Witch Hunter Robin

Fire and Rain

Chapter VI - When the Gunsmoke Settles

Rated : PG-13 for Mild Violence, Mild Profanity, and Mature Content

Summary : After the bout with Nobunaga, the STN-J is under review from Solomon Agent Saunders and his deputy, David Rica, but is there more to Rica than meets the eye? And what about Robin and Michael's continuing romance?

Disclaimer : I do not own Witch Hunter Robin® or any characters. They are registered Trade Mark™ of Sunrise® and now apparently Sci-Fi™. If I owned WHR it wouldn't have just been 26 episodes.

Nor do I own the song Fire and Rain ; I just borrowed its title.

Storyline, Plot, Joe Saunders©, Calypso© and David Rica© are all my property.

Author Notes :

^.^

Wow. Arigato!

Lots of reviews, I love it when I get lots of reviews! ^^

Oh, and I've been forgetting to mention this.

Just so you all know, if you've never read “ Time Off ” my other WHR story, you may think Robin and Michael are a bit . . . well . . . not themselves. But that's what makes it a good story, if the fact that they are, in fact, only human and they do have times when they break down and act like complete strangers, even to themselves.

It's all in the psychological thriller that is Fire and Rain .

^^

Oh and the Doujima/Sakaki stuff starts in this chapter, but you'll find their romance is more comical than Robin and Michael's.

-------------------

The sky was dark, and the bay waters had finally calmed. It was the oddest thing Takeru Tokomak had ever seen. The entire bay seamed to swell up with an evil force, like the very waters, the tears of the earth, were being controlled by some unseen force.

Then a Yacht had sunk. He had watched from the beach. He had locked up his little convenient store and was walking home in the moonlight down by the beach when he watched the great boat sink. It was like the waves around it grabbed it and squeezed it like a giant hand trying to kill a small animal.

And the boat had been killed.

Now Takeru was standing on the beach, his hand reached into his pocket and grabbed his cell phone. He was calling the police, but he paused. Was this a police matter?

Then he saw something move. His eyes widened as a man began to walk from out of the waves like something from a Sci-Fi movie. The man had trimmed dark hair, and pale skin. He wore an old navy jacket that stretched down to his knees.

”You okay buddy?”

The man looked up at Takeru and Takeru screamed. The man's eyes were . . . horrible. Gray and clouded, like the eyes of a carcass, a dead man. The eyes of death. The eyes of David Rica.

Rica smiled and his eyes flashed with an aqua shaded glow, then a great jet of water shot from out of no where, out of thin air, like a glassy stream of liquid from a hose. It hit Takeru in his mouth and he drowned there, on dry land, the same way Sarah Rhodes had done.

“I'm just fine.” Rica smiled as he reached down and picked up the man's cell phone. He quickly dialed a number and waited, after connecting with America, and then Louisiana, he finally reached the ringing phone of a one Doctor C. Calypso.

”Hello?” Came a cold drawing voice.

”Sir, the STN of Japan is gone. They are dead sir, every last one of them.”

“And their eyes?” The voice of Calypso asked with anticipation, almost like a child asking for candy.

”I'm afraid we couldn't get them.” Rica said timidly. “But we'll get Zaizen's.” He added quickly.

There was a pause.

“Very well. Take Zaizen's eyes and be back here by Friday.”

“Yes sir.”

“And . . . Peter? Did Amon suffer?”

Rica smiled into the phone. “Yes sir.”

”Good.”

----

“Robin.”

There was no response.

“Robin.”

Still the youth didn't stir.

“Robin.”

Finally the petite body of the young craft user began to move, and emerald eyes opened to see the blurry form of Amon standing over her. Her head was spinning and her body felt as if she'd been through a blender, the memories of the last few days, of Rica, and Michael, and the park, and the car chase, and her uncharacteristic worry and confession of love, it all came crashing back. She shot up into a sitting position and began to cough and choke, spitting water out onto her already drenched form.

“Michael, she's awake.”

From somewhere else Robin was aware that Michael had now appeared. He looked horrible, his face had new cuts and his already damaged right arm was no-doubt worse off. The bandages had come off and he was holding it at an odd angle. But it was his eyes that made Robin feel the worst. His eyes, no longer clouded by his sunglasses, showed the tired, horrific, expression that had been building for days.

Inside Robin's head it was as if two conflicting forces had appeared. Both of these forces were led by her, fighting on the great plain that was her own soul. One of the forces was her heart, which was shouting what any fifteen year old girl's heart would shout when they survived the brink of death and found the man they love. It told her to break down, to cry, to hug him, to do something.

Yet the other force was her mind. It was not the mind of a normal fifteen year old girl. It was the mind of Robin Sena, who had been taught discipline, and to keep a clear head in danger, and never to let her emotions get in the way of her job. It seamed her mind told her not to do these things. Not to break down.

It seamed these two forces were evenly matched, and right now her heart and brain were giving her a huge headache. She really would prefer just to slip back into darkness, let sleep take her, let herself fall away . . .

But she knew it was not sleep that threaten to take her, it was death.

“Robin, don't you die.”

Michael's voice sounded very far away. He was . . . different. He was unlike she had ever seen him before. His eyes filled with horror and tears and it seamed. His face floated before her. The fingers of death reached out and grabbed Robin's body, trying desperately to pull her away from life.

But she did not go.

Instead she opened her eyes once more and put her arms around Michael. She said nothing and she shed no tears, she just simply held him.

They had survived.

Then Robin remembered about Jeri Lee, Michael's favorite cousin.

She was not here.

She did not survive.

----

Sakaki, as chance would have it, was lying on the same stretch of beach that it seamed the rest of the STN was on. About three miles to his right was the bridge, and beneath it was the small patch of beach where Amon and Michael fought to wake Robin from her sleep.

And about a mile to his left was where Rica had killed the store owner and taken his cell phone. Of course, he could not see any of these things. He could barley see himself in the darkness. It was nighttime, and the rain had ceased at last. He was lying on his back staring at the stars.

His back.

It hurt him worse now that it ever did. And he felt as if his stitches on his waste had come undone. He was in horrible, shooting pain in his back and all he wanted to do was lie there on the beach and never move again.

But he did have to move. His eyes shot down to his right where, about a hundred yards away, lay Doujima. Her blonde hair was wet with both water and blood, and her face was covered in welts from Rica's vicious attack on her.

It felt like it took him years to reach Doujima's battered body, but in reality it was probably only a few minutes. He tried to walk, but he fell, after the third time falling face first into the dirt he decided to crawl to her.

When he finally reached her and looked down her saw that she was not moving, perhaps not even breathing. She was annoying, the worlds biggest baka, and she was undoubtedly the laziest person he'd ever met, but he didn't want her to die. His mind was racked, trying to think of something.

Then it hit him.

CPR.

Sakaki leaned down, ready to blow the life-giving air back into her lungs. His mouth was so close to her lips that it was hard to tell if they were touching or not. He began to revive her, or so he hoped, he prayed the CPR would work. Then he heard a quiet cough and saw her eyes open.

”Not even gonna buy me dinner?” Doujima's voice was weak and she broke into a coughing fit but even here in the middle of the worst possible situation they could be in, she could make jokes.

“You okay?” Sakaki asked.

“Do I look okay?” She snapped back.

“Yes, I'd say you like fine.”

”I'm ugly.” She sniffed.

Sakaki blinked. “What?”

”I'm ugly. He beat me with that pistol. Now my face is ugly.”

Sakaki didn't know whether to comfort her or to tell her off for worrying about her appearance at a time like this. In the end he decided comfort.

“No you're not.”

”Yes I am.”

”You are not.”

”I'm ugly.”

”You're beautiful.”

”You think so, Romeo?”

”Will you two stop flirting for one minute?“ Sakaki and Doujima both turned their heads to the right where Karasuma lay. Her legs were covered in blood from where the chandelier had smashed them. She wore a mingled expression of pain and anger. It had been hard for her to make it to land.

“We're not flirting.” Sakaki corrected.

”Yes we are .” Doujima smiled.

“We are?”

” I was flirting.”

”I thought I was comforting you.”

“So you just said that stuff to make me feel better?”

”Well, yeah.”

”So you really don't think I'm beautiful?”

”Gah -- well, no, I mean, yeah, I mean, I do , but-“

”Then we're flirting.”

“Enough.” Karasuma spat.

----

Zaizen was angry.

He couldn't contact a single member of his STN team. Michael's tracking device, which was implanted in the dog tag he wore around his neck, had stopped working after the shooting. In his daze after being shot and having to shoot his attacker, he had lost the tags. And as for the rest of the STN-J, their headsets were nothing but static.

Zaizen sat in his office, a Smith & Wesson revolver in his hand. He was alone at the Flat with no one but Kosaka and Saunders here. He had already warned Kosaka that something was going on, and neither of them trusted Saunders.

The sun was rising now and Zaizen was growing tired. He had barley slept in the days since Saunders and Rica arrived, and now he wasn't sleeping at all. With a sighed he stood up and walked away from his desk, slipping the revolver into his pocket. He knew he might need it.

Running down the steps he found Kosaka sitting at his desk, and Saunders sitting not far away. Still Saunders held an old cane in his hand and he was today wearing a horrible pearl suit that made him look devilish.

“Ah, Zaizen, there you are. Come sit down.”

”I'd rather not.” Zaizen said shortly, narrowing his eyes.

Saunders laughed. “What's wrong with you?”

Before Zaizen ever got a chance to answer what was wrong with him the ding of the elevator sounded, and David Rica walked inside. He was soaping wet from his head to his feet, but in his hand he held a gun. Not the nine millimeter he had carried before, this one was a Colt, the kind the guard down at the front door kept tucked in a compartment of his desk.

”Joseph, it's time.” He said at once, and before Kosaka or Zaizen could react he lifted the gun and fired a shot into Kosaka, who gave a grunt as he fell to the ground. Zaizen went for his S&W but Saunders was faster and smashed his walking cane into the back of Zaizen's head.

As blood clouded his vision Zaizen felt himself fall, and in the last fleeting moments of consciousness he could see the smug smile of David Rica.

----

Amon was quick on his feet. He knew that whoever it was who had attacked them at the park and continued to chase them on the bridge and kill Jeri was one of Calypso's, and he knew what that meant better than anyone. He had lead Michael and Robin into the alleyways of the city and taken them on a very long, very dark path of back roads and subway tunnels for the last few hours before dawn, at which point they made a break for Harry's.

Robin still had no information on who this Calypso was, but she had no chance to learn anything. Michael was broken up over his favorite cousin's demise and Amon was too busy making sure they weren't attacked again.

When at last, in the rising sunlight, they arrived at Harry's she wondered if it would be open, but a moment after they arrived outside the glass doors, Master Yuji Kobari appeared and opened the door quickly, letting them in before locking the doors behind them.

“Were you followed?” He asked Amon quietly.

”I don't think so. Any word from Zaizen?”

Master Yuji shook his head. “I tried to call his private line but there was no answer. Something is going on at the Flat Amon.”

Amon said nothing.

Half an hour later Robin found herself lying sprawled out in one of the booths. She was wearing an old kimono that Yuji had leant her, it belonged to a singer who had sung at Harry's about a year ago and forgot it. Robin was glad to have something dry to change into.

She was alone now. Yuji had tried to send Michael to a hospital, but he flat out refused. Instead he was had vanished off to some part of Harry's that Robin had never been to and was attempting to hack his way into the STN-J's computer banks. Every now and then she could hear him pound his fist in frustration. It was a tiring day, he had been thought many hardships, and he had only one usable hand and combined these things made him quite irritable.

We haven't talked about what happened.

Robin sighed and tried her best to move into a more comfortable position in the booth. She was confused and tired but really she felt left out. She hadn't felt this isolated from the others since she first arrived at Raven's Flat. Michael was busy hacking and she couldn't disturb him, and she had no clue where Amon and Master Yuji had vanished too.

Not long later, after Robin had given up any hopes of rest, (instead she just sat, lighting the candle on the table with her craft over and over again), she heard the sound of footsteps. Turning her petite head she saw Michael and smiled. He looked even worse than he had before, the cuts on his face had band-aids on them and he was now wearing some clothes that he had borrowed, though his arm still looked terrible, but he flashed a weak grin and sat down across from her.

”You okay?” He asked in a weak voice.

”I suppose.” She bit her lip. “Are you?”

Michael shook his head. “I will be, eventually.”

Robin nodded. She wanted so badly to ask him about what had happened before, or to ask him how the hacking was going, or to try to convince him to go to a doctor (his arm looked horrible) or to ask him who Calypso was, but instead she just sat there staring at him.

“He was a Witch Amon hunted about five years ago.” Michael suddenly said. Robin blinked. “Calypso.”

Robin nodded now, understanding. Michael could read her like a book, and he was much too tired and in much too bad a mood to talk about the romance that had transpired between them. Instead he decided to explain about Calypso.

“Calypso is a rare breed of Witch. A Necromancer.”

Robin blinked. She knew, of course, what a Necromancer was. A Witch with powers over the dead. She had hunted one once with the STN-J, he had been a doctor who used healthy patients to cure sick ones. He targeted drug lords and mobsters to save the lives of healthy people. She had watched him use his powers on himself to save his friend. (See TV show)

Again Michael could guess what she was thinking about. “Not like the guy we hunted a while ago. Calypso was a Pure Necromancer. He had the power to preserve the memories of people inside their eyes.”

Robin gasped. “Memories?”

Michael nodded. “Yeah, memories. He would cut the eyes from people who had died horrible deaths and then he would find other people, he'd kill them himself and use their body as a ‘vessel', usually a Witch. He'd implant the eyes and memories of the dead person into the vessel body and then use his craft to revive the body. They'd have all the skills and powers of the vessel body, but with the memories of the person who the eyes belonged to.”

Michael paused and shook his head.

”The new . . . thing, created with the eyes of one person and the body of another would be practically immortal. They still bleed, and feel pain, but they don't die. Their bodies can heal at an incredible rate. In order to really kill one of these hybrid creatures of Calypso you have to destroy their eyes. Anyway, about five years ago Calypso moved here, to Tokyo. Amon was just a rookie then, it was before my STN days, and anyway, Amon shot Calypso in the face.”

“Amon killed him?” Robin blinked. “But then . . .”

“Rica.” Michael explained. “Rica had a kidney surgery in 1997; my guess is that's when Calypso made him. Meaning that when Calypso was killed by Amon, Rica was still out there. Calypso must have added some of his Necromancer powers to all of his creations just in case he ever died. Rica must have found Calypso's body and made him into the same kind of creature that he had turned Rica into.”

Robin looked mortified. “That's horrible.”

Michael agreed. “Yeah, it is.”

They sat in silence, reflecting on this.

----

Amon looked over at Yuji. They were standing in a back room of Harry's, filled with restaurant supplies, wine bottles, and a old shelf in the back that turned out to be filled with guns.

”Thank you.” Amon said as took one of the Orbo Guns from the bottom rack of the shelf. Yuji shook his head.

“You know I'll always help you.”

Amon loaded a clip into the bottom of the gun and he tucked it away inside his coat, which was still damp from the river. He had changed into some clothes that Yuji had given him, but he still wore his old jacket.

”Amon, I think you should treat Raven's Flat as a hostile environment.” Yuji said wisely. “If Rica is one of Calypso's then he will go back there, and if he is there it will be dangerous.”

Amon sighed. “I know how to deal with Calypso.”

Yuji nodded. “Yes, I remember. You were just a rookie then.”

Amon said nothing.

“But do be careful.” Master Yuji urged. “Calypso will have improved in five years.”

Amon looked out the window, his eyes full of memories of that day. Of the shooting, of his near death. He shook away any doubts or fears that lingered. Calypso was darkness from his past, but he would not fear it.

”So have I.”