AU. Teenagers in training, the psychics Crawford, Schuldig, and Farfarello escape from Rosenkreutz. Of course, Este isn't about to let two of their most prized Talents go without a fight.


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"Great Escape"
Phantom Sunstorm
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"What are we going to do with him now?"

The two boys stood over the huddled, shivering form with twin expressions of consideration pinching their smooth, hardened faces. Both had their arms crossed, feet spread far apart; both had mouths that were twitching to smirk, but too afraid to so soon after their 'Great Escape.'

"He's already starting to degenerate, he'll need medication soon or he'll turn on us. That's something we can't provide for him." Fifteen-year-old Bradley Crawford rationally pointed out.

Schuldig made a sound in the back of his throat. The fourteen-year-old German telepath tossed his hair away from his face in dismissal. "I'd feel guilty just abandoning him, or destroying him."

Crawford, as he preferred to be called, let loose his unquenching desire to smirk, fear forgotten momentarily in the irony of his partner's words. "Since when did you feel guilty?"

"I was always guilty." Schuldig simply replied. "Joking aside, Brad, we really can't leave him. He could lead them right to us."

The topic of discussion didn't respond to the conversation. Amber eye glazed over, he concentrated on his trembling, on the blood lined in-between his teeth, of the carnage buried deep beneath fingernails.

The low-level psychic had been a crucial element in their escape. If it weren't for the efforts of Farfarello, for turning on the instructors who were leading him back to his cell, his cage, for him smashing and tackling every guard, every psychic and human who threatened to block their path, they never would have made it out of Rosenkreutz. They were in debt to him.

"He's trailing blood. He'll lead them to us either way." Crawford reasoned. The American placed his fingertips up to his mouth and rubbed at his lips thoughtfully. Schuldig cast him a sidelong glance, emerald eyes aglow with curiosity. Crawford shook his head. "Farfarello, stand up."

The twelve-year-old didn't move.

"Farfarello..." Crawford warned.

Schuldig whined, "Farfie..."

"We're leaving Farfarello. You have a choice. Come with us and be free. Or..." A cruel smile played across his face, "be caught and punished."

Pale lips moved, murmuring something that had neither voice nor breath. Crawford tilted his head to the side in confusion and Schuldig sighed. "He said, 'I deserve punishment', Farfie, if you don't come with us. You'll be locked in that padded little cell they like to cage you in until your a hundred-and-thirty-nine with no weapons, television, books, jigsaw puzzles, black cats to sacrifice, virgin pussy, blood of the innocent, whatever the fuck your crazy doped up mind likes to play with again. Ever. So get up, stop drooling, and be a good vampire wannabe."

"Escape is a high crime. They'll fight you, but you won't get very far on your own." Crawford pointed out, using his sooth, almost hypnotic voice to make the offer sound even more appealing, "Come with us and we'll give them a battle. We'll tear them down to hell. Do you want to kill again?"

"Yes." Whether it was the promise of blood, the biblical reference, or Schuldig's half-humored attempt to frighten him, the alabaster Irish boy picked himself off the street corner and straightened to his full height.

Schuldig reached forward and cupped a teasing hand around Farfarello's face. "That's a good psychopath." Farfarello tilted his head in askance, but was ignored by his provoker as Schuldig suddenly whipped his head around to the side, paling. "They're coming."

A normal human wouldn't have been able to detect the subtle shifting in the air, the cat paw footsteps across the roofs, the team moving down the alley. But a high level telepath would. No one in Rosenkreutz could mask their presence from Schuldig's fearful ability.

That was why Bradley Crawford chose to run with him.

"Let's go."


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No one had ever escaped Rosenkreutz.

No one had ever made it pass the gates.

The plans of Crawford and Schuldig had been quite ingenious really. Too clever for boys their age; frightenly clever for boys their age. The council had been worried about both boys power from the start. They should never have met, Head Councilman Charles Leistung knew that now. They should never have met.

"Herr Hoztmann, what do you plan to do about this problem?" Head Councilwoman Fran Krauler asked. The ancient telepath sat on her department chair as an aristocrat would a thrown. She looked like European nobility, with her wrinkles stretched in the right places, her gray eyes cold and sharp, her hair pulled back into a perfect bun. A gray cat sat in her lap, melting into the hand that gently kneaded its head.

Leistung raised an eyebrow as the security manager bowed to the woman. "I've sent three sweeper teams to take care of the problem. I promise you, Frau Krauler, they will not get far."

"They had better not." Intoned Ruth-Marie Collins, Rosenkreutz head Hypnotist.

Krauler appeared amused, "You'll make sure there are no...incidents? Especially with that Manipulator. He's very volatile."

"Nothing will happen." Hoztmann vowed.

Leistung was less than assured.


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They ran for several hours. They ran until their lungs burned, until their cheeks turned red, until even Farfarello could feel pain from the pounding of his heart. Crawford kept them moving, dropping back to grab the two younger boys by the arms and urging them to go forward. The night passed them by and still they ran.

"Cr-crawford," Schuldig wheezed, stumbling every other step. "We need to stop."

Even the American was starting to falter, though he would never admit to it, he was as ready to collapse as the other two were. Crawford ran them another half a block for good measure, so that when they finally came to a halt, it didn't seem like he was doing it because he was tired, or because he was listening to Schuldig's nagging.

"We'll stop here...I think...we lost them." He cursed the frailty of his voice, the gasps his burning lungs had to take; his life in general. Crawford hunched over and held himself at the knees for a second, than straightened. The others could act wounded, but not he. He was the oldest, he was the leader of this operation, the brains, the oracle, the perfectionist. Crawford turned his back to them so that they couldn't see the red in his face, or his struggle to regulate his breathing.

Farfarello trotted ahead of them, decreasing his speed slowly. He eventually made an arc in his pace to get back to where they were, where he promptly sat down and laid his head into his knees. Farfarello didn't openly gasp like Schuldig did, or like Crawford tried not to do. His lips were clamp shut, single eye heavily dilated, he breathed largly in and out of his nose, with such intensity that it looked painful. But Farfarello was a Manipulator, wasn't he? He didn't feel pain.

Lucky him, Schuldig thought with a frown. He had one hand against his chest, wondering if it was possible for someone his age to go into cardiac arrest. Maybe not. But perhaps his heart would explode. Yes, That would be fitting. Crawford would look over at him, grunt, and haul his body into the nearest dumpster, or hand his corpse over to Farfarello to snack on.

He couldn't understand why he had agreed to follow the Oracle into his crackpot plan. Yes, he could understand why. Better death than capture, that's what Farfarello had said when they asked him if he would help, if he would run away alongside them without chickening out. Better death than Rosenkreutz.

Still, Schuldig wished he had escaped with a group more personable than Bradley Crawford and Jei "Farfarello" Harris. Crawford's idea of a good time was standing against a wall looking intelligent and threatening, either that or he was stuck in his studies. Occasionally Schuldig had seen him around the leisure hall with an American newspaper in hand. And Farfarello... Farfarello was a legend among the Institute. One of the strongest in his psychic category, but completely nuts. He was always locked up somewhere because of his unstable nature. He was a cutter with a vendetta against God. He was rarely seen in the training rooms and never at the school.

Two total bores, Schuldig decided.

"We need a place to hide." Crawford commented, he had finally caught his breath.

"I'm cold." The German pointed out.

"We have no money, so perhaps a warehouse... maybe even the sewers. A sheltered, secure location..." He was plotting out loud, as he tended to do when he was exhausted.

"And hungry."

"Rosenkreutz already has a sweeper team rooting us out. I don't believe that we really outran them. They could just be waiting for us to let our guard down, to exhaust ourselves. Why didn't I think of that?"

Farfarello looked up and bared his teeth in a grin. "Oracle..." He accused.

Crawford should have foreseen that.

"I have to piss." Schuldig added.

"Thank you, Schuldig, that information is very helpful." He snapped. The other boy shrugged. He sighed. "It's true though, we wouldn't be able to loose the Sweepers by merely running away from them. They're out there, waiting for us."

How thoughtless could he have been? It was only now that he realized the holes in his plan. Such a large part of his mind had been devoted solely to figuring out how to get OUT of Rosenkreutz. He didn't have time to sequence any further in time before they had a chance to enact his original plan. It was foolish of him to think everything would work out, once they passed the gates. That the Sweepers wouldn't come after them. Terribly foolish.

Crawford wanted to curse out at his own stupidity. Out of the sudden wave of hopelessness that tied around his gut.

But he couldn't, he didn't have time to, because at that moment the first of fifteen Sweepers dropped out of the darkness and aimed their weapons. Schuldig turned and stared.

Farfarello let out a battle scream.