Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Chaos Came Early ❯ Under the Influence ( Chapter 4 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Urmm, another A/N. Hmm. Here goes.

Sancta, graveyard man, thanks! Glad to hear from new folks. Especially nice things. RedQueen, Schu’s gonna be one boa constrictor short, darn thing tried to eat my dog. ;) Phoenix, next AssAn meeting is at your house. I’ll bring the Cheez Wiz. Race, yeah, I love the paddleball too. mm-chan, you’re giving me ideas. Knock it off, I’ve got enough going. Soxy–your wish is my command. At least as long as Schu has anything to say about it. Here’s more.

*******

“Dinner,” Farfarello repeated, as if he knew the word, but couldn’t place it.

“I want ice cream!” Schuldig squealed and grabbed his jacket. Farfarello still stood on the chair, as if that would do until they were ready to leave.

As it would, really. It wasn’t his chair. Crawford slipped his holster back on, then his jacket.

“Herr Crawford,” Schuldig was frowning at Farfarello, “he can’t go out like that. He’ll never get any action, chains scare girls.”

“Girls,” Farfarello repeated, and that little smile came back. “Girls and chains and ice cream.”

Was he drugged? Crawford wouldn’t be surprised, the file contained an exhaustive list of what he had a tolerance for, and what could still be expected to take him down.
“Schuldig, is your target dead?”

“Nein.” The German prodded with a toe. “Did you want him to be?”

Crawford smiled again, he couldn’t help it. “That’s all right, I did need to talk to him. Can you wake him up?”

Schuldig smirked. “Can I wake him up,” he muttered, and bent over the man. “Wakey, wakey! The sun is rising, time to face another miserable day of being you!”

“Birds are singing, time to bury your friend,” Farfarello added, plopping to sit in the chair.

Crawford stepped into the bathroom and locked the door.

His team. Two barely-trained boys had taken down two full-size Essett-trained goons in seconds.

This was...incredible. Dizzying. Addictive. He had never experimented with drugs, he experimented with nothing. He knew where he was going. But now he knew what it was to be high as a kite.

Wow. Just...wow.

Crawford let it flow through him for another minute, then got himself under control. When the only sign of his triumph was “We Are the Champions” in the back of his head, he returned to his team.

His team.

Grumpy sat in the chair in the corner, holding his head and glaring at Schu on the bed.

Thwack! “Ha!” Thwack! “Ha!”

Farfarello stood between them, unlocked. And armed with a knife he’d gotten from Schuldig knew where. Of course there were drawbacks, Crawford reminded himself, to anyone who got along well with Schuldig.

Thwack! “Ha!”

“Ye bloody bastard,” Grumpy snarled, looking up. “Wot t’ hell ye doin?”

“Taking my team out for dinner.” Crawford knew he was arrogant. Sometimes he didn’t hide it all. “What happened to Farfarello’s head? No one mentioned recent injuries.”

“‘E did it himself! Barking loony, you’ll see. Wanker’s only got one eye now, how much good you figure he’s gonna do ye?”

Crawford let one eyebrow twitch upward. “He seemed very effective to me.” Farfarello had removed his own eye?

“You poked your eye out?” Schuldig asked. “Were you running with scissors?”

“Studying anatomy,” Farfarello confessed. “I didn’t think it would do that.”

Grumpy snorted and grumbled.

“Are you really barking loony?” Schuldig asked.

“So they say.”
“What do they know? They say I’m annoying.” Schuldig smirked at Crawford and went back to his paddleball. Crawford shook his head. So did grumpy.

“Barking. The both of them.” He grinned at Crawford. “And ye think you’re going to control them?”

“Woof,” Schuldig said. Farfarello barked back at him. Schuldig grinned and yipped like a poodle. Farfarello howled. Schuldig did too.

“Dinner and ice cream!” Crawford called, opening the door. Schuldig cheered and ran, Farfarello followed. Crawford scooped up Farfarello’s discarded overcoat on the way to the door.

“Oy! What about Bob, there? Ye can’t just go killin’–“

”Call Herr Stein,” Crawford suggested. “Tell him Bob forgot what sort of team I’m building.” He hurried after his team. Farfarello was still carrying a large knife in plain sight.

Even in the cold, walking had seemed like a good idea, with two exuberant novice assassins and their exultant leader all needing to let off some energy. But within three blocks Crawford was debating going back for the car. Not because Farfarello was acting out his psychopath side, he wasn’t. Either he was drugged, or he knew when he couldn’t compete.

Because Schuldig had brought the paddleball.

One thing was certain, the toy was improving the boy’s hand-eye coordination. By the time they reached the restaurant he could hit someone nine tries out of ten, and only four of his victims had spotted the weapon. One look at the group had dissuaded each of them from complaining. Crawford had practiced looking forbidding, and knew he was good at it. And with Farfarello–
There was something about Farfarello. People looked at him and looked away. Quickly. And those that found themselves near him, moved.

Crawford walked them past the French restaurant he’d meant to try the next time he was in the city, somehow he knew Schuldig and fine dining did not mix. Instead he led them to an American fifties-style diner with little jukeboxes on the tables, and when Schuldig found a song he liked, handed over money.

He wasn’t surprised when Schuldig started wailing along with the high part. He did raise an eyebrow when Farfarello joined in with the weem-a-weps.

Perhaps the two got on a little too well?

Several topics were listed in the Irish boy’s file as “setting him off,” but there hadn’t been a list of safe subjects. So Crawford let his telepath lead, and learned a lot that night.

He learned that Farfarello believed that vegetables should be fed to a rabbit, then you ate the rabbit. Liberal applications of grease made plant matter acceptable fare, but if it wasn’t deep-fried, Farfarello probably wasn’t going to eat it. And if it was fried, it was going to be drowned in ketchup.

He learned that Schuldig preferred mustard, the hotter the better. And that under the right circumstances a German imitation of an American corn dog could combust. The right circumstances being Schuldig setting fire to it. Farfarello added his napkin to the conflagration, and they would have continued if Crawford hadn’t put a stop to the arson. He made a note that they were both inordinately fond of fire. Not necessarily a bad thing, in their line of work, but something to be remembered.

Schuldig liked to dance, and hinted he would do it on the table given a glimmer of encouragement. Farfarello seemed only to notice the music if Schuldig was singing, and he didn’t tap his fingers or toes. They shared half the booth, Schuldig stealing Farfarello’s fries since his were singed, until the white-haired boy grabbed Crawford’s steak knife and pinned Schuldig’s sleeve to the table. Crawford was sure Farfarello hadn’t meant to catch only cloth, and equally sure Schuldig knew it, so he didn’t comment.

When Schuldig went to the restroom and stopped to harass the waitress on the way back, Crawford asked Farfarello why he liked the German so much.

Farfarello cocked his head and answered, “His mind is loud.”

“Everything about him is loud,” Crawford agreed.

“That makes it quiet,” Farfarello said.

“Hey, baby,” Schuldig had been turned down by the waitress, he slid into the booth to drape himself over Crawford, “with my mind and our bodies we could begin a race of genetic superchildren to conquer the earth.”

“We’ll do it another way,” Crawford said, removing the leg from his lap, but letting the arms be. The waitress would bring a sundae in 28 seconds, Schuldig would unwrap himself.

Later Crawford reflected that a black cow was more sugar than drink, so he shouldn’t let Schuldig have both that and a brownie sundae. Letting the telepath enjoy himself was one thing. Crawford ending up as “barking loony” as Farfarello, was quite another.

The boy chattered away, describing a movie and talking with his hands for the first time Crawford had seen. “...so they’re zooming through this canyon, and the alien is on him, he’s like, right on him, and he yells blood and he yanks the parachute on the plane and kill and there’s the edge of the canyon and knife and he’s all yelling and dead and–”

“Farfarello,” Crawford said, “stop it.”

The Irish boy shrugged in his oversized coat, but Schuldig stopped putting random violence words into his movie description. It wasn’t surprising that Farfarello had tried the game, it was one of the ways Rosenkreuz trained telepaths–non-telepaths were told to think loudly at them, attempting to influence them. Enough embarrassment and/or pain, and the telepaths quickly learned to shield better.

What was surprising was that Farfarello, a non-Talent only at Rosenkreuz six months, had influenced Schuldig. Crawford had put the boy’s bad reports down to the personality clash–the personality war–between Stein and the wild child, but if Schuldig really hadn’t learned to control his power–

He would learn. It might just be the sugar-and-caffeine high making it hard for him to focus–Crawford hadn’t even known some root beers contained caffeine, there was so much he needed to learn if he meant to keep this flighty child–but if it wasn’t that, if the wild child had resisted training, he would learn now.

Tomorrow, rather. Tomorrow at breakfast Crawford would give the boy fair warning, and then he and Farfarello would test him until Schuldig learned to keep them both out. Tonight Crawford was wondering if he shouldn’t just beat the Christmas rush and buy a tranquilizer gun now.

“And he was in this other movie, with dinosaurs, and he was this scientist or math guy or something, only I thought it was all crap because he was just spouting this stupid PRIEST...”

Too slow, Crawford snatched only air.

*******
“The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (source of Farf’s weem-a-weps) is by The Tokens. Schu’s movies are Independence Day, and Jurassic Park.

I think my plotless wonder is ::ahem:: growing a plot. Oops.

Rattle beads, burn incense and whatever else for my left ring finger. I hurt it at karate, and being one finger down has slowed me by a lot more than ten percent. And the next Shades chapter isn’t even halfway done, argh...