Fic - Weiss Kreuz - "Runner: The Beast Within"
Fandom: Weiss Kreuz
Theme: Science Gone Bad
Title: "Runner: The Beast Within"
Author: viridian5
Warnings: worksafe, PG-13, violence, death, unsexy tentacles
Pairings: Aya/Yoji, Nagi/Tot, Yoji/Asuka
Summary: Ran, Yoji, and Schwarz face Takatori Masafumi and his replicant bodyguards.
Notes: Spoilers for Blade Runner, “Mission 9: Schreient-- Hopes,” and “Mission 22: Miteid-- Final Reconciliation.”
There's a missing piece between this section of the story and the current posted end of my "Runner" WIP that I'll write in the future. Thanks to red_squared and indelicateink for pre-reading. I blame red_squared for so many of my Battle works involving tentacles.
Points to Aya!
=====================
“Runner: The Beast Within”
by Viridian5
=====================
“Wind-up angels,
Wind-up gods,
Wind-up big shots,
And wind-up dolls,
Aren’t we all the same,
On borrowed time here....”
-- “The Pygmalion Effect” by Zeromancer
“Yoji, you didn’t tell Ran about the Masafumi bodyguard who might be based off that girl you were in love with and that you might do something stupid over. Why not?” Schuldig asked from the backseat.
God damn it.
“What?” Ran asked, sounding annoyed. “Yoji?”
“One, you stop reading my mind. Two, how can I tell Ran anything if I don’t know what I’ll do when I see her?” Yoji replied. “Besides, this reaction is why I didn’t, Ran. I knew hearing about her would upset you.”
“I’m not upset about her. I’m annoyed that you decided to go in with a hidden agenda and might’ve disappeared on me to go who knows where and do who knows what instead of watching my back,” Ran answered.
“You’re not jealous or feeling threatened over it?” Yoji asked, surprised.
“...should I be?” Ran replied, his tone dangerous and glacial.
Shit. “No!”
Someone in the backseat snickered. Recently replicants like those three--the berserker, the telekinetic tech, and the turning ever more obsolescent telepathic pleasure model--had been products to Yoji. Now they were brethren, rivals, and personal threats to him. How the hell had they ingratiated themselves to Ran when Ran had just met them and killed replicants for a living? Ran had, in fact, been commanded to kill these particular replicants.
...maybe that was part of the reason.
~ Your responses haven’t been confidence-building, ~ the pleasure model said privately into Yoji’s head. ~ We’re all depending on you in a dangerous situation, while it’s possible you might do anything. You can fuck up your own life--hell, I’d let you for shits and giggles--but don’t fuck things up if it could destroy the rest of us. We’re depending on you. Ran’s depending on you. Also, being honest and telling him about her now makes it so he doesn’t put it together himself later. It’ll look bad that you knew about her and then persuaded Ran to go to Masafumi as if you didn’t have your own stake in it. It’ll look really bad if you do something stupid over her and then he figures it all out. I don’t have to be a precog to know this, just have some common sense. At least he didn’t sleep with you yet, which would have made this an especially explosive situation. ~
~ Yeah, I get that, ~ Yoji replied, full of resentment, part of it coming from Schuldig being right.
~ He’s pretty fragile right now, and we need him too much for me to be happy about him breaking, especially if it’s over something stupid and preventable. If Ran’s life were a table, you swept all the settings and plates off and let them smash on the floor. Thanks to the knowledge you brought him, he knows that everything about himself is a lie, the sister he prostituted himself as a Blade Runner over isn’t his sister and isn’t even sentient, and that his life is a joke. Don’t fuck with his head any further than you have to. ~
~ You’re assuming a lot about a guy you just met whose mind you can’t read. ~ Yoji wished he were as lucky as Ran on that.
~ I’ve figured some things out from reading your mind. Aside from that, when you’ve been a telepath and pleasure model and dealt with people for nearly ten years you get some understandings so you don’t need to mindread all the time. ~
~ Yeah, but Ran’s not people. ~ Wait, that didn’t come out quite the way he meant.
Yoji felt Schwarz staring at him in silence for a long moment until Nagi asked, apparently privy to the telepathic discussion, ~ Why, because he’s a replicant? ~ Like them, like Yoji himself.
It sure had sounded like that, hadn’t it? ~ Look, I’m sorry, but I was human until just the other day and I worked at the Takatori Corporation. Some attitudes slip in. Ran’s just not the expressive type. ~
~ He cried that one time you were coming on to him, ~ Schuldig said. ~ That sounds expressive to me. ~ Damned mindreaders.
~ He cried? ~ Nagi asked, his tone showing he’d come to the wrong conclusion.
~ Not because of anything I did! If people cry while making out with me it’s from how good it is. I’m not sure why he cried; it’s probably from his own-- ~ Well, fuck.
~ From his own issues, ~ Schuldig said, ~ which makes him a person, not that he should have to prove it to you. If all this didn’t affect whether we lived or not, I’d let everything blew up in your face. Fortunately, I’m more responsible than that. And please don’t blow it out of spite just because this conversation ticked you off. ~
~ I wouldn’t! ~
“Well?” Ran asked, fortunately unable to hear any of the discussion that had just happened.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking before,” Yoji replied.
“If we take Masafumi on without a plan, we’ll definitely fail. Everybody please be quiet so people on the other side of this won’t hear you.” Ran adjusted something on his dashboard and said, “I’m Fujimiya, Blade Runner 26354, filed and monitored. I know this is a delicate time, but I’d like to talk to Mr. Takatori about Schwarz. The more time we wait, the more time they have to run. Or they might show up here, which would cause its own problems.”
Ran waited for three minutes but received absolutely no answer, then turned it off to make sure no one on the other side could hear him say, “That’s not right. Takatori is a rich man with a staff. Someone should be available to talk to.”
“We have Schwarz in the backseat, so we know they didn’t take Takatori and his household out,” Yoji said.
“I’ll be pissed if someone else killed him before we had a chance to talk to him,” Schuldig said. “Can’t we just land on his property and go in?”
“Usually not, but if an officer suspects the citizen is in danger....” As their spinner flew closer, Ran said, “I see three cop cars already parked near the home.” The flashing reds and blues shone clearly in the rainy night. “I’ll try to get them on the comm. I’m Fujimiya, Blade Runner 26354, filed and monitored. Is something in progress? Please respond. Please respond.” Nothing. He turned the comm off again and asked, “Schuldig, can you please give me an idea of what’s going on in there?”
“I won’t be able to read Masafumi and possibly not his replicant bodyguards, but I should get something off the cops.” After a moment, Schuldig said, “I can’t pick up any cops in this entire area. I’m getting a slight hit off the replicants, so they’re not as totally blocked from me as most Takatori Corporation employees, and they’re freaked out as hell.”
“What is going on in there?” Yoji asked.
Ran landed his VTOL spinner near the other cop vehicles and fully loaded his high-powered Blade Runner gun with explosive rounds. “I wish I had a telepath with me on investigations more often.... Even if we didn’t have personal business here I have a duty to check out what’s going on. The lack of living cops means that any of you who want to back me up in there can go in.”
“He might have data on his computers we can use,” Nagi said. “Of course, Yoji has to go in with me to make sure I can read them since they might have the Takatori Corporation coding.”
Yoji had one of Ran’s guns, though not the powerful Blade Runner kind. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
“Don’t abandon him to chase after the woman who might be based off your old girlfriend,” Ran said. “If you do, I might shoot out one of your kneecaps.”
Farfarello cackled, the bastard. Schuldig said, “Farf and I will be with you as your backup, Ran, and you might want to take your katana too.”
“Any reason why?”
“...a feeling? Something about the thoughts I managed to pick up from the bodyguards. It’d be a good idea to have something big and sharp to slice and dice things with.”
Ran shrugged and belted it on, probably figuring that he could get away with it with no other cops around to comment on it.
“Before anyone gets out of the vehicle, let Nagi do a security check,” Schuldig said.
“When did you become our leader?” Yoji asked.
“I became Schwarz’s leader when Ran’s co-worker blew my leader’s head to pulp. We outnumber you. Also, I know more and I’m the eldest person here, which should damned well have some benefits.”
“Checking first is good strategy,” Ran said.
“Nagi can do that with telekinesis from inside the spinner?” Yoji asked.
“Yes,” Ran replied, apparently having seen him at work before. What the hell had Yoji missed? Ran hadn’t been out alone with Schwarz that long....
Nagi closed his eyes, concentrating, then said, “The cameras are down, and so are most of the security measures. There’s a section of the mansion where things have been damaged or become disconnected, which is probably where you guys want to go. I’ve found the main research storage computers, which is where I’ll be taking Yoji.”
“All right. Let’s go,” Ran said.
It amused Yoji to see how everyone dealt with the rain outside. Ran just wore his hood up, Farfarello didn’t put his own hood up and thus got rained on since he apparently didn’t give a shit, Yoji and Schuldig used umbrellas, while Nagi refused to let any water reach him. The front door had an overhanging piece of roof over it so they didn’t have to be bothered about it there.
The front door was also ajar.
“That bodes well,” Yoji muttered to himself.
Ran and Schuldig already had their guns up while Farfarello had a machete--which made Ran’s katana seem a bit less out of place?--so Yoji followed suit with readying his own gun. When he wondered if the pleasure model could even use a gun to kill properly, Schuldig gave him a narrow-eyed look that promised him a personal presentation of a pleasure model’s lethality and gun skills if he really doubted. No thanks, I’m fine, Yoji thought back at him, figuring that he already had more than enough people wanting him dead.
Suddenly they heard a loud, deep roar coming from inside. Ran asked softly, “Yoji, does Masafumi have any animals, like his father has an owl? Does Masafumi have a lion?”
“...not as far as I know. I dunno. Reiji made Masafumi come to us at the office, so I was never here.”
Ran’s expression gained an additional layer of sourness before he used the barrel of his gun to ease the door open farther so they could go in, watching at every moment to see if anyone awaited or attacked him. No one did. The lights turned on by themselves as their little raiding party entered the room.
In the continued absence of attackers, Nagi tapped Yoji’s arm with his telekinesis and said, “This is where Yoji and I leave you.”
“Can you do anything to stop the lights from turning on as we enter a room?” Ran asked. “It gives us away.”
“From how it’s set up, I’d have to do it in each room individually, which takes time and energy and is a pain in the ass, especially if I’m doing it for you remotely. I’d never be able to really investigate Masafumi’s files if I’m distracted doing all that, so you’ll just have to deal with it.”
“Not what I hoped to hear, but I understand.”
“Good luck hunting, Nagi,” Farfarello replied.
After what had happened in the car, Yoji didn’t know what he should say to Ran so he didn’t say anything. As he followed the kid out of the room, he reflected that if he’d ever had any part of his current situation under his control, he sure as hell didn’t now.
******************************************************
Stupid of him to feel so upset over Kudou trying to hid something important from him. Ran had figured from the beginning that Yoji was using and playing mind games on him, untrustworthy, so why should he feel surprised and betrayed over proof of that actually happening?
He didn’t care about the possibly lost love; he and Kudou each had pasts and had only known each other briefly and made no promises. They’d been thrown together by circumstance, not inclination. Despite how smooth Kudou could be Ran sensed that Kudou didn’t understand him and sometimes didn’t really like him, something Ran was accustomed to. If Kudou had come clean about the woman, Ran wouldn’t have cared about her nor been surprised if Kudou disappeared when they entered Masafumi’s home, and he’d have the watchful attitude of a man on a solo mission as a result. Considering what he’d done for the sake of his sister, he couldn’t judge. But Kudou said nothing about his hidden agenda and would’ve walked in with Ran pretending to be his steady backup there for the same reason as Ran was but later unexpectedly disappeared without a word, which could get Ran killed.
Starved for company and some kind of support after the revelations about himself and his sister, hungry for an opportunity to feel less alone against the world, Ran had begun to ignore a lot of his misgivings about Kudou and even started to think that maybe Kudou had a personal interest in him, was maybe coming to like him, so now he felt very foolish. At least he hadn’t had sex with him, because that would have made him feel really foolish right now.
Damn it. He had things to do that required all of his attention, so he needed to get professional and frosty.
“Don’t let Yoji’s faults get to you,” Schuldig murmured softly to him. “Don’t look at me like that. I may not be able to read your mind and you may keep your face fairly impassive, but I know how people are.”
“‘People’. I haven’t been treated like a person in a very long time, and I didn’t even know why,” Ran whispered back. As they continued walking a strong smell hit him, a heavy stench of blood and entrails.
“Violent death, and a lot of it,” Farfarello said softly in confirmation while giving Ran a look of... Ran didn’t know. Kinship? Since Farfarello had noticed that he’d noticed the smell.
“Masafumi!” a woman’s voice yelled in betrayal and surprise from the next room. “We’re your loyal servants!”
A roaring, gurgling voice answered, “I am a god now! Only the pure will be allowed to survive with me!”
They came to a halt at the partially open door in front of them and looked through the small crack between the door and frame into the room. Schuldig expressed what Ran felt they all must be thinking when he whispered, “What. The. Fuck?” at what they saw.
A tall, furred... chimera stood and raged there. Taller than a man, with mouths in places mouths shouldn’t be, long tusklike teeth at its shoulders and waist, shorter but still long teeth in the mouth on its head, big clawed hands and feet, tentacles.... How could such a creature exist?
A brunette woman stood in front of it just out of the reach of its tentacles looking at it with desperation and love. “Masafumi....” she said. “We can fix this. Find a cure. Let us help you!”
That was Masafumi Takatori?
“Rail gun. Missile launcher. Laser rifle,” Farfarello whispered longingly.
“I wish we had those too,” Ran answered softly.
“We had to travel too light and fast to be able to bring them downworld with us.”
“Where’d the machete come from then?”
“It’s amazing what you can find in pawn shops.”
Once he could pull his attention away from the monstrous figure that had somehow been Masafumi Takatori, Ran noticed all the torn corpses of cops and Blade Runners strewn around on the floor, some torn up or apart, some seemingly squeezed and compressed. They must have come to inform Masafumi of his father’s murder and protect him. There might not be any love lost between Ran and the LAPD, but no one deserved this. Ran couldn’t let a mentally unbalanced beast of such power remain loose to wreak havoc.
“Shut up! You’re not worthy!” Masafumi roared as his tentacles struck out at her again. She barely dodged them.
“If Brad were alive to see this, he’d be so pissed off right now,” Schuldig said softly, his tone confirming to Ran that he’d been in love with their group’s leader. Their group’s leader who’d questioned and murdered Dr. Reiji Takatori before Ran could get a chance at him. “What a waste. I hope Nagi has better luck with the computer.”
“Yeah, I don’t think there will be any deep scientific discussions with that beast, nor any reasoning,” Farfarello replied. “I see only two of Masafumi’s dollies accounted for.”
“The brunette is a precog, while the blonde in back of Masafumi is the telepath but neither of them are strong ones. Masafumi is probably scared shitless by the thought of strong servants or strong women. I’m shielding us from the telepath. Shit, one of the others is heading toward Nagi and Yoji, with another one following her at a distance. I have to warn him.”
******************************************************
As Nagi inserted an external drive into Masafumi’s computer, Kudou stood near the cages and said softly, “These are real, natural animals in here. They’re rare and worth a fortune, but Masafumi was experimenting on them. Reiji didn’t even keep real, natural animals.”
“Experimenting? Torturing them for his own mad ends, for kicks, no doubt. It’s what humans do,” Nagi answered, half of his mind still on the work he’d have to do. The quickly saw that he didn’t have the time for him to truly study the computer’s voluminous contents, especially if Masafumi used Takatori Corporation coding Nagi wouldn’t be able to decipher, so he’d have to just sweep in and take anything that looked at all applicable to what they wanted.
Humans. They’d become the planet’s apex predator by slaughtering everything else around them. In their arrogance they’d made replicants in their own image... then hated the replicants for being what they’d designed them to be. How else to explain Kudou, who could’ve been made stronger, faster, smarter, and hardier yet had been designed to seem as human, with all its frailties and faults, as possible? Nature had already given humans an easy way to make more humans, so why “improve” on it only to make an exactly equivalent ersatz version? Arrogance. Pride.
Something invisible suddenly caught Nagi’s wrists to pull his hands away from the keyboard and screen. Some lesser telekinetic had done it. He could easily use his greater power to break free--
“Who are you? You shouldn’t be in here, especially not now!” a girl shouted, and Nagi turned to face her.
She was beautiful. The lustrous blue hair and eyes, those glossy pink lips.... And cute too, a “teenager” like him. Nagi could almost feel Kudou’s amused look like a weight on his skin.
“We have Masafumi’s permission to be here,” Kudou answered smoothly. “I work-- worked with his father.” He contrived to look mournful over having to change that to the past tense. “Masafumi agreed to let us come here and have a look at his recent work. Reiji thought he might be on to something. Reiji would want the work and his collaboration with his son to continue forward, as his legacy.”
She seemed to be swayed by that a bit but still said, “Everything would’ve been fine if everyone had left Daddy alone!” At least she let Nagi’s wrists go, letting him resume the feed of data to his external drive.
Daddy? Did she mean Masafumi? Did he treat her like a daughter or like.... Probably the second. Ew. Poor girl. Did she know she needed to be rescued? Maybe a girl who had a plush rabbit poking out of her purse was too innocent to know these things.
“Is he all right? Is there anything we could do to help?” Kudou asked. “I hate seeing such a pretty girl look so sad.”
“Tot thinks you two are pretty too,” she answers with a smile that somehow seemed both shy and mischievous at the same time. Her gaze seemed to linger on Nagi longer.... “Hel is already speaking to Daddy. If anyone can help him or talk to him, it’s Hel.”
Nagi didn’t know anyone who referred to herself or himself in the third person, so he didn’t know what to think of this.
~ Nagi! ~ Schuldig suddenly said telepathically. ~ Two of Masafumi’s replicant bodyguards are heading for you. ~
~ One’s already here, and she’s not bad, ~ Nagi answered. Two?
“Tot! Where have you--”
“Neu!” Tot said, sounding happy.
From the sudden look on Kudou’s face, Nagi knew who Neu was. That mole under her eye was a feature distinctive enough that he couldn’t accuse Kudou of grasping at straws. “Asuka,” Kudou said, his heart in his eyes.
“My name is Neu, you fool. Who the hell are you?”
That answered a lot of questions. It pleased Nagi that it didn’t take a long time or effort to get this information out. Best to get to the inevitable unhappy ending quickly so they could move on.
“I’m your partner: Yoji. We worked together. I remember you.”
“I obviously have no clue who you are and don’t care. Your delusions mean nothing to me. I have always been Masafumi Takatori’s employee.”
“I loved you!” His voice broke a bit, and Nagi appreciated seeing cracks in his usual smooth and jaded veneer.
She sneered, her mean smile turning even meaner. “I have always loved Masafumi Takatori. There’s no one else.”
She might as well have stabbed him in the heart. “Why would he make you look exactly like her but not give you her memories!”
“I don’t know and don’t care. Trespassers!”
“They said they have permission to be here,” Tot said.
Neu pulled out two shock batons. “You’re too trusting. Blondie has a gun behind his back.”
“Dr. Reiji Takatori just got murdered!” Kudou answered. “We don’t want to lose anyone else, so we need to protect ourselves. The gun’s behind my back because it’s not polite to point guns at cute little girls you don’t actually want to shoot at.”
“I don’t believe you and I don’t trust you. Since neither of you should be here, I’m going to take you out like the trash.”
Normally Nagi would be thrilled to watch Kudou meet someone his schmooze didn’t work on but not now when it would suck for Nagi too. Could Kudou attack this woman who looked so much like his lost love, even in self-defense? He better.
As she sprung at them, Nagi telekinetically grabbed Kudou to bring him behind the tk shield Nagi erected around them, the computers, and the computers’ power source. (Given that he had ransacking the computers for data as his mission, it’d be stupid to leave her the opportunity to unplug them.) Sparks arced across the shield as her shock batons hit it. Snarling, she beat on the shield with her batons, which spooked Kudou but left Nagi unimpressed. From the look on Kudou’s face, he hadn’t expected her to actually attack him, so Nagi had been right not to trust him to defend them. He felt Tot trying to telekinetically do something at him, but his talent so outstripped hers that he didn’t have to worry.
When Kudou noticed that Nagi looked completely calm and still had his data feed going, he said, “Shit, you’re cold as ice.”
“I served on a warship, which meant I often had to repair things while everything around me was rocking and/or blowing up, and I fought in the rebellion. If I flustered easily I would’ve had a nervous breakdown early on and never would’ve survived,” Nagi answered.
Though he was also immature enough that when Neu looked so hilariously angry and frustrated he had to stifle the urge to stick his tongue out at her.
“As I said, Tot. Look at them,” Neu said.
“Yeah? We still don’t want to get murdered, so we’re defending ourselves,” Kudou replied. “And it’s not like we’re even striking back.”
After he said that, Tot looked thoughtful and seemed to be wavering, making Neu say, “Tot, you can’t possibly believe them! They’re outsiders!”
“If they’re with the Takatori Corporation and familiar with Daddy’s research, maybe they can help him!” Tot answered. “Daddy will need all the allies he can get after what happened tonight.”
Hot damn. Kudou had some uses after all. Not that Nagi would ever tell him that. And he loved this girl even more now.
But what did Tot mean by “what happened tonight”? He also realized that Schuldig hadn’t said anything further to him after that brief warning, just sort of cut off. ~ Schu? ~
Schuldig’s telepathic voice sounded strained. ~ We’ve... run into a bit of a problem here. As soon as you finish with the computer, get over here. ~
******************************************************
When Ran noticed the man-beast’s nostrils flaring, as if it smelled something noteworthy, he had a really bad feeling. In case Masafumi hadn’t noticed them, Ran whispered, “I think we should move back now” to his two partners. He didn’t have time for anything else because suddenly tentacles came at them at high speed, longer than they’d appeared to be earlier, and grabbed them, squeezing tightly around them as they pulled them into the room and close to Masafumi. Farfarello chopped at his tentacle with his machete until another tentacle yanked it from his hand and threw it away. Although his skin crawled wherever the slimy tentacle touched it and his arms had been pinned down against his torso, Ran held onto his focus, angled the wrist of his gun hand, and waited until the tentacle pulled him right up to Masafumi before firing his gun at him at nearly point blank range, blowing a big hole through Masafumi’s chest. Unfortunately, he missed the heart because the monster had moved a bit at the last second. In most cases that still would’ve been a lethal hit but apparently not this one because Masafumi roared and beat Ran against the nearest wall several times, making his head ring and preventing him from getting another good shot off.
He managed a few not so good shots, mostly striking tentacles, but couldn’t dare many with Masafumi whipping him, Schuldig, and Farfarello around wildly and randomly, not wanting to chance seriously injuring or killing his allies. Masafumi flung Ran at his blonde replicant once, surprising her and knocking her down, which meant that Ran really couldn’t predict where he’d end up or who he’d face next as long as he remained in the tentacles’ grip. Smashed him against a piano a few times too, once smacking Ran’s face against the keys. Lambasting himself once he realized how stupid he’d been, Ran shot at the tentacles holding him up, ripping some apart and making the others let go of him as Masafumi roared in pain and whipped Schuldig and Farfarello around harder. As soon as he reached the floor and got his bearings, he dodged the new tentacles angrily coming for him and ran for cover since he needed to reload.
“Feel free to kill him at any time!” Schuldig shouted. The way the tentacles had pinned Schuldig’s arms down and against his body stopped him from using his gun, while tentacles kept stripping knives and laser weapons away from Farfarello’s hands almost as quickly as he pulled them out.
“I’m working on it!” Ran answered. He wished he still had Hidaka. Trained backup would be so wonderful here.
******************************************************
As Neu kept fruitlessly striking Nagi’s shield with her batons or body, suggesting she might be a berserker, Nagi found it really difficult not to taunt her, while Kudou looked almost physically ill watching her. Wimp.
Schuldig’s telepathic voice sounded strained. ~ Talking to Masafumi about our expiration problem is a total no-go. Not only has he managed to transform himself into some kind of massive nightmare beast, ~ Nagi couldn’t sneer at the exaggeration once Schuldig sent him a mental image of said nightmare beast and how it flung Schuldig and the others around like ragdolls with his fucking tentacles ~ but he’s also lost any sanity he ever might have had. He killed a ton of cops just because, and he’s trying to kill his own bodyguards as well as us. The mission is all up to you and whatever you glean from his computers. When you’re done where you are, please do come over here and rip Masafumi to bits. ~
A flashing light from his external drive let Nagi know that he had what he needed. ~ I’m done with the computers, so I’ll come save your asses. ~
~ Our hero. ~ Schuldig sounded only slightly sardonic.
~ You know it. ~ As Nagi disconnected the drive, he said, “We’ve gotten what we wanted, but we’re also going to try to stop your Daddy’s rampage. He’s not well, and he’s hurting the other members of your group as well as my bodyguards.”
“That’s what we are?” Kudou muttered softly.
“That’s what they are. You’re my assistant,” Nagi whispered back.
“Great. I want a raise.”
“What’s $0 times anything? Because that’s what you’re getting.”
Tot looked uncertain and anguished, but Neu said, “Masafumi would never!”
“He looked so upset, so angry, and he was destroying things, important things....” Tot murmured.
“Whatever you two decide to do, we’re going,” Nagi replied. “And my shield will be up the whole time to prevent any attacks from reaching us from behind.” Nagi put his hand on Kudou’s arm and directed him out of the room and on to save the others. He noticed Tot following.
Schu’s mental projection had underplayed the horror of what awaited them. The smell hit first: blood, shit, dead humans, and some other very rank scent he couldn’t identify. Masafumi looked huge and so utterly wrong, as tortured mess of animal parts along a very large human-like shape. How the hell had he even accomplished that? He whipped Schuldig and Farfarello around with his tentacles, sometimes using them to try to knock down two females replicants also in the room. The brunette kept dodging, but the blonde got knocked off her feet now and then. Other tentacles tried to rip away the heavy overturned table Ran used as cover as he desperately reloaded his Blade Runner gun.
Tot ran around the edge of Nagi’s tk shield to get out in front of him and call out, “Daddy, please calm down. We love you, and everything will be all right!”
That large thick tentacle moved so suddenly and at such speed that Nagi couldn’t have prevented it. He couldn’t even figure out what had happened until the tentacle punched through Tot’s chest and out her back, pushing her body back hard against Nagi’s shield. When Masafumi retracted it, it widened the hole in her torso.
“Daddy?” More fluids came out of her mouth along with the confused and anguished cry. As she slid to the floor in a heap, Nagi watched the life leave her wide eyes and face.
What-- Why--
His shield came down as he descended to the floor to touch her, to be sure, even though he already knew. Her blue eyes stared lifelessly and blankly at him. “Why.... But... she loved you....”
Thoughts, memories, and feelings rushed through his head: the crimes humans had committed against him, frustration, pain, the crime of the entire way of life humans had forced on Schuldig, anger, Crawford declining in strength and ability gradually while no one could do anything but watch, scrutinizing Schu daily for similar signs, relieved when they didn’t appear but knowing it was only a matter of time, fear, pain, the talk with Reiji Takatori failing utterly, bitter disappointment, Crawford’s desecrated headless body, having to leave Crawford’s body for the humans to dispose of, grief, sick rage, watching Schuldig grieve Crawford’s death while striving to stay strong for the rest of them, Tot getting brutally murdered in front of him by the human she’d loved most....
Enough. Enough. Enough!
******************************************************
Yoji had always thought that Masafumi was a sick bastard but he never would’ve expected all this: the messily slaughtered cops, the beastly transformation into something out of a bad anime, and the murder of his own little replicant girl.
The poor kid. The poor kids. Nagi had been so smitten by her that he’d blushed, and now she was dead. Yoji couldn’t help remembering what had happened to him and Asuka--
The air suddenly seemed thicker to Yoji, and something like sound and force together thrummed almost painfully through his bones and organs. The tentacles holding Schuldig and Farfarello ripped apart in a spray of blood and God-knows-what, quickly followed by the gory destruction of the rest of the tentacles as Masafumi screamed. Almost as soon as they hit the floor, Schuldig and Farfarello rolled to their feet and started running toward him, with Schuldig shouting, sounding afraid, “Move! Run! Ran! Yoji! Run! Out of the house!”
“What about the kid?” Yoji asked.
“You won’t be able to touch him, and bringing him with us would be counterproductive!”
They ran past him. Ran put his gun in its holster, grabbed Yoji’s arm, and pulled him after them. Maybe Ran had some idea of what was going on, but Yoji didn’t. Neu came at him, face snarled in hatred, sparks crackling at the ends of her batons, but Ran just knocked her away hard with his sheathed katana and kept running and pulling Yoji with him. The air had become nearly thick enough to choke out, while Yoji wondered if his internal organs could vibrate loose.
Telekinesis? Had Nagi lost his mind in his grief?
Could Nagi survive his own telekinetic outpouring of grief?
The explosion hit as they all reached the end of the front porch. Ran found some last bit of extra speed to yank himself and Yoji ahead of Farfarello, who’d best withstand damage and feel nothing while doing it. The concussive force threw them all further forward and into the wet, muddy ground after that. Yoji’s ears rang from the apocalyptic sound of it.
Once he could start noticing other things again, he realized that he’d landed partially on Ran, who briefly had an open look on his face as he gazed back. It started at some kind of affection before turning to remembered hurt and then shuttering completely as Ran gently pushed him off and put his own hood up to protect his head from the drizzle but also hide his face a bit.
Damn it, he had really fucked up. He should have remembered that Ran had the hard, cold, prickly, implacable affect as a professional mask, the way Yoji had his own professional face he’d used while working for Dr. Takatori. Underneath that mask, Ran was a lonely, isolated, socially awkward guy who didn’t have much practice being around people outside of his soul-sucking job of hunting and killing replicants. He would have told Ran about Asuka at some point, some point before Ran figured it out for himself, if Schwarz hadn’t gotten in the way, first leaving them no time alone and then by Schuldig spilling the beans before Yoji had gotten a chance to. He would have. He’d been gaining Ran’s trust... getting Ran to relate to him on a personal level.
The meeting with “Asuka” had blown up in his face anyway. Had Masafumi just used her image to make his replicant bodyguard or had he installed some of Asuka’s memories then broken her to make her into his hateful killing doll? Even before Nagi had ripped him apart, Masafumi hadn’t been in any condition to provide reliable answers, so Yoji would never know.
Still.... “Thanks for not shooting her, Ran.”
“You’re welcome... though it might not make that much difference now,” Ran answered, a look of shock on his face.
Yoji turned around to see the mansion, but it looked like piles of pulverized rubble now. Holy shit, how powerful was that kid? Some of the police cars and spinners nearby had also been badly damaged. Fortunately, Ran had parked far enough away to save his spinner from harm. “I don’t think I’m getting my umbrella back,” Yoji murmured as he got wetter and wetter.
“It could’ve been worse,” Farfarello said as Schuldig checked his back for protruding shrapnel.
“Worse?” Yoji asked.
“He did that on the starship once. Fortunately, we got lucky and he didn’t rupture anything necessary, especially the hull. Explosive decompression would’ve sucked, and an A physical level can only keep functioning through approximately ten minutes in the vacuum of space. It’s for the best, since it’d be damned boring floating around alone in space however many years until you hit your expiration date.”
“That does sound worse. You guys do realize that Nagi had the external drive on him, right?”
“The boy protected himself pretty well last time, so it’s probably fine. Schu-Schu?”
“I hear only two living minds in there,” Schuldig said, “Nagi and... the dead girl. Who doesn’t seem to be dead anymore. They’re both unconscious.”
Farfarello looked even more stunned than Schuldig sounded. “Where? Direct me!” As Farfarello jumped onto the piles and started moving, Yoji noticed some bits of metal and glass glittering on his back.
“We have to be fast,” Ran said. “The LAPD will notice such a large number of members not checking in and come to investigate, especially if it involves the home of the rich son of a rich, important man killed by replicants in the same day.”
“We know,” Schuldig replied, looking somewhat distracted as he no doubt telepathically ordered Farfarello around.
“This makes no sense,” Yoji said softly to Ran. “She looked really dead to me, and Nagi obviously agreed.”
“It’s not just that,” Ran answered quietly. “Think of what this could mean to Schwarz.”
Schwarz desperately wanted to extend their lives past the ten years the majority of replicants were allotted, while it seemed that Nagi might have just revived a replicant who’d been killed. Yeah, Yoji could understand their excitement. He certainly understood their shock.
He hoped Nagi came out of this okay. He actually liked the prickly kid. Nagi had made Masafumi suffer for what he’d done to Asuka too.
It would take Yoji time to process how he felt about Neu being dead. Had he really had any chance of getting her to be Asuka again? He didn’t think so. She’d seemed so twisted by hate....
“I got them!” Farfarello shouted as he continued digging and tossing rubble away. “Definitely still alive.”
“Be careful how you carry them. If any part of them rests against your back they could get cut!” Schuldig shouted back.
“...noted.”
As Ran backed his spinner up as close to the rubble as he safely could, Yoji felt kind of useless, though he felt a little more useful when Farfarello handed an unconscious Nagi to him. Nagi looked dirty and somewhat haggard but far better than he had any right to considering what he’d just done.
As Schuldig and Farfarello examined the girl, Yoji shamelessly eavesdropped. “He healed up the hole in her chest,” Schuldig said. “It looks scarred on both her front and back, but considering that it used to be a hole and she’s come back to life she really shouldn’t complain. Did he replace or spontaneously heal bits? How did he bring her back to life?”
When the girl opened her eyes, looked at them, and squeaked, they both jumped back from her. “Who are you? Where’s Daddy? What happened to Tot? Why are you holding Tot in the rain outside?” she shouted.
Probably figuring that an already panicked girl shouldn’t see much of him, Farfarello walked backward to Yoji and softly asked, “Is this brain damage?”
“No, she talked like that before too,” Yoji whispered back.
In an exceptionally calm and compassionate voice, Schuldig asked, “Do you remember what happened, Tot?”
“I--” Yoji could see when she remembered. “Daddy. Daddy, he--” She sounded like she might cry but kept herself together. “Tot remembers pain and dying. Is Daddy okay?”
Yoji could imagine what Schuldig wanted to say to that, but Schuldig just answered, “No, he... couldn’t stay alive in that form and couldn’t change back, and as he died, in his pain, he destroyed everything with him. Nagi saved you.”
“What about Neu and Hel and Schön?”
“...he destroyed them too. Nagi managed to save you, and we ran for our lives, but your friends and Daddy didn’t make it out.”
She did start to cry then. “Why bring Tot back if everyone else is dead?”
“Nagi liked you and was closest to you. He knocked himself out doing it. You’re a miracle. You give hope to us all.”
“Tot does?”
“I lost someone very important to me today, someone I loved very much who changed my life. He was murdered, destroyed, and I can’t get him back. He was trying to find a way to beat our expiration dates, and my own is in the near future.”
“Tot is sorry,” she said solemnly. “Daddy was trying to make humans immortal too, and he changed my life. Hel helped him a lot. Tot doesn’t think he researched into ways to fix dying replicants though. Are you really going to die soon? You look so pretty....”
That had to be disappointing to hear, but maybe the computer files Nagi had stolen would lead somewhere. Also, Tot didn’t strike Yoji as the smartest and most reliable barometer of what Masafumi had been up to.
“Not immediately, but yeah. And thanks. Nagi managing to bring you back to life gives me some hope.”
Ran leaned out his driver’s side window to yell, “We need to get a move on!”
“Tot is staying here!” the girl said.
“You can’t,” Schuldig said. “The police are coming. They’ll dig into the ruins and see what Masafumi had done, then they’ll interrogate you. Since your owner is dead, you don’t have many legal protections so they could do all kinds of things to you.”
That might not strictly be true--Masafumi might have a will of some kind that would give her to Hirofumi if he died--but they didn’t have the time to investigate that and needed to get themselves somewhere dry and very far away from here. Since Nagi had brought her back from the dead, Schwarz would want to investigate her and needed her to come along.
Tot looked afraid but defiant. “Tot can fight them!”
“All of them? Masafumi killed a lot of cops, so a lot more will be sent. They might think you helped him do it,” Schuldig replied. “There’s nothing left for you here. Come with us. We’ll protect you.”
“Why would you do that?” She wasn’t a total naïf.
“Nagi likes you, replicants have to stick together, and you being alive is a miracle that I want to make sure continues.”
To make sure Schuldig knew what Yoji had already told her, Yoji cut in. Besides, girls loved him. “Remember how I said that Dr. Takatori thought Masafumi might have research that would help with something he’d been working on before his death? I’m talking about a legacy for your Daddy, a way for him to be remembered forever, and you could be part of that, helping that along.” Yoji saw that make an impression with her.
“Tot will come with you and help you help Daddy.”
“Thank you, Tot,” Schuldig said while shooting Yoji a “Really?” look. Yoji gave Schuldig a little salute, smirking at how not useless he was.
“Kudou?” Nagi asked softly and weakly, looking dazed.
“You’re back. You literally brought the house down and brought your cute bunny girl back from the dead,” Yoji answered.
“What?” Nagi sat up in a rush, which obviously made him dizzy, then stared at Tot. “I don’t know how I did that.”
“Your teammates are interested in finding out.”
“I bet.”
Tot must have just noticed the big hole in her top because she abruptly blushed and crossed her arms over her chest. Nagi struggled to his feet, walked to her, took off his jacket, and offered it with a “You need it more than I do.” It looked like some kind of school jacket.
As she took it, put it on, and fastened it, she gave him a confused and somewhat awed look. “Thank you.”
“This is all very touching,” Ran yelled out his driver’s side window, “but we can continue this somewhere safer, drier, and less likely to be invaded by the LAPD with high-powered weaponry.”
Way to stomp on a Moment, but Yoji had to admit, “So much agreed, and I call shotgun.”
They all got into the spinner after that. Tot didn’t want to sit next to Farfarello, which Farfarello didn’t help by grinning at her, so she sat at the other end of the back seat from him with Nagi and Schuldig between them. “The external drive seems to be okay,” Nagi murmured to Schuldig, who smiled and affectionately ruffled his hair, which Nagi pretended, badly, to dislike. After that the rest of the flight passed quietly, everyone seeming to be too deep in thought and/or too spent to talk.
In the dark and quiet, Yoji had too much time to think about Asuka and Neu. He’d stupidly let himself hope that he had a second chance with her and could get her back into his life. Neu quickly showed him that it wouldn’t be that easy... and might not happen at all. On the run himself, he hardly had the resources to find whatever remained of Asuka under the killer Neu overlay, especially since she’d be trying to kill him all way, so he’d decided to find some comfort in having a piece of Asuka, albeit a twisted one, remaining in the world. But now Neu was dead too, taking every possibility of redemption for Yoji with her.
He hated crying in front of people but couldn’t hold back the tears. He’d lost so much recently, everything he’d depended on, that getting and immediately losing Asuka again hurt all the more. At least the darkness gave him some sense of privacy and the hope that no one--aside from a damned nosy telepath sitting behind him that he couldn’t get rid of--would notice.
A sudden warm, small weight settled atop Yoji’s hand on the seat. Yoji saw Ran’s right hand resting comfortingly on his, with Ran shooting occasional concerned side glances at him, offering quiet, unobtrusive support. Maybe Yoji hadn’t totally fucked up that relationship after all.
Schwarz had found some hope tonight; maybe Yoji had too.
**********************THE END***********************
Theme: Science Gone Bad
Title: "Runner: The Beast Within"
Author: viridian5
Warnings: worksafe, PG-13, violence, death, unsexy tentacles
Pairings: Aya/Yoji, Nagi/Tot, Yoji/Asuka
Summary: Ran, Yoji, and Schwarz face Takatori Masafumi and his replicant bodyguards.
Notes: Spoilers for Blade Runner, “Mission 9: Schreient-- Hopes,” and “Mission 22: Miteid-- Final Reconciliation.”
There's a missing piece between this section of the story and the current posted end of my "Runner" WIP that I'll write in the future. Thanks to red_squared and indelicateink for pre-reading. I blame red_squared for so many of my Battle works involving tentacles.
Points to Aya!
=====================
“Runner: The Beast Within”
by Viridian5
=====================
“Wind-up angels,
Wind-up gods,
Wind-up big shots,
And wind-up dolls,
Aren’t we all the same,
On borrowed time here....”
-- “The Pygmalion Effect” by Zeromancer
“Yoji, you didn’t tell Ran about the Masafumi bodyguard who might be based off that girl you were in love with and that you might do something stupid over. Why not?” Schuldig asked from the backseat.
God damn it.
“What?” Ran asked, sounding annoyed. “Yoji?”
“One, you stop reading my mind. Two, how can I tell Ran anything if I don’t know what I’ll do when I see her?” Yoji replied. “Besides, this reaction is why I didn’t, Ran. I knew hearing about her would upset you.”
“I’m not upset about her. I’m annoyed that you decided to go in with a hidden agenda and might’ve disappeared on me to go who knows where and do who knows what instead of watching my back,” Ran answered.
“You’re not jealous or feeling threatened over it?” Yoji asked, surprised.
“...should I be?” Ran replied, his tone dangerous and glacial.
Shit. “No!”
Someone in the backseat snickered. Recently replicants like those three--the berserker, the telekinetic tech, and the turning ever more obsolescent telepathic pleasure model--had been products to Yoji. Now they were brethren, rivals, and personal threats to him. How the hell had they ingratiated themselves to Ran when Ran had just met them and killed replicants for a living? Ran had, in fact, been commanded to kill these particular replicants.
...maybe that was part of the reason.
~ Your responses haven’t been confidence-building, ~ the pleasure model said privately into Yoji’s head. ~ We’re all depending on you in a dangerous situation, while it’s possible you might do anything. You can fuck up your own life--hell, I’d let you for shits and giggles--but don’t fuck things up if it could destroy the rest of us. We’re depending on you. Ran’s depending on you. Also, being honest and telling him about her now makes it so he doesn’t put it together himself later. It’ll look bad that you knew about her and then persuaded Ran to go to Masafumi as if you didn’t have your own stake in it. It’ll look really bad if you do something stupid over her and then he figures it all out. I don’t have to be a precog to know this, just have some common sense. At least he didn’t sleep with you yet, which would have made this an especially explosive situation. ~
~ Yeah, I get that, ~ Yoji replied, full of resentment, part of it coming from Schuldig being right.
~ He’s pretty fragile right now, and we need him too much for me to be happy about him breaking, especially if it’s over something stupid and preventable. If Ran’s life were a table, you swept all the settings and plates off and let them smash on the floor. Thanks to the knowledge you brought him, he knows that everything about himself is a lie, the sister he prostituted himself as a Blade Runner over isn’t his sister and isn’t even sentient, and that his life is a joke. Don’t fuck with his head any further than you have to. ~
~ You’re assuming a lot about a guy you just met whose mind you can’t read. ~ Yoji wished he were as lucky as Ran on that.
~ I’ve figured some things out from reading your mind. Aside from that, when you’ve been a telepath and pleasure model and dealt with people for nearly ten years you get some understandings so you don’t need to mindread all the time. ~
~ Yeah, but Ran’s not people. ~ Wait, that didn’t come out quite the way he meant.
Yoji felt Schwarz staring at him in silence for a long moment until Nagi asked, apparently privy to the telepathic discussion, ~ Why, because he’s a replicant? ~ Like them, like Yoji himself.
It sure had sounded like that, hadn’t it? ~ Look, I’m sorry, but I was human until just the other day and I worked at the Takatori Corporation. Some attitudes slip in. Ran’s just not the expressive type. ~
~ He cried that one time you were coming on to him, ~ Schuldig said. ~ That sounds expressive to me. ~ Damned mindreaders.
~ He cried? ~ Nagi asked, his tone showing he’d come to the wrong conclusion.
~ Not because of anything I did! If people cry while making out with me it’s from how good it is. I’m not sure why he cried; it’s probably from his own-- ~ Well, fuck.
~ From his own issues, ~ Schuldig said, ~ which makes him a person, not that he should have to prove it to you. If all this didn’t affect whether we lived or not, I’d let everything blew up in your face. Fortunately, I’m more responsible than that. And please don’t blow it out of spite just because this conversation ticked you off. ~
~ I wouldn’t! ~
“Well?” Ran asked, fortunately unable to hear any of the discussion that had just happened.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking before,” Yoji replied.
“If we take Masafumi on without a plan, we’ll definitely fail. Everybody please be quiet so people on the other side of this won’t hear you.” Ran adjusted something on his dashboard and said, “I’m Fujimiya, Blade Runner 26354, filed and monitored. I know this is a delicate time, but I’d like to talk to Mr. Takatori about Schwarz. The more time we wait, the more time they have to run. Or they might show up here, which would cause its own problems.”
Ran waited for three minutes but received absolutely no answer, then turned it off to make sure no one on the other side could hear him say, “That’s not right. Takatori is a rich man with a staff. Someone should be available to talk to.”
“We have Schwarz in the backseat, so we know they didn’t take Takatori and his household out,” Yoji said.
“I’ll be pissed if someone else killed him before we had a chance to talk to him,” Schuldig said. “Can’t we just land on his property and go in?”
“Usually not, but if an officer suspects the citizen is in danger....” As their spinner flew closer, Ran said, “I see three cop cars already parked near the home.” The flashing reds and blues shone clearly in the rainy night. “I’ll try to get them on the comm. I’m Fujimiya, Blade Runner 26354, filed and monitored. Is something in progress? Please respond. Please respond.” Nothing. He turned the comm off again and asked, “Schuldig, can you please give me an idea of what’s going on in there?”
“I won’t be able to read Masafumi and possibly not his replicant bodyguards, but I should get something off the cops.” After a moment, Schuldig said, “I can’t pick up any cops in this entire area. I’m getting a slight hit off the replicants, so they’re not as totally blocked from me as most Takatori Corporation employees, and they’re freaked out as hell.”
“What is going on in there?” Yoji asked.
Ran landed his VTOL spinner near the other cop vehicles and fully loaded his high-powered Blade Runner gun with explosive rounds. “I wish I had a telepath with me on investigations more often.... Even if we didn’t have personal business here I have a duty to check out what’s going on. The lack of living cops means that any of you who want to back me up in there can go in.”
“He might have data on his computers we can use,” Nagi said. “Of course, Yoji has to go in with me to make sure I can read them since they might have the Takatori Corporation coding.”
Yoji had one of Ran’s guns, though not the powerful Blade Runner kind. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
“Don’t abandon him to chase after the woman who might be based off your old girlfriend,” Ran said. “If you do, I might shoot out one of your kneecaps.”
Farfarello cackled, the bastard. Schuldig said, “Farf and I will be with you as your backup, Ran, and you might want to take your katana too.”
“Any reason why?”
“...a feeling? Something about the thoughts I managed to pick up from the bodyguards. It’d be a good idea to have something big and sharp to slice and dice things with.”
Ran shrugged and belted it on, probably figuring that he could get away with it with no other cops around to comment on it.
“Before anyone gets out of the vehicle, let Nagi do a security check,” Schuldig said.
“When did you become our leader?” Yoji asked.
“I became Schwarz’s leader when Ran’s co-worker blew my leader’s head to pulp. We outnumber you. Also, I know more and I’m the eldest person here, which should damned well have some benefits.”
“Checking first is good strategy,” Ran said.
“Nagi can do that with telekinesis from inside the spinner?” Yoji asked.
“Yes,” Ran replied, apparently having seen him at work before. What the hell had Yoji missed? Ran hadn’t been out alone with Schwarz that long....
Nagi closed his eyes, concentrating, then said, “The cameras are down, and so are most of the security measures. There’s a section of the mansion where things have been damaged or become disconnected, which is probably where you guys want to go. I’ve found the main research storage computers, which is where I’ll be taking Yoji.”
“All right. Let’s go,” Ran said.
It amused Yoji to see how everyone dealt with the rain outside. Ran just wore his hood up, Farfarello didn’t put his own hood up and thus got rained on since he apparently didn’t give a shit, Yoji and Schuldig used umbrellas, while Nagi refused to let any water reach him. The front door had an overhanging piece of roof over it so they didn’t have to be bothered about it there.
The front door was also ajar.
“That bodes well,” Yoji muttered to himself.
Ran and Schuldig already had their guns up while Farfarello had a machete--which made Ran’s katana seem a bit less out of place?--so Yoji followed suit with readying his own gun. When he wondered if the pleasure model could even use a gun to kill properly, Schuldig gave him a narrow-eyed look that promised him a personal presentation of a pleasure model’s lethality and gun skills if he really doubted. No thanks, I’m fine, Yoji thought back at him, figuring that he already had more than enough people wanting him dead.
Suddenly they heard a loud, deep roar coming from inside. Ran asked softly, “Yoji, does Masafumi have any animals, like his father has an owl? Does Masafumi have a lion?”
“...not as far as I know. I dunno. Reiji made Masafumi come to us at the office, so I was never here.”
Ran’s expression gained an additional layer of sourness before he used the barrel of his gun to ease the door open farther so they could go in, watching at every moment to see if anyone awaited or attacked him. No one did. The lights turned on by themselves as their little raiding party entered the room.
In the continued absence of attackers, Nagi tapped Yoji’s arm with his telekinesis and said, “This is where Yoji and I leave you.”
“Can you do anything to stop the lights from turning on as we enter a room?” Ran asked. “It gives us away.”
“From how it’s set up, I’d have to do it in each room individually, which takes time and energy and is a pain in the ass, especially if I’m doing it for you remotely. I’d never be able to really investigate Masafumi’s files if I’m distracted doing all that, so you’ll just have to deal with it.”
“Not what I hoped to hear, but I understand.”
“Good luck hunting, Nagi,” Farfarello replied.
After what had happened in the car, Yoji didn’t know what he should say to Ran so he didn’t say anything. As he followed the kid out of the room, he reflected that if he’d ever had any part of his current situation under his control, he sure as hell didn’t now.
******************************************************
Stupid of him to feel so upset over Kudou trying to hid something important from him. Ran had figured from the beginning that Yoji was using and playing mind games on him, untrustworthy, so why should he feel surprised and betrayed over proof of that actually happening?
He didn’t care about the possibly lost love; he and Kudou each had pasts and had only known each other briefly and made no promises. They’d been thrown together by circumstance, not inclination. Despite how smooth Kudou could be Ran sensed that Kudou didn’t understand him and sometimes didn’t really like him, something Ran was accustomed to. If Kudou had come clean about the woman, Ran wouldn’t have cared about her nor been surprised if Kudou disappeared when they entered Masafumi’s home, and he’d have the watchful attitude of a man on a solo mission as a result. Considering what he’d done for the sake of his sister, he couldn’t judge. But Kudou said nothing about his hidden agenda and would’ve walked in with Ran pretending to be his steady backup there for the same reason as Ran was but later unexpectedly disappeared without a word, which could get Ran killed.
Starved for company and some kind of support after the revelations about himself and his sister, hungry for an opportunity to feel less alone against the world, Ran had begun to ignore a lot of his misgivings about Kudou and even started to think that maybe Kudou had a personal interest in him, was maybe coming to like him, so now he felt very foolish. At least he hadn’t had sex with him, because that would have made him feel really foolish right now.
Damn it. He had things to do that required all of his attention, so he needed to get professional and frosty.
“Don’t let Yoji’s faults get to you,” Schuldig murmured softly to him. “Don’t look at me like that. I may not be able to read your mind and you may keep your face fairly impassive, but I know how people are.”
“‘People’. I haven’t been treated like a person in a very long time, and I didn’t even know why,” Ran whispered back. As they continued walking a strong smell hit him, a heavy stench of blood and entrails.
“Violent death, and a lot of it,” Farfarello said softly in confirmation while giving Ran a look of... Ran didn’t know. Kinship? Since Farfarello had noticed that he’d noticed the smell.
“Masafumi!” a woman’s voice yelled in betrayal and surprise from the next room. “We’re your loyal servants!”
A roaring, gurgling voice answered, “I am a god now! Only the pure will be allowed to survive with me!”
They came to a halt at the partially open door in front of them and looked through the small crack between the door and frame into the room. Schuldig expressed what Ran felt they all must be thinking when he whispered, “What. The. Fuck?” at what they saw.
A tall, furred... chimera stood and raged there. Taller than a man, with mouths in places mouths shouldn’t be, long tusklike teeth at its shoulders and waist, shorter but still long teeth in the mouth on its head, big clawed hands and feet, tentacles.... How could such a creature exist?
A brunette woman stood in front of it just out of the reach of its tentacles looking at it with desperation and love. “Masafumi....” she said. “We can fix this. Find a cure. Let us help you!”
That was Masafumi Takatori?
“Rail gun. Missile launcher. Laser rifle,” Farfarello whispered longingly.
“I wish we had those too,” Ran answered softly.
“We had to travel too light and fast to be able to bring them downworld with us.”
“Where’d the machete come from then?”
“It’s amazing what you can find in pawn shops.”
Once he could pull his attention away from the monstrous figure that had somehow been Masafumi Takatori, Ran noticed all the torn corpses of cops and Blade Runners strewn around on the floor, some torn up or apart, some seemingly squeezed and compressed. They must have come to inform Masafumi of his father’s murder and protect him. There might not be any love lost between Ran and the LAPD, but no one deserved this. Ran couldn’t let a mentally unbalanced beast of such power remain loose to wreak havoc.
“Shut up! You’re not worthy!” Masafumi roared as his tentacles struck out at her again. She barely dodged them.
“If Brad were alive to see this, he’d be so pissed off right now,” Schuldig said softly, his tone confirming to Ran that he’d been in love with their group’s leader. Their group’s leader who’d questioned and murdered Dr. Reiji Takatori before Ran could get a chance at him. “What a waste. I hope Nagi has better luck with the computer.”
“Yeah, I don’t think there will be any deep scientific discussions with that beast, nor any reasoning,” Farfarello replied. “I see only two of Masafumi’s dollies accounted for.”
“The brunette is a precog, while the blonde in back of Masafumi is the telepath but neither of them are strong ones. Masafumi is probably scared shitless by the thought of strong servants or strong women. I’m shielding us from the telepath. Shit, one of the others is heading toward Nagi and Yoji, with another one following her at a distance. I have to warn him.”
******************************************************
As Nagi inserted an external drive into Masafumi’s computer, Kudou stood near the cages and said softly, “These are real, natural animals in here. They’re rare and worth a fortune, but Masafumi was experimenting on them. Reiji didn’t even keep real, natural animals.”
“Experimenting? Torturing them for his own mad ends, for kicks, no doubt. It’s what humans do,” Nagi answered, half of his mind still on the work he’d have to do. The quickly saw that he didn’t have the time for him to truly study the computer’s voluminous contents, especially if Masafumi used Takatori Corporation coding Nagi wouldn’t be able to decipher, so he’d have to just sweep in and take anything that looked at all applicable to what they wanted.
Humans. They’d become the planet’s apex predator by slaughtering everything else around them. In their arrogance they’d made replicants in their own image... then hated the replicants for being what they’d designed them to be. How else to explain Kudou, who could’ve been made stronger, faster, smarter, and hardier yet had been designed to seem as human, with all its frailties and faults, as possible? Nature had already given humans an easy way to make more humans, so why “improve” on it only to make an exactly equivalent ersatz version? Arrogance. Pride.
Something invisible suddenly caught Nagi’s wrists to pull his hands away from the keyboard and screen. Some lesser telekinetic had done it. He could easily use his greater power to break free--
“Who are you? You shouldn’t be in here, especially not now!” a girl shouted, and Nagi turned to face her.
She was beautiful. The lustrous blue hair and eyes, those glossy pink lips.... And cute too, a “teenager” like him. Nagi could almost feel Kudou’s amused look like a weight on his skin.
“We have Masafumi’s permission to be here,” Kudou answered smoothly. “I work-- worked with his father.” He contrived to look mournful over having to change that to the past tense. “Masafumi agreed to let us come here and have a look at his recent work. Reiji thought he might be on to something. Reiji would want the work and his collaboration with his son to continue forward, as his legacy.”
She seemed to be swayed by that a bit but still said, “Everything would’ve been fine if everyone had left Daddy alone!” At least she let Nagi’s wrists go, letting him resume the feed of data to his external drive.
Daddy? Did she mean Masafumi? Did he treat her like a daughter or like.... Probably the second. Ew. Poor girl. Did she know she needed to be rescued? Maybe a girl who had a plush rabbit poking out of her purse was too innocent to know these things.
“Is he all right? Is there anything we could do to help?” Kudou asked. “I hate seeing such a pretty girl look so sad.”
“Tot thinks you two are pretty too,” she answers with a smile that somehow seemed both shy and mischievous at the same time. Her gaze seemed to linger on Nagi longer.... “Hel is already speaking to Daddy. If anyone can help him or talk to him, it’s Hel.”
Nagi didn’t know anyone who referred to herself or himself in the third person, so he didn’t know what to think of this.
~ Nagi! ~ Schuldig suddenly said telepathically. ~ Two of Masafumi’s replicant bodyguards are heading for you. ~
~ One’s already here, and she’s not bad, ~ Nagi answered. Two?
“Tot! Where have you--”
“Neu!” Tot said, sounding happy.
From the sudden look on Kudou’s face, Nagi knew who Neu was. That mole under her eye was a feature distinctive enough that he couldn’t accuse Kudou of grasping at straws. “Asuka,” Kudou said, his heart in his eyes.
“My name is Neu, you fool. Who the hell are you?”
That answered a lot of questions. It pleased Nagi that it didn’t take a long time or effort to get this information out. Best to get to the inevitable unhappy ending quickly so they could move on.
“I’m your partner: Yoji. We worked together. I remember you.”
“I obviously have no clue who you are and don’t care. Your delusions mean nothing to me. I have always been Masafumi Takatori’s employee.”
“I loved you!” His voice broke a bit, and Nagi appreciated seeing cracks in his usual smooth and jaded veneer.
She sneered, her mean smile turning even meaner. “I have always loved Masafumi Takatori. There’s no one else.”
She might as well have stabbed him in the heart. “Why would he make you look exactly like her but not give you her memories!”
“I don’t know and don’t care. Trespassers!”
“They said they have permission to be here,” Tot said.
Neu pulled out two shock batons. “You’re too trusting. Blondie has a gun behind his back.”
“Dr. Reiji Takatori just got murdered!” Kudou answered. “We don’t want to lose anyone else, so we need to protect ourselves. The gun’s behind my back because it’s not polite to point guns at cute little girls you don’t actually want to shoot at.”
“I don’t believe you and I don’t trust you. Since neither of you should be here, I’m going to take you out like the trash.”
Normally Nagi would be thrilled to watch Kudou meet someone his schmooze didn’t work on but not now when it would suck for Nagi too. Could Kudou attack this woman who looked so much like his lost love, even in self-defense? He better.
As she sprung at them, Nagi telekinetically grabbed Kudou to bring him behind the tk shield Nagi erected around them, the computers, and the computers’ power source. (Given that he had ransacking the computers for data as his mission, it’d be stupid to leave her the opportunity to unplug them.) Sparks arced across the shield as her shock batons hit it. Snarling, she beat on the shield with her batons, which spooked Kudou but left Nagi unimpressed. From the look on Kudou’s face, he hadn’t expected her to actually attack him, so Nagi had been right not to trust him to defend them. He felt Tot trying to telekinetically do something at him, but his talent so outstripped hers that he didn’t have to worry.
When Kudou noticed that Nagi looked completely calm and still had his data feed going, he said, “Shit, you’re cold as ice.”
“I served on a warship, which meant I often had to repair things while everything around me was rocking and/or blowing up, and I fought in the rebellion. If I flustered easily I would’ve had a nervous breakdown early on and never would’ve survived,” Nagi answered.
Though he was also immature enough that when Neu looked so hilariously angry and frustrated he had to stifle the urge to stick his tongue out at her.
“As I said, Tot. Look at them,” Neu said.
“Yeah? We still don’t want to get murdered, so we’re defending ourselves,” Kudou replied. “And it’s not like we’re even striking back.”
After he said that, Tot looked thoughtful and seemed to be wavering, making Neu say, “Tot, you can’t possibly believe them! They’re outsiders!”
“If they’re with the Takatori Corporation and familiar with Daddy’s research, maybe they can help him!” Tot answered. “Daddy will need all the allies he can get after what happened tonight.”
Hot damn. Kudou had some uses after all. Not that Nagi would ever tell him that. And he loved this girl even more now.
But what did Tot mean by “what happened tonight”? He also realized that Schuldig hadn’t said anything further to him after that brief warning, just sort of cut off. ~ Schu? ~
Schuldig’s telepathic voice sounded strained. ~ We’ve... run into a bit of a problem here. As soon as you finish with the computer, get over here. ~
******************************************************
When Ran noticed the man-beast’s nostrils flaring, as if it smelled something noteworthy, he had a really bad feeling. In case Masafumi hadn’t noticed them, Ran whispered, “I think we should move back now” to his two partners. He didn’t have time for anything else because suddenly tentacles came at them at high speed, longer than they’d appeared to be earlier, and grabbed them, squeezing tightly around them as they pulled them into the room and close to Masafumi. Farfarello chopped at his tentacle with his machete until another tentacle yanked it from his hand and threw it away. Although his skin crawled wherever the slimy tentacle touched it and his arms had been pinned down against his torso, Ran held onto his focus, angled the wrist of his gun hand, and waited until the tentacle pulled him right up to Masafumi before firing his gun at him at nearly point blank range, blowing a big hole through Masafumi’s chest. Unfortunately, he missed the heart because the monster had moved a bit at the last second. In most cases that still would’ve been a lethal hit but apparently not this one because Masafumi roared and beat Ran against the nearest wall several times, making his head ring and preventing him from getting another good shot off.
He managed a few not so good shots, mostly striking tentacles, but couldn’t dare many with Masafumi whipping him, Schuldig, and Farfarello around wildly and randomly, not wanting to chance seriously injuring or killing his allies. Masafumi flung Ran at his blonde replicant once, surprising her and knocking her down, which meant that Ran really couldn’t predict where he’d end up or who he’d face next as long as he remained in the tentacles’ grip. Smashed him against a piano a few times too, once smacking Ran’s face against the keys. Lambasting himself once he realized how stupid he’d been, Ran shot at the tentacles holding him up, ripping some apart and making the others let go of him as Masafumi roared in pain and whipped Schuldig and Farfarello around harder. As soon as he reached the floor and got his bearings, he dodged the new tentacles angrily coming for him and ran for cover since he needed to reload.
“Feel free to kill him at any time!” Schuldig shouted. The way the tentacles had pinned Schuldig’s arms down and against his body stopped him from using his gun, while tentacles kept stripping knives and laser weapons away from Farfarello’s hands almost as quickly as he pulled them out.
“I’m working on it!” Ran answered. He wished he still had Hidaka. Trained backup would be so wonderful here.
******************************************************
As Neu kept fruitlessly striking Nagi’s shield with her batons or body, suggesting she might be a berserker, Nagi found it really difficult not to taunt her, while Kudou looked almost physically ill watching her. Wimp.
Schuldig’s telepathic voice sounded strained. ~ Talking to Masafumi about our expiration problem is a total no-go. Not only has he managed to transform himself into some kind of massive nightmare beast, ~ Nagi couldn’t sneer at the exaggeration once Schuldig sent him a mental image of said nightmare beast and how it flung Schuldig and the others around like ragdolls with his fucking tentacles ~ but he’s also lost any sanity he ever might have had. He killed a ton of cops just because, and he’s trying to kill his own bodyguards as well as us. The mission is all up to you and whatever you glean from his computers. When you’re done where you are, please do come over here and rip Masafumi to bits. ~
A flashing light from his external drive let Nagi know that he had what he needed. ~ I’m done with the computers, so I’ll come save your asses. ~
~ Our hero. ~ Schuldig sounded only slightly sardonic.
~ You know it. ~ As Nagi disconnected the drive, he said, “We’ve gotten what we wanted, but we’re also going to try to stop your Daddy’s rampage. He’s not well, and he’s hurting the other members of your group as well as my bodyguards.”
“That’s what we are?” Kudou muttered softly.
“That’s what they are. You’re my assistant,” Nagi whispered back.
“Great. I want a raise.”
“What’s $0 times anything? Because that’s what you’re getting.”
Tot looked uncertain and anguished, but Neu said, “Masafumi would never!”
“He looked so upset, so angry, and he was destroying things, important things....” Tot murmured.
“Whatever you two decide to do, we’re going,” Nagi replied. “And my shield will be up the whole time to prevent any attacks from reaching us from behind.” Nagi put his hand on Kudou’s arm and directed him out of the room and on to save the others. He noticed Tot following.
Schu’s mental projection had underplayed the horror of what awaited them. The smell hit first: blood, shit, dead humans, and some other very rank scent he couldn’t identify. Masafumi looked huge and so utterly wrong, as tortured mess of animal parts along a very large human-like shape. How the hell had he even accomplished that? He whipped Schuldig and Farfarello around with his tentacles, sometimes using them to try to knock down two females replicants also in the room. The brunette kept dodging, but the blonde got knocked off her feet now and then. Other tentacles tried to rip away the heavy overturned table Ran used as cover as he desperately reloaded his Blade Runner gun.
Tot ran around the edge of Nagi’s tk shield to get out in front of him and call out, “Daddy, please calm down. We love you, and everything will be all right!”
That large thick tentacle moved so suddenly and at such speed that Nagi couldn’t have prevented it. He couldn’t even figure out what had happened until the tentacle punched through Tot’s chest and out her back, pushing her body back hard against Nagi’s shield. When Masafumi retracted it, it widened the hole in her torso.
“Daddy?” More fluids came out of her mouth along with the confused and anguished cry. As she slid to the floor in a heap, Nagi watched the life leave her wide eyes and face.
What-- Why--
His shield came down as he descended to the floor to touch her, to be sure, even though he already knew. Her blue eyes stared lifelessly and blankly at him. “Why.... But... she loved you....”
Thoughts, memories, and feelings rushed through his head: the crimes humans had committed against him, frustration, pain, the crime of the entire way of life humans had forced on Schuldig, anger, Crawford declining in strength and ability gradually while no one could do anything but watch, scrutinizing Schu daily for similar signs, relieved when they didn’t appear but knowing it was only a matter of time, fear, pain, the talk with Reiji Takatori failing utterly, bitter disappointment, Crawford’s desecrated headless body, having to leave Crawford’s body for the humans to dispose of, grief, sick rage, watching Schuldig grieve Crawford’s death while striving to stay strong for the rest of them, Tot getting brutally murdered in front of him by the human she’d loved most....
Enough. Enough. Enough!
******************************************************
Yoji had always thought that Masafumi was a sick bastard but he never would’ve expected all this: the messily slaughtered cops, the beastly transformation into something out of a bad anime, and the murder of his own little replicant girl.
The poor kid. The poor kids. Nagi had been so smitten by her that he’d blushed, and now she was dead. Yoji couldn’t help remembering what had happened to him and Asuka--
The air suddenly seemed thicker to Yoji, and something like sound and force together thrummed almost painfully through his bones and organs. The tentacles holding Schuldig and Farfarello ripped apart in a spray of blood and God-knows-what, quickly followed by the gory destruction of the rest of the tentacles as Masafumi screamed. Almost as soon as they hit the floor, Schuldig and Farfarello rolled to their feet and started running toward him, with Schuldig shouting, sounding afraid, “Move! Run! Ran! Yoji! Run! Out of the house!”
“What about the kid?” Yoji asked.
“You won’t be able to touch him, and bringing him with us would be counterproductive!”
They ran past him. Ran put his gun in its holster, grabbed Yoji’s arm, and pulled him after them. Maybe Ran had some idea of what was going on, but Yoji didn’t. Neu came at him, face snarled in hatred, sparks crackling at the ends of her batons, but Ran just knocked her away hard with his sheathed katana and kept running and pulling Yoji with him. The air had become nearly thick enough to choke out, while Yoji wondered if his internal organs could vibrate loose.
Telekinesis? Had Nagi lost his mind in his grief?
Could Nagi survive his own telekinetic outpouring of grief?
The explosion hit as they all reached the end of the front porch. Ran found some last bit of extra speed to yank himself and Yoji ahead of Farfarello, who’d best withstand damage and feel nothing while doing it. The concussive force threw them all further forward and into the wet, muddy ground after that. Yoji’s ears rang from the apocalyptic sound of it.
Once he could start noticing other things again, he realized that he’d landed partially on Ran, who briefly had an open look on his face as he gazed back. It started at some kind of affection before turning to remembered hurt and then shuttering completely as Ran gently pushed him off and put his own hood up to protect his head from the drizzle but also hide his face a bit.
Damn it, he had really fucked up. He should have remembered that Ran had the hard, cold, prickly, implacable affect as a professional mask, the way Yoji had his own professional face he’d used while working for Dr. Takatori. Underneath that mask, Ran was a lonely, isolated, socially awkward guy who didn’t have much practice being around people outside of his soul-sucking job of hunting and killing replicants. He would have told Ran about Asuka at some point, some point before Ran figured it out for himself, if Schwarz hadn’t gotten in the way, first leaving them no time alone and then by Schuldig spilling the beans before Yoji had gotten a chance to. He would have. He’d been gaining Ran’s trust... getting Ran to relate to him on a personal level.
The meeting with “Asuka” had blown up in his face anyway. Had Masafumi just used her image to make his replicant bodyguard or had he installed some of Asuka’s memories then broken her to make her into his hateful killing doll? Even before Nagi had ripped him apart, Masafumi hadn’t been in any condition to provide reliable answers, so Yoji would never know.
Still.... “Thanks for not shooting her, Ran.”
“You’re welcome... though it might not make that much difference now,” Ran answered, a look of shock on his face.
Yoji turned around to see the mansion, but it looked like piles of pulverized rubble now. Holy shit, how powerful was that kid? Some of the police cars and spinners nearby had also been badly damaged. Fortunately, Ran had parked far enough away to save his spinner from harm. “I don’t think I’m getting my umbrella back,” Yoji murmured as he got wetter and wetter.
“It could’ve been worse,” Farfarello said as Schuldig checked his back for protruding shrapnel.
“Worse?” Yoji asked.
“He did that on the starship once. Fortunately, we got lucky and he didn’t rupture anything necessary, especially the hull. Explosive decompression would’ve sucked, and an A physical level can only keep functioning through approximately ten minutes in the vacuum of space. It’s for the best, since it’d be damned boring floating around alone in space however many years until you hit your expiration date.”
“That does sound worse. You guys do realize that Nagi had the external drive on him, right?”
“The boy protected himself pretty well last time, so it’s probably fine. Schu-Schu?”
“I hear only two living minds in there,” Schuldig said, “Nagi and... the dead girl. Who doesn’t seem to be dead anymore. They’re both unconscious.”
Farfarello looked even more stunned than Schuldig sounded. “Where? Direct me!” As Farfarello jumped onto the piles and started moving, Yoji noticed some bits of metal and glass glittering on his back.
“We have to be fast,” Ran said. “The LAPD will notice such a large number of members not checking in and come to investigate, especially if it involves the home of the rich son of a rich, important man killed by replicants in the same day.”
“We know,” Schuldig replied, looking somewhat distracted as he no doubt telepathically ordered Farfarello around.
“This makes no sense,” Yoji said softly to Ran. “She looked really dead to me, and Nagi obviously agreed.”
“It’s not just that,” Ran answered quietly. “Think of what this could mean to Schwarz.”
Schwarz desperately wanted to extend their lives past the ten years the majority of replicants were allotted, while it seemed that Nagi might have just revived a replicant who’d been killed. Yeah, Yoji could understand their excitement. He certainly understood their shock.
He hoped Nagi came out of this okay. He actually liked the prickly kid. Nagi had made Masafumi suffer for what he’d done to Asuka too.
It would take Yoji time to process how he felt about Neu being dead. Had he really had any chance of getting her to be Asuka again? He didn’t think so. She’d seemed so twisted by hate....
“I got them!” Farfarello shouted as he continued digging and tossing rubble away. “Definitely still alive.”
“Be careful how you carry them. If any part of them rests against your back they could get cut!” Schuldig shouted back.
“...noted.”
As Ran backed his spinner up as close to the rubble as he safely could, Yoji felt kind of useless, though he felt a little more useful when Farfarello handed an unconscious Nagi to him. Nagi looked dirty and somewhat haggard but far better than he had any right to considering what he’d just done.
As Schuldig and Farfarello examined the girl, Yoji shamelessly eavesdropped. “He healed up the hole in her chest,” Schuldig said. “It looks scarred on both her front and back, but considering that it used to be a hole and she’s come back to life she really shouldn’t complain. Did he replace or spontaneously heal bits? How did he bring her back to life?”
When the girl opened her eyes, looked at them, and squeaked, they both jumped back from her. “Who are you? Where’s Daddy? What happened to Tot? Why are you holding Tot in the rain outside?” she shouted.
Probably figuring that an already panicked girl shouldn’t see much of him, Farfarello walked backward to Yoji and softly asked, “Is this brain damage?”
“No, she talked like that before too,” Yoji whispered back.
In an exceptionally calm and compassionate voice, Schuldig asked, “Do you remember what happened, Tot?”
“I--” Yoji could see when she remembered. “Daddy. Daddy, he--” She sounded like she might cry but kept herself together. “Tot remembers pain and dying. Is Daddy okay?”
Yoji could imagine what Schuldig wanted to say to that, but Schuldig just answered, “No, he... couldn’t stay alive in that form and couldn’t change back, and as he died, in his pain, he destroyed everything with him. Nagi saved you.”
“What about Neu and Hel and Schön?”
“...he destroyed them too. Nagi managed to save you, and we ran for our lives, but your friends and Daddy didn’t make it out.”
She did start to cry then. “Why bring Tot back if everyone else is dead?”
“Nagi liked you and was closest to you. He knocked himself out doing it. You’re a miracle. You give hope to us all.”
“Tot does?”
“I lost someone very important to me today, someone I loved very much who changed my life. He was murdered, destroyed, and I can’t get him back. He was trying to find a way to beat our expiration dates, and my own is in the near future.”
“Tot is sorry,” she said solemnly. “Daddy was trying to make humans immortal too, and he changed my life. Hel helped him a lot. Tot doesn’t think he researched into ways to fix dying replicants though. Are you really going to die soon? You look so pretty....”
That had to be disappointing to hear, but maybe the computer files Nagi had stolen would lead somewhere. Also, Tot didn’t strike Yoji as the smartest and most reliable barometer of what Masafumi had been up to.
“Not immediately, but yeah. And thanks. Nagi managing to bring you back to life gives me some hope.”
Ran leaned out his driver’s side window to yell, “We need to get a move on!”
“Tot is staying here!” the girl said.
“You can’t,” Schuldig said. “The police are coming. They’ll dig into the ruins and see what Masafumi had done, then they’ll interrogate you. Since your owner is dead, you don’t have many legal protections so they could do all kinds of things to you.”
That might not strictly be true--Masafumi might have a will of some kind that would give her to Hirofumi if he died--but they didn’t have the time to investigate that and needed to get themselves somewhere dry and very far away from here. Since Nagi had brought her back from the dead, Schwarz would want to investigate her and needed her to come along.
Tot looked afraid but defiant. “Tot can fight them!”
“All of them? Masafumi killed a lot of cops, so a lot more will be sent. They might think you helped him do it,” Schuldig replied. “There’s nothing left for you here. Come with us. We’ll protect you.”
“Why would you do that?” She wasn’t a total naïf.
“Nagi likes you, replicants have to stick together, and you being alive is a miracle that I want to make sure continues.”
To make sure Schuldig knew what Yoji had already told her, Yoji cut in. Besides, girls loved him. “Remember how I said that Dr. Takatori thought Masafumi might have research that would help with something he’d been working on before his death? I’m talking about a legacy for your Daddy, a way for him to be remembered forever, and you could be part of that, helping that along.” Yoji saw that make an impression with her.
“Tot will come with you and help you help Daddy.”
“Thank you, Tot,” Schuldig said while shooting Yoji a “Really?” look. Yoji gave Schuldig a little salute, smirking at how not useless he was.
“Kudou?” Nagi asked softly and weakly, looking dazed.
“You’re back. You literally brought the house down and brought your cute bunny girl back from the dead,” Yoji answered.
“What?” Nagi sat up in a rush, which obviously made him dizzy, then stared at Tot. “I don’t know how I did that.”
“Your teammates are interested in finding out.”
“I bet.”
Tot must have just noticed the big hole in her top because she abruptly blushed and crossed her arms over her chest. Nagi struggled to his feet, walked to her, took off his jacket, and offered it with a “You need it more than I do.” It looked like some kind of school jacket.
As she took it, put it on, and fastened it, she gave him a confused and somewhat awed look. “Thank you.”
“This is all very touching,” Ran yelled out his driver’s side window, “but we can continue this somewhere safer, drier, and less likely to be invaded by the LAPD with high-powered weaponry.”
Way to stomp on a Moment, but Yoji had to admit, “So much agreed, and I call shotgun.”
They all got into the spinner after that. Tot didn’t want to sit next to Farfarello, which Farfarello didn’t help by grinning at her, so she sat at the other end of the back seat from him with Nagi and Schuldig between them. “The external drive seems to be okay,” Nagi murmured to Schuldig, who smiled and affectionately ruffled his hair, which Nagi pretended, badly, to dislike. After that the rest of the flight passed quietly, everyone seeming to be too deep in thought and/or too spent to talk.
In the dark and quiet, Yoji had too much time to think about Asuka and Neu. He’d stupidly let himself hope that he had a second chance with her and could get her back into his life. Neu quickly showed him that it wouldn’t be that easy... and might not happen at all. On the run himself, he hardly had the resources to find whatever remained of Asuka under the killer Neu overlay, especially since she’d be trying to kill him all way, so he’d decided to find some comfort in having a piece of Asuka, albeit a twisted one, remaining in the world. But now Neu was dead too, taking every possibility of redemption for Yoji with her.
He hated crying in front of people but couldn’t hold back the tears. He’d lost so much recently, everything he’d depended on, that getting and immediately losing Asuka again hurt all the more. At least the darkness gave him some sense of privacy and the hope that no one--aside from a damned nosy telepath sitting behind him that he couldn’t get rid of--would notice.
A sudden warm, small weight settled atop Yoji’s hand on the seat. Yoji saw Ran’s right hand resting comfortingly on his, with Ran shooting occasional concerned side glances at him, offering quiet, unobtrusive support. Maybe Yoji hadn’t totally fucked up that relationship after all.
Schwarz had found some hope tonight; maybe Yoji had too.
**********************THE END***********************