Chapter 1

Tending to Buds

The voices were hushed, they always were. It was as is they didn’t think it was proper to talk like they did around him, yet they only ever lowered their voices. And that meager concession didn’t make him feel any better. In fact, it only made him feel like he didn’t exist…

“Did you see him?”

“That’s the one who survived. They say his sister’s brain-dead, in a coma, yet he refuses to pull the plug.”

“Poor boy.”

“But did you hear what his family did? It doesn’t surprise me really…I always knew they were up to no good, but to think that they were really that disreputable…”

“How could they raise kids in an environment like that?”

“I bet they’re just as bad as their parents.”

“Can you imagine what it would be like, to have his family commit suicide like that?”

“Then to have his sister hit by a car, out of the blue!”

“But I hear he never tried to stop them. I’m sure he must’ve known, people don’t do something like that without giving some type of warning. What kind of person does that make him?”

“You’re right.”

A smile. Yes, what would they have for dinner?

Happy Birthday.

It was raining then.

Black, yes blackness…that foreboding darkness…A scream. Bodies on the floor, wounds still fresh. His mother silent, blood on her dress, her lips, caked on her neck. His father stiff, lifeless, blood soaked through his white business shirt.

The smell of blood, sticky blood lying on the floor in pools…and gas, the smell of gas was there too…gas was pouring from the stove.

Run!

The explosion, weight pinning him to the ground.

Another scream, a car…

No!

Helplessness, sickness, that cruel blackness stealing everything.

It hurt, everything hurt so much…couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe!

Wet, suffocating…dying…

“…don’t die yet…”

---

Ran shot up in bed shivering, clutching at his heart which threatened to give out, his breath coming only in short and uneven gasps. That dream, no, that memory…it had happened all over again and he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control any of it. It was driving him mad. As hard as he tried he wasn’t able to protect them, to defend them! As always, he was helpless against his past.

No one had believed him; no one had even cared.

Sweat soaked his bangs, plastering red tendrils uncomfortably to his forehead, sticking there like so much blood. With a quaking hand he pulled them away from his face. Ran gulped in the air as he did so, desperately willing his heart to calm down until he sat there, cold, just like he had been every day since that day. The day during which his life had ended and he’d began to head down a path that led only to death and to becoming a harbinger of such, a hunter of the night.

Suicide they had said, suicide out of shame for their wrongs and an unfortunate accident. No one pitied the banker who’d ‘fallen from grace’. His parents, his sister, no one cared about them; no one even wanted to hear the truth. But he’d known, he’d always known the truth. That night he’d seen the bodies, smelt the blood and seen the bomb that had blown apart their home, trapping him under the beams. Trapped, he had watched, helpless as his sister was thrown into the street, staggered across the asphalt and disoriented from the blast until the car that came at her at full speed, never slowing.

In the husk of the fallen building the rain had soaked him through, washing away his tears as they fell down his cheeks, unable to reach his sister laying only a few feet away on the road. He’d seen the man who’d done it shrug it off, drive away. And then he’d been taken by the darkness, collapsing in the mud and debris.

Then he’d woken up in the hospital only to see his sister lying there, on another of the building’s beds, deep in a coma. Almost no chance of her waking up the doctor had said sadly, the oxygen to her brain had been cut off after the crash, that there was a high chance of severe brain damage. A family, his family had been shattered to pieces, a girl all but lost to the world on her sixteenth birthday…all because of one man’s greed.

But he’d never stopped believing in her, that delicate last fragment of what had been happiness.

It was for her smile that he’d done it, become a killer with no hope of salvation for himself, living only on thoughts of revenge against the man who had stolen everything without a second thought. Anger had stirred inside of him; festered like physical wounds he had failed to receive. But to see that smile one more time, to see her open her eyes and look at the world again he’d taken all missions. He had sold his soul to pay her hospital bills; to make the man who had put her there pay for ever harming her.

Revenge had driven him; but it was hope that had given him a reason to keep getting up in the morning, for her.

But everything was different now, Ran thought as he lay back against the lone pillow that lay on the small single bed in the equally small room above the Koneko. Through the partially drawn blinds he could see the stars. The night sky over Tokyo had cleared for a change.

Yes, for the first time in a long while, he could see the stars.

Now he’d taken their revenge, Reiji Taketori had died by his sword. The part of him that cried out for some sort of justice has been satiated. Then with all that had happened with Sherient and Schwarz, almost losing her all over again…

Yet after all that she’d finally opened her eyes and reclaimed her name.

“Aya,” he whispered her name reverently in the cold of the early morning, as if it were a sacred prayer. That name, the part of his sister that he’d carried for over two long years as she had lay motionless in that coma was one of the only things that had reminded him that there was still someone who needed to be protected; fought for. Who was to say it wasn’t sacred; to say that it couldn’t make the impossible real? After all, she was with him now, in the room across the hall as alive and real as she had ever been, no matter how impossible the doctors had thought it would be. It was her smile that greeted him in the afternoon when she returned from school alongside Sakura, eagerly picking up right where she had left off those years ago. It was her gentle words and innocent spirit that reaffirmed exactly why Weiss had been formed.

The dreams of the past that he could never forget came less often now. Sometimes he even slept through the night without waking in a cold sweat like he had done for so long. Other dreams even came to him now, real dreams and not tormenting memories or nightmares.

All of it made him feel almost human again, or as close to it as he could be as a killer.

Slowly, eyelids drifted closed over violet eyes once more. Ran could feel the exhaustion from the previous days dragging his consciousness down into oblivion once more. However, there was a small pause in his thoughts as a formerly panicked mind calmed enough to rest again. It was fleeting, as those moments always were, but in it he couldn’t help but think that, among all those memories, there had been something that hadn’t belonged, the kind of detail that sat on the tip of his tongue yet couldn’t be identified. There had been something important…

But, for the first time in years, Ran fell asleep too fast to figure out exactly what that abnormality in his dream had been.

---

The Koneko was ready to open early that morning, or more accurately, Ran was ready to open the Koneko early that morning. The sun had just barely peeked over the lower rooftops when he’d lifted the metal gate over the store’s main entrance and windows, the fragrance of lilies, roses, orchids and snapdragons spilling out into the street in front of the small flower shop.

Stepping out on to the street in the early morning, when the air was cold but fresh and seemed to blow right through your very soul, made the redhead realize just how much he’d become used to the aroma of the dozens of different types of flowers the Koneko carried. Ran remembered, as he pulled some of the larger pots onto the sidewalk in order to catch the early morning sunshine, how much it had bothered him to be surrounded by the scent of flowers all the time when he’d first joined Weiss. In fact, it had downright grated on his sanity some days.

All the flowers they sold were beautiful, almost flawless and with a haunting aroma. Unconsciously he’d equated them to everything that he had lost, and because of that it had been if the flowers were taunting him in those early days. It had been silently tormenting to see customers come in with their smiles and buy those perfect flowers and then leave again, as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Deep down he’d always known that that wasn’t true, but it hadn’t helped to ease the pain or the anger. Yet, over time, the flowers had somehow become soothing. He couldn’t quite remember when it had happened that they had turned from tormentor to pacifier, but he noticed that change most acutely now that his mind wasn’t overcome with worries. Now that his sister worked alongside the four of them in the shop and he taught her how to weave flowers into wreaths and other designs instead of sitting at her bedside, his mind actually drifted to other things he had long forgotten to appreciate or even notice.

Maybe for the first time he actually enjoyed working in the little shop for what it was and not simply carrying on with the task of being a florist because it was his cover, just like it was for the rest of Weiss.

Taking one last breath of the crisp, fresh air Ran stepped back into the store. However, instead of turning the small sign on the door from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ he pulled out the shop’s broom and began to sweep up the mess of dirt and cut stems that had been tracked across the floor over the course of the previous day. No, unless someone was desperate and banging on the door, which he highly doubted would be happening on a Monday, he would leave the sign as it was until Yohji, Ken and Omi finally pulled themselves out of bed and made their way down from their rooms above the Koneko. He was not going to deal with all of the girls that crowded the shop in the morning while on the way to the schools in either direction all by himself unless he absolutely had to.

Fangirls, he had decided early on, were not only one of the greatest nuisances of his job, but also one of the greatest hazards. Ran was sure that they would drive him into an early grave far before Schwarz could do him in. Why they hung around the shop just to ogle the four of them when they had no intention of buying anything not only ceased to make sense to the redhead; it was just plain annoying. He was not a piece of meat and had no intention of being looked at as such.

“Ran Nii-chan, good morning!” Aya called as she came down the stairs, book-bag in hand and her long, dark blue hair tied in the back with a simple red ribbon, pleasantly interrupting his mental rant about the hazards of being a male florist.

“Good morning Aya,” Ran replied, putting away the broom and turning to face his sister once again. Still sixteen, just like the day it had happened. She was eighteen, almost nineteen, on paper but both her body and mind had remained sixteen. It was like being given a chance to start over. What really surprised Ran was that Aya wasn’t bitter anymore over any of what had happened those years ago. She was strong, he noted with a small hint of a smile. Of course, there were times when the past was too much for her to remember, when she’d come to him in tears, afraid to be alone. But more often than not, she wanted to leave the past behind and continue to ‘live life’, as she had put it.

Aya caught his stare as he thought, interpreting the ever-present lack of emotion on her bother’s face to mean concern at that particular moment.

“Don’t worry Ran Nii-chan,” she smiled, smoothing out her hair as she waited for Sakura so that the two of them could walk to school together. “I’ve already eaten and all my homework is done too!”

“I trust you,” Ran replied, using more words than he usually did at this time in the morning. But it was Aya he was talking to, and she deserved his best effort, no matter how awkward it was after what seemed like and eternity of barely speaking to anyone.

Then there was Sakura. She was the first true friend that he could even remember his sister having. Usually, Aya was too shy to speak to other people so she’d never had many close friends when she had been younger, but in the time since she’d woken up Sakura had almost become joined to her at the hip. The two did their homework together and then quietly closed the door to Aya’s room to talk and gossip like girls tended to do. Also, because of the time she’d spent in the hospital the two of them were both in the same grade, even if Aya was technically two years older.

All in all, they had become very much like all the other girls that frequented the small flower shop, yet nothing could’ve made Ran happier on the inside. Even though his smiles were still rare, the thought made him smile inwardly. She and Sakura were normal girls with normal problems. Aya was leading exactly the sort of life he’d hoped she’d have, with a close friend whom she could trust.

Sakura had proven that over and over during the past two years, that she was not the sort of person to care about someone half-heartedly.

Sakura was the only one outside of those dark circles they operated in that knew who he as well as the rest of Weiss were and the dark beasts that had to be destroyed. And somehow she’d still accepted the four of them, no matter how wrong it was in his mind. He’d even grown to trust Sakura, trusted her as he did the other members of Weiss even. When he thought that he wouldn’t make it back alive, it had been Sakura who he’d trusted with a comatose Aya. Then it was Sakura who had almost let herself be sacrificed in place of his sister in order to protect her, someone she hadn’t even met.

Sakura really was something indeed. He was glad indeed to be able to call her a friend even if he didn’t deserve it personally.

As if on cue, said teen stepped through the unlocked door to the shop. “Good morning Aya-chan; Ran-san,” she greeted cheerfully, looking at him with that same expression she always used when around the redhead. All this time and she still had a crush on him. Even after seeing what he really did for a living and then being kidnapped and almost sacrificed by Estett and Schwarz because of that knowledge she still thought she loved him.

Nevertheless, he nodded a polite hello and then let the two girls head outside to gossip like they often did when they were both early.

It wasn’t really a matter of his choice anyway he thought; Sakura could be in love with him all she wanted. He trusted her, even considered her a friend, but her affections were not returned. It was simply the way things were. But, Ran reflected as he watched the two of them talk through the window, Sakura had known that for a long time already and had likely come to terms with it. She had even said herself that she was happy just being around him, no matter how much sense that failed to make in his mind.

Women made no sense in general, no matter how long he was around them. Sometimes Ran honestly wondered how they could think some of the things that he heard uttered aloud as the crowd of fangirls loitered around the shop. At the end of the day though, that really wasn’t a major concern of his.

No, there were most certainly other things on his mind he conceded as he noticed Birman approaching with a rather large folder tucked under her arm, even by Kritiker standards. He doubted that she was coming for a strictly social visit. It was unusual for her to show up this early in the morning. After all, Kritiker far preferred the night for the distributing of missions; they were simply less conspicuous that way.

“They aren’t up yet, are they?” she asked, entering the shop and setting the large folder on the table in the center of the room before pulling up a chair. Now normally that wouldn’t have been the best thing to do as that table served as the predominant space to work with anything that was even remotely messy. However, since Ken had spilled half a pot of dirt the night before and accidentally created a large mud puddle with all of the water that was forever on the table, it had actually been thoroughly cleaned off. For the first time in a long while the table had received a good scrubbing instead of just a quick once-over with a damp cloth after closing.

Ran looked down at his watch, and seeing that it was only 7:30, which meant the other members of Weiss would be pulling themselves out of bed shortly for work anyway, he headed for the small kitchen at the back of the shop that kept the four of them from having to run upstairs for food during the day. Birman didn’t have to ask where he was going, she pretty much knew by now that he intended to make a pot of tea while the two of them waited. It had long become a habit of his to make tea for guests, even members of Kritiker like Manx and Birman, though that was more of a professional courtesy.

One could say that the habit had become ingrained when he’d been in high school and ended up arriving home before everyone else Ran reminisced as he set the water on the stove to boil. Aya had loved to have a cup of tea when she came home and it had usually helped to vastly improve the moods of his parents when they finally made it home form their respective jobs. So everyday he’d come home and sat in the kitchen doing whatever homework he had to do while he made that night’s tea.

Actually, he frowned, pulling the water off the stove, he’d almost forgotten about that particular habit after his life had been turned upside down. It made little sense to make a whole pot of tea just for himself, especially since there had been quite a few other things on his mind at that time that were far more important than tea. After joining Weiss, he still hadn’t bothered. Ken, Yohji and Omi were usually content with coffee in the morning, and since he personally disliked the taste, he had been content to drink water. But after Aya had moved in with them he’d been reminded once more.

Gingerly, Ran poured the water over the loose tealeaves.

He’d come back to the Koneko after a mission one night to find Aya rummaging through the cupboards in the light blue yukata that served as her nightgown. Momentarily glad that he’d already changed out of the leather trench coat and related ensemble and back into a pair of jeans and the comfortable orange sweater that, for some unknown reason, everyone else seemed to detest. Standing in the shadow of the doorway he’d watched as she pulled a small tin box of tea out of the very back of the top shelf that looked like it hadn’t been touched in ten years. It was only after she had dusted off the lid that she’d noticed him standing there watching. With a tired smile and a yawn she’d commended him on hiding his tea so well that even she hadn’t been able to find it.

He’d made her a glass of what had been mediocre tea so that at least she’d go back to sleep, not having the nerve to concede that he hadn’t made any tea of his own in over two years.

Yet, the next day he’d found himself in the kitchen making a pot for Aya just like he used to, while he waited for her to return from school with Sakura. It was hard to believe at that moment, standing over the steam that came from the water and the gentle aroma of steeping tea leaves; that he’d forgotten how relaxing it was, both to make and to drink.

Apparently though, he was good enough at it to send Ken, Yohji and Omi to the kitchen in an effort to make some tea of their own. That, however, had turned out to be a disaster. Yohji had rushed it, not surprisingly; Omi hadn’t heated the water enough and then left it to steep for too long and Ken had simply been too careless. What those three had made was closer to sewage than tea, yet that hadn’t really surprised him either since he’d also had the misfortune of tasting their cooking. Those three were certainly not the domestic type.

Ran poured the finished tea into a cup each for Birman and himself, leaving the rest of the pot for when the others finally got up, knowing Yohji at least would need something if how plastered he’d been last night was anything to go by.

Birman nodded thankfully and took a few leisurely sips from her china cup as he sat down across from her wordlessly. The sun had risen higher overhead and had crested the taller buildings that littered the skyline with a golden glow that drifted lazily through the large window and ghosted across the smooth wooden surface with a gentle touch against his pale fingers.

Always so pale…

Ran remembered his family making jokes when he was little about how he was really a child of the snow kingdom that had been left in Tokyo by mistake and that one day his real parents would come to take him back to their home in Hokkaido where he would live in a realm of eternal snow. Suffice to say, it had been enough to scare him into behaving. He looked down at his hands once more, the scars and calluses that came with his excessive use of the katana and all the training he’d done with it over the years were just a slight bit paler than the rest, the hands of a swordsman…of a killer.

If he belonged in the snow kingdom than he was the blood spilled on the snow in the wake of predator. The bright red that shattered the tranquil beauty of the wildness.

Though as he thought of all those things, his expression never once wavered from the indifferent mask, his lips never once moving from the thin line they formed and eyes neither widening nor narrowing. His countenance betrayed nothing of what swirled underneath, like the thick ice over a wintry lake.

It wasn’t long after that that Omi stumbled down the stairs, textbook in hand and shirt on inside out and backwards. Even though the young assassin’s high school was different from the one that both Aya and Sakura attended, and had given him the day off today, it appeared that did not mean a break from studying. Ran knew well that when there was a lull between missions Omi tended to over-do things like that, not knowing when the next time would come where he would be stuck hacking into some database at every spare moment for a week solid. He fit school in wherever he could. Though he didn’t usually exhaust himself this badly.

None the less, Birman giggled over the rim of her cup of tea at the sight of him, and let out another peal of laughter after the young brunet realized his state of dress, dropped the book and blushed as he righted the shirt before gravitating to the pot of tea and next to Birman. Embarrassed, he tried in vain to flatten his unruly hair that had likely been the result of sleeping on the textbook, which now lay forgotten on the table at his side. Though Omi’s hair was still short it was thick and tended to stick out in all directions in the morning before it was smoothed out or pushed under one of Omi’s many hats.

Mere minutes after that Ken appeared on the stairs as well, quite awake though dressed only in a pair of worn jeans with rips all across the knees, and toweling off his damp hair with a green shirt, something which garnered another snigger from both Birman, and an awakened Omi.

Yohji, as could be expected, descended into the Koneko last in a cross between stumbling and downright falling. However, at least he was dressed properly. As well, after emptying what was left in the teapot as well as half a pot of coffee, he seemed much more alert. Though that was likely only the caffeine’s influence and the playboy would crash in under an hour. Not that any of them were surprised. Even a junior could deduce the equation: Yohji plus weekend off equaled a hangover. Generally though, the three of them were just glad that he neglected to bring his dates back to the Koneko. They already had enough to deal with without dabbling into each other’s personal lives.

Regardless of Yohji’s state of alertness though, the five of them finally headed down into the basement. Omi locked the door to the shop so that they wouldn’t return upstairs from their briefing just to find that the store robbed.

Once in the basement of the shop, Birman slid the DVD into the sleek silver player and Ken dimmed the lights as they all took their places in front of the large screen television.

Persia’s digitized silhouette appeared on the screen shortly after, just as it always did. Standing against the wall Ran vaguely wondered about the fact that, though they were assassins and thus supposed to be adaptable and supposedly unpredictable, Kritiker certainly tended to cater to habit. That and he wondered about the logic behind having the digitized image of a dead man be the one giving them missions. If one thought about it, it seemed just a slight bit irrational.

“Weiss, as you know, the fall of the Estett Elders did little to harm the individual factions supporting and comprising that organization. Many of those groups have now relocated and continue with ‘business as usual’. One such group was and is involved in research involving DNA and aging. The data that they collected when funded by Estett has led them to continue their research on a much larger scale.”

Ran’s eyes narrowed dangerously as the pictures of victims flashed across the screen. Children appeared with such wrinkled skin that they could’ve been mistaken for mummies; the elderly with fattened, shortened limbs and victims of all other ages with different mutations. Even to eyes that had seen almost every type of mutilation flash across that same screen the images were still disconcerting.

After a pause Persia continued, “They choose their victims at random and thus the next target is impossible to predict. Their gross misuse of science must be stopped before others are harmed. Hunters of the Night, deny these Evil Beasts their tomorrows!” With those last words the screen went black, Ken going to turn the lights back on as Omi retrieved the DVD and handed it back to Birman.

She straightened the collar of her light blue blazer as the large folder she’d been carrying was, in turn, passed to Omi who immediately began to scan its contents.

“With Estett out of the picture it’s much harder to gain access to the affiliated factions. Kritiker has done all that it can here, but we know that our information falls short of providing a direct target. However, we do know that the security around the main testing facility and labs is quite thorough and will require careful planning to work around,” she paused, turning to Ran only to see him holding back a downright scowl. “The only other thing we know, aside from the information I’ve given you, is that their experiments so far have been unsuccessful as far as their main goal is concerned, making them more and more of a threat as they become more desperate.”

“You’re saying time is a major factor then?” Omi asked, closing the folder and setting it on the small coffee table in the center of the room.

“Definitely.

I take it you’re all ‘in,’ then?”

“Count on me,” Ken spoke up, absently fingering the large wet spot in the center of his shirt that had been left, courtesy of his hair.

“Me too, they have to be stopped,” Omi said resolutely, accompanied a moment later by an incoherent moan from Yohji who lay sprawled across the length of the couch, an arm over his eyes to shield himself from the glare of the overhead lights.

Ran too nodded in agreement.

Birman left shortly after that, her job done for the moment and the Koneko due to open in less than a half an hour. The three of them had decided to turn off the lights in the basement and leave Yohji there to sleep off the last dregs of his hangover, that way he might actually be of some use during the afternoon rush. Also, since Ran had done most of the cleaning earlier that morning, they were still able to open on schedule. Of course, that was something Omi thanked him profusely for, even though he paid little attention to the younger assassin’s words. His mind was elsewhere at that moment.

Three letters repeated themselves over and over in his mind as the redhead flawlessly wove the thin stems of various flowers into wreaths that had been ordered for an upcoming wedding. DNA, DNA, DNA…Those three tormenting little letters that had almost cost him both his sister and Sakura.

Now, he had never been a science nerd in high school, taking the subject more out of necessity than general interest, but the biology that he had taken he remembered rather clearly. It was one’s DNA that housed the information which directed the formation of each part of one’s body. It controlled the synthesis of proteins that could create hair, organ tissue and even hormones and it was this same material, this genetic code, which kept the body functioning.

However it was also what caused the body to deteriorate. Mistakes in copying and translation of this DNA were what led to aging as well as other diseases such as cancer. It was hypothesized that if DNA could be replicated correctly every time in the cells of an organism than aging could be stopped, if he remembered correctly. A kind of fragile eternal youth could be achieved.

So too did he know that scientists all around the world were trying to do just that, not only for cosmetic applications but mostly to fight disease. However, he also knew that those experiments and research conducted legally were no where near serious manipulation and testing on humans. The technology was too new; DNA too complex and unstable for the large-scale test that could actually prevent a human from aging for any lengthy period of time.

Yet, it was not the legal research that worried him as he skillfully worked with the flowers before him. Estett had been anything but legal and he’d seen the monsters that had been created by the likes of Masafumi Taketori, those chimeras created from indiscriminant experimentation. Worst of all, because of them he’d had to admit to himself that it was true his sister hadn’t aged a day since her sixteenth birthday, the entire time that she’d been in a coma, and that that was the reason both Schwarz and Estett had been after her.

They’d come after her once, what was to stop them from doing it again? That was what had him genuinely afraid. As well as Weiss fared in open combat against Schwarz’ psychic powers, which was debatable at best, they couldn’t combat those same powers if they were used covertly. In short their ability, his ability, to protect his sister if it came down to that were slim to none.

It didn’t help either that, even working at the Koneko alongside them; Aya still knew nothing about the existence of Weiss. Even when Sakura had told Aya what had happened while she had been in a coma, the part about her older brother and his three florist co-workers being paid assassins had been conspicuously missing. When he’d asked about it Sakura had told him that it was a detail about the past that he would have to confide in Aya on his own.

But he was selfish he didn’t want to tell her the truth; had no desire to watch her renounce him for the killer that he was. Ran knew that the day would come when she would find out, but he wanted to stay by her side as long as possible. Just for a few minutes each day he wanted to pretend that they were a happy family again. He wasn’t man enough to tell the truth and shatter that delicate illusion that had been revived; lose the one he loved more than anything else. That made him not only selfish but a coward as well.

But more importantly than his shortcomings was the fact Aya wouldn’t even know that she was in such danger. Doubtless, the others were already thinking of it though. If the looks Birman and Omi had both given him were any sort of indication than they were almost as worried about Aya as he was.

Completing the last wreath with a long white ribbon, he set it aside with the other ones for Omi to carefully wrap before making the delivery. It was an unspoken fact that the teen would drive by the genetic research facility on the return trip. If their security was anything like what Birman had hinted at, then good reconnaissance would be vital to the success of the mission. This was the center of Tokyo not some complex out in the middle of the woods like Masafumi’s had been. Weiss could not afford to cause a local disturbance, it was simply too dangerous. Somehow they would have to concoct a plan that would allow them to both slip into the complex without being noticed, and be able to acquire the target or targets before they had a chance to escape.

However, it was more than likely that Omi would again be the one who bore the brunt of that task. The teen had a good head for strategy and was meticulous enough to think through a plan enough so that it actually stood a chance at working after being put into action. Ran couldn’t say the same for Yohji, Ken or himself. Yohji’s strengths were footwork and the kind of dogged perseverance that being a former private eye had required. Putting the information he acquired together was another matter. Ken was much more of an action-taker and didn’t have the patience that was required to go over details and plan for different scenarios.

If it hadn’t been for the circumstances that surrounded Weiss’ youngest member’s past he probably could’ve grown up to be a very successful bureaucrat or something of the like. He hazarded saying ‘politician’ but for obvious reasons he left that particular occupation out of what Omi could’ve grown up to be, had fate not had other ideas.

Fate however, was not one of his choice words. It wasn’t so much that he was against the concept of fate itself, but its use always seemed to conjure up the image of Schwarz, and mostly because of a certain member of said enemy group. For the most part he could understand, at least to an extent, the powers possessed by them. Oblivion to pain, telekinesis and telepathy were all extensions of capabilities that humans naturally possessed that had been taken to their extreme. Many people could put themselves in a state of mind where they didn’t feel pain through meditation, like a temporary state of what seemed to be Farfello’s condition. Otherwise one would have to be enlisting the power of other, usually illegal, substances to walk through fire and other activities people would not normally attempt.

Ran shook his head, earring bouncing lightly against his neck for a moment.

Telepathy struck him as an extension of human communication, an interpretation of voice and manner that went beyond the normal and into the ‘voices’ that telepaths supposedly heard. And, after seeing Aya and Sakura finish each other’s sentences without blinking or pausing; after witnessing a whole conversation like that, he was sure telepathy wasn’t very unnatural at all, even if Schuldich’s hair was. Telekinesis he explained on much the same vein, an extension of the human reach with the mind. It wasn’t terribly improbable, and much like some of the ‘impossible’ things that seemed to happen in sports. At least according to Ken, who’d paid the extra money just for all the available sports channels.

Precognition however, struck him as decidedly unnatural. Intuition was merely a prediction based upon known facts and things that the mind noticed yet sometimes didn’t actively recognize. Like telekinesis and telepathy intuition was rooted in the now; the reality that was tangible. Even Déjà vu had been recently explained by scientists as the brain comprehending a situation before the conscious mind did, thus creating the sensation of having done something before. To have visions though, to actually see the future, seemed very wrong somehow and entirely unnatural. Crawford was obviously proof that it existed, but that didn’t mean it was supposed to.

Now, Crawford was indeed a skilled marksman as well as a fighter, but sometimes Ran had to wonder what was genuine ability and what was his precognition. It would be interesting; he mused, to one-day fight the American without the benefit of ESP. Crawford, he knew, was not one to play with a handicap though. The way he talked down to him when they fought, the way he acted so superior because of his power irked Ran like nothing else. Oh how he wanted to wipe that smug smirk off the other assassin’s face.

When they clashed he felt a great heat well up inside that made him want to fight more than anything, to prove to the precog that those whom he’d called pitiful didn’t need to be able to see the future in order to defeat him. He wanted to see that cool aloof façade break and watch as the psychic realized that, even with whatever abnormal powers he had, he was undoubtedly still human. He was not a god.

In the end, Ran supposed, it was more of Crawford’s arrogance, which he supposedly knew all, which was what he hated rather than the fact he could see the future.

Yet, since the Estett theatre had collapsed, crumbling into the sea along with both Weiss and Schwarz inside, none of them, not even Kritiker, had come across the four assassins. Though, if all of Weiss had been able to survive the collapse and then the swim to shore, there was no doubt in his mind that Schwarz had also survived. He had to admit however; it was rather odd that none of the missions Weiss had received since that incident hadn’t uncovered a trace of them. It was hard to imagine that Schwarz would simply stop all of its illicit activities because of what had happened to Estett. By the way that the three elders had met their respective ends it seemed that they were more freelance mercenaries than tied to anything or anyone. That alone made them dangerous.

Ran also knew it would likely be sooner than later that the two groups would clash once more. Then all he could hope for was that Weiss would be able to hold their own.

He closed his eyes for a moment, clearing his mind of all the anxiety he had worked up surrounding Schwarz and it’s leader. Instead he moved towards the decidedly more delicate orchids, removing a few at a time from where they had been freshly cut.

With three stems in-between his fingers he began to gently weave them together in a long braid so that the large booms peeked out. And as one flower was woven in another stem was added until the braid was about a foot long. Then he threaded a pole gently through the stems so that it could be stood upright. As a finishing touch he cut off the rough stems at the bottom of the arrangement and quickly set the whole thing into a tall rectangular glass vase that had already been partially filled with water.

He liked working with the fragile orchids. In a way handling them was much like handling a sword. Both helped to calm him yet also required a definite delicate touch. With one wrong flick of the wrist the thin stem of an orchid could snap just as surely as the same motion could cost a man his life. There was also that element of control, for as surely as an orchid could die or a swordsman kill, there could also be a great beauty created. It was control that separated the beauty from death. When he had first started training with the sword, long before Weiss, he had hoped to one-day posses the fluid movements that had made samurai just as graceful as they were deadly.

And he couldn’t deny himself the fact that his name did mean orchid.

AN: I do not own Weiss Kreuz.