My first fic!!! And I'm nervous about it, so I babble alot before and
after.
Title: Steel runs in the blood
Author: Dragonflyred7
Pairings: Youji/Aya later. (chapt3. Noooo, don't skip this part!!! It has action! Er…not *that* kind.)
Summary: When the Abyssinian is badly injured during a mission it's up to the other Aya (Yup, Aya-chan!) to keep the team together.
Rating and warnings: PG-13(Maybe?) For violence, angst, and language.
Spoilers: Many, but not necessarily overly correct: Aya(kun)'s real name and very likely everyone's pasts, Botan, Aya-chan's accident. Etc etc. List goes on indefinitely, but these are the spoilers I know I'll use in this part or plan to use later.
Status: In progress. But if you all hate it, I can drag it out back and shoot it in the head for you. It's a first fic. Be gentle. Also, I have a very bad track record for finishing things I start. *coughs*
Archive: Why would you ever want it? But if you do, e-mail me first and tell me where it is so I can go ooh and aah at it.
Thanks to: some person called Yen, who wrote the fic, `Aya's Scheme'.
Something Youji says in that inspired the title of this one. It all grew from there.
Disclaimer: I'm using Weiss and it's characters without permission. This story is written for fun only and I'm not making any money off of it. All characters and most of everything else belong to Koyasu Takehito and Project Weiss, and not, unfortunately, to me. (shed a
tear, everyone!)
K. I babble too much. Getting on with it.
########
steel runs in the blood
by dragonflyred7
scene 1: mission
A long, darkened hallway in a large corporate complex. Normal offices to the right and left. Nighttime. You could hardly see a thing in the clinging gloom. In fact, Ken kept looking down at his bugnuks to see if they were still visible or if the darkness was growing more complete. It was always a corporate building of some kind, these days. Always a file to download. Always nighttime. Always so dark you could barely see your own feet. And Youji always seemed to have his sunglasses on. How the hell did he see where he was going? What did he have? Sonar or something? At least that would explain the humming Ken had had to put up with for the past hour or so. He wondered idly if forcing Youji to shut up would cause the blonde to start bumping into things.
Considering the explosives they both carried, that might not be a good thing. Amusing, yes, definitely, but just as definitely *not* good. Almost as not good as the sudden cigarette Youji appeared to decide he couldn't live without. Ken sighed a little, under his breath. Why did they bother to sneak around in the dark when Youji insisted on igniting that telltale little flame? And why did he insist on it when both he and Ken were loaded down with what felt like the better portion of a ton of explosives.
"Balinese. Put in out." He hissed, leaning forward over Youji's shoulder to make sure the blonde had heard him.
"What for?" Youji raised an elegant eyebrow, a line of slightly deeper shadow in the pool of greyish gloom that was his face in this half- light. Did he actually have to point out *why*? Ken just gave him a *look*, copying Aya's tactic of getting people back in line. It didn't work very smoothly for Aya, not when dealing with Youji, anyway, and it didn't work at all for Ken. Youji just chuckled softly and took another long drag, the ember at the end of the thing glowing brightly in the darkness.
"You're gonna blow us up, Balinese, that's `what for'." Ken snapped, still keeping his voice down as he pulled out and inspected the blueprints Omi had printed out and marked. Even squinting, he could barely see the neat, tidy Xs Omi had made to indicate the most
effective points to blow. Support beams and such. Gas lines. The better to bring the house down with, my pretty. Ken smiled at the thought and pointed down the hall. Gas main just around the corner.
Youji paused to consider his cigarette, pulling it out from between his teeth to examine it before replacing it and inhaling deeply, a sigh. "Just another chip on the table, Ken." He replied, releasing smoke with every word, "It's all a gamble anyway, right?"
Ken could hear the smirk in his voice.
%%%
Finally they were in. Omi breathed a celebratory, "All right!!!" as the password screen disappeared to be replaced with lines and lines of filenames, racing down the screen as they were copied onto disk, the whirr and hum of the hard and disk drives filling the small, dark room.
Another office. Another crooked, sinister corporation who couldn't care less who why harmed so long as profit was high and kept rising. The soft sounds of a computer at work seemed to have become the sound track of his life. The play of the screen's bluish light on Aya's patient, waiting figure on guard just beyond the door its backdrop.
"C'mon, c'mon." Omi chanted, bouncing a bit restlessly in the chair when the download stopped for a second or two before resuming again. He knew they didn't have as much time on this one as they usually did. They had about twenty, thirty minutes to get it all done and get out. Ken and Youji were under orders to rig and set the explosives, then inform them. However long it took them to finish that task was exactly how long Omi had to get the files and leave. No more, no less. Probably not even a few second's leeway.
The file names kept racing down the screen, catching now and then as the hard drive whirred to catch up. Omi checked his watch. A few more minutes to clear this up and they could go. Line of text kept scrolling down the screen, too fast to read, but slow enough that Omi could catch a word here and there before the line disappeared off the bottom of the screen. He checked his watch again. His mind had started measuring the time by the beat of his heart and the random words.
Finance…lub-dub…lub-dub…test…lub-dub…report…lub-dub…15MB…lub-dub…. Check watch again. One minute down. Words kept scrolling. Aya shifted a little out there, tilting his head as to listen. Consumers…lub- dub…erase…lub-dub…file saved…lub-dub…. Check watch again.
He could hear the occasional burst of chatter over the comm when Ken and Youji were out of earshot of each other. The occasional joke or wisecrack. Not many though. Not as much tonight as on others. Everyone seemed in a pensive mood tonight. Even Aya, who usually hung aloof from the rest of the team's moods, was more silent than usual. He hadn't said so much as a word since leaving the car, and Omi was loath to bother him, much as he'd have liked some conversation to help ease the tension.
The hard drive whirred loudly and the message "30% complete" superimposed itself over the parading text. "We've got thirty, Abyssinian." Omi announced, his voice sounding louder in the velvet darkness than he'd intended it to. Even to himself it sounded like an
eerie hiss. The flicker of blue light against Aya's face as he nodded, the only indication that he'd even heard.
Omi left the percentage window open. Announcing the progress of those numbers gave him an excuse to fill the silence with something other than machine sounds and his own breath, way, way too loud in his ears. How could Aya be so silent? So still? A raven-black statue in his trench, the almost-delicate paleness of his skin hiddenby the bulk of leather he encased himself in on these missions.
"Thirty five percent. It's going pretty quick. We should be able to get in all."
Another nod.
Omi shifted uncomfortably to get some feeling back into slowly numbing legs. He hoped he'd be able to be get out of here when the time came. Stupid to end up dead because your feet fell asleep. Nodding to that piece of internal logic, Omi got to his feet, pushing the chair back as he stood and shifting his weight from one foot to the other to get the circulation going. The sensation of pins and needles made him wince a little, but it faded soon enough with the constant movement. Omi sighed in relief. "Forty percent, Abyssinian."
%%%
Aya leaned against the doorway, eyes flickering up and down the hall, hands clenched on the hilt of his katana. He jumped a bit at the creaking sound of Omi's chair being relieved of its burden, but managed to stifle it.
There was nothing but silence in the hall. It made him a bit nervous. These buildings usually had air conditioning running round the clock, for the benefit of whichever ambitious employee might be putting in extra hours, a low background hum that was so common that its absence raised Aya's hackles. Unlike the others he didn't mind the routine of the latest missions. It just meant they all knew just what they had to do *before* they went in. The less guess work they had to work on the better. It made surprises a little easier to deal with, so long as they didn't allow themselves to be lured into a sense of security, didn't allow themselves to get cocky.
Omi hadn't yet started on his nervous habit of breaking into chatter, save to call out the advancement of progress bar. Aya didn't mind. For once he was actually glad for it, as impatient as the others to get done and go home. Somewhere across town, a comfortable bed and a safe home awaited them. He wanted done with this.
There was a time he might not have cared if a bullet took him through the head, if he was captured and subsequently killed. Not have cared if it hadn't meant an end to his sister's care. But it was too late for that now. Too late to give himself over to the darkness
beyond, to the what he imagined must be peace and cool, soothing darkness. To do so now would be to effectively admit to his dark life. If were to die, he knew the others would feel obliged to straighten Aya-chan out, to inform her as to what, exactly, her brother had become for her sake. So she could know and understand. Understand why he was not the gentle, shy boy he'd been when she went to sleep. Why she'd woken to find a cold eyed, cold- hearted young man wearing *her* name. So maybe she could forgive him for being unable to look her in the eyes anymore. So maybe she could forgive him for sullying her name.
He would be unworthy of that forgiveness as he was now. He knew he could never ask it of her. Yes, he would not deserve it, but her inevitable refusal to forgive him, to absolve him, would be too harsh a blow. Maybe in death he would be…. But to do so she would
have to know what he'd been doing these past years. For her to know *that*. It was a shame he thought he might not survive. He could not forgive himself *any* of the lives taken. Not even those most deserving of it. So how could she? She who had never known the pain of treading the gray area between right and wrong. Aya-chan had fallen asleep at the end of one dream, one life, and awoken at the start of another. She had not seen the blood and the pain of the transition period. She could not know, not ever, that it was blood that had paved his path and hers. Her brother's blood, and that of countless others.
"Heads up, Abyssinian." Youji's voice crackled in his ear. "I think we've got trouble."
It was maybe two seconds, maybe three, before Youji words were a reality instead of a mere warning. The appearance of the building's security reminded Aya of nothing so much as a pack of dogs closing in on the kill. They came dashing around the corner in a tight group, the lights flickering on ahead of them, heralding their approach. Aya scowled at that, blinking to adjust to the sudden illumination. Unless they were planning to blind him, it seemed rather a stupid move, giving prior warning of their approach. It gave him enough time to draw his katana and step away from the wall—to give himself room to move—before they got there.
"Abyssinian?" Omi, hearing the guards, or maybe just noticing the lights flickering on in the hall. Maybe he'd even noticed Aya's withdrawal from the doorway.
"Keep going, Bombay." His own reply was smooth and cool and even, unbroken, uncolored, by the adrenaline that rushed through his veins as soon as his katana was a rod of reflected lamp light in his hands, rather than cloaked steel. Omi's affirmative was a terse, tight nod, a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision before the
blade turned back to the screen.
"Fifty percent."
Good. Half more and they could go.
"Siberian, Balinese. Backup?" he barked, keying his comm, bringing his blade up into a defensive stance so he could remain near the door, protect Omi until the files were downloaded and they could fight their way out.
%%%
"Backup?!!" Youji shrieked, "What the fuck do you mean backup? Siberian, tell him just how capable we are at the moment of offering *backup*?"
"Uh, we're kinda busy, Abyssinian." Ken offered, hollered, actually, over the sounds of battle. "We've got our hands full, too."
"How's progress?" Youji asked, his wire whistling out to cut open a throat, another nameless, faceless adversary. Another nameless, faceless corpse, probably as much a victim as they were themselves. Youji didn't let himself think about the family this man was probably trying to support, didn't let himself wonder about whether he had any more sinister motive for defending this place. He knew that these faceless rent-a-cops were just trying to earn a penny or two, that they didn't and never would *deserve* to die. He shoved
the knowledge to the back of his mind, to drink into non-existence later, and contacted Aya.
"Abyssinian, we have to get out now. We need to get things moving if we still want fireworks."
"Fifty-five percent." Omi's voice, a soft background call coming to him through Aya's earpiece.
"Files or fireworks, Abyssinian?"
A pause. Then the soft breep and static that announced Aya getting back in touch.
"Fireworks. We'll need them to get out."
"Okay."
Youji winced as he pulled out the knelt to set the timer on the beat bundle of explosives, letting Ken cover him, cover what he was doing, as he did. The bomb was well hidden. These goons wouldn't know what hit them. Youji left the timer shoved it into the grate its wires trailed down, and bounded to his feet, to Ken's side, his wire a long strand of silver moonlight in gloved hands.
"Set to go, Abyssinian. Fifteen minutes to clear the area."
00:15:00
The sounds of Aya fighting outside drifted in through the open door along with the overflow of fluorescent lighting from the hall. Omi bounced a little, dancing from foot to foot in impatience. The damned download paused again for what seemed like several minutes, the light that indicated the hard drive busily at work a bright green spot against what was still only a vaguely cube shaped shadow, despite the extra illumination.
"Oh, come on you. Dammit." Omi swore softly at the machine, as if that would entice the thing to hurry.
There was a lull in the clashing noises, in the yells and shouting. Aya was back in the doorway, orchid color eyes a deep, rich plum in this darkness. The expression in them was questioning.
"Sixty percent and its stuck again, Abyssinian." Omi informed him softly, complaint evident in his young voice, he returned Aya's questioning look with one of his own, raised a brow in case Aya couldn't see him all that well, looking from light into darkness.
"Fifteen minutes." Aya told him, turned back to look out into the hall.
"Fifteen?" Omi squeaked. Aya gave him a look that plainly said, *you heard me the first time*. "But…weren't they supposed to contact us before they actually turned anything on?"
"They were. They had trouble." It was all Aya was willing to say on the subject, but it was enough. Omi understood what had happened.
"Hurry up, you!" He hissed at the computer. Behind him, Aya stepped back into the hall. The sound of approaching, heavily booted feet approaching drifted in. "Dammit!!"
%%%
"Balinese!! Stop slacking off and give me a hand!!!" Ken screamed at him, wading through the hordes of guards, splashing red to the left and right like a kid in a wading pool. Youji nodded and didn't. He had Omi's blueprints in hand, but it was hard to read them while trying not to get shot, stabbed or otherwise mutilated. Even with the lights on, he couldn't make heads or tails out of it. Wondered how Ken had, in the dark.
"Hey, Siberian! You read, I slice an' dice. You're making a mess." Ken paused long enough to glare over his shoulder.
"Forget the fucking prints, and help me out!!!" He yelled, bugnuks flashing before another wave of red splashed to the floor and across the wall. Messy weapon. He wondered how Ken ever got the blood out of his assassin gear. His own wire was tidy, neat, clean and graceful. It left it's hideaway in his trick watch with a musical whistle as he sent it out into the group of guards and goons, wrapping around a neck, sharp enough to slice through windpipes before he tugged it loose and sent it out again.
"Good enough for ya?" He asked Ken, stepping up beside the shorter brunette, the blueprints had dropped to the blood spattered floor, where they promptly proceeded to become red and soggy.
"Fuck you." Ken replied, temper high as it always was when he was fighting.
"I'd fuck you back." Youji replied smoothly, smirked as Ken choked on his retort.
"We need to get to Abyssinian and Bombay." He said instead, lashing out and catching someone across the face, sending their cap skittering across the floor, streaking red on the tiles. Youji winced in sympathy. They would probably need dental records to identify that guy, If Ken hadn't knocked his teeth out that is.
"Go!!!" Youji yelled, as his wire thinned the herd enough to create a narrow space, wide enough to fight through if he was following in the wake of Ken's bugnuks.
00:10:00
Sprinting down the halls. The sound of their booted feet no longer loud as gunshots, drowned out now by the echo of their pursuers, one hall and a turn behind them. Ken supposed it was just as good that he spent the weekends playing soccer. It made these infuriatingly frequent breakneck- speed evasions a little easier to handle.
Youji, however, wasn't quite as fast, though he somehow managed to stay in surprisingly good shape for someone who put so much effort into *not* making an effort. Even now, his eyelids half-drooped in a sleepy, amused expression. As if this were all a mildly entertaining joke he was taking part in, and not even all that active a part at that.
"Holy shit!" Ken cursed, skidding to a halt as they rounded a corner and found themselves face to face with a wall. Dead-end.
"You're the one who said to forget the blueprints." Youji helpfully pointed out, peering over his shades at the wall, as if it might be something other than what it appeared to be.
"I didn't say to chuck 'em!" Ken retorted, pivoting so he could put his back to the wall. He almost contacted Aya for help, but remembered in time that their partners were in a bit of a fix themselves and in no position to be running to anyone's rescue. Remembered, actually, that he and Youji were supposed to be the cavalry this time.
"Well, gee." Youji shot back, turning to face the direction the guards would come from, leaning casually against the wall and puffing on his cigarette. God, had he been smoking that thing the entire time they'd been running? "You could have been more specific."
"You could have used your brain!" Ken snapped, frustrated and exasperated. Youji just shrugged.
"We're dead!" Ken ranted, his voice rising even as his body remained poised and still.
"Nah." Youji smirked, kept smoking as the guards rounded the corner. "Hmm." He observed. "Took 'em a while this time." He made a show of checking his watch. Maybe checking how much time they had left, maybe checking his wire. Maybe really timing the guards. Ken wouldn't put it past him.
Still, Youji could get very serious very fast, and he did when they caught the dull flash of a gun's barrel. All jest and mock-playfulness falling away as green eyes scanned the hallway. Even the cigarette fell from his lips to the smooth tiles of the floor as he grabbed Ken's arms and half-hauled, half-threw him down the hall.
"What the hell are you doing, using me as a human shield?" Ken yelled, warily searching for firearms amongst the guards as Youji shoved him through a door, bounding after, hard on his heels. Ken looked around. "Where are we anyway?"
"Looks like a closet."
Sure enough, mops and brooms and leaned against one wall, buckets and dust pans piles in a corner, hemmed in by bottles of floor cleaner and Windex and polish. Another door opened out the other side of it, and Ken and Youji spilled through it at the same time that the guards shot out the lock of the first door. Youji spun and locked the second behind them, too. "Maybe they'll run out of bullets before they get to us." He suggested. Ken snorted.
"Sure." As he saw it, Youji was leading them from one bad spot to another. The two of them stood in the middle of a tiled room, one high window along the far wall granting a narrow glimpse of night sky. A bank of sinks lined one wall, and a row of stalls the other. Ken frowned at them, then at Youji, who appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be lighting another cigarette. "Now what?"
"It's a ladies' room." Youji, master of the obvious. Ken rolled his eyes.
"Great. We need to get out of here, Balinese!" He sighed, exasperated, heading for the door to the hall. He didn't like the way his booted feet slid on the tiles. Not much traction. A pretty crappy floor for a bathroom. He imagined how treacherous it would be when wet. "What about Bombay and—"
Before he could finish his sentence, a second gunshot rang out. "Fuck it!" They moved to flank the door to the closet, eyes darting to the exit. Maybe they could get out before the guards got in. Even as that thought ran through Ken's mind, the closet door was
shoved roughly open.
Youji strangled the first guard with his wire, blood spurting from the almost surgical cut across his throat. Ken gutted the second, bugnuks flashing, eyes flashing. An almost addictive adrenaline rush flooding his system. It made the killing almost a dance. Not as smooth as Youji's, not as graceful as Aya's, but a dance all the same.
Guards were flooding in from the other door now, too. Goddamit!! They had to get out of here. They had to get to Aya and Omi.
00:08:30
Omi fought the urge to run and assist Aya, still fighting in the hall, still covering for Omi while he got the remainder of the files. Not fighting to win, but to stall. Long enough to finish the job and get the hell out of there. The screen flashed.
Oh shit. Another hang up. The progress bar flashed the unchanging numbers at him. "Hurry up!!" He yelled at it, in a fit of childish pique. "What? You think I've got all day?" The urge to kick the damned thing in was starting to gnaw at him, fraying already strained nerves.
Ken liked the adrenaline rush of tight situations. Omi hated it. Hated the way it made his palms sweat, made his practiced fingers unsteady on computer keys. The way it sometimes made his unfailing accuracy a little wavery, the way it made his heart jump to his
throat and start beating wildly, cutting off breath and making him light headed. Most of all, he hated the fear that fed it.
Fear for himself, yes, that was always there, but he'd been in this line of work so long. As long as he could remember. There was nothing before the killing and the hunting. Nothing but brief flashes of half- glimpsed uncertain images which could have been imagined as well as remembered. He'd been in this so long that it wasn't the fear for himself that made his hands quake and his heart race. No. It was fear for red haired Aya, fighting on his own out in the hall. One slender sword and one gun against anything the guards could throw his way. For Ken and Youji, also probably in trouble now that they'd been detected. He hadn't heard from them, but knew they were reporting straight to Aya so they wouldn't distract him from his hacking. Heh. It was the not knowing that was distracting. He hoped they weren't too badly outnumbered.
It wouldn't have mattered if they called him, even if it could have impeded his work. He had nothing to do but wait now anyway. Just stand watch over the computer, in case someone tried to cancel out his hacking. Stand watch, and wait.
He had so clench his hands on the edge of the desk to keep from running to assist Aya.
%%%
There were a lot of them. There were always a lot of them. It was strange, actually, how they had managed to survive this long, always outnumbered, perpetually overpowered. It all sometimes seemed like some sick cosmic joke. The universe allowing them to live a little longer just so they could suffer through one more day of pain, of guilt, of *being*.
But of course, he couldn't believe in fate. Believing in fate meant believing that Aya-chan had deserved to be put into a coma, that his family had, on some level, deserved to die. He could believe that for himself. He could believe that, with his blood stained hands, for him death would be just. Less than just, because what he'd done, what he did, could not be paid for by one life. But not for *her* and not for *them*.
So the only thing left to believe was the darkness. Because that was palpable and tangible, and he'd lived with it every day for so long. Because in the dark, you couldn't see the turns and the pitfalls that the road ahead of you held, and that made sense, too, because he sure as hell hadn't seen this one. This was a pitfall that dropped away beneath his feet. One day he would stop falling. He wondered what would happen when he hit the bottom.
A bright ribbon of pain tore his mind back to the problem at hand. What was he doing? Drifting away like that in the middle of a fight? He knew better than that. He was stronger than that. That kind of stupidity that kind of weakness, was liable to get himself and Omi, and maybe Youji and Ken killed. That kind of weakness was unforgivable.
He turned the rage around. Directed his anger at himself on the guards pressing in, like ants at war. Too many of them, and more likely on the way. Like ants, faceless and uniform, every one nothing more than a cardboard cutout of a man. Each face blurring into the next. At least for a span of several minutes. Then a familiar voice was in his head.
Cardboard people. Cardboard doesn't bleed, Abyssinian. He tensed, startled by the words forming unbidden in his mind, sounding loud as a palpable voice in his ears. It left enough of an opening for someone to get off a shot. Hot pain flared in his shoulder. He hadn't even heard the gunshot.
I wonder if you even care anymore how many you kill? Remember the first? The first taste of blood on your blade?
Damn it!! No!! he wasn't going to listen to this. He was stronger than this!! This kind of weakness….
Or maybe you've killed so many, it doesn't really matter
anymore. The voice was quiet and thoughtful. Amused. He was furious at it. It made his attacks all the more savage. It just makes you so much more the killer.
Hn. Not. Listening. To. This.
And do you know why, Abyssinian?
Not. Listening…. I'm. Not. That. Weak.
He couldn't see the bodies falling away beneath his blade anymore. They were a blur of black and white uniforms and red. His attackers were a blur of movement. His katana moved on it's own, hundreds of hours of monotonous practice bringing each stroke down in time to save his life.
Do you know what makes you nothing but a killer now? Why
you're irredeemable?
Can't acknowledge this. He knew what it was like to have other's voices in his head. That damned German had been there before. Had practically taken up residence there in the days after the accident that had torn away his life. He'd been absent for a while. Strange how he'd occasionally missed that voice. It had drowned out the more painful voice of his conscience.
%%%
Omi looked up from the computer at the sound of a crash. Looked up in time to see Aya hit the floor and bounce back up like those blow-up punching bags for kids. The ones with the weight in the bottom. Of course, with Aya it wasn't a mindless, comical bobbing motion, but a graceful spring, coming quickly to a low crouch on the balls of his feet, one hand against the floor for balance, one clutching his katana. Then he was a flash of black and red, and was out of sight again.
This time Omi did get up. He knew enough not to go out into the hall, when his duties very clearly lay with the computer and the data they needed, but he did go far enough to get a slightly broader view of the hall. What he saw surprised him. He hadn't seen Aya fight
like that since Takatori, not with that almost blind rage that turned his calculated swings and swipes into nothing more than a series of furiously paced reflex actions. Graceful and smooth still, but the it was the grace of an angered, injured wild beast, instead of
Abyssinian's cold elegance.
"Abyssinian?" He yelled, loud enough to attract Aya's attention. Again, "Abyssinian!" Louder than before. More than sufficient. Enough to turn some of the guard's eyes to him. "ABYSSINIAN!!!" Nothing. For some reason or other, Aya wasn't responding.
"Abyssinian!!!"
00:07:00
"Shit." Youji checked his watch again, a quick glance down as he pulled his wire out in one smooth movement. "Shit."
"What?" Ken was backed to the wall beside him, a moment of reprieve, enough to pause for a couple of seconds to get some breath back.
"We're not gonna get to 'em in time. Not if we have to wade through this mess." He jerked a thumb in the direction of the bathroom they had just vacated and the pile of injured, unconscious and dead they had left behind.
"Yeah. And you can bet there'll be more where those came from." Ken's bugnuks made soft *snickt* sounds as he sprang them, then released, and sprang them again. How did he ever get the blood out of the mechanism? The blades slid out, *snickt*, in, and out again, *snickt*. Ken's nervous habit was driving him insane.
"Yeah. There would have to be, wouldn't there?" Youji sighed, running a gloved hand through his hair in tired frustration, not caring for a moment that he was leaving streaks of red in the honey blonde strands. He didn't like what he knew they were going to have
to do.
"We have to abort." Ken, saying it for him. Voice and expression so grim that Youji couldn't imagine him as the Kenken of the Koneko no Sumu Ie. He was only Siberian now. Being Siberian, because Ken would never have been able to say what he said next. "It's waste of time trying to fight our way all the way to 'em and them out again. We'll never make it." Ken pulled at his sleeve while he talked, getting them both moving down the hall again, a tired scuffle that slowly escalated into a run, "Abyssinian and Bombay will
have to manage to get out on their own."
Even trying so hard to be nothing but the killer, Ken couldn't keep the hurt out of his eyes and out of his voice as he suggested they leave their team mates. Youji didn't reply, concentrating on running, on keeping up with speedy Ken, on not yelling at him that that was a betrayal. He was the eldest. And since Aya wasn't here to make any decision, he had to be the one to nod. To make Ken's suggestion reality. Hell, if Aya had asked for backup, it was a sure thing they were in trouble. He didn't like leaving them to their own devices, either. The backup shouldn't ever abandon the main team. But they shouldn't run into near certain death, either. Not when it would accomplish anything. Going to Aya and Omi would leave him and Ken firmly in the center of the building, far from any exits, when the first of the bombs went off.
"Tell Abyssinian we're getting out of here. Abort."
Ken nodded and touched his earpiece. "Abyssinian. No time to party. Abort mission." He repeated the message, then blinked, still running, and looked up at Youji.
"He's not answering."
Youji tried. Nothing. There was the soft beep that indicatedhe was through, and the buzz and clash and yelling of fighting. But no Aya. "Abyssinian!! Abort mission!! Get your butts outta there."
Still no reply.
%%%
He was gone. Even in this state, he knew it. The voice was in his head, and while he wasn't weak--Wasn't. Weak. Goddammit!!!–-it seemed that the voice in his head, in his ears, was stronger.
He saw nothing now of his attackers, his adversaries, nothing of the fluorescent lit walls, and the blood soaked carpet. There was still the faint buzz of impact vibrating along his sword, but nothing more. The sword itself was nothing more than a concept in his mind, a ray of light that he clung to. A blade was power and his blade was the only power he'd ever had to fight back against this-this thing that had been a life. His life.
I thought you'd want to know. I thought you'd want to know
what makes you what you are now. Amused curiosity. Do you want to
know what you are now?
"NO!! Go away."
Distant clang of metal against metal. Faint buzz of a voice in his ear, overpowered by the louder, more seductive voice in his mind. A voice that surrounded him and pressed on all his senses. Great. All he needed was a second voice to torment him.
You do want to know. I'll tell you.
"Leave me alone. I need to—" He couldn't remember. The only need he knew was to get away from that voice in his ears, in his mind. "I need to—I have to—have to—"
Have to stop killing? Worse than a murderer. Murderers kill
for a reason. What's yours? What's your excuse?
"Excuse?"
She's awake. What's your excuse for still killing? You could
stop now. Could so easily stop.
His body was moving on it's own, freed of any restraint the mind might have had over it, killing without a thought, all reflexive action and survival instinct. No Aya. No Ran. Just Abyssinian.
00:06:40
Ken kept running, fighting the urge to ask Youji how much time they had left. How long they had to get out of here. He could hear the taller man puffing behind him. His own lungs were developing a twinge, not burning yet but getting there. All this fighting, all this running. He wondered how Youji's lungs felt, what with all the smoking and drinking and laying about the man did. Really, he should have been big as an icebox with his lifestyle, not scrawny as he was, all skin and bone and sinewy muscle. He sneaked a glance over his shoulder at the other.
Youji was red-faced with exertion and panting with the effort of keeping up with Ken, and the brunette felt a slight stab of pity, but wasn't willing to slow down just for Youji's comfort. He didn't want to slow down until they were out of the building and free to
flop onto the grass and die of oxygen debt. Oxygen. He looked again at Youji's puffing face and decided he didn't want to know about his lungs.
Instead, he reached for his comm again and contacted Omi. "Bombay."
"Yeah?" Omi's strained voice, sounding tense and angry and impatient.
"Shit!! Fucker." Ken swore as bullets thudded into the wall between his head and Youji's. He put on an extra burst of speed.
"Jeez!!!" Youji yelped, "Do they never quit?"
"What is it?" Omi asked, worried, yelling in his ear.
"We're not gonna get to you guys, Bombay. You've gotta abort and get out. We've got…?"
Youji checked. "Six minutes, seventeen seconds."
"Six sixteen."
"Ok. See you outside."
00:06:15
He waited an extra second or two. The file was almost done, anyway. Maybe it was Aya's stubbornness rubbing off on him. He didn't know. Still, it felt like a cowardly shame to abort two or three seconds early and lose all the information they'd come for. They had six
minutes. Enough time. Enough.
100%
Omi grinned. "Finally." Two or three seconds could last a lifetime.
He popped the disk out of the drive, and, clasping it firmly in one small hand, bounded to the door, beyond which Aya was still fighting with crazed efficiency, terribly deadly, terribly beautiful. Omi could imagine the specter of death looking something like Aya.
"Abort!" Omi yelled at him, but again got no response. "Abyssinian!!" Nothing. "ABYSSINIAN!!! ABORT!!! WE'VE GOTTA GO!!!"
"SHUT UP!!!" Aya's scream was choked. His body moving fluidly even though he sounded like he was being strangled.
"ABYSSINIAN!!! WE NEED TO ABORT!!!" Omi stepped into the hallway, prepared to drag Aya out of there even if it meant he would lose and arm in the process.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!!" A sword slash. Dangerously close to Omi's face. It made the young assassin rethink his plans.
"GO AWAY!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!" But…Aya wasn't screaming at him. Aya hadn't even looked in his direction. Aya was fighting like there was no tomorrow and who cared if there was? He would have killed Omi without a second thought if he got too close. Omi darted back into the office, back against the wall beside the door where he could handle anyone who might enter, be it guards or an insane Aya.
"Balinese. There's a problem with Abyssinian." Faint echo of having said those words in the past, after seeing Aya in a similar state of mind. It seemed so long ago, yet so recent. It was like they'd been Weiss forever. "I don't think I can get through to him."
00:06:00
"What? What the fuck are you taking about?" Youji was beyond pantingfor breath, words rasping out as he pounded down the halls after Ken, who was, maddeningly, looking like he was just enjoying another day in the park. The brunette tossed him a questioning look over one shoulder, then stopped and let Youji run past him. He heard the slash and gurgle behind him, then Ken was hard on his heels and catching up fast.
"What is it?" Ken yelled, as they both ducked around a corner and out of the line of fire. Youji hoped to any god that might be out there that they were really heading out of the building.
"Abyssinian."
"Is he hurt?"
"Don't know. He's gone Takatori-shi-Ne crazy."
Ken's eyes widened.
"Only more so. Bombay can't get through to him or to him without getting mangled."
"More so?" Ken sighed in disbelief. How he could while running for his dear life was beyond Youji, but he knew what Ken was thinking, and it was the right thing to do, however painful. Hmmm. Two betrayals in one day. One night, he corrected. Yup. They were definitely on a roll. He keyed his earpiece.
"Bombay. There's nothing you can do. Leave him if you have to. Just get out of there."
No reply.
"Do you hear me, Bombay? Every man for himself. Just get the hell out of there. Got it? Leave Abyssinian and get the hell out."
"But—"
"GET OUT BOMBAY!!! NOW!!!"
"Uh…O-Okay. Got it!" Omi spat it, sounding hurt and disgusted and like he was going to break into tears the moment it was prudent to do so. Well, better to lose one than both.
00:05:00
Fighting the way he was, with no though to anything but to kill—No, Omi corrected, no thought to anything—Aya was being slowly herded back, the remaining guards more than a match for his already injured, bleeding body. Somehow, though, some deep-rooted instinct still seemed to remind him that his job here was to protect Omi, because, while he could have backed away down the hall, he hadn't. Instead, he had backed towards the office, still covering Omi, though it served to do nothing but trap them both inside as he was forced back into the room.
It reminded Omi of the brawls Aya and Ken still sometimes had, the 'differences of opinion'. Blows and limbs everywhere, moving in a blur so that you didn't know who was landing more punches and who was getting the pulp beat out of them. Aya was no more than a flash of dark leather and blood red hair as he struggled to cover the doorway. The occasional flash of silver off the buckles of his trench as he darted one way, a brilliant slash of steel, and then he was darting back again, hilt wrapped in both gloved hands, shoulders hunched as if the weapon were too heavy for him. Looking like a predator or like
wounded, crazed prey. Omi couldn't decide which.
Omi shoved the disk into the inside pocket of his jacket and when his hand withdrew, darts fanned from his closed fist. The crossbow was more powerful, deadlier, but it took time to reload and this fight was too close and too fast for that. With a deep breath, he armed his other hand as well and stepped into the fray.
00:04:30
What had already been a maddeningly fast run for Youji had escalated into a desperate sprint when he checked his watch and realized they weren't anywhere near an exit yet. He called out again to Aya and Omi, heard Ken doing the same.
Aya still wasn't replying, still only the sounds of fighting came across. Actually, scratch that. He could hear Aya yelling something indiscernible, but he was fairly certain it wasn't directed at him, nor at Omi, by the sound of it. And it sure as hell wasn't 'shi-Ne'. What was wrong with the redhead *this* time? God, they'd all joked about Aya's sanity—behind his back—but to actually have it fall away like this, and during a mission….
At least Omi was answering. Loud, desperate yelling, broken by the sounds of fighting and dying and Aya in the background, loudly going insane. He couldn't make out Omi's words, not all of them, anyway, but from what he could gather, they were still in that office.
"Holy shit!!" He yelled, frustrated, surprised that his lungs could still support that outburst without exploding messily all over the place. If he got out of this, he swore he'd take up jogging and exercise and quit smoking. "They're still up there!!!"
Ken nodded grimly and kept running. Feet pounding the floor.
"We can't so anything, Balinese." He panted, feet skittering on tile as he rounded a corner. Youji checked his watch and followed, kept yelling at Omi to get out.
00:04:00
It was dark. He wondered that a place could be so utterly lacking in light. Wondered that he could still see himself when he looked down at his hands, his clothes. His assassin's gear. Dark trench and dark gloves clearly visible even the complete dark, even without the
faintest source of light.
It was familiar here. He'd been here before, many times, after his family's death. Many times even after Takatori, the murderer, was dead. Not since Aya had woken, though. Not since his sister had opened her eyes. He thought that her light had banished this dark for good. Strange. So much that was strange.
Strange that it was still here. Strange that it had survived. Strange that he hadn't known better. hadn't known better when all he's had to do was reach inside and feel that hard knot of pain in his chest. Strange that he hadn't even thought to do that since she'd
woken.
Strange that you kept killing, even after she was well and out of hospital. Strange that you kept it up even after you didn't need to anymore. That's the difference between a killer and a murderer, Ran-chan.
He looked up from his dark gloves and cast about the place, looking for the speaker. Whoever it was wasn't here. Just a disembodied voice and himself. The voice echoed a little bit more here than it had before, the sound just a touch muted by the overly loud beat of his heart in his chest. He was lightheaded from the rush of blood, nauseous. He needed to stop. No. He wasn't that weak. He could find his way out of here.
Really? Seems to me, your ways out have never been the right ones. Stepping further from the light with each fork in the road.
"Go away." The was no longer any strength to scream at the voice as he sank down to his knees, his legs bonelessly giving way beneath him. "Go away." There was laughter.
You've hated a murderer, Ran-chan, Aya, but at least murderers kill for a reason. Killers kill for no reason. Which are you, Abyssinian?
"Leave me alone. Go away."
And then it did and he was alone. Alone and with no way out. Trapped in the dark.
Alone.
%%%
Omi was tired. Dead tired. He wasn't built nor armed for this kind of fight. Always, well, almost always, he was Weiss's tactician and sniper, rarely getting as close as Ken and Aya and Youji did. And now he was practically being forced to use his darts as Ken did his bugnuks. He couldn't afford to lose them and be left unarmed. He had to chase them up when he could, dodging and diving and rolling to pluck one out of a dead throat and fling it into a living one. Soon, though, he'd have to turn to his crossbow. he was losing darts anyway.
"Abyssinian!" He yelled suddenly, darting forward. A gap in the fighting. He had seen it. He needed Aya's help to battle through it, however. He was too small to be much good save to offer cover fire.
He was already running for it when he realized Aya wasn't. Aya was still fighting. Aya was ignoring him and their chance--possibly their only chance--at getting out of here alive.
"Abyssinian!!!" Omi's cry was almost a plea, almost a sob. God, let Aya get it together enough for us to survive and get out!
And then the gap was gone, Aya still blind and deaf to the world.
00:03:30
He was thinking of sleep. Thinking of getting back to their apartment so he could curl up in the nearest available corner and pass out. He knew it was dangerous to be thinking such things now, but he couldn't really help it. He was tired, his pre-growth-spurt body not used to fighting grown men practically hand to hand. He glanced at Aya, thinking that this fighting part was supposed to be his job.
He only caught a flash of bright red hair, and then Aya was gone, swallowed under guards who were now free to get at him. Omi tossed his darts up, getting two guards in the face as he dove amongst legs and into a roll, coming up beside Aya. Aya's gun. He always carried that .22. His only hope now was Aya's gun.
00:03:15
"Balinese, I think that's an exit."
"Looks like and exit to me."
"Beautiful."
It would have been even more beautiful if Ken hadn't insisted on accelerating yet again. Just how many speeds did little Kenken have, anyway? Youji had known cars that didn't accelerate this much.
"Bombay!!" He tried again. Nothing now. "Abyssinian?" Even though that was a lost cause, he had to try it. "Abyssinian?"
Ken was echoing him, desperation in his voice. Tears in his voice now that they were so close to an out. The last fucking thing he needed was an emotional Kenken instead of a deadly Siberian. "Bombay!!" Ken was pissed at Aya for losing it. He wasn't even trying Aya's comm. "Bombay!!!"
00:03:00
Outside.
At last he could stop running, could look around and realize that, somewhere along the way, they had lost their pursuers. Guess that was a good thing. He wanted to kill something right now, but they'd been so preoccupied with Aya and Omi's safety that they'd
likely have taken a good number of bullets in the back had anyone been tailing them closely enough.
"They're still in there, aren't they?" he asked, anger in his voice. Anger at Aya. Anger at Youji. Aya was the leader. He was fucking responsible for them. He was god damned fucking responsible for Omi. And to let whatever it was that had taken him over take him over right there, in the middle of everything going to shit…. It was unforgivable. And Youji! Youji who'd told them to run and leave their teammates…. He knew he'd suggested it himself in the first place, but Youji had actually turned it into a decision.
"Yeah." Youji's voice was quiet as they moved to get away from the building, to be safe when it finally blew. "Yeah, I think they're still in there."
"You think? You think? How do we know where they are? If the building goes do we look for them?"
"When." Youji corrected.
"Huh?"
"When the building goes." He lit a cigarette.
"Fuck. When the building goes, yeah." Ken snapped sarcastically, eyeballing Youji as he inhaled deeply.
"What are you bitching at me for?" Youji sounded peeved. "Why don't you try to comm them again, or something. It'll keep your mind off the PMS. Jeez." Youji stalked away into the darkness, Ken following after a hard look at lighted windows, looking for any movement, any sign of the other two.
00:02:00
"They're still not out." Youji said, staring to twitch with a bad case of the nerves. "They're still not out."
"Yeah. Still no word, either." Ken paced frantically, back and forth in front of dimmed dead headlights, Aya's Porsche purring softly in the darkness in case they needed to make a quick getaway.
Youji took another long drag, glancing up at the building. The upper stories were clearly visible over the trees, the grounds displayed in a series of windows across the laptop screen in the back seat. Ken kept pacing back to look at it, then pacing away to look at the building. Driving himself and Youji insane.
"Have they got tracers?" He asked, for what must be the millionth time.
"No." Youji replied for the millionth time. "It was supposed to be an easy job. We didn't bother, remember? That's why I hate routine jobs. Routine makes you lazy."
"God, what are we gonna do?" Ken was looking up at the stars as he said, so Youji wasn't sure exactly who was being addressed. If Ken was just cursing, or if he was really trying to contact a deity who seemed to take a perverse pleasure in screwing them all over. Repeatedly. "How are we gonna find them in that mess? Do we even look for them?"
Youji didn't know how to answer that. He didn't wasn't to ask why Ken thought there's be anything left to look for.
00:01:00
"I don't think there'll be anything left to look for." Youji said, looking up at the building.
"Huh?"
"Or if there is, I doubt you'll wanna bring it home with you."
"Ewww." Ken made a face, then looked green. "Shut up, Youji!!" Codenames forgotten in that fit of anger and fear. "They're gonna be okay. I know they will be. I'll fucking kill Ay—Abyssinian if they're not."
00:00:30
"They're dead, aren't they? They're gonna die, if they aren't dead already." Ken cried, reality hitting him with the force of a blow. He crumpled, near enough to the car that he could lean back against a tire and stare up at the building. "Anything on screen?"
Youji looked. "No. Nothing."
"Shit. They're not gonna make it. We might as well give up. We might as well go home."
00:00:07
"WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GUYS?" Ken screamed into the comm. "GET YOUR BUTTS OUTTA THERE NOW!!! ANSWER ME DAMMIT!!! GOD, FUCKIN' ANSWER ME!!!" He sounded do close to tears that Youji didn't know whether to start screaming himself or just smack Ken before he got hysterical. On second thought, he probably was hysterical already.
"Keep it down. We're exactly not safe out here."
"Damn it…" Ken whispered, "Answer, Bombay…Abyssinian."
00:00:05
"IF YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES DON'T SHOW UP IN TWO SECONDS, I'M GONNA—" Youji screamed into the comm, "FUCK, I DUNNO WHAT I'M GONNA DO, BUT AIN'T GONNA BE PRETTY!!! YOU HEAR ME?!! FUCKING ANSWER, YOU CRAZY SON OF A BITCH!!!"
The lights in the building flickered off. The squares showing the yard still online, but cloaked in darkness.
"No." They both whispered at the same time.
00:00:04
The first explosion blew out all the building's windows. That must have been the one on the generator, judging by how the lights cut.
00:00:03
Guilt ran through both of them. Four seconds early. Who'd made the mistake? Between Ken's bickering and Youji's smoking and retorts, had they been paying attention to what they'd been doing? Did it matter? Would an extra three or four seconds have seen Aya and Omi alive and safe?
Ken was back on his feet, not knowing when he'd risen, "OMIIIII!!!…"
00:00:02
The second explosion rocked the building and the ground beneath their feet. Fire leapt out of the upper stories, licking at the night sky. The ones rigged to take out the executive offices near the top, where they had done most of their scrounging tonight. Best and surest way to hide any tracks they might have inadvertently left behind.
Just one left. The gas main. The one that would bring the whole thing down.
00:00:01
"NO!!!" Youji bolted out of the car and towards the building, stopping only when Ken grabbed him and muscled him down onto the damp grass. "NO!! DAMN IT, NO!!!" His cries may as well have been sobs, his cigarette still somehow managing to cling between his teeth as he screamed. "NO, OMIII!!! AYAAA!!! God, no…." The absurd thought flashed across his mind that this was happening because he'd broken his promise. He'd promised to stop smoking if he and Ken got out alive….
00:00:00
The last of the explosions blew debris and flames high into the night sky. Flakes of plaster and sparks drifted over Youji and Ken, ashes a ludicrous clean white on their dark clothes. The windows on the computer screen echoed the sky, darkness broken by white specks, static instead of ash. The cameras blown out or melted down.
There was still no sign of Aya or Omi.
TBC…
^^;
########
I was gonna end this with just the clock reading 00:00:00, but
then I thought that was a bit confusing. It looked weird, too. There.
I hope I got all the italics fixed and all the times centered and
evrything. If something doesn't make sense...that's cause I'm baka. I
think there are a few contradictions in there, like the hallway Aya's
fighting in. I think I mentioned it as tiled, then as carpeted.
COuldn't find the tiled reference back, though. If you find any
others, or anyone is OOC, or you just hate it all please let me know,
so I can change/fix it. Onegai?
after.
Title: Steel runs in the blood
Author: Dragonflyred7
Pairings: Youji/Aya later. (chapt3. Noooo, don't skip this part!!! It has action! Er…not *that* kind.)
Summary: When the Abyssinian is badly injured during a mission it's up to the other Aya (Yup, Aya-chan!) to keep the team together.
Rating and warnings: PG-13(Maybe?) For violence, angst, and language.
Spoilers: Many, but not necessarily overly correct: Aya(kun)'s real name and very likely everyone's pasts, Botan, Aya-chan's accident. Etc etc. List goes on indefinitely, but these are the spoilers I know I'll use in this part or plan to use later.
Status: In progress. But if you all hate it, I can drag it out back and shoot it in the head for you. It's a first fic. Be gentle. Also, I have a very bad track record for finishing things I start. *coughs*
Archive: Why would you ever want it? But if you do, e-mail me first and tell me where it is so I can go ooh and aah at it.
Thanks to: some person called Yen, who wrote the fic, `Aya's Scheme'.
Something Youji says in that inspired the title of this one. It all grew from there.
Disclaimer: I'm using Weiss and it's characters without permission. This story is written for fun only and I'm not making any money off of it. All characters and most of everything else belong to Koyasu Takehito and Project Weiss, and not, unfortunately, to me. (shed a
tear, everyone!)
K. I babble too much. Getting on with it.
########
steel runs in the blood
by dragonflyred7
scene 1: mission
A long, darkened hallway in a large corporate complex. Normal offices to the right and left. Nighttime. You could hardly see a thing in the clinging gloom. In fact, Ken kept looking down at his bugnuks to see if they were still visible or if the darkness was growing more complete. It was always a corporate building of some kind, these days. Always a file to download. Always nighttime. Always so dark you could barely see your own feet. And Youji always seemed to have his sunglasses on. How the hell did he see where he was going? What did he have? Sonar or something? At least that would explain the humming Ken had had to put up with for the past hour or so. He wondered idly if forcing Youji to shut up would cause the blonde to start bumping into things.
Considering the explosives they both carried, that might not be a good thing. Amusing, yes, definitely, but just as definitely *not* good. Almost as not good as the sudden cigarette Youji appeared to decide he couldn't live without. Ken sighed a little, under his breath. Why did they bother to sneak around in the dark when Youji insisted on igniting that telltale little flame? And why did he insist on it when both he and Ken were loaded down with what felt like the better portion of a ton of explosives.
"Balinese. Put in out." He hissed, leaning forward over Youji's shoulder to make sure the blonde had heard him.
"What for?" Youji raised an elegant eyebrow, a line of slightly deeper shadow in the pool of greyish gloom that was his face in this half- light. Did he actually have to point out *why*? Ken just gave him a *look*, copying Aya's tactic of getting people back in line. It didn't work very smoothly for Aya, not when dealing with Youji, anyway, and it didn't work at all for Ken. Youji just chuckled softly and took another long drag, the ember at the end of the thing glowing brightly in the darkness.
"You're gonna blow us up, Balinese, that's `what for'." Ken snapped, still keeping his voice down as he pulled out and inspected the blueprints Omi had printed out and marked. Even squinting, he could barely see the neat, tidy Xs Omi had made to indicate the most
effective points to blow. Support beams and such. Gas lines. The better to bring the house down with, my pretty. Ken smiled at the thought and pointed down the hall. Gas main just around the corner.
Youji paused to consider his cigarette, pulling it out from between his teeth to examine it before replacing it and inhaling deeply, a sigh. "Just another chip on the table, Ken." He replied, releasing smoke with every word, "It's all a gamble anyway, right?"
Ken could hear the smirk in his voice.
%%%
Finally they were in. Omi breathed a celebratory, "All right!!!" as the password screen disappeared to be replaced with lines and lines of filenames, racing down the screen as they were copied onto disk, the whirr and hum of the hard and disk drives filling the small, dark room.
Another office. Another crooked, sinister corporation who couldn't care less who why harmed so long as profit was high and kept rising. The soft sounds of a computer at work seemed to have become the sound track of his life. The play of the screen's bluish light on Aya's patient, waiting figure on guard just beyond the door its backdrop.
"C'mon, c'mon." Omi chanted, bouncing a bit restlessly in the chair when the download stopped for a second or two before resuming again. He knew they didn't have as much time on this one as they usually did. They had about twenty, thirty minutes to get it all done and get out. Ken and Youji were under orders to rig and set the explosives, then inform them. However long it took them to finish that task was exactly how long Omi had to get the files and leave. No more, no less. Probably not even a few second's leeway.
The file names kept racing down the screen, catching now and then as the hard drive whirred to catch up. Omi checked his watch. A few more minutes to clear this up and they could go. Line of text kept scrolling down the screen, too fast to read, but slow enough that Omi could catch a word here and there before the line disappeared off the bottom of the screen. He checked his watch again. His mind had started measuring the time by the beat of his heart and the random words.
Finance…lub-dub…lub-dub…test…lub-dub…report…lub-dub…15MB…lub-dub…. Check watch again. One minute down. Words kept scrolling. Aya shifted a little out there, tilting his head as to listen. Consumers…lub- dub…erase…lub-dub…file saved…lub-dub…. Check watch again.
He could hear the occasional burst of chatter over the comm when Ken and Youji were out of earshot of each other. The occasional joke or wisecrack. Not many though. Not as much tonight as on others. Everyone seemed in a pensive mood tonight. Even Aya, who usually hung aloof from the rest of the team's moods, was more silent than usual. He hadn't said so much as a word since leaving the car, and Omi was loath to bother him, much as he'd have liked some conversation to help ease the tension.
The hard drive whirred loudly and the message "30% complete" superimposed itself over the parading text. "We've got thirty, Abyssinian." Omi announced, his voice sounding louder in the velvet darkness than he'd intended it to. Even to himself it sounded like an
eerie hiss. The flicker of blue light against Aya's face as he nodded, the only indication that he'd even heard.
Omi left the percentage window open. Announcing the progress of those numbers gave him an excuse to fill the silence with something other than machine sounds and his own breath, way, way too loud in his ears. How could Aya be so silent? So still? A raven-black statue in his trench, the almost-delicate paleness of his skin hiddenby the bulk of leather he encased himself in on these missions.
"Thirty five percent. It's going pretty quick. We should be able to get in all."
Another nod.
Omi shifted uncomfortably to get some feeling back into slowly numbing legs. He hoped he'd be able to be get out of here when the time came. Stupid to end up dead because your feet fell asleep. Nodding to that piece of internal logic, Omi got to his feet, pushing the chair back as he stood and shifting his weight from one foot to the other to get the circulation going. The sensation of pins and needles made him wince a little, but it faded soon enough with the constant movement. Omi sighed in relief. "Forty percent, Abyssinian."
%%%
Aya leaned against the doorway, eyes flickering up and down the hall, hands clenched on the hilt of his katana. He jumped a bit at the creaking sound of Omi's chair being relieved of its burden, but managed to stifle it.
There was nothing but silence in the hall. It made him a bit nervous. These buildings usually had air conditioning running round the clock, for the benefit of whichever ambitious employee might be putting in extra hours, a low background hum that was so common that its absence raised Aya's hackles. Unlike the others he didn't mind the routine of the latest missions. It just meant they all knew just what they had to do *before* they went in. The less guess work they had to work on the better. It made surprises a little easier to deal with, so long as they didn't allow themselves to be lured into a sense of security, didn't allow themselves to get cocky.
Omi hadn't yet started on his nervous habit of breaking into chatter, save to call out the advancement of progress bar. Aya didn't mind. For once he was actually glad for it, as impatient as the others to get done and go home. Somewhere across town, a comfortable bed and a safe home awaited them. He wanted done with this.
There was a time he might not have cared if a bullet took him through the head, if he was captured and subsequently killed. Not have cared if it hadn't meant an end to his sister's care. But it was too late for that now. Too late to give himself over to the darkness
beyond, to the what he imagined must be peace and cool, soothing darkness. To do so now would be to effectively admit to his dark life. If were to die, he knew the others would feel obliged to straighten Aya-chan out, to inform her as to what, exactly, her brother had become for her sake. So she could know and understand. Understand why he was not the gentle, shy boy he'd been when she went to sleep. Why she'd woken to find a cold eyed, cold- hearted young man wearing *her* name. So maybe she could forgive him for being unable to look her in the eyes anymore. So maybe she could forgive him for sullying her name.
He would be unworthy of that forgiveness as he was now. He knew he could never ask it of her. Yes, he would not deserve it, but her inevitable refusal to forgive him, to absolve him, would be too harsh a blow. Maybe in death he would be…. But to do so she would
have to know what he'd been doing these past years. For her to know *that*. It was a shame he thought he might not survive. He could not forgive himself *any* of the lives taken. Not even those most deserving of it. So how could she? She who had never known the pain of treading the gray area between right and wrong. Aya-chan had fallen asleep at the end of one dream, one life, and awoken at the start of another. She had not seen the blood and the pain of the transition period. She could not know, not ever, that it was blood that had paved his path and hers. Her brother's blood, and that of countless others.
"Heads up, Abyssinian." Youji's voice crackled in his ear. "I think we've got trouble."
It was maybe two seconds, maybe three, before Youji words were a reality instead of a mere warning. The appearance of the building's security reminded Aya of nothing so much as a pack of dogs closing in on the kill. They came dashing around the corner in a tight group, the lights flickering on ahead of them, heralding their approach. Aya scowled at that, blinking to adjust to the sudden illumination. Unless they were planning to blind him, it seemed rather a stupid move, giving prior warning of their approach. It gave him enough time to draw his katana and step away from the wall—to give himself room to move—before they got there.
"Abyssinian?" Omi, hearing the guards, or maybe just noticing the lights flickering on in the hall. Maybe he'd even noticed Aya's withdrawal from the doorway.
"Keep going, Bombay." His own reply was smooth and cool and even, unbroken, uncolored, by the adrenaline that rushed through his veins as soon as his katana was a rod of reflected lamp light in his hands, rather than cloaked steel. Omi's affirmative was a terse, tight nod, a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision before the
blade turned back to the screen.
"Fifty percent."
Good. Half more and they could go.
"Siberian, Balinese. Backup?" he barked, keying his comm, bringing his blade up into a defensive stance so he could remain near the door, protect Omi until the files were downloaded and they could fight their way out.
%%%
"Backup?!!" Youji shrieked, "What the fuck do you mean backup? Siberian, tell him just how capable we are at the moment of offering *backup*?"
"Uh, we're kinda busy, Abyssinian." Ken offered, hollered, actually, over the sounds of battle. "We've got our hands full, too."
"How's progress?" Youji asked, his wire whistling out to cut open a throat, another nameless, faceless adversary. Another nameless, faceless corpse, probably as much a victim as they were themselves. Youji didn't let himself think about the family this man was probably trying to support, didn't let himself wonder about whether he had any more sinister motive for defending this place. He knew that these faceless rent-a-cops were just trying to earn a penny or two, that they didn't and never would *deserve* to die. He shoved
the knowledge to the back of his mind, to drink into non-existence later, and contacted Aya.
"Abyssinian, we have to get out now. We need to get things moving if we still want fireworks."
"Fifty-five percent." Omi's voice, a soft background call coming to him through Aya's earpiece.
"Files or fireworks, Abyssinian?"
A pause. Then the soft breep and static that announced Aya getting back in touch.
"Fireworks. We'll need them to get out."
"Okay."
Youji winced as he pulled out the knelt to set the timer on the beat bundle of explosives, letting Ken cover him, cover what he was doing, as he did. The bomb was well hidden. These goons wouldn't know what hit them. Youji left the timer shoved it into the grate its wires trailed down, and bounded to his feet, to Ken's side, his wire a long strand of silver moonlight in gloved hands.
"Set to go, Abyssinian. Fifteen minutes to clear the area."
00:15:00
The sounds of Aya fighting outside drifted in through the open door along with the overflow of fluorescent lighting from the hall. Omi bounced a little, dancing from foot to foot in impatience. The damned download paused again for what seemed like several minutes, the light that indicated the hard drive busily at work a bright green spot against what was still only a vaguely cube shaped shadow, despite the extra illumination.
"Oh, come on you. Dammit." Omi swore softly at the machine, as if that would entice the thing to hurry.
There was a lull in the clashing noises, in the yells and shouting. Aya was back in the doorway, orchid color eyes a deep, rich plum in this darkness. The expression in them was questioning.
"Sixty percent and its stuck again, Abyssinian." Omi informed him softly, complaint evident in his young voice, he returned Aya's questioning look with one of his own, raised a brow in case Aya couldn't see him all that well, looking from light into darkness.
"Fifteen minutes." Aya told him, turned back to look out into the hall.
"Fifteen?" Omi squeaked. Aya gave him a look that plainly said, *you heard me the first time*. "But…weren't they supposed to contact us before they actually turned anything on?"
"They were. They had trouble." It was all Aya was willing to say on the subject, but it was enough. Omi understood what had happened.
"Hurry up, you!" He hissed at the computer. Behind him, Aya stepped back into the hall. The sound of approaching, heavily booted feet approaching drifted in. "Dammit!!"
%%%
"Balinese!! Stop slacking off and give me a hand!!!" Ken screamed at him, wading through the hordes of guards, splashing red to the left and right like a kid in a wading pool. Youji nodded and didn't. He had Omi's blueprints in hand, but it was hard to read them while trying not to get shot, stabbed or otherwise mutilated. Even with the lights on, he couldn't make heads or tails out of it. Wondered how Ken had, in the dark.
"Hey, Siberian! You read, I slice an' dice. You're making a mess." Ken paused long enough to glare over his shoulder.
"Forget the fucking prints, and help me out!!!" He yelled, bugnuks flashing before another wave of red splashed to the floor and across the wall. Messy weapon. He wondered how Ken ever got the blood out of his assassin gear. His own wire was tidy, neat, clean and graceful. It left it's hideaway in his trick watch with a musical whistle as he sent it out into the group of guards and goons, wrapping around a neck, sharp enough to slice through windpipes before he tugged it loose and sent it out again.
"Good enough for ya?" He asked Ken, stepping up beside the shorter brunette, the blueprints had dropped to the blood spattered floor, where they promptly proceeded to become red and soggy.
"Fuck you." Ken replied, temper high as it always was when he was fighting.
"I'd fuck you back." Youji replied smoothly, smirked as Ken choked on his retort.
"We need to get to Abyssinian and Bombay." He said instead, lashing out and catching someone across the face, sending their cap skittering across the floor, streaking red on the tiles. Youji winced in sympathy. They would probably need dental records to identify that guy, If Ken hadn't knocked his teeth out that is.
"Go!!!" Youji yelled, as his wire thinned the herd enough to create a narrow space, wide enough to fight through if he was following in the wake of Ken's bugnuks.
00:10:00
Sprinting down the halls. The sound of their booted feet no longer loud as gunshots, drowned out now by the echo of their pursuers, one hall and a turn behind them. Ken supposed it was just as good that he spent the weekends playing soccer. It made these infuriatingly frequent breakneck- speed evasions a little easier to handle.
Youji, however, wasn't quite as fast, though he somehow managed to stay in surprisingly good shape for someone who put so much effort into *not* making an effort. Even now, his eyelids half-drooped in a sleepy, amused expression. As if this were all a mildly entertaining joke he was taking part in, and not even all that active a part at that.
"Holy shit!" Ken cursed, skidding to a halt as they rounded a corner and found themselves face to face with a wall. Dead-end.
"You're the one who said to forget the blueprints." Youji helpfully pointed out, peering over his shades at the wall, as if it might be something other than what it appeared to be.
"I didn't say to chuck 'em!" Ken retorted, pivoting so he could put his back to the wall. He almost contacted Aya for help, but remembered in time that their partners were in a bit of a fix themselves and in no position to be running to anyone's rescue. Remembered, actually, that he and Youji were supposed to be the cavalry this time.
"Well, gee." Youji shot back, turning to face the direction the guards would come from, leaning casually against the wall and puffing on his cigarette. God, had he been smoking that thing the entire time they'd been running? "You could have been more specific."
"You could have used your brain!" Ken snapped, frustrated and exasperated. Youji just shrugged.
"We're dead!" Ken ranted, his voice rising even as his body remained poised and still.
"Nah." Youji smirked, kept smoking as the guards rounded the corner. "Hmm." He observed. "Took 'em a while this time." He made a show of checking his watch. Maybe checking how much time they had left, maybe checking his wire. Maybe really timing the guards. Ken wouldn't put it past him.
Still, Youji could get very serious very fast, and he did when they caught the dull flash of a gun's barrel. All jest and mock-playfulness falling away as green eyes scanned the hallway. Even the cigarette fell from his lips to the smooth tiles of the floor as he grabbed Ken's arms and half-hauled, half-threw him down the hall.
"What the hell are you doing, using me as a human shield?" Ken yelled, warily searching for firearms amongst the guards as Youji shoved him through a door, bounding after, hard on his heels. Ken looked around. "Where are we anyway?"
"Looks like a closet."
Sure enough, mops and brooms and leaned against one wall, buckets and dust pans piles in a corner, hemmed in by bottles of floor cleaner and Windex and polish. Another door opened out the other side of it, and Ken and Youji spilled through it at the same time that the guards shot out the lock of the first door. Youji spun and locked the second behind them, too. "Maybe they'll run out of bullets before they get to us." He suggested. Ken snorted.
"Sure." As he saw it, Youji was leading them from one bad spot to another. The two of them stood in the middle of a tiled room, one high window along the far wall granting a narrow glimpse of night sky. A bank of sinks lined one wall, and a row of stalls the other. Ken frowned at them, then at Youji, who appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be lighting another cigarette. "Now what?"
"It's a ladies' room." Youji, master of the obvious. Ken rolled his eyes.
"Great. We need to get out of here, Balinese!" He sighed, exasperated, heading for the door to the hall. He didn't like the way his booted feet slid on the tiles. Not much traction. A pretty crappy floor for a bathroom. He imagined how treacherous it would be when wet. "What about Bombay and—"
Before he could finish his sentence, a second gunshot rang out. "Fuck it!" They moved to flank the door to the closet, eyes darting to the exit. Maybe they could get out before the guards got in. Even as that thought ran through Ken's mind, the closet door was
shoved roughly open.
Youji strangled the first guard with his wire, blood spurting from the almost surgical cut across his throat. Ken gutted the second, bugnuks flashing, eyes flashing. An almost addictive adrenaline rush flooding his system. It made the killing almost a dance. Not as smooth as Youji's, not as graceful as Aya's, but a dance all the same.
Guards were flooding in from the other door now, too. Goddamit!! They had to get out of here. They had to get to Aya and Omi.
00:08:30
Omi fought the urge to run and assist Aya, still fighting in the hall, still covering for Omi while he got the remainder of the files. Not fighting to win, but to stall. Long enough to finish the job and get the hell out of there. The screen flashed.
Oh shit. Another hang up. The progress bar flashed the unchanging numbers at him. "Hurry up!!" He yelled at it, in a fit of childish pique. "What? You think I've got all day?" The urge to kick the damned thing in was starting to gnaw at him, fraying already strained nerves.
Ken liked the adrenaline rush of tight situations. Omi hated it. Hated the way it made his palms sweat, made his practiced fingers unsteady on computer keys. The way it sometimes made his unfailing accuracy a little wavery, the way it made his heart jump to his
throat and start beating wildly, cutting off breath and making him light headed. Most of all, he hated the fear that fed it.
Fear for himself, yes, that was always there, but he'd been in this line of work so long. As long as he could remember. There was nothing before the killing and the hunting. Nothing but brief flashes of half- glimpsed uncertain images which could have been imagined as well as remembered. He'd been in this so long that it wasn't the fear for himself that made his hands quake and his heart race. No. It was fear for red haired Aya, fighting on his own out in the hall. One slender sword and one gun against anything the guards could throw his way. For Ken and Youji, also probably in trouble now that they'd been detected. He hadn't heard from them, but knew they were reporting straight to Aya so they wouldn't distract him from his hacking. Heh. It was the not knowing that was distracting. He hoped they weren't too badly outnumbered.
It wouldn't have mattered if they called him, even if it could have impeded his work. He had nothing to do but wait now anyway. Just stand watch over the computer, in case someone tried to cancel out his hacking. Stand watch, and wait.
He had so clench his hands on the edge of the desk to keep from running to assist Aya.
%%%
There were a lot of them. There were always a lot of them. It was strange, actually, how they had managed to survive this long, always outnumbered, perpetually overpowered. It all sometimes seemed like some sick cosmic joke. The universe allowing them to live a little longer just so they could suffer through one more day of pain, of guilt, of *being*.
But of course, he couldn't believe in fate. Believing in fate meant believing that Aya-chan had deserved to be put into a coma, that his family had, on some level, deserved to die. He could believe that for himself. He could believe that, with his blood stained hands, for him death would be just. Less than just, because what he'd done, what he did, could not be paid for by one life. But not for *her* and not for *them*.
So the only thing left to believe was the darkness. Because that was palpable and tangible, and he'd lived with it every day for so long. Because in the dark, you couldn't see the turns and the pitfalls that the road ahead of you held, and that made sense, too, because he sure as hell hadn't seen this one. This was a pitfall that dropped away beneath his feet. One day he would stop falling. He wondered what would happen when he hit the bottom.
A bright ribbon of pain tore his mind back to the problem at hand. What was he doing? Drifting away like that in the middle of a fight? He knew better than that. He was stronger than that. That kind of stupidity that kind of weakness, was liable to get himself and Omi, and maybe Youji and Ken killed. That kind of weakness was unforgivable.
He turned the rage around. Directed his anger at himself on the guards pressing in, like ants at war. Too many of them, and more likely on the way. Like ants, faceless and uniform, every one nothing more than a cardboard cutout of a man. Each face blurring into the next. At least for a span of several minutes. Then a familiar voice was in his head.
Cardboard people. Cardboard doesn't bleed, Abyssinian. He tensed, startled by the words forming unbidden in his mind, sounding loud as a palpable voice in his ears. It left enough of an opening for someone to get off a shot. Hot pain flared in his shoulder. He hadn't even heard the gunshot.
I wonder if you even care anymore how many you kill? Remember the first? The first taste of blood on your blade?
Damn it!! No!! he wasn't going to listen to this. He was stronger than this!! This kind of weakness….
Or maybe you've killed so many, it doesn't really matter
anymore. The voice was quiet and thoughtful. Amused. He was furious at it. It made his attacks all the more savage. It just makes you so much more the killer.
Hn. Not. Listening. To. This.
And do you know why, Abyssinian?
Not. Listening…. I'm. Not. That. Weak.
He couldn't see the bodies falling away beneath his blade anymore. They were a blur of black and white uniforms and red. His attackers were a blur of movement. His katana moved on it's own, hundreds of hours of monotonous practice bringing each stroke down in time to save his life.
Do you know what makes you nothing but a killer now? Why
you're irredeemable?
Can't acknowledge this. He knew what it was like to have other's voices in his head. That damned German had been there before. Had practically taken up residence there in the days after the accident that had torn away his life. He'd been absent for a while. Strange how he'd occasionally missed that voice. It had drowned out the more painful voice of his conscience.
%%%
Omi looked up from the computer at the sound of a crash. Looked up in time to see Aya hit the floor and bounce back up like those blow-up punching bags for kids. The ones with the weight in the bottom. Of course, with Aya it wasn't a mindless, comical bobbing motion, but a graceful spring, coming quickly to a low crouch on the balls of his feet, one hand against the floor for balance, one clutching his katana. Then he was a flash of black and red, and was out of sight again.
This time Omi did get up. He knew enough not to go out into the hall, when his duties very clearly lay with the computer and the data they needed, but he did go far enough to get a slightly broader view of the hall. What he saw surprised him. He hadn't seen Aya fight
like that since Takatori, not with that almost blind rage that turned his calculated swings and swipes into nothing more than a series of furiously paced reflex actions. Graceful and smooth still, but the it was the grace of an angered, injured wild beast, instead of
Abyssinian's cold elegance.
"Abyssinian?" He yelled, loud enough to attract Aya's attention. Again, "Abyssinian!" Louder than before. More than sufficient. Enough to turn some of the guard's eyes to him. "ABYSSINIAN!!!" Nothing. For some reason or other, Aya wasn't responding.
"Abyssinian!!!"
00:07:00
"Shit." Youji checked his watch again, a quick glance down as he pulled his wire out in one smooth movement. "Shit."
"What?" Ken was backed to the wall beside him, a moment of reprieve, enough to pause for a couple of seconds to get some breath back.
"We're not gonna get to 'em in time. Not if we have to wade through this mess." He jerked a thumb in the direction of the bathroom they had just vacated and the pile of injured, unconscious and dead they had left behind.
"Yeah. And you can bet there'll be more where those came from." Ken's bugnuks made soft *snickt* sounds as he sprang them, then released, and sprang them again. How did he ever get the blood out of the mechanism? The blades slid out, *snickt*, in, and out again, *snickt*. Ken's nervous habit was driving him insane.
"Yeah. There would have to be, wouldn't there?" Youji sighed, running a gloved hand through his hair in tired frustration, not caring for a moment that he was leaving streaks of red in the honey blonde strands. He didn't like what he knew they were going to have
to do.
"We have to abort." Ken, saying it for him. Voice and expression so grim that Youji couldn't imagine him as the Kenken of the Koneko no Sumu Ie. He was only Siberian now. Being Siberian, because Ken would never have been able to say what he said next. "It's waste of time trying to fight our way all the way to 'em and them out again. We'll never make it." Ken pulled at his sleeve while he talked, getting them both moving down the hall again, a tired scuffle that slowly escalated into a run, "Abyssinian and Bombay will
have to manage to get out on their own."
Even trying so hard to be nothing but the killer, Ken couldn't keep the hurt out of his eyes and out of his voice as he suggested they leave their team mates. Youji didn't reply, concentrating on running, on keeping up with speedy Ken, on not yelling at him that that was a betrayal. He was the eldest. And since Aya wasn't here to make any decision, he had to be the one to nod. To make Ken's suggestion reality. Hell, if Aya had asked for backup, it was a sure thing they were in trouble. He didn't like leaving them to their own devices, either. The backup shouldn't ever abandon the main team. But they shouldn't run into near certain death, either. Not when it would accomplish anything. Going to Aya and Omi would leave him and Ken firmly in the center of the building, far from any exits, when the first of the bombs went off.
"Tell Abyssinian we're getting out of here. Abort."
Ken nodded and touched his earpiece. "Abyssinian. No time to party. Abort mission." He repeated the message, then blinked, still running, and looked up at Youji.
"He's not answering."
Youji tried. Nothing. There was the soft beep that indicatedhe was through, and the buzz and clash and yelling of fighting. But no Aya. "Abyssinian!! Abort mission!! Get your butts outta there."
Still no reply.
%%%
He was gone. Even in this state, he knew it. The voice was in his head, and while he wasn't weak--Wasn't. Weak. Goddammit!!!–-it seemed that the voice in his head, in his ears, was stronger.
He saw nothing now of his attackers, his adversaries, nothing of the fluorescent lit walls, and the blood soaked carpet. There was still the faint buzz of impact vibrating along his sword, but nothing more. The sword itself was nothing more than a concept in his mind, a ray of light that he clung to. A blade was power and his blade was the only power he'd ever had to fight back against this-this thing that had been a life. His life.
I thought you'd want to know. I thought you'd want to know
what makes you what you are now. Amused curiosity. Do you want to
know what you are now?
"NO!! Go away."
Distant clang of metal against metal. Faint buzz of a voice in his ear, overpowered by the louder, more seductive voice in his mind. A voice that surrounded him and pressed on all his senses. Great. All he needed was a second voice to torment him.
You do want to know. I'll tell you.
"Leave me alone. I need to—" He couldn't remember. The only need he knew was to get away from that voice in his ears, in his mind. "I need to—I have to—have to—"
Have to stop killing? Worse than a murderer. Murderers kill
for a reason. What's yours? What's your excuse?
"Excuse?"
She's awake. What's your excuse for still killing? You could
stop now. Could so easily stop.
His body was moving on it's own, freed of any restraint the mind might have had over it, killing without a thought, all reflexive action and survival instinct. No Aya. No Ran. Just Abyssinian.
00:06:40
Ken kept running, fighting the urge to ask Youji how much time they had left. How long they had to get out of here. He could hear the taller man puffing behind him. His own lungs were developing a twinge, not burning yet but getting there. All this fighting, all this running. He wondered how Youji's lungs felt, what with all the smoking and drinking and laying about the man did. Really, he should have been big as an icebox with his lifestyle, not scrawny as he was, all skin and bone and sinewy muscle. He sneaked a glance over his shoulder at the other.
Youji was red-faced with exertion and panting with the effort of keeping up with Ken, and the brunette felt a slight stab of pity, but wasn't willing to slow down just for Youji's comfort. He didn't want to slow down until they were out of the building and free to
flop onto the grass and die of oxygen debt. Oxygen. He looked again at Youji's puffing face and decided he didn't want to know about his lungs.
Instead, he reached for his comm again and contacted Omi. "Bombay."
"Yeah?" Omi's strained voice, sounding tense and angry and impatient.
"Shit!! Fucker." Ken swore as bullets thudded into the wall between his head and Youji's. He put on an extra burst of speed.
"Jeez!!!" Youji yelped, "Do they never quit?"
"What is it?" Omi asked, worried, yelling in his ear.
"We're not gonna get to you guys, Bombay. You've gotta abort and get out. We've got…?"
Youji checked. "Six minutes, seventeen seconds."
"Six sixteen."
"Ok. See you outside."
00:06:15
He waited an extra second or two. The file was almost done, anyway. Maybe it was Aya's stubbornness rubbing off on him. He didn't know. Still, it felt like a cowardly shame to abort two or three seconds early and lose all the information they'd come for. They had six
minutes. Enough time. Enough.
100%
Omi grinned. "Finally." Two or three seconds could last a lifetime.
He popped the disk out of the drive, and, clasping it firmly in one small hand, bounded to the door, beyond which Aya was still fighting with crazed efficiency, terribly deadly, terribly beautiful. Omi could imagine the specter of death looking something like Aya.
"Abort!" Omi yelled at him, but again got no response. "Abyssinian!!" Nothing. "ABYSSINIAN!!! ABORT!!! WE'VE GOTTA GO!!!"
"SHUT UP!!!" Aya's scream was choked. His body moving fluidly even though he sounded like he was being strangled.
"ABYSSINIAN!!! WE NEED TO ABORT!!!" Omi stepped into the hallway, prepared to drag Aya out of there even if it meant he would lose and arm in the process.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!!" A sword slash. Dangerously close to Omi's face. It made the young assassin rethink his plans.
"GO AWAY!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!" But…Aya wasn't screaming at him. Aya hadn't even looked in his direction. Aya was fighting like there was no tomorrow and who cared if there was? He would have killed Omi without a second thought if he got too close. Omi darted back into the office, back against the wall beside the door where he could handle anyone who might enter, be it guards or an insane Aya.
"Balinese. There's a problem with Abyssinian." Faint echo of having said those words in the past, after seeing Aya in a similar state of mind. It seemed so long ago, yet so recent. It was like they'd been Weiss forever. "I don't think I can get through to him."
00:06:00
"What? What the fuck are you taking about?" Youji was beyond pantingfor breath, words rasping out as he pounded down the halls after Ken, who was, maddeningly, looking like he was just enjoying another day in the park. The brunette tossed him a questioning look over one shoulder, then stopped and let Youji run past him. He heard the slash and gurgle behind him, then Ken was hard on his heels and catching up fast.
"What is it?" Ken yelled, as they both ducked around a corner and out of the line of fire. Youji hoped to any god that might be out there that they were really heading out of the building.
"Abyssinian."
"Is he hurt?"
"Don't know. He's gone Takatori-shi-Ne crazy."
Ken's eyes widened.
"Only more so. Bombay can't get through to him or to him without getting mangled."
"More so?" Ken sighed in disbelief. How he could while running for his dear life was beyond Youji, but he knew what Ken was thinking, and it was the right thing to do, however painful. Hmmm. Two betrayals in one day. One night, he corrected. Yup. They were definitely on a roll. He keyed his earpiece.
"Bombay. There's nothing you can do. Leave him if you have to. Just get out of there."
No reply.
"Do you hear me, Bombay? Every man for himself. Just get the hell out of there. Got it? Leave Abyssinian and get the hell out."
"But—"
"GET OUT BOMBAY!!! NOW!!!"
"Uh…O-Okay. Got it!" Omi spat it, sounding hurt and disgusted and like he was going to break into tears the moment it was prudent to do so. Well, better to lose one than both.
00:05:00
Fighting the way he was, with no though to anything but to kill—No, Omi corrected, no thought to anything—Aya was being slowly herded back, the remaining guards more than a match for his already injured, bleeding body. Somehow, though, some deep-rooted instinct still seemed to remind him that his job here was to protect Omi, because, while he could have backed away down the hall, he hadn't. Instead, he had backed towards the office, still covering Omi, though it served to do nothing but trap them both inside as he was forced back into the room.
It reminded Omi of the brawls Aya and Ken still sometimes had, the 'differences of opinion'. Blows and limbs everywhere, moving in a blur so that you didn't know who was landing more punches and who was getting the pulp beat out of them. Aya was no more than a flash of dark leather and blood red hair as he struggled to cover the doorway. The occasional flash of silver off the buckles of his trench as he darted one way, a brilliant slash of steel, and then he was darting back again, hilt wrapped in both gloved hands, shoulders hunched as if the weapon were too heavy for him. Looking like a predator or like
wounded, crazed prey. Omi couldn't decide which.
Omi shoved the disk into the inside pocket of his jacket and when his hand withdrew, darts fanned from his closed fist. The crossbow was more powerful, deadlier, but it took time to reload and this fight was too close and too fast for that. With a deep breath, he armed his other hand as well and stepped into the fray.
00:04:30
What had already been a maddeningly fast run for Youji had escalated into a desperate sprint when he checked his watch and realized they weren't anywhere near an exit yet. He called out again to Aya and Omi, heard Ken doing the same.
Aya still wasn't replying, still only the sounds of fighting came across. Actually, scratch that. He could hear Aya yelling something indiscernible, but he was fairly certain it wasn't directed at him, nor at Omi, by the sound of it. And it sure as hell wasn't 'shi-Ne'. What was wrong with the redhead *this* time? God, they'd all joked about Aya's sanity—behind his back—but to actually have it fall away like this, and during a mission….
At least Omi was answering. Loud, desperate yelling, broken by the sounds of fighting and dying and Aya in the background, loudly going insane. He couldn't make out Omi's words, not all of them, anyway, but from what he could gather, they were still in that office.
"Holy shit!!" He yelled, frustrated, surprised that his lungs could still support that outburst without exploding messily all over the place. If he got out of this, he swore he'd take up jogging and exercise and quit smoking. "They're still up there!!!"
Ken nodded grimly and kept running. Feet pounding the floor.
"We can't so anything, Balinese." He panted, feet skittering on tile as he rounded a corner. Youji checked his watch and followed, kept yelling at Omi to get out.
00:04:00
It was dark. He wondered that a place could be so utterly lacking in light. Wondered that he could still see himself when he looked down at his hands, his clothes. His assassin's gear. Dark trench and dark gloves clearly visible even the complete dark, even without the
faintest source of light.
It was familiar here. He'd been here before, many times, after his family's death. Many times even after Takatori, the murderer, was dead. Not since Aya had woken, though. Not since his sister had opened her eyes. He thought that her light had banished this dark for good. Strange. So much that was strange.
Strange that it was still here. Strange that it had survived. Strange that he hadn't known better. hadn't known better when all he's had to do was reach inside and feel that hard knot of pain in his chest. Strange that he hadn't even thought to do that since she'd
woken.
Strange that you kept killing, even after she was well and out of hospital. Strange that you kept it up even after you didn't need to anymore. That's the difference between a killer and a murderer, Ran-chan.
He looked up from his dark gloves and cast about the place, looking for the speaker. Whoever it was wasn't here. Just a disembodied voice and himself. The voice echoed a little bit more here than it had before, the sound just a touch muted by the overly loud beat of his heart in his chest. He was lightheaded from the rush of blood, nauseous. He needed to stop. No. He wasn't that weak. He could find his way out of here.
Really? Seems to me, your ways out have never been the right ones. Stepping further from the light with each fork in the road.
"Go away." The was no longer any strength to scream at the voice as he sank down to his knees, his legs bonelessly giving way beneath him. "Go away." There was laughter.
You've hated a murderer, Ran-chan, Aya, but at least murderers kill for a reason. Killers kill for no reason. Which are you, Abyssinian?
"Leave me alone. Go away."
And then it did and he was alone. Alone and with no way out. Trapped in the dark.
Alone.
%%%
Omi was tired. Dead tired. He wasn't built nor armed for this kind of fight. Always, well, almost always, he was Weiss's tactician and sniper, rarely getting as close as Ken and Aya and Youji did. And now he was practically being forced to use his darts as Ken did his bugnuks. He couldn't afford to lose them and be left unarmed. He had to chase them up when he could, dodging and diving and rolling to pluck one out of a dead throat and fling it into a living one. Soon, though, he'd have to turn to his crossbow. he was losing darts anyway.
"Abyssinian!" He yelled suddenly, darting forward. A gap in the fighting. He had seen it. He needed Aya's help to battle through it, however. He was too small to be much good save to offer cover fire.
He was already running for it when he realized Aya wasn't. Aya was still fighting. Aya was ignoring him and their chance--possibly their only chance--at getting out of here alive.
"Abyssinian!!!" Omi's cry was almost a plea, almost a sob. God, let Aya get it together enough for us to survive and get out!
And then the gap was gone, Aya still blind and deaf to the world.
00:03:30
He was thinking of sleep. Thinking of getting back to their apartment so he could curl up in the nearest available corner and pass out. He knew it was dangerous to be thinking such things now, but he couldn't really help it. He was tired, his pre-growth-spurt body not used to fighting grown men practically hand to hand. He glanced at Aya, thinking that this fighting part was supposed to be his job.
He only caught a flash of bright red hair, and then Aya was gone, swallowed under guards who were now free to get at him. Omi tossed his darts up, getting two guards in the face as he dove amongst legs and into a roll, coming up beside Aya. Aya's gun. He always carried that .22. His only hope now was Aya's gun.
00:03:15
"Balinese, I think that's an exit."
"Looks like and exit to me."
"Beautiful."
It would have been even more beautiful if Ken hadn't insisted on accelerating yet again. Just how many speeds did little Kenken have, anyway? Youji had known cars that didn't accelerate this much.
"Bombay!!" He tried again. Nothing now. "Abyssinian?" Even though that was a lost cause, he had to try it. "Abyssinian?"
Ken was echoing him, desperation in his voice. Tears in his voice now that they were so close to an out. The last fucking thing he needed was an emotional Kenken instead of a deadly Siberian. "Bombay!!" Ken was pissed at Aya for losing it. He wasn't even trying Aya's comm. "Bombay!!!"
00:03:00
Outside.
At last he could stop running, could look around and realize that, somewhere along the way, they had lost their pursuers. Guess that was a good thing. He wanted to kill something right now, but they'd been so preoccupied with Aya and Omi's safety that they'd
likely have taken a good number of bullets in the back had anyone been tailing them closely enough.
"They're still in there, aren't they?" he asked, anger in his voice. Anger at Aya. Anger at Youji. Aya was the leader. He was fucking responsible for them. He was god damned fucking responsible for Omi. And to let whatever it was that had taken him over take him over right there, in the middle of everything going to shit…. It was unforgivable. And Youji! Youji who'd told them to run and leave their teammates…. He knew he'd suggested it himself in the first place, but Youji had actually turned it into a decision.
"Yeah." Youji's voice was quiet as they moved to get away from the building, to be safe when it finally blew. "Yeah, I think they're still in there."
"You think? You think? How do we know where they are? If the building goes do we look for them?"
"When." Youji corrected.
"Huh?"
"When the building goes." He lit a cigarette.
"Fuck. When the building goes, yeah." Ken snapped sarcastically, eyeballing Youji as he inhaled deeply.
"What are you bitching at me for?" Youji sounded peeved. "Why don't you try to comm them again, or something. It'll keep your mind off the PMS. Jeez." Youji stalked away into the darkness, Ken following after a hard look at lighted windows, looking for any movement, any sign of the other two.
00:02:00
"They're still not out." Youji said, staring to twitch with a bad case of the nerves. "They're still not out."
"Yeah. Still no word, either." Ken paced frantically, back and forth in front of dimmed dead headlights, Aya's Porsche purring softly in the darkness in case they needed to make a quick getaway.
Youji took another long drag, glancing up at the building. The upper stories were clearly visible over the trees, the grounds displayed in a series of windows across the laptop screen in the back seat. Ken kept pacing back to look at it, then pacing away to look at the building. Driving himself and Youji insane.
"Have they got tracers?" He asked, for what must be the millionth time.
"No." Youji replied for the millionth time. "It was supposed to be an easy job. We didn't bother, remember? That's why I hate routine jobs. Routine makes you lazy."
"God, what are we gonna do?" Ken was looking up at the stars as he said, so Youji wasn't sure exactly who was being addressed. If Ken was just cursing, or if he was really trying to contact a deity who seemed to take a perverse pleasure in screwing them all over. Repeatedly. "How are we gonna find them in that mess? Do we even look for them?"
Youji didn't know how to answer that. He didn't wasn't to ask why Ken thought there's be anything left to look for.
00:01:00
"I don't think there'll be anything left to look for." Youji said, looking up at the building.
"Huh?"
"Or if there is, I doubt you'll wanna bring it home with you."
"Ewww." Ken made a face, then looked green. "Shut up, Youji!!" Codenames forgotten in that fit of anger and fear. "They're gonna be okay. I know they will be. I'll fucking kill Ay—Abyssinian if they're not."
00:00:30
"They're dead, aren't they? They're gonna die, if they aren't dead already." Ken cried, reality hitting him with the force of a blow. He crumpled, near enough to the car that he could lean back against a tire and stare up at the building. "Anything on screen?"
Youji looked. "No. Nothing."
"Shit. They're not gonna make it. We might as well give up. We might as well go home."
00:00:07
"WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GUYS?" Ken screamed into the comm. "GET YOUR BUTTS OUTTA THERE NOW!!! ANSWER ME DAMMIT!!! GOD, FUCKIN' ANSWER ME!!!" He sounded do close to tears that Youji didn't know whether to start screaming himself or just smack Ken before he got hysterical. On second thought, he probably was hysterical already.
"Keep it down. We're exactly not safe out here."
"Damn it…" Ken whispered, "Answer, Bombay…Abyssinian."
00:00:05
"IF YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES DON'T SHOW UP IN TWO SECONDS, I'M GONNA—" Youji screamed into the comm, "FUCK, I DUNNO WHAT I'M GONNA DO, BUT AIN'T GONNA BE PRETTY!!! YOU HEAR ME?!! FUCKING ANSWER, YOU CRAZY SON OF A BITCH!!!"
The lights in the building flickered off. The squares showing the yard still online, but cloaked in darkness.
"No." They both whispered at the same time.
00:00:04
The first explosion blew out all the building's windows. That must have been the one on the generator, judging by how the lights cut.
00:00:03
Guilt ran through both of them. Four seconds early. Who'd made the mistake? Between Ken's bickering and Youji's smoking and retorts, had they been paying attention to what they'd been doing? Did it matter? Would an extra three or four seconds have seen Aya and Omi alive and safe?
Ken was back on his feet, not knowing when he'd risen, "OMIIIII!!!…"
00:00:02
The second explosion rocked the building and the ground beneath their feet. Fire leapt out of the upper stories, licking at the night sky. The ones rigged to take out the executive offices near the top, where they had done most of their scrounging tonight. Best and surest way to hide any tracks they might have inadvertently left behind.
Just one left. The gas main. The one that would bring the whole thing down.
00:00:01
"NO!!!" Youji bolted out of the car and towards the building, stopping only when Ken grabbed him and muscled him down onto the damp grass. "NO!! DAMN IT, NO!!!" His cries may as well have been sobs, his cigarette still somehow managing to cling between his teeth as he screamed. "NO, OMIII!!! AYAAA!!! God, no…." The absurd thought flashed across his mind that this was happening because he'd broken his promise. He'd promised to stop smoking if he and Ken got out alive….
00:00:00
The last of the explosions blew debris and flames high into the night sky. Flakes of plaster and sparks drifted over Youji and Ken, ashes a ludicrous clean white on their dark clothes. The windows on the computer screen echoed the sky, darkness broken by white specks, static instead of ash. The cameras blown out or melted down.
There was still no sign of Aya or Omi.
TBC…
^^;
########
I was gonna end this with just the clock reading 00:00:00, but
then I thought that was a bit confusing. It looked weird, too. There.
I hope I got all the italics fixed and all the times centered and
evrything. If something doesn't make sense...that's cause I'm baka. I
think there are a few contradictions in there, like the hallway Aya's
fighting in. I think I mentioned it as tiled, then as carpeted.
COuldn't find the tiled reference back, though. If you find any
others, or anyone is OOC, or you just hate it all please let me know,
so I can change/fix it. Onegai?