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A “Weib Kreuz” song fanfic
By Jop and Yen
Comments are always welcome! Please feel free to drop us a note! ^^
Disclaimer: All characters are not owned by us, but belong to their respective owners. The tune on the other hand is something of my own reckoning
If life had turned out differently
Would things have been the same?
Would life still have its ups and downsOr would fate come the same?
Watching from his vantage point, his eyes flickered once more towards the young man standing in front of his parents’ grave. He was about twenty, red-haired and had a sole earring dangling from one of his ears.
Ran Fujimaya. Alias Aya Fujimaya. Once the member of the assassin group Weib Kreuz.
Botan sighed as he continued waiting.
***
Aya scowled as the opposite door of his car opened and a dark-haired person got in.
“What are you doing here, Botan?”
“I’m here to return something to you.” The Kritiker agent grinned as he dangled a small nondescript key in front of the former Weib agent’s face. “It’s yours, I believe?”
Aya remained silent as Botan related the events that had led him to the key that Aya had entrusted to Sakura.
“……”
“Your relationship with Sakura must be something huh?”
“Is that all you came for? To question why I gave the key to Sakura?”
Botan sobered. “Aya, come back to the flowershop. There’s a mission that awaits you.”
Aya scowled. “I don’t have time to play games with you, Botan. I told Manx and Birman already. I am not going back to Weib.”
“But – ”
“Get out. I have places to go.”
Botan closed his gaping jaw and smiled. “Drive on,” he announced. “Since I’m a bit free today, I thought I’d just tag along.” The Kritiker agent eased himself into the chair and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.
“’I’m not interested in bringing you along.” Grumbled the former assassin.
“But I’m interested!” protested the smiling Botan as he lit a cigarette.
Aya’s eyes widened as he heard the characteristic spark as two pieces of metal rubbed against each other.
“Don’t smoke in my car!” Growled Aya, but could do nothing as he helplessly watched the older man calmly take a slow drag on his cigarette, blithely ignoring the owner besides him.
Whose car was this anyway? Aya’s or Botan’s?“Don’t you ever listen?” Aya finally demanded, exasperated. Fine. If Botan wanted to smoke, then fine. If that fool wanted to follow him around the block, then fine. It was his time that was being lost anyway, not Aya’s. “Why are you following me around anyway?”
Botan extinguished the cigarette and glanced at his new companion. “I worry about you.”
***
“What’s the new assignment?”
“It’s about the recent immolations that have been occurring in Tokyo. We’re meant to look into it before passing it on to Birman for Weib to handle.”
Botan pondered for a while as he picked up and flipped through the dossier. “Then what about Aya Fujimiya? The last I recall he quit.”
“Aya? You need not worry about him. He will be taken care of.” Botan looked up at that. It had a distinctly final air to it and Botan understood what was to happen.
Not that he liked it.
Abruptly, he put the dossier down again and putting his palms on the table, leaned forward to study the Other’s features.
Finally, he spoke up. “What say you give me a chance and speak to him? See if I can change his mind.”
“Why should we? What is he to you?”
A child. A man who has lost his way and knows not what to believe in. A human being who understands lost and pain and presses on. Someone who knows what it’s like to lose a family.
Like I lost mine.
“A capable agent. If he is ‘taken care of’, we lose his expertise and we have few enough who are willing and able to fight this war as it is. Besides, what harm can it do? If I convince him, good and well; if I can’t, you just dispose of him a few days later than planned.” Botan shrugged. “As I see it, it’s win-win.”
The other looked down, then looked up again. “You have three days.”
* * *
Regrets they come, they stay don’t goIn hearts they linger ‘ere
Amidst the dark the blooming roseThey fester, choking care
“?”
Suspicious eyes threaten to stare through me as I proffer the manila envelope to him.
You really care about your sister, don’t you? No, you don’t have to answer me, I can see it from your eyes. The very fact that you currently can’t do anything is tearing you apart.
“Well, do you want it or not?” I sigh as I see those proud eyes, desperately seeking help, yet too proud to take any hand offered. “Look Aya,” I begin again. “Wouldn’t you even like to have a look at it, even if it’s through Kritiker means?”
“I’m not joining – ” he begins again.
“Right now, I’m not asking you to join,” I rake my hair exasperated. How Manx ever managed to deal with such a person and get him to join Weib in the first place, I will never know. “I’m just asking if you would mind having some help?”
I’m not pulling your strings. I just want to help.
Grudgingly, you take the information. I smile in return.
You see, Aya, by ourselves, we can only do so much.
But united we can make a difference.
***
He sure is pretty resilient for someone who hasn’t gone to sleep for the last 36 hours. “Look, I don’t know about you, but I could do with some food right about now.”
He doesn’t even glance at me, just sits in the car waiting for our suspected man to come out of the building. “No one ever asked you to come,” he states simply.
I sigh. This is not going anywhere. I open the car door and glance around. There had to be some form of eatery or convenience store somewhere. Aha! There, at the corner of the street – a Mr. Sunshine. I glance back at my chosen companion and told him of my intent, asking if he would like to join me for that daily ritual most humans engage in. And for all my good intentions, I receive a cold shoulder. Hah, Aya must be getting tired. Most of the time I get a snort, a glowering reply and a cold shoulder.
It is ten minutes before I finally return. True to my expectations, the target still had not shown up.
I open the car-door and dump my prize onto his lap.
“Here have some breakfast. It’s not much, but then we’re not at Yoshinoya’s.”
I put a hot drink and a plate of microwaved sausages and bacon in front of him.
“I said I don’t – ”
“Yare, yare. I know you don’t want breakfast, but here it is anyway.” I shuffle through my plastic bag to reveal my own ham sandwich. As I hear no reply, I assume he has taken it, and the sound of another unwrapping the plastic cover confirms my suspicions.
Under my coffee cup, I smile.
I wonder if he’s like that with his other friends – those members at Weib. Does he still play the same stoic tormented soul with that innate fear to trust and let anyone in beyond his little cocoon?
Aya, Aya. When will you ever learn? Even if you have not the words to express it, your friends still love and accept you for who you are. Even if you have lost Aya-chan for the moment and your family, you still have a home to go back to even if you don’t realize it.
I glance outside the window, fingers absently fingering the paper plane beneath them.
Others are not so lucky.
***
All this waiting is getting on his nerves. Heck, all this waiting is getting on my nerves. It has been hours and yet the target still has yet to appear. I glare listlessly at the sky. As if to add to our pleasure, it had to rain. And not just rain, it had to pour.
The airplane in my hand twirls around moodily.
Azumi always loved the rain.
“Father! Come and look outside! It’s raining!!” A small hand tugs at the larger one, pulling it to towards the window.
“Not now Azumi, I’ve some work to do. Go and ask your – ”
“But Father! You always have work to do!” The small voice turns petulant and small. “You never have time to play with me anymore.”
The plane stopped spinning.
“Father, where are you? There are bad men all over, and I’m scared. Mommie is – ”
“Azumi! Azumi!”
The sound of coarse laughter fills the earpiece.
Botan’s face whitened. “Who are you? Please don’t hurt my family. I’ll do anything,” he begged, ignoring the curious glances that the passerbys were giving him. “I’ll –“
Botan paled.
The
phone went dead.
“Aya.”
Violet eyes glances sideways towards me.
“Come back to Weib.”
He is irritated, I can tell. “Why do you keep bugging me about Weib?” He demanded. It had to be at least the sixth time since I’ve pushed the issue, and he is sick and tired of hearing me rant on and on.
Because I care about you.
“You’re just trying to make me angry!”
“Yes, I am!” I rise up to match his own inner frustration. “Don’t tell me that Aya is the only unfortunate person in the world? Are you just going to dedicate yourself to helping Aya and ignore the cry of the helpless by the street?”
I watch him narrow his eyes, and I know that I am losing him already. But making him angry is a small price to pay to wake up from his bubble of pain. He goes on, but suddenly, he pauses in mid-rant, attention diverted. I turn around.
The target has appeared.
***
Yet tho’ for one, the time may seem
To slowly draw a still
Life still goes on, against all odds
Regardless of one’s will
This was exactly how I planned things. Wake up, follow Aya around, trying to convince him to go back to Weib and beat him up under the pouring rain to prevent him from committing murder.
Right. I’m quite sure getting beaten up as well was right under my “things to do list” at 8pm.
Right.
Aya glares at me, rain-sodden bangs plastered down his face.
“Why don’t you go back home? Go and play your aeroplanes with Azumi!”
My face tightened, and a roundhouse punch answers what my heart has trouble saying.
Bastard. Do you think you are the world’s greatest unfortunate??
What can I say, Aya? The aeroplane can never ever fly again. No matter what people say or do, there will never be another Azumi.
Because my wife is dead and Azumi taken from me forever.
You see, I know what pain is. I’ve been there before. Been there and back. That’s why I can’t leave you as you are, Aya. That’s why I can’t stop annoying you to go and rejoin Weib. Already there are too many souls walking wounded, broken by circumstance.
And not all of them can defend themselves.
You’re different. You can do something about it.
But you won’t!
You won’t!
***
And always so, the choice remains
To take up or let go
To fight the fight for other’s right
Or walk by humbly so
Somebody must save the children, I feel. They have no one to help defend them against the evil of our world today. Even if my own daughter is lost to me, I take pride in the knowledge that my role in Kritiker somehow makes a difference. That by gathering information and passing them on to groups like Weib, we are slowly but surely getting rid of the darkness that lies in Tokyo and somehow making it a better place for our children to live in.
I glance at the chemical truck. They are getting away! And the rest of Weib are not here yet. Unless we do something, Weib will never make it in time to kill the target.
“What are you doing?” Aya asks as he notices my hand on the door handle.
“Stalling for time for Ken and the others. Are you coming?” I dress him down, but all he does is look away.
No matter what, he will not be joining the mission. I would love to shake some sense into him, but now is not the time.
There is no time.
Aya, someone has to rescue the children.
For if not us, Aya, then who will?
Who?
~~ owari ~~
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