Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Reality's Game ❯ Another Day ( Chapter 6 )

You know how a person can dream so long and so hard of owning something but then there's that one-day when you wake up and realize you don't own it… The same applies for Weiß Kreuz. I don't own it nor will I ever. My dream has been broken and I have awoken to face reality.

 

 

Notes: Italics in the story represent though.

 

 

 

 

Reality's Game

Chapter 6: Another day

 

 

Yohji sat at the table inside the Koneko and sighed. It was too early in the morning for him to be out of bed, but that was his own fault.

 

After he had set Ran down in his car, the younger man had passed out. Whether it had been from the blood loss, the exertion, or a combination of both was unclear to the playboy. Whatever the cause may have been, Omi had asked him to cover Ran's shift so that the young swordsman could have time to recover from his wound.

 

It goes without saying that he had tried his damnedest to get out of having to wake up early those days. In fact, he did everything he could think of on the drive home to tempt their normally easy-going Ken into doing the shifts for him, but to his dismay, the soccer player wouldn't budge.

 

That was why he was sitting there tremendously tired and bored. He was bored enough to be creating little paper airplanes out of their delivery forms which he would then throw at Omi who was running around the store trying to get things ready for when the customers started to pour in.

 

Omi paused as he felt something hit the back of his head and set down a potted plant he was carrying. He glanced down to see what had hit him and saw the floor littered with pink airplanes. He sighed over the mess, “Ne, Yohji-kun, could you stop making such a mess and come help me out?”

 

“With what?” Yohji asked the boy. “Everything's been done already.”

 

“Oh…” The teenager went silent. So, Yohji, thinking that the kid was finished getting on his case, went back to making the planes.

 

He had finished yet another one and was about to launch it into the air when Omi spoke up again. “Ano, Yohji-kun? Can I ask you something?”

 

“Sure chibi, go ahead.” With that, the paper airplane glided from his fingers only to soar through the air for a few moments before plummeting to the ground.

 

“If someone starts seeing things… that aren't really there… would the said person be considered insane?”

 

“Depends on what the person is seeing, chibi. Why do you ask?”

 

“Well…” Omi hesitated slightly then burst out quickly. “The other night while I was working on that security system I could have sworn I saw someone… but when I turned to look for sure, they were gone. It was like they had just disappeared into thin air.”

 

“Hmmm, it could have been a hallucination, or you were day-dreaming. Who was it that you thought you saw?” Yohji asked.

 

“Manx…”

 

A slow smile began to spread over the former private investigator's lips. “Manx, eh? What was the vision you had of her about?” He started teasing Omi. “Was she doing naughty things that a chibi like you shouldn't be thinking about?”

 

“No she wasn't!” Omi half-yelled, his face turning red in embarrassment. “She was…”

 

“Come on now, Omi, don't be shy. We all have daydreams especially kinky ones. There's nothing to be embarrassed about.” He got up and walked over to his younger, less-sexually oriented coworker and wrapped an arm around his shoulder in a brotherly fashion. “You can just tell Yotan all about it.”

 

“Yohji-kun! She wasn't doing anything like that!”

 

“But you've thought about it though,” Yohji said. He was taking a perverse delight out of teasing the kid.

 

“No I have not. And all she was doing was walking down the street.” Omi pulled himself away from Yohji and glared at him.

 

“You know, chibi, I'm thoroughly disappointed in you.” Yohji said as he frowned and let his arms drop to his sides in defeat.

 

“Disappointed? You? I should be the one that's disappointed. You're the one that has to take everything that's said and turn it into something sexual!” Omi continued to glower at the man whose frowning still marred his features. “Does everything have to contain some sort of sexual connotation to you?”

 

“I believe you asked me something to that extent last night, kid.”

 

“No. I asked if you could, for once in your life, take things more seriously,” Omi reminded him.

 

“Oh… well then… to answer your question… yes, it does.”

 

Omi bit back a groan. He should have known not to ask Yohji that type of question when he had known the answer from the start.

 

“I take sex seriously. However, I wouldn't worry too much over what you saw. It was most likely your imagination,” Yohji continued speaking.

 

“So, you don't think I'm going crazy then.”

 

“Nope, you're not. Besides, it's not a question on if you're going crazy or not.” Yohji's voice had a matter-of-fact tone to it as he spoke the next words. “You already are crazy. Hell, if you think about it, we all are… given the line of work we're in.”

 

Omi pursed his lips and gave Yohji a long, hard look. For all Yohji's looks and attitude, he did have times when he was right, and this might be one of them, but… “You know, that doesn't make me feel any better Yohji-kun.” Omi sighed softly then gave himself a small shake before putting on his normally cheerful expression. “I guess there's no real reason to worry about that right now, ne. We have a business to run and it's almost time for us to open. That means you need to sweep up the little mess you made with the airplanes. I'm going to take this plant outside.”

 

With that, Omi picked the pot back up and walked off.

 

As he did so, he heard Yohji groan in frustration at the thought of having to do any sort of manual labor. Strangely enough, he found some enjoyment at Yohji's discomfort, and for the rest of the day, he was happy.

 

 

Oo

 

 

It had been a peaceful night for Ran. And for him, that was a rarity in itself.

 

Ever since he had taken up the burden of being the nightly executioner of the dark beasts that lurked within humanity, he was constantly plagued by nightmares. Most of the time, those dreams were merely a trifle, causing him to wake up at some ungodly hour of the night in fear. The fear would easily be dispelled though, and he would quickly fall back into a restful dreamlessness that lasted until morning.

 

However, with every silver lining there was still a touch of gray. No matter how small that lining was.

 

On the night before a mission and the night after, he would find that his dreams would go on a rampage through his mind. To put it mildly, the young man would get little to no sleep.

 

Those were the nights that he would use his insomnia to think over his past, to study it, and see if he could have somehow changed the outcome by doing something different, said something else, or even been forewarned ahead of time.

 

When he did that, he could never come up with a different solution. The “what ifs” he would come up with never worked out. Because in the end, he would remind himself that it had been an outside force that caused him to chose the path he had taken. Fate played her cruel hand in this, and he almost hated her for it.

 

After he came to the realization that there was nothing that could have been done to change his life, he would sit there, in his room, wondering if his teammates went through the same thoughts as he did. Of course, he would never ask them about that.

 

Then at other times, he would get this unexplainable urge to find a game console and play it no matter how old the system was. During those nights, he would shake his head and berate himself for allowing such childishness to come over him. He was a killer now, as well as an adult, and didn't have time for such useless frivolities.

 

That morning, though, as the first rays of sunlight filtered through his blinds and fell across his still-closed eyes, Ran awoke feeling strangely refreshed if not a bit sore.

 

He sat up, stretching his sleep-tensed muscles carefully. It wouldn't do him any good to tear his wound open. He looked at the time that read eleven am.

 

His first thought was he had over slept.

 

He scrambled out of his bed. Never, in all the time he had lived and worked as an assassin, had he slept so late.

 

As soon as he had gotten out of bed, the door to his room opened, and Ken walked into the room holding a steaming bowl in his hand.

 

“Oi, Aya, you're awake,” the boy said cheerfully. “That's good. We thought you were going to sleep the whole day away.”

 

There was no acknowledgement from the older man; so, Ken took that as a good sign and continued speaking.

 

“Anyway, I made some miso for you. I figured you'd be getting hungry soon.” A had filled Ran's face so Ken spoke up in consolation. “Oh, don't worry, I didn't make it from scratch. Yohji made us buy that instant crap a while back, and that's what I used. It's not that bad. I've had it before; besides you need to eat something.” He held the bowl out to Ran. “Go ahead, eat it.”

 

Ran glanced down at the bowl being offered to him. Its white broth with chunks of tofu and strips of seaweed seemed to look normal to him, so he took the bowl and drank eagerly from it. It didn't taste bad either, he conceded to himself.

 

“Why didn't one of you wake me up,” he asked as soon as he finished eating.

 

“Omi said not to bother you. You'd lost a lot of blood,” Ken explained. “Besides, a full day of sleeping seems to have done you some good.”

 

Ran looked down at the empty bowl in his hands; his mind half-adjusting to the time. It pained him that even a day had gone by with him laying in bed doing nothing but sleeping. Yet, he figured out that in the end it had all worked out for the best.

 

“Who's been covering my shift for me?” Ran asked half-curious.

 

“Would you believe that our little Omi talked Yotan into taking your shifts for you?” Ken chuckled. “You should have seen it though. He did everything he could think of to try to get out of it.”

 

“How much damage did he cause?” Ran asked his gut tightening in foreboding. To put Yohji in the store first thing in the morning tended to be a disaster waiting to happen especially when you scheduled him to work any morning on the weekends. The combination of exhaustion from clubbing so much and the after affects of imbibing too much alcohol didn't sit too well with the ex-private investigator, so Ran usually had the foresight to exclude him from any morning work.

 

“Shockingly enough, there was absolutely no damage,” Ken said. “Well except for the fact that Omi just told me that we're out of delivery forms.”

 

“I don't think I want to know why.”

 

Ken just shrugged. “That's fine… oh yeah, before I forget, Omi wants you to stay in bed.”

 

“Hn, I'll be fine.” Ran said. “I don't need to stay in bed like a sick child.”

 

“That's up to you, but if it were me, I wouldn't want to invoke the poutiness of Omi,” Ken said. “Ah well, that's not any of my business. I just came to give you some food and to see if you were awake yet.”

 

“Which you've dispensed with your duties already.”

 

“Exactly, now I have to get ready for my shift,” Ken said giving the older man a half-salute before turning and heading towards the door. He stopped at the door and looked back at Ran. “Oh, by the way.”

 

“What?”

 

“Manx hasn't been by with a new mission since that last one. I think Kritiker is finally giving us a small break in business.” With that, Ken left Ran to his own devices.

 

Time off… he thought as he began to get dressed, who has time to relax when you have things to do, places to go and people to speak to? Like Omi, for instance; Ran needed to talk to the boy about the report he had sent to Persia. He might even get a chance to read it as well. Moreover, he wanted to look over the information Omi and Ken had gathered the day before and compare it to the information supplied to them by Kritiker.

 

He wanted his facts straight before he went to Persia with the accusation that someone, even though he didn't know whom, was a traitor or Kritiker's information gathering wasn't as reliable as they believed it to be.

 

In a way, that thought worried Ran. If their security wasn't holding up very well, then worse things could happen the next time they were on a mission. Instead of being wounded, he could be killed, and that would leave his sister in worse shape than she was in now.

 

He sighed. Thinking about his sister made him realize that it had been a while since he had last saw her. And that ended up causing him to hold off his conversation with Omi until later that night.

 

He left his room and made his way out of the house and down the street.

 

As he walked to the hospital, his mind drifted over the many thoughts that were jumbled together in his head. He was so lost in thought, that he was unaware that he was being watched by someone or something.

 

 

Oo

 

 

“And they call themselves assassins,” a nasally sounding voice said as he watched the unsuspecting Ran move down the street. “Look at him. He wouldn't even be able to hurt a fly.”

 

“I wouldn't mock them if I were you,” a soothing, yet, assertive baritone said. “They're Kritiker's best assassins, remember?” He looked over at the man who had spoken.

 

A sneer of derision amongst outlandish, carrot-red hair greeted him. For a brief moment, he wondered why in God's name had anyone allowed that man, Schuldig, to have such brightly colored hair and obnoxious fashion sense as well.

 

Schuldig wore a dark green double-breasted coat with freshly pressed white dress slacks. What was worse was the yellow bandana that the man sometimes wore. Which thankfully today, he had not.

 

“I know they are Brad, but come on. Talk about a bunch of pansies.” He gestured to the now distant shape of Ran. “He didn't even realize that we're right here.”

 

Brad ran his hand through his black hair and looked over at the flower shop Weiß worked in. Unlike his partner, he always dressed for business success, and today he was here for business. Though staking out a place in a crème colored Armani suit wasn't one of the best ideas he, because of all of the sitting he had been doing the suit was now wrinkled.

 

“Can we just attack them and get it over with?” Schuldig asked. “I bet we could take them out like that.” He emphasized his point with a snap of his finger.

 

“No our orders for now are to watch and wait. More to the point, we're still missing two of our… colleagues.”

 

“Those two? Bah, we don't need them. We're by far superior than they will ever be.”

 

“We're to follow our orders, Schuldig. If you don't like it, they will be more than happy to terminate you,” Brad gave his partner a quelling glare.

 

“Alright, alright, I'll leave them alone… for now,” he said with a wicked tooth-filled smile lighting up his face. “But when the time comes, don't you or anybody else dare hold me back. Do you hear me, Brad? Not you, them, no one had better get in my way.”

 

Laughter that could only be described as menacing echoed throughout the tiny car, and for once in his life, Brad only sat there and smiled at his partner in complete understanding and full agreement.

 

 

 

 

Author's Notes: Well now it seems I've gotten this finished now. I don't know why but I've been having better luck writing chapters for this story and Green Eyes Watching than any of the others.

 

Schu: -smiles- It's because I'm enjoying giving you evil idea's for these two.

 

Whatever it is I guess I should be thankful… Anyway, I hope people who do read this enjoyed this chapter. I think I enjoyed writing it.

 

Schu: You did.

 

Anyway, review please I would really like to know what you think of this story.