Roses in Rain
a Weiss Kreuz fanfiction by laila

Part 10 – It Ain't Me, Babe

Friday at the Koneko with Rain and Omi safely sequestered in some classroom and Ken Hidaka had either hit his head far harder than anybody had realized, or he had always been this strange and Youji simply hadn't noticed before.

"What are you doing, Ken?"

What Ken was doing was counting. Standing in front of the store, one hand resting on his hip, he was pointing at each of the second-floor windows in turn, quietly counting under his breath. One, two, three; hesitating only momentarily when he reached the last window, he would frown, then backtrack and start over. One, two—

"Counting the windows," Ken said distractedly, as if it were obvious. "One. Two…"
"Why do you want to do that?" Youji asked, leaning back against the table with his hands in his pockets. "Don't tell me you're thinking of applying to college."
The boy let his hand fall, giving Youji a nasty look. "Ha fucking ha. If you must know, there's a window missing."
"One missing? There's three windows there, Ken, there always has been. How many are you expecting to see?"
Ken said, "Four."
"Four," Youji echoed. "Why four all of a sudden?"
"Look."

Ken pointed upward, up at the windows of the second-storey living areas, and Youji followed his gaze, feeling himself start to frown. There was nothing much there: just three windows, same as there always had been. He couldn't work out for the life of him what it was about them that had Ken so fascinated. No matter how slow an afternoon it was, you had to be really hard up for entertainment before counting the windows of your own home seemed stimulating.

"I don't see anything," Youji told him.
"No, look," Ken insisted. "Really look at what's there, Youji. There's the training room, that's those two windows right there. And there's Omi's bedroom window next to it. That makes three. Where's Rain's room?"
"Down the corridor from Omi's where it's always—oh." Youji hesitated, then looked away, rubbing his eyes, before gazing back up at the building where the missing fourth window had utterly failed to materialize. "Oh. Well, I'll be goddamned."
"It's really obvious when you notice it," Ken said, "isn't it?"

Youji had to agree that it was.

One of Ken's peculiar talents – and it only sounded easy until a guy actually had to do it for himself – was the ability to see what was right in front of him. Usually it was just a pain, manifesting as a marked tendency to point out that empty rooms were, in fact, empty. Every so often though the boy would play a blinder like this one, leaving Youji to remind himself, yet again, that a man should never underestimate how useful it was to keep a guy who only saw what was really there around.

The missing window was obvious when you noticed it: first, however, came noticing it in the first place. That was the hard part, and that was where Ken came in.

"But if Omi's room is there," Ken said, "and Rain's is down the corridor from it… where'd the corridor come from? And where in the nine Hells does it go?"

All he was really asking was, what's going on?

"I have no idea," Youji told him, "but there's only one way to find out. Come on."

And, without waiting to see if Ken was following, he turned back to the store only to discover his current favorite among the girls stood on the sidewalk right in front of him, her arms full of books, staring at him as if he'd managed to misplace his head. Half past one on a Friday afternoon and no question why she was here. If he'd only played his cards right he could no doubt have charmed her number out of her, or even a promise to meet up – and Ken, damn the boy, was standing there, hands planted firmly on his hips, looking as if this was somehow his fault.

"Youji-san? What are you doing, is one of the windows broken?"
"After a fashion," Youji told her, "yes. I'll be right back, okay?"

"What the Hell did you mean," Ken asked him a few moments later, "after a fashion?"
"Well what was I supposed to say?" Youji said. "My friend here thinks we're living in an Escher litho, back in five?"

Ken just looked blank, and Youji added the life and works of M. C. Escher to the disturbingly long list of things his friend appeared genuinely worryingly ignorant about – which, now he thought about it, probably included lithography as well. Still, fair was fair, Ken must have explained zonal defending to him at least three times by his reckoning and he still didn't have any idea what it involved beyond a soccer pitch and Ken yelling the kind of insults a guy could only pick up in a locker room at the television.

It wasn't like any of that would help now. Even the insults seemed somehow misplaced. Here they were standing outside Omi's bedroom, staring down a corridor neither of them could quite believe in at a room that shouldn't have been possible. Clearly this was no time for Dutch lithography.

"No," Ken said patiently, "I think we're living in our house. Except it's got a bit bolted on."
"Are you suggesting she did some interior remodeling and nobody noticed?"
Ken gave him that look again, narrow-eyed and slightly suspicious as if this was somehow all his fault. "That's stupid, Youji. There'd be a big lump sticking out the wall. Or the neighbors would have written us a letter saying something like get this girl's bedroom out my… well, whatever's on the other side of that."
"I'm not saying this isn't odd," Youji conceded, "but you should never confuse the unusual with the impossible."
"So what are you saying, you want me to buy that she smuggled in a spare room that never existed before without anyone noticing? Even the outside of the building? Youji, this is just a fucking mess!"

Well, that much Youji would give him. No matter how strangely he was acting Ken had a point about that, at least.

Not that the kid seemed to have finished being strange. As if determined to push the act to the bitter end, Ken had fished a pair of pruning shears from the pocket of his apron. Carefully, he tossed the shears into the corridor, frowning when they fell to the floor with a loud, heavy thump.

"Huh. Looks solid enough."
Youji just sighed, shaking his head. "Ken, we've all been down there before. You won't fall through the floor. It's real."
"Then where's her window?"

Yeah, he'd been down there before, he was sure of it, but something about Ken's worry was contagious. It was crazy, Youji knew that sure as he knew anything – it's just a corridor, kid – but Ken wasn't the twitchy, paranoid sort. The kid didn't get this worked up over nothing. When Ken moved to retrieve the shears, taking a few cautious paces out into that inexplicable corridor, it was all Youji could do not to catch him by the shoulder and pull him back. Ridiculous, really, and yet there it was. Carefully Ken stooped to pick the shears and then straightened, hesitating just before Rain's door to gaze at Youji over one banked shoulder.

"What am I standing on?" he asked. "Does this look weird to you? Can you take a photograph?"

God help him, Youji was actually considering it.

"What with?" he asked instead – and who did he think he was kidding, anyway? Kudou, if you're objecting on technical grounds he knows he's got you. "We don't have a camera, Ken. You just look like a guy standing in a hall to me."
"So we don't have a camera, so what?" Ken tugged a battered spiral-bound notepad from the pocket of his apron. "You're an artist, aren't you? Can't you do a sketch?"
"Yeah, but what would that prove?"
Ken muttered something mercifully inaudible, tossed him the notepad, then leaned back against Rain's bedroom door with his hands in his pockets. "Humor me."

Which was why doing anything more serious than choosing a movie with Ken Hidaka could be such a pain. Sometimes Youji figured his stubbornness might have been kind of funny, if only it hadn't been so painfully familiar – and hadn't made it so damned difficult to turn the boy down.

(Besides, didn't he want to know how the Hell Rain could have snuck a spare room up behind his back, too?)

"Oh, very well." Youji sighed theatrically, uncapping his pen. He knew when he was beaten. "Hold still, okay?"
Ken started. "What?"
"Hold still," Youji told him. "That's… well, that would be pretty much the opposite of what you're doing now. So don't do that and we should get on just fine."
"I meant sketch the corridor, you ass!"
"Then don't stand in it," Youji said mildly – then, when Ken made as if to move, held up one hand. "Wait. I think this is gonna work out better with something to focus on. If I'm concentrating too hard on what I can see, it could be kind of tricky to draw whatever you think is really there."
"What'd you mean what I think is there? Dammit Youji, whose side are you on?" The boy spoke angrily but he slumped heavily back against Rain's white-painted bedroom door all the same, fidgeting slightly as he attempted to settle himself comfortably. "She doesn't have a window, Youji, you tell me what to think."
"I think," Youji said, "that if you're genuinely onto something here, Kenken, you're not even standing in the same building as me right now. Now shut up, I'm trying to concentrate."

It should have been a nothing of a background. It was, after all, merely a hallway and not even a very interesting example of that. Just bare, varnished floorboards, a cupboard, an uninteresting stretch of wall painted a plain white. When he first moved in Youji had talked about hanging a print there, but between one thing and another he'd never quite gotten round to it; Ken, more practically, got it into his head there should be more space in the bathroom and had dragged the linen closet out there, and that had put an end to that.

Youji sketched quickly, concentrating on Ken – on the cant of his head, the set of his shoulders, the loose folds of the shirt he never had quite grown into. He tried not to think about what he was roughly blocking in around the boy, but one thing was certain: it damn sure didn't feel like he was drawing any kind of linen closet.

Ken had a certain gift for stillness he seldom, if ever chose to use. He certainly wasn't using it now; ten minutes the sketch had taken, and the boy was already starting to fidget as his friend put the finishing touches to the background he was trying very hard not to actually see. Youji (as he tucked away the pen and glanced down at the picture on the pad, only to blink and rub his eyes, then look again) thought he knew the feeling.

"What's up?" Ken asked. "You look like you swallowed a bug."

In reply, Youji held the pad out to the boy, wordlessly inviting him to see for himself. Ken frowned at it for a minute, then tried to tilt Youji's wrist for a better view until Youji told him not to be so bloody stupid and it dawned on him that he could just take the pad himself. It took him only a couple of seconds to drop it.

"Jesus fuck."

And that was an understatement if Youji had ever heard one.

That was Ken all right, but he was propping up the wall in a stranger's bathroom. A foot or so further down the corridor and he'd have been standing right in the middle of the empty tub. Either Youji was going crazy or the rest of the world was, and he wasn't at all sure right now which he'd prefer.

"She did it," Ken announced after a long moment had passed in awkward silence. "She must have done."
Even now it sounded ridiculous – just not quite ridiculous enough. "That's crazy," Youji told him. "How could a normal girl have done something like this?"
"Oh for fuck's sake! When was Rain ever interested in normal? She's not like other girls, she's… she's just different!"
"Different," Youji echoed, as if the word meant nothing. "Okay, Ken, so she's different. That's not a crime, and it still doesn't explain this hallway."
Ken wasn't listening. He was pacing, worrying at the nail of one finger. "Christ, Youji," he said, "this is just her goddamn door. If that's what we get when you try to draw her bedroom, what the fuck'd you get if you tried to draw her?"

Half an hour found them in the basement, Youji armed with a sketchpad and charcoals, Ken scribbling something in biro on a spiral-bound notepad he used for writing down telephone orders in. It wasn't at all easy to dissuade Ken from doing something when he set his mind to it so, Youji thought, what harm was there in riding this crazy train all the way to the end of the tracks? If it did nothing else it got them out the shop. Sure, Ken, let's try and draw Rain now – we work with her every day, we should remember her well enough. Why the Hell not?

"Done," Ken said, raising his head from his notepad.
"Good." Youji snapped his fingers, holding out one hand to him. "Let's see it, then."

Ken handed the pad over, taking Youji's own from him and frowning over what he found there. What he looked so worked up about Youji didn't know: his job was easy. Youji, after all, could actually draw. As for deciphering what Ken had intended with this generic anime scribble—

Huh. Youji raised his eyebrows in exaggerated surprise. Ken was… well, calling him a competent artist would have been pushing it, but for all Rain had come out looking disturbingly like she was about to go Super Saiyan it was at least obvious what he thought he was driving at. Too bad what he was driving at was – at a conservative estimate – at least two years older and twenty pounds heavier than the sylph-like schoolgirl Rain. Who the Hell did Ken think he had been drawing?

"Even you," Youji said, "cannot possibly be that bad an artist."

And braced himself, only smiling when Ken hit him in the arm with his own sketchpad.

"Look who's talking," Ken muttered, jabbing one accusing finger at Youji's own sketch. "Rain's got long hair, you idiot! And she never had a freckle there."
"I know that," Youji said far too casually. "Artistic license, Kenken, I drew her with her hair tied back."
"Yeah, but why?"
Youji sighed. "Hidaka, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Yes, Youji thought a little wistfully as he watched Ken blink and frown and try to puzzle what the Hell that was supposed to mean out, that had been below the belt. Just as long as it stopped him asking questions, though—

"Youji," Ken said, "these don't look remotely like they're supposed to be the same girl."

That's because you can't draw to save your life, Kenken- the retort was on the tip of his tongue, but something wouldn't let him say it. Reducing the whole uneasy situation to a single mean-spirited quip just seemed wrong of him, somehow. Ken – by the look on his face, by the tone of his voice – was clearly worried and even if Youji thought he was worrying about nothing turning the whole thing into a joke at his expense… well, it just didn't seem fair on the kid, somehow.

All he could think of to say was, "Of course they're the same girl."
"I don't think so," Ken said quietly. Then added, quickly and almost anxiously, "I know I can't draw, Youji. But… say you tried to draw her like I have. With the biro and the shit art and everything. It still wouldn't look the same! It's like… it's like when we look at her we're not even seeing the same thing!"

"But that's what art is—" Youji began, only to break off when Ken rounded on him, raising the sketchpad he still held as if he were threatening to hit him with it.
"Don't give me that, Kudou! An apple is an apple whoever draws it! There's something really goddamn weird going on here and I don't fucking like it!"
And he was serious. Dead serious. "Ken," Youji said, "what exactly are you implying? Rain's somehow responsible for all this? I don't think she's on the level either and I can't say I much care for the effect she's had on Aya, but isn't this pushing it a bit?"
"Then what about the corridor?" Ken demanded, as if he thought this was somehow conclusive – and who knew, to him maybe it was. "It's fucked up in her favor, Youji, who else'd do it? For Christ's sake, who'd even bother?"

Youji wished it didn't sound so reasonable. Sounded, in fact, like something he should have been thinking. Who else would have had the motive to do anything of the sort? The only person who benefited was Rain: just as the only person who benefited from the sudden fondness of the neighborhood boys for hanging round a flower shop was Rain, just as Rain was the only one who could possibly have had anything to gain from poor little Sakura humiliating herself in front of a man she adored. Just as the only person who liked the way Aya was changing was Rain. It was all for her sake, every last bit of it.

But that didn't have to mean she was the one who was changing it, did it? Ken might have thought so but Ken, not to put too fine a point on it, wasn't exactly Mr. Logical at the best of times. No, there had to be another solution, a sensible one—

Damned if he had any idea what it could have been, though.

The sound of footsteps – light but confident, a woman's gait – on the metal treads of the spiral stairway put an abrupt stop to those speculations. Youji, his brows quizzically arched, glanced up and over one shoulder to the staircase; next to him Ken's head snapped up, and the boy's eyes were narrowed in suspicion. He relaxed visibly at the sight of Manx – or, more accurately, the sight of her shoes. Youji, for his part, gave the woman a charming smile.

"Well, well, if it isn't Miss Manx," he said. "To what do we owe this pleasure?"
"I'm afraid this isn't a social call, Balinese," Manx replied, coolly as ever, but her manner seemed to soften as she gazed down on them. "I'm glad to see you two alone, though. No—" Ken had got to his feet, "—please sit down, Siberian. There's something I need to talk to you both about and it would be best I did so alone."

Which meant, of course, that it was about Rain. Hurriedly Ken sat back down again, glancing about himself for something to shove the sketchbooks behind. Sure, his expression said, Manx was trustworthy but that hardly meant this whole sketchbook thing wouldn't look deeply weird to her… complete lack of anything resembling a sofa cushion aside, maybe there was hope for the kid yet.

"So, Manx," Youji said with a smile, "if it's not the mere pleasure of my company you're here for, what can we do for you?"
"We have another mission," Manx replied with something that sounded worryingly like a sigh, smoothing her skirt out and taking a seat opposite them. "No, Siberian, don't get up, this isn't a briefing yet. That's one of the things I need to talk to you about. I've noticed… let us call it a certain pattern in the missions you've been assigned lately."
"Pattern?" Ken echoed. "Like what?"
"A pattern in that that they require a large amount of undercover work that not only throws Agents Abyssinian and Calico together, but that they specifically call upon the abilities of Agent Calico to the extent one might say they were designed to showcase them. It strikes me as suspicious that a matter of days after receiving a mission that called on Abyssinian and Calico to go undercover as a couple and put themselves in harm's way, Weiss should be assigned another, seemingly unrelated mission that requires the exact same thing."
Ken blinked. "Wait, you're saying these things are being set up to make Rain look good?"
"That would be my theory," Manx replied, "yes."
"But why?" Youji asked. That doesn't make sense, Manx. "Why would Kritiker want to do something like that?"
"That, Balinese, would be what I've been attempting to find out. Unfortunately, there have been…" She hesitated, groping for a word. "Issues. I have yet to work out by what criteria Persia has selected the last few targets, and I've had no more luck in obtaining full access to Calico's records. I intend to keep trying, but until I know precisely where she's claiming to have come from I see no way of looking into the truth of those claims. So I've come to ask for your help."
"Ours?"
Ken sounded disbelieving. Youji hardly blamed him. "He's got a point, Manx. What can we do Kritiker can't?"
Manx just smiled. "For one," she said, "you're around her all the time. You can let me know if she lets anything slip."

Well, Ken supposed they could hardly say Manx hadn't warned them.

As ever, Rain wasn't with them; as ever, she suddenly remembered that there was something she just had to do that would only take a minute and she'd be back by dinner, she promised! and left the building. No doubt headed off to her own briefing elsewhere and why the Hell couldn't Omi and Aya see this, why did they persist in thinking it was simply a strange and fortunate coincidence that Rain kept upping and leaving every single time they got a mission? They weren't stupid guys: God knew why they persisted on acting it just because it would suit Rain if they did.

Of course everything was acting kind of like that at the moment. Even Kritiker was, even Persia. How else were they supposed to explain why Persia had even heard of Kyoshiro Mitsua and the Core?

(Didn't guys like this just go to prison?)

"Weiss," Persia was saying, as the image on the video flickered from his silhouetted face to a headshot of a handsome middle-aged man with a sly smile on his face, "this is Kyoshiro Mitsua, music promoter and owner of the members-only club The Core. Mitsua has been implicated in the disappearances, and subsequent deaths, of several talented young female singers who vanished after successfully auditioning for a job in his club."

Next to Ken Youji stirred, muttering something discontented along the lines of it wasn't 1938 any more and had anyone told Mitsua this, if the rest of them had to live in the present he damn well did too.

"Once he had lured the girls to his club, the victims were sedated by means of a drugged drink, then auctioned off to the highest bidder. His favorites among the girls, though, were not put up for auction at all but were abducted to his mansion, where a far worse fate awaited them—" Youji pulled a face; Ken fidgeted slightly, gazing up at Manx and since when did they really need to know all this stuff? wouldn't 'he's a bad dude and he's killing girls' have done? It normally did! "—as he slowly killed them over several weeks. Recently, though, he has turned to abducting couples from his club and subjecting them to the same torments. The victims chosen in this manner all have one thing in common: one or both of them was a natural redhead."
"Oh," Youji muttered. "What a surprise."

Aya, stood across the room, said nothing. He hadn't turned a single perfect red hair.

"Agents Abyssinian and Calico," Persia continued, as the screen flickered from crime-scene stills of broken young bodies lying in gutters or patches of scrubland back to his own shadowed form, "will pose as a couple and infiltrate the club to get Mitsua alone and off-guard. The rest of you will provide backup in the event of anything going wrong. Hunters of light, deny this dark beast his tomorrows!"

Hardly worth Omi's time to prep them all after that, Ken thought as Manx snapped the lights back on. Not when Persia'd decided exactly how everything was going to go down already and Christ but he'd had just about all he could take of this. Even their goddamn missions were fucked up these days; even the briefings were…

"One more thing," Manx said – was that a note of weariness in her voice? – as she handed out folders of utterly extraneous data and the VIP pass Aya would need to get into Mitsua's private rooms. "Preliminary surveillance and undercover work by Agent Calico has indicated that Mitsua will be attending the club for the last time tomorrow night. Apparently—" and that was definitely a sigh, "—he will be flying out to Los Angeles to help set up a talent agency first thing on Monday, and will not return to Japan for six months. Persia insists your mission must be completed by Sunday morning without fail."

Huh. Ken blinked, trading a disbelieving glance with Youji. Well, perhaps it was no bad thing they weren't being expected to plan this one themselves.

"Now look what you've done. How could you be so ungrateful?"
"Aya, all I said was I didn't like mashed potato."

Seven PM the following evening and Aya glared at Ken over a table laden with the picked-over remains of yet another All-American extravaganza as, somewhere out of sight, the shop door slammed behind the fleeing form of Serenity Raven Kath'rynn Sakura Enigma Hikari Akegata and, if he hadn't had it dinned into him by the nuns that belief in bad omens was somehow unforgivably Pagan, he'd have been feeling very, very worried about what this meant for the rest of the evening. And all this over a plate of chicken and potato.

"Our guest slaved for hours over that meal—"
"It's not like I forced her to!" Ken retorted. "And I'm sick to death of this diner crap!"
"Rain's cooking," Aya said low and dangerous and wasn't he overreacting just a touch? "is not 'diner crap', Hidaka."
"I don't care what it is, I just want something with bloody rice for a change!"

Youji sighed, picking up his own plate and getting to his feet – made you look, Hidaka. Ken looked, and couldn't help but notice Youji hadn't done much more than diligently toy with his food either. He hadn't even touched the cheese. Someone, Ken thought, really needed to tell Rain what 'lactose intolerant' meant. Any volunteers?

"He's got a point, Aya. This kind of stuff's fine for a change, but not all the ti—"
"Enough." Aya cut him off, glaring furiously at the both of them as if he'd caught them spitting on God. "I've had just about all I can take of this ingratitude. When Rain returns, you will apologize to her. Both of you. And that's an order."
Ken stared at him. "What are you, my dad now?"
"Forget it," Youji said with a sigh, pitching the contents of his plate into the trash. "He's gone."

As if to underscore the point, the door slammed again, shuddering in its frame as Aya stalked from the room, leaving Ken gazing after him in complete amazement. Remind me again why you even care?

"What the Hell?"
"Don't ask me, Kenken," Youji said wearily. "I'm just as lost as you are."
"Well, shit," Ken said, "now we're really in trouble."

So no, the evening hadn't even started well. When, after wearily cleaning up the remnants of their abortive evening meal and stacking the last of the dishes in the drying rack, Ken finally made his way upstairs to get ready for the mission he didn't even want to go on in the first place, things only went downhill.

It had been bad enough just knowing they were going to have to spend the evening hanging round a sex club in the hope that some old pervert would take a shine to Aya (that he would take a shine to Rain went without saying, and didn't that just say it all). It only took running into a suspiciously freshly-scrubbed Omi on the stairwell – towel-drying his hair and prattling cheerfully about the bathroom being free so it was okay for him to go take his shower now, as if there'd been anything stopping him before that! – to have Ken realize that they were about to get substantially worse.

"What are you going to wear, Ken-kun?"

What was he going to wear? Jesus, wasn't it bad enough that Aya thought he was the entire team's dad without Omi deciding he was a fifteen year old girl? Ken stared at his friend in disbelief for a moment, wondering if he'd had any idea what that had sounded like… but no, going by the open, expectant, utterly unselfconscious smile on the boy's face, he hadn't done. Wait, that had been a serious question?

"What I always wear," Ken said. Then, when Omi frowned, brows furrowing in disappointment, he added, "Or something. It's a mission, right? So I figured I'd wear my… my mission… stuff?"
"You can't wear your mission clothes to the Core, Ken-kun!" Omi chided him gently. "Go put on your clubbing gear!"

Clubbing gear.

Ken didn't have any clubbing gear. He didn't go clubbing either, for that matter, and while he was on the subject nor did Omi but now hardly seemed the time to bring that up. He managed to stop staring at Omi in complete bewilderment long enough to stammer something that could have been taken as assent, and the boy had beamed at him and practically skipped off to his room to get changed. Heaving a sigh, Ken walked into the bathroom to take the shower he hadn't been planning on having until they got home. It seemed easier, somehow, than arguing.

He'd not been in there five minutes and was still washing the shampoo from his hair when Aya banged on the door and told him to hurry up. Other people needed to take a shower, too!

"The door's open," Ken told him.

The sudden frosty silence from outside the door told him that Aya thought he was completely missing the point. Jesus fuck what was wrong with everyone this evening?

"Fujimiya, you're not a fucking American, if you wanna shower so bad what's stopping you?"
Aya's silence was now so glacial that it was a wonder the water wasn't running cold. "Hurry up, Ken. You're not the only one in this household."
"Why do you think the bathroom's so big if we don't—"
"Hurry up."
"Jesus Christ, Aya! Either come in or fuck off!"

A deep, angry sigh and the sound of receding footsteps – and, distantly, yet another loud slam – told Ken that Aya had chosen Door Number Two. Which made… well, it made about as much sense as everything else that had happened since they closed the shop for the night. Sighing, Ken stuck his head back under the shower. It wasn't like it was his fault Aya was determined to make life difficult for himself, was it?

"Well, Calico, it's been a long time. But we finally tracked him down."

As always, when Rain pushed open the door to the Meguro safehouse, she found Siamese already there and waiting in her usual place on the couch. Sat calm and collected with her hands folded in her lap and her long, elegant legs crossed at the knee, the older woman raised her head when Rain stepped into the room, and gave her a warm smile.

As always, Siamese was dressed impeccably. She was wearing a heather-gray single-breasted suit jacket and a skirt to match, with an asymmetrical ruffled hemline. A patterned scarf was wrapped loosely about her delicate throat, and on her feet she wore black ballerina-style pumps. Her burgundy hair was loose, and tumbled gently about her heart-shaped face. She made Rain – still dressed in the tight purple tee-shirt with a black winged heart printed on the front, loose black bondage pants with skull patterns on the straps and purple Chuck Taylors she had worn for work – feel very untidy indeed.

"Tracked who down?" Rain heard herself asking. Surely it couldn't be… "They haven't found van Haal!"
Siamese shook her head, smiling sadly, her eyes downcast as she gazed at the file in her lap. "No. It's not him, I'm afraid."
"Oh," Rain said. Then again, "Oh…"

Kicking off her shoes, the young girl sat down heavily on the couch opposite Siamese, drawing her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms about them. Try as she might, Rain couldn't stop the dark path her thoughts were taking. To know that van Haal was still out there, still free to hurt others just as he had so hurt Rain… and to know that it was all her fault he still lived! He had been there beneath her hands, and she had lost him! But no, he who had done all those terrible things he had done to her and to her dear, sweet little brother, her loving and beautiful mother, her teammates, the only friends she had ever had… he lived on—!

What if he came for Aya, just as he had for everyone else?

Rain shivered, huddling up tighter. Unconsciously, she gave a sob, a single tear trickling down one of her pale cheeks. She didn't move to wipe it away. God, van Haal, that bastard! All her sufferings, all her losses… it was all his fault! And now they couldn't even find him!

"Calico!" Siamese cried in sudden dismay. She sprung to her feet, wrapping her arms about the girl's delicate shoulders and gathering her into a loving embrace. "Calico, I'm so sorry! I promise you, Persia is doing all he can to track him down again… I know this is hard for you, but have faith in us, please! Kritiker won't let you down!"
"Thank you, Siamese…" Rain raised her head from the woman's shoulder, smiling bravely up at her through her pain. Her beautiful amethyst orbs were bright and swum with unshed tears. "I know you're doing all you can. I know you'll find him again, and when you do, I'll be ready!"
Siamese smiled back at her. "Persia promised you van Haal's life when you agreed to join us. He will not go back on his word. You will have your retribution, Calico. You will. Tonight Wraith will be avenged, and soon we will—"
She got no further. "Wraith… you mean Anya!" Rain cried, her grasp tightening on Siamese's shoulders. "You found…!"
"Kyoshiro Mitsua," Siamese said, her full lips, painted a glossy reddish brown, curving into a triumphant smile as she tugged a photo from the file on her lap and held it out to the girl. "And Aya and Weiss will be at your side."

Rain snatched the photo from her, her tears drying as she surveyed every contour of the smug and hateful face she had seen in so many of her nightmares. Oh, how she had dreamed of this day! Now finally, his time had come… and the ghost of her first true friend, the shapely and beautiful young redhead with the laughing blue eyes who had taken her in and taught her everything she knew about assassination, could rest in peace.

Kyoshiro Mitsua. Though her lashes were damp and her cheeks stained with tears, Rain was smiling: a smile as terrible and beautiful as death.

There was English on the tee-shirt. It was black and tight-fitting and it said… something in blue and purple letters and Ken couldn't understand it. Be… something, something, two long English words he didn't know. He just knew that it had made Youji smirk when he saw it – it had been that day they'd all gone shopping for Rain's stuff, weirdly – and, smirking, he had bought it for Ken. Ken had said thanks, I guess, and buried the thing in his closet and never expected to actually have to go out wearing it.

The only problem was he had nothing else in his closet that Youji deemed even partway suitable.

Youji had smirked again as he tossed the thing to him and told him, put that on. That and black jeans and boots would have to do, he supposed. It wasn't really like Ken offered him a lot to work with.

"This is clubbing gear?" Ken asked him once he was dressed, blinking down at himself in confusion.
Youji frowned, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. He said, "Vaguely. You've got some fingerless gloves, right?"
"Yeah, in my jacket pocket. Why?"
"Put them on," Youji told him. "And… wait here a second, I'll go get—just wait here, okay?"

Ken sighed, deeply and wearily: already he was tired of this whole stupid mission and he hadn't even gone on it yet. Retrieving the gloves, he tugged them on then sat back down on his bed, turning to the laptop he'd been working at during the lunch break. It was all very well for Youji, he thought, idly picking at the keys. He could just wear his mission gear and leave the coat off. Not that he was doing that, of course – he'd have considered that way too unimaginative – but he could have done and Ken envied him for it.

He was bent over the laptop, frowning in confusion, consternation and concentration, when Youji crept up behind him and snapped the collar about his neck, earning himself an elbow in the ribs for his trouble. By the smile on his face, the look on Ken's own was more than adequate compensation for it.

"Fuck off. Youji, what the Hell are you doing?"
Even as he backed off, both hands raised defensively before his chest, Youji was grinning an infuriating grin that left Ken positively itching to punch it. "Knew you'd never agree to wear it, Kenken, so I figured I had nothing to lose. Hold still, will you? I wanna clip this in."
"Clip what in? What's this around my—ow what the fuck Kudou."

Spikes. What the—oh, Christ, that was a spiked collar, wasn't it. Cursing creatively, Ken shook the hand he had raised to his throat, only breaking off to suck on his fingers. Oh, very fucking funny, Kudou!

"How'm I supposed to take this damn thing off?"
"You're not," Youji said. "Ken, it's a sex club. Trust me, you'd look weirder without it."
"You'd know, huh," Ken muttered.
Youji just smiled. "Hold still. This won't take long."

Ken ignored him. He turned back to the laptop, bowing his head again – Youji sighed, raised his eyes heavenward, then bent over to fix something into his untidy bangs. Ken glared and ducked his head a couple of times and told Youji to go to Hell more for the look of the thing than out of any real expectation he'd be listened to. Probably for the best, since Youji didn't. His fingers brushed against Ken's brow as he clipped something into place, then stood back.

"You'll do," he said. "Come on, let's get going before Aya finds something else to bitch about."

And, picking up his coat and slinging it over his shoulder, he walked from the room. Ken closed the laptop with a snap and followed, pausing only to grab his black leather jacket on the way. He didn't know what the Hell Youji had just clipped in his hair and didn't want to, either: it was quite bad enough he was going to be spending the evening in the company of a man wearing a leather waistcoat (fastened, if he could be bothered to fasten it, with buckles of all things), low-slung leather pants and heavy-soled black boots without having to wonder just how much he looked like said leather fetishist's boy toy.

On the plus side, if plus side it was, they were going to be there with Aya and Omi. Compared to Aya and Omi's get-up, Youji's all-leather ensemble was conservative as a Sunday suit, while Ken might as well have turned up in a kimono.

Aya appeared to be wearing a corset. A real, honest-to-God corset made out of some shiny black material that could have been leather or PVC or latex, complete with laces and boning. Beneath that he wore a figure-hugging mesh short-sleeved shirt, and had poured himself into a pair of dark red leather pants with lace-up sides. Christ, those pants! The damn things were so tight Ken couldn't imagine how he'd gotten into them, unless they'd been sewn around him. One wrong move and he'd be singing Soprano for the rest of his life. His gloves were tight, black, and elbow-length; the boots were heavy and black and laced to the knees, and the soles were so thick they almost put him on eye level with Youji. Then there was the collar. The collar about Aya's neck was clearly quite functional, with a heavy metal ring resting between his clavicles.

"Are you wearing eyeliner?" Ken heard Youji ask.

Aya fixed them both with a smoldering violet glare. Yes, he was definitely wearing eyeliner… and Jesus, was that lip gloss? Ken essayed a glance at Youji, who was giving Aya a slightly sickly grin.

"Never mind," he was saying. "You look…" Stupid? "Very nice."

Still, it beat looking at Omi. Omi looked like the result of a head-on collision between an anime convention and a photo-journalist's expose on Exploited Youth. Ken owned underwear that was less revealing than Omi's shorts. Add that to knee-high boots, fishnet gloves and a red silk short-sleeved top with a Mandarin collar and you had an outfit that was one police officer away from a soliciting charge. The bracelets, the kohl-rimmed eyes and the bondage collar with the embossed dog tags hanging from it would just make his defense counsel's job that one bit harder. That wasn't the worst of it, either…

"Omi, uh…"
"Hm?" Omi blinked owlishly up at him. "Is something the matter, Ken-kun?"
Ken swallowed. "The, uh… cat ears?"
"Aren't they cute?" Omi beamed. "Rain bought them for me!"
"Really. That was… uh… that was very kind of her Youji can we go?"

There was something Ken really needed to talk to him about anyway.

Some sixth sense, some awareness that what he was about to say was… was wrong, just plain wrong, had Ken waiting until they were alone in Youji's Seven, driving to the club down still-congested Saturday-night streets. Aya, with Omi in tow, had gone to pick up Rain – Calico – from the Meguro safehouse she still insisted on using as a base, while the two of them headed straight to the club. Well, good. At least Youji wasn't going totally out of his mind.

It was strange that it was only now that his teammates were safely elsewhere that Ken felt comfortable talking about the mission: strange, and more than a little sad. It shouldn't have been up to him to think these things.

"Youji?" Ken asked suddenly, as the Seven idled at the hundredth set of red lights they'd hit since leaving the store, "Does this feel off to you?"
"The mission?" Youji turned to him, blinking in confusion. "Yeah, a little… why'd you ask?"
Ken swallowed. "Me, too… I looked some stuff up," he said. Somehow, it felt like a confession. "I kinda thought… there should be more than this. You know? In the papers and things. If people are going missing. Even the rich ones – this guy ain't that rich, and there's nothing. But normally… if people turn up dead, someone says something. Even if they won't say who. They say something…"
Youji frowned. Turned to him, regarding him over one leather-clad shoulder. "Spit it out, Hidaka."
"There's nothing," Ken said. "There ain't nothing like what Manx said had been happening. There's nothing in the news, the cops don't have shit, there ain't even any missing-persons stuff that mentions this place except one and that was in 1996 and the girl had eloped, she was on honeymoon in Hamatama with her Economics professor and it wasn't even called the Core back then. It's… strange."

Strange.

It wasn't a cold evening, but Ken was shivering as he gazed about himself at the stalled traffic, at the knots of passersby hurrying down the sidewalk on their way to this and that. Here a gaudy cluster of girls barely older than he was, all pigtails and miniskirts and platform soles; there a little family waiting patiently for a bus, half-hidden under rucksacks and guide books and cameras, and bags emblazoned with the logo of the National Museum of Nature and Science; across the street an old man with fine, windblown hair, stumbling down the lighted steps of a bar. Just people, completely blind to the existence of the shadows, quietly getting on with their lives…

The thought didn't make him feel any happier about what they were about to do. Just ordinary people, doing all the things that ordinary people did… He was grateful when the lights changed, and Youji's car surged eagerly forward to – what?
"What," Youji said finally in a tight, strange voice, "exactly are you implying?" He didn't take his eyes off the road.
"I don't think he did it," Ken said. Just that, a simple little sentence, and yet he winced at the sound of it, to hear the thing he had just admitted spoken out loud. "Mitsua. I… I think he's innocent. He didn't do it and she's going to kill him anyway. And we can't do a goddamn thing."

- to be continued -

Yes, you may well ask what this is. An update that didn't take six months to show up? You may be wondering by now if someone kidnapped me and replaced me with a double with an actual work ethic. It's not that; it's something rather simpler. I've scaled back a few of my other online writerly-style commitments specifically so that I can spend more time attending to my own fanfiction. Fingers crossed it actually seems to be paying dividends.

Onto the chapter and I admit that this is about where the story stops being a parody and turns into a deconstruction. This is where a lot of the jokes stop. There's still plenty of humor beyond this point, but from here on in both Rain and her adversaries are playing for keeps. Roses in Rain, for all it plays with the conventions of Mary Sue fanfiction, does have its own story to tell. Now that it's checked off a good number of the standard Weiss Kreuz Mary Sue tropes, it's time for the actual story to start making its presence felt. And, at its heart, that story really isn't very funny. Rain is only amusing to watch because we don't have to live with her. Ken and Youji have to live with her and, to them, a lot of what's happening isn't funny at all. It's just strange and unsettling and deeply, deeply wrong. Whatever it is that Rain's ushered into their lives, all they want is to see that it goes away again. This is about the point in the story where they start asking questions about who this girl is and what she's there for and, fair warning, a number of the answers they're due to get are not actually that pleasant.

I know humorous stories that try and get serious often don't work very well - but this was always, always where Roses in Rain was going to go.

Thank you very much for reading, and comments and criticism are, of course, always welcome.