Author's note: Thanks for all the reviews!! My heart always goes 'doki doki' when I see them! ^^
As for Necremancer 9's question: Maybe. Wait and see?
Mission #3: Sie sind angekommen
Laughter. Children's laughter. Long blond hair, framing a small body. A red summer dress. Her laughter, her smile. Sweet.
A Scream. Blood. Darkness. Darkness that will swallow you whole. Loneliness…
Rays of sunlight shone directly into my eyes. I threw the blanket over my head, snuggling deeper into the blankets in an attempt to escape the annoying sun. The headache however decided that I was conscious enough to hit me hard and fast. Shit. Times like this made me hate my powers and wish the sun would never rise again.
I splashed ice cold water on my face and searched through the closet, hoping to find the little white bottle that would put an end to my misery. Lady luck wasn't smiling upon me. The blue boards stared at me empty. Lovely.
It was Thursday. So I didn't have to work until 1pm. Maybe I should catch up some of my lost sleep. It sounded tempting. Very tempting.
I lay on the bed and closed my eyes. My head was throbbing. A dull pain. Not enough to let you cry out, but annoying enough to make you want to tear your own head off. The nightmares, or rather the memories, had returned too. I haven't had them for years. My old shrink promised me that they would gradually become vague and disappear as I grow older. To a degree this had been true. I could never forget them, but they had somewhat become distant for the past few years. So the question would be, why were they returning? All polished up and clear as a picture too. Dammit.
I grunted unhappily. So much for more sleep. This was going to be a LONG day.
My mood today was resembling Aya's. How nice.
It usually doesn't take much for my mood to turn all spectacularly thunder and lightning. Especially in the morning. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. I do belong to the majority of the people who wakes up grumpy, regardless of how much sleep they got the previous day or how inactive their day was. However, a very small asocial group of human beings are actually capable of looking and acting cheerful and energetic in the morning. I got the grim suspicion that our resident hacker belonged to that group.
The image of Yohji helping himself to tons of coffee greeted me at the door. That cancelled him out.
"Hey." I murmured.
Ken was already seated at the breakfast table. Carrying a smile for no particular reason on his face and humming some kind of cup-of-the-world song softly in his head, which I could hear unfortunately. We must not be fooled by his apparent delights in the morning, ladies and gentlemen. If I had had more than ten hours of sleep and a whole day off, I would be a cheerful camper myself. A piece of paper in one hand and chocolate bagel in the other. Something resembling the word 'morning' came out of his chewing mouth. Small crumbs of his food proceeded to fall on the paper, while he reviewed the supposedly big events and changes in the world of sport. Who the fuck gave a damn about what happened in some stupid EPO doping accident? Oh well. I guess you had to feel some sort of connection to that world.
Omi apparently already left for school. And Aya? Opening the shop, I believe. Not that I cared. Aya isn't a happy person by nature. His constant grumping shrank the chances of him being happy in the morning below zero. If someone like me wakes up being grumpy, you can estimate the killer mood someone like Aya would be in when he wakes up.
Yohji's eyelids were heavy and he had dark rings under his eyes. His hair was sticking out at different angles. Somebody here sure had a rough night.
He sat down next Ken and was dozing off. I slapped him very friendly on the shoulder, nowhere near painful of course, and just couldn't stop myself from grinning.
"Good morning, Yotan old pal. You look like hell."
"You ain't looking so hot yourself. Who are you to complain?" He snorted.
I shrugged. True. But still, who said I wasn't allowed to tease?
"Mine is job related. What's your excuse? I don't recall sleeping with the mission was part of our job description."
"On the contrary, Sky. It was quite necessary and interesting. At least I could get the satisfaction of having some fun while being actually productive, while others had to serve oysters. "
"Well..no one's gonna complain about you not being thorough then. Would you do the same if mission had been an attractive guy instead??"
I gave him a wider grin.
Yohji hmphed, positively insulted and decided to ignore me. He was silently wondering if I could pick up the answer to that question if he just didn't think about it.
Oh well… Don't want to ruin all the fun now. I was very pleased to find out though that the target had quite an imagination. Once again the saying proves itself to be utterly true. Never judge a person by appearances only.
It appeared that our Yohji here was tied up until dawn. I believed that one thing the room didn't lack of was toys. In fact there seemed to be a whole closet of them. Poor Yohji.
"Hey Ken, do you have any aspirin?"
***************************************************************************
Yamoto Kanryou, 41 year old president of the Yamoto cooperation. He looked young for his age. Most people would estimate him to be in his mid thirties.
Being an only child, he automatically inherited the cooperation, when his father died 3 years ago. For the past thirty years he had lived in Europe. Now he had come back to the land of his origin, Japan.
The Yamoto's had been powerful in Europe and the USA, while the Takatori's were powerful in Asia. Now that the leader of the Takatori cooperation was gone, he had come back to expand his powers. He intended to finally incorporate Asia, particularly Japan. And with his almighty opponent weakened, if not removed, he could easily expand his powers.
He sat in the high leather chair in his personal library and carefully planned out his next moves. Power was after all a delicate matter.
A knock on the door was heard.
"Come in." He said.
The door opened and four young men stepped inside. He regarded each of them closely. The boy, Nagi Naoe, was quite deceiving with his delicate looks. The Irishman was fondling with his knife. Madness glittered in one good eye. Then there was the german. The grin. The beautiful high cheekbones. Arrogance. Fascinating.
"You have asked for us?" The eldest and leader of the group, the black haired American spoke.
"Yes, Mr. Crawford. I would like to hire Schwarz. You would be my bodyguards during my stay in Japan. You will stay in this mansion and you must be available 24 hours a day. The payment of course will be royal enough to last you a lifetime. " Yamoto stated.
Schuldich laughed. Yamoto raised an eyebrow at the younger man.
"It seems your teammate is amused. Would he be so kind to share it with the rest of us?"
Crawford shot an annoyed look at Schuldich and bowed.
"Sumimasen, Mr. Yamoto. He loses himself sometimes. If you would like to punish him for this sign of disrespect, please do."
Yamoto looked at the impassive American and then at the German.
Jade eyes looked at him, challenging.
"Iie. He is not to be punished…for this."
Needless to say, Crawford accepted the Yamoto's offer. After all, he was excellent in providing his group the most profitable tasks.
The three other members of the group soon left to their respective rooms, while Crawford stayed to receive other details about their jobs and to make arrangements.
Nagi quickly logged onto the network and resumed hacking some poor banker, while Farfarello was doing his own things or torments rather. Schuldich stepped into the room and settled down already after he took a shower. He zapped through the channels and fell asleep after doing it three hours straight.
Schuldich found himself walking in a park. It was autumn and the wind made the leafs dance in circles. He heard children's laughter. Two boys ran past him.
A little girl was following them. She tripped over a rock and fell. She wept. The boys came back to comfort her. She smiled an angelic smile.
The scene changed. The weather was bad. It was storming. Thunder and lightning. It was raining and the rain was red. Then everything darkened like someone had thrown a switch.
Schuldich screamed.
Schuldich blinked to adjust his vision. The room bathed in darkness, just like in his dream. He counted to himself and took deep breaths to calm himself down.
Some quick steps down the hall. The door burst open and Crawford rushed inside. He threw on the light switches. Schuldich squeezed his eyes at the sudden raid of light.
"What the hell were you thinking?! You could have awakened the dead with that scream of yours." Schuldich blinked, finding Crawford's faces only inches from his own. Deep brown eyes were narrowed, but that was the only sign of him being angry. The rest of his face remained expressionless like so often. The only time Crawford would show more signs of being human, would be when he's mean. Or so it seemed to be the case…to the outside world.
"Aww Bradly Mein Liebchen. You flatter me too much." Schuldich laughed out loud, while Crawford heaved a big sign.
"You know, you just sold us off to an old geezer for a couple of coins."
"Things aren't cheap, Schuldich. Besides you know our orders."
"Yeah…Well let's go eat!"
He took hold of his leader's arm and dragged the other into the hall, while the last fragments of the dream softly drifted away from him.
After a copious meal Schuldich returned to the room that was going to be his for the next months. With nothing really entertaining to do, sleep claimed him once more.
Schuldich was walking in the same park. He knew that he was dreaming and that it was the same dream as he had before. Something deep inside of him was yelling at him, telling him to get away from this particular dream. It knew the sadness and fear. His heart pounded louder and louder. He found himself unable to escape.
Children's laughter. Two boys and a girl. Her smile.
Darkness. Thunder and Lightning. A scream, her scream. A silhouette wrapped by a blanket of mist was walking towards him. It slowly lifted and he could clearly see a young man. The young man also looked up and stared at him in return. Dark met Jade. Both screamed and their horrifying cry shattered the image of the girl in fragments.
Schuldich opened his eyes, bewildered while sweat adorned his entire body. He got out of the bed and stumbled to the window. He pushed open the double windows, gasping for air. After a while, his heart rate returned to normal and his breathing slowed. The gentle rays of a full moon shone on him. It was comforting.
The dream, the sense of familiarity the moment he stepped out of the plane…It all made sense. This could only mean one thing… He was here.
Crawford rubbed his temples. His glasses laid beside a pile of folders he had been going through. He glanced at the clock. It read 4am.
Schuldich just screamed again in his room. He had already seen it in a vision. Although he tended to act cold sometimes towards the redhead, he actually really enjoyed the company. In all the years they'd known each other, he had never heard a scream like that. Not from Schuldich at least. As he puzzled some more about the things, a new vision visited him.
Red. Danger.
Bradly Crawford had a bad feeling about it. He sensed a feeling, one he hadn't experienced in years.
Fear…
TBC
"It is at night we cry the tears we're afraid to cry during the day. It is at night when they appear and we cannot control them. It is at night when the child in us peek out and cry for it's innocence, lost."
