Like cowboys facing off in a cheesy, low budget western, the German mindwhore and Japanese playboy glared each other down with equal expressions of horror and amusement. Finally, Yohji, who was suddenly painfully sober, rubbed at the edge of his nose and graciously asked, "What's with the hair? Get in a fight with a bleach bottle?"
Schuldig's lip immediately curled up one side of his face, not lacking his usual sadistic smoothness he icily returned Yohji's question with one of his own. "What's the matter, kitty? Got bored with Fujimaya's brain dead sister and decided to come here and try something that moved?"
Yohji's color drained and for a moment Schuldig was filled with a sense of sick pleasure, a temporary warmth that drove away the sting Crawford's fist left on his face and heart. His mouth opened for another jab but snapped shut in agony as Yohji suddenly moved forward and gave his injured face a good hard poke.
"What happened here? I thought you psychic guys could predict bullets and dodge and teleport and..." Balinese urped feeling his last two drinks coming back up on him. He offered a dull smile and forced the bile down. "...and throw blue fireballs from yer ass!"
Jade eyes widen as Schuldig was forced to catch the damn drunkard by the shoulder or have him fall head first into his lap. A position he normally wouldn't have denied to anyone but Dipshit Fucking Kudoh. "No, kitty, that was William Wallace. Or the Irish. Or something. Fuck, I don't know, Farfie rented that movie and fast forward to all of the horse killing parts."
He might have gone on but was suddenly blessed with a bemused stare from his enemy indicating that he, Schuldig, had either grown a second head, sprouted wings, announced that he was the One, the Way, the Light of Salvation, or some other spunky metaphor relating to those kind of odd...looks.
"William...who?" The Eurasian asked, then, as if suddenly noticing that he was half slumped against Schuldig's chest, drew back with a meep. "Stop trying to control my body!"
Yohji let out a wail of a nervous laugh to fan out any homoerotic indications their previous stance might have brought to mind as if anyone in the bar cared or weren't already engaged in such indications or worse themselves. Yohji slapped the bar table for good measure, getting his hand sloshed in that mysterious yellow liquid Schuldig had been studying earlier.
"So," He asked after a bit, "are we going to kill each other or what?"
Schuldig shrugged, "How about we fuck like monkeys and just say we tried to kill each other? Winner's the one who screws the other unconscious and leaves him on a city bench with his underwear worn inside out."
Yohji seemed to agree with this. "Then... we should probably head to a dark alley! Bartender, our checks please!"
*
Fall was here. Schuldig almost didn't realize it until he found himself trotting down some nameless park with the dry leaves breaking under his feet. He used to take walks like this all the time, always alone, always after a fight with Crawford. But lately... he just didn't feel like leaving the house at all. No matter how bad he and Crawford had fought.
Schuldig didn't even want to get out of bed anymore...
Yohji walked solemnly beside him. The air was crisp and stale, their breaths came out in long, thin clouds. Even so, the former detective had his jacket, a wine colored leather, off his body and slung over one shoulder. Schuldig, in his warm clothing, still felt a chill and wondered if Kudoh was really so vain and idiotic that he would just walk around in the freezing night like that because it looked cool.
"I like the cold," Yohji admitted suddenly.
Schuldig sensed more in that statement and turned to study him. Their pace slowed. Yohji's expression had turned from one of somber thoughtfulness to bitter amusement. He turned and smiled at his sworn enemy.
"I figure... I'm going to be burning in hell someday, so I should enjoy the cold as much as I can now."
"...with reasoning skills like that, you must be related to Farfie."
Yohji blinked, honestly lost. "Who's Farfie?" His elbow hit Schuldig's arm. "Ex-girlfriend?"
"Who's Farfie??" Green lines of disgust ran down the German's face. "Farfie? BESERKER? Scary guy with eye patch? Kill God, mutilate, hurt, hurt, PAIN. You know... Farfie?"
Obliviously running into his archenemies hadn't sobered Dipshit Kudoh that much. The playboy's soft round lips formed quietly into a circle. "...oh! That guy with the acid and priest fetish! His name's Farfie?"
"...Farfarello."
"Berserker. Farfarello. You Americans have weird names. And weird nick names."
Schuldig's dark red eyebrow, the eyebrow thats color no longer matched his pathetically dyed hay blonde hair, lifted and twitched. "Americans? Why do you CHINKS always think we're all American?"
Yohji flew back, outraged. "Who're you calling a Chink?"
Schuldig exploded. "There's another continent besides North America on this GOD FORSAKEN planet, you know. It's called Europe... and Africa! And...and... What about Mexicans! They're from North America too! And...and... Canadians! HA. I could be Canadian!" He stormed away from Yohji, up an incline that led to a few trees and a sandbox a few yards off.
Yohji struggled after him, now very confused. "You're Canadian?"
"NO!" Schuldig screamed and fell down upon the wet, dying grass. "I'm German. JA? Notice the hideous German ACCENT. JA???"
Yohji flopped down beside him and rested his arms on his knees. What was going on? It was a Saturday night. He could be fucking some nameless sex addict raw on a diseased karaoke stage, and he was stuck here in some freezing park having a heated discussion on Caucasian nationalities with the pervert of Schwartz. "...I always thought you were from Brooklyn."
"What?" Schuldig's voice did an accurate impression of a hissing rabid cat.
Yohji held his hands up, "Joke. Joke. I'm not that stupid. But I thought Oracle and Beser...Far...Farfar... uh, Berserker, were Americans."
Schuldig sighed, "Farf's Irish."
"...ah." By then Yohji had lost all interest in caring about wherever these psychic annoyances had come from - hey, a foreigner was a foreigner, right? - and begun searching his pockets for his cigarette stash. "So, what's with the beauty marks?"
Schuldig pulled his own cancer stick from his coat pocket and stuck it in his mouth. "Do you know how many annoying Nippon's come up to me each week and ask in broken English: 'hello, may I very much try to practice English with you?' You think my accent's bad in YOUR language, you should hear me try to American it."
"Your face, Schwartz. What happened to your face?"
Schuldig glared, "Why? Jealous someone was able to make a hit on me and you weren't? Don't worry, kitty, you don't have any competition." His tone was mocking, a perfect mask to the nervousness that knotted in the pit of his stomach.
The wind blew and they both felt cold.
Yohji shrugged, "Heh. I just want to know what can hit someone who moves as fast as lighting." There was a perverted follow up to that comment, but Yohji wanted to maintain some semblance of seriousness and not persuade it.
"I may fuck fast, but all parties come out satisfied, pretty boy." Schuldig made the comment for him.
The wind and the cold was irritating his healing injuries.
"You're dancing around the question." The Eurasian pointed out.
His blood ran cold when Schuldig was suddenly towering over him, body moving with that inhuman speed that caught him and his team off-guard time and time again. The taller assassin smirked, smile broken on his purple face, though not lacking any of the usual cruelness Yohji was used to seeing on the battle field. In less than a second Schuldig had morphed from the temporal drinking/bitching buddy into Schwartz's deadly Mastermind.
Yohji should have realized he was playing with fire and would be burned.
"Balinese," Schuldig responded, "all we ever do is dance."
Yohji's mind tried to form a battle plan and then...
Schuldig was gone.
An unlit cigarette laid un Yohji's stomach. The playboy studied the butt before drawing it into his fingers and pulling out his lighter. The silver torch lit and made the embers flow. Yohji let the noxious smoke fill his lungs. He breathed out.
"...you didn't even let me tell you what I was doing in that shit hole." He muttered to the emptiness.
*
Nagi tried to trace Farfarello's outline in the pitch black cell square. "Farfie?" He whispered.
He received a grunt in reply, a soft, animal-like snort of a person just awaking and raising their head to follow the noise that aroused them. Nagi heard Farfarello shuffle into a sitting position, difficult and clumsy with the straight jacket on, and breathed normally.
"Farfie... with... Schuldig and Crawford... who's the bad guy...?"
The Irish man's amber eye widen. How amusing. To come to him with such a question. As if he was the voice of reason in their four person circus of insanity. His stomach growled and he remembered he was hungry.
"...Farfie..." Nagi pleaded again.
"Stupid Nagi..." He answered, his force strained as he flopped back onto his side, "...this story doesn't have a good guy."
*
Schuldig trudged up the stairs to their penthouse apartment feeling empty. Here he had snuck out against Crawford's better wishes to get sloshed, doped, and fucked, and he had done neither. Neither! And he had a near-intelligent, near-decent, conversation with a member of Weiss.
He felt dirty.
Fumbling with the keys, Schuldig plotted his course through the apartment. Pass the kitchen and dining room, to the shower, to his warm snuggly bed. The door flew open and he would have smiled had he not quickly realized that both his hands were still in his pockets vainly grabbing for his...
"Consider yourself lucky that Este considers you a valuable memeber of its psychic force and I therefore cannot *destroy* you for your insolence." Crawford, fingers wrapped around the door handle, calmly reminded.
Schuldig gawked as he was pulled.
A hand wrapped around the back of his poorly dyed hair and he felt something rip.
The last thing he saw before everything faded to gray was one of Farfarello's jackets and a syringe full of Farfarello's heavy medication on the table next to them.
God, he felt stupid.
Schuldig's lip immediately curled up one side of his face, not lacking his usual sadistic smoothness he icily returned Yohji's question with one of his own. "What's the matter, kitty? Got bored with Fujimaya's brain dead sister and decided to come here and try something that moved?"
Yohji's color drained and for a moment Schuldig was filled with a sense of sick pleasure, a temporary warmth that drove away the sting Crawford's fist left on his face and heart. His mouth opened for another jab but snapped shut in agony as Yohji suddenly moved forward and gave his injured face a good hard poke.
"What happened here? I thought you psychic guys could predict bullets and dodge and teleport and..." Balinese urped feeling his last two drinks coming back up on him. He offered a dull smile and forced the bile down. "...and throw blue fireballs from yer ass!"
Jade eyes widen as Schuldig was forced to catch the damn drunkard by the shoulder or have him fall head first into his lap. A position he normally wouldn't have denied to anyone but Dipshit Fucking Kudoh. "No, kitty, that was William Wallace. Or the Irish. Or something. Fuck, I don't know, Farfie rented that movie and fast forward to all of the horse killing parts."
He might have gone on but was suddenly blessed with a bemused stare from his enemy indicating that he, Schuldig, had either grown a second head, sprouted wings, announced that he was the One, the Way, the Light of Salvation, or some other spunky metaphor relating to those kind of odd...looks.
"William...who?" The Eurasian asked, then, as if suddenly noticing that he was half slumped against Schuldig's chest, drew back with a meep. "Stop trying to control my body!"
Yohji let out a wail of a nervous laugh to fan out any homoerotic indications their previous stance might have brought to mind as if anyone in the bar cared or weren't already engaged in such indications or worse themselves. Yohji slapped the bar table for good measure, getting his hand sloshed in that mysterious yellow liquid Schuldig had been studying earlier.
"So," He asked after a bit, "are we going to kill each other or what?"
Schuldig shrugged, "How about we fuck like monkeys and just say we tried to kill each other? Winner's the one who screws the other unconscious and leaves him on a city bench with his underwear worn inside out."
Yohji seemed to agree with this. "Then... we should probably head to a dark alley! Bartender, our checks please!"
*
Fall was here. Schuldig almost didn't realize it until he found himself trotting down some nameless park with the dry leaves breaking under his feet. He used to take walks like this all the time, always alone, always after a fight with Crawford. But lately... he just didn't feel like leaving the house at all. No matter how bad he and Crawford had fought.
Schuldig didn't even want to get out of bed anymore...
Yohji walked solemnly beside him. The air was crisp and stale, their breaths came out in long, thin clouds. Even so, the former detective had his jacket, a wine colored leather, off his body and slung over one shoulder. Schuldig, in his warm clothing, still felt a chill and wondered if Kudoh was really so vain and idiotic that he would just walk around in the freezing night like that because it looked cool.
"I like the cold," Yohji admitted suddenly.
Schuldig sensed more in that statement and turned to study him. Their pace slowed. Yohji's expression had turned from one of somber thoughtfulness to bitter amusement. He turned and smiled at his sworn enemy.
"I figure... I'm going to be burning in hell someday, so I should enjoy the cold as much as I can now."
"...with reasoning skills like that, you must be related to Farfie."
Yohji blinked, honestly lost. "Who's Farfie?" His elbow hit Schuldig's arm. "Ex-girlfriend?"
"Who's Farfie??" Green lines of disgust ran down the German's face. "Farfie? BESERKER? Scary guy with eye patch? Kill God, mutilate, hurt, hurt, PAIN. You know... Farfie?"
Obliviously running into his archenemies hadn't sobered Dipshit Kudoh that much. The playboy's soft round lips formed quietly into a circle. "...oh! That guy with the acid and priest fetish! His name's Farfie?"
"...Farfarello."
"Berserker. Farfarello. You Americans have weird names. And weird nick names."
Schuldig's dark red eyebrow, the eyebrow thats color no longer matched his pathetically dyed hay blonde hair, lifted and twitched. "Americans? Why do you CHINKS always think we're all American?"
Yohji flew back, outraged. "Who're you calling a Chink?"
Schuldig exploded. "There's another continent besides North America on this GOD FORSAKEN planet, you know. It's called Europe... and Africa! And...and... What about Mexicans! They're from North America too! And...and... Canadians! HA. I could be Canadian!" He stormed away from Yohji, up an incline that led to a few trees and a sandbox a few yards off.
Yohji struggled after him, now very confused. "You're Canadian?"
"NO!" Schuldig screamed and fell down upon the wet, dying grass. "I'm German. JA? Notice the hideous German ACCENT. JA???"
Yohji flopped down beside him and rested his arms on his knees. What was going on? It was a Saturday night. He could be fucking some nameless sex addict raw on a diseased karaoke stage, and he was stuck here in some freezing park having a heated discussion on Caucasian nationalities with the pervert of Schwartz. "...I always thought you were from Brooklyn."
"What?" Schuldig's voice did an accurate impression of a hissing rabid cat.
Yohji held his hands up, "Joke. Joke. I'm not that stupid. But I thought Oracle and Beser...Far...Farfar... uh, Berserker, were Americans."
Schuldig sighed, "Farf's Irish."
"...ah." By then Yohji had lost all interest in caring about wherever these psychic annoyances had come from - hey, a foreigner was a foreigner, right? - and begun searching his pockets for his cigarette stash. "So, what's with the beauty marks?"
Schuldig pulled his own cancer stick from his coat pocket and stuck it in his mouth. "Do you know how many annoying Nippon's come up to me each week and ask in broken English: 'hello, may I very much try to practice English with you?' You think my accent's bad in YOUR language, you should hear me try to American it."
"Your face, Schwartz. What happened to your face?"
Schuldig glared, "Why? Jealous someone was able to make a hit on me and you weren't? Don't worry, kitty, you don't have any competition." His tone was mocking, a perfect mask to the nervousness that knotted in the pit of his stomach.
The wind blew and they both felt cold.
Yohji shrugged, "Heh. I just want to know what can hit someone who moves as fast as lighting." There was a perverted follow up to that comment, but Yohji wanted to maintain some semblance of seriousness and not persuade it.
"I may fuck fast, but all parties come out satisfied, pretty boy." Schuldig made the comment for him.
The wind and the cold was irritating his healing injuries.
"You're dancing around the question." The Eurasian pointed out.
His blood ran cold when Schuldig was suddenly towering over him, body moving with that inhuman speed that caught him and his team off-guard time and time again. The taller assassin smirked, smile broken on his purple face, though not lacking any of the usual cruelness Yohji was used to seeing on the battle field. In less than a second Schuldig had morphed from the temporal drinking/bitching buddy into Schwartz's deadly Mastermind.
Yohji should have realized he was playing with fire and would be burned.
"Balinese," Schuldig responded, "all we ever do is dance."
Yohji's mind tried to form a battle plan and then...
Schuldig was gone.
An unlit cigarette laid un Yohji's stomach. The playboy studied the butt before drawing it into his fingers and pulling out his lighter. The silver torch lit and made the embers flow. Yohji let the noxious smoke fill his lungs. He breathed out.
"...you didn't even let me tell you what I was doing in that shit hole." He muttered to the emptiness.
*
Nagi tried to trace Farfarello's outline in the pitch black cell square. "Farfie?" He whispered.
He received a grunt in reply, a soft, animal-like snort of a person just awaking and raising their head to follow the noise that aroused them. Nagi heard Farfarello shuffle into a sitting position, difficult and clumsy with the straight jacket on, and breathed normally.
"Farfie... with... Schuldig and Crawford... who's the bad guy...?"
The Irish man's amber eye widen. How amusing. To come to him with such a question. As if he was the voice of reason in their four person circus of insanity. His stomach growled and he remembered he was hungry.
"...Farfie..." Nagi pleaded again.
"Stupid Nagi..." He answered, his force strained as he flopped back onto his side, "...this story doesn't have a good guy."
*
Schuldig trudged up the stairs to their penthouse apartment feeling empty. Here he had snuck out against Crawford's better wishes to get sloshed, doped, and fucked, and he had done neither. Neither! And he had a near-intelligent, near-decent, conversation with a member of Weiss.
He felt dirty.
Fumbling with the keys, Schuldig plotted his course through the apartment. Pass the kitchen and dining room, to the shower, to his warm snuggly bed. The door flew open and he would have smiled had he not quickly realized that both his hands were still in his pockets vainly grabbing for his...
"Consider yourself lucky that Este considers you a valuable memeber of its psychic force and I therefore cannot *destroy* you for your insolence." Crawford, fingers wrapped around the door handle, calmly reminded.
Schuldig gawked as he was pulled.
A hand wrapped around the back of his poorly dyed hair and he felt something rip.
The last thing he saw before everything faded to gray was one of Farfarello's jackets and a syringe full of Farfarello's heavy medication on the table next to them.
God, he felt stupid.