Witness. A bystander. Someone who can only watch as something horrible happens to her dearest friend.
The fear and the guilt shot through Arisa like a black, clawing shadow. And she reacted the same way that she always did to feelings like those.
She got mad.
Like hell I'm going to just stand by! Adrenaline galvanized her, urgency and emotion helping her to shake off the lingering effects of the shock or at least force her body past them. She forced herself to her hands and knees, then yanked out her mobile phone and snapped off as many pictures of the van as she could manage. She got to her feet and wobbled towards her motorcycle, her stride getting steadier with every step. Meanwhile she pulled up the address book on her phone and dialed.
"Tsukimura residence," a well-modulated voice answered on the second ring,
"Noel? This is Arisa Bannings. Suzuka's been kidnapped from the school parking lot!"
"When?" Noel didn't waste time on protests or babble; the Tsukimura household's senior maid was kind but above all efficient, naturally enough.
"Just now. Three guys in a burgundy Toyota minivan...no, four guys, with the driver." She glanced around even as she was freeing the bike from its spot. "Maybe a lookout in a cream Nissan; he's gone now. I'm mailing you the photo of the car. Look; I've gotta go," she added, fishing the key out and putting it in the ignition. "I'm going after them. Call you if I find out anything."
Forget the helmet, she thought.
I won't be able to use my phone if I'm wearing it. Arisa sent the e-mail in a manner of seconds, swung her leg over the Yamaha, and stuffed the phone away in her blazer pocket.
Some people would have called the police instead of the victim's home in that circumstance. Arisa knew better. If anything, the Bannings family was even wealthier than the Tsukimuras. While Arisa didn't
think she'd gotten a swelled head over her money (hanging around with girls who were genuine magicians helped with that a
lot--simple cash, and that earned by somebody else at that, wasn't anything special in comparison to what her friends were), she did understand the realities of being a member of the Bannings family. Depending on the identities and motives of Suzuka's kidnappers, the Tsukimuras might not want police involvement. The law might just get in the way of Suzuka's safe return.
Arisa was in luck, though. Gunning the Yamaha down the school drive, she caught up enough to see the minivan making a right turn up ahead. Running a red light, she lanced through traffic and got to the corner before the kidnappers had time to turn again. The mud-spattered license plate was distinctive to someone looking for it specifically, and the driver was cautiously obeying the traffic laws like a normal car, not tearing away from the scene of the crime as if they were in an action movie.
Since she had them in sight, Arisa backed off on her own chase-scene antics and throttled down. She was following, after all, to see where they took Suzuka, not to rush in and stage a rescue.
Why isn't Nanoha here? she wanted to scream. Of all the times when it might have been genuinely useful to have a real mage as a friend, she had to be somewhere off-dimension! Arisa regretted the thought almost at once. Knowing Nanoha, she'd be ripping her heart out over not being able to help once she found out, even though it wasn't her fault at all.
The real problem wasn't that Nanoha wasn't here. It was that Arisa, who was here, couldn't do anything. She couldn't rush in to the rescue. All she could do was follow, watch, and hope they didn't spot her.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Suzuka thrashed desperately against the men's arms, but the struggles were weakening; she was unable to keep two of them from getting her up onto a metal table. The back of the van looked more like an ambulance, the table surrounded by a variety of medical equipment.
"I thought that stuff was supposed to knock her out!" one of the kidnappers grunted.
"You let her yank her arm away, Yoshikawa," snapped the one who'd had the needle. "She only got about half the dose."
"Get her strapped down, blast it!" barked the third man, who'd been the one with the stun-gun.
"Hey, give me a hand, Kanzaki."
They forced Suzuka's arm down and yanked a heavy leather strap around it, slamming the tongue into the buckle. The girl's cries and grunts, the way she twisted and tugged at them was more like a wounded animal than a person, but they managed to overcome her efforts and get her other arm down and strapped in as well.
For God's sake, you guys, can't you control one teenaged girl?" shouted the driver.
"You want to come back here and help?" Kanzaki barked. "No? Then just shut up and drive. Takuma, did Tengu give you another dose of the drug?"
Takuma nodded.
"Yea, there's enough for a second shot."
"Well, do it then!"
The buckles rattled against the metal tabletop as Suzuka pulled on the straps, mindlessly yanking on them while her hands drummed frantically.
"Amida!" Yoshikawa breathed. "What's it
doing to her?" He wasn't a man who was easily disturbed or shaken--he'd gone along with the kidnapping assignment without a qualm, as he had all the other acts in his twisted past--but what the drug had done to the violet-haired girl scared him. "Takuma?"
Takuma, who'd actually been a registered nurse before being caught stealing drugs from the hospital pharmacy for resale, fished through the cabinets for a hypodermic needle.
"The way Tengu explained it, it basically assaults her body chemistry and beats it into submission until she falls unconscious."
"No wonder she was screaming like that."
Having found the syringe, Takuma fished out a small black case from his inside coat pocket and took from it a vial half-full of a viscous amber fluid. He jammed the needle through the cap and withdrew the plunger, filling the syringe.
Suzuka growled, hissing like a cat and redoubled her struggled. Her leg flailed wildly, her knee catching Kanzaki in the side. He reeled away, crashing into a bank of machines.
"Grab her, will you? At least until I can get this shot into her!"
Takuma neared her with the needle upraised.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Talking on a cell phone over the rush of the wind, the sounds of the road, and above all the purr of the Yamaha's engine was next to impossible; Arisa could barely hear the ring on the other end.
"Tsukimura residence."
"Noel?"
"I'm afraid that she's unavailable--is this Arisa-san?"
"Yes."
"Ah! This is Falin." That was Noel's younger sister, also a maid for the Tsukimuras. "Noel has gone out in the car, hoping that you would call."
"Hey, finally some good news. They've gone out on the oceanfront road heading southwest so she should actually meet us coming the other way." The curving route was one of the more scenic drives in Uminari City, but didn't get a lot of traffic because the main highway offered a direct shot into the downtown core. That was both a blessing and a curse, since there were fewer people around to interfere, but it would be all that much simpler to spot Arisa following since there was no traffic to blend into. And if any of the kidnappers happened to look out the back windows and see that the girl following them was the same one that they'd had to beat off while kidnapping Suzuka, that...yeah, that would be bad.
"I'll relay the information to Noel. Please keep in touch with any more information, Arisa-san. I'll stay right by the phone so I'll be ready if you need anything."
"Yeah. Thanks, Falin."
Arisa put the phone away and slowed down a bit, opening up some distance from the kidnappers. There weren't any turnoffs for a while, so she wouldn't lose them, and this way she'd be less likely to be spotted. She still wasn't sure what good she'd be able to do, even with Noel and other employees of Suzuka's family in tow, but she darn well was going to keep on trying.
It bothered her, though. The weapons, the drugs, the men's appearance all implied "pro," and yet they hadn't seen her following as she'd expect experienced criminals being followed by an amateur to do. Was it some kind of trap, or was there something else going on?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
If she'd been inside the Toyota, Arisa would have known that there was no way the kidnappers would have been devoting any attention to anything going on outside the vehicle. Even half-drugged and restrained, Suzuka fought back like a wildcat, occupying all three of them in the attempt to keep her under control and diverting far too much of the driver's attention from what he was doing to be looking in his mirrors for a girl on a motorcycle that he hadn't gotten a look at anyway.
Takuma's approach with the syringe proved to be the tipping point. Suzuka caught sight of the needle and the wounded animal recognized what had injured it. She screamed with feral rage and redoubled her efforts, legs thrashing while she tore at her bindings. There was a shrill whine as a flange bent under the table, but it was the leather that gave way, ripping out around the heavy bolts that had kept it fastened. Suzuka's hand shot up, grabbed Takuma's arm as he reached for her, and wrenched it viciously so that the bones in his forearm snapped audibly. Howling in pain, he dropped the syringe as Suzuka yanked him over into Kanzaki.
"What the hell?"
"Get the syringe!"
"Stop her before she--"
Yoshikawa was cut off as a foot slammed into his ribcage, knocking him sprawling back against the rear doors. Kanzaki fought for balance and came up with his stun-gun again while Takuma dropped to the floor. Kanzaki thrust the stun-gun at Suzuka; she shuddered as it jolted her again. His face was a mask of hate; somewhere along the line her steady resistance had changed the job from a professional one, a business matter, to something personal. Anger burned in his eyes, the desire to hurt her just for its own sake.
She could see it in his expression, the naked threat there, and she raked her nails across his eyes. Blood spattered and he screamed, reeling away and tripping as he staggered away so that he tumbled into the front seat, slamming against the driver. The van swerved, grinding up against the guardrail.
Suzuka tore her other arm free of the straps.
"Keep away!" Yoshikawa babbled. "Don't touch me, you monster!" Whatever he saw in her face terrified him; he yanked out his gun and fired, the bullet punching through Suzuka's abdomen. The sudden pain left her unable to keep her balance in the lurching car; she fell off the table, nearly onto Takuma.
The driver pushed at the thrashing, wounded man in his lap.
"Damn it, get off me or we're going to wreck!"
Kanzaki flailed desperately. Blood was running into his eyes, blinding him, and he wasn't really sure of what was happening. He thrashed like a landed fish in the driver's lap, trying to regain his balance, and ended up jabbing the stun-gun he barely knew he was holding into the other man.
That finished it.
The van fishtailed completely out of control. A tire blew from the sudden stress, having already been scraped down by the guardrail. The Toyota spun across the thankfully empty lanes of traffic. Yoshikawa was flung wildly aside; his head struck a jutting corner of one of the machines and he went out. His body crashed into the back doors and they were flung open; he tumbled out onto the street, hitting the pavement and rolling several times before flopping to a halt. The van hit the rock wall on the street side opposite the sea at an odd angle, a corner catching and scraping, and then it teetered and flipped before it hit the wall again going into a curve and came to a sudden, final stop.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Arisa gunned the engine as she saw the wreck play out in front of her. She had no idea what had caused it, but the sudden fright drove out any logical ideas of hanging back or being aware of her own limits.
Suzuka! She just reacted, closing in quickly, dodging around the body of the man who'd fallen out the back. She saw the van crash into the rocks, first the nose, then swinging around so that the undercarriage crushed into stone. A metal table on wheels tumbled out, and a man's body ended up with both legs hanging macabrely over the edge of the door.
Arisa only peripherally noticed these things as she stopped the bike and hopped off. What caught her attention was the violet-haired girl in school uniform that had been flung out after the first man but before the impact.
"Suzuka! Suzuka!" she shouted as she ran over.
Is she all right? Does she need an ambulance? How long will it take Noel to get here?
Impossibly, the girl seemed to be moving. At first she just twitched, but then she actually rolled over and began to sit up.
"Suzuka, don't move; you could be hurt! Oh, God, you
are hurt--all that blood!" Arisa babbled as she caught sight of the red-soaked shirt over her belly. "Hold on, I'll call for an ambulance, and Noel's already on her way. Just hold on!" She dropped to her knees next to her friend and reached into her pocket for her phone.
Suzuka grabbed her wrist.
"Suzuka?"
A rasping, gurgling noise rose from the back of Suzuka's throat, like an unnatural mating of a hiss and a growl.
"Ow! That hurts!" Though injured, her grip was like a steel vise on Arisa's arm. Arisa turned to see what was going on and recoiled in shock. The eyes that stared at her weren't their usual violet, but a glowing red, their pupils having resolved themselves into vertical slits like a cat's. Arisa could feel nails like claws digging into her skin, and she flinched back nervously.
"Suzuka, what are you doing? Get a hold of youself!"
When Suzuka leaned in towards her, the grip on her arm keeping Arisa from running away, the injured girl's mouth opened and Arisa could see canines elongated into twice their usual length, Suzuka's neat, perfect teeth turned into needlelike fangs.
"Suzuka, wait! It's me, Arisa! Don't do this!"
Gasoline fumes from the van's ruptured tank tickled her nose as Suzuka leaned in and nuzzled at her neck, working her lips past her collar until they centered over the jugular vein. Arisa tried to pull away, but the other girl was far too strong for her. All she could do was bite her lip as she felt the icy stab of pain. She had too much pride to scream like some silly twit in a horror movie, after all! In the next instant the pain was swept away by a wave of sudden pleasure, her senses swam, and she knew no more.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The blaze consuming the wrecked minivan, sparks from broken equipment having triggered gas fumes once the proper fuel-air mixture was achieved, cast back a reflection in the glossy polish of the black Mercedes sedan. The car pulled to a stop and woman in a maid's uniform, violet-haired like her employers, got out. Noel dismissed the wreck at once; she was concerned with only one thing.
"Suzuka-sama!"
She ran to the girl's side at once. Suzuka was sitting in the middle of the road, legs curled up beneath her, cradling the lifeless body of her beloved friend in her arms while tears streamed down her face in silent, tormented sobs.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Arisa & Friends Omake Roadshow!
"Why were you picking on her anyway? That's mean!" First-grader Nanoha didn't have Raising Heart yet, but her sense of justice was fierce without magic.
Arisa pointed at Suzuka.
"She's...she's a total freak! She has
fangs!"
"You can't make fun of people just because they need dental work."
"She's super strong! She caught one of the second-graders with one hand when he fell off the jungle gym."
"Helping people is a good thing!"
"Look at her thermos! She's not drinking milk; that's
blood! She's a vampire!"
That one at least got Nanoha to blink. She turned, then tipped her head to the side to look at Suzuka curiously, as if thinking of something.
"Um...what's your name?"
"Suzuka. Tsukimura Suzuka."
Nanoha's face lit up.
"Oh, that explains it! You look just like your sister!"
"You...know my oneesan?" Suzuka said hesitantly. Nanoha gave her a brilliant smile.
"Mmn! I'm Takamachi Nanoha. Shinobu-san works at our family's café, Midoriya."
"Then, you're Kyouya-san's sister, aren't you?"
"Mmn," Nanoha repeated happily.
"I...didn't think Shinobu would tell people about us..."
"Well, it was sort of by accident. She and Kyouya-niichan were watching a movie on TV one night, and she was nibbling on his neck, and I was going to tell Mama because she doesn't want them kissing and stuff while they're supposed to be babysitting, but they said she was just sucking his blood 'cause she's a vampire."
"Wait, and that's okay?" Arisa tried to wrap her mind around the concept.
"Well, yeah. Papa always says it's not right to be prej-- predu-- mean to people of other races and cultures just because they do things differently than we do. Aren't you part American? That's the same thing, right?"
2009-07-13, 12:45
IT Support
Yes. I'll ask it more directly: Does he seem slightly (but not completely) less sane?
) that Kyouya and Shinobu eventually did get married?
