Please read Disclaimer in Chapter One.
Title: Maya's Tale (C18: Dead Man Walking)
Author: JaganshiKenshin
Genre: Action/Adventure, General
Rating: K+/PG-13 (for anime-style fight scenes/language)
Summary: Kurama and his allies must make a terrible choice.
A/N: I appreciate your reviews and thanks for reading this tale!
Though the odds are now 3 to 1, Maya remains in grave danger
Maya's Tale (18: Dead Man Walking)
by
Kenshin
Shayla Kidd on the end of a gun was a chilling sight.
The gun itself was a .32-caliber Beretta. It didn't have a lot of stopping power, nor much kick, but she was braced for shooting with a two-handed grip. Hiei knew her aim was true.
The bullets were also treated with grains of Holy Salt. If Von Brandt was a youkai, she would not even need accuracy. The shot merely had to hit him, somewhere.
All well and good-but her shocking gambit may have been a fatal error.
The gun's reflection flashed in Von Brandt's glacier-pale eyes, and even in his heavy coat, he moved lightning-quick. He dropped the hypo, scooped Maya from her floating position into a tight grip, close to his ribs. In the other hand, a scalpel materialized as quickly as Shayla Kidd had drawn her Beretta.
With the scalpel pressed against the soft flesh of the girl's throat, Von Brandt leered at them.
With smug self-assurance, he intoned, "What makes you believe I will hand over my property to the likes of you?"
Hiei's twitching hand longed for the comfort of his sword. From the corner of his eye he saw Kurama's jaw clench.
Kitajima Maya did not flop as an unconscious girl would. Von Brandt's dark influence kept her ironing-board stiff, her head upright, her feet dangling off the ground. In contrast to the deranged vitality of her captor, she was helpless, vulnerable, and unaware of the terrible danger.
But Kurama's eyes glittered with a hard emerald flame. Hiei had seen that look before, in the Dark Tournament, when that fool of a sickle-handed youkai had threatened Kurama's mother.
Von Brandt, Hiei thought: Dead man walking.
Ever so casually, Kurama raised a hand toward his hair as if to scratch an itch.
Von Brandt spread his thick lips in a mocking grin. "Little boy, this tactic of yours is indeed ill-advised." However subtle Kurama's move has been, Von Brandt had seen it. "But please-do try if you like. Just be prepared of the consequences." The scalpel flashed a deadly warning.
Kurama slowly lowered his hand.
"A wise move, for once," said Von Brandt. "Your powers have been sealed."
"Seal this, you bastard." In a spasm of anger, Hiei shrugged off his jacket and drew his sword, flipping it into an overhand grip as he had done with the Bartholomew tree.
Armed at last, he felt a burst of renewed hope, as bracing as a cold slap of water. With gunslinger Shayla Kidd, and Kurama waiting for the moment, they might yet win.
Von Brandt's baleful eyes narrowed. Maneuvering the girl to shield his body, Von Brandt growled, "Drop it or she dies."
Hiei hesitated. "She dies anyway. And you need her."
"As do you." Von Brandt's white fingers did not appear to move, but a bead of blood welled on Maya's throat, tinting the silver scalpel crimson.
"I'm calling your bluff." Every fiber aching with the savage need to act, Hiei gripped the sword so hard his hand hurt.
"Hiei!" Kurama's voice cracked with tension.
But this was a showdown between only Von Brandt and Hiei. "Don't just drop that sword at your feet," Von Brandt ordered, "But where you will be unable to reach it."
As though Von Brandt knew Hiei could easily flip his sword back into his hand using just the tip of his toe...
Throw it at Von Brandt now? Hiei was quick and accurate. He had practiced on that damned tree.
But there was a big difference between hitting a large, stationery target like a dead tree, and threading the needle here so as not to hurt the girl. And with the girl in front, the coward using her for a shield-
"Hiei..." Kurama warned.
Kurama lacked the power to summon a Rose Whip. With a single Command, Shayla Kidd could stop this guy cold, but her powers were suppressed as well, or she would have told him to freeze the minute they entered the room.
Hiei was itching to risk the spear gambit.
"Hiei," Kurama rasped.
"Do it," Von Brandt boomed. "Or she dies now!" He gave the unconscious girl a shaking as a man would shake his fist.
With great reluctance, Hiei lowered his sword. Hating to disarm, he tossed his sword to the right, well past Kurama. It landed with a disheartening clunk on the black rubber floor.
Then-
Shayla Kidd was in front of him somehow, the Beretta pointed at Von Brandt's head. Her lips skinned back in an animal snarl, she switched to English. "All I need is one bullet to blow your _ brains out."
A muscle in Von Brandt's cheek twitched. "You-"
"Shut up! I dress like a boy, remember?" As venomous as a spitting cobra, she started in with curses that should have stripped the acid-yellow paint from the walls.
To all appearances, this was a woman who had taken an insult and fanned it to a bonfire of insane fury. But Hiei knew her well enough to realize this was no mere fit.
Nor was this Spellcasting. No Command, which would have caused Von Brandt to drop that girl, but might also leave them paralyzed for precious seconds. This was not even Suggestion. Just Shayla Kidd's stagecraft, pure and simple.
From a couple of clues dropped by Von Brandt, from his remarks on their manner of dress, from his manhandling the girl, Shayla Kidd had discerned the sort of man he was and leapt on a strategy to distract him.
The stakes had been tripled. Shayla Kidd's rash action in drawing the gun and Hiei's out-of-reach sword balanced against Von Brandt's scalpel at the girl's throat.
Work with her, Hiei thought, and we might stand a chance. He said in a low, warning voice, "Don't do this-"
"No!" She called Hiei a filthy name. "I'll do whatever the _ I want, and I want this creep dead!"
Von Brandt's nostrils whitened.
"But Maya could get hurt," Hiei said.
"Maya?" Holding steady aim on Von Brandt, she shrieked an insane laugh. "Who gives a _?"
Von Brandt's icy gaze was locked on Shayla Kidd. "Do you think that gun will stop me?"
"Wanna find out? I can drill a bullet right through your eye." Her finger tightened on the trigger.
"And should you move your finger by so much as a single millimeter more, I will cut the girl's throat!"
"With your head blown off? Your brains will be decorating the wall before your spinal cord knows what hit it!"
Von Brandt's lips moved. "Put... the... gun... down."
"Make me,_."
But Shayla Kidd did not use such language. Even when vase-throwing mad at Hiei, she was much more creative than just that.
Her vile language was his first clue, but Hiei knew for certain she was playing a strategy from the moment she said she did not care what happened to Maya.
"Think you stand a chance?" There was a rhythm to her words, a code to her speech that was suggestive to another Shadow Warrior, but unrevealing to an enemy. "Come on," she snarled. "Try me. Take a chance. Go ahead, take it!"
Take a chance. The directive couldn't have been more clear to Hiei if it was splattered on the wall in black paint.
Hiei edged away from Shay-san. Beside him, Kurama shifted.
Hiei and Kurama had worked together in silent concert countless times: against Dr. Ichigaki's thugs at the Dark Tournament, against Old Dragon, and, before they even knew one another's moves well, against the demon Yatsude who, nearly ten years ago, had held Maya hostage.
Shayla Kidd continued to hurl invective. Von Brandt's cheek twitched. She was squeezing the trigger.
For this to work, everyone's timing must be perfect.
Hiei could not so much as flick a glance Shay-san's way, but had to put all their hopes into his own speed and Kurama's skill.
That band of photos that revolved around Von Brandt and the girl. They might get in the way. But Hiei could dodge a bullet at close range. He could do this.
Gathering himself like a coiled spring, Hiei waited.
The gunshot roared like a bomb. Glass exploded.
Now.
He teleported forward. The photos snatched at him. Hiei tore the girl from Von Brandt's grasp. His momentum hurled him toward the far wall.
He tucked into a roll. His shoulder slammed the wall and he crashed to the ground, but he kept his grip on the girl.
Blood and cordite tainted the air.
He placed Maya's rag-doll form on the floor, then reached for the meager protection of the folding chair and pulled it over to shield her as far as possible.
Now-to assist Kurama.
Kurama was picking his way over broken glass to where Maya lay. Hiei couldn't see Von Brandt at first. And then he could.
It was probably best that Maya's eyes were shut.
And though Maya had not seen the results of Kurama's work, Shayla Kidd had. Her bone-white face reflected it.
There was a smoking, bubbling ruin of laboratory flasks. Hiei skirted the mess to where his Firebird stood, gun still pointed at the table.
She had done what she had to do-diverted Von Brandt's attention, shot wide at the last moment, hit the glassware. Hiei had grabbed Maya with pin-point timing. While Kurama-
Shayla Kidd gave a hoarse squeak. Hiei caught her as she toppled to her knees.
He was not demonstrative, and they both knew it. But to hell with that. "I got you," he whispered. "That's my girl."
The Beretta fell from her nerveless hand.
Hiei retrieved it for her. "Need to puke?"
She shook her head.
"Need a drink?"
"F-from this hellhole?" With trembling hands, she took the gun from Hiei and managed to get it back in its holster. "Maya! I-is she-did you-"
He helped her to her feet. "This way. Don't look until I tell you."
The Thrashvine, which Kurama had used in concert with Hiei when they had taken down the Bartholomew tree, needed only the lowest level of spirit power. It was something that would work when all else failed.
Summoned from Kurama's hair, the vine had surged forward in tandem with Hiei's leap. Wrapping itself around Von Brandt, tightening, it had literally cut him to pieces.
What was left of Von Brandt was mercifully hidden behind the gurney.
Glass crunched underfoot as Hiei helped guide Shay-san past the body, over to Kurama and Maya.
"You can look now."
Kurama was on his knees, Maya lying beside him, his long russet hair hiding his face.
Hiei could have sworn Maya had been alive when he had whisked her away.
The spinning photos of Maya had fallen, released from their grotesque sorcery. They littered the floor like autumn leaves.
The photos on the wall remained. The weight of that girl's images, the pictures taken without her knowledge or consent, stared down at them.
Shayla Kidd had opened her eyes. She bit her knuckle. For a few moments, she regarded Kurama and Maya. She put out a hesitant hand, but drew it back. "Kurama?"
Kurama did not look at them. "I tried everything," he said. "She won't wake up."
Hiei gazed at the ghost-pale girl sprawled on the black rubber floor, dressed as for a wedding.
Once, he would not have been able to feel pity for her, but Yukina's capture had provided a pathway for the softening of his heart. His muscles twitched as if attached to live wires.
He clenched his fists. All this for nothing?
The reek of sulfur and blood was almost a taste.
"Then we have no choice," he heard himself say. "It's back to Toad's palace."
-30-
(To be continued: Can Toad's strange powers awaken Maya?)