Chapter one: White feathers
The sun beamed lazily onto the now fall Earth with a smile, a warm fuzzy feeling of rays tangled through the lands. Birds chirped as they flew through the sky by the packs, sparrows, cardinals, and more. Some moved to the South for the winter, while the other stayed at cool old little Tokyo.
Browned grass waved with the breeze as the gentle fingers of wind touched them with her hands, brushed them patiently as she passed by.
Two teenager walked on the side walk, window shopping the new dress that both wanted to by, and of course, as things never went their way, they didn't had enough money together to buy an ice cream. A mother pushed her baby cart down the street, holding the bags on her left arm. The baby boy that sat in the cart smiled as he touched the red balloon before him, giggled at the large shinny ball of air.
A couple steps away from the dress shop, a man slept on the chair in front of a flower shop. His faced covered with a large magazine and his arms crossed; he was sleeping like a newborn baby. A green sweatshirt wrapped around his form, unzipped to show the white shirt underneath. Color faded blue jeans shaped his legs, made them look long and thin, but not loosing the image of power. Brown sneakers were untied, laces touched the stone paved floor, they were suppose to match his hair and eyes, of course, no one really would look at his eyes and compare them to his shoes.
The man was enjoying his rest; on a day like this, no one would really come to the flower shop. Come to think of it, the flower shop was well known in the area mostly because of the four workers, namely, himself, and three others, and not the flowers. Sure, screaming girls help with the 'advertisement', but that was beside the point.
The man rested his eyes and enjoyed the sunray warming up his body, feeling the heat that ran back and forth from his head, back to his legs.
"KEN-KUN!!" A voice called out.
Ken sat up without much thinking and saw a young blonde boy before him as the magazine slipped from his face and down to his lap. "Oh hi Omi, what's going on? How's the delivery?"
The blonde knotted his eyes brows as he dusted his white shirt with a large red stripe that ran horizontal from it. The cloth he wore seemed to be covered with mud, apparently that the boy had a little trouble running away from the girls again. "The delivery went fine." He said as he watched his tennis shoes, which seemed to be untied. Ken smiled at his words. "But, what are you doing?"
The brown haired man blinked as he picked up the magazine with one hand and fanned himself with it. "Sleeping, wha ya think I was doing?"
"That's not what I meant!" Omi explained and bent down to his knees, he held up the laces and started to tie them. "What I mean is that you're suppose to be looking over the shop, and not sleeping."
Ken sighed, "Omi, there is NO customers here! And none will come on a day like this! And besides, it's Yoji's turn to look over the shop, but the man ran out saying he had a date."
Omi shook his head and took a deep breath, then exhaled it loudly as he walked back into the shop. "Well, I'm gonna go and fix the next order, you just stay here. Okay? And you would want to tie those shoe laces." The little boy watched the older man's shoes and frowned a bit.
Ken nodded back.
"And please Ken-kun, do not fall asleep again. You're making us loose all our customers." The blonde finished his sentence.
"Well, if we had any customers that is." Ken grinned as Omi shook his head and walked into the shop. As usual, the flower shop was not doing too well. It was just infested with wild screaming teenagers that never dig their pockets to buy any of the flowers here. And there's Ouka, but she's gone now.
Decided that it was more fun to sleep rather than to think about Omi's dead girlfriends, Ken placed the magazine back on his face and closed his eyes. Of course, no one's gonna come.
"Hello, do you have roses today?" A sweet female voice called out from a couple feet away.
Ken's eyes snapped open as he hopped off the chair, not caring about the magazine that hit the ground before him. "Yes, yes we do have roses today." Barely touching the floor with one foot, he stepped toward the voice, and tripped.
Landing harshly onto the cement pavement, he felt dust running into his mouth and his chest in pain, followed by the dizziness he felt in his head. "W. . . what roses. . . wou. . . would you like?" The brown haired man whispered the second after he fell. God, that didn't felt good, he felt his insides turning and wanted to throw up.
"Oh my god, Ken-kun, are you okay?" That girl called out and ran up to him, she bent down to his eye level and smiled a reassuring smile. "Do you need help getting up?"
Ken blinked raptly as he saw a breeze like white skirt with matching shoes, then two deep blue braids and clear ocean eyes. "A. . . Aya-chan. . ."
Aya smiled as she grabbed Ken's right hand in both of her own. "Ken-kun, how can you trip on your own feet?" She asked as Ken got up with her help.
The brown haired man patted his jeans and spitted out the dust in his mouth before he cursed at his shoes. Mainly, the shoelaces. "Well, it's those damn shoelaces, they're the ones that made me trip."
"I told you to tie them." Omi's walked out of the flower shop; he had changed his cloth. A backwards blue cap had shaped his wild blonde hair, pinned his overly long strands back down to his cheeks. A plain blue shirt and light brown shorts made him look younger than he really was. Then again, Omi always look young. He flashed his bright smiled at the newly approached girl. "Aya-chan, Aya-kun's out, but he'll be back in a couple minutes."
"Ran-niichan's not here?" The girl gave a sad expression on her face.
"Sorry, but, he should be back soon." Ken answered matter-of-factly, and then turned back to Omi. "And stop calling him Aya, he had told you many times not to call him that, after our little princess is back."
"Gomen Ken-kun, it's been too long and I just couldn't change it." Omi frowned a bit, and then brightened. "Manx, what are you doing here?"
Ken turned.
A red head stood around ten feet away from the three some, wearing a large smile on her face. As usual, she was wearing that crimson colored dress with the black shirt underneath, and the matching high heels. Ken always wondered why she wore those socks along with her heels but didn't bother to ask.
"Can't a girl come and visit some time?" The woman smiled and walked closer. "Actually, the truth is that Birman's on a vacation, so I have to fill in for her." She smiled. "We have a mission."
"But what about the others?" The young blonde asked.
"We'll just have to do with out them, for now at least."
Ken frowned. Since the red head woman's here now, he can't escape this mission, unlike Yoji and Ran. Lucky. Ken flashed a smile. "Let's talk inside."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The room was with a deep shade of gray, white walls painted looked dull without the light. Green plants near the stairs seemed to be moving as the large television flickered and the vision of a man in shadow sat there. A basement.
The sofa in the middle was taken over by the two young ones, Aya and Omi, while Ken leaned against the walls near the stairs, watching the TV without much interest.
Manx sat on the edge of the stairs, waiting for the order to be given.
Finally, after what seemed to be forever, the TV. turned to a blank screen and shut off by itself.
Omi stretched and stood up, watching the others. Aya-chan wasn't in the group, but now days, she's been in with most of the missions. Of course not killing anyone, for it would be hard to even imagine a sweet girl like her holding a katana and have the look of death in her eyes, unlike some member of the group.
"So, what's this all about?" Ken stirred in the corner of the room. "I mean, we saw worst and stuff, but what is going through that guy's head? I'm going to have an amusement park of doom? I'm going to squish all those people under my giant machine, ha ha ha?"
"Ken-kun, it's not as bad as the other ones, like the online rapist thing." Omi replied and Aya-chan nodded. The blonde turned the Manx, who was holding a clipboard in her arms. "Where's the address?"
"Right here." Manx stood up and handed him the clipboard.
Omi dug through the files, and stopped at one with the little drawing of an angel in the corner. His eyebrow twitched as he turned to Manx, who just shrugged.
"What do you expect, when you're bored as me in the police department, I'm sure you'll start doodling too." The woman smiled.
The little boy sighed and went back to the notes, but he just couldn't manage to take his eyes off that little picture of the angel. He studied it without noticing his own movements. The angel was a boy, he was sure of that. He had both of his wings open, five large feathers on each one. Deep shaded hair that parted in the middle, wearing. . . street clothe. . . that looked a lot like. . . Ken-kun's. In fact, that angel looked exactly like Ken-kun. Even down to the at like a klutz part. Well, the winged boy in the picture was falling over, which seemed to be quite usual with Ken.
"Where's the hide out?" Aya-chan asked, standing up from where she sat.
Omi snapped out of the trance he was in and flipped through the next page. "It's at 32972 Keitson Street." He whispered as he turned to the next page to find more information and found something stuck in the middle of the pages as a bookmark.
A white feather.
The boy blinked as he pinched the end with two fingers and held it up. "Manx? Where did you get this?"
The red head walked over, glanced at the feather in Omi's hand, and shook her head. "I never knew that it was in there, I mean, it wasn't there when I had it."
"Really?" The blonde asked as he studied the feather. The feather was milky white and felt soft as silk. "I don't get it. . ."
"Don't get what?" Ken asked as he walked closer to the smaller boy, away from the shadows.
"Nothing, it's just that it seems this feather just appeared out of nowhere." Omi answered, unable to place that sheet of white back down. Aya-chan took it away from him to study it.
"These things happen, I mean, I find stuff I don't know in my closet all the time." Ken scratched his head. "I mean last week, I found two skate boards and a new soccer ball in there, along with a green shirt I never saw before."
"But Ken-kun, this happens to you all the time. Two weeks before that you found an unfinished hamburger under your bed." The little boy forced a smile.
"That's beside the po. . ." Before Ken could finish his sentence footsteps approached the basement stairs, all talking stopped and silence replaced it all.
Manx opened her hand bag and pulled out a gun, she held it towards the stairs with her index finger on the trigger. Omi pulled out a dart from his sleeves as Ken cracked his knuckles. Aya-chan backed away, holding the information clipboard Omi had just gave her along with the feather.
A man walked from the shadows and the lights turned on in the room. The foursome in the basement stared wildly at the newly approached figure.
Yoji.
Omi sighed.
Yoji looked tired. His deep brown coat looked a bit messed up, the white shirt underneath was stained with light pink, wine, Omi had guessed. Black slacks matched his hair, along with deep brown dress shoes.
He looked at everyone underneath his deep colored glasses. "Um. . . hello."
"Yoji!" Ken breathed, "don't do that!! You just scared the crap out of all of us!"
"Sorry, but I do live here you know." The tallest one answered.
"Yoji-kun, I thought you were gonna be out late. . ." Omi blinked, then turned back to Aya-chan and took the clipboard from her hands.
"Well, I was gonna be late, but tha girl had an emergency and had to leave." The black haired man answered.
Omi frowned. "In other words, she kicked you out."
Yoji's face color changed to a shade of pink. Manx smiled as Aya-chan giggled. Ken held onto his stomach, laughing. Then, the tall man's face turned back to normal along with his sly smile. He pushed his sunglasses up with one finger and inched towards the red headed woman. "Manx, what are you doing here?"
"I'm not here to see you." Manx hid her smile. "There's a mission."
"Do you need my protection?" Yoji asked, placing a hand onto the woman's shoulder.
The red head took a step forward and Yoji's arm fell away from her shoulders. "Any ways, are you all in?"
"Hey, Ay. . . I mean Ran-kun's not here yet." Omi said, turning his head to the top of the stairs, hoping to see Ran's figure appearing from the shadows.
"Hey! You found one too?" Omi turned as Yoji smiled at Aya-chan, who was still standing near the wall.
"Found what?" Ken asked, smiling.
"A white feather." Yoji said as he reached in his jacket pocket, and pulled out another snow white feather. Exactly the same as the one Aya-chan was holding.
Omi blinked, then shook his head. What's with feathers today? He didn't bother to think about the newfound white sheet and opened back up the clipboard, trying to find out about the number of men they would be fighting against. He stopped at the page of the drawn angel and couldn't help but smile, and then, the smiled was wiped off of his face and turned into a feeling of ice, coldness, and fear.
On that sheet of paper, on the very right edge was the drawing of Ken-angel, everything else was the same. But now, one of Ken's wings only has three feathers, and the whole picture was dripping wet with a red liquid.
Blood.
The sun beamed lazily onto the now fall Earth with a smile, a warm fuzzy feeling of rays tangled through the lands. Birds chirped as they flew through the sky by the packs, sparrows, cardinals, and more. Some moved to the South for the winter, while the other stayed at cool old little Tokyo.
Browned grass waved with the breeze as the gentle fingers of wind touched them with her hands, brushed them patiently as she passed by.
Two teenager walked on the side walk, window shopping the new dress that both wanted to by, and of course, as things never went their way, they didn't had enough money together to buy an ice cream. A mother pushed her baby cart down the street, holding the bags on her left arm. The baby boy that sat in the cart smiled as he touched the red balloon before him, giggled at the large shinny ball of air.
A couple steps away from the dress shop, a man slept on the chair in front of a flower shop. His faced covered with a large magazine and his arms crossed; he was sleeping like a newborn baby. A green sweatshirt wrapped around his form, unzipped to show the white shirt underneath. Color faded blue jeans shaped his legs, made them look long and thin, but not loosing the image of power. Brown sneakers were untied, laces touched the stone paved floor, they were suppose to match his hair and eyes, of course, no one really would look at his eyes and compare them to his shoes.
The man was enjoying his rest; on a day like this, no one would really come to the flower shop. Come to think of it, the flower shop was well known in the area mostly because of the four workers, namely, himself, and three others, and not the flowers. Sure, screaming girls help with the 'advertisement', but that was beside the point.
The man rested his eyes and enjoyed the sunray warming up his body, feeling the heat that ran back and forth from his head, back to his legs.
"KEN-KUN!!" A voice called out.
Ken sat up without much thinking and saw a young blonde boy before him as the magazine slipped from his face and down to his lap. "Oh hi Omi, what's going on? How's the delivery?"
The blonde knotted his eyes brows as he dusted his white shirt with a large red stripe that ran horizontal from it. The cloth he wore seemed to be covered with mud, apparently that the boy had a little trouble running away from the girls again. "The delivery went fine." He said as he watched his tennis shoes, which seemed to be untied. Ken smiled at his words. "But, what are you doing?"
The brown haired man blinked as he picked up the magazine with one hand and fanned himself with it. "Sleeping, wha ya think I was doing?"
"That's not what I meant!" Omi explained and bent down to his knees, he held up the laces and started to tie them. "What I mean is that you're suppose to be looking over the shop, and not sleeping."
Ken sighed, "Omi, there is NO customers here! And none will come on a day like this! And besides, it's Yoji's turn to look over the shop, but the man ran out saying he had a date."
Omi shook his head and took a deep breath, then exhaled it loudly as he walked back into the shop. "Well, I'm gonna go and fix the next order, you just stay here. Okay? And you would want to tie those shoe laces." The little boy watched the older man's shoes and frowned a bit.
Ken nodded back.
"And please Ken-kun, do not fall asleep again. You're making us loose all our customers." The blonde finished his sentence.
"Well, if we had any customers that is." Ken grinned as Omi shook his head and walked into the shop. As usual, the flower shop was not doing too well. It was just infested with wild screaming teenagers that never dig their pockets to buy any of the flowers here. And there's Ouka, but she's gone now.
Decided that it was more fun to sleep rather than to think about Omi's dead girlfriends, Ken placed the magazine back on his face and closed his eyes. Of course, no one's gonna come.
"Hello, do you have roses today?" A sweet female voice called out from a couple feet away.
Ken's eyes snapped open as he hopped off the chair, not caring about the magazine that hit the ground before him. "Yes, yes we do have roses today." Barely touching the floor with one foot, he stepped toward the voice, and tripped.
Landing harshly onto the cement pavement, he felt dust running into his mouth and his chest in pain, followed by the dizziness he felt in his head. "W. . . what roses. . . wou. . . would you like?" The brown haired man whispered the second after he fell. God, that didn't felt good, he felt his insides turning and wanted to throw up.
"Oh my god, Ken-kun, are you okay?" That girl called out and ran up to him, she bent down to his eye level and smiled a reassuring smile. "Do you need help getting up?"
Ken blinked raptly as he saw a breeze like white skirt with matching shoes, then two deep blue braids and clear ocean eyes. "A. . . Aya-chan. . ."
Aya smiled as she grabbed Ken's right hand in both of her own. "Ken-kun, how can you trip on your own feet?" She asked as Ken got up with her help.
The brown haired man patted his jeans and spitted out the dust in his mouth before he cursed at his shoes. Mainly, the shoelaces. "Well, it's those damn shoelaces, they're the ones that made me trip."
"I told you to tie them." Omi's walked out of the flower shop; he had changed his cloth. A backwards blue cap had shaped his wild blonde hair, pinned his overly long strands back down to his cheeks. A plain blue shirt and light brown shorts made him look younger than he really was. Then again, Omi always look young. He flashed his bright smiled at the newly approached girl. "Aya-chan, Aya-kun's out, but he'll be back in a couple minutes."
"Ran-niichan's not here?" The girl gave a sad expression on her face.
"Sorry, but, he should be back soon." Ken answered matter-of-factly, and then turned back to Omi. "And stop calling him Aya, he had told you many times not to call him that, after our little princess is back."
"Gomen Ken-kun, it's been too long and I just couldn't change it." Omi frowned a bit, and then brightened. "Manx, what are you doing here?"
Ken turned.
A red head stood around ten feet away from the three some, wearing a large smile on her face. As usual, she was wearing that crimson colored dress with the black shirt underneath, and the matching high heels. Ken always wondered why she wore those socks along with her heels but didn't bother to ask.
"Can't a girl come and visit some time?" The woman smiled and walked closer. "Actually, the truth is that Birman's on a vacation, so I have to fill in for her." She smiled. "We have a mission."
"But what about the others?" The young blonde asked.
"We'll just have to do with out them, for now at least."
Ken frowned. Since the red head woman's here now, he can't escape this mission, unlike Yoji and Ran. Lucky. Ken flashed a smile. "Let's talk inside."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The room was with a deep shade of gray, white walls painted looked dull without the light. Green plants near the stairs seemed to be moving as the large television flickered and the vision of a man in shadow sat there. A basement.
The sofa in the middle was taken over by the two young ones, Aya and Omi, while Ken leaned against the walls near the stairs, watching the TV without much interest.
Manx sat on the edge of the stairs, waiting for the order to be given.
Finally, after what seemed to be forever, the TV. turned to a blank screen and shut off by itself.
Omi stretched and stood up, watching the others. Aya-chan wasn't in the group, but now days, she's been in with most of the missions. Of course not killing anyone, for it would be hard to even imagine a sweet girl like her holding a katana and have the look of death in her eyes, unlike some member of the group.
"So, what's this all about?" Ken stirred in the corner of the room. "I mean, we saw worst and stuff, but what is going through that guy's head? I'm going to have an amusement park of doom? I'm going to squish all those people under my giant machine, ha ha ha?"
"Ken-kun, it's not as bad as the other ones, like the online rapist thing." Omi replied and Aya-chan nodded. The blonde turned the Manx, who was holding a clipboard in her arms. "Where's the address?"
"Right here." Manx stood up and handed him the clipboard.
Omi dug through the files, and stopped at one with the little drawing of an angel in the corner. His eyebrow twitched as he turned to Manx, who just shrugged.
"What do you expect, when you're bored as me in the police department, I'm sure you'll start doodling too." The woman smiled.
The little boy sighed and went back to the notes, but he just couldn't manage to take his eyes off that little picture of the angel. He studied it without noticing his own movements. The angel was a boy, he was sure of that. He had both of his wings open, five large feathers on each one. Deep shaded hair that parted in the middle, wearing. . . street clothe. . . that looked a lot like. . . Ken-kun's. In fact, that angel looked exactly like Ken-kun. Even down to the at like a klutz part. Well, the winged boy in the picture was falling over, which seemed to be quite usual with Ken.
"Where's the hide out?" Aya-chan asked, standing up from where she sat.
Omi snapped out of the trance he was in and flipped through the next page. "It's at 32972 Keitson Street." He whispered as he turned to the next page to find more information and found something stuck in the middle of the pages as a bookmark.
A white feather.
The boy blinked as he pinched the end with two fingers and held it up. "Manx? Where did you get this?"
The red head walked over, glanced at the feather in Omi's hand, and shook her head. "I never knew that it was in there, I mean, it wasn't there when I had it."
"Really?" The blonde asked as he studied the feather. The feather was milky white and felt soft as silk. "I don't get it. . ."
"Don't get what?" Ken asked as he walked closer to the smaller boy, away from the shadows.
"Nothing, it's just that it seems this feather just appeared out of nowhere." Omi answered, unable to place that sheet of white back down. Aya-chan took it away from him to study it.
"These things happen, I mean, I find stuff I don't know in my closet all the time." Ken scratched his head. "I mean last week, I found two skate boards and a new soccer ball in there, along with a green shirt I never saw before."
"But Ken-kun, this happens to you all the time. Two weeks before that you found an unfinished hamburger under your bed." The little boy forced a smile.
"That's beside the po. . ." Before Ken could finish his sentence footsteps approached the basement stairs, all talking stopped and silence replaced it all.
Manx opened her hand bag and pulled out a gun, she held it towards the stairs with her index finger on the trigger. Omi pulled out a dart from his sleeves as Ken cracked his knuckles. Aya-chan backed away, holding the information clipboard Omi had just gave her along with the feather.
A man walked from the shadows and the lights turned on in the room. The foursome in the basement stared wildly at the newly approached figure.
Yoji.
Omi sighed.
Yoji looked tired. His deep brown coat looked a bit messed up, the white shirt underneath was stained with light pink, wine, Omi had guessed. Black slacks matched his hair, along with deep brown dress shoes.
He looked at everyone underneath his deep colored glasses. "Um. . . hello."
"Yoji!" Ken breathed, "don't do that!! You just scared the crap out of all of us!"
"Sorry, but I do live here you know." The tallest one answered.
"Yoji-kun, I thought you were gonna be out late. . ." Omi blinked, then turned back to Aya-chan and took the clipboard from her hands.
"Well, I was gonna be late, but tha girl had an emergency and had to leave." The black haired man answered.
Omi frowned. "In other words, she kicked you out."
Yoji's face color changed to a shade of pink. Manx smiled as Aya-chan giggled. Ken held onto his stomach, laughing. Then, the tall man's face turned back to normal along with his sly smile. He pushed his sunglasses up with one finger and inched towards the red headed woman. "Manx, what are you doing here?"
"I'm not here to see you." Manx hid her smile. "There's a mission."
"Do you need my protection?" Yoji asked, placing a hand onto the woman's shoulder.
The red head took a step forward and Yoji's arm fell away from her shoulders. "Any ways, are you all in?"
"Hey, Ay. . . I mean Ran-kun's not here yet." Omi said, turning his head to the top of the stairs, hoping to see Ran's figure appearing from the shadows.
"Hey! You found one too?" Omi turned as Yoji smiled at Aya-chan, who was still standing near the wall.
"Found what?" Ken asked, smiling.
"A white feather." Yoji said as he reached in his jacket pocket, and pulled out another snow white feather. Exactly the same as the one Aya-chan was holding.
Omi blinked, then shook his head. What's with feathers today? He didn't bother to think about the newfound white sheet and opened back up the clipboard, trying to find out about the number of men they would be fighting against. He stopped at the page of the drawn angel and couldn't help but smile, and then, the smiled was wiped off of his face and turned into a feeling of ice, coldness, and fear.
On that sheet of paper, on the very right edge was the drawing of Ken-angel, everything else was the same. But now, one of Ken's wings only has three feathers, and the whole picture was dripping wet with a red liquid.
Blood.