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Chapter 26


The fated destiny of the inescapable future

The mirror seemed to materialise, the surface rippling like a wide ocean in a grain of sand.

I watched, fascinated as the figure behind me clutched only tighter, his face buried into my neck as I stared forwards and watched my other self smile cruelly.

It took me a moment to realise that the figure behind my mirror image was changing too. It took me only a split second however to recognise the small, frail looking girl who was now hanging around my doppelgangers neck.

It had been a lifetime.

"Aya…"

I had been her lifetime.

"…it's really you."

It was really her. I could see her. I could…if I could just reach out and touch her…

"I'm…so sorry…"

Couldn't move my hands, couldn't make my legs take one step towards that wavering figure in that pure white dress.

"Please, don't look at me like that…"

God, just let me touch her, please, she has to be real…please…

"…I can't stand it Aya, don't, I'm warning you…"

Can't move, why can't I…god damn it! Where the hell am I? Why are we here Aya, why can't we just run away, away from everything…

"…Don't look at me like that!"

"Ken are you sure you're alright?"

He looked so pale, like he had seen a ghost or something.

"I said yes Omi now will you drop it?"

Oh come on, when did I ever just "drop it"…

"Just sit down will you," I said with a concerned frown, "please?"

He complied, slumping into one of the chairs we had found in this new room. It was some sort of lounge, high ceilings and large arm chairs with small glass tables in between them. The roof lights hadn't worked at first when we had tried them, but for some reason Crawford had decided that this was where we were going to stay. No arguing with him that man, no matter how I tried all my techniques against his own. He was a precognitive however, making things increasingly difficult to battle.

I didn't want to be here, neither did Ken and neither did Yoji; it was as simple as that. This was madness, pure and simple, everything had gone downhill after…after Aya had died. It was…it had been so unexpected. No one knew what was going on, no one knew where to turn, who the enemies were, who there was to trust; even amongst friends. And then they had turned up, and I wasn't sure what to make of them either, everything had been happening so fast I just got swept along like everyone else. Still, even though Schwartz had been playing nice up until now…we hadn't been acquainted with their "new incarnation" for very long and, to be frank, I don't think I would have trusted them even if we had been together for ten years. Some things were unforgivable, unforgettable. Some people…didn't deserve a second chance. And on another point I didn't believe Crawford's story, or more precisely I knew that he was leaving out something very important. Crawford, I had learned in the past, along with the rest of Schwartz, liked to horde his secrets.

The table lamps had lit up the room fine, leaving the ceiling dull but the rest of the room bright enough. The sky was dark though the tall windows, stars shining ominously in the sky; we had quickly covered them with heavy curtains first of all, never could be too careful. Best to be enclosed, shutoff from the world you're trying to hide from, especially when you feel like eyes are watching you wherever you go. I would have preferred a room with no windows at all, but then Crawford had insisted…

The young brunette Yami sat on a low black leather couch with his tall friend, Tatsuha I think, and looked at his palms intently. The taller ones face was stony and rivalled any gaze that fell upon him until it was diverted. I didn't trust them either, well why should I? This was no time to be trusting anyone, especially not before I had my facts straight, or even got my facts in the first place for that matter.

"Sit down Omi, you're making me nervous," Ken growled out over his shoulder.

I nodded tightly, feeling a little…trapped I suppose is the best word for it. Crawford had disappeared to the darker end of the room and deposited the telepath onto a couch. He had said he couldn't stand sitting anywhere near the "inexperienced assholes who can't keep their minds quiet". Huh, he could talk, he was the one who never shut up. Perhaps we should have made him sit here as penance. I still didn't know why we had been transported to this room, or why the telepath had been walking with his eyes closed the entire way, muttering curses when he tripped and keeping a firm grip on Crawford's arm as he was guided. I had only received stony glares in response to my questions, and sometimes completely ignored as I demanded to know what was going on. Not that I really cared what was up with the red headed idiot but still, I didn't like to be left in the dark, especially at times like these.

"So," I turned to watch Nagi as he spoke, his eyes focusing on something that I couldn't see as he took a chair across from me in the small circle that they formed, "what now?"

There was a soft silence where everyone refused to look at anyone else. Ken brought his feet up into his chair and curled in on himself, closing his eyes and resting his head on his knees. Yami seemed to move closer to his counterpart, his hands twisting around each other in his lap. Yoji didn't even seem to be paying attention at all; his elbow on his armrest and his chin in his hand he stared absently over towards the closed windows and the couch where our absent party member lay. I opened my mouth to rouse him but was interrupted almost immediately. Crawford had returned to the circle and had taken the chair facing the two strangers on their couch. He spoke as he sat his movements fluid and unconcerned.

"We talk," his voice was as severe as his gaze as he looked at each of us in turn, "things need to be straightened out before we can proceed any further."

"Well," I said with a sigh, folding my hands on my knees and leaning forwards, eyes coming up to focus on him, "how about we start with Schwartz. I want to know why you're really here, all of it, no secrets."

"Oh, I have an even better idea than that," Crawford replied shaking his head and pointing straight in front of him, "how about we start with them?"

I blinked and followed his finger, looking over to look where everyone else was now staring. The young brunette blinked, his shoulder length dark hair shimmering delicately as he looked from face to face, his eyes innocent and confused.

"U-Us?" he stuttered as if he couldn't comprehend exactly why we would want to be doing that.

"Didn't your mother teach you that it's rude to point?" Tatsuha's eyes hadn't looked so dangerous since we had questioned him earlier and there was something in their icy depths that made you want to quail; his question could almost be taken entirely seriously with him staring at you like that.

Crawford, being Crawford, just smirked and lowered his hand back onto his chair arm. He cocked his head and levelled his gaze with the blonde's protective stare.

"Didn't yours tell you it was rude to turn up at other peoples houses in the middle of the night and crash their party?" he moved a little to get more comfortable before looking back to the newcomers, "I think I can safely speak for everyone here when I ask…what exactly you think you're doing here and what do you hope to gain by it?"

Yami seemed to swallow hard at that statement, shuffling even closer to Tatsuha. I could see in his eyes that he was scared, but whether it was by the thought of being abandoned by the group to face the danger on their own that brought about this fear or whether it was the prospect of answering questions…I couldn't be too sure. Tatsuha's gaze didn't waver and Yami looked evasive. There was no answer forthcoming.

"I ask you again," Crawford said, his smirk gone now as he reached up to remove his glasses, not breaking eye contact as if seeing it as some sort of challenge not to be backed down from, "why are you here?"

"We.." Yami's strained voice emitted the word as more of a squeak, making the boy stall in his sentence to clear his throat before continuing, "..we, we are going to be hunted by those people who are after you now too."

"Oh really," Crawford said facetiously, making me want to butt in right then and take over the interrogation out of pure instinct, "and why would that be exactly?"

"We saved him…" Yami pointed over his shoulder quickly without even looking where he was putting his hand and barely avoiding hitting his friend in the face; Tatsuha however, seeming used to theses sorts of outbursts, had already dodges to the side without even so much as blinking, "…and so they followed us when we brought him back to you. They'll be after us now too."

He seemed quite pleased with his explanation as he brought his hand back and set it once more in his lap, no longer wringing his hands. Tatsuha sighed in what could only be described as wistful embarrassment and returned to his original position. Crawford just replaced his glasses, after polishing them on his suit, and continued.

"And why exactly did you save him? Seems a big risk for a child to save someone he had barely met under such circumstances as a fire fight with a company such as Esset, and putting his friends in danger too by doing so…"

Another silence; Yami's hands seemed to go into overdrive so that it looked more like he had a writhing bundle of snakes in his lap. I could have sworn that Tatsuha growled somewhere deep in his throat before he countered Crawford's brazen statement.

"Why don't you just keep your forked tongue behind your teeth," he said in a low voice, "and listen to your answers before asking the next question."

"Oh I've listened," Crawford replied, making an offhand gesture of displeasure, "and it was not exactly satisfactory, or the truth for that matter. You know what I want to hear and it was not that."

"What exactly is that supposed to mean?" the blonde practically spat.

"He means we want the truth and we haven't much time to hear it in," I finally interjected, tuning heads with my sudden statement, "so please, just tell us exactly why you saved that man and why you brought him back to us."

"It's not…" Tatsuha seemed to deflate almost, sighing and looking down to the small glass table in front of him, his hand moving up lethargically to pull his hair from his face, "..as easy to explain as it would seem."

"Indulge us," Crawford said back coldly.

"I see," the blonde said back, his head slightly bowed and his mouth almost smiling, "it must be time."

Tatsuha pulled his hand from his hair and focused on Crawford once more, the errant strands refusing to obey him without the aid of a hair tie simply falling back to shroud his eyes. He flicked his head back swiftly creating a whirlwind of blonde strands and then waited for them to settle on his back. His eyes, when they came back into view, seemed distant, looking far off to somewhere so completely removed from this room that…

"Do you know of the meaning of the word Eridae?" he said, still looking off, his eyes pointing towards the ceiling, lost in thought as if in some sort of trance almost, "It was discovered approximately thirty years ago by a German scientist named Henrich Faxon on a remote island to the south of Osaka."

"Is this to be a history lesson or an explanation?" Crawford snapped, his eyes slitting in displeasure.

"On that island, deep under the ground, he found an ancient tomb like no other in his travels of the cultural ruins of Japan," the blonde continued, ignoring not only Crawford but the whole room, "a large dome shaped antechamber with crumbling roof and painted walls of silver and gold. Even though underground a light seemed to exist inside it, the world itself dissolving away when he stepped inside and a new universe seeming to arrive out of thin air."

"W-what are you talking about?" Yoji, whose attention seemed to have been drawn back by the sudden change in the atmosphere, his eyes fixed on the blonde as everyone else's were, "Is this some kind of joke? You're not making any sense!"

"But the wonder of that room was not the reason for his joy, his elation, his discovery. It was the parchment, the scroll hidden delicately in the ivory case which lay haphazardly on the floor at the centre of the room itself. That parchment which, when deciphered, could lead to the fate of this world itself."

"That's all very well," Crawford said, standing from his chair and placing a hand on his hip, the other flat out in front of him, palm up in a show of questioning, "but what the hell do you think this has to do with my question? I asked you to answer me fast and instead you give me more of this mystical bullshit! I don't want to hear about it; what I want is you to give me a reason not to kill you right here!"

His gun was drawn and aimed in a second flat, Yami jumping to the side and taking hold of Tatsuha's arm while the other only refocused his eyes and looked to the gun pointed at him. Then, of all the things he could have done while staring down the barrel of a known killer, he smiled.

"In that scripture," he said softly, his eyes still dreamy even though more focused, "the one word that occurred most frequently was the word "Eridae"; it occurred two hundred and seventy times in one single scripture of only two thousand words. It was a central part, a central part of the mystery that captured that mans soul, that captured his mind and his devotion and his very will itself. He had to know what it was, what this scripture pertained to, for the word Eridae, he discovered not to long after, translated to the word "fate"."

"Fate?" I asked, "Are you trying to tell us that our situation is linked to that discovery? But how, and what does it even mean?"

"This word, Eridae, when written in its native tongue," he continued, turning to look at me now with those cold eyes, so lost in memory, "was so fascinating to him even before he knew what it meant. This was of course because it greatly resembled a character from his own native tongue. A straight back with two delicate curving extremities which stopped at the middle of the beginning line. The symbol of "esset" from the Deutch alphabet, that is what the word Eridae resembled."

"Esset?" Farferello, who up until now ha been so quiet that I had almost forgotten his existence, "This man, how is he linked to Esset?"

"He was the one, did you not know?" Tatsuha looked to the pale man in the corner seat, his eyes narrowing in suspicion while he tried to calm his partner down, "He saw it as fate before he even knew of the words meaning. He bent his life's work, staked his career on learning the secrets of this scroll and its properties. He covered the hidden temple back over and kept its whereabouts a secret. He formed his research group into an organisation, recruiting all who had any knowledge of this scripture, of its meaning, any link he could see between the candidates who presented themselves and this one word. Eridae. By the time of his death only twenty three years ago he had created one of the single greatest globe spanning corporations the world had ever seen."

It…couldn't be. All of this, was this the history of…

"…Esset," Crawford said, nodding slowly, his gun lowering slightly but not completely, "I knew that I recognised that story. Henrich Faxon, or to us The Founder. We were never told his name, but we knew scraps of the history, whatever was passed down. But…how the hell do you know all of this? You sound like you're reciting out of a book! Who taught all of this to you, who else knew our history in such detail?"

"My master is…was a wise man. He passed on his knowledge to me as he did with his charge," his eyes wondered to the floor, his hand sliding carefully over Yami's trembling one, "and I was sworn only to reveal things when the time is right."

"The time..? What time? What are you talking about, is this some sort of hoax?" Yoji looked more angry than confused, his eyes flaming and dark, "This is all just a pile of shit! Give him as little credit as you like but Crawford was right when he said he spoke for all of us when he asked his question. We want to know why you're here and instead you try and confuse us and distract us! I want an answer and I want it straight down the line and in easy simple terms. I don't want ay margin for error you understand?"

"I can only divulge my master's secrets when the time is right," Tatsuha's glare didn't even seem to faze Yoji as it settled on him, "and now is not the time to answer your question. You will have to wait, or the balance will become undone and everything will fall."

"Look here mister high and mighty I'm in no mood to play your games okay! Just tell us what we want to know or I'll shoot you myself!"

"Yoji-kun please!" I interjected, alarmed by his uncharacteristically angry temperament, "Calm down or we'll get nowhere with this."

"Calm down? What's the point of being calm at a time like this? I thought I wouldn't have to remind you Omi that it's one of our own who's M.I.A. Have you even thought about him since he left, since he turned against us..!"

"Of course I have how can you ask me that?" I suddenly burst, "Do you think I'm that heartless? Do you think me as uncaring as you've shown yourself by even asking that?"

I don't know what happened but it happened very quickly and suddenly. One moment I was the centre of calm, the next…I was both furious and depressed all at once. Just the thought, the thought of Ran and those heartless eyes pinning me to the wall as I aimed my crossbow and tried to…kill him. God, I had never felt like that, not even when I found out about Takatori, not even when Ouka…

They hadn't been my family, they never had been. Abandoned and alone, that's what sprang to mind when I thought of them; they were different from Weiss. They had left me broken, Weiss and Kritiker had picked up the pieces and made me whole again; well as whole as someone without a real heart can be. I tried to be strong, I tried to be the calm one, the knowing centre of the group, the one who always knew what to do but…but this was different now! When I found out about Takatori I could only recover because I knew that in the long run they did not mean as much to me as they should, as much to me as Weiss did. They were my real family, but Weis were my true family; as much as Ran's personality shunned him from showing his affection to anyone but his sister I still knew that…he cared for me. He cared for all of us.

And the thought of killing him, the thought of his trying to kill us…it was killing me. And I, the pillar of strength, had flaws too. I could crumble just as easily as the next person. I had cried before yes, I had relied upon others yes, but in a frantic situation I could always be counted upon. I did not blow up at comments like this, I did not blow up at team members when I knew that they didn't mean what they were saying, when they were under just as much stress as I was…

"Fine! If that's the way you want to have it then talk this one out on your own!" Yoji pushed up violently from his chair and stormed off towards the dark couch where the German lay, his boot heels clicking on the polished floor as the white cross on his back flickered out like a candle and was replaced by a shifting shadow behind the fake ferns blocking my view.

The silence that followed was terrible and very, very still. I could feel Ken's deep breathing to my left and knew that he was asleep, probably had been for a long time.

I fell back into my chair and forced my face into neutrality. I had to focus, I was the only one here who could concentrate on the larger picture, I was the only one who could get us through this, get Ran back and keep Ken safe and Yoji…yet still, without a base to stand upon, even the sturdiest of pillars can fall.

"Perhaps…" I said softly, flicking my eyes to the floor, "perhaps we are simply asking the wrong questions."

"Wise words," Tatsuha seemed to smile in his eyes even if his mouth did not reflect it, "but first I suggest a different path of questioning. Firstly, how we intend to evade Esset.

"It seems almost impossible doesn't it?" Farferello said from his chair, his eyes as ponderous as his expression, "considering the facilities and staff they have at their disposal, all over Japan."

"Not entirely true," Crawford said, slowly lowering his gun in a silent submission to the new line of questioning, ignoring Yami's relief as he sat back down in his chair and looked to the Irishman to his right, "thankfully Esset are not entirely united at this present time. The failed, or supposedly failed resurrection of The One God has sent them into a disarray that will take time to recover from. We can take that as our only blessing, along with the fact that this may split the separate Esset factions right down the middle or even into groups. New allegiances are going to be forged between old and new allies. It won't be the same as before, we won't be able to rely on that perception any longer."

"But what I think we need to learn more about," I said, focusing my eyes back onto the pair on the couch, "is this scroll and what you think it means in relation to us. I don't want any more mystery, no more complicated verses, I want it plain and simple. This is our lives we're staking on believing you, on even having you here, and I for one will not stake my own life or those of the people I care about on a collection of riddles."

My gaze stalled however when my eyes fell on the young brunette. My mouth stilled and my breath caught in my throat. Yami was staring me right in the eyes and his look…

He looked at me as if to say…-

I started. Well…well his eyes were, they seemed to be...looking right through me. I shook myself and looked away from him. There was something about that boy, something that wasn't quite right. Hard to put my finger on it. Ha, well look at me, who exactly am I calling boy? He must be at least two years older than me for crying out loud, but then…perhaps it was just the way he acted, his childish mannerisms and his childlike face that made him seem young to even me. However, it didn't take a genius to see that there was intelligence in those eyes, intelligence that betrayed his mask of ineffectual naivety. Tatsuha's mask in turn was not exactly foolproof. It looked like neither of them were exactly what they seemed. I looked back up and locked my gaze once more with his own.

…as if to say that everything was going to be alright.-

Authors Notes: the only true insight into the disturbed mind who concocted this bizarre story! Heh heh, lost yet? Err, if you're not then I'm obviously not doing my job well enough…but I'm sure you'll figure it out…right! So please R&R!