Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Crazy Sunday Mornings ❯ Tapdancing to File Cabinets ( Chapter 8 )

It was not as bloodcurdling as torture chambers go, but they weren't that far gone to the deep end for them to be numb to it. A torture chamber is a torture chamber no matter how many victims there were, whatever size, shape, and smell it was. The smell was bad enough. Trained eyes surveyed the room, counting the bodies, checking for possible dangers. None. Not one bodyguard, not one hidden door. Its official, the man's a loon, Yohji thought. He shook his head in slight bewilderment, despite himself. Didn't the man know his being hunted down? A guy couldn't just kill several kids without knowing some force'd eventually want him.

 

`Except, of course, if he is a total loon. Then the man wouldn't really care, because his concept of reality and the now is different.'

 

Yohji mentally cursed his smart-aleck conscience. This was not the time for semi-witty remarks. This was the time to hold one's breath and dive into the scene of a crime done more than twenty times. In unique ways, he added to himself. His eyes darted towards the position where Aya should be, and a slight movement invisible to the untrained eye from the latter was his cue. They entered the target area, as stealthily as shadows.

 

 

Yohji flattened himself to the wall, as much as he disliked it. Who knows what lived in the grime that clung to the wall? You couldn't culture bacteria on a wall, could you? He stopped, regulated his breathing, and noiselessly readied a stretch of wire for a very personal garrote. Sometimes he wished he'd taken that gun off the “Choose Your Weapon Wall” back then, instead of this fashionable yet sometimes too dramatic a weapon. Bloodstains are a bitch. Damn that novel*, he thought, making me think garrotes are so cool. Steady now, he freed his mind of thoughts, as he waited for the target to come out of the bathroom.

 

He looked at Aya, standing somewhere close, ready to back him up. Ken was going about the room, checking for any survivors. The one slumped by the wall opposite the worktable was the most recent, yet the most puzzling. Most of the bodies indicated blood poisoning, syringes still left on the arm full of some ooze of a substance. Ken had taken samples of it, to include in the report. But the recent one had no injection at all. Her body was clear of any wounds, but for some odd wound near her breast. Ken sorely wanted to take all those bodies out of the stinking mess of a room, all those corpses of women no older than twenty years. There were some hardly recognizable, badly decayed. His bugnuks sheathed and unsheathed. He wanted to make the monster pay. Badly. But it was up to Yohji to do that.

 

Oh gods, he's taking so loooong. Is he taking a crap? Fuck, he better wash… Yohji's thoughts automatically stopped when the hinges of the door creaked.

 

 

On the way home, Yohji blew and sucked the blood from the wound on his left arm. The loon had bit him. Hard. He remembered how strong the man seemed, when he looped the wire around the target's neck. The vise-like grip, and of course, the sharp pain when the man bit him, he remembered. A man in his forties, not too shabby a built, tall, definitely Caucasian… but the lifestyle lead by a man like that should at least have deteriorated the strength… and the sharp teeth, he thought bitterly. More sensing than seeing the struggle, Aya intervened with a nice clean swoop of a sword. Even when the man was in two, the upper body, particularly the mouth, still clung to Yohji's arm, which disgusted him for some reason. Aya took the head by his hands and pried it from Yohji. It would have looked funny, if it didn't look disturbing in the first place. They were technically traveling incognito, Ken driving the battered old pest control van, disguise cap pulled down low and chewing gum to look genuine. The rest sat on cold steel in the back, careful of snaking wires that ended to Omi's laptop. Aya eyed him warily.

 

“You shouldn't be doing that.”

 

Yohji shrugged, and continued to suck the blood from his wound, which he afterwards bit to stop the blood. Aya watched him do so, face quite impassive until he shifted his gaze towards… well, towards nothing. That was how it was with Aya- when he wasn't glaring at anything, he was still glaring. Yohji wrapped his arm with some cloth he found in the emergency first aid kit in the van that contained two strips of band-aid, the cloth, and about three cotton balls. So much for fucking first aid. The travel home was insignificant; it was later in his room that things became curious. Of course, Yohji remembered nothing of that.

 

And now, let us bring our horizons back to Yohji's new current dilemma, which is to ferret out the folder of information about the hit just recounted. He couldn't just waltz up to Omi's room and ask for it because it would cause suspicion, he hardly read the mission folders when needed, so why now? And raising an Assassin's suspicion, and an Assassin that is Omi, is kind of like tripping yourself up purposefully. The pain of the pavement rising to meet you (and not in the kind, Irish blessing's way) might go away, but the burning embarrassment you felt would always be there, haunting you. And with suspicion, the moment may physically pass, but the eyes will always be watching you from now on (with Omi they were probably watching you even before you tripped yourself, but just harmless note taking).

 

Yohji imagined Omi's mind as rows and rows of endless filing cabinets. Not a computer, but filing cabinets that are susceptible to nothing- fire, earthquake, what-have-yous. Computers lay prey to viruses. They crash. Not filing cabinets. Not Omi's mind. And every little thing he saw, any little thing at all, he imagined Omi file it away to a cabinet with that thing's name on it. Safekeeping maybe, future references definitely. Asking Omi, definitely out of the list. In the end, it was a no-brainer really, Yohji thought as he crept down the hallway and slowly turned the knob of Omi's door with a gloved hand. It's something he does for a living anyway. Just that now he's doing it to an associate.

 

Stealing information from any other goon's hideout, even the ones with the infrared sensors 24 hours on, killer firewalls and mind crunching secret passwords, and that really slow download processes those computers always seem to have when everything's going like a suspense movie (cue some theme) now all seems like a walk in the park to Yohji. But just borrowing without permission some old mission folder that's probably due to be thrown away anyway from Omi is the real motherfucker, Yohji concluded as he sat down innocently on the soft bed, giving Omi a look of “Me, what did I do?” Omi in turn gave him a look of “Oh, come on.” They stayed like that for a while, until Yohji smiled and clapped his hands.

 

“Look, Omi-boy, you caught me. I was going to spring a prank on you, but you're just way too good for an old bastard like me. Well, congratulations kid.” He stood up and was about to walk towards Omi and pat the kid on the back, when Omi somehow spirited a rather battered folder from somewhere and held it up.

 

“Looking for this, old bastard?”

 

Yohji's jaw fell just a little, for just a fraction of a second, but Omi saw it and Yohji knew Omi saw it. He is definitely busted, he thought, so he sat back down on Omi's rather soft bed and watched himself trip on his own feet to the sound of the clicking file cabinets.

 

 

Somewhere below, Ken wonders where everybody has gone.

 

 

“So you still won't tell me why you need this?”

 

Yohji shook his head firmly. Omi let him off easily, in the meantime, but Yohji still won't tell Omi why he needed the mission folder. He couldn't jus tell the kid that a voice hinted to him to look up the mission folder for a hit a month ago because he's been having the strangest Saturday nights and crazier Sunday mornings, now could he? Besides, Omi won't believe him anyway.

 

“I swear kid, if I could tell you, I would. But I can't. So I won't. Sorry.”

 

Omi eyed him suspiciously. “You're not working for some other agency, are you?” Yohji sighed. “No, Omittchi, I'm not.” Omi's nose wrinkled at the nickname. Yohji had to smile; the kid was a kid after all. Yohji stood up, took the folder from Omi and leaned against the door. He knew he'd feel like an ass after what he's going to do, but he has to, if only for his sanity. He stopped and marveled at the irony of that sentence. Him, sane? Hah! The conscience alone warrants his insanity.

 

“Okay kid, listen. You don't ask me why I need this, and I won't ask you why you haven't disposed of this information yet.”

 

Omi's eyes widened and Yohji felt a tug at his heart. Aw man, not the look! Omi, although a superb tactician and a head full of file cabinets, still had emotional blue eyes he has yet to master and now his face crumpled a bit as he looked away.

 

“I did. I burned the copy, as per protocol.”

 

“Yeah, but you have a photocopy of it.” Yohji mentioned, waving the folder in his hand. “And you know how Aya is with protocol; he's a stickler to S.O.P's if you please. I would know- I have been the audience of his many lectures about it.”

 

Silence for a while, then a whisper from the boy.

 

“He worked for… Masafumi, Yohji. I… just wanted to know…”

 

Yohji raised other hand and butted in. “Yeah, I said I won't ask, right? Don't worry, my lips,” he made a zipping motion with his hand across his mouth, “are sealed.” Then he gave a boy a wink, who significantly lightened up. Omi nodded, and it took a while before he smiled, and when he did, it was a smile of gratefulness. Before Yohji was completely out the door, Omi asked him again.

 

“You sure you don't want to tell me about it?”

 

“Sure I'm sure kiddo. I'm Yohji the great. Of course, I'm sure. When have I ever lied to you?”

 

Omi acted as if he was thinking, exaggeratedly stroking his chin. “Hmm, just about every time?”

 

Yohji replied with a pose of mock indignation. “Okay, the next time you ask me how babies are made, I'll tell you the whole truth. Assassin's honor.”

 

“WHAT? I never asked you that!” Yohji smirked. “Oh, just get out Yo-tan!” Yohji saw Omi stick his tongue out before the door closed and he was once again reminded that Omi was, after all, a kid.

 

And if he wants to study every single mission folder that has any inkling to his past, then let him. Yohji thought, as he strode purposefully towards the stairs.

 

 

 

 

 

*Mario Puzo's The Godfather. You know in the ending where the traitor was garroted from the back of the passenger seat of the car? That scene.

Sorry for the late update, summer school's a bitch. Especially Yoga. Here I was thinking Yoga was for calming and relaxing you, then a rude awakening to the truth that Yoga was meant to test your strength, flexibility, and break your back. Ow. And whoever heard of a person getting a cold under the frying heat of the summer sun? Certainly not me, until it happened to me.