Series: Abs Calamitas
Numbers: 1:8
Anime: Witch Hunter Robin

A/N: Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing!

Coming back from a short lunch, Nagira entered the office to find Hanamura glaring at him from over her computer screen. Hattori wouldn't look up from his calculations. With a sigh, Nagira hung up his coat and held up both hands.

"Fire away, Hana-chan."

"What makes you think I have anything to say to a louse like you?" she asked, typing furiously. "You've got an appointment in an hour, and you've got a hysterical girl up in the apartment. Take your pick."

"Hysterical?" Nagira asked with an arched eyebrow at his secretary.

"Ohh, don't be so dense!" Hanamura folded her arms on her chest, disregarding her typing work, and pushed her chair back, standing. "You can't just switch lovers at the drop of the hat. You've been chasing skirts again, no doubt, and the new girl found out about it, I bet."

"Even if I have been, which I haven't… what would she know about it?"

"Even working girls have eyes!" Hanamura said, pointing at the door. "Now you march right up there and apologize for being such a louse."

"I haven't the foggiest clue what you want me to do that for, Hana-chan," he said with a smile. "But I will take your advice on going to talk to my friend."

Inwardly, he sighed. As if he had time to chase skirts? Doujima and the rest of her STN-J team were good at hunting dangerous witches, and he could live with that the way that he lived with the fact that murderers were put to death, but there were other branches of the STN-J that didn't involve hunters. The part of that black organization that watched people because they were related to witches… Seeds…

He headed out of the office and up to the apartment and found the door was partly open. He pushed it open and looked around. For a minute, he didn't see anyone. "Yurika?"

Movement in the bathtub. She wouldn't really…

The air was cool and without humidity, and Doujima did not strike him as the type to take a cold bath, if she could help it. No, she couldn't be bathing. He pulled back the plastic curtain and found her sitting in the bathtub with her knees drawn up to point at the ceiling, like her chin. On second thought… Nagira crossed over and closed the door.

"What's wrong, Yurika?" he asked, returning to the tub side.

Doujima lowered her face, turning to look at Nagira, and blinked for a moment, as though she hadn't really expected him to be there, or to come up and check on her. As though she didn't really belong here.

This, like so much, was Robin's.

This place… this man?

And now, he was leaning against the tub with one arm resting on it, the other leaned up to cushion the side of his face and those horrible lamb chops… paying attention just to her. Listening. Waiting.

"Yuri-" Nagira started to talk again, but got cut off.

Doujima leaned over and pressed her lips to his.

The problem with buses was that they stopped. And stopped. And stopped.

Amon was getting agitated by all the stopping. His normally arctic cool was thawed and he felt turbulent like a stormy ocean. Robin was asleep again, leaning against the window of the bus… or so quiet and still that she looked to be sleeping. That could be nice. Sleeping wherever… whenever it was convenient.

Trusting…

Trusting him to maintain cool and calm and to look out for her.

He adjusted his hands on the armwrests as the bus finally pulled into the Chicago station. He reached over and roused Robin again, expecting her to tense, to freeze, to be scared, as she had on the island when he woke her…

But she turned her head towards him and opened her eyes slowly.

"We're here," he said.

Robin nodded. The bus stopped and Amon stood, offering her a hand. She took it, gratefully, and kept it as they filed off the bus with the others. Instead of heading into the terminal, because they had no luggage, Amon lead Robin out onto the street.

It was amazing what you could do on the internet these days. He'd rented an apartment, and gotten a card to access his bank accounts… even was having the passports wired to the address.

It would take a few days, but then that was why he had rented two different apartments. The first would last for a week, perhaps. The hotel had lasted nearly that long before he got the itch to desert it. The itch and the tip. With luck the two apartments could be enough until they could get out of the country.

The only problem would be cameras…

That had to be what had tipped the North Eastern branch of the STN-A.

That and his jacket.

It was really too warm for it… but without it, his clothing would definitely stick out. Stick out more than Robin's. And her hair…

"When we get to where we are going, you need to change your hair," Amon said softly as they headed to a cross walk. He had the directions memorized to the first apartment.

"My hair?" she asked softly, looking up at him.

"It stands out."

Robin thought about that for a moment. She lifted a hand to touch her bangs where they fell down in her face, and then looked around as they headed down the street. In Japan, while not normal, it was accepted. She could still blend in because there everyone was trying to look interesting at her age. Here… in America, in Chicago… the style of her hair was not normal.

This sort of thing didn't happen. It just didn't. More and more hunters were becoming useless to the cause. More and more of the soldiers of the organization were losing nerve and falling from the path of the righteous. It had started in Japan, though the STN-J had lost none of their craft users. In fact, signs were pointing to one of the Seeds developing a Craft rather than losing the power of it. But from Japan, the power fluctuations and doubts had spread outwards like a radiating circle. China, Indonesia, Russia… it was even beginning to show signs of crossing the Pacific Ocean… the hunters in the STN-A4 and A3 were beginning to question…

The dark hall of the cathedral echoed with Maestro Abele's pacing footsteps. A candle lit in the darkness, and then another. The Maestro turned to see who it was and saw il Padre standing with his hands folded in prayer over the hilt of a sword.

"She is a dangerous Witch who must be hunted!" The maestro said in an urgent whisper. Within Solomon, between those who found the faith a full part of dealing with the entities known as Witches, there were the hypocritical, and there were the devout. The Maestro Abele was one of the devout.

"Without faith in the hunters who do battle with the darkness, there is nothing for those of our rank to do but fall," Padre Juliano said, eyes remaining closed, hands still holding the curved blade above the rows of unlit candles. The light of the two flames that were burning caught the well-honed blade and reflected across the chancel and splintered off to cast yellow into the transepts of the cathedral.

"The power she represents, returning to the hands of those heretics, is unacceptable!" Abele drew a short blade of his own that shone in the candle light that spilled from the transepts into the chancel. "Your pathetic sentimentality for that heretic is deplorable!"

"As is your short-sightedness," Juliano replied. "The Hunter is the body of the organization, the guard against those who would hurt mankind."

"It seems," Abele said, lifting his blade at Juliano, "that I have not taught you all you need to know yet, my son."

The shining, silver blade made quick work of the old man on the wrong end of it. The victor of the battle disposed of the body and retreated from the cathedral, pausing to kneel and make the sign of the cross on his body.

Alone in his apartment, Sakaki stared at the ceiling.

He wasn't at the shooting range. He wasn't running laps at the park. He wasn't joyriding on his motorcycle.

He was thinking about work.

He was thinking about his co-workers. About how frustrated he was with Mrs. Nye, and Doujima-shi, and Karasuma-san. Doujima-shi… who was always disappearing somewhere. Doujima-shi who came back to the office with a bright blush on her face and her hair slightly messed up. Karasuma-san, who had made a long-suffering roll of her eyes and put a hand to her head. Karasuma-san, who was impossible to understand.

Mrs. Nye acted like he was a baby. Doujima-shi ignored him and was seeing someone else. Karasuma-san treated him like a little brother.

Thumping his head on the floor where he was stretched out, Sakaki sighed. None of this was what he wanted. None of it at all.

Was this the height of all he could expect from himself at the STN? A mediocre B-class hunt rating? Excellent marksmanship with nothing more to show for it than a clean record and a bunch of screw ups?

He pressed his eyelids tighter together.

Was this all of his life? Squabbling and flirting hopelessly with women out of his league? His temples pulsed, he was giving himself a headache.

He was angry with himself, angry with his Craft, angry with Solomon-

He opened his eyes with a sigh, and was surprised to find the ceiling much closer than he had expected it would be. The pain in his temples went from a pulsing to a burning. He turned his head and saw that his floor was beneath him. He was off it by four feet. The burning intensified to an inferno, and then there was the harsh rush of air.

Sakaki never felt his body impact with the floor. His mind was swallowed by a cool, blissful blackness.

Angrily, Paul kicked the car that they had driven over to the hotel in. Simon's car. He ground his teeth. "If you tear your hair I think you could aspire to be a classical fiction character," Jessica said.

"Witches have vanished before, especially right before a hunt," Mary said. "It's nothing to get so upset about."

Simon regarded the two women with an even glance and headed over to his car without a word. Paul kicked the tire again. "Witches have," Simon said as he put a hand on the other man's shoulder before unlocking the doors. "But those two are worse than Witches."

Paul blinked and turned to look at Simon as he climbed into his car. Mary frowned. Jessica looked dubious before she asked, "What's worse than Witches?"

No response came from Simon. He closed his car door, taking out his mobile unit, and pressed the button on his headset.

"Shelly."

"Yeah boss?" the woman's voice responded to him almost immediately. If he listened carefully, Simon could hear her fingers working on a keyboard. "What's up?"

"Do you have anything on the Witches?"

"Other than that they're hunters?" Shelly replied.

"Hunters… plural?" he asked.

"Looked over the hunt orders we got from the top, and they are for both of them. Nagira Amon and Robin Sena. The details were sketchy beyond that. Seed and a Craft User… Nagira.. or I should probably say 'Amon', as that's what he's listed as throughout the rest of the briefing, is a Seed… he joined Solomon at a young age, and advanced quickly up the ranks of the hunters."

"That doesn't tell me a thing about the Sena girl," Simon said with a slight frown. He reached into his pocket and took out his cigarettes. Cloves. It was more of an oral fixation than a nicotine habit, or at least that was what he told himself.

The ignition key turned over, but he didn't start the engine. A finger pressed the window button on his door handle, and the window cracked slightly. The gray trail of smoke from his cigarette took the cue and left the cabin of the car into the atmosphere outside.

"The likelihood of a hunter like Amon turning on the organization for a girl is slim to nil. I know the type." Shelly's voice was somewhat cold, and definitely scornful. "Indoctrinated at a young age… the organization is this man's family. His whole life. It would take more than a pretty face to steer him from the straight and arrow."

"You know the type, huh?"

"I could wait for you until the ice caps melt and it'd be the same story," Shelly said in an empty tone. "Something drastic must have happened."

"The hardest hearts are the most susceptible to love," Simon replied to her.

"You let me know when your catchy generalizations apply to you, ok boss?" she quipped back. "Anything else?"

"About the Sena girl?" Simon asked.

"Very little. Craft user… fire… sixteen. Bare bones on that one. She's not a Japanese native."

"Careful Shelly… you sound jealous."

The line went dead.

Simon lifted the cigarette to the window and flicked the ashes out the glass. He took another drag from it and tipped his head back onto the seat pad.

Amon sat at the small table where he had the new laptop set up. His fingers moved quickly on the keyboard, and he scanned the screen. On the bed across from the desk shopping bags were strewn about. Only one of them was disturbed. The drug store bag had contained scissors for trimming hair and a color tint for Robin. She had taken it down once they got to the apartment for the first time, and when she woke from resting… yet again she had been resting… she simply left it down.

There was nothing to be done about Amon's hair. When they were in the store, Robin had held up a box with red in it next to Amon's face, as though she were contemplating the change of color on him. He glanced at her sidelong and she had put the box carefully back on the shelf with a shrug.

But as they headed to the checkout, she seemed more lighthearted than she had in New York.

There was a mirror over the small desk where Amon was typing on his computer, and as he waited for the codes to ping off the server, his eyes wandered up to it. The view was mostly dark, in the late evening, the bedroom in the apartment did not get much light. There was a view of the bathroom.

A square of light in a dark room.

His eyes went almost instantly to the doorway. It was open halfway, and through it, he could see Robin standing at the sink.

Standing in a towel.

Her back was curved, her head bent down over the sink.

She couldn't see that he was looking at her. He didn't realize he was looking at her for a moment. It was just the square of light that he was seeing. And then it wasn't just the square of light, it was the person that was inhabiting it.

Robin was slender, she had always been slender. The towel she had on still had the cardstock tag from the small department store they'd gone to. Her skin was pale from her ankles on upwards. The water in the sink was running, and one of her feet was tapping slightly on the tile floor.

How long he'd been watching her, Amon couldn't tell. The computer before him was neglected and forgotten, despite the fact that it had yielded to his desire and completed pinging the server for the applications he was so interested in. The immediacy of the situation didn't seem to reach him. They had been hunted and survived.

A low voice in his mind chuckled at him. 'Hunted? You were aware of a search being conducted in the STN-J mainframe. You moved location. You haven't been hunted.'

He frowned, thinking that perhaps the voice in his mind was right. Was this his reasonable side? Why was it speaking to him now? He was rational. He was reasonable. She was practically a nun… or practically a child. There was no reason for him to be anything other than passive to her appearance. Towel-clad or fully clothed.

Robin shifted, and the line of the towel changed its fall against the back of her legs. Amon's eyes followed it.

Impossible.

Walking into the lobby, Michael waved to the security guard. He waved in response. "Hello, Mr. Michael," the guard said to him. "Better hurry on upstairs. Mr. Sakaki won't be making it in today."

"He won't?" Michael asked, stopping in his tracks.

"The hospital called to say that he was under observation for possible head trauma," the guard replied. "He's out for the day, unless there's an emergency."

"Thank you," Michael said, dipping his head politely. He pulled out his mobile unit and turned to head back out of the lobby.

What would give Sakaki head trauma? Michael frowned. The taxi he'd taken in hadn't pulled away yet. He opened the back door and climbed into it again. The hospital that Sakaki had been taken to was listed in the daily report. He gave the address to the driver and the taxi pulled away from the curb again.

As they reached the hospital, his phone rang. It was Administrator Kosaka. Michael pressed the talk button on his headset and slipped it on.

"Yeah boss?"

"You're late," Kosaka said to him.

Michael paid the cab fare and climbed out, heading up to the front of the hospital. "I'm going to check on Sakaki," he replied. "Is there an emergency?"

"Well, no, but…"

"Then I'll be in this afternoon," Michael said, pressing the end button on his headset.

Inside, he checked in at the desk and headed over to the elevator. It was a short, boring trip up before he made it to the floor, and found the room. Unsurprisingly, Sakaki was sitting on the bed, upright, and staring out the window. His legs were crossed, and there was an ace bandage wrapped around his right arm.

"Got your shooting arm, huh?" Michael asked.

Sakaki turned his head quickly and started, reaching for the small, hospital standard dresser. He relaxed when he saw that it was Michael, and offered a slight smile. "Yeah."

Haruto turned back to the window, watching the birds in the tree outside. Micheal stood and watched them too, for a moment. He sobered when a nurse's cart rolled by outside the doorway and he glanced at the wall, noticing the clock. He had to go in that afternoon…

"So… what happened?"

Sakaki didn't reply for a long moment, and when he did, it was quietly. "I fell."

"You fall all the time, you don't get concussions from it," Michael said. "The report said that your landlord found you passed out in your kitchen. Is it anemia? Did someone break in?"

"I fell," Sakaki said again.

"You keep saying that, but I don't see how someone who has your training and experience could fall and get a concussion in your apartment. If you were attacked, Sakaki, there's no shame in admitting it. People have break-ins all the time…"

"I fell from my ceiling."

"What?"

Sakaki didn't bother turning around, he continued staring out the window. He wasn't sure this was what he really wanted. To be a Craft user? The training he'd have to undergo… the years spent at headquarters… Amon never mentioned the amount of training he'd undergone to become a senior hunter, but Sakaki could tell it was rigorous. He looked up to Amon, honestly. The man was something like a hero to him. He was cool, he was tall and attractive to women. But…

"What do you mean you fell from your ceiling?" Michael asked again, stepping closer to the end of the bed to peer around at Sakaki's face. He didn't understand for a long while, and then it hit him. Everyone involved in Solomon was either a Craft-user, a Seed, or someone with enough money to ensure that they knew enough secrets to keep them safe. Sakaki wasn't rich, and he wasn't a Craft-user.

"You…"

"Don't make a big deal of it," Sakaki said.

Michael stared at Sakaki's face in confusion for a long moment. He'd awakened. Just like that…? Something had to trigger that sort of thing, didn't it? There was some reason for things like that to happen. They didn't just happen. And… if they did just happen, Michael didn't know what happened to the people who woke up like that.

"Please," Sakaki said, meeting Michael's eyes.

"…whatever you say," Michael said. He took a step back from the bed. There was nothing threatening about Sakaki's gaze. Rather, there was something worried. Not desperate or cornered, just worried.

"Nagira-san, you've got a phone call from a woman."

Hanamura leaned back from her desk and glared at Nagira as she said it. He wasn't paying the strictest attention to the office environment. It wasn't new. He had been distracted the past few afternoons. Yurika kissed him… and he'd kissed back. What the hell was going on here? A woman he didn't trust, one who he was pretty sure was only using him regardless…

It could be nice to be wanted, even if it was only enough to be used.

"Nagira!" Hanamura snapped.

His eyes turned to regard his secretary.

"The phone."

"Hai, Hana-chan," he replied finally, reaching a hand forward to pick up the phone. "Moshi moshi."

Hanamura watched her boss, but the man's face was almost impossible to read. With one hand he took out a notepad and pen and wrote something on it, and then he set the receiver back in the cradle. He stood, grabbing his coat and putting the entire notepad into his pocket, and headed for the door.

"Nagira-san…" Hanamura began again.

"I'll make the appointment this afternoon as well," he replied, stepping out of the door.

Wide eyes watched Nagira as he headed out of his office. They stayed at the door after it had closed behind him. Harutto even looked confused as he watched his boss run out of the office.

"If it's that blond again…" Hanamura said with venom in her tone.

"The new one or the one from before?" Harutto asked.

Hanamura glared at him. It was a thing, with Nagira Syunji, she found. He liked women, but he specifically liked his women a certain way. Hanamura had thought, for a while, that she was one of Nagira-san's "women", but it became quickly clear as she worked for him that she was much more valuable at her desk than on it. She liked it that way.

It was better.

It also made her feel motherly about Nagira-san, or perhaps big sisterly about him. She worried when he didn't keep up with his responsibilities, when he missed appointments, and when he was out chasing skirts. She was ruthless with hounding him to be the sort of Nagira that he could be, rather than the sort of Nagira that he felt like being most of the time. The reason she kept it up was that he seemed to agree with her. Syunji was a good man, she knew it. The way that he treated people, the way he went out of his way for his clients…

And then there was this Doujima woman.

Hanamura shook her head and turned back to her desk. "It's no business of mine what blond skirt he's chasing today," she said stiffly.