Been here before / couldn’t say I liked it / where do I start writing all this down? Just let me plunge you into my world / can’t you help me be uncrazy?
It comes alive and I / die a little more
The unnamed feeling
Minoru Alder woke up a little painfully and found that he had been stashed in a dumpster. His head hurt a lot, and his radio was buzzing off the proverbial hook.
“Minoru, where the fuck are you? If you’re hearing this, Minoru, respond immediately. I repeat, respond immediately.”
Boy, he thought in a daze as he observed with interest how trash had actually collected a little bit over him, Scratch-ass sure seems panicked. What’s eating him?
“Minoru, where the fuck did you go?”
Jesus, can’t a sniper get a good night’s sleep anymore? During the Lazy Years he had actually gotten quite a bit of sleep, even on assignments, because of how ridiculously easy they were towards the end of the conflict. (There’ll be a guy shouting at all of his troops, gathered at the center of the camp. Yeah, even the sentries. Shoot him. He’ll be the one with the fluffy hat.) He picked up the radio and thumbed the button, noting that it required a lot more effort than was really necessary. “Yeah?”
There was a pause, as though Scratch-ass couldn’t actually believe that he was reporting in now, after all the work he’d gone through to get Minoru to say something. “Where the fuck have you been?”
Minoru took a brief survey of his surroundings. “It would appear,” he said as he concluded, “that I’m in a dumpster. In what is quite possibly the only back-alley that this little shitpot of a tourist trap has to offer.”
“And would you like to tell me how you got there, exactly?”
Scratch-ass calls me just after my mark goes into the lingerie store and tells me to invite her to the beach house he specifies. He tells me to use my creativity. I tell him I’m not exactly experienced in spywork, which is why I’m a sniper and not a spy, because god damnit, you get a lot more ass as a spy. Or James Bond does, anyway.
I do it anyway, using the ring that I … I do it anyway, and as I walk outside, I see my mark by herself. A couple of seconds later, my radio buzzes and Scratch-ass tells me to get her out of there RIGHT NOW. I briefly wonder where exactly he’s watching me from, and why he needs me at all if he can see so clearly, but I start moving anyway. Before I get more than about five feet, I—
Minoru remembered the sharp pain in his side pretty intently when it bit at him again as he tried to extract himself from the dumpster.
“Why don’t you tell me? You seem to be watching pretty intently from wherever it is you are.”
Silence. Minoru was suddenly angry. He was a pretty mellow person as a rule, and he hadn’t even minded going undercover even though he was not cut out for that sort of work, but god damnit, somebody had just used a fucking taser on him. Not only did that sting like a bitch, but god damnit, it was the principle of the thing. Like he was some kind of rapist or something.
“In fact,” he said, “I think you should tell me exactly what the fuck it is that I’ve gotten myself into before I go any further into it.”
“Or what?”
“Or…” What would he do? Would he leave? Absolutely. But then what would he do after that? He thought of a thousand different things he could say, and all of them sounded equally ridiculous; case in point: Before I decide to walk right out of it and go home to my ex-wife so that she can use her taser on me for violating the restraining order.
“Well?”
“Or nothing.” He sighed. “But tell me what I’m doing here.”
“Right now, you are going after the people who have kidnapped your mark. I will tell you that you were watching her because we wanted her very much alive and unkidnapped, preferably in our hands.”
So you wanted to be the ones to kidnap her first. Good to know that he’s got his priorities straight. It didn’t particularly bother Minoru; he more thought of it as ironic; but it was the kind of ironic he wasn’t sure he wanted to be employed by. It was the stupid kind of ironic. He knew perfectly well that there wasn’t some mythicalbad-guy coalition that would ambush you from all sides with a well-coordinated strike if you didn’t watch yourself; that if you walked in a bad neighborhood, you were sometimes just as likely to walk away unharmed because the people who were planning on robbing and raping you were too busy trying to shoot each other.
But he also knew he wasn’t working for any of those people. One of the reasons the “bad-guys” didn’t have the kind of money it cost to hire him was that they didn’t form a bad-guy coalition, give it a spunky title, and try to unite all the gangs in New York to try and take over the city.
(Can you dig it?) Minoru thought, momentarily amused.
“So you want me to what? Go after them?”
“Something like that. They have taken your backpack, but I don’t think they know how to assemble the weapon inside of it; they’re nothing more than locals with guns and the promise of money keeping them going; taking care of them shouldn’t give you too much trouble.”
“What fucking planet are you from?” Minoru snapped. “I’m a sniper, not a footslogger. I don’t ‘take care’ of a big mob of people. I ‘take care’ of their leader and then I ‘take care’ of a big fat paycheck while the real footso’jers ‘take care’ of the rest of them; do you get me? If I tried to walk in there and take the mark back, I don’t care if they were kids with popguns, they would probably have my ass for lunch.”
There was a frustrated sigh from the other end of his radio, which meant that Scratch-ass wanted him to know he was getting angry. Suddenly, Minoru didn’t give a flying monkey turd. He was angrier than he’d been in years.
“If you refuse this assignment, you know what will happen to you?” Scratch-ass said.
“What? You’ll shoot me?” Minoru had a minor revelation. “Here’s an idea, buddy. How about taking that mythical guy who’s going to shoot me, and using him to ‘take care’ of the local yokels?”
“If we did that,” Scratch-ass said, “Then who would we have around to shoot you when you broke and ran?”
Minoru wanted to scream. Towards the end of the Sino-Russian conflict, this was exactly the kind of logic that a lot of the Russian commanders had employed; better to use their Commisars—talented soldiers, all—to shoot fleeing or cowardly soldiers than to actually have them fight. It lost them a lot of battles, cost a lot more lives that were necessary, and had contributed in large part to their final defeat and the loss of Russian Manchuria to the Chinese. He had actually been offered a job by one such Russian commander—whose predecessor Minoru had killed, but he kept that part to himself—to shoot his own troops if they broke formation.
He had accepted the job, because the money had been good and the risk was roughly zero—the Chinese had spotted him, but when they saw who he was targeting, they actually left him alone, even congratulated him on a job well done—but he had thought it stupid the whole time, dammit. It had even shaken that underused moral compass of his around a little.
And now, for this stupid bastard to be here, doing the exact. Same. Thing...
But he couldn’t exactly do anything about it. He was now fairly well convinced that there was a sniper following him, just itching to gun him down if he ran off.
“Fine. But get me a new gun. I am not going into some barn or burned-out apartment or whatever—”
“They’re currently located in a residency.”
“I don’t give a fuck if they’re holed up in the Taj freaking Majal. I am not going wherever they are with only a pistol.”
“We didn’t intend that.”
“You…what?”
“Look above you, please.”
Something was being lowered from the rooftop. He saw just the barest flash of a black-gloved hand lowering that something down on a rope, and he made a mental note of it. Mental note: Kill other man in black. I am the one true man in black.
“And what is this?” he asked, genuinely interested.
“Two new weapons and some equipment that we came by during our…better years. Inside you will find a new sniper rifle equipped with an infra-red scope, and a weapon of our own invention. It assembles and handles the same way as a minigun, however, so you should have no trouble using it.” (A/N: A minigun is a semi-fictional weapon, that is essentially a big machine gun, usually mounted on a helicopter. However, given the advanced nature of the world’s more private organizations due to the occasional interference of the former Searrs Foundation, I have taken the liberty of allowing weapons such as this to be hand-held, braced on one’s torso for use.)
“You say that like I know how to use one of those.”
“You do.”
He did, but damned if he was going to admit it.
“We have provided an adequate sniping location near the house; please be sure not to kill the girl. After you have picked off any targets that you can, you will enter the house using the weapon we provided you and clear it out; you will then escort the girl back to her friends.”
“And what exactly are you planning on doing about the cops when they start hearing big explosions in their quiet residential town?”
“All of your weapons are silenced, and we have arranged for a distraction. Is there anything else?”
“Just one more thing. Tell me why you want this girl so bad, and if you do, why you don’t just walk in and take her yourself.”
“Our police influence as of late has been rather…limited.” He said it like a rich man might say, my caviar as of late has been rather…low-quality, if I might say so. Like he felt that he was being deprived of a right. “This distraction is about as much as we can do for the time being; the plan you set in motion recently is our method of, as you say, ‘walking in and taking her ourselves’.”
If you think that after all this, that that girl is going to just walk into some stranger’s house, you’ve got another thing coming, mister. But he kept that to himself; the longer this assignment went on, the longer he got to brood over a sense of vengeance that suddenly swept over him. And maybe act on it, too.
“And so after this is over, you want me to what? Just set her on the ground and fly off into the sunset?”
“Something like that.”
Bastard completely misses the humor and he expects…god damnit.
He wondered what rank exactly Scratch-ass held within his “organization.” It couldn’t have been very high; his plans didn’t seem to be working out so well as of late.
The bag landed on his stomach and the black hand vanished, and his radio clicked one more time: “Go. You have no time to waste.”
Ugh.
Mikoto giggled and screamed, and shifted her weight down onto Mai, who smiled.
Tate groaned in pain, feeling as though he was about to die. “Could you two lovebirds please get off of me?” he shouted, and then covered his mouth in alarm. He hadn’t meant to shout that loud, and if the crash hadn’t brought their present situation to the attention of the store owners, this certainly would.
On the plus side, the two girls rolled off of him immediately, easing the pain on his scrotum considerably.
Shiho peeked her head above the safety of her hands. Finding it safe, she emerged from her shelter and, not seeing her shadow, decided all was right in the world. Before anybody could say anything else, though, the store owner, another old man in an apron, arrived with a look on his face which gave Shiho cause to reconsider her decision.
“What the hell are you kids doing?” he shouted angrily. “Look at this mess!”
Everybody but Mikoto had the grace to look sheepish. As to the cat-like girl, blessedly ignorant of the verbal whupping-out-behind-the-shed, Mikoto simply looked curious at the arrival of yet another person who smelled like food. She was rather hungry of a sudden. (Or not of a sudden, in all honesty).
“Who’s responsible for this?” The old man had a voice like moldy cabbage, and what appeared to be a personality to match. He was pointing with one withered finger at the pile of noodles. Nobody seemed to want to say anything, so Mai shook her head.
“I am, sir.”
He stopped, blinked. “You are?”
“Yes, sir.” She bowed slightly. “I’m very sorry; we weren’t watching where we were going, and I accidentally ran into the display. We’re all very sorry.”
Amazed but certainly not rendered stupid, Tate and Shiho nodded in agreement, bowing respectfully as well. “If you’d like, I’ll pick these up for you and re-arrange them.”
“Are you kidding? Who wants to buy them now?” the owner snapped. “All the noodles are probably all broken up and everything, all—”
“Are you kidding?” Tate burst out, “They’re nood—” Shiho headbutted him in the side (lacking the height to elbow him properly anywhere above the scrotum, which she was rather abject to just now), hard.
“You say something?” the owner’s tone was positively venomous. This was not a man who would be easily swayed by cuteness or penance, though it had thrown him off-guard for a moment.
“Nosir.”
“Mm. I thought so, boy. You kids will have to work this off, but good. I don’t have another shipment coming in until tomorrow!”
“But the noodles are fi—” Another attempt at common sense, another headbutt. Harder, this time.
Mai grinned like a celebrity’s wife in divorce court. “I suppose so. It’s a shame, too; we were hoping to go next door for sukiyaki tonight.”
The old man froze. “What?”
She blinked as though she were surprised. Which, of course, she was not. “I’m sorry?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes, sir. I was simply saying that I was hoping to go for sukiyaki tonight, and I suppose we won’t be able to.”
“That place closes late,” the owner countered, suddenly defensive and nervous all at once. “I won’t keep you until it closes, if that’s what you mean.”
“Oh, that’s not what I mean. I just mean that I suppose that they’ll probably run out of noodles on a night like tonight, and then…”
“And then what?”
Mai grinned at him. “And then he’d have to use noodles that were all broken up in his cheapest sukiyaki in Goza, which I still find to be moderately expensive considering...” she looked at the display. “The sale on shirataki noodles.”
There was a customer in the doorway who had walked in halfway through the conversation, and she was giving the store owner an odd look. This may have been because she was a sharp customer who had caught onto what Mai was saying, or, more likely, it was because the old man with chalky-white skin and a mean complexion suddenly resembled a beet wearing an apron.
“Fine,” he spat after a moment. “Pick these up and get out.”
“We’ll be buying one, first,” Mai said cheerfully. “Mikoto here is hungry.”
“Make that two. Shiho is—” Another headbutt. Tate began to wonder if Shiho wasn’t feeling so much of a bout of caution as a bout of malice. Also, he felt that his ribs were starting to bruise.
“Two,” Mai said anyway. “But we’ll get this cleaned up right away; thanks very much!” She gave him her most winning smile and bowed one more time, and he stalked off sourly.
When he was gone, they wordlessly rebuilt the display, taking two boxes of noodles for themselves. Tate could only stare at Mai in a little bit of awe. “That was…”
“Beautifully handled?” Mai smiled. “Thank you.”
“No, I meant, that was…” Tate couldn’t think of a word to describe what that was. What that was right then. What she was. “That was…”
That was yet another headbutt. With the owner gone, Tate rounded on Shiho angrily. “Would you knock it off?”
“If you could stop drooling over Mai for two seconds, maybe I wouldn’t have to in the first place,” she shot back, taking him off-guard.
Mai colored a little and Tate’s face turned into something awful and ugly for a moment; something very, very angry. Shiho’s did the same in return. They stared at each other for a solid minute, and Mai found herself forced to look away, feeling
Tate is so kind
as though she had done something fundamentally wrong, and at the same time feeling angry enough to smack Shiho. She wanted to ask her in that instant what the fuck her problem was, but she knew the answer already, and she wasn’t sure she could bear to hear it.
“Come on, Mikoto,” Mai said quietly. “We should go.”
Mikoto looked between the two of them—Tate and Mai—a little askew, as though she were confused. Tate looked as though he wanted to say something, and Shiho just looked satisfied. None of them, however, did anything about any of this. What followed was an extremely awkward moment in which Mai felt her heat sinking down into her right calf, followed by another; finally, after about thirty of these awkward moments, Mai simply walked off towards the registers wordlessly. Mikoto gave Shiho a curious look and then scampered off after Mai.
By the time Mikoto caught up to Mai, she had finished paying and was on her way out the door. The two said nothing to each other; Mikoto walked behind Mai like a puppy as Mai directed herself calmly around the corner of the store, around again, until they were in back, where there was a small field of grass that would have been a parking lot in Tokyo or Kyoto.
As soon as they were out of the street’s sightline, Mai collapsed on her butt and Mikoto, sensing what was coming, leapt onto her, asking nothing and demanding nothing in return, and Mai wrapped her arms around Mikoto and cried.
After a while, it subsided, and Mai spoke into Mikoto’s damp shirt, “Why can’t he just tell her to back off? Why can’t he just…”
“Because,” Mikoto said with an air of perfect understanding, “if he did that, then she would be by herself.”
Tate is so kind
“Why can’t she find herself some other fuh-fuh-fucking plaything?” Mai whispered back, bitterly, still hiccoughing. “I hate that little…”
“No,” Mikoto murmured. “No, you don’t. You envy her, but you shouldn’t.”
“What do you know,” Mai said morosely, less a question than a statement. Mikoto didn’t take it personally. She just held Mai while the girl, weakened from
death
her lack of sleep and, maybe, worn out from fighting long after the fight was over, cried. And she never wondered once how Mikoto knew so well exactly what was going on, how she had displayed a wisdom that Mai had previously thought only Chie possessed.
In truth, the answer was far too simple to be pondered anyway. Somebody once said that love makes us all fools, but that was only half true. The other half, the half that that stupid bastard left out, is that love also makes us wiser than any philosopher.
Even if it only was with regards to the ones we love.
It took them a while after that, but they made it to their feet, and Mikoto suggested to Mai that they go find Tate and Shiho, and Mai agreed.
The current is changing, Mai thought again. It hurts to change; it erodes a lot of our walls as it does, but it changes nonetheless, and then life is better for us.
The males, though, were not rough. No, they looked desperate, maybe, but not rough. They had treated her gently, and told her that they weren’t planning on hurting her, but that they couldn’t tell her what was going to happen to her.
They reeked of the kind of poverty that won’t starve a man but rather, will drive him insane: The kind of poverty that one has only known since the beginning of a recession. The kind that makes him speak of the better days, and back in the day with the same kind of wistfulness one might have when looking back on a tryst with a model.
She felt sorry for all of them, but that didn’t displace her fear that they knew exactly what was going to happen to her, and she was frightened that she was going to die for it.
Natsuki…
And still, she felt more than anything, pain in her heart. Obsession is a dangerous thing, Shizuru, somebody had once told her.
She had ignored that person.
But then, Reito was also a closet cynic.
Midori emerged onto the bright sidewalk, started off without any sort of thought towards the next bar, having more or less rejected the last, and after a moment Reito followed her.
His cover was nearly perfect: He was quite adept at hiding himself when the need arose, and with Midori in the state she was in, (though he wasn’t entirely sure what that state was, yet; she hadn’t had that much to drink, and yet she walked with the sorrowful purpose of a career drunk) she would probably never notice him. It almost could have worked.
That is, it almost could have worked if Natsuki hadn’t shouted out his name with a kind of desperation as she dashed down the street at him. A moment later, she shouted, Midori’s, and that was the end of his cover.
They both turned to face her, and Reito was taken off-guard at how fast she was sprinting. When she came into full view, he was even more surprised by the look on her face: She looked both scared and near to frustrated, to the point where she was near to tears.
Midori gave Reito an evil look as she caught onto what he’d been doing, but she seemed to have sobered or snapped out of it or overcome whatever had been eating at her for the time being. “Jesus,” she said as Natsuki stopped in front of them, panting a little. “What is it, Natsuki?”
Reito approached just in time to hear her say this:
“Shizuru is gone,” she said, and as if that didn’t stop Reito’s heart halfway, the next thing did: “And I need you to drive me back to the cabin.”
“For what?”
Natsuki took a deep breath, which could have just as easily been because she was a little winded as for the dramatic pause it entailed. “I’m going to get my gun.”
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