Disclaimer: I don't own any Weiss Kruez characters.
CHAPTER FOUR
Gretchen rolled the dough out on the marble board on her kitchenette's tiny counter space. Her aunt had given her the board with its matching marble rolling pin last Christmas, but she'd never thought she'd have much chance to use it. There was no sense in making Christmas cookies for just one person. However, when there were two people, making cookies made sense.
She glanced over to where Aya sat on the sofa bed, now pushed back into its daytime sofa shape. She'd offered to let him sleep on the bed for as long as he liked, but once Aya realized that the sofa pulled out into a bed, he'd insisted on taking it and leaving the real bed to her.
It was silly. He was wounded, he should have the more comfortable bed, but Aya was like that. Gallant, like a knight. Gretchen let her gaze wander over to the bed. It was actually big enough for both of them, she thought idly, then blushed.
Aya didn't think of her that way. She shouldn't think of him that way. She was a good Catholic girl, and he was her guest, nothing more.
Rolling out the dough with more vigor than necessary, she mashed it against the marble board so hard that she tore it, and had to ball it up and start again.
"Do you need any help?" asked Aya.
"Oh no, I'll be fine." Gretchen waved a floury hand at him and smiled.
Aya gave her a small smile in return and went back to pouring over the maps Yohji had brought him a day ago. Yohji also brought him clothing, bought to Aya's specifications. Today he wore black jeans, a white shirt and a dark blue pullover. He somehow managed to make the simple clothes look like something a male model would wear in a fashion magazine.
Gretchen sighed happily. He was so beautiful, and he was staying for another few days. With Yohji's help, she'd been able to talk him out of leaving to go to a hotel. She liked having someone else around to cook for, and it was nice to just sit together quietly instead of being alone in the apartment. When he needed to make phone calls on the cell phone Yohji brought him, he'd go out into the hall. Otherwise he'd stay inside with her.
A knock came at the door. Aya got up to answer it. It was his friend.
"I'm ready." Yohji said, and came inside.
Gretchen halted the rolling pin and watched as Aya grabbed his long, tan trench coat from off the back of the sofa.
"We're going out," he said, and bent to grab up some packages stacked by the door that Yohji had brought by earlier.
Forcing herself to smile, Gretchen wiped her hands against the apron around her waist. "Just be careful, OK?"
Aya told her yesterday he and Yohji would be leaving for a short time. She wanted to tie him to the sofa to keep him inside and safe, but knew that was ridiculous. Aya's wound was healing, and he didn't need to rest all day long anymore. Of course he'd be eager to get out for a short while.
The redhead nodded. "We'll be back in a few hours, Gretchen. You don't have to worry."
She opened her mouth to say that she wasn't worried, but that would be a lie. So she smiled again and said, "OK," and watched them leave.
And immediately thought of everything that could go wrong.
Aya could overdo it and pull out the stitches in his side. They could get lost despite the maps he'd been studying. If they wandered into the wrong part of town, Aya could get mugged again, or that first mugger who tracked him down to the hospital to kill him might show up again.
Or they would just get their Christmas shopping or whatever it was done and Aya would come back to her safe and sound.
Gretchen straightened her shoulders. They'd be back soon and they'd probably be hungry too, so what was she doing wasting her time with 'what-ifs'? Narrowing her eyes at the speculaas dough she'd made using her Dutch grandmother's recipe, she grabbed her rolling pin and attacked. She might not have the traditional cookie molds the recipe required, but she could still make cut-out shapes from her Christmas cookie cutters. Gretchen set to work.
o-o-o
"You don't have to come with me, you know." Aya said in the car that Yohji had rented using a fake ID.
"Yes, I do."
They both knew that he did. Aya might put up a good act in front of the girl, Gretchen, but Yohji knew his wound wasn't healed yet. Aya still needed help, and Yohji needed…
What did he need? What did his presence here prove except that he was allowing a past he couldn't remember to lay claim to him? He could have gone the rest of his life without knowing that he'd been an assassin, and he would have been happy. Now that he knew, things changed. He'd been Aya's team-mate, and when he'd asked him for the truth, Aya had given it to him. He owed him for that. There was this sense, too, hovering in the back of his mind, that he might owe him for other times, times when they'd depended on each other during missions. The memories were there, just beyond reach, locked away somewhere in his brain, and they dribbled out sometimes, but only in bits and pieces.
He hadn't lied to Aya when he said he remembered the faces of some of his victims. They came to him in dreams at times; he couldn't even call them nightmares, for the images were not accompanied by strong emotion. He didn't wake up soaked in sweat with his heart racing.
It was like remembering photographs from a newspaper article. It didn't bother him. The fact that it didn't was what really worried him. What kind of a man had he been? There was only one way to find out.
They drove on in silence.
Yohji pulled in to a side street by a seedy bar. Raucous music spilled from inside. There were lots of cars around. Theirs wouldn't be noticed.
"We're here," he said, unnecessarily. He'd followed Aya's directions to the letter.
Aya reached down to the shorter of the two packages resting against his leg on the floor of the car and handed it to Yohji.
"If you really want to come along, you're going to need this."
Yohji took the package and tore the brown paper wrapping off of it. A metallic disk with a band meant to go around one's wrist was nestled in the paper. It wasn't heavy, but it was solid in his grip. He'd seen something like it before, for it looked familiar.
"This is…?"
"Garroting wire." Aya answered in a clipped voice, tearing the brown paper off his longer package to reveal the hilt and sheath of a Japanese style sword. "It's coiled in the disk and can be extended or retracted by pressing the…"
"I know." Yohji cut him off, staring it at the device in his hand.
"I know," he said again more softly, and he did. He secured the band around his wrist and felt its weight against his skin, solid and familiar. "Let's do this."
Aya nodded and opened the car door.
Their goal was a derelict building a block down. It had once been a factory, and now it was the home of a small time crook looking to make it into the big time. Butler's need for human lab rats was supposed to have been his ticket to that big time. With Butler's death, his main source of income had been cut off, and he'd gone looking for revenge against Aya, as a way of upping his street credibility. Kill the assassin who killed your main man, and you scored points with those who were keeping track in the criminal underworld.
Aya told him that that the crook, Bandini, was not affiliated with the Italian mob, despite his Italian sounding name. He and his men had kidnapped and delivered homeless street people, men, women, and even children to be butchered in the name of science. Now it was payback time.
Bandini obviously deserved to die, but why not have the police handle it? When Yohji asked Aya about it during one of their conversations while Gretchen was out shopping, Aya told him that Bandini was protected by someone in the police department. It was someone very high up who'd made evidence against the man disappear the four times he'd been brought in for questioning. Evidently Bandini had something on a police official.
As they walked down the dirty sidewalk through the blackened slush of melting snow, Yohji wondered again what he was doing here.
All too soon they were at the building.
It was second nature for Yohji to melt against the shadows while Aya kicked in the door, then follow after checking the area to be sure they hadn't been seen entering.
It was dark inside, except where moonlight shone through the dirty, broken windows in the wall behind them, leaving patches of lighter grey on the ground. The ceiling over where they stood was open to the second story, girders like pillars interspersed along the floor to support a grid pattern of other girders above. The back half of the building was solid, two or three stories of rooms and offices rising up from the darkened first floor.
Movement from out of the corner of his eye had Yohji tensing into a ready position, hands in front of his body, ready to move. Next to him, Aya stopped and pulled his katana out from under his coat as three men surrounded them from the front and sides.
They all had guns, and their guns were pointed at Yohji and Aya. One was directly in front of them, one to the left, and one to the right in a classic triangle shape.
'Guns?' thought Yohji incredulously. 'Guns against an antiquated sword and a bit of wire? What chance did they have against guns?'
Then Yohji remembered. Having an unexpected weapon gave one the element of surprise. Guns only worked if their target remained in a clear line of fire. Without commanding his brain to come up with a plan, Yohji found that he already knew of several moves to evade the bullets while taking care of his targets.
Targets? Since when had he stopped thinking of them as people?
"Hey, boss!" One of the men yelled, glancing back over his shoulder into the inky blackness of the building's interior. "We got some intruders."
A muffled curse, then a rectangular blaze of light flared as a door opened and a short olive complexioned man came out wearing khaki pants, a t-shirt, and a leather jacket.
Another man, smaller and more unkempt looking in baggy jeans and a sweatshirt followed after him, obviously an underling.
"Well, look what we got here." The leather jacketed man sneered, coming up behind the center gunman and staring over the man's shoulder.
"Bandini." Aya said, identifying the leader.
Without having to be told, Yohji knew that was Aya's way of marking the man as his prey. Yohji was to leave Bandini to Aya.
"Looks like your screw-up has come back to haunt you, Ty." Bandini said to the gunman on Yohji's right.
The man growled and took a step forward into a patch of moonlight, tightening his grip on the gun. Yohji saw that it was the man from the hospital, the one he'd punched in the stomach.
"This one's mine," said the man, aiming for Yohji's chest. "I got some unfinished business with him," he blustered.
Yohji felt his mouth quirk. The guy sounded like something from a bad gangster movie. He expected to be scared, but he wasn't. Instead he felt as if every sense was on high alert. This was going to be easy.
Aya leapt into action, using the element of surprise to full advantage. From the flash of metal Yohji knew that Aya's katana was out and already slicing through the gunman standing between him and his prey, Bandini.
Taking that as his sign to move, Yohji pressed the button on the disk as he pointed his wrist at the thug from the hospital. The silver wire shot out with a slight 'snick' as Yohji sprang forward.
The man dropped his gun and instinctively began to claw at the wire circling his neck. Yohji ran past him, pivoted, and yanked. His victim's startled gasp turned into a gurgle as the wire cut through his neck, severing the main artery and vein that brought blood to and from his brain.
By running behind the man, Yohji used his opponent's body as an impromptu shield, counting on the other gunman's reluctance to shoot at his comrade in order to get Yohji.
With a practiced flick of his wrist, Yohji commanded the wire to retract back inside the disk, then immediately sent it shooting out again to latch on to one of the girders above. He knew that as soon as the right hand gunman was down, the left hand one would start shooting.
The man didn't disappoint him. Bullets flew across the room, and would have hit Yohji had he remained standing behind where his first victim fell. But Yohji wasn't there anymore; instead he was flying through the air himself, suspended from the girder by the wire, and careening forward with his feet out in front.
They connected nicely with the gunman's torso, shoving him back against the far wall, the gun dropping out of his nerveless fingers on impact.
Yohji bent his knees and jumped back, away from his winded opponent. Landing with his feet on the floor, he moved right as he retracted his wire from the girder.
The gunman staggered forward and Yohji slipped behind him, releasing just enough wire to loop over the man's head. He pulled it tight, once again using the wire for its intended purpose, as a garrote.
When it was over and the man stopped his twitching, Yohji retracted the wire and turned to find Aya calming flicking blood from off his blade and using a tissue to wipe away the rest of it.
The last three men lay in pools of blood on the floor at his feet. Yohji walked over and took a closer look. Now that his adrenalin rush was wearing off, he had time to think, and to feel.
A sick disgust came over him. Bandini's head was no longer connected to his body. The center gunman had died from a diagonal slash across his chest. He hadn't even got a shot off, so surprised had he been when Aya leapt forward. The last man, the underling who'd followed Bandini out the lighted doorway in back, lay face down, punctured through his back. He'd been trying to flee.
"Is this how it is?" Yohji asked.
Aya looked at him. "We are the hunters of the night. Beasts such as these are who we hunt."
Yohji clenched his fists. "They're people, Aya. Calling them beasts doesn't change that fact. We killed people tonight and…"
He stopped as Aya raised a hand for silence.
Straining his ears, he heard it too, the soft sound of crying. Looking over at Aya, he saw the man's eyes narrowed in concentration.
"It's coming from back there." Aya nodded toward the lighted doorway Bandini had left open. He lowered his hand and set off, katana at his side.
Yohji sighed, and followed.
The crying grew louder as they passed the threshold and entered the room. A round table with cards on it dominated the area. A bowl of pretzels lay in the center of the table, and empty beer cans littered the ground. Cheap folding chairs and a battered sofa next to a small refrigerator completed the furnishings.
Two closed doors set into the far wall gave them two choices.
But the sobbing was coming from behind only one of the doors. Knowing it could be a trap, Yohji took a defensive stance behind Aya, and allowed him to kick open the door, which splintered at the edge, a sign that the lock was breached.
A pint sized opponent hurtled at Aya from the right hand side, Yohji moved left and into the room to give Aya space to maneuver his sword, but also to guard against any further threats coming their way.
As he moved he got a better look at the small body coming at them, metal object in hand.
"Aya, no!" he managed to cry out.
The red head was already gearing back his reaction. Dropping the sword, he hit with his elbow instead of the blade, and sent the small boy flying in one piece instead of two. The kid hit the ground with a grunt and dropped what looked like a long nail or spike.
The kid couldn't have been more than nine or ten years old. He was cursing though, not crying.
Yohji's eyes, adjusted to the darkened room, took in the sight. The room was set up as a dormitory. Cheap, plain beds lined both walls, five on each side, their footboards about three feet across from each other, creating a center aisle. On the bed furthest away sat three little girls, the tallest one with her arms around the shoulders of two smaller ones. The smallest of all was the one crying.
From the light streaming through the doorway behind him, Yohji saw that the three girls were dressed in what looked like their underwear, and not much else. The boy writhing on the floor was dressed in shorts and a dirty t-shirt.
Letting Aya handle the boy, Yohji relaxed his stance so he'd look as non-frightening as possible, and walked over to them.
The oldest girl immediately tightened her grip on the other two girls' shoulders. "You can't have them," she told him fiercely. "I'll go again, but you can't have them."
Go again? What was the girl talking about? Then it clicked. The underwear, the locked door, the beds. Child prostitution.
The horror of it caused bile to rise up in Yohji's throat. It must have shown on his face because the girl turned her head away and buried her face in the smaller child's hair.
"I'm not…I wouldn't…" Yohji took a deep breath and started again. "I'm Yohji. What's your name?"
The girl peeped up at him with big hazel eyes from beneath bangs that needed trimming. She stared at him for quite a while before she answered. "I'm Sara. This is Rachel and Hannah." Two other pairs of hazel eyes, one filled with tears, regarded him warily.
"I see." Yohji smiled reassuringly, but his smile just seemed to make them more tense, so he let it drop. "Where are your mom and dad?"
"Daddy died," said the middle child. Hannah, wasn't that her name? "He died and we had to go live in a motel."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Yohji said automatically. "And your mom?"
"She couldn't stop them." Sara turned her hazel eyes inward on a painful memory. "They came into our room and they hit her and they took us. She tried to stop them, but she couldn't."
The youngest girl, Rachel, began to wail again, and Sara took her arm from around Hannah so that she could cradle her youngest sister in both. Hannah reached out for her sister as well, and Yohji left them huddled together. He knew if he tried to pat them on the shoulder or touch them in any way, it would only make it worse.
Drifting back to where Aya had the boy seated on a bed, holding his stomach where Aya's elbow had connected. Coming closer, he listened in on their conversation.
"How did you end up here?" Aya was asking.
"They came to where Ed and I were staying with a bunch of other kids."
"Ed?" asked Yohji, conscious that he'd missed part of the boy's story.
"He's my brother," the kid said, his sharp eyes taking Yohji in. "We ran away together."
"What happened then?" Aya asked calmly, not bothering to acknowledge Yohji's presence.
"I was asleep when they came in. All the other kids ran away, but they caught me. Ed was out getting food or something." The boy shrugged. He was a street kid; he didn't really have to spell out what his brother was doing to survive. Yohji felt sick all over again.
"He came back when they were dragging me to the car. He tried to fight them, but they hit him on the head with a gun. He fell down and didn't get up. I think he's dead." The boy's voice was matter of fact, but his eyes betrayed his grief.
"I'm going to kill them. I'm going to kill them all," he bowed his head and muttered in a voice chillingly adult for someone his age.
Yohji and Aya exchanged a look. Revenge? Justice? How could they blame the kid for wanting to do what they'd just done? Bandini's crime was so horrific, it beggared the imagination. He thought back to the little girls huddled behind him. He had to know.
"Those men, did they…?"
The kid's head shot up, and an angry look appeared in his eye. "Not me. Ed always said I should fight if anyone tried anything. He always protected me. Besides, I just got here yesterday."
"And the others?" Yohji nodded back at Sara, Rachel, and Hannah.
The kid smirked, with a male child's contempt for mere girls. "They're stupid. All the little ones ever do is cry, and Sara won't tell them what's going to happen. They took her out the first night I came here, but they brought her back. She kept screaming at them. Like that's gonna help." His eyes grew cold, obviously thinking about what would help.
It was like watching the last light of a sunset dying away as the darkness of night took over.
Yohji shuddered. Kids shouldn't have that look. No one should. This life wasn't his anymore. He'd killed tonight, and it was justified. Bandini and his men would no longer prey on innocent children, but he would no longer prey on animals like them.
He was going back to Asuka. He would have children with her and protect them to the death if he had to, but he wouldn't go cruising the cesspits and back alleys of the world to hunt down scum. He'd built a life with her, promised to love and honor her. If he'd made any promises in the life he had before, he didn't remember them. As soon as the children were safe and Aya was back at Gretchen's apartment, he'd be leaving.
He was going back to Asuka, and to sanity.
The night would belong once again to the hunters, but he would not be a part of it anymore. He'd paid his debt to Aya, and now he was going home.
TO BE CONTINUED (EPILOGUE CHAPTER IS ON ITS WAY)
Note to Reviewers:
Anendee – I'm glad you're liking Hitomi and Gretchen. I wish I was all efficient and competent like Hitomi, but I'm afraid I'm more of a Gretchen – including the tendency to trip over my own words and embarrass myself! Like you, I wasn't really a huge fan of Yohji's either until he lost his memory in Gluhen and forgot to be such a womanizing jerk! I thought the way they portrayed him with Asuka was really sweet, because it showed that he could have been a nice, normal, monogamous guy if life hadn't thrown him a few curve balls. I like Yohji the amnesiac far better than the Yohji who chased everything in a skirt between the ages of 18 – 30! Bad Yohji! Down boy! So anyhow, I'm keeping him the way I prefer him.
Kim – Thanks for the review! As for Aya and Gretchen…stay tuned, you'll find out in the epilogue.
Elven-girl10 – No chance of Yohji going back to his womanizing ways! He's grown up and is well past the 'sewing his wild oats' stage. Even in Gluhen, the accident gave him a second chance at monogamous happiness. I've just built on that. I'd rather eat glass than screw that up for him!
Thanks again to everyone who reviewed chapter two (Dane, Nekotsuki, Heta Noitio, etc.)