AN : The waiting has come to an end! What will happen to Antonio? Did Lars arrive in time? Did he really kill someone? And who is that new man speaking in a German he doesn't understand? So many things that will get an answer here! (and yes, I'll just shut up now)
'Ein Uhr morgens' - One a.m. (German)
Word count : 1693

A limp body propelled him to the ground. He didn't take his hands away. The knife cut them deeply, but his throat hadn't been harmed more than that.

Lars ran up to him, tore the body away, and saw no particular wound that could have been inflicted, but the man stared at him with the blank expression of eyes that would never be able to see again, so he guessed it was over.

He sighed in relief, then knelt down and helped his partner get up. They had had a lot of luck this time. He hoped it would always be that way, he had no intention of getting another new partner (it had already been terrible enough when Antonio had popped up). He clapped his mobile phone open, pushed three buttons, and called an ambulance. After having made a rough check-up of his partner's condition, he made another call. He heard the beep echo through the cellphone, and when a sleepy but annoyed voice just had the time to say 'What the...' he had already answered "Five streets away from 'Hungary', south-east. Where the sirens and all that stuff will be. We need you here, I think I just killed someone."

A grunted "Great..." was all he received before he heard the beeping again. Lars turned around, wiped a bit of blood away from his friend's eye, and smiled. "Everything's fine. He'll be here in ten minutes."

Antonio smiled, as much as he could.

(- -)

Twelve minutes later, Lars was next to the ambulance where his friend was being bandaged and taken care of, when he saw the head of blond hair through the crowd of people that were being asked by the policemen to please go away, if you're no witness, go home. They tended to be a little cranky when they were asked on the place where a crime had just been committed at one in the morning.

"Wait here a few minutes, Toni, I'm gonna check on the victim and all that..."

He hadn't even noticed the nod he got in response. The Dutchman was in the police for about eight years already, and in all those, he had never killed anyone, and he felt absolutely horrible at the thought. He had shot, had hurt, had arrested, hadn't killed. If it weren't for the fact that this man was about to murder his partner, he'd feel bad to the point he'd want to throw up. Sadly, but still fortunately, the wounds the madman had inflicted Antonio were prove enough he acted in self-defense and wasn't the first one to attack. He also had to get a written document from a forensic scientist, which was the reason he had called him in the first place.

He managed to go through the crowd of people by pushing them out of his way. At every protest, he had to say 'sorry, I'm from the police', 'gotta go through' or just 'sorry' when he was feeling tired of all this.

When he had made his way to the person currently kneeling next to the dead man behind the yellow 'keep out' plastic rolls, he knelt down in the same position. Before he could say anything, though, the other stated rather calmly, but still annoyed : "You moved the body.".

"Yes. Next time I'll know and I'll let Toni lying under him until you come over."

"So he was on top of him."

"Yes."

"It wasn't a question." The blond man took a pair of gloves out of his pocket, and turned the body around carefully. "You shot?"

"Yes. Once. I aimed for the heart. I thought his head was even closer to Toni than the heart, that's why I didn't shoot there." He had had the time to think about it. He felt rather proud for being able to think clearly (as much as possible, at least) in a situation like this.

"Hm." Silence filled the space between them once again, where the blond examined the body. There was not a lot he could tell as long he hadn't had him on his table for further analyzes. One thing he knew, though.

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but you didn't kill him." When Lars's head shot up, he quickly added "He's dead. But you didn't kill him."

The Dutchman just looked at him in disbelief. "How can you say that?"

"Look." He moved. "Antonio was lying on the floor like this. Right? There's a bit of blood, it must be from the cuts at his neck." Lars nodded. "Which means our criminal was sitting on him like this..." he positioned himself a little behind the actual place the corpse was originally located, sitting on his knees. "Was he looking at you? I assume he was. Those people are twisted, they love to see all kind of scared and panicked expressions on people's faces." Lars responded this time. "He did look at me. His torso was a bit turned toward me too. I remember because I managed to shoot him easier than I could have if-" "Fact is, the bullet pierced his shoulder, and I'm guessing it's still stuck in there, since I don't see any hole on the other side."

There was another long silence.

"Then how did I-" He was interrupted again. "As I said, you didn't. If you look at the back of his skull, you'll see a mark there. He was shot in the head. From behind. Probably at the same time you pulled the trigger, maybe even one second or so before. I need to make tests though, I'll call the guys from the ballistic over. I'm guessing that since this is a dark alley with a dead-end..." He didn't finish his sentence, but Lars knew. He looked around quickly. If the man was lying there, and had been shot in the head, it meant the person who did actually shoot was located in an angle that allowed them to aim correctly. Which was probably a place located further away and higher.

There was a tall building about two hundred meters away. And two others behind that one.

The other man stood up, yawned, and scratched the back of his neck. "Never thought I'd have to work on my day off. Well. I'll tell Svenja that I'm at the mortuary. You tell those useless guys over there I want that corpse on my table in a quarter of an hour at the most."

"And the guys from the ballistic?"

The man sighed, rubbed his temples "You moved the corpse. Remember? They can make their stuff once I'm done." He paused for a few seconds before he pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket. "I've got to call her now." he pressed a few buttons, and waited. Waited a little more until the sound of someone taking the call could be heard at the end of the line. "Svenja, tut mir Leid dich wecken zu müssen..." Lars turned around at that point, he would only get a headache if he tried to understand anything about the Schwitzedeutsch that was soon to be spoken. He didn't need to try understanding Vash when he decided to switch to speaking that strange German of his. He understood the language well, but there was a difference between Hochdeutsch and when the Swiss decided he didn't want anybody around him to understand what he was saying. A huge difference. And he wanted to check back on Antonio anyway.

But now that he had time to think about it again, he was left wondering : he had shot, but someone else had killed. Was it a personal grudge? Was it an errant righter of wrongs? Another madman? Someone from a secret organization? A policeman? An accident?

He let that last hypothesis burn somewhere in the back of his mind. The shot was precise, the killing rapid. An accident was impossible, and if there was one thing Lars didn't believe in (aside from honest politicians and anything Gilbert-related), it was pure random luck. There were skilled people behind all of this.

He finally arrived and spotted his friend in front of the ambulance, who had gotten the necessary treatments and now had a neck brace, a large band-aid at the cut of his neck, and other bruises he would have to nurse for quite a bit of time now. Antonio smiled when he noticed him, but when he came closer, his smile faltered, and an uncharacteristic frown replaced it. Once they were in front of each other, Antonio murmured, for his throat was a bit sore "What's troubling you?"

Lars didn't respond immediately. His gaze wandered over his friend's injuries, his bandages, his neck, his eyes. Those eyes. Those who said they knew Antonio never looked at those glowing emerald orbs ; you could see a lot when you had a good look at them. He cleared his throat, his friend would know anyway.

"I shot him in the shoulder. Didn't kill him." Antonio stared at him in shock for a few seconds, before his lips started to tremble and parted to let out an almost inaudible "Then how...".

Lars swallowed dryly. If that other person hadn't been, Antonio would have been killed because of his incompetence. He hoped Vash could help him find out who it was, and possibly thank them.

That was when it hit him hard like a brick thrown right in his face : if he had been alone, completely alone, Antonio would be dead right now. A flash of his friend lying down onto the ground, and blood, blood everywhere-

"Are you okay?" the face was now in front of his, and the sudden action snapped him out of his daze. He shook his head. "No, no. I'm alright." He paused again. "That man..." he took a closer look at his friend, noticed how tired he seemed for the first time in months. "He was killed. By someone else. I'd guess the person shot from one of the buildings over there."

Antonio didn't even blink. He was probably thinking about Lars's incompetence, too. Just like his predecessor...

Translations :

'Svenja, tut mir Leid dich wecken zu müssen' (German) : Svenja, I'm sorry to have to wake you up...

The German spoken in Switzerland is known as 'Schwitzedeutsch' in German, which would, basically, just be translated with "Swiss German". It is opposed to high German, or 'Hochdeutsch', which is the one you'd learn at school in Germany or any other country proposing German. There are quite a bit of differences between those two 'dialects' (if you can call them that? I'm not sure).
Dutch and German are a bit similar, when spoken. If you speak one of the two languages fluently, and if you learnt some of the other, you should, I think, understand it pretty easily (as far as learning languages is easy). Lars did study German, but he just can't understand Vash~ If any Dutch people (I know at least one) are reading this, would you tell me if it's easier for you to understand Swiss or high German please? :3

Antonio's predecessor, who is Lars's ex-partner, is an OC that will only make memory appearances. He was someone who Lars looked up to but who just left, like that.

Vash Zwingli [27] is the 'local' (or something) forensic scientist. And of course, represents Switzerland.