POST-SERIES

Amon and Robin somehow escape from the Factory, under very strange circumstances. But then, some of Amon's past begins to come out as a mysterious witch, called the Angel, falls into the STN-J's crosshairs...

Nature's Folly

WARNING: POST-SERIES

((NOTE: I do NOT own Witch Hunter Robin, or any characters from it. I'm not making a profit off this, so don't sue me. Lastly, if any of the religious or sexual topics (If you want me to be specific (which would spoil quite a bit of the story) email me.) involved in this insult you, don't send me hate mail. This is called ART, children, and therefore I am free to make it as I see fit. Any suggestions, please send to and please state the subject, or it might be deleted. Thankees much! Fluffy-sama))

Chapter 4: Confessions

The Hunters stared at Angel as she laid her head against Amon's chest. Her brows drew together after a moment.

"I can hear your heart… you are alive!" With a sob, she threw her arms around his neck, and they clung together, shaking. She held him tight, like a dream that might vanish if she let go. He cradled her like a fragile treasure, as if she might break, and buried his face in her hair. They seemed to have forgotten all about the others in the room.

Just when Nagira was ready to interrupt, Angel sat up. "What's poking me?" She reached down and pulled out his gun. Her smile vanished, and her eyes widened. "Amon…? Why do you… NO! You wouldn't!" She jumped up and looked at each of the Hunters. "You," she pointed at Robin, "you were there! In the factory… with Amon?" She looked back at him, then turned toward Nagira and stared. Nagira half-smiled at her. "Oniichan?"

He nodded. She looked down at the gun in his hand. "You're Hunters… You're all Hunters! Why, Amon? You thought I was dead, so you joined the people that killed me?"

"No!" He stood now, and his hands fisted at his sides. "They told me a witch killed you. They said they would help me avenge you!"

"And you believed them over me? I told you not to ever let them find you. I warned you that they might try to take you because you're untrained! How long did it take for them to have you wrapped around their fingers? A week? Or maybe it was a day. Was it that same day? I held them up for an hour or so before I weakened. Ah, yes. How many witches have you killed? How many did you send to Hell, hm? Hundreds, I would guess. Your powers are like mine; perfect for killing. You could smell their blood, feel it slow when your cursed bullets hit their hearts-"

"Stop it, Angel. You know better than that." Nagira covered her mouth gently with his hand as Amon stared, pain and utter disbelief in his eyes. Angel's eyes, the same obsidian black as her twin's, turned on her half-brother. And, for the first time that anyone had seen, they were cold. Nagira flinched at that icy glare, and said, still gentle, "What could they possibly have done to you that would make you turn on him like that?"

She wrested her chin out of his grasp. "What did they do to him that he would hunt others like me, like himself?" She looked at Amon now, boring holes in him with her eyes.

"They killed what he loved most… and said it was witches that did it. Said it was your mother's fault. What choice did he have? If he had not become a Hunter, he would have been Hunted. Sent to the factory, like you."

"How did you get out of the Factory?" asked Haruto, who had been hanging in the background.

"And why would Amon have been Hunted?" said Robin. "I was sure I had put all of the witches there out of their pain, and Amon isn't a Craft-user, or a witch."

Now Amon looked away. "Yet… my powers are dormant."

"I was sent to the Factory when I was too weak to withstand the bullets. It wasn't the orbo that finished me: it was not developed very well then. I was weak from healing the damage. I do not hurt people, with my powers or not. I had only hoped that Amon would get away, since I was surrounded. They ran tests on me and found that no matter what they did, they could not pull blood from me, make orbo from me, or kill me. Instead, they tossed me down into this pit where they stored the waste from making orbo, and left me there." She pulled away and sat by her piano, trailing her fingers over it, her eyes unfocused and her mind somewhere far away, and frightening.

"What they didn't know was that the wastes had residual powers in them, and these affected my powers over time. And time… that's all there was, and even that was indistinct. After they closed me up, there was no light. When I couldn't talk or sing to myself anymore, no sound. When I didn't care anymore, no movement. Nothing but darkness." She placed her left hand on the piano keys and began to play a slow waltz. Just three notes, one after another at first, with a low undertone beneath them, and then a key change and the intensity grew, then resolved. She smiled and closed her haunted eyes, lost in the sorrowful, yet joyous sonata. "Time stopped, and still I changed."

Her right hand moved now, a few little, almost playful trills and grace notes. She rocked slowly, and now her tears flowed as well. Strange, bloody tears wrung from the weary heart of a caged bird, singing her mournful song to the bright world that was lost to her. Under her breath, she querulously hummed along with her hands, and the piano cried with her. As she leaned closer and closer to her beloved instrument, the notes weakened and faded.

"I became stronger," she continued. Her voice was soft, as the music erratically increased in volume and tempo, transforming into another Beethoven; Appassionata. Her voice followed its crescendo. "But what good did it do? I was dead, the world I knew was dead, and all I was good for was to become compost for the earth that could not reach me through the concrete. But then the concrete broke!" Her fingers were flying over the keys.

"The ground shook, and I could hear the cries of the witches above me, they were crying for their Eve. 'Eve of angels, save us from our pain!' they said, over and over, like a prayer. And then it all stopped, and the ceiling fell in." Her voice softened, and the music faded. "Among the rubble were two, and I smelt their blood, their pain. It called to me, the broken flesh to the healer. And heal I did. My dreamlike ignorance was gone, and I wanted desperately to see the sky, feel the sun on my skin, taste the life all around. So I used these new powers of mine to change myself so I could escape. I had transformed myself before, but only into things that already existed. A bird to watch over my brothers, a dog to sit by their sides, or a cat to go out at night to find people who needed me. But for this, no normal creature could do what I was going to try. I combined the flesh of the animals into myself. A body like an elephant's, but upright like an ape, and with claws like a bear. And then I dug. All I knew was that I had to go out, and then up. Who knows how long I was digging for? An hour, a day, a week, what did it matter?

"But when I broke through, there was no sun. Only darkness and thick fog awaited me. And as I looked back at the rubble that had been my prison, that was when I knew I was dead, only a spirit, left behind to drift and watch the world whirl by, groveling in the dust of its passing." Her voice dropped away, and she lay her head against the piano once more, her hands barely touching the keys as she seamlessly slid back into the Moonlight, despite the different key and character. Amon had somehow ended up at the open window, and there he stared out, not seeing the rooftops around the house, or the stars in the inky blackness of the sky. Instead, his face was relaxed, serene, with only his unfocused eyes belying the mask. Beneath the dark of those orbs was an inner bitterness. No, not bitterness, but horror.

His gaze slid slowly to a shelf nearby. Now his eyes caught on a down turned picture frame. His hand suddenly shot out, causing the others to jolt, but for the figure collapsed at the piano. At some point they had all settled, enthralled by the flow of music and words. Robin sat on the bottom rung of the ladder going up to the loft bed, Yurika at the desk, and Miho in a plush chair that showed the abuse of much sprawling on for reading. Nagira leaned against the wall by the stairs, and Haruto did the same near Miho. They all watched as Amon reached for the picture and set it upright.