Ever heard the song “White Flag” by Dido? I find it oddly addictive; it’s like a collaboration between Poe and Sarah McLachlen. *happy* I like it, indeed. Oh yeah! This is the part where I apologize for not updating for a week or two, isn’t it? Soooorrrryyyy!!! I’ve been tired and anti-social and haven’t done anything productive for a bit. I sorries! Look: Here is chapter! ^_^ *eeps and hides* People keep pointing out (just a random aside, bear with me) that I frequently switch the third person point of view to hover over a different character’s shoulder even as I’m within one chapter, and I have to point out that I’m doing it on purpose, so if you’re having trouble following, I apologize, but to me that’s the whole point of writing in third person, so you can be an omniscient outsider and highlight the thoughts and emotions of EVERYONE. Doot! *goes back to listening to Dido* Ooo, this chapter changed course, as will the ones following thanks to AMY AMY AMY!!!! *dances in a cirlce* I’ve said your name three times, so now you have to show up and torture Winona Ryder, okay?
They’d went to the hotel One-Eye found records of on the internet. Even before the door swung open beneath Youji’s hesitant knock they all knew something was wrong; the sixth sense they’d learned to hone as prize assassins sending chills running up the length of their spines. The room had been razed, furniture thrown every which way, mattress sliced to ribbons. Wandering horror struck through the room like survivors of a natural disaster, they found even the bathroom had seen signs of a massive struggle, the porcelain sink was cracked and liberally splattered with blood.
Ken closed his eyes, picturing Aya being thrown face first into varying fixtures around him, the mental image less gratifying than he’d imagined. Out of the corner of his vision he saw Youji sinking towards the ground. Ken whirled, thinking to prevent further injury to a fainting Youji; embarrassed when he realized Youji descent was of his own violation. Youji looked so lost, hand splayed in the dried rust of what could only be old blood.
“Ken?” Omi and Fate both turned their attention to him. “What are we going to do?”
“Why are you asking me?” Ken actually took a step backwards, threatened by the implied responsibility, hands raised defensively.
“Who else?” Omi glared at Ken before dropping down to his knees next to Youji, heedless of the unnamed muck he was subjecting his pants to. “Are you okay, Youji?”
“Well, you threw him out of Weiss.” A hint of a tired sneer hummed around the aimlessly angry words issued from Youji’s drawn mouth. “He’s good and gone now. I guess you won.”
Omi tried to get something soothing and non-committal out, but Ken bulldozed over the consoling words.
“You fucking idiot! You sit there moping and for what? For some uncaring jerk-off who tried to sell you out? I saw him! I saw his face. You may have been there, but I saw his expression without your drugged-up, sappy, lacquered over twist on reality to make things all happy again. He didn’t care, and you’re wasting your time pining away!”
He wanted Youji to say something, wanted Youji to get angry. It didn’t even matter if he wound up mad at Ken instead of Aya, so long as he got rid of that hopeless little slump to his shoulders and started to act normal again.
“You aren’t going to let this drop, are you?” Youji leaned heavily against Omi to regain his balance. His head sagged forward as he reeled on his feet. He tilted his chin back up once he’d found a way to stand without monitoring his feet, eyes hazy and overcast by waves of tangled tawny. For a moment Ken was transported back in time by several days, trying to end Aya’s life in the cramped confines of an overturned car. It all kept coming back to that, much as he tired to push it from his mind.
“Ken…” Youji had been talking for several minutes now, judging by the flash of anger across his features as he realized that Ken was only then tuning into the program.
“I’ll go look for the selfish bastard, all right? They can’t have killed him yet.” An afterthought brought on by petty jealousy and spite. “But you have to go back to the hospital and get some rest.”
“Are you insane?” It was more an honest question than a virulent retort. “Did you just ignore every single word that passed from my mouth? You might as well paint a huge bulls eye on my back and then give Ko-Ishi a call to tell him where to find me with the least amount off effort.”
“Better than taking that a step further and driving you there myself.” He’d crossed the line, and there was no turning back. He could barely rationalize the animosity he felt towards Aya.
“Ken,” Omi snapped his name out like profanity, “you’ve said quite enough. We can’t change anything by fighting about stupid, trivial points.”
“And we can’t will the past away just by utilizing selective memories. If I’d done that then I’d be off somewhere else right now with people still possessing a firm grasp on reality, I can tell you that much!” Inarticulate in his desire to lash out at anything and make a connection.
“You two bicker just like married couple.” Fate interjected from the doorway, sniggering at their inappropriate antics. “While you all busy with fighting I go get random note from table.”
“A random note?” Omi broke the starting contest and turned his attention to Fate.
“She meant ranSom. How cliché of them.” Youji’s eyes tightened at the corners. “Let me guess, give me the one called Youji and Aya will return nice and safe, blah, blah, blah.”
“Shock! How you make such intuitive guess?” Fate laughed and waved a sheet of typewriter paper through the stagnant, blood-reeking air.
“How you find humor is such a situation, I’ll never know.” Stepping past the destruction of the hotel room, Youji pushed the still-open door further ajar to get a fresh breath of air. “Fuck.” He breathed. “I’d kill for a smoke right about now.”
“Menthol okay?” Fate leaned her diminutive frame against the wall, proffering a crumpled green box.
“Beggars can’t be choosers.” There was already a lighter in the half empty pack and he tapped it out and lit up with a grateful inhalation of smoke, cigarettes tucked against his side between shirt and cast as his one-handed troubles became more apparent. “Didn’t know you smoked.” Closing his raw eyes against the harsh, orangey light of the open walkway. His heart rate was already kicking it up a notch in response to a newly fulfilled craving.
Fate smiled cheekily. “Is a bad habit. I trying to quit.”
Youji let out another shaky, exhausted sigh, dead on his feet. “What am I supposed to do now? I can’t keep this up, watching over my shoulder for every step I take while still trying to look ahead of me for some new trap or horror to spring itself. I’m about ready to give up. I could poison myself and then go to trade out with Aya. I wouldn’t have to suffer for too long that way.” The utter finality of such a suggestion shed light onto the depths of his despair despite the cavalier tone he tried to convey.
“Look, we all go home, and I take out a car. I know something you not know, but keep it to myself until I make proof, okay? I find stupid redhead for you, you go lie down and make other stupid heads not worry for you.”
“Worried for me.” Youji snorted in disbelief. “Yeah, I can really see that. Is that before, during or after they fight in a bathroom?”
“Ken was worried until almost sick when you stuck in hospital. He afraid you really die.” Even in such a serious moment, her broken language skills reigned supreme. “You stopped breathing once, before we get to hospital with you.”
He shrugged, telling himself he should flick the cigarette away and end this slight indulgence before it gained too great a hold even as he drew in another lungful of lovely, soothing nicotine. He dismissed any thoughts of that less than lucid time he honestly couldn‘t recall. “What do you know that I don’t? Do you know where they’d have taken Aya?” Trusting in Ko-Ishi’s word that Aya was even still alive.
“Is secret now, I can’t tell until for certain.”
“Last time someone decided to play games with me I broke out of a hospital and wandered around in the rain for a long period of time.” A sardonic twitch at the corner of his mouth accompanied the mildly implied threat.
“That was after he tell you what secret is, I not make that same mistake.” Fate ignored the jerky motions rage lent to Youji’s limbs as he stomped out the borrowed cancer stick. “You go get arguing stupid heads, I wait in car. Sooner you are at home, the sooner I am free to go find things out, okay?”
So, he found himself braving the ravaged room once more, ready to duck flying projectiles if the kid gloves were truly off and Omi was violently angry with Ken. They weren’t talking, that was for certain, going by the harsh set of Ken’s mouth and the tightly crossed arms Omi ground into his own chest as they turned their backs to one another, ending the argument Youji was oh so glad to have missed out on.
“We’re heading out.”
“Where?” Ken tried to force the muscles of his face to relax, to put off a casual air.
“Fuck if I know.” Turning on his heel to join Fate in the running vehicle. There was nothing to be gained from the hotel room, and he couldn’t even think straight let alone solve puzzles and rescue comrades with even he slightest modicum of success. He close his eyes and curled his arms up inside his jacket, jolting back into awareness in the vehicle swayed to a less than smooth stop, momentarily panicked by the solid press against his left side that hadn‘t been there as he nodded off.
“It’s okay. It’s just me.” A low reassurance whispered against his ear even as gloved hands helped him right himself, tangled up in the thick corduroy of his coat as he was. Ken was a welcome sight after the dreams he vaguely remembered having. The world around him wouldn’t focus for the first moment or so. Youji shook his head back and forth until his neck ached, but it helped disperse some of the mental obstructions.
“We’re home?” Wrenching the car door open and immediately regretting it as the cold air rushed in to rob him of all his saved up body heat. Fumbling for the keys he no longer possessed, he shuffled from foot to food as he waited for someone better prepared to catch up and let him in out of the weather.
Again, they held him back; the more armed and dangerous factions of their ragged team fanned out and checked the house for traps and hidden enemies.
Fate breezed past him a few moments later, grim and determined. “I off now, to go for looking.” She pulled the door shut behind her, finally blocking the draft of chilly air.
“Well, let’s get that pot of liquid caffeine brewing, shall we?” Youji spoke to himself in the deserted front hallway, trying to stave off a new wave of depression.
There was no rage like helpless rage. Watching Youji stare listlessly out the window, 10th cup of coffee for the day in one hand, Ken couldn’t help the wash of bitterness. Aya didn’t deserve the worry he was inflicting on Youji, didn’t deserve the concern some people still felt for him. Every time he looked at the tense line of Youji’s shoulders, the trembling fingers gripping the ceramic of his mug for dear life, it was like a slap in the face to all things fair and decent.
It called to mind too many things he was trying to forget, to force himself into a mindset where NOT killing Aya seemed like a fairly reasonable idea. Every time he closed his eyes he could see that look of bereaved confusion slashed across Youji’s face, could hear that sick little sound he made in the back of his throat when Ken lifted him as best he could and struggled out of the crumpled car wreck. How could Aya sink this low? Ken might be an absolute slouch as far as credentials for being a good guy went, but he’d never sell someone into pain and torture for the sake of any one other person, even Omi, he’d sacrifice himself before he’d willingly endanger Youji.
“Youji?” A hesitant beginning, not sure of any questions he really had. He just needed to hear Youji talk, to give him something new to drown out the muffled sounds ringing through his head.
“I’m still mad at you.” Youji jiggled his foot up and down, peering into the depths of an empty coffee cup. “I’m going out on the porch to smoke.” He’d never returned Fate’s purloined pack of cigarettes, and as long as she didn’t ask for it back, he planned on utilizing his excuse for not going to a store and buying the brand he actually liked. Beggars can’t be choosers, and smokers can’t be whiners. Especially lapsed quitters. Aya would have his heart for breakfast with a side of toast and violence when he was safe and sound once again. It was such a soothing habit, though.
When Aya had been around, when he hadn’t tried to sell Youji out as Ken so repeatedly kept insisting had happened, the trade off had been worth it. No smoking, but an almost tolerable Aya. Fair deal. What did he have now? A pack of stolen menthol cigarettes and a rapidly growing sense of malaise. Where the hell was Aya? It didn’t matter, he wasn’t around to complain through his own fault. Thoughts of Aya being subjected to the same conditions Youji himself had been were jarringly unrealistic. He could only picture Aya with that cold glare of his, facing down anyone who dared to step within range.
He stubbed the butt of his cigarette out on the well worn wood of the porch, heading back inside as his lack of a coat became an apparent hindrance. Much as the desire to brood and berate himself for reasons unknown was a definite header on his list of things to do, he had to find Omi and pump him for the information he might have missed as he slept in the car. It wouldn’t happen again. There would be no rest until Aya was safe again, whether he really had orchestrated Youji’s current battered existence or not.
His arm itched beneath the plaster cast, a nagging, whining mosquito sound turned into a tangible sensation, drilling at any available nerve endings. He’d go insane soon if this didn’t end. He was rather fond of his right hand for the most part, but if this was the sort of trouble it caused him, perhaps he’d just be better off with a stump at the end of one arm and a few weeks of training to facilitate his left hand to the feats of dexterity previously unnecessary.
Bypassing the downstairs rooms, Youji headed for the bedrooms where he’d last seen Omi sulking, treading casually through the darkness they still couldn’t push back with electricity. This house would be burnt down to the ground again before they managed to find someone to properly rewire the entirety of the upstairs.
Fate met him halfway up the stairs, coming down, jittery with that nervous energy so many tiny people seemed to exude. “Hello Youji, we go downstairs now, they busy up there.” Using his name for the first time he could remember since they’d met her almost a week ago.
“How the hell did you get up there? I thought you were gone.” He gave in to the sharp jabs she kept giving his good shoulder and turned around, clumping noisily back down to the hallway.
“I come through window, you know.” Offhand, as if popping in and out of houses through the upstairs windows were something mundane and usual.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” He almost smiled for a minute, seeing the leaves in her hair, picturing her scrabbling up the side of the house like an insect.
“Just the usual, you know. Now, you and I will go out and get that stupid red head of yours, Mr. Asshole.” Fate kept going, pulling his coat off the wall hook and tossing it back to him. Youji caught it awkwardly, draping it over the bulky cast on his right hand.
“Which one of us is ‘Mr. Asshole’” Struggling to work himself into the garment with one shoulder still out of commission and one hand beyond useless.
“He is, of course, you just a poor deluded fool boy. Come on, hurry, hurry.”
He followed without asking as she bounced out to the car, a further sign of how frighteningly trusting they’d become of this woman who’d never really done anything concrete to garner such an esteem from them.
“Mind if I ask where we’re going?” Youji fumbled the seatbelt into place, remembering in a distant way how horrible a driver she could be.
“You not listening? I tell you already! We go get red head of yours.” She slammed her foot down on the gas, reversing and tearing out of the driveway before Youji could even think of removing his seatbelt and rolling from the now moving vehicle. No time for second thoughts.
“Are you fucking crazy? You want just the two of us to go and get him? Are you suicidal? Do you want to kill us both?”
“He back at the Meleeke main building, the corporation Ko-Ishi was working for originally. He never leave, apparently, just fake death for a while to throw everyone off trails.” Fate removed one hand from the wheel to rummage around the lining of her own jacket, driving skills severely impaired as she stopped watching the road all together. Panicked, Youji twisted and grabbed the wheel, steadying the careening vehicle. It was broad daylight, they were sure to be pulled over if he didn’t temper her insanity. “Ah, here it is!” She slapped one hand back on the steering wheel, slashing the other out towards Youji’s eyes.
“You brought me cigarettes?” He accepted the small, familiarly patterned box for the sake of an extra hand controlling the speeding vehicle. “Uh… thanks?” It was beyond him, to understand the utter randomness of all things Fate.
“Not menthol, right?” Grinning toothily. “Okay, we go to Meleeke and get your stupid head boy, no one guards well during the day, they all up at night doing illegal.” Harder to follow, but still making sense. “You know how I know?” Fate chortled. “Ko-Ishi not write random note, it is by some lesser minion, stupid type. It was all written on stationary from corporation.”
“You mean like they had the actual address on the paper and everything?” Incredulity crept into his voice. “We’re just going to show up and assume Aya is even there at all?” This was one of the more stupid things he’d been conned into doing recently, and the dull disappointment settled across his chest like a weight, trying to force down the over-frantic caffeine driven beat his heart throbbed with.
“I do research too, you think me as foolish as you all?” Fate reproached him as she made a sharp turn around the corner. “I buy you present, stupid head, for letting me borrow shirts. You not want to work on cancer? Not going to give back my own?” She extended one hand, thankfully keeping an eye on traffic this time.
Sighing, Youji gave her back the cigarettes he’d been ’borrowing’ from her and stared pointedly out the window. “Thank you, but I’ve been trying to be good. You’re a bad influence on me. Soon I’ll start speaking poorly and going off to make war on unsuspecting thousands without a hint of planning beforehand.”
“Says much for spontaneity, that I still breathing after doing no planning.” Silence descended. There were only so many broach able topics between the two. Without a common background or shared interest beyond ending Ko-Ishi’s life and otherwise bungling his malevolent machinations, there just wasn’t much to be said. “We here now.” She sounded almost relieved as she parallel parked the car alongside a busy, downtown road.
The area didn’t look familiar, but once Fate had sidled up to one of the generic, tall buildings surrounding them, and picked the lock, things began to take a feverishly dark turn. At first the hallways they turned round and round were like any other office building, emptier than most, but still harmless and stereotypical. They kept silent, and he trailed after Fate, trusting her as always to know where they ultimately had to go. She counted doors, finally pulling up in front of what appeared to be nothing more than a broom closet, plain wooden door bereft of name plaque or room number.
She made a shushing gesture and did something effective to the thick push-button lock keeping them from opening the door. She certainly had her share of obscure skills. It certainly wasn’t a closet that lay behind the innocuous door, more an insidious decent into a dark and cruel hell far worse than those imagined in any religious texts. Youji reflected on his previous difficulties with stairs and grimaced.
They proceeded despite serious misgivings on Youji’s part. The streaked, poorly lit cement walls beyond the stairs were oppressive to say the least, pressing down in an attempt to squeeze the very last bits of oxygen from their lungs. Cavorting through his mind, twisting perception included, he could see individual chips in the flooring up close and personal, from a different perspective and a different time, he could feel their grit burning into his knees as he was dragged along, too weak to stand on his own.
“I’ve been here before.” Flatly gesturing to encompass all they’d passed and all that lay ahead of them. His heart trip hammered in his chest, aching in a way he’d never experienced before, and he wished again he hadn’t forced so much coffee upon himself, wished he’d taken Fate’s suggestion and fed a little nicotine into his system before coming down to face yet another batch of demons.
“Ko-Ishi not survive for so long by taking chances and making innovations. He really a boring villain despite tenacity.” Fate turned to face him. “I know enough to get here, now is up to you. I never set eyes on anything here, so you show way? He keep red head in same place you stay.”
“Yeah, I know where to go.” Youji closed his eyes for a moment, feeling incredibly old and sore, right hand cradled against his midriff to take the unusual weight of the cast off his still-workable shoulder. He opened his eyes and began to put one foot in front of another, retracing remembered pain. “I know where I’m going.”
“Is good to hear.” Fate’s hand rested on her belt in easy reach of the gun holstered at the small of her back.
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Okay kiddos, I’m setting things up for the next chapter ^_^. Sorry I haven’t written for a while, but I’m running off right after this to get a shower in and then I’ll start working on the next chapter. Ooo, I LOOOOVE days off, I should have more of them! *pretends to go and quit her job* Okay, maybe not… Oi! I have a guest book, did you guys know that? You should definitely sign it, or uh… your house might blow up. I can do that, you know. *laughs* Again, maybe not. Don’t worry more eventful things will be coming up soon. You know how to reach me [email protected] or [email protected]