Notes! Again! =P
There will be some intensive series spoilers, mostly Omi-centric stuff. I'm an Omi author, that's how I work. There will also be shounen-ai, and if that doesn't agree with you, then don't read this.
The irony of the situation is that the way I write Blended Grey, in theory, takes longer to produce a chapter than my normal method. Yet, I've gotten this chapter out faster than I have any of my other stories. Weird, ne?
Blended Grey: Chapter One
-----------------------
Things had almost proven too late.
By the time that the dispatched Kritiker agents had arrived, Mastermind had undergone a serious beating. Somewhere along the lines he had lost consciousness, which had sparked Bombay into action. It was that action that saved the German from the death that had most certainly been before him. Bombay had held off the thugs until the agents could arrive, at which point they were dealt with and their bodies removed from the scene. Nothing existed on the scene of the fight to say that anything had ever happened. Perhaps a bloodstain or two, but few would be able to tell it from dirt on the path. As was token to their existence, Kritiker had simply made disappear all evidence of any crime.
Now the matter was to deal with Mastermind.
The telepath had been brought to Magic Bus, the police-controlled hospital where the organisation had the greatest influence. Trustworthy doctors had seen to him, declared a total of four ribs broken as well as a multitude of bruises from the beating. In addition, the general verdict was that Mastermind was weak and far too thin for his size and frame; something that suggested Schwarz was no longer as influential or powerful as they once were, to be leaving their prize telepath so poorly tended. It was that suggestion that perhaps Schwarz cared not about where Mastermind was that had him still in the care of the hospital, rather than simply killed for past crimes. Kritiker heads believed that he might hold key information about the rival group, as well as the mysterious SZ organisation that still seemed to exist after the defeats it had felt; and if no one was going to retrieve the telepath, they had luxury time to question him.
Birman did not agree with that decision.
Standing outside the telepath's hospital room, her arms crossed lightly upon her chest, the Weiß 'secretary' narrowed her eyes some as she gazed through the observation window. While she felt not emotion or instinct that told her that a trick or plan was now set in motion, Birman simply could not accept Mastermind being weakened to the point of a child. A mindraper like that would not ever be so helpless, so she simply distrusted the sight before her. Were it her place, she would be arguing with the higher-ups about moving him to a secure location, instead of letting him sleep - if he indeed were even sleeping instead of seeming so - in a room where security was minimal. Nothing about it felt safe, and that was the root of her problems.
The fact that Bombay was in the room, alone, with Mastermind also failed to settle her mind.
The blond youth had volunteered to observe the telepath and report his awakening immediately, if it even occurred - given the man's current health, that was indeed up for question. After a great deal of discussion with Birman, he had even succeeded and was now into the third hour of his watch. No weapons were with him, it having been decided that it was better to have nothing available to be used as a weapon should Mastermind awaken and desire to fight. In essence, the boy was defenceless against a man who had many times attacked and hurt him, in body, mind, and soul. Having partially raised Omi, Birman was feeling the natural parental instinct to get her assassin away from that bastard.
However, she easily realised how impossible it would be to get Bombay out of there. He was as stubborn as his uncle had been, and twice as persistent. The only way she would manage to get him from that room would be when she had an agent to replace him in watching Mastermind. That was still hours away, though; Bombay was too alert to be removed from 'guard' duty at the moment. So she would have to wait, and would watch through the glass to be certain he was okay.
Sighing softly, Birman chewed the inside of her lip in an uncharacteristically tense fashion. Watching. Waiting.
*
With the morning light filtering through the drawn shades, casting faint colour upon the patient of Kritiker's interest, Omi might have sworn that Schuldich did not look half as evil as the past had proved him to be. Laying asleep, the German seemed almost peaceful, all traces of his injuries' pain drawn away by the soothing touch of painkillers. Even the long orange strands of unruly hair, which were tainted by an odd lack of care, lent to the soothingly calm appearance of the other; it presented a soft halo that lightening the harshness of features all too often plastered with the defiant smirk of a man who took pleasure in ruining the lives of others. In all, it gave the sleeping telepath an air of innocence that the Weiß assassin knew was false in every fashion. There was nothing innocent about Schuldich, the most basic proof of that being the man's name. Innocent people did not call themselves 'guilty' on a day-to-day basis, nor did they list their hobbies as 'mind raping' or 'ruining the lives of little white kittens'.
Curled up on a chair in the far corner, the back facing the bed and his arms crossed lightly over it, Omi dismissed the almost errant train of thought about the truthless image of innocence that was currently being presented. Such things were not something he could afford to focus on; he had taken on a task that required attention and observation to detail. To let his mind wander aimlessly around that would be to fail, something he refused to do on any level. A literal lifetime spent training to be perfect at his task did not leave room for failure or errors.
Still, despite the resolution to perfection, Omi could not stop his thoughts from wandering off on other tracks, such as why he even bothered to help the German in the first place. That, in itself, defied all terms of personal logic, given their history. He should not have wanted to help the one person that made it a favourite past time to ruin what little life and family he had left. To assist the one who orchestrated the fateful night of Ouka's death, or kidnapped and handed him over to his own brother for torture, was hardly a notion that should ever have crossed Omi's mind. So often he had claimed his hate for the German's actions, and his sorrow for the result; to feel anything but bitter anger towards the man now was odd in itself. But he had felt something different, which had stayed his decision to help the other, instead of watch him feast upon the fruits of fate's revenge.
Sighing softly, Omi raised a hand to brush away a few strands of hair from his eyes, the sapphire depths not once moving off of the telepath's still form. The question of why he had helped the other still hung powerfully in his mind, but the answer to that was dancing safely out of his reach. There was the faint hope that the German could answer a few of those questions, simply by waking and acting as he chose. Any sort of motion instead of laying still might prove helpful. Yet, no signs of waking were being shown; it was as if the German wanted to remain unconscious to frustrate the young assassin further with a lack of answers to endless internal questions.
Omi would not give up so easily, though; he had volunteered and argued for the position on watch in order to be present when the telepath did awaken. If nothing else, it would be through perseverance that he found the first answers to his questions. He intended to have the first few moments of privacy with an awake telepath in order to ask a few questions to help with his own; there was little Kritiker could do to stop him. Having been the agent that found one of the organisation's most wanted, he had a basic right to be first at him when he was ready. And it was exactly that which Omi intended, even if it meant pulling the seniority that a lifetime as a trained killer had given him within Kritiker.
Problem being that he needed the telepath to awaken and soon. Birman would not let him remain on solo guard for too long, thus time was of the essence. Fortunately, he had patience to keep his company for the moment, as he sat there and simply watched. And waited.
*
Darkness was such a welcome thing, after the blurred nightmare of living without Schwarz; Schuldich held tightly to that darkness, unwilling to re-emerged into the hateful light of society and the little 'perfect' world it had created. Ha, perfect, that was laughable. A perfect world did not cast out a little child to the streets just because he heard voices not of his own concoction. A perfect world did not hate someone that could read every though in their little sheep-herded head. No, a perfect world did not do anything that the current world did, yet it was still called perfect. Schwarz had meant to awaken the world to their imperfection, but that had not been meant to be, apparently. The once proud group had fallen, or rather simply disappeared, and the perfect world went on with its life, oblivious to the loss of the influence that could have changed it all.
Finding that the society he so wanted to ruin was invading even the silent darkness of his mind, Schuldich relinquished, with some disgust at society invading his quiet and rare privacy, the concept of finding a bit of mental peace after months of thoughtless disarray. With that, he allowed the unwanted path of waking up to claim his mind and body, slowly losing his grip on the darkness he could have happily spent an eternity in.
The first thing he noticed, though it was hard to miss by any stretch of the imagination, was the sudden return of all the voices as his mind, and telepathy, began the rise from the unconscious. What could only be a thousand words jumped into his mind, all at once, and obliterated the delicately built paths for his own thoughts. That was to be expected, though, since the voices never left him alone. The only time he'd ever been able to escape those voices was with Schwarz, who had all had a varying degree of silence to their minds that he could hide himself in. Those silences were, as had been for months, absent from his reach for sanctuary. All he found, in weakly stretching his telepathy in that search, was sickness on nearly all sides. Mental and physical pain not of his own doing surrounded him, threatening to confuse him as to which was his, and which was belonging to others.
Damnit, that meant he was in a hospital. Schuldich hated hospitals, with something more than an utter passion. The pain of humans could be delightful to savour, yes, but not when it was of another person's doing. He preferred to feast upon the hurt his words could inflict, not those brought by the touch of another. It was like the subtle difference between cooking a gourmet meal for one's self and then eating at a restaurant - the latter always lacked the personal taste and flair that made the home-cooked meal more enjoyable, rather than just an overpriced plate of someone else's cooking.
The question that hung just out of his reach was the why of the entire situation: Why was he in a hospital? As far as he could remember, amidst the haze of alcohol, he'd been in a park or something before. How did one get from a park to a hospital in the stretch of sleeping darkness? Unfortunately, there was only one answer to that, it being he had to finish waking up and find out for himself, as he had to do for everything in life. If you wanted something done, it had to be done by yourself.
With a slowly muttered German curse, his voice roughly overlaid from a lack of use, he opened one jade eyes, and immediately shut it as the lights above him seemingly pierced straight through his head, awakening the start of what was likely going to be a painful hangover. "Mein gott, someone shut those lights off," he growled, trying to raise an arm to cover his poor eyes before they got assaulted by the evils of brightness once again.
Almost immediately, accompanied by a slight shuffling sound similar to the movement of feet, the lights of the room flickered off, their lost presence lessening the pressure on his still closed eyes. Warily opening the jade pools again, he let them focus on the now darkened ceiling. Once he was certain that he could make heads or tails of a coin, or whatever it was he saw, he started the slow search for whoever had shut the lights off.
And found himself staring into the piercing blue gaze of one Bombay kitten, his former favourite assassin playtoy. A familiar face in the last possible place he could have expected to find one. Not just any familiar face, but one that was known to very much hate him and want him dead.
Damn, how the hell had that happened?
- tbc -
Author's Note:
Bah, I take so long to write. This chapter is both long, and short in so many senses. I couldn't find a better place to cut it, so here I did. Comments/crits/reviews are always appreciated.
Next chapter posting? Don't know. School starts again on September 5th, so I might be busy keeping up with my writing-gaming and unable to work on many fics. I'll try and get it done as the inspiration comes along, but with so many fics in the works, I can't predict which will get a new chapter first.
There will be some intensive series spoilers, mostly Omi-centric stuff. I'm an Omi author, that's how I work. There will also be shounen-ai, and if that doesn't agree with you, then don't read this.
The irony of the situation is that the way I write Blended Grey, in theory, takes longer to produce a chapter than my normal method. Yet, I've gotten this chapter out faster than I have any of my other stories. Weird, ne?
Blended Grey: Chapter One
-----------------------
Things had almost proven too late.
By the time that the dispatched Kritiker agents had arrived, Mastermind had undergone a serious beating. Somewhere along the lines he had lost consciousness, which had sparked Bombay into action. It was that action that saved the German from the death that had most certainly been before him. Bombay had held off the thugs until the agents could arrive, at which point they were dealt with and their bodies removed from the scene. Nothing existed on the scene of the fight to say that anything had ever happened. Perhaps a bloodstain or two, but few would be able to tell it from dirt on the path. As was token to their existence, Kritiker had simply made disappear all evidence of any crime.
Now the matter was to deal with Mastermind.
The telepath had been brought to Magic Bus, the police-controlled hospital where the organisation had the greatest influence. Trustworthy doctors had seen to him, declared a total of four ribs broken as well as a multitude of bruises from the beating. In addition, the general verdict was that Mastermind was weak and far too thin for his size and frame; something that suggested Schwarz was no longer as influential or powerful as they once were, to be leaving their prize telepath so poorly tended. It was that suggestion that perhaps Schwarz cared not about where Mastermind was that had him still in the care of the hospital, rather than simply killed for past crimes. Kritiker heads believed that he might hold key information about the rival group, as well as the mysterious SZ organisation that still seemed to exist after the defeats it had felt; and if no one was going to retrieve the telepath, they had luxury time to question him.
Birman did not agree with that decision.
Standing outside the telepath's hospital room, her arms crossed lightly upon her chest, the Weiß 'secretary' narrowed her eyes some as she gazed through the observation window. While she felt not emotion or instinct that told her that a trick or plan was now set in motion, Birman simply could not accept Mastermind being weakened to the point of a child. A mindraper like that would not ever be so helpless, so she simply distrusted the sight before her. Were it her place, she would be arguing with the higher-ups about moving him to a secure location, instead of letting him sleep - if he indeed were even sleeping instead of seeming so - in a room where security was minimal. Nothing about it felt safe, and that was the root of her problems.
The fact that Bombay was in the room, alone, with Mastermind also failed to settle her mind.
The blond youth had volunteered to observe the telepath and report his awakening immediately, if it even occurred - given the man's current health, that was indeed up for question. After a great deal of discussion with Birman, he had even succeeded and was now into the third hour of his watch. No weapons were with him, it having been decided that it was better to have nothing available to be used as a weapon should Mastermind awaken and desire to fight. In essence, the boy was defenceless against a man who had many times attacked and hurt him, in body, mind, and soul. Having partially raised Omi, Birman was feeling the natural parental instinct to get her assassin away from that bastard.
However, she easily realised how impossible it would be to get Bombay out of there. He was as stubborn as his uncle had been, and twice as persistent. The only way she would manage to get him from that room would be when she had an agent to replace him in watching Mastermind. That was still hours away, though; Bombay was too alert to be removed from 'guard' duty at the moment. So she would have to wait, and would watch through the glass to be certain he was okay.
Sighing softly, Birman chewed the inside of her lip in an uncharacteristically tense fashion. Watching. Waiting.
*
With the morning light filtering through the drawn shades, casting faint colour upon the patient of Kritiker's interest, Omi might have sworn that Schuldich did not look half as evil as the past had proved him to be. Laying asleep, the German seemed almost peaceful, all traces of his injuries' pain drawn away by the soothing touch of painkillers. Even the long orange strands of unruly hair, which were tainted by an odd lack of care, lent to the soothingly calm appearance of the other; it presented a soft halo that lightening the harshness of features all too often plastered with the defiant smirk of a man who took pleasure in ruining the lives of others. In all, it gave the sleeping telepath an air of innocence that the Weiß assassin knew was false in every fashion. There was nothing innocent about Schuldich, the most basic proof of that being the man's name. Innocent people did not call themselves 'guilty' on a day-to-day basis, nor did they list their hobbies as 'mind raping' or 'ruining the lives of little white kittens'.
Curled up on a chair in the far corner, the back facing the bed and his arms crossed lightly over it, Omi dismissed the almost errant train of thought about the truthless image of innocence that was currently being presented. Such things were not something he could afford to focus on; he had taken on a task that required attention and observation to detail. To let his mind wander aimlessly around that would be to fail, something he refused to do on any level. A literal lifetime spent training to be perfect at his task did not leave room for failure or errors.
Still, despite the resolution to perfection, Omi could not stop his thoughts from wandering off on other tracks, such as why he even bothered to help the German in the first place. That, in itself, defied all terms of personal logic, given their history. He should not have wanted to help the one person that made it a favourite past time to ruin what little life and family he had left. To assist the one who orchestrated the fateful night of Ouka's death, or kidnapped and handed him over to his own brother for torture, was hardly a notion that should ever have crossed Omi's mind. So often he had claimed his hate for the German's actions, and his sorrow for the result; to feel anything but bitter anger towards the man now was odd in itself. But he had felt something different, which had stayed his decision to help the other, instead of watch him feast upon the fruits of fate's revenge.
Sighing softly, Omi raised a hand to brush away a few strands of hair from his eyes, the sapphire depths not once moving off of the telepath's still form. The question of why he had helped the other still hung powerfully in his mind, but the answer to that was dancing safely out of his reach. There was the faint hope that the German could answer a few of those questions, simply by waking and acting as he chose. Any sort of motion instead of laying still might prove helpful. Yet, no signs of waking were being shown; it was as if the German wanted to remain unconscious to frustrate the young assassin further with a lack of answers to endless internal questions.
Omi would not give up so easily, though; he had volunteered and argued for the position on watch in order to be present when the telepath did awaken. If nothing else, it would be through perseverance that he found the first answers to his questions. He intended to have the first few moments of privacy with an awake telepath in order to ask a few questions to help with his own; there was little Kritiker could do to stop him. Having been the agent that found one of the organisation's most wanted, he had a basic right to be first at him when he was ready. And it was exactly that which Omi intended, even if it meant pulling the seniority that a lifetime as a trained killer had given him within Kritiker.
Problem being that he needed the telepath to awaken and soon. Birman would not let him remain on solo guard for too long, thus time was of the essence. Fortunately, he had patience to keep his company for the moment, as he sat there and simply watched. And waited.
*
Darkness was such a welcome thing, after the blurred nightmare of living without Schwarz; Schuldich held tightly to that darkness, unwilling to re-emerged into the hateful light of society and the little 'perfect' world it had created. Ha, perfect, that was laughable. A perfect world did not cast out a little child to the streets just because he heard voices not of his own concoction. A perfect world did not hate someone that could read every though in their little sheep-herded head. No, a perfect world did not do anything that the current world did, yet it was still called perfect. Schwarz had meant to awaken the world to their imperfection, but that had not been meant to be, apparently. The once proud group had fallen, or rather simply disappeared, and the perfect world went on with its life, oblivious to the loss of the influence that could have changed it all.
Finding that the society he so wanted to ruin was invading even the silent darkness of his mind, Schuldich relinquished, with some disgust at society invading his quiet and rare privacy, the concept of finding a bit of mental peace after months of thoughtless disarray. With that, he allowed the unwanted path of waking up to claim his mind and body, slowly losing his grip on the darkness he could have happily spent an eternity in.
The first thing he noticed, though it was hard to miss by any stretch of the imagination, was the sudden return of all the voices as his mind, and telepathy, began the rise from the unconscious. What could only be a thousand words jumped into his mind, all at once, and obliterated the delicately built paths for his own thoughts. That was to be expected, though, since the voices never left him alone. The only time he'd ever been able to escape those voices was with Schwarz, who had all had a varying degree of silence to their minds that he could hide himself in. Those silences were, as had been for months, absent from his reach for sanctuary. All he found, in weakly stretching his telepathy in that search, was sickness on nearly all sides. Mental and physical pain not of his own doing surrounded him, threatening to confuse him as to which was his, and which was belonging to others.
Damnit, that meant he was in a hospital. Schuldich hated hospitals, with something more than an utter passion. The pain of humans could be delightful to savour, yes, but not when it was of another person's doing. He preferred to feast upon the hurt his words could inflict, not those brought by the touch of another. It was like the subtle difference between cooking a gourmet meal for one's self and then eating at a restaurant - the latter always lacked the personal taste and flair that made the home-cooked meal more enjoyable, rather than just an overpriced plate of someone else's cooking.
The question that hung just out of his reach was the why of the entire situation: Why was he in a hospital? As far as he could remember, amidst the haze of alcohol, he'd been in a park or something before. How did one get from a park to a hospital in the stretch of sleeping darkness? Unfortunately, there was only one answer to that, it being he had to finish waking up and find out for himself, as he had to do for everything in life. If you wanted something done, it had to be done by yourself.
With a slowly muttered German curse, his voice roughly overlaid from a lack of use, he opened one jade eyes, and immediately shut it as the lights above him seemingly pierced straight through his head, awakening the start of what was likely going to be a painful hangover. "Mein gott, someone shut those lights off," he growled, trying to raise an arm to cover his poor eyes before they got assaulted by the evils of brightness once again.
Almost immediately, accompanied by a slight shuffling sound similar to the movement of feet, the lights of the room flickered off, their lost presence lessening the pressure on his still closed eyes. Warily opening the jade pools again, he let them focus on the now darkened ceiling. Once he was certain that he could make heads or tails of a coin, or whatever it was he saw, he started the slow search for whoever had shut the lights off.
And found himself staring into the piercing blue gaze of one Bombay kitten, his former favourite assassin playtoy. A familiar face in the last possible place he could have expected to find one. Not just any familiar face, but one that was known to very much hate him and want him dead.
Damn, how the hell had that happened?
- tbc -
Author's Note:
Bah, I take so long to write. This chapter is both long, and short in so many senses. I couldn't find a better place to cut it, so here I did. Comments/crits/reviews are always appreciated.
Next chapter posting? Don't know. School starts again on September 5th, so I might be busy keeping up with my writing-gaming and unable to work on many fics. I'll try and get it done as the inspiration comes along, but with so many fics in the works, I can't predict which will get a new chapter first.