Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ In The Shadows, In The Light ❯ 14 Momentum ( Chapter 28 )

Author's Notes: All Weiss Kreutz stuff/characters are not owned by me and all rights apply to the lucky bastards who do own them. I make absolutely nothing off this except gratification of my own sick and twisted desires.

 

Thanks goes to my beta on this. It's greatly appreciated.

 

~ indicates character POV

** indicates internal conversation

Italics indicate spirit conversation

 

 

14 Momentum

 

~Ken~

 

I wasted a few precious bits of brain power wishing warts and rickets on whoever was stabbing me in the head with a red hot poker. It complimented that lovely feeling that my eyeballs would fall out of my head and bounce away if I so much as blinked too hard, and did nothing to help fight off the urge to puke up everything I'd eaten in my entire life. Even without a mirror I knew I looked like I was barely surviving the worst hangover on history. If only I'd had the fun of getting falling down drunk.

 

But noooooo.

 

Crawford called it mental over-exertion. Like I was slacking on brain push-ups or Sudoku or something. Whatever. The result was an urge to rip my own head off and whomp it against the wall just to make the hurting stop. Fucking bastard lied when he said it'd get easier after a few days. Sure, I wasn't barfing up my toenails like the first time I'd gotten the super-duper boost thing that we were all getting now, but that was only from sheer stubbornness, a lot of jaw clenching and swallowing hard. Repeatedly. I didn't like the fact that I was the only one who tossed their cookies from the boost either.

 

Omi had turned hideously green, but didn't up-chuck, although, it'd been a close call. Nagi sweated buckets for probably the first time in the little nerd's life, and looked like he was going to pass out. Farfarello laughed like the maniac he was, but that hadn't lasted long. His laughter stopped like a switch being thrown and he went to screaming his head off, babbling about seeing people who weren't there and begging Crawford to shoot him up with drugs to make the dead people go away. Crawford grit his teeth so hard, I swear I could hear them grinding together from across the room. I'm surprised they aren't all flat like a cartoon dog's now. He white-knuckled the arms of the chair he sat in and tendons stood out in his neck, but the Great Oracle never once looked like he was going to spew chunks.

 

Not gonna lie; the craptacular way I felt was more than made up for by the almost supernatural way I could move after the boost. I wasn't a clumsy ox before, but now I had grace out the fucking wazoo. I'd freaked myself out just a little bit in the sparring room, though. Thank God it was Farfarello, the nut job, I'd been messing around with. I'd gone… I guess feral was the right word. Bloodthirsty would work, too, and that scared the pants off me. I lost the slash and stop before real injuries stuff that was what we usually did in training, and moved on to honest to God, I'm-going-to-fucking-kill-you-and-like-doing-it. I'd been seriously trying to gut Farfarello, okay, knee-jerk reaction but in theory he was on our side at the moment.

 

Yeah, I sometimes got a tiny bit too into the missions and maybe went a little far on the violence side of things. That was only on mission though, never, ever when I was just messing around. Sure, the point of training was to be ready to take extreme measures to make sure you were the one who came out of the mission alive, but I'd always been completely in control of myself when I sparred no matter who it was with. It wasn't even that I'd been fighting with Farfarello and he was still the enemy. Sorta. It was something deeper than that and whatever it was, the boost thing had set it loose in my head.

 

I needed to talk to someone about this shit, but didn't know who to go to. It seemed really, really wrong to tell Omi that I wanted to disembowel somebody and wear their intestines like a necklace just for shits and giggles. Telling Aya or Yohji was out because as soon as one of them knew something, that fucking annoying German knew it, too. The last thing I needed or wanted was that asshole saying something to piss me off, the idea of killing him was entirely too pleasant even on a normal day. Talking to Farfarello about my violent desires would be like beating a starving dog with a ham. He'd be all over it and me in a heartbeat and I truly didn't want to bond with the Nutjob. I was afraid he'd want to go and do some evil sick, violent thing and I didn't think I was in the right frame of mind to say no. He already bugged me every day to fight with him since that last time when I'd almost slashed his throat open. Talking to Prodigy was pointless. If my face wasn't on the screen, he wouldn't see it.

 

That left Crawford.

 

I groaned. I was still a little weirded out over kissing the evil leader dude of Schwartz. Fine, it hadn't really been my choice to do it, thanks to whatever Schuldig had done, but still, that's the kind of faux pas that takes decades to live down. And that's just between friends. I thought about that kiss at the strangest times. Not like I wanted to kiss Crawford again, but damn, he was a really good kisser and I couldn't remember the last time I'd been up close and personal with somebody that didn't involve a mission. I groaned again.

 

I was so not wanting to kiss Crawford again. I really wasn't. I reviewed the situation as clinically as I could. Crawford was a guy. An evil, enemy guy. Who was pushing 30 for Christsake. And evil. And a guy. And, you know, we were all trying to help him save his team. Yeah. He owed us, the arrogant prick. I added `arrogant prick' to the list.

 

I hated that the kissing thing made me even more uncomfortable around the guy. Not that he'd done or said anything. He actually acted like the whole incident never happened, which, considering my temper lately, was probably his safest bet. I was mostly grateful for that, except some teeny-tiny part of my brain insisted on asking why and wondering if my kissing skills were that sub par. I swear to God, that sadistic bastard telepath was putting fucked-up ideas in my head when they did that boost thing. I should go gut him, then I could talk to Yohji and Aya in peace.

 

“Hidaka, I'd like to speak with you a moment.”

 

I jerked my head up and hissed through my teeth at the sharp stab of pain between my eyes that action caused. Crawford stood in front of me and I could feel a blush spread across my face. Say the name and see the face. Abso-fucking-lutely perfect.

 

“Now's not the best time, Crawford.”

 

“Yes, it is. I realize you've been having a harder time than the rest of us with certain aspects of the boost. I sympathize,” he said, sounding not in the slightest sympathetic, “but this is an urgent matter.”

 

“My brains feel like they've been scooped out, pureed and poured back in through a hole drilled between my eyes. I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna puke on your shoes, but don't stake the game on it. I should be drinking about a gallon of water but I'm not sure I face even that; if I don't get your Nutjob off my leg about sparring with him I'm going to slice him into Irish flavoured noodles so trust me when I say now is a shit-ass time to have some kind of idle chit-chat, Crawford.”

 

“Do you really think I'd approach you for idle conversation? I do have things I'd rather be doing, but I had a rather clear vision of you enjoying yourself immensely while slicing a nice policeman's spine in two simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I assumed you'd want to know about that and what you could do to keep it from happening.”

 

My mouth dropped open and I stared at Crawford, too startled to think. He was dead serious. Snotty and annoying as hell, but totally serious. Shit. I've lost it Big Time.

 

With a smirk, Crawford reached over and pushed my chin up to shut my mouth. “Under normal conditions, I wouldn't give a flying fuck what you do during your personal time, but we can't afford to have any attention drawn to us at the moment. Rosencrantz will be sending out a team soon to verify my report and I know the bullshit I've been feeding them will only buy us a precious little extra time, which we cannot afford to spend dealing with you going off the deep end. So tell me, what the hell is going on with you, Ken?”

 

I let my head fall against the back of the chair and stared at the ceiling. Fuck. Me. I was in even deeper shit than I thought if Crawford had a vision of me going all Farfarello on some poor cop. I needed help to prevent that and the only one who might have a clue how to stop me was the guy I really didn't want to deal with at the moment. Thanks a lot, Fate, you bitch.

 

 

“Would you believe me if I said I think that asshole telepath of yours does something to my head when they do the boost thing? I didn't feel like this before that.” Well, at least not much, but Crawford didn't need to know that.

 

“Despite being a pain in the ass and often more trouble than it seems he's worth, Schuldig is all professional when it comes to doing his job. Right now, his job is to ensure his own and his lovers' survival by helping everybody get boosted as much as possible, something he's doing with minimal bitching, a miracle all by itself. Schuldig has too much to lose by playing games. In any event, do you really think Abyssinian and Balinese would allow him screw with your head like that?”

 

“He could be doing it without them knowing.” I knew that was lame, and Crawford confirmed it with a look. Aya, Yohji and Schuldig were weirdly in tune with each other. They barely spoke out loud to each other now, but you just knew that they were having huge conversations in their heads with each other. They almost moved as one whenever they did anything. It went past creepy and weird and bordered on extra creepy - and I'd seen some pretty freaky shit. “Okay, fine. That was dumb, but I don't know what's going on in my own head anymore. Cut me some slack here, you may be used to this mental shit but I'm sure as hell not.” I took a deep breath and plunged in. “This vision you had… can we change it like we did the one of Yohji dying? I don't… I don't want what you saw happening to happen. I don't want to hurt innocent people. I'm not that kind of guy.”

 

“Are you willing to let Mastermind poke around in your head? That may be the only way to fix whatever's triggered these urges of yours. We're pressed for time so it won't be a pleasant experience. You'll probably look back on the way you feel during and after boosting as a walk in the park. Are you ready for that?”

 

I looked at Crawford and exhaled slowly. I wasn't sure it was possible for my head to hurt any more than it already did; adding Schuldig poking around in there made the proposition even less thrilling. The only thing that made me nod my head in permission at Crawford was the fact that I knew a whole lot more people than me were going to be hurting if I went off the edge. That, and Yohji and Aya would be there to muzzle the asshole German if need be. I couldn't afford to get too much more fucked up than I already was. I stood and felt my stomach heave from more than just the after-effects of the boost.

 

“Let's get this over with. You think Schuldig would be a little gentler with the whole brain poking thing if I brought him a bribe? He seemed to really like the sugared violets when Aya gave him some.”

 

Crawford smirked. “Schuldig is very open to bribes. I suggest you take the tub of Haagen-Dazs Reserve Hawaiian Lehua Honey and Sweet Cream he hid in the back of the freezer. He'd do almost anything for that.”

 

I grinned at Crawford, feeling better already. For being the evil leader of our sworn enemies, he sure knew his ice cream. Then again, anyone who'd help me get some leverage with the pain in the ass telepath couldn't be all bad.

 

 

~Aya~

 

Ken had a mulish set to his jaw; counterpoint to Schuldig being insufferably smug at my teammate's the obvious discomfort. I knew Ken wasn't doing well with the effects of the boost; none of them were. However, I'd had no idea that Ken was dealing with anything more than some rather uncomfortable physical reactions. Omi, Yohji and I knew Ken sometimes went a little too far on mission but he'd always been reasonably in control of his actions. That didn't seem to be the case now and he was rightfully concerned. Crawford's vision, which he shared with a hint of malicious glee, wasn't helping to ease Ken's fears.

 

“I wouldn't even be asking for your help if there was some other way to deal with this. I'm not even one hundred percent convinced that you're not responsible for this shit going on in my head in the first place. We need this problem fixed now before something bad happens.”

 

“We? There's no we. You have the problem. You need it fixed. You need my help to do that and that's no way to ask me a favour, Ken. Where's the pretty words and sincere attitude? I gotta say I'm not feeling the love,” Schuldig said with the most insincere hurt look I'd ever seen in my life.

 

I gave Schuldig a mental cuff to the head and he yelped in surprise before giving me an annoyed glare. He turned to Yohji for support and got a surprisingly stern look from him.

 

**Ken wouldn't come to you on a whim, Sasha. He's… frustrated and frightened. It took a hell of a lot of guts for him to even come here and ask you to see if you could fix whatever's wrong. Put your Big Boy Telepath Hat on and be serious,** Yohji said.

 

Schuldig gave a long suffering sigh and grumbled about being underappreciated and people just using him for his incredible mental talents. Yohji and I rolled our eyes. A flare for the dramatic was an understatement as far as Schuldig was concerned. The man was a drama queen.

 

**I heard that,** Schuldig said in a haughty tone. **I am not a drama queen. Or any kind of queen for that matter.**

 

I raised an eyebrow at him. **If the feather boa fits….**

 

** Besides,** Yohji put in, leaning over to physically pat Schuldig's ass. **I never said I was after your mind.**

 

That got a smirk and a distracting shimmy, which spun into a daydream of Yohji's.

 

“Guys? Hey, freaking out teammate here. Hello?” Ken wisely stopped short of knocking on Schuldig's head for attention, but only just. “I want this problem dealt with right away. Crawford said it's in the best interest of all of us to have it fixed now. We all know drawing attention to ourselves would be a bad thing. Just to prove how bad I want this straightened out, I've got something here for you, Schuldig, if you can fix my head and make me as close to normal as I was before the whole boost thing started,” Ken said as he held up a small cooler.

 

“You never said anything about payment for my services as part of this deal. I'm willing to negotiate. What's in the cooler?” Schuldig asked. I knew he eventually help Ken because Ken was important to Yohji and me; because he was needed for the whole team to defeat Rosencrantz; and because Sasha could not resist a challenge. I would've been surprised if he didn't try to yank Ken's chain just a little.

 

“Nothing much. Just some of those sugared violets you liked.”

 

Eagerness lit up Schuldig's eyes. He'd developed a real taste for those when he'd discovered them in the freezer one day. I felt the beginnings of a blush crawl up my throat when I remembered exactly how much fun he'd had with those sugared violets, liquid honey and a pastry brush. Schuldig and Yohji looked at me with banked heat in their eyes and for about the millionth time, I wished Schuldig could heal faster. While sex in the mind was incredible, there was just something very… visceral about passion slicked skin and tasting your lover on your tongue.

 

“I also brought a container of that stupidly expensive ice cream you adore and try to hide in the back of the freezer,” Ken said as he pulled out the tub of ice cream.

 

As soon as Schuldig saw the label, he moaned softly and Yohji and I snickered. He sounded exactly like that when he came and I think he counted that particular ice cream on the same level as an orgasm.

 

“So, you think you can help me out?” Ken asked with a little grin as he dangled the cooler holding the ice cream and sugared violets just out of Schuldig's reach. “Because it does look pretty good, I could eat it myself.”

 

“I will do my absolute best to fix whatever you think is wrong in your head. I might not be able to do anything. I'll try, but I can't guarantee results. I still get the ice cream and violets though, right?” Schuldig asked his entire focus on what Ken held.

 

I snickered and then choked a little when Schuldig flashed a mental picture of Yohji and me strapped down to X-frames while he spooned melting ice cream over our bodies and then licked it off. Yohji groaned softly. Ken flicked his gaze between the three of us and muttered something I couldn't quite make out under his breath.

 

“Schuldig, if you can drag your mind out of the gutter for more than thirty seconds at a time, it would be in all our best interests to get this done now. I assume I can leave this little problem in your capable hands,” Crawford said, the unmistakable hint of command in his voice.

 

“We'll take care of it,” I said, more to assure Ken than Crawford. I ignored the need to adjust myself, tucking those images away to be savoured later.

 

**I can speak for myself,** Schuldig said sharply.

 

**I know, but you're not going to be the only one working on fixing Ken, are you? We're going to help.**

 

**We are?** Yohji asked in surprise.

 

**For an empath, you can be pretty clueless, Yohji. You must be able to feel how nervous Ken is getting. Look at his body language,** I said with a long suffering sigh.

 

**When did you get to be Mister Sensitive?”** Yohji asked with a little huff.

 

**We're in each other's heads, Vergnügen. We take information from each other automatically without even thinking about it. That's a good thing, ja?**

 

“Can we please just get on with this? You guys are making me twitchy as hell with your silent conversations. I expect the whole big brain temple throbbing thing to start next.”

 

Schuldig waved his hand to one of the chairs in his room. “Sit down. Don't fight me. That'll only make it harder.”

 

“No funny shit. I just need these weird impulses to go away.”

 

Schuldig eyed the container with the sweets and sighed, “This probably won't be a whole lot of fun for any of us.”

 

“Schuldig will be on his best behaviour, Ken. Promise,” I said with steel in my voice.

 

**Spoil sport. You could've at least let me string him along a little more,** Schuldig grumbled.

 

**No, Sasha, I couldn't. We need everybody in top form as soon as possible. Knowing you, I'm sure you'll figure out a way to screw with my team mates at a later date,** I said with a resigned sigh.

 

Asking Schuldig not to mess with Omi or Ken was like asking the sun not to shine or the rain not to fall. It wouldn't be happening in my life time. Schuldig smirked and mentally gave my ass a pinch. I glared at him but there was no anger in the look. Schuldig was what Schuldig was and I didn't want to change him.

 

Ken sat down in the visitor's chair and put the cooler on the floor between his legs. Some of the tension left his body at my promise. Ken knew I never went back on my word. Schuldig switched gears mentally, becoming utterly professional as he prepared to try and fix whatever had gone wrong in Ken's head.

 

 

~Crawford~

 

I left Ken in the capable hands of Mastermind and his two lovers. I was confident that even if Mastermind couldn't fix the problem, he could at least do some kind of stop-gap measures that would keep Ken from losing it and drawing the cognizance of the authorities as I'd seen in my vision. The very last thing we needed was any kind of attention at this point in the game.

 

I didn't particularly care about Ken's mental issues; wouldn't have even bothered to say anything if I there hadn't been a part two to the vision I'd told Ken about. Since the boosting began, my visions had become very sharp in detail, although the things revealed still required me to puzzle out what the vision meant as a whole. I'd been hoping for a little more clarity for the big picture through the boost, but beggars couldn't really be choosers. I was beginning to be able to control what I wanted to see if I concentrated, an improvement over the way my visions usually worked.

 

In my latest vision, Ken's little wilding spree coincided with the Rosencrantz crew checking to see if what I'd stated in my report was true. Unfortunately, the vision didn't show me when that crew showed up, how long they'd been investigating my bull shit story or even who the team was. I'd have been a whole lot less anxious if I'd know at least one of those things, but after giving myself a killer headache trying to force a vision, I was somewhat resigned to not knowing the finer details at the moment.

 

The murder of the cop popped up on the crew's radar because of the paranormal flavour and they'd intensified their investigation. The vision showed that they'd discovered the link between Weiss and Schwartz and the plan we had for breaking free of their control. While the outcome of the previous vision with all of team Schwartz dead was now null and void, this outcome was worse to my way of thinking.

 

This vision showed Omi being killed outright by Rosencrantz. Ken's newly enhanced, murderous impulses were psionically boosted even further, turning him into a nearly mindless killing machine under the direction of Rosencrantz. Nagi, Farfarello and I were mind wiped and re-programmed back into good little drones. I'd more or less assumed that was what would happen if this plan failed, but the one that puzzled me the most was the fate of Aya, Yohji and Schuldig.

 

From what I could tell, none of them suffered the mind wipe that Schwartz did. They didn't look happy and Yohji looked down right sallow, but they appeared to still be together mentally. Physically together was a different story and I was positive that Aya was being used as a pawn to make sure Yohji and Schuldig did whatever Rosencrantz demanded. Why Rosencrantz hadn't simply mind wiped them too, I couldn't understand.

 

There had to be more to what those three shared than what they were telling if Rosencrantz didn't wipe their minds. It's not like they ever hesitated to do it before. There had to be a bigger reason. I didn't need a vision to tell me that; gut instinct was enough. Unfortunately, they weren't talking and there was absolutely fuck all I could do about it. I couldn't even get Schuldig to check out Aya and Yohji's heads as he was part of the problem. I scowled and left the hospital, more than a little frustrated. I could feel time running out and it was starting to make me twitchy as hell. I was half-way back to the flower shop when my cell rang.

 

“Oracle, we're waiting at your front door but nobody seems to be home. Having a little family day, are we? Didn't you get the memo that we'd be arriving today?” asked a female voice full of patronizing tones.

 

Mother-fucking, cock-sucking, son-of-a-bitch!

 

I knew that voice. I could live to be a thousand and I'd never forget that voice. Damita Waterio. Also known as Scythe and leader of the investigative/reprogramming group for Rosencrantz called The Letters. I was likely the only one of Schwartz who remembered her as more than just a name and picture of some one to steer very clear of.

 

It was The Letters who came periodically to obliterate the memories of my team so we never got too close with one another. They seemed to be our personal Cleaners and she was their telepath. Her codename was Scythe for a good reason. She cut a swath through the minds of whoever she targeted and she was less than subtle about it. She seemed to take extreme delight in screwing with Schuldig's head. I think it was because she knew he was stronger than her and that pissed her off. I was too far away for her to reach me mentally, but the memory of the last time she'd paid us a visit and sliced through my brain, made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and a cold sweat break out on my skin.

 

“I'm waiting, Oracle. Didn't your mother teach you it's not polite to keep a lady waiting?” Damita asked.

 

I grit my teeth and mentally swore in every language I knew. Regardless of how she looked or the airs she put on, Damita was no lady. She was also somebody I wasn't supposed to know by voice alone. I swallowed down the urge to mentally call out to Schuldig and have him puree her brain. He was strong enough and now had enough range that he could probably do it, but that would bring Rosencrantz down on our heads for sure. We needed more time so I had to play innocent.

 

“We weren't expecting anyone. The memo must've gotten lost along the way. You know how bureaucracy is. Traffic is horrendous. It'll take me another half an hour to get there. There's a nice little café just around the corner where you can wait. They serve the most amazing almond cake there. Very reasonable price, too. We run a tab there; feel free to put whatever you order on our bill.”

 

I cut across two lanes of traffic and took a short cut through an alleyway that was just barely wide enough to fit my car. I needed to get to the flower shop, pick up Nagi and Farfarello and then head home to meet with The Letters. If I drove like a mad-man, I could probably just make it within the half hour I'd quoted Damita. The last thing we needed was to make them more suspicious than they likely already were. As to the memo… memo my ass. I snorted. There was no memo. They were counting on catching us off-guard and off-balance by simply showing up. That was the way they operated.

 

There was an annoyed sigh through the phone. “I suppose the café will have to do. Don't dawdle, Oracle. I'd like to get this business over with as soon as possible.”

 

“Certainly. We'll be there as quickly as we can, barring traffic.”

 

I snapped the phone off and stepped a little harder on the gas. Shit and double shit. We weren't ready for any confrontation yet. We were stronger, but I didn't feel we were at the level we needed to be if we were going to try and take on a crew like The Letters. I couldn't push the boosting any harder either. It was no fucking cake-walk like I'd thought it would be. It damn well hurt to have that much power forced on your brain all at once. Not to mention the strain it put on Yohji, Schuldig and Aya as well as the time required for Yohji to recharge between boosts.

 

Fuck. Me.

 

I pulled into the driveway of the Koneko and gave myself a few precious seconds to calm my ass down. Regardless of how I felt on the inside, I couldn't show any of that to my team. If there was even the slightest crack in my confidence, they'd pick up on it. If my confidence dipped, so would theirs and then we'd be in a shit-load of trouble in front of The Letters. I drew in a deep, steadying breath, and got out of my car, my mind already running over which plausible story to tell Damita and her crew.

 

 

~Farfarello~

 

Your leader is back and he's agitated.

 

I ignored the spirit as I carefully stirred the boiling pot of Irish moss, waiting for it to finish thickening.

 

He's looking for you. And you're not supposed to stir that widdershins. It'll never gel properly if you do.

 

I sighed and obediently started stirring the moss gently in the opposite direction. I suppose if the spirit was being good enough to provide me with a fourteenth century recipe for blancmange, I could go along with whatever stupid superstitions it had. It wasn't like it actually made a difference which way I stirred the fucking pot.

 

Good, good. Another ten minutes or so and it should be ready to add to the rest of the ingredients. Your leader is heading this way.

 

I grunted at the spirit and kept stirring. I was getting the hang of ignoring the majority of the spirits that whispered in my ears. Most of the time, if I listened to them for a few minutes, they seemed happy to have been heard and went… wherever spirits went when they weren't bugging the crap out of me. Some were even turning out to be helpful. Like the one hovering at my elbow, telling me how to put together the ingredients for this dish.

 

“Nagi, Farfarello! Drop whatever you're doing. We have to go home.” Crawford shouted.

 

I scowled and continued to stir the moss. Crawford could go fuck himself. I'd had to special order the moss and the capons and wait two days for them to get to Japan. If I stopped this right now, it would be ruined and I'd have to start all over again. Starting over meant ordering the moss and the capons again because I refused to freeze the capons. Importing the moss and capons was bloody expensive, but the spirit said to use the moss and fresh capons to re-create the authentic medieval dish, so I was using moss and fresh capons.

 

Cooking lessons from the dearly departed was a really nice bonus for having to deal with the increased spirit activity around me. I kept hoping that Julia Childs would drop in one day. I'd missed the last half of one of her shows on making Cajun etouffee and not knowing how to finish the recipe was irritating. I could've looked it up, but that wouldn't be the same.

 

Crawford appeared in the kitchen with Nagi at his heels and frowned at me. I ignored him and kept stirring the moss. It was close to being done. He folded his arms across his chest and waited. He could wait as long as he wanted. I was busy.

 

“Farfarello, we have to go. Now.”

 

“Busy, Crawford. Come back in… twenty-five minutes. I should be done by then.”

 

“The team from Rosencrantz is waiting at our house. They sent The Letters.”

 

I stopped stirring the pot for several seconds before starting again, slower than before. “Are you sure?”

 

“I spoke with Scythe. She never travels alone.”

 

“I don't suppose you could finish the blancmange?” I asked the spirit, already knowing that she couldn't.

 

No, I can't touch anything. I'll wait for you to come back and we can continue. It's a pleasure to speak with somebody who enjoys cooking.

 

“Farfarello, we're running on a deadline. I said we'd be back in half an hour and at least ten minutes have already gone by since my call with Scythe. We need to go over what story we're going to tell and strengthen our personal shields. Scythe is going to do her very best to get behind our shields and we'll be completely fucked if she does. I don't think Schuldig can supplement the shields without Scythe knowing what he's doing, so we're on our own in that respect.”

 

I turned off the stove and moved the pot off the hot element. I sighed softly. For anything else, I would've ignored Crawford and finished the dish. But, Crawford had told us about the cleaners that routinely paid us a visit and he'd told us what he knew about them. He'd showed us pictures of the team and had Nagi dig through restricted files for more information on them so we'd be well informed when we ran into them. Crawford believed in being prepared.

 

I wasn't an angel by any stretch of the imagination, but The Letters made me look like Captain Courteous. They also pissed me off because of what they'd done to me and I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep my knives to myself when I finally saw them. Crawford had us read the reports The Letters made after they'd mind wiped us. I agreed with Crawford. I wouldn't be nearly as crazy as I was now if they hadn't been at my head as many times as they had.

 

“No moves, Berserker. You're not supposed to know who they are or what they did. We will take them out. Just not yet. We're not ready.”

 

I stared hard at Crawford for several seconds before nodding my head. If Crawford said we'd take care of The Letters, then we'd take care of The Letters. I didn't know how, but it wasn't my job to know how. That was Crawford's job. I just needed to know when to pull my knives and start having fun. I followed Crawford and Nagi out of Weiss's house with a tiny sigh for my ruined blancmange. That was one more crime against The Letters that I intended to collect on.