Roses in Rain
a Weiss Kreuz fanfiction by laila

Part 4 – Moonlight Shadow

"Well, I'm off!" Rain announced.

Aya raised his head to look at the young girl. Damn, she was gorgeous! There she stood by the door, measuring herself against it in a way that looked that one bit too contrived to convince as charmingly casual. She was clad from top to toe in tight leather – a one-piece biker's cat suit in shades of black and purple, unzipped just enough to show off a tight black tee and a bit of cleavage – with knee-high black leather boots, her long, straight hair pulled up in a high plait and tied with a scrap of purple ribbon. She held a black and purple crash helmet loosely in one hand. Aya stared at her, though covertly. Youji just stared. Ken, unobtrusively leaning on the edge of the table, turned away and gazed out the window at the crowded street.

Just for a moment Rain had reminded Ken of Yuriko, but in a parodic, blurred-black-and-white-photocopy kind of way that had him wanting to take the original in his arms and punch the bad facsimile.

Youji realized rather belatedly that his mouth was hanging open and quickly closed it to save the cigarette that was in serious danger of tumbling to the floor, then took two calculated paces toward the girl, a sleepy, seductive smile playing across his lips "Whoa there, Rain. You know it's scientifically implausible for the same girl in the same outfit to be both damned hot and seriously cool? Where are you going?"
"Oh, nowhere in particular." The girl said, far too casually. "And I'm sorry to say this, Youji, but no you can't come too."

Okay, Ken thought, she's dressed like that and she's going nowhere in particular. Yeah, that sounds plausible. He wanted to make an issue of it and, if it hadn't been for his decision that the best way to cope with resenting Rain for not being Yuriko without getting smacked round the face again was to ignore her unless she directly talked to him, he would probably have done just that. Hell, he thought, she'd better not have designs on my Kawasaki… she couldn't have, he had the keys and if she tried to hotwire it he'd kill her. No two ways about it. If Rain messed with his bike, Ken would be forced to kill her.

"Aww." Youji was saying, trying his best to look playfully disappointed – at least Ken hoped he was only pretending to be disappointed. "Rain, you know it's not fair to make plans without telling the rest of us. What do you say we go somewhere together next time? There're a lot of places out there where they'd more than welcome a woman like you!"
Aya cleared his throat. "Maybe Rain isn't interested in going to the kind of places that you go to for fun, Youji," he said quietly. Dangerously.
"Yeah, well, maybe she is. She isn't ever gonna know if we don't give it a try, ain't that right Rain?"

Which comment somehow had the effect of leaving Ken unsure if he'd rather have killed Rain at that moment or killed to be her. No. What was wrong with his brain at the moment? This thing he had, this stupid Youji thing was getting beyond a— no, he wasn't even going to think it. Ken glanced up at the pair through his fringe, and scowled when he noticed that Rain's pale cheeks had grown slightly pink.

"I don't think," Aya said even more quietly, "that would be entirely wise."
"Forgive me for saying this, Aya," Youji replied coolly, resting a casual hand on one of Rain's leather-clad shoulders, "but it's none of your business whether Rain chooses to go out with me or not. If she wants to spend a bit of time with me, it's her decision. Okay?"
Aya only glowered. "Maybe, but I'm not convinced Rain knows what she's letting herself in for."
"Oh, no?"
"No." Aya spoke coolly, folding his arms across his chest. "Look, Kudou, Rain's not like the rest of the girls you pick up and put down. She's different. She doesn't deserve to be played with."
"Maybe not," Youji said, absently fingering one of Rain's raven locks and making Ken fantasize about running riot with a pair of scissors, "but how do you know how I play when I'm playing to win?" And he smiled. A broad, infuriating grin that Aya must have longed to punch.
"Since when have you played for keeps?" the redhead asked derisively.
"Since when, Fujimiya," Youji countered, "have you played at all?"

And since when did you care who Youji took out? Ken thought resentfully. Geez. Part of him wanted to try and break it up but – no, he was not going to interfere. No way. If the guys wanted to make idiots of themselves over some random girl Aya should never have imported into the equation in the first place, let them. Youji and Aya were supposed to be grown-up assassins. They should know how to play nice all by themselves and they certainly shouldn't need him to tell them how to do it. He should never have to tell them how to do it. Ken Hidaka had not been designed to be the Voice of Reason, fuck it!

Speaking of… shouldn't it have fitted Rain's Cute Young Innocent act that she broke things up?

He hadn't been meaning to. He'd been trying to ignore the girl because she wasn't Yuriko, but Ken found his gaze wandering over to her all the same. Found himself staring. Shouldn't it have fitted her Cute Young Innocent act that she looked the slightest bit bothered about the fact that two guys she knew were fixing to come to blows over her? Shouldn't she have not been – waitaminute she was fucking smirking!

And Rain turned to him, belatedly realizing someone was watching her. Just for a moment she looked guilty. Caught out. A kid with her hand in the cookie jar confronted by a mother as yet too startled to think of anger. Just for a moment…

"Hey—"

Ken got no further, breaking off in sudden confusion as Rain gave him what had to be, hands-down, the most beseeching look he'd ever seen on anyone over the age of twelve who wasn't Omi Tsukiyono. Her eyes frightened, she bit down slightly on her perfect, shell-pink lower lip as she glanced between Aya and Youji in frightened consternation, and fiddled with the chinstrap of her crash helmet. You're their friend, the look in her troubled amethyst pools was saying. Can't you do something? Can't you stop them? God, if only he could have done! Poor little thing, Ken thought, she's hating this. How could I have thought a girl like Rain would ever enjoy being fought over like that? She's much too… much too special.

And Christ, what a beautiful girl she was…

Youji blinked, looking as if he had quite forgotten Ken was actually in the room. "Huh? What's the problem, kid?"
"Oh." Ken blushed, anxiously scratching the back of his head. "Uh, nothing. Thought I kinda… but I must've been imagining it or something? Yeah, that was probably it. Probably wasn't important anyway. Sorry. Forget I spoke, okay?"

He turned away to hide his abject confusion. He'd been thinking something else, hadn't he? He'd seen something weird. Something weird about Rain, something that, that… no. No, it was gone. Why would he have been thinking about Rain in the first place?

This time, he didn't notice Rain's smile.

"Aya-san," Rain said beseechingly, her head tilted slightly back, causing her hair to tumble back from her wide eyes, which were affixed on the young man's pale, dour countenance, "Youji-san, please, don't fight like this! It's not right for you to fight like this! If it really matters that much to you who I go out with, Aya-san, why don't we all go out together?" She said it like it was a revelation, like she'd discovered penicillin in her sandwich bag. "Yes! Let's go out together! So I can really feel I'm getting to know you all!"
"Together?" Youji asked incredulously. He looked like he was about to laugh, only for him to remember who he was talking to and quickly pull himself together. "You'd like that, Rain?"

(How, Ken wondered, could I just forget what I was thinking about like that? How in the Hell could his mind change about something all by itself? Whose thoughts had those been?)

The girl nodded. "Oh, yes," she said enthusiastically. "It'd be such fun. Don't you think?"
"Well, yeah…" Youji began dubiously. "But… Rain? I hate to be the one to break this to ya, but Aya here doesn't exactly play much. Actually, it's more like he doesn't play at—"
"Saturday." Aya said calmly.
Youji blinked. His sunglasses slid a comical couple of inches down his nose. He stared. "Aya?"

("I don't think like that," Ken said to nobody at all. "I don't. I don't.")

"Not now." Aya said His expression hadn't changed one iota, though the look in his eyes seemed to soften somewhat as he gazed down at the pretty young girl before him. "Would Saturday night suit you, Rain?"
"You mean… you'll come?" Rain asked excitedly, beaming up at him. "You'll really come, Aya-san? Oh, that's wonderful!"
"Aya," Youji said, "Are you sure you're feeling all right, man? You… hey, look, Rain, I'm not sure that's such a great ide—"

For Rain had gently but firmly pulled away from Youji and, thrusting the crash helmet she held into his arms, hurried across the room to where the redhead stood, she wrapped her arms about Aya's waist and hugged him as if he were a large, bad-tempered teddy bear. An Aya bear perhaps; the least cuddly cuddly toy the world had ever known. Youji stared. Ken grasped the edge of the table he leant against with both hands simply for the sake of keeping his balance. And all Aya did was stand there and let her. He didn't look thrilled, no, and both Youji and Ken could tell he held himself stiff as a board, but he didn't push Rain away. He didn't even try to.

Neither of them seemed to mind that Youji and Ken were staring openly at them, their very different faces now identical twins for shock and incomprehension.

"Holy shit," Ken said flatly.
"I don't know who that is," Youji solemnly declared, pushing his sunglasses back up his nose, "but it sure as Hell ain't Aya."
Ken was inclined to agree with him. "Don't you have somewhere to be, Rain!"

Rain started, pulling away from her unresponsive hug accomplice and glancing about herself, as if suddenly recalled to where she was and what she was doing. "Oh, no!" she cried. "My appointment! Thanks for reminding me, Ken-san, oh no, I'm gonna be so late!" She snatched the crash helmet from the table where Youji had placed it and bolted for the door.
"Wait, Rain" Aya said alarmingly solicitously, as the girl stopped in her tracks and looked back at him, her gaze curious. "How are you getting there? Do you need a lift?"
"Ayaaa," Ken pointed out, "she's wearing leathers."
Rain ignored him. She simply shook her head and smiled up at Aya. "Oh, no. No, there's no need to worry. I'm taking my motorbike, of course! See you boys tomorrow!"

And, with another, broader smile and a playful little wave aimed at everybody and nobody, the young girl stepped lightly out through the back door and into the gathering dusk, her long, dark plait swaying as she walked, in counterpoint to her steps. She couldn't have failed to notice that Aya and Youji watched her every move as if hypnotized.

"God," Youji muttered to the four walls as the door closed behind her, a glazed look in his green eyes, "that girl is so sexy."

Aya glowered. He looked as if he would have liked to say something rather pointed on the subject of Youji's increasingly vocal approval of Rain's sexiness and might even have been about to had it not been for Ken, who was thinking exactly the same thing – albeit for diametrically different reasons. Youji's comment had startled him into speech before Aya could so much as draw breath.

"Wait. So she's more sexy because she owns a motorbike?" Ken asked incredulously. "Youji, I own a goddamn motorbike. I can't believe you thought I was any more sexy after you found out I had a bike than you did before!"
"It's different for girls." Youji said fervently. "Very, very different." Even as he spoke something at the back of his mind nagged at him. That was rather a weird thing for Ken to have said, wasn't it? He almost, Youji thought, sounded like he wanted me to think he was sexy. In fact, he'd almost sounded envious…
Ken stared at him. "Why is it so different— oh forget it. And you didn't remotely want on with Yuriko and she was, God, she was at least three times more exciting than Rain… ugh, what's with this sudden kink for girls on motorbikes! When'd she get a bike anyway? If she can get herself a motorbike why did we have to buy her an entire wardrobe's worth of clothing?"
"You're sure you're not just jealous, Kenken?"
"What? Jealous? Of who? Why the fuck would I be jealous, Youji!"
Youji grinned at him and playfully ruffled his hair. Ken impatiently batted his hand away. "You don't have to worry about that, kid. There's more than enough of the Kudou to go round."
"Shut up!"
"Never mind that now," Aya said forcefully. "We should be grateful she chose to go out tonight."

And Ken stared at him. Just how much denser did his teammates plan on getting? Yeah but Aya, he wanted to say, don't you think that's just a bit suspicious? Rain hasn't exactly made a habit of going out of an evening up till now but she vanishes off and won't tell anyone where she's going on the same evening as our first mission with The New Mysterious Female Teammate of Mystery? Am I the only one who thinks this is way too coincidental to be a coincidence at all?

"Yeah." Youji said – and Mary Mother of God, he was serious! "We really lucked out there, don't you think, Kenken?"
"If luck's what you call it…" Ken muttered darkly, and knew the others wouldn't hear him.

Seemingly he was, which was something else Ken didn't like one bit.

He wasn't supposed to be the smart one either.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the mission would have to be taking place in the cheap cliché that was an old warehouse. A warehouse, for fuck's sake. Hard to picture a more hackneyed locale short of Persia ordering them off to some haunted mansion like they were doing a Weiss Halloween Special or something equally lame. If life was a movie God should fire his screenwriter.

The warehouse, hulking and ostensibly abandoned, was like something out of a lame B-movie or perhaps a pretentious prog-rock video. A precarious pile of sagging crates stood piled by its great sliding doors, doors from which a chain like a snapped charm bracelet, it's dangling padlock nothing more than an outsize pendant, hung limply and which now stood suspiciously half-open, revealing the looming shadows of long-forgotten machinery. The entire place smelt of dust and damp and rot. Even the B-picture's curling tendrils of dry ice were accounted for in the form of an infuriatingly atmospheric ground mist that had the building's shattered shell loom ominous and yet strangely incorporeal in front of them.

And the place was still giving Ken the creeps and he resented it. Nothing that cheesy had any right to be scary, damn it!

He told himself it was just the wait. Too much time hidden in damp foliage with nothing to do but stare at said warehouse and get cold was getting to him. Making him itch to just kill something already and go home. Yeah. That was all. Goddamn Calico.

"What's keeping her?" He muttered.
"No idea, kid," Youji murmured in his ear, making Ken jump. He hadn't known Youji was standing that close! Hadn't wanted to, either. Not when it meant all he had to do was step back a pace and no Ken that's stupid, Youji's strictly hands off, he's Women Only (isn't he?), he doesn't have the faintest idea you more sort of aren't (does he?), you keep your mind on the job okay? "Guess she just fancied being fashionably late. Women, huh? Even when they're going out assassinating they still keep everyone waiting for them to get ready…"
Ken laughed almost in spite of himself. "Well, you'd know. Hey, Omi? Where'd you say we were meeting this girl?"
"She wouldn't specify a location." Omi said quietly. "She just said the target site. It seemed logical that, if we were going in as a group, she'd meet us before we went in. I'm beginning to suspect she hasn't done the logical thing."
"Yeah, probably." Ken said, he suspected more than a little irritably. "Come on, Omi, she's some super-amazing bad-ass solo agent, right? Why's she gonna bother waiting for something stupid like her teammates? She's already in there!"

And realized his teammates had actually listened to him. All three of them had turned to him like he'd done something other than state the (to him at least) blindingly obvious. Why would a girl like Calico have waited for them? Most likely it wouldn't even have occurred to her.

"This isn't a mission one person could handle alone." That was Aya, so far silent.
Omi nodded in agreement. "Aya-kun's right. I thought she'd want to meet us, but… oh, no. I've been stupid! Calico's used to working alone!"
It was on the tip of Ken's tongue to say, and isn't it going to be a blast working with her if that's really the way she thinks, but he held it back. Instead, he simply shook his head and sighed. "And isn't it going to be a blast working with her if that's really the way she thinks. She could have at least called in!"
Omi ignored him. "I know what must have happened to Calico. She's a solo agent! It figures she'd have thought the meeting time we gave her was the mission start time, so she must have gone right in…" The teenager 's voice tailed off, and he swallowed.
Youji glanced at his watch. "Fifteen minutes ago." He said grimly, looking up at his teammates' faces. "Omi?"
"Let's go." Omi said simply.

And darted from the brake of rather straggly trees they had been hiding in, and darted toward the entrance of the warehouse. At least, Ken thought wearily, Omi still had the sense to stick in the shadow… still, it beat waiting around for the perhaps-mythical new teammate who didn't even seem to realize what a comm. was for.

Funny, the warehouse didn't look anywhere near as creepy up close.

After all that buildup, Ken accounted the actual interior a bit of a let-down. Sure, the dust-furred, rusting hulks of machinery were kind of ominous and the air smelt suitably stale (even if there was a rather unfortunate undertone to it suggesting that whatever the warehouse had been doing when it was operational must have involved fish in some way, shape or form) but in just about every other way it fell far short. Certainly there were no strange instances of sin visible anywhere. It was, in short, just an old warehouse. Heard it before, heard it before.

In fact, the place was so scrupulously, boringly normal in just about every way it made Ken wonder what in the Hell they were doing there. It just looked like an old fish-packing plant to him. Yeah, it was creepy, but surely there were far more interesting places for dark beasts to hang out?

"There had better be some bad guys in here somewhere." Ken muttered, nudging an upended plastic pallet out of the way with the side of one foot. "If they got bored of waiting to get their asses kicked while we were hanging about outside and are all tucked up with their teddy bears now, I'm gonna be pissed."
"Teddy bears?" Youji, hidden somewhere behind a large dust-clogged machine which looked like it had been designed to be suitably creepy first and functional only as an afterthought, drawled over the comm.
"What? Even dark beasts have to get their heads down sometime."
Omi, prowling the decidedly precarious-looking catwalks above the warehouse floor, shushed them. "Someone's coming."

Oh, right.

Ken ducked back behind one of the conveniently located pieces of machinery, hoping to lose himself in the shadows. Damn the dust! It would have been so much simpler if he could go climb on top of the thing, nobody ever looked up when they weren't thinking about it, but that'd leave footprints everywhere and they'd sure as shit look up then. On top of everything else, his ducking back here had knocked one of the tarpaulins and there was dust everywhere… now that's just fucking great, Ken thought frantically, clapping one hand over his mouth. You don't want to sneeze, Ken!

The only thing he could do was hope that this was Calico deigning to show her no doubt fabulously beautiful face – he didn't care if he sneezed in front of her even if he bet the bitch did laugh at him for it – but of course life never was that simple.

"Targets." Aya whispered over the comm. For a moment Ken had the creepy feeling the guy was stood right behind him.
Oh, brilliant, Ken thought. Do not sneeze now, for Christ's sakes. He decided this was all Calico's fault and that he now hated her even more. Where was the woman anyway?
"Siberian?" Omi said softly. "Are you all right?"
He nodded, only to realize that was pointless. "Dust," he said in a curiously choked voice and heard Youji laugh, a whisper-soft thing which made Ken want to kick him. In the face.
"Only you could manage that, Siberian." The guy had sounded – what in Hell had he sounded like? Damn near impossible to tell, what with the comm. Ken wondered if he was blushing, had a feeling he probably was, then wondered why he was worrying about it. Mission. Right.
"Not funny. Shut up." Ken made a mental note to kill Youji or, failing that, throw flour in the guy's face next time he had some to hand and see how he liked it.

The targets didn't seem to be in any particular hurry to make their presences felt. They stopped short a few feet into the room, the one turning to the other and saying something that none of his unsuspected audience quite caught in a self-congratulatory tone which had Youji raising his eyes heavenward, Omi sighing near-silently and Ken (now experimenting with holding his breath in a desperate attempt to keep himself from noticing the equally desperate condition of his sinuses) utterly failed to notice. He didn't notice it when the targets, an older guy in a business suit and a slim young man with something of the demeanor of a personal secretary, started ambling casually closer. All he knew was that nothing was happening and he was fed up…

… and oh, Christ, he really was going to sneeze. He clapped one hand over his mouth in a frantic attempt to stifle it – not, it had to be admitted, entirely successfully. All he could hope for now was a half-deaf, mostly stupid target and the problem with dark beasts was they tended to be a lot on the ball and extremely intelligent. This didn't look good.

"—and, if all goes to plan, we'll be well positioned to demand… Oh, bless you."
"I didn't sneeze, Sir."
"Didn't you? Well, somebody did."

Shit.

"Move in," Omi said, and even through the comm. he sounded weary. He knew it wasn't as if the guy could have helped it what with all the dust but seriously, Ken, God dammit.

Outside on the roof and crouched unobserved, like a panther waiting to spring, by one of the half-open skylights, a lithe figure half-hidden in a patch of conveniently-placed shadow gazed down into the abandoned warehouse through narrowed amethyst eyes as the four assassins moved in on their targets – targets who, the figure noticed, were nowhere near as taken aback as Abyssinian and his team might have hoped. Targets who had been ready for this. Cradling a sheathed weapon to its leather-clad chest with slender gloved hands, the night wind whipping back the long, shining, raven-dark hair which the stranger wore tied back in a high ponytail, they watched the ensuing battle.

"Not yet," the stranger murmured to themselves in a soft, low, musical voice. "Not yet."

As they looked down on the scene unfolding beneath them, the watching figure could have been forgiven for thinking all Hell had broken loose. For the four young men in the warehouse it just about had. Seemed these targets were so glad someone out there was trying to kill them that they'd given Weiss, as a token of their gratitude, a toybox full of assorted baddies to play with. Were all these guys in the briefing? No, probably not, they very rarely were.

Omi had managed to down the secretary as he hustled his boss back to safety courtesy of a nicely-placed crossbow bolt to the windpipe, but before Aya could send his boss to join him he had been stopped in his tracks by two ill-tempered types in matching black business suits, and when Ken had tried to go and help him out his own progress was arrested by a brawny bodyguard, who resembled nothing so much as a nicely-dressed ambulant wall and moved far more quickly than someone of that size had any right to.

Needless to say getting in the way of the guy's fist had hurt quite a bit and put Ken in an even worse mood than he had been in already. As he drove the claws of his bugnuks through the chest of brick wall guy and turned on a woman wearing far too much makeup and far too little clothing and armed with, of all things, a freaking fan who jumped about like she thought she was a compellingly challenging boss in some dumb video game, decided that if he got out of this one alive he was going to kill Calico. No two ways about it. He was going to kill her. Christ, and he'd assumed Aya had trouble with the whole 'teamwork' concept!

Remind me, he thought, never to bitch out Aya for thinking 'heaving katanas at helicopters' is a workable mission objective again and why won't this bloody woman stand still!

"Having trouble, boy?" She purred as she darted just clear of the bugnuk claws for the nth time.
"Oh, shut up," Ken muttered irritably. "I don't see you doing me any damage either!"

Had he cared to look round at that moment, he would have seen a frustrated Youji struggling to subdue a gagging, wriggling target who seemed to be determined to take his time about choking to death (something Youji had never quite come to terms with; he always was caught off-guard by what a startlingly long time it took to strangle a man), would have seen another man draw his gun and take aim at the blonde's head only to be felled by a crossbow bolt to the chest – Omi, still in the rafters, leveling the odds as best he could. He might even have seen Aya carefully dispose of his second besuited assailant and start after their primary target, a slightly shabby-looking man named Kawamata, only to very quickly run into further difficulties.

The redhead, his katana raised to strike, found himself staring down the barrel of a rather nasty-looking shotgun. He drew away a pace, his eyes narrowing in understated vexation only to feel something cold and sharp – the point of a knife, he suspected – dig into the small of his back. Even through the heavy leather of his coat, he felt it. Drawing himself up to his full height and letting his arm drop, Aya gazed into the dull brown eyes of his target and felt only frustration. Thought, what a pointless way to die.

"Aya-kun!" Omi called, and he sounded almost as furious as he did worried.

All he could do was watch. Watch when Youji, his target finally dispatched, was surrounded by three other near-identical men, armed with very much identical guns (very large identical guns at that) – cool even in extremis, the blonde raised his hands and graced his captors with a grin that as good as said okay, you got me. Watch as Ken finally realized that something was the matter here and turned, surprised by the way the noise had suddenly dropped only to pay for his momentary lapse when the woman he was fighting pounced upon him and wrestled him to the ground, pinning him face-down with one arm twisted behind him, her knee planted firmly in the small of his back and the folded fan pressed against the nape of his neck.

Omi hardly needed anyone on the ground to draw a bead on him too to know that trying anything now would be a very, very bad move.

"That's far enough, children." Kawamata said coolly.

Of course we'd be outclassed, Omi thought in sudden frustration, clutching his crossbow to his chest like a child might clasp a teddy bear. Of course. Manx said this was too difficult for four… he wondered what had happened to Calico, and if she had been killed already and he couldn't help but feel sorry for her, for this strange young girl he'd never met. Their teammate. They hadn't been much of a team to her, had they?

All Ken wondered was why he was supposed to feel so intimidated by someone holding a fan to his throat.

"I don't suppose," Kawamata said into the sudden silence, walking, with hands clasped behind his back, slowly into a pool of moonlight falling from a large, surprisingly dust-free window as if the warehouse were his personal stage and the moonlight a spotlight, as if he were ready for his close-up, "that you're going to be so amenable as to tell me what you four thought you were playing at?" Youji thought he looked better like that, imposing rather than seedy, his demeanor that of a venerable ambassador who'd secretly turned to drink – the old bastard was showboating.
Aya said nothing; he merely watched and waited. Why, he wondered, do they feel they have to talk first? Why do they always want to talk? From somewhere behind him, he heard Youji laugh briefly and incredulously. "Are you kidding?" He wasn't sure what he found more ridiculous; the thought that an assassin might, while shooting the shit at gunpoint with his target, decide to tell the guy exactly why he had been marked for death as if he didn't know already, or the idea of Aya shooting the shit with anyone.
"I thought not." The man shook his head sadly as if amazed and saddened by this display of rectitude, a grandfather whose grandchildren had disappointed him so often that disappointment was all he expected. "I suppose, too, that you would not consider an old man's offer of employment, even if he were to tell you it was the only way the four of you will live to see another sunrise?"
"No." Aya replied indifferently and Ken wished the guy had kept his mouth shut. If Kawamata was going to be so stupid as to offer jobs to guys who wanted him dead, Ken would have let him be stupid. They could have dropped the bastard the minute his guard was down and finished the job that way, right? Sure, it might have taken a bit longer but the target would be dead and they could collect the pay packet – two pay packets even and it wasn't like Ken needed the money but they could use a new rice cooker… Perhaps Kawamata would let him take the job alone.
"I see. A pity, a pity when you all seem somewhat skilled, yet if you refuse to be bought I suppose it can't be helped." Another sorrowful shake of the lowered head, a horribly pregnant pause and Kawamata looked up, smiled nastily, no longer the kindly old man – funny thing, it felt like a relief. "Kill them."

Like they hadn't seen that coming. Ken surprised himself by thinking, can this get any more obnoxiously dramatic?

And the large window over Kawamata's head cracked across the middle then exploded discordantly into a million glittering shards, a sparkling, deadly rainfall of glass spinning and tumbling to the stained concrete floor. Teach Ken to ask himself that question.

The Deus ex machina had arrived.