Rose looked like she practically wanted to roll out of the taxi. After all, most of the way, she'd been complaining about travel sickness, and dear God, she was grouchy when she was feeling sick. B muttered a quick, irritated, 'sorry' to the taxi driver, deciding that the best thing to do would be just to get her out and get her used to the place. If he didn't tell her the truth, it was now safe for him to admit that she'd try to kill him. She'd always had weapons in case people ever came for her, and now her paranoia was experience.

Rose froze as they stopped outside Wammy's gates. She clearly wanted to be anywhere but where they were. She made to go back to the taxi so B grabbed hold of the scruff of her collar and pulled her back to stand next to him. His face was stony.

"You are not walking out on me after I got us somewhere safe," he said firmly.

"If we get arrested, you can be assured that I will break every bone in your body very slowly," she quipped.

"Looking forward to it."

She looked at him, arching an eyebrow. "It'll hurt. A lot."

The corners of his mouth twitched upwards as he remained facing the gates. "It'll give you something to enjoy later."

"I didn't know you were up for S and M."

"Now's not the time."

She laughed quietly. "Get us inside, then, since you clearly have the knowledge to do exactly that."

"I'm sure even you could figure that out," he grumbled, pressing a button by a speaker at the side of the gates. "B here. With guest."

An electronic voice that had Rose grimacing at the metallic sound came from the speaker. "Prove it."

"Aw, man, don't make me do that," B groaned. "That's just immature-"

"Prove it."

"That was years ago; surely that's still not valid-"

"If you wish to enter this establishment, you shall prove that you are indeed the B you are referring to," the voice announced.

"You have a camera," B said through gritted teeth. "You can see that it's me!"

"It's broken."

"The red light's on!"

"It's broken. So prove it."

B sighed and ran a hand through his hair before taking a breath and murmuring, almost inaudibly into the speaker in the wall, the first few lines of 'Kung Fu Fighting'. "Everybody was kung fu fighting… those cats were fast as lightning… in fact it was a little bit frightening… but they fought with expert timing… they were funky China-"

"Very well, I believe you. The gates are open."

Rose blinked in surprise as B easily pushed the gates open. She shook her head as if to bring about coherence. Her voice resembled that of a person restraining raucous laughter. "What just happened?"

"Forget that," B warned. "Come on, let's go…"

"I'll tell you what happened," she answered for him, following him in through the gates. She cracked up laughing. "What happened was you got owned!"

"Yeah, fucking hilarious," he sneered. "I'm taking you inside…"

"Shaking in my boots, B, shaking in my boots."

Once inside, they were met by a thin young woman with dark brown hair pulled into a ponytail. Despite being quite pretty, her features were defined and delicate, almost disturbing in their resemblance to a doll. This might have been partially because she looked like she was all business and hated it. She studied the two carefully and Rose could have sworn she flinched ever so slightly at the sight of B's red eyes. Eventually, she spoke. They had not expected her to be American.

"I was told that I should come and meet you. Apparently, you two have been in a spot of trouble?"

"L told you that?" B said, astonished that such a secretive man as L would confide in who appeared to be pretty much a stranger to Wammy's.

"No, I broke into the asshole's computer." When she said the word, 'asshole' she winced, like the thought of L grossed her out. B had a feeling he and this 'Elisabeth Reid' would get on very well. She shrugged. "My brother calls me a technopath or something like that."

"Interesting," B murmured. "So… you're going to take us to L, right?"

"He wants to be called that, like it's his stupid title," Elisabeth snapped. "But I'm not calling him that."

"So what do you call him?" Rose asked.

"'Jerk', usually, or 'dipshit'," the dark-haired young woman countered. "Yeah… I'll take you to the Big Monkey. Follow me." As she led them down the corridor, she glanced back at them. "You got powers like the rest of us, then?"

"Not as useful as yours," Rose admitted. "Actually, no, it's a pain in the butt, period."

"And that is?"

"I see ghosts," Rose said quietly. "And it sucks."

XXX

Kiyomi Takada's eyes fluttered open. She found herself in a clean, soft, white hospital bed as doctors flitted in and out of what appeared to be a private room. She felt strange, as if her whole body wasn't really there, just floating, constantly on a cool, unmoving lake. She tilted her head either side and felt her neck crack. Another doctor came in, this time to check her vitals and temperature. He looked startled to see a conscious patient.

"You're awake," he observed, surprised. He frowned. "Your eyes… what color do you think your eyes are, Takada-san?"

"Brown," she croaked. Her throat hurt a little bit from not speaking for what felt like a long time. God, this doctor must have been an absolute idiot. Of course her eyes were brown, but… no, he was shaking his head. He handed her a mirror and she screamed.

The contrast was terrifying. Instead of beautiful brown eyes that had gotten her voted 'Miss To-Oh', Takada was seeing pale blue eyes. This light blue was not clear or pretty. This pale blue had almost a crystal-ball look to it, with murky light gray shadows that seemed to swirl through it at odd moments. As her eyes began to mist further because of oncoming tears, she found that her tears were not clear, but sky blue.

She looked up at the doctor pleadingly. "Is my family here?"

"Your mother was here, but had to go home to deal with some work," the doctor responded, recoiling as if anxious about her sudden change in visage. "Your father is still here. I can go get him for you-"

"Please," Takada whispered.

When Ritsuko Takada entered the room, he was still on his Blackberry. After he looked up at his daughter, he had to take a step back. His voice came out strangled.

"Kiyomi?"

"Daddy, I'm scared," she squeaked. "My eyes… look at my eyes…"

"I am looking," he choked out. "Lightning… did this… to you?"

She burst into tears, covering her face with her hands. The vivid blue tears leaked through her fingers, and she discovered that she could not stop crying once she had started. In all the time that she spent weeping, her father did not shift from the spot he had been in when she had started. He did not move to comfort her, or tell her everything would be all right, or fetch a doctor to ask for more medication. He just stared at her.

"Stop it," she hissed. "Stop looking at me… like I'm a freak!"

"I don't mean to," her father stammered. "It's just…"

"I'm not a freak!" she protested. "I am Kiyomi Takada! I am Miss To-Oh! I – am – not – a – freak!"

The last part of this exclamation was emitted as a shriek, gritting her teeth together as anger took over despair. She let out a growl of frustration and clutched at her hair, only to feel something unexpected. Her father voiced her thoughts.

"Kiyomi, why is your hair all wet?"

She shot him a contemptuous look. "Don't judge me!" she gasped. "I… I'm not doing any of this! It must be a medical… medical condition! I can be cured!"

Still, he gaped at her with something that was not pride, sadness or sympathy. This was a combination of fear, shock and disgust, like the girl sitting in the bed in front of him was not his daughter, but a true monster. All because of her eyes.

"Don't… don't look at me… like that," she sobbed furiously. "I'm not a freak… I'm not a freak!"

With these final words, Takada's began to choke out a horrible gargling sound, and water began to gush from his mouth and nose like Niagara Falls. It all began to click in her head. The human body was approximately sixty percent water. He was being drowned in whatever hydration he had absorbed, the water he had drank, the water in his brain…

He finally collapsed, surrounded by so much water. No longer did Takada feel as though she were on a motionless lake. Now she was on a fast-paced, angry sea, and as she unhooked herself from the wires that monitored her heartbeat and temperature, she knew that some sort of frightening power had just been unleashed on the world.

XXX

Elisabeth put a hand on Lara's to stop it shaking as she held the handgun at arm's length. She had agreed to let Ben and Lara learn to shoot if she and someone experienced supervised. It turned out that the supervisor was Watari, who could shoot a moving target at around one hundred yards, maybe even further; Elisabeth hadn't asked the furthest target he'd shot at.

It was not that Elisabeth was an excellent marksman, or had even had much experience with guns (hell, paintballing was probably her limit), but she had solid knowledge on how bullets affected the body, considering pathology. She also was aware of the most deadly, or most useful, places to shoot a person. For a sniper, the 'golden shot' was a single killing bullet to the place where the spinal cord intersected with the skull. She had only ever seen one of these cases, and even then, she'd been told to butt out. The sheer precision of the kill had meant that it had to be dealt with by a professional, experienced pathologist, with a professional assassin evidently to blame.

"Do not keep your arms straight with a handgun," Watari instructed. "The recoil could seriously hurt you. Bend your knees as well, loosen up… there you go. Well done." He went to sit on the bench at the back of the firing range with Elisabeth. "Do you not wish to learn?"

"Give me anything electronic and I'm good." She sighed and looked down at her knees. "Guns aren't technology unless they're sniper rifles, which have the angle, wind velocity and stuff like that showing up…"

"Are you all right?"

"I never thought I'd have to teach my little brother how to fire a gun to save his life," she said bitterly. "I thought he'd live a normal life, settle down, have a family, maybe make a few mistakes like everyone does. I didn't want anything like this for him."

"Did it ever occur to you he might want this for himself?" Watari asked.

"For what? To die some pointless death? To prove himself? That's such macho bullshit," she muttered. "Sorry… but he's too young for that."
"What about you? Aren't you too young as well?" the old man questioned.

"I'm twenty-four," she responded. "I can make my own choices and my own mistakes. I know well enough not to get anyone else involved in my bad choices. I can choose what to do and who to protect. I am capable of anything should I put my mind to it, like everyone is. I am not an unintelligent person."

Watari smiled a little. "You may not approve of this comparison, but that very much resembles the mindset of another certain twenty-four-year-old."

She shook her head. "You're wrong," she said resolutely.

"With all due respect, I disagree," he said. "I have known L for most of his life, and I like to think that I know him better than anyone because of that. I have been his confidant, when he chose to confide in someone, for a long time. Twenty-four-year-olds are actually not that difficult to figure out." He patted her shoulder. "He does what he does purely to protect."

Again, her head moved from side to side slightly. "I don't think so. As much as we'd love to believe there is a purely good, selfless person in the world, it is not possible. I think he does what he does only partially for justice. I think one of the main reasons he does what he does is because he gets a thrill from it. He likes the danger. He likes feeling more intelligent than everyone else. As much as he likes overcoming a challenge, what he enjoys most is the race to get there."

She looked at Watari with a serious expression.

"Miss Reid," he said, surprised.

"That," she finished, "is what I see." She stood up and forced a smile for the old man. "No offense to your parenting skills, but I don't like what I see." She glanced at her brother and his best friend. "I think you can take it from here."

I only just looked back through the fanfic and realised in my author's notes that I put the deadline for the 'Beyond's House' competition as 20 April 2011, when it should have been the 25th. Sorry! Typo...

I have now got my writing mojo back, for which I am pleased. I hope you like this chapter. Maybe review? Don't worry about only reviewing this chapter if you've been reading up to now; you're not going to be ostracized in Review World.

C.