HOME | DD

Description
Fire and Ice
By RobinxAmon
Rated R
Warnings: Violence, crude language

Disclaimer - Witch Hunter Robin, Robin, Amon, and all related characters belong to Sunrise and Bandai, not me. The only things that belong to me are Roland and the plot. I’m not making any money off of this, and it is solely for personal use for entertainment purposes.

---

Chapter One - Slow Chemical

The alley was narrow and deserted, but for one solitary figure. It was completely dark except for the sliver of moonlight shining feebly from behind heavy clouds. The air smelled of recent rain, and the clouds, barely visible in the darkness of the night sky, seemed to threaten more. The lone man walked slowly, hands in the deep pockets of his black overcoat. His head was bowed, his jet-black hair hanging in front of his face.

Without warning or any indication as to why, the man stopped. This man was a hunter, but not in the way SOLOMON defined it. SOLOMON was a vast worldwide organization that worked closely with the governments of the world, as well as being closely tied to the Church. They hunted witches, people with supernatural powers. Amon was in opposition to them. He hunted their hunters, without mercy or regret, utilizing the powers that classified people as witches against them. No one within the organization knew why he did it. In fact, there was only one person besides him that understood his motives.

SOLOMON had quickly seen him as a threat. They had laboured diligently to eliminate his threat, but that had only proven to provide him with more targets. One by one, Amon had defeated the hunters they had sent to kill him. After losing five hunters in this manner, they had decided to stop. What SOLOMON didn’t realize was that they were only delaying the inevitable. One way or another, Amon would continue coldly killing their hunters. It had just been more convenient for him when they were sending them to him rather than having to find them himself.

Amon looked up from where he stood. The sound of someone approaching filled his ears. Slowly, deliberately, he took one gloved hand out of his pocket, reaching into his jacket, and retrieving a long-barreled silver gun. Along the barrel, protection wards were carved. They offered the weapon some protection against the Craft, that is, the powers utilized by witches.

He opened the chamber, checking to make sure it was loaded. A single bullet lay inside. It was large, larger than a bullet typically used for that size of gun. The casing was brass, and like the barrel of his gun, was covered in wards. They were specialized witch hunting bullets that were normally used by SOLOMON hunters. They were especially effective in Amon’s case, because he only hunted hunters that were Craft users.

Nodding in satisfaction, he closed the chamber of his gun and held it loosely at his side. He was certain that the man that was now approaching him was the one he was looking for, but he wanted to be absolutely sure. He didn’t want to be pointing his gun at an innocent bystander.

The man stopped about twenty feet away from the hunter. Amon was reminded of shootouts in old American Western films. His experience with them was admittedly very limited, but the imagery still stood. The only difference was that it was midnight, not high noon, and his weapon was already drawn.
The man standing before him was short, about a head shorter than Amon. He had a scraggly gray beard and he looked every bit the grizzled veteran that the information Amon had gotten about him said he was.

“You’re Amon.” It wasn’t a question. Amon merely nodded at the hunter’s assessment. “Never thought I’d be facing off with you.” His voice was gravelly, speaking of far too many years of smoking. He stood with his hands held loosely at his sides. He appeared almost casual. Of course, from what Amon understood, he had earned the right to that sort of attitude by being a very skilled hunter. Nearly 500 witches had met their end because of this man. He shook his head. “What they would say if I could bring you in,” he said wistfully.

Amon’s lips curved into a very slight smirk. “Do you think you can succeed where many before you have failed?” he questioned, sounding somewhat amused. He carefully sized the man up. Like many witches, he was a telekinetic Craft user. When Amon was much younger and far more inexperienced, he had been under the impression that telekinetic Craft users were weak. That was until he was shown forcibly that they weren’t. After that, he had learned not to underestimate any Craft.

The old man smirked. “Well, since I’m here, I might as well try, huh?” With that said, he gave Amon an experimental push. To the hunter, it was obvious that he was checking to see if he had any way to protect himself against him using his powers directly on him. Seeing that Amon didn’t he grinned, and gave him a shove.

Amon grunted as he was thrown into a cluster of metal trash cans. His breath was momentarily knocked out of him, but other than that he was unharmed. He would have wondered what the hunter had hoped to accomplish by that, had he not suddenly realized that he was no longer holding his gun. In fact, it was sitting only a few feet away from him.

He knew the hunter was hoping to bate him into diving for it. He’d then proceed to taunt him by either tossing him around, or moving the gun so he would fall flat on his face. Amon wasn’t falling for it. He stood up, brushing the dust and dirt from his clothes. The hunter held out his hand and the gun flew to it.

Amon simply watched as he examined it, nodding here and there. Finally he said, “This is a very impressive weapon.” Amon remained silent as the hunter ran his finger over the barrel, feeling the wards carven into it. “You carved these wards yourself?” he asked. Amon merely nodded. “This is a pretty specialized weapon,” the hunter commented as he opened the chamber. Amon almost smirked when his eyes widened at what he saw. He removed the bullet from the chamber, holding it between his thumb and forefinger and bringing it in front of his eyes to get a better look. “Now where could you have gotten this?”

“I have resources,” Amon replied.

The hunter put the bullet back in the gun and closed the chamber. “I see that you’re every bit the professional we’ve been told you are,” he said, slightly awed. Amon didn’t say anything in response to that. He didn’t need to be told he was a professional. He knew it, plain and simple.

“Are you going to stand here and ramble on all night?” Amon asked.

The hunter laughed. It sounded more like the bark of a dog. “You’re right. We should end this.” The smile promptly left his face. He suddenly looked very serious, and very dangerous.

Amon suddenly felt a stabbing pain in his head. His hands flew up to clutch his head as he fell to his knees. The pain was excruciating, like someone had suddenly stabbed his brain with a sharp, pointy object. Blood began trickling from his nose. He knew what the hunter was doing. He was attacking his brain with his telekinetic powers. Not very many telekinetic Craft users were capable of that kind of control.

H struggled to stand, closing his eyes and searching for the center of his Craft, roaring and howling within him with arctic wind. It was very difficult to concentrate. He brought his hands down holding them to his sides, palms facing outward. Ice spikes formed around him. He felt his head throbbing with the combined pain from the attack, and the concentration it took. He held his hands up, almost like he was pointing at the hunter. The ice spikes flew toward him. Amon felt the pain in his head begin to lessen as the Hunter’s eyes flew open. He had no time to erect any kind of defenses before he was impaled by four very large icicles. His eyes were wide open in shock as he fell backward with the force of the impact. He landed with a thud. The gun clattered to the ground, released by the hunter’s opened hand.

Amon casually walked over, picked up his gun, and left, paying no mind to the bleeding corpse of the now dead hunter.

---

Amon entered the darkened hotel room, flicking on the lights as he closed the door behind him. He shrugged out of his overcoat and hung it up before heading to the bathroom. He turned on the light and examined his reflection in the mirror. The blood had trekked from his nose, down to his chin, and had dripped onto his shirt. He turned on the water, wetting a washcloth. He squeezed some of the water out before dabbing at the blood on his face to clean it off.

He had to admit that he had gotten a little cocky. Then again, he had reason to be cocky. He was a master hunter. Not even the master hunters of SOLOMON were any match for him. At least, he hadn’t found a master hunter of SOLOMON that was a match for him. He dabbed at the blood on his shirt with the washcloth, knowing it wouldn’t help anything, since it was already mostly dried. He sighed. It wasn’t like that was his only shirt.

He took the shirt off as he walked into the room itself, turning the bathroom light out as he went. He threw the garment on the immaculately made queen-sized bed, which faced a chest of drawers, upon which rested a TV. Amon didn’t really care about that. Now wearing the long-sleeved black shirt that he wore under his Chinese-style shirt, he headed over to the table where he had set up his laptop. He sat down heavily in the chair at the table and flipped it open, booting it up. He checked his e-mail. For an unpublicised address, he got a lot of spam, much of which was porn. He found the e-mail he was looking for under the subject ‘Click here to enlarge your penis.’ Amon rolled his eyes. He was not amused by his brother’s often perverse sense of humour. He opened the e-mail, only to find that all that was written was Call me.

He grabbed his cell phone and commanded, “Niisan.” The phone automatically dialed his older brother’s phone number.

Nagira answered on the second ring. “That you, Otouto?” he asked. Amon heard him exhale and assumed he was smoking. Then again, when wasn’t Nagira smoking? He was always smoking like a fucking chimney. In fact, Amon was surprised he hadn’t already died of lung cancer or something.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“You went on a hunt tonight, ne?” Nagira inquired. How the hell did he know how to push all the wrong buttons? Not only did he know how, he enjoyed doing so. It was like he enjoyed getting Amon all riled up. The only thing that annoyed him more than his brother was hunters that got close to killing him.

“Yeah,” Amon replied, trying not to betray his displeasure at the question. That would be giving Nagira what he wanted.

“Well, how’d it go?” Nagira asked jovially.

“Fine,” Amon ground out. He didn’t say anything else about it, but he knew his brother had picked up on his frustration.

“C’mon, Otouto. You like bragging about your victories,” Nagira goaded with a laugh. Amon scowled. He didn’t care that his older brother couldn’t see it.

“I do not,” he said flatly. “I know you didn’t want to just talk about the hunt. Did you find something?” Nagira merely laughed again, and Amon wondered if he would continue to try to press him for details about the hunt.

“Fine, fine. I can see you don’t want to talk about it,” Nagira said good-naturedly. “In response to your question, yes, I did find something. Unfortunately, the info is sketchy.” He paused as if considering something. “Okay, more like non-existent.”

Amon quirked a brow. It wasn’t very often that Nagira’s contacts couldn’t get him detailed, solid information about their leads. “Tell me what you do know,” Amon said.

“The hunter will be coming to Japan within the next week. Word in the Walled City is that STN’s local branch there lost one of their agents. Apparently, the hunter will be the replacement.” Amon could hear papers shuffling in the background. Nagira must have been checking his information.

“What about Craft?” Amon asked. He knew his brother wouldn’t bother calling him unless the hunter was a Craft user. Amon’s usual targets were male hunters around the ages of 40-60. Some would think that SOLOMON wouldn’t employ such aged hunters, but the advantage with them was that they were extremely loyal to the organization by then, having been recruited in adolescence, and at that age, using their Craft was like second nature to them.

“Fire Craft,” Nagira replied after a moment. “Heh. That directly opposes your Craft,” he said, as if Amon didn’t know that fire opposes ice.

“Not that it really matters. I don’t use my Craft on hunts,” Amon reminded his brother.

“Self defense might be an issue though, Otouto. Don’t you think fire would burn right through any defenses you could put up?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Amon said. He had other methods of protecting himself. “What other information do you have?” he asked in order to get his brother back on track. He leaned in his chair and grabbed for his cigarettes. Listening to his brother smoke made him want to. He lit up while he waited for his brother to look through his information.

“Well, we don’t know the hunter’s age or gender,” Nagira started. “I guess it’s from SOLOMON headquarters. Pretty good from the look of it, although I can’t say I’ve got a rap sheet or how many witches the hunter killed.”

“What class?” Amon asked as he blew out his own lungfull of smoke.

“I dunno. I’d estimate around A-class or S-class. I know you’re looking for master hunters, but maybe the mystery hunter who offed your mom isn’t a master hunter now and wasn’t then,” he said off-handedly. Amon didn’t like how casually he treated it.

“I guess not,” he said.

“You want me to make travel arrangements?” his brother asked.

Amon considered it for a little while. Whether or not the hunter was in his usual target area, he had to admit that he was intrigued. The least he could do was check it out. “Yeah. Get the earliest flight possible.”

“And a hotel room with a single bed and a fast car. Don’t worry, Otouto. I think I know how you like to travel by now. Should I meet you at the airport?” his brother asked, exhaling heavily again.

“Yeah. Try to find out more before I arrive.”

“Will do,” Nagira said. They both hung up without saying goodbye. Amon leaned back in his chair, rubbing idly at his clean-shaven chin while exhaling a small cloud of smoke through his nostrils. His brother was the one that handled his travel arrangements, mostly because he didn’t mind, and Amon did.

Nagira was also the only person that Amon socialized with . . . the only person he allowed himself to depend on. He would have preferred not to need to depend on anyone, but that just wasn’t possible. Anyway, if he had to depend on someone, it might as well be his older brother. He was the only person other than Amon himself that knew why he had began hunting SOLOMON hunters. He looked at his little printer, seeing that his travel papers were being printed out. He didn’t bother to wait for them to finish.

He stood up and moved over to the bed, sitting on the end of it and pulling his boots off, followed by his socks. He stood up and pulled off his slacks, followed by his shirt. He grabbed his pajama bottoms and putting them on. Now ready for bed, he turned off the lights before laying down in bed, pulling the blankets over himself, and settling against the soft hotel pillows. He fell asleep almost instantly.

---

Amon awoke early. The sun had just barely began to rise. He sat up in bed, yawning and glancing at his watch. It was five after five a.m. He threw the blankets back and got out of bed, heading to the bathroom. His flight left at six-thirty, which would give him plenty of time to shower and get some breakfast.

He flipped on the bathroom light and undressed before turning the water on as hot as it would go and climbing into the shower. When he saw that it was sufficiently scalding, he stood under it as it drenched his hair and ran down his body. Like many people, he did much of his thinking in the shower. Right now, his thoughts were on the mysterious hunter being sent to Japan. He could already tell that the hunter was not within his normal target area, but he was going to check it out anyway. He wondered what intrigued him so much about this mysterious fire Craft user. Was it the fact that elemental Craft users seemed rather rare? What did he expect to find? He couldn’t answer his questions.

He took some time to wash his hair, using the little bottle of shampoo left for him by the hotel. He didn’t bother buying his own because ever hotel he stayed at gave it to him for free. He also took some time to wash himself with the hotel soap. He ran it down his arms and chest, scrubbing until he was clean. He rinsed himself off, turned off the water, and got out of the shower. Amon dried himself off with the fluffy white towel also provided by the hotel, and despite the fact that he was alone, he wrapped it around his waste before going back into the room.

He dressed and decided that he would go out for breakfast instead of calling room service. He’d pick something up on the way to return his rental car. He packed up his laptop and clothes that were still laying around, deciding that he’d launder them after he got to Japan. Once he gathered his things, he left the room. Soon he would be leaving Paris for Tokyo. It would be a long flight, but he was used to them.

He went out to his car, parked in the hotel’s parking garage, and sped off to McDonald’s. After he had eaten, he would go drop the car off at the rental place and take a shuttle to the airport. By that time, he would have enough time to get through security and board his plane.

Description
Fire and Ice
By RobinxAmon
Rated R
Warnings: Violence, crude language

Disclaimer - Witch Hunter Robin, Robin, Amon, and all related characters belong to Sunrise and Bandai, not me. The only things that belong to me are Roland and the plot. I’m not making any money off of this, and it is solely for personal use for entertainment purposes.

---

Chapter One - Slow Chemical

The alley was narrow and deserted, but for one solitary figure. It was completely dark except for the sliver of moonlight shining feebly from behind heavy clouds. The air smelled of recent rain, and the clouds, barely visible in the darkness of the night sky, seemed to threaten more. The lone man walked slowly, hands in the deep pockets of his black overcoat. His head was bowed, his jet-black hair hanging in front of his face.

Without warning or any indication as to why, the man stopped. This man was a hunter, but not in the way SOLOMON defined it. SOLOMON was a vast worldwide organization that worked closely with the governments of the world, as well as being closely tied to the Church. They hunted witches, people with supernatural powers. Amon was in opposition to them. He hunted their hunters, without mercy or regret, utilizing the powers that classified people as witches against them. No one within the organization knew why he did it. In fact, there was only one person besides him that understood his motives.

SOLOMON had quickly seen him as a threat. They had laboured diligently to eliminate his threat, but that had only proven to provide him with more targets. One by one, Amon had defeated the hunters they had sent to kill him. After losing five hunters in this manner, they had decided to stop. What SOLOMON didn’t realize was that they were only delaying the inevitable. One way or another, Amon would continue coldly killing their hunters. It had just been more convenient for him when they were sending them to him rather than having to find them himself.

Amon looked up from where he stood. The sound of someone approaching filled his ears. Slowly, deliberately, he took one gloved hand out of his pocket, reaching into his jacket, and retrieving a long-barreled silver gun. Along the barrel, protection wards were carved. They offered the weapon some protection against the Craft, that is, the powers utilized by witches.

He opened the chamber, checking to make sure it was loaded. A single bullet lay inside. It was large, larger than a bullet typically used for that size of gun. The casing was brass, and like the barrel of his gun, was covered in wards. They were specialized witch hunting bullets that were normally used by SOLOMON hunters. They were especially effective in Amon’s case, because he only hunted hunters that were Craft users.

Nodding in satisfaction, he closed the chamber of his gun and held it loosely at his side. He was certain that the man that was now approaching him was the one he was looking for, but he wanted to be absolutely sure. He didn’t want to be pointing his gun at an innocent bystander.

The man stopped about twenty feet away from the hunter. Amon was reminded of shootouts in old American Western films. His experience with them was admittedly very limited, but the imagery still stood. The only difference was that it was midnight, not high noon, and his weapon was already drawn.
The man standing before him was short, about a head shorter than Amon. He had a scraggly gray beard and he looked every bit the grizzled veteran that the information Amon had gotten about him said he was.

“You’re Amon.” It wasn’t a question. Amon merely nodded at the hunter’s assessment. “Never thought I’d be facing off with you.” His voice was gravelly, speaking of far too many years of smoking. He stood with his hands held loosely at his sides. He appeared almost casual. Of course, from what Amon understood, he had earned the right to that sort of attitude by being a very skilled hunter. Nearly 500 witches had met their end because of this man. He shook his head. “What they would say if I could bring you in,” he said wistfully.

Amon’s lips curved into a very slight smirk. “Do you think you can succeed where many before you have failed?” he questioned, sounding somewhat amused. He carefully sized the man up. Like many witches, he was a telekinetic Craft user. When Amon was much younger and far more inexperienced, he had been under the impression that telekinetic Craft users were weak. That was until he was shown forcibly that they weren’t. After that, he had learned not to underestimate any Craft.

The old man smirked. “Well, since I’m here, I might as well try, huh?” With that said, he gave Amon an experimental push. To the hunter, it was obvious that he was checking to see if he had any way to protect himself against him using his powers directly on him. Seeing that Amon didn’t he grinned, and gave him a shove.

Amon grunted as he was thrown into a cluster of metal trash cans. His breath was momentarily knocked out of him, but other than that he was unharmed. He would have wondered what the hunter had hoped to accomplish by that, had he not suddenly realized that he was no longer holding his gun. In fact, it was sitting only a few feet away from him.

He knew the hunter was hoping to bate him into diving for it. He’d then proceed to taunt him by either tossing him around, or moving the gun so he would fall flat on his face. Amon wasn’t falling for it. He stood up, brushing the dust and dirt from his clothes. The hunter held out his hand and the gun flew to it.

Amon simply watched as he examined it, nodding here and there. Finally he said, “This is a very impressive weapon.” Amon remained silent as the hunter ran his finger over the barrel, feeling the wards carven into it. “You carved these wards yourself?” he asked. Amon merely nodded. “This is a pretty specialized weapon,” the hunter commented as he opened the chamber. Amon almost smirked when his eyes widened at what he saw. He removed the bullet from the chamber, holding it between his thumb and forefinger and bringing it in front of his eyes to get a better look. “Now where could you have gotten this?”

“I have resources,” Amon replied.

The hunter put the bullet back in the gun and closed the chamber. “I see that you’re every bit the professional we’ve been told you are,” he said, slightly awed. Amon didn’t say anything in response to that. He didn’t need to be told he was a professional. He knew it, plain and simple.

“Are you going to stand here and ramble on all night?” Amon asked.

The hunter laughed. It sounded more like the bark of a dog. “You’re right. We should end this.” The smile promptly left his face. He suddenly looked very serious, and very dangerous.

Amon suddenly felt a stabbing pain in his head. His hands flew up to clutch his head as he fell to his knees. The pain was excruciating, like someone had suddenly stabbed his brain with a sharp, pointy object. Blood began trickling from his nose. He knew what the hunter was doing. He was attacking his brain with his telekinetic powers. Not very many telekinetic Craft users were capable of that kind of control.

H struggled to stand, closing his eyes and searching for the center of his Craft, roaring and howling within him with arctic wind. It was very difficult to concentrate. He brought his hands down holding them to his sides, palms facing outward. Ice spikes formed around him. He felt his head throbbing with the combined pain from the attack, and the concentration it took. He held his hands up, almost like he was pointing at the hunter. The ice spikes flew toward him. Amon felt the pain in his head begin to lessen as the Hunter’s eyes flew open. He had no time to erect any kind of defenses before he was impaled by four very large icicles. His eyes were wide open in shock as he fell backward with the force of the impact. He landed with a thud. The gun clattered to the ground, released by the hunter’s opened hand.

Amon casually walked over, picked up his gun, and left, paying no mind to the bleeding corpse of the now dead hunter.

---

Amon entered the darkened hotel room, flicking on the lights as he closed the door behind him. He shrugged out of his overcoat and hung it up before heading to the bathroom. He turned on the light and examined his reflection in the mirror. The blood had trekked from his nose, down to his chin, and had dripped onto his shirt. He turned on the water, wetting a washcloth. He squeezed some of the water out before dabbing at the blood on his face to clean it off.

He had to admit that he had gotten a little cocky. Then again, he had reason to be cocky. He was a master hunter. Not even the master hunters of SOLOMON were any match for him. At least, he hadn’t found a master hunter of SOLOMON that was a match for him. He dabbed at the blood on his shirt with the washcloth, knowing it wouldn’t help anything, since it was already mostly dried. He sighed. It wasn’t like that was his only shirt.

He took the shirt off as he walked into the room itself, turning the bathroom light out as he went. He threw the garment on the immaculately made queen-sized bed, which faced a chest of drawers, upon which rested a TV. Amon didn’t really care about that. Now wearing the long-sleeved black shirt that he wore under his Chinese-style shirt, he headed over to the table where he had set up his laptop. He sat down heavily in the chair at the table and flipped it open, booting it up. He checked his e-mail. For an unpublicised address, he got a lot of spam, much of which was porn. He found the e-mail he was looking for under the subject ‘Click here to enlarge your penis.’ Amon rolled his eyes. He was not amused by his brother’s often perverse sense of humour. He opened the e-mail, only to find that all that was written was Call me.

He grabbed his cell phone and commanded, “Niisan.” The phone automatically dialed his older brother’s phone number.

Nagira answered on the second ring. “That you, Otouto?” he asked. Amon heard him exhale and assumed he was smoking. Then again, when wasn’t Nagira smoking? He was always smoking like a fucking chimney. In fact, Amon was surprised he hadn’t already died of lung cancer or something.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“You went on a hunt tonight, ne?” Nagira inquired. How the hell did he know how to push all the wrong buttons? Not only did he know how, he enjoyed doing so. It was like he enjoyed getting Amon all riled up. The only thing that annoyed him more than his brother was hunters that got close to killing him.

“Yeah,” Amon replied, trying not to betray his displeasure at the question. That would be giving Nagira what he wanted.

“Well, how’d it go?” Nagira asked jovially.

“Fine,” Amon ground out. He didn’t say anything else about it, but he knew his brother had picked up on his frustration.

“C’mon, Otouto. You like bragging about your victories,” Nagira goaded with a laugh. Amon scowled. He didn’t care that his older brother couldn’t see it.

“I do not,” he said flatly. “I know you didn’t want to just talk about the hunt. Did you find something?” Nagira merely laughed again, and Amon wondered if he would continue to try to press him for details about the hunt.

“Fine, fine. I can see you don’t want to talk about it,” Nagira said good-naturedly. “In response to your question, yes, I did find something. Unfortunately, the info is sketchy.” He paused as if considering something. “Okay, more like non-existent.”

Amon quirked a brow. It wasn’t very often that Nagira’s contacts couldn’t get him detailed, solid information about their leads. “Tell me what you do know,” Amon said.

“The hunter will be coming to Japan within the next week. Word in the Walled City is that STN’s local branch there lost one of their agents. Apparently, the hunter will be the replacement.” Amon could hear papers shuffling in the background. Nagira must have been checking his information.

“What about Craft?” Amon asked. He knew his brother wouldn’t bother calling him unless the hunter was a Craft user. Amon’s usual targets were male hunters around the ages of 40-60. Some would think that SOLOMON wouldn’t employ such aged hunters, but the advantage with them was that they were extremely loyal to the organization by then, having been recruited in adolescence, and at that age, using their Craft was like second nature to them.

“Fire Craft,” Nagira replied after a moment. “Heh. That directly opposes your Craft,” he said, as if Amon didn’t know that fire opposes ice.

“Not that it really matters. I don’t use my Craft on hunts,” Amon reminded his brother.

“Self defense might be an issue though, Otouto. Don’t you think fire would burn right through any defenses you could put up?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Amon said. He had other methods of protecting himself. “What other information do you have?” he asked in order to get his brother back on track. He leaned in his chair and grabbed for his cigarettes. Listening to his brother smoke made him want to. He lit up while he waited for his brother to look through his information.

“Well, we don’t know the hunter’s age or gender,” Nagira started. “I guess it’s from SOLOMON headquarters. Pretty good from the look of it, although I can’t say I’ve got a rap sheet or how many witches the hunter killed.”

“What class?” Amon asked as he blew out his own lungfull of smoke.

“I dunno. I’d estimate around A-class or S-class. I know you’re looking for master hunters, but maybe the mystery hunter who offed your mom isn’t a master hunter now and wasn’t then,” he said off-handedly. Amon didn’t like how casually he treated it.

“I guess not,” he said.

“You want me to make travel arrangements?” his brother asked.

Amon considered it for a little while. Whether or not the hunter was in his usual target area, he had to admit that he was intrigued. The least he could do was check it out. “Yeah. Get the earliest flight possible.”

“And a hotel room with a single bed and a fast car. Don’t worry, Otouto. I think I know how you like to travel by now. Should I meet you at the airport?” his brother asked, exhaling heavily again.

“Yeah. Try to find out more before I arrive.”

“Will do,” Nagira said. They both hung up without saying goodbye. Amon leaned back in his chair, rubbing idly at his clean-shaven chin while exhaling a small cloud of smoke through his nostrils. His brother was the one that handled his travel arrangements, mostly because he didn’t mind, and Amon did.

Nagira was also the only person that Amon socialized with . . . the only person he allowed himself to depend on. He would have preferred not to need to depend on anyone, but that just wasn’t possible. Anyway, if he had to depend on someone, it might as well be his older brother. He was the only person other than Amon himself that knew why he had began hunting SOLOMON hunters. He looked at his little printer, seeing that his travel papers were being printed out. He didn’t bother to wait for them to finish.

He stood up and moved over to the bed, sitting on the end of it and pulling his boots off, followed by his socks. He stood up and pulled off his slacks, followed by his shirt. He grabbed his pajama bottoms and putting them on. Now ready for bed, he turned off the lights before laying down in bed, pulling the blankets over himself, and settling against the soft hotel pillows. He fell asleep almost instantly.

---

Amon awoke early. The sun had just barely began to rise. He sat up in bed, yawning and glancing at his watch. It was five after five a.m. He threw the blankets back and got out of bed, heading to the bathroom. His flight left at six-thirty, which would give him plenty of time to shower and get some breakfast.

He flipped on the bathroom light and undressed before turning the water on as hot as it would go and climbing into the shower. When he saw that it was sufficiently scalding, he stood under it as it drenched his hair and ran down his body. Like many people, he did much of his thinking in the shower. Right now, his thoughts were on the mysterious hunter being sent to Japan. He could already tell that the hunter was not within his normal target area, but he was going to check it out anyway. He wondered what intrigued him so much about this mysterious fire Craft user. Was it the fact that elemental Craft users seemed rather rare? What did he expect to find? He couldn’t answer his questions.

He took some time to wash his hair, using the little bottle of shampoo left for him by the hotel. He didn’t bother buying his own because ever hotel he stayed at gave it to him for free. He also took some time to wash himself with the hotel soap. He ran it down his arms and chest, scrubbing until he was clean. He rinsed himself off, turned off the water, and got out of the shower. Amon dried himself off with the fluffy white towel also provided by the hotel, and despite the fact that he was alone, he wrapped it around his waste before going back into the room.

He dressed and decided that he would go out for breakfast instead of calling room service. He’d pick something up on the way to return his rental car. He packed up his laptop and clothes that were still laying around, deciding that he’d launder them after he got to Japan. Once he gathered his things, he left the room. Soon he would be leaving Paris for Tokyo. It would be a long flight, but he was used to them.

He went out to his car, parked in the hotel’s parking garage, and sped off to McDonald’s. After he had eaten, he would go drop the car off at the rental place and take a shuttle to the airport. By that time, he would have enough time to get through security and board his plane.