[A/N: Wow, that's a hell of a paragraph.]
Shatter [18]
...
Yohji was actually rather proud of the work he had done that night. The entire thing went rather smoothly and without any annoying kinks. His wire quickly snapped back into its case and he looked around for the quickest way to get out of the building. He didn't want to deal with the maze of hallways and doors and decided to just leave the same way he came, straight through the front door. He ran back down the stairs almost soundlessly (it seems Weiss has cat codenames for a reason, after all) and into the main lobby to find Brad with a very smug look on his face and a rather displeased Ran.
"Ah, Balinese." Brad spotted him from the corner of his eye and motioned for him to walk further into the lobby and join in the conversation.
"Aya," Yohji said unsurely as if looking for some kind of confirmation.
Ran didn't respond, but Yohji walked further into the lobby anyway. Appropriately, he stood in the very center, being the embodiment of the dilemma both teams were being faced with. However confused he may have been with the situation, the predatory look stayed fixed in his eyes, and he always had the wire ready at hand.
As if Irony had been tossing their fate around, Schuldig, annoyed, emerged from yet another staircase. Ken followed him out, saying something along the lines of one or the other making absolutely no sense. However, both stopped upon seeing the impasse in the main lobby. Ran seemed frozen in his spot, and Yohji looked just as confused as they both were when first coming upon the situation. Brad, conversely, greeted every newcomer with a certain flare of pernicious optimism.
"Well, gentlemen," Brad said finally, "looks like we have a stalemate, and you know what that means." Schuldig, Yohji and Ken all exchanged surreptitious looks while Ran tuned in to be more on guard than ever.
"What does that mean, Brad?" Schuldig finally spoke with a note of defiance in his voice.
"Glad you asked," Brad said, eerily keeping his eyes on Yohji rather than the person he was speaking to. "When one comes upon a stalemate, one must think of an incredibly clever way to be through it." With that, he pulled out his gun with almost invisible speed and shot a bullet straight up into the ceiling. There was a split second of utter confusion among everyone before a loud shatter was heard and the entire glass ceiling came crashing down on top of them, each separate skylight releasing the one next to it like a domino effect.
~
"I'm leaving and you can't change my mind," Nagi persisted, still very unwilling to detach his arms from around Omi's neck.
"What? Where are you going to stay?" A string of questions ran from Omi's lips ever since Nagi first introduced the idea of his running away. "Do you even have any money? What if they go looking for you?"
Nagi finally managed to permanently pull himself away. "So many people spend so much energy trying to be special, and all I want is to be as inconspicuous as humanly possible so they just leave me alone. That's all I want. No more people."
"What about Schwarz?"
Nagi laughed bitterly. "They're my main reason for leaving!"
"In that case," Omi realized that he had very little say in changing Nagi's mind, "can I help you with anything?"
"No," Nagi insisted immediately, "I only came to say goodbye."
At that moment, a sharp beep sounded from the corner of the hall, indicating to Omi that his download had completed. He turned to it and pulled out his disc, hiding it in the safety of his pockets. Suddenly, a loud crash came from somewhere in the building, and Nagi and Omi exchanged apprehensive glances. It was the kind of crash that surely foreshadowed something unwelcome. As if on cue, they both ran down the hallway and towards the sound of the noise without saying a word.
It was odd, Omi thought, how Nagi seemed to know exactly in which direction to go even though the origin of the crash was so obscure to them in their basement hideout. Nonetheless, he followed, trusting Nagi's sense of direction. Running back up the stairs to the ground floor, Omi felt something fall to his feet in the darkness, and it didn't take him long to figure out that it was the disc he had hidden in his pocket earlier. Without a second thought, he stopped to pick it up and replace it, but when he looked up a moment later, Nagi was already out of sight. Omi continued up the stairs, figuring he'll eventually catch up with him once they get to the next level.
A few more flights of stairs, and the crisp smell of capitalism Omi had noted earlier came back to him, and he knew that he had now reached the lobby that was so characterized by that scent. He stopped running and walked in quietly, feeling it was somehow appropriate to do so as there was no more noise anywhere. Everything was very eerily silent. He first caught a glimpse of Nagi, standing near another entrance of the lobby, seeming completely exhausted from having run those stairs in one fast sweep.
Omi, out of breath himself, stood a good ten feet behind Nagi, taking in the scene before them. There was glass everywhere. Literally, across the entire center of the entrance hall were large and tiny pieces of heavy glass, broken and glistening in the light illuminated by the moon. Brad knelt, pressed up against the doors at the far end of the building. He seemed relatively unharmed, but perhaps a bit winded with a few random cuts. Ken took refuge under the reception desk, which was a rather smart move on his part except for the fact that he hadn't managed to hide his legs, and a few glass shards were sticking out of his right calf, his jeans soaking in the blood and sticking to his skin. Ran stood stiffly against the very back wall, pressed up tightly against it to take advantage of the one foot of glassless ceiling directly above him. He was not completely unharmed as one of the shards managed to slice across his cheek and another across his arm. The more serious injuries came upon Schuldig, who knelt on the ground in the center of the lobby, hovering slightly over Yohji, perched up by his forearms. Not much of the falling glass had impaled him, but it certainly left large, bleeding gashes in his back and legs. Yohji still looked completely stunned by the entire situation. His arms were wrapped around Schuldig's neck and head protectively, and he hid his face in his shoulder.
Brad managed to pull himself up and walked rather uncomfortably towards the center of the lobby. "Well, seems like my idea worked just fine. Our stalemate is somewhat dispelled."
Ran moved his hand up to wipe off the blood running down his cheek. He stepped away from the wall and began walking decisively to where he dropped his katana just a few feet away. The glass made sharp cracking sounds underneath his feet.
Schuldig pulled himself up into a kneeling position, Yohji's arms falling away from him, and stumbled back a bit. "You put so much effort into being an asshole, Brad," he hissed. "Must be tiring."
Yohji sat up, too. He tried to stand up but found that a large piece of glass lodged into his shin. He sat back and worked on pulling it out because he knew he stood no chance of walking with it intact. Ran had already retrieved his katana and watched every move that Brad made, ready to counter it. Ken pulled himself up off the ground and leaned against the reception desk, unable to stand on his injured leg. Omi finally snapped out of his daze and took a few steps forward to stand next to Nagi. No one seemed to have noticed them.
"Well, this certainly complicates the situation." Brad got a good grip on his gun and pressed it square against Yohji's temple. "We'll need to find out exactly where your loyalties lie, Mastermind."
Ran, ever vigilant of his teammates, within seconds had his katana poised neatly against Schuldig's throat.
"Aya, what the hell are you doing?" Yohji protested despite the uncomfortable positioning of Brad's gun against his head.
"That's a good question," Brad commented, smugly, "if we stay like this, we'll have that awful impasse again."
"I'm trying to save your life, idiot," Ran answered Yohji's question sharply, marking the first thing he's said in quite some time.
"They don't know what they're doing," Nagi said very softly, stunted by the entire scenario.
"Aya..." Ken's voice sounded almost pleading as he limped his way towards him.
"Not now, Ken."
Brad frowned. "This has to end somehow, and I'm running out of ideas for instant catastrophes."
"You don't even know why you're fighting anymore!" Nagi yelled this time, and Omi instinctively grabbed his hand.
"Christ, just kill me." Schuldig was beginning to get fed up.
"Aya," Ken whimpered, "it's cold."
"What?"
Brad sighed, annoyed. "You don't seem to understand, Abyssinian, that his life isn't worth anything to me anymore."
"How can you say that?" Omi was shocked by the idea that Brad could just throw around the lives of his teammates.
Schuldig, sensing that this wasn't going to end well at all, decided to take care of the loose ends as quickly and efficiently as the situation allowed him. "Nagi, listen to me!" The katana scraped his throat as he spoke. "You can't go back home. Leave now!"
"No!"
"...Aya"
"I said, not now, Ken."
"Nagi-kun, he's right. You can't stay."
"They'll kill each other for nothing!'
"You have to put down the katana."
"Yohji, you've done enough stupid things to put us all here as it is."
"It's really cold."
"Are any of you human beings?" Nagi's fists clenched.
"Shut up for just a second, Ken."
Brad fired the gun. "Oops, empty," he laughed.
Omi sensed a serious tension around Nagi. "Nagi-kun, what's happening?"
"Let's see how long that keeps up." Brad fired again.
"You're heartless!" Nagi felt a sudden wave of fatigue sweep over him, and he fell to the ground.
"Aya, please, I'm so cold."
"Empty again. Damn."
Hearing the third shot ring out from Brad's gun, Nagi felt his mind swim while his heart seemed to freeze in space and time. Around him, time had stopped. In his mind, eternity passed in a moment. Everyone was snapped out of their vindictive intentions as a powerful wave of energy shot out involuntarily from Nagi and threw them about the room as if they were trapped in a tornado; everyone, that is, except for Omi, who panicked upon seeing Nagi so torn and Ken, who whimpered, "Aya..." and immediately collapsed, the blood from his leg splattering on the walls as his unconscious body whipped around the room in the wind funnel.
"Ken!" This was in Ran's instinct to say, but he knew very well that it was all to late to take any of the infinite chances he had that night to keep this from happening. All too preoccupied with the situation, he didn't invest much thought into getting his katana back as it tore away from him and was thrown into a wall at the opposite side of the building.
Omi was terrified by what was happening. Especially so because it seemed that Nagi had no control over his powers. "What going on?" He asked as gently as he could manage under the circumstances.
Tears streamed down Nagi's face as he tore his attention away from the floor and focused it on Omi. "I don't know," he explained pleadingly. "I don't know why I'm doing this."
Omi looked up to watch his teammates fly over their heads in a whirlwind when he caught a glimpse of Ken. A pang of panic and desperation hit him, and he quickly grabbed both of Nagi's hands to steady him. "Please stop this. They'll get hurt."
"I can't stop! I don't know how!" Nagi quivered at the inability to control his telekinesis. This was obviously a very dangerous thing to have no control over.
"Is it because you're upset?" Omi searched his mind for a solution to this. "Is it hard for you to control this when you're upset?"
Nagi nodded, concentrating hard to will himself to stop. The more he tried, the more he seemed to panic, and the worse the situation became.
Omi looked up at the chaos over their heads just in time to see Yohji be thrown against a wall, his forehead splitting open with the contact. He looked back down at Nagi and, through a spontaneous stroke of radical thought, pushed himself forward and kissed him. He didn't really know what he was doing, but he figured that Nagi wouldn't either, and that's what's important.
Nagi's train of thought crashed instantly. He found himself lost in a new, entirely more favorable way. He began breathing more deeply, being caught in the soft feeling of Omi's lips against his. It suddenly seemed natural to him to let his eyelids fall over his eyes, and he relaxed.
The tornado in the building slowly died down, and the members of Weiss and Schwarz dropped to the ground like flies. Yohji slid against a wall to the floor, where he decided he was content for the time being. He rested against it and caught his breath. He then felt a slight touch on his shoulder and looked up to see Schuldig kneel down next to him. They were both entirely too worn out to start any of the involved discussion they had coming about what was to happen to them next. Schuldig sat down against the wall, and Yohji shifted to rest his head against his shoulder. For just a little while, it was nice to pretend that none of this was happening.
Ran, comparatively unharmed, limped his way over from where he was thrown to where he saw Ken, who was still unconscious and bleeding. He knelt down next to him to assess the damage. Most of the blood seemed to be coming from around Ken's leg, and Ran figured that he must've broken a vein. He ripped off a piece of his shirt and wrapped it around Ken's ankle, tight enough to stop the bleeding, but not too tight as to break any capillaries. Taking into consideration both his injured ankle and his head, Ran picked him up and walked out of the building wordlessly.
Crawford was already gone.
Shatter [18]
...
Yohji was actually rather proud of the work he had done that night. The entire thing went rather smoothly and without any annoying kinks. His wire quickly snapped back into its case and he looked around for the quickest way to get out of the building. He didn't want to deal with the maze of hallways and doors and decided to just leave the same way he came, straight through the front door. He ran back down the stairs almost soundlessly (it seems Weiss has cat codenames for a reason, after all) and into the main lobby to find Brad with a very smug look on his face and a rather displeased Ran.
"Ah, Balinese." Brad spotted him from the corner of his eye and motioned for him to walk further into the lobby and join in the conversation.
"Aya," Yohji said unsurely as if looking for some kind of confirmation.
Ran didn't respond, but Yohji walked further into the lobby anyway. Appropriately, he stood in the very center, being the embodiment of the dilemma both teams were being faced with. However confused he may have been with the situation, the predatory look stayed fixed in his eyes, and he always had the wire ready at hand.
As if Irony had been tossing their fate around, Schuldig, annoyed, emerged from yet another staircase. Ken followed him out, saying something along the lines of one or the other making absolutely no sense. However, both stopped upon seeing the impasse in the main lobby. Ran seemed frozen in his spot, and Yohji looked just as confused as they both were when first coming upon the situation. Brad, conversely, greeted every newcomer with a certain flare of pernicious optimism.
"Well, gentlemen," Brad said finally, "looks like we have a stalemate, and you know what that means." Schuldig, Yohji and Ken all exchanged surreptitious looks while Ran tuned in to be more on guard than ever.
"What does that mean, Brad?" Schuldig finally spoke with a note of defiance in his voice.
"Glad you asked," Brad said, eerily keeping his eyes on Yohji rather than the person he was speaking to. "When one comes upon a stalemate, one must think of an incredibly clever way to be through it." With that, he pulled out his gun with almost invisible speed and shot a bullet straight up into the ceiling. There was a split second of utter confusion among everyone before a loud shatter was heard and the entire glass ceiling came crashing down on top of them, each separate skylight releasing the one next to it like a domino effect.
~
"I'm leaving and you can't change my mind," Nagi persisted, still very unwilling to detach his arms from around Omi's neck.
"What? Where are you going to stay?" A string of questions ran from Omi's lips ever since Nagi first introduced the idea of his running away. "Do you even have any money? What if they go looking for you?"
Nagi finally managed to permanently pull himself away. "So many people spend so much energy trying to be special, and all I want is to be as inconspicuous as humanly possible so they just leave me alone. That's all I want. No more people."
"What about Schwarz?"
Nagi laughed bitterly. "They're my main reason for leaving!"
"In that case," Omi realized that he had very little say in changing Nagi's mind, "can I help you with anything?"
"No," Nagi insisted immediately, "I only came to say goodbye."
At that moment, a sharp beep sounded from the corner of the hall, indicating to Omi that his download had completed. He turned to it and pulled out his disc, hiding it in the safety of his pockets. Suddenly, a loud crash came from somewhere in the building, and Nagi and Omi exchanged apprehensive glances. It was the kind of crash that surely foreshadowed something unwelcome. As if on cue, they both ran down the hallway and towards the sound of the noise without saying a word.
It was odd, Omi thought, how Nagi seemed to know exactly in which direction to go even though the origin of the crash was so obscure to them in their basement hideout. Nonetheless, he followed, trusting Nagi's sense of direction. Running back up the stairs to the ground floor, Omi felt something fall to his feet in the darkness, and it didn't take him long to figure out that it was the disc he had hidden in his pocket earlier. Without a second thought, he stopped to pick it up and replace it, but when he looked up a moment later, Nagi was already out of sight. Omi continued up the stairs, figuring he'll eventually catch up with him once they get to the next level.
A few more flights of stairs, and the crisp smell of capitalism Omi had noted earlier came back to him, and he knew that he had now reached the lobby that was so characterized by that scent. He stopped running and walked in quietly, feeling it was somehow appropriate to do so as there was no more noise anywhere. Everything was very eerily silent. He first caught a glimpse of Nagi, standing near another entrance of the lobby, seeming completely exhausted from having run those stairs in one fast sweep.
Omi, out of breath himself, stood a good ten feet behind Nagi, taking in the scene before them. There was glass everywhere. Literally, across the entire center of the entrance hall were large and tiny pieces of heavy glass, broken and glistening in the light illuminated by the moon. Brad knelt, pressed up against the doors at the far end of the building. He seemed relatively unharmed, but perhaps a bit winded with a few random cuts. Ken took refuge under the reception desk, which was a rather smart move on his part except for the fact that he hadn't managed to hide his legs, and a few glass shards were sticking out of his right calf, his jeans soaking in the blood and sticking to his skin. Ran stood stiffly against the very back wall, pressed up tightly against it to take advantage of the one foot of glassless ceiling directly above him. He was not completely unharmed as one of the shards managed to slice across his cheek and another across his arm. The more serious injuries came upon Schuldig, who knelt on the ground in the center of the lobby, hovering slightly over Yohji, perched up by his forearms. Not much of the falling glass had impaled him, but it certainly left large, bleeding gashes in his back and legs. Yohji still looked completely stunned by the entire situation. His arms were wrapped around Schuldig's neck and head protectively, and he hid his face in his shoulder.
Brad managed to pull himself up and walked rather uncomfortably towards the center of the lobby. "Well, seems like my idea worked just fine. Our stalemate is somewhat dispelled."
Ran moved his hand up to wipe off the blood running down his cheek. He stepped away from the wall and began walking decisively to where he dropped his katana just a few feet away. The glass made sharp cracking sounds underneath his feet.
Schuldig pulled himself up into a kneeling position, Yohji's arms falling away from him, and stumbled back a bit. "You put so much effort into being an asshole, Brad," he hissed. "Must be tiring."
Yohji sat up, too. He tried to stand up but found that a large piece of glass lodged into his shin. He sat back and worked on pulling it out because he knew he stood no chance of walking with it intact. Ran had already retrieved his katana and watched every move that Brad made, ready to counter it. Ken pulled himself up off the ground and leaned against the reception desk, unable to stand on his injured leg. Omi finally snapped out of his daze and took a few steps forward to stand next to Nagi. No one seemed to have noticed them.
"Well, this certainly complicates the situation." Brad got a good grip on his gun and pressed it square against Yohji's temple. "We'll need to find out exactly where your loyalties lie, Mastermind."
Ran, ever vigilant of his teammates, within seconds had his katana poised neatly against Schuldig's throat.
"Aya, what the hell are you doing?" Yohji protested despite the uncomfortable positioning of Brad's gun against his head.
"That's a good question," Brad commented, smugly, "if we stay like this, we'll have that awful impasse again."
"I'm trying to save your life, idiot," Ran answered Yohji's question sharply, marking the first thing he's said in quite some time.
"They don't know what they're doing," Nagi said very softly, stunted by the entire scenario.
"Aya..." Ken's voice sounded almost pleading as he limped his way towards him.
"Not now, Ken."
Brad frowned. "This has to end somehow, and I'm running out of ideas for instant catastrophes."
"You don't even know why you're fighting anymore!" Nagi yelled this time, and Omi instinctively grabbed his hand.
"Christ, just kill me." Schuldig was beginning to get fed up.
"Aya," Ken whimpered, "it's cold."
"What?"
Brad sighed, annoyed. "You don't seem to understand, Abyssinian, that his life isn't worth anything to me anymore."
"How can you say that?" Omi was shocked by the idea that Brad could just throw around the lives of his teammates.
Schuldig, sensing that this wasn't going to end well at all, decided to take care of the loose ends as quickly and efficiently as the situation allowed him. "Nagi, listen to me!" The katana scraped his throat as he spoke. "You can't go back home. Leave now!"
"No!"
"...Aya"
"I said, not now, Ken."
"Nagi-kun, he's right. You can't stay."
"They'll kill each other for nothing!'
"You have to put down the katana."
"Yohji, you've done enough stupid things to put us all here as it is."
"It's really cold."
"Are any of you human beings?" Nagi's fists clenched.
"Shut up for just a second, Ken."
Brad fired the gun. "Oops, empty," he laughed.
Omi sensed a serious tension around Nagi. "Nagi-kun, what's happening?"
"Let's see how long that keeps up." Brad fired again.
"You're heartless!" Nagi felt a sudden wave of fatigue sweep over him, and he fell to the ground.
"Aya, please, I'm so cold."
"Empty again. Damn."
Hearing the third shot ring out from Brad's gun, Nagi felt his mind swim while his heart seemed to freeze in space and time. Around him, time had stopped. In his mind, eternity passed in a moment. Everyone was snapped out of their vindictive intentions as a powerful wave of energy shot out involuntarily from Nagi and threw them about the room as if they were trapped in a tornado; everyone, that is, except for Omi, who panicked upon seeing Nagi so torn and Ken, who whimpered, "Aya..." and immediately collapsed, the blood from his leg splattering on the walls as his unconscious body whipped around the room in the wind funnel.
"Ken!" This was in Ran's instinct to say, but he knew very well that it was all to late to take any of the infinite chances he had that night to keep this from happening. All too preoccupied with the situation, he didn't invest much thought into getting his katana back as it tore away from him and was thrown into a wall at the opposite side of the building.
Omi was terrified by what was happening. Especially so because it seemed that Nagi had no control over his powers. "What going on?" He asked as gently as he could manage under the circumstances.
Tears streamed down Nagi's face as he tore his attention away from the floor and focused it on Omi. "I don't know," he explained pleadingly. "I don't know why I'm doing this."
Omi looked up to watch his teammates fly over their heads in a whirlwind when he caught a glimpse of Ken. A pang of panic and desperation hit him, and he quickly grabbed both of Nagi's hands to steady him. "Please stop this. They'll get hurt."
"I can't stop! I don't know how!" Nagi quivered at the inability to control his telekinesis. This was obviously a very dangerous thing to have no control over.
"Is it because you're upset?" Omi searched his mind for a solution to this. "Is it hard for you to control this when you're upset?"
Nagi nodded, concentrating hard to will himself to stop. The more he tried, the more he seemed to panic, and the worse the situation became.
Omi looked up at the chaos over their heads just in time to see Yohji be thrown against a wall, his forehead splitting open with the contact. He looked back down at Nagi and, through a spontaneous stroke of radical thought, pushed himself forward and kissed him. He didn't really know what he was doing, but he figured that Nagi wouldn't either, and that's what's important.
Nagi's train of thought crashed instantly. He found himself lost in a new, entirely more favorable way. He began breathing more deeply, being caught in the soft feeling of Omi's lips against his. It suddenly seemed natural to him to let his eyelids fall over his eyes, and he relaxed.
The tornado in the building slowly died down, and the members of Weiss and Schwarz dropped to the ground like flies. Yohji slid against a wall to the floor, where he decided he was content for the time being. He rested against it and caught his breath. He then felt a slight touch on his shoulder and looked up to see Schuldig kneel down next to him. They were both entirely too worn out to start any of the involved discussion they had coming about what was to happen to them next. Schuldig sat down against the wall, and Yohji shifted to rest his head against his shoulder. For just a little while, it was nice to pretend that none of this was happening.
Ran, comparatively unharmed, limped his way over from where he was thrown to where he saw Ken, who was still unconscious and bleeding. He knelt down next to him to assess the damage. Most of the blood seemed to be coming from around Ken's leg, and Ran figured that he must've broken a vein. He ripped off a piece of his shirt and wrapped it around Ken's ankle, tight enough to stop the bleeding, but not too tight as to break any capillaries. Taking into consideration both his injured ankle and his head, Ran picked him up and walked out of the building wordlessly.
Crawford was already gone.