FicWad

"And when we're done
soul-searching,
as we carried the weight
and died for a cause -
is misery
made beautiful
right before our eyes?
Will mercy be revealed
or blind us where we stand?"
-Witness, Sarah McLachlan-


"So tell me," Nao said slowly, choosing her words carefully, "who exactly are you doing this for?"
Natsuki's eyes closed she paused, bent over, still in the midst of packing. "Myself."
Nao had the decency to hide a very wry smile by turning around on her heel, making motions of placing what was left usable from the top of a now wrecked coffee table into a nearby box. "Well, I know that."
"Then don't ask questions you already know the answer to," the other girl replied irritably. The glass of some food containers chime in agreeance as she continued what she had been doing.
Natsuki had received the letter no more than a day after the carnival. To Miss Kuga Natsuki/, it read, /it has come to our attention that your residence is in complete disrepair. Your continued residency here is no longer acceptable, and Mikoshawa Properties asks you to vacate the premises no later than the end of this month. We thank you for your business.
To be honest, none of them had any idea that eviction notices were even legally allowed to be so vague. But Nao hadn't been referring to the fact that Natsuki was moving at all. She'd been questioning that Natsuki had decided to take up a dorm room on campus with Mai and Mikoto. It burned her a bit, because in the end Natsuki knew that Nao understood why she was doing it. After all, the options had come down to either staying with those two, her private time and personal space be damned, or attempt to get another apartment, not only with an eviction record, but also the chance that Shizuru would decide to move in somewhere near.
Not as though that was necessarily a bad thing. But she wasn't entirely sure she was ready for it.
So instead it was Natsuki's luck that Nao was the only one free this last weekend to help her move the last of her possessions. It served her right, Natsuki told herself, for having help wrecked the place to begin with. Still, her barbs weren't helping the process. The dark-haired girl took a deep breath and counted slowly until her anger dissipated enough to speak.
"Look, I don't think this is working out. I'll move the last of this myself. Why don't you go enjoy the rest of tonight off... doing whatever it is you do?"
Nao seemed surprised for a moment, then her expression took a turn that reminded Natsuki of the Cheshire Cat. "I think I will," she murmured back at her through pursed lips, completely ignoring the shudder from the other girl as she walked past the kitchen to reach the closet with her jacket. /Creepy girl/.
The red-head didn't even say goodbye, or wait for a thanks; the door's closing echo was only made more apparent from the lack of furniture. Natsuki stood leaning against the counter for a moment before blowing a bit of the bangs that had fallen out of the quick pull-up job she'd done for her hair. She felt incredibly hot, all of the sudden. /Gotta be all the packing/, she thought dully, and pushed off slightly from the counter for balance, picking her way across the floor to the balcony door.
A cool wind greeted her as she slid it open, and the smell of pending rain wafted through the air; the humidity didn't help the moisture from sweating, but the breeze certainly felt nice enough. She noticed Nao far below hitching a ride from a cabbie, and judging by the way she was shaking her hips, she imagined that the other girl only had to pay a fraction of the fare. Natsuki shook her head, not really wanting to think about it.
The sun was already going down, but the oddest thing was a sudden fog bank that was creeping up the street. There was no nearby water source that Natsuki knew of, and in fact the property managers had specifically stated as much when they'd had to go about repairing the pipes a few months back, leaving the apartments out of service for several days after one of the nearby water mains burst. Sure, it could have been just an excuse, she'd supposed, but it would seem weird to only have shown up just now. The tail lights of the cab faded into it quickly.
No one else seemed too disturbed by it, however; traffic was normal, parents ran down the sidewalks chasing down their children, and a stray cat emerged from it, stopping only to beg at the feet of a local homeless man. Natsuki chalked it up to the stress and went back to leaning against the railing of the balcony. After a moment, she moved her hand to her face, attempting to wipe away some of the moisture from it and her neck.
The pain was sudden, and short-lived, but Natsuki knew very well that its placement couldn't be mistaken. The brief burning sensation forced her hand to dart to her lower back, where the HiME mark had once been.
She was frantic, and had no clue why. The teen dashed further back inside the apartment to her bedroom, and groaned as she remembered that the full-length mirror had already been taken to the dorm room. A moment of rifling through the box Nao had been working on produced nothing either. She looked to one side, finding the small makeup mirror normally kept near, if not on, the coffee table to be shattered into quite a many small shards.
Cursing now, Natsuki went into the first bathroom, the spare one, and flipped on the lights. Intelligently, she'd been looking directly at one of the bulbs over the top of the sink, and managed to temporarily blind herself. With a grunt she hopped onto the sink, sitting backwards, tugging up the edge of her shirt. Was something flaring red...?!
But no... Natsuki blinked a few times. She was still seeing bits of the light from staring directly into it a moment ago. They just weren't going away. She willed myself to be calm again and shut her eyes for several seconds. Turning back, there was nothing. No marks at all, no light, no flaring. Just her lower back, as it had been since about a month ago. She didn't believe it at first, and pulled up the shirt on the other side also, checking thoroughly. She didn't find anything.

*

The night fell silently, as nights tend to do. At seven o'clock sharp, the watch provided a soft beep as it was programmed, letting its owner know that it was time to go home and the required overtime had been served, as it always did. And normally, three hours later, its owner would finally go home, tired to her wits end, as she normally did. Tonight was a bit different than usual.
Tonight the BRUTE Special Division had obtained a subject to study. The Brisk Restraint Unit with Tactical Expertise of Searrs Corp really had outdone themselves this evening. And, in fact, the Research Department's tools had worked effectively - extremely so - against the dangers they'd encountered. Accounted for dangers, but dangers nonetheless. One could never be too certain with Childs involved, after all.
To be fair, the subject this evening had seemed just as startled at the appearance of her Child as she was at having the BRUTE officers capture her. Nothing quite said "surprise" like a group of twenty well armored, semi-automatic rifle armed men storming down the road out of parked vehicles, while a creature you thought had dissipated permanently appears from nowhere next to your recently wrecked taxi. Except perhaps being subsequently tasered, restrained, and tossed into the back of one of those vehicles.
Saeko pushed her glasses to one side and rubbed at her right eye tensely. They were watering from having stared at the screen for too long. The statistics, no matter how intriguing, were beginning to become harder to comprehend. Six hours of pouring over them tended to do that, especially compounded with her normal workday.
"Kuga-san," came the gruff voice of the night-shift assistant. "You should go home."
"I'm-" she cleared her throat, it hadn't been used and had cracked, "I'm about to."
The assistant watched her back dubiously as she hunched over the large control panel. "She'll still be here in the morning, ma'am."
The blue-haired woman paused in her typing. Slowly she hung her head to stare at the desk portion of the panel. "I suppose you're right." She rustled some papers into her bag without much care, and stood.
Turning, she could only smile back at the assistant's scruffy face as he grinned to her encouragingly. With only one thing in mind - her nice warm bed at home - she sauntered past him, no further conversation necessary. Sometimes, that's the best way.

*

The next morning, it didn't take Natsuki very long to figure out that something wasn't right. She'd gotten in very late with the last of her things to the dorm room, and the other two occupants had already gone to sleep by then.
"Hey, Natsuki."
Mai's tone softened her response somewhat as she rolled over in bed, despite having been woken up early. "What is it?"
"Yesterday..." her red-haired friend paused a moment. "Did anything strange happen to you yesterday?"
Natsuki considered her options foggily, clinging slightly to a pillow and her back facing the other girls.
"I mean, while you were packing."
It was then that Natsuki realized very suddenly, in a clairvoyance that happens only to you when you're woken up far too early and with only a minimal amount of rest, that she didn't know what to think about what had happened yesterday. But that for one, she was damn sure she didn't want to talk about it just yet. She put the growl back into her voice that she normally had at this time of the day. "No. Why?"
Mai's breath paused for a moment. "No reason."
Then there came the sound of shuffling feet and eventually what sounded like the toilet being used. The familiar sounds started to calm the dark-haired girl down, and she began to fall back to sleep.
The alarm clock met its end no more than ten minutes later as Mikoto launched herself from the other bed as it went off, grabbing at Natsuki in a breath-stealing hug. She always kept the clock on her pillow by habit; she was not a morning person so the less she had to move at first, the better. However, the clock was not used to Mikoto, and Natsuki felt it was rather a sore loss as it flung into the wall with a sickening crack.
"MIKOTO!"

*

Saeko slept hardly any better than her daughter, though of course there was no way for her to know that. Folding up the futon in a brisk manner, she stopped in her kitchen long enough to heat up a cup of water for tea. She moved it purposefully into a travel mug from one of the cabinets and then reached into her tin of teabags.
A sound of disappointment followed shortly thereafter; she was out of tea. Upset, she clanged the empty tin against counter a couple of times before giving up. She'd have to order more, it seemed. British tea was so hard to get direct and the rush order would no doubt cost her.
Instead, the dark-haired woman poked quickly through her pantry to try finding some breakfast snack bars. Taking one out of the wrapper, she frowned irritably as she bit down. The things were rock-hard. /It just isn't my morning/, she thought. She tossed the remains of the bar into the trash absently as she passed, making her way down into the parking garage of her complex.
The sleek sports car, a Maserati Gran Sport, hummed to life softly, as it was meant to. The engine greeted her happily as she reversed out of the spot and tore down the garage roads. This was one of Saeko's few indulgences: she loved sports cars. The luxury suspension gripped tightly to the curves, giving her the ability to take turns at higher speeds with only a fraction of the vertigo. A single hand on the wheel wherever she could, the woman enjoyed the chilly spring breeze coming through the cracked driver side window.
The drive to work was normal for this time of day, that being very early. Hardly anyone was on the streets and, those that were, were too tired and sliding along in the slow lanes. Saeko just took enjoyment maneuvering around them, anyway. She reached work in probably what was considered record time.
Maybe they'll have fixed the cappuccino machine at least/, she considered idly as she passed the large stone slab that stated in a flat, bold font that this was a building property of Iwasaka Pharmaceuticals. /At least I'll have enough time to get some today. She snapped the nose of the vehicle snuggly in the first available spot, right by the employee entrance.
Bricks are naturally dangerous things to be hurled into your windshield from about 5 feet away. However, when backed by the power of an approximately twenty foot tall mechanical-spider beast, they're downright deadly. Saeko supposed later that getting off with three cracked ribs and a deep graze across her forehead was lucky; at least, her car wasn't nearly so lucky overall.
A deafening crash came as the building's wall broke apart, disturbing birds and small wildlife creatures from their homes in nearby trees. When Saeko could think clearly enough to breathe again, the dust had started to settle; a small cloud of fog mixed with the dirt, making the atmosphere choke-worthy to any normal human being. But no human stood in its midst - just something with six bright red eyes that were glowing. The Child made a distinctly metallic hissing noise as she comprehended her surroundings.
It was all Saeko could do to brace herself against the seat, one hand covering her eye and bleeding forehead as Julia leaped forward, fully intent upon crushing anything that got in her way. Including her.