Flesh and spirit. Spirit and flesh. Ken stared blankly as Birman stepped over to Aya and offered him a piece of paper.
"Kundalini is supposed to be the purest form of life force energy buried deep within the spine. Yoga teaches that once you're attuned to it, you can tap into a great energy source."
"Here. This is a list of Kundalini research labs. We'll go through them one by one. We're bound to find their lab."
"There is a group that is trying to distill Kundalini energy scientifically for their own purposes."
"And there's one more thing – Kritiker has received some information that four strange women have been seen at every crime scene. We're not sure who they are, but…."
Yohji's head raised. "It isn't…"
"We're still not sure," Birman repeated. "But based on the descriptions of the women, it's highly likely that they're Schreient."
Spirit and Flesh. Scientifically distill spiritual energy. Was it even possible?
A few hours later, he was staring at someone's attempt to answer that question as graphs and charts scrolled across the computer screen. He wasn't bad with a computer. He even knew a few hacker's tricks. But Omi was the real geek of the group.
"If I'd know I'd be doing this, I would have paid more attention in school," Yohji drawled in a complaining tone, cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Ken chuckled despite himself. Yohji was far more intelligent than he liked people to think – he had been a detective, after all. "Well, let's save a copy for Omi to look at," Yohji was saying, then trailed off. Ken looked up, blinking, just in time to see Yohji jerk backwards. He too flung himself back, shoulders slamming into the row of filing cabinets behind him. He twisted his head to the side just as three cross-shaped shuriken imbedded themselves in the metal next to his head. Four shadows burst from open doorways. Ken turned, and saw the way of escape clear, but Yohji was still there, making no move to run from the four lethally armed women.
"Yohji, look out!" Ken snarled as Neu leaped for him. He managed to dodge a kick that would have cracked his ribs. This wasn't right, he thought frantically as he fended her off, then turned to duck under an attack from Hell. He wasn't in uniform and he didn't have his bugnuks. He was effectively helpless, save for his fast reflexes and his hand-to-hand training, which was probably equal to Schreient's – useless when he was outnumbered. He took the quickest way out, elbows up to protect his head as he burst through the window. He rolled to his feet on the grass below, and paused to look back. What the hell? "YOHJI!" he yelled. "Come ON!" He was on his feet and running for Aya's car, where the backpack containing his equipment was. The car was unlocked… if only he could get there and back in time. Yohji wasn't thinking straight, he remembered as he saw the sleek lines of the white Porsche ahead of him. His hand closed on the door handle and he yanked, dragging on his mission clothing as fast as he could and sheathing his hands in the padded leather gloves. Yohji would let himself be injured because one of the women, Neu, looked like his beloved (and dead) partner, Asuka.
He whirled and kicked up tufts of grass as he sprinted back. Hopefully, Aya and Omi had heard the commotion and gone to Yohji's aid… no, there they were, headed his way.
"SCHREIENT!" he called, not changing course. "Yohji's in trouble!" Then he hit another pane of glass head-on, just as Schoen was closing in on Yohji, who held a struggling Neu captive. Knowing the blonde hated him for scarring her face, he tossed off the first quip that came to mind. He wasn't very creative, so the quip wasn't either, but it served its purpose. She left Yohji alone and attacked him instead.
"Schreient, stop!" Aya yelled, charging toward the broken window, sword out, but a pink Volkswagen beetle nearly ran him down, forcing him to roll sideways to avoid it. Ken planted a sneaker in Schoen's stomach and sent her flying backward, even as Neu elbowed Yohji twice in the stomach. Ken let her fall and went to Yohji, dragging him to the window just in time to see Omi's arrow plunge into the hood of the car on the driver's side, the car swerve to the side, and Neu's body fly over the hood, limbs askew like a broken marionette's. She crumpled to the ground. The car didn't stop, merely slowed to take on Schoen, then vanished in a squeal of tires.
Yohji stared at the limp body on the ground. "No…" he breathed. Ken felt his shoulders shake, and stepped back just in time, as Yohji screamed.
"ASUKAAA!"
X-X-X-
Ken lay awake, hands beneath his head. The moon shone in through the window, like it did every night, casting the colors of his room into various shades of gray. This time, it wasn't Kase keeping him awake, but something much more recent.
"Hey… Ken… what do you think of her, really? I mean, I feel bad for Yohji, but I can't help thinking…."
"That it's a trap?"
Omi'd caught on to it too, and that made Ken feel better, if only slightly. He didn't trust the situation one bit, but he saw the desperation in Yohji's eyes and knew – Yohji NEEDED this. He needed it or his soul would fracture even more.
"You are all going insane."
Ken moaned quietly and threw himself onto his stomach. The Irishman had begun to haunt him too, recently, his words and his strange mannerisms and the gleam of that single eye. One good thing Ken could say about that: Farfarello always chased Kase away, when the nightmares came, and in the few dreams he'd had in which the madman was doing him harm, it somehow had not hurt to have hands buried in his body to the elbows, thrusting aside his internal organs and clenching around his heart. It had felt oddly RIGHT, to have someone open him up, split him apart, see him for what he really was. And he had not been afraid.
"Just leave her alone for a while! She doesn't remember anything!"
Yohji's voice, raised in a plea.
"I'll ask about your sister later!"
"That's okay, isn't it, Aya?"
Ken himself, trying to make peace between the two men. Aya's temper was balanced on a knife's edge these days, and Yohji seemed more and more unhinged the more time he spent with the girl who had been Neu and might have once been Asuka. Ken wanted her to be Asuka almost as much as Yohji did, even if it meant losing Yohji… and he'd thought about that too, about what would happen if she really WAS Asuka. Asuka's death and Yohji's near-death had been the catalyst for the blonde's joining Weiss. Without that pain, he would no longer choose to be a white hunter.
Without my pain, Ken wondered idly, what would I be?
He let out a noise of disgust and threw the covers aside, pulling on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt over his boxers. Sliding his feet into his sneakers and lacing them up, he grabbed his soccer ball on the way out the door. He wasn't going to get any sleep like this. Better just drink some strong coffee in the morning.
Midori Gardens was deserted in the dead of night, the net between the goal-posts swaying gently in the breeze. Ken practiced juggling the ball for a little while, taking pleasure in the simple act of keeping the spinning black and white orb from touching the ground with his knees and feet. When he tired of that, he ran the drills he remembered from all those years ago in J-League. The sun was not out, and there was no crowd, no teammates to practice with, but the nostalgia was there none the less. Good memories sank into his bones slowly, warming him even though the night was a bit chilly and easing the throbbing ache in his soul. He always felt better like this, chasing the ball up the field, keeping it moving with the balls of his feet. He could focus on this, and everything else would just fall away.
When a glance at his watch showed the time to be three thirty in the morning, on a night when he had to work the morning shift the next day, he finally collected the ball and went home.
He was surprised to find Omi sitting up in the kitchen with the files spread out in front of him and a mug of hot tea in hand.
"Ken-kun!" the younger man exclaimed softly as the former goalie slipped into the kitchen, toeing off his dirty cleats and dropping the soccer ball to the floor. However, Omi's surprise quickly slipped into an understanding smile. "Couldn't sleep?"
"You either, ne Omi?" Ken summoned a tired smile. "We're going to be dead on our feet tomorrow."
Omi shrugged. "It won't be the first time I've opened the shop after an all-nighter," he said dismissively. "Would you like some tea?"
"I'd love some. With honey too," Ken said, favoring Omi with a more genuine smile as he took a seat at the table. Omi bustled around making tea for him and Ken relaxed. He had a feeling Omi was glad for the excuse to get up and move. "Hey…."
"Mm?" Omi didn't turn, but Ken knew he was paying attention anyway.
"Do you really think it's possible to harvest spiritual energy with science?" he wondered. "I mean, I thought they were separate, part of different… natures. Like, body and soul."
Spirit and flesh, flesh and spirit.
Omi considered that as he stirred honey into Ken's tea and brought it to him. "Hmmm. I'm not sure what to think about that. But what concerns me is, what could Schreient need that kind of energy for, assuming it's possible for them to harvest it like they're trying to do?"
Ken nodded. "Maybe it has something to do with reviving Masafumi. They're obsessed with that."
"Maybe," Omi allowed, "but that doesn't seem to cover the entire picture. We're missing something."
"Wherever Schwarz comes into this," Ken suggested.
Omi blinked. "Schwarz? What do they…." He paused. "This organization, that's moving behind the scenes of all these strange crimes…."
"I think Schwarz has something to do with it. They're freaks, those four," Ken murmured, drinking his tea with a pleasured sigh. "They're unnatural. And all this – harvesting energy from peoples' spines, driving people insane with music – it stinks of their kind of work."
"But where would they fit into this?" Omi wondered. "There are only four, and I have the impression that the organization controlling all this is substantially larger than that."
"How should I know?" Ken wondered, throwing up his hands. "It's late, I'm tired, and I'm not the great thinker on the team even when I'm fresh."
Omi laughed. "I'm sorry. It's just so frustrating. But never mind that, Ken-kun. Go to bed."
"You should too," Ken scolded mildly. "We need you, Omi. We can't have you falling asleep on us, in the shop OR on a mission."
"Tomorrow's Wednesday," Omi reassured him. "We're never busy toward the middle of the week. We'll be all right, and Aya might not mind relieving us a little early."
"Yohji will," Ken pointed out as he gathered his ball and headed for the stairs.
Omi glanced toward the window, sky-blue eyes distant. "I'm not sure Yohji will be joining us at all tomorrow," he said quietly. "But you can try him and see what he says. Goodnight, Ken."
"Goodnight, Omi," he returned softly, and ascended the stairs. He threw his clothes over the desk and flopped back onto his bed.
This time, he slept quickly and had no dreams.
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