The house sat on a steep cliff. Dark emerald vines hung down from the roof, clinging stubbornly to the old, solid gray-stone of the walls. Crab grass grew in patches cross the barren yard and a twisted rose bush in a full bloom of blood-red color swayed lonely by the gated doors. A rough, scarred Willow tree hung its branches over an empty doghouse. A broken chain snaked fromthe pitch-black dark inside. A wooden sign thrust out of the ground at an angle at the end of the gravel path from the doors.
On the sign, embossed in bold black letters read, "Beware of Dog," except that "Dog" was crossed out and beneath it, with deep, burnt scratches into the wood, was written "Schuldich".
BEWARE OF SCHULDICH
And Schwartz enters the scene. Enjoy.
The club was packed, but not in the there're-too-many-people-to-breath sort of way. The live band that played on stage was very popular with the college crowd, but no one seemed to be actively trying to get drunk, more interested in dancing. Bodies swayed and twisted and turned on the floor, skin glowing with a light sheen of sweat in the dim light. The deep beat of the drummer reverberated through the air and the acoustics of the room dampened the echo into clean, pure music.
Schuldich paused with his whiskey half way between his mouth and the table, and cocked his head to the side. The music had been muffled, situated as he was in a dark corner at one of the square tables, but suddenly he couldn't hear it any more. The sound of people talking, a woman's deep purring laugh from the direction of the bar, the high giggles of a group of girls barely old enough to get through the door, all blended together, faded and then completely disappeared.
Something felt off, wrong, like some unidentifiable bad thing was going to happen.
And that made him sound so much like Crawford he was sorely tempted to gag. It was Bradley's job to tell the future and Schuldich certainly didn't want anything to do with that. Hearing people in the present was bad enough. Having to hear everything that they could say, rather than what they were saying, was definitely a number of uncountable times the trouble. No wonder Brad got headaches. Not that he felt sorry for Crawford. That anal retentive pain in the- ("Damnit Schu. No swearing!" "Nagi! I can swear if I want to! And you just said 'damnit' damnit!" "No swearing!" "Are you even listening to me?") -deserved a few headaches every now and again. He always had to be such a prissy stuck-up about his stupid fu- ("Schuldich!").
Get out of my head Nagi!
"Why would I want to be in your head?"
Schuldich blinked. Looking up he saw Nagi, huddled in the chair across from him, back to the wall, wincing every time the singer on stage hit a particularly high note. A puzzled, slightly disgusted expression dominated his features. Schuldich hadn't realized he had spoken out loud, but decided to go with it.
"I can very well fucking swear if I fucking want to!" he snapped.
Nagi's face blanked and he stood up slowly from the chair in the corner. He watched Schuldich with a cautious look in his eyes as he reached forward and pulled the half-filled glass out of his hand.
The kid looked like he expected someone to bite him, Schuldich thought as he watched with vague curiosity.
Nagi set the glass down on the corner of the table, out of Schuldich's reach. Keeping his eyes locked intensely on Schuldich's he spokein what was obviously a forced calm.
"Okay. We're going home now. C'mon Schuldich. You're drunk."
He was not drunk. So what if he was slurring his s's and his l's and his n's and his r's and his…
Come to think of it everything did seem a little fuzzy around the edges.
"Just let me finish the damn drink Nagi." Schuldich said somewhat sulkily. And no, he didn't sulk. It wasn't his fault if some people couldn't tell the difference between sulking and not sulking. He did not sulk.
"We've been here for three hours and you've had five drinks. Let's just go home, alright?" said Nagi.
"Four and a half if you count the fact that I haven't gotten to finish this one," retorted Schuldich in what he would never admit was a show of mathematical brilliance, especially drunk.
"Schu…"
"I'll take him off your hands if you'd like to finish your whiskey," purred a deep and obviously female voice off the Schuldich's right. "I'm sure he'd be fun and you look like you could use the quiet. Win-win."
Anger bordering on rage burned through Schuldich as he watched Nagi cringe under that voice, giving no outward sign of it's effects other than the frozen passiveness of a puppy expecting to be kicked.
Nagi's mind uttered a faint, helpless 'go away' before Schuldich heard nothing. Nagi had realized he was broadcasting and then blocked it, but Schuldich had still heard.
"Get lost, bitch," growled Schuldich. Surging up out of his seat he steadied himself on the edge of the table for a second, then reached over and plucked Nagi out of his chair. Hand on his arm, he stared pushing the far to passive Nagi towards the door.
"Oh, come now. I'm sure you wouldn't mind sharing. You're hot; you could have your choice of toys to play with. I'd just be borrowing him, or we could take him together if you'd rather," the bitch continued in a sickly sweet voice.
What the hell was someone like this doing here? Schuldich had came to this bar in particular because there would be no sexual predators around to frighten Nagi. The Star Show wasn't the classiest bar in town but it had a reputation of being a place of good, clean fun and people looking for one-night stands were frowned upon. This bitch shouldn't even be here and Schuldich wasgonna bedamned if he was going to let her run them out, except for the fact that he could feel Nagi shaking under his hand.
As he pushed the door open and stepped out into the cold with Nagi in front of him Schuldich could still feel the woman's mind, bright with determination, following behind him.
"I swear if that woman comes up and talks at me again I'm gonna shred her mind into little pieces and then stuff her body into the sewer to rot," he mutter viciously under his breath.
"Schuldich, you can't use you powers. After what happened yesterday Crawford said-"
"Screw Crawford. He has a pole up his ass so long that it comes out the top of his head and would be the perfect way for Farf to climb to heaven and slice up God."
"You're being creative. You're…We're going home now."
"Neither of you are going anywhere."
Schuldich spun around, pushing Nagi behind him instinctively as he stared at the sight of the woman from before, settled comfortable in a shooting stance, aiming a loaded handgun at them steadily with both hands.
Schuldich cursed himself in both German and Japanese as he studied the little black dress she wore. It covered her just enough to hide a gun while still leaving the impression that she had nothing to hide. And that she wanted you to take the dress off just so she could prove it.
Schuldich was pulled out of his thoughts by the feel of Nagi pushing his power against the woman. He could feel the effort going into it and it should have blown everything in its path through acouple of walls.
Leaves and dust stirred around the woman's feet. A damp newspaper a few feet behind the woman lifted up and slammed into the wall with a wet smack.
The woman stood unaffected, a smirk growing on her lips.
Schuldich gathered his will, pushing the beating pulse of pain behind his right eye out of his mind, reached out towards the woman, and twisted. He felt her mind scream under the pain as he riffled through her memories. The most recent were of planning to kill them. Some of what they looked like sitting together at the table, the way in which she planned to get them out of the building, she was a bitch just for that.
Schuldich kept looking, unconscious of the fact that Nagi had caught him as he slumped toward the ground. Or that the woman was getting her dress wet as she withered and twitched on the ground in pain, mouth open in a silent scream.
There. There it was…just…light streamed trough the one unbroken window of the abandoned warehouse illuminating the three women and one man that stood at attention. They were all gazing towards the back of the warehouse looking intently for movement that wasn't there.
"You want us to take out Schwartz? The telekinetic and the telepath in particular? How do you expect us to do that?" said the man.
"One of your members has the ability to null the powers of a telekinetic, without his powers, killing him will be easily done," boomed a voice from the shadows where the four watched.
"The telekinetic never leaves their headquarters alone, killing him in the presence of the others won't be easily done."
"He is most often seen with the telepath. It will be the perfect chance to kill them both."
"And the telepath? None of us have the power to thwart him."
"His powers will be taken care of before you strike."
The man then abruptly bowed low, and said a firm, 'we accept' before all four turned and walked out of the warehouse.
Schuldich came to himself laying curmpledhalf on the ground and half in Nagi's arms. A small hand was pulling the tangled vermilion hair back from his face and checking his eyes. The headache was back and his whole body felt like someone had poured burning oil all over it. His eyesight kept slipping in and out-mostly out-of focus and the ringing sounded like a siren in his ears.
The woman was spread on the ground, body contorted in pain, dead.
"Now can we go home?" Nagi whispered softly to Schuldich.
"Yeah. Yeah, let's go home."
Crawford needed to know that they had problems.
This actually does connect with the rest of the story. And, no, I won't tell you how. If you want to review and tell me how you think it connects that would be really cool. It would also tell me if I wrote this chapter, with all it's foreshadowing and what-not, correctly.
Please review and return.