defending and deluding and defending-
she's in your heart, she's in your traitor's blood,
arches your eyebrow and contracts your eye/
Alas, what help for you, poor orphan fool,
who creep from rib to rib, and lose your way?
(Conrad Aiken. Time in the Rock V)
BlasphemyPart One
Weiss Kreuz is © to Koyasu Takehito, Project Weiss.
Rating and Warnings: PG-14 and might go up. OOC, original characters.
Summary: Schwarz stole an old icon from a church in order to use it in their mission but since playing with gods has never been their strong point, Weiss should start worrying right about…now!
Author: Ele
Website:
Date written: sometime in 2007
He has always been disgusted with churches. Even when he was a child, still innocent and sweet, with no or little experience in life, he would have this sickening feeling in his stomach upon entering a church, but then he didn't know what it was, he couldn't give it a proper name then. What would one get after mixing phobia with interest? What name such a poison deserves?
Take this church, for example, in the central Tokyo. Big stained glass windows, placed high on the walls of fortress thick, depicting suffering saints with that sheepish gaze somewhere up there, with this sickening naivety of being soon saved. Sometimes, they were, but in most cases God was so terribly late. Did He ever apologize for that?
The man with a backpack approached the altar barrier and kneeled down on an uncomfortable wooden pew. He carefully and with peculiar interest examined the altar and its attributes: the embroidered silk covering, the golden chalice, the cliché painting of Virgin Mary in her blue robe, stepping on the grass-snake… Everything was very realistic; no wonder so many people believed it was true. The scent of wax candles and incense was thick rich in the air.
Farfarello believed in God, he honestly did. He was overexcited with the idea of one day approaching Him face to face on the Day of Last Judgement and finding out how bad he had hurt Him in so many different ways. Farfarello wanted to hurt God, and hurt him bad, very bad. He had his reasons for that. And forgiving was what God did for a living, so there were many chances of not being punished at all. But Farfarello could punish himself instead, what he conscientiously did in regular intervals: he wanted his whole love-hate affair with God to be fair, at least for his own part.
He looked around. The late evening Mass was over and the last parishes were leaving, the sound of their steps dying out in the stillness of the night. Soon this place will be closed for the night. Farfarello slowly rose to his feet and sneaked to the sideway staircase that led to the second floor organs; the piece dated back to the XVI century. He knew the most secure place for a thief to hide was in the confessional- it was so sweetly detective story-like!- but so did know the sexton, who would carefully check each and every confessional before locking the church's premises, the main and two sideway doors for the night. And tonight Farfarello was going to loot the church.
He squatted down on the carpeted floor next to the organ and observed the church through the holes in the carved wooden barrier that constructed a kind of a balcony. He saw the sexton check the confessionals, the human size niches with the statues of saints, and each chapel. The sexton was old and walked with difficulty, still trying to fulfil his duties to the faith, so climbing the staircase to check the organs was a work of his lifetime. That night he just stood down there, head cocked backwards like a saint in the stained glass window, trying to see if there was anybody in the organ balcony, - Schuldig did his piece with a certain amount of grace for Brad did not want blood on this mission, be it their own or not, and that already said something about how serious was their leader about not getting unnecessary attention. The sexton spent a few minutes carefully listening to the meaningful silence of the church, trying to catch any suspicious sound of the thief's breath. Then he put out the last candles and slowly walked out of the church. He spent a few minutes with all the locks, and then everything went quiet.
Farfarello left his hideout, rummaged in his backpack, and lit a portable torch. It was quite an unnecessary move because Farfarello had a gift for night vision, but he enjoyed it to no end. It took him only a few minutes to get downstairs to one of the inner doors of the church that were the closest to the altar. The meagre light lit a few wires around the doorframe, and Farfarello grinned- only a complete idiot would have an alarm system installed outside the object! But it was Brad who installed it with his scrupulous attention to details two weeks ago, claiming it was in the insurance policy of the church, - a thing no one in the clerical staff could confirm or deny when he showed up in a worker's uniform and with his gadgets. And, for the heart of the matter, the alarm system worked just fine. It was a necessary risk to finally make sure the item was there and could be easily retrieved.
Farfarello took out a pair of small forceps from the pocket of his black biker's leather jacket, and cut a few wires apart. The door opened without a sound (Crowford knew what he was doing back then, even though nobody would hear the door squeak.) and Farfarello entered a small square room without any windows. He closed the door tightly and only then found the light switch.
It was a room all dusty and with bad air. It seemed for centuries the things were only brought in but not taken out from the cell; Farfarello sneezed a couple of times. Farfarello checked a few stalls and bookshelves but found nothing even close to what he was looking for. Then he yelped from joy when he spotted something covered with a torn linen blanket behind one of the bookcases, leaned against the wall. He took away the blanket and his heart rejoiced even more. He quickly looked through the icons and found the one he was so desperate for, then covered the rest items with the same blanket and put back in the exactly same way he had found them. Then he switched off the light and left the room without any signs of breaking in, except for the cut wires that he quickly fixed with some cello-tape, -it would take some time for them to figure out the break-in and then ages to go through the list of things kept in the room until they'd come to what went missing; if they ever go for it. Human nature was lazy.
The light of his portable torch found a metal ring in the floor in front of the altar, and Farfarello pulled it up. A small hidden entrance appeared disclosing the stairs leading downwards. Farfarello descended into the new hideout and shut the doors tightly (the sound was an eerie thud in the huge empty space): he'll spend the night in the crypt, and the dead rarely complained about his presence. He embraced the icon and sat down on the floor, leaning back against the wall, and soon was peacefully snoring.
Later on, in the early hours of the day, back at Schwartz headquarters, Schuldig cracked one eye open and looked daggers at Brad.
"I'm busy,"- said the telepath.
"You are becoming reckless,"- said Crowford, - "what if I were a Weiss?"
"I sense Weiss in the radius of ten miles,"- snorted Schuldig, -"I'd know if you were one."
"Doesn't matter now. Get ready, it's time to go."
"You mean our Arsène Lupin did it?"- Schuldig quickly sat up in his bed, where contrary to Oracles expectations he has actually been peacefully dozing off instead of messing up with somebody's mind, like Oracle could have rightfully expected. To tell the truth, Schuldig has never been a morning person, anyway.
"Yes, so hurry up."
"Where's the fire? I thought he was enjoying the company. We don't want to be intrusive, do we?"
Brad didn't reply to that; he just looked down at the telepath and fixed his glasses to sit firmer on the nose (damn, why couldn't he finally get himself a pair of contact lenses? That's something to consider after this mission.). In another ideal scenario he'd ask Schuldig 'are you questioning my authority' type of a thing and they'd get into another row that Schuldig was so good at involving his discourse participants in, but this time Brad was meaningfully silent.
"Did you again have one of your visions or something?"- asked Schuldig.
"If you continue in the same spirit, it will definitely remain only a vision and not even something."
"Give me a couple of minutes for preparation, then. He spent the whole night in there, he can spare some time more. Go stalk Nagi."
"Nagi's on a mission, if I may remind you. We have to pull efforts together since some of us obviously cannot work at their full capacity. Did you scan the mind of the person I asked you to? I hope you did. You had three days for that."
This was the part that Schuldig hated about his job. He was probably the only telepath on Earth working under pressure. How can they set limits to what was meant to be a form of art? Schuldig angrily sighed.
"He knows he's being watched and is confused about it, so he took precautions. His mind shield is difficult to trick. But he's thinking about coming to Tokyo these days to personally attend to the matter."
"Good. Tell me when you have more about his plans, and we'll send someone to pick him up,"- a wry smile was forming on Crowford's lips.
"You want him to be captured alive?"
"He's of no use to us dead."
"I can extract information from dead people, you know. It's even easier than working with the living, they don't have their mind shields anymore, even though that's so much less pleasurable."
"Weiss doesn't know that."
"Oh? Are we inviting them to play along?"- Schuldig clapped hands in excitement.
"They will inevitably interfere. If they don't do it themselves, we'll have to pinch them."
"But what for? I do share your passion for teasing Weiss on different occasions but can we at least once do things the easy way?"
"No,"- said Brad and chuckled, –"doesn't it feel good to be bad?"
There was something more than the silliness to tease their strongest enemy, thought Schuldig as he was preparing to go. For some reason Brad wanted Weiss to participate. Was it somehow related to his visions? Must be. Weiss and Kritiker were worthy enemies to break; others in the history of Schwartz were simply squashed. Is it all about that? Brad has never been an open book, and in most cases he did share his ideas, Schuldig was happy he wasn't the one sent to work with them.
A day at Koneko was starting in the usual morning working mode and was promising to again be busy. Omi was working with a computer by the counter, Ken was moping the floor, Aya was arranging an intricate ikebana, and Yoji was- surprise, surprise- busy doing nothing observing the traffic in the street.
"We need to tell the greenhouse staff to reduce the amount of cut flowers they send us,"- said Omi and tapped a few keyboard keys, -"especially lilacs and tulips. People don't buy them as much as they used to and often ask for flowers in the pots, and our selection isn't big. We need to think about that, too. And maybe we can start doing combinations of dried flowers. People are becoming more practical these days."
"Are we on the verge of bankrupt?"- asked Yoji, half amused and half serious. Only he could utter a sentence with several implications at the same time.
"No, Balinese, of course, not. But our accounts aren't great, either,"- replied Omi.
"You do the accounts, you've got a head for that,"- said Yoji, -"and I'll take care of the customers,"- and he shot his famous smile at a pair of schoolgirls passing by on their way to school. –"Oh, dear. I wouldn't know how to keep a normal job if we are ruined."
"What do you consider a normal job, you women chaser?"- asked Ken, finishing to mop the floor. –"And stop grinning at minor or else you'll get in trouble."
"A job compatible with our mission, of course, and trouble is my second name. That's definitely not a nine-to-five job once I'm a full-time hun…"
He didn't finish the sentence because the first customer that morning showed up on the threshold.
"I'm sorry, we're not open yet,"- said Aya as he placed the ikebana on display on the window-sill to draw attention of the passers-by as a kind of an advertisement, -"please come back in half an hour."
"I'm sorry,"- said the customer with a mild accent, -"I'm not going to buy anything. I just…could I have a glass of water, please?"
The four members of Weiss looked up at the strange person. He was in his late sixties, short and stout, with long grey hair and a beard, dressed in a long black cloak and carrying a rather shabby suitcase. And he didn't look well.
" Of course,"- said Ken, -"please take a seat. Omi, get this man a glass of water."
"Right away."
"Thank you,"- said the man after he drank a glass of cold tap water, -"I'm feeling much better now. I don't take flying by plane well, you see. And I just wanted to walk it to my place, to cool my head so to say, so I didn't take a taxi from the airport. But I overrated myself."
He looked around.
"What a beautiful place!"-he complimented.
"Thank you,"- smiled Aya, -"now if you are better let us get you to your hotel."
"You're very kind but please don't bother. I don't want to trouble anyone. I'd be grateful if you could show me the way to Church of St. Helen. That's where I was going."
"A church?"
"Yes,"- and the man looked at the four Weiss with suspicion, -"is something wrong?"
"No, not at all,"- again smiled Aya. –"We'll be glad to help. Here,"- he took the man by his elbow and guided out of the shop,- "go along this street…"
"Do you think it's related to what Persia informed us about earlier?"- asked Omi as he together with Ken and Yoji was at watching Aya and the strange man. There have been several break-ins in churches in the region that were accidentally discovered but no connection between them was found with the exception that all of them were Catholic churches and that nothing has been stolen. Nothing has been broken or damaged and the intruders seemingly didn't find what they were looking for and this mystery drew Kritiker's attention because everything related to spiritual issues was a tangible issue with them.
"He's a priest,"- said Aya returning to the shop, -"he came from Germany to translate several old religious books that are kept in the Church of St. Helen. But I'm not buying that, even though he was wearing a priest's clothing under the cloak."
"We'd better look into it,"- said Yoji, and Ken and Omi nodded in agreement. –"We know where he went so it won't be a problem to find him."
A computer loudspeaker chimed announcing a new email message. That was a new Omi's idea to give the shop a more modernized approach and to increase their clientele: now Koneko had an own website. People could place their orders by filling an online order form and also pay online by credit cards. This approach to business had already won a favour of several companies in town.
"I don't believe it!"- cried out Omi.
" What is it?"- Yoji bent over Omi's shoulder to inspect the email, -"kuso! It's an order from Schwartz!"
"Schwartz?!"- Aya and Ken couldn't believe their ears.
"Yes, they ordered four bouquets of white lilies and even paid for them!"- confirmed Yoji.
"Who's the recipient?"- asked Aya.
"We are,"- said Omi gloomily, -"and lilies by large are funeral flowers."
"Is it a message or just a bad joke? I hope they don't intend to support our business like that too often,"- said Ken.
"I think Schwartz…"- began Omi.
"Excuse me,"- said the priest, -"I am so terribly sorry to bother you again but I forgot my briefcase."
Everybody again glared at him.
To Be Continued.