Youji hummed to himself, rain pattering on his umbrella as he turned the corner, carrying a plastic bag from the neighborhood convenience store. Aya-chan had declared a movie night and he'd been sent out to buy snacks while she rifled through the paltry video collection the lot of them had accumulated. He wondered what she'd end up choosing. He rather enjoyed having Ran's sister around to fuss over everyone. If he'd ever had a little sister of his own, he'd decided, he'd have wanted one just like her. As it was, he was tempted to ask Ran if he could borrow Aya-chan to be his sister as well.

Beneath the spotlight of a street lamp just ahead, across the street from their building, a familiar figure stood beneath her own umbrella.

"Yuki-chan?" he inquired as he drew near. She turned towards him. "You're not working tonight?"

She smiled sweetly up at him. Then flashed into a roundhouse high kick, the heel of her shoe aimed to take out his throat.

 

Lady Killer 12 -- Kitaku (Homecoming) 3
by K.Huntsman
released 15 September 2003

 

//Hello, Siberian.//

Ken resolutely ignored the thought that was not his own. Schuldich, unfortunately, didn't take the hint.

//Bodyguarding? My, you must not have much faith in Magician's ability to take care of herself.//

He swore he could feel the telepath sliding deeper inside his mind, slick and twisted and alien.

//Oh so wrong... but oh so right. You seem to have acquired a taste for blood, little kitten. You're an addict.//

"Not anymore," he hissed aloud, glaring.

//Oh, but addiction's the one thing you can't break, didn't you know? No matter how you starve it, no matter how much you deny it... it will always be there. It's stronger than you, this craving for blood. No matter how long it has to wait, it will eventually break free. One drop of blood will bring it back. You could cut yourself shaving, or in the kitchen chopping vegetables, and there it'll be, unstoppable, undeniable. Addiction's such an ugly thing, isn't it? You're a monster even worse than I am. Your friends know it. Your pretty little lover... she knows it.//

Ken's right hand flexed, curling into a ball.

//See? You're wishing for your claws right now. You want to kill me because you know I'm right. Can't stop wanting to kill, can you?//

"I hate you," Ken whispered, knowing Schuldich was right.

//Hate me all you want, little killer. You've become the very darkness your vaunted organization was supposed to eliminate.//

 

"Organization," Mamoru said, "is everything. Mastering supply and demand depends on careful scheduling... in my opinion."

The older men and senior geisha laughed raucously. Shirayuki smiled and refilled Mamoru's sake cup.

"Quite a head this grandson of yours has, Takatori-san," Cabinet Member Ibuki complimented Saijou. "What did you say you were studying at Tokyo University again, boy?"

"Law, sir."

 

Ran sat on the sofa, eyes closed, listening. The rain beat with a steady soothing patter, now against the windows, now more distantly on the further-off roof and street. The lamps in the corner of the room hummed very softly, just at the edge of hearing. In the next room a whisk swished through liquid, every now and then scraping just a little against the sides of a pot. He could hear the whisk being set down with a soft chink and the stove was turned off with a click. Then liquid poured, the pot was set back down, and he heard footsteps. He opened his eyes.

Aya-chan came back in the room, bearing a tray of steaming mugs of hot chocolate. "Youji-san's taking a little longer at the convenience store than I thought he would." She paused by the window to look out at the rain.

"He's probably trying to pick up the cashier," Ran opined.

"Ran-niisan," Aya said, an odd vibration in her voice. "Is that... Youji-san?"

Caution pricked by Aya's tone, Ran rose smoothly to his feet and strode over to look from behind his sister's shoulder. His eyes widened as he saw the collapsed form beneath the streetlight opposite.

He grabbed his sister's shoulders, turning Aya to look into her eyes. "Stay here," he told her shortly. "Keep away from the windows." Then he turned and ran towards the door.

Wonderingly, Aya-chan followed instructions, moving to the center of the room. She set down the tray on the coffee table and sank down onto the sofa next to it. She pulled the neck strap of her apron over her head, eyes worried. Her hands folded into her lap.

 

"Youji!" Ran turned his teammate over. A little blood trickled from Youji's mouth onto the wet sidewalk. His hair was dishevelled, dark with rainwater, and his skin was cold. Ran could see the bruises forming. However, a strong pulse beat beneath Ran's fingers.

Sitting back on his heels for just a second, Ran considered the placement of things. Youji's watch was still on his wrist, wire untouched. The groceries he had been carrying spilled out of the plastic bag in one straight line towards the shuttered business on the far side of the sidewalk. He'd been carrying the bag probably with his left arm, using his right to hold the umbrella, which lay not too far away. He had to have been taken by surprise, knocked down and out before he had a chance to drop things and pull out his wire.

But he'd only been beaten, not killed. Further, the attack had happened right across from their building, which spoke to Ran of a message.

Mouth in a line, Ran returned the groceries to their sack and retrieved the umbrella, closing it. Both bag and umbrella in his left hand, he used his right to pull up Youji half over his shoulder. With no one in sight, he began crossing the dark street.

 

The line of Akayuki's neck was absolutely stunning, with or without a geisha's ceremonial paint applied. When she was wearing Western clothes, with their high collars, Ken had never thought much of it. But now that she was wearing kimono all the time, sometimes with her collar up, while shopping or at home, but always with her collar low and deep in the back while at a party, he couldn't help but notice how long and elegant her neck was, fine dark hairs like brushstrokes wandering up into her hairdo, delicate against her porcelain skin, nearly as pale as Aya's.

He wanted to touch her.

 

Youji woke slowly, warm, surrounded by softness, and feeling like shit. Had he been on a bender? No, no, there was no taste of something having died in his mouth.

The light outside his eyelids dimmed. "You can open your eyes," Ran's voice said.

Youji did so, to find himself in an odd parody of the first morning after Ran--then called Aya--had joined Weiss. He lay in his bed while Ran sat in a chair by its side, looking neutral. "What happened?" he asked.

"How do you feel?" Ran temporized.

"Terrible. What happened?"

"What do you remember?"

Youji thought back. The cute girl at the convenience store who'd given him her number, but he'd crumpled it up and thrown it in a bin half a block away, already knowing he wouldn't call her. The walk back through the hissing rain, being passed by a car or two, their yellowish lights illuminating the falling drops even as their tires splashed. Turning the corner to their street, randomly humming some song he'd heard on the radio. The streetlamp across the way--

"Yuki!" But it couldn't have been, it couldn't have been her who had attacked him. She wouldn't. Not unless she'd betrayed them and gone over to La Mort. But they'd attacked her, so why would she? Unless that attack had all been a set-up....

"Hmm." Ran's noncommittal statement ran over Youji's wildly spinning thoughts. The man pulled out his black cel and dialed. There was silence for a minute while Youji could hear the ringing on the other end. "Ken? Has Akayuki been there all night? I see. I'll tell you later." He hung up, and turned the wisteria eyes his surname hinted at on Youji. "Ken says she's been at the party all night."

"Then how--" Youji stopped and corrected himself. "No, who attacked me?"

Ran's expression shifted a little. "Better still, why did she leave you alive?"

 

Yuki stifled a yawn as she followed Omi and Ken down the stairs to the Underworld. It was nearing dawn and she'd been on her wit's edge all night, flirting, playing games with her customers, teasing them, and all the while carrying on a subtle conversation with Omi about her undercover work and impressions of the others in the room with them. His grandfather had also joined in that secret conversation here and there with a sharp observation of his own, having, of course, originally founded Kritiker and having had a hand in the creation of all its codes.

Takatori Saijou made her nervous. That reaction made her suspect she wasn't a real geisha. Swimming in the water with sharks was one thing. Having them know you for what you really were was another.

//Surely,// she thought as she landed on the last step, //I should feel no fear.//

Her eyes widened.

"Youji-kun, what happened to you?" Omi asked. Youji's finely-featured face was bruised all over, each mark showing vivid color, though surely they'd look worse once the bruises healed to the yellow-and-green stage.

"Jealous lover?" Ken hazarded.

"More like Magician's evil twin," Youji replied.

Every muscle in Akayuki's body tensed.

"Right across the street, no less," Youji continued. "I thought she was you."

Akayuki felt solid and clung to that solidity to keep from screaming or whimpering. Thoughts tumbled through her mind, one after another. She'd held to the hope that Crawford had been lying, or that it was only someone who looked superficially like her, but if Youji said so.... She wanted to deny the possibility that this was happening at all.

"That's why we called you," Ran said from the sofa. His eyes were firmly on Akayuki.

"Did she... say anything?" she asked Youji.

"Not a word."

Taking a breath, Akayuki tried to calm herself. Her feet moved and so did she. She could feel the weight of four pairs of eyes as she paced. "If it's my sister... you won't be able to tell us apart at all. By anything. We overlapped. I made her share in gymnastics. She made me train in voice. I suppose our fingerprints are different, but that's all." She knew she was babbling. She looked down at her clothes, fingered her obi cord. "There's that, I suppose. I'm in kimono these days, I'm used to wearing them. She might not be."

"Do you really think it's her?" Ken asked.

"She looked exactly like Yuki-chan," Youji emphasized.

"If Youji-kun couldn't tell the difference...." That was Omi again. "Either it's Yukiko-san, or someone who's been made to look exactly like her."

"If it is her," Ran said calmly, "the question is, who got hold of her after the fire, and why?"

"No." Akayuki looked up at the four of them. "The question is, what has been done to her?"

 

Sitting at the low table alone, Magician ate her dinner and tried to remember what her twin might have said. Her dinner was steamed carrot slices seasoned with salt and honey, and a bowl of rice. Kiko had never shared Yuki's vegetarian tendencies. She probably would've remarked that it was bad for her sister's health even as she dug into her own dinner. Yuki would've smiled and shot back that at least her skin didn't stink of rotting flesh. It would all have gone downhill from there.

She'd thought that was all gone, and had drawn inside of herself, taking all that she had lost as punishment for her sins of pride and the transgressions she had surely committed in another life. When she'd found a new family, finally started to get used to Weiss and relax around them, though, she'd found that as far as she'd turned inwards, she couldn't go all the way back out. They thought of her as "quiet." They'd never seen her rows with her twin. The two of them had never argued--they'd fought. It almost made her smile, trying to picture Weiss's reactions to the fights she and Kiko had once shared, with screaming voices and broken vases. They had sometimes gone nearly a year without a fight, but the tension always came back. They could not be broken apart--but they could certainly try to break each another. The damage had all been collateral, though; the only things they'd never tried to physically hurt were one another, respecting their individual career choices too well--and perhaps being unable to injure their mirror.

If this new mirror in her life was Kiko....

"We break the things around one another because we cannot break each other," Yuki whispered, setting down her chopsticks. "And so you attack Youji-san, even while protecting me."

She knew, as the rest of Weiss did not, who it was that had protected Sakaki-san from the attack of La Mort. Her sister, her twin, her doppelganger and shadow. Yuki knew she should tell them, tell Omi, but....

/She killed her own troops. Who is she?/

 

Omi sat before the computer, his fingers moving across the keys in a swift, steady manner, every once in a while his right hand moving to the mouse to highlight something, or click into a new window.

Kritiker's files were amazing, international in scope yet carrying all the detail and precision he expected of Japanese law enforcement.

The hierarchy of the organization was simple: at the head, Persia, and below him a secretary or two, his couriers and watchdogs. Beneath them it split into three organizations. The smallest branch was the teams known as Weiss, strike teams specializing in assassination, though also used for high-security information or hostage retrieval when needed. Far greater in number were the members of Crashers teams, units that retrieved information and set up entrapments. The third branch of the organization was Kritiker itself--all the organizers, evaluators, trainers, and specialists who kept everything running.

The muscle, the brains, and the backbone.

 

Ran lay in the dark and watched his ceiling, arms crossed behind his head, thoughts moving in slow patterns.

Youji had been attacked and left alive by Akayuki's sister. Weiss had agreed to a ceasefire with Schwartz. Omi was rebuilding Kritiker. Ken had finally made a perfect bridal bouquet on the first try. Aya seemed happy working in the flowershop and fussing over the four of them. And Ran had discovered something hitherto unknown about himself.

Like the movement of sunflowers in the time-lapse videos he had seen in elementary school, their faces turning each day to follow the movement of the sun, the knowledge had perhaps always been a part of him, just not something he'd ever understood or even looked at until now. Sitting in Youji's bedroom, waiting for the injured man to wake, he'd become aware of something.

He was content listening to Youji breathe.

The man who was probably his best friend, closer even than Omi or Ken, had been a shameless womanizer for as long as Ran had known him. Ran had never approved, never understood, even after he'd realized Youji's behavior had deep-rooted causes in the man's history and psychology. The son of an old family, mingled samurai and aristocratic blood running in his veins, Ran had always felt that women were to be treasured and guarded, never taken lightly or casually as companions or lovers. He'd even disapproved at first of Akayuki's addition to their team, feeling not that a woman couldn't kill, but rather that she shouldn't have to. He still felt that, but had accepted that Magician, like all of them, had her reasons.

Ran knew now why he had never been, and never would be, like Youji.

 

Ken had the television on mute as he sat in his room, flipping through channels. The apartment walls weren't the thickest, and he didn't want to keep Ran awake. When he didn't get enough sleep Ran could get cranky, which was saying something.

It was late at night and there was nothing good on. Ken kept going through the channels, but nothing caught his attention. Nothing kept his mind off himself.

He hated Schuldich.

He hated what the man had said, because he was afraid it was the truth.

"I don't want to be nothing but a killer," he whispered, finally setting down the remote, not even knowing what the images were that flickered across the screen. His forehead came down on his folded-up knees. Water blurred his eyes as he tried to remember the dreams he'd once had. Even after losing J-League... he'd been okay in Weiss. His teammates had been his friends. He'd had the neighborhood soccer kids. He'd even had Yuriko, and then later Akayuki.

"I was happy. Why...." He couldn't force the words past the pain in his throat.

--//You've become the very darkness your vaunted organization was supposed to eliminate.//--

//Why can't I be happy anymore?//

 

Youji winced as he settled back into the easy chair, coffee cup on the side table, thick book lying next to it, just what he needed to take his mind off things. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, soft leather upholstery denting beneath that pressure. Painkillers be damned, he could still feel the pulse and ache of his body. The headache had settled to a muted pain like an iron headband just above his eyes. He had to stifle a half-snort of laughter. Yuki's sister did good work, it seemed. It still bothered him that he hadn't been able to tell the two of them apart. Identical twins had never phased him before. Riku and Risa, Emi and Yumi... he'd never had trouble telling any twins apart. He refused to write it off to the fact that they'd all thought Magician's twin was dead, because even as he remembered the encounter, he still wasn't sure it wasn't Yuki. Only his knowledge of her nature and Ken and Omi's swearing that she'd been at the teahouse all night made him believe differently.

Magician hadn't attacked him.

That figure beneath the streetlamp, though, wearing a demure gray skirt and a long white blouse, one hand holding the umbrella, the other half-hidden in the folds of her skirt... the soft loneliness and yearning, the ready tension hidden beneath a passive exterior....

"It's going to be exactly as if we were taking Yuki down," Youji said, and opened his eyes. He straightened, dropping his shoulders to release the tension, and reached for the well-worn book. If he couldn't lose his thoughts in Genji's romantic escapades, Youji reasoned, there was no hope for him. Even so, that figure in the rain stayed with him.

 

It was still raining when Brad woke up. Reaching to his right, he shut off his alarm before it could even sound, numbers on the digital clock glaring a red 4:59 into the darkness, and switched on his bedside lamp. He'd half-woken when he'd heard Schuldich come in barely an hour before and knew the telepath would still be awake.

//Yes, fearless leader?// Schuldich's mocking voice sounded in his head. //You summoned me?//

Bradley ignored the German and got out of bed, slipping on a robe and a pair of house slippers. His glasses were on the nightstand; he put those on as well and the world swung into a less muzzy focus. He didn't deign to reply to Schuldich's open mental presence until after completing his morning toiletries and getting dressed.

Snugging his tie into place some minutes later, Brad checked his image in the mirror once, an automatic double-check against what was a foreseen certainty. Now he felt ready to deal with Schuldich.

//It beats me why you feel the need to pretend I don't know what your mind's really like before you put the suit on,// Schuldich remarked as Bradley made his way to the kitchen. //I see you when you're sleeping, I see you when you're awake; I know who you are.//

"So you wish to believe," Bradley replied, opening the refrigerator door. He took out eggs and milk, lunchmeat, cheese, and green onions. "You've never been able to go deep enough to know the difference."

He felt the shudder of irk passing through the mental atmosphere of the room as he set a pan on the stove and took out a knife. He chopped the scallions and meat precisely, methodically shredded the cheese. It was true that Schuldich could only delve to a certain depth in his mind. Below that was a layer of black ice beyond which the telepath could not reach, try as he might and had. It had been implanted at a very young age because of both necessity and foreseen necessity. It served Brad well, the part of his mind walled off from the rest.

Eggs hissed as they poured into the pan, beaten together with milk. Schuldich eyed the pan as Brad cooked, wicked thoughts fluttering in the ether about what might be done with breakfast, with Brad, with Kudou....

"I have no interest in your sex life," Brad reminded the telepath, which was mostly true.

Schuldich promptly beat a hand over his heart and collapsed backwards into his chair. "Wounded to the quick!" he replied aloud, hamming it up for all he was worth.

Bradley ignored him and sent a prodding tendril of thought at the future, trying to tease a vision forth. Nothing came other than the surety of his eating breakfast within a few minutes and of that annoying Schuldich. He smiled and folded the omelette in half, then slid it onto his plate. He spent half a minute deciding, in that hidden place in his mind, whether it would be worth irritating the telepath by eating alone, then poured the rest of the egg mixture in the pan. Some days it was worth vexing Schuldich, others it wasn't. Today Bradley seemed to be in a "wasn't" mood.

Schuldich's surprised expression alone, he decided as he slid the second omelette in front of the other man, was worth the extra time spent in front of the stove.

The gray light quickened into a bloody dawn as they sat together eating in companionable silence. Finally only a few scraps of egg were left on either of their plates. Schuldich poked at one with his fork. //This was good,// he said, sounding like he was contemplating what the existence of the omelette, let alone its taste, meant about what he didn't know about Bradley. //Hey, Crawford--//

Bradley didn't hear the rest. His eyes unfocused and the world around him became insubstantial, a rush of background noise, as the future unfolded before him with far more solidity than the newspaper that had been held in his hands.

It was a dark place. A warehouse, with a soaring ceiling lost in darkness. Foghorns sounded in the distance and the air was moist with the smell of sea salt. Glancing to either side, Bradley found he was with Schuldich and Weiss. The telepath lounged jadedly against a wall, arms crossed on his chest. Only the quirk of his lips and the glitter of his eyes betrayed interest in the proceedings. Brad could feel, however, his attention focused on the two figures battling in the center of the box-stacked arena before them.

Weiss, on the other hand, were not so seemingly complacent. Scattered about, perching like gargoyles on catwalks or boxes, they were far more obviously ready to move, to murder, at a instant's warning. Their attention, too, was held on the pair in the center of the building.

It was Magician and her twin. Clad identically in black bodysuits with their long hair in high ponytails, they were impossible to tell apart save for the bo one held and the sai in the other's hands. A bloodied kimono lay on the ground nearby. As Crawford watched, time flashed forward. The one with the sai lunged at her sister and missed--almost. A line of blood scored on Magician's cheek as she clumsily hurled herself aside, slowed perhaps by the weight of her injury.

Her twin stopped and spun, eyes wide, as she clapped a hand to her own right cheek, where blood showed. Something happened, changed, that could not be seen, a star-cracked glass pushed to shattering, a white light blazing, blasting through the fragments--

Crawford looked up and out one of the dirty windows. Through it, he could see the new moon, a thin silver crescent.

The kitchen came back in a rush, the vision washed away like a writing in wave-wet sand.

He turned his head to look at their calendar. Schuldich, who had fallen silent, aware of the mental flavor of Bradley's visions, raised an eyebrow.

"Three days," Brad said.

 

Author's Scribbling: This is to be blamed on N-chan and Yuki Scorpio. They have such fun writing in Schwarz PoV that they make me want to do the same.

As to why Omi is studying Law at Tokyo University... apparently in the past, and still somewhat today, not only is Tokyo University the number one school for entrance to the government, but studying Law there is more or less a fast track to high placement. Omi has his career in mind. The sets of twins Youji mentions are references to other series I like. You'll have to guess which ones.

And, yes, the omelette is a reference to a certain story of N-chan's.... [eg]

Back to Chapter 11

On to Chapter 13

Weiss Kreuz fanfiction page

Send comments to author