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PRERECORDED VIDEO THERAPEUTIC COUNSELING STUART HOLZKOPF DATE/TIME: ERRORCODE
"I've been told your dreams were bothering you, Mr. Holzkopf. Would you like to talk about them?"
"Not really." The therapist had to lean forward to hear Stuart's reply. He took note of the man's posture in the large, plush recliner reserved for patients, and scribbled a quick note.
Uncomfortable speaking about dreams.
"Why not, Mr. Holzkopf?" the therapist asked. "From what I've heard, you've been suffering from some pretty severe nightmares recently. The guards mentioned you've woken up screaming on several occasions and once even begged them to stay with you, isn't that true?"
The man gave a half-hearted shrug, rubbing his arms from where they were crossed along his waist while he avoided eye contact with the therapist. His legs were folded too, his posture slumped forward. To the observer the prisoner looked small; a child sitting in his father's large entrepreneur chair and trying hard to look smaller still. The psychiatrist scribbled another quick note. Insecure. Doesn't want attention.
When Stuart said nothing after a time, the psychiatrist switched tactics. "Perhaps if we talk about them, we can figure out the root cause of your nightmares and work through some methods to combat them."
"I don't want medication." Stuart snapped, and then scrunched down in his chair, as though terrified of what he'd done. "Sorry, Doc."
"It's quite all right, Mr. Holzkopf," the man replied. In comparison to some of his other clients, Stuart was mild; he wasn't looking for handouts like the druggies, nor was he one of the short-tempered gang members who were quicker to lunge at him than speak on what led to their life of crime. He wasn't even like the hardest nuts to crack: those folks who'd fully lost their grip on reality and belonged in a mental facility instead of a prison, those who thought the psychiatrist was a fraud and spent their hour together trying to get into his head, or even the worst ones, those individuals who were agreeable and assured him that 'there was nothing wrong' and 'everything was fine'. You're in a prison ward. How could things be 'fine'?
Stuart was one of the better patients, in that regard. He'd pleaded guilty at his trial and had since been working hard to address the issues that had landed him in prison, and the man had been quick to admit that he had a problem. He'd worked closely with the psychiatrist to address the issues and work towards improving himself, and on all accounts appeared to genuinely regret what he'd done to his victim. It was a sign of progress for the man, a sign that, should he win his upcoming parole hearing, the inmate would be safe to release into society without too great a fear of a repeat attack. Stuart had even worked with him to find a community absent of children to prevent a repeat, a place where he could settle down and find a job without temptation to ruin his possible parole.
As such, it was a noticeable change in behavior when Stuart clammed up about these dreams that so troubled him. They were violent. Bad enough that on several occasions the on-duty guards had to enter his cell and restrain him, as when they didn't he was liable to injure himself in his flailing. "It was documented that you screamed something about a... white woman?" the psychiatrist said. "Is that true?"
Stuart went stark white. "You know?" he whispered.
"You screamed it on several occasions to the guards," the psychiatrist reminded him. "Is she from your dreams? Can you tell me about her?"
Stuart looked reluctant, his eyes wide and his brows knitted together with worry. "I can't," he breathed. "I don't want to draw her attention."
"Why not?"
"She gets closer every time I think about her," Stuart confessed. "Every night when I close my eyes, when I think I'm asleep, I can see her. When she first appeared, she was on the other side of the prison bay, watching me through Ramos's cell. Only in my dreams, Ramos wasn't there anymore, and I thought to myself, 'it's 'cause she killed him. She ripped him up and ate every bit of him to keep her going', which is stupid because when I woke up I could see Ramos across the cell block waving his junk at me like he does every morning. He says it's 'cause I'm a child rapist and I need to re-acquaint myself with adult genitalia."
"Let's stay on the subject of this woman, Mr. Holzkopf," the psychiatrist said. "So, she is Caucasian then? Can you describe her features for me?"
Stuart shook his head. "I never said she was Caucasian. I said she was white. Like... all of her. White as a ghost." He hesitated a moment before continuing. "She's... sick. I know this in my dreams but I don't know how I know, but I do. She's dressed in dirty white rags, and her skin is white. Not peach or pink like you or me, but white. Her hair is white, but it's all messy and matted, and her eyes..." Stuart shuddered. "Her eyes are white too. White like a corpse, like they're covered in cataracts, but somehow she can still see because she'll look right at me and just... just..." he groaned in misery, burying his hands in his hair. "Can we stop talking about this?" he asked. "I can't- she'll come for me, I know it. Please Doc, let's change the subject."
The psychiatrist paused, noting the mounting distress of the inmate. "This woman scares you."
"Yes!" Stuart cried. "She terrifies me, Doc! Every night I see her and she's closer. First in Ramos's cell, then outside of his cell, then standing on the railing of the third floor, then-then fucking floating and-" He made a noise in his throat, his left foot tapping a fast and steady rhythm on the old slate floor of the room. "She's coming for me. She speaks to me every night, but I don't know what she says. All I know is that it's bad, like she wants something from me, and that when I wake up I know I did what she wanted but it's not enough, Doc, it's not enough! I- I can't sleep anymore, Doc. I can't. She gets closer every time I close my eyes, and I don't want to know what will happen when she gets to my room. Something bad is gonna happen Doc, and I'm either gonna wake up dead or mad when she pops into my cell."
"And how close is she now, Stuart?"
"Close." Stuart whispered. "She- she's hovering three-fourths of the way from where she started." His voice rose with a tremor. "It's getting worse Doc. I wake up and still think I see her. I blink and I see her face, and her lips are moving but it ain't in English, and, and, oh god I just want her to leave me alone!" The tremor rose into a wavering scream, and tears began to pour down his cheeks. "I can't take it anymore! I think she's killing people, Doc! I think she's killing people, and she wants me next!"
"Killing people?" The psychiatrist sat a little straighter in his chair. "What do you mean, Mr. Holzkopf?"
The man groaned and buried his face in his hands. "I don't know..." he moaned. "It's... when someone bullies me, I find out later they were in an accident and they're dead. When someone threatens me, an accident later and they're dead. People think I'm cursed. People think I've made a deal with the devil. People think I'm somehow murdering people who are harassing me. I'm not. I'm not doing anything. It's that damn white woman! She's killing people and I can't prove it and its all getting linked back to me! I haven't done anything! I just want to be left alone!"
Abruptly the inmate stood and pointed to an empty corner of the room. The psychiatrist followed his finger, yet nothing was revealed by the gesture; just an empty corner. "You hear me?!" Stuart screamed. "Leave me alone you white bitch! Leave me the fuck alone!"
"Mr. Holzkopf!" The psychiatrist rose to his feet, abandoning the notepad in his lap as he reached under his desk and hit the red, worn panic button installed there. "Mr. Holzkopf, what's the matter?!"
The man stumbled back, tripping over his own feet and falling to the floor with a wail. "Leave me alone!" he shrieked, and crawled backwards along the floor, his legs kicking at something that only he could see. He had reached the other corner of the room by the time the guards on post burst in, curled into a ball of howling, sobbing terror. He lashed out at the guards as they approached, too lost in his psychosis to distinguish the people from the hallucinations. "Don't touch me, don't touch me! You fucking bitch, don't touch me!" Further words dissolved into mindless screams that left his face red and blood vessels bulging in his neck and head. He struggled with a strength born of fear, and even managed to escape the grip of one of the guards long enough to rake the nails of his right hand across the man's arm. Blood began to well up from the scratches. After a moment longer, both guards managed to pin him on the floor, cuffing him as the psychiatrist approached. Stuart's eyes, dark and mindless with terror, rolled in their sockets before focusing on the doctor.
"No... no, no!" Stuart screamed with fresh vigor. "Don't put me to sleep, don't give me drugs! She's coming for me!" A syringe was in the psychiatrist's hand, a simple cocktail of tranquilizers designed to knock out any inmate who grew too violent during a session, and what a pity it was that Stuart had relapsed so badly when he'd shown so much progress up until this point. "Doc, I'm begging you, I'm begging you! Don't knock me out, she's coming for me!" A true shame. These notes would go into his file and be presented alongside of the evidence to be used against him in his parole hearing in the coming weeks. "Doc!" Stuart pleaded, yet his words went ignored as the psychiatrist injected the drug into the inmate. In less than ten seconds, he was out cold, and the guards rose off him and picked him up.
"You okay Doctor Bautista?"
"I'm fine, Booker. Are you, though? You're bleeding pretty badly."
"It's fine, Doc," replied the guard. "Just some scratches. Fucker got me good. I'll head to the infirmary to get it cleaned up after we send this guy back to his cell."
"What set him off?" Tucker, the other guard, asked.
"Apparent hallucinations," the doctor replied. "A first for him. Possibly a result of lack of sleep. I'll need to get some blood work on him to be certain though. It could be something in his system we aren't aware of yet."
Tucker sighed. "Cavity search?"
Booker nodded, scratching at his injured arm. "Cavity search," he agreed. "Can you grab Chan for me though? This thing is starting to swell like a balloon."
"Go get fixed," Tucker said. "This guy's out cold. He won't rouse before Chan comes and helps drag him out of here.
END PRERECORDED VIDEO THERAPEUTICCOUNSELING STUART HOLZKOPF TIME/DATE: ERRORCODE
Soon after the end of this video, Jim Booker was put on paid leave after a trip to the ER. His left arm, it was later reported, was infected and quickly progressed to necrotizing fasciitis, with a gross amount of Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria that caused his arm to rot at a rapid rate. The arm needed to be amputated in order to save the patient's life. Jim Booker is currently recovering at Zuckerburg San Francisco General Hospital.
A closer examination of inmate STUART HOLZKOPF revealed no traces of flesh eating bacteria, and an in-depth cavity search and bloodwork showed that there were no traces of foreign substances in his system prior to his breakdown in the psychiatrist's office.
Investigation is ongoing.
XXX
Belldandy and Urd returned to a lobby filled with people, most of them, Belldandy was relieved to see, being the Morisatos. Together, the two sisters slipped through the crowd to where Keiichi and Aiko stood. Aiko looked pale but relieved, yet as the Norns drew near Morgan approached, stealing the blue-haired woman's attention. For that, Belldandy was thankful. If there were demons around, she did not wish to spook the younger woman without due cause, and this would allow her to question Keiichi without rousing the college student's suspicions.
Keiichi spotted Urd first, then Belldandy. His eyes roamed the crowd around them, then zeroed in on Urd. "Where's Debra?" he asked.
Belldandy flinched.
Urd took Keiichi by the arm and led him away from the others. "Smoking I think, but never mind that." She glanced around to ensure that they were alone. Belldandy held back, still unwilling to say anything to Keiichi. "Was everything all right in there?"
Absentmindedly, Keiichi reached down and scratched under his watch. "No, it wasn't," he admitted. "I had to stop myself from jumping over the railing to wring Stuart's neck. Why do you ask?"
"Think back," Urd replied. "Was there anything, anything at all that was out of place?"
Keiichi furrowed his brows in thought. "Come to think of it, Stuart. There was something wrong with Stuart."
Unable to contain herself, Belldandy stepped forward. "Like what? Please be specific."
There was an urgency in her tone that the dark-haired man could not ignore. It caused the skin on the back of his neck to break out in goosebumps. "He was… off. Kept rambling, and at one point was asking to be left alone." Keiichi looked to the two deities, who were listening with rapt attention. "There were times it almost seemed like he was talking to someone else. Someone… not there? Shit…" He reached up and rubbed the back of his head. "I probably sound like an idiot."
"I'm sure it's nothing," replied Urd as she put on a pleasant smile. Keiichi watched as she glanced to Belldandy, then returned her gaze to him. "I mean, earth prisons can do some weird things to a guy, right Belldandy?"
Keiichi frowned. "You guys are hiding something, I can tell."
Urd stared at him, her face void of expression. "Hiding something? Why would you say that?"
"Well, partly because of Bell," he said, his eyes moving to the almond haired goddess for a brief moment. "She's shifting around pretty nervously behind you."
"You must be seeing things," countered Urd without even a hitch.
"No. No, I'm not." Keiichi narrowed his eyes at the deities. "Something's got you two worried, and I have a right to know what it is. Especially since my family might end up involved here."
"Keiichi, it's not that-"
"It's a demon," interrupted Belldandy.
"What?!" yelled Keiichi, drawing the attention of everyone else in the hallway. Immediately, he clapped his hands over his mouth. After a moment, the attention faded as people returned to their conversations.
Urd shot Belldandy a glare. "Thanks, Bell," she growled.
"What else would you have me do?" demanded the almond haired goddess. "It's better he knows so that he can prepare."
"Fine," replied Urd, shaking her head in frustration. "He's all yours." With that, the silver-haired goddess stepped away.
Belldandy took a deep breath. Truthfully, she was fine with Urd taking the lead on this considering how things had been going with Keiichi. After seeing Debra enter his room, she had gone back to her own, dejected and defeated. Remembering that the blonde mortal had been there before, Belldandy had done the math. 'Three is a crowd' was the old Earth saying, as she recalled. So, rather than make any type of scene, she decided to grant them their space and just quietly fade away into the background.
But now it seemed that Urd had other ideas. Keiichi was looking at her expectantly. "I do not feel like you have anything to worry about."
"How can you say that?" asked Keiichi. "I still remember all the shit Hagall did to me back in March. That's shit you don't forget."
"Yes, I remember as well," replied Belldandy. "But please understand, that was a special circumstance. Aoshima had called upon her to help, and she was contractually obligated to do so." Belldandy shuddered slightly at having to recall events from that time. "If you are not interfering with one of their contracts, they are not allowed to harm you."
"I don't know..." Keiichi looked unconvinced.
"Please, just trust me on this," replied Belldandy. While her tone was firm, to herself, her words sounded hollow. "If Urd or myself catch any inkling of danger, we will act, and act decisively."
Keiichi visibly calmed after hearing that. "Thanks Bell," he murmured, relieved. "I'm glad you are here."
Belldandy completely missed the meaning of his words. "Well, even though things are going well for you and Debra, I still have an interest in keeping you safe." She folded her arms across her chest, hoping she looked stern and certain in her words but feeling insecure and vulnerable. She didn't want to talk about this. Not here, not now, by Yggdrasil, not ever, if she had any say.
"What do you mean; 'going well between me and Debra'?" asked Keiichi as he stared at the goddess as if she had grown a third eye.
Belldandy bit her lip and looked away, unable to hold his gaze. "I know you two are back together."
"What are…" started Keiichi before deciding on taking a different track. "Where did you get that idea?"
"I saw Debra go into your room last night!" Belldandy snapped. A flash of annoyance came and went at the idea that the goddess had to spell it out as she leveled a glare at him. Behind her, the heavy wooden doors that led into the courtroom splintered and cracked with a sharp snap, and those near the doors jumped back, their voices rising in protest.
Neither Keiichi nor Belldandy noticed.
Keiichi was still nervous though. "Oh, you did?" There was a slight hint of fear as he spoke which was easy to detect, and Belldandy felt her aura flare around her even more. He was afraid. He was guilty. Well, she wasn't about to make this hard for him. Her decision was already made.
"Yes," replied Belldandy. "And it's fine. When we get back, I won't get in the way. I can even have my stuff packed and –"
"No!" yelped Keiichi, as he reached out and grabbed the Goddess by the arm and turned her to face him. A blast of wind buffeted his face, and though there were no open windows, his hair rose for a brief moment before falling limp once more. More pedestrians, already spooked by the cracked wood, began to protest, moving away from Keiichi and Belldandy as though the two were jinxed. "It wasn't like that!" the SEAL cried. "Nothing happened between us."
"What?" Belldandy stared at the man in astonishment. "What do you mean?!"
"Nothing happened," he proclaimed, desperation seeping into his voice before he recovered. "We had a long, heart to heart. I told her I was with you and she said that it was fine, and that she would step aside."
Belldandy stepped closer to Keiichi and looked deeply into his eyes. While there was iron in his words, there was still a little something off. Three months of living with him and learning his every nuance told her he was hiding something. The fear in his voice. A part of her whispered. He would not be afraid if he was honest. The woman's eyes narrowed. "I think there was more to it than that," she accused after a moment.
Keiichi flinched. "Well... ok, here's the deal." Belldandy could tell he was bracing himself for what was to come next. Truthfully, she was doing the same. Her stomach dropped, and she could feel her heart thump wildly in her chest- not out of excitement, but terror. "That wasn't the first time she came to me." the man confessed, and in his eyes Belldandy saw pain. Pain and regret. "The first time, our first day here... we kissed," he said after a moment. The man took a long, slow breath. "We... Bell, I'm sorry, I just- we got caught in the moment."
The goddess paused. While the 'news' might not be as bad as she had imagined, it was still something of a shock. Keiichi had kissed another woman. A tinge of redness invaded her field of vision as she glowered over the mortal. "What do you mean 'kissed'?" she demanded, causing him to shrink back. "Was it like some kindergarten playground thing? Or was it like if you took one more step further you'd have ended up fucking on the bed?!" Keiichi looked genuinely afraid.
"It wasn't..." he croaked out, but stopped when it became apparent Belldandy was not even listening. The goddess clenched and unclenched her hands, her lips peeling back in a wide, toothy snarl that spoke of dwindling self-control falling into agonized rage. It was the look she'd worn on her face several times before, during Peorth's visit. "Bell, don't get any-"
Belldandy cut him off. "I'm going to fucking rip that cunt's heart out so she can understand what she is dong to me right-"
"No, you're not."
Holy Bell's voice rang in her mind, causing her to pause before she could finish what she was going to say. The goddess went rigid, like a child caught by her mother. And just why the hell not?! she demanded of her inner self.
In her mind and soul, she felt the sensation of someone wrapping their arms around her. She felt warmth well up in her as her angel spoke. "Because you are only seeing the bad side of this, as you always have," replied the angel.
What good side would you have me see here? demanded the goddess.
"He told you the truth, did he not?" asked Holy Bell. "Even though he was afraid to do so. I think that indicates he regrets what happened."
That may be, but as I have been reminded on multiple occasions, it takes two to tango, replied the goddess.
"That's right, it does," agreed the angel. "But this has been a three-way dance, and you are not without fault. Let it go, Carrie. You should focus your anger where it belongs."
Carrie.
Holy Bell had called her Carrie; had taken up the same special little nickname Aiko liked to call her during their late-night conversations. Aiko on one end of the phone with coffee and Belldandy on the other end with tea, both of them conversing of everything from the silly to the despairing to the ridiculous and the depressing. Carrie and Bangle, talking about their respective siblings and the unruliness of youth and the unfathomable depths of the spiritual to straight advice on how to get out of debt by means that may or may not have been legal.
Bangle, Aiko, who had shown her support when she'd barely known Belldandy and had forgiven the goddess when she'd killed Keiichi.
It tempered her rage, but did not extinguish it. And where should it go? She asked her angel, This rage over the man who would be so careless as to hurt me; where should I focus this anger?
"Well, not on some woman that we will probably never see again."
As Belldandy had her inner dialogue with her angel, Keiichi was growing increasingly concerned at seeing the goddess in what was almost a catatonic state. She had simply stopped talking and started staring off into space, as if falling into a trance. He tried waving his hands in front of her face to get her attention, to no avail. Just as he was contemplating the idea of finding Urd to see if she could help, Belldandy's hand snapped out and grabbed him by the shirt. With a grip strong enough to tear the fabric if he struggled, the Norn pulled him close to her until they were nearly nose to nose.
"When we get home, we need to sit down and have a serious talk about where we are with this relationship." Though her voice was calm, her eyes terrified Keiichi in ways he could not describe. The irises were cloudy and spiraling, like the swirling, hypnotic depths of a tornado against a blue sky, and the SEAL feared that if he held her gaze, he'd be sucked in; sucked in and lost, spinning endlessly within a sky of blue until time stood still. She released him then, and he let out a breath that he didn't realize he was holding. She glared at him for a moment more before turning to walk away, pausing only for a moment to look back over her shoulder at the mortal. "Keiichi, get your head out of whatever nether region it's located in right now and step up, or be prepared to step away. I'm not above canceling MY wish and ending it all at this point." She then turned and walked to the front door, leaving the stunned mortal behind as the glass windows splintered into hairline fractures at her retreat.
XXX
"Too bad Stu." Stuart kept his head bowed as the guards escorted him back to his cell, doing his best to ignore the cat calls and insults thrown his way from the inmates. It'd been hard to focus during the parole hearing, where he'd had to fight to stay awake, and on several occasions through the proceedings he'd thought he'd seen the woman. Not right in front of him, no, but off to the side. In his peripheral vision. Watching. Muttering. And the voices... he was hearing voices now too. Conversations at the edge of his hearing. Discussions on the verge of comprehension. They scared him, almost as much as the woman, whose voice he'd come to know in his dreams as deep and baritone with an odd, hollow edge. Those voices weren't the woman's, but some piece of him recognized them still. They were what made him speak out in the courtroom, trying to drown out the voices in favor of the men and women speaking around him.
Yet to his disappointment he realized that mortal voices fell silent in the wake of ghostly whispers. And he knew them. He knew them. That was what terrified him the most. These whispers were not the whispers of strangers but the voices of close, personal friends. Of lovers whose faces had been forgotten and family long since passed on. He didn't know what they asked, but some piece of him, his very soul he suspected, understood, and what it understood was that Stuart had done something for them. He'd agreed to, to something, but he didn't know what.
It made him want to stick a pencil in his ear, the voices. To grab a pencil sharpened on the cement floor of his cell, long and pointy, and shove it into his ear canal in an attempt to deafen himself to the voices. Only he suspected that even then, those voices would no more fade than the White Woman, and he'd be trapped, deaf and mad, as the voices whispered in his head and the White Woman drew near and he was imprisoned in a hospital bed with lead poisoning.
She'd be coming for him tonight.
The thought made him shudder as he entered his cell. He didn't have a roommate, given his history, and the tiny little cell never looked more cold and uninviting. I'm going to die tonight. He found himself thinking, stepping inside as the cell door slammed shut behind him and sticking his hands through the small window for the guards to remove the cuffs. They'll find me dead in the morning. Dead with white eyes, like the White Woman. It was a morbid thought, but one he felt held some level of truth to it. Something was going to happen tonight, of that he was certain. The White Woman had been perched on the railing of the third-floor cell block two nights ago. It had been the first time he'd gotten a good look at her, and what he'd seen repulsed him even now.
The rags of her outfit had at one time been a complete wardrobe, but time and abuse and... tumors— large, bulging, deformed tumors— had left it in tatters. Her flesh was thin and translucent in his dreams, and he could see the veins and muscle and bone of her exposed flesh. Her lips were dark and swollen, and when she spoke he caught hints of her tongue, which was black and rotten inside her mouth.
The sight of her and all her wretchedness had been enough to leave him howling with such mindless terror that he'd woken up the whole cell block. The guards who'd come to investigate had come with the rush of police officers hearing a murder, yet finding it was only Stuart and his nightmares at the end of their chase had left them in a sour mood. They'd thrown him in isolation for the rest of the night, and like the horrible wraith she was the White Woman had followed. Isolation had done little to shield him from her, and while she never ventured through the heavy steel door into his room, he knew she was out there. In his dreams the door was removed, and he'd lain on his small cot paralyzed as she'd stared down at him from the guardrail.
That time, when he screamed, no one came to wake him.
He'd been returned to his normal cell in the morning after everyone else had woken up, and in his fear of being imprisoned once more in isolation and the dreams of no-doors, he'd fought sleep. Last night, the night before the parole hearing, he'd fought the need for sleep with all his might, and though it left him exhausted and delirious, he only glimpsed the White Woman on two or three occasions. They had been small, quick glances from when he'd nodded off, and the sight of her right outside his cell door had always been enough to jolt him awake with a shout.
It had made the parole hearing an absolute nightmare, but regardless of his efforts to work towards an early release, Stuart had given up any hope of gaining parole long ago. The Morisato family was a stubborn lot, he'd learned, and they did not forget or forgive easily. Every time word of a possible parole came forth, the Morisatos sprang forth to shoot it down faster than he could blink. He didn't hold it against them, though. Not in the slightest. Their anger towards him was more than justified, even now, years after the incident had occurred, with Aiko a grown woman. What he'd done to her as a child had been a loss of self-control for himself. He'd realized that after the long sessions with Dr. Bautista, and the guilt of his crime shamed Stuart by the day and by the hearing, where Aiko-each time older than before, steeled herself to speak of how he'd raped her.
But this particular time...
With the White Woman waiting behind his eyelids and the voices whispering sweet and terrible nothings in his ears...
God... what would it have taken to have the bailiff kill him? Or better yet, maybe Keiichi? If he'd just hopped over the table and into the audience pews, would Keiichi, Mr. Navy SEAL Morisato, if the rumors were true, been enough to end his suffering? Free him from the voices? End his life before the White Woman and all her wretchedness ended it for him?
He'd been tempted. Oooh, how he'd been tempted. A neck snap. Quick and fast. That's all it would have taken. Wasn't that what SEALs did? Snap people's necks and whisper 'nothing but dreams now'? The inmate would have gone for it if he'd thought he had a chance, if for no other reason than to die at the hands of another man rather than the hands of whatever monstrosity waited for him at night's end. He was too cowardly to take his own life, though that wasn't to say he hadn't tried, and goading the other inmates into a fight had only led to his own injuries and the inevitable death of the inmates.
The White Woman wanted Stuart for herself.
It was close to six in the evening as they closed the doors behind him, and there were still three hours left before the lights out call was made. Three hours. Three meager hours to plan on what to do when the White Woman appeared that night, as there was little doubt in his mind that she would come. Time was of the essence, and he'd wasted most of it in his panic of the White Woman's first arrival. He had no tools outside of paper, and though he'd heard of inmates fashioning shivs out of less, Stuart had neither the time nor expertise to craft one. He had a pencil he could sharpen to a point, but the only thing it might be used for would be as a quick end to his own life-the White Woman was supernatural, for certain, and a pencil used as a shiv would do nothing against her. But with a sharp enough point, he might still drive it into his neck and bleed out before his time was up, and at least then he could die a man before falling victim to whatever horrors the specter had in store for him.
What a worthless thought.
He eyed the pencil from where it rested on a small shelf built into the back cell wall. Even now, the thought of driving the pointed end of a pencil into his neck...of taking his own life...
He shuddered and looked away.
Coward. Always the coward. Always quick to roll over, that was Stuart. And now he was too cowardly to take the coward's way out. What a disgrace.
Defeated, Stuart walked over to his bed and sank down onto the old and musty mattress that was his bed. The springs squealed beneath his weight, and the lone light of his cell cast a long and dark shadow across his face from the bed above him. The man heaved a sigh, hiding his face in his hands. A broken sob was muffled by the palms at his lips, and a part of him wondered what his fate with the White Woman would be.
Throughout the cell block the lights flickered and hummed. Stuart wondered with morbid curiosity what the White Woman would do to him. Rip his spine out, by chance? Pull him through the bars of his cell door until he was nothing but pulp? Devour his soul like some kind of demon, leaving him to suffer for eternity?
The man lay down on his back and sucked in a shuddering breath.
Perhaps he slept.
XXX
The cell was dark when his hands finally slipped from his face. It was a thick blackness, of the sort one might expect to find in a black hole: deep and all-consuming. The lights were off, which in and of itself was not strange; the lights for the individual cells went off at nine-thirty at night, yet what was strange was the fact that the outside lights, which remained on but dimmed for the night watch, were off as well. It wasn't a power outage; in the half-dozen times such an event had occurred, emergency lights fueled by a generator came on to provide illumination, and on this occasion the red lights were off as well, leaving the cell in complete darkness. There was no abstract light source that could provide so much as a glint, and even as his eyes attempted to adjust to the darkness, he could make out nothing to mark his surroundings. He could not even see his hands, which he held out an inch from his face and flexed, but he felt their touch.
As if to add to the strangeness, the cell block was quiet.
If not for the way his bed protested his weight, Stuart would have thought he'd gone blind and deaf. Against the deafening silence that surrounded him, the squeak of his mattress was a loud scream. There were no footsteps that spoke of a walking guard making his rounds. No moans or sniffs or coughs or snores or voices to hint at his neighbors in their cells, and with such an encompassing darkness around him, they should have been screaming and hollering and complaining to whoever would hear them.
Yet it was all silent.
As far as Stuart could tell, he'd closed his eyes in one world and opened them to another. A world of silence and darkness, with him the last man on earth, locked away to rot in a cell with no hope of escape.
He wondered if he was dreaming, and smashed a fist into the wall his bed was propped up against. There was a thump, another blessed sound, followed by a yell which he could not contain as pain blossomed in his knuckles. Hissing through his teeth, the man drew his hand back, rubbing the knuckles in the dark and feeling liquid smear his thumb.
He was awake then.
Awake and enveloped in darkness and silence.
"I'm awake." He tested his voice against the silence and found it lacking. The quiet somehow stole substance from the sound, and the voice he heard sounded faint and weak, quivering in its attempt to stand up to the quiet around it. He tried again. "I'm awake." It was stronger now, but so too was the quaver of his voice, reflecting the fear gathering in his gut.
He could hear his heart hammering in his ears now, its beat rapid and pounding like a drum. He felt it beat against his ribcage, and it left him feeling breathless, breathless but awake as he peered in the direction of the cell gate. He couldn't see her, not yet, but he was certain the White Woman was out there, lying in wait. What was she waiting for, he wondered? Why hadn't she appeared to swoop down on him like he had been so dreading this past week. Where was she?
Was it because he was awake?
"Hello?" He called out into the darkness, yet nothing called back to him; not even the hint of an echo. "Is anyone there?" He rose from his bed and crept to the front of his cell, his hands out in front of him and searching for purchase. They found the cell bars soon enough, the steel cold and hard against his hands. "Warden?" He projected his voice into the cell block, and an echo finally returned, making him feel even more alone. His breath hitched in his throat, and he swallowed, tasting panic and bile on his tongue. "Morris?" He called to the cell mate on his left and got nothing. "Hayfever?" He called to the prisoner on the right and got the same. "Ramos?" He called across the bay and only his voice returned to him, nervous and high like a lost child. "Anybody?"
Nothing.
"What the fuck?" He whispered to himself, squinting through the bars of his cell. Yet it was the same outside as it was inside, and Stuart saw nothing.
But he could hear something now, at least.
He could hear voices.
Distant at first, but growing stronger by the second, their words still too far and indistinct for him to make out. Stuart pressed himself into the bars, straining his ears to make out what the voices were saying and hoping it wasn't his mind playing tricks on him. A whisper first, then he could assign genders to them. He thought one of them might be male, but as a whole most of them sounded feminine, which should have been a warning to him. There were no females in San Quentin unless they were visitors, and those visitors never went into the cell blocks.
"Who's there?" he called. The voices continued on as if they'd never heard him. "Hello?" he tried again. "I know someone's out there, I can hear it. Who's out there? What's going on?"
None of the voices responded to him, and he realized with growing dread that as they grew louder, he could find no meaning in their words; whatever language they spoke was so strange and so foreign that it was almost otherworldly, a Lovecraftian slur that made the hair on his arms stand straight.
They're in my head. He thought. Like before, like in the courtroom and when I'm asleep. It's the voices all over again.
"I'm awake though," he said out loud. "I'm awake!"
Yet if the voices heard him they cared not. They continued their conversation, heedless of his protests and growing louder by the second. The whisper became a murmur, the murmur became noise. The noise grew to first a dull roar, and then a deafening shout, as one voice after another warred for dominance in his psyche.
"Stop it!" he cried, and was ignored. "Shut up! Leave me alone!" He covered his ears with his hands and discovered it did nothing against the voices. Their tumult grew louder, and when he screamed he could no longer hear his own voice. "Go away! Shut up! Shut up! Stop!" He slammed his head against the bars but didn't feel the pain against his temple. Instead Stuart fell to his knees, clutching his head as he screamed, hoping to drown out noise with noise and failing even at that. "Please, no more!" he begged. "I'll do whatever you want, just stop!"
At once the voices quieted.
The resulting silence was enough to make Stuart whimper.
"Oh god, just make it stop," he groaned, and popped himself up against the bars of the door. "I just-I just want to be left alone!"
Yet he was not alone.
The White Woman was in his cell.
She glowed with an internal, ethereal light, and her white gaze was horrible. She came to him, large and otherworldly, and Stuart began to scream. "No! Stop! I'm awake! I'm awake!" He screamed long and loud and shrill, until his face grew red and the veins bulged in his neck.
The White Woman swept down upon him in silence, and amidst the hysteric screams of a man driven to hysteria, Stuart Holzkopf disappeared from his cell.
No trace would be found leading to the reason of his disappearance or how he'd slipped through the bars. And by the time he was discovered missing and word was released to the San Francisco police, the events that followed his disappearance would already be completed, and the actions, and resulting consequences, would be out of even the hands of gods.
XXX
Dinner that night was one of celebration and good cheer. Stuart remained behind bars, and with it came a sense of satisfaction and serenity for many of the individuals involved. Many, but not all. Aiko celebrated her victory against Stuart at dinner that night, where Keima paid for her meal as those gathered toasted to Aiko's success. It would at least a year before the man in question would be up for parole again. That knowledge brought with it a certain peace of mind for his lone victim; peace of mind that Stuart would not be released, that he would be unable to hunt out new quarry, and that there would be no possibility of him committing further crimes upon his release.
For those most involved, it was like a great weight had been lifted from their shoulders. Aiko smiled a bit larger, Morgan conversed with the others a bit more, Megumi became a bit more open minded and Takano laughed a bit more. Keima was vocal in his happiness as he spat out curses at the man behind bars. Yet not everyone shared in the joy of the celebration. The Norns were uneasy amongst the festivities, and were quiet and reserved amongst the Morisato family. Belldandy smiled and laughed and listened whenever someone paid her particular attention, but otherwise offered no conversation during dinner. Urd didn't even bother with an attempt to conceal her mood, her gaze long and distant as she appeared lost in thought. She was left alone, unlike Belldandy, leaving her to brood in peace as Keiichi looked on in concern, his thoughts troubled with memories of Hagall and the hellish mental attack cast against him.
Though he, like Belldandy, managed to smile and laugh for the others, those who knew him well could see that there was something off. The grip on his drink was tight and tense, leaving the veins in his hands and forearm bulging, with a smile that did not quite reach his eyes. It almost looked like a snarl was on his face; a warning to those around him he was in no mood to be trifled with, and similar to Urd his family let him be. And while Aiko laughed and enjoyed herself and celebrated Stuart's defeat, her gaze was drawn to her elder brother and the goddesses who lived with him on several occasions, her eyes questioning but her voice silent, unwilling to spoil the good mood.
Debra watched the Norns with suspicious eyes, following their actions with a frown as she observed them. Her eyes remained centered on Urd, who appeared too distracted to notice the woman's gaze. However, when the woman did look towards Debra, the detective was quick to turn away, as though fearing the silver-haired woman's eyes or perhaps, that she might see (beneath the mask)something she didn't want to see. On several occurrences she attempted to start up a conversation with Keiichi, but lost her nerve at that last minute each time.
Nothing more happened that night.
It was not until the following morning that disaster struck.
It was the morning Keiichi and those who'd accompanied him were due to fly out. Their flight back to Virginia was scheduled for 10:13 that day, and so most of the early morning was spent gathering what few possessions they had and double checking the rooms for any last-minute forgotten items. The group made their way down to the lobby for a final hotel breakfast at a slow crawl. There was no rush; it was only seven when Keiichi awoke, and by then the Norns were already awake. Aiko was the last of their unofficial group to awaken, appearing downstairs at close to nine with her bags and Morgan in tow. The two women beamed with happiness, and it made Keiichi smile when he looked at them. They made a cute couple together, now that the initial shock of their relationship had faded for him.
The duo moved to join the Norns at the table where they sat, dining in amiable silence next to the table Megumi and Keiichi ate at in their final hours together. It was a comfortable silence; one that allowed Keiichi to forget the events of yesterday. They'd be leaving soon, he told himself, in a matter of hours, in fact, and there was no way, no goddamned way, that what Belldandy and Urd sensed yesterday in the courthouse, something that in private even Keima admitted being unnerved by, would come to them at the hotel. No way.
And if he looked to the Norns, he found them in a similar state of mind. Or perhaps they were just tired. Neither woman appeared very concerned with the goings-on around them, though they both looked tired. Keiichi wondered if they'd sung in the early morning hours of a tiny hotel in San Francisco when there were demons present in town.
It doesn't matter, a tiny voice whispered in his head. This will all be over once you get on the plane home.
Keiichi was unconvinced.
The rest of the morning passed in peace. Wayfarers loaded with travel bags and suitcases checked out of their rooms while cleaning personnel began their slow creep through the corridors. The initial rush of departing guests faded, and as the hotel staff began clearing the breakfast bar, Keiichi and the others grabbed their own possessions.
Keima and Takano were there to see them off in the hotel lobby as they all checked out. "If Keigo scores well on his tests, will you still allow him to visit you?" Takano asked, embracing Keiichi in a tight hug that belied her tiny form. Her gaze turned to Belldandy, who was holding an amiable conversation with Keima. "Especially now that you have other... priorities to sort through?"
Keiichi winced internally. In the excitement of the Norns coming to live with him, he'd forgotten about his baby's brother's aspirations to come and visit during the summer time. Part of the deal had been that he achieve a straight-A grade point average, and from his exchanges with the youth, Keigo had worked diligently to achieve that goal. Before Urd had come to him on that Friday night, Keiichi had been looking forward to seeing his younger brother, as the age difference between the two of them left them with little closeness as siblings. Keigo's visits were a way of getting to know the boy and to bond with him, and the boy's exuberance and excitement whenever he came to stay with Keiichi were the highpoints of his life, especially after returning from Iraq.
Yet that had been before a pair of goddesses had entered Keiichi's life. The Norns were quick to change that excitement. Belldandy was quick to change that excitement. It had taken all of two days for Belldandy to forget herself and 'spill the beans' to Aiko during that one Easter weekend, and though the goddess had progressed towards recovery, a part of him still feared the idea of a boy like Keigo, not even a teenager yet, learning what had become his 'dirty little secret'. Despite everything else, to include the onset of puberty, Keigo was a perceptive boy. Though he was the only one in the family who wore glasses, his eyes were sharp, and he could spot things that were out of the ordinary or out-of-place with an ease that at times made Keiichi envious. And while Belldandy had gotten better since Easter, hell, since her angel, the Norn still at times simply didn't fit in the world around her.
Keigo, a child sensitive to such dissimilarities, would pick up on that in a heartbeat.
With a heavy heart Keiichi opened his mouth to decline the invitation, and then immediately shut it when he caught the expression on Takano's face. The look was one of expectation and rock-hard stubbornness, the glint in her eyes holding an edge like a knife that dared the Navy SEAL to go back against his word. Keiichi knew that gaze and knew it well from his childhood. That was Takano's legendary 'my way or the highway' look, the one that left little room for argument and had left everyone from Keima to Keiichi to Keigo to coworkers and friends silent and withdrawn, reluctant or perhaps simply unable to hold an argument that went against Takano's will. That was the look that told Keiichi that there was no choice for him, and that Takano was not so much asking as she was reminding him of his past promise to the baby of the family.
A sinking feeling filled his gut, and Keiichi glanced back at Belldandy, then at Urd. With Urd around, they could goddess-proof the house before Keigo arrived, which was still a little way off, and, well... Belldandy had improved by leaps and bounds since the scene with her angel. Of course, that was before this latest fiasco with Debra, but maybe if he...
With a smile he didn't feel, Keiichi looked back at Takano. "It'll be fine," he assured her. The smile Takano gave him was not so much relieved as it was pleased. "The house is pretty big, and the girls don't take up much room. It'll be nice to have another man in the house, given I'm already outnumbered with Urd there as well."
Takano nodded, her smile long and generous. "Wonderful," she said. "I'll make sure to let Keigo know before he tests. He got a ninety-six percent on his last test, and I'm beginning to fear that he's starting to slip in his studies, especially after we informed him he would not be coming with us to the parole hearing- he's too young for such things- and I'm afraid they'd slip further if you changed your mind. Perhaps this will inspire him and reaffirm his goals so that he can still come out and see you, although—and don't you tell Keima about this—I was thinking of allowing him to visit you even with such a poor grade as an A-."
"You're a generous woman, Takano," Keiichi said dryly.
Takano hummed in agreement, and for one final moment drifted back towards Belldandy before looking back at Keiichi. "One more thing," she said, unconsciously mimicking her husband. "When Keigo visits you... don't let Belldandy sleep with Keigo."
Her comment was odd enough to leave Keiichi staring at her. "What?"
"I don't want her sleeping with all my children, and she's already got a head start with you and Aiko," Takano said, and then turned away, distracted as she moved towards Megumi.
Keiichi remained where he was, staring at his mother's back in bafflement. "What?"
Takano and Megumi embraced, and it was as they were parting that Morgan approached from the direction of the bathrooms. The woman looked uncertain, drawing behind her a small, wheeled, maroon suitcase that looked small enough to be a carry-on. The woman approached at a rushed walk, her brows knitted together with worry as she made a beeline for Keiichi, and it was enough to make the SEAL's hackles rise.
"Hey, um... Keiichi?" Morgan's voice was low as she approached, and her eyes flitted around the lobby in search of something that eluded the man. "Uh... listen, this is going to sound weird but... Aiko didn't come over here, did she?"
"No..." Keiichi drawled, and that lump that had formed in his stomach at the mention of 'demon' yesterday became a boulder in his intestines. "The last I saw her, she was with you."
"Yeah..." Morgan was growing more anxious now. "I- we went to the bathroom together, you know? Only I forgot I left my brush in our room, so I went to run and grab it real fast, and when I came back, well..." She shrugged, and though the response was flippant, Keiichi could see the dawning fear on her face. "I... I was hoping she'd come here to join you," Morgan continued. "She... she isn't answering her phone."
As if to prove this, Morgan pulled her cellphone out from her pocket and checked the home screen. The phone remained empty of notifications, and after unlocking it and going to her texts, she showed Keiichi her recent history. The past ten minutes detailed a dozen or so texts from Morgan asking about Aiko's whereabouts. None of them had a response.
Keiichi frowned, uneasy but trying to reassure himself. "Maybe her phone died when she left the bathroom," he suggested, though by the look on Morgan's face she remained about as convinced as he felt. "Come on, let's go and see if we can't find her."
Morgan nodded, and as he moved to depart she went to Belldandy, catching Keiichi off-guard. "Excuse me, Belldandy?" The goddess had been talking in Japanese with Keima. It sounded like they'd been talking about food, unless Keiichi's ears were mistaken, and that would have been a first in Keiichi's books. Bell never talked about food with anyone. "Could you- could I speak with you and Keiichi in private for a minute?" She said nothing of Aiko's possible disappearance, and her tact earned her brownie points in Keiichi's eyes.
"Of course," Belldandy murmured, and excusing herself from her conversation, Morgan and Belldandy walked out of the lobby and into the neighboring media room. Keiichi followed, and held back a small distance as the young woman explained Aiko's disappearance to Belldandy. The room was empty aside from themselves, and beneath the low din of the weatherman reporting clear skies and sunny days, Belldandy listened with rapt attention.
"Could you come with us to go look for Aiko?" Morgan requested. The young woman bit her lip. "Aiko, she... if- if anything happened to her, she told me that you could help. You and Keiichi both."
Belldandy started. "She said that about me?" The woman was shocked by the simple revelation. "Me?"
Morgan nodded. "It's true, right? You'll help find her?"
Belldandy opened her mouth, and then closed it when no words came out. She stared at Morgan with wide eyes, and then frowned, the shock dissipating into determination. "Yes. She's right. We'll find her, Morgan." The level of certainty in her voice was reassuring even to Keiichi, who was fighting down his own anxieties about his sister's disappearance amidst the presence of demons yesterday.
Together the trio moved to the bathroom where Morgan had left Aiko. They found Debra exiting it with a frown, a bag Keiichi recognized from Aiko's many visits to his house hoisted on her left shoulder. She looked at the approaching group in surprise. "Kei?"
"That's Aiko's bag." Morgan breathed.
Debra nodded. "I found it in the bathroom," she said, and handed it to Keiichi to examine. "I'd been washing up and noticed it'd been left unattended on the countertop." She looked between Keiichi and Morgan. "What's going on?"
"Aiko's missing," Keiichi said, and as he spoke Belldandy pushed past Debra and into the bathroom. Keiichi dug around in the backpack, coming up with a spare change of clothes, a tablet, a textbook, and, most worrisome of all, Aiko's wallet. It still had Aiko's driver's license, college ID, debit card and fifty dollars inside, indicating that the bag had not been trifled with. "This isn't good," Keiichi mumbled, staring down at the wallet before pulling out his cellphone and dialing Aiko's cell. After a minute of ringing, the phone went to voicemail. "Fuck," Keiichi grunted.
"Fuck!" An oath emerged from the bathroom, and all three of the mortals jumped as Belldandy came storming out, eyes wide and anxious and, worst of all, angry. Her eyes found Keiichi's first. "I need Urd," she said, and then looked at Morgan, who was starting to dance on her feet next to Debra. It made the goddess hesitate, and some of the fear and anger vanished under a mask of calm. "Morgan, can you go back to the others and send Urd here?" she requested. "She can help me find Aiko, but until we find her, I need you to let the others know to keep an eye out for her."
Morgan nodded. "Yeah, okay, I can do that, sure," she said, all too eager to help. "I'll- I'll keep Aiko's bag on hand and keep an eye on her luggage." She licked her lips. "Besides, maybe she's already back with the others."
"Maybe..." Debra murmured, watching as Morgan took Aiko's bag from Keiichi and raced off. "I'll stay with you guys." She looked at Keiichi and Belldandy. "I want to help search for her. If I'd been aware she was missing, I'd have done a more in-depth investigation of the bathroom before moving her backpack. I might still be able to find some traces of what happened to her."
"That won't be necessary-" Belldandy began.
"Fuck you, it won't," Debra interrupted. "I grew up with Aiko. She's as much my baby sister as she is Keiichi's."
"Deb-" Keiichi began.
"Don't start, Kei." Debra snapped. "I'm not just going to sit by on the sidelines while you and your girlfriend and her sister do whatever to find Aiko. I don't know what's going on between you three, and quite frankly, right now I don't give a shit. Aiko's missing, I'm helping, and fuck all of you if you think I'm not getting involved."
Belldandy bristled, her lips pulling back in a snarl that was interrupted by the arrival of Urd. "Aiko's missing?" the Norn asked, and any chance at arguing died on Belldandy's lips.
"She is," Belldandy said. "Come, you need to examine the bathroom. Keiichi, you too. No one is inside right now."
The group of four entered the woman's bathroom, a small, three-stall restroom with a white porcelain counter. To Keiichi it was like watching Urd walk into a spider's web. The goddess visibly stiffened upon stepping inside, and her lips peeled back in a grimace as she tossed her head. "Holy fuck, Bell."
"Agreed," Belldandy muttered.
Debra ignored them both, approaching the countertop where she had said Aiko's bag had been left. The woman examined first the counter top, then knelt on the floor, searching for what Keiichi could only guess was hair or bobby pins.
"Bell, this place reeks," Urd rumbled, her voice deep and low next to her sister. "It's bad enough that it's giving Elegance the heebie-jeebies."
"You aren't alone," Belldandy murmured, stepping around Debra and approaching a small window that let light in from the outside. It was two-by-two feet, mounted high on the wall with thick, translucent glass that flooded the bathroom with light.
"What do you mean?" Keiichi asked, glancing at Debra before turning his attention on Urd. "This place doesn't smell that bad, does it?" To him at least, it smelled like any woman's public bathroom- like potpourri and artificial fragrances.
"It's not a smell," Urd said, and her voice lowered. "It's a sense. There were demons here, Jank."
"Like yesterday?" Keiichi asked, and felt his gut tie itself in a knot as Urd nodded.
"Urd, will you contact Lind now?" Belldandy looked over her shoulder at her sister. "I fear we will need her if we're to locate Aiko."
"Who's Lind?" Debra looked up at Belldandy.
"You'll find out soon enough." The Norn sent an imploring look to her older sister, who scowled and reluctantly pulled out her phone.
"We can't meet Lind at the hotel," Urd said.
"Then we follow the trail and see where it goes," Belldandy said. "We find some place private and call her from there."
"Keiichi, what's going on?" Debra asked. Her eyes remained on Belldandy.
"We're calling for backup," Keiichi explained, looking at Urd. "Right?"
"Yeah..." Urd trailed off. "Bell, you sense it too, right? There's no trail through the restroom door."
"It came in and left through the window," Belldandy replied.
"Wait, what?" Debra looked between the two sisters in confusion. "What did? How could you- what are you talking about?"
Neither sister answered her, and as Debra rose, Urd moved to her sister's side, her voice dropping into a soft murmur as she spoke to Belldandy in a language Keiichi didn't understand. He recognized it though. It was that same musical song-language Belldandy spoke on occasion when her emotions got the better of her. The siblings conversed briefly, and Debra moved to stand beside Keiichi, her attention never leaving the two women before them.
"What are they speaking?" she asked. Keiichi wondered why she was whispering.
"I don't know." Keiichi wondered why he was whispering too. It was as if their native tongue, so like a duet to the women who spoke it, demanded silence, like a choir performing within an opera house where any interruption would be deemed sacrilegious to the song in question. It was an enchanting sound to listen to when Urd paired her voice with Belldandy's, and Keiichi felt his grip on time loosen, drawn as he was to the music of their voices. A glance at Debra would have revealed much the same, had he the will, yet the voices of the goddesses had robbed him even of that, and as they spoke Keiichi felt himself fall prisoner to them, robbed of will and desire to pursue whatever had drawn him into the women's restroom to begin with.
At length, the sisters stopped, whatever plan they'd discussed finalized with a single head nod from Urd. The spell broken, Keiichi brought a hand to his brow, massaging his temples and blinking rapidly. His mind felt slow and his thoughts like molasses after whatever Belldandy and Urd had discussed, and this time, when he worked up the energy to glance at Debra, he saw that the effects were not limited to him and him alone.
Debra had closed her eyes, gritting her teeth as she pressed her fingers down on her forehead. Blood had begun to trickle from her nose. Keiichi touched his upper lip in reflection, but found no moisture dripping from his nostrils, and wondered why Debra had been affected in such a manner. "You okay?"
Debra looked at him with one eye. A blood vessel had burst within it, leaving part of the sclera red. "I- I think... so?" She didn't sound so sure herself. "My head hurts... but, it's fading now. I'm fine," she assured. "Really, I... I'm fine." Once more her attention was drawn back to the Norns, watching as Urd moved to the window and peered up at it. "Kei, what was that?" The Norn reached her long arms up to the window to pull it open, and with a soft click it surrendered to her will. "That... that wasn't any language I've ever heard before."
"You don't look so good, Deb." Keiichi ignored her question, his concern real. Whatever the Norns had done had affected Deb in a more negative fashion than Keiichi, and the woman looked pale and shaken as a result. The blood had slowed but not stopped its path down her upper lip, and even as Debra dabbed at it with her arm, a fresh dribble began as soon as her hand fell from her face.
"I'm fine." Debra insisted, but the grimace on her face told another story. "Better question would be what your girlfriend and her sister are doing and why."
The man looked back to the Norns, and his jaw nearly dropped as he watched Urd hoist herself up to the now open window and shimmy through it. "What the fuck?" Before he'd even completed his question Belldandy was jumping up after her sister, slipping through the tiny window with the same efficiency as her older sibling. A moment later, Urd's head popped back up on the other side of the window.
"You coming or what?" she demanded. "Bell's already off, and I can't wait forever.
"Urd, you crawled through a window!" Keiichi exclaimed. "What the hell are you guys doing?"
"Hunting," Urd replied. "We've got our trail, and we can't waste time or it'll grow cold."
"So you crawled through a window instead of circling around like a normal, sane person?" Debra demanded.
Urd looked her square in the eyes. "Yes. Now are you coming or not?"
"Through the window?" Both Keiichi and Debra demanded.
"Yes."
Keiichi looked at Debra.
Debra looked at Keiichi. "Kei, no."
Keiichi ignored Debra and moved towards the window. Urd disappeared once more. "Kei, you won't fit! You'll get stuck in the window!"
Keiichi jumped and grabbed hold of the window ledge. With a grunt he hoisted himself up and through the window, and as Debra predicted his arms, large and beefy as they were, combined with the thick chest he'd built to support such a massive frame, left him stuck. A muffled oath came from the other side of the wall, and Debra watched as Keiichi flailed in the window, his feet kicking to find purchase as his hands clenched and unclenched.
"Kei, hang on!" Debra ran over to grab his feet, to pull him back down so that they both could walk around to the front entrance like a pair of sane, normal people and not some half-mad pair of sisters. "Keiichi, stop kicking!" she called. "I'm going to pull you down!" The man stopped fighting, and his legs fell back against the wall, his knees banging against the tiles. The detective wrapped her arms around Keiichi's quads, and holding tight, began to pull him back down.
Yet instead of him falling back through, something else pulled him up, something that had to have been large and with monstrous strength, because it pulled Debra up as well. She screamed as she found herself hauled up to the window, a passenger along for the ride, yet she never thought to loosen her hold on her ex-husband. The window loomed closer with a ferocious speed, and Debra closed her eyes, waiting for the onset of pain as she crashed into it.
However there was no pain. Just a brightness behind her eyelids and a flush of fresh, hot, California air, followed by gravity once more exerting its hold on her. She opened her eyes to find herself tumbling down to the grass with Keiichi, only to be caught by Urd before her head could impact the ground. "Wow, easy there," Urd exclaimed, righting Debra as if she was a child caught in her mother's arms and placing her feet-first on the ground. "Wasn't expecting two people coming out at once. That's dangerous, you know."
Keiichi picked himself up off the ground with a moan, then looked up at the window he'd crawled-been pulled-through. "How...?"
"What the hell was that!?" Debra exclaimed.
"You going through a window," Urd replied. "What else would it be?" She looked at Keiichi. "Grab your car. Bell's already well ahead of us, and we're going need to catch up with her. She took off as soon as her feet touched the ground, and I don't think hell or high water is going to stop her from tracking down Aiko."
"Why not just run after her then?" Keiichi asked. "Bell never struck me as a runner."
"She's hunting," Urd said, and Debra sent her a queer look. "Have you ever tried to race Usain Bolt?"
"What? No!" Keiichi cried.
"Same principle," Urd replied. "Only add parkour to it as well. She's won't let anything block her trail now that she's on it, and I'll be lucky if I can track her down now. We'll need a car to catch up with her."
"Wow, wait, are you serious right now?" Debra demanded. "You're telling me your sister fucking Usain Bolted the fuck out of Dodge and is now jumping off rooftops on some kind of imaginary trail I can't even see? Are you high?"
"Not since coming to California," Urd muttered, then looked to Keiichi. "Well? Let's go! The trail won't last forever."
"Right." Keiichi nodded, then raced off to grab the car.
Urd hung back and Debra stayed with her, turning to regard the woman next to her as Keiichi walked away while digging in his pockets for the rental key. "Who are you?" Debra asked. "What are you? Really?" Urd looked at her, and the detective frowned. "You can't fool me forever," she continued. "I know what I saw when I saw you with that Blonde Woman. You aren't human. Neither was that woman. I doubt Belldandy is either."
Urd was silent.
"I know what I saw. You're wearing masks. You and that other woman too," Debra continued. "I saw what you really are." When Urd said nothing still, the blonde continued. "I saw it, you know. The snake-bird. And that blonde was... some kind of cheetah-dog mixed with a centipede." She saw Urd's eyes widen at the description. "I'm right, aren't I?" she asked. "I only saw it for a few seconds but... that's what you really are, right?"
"You're too sensitive," Urd replied. "That's... unhealthy." She narrowed her eyes, and turned to face Debra more fully. Her eyes were drawn to Debra's upper lip, still with its red smear from the bloody nose. "Keiichi's sensitivity comes from exposure to us, but you were born like that." She pursed her lips, then dug in her pocket and withdrew a small vial. "It's dangerous for you to be so close to people like me." She offered the vial to Debra, then mumbled to herself, "How does a man with the sensitivity of a rock draw people like you to his side? There must have been shamans of some sort in his family... monks, priests, wisemen, something to explain the attraction..."
"Is that poison?" Debra asked. "Are you going to make me forget?"
"Venom," Urd corrected. "And no. It'll heal the damage done to your mind. I don't know how we hurt you because I wasn't paying attention, but... you'll need it if you want to continue this journey with us. It won't make you forget though. That comes later, after Aiko is rescued and I can decide how big a threat you are to Belldandy and me."
Debra eyed the vial with distrust. "It's your venom, isn't it."
"It is," Urd replied. "But I promise you on the friendship I share with Keiichi, it will not harm you. My venom is used as the base for all my potions, and I use them to heal rather than harm." The woman made a face. "I don't use my venom as a poison."
The detective eyed the potion a moment longer before taking it in her right hand. "Does Keiichi know?" Debra stared down at the little vial. "He certainly seems to trust you. Is that because he already knows?"
"He does," Urd said, and her words were a slow murmur. "Perhaps when this is all over, I'll explain it more, but... for now, for Aiko, will you hold off on your questions?" she requested. "Because the truth of what I am is not something that should be the topic of conversation right now. Not when Aiko needs us at our best."
"That woman who was with you..." Debra continued. "Humor me this at least: Is she on our side?"
"She is," Urd replied. "And we're about to get more on our side too. Drink the potion, Debra Johansson. If it's what I fear, we'll need all the help we can get."
Debra eyed the potion with trepidation. "I feel like this is the first time you've really been honest with me." With a sigh she removed the small cork and downed the contents. The fire that chased the liquid down her throat reminded her of whiskey and left in her nostrils a smell like rain during a thunderstorm. She grimaced and handed the vial back to Urd. The headache that had haunted her since Urd and Belldandy had spoken their strange song at once began to diminish. "And what do you fear it is?"
Yet Urd didn't respond. Keiichi had pulled up to the sidewalk in the vehicle, and the woman was already making her way to the car. "I'm taking the back seat," she announced. "I'll need the freedom if I'm going to drag Bell into the car."
Debra regarded the silver-haired woman for a moment, and then circled around the car to take the passenger seat beside Keiichi. Keiichi adjusted the rearview mirror to look at Urd. "Where are we going?"
"Hang a right outside the hotel and head towards the coast," Urd instructed. The man grunted, then wheeled the vehicle out of the parking lot and into San Francisco's traffic. With Urd's direction they traveled onto the interstate and then into the city. Rush hour had long since passed, and they made good time as they sped along, where even police cruisers seemed to ignore them though Keiichi was going close to twenty over the speed limit. They slowed down in the city, and as Urd continued shouting directions, she shuffled over to the right side of the vehicle, rolling down the window as she eyed the flat rooftops of the brick buildings they passed. "Debra, cover your ears," Urd advised. "Keiichi's hearing is already shit but I don't want to damage yours."
"Hey!" Keiichi protested.
At this point, Debra had ceased questioning Urd's instructions and instead did as was bidden, sticking her fingers in her ears and giving the go-ahead to Urd. The silver-haired woman then stuck her head out the window and whistled so loudly that even Keiichi, the Great and Fabulous Ear-Ringer Himself, winced at the sound. The whistle started off high, then dipped in a series of lower frequencies, almost as if the woman was sounding off a message somewhere outside. As soon as it ended another tune picked up in response, one equally loud that came across in a series of higher notes. Debra looked outside, trying to locate the source and using Urd as a frame of reference.
She saw Belldandy soon enough, running and leaping and bounding from one rooftop to the next, running alongside the rental as if she was out for a leisurely jog. The woman released another sharp whistle that made Debra wince, and Urd responded in turn before pulling her head back inside the car. Debra, transfixed by the racing woman on the rooftops, didn't notice.
"Hang a right at the next intersection," Urd instructed. "Head down two blocks towards the coast before taking a left. You'll see a storage facility with a black gate in front of it. Belldandy will open it for you."
"What's at the storage unit?" Keiichi asked, following her instructions and turning off the main road they were at and down a smaller, less populated road. Belldandy, still high up, vanished for a moment before hopping down to a lower rooftop. A moment later, and she was running past them as Keiichi lowered the speed to thirty-five.
"Christ, what is she, The Flash?" Debra breathed.
"She's the wind," Urd corrected, and looked back at Keiichi. "That's where the trail ends," she said.
"A storage facility. Of course," Keiichi muttered dourly. "Where you can store your grandmother's corpse for half a century and no one would ever know until someone complained about the smell."
"We'll find Aiko, Jank," Urd assured.
"I know," Keiichi mumbled. "But I'm worried what we'll find with her."
The gate to the storage facility was already open by the time they'd arrived. They drove through unhindered. The front office had a large CLOSED sign in its window, and the blinds were drawn behind it. There were no cars parked in any of the long rows of storage crates that might signify other people, either. Keiichi parked the car near the front gate, and the small group exited the vehicle, finding Belldandy near the closing automatic gate. The spot she was occupying had been empty a couple of seconds before.
The Norn's eyes narrowed when they fell upon Debra. "You're here?"
Debra scowled. "Surprise Motherfucker."
"Don't start, either of you," Keiichi growled.
"Agreed," Urd sighed, and the look she sent Belldandy was disappointed. "We're here for Aiko, not for some Wild West Showdown bullshit."
"Fine." Belldandy sighed and massaged her brow. "Urd, call Lind now. Please."
A flash of discomfort wormed its way across Urd's face, there and gone in an instant, and with reluctance the Norn withdrew her cellphone once more. As the woman dialed Lind, Belldandy drew near to Keiichi. "There are demons here, Keiichi," she said, and glanced at Debra. "It's not safe for her to be here."
"I don't think it's safe for me to be here either, yet here I am," Keiichi replied. "Deb wants to help too, and I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth."
"I can't look after her if there are demons around," Belldandy protested.
"Something tells me you won't be able to look out for Keiichi either." Debra spoke behind Belldandy, and the goddess jumped, wheeling to face the woman with a start. "I've heard you mention demons before," Debra continued. "Is that what we're facing? Demons? Are you actually telling me that demons kidnapped Aiko?"
"Yes." Belldandy's reply was firm. "And no, I don't know why. Perhaps Stuart made a contract with one and this is partial payment. Or perhaps whoever these demons are recognized my sister and I for what we were and saw Aiko as a target of opportunity. I can't say for certain until I know what we're up against, and I can't spend that time shielding a mortal who has no place in a battle against demons."
"But you're saying you can shield Keiichi, is that it?" Debra argued. "Or does he just have some kind of superpower I'm not aware of to help combat demons? What, is he armed with Holy Water and a blessed whip? Or is he housing a Stand?"
Belldandy bristled, and next to her Keiichi groaned. "Stop, both of you!" he snapped, "I'm fed up with your bullshit. Every time we go out somewhere you two pick fights with each other, regardless of what's going on around you! Both of you, get your heads out of your asses and grow the fuck up. There are more important things to worry about right now than who's the top bitch on the fucking food chain!" He looked over at Urd, who was pocketing her cell phone. "Help me out here, Sheila!"
"At the rate you two keep arguing, Aiko's going to be dead and gone by the time we rescue her," she said. "Apologies mean nothing to a corpse. Both of you either get your shit together or get out of our way." She sent a meaningful look to Belldandy, who had the decency to look ashamed. "Debra, stay with Keiichi, no matter what happens here," Urd continued. "Belldandy is right in that we can't waste time shielding other people when there are demons around, but if you both stay together at least we won't have to worry as much. Truth of the matter is that neither of you should be here right now, as you both are going to be collateral at this rate." This time both Keiichi and Debra winced. "But you might yet prove useful. Keep your heads down when the fighting begins and don't make yourselves a target."
She looked over at Belldandy. "Lind is on her way now."
"Wait, isn't that going to draw attention here?" Keiichi asked.
"No more than we already have," Urd replied. She turned to look up towards the roof of one of the storage units, and the others followed her gaze. A blur of white descended like a blazing star from the heavens, and it hit the roof with enough force to disturb the accumulated dirt and debris that had gathered there through the years. Something-someone-hopped down from the rooftop with a grace Debra would have killed for in her teenage years.
The debris began to settle, and from the cloud of dust walked the superhero Aiko Morisato.
Debra stared.
And stared.
….and stared.
"Oh my god, Aiko's got an alter ego."
The woman dressed in white, who looked all too much like the missing Morisato, stared at Debra, unamused. Apparently, Aiko's superhero persona lost her sense of humor as well.
"Oh my god, Aiko's Batman."
Before her, Aiko-Batman sighed and brought a hand to her brow. "Why is it," she began, "whenever I come down here, either Aiko is mistaken for me, or I am mistaken for Aiko?"
"You gotta admit, Lind, the similarities in appearance are kind of scary," Urd pointed out.
"Urd..." Lind's voice was strained. "You called me here because of a possible demon presence, not to make jokes about Aiko's resemblance to me." She leveled a blue-eyed glare at Urd. "Well?"
"Thanks for coming, Lind." Urd sent her companion a wan smile, approaching her and throwing an arm over the shorter woman's shoulders. For what might have been the first time in over one hundred years, Lind didn't flinch at the action. "So here's what's going on..."
As Urd explained the events leading up to Aiko's disappearance and their own arrival at the storage facility, Debra continued to stare. "Okay, Keiichi." Her voice dropped an octave. "Seriously, what the fuck?"
"Weird enough for you yet?" The question was meant to be humorous, yet Keiichi's voice lacked its usual humor. "It only gets weirder from here on out."
"Fuck me," Debra muttered, watching Urd and Lind with disbelieving eyes. "At this point I might as well start seeing little gray men from Mars paired up with Agents Mulder and Scully. At least then I'd be able to make some kind of sense of this whole thing."
"I doubt even they'd be able to make any sense of it," Keiichi grumbled. "I've been going through this shit for months now, and I still don't understand half of what these girls do."
"So who is... Lind?"
"A Valkyrie," Keiichi replied. "I guess... a kind of divine soldier?"
"A what?" Debra sent Keiichi a disbelieving look. "A divine- like an angel?"
"Oh no," Keiichi replied, "Ohhhh no no no no no. Definitely not an angel. Trust me on that. I've seen angels, and they're totally different from Valkyries." He missed the displeased look Belldandy sent him. "Trust me on that."
"So then...what are your girlfriend and Urd then?" Debra continued. "Is this like some crazy episode of Charmed where I learn these two are sisters, a third one is missing right now, and that they're all some kind of magical trio needed to keep the Powers That Be in balance?"
This time both Belldandy and Keiichi stared. Neither said a word.
Debra cursed. "I'm right, aren't I," she stated, then muttered under her breath. "Fucking Hollywood."
"Alright guys, I think we're just about ready." Urd returned with Lind in tow. The Norn looked nervous as she looked amongst those gathered. "Let's do this. Time to save Aiko and kick some demon ass."
A/N: Is 3 weeks the official cadence right now? I am hoping not. I am hoping we can start getting this out a little faster, but I also cannot make any promises.
Comments of a Madwoman: "Forgive me for this violence I am about to inflict."-Prayer for forgiveness from a Kung-fu stone angel. KILLSIXBILLIONDEMONS.
