The Black Cross

Omi's eyes traveled across the spread of his teammates-- Yohji. Aya. Ken. He felt the nervous energy in the air around them and tried to block it out. He looked briefly back to Yohji and nodded to all of them. "Un. It's down this way, everyone."

After a moment to look and listen, to double check they still hadn't been spotted, Omi led the way through the halls towards the room where the two targets had been seen.

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Something felt not quite right to Yohji, and it wasn't the glitch in the plan. Why had Omi's gaze lingered on him the longest just now? It was as if he thought that by chaperoning, he could stave off some disaster that he expected Yohji to instigate.

He hadn't missed the eager quality in Ken's voice as he said Just give me the kill order, either. Hadn't Ken followed that the first target was being taken down with darts?

They just didn't seem to be moving properly as a -team- tonight. The balance was off, but the change was subtle and hard to pin down.

Yohji shook it off and nodded to Omi before silently following.

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Ran took a step after them.

"Hey!"

He whirled. Two security guards were running at them, both reaching for their hips. One was a good ten yards behind the other.

Damn. "Go!" He snapped at his teammates. Without looking backwards, he jerked into action. The man closest to him suddenly realized the intruder he was facing had no intention of listening to him. His eyes widened.

"Hey...wait..." His hands went up, by his head. "I'm just -"

Ran - Aya raised his sword. "Meet your -"

Aya-chan.

Ran stumbled.

The first guard used the split-second mistake to reach for his gun. Aya knocked it out of his hand and spun to bring the hilt of his sword down on his neck.

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The sound of an unfamiliar voice caused Yohji to wheel around, instincts overriding Ran's command to keep going.

Keep going. Instructions he had given once, with disastrous results. Not a good parallel for his mind to be drawing just now....

He hesitated, trying to decide whether to listen to Ran or turn back and help. Ran could hold his own. But they had guns.... He fucking hated guns. For an agonizing moment his feet seemed locked, and then he was running back towards Ran, no thinking required. His legs simply wouldn't go in the other direction. He watched as Ran faltered and his stomach lurched. There it was, happening again. He could only watch as a gun was drawn and pointed at someone he--

The guard was too close to Ran for Yohji to use his wire, and it was a good thing because it stopped him from following his instinct to attack the one that was already being taken care of. Ran doesn't need your help! There's a second guard.

Yohji tore his attention off of Ran and tried to focus on the other. His hesitation as he watched Ran struggle with the gun had given the man time to fully draw his weapon. He practically flung his wire at the guard, who stubbornly clung to his gun in spite of the threads cutting through his arms and binding his hands. Should have gone for the neck, he would have dropped it if he were choking....

In spite of how volatile his target remained, Yohji couldn't stop himself from looking backwards and checking on Ran. Not a smart move.

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"Hey!"

Crap!

Like Yohji, Omi automatically whirled around in spite of Aya's orders. Instincts took over. Aya was attacking the first; Yohji had the gun of the second.

A dart sailed from his hand into the second, silencing him quickly.

That was more noise than he cared for already.

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Ran's lips thinned.

I could have taken them both!

...you could also have been killed.

He needed to focus on the mission. He would be no help to his sister if he were dead. And...

Yohji.

He could get his teammates killed. Aya stared at the gun in the hand trapped by Yohji's wire, violet eyes flicking to the assassin's face.

Whatever feeling that was, he was going to have to control that, too.

He set his jaw and turned away quickly, before he exposed the flash of emotion, and followed Omi.

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Yohji stared at the trembling gun, and disjointedly wondered why it was moving. Omi had cleanly taken down the guard, everything should be still….

It took him a moment to realize that the shaking originated from his own hands.

The taught wire formed a beeline between the gun’s barrel and his chest; the guard couldn’t have asked for more unerring aim. If Omi’s dart had come just a second later….

It didn’t matter.

Omi had been there, and dwelling on what ifs would only rattle and make him clumsier.

He quickly freed his weapon, and got back in line with the others. He kept his gaze steady on the door they were approaching, not daring to make eye contact with Ran.

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He wasn't fast enough. Ken whirled around with the others when he heard the shout, and there was the gun. Before he had the chance to get momentum going, the quicksilver sounds of wire and dart beat him to it.

All too soon. It was one of the drawbacks to having such a close range weapon. But he never let it get to him. He'd just...next time. Everything was under control. He spared a quick glance to his team as they made their way down the hall. Sure they seemed a little shaken, but it'd been a long time since...and anyway, they still had work to do, and they were gonna do it and go home.

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Omi met Ken's eyes in the hall. They had to hurry-- who knew if they'd heard any of the noise. But they couldn't just leave those two fallen guards in plain sight; it was a dead giveaway of trouble.

He clasped his hands together and mouthed to Ken, "Hide them?" before resuming the lead down the hall towards the targets. He would have stayed to do it himself, but he was the one who knew where the targets were, and was part of the scheme to take out the one they wanted dead immediately.

It was the only efficient choice, but he still worried.

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Ken watched the retreating backs of his teammates with a mixture of resignation and mild irritation. He hated body duty; it was slow, heavy work and left him feeling all too vulnerable. Still, it needed to get done, so he would do it.

He sprinted to the closest door, tried the handle a few times and frowned when it didn't open. The next door had an ID swipe. Fortunately for Ken, whoever left the room last was careless enough not to latch the door all the way. Ken smirked a little. Blame it all on the folly of feeling safe and secure.

He grinned as he listened for any noise from inside. Silence. A quick peek through the crack proved it to be empty. He ran back to the corpses, and with all too familiar ease he hefted the dead weight around his back and shoulders and dragged them back to the unlocked room.

It looked like a cross between a recording studio and a mad scientist’s lair, all overlaid with a theme of “Too Many Late Nights”. The place was littered with energy drink cans and vitamin supplement wrappers, and more than a few empty microwave dinners sat side by side with delicate looking equipment and manila envelopes.

There was a small door to the left with a cheery sign that read “LET’S DO OUR PART TO KEEP THE WORKSPACE CLEAN”. Ken opened it to reveal a small storage closet with cleaning supplies. All of them were still in their original packaging and had a fine coat of dust. It would now be the temporary home of Guards #1 and #2.

As he dragged the body of the second guard into the room, he had to stop for a moment to shift the body weight. The guards arm brushed against a precariously stacked pile of iced coffee cans, sending them tumbling to the floor. Ken bit back a groan of frustration, squeezed the guard in with his coworker, and shut the door tight. He almost wanted to leave the cans where they lay, but that would be telling evidence that someone was in here, so he scrambled to put them back in their leaning tower.

That’s when he noticed the padded metal box lying open next to one of the computer stations. It had only four slots, with organizational tabs above each space. In each slot were two glossy black and white photos, a post-it note with some kind of shorthand hastily scrawled on it…and a disk.

Each disk looked exactly like the one in the mission photo. There was only one slot that didn’t have a disk, marked “Nov. Canary Island.”. On closer inspection, Ken could see an imprint in the padding that suggested there was a disk that belonged there. The scientist may have grabbed it when the fuse blew.

Damn. Now what? Kritiker hadn’t brought up the possibility that there was more than one disk. There was no guarantee that the missing disk was the one they were here for, but they couldn’t risk leaving without it. Ken resisted the urge to knock over the tower of cans again just for spite. Instead, he grabbed the three disks and slipped out of the room, carefully returning the door to its barely opened position.

“Ken here,” he murmured into the headset. “Dump complete. Got some good news and bad news. Good news is the target should have a disk on him when you find him. The bad news is, there are three other disks that look exactly like the one we’re supposed to get. I have the other three, but we gotta find that last one. Where do you want me to meet you?”

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Ran frowned at Ken's news. Three disks? He didn't like the idea that either Kritiker didn't know about what could possibly be other projects, or that they were withholding information from Weiss.

The sound of footsteps came from around the corner of the hallway in front on them, down the left branch.

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Yohji didn't quite see what the issue was. They were expecting a disk to be on the target, so a missing disk was no surprise, right? And if Ken had the other disks, it didn't matter that there were more. Wouldn't most work places have multiple disks, anyway? Now that he thought about it, it seemed kind of strange that their mission plan hadn't included the possibility of others turning up.

He stiffened at the sound of someone coming. The extra disks were inconsequential, he wasn't going to worry about them until all of their targets had been dealt with.

Drawing his wire, Yohji slid back against the wall, and started to creep towards the approaching footsteps.

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Omi stopped and made a face at Ken's relayed message. Three more disks just like the one they were looking for. And stashed in one of his jacket pockets was another identical disk as a potential wild card. Omi wondered now if it was even going to be of use if there were three more that had been left in the room.

No, that was silly. They weren't expecting a team of assassins. There was no reason to remove any disks that weren't currently in need of use. As long as Ken had the other three disks, there was no point in worrying about it. They'd continue according to plan in getting the last one off the target.

"Come down the hall we were headed and turn left, then the second right. We're at the end of that hall right now, okay?"

As he relayed directions to Ken, Omi eyed the corner with the approaching footsteps, holding back since Yohji seemed prepared to handle the job.

I thought he would have wanted to avoid killing... did he change his mind? Or is he trying to pretend everything is normal?

Either way, Omi didn't try to intervene; he trusted his team.

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A man in a white coat turned the corner, deep in conversation on a cell phone. His voice was low, but Ran picked up something about "milk" and "yes, see you soon."

He raised his eyes casually, as if expecting an empty hallway. At the sight of them he promptly dropped the stack of papers he'd been holding. The huge pile went scattering across the floor. He still held a clear plastic box in his hands; it was full of disks. His face paled.

Target two!

The man took off, turning on his heel and fleeing down the righthand corridor.

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Yohji gritted his teeth and tried to block out the one-sided conversation. It was so much easier to do his job when he was fighting dark beasts. The occasional reminders that most dark beasts had families—ones who rarely knew about their loved one’s dubious activities—always threw a wrench in his style. The person on the other end of the line was now destined for another, and far more tragic phone call.

His stealthy creeping quickly broke into a run, as the target caught sight of them and bolted. But the hallway was suddenly a river of paper, and his traction vanished into a slippery mess. He teetered precariously for a moment, just narrowly stopping himself from pitching backwards.

He had no chance of catching up by running. He threw his wire, knowing that with the distance it was as likely that he'd miss as not.

Target two stopped dead in his tracks, the box thumping to the ground as his hands jerked up to claw at the stranglehold around his throat.

“Not so fast, hot shot,” Yohji smirked.

Finish him off now. Yohji's brain was still in level mission mode, but his hands suddenly felt detached and unresponsive.

The target stood frozen, eyes locked on Yohji in complete disbelief of what was happening to him. He choked, and the sound managed to snap Yohji out of...whatever it was that had just come over him. You're not saving him by stalling, his death will just be slow and painful.

He gave a final yank on the wire.

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Ran jerked into motion.

Yohji might not like killing, and Omi might think he needed protection, but the ex-detective was smoothly efficient at it nonetheless.

It was what allowed the other man to trap him in the first place, all that time ago.

Still, Omi's request to finish the targets nagged at him. Yohji paused in a strange standstill, his body locked. Ran drew back his sword, prepared to take the opening, when Yohji slid the wire through.

The target fell to the ground, in two pieces. The head rolled across the floor to Ran's feet, glassy, bloodshot eyes staring up at him.

He had been calling his home. The human side of the targets Ran usually managed to numb himself to.

Because it was a lie.

Ran pushed the thought away. Focus.

But what did Yohji think, just then?

An unnamable, unpleasant feeling settled into his stomach, looking at Yohji's back. He wasn't comfortable with how Yohji froze, or what it meant.

What was done, was done. Ran checked behind them to make sure they hadn't been followed.

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Ken managed to skid around the corner just as Yohji pulled the wire. He was inexplicably reminded of children ruthlessly separating flowers from the stem with a press of a thumbnail and the flick of a wrist. A quick snap and pop! Off they flew.

He was also reminded of just how much blood the human body could hold. It pooled across the swath of papers and oozed dangerously close to his teammates shoes.

Ran was staring at him.

~What for? For making Yohji take the guy out? How was it his fault, he’d gotten here as fast as he could. He couldn’t be everywhere, and he was just following orders. Like that guy. Just following orders.~

Ken walked past the others, his expression neutral except for the tension in his jaw where he was grinding his teeth.

“Let’s do our part to keep the workspace clean,” he said to no one in particular as he stooped to pick up the box of disks, putting the ones that had fallen back in the plastic container.

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Omi froze as he overheard the talk over the phone. It was almost horrifying to watch Yohji kill the man after that casual and mundane conversation with undoubtedly the man's wife. That wasn't the image of a monster; if he hadn't seen the man's face on the sheet of listed targets, he could have been just another normal worker-- someone with an honest job and a loving family. Omi stared blankly at the wall, his stomach sick over the man's last words.

'See you soon.'

The targets weren't supposed to be human like that, not people with innocents who loved them, with reasons to live and people to live for that Omi himself lacked. The person on the other end of the line, what had they just taken from her?

“Let’s do our part to keep the workspace clean.”

Omi sharply gasped, snapped from his daze. He looked down at the headless body pouring blood all across the floor.

Ken was right; that wasn't anything they could quickly hide. That disk had better be on the third target, and the two remaining targets had better still be in that same room together, or this mission was likely to get even messier.

And the last thing they needed was for something else to go wrong.

"Come on," Omi encouraged, and stepped past the pool of blood to round the corner and confront the hall outside the room where he'd seen the other two.

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Ran's relief at seeing Ken rejoin them fell by the wayside at his quip. The contrast between the lighthearted statement and the head at his feet made him uneasy.

He was becoming too sensitive. Focus.

"Let's go," he stated.

Nevertheless, his eyes passed over Ken, when he bent. He was trying his damnedest to forget the conversation from yesterday, the vomit on his floor. The soccer player now seemed thankfully composed. His gaze shifted to Yohji.

A small grain of guilt, for not getting there soon enough.

He's an assassin! He shouldn't be Weiss if he can't do his job! The more reasonable side of him berated.

Ran looked up sharply at the gasp. An expression he didn't like was warring with professionalism on Omi's face.

Omi recovered before he could say anything, turning away quickly. Ran turned on his heel to follow.

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