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Part 3 : Relentless Observation
..."Stop squirmink."
Tomm's pace slowed as the volume of the argument increased. The white paint of the hallway gleamed under the too-bright overhead lights. The whole wing of the Millennium base that Tomm was currently walking down smelled of chemicals and blood, no surprise seeing as it was the section dedicated to science and experiments. Stopping in front of the door where the banter between the two familiar voices was loudest, Tomm stifled a snicker and shoved the door open so the occupants of the room became visible.
"Being a pain in the ass again, Zw�lf?" Tomm grinned and crossed his arms, leaning against the frame of the door. The fur on his teammate's ear and tail bristled as he glared at Tomm from the operating table on which he was seated. The jacket, undershirt, and tie that made up his normal attire had been discarded, thrown carelessly over one of the many swivel chairs throughout the lab, revealing the lithe build of his torso and arms. Doc, the head of the scientific division of Millennium, stood behind him, a tray full of tools within easy reach of the doctor as well as a dish already partway filled with bloodied shards of glass. Several different intricate lenses on his glasses were clicked into place while he worked a few of the tools on a shard embedded in Zw�lf's back, only looking up at the new arrival once the piece had been deposited in the dish with the others.
"If you are not goink to be useful, then go avay." The command was accompanied by a shooing hand motion directed towards Tomm. When Doc's attention once again returned to his patient, he found him scratching at the newest wound on his back, scattered among others all in different stages of regeneration. Sighing angrily, Doc slapped Zw�lf's clawing hands away and once again picked up his tools.
"Mein Gott! Stop fidgetink! You are makink this extremely difficult." Zw�lf hunched his shoulders and leaned forward, muttering darkly as Doc once again began the process of cutting out the next shard of glass. He was still for a few moments before he flinched away, making the scalpel cutting his skin slip. Frustrated, Doc threw down his tools and turned away.
"I could hold him down if you want," Tomm offered as he finally stepped through the doorway into the room. Zw�lf flipped him off, but he paid it no mind. "Seriously though, Zw�lf... Why are you being so stupid about this?"
"First off," Zw�lf began. "It itches like hell because Doc needs the wounds to stay open in order to get the glass out, so he put some weird shit on them, and secondly, his hands are
bloody cold," he whined, twisting to and fro in his seat. He was gripping the edge of the table so hard his fingernails left gouges, in an attempt to keep from clawing at his back.
"You're lucky it's him then... I was just outside," Tomm said, pulling up a chair next to the operating table and sitting down in it.
"Yeah, and...?"
"It's fucking freezing out." Without warning Tomm's still cold hands shot out and caught Zw�lf's face. Startled, his partner reeled backwards, almost flipping over the opposite edge of the table. Tomm doubled up with laughter while Zw�lf regained his balance, glaring daggers at the vampire the entire time. Doc threatened to throw them both out of the room.
"You're a bastard," Zw�lf growled once Tomm's fit of laughter had died down, rubbing angrily at his cheeks. The vampire tried his best to look apologetic, even though he knew it would be of little use on Zw�lf. Giving up, he let his grin slip back into place, shook his head, and reached around the half-breed sitting in front of to pick up a scalpel, twirling it in his fingers like a toy.
"Can't help it, mate... Anyway, I came down here to tell you that Dani got the wallet back from the labs. As soon as you're finished here we can head upstairs and have a look," he said, tossing the scalpel from hand to hand. The news obviously interested Zw�lf because his ears perked up and he straightened out his back, sitting up at his full height at the mention of the wallet.
"Yeah, for real? Hey Doc, how much longer is this gonna take?" Zw�lf tilted his head back so he could see the doctor, who was impatiently waiting for the conversation to be finished.
"Well, if you are done beink troublesome, then not very long. You only haff a few still left," Doc huffed. Grinning, Zw�lf nodded his head and handed the scalpel back to Doc. Tomm blinked and quickly looked down at his empty hands, then back up at Zw�lf, who was now facing forward and laughing silently at him.
"Klepto." Tomm grinned and twisted back and forth in the swivel chair, watching as Doc completed the operation. Zw�lf sat perfectly still, his hands once again digging a new pattern into the edge of his seat. Once in a while one of them would twitch, but they never left their posts at the lip of the table. As the final piece of glass clinked into the dish and Doc pushed up his glasses, Zw�lf eagerly went to jump from his seat, but was held back by one of the scientist's cold hands clamping onto his shoulder.
"I am not finished yet." Rummaging around amongst his tool, he produced a roll of gauze and instructed Zw�lf to lift his arms.
"Bandages, Doc?" Zw�lf questioned as the scientist wrapped the gauze around his middle. "What's the point? As soon as I wash whatever the hell you put on me off, my wounds will heal up in a snap."
"Well, knowink you, you vill get sidetracked and not remember until you pass out from blood loss. Also, they are so you vill not go bleedink all ofer the place while your wounds are still open." With one last pass around Zw�lf's abdomen, Doc secured the bandages and stepped back to clean his tools. Zw�lf jumped down from his seat and received his clothes from Tomm, who had snatched them from the chair where Zw�lf had thrown them. The pair left Doc to bustle about his lab while Zw�lf preformed a juggling act in an attempt to get his shirt back on.
"Weren't you complaining about being cold earlier, or was that just you being an asshole?" Tomm's heavy boots echoed loudly down the corridor as he observed his companion. Zw�lf had thrown on his shirt and jacket, but had buttoned neither, leaving his bandages on display while the red tie draped around his neck hung lopsidedly from one shoulder. Tomm's only reply was a shrug and grin from the half-breed experiment, the higher pitched footfalls of his lighter boots making an interesting contrast with Tomm's.
"You bastard." Tomm laughed and threw a friendly punch at Zw�lf's shoulder. The two continued on down the hallway in a comfortable silence, neither feeling the need to break it with unnecessary chatter.
**----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**
"I thought you said that Dani would be here by now." Zw�lf waited impatiently at the window, watching the almost complete lack of fog his breath produced on it, despite the cold temperature. Tomm gave half a shrug and flipped to the next page of the book in his hands. He had picked it up from where it had been abandoned on the table, probably left there from the previous night.
"Actually, I said she got the wallet back. I never said she didn't have anything else to do." Tomm's chair creaked slightly as he rocked back and forth in it, pushing one foot up against the edge of the table to keep balanced. Zw�lf turned back to the window and exhaled a long breath over the glass, drawing figures in the fog and then watching as they quickly disappeared. After a few more minutes of proving to himself just how inhuman he was, Zw�lf turned back to the table and stepped away from the window. Coming up behind Tomm's chair, he grabbed either side of the backrest in his hands and leaned forward until his chin rested on the other immortal's shoulder. Letting his eyes drift down to the book held in Tomm's lap, he began skimming over the text on the pages in front of him.
"'And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor...' Is that Poe you're reading?" Zw�lf leaned forward more, pressing himself against the back of the chair, and tilted his head to the side in an attempt to glimpse the cover of the book. Tomm batted him lightly in the face with the text, and then snapped the book back open to the page he had been on previously.
"Why the hell do you care, anyway?" Tomm asked, eyes trailing back to the line he had left off at. His voice held an annoyed tone but he edges of his lips quirked despite it. Irked, Zw�lf snaked an arm around his companion's shoulder and plucked the book from his hands. Red eyes scanned over the title and author before he twisted to the side and kicked out another chair from the table, plopping down into it.
"Ha. It is Poe. You could have just said so... I always thought he was a bit of a creepy bastard, though..." Long fingers flipped the book open and thumbed through the pages of text. Zw�lf's eyes twitched back and forth, skimming over some lines and then lingering on others.
"He's just your type of author then, isn't he Zw�lf?" Tomm leaned forward and clasped his hands together, leaning his elbows on the table and then his chin on knuckles, grinning over the tips of his fingers.
"Really? You think so?" Zw�lf flashed a grin that was more a bearing of teeth than a smile, and his eyes suddenly adopted a look of pure madness. The dull light filtering through the widow seemed to exaggerate every abnormality about him, glinting off claws and teeth and eyes, and giving his furred ears and tail an odd sheen. For a split second Tomm could see Zw�lf as the monster he knew he truly was, before he faded back into the familiar companion he knew best. The half-breed was still in the moments afterward, staring intensely down at the book set before him. Tomm's smile had vanished. He knew it would be a while before he could shake the uneasy feeling he had gotten from watching his partner.
"Fucking stupid book," Zw�lf growled suddenly, breaking the suffocating stillness of the room, and scooped up the text. With a burst of unnecessary strength, he hurled it at the wall opposite him. Upon impact, the weathered old book tore at the spine and sent an explosion of pages in every which direction. As the leaves of text settled, a sizable dent in the plaster of the wall was revealed in the area of where the book had struck.
"Oh you're going to
love buying me a new copy of that... It took me
ages to find one like it in the first place..." Both Tomm's and Zw�lf's attention turned to the last member of their party as Dani stepped through the doorway into the room. She stalked over the last empty seat and stood before it, not yet sitting down in it. There was a clatter of furniture as Zw�lf jumped up from his seat as Dani neared the table. Once she was stationary beside her chair, he preformed a mock-bow so low his nose almost touched the ground.
"Oh absolutely
lovely master, I simply
adore fetch... Would you like me to lie down and roll over for you as well?" Zw�lf's voice dripped honey-sweet venom as he wagged his tail back and forth in an imitation of an overjoyed dog, though the fur along it and his ears bristled dangerously.
"Oh, no need to... I know it would be useless trying to get you to perform such complex commands when we haven't even gotten you to master obeying such simple ones like 'sit' and 'stay...'" Dani gave a false sigh and shook her head, reaching one hand up to her face to cover her eyes like she had witnessed some sort of tragedy.
"Oh dear... Well, you know what they say about disobedient dogs," Zw�lf shook his head and sighed in return, looking down at the floor. "Best get me euthanized quickly before I run out into the street and bite the neighbors..." As he looked back up from his feet, Zw�lf flashed a grin that labeled him anything but sane.
"Don't ever say that again... Cut it out, both of you." Tomm's quiet voice interrupted the exchange between the two and captured both Dani's and Zw�lf's attention. Forgetting their argument, the pair turned away from each other and took their seats at the table.
"Dani, what's the news on the wallet? You got it back, right?" Tomm's blue eyes drifted over to the other vampire who nodded her head in an affirmative. Zw�lf slumped forward in his seat and rested his chin on the table's surface, his gaze and attention flickering back and forth between his partners. As the two others watched, Dani pulled forth the now-familiar wallet and placed it in the center of the table.
"Fingerprint and DNA tests along with the I.D. that was inside reveal that the wallet really is Lionell's. Aside from his, there was another set of fingerprints, but whose they are is unknown. Inside the wallet was a note on what was identified as one of Hellsing's bank accounts. The note catalogued that a sum of $100,000,000 was withdrawn in smaller increments of about $1,000 each, all at different times but within a relatively short range of each other, and quite recently as well. Another note shows that the money was transferred in a similar manner into a different account, but with a deduction of $5,000. On another scrap of paper there was the address to a nearby hotel and a room number along with several business names and times and dates for scheduled meetings. Receipts for several train tickets show how Lionell is planning to travel to his meetings, and a few possible routes he could take can be mapped out from them. Everything else was pretty much of little importance, receipts for gas, shopping coupons... That's about it. Oh yeah, and there were a couple of cheap cigarettes stuffed in the liner, but I'm sure that doesn't make a difference either way." Dani watched as her two companions absorbed the new information, pulling each item out of the wallet as she mentioned it and organizing them on the table.
"So I
was useful for something after all," Zw�lf muttered, picking up a scrap of paper from the table that was covered in a neat cursive script. "So we've got his contacts list right here. Let's pick a time and place to ambush the bastard and off him like we should've done in the first place." As he finished speaking, Zw�lf let the list drop carelessly back to the table, brought his thumb up to his mouth, and bit through it with one sharp fang. Drawing it across the picture on David's I.D., he left a diagonal slash of blood crossing through the man's face from the rapidly healing wound. Before he could pull away, though, another pale hand shot out and caught his.
"Not so fast, Zw�lf. We can't just randomly pick a day and go execute him. This has to be planned out properly so we don't end up fumbling it like we did last time." Once sure he had his partner's attention, Tomm released Zw�lf's wrist and leaned forward, snatching up one of the crumpled cigarettes and hanging it from the corner of his mouth. The other two immortals leaned forward as well, the foreheads of all three nearly touching as they began the discussion on the details of the plan they would need to pull off this new mission...
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