Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. Someone in Japan does. And he has red hair. And his name is Takehito Koyasu. Oh, and this is het-shippy. And weird. I guess. So don't lynch me. ^_^
Unnamed Beauty
by Crystal Dawn
Footsteps echoed down the darkened hallway, soft, slow, and steady. There was a chill in the early spring air, enforcing the loneliness of the empty laboratory. Every worker had gone home hours ago, and now the only people in this section of the building were two young men who were edging along one wall, carefully keeping to the shadows like thieves.
And in essence, one could consider them thieves. They had broken in to the building, after all. It was a simple enough matter - hook a laptop up to the building's security system, run a looping video feed to the security cameras, disarm the alarms, and open the doors. But unlike thieves, they weren't there to steal anything - they were there for something else entirely.
Actually, it was almost as if they'd been invited there.
It had been two weeks since the first victim had surfaced. It was a young man, laying face down in a ditch about two blocks from the lab, with his heart cut out. And he was only the first. It almost seemed like every day after that there was a new victim - there were between ten and twelve altogether. Some were missing their hearts, some their lungs, some their livers; one had even been bludgeoned to death and had his pancreas removed.
At first it had seemed like some odd serial killer with a fixation on mutilation was on the lose. But they had known better; they'd seen this sort of thing before. And upon closer inspection, the youngest one, Omi, had discovered that the victims were being placed in something that resembled a circle around a four to five block radius - the center of the circle being the lab. The message was clear - here we are, come get us before we kill again, if you think you can, we'll be waiting.
It was Schreient's calling card.
Upon entering the building, the four of them had split up. Better chance of seeing something, better able to cover more area. Looking back on it, Omi wondered if that had been such a good idea. Sure, the chances of finding some information were better, but there was also a greater chance of running into Schreient themselves - and in his experience, they never worked solo. Two against the four of them would be a losing fight.
Omi squinted in the darkness, his sandy brown bangs falling into his eyes, and followed the movements of his partner down the hall. He moved quickly behind the taller young man, his red and white sneakers padding near-silently on the floor and his finger tensed on the trigger of his crossbow. His other hand moved to the darts hidden inside his black jacket in a nervous reaction - just to make sure they were still there.
His partner, Ken, passed through the edge of a patch of moonlight thrown off by a nearby window. He moved quickly through the pale light and back into the darkness; the only thing Omi could see constantly was the dusky orange color of the jacket he kept tied around his waist. The rest of him blended in too well and he was hard to follow at times. His movements were lithe and cat-like, obviously belonging to an athlete. That made him hard to spot, hard to catch, and ultimately, hard to kill. Omi knew this was a great asset on the battlefield, but it made trying to follow him hard as all hell.
Suddenly, Ken stopped short, and Omi almost ran into him. Omi looked around him to see what he had stopped to look at: they had come to the end of the hallway. However, instead of a dead end, it forked - one hallway to the left, one to the right. Omi sighed and Ken rubbed the back of his dark head with his gloved hand.
"Which way?" Omi asked in a whisper. Ken looked left to right, and then looked back at Omi.
"I'll take the left, you can take the right," he finally replied, "We'll meet back here in five minutes." Omi looked skeptical as Ken turned to go. Before he could get more than a few steps away, though, Omi grabbed the sleeve on his brown leather jacket and tugged.
"What if you run into them?" Omi asked, "It's dangerous to go alone." Ken shrugged and brushed some hair out of his face.
"No one said this was going to be safe," he remarked, "Besides, I have this - if there's any trouble, I'll give you a call." At this, he produced the little, black, matchbook-sized communicator that Omi had lent him for the mission. Omi looked from the communicator, back to Ken, and reluctantly let go of his sleeve.
"Alright, then," he said quietly, "Be careful." Ken turned away and began walking. He threw a look over his shoulder at his departing colleague.
"Likewise," he said, before facing the darkened hallway.
The left-hand side hallway was darker than the one Ken had just come from. His eyes took a second to adjust to the lack of light. There was only one window in the entire hall, and it was all the way down at the end on the left wall - a good 20 or 30 meters away. From the light there, he could see that the passage stopped right after the window and forked off to the right. The window cast its light into that passageway more clearly than it did the one he was in.
He walked slowly and steadily down the passage, trying as hard as he could to be silent. His boots weren't designed to be quiet, but so far he was sure he was doing a decent job of it. Besides that, there was something in the air that told him to be silent: a forbidding current, sort of as if the walls themselves were watching him, or perhaps something more sinister.
Ken concentrated on the patch of light at the end of the hall. He squinted, his pupils dilating to respond to the lack of light. For a second, he thought he saw something at the edge of the fuzzy white patch of light at the end of the passageway. Then it moved and he was sure. Bracing his footsteps, he quietly broke into a run. Whatever was at the end of the hall withdrew behind the corner, apparently aware of his presence.
He reached the end of the hall and skidded to a halt in front of the window. He snapped to the right quickly, silhouetted by the bright light of the window. It streamed in around him, darkening his features to the point that he resembled a black angel. He looked down to see his shadow stretch into the hallway before him, vaguely lit by the window's light.
At the end of the hallway, he could make out the figure he'd seen before. It was definitely a woman; the long hair and rounded hips gave that much away. Her hands were up at her sides, holding something, it seemed. From the way her wrists bent, he could tell instinctively that it was a whip.
Ken's claws emerged from the sheaths in the backs of his gloves with a distinctive 'snikt'. Automatically, he crouched into a defensive posture, drilled into him from years of soccer practice.
"You," he hissed. The woman seemed to smile.
"Welcome, Weiß," she replied, her voice quiet and silky and sharp, "We've been waiting for you."
Ken allowed a small smile to tug up on the edge of his mouth as he pulled the small, black box with a white cross on the cover from a pocket in his jacket. He flipped the top open, ready to press the button that would contact Omi and the others.
"And I've been looking for you," he remarked. In the blink of an eye, the figure at the end of the hall sprang. Ken's eyes widened as he braced himself. She was fast.
In another second, she lashed out with her whip, striking his hand and sending his communicator flying into a wall. It shattered, the fragments falling to the floor with the sound of the tinkling of broken glass. Ken screwed his eyes shut and ground his teeth together to keep from crying out; he was almost sure she had cut his hand, even through his leather gloves. He clutched the paralyzed appendage and opened his eyes, glaring. She was only a few feet away now.
"We can't have you calling for help," she said softly, her razor-thin smirk visible in the moonlight, "Not that it would do you any good."
"What?" he hissed, looking at her from underneath narrowed eyelids. Suddenly, there was a sharp blow to the side of his head, and he knew that she hadn't been the one to strike him. As darkness overwhelmed him, Ken realized that he'd been tricked by a distraction.
Schoen smiled bitterly as the assassin dropped to the cold tile floor like a marionette with its strings cut. His falling form revealed a woman with dark black hair pulled into a messy bun standing behind him. Her glasses gleamed in the dim light, a police baton visible in her right hand.
"That was almost laughably easy," Schoen murmured, looking down at the fallen man at her feet, "Should I kill him?" She tightened her whip between her hands with a snap.
"No," Hel replied, "He's going to be very useful to us." Schoen smirked. She was hoping she'd get a chance to play with this one.
Suddenly, there was the sound of footsteps coming quickly down the hall. Schoen and Hel looked at each other, and then in the direction the noise was coming from.
"Ken-kun?" a young man's voice called. Hel looked back at Schoen.
"We've got what we wanted," she said in a hissed whisper, "Get him and let's go."
"Ken-kun? I heard a noise down here..." A sandy brown, bandana'd head poked around the corner, surveying all that the moonlight fell on. All Omi saw, however, was an empty hallway. Nearly empty, anyway; the pieces of Ken's shattered communicator lay strewn about, reflecting the light in bright, white spots.
* ~ *~ * ~ *
The sound of voices, the throbbing in his head, and a painfully bright light brought Ken back to something resembling consciousness. This consciousness was tenuous, however; Ken soon found that he couldn't bring himself to open his eyes. He could feel the bright light behind his eyelids, and that was part of it, but his right eye felt different. It was swollen somehow, and painful to move. This had happened once before, years ago, when he'd been hit in the face with a ball during a soccer match. The feeling was the same and he slowly realized what had happened - he'd been given a massive black eye by whatever hit him.
He felt a small hand brush the side of the wound and tilt his head to the side.
"Did you have to hit him right there?" a woman's voice asked, "He used to be kind of cute. That swelling is absolutely hideous." Ken winced as she ran her thumb over the swollen area and pressed against it.
"You can always lance it, you know," came the cold reply. There was soft laughter like the tinkling of bells. It rang in Ken's head, bouncing off the bones in his ears and sharpening the pain in his temples.
"Good idea!" Schoen replied, titling Ken's bruised face up to meet the bright light, "Could you lend me one of your knives?" Hel pulled a scalpel out of the jacket of her black and dark purple uniform and handed it over to Schoen.
Ken felt a thin, cold line of metal press against his skin. His breath came through his teeth sharply as the metal dug into his bruise, drawing blood. He could feel it, hot and thick, sliding down over his cheek as the pressure behind the blade increased, drawing a longer line across his cheekbone.
Finally, he couldn't take it any longer. The tension in his jaw came to a breaking point and he snapped his head away, screaming in pain. He could hear Schoen laughing above his screaming, the sound again reminiscent of glass bells. Furious and hurt, his natural instinct began to take over. He tried to pull away and get up from wherever he was sitting, but it was no good. His arms were bound tight behind his back to the chair he had been placed in. His ankles were tied to the front legs of the chair.
Ken finally stopped struggling, his breath coming in short, fierce bursts. The blood ran down the side of his face and into his mouth. He could feel it creep into his swollen eye and over his chest. It was then that he realized that his shirt, jacket, and gloves were gone; the ropes cutting into his wrists became more obvious to him now.
Slowly, he tried to open his eyes - first the left one. The left opened, causing him to wince at the brightness of the light he'd been placed in. It was only an overhead light in an otherwise darkened room, not at all unlike one of the interrogation rooms he'd seen in so many police movies. Standing before him were Hel and Schoen; the former stood farther away, her arms crossed over her chest, while Schoen stood right before him, scalpel in hand, her white gloves covered in his blood.
He began to crack open his right eye. The swelling had gone down a bit from the lancing, but his vision was clouded with the blood.
"I see you woke our guest up, Schoen," Hel said darkly, "Why don't you give him a proper welcome?" Ken began to cough some of the blood out of his mouth as Schoen stepped closer to him, discarding the scalpel to the floor. She smiled down at him bitterly and placed a hand on the side of his face. She tilted his face up to look at her. The light above her was so bright that Ken could barely see her features or keep his eyes open.
"Good evening, Weiß-san," Schoen said coldly, "We have a few questions we want to ask you." Ken managed to crack a strained smile as a few locks of bright blonde hair brushed against his cheek.
"That's funny," he said weakly, "I thought that was why I was looking for you." Schoen chuckled deep in her throat without parting her lips. She ran a finger down Ken's cheek and across his lips. Then, without warning, her hand flashed away and struck his clean cheek. His head snapped to the side, causing blood and sweat to fly away from his face.
"Don't be flippant," she said, steel in her voice, "If you're a good boy, this will be over quickly, and I'll kill you painlessly. If not... I can do this all night." Ken opened his eyes again and gave her a rueful smile.
"Promises, promises," he said, trying not to swallow the blood that had run into his mouth. Schoen gritted her teeth. He was obviously making fun of her. She drew her whip and raised it to strike.
"I'll leave you two alone, then," Hel said, causing Schoen to start, "Don't be too rough on him. We don't want our guest to die before he's had a chance to tell us what we want to know." She started to walk out of the light and toward the room's exit.
"Don't you want to watch, Hel?" Schoen asked, looking over her shoulder. The sound of a door opening came out of the darkness.
"No, thank you," came the reply, "I have things to attend to." The door clicked shut and Schoen turned back to her prisoner with a smirk.
"Now, where were we?", she asked, tightening the whip between her hands with a snap. Ken didn't respond. Instead, he faced the ground, spitting out the little blood that was still running into his mouth. Aggravated that she was seemingly being ignored, Schoen stepped closer to Ken and wove her fingers through his hair. With a jerk, she pulled his face up to meet the light.
"Are we paying attention now?" she asked, taking a labored breath as a response, "Good." She released his hair, causing his head to drop to rest his chin on his chest. He glared at her from underneath his bangs and the blood that clouded his eyes.
"First of all," she said, taking a small step back, "I want to know your name."
"Go to Hell," came the reply. Schoen's lips drew back in a snarl as she brought her whip across his bare chest. Ken's breath caught in his throat; he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of a scream this time. A long, bright red welt rose across his chest almost instantly. Tiny red droplets began to materialize along the mark, signifying that the whip had broken his skin.
"Your name," she said calmly, "Or I give you another lash." Ken looked away, a silent act of protest, and bit his lip. Schoen hissed and lashed out again, this time leaving a vicious mark from his collarbone to his waist. He dug his teeth into his bottom lip so as not to cry out and he was almost sure that he had drawn blood himself.
"Are you just going to sit there and die silently!?", Schoen said, almost screaming, as she struck him again, this time across the stomach. She hit him again, leaving one more mark across his chest, this one just as bright and bloody as the last. He was a stubborn one, that was certain. Schoen knew that most people would have capitulated after the first lash. And as interesting as it was, his stubbornness was really beginning to infuriate her.
She raised the whip to strike again. Before she sent the whip flying again, however, she noticed Ken's lips begin to move.
"Si... S-Siberian," he muttered between ragged breaths. Schoen stayed her whip, looking at him curiously. Then anger suddenly crossed her features again.
"That's not good enough!", she screamed, striking him again, "I want your real name, not some code name!" Ken gasped between clenched teeth as the whip struck his chest again, and then once more. After the third lash, he realized that he stood a good chance of passing out from the pain if he took many more. Finally, he hung his head and allowed his bangs to shade his downcast eyes.
"Ken," he said breathlessly. Schoen stopped short and a smile crept across her face. It wasn't so much a smile of happiness as it was a smile of sadistic satisfaction.
"That wasn't so hard, now was it?" she asked mockingly, "Now, Ken..." He didn't like the way she said his name. It reminded him of a witch that has power over a demon just by calling it by its name. "What about your friends?" she asked, toying with her whip, "Where are they at?"
Schoen was certain that she had his obedience now. He looked exhausted and pushed beyond his limits; moreover, now that she had managed to get his name out of him, she was sure that more victories would come easily. Satisfaction and confidence continued to sustain her vicious smile.
"I'm not going to tell you," he said firmly. Even though he still sounded spent, Schoen could tell that he was serious. Her smile vanished as her lips pursed and her brow creased.
"Oh, is that so?" she said sharply. Once again, her whip left a bright red streak across Ken's chest. This time, though, he wasn't as prepared for it; his scream rang out against the walls. Schoen brought the back of her hand up to her mouth and laughed at his pain.
A few seconds later, Ken was silent again save for the sound of his uneven breathing. Schoen's laughter faded out as echoes bouncing off the cold walls.
"Now, unless you want another, Ken," Schoen said, sounding thoroughly amused, "I suggest you tell me what I want to know. Either way, it doesn't matter to me. I like hearing you scream." He jerked his head up, sneering.
"Why are you such a sadist, lady?" he asked through his teeth. Schoen's expression once again soured.
"A sadist?!" she asked, losing what patience she had left, "How can you call me that?! You were the ones who put Masafumi into a coma! You're the sadist!" Schoen withdrew, embarrassed as she realized that she had been screaming again. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be; she was supposed to be making him lose his bearing, not the other way around. He had somehow managed to get her on the defensive from the confines of his ropes and chair.
"And you were the ones who killed dozens of innocent people," he replied, hissing and barely audible, "People like you and him can only be stopped by death." Schoen literally growled at his words. He could say things like that about her, but she'd be damned if he'd talk about Masafumi like that.
"How dare you!" she snarled, forgoing her whip and slapping him flat-handed across the face. The impact resounded throughout the hollow room. When Ken managed to get enough bearing to look back up, he saw something different on Schoen's face. It wasn't the same anger that he was growing accustomed to; it was a vicious hurt.
Schoen closed her eyes and took a breath. She couldn't let him get to her like that. In the back of her mind, she counted to ten and then reopened her eyes.
"I'm going to ask you again," she said firmly, "Where are your friends?" Ken looked up at her with a cold stare through bloodied, matted bangs.
"I won't tell you," he hissed, "You can kill me, but I won't tell you, you witch." Schoen's eyes widened in shock and anger.
"What did you call me?" she asked, her voice harsh and quiet. Ken's countenance remained cold and angry as he leaned forward.
"I said you're a witch," he replied calmly and quietly, "An ugly, sadistic witch." Schoen's eyes flew open as her face contorted with rage.
"Bastard!" she screamed, executing a perfect and graceful roundhouse right into Ken's head. For a moment, all four legs of his chair left the ground with him before they both came tumbling down onto the hard, cold, wooden floor. He skidded a few feet before sliding to a stop. Ken lay on his face and stomach, the chair on its side, causing his body to bend in strange ways. A small puddle of blood began to gather underneath his nose.
Schoen stood over him, trembling and breathing raggedly as she looked down. Her hands were balled into angry fists and she had broken out into a cold sweat. The back of her sinuses tingled as tears gathered at the corners of her eyes; she silently damned Ken for what he'd said.
As the fog of fury began to clear out of her mind, Schoen realized that Ken's eyes were shut and that he wasn't moving. For a moment, she thought she might have broken his neck; there was an uncertainty in that, however, as she didn't think she'd hit him in the right place for it. A moment later, though, she realized that he had merely been knocked out again. She could see his chest rising and falling heavily as he breathed.
Frustrated and dazed, Schoen walked out of the light and toward the exit that Hel had used earlier. As she reached the door, she flicked a switch and shut the overhead light out, bathing the room in darkness.
"Damn you," she said softly as she opened the door to go.
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
Schoen sighed as she undid the straps on her long, white boots. They were covered with his blood as well. Actually, nearly all of her uniform had been soaked or splattered in varying degrees. She was glad that most of it was black, but the parts that were white were annoying to clean. At least the boots were leather, she reasoned.
She pushed off the last of the white leather and stood from the stool she'd been seated on. One by one, she undid the straps around her waist and unzipped her bodysuit. She pulled her arms out of the suit's sleeves, revealing a gold satin bra, and pushed it down over her hips, uncovering a matching pair of panties. As the suit fell to the floor, she stepped out of the fabric and bent over to gather it all up.
Silently, Schoen balled up the soiled uniform, gloves, and boots, and put them on the stool she'd just been sitting on. Avoidantly, she turned to face the rest of her bathroom.
It was a spacious room with cheerful yellow silk flowers in wicker baskets decorating the clean, white walls. The faucets and fixtures were all carefully polished silver that trimmed a white marble basin. Facing the sink, along the opposite wall, was a small shower with clear glass walls and doors. The wall between the sink and the shower, as well as the wall above the sink, was mirrored from floor to ceiling. Schoen looked sadly into the mirrored wall, despairing in what she saw.
Her hair fell around her shoulders and down her back, still matted in places with Ken's dried blood. The corners of her eyes were smudged with mascara that had come loose from the dampness of tears. Her nose was still red and a little puffy, as well. She silently cursed at how terrible she looked.
'What's the matter, lovely? Have you been crying?' Schoen closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself. In her mind, she could hear Masafumi talking to her, as though nothing had ever changed. If he had seen her unhappy, he would have been the first one to do something about it. She damned Weiß again for taking him away from her, but she especially damned Ken; his words had stung like needles. How dare he call her ugly?
Slowly, Schoen reached behind her back and undid the hooks of her bra. As soon as the hooks were loose, she pulled her arms out of the straps and freed herself from the garment. The silky gold material met the pile of soiled, bloody black clothing, and a few seconds later, so did the panties.
The sound of running water and the thick dampness of steam filled the bathroom as Schoen turned on the shower. After testing the water to see if it was hot enough, she stepped in. The water ran in cascades down her back and shoulders, wetting her hair and rinsing away most of the blood and sweat that were clinging to her.
Her memories, however, were not so easily disposed of.
'We're sorry, dear. You're just not what we're looking for anymore.' Schoen had been so shocked to hear it. One day it seemed like they loved her and the next they were telling her she wasn't good enough anymore?
'Why not? Whatever's wrong with me, I can change it!' It was true. She wasn't afraid to go under the knife. She'd done it before. It had almost seemed like a prerequisite to making it in the modeling industry.
'That's just the problem. Your look is very... synthetic. We're trying to lean toward a more natural appearance. And as a woman ages, it becomes clearer and clearer that she's had work done. It's unattractive. And let's face it, dear - you're no Claudia Schiffer.' She had laughed half-heartedly. Surely to God they were kidding? That was the only explanation. It was just a really bad joke.
'You're kidding, right? I mean, I've been with you for four years...' The look on the manager's face hadn't wavered.
'We'll be happy to write you a referral to another firm. I'm sure there are plenty of markets out there for your looks. But we just can't sell you in high fashion anymore.' And it hit her then.
They were serious. It was over.
She had gone home to her well-furnished apartment in her upscale neighborhood that evening and she drank until she was sick. When she woke up the next morning, the entire apartment was a wreck; every mirror, every chair, every table, every plant had been broken. She hadn't left a single thing untouched. But it was okay. She knew she couldn't pay the rent anymore, anyway.
Schoen poured some shampoo out of a bottle and lathered her hair up with it. She could feel the tangles being worked out and the blood being broken up and swept away as she worked her fingers through her hair. She shut her eyes as her lingering memories made them hotter than the shower water. She knew she was beautiful; she didn't care what the modeling industry or Ken said.
But if that were true, then why did it still upset her when they said otherwise? The water washed the shampoo out of her hair, but it didn't give her the answer.
Fifteen minutes later, Schoen stepped out the shower, clean, but still without the closure she'd been hoping for. She took a fluffy orange towel that had been draped over a shower bar and wrapped it around her body. Looking over the basin into the foggy mirrors, she could barely make out her own reflection. She picked up a washcloth from the side of the sink and wiped the dew off the mirror in front of her. No, she was definitely the same as she was when she woke up this morning. But somehow, she didn't feel like it.
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
"Hel? Are you still up?" There was a small knock on the study door. A second later, it slowly opened as Schoen poked her head inside.
Hel was seated at a large desk strewn with papers and lit with a single green desk lamp. The walls of the study were lined with towering bookshelves and decorated with clocks, fine paintings, and countless degrees and awards earned by both Masafumi and Hel. The only other light in the room besides the desk lamp was a small table lamp that resided on an end table beside the overstuffed sofa on the other side of the room. The door that Schoen currently stood in opened right beside the end table and lamp.
Hel shuffled a few papers, but didn't look up.
"Yes," she replied softly, "Is the prisoner behaving?" Her manner was as business-like and analytical as always. Schoen stepped inside the study and shut the door behind her.
"He's unconscious," Schoen said, a hint of discomfort in her voice, "I knocked him out." Hel turned to look at Schoen. Her hair was still damp from the shower, and she was now in her house clothes - a loose yellow and gold blouse and chiffon skirt, tied around the waist with a ribbon.
"Is something wrong?" she asked, adjusting her glasses, "You don't sound well." Schoen looked away at one of the pictures of her, Masafumi, and the others on the wall.
"No, it's just..." she began, not really sure what to say as she turned back to Hel, "I... Hel, do you think I'm ugly?"
Hel blinked, not believing what she was hearing. She blinked again just to make sure she'd heard Schoen right. Then, realizing she was serious, she tried to think of an appropriate response.
"What on earth would give you that idea?" Hel finally managed to ask. Schoen looked down, not wanting to meet Hel's gaze any longer.
"Yeah, you're right," she said softly, "It is a pretty silly idea." Hel continued to stare, not quite sure what to make of her partner's strange new attitude.
"Schoen, why don't you go downstairs and get something warm to drink?" Hel suggested, "Then, why don't you go to bed? I'm sure you're tired." Schoen looked back to the picture on the wall.
"That sounds good," she said weakly, "I think I will. Thank you. Goodnight."
"Goodnight," Hel replied, watching as Schoen slipped silently back out the study door.
Once back out in the hall, Schoen realized that that wasn't as helpful as she'd expected it to be. She sighed to herself. As she walked down the hall toward the kitSchoen, she threw a glance at Neu's room. The door was shut as well, and Neu was no doubt already asleep.
She could hear the muffled sound of music coming from Tot's room, and guessed that the younger girl was listening to some new pop and reading a manga. She wouldn't be much help, either. Instead of the kitSchoen, Schoen decided to go where she was sure she'd find an answer.
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
The houseshoes on her feet made a strange scuffling noise as they slid across the metal flooring of the basement lab. It was a spacious place to be sure; Masafumi had wanted plenty of room for holding his own personal experiments. But since he'd been 'gone', it had been left largely unused. Hel preferred not to touch it for her own work, saying that it belonged to him and that she wouldn't use it without him there.
Schoen passed several small cages holding sleeping rats and guinea pigs and hamsters. Her sheer skirts swirled airily around her legs, giving them the strange look that they were floating on air. She passed racks of acids and beakers. She passed the shelves the microscopes were kept on. The poorly lit room seemed to stretch forever before her. What she wanted was at the end.
'What are you doing out here?' It was a stupid question. It was raining. She didn't even have an umbrella since her apartment had been repossessed. She had left it in there along with everything else she couldn't carry with her.
'I don't have any place else to go.' It was true. She didn't have any real friends and none of the people she knew from the agency wanted to be associated with some old has-been like her. And she would rather throw herself off a bridge than go back home to her parents and admit defeat.
'Is your pride worth so much?' Another stupid question. But he was right. She would probably freeze to death if she stayed out there.
'It is to me. Unless you're offering me a job.' It was a sarcastic response. But it was worth a try. After all, when you've not eaten in four days, you don't have much to lose.
'Come to think of it, I could use a new secretary.' What? 'Especially a pretty one like you.' What!? 'Why don't you walk with me for a bit? You can even use my umbrella.'
The tears prickled the corners of Schoen's eyes again at the memory. How could they call someone like that evil? How could they say he deserved to die? He had picked her up when she was at the bottom, and he didn't even know her. A tear slid down the side of her face as she reached the end of the room. She rested her hand against a cold glass surface. Behind the glass facade, she could feel the flow of the stasis fluid and make out Masafumi's features.
He was still alive, but just barely. As she looked at his peacefully sleeping features, she felt the familiar hate rising in her heart. She hated Weiß for judging him. She hated having her new family broken up. She hated the man on the floor in the other room. Worse yet, she knew that she hated him because deep down, she knew he was right. They had been unspeakably cruel to others.
And on top of all this, there was a new feeling. She was beginning to hate the hate. It was making her tired. All she wanted was to hear Masafumi's voice reassure her again.
Schoen leaned against the glass that separated her from Masafumi and shut her eyes. She knew there were no answers to be found here. Not as long as he was like this. Maybe some day in the future, but not now.
But where was it? Schoen finally gave in to the thought that she wasn't going to find that answer. She turned and left the lab. She wandered back up to the ground floor and into the kitSchoen. She made a cup of warm tea. She wandered through the stairways, the studies, the bedrooms of the large house. No, there was nothing there that was going to tell her once and for all that she was a beautiful person.
Finally, Schoen wandered up to the attic. They had moved her old bureau up there after her face had been cut in battle and she'd broken the mirror out of it in a rage. It sat, unused and dusty, like so much that they no longer had any use for. She knew that somewhere underneath all the clutter lay a box with a single suit and pair of heels in it, the only reminder she had of her past life, other than a few posters and magazine clippings. It was the outfit she'd been wearing when she met Masafumi.
Sighing and feeling defeated, Schoen seated herself on the ottoman in front of her old bureau. She looked at the broken glass still clinging to the inside of what used to be the mirror. It made a bizarre picture, the fractured images of herself splayed out in the shape of the old mirror. She reached out to touch them, just to make sure they were real. As soon as she touched the glass, she recoiled in pain; she had cut her finger on one of the shards of broken glass.
Schoen tucked the cut finger into her mouth and sucked on it to help kill the pain. As she did so, she looked at the fractured mirror and thought about what Ken had said. Did she really like the pain of others? Did that make her 'ugly'?
All her life, she had always associated outer perfection with inner beauty. Looking at the broken glass in front of her and on the floor around her, Schoen realized that perhaps she'd only wanted to be beautiful to prove to herself that she was a good person. And if others thought she was beautiful, then they'd see that she was a good person as well.
But not Ken. He'd seen through it all. He had called her bluff.
Schoen felt something hot and wet hit the hand of the finger she'd stuck into her mouth. She realized that she was crying again. She really had been ugly.
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
"Ne, Omi, are you still up?" Omi didn't turn from his computer screen. He knew the voice belonged to Youji. If he had turned around, he would have seen that the taller man was in his bed clothes with a cup of hot tea in one hand. Omi hadn't even changed out of his clothes from the mission earlier. As soon as they had gotten home, he'd made a beeline for the computer.
That was five hours ago.
"I'm not going to sleep yet," Omi said, the fatigue showing in his voice, "Not yet." Youji could tell that he was intent on finding their lost teammate. Worse yet, he knew that Omi held himself responsible for losing him. It was a feeling he was all too familiar with, as well.
"Omi," Youji began. He couldn't bring himself to finish it. The truth was, he didn't have much hope that they'd find Ken alive or even in one piece. They knew without a shadow of a doubt that Schreient had taken him. Apparently, they didn't want anyone else, either. After he'd disappeared, they'd even searched the lab from top to bottom - still nothing. They had cleared out. They had obviously gotten what they came for.
Most worrisome was the fact that if they had wanted to interrogate him, there was a chance he could slip and give away their location. Then Schient could come and pick them off at their leisure.
"Omi, maybe you should turn it over to Kritiker and rest for a little while," Youji suggested finally, "There's not much we can do right now." Omi stubbornly shook his head and didn't look up from the screen.
"I can find them," he said anemically, "I just need a little more time, that's all. Just a little more time."
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
The quiet sound of shuffling houseshoes and rustling chiffon skirts broke the silence of the dark room. The houseshoes made their way from one end of the room to the other. Then the sound of a blind flipping up accompanied the houseshoes as a window was revealed behind it. The window allowed dim, blue late night light to pour into the room, giving it a husky, ethereal hue.
As the light filled the room, it fell across the contorted figure of a man, bound to a chair and lying in the floor. The light didn't cause him to stir at all; indeed, he was quite unconscious.
The footsteps belonging to the one who had opened the blind trailed over beside the man in the floor. She bent over and put a stack of things in the floor before picking up something long and thin that gleamed white in the moonlight.
Holding the scalpel in her hand, Schoen bent over Ken's unconscious form.
She leaned forward and closed her eyes.
A second later, there was a taut snap, and then another. She sat up and moved down to his feet, snapping the ropes there as well. She moved the chair away from him and watched as his body slumped down into a more natural position. For a moment, she wondered from his limpness if he wasn't actually dead. But, no; once again, she could still see and hear that he was breathing.
Quietly, she moved to sit behind his back.
Schoen reached over and pulled something out of the stack she'd sat down by his head and unfolded it. It was apparently a towel. She laid the towel over her lap, smoothed it out, and then took Ken's uppermost shoulder in her hands. A few seconds later, she had rolled him onto her lap, the dried blood making a sickening crackling noise as his face separated from the floor. She looked him over, realizing that now he had a large bruise on the left side of his face to match the one on the right side. The only difference was that this one hadn't swollen over his eye; it was an inch or so above his eye. For the first time, she bit back the bile she felt rising in her throat and allowed herself to feel pity for him. She realized that she really had been cruel to him.
Schoen took something else out of the stack and sat it by her lap. Then she took a small handcloth from the stack and unfolded it. She picked up the first item, a bottle, and unscrewed the lid, dabbing the handcloth over it to wet it. Once the cloth was wet, she began to dab at Ken's face with it, cleaning the blood away.
After a few minutes, Schoen had gotten most of the blood off of his nose. Suddenly, she felt something underneath her hand twitch and realized that he was trying to open his eyes. She moved her hand to get a better view. Sure enough, Ken's eyelids were moving like they were trying to open. A pained groan followed a few seconds later as he brought his hand to his face.
"No, don't move," Schoen said softly, "I don't know how bad you're hurt." Ken stopped moving for a second before his eyes cracked open.
"Is that..." he mumbled, "Are you...?" She dabbed the washcloth again and began working on the bloody spot beneath his right eye.
"Schoen," she said, "My name is Schoen." She pulled another bottle out of the stack she'd brought in with her and unscrewed the cap. "Here, drink this," she said, placing the bottle to his lips, "It's water." Reluctantly, Ken began to drink. After a second, though, he forgot his hesitance and began to drink ravenously.
When the bottle was finally empty, Schoen lowered it and put it on the floor.
"How do I know you're not trying to poison me?" Ken asked breathlessly as she continued to clean his face. Schoen bit back the urge to get mad again; after all, it was a perfectly reasonable question.
"Because if I were going to poison you," she replied firmly, "I wouldn't bother cleaning you up." This answer seemed to satisfy him and he relaxed into her lap while she cleaned.
Slowly, Schoen made her way from his face to his neck, and then down to his chest. She looked over the lashes her whip had made, marveling at how long he had lasted under her assault. She ran her fingers over the bloody welts, watching Ken wince as she did so. As her fingers traced the length of one of the marks, Ken's hand covered hers, stopping her from going any farther.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked haltingly, "Aren't you going to kill me?" Schoen slowly shook her head, causing her hair to wave back and forth across Ken's cheeks.
"No," she said quietly, "Because I thought about what you said. I don't want to be an ugly person." He could vaguely see a streak of light make its way down the side of her face. Carefully, he moved his hand from hers and touched her cheek, feeling a hot stream of water.
"An ugly person wouldn't be doing this," he said in a hushed whisper. Schoen smiled then, and for the first time that night, it was a real smile.
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
It wasn't yet dawn when Schoen parked the pink VW Bug outside the entrance to the subway station. She wanted to hurry and beat the morning rush; if she wasn't quick, this could get messy.
She turned to look at the man sitting in her passenger's side seat. He had been so tired that he had fallen asleep as soon as he sat down in the car. That wasn't surprising, considering what she'd put him through. Right then, Ken was asleep, bundled inside one of Schoen's blankets like a cocoon. She had rolled up his shirts inside of his leather jacket and tied his gloves together. The gloves were draped around his neck and hidden inside the blanket.
Schoen shut the car off and got out. She walked around to the other side of the car and opened the door, causing Ken to stir. He looked up at her groggily, still not fully coherent after all he'd been through.
"It's time to go," she said, tugging on the blanket, urging him to stand. Slowly, he managed to get out of the car and stand.
"Is it already?", he said, yawning and trying to stretch as much as his battered body would allow him, "Time really flies when you're having fun, huh?" Schoen gave him a small smile.
"You have to hurry," she said, "People will ask questions if you wait till rush hour." Ken smiled tiredly at her.
"That's what you think," he said, "You've not seen some of the things that go on on the train." Schoen allowed herself a small laugh.
"I guess not," she said before stopping to look up at him. He smiled sadly back at her.
"This is it, then, isn't it?" he asked, "I get the feeling that if I see you again, I'll have to kill you." There wasn't a hint of malice in his voice; it was said so matter-of-factly that Schoen could tell that he was sorry to say it.
"Then if we have to meet again," Schoen said, pressing a finger into his chest, "Let us have a beautiful fight." She gave him a mischievous smile.
"Agreed," he said, returning the smile.
There was silence for a moment as they stood there, wondering how exactly to part. At last, it was Ken who broke the awkward moment. He leaned forward and captured Schoen's lips with his own for a brief moment before withdrawing. She simply stood there, wide-eyed, not knowing what to do or say. He smiled sheepishly and turned to go.
"Later," he said finally, throwing a wave over his shoulder. Schoen stood there, dazed as he walked off.
"Later," she replied mechanically, not knowing what else to do.
A few minutes later, Schoen raised her hand to her lips and looked in the direction of the subway terminal. Ken was nowhere to be found. Still slightly dazed, she got back into the car and started it, wanting to get back home before dawn.
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
The sun had just risen no more than ten minutes before Schoen pulled the car back into the driveway of Schreient's large estate. She coasted the car into the driveway before shutting it off. Quietly, so as not to wake anyone else up, she got out and shut the car door slowly.
The house was always quiet right at dawn. No one would be up for at least another two hours or so. Neu and Hel were usually the first ones up, but they wouldn't think it odd if she slept in today. Especially considering what she'd been up to last night.
As she walked through the front door, though, she was hit by a pang of guilt. She was going to have to lie to Hel about Ken. There was no way he could have just escaped without them catching him. The best she could do would be to say that she'd gotten angry and beat him to death. Disposing of the body would be a good excuse for having driven out before dawn. Hopefully, this would never catch back up to her.
Then again, considering the fact that they had the sister of one of the Weiß upstairs, it was pretty likely that it eventually would....
Schoen sighed and headed toward her room.
* ~ * ~ * ~ *
It was already well into the morning.
Aya and Youji had opened the shop by themselves while Omi continued to search online for any leads he could get. But by 10 o' clock, nothing had turned up.
Omi, exhausted, and probably unwittingly, had gone to sleep at his computer. His head was pillowed on his arms beside his keyboard and mouse.
Aya and Youji worked together in silence, Aya watering the plants and Youji running the register. Business was slow so far, as most all of their normal customers were still in school. There was an almost unearthly pall in the shop. The thought that Ken would not be coming back had seemed to poison the air.
About 10 after 11, Youji began to ring another customer out. He'd gotten halfway through punching in the price on the sticker when the door chimes rang. Instinctively, he looked up. When he saw what had just come through the door, he almost dropped the potted plant he was ringing up.
It was Ken, draped in a fuzzy orange blanket, still in his jeans from the mission, and covered in bruises. If it weren't for the fact that they had believed he was already dead, it probably would have been mildly amusing.
"My goodness!" the lady waiting to be rung up remarked, "What's wrong with him?" Aya, having noticed Ken as well, rushed over and helped him walk to the back of the store. He threw Ken's arm over the back of his neck as they headed back.
"Oh, don't mind him," Youji remarked, smiling as he continued to ring up the purchase, "He does this all the time. He probably just got in a bar fight last night." Then, to emphasize the point, he called out toward the back. "Hope you gave 'em one for me, Ken!" he called, causing the customer to get the oddest look on her face.
In the back, Aya's boots clanged on the metal stairs as he helped Ken down into their basement. The noise caused Omi to stir at his place by the computer. He looked up in disbelief at his two teammates coming down the stairs and heading over to the couch. Just to make sure he wasn't dreaming, he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.
"Ken!" he finally said, "You're alive! What happened?!" Ken looked up, smiling a bit.
"Well, aside from the guy asking me for change on the subway?" he asked. Omi stood up and walked over to the couch to get a better look at him. Aya stood behind the couch as Ken flopped down, grunting at the soreness in his chest.
"What happened to Schreient?" Omi asked, "Didn't they try to kill you?" Ken smiled sheepishly and pushed the blanket away from his shoulders, revealing the multitude of whip marks covering his body. Omi's eyes widened and even Aya was taken aback.
"They tried," he said, rubbing the rope burns on one of his wrists. Omi adopted a confused expression.
"How did you get away?" he asked, awestruck. Ken looked at the floor and smiled ruefully.
"I was saved by a beautiful woman."