Witch Hunter Robin Fan Fiction ❯ Of little things ❯ Diggin' up dirt ( Chapter 10 )

The STN offices were somewhat busy, even though the time on the large clock near the chief's desk read almost six in the morning. All of the hunters had not gone home yet, Kosaka and his assistant had left many hours previously, leaving the rest to their nocturnal work.

Bathed by the light off of his monitor, Michael works tirelessly over the keyboard, stopping only periodically to grab a handful of potato chips and shovel them into his mouth. He eyes the display on the screen intently, bopping his head to and fro with whatever he has playing on his walkman.

Karasuma sits nearby, watching the lad work, her eyes seemingly like two weights from a lack of rest. She shakes her head to wake herself, finding herself beginning to nodding off sitting there. Forcing herself to sit up straighter, she finds herself still wanting to nap.

" Have you got anything yet?" She asked in a playful sort of whiny voice, trying a stretch to bring her back to feeling more alive. " I am starting to falling asleep here while I'm waiting!"

" With only a partial print that you lifted from that hotel room, it will take time to put it through the records... and the report from SOLOMON on those bones in the ash, will be here when they finish" The lad said. " Go grab some coffee, it might wake you up... looks like you need it"

The woman giggled and shook her head.

" If I have one more cup of coffee, I'm going to explode." She replied, giggling louder than she had been..

The lad chuckled at the lady's little bit of humor, but never turned his head to look at her. He worked the keyboard like a concert maestro, his fingers were nothing more than a simple blur as he went along.

Karasuma just stood from her seat, deciding to move around to get the heavy feeling of fatigue out of her limbs. This had already been on hell of a long day, and it was stretching longer and longer by the looks of it.

She walked back towards where the door to the old well area, flapping her arms out to facilitate her revival of herself. To her frustration, walking only seemed to be accenting the exhaustion she was feeling, rather than helpful in waking her up. She groaned and rubbed her eyes, wishing that she could just go home and crawl into bed. She could have, she mused, but that won't get the work done.

Michael looked at the screen, and saw that he had gotten a possible hit on the print from the different databanks they used. He smiled and clicked on the answer that had taken almost the whole night to come up with. The name came up on the screen, and the youth's face suddenly went white.

The youth gasped, and turned his head.

" Miss. Karasuma!!" He called out, his voice seeming louder than he usually was. " We have something here, and you just won't believe it..."

Miho turned on her heels, hearing her name called in such a animated way. She hurried back to the main work area, her fatigued state was gone all together. She hurried herself with quickened steps to where her frantic young co-worker was standing staring at his computer monitor.

She got to the lad's station and looked at the screen. It said in big bold letters on the monitor.

" Partial match found..." He said out loud as he read it " It hit on Amon Syunji."

The two looked at one another, in shock.

" Amon??? He's alive?" Miho breathed in sharply, almost feeling her legs give out, as Sakaki's question from earlier came back into her head. " But how could that be?"

" It is only a seventy percent match mind you." Cautioned the hacker kid, his finger pointing out the number value beside the name on the screen. " But it is a possibility."

Miho took a seat and just looked into space for a moment. Her thoughts seem to be whirling around in her head.

"Could Haruto's suspicions be right?" She frowned as the thought came to her, knowing the match was not perfect... this could be all just a coincidence.

She looked at the young computer genius, her mind still processing this information. She soon came up with a thought.

" We have to keep this from everyone, for now." She said, thinking out loud to the young man. " We have to try and verify that Amon might actually be still alive." She then got a thought. " Do you think Robin is alive, if Amon is?"

Michael shook his head.

" We don't know if Amon or Robin is alive right now, but this just might be a place where Amon had gone sometime, and by accident it was not cleaned where you found it." Thought out the lad. " Where did you find that print in the room? It would go far in actually explaining this close identity hit."

Miho looked at her little notepad she had on her desk nearby, reading them quickly through.

" They were on the underside of a chair in the corner of the room." She said, looking at the young hacker.

" It then could be another person, with under seventy five percent of a hit on the print, that can be possible." Michael thought it out. " Or it could have been Amon's print from a long time ago, considering that hotels never clean the undersides of chairs much."

" Have you heard him ever mention that he was ever in the Loo Hotel?" Miho said.

" I never have.. Then again...." He said, then pondering on it. " He never really said anything to me, other than when it was about a case we were on." He snorted, remembering the brooding agent he once worked with. " You know that was Amon's charm."

" That was Amon." She said, knowing that the brooding man was often very aloof with the team.

Miho nodded, there was more than enough doubt for her to go around, yet it still stayed in her mind. That possibility was a longshot.

" Lets just keep that fingerprint a secret for now... We can check into things later." She stood up from the chair. " I really hope that the SOLOMON report will give us at least the name of whoever this person was that had been incinerated."

" If there is any DNA left in the bones themselves after the heat they were subjected to..." Michael said with a half positive attitude in his speech. " That would be a miracle in itself."

" That will have to be seen if the SOLOMON scientists can extract enough from those remains to extract a full profile." Agreed Miho. " We can hope that they are able to... it would hopefully go a long way to explain a few things."

Michael stopped for a second, his mind seemingly processing all of this.

" If you ask me.." He said, finally looking right at Miho. " I was there at the Factory's fall... There is no way they got out alive."

" That print might be telling us otherwise, you know?" Miho countered.

" I have already addressed that... It is barely a 70% match to Amon's print on record." The lad restated for the woman, who seemed to be hooked on the thought of Amon and Robin still being alive. He sighed, knowing the woman had it in her mind. " I will run the print through again, and perhaps we can prove or disprove this."

Miho nodded, knowing the lad was probably right on his recollections of the night of the factory's fall. It seemed almost impossible to her too. Even though her mind knew that, deep inside of her, something was gnawing at her from inside. Her instincts were telling her differently than the thoughts of Michael's..

The hunter woman did not understand just what her gut was telling her, but it was causing her mind to waver on the lad's usual level of logic The woman turned and left the youth to his work, waking away from the whiz kid. Her mind continued all of its pondering the possibility of her seemingly dead co-workers being alive still. Now was the time to think just how she could find out for sure, without raising the suspicions of others.

She stopped just shy of the door to the well, and stood right where she was. Her mind working overtime on the problem.

" There has to be a way..." She told herself. The question was just how she could pull it off.

The lady suddenly had a idea pop in her head as she walked off. She thought on the flash of inspiration for a moment, weighing it in her mind as it was a very oddball thought she was having. She entered the well area, looking around quickly to see if anyone was in the area. No one was in sight.

Pulling out her cellphone from her pocket, she dialed a number furiously as a hopeful smile crept on her face. She had an idea on how she might find out if the ex-hunters were still alive or not, to settle her mind to look elsewhere in the case for the evidence needed.

Putting her phone to her ear, she waited for some sort of answer to come from whomever she was trying to get in contact with.