Such a normal memory. Too normal to send her into the waking world gasping for breath. Or was it the thunder outside that had woken her? So strange that it was of a living person…
The threat hadn't seemed like much in the moment. It haunted her. Mixes of fiction and reality had to be handled with care, lest the connection snap and parallel worlds fled back to their territory.
She hadn't done that, of course. She had gotten excited. She had poked and prodded and tried to tickle the truth out of the beautiful, reserved demon queen.
What was the worst that could happen?
Better not think about that.
She dressed, half in the dream, went to walk the brightly lit street outside her building. Rain would wash away the fog she was under… wouldn't it?
But the girl had laughed. So much must have changed since the day they had met. Erika remembered a girl who had waited for the threat following her to catch up. A girl who had not expected to be rescued, and had not made an attempt to take the threat down on her own.
The street was strangely crowded, and calm for this time of night and this much rain. Were they all under the same spell as Erika?
A flash of red in the public square. Flitting through the eyes of a passerby. And another. They were moving in the same direction. She must be nearby. The woman found herself thinking, and that thought blotted out all other thoughts, such as why the girl would be calling the red eyed people to her. The beating of Erika's own heart was louder than distant screeching or the engines on the street.
She wanted to follow them.
She questioned why she wanted to follow them.
She held a hand up to her eye.
Her eyes weren't glowing. ... as far as she could tell.
She started to run, cutting a path through the slow moving crowd. Glancing around for red as she went, trying to follow the curse's vein to its heart.
She saw the reason. The girl was stuck, unable to break away or through a fight she was having with some stranger. The stranger was parrying nearly every move she made with a thick bamboo staff that bent when the sword hit it rather than allow itself to be cut. Those times that Anri got a shot at him, she pulled away at the last minute. Evidently this was not someone she wished to add to the red eyed army.
Erika tiptoed close to the man, and kicked him squarely in the back of the knee. It broke his concentration, and with a roar of anger he thrust the tip of the staff backwards, aimed just under her ribcage. The stick was cut cleanly in two. The pommel of Saika came down hard on the man's temple. He went tumbling to the ground.
The girl's confused expression, and the focus that her luminescent eyes bestowed, not leaving as she tried to regain her breath. "Umm… Thank you… I had it under control… but… thanks… sorry"
Erika's mind worked furiously… she could have just been seriously hurt… this whole situation was… kinda Romantic… "I owe you my life." She immediately went down on one knee. "Will you accept my servitude until fate or your will drives us apart, as repayment?"
The girl was taken aback. She looked over her own shoulder, as the sword was sheathed in her body once more, and her eyes became brown again, vulnerable again. "M-me?"
"Yes you, my lady"
"T-That's really not necessary…"
"Yes it is! I know how these things work." Erika said cheerfully "You saved my life so now it belongs to you."
"Err If you… If you say so…"
"Do you want information from this guy?" Erika said, eyes shining. "I can do that for you."
"Information?"
"Yeah… like if he was working alone, or if he was sent by someone… Well if he was sent by anyone it was probably an Orihara so that information wouldn't be that surprising… But I have lots of ideas for how to extract it."
"That's… errr… okay…" Anri muttered.
"So we should probably bring him to my place, It's close… and I have materials there… we might need some help though… You can enlist some, can't you?"
By this point the girl was just nodding silently. Her eyes went red, and the smallest sliver of metal was visible. A Guy wearing a yellow scarf, and a portly man in a suit suddenly forgot their confusion as their eyes glowed red. In sync they picked up the anonymous martial artist, and paused.
"oh, follow me." Erika said, grabbing the hand that Saika was not protruding from and pulling the girl along. Far enough ahead of the men as to look unrelated to them.
They arrived at a pokey little apartment that was lined with bookshelves. The cielings, which were the only places books could not feasibly be stored, had several layers of posters on them.
The hypnotized men brought the unconscious man in then turned stiffly and left. As Anri watched from the window until they were a safe distance away and let them go free, Erika was fumbling with her bookshelves. She tilted five issues of Pandora Hearts forward, reached behind them and pulled out an impressive amount of rope, from behind Death Note she pulled a pair of handcuffs.
Anri looked at the fruits of her labours with just a touch of fear.
"What? You can't play Light without handcuffs." Erika brushed it all off… Admittedly they weren't handcuffs that would be allowed at any sort of convention… but Anri didn't really need to worry about that.
"Play what…"
Erika knelt beside the unconscious man and set to work with the rope, tying intricate knots, occasionally lifting one of the man's arms or legs to test the resistance of the rope. "So why not just take control of this guy?" She said, her voice muffled by the rope she was pulling at with her teeth. "He's strong enough that he could be useful to you."
"It wouldn't be right to let Saika out… and I don't need any more voices… I think that's why…"
"You think?"
"Yeah. Sorry."
Erika stood back and admired her handiwork. It looked more or less like a basket had been woven around the man, if he moved any limb the others would be more thoroughly stuck. He was still out cold, so she stood up, brushed the task from her hands and said "Well… we're both soaked. Let's get you into something dry." She pulled the girl into her room. Opened her closet. In it there were a few of the same black dresses that she always wore, on one side and an explosion of colour, and wigs, and different levels of shine on the other. She looked Erika up and down "What sizes would you say you are?"
"Ummmm"
"Never mind, we're probably about the same size… anything else a belt could fix." She flicked through the ones that were hopelessly frilly. Eventually coming up with a dress that was a pale powdery lavender colour with loose yellow sleeves, underskirt, and bow. "Ha! Found it!"
"Wha-Wh-why that one?" the girl was looking from the eminently modest dresses on the one side of the closet to the thing in the woman's hand and back as if her mind had shut down from the enormity of it all.
"Because I don't know what sizes you need, but this thing is practically made of laces and modesty panels so it will fit. It might mess with our unconscious friend's head a bit. And I think you would look gooooorgeous in it." She said, not even trying to be subtle.
"You are trying to seduce me?" Anri said matter of factly.
"Mayyyybe" Erika put the dress in Anri's hands "and here, I can be equally fancy, so you won't be out of place." She pulled out a bright yellow dress with a heart shaped hole in the chest. "finally we can look like the badass superheroines we are!"
"… sorry… where can I change?"
Erika was taken aback "You're not going to object to wearing the dress?"
"No…"
"Oh… in that case just anywhere you want, I won't peek. Or I could go check on our hostage and you can call when you need help with the laces." Erika found herself grinning more than she intended. She wondered if that would be the tipping point that would make her too creepy for the girl.
"I would like to be alone… if that's okay."
"Of course. My lady" she gave a flourishing bow and left the room. Sliding the door shut and leaning on the wall she, still in her soaked dress, considered the captive who had yet to stir "what are we going to do with you?"
It wasn't long before Anri called for help, but in that time Erika had formulated a plan.
Lacing the girl up, Erika told Anri about the plan, what to watch for, what to do. Shamelessly undressing and putting on the yellow dress in front of her, she explained the concept behind her specialized art.
Erika's hand pulled the half conscious man's head up by his hair. "Do you want to know what your sin is?" her smile was gleeful, alert and excited.
"My… my whaaaa?" The man was released, but only sat, as his back was being held upright by Anri sitting behind him quietly.
"Your sin. There's only a couple ways that you can repent from a sin so egregious."
"nonsense."
"No, it's not nonsense. You tried to hurt my mistress. That is an unforgivable sin." She ripped open his shirt revealing a mandala on his chest. It was drawn in black permanent marker, and was intricate, spiked, and confusing to the man who had not had it last time he'd been conscious. "But your first stage of repentance. Tell me who you are working with."
"Why should I care?" The man was obviously not as aware enough of his surroundings, or his position, which was more like a burrito than a human.
"Because my mistress doesn't want me to hurt you. But if you don't talk…" Erika said, quietly grinning away as she raised a scalpel which had been carefully dulled at all but the very point.
"You don't scare me." He said, his eyes filled with disdain. Anri quietly pulled a handkerchief between his teeth and tied it.
Erika traced the mandala gently with a fingernail "I don't need you to be scared of me. I need you to care about your own skin. You have nine tries before I lose my patience." She raised the scalpel, running the tip gently along the edges of four of the mandala's outer triangles, leaving tiny cuts that barely bled but would sting like all hell. He tensed, tried to scream, only to find Anri's hand over his mouth and her dispassionate eyes looking down at him.
Erika lifted the scalpel. Anri removed the gag. All in silence. "You're insane. What do you think you're…"
"Who were you working with?"
"I'm just a crook. I rob people. Is it so hard to imagine." He said. Anri looked at Erika questioningly, Erika shook her head and the gag went back in.
She ran the scalpel lightly in a curved line down from the top spike of the circle inward "Someone with the skills to be a professional martial artist? Just another mugger?" She ran it along the flared wing of the design "Or a mugger who happened to favour the bo. Somehow it doesn't strike me as a good concealed weapon, unless you're actually a farmer in disguise." She lifted it, went back to the first internal line and drew another edge looping around in a tight circle that if she'd gone any deeper would be in danger of peeling "is that what you'll say next?" She drew another straight line to the Eighth marker.
The gag was removed "Okay, There was this kid, he told me about you, that… That this girl had power, and that if I could… If I could take it then I'd be…"
"What was his name?" Erika raised the scalpel again.
"I never got his name" he said. Erika sighed, and the gag was raised slowly "But… but I have this list… he gave me a list… of people… that he wanted gone… once I had the sword…"
"Will you tell me this list?"
"It's in my pocket." He said. Desperately wanting to be believed.
Anri reached into the pocket pulled out a list. Several people she didn't recognize were on it. At the very bottom, with a note beside it to "Attempt this last" was Heiwajima Shizuo.
"Izaya-san…" Anri guessed.
"I thought so… How disappointing… Thank you for your cooperation." Erika said sweetly. "was there anything else he told you?"
"N- NO! I know nothing."
"Does that sound convincing, Mistress?"
"Sorry… yeah. Yeah it does…"
"I'll believe you then. And I think I can trust you to not tell anyone about tonight?"
"I… Yeah I… won't…"
"Because if you do I'll find you and do all I meant to do with that design. I mean Its kind of sad I didn't get to see what it looked like with the skin, carefully scraped off."
The man went even paler than he already had.
"But I don't want to get blood on this dress…" Erika said, preoccupied as she reached behind her and pulled out a first aid kit, She had a large square of gauze and alcohol wipes ready. "People might have seen us bring you in here, so you are going to leave, under your own power, and you are not going to turn around or glance backwards." She put the alcohol on the wounds she'd inflicted "Understood?"
"YESS" he hissed over the renewed stinging.
"Good." She taped the patch on and gave it a pat for good measure that made him squeal. She untied him taking practically no time to undo what she'd done, and helped him to his feet. His shirt was a problem… it had been dramatic at the time but now the buttons were torn off… She took a safety pin from the kit, and pinned the man's shirt back together. "Get out."
"Yes ma'am."
Finally alone after the stiffly moving man had taken his leave, Erika practically pounced on the girl. "You were great, Anri-chan!" she said ruffling the girl's hair and squeezing her closer.
"You did the work though…"
"Well you did the fighting. And he's definitely going to spread the news in the underworld. Maybe people won't want to fight you so much anymore… or maybe Izaya'll get blacklisted by some for hire types. Who knows!"
"you're really enthusiastic… considering that I can't… love you…"
"Love? That's way too abstract a term! You are attractive, strong, badass, smart, adventurous, and you've put up with me through all this. Who needs love when you've got all that going for you?"
Anri, falteringly, as if wondering what she was doing pulled her lips to meet the woman's. "Will you let me use you to find out?"
"I think this one is just harassment"
"Whaaaaaaaaat?" she said "If I don't ship it, how can I expect her to ship it, and if she doesn't ship it I can never have a chance with the sexy demon queen"
"But what good does it do you to ship it when she doesn't have any way of knowing"
"Oh I know that trick. I'll just bump into her on the street and while helping her pick her things up I'll put the story in her bag."
Yumacchi held the book sideways as if trying to find another angle and considered it for a while. "You really think you're this smooth?"
"Of course I am, I have studied from the best" She said sticking out her tongue and holding up a light novel.
Yes Erika dressed them up like the Flamenco Girls. I figured it would be some sort of Yuri pairing but I am sadly lacking knowledge of yuri manga/anime that aren't creepy as all hell… Suggestions?
Which I acknowledge is a bit hypocritical coming after the Shizaya fic…
And Pandora Hearts… because Pandora Hearts. Spent too much time being ambushed by feels while searching for a picture of Break without his shirt for reference.