Disclosure: I don't own it so no being mean to me now! Although I do own Lorelei (not that anyone else would have her)

Warnings: Violence, swearing

Chapter 42

Against the World

I had hoped, something I don't often need or allow myself to do, that it wouldn't have to come to this; but this was how it was going to be.

There was fire as we slew through the mud, an inferno raging above the tree tops pluming against the bruised dawn. Then there was us, screaming over the tarmac, towards the raging turmoil ahead. Everything was out of place, out of time and out of joint.

"Stop the van! Stop Crawford!" Balinese was yelling.

I hit the brakes and the wheels left the road, skimming over the slurry of dirt and rainwater. The front of the van swerved wildly through the storm, I grit my teeth and back steered hard, the world sweeping by in pale light haze. Then everything tilted to the left, then the right, and then settled into a constant drumming of rain on the roof.

"What the fuck is that?" Balinese's voice was almost lost beneath the sound of the rain as he stared up at the sky through the water shrouded windshield.
"Someone's beat us to the catch," Tatsuha growled, "idiots won't get far, they don't know what they're up against."
"Shit, they don't know? We don't even have any bloody weapons, what exactly do we have over people who obviously thought far enough ahead to bring explosives?" Balinese asked incredulously as he flung open the back door of the van.
"Who needs explosives," Yami said with a shake of his head.
"I don't even know what you have planned," Balinese's voice was drowned as he stepped out into the storm, yet I still caught the sarcasm, "and still I feel completely safe."
"Well you know more than me friend," Tatsuha said as he followed him out smiling, "I didn't even know there was a plan."

As I opened my door and jumped out the rain clouded my glasses and I couldn't see. I pulled them off and blinked as everything turned for the worse and I ran under the cover of the trees. The battering rain stopped and I turned back to look at the blurred shape of the van, skidded so expertly by myself half into a ditch. Balinese was to my right, the other two on my left, all of us looking out of place. I shook my glasses vainly and thrust them back onto my face.

Somewhere, down deep in the pit of my stomach, was a feeling I had been trying my best to ignore since I had learned of Schulidch's fathers real identity. It was something I had never felt before, perhaps something I had never believed myself capable of. Yet here I stood now, in the storm, wondering with a sick feeling if this was all my own creation. Wondering if at that moment ten years ago, when the arrogance of my youth was at its peak, that I really could have believed that I could control the future of the world. The feeling in my gut twisted, pushing bile into my throat and left the bitter tang of failure on my tongue.

"Who?" was all I managed to squeeze out.
"Who do you think?" Tatsuha said with a wry tone, "think of anyone else who runs into situations without proper intelligence, blowing things up here, there..."
"Kritiker," I said succinctly, my brow creasing with the added knowledge of this complication.
"Bingo," he said back with dark humour.
"But how do you know that?" Balinese asked with suspicion.

The stormy silence was shattered by the ripping sound of wood being shredded. We all took a step back as a huge plume of smoke and ash erupted from the side of the looming building before us. A fresh set of flames licked greedily at its broken frame, turning the proud wood black.

"Huh," Balinese said with a smirk, snorting through his nose as he turned his head away into the darkness, "I guess it doesn't really matter who's attacking. An enemy of my enemy..."
"Can help out without knowing it," Yami finished, "They'll cause confusion and, hopefully, will distract them long enough for us to go unnoticed for longer than if they hadn't been here."
"True," Balinese acquiesced, "I just hope they don't do any unnecessary damage, if you get my drift. At times of confusion, as you put it, people sometimes have a hard time enforcing restraint."
"We can't wait any longer," I said finally, feeling the heightened tension around me, the feeling of dread that only comes with the unknown, "or this trip will have been for nothing."

I started forwards out into the gloom of the surrounding trees, their shadows silhouetted by the dancing orange glow of the fire. Vaguely I heard the others following me, Balinese muttering to himself about lack of communication, but still following. Unconsciously my brisk walk turned into a jog, which then broke into a run.

"You think they might attack your team mates," Tatsuha replied thoughtfully to Balinese's statement.
"The thought did cross my mind."
"Do you have a plan," Yami asked as he jogged along to my left."
"Well, I was thinking mainly of going for the simple approach. Grab Schuldich and Nagi, get the hell out of here and straight back to the warehouse to regroup," Balinese said quickly, coming into my line of sight as I turned my head up to watch the burning house, "what else is there we can do?"
"You're forgetting someone aren't you?" I said with a raise of my eyebrow, suddenly smelling the foul stench of burning flesh and wood as the wind changed, "Aren't you here to collect your missing team member too?"

He shuddered, and not because of the cold rain or the harsh wind. His face was only turned half towards me as he replied, his eyes shrouded in darkness.

"If I can I will," the words seemed to be slipping from his mouth, as if he was having trouble thinking about them as he said them, "if I can."
"We'll back you up," Tatsuha said suddenly, having just finished a hurried conversation with Yami through gasping breaths as the road turned uphill towards the back entrance to the mountain lodge.
"No need to lie to us, " I said back to the startled blonde, "you aren't here to back us up. You do what you're here for, we get our people, we go our separate ways."
"Well if you're going to be blunt about it," Yami said with a smirk, "then that's fine by me."

In my head, as I turned back towards the dark road ahead, I tried to block out the millions of questions that had been invading my mind since I had seen my vision of Schuldich's death and we had quit our house to team up with Weiss. There was only one way to be when the world was chaos around, and questioning didn't take any place in it. I needed to focus, to hope and trust the good judgement of my team.

Oh, but in a perfect world that would be true. Of course, my perfect world was one without emotion, without the baggage of dependency. Yet, when I tried to push this ideal onto myself one fatal flaw kept jumping up and biting me in the ass.

"I'm getting us all out, after that you can do what you want."
"...You know you're just full of surprises," his red hair was soaked the colour of blood, but I could have sworn his eyes sparkled with something akin to tenderness as they stared at me, something that made me want things I knew I couldn't have. (1)

Out of mind, body and soul my own truths infected this mission. I felt the need for normalcy threatening my calm, the need to be back again in that old house, knowing that everyone was as safe as they were ever going to be, knowing what was going to happen next. Yet now all we had was a moment to moment life expectancy, and my brain was in a state of lethargy from my haywire precognition. I didn't need this, I didn't want this, and yet...from the depths of my dark soul there rang a calling that I could never have admitted to myself before. Something possessive, almost primal, a need to protect what is mine.

"If I can."

Balinese's words, so simple and yet devastatingly so. I had always believed Weiss to be the stubbornly arrogant type, never give up, never leave a man behind, while Schwartz were the stereotypical bad guys who just didn't give a shit. Yet here we were, two polar opposites switching sides. Of course human emotions are fickle things, and as all fickle things they care not for the judgment of others. The human nature is indefinably capricious, something I had come to understand all too well after starting my job as leader of Schwartz.

Inconsistency is our only constant, and in this chaotic hell I could feel the writhing maggot at the centre fatten itself on the rising fear and uncertainty that it created. This was the god we had sought to bring into his world, this was the false prophet who had walked the earth five hundred years ago, if I was to believe the men who ran beside me.

But I did not care, and I would not let petty questions stand in the way of what was mine, and my promises.

From the air, the earth, the fire and the water, like shadows in the night we set out towards the Gigas' inferno.

(1) See chapter 40 for Crwaford's flashback

AN: I am very, very sorry that this took so long to get out. I am afraid that I have had a severe case of writers block since I last posted and I had the idea in my head but just couldn't write it out. I hope it has turned out okay and please, if the writing is just too ostentatious then please feel free to throw rotten cabbages at me and tell me to stop it! I just hope it all makes sense...

I also want to leave a personal apology to Gillian Sillis for making you wait so long and forcing you to pester me for updates! I know this is short but I am going to start writing the next chapter right now so that I have no excuses not to get it out as soon as possible. I really can't believe this story is over three years old, it really is ridiculous...I hope you like this chapter and I really will try harder to update!

Anyway, thanks to everyone for reading, reviewing and also being patient with me!

Maiko