phase

Chasing After Dogs

He was astonished at her very existence.

Or rather, the fact that the existence he'd thought to be true had turned out to be something else entirely.

Rose could see this on Kaitou's face when she threw him a sideways glance just as Francis made a sharp turn onto the road that would take them directly to their destination.

There were a lot of conflicting emotions frothing inside of him, she knew. Just like she had felt when Francis had told her Kaitou was the sleeping spirit that was what had been haunting her during that almost battle with Pavlov.

And then, of course, there was Pavlov.

She hadn't expected him to show up here; shouldn't they have sent a lower-level fighter for a simple Grey?

So whoever sent him must have known it was me they were looking for...

There were three possible opponents she could be facing in this battle of mind and spirit: Red, White, or Black. There were a few other kingdoms that may have also risen to the challenge of hunting her down, but it was not very likely that they had managed to climb back to the top in the ten years she'd been gone...especially two in particular.

However, whoever had assigned Pavlov to play finder hadn't properly thought it through, and now here they were, running from a madman on the loose. He was a madman...right?

He tried to kill you. Of course he's a nut job.

"I got in the car," came Kaitou's voice, completely shattering the concentration she had on the situation at hand.

"Congratulations. What, do you want a medal?"
"From the way your friend is driving," Kaitou said as Francis slammed on the brakes at a red light and cursed underneath his breath, "I don’t think this is the time for making bad jokes."

"In short, why are you telling me this again?" Rose focused on adjusting the time on her watch, twisting the dial carefully. "I can see that you're in the car."

"You told me you'd explain things. So explain them."

"You yourself said that you could tell that we're kind of, oh I don't know, in a rush right now. Stop asking me to talk about what's going on when it's going on, will you?"

"But in order to know what's going on--"

Gods above, this guy is persistent. "You remember Pavlov, right?"

"The man from the dream that kept calling someone a scout. Wait. How do you--"

"What did I say about questions?" Rose pushed the dial back into place, glancing out the window as if expecting some phantom to suddenly appear out of the fog that had abruptly begun to fall after their conversation. "Don't ask them. He's after us. Well, me to be specific, but that's besides the point."

"Can't I play escaped fugitive, too?" Francis laughed and his eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror and then back to the road. "It seems pretty exciting. Don't just go and make yourself the only one that's special."

"I'd pass off the honor to you if I could, believe me." Rose, sitting shotgun, narrowed her eyes against the mist as it hindered her vision. "Hey, hand me that torch."

"Torch? Are you talking to me?" Kaitou looked around him from the backseat.

"You know, that torch." Impatient, she pointed irritably to it. "What do Americans call it? Oh yeah, 'flashlight'."

"I'm not American," Rose was about to reach back, but Kaitou just tossed it to her as he said, "I'm Japanese. Not that it makes much of a difference."

"You have an American accent, though, which is odd if you're not American. Then how...?"

"My mom."

"I see."

Rose wasn't paying any attention, so to be honest, she didn’t really see.

“Hey, Rose,” it was Francis bothering her this time, “we’re heading back, right?”

“Drive around for a bit to lose him if he’s still on you; just not for too much because we don’t want to run into him. Yeah, we’re going back.”

“Gotcha,” Francis said just as he made another sharp and sudden turn at a corner, making Rose wonder if she really should have let him drive.

Damn mess his driving skills are…when was the last time he renewed his license? If he even has a license…

Next time, Pavlov or no Pavlov, Rose was driving. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be a next time, but with the unpredictable curve balls that were thrown her way, she never really knew.

“How much longer?” She asked Francis only ten or so minutes after instructing him to drive in a rather distracted manner all over the city (or so he had seemingly interpreted it as).

“Give me five and we’ll be there. The traffic is barely here right now, but there are too many drunks—” he swerved, avoiding another inebriated pedestrian “—to drive sanely or safely. Or efficiently, for that matter. Is there any particular reason for which we are heading back? If by some chance, he’s still following us, we may be leading him right to—”
“I know. There is a reason, which I’ll tell you later, but trust me for now. Okay?”

Francis gave her a slightly doubting look, but said a heartbeat later, “Okay.”

Even though Rose was sure that he couldn’t see outside half as well as she could, she knew that Kaitou sensed their surroundings speed up after this confirmation of confidence, and there was a slightly more driven edge in sense of whether or not they were getting to their destination as fast as they could. Francis was definitely breaking at least twenty different driving laws, but the normally strict and unyielding Rose decided to accept it this time. After all, these were extenuating circumstances, right? And for extenuating circumstances there was special treatment, at least in her book.

“Right,” Rose said just as the driver was about to make a left, and he winked a thanks from behind his rectangularly-framed glasses.

They drove onto the gravel of the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse, with Francis showing no signs of slowing down the vehicle as the flew towards the inches of concrete that stood as walls for the structure. They were on course to collide with a corner, and Rose saw, out of the corner of her eye, Kaitou flinch in fear as they passed through without a scratch, something completely different than he’d been expecting, she supposed.

It was like that for me the first time, too.

Yet again Francis hit the brakes, and both Rose and Kaitou were jolted forward, forced into their seatbelts by their own momentum, generated by sitting in a car that may as well have been traveling at the speed of light.

“We’re here,” he said, but Rose was already breathing in the familiar air and stretching her legs after being in the cramped sedan.

Home is where haven is.