Disclaimer: not mine as said in chapter 1

Warnings: none yet.

A/N: made some minor changes to chapter 1. negligible. Thanks guys for the reviews, even though it's only 3 of you. This was really slow going… well thanks for your support anyway.

Einsam: I would really appreciate it if you would point out the errors, it'll help me improve the story. As for the questions, wait and see.

Shangri-la

Chapter 2

Presented by Precognition74

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For the next few hours, Omi sat in the hospital alone and just thinking. When a nurse came in, he asked for his report. Strangely, he felt a lot better than what he thought he should have been feeling. Minor burns to the respiratory tract, minors burns on the side of the face, a greenstick fracture of his left ulna, and a gunshot wound on his right shoulder.

If his memory served him right, injuries like these should hurt a lot of more than what he was feeling… or maybe his nerves were dying from the many times they've been hurt. Omi shook his head.

Omi sighed after reading the report and slumped onto the bed, careless of his injuries, he didn't really care afterall… as long as it didn't hurt and cause him liability on the field, he didn't care. It was a Takatori body anyway. There were a few times Omi felt like taking revenge again on his already dead family by damaging this body that were from the same lineage as them. It seemed like a stupid thing to do.

Aya… it was strange… Schwarz have never tried to capture anyone of them before. Why was Aya special? It was his sister that they want right? Why capture him? Omi really could fathom the minds of them.

Also, there was the way Manx was blatantly threatening him. It was unnatural. She never really tried to threaten him. She was like the mother figure he never had. But ten why was she like this today? In the past, Kritiker had never really stopped them from leaving, only if they refused a mission for tried to oppose Weiss. Well, maybe it was because they knew that they could not leave the others. Maybe Manx was afraid of his loyalties since Aya left the group. Weiss was not Weiss anymore with any one of them. Perhaps, then, she felt desperate; she was ready to use anything to make him stay.

Omi flung the report that sitting on his lap ion disgust. He narrowed his eyes at the muffled whispering of the nurses outside his room. He knew they were talking about him, it irked him very much. Omi felt another tension headache coming on and rubbed his temple. Everything was spinning out of the norm, he felt helpless, like a spectator, and everybody was behaving strangely.

And as he thought about it all, Omi fell asleep.

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When Omi woke up, it seemed like morning. A nurse walked in, a glass of milk balanced on a small tray. She told him that he should stick to fluid for a while throat recovers. Omi sat there sullenly listening to her. It was only when she went out did he take the glass from the side table and sipped it.

Omi suddenly remembered his laptop. He missed it very much… but would they bring it here for him? After how he had treated them last night, would they help him? Omi sat upright on the bed and immediately felt a wave of vertigo pass over him. The blood was rushing away from his brain and the effect left the room spinning. Omi clenched his teeth and closed his eyes tightly trying to stop the dizziness, and a stray tear made its way down a cheek. It seemed like a long time before the painful throbbing in his head subsided and Omi opened his eyes to take a good look at him ward for the first time.

His bare feet touched the ground and he withdrew from the coldness of the floor. There was a pair of pair slippers nearer to the side table, so Omi shifted a little to the right and slipped his feet in. then he braced himself against the side-table and used his right arm to hoist himself into a standing position. Pain lanced up Omi's shoulder and he let out a soft cry of pain. The room started spinning again. And the floor seemed to start floating, in his pain, Omi didn't notice as he knocked over the empty glass of water and it made a loud sound upon impact with the ground.

The earlier Nurse ran into the room and took in the scene in front of her, she uttered surprise and ran to Omi's side, " Tsukiyono-san, please do stay in bed, if there's anything you need I'll help you get it. Come on, the bed just behind. Right… okay. Now you can lie down." She murmured gently, helping him into his earlier lying down position.

Once Omi had settled down on the bed again, settle covered him with the blanket.

"Now, Tsukiyono-san, is there anything I can help you with?" she asked. Omi disliked needing help very much; it was an ingrained mentality from having to become independent from a young age. He was loathe to ask the nurse for help.

"I need a phone." Omi said reluctantly. He turned his head to the direction of the window, avoiding her kind smile. He disliked it.

"Oh, is that all? I'll get one for you. Please hold on for a few minutes." She said and padded out of the ward. Omi heard more whisperings outside his ward. Soon, the nurse came back with an orderly who went about clearing the shards of glass on the floor. She held out a phone to Omi, who took it.

"Thank you."

"You're welcomed. Next time, if there's anything you need, let me help you with it okay?" and she walked out of the door, leaving Omi with the orderly. Omi studied the uniformed man curiously. Watching at him work. There was nothing to do anyway. Omi's mind made calculations. He had more than enough time to waste. If he made the call then, the after he finished the call the man would have finished cleaning up and there would be nothing to watch. If he watched the man then made the call, he would be able to kill more time. It was all very simple to him.

The man very efficiently swept up everything and without a further ado, he left the room, leaving Omi alone and bored. Well, at least he had a call to make. After he got the laptop, there were a million things he could do.

"Youji-kun. Ah. I'm fine… yes, oh yeah; would you please bring my laptop in the bag here? Yes, including the charger and stuff. Thank you… Okay, see you." Omi clicked the phone off. 'That was scary!' he thought, but it wasn't as disastrous as he had thought.

Now what? Omi fiddled with his fingers, twirling them around he saw his mission gear sitting on the back of a chair, he thought, ' hm… isn't there a palmtop in my clothes.' It was the latest model and Omi and bought it a few months ago, fascinated by the thing, although its capabilities were nothing like those of a desktop computer or even a laptop. Well, at least its battery could last longer, and its touch pad made it more portable. For example, he could now put a water-proof plastic covering on the palmtop without compromising any for its functions. This was especially useful on wet-weather missions. There was only one main problem with bringing a palmtop instead of a laptop computer on a mission. Hacking sequences had to be programmed and the palmtop was very useful in typing, it was slow and if there was a glitch, it took a long to time to fix it. Omi thought his fascination with the machine would end soon, and then he would go back to the laptop. He would never let the palmtop take the place of any desktop or laptop though, it could never match up.

Omi's first thought was to stand up himself and take the palmtop, but he thought of the nurse and decided to press the call bell instead. He waited patiently for the nurse to arrive. And another nurse came in, not the one earlier. Inside, Omi was rather disappointed.

"Please, would you help me get my palmtop from the pocket of the jacket hanging on the back of the chair?" Omi asked. Omi almost expected her to ask why, or protest that she had better things to do than to help him take his palmtop. Instead, the nurse just did as she was told, and gently handed the palmtop to him.

After that she quickly left after a simple 'is there anything else you need?'. Omi checked the battery; there was still an hour of battery left. Omi let himself heave a sigh, by then Yohji would have arrived with his things, and he would be that bored anymore.

Actually, to say the truth, Omi was still angry with the older man. He was exasperated that he and Ken could not understand that Aya was one of them, that he was family and they couldn't possibly forsake him.

Then it came to him suddenly. Maybe he was disillusioned. Maybe he had wanted a family so much he just imagined that they were, and perhaps to anyone else, they were only comrades and nothing else. He was the only one in Weiss who had never experienced a real family. Perhaps that was why he did not know that they were not a family. Yes, that must have been what happened.

Sadly, with that new revelation, Omi switched on his palmtop and watched the starting sequence. He checked his mail, nobody missed him. Of course! 'Who am I that someone would miss me enough to leave a mail?'

A soft rap on his door took his attention from the screen.

"Omi, it's me, Yohji."

Omi held his breath. "Come in". He thought bitterly, they hadn't reverted to asking permission to enter each others' rooms in a long time.