|
Chapter 5 We all stared at him, shocked. "You've got to be kidding!" Youji finally exclaimed, his voice thin with strain. Omi shook his head and sobbed again, curling up into himself for comfort. I could only watch, feeling helpless, not knowing what to do. "You aren't really going to do it?" I asked finally, and somehow I knew I didn't really want to hear the answer. Sure enough, Omi raised a tear-stained face to us, and nodded slowly. "I have no choice," He whispered, the stress in his voice making it sound more like a scream of protest. There was a stunned silence again, broken only by the sound of his harsh sobs. Nagi was the first to recover his voice. "No!" He burst out violently, and a small glass vase on the table next to where he was sitting abruptly shattered. The pieces didn't come near anyone, but he cried out as though he were in agony and clutched at his head. "Nagi!" Omi was instantly at his side, his own tears forgotten, soothing him with soft murmurs. "Nagi, Nagi, calm down." Across the room, a window blasted outwards, and the slim boy cried out again. "Calm down, itoushi!" Omi insisted, running gentle fingers over the dark head and tense shoulders. "It's okay. It'll be okay." Nagi glared up at him with watering eyes, gasping and clearly fighting to control himself. "Okay? Omi, they're asking you to kill the woman you think of as a mother! How will it be okay?" "Because we're gonna sort this out," Youji replied for Omi, his tone brooking no argument. "We're gonna figure out what the hell is going on, and Omi isn't ever going to have to kill anyone again. Okay?" "There, you see?" Omi continued to stroke Nagi's face and neck, cuddling the smaller boy to his chest reassuringly. "It will be okay. Relax, calm down, you need to get control again before you hurt yourself more." Nagi's expression was pained, but he seemed to be slowly calming, getting himself back under control. Finally he relaxed completely, panting in Omi's gentle grasp. Something very odd was going on here. I certainly didn't remember Nagi being this volatile, nor this out of control with his powers. On the contrary, he'd always been calm and collected and in control of himself, making him a very dangerous opponent. Ran's sharp eye apparently hadn't missed the changes any more than I had, because he asked, "Nagi? What exactly is wrong with you? You're demonstrating a lack of control that you've never exhibited before." Nagi sighed and made a token effort to extract himself from Omi's embrace, but the ex-Weiss was having none of it. He settled deeper into the chair and held Nagi's frail form against his own, both of them seeming to take comfort in the mutual touch. "I... am no longer in control of my powers," Nagi finally confided, watching them hesitantly. "Use of them is painful to me, as you've seen. It's a very long story, and it's tied into what Omi needs to tell you, so perhaps I should wait and explain at the proper time." "You mean we're FINALLY going to get a coherent explanation?" I blurted, then blushed. Yup, trust me to let my tongue run on without supervision from my brain. Omi shifted, his grip on Nagi tightening as though for reassurance. "That... was Esstet," he finally said, nodding at our incredulous looks. "Some of them survived - the more powerful members. They're rebuilding - slowly. They won't be a real threat for another fifty years, at least - and it will be another hundred before they have a chance to try that summoning ceremony again." "And they're blackmailing you into doing these assassinations?" Youji guessed shrewdly. Omi bit his lip to stop another bout of tears, and nodded. "But how? What leverage can they have over you?" "Me," Nagi replied softly. "They're using me against him." It was his turn to sigh, and he huddled a little closer to Omi. "At first, I was the assassin, not Omi. But, they didn't have my loyalty to Crawford to control me any more, and they quickly discovered that I was not as willing to be a puppet to them as I had been before. Especially not once Omi found me again; he had always believed that I was a good person - something no one else has ever bothered to believe about me." He gave Omi a soft smile. "I wanted to prove him right, and be more worthy of him." Omi took up the thread, expression sorrowful. "Nagi was too powerful for them to want to let go of him. He was their best weapon, their sharpest tool. Without him to protect them, they knew they'd fall to people like Kritiker before they had a chance to consolidate their power again. So they threatened him, trying to keep control over him." "Everything was fine, until they threatened Omi," Nagi put in, his eyes darkening with remembered pain. "Despite what he thought, I knew they could hurt him if they really wanted to. I wasn't the only psychic they had left in their forces, just the strongest by far. I was desperate, so I did something very stupid - I tried to rid myself of my powers, figuring that without them, I wouldn't be valuable enough to Esstet for them to bother with." "How...?" I voiced the question that was on all our faces. Nagi swallowed, looking like the next part of the story pained him physically, and continued. "One branch of Esstet was researching a way to suppress psychic powers, in case someone ever tried to use their own tricks against them. I snuck into the lab one night, and forced one of the scientists to give me the injection they'd developed." He laughed, and the sound was bitter. "I was such a fool. It hadn't been properly tested yet, he warned me of that, but I was desperate enough - and cocky enough - that I didn't care." He turned and buried his face in Omi's chest, sighing softly. "Obviously, it did not suppress your powers," Ran commented. "What DID it do, exactly?" "It destabilized them," Omi answered him. "Made them almost entirely unpredictable. He has almost no control over them now, and what's worse, using them is agony. On top of that, the drug itself is poisonous." He shrugged bitterly. "As far as Esstet's concerned, that's even better than just suppressing an enemy's powers, since it takes them out of the game completely." "They're blackmailing you with the antidote," I had a sudden revelation. Omi nodded and hugged Nagi a little tighter, as though afraid he would lose him if he took his eyes off him. "They give me just enough to keep him alive and mostly out of pain," he replied bitterly. "Every time I do a hit for them. I've become their weapon instead of Nagi, and I've got far more incentive to succeed than he ever did. One failed mission, and he'll die, in horrible pain." "And likely taking everything and everyone near me in a final burst of telekinetic power," Nagi added. "Pain, anger and fear trigger my power now." I shuddered - we'd seen a sample of Nagi in a rage when he'd destroyed the Schrient mansion after Tot's 'death'. It wasn't something I wanted to mess with - he'd reduced the huge building to tinder. "And now they are asking you to kill Manx?" Ran sounded like someone who had followed something through to its logical conclusion, and wasn't happy with what he'd found. Omi nodded again. "Th-they said she's getting too close to me." He gave a shaky little laugh. "I guess they don't know that she'd already called you guys in. They said," he took a deep breath. "That if I messed this up or refused the hit, they not only wouldn't give me any of the antidote, but if Nagi survived, they'd cut the payment dosage in half, so I'd have to kill for them twice as often." He shuddered, and I instinctively reach up and wrapped my arm around his shoulders. "Hey. Omi, it's okay. We're gonna work this all out, for sure! We're backing you up now, and we'll figure a way out of this! When has Weiss ever faced a challenge we couldn't overcome together?" I was babbling and I knew it, but it seemed to be working, as he smiled at me hesitantly. "This antidote. How does it work?" Ran asked, ever the practical one. "There are several parts to it, and they have to be mixed exactly right," Omi replied. "Then they get fed through an IV drip into his bloodstream. It's an ongoing process... I can't just give him a big dose and leave it for awhile, it has to be redone four times a day. More often if he uses his powers." "How much do you have now?" I asked. Omi frowned, calculating. "Given how much effort he put into lifting you off me... and then shattering the vase and the window... if he doesn't use his powers again, maybe enough for three more days." Nagi blinked. "So little? But your next mission wouldn't normally have come for another week or more..." Omi looked very unhappy, and he answered slowly. "I... didn't want to mention it to you, but... I've been having to use more and more of it, lately. I think your body is adjusting to it, creating defenses for it. It IS a sort of poison in and of itself." "Either that, or they're giving you weaker doses of it," Youji pointed out. Omi and Nagi stared at him. "But why..." Omi began, bewildered. "To make you more dependant on them," Nagi cut him off, expression thoughtful. "If you thought that I was adjusting to it, they could gradually water down the dosage until I needed it constantly, which would put you entirely under their control." "They wouldn't!" Omi protested weakly. "Would they? If I found out they were cheating me..." "What could you do about it?" Nagi shrugged philosophically. "Refuse a hit? Argue with them?" Omi had no answer to that, and looked deeply upset by the notion. "So what are we going to do about it?" I asked, turning possibilities over in my head. "That depends," Youji answered. "How closely do they watch your actions, Omittchi?" Omi shook his head. "Not at all, as far as I can tell. As long as I carry out the instructions in the amount of time they specify, they leave me to myself. I tested it a few times, at first, before we realized how serious Nagi's condition really was. They never said anything." "Yoshe. Then here's what we're going to do. We're going to contact Manx, since we have to do that anyway, and let her know what's been going on. Then you're going to set up the hit, just like you would normally. I'm going to get you some special bullets for your rifle, paint pellets basically. She'll be wearing body armour just in case something goes wrong, but she usually does anyway, believe it or not. The paramedics will be Kritiker agents who are in on the whole thing - she'll be pronounced dead on the scene. The papers will be screaming about Okada Chiyako's assassination, and..." I blinked. "Who's?" The name was vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. Ran and Nagi looked equally confused. "Didn't you know, Ken-kun? That's Manx's real name." Omi supplied. "Okada... the police commissioner?" I shook my head. "No, I didn't know. Should have guessed, I suppose. I haven't really been keeping up with that sort of thing." "So we fake Manx's assassination... then what?" Omi asked. Youji shrugged. "Then you meet with them to get the antidote, right? So we'll tail you, and when they show themselves, we'll grab them and force them to tell us how we can cure him permanently, or at least what the formula for the antidote is, so we can make it ourselves." Nagi frowned. "It won't be that simple. They always have at least one guard, sometimes more. Crawford was their most reliable precognitive, but they do have others, who might warn them." Ran shrugged. "There is nothing we can do about that. If it happens, we will deal with it then. We four faced Schwartz and come out alive, and by your own words, they have no one that powerful now." Nagi gave a dry chuckle, which somehow held very little amusement. "You survived fighting us because we wanted you to. Crawford and Schuldich enjoyed watching your efforts to stop us. They were playing with you." "They weren't playing in that last battle!" I objected. "And you'll note we all survived that, and they didn't!" Nagi shrugged. "Manx's appearance and the collapse of the citadel was unexpected - why Crawford didn't foresee it, I'll never know. Even his powers were fallible, I suppose. I survived by holding off the rubble with my powers - I still don't know how all of you lived through it." "Neither do we," Youji shrugged. "But I'm not gonna argue with God, or whoever. At any rate, Ran's right. There's not much we can do about it, so there's no point worrying about it." Omi gave us all a tremulous smile. "Minna-kun... arigatou. I... I've been so helpless, and... having you here with me again... it makes me feel like I have a chance at winning again." "Mochiron!" I reassured him. "You know we'd all do anything to help you, Omittchi!" I reached over and patted his hand where it rested over Nagi's, then frowned at the delicate feeling of his bones beneath the skin. "Na, Omi, when was the last time you ate something? You and Nagi both look like you're both competing for best skeleton impression." I asked, worried about him. He blinked, and had to think about it. That wasn't a particularly encouraging sign. "I'm not sure," he finally said slowly. "A few days ago, I guess. I don't really remember." "I have trouble keeping food down," Nagi added, then glared up at the boy holding him. "But you should be taking better care of yourself, Omi!" Omi shrugged, and I got to my feet. "I'm going to make you both something to eat," I said, padding towards the kitchen. "Then you should try to get some sleep. We'll take care of letting Manx know what's going on, and arranging everything. Okay?" The soft, hesitantly happy smile Omi gifted me with was the closest he'd come that night to the sweet, innocent boy I remembered. It sent a shaft of pain through my chest near my heart, and I realized in that moment that I would have done anything to bring back the joy in his life. Gazing at him gently holding his koi close to his body, I silently swore that I would do anything and everything in my power to see that the shadow was lifted from their shoulders, and give them both a chance to be normal boys for once in their lives.
| |
|
|Part 1| |Part 2| |Part 3| |Part 4| |Part 5| |Part 6| |Part 7| |Part 8| |