Dark Crossing
"You'll crease your suit lying like that."
Mireille's chiding tugged Kirika's head to roll toward the bedroom's
door, herald for the towel-wrapped woman's appearance. Mireille had
declared that Kirika shower before her to allow her the opportunity to
unearth suitable clothing for the imminent 'assignment' from the
wardrobes their baggage supplied. The outcome had been the squeaky clean
younger girl welcomed back from her morning wash by her slate-grey
business suit and a white shirt with a red decorative cord for the
collar arranged for her on the bed, and the blonde responsible for the
service only now finishing her own lavations.
Remaining inert, Kirika's eyes; exempt from her body's indolence; moved
with Mireille as the blonde strode to the chest of drawers standing
against the wall to the left of the bed; and to the left of Kirika
sprawled upon it; arms outstretched and her legs apart as wide as her
skirt permitted. The bed wasn't made, a match for the girl's untidy
lassitude, although the covers had been sloppily pulled to the pillows
in a disheveled show of order. Idly Kirika mused whether she had creases
in her clothing the same as the messy bed sheets, as per her partner's
warning. She didn't think it would matter much to her cover if she did,
but Mireille acclaimed a neat presentation of one's self, so for that
sake she hoped to have escaped a rumpling. Mireille would usually see to
it herself to straighten Kirika up if not. The close, personal attention
wasn't something to really deserve shunning however, and the girl
supposed it was for that particular reason that she was in no hurry to
observe Mireille's direction... for now.
Mireille grappled at the towel wrapping around her as it apparently
threatened to slip and unravel, and stripped off the hood made from a
second towel she wore over her head with a yank from her other hand, wet
flaxen hair spilling loose in a tangled affair. Her back was to Kirika,
but it was still hard to look away. There was appreciation to discover
in all aspects of Mireille's figure, and from every angle. Perhaps
prolonging her comfortable view of her sculptured beloved was one more
motivation to linger in lethargy.
Kirika sat up to the blare of the hairdryer going, choosing the edge of
the bed furthest from Mireille to swing her legs over before her feet
touched the floor. There was a threshold for how long she could shirk an
instruction from Mireille. She didn't want to get a stricter scolding
after all. Moreover, there was an instinct, an inherent need, to obey
her blonde partner encoded within Kirika. The longer she disregarded
supervision given by Mireille, the greater the urgency to fulfill it she
felt. As the rebellious seconds ticked, each was synonymous to a step
toward navigating deeper into a thickening minefield. Kirika became
progressively restless, on edge; her thoughts grew to focus on nothing
else but her lapse, and physical irritation manifested though missing a
tangible source; her skin itching in, conveniently, awkward to reach
spots, and aches that weren't there before suddenly were. Whatever
activity she was doing or repose she was in was cursed, sucked of appeal
and comfort.
Yet for all the penalties of defiance, seldom did Kirika suffer them.
Kirika was punctual to mind Mireille's word because she wanted to.
Whether there was distinction between the innate impulse to do as she
was told and the desire in her heart to, she couldn't deduce it. It
wasn't relevant. Their goals were the same, and pleasing Mireille was
the end result.
Heedless of locating and smoothing away any wrinkles in her outfit she
might have, Kirika's head crept over her shoulder, choosing the ecstasy
of drinking in her love's splendor once more, her eyes addicted to it
and her heart to the woman inside who modeled it. Mireille's stream of
blonde locks were the main attraction as their alluring owner
methodically ran her wooden hairbrush down their length under the heat
of the hairdryer, spun gold coming to luster as the damp was gradually
coaxed out. It was always that brush of rosy wood with the faded gold
detail around the rim of the back face; wherever in the world Kirika and
Mireille went, it traveled in their company.
Kirika had wondered before if the hairbrush carried personal importance
for her partner; some keepsake of her home in Corsica, maybe? It looked
as if it had a history with its dulled decorative pattern; the colour
likely as bright as Mireille's tresses at that history's beginning. It
might have belonged to her mother. If it had, it was to some extent
Kirika's keepsake too. A memento of the person who had blessed her with
the seed that would bear a greater existence than the hateful one
originally intended for her, even while Kirika had been at the point of
extinguishing hers. Kirika could never forget her or the kindness she
had shown in the face of her death, to its harbinger no less. Kirika
could see her in Mireille--in heart and spirit, and even in looks.
Odette Bouquet lived on in her daughter.
Mireille dedicated a prolific amount of time in the morning and even
more so at night to combing her hair with her favoured brush; stroke
after stroke, over and over that Kirika gave up keeping a tally of how
often it parted and caressed those silken strands. Like magic the
hairbrush brought out the best in Mireille's hair; somehow polishing the
mane to a glossy sheen and inspiring a buoyant bounce to the way it fell
and moved. Kirika ached to brush her beloved's hair to that brilliance.
To spend the hours peacefully watching up close as her brushstrokes
glided down the blonde cascade, being near enough to pick up its scent,
near enough to let her fingers flow through the locks whenever she
craved the divine sensation of softer than silk. If only Kirika had the
daring to ask and the confidence she could brush Mireille's hair in the
proper fashion. If only. In the deficiency, Kirika had to be content at
admiring the perfect beauty with a distance forever a buffer. Perhaps
radiance as Mireille possessed wasn't meant to be touched but merely
treasured with the eyes... and longed for in the heart.
She could have sat staring all morning--she could have sat for as long
as Mireille was there to behold--but eventually Kirika stood up from the
bed, running her hands over her skirt to flatten it out this time
around, just to be safe. A straightening tug on the bottom of her jacket
later and she was wandering toward the bedroom's sole window, knowing
the sights it had on offer behind the shut drapes. It was a school day,
after all.
With the forethought of the vigilant, Kirika eased open a break in the
curtains, employing a single finger; the gap a nigh on incidental
crinkle in the fabric to those on the outside of the glass windowpane,
but a peephole for the orchestrating girl on the inside. The sun
however, never the fool like those it shined on below, leapt on the
opportunity to cast a bright limb into the room, yet Kirika had foreseen
and sidestepped even its reach. It was a risk gazing out the window; any
antagonist could be gazing back, and the unnecessary security breach
would vex Mireille if too gaudy or possibly even out of sheer principle;
but Kirika had tweaked the odds of the gamble radically in her favour.
The assassin was no more exposed to a sniper scope or camera lens than
she was to an onlooker's eye. A critiquing azure look at her back was
the greater peril on her mind, however Kirika trusted her canny approach
would prove to mitigate that.
The window was host to the street in front of the Yuumura house below, a
slice of suburban living spread out with skyscrapers of the city
distant, behind the trees and power lines and neighbours' houses. It was
a threshold to what might have been; to the other world.
A gaggle of giggling high school girls roamed the pavement outside the
house, tracing a path Kirika used to follow and still remembered. The
uniforms were the same, although the weather saw coats worn over the
blue winter version of them. Tsubaki High School went on without her.
Kirika wondered what had become of her classmates. She recognised none
in the group below. Were the girls and boys of class 2-4 still there?
Did they speculate on where she had suddenly gone? Did they remember her
sometimes? Or had it been as though Kirika had never been a part of
their class, their school, and her disappearance was akin to an eraser
removing a mistake--dismissed without a vestige remaining to mark her
existence? It was in the realm of Soldats to have lubricated her
departure once Japan had seen Kirika and Mireille's backs; paperwork
vanishing and faculty coerced into forgetting about one quiet,
unassuming girl. It wasn't as though Kirika had formed friendships in
Tsubaki High School or left an impact on any of her teachers. Even in
the world of light she had tread in darkness; she had been of the
friendless, a shadow while everyone around her had been bright. The
stigma of a killer, a sinner, was not something shed with a simple loss
of memory. Kirika had never been one of them.
The girls down there... glass separated them, but they and Kirika were a
world apart. Their world was not Kirika's, just as Kirika's world was
alien to them. Their naivety to it made them safe; kept them smiling.
Kept them in the light. It was better for them to not know her. Like
Heaven and Hell were separated, a demon was out of place in paradise.
Kirika would always see their world through a window; she'd never truly
live in it. Still, she hoped that one day she might find a place of
sorts in it, but Kirika's eyes had seen too much death and her hands
been wet with too much blood. The light would never wash the shadow from
her, not completely.
The hairdryer switched off, and Kirika let the schoolgirls blur as she
focused her gaze on Mireille's reflection on her side of the glass, the
blonde's image overlapping the group. In the choice between light and
dark, Kirika would always stand where it was blackest for as long as
Mireille chose the dark--beside the woman she loved. That was her
purpose this morning and the next, and for every one thereafter while
they lingered in their sinister world. The girls walking to school could
not allege to have an equal or more important function, and in that
sense Kirika had something over them and their peaceful existence.
Something beautiful flourished in the deep blackness, like a flower
blooming in a land otherwise constantly ravaged by war. It was that lone
flower Kirika held in her heart for succour and what caused a euphoric
swelling there in her breast. She fought in support of Mireille, to
ensure the darkness didn't claim the breathtaking woman's life--that
nothing would. It was an honour made in love and upheld with love, and
even if they did manage simpler, quieter lives together one day, that
honour would persist. Mireille and the amazing feelings they shared was
Kirika's pinprick of light in the vast dark, but it was vibrant and
clear, and couldn't be encroached by the void around it.
<Sinners always try to justify their crimes; do you think you are any
different? Sin is sin; the grey world doesn't exist. Nothing glorifies
it.>
Kirika watched Mireille in the window as the blonde walked over to their
luggage, the girl's brow creasing slightly as she tried hard to
concentrate on her adored partner alone. The voice in her head belonged
to Altena, but it didn't speak like her. Kirika was starting to doubt if
her other self had been the prodigy that she had always thought her to
be; the perfect student of Altena and her enclave, robotic in following
their creed. Altena had relished in submerging herself in sin; she of
anybody found grandeur in it. Then again, the voice was not to be
trusted. She worked to undermine Kirika, stoking her fears while gnawing
at her spirit. To what end, Kirika did not like thinking about.
Mireille bent over to dig around in her bag, and Kirika discovered her
eyes alighting on her partner's upraised bottom. It turned out to be as
engrossing as every other occasion her gaze loitered on it, clearing her
mind of her perturbing thoughts--all thought, really. Her mind,
ordinarily an indiscriminate sea of churning waves and drifting streams
went quite silent and still; what always happened during the moments she
was particularly mired in gazing deeply and fondly at Mireille. The
towel covered most of the blonde's posterior--it was rare to catch it
exposed, and then only flashes--but in the dim outline the
window-turned-mirror provided, Kirika thought she could *just* see up
inside it. If only the angle were better....
It became an unnatural obsession--Kirika subtly tilting her head this
way and that to see whether the new perspectives created would let her
view more of the cheeks of her love's rear. Mireille's bottom sashaying
a little from side to side while she rummaged only heightened Kirika's
level of heady enthrallment. It always moved, swayed, so... so....
Kirika didn't have a word for how it moved, but it was nice to watch.
From far, far away a tiny thought mused on why naked bottoms weren't
shown on television. Or for that matter, naked women like Mireille. That
might be a program Kirika would enjoy and make an effort to see. The
girl guessed it was due to propriety again; there were some places on
the human body that were just hidden as a rule. Kirika would cover
herself too while dressing sometimes, when she remembered. But again, it
was merely because it was something she believed she was meant to do. At
least when she forgot to Mireille didn't admonish her for it, probably
because Kirika was either in the privacy of their bedroom or secluded
behind a curtain in a store's changing room.
Mireille stood up straight, Kirika's toil to see what she wasn't meant
to for naught, and the girl's mental faculties returned to her, though
how she was feeling disappointed was the first thought shaped. Kirika
didn't budge from her position however, still hopeful for more. There
had never been an assignment so dangerous that could match these
feelings--the sensation of spicy anxiousness, the flavour of genuine
fear nearly, but fear she *wanted* to face and that tamed her breathing
to a slow and measured tempo. When her gun was in her grasp Kirika was
never afraid or eager for the possible exchange of fire ahead. She felt
nothing. This was something else. She tingled with life inside.
From Mireille's likeness in the window Kirika could pick out a lacy pair
of black panties and matching bra in the blonde's hand, delicate things
unlike the underwear the younger girl had. Mireille's undergarments came
in an array of colours and styles, and in fabrics like satin and silk
and lace. Kirika's were so very plain by comparison--cotton mostly cut
in straightforward designs, and white and pink and blue the usual
shades. She supposed her underwear served its purpose well enough, but
Mireille's was pretty, especially once on the woman's body. Kirika had
even glimpsed panties that left the blonde's bottom cheeks bare! It was
strange to wear garments that looked so nice when no one got to see them
under your clothing. There had to be a reason, but it was a mystery to
Kirika.
Still, Kirika wouldn't have minded so much trying on attire like that,
but Mireille didn't possess the same devotion she had choosing Kirika's
undergarments as she did the rest of her partner's wardrobe. They were
always selected in a hurry, with rarely much browsing involved. It
continued to the instances when Mireille laid out her clothes for her;
the woman let Kirika decide on her own what to don underneath it. This
morning had been no exception; Kirika's suit had been missing a set of
underwear. The girl didn't know why. True, it wasn't often she thought
she needed to wear a bra. She simply put on the clothes she had and it
didn't seem to make a difference lacking one. Mireille always wore one,
or something like it, however she was a lot bigger up there. Maybe
Kirika's size was why Mireille didn't bother spending the time.
Mireille paused suddenly and glanced over her shoulder, and for a second
Kirika thought she was going to get in trouble for peeking out the
window, or worse, caught peeking at her. Mireille didn't like it when
Kirika watched her change. Kirika was shooed away rather brusquely when
she had first sat there staring after moving in with the blonde,
teaching her not to look so obviously again. Kirika had undressed and
dressed in the company of her classmates for gym without generating an
acrid reaction, but perhaps there were different standards in school.
Apparently Kirika's spying on both counts was overlooked or unnoticed
for now, as Mireille was content to look away and put on her panties.
She slipped them on underneath her towel however; the veiled approach
her normal habit while Kirika was around. But after a wiggle of her hips
to get comfortable in her black underwear, the towel fell from Mireille
to encircle her feet, and Kirika was treated to her partner's bare back.
The dimple of perfect alabaster skin down the center that followed that
sinuous curve, ending at the woman's albeit panty-clad round bottom,
only for two long, slender, beautifully toned legs to carry on the rest
of the way downwards.... Kirika's eyes didn't want to leave. It was as
close to seeing all of Mireille without the blanketing distraction of
clothes that Kirika was ever privileged to. Mireille packaged herself
attractively in elegant apparel, but regardless of how stylish the
clothes were there was no fabric on par with the blonde's naked
flesh--her true, unadorned self.
Mireille threaded her arms through the shoulder straps of her bra, and
then after fiddling with it at the front, fastened the clasp at her
back. She bent at the waist again to retrieve something out of her bag,
but it was for the shortest of moments. However, as consolation, when
she rose her stretched underwear was pushed a little bit between the two
cheeks of her bottom, creating some delightful contours.
At last Mireille turned around--side-on to at least allow Kirika to
properly revere her stature in lace underwear--and she walked over to
sit on the edge of her half of the bed. She gathered together what
looked like a tan knot of material in her hands and reached down to her
feet. When the blonde sat back up, sheer nylon was unrolled along her
calves. Mireille got to her feet to pull the remainder of the elastic
material past her thighs and over her hips, and then shimmied those hips
to and fro as she adjusted the pantyhose to her liking, her thumbs
stretching and twisting the waistband about. She grumbled wordlessly
under her breath throughout--low mutterings, probably deliberately
subdued so that Kirika wouldn't hear, however they failed to be amply
muffled that the girl's receptive ears weren't piqued--and pulled a
variety of discontent expressions before finally leaving the waistband
alone. Tights weren't a favourite of Mireille's, but her penchant for
very short skirts saw them as part of her garb all too frequently. On
one of their numerous fashion-related forays, Mireille had sternly
educated Kirika on the topic of pantyhose being a poor and distasteful
substitute for thigh-high stockings and garter belt, or even just the
stockings. She didn't remark why exactly, but her abhorrence was
unmistakable.
Kirika had her theories she tossed around in her mind, of course.
Pantyhose were plain--black, brown or white were the only hues Kirika
had observed in her partner's wardrobe, and with no patterns or designs
to speak of--whereas Mireille was fond of pretty things. Contrary,
Mireille's stocking collection, while not having many extra colours, had
lots and lots of diverse decoration. Kirika had seen stockings
resembling netting; loose like a chain-link fence or tight akin to mesh;
stockings with stitched butterflies, stockings with vertical stripes,
stockings with horizontal stripes, stockings with checkers--then there
was the lace band at the tops, and the garters too! The assortment was
as great as their wearer's taste for them.
Perhaps pantyhose had a comparable selection, but Mireille simply didn't
entertain it. Kirika wasn't as offended by tights as the blonde; she
wore a tan pair like Mireille did now, although granted it was
uncommon--hosiery didn't fall under the category of underwear according
to the woman, and was typically set out for Kirika by her--but she had
to agree that stockings were nicer. Kirika felt fine wearing pantyhose
herself; the texture of nylon was rather pleasant to run her hands down;
and they did accentuate Mireille's legs as superbly as thigh-high
stockings did, but stockings; and especially when complemented with a
garter belt; had an allure unmatched by their lengthier sister. That
stockings didn't completely cover the whole leg, sparing a tantalising
space of thigh above an eye-catching lace design, made them the winner
in Kirika's opinion. She got to look at Mireille's legs attractively
attired and yet still had some of her love's skin on open display--a
sampling of both beauties. And while it was correct that Kirika couldn't
catch sight of Mireille's panties once the blonde was fully dressed, she
didn't like how pantyhose fit so high on her partner's hips. She felt it
was a shame to obscure pretty underwear of the kind Mireille had during
the times it was revealed.
Kirika hadn't had the experience of slipping on a set of thigh-high
stockings of Mireille's sort, and never a garter belt. Hers were always
basic like the blonde's tights, and cotton, and the lace was absent.
Similar to her underwear in fact, which rendered Kirika musing on the
secret of why Mireille didn't handle her hosiery the same as she
ministered to her undergarments. She tried, but Kirika wasn't sure she'd
ever understand fashion, or at least Mireille's interpretation of it.
Mireille made to walk back to her bags, however she stopped when she was
faced with Kirika at the window, and as though seeing the girl there for
the first time, struck a rigid, officious pose; her hips swung to one
side and a hand found purchase on the raised swell. She frowned like
that at Kirika's back for a second or two, her look predictably
disapproving, but then resumed her course to the foot of the bed.
Once there, Mireille leaned over her luggage, hovering on one foot while
the other lifted for balance behind her, and with her fingertips plucked
a white shirt from one of her bags by its collar. "There must be
something very interesting out there," she remarked as she shook out the
shirt. The blonde must have felt she had enough clothes on now to
tolerate Kirika's visual attention.
Even so, Kirika was sluggish in turning around and leaving the curtain,
the acclimatised convention for when her partner was dressing keeping
her chary while also that she had been spying making her unwilling to
present herself as too keen to look. "Mmm... not so much," Kirika said,
her finger slipping from the drape. The outside didn't beguile so much
this occasion; for all its temptation it was the inside that sported the
greater lure. Peace and wishes were for tomorrow; the gun and a promise
were for today.
Mireille seemed grim when Kirika finally faced her head-on, the woman
concentrating too fixatedly on finding the sleeves of her shirt for her
arms. She tugged sharply on the shirt's lapels, the fabric answering
with a crisp snap, and then began to button it from the top downward.
"We'll be home soon," Mireille said after she had worked about halfway
down the shirt, not looking up from her fastening fingers. She had
spoken of the return home seldom, yet the hope was everlasting hanging
in the air amidst Kirika and Mireille, and the times she had given them
voice were notable enough for the declaration to have neared becoming a
mantra, or perhaps a prayer; one shared by them both.
"Mm," Kirika nodded. She tried to draw comfort from Mireille's assurance
whenever the woman gave it; to believe her; but each time it was uttered
some of its promise eroded in the girl's heart and in her partner's
voice. Today would see if Mireille's conviction was vindicated, or if
the assuring veneer would be abraded to a false hope underneath.
Mireille finished doing up her shirt and procured a lavender skirt and
jacket from her bag; a matching set. She tossed the jacket on the bed
and then stepped into the skirt before pulling it up to her waist,
wriggling her hips again--which Kirika took notice of, hopefully not too
obviously--to ease it along. It was rather petite like Kirika had
suspected, climbing high on her thighs well above her knees, and with a
slit down the side of the left leg to expose more pantyhose. Although it
would give more freedom of movement than Kirika's much longer grey skirt
that was cut to just beyond her knees and had its slit in the back, the
girl was positive that Mireille hadn't decided on it for its strategic
good sense.
Mireille ensured that her shirt was tucked into her skirt smoothly by
way of her hand feeling under the waistband's circumference, and then
walked back to the chest of drawers. It wasn't just a place to style her
hair; Mireille had set up a makeup station there on top of the drawers
as well. She leaned close and stared into the little mirror she had
propped up against some books, and reminiscent of an artist to a canvas,
applied her special paints to her features. Her eyelashes were teased
with brushes and her lips carefully coated with lipstick, powder was
dabbed and then coloured pencils were used for the final touches. It
looked complex and painstaking, but Mireille was packing away her
cosmetics bag for another morning in no time.
Kirika hadn't tried painting her face, at least not for the titivating
aim her partner did; camouflage mix for dense foliage and black smears
for especially treacherous night assignments were her colours, and the
application of both were empty of the delicate diligence the blonde
demonstrated with her bevy of attractive shades. Mireille had yet to
introduce the practice to her either, the absence of a teacher all but
ending any exploration into the ritual before it could begin.
Nonetheless, Kirika didn't feel as though she was less for not wearing
makeup. She had stared into a mirror a few times, straining to imagine
what her visage might look like with a glaze of cosmetics, but the face
staring back at her didn't alter a notable extent. Kirika took that as
her features being fine without makeup, however it would have been nice
to try wearing it once. Imagination was no substitute for the real
thing, and she could have been wrong about its effect.
Mireille didn't truly require makeup either actually, and yet following
the woman's efforts Kirika was always happy she had pursued it. Mireille
looked ravishing plain-faced, but the cosmetics she put on toiled to
highlight that beauty, emphasising her rich blue eyes, long eyelashes,
lush lips, and flawless complexion. The blonde's immaculate features
were more... out there, for all to see. Kirika didn't think her love was
more gorgeous with makeup, just that the reality was much more obvious,
even to her.
Mireille grabbed a fancy-looking spray bottle partway filled with a
golden liquid off the chest of drawers, and then arched her head back,
accentuating her throat. She sent out several plumes of fine mist into
the air in front of her, before stepping slightly into the rapidly
vanishing wafting clouds. She did similar at her left wrist, squirting a
puff of not exactly sweet, but a pleasantly heady fragrance above her
pulse point. Mireille replaced the perfume after that, and straight away
rubbed the insides of her wrists together to spread the aroma.
Kirika had consistently found this behaviour baffling. The girl was of
the belief that it would be more effective for Mireille to spray the
scent directly on her body. And why the blonde was so sparing as to wipe
her wrists together to anoint the odour to her neglected pulse point was
awkward to rationalise too. Was perfume expensive? For as long as Kirika
had known her Mireille had never been stingy with money--being a
freelance assassin was extremely profitable; there forever seemed to be
someone who wanted someone else dead, and the skills sought for a
precise and reliable execution never came cheap. Furthermore, that guess
was in dispute with Mireille not electing the efficiency of spraying her
perfume straight on her body. Was it toxic in large doses? That thought
was scary, even if it did make Mireille smell very... peppery,
pleasingly so. Her presence was rendered all the more imposing just by
that bouquet. Be that as it may, its toxicity was in question. Sometimes
when Kirika roamed the cosmetics counters in stores in the company of
Mireille, the combined fragrances mimicked a hostile gas attack. The
girl wondered if in high quantities it would burn her throat and eyes.
She hoped Mireille knew what she was doing, and wasn't making another
sacrifice for her beautifying activities.
If Mireille gave perfume up, as good as it smelt, Kirika wouldn't mourn
it too greatly. The woman's own splendid scent was the best. If that
could be bottled and its potency increased, Kirika would definitely
adore her beloved's use of perfume. With that bait, she might have even
garnered the nerve to ask Mireille if she could wear some herself.
It appeared as if Mireille still had more to do at her provisional hair
and makeup station when Kirika sighted her producing a series of
hairpins. Mireille took up her hairbrush again, and looked into the
small mirror while she gathered and combed her hair into a ponytail held
in her left hand. From there Kirika started to lose track of movement of
Mireille's hair, although her acute eyesight still traced the blonde's
hand motions. The ponytail disappeared into a funnel of flaxen lacks,
and Mireille stuck pins seemingly haphazardly in a forming blonde
bonnet. When the woman's hands slowed into patting loose hairs into
position, Kirika could take in what she had done.
Mireille had folded her long mane somehow in upon itself, the crease
visible at the back of her head. It was like two winding waves meeting
and plunging together down a narrow crack, or alternatively blonde silk
bubbling up from a crevice. Kirika recognised it as a bun of some style.
A mound of hair coiled somewhat on top of Mireille's head gave her extra
height, but it wasn't total neatness with a large tress allowed to
lightly curl down her left cheek. It was elegant, yet the faint disarray
alluded at a wilder charm. For all its complex grandeur, the style could
not measure up to Mireille's hair hanging loose and natural about her
shoulders and sinuous down her back. Other styles did have their
individual virtues, but Kirika liked that simple, free, unembellished
style best, which providentially the exquisite woman normally retained.
It was how she saw Mireille for the first time waking in the morning,
and was her last vision of her when she went to sleep at night--relaxed
and as herself. The classy makeup, the piquant perfume--what they
afforded was appealing and not the least bit unwelcome, however it was
lazing Mireille in her nightwear that Kirika remembered most.
There was no more beauty to be coaxed from Mireille's body; all that
remained was to arm it, the thorns to a rose. Mireille seized her pistol
and ammunition holster from where it was looped over one drawer's
handle, and then strapped it onto her torso. Her Walther P99, definitely
out of place among the hair and cosmetics items, was grasped next. The
suppresser was already fitted to its barrel, and subsequent to checking
that there was a bullet in the gun's chamber via a partial tug on the
slide, the blonde secured it firmly in the holster against her ribs.
Observing Mireille caused Kirika to be conscious of her own pistol flush
to her body stuck in her skirt behind her back and covered by her
jacket, concealed, silenced, and loaded. When it was next revealed at
her behest, it would be the death of at least one soul.
Mireille picked her jacket off the bed and put it on over her holster
and the weapon within the leather sleeve, and fastened its two front
buttons to hold it closed. She flicked her shirt's broader collar
outside over the jacket's, inspected her cuffs, and finding them
satisfactory favoured Kirika with her attention. The woman smiled a
little at the younger girl, only just an arc to her mouth, and
approached her, her eyes focused below Kirika's own.
Wordlessly Mireille touched the red cord tied into a loose bow at
Kirika's throat, before deciding to tighten the knot slightly with both
her hands. Kirika peered downward along her nose while Mireille did;
noting that the woman's nails neared if not matched the lavender tone of
her suit.
Mireille lifted her eyes to Kirika's when she was content with the bow,
although her fingertips lingered on the girl's collar. The blonde probed
with her eyes, searching for doubt or hesitation--searching if the
reluctance she had surely sensed throughout their four days of waiting
had matured into something deeper. But Kirika knew there was nothing to
find; even her early reservations were under control today. Despite the
sadness, the wishes for home, and the longing for another day of quiet
waiting, when the moment to kill arrived, it was easy to fulfill. It was
the aftermath that ate at her soul to admit the darkness. But Kirika
fought for Mireille; she fought to protect her. She had to hold onto
that and remember why the sins were permissible. She had to hold onto it
as a talisman against the creeping darkness inside herself. With that
defence Kirika could do what she had to, just like she had in the Metro
station, the club in Pigalle Place, and in Albert Laroque's estate back
in Paris. If it was for Mireille, Kirika could and would do anything.
Kirika's steely reddish-brown gaze proved her resolve before Mireille's
intent eyes. The dark haired assassin gave a small brief nod, and
Mireille's lips creased into a slightly fuller smile. Compunction would
trouble Kirika no more.
******
The train sped along its tracks, the latest curve jostling Mireille into
a fellow passenger; a bespectacled man in a suit who accepted the shove
as an inevitability, leaning with it but displaying no other reaction.
Mireille, not so accustomed to these rigours, strengthened her grip on
the handle attached to the railing overhead and used it to rock herself
back into her tiny cubby amid the jam of commuters, her jaw set tightly
as she battled mounting irritation. It was the early hours on a weekday
morning--a hectic time to travel wherever you were in the world.
However, the carriage seemed to be packed to capacity--and pushed rather
beyond it, to the likes Mireille--albeit no veteran with merely a narrow
exposure to riding public Parisian trains--hadn't witnessed before on
the Metro back home.
Businesswomen and businessmen on their way to the office and
schoolchildren on their way to school made up most of the crush, with
those in suits outnumbering those in uniform. Mireille and Kirika
mingled fluidly dressed as they were, although the illusion might have
been improved if the latter teen girl had been clothed in her school
uniform.
With so many bodies crammed together like an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle,
the atmosphere was stifling. The reek of other people's cheap cologne,
the pong of those filthy individuals that hadn't washed and then
attempted to hide their stench beneath a cloying blanket of deodorant,
the stinking sweat oozing from dozens of overheating bodies despite the
cold weather outside the speeding train, the bad breath puffing over her
shoulders from too near passengers; it all combined pungent forces into
a single polluting environment bent on offending Mireille's nose and
reinforcing her distaste for public transportation. This had to be it at
its worst. Japan had much too many people, or perhaps every one of them
had just opted to board this train today, after also stuffing the first
train Mireille and Kirika had rode on in Kawasaki.
The railway was the quickest and easiest--although that last was
beginning to look disputable from Mireille's standpoint--mode of travel
into Yokohama and to its courthouse, and the assassins, seemingly just
like the majority of the morning's travelers, had chosen to make full
use of it. The claustrophobic train was the third in succession the
young women had stepped aboard--the first in Kawasaki, and into a
similar press of people, to take the pair to the second that had
transported them to Yokohama to shortly later catch the present train
that would drop them in the vicinity of Yokohama District Court. The
second train hadn't been the ordeal the first was, and that the third
was being; a fortunate mercy, since the time aboard had been the longest
of the three up to now. The bullet train running between Kawasaki and
Yokohama had contained a comfy seat for every passenger and there had
been abundant vacant, qualities that had championed a quiet and relaxed
transit. Furthermore, whilst it was true it had been the lengthiest leg
of Mireille and Kirika's trip to the courthouse, it had taken fewer than
thirty minutes to switch cities. The luxury of the intercity carriage so
soon after the cramped conditions of the local Kawasaki train had also
seemed to propel the bullet train down the track at even greater
velocity. Comfort could condense the longest voyage, while the want of
it could stretch out the shortest... in particular if you were one of a
multitude of sardines in a tin can, and one without a seat.
Although standing with almost no room to move, Mireille's legs weren't
throbbing--she would be a miserable contract killer if her fitness was
that appalling--but when the option was there, sitting down was always
better than standing up in a densely crowded and lasting setting such at
this. Yet Mireille had been stanch in rejecting her chance to keep off
her feet. Kirika hadn't uttered it openly, sparing with her soft-spoken
voice as she was, but the blonde had sensed the girl's insistence that
she take the lone available seat when they had initially boarded the
train. Mireille had had to really beat the proposition back, and even
then it had been no small accomplishment given how accommodating Kirika
was, and how habitually the older woman took advantage of her obliging
demeanor. Mireille was aware she invited that altruistic behaviour; her
passive acceptance the same as active encouragement; and thus Kirika did
not turn from sacrificing her own well being to promote the blonde's at
every opportunity. Subsequent to much unsure dithering on Kirika's part,
Mireille's eventual recourse had been to firmly fold her arms in
finality and flat out state that Kirika sit down. The idea of
threatening that someone would steal the seat if neither of them
occupied it before long had crossed Mireille's mind, but it would have
been just like Kirika to opt to stand beside her in that case and share
her level of discomfort. Mireille felt it not past her to have given her
sometimes vexingly loyal companion a little push into the seat if it had
come to that.
Mireille was starting to wonder at her decision now, and the occasional
dubious look Kirika gave her wasn't helping her shaky selfless resolve.
Kirika was very much raring to donate her seat at a split second's
notice; she wanted to, the Corsican could tell; all she had to do was
ask. However, Mireille thought of the temptation she would never--she
hoped not, anyway--yield to and the unpleasant proximity of the other
passengers around her as penance for earlier this morning and what's
more it served as grooming for her to be the hospitable one from time to
time. The woman did like Kirika's helpful nature; like it a bit too much
that she was beginning to take it for granted. That Mireille's guilt
over feeling that way and over Kirika deferring to her constantly was
remote and glossed over was a sign of concern. If they were going to be
in a... a real relationship, there had to be equal give and take between
them... more or less.
Mireille sighed at herself. She was spoiled and bossy and she knew it.
It wasn't going to be simple or painless to break out of her
self-centred habits. Being Kirika's elder automatically put her in the
commanding role too and allotted justification to her dictatorship, a
position she additionally maintained in their work. But it couldn't be
the same; Mireille was in charge of assignments because she was the more
capable in that responsibility. It was life and death there, not life
and love. In their private life Mireille's leadership should be
exercised to merely guide and advise--not rule. Kirika wasn't her
servant; she was her partner... her lover. Her equal. It was the ideal,
and would hold in spirit; however Mireille would probably always retain
some dominance over the younger girl as a consequence to her age and
experience. But she would see it diminish as much as it could.
Kirika took respite from pouting at Mireille; unbeknownst to the girl
granting her grateful partner a reprieve as well; to turn her head
around and favour the window behind her and its streaming views broken
by the occasional overpass or tunnel with her doe-eyed stare for a
while. Guilt smeared across the blonde's conscience, and stern tolerance
of her circumstances standing in the tight throng rose where a pit of
complaint only had root before. This was Mireille's penance as much as
it was her start at a more considerate self. The blonde had immediately
felt shamed upon chiding Kirika for her customary window gazing back at
the Yuumura house, and the remorse had worn on her from then on. As
understated as the comment had been, Mireille was cognisant that she had
intended there be sarcasm; sarcasm Kirika likely hadn't figured out
going by her response. That innocence in the face of the Corsican's
callousness could have brought a lump to her throat if she'd been a less
disciplined woman. But Mireille could no longer tame her heart when it
concerned her beloved partner, and it was shown no such leniency. It
hurt. She was trying to make amends in her tacit fashion; amends for a
slight Kirika probably wasn't even aware of; but it still hurt. Perhaps
it was because it was penance more to soothe herself, seeing as Kirika
was ignorant to her wrongdoing. Moreover, she was causing her partner
some added distress too in not sitting down in Kirika's seat like the
girl desired, even though it was secretly for her benefit. Mireille had
never been good at apologies--she'd had little practice at it given that
her conscience seldom bothered her to make any. But it was something,
and Mireille was nothing if not a woman who took responsibility for her
actions... when they harmed someone who mattered to her.
Mireille believed the tension of the morning was the culprit for her
prickly mood earlier--being in Japan under Breffort's conditions grated
on her relentlessly--though the time to shake Soldats and the conniving
man off her and Kirika's backs was now. But their being here wrested a
toll from Kirika too. Every traveller of the black path had their method
of coping with its severity and adversity; some smoked compulsively,
some drank for numbness; some found peace with family or in the arms of
lovers, others in the euphoria of mind-altering substances. Kirika had
her windows and whatever vista she saw through them. It was a tiny and
simplistic vice for one so tortured. The girl had pursued another
pastime before in painting, but leisure that involved people not on the
path had a tendency to steer them toward it, and normally not of their
own volition. That lesson had been inked in pain inside Kirika.
Mireille shouldn't get in the way of her partner's unobtrusive
diversion--she couldn't interpret it herself, nevertheless what her
lover saw from her windowsill roost had to be meaningful and worthy of
interest--although before this morning she'd seen no reason to meddle.
That reason today of course had been baseless and uncalled for--there
could be dangerous eyes outside their safehouse, but Kirika was not some
amateur hired gun; she was arguably the finest professional killer in
the world. She knew perfectly well what to be on guard for when
indulging in her usually harmless window-watching fetish, and her
precautions were no doubt impeccable. Kirika was not some young
girl--she was an assassin just like Mireille.
And as for Mireille's distractions, she was partial to shopping in
boutiques and dining out at fine restaurants, these days with Kirika to
join in on her pleasures. The company certainly improved upon the
outings, not to mention having someone else to buy clothes for. There
were many cute ensembles that Mireille had always fancied, but she knew
would not suit her. Kirika's body and general air was not so fraught, to
Mireille's great delight and continued entertainment.
Mireille smiled faintly to herself, gazing down at Kirika. Even while
they were closing in on another meeting with opposing travellers on the
black path, the feelings Kirika drew from her could still keep her warm.
She'd always have that console, no matter how dire the twists and how
barbed the turns on the dark road became. Something beautiful took the
journey with Mireille; something pure and good that couldn't be
corrupted in the immorality surrounding her life, something private just
for her... and for the girl who made that beauty possible. It made the
difference in the Corsican's days. Mireille hadn't really lived until
falling in love.
Simply looking at Kirika rubbed away the passenger cage, pushing it
back; well back; to some place behind Mireille's senses. The annoyance
the train generated became an equivocal sentiment; the reason for even
having the feeling a developing mystery the blonde didn't care to study.
As Kirika watched the passing streets and buildings outside the window
Mireille watched her, and discovered the view just as enchanting.
Suddenly Kirika's eyes veered from the glass and in the next fraction of
a second her right hand shot out while her body stretched to catch up,
seizing something behind Mireille. The something gasped as Mireille
jerked into full wakefulness, and the woman turned, her own hand thrust
inside her jacket for her firearm and with no time to curse her
daydreaming.
Kirika had caught a man's wrist, his hand, rigid and trembling in the
assassin's white-knuckled grip, kept mere inches from touching
Mireille's rump. There was no weapon in his grasp, but in his other was
a briefcase. On inspection he appeared an everyday businessman in suit
and tie; albeit with a face drawn and horrified; a commuter in a host of
commuters on his way to work.
Mireille blinked a few times, it taking a moment for her would-be
assailant's intention to sink in. He'd wanted to grope her. He'd wanted
to grope her... *her*...!
Mireille shuffled her rear as far as she could from the outstretched
claw, cold death in her blue eyes for the petrified pervert owner. The
audacity! She wasn't certain if she wanted to let go of her gun, but
eventually she removed her hand from within her jacket and signalled to
Kirika in the form of a grudging scowl to release her almost molester.
Mireille wagered her partner's crushing fist was sufficient castigation
while being appropriately lowkey, unlike what the Corsican *wished* she
could inflict. She knew his offence didn't warrant getting shot--well,
except perhaps if the wandering hand.... She shooed that image away--but
at the minute nothing seemed too brutal. Mireille let her emotions go
swiftly however; her violence was not without temperance, and, for that
matter, was not unnecessarily sadistic when employed. Still, she hoped
the man was right-handed. He'd find today at the office rather
pain-ridden and frustrating.
As the groper disguised as a businessman clutched his injured wrist and
melted back into his camouflage of passengers before anyone noticed his
vile action, Mireille was reminded it wasn't just people's odours and
their pooled heat that posed problems in these close quarters. There
were dangers in a crowd; it held the potential to be as treacherous as a
stormy ocean. A weapon could very circumspectly be drawn and continue to
go unnoticed within a swarm of oblivious people, and the target for that
weapon in the swarm could be approached with all secrecy under a
mimicked air of casualness. When the body fell amongst the maze of feet
and people started to stir from apathy, the slayer would by then have
blended into the sea of faces, the corpse her or his only sign of being
there. Mireille had had her brushes with killers in crowds and had been
one herself more than once, but the lecher could have been another rival
assassin with her demise in mind; the one that had succeeded if not for
Kirika's steadfast vigilance.
Kirika studied Mireille's face for a moment before leaning back into her
seat, however she seemed to find it a task leaving her partner's
features alone for longer than a couple of seconds.
Mireille's chin dropped, and her eyes were pushed askance from Kirika's
prying looks. The warped contours of her lips articulated her
displeasure, but it was not for the girl before her. Mireille had been
concerned about the problems her partner's sentimentality could bring to
their business, yet it looked as if it was her own she needed to begin
seriously cracking down on. Affectionate behaviour in front of those who
could use it as a tool against them was the bounds of the blonde's
worries for how Kirika might handle the changes between them, but
nothing to give validation to that concern had transpired. Granted, it
was still very much the beginnings of their romantic relationship, and
still in private Kirika had yet to branch out from being the quiet and
withdrawn girl Mireille knew her as. Regardless, in the meantime
Mireille was an ever-ripening tumult of emotion. Tender emotion she had
grown to adore, but there was a time and a place for the feelings, and
when working was neither. Kirika had kept her head about her; Mireille
must have no less focus, or *she* might become the one to commence the
inappropriate intimate touches whilst adversaries looked on, if her
carelessness didn't see her dead first.
The blonde blanched and then cringed at the thought--at the thought of
being rendered unable to keep her hands off Kirika, that was to say; it
was a nightmare for some reason more demoralising than being killed for
negligence--and blew the flaxen tress suspended by her cheek out of her
face, just for it to fly back into its former spot. Mireille's hair was
done up in a French twist--part of her small effort to alter her
appearance from her norm. Ryosuke and Vincent could recognise her on
sight; even a slight variation to her looks would help to ease their
eyes over and past her. The clump of hair in her face obscured her
features a little too, and if not for that Mireille would have
considered donning glasses to give further doubt to her identity.
Nothing she could do would hold up to a close inspection however, and
her being a foreigner who stuck out did much to counteract her
masquerade as an insignificant court attendee.
Kirika, her face known by their prey too, had difficulties as well with
her cover despite being Japanese--she was a high school aged girl and
might cause attention wandering the courthouse because of that. However,
she wore a suit like Mireille to blend in and such tactics had worked in
the past. Perhaps onlookers saw Kirika as simply a short woman, or as a
youth with familial grounds to be in court. Still, up close she would
easily be identified also. It was hard to overlook such a cute face.
But the Corsican assassin didn't intend for them to get near enough that
either of the men or their personnel could distinguish her or Kirika as
Noir, not until she decided to at any rate. And then whether they
recognised them or not wouldn't matter.
More distaste kept Mireille's expression sour and poor Kirika perturbed
as the seated girl divided her time staring at her and trying not to.
Like it or not, that was what Ryosuke and Vincent and those they had
spread the information to regarded Mireille and Kirika as--Noir, the
hands of Soldats. Severed hands, if the men had believed the Corsican
when she had denied the association with the organisation. In any case,
her and her partner's label was unlikely to change now, and the woman
had to put up with it if not celebrate being saddled with the title. It
was the truth at the end of the day, for all of Mireille's dislike and
refusals. She and Kirika had earned the name like no other who had
adopted it before, and it was not so straightforwardly renounced. At the
very least, the reputation that came with the name should put fear into
their quarry and any who would join Ishinomori's side. Fear was a good
edge to have. A terrified target made irrational mistakes and hesitated
when confronted with the face of their fear, and a fleeing target put up
paltry resistance. Mireille had no reservations against shooting someone
pleading for their life.
Mireille could tell that it wasn't in Ryosuke's nature to beg, however.
Vincent, maybe.... Yet each man had faced down Noir with cool composure
and blazing gunfire. The Corsican assassin recognised talent when she
saw it, and this pair had enough to keep her sharp. They knew the path
and had treaded it for a long time. But Ryosuke and Vincent were still
going to die.
There were others apart from Ishinomori's crew to watch for. The
courthouse would probably have descended into a hubbub of activity over
Kaede's Ishinomori's high-profile attendance, with media presence thick.
That meant people with cameras, a weapon as prospectively lethal to
anonymity as a gun was to a human being. Mireille and Kirika would have
to be sure to stay clear of their shots as though they were bullets, at
least when the real bullets started to fly. Photographic evidence
linking them to the hit being plastered over tonight's news generated
renown Mireille would rather not have.
There were the closed circuit cameras of the courthouse itself to avoid
whenever possible as well, although even knowing where each was thanks
to Jacques' blueprints, it would be quite a game of hide and seek to
win. The cover of the crowd and the young assassins' ability to become
one with it would be their defence if caught on either type of film; as
long as they appeared innocuous in the background, seemingly distant
from events, they were virtually inoculated to exposure. That said;
nothing more than cooling bodies and harmless empty bullet casings was
the preferred calling card.
The Japanese police would be out in force like the media, and manning
select chokepoints equipped with metal detectors and x-ray machines. The
courtrooms themselves, particularly the one where Kaede's trial was to
be held, would be all but inaccessible to someone carrying a firearm,
but the bigger hindrance was the security station screening all visitors
that ventured outside the lobby area to access more of the courthouse.
Smuggling a Walther P99 and a Beretta M1934 past that would border on
impossible. But of course, a professional assassin didn't voluntarily
wander through a metal detector or into a waiting frisk when it wasn't
in her interests, and there was never merely a single way to enter and
move around in a building, irrespective of how fortified it was.
Jacques' blueprints had spared no detail.
The train slowed down, and Mireille braced herself for the coming jolt
as the bed of air she had been riding began to feel more and more like
solid ground. The parroting chirp of the announcer from a speaker
somewhere overhead declared the approaching station twice over--sweet
relief for some, and a welcome milestone for those remaining. It was
Mireille and Kirika's final stop too, but while their relief might flow
sweeter than most for more reasons than just escaping the cramped
conditions, bitterness was there to dampen it. They shouldn't be here,
but here they were. Nothing could help that now, though. At least the
days of difficult waiting were at an end, and Mireille and Kirika had
the chance to shape their own fate at last.
Mireille looked at Kirika, and her partner returned the stare. Their
eyes were the same. There was nothing more to say or to think
about--except going home. The blonde assassin hadn't forgotten about
Langonel's Manuscript, but the stolen tome could be buried with Ryosuke
and Vincent for all it mattered now. Whatever intentions they had for it
would die with them. The book had importance, and Mireille would have
scooped it up into her own safekeeping if given the opportunity, but it
wasn't vital in the sense she and her partner must go out of their way
to retrieve it. Let it be lost again, an overlooked relic amongst a dead
family's possessions.
The jolt Mireille had been anticipating arrived, staggering her
slightly, and the station's platform rolled to a dead stop in the
train's windows. The carriage's doors opened with a whoosh, and Kirika
got to her feet to stand close beside Mireille.
Noir had a court date to attend.
******
The column of black sedans and one limousine carved through the Yokohama
morning traffic with the conviction and resulting ease an outward
portrayal of authority sanctioned; the bumper to bumper line of
expensive and important-looking vehicles forbidding enough for the
average motorist to give the right of way to. Conduct yourself like you
are meant to be where you are and doing what you are doing, and only
those with mettle questioned your being. Ryosuke believed the motorcade
could push through red lights and teeming pedestrian crossings if
willing. Strength was uncommon among the mundane and complacent masses.
They would rather bend in the wind than throw themselves against it and
risk snapping.
There was none of that wretched sort in this car--at least those that
mattered were not. Vin sat on Ryosuke's right, dressed in a yellow suit
and red tie that spoke loudly of his probable aspiration of trampling
all over the district court's decorum. He fiddled with his new knife; a
butterfly knife to succeed the switchblade left behind in a mansion's
library in Paris; flipping its bite handle open to expose the length of
sharpened steel for a second and then snapping his wrist in the opposite
direction, letting momentum close the two handles together again over
the blade.
"Just like in the movies," Vin muttered, before thumbing off the
handles' latch and spinning the knife edge into view once more.
Ken was at Ryosuke's left side, occasionally glancing at Vin while he
played with his latest toy. He sat stiffer than his laidback habit, his
many ring-adorned fingers--the nine that could--clutching his parted
knees. He was probably worried about Kaede and her fate, but he needn't
have. This appearance in Yokohama District Court was a formality, and
Ken was aware of it. He was a worrier by nature, though.
Ken had clothed himself smarter than usual for the occasion in spite of
its redundancy--a crisp white suit and Hawaiian shirt of giant orange
blossoms on cream was prim for him. He would always look the gangster no
matter what he wore, but sometimes Ryosuke thought he embraced the
yakuza stereotype and fed on that image. The older man likened it to a
peacock's show of fanned feathers; it had its uses as warning to the
weak and lure to the curious, although Ryosuke doubted Ken was as
lucrative with the ladies as Vin. Only certain kinds of women considered
an openly dangerous and brash criminal a thrilling romantic liaison for
long.
Taking up the black leather seats across from Ryosuke and his brothers
were three women who likely preferred the company of gangsters, although
Ken still had no chance with any of them, even before Ryosuke's
objections. Kaede sat in the middle directly opposite Ryosuke,
fashionably clad in one of the pantsuits she seemed to like. Ryosuke
recognised Dominique's hand when he saw it. The girl he knew had liked
skipping about in colourful floral summer dresses, not the severe and
rigid business attire of today. It pained Ryosuke that she had become
like him. Kaede was as strong as anyone he knew, but he had never
intended for her to live his life.
The mother hen in a skin to pair her to her chick, except a skirt and
stockings substituted for the pants, sat alongside Ryosuke's little
sister, their legs pressed against one another despite the spacious
seating. Ryosuke was sure Dominique had arranged herself that close to
Kaede just to rankle him. Kaede's decline had started with that woman
and it would end with her. No matter what she liked to think, Dominique
wasn't family. She was a foreign invader in Ryosuke's hate-filled eyes,
and a Machiavellian puppeteer, and he would find a way to cleanly
extricate her deeply sunken claws from his only remaining kin before she
completely destroyed all that his family had accomplished... and
destroyed Kaede, too. She was Soldats, and just as accountable for his
mother and father's passing as the other Soldats members they were
fighting. Watching Dominique's influence twist his sister into a sick
prot‚g‚ of hers became more grueling every day. Dominique loved to
parade Kaede's prevailing affection for her in front of him, such that
even steel's patience would start to bend.
Spotting the attention, Kaede grinned at Ryosuke and mouthed 'Big
Brother' before giving him a little wave, her crumbling mind that of a
simpleton's to her sibling's troubles. Ryosuke merely stared back while
Dominique shot Kaede a sidelong disapproving look and irritated frown.
There was still hope.
The last woman in the back of the limo was Fumiko Morita, sitting on the
other side of Kaede. She could have been mistaken for a mere friend of
Kaede's, albeit a shy and reclusive one. The young woman was clothed as
Kaede would have been in a better time; in a straightforward moss-green
dress under a white shawl, and a white sunhat with a garland of black
and white ribbon and lace atop her green locks. She looked pretty, but
Fumiko always was. That was *all* she was--a pretty thing to look at.
Fumiko had amounted to nothing greater since Ryosuke first saw her, but
in her defence opportunity for becoming something more had been cut from
her destiny. Still, it wasn't an excuse for being weak and pathetic.
Courage and strength was best found during adversity, and Fumiko lived
her harsh life in just such a realm.
It was demonstration of the depth of Fumiko's captivity that she was
here in the limo today, outside and unshackled in the free
world--outside, yet a caged animal still. The bars of her prison
traveled with her now wherever she went. Ryosuke wondered if Fumiko ever
toyed with the thought of escape these days, or if she had accepted what
her life was now. The woman had tried to flee when initially awarded to
Kaede like a wad of banknotes; however her keeper was fond of her, and
was unyielding in demanding obedience. It hadn't taken many recaptures
and subsequent punishments for Fumiko to stop running away and submit
herself to Kaede's wants. She had been domesticated, a dog that came and
sat at her mistress's direction.
To Ryosuke, Fumiko was one of the feeble masses in the streets outside
the limo, taken into a world too unkind for her. Had fear trapped Fumiko
in her cage? If she was that desperate for freedom, Ryosuke believed
nothing would keep her from striving for that hope. But there were no
more escape attempts from her, no more screaming and bawling; no more
defiance for a very long time. She had given up. Was it fear, or did
Fumiko like it? Did she like serving? Would she become as disgusting as
Claire, a willing whore who moaned in ecstasy in her slavery? Or had
Fumiko already become as filthy, deep down inside?
Ryosuke wanted to hate her, despise her and spit at the thought of her
as he did Claire--who Kaede had thankfully left behind at Ishinomori
Tower, against Dominique's suggestion that the slothful and pampered
redhead should accompany her. Ordinarily Ryosuke abhorred frailty as
Fumiko possessed with every fibre of his indomitable being, but he knew
himself enough to recognise he forced himself too hard to deride her
existence. Fumiko was so quiet, and seemed so... small. If not for her
beauty, one could forget she was in the room. Ryosuke wanted to hate
her, but in his heart there was little of that for Fumiko. How could you
hate something so fragile and beautiful? What was the point.
The smoky windows of the limousine prevented onlookers from peering
inside, but they were not curtains, and the morning's rays pierced
inside the backseat where people's eyes could not. Ryosuke's round
sunglasses where there to meet the glaring sunbeams that got through
however, the blue lenses glinting like jewels. The windows first role
wasn't as a privacy screen--they would halt a bullet. The vehicle's
chassis too was resistant to gunfire among other ordnance--its armour
plating was thick and durable to the degree a determined rocket
propelled grenade would not penetrate. The tires were still vulnerable
being not completely immune to puncture, however they would fill with
some jelly-like substance if pierced, ensuring that the limo's wheels
would continue rolling and keep it on the road.
There were possibly more countermeasures Ryosuke wasn't aware of, but he
knew of ample to realise the limousine was a secure way to move around
the city. It wasn't a tank, but it came close. Dominique had ordered and
overseen the construction of the vehicle, and while the defensive
upgrades had cost more than the car itself, the woman hadn't skimped on
the bill. Ryosuke grudgingly understood her meticulous attention. His
mother, Hikaru, had lost her life travelling in a motorcade. Ryosuke had
heard that the car she'd been in had been reinforced, but hadn't been
robust enough to withstand the furious Soldats assault that had assailed
it. Dominique had been there, so he had been told; hence, her background
aside, she knew well what armaments Soldats could potentially bring to
bear against them. It was strange to Ryosuke that Dominique could
survive in a bullet-ravaged car without a scratch while his mother
succumbed. People had consoled her for her loss for a long time, and she
had looked dejected, but Ryosuke couldn't stop himself manufacturing
secret plots centring on the French woman in his head. Maybe Dominique
had been involved in his mother's murder as well as his father's. Maybe
she had tired of Hikaru, and seen the future in Kaede. Would she tire of
Kaede too, once she had wrenched all use out of her? Ignoring her
obnoxious gestures, Dominique did appear to care about Kaede's physical
wellbeing. Whether because she genuinely worried for Ryosuke's sister or
worried for her as someone did their precious possession, was yet
another nefarious notion unproven one way or the other.
Through the azure shade of his sunglasses, Ryosuke glimpsed the brief
looks Dominique snuck at Kaede. He didn't think anyone else in the
backseat noticed them; perhaps not even Dominique herself realised her
behaviour--but he did. She was nervous, but it wasn't about the trial.
Kaede had been confined to the protection of Ishinomori Tower almost
since their mother's death under Dominique's direction; the girl hadn't
even gone out to visit their parents' graves. Ryosuke had gone in her
stead and passed on her love and respects; Dominique wasn't concerned
about his safety like she was his little sister's. There was freedom in
that though; Kaede had none, although Ryosuke didn't believe it had
dawned on her. Today was the first time she had gone out into the city
like this, and it was the first time the outfitted limousine with its
primary occupant inside was put to the test. Ryosuke admitted he wasn't
exactly relaxed about Kaede leaving the shelter of home, but he was
confident that she was safe. He was here after all, as was some of the
Kanagawa Kotetsu, packed into the last car of the convoy. Kaede could
always place her faith in them, like her older brother did. Dominique
didn't think much of Ryosuke's comrades or the Ishinomori family's
soldiers--'drones' she had cruelly remarked once, when she'd known he
was listening and Kaede was not--but she should have had trust in her
own personnel riding in the other cars to guard Kaede; the gaijin was
their leader, and a good leader should believe in those that followed
them. Ryosuke didn't have that trust in Dominique's followers himself of
course, however he had witnessed the black-clad women at work and they
were top-rate at what they did... when they weren't letting his
brothers-in-arms die in their stead. Then again, they were still
Soldats. How could anyone in that group, even amongst the rebels, trust
anybody else in it? It was in their nature to be cunning and
treacherous.
Ryosuke heard the crowds before he saw them. The media hive had been
shaken this morning, and journalists and photographers buzzed around
Yokohama District Courthouse's steps. It was a waste of their time;
there was no story here but of a quick acquittal. Drug charges, of all
things... if the law only knew the horrors Kaede had perpetrated.
Ryosuke would have laughed if he still remembered how, and if his
nightmares were not the stuff of those horrors, starring the distorted,
demonic image of his beloved sister of present day.
The motorcade parked in front of the courthouse, each car waiting for
the one behind it to catch up and stop before the doors started to swing
open. The bodyguards were the first on the pavement; Kanagawa Kotetsu
members and Dominique's supporters, who pushed back the mob wielding
cameras and microphones. Ryosuke's men weren't shy regarding that
job--he heard their raucous bellows even above the media's squawked
inquiries. For his brothers' sakes he hoped they kept it to shoves and
shoulder barges; Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals did have a respectable image
to represent, or it had before all this trouble. At any rate, repairing
it could do without assault charges being filed against Ryosuke's men.
It would be something new for Dominique to rub in Ryosuke's face and
bemoan to Kaede also, and he could do without that.
A woman belonging to Dominique's faction opened the limo's curb-side
passenger door--part of Kaede's personal bodyguard that the French woman
had forcibly appointed to loiter around Ryosuke's sibling. The rest of
the group erected a niche focused around the door while maintaining
watch on the rabble they kept back with hard looks or the eyeless stare
of dark sunspecs; black monoliths cold as stone and just as still and
silent.
Vin ambled out of the vehicle before anyone else, antagonising Dominique
and the guards with his disrespect, whether that was his intention or
not. Female tongues clicked to condemn him; even the statues lapsed for
a pithy flicker of life; and Ryosuke would have frowned on Vin's slight
toward Kaede as well, but a look at his spacey sister verified she
didn't seem conscious of it, and Ryosuke wasn't one to raise objection
to his partner's larks when it incensed the Soldats mutineers
satisfyingly so.
Dominique had to lay her hand on Kaede's forearm to alert her to the
fact they had arrived at the courthouse, and the roused Kaede, like a
toppled domino in a row, pushed Fumiko toward the open limousine door.
Fumiko, who until then had been sitting passively like a doll with its
strings put down, furtively stepped into the shadow of the courthouse,
her skittering frightened blue eyes absorbing the wild media circus
waiting for her. For a moment a pang of understanding struck Ryosuke,
but it didn't live long enough to make a dent in his heart. It was
sympathy for an animal scared by loud noises and too much attention.
Kaede should have left all the pets at home.
Kaede exited the limo at Fumiko's heels, the chum in the water that
whipped up the swarm of journalists and cameramen, their hunger great
enough to tempt pushing against Ryosuke and Dominique's soldiers. The
yakuza and Soldats renegades saw to it that the renewed pluck was
short-lived. Kaede never spoke to the representatives of the media
anyway. For one, she was in the haven of home as a rule, and declined
all requests for statements or interviews from those who wished to
breach that haven. It was Dominique who actually issued the refusals--it
was she who spoke for Kaede, the white-haired puppet on her lap. He
could grumble, but Ryosuke imagined it was a wise choice on his foil's
part. Kaede's blather was frequently a window into her insanity, and
heaven knew Ryosuke was no wordsmith. It was a weakness having Dominique
as Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals official voice to the public; it was one
more rein firmly in the gaijin's hands. She did a good job though--as
expected with that forked Soldats tongue in her head--and for now looked
to agree with Ryosuke's interest in appearing as a benign and lawful
company.
'Appearing as a benign and lawful company'. When Ryosuke's mother had
reigned, her business's appearance had been truly clean. There was
nothing pure about it now. The home he remembered fondly only existed in
his memory and heart.
Dominique curled her made-up lips at Ryosuke before she gathered her
handbag and documents and followed Kaede--a kind and rather beautiful
smile if you weren't aware of the undertones. Ryosuke only saw a
stuck-up and provoking smirk.
Ryosuke remained seated as he heard the hubbub move away from him,
making their way up the stairs to the courthouse. Dominique's lawyers
were likely with Kaede and the others by now, fending off questions from
the avid media like bodyguards would attacks. The lawyers were attached
to Soldats like every other woman allied with Dominique, armed with
briefcases and law degrees. They weren't warriors, their intellects were
their weapons. There were many like that in Dominique's service, and
like the brawn, the brains were in the top of their fields.
Ryosuke thought four solicitors excessive for today's affairs, but they
didn't have much to do usually, so maybe they were overeager regarding
this last morsel of work. It created a striking show of force, at any
rate. Three of them were foreigners as well, which routinely made an
impression. However, with countless foreigners accompanying the
Ishinomori family nowadays, the appeal should have worn off long ago.
Ryosuke turned his head to Ken briefly; who had calmed down if he had
ever been tense; and the two men shared an expressionless look. They may
as well get this meaningless demonstration over with.
Ryosuke climbed out of the limousine to behold Kaede and her band of
guards and attendants, and the media mass attached to the collective
entourage, reach the court step's entrance plateau and squeeze into the
building's lobby. Vin was nowhere in sight, probably smothered in the
crowd somehow despite his bright suit, but a couple of Ryosuke's men
were hanging around the cars despite the glares the Soldats women who
had also stayed put were hurling at them. The glares turned to Ryosuke
and Ken when the latter shut the limo's passenger door, their coldness
speaking of the women's dislike at their punctuality.
Ryosuke adjusted his sunglasses and shrugged off the inhospitable looks
with the ease of habit, and marched up the steps to the sounds of car
engines revving in his wake. He glanced over his shoulder as the
motorcade moved to the opposite side of the street to park for the
long-term, and caught Ken waving at the Kanagawa Kotetsu pair to abandon
the face-off and come to him. Ryosuke paused mid-step on the stairs,
watching his subordinate as Ken shielded his eyes from the little sun
there was with a hand over his brow, waiting for the two men to reach
him. Ryosuke felt it ill-advised pulling the men from the motorcade and
leaving it solely in the women's hands, but he guessed needless conflict
could arise if the two were left alone and outnumbered by their female
counterparts. The visit to the courthouse shouldn't last long in any
case, and while Ryosuke didn't trust Dominique's guards and drivers, he
did trust their abilities. It still didn't sit right on his shoulders as
he resumed his ascent, but he let it go.
Ken and the two gangsters--Nobuo and Takeo; Ryosuke put names to the
faces; he remembered every one of the men who had thrown in their lot
with him--jogged up the stairs to join him, falling in line beside him.
"No choppers," Ken muttered. Ryosuke guessed that he was searching the
skies earlier, not blocking the sun.
"Lost interest now the show's moved inside," Takeo drawled between chews
on his gum. While Ken dressed to fit and played the part, Takeo accented
his speech to bark like a classic yakuza in the movies. There was more
to being a gangster than wearing the skin and talking the talk, but
neither man was a weakling pretending to live the life. It was just
their way.
"Or we're not as high profile as we think," Ryosuke grunted. There had
to be something more fascinating happening in Yokohama than an
inconsequential court case. Damn slow news day if there wasn't.
By the time Ryosuke, Ken, Nobuo and Takeo strode into the courthouse,
Kaede and most of her flock had passed into the corridors leading to the
courtrooms, shedding numerous journalists and photographers as the
throng dealt with a security checkpoint's restrictions. Ryosuke's sister
and the privileged in her party--namely those wearing black--were free
of such delays; greased palms and delicate coercion days earlier saw
clear and easy passage through Yokohama District Court's halls. The
bought freedom didn't extend to the Kanagawa Kotetsu, whose members
mingled with the discarded press. Dominique had purchased permits for
her Soldats society; none of Ryosuke's men were listed on them. Ryosuke
had tried to pay his and his colleagues' way by himself; however
Dominique had figuratively salted the ground after she had wrung what
she needed from it, as every guard his men had approached had shut the
Kanagawa Kotetsu out. Brazen yakuza were too noticeable and Ryosuke's
group too well-recognised, the once pliable guards had nitpicked, and
even a roughing up hadn't changed the weakest court policeman's mind;
only made him bolder in resisting. Consequently the Kanagawa Kotetsu was
forsaken to loaf around the courthouse's lobby, none prepared to
surrender their arms while joined by Soldats soldiers who had not. But
not everyone with Ryosuke was yakuza.
Vin strolled up to Ryosuke, his flashy attire and grandiose gait
suddenly easy to pick out amongst the quietening and thinning crowd of
people queuing up orderly to be security screened, or settling down in
the lobby, or being smart and leaving this meagre blurb in a newspaper
altogether. "Here," Vin said without preamble, stepping near and drawing
his two pistols from the holsters under his jacket before stuffing them
into Ryosuke's grasp, followed by a bundle of magazines. "And don't lose
this." The smaller gangster's new knife spun out from behind his back
and was slapped into his partner's palm to be secreted away inside
Ryosuke's customary long black coat with everything else.
With a grin and tip of his head, Vin walked away to merge with the
others waiting in line at the security checkpoint, his only remaining
weapons that which his body could become. More than adequate, Ryosuke's
cocky friend had assured when they'd discussed his being there in the
courtroom's audience last night. Vin would find a way to rearm himself
regardless if things really did somehow spiral into a firefight, but he
had the skill to survive one without a gun. Ryosuke trusted he wouldn't
let Kaede down... that Vin wouldn't let *him* down. Ryosuke would have
been at his little sister's side too--*should* have been--yet
circumstance turned as it willed and wasn't something one could command
absolutely. Moreover, he had an aversion to taking off his coat outside
of his quarters. Ryosuke wondered if that translated to Kaede having
more courage than he, seeing that she hadn't donned such armour since
her yakuza days. More daring perhaps, but she wasn't in her right mind,
and the mad could know no fear... and were oblivious to dangers a blind
man could see.
Ryosuke interest in the queues diminished as the number of people
populating them did, yet as he turned his head the swish of long blonde
hair snapped it and his curiosity back to where they had been. His brow
clenched as his violet eyes below narrowed and honed, trying to
establish a straight path through the heads and shoulders strewn between
him and the source of the yellow flash. Noir. It came out of nowhere,
the thought of them being here blindsiding him like a shiv in the kidney
from his closest friend. He had put them out of his mind, left them and
the memory of them behind in Paris. Ryosuke had no time for Noir.
Dominique, that stupid bitch. If her petty rivalry with him had set the
Parisian wolves pointlessly on their scent, *Kaede's* scent....
The face of a Soldats rebel he had seen before under the blonde tresses
in the distance came as a relief, however bitter abhorrence quickly
followed. She was stationed there just past the security checkpoint as
rearguard--Dominique and her rebels didn't even trust the Kanagawa
Kotetsu to guard the courthouse's lobby. The French woman heaped insults
upon Ryosuke and his brothers unendingly that one would think him and
his men numbed to them, dare say accepting. But at least one of them,
Ryosuke, had a long memory; a memory written in grudges and prevailed
through tempered hate, slow and deep. So very deep. He was glad it
wasn't the blonde half of Noir that he had caught out of the corner of
his eye, yet it was Dominique's fault that he had been made to suspect
the rebel as the assassin--in a roundabout way, but still *her* fault.
Ryosuke finally let his gaze drop from the security checkpoint, and took
out a cigarette. Nobuo and Takeo sparked into action, competing to see
which of them could fumble out a lighter or match first. The young ones
could sometimes act so green. Nobuo was the victor, and while lighting
the cigarette in his mouth Ryosuke noted coolly that the yakuza's hand
holding the flame didn't tremble at least.
The smoke swirling into Ryosuke's lungs comforted and then the streams
exhaled out his nose calmed. He snorted, plumes of his addiction puffing
into the air, and took the cigarette from his lips to stare at it. His
mother would never have approved of his smoking. Hikaru Ishinomori
wouldn't have approved of many things he did and had done.
Ryosuke blew on the end of the cigarette, the smoulders glowing and ash
knocked free to float on his breath. He watched for a moment, before
putting it back in his mouth for another drag. Nostalgia was for the
dying. The living lived in the now, no matter what it was like.
"Hey! You can't smoke here!"
The call of a courthouse police officer attracted the grim attention of
Ryosuke and the gangsters with him, but the officer didn't balk, the
institution of the law they were inside and the presence of other
officers within it probably reassuring even while facing such yakuza
that made up the Kanagawa Kotetsu.
Takeo moved forward with purpose in his step, as if he was going to
start something, until Ryosuke's raised hand slapping against his chest
held him in place. The right to smoke in the building or not was a small
thing to come to blows over, especially with the police.
"Satsu..." Ken jeered, shaking his head a little. "Hah! Damn world is
too healthy nowadays. Makes me want to have a smoke." He sneered,
showing his teeth, and felt inside his jacket for his cigarettes.
"Nobuo! Where's that light!?"
"Enough," Ryosuke said. "Remember why you are here." Ken and the others'
antics ceased and they had the decency to look sheepish; for gangsters
anyway.
Ryosuke glanced at the policeman one last time and then walked toward
the lobby's main entrance. He would feel better anyway watching over the
motorcade that only Dominique's soldiers were overseeing. Maybe Noir
wasn't here, but Soldats--the one Dominique and her women hated--could
be. And then there was always the enemy within--the ones who wore black.
******
Mireille's right leg kicked where it lay crossed atop the left, as
though it were a gasping fish on land, until her conscious mind took
notice of her unconscious one's behaviour and she reigned in the tick
spurred on by boredom... or was it nerves? It would be the day of her
retirement from the life of taking lives if the professional contract
killer admitted it were; however there was tension within her regardless
of her inner disavowals. To describe her being on an assignment of a
personal nature as typical was generous--then again, since meeting
Kirika actually being paid for an assignment was what had become
atypical. Not that she was struggling for funds; those in the business
who were good enough to survive past a few contracts learned to stash
away ample for emergencies, though ideally it was retirement money for
when they stepped off the black path once and for all. Mireille was
better than 'good enough' however--she had some expensive tastes but
wasn't overly extravagant in her spending; it would take several years
bereft of proper work before she'd have to think about dipping into her
rainy day savings.
Personal assignments had their own rewards in place of money, and
normally when weighed against a cheque their worth was considerably
greater, priceless, which made the assignment itself of more
consequence. Mireille and Kirika fought for their own agendas, not some
anonymous client's veiled behind a letter, or email or telephone call.
The added, private, pressure to succeed could very well encumber as it
could support. Emotions weren't for a cold killer, but here Mireille
sat, emotion within her--the passion to accomplish her mission at all
costs and the dread at the outcome of failure. Her mind, accustomed to a
state of cool and calm was there to bring her roiling feelings into
accord and promote professional detachment, but the emotive thoughts
remained on the outskirts of the void, pressed down yet not blotted out.
There were a lot of people in Yokohama District Court, and Mireille had
seen the even bigger crowds waiting outside its doors before she came
in. Plenty of human cover--a boon as long as it continued to work to her
benefit; as long as she continued to be part of the throng. She felt
suitably at home inside the lobby with a newspaper in front of her face,
blocking all but the rudely inquisitive to her foreign features.
Mireille was a lawyer... a reporter... a translator. A curiosity, but
one quickly dismissed once a casual explanation was put to her. She
belonged.
The newspaper was chicken-scratch to Mireille without her mop-headed
partner to interpret, but her eyes were meant for more than the
headlined goings on in Yokohama and the rest of Japan. Her concern was
for just a tiny speck of the city--the entrance hall of this municipal
building.
The blonde's gaze skimmed over the top of the newspaper in intermittent
bursts to take in her perspective of the lobby from sitting in its
lounge--picked just for that unsparing perspective--rising and falling
with apparent waxing and waning offhand interest to avert answering
interest; blue eyes spying, watching--waiting. And if those eyes
sometimes drifted across the foyer to pick out a certain girl, Mireille
did all she could to keep the interest from shining too brightly in
them.
Kirika milled about with the other visitors to the district courthouse,
going nowhere yet appearing to have some unreachable heading known only
to her. Her nomadic disorientation was postponed every so often by fits
of loitering where she simply stopped and looked at her surroundings as
though they were new to her, letting the people flow past her like
currents in a river, and she the stone. It was cute; sweetness that
touched a smile to Mireille's lips, however the woman hoped her partner
wasn't selling the lost child cover too forcefully. It wouldn't be a
disaster or even a hindrance if a police officer or Good Samaritan
identified Kirika's 'plight' before their targets showed up, but the
younger assassin had to maintain believability for suspicion to not be
levelled at her, now, or later when law enforcement reviewed the lobby's
security camera footage. It was fine to be caught on film if determined
to be an innocent bystander.
Perhaps it was because Kirika, with her apparent fragile petite figure
and ingenuous face prone to innocent expressions, could look perfectly
helpless without the fa‡ade. All the combat experience, all the
murderous know-how--Kirika was still a withdrawn and na‹ve teenage girl.
Who knows; maybe Kirika wasn't acting over there, but just being
herself.
It wasn't until Mireille noticed the portly balding man sitting on the
sofa opposite looking at her that she realised the newspaper in her
hands had sagged in her wilting grasp and her little smile for her
love's endearing manner had had a growth spurt... and that the man was
returning it, thinking it for him.
The smile died quickly, Mireille's throat clearing in its passing with a
slightly embarrassed cough, and the blonde hurriedly shifted the
newspaper higher over her countenance. She was sure the man would
remember her, although not in a dangerous way... but in a way still
unwelcome.
A rapidly escalating flurry of activity congregating around the front
entrance grabbed Mireille's attention away from the grin of a stranger
and put it back on track. They had arrived.
Like pigeons to scattered breadcrumbs the up until now loafing reporters
flocked, erecting an effective screen on all sides of this morning's
celebrities. Flagging journalists and photographers yet threw themselves
into the jam, in futile hope of a breach that would get them closer to
the quarry they unwittingly had in common with Noir.
The ball of people travelled with the Ishinomori procession, making it
easy for Mireille to follow her enemies' progress across the foyer
despite not actually laying eyes on them. The latter handicap changed
when the mob bumped into the security checkpoint policing the courtroom
traffic. Faces as foreign as her own began to emerge as the crowd was
siphoned into single files, a fact Mireille found novel although she had
no reason to suspect a full Japanese entourage was attached to Kaede
Ishinomori after seeing Breffort's newspaper clippings and surveillance
photos. It was a little difficult not to automatically have kinship
toward the women sharing her central facial characteristics while
herself a stranger to the nation, but the impulse passed swiftly. At the
end of the day it would simply make them stand out as clearly as she
did.
While not everyone next to Kaede was from overseas, they did have the
same dress sense. Black was in vogue, the Soldats rebels not so
separated from their forebear that they had discovered colour. The suits
were crisp and the sunglasses smart, but goons were still goons. It was
hard to think of any of them as Altena's 'priestesses'--or whatever
station had been theirs in the woman's cult--however a finely tailored
suit was a far cry from pseudo-religious robes and habits.
The face of Kaede Ishinomori finally surfaced in the centre of the
little revolutionaries, one of the older priestesses--if they could
still be called that--bent at her ear. The young woman hadn't branched
out her wardrobe since Mireille had seen her pictures in Breffort's
office, emulating her splintered Soldats bodyguard outfits closely. In
person Kaede Ishinomori didn't look like much; not that much more than a
girl somehow with too much power at her fingertips... if it were true.
She had time in the yakuza under her belt, but any dregs were labelling
themselves gangster these days. Mireille wondered what influence she did
have in the mutiny, or if Altena's former circle allowed her any. Having
a dead mother as a member could only go so far, and Altena had always
enjoyed wielding power through others. Her disciples were likely the
same.
Mireille couldn't see Kaede's brother or the man he travelled with in
the wholly feminine melange--strange that they wouldn't be here,
especially Ryosuke when his sibling had a day in court. It was slightly
perturbing--the blonde assassin considered whether the pair was hanging
back somewhere out of sight.... It made Mireille's skin itch, like their
predatory eyes were inexplicably on her all of sudden, waiting for their
chance to surprise her. She shook it off quickly, however the wariness
stayed. There was no need to be too relaxed.
Slaying Kaede Ishinomori should be suitable show of Noir's 'loyalties'
toward Soldats if Ryosuke and Vincent didn't crop up before the hit, but
Mireille disliked leaving loose ends. There was vengeance to consider,
and she really didn't want either of the men knocking on her door with a
barrage of bullets back in Paris one day in the future. The possibility
of planning a second assignment in Japan targeting Ryosuke Ishinomori
and Vincent Hsu was odious, but it was a thought for a later time.
Mireille almost overlooked the downcast young woman trailing at the
edges of Kaede's party. At first Mireille had thought she was an
impatient bystander who had somehow elbowed her way into the party's
rear and had been on the verge of dismissing her, except it quickly
occurred to the assassin that the priestesses weren't moving to restrain
her. No guard was that lax, however the woman looked very out of place
amid her companions. She was in a world all of her own; even from
Mireille's outlying location she could sense the distance within her.
Ironically the discouraged young woman was dressed the most upbeat amid
the prevalent darker tones; a green dress and white shawl, and a white
sunhat she held in her hands in front of her. Whoever she was, she was
definitely with Ishinomori after further observation, moving in synch
with the group and being waved through the security checkpoint without
pause.
Mireille's analytical mind wheeled into motion, digesting with the
vivaciousness of a ravenous lion what she had witnessed. The police at
the checkpoint had to be paid off to sanction the high profile
defendant's and her gang's unrestrained access. The metal detector
portal's warning beeps sounded out unheeded with each Soldats rebel it
admitted, and none of the briefcases some of the priestesses carried
were subjected to the x-ray machine. It appeared security wouldn't be
weeding out the armed members of Kaede Ishinomori's party. It was not a
setback--it simply meant the mission wouldn't be a pure pushover.
Indeed, Mireille had figured at least one or two of Kaede's bodyguards
would manage to smuggle a firearm into the courtroom. The new
circumstances wouldn't cause a hitch in the blonde assassin's plans...
but she was going to change them nonetheless.
Still as smooth and composed as she had been since she sat down,
Mireille folded her newspaper and put it under her arm, uncrossed her
legs, and got to her feet. The man who had been staring at her had
twisted himself in his seat on the other sofa to instead stare over the
back of it, eating up the hubbub taking place in the lobby which was
evidently a better dish to him than an unreceptive though beautiful
Western woman. There was no complaint from Mireille; she welcomed being
ignored. It was what she wanted.
She repaid his disregard by quietly and unobtrusively leaving his
company whilst availing herself of his coat draped over the sofa,
sweeping it up as she passed without missing a beat. Mireille held it
slung over her left arm at her hip as she continued her stride; the
newspaper under her right a screen for the other arm's doing; and moved
through the man's blind spots until the heaving crowd clustered in the
centre of the foyer eliminated all hope of him detecting her and his
loss. Though, if Mireille had underestimated the man's alertness, she
was confident she could shake off his pursuit in the crowd. An untrained
civilian was simple to mislead and elude. Mireille wouldn't be seeing
the man again.
Mireille nudged, sidestepped, and sneaked a clear route to the security
checkpoint.
The newspaper found itself tumbling into a trashcan on the way, and
Mireille's admirer's coat became hers when she threw it on soon
afterwards. It was large for her slender frame, but it would serve its
purpose. As the metal detector gateways and x-ray conveyers loomed
close, Mireille slapped on her sunglasses and buttoned the coat over the
lavender shades of her suit. Her normal fashion sense would not help her
here, but thanks to a little good fortune there was still opportunity to
be had. She was deviating from what she and Kirika had sombrely planned
yesterday, but sticking to a plan no matter what was for mechanical
grunts lacking initiative, lacking enterprise; willing to face defeat
for peace of mind. Knowing when to adapt was for leaders. The move came
with risk, yet so did what the original plan specified. What wasn't a
gamble on an assignment? Your life was the wager throughout. This was
the better path, with the better odds. Mireille didn't hesitate.
Kirika was no doubt making her own move now too, proactively searching
for 'aid' if an empathic passerby or policeman hadn't 'come to her
rescue' beforehand. Mireille dared not seek her out with her gaze at
this late juncture, irrespective of how affectionate she might
ultimately feel. The time for emotions was over; in truth the blonde was
meant to have left them at the Yuumura house.
Mireille slotted herself metres behind the Ishinomori party, putting
some people between them and her--not too close, not too far; merely a
tardy bodyguard or rear watch. Her foreign looks were actually helping
her fit in for once.
In the minutes Mireille had to wait in the queue it felt like time was
in no hurry to go by, but the assassin didn't sweat the delay. When
trying to blend, your will had to be in it; appear like you were out of
place, and people would think you were. You had to be bold, you had to
be calm. Blown cover typically entailed a drastic, and violent,
aftermath.
The final genuine member of Kaede Ishinomori's entourage trickled out of
the lobby to join her comrades on the other side of the security
checkpoint, none the wiser of the extra member at their heels. It was
Mireille's turn to leave and for her disguise to be tested.
Armed with the haughty carriage exuded by the preceding priestess and
more entrancing grace in her swaying hips, Mireille sailed through the
chirping metal detector as soon as her path to it was clear of other
visitors. In her peripheral vision she saw police officers look at her,
but none stepped out to challenge her. They had indeed been compensated
well, and had respect for their bribers--too much. Fear of possibly
impeding one of them kept their hands in their money-lined pockets and
let a lion through the door. Mireille suspected almost any foreign woman
in black would have gotten through the checkpoint unopposed this
morning.
It was over in seconds, but every one of those seconds had belonged to
her. Cowed officers perhaps, but to them Mireille had been one of
Ishinomori's bodyguard. She was inside clean.
That was not to say her guard was lowered, but her cover was cast off;
there was no need for it past the checkpoint, and it wouldn't hold up
under the scrutiny of real priestesses. Mireille was simply a visitor of
some sort now, one of many.
The quantity of people on the other side of the checkpoint had been
watered down compared to that in the nearby foyer, but there was still
ample to brush shoulders with in the narrower halls. Kaede's group had
gained some distance on the blonde assassin whilst she was slowed in the
security line, but it was of no consequence. Mireille knew without a
doubt where they were going.
The priestesses weren't all with Kaede. The surveying eyes skewered
Mireille, and a lesser person would have been impaled to the floor and
held fast. Kaede had left a rearguard just past the checkpoint, the
*true* rearguard Mireille had imitated. Somehow Mireille had wandered
into her watch, and for some reason had not wandered unnoticed through
it. The priestess had been with Altena before all this--did she
recognise Mireille? Did she know her face? Did she know Noir?
Mireille didn't freeze, tense up, or so much as glance sidelong in the
priestess's direction; but continued on, calmly, maintaining her
composure that had seen her through security. If the blonde reacted
negatively it would all but confirm her as a threat in the rearguard's
eyes; that she had something to hide, a cause to fret over the woman's
study. There was still the prospect of easing out and manoeuvring free
of that skewer.
Mireille's pace didn't quicken, but she did hunt for the thicker tufts
of people to walk through to foil the priestess's easy observation of
her. If there was any reservation regarding her identity or the danger
she posed in the Soldats rebel's mind, Mireille wanted to stoke it, and
keep stoking it until she decided the blonde wasn't worth the trouble,
and was written off as *probably* harmless. Pulling the priestess's eyes
further and further from her post as Mireille walked down the hall would
increase the pressure, forcing the guard to choose between remaining on
watch there or abandoning her position to tail and eventually confront
the other woman. It was the priestess's frustration that was Mireille's
true ally here; they were the coals for the fire of uncertainty she was
brewing; and she did everything she could to raise it while sticking to
her indifferent fa‡ade.
A glance with just a turn of her eyes rather than her head into the
shiny skin of a trashcan depicted a distorted dark shape advancing
behind Mireille amid the benign lights of bystanders, the menacing blob
stretched up and down the curved silver like a monster's sinister
shadow. The priestess's dedication to duty was stauncher than the cops'.
Mireille wasn't really surprised; she was reminded of Altena's
followers' suicidal zeal when she and Kirika faced them and their
mistress down in the Manor. The blonde had hoped of course that perhaps
with the loss of their leader the bulk of their fanaticism had been
stripped away in the demise, but this priestess had enough left in her
to hound the slowly and discreetly retreating assassin. Or the priestess
did indeed know at least one face of Noir. There would be no rid of her
hunt if that were the case, and a virtual guarantee she'd report the
sighting to her allies. But the priestess, for now, followed where
Mireille led... and where Mireille walked death awaited.
A sign ahead pointed down a corridor, the writing gibberish but the
pictograph indicating restroom facilities. Mireille had been expecting
it, the buildings blueprints still laid out in her head. She took a
right into the corridor, and she wasn't far along it before she sensed
the priestess walking it with her. The corridor provided a means to the
restrooms and to a couple of the building's service entrances for
maintenance crews, leaving it much less travelled, although the noise
from the lobby and the wider hallways to the courtrooms still easily
found a way in. Mireille may not have been able to hear the priestess's
footsteps over the drone, but she could feel the woman at her back. It
was instinct honed through years of service on the black path; always
active, always right--well, right most of the time to have Mireille
still breathing.
Mireille pushed open the door to the female restroom and, without
breaking her stride, quickly took stock of it while the door swung shut
behind her, separating her from the priestess for now. It wasn't empty
as the assassin would have liked, but that would have been asking for
too much. One of the three standard stalls was occupied--the one in the
middle--and the disabled toilet was free. Not alone, Mireille needed to
kill time before she could the priestess.
The blonde slipped into a stall and shut and locked the door just as she
heard the restroom door creak open. It was almost silent here but for
the dripping of a leaky tap bouncing off the tiled walls and floor. The
priestess's heels echoed soundly as she arrived; and then louder,
marking her path nearer the toilets. They stopped abruptly however, then
started more softly and sporadically as she seemed to pace, waiting for
Mireille to finish her business inside the stall... whichever stall that
was. With now two of the stalls occupied, it afforded the assassin the
delay she sought. Unless the Soldats rebel wanted to chance harassing an
innocent civilian by kicking down the cubicle doors, her hands, or in
this case her feet, were tied. Involving bystanders on the black path
was more often than not a loathe scenario--their reactions were
unpredictable and their tongues loose. You killed them when there was no
other choice, and with cold immediacy. Their life was worth less than
yours--everyone's was. Or almost everyone's.
The commode in the stall neighbouring Mireille's flushed, and shortly
after its lock clicked open and a new set of footsteps took up the beat
the priestess's had started. Mireille heard a squeak, and the sound of
running water the flushed toilet had begun completely filled the
restroom. The only woman that wasn't armed was at a sink, putting her
back to the toilet cubicles. Time had been slain.
Mireille eased open the lock on her stall door as swiftly as she could
manage, the rushing water resounding obliterating the solid click. She
opened the door a tiny fraction and peeked through the slit. Her pistol
was in her hand.
The other woman walking out of her stall had snatched the priestess's
attention, if only for that fleeting moment. But it was all the opening
Mireille needed. The black-clad woman was already turning back to the
cubicle where she knew Mireille must be, however that shred of
distraction had her flat-footed when the assassin shot out of the stall
and jammed her weapon's silencer in her ribs. Mireille's left arm
smacked into the Soldats mutineer's throat as she slung the limb around
her neck and locked the Ishinomori guard in place in front of the gun's
barrel. The blonde then pulled her arm back fiercely, constraining her
prey to arch her body awkwardly and throw herself off-balance
indefinitely. With the woman's head craned back it brought her ear to
Mireille's mouth. "Silence," the assassin whispered. Mireille had her.
The squeak of the sink faucet and the halt of one source of running
water robbed Mireille of the rest of her moment of professional
satisfaction. The woman at the basin turned to presumably go to the hand
dryer, but the shocking sight of the blonde death dealer and her pinned
captive jolted the civilian to a dead stop.
Mireille didn't want to have to control *two* prisoners, and quickly
seized hold of the situation before it became a *situation*. Adopting
one of her most charming but largely seductive smiles of her vast
repertoire, Mireille nuzzled the Soldats guard's ear and kissed her neck
with all familiarity of an old lover, capping it off with a teasing wink
that promised more to come at the dumbfounded woman looking on. The
Corsican could feel the priestess tense in her grasp and heard the
intake of air as indignant protests amassed in her throat--or was it a
gasp of enjoyment...?--however the merciless grinding of the Walther P99
in her kidney saw any response from Mireille's hostage short-lived.
The hasty ruse had the desired affect--the civilian's senses returned to
her at the Sapphic spectacle and she smiled weakly, before all but
jogging to the restroom's exit, hurriedly wiping her wet hands on her
skirt as she fled. Mireille couldn't help a genuine grin.
Mireille ushered the tottering priestess toward the disabled toilet;
half-pulling, half-dragging her into the spacious stall. The faint
crackle of a radio sparking to life gave pause to the assassin, and she
listening intently to the German whisper. "Gisela--come back."
The fingers of Mireille's free hand reached up and tucked the
guardswoman's fair hair behind her ear, baring the murmuring earpiece.
German was once more broadcast softly into the again quiet
restroom--"Gisela, do you read? Do you have anything to report? Come
back."
"The..." Gisela's voice was hoarse--as well it should be since Mireille
had ordered silence from her--and she spoke in German like the
broadcaster. "The microphone is in my left sleeve. Do you... do you
understand?"
Mireille said nothing. Then in the silence, a muffled snap immediately
followed by a wet thud. The priestess gasped, and there was no mistaking
what sort of gasp it was this time. Mireille pushed her buckling body
over the toilet, Gisela's stomach finding the seat first, and aimed her
pistol at the back of the dying woman's head. A second and another
gunshot later, and Gisela was just plain dead.
Mireille holstered her weapon and bent over the corpse, looking for that
microphone. The Corsican had weighed whether she ought to let her
prisoner give the all clear to her colleague, but she simply hadn't
trusted Gisela to blurt a warning despite the sure death that would
ensue. Self-preservation had been second to duty under Altena's
leadership.
Mireille lifted Gisela's limp wrist with the microphone set against what
used to be a pulse point to her lips. She flushed the stall's toilet,
and, recalling her victim's Germanic voice, gave the all clear to
whoever was listening on the frequency, the combination of the blonde's
mimicking of Gisela and the interference from the nearby flushing toilet
hopefully passing the assassin off as the dead guard merely on a
bathroom break. It seemed to work--the radio fell quiet after an
acknowledgement.
Mireille nudged the stall door closed with her hand and locked it in
case of some random bathroom-goer stumbling upon her, and then went
about the somewhat grisly task of stripping off the radio and microphone
lashed around Gisela's carcass for her own eavesdropping purposes.
In rummaging through Gisela's person to detach the radio and mic,
Mireille discovered a handgun harness containing a Glock 18 machine
pistol and a few extended magazines, and what the blonde guessed was a
backup firearm; a stubbier Glock 26; at the small of the priestess's
back. It provided Mireille some idea of the hardware she and Kirika
would be up against if most or all the guards were equipped thus, and
the Corsican contract killer made mental note of the intel.
It wasn't until Mireille had fitted the Soldats' radio on her body and
was propping up Gisela on the toilet in a pantomime of use that she
noticed the very familiar silver symbol on the lapel of the woman's suit
jacket. Almost without thinking Mireille picked it off the black fabric,
staring at it as she brought it closer to her eye. She had seen the
emblem nearly all the years of her life on the pocketwatch her father
had owned, and again on the face of the book called Langonel's
Manuscript. Soldats... but more accurately, *Noir*. Two women wielding
swords before one another, dressed in robes. Altena's Noir existed only
in metal. And it was principally just a symbol of the Soldats splinter
group now, the badge of the old.
Mireille kept the pin, thinking it might come in handy, and arranged
Gisela's droopy feet flat on the floor to appear normal to anyone who
might peek under the cubicle's door. It simply took a hundred yen coin
to turn the straightforward lock to 'occupied' status once outside the
stall--the morbid fact that the guardswoman was dead probably wouldn't
be realised for hours.
Mireille washed her hands and ensured she was as presentable as always
in the restroom mirror; blood had a tendency to splatter on you at close
range. However it looked as if Gisela's gore had only stained the toilet
and porcelain tiles; Mireille was spotless.
She took off the stolen overcoat and smoothed any dishevelment from her
infinitely more attractive suit. Laying the coat over her arm, Mireille
smiled briefly at the attractive and bright face in the mirror and left
the restroom. She hoped Kirika hadn't been waiting for her for long.
******
Kirika selected a spot on the Yokohama District Courthouse lobby floor
and picked a staggered route through the other building's visitors
toward it. When she reached it, she looked around the foyer from her new
perspective for a while and at random picked another spot to mosey on
to. Disorientation seemed to tag along wherever she drifted, and her
mystified expression showed she knew of her travel companion.
But on the inside Kirika was something else, something much deeper than
the lost girl she played. She'd had training for this kind of deception;
at least that was what the phantom images from her shattered memory
suggested; and her life before had all but consisted of pretending to be
something she wasn't. It was a technique of an assassin, hiding in plain
sight, a subterfuge that led to the kill, and Kirika was all about
killing today. For Mireille who she loved, and for the blood price that
had to be paid for their freedom.
If Kirika had a preference, she liked pure stealth more than trying to
blend into a crowd of people. Sneaking around, working quietly in the
shadows, not being seen at *all*... there was security in the dark
anonymity, away from eyes. But Mireille was responsible for the planning
of an assignment's operation, and the older assassin's typical
predilection was to hide with the non-combatants when such were present
in number within a target's general proximity. It was the wisest
alternative for this mission being the safest and most auspicious means
of entry and execution; however Kirika couldn't spin a tale and assume a
role as smoothly as Mireille was able to. The blonde had been gifted
with undeniable charm and the sweet tongue to match that Kirika knew the
pleasant magnetism of intimately well. Mireille could ooze her beguiling
wiles whenever she required--was it the look in her suddenly deep,
endless gaze, or the perfect way she contorted her body to that of a
master sculptor's life's work in flawless alabaster flesh, or was it the
carefully picked words she crooned that went straight to your heart
while airing out your head?--and they *made* you want to do everything
in your power to accommodate her requests, just to see her pleased with
you and your efforts. Or that was what Kirika felt when rushing to
oblige her beloved blonde angel, anyway. It couldn't have been much
different for other people trapped under Mireille's enamouring
spell--Kirika had witnessed how they behaved. Even though those people
had not been in love with the woman like she was, they had looked it in
those moments.
A cover with a speaking part wasn't Kirika's strong suit when charm was
a foreign trait to her that she had no hope of exuding herself, but
fortunately her partner, the adept strategist, knew that. Mireille kept
Kirika's disguises as light on the roleplay as feasible; they were
generic backgrounds, positions in which people rarely had a reason to
speak up much. The soft-spoken Kirika played those roles as though she
lived them.
Mireille's plan for the Ishinomori hit had Kirika posing as a lost girl,
somehow separated from her family already inside a courtroom. She was to
find her way into a court police officer's custody and be escorted to
the security room linking the lobby to the courtroom access hallways
where she would await Mireille; acting as her guardian; to claim her.
Then they would both leave the security room via the door to the
courtroom areas, thereby circumventing the lobby's metal detector's and
x-ray machines. The sly sidestep was the sticky part; if the officers in
the security room were alert, it would occur to them that Mireille had
come in from the lobby side and was leaving through the courtroom side.
But if questioned, Kirika was confident that Mireille would convince the
guards that it was alright to let them slip on through. In the event of
such a failure that they were confined to the lobby, the contingency
proposal was to strike at Ishinomori on the street as her and her group
left the district court. That would be messy and the danger high,
probably calling every member of Kaede's bodyguard she had in the region
down on them and every police officer too, and out in the open, however
in the chaos Kirika and Mireille's objectives could still be achieved. A
panicked crowd immersed in bedlam tended to have poor memory recall
after the fact, and neither Kirika nor Mireille were assassins who
depended exclusively on the shadows to succeed. A heated shootout
against multiple aggressors was usually the worst case scenario, but it
was a scenario the young women had plenty of experience winning.
The throng in the lobby stirred up into a commotion, and Kirika knew its
centre before it appeared. In the last seconds before the action really
started she tried to find Mireille through the mob of gathering people,
but the smitten girl had to settle for disappointment. For all Kirika
knew her partner may already be on the move. She had better get a move
on too.
Kirika made sure to get a glimpse of Kaede Ishinomori before stepping up
her lost girl feign, just to be sure it was really the moment to put the
mission into motion. A tiny fissure in the swarm and a fraction of a
second was all that was needed; the assassin instantly mirrored the face
of the white-haired woman smothered by bodyguards and reporters to the
photographed individual's she had memorised in Breffort's office. Kirika
tried not to think about her name and who she was too much; it made it
easier to overlook that they had a past and a life and people who knew
them; loved them even. That they had a future. *Had* a future.
<Taking lives is a sin, even their lives. But how terrible a sin,
really? Is it murder to put down a rabid animal?
Monsters--demons--forfeited the right to be regarded as people. Their
future is another's pain. Put them down. Put them down.>
Kirika did her best to overlook Altena's whispering too.
Kaede Ishinomori was not alone of course, but Kirika didn't belabour
sizing up her bodyguards either. The target had some; that was
everything the girl needed to know. No matter whom they were, no matter
how experienced or armed, the outcome would not change. If the women in
black suits stood with their doomed charge when Kirika and Mireille
descended, their fortunes were as promising as Kaede's.
Kirika's keen ears reached above the lobby's clamour to pick up the bang
of a heavy door swinging shut on her other side of the room away from
the crowd. The blueprints of the courthouse flared in her mind, and she
homed in on the security access door on the distant foyer wall. A police
officer briskly trotted across the lobby's floor in the wake of the door
closing, a rolled up brown paper bag in one hand while the other
struggled to pin a security swipe card to his belt. It didn't take the
appraisal of a practiced assassin to tell that he was in a rush, the man
needing several tries before he got the card securely fastened. His hat
was on squint too, but it looked too big for his head to begin with, and
his hair underneath was scruffy. He barely seemed to notice the furore
in the middle of the lobby. The policeman's distraction was welcome for
Kirika's objective.
Kirika set her meandering path of disorientation on an intersect course
with the police officer's hurried jog. When the policeman looked up from
adjusting his black tie, the teenager was there in front of him, her
sudden appearance almost bowling him over. His shoes squeaked on the
floor and his arms flailed as he battled to come to a halt, all but
stooped over the shorter Kirika when he finally did.
"I'm lost," Kirika said simply, staring up at the man.
The policeman blinked at her for a moment while her words sunk in
following his excitement beforehand. "Oh. Umm..." He glanced about
fretfully, as though Kirika's guardian would be readily visible nearby,
or that maybe someone else would be able to help her. "Did you... did
you come here with family?"
Kirika nodded solemnly. She thought it funny how easily the lies came.
None unsettled her.
The police officer sighed, scanning the lobby again, as if Kirika's
missing family, now confirmed by the assassin to exist, truly would
materialise from thin air somewhere close. But no such luck. That family
would only show up when she wanted to.
"Okay, you better come with me," he admitted half-heartedly, however his
supportive smile and kind eyes told that his lack of enthusiasm was
reserved for Kirika being in a predicament, not for the girl herself.
Kirika trailed after the policeman, who had slowed his pace to normal
after their meeting. When they reached the security office, he held the
door open for her to pass by him and enter first.
The office was nothing particularly unique. It was an office host to
desks and chairs and papers, although with the added exception of a
security camera station housing multiple black and white monitors, and
the occasional wall-mounted gun rack where pump-action shotguns were the
sported arms. It was all quite orderly, documents stacked nicely and no
loose ammunition lying around.
"Ah, so that's why you were late!" one of the two other officers in the
security room smirked as the tardy policeman escorted Kirika to a chair
in front of one of the desks, pulling the swivel chair out and gesturing
for her to sit. "She's cute. Which high school?"
"Funny," Kirika's police officer said dully, sounding like he didn't
think it was funny at all, whatever the joke was.
Once Kirika had taken her seat, the officer sat on the edge of the desk,
his back to his workmates, and launched into his gentle interview of
her.
"What's your name?" was the first question he asked as he took off his
oversized hat and tossed it and the brown paper bag after that on the
desk. It might have been his desk.
"Kirika Yuumura," Kirika said truthfully. Her name didn't exist anywhere
except on the student card she carried; it was as good as an alias, as
that was what it had once been. Her Tsubaki High School records had been
no doubt expunged by Soldats, and everyone else who knew it was either
dead or lived in darkness, out of reach of the law. Or was a high school
student. However, Kirika didn't see herself living long in their
memories. The policeman would forget it too before the day was out. When
Kirika thought about it, it was only Mireille who uttered her name
aloud. But for all that; she *was* Kirika Yuumura. Another name would be
simple to conceive, but her real name, such that it was, mattered to
her. When she could, Kirika shunned perverting her identity behind a
false name. She would not lose this one.
The policeman continued his line of questioning. "Who were you here
with?"
"My aunt," Kirika replied. A half-truth; Mireille was the only family
she had, and their bond was thicker than blood and truer than name.
"And her family name is Yuumura too?" Kirika nodded, and the policeman
jotted down the information on a notepad and then tore off the leaf.
"Okay..." He hopped off the desk to his feet. "I'll get an announcement
made over the PA system for your aunt to pay us a visit, and take a look
around for her myself. You just sit tight, okay?"
The policeman put down the notepad and unrolled the top of the brown bag
and stuck his hand inside, coming back out with a chocolate bar in his
grip. "Here you go," he said, tendering it to Kirika.
Kirika regarded the chocolate bar listlessly, wondering if there was a
risk or if the treat was as innocuous as it looked. There were many
insidious poisons in the world, and when you had the knowledge of their
effects it was challenging not to beware what food and drink strangers
offered you of their own volition.
"Oh, are you allergic to nuts?" the policeman asked, for a second
browsing the chocolate bar's packaging.
"Mm, mm," Kirika denied, shaking her head from side to side slightly.
She took the bar from him and studied the bright yellow wrapper idly.
She had a cover to maintain, after all.
The police officer smiled, obviously pleased that Kirika had accepted,
and then left the office to alert the girl's 'aunt' of her 'niece's'
whereabouts.
Kirika tore open the treat's wrapper and nibbled at the chocolaty outer
shell. Meanwhile her gaze panned the room carefully, her indolent
reddish-brown stare the thick coating masking the scrupulous scrutiny of
a high-class assassin.
The chatty officer was at another desk, squeezing a small orange rubber
ball in one hand while reading a piece of paper in the other, Kirika's
presence apparently dismissed. The policeman who had remained silent was
at the surveillance camera station, dividing his attention between the
newspaper in his lap and the monitors, with the newspaper getting the
bigger slice. A few seconds spent watching the neglected screens had
Kirika up-to-date with Kaede Ishinomori's and her bodyguards' positions
just outside the target's scheduled courtroom. Kirika hadn't seen
Mireille in one of the black and white images, but then she hadn't
actually presumed to. The blonde had a habit of unconsciously walking in
a camera's blind spots when she knew where they were, even when they
weren't on an assignment.
There wasn't a CCTV camera in the security room with Kirika, but the
teenager didn't need the monitors to fathom that. The building's
blueprints had pointed out the lack, and her survey of the room had
validated them. Kirika could almost relax here in the den of law
enforcement. She chewed on her chocolate bar, liking the taste and
texture and wondering if Mireille would get her more. Mireille hardly
ever ate chocolate, which more or less meant Kirika hardly ever ate it
either. When the woman did though, the little prettily shaped chocolates
she brought home were very rich and delicious and sometimes had creamy
middles that mixed in Kirika's mouth with their chocolate casings so
delightfully. But this chocolate bar was good too. It had a crunch to it
and was fun to chew.
It was roughly ten minutes later with Kirika bent over at the waist in
her chair, searching under the desk for a waste bin for her empty
chocolate bar wrapper, when Mireille breezed into the office. She
arrived by the other door into the security office, the one that led
around the lobby's security checkpoint; for the police officers'
convenience and queuing visitors' peace, Kirika imagined. It was a
departure from what Kirika had expected, yet a gainful one. Mireille
must have seen an opening to improve their plan. The black coat slung
over her left arm had possibly eased that opening a little wider--she
hadn't left the house with it.
"There you are!" Mireille exclaimed cheerily, making quick work of the
space between herself and Kirika and stooping low to engulf the rather
taken aback girl in a big warm hug where she sat. "I was worried. You
shouldn't wander off like that."
"Mm..." was the entirety of Kirika's muttered answer as she meekly put
her arms around Mireille. She found one half of her face squished
against her partner's neck and shoulder, and all she could smell was the
woman's strong perfume, and below that, a whiff of her natural scent.
Some cover roles were nicer than others.
Through the one eye that wasn't forced shut because of the enthusiastic
blonde's reunion with her 'niece', Kirika saw the helpful police officer
loiter uncomfortably in the doorway, scratching an itch underneath his
hat. "It, uh, was pure luck I bumped into your, your aunt..." he said
clumsily. Luck had nothing to do with it, unless her name was Mireille.
The policeman's gaze seemed to persist dragging toward Mireille's back
then pull away violently, only to be dragged back again almost
instantly. "I-I guess she's your aunt through marriage?"
Mireille loosed Kirika from her embrace as she straightened, however her
hands slid up to remain on the younger girl's shoulders. "Of a sort,"
she said, a knowing smile blossoming for Kirika only. The blonde turned
to the police officer. "I fancy 'big sister' to 'aunt', since I'm not
*that* old, am I?" The charm was out to play.
"Oh, uh, no," the policeman stammered. "You are very... young." There
was a guffaw from one of the two other officers behind Kirika, but
whatever the joke it must have had meaning for him alone.
"Thank you for taking care of my niece," Mireille said, glossing over
the man's clear-cut comment. The policeman started to mutter some sort
of gauche reply, except the assassin didn't wait for it. "Oh, I found
this coat unattended in the lobby," she said, lifting the coat on her
arm as though she just remembered it was there. "Perhaps you have a lost
and found?"
"Umm... um, yeah, let me take that for you," the policeman said,
struggling somewhat to keep up.
Mireille handed the coat into the officer's care, and then bid Kirika to
rise through a pointed look in her eyes and slight tilt of her head.
"Thank you, again," she said to the policeman while putting an arm
around Kirika's shoulders, grasping the left. Mireille didn't want to
stick around for the man's goodbye, guiding Kirika to the door she had
entered from.
"Bye, Kirika," the officer said to the teenager's departing back.
Kirika felt Mireille's arm tense around her, but her partner waited
until they were in the hall before she spoke up. "You told him your
name." It was a statement of fact, not an inquiry.
"Mm," Kirika acknowledged anyway.
"I suppose there's no real harm..." Mireille admitted, but one glance at
her serious expression and Kirika could see the wheels in her head
turning, divining how her partner revealing her name could threaten
their anonymity in the future. But the wheels didn't turn for long with
so negligible a thing to power them. Ahead of the misgiving about to set
in Kirika anyway, the girl's shoulder was squeezed tenderly and her
petite body coaxed close to her love's, for her to bask against for an
idyllic, too short, instance before Mireille's necessary separation.
They had been niece and aunt in the lobby and security room, but here
beyond those places they were strangers. Kirika could yet feel
Mireille's warmth touching her side; she would have to savour that
flicker of heavenly sensation until what they had come here to achieve
was through.
"I have one of their radios," Mireille said while she and Kirika walked
with each other down the hall, mingling amongst the other suits, the
distance between the two assassins gradually growing.
Kirika said nothing. She didn't need the details, though she could
envision them. She doubted one of Ishinomori's escort would have given
the hardware up willingly. The radio would help to tell them *exactly*
when Kaede Ishinomori was leaving her courtroom, and what route she was
taking out of the building. It took the spying and guesswork out of the
equation, replacing it with coordination and pinpoint accuracy. Kirika
would have to stay in eyeshot of Mireille to recognise when to move,
however having to hold her attention on the blonde was definitely a perk
of the job.
The intersection looming harked back to the young women's predestined
separation; one hall for Kirika and one for Mireille. The black thread
tying them together would bring both back as a whole when the moment was
ripe, and the lives caught between the pair at that instant would be
smothered by the darkness that coloured the string. Kirika and Mireille
separated as lovers, but they would reunite as killers. Today, it was
the way it had to be.
******
"Case dismissed!"
The judge's gavel rapped, and immediately the uproar, held in so long by
those observing in the gallery, was unleashed. Some of the prosecution
stood up to shout protests above the din behind them--mistrial,
perversion of justice, and that rot--but the smarter ones realised total
defeat when they saw it and wallowed in their failure. With no witnesses
the prosecution's case had been based on circumstantial
evidence--Yolanda, Uzumi, Karen and Fatima; the team of lawyers
defending Kaede and fellow sisters themselves; hadn't broken a legal
sweat. But Kaede herself had seen to her own defence with a more
hands-on approach days earlier; the prosecution's sole witness, Aki
Matsumoto, a nothing factory worker turned whistleblower whose
conscience had led him fatally astray, was in little pieces of meat
dumped in Tokyo Bay. Digested meat, by now. The family that survived him
had been suitably compensated for their loss... and cooperation. Aki
Matsumoto's life had been worth a surprisingly low sum to his wife and
child all told.
Dominique ran the gamut of the media gauntlet that was seconds prior a
well-behaved courtroom gallery in company with Kaede and her
bodyguard--oh, and her little pet; she was so very easy to
overlook--microphones waved in her face and camera flashes shocked her
eyes, all throughout the jumbled questions and requests for comments
assailing her ears. The lawyers would fend off the rabble with their
garrulous statements and diplomatic responses of how unshakable their
confidence had been in Kaede Ishinomori being found innocent of the
crimes laid against her, once they had all vacated to the halls outside
the courtroom. And while they wooed the crowd with their effusive
showmanship and inspiring poise, the celebrity of the morning and her
escort would quietly slip out the back.
"Pfft, look at this lot. Makes you think they were expecting a
conviction, or an escape attempt, or *something* more exciting than an
acquittal. Worse, there's not a looker among them!"
Vincent's pointless prattle was what scathed Dominique's ears the worst.
His unrelenting idiocy even had him trying to fight the clamour with a
loud voice so everyone, Dominique, Kaede et all--maybe he even wanted
the members of the gallery included in his insight too--could hear his
inane observations, as if they held something redeemable. He'd even
talked during the actual trial, whispering dry comments of questionable
wit at every opportunity. Why was Vincent even here? He should be
wherever Ryosuke was--out of Dominique's hair.
"When I start eyeing you women-in-black that's when you know it's bad."
Behind the dark lenses of their sunspecs longsuffering glances were
exchanged between sisters, and Dominique was positive more than one sigh
was heaved. How... how this, *this* man, was purportedly a ladykiller,
the French woman would never comprehend. She supposed she had to concede
that he was beautiful, though in a feminine vein that she had
difficultly believing attracted women favouring men. But it was his
personality. Vincent's personality was absolutely ignoble, intolerable,
and insulting to the women he would later bed, or attempt to, while
downright cruel to his rejects. A well, if luridly, dressed and pretty
caveman was all he was. Dominique hoped she would be compensated for
accommodating Ryosuke's long-time partner; that when he eventually fell
in the war against Soldats--and he *would*, she would make it so--his
abilities had furthered her and her sisters' struggle in some grand
manner beforehand. Though, when suffering in his repugnant presence, she
did feel that an unremarkable and abrupt death would be satisfactory
enough.
More reporters waited to ambush Dominique and her charge in the hall,
jockeying for a coveted position at the front of the pack that the
bodyguards kept at arm's length with their foreboding manner and looks.
Yolanda and the other solicitors flitted past the shoulders of their
martially inclined peers to wrestle the crowd into a loose civil
passivity using their verbal arsenal and presence of a dissimilar but no
less intimidating sort of their own. What the legal team said never
touched Dominique's ears for longer than a handful of seconds; while the
four corralled the commotion into a measure of calm, their leader; the
girl the gathered journalists *really* wanted to talk to; and her left
over retinue, vanished into the corridors of Yokohama District
Courthouse. Though their methods differed, the lawyers were as much the
rearguard as their sisters equipped with firearms and left behind to
support them were.
Their company smaller, it was tantamount to strolling inside the walls
of Ishinomori Tower for Dominique and Kaede as they travelled through
the halls swiftly and without attracting too much interest, on route
toward an isolated alleyway emergency exit, unlocked and the connected
alarm deactivated prior to their arrival at the building. The route was
told to be a seldom trafficked one by visitors and courthouse staff
alike, and thus far lived up to its repute. Sisters awaited them at the
commandeered emergency exit to link up with and lead them to the
motorcade, and then it was a short ride home in the limo while one car
stayed behind to wait for the sisters still in the building. The thought
of Kaede in the limousine again, even outfitted as it was, dried
Dominique's throat, but she was conscious that it was an illogical
response, governed by emotion... and the past. Nothing would happen, she
told herself. However, deep down, the woman was ready if something did.
Dominique smiled a little tremulously down at Kaede, but stiffened her
lips before the girl saw it and beamed brilliantly in return. Vincent
grinned back at her too, the lout. Dominique didn't like him walking so
near to Kaede. The child shared her mother's taste in companionship, but
still... Dominique didn't like it. Vincent was certainly an awful
character and the French woman would have hated if her charge picked up
any of his dreadful attitude, but there were also dangers everywhere,
even from within the rebellion. His association with Ryosuke was one
thing, but at the core Dominique viewed Vincent Hsu as an outsider. He
wasn't a sister, he wasn't Ishinomori family; he was analogous to the
ragtag bunch that blindly followed Ryosuke, and yet, not one of them
either. She knew his background, his life preceding Japan, yet wherever
Dominique saw Vincent, she saw suspicion as well. She did not want him
befriending Kaede like he had Ryosuke. Dominique would not lose Kaede to
anything... or anyone.
"Cristina here... You can't raise her? All this time? Could be a
malfunction; there's thick concrete in some sections. Send a runner to
check on--" Radio chatter. After being around it so long, Dominique was
accustomed to tuning out the bandied words of varying languages. The
sisters trained in arms and military tactics were disciplined,
especially those taking care of Kaede, but even they gossiped on the
radio frequencies like it was a phone line now and then.
"...Check the bathrooms if she isn't there... Yes, I know she isn't the
type...."
Kaede had been discharged quickly without a fuss, much less a
conviction; Yolanda, Uzumi and the rest had performed a job well done
waylaying the media hounds; and everything remaining was progressing
along according to schedule--just the way Dominique liked it. There was
a satisfaction gained when events unfolded as you predicted; rather,
engineered them to be. It was akin to knowing the future, precognition,
like watching a machine in motion and understanding that motion, each
cog and spring doing exactly what it was meant to together in
sequence--a triumph of logic, perfect in its--
Dominique heard the footsteps before the woman strode out from the
corner ahead. She could hear the purpose in each resounding hard click,
and then saw it in her stride. The woman was a foreigner, at least a
foreigner in the provisos of this country; blonde hair and blue eyes and
fair features. Beautiful. She was well-dressed in a suit and skirt, if a
tad flashy in her chosen lilac shade, and her hair was done up in an
adventurous twist. There was something... something in her face....
The woman reached behind her head as she turned on her heel to face
Dominique and those with her, releasing her long tresses to fall about
her shoulders. She shook out her mane, tossing her head gently from side
to side, and stood there in Dominique and Kaede's path--in everyone's
path. Her expression was blank, cool nothingness, yet there some
*something*... *something* about it....
A memory was pulled grudgingly out of dust and cobwebs; all but dust and
cobwebs itself; a flake of recall. The time and the place came slowly,
made nebulous by age. It was years ago, the place... warm, sunny. The
Mediterranean. There was a child; a girl. An important girl. Dominique
had seen her only then, and only from a distance. It was during her
sojourn in the personal service of Altena, when she had lived and worked
humbly at the Manor as a robed and pious sister; not that she was any
less devout now. Dominique had been much younger then; Altena too, but
still wise and carrying her force of presence that would only grow
stronger with the years. And the child had been a child, young and
innocent, a native to the island--yes, it had been an island...--and
pretty, with blonde hair and blue... blue eyes....
"No...!" someone gasped, barely a voice powering the word.
A muted spit, another and another and another, and then thunderous bangs
erupted behind her, tearing into reality and literally jolting Dominique
from her astonishment. But as rational thought kick started, so did
terror spawn to subvert it. The screams, the shouts around her, the--the
gunfire! Gunfire everywhere, driving her deaf; hammer's blows against
her eardrums, and hammered nails in some unfortunate's coffin. She
remembered it. The aggression of it. The *violence* of it, so ferocious
and frank that it could only be reality despite your mind's fraught
refusal it was happening. The chaos. The blood and death. Dominique
remembered it all.
Her body did as well. She ducked down, sitting on her heels, head
covered--cowering. Instinct. All the instances she mourned the past,
wished for a chance to go back and do it differently somehow, do it
better; all the vows of readiness for this, *this* which was taking
place right now. Dominique had been deluding herself. She reacted like
anyone would. She reacted like she had back then. She froze. She
cowered.
There was an explosion, a boom not of gunpowder, then a hissing like a
snake, and thick vapour surged over her, about her; breathed by the
serpent--a poisonous serpent. Gas! They were using gas! Dominique's
shuddering hand somehow made it to her mouth, although what little logic
her mind yet commanded exclaimed that the gesture was senseless.
Something heavy smacked against Dominique's back, splaying her out on
the floor. Her chin hit tile, and her glasses bounced off her nose to
crack in front of her face. There were bodies with her on the floor,
mercifully blurred, but myopia couldn't censor the red pools and
spatters on the while tiles near them. God. No. No, it could *not* be.
How could the old fossils send them?! They were...! They were... *gone*!
Broken off from Soldats! They...! Dominique could scarcely *think* the
word, but it was there, laced with her fright where it rightly belonged.
The Black Hands, *here*! Their swords against *her*! Against...! Oh god,
*Kaede*!!
Terror of a dissimilar sort, arguably more potent than the first,
gripped Dominique, and she whirled her head around to find Kaede,
fervently praying she wasn't one of the slumped black shapes. Her weak,
squinted vision located Fumiko first, the green dress an unmistakable
tip off. The girl was like Dominique had been seconds before, crouched
in a ball, but with her eyes shut and her hands over her ears. It could
have been attributable to Dominique's strained eyesight, but Fumiko's
face looked disturbingly impassive--the French woman was certain she
didn't even flinch as blood splattered across her right cheek.
Kaede was close, being restrained by Vincent of all people. Both were
kneeling on the floor, the child fighting in Vincent's clutches
feverishly, clawing at his arm across her chest.
"My katana!" Kaede shrieked, ceasing her clawing for a moment to thrust
her hand at the air, reaching for the sword that wasn't there. "Who has
my katana?! Give it to me! *Give* it to me!!"
"No one has it! You left it at home, you ditz!" Vincent barked above the
gunshots and yells. He was searching the floor for something, pawing at
it with his available hand while simultaneously scuffling with the
thrashing Kaede. He obtained what he was looking for--a pistol looted
from one of Dominique's fallen brethren. "Your brother's coming, okay?!
Stay still and wait for him!" He let Kaede off his leash with a shove,
his sneer symptomatic of his brusque dismissal if his tone and push
weren't enough.
Vincent hurriedly ejected the magazine of the stolen gun, inspected it
with a glance, and then slapped it back inside. He went to cock the
weapon when all of sudden he happened to look up, catching Dominique's
scrutiny from where she was prone, pinned to the floor by what she
regrettably knew had to be a dead sister. Vincent did no more than watch
her in her grisly predicament, tapping the pistol's barrel against his
leg as seconds and bullets passed, seeming one in the same to him. There
was obvious mocking in his look, but there was something predatory too.
Dominique had the uneasy impression of what a lame wolf would feel like
being sized up by the more able of the pack. She started to writhe under
the body and strive to get a hold of her glasses--or a gun.
Vincent flashed Dominique a lopsided grin, gritted teeth behind it. He
cocked the pistol in his hands roughly. Dominique abandoned her
spectacles for a gun. There was blood on her palms and in between her
fingers, wet and sticky; her sisters' blood; but had no weapon to show
for the macabre hunt. Kaede had quietened down, panting violently like a
feral animal, seething. She mumbled spite and lunacy; chilling
atrocities after each hard breath, however she was berserk in her head
only; she was in the eye of the coordinated attack and ragged, faltering
defence, but she was not a part of the fracas. There would be no aid
from the child; she was as shut off as Fumiko. Dominique needed that
gun.
"Time to do my thing," Vincent said through his teeth. He bolted into
the grey smog which didn't seem to be gas after all, body hunched and
pistol raised, back the way he and Dominique had come. The distinctive
pitch of unrestrained gunfire that had been lacking began anew in a
rapid barrage. Awful man.
Vincent had the right of it, though. It pained Dominique to have been
shown by *him*, but shamed her more. Leaders had to fight sometimes too,
and she had more reason to than anyone. It was not just her life.
Dominique winced and grunted as she heaved her stricken comrade off her.
She retrieved her broken glasses, and with them found a gun. They were
Noir, but while she prayed for deliverance, Dominique knew that at least
one angel was listening.
******
Kirika listened at the edge of the stairwell on the floor below for the
parade of footsteps that would come overhead. It was silent and empty;
they would not know she lurked underneath. She rested against a wall,
patient as a spider on its web, her pistol already in her hands, though
concealed behind her back should someone wander out this way. The
teenager could understand why Kaede Ishinomori had picked this remote
route for extraction from the courthouse, but as a price for the
infinite potential hazards and hindrances avoided by forgoing a public
exit, they had honed the deadlier threats left over. Kirika surmised
that Ishinomori's bodyguards thought that the residual dangers would be
easier to detect and combat in the open, lonely halls. However, in the
isolated corridors they were equally cut off. They would not see the
threat to detect it beforehand, and when it was time to combat it... it
would be hopeless.
There weren't any security cameras around here; well, too few and far
between in this section to worry over. Reinforcements for Ishinomori's
retinue were some minutes away, as were the municipal building's police
officer contingent. They would turn up eventually, inevitably, but
Kirika and Mireille would have finished with time to spare before then.
They would rescue corpses, arrest no one. They were lucky. They would
live through today.
There was a rattle on the web; many footsteps tramping above. Like the
spider, Kirika waited while they tangled themselves completely in the
invisible threads. This was a web weaved by two spiders, and it was the
second who would reveal to their prey how black the spun silk they had
walked into was.
The marching stopped. Kirika broke into action, stealing up the stairs
as fleet of foot as though she really did have eight nimble legs. She
leaned out from around the corner at the top of the stairwell, sighting
the target and her escort. The all-female bodyguard protected Kaede
ably--Kirika had no shot at the lead Soldats' agitator. It would have
been nice to have ended it quickly, and with fewer deaths. Then again,
the women had all seen Mireille's face; the blonde wouldn't have been
satisfied until it was the last thing each of them saw.
Although Mireille met Ishinomori's group, it was Kirika who dealt the
first bite. They never saw it coming, too captivated by Mireille; their
backs to Kirika. Dying with the woman's beauty as the final image in
your eyes wasn't such a bad fate when Kirika considered it.
Kirika shot the nearest bodyguard in the back of the head. She crumpled
instantly. The assassin's follow up shot took another in the temple as
the woman turned, knocking her off her feet. The third gunshot of the
opening volley pierced the breast of a yet another. She collapsed into
her friends, sliding onto her rear and then toppling over onto her side.
Kirika ducked back behind the wall as she received heavy fire in answer
to her ambush. She had done as much damage as she could in those scant
seconds of surprise, eliminating approximately a third of the enemy's
strength. Mireille had exacted her own toll too before retreating to
shelter in a neighbouring hallway, but there was still the primary
target--and those standing in the way of her.
Kirika's back slid down the wall, the assassin lowering into a crouch.
Bits of cracked and chipped plaster flew overhead, powder plumes
bursting in the aftermath of their launch. The bullets pounding the wall
around the corner weren't enough to suppress her.
The girl's back spun away from the wall, her body rotating to poke her
head and arm and pistol outside the edge of her cover. There was no one
down here but the last guard she had shot, lying on her side, bloodying
her white shirt red while drunkenly and lethargically squeezing the
trigger of her handgun in Kirika's general vicinity, each shot wilder
than the one preceding it. Blood dribbled from between her lips, but
Kirika put another bullet in her chest regardless. The guard might have
gotten a lucky hit.
Kirika emptied the rest of her magazine into two other bodyguards too
intent on above to remember below; two rounds in one woman's sternum and
the final slug in another woman's stomach before dipping behind the wall
again. She made a mental note that the latter guard might linger with
the stomach wound and to not discount her. The assassin swapped her
depleted clip for a fresh one, and stood up. The little crouching trick
wouldn't work as well again, but the guards still had to reload
sometime.
Their initial panic subsiding, Kirika could tell that the black-clad
bodyguards were good, better than the average mercenary and underworld
criminal. They outshined their male counterparts Soldats had sent after
her and Mireille also. These women were like the priestesses Kirika and
Mireille had fought in the Manor, women who had admired Altena and who
had devoted themselves, life and all, to Le Grand Retour. Like it was a
religion itself, Mireille had once said. Women like these, dressed in
robes and habits, had trained Kirika into what she was.
<Thank them for it. Show them how much you have learned, what a *good*
student you were...>
Kirika ignored the grim voice, but demonstrated her talent nonetheless
on her former teachers. The priestesses' own elite abilities counted for
little in the exposed position they were left in, with no cover but the
dead at their feet. They used it all the same, getting low and hauling
their departed peers upright as fleshy shields. It was callous, cold--it
was necessary. Kirika's tactical mind would have directed her no
different. And if they were alive to comment, the human armour would
probably feel it an honour to be used so by their surviving sisters.
A bullet hit the fire extinguisher mounted on wall, the rupture
billowing carbon dioxide into the hallway in a hissing stream. Stray
shot or deliberate, it was to the priestesses' advantage. The fire
extinguisher sketched a veil across Kirika's line of sight--and, the
teenager imagined, Mireille's as well--before the canister hollowed out,
the grey a ready m‚lange with the priestesses' black suits. In the
materialised murk Kirika's eyes couldn't distinguish what was a shadow
or a corpse and what was a priestess still armed and on her feet.
Flashes of straggling muzzle flare and her memory gave the assassin
direction however--Kirika maintained her fire, aiming where she recalled
priestesses yet lived and where spurts of light emanated to confirm it.
Return fire had waned, maybe only a single pistol insisting her sporadic
withdrawal into cover. Vision ahead was still hazy, but Kirika juggled
with the intuitive idea of pressing the attack home to deliver an
immediate finishing assault in close quarters. She had superiority in
her position right now, but time was a factor which was fast becoming a
critical issue. The girl could kill what still breathed quicker up
close, the mist a two-way cloak that would cover her rush until she was
upon the women. Friendly fire inside the fumes from Mireille was a
worry, but Kirika's gut placated her with groundless yet persuasive
assurances. Mireille would not shoot her; *could* not, like it was a
physical impossibility irrespective of circumstance. It made no sense,
but Kirika believed it. Maybe it was her heart doing the talking.
Kirika reloaded her Beretta and moved out around the battered corner,
but a peek of yellow kicking up swirling tides in the thinning carbon
dioxide plume stayed her charge. The sudden blasts of muzzle flare and
thunderous hail of streaking lead sent Kirika springing back to her
refuge while the wall took a fresh pummelling. When the volley lifted,
the assassin bounded out to counterattack the renewed resistance.
She never got a chance to bring her gun to bear. One of the men from the
Soldats mansion in Paris, where Langonel's Manuscript had been found,
was there in front of her. The smaller man, Vincent Hsu. And he had her
right wrist.
"Braaaaaat..." he crooned.
Vincent's other fist, clasping an empty pistol, whacked her in the face
and off balance, and then clean off her feet too as he released his grip
on her wrist. Unseen in the pack of priestesses he'd had the same
strategy as Kirika, except he had beaten her to the punch in quite the
literal sense.
Kirika fell from the top of the stairs, her head rattling and cheek
throbbing into numbness, but she fell like a cat, grace in every tumble;
turned shoulders absorbing impacts and her petite body loose and
submitting to the flow of the sloping plunge. She fell like she meant to
fall, and when she came to rest on the landing at the bottom of the
steps, she was stretched out on hand and feet, stomach low to the floor
and her gun, still there in her clutches, aimed at where she had
descended from. The assassin had fallen like a feline, but she was still
the spider.
Kirika fired as soon as she was right way up, however Vincent had
skipped down the stairs after her while she had tumbled and was already
upon her. His foot lashed out as she pulled the trigger, knocking her
gun's sight askance, the ignited round pinging piercingly off the guard
rail and ricocheting to places unknown. A yellow pant leg flung a brown
leather shoe sole straight into the teenager's face an instant later,
and through the stars blinking in her eyes and in her head she felt
Vincent seize her wrist again.
He had dropped his empty gun to grab it, and with his right hand he hit
Kirika in the head once more with the speed and force only a trained
practitioner in unarmed combat could muster. Vincent's left swung her
hand with her Beretta into the metal stair railing again and again,
battering it in an effort to slacken her hold on the weapon. It wasn't
until the man's right hand snapped purposefully at her wrist did her
muscles involuntarily spasm and hurl her firearm across the landing, out
of her reach. He had known exactly where to strike to cripple her hand
for the split second needed.
But it was the split second Kirika needed too. Committing himself to
disarming her had left her assailant open, and the dark-haired assassin
wasn't dependant on her gun to kill. Vincent tried to follow up his
precise jab by backhanding Kirika, and he was very fast. Yet Kirika was
faster. In spite of the blows to her head, she moved with viper-like
reflexes. It was just pain; the actual wounds inflicted were minor. Her
body could push through it, keep working. It would take something
severe, potentially mortal, to slow her. Pain was merely an old
acquaintance.
Kirika arched her head back, Vincent's fist whipping past her nose. Her
left hand flashed, her fingers stabbing into the man's throat. He
immediately choked; a clipped, garbled wheeze all he could get out, but
it was all Kirika needed to know the attack had been effectual. That and
his fingers relaxing around her wrist.
Kirika's right hand broke loose and Vincent jumped back, his struggle
for oxygen not sapping the nimbleness from his legs so far. Her own
agility in perfect form and both her hands now free, Kirika planted her
right palm on the landing as her body flung up into the air, effectively
cart-wheeling in place as much as her skirt's breadth allowed. Her
whirling feet clubbed Vincent across his face, and as he recoiled his
heels struck the bottom step of the stairway, tripping him over onto the
other steps.
Kirika wheeled upright and snatched a hold of the railing with both her
hands, before throwing her legs, pressed together, and with the weight
of her body and momentum of her sidelong leap behind them, at Vincent's
chest.
Vincent bared his teeth as he rolled his body aside and against the
wall, Kirika's feet stamping on the stairs in his place. "Fuck you,
brat," he croaked hatefully, still suffering the detriments of his
throat being temporarily crushed. He pushed off the wall, reversing his
roll while casting his leg out to hook Kirika in mid-flight.
Kirika bounced off the steps, propelling herself enough distance from
Vincent that his kick took his aggression out on the air instead of her.
The gangster's failure didn't deter him; it seemed to incense him to
more furious heights of violence. As the girl landed, Vincent,
definitely not short of breath if short on voice, pounced at the
stairway handrail, employing it as a platform in an imitation of Kirika
to thrust his feet at her skull.
The younger assassin matched her enemy's pace and increased it, bending
her knees that little more during her landing that she ducked under his
legs. The swinging limbs grazed through her hair, the margin as close as
their respective alacrity was. The room it left didn't accommodate
mistakes, but Kirika wasn't one inclined to make them. The cost was
always dire, and the chance it was your last high.
Kirika turned to confront her foe as Vincent's feet found the floor
behind her. There was space for them to manoeuvre now that they were
face-to-face standing along the length of the landing, and the triad
member pitched himself into the opportunity. His left fist opened the
second stage of the brawl and Kirika weaved under and away from the arm,
then buried her own fist below his ribs.
Vincent's torso screwed up awkwardly, agony in his movement; however his
right fist was still able to maintain the pressure on Kirika. He threw
it lower than its match, carving downwards from above his shoulder.
Kirika darted back, but straight after bounded forward during Vincent's
follow-through, her leap providing her the height to punch him square in
the face. He reeled to the side, his head and left shoulder crashing
through the frosted glass of the landing's only window. Blood matted his
black hair and dripped over his ear, and broken glass shards littered
the floor amongst the dotted red splotches he spread.
"Graaa!!" Vincent roared, clapping a hand over his ear and the wet side
of his head. He snatched a handful of glass splinters, heedless of their
points and edges, and lobbed them at Kirika like shrapnel.
The glass was nothing without an explosion to launch them, and Vincent's
anger was no substitute. Kirika shielded her eyes, losing sight of the
gangster but for his legs. They telegraphed his moves however, and when
he dived upon the opening he thought he had wrought, the Soldats trained
assassin was prepared for it.
Kirika deflected Vincent's crescent kick with a slap of her right hand
as she hurtled herself forward. She grabbed his dangling necktie that
she had noticed whipping about throughout their confrontation and yanked
it down as hard as she could while jumping into the air, leading her
climb with a lifted knee. As bone cracked against bone, the latter
namely Vincent's chin, Kirika distantly hoped she hadn't torn her skirt.
Kirika grasped Vincent's shoulder and flipped herself over the stooped
man, almost rolling along the slope of his back. She brought his necktie
with her, a second fierce tug snapping his spine in the opposite
direction; his hunch violently pulled into an arched stretch backwards.
Kirika had broken necks with the technique before; there was never a
shortage of tie wearing men to hone the move on, especially around
Soldats types. However the familiar wrenching snap never came, Vincent's
taut neck muscles reinforcing the joints. His death would be slower
then. Kirika rammed her elbow into his back and pulled his tie even
tighter over her shoulder with both hands now, the red garment his noose
and the girl the gallows for his hanging.
Vincent fought against his strangulation, scratching and tugging at his
necktie while his feet kicked and scuffed the floor, but his poor
footing was nothing to build an escape on, other than going limp and
surrendering to the noose. He began to swing his elbows, trying
anxiously to hit Kirika and perhaps weaken her grip; however his reach
was too limited, the angle too vast. Kirika pulled harder.
Suddenly Vincent's feet were on the wall, and he had traction. He was
moving. Up. He ran up the wall and then pushed off it with his legs, the
force propelling him over Kirika in a reversal of her somersault that
had pinned him. Kirika looked upwards in time to see his fist smash into
her forehead as he passed above her.
Kirika staggered, letting go of Vincent's tie. The gangster himself
collapsed into a corner of the landing, coughing madly while his knees
appeared to muse with the thought of buckling. They both saw it at once.
Kirika's Beretta M1934.
Vincent dived for it, sudden strength in desperation. Kirika had read
his intentions and had sprung for her weapon too, meeting him in a
frantic grapple on the floor. The gun skittered away from them, tumbling
down the next flight of steps to the lower level.
There was no finesse in their fight when up so close to each other;
Kirika bludgeoned and battered her adversary with everything she could;
hands and feet, knees and elbows, and Vincent matched her assault blow
for blow. The eyes were a common target, Kirika having to defend them
often from being squashed in or clawed out while she attempted to blind
the hitman just the same. Vincent's groin turned out to be a particular
vulnerability that he battled feverishly to protect once he realised the
area was under threat, breaking off his current attacks. Kirika
exploited it fully.
The two assassins' wrestling quickly saw them thrown down the stairs in
their violent embrace, the crude brutality enduring all the way to their
landing, neither able to call upon their respective adroitness to
control the fall. They struck the floor heavily, finally spilling apart
from one another.
"I can't believe how much I'm going to kill you..." Vincent growled as
he and Kirika picked themselves up onto their hands and knees. Kirika
met his promise of death with apathy in her answering gaze, the vision
of his death in her mind all the pledge she needed, but shouts from one
end of the corridor they had been dumped into precluded both vows for
now. The police had arrived.
In a last ditch effort Kirika lunged for her pistol, seizing it in her
two hands--one to hold and one to steady--and fluidly rolled over to
slide supine across the floor, firing above her head at Vincent. The
gangster flung himself back toward the stairs, the railings his cover
for the nine millimetre salvo. Kirika rolled onto her stomach and then
leapt to her feet, entering the stairway and running down the steps to
the building's lower floors two at a time. She shot in Vincent's
direction until her clip was expended, then didn't look back. Her time
was up.
Vincent's yelling overhead while she plunged down the stairs told her
she had missed, but sticking around risked her being seen by the
authorities in detail that could be described clearly. Likewise,
fighting it out with police who were alert and in growing number was
undesirable, and an option only if cornered.
"Not me; the brat!" Vincent was screaming. "The brat! Get the brat!
The... the *girl*!! I don't even have a gun, you dumb fucks! She does!!
The kid!!"
"The kid?"
Loud and fast footsteps followed Kirika on the higher flights of stairs
she left behind. Police officers were in pursuit. She'd lose them, or
she'd kill them. Either way, Kirika would make her rendezvous with
Mireille. Nothing and no one could keep them separated for long. She
hoped Mireille had had more success than she did.
******
Mireille slipped behind the wall of an adjacent corridor as a sudden
torrent of bullets threatened to eviscerate her, the passionate
opposition coming as a surprise after the woman and her partner, Kirika,
had seemingly decimated the majority of the bodyguard priestesses--and
with luck, Kaede Ishinomori herself together with them--along the length
of first hallway to the point of dead or dying. While the blonde bided
her time in her cover with the patience experience had taught, she noted
the shots were as unreserved as they were uncoordinated, slugs embedding
themselves in the walls and ceiling further down the other corridor, and
with no signs of stopping until the magazine ran dry. The priestess
doing the shooting was certainly not a markswoman--perhaps she was one
of Kaede's lawyers or that woman in the dress. Although, if Mireille
hadn't moved back, at this range the priestess's untamed aim would not
have been a drawback for her. Smart people always tried to avoid gunfire
when they could regardless of the accuracy however, and Mireille was
smart. Arrogance bred carelessness, and then sooner or later you were no
longer alive to regret your overconfidence.
Mireille continued waiting, listening for the telltale click of an empty
clip and the signal to pounce. The priestesses had been wise; taking
turns firing upon Mireille's position while the rest at this side of the
hallway took the opportunity to reload. Perhaps they had changed
frequencies, but their radios had fallen silent too at the beginning of
the shootout after a call for reinforcements and broadcasting their
position, denying the blonde insight into their tactical minds. The
priestesses in the Manor had fought without such communication
technology to her knowledge; maybe they had no dependency on it. Still,
Mireille had kept her radio's ear bud in.
This priestess had no such discipline in her handling of firearms. The
fog issued from the fire extinguisher was clearing; the Corsican
assassin would probably only need a single round to terminate the
amateur's foray on the Black Path.
"Halt, damn it! I said stop right there, you trash!"
Mireille's head swung in the direction of the shouting and drumming of
feet; down the corridor she was taking refuge in. She made a face. It
was the police--two uniformed cops; each with a hand on their revolver
holsters; chasing three men whose shady attire gave off classic
underworld vibes. They were all heading right for her.
The men saw Mireille the same time she saw them. Hands went behind backs
and inside jackets, heedless of the law on their heels. So it was like
that. The yakuza were with the priestesses. Strange company... but
Mireille could mull over it later, when she had fewer predicaments. The
men, police included, had trapped her in a budding crossfire--gunfire
from the Soldats rebels still capable of lifting their arms and from the
gangsters and police would be a bullet sandwich for the blonde assassin,
her former cover even shielding either side from accidentally hitting
one another thanks to the T-junction's shape. The policemen might take
out the gangsters before they had a chance to shoot, but then Mireille
would soak fire from the authorities a second after.
So many problems were solved simply by killing everyone. They had seen
her face anyway.
Mireille dropped into a crouch and swivelled around to face the
newcomers proper, before promptly shooting one yakuza in the chest. It
bowled him off his feet, depositing him flat on his back.
"Shit!"
The other two thugs panicked, stopping dead in their tracks and ducking
their heads, as if they believed they could rely on their lacklustre
reflexes to miraculously dodge any more incoming bullets. The elder of
the pair realised the foolishness of standing out there in the open and
snatched his younger companion's collar, dragging the still startled man
with him as he threw his shoulder against the nearest door leading out
of the corridor; a small janitor's closet if Mireille remembered
correctly. The door wheeled open, flying on its hinges, and the men
bundled clumsily inside after it.
The gangsters had no cause to fear the assassin just yet; they had not
been in Mireille's sight. The police officers behind them had her dire
attention, mutually having forgotten their pursuit of the thugs and
drawing their pistols against the obvious threat Mireille posed. Their
efforts were pointless, however. Before the barrels of their revolvers
cleared the leather sleeves, the blonde had put a round apiece in their
chests. The cops were just doing their job, but so was Mireille. And she
was better at hers.
"Takeo~! Just stay put!!" one of the gangsters hollered from the closet.
'Takeo' yet lived, although for how much longer was a dubious subject.
There was no question that he was staying put though; he laboured
terribly to merely pick his head off the floor. Takeo spat, a wad of
pink gum bouncing along his chest and blood spraying down his chin. His
right hand lifted, shaking. There was a gun in it. His lips moved, but
nothing came out bar more blood.
Mireille bolted across the hall into cover, keeping low in her crouch as
Takeo fired at her, his friends added their steadier shots to his. She
squeezed off a couple of slugs as she ran, one drilling into Takeo's
shoulder. Mireille heard him wail.
The blonde assassin tucked in her shoulder and rolled across the floor
as soon as she was out of the gangsters' line of sight, spinning
about-face, aware that in evading them she had exposed herself to the
Soldats mutineers' position in the intersecting corridor. The carbon
dioxide shroud over them was gone, and the carnage it bared would have
been jarring if Mireille was not so accustomed to creating such scenes.
Besides, it was the people still alive, not the casualties, which
concerned her.
In a minute sliver of a second Mireille sized up the situation; one
bodyguard lived, wounded in leg and hip, anxiously staring at her while
she raced to shove a clip into her Glock; the lawyer clutching a visibly
empty gun was crouched below her, her glasses fractured and blood in her
inordinately long hair--her off-balance stance branded her as the
amateur of the armed duo; the woman in the dress sat behind them with
her hands over her ears against a wall--the Corsican could safely
determine her a non-combatant of low threat; and then there was Kaede
Ishinomori, regrettably still alive and appearing unharmed, but for her
gibbering and twitching on the floor, lying on her side amidst the
corpses and blood stains. She was smiling. The smile never moved; a
paralysis to her lips while she ranted. Had Mireille and Kirika's
assassination attempt driven her mad? There was no sanity in the woman.
Killing her might be a mercy.
Mireille dropped onto her side and snapped off two shots in the same
instant the last surviving bodyguard unleashed a final fit of futile
resistance against her. The one bullet the priestess managed to squeeze
off sailed harmlessly overhead--Mireille's shots had much more of an
impact when they ravaged her chest. The woman toppled to be with her
other cohorts littering the floor.
"Move it!!"
Mireille instinctively dipped her head as gunfire thundered above her,
the hail of slugs delving into the wall behind the assassin to dribble
flakes of drywall onto her shoulder and in her hair. Glaring, the
Corsican saw that one of the yakuza had poked his pistol and only his
pistol around the corner of the neighbouring passage, firing blindly at
her location. If she hadn't been on the ground the blind shots might
have actually struck her. The thug was intelligent enough to appreciate
the danger she was; enough to hide from her. Intelligent, but it would
only protect him for so long.
Reacting quickly, Mireille let loose a volley at the gangster's weapon,
her third shot tearing his semi-automatic from his fingers, and
hopefully tearing some of those fingers too with it. He howled, but
abandoned his handgun where it had clattered to the floor. The man had
done what he had set out to do--sidetrack Ishinomori's would-be killer
for a while.
The distracting fire had covered Kaede's and her party's remnant's
withdrawal to the gangsters' position in the other hallway. Or at least
the commencement of that retreat; the thug responsible for the diversion
probably hadn't expected to be disarmed so swiftly. The last priestess,
the possible lawyer, had even roused the traumatised woman in the dress
to follow her while she ushered Kaede, enclosed in her arms, to relative
security. But no safe-haven existed on earth for Kaede Ishinomori today.
The opening was a slim one, governed by lightning reflexes, but Mireille
required a bare minimum to work with. Her piercing eye followed her
gunsight as it snapped to Kaede, and across it she witnessed the end of
this farce Breffort had coerced her and Kirika on. Mireille pulled the
trigger on her Walther P99, the woman cool in the moment of the ordained
kill.
Mireille's eyes widened when the bullet punctured the lawyer's bicep;
the priestess's body somehow there, shielding Noir's target. If it had
been her goal, it wasn't obvious. The Soldats rebel shrieked as though
in her death throes, yet to her credit she kept running... out of sight.
A swear word came to mind as Mireille leapt to her feet, but she
contented herself with a sharp breath past her teeth instead. She bolted
around the corner after her prey, her haste fraying her caution. The
blonde's shoes slid on the tiles as she abruptly back-pedalled behind
the wall again, hot lead almost searing tunnels in her flesh. The yakuza
were there, watching Kaede and the other women's backs; the older
hoodlum had pulled a backup pistol from someplace, and the younger,
though trying to haul his badly haemorrhaging and all but comatose
friend down the corridor by his arm, had joined in pinning Mireille in
her spot with his own peppered gunfire. Blood had streaked the path the
gangster had dragged the wounded Takeo--his toil would be for naught;
death's grip could not be shaken off. Na‹ve.
Mireille clenched her jaw and carried out some blind firing of her own
around the worn corner. She cleaned out what was left of her clip in the
rapid burst, the vehement curses uttered in the linking corridor and the
ceasing of suppressing fire ambiguous hints of the attack's payoff.
The assassin traded her magazine for a new one, and threw herself around
the corner to face her assailants. They and the women had made off a
fair distance, the injured gangster forsaken beside the dead policemen.
More than injured now--Takeo was dead.
The elder, near bald thug had a limp in his right leg; however it didn't
seem to be hampering his frenetic pace. Then again, Mireille was at his
rear; adrenaline could be a powerful painkiller, and fear a powerful
motivator. He had Kaede within his arms now, shepherding her onwards
while the priestess and the woman in the dress ran ahead. The priestess
cradled her arm stiffly, still holding her empty Glock 18 machine
pistol, while the woman in the dress held her blood-encrusted sunhat to
her breast like a shield and skipped more than she ran. The young thug
followed behind jogging and looking over his shoulder, and accelerating
into a run for brief periods to catch up with the rebels.
Her weapon steady in her two hands, Mireille fired down the hallway. The
young yakuza cried out and stumbled, then hopped, slapping his hand over
the left side of his lower back, but he still moved forward, albeit
erratically.
"Drop it!!"
Mireille's right arm swung toward the voice, and she fired twice. The
cop who had shown up at the top of the stairwell shouldering a shotgun
tumbled, his limbs tangling in the railings halfway down the steps. A
thought went out to Kirika, pushing through Mireille's single-minded
concentration on the mission. Mireille hadn't seen her partner since the
opening stages of their assault, and now the girl's position was
unguarded. She shouldn't be concerned; Kirika was more than capable of
defending herself, yet the uneasiness stuck inside the blonde. Doubt
crept in. Imagination fired up. Perhaps it was another natural
behaviour, given Mireille's deep affection for the younger assassin. But
it wasn't the time for uncertainty; for distrust when there shouldn't be
a trace of any. Kirika was the same girl she had been yesterday,
equipped with the same amazing skill. Mireille had to put her love, girl
and feelings both, out of her mind.
When the Corsican contract killer looked back along the corridor she saw
neither Kaede nor any other soul. Kaede Ishinomori, her hoodlum
rescuers, and the priestess and woman in the sundress, were gone. Fool!
Mireille sprinted down the other hallway at full speed, which despite
being clad in her dressy suit and heels was achieved without impediment.
Indeed, such clothing was as combat gear to the blonde subsequent to
years of work dressed in style; style that integrated her into the
nondescript populace, but style to fit a catwalk all the same.
Kaede and her company were heading to the motorcade out front for
certain. It was their escape. Mireille just had to beat them there.
Chasing them through the courthouse would have been folly; there were
too many cameras outside of this area, and the police had already
emerged from the direction the rebels took. In addition the stairwell
behind Mireille was compromised with Kirika's absence, however the woman
knew of a smaller one close by that would serve just as good.
Mireille kept her Walter P99 unholstered since she was unbound from the
threat of being taped while armed, and moreover there could be Soldats
reinforcements closing in who were familiar with her identity.
Consequently, the blonde was forced to skid to a halt at each bend and
blindspot to check if it was clear to go on, lest she run straight into
a trigger-happy priestess or a cop hellbent on detaining and
interrogating her. The precautions slowed and as a result aggravated the
assassin, but they didn't aggravate Mireille enough for her to forgo
them and jeopardise her life.
Mireille arrived at the stairwell's door in a time that felt too
lengthy, but couldn't have been longer than a minute or so. She paused
at the door, gingerly pushing it open with a foot while the barrel of
her gun did the surveying of the narrow passageway behind it. When it
was clear there were no surprises on the other side Mireille resumed her
dash, this time down steps that led to the ground floor.
Sound echoed in the tight concrete shaft, and after a couple of flights
the assassin was quick to realise she was not alone. The bass of hurried
footsteps reverberated up, too fast and many to be a single person,
however the original beats were high in pitch, suggesting raised
heels--women's shoes. It was policewomen or priestesses. Mireille didn't
bet on it being the former. She'd have to sight them to be sure in any
case. It might simply be a pair of civilians that she wouldn't have to
confront.
No matter what, Mireille couldn't reduce her pace. The ticket home was
slipping away, and that was one trip she *must* make, and not just for
herself. Least of all for herself.
The Corsican held her pistol low just behind her leg, although her gut
said it was wishful thinking that she'd need to conceal her weapon and
ultimately avoid combat.
The glimpse of black suits immediately followed by a short-lived rain of
automatic fire that suddenly ricocheted and sparked off the metal
handrails proved Mireille's instincts correct once again. Those Glock
18s. They'd be quite potent and not to mention lethal in these close
quarters, but Mireille didn't have the time to trade shots with the two
rebels on the stairs below her.
Putting caution to the wind and faith in ability, Mireille vaulted over
the railings with her left hand, pivoting her body one hundred and
eighty degrees in the same motion. She fired in midair, a bullet for
each of the rebels, and which found their marks as keenly as if she had
been aiming at length on the ground. The priestesses rolled like boned
fish down the stairs to the next landing, piling together in a softly
whimpering heap, and Mireille landed firmly on a step with a solitary
hard rap of her heels. Machine pistols; or any kind of firearm; were
useless if you didn't pull the trigger.
Roadblock destroyed as immediate as it had been erected, Mireille
descended the stairs with all urgency. As she trotted over the bested
women, she shot both again in passing whilst sustaining her harried
stride, her eyes never seeing them. It wasn't in Mireille's makeup to
leave her victims merely wounded. There were still a few others left for
her to administer the coup de grace to, and it would so nag her if they
weren't put out of their misery.
*******
Dominique hurtled headlong through the fire door, her scuttling legs
contained in her tight and unforgiving skirt nevertheless practically
unstoppable whilst taken by her mad dash. If she had been of sounder
mind she would've forever cursed her high heels with the skirt; once
again she almost rolled an ankle and tripped over her own feet.
The fire alarm squealed and she stumbled together with the heavy
swinging door, the arm she *could* use reaching to clutch the long
handle bar and steady herself. Blood wiped the chrome crimson where her
hand slipped; her own for sure this time.
Dominique was in an alley, the strident noise of the streets as
welcoming as the melodies of songbirds in a peaceful glade. Freedom at
last. Safety mere metres away in the mobile bastions waiting for them.
She wanted to continue to run and run and run, but what if *they* were
waiting for them as well? There were two of them; the other one could be
*ahead* of them!
And then there was Kaede. The child wasn't able for this. Dominique
shouldered the guilt for bringing Hikaru's daughter outside the walls of
Ishinomori Tower. Kaede hadn't been ready. Dominique should have *seen*
that! She should have found *some* means for Kaede to sit her trial in
absentia. The girl's current bodyguard, butchered like lambs at the
sword points of the Black Hands. It could not end here... Kaede had to
make it out. She had to live. If she were to be slain, Dominique would
not be capable of lifting her head to face Hikaru.
"G-Give her," the woman swallowed, whetting her throat, and looked back
inside the stairwell, "give her to me."
The slovenly man in the white suit; one pant leg darkened by seeping
blood; who held Kaede favoured Dominique with an impatient expression,
and hobbled over to her. Suddenly his hand slapped against hers; against
the hand she kept rigid against her chest, still gripping the gun she
had borrowed in stone-like fingers. She screamed and her fingers felt as
flesh again. Her arm screamed with her. The gun was dropped but she
never heard its landing. Dominique hadn't ever been shot before; not
even when she and Hikaru had been ambushed. But then Hikaru had seen to
that. The angel was only here in spirit now however, not body, as was
the too dear and painful cost of such selfless love. May she protect
Dominique and Kaede even so.
"You can't," Ryosuke's boy stated beyond the haze of anguish.
Through the tears in her green eyes Dominique observed the other thug
shamble down the last few steps, one hand leaning on the railing and
holding his pistol, and the other pressed to his hip. Blood poured past
his fingers and covered his hand, and his suit appeared as if he had
traipsed carelessly through a slaughterhouse. His youthful countenance
was ashen.
"I... I can't..." the boy huffed, hunching over the handrail once he
made it to the landing. "I'll stay put... here... wait for her. Get...
Kumicho out of here."
The older gangster stared silently at the boy, hard and obdurate, but a
moment later he nodded soberly. "Here." He tossed his pistol to the
mortally wounded young man. A bloodied hand caught it easily. The older
yakuza grinned lopsidedly. Dominique meanwhile questioned the
intelligence of giving up their last working firearm to a corpse.
"You. Stay close," the white suited man barked at Fumiko, the useless
whore dithering in a corner of the stairwell. "You," he coarsely
addressed Dominique. "Move!"
Dominique was virtually pushed outside into the alley by the hoodlum,
but the sight of two sisters at one end of it erased her fear and anger.
"Y-You there! We need you!" The sisters; guards likely posted in the
alley as security for Kaede's and her retinue's rear extraction; came
running.
"Aniki! ...No, she's... You didn't-- it was an ambush! No, no, no! Stay
at the front! We're almost to you!" The gangster had replaced his gun
for his mobile phone. Dominique had her sisters; he had Ryosuke. For
once Dominique wouldn't have minded Kaede's brother's presence nearby
her.
The sisters' chests' erupted in bursts of blood, showering Dominique's
hopeful face and dotting the lenses of her glasses. They faltered and
crumpled before the woman's feet. *She* was behind them, another door
open further down admitting death into the alley. The fear returned as
if it had never gone.
"Move!!" the gangster roared. Dominique moved.
She heard louder gunfire behind her and bullets hitting bricks; she
chanced a glance over her shoulder to witness the dying young man speed
toward his ultimate demise, propped against the fire-door while braving
the blonde assassin with his two guns blazing. Dominique didn't watch
longer, but when his guns went silent she could imagine the woman's
blade had cleaved him in half.
The gunfire had panicked bystanders; the street in front of the
courthouse was gripped in a riot. The fire alarm probably hadn't helped
nerves either. But through the screaming, swirling people Dominique saw
the limo and the rest of the motorcade, and more sisters armed and
ready. One held the limo's passenger door open, beckoning her
frantically into its fortress interior. She was going to make it. They
were... Kaede!
Dominique whirled around, almost literally being bowled over by
someone's shoulder smashing into hers, searching for Kaede and the
gangster. For the few seconds of bafflement the French woman did not
fear the Black Hands and what they would do to her, but was terrified
for the child she had sworn to look after.
She spotted them at the edge of the courthouse; he was taking her
elsewhere; up the steps of the courthouse, to him. To Ryosuke. Dominique
should have anticipated his loyalties! She had run too far ahead. She
had to get Kaede into the limousine where she had *guaranteed*
protection, which *wasn't* found in the company of a common yakuza!
Dominique looked back at the limo pensively, but she knew her course.
Maybe some sisters could assis--
The sister at the passenger door was enveloped in flame, and a pyre was
ignited into destructive life within Dominique's vision. She felt as if
she was falling, but something or someone caught her. Something hard
cracked against the back of her skull, and darkness swam before her eyes
to devour the conflagration. The darkness.... Noir.
******
"Ken-- what's wrong? Kaede, is she-- What's happening? ...Ambush? I'm
coming to you! ...Ken?! Damn it!"
Ryosuke barged a path through the raving people back to the front
entrance of the courthouse, frequently blowing men and women off their
feet to be trampled unsympathetically by others. When it came to one's
own survival it was rare when another's mattered more. Ryosuke was one
of those rare people who had someone whose life was genuinely valued
greater than his own, however. And he had to reach her.
The fire alarm had had him return to the lobby, but Ken's anxious phone
call had torn him back out again, vastly more concerned than before.
Ryosuke had heard it in the yakuza's voice--this was bad. It hadn't been
since the altercation that had cost Ken his finger that Ryosuke had
heard his voice sound like that. End of the world stuff. The world that
mattered, anyway.
"Aniki!!"
Ryosuke shoved another pedestrian out of the way and saw Ken at the foot
of the building's steps, on the left side. The relief on Ken's face was
so strong it was unsettling. Fumiko was with him, and... Kaede. The
amount of blood on the trio widened the black-clad man's eyes behind his
sunglasses. She was hurt. Where was Vin??
Then he saw *her*, and whether Vin was even still alive came into doubt.
The blonde woman from Paris; standing there, unmoved in the frightened
crowd of weaklings. The Japanese girl must be here too. The so-called
'Noir'. They had followed.
Ryosuke's mobile phone fell from his hand, kicked away and then crushed
by the fleeing masses. There was no time to swear oaths against
Dominique and her small-minded meddling that had led the assassins
here--no time for anything except to draw his gun. Hers was in her hand
already, rising; she knew his vulnerabilities and had the drop on him,
or worse, his sister. Their eyes met, and the silver plating of his
pistol flashed in the sun as his coat disgorged it. No time. Ryosuke
prayed she was aiming for him.
There was a shrill whoosh, and then tremendous explosion rocked the
street. Instinctively Ryosuke's arm shielded his face, ready for fire,
shrapnel--anything. The motorcade had been bombed. No, not bombed;
struck by some explosive. The limo had been the target, but that
civilian tank was better armoured than he was; it was intact, if dented
and on fire in places. Some of Dominique's soldiers lay motionless on
the road and pavement; a few charred past human, others maimed and
gutted that frailer sorts would wish weren't human. Pedestrians had
suffered also, sharing a likeness to the rebels in the brutality of
their deaths.
A second whoosh and Ryosuke saw a line of smoke being drawn in the air,
a missile or rocket or some explosive airborne projectile as the pen. It
was a white streak across buildings for mere seconds before it touched
down upon the car in front of the limousine, blowing the merely lightly
reinforced vehicle into scrap. The detonation was mammoth, storeys high
as the car's fuel tank lit up in response. It shook the very earth,
Ryosuke having to take a step back to maintain his balance. The cloudy
trail had originated from a rooftop on the opposite side of the street.
It was difficult to see through the black smoke billowing into the sky,
but he saw men up there making good their escape. It was probably
Soldats; the one Dominique and the others were at war with. Noir might
be working with the many-eyed beast after all in spite of their denial,
and had brought their benefactors with them as support.
Scant moments had lapsed, but Ryosuke threw his attention back to the
blonde half of Noir angry at himself and hoping his slip, however short,
hadn't been capitalised on. Ken laboured up the courthouse's steps, his
heavily bleeding leg source of his disability, escorting Kaede with him.
Fumiko tagged along at the rear, luck liable to be solely responsible
for the pathetic dog still breathing this day.
But the crowd had swallowed the Parisian woman. Of Noir, there was no
trace.
******
The ringing of the fire alarm followed Kirika as she ran down the final
flight of stairs. It had started some time ago, while she had been
evading any police officers on her tail by wiping the blood from her
nose with her sleeve and exiting on another level to then change
stairwells. The alarm had turned out to be to her benefit; the
evacuating staff and visitors had been simple to dissolve into.
The young assassin thought she had heard an explosion minutes ago as
well; part of the fire, maybe? Her thoughts dwelled on Mireille. Their
separation was lasting too long. Kirika had to hurry to their rendezvous
point to soak her eyes in her love's perfection and relax in her
reassuring aura once again, whether they had succeeded or failed in
their mission a subject for a later hour; it wouldn't matter to the
teenager at that moment. Kirika expected Mireille to be there; the other
negative possibility could not enter her mind. Painful what-ifs did not
bear thinking about... when she could help it.
Making it to the ground floor, Kirika jogged toward the fire exit.
Suddenly the noise of the hectic courthouse entered the previously quiet
stairwell from behind her. A door had opened.
"F-Freeze!"
Kirika responded faster than a heart could beat, half-turning and firing
her Beretta twice from her hip. She breathed in sharply.
It was a policeman, and the shock on his face shone in the reddish-brown
of Kirika's widened eyes. He had given her a chocolate bar. How he was
here now, if he had somehow tracked her; the answers didn't matter.
Whatever they were, it was moot now.
The policeman's mouth hanged open, and he looked down at the two bullet
holes in his chest as he slumped against the doorjamb. His jaw worked,
but nothing was said.
He slid to the floor and looked up at Kirika, something in his glassy
gaze; imploring and confusion... then hollowness.
Kirika's hand holding her gun dropped to her side. Sometimes meetings in
the darkness ended this way, where and when the two different worlds
crossed. More than just sometimes. People with faces, with futures that
should be secure from this type of end, died.
<He was just on the wrong side. You or him, him or your *partner*; the
choice isn't difficult.>
The choice *was* clear, but too many always seemed to be on the wrong
side. Too many lives. But at the end of the day Kirika was glad she was
alive. She was glad Mireille was alive. There was forever the regret,
the guilt of a demon at her grisly toil; but it had never stopped her.
And what worth were their lives when balanced against Mireille's? Kirika
would trade them all for her love's life.
Kirika left the policeman's body where it sat, and pushed open the fire
door.
******
To be continued....
Author's ramblings:
This has got to be the longest chapter I've ever written! I've very
glad to have finally finished it. T_T
Satsu = Yakuza slang for cop.
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