.hack//Legend Of Twilight Bracelet Fan Fiction ❯ Heist ❯ Chapter Two ( Chapter 3 )

Chapter Rating: R - For excessive swearing.

 

Disclaimer: I don't own .Hack or make any profit off of .Hack either. Everyone else except Tengaki, Anissa, and Shuyin, (who belong to my sister, Anissa), are mine unless otherwise stated.

 

Note: Sorry I haven't updated this story in months. Been busy. Any questions, just ask. And if anyone was wondering where the hell Alyssa/Kayane was/went, and isn't one of the few I filled in on, you'll find out this chapter

 

Ttyl, bies.

 

 

Last Chapter: Despite them being barely out of their teens, they weren't as reckless as their ages and first minute impressions made him think. This was supposed to be Aeturnum Vale, the team that didn't even have an identity outside of their group and his own father? It was hard to believe...

 

Chapter Two

 

Balmung was beginning to think he'd done something wrong in his father's eyes or shamed the company in some way. Consistently, the young, twenty year old blonde seemed to take utter pride in forever talking to him quickly, to the point where he couldn't understand her. Needless to say, it was having the effect Anissa wanted her pestering to have; Annoyance. After a day and a half, the annoyance only seemed to grow as much as Anissa's confidence did. Which was saying a great deal.

 

“So,” Anissa chirped suddenly, hands on her hips rather demandingly. She turned to the white haired, brown eyed, oldest person in the room. “What now, boss?”

 

Letting out a sigh he'd hoped to have been less obvious than it seemed to be, Balmung shoved his hands into his pockets, bored. Opening his mouth to chide at Anissa for the disrespectful tone of her voice, he was cut off as she spoke once more.

 

Only this time, he had no clue what she said.

 

“Agegangen, was ist der Plan?” (1) she continued, a smile tugging violently on her lips as her eyebrows were raised farther than he thought possible.

 

Narrowing his eyes, he only understood the last word that resembled an English word he knew; Plan. “Translation.” It almost would have been a question and not an order, had he not come to the conclusion that showing confusion and weakness was something that would give the blonde's ego a major boost.

 

“Come on, what's the plan?” Rena sounded from across the room, using the same tone Anissa had a moment before.

 

Glancing over his shoulder, Balmung sent a careless look at Rena's back then turned back to the annoying blonde who apparently took much joy in aggravating him at the most.

 

And they hadn't even known each other for more than an hour…

 

“The plan,” he started, “is to find out what information we can about Aura and Morti to get our job completed quicker and I can get out of your presence. I want to know where their main vaults are and just how they're linked to my father's company other than bonds.” He turned to Taryn. “I want you to find the most secure and discreet route to the building in which the vault will be for both. And Rose, look up the architecture of the buildings and find our best possible entrances for both.”

 

Shugo shrugged his shoulders and sent a calculating gaze towards Balmung's back. This had better be his bad mood.

 

(-)

 

Rena spun in the chair as Balmung read over all that she had found on the corporation headquarters. Compared to Aeturnum Vale's average speed, Balmung was an extremely slow reader and after two minutes of waiting for him to finish, she was already letting her mind wander to thoughts about spending the following two months with him.

 

Two months.

 

Holy hell, that's a long time…

 

“So, you gonna finish reading anytime in the next two months?”

 

“I'd rather take my time than rush into a faulty plan of action. Especially one set up by people I'm not familiar with.”

 

“Sorry that we aren't on your list of picky choices of people to befriend but you gotta do what you gotta do,” Anissa snapped from behind them as she walked up flipping through a small handful of paper. “Even though I don't really care one wit about you, this assignment needs to be done.”

 

“The feeling is mutual for us all, I'm sure,” Balmung sneered, stretching out his hand for the papers.

 

“Isn't it? Or are you here to keep track of us since we're even elusive to your father?” Anissa chided, extending the papers out to an inch from his hand then dropping them carelessly.

 

“I'm not exactly on my father's side, if that's what you mean.”

 

Rena, who had been still sitting at the desk and scrolling up and down on the computer screen, stopped and turned around to send him hard stare, searching for insincerity in his face. With a snort, she turned back to the screen and angled her head downward.

 

Anissa stared up at Balmung fiercely with her crystal like eyes, lips set in a line as she studied his words. “You saying that you aren't with him, and, if you had the chance that was probable, you would go against him?” A sudden grin spread across her face. “Because anyone that doesn't like Senior Beyoneisu is a-okay with being on Aeturnum Vale.”

 

“Just don't go and back stab us, or we'll find a way to send you to hell,” Taryn's voice sounded when she walked into the room, a loose but binding braid of messy red hair trailing behind her. She wore black, slim pants with chains and zippers in every which way and a black zip up hoodie with 'Sieze the Day or Die…' on the front and Balmung didn't know whether the clothes were meant to threaten him or entice him.

 

He highly thought against the idea that it was the latter.

 

But nevertheless, he wasn't about to spill his guts about his dislike of his father to a team that his father trusted so highly for an assignment of such high risks.

 

They might just do the back-stabbing that they warned him from doing.

 

“I'll only back stab with a reason I find suitable enough. So unless you do something untrustworthy, I wouldn't worry.”

 

All he received was a smile and a few chuckles.

 

“You're all right once we get past the fact that you're his son and you're pretty much against the whole idea of us existing. You'll fit in, fine, dude. Just don't piss of Kirasha and Nami, or they won't be happy. Its like they've got some Irish blood in them.” The last part said was a whisper and Tengaki ran off before Balmung could respond.

 

“He's right, you know. You'll fit in just fine. Don't worry if some of us get a little testy or give you the cold shoulder 'cause you're a lot like someone else we used to know. We kinda miss her so don't be surprised if we visibly show that we're sad. We all love her.”

 

Balmung sent Rose a careless look from the corner of his eye as he stood with his arms crossed, facing the screen where the girl he knew as Kirasha scanned the documents Rose had rustled up.

 

“We have all that we need at the moment,” she told him. “And as I said a minute ago, it's up to you for our next plan of action.”

 

Shrugging off the comment, he continued looking at the screen in front of Rena. Next plan of action, he thought, just so happens to be setting our own eyes onto the buildings we'll be entering.

 

(-)

 

Shugo spun around in the black leather computer chair, nearly to the point of going to the ammunitions room and firing off a couple shots merely for something to do.

 

Balmung, Tengaki, and Rena had all gone to Aura Marion's base located right in Japan to discuss the possibility of using a bomb to quicken their entrance and escape when the time came, which confused Shugo more than it seemed to even be of awareness to Balmung or anyone else in the group. Aura was from England, so why was her main headquarters residing in Japan?

 

He'd be damned if he knew the answer to that question, however.

 

But before they'd left, he'd been unable to voice his caution, and would have to wait until at least three hours passed to speak to them again. Traffic was a bust in Japan, no matter what time, no matter who you were, not even if you were some criminal who was probably capable of destroying everyone within a mile radius in one blow (Tengaki).

 

Spinning in the chair at a faster rate of speed, thankful that the chair could lock into place on the floor, and began to wonder why the hell it was taking a half hour for Anissa to go downstairs, grab some food, and bring it back up to share, and why the hell it was taking a half hour more to reply to his god damned email and make contact with him?

 

When he heard the sound of a beep coming from the internal speakers of the computer, he stopped his spinning, waited a moment for everything to settle in place through his eyes, and clicked on the new message.

 

Almost an instant later, someone requested direct connection through Web-cam and an Audio connection but he immediately knew exactly who it was.

 

At the moment when Shugo accepted the request, Anissa walked through the door, already speaking about how difficult it was to convince the building chef to fork over some food in a language she didn't know, and he absently wondered just how the hell Anissa and the one he was connected with through the Internet were able to almost work in sync with each other.

 

Even he and Rena didn't have that strong of a psychic connection and they were twins!

 

He watched as Anissa dumped everything in her hands onto a nearby table, regardless of what might have spilled, bruised, or been crushed, then went back to the desk she'd been sitting at before she'd became hungry with an apple in her hand, already writing more on the paper that was a reply to her older sister's latest letter. He doubted that she'd discontinue writing the letter when he told her but, nevertheless, he couldn't help but be overly excited about seeing the shocked and gleeful expression that was bound to appear on Anissa's face when she saw to whom he was talking.

 

“Yo, Niss, check this out.”

 

Anissa looked up from the letter and turned to Shugo. Frowning in wariness and raising an eyebrow in curiosity when she saw him moving his arms in a windmill like fashion, obviously urging her to come to him, she stood and walked over to him.

 

“Guess who,” he grinned, pressing a button to blacken the screen before she caught sight.

 

“What?” Anissa was half-expecting the screen to show something vile and disgusting, and turned her head to the side cautiously. “Something I'd rather not see, I'll bet. Grow up with the pranks, Shugo. They're so not amusing anymore and I believe in a certain phrase goes 'It's only funny the first time.' Especially having the 'ugly something that's so horrible it's impossible to name' on the screen.” Sending him a warning look, she turned on her heel and began the small walk back to her desk.

 

“Nice to finally hear what you think of my mug.”

 

Suddenly, Anissa regretted trying to predict Shugo's intentions, and understood why he was all laughing all of a sudden. Coughing, as if water just went down the wrong tube in her throat, Anissa rounded once more and raced to the screen, jaw dropped and eyes wide.

 

Oh fuck, she thought in a laughing tone. The voice was impossible to not recognize, despite not having heard it for almost two months straight.

 

Sending an apologetic look to her sister through the camera behind the screen of the monitor, Anissa grinned sheepishly and was overjoyed by the sight of seeing her sister. For a bare moment, Anissa would have accepted everything to be all right on her sister's side of the connection until Anissa noticed the strain her sister's face to merely keep both of her wise, green eyes open. Along with the shadows under both eyes, the slight bruise forming on one cheekbone, the unruliness of her sister's hair -- more than usual, anyways -- and the blotches of pale areas on Alyssa's arms.

 

Watching as her sister leaned back into what looked like a lawn chair, and propped one foot up onto the edge of whatever platform the computer her sister was using at the moment was sitting on, and smiled.

 

“Everything tight over there, Niss?”

 

Not to mention the raw tone of her sister's voice…

 

“Peachy,” Anissa said, suddenly feeling the urge to talk about Balmung's arrival, “You know the dude who's the father of that girl you tutored for and who's our semi-boss?”

 

Alyssa's eyes narrowed, and Anissa assumed that it was to prepare her for whatever she was going ot be told. “Yes.”

 

She always either nods or shakes her head when asked a yes or no question, Anissa thought, hoping her face and voice didn't give anything away to her sister.

 

“Well,” she began before a pause as Shugo left the room, wanting to raise the level of suspense, if there was any to begin with, “His son is now temporarily a part of A.V.”

 

Alyssa's mouth parted and her chin raised, creating a look that almost made Anissa think that her sister was looking down her nose at her. “Balmung Beyoneisu?” she asked, just to clarify that they were thinking of the same person. Alyssa wasn't one to put the idea that Sr. Beyoneisu had more than one son lurking around somewhere, mothered by a different woman. “Anything suspicious about him as of yet?”

 

“He's pretty much laid-back but so not at the same time, which is pretty confusing to me as it is.” Flipping a lock of blonde hair that was persistently slipping to the front of her face, Anissa paused after an aggravated growl. Maybe she cut it short like her sister suggested. At least she knew her sister wouldn't suggest something that would backfire on her and end up stupid. Looking back at the door, as if suddenly conscious and wary of the possibility that the subject of their conversation would walk through the door any second and ambush them, Anissa set her jaw squarely. “He smokes -- but I've only seen him smoke once -- Doesn't seem to fond of his pops; he's a bit self-confident like you wouldn't believe and way determined, which makes me wonder. But, fuck, he is so damn rich and spoiled like hell. You weren't shittin' in the slightest bit when you told me that Cecilia lived in a mansion with the best of everything in the world.”

 

“I hardly believe those factors to mean anything,” someone interrupted into their conversation.

 

Anissa turned the chair sideways to watch as Taryn walked around the large computer area. Nearly grinning by that time, Anissa noticed the small grin fighting to pop up onto Taryn's face.

 

It was to be expected, of course; Taryn and Alyssa had been best friends for three years before either of them got pulled into the illegal life of crime and felony. Anissa assumed that their friendship with each other was probably the last honest and untouched thing that they had in their life, aside from their own blood and kin.

 

“He seems protective of his own back rather than of any secrets he may be trying to keep hidden. And he's pretty much to himself, which we all would be when we've no one to trust unconditionally in our group. Damn handsome intelligent, confident, and commanding though. Perspective as well.”

 

Rolling her eyes, Alyssa sighed at the sound of her sister's loud laugh and regarded Taryn calmly with one eyebrow raised.

 

“Handsome?” Anissa cried, gripping the armrests of the leather chair, “Dude --I mean dudette--! B-boy is fucking hot! Almost as hot as Shugo and Tengaki, even!”

 

Taryn gave Anissa an incredulous look, scoffing at the younger teen before her. “He's four years older than you are!”

 

“Two.”

 

All of a sudden, the red-head and the blonde closed their mouths and gawked at the black-haired woman on the screen. Simultaneously, both of them disbelievingly said, “fuck.”

 

“That means he's fucking twenty-two like us!” Taryn mildly cackled, suddenly developing a devilish grin on her face, at the same time that Anissa cried, “He looks so damned older than that! In a good fucking way!”

 

“Excessively swearing.”

 

Normally, only Anissa would have ducked her head and spoke in a meek like voice, but this time Taryn chuckled nervously as well.

 

The two of them laughed once more when the eldest girl they knew let out a sigh that seemed to fit with the idea of 'you've got to be kidding me' quite well. “At least we're aren't daydreaming about him.”

 

“Yet,” Anissa added, not just as an afterthought, waggling her eyebrows slightly.

 

“Bye.”

 

“Wait!” Anissa shouted almost immediately. “I'll stop, I promise! No more hints of falling in love with him!” Breathing a sigh of relief, Anissa gratefully thanked the fact that her sister loved her too much to cut the connection as Alyssa leaned back into the chair.

 

“So nothing of him to be worried about?”

 

“Nope, he's only been here for about a day and a half, but he's bound to make a mistake he'll regret if it meant to go against us if he'd not messed up, whatever it will be.” Taryn leaned on the chair Anissa was sitting in and cocked her head to the side. “But, you. I want to hear about how life's killin' over there. How's whomever you're working for treating you? Hate to say it when I know you're trying to not worry us, but you don't look so good.”

 

Alyssa closed her eyes, as if suddenly unable to keep them open any longer and sighed. “Tiring. He's more dangerous and ruthless than Beyoneisu is. More than anyone else, for that matter, but the only good thing is his organization is unstable; full of faults and weakness that even he could spot if he weren't so high on himself. Fend runs a tough business though. Makes everyone train to a weight of his own preference and either kills them or turns them into government officials if one thing goes wrong he doesn't like, which means his group is filled with highly skilled people. Ten of which, that I know of, are undercover cops doing an unbelievably solid job as some of the top in the business.” Her gaze suddenly turned hard and serious on Anissa. “One of them is Shuyin.”

 

Anissa turned solemn instantly but was glad to hear that Shuyin was still alive. He was a cop, her age, who'd been involved in a horrible shoot out about two and a half months before. They'd been in a warehouse, trying to rescue an old friends who'd been kidnapped because of her money, and Shuyin ended up arriving in the middle of gun-fire with about five other police after an anonymous tip. It was Anissa, Taryn, Rena, Tengaki, Alyssa, and Shugo against about eight men and three women. Apparently there were a lot of goods and arms in the many boxes that were stolen and the opposing gang of sorts thought Aeturnum Vale arrived to steal from the stealers and take the hostage to get the ransom money for themselves.

 

“He's alive then. That's good.”

 

Aeturnum Vale had to leave in such a hurry to escape from getting caught by federal police (the brawl had turned serious enough to alert federals), that the last any of them had seen Shuyin was on the ground, bleeding severely from both a gut and chest wound.

 

“But bitter. He finds the whole incident our fault. Or, rather, my fault, since I was the team-leader and eyes and ears at the time. He holds no grudge against you all.”

 

“That's fucking bull-shit!” Anissa snarled. “He knows the girl was my friend and the heir to dad's former best friend's money! They attacked us, too, and we went in on peaceful terms, hands up and asking to talk with the mother fucking --”

 

Taryn raised her hands while shaking her head slowly with an aggravated sigh. “Okay, okay, shut the fuck up, Anissa.”

 

“God, you two swear like American drunks.”

 

Taryn ignored the comment and began what she wanted to say. “Okay, this is the last subject we should talk about, considering one is blamed and the other is riled up… Anything you can tell about Balmung from your experience?”

 

“He's as you described him. Cecilia looks up to him quite a bit and their father seems to be a bit emotionally abusive but not physically abusive from what I've seen.”

 

“So, what, he's just him?” Anissa said snidely.

 

“He's not a bastard, Anissa,” her sister's voice came through coldly.

 

“Well, he sure acts like it! I'd bet that his ass has probably been beat a million times, he's so cold.”

 

Taryn looked back and forth between Anissa and Alyssa, furrowing her brow at the anger rising from Anissa. “Anissa, calm down. It's only been a day.”

 

Anissa shrugged off Taryn's comment with snort and turned away. “Whatever. We'll see if he improves. His attitude, I mean. For all I care, he's a rich boy with the damned attitude to match. He's not superior to us…”

 

Mouthing sorry to Alyssa, Taryn raised her hand horizontal to the ground and shook it slight, signaling to her longest friend that things were going not bad but not necessarily good either. “We all miss you,” she whispered, hoping Anissa wouldn't hear over the sound of her own muttering.

 

Taryn barely had time to catch a pained, lost and forlorn look in Alyssa's eyes before it was gone and she opened her mouth to speak when the door opened behind Taryn and Anissa to reveal Balmung, Shugo, Tengaki, and Rena.

 

“Shugo!” Anissa shouted, her eyes widening in surprise. The damn idiot, Balmung would recognize her sister as the woman who tutored his own sister! Only when Taryn shouted her name, also her given name and not her undercover one, did she realize the mistake she made as well.

 

“Fuck,” Taryn cursed in a hiss, narrowing her eyes at Balmung dangerously. “Damn it, Anissa, you -- ugh, damn it!”

 

Now, they'd have to spill the rest of their names to Balmung as well. And, most assuredly, Balmung would rat to his father about their real names, either accidentally or on purpose, and then everything would tie together for Sr. Beyoneisu.

 

Rest assured, at least two of them would be sent after and ordered to be killed in an instant, and Alyssa was one of them. When Balmung spilled, she might be in the same building, only rooms away, tutoring his little sister, perfectly trapped and without a bare chance of living.

 

Balmung seemed to smirk triumphantly but not surprised. “It wasn't that hard to figure out that Kite wasn't his real name,” he told them simply. “And if he had a code name of sorts, then it was likely that the rest of you all did, as well.”

 

Remembering her sister was still connected with them, Anissa hoped that Alyssa would have enough selfishness in her body to cut the connection and save herself instead of watching to make sure the rest of them didn't end up for worse. “Well, what, then? Do you want us to tell you or not?”

 

“Tell me. I don't want to take the risk that if I call you in a time of danger by a name you aren't completely familiar with and you either get shot, I get shot, or we lose something important.”

 

“That's the same damn point she gave us!” Shugo growled, nodding his head sharply towards Alyssa on the screen of the computer. “Why can't you just leave that role alone?”

 

While Shugo didn't love Alyssa in a romantic way, he thought of her as a sister and looked up to her a bit. He wasn't someone who didn't miss her absence but he missed the rationality more than enough to want her back despite the indefinitely superiority she'd reign when back.

 

“Shugo!” Rena shouted in his ear.

 

He cursed at his stupidity once more and decided to give up on speaking altogether. Now, he'd revealed the presence, albeit digitally and virtually, of the one person in Aeturnum Vale who'd killed even a single person, sabotaged, stole, kidnapped, anything of a high crime, towards the Beyoneisu organization and many others.

 

Balmung recognized the woman almost immediately, sneering at the relaxed and composed expression and position that the woman they obviously saw fit enough to keep on the down low. And considering the fact that she was his sister's tutor and was associating with Aeturnum Vale, he would expect her to be doing more than just teaching Cecilia.

 

“So, keeping tabs on my father is your real intention for being there, it seems.”

 

By all right, Balmung should reporting the woman, who's name he still didn't seem to have memory of, to his father. But, for some reason, he felt more as if he wanted to help with distinguishing his father's name behind all the truth of his wrong-doings. And he added an afterthought of, “And you didn't let me in on it.”

 

As if she'd been waiting for those words to leave his mouth, the black haired woman with the too familiar face leaned forward onto her elbows and sported an all-knowing smirk that made him wonder.

 

“I seem to recall that, in a way, I did, Balmung.”

 

Her voice suddenly sounded as if it didn't belong with her body, but at the same time fit perfectly, up until he remembered just where the voice was acquainted from. “You and the so-called, female traitor of my father are the same person. I just never heard your voice when you were posing as my sister's tutor so I couldn't match them together.”

 

“Evidently so,” she replied, lips tight and eyes empty. He couldn't tell whether there was something she was guarding, so he decided against prodding her for information at the moment.

 

Briefly, he ran over the very short conversation that the two of them had, while in the dark of his father's empty office, and finally came across the memory of the name she'd given to him. “You told me you were called Kayane.”

 

“Again, evidently so, Balmung,” she remark monotonously, her voice turning quieter but with the same exact tone, “evidently so.”

 

And he realized the almost emotionless tone of her voice, the rawness and superiority that rang out though probably unintentional but effective to the rest of the occupants of the room. He realized that if he didn't comply to their expectations, ones he wasn't sure were, he'd probably end up five miles underwater and dead.

 

But all it really meant was that now he wondered about her.

 

And not to mention the whole of Aeturnum Vale.

 

 

Whewness. Wrote all of this chapter in one sitting. Geh Mich! That's 4402

Ok, reviews loved, welcomed, highly appreciated, desired,

-Ice.