Yohji nearly went down when the first shot caught him in the thigh. He stumbled forward, warm blood dripping down the inside of his pant leg. He was too shocked to consciously move his body, but years of training and muscle memory had him pulling out his weapon and spreading his legs into a fighting stance.
Their attackers came through the roughly door-shaped hole that had been blown into the wall, stepping over splinters of what had previously occoupied the space. They were dressed in something like the black ops. costumes that Hollywood seemed to be so fond of.
Omi put two darts into the first man that came through the door. Yohji had a second to wonder where Omi had gotten the darts before he, too, had to attack. He yanked a gun out of one of the attackers hands, right before the man would have put a bullet in the back of Ken's head.
Ken himself scooped up the Schwartz kid, Nagi, and launched himself behind Yohji and Omi. Yohji wrapped his wire around one of the attackers throats and pulled, forcing the man to drop the weapon that had been aimed Omi. When the man jerked and pulled against the weapon it didn't slice into his skin and Yohji was forced to cut the wire, leaving the man alive.
Suddenly they retreated, pulling back through the hole they had blasted in the wall. Their departure left a ringing silence in Yohji's ear. Over the frantic beating of his heart he could hear the echoes of footsteps walking quickly down the hallway.
"The hell…" panted Ken.
Yohji looked behind him to see Ken, crouched on the floor with Nagi in his arms. The kid was out, completely unconscious, but otherwise unharmed. Ken stared up at Yohji with wide eyes, not a scratch on him.
Yohji felt shell-shocked, a little numb around the edges. Everything around him was in hyper-focus, the soft lamp light suddenly too bright for him to look at. His pulse pounded like a caged animal against the side of his skull. He was so confused. Their attackers had just rushed in, done some damage, and then walked out. No word or warning, they just turned around and left. Like they had been under a time limit or something, and everyone knew exactly when it ended.
"We need to get out of here," said Omi as he hurried over to Mastermind. The Schwartz telepath lay limp on the floor, a little bit of blood pooled in the hollow of his ear. Berserker was kneeling next to him, dripping blood onto the floor from numerous small cuts and grazes.
Yohji suddenly knew Aya wasn't in the room with them. He spun around on the spot, his eyes flitting about the confined space, trying to catch a glimps of red hair, or pale skin.
Aya was nowhere to be seen. Yohji was suddenly sure their attackers had taken him. Why else would they have stopped their attack so abruptly? They had gotten what they wanted, they had gotten Aya, and now they no longer had a need to be here. They had left, dragging Aya behind them like a wounded deer.
"Yohji! What are you doing?" Omi shouted.
"I'm going after them!" Yohji yelled as he scrambled towards the hole where the door used to be. There were smears of blood on the floor, marks of someone being dragged down the hallway.
"Yohji! Yohji, get back here!"
He had to rescue Aya. He couldn't leave him to be...
"KUDO!"
Yohji froze, eyes widening in disbelief. He had to be hallucinating. That couldn't be possible. He couldn't be…
"Kudo, get back here. There's no point in going after them now. We need to leave," said Aya. He stood in front of the doorway to the bedroom, a sword Yohji had never seen before held loosely in one hand.
Yohji stumbled toward him, not quite sure if what he was seeing was real. "But it can't be. I knew…"
"What are you mumbling about?" Aya said sharply.
"Uh…nothing. Nothing."
"Good. Now go help Omi with Mastermind."
Yohji nodded, brushed his hand discretely against Aya's arm to make sure he was real, and, fighting the dizziness that was beginning to seep into his every movement, began making his way over to Omi.
Ken watched Yohji warily from where he was crouched on the floor. Yohji's breathing was heavy, his eyes dilated into wide pools of black with a thin lining of green; he limped protectively over his left leg as he went haltingly in Omi's direction.
Yohji had panicked. Straight up-and-up panicked, and it worried Ken. It wasn't like Yohji, not at all. He would get over protective, and maybe worry too much, but he never panicked in a mission situation. It was why Yohji always took command in the 'rescue-Aya-from-whatever-he's-gotten-himself-into' situations. There had been situations like this before, with Aya caught in a fight or missing, and Yohji had never reacted so badly. At least not on the outside, or in a way that could harm the mission. Charging after the bad guys with absolutely no clue about what was happening, like he had just tried to do, would have definitely harmed the mission.
Ken looked over at Aya and saw him watching Yohji. Ken saw the frown curve over Aya's lips and then he looked over and caught Ken's eye. Aya nodded once in his direction and Ken knew he had just been given his mission for the night: look after Yohji.
"Where are we going to go now?" asked Omi. "If even this place isn't safe…"
"Then we need to go someplace else," interrupted Aya.
"And that's where?" grumbled Ken.
"Just follow me," answered Aya.
There was a bit of shuffling as everyone figured out who was helping who with the injured. Nagi got deposited in Aya's arms, who cradled the kid like he knew what he was doing, but wore an expression that said he was not happy about it. Yohji and Ken got to support the still unconscious Mastermind. And Omi got to walk behind an unusually listless Berserker, prodding him with both words and hands to keep moving.
It was only then that they realized that Oracle was missing. Omi started looking around the room for him until Yohji muttered something about bloodstains.
"What Yohji?"
Yohji lifted his arm to point over at the hole in the wall. Omi quickly walked over to the spot, and then started cursing.
"They took him, didn't they?" said Ken, suddenly a little sick to his stomach.
"Probably," said Omi. "That must be why they stopped attacking."
"They're long gone, we can't do anything about him now," said Aya. No one protested when he dismissed the matter. Berserker didn't seem to notice what was going on around him, and the only other two who would have put up a fight were unconscious.
Aya lead them to a door in the bedroom that Ken had thought was a closet. He shoved it roughly open with his shoulder and they walked into a steel walled, steel floored, steel everything, room. He walked up to the elevator door on the far wall and then stopped.
Aya frowned down at the child in his arms and then looked over his shoulder at Omi.
"You're going to have to type it in."
Omi nodded and walked up to the keypad next to the door. "It's the numbers that manager person gave us right?" he asked Aya.
Aya nodded.
Omi then quickly typed in a bunch of number that Ken was too tired to even try remembering. The elevator doors whooshed open, they all stepped (or got carried) inside, Aya pressed one of the only two buttons on the inside panel, and the doors whooshed shut behind them.
As soon as the elevator started moving Mastermind's weight pushed into Ken, causing him hunch over and fight for his balance. There was a thunk and Ken looked down to see Yohji collapsed on the floor.
"Yohji!"
Ken dumped Mastermind into an unceremonious heap and scrambled over to Yohji. By the time he got there Omi was already checking Yohji over for wounds. There wasn't enough blood that Ken could see on Yohji for the collapse to be blood-loss induced. Kneeling down next to him, Ken pulled Yohji's head into his lap and brushed back the lanky hair to feel his forehead.
"Omi, he has a temperature," said Ken, knowing he sounded worried.
"I can't find any…oh, crap," breathed Omi. He was pulling what looked like a lumpy squashed version of one of Omi's own darts out of Yohji's thigh.
"Poison?" questioned Aya.
"I don't know. I need to get it somewhere where I can analyze it," Omi quietly replied.
Yohji suddenly moaned and twisted on the floor. Ken wrapped his arms around Yohji's shoulders in an attempt to keep him still. He flinched, mumbled something the sounded like 'you bastards, Aya', and then stilled. If it was poison, and he got shot with it during the fight then…
"Maybe…" Ken paused, swallowed, licked his lips, "Maybe this is why he was acting so weird."
"Possible," said Omi, who was now standing in front of Berserker, pulling one of those same darts out of the Schwartz's shoulder. "And it might be why this guy is acting so docile." Omi held up the dart for them to see.
"So, what? They just shoot us with darts and then leave? Assuming we're dead or gonna be soon?" asked Ken.
"They would have made sure they had shot everyone before leaving if they were trying to do that," said Aya.
"Maybe they thought they had shot everyone?" countered Ken.
"And only really hit two?" Omi shook his head. "No, I don't think so."
"And then there's Crawford," muttered Aya.
"There was nothing we could have done for him. They're either long gone, or we'd have been walking into a trap." Omi walked the short distance of the elevator over to Yohji, pulled up a limp wrist and began checking his pulse. "Faster then normal," he mumbled to himself, "Farfie's is slower."
Then elevator suddenly stopped and the doors whooshed open. Omi got up and pushed Berserker out. Aya walked out with Nagi and back in without him. They both pulled Mastermind out and then came back together to help him with Yohji, who hadn't moved since his first stirring.
As Aya and Omi got Yohji out of the elevator Ken walked behind them, only to stop, frozen and speechless, at the sight that met his eyes.
There was a train, no a brightly lit, neon-green and –blue, shinkonsen resting on the tracks of an underground train tunnel. The amount of money it would take to build this, the amount of talent and connections it would take to keep it secret…
"What the hell kinda people do you know, Aya!?" gasped Ken.
Crawford regained consciousness to the sound of someone slamming a large door. He kept his eyes closed, concentrating on keeping his breaths even as he discovered the pain coursing though his body.
"What's this I hear about you kidnapping someone?" snarled a masculine voice.
An anxious female voice answered him. "Sir, it was the perfect opportunity to take away their precog. Unna told us-"
"Unna failed to carry out her task and got captured by her prey. And locked in the trunk for god's sake! Do you think I care what Unna said!? You were supposed to kill them!"
"Sir…"
"I already had one of my team die for this assignment! We were only hired to kill the telepath and the telekinetic! Kidnapping the precog and fighting Weiss was not part of the deal."
"But, sir, he said…"
"You don't follow his orders, you follow mine!"
There was a few minutes of silence.
"Is Unna alright?" said a calmer version of the male voice.
"Yes, sir. They're treating her right now."
"Update me on any changes. Dismissed."
"Sir." A light set of footsteps began walking away.
"And, Umi." The footsteps paused.
"Yes, sir?"
"Don't fail me again."
"Yes, sir."
The footsteps came again. A door opened and closed.
The male voice sighed. "Now what the hell am I going to do with you?"
The beginning started out a lot more stiffly then I would have liked, but I could not find a way to get Crawford realistically kidnapped without killing someone, and I need those people alive. So sorry if it seems a little surreal. If you get that in the Yohji POV, it was supposed to be there, if you get it in the Ken POV, sorry, I couldn't figure out a way to fix it. My slightly dented wall and bruised head proves that.
Fun Fact: Umi, while being a traditional Japanese name, is also an African name meaning 'servant'. Fits her, don't you think?
Please Review and Return!
12/21/06
12:51 PM