Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction / Noir Fan Fiction ❯ There Can Be Only Two ❯ Ending II: The French Connection ( Chapter 7 )

Disclaimer: Just because I know how picky lawyers can be and because I think in worst case scenarios: These are not my characters, they belong to their respective (even if not always respected) owners.

 

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Ending II: The French Connection

 

 

Farfarello was a formidable fighter. Many enemies had found their demise at his viciously skilled hands. And those who had witnessed him in action and got to live that day were left with the impression of a raging berserker, more beast than man. Ferocious and brutal, an unstoppable force of nature. A beast with man made claws of steel.

 

A petit girl with dark purplish hair was dancing around that beast this night, fast and illusive like a tamer's whip, never too close to the beast to get bitten, yet never too far away. Always ready to strike to keep the beast in check. In her left hand a long and thin metal sheet of a throwing knife, in her right the larger blade, both handled with deadly precision. She was the matador controlling the beast's movement, wounding it little by little, slowly bringing down the mighty bull into the sand of the arena.

This arena, though, had no sand, nor a cheering mass admiring the morbid skill shown upon it. It was a cold and gray concrete roof somewhere in Tokyo, with the red air traffic markers on the city's skyscrapers slowly blinking in the distance and only the weak light of the moon, pushing through the clouds from time to time, to illuminate the end and the beginning.

And in the beginning the two fighters had been equals. Unhurt and fresh they had clashed and often it had seemed as if the smaller body could never withstand the onslaught and sheer power of the stronger man. But she had worn him down, slowly, bit by bit. Careful cuts had severed muscles and tendons, slowly reducing his abilities while blades, he had not torn out, further hindered his movement, sticking out like obscure pieces of body piercing.

 

But those wounds meant nothing, the beast still thirsted for blood, her blood. Bearing almost no more resemblance to a human being, the lust in the blonde man's eye had gotten even stronger over time, made him wilder, faster, not inhibited by anything she had done up until that moment.

And for the fraction of a second after inflicting another deep wound Chloe could only marvel at the feat the Schwarz member was accomplishing. Wondering for a moment she did not posses, for the beast could all but smell distraction. And Farfarello leaped at her.

 

The outcome had been unavoidable. But for mistakes a price had to be paid nevertheless.

Slowly Farfarello licked the red stain from his blades a satisfied look on his face as he tasted the red liquid. Like in trance Chloe's hand dropped the throwing knife and reached for the wound that the Irishman's blade had torn. A long deep gash from the lower jaw up across her cheek, already forming a thin line of blood running down her face.

 

A few minutes past before finally she could not feel anymore movement from her opponent and stopped supporting his weight with her other hand, letting go of the knife that was now deeply buried in the man's chest. Her reflexes had saved her, and they had brought an end to the beast.

Slowly the corps sank to the ground as she began quietly to speak to herself, her eyes focused into nothingness: “You were a strange opponent Farafarello. The first to ever touch me. The first…” Again she traced the gash on her cheek thinking. “Altena won't be pleased for she seeks perfection and by your hand you…I…”

A touch to the wound the man had torn, the place the foreign knife had intruded her flesh, let her shudder inwardly as wave of sickly pleasurable pain ran down her spine, erecting the fine hairs on her neck and letting sink in the feelings the fight had stirred up suppressed in the heat of battle.

 

“But I am not angry. I should be. With me. I always feared the day this would happen. But now that it has I….”

Not finishing that thought and without moving form the spot she absently reached for one of her pockets and took out some bandaging material, pressing it on the wound.

And with the life of her opponent, so had faded away the light of the moon to again shroud Tokyo in gloom.

 

A long time past on the now quiet roof before the silhouette of Chloe moved again. Reaching down it picked up an object from the ground, thoughtfully examining it as she held it in front of her. For a moment the blade of a knife, not her own, flashed in the darkness before she tucked it away.

“I will treasure this.”

With those soft spoken words flowing through the air the figure disappeared never to be seen again here, leaving behind the slowly cooling body of a blonde man that was lying in a slowly growing pool of red liquid with Chloe's knife imbedded in his chest.

 

 

*

 

 

Walking hurt, running even more. The wound itself hurt, more than he had thought it would. It might not have been very deep, but the bullet had severed crucial tendons and that together with the slow blood loss was making moving around not the most pleasant activity he had taken part in.

 

Neither crippled, but not in the best of shape either he had followed the delinquent girl through the night, occasionally exchanging a few shots, but never seeing her for more than a moment. Like a phantom, a mere fragment of his imagination she appeared and disappeared, always at the rough fringe of his stronger sphere of influence but never too close to let him know more than her approximate location. He knew he was being led on, but what could he do? Trusting his honed skills and reflexes to overcome any trap she might prepare for him he had followed.

 

Along ever changing but never quite distinguishable rows of houses, through a small park and an endless number of cars and power poles. Up to the area he was just entering. Normally the dirt ground would have been ideal for him. A wide open area. A field where he would have had no problem shooting from afar with his magnum caliber while safely out of reach of he 9mm bullets. There was more than on reason why he carried the biggest there was. But it did him no good for the field was not empty as it would have been most year round.

 

“Figures… can't they just stay traditional?” Schuldig dryly commented the `balentain matsuri ni irasshaimase` sign that hung over the entrance.

“Welcome to Valentines' Festival my a…”. Further ranting was disrupted by another shot coming from somewhere along the now dark and empty rows of booths and stands that occupied the field if even for only one or two days. Booths that during the day sold toys, and flowers, stands for making Okonomiyaki, Yakisoba, Odangos as well as more western style foods, and almost everything else that could be found at any Japanese festival site, providing simple happiness to children and the carefree. But carefree he was not.

 

Schuldig started to really hate this night. The uneasiness that had befallen him the moment this nightly chase had had started, or - to be more exact - the moment he had lain his mental sight on the girl back at the hotel, had only gotten stronger. And his brain was starting to play tricks on him, making it hard for him to keep the right picture of her in his mind. He was hunting a young woman, but at one time or another he could have sworn he had seen a much smaller girl, one too young to be able to run around, vanish into the shadows of the night. A phantom indeed.

 

This had to end, and fast! With that in mind he followed after her towards the center of the field, along the empty wood frames. Ready for what ever might come…

 

 

 

 

In retrospective that had had been the point where he had lost control of this game in the night, if he ever really had had control from the point on she had inflicted that wound on him. Who knew?

 

They had played hard from the beginning, played a deadly game all the way to this point, but in this field of darkness and gloom, this scene of shadow play performed by the slow wind, the rustling sheets and awnings of the booths, and the far away street lanterns, the stakes had more than risen. Too high for him to gamble on this moonless, starless night under Tokyo's ever illuminated sky.

 

Had he not been incapacitated, he might have been faster. Had he had a better aim it would never have come this far. Had he known her skill level was on par with his own, so familiar, almost as if indeed a copy of his own - lightning fast, instinctive, deadly… it all did not matter.

 

The last stage of their game had taken a while, hunting in the shadows, listening for steps, for breaths, for the beats of another heart; anticipating, waiting, moving and again listening. Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? Time had run out nevertheless.

 

It had ended. And it had ended with him lying in the remains of one of the stands, unable to move, and with blood running out of various wounds. She had won and he had lost. Simple as that. Bested at hide-and-seek, he never had been bested at this, or had he? He wasn't sure anymore.

 

Besides him the broken remains of a children's puppet was staring at him - left behind merchandise perhaps. A puppet portraying the smiling girl with a red ribbon in her dark hair. For a moment he lost his focus. When he regained it, again a staring motionless face of a girl looked down on him, again dark haired but without a ribbon.

 

For a last time he let the events of the past few minutes rewind in his head: his first little mistake - firing at a harmless shade - , the return fire from a direction he did not had expected, the second and third wound that night, his own counter shots that did miss and again the lead bullets that had torn another three wholes in his body and had brought him crashing into on of the booths, the place he was now lying in. It all seemed so stupidly insignificant.

 

“Crawford, you old bastard, was it supposed to end this way?” were his last thoughts.

 

 

*

 

In the solitary spot of light that shone through the otherwise empty street, the white clad figure of Brad Crawford in the middle stood out even more than the illuminated cone itself, but equally unmoving and accompanied only by the faint noise background of Tokyo. Silent up until something unseen prompted him to speak up:

 

“Hello Mireille. It took you quite some time. But you have decided, have you not?” The outspoken words rang through the air and faded into the quiet alley, and once again nothing but slight rustling of wind could be heard. Crawford just remained standing there, back turned towards the entrance.

 

After what could have been an eternity, a moment frozen in time, something moved. Without a sound and gracefully as a dancer another figure slowly emerged from the deep shadows into the twilight of the alley, yet not stepping close enough to extend more than the tip of a gun into the directly illuminated area.

 

“What do you think I have decided on, Brad? But then, I think I did not have to ask now, for you surely know, don't you?” A low voice asked, to be answered with an amused voice:

 

“No, of course not. Would you have expected something else? I regret thou, that I am forced to react upon that decision.” At those words the hand holding the gun tensed up. “I hope you can live with the consequences.” With those words Crawford instantly turned around, the right hand reaching inside his suit.

 

The sound of a single gun shot reverberated from the walls.

 

Smiling Brad Crawford removed his hand from the inner pocket it had never left, carrying with it a cigarette etui and a silver lighter. Carefully he extracted a single stick of tobacco and equally slowly ignited it before taking a deep draw. Looking up into the gloomy sky and exhaling he put lighter and etui back inside his suit before took another draw and again letting the blue smoke run out his nostrils, ignoring his surrounding.

 

“Why?” Disbelief, a trace of sadness, a trace of confusion, and a trace of anger rang with that single, almost neutral syllable. “What Kind of games are you playing?”

 

“None…anymore.” came the calm response. “I did what I did, you did what you did, as easy as that.”

 

“Don't give me that crap. You should have known about the gun. You should have seen this coming.”

 

“Who said I did not?”

 

“But…this is…pathetic!”

 

“Some things are simply worth dieing for, Mireille. But it takes a long time to realize what they are. And sometime, maybe all too often, it is too late. There is no more place for me.” Smiling he took another draw and finished the cigarette and flicked the remains away. And with the still glowing tobacco Brad Crawford went down on his knees, his previously immaculate white suit sporting red, steadily growing stain. And for the fist time in many years his face showed signs of pain. But not for long.

 

“To live… either you or me, from here on it was. Use this gift, well. I will be seeing you in hell, my dear.”

 

And with those words the white clad man collapsed, never to walk out of that ally again. And as if bonded to the mans life the single light in the alleyway ceased to shine, shrouding everything in darkness, except for the tiny sparkle of a single tear on a woman's face.

 

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Again I would like to hear what you think, for better or worse ( or at least tell me what a great story I wrote^^)