A/N: So. This is not the origional chapter ten. In fact, it's actually chapter eleven. While I was revising, I realized that the origional chapter ten was total BS that did nothing to progress the plot. So I deleted it. Hopefully this will help things move a little faster.
HEARTS DESIRE
Chapter Ten: Return
A Witch Hunter Robin Fanfic
By Yuriko Tsukino
The first thing Amon thought when he woke was that he was still sleeping. He hadn't felt this comfortable in a since he had been a child, before his mother had awakened as a witch. As he drifted in that halfway point between wakefulness and sleep, he thought longingly of when he was still small, sleeping with his head in her lap while she sang quietly and stroked his hair.
He did indeed hear singing, though it was not the lullaby he remembered from childhood. The hymn was soothing, however, and it took him several moments more to decipher that it was not his mother's voicing singing so beautifully into his ear, but another sweet soprano, less familiar but even more beautiful.
The singer also appeared to be stroking his hand through his glove. The tender touch was so comforting, he tried not to wake for fear of destroying the much needed and seldom found peace. At last, however, he couldn't resist any longer. He wanted to know who this apparition was. His sleep crusted eyes slowly opened, and he drowsily took in the angel before him. Blonde hair, done in two pigtails wrapped in green ribbon. Pert nose and pink lips, emerald green eyes. She had washed off the makeup while he was asleep, but that only made her more beautiful. He didn't know why she wore it, anyway.
Robin didn't know he was awake yet. She continued to sing quietly, absently rubbing the back of his hand with her fingertips. With the other hand, she picked at the faux fur of her leopard print skirt.
Strongly resisting the urge to wake up enough to remember why he was alone in a cheap hotel room with his most beautiful student, Amon closed his eyes again, figuring that he could fool himself into believing that he was still asleep and only seeing snatches of a perfect dream.
The perfect dream was shattered however when the sound of gunshots broke through the quiet.
Instantly awake, Amon sat up and in one smooth motion, grabing Robin around the waist and rolling them both onto the floor opposite the door. He held her down, pinning her to the dirty carpeting, and reached for his gun.
The gunshots stopped just as abruptly as they had started. Amon eased off his young charge, and she crouched low beside him. Amazingly, he noted that their hands were still joined. He caught her eye and squeezed her hand, signaling her attention to the window behind them. In an instant the panes went up in flames, and the two hurried through the opening as the factory workers burst through the Swiss-cheesed door.
Releasing Robin, Amon fished out his car keys and punched the electronic lock button. They dove inside for the second time in twenty-four hours, and sped off once more for the freeway.
Amon pressed his foot to the accelerator as hard as he could, weaving in and out of the early morning traffic. It was both a blessing and a curse that it was only five o'clock; while there was little traffic to get in their way, it was also that much easier for the factory to catch up to them.
Once more, Robin turned in her seat, preparing to stop them with her flames. There was just enough traffic however, that she couldn't do anything with endangering another driver.
They were approaching a viaduct; below them was a deserted side street.
"Amon! Get to the right!"
The car jerked to the side, and the factory van followed. It started to skid onto the burm from the sudden change, and Robin took advantage of this. She aimed for the tires, intending to make them burst and therefore using the momentum of the vehicle to send it over the guard rail, but her aim was off; she could make the fire come, but she couldn't tell it exactly where she wanted it to go.
Instead of hitting the tires, the fire went wide to the left, causing a minivan to got squealing into the grassy space dividing the two sides of the highway, and running two small cars off the road with it.
Unnerved, Robin turned back around again, praying that she hadn't hurt anyone.
Out of the corner of his eye, Amon was watching her.
She took a deep breath, then turned back to the van. This time, she gathered all of her strength—focused—
The road between the factory van and the two renegades burst into flames too thick and hot to drive through. Amon and Robin could hear the sound of squealing tires as the van tried to brake, and she watched in horrified fascination as the huge van—unable to stop—broke through the barricade, now covered in flames and swerving dangerously through all three lanes of traffic.
After scraping past a pickup and nearly bulldozing a compact car, the driver finally seemed to have lost control completely as the van veered right once more, rolling as it hit the ditch.
Robin watched the burning van grow smaller and smaller as they drove further down the highway, until the flames finally found the gas tank and the entire thing exploded.
00000
By the next night, Amon had emptied and closed his bank account and shredded his credit card. With his cell phone off, they were nearly untraceable.
The next day dawned clear and cold, coating the world in a thick layer of frost.
Sitting up, Robin looked over at the other bed. In it, Amon lay sleeping, though it was not a peaceful sleep. He had taken off his coat, tossing it at the foot of the bed, and removed his holster, though it was sitting on the bedside table, his hand resting on the butt of his pistol. Even asleep, his brow was creased with worry.
Robin watched him sleep, trying not to stare; Amon seemed the sort of person who would wake up if she watched him too long.
Grateful as she was for everything he had done for her, she still was sorry for dragging him into the mess which had become her life. Car chases were okay in the movies, but in reality they were horrifying, and they weren't something she wanted to deal with on a regular basis.
And what of Amon? Should he go into hiding because of her? No, she couldn't tolerate that. Just as she couldn't stand the thought of spending the rest of her days on the road, running from an enemy without ever standing up for herself.
No, it was time to do something about it.
"Amon?"
There was no movement from the other bed.
"I think it's time for me to go back. I don't want to run anymore."
The hand on the nightstand twitched, but instead of picking up the gun, it moved a few inches to the right and picked up the car keys instead.
00000
"You lived here?" Amon asked, picking his way around broken furniture.
"For two months," Robin replied. Briefly, she explained how she had arrived at the airport to find no one waiting for her. Thinking there might have been a mix up, she had taken a cab to the address she had been given, to find that someone had gotten there first, and apparently carried off her host family.
"I wasn't sure how to explain it; what would I tell the police? I had just come to a new country, and I was scared, but I didn't know where else to go, so I stayed here, hoping that somebody would show up eventually. I wasn't sure what else to do."
Amon flipped the switch for the kitchen lights, but nothing happened.
"It's probably been shut off." She blushed. "We left before I had a chance to pay the bills."
"So we have no electricity, no water, no gas?"
"Technically, we don't have a house either, since I never paid the mortgage or rent or whatever, either. Though that bill didn't come, that I know of."
"It's possible that whomever lived here owned the house," Amon speculated. He continued the inspection.
"Oh, we also don't have food because I never got to collect my paycheck."
The glare Amon sent in her direction spoke of a very serious man trying very hard not to roll his eyes.
"Sorry. I didn't have any money."
Well, if she was living here alone with no job, then it certainly explains a lot, Amon thought, recalling the day she had passed out in his classroom.
Robin continued, "That room there is mine. There are two other bedrooms; you're welcome to whichever you like. They're not trashed like this," Robin said, waving her hand at the living room and kitchen area. Really, the only signs of…whatever had happened were the over turned couch and a few other damaged pieces of furniture, and the hole in the sliding glass door.
And a few dozen bullet holes in the back wall.
Amon went to inspect the master and guest bedrooms and find a place to catch up on sleep, leaving Robin in the kitchen with her thoughts.
Coming back to face the enemy was easy enough in thought, but in practice it was much harder. To start with, she needed information. Unlike Zaizen, she didn't think she could just storm the school and not worry about the other students. No, she would have to figure out where to find him on his own.
Amon had said that when he hunted witches, the factory always came to take them away. Robin had a hunch that if she found out where the factory was, she'd be able to find not only Zaizen, but the witches taken away, and the answers to all of her questions.
The question was how to get this information. Amon had already told her everything he knew, even showing her the copies he had made of her file. Since he had abandon his post at the school, and his mission to hunt her, he wasn't receiving any new information. With no witches to catch, there was no reason for the factory to come to them, and hence, no way for them to follow them back to their origins.
Sifting through the pieces, Robin guessed that as Zaizen was the source of all this, that he would be the best place to start. Obviously, she couldn't just walk up to him and start asking questions. So maybe…
Well, Michael was quite adept at overriding the parental controls on the school computers, and blocking and redirecting the firewalls (she heard rumors that his freshman year, he had implanted a virus that had crashed all the school computers the week of midterms, giving the students a month and a half reprieve as grades had to be reconfigured. Of course, he had helped with that too…)
Maybe Michael would be able to find someinformation on Zaizen's computer. If he was involved at all, he would have to have something there.
Sure that by now Amon was most likely asleep, Robin slipped quietly out the door.
00000
It was lunchtime. Doujima was meeting with the other cheerleaders, practicing for the big game on Friday. Sakaki…well, Sakaki was watching.
That left Michael out in the quad by the well, working on his laptop and eating a bag of chips. It was still chilly out, but between his jacket and hoodie, he wasn't cold. It seemed spring was finally starting to reach the frozen city, now that it had reached April.
He tapped away at the keyboard, chuckling to himself at a comment someone had left on a message board.
"Michael!"
Heh, this guys a little crazy. I wonder if I can get his e-mail address.
"Michael!"
Maybe he knows some good sites I could check out…
"Michael!"
"What?!"
Michael lept to his feet in surprise, his head whipping around the deserted quad, searching for the person who had called to him.
"Michael, it's me."
"R-Robin? Is that you?"
"Yes. Michael, I need your help."
"Where are you?"
"In the well."
Michael started to peek over the edge of the stone wall, but her voice stopped him.
"Please, don't act like there's anything strange going on. Someone might see you."
Pretending he had merely jumped up for a casual stretch, Michael sat back down, then asked, "So what is this all about? Where have you been? Why did you just disappear? Is Mr. Am—"
"I'm sorry, I don't have a lot of time to explain," she replied. "All I can say is that I'm in hiding now, and you don't have to worry about me. But I do need your help. Do you think you can hack into Principal Zaizen's computer?"
"Have you been talking to Mr. Amon?" Michael asked, quirking an eyebrow. "Why the sudden interest in his computer?"
"I need information in something called STN or STN-J, and something called 'the factory,'" Robin explained. "Do you think you can do it?"
"Well, yeah, I could…"
"Thank you so much, Michael," Robin said, and even through the stone walls of the well, he could hear the rush of gratitude in her voice.
"Look…take care of yourself, okay?" Michael said hesitatantly. "Sakaki keeps asking what happened to you, and I know that Doujima is worried, even if she doesn't really act like it."
"And you?"
Michael felt warmth blossom in his cheeks. And in his chest and a few other areas, too.
"Yeah. I'm worried too."
Robin smiled to herself. "I'm fine. You don't need to concern yourself over me."
"You're my friend Robin, I—"
The bell rang then, cutting him off. "I need to go. How should I get that information to you?"
But he was met with only silence. Robin had already gone.
00000
"You left without telling me."
"Yes, I did."
Amon's arms were folded over his chest, his entire expression and posture oozing annoyance. He watched her through narrowed eyes, his jaw set and firm.
Inside, Robin was positively drooling.
"You can't just walk around like that," he stated. "It's too dangerous."
"Really? How would you prefer I walk around?" She demonstrated by sashaying her hips slightly.
A muscle over Amon's left eye began to twitch. Robin forced down a smile and a bubble of laughter.
"You need to ask me before you go out. You can't just go out on the street like you have been. You could easily get yourself into trouble that way."
"I'm sorry, would like me to ask permission for breathing, as well?"
It was all Amon could do to keep his temper under control. Why was she doing this? She was normally so quiet and sweet, and yet today she was acting like such a brat. He was ready to just smack her.
"Fine, do what you want."
Biting his tongue, Amon turned on his heel and left, slamming the front door behind him.
In the living room, Robin stood, fuming.
What is wrong with him? She wondered. She was ready to scream with frustration. She had been trying to help, for heaven's sake! And now, here he was, scolding her for it, not even letting her explain and making her act like a spoiled little brat.
A lot like Doujima, in fact.
If only she could get his attention, in a way that didn't make that cute little vein twitch.
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A/N: So yeah. Drastic changes.
