Acceptable Release

A/N: An abrupt change to Nagi sets in motion changes in those around him too as he faces his own issues and they see their own in his dilemma. Nagi genderswap. PostGluhen.

Pairings: Omi/Nagi

Setting: post Gluhen

Warnings: shounen ai, genderswap, het (sort of) and yaoi couples, swearing, angst, sap, minimal smut. Rating may go up later.

Disclaimers: Weiss are not mine, and never will be. Though I'm still happily ssucking other innocents into the fandom!

Part One

It wasn't a matter of changed centres of gravity or even just looking down. For a start, Nagi was lying on his back under a hefty amount of rubble. It was something like déjà vu, in that sense. Some circuit in his brain always stopped the rubble for falling on anyone, no matter how much he wanted to kill people. It was like it slowed before it landed on people already knocked flying by the first telekinetic punch. They woke with rock resting on them, but no injuries.

Nagi knew himself. He knew ever inch of his body, every skin flake, every capillary, every cilia. It was something he had relied on to be constant once, accepting the vertical changes but being completely unprepared for everything else that hit him unusually late in his teens. For a while he'd lost all sense of self, in this strange jail that couldn't even make up its mind about his voice, let alone his physical appearance.

So once it had settled down and gone back to an even more constant state than before, one didn't expect this to happen.

Bits of him were gone. Bits of him were different. Inside, bits of him were new. He knew every cell, and every cell was screaming change at him. Panic began to build, hot and tight in his throat. He tried to claw at the rock around him, but he was pinned down by a metal beam. He couldn't even remember what had upset him so much now. His mind was taken with the change and increasing inability to breathe.

He pushed. Nothing moved. He summoned the energy from those foreign cells and pushed again. His panting stirred the dust, but that was all he could manage.

Even more than the change, this took up his mind. He couldn't even articulate his abject terror. There was just this black hole in his mind, this Truth, which he circled and circled and did not dare to think. It was too big to take in at once, but it couldn't be broken down. The thought just sat there, waiting for him to think it. Nagi screwed his eyes shut. The dust on his cheeks began to turn to mud.

A pair of strong hands tossed the beam to one side and another pair shifted the rubble on his legs. Two familiar faces stared down at him. He was shaking and crying and he didn't care.

"Nagi, what's wrong?" Schuldig cocked an eyebrow at him. "Why are you just lying there hyperventilating?"

"I'm not the man I was when I woke up this morning," Nagi gasped.

Schuldig shook his head, amused, and reached down to help him up. Nagi took a moment to clutch his hand, missing twice. Schuldig eventually put his hands underneath Nagi's arms and hauled him out of the hole like a small child. Pressed close to Schuldig's chest, the changes were more obvious.

"Fuck. You turned into a girl."

Nagi passed out.


Nagi sat on the couch awkwardly. Crawford and Schuldig exchanged looks. Nagi sighed at them and pulled his knees up to his chest, curling up as tightly as he had as a child.

"Rosenkreuz, yes?" he said softly.

"Probably," Crawford nodded.

"But not certainly," Schuldig warned. Nagi shot him a dirty look.

"So..." Nagi looked at the older men.

Schuldig shrugged easily, and Crawford's silence had a similar meaning, though it wasn't in him to admit ignorance so casually. Nagi swallowed his disappointment. He fought the urge to fidget. These clothes no longer fit quite right, and he was being touched in newly sensitive places.

"Do we know anything?" Nagi asked quietly.

"Well," Schuldig glanced at Crawford, "it's probably some variation on telekinesis."

"Really?" Nagi raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, like your electrokinesis. You know, a variant dependent on having mastered telekinesis first."

"So it's got to be someone powerful and highly skilled," Nagi said. "I tend towards brute force, mostly."

"Yes," Crawford said. "I hope you're not abandoning those fine motor skills."

"Of course not," Nagi said dismissively. "I just have less use for them."

"Why poke when you can clobber?" Schuldig grinned. "Biokinesis, that's the body stuff, is all fine motor skills."

"I can't help it," Crawford shook his head, "tell me, where did you learn all this?"

"Knew a few," Schuldig told him. "Always locked up studying. If you want to alter the body, you've really got to know it through and through first. Cellular level."

Neither of the older men, looking at each other for now, noticed Nagi's shoulders sag slightly, and the frown ease from his forehead.

"I suppose you've got some horror story as anecdotal evidence here," Crawford smirked.

"Naturally," Schuldig laughed. "Russian girl. Tried to turn herself black and ended up looking like a grizzly bear. Stimulated the wrong cells by accident."

"I was expecting something worse," Nagi piped up.

"Me too," Crawford admitted.

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Schuldig said agreeably. "None of them ever tried the big stuff. Big focus was on eyes and fingerprints. Things like hair and skin colour were useful too, but really, it was the ability to change the unique things about you into the unique things about someone else that Rosenkreuz wanted."

"Of course," Crawford sighed. "Though I still don't understand what you were doing hanging around with Physicals."

"Yeah," Nagi said thoughtfully. "I mean, Crawford obviously didn't, and you're both Mentals."

"Yeah, but Crawford didn't send as much time in the ward as I did," Schuldig pointed out. "They tested all of the biokinetics as healers, but nearly all of them focused either out or in. I mean, on other people or on themselves. The ones that could change themselves pretty much disappeared once they were tested. Only one I saw twice was bear girl."

"So you think it could have been a healer?" Crawford suggested.

"You aren't slightly curious as to why they'd be wasting those kind of resources in Japan?" Schuldig asked. "I mean, Kritiker wiped out any base Rosenkreuz had here."

"But they still want us dead," Crawford pointed out firmly.

"Like fuck," Schuldig yawned. "When was the last time either of us saw any action? And they were chasing Nagi even less."

"It could be Saijoh Takatori," Nagi suggested quietly.

"What's he got against you?" Crawford asked slowly.

Nagi chewed his hair, the tip of his fringe that long now. He needed a hair cut, he supposed, but he liked it this length. No one could see his reactions.

"Nags?" Schuldig prompted.

"He thinks I'm after Mamoru," Nagi said eventually. "Sexually."

Schuldig snorted. "Sure."

Crawford remained silent, but Schuldig wasn't the only one in the room who knew what the older man was thinking. Nagi had already tried one relationship with a partial ally that had ended badly. Was he foolish enough to make another attempt at it? He might as well lust after Aya-chan.

"He warned me off, and told me he'd have Mamoru fire me if he felt I was getting too close," Nagi said quietly. "Apparently I'm not allowed to be friendly."

"How friendly?" Schuldig asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"No more than I ever have been with you," Nagi said evasively. After all, Mamoru had been obliviously to his approaches, so it hardly mattered. Schuldig snickered anyway.

"Is Mamoru's office bugged, or are some of the Kritiker staff in Saijoh's pay?" Crawford asked calmly.

"Both," Nagi said simply. "He hired most of the staff before Mamoru took over."

"And bugs?"

"Everywhere, though Mamoru can access all of them. He assumes they're just security devices, and sees no harm in allowing his grandfather to see what happens."

"His grandfather is evil!" Schuldig blurted out. "I'm sorry, but kept his own family stuffed with wax? Yeah, like he didn't know."

"I know!" Nagi agreed vehemently. "Mamoru is just blind to it."

"I suppose it takes one to know one," Crawford murmured under his breath, glancing at Schuldig. He ignored the curious look he got in return. "He has been offering work for both of us," he informed Nagi.

"You want me to pass that on to Mamoru? He'll flip," Nagi smirked at the thought.

"Understandably," Schuldig admitted. "What's going on at Kritiker that we're getting most of the assassinations?" he asked.

Nagi shrugged. "Do you know what Mamoru would do to me if he knew I was telling you all of this?" he said mildly. "He's cutting out the killing teams. More emphasis on bringing information out into the open. I'm one of the few assassins left. Most of the others opted for rehab, of a sort, or moved to Kryptonbrand."

"Interesting," Crawford mused. "That would explain Fujimiya's presence at Heathrow."

"Look how international we are," Schuldig boasted cheerfully. "He can recognise an airport from a single vision."