Still untitled new fic
Feb. 7th, 2006 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sakon76Le'sigh. Ended up with Yami no Matsuei in here after all because it fits the plot. But hey, I like Hisoka and Tsuzuki, so I guess I can be happy with them if not Muraki. Um, spoilers for Kyoto-hen. Also, episodes 8-9 of Ayatsuri Sakon. And a couple of notes: yes, y'all are not misreading one particular line, it is indeed a bag on the shinigami of Bleach who, at least at 20-some-odd episodes in haven't left the best of tastes in my mouth. Also, in the Character Book for Yami-Ei, there's a couple pages from Matsushita's sketchbook. The one on page 84 on the lower left has a note that "If Hisoka had become an adult, he'd probably be like this." Me-ow! (Just sayin'.) *evil laughter, fades into the bg*
Being in the historically unique position of being both the Sakurazukamori and simultaneously the head of the Sumeragi clan, Subaru was tightly bound to the wishes of two governments. The first, and more obvious, was the Japanese government. Both of his positions were bound, in their own ways, to maintaining peace and spiritual equilibrium in the land. It wasn't always easy, of course--the histories spoke of demon insurrections, onryou disturbing everyday life, and, in his own lifetime there had only been the possible end of the world. But he managed as well, Subaru thought, as any of his predecessors had. The other, vaugely more important, government to which both Sumeragi and Sakurazukamori were indentured was that of the afterlife. Fortunately for his schedule, the afterlife had its own agents take care of problems, and on the rare occasions that they were drastic enough to call him in, the mortal government tended to recognize the threat as well, and thus the clans got /paid/ for their work.
Subaru was scrupulous about keeping the Sumeragi and Sakurazuka incomes separately banked, especially on those occasions when both positions were contracted for their services. It happened, he had discovered, with a disturbing amount of frequency. The Japanese government had somehow never figured out that when the Sakurazukamori position was passed on in 1999, it was to the Sumeragi head. The afterlife, of course, had known from the beginning.
What all this essentially meant was that for the good of both clans, when the Japanese government beckoned, Subaru jumped, and when the demands of Meifu beckoned, he jumped faster.
Over the course of his active career as an onmyouji, Subaru had ended up working with several divisions of the afterlife's bureaucracy, ranging from the spirit detectives to the shinigami to the /other/ shinigami. Most frequently he found himself in the company of the first two, which was just as well--he found he had little use for the attitudes of the last, and they not much respect for anyone still living.
The department he enjoyed working with the most was unquestionably the shinigami of Tooucho. And somehow, somewhere, someone (he suspected Tatsumi) had figured out that he, Tsuzuki, and Kurosaki worked together very well, which was why Subaru was seldom surprised to find the pair turning up on either of his doorsteps, a mission brief in hand. All the shinigami of their department worked to cover Tokyo, but they were the pair routinely assigned to any case in which he was also active.
He blinked after opening his front door, then invited them in, going through the civilized rituals of house slippers and offering tea and snacks before saying anything. By the time they were all seated around the table with steaming cups in front of them, though, he could no longer contain his curiosity. "Kurosaki-san, do I want to ask?"
And Kurosaki, who, despite the fact that shinigami did not age, was now significantly taller and older than he had been the last time Subaru had seen him, almost a match for his partner in physical age, in fact, frowned and glared at his tea. "No."
"Blame Watari," Tsuzuki advised, slurping at his tea. And having met the shinigami scientist in question, that was all the information Subaru needed. He could picture it, sort of: the blond slipping something into a drink or some kind of food, getting Kurosaki to ingest it unawares....
"My sympathies," Subaru replied. "Is it permanent?"
"Hopefully not," Tsuzuki cheerfully answered, helping himself to a bun. He quailed, though, beneath the force of his partner's glare.
"The mission," Kurosaki said, returning his attention to Subaru. He slid a file folder across the table to Subaru, who picked it up and opened it. "The... sorceror... in question has long been involved in various activities forbidden by both the Japanese government and the afterlife. He's highly intelligent, absolutely psychotic, and very dangerous."
"A Hannibal Lechter?" Subaru inquired, having been forced to watch _The Silence of the Lambs_ not too long beforehand by Kaoruko.
"Other than a lack of cannibalistic tendancies," Kurosaki said, "yes."
"As far as we know," Tsuzuki muttered. His fingers picked his bun apart into pieces.
"Mmm." Subaru rapidly scanned the brief, then stopped, his eyes caught by one name.
He raised his eyes to Kurosaki's.
Kurosaki didn't look away. In his green eyes was a refusal to accept any pity that Subaru might direct at him.
Subaru paged through the rest of the file instead. "So why is he to be apprehended now?" he asked.
Tsuzuki smiled, but it was crooked and thin. "Because this is the first time we've managed to find him."
"We've always just tripped across him during other investigations before," Kurosaki explained. "Usually not to our advantage. And he has a talent for disappearing on us."
"Why am I being called in?" Subaru asked bluntly.
Kurosaki looked away, chin propped on one hand, fingers covering his mouth. Subaru respected that, how difficult this entire subject (person) must be for him. Tsuzuki took up the slack. "The last time we met up with him was in Kyoto," he said meditatively. "You heard about what happened at the university?"
"Yes." He'd been on business in Yokohama at the time, but the television stations had carried reports. There had also been a report from the Sumeragi estate which had contained a very different version of events from the news media's. For the Sakurazukamori there had been nothing. "You were involved."
"Four of us," Tsuzuki confirmed. "Two nearly died, and he got away again."
Subaru's eyes widened. He knew just how much power it would take to kill a shinigami. Someone that powerful, and not on the Japanese government's hit list? Either the Sakurazukamori had competition he didn't know about, or something else was going on. "How many died?"
"Eleven before we got there. Two more in front of us. Twenty-four in the fire," Kurosaki counted tonelessly.
"Who was with you?"
"Watari and Tatsumi-san."
Subaru nodded, understanding now why he'd been brought in. The shadow secretary was a formidable force, and Watari unquestionably brilliant (if eccentric), but neither of them had the battle expertise he did. Of course, neither did Kurosaki, but where any shinigami went, his partner followed. "I assume you'll be staying here, then?" he inquired.
"If it's not an inconvenience," Kurosaki deferred.
"Tatsumi's cut our budget again," Tsuzuki whimpered.
"Cut your sweets budget, you mean," Kurosaki argued.
Tsuzuki turned on the puppy eyes. "Hisoka, that's meeeeean!"
Subaru subverted a laugh into a cough, standing. "I'll get out the spare futons, then," he said, fleeing the bickering pair as best he could.
*
Sakon stood in front of an ordinary-looking residence, address paper in his hand. This was where the possessed doll had fled? But, sure enough, as he looked around he saw the white bird that was the Sumeragi's shikigami perched in a tree across the street, watching the house. It flew to him and landed on his open hand. It chirped a few notes that sounded suspiciously like Subaru's "Be careful. But you can handle this." from the previous night, echoing now in the back of Sakon's mind. The bird turned back into a slip of white paper with black markings and Sakon studied it for a moment, wondering absently if the Sumeragi intended him to learn about ofuda at some point.
"Well, nothin' for it," Ukon opined. "Shall we knock?"
"Yeah." Sakon tucked the ofuda into a pocket, and went to the door. Part of him was still doubting that something so as unusual as a cursed doll would flee to this very usual-looking house... maybe it was the home of the girl who had died? But part of him knew that the most ordinary exteriors could contain the most astounding interiors.
He rang the bell and waited, hoping someone was home. He couldn't quite see his way clear to breaking and entering to locate the doll, and he doubted the owner or police would either.
Fortunately, he didn't have to. A girl his own age, maybe a year younger, opened the door. Her brown hair was pulled into two ponytails, her eyes were a gentle brown behind large glasses, and she had a pleasant expression on her face. "Hello," she said, seeing the two of them. "Can I help you?
"We're lookin' for a doll who flew here last night," Ukon answered immediately. "Maybe you've seen her?"
The girl's eyes widened immediately and she obviously knew exactly who they were talking about. Sakon had no doubt on that score whatsoever. "She was causing trouble at a hospital," he explained. "We just want to make sure she doesn't hurt anyone else."
The girl was starting to edge the door shut, retreating behind it. "Well, I'm sure--that is, I don't know what you--"
"Nori," another voice demanded impatiently from behind her, "who is at the door?"
"Ah, Shinku-chan, that is..." the girl floundered helplessly, looking behind herself. Her angle of view, though, was strange. Either she was talking to a child, and that hadn't been a child's voice, or.... Sakon stepped to the right and felt his eyes widen.
A second doll, very obviously not the one from Subaru's description, but of the same height, stood in the hallway. She wore a red dress and bonnet, white stockings and black shoes even indoors. Her blonde hair was pulled up into two long ponytails, and her blue eyes shifted immediately to Sakon. The girl, Nori, glanced back and forth between them as he and Ukon sized the doll up, and she them. "Shinku-chan, this gentleman... gentlemen," she amended after a glance at Ukon, which immediately make Sakon up his estimation of either her intelligence or sensitivity, "were just asking about Suigintou-chan."
The doll's expression softened into a kind of sympathy. "They they'd better come in," she said, and turned around, disappearing into another room.
The girl looked helplessly back at Sakon and opened the door wider again. "Won't you please come in?" she asked weakly.
*
There turned out not to be just the two dolls in the house, Sakon discovered, but six. Three (Red, Blue, and Green he mentally dubbed them until he knew their names other than Shinku's) sat on the sofa watching an episode of "Detective Kun-Kun." Two more (Pink and Yellow) lay on their stomachs on the floor, drawing with crayons that seemed oversized in comparison to their small hands. And the last, the object of his quest, (Indigo, named Suigintou) sat at a table, looking unhappy and playing listlessly with a cup of tea. There was a dark-haired boy at the table as well, unmistakeably the girl's sister, younger than her by a year or two. Behind his glasses brown eyes were steady on Sakon and he was tense, ready to fight. Sakon looked at the gold and silver band on the ring finger of the boy's left hand and saw the threads that connected him to the red-clad doll. "You're bound to her, aren't you?" he asked quietly, nodding in the direction of the sofa.
The boy jumped at being addressed. "What--how do you know that?"
"Here, some tea." Nori set two fresh cups down, one in front of Sakon, one in front of Ukon. Sakon looked at the tea, his eyes narrowing as he realized the implications of the automatic action as well as the cup in front of Suigintou.
These dolls not only walked and talked freely without a handler, but apparently flew and also /ate/. At what point, he wondered, did they cease being classified as "dolls" and start being "humans"?
"Thanks," Ukon told the girl, pushing the cup away, "but I don't drink."
"Oh, my," she said, picking the cup back up. "I'm sorry. I thought--"
"Ukon is a different kind of doll, I think," Sakon told her with a small smile to set her at ease. He looked back at the boy. "I'm a medium," he explained. "I can see the power lines between you and her, and they focus through your ring."
Suigintou, he noticed, twitched at the word "medium."
Nori returned to the table and seated herself. "We should have introduced ourselves," she said apologetically. "I'm Sakurada Nori. This is my brother Jun, and those are Shinku, Soiseiseki, Suiseiseki, Hinaichigo, Kanaria, and Suiginto, of course." She gestured at each doll in turn.
"I'm Ukon," Ukon introduced himself. "And this is my useless partner, Tachibana Sakon." He patted Sakon's cheek. Sakon let him. "We were asked to come here by the guy that's teachin' this guy magic."
Suigintou's eyes flew wide open. "That /magician/?" she spat.
Sakon nodded. "Sumeragi-sensei was concerned about you," he said, and wondered if Subaru had misinterpreted the doll's nature. Because Sakon didn't think she was a possessed doll at all, but something else. But even if his teacher /had/ realized what Suigintou was, he hadn't misjudged Sakon's interest in the least.
"Why should he care?" the doll demanded. "He made me leave Meg's room!"
"That girl was your friend?" Ukon inquired, a little too casually, leaning back.
"She was her medium," Shinku said from beside Suigintou. She climbed up onto a chair. "Nori, some tea, please."
"Of course." Nori jumped up to fill the request. Shinku, Sakon noticed, had her own special teacup.
Her blue eyes studied Sakon and Ukon. "The two of you seem to have some knowledge of magical matters, but you don't seem to know what a medium is to us."
"Very sorry, babe, but we've never met dolls like you before," Ukon said cheekily.
"Ukon!" Sakon remonstrated, horrified.
The doll's eyes flashed. She didn't say anything, but when she resumed speaking, her remarks were very clearly addressed to Sakon alone. "We are called Rozen Maidens in honor of our father, Rozen. He was a great dollmaker." Her porcelain skin blushed faintly in a clear case of father-hero-worship. "To each of us he gave a power to protect ourself, and the ability to form a bond with a human, called a 'medium,' to draw strength from in battle and to protect us in daily life." Nori set her cup back down before her and Shinku drew a delicate sip before continuing. "Our mediums, however, are more than merely protectors and power sources. They are our... friends." She looked softly at Jun and he smiled back. Then she looked at Sakon again and her expression hardened. "The loss of a medium is no small thing."
Sakon nodded in understanding. "I don't believe Sumeragi-sensei intended you any harm," he addressed Suigintou softly, "but you had hurt patients and nurses in the hospital and it couldn't be allowed to continue."
"What?" the green-clad doll, Suiseiseki, demanded of Suigintou. "How could you, Suigintou? That was very bad manners!" She turned her back on the other doll.
"Suiseiseki," her twin said admonishingly.
"Well, it is!" she declared unrepentant.
"They wouldn't leave me alone," Suigintou said brokenly. She looked up at Sakon and her eyes were wide and pleading. It tugged at his heartstrings, but memories of murderers with that same expression stayed his full sympathy. "I just wanted to be left alone in Meg's room."
"I understand," her said, and Ukon was uncharacteristically quiet, trusting Sakon to deal with the serious words this somehow fragile doll needed to hear. "But, Suigintou-san, that wasn't really Meg-san's room, was it? It belonged to the hospital."
"It was the only room I knew her in," the doll said quietly, and somehow that conveyed the pain of her situation more clearly than anything else had. She'd only known the girl after she'd already been admitted into the hospital to die?
"I'm sorry," Sakon said quietly.
"Humans die," Suigintou replied, looking away. "They all do. It's what they're made for."
"Suigintou!" It was Soiseiseki who remonstrated her now, anger flashing across the boy doll's face.
Ukon placed a gentle hand on Sakon's face. He looked at his partner, startled. Ukon regarded him steadily, and Sakon realized what his partner was thinking. He was human, and mortal, and Ukon was not. The child-puppet would continue on after Sakon was gone, and there was no guarantee that there would be another who could channel Ukon's spirit.
But at the same time, Sakon remembered when he had once believed Ukon destroyed in a fire. There was, in the end, no guarantee for either of them, which was perhaps the way it should be. Equal partners to the end. Sakon managed a smile for Ukon. "It's all right," he reassured his best friend.
Being in the historically unique position of being both the Sakurazukamori and simultaneously the head of the Sumeragi clan, Subaru was tightly bound to the wishes of two governments. The first, and more obvious, was the Japanese government. Both of his positions were bound, in their own ways, to maintaining peace and spiritual equilibrium in the land. It wasn't always easy, of course--the histories spoke of demon insurrections, onryou disturbing everyday life, and, in his own lifetime there had only been the possible end of the world. But he managed as well, Subaru thought, as any of his predecessors had. The other, vaugely more important, government to which both Sumeragi and Sakurazukamori were indentured was that of the afterlife. Fortunately for his schedule, the afterlife had its own agents take care of problems, and on the rare occasions that they were drastic enough to call him in, the mortal government tended to recognize the threat as well, and thus the clans got /paid/ for their work.
Subaru was scrupulous about keeping the Sumeragi and Sakurazuka incomes separately banked, especially on those occasions when both positions were contracted for their services. It happened, he had discovered, with a disturbing amount of frequency. The Japanese government had somehow never figured out that when the Sakurazukamori position was passed on in 1999, it was to the Sumeragi head. The afterlife, of course, had known from the beginning.
What all this essentially meant was that for the good of both clans, when the Japanese government beckoned, Subaru jumped, and when the demands of Meifu beckoned, he jumped faster.
Over the course of his active career as an onmyouji, Subaru had ended up working with several divisions of the afterlife's bureaucracy, ranging from the spirit detectives to the shinigami to the /other/ shinigami. Most frequently he found himself in the company of the first two, which was just as well--he found he had little use for the attitudes of the last, and they not much respect for anyone still living.
The department he enjoyed working with the most was unquestionably the shinigami of Tooucho. And somehow, somewhere, someone (he suspected Tatsumi) had figured out that he, Tsuzuki, and Kurosaki worked together very well, which was why Subaru was seldom surprised to find the pair turning up on either of his doorsteps, a mission brief in hand. All the shinigami of their department worked to cover Tokyo, but they were the pair routinely assigned to any case in which he was also active.
He blinked after opening his front door, then invited them in, going through the civilized rituals of house slippers and offering tea and snacks before saying anything. By the time they were all seated around the table with steaming cups in front of them, though, he could no longer contain his curiosity. "Kurosaki-san, do I want to ask?"
And Kurosaki, who, despite the fact that shinigami did not age, was now significantly taller and older than he had been the last time Subaru had seen him, almost a match for his partner in physical age, in fact, frowned and glared at his tea. "No."
"Blame Watari," Tsuzuki advised, slurping at his tea. And having met the shinigami scientist in question, that was all the information Subaru needed. He could picture it, sort of: the blond slipping something into a drink or some kind of food, getting Kurosaki to ingest it unawares....
"My sympathies," Subaru replied. "Is it permanent?"
"Hopefully not," Tsuzuki cheerfully answered, helping himself to a bun. He quailed, though, beneath the force of his partner's glare.
"The mission," Kurosaki said, returning his attention to Subaru. He slid a file folder across the table to Subaru, who picked it up and opened it. "The... sorceror... in question has long been involved in various activities forbidden by both the Japanese government and the afterlife. He's highly intelligent, absolutely psychotic, and very dangerous."
"A Hannibal Lechter?" Subaru inquired, having been forced to watch _The Silence of the Lambs_ not too long beforehand by Kaoruko.
"Other than a lack of cannibalistic tendancies," Kurosaki said, "yes."
"As far as we know," Tsuzuki muttered. His fingers picked his bun apart into pieces.
"Mmm." Subaru rapidly scanned the brief, then stopped, his eyes caught by one name.
He raised his eyes to Kurosaki's.
Kurosaki didn't look away. In his green eyes was a refusal to accept any pity that Subaru might direct at him.
Subaru paged through the rest of the file instead. "So why is he to be apprehended now?" he asked.
Tsuzuki smiled, but it was crooked and thin. "Because this is the first time we've managed to find him."
"We've always just tripped across him during other investigations before," Kurosaki explained. "Usually not to our advantage. And he has a talent for disappearing on us."
"Why am I being called in?" Subaru asked bluntly.
Kurosaki looked away, chin propped on one hand, fingers covering his mouth. Subaru respected that, how difficult this entire subject (person) must be for him. Tsuzuki took up the slack. "The last time we met up with him was in Kyoto," he said meditatively. "You heard about what happened at the university?"
"Yes." He'd been on business in Yokohama at the time, but the television stations had carried reports. There had also been a report from the Sumeragi estate which had contained a very different version of events from the news media's. For the Sakurazukamori there had been nothing. "You were involved."
"Four of us," Tsuzuki confirmed. "Two nearly died, and he got away again."
Subaru's eyes widened. He knew just how much power it would take to kill a shinigami. Someone that powerful, and not on the Japanese government's hit list? Either the Sakurazukamori had competition he didn't know about, or something else was going on. "How many died?"
"Eleven before we got there. Two more in front of us. Twenty-four in the fire," Kurosaki counted tonelessly.
"Who was with you?"
"Watari and Tatsumi-san."
Subaru nodded, understanding now why he'd been brought in. The shadow secretary was a formidable force, and Watari unquestionably brilliant (if eccentric), but neither of them had the battle expertise he did. Of course, neither did Kurosaki, but where any shinigami went, his partner followed. "I assume you'll be staying here, then?" he inquired.
"If it's not an inconvenience," Kurosaki deferred.
"Tatsumi's cut our budget again," Tsuzuki whimpered.
"Cut your sweets budget, you mean," Kurosaki argued.
Tsuzuki turned on the puppy eyes. "Hisoka, that's meeeeean!"
Subaru subverted a laugh into a cough, standing. "I'll get out the spare futons, then," he said, fleeing the bickering pair as best he could.
Sakon stood in front of an ordinary-looking residence, address paper in his hand. This was where the possessed doll had fled? But, sure enough, as he looked around he saw the white bird that was the Sumeragi's shikigami perched in a tree across the street, watching the house. It flew to him and landed on his open hand. It chirped a few notes that sounded suspiciously like Subaru's "Be careful. But you can handle this." from the previous night, echoing now in the back of Sakon's mind. The bird turned back into a slip of white paper with black markings and Sakon studied it for a moment, wondering absently if the Sumeragi intended him to learn about ofuda at some point.
"Well, nothin' for it," Ukon opined. "Shall we knock?"
"Yeah." Sakon tucked the ofuda into a pocket, and went to the door. Part of him was still doubting that something so as unusual as a cursed doll would flee to this very usual-looking house... maybe it was the home of the girl who had died? But part of him knew that the most ordinary exteriors could contain the most astounding interiors.
He rang the bell and waited, hoping someone was home. He couldn't quite see his way clear to breaking and entering to locate the doll, and he doubted the owner or police would either.
Fortunately, he didn't have to. A girl his own age, maybe a year younger, opened the door. Her brown hair was pulled into two ponytails, her eyes were a gentle brown behind large glasses, and she had a pleasant expression on her face. "Hello," she said, seeing the two of them. "Can I help you?
"We're lookin' for a doll who flew here last night," Ukon answered immediately. "Maybe you've seen her?"
The girl's eyes widened immediately and she obviously knew exactly who they were talking about. Sakon had no doubt on that score whatsoever. "She was causing trouble at a hospital," he explained. "We just want to make sure she doesn't hurt anyone else."
The girl was starting to edge the door shut, retreating behind it. "Well, I'm sure--that is, I don't know what you--"
"Nori," another voice demanded impatiently from behind her, "who is at the door?"
"Ah, Shinku-chan, that is..." the girl floundered helplessly, looking behind herself. Her angle of view, though, was strange. Either she was talking to a child, and that hadn't been a child's voice, or.... Sakon stepped to the right and felt his eyes widen.
A second doll, very obviously not the one from Subaru's description, but of the same height, stood in the hallway. She wore a red dress and bonnet, white stockings and black shoes even indoors. Her blonde hair was pulled up into two long ponytails, and her blue eyes shifted immediately to Sakon. The girl, Nori, glanced back and forth between them as he and Ukon sized the doll up, and she them. "Shinku-chan, this gentleman... gentlemen," she amended after a glance at Ukon, which immediately make Sakon up his estimation of either her intelligence or sensitivity, "were just asking about Suigintou-chan."
The doll's expression softened into a kind of sympathy. "They they'd better come in," she said, and turned around, disappearing into another room.
The girl looked helplessly back at Sakon and opened the door wider again. "Won't you please come in?" she asked weakly.
There turned out not to be just the two dolls in the house, Sakon discovered, but six. Three (Red, Blue, and Green he mentally dubbed them until he knew their names other than Shinku's) sat on the sofa watching an episode of "Detective Kun-Kun." Two more (Pink and Yellow) lay on their stomachs on the floor, drawing with crayons that seemed oversized in comparison to their small hands. And the last, the object of his quest, (Indigo, named Suigintou) sat at a table, looking unhappy and playing listlessly with a cup of tea. There was a dark-haired boy at the table as well, unmistakeably the girl's sister, younger than her by a year or two. Behind his glasses brown eyes were steady on Sakon and he was tense, ready to fight. Sakon looked at the gold and silver band on the ring finger of the boy's left hand and saw the threads that connected him to the red-clad doll. "You're bound to her, aren't you?" he asked quietly, nodding in the direction of the sofa.
The boy jumped at being addressed. "What--how do you know that?"
"Here, some tea." Nori set two fresh cups down, one in front of Sakon, one in front of Ukon. Sakon looked at the tea, his eyes narrowing as he realized the implications of the automatic action as well as the cup in front of Suigintou.
These dolls not only walked and talked freely without a handler, but apparently flew and also /ate/. At what point, he wondered, did they cease being classified as "dolls" and start being "humans"?
"Thanks," Ukon told the girl, pushing the cup away, "but I don't drink."
"Oh, my," she said, picking the cup back up. "I'm sorry. I thought--"
"Ukon is a different kind of doll, I think," Sakon told her with a small smile to set her at ease. He looked back at the boy. "I'm a medium," he explained. "I can see the power lines between you and her, and they focus through your ring."
Suigintou, he noticed, twitched at the word "medium."
Nori returned to the table and seated herself. "We should have introduced ourselves," she said apologetically. "I'm Sakurada Nori. This is my brother Jun, and those are Shinku, Soiseiseki, Suiseiseki, Hinaichigo, Kanaria, and Suiginto, of course." She gestured at each doll in turn.
"I'm Ukon," Ukon introduced himself. "And this is my useless partner, Tachibana Sakon." He patted Sakon's cheek. Sakon let him. "We were asked to come here by the guy that's teachin' this guy magic."
Suigintou's eyes flew wide open. "That /magician/?" she spat.
Sakon nodded. "Sumeragi-sensei was concerned about you," he said, and wondered if Subaru had misinterpreted the doll's nature. Because Sakon didn't think she was a possessed doll at all, but something else. But even if his teacher /had/ realized what Suigintou was, he hadn't misjudged Sakon's interest in the least.
"Why should he care?" the doll demanded. "He made me leave Meg's room!"
"That girl was your friend?" Ukon inquired, a little too casually, leaning back.
"She was her medium," Shinku said from beside Suigintou. She climbed up onto a chair. "Nori, some tea, please."
"Of course." Nori jumped up to fill the request. Shinku, Sakon noticed, had her own special teacup.
Her blue eyes studied Sakon and Ukon. "The two of you seem to have some knowledge of magical matters, but you don't seem to know what a medium is to us."
"Very sorry, babe, but we've never met dolls like you before," Ukon said cheekily.
"Ukon!" Sakon remonstrated, horrified.
The doll's eyes flashed. She didn't say anything, but when she resumed speaking, her remarks were very clearly addressed to Sakon alone. "We are called Rozen Maidens in honor of our father, Rozen. He was a great dollmaker." Her porcelain skin blushed faintly in a clear case of father-hero-worship. "To each of us he gave a power to protect ourself, and the ability to form a bond with a human, called a 'medium,' to draw strength from in battle and to protect us in daily life." Nori set her cup back down before her and Shinku drew a delicate sip before continuing. "Our mediums, however, are more than merely protectors and power sources. They are our... friends." She looked softly at Jun and he smiled back. Then she looked at Sakon again and her expression hardened. "The loss of a medium is no small thing."
Sakon nodded in understanding. "I don't believe Sumeragi-sensei intended you any harm," he addressed Suigintou softly, "but you had hurt patients and nurses in the hospital and it couldn't be allowed to continue."
"What?" the green-clad doll, Suiseiseki, demanded of Suigintou. "How could you, Suigintou? That was very bad manners!" She turned her back on the other doll.
"Suiseiseki," her twin said admonishingly.
"Well, it is!" she declared unrepentant.
"They wouldn't leave me alone," Suigintou said brokenly. She looked up at Sakon and her eyes were wide and pleading. It tugged at his heartstrings, but memories of murderers with that same expression stayed his full sympathy. "I just wanted to be left alone in Meg's room."
"I understand," her said, and Ukon was uncharacteristically quiet, trusting Sakon to deal with the serious words this somehow fragile doll needed to hear. "But, Suigintou-san, that wasn't really Meg-san's room, was it? It belonged to the hospital."
"It was the only room I knew her in," the doll said quietly, and somehow that conveyed the pain of her situation more clearly than anything else had. She'd only known the girl after she'd already been admitted into the hospital to die?
"I'm sorry," Sakon said quietly.
"Humans die," Suigintou replied, looking away. "They all do. It's what they're made for."
"Suigintou!" It was Soiseiseki who remonstrated her now, anger flashing across the boy doll's face.
Ukon placed a gentle hand on Sakon's face. He looked at his partner, startled. Ukon regarded him steadily, and Sakon realized what his partner was thinking. He was human, and mortal, and Ukon was not. The child-puppet would continue on after Sakon was gone, and there was no guarantee that there would be another who could channel Ukon's spirit.
But at the same time, Sakon remembered when he had once believed Ukon destroyed in a fire. There was, in the end, no guarantee for either of them, which was perhaps the way it should be. Equal partners to the end. Sakon managed a smile for Ukon. "It's all right," he reassured his best friend.
