Nanashi - h t t p / n a n a s h i - i n c . n e t
FanFictiondotnet - pen: Lady Dragon
MediaMinerdotorg - pen: LadyDragon
Warning: Technically speaking this fic contains shotakon, yoai, shounen ai, angst, and possibly a lil OOC-ness. If that hasn't scared you off then please do continue reading.
Disclaimer: I have yet to pull out an official document that reads: "Ye now owns the rights to Weiß Kreuz and all characters therin" from inside a Cracker-Jack box.
Author's Notes: Well I have let this story sit for quite some time untouched and for that I apologize immensely. My muse has run off long ago and my beta reader even longer still. However I will not give up (shakes fist determinedly) and I hope you the readers haven't either. This chapter is unbearably short in comparison with the other chapters but I wanted to get a little bit more of Nagi's past and his way of thinking out before I progressed the story further. It is important for the story's plot that the readers be able to understand where he is coming from and I just didn't feel that there was enough background in the story yet to do this. There will be more flash backs and snippets of his past along with Ran's in the chapters to come, but this part I thought was essential.
One More Thing!
Special Thanks to: Rita, Dalamar the Dark, Koril Dragonic, Kyra, Jay Kamiya, Misura, NieA, Bulma Greenleaf, Sisithewestwitch, Dana a.k.a. Kudou Setsuna, xCrsuhx, klyukaizer, Yanagi-sen, Mikaesu, Taline, and Alli4 for your wonderful reviews.
My apologies if I missed anyone. ' has some people's reviews registered for chapter number four, which is just now being typed so I'm not sure who reviewed what chapter and when. O.O;
The Prodigal Child
by Lady Dragon
Chapter 4
To the casual observer it might appear that I was asleep, but I wasn't not really anyway. Since I was four years old I've never been able to sleep deeply unless I've been completely pumped full of drugs. Before I meet Crawford and he brought me to the institute I had learned to survive with a minimal amount of sleep. Of course getting by with little sleep doesn't do one much good if they're a heavy sleeper. I learned this first hand when I was a kid.
It had been raining non stop for days, heavy showers that immediately drenched a person in seconds rained down upon the city off and on throughout the day and most of the night. When it wasn't pouring outside there was a fine and constant drizzle that helped to set the chill in a person's bones. The weather dampened everyone's moods, there wasn't a person who trudged along gloomily to their destination. Those that could call in sick or use vacation time did so in order to avoid having to venture out into such bleak weather. I was about four years old then, my parents had kicked me out onto the streets a few weeks prior too and it was a miracle that I had survived that long. But then again, I am hell spawn so maybe it wasn't too surprising that I had managed to survive that long living on the fringes of society.
Normally I shunned human contact, fearing that everybody would eventually see me as my parents had seen me, a possessed and evil creature, Satan's child. I scrounged meals from the dumpsters in the alleys behind restaurants, sometimes I was fortunate enough to find food that vaguely resembled a meal that would have been sat down in front of me when I was at home. Most of the time though I made do with whatever was left over from the scrounging of the city's other derelicts; which to say wasn't much. I could have used my powers to defend myself, to procure a decent meal, but I was immensely afraid of them.
So that bleak week found me huddled in a corner of an abandoned apartment complex, squatting beneath a staircase and surrounded by the lumbering shapes of the other homeless prowlers that had taken refuge there as well. A few children my age and older were scattered about as well as a few women. The majority of the people there though had a dangerous and predatory air about them that sent shivers down my spine. They were the sort that I normally wouldn't have gone within twelve feet of yet here I was forced to share living space with them in lieu of sleeping out in the rain. I might have been a child still, a child who had hardly spent anytime living on the streets, yet I knew that those who went to sleep in the rain never woke up.
By nightfall my eyes were drooping shut. The combination of stress, fear, and cold had left me exhausted and in dire need of sleep. Somewhere in the dark room a woman began to sing softly, the words I did not understand but the melody was soothing, before I knew it I had fallen asleep beneath the stairs. I was awoken later that night to a confusing scene. The cold and dark room that was illuminated only by the brief flashes of lightening had become a fiery inferno. The flames from the fire cast the remaining figures into startling relief. A large dark puddle was stretching out to my hiding spot it's source, the bodies of two boys a few years older than me. Screams sliced through the air and in a panic I flew from my hiding place hell bent on getting as far away from this madness as possible. As I ran my foot caught on some of the debris strewn across the floor. I landed with a thud, the air completely knocked out of me. Before I could even stagger back to my feet a large hand seized me by the back of my neck and hauled me straight up into the air.
My vision blurred for a moment before coming back into focus, I smelled the man's foul breath long before I was able to focus on his face. The words he spoke had no meaning to me, only the menace in them.
I remember him shaking me for a moment before tossing me, my back colliding with one of the few walls still standing. Beyond the man I saw the object that had tripped me and alerted the brute to my existence. There before me lay the unmoving body of a woman, her clothes ripped away and her neck bent at an unnatural angle. I couldn't help but wonder if she was the one who had been singing and who had unwittingly lulled me into a deep and peaceful sleep. My thoughts and gaze were wrenched away from her as the miscreant approached me, a maniacal gleam in his single eye.
What happened then I'll never be sure of, all I know for certain is that sometime later I found myself in the town's plaza with no recollection of how I had gotten there and in the state that I was in. The decent and upright citizens steered clear of the little boy hunched down by the fountain in the plaza completely and utterly drenched in blood. There I remained for a few minutes trying to get my bearings before I heard the shrill whistle of a police officer and the hurried footsteps that announced their swift approach. I bolted from the plaza, down the many twisted and narrow alleyways until I found a loose manhole cover and slid into the City's sewers. There I discovered that although I was covered from head to toe in blood, there was no apparent wound on my person. The memories I had of that frightful night came rushing back, but with them no true answers as to how I came to be in the plaza, covered in blood, came to me.
Days later I learned that the apartment building I had been in had burnt to the ground that night, despite the torrential rains. Firefighters had stumbled upon numerous carcasses of the squatters that had been caught up in the blaze. That incident occurred two days before that eventful day in the plaza.
When I was at Rosencrantz I learned that using a large amount of raw power that the body is unaccustomed to can cause the user's body to shut down, the mind to blank out hours and whole days as the body struggles to right itself.
Whatever the case the incident served to teach me one thing that I never forgot. It taught me that a person who sleeps deeply will most likely never awake again. In the following months on the street until Crawford's discovery of me the ability to sleep lightly and to come fully awake at the slightest noise served me well. It served me better while I was at the institute and in my years with Schwarz.
So when the door to my hospital room opened I awoke instantly. My breathing pattern never fluctuated and no movements betrayed my awakening, I kept my eyes closed as the presence fully entered the room and shut the door. It remained by the door, seemingly surveying it's surroundings and the inhabitant. I struggled mentally to find a name for the presence that I felt, yet I drew a blank, despite this fact I sensed no malice and suspected it was yet another nurse or doctor.
So imagine my surprise when my visitor spoke from beside my bed in a voice that could only belong to one person.
"I know you're awake Naoe."
TBC
As we speak I am going back over the past chapters and refurbishing them, if you want you can re-read them, but aside from grammar errors and modified lines nothing major will be changed.
Last updated: Friday August 12, 2005