| A man swaggers down the street, until he's stopped by two men near a vending machine. He's chloroformed and dragged off. At the hospital, an unconscious girl is discussed by her two doctors; she's getting worse but they say she'll be better soon. One doctor, Kurosawa, puts his hand on the girl's chest and the other on another patient's chest; there's a bluish glow from his hands, and then he opens his eyes and says it's done. The other doctor is impressed and calls Dr. Kurosawa the Chosen One, and Dr. Kurosawa says to handle the rest as usual. Robin has a cough and cold, so the Master at Harry's makes her hot ginger tea with a slice of lemon. (Which tastes AWFUL but really is helpful for a cough.) He scolds her for working late and not using an umbrella in the rain, and refers her to a doctor he knows. (The Master seems to know, uh, a special bunch of people.) Robin follows his advice and goes to the hospital (which, unsurprisingly, is the one from earlier) and sees the doctor (which, ALSO unsurprisingly, is Dr. Kurosawa of the Magic Glowing Hands. Let's see if he needs to lay hands upon her chest too!) He says her tonsils are swollen (aka she's sick) and writes her a prescription. He asks her if she has any other problems, and Robin reports that she's fine. The doctor conveniently segues into how that's good to hear, and she's lucky to be so healthy; there are many sick kids in this hospital who can't even go outside. Robin takes the prescription and is about to leave when the doctor suggests tying a green onion around her throat; that might work better than the medicine. He makes goofy descriptive tying gestures, and Robin stares at him like he's crazy. (Tying green onions around the neck is a Japanese folk remedy for treating a cold, kinda like drinking chicken soup.) Robin gets her cold medicine and heads out, as two passing doctors discuss a recent patient that died of a heart failure due to a drug overdose. Up in the room of the girl we saw the night before, she's up and seems much better; she says she feels "alive" for the first time. She credits her doctor, Dr. Kirihara, who demurs and says it was because she tried her best. Another girl who's visiting, Risa, asks Dr. Kirihara to also help her in her upcoming heart surgery, and Dr. Kirihara nervously agrees. Later, looking at her chart with Dr. Kurosawa (she has an enlarged heart silhouette on the X-rays; she probably has heart failure) he reveals that the girl is probably not well enough to survive surgery. He begs Dr. Kurosawa to help her. Dr. Kurosawa says that if he heals her before the surgery, Dr. Kiriyama will get no credit, but Dr. Kiriyama just wants the girl to get better. Dr. Kurosawa looks at his hands and rambles about his power to save the dying, which, in case you were slow and didn't grasp the concept, is his Craft. He asks Kiriyama if there's a donor, and Dr. Kiriyama mentions a former patient of his who is a "waste of life." At STN-J, Robin's using her cold as an excuse to space out. They're discussing a Witch who died of heart failure recently. Apparently when Witches die, they get flagged and re-autopsied by STN-J. The STN-J autopsy results, of course, were different than the police ones; the Witch died of massive necrosis of the heart muscle, which apparently can only happen if Witchcraft is involved. (OR A HEART ATTACK, YOU MORONS) They don't know if it was an accident or murder by another Witch, but they found a similar case three years ago, with the same pathologist who did the autopsies. It's Dr. Kirihara, who has performed autopsies on many members of the Yakuza - a large number of whom died of heart attacks or strokes. STN-J decide to keep an eye on him. Dr. Kiriyama is having dinner with a yakuza member, who's apparently the guy that he saved years ago. Kurosawa, who's listening through a hidden mike, thinks to himself, "a waste of life." The yakuza member drinks himself into a stupor and is helped out by Kiriyama into Kurosawa's car; SNT-J trails them (or, Amon drives, Haruto uses his bike, Karasuma goes with Amon, and Robin sleeps in the back.) Amon is apparently not very subtle, because the doctors notice the tail and they try to escape. The drunken yakuza member grabs at the steering wheel, making them crash through a barrier for a construction site. The two doctors escape into the partially-complete building, and STN-J splits up (Haruto and Robin, Amon and Karasuma). Kiriyama's running like a little girl and gets cornered by Haruto, but Kurosawa grabs him and Kiriyama chloroforms him. Kurosawa tries to do the glowy-hand thing, but Haruto's Orbo saves his life, and Robin catches up. She recognizes Dr. Kurosawa and realizes that he's the Witch. Haruto is down for the count (unsurprisingly) due to the chloroform, so Robin has to chase the two of them single-handedly. Robin follows them out onto the rickety scaffolding, cornering Kurosawa, and Kurosawa tries to argue that he saved lives, and the ones who died were sinners who didn't deserve to live. Robin says that he doesn't have the right to make such a decision, and attacks with flames. Amon sees the flames from below and stands like a gimp with his hands in his pockets. Kiriyama jumps on Robin from the upper level, causing the scaffolding to fall apart. Finally Amon and Karasuma move their lazy asses to help her, and when the dust clears, Robin's on a section of scaffolding that's about to break loose. Kurosawa tells her not to move, or she'll fall. Kirihara apparently severely injured himself also when the scaffolding fell apart, so he's on the verge of death. Kurosawa asks Robin how other Witches use their powers, how they follow their destiny. He puts one hand on Kiriyama's chest and the other on his own, and does his magic-glowy-thing. Kiriyama comes to, and Kurosawa asks him to save Robin's life before, naturally, he dies. Amon and Robin go to the hospital; apparently Robin's arm was broken or sprained since it's in a sling. Amon somewhat smugly says that they have Kirihara under their thumb now. "Three hundred and twenty years have passed since the coven sank in the dark. The metaphor of death. A summoned spirit. The sealed past. The darkness take light away from the flame of revenge." [previous] [next] |