Shadows of Angels, part 31, R

[Daughterof_Evil]

I can't believe it. Christmas is over, a new year is almost upon us, and I'm up to thirty-one on this story. Time has really gone fast. I'm glad I could spend a little of it with you guys.

This episode includes some very graphic violence, grim themes and disturbing conversation. Christmas and Chanukah might be over, but hey, thank goodness for Kwanzaa and New Year!
***
It turned out that in reality, Hiramiaku’s hair was that brilliant red naturally.

They moved through the clubbing crowds silently, edging along the admittance lines and the clusters of random partiers who danced to drunken music played in heir own minds. The night was warm with the smell of hot neon and sweat. They hopped onto the sidewalk again and went by a doorway full of Spaniard expatriates, Mexican-imported nortec spewing out onto the street. The hot chatter of Spanish and a brief taste of marijuana smoke blown from a nearby East European absorbed X’s senses.

Her father had been a Japanese assassin, dead before she was even born. Her mother, an Indian assassin, had killed him shortly after becoming pregnant. Hiramiaku’s maternal line had been with one particular assassin society for generations, their children picked and chosen by the forebearer of genetic engineering, selective breeding. The strongest with the smartest, the most beautiful with the most agile, and so on.

As Hiramiaku recounted this to her in Japanese, she pulled her along a building front spray painted with a mural of some technicolor South American rainforest. Saru was close behind, at her back.

And so all that selective breeding, aided in the last few years by the most advanced genetic technology, produced a race of soldiers with skills other assassins worked most of their lives in Zen and Baghua Zhang to get. After all that time, there were bound to be a few deformities, and one of those happened to be Hiramiaku’s unearthly red hair, extremely rare for a woman of Indian-Japanese descent.

However, Hiramiaku's father had been an outsider. She was not of pure blood, and not respected fully by either of the societies she belonged to by birthright.

This portion of the night scene seemed to be dominated by electronica clubs, their patronage pouring out into the streets in the form of leather-clad women and men in dark, tight denim. Hiramiaku was wearing a pair of red leather pants, black boots, a black halter top scribed with the Romanji word HANTA in red letters, and tall black fingerless gloves. As they continued on, X noticed that imprinted deep in the brown flesh of Hiramiaku’s bare back was a pair of elaborate black angel’s wings.

X was so overwhelmed by the sensations of the street she didn’t even realize they had snuck into a club through the kitchen until the cool turquoise walls and the shouts of French cooks roused her from her waking dream.

“ What are we doing!?” X cried.

“ Wait for it,” Saru advised.

X suddenly stopped in her tracks. “ I-I don’t think-”

Saru whirled around in front of her while Hiramiaku delved into the club. “ Do not worry!” he cried. “ You rook ruvry!”

She looked down at herself. She was dressed in huge black boots, a black leather miniskirt, and a black top with mid-length sleeves that tied up the very low-cut front. She tugged at the hem of the skirt. It was very short and showed the large muscles in her pale thighs, which apparently weren’t valued in girls lately. She had never worn something so revealing before, and it made her feel strange, like all her physical power was gone.

“ I-I,” She could smell the contents of the club, the alcohol, the moving humans, the slightly tart scent of burning strobe lights.

Saru laced a lean arm about her shoulders and pulled her out into the club. “ Farro me,” he advised.

The crush of people was immediate. The music was remixed techno, pouring from the speakers in cooling waves, backed by static mechanical blips and surges. Everything was dark, and only the occasional flashes of brilliant light against bare skin served as guide.

It took X a moment to find Hiramiaku in the chaos. She was in the middle of it, dancing, eyes closed, as if possessed. And alone. Within the crowd, she was singular, separated from the amoebous form of the other dancers.

Suddenly, X was jerked into a circlet of motion, and Saru was across from her, dancing. It was as if she were transfixed, replicating the movements of those around her, sifting through the mesh of dark and light. Saru still had her hand in his own, and he was laughing at the ceiling, pale face reflecting the blues and pinks of the strobe. For the first time, X realized what the rush of living was.

Someone grabbed her arm and wrenched her away from Saru, pulling her deeper into the circuit. The exhilaration was gone in a moment, replaced with very real fear, the taste bubbling in her mouth. There was only the flash of her adrenaline.

Her fingers were knuckle-deep in his throat, sunk far into the ring of cartilage surrounding his trachea. She could feel his pulse in the warm fountain of red running down her hand and trailing off her elbow. His eyes were wide with fear, mouth open in a cry he could not seem to complete. The dancers went on around them, a solid mass twisting and coagulating back together.

He slumped. She slowly and deliberately pulled her fingers from his throat, relishing the loamy feel of living flesh and the spurt of blood as his jugular vein erupted. There was an audible ripping sound from his massive neck, and he was dead, toppled onto the floor. It had been so fast and silent no one else had even noticed.

X looked down at her left hand, painted up to the wrist in sticky, slightly translucent red. She raised a finger to her lips and licked the gore from it in a single swipe of her tongue.

A hand grappled her from behind, and she turned on heel, two clean fingers hooked to gouge out the eyes. Saru blinked at her and shrugged.

“ We didn’t need him anyway,” Hiramiaku said behind him, slinging one arm casually over Saru’s shoulder. Clenched in one of her fists was a canvas bag. A brilliant flash of pinkish light bounded off her cheekbones as she grinned, teeth white and sharp. Her face was splattered with blood.

Saru reached into the open front of his black mesh t-shirt and pulled out a thin, graceful, silver handgun, its side decorated with a floral filigree design. He raised it to the ceiling and fired once. The shot was silent.

Saru tugged on the jump line to make sure it was secure, then gestured to Hiramiaku, who clamped the handle of the bag between her teeth and clambered up immediately. She had disappeared in a second, hopping from the line to one of the massive chandeliers hanging from the ceiling by steel cables. Saru then took hold of the gun, fastened a lanky arm around X’s waist, and hit the recall button.

The withdraw was slower than normal with X’s added weight, but the second their feet left the floor the writhing mass of dancers below discovered the dead body of the hired thug. A scream went up, punctuating through the pulsating blur of the music. The crowd shifted backwards in a sphere around the corpse and its splattered bed of scarlet as Saru handed X off to Hiramiaku on the chandelier. The crystal and gilt steel structure trembled under her, and X heard the cables above moan. Across the room, a group of other dancers tripped over two more bodies near the bar.

Hiramiaku started up one of the three cables that affixed their chandelier as Saru scanned the crowd with his eyes, a matte black pistol primed at his side. His brow was low, face serious. She’d never seen him like that. He glanced up, once, to make sure Hiramiaku was safe, and she knew he was doing it out of instinct.

It was at that time, when Hiramiaku had just popped open the hatch of the blacked-out skylight, that the middle of the three cables snapped. The chandelier lurched, then dropped a few inches. Saru and X traded expressionless faces and began to simultaneously shimmy up the remaining two, one to each.

Three feet short of the ceiling, X felt the housing above her come undone, the bolts giving way under her weight. Saru was by then pulling himself up through the skylight, onto the roof. The cable’s steel hook broke from the ceiling and X, in a terrifying and exhilarating moment of free-fall, swooped towards the floor as the huge Victorian chandelier swung completely vertical.

The girl lost her grip on the cable six feet above the floor, hitting the stained concrete on her side with a thud and a pop. Above her, she could hear the cry, “ I didn’t do it!” It sounded like Hiramiaku.

People around her shouted, the music abruptly stopped, the strobes went out. Everything was black, and the wails rose like a collective wall enveloping her. The silhouettes around her were dusted in a strange phosphorescent green, and X suddenly, and somewhat inappropriately, remembered that she could probably see in the dark.

She scrambled to her feet and reached upwards, hands groping for the cable. The partiers pressed in around her, knocking into her, their smells filling her nose and their heat attempting to burn her to a cinder. She covered her head with her arms. Gasping, she suddenly looked down…

…to find she had jumped twenty feet into the air, the muscles of her thighs tensed and body bent slightly over at the waist to watch the heads of the patrons below. Her feet met the lopsided chandelier, and she was off again, spinning to miss the last steel cable as it separated from the ceiling. She heard the chandelier crash to the floor in a harmony of shattering crystal and horrific screams. The lights flashed on just as she found the roof and the hand pulling her onto it.

The police crowded the doorway, ushering patrons out into the street in clumps of weeping and exclaiming French. A woman sat at the bar, calmly finishing her martini. She was soft-skinned, with glowing honey-blond hair and long, shapely legs, wearing a tight black midriff shirt and a red leather skirt. She checked her watch, then looked up at the gaping square of Parisian sky in the ceiling. Getting up from the bar, Annaka ignored her tab and focused on trying to hide the bloody stain soaking through the shoulder of her shirt, a rivulet of red running down her bare stomach.
***
“ So, I find this briefcase, and I’m wondering where it came from,” Agent Carter looked up from the lambskin case laid out flat on the desk. Gordon’s eyes shifted to the two shadows standing in the darkened corner. Agent Carter picked the case up, revealing a symbol neatly scribed into the yielding hide…a bat.

“ Poof, it’s just at the door of my hotel room, like that,” Agent Carter’s voice was easily a Brooklyn accent, persuaded into a further dialect by years working for the federal government. He was in his late thirties, early forties, with dark eyes that instinctively fell upon the corners of every room he occupied. Block eyes blinked coldly back at him. The boy was leaning against the window frame casually, just a spectator in the conversation, just like Agent Arroway stood near the door, stiff as a post.

Commissioner Gordon took a sip of coffee. “ This isn’t my jurisdiction,”

“ This is your city, Jim!” Carter cried, “ Tell the Bat to back the hell off.”

“ I don’t give him orders,” Gordon said. “ He does this on his own.”

“ With your aid, Gordon,” Agent Arroway suddenly said. “ All due respect, Commissioner, but we can’t have non-governmental agents trifling with this. About a dozen and a half countries are looking to have Mullen fried for the things he’s done, and if anything warps the process, we’re in deep.”

Gordon nodded. Agent Arroway noticed how tense the Robin boy looked. He kept shifting his feet, checking the watch built into his glove, glancing out the window. Like he was waiting for something. His master, the Bat, was completely still. They hadn’t even noticed he was in the room till Gordon had gestured at him.

“ Did you check what was in the briefcase?” Gordon asked from the inside of his coffee mug. He said it in a knowing, somewhat arrogant way.

“ I looked at it,” Carter admitted.

“ Find anything interesting?”

Carter jutted out his jaw. “ Some old Interpol scraps about Nevig Lockhardt, pictures from that airport bombing in La Havre.”

“ Anything else?”

Carter opened up the case, picking out a paper-clipped sheaf of yellow paper. “ Printouts of a correspondence with a person called Coquin.”

“ A person inside Intergang,”

The agent narrowed his eyes. “ If you can believe it. The Bureau already got this information and reduced it to a hoax,”

“ You read it, then?” Arroway asked. She was dressed in a gunmetal-grey skirt suit, braided hair brought up in a half-ponytail.

Gordon nodded. “ This Coquin knows things about the inside of Intergang that agencies like MI-6 and Interpol were just beginning to understand. The information given to the FBI directly by Coquin was a ruse to distract the government’s attention from the real information being funneled to an independent secret agent.”

“ They’ve also somehow managed to procure parts of British intelligence censored by MI-6’s ‘D’ notices; things that were never released to the public,” Arroway added.

“ So this double-agent, if that’s what you can call them…who are they?” Carter asked rhetorically, standing back and crossing his arms. He looked at Batman. “ Do you happen to know? And how did you get this information?”

The Bat stepped forward, producing from the inside of his cloak an uncreased photo in black and white taken from what appeared to be an airport security camera. It showed a simple image of a long-haired man in a dark trenchcoat and sunglasses in the middle of a wide stride into a group of foreign tourists.

He laid it on the desk, under the circlet of white light. “ This man,”

Arroway looked at it, then frowned at Batman. “ Forgive me if I don’t study the wanted posters, but just who is he?”

“ A defect from several underground intelligence agencies, who I believe is presently in Gotham. A quadruple agent, if you will. He has hundreds of aliases, but his birth-name was Brugnon La Touga.”

“ What stake does he have in this?” she asked.

“ At first, very little. He was working Intergang from the inside out, using his younger sister Cerise’s connections with Nevig Lockhardt to study them and learn their secrets."

“ And then?”

Batman looked unaffected. “ According to DGSE, his younger sister was raped and killed.”

Arroway didn’t wince. “ Execution?”

“ Unlikely. Coquin said it was just a way of burning bridges, getting rid of a witness. If you’d read the file, you’d have known that.”

“ But why the rape?”

“ Again, Coquin states it wasn’t rape. Cerise La Touga was having an affair with a member of Intergang. His superiors probably convinced him to kill her at last moment’s notice.”

Arroway’s eyes shifted to the boy at the window. He looked strangely detached, arms folded over his thin chest. He hadn’t made a noise the entire time.

“ Do you think she could have been on the verge of sending her brother valuable information?”

“ No.”

The frankness of his answer startled her. “ Why?”

Carter interrupted them. “ What would Coquin have to tell this La Touga guy that he already hadn’t learned from his sister?”

Batman looked at him. “ Intergang members all have a secret signature feature. They have their fingerprints burned off with lasers upon earning acceptance. This Coquin apparently witnessed the rite of passage and went through it themself.”

Carter, arms still folded, bore down on him with his eyes. “ How can I know to trust you?”

Nothing from the other side. He folded up the photo and replaced it within his cloak. “ You can’t. The information is yours to take or leave.”

Carter paused, then shut the case and took it off the desk. Batman turned completely around. The boy stood up straight.

“ I’ll see you tomorrow, Gordon,” Carter said with a half-wave. Arroway nodded to him, and led the way out the door.

Outside, the sky was beginning to pink very slightly at the edges. The streets were deserted, except for a gutter-sweeper making its rounds of the block and the trucks of papers being delivered at the news stands. There was no wind, and the tart smell of the sewer was delivered up from the manholes in plumes of white smoke. Taxis were lining up at the perpendicular street, delivering uptown workers back home for the evening.

“ Do you think what he said is worth a sh*t?” Arroway asked her partner.

He grunted. “ Barely. He could be working for them. That’s the hell of it,” He raised a hand and hailed a cab. “ You can’t even trust your garden-variety super hero anymore.”

Some twenty-odd stories above, Batman and his small partner tested the wind up on the ledge. Robin, crouching at the edge, detached a grappling hook from his belt.

“ Why didn’t you tell them everything?” he asked, in a small and slightly disappointed voice.

Batman didn’t say anything at first, but fired a line off in the direction of home.

“ I can’t let them know the entirety of the situation,” he said finally. “ Doing so would put a lot of people in jeopardy.”

“ But, it’s not like they’re innocent.”

Batman looked at him. The boy rose his brow.

“ Some of them are innocent?” he questioned.

“ A small percentage.” He took off. Robin followed, and they continued the conversation on the next roof. “ People who are caught in the processes, for whom it’s difficult to escape their circumstances.”

“ Like, people in debt to Intergang?”

“ I mean slaves, Robin,” He looked off towards the thin black line that held up the edge of the horizon. “ But yes, they are in debt. In a very sick way, they are in debt.”

[Panther]

I was very impressed if very confused by that night club sceane. I swear I could feel the beat, hear the music, smeell teh smoke and see the lights while reading. Although, I must also admit being confused about who was killing whom and why.

And another great plot twist - Madmoiselle had a brother!!!

Intereseting discussion of innocents, thought provoking place to leave off.

must go,

[witness]

I'm still reading this!!!!!


I loved the whole nightclub scene. It's as if this was the kind of life that X probably would have chosen, if she weren't caught up in all of this mess. If she was a normal girl, I bet she would be clubbin' for sure.

I know you haven't gotten a lot of response for this one, but I'm reading it and I want to know what happens next! Please keep posting!

[Daughterof_Evil]

So nice of you to say it was so realistic. The killing will be explained later, trust me. I thought of you when I thought up Brugnon La Touga. The exact thought was " I bet Panther'll get a kick out of this,"

Thanks again for the sweet comments!

[Daughterof_Evil]

Thanks for the reassurance! And I'd like to tell you that I am reading your posts as well...your story is progressing nicely.

I agree that X would be a clubbin' kind of girl if she weren't, you know...an assassin kind of girl. But maybe she can be like Hiramiaku and have her cake and eat it too, eh?

No one is replying, I guess, because they're all getting off break and going back to work/school, and that can be hectic. I mean, when all you do for two weeks is sit around, eating marshmellow bunnies and drinking egg nog...what did you think was going to happen??

Anyway, thanks again! And keep writing!

[hellraiser765]

Hi! Thanks for the feedback and warm welcome on my post-- Here I am just returning the favour, and... very impressed with what I've read. Unfortunatly, I arrived here too late to read the previous 30 installments of your story But after having read what you have written so far, I'm determined to scour the board's history looking for the rest of it.

I love your style, Daughter of Evil, it really draws the reader into the atmosphere you set for your story- Like all the previous ppl who've replied, I was very impressed with the nightclub scene. But from my experiance, I think a bloody scene like that would cause people to stop and stare- after all, they kicked one of my friends out just for shoving this kid.

But NEwayz, I'm off to piece your story together (which should take awhile)

-hellraiser765

[Daughterof_Evil]

Did you know they're thinking El Nino is forming again? Do we really need a load of crap like that right now? Really, people. Give me your opinions. Someone should write a massive complaint letter to the engineer of the universe.

This part is only slightly disturbing, including descriptions of torture. For reference reasons, a men is a mask kendoists wear, and the shinai is the sword, which is made of bundled bamboo. Thanks to Animerica magazine's August issue for those tidbits of interesting information.
***
Hiramiaku watched the girl from afar, her men under her arm and shinai clenched in one fist. Teaching X kendo had taken fifteen minutes. From deep within the dark reservoir of her mind, the child was beginning to pull mysterious skills, things she could not remember doing before. They had been training in the attic dojo for hours, and every style of combat Hiramiaku set before X was devoured and transmuted. Tae Kwon Do, Capoeira, Dim Mak, kyudo, ninjutsu, Samozashcitya Bez Oruzhiya. To give X a weapon was to create an extension of her.

Hiramiaku took a drink of water from a bottle and thought. X stabbed an invisible enemy, then stood back, swung, whacked at mid-air. She hadn’t told her about the night before, in the club, the money in the canvas bag. And she had already decided that if X asked, she would say she had been paid for a job. It was not so much a lie, but an inconvenience.

Saru watched from the rafters, sitting on a horizontal beam with his back propped up against one of the verticals. He was dressed in black hakama slacks, tabi, and a tank top, reading a book. One gesture from his mentor brought him leaping from the ceiling, landing fifteen feet below like a cat.

He hopped over. “ Hai, ane-sama?”

“ Keep an eye on Uguisu,” she told him in hushed Japanese. “ I have a feeling about her.”

“ Nani?” he asked incredulously.

“ She’s been trained. Hoshi Aka, to be precise. It was the same fanatic conditioning I went through as a child.”

“ Hoshi Aka?” he questioned. “ They’re extinct!”

His eyes fell on the shield of scar tissue that had formed over her left shoulder. She glared at him.

“ Just watch her. I have to check something out.”

He nodded. Unbeknownst to him, across the room, X heard every single one of their quiet, hurried words from within the sweating darkness of her kendo mask. She swiped at the air again, making her imaginary kill.
***
Brugnon sat back in the green sueded armchair, letting his head relax against the cushions. The orb of the crystal snifter was cold and heavy in his hand. Through the shadowed glass of the window, he watched Gotham from twenty-three stories up. He had checked in with a credit card in the name of Michele Tabet, paid for his brandy in that name, called up room service for lamb in brie sauce with roasted apples. Self-consciously he ran a hand back over his dark hair, newly cropped closely around the ears in a style the Americans liked to call a chili-bowl.

New clothes, too. He had thrown out the dark trenchcoat and the suit set he had worn in the airport, but only after wandering through uptown Gotham with a personal shopping assistant, a cute little brunette woman in a red suit. She had shown him the art of dressing well, something he was already well acquainted with, by giving him a tour of all of the great department stores. In all, he spent a little over two thousand dollars on slacks, dress shirts, blazers, shoes, socks, and handkerchiefs. Part of that was the cute brunette’s commission.

He stretched his feet on the ottoman. It felt good to stop running for once, just to relax and think. Since giving Heinrich the data, he had felt himself breathing easier. The pain in his thigh was gone, as were his persistent headaches. Still, he frowned into his brandy, gazing off at the slim edge of the horizon just barely visible through the gap of buildings. Cerise was dead. There was no escape for her. Her death had been brutal and demeaning, defiling the strong, beautiful spirit she had once been. He could only do one thing to appease his sense of guilt, a last wish for his sister.

The little girl was safe, away from Mullen. He had made sure the thieves had taken her before he left Paris, and he had made them promise not to give her back. It was his responsibility to watch over the child. How sad she was, Cerise had told him. So ready to die.

His cell phone rang. He grappled with it, not raising his head from the chair.

“ Oui?” he said gruffly. His neck hurt from all the time on the plane.

“ Are you daft or just jet-lagged?”

He smiled subconsciously. “ Good evening, Yuri.”

The bodiless Russian accent hardened. “ Shut it, Brugnon. This isn’t a social call.”

“ I assumed so.”

“ I never got a confirmation call from Heinrich.”

He sat up, knocking his feet off the ottoman. “ What?”

“ You heard me. You said you left it with him.”

“ I did. At the Cote d’Azur Bistro on Shafterson,”

“ It wasn’t him,” The time for rage had passed hours before, now all Yuri wanted was an explanation. “ He was set-up, I’m thinking.”

“ You want me to investigate?”

“ I want you the hell out of Gotham as soon as possible.”

Brugnon hit the OFF button, jumping up.
***
“ I think I was in love once,”

Saru looked up from his bubble tea. He was dressed in such a manner it was hard to recognize him, in the wrinkled and tattered clothes of an underground punk enthusiast and bearing a blonde wig of dreadlocks.

“ Huh?” he said, swallowing a lump of tapioca.

She became shy, looking at the scuffed formica of the tabletop. “ In my dreams. A boy in red, wearing a mask. I think I loved him.”

Saru grinned widely. “ Ya?”

Her face turned red. “ I was always fighting him. I bet I probably killed him. After awhile, he doesn’t show up in my memories anymore.”

“ Ah, unhappy romance,” Saru said, poking the straw around in his glass.

“ I-I’ve never told anyone that,” X said. A drop of sweat rolled down the side of her face. There was no air conditioning in this bar. They had only stopped shortly to rest before hitting the museum circuit again.

Saru looked up at her. “ S’okay. I won’ teru any’un.”

“ It’s like…” She thought calmly through her choice of words, “ like I’m empty inside. Ever since I woke up in America, it’s as if there is this great silence within me.”

She looked down at the tabletop, catching her reflection in the clear glass of her bubble tea. She was trying to approximate the exact look of a fangirl with a long brown wig and rose-colored sunglasses. From the neck down she was dressed in a red 99 Gunnm jersey, plaid skirt, black tights, and cherry red combat boots. She had seen the picture in a Japanese fan magazine that morning over breakfast, and Hiramiaku had noticed the admiring look on her face.

“ Where does Hiramiaku go during the day?” she asked in Japanese, draining her glass of tea in one draught.

“ Ane-sama is not a day person,” Saru said. “ Tell me more about the boy.”

X glanced around the room. At the bar, there was a young man, a college student maybe, with auburn hair and a graceful Roman nose. He was dressed in a suit, the jacket lying on the barstool next to him. She could see from across the room that he was reading a book, Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein. His eyes occasionally wandered up from the page.

“ That man is looking at us,” X said in Japanese, lowering her gaze to the spotted chrome napkin holder.

Saru nodded. “ Hai. I see him as weru.” She noticed he was staring directly into a grimy gilt mirror on the opposite wall, face expressionless. His fists had constricted slightly on the tabletop. “ Tell me about the boy.”

X continued seamlessly. “ He wears a costume, with an R on his chest.”

“ And a cape?”

She started. “ You know him?”

“ If they have a mask, and a symbol on their chest, there’s always a cape involved.”

The auburn man turned a page, stealing a glance at X. Their eyes met. He looked away immediately, before she had time to figure out what color his eyes were.

“ Ret’s go,” Saru said in English. They got up simultaneously, as smoothly as actors, and strode out the door. Down a flight of crumbling concrete stairs that had once been painted green, past the neon sign advertising the milk bar they had just left. It was warm out, the washed-out sunlight amplifying the state of Montmatre decay. As they hit the street, they heard the jingling of the brass bell on the bar’s door, and flattened themselves against the building front.

The street was virtually empty this time of day, the glitzy neon signs of the strip clubs less than a half-block away stilled until dark. It seemed like hours before the auburn-headed man reached the end of the staircase. When he stepped out into the street, he was pulling on his blazer, the book of poetry tucked into the pocket. He was really young, X suddenly realized as Saru grabbed his collar and smashed him into the wall. She searched him, checking his pockets, sleeves, the legs of his pants, his socks in barely a few seconds time. He was as young as Saru, by her guess, nineteen at the oldest. All she came up with was the tiny book of Gertrude Stein, which she tucked into the kangaroo pocket of her plaid skirt.

“ Qu’est-ce que c’est!?” the man shouted.

They dragged him out of the street and into an alley. Saru was holding him from the back, his arms looped under the auburn man’s armpits and his hands on the back of his head. X knew that hold. He could very easily break his neck.

“ You speak French?” Saru asked her. She nodded.

He began a brief dictation, and she repeated it in French to the man, whose eyes turned out to be grey and small. He looked very afraid as she talked to him, but she strangely felt no compassion towards him.

The conversation was short. Saru asked who the man was. The man said his name was Georges Loren. Saru asked why he was following them. Georges told him he wasn’t following them.

Saru turned to her and said in quiet Japanese, “ We’ll bring him home to ane-sama,”
***
There was a slightly radiant glow being emitted from the city, as if the low humming sound coming up from the belly of the streets produced an eerie whitish light. The stars were drowned in it.

Hiramiaku tugged on black leather gloves with rubber gripping pads on the palms, then looked over at the man. Georges was tied up, blindfolded, stripped down to his slacks and dress shirt and lying on his back. He was remarkably calm, despite the sweat slathering his forehead. X checked his pulse. He was controlling it steadily, not letting himself get too overwhelmed. It was a trademark of at least a dozen schools of martial arts, though X could not place it. She had not seen him in battle, and she could not assess his skill.

The three of them were dressed in head to toe black; elaborate ninja uniforms with optic lenses in the cowls to conceal the eyes, utility belts stuffed with things like laser glass cutters and smoke bombs, tabi boots with thick ridged rubber soles that sort of stuck if they walked on something hard and smooth. Hiramiaku was fixing a wide harness of spandex padding and plastic around her hips and thighs. Saru was checking the holds on the wrist-thick cable that was anchored to the roof. X’s job was to watch Georges.

She had not been to this, the highest point in Paris, since that first night. Now that she wasn’t so afraid, she took the time to enjoy the view. The wind off the Seine smelled like oil, and the tiny lights of the various districts to the south blinked and wavered and danced in the night. She did not know what drew Hiramiaku to this place time after time, but felt safer not asking.

“ Get him up,” Hiramiaku ordered. X hoisted Georges up by his arms, standing him straight. Hiramiaku strode over to him, sized him up, then grabbed him and jumped.

X stood back quietly. She noted, out of the corner of her eye, that Saru had peeled back his mask and was biting his thumb as Hiramiaku descended.

“ She has done this before?” she asked. He nodded, thumb still between his teeth.

“ You love her very much,” she stated. Again, he nodded, eyes not shifting from the ground.

She thought back to that afternoon. They had dragged Georges in, blindfolded with his own necktie, and presented him at Hiramiaku’s feet. She was eating tai-yaki at the time. Intravenous injections of wasabi alternating with intense questioning bled Georges of his secrets: he was from Chantilly, twenty years old, and madly afraid of heights. After pulling a few molars out with pliers, he surrendered the information that he was working for Annaka Behm as a reconnoiter. A few bicuspids, and he told them he’d been at it since they’d acquired X. He knew where they lived.

All this time, X felt no special feelings for this pitiful human being, screaming with the burning pain of the wasabi while gleaming blood ran out of his mouth. He was a chain in the link, a bystander, and compared with herself, an innocent. Still, she was expressionless. Though blindfolded, she imagined his cool grey eyes searching for hers, pleading. Once, for five minutes, Saru and Hiramiaku left to get something to eat. X bent over and spoke directly into Georges’s ear.

“ Are you a religious man?” she asked. She didn’t like the way her own voice sounded.

He spat a little blood out with the accent-encrusted English. “ I’m Catholic.”

“ Are you praying right now?”

He paused. “ Oui.”

Hiramiaku and Saru had then come back with bento boxes, and X had eaten while watching Georges shake in fear.

The line pulled taut. Saru waited, then gestured for X to help him pull it up. Hiramiaku was alone. The moment she hit the top of the deck, she ripped off her mask and broke into a peal of laughter that sounded more like a deep, rolling song.

“ I just love the night air,” she said happily, not saying where the man had gone and not really needing to.

[witness]

yes, i enjoyed this chapter a lot! from learning what kind of training X went through, to having her willingly be vulnerable to Saru (telling him about her dream), to his response.

you had a couple of funny lines, Saru's response and X asking the "spy" if he was a religious man and was he praying.

I do have a couple of questions, though. is this Yuri guy the same russian that was hanging out w/ Benidict Asp in the knightfall stories, or is he just a character you created for your story? Also, how much longer do we have to wait for X and Robin to meet???? The waiting is driving me crazy!!!!!!!! Another thing, I think X should have her cake and eat it too! X would probably kill everyone there for trying to touch her though. Just like the last time.


Until next post!

[maxcine steel]

i really enjoy your story.it is really exciting.but i din't understand what witness was saying.who tried to to touch x last time.

[Daughterof_Evil]

Thanks for the great comments! It's always nice to meet the newbies, especially the very talented ones like yourself! This story's been on these boards since before Toonzone took over, so it might be hard to find it. Just tell me how far back you read, and I'll fill in the rest from the beginning, okay?

Electronica clubs vary in noise level, depending on what genre of techno it is they tend to play. I assumed that the type of techno everyone here was most acquainted with was industrial, which can get immensely loud when there are large (and often, doped-up) crowds. The noise, combined with the frenzy of dancing, can make it difficult to assess what's going on around you. I also meant to convey the message that much of the patronage was under the influence of drugs or alcohol. But I'm sure you know, you just said you've been to clubs.

Thanks again for the nice compliments! And i'll be sure to check on your growing story!

[Daughterof_Evil]

I'm glad you liked it! And thanks for the compliments!

Dontcha just love Saru? He's my best friend's character (along with his ane-sama, Hiramiaku), and I had to put them in because they were such a nice contrast to Mullen and Asmodeus and the others. He's a trustable person...which is why I think X feels she can be truthful with him.

And about Robin and X...you'll just have to wait. I've gotten messages from others who have gone nuts from the waiting, but it's just the grain of the story. As Panther pointed out, it's a marathon, not a sprint. And it would be lovely for X to have her cake and eat it too, but you'll have to wait on that as well because I've got plans for that.

Also, while I'm here, I should mention how terribly sorry I am for not finding your private message until last week. I never check my profile, but when I updated my avatar and signature a few days ago I found the message and was mortified that I was over a month too late! Please accept my sincerest apology. I sent you a message back, in case you're wondering.

[Daughterof_Evil]

Welcome, and thanks for the compliments! In case you're wondering, X has a morbid fear of being touched due to some vicious torture she sustained while under Intergang's control. The strange man who grabbed her triggered something in her, which is why she killed him and not Saru, who had also touched her. Hope that clears things up!

[The_NewCatwoman]

It kinda sounds like your mad at me for not replying until now, and I don't blame you if you are. Things are kinda hectic for me 'cause for the second time I've got mid-terms to deal with. Man, I can't wait until I graduate,... Anyway, I really enjoyed these posts, and I'm trying to be patient waiting for Robin and X to finally reunite so he can put her broken past back together for her. "Like all the king's horses and all the kings men.

Your doing and excellent job pacing this story along, I've always had a problem with that, but I don't know if that's the case with PD or not. Well keep on writing those heart-breaking stories we love so much! C-ya! Oh, and happy New Year, thirteen days late and all.

[Daughterof_Evil]

Have a clarification to make. Witness pointed out that there is a character name Yuri, who IS NOT the same guy as in Knightfall who has the same name. Thanks go to witness for that.

Let's get to the chase, shall we? This part includes violence, drug use...and government pillow tags. And, since New Catwoman did it, and I haven't done one in awhile, I am obliged to deliver a disclaimer:

Any characters belonging to DC or Warner Brothers are not my property, I am only using them here as a means of entertaining. Characters not owned by these two conglomerates are my property, now and forever, and they include but are not restricted to: X, Mullen, Annaka Behm, assorted other Intergang members, Agents Arroway and Carter, and Brugnon La Touga. The characters Saru and Hiramiaku are not my property, but the property of Tonbo Rosso, the Invincible Fencing Goddess and soon-to-be ruler of the world. Also, thanks go to Mapquest.com for the location of the auctionhouse on rue Druout.
***
They took a left onto rue de Châteaudun just as Hiramiaku got to the good part in the story.

“ When I hit the rooftop, there was this bright white flash,” She spread her arms out to simulate the event, “ and I heard helicopters in the background. Interpol had known all along that the caterers were assassins. They were just setting us up,”

X nodded, enthralled. Saru chewed a toothpick, still enthralled despite having heard the story a dozen times. It was one of those rare instances where they were not dressed in disguise. In Montmatre, nobody looks twice at a woman with flame-red hair.

“ Josefi was already dead at that point; just a sniper in the hallway. That’s why I went out the fire escape. So I’m on the roof, caught in the spotlight, and…pay attention here, it’s important,” She stopped and made a move like something out of Charlie’s Angels, feet spread and hands up in a pantomime of a gun-hold, “ and I shot out the spotlight. I jumped off the roof and disappeared into the shadows.”

“ So who betrayed you to Interpol?” X asked quietly.

“ Holtz, the guy who gave us the idea to go as caterers. I tell you, it’s hard, but not impossible, to kill someone with a plastic spork.”

Rue le Peletier came up, and they turned right.

“ How many places have you been?” X asked.

“ Every continent,” Hiramiaku said, then, after a while, “ Two hundred and forty-three countries,”

“ Two hundred twenty-eight with me,” Saru added, pointing at her.

At rue la Fayette, Hiramiaku jumped on Saru, and he carried her piggyback the rest of the way to rue Drouot. A huge building of glass and steel dominated an entire city block, bordered at its edges with teeming hives of people carrying awkward packages in and out. Four men at the street were trying to load a huge 18th century armoire onto the back of a Toyota. Two young women trundled past carrying a framed painting. They went inside.

More chaos within. Tables, paintings, silver tea services stacked in every corner, on every inch of cardinal-red carpet. Hiramiaku passed a glass display case filled with baubles, looked it over, then passed it, whispering something discreetly to Saru as he ducked to her side. They wound sinuously through the crowds, taking time to admire certain objects, ignoring others, nudging through the closed-in walkways made by the backs and purses of older bargain-hunters.

Saru grabbed X’s hand and pulled her through the mess, into a back room where seventeen auctioneers simultaneously rattled off purchases with the pistol-like crack of their ivory gavels. One, an older man with tiny half-moon glasses and a black toupee, suddenly noticed her and announced aloud that he was taking a break.

Hiramiaku went up to his table and laid her arms on it, smiling sweetly. The man took a large gulp from a glass of water as Saru pulled the brim of his cowboy hat down, a menacing black stare burning out from under a lowered brow. He let go of X’s hand and placed his palm on the back of her jacket as if steadying her.

“ Fordship,” Hiramiaku said, “ I had hoped we could talk in private.”

He swallowed. “ I don’t believe I have anything to say to you, Miss Boneventura,”

“ I believe you do,” She produced from her shirtsleeve a small photo, then held it out for him to see between two fingers. “ You can get me Behm.”

His tiny little eyes trembled. “ I have nothing to do with her!”

“ But you know where to find her.”

He lowered his face. “ She left Paris. After what you did to her in that bar, she and the others packed up in a hurry.”

“ But she left me a little gift: a reconnoiter.”

“ Whom I hear you disposed of,” He checked through his handheld computer. A giant bead of sweat rolled off his shiny forehead.

“ Where’s Rudy?”

He looked slightly taken aback. “ What do you want with him?”

“ Cut the crap, Fordship, and hand your precious little boy over, ‘kay?” she said in one breath, smiling the entire time. Anyone watching from a significant distance would have thought she was exchanging a very humorous anecdote.

“ You promise not to hurt him?”

She nodded. Somehow, the manner in which she did suggested she would ignore the promise entirely.

“ Place des Abbesses,” he said, ashamed.
***
The door flew open. Scattering behind the three staunch silhouettes were his bodyguards, his women, a few early afternoon customers currently pissing themselves because a single unarmed woman had blown through the place like a tempest.

Rudy Fordship had his face to the toilet seat cover, ready to do a line up his particularly broken-looking Welsh nose. He stared at her for a moment.

“ Now that’s a Kodak moment,” Hiramiaku said throatily.

Seconds later, he was chest down and hog-tied against the dirty formica of the bar. A vein was sticking out in his neck.

“ Wha-wha-what d-do…” he trailed off uselessly.

“ Still got that nasty stutter when you get scared?” Hiramiaku asked. “ Y’know, your foster daddy Fordship is really getting tired of bailing you out of jail for petty drug offenses, so how about you help me out with something?”

X sat on one of the pool tables, swinging her feet over the edge. She listened as the interrogations went on and on, when Rudy began foaming at the mouth because Hiramiaku was depressing this certain nerve in his neck with her thumb. He gave in within five minutes, just as Saru found the ice-cube tongs behind a pile of gin-soaked rags and cracked beer mugs.

She nodded along to the music, thinking. So Annaka had been at the club the night before last, and had told Georges to watch them as Mullen fulfilled his end of the bargain by leaving Paris. She glanced at Saru as he produced a bloody molar from Rudy’s mouth. Strange. Saru was so gentle, so kind to her.

“ So what you’re saying is Behm is still here in Paris?” Hiramiaku asked. “ That’s quite the opposing statement to what your foster father said.”

“ He has no idea what he’s talking about,” Rudy said, red-stained saliva running out of the corner of his mouth. Hiramiaku leaned over and ripped open Rudy’s short-sleeved jersey in one move. His furry chest was mottled with black, blue, and tinged with green.

X pulled her sneakers up to the turf of the pool table.

“ It’s all her fault,” Rudy spat at her. “ Behm beat me up. Told me that my women in Montmatre should watch out for you guys, since she knew you’d kill Loren.”

“ He was a plant,”

Rudy continued to glare at X. “ It’s her fault. Everyone wants her. I’ve got people not even from Intergang all up my ass for information on her.”

Saru planted a single fist in his face. It was evident even from across the room that he had broken a few bones. The boy grabbed his jaw and jerked his head to face him.

“ You talk to us,” he said.

“ I-It’s not my problem! I’m j-just doing this so Behm doesn’t kill me,” Rudy admitted sheepishly. He was really bleeding badly now, and one eye was swelling shut.

The kitchen door swung open. A woman in leather pants and a powder-blue metallic tube top skittered out. Her hair was a brassy red, eyelids lined with azure shadow. A giant blue-sequined purse was over one shoulder.

She placed her left hand against her ample chest. “ Pardon,” she said breathlessly. She stepped into the room and pulled from her huge sequined purse a silenced Tokarev 7.62 mm pistol. The gin bottles behind Saru’s head shattered inexplicably.

X rolled over the pool table, falling off and hitting the floor on all fours. She sent herself into a forward somersault, catching herself in mid-action and firing four rapid and almost invisible kicks from an upside-down position. The pistol went flying. The woman hunched over from a blow to the stomach, blow to the chest, blow to the face that sent her head whipping back with such force it was clear that her neck had snapped.

X flipped to her feet. “ Everything okay?”

Rudy was slumped over the counter now, limp. Hiramiaku shrugged and said, “ Human shield,” as Saru grinned behind her.
***
“ You!”

The walls were being stripped as they stood there, the carpet pulled up, the bed shredded in big dollops of white down that floated about. The manager was in the back, arguing with an agent from FBI Lab Services about removing the showerheads.

“ What the hell are you doing here?” Carter shouted.

Batman said nothing, but stalked through the suite, examining tufts of pink insulating that had been torn out of the walls. The boy, Robin, followed, not asking questions. They seemed to be teaching and learning without language, like a pair of prehistoric men.

“ I asked what the hell you were doing here,” Carter reminded them.

Batman straightened out and stared at him, and Robin did the same.

“ You had a miscellaneous tip to search this room,” Batman said.

“ You tapping our lines now, Bat?”

“ I learn things,”

Arroway watched him as he made a complete circle of the room. She had never believed the urban legends, not once, even in the CIA, where they had cardboard boxes full of files on Batman. To her, it was only a rumor, unsubstantiated drivel, without significant data to back it up. The government didn’t even have pictures of him, or any of those on his team.

Robin crossed the room and sifted a hand through a lump of soft white down from the bedspread.

“ Hey, don’t touch that,” Carter barked at him. The boy ignored him, picking up a tiny white tag from the depths of the down. Arroway walked up to him. He offered it to her, and she took it with a little smile. Close up, she saw that Robin was very young indeed.

“ What is it?” Carter asked disinterestedly.

Arroway looked up. “ Under penalty of law this tag not to be removed except by the consumer,”

“ Great,” he mumbled.

A lab examiner in a governmental black suit entered, carrying a trashcan with an ivy pattern on it. He held up a cluster of plastic tabs.

“ Shopping tags,” he said.

“ Brugnon La Touga occupied this room last,” Batman noted solemnly.

“ What makes you so sure?” Arroway asked.

“ He has a taste for expensive clothes, expensive foods, expensive liquors, and expensive colognes,” Batman said. Robin studied his face. Anyone who didn’t know Batman wouldn’t have known the discerning expression on his face from any other series of stoic phases he went through. He could tell he was analyzing the deeply-ingrained and slightly musty smell of a distinct scent, one that might linger in the carpet or the wallpaper.

“ And?” Carter prodded.

“ See it for yourself,” Batman said, heading for the open window. Robin followed wordlessly, hopping out onto the ledge ahead of his mentor.

“ Agent Carter,” It was a crime scene investigator walking in the door, holding a sheaf of papers, “ the room service tab. A thirty-five dollar meal washed down with fifteen-hundred dollar brandy sealed in the year of the French Revolution,”

Arroway took the printouts from him, scanned it with her eyes, then gazed at the open and empty window.
***
LA TOUGA, BRUGNON

Age, twenty-eight. Height, approximately six-two. Weight, variable, tends to lose or gain weight to better disguise himself. Place of Birth, Rouen, France. Family, father Pierre La Touga, deceased; mother Cassis Junavreau La Touga, deceased; sister Cerise La Touga, deceased.

Tim sat back. The last passport photo they had that actually read Brugnon La Touga was from when he was fifteen and on a holiday to Frankfurt with his father. Shortly after that his mother would have died under tragic (and some would say, suspicious) circumstances. When he was nineteen, he had simply disappeared, both estranging himself from his father and cutting himself out of the substantial will.

“ So, why’s this guy a double agent?” Tim asked, swiveling in his chair. He was dressed in his pajamas, to Alfred’s discontent, since it was very cold in the Cave.

Bruce looked at him over the top of a book on KGB spy devices. “ If you had read the investigation, you would know,”

“ That would take too long. Just gimme the gist of it.”

Bruce turned a page. Tim knew he was talking and reading at the same time; multitasking, it was called.

“ About twelve years ago, his mother was killed in an explosion on their family yacht in Monaco-“

“ But I thought they were in Frankfurt.”

“ Father and son were in Frankfurt. Mother and daughter were in Monaco, because Cassis La Touga particularly hated Germany. Probably because the Nazis that had occupied France during the Second World War had put her shoemaker father out of business...he was Jewish.

“ An explosion destroyed the aft portion of the yacht, killing Cassis, who was on deck. Cerise was below deck, asleep in the front part of the yacht, and was only slightly injured. It was a huge international scandal. No one ever claimed responsibility, but investigators had reason to believe Pierre La Touga had wanted his wife dead.”

Tim stared. “ Did he?”

“ No. There was no logic to the accusations, because even if he had wanted his wife dead, there was no reason to kill his daughter. In reality, it was an international crime syndicate using La Touga’s shipping business to smuggle drugs and weapons. They’ve faded out of the spotlight, though. Brugnon knew all about this, and his father’s reluctance to publicly accuse the killers, and left the family for good. He never worked for Interpol, or the DGSE, as some people say. He’s always been in the underground secret services business. He’s just a very intelligent man.”

“ You’ve met him?”

Bruce glanced at him briefly, but then looked back to the book. “ Yes, once. He was in the know about an assassination carried out in a hotel uptown. A woman named Hiramiaku was sent to kill a few foreign dignitaries. Brugnon, acting as a sniper, killed her comrades. However, since then he’s chosen not to hunt her down. I’m suspect to believe they’re now working together,”

Tim looked at the screen. Brugnon had once been a charismatic young boy, with fairly fine features and dark hair. A picture of his sister came up at the click of a button. A cute little girl maturing into a beautiful young woman, with Rivieran good looks. She was only nineteen when she died.

“ His whole family is dead,” Tim noted.

A pause. “ Yes,” Bruce admitted. A hint of pain in his voice.

“ And his sister was working with him?”

“ She was his reconnoiter, relaying him messages about Intergang while they stayed with her. Undoubtedly she shared with him a hatred of conventional diplomacy,”

“ Anything interesting?” Tim asked as he stared at the headshot of a beauteous teenaged Cerise.

Bruce rose an eyebrow.

“ About their correspondence,” the boy corrected, tapping a button that bleached Cerise and her brother from the screen. “ In the data, Coquin keeps mentioning something called X,”

“ A weapon,” Bruce said. “ Though what kind is ambiguous. They refer to X as ‘continuing to progress’, as if they’re still building it.”

“ Maybe they don’t have all the parts,” Tim suggested.

“ I’ve thought of that. I’ve also taken into account that Coquin has told Brugnon before that someone named H is beginning to show interest in X.”

“ An investor?”

“ Possibly. Or someone necessary to its development. A scientist, another mercenary.” Bruce shut his book and stood. “ You should get to bed soon. It’s nearly two in the morning.”

“ I’m not tired at all,” Tim said, stretching out his arms behind his head and wiggling his fingers.

“ By the time I’m back down here, you’ll be asleep on the floor,” Bruce predicted humorlessly, taking the stairs up to the Manor. He had disappeared in a moment.

Tim sighed and skimmed through the wealth of information that had been accessed that day. Something new in the Lockhardt file. He clicked on it and went through the biography, the M.O., the tiny fragments of the old man’s life that piled up to a spectacular crescendo. In the media files, he found another under the old La Havre airport stream, and clicked on it.

It was a single picture, amplified, improved, stopped between the seconds to a perfect crystal clarity and then brushed up. Lockhardt’s bodyguard, the young girl in black. He had read sordid bits about her, hypotheses of who she was even though no one had seen her face and lived. That she was Lockhardt’s illegitimate grandchild, or a sister or niece of some Intergang tech expert. Most likely she was with Lockhardt in Rouen, when he stayed with Cerise La Touga and probably ordered the girl to kill her.

But now, as he looked into her face, he felt the cold chill slide down his spine again. He clicked the play button. It had been compressed to just a few seconds, the precious few seconds after crushing the Interpol informant’s head, as she was grabbing Lockhardt’s hand to lead him away from danger. White mask of a face, all sharp angles and wide, bright eyes gleaming with the adrenaline. Her dark hair was short and obscured her forehead and much of her left eye.

He stared for awhile, mouth open. And said her name, almost like a whisper, a secret, into the silence of the Cave.

[Panther]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Yoo stopped right before the most important word! How could you stop? >wrings hands in frustration< That was calculated cruelness!

>settles down from tantrum< Ok, ok, I understand why you stopped. great cliffhanger!

opps - gotta go

[witness]

I tell you, it’s hard, but not impossible, to kill someone with a plastic spork.

That sentence just made me laugh. I enjoyed that. I must agree with Panther on this one. It was calculated cruelness. I understand why it was done though. It was a great cliffhanger.

I liked the beginning with the story-telling. It seemed as if they were sitting around a campfire swapping ghost stories or something. Also liked the whole ripping off of government tags. That was funny.

So now Robin knows. What will he do with that information? The bigger question is how long has Batman known and tried his best to keep this a secret from Robin? Can we expect a fallout of some kind?

You're right, I had forgotten that this story was like a marathon. I am trying to wait patiently for the next chapter. All in all, an excellent post DoE.

[The_NewCatwoman]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

OMG, how could you do that?!

That was just sick,

naw, just kidding!



I notice you mentioned me there at the beginning, glad I could be your inspiration.



*sigh*, I've been waiting so freaking long, I was practically in a trance reading that, and you,... you just... stopped. Oy!

Man, could ya, just for the love of humanity, say... her...name?



Also, Witness brought something to my attention about Batman probably knowing this, and chose to keep it to himself, sounds like someone needs a spanking.

But I must add, either Bruce doesn't give Tim much credit, leaving him there with the open file, and expecting him to just miss it completely, or he just,... I don't know,.. feels it's irrelevent. If he only knew, everything that X, and Tim went through separately....



Otherwise, hilariously sweet, and yes the spork comment got me thinking. What other bland everyday items could you disable a man's spinal cord with? Possibly a baby spoon, or maybe a crazy straw... The possiblities are endless...

[Daughterof_Evil]

I'm sorry to cause you any unjustified pain. Really. But it's detrimental to the story! I see in Flower Children you've begun to do the same!

More posts soon, I promise. And thank you for yor continuing support.

[Daughterof_Evil]

You can give all the credit for that line to Tonbo, Hiramiaku and Saru's creator and mistress. It involved some little tiny alterations by me (the spork replaced a spoon because I thought it sounded funnier), but otherwise she deserves all special comments on that.

Thanks for also understanding why I had to do the end that way. And as for fallout, you'll have to wait and see. All I can say is that a lot of the story will revolve around lies between many sets of people, and after awhile I even get confused.

I'm trying to compress the story, so I've had to remove some parts I really liked. It'll move quickly soon, with some big surprises.

[Daughterof_Evil]

Yes, you did remind me there about the disclaimer. Thank you very much for that. And what can I say? I'm a sick, sick person.

Yes, Bruce is a naughty, naughty boy, but not for the reason you're thinking of...