Chapter Nine– A Pair of Thieves
summary- I thought of Maron and decided, what would she be like if the story was more mature? Not in that way you pervs, but what if she was less magical girl-ish. She still has magical powers, but she's a little older, and she uses her God-given supernatural strength, speed, and agility to fight instead (you know, the one that lets her jump on rooftops and stuff). Oh, and Finn is not evil here. I just can't stand the thought of cute little Finn having to be bad (sob sob sob). So... on with the story and I hope you enjoy. Happy readings!
ratings- T (just in case)
pairings- MaronxChiaki, JeannexSinbad, FinnxAccess
disclaimer- I own neither Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne nor its characters. However, anyone who dares to take this story, word for word, as their own will have to answer to Finn and Access personally. And they have fangs. Just remember- you have been warned.
last note: to change character perspective, I had to put their names, because this site's not letting me just put the dash on its own. Sorry for any inconvenience it may cause.
-9-
previously in chapter eight...
She glanced back at Miyako as understanding and realization dawned, but it was too late. The energy surged up from the vase and aimed itself directly at her friend. Miyako couldn't see it, of course, but she still tried to shout out to her.
"Watch-"
"I don't know why I believed you." said, Miyako cut her off, her voice breaking a bit at the end of her sentence. "A thief is always a thief. Just..."
Jeanne watched helplessly as the dark aura surged towards Miyako...
"a thief!"
and hit her, possessing her best friend.
and now... on with the story!
"I'm so disillusioned by you, Jeanne." Miyako said, her anger amplified by the demon possessing her. "To think I thought you could actually keep your word."
"Now, I would tell you that you had nothing to worry about, but I don't think you'd listen to me." the kaitou replied, keeping all her attention on her best friend. She took a quick glance at the girl's aura, which was now colored the same dark as the demon's.
"Especially now."
"Why would I believe anything that you say now? You liar!"
The clock tower outside struck 11:15 pm. Ironic how, even when you weren't having fun, time seemed to fly.
"I'll never believe anything you say again!"
And with that, Miyako charged at her. Surprised by her friends aggression, Jeanne almost didn't recover in time to evade her grab. She leapt back and made sure to keep her front facing the girl.
A sound to her side made her dread what could be next. She risked a glance towards it, and realized that it was a window that had been opened. And the person who was entering it...
Sinbad.
-Sinbad; 11:16 pm-
As he entered the window, he heard something moving in the room. Turning his head to face the sound, his eyes locked with Jeanne's, and the look of shock, disbelief, and... after a split second, annoyance on her face. She glanced away from him, and for the first time he noticed Miyako standing near her.
He hesitated, feeling like something was off, but couldn't put his finger on what. He squinted a bit, before realizing what it was- a dark aura was surrounding Miyako, as if she was possessed by a demon.
Miyako lunged for Jeanne, and in an amazing show of agility, the kaitou evaded her and leapt, Sinbad noticed almost too late to register, straight for him.
Or more precisely, straight for the window.
The young kaitou slipped past him with ease and out into the night air, leaving Miyako, and him, behind.
"That's it! Just run away like you always do!" the girl shouted after the kaitou, her voice angrier than he had ever heard it before. "You thief!"
Sinbad took one last look at the vase that had been his target, and Miyako who seemed to be acting odd, before retreating to follow Jeanne. Somehow, he knew that if he caught up to her, he'd find out what was going on.
-Jeanne; rooftop-
He caught up to her. She knew that he would. Although she knew he wanted to beat her, he'd be more curious about what she had been doing back at the house than try to get the vase when she was no longer there. Besides, it's not like he could seal the demon as it was now anyway.
Of course, she had made it easy for him, having stopped at a particularly high rooftop in clear moonlight. It had a chimney that gave a fair amount of shadow in case she needed to hide from view, but for the most part, it was open. There was no way he wouldn't find her. Although he was an idiot thief, he was a smart guy. One had to be to hide a secret like theirs.
"Well, that was unusual." Sinbad said as he landed on the rooftop a few feet away from her. "Are you going to tell me what that was all about? The vase didn't have any dark aura, but Miy- uh, that girl sure did have a pretty unusual one."
She noticed the almost slip up, but decided to let it go for now.
"So you noticed."
He sent her a curious look, as if unsure if she was testing him.
"Yeah, I noticed." he replied.
Jeanne held back a sigh of emotional exhaustion. Still, she couldn't help looking away when she spoke. Although she knew she wouldn't have been able to stop the possession it if she had tried, she still felt guilty about it.
"It appears that the demon that had been in the vase decided it'd be better to to possess her instead of an inanimate object."
She wasn't sure why she had decided to let him catch up and tell him this. After all, she still wasn't sure if he was behind the music box swap during the other heist. But, for some reason, she felt the need to talk- the tell him. To... confide in him.
She shook her head mentally. Confide in Sinbad? She barely even knew him. Yes, she knew his secret, but not because he had told her. And he didn't know that she knew about it. Why would she want to confide in someone she wasn't even close to, she had no idea. But she still found herself talking to him anyway, telling him what she planned to do.
"I'm going to expel the demon from her."
She gave him a pointed look.
"On my own."
-Sinbad; on the roof with Jeanne-
He knew that he was looking at her like she was crazy, but that was how he felt.
"Why don't you let me help you with this one? I mean, you know that my main goal is to beat you" although he couldn't yet tell her why, "but this isn't just an object possessed by a spirit. This is an actual person, and it's going to be a lot more dangerous, no matter how you look at it."
"No." her voice held conviction, and with it, he saw what looked like the weight of responsibility on her shoulders get heavy for the first time since he met her.
"Why not?"
Her eyes met his, and Sinbad saw the guilt in her blue orbs.
"Because, this is all my fault."
-Chiaki; next day-
He glanced over at Maron out of the corner of his eye for what seemed like the hundredth time in the past hour. She looked completely normal, but he could swear that her eyes were creased just a little bit from stress. He wanted to help her, he really did, but short of telling her that he was Sinbad, he didn't think that she'd trust him enough to help her handle her best friend. He understood, but that didn't mean that he liked it.
A sigh escaped his mouth.
Chiaki was tired. Not only was he going to a different school after transferring through part of the year, he had his work as Sinbasd to keep him busy at night, so homework had always taken as second priority in his life. And since his appearance, Jeanne seemed to be testing him by pulling off most heists, more often than his data told him was normal. It was like she wanted to exhaust him, and he wasn't that used to putting so much effort into something. Most things came fairly naturally to him, but this thief thing was beginning to take its toll. He doubted that it was the actual "thief" part that was making it so hard, though.
Chiaki allowed his eyes to wander back to Maron.
No, the reason he was having so much trouble adjusting to it was the girl next to him. Of that, he was sure.
-Maron; in class-
She felt Chiaki's eyes on her, but refused to look at him. After leaving Sinbad on the roof last night, she had detoured to Miyako's apartment window before returning to her own place to see how the demon possessing her was affecting her personality . Miayko didn't seem to act any different towards her dad or her mom. Did that mean that she would just react to Jeanne? On one hand, Maron hoped that that would be the case. But on the other hand, it meant that her chances of expelling the demon were limited to when she was Jeanne.
Although it wasn't necessary to wait for a demon to show itself if it was possessing an object, Maron had no idea how it'd work if the demon possessed a human. So, to be on the safe side, she could only attack when she knew the demon was making its presence known. That left two options- either confront Miyako directly as Jeanne, or pull of another heist.
Since she knew that the demon had possessed her friend because of Miyako's dislike for Jeanne, she didn't want to make the situation between them any worse than it already was. That meant that she had to pull of another heist.
Maron sighed under her breath.
This was becoming ridiculous. First, Sinbad appearing in her life, the music box that hadn't been possessed and might have been switched, and now Miyako had gotten possessed. If she hadn't known any better, she'd say that there was a direction to the escalations. But that couldn't be it. Finn had told her that she had been blessed by God to fight the evil on Earth, but she never mentioned that something had changed in their plans.
No, the angel hadn't told her about anything that would indicate that something was out of the ordinary, and Finn didn't lie to her. It must just be a bad luck streak.
A really sucky bad luck streak.
-Finn; outside-
She watched Access from his perch on the ice cream shop rooftop as he laid back, soaking up the sun's rays. Although she knew that angels who were not full angels had to gather their energy from nature (after all, she had to too) in order to become full angels someday, she wasn't completely sure why he was there. God had not told her that he would be sending anyone down to Earth to talk to her, help her, or otherwise, so that fact that Access had appeared unannounced was troubling. She knew that the dark angel was reckless, but surely he wasn't here just to relax? Heaven did not give out vacations to Earth.
Suddenly, an odd wind blew, and Finn felt the presence of a possessed object.
She saw Access' head turn too, and hid as he sat up, scanning his surroundings.
They spotted the target at the same time. An older woman was carrying what appeared to be a painting case. Access got up to follow the woman, and Finn tailed them both, a bit further behind. When the woman stopped at a relatively large house, very well kept and obviously upper-middle class, both angels waited outside. Finn wasn't sure if Access had a purpose or was just curious, but she needed to see where the old woman would place the picture, to both make sure that it actually was a demon, and to be able to give Jeanne directions so that she didn't have to waste time looking through every room.
The older woman unwrapped the canvas and hung it above her fireplace in the sitting room. Uncovered, it had a very noticeable dark aura. Convinced, Finn waited for Access to leave first before setting off on her own.
Not only was Access hanging around on Earth, but he was checking out demon possessed artworks? How strange.
Finn flew towards home.
It was suspicious, but she still didn't have enough evidence that she felt confident bothering Maron with the news of the dark angel's presence in the city. After all, it could still be nothing.
Still, angels didn't just appear on Earth for no reason.
No, Finn was convinced that there was a reason behind all of this. She just had to look hard enough.
-Maron; after school-
She watched Miyako take the notice out of her shoe locker, which she had slipped in as soon as Finn told her the news. She knew that she had made the decision to exorcise her best friend during her next heist, but she hadn't expected it to be so soon. She really was having a sucky bad luck streak.
Her ears caught Miyako's voice as she read the notice out loud in the empty room.
" 'Tonight, at 11 o'clock pm... I will steal the painting of the Famous Friends from the red house near the park, and the hatred from Miyako, the officer's daughter's, gaze. -Kaitou Jeanne' "
Maron watched as her best friend's face twisted into one of rage and betrayal. Her hands were shaking as she crumpled the note in them.
"We'll see about that, Jeanne." her best friend's voice, and the hatred it held, felt like a small, sharp knife was being driven into Maron's heart. She clutched her uniform skirt, refusing to tear her eyes away from the emotions her best friend was displaying for her alter-ego, for her. She'd burn that image into her mind, so that when she had to confront Miyako, she'd remember that it wouldn't be her best friend that she was fighting, but the demon possessing her.
She just had to remember who she was really fighting.
-Miyako and Jeanne; at the red house near the park; 10:45 pm-
As the officers readied the building, closing off all possible entrances and standing guard, Miyako stood in the room with the painting in it, along with its owner.
"So, we just have to wait until 11, then, is it?" the older woman asked her, curious. Apparently, she had heard of the famous thief, and was a bit excited about the possibility of catching a glimpse of the elusive female tonight. Miyako's lips pinched tight.
"No. She'll probably arrive early to steal it right from under our noses before we're ready. Thieves are never to be trusted. They lure you into a false sense of security, making you think that they're honorable, then..."
Her face twisted a bit in barely disguised hate.
"they show you their true colors."
Jeanne, who had positioned herself outside of the nearest window to watch her best friend as the night went on, felt her heart squeeze at her comment. She hadn't meant to make it seem like she had been cheating and gone back on her word by getting so close to her last mark, but just that one instant might have lost any trust that Miyako had in her being honorable.
She had always been a thief to Miyako, but she had always been a somewhat honest thief, by blatantly stating what she'd get and when she'd try for it. Miyako had never doubted her words, even when she was Jeanne. Until now. She wanted to fix the misunderstanding, but was unsure how. All she had was a guess. But if it might bring her best friend back to her, she'd try anything.
Jeanne looked skyward, towards a bright circle shining above the buildings- the clock tower. As she watched, the minute hand struck 10:53 pm. It was time to get into position.
The thief allowed herself one last glance at her best friend in the room before leaving the window to go to the other side of the building, where she stopped at the front door. She wasn't sure whether her plan was going to work, but she was going to try with all her might.
As she tugged on the edges of her gloves to make sure that they were secure, the sound of footsteps approached from her right.
"Sinbad." she greeted, not even turning to face him. She knew the sound of those boots anywhere.
"What are you doing here?"
"What are you talking about?"
His candid answer made her curious enough to look at his face. His eyes were serious, but when he spoke next, he smiled.
"I'm a rival thief. I'm here to steal what you're after."
She didn't believe him. Not for one second. Still, mixed in with the agitation she always felt for him, a new, stranger feeling that seemed uncomfortably too much like relaxation... and reassurance was beginning to creep in.
"I already told you, the officer's daughter is off-limits. As for the painting..."
There was no way she was finding enjoyment in this. Not while she was in such a bad situation. And no way was he somehow making her feel better. It must be lack of sleep.
"let's just see you try."
Sinbad smiled again, with what seemed like a more genuine grin, as the clock tower struck 11 pm.
"Let's do this."
Maron frowned at his eagerness, before putting her hands on the front door handle.
"Come on, puppy. This isn't a game."
"Oh? But isn't it?"
She glanced at him, about to reply with 'No it's not.', but the words never left her lips. His smile was still on his face, but his eyes held something different. They weren't joking, but... focused. Serious.
Instead of replying, she just shook her head as she opened the front door, and the two kaitous raced inside, side by side.
"Game start!"
-end chapter nine.
end chapter notations: Sorry that this chapter is pretty ridiculously long. Hopefully, it was worth the wait and I can get another chapter out sooner than last time.
