FISH ANGST WEEK 2019. The first day basically started right after the last day of fluff week YKNOW I HAD TO AT LEAST MAKE AN ATTEMPT WITH THE LITTLE TIME I HAVE TO PREPARE. Ash and I share all of that,,, CSA trauma stuff,,, I guess I tried to envision killing my own rapist(s) while making it about Ash and it was a good time. Death to all child predators! That's a reason to celebrate! Thanks for stopping in and taking a moment to read this horrific angst and yeah any thoughts/comments are welcome!