Beta'd by Sybil Rowan
disclaimer: Weiss belongs to Koyasu Takehito, Project Weiss and others
Little mail this morning. The only important item was a postcard, a photo of Omi and Schuldig. Schuldig had his arm around Omi's shoulders, and they were grinning into the camera. Looking less grim than usual, Aya flipped the card over.
In Omi's neat little kanji it said 'Just to tell A his worry about Schu getting us arrested hasn't happened. You can tell from the wobbly focus, Ouka took the photo. But this time I've kept her out of my laptop. Nagi and Nanami still in California. The rest of us really enjoying London. Don't forget C and K's grand opening is June 25, workmen willing. Hope you're all well. (drop a line at this address)'
When he entered the Koneko's living room Yohji looked up, rather reluctantly. He'd no doubt hoped Aya had dropped dead overnight. Yohji and Aya had never got along, and having just the two of them made it worse. Their talents should have balanced each other, Aya rather thought Kritiker expected it. But he and Yohji were too different in everything.
He had some things in common with Ken, and others with Omi, and could have partnered either. Aya didn't let himself realise how much he missed them, now, when Yohji was saying in one of his more offensive drawls, "From the strange fact you're nearly smiling, I guess you've news from our two escape artists."
"London, this week."
"Very sweet and cosy." Yohji brought out a cigarette and dragged on it, grabbing as much nicotine as possible before Aya yelled at him. "And have you thought about tackling this Gokita with only two men?"
"Don't smoke in the kitchen. Omi did missions all by himself, then with only Ken, and they had less experience than us."
"Their missions would have been smaller scale."
Aya snatched the cigarette out of Yohji's mouth and stubbed it out in his toast. "Eat it, if you want nicotine. Or suck a baby's dummy, that's what you're after. Then we'll scale down our missions."
Yohji fished out the dying, buttery cigarette and sucked it, just to show Aya. "Manx has been promising us a couple more killers. Women. Young, attractive women."
Aya wondered if Yohji had deliberately chosen the argument least likely to appeal to Aya. There were a lot of reasons not to go off half cocked on this mission, but waiting to train two newbies wasn't one. "Meanwhile Gokita's bankrolling half the underworld." Aya knew he wanted to work as far away from Yohji as possible, but that didn't make it a bad idea. "Look, even you can't do as well getting info from the internet as Omi. But you were the best at finding things out on the ground. I go in, and get Gokita. You hang round that club of his in Naha, and see what you can pick up there."
Yohji nodded. This mission plan had one thing he and Aya agreed on. They would be apart, and it would be a good thing.
When you're as rich as Gokita, you don't skulk in warehouses. Gokita had bought himself his own island, a green and tropical islet in the Ryukus.
A full moon and thick fields of stars clearly lit the small boat approaching it. A silenced motor boat steered by the head of the Okinawa Kritiker station.
Aya slid over the boat's side.
"I can't actually land," the station head had told Aya. "The coral sand would rip open the boat, but swimming the last few yards should be easy. I'll come back for you in twenty four hours."
The bare minimum of equipment had been wrapped in oilcloth, in a rucksack Aya would wear for the swim, which seemed more than a few yards. Still, Aya had enough breath left to dash for cover in tropic greenery. Instant loss of bearings. But he'd never be far from the sound of the sea.
He put on much lighter clothes than his usual. Light shirt and jeans, but proper bush boots. He strapped on his katana, and walked away from the sea. 'The centre of the island' was a bit vague, but it was a small island.
There was sea smell, and jungle smells. He kept on the alert for the various smells of human life, and found them soon enough.
As he approached, he noticed another mixed in with the petrol fumes and garbage. It wasn't such a usual one, but it was one he knew well enough. It explained the silence.
The moon spotlighted them. The target, and all his bodyguard and staff, were all dead, laid out in front of a white mansion.
They'd all been killed by a blade.
Aya reflexively checked the sunken power generator and plate armour security arrangements. Breaking in would have been quite a job.
The killer came around the corner of the house, and Aya looked over the bodies of the dead. At the Irishman grinning at him. Farfarello said in his musical accent, "All killed as hum'nly as I cud."
Aya asked evenly, "And me?" His sword was bare by his side, as ready as needed.
"Nae, nae! They're for you. A courtin' present."
Aya lowered his lids for a moment. But not all the way, it being dangerous to lose sight of Farfarello. Something in him recognised the same in Farfarello, like hearing his native tongue in the babble of a foreign crowd. "We can't – I can't – just turn from trying to kill someone to courting."
"I can wait." Aya looked at him quizzically. Farfarello's previous behaviour hadn't given the impression of a long attention span. "I've been waiting years." Even Aya blinked at that. "When I first saw you, I knew, as one side of the blade knows the other."
Aya knew Farfarello hated lies, and lying. Still... "It didn't occur to you to say anything?"
"It wadna have worked. We both had too much anger in us." Farfarello stepped a couple of cautious paces closer. The tip of Aya's sword lifted just an inch. Farfarello stopped, but didn't retreat. "But now Takatori's a stuffed exhibit."
"And you?"
Farfarello smiled beautifically. A homicidal lunatic shouldn't be able to smile like that, and obviously Farfarello hadn't lost his claws. "Crawford had a renegade Healer from Essett help me. Sweet girl. I near decided to settle for Italian cooking and uncritical adoration."
"You should have."
"I've been wonderin' the same thing. But now, it's sure I shouldn't." Another couple of steps closer.
It had been so much simpler for both of them when they'd just been trying to kill each other. Aya said, "I shouldn't think either Crawford or Schuldig did his courting in this sort of setting."
"True, I'm lucky." Aya lifted one elegant eyebrow. "What man wouldna want to court the love of his life, jus' th'two of 'em on a tropic island?"
Not much in the mail, but the unscheduled letter from Omi looked interesting. Aya read it, and shook his head ruefully.
Their Boston town house was a bit on the small side. When he walked into their sitting room he was still looking disturbed, in his minimalist way. "News from Omi," he told his lover. "Not Schuldig."
"Well, that's different."
"It's about Epitaph. The computer, not the mission."
Farfarello frowned anyway. Restorative surgery or not, it was a disturbing expression. The name Epitaph reminded him of that pretty teacher, who'd thrown herself so at Aya. Farfarello hoped, for her sake, Yohji was keeping his Asami in Australia. The Kudohs had the whole Southern Hemisphere, while he and Aya kept to the Northern. What could be fairer than that?
Meanwhile, Aya was talking about how Omi had rigged Epitaph, to remove it from use. Provoked by sneers at his beloved 50s science fiction movies, he'd bypassed all the safety features to fix the master computer onto a Big Question. In this case, the nature of God, or if He existed at all.
"And I don't know how to tell you this, Jei..."