On 04/21/2004 05:07 AM, hkmiller said:
Contains spoilers for the entire series, mild shoujo-ai, lime
content, and VERY dark content.
What? No more depraved violence?
"BOR-ING!" Aditi declared. "We need a real case." The Indian girl,
sitting next to Tati, promptly moved on to the next story. "What does
'un tueur en serie possible' mean?"
The first news article is a nice addition.
"We are not going to do anything about that story. We are going to
drive straight to Paris, today, and hand you over to {this :} Father
DiFrancesco." Mireille eyed the two girls sternly in her rear-view
mirror as they threw the newspaper down, crossed their arms, and
huffed in disappointment.
He watched a Toyota Land Cruiser came to a stop and park in front of
a fashionable women's clothing store. Two women got out of the front
seat, one rather nice, a blonde; the other a little young, and an
oriental. Hmmm; he hadn't tasted Chinese yet. Two more Asian kids
got out of the back seat. The oriental woman was wearing some
bizarre golden gown, and had bandages wrapped around one leg. She
wasn't the type he'd normally watch, but with the amount of leg that
gown was showing...
The problem with Chinese is that you're hungry again an hour later.
Since Kirika's actually Japanese, the real problem is that she'll kill you.
Outside, Aditi grinned and began to stride down the street, turning
her head from side to side. If she were a terrorist group, where
would she hide in Bordeaux? What other kinds of cases would Kirika
and Mireille let them help with? Bank robbers? Spies? That serial
killer? Where should she look?
Behind her?
She had just passed the mouth of an alleyway when she heard a faint
scraping sound close behind her.
Talk about instant validation.
Mireille heard the back door of the Citroen open behind her as the
man herded Aditi out of the car. Glancing into a shiny surface{
:}close to her, she could see that the man was still watching her
closely and all but ignoring Aditi. This is your chance, girl,
Mireille thought. Kick him in the shins.
The bottom of the cellar stairs opened into a large central room
taking up most of the basement, well lit by an overhead fluorescent
lamp. A butcher-block table sat near a large freezer{
:}towards the back, with a cleaver and knives sitting on a large{
:}cutting board. A few brown stains smudged a large pewter platter
also sitting on the table. A lone mouse scurried out of sight.
Gafori smiled in delight. "Ah! Now there you touch upon one of my
core principles, as it were: eliminate possible threats early, even
unlikely ones. She might have been here in Bordeaux to finish the
job on me, for all I knew. Much the same reason I picked the
delightful Ms. Merril up," Gafori continued, gesturing at Charlotte
with a thumb. "A tattly little article in one of the trashier
tabloids claimed that she helped the police find my immediate
predecessor in the business of widespread feminine disappearances, by
means mysterious and supra-mundane. My {curiousity : curiosity}
aroused, I investigated, and found her just comely enough to warrant
extending an invitation to enjoy my hospitality."
So she is a, possibly psychic, police consultant. Or someone with the
same name is.
"I'm cuffed to the bed in a spread-eagled position, face up,"
Mireille said. "He cut my clothes off me with a knife, and then did
the same to you: your nice new sun-dress is in tatters. Our captor
is NOT a nice man, I'm afraid."
For the sun-dress, he can not be forgiven. You spell it sun-dress here
and sun dress when it is first mentioned.
"We'll also need a way out of this room. If he looks through that
peephole and sees we're free, he can just leave us in here{
:}until we starve. We have to make sure he opens that door, and he's
really paranoid about you."
Charlotte lifted her head abruptly. "WHAT!? Was it 'les mains
noires protegent la paix des nouveaux-nes'?"
Keeping the phrase in Medieval French is a good idea. I think I saw at
least part of it written in the anime.
"Incredible. A group still engaging in religious practices based on
the Langonel manuscript. What an incredible find!" Charlotte's eyes
gleamed, but she bided her time rather than{
:}asking questions of the two women right away. Villagers practicing
archaic religious forms, in her experience, did not respond well to
questions from complete strangers.
Most would kill and eat you. This pair would only kill you. I wonder
what Charlotte would have made of the shrine at the edge of the Soldat's
village and the village church if she's come upon them before the
village was destroyed.
"Children, children, children," Gafori admonished, shaking off Tati
and then kicking her, hard, in the side. She collapsed to the floor,
clutching her side. He caught Aditi's wrist on the downstroke,
removed the cleaver from her hand, then wrenched her{
:}arm behind her back and marched her forward to the freezer. "You
two are no match for me, and don't forget it. Now," he said, opening
the freezer, "start chopping."
Aditi wiped her mouth clean on the back of her right hand, grimly
{eyeing : eying} Gafori from where she huddled on the floor. She
understood, all right. She understood what kind of a monster they
were dealing with. What would Kirika and Mireille do in her shoes?
Aditi knew the answer the moment she asked the question: Kirika, at
least, would simply do as the man requested, biding her time.
"The rules are as follows: I shall return at eleven o'clock this
afternoon for said practice. At one o'clock I shall take these two
charming children with me on a drive. Once we reach a suitable spot,
I shall remain in the car with child number one and my gun; child
number two will be equipped with said sharpened letter opener and
depart the car. Former Business Associate {Numero Uno : One}, we
hope, will be lunching at his usual spot, and the child number two
will casually approach my former comrade, letter opener in hand, and
hasten his departure from this doleful vale of woe without fanfare or
fuss.
"Should all go exactly according to plan, we will go in search of
Former Business Associate {Number :} Two and repeat said procedure,
only with the children's roles reversed.
"Ummn." Kirika sniffed, recovering. "Well, you have to hold the
letter opener horizontally. The best way is to slide it into the
heart from the back, between the ribs, with one quick push. The hard
part is missing the ribs. If he's sitting with his back on a solid
chair, or wearing a bulky jacket so that you can't see his ribs, that
won't work. In that case you have to either cut his spinal cord in
the back of his neck, or cut the carotid artery in his throat."
Romance tips from Kirika: the shortest way to a man's heart is between
the ribs.
"{Pardon me : Pardonnez-moi}," she said in carefully memorized
French, then stood and brushed herself off without haste. Out of the
corner of her eye, she saw the target's wife's eyes upon her.
Gritting her teeth, she looked up and smiled at the woman.
"Who? All I know is one page of the Langonel manuscript. You're the
two {virgins : maidens}, right? Who reign over death? Whose black
hands protect the peace of the newly born?"
Mireille rolled her eyes. Great; an obsessed scholar. "We have to
get out of here first. Then... we'll talk about it."
I'm sure Charlotte won't forget to ask. The girls should learn more
about it too since they are now thoroughly enmeshed in it.
The Citroen was now out into the suburbs. Tati now sat next to
Gafori, shivering, while Aditi was next to the passenger door,{BR
:}left arm around Tati, trying desperately to comfort her.
She flipped herself over so that she was sitting on Mireille's chest,
then reached forward and untied the knots around her{
:}ankles. She briefly examined the cuffs around Mireille's wrists,
but it was clear that, without the key or a lockpick, nothing was
going to be done about them.
The need to get back to the Land Cruiser to clean it out and retrieve
the stuff Altena left them. Then they will want to dispose of it. They
probably also left fingerprints all over the dungeon, so they'll want to
burn down the house.