More nameless fic

[sakon76]

Shinku sipped at her tea. Nori’s tea was gradually improving under her tutelage and she had faith that the girl would someday turn out to be quite a good tea brewer. Jun’s tea, however, was bitter. He always oversteeped the leaves, no matter how carefully he thought he was timing them.

Shinku would never admit it, but despite its bitterness, she liked the tea Jun made for her the best. If Nori’s tea always had a gentle flavor to match her gentle nature, Jun’s was infused with the protectiveness that was a twin to his.

Neither flavor, though, was helping her come to a conclusion regarding Suigintou. She couldn’t just /find/ the other doll, not in the real world. She could wait in Suigintou’s N-field, but that had always been a precarious place at best, and with its mistress in such a distraught state of mind, now undoubtably dangerous.

Soiseiseki stood motionless at her side, waiting for Shinku to notice her. She set her cup down and turned her head slightly in acknowledgement.

“You’re thinking about finding her, aren’t you?” Soiseiseki asked. The boy doll had always been perceptive and to the point. But she was also highly intelligent. Shinku nodded. “Her N-field must have exit points too,” Soiseiseki continued calmly.

Shinku blinked.

Soiseiseki wasn’t just smart, Shinku conceded; the other doll was a /genius/.

“Thank you,” was all she said, with a small smile.

*

The fax machine, one of the few hints of any kind of personality in the rather spartan apartment, hummed quietly as it spat forth paper. Unfortunately, no one was there to receive it. The occupying trio, an onmyouji and two shinigami, had already left to seek a confrontation.

The neatly lined black kana and kanji, however, spelled out an answer to a question that had been asked earlier.

It was, in essence, “yes.”

*

Leaning back against a wall waiting for a target always made Subaru’s fingers vaguely itch for a cigarette. He’d given up the habit out of sheer stubborn mutiny when he realized after the fact how much of a clone of Seishirou he’d made himself into. He had loved Seishirou beyond all possible reason, both blindly and with eyes wide open, had been shaped by the man in more ways than he could name, had fit his life around the pain and omnipresent heartache. He still loved Seishirou; that would never, ever change. But there had come a moment of realization not too long after the end of the world that Seishirou was /dead/ and while his legacy continued, it didn’t need to be the sole defining factor in Subaru’s life.

So he’d stopped smoking.

It hadn’t been easy and there were always moments when he craved the drug in the cigarettes, but he didn’t need it, and he knew he didn’t need it, and when he was mindful, Subaru could deny his body anything it thought it wanted. Onmyouji trained in austerities and purification, and he had been undergoing the training since he could walk.

He turned his mind from the desire, sweeping his mind clear, concentrating on patience. The doctor would come sooner or later for his shift.

A shikigami perched in the branches above Subaru’s head. Another waited at a nurse’s station within the hospital, rendered invisible to those who didn’t have the training to see the spiritual construction, listening in case Muraki called in and avoided their three-pronged trap. Tsuzuki was tense, Subaru noted, and bad at hiding it. Kurosaki, however, seemed at ease, his eyes half closed against the brightness of the sun. To anyone else the three of them would seem acquaintances taking their time, conversing through the late afternoon at an outdoor cafe. But to Doctor Muraki....

Subaru suddenly wondered if Kurosaki’s presence was a good idea. The doctor would be able to sense his curse marks. They’d alert him that something was up. Even if he didn’t know about Subaru, he’d know at the least that Meifu had sent its agents after him. And that was compounded by the fact that they couldn’t let civilians be involved in this case. Silently, he considered if Meifu might not have just been better off sending the Sakurazukamori alone against the man... but, no, they knew he didn’t kill, the living were never assigned unsupervised missions by the shinigami divisions, his two partners had prior case experience with the target, and in Kurosaki’s case, the most definite right to be the one to reap the man’s soul.

If surprise was all that was lost by the additional firepower, the three of them would likely still have enough of an edge to win.

Above his head, the dove shinigami let out a soft call.

*

Smiling at the nurse, Muraki made a series of subtle gestures with his right hand, hidden from view by the edge of the nurse station and the folds of his coat. The shikigami behind her, an elegant creation of white feathers and blue crystals, gave a piercing shriek and exploded, unheard by the mortal ears of everyone but Kazutaka himself. He felt the presence of his doll not too far away and wondered if the shikigami had been one of Tsuzuki’s.

Really, he thought, accepting the clipboard the nurse handed him, it was all playing out too easily.

*

Subaru’s eyes widened as the shikigami saw their target, a silver-haired man in a white coat with a genial smile. As he looked the shikigami in the eye, Subaru felt the power grow near it and hastily murmured the words of a ward, reflecting the attack he knew was coming away from himself.

Next to him, Kurosaki hissed softly under his breath and pushed a long sleeve back. The marks of his curse, long wavering shapes like brush sweeps or tongues of flame, glowed bright red.

In an instant the shikigami exploded; Tsuzuki’s face grew pale; power rushed back blindly at Subaru; Kurosaki muttered something he didn’t hear; the power caught on the ward, held, rebounded; power reflected; Subaru watched its path; in the hospital, a few feet from the doctor, a water cooler shattered, spraying plastic and water everywhere; Subaru’s eyes narrowed.

He now had the bracket of his enemy.

Standing, Subaru pushed back his chair. “Shall we hunt, gentlemen?” he asked coolly, feeling the mental cloak of the Sakurazukamori sliding around him. He always needed to be mindful of his actions while in this frame of mind, he knew, but... somehow it was so easy, sometimes, to become the hunter.

Damn Seishirou and his mind games and his legacy anyway.

A note: I refer to Soiseiseki as "she" despite the fact that Soiseiseki is a /boy/ doll because he/she/it is referred to by the other dolls as Suiseiseki's "imouto"--younger /sister/, not brother. So maybe all dolls are inherently female. Or maybe Soiseiseki is a crossdresser. Or maybe all dolls are genderless so it doesn't matter anyway! ^_^