disclaimer: Weiss belongs to Koyasu Takehito, Project Weiss and others
beta'd by Sybil Rowan
Aya had thought, when Manx assigned him, the case was more for Crashers. Now he was on the scene, he thought so even more. Honjou would have fitted into this pretentiously posh club like a hand in a glove.
They didn't even have hired entertainment. Peach Wren was 'the club's guest', fresh from her dazzling tour of Europe's opera capitals. The overwhelmingly male membership focused on her cleavage.
Aya was more interested in waiting for someone to approach him and start casual talk which held the code word Iran. It was almost by accident he heard the singer herself announce, "And for sentimental reasons, I'll add a little vocalise set to the tune of In a Persian Market." She smiled deliberately across the room at Aya.
Well, that was discreet.
At sixteen, Aya had settled for himself he was gay. At sixteen, he might have been glad of a woman who made him feel otherwise. But at twenty, it unsettled his sense of self. It felt twisted and unnatural. He examined the woman who made him feel this way.
She was almost anoxeric, except a pair of breasts whose incongruity made their falsity pretty obvious. Her Barbie doll face also looked as if it might come from some unimaginative plastic surgeon's. Her clothes...well, Aya was no expert on clothes. But he thought her long dress too fussy, and too sparkly. She wore enough jewellery for ten women. It was fussy and sparkly, too. The fantastically long and wavy hair was golden, he assumed it a wig.
Aya suspected a few of the men, gathering around her after her song, were more interested in the the jewels than the breasts they covered. Some of them were even polite enough to address her face. She looked at Aya, though. She smiled at him. Like a well trained corps de ballet, the crowd of other men parted, their faces envious.
She did project raw sex appeal. Maybe it was that overpowering musky perfume. As if checking the acidity of potting mix, Aya observed the faint blush warming his own cheek, pupil dilation turning his eyes into pools of dark, racing heartbeat. And yes, his cock stiffened a little. She was saying, "Ran and I are old friends. I'm sure you don't mind if we speak in private."
They did, of course. Aya wasn't too polite himself, but even he admired more the efficiency than the kindness with which she turned her back on everyone else and walked away.
They entered a dressing room, which was, of course, frilly and sparkly. In it was a woman a few years older than Wren, and considerably plainer. She gazed at Wren with mindless adoration.
"Thank you, Abby," said Wren. "We must speak privately."
Abby disappeared, with speed and silence even a professional assassin could admire. Wren looked at Aya with wide, beseeching eyes. They were more violet than Aya's own. A deeper tone, and unlike his, they didn't grey in some lights or moods, but remained vividly purple. Her hands were clasped upon her breast, getting rather tangled with all the jewellery, and her mouth quivered.
Aya asked, "Ran?"
Wren said, "I have access to whatever Kritiker files I want. Oh, Ran!" She swayed even closer to him. Aya kept a careful eye on both her hands, until they grasped his arm. She couldn't knife him like this, could she? Perhaps Abby was going to sneak up from behind. "I'm in the most deadly danger! Essett is after me! You must hide and protect me!"
"Then they will have told you my name is now Aya." Perhaps she was trying to make his arm numb? "I'm not the right person to protect you. Kritiker has far better resources - "
"Infiltrated!" Being a professional vocalist, she managed to hiss the word. "Only Weiss is safe for me now!" Her hands managed to move up his arm without relaxing their grip.
"Wren-san." It felt strange to be on formal terms with someone who was trying to use him as glad-wrap, but he certainly didn't want to get less formal. "You shouldn't know about Weiss at all, but if you do, you know we're not - "
"Hush!" she said dramatically. "They're coming!"
"I think that's your Abby." He tried to peel her off his arm.
She assured him, "I'm a black belt."
For a moment he thought she was threatening him, if he went on with his efforts to detach her. Then he realised she was offering to help him with the bad guys. "Getting away quietly would be better than getting into a brawl."
She pouted a little. Aya was pretty sure, from fan girls, she would have liked him to have fought for her.
He led her out through the nearest door. They exited into the nearest this posh suburb of Tokyo got to a back alley, a walkway neatly trimmed by bonzai in planters, which were changed according to season. Being winter, they were coloured conifers. Teetering on very high heels, she kept a firm grasp of his arm.
He wondered whether to just break her neck and stuff her in the nearest snow bank. But she might be a Kritiker agent. She was very unlike any Kritiker agent he'd ever met, except for the cleavage, but then Weiss met as few as possible.
This really needed Yohji's touch, but he doubted if Yohji would have got into this predicament to begin with. "We better sit down and have a talk," he said, nodding at a nearly deserted ice cream parlour.
"Of course," she smirked, and arranged herself, with much preening, at a table well exposed to admiring – or hostile – eyes. "I'll have...cherry." Her eyes lingered on his hair. He was surprised. Her musky perfume was rather like vanilla. He never had liked vanilla.
He stood up rather abruptly, walked to the service counter, and went on walking.
He went on walking for a long time. Sometimes it helped settle him. This time, not too well.
Especially, when he came back to the Koneko to find Manx and Wren waiting for him on the pavement in front. They were talking to Yohji. Joy. Aya couldn't imagine what Yohji was going to make of this, and he didn't want to.
Actually, the playboy wasn't as obnoxious as expected. He was flirting madly with Wren, using the sunglasses with the graceful expertise of an old-time lady using a fan, shaking his long chestnut mane.
Aya looked sidelong at Manx to see how she took being neglected for the newcomer. He caught the brief shadow of a satisfied smirk over her normal calm, then she realised he was watching, and it was gone.
Peach told Yohji, "Aya-kun has tried to spare me from the dangers of his life, but it is too late!" She turned her impossibly purple eyes – it must be contact lenses – and impossibly long, and undoubtedly false, eyelashes on him. "We're in this together!"
Manx said, "Agent Ragdoll will be living in the Koneko."
Yohji beamed. Aya said in a cold tone, "Aya-kun?"
She blushed. "Of course. Ran."
Yohji grinned wider. Aya was sure that besides approving this new idea of Kritiker's, of providing Weiss with hot and cold running blondes, he'd enjoy seeing Aya get what he'd think of as comeuppance. Yohji could be spiteful enough to Ken and Omi, whom he liked. Between him and Aya was some basic antipathy, harder to solve than wrong done.
Aya felt no qualms about spoiling his fun. He pointed out, "The Koneko is very open to the public, especially gossipy schoolgirls. You think they're not going to mention our guest? And Esset won't hear about it, and manage some basic arithmetic?"
Peach said triumphantly, "I'll wear a wig!"
Aya looked at her perfectly regular, perfectly characterless face. It just might work.
Yohji said, "Of course, the Koneko only has four bedrooms, but my own is largest, and can easily accommodate two separate beds."
Aya snorted. He saw where this was going. He entered the Koneko, up the stairs to his own room, and stripped the bed. He went down to where Peach was batting her eyes at Yohji, and said, "The bedroom at the front."
"Oh, Aya!" From her expression, he might have saved her from a dragon. One of the non-fluffy sort. "I'm sure we can share without too much hardship - " If it's possible to snort disconsolately, Yohji did then.
Walking away to the garage, "I'll leave that to you and Yohji. I'm moving into a motel."
"You're not taking your fair share of Peach-coddling," pouted Yohji.
Being drooped over out of shop hours was wearing Aya's small store of patience. "First, my fair share is zero, like everyone else's. Second, I thought you were enjoying taking most of her well-upholstered attention."
"I'm polite," said Yohji. "You should try it sometime."
Omi said mildly, "Honestly, Aya-kun. She insists on being my big sister, and teaching me all sort of computer skills. She's started to take an interest in helping my social life. This might harm my contribution to the team."
Ken said cheerfully, "Kritiker'll take her away, then."
The other three looked at him in an unfriendly manner. For some reason, Peach hardly noticed Ken, even if he was standing right in front of her. They felt he was getting off unfairly lightly. Aya said, "Manx is up to something. She was pleased at Yohji's chatting up Peach. That's normal?" It was a definite question. The three younger Weiss felt Yohji ought to know most about Manx, he paid her so much attention. From Yohji's frown, he didn't think it was normal either.
Ken pointed out, "She was probably glad to see some other unlucky lady suffer the Kudoh charm."
Aya wasn't sure about that. When hindering in the shop, Peach always seemed pleased enough to take all their attention. Aya rubbed his forehead at the thought of the shop. It had become more like a bad dream of itself lately. Everyone acted like dopy teenagers.
Yohji behaved like a high school boy overwhelmed by hormones, Ken was clumsy, and Omi acted far too young. Aya himself would have been glad of the numbing cold, if it hadn't numbed his brain as well. On some level, he knew it was Peach's doing. But even now his thoughts were deciding the four men were probably overwhelmed by Peach's attractiveness.
Peach was quiet footed, but perfumed as strongly as she was there was no chance she could descend the stairs without the four of them noticing. Aya was fairly sure she wanted them to notice.
If she'd seemed sparkly before, now she attained an abeldo Aya would have sworn impossible without the use of neon. Her elaborate jewellery clanked like the chains of some Western haunting. She floated down the stairs, apparently buoyed up by her mechanical looking breasts. She smiled at them dazzlingly. "So sorry I kept you waiting."
Quite rightly deciding any reply Aya might produce would be far inferior, Yohji decided to fill in the right one. "Dear lady, any length of time would be worth such a sight at the end." Ken mimed gagging. "See, our normally fluent Aya is tongue tied at the sight."
Omi giggled. He looked apologetically at Aya afterwards, but that didn't help as much as it should. "Well, Aya-kun, it was funny."
She still hadn't got out of the habit of grabbing Aya's arm. Now she draped herself over as much of him as she could manage, pointed her cleavage at Yohji, and told Omi, "Don't stay up too late. It's a school night."
"Thank you, Peach-chan," said Weiss' leader.
She still ignored Ken. He had to dodge them on her procession to the door.
This was another of those missions that seemed exactly unfitted for Weiss in general, and Aya in particular. Aya and Peach had been assigned to pose as a young married couple with more money than they knew what to do with, open to any decadent experience. Peach had been given an American name and background, a cover Aya tersely refused. Most of Kuroswa's circle was American, so much so Aya wondered why he bothered to live in Japan.
Ragdoll had adopted a costume, which Aya was pretty sure she had copied off some go-go dancer, and a two-tone wig with beads. She'd tried to force some black leather whore's outfit on Aya, and even talked about make up. They compromised. Aya wore black jeans and black leather jacket, and Peach stopped using the best shop stock for her garish and shapeless arrangements.
This had led to lectures on aesthetics and modern art until Omi, the born peacemaker, and like all of them someone who desired to eat a meal without Stock Market Modern, had taken Peach to one side and explained to her Aya didn't like being upstaged by a newbie. This, in its turn, led to even greater smugness from Peach. Since it was quiet smugness, and Aya didn't care what Peach thought, it could be considered the nearest Weiss got to a satisfactory resolution with Agent Ragdoll. Who was not Weiss, and never would be.
She arranged herself in Aya's beloved Porsche with the air of one making do. "Have you ever thought of getting pretty upholstery?"
At least he was upwind of her perfume.
On their arrival at the dinner party, Aya fended off Peach's automatic glomp. "We better not look too loving a couple. Show yourself ready to flirt with any good looking guy around." They parted.
It was early, but the party seemed very dull and listless to him. The tuxedoed guests reminded him of salarymen who'd had to turn up for a company do, and were wishing they were home watching telly instead. Their gowned wives might have been dragged along Western style, but at least they were having gossips about what sounded very schoolgirl subjects to him. There were a few ludicrously obviously drug dealers.
There was something very off about the whole thing. Before his parents' death, Aya had been allowed to attend the beginnings of such parties, and he'd have thought the men would be talking their business, or at least politics and finance. Most of them stood about with a slightly dazed expression on their face. Usually they weren't talking at all. The couple of times Aya overheard a brief snatch of conversation, it seemed to be about sex in a remarkably school girlish way. It might have rubbed off from the teenagers around. There were a lot of them. Aya thought he recognised a couple of Koneko fangirls.
Aya resolved not to drink or eat anything.
A familiar voice said, "That'd work if it was something in the food."
The voice was Schuldig's, of course. This strangeness seemed the sort of thing he would do. He was dressed in a formal tuxedo, looking far more handsome and respectable than he had any right to, and he was leaning against the wall in almost Aya-like position. He was scowling, too.
Aya knew he should attack the man, but he was feeling a sort of dream-like inertia. He didn't feel like a professional killer at all. "Are you doing this for fun, or does Schwarz have something like an idea under their pointy black hats?"
"Not my doing at all." Schuldig's scowl deepened, and he looked at the nearest group of young women. They were flounced and frilly, but not as flounced and frilly as Peach. "If this was my doing, they'd either be talking about something more interesting than hairdos, or have – shut up!"
Not surprisingly, they looked at him. More surprisingly, instead of being intimidated by a tall man with a dangerous scowl, they smirked and told each other 'isn't he handsome?'. Aya found himself another victim of the ogling frenzy. Their expressions were eerily like Peach's. He hated the idea of Schwarz seeing him run, but he looked toward the nearest French windows.
Then their faces smoothed as one, and they moved toward another room. There was a murmur of voices, often saying the name 'Peach Wren', in awed tones. Just through the hubbub, Aya could make out a voice he recognised all too well. Her singing soprano was sweet as vanilla essence, so like every top soprano it somehow had no personality at all. Aya frowned, listening. He wouldn't have thought it good enough to win top ranking in professional opera.
Schuldig told him, "That's because it isn't. You don't think someone that young could be a world renowned opera singer, do you? Not one of those rich men were in a position to know who was, or wasn't."
"Well, then, if you've read Peach's mind - "
"I haven't."
"You can't read her mind?"
Haughtily, "I can. I just don't want to."
"Do you know what she's doing in the Koneko with Kritiker's blessing?"
"Just what you think. Field testing their own pet psychic." He straightened up, smoothing the line of his dinner jacket. His fingers stroked the shape of his gun to make sure it was just the right angle. "I wouldn't have thought their only lethal team was the right field, but Yohji does get on Manx's nerves."
It sounded right, or at least less wrong. But there was one thing, which had wrecked other theories of Aya's. "But why concentrate on me?"
"That was Peach's Great Plan. You were meant to be converted by her feminine charms, and the others were meant to be maddened by jealousy." Aya couldn't help smiling at that. Schuldig didn't smile back. "The wrong person got jealous."
In sudden relief from long numbness, Aya snapped into focus. He was talking with Schuldig, while the woman he was meant to be guarding was out of sight. Like the other members of Schwarz.
Schuldig smirked a flash of sharp teeth. "Too late. You wouldn't be thinking so well, if she was still clouding your mind."
"But if you were in love with her..."
Those blue eyes lifted briefly to the ceiling. "You're not listening very well."
Then Schuldig was backing away from Aya, grinning. Aya realised he'd been kissed, very fast and lightly. So fast he'd not quite caught the taste. Nothing like musk or vanilla. Something wilder and more bitter, but there was a sweet in it.
Aya realised he'd put up his hand. He told himself he'd raised it to fend Schuldig off, not hold him for just a moment.
Whatever he had to eat later in the day, Crawford insisted on a good American breakfast, and in their flat he got a good American breakfast. Nonetheless, he frowned at his newspaper. Sometimes he wished they'd just print what Kritiker was up to, and not make him have to guess. "Looks like having a corpse bleeding on his carpet was enough to get Kurosawa investigated."
Nagi shrugged. Kurosawa had always been too small fry for Weiss, anyway. "If Kritiker's not going to pay us – they're not going to pay us, are they?"
"Considering how Weiss have to make that shop of theirs turn a profit...Answer the door, Schuldig."
Schuldig groaned. "Farfarello would be a far, far better choice."
The two junior members of Schwarz looked at the door.
Crawford hid his smile behind his coffee cup. "The simplest and least troublesome way to deal with this is for you to answer."
"Least troublesome for you, maybe."
The doorbell rang.
Schuldig got up, saying, "This sort of thing isn't meant to happen to us." He crossed over to the door on dragging feet, opened it, and was smothered in grateful fangirls.
FIN