Okay, here's chapter three, I hope I still have all of your attention. You won't find the Hunter mentioned much in this chapter, except for a tiny scene. By the way, could somebody tell me the names of Nagira's employees? That is one of the things I could not find, and I don't have the series on DVD like I had wanted originally. Thanks in advance.

WITCH HUNTER ROBIN: And the White Smoke Shall Rise.

"I can hardly believe they are still alive," Michael whispered to Kin, slowly eating a donut as he looked at his computer screen. It had only been four days since he had met with Amon and Robin at Harry's.

"I suggest that you keep your voice down if you want to keep it a secret," Kin snarled at the younger man. The former police officer and newest member of the STN-J looked at his paperwork, and frowned. Between the revelation of Robin and Amon still being alive and the STN-J's hunt for the Witch Hashi Motokita, he hadn't slept in a while. The group nearly got Motokita during a stakeout at the opera house, but someone seemed to have tipped him off that they were there.

Kosaka is a very good man, but unfortunately he's not the top of the chain in the leadership of the STN-J. That's what that girl, Robin had said. Amon had also said that there were worse people still in power in the STN-J and Solomon itself, than what Zaizen had been.

Kin frowned and felt his pulse race. That man, Amon, who did he think he was? Are you prepared to sell your soul to the devil himself, if the time comes, or have you already done so? Kin didn't know much about the man, but the few minutes had spent chatting with him hadn't been very fun.

Who is he, to be judging me, anyway?

The office was mostly empty except for Michael, and Kin, and a few people who were scrambling around like human ants, busy to please the queen and the colony. In a way Kin felt he should be happy that he was not working in a cubicle, that his work space was open and allowed him space to breathe.

Then a creeping sensation trickled up his back. He turned around and looked at a dozen gray silver surveillance cams. They were supposed to be there to guard and protect the workers, to protect people like Kin. But that damned man's words kept flowing through his mind. There are worse people still very much in power that would love to see us dead.

"Hey, I wasn't that loud," Michael snapped, still as quietly as he could. "It just that I haven't," he stopped and followed Kin's gaze to the cameras. Suddenly a tinge of dread, and the feeling of having the conscious computer overlord, Skynet, from the Terminator movies, watching his every move, and listening to his every word, flooded him with fear.

Michael reached over for a piece of paper and wrote, "I see what you mean, I'll shut up now," on it, and handed it over to Kin. The older man chuckled and turned to the teenager, with a twinkle in his eye.

"Too bad that wasn't written by Doujima, that would be a first," he whispered. Michael looked at him for a moment and smirked.

"What would be a first is getting her to show up on time, stay when she's supposed to, and keep her away from the shopping malls." The two men laughed wildly for a few minutes, before standing up. It was late and neither had eaten dinner yet. Turning off their computers, and placing their papers in a safety room, they bid each other good night and walked toward their separate destinations.

Two crimson eyes watched the pair leave the office, from their owners own office, high above the war room. The shadow's cameras were keeping track of each and every word that they had said, tracked their body temperatures as they looked around at the cameras, and watched them leave for the night.

The crimson eyes seemed to brim with hellish, demonic delight as the men's body temperatures seemed to grow high, as their voices seemed to drop to subhuman audible levels. They feared what might be heard, and that was good. The individual could use fear, had used it many times in the past, and it proved in the end to be very acceptable.

The large, shadowy figure still wasn't sure who, or what the men were talking about with a one hundred percent determination, but it could guess. And there were other shadows who were above it, who would enjoy their servant's little bits and pieces of information.

Speaking of which, the shadow thought, as it picked up a cell phone and traced its fingers over the numbers it needed to access, it was time to move the operation into a new direction. Its overseers had ordered it to remove a certain obstacle, in their plans, and it had placed an agent in that obstacle's court.

It waited for a moment, and then the agent answered the phone. "It's time to clip the Olive branch," it hissed. It waited for acknowledgement, and then closed the phone. The black night of the Hunters, and the future of a new, purer, and more enriched humanity, was only three months from arriving. Once the shadow knew that the "Devil's Child" was alive, it would contact another agent, one that had been thrilled with the slaughter of the "animals" in the American Continents, and have her arrive to begin the ultimate hunt, though it probably figured that, with no major contacts in two weeks, the agent would get bored of that publian sewer infected land, and come home to a more civilized people, to look for the devils that hid in human skin here. Either way was fine for the shadow. The agent, like all the others was an instrument, one that would bring ever lasting peace.

Robin sat in the chair, watching the television. It was focused on the Vatican and the pope, or rather than man who had been pope. Yesterday Pope Zephyrinus II had been found dead at his desk, his face overblown like a ripe pumpkin. It was obvious that he had been poisoned, but no one could imagine who would do such a thing, as it was an inside job.

The fifteen year old woman sat, her fingers frantically passing each golden Rosary bead from one to the next. She remembered meeting the seventy year old man, as Father Juliano introduced her to him one time when he visited her at the convent. He had been such a sweet person, very loving and understanding of people's problems and differences. The right wing elites felt very betrayed with his election, but Robin knew that there were those on the left wing who felt dismayed when Pope Philip would not reverse millennia of Catholic teachings on certain positions, despite all the new invocations he was bringing forth. He was called the pope of the 21st Century, with the heart of a Middle Ages Pontiff, one that would make Leo X, pope during the beginnings of Protestant Reform, proud.

"I just don't understand," she mussed between Hail Mary's. "Who could have killed him?"

"Robin," Amon snapped, his dark chocolate brown eyes glaring at her, "you need to focus." His tone was tight and strong a steel. The young witch turned her eyes up at him and cringed for one of the first times since they met. Then she steadied herself, and glared back.

Amon turned from her and sighed. Witches weren't really mystical, as they were mutations, mutations that had been living right besides "normal" people, for at least two thousand, five hundred years. People thought at first they were gods, and thus many corrupted witches decided that it benefited everyone to take that title. Soon, as the first wave of the mutant humans began to die off, and Judeo-Christian came to center stage, and they labeled the remaining mutants with the devil. A thousand in a half years later, religious influence began to decline, and as persecution ended, the mutant humans began to grow in size and power once again. Still, Amon was positive that humanity was not ready to learn that eventually they would be replaced in the power structure as much as the Neanderthal man thought of the appearance of Homo sapiens. Except the Neanderthals did not have any weapons to try to whack Homo sapiens off the stage and existence completely.

"Robin, I'm sorry about the pope. I'm sure he was a good person," Amon began.

"Yes, he was," Robin snapped, her emerald green eyes seemed incandescent with righteous fury.

"Robin, calm down," Amon snapped. "I don't mean to be disrespectful, but we have to remember, there are greater dangers to us, also. I wont do you any good to be melancholic for him, if our enemies us that, to kill you too."

Robin looked down at her feet and sighed. She was mad at what he had said, but there was truth in his words. She would have to wait and figure out one mystery at a time if she was going to stay sane, or alive. "Allow me to finish my prayers first, then I will join you," she said in a low whisper.

Amon looked at her for a moment, and then smiled, "Very well." He turned and walked out of the room, leaving the girl to her Hail Mary's and Our Father's. He walked down the hall, and opened another door, leaving behind the meticulously clean medical looking apartments and corridors, and into the littered, and smoke filled air of his step brother's office.

Nagira looked a little like his younger brother, but there were still enough differences that distinguished them from the other. Amon almost always wore black, and seemed to have a black cloud follow him wherever he went, where Nagira seemed to have a massively sick affliction to the color white, and seemed so upbeat and laid back that one would think he was doing nothing back smoking bogies, and gone so much from the office, his employee's thought that he was constantly in the bummer tent. Amon's hair was long, and hung from his shoulders at times, where Nagira sported a very Elvis like hairdo.

"So, how is our little princess?" he said in his laid back tone. He smiled and leaned back against a wall, leaning his legs on his desk.

"Boss, will you grow up!" his female assistant snarled, looking as if she were suffering from both labor and hemorrhoids at the same time.

Nagira looked over at her and flashed one of his famous toothy smiles. Sometimes it seemed to Amon that he enjoyed driving her nuts. "Relax okay?"

"How can we relax when we're harboring fugitives," she snarled, her skin growing red.

Nagira waved her off, and turned back to Amon. "So little brother, you never answered my question, how is Robin doing?"

"Fine for the most part," Amon said bluntly.

"But. . .?" Despite his best attempts there were very little things that Amon could hide from his step brother. There were a few things that the younger man could keep quiet about, things he held tight to his chest, but mostly his elder sibling could unlock his mind in ways others simply could not.

"But, she seems preoccupied these last two days with the death of the pope," the other man said with a sigh.

"The mind of a paranoid," Nagira sighed. "She sees enemies in every shadow that crosses her path."

"And you wouldn't?" Amon snapped. "Or have you forgotten who the enemy is?"

Nagira pulled his legs off of his desk and stood to stare his brother in the eyes in such a flash of movement, he could have been accused of having supernatural powers. "There aren't many things I forget, though I'd very much like to," he said in a hard and tightly controlled whisper.

Amon stared at his brother for a moment more, fully aware of Nagira's employees watching the exchange. He turned a few minutes later, his black overcoat's flaps and folds swirling in the air. "What have you found out about this hunter in America, or those behind her?" he asked his tone both harder and colder in stone.

"Other than the fact that she's a certified, lunatic, fanatic, not much," Nagira hissed, "The one surviving witch who I sent a person to interview spoke cryptically of the angel of fire, before she died in the hospital of unknown causes."

"The angel of fire? What does that mean?" Amon said out loud, to no one in particular.

"Could mean some kind of code name, could be what the hunter looked like to the witch during the encounter," Nagira said, naming off ideas as they raced through his mind at lightning speed. "Maybe it was what the hunter called herself. I really don't know."

"There might be someone at the STN-J, who might know," Amon said.

"But if the enemy is connected to the hunter, that might put Michael in danger," Robin said, making her protector jump as she walked up behind him.

"How long have you been there?" Amon said, turning to the girl, his heart racing at how near she was. He felt himself flush, and slightly turn away as she tried to put a hand on his cheek.

"Long enough," she said, lowering her head.

"Does the name, angel of fire mean anything to you?" Nagira asked.

Robin looked at the other man and frowned, biting her lower lip. "It seems that I heard of it once or twice while I was learning Catechism. But I can't remember what it was right now."

Amon sighed and shook his head, turning slightly to the girl so his black hair was highlighted by the sun shining through Nagira's office windows. "That's fine, don't worry about it," he said softly. He reluctantly put a hand on her shoulder and allowed himself to smile. "Michael might be our only chance to learn about this, at the moment. He's done dangerous things before, and gotten out safely, and that was when he was working for Zaizen, with Director Kosaka, he might have a chance of getting the information we need, without the enemy peering over his shoulder that much."

"That might put Director Kosaka under fire though," Robin said nervously.

Amon looked at her and chuckled. "Well, he's done some things the higher ups aren't very happy about either, and somehow managed to evade the bullet. Both of them are tough men, Robin. I'm sure they'll take care not to rough up the water too much."

"It might mean revealing ourselves to the director, to ask Michael to do this," Robin continued to protest.

"Don't fool yourself, Robin. I don't doubt that Kosaka knows we're alive, but he knows the stakes, and has decided to wait until we decide to reveal the fact." He smiled at her shocked face and chuckled again. I don't remember the last time I laughed like this. "The threat was allowing the others to get the hopes up, and start talking when they shouldn't."

"Particularly Doujima, am I right little brother?" Nagira cackled, leaning against his desk with his elbows. His female employee hissed, which only made his grin widen.

Amon glared at the older man, but then lowered his shoulders, and nodded. "And even if it means not letting Kosaka know quite yet, Michael's been our eyes and ears before, under Zaizen."

"I, I suppose that's true," she said, stuttering on each word as she bit her finger nails.

"So it's settled. Let's see what Michael can dig up," Amon said. With one swift motion he pulled his cell phone from his coat's pocket and dialed the numbers.

Michael studied his computer, watching the colored blimps scurry around the screen. With any other teenager, he could have been playing a video game, and sometimes to keep his sanity, that's what he pretended he was doing. Instead, each of those blimps on the screen represented one of his co-workers, with the exception of a slightly larger blue blimp. That was a witch from Argentina with connections to Motokita.

"Sakaki, he's going around the corner, near the convenience store on Ranaka Road," he said into his mobile ear phone. "He should be just a few minutes from where you are."

"I'll be ready, thanks Michael," the other man said, and the teenager could hear him click his gun, ready to fire.

As he watched the screen, Michael's mind began to wander from Mauricio Rogeliez's, aka Mukhtar Ben Mohammed's, aka the Raven's, hunt. He was a petty criminal, and an even pettier witch, but he had connections to an Islamic terrorist cell in Japan, and was wanted by a few other countries. If the STN-J didn't get him, someone else would, and another chance to get to Motokita would be gone.

It was three weeks already since Amon had called in the favor. Somehow he had managed to use his cell phone, and tap directly into Michael's computer, but that was not surprising to the teen. The technology to do such a thing was available, and Amon was a resourceful person. Still it had irritated the boy that he could not, as of yet, find the reference that he had been asked to find.

It wasn't as if there hadn't been any reference to the "angel of fire" on the net. The problem was, there were billions of sites that came up due to the inquiry. A small sample included Biblical texts, non canonical texts, cult groups, and even a porn site, here or there. Michael had enjoyed those sites, and had hoped that the information would come from cult sites, or even some more religious site, but so far there was nothing definitive. It was as if someone on the inside knew of the name, and was blocking certain sites from his eyes.

One site in particular caught his attention, a conspiracy theorist group, that claimed that the reign of the papacy was coming to a close, and that one of the popes listed on their sites would be murdered by the cult of the ANGELIC FIRE, only to be replaced with a pope with ties to the east. That site closed down eight years ago, and it appears the most resent of updated writings of the cult were older than that, at least twenty years ago, during the last years of the reign of Pope Paul VI. Interesting enough, Michael only got to visit that site once, as when he tried again, for some reason it had been blocked by "anti-virus" programs that had been put into the STN-J's computer network the day after he visited it.

"Michael, what the hell!" Sakaki screeched, bringing back to reality. "Where are you?"

He stumbled over his words at first, and then composed himself. "What happened?" he asked, looking at his computer screen. The larger blimp had managed to double back and eluded Sakaki just seconds before he could be encountered, as if he knew Haruto was there. "He's heading for a car dealership," he said glaring at the screen.

"I see him," Doujima squealed, "he's coming right at me." The computer screen acknowledged this fact.

Just as the blimp reached the dealership, it did a double take, and seemed to do a back flip, rushing in the other direction. He saw her. Michael slammed his fist into his desk and looked over to Kin, who was just coming into the room. His skin was white, and he was shaking all over, and had bits of lunch over his lower lip, but he nodded to Michael and took his place.

"Kin, don't be stupid, if you're sick, stay in bed," he said, forgetting that he had his phone still plugged into the computer.

"Will you please focus, Michael," Karasuma chided him. "And Kin, get back to bed, devotion to duty is one thing, but don't get obsessive on us."

"I said I'm fine," Kin snarled, "and the suspect just passed Doujima. If she turnsto a right angle and fires, she should have him."

Michael frowned and looked at his computer screen. The big blimp was still fleeing in the direction it had been going after seeing her. "You're computer in on the fritz," he said.

"The witch can screw with a person's mind, and electronic surveillance," Kin said, picking up a piece of paper. He looked ready to blow more chunks, but in order to catch the creep, he forced himself to swallow it back down. He turned back and looked at the screen, trust me Doujima, turn and fire. You'll get him." A second went by, and then they could hear bullets being shot, first from one gun, and then by two, as Karasuma reached the scene. Kin and Michael heard a man scream in pain, and then could hear him collapse to the ground.

Kin looked at Michael, a weak lopsided grin on his face. "It pays to do your bathroom reading," he said in a half chuckle. A moment later his face turned from chalky white, to sea green. A few milliseconds later, he had dropped the papers, and went zooming toward the bathrooms.

"Michael, we got him," Karasuma's voice echoed into the boy's ear. "Tell Kin thanks, and make sure he gets back to bed." Karasuma, making jokes? "And let the Factory know that the suspect is ready to be picked up."

"And tell Kin that if he pukes in the hall, I'm not going to clean it up," Doujima said in a sing songy tone.

"You got it," Michael said. He alerted the Factory, one that was no longer using the essence of witches, to make Orbo, or so they said, and then began to turn off his computer. On a hunch he quickly reversed the decision and looked up his email. What he saw might his eyes grow so wide, he thought he was going to have a stroke.

It was a live news feed at the Vatican. Half an hour ago, the cardinals had chosen the next person to lead to lead their one billion followers. To the shock of many, many people it was a shock that it was not Cardinal Romano, or Cardinal Scolli. In fact, it wasn't a cardinal at all! Or even a bishop!

Michael could hardly swallow as he watched the elderly man with scruffy side burns, thick hair as white as the puffs of smoke still trailing from the chimney. His clothes were white and red, and he waved briefly at the people with a sad, thin, smile gracing his lips.

"Pope Lando II? I didn't even know there was Pope Lando I," Kin nearly made Michael leap out of his skin. The teenager turned to the older man, his face greener than what Kin's had been just moments ago. "Damn, who's the sick one?" he said with a chortle.

"Don't do that," he snapped.

"So, what's so distressing about this guy being pope?" Kin leaned over and narrowed his eyes. "He seems like an Italian, most of the popes have been anyway, haven't they?"

"Except I never knew any of the other's before," Michael quipped.

Kin frowned further and looked at the boy, starting to catch on. "You, know him then?"

"Yes, I do, not very personally, but I've spoken to him once or twice. Robin knows him extremely well, almost like a grandfather, in fact, that's not all that far off."

"So then, who the hell is he?" Kin roared.

"Father Juliano?" Robin took a step from the television, the blood fleeing her body, as if she had somehow became unholy. Sweat poured down her forehead and wetted her plain black Victorian dress. Her green eyes glazing over as each second her confessor and "grandfather" stood on the balcony waving to the thousands of adoring followers.

"Father Juliano was elected pope?" Amon gently attempted to push her aside, and failing to do so, simply watched besides her. He began tapping his finger on his chest and slowly became lost in thought. Ever since the previous pope had been pronounced dead, Robin had seemed to insist that there was more at work here than a simple death. Even Harry could not console her grief and suspicion. Now, with her "grandfather" the father of her mother, standing there as the new pope, never having been made a cardinal, or a bishop for that matter, Amon began to feel as if she might have been right all the time.

"They want to draw us out," she said in a whisper. "I don't know how they plan on using him to do it, but the enemy wants to draw us out in a battle."

"You are probably right," Amon said slowly. In fact he knew that she was right. There had been non cardinals made pope before, as well as a non bishop or two, and John XII was barely eighteen years when he was made a pope, the cardinals keeping a promise to his father to do so. He hadn't been a very good pope, and Amon was sure Fr. Juliano would be far better to fill those shoes than him, but there was still an air of sinister intensions all around this.

"I do not think we should take the bait, no matter what they put on the hook, until we know who they are." He looked at the girl and felt his shoulders drop. He knew that was exactly what she was thinking of doing. "Robin, too many lives are depending on us to stay in the shadows for a little while longer. She looked up at him and nodded.

Robin sat in her room, late at night, pulling her legs into her chest. In front of her she was watching the rebroadcast of Fr. Juliano's election. There were numerous stations trying to dig far into his background, and into his past, some getting a few things right, most of them only announcing speculations.

The light from the television danced along the dark corners of her room, like a ballet of colors and shades. Behind the girl the white wall shimmered with whites and grays, and fine cadet blues.

"Fr. Juliano, why?" she asked with teary emerald eyes. "Oh Lord, how could this happen?"