Challenging
by Vanessa S. Quest
Fandom: Weiss, but of course!
Genre: Ideally Horror.
Glancing upward for a long moment eyes locked into endless darkness before illumination of stars could melt away the dark and change it into a blazing rose-gray haze in the midnight hour. What brought him here? Trench coat racked with the blood of weaker devils, separated from fellow Weiss? Fearful of what may come by nights' end?
Loup-Garou.
That's right, you heard it, werewolf. Now, true strange things have been known to happen here in Tokyo, particularly Mt. Fuji, but usually when carcasses get up and walk around its time to move out and on. Of course, that would be the case if you were A. Normal, and B. the corpse wasn't one of your targets.
Against Aya's better judgment the team had split up to search for the reanimated target. He knew it was a mistake, from the beginning he knew it was a very bad idea to let Omi go off on his own to hunt down some chimera zombie Takatori. How did that happen? How did they decide to separate if it was a bad idea from the very beginning? A simple three-word phrase provided all the pieces to that- Schreient and Schwartz. It hadn't started as a tactic they initially wanted, by any means. Manx came in and told them about this… problem, Omi turned stark white at that, his blood must have froze from that. A dead man- beast- how many times was his body defiled by sciences just for it to be revived by magic? Pseudo-science? How the HELL would you explain what that was? Early on, though, Schon had made a move to pick off Ken in some fight, luring him from the back to cover them as the remaining Weiss moved forward towards the supposed place of rebirth.
Soon after Farfarello had come forward, Nagi and Crawford nearby, with Yoji forced to take on the Irish madman, Aya realized the predicament that they were in with both Schwartz and Schreient. Worse still was that Prodigy seemed to be enraged, his attacks on Omi were relentless and Crawford was keeping Aya too engaged to assist, that was when heavy complications came up.
Hell and Crawford came after Aya, tag teaming, while some twisted form of Tot came up to fight both Farfarello and Yoji. How that made sense, he had no idea. The girl did not seem to be herself, the only features she kept was speech and physical appearances, for the most part. She seemed to have acquired a special little trick during her absence from Weiss's happy life. Somehow the girl had gained the ability to form second flesh much like the tentacles Masafumi had once yielded- and with the same amount of control, the only difference was it was more of a mass of flesh than any developed feature.
When her presence was brought forth, Nagi's anger seemed to rise. Was this some devil's trade the remaining female assassins had made to regain their dear Takatori? Either way it made his stomach turn. Something bothered Aya though, during all of this, something wasn't adding up.
He glanced back to keep his eye on Omi when he saw it, Schuldig. His blood felt halted when he realized Omi was now against both Nagi and Schuldig, Hell and Crawford- at least the communication barrier was there, Farfarello and Tot were battling equally among themselves as Yoji- but Schuldig and Nagi have demonstrated time and again an ability to communicate without any falter or indication, Aya near-missed a blow from Hell, he was forced to turn back.
Omi put a hand to his head, in his other hand a dart he held with desperate attempts to get a chance for Nagi. His vision was blurring as suddenly he heard something snap and wasn't quite certain he wanted to know just what had made the noise. Omi let out a scream as the pressure from a kinetic blast of Nagi's removed itself from Omi's chest, his ribs.
Nagi made another strong blast sending Omi hurdling back fifteen feet and into another room.
When that happened Aya knew this was a diversion to divide them in particular Omi.
Finally he had made his way out of Hell and Crawford's attack, the two opposing assassins disappearing for somewhere he had no idea led to. Either way his condition was poor. Ken had contacted him as had Yoji, apparently Farfarello and Tot were still at it and Yoji just walked away. Lucky bastard.
Omi on the other hand had no radio contact. That made Aya very nervous, Omi was the most likely of them to radio first- he never turned his communicator off unless it were critical and always contacted them within an hour after separations, like clockwork would keep in touch.
All of this, and they still had no idea where the fuck the werewolf Takatori was. He glared up into the night's air, he was boiling mad and wanted to kill something. That something started with a T and ended with a scream- erm, -akatori. He, "hn'ed" at that.
Smoke rose from his lips and he knew very well that by tonight's end he needed to have a little visit with Mr. Daniel's and Jose, and quite possibly old Cap'n? He rubbed his arm and then took his sunglasses off. His now broken sunglasses, might he add. Oh Kritiker was footing the fucking bill for those! They had sentimental value, he fucked seventeen women in a seven-hour binge the day he got those, a Yotan record that lasted four weeks, as did the dehydration.
This mission reeked of a set up to him. Everything about it, each grain was leading him into a rather sour mood. Apricot Sour was most likely in all honesty. Since when was Tot alive, and when did she pick up that little trick with her muscle control?
That innuendo made, why was Nagi so pissy, Schreient divided as ally and enemy of Schwartz and where the hell was Ken, Aya and Omi? He needed to snap at someone for his glasses, granted maybe the chibi wouldn't be the best audience with the whole your older-brother-is-back-from-the-dead thing, seriously- how does that compare to his losses? THOSE WERE RECORD-SETTING GLASSES!
He took another long drag and took out his radio to complain loudly at Aya.
"Ayannnnnnnnnn! My glasses!"
He waited a moment for the inevitably 'wordy' retort his fearless leader would give. "Shizuka nai baka! Omi's missing." Hmm, strange, that sounded more like Ken, "or did your keen skills as a detective miss that?"
Yoji rolled his eyes, "Wrong channel." He disconnected with Ken making the man fume, he then repeated the message, "Ayannnnnnnnn! My glasses!"
Aya swore under his breath, making it come off as static.
He stood there, staring past, smiling. The pain was gone now, all sensation really. All that remained was the blinding light before him and his quarry in front of it. Behind him stood more enemies, battling for his mind and his control, he continued to smile.
That light was so blinding all he could do was to focus on what was before him.
"Oto-chan, oto-chan?"
Blue spheres opened hesitantly, driven only by the constant nagging of a German voice behind his eyes. They opened blank and all he saw was blinding light in a medly of burning pain. Yes, he could actually see the pain he felt as the flashing lights in his head made themselves larger with each and every breath, decreasing with the size of his chest.
"Mamoru…"
Omi's eyes became less foggy. As he realized he was restrained he knew he had to find out by what and release himself. When he realized it was by tentacles, well let's just stick with the PG version- very very very bad touch.
His throat tightened as the extent of awareness informed him that he was in the grip matching anything anacondas eat. His eyes rose to meet the monster before him, his face was gone now but instead replaced with something more devilish, a wolf's head, he looked almost exactly like all those ancient portrayals of Beelzebub.
"Mamoru…"
"Ts'ki…yono!" Omi hissed out. "Watashi nai Mamoru! I am NOT A TAKATORI!" Omi spat out angrily.
Raising the whiskers that mocked eyebrows, Masafumi tightened his grasp, "Mamoru it is you!" The tightening of the fleshy vines was coincidentally, surprise, inconvenient for breathing.
"It isn't your fault, they made you do it. They filled me in, I understand completely. They won't do it again."
Omi blinked in confusion until that nasal, grating voice played in his head, 'Katzchen, we're here to help you kill off Weiss. Whether you'd like to or not.' Omi screamed as the vice-like grasp on his mind was flexed in time with the squeezing of the tentacles. He screamed until he fell limply over into Masafumi's grasp.
Hell walked in at the doorway to this scene, Omi collapsed over the man she loved. Tot volunteered for this, she reminded herself, she volunteered to exchange parts of herself for Hell to finish up the research and recreate Masafumi's thoughts and DNA, to reanimate his decayed form and enhance it, control it just enough with the help of Mastermind and Oracle. The cost, regrettably, was Tot's mind.
The girl was always off, but this exchange, which had proven impossibly painful, and the metamorphosis, those powers she gained took her over as well. She was no longer human, she was a beast with human form, running on pure instinct it was beautiful though time and again problematic, as seen tonight with her competition with Berserk.
It is documented that sometimes during an animal's hunt when other predators come in they turn on each other for the rights of hunting ground.
She swore, why the hell did she choose to go with wolf DNA? And snakes? Well, that was a given, regeneration. Accelerated regeneration actually, that was the only way to return Masafumi to any form. Enhance Tot's DNA with wolf and snake, then insert some of Masafumi's until it recreated a stem-cell spinal chord, inserting that left his body time to regenerate after forcing the carcass into some state of life-support if you can even call it that.
The benefits of the wolf part- the proof is in the pudding he was wild in bed.
He was still hung up on the boy though, she debated the validity of leaving him alive, after all he could draw question to her ranks and she was well aware that she would be the only one at Masafumi's side, with Schon and Tot beside her. And, if all went well, soon enough Neu would also return, as soon as Masafumi's senses returned enough to tell them how to revive her, again.
TBC. Maybe.