Witch Hunter Robin Fan Fiction ❯ Binah (Understanding) ❯ Walls ( Chapter 3 )

He was reading when Robin finally emerged from her room in the early afternoon, the next day. Try as he might, Yukio Mishima always put him to sleep. Never mind that the man was one of Japan's greatest novelists and thinkers—his prose was simply too elegant to maintain Amon's attention for long. Inevitably, his eyes fell closed, and stayed that way. So they were when Robin tiptoed into the living room, unwittingly stepping on a creaking floorboard and waking him suddenly. His eyes flew open and every muscle tensed, upon seeing a stranger in the apartment. He was already upright when he realized it was her, dressed in form-hugging jeans, and a curious green sleeveless hooded jersey with what looked like white mesh racing stripes up the sides. She squirmed inside the clothes.

“Everything seems to fit,” he said, feeling a little stupid.

“They're too tight…” Robin complained. “And I can't move my arms, look, when I do, the shirt-” She raised her arms awkwardly, stretching, exposing a flat ivory stomach, and ribs that were a bit too prominent. The low-slung jeans sunk down in turn, going dangerously low and showing the faintest hint of something black beneath... He blinked, met Robin's face.

“I can see how that would be a problem,” he said.

“If the sisters at the convent saw me like this, I'd be slapped and told to scrub the gallery,” Robin informed him matter-of-factly. She turned on her heel and crossed into the kitchen.

Amon rather had the idea that anyone who tried to slap Robin would probably find a hand full of fire and not a vulnerable face, but he merely stated: “Well, there isn't any of that going on, here.”

“Thankfully,” she commented, crouching into the refrigerator. She brought out milk and ice cubes, and a large glass. By now he was used to this—Robin didn't have an espresso machine of her own, but she'd be damned if she didn't have an iced coffee every day. Amon took it black, and so did she, but the summer months were a trial. He listened to the glassy, musical sound of a big spoon mixing coffee, milk, and ice. Now was as good a time as any.

“Single-Eye is back.”

The stirring stopped momentarily, then resumed. “Where?”

“The Walled City.”

Now the stirring ceased completely. He heard the spoon come to rest in the sink, the ice cubes clinking in the glass as Robin returned to the living room. She stood in front of the sofa, where he was sitting. “Nagira told you this?”

Amon nodded. “Apparently, he's using his own power to force other Witches to use theirs. For a lark.”

Robin recoiled visibly. “That's disgusting,” she murmured. Her grip tightened on the glass. “It's a violation.”

“Yes,” Amon answered. “And STN-J is backlogged, they can't get to him. They're…training a replacement.”

He waited for a startled reaction. None came. Instead, Robin nodded to herself, sipping her drink contemplatively. “They had such a difficult time without you,” she remembered aloud. “With Sakaki injured, only Karasuma and Doujima could take on the load.” She met his glance. “It makes sense that Solomon would send a replacement. Who is it?”

“Nagira didn't have too many details. She's a German woman, in her thirties.”

Again, Robin nodded, apparently thinking to herself. “Solomon wants someone in Tokyo who can take control,” she theorized. “For the past few months, STN-J has been a mess. The Factory was destroyed after its overseer disobeyed orders. People were injured,” she met his eyes again, “two Hunters are dead…”

“The place is in shambles,” Amon summarized. “So Headquarters most likely sent someone who operates by the book. Someone older and more responsible. Someone our old comrades will hate.”

Robin smiled faintly at that. “They'll get used to it,” she said. “Is this new person a Craft user?”

Amon nodded. “Telekinesis.”

“Is she weak?”

He frowned. “I don't know. Nagira didn't say.” Amon sat back. An entirely new way of looking at things was exposed to him by Robin's question—he wasn't used to thinking of the weakness or strength of Witches as it related to him, another Witch. It was an alarming thought. Compared to many of the other Witches they might face in the Walled City, the ghetto for Witches, he was nothing more than a child. He was vulnerable, dependent on another, completely unable to control his own power. And working as lone wolves, they didn't have Orbo bullets to break through supernatural attacks. His skills with the guns weren't nearly as useful, as the incident with the Earth Craft user had proved. It was imperative that he improve, before they entered the Walled City, and fought Single-Eye.

“Will Single-Eye be able to sense that I've become a Witch?” Amon asked.

“It's possible, but unlikely,” Robin answered. She sipped her coffee. “When he touched me, I had no idea that he was a Witch.”

Amon's head snapped up. “When did he touch you?”

Robin blinked. “When we were in the subway terminal,” she said. “He bumped into me, and explained why his vision was so bad.” She pointed at one eye, the eye that the Witch had lost somehow. Her own eyes went to the floor. “That's why, in Harry's later on, when Harry told us the rumor about a Witch with one eye, I was so startled.”

“He could have attacked you,” Amon murmured.

“It could have been any one of us,” Robin reminded him quietly. “Sakaki was the one he chose, for whatever reason.”

Again, Amon remembered Sakaki on his knees in the busy subway terminal, the whole group of them under that bank of civil-service fluorescent lights, just the way it used to be. There was Sakaki, sweating with fear, and then Robin, simply putting her arms around him and chasing all of that fear away. “He'll be angry with you, for thwarting him before,” Amon said grimly.

Robin shrugged. “His power is not so great if something so simple can counter it.”

“And can you Hunt him?”

To his surprise, Robin shook her head softly. She was lost in thought, wandering somewhere he couldn't see. Her eyes slid to rest on his face. “We're going to Hunt him, together, as usual.” She smiled gently.

“I might be a…hindrance to you, out there.”

Her soft smile just wouldn't quit. “You can master it, Amon.”

He sighed, a ghost of a smile playing across his face. “If your replacement is half as stubborn as you are, she might just whip STN-J into shape.”

***

Margarethe Bonn, new Hunter at STN-J, sighed through her email. The little symbols in the windows helped her a bit; they were self-explanatory. The fact that all the text was still in Japanese was not helpful in the least. Certainly, STN-J had an English language program that would transfigure her keyboard into Western letters, but there was no such program with German punctuation. Her email was a mess of what looked like corrupted files, but what were really the last little bits of tax information from STN-Frankfurt. There were two offices in Germany, Frankfurt and Berlin. Berlin was the big office, and she'd seen it only once in her many years working for Solomon. It was one of the reasons she'd applied for the position in Tokyo—she could distinguish herself, here. It wasn't like Frankfurt, where everyone knew her.

Not that she didn't stick out like a sore thumb, here; she did. Margarethe idly scratched her scalp, short fingernails losing themselves in short, and spiky ginger-red hair. Surrounded by the black, silky heads of the Japanese, she was definitely a foreigner. Her watery blue eyes and her skin that liked to freckle in the sun betrayed her as a stranger as well. She'd been surprised to discover that much of the STN-J team was comprised of international mutts like her. Blonde Yurika Doujima was from an unspecified country in Europe, although her Japanese was flawless; the hacker Michael Lee was obviously American. Japan was the place that all of them could go to Hunt Witches and be ignored by the rest of normal society. Witch Hunters were like their prey, in that way. Everyone liked to pretend that they didn't exist.

This would all be well and good if Witches didn't make so much trouble. But they did, and the team members of STN-J were gone after them, presumably, because they certainly weren't in the office. None of them had included her yet in an investigation; she felt like the prudish older sister that no one wanted around. While Chief Kosaka had tried to make her welcome in his own bumbling way, it hadn't truly gone well. This was a team forced to work together under extremely stressful conditions, a team betrayed by their own administrator, the late Takuma Zaizen, and a team that had lost three of its members in the last year. The last thing they wanted was an intruder, and Margarethe was walking in on their territory, expected to pick up this fallen branch of Solomon and somehow affix it again to the tree.

Just then, Yurika Doujima entered, slurping away on a bubble tea. She was dressed in a zippered white sleeveless dress covered in utility pockets, with matching white shoes. Her feathered hair blew in the draft of her arrival. “It's noon,” Michael said, not looking up from his computer.

“I am well aware of the time, Michael,” Doujima said lightly. She sat primly in her chair, completely ignoring Margarethe. “Where are Miho and Sakaki?”

Michael leaned back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head. “In the Walled City, canvassing.”

Doujima's perfectly groomed eyebrows rose. “The Walled City, huh? Sakaki wants Single-Eye that bad?”

“He's not the kind to forget incidents like that.”

Margarethe cleared her throat. The others started, and turned in her direction. “Excuse me,” she began, “but would you be so kind as to brief me on the other case involving Single-Eye?”

Doujima was the first to speak. “It's all in the files.”

Margarethe decided to be difficult. “Not in German, it isn't.”

Doujima gave a martyred roll of her eyes, and inched her chair infinitesimally closer to Margarethe's. “Single-Eye is a Witch who can get inside the minds of other people. When he does, there's a scent of fragrant olives in the air—it's his only signature, as far as we can tell. He was completely off our records at first, because he was homeless. We were off on another track, Hunting decoys that he put up. Then, when we got too close, he attacked Sakaki.”

“He entered Sakaki's mind?”

Doujima nodded. “There was nothing any of us could do. And then Robin-” Margarethe noticed Michael stiffen suddenly, “came up to Sakaki and comforted him, and, as they say, the spell was broken.”

“Did Miss Sena use her Craft to do this?”

Doujima treated Margarethe to one of her best “are you stupid?” looks. “No, of course not,” she answered. “What would she have set on fire? Sakaki's brain?”

“It was just a hug,” Michael said quietly, staring at his screen but not actually seeing it. Margarethe noticed he'd stopped the incessant kicking of his feet. “Just a simple hug. That was all.”

Doujima was watching Michael. Margarethe asked, “And after that, the attacks ceased?”

“Yes,” Doujima answered, turning back to the other Hunter. “He disappeared, until now.”

Magarethe frowned. “Why now?” she asked. “And why Witches?”

Doujima shrugged. “It seemed to be a vendetta last time; maybe that's what it is now, too.”

“In an area that we patrol so often?” Michael asked, beating Margarethe to the punch. He was typing again, now. “Not likely. He must want us to notice him.”

“That's a good thought, Michael,” Magarethe said. “Will you please inform Sakaki and Karasuma of it?”

“Okay,” the hacker answered, and opened up the communications system.

***

It was abysmally hot in the Walled City. Miho hated it with a passion. It made her feel dirty just being within its walls. The mixed fear, ennui, resentment, rage, and depravity experienced by the many marginalized Witches living inside had soaked into the concrete, glass, and steel, making the place radiate negative energy that coated each visitor; stained them. For someone as psychically sensitive as herself, she imagined it was much like those cases of dolphins she read about in the news, who washed up on beaches with exploded brainpans after swimming too near sonar test sites. It was simply too much for too refined a power. And the fact that she was hot, and tired, and frustrated, did not improve things.

“They don't wanna tell us anything,” Sakaki state the obvious. He lounged against the car. “And when they do, it's only to tell us they haven't heard about Single-Eye.”

“Which means they've heard of him,” Miho finished. She sighed; wanting to lean up against a wall and knowing that it would be a bad idea for her powers to do so. “A Witch who invades the minds of others…of course they want to protect him. They don't want to get on his bad side.”

“No, they don't,” Sakaki said darkly.

“Do you think Michael's right, and that it is a ploy to lure us?”

Sakaki's lips pursed. He uncrossed his arms, re-crossed them, and then unfolded them to gesture. His trendy haircut and jacket were completely at odds with their slum surroundings. He stood out against the trash-filled alleys and beaten-down fences. “We're here, aren't we? We're lured. So where is he?”

“Exactly.”

“Something's wrong about the whole thing,” Sakaki continued. “There's something we're missing, and I just can't see it…” His voice petered out with frustration. Both of them sighed, knowing what the other felt but was ashamed to say. Miho decided to speak first.

“We all want them back, Sakaki,” she said.

“Amon would have seen whatever it is, by now,” the other man murmured. “And if he didn't, Robin would.” His fists were clenched.

“They were alike, in that way.”

Sakaki turned to her, his expression sour. “It was more than that,” he said clearly. “Everything he couldn't see, couldn't do, couldn't think up; she did. She filled the gaps.”

Miho smiled faintly. “Solomon was right to put them together.”

Her fellow Hunter detached himself from the car, and walked over to the driver's side. She could feel both the anger of the Walled City and his own bitterness assailing her in waves. The summer sun seemed to magnify all of it. “Oh yeah?” he asked. “Then why the hell are they both dead?”