Chapter One:
A New Generation of Contractors and Humans: Part One
Two Years after Izanami:
Hei kneeled before a man with dark hair who held a Japanese sword and wore a black jump suit. Hei breathed out heavily, impressed at the young man's athletic ability since he didn't show any signs of exhaustion.
Trees surrounded them with birds chirping in the distance, the wind blowing lightly, and the night sky and fake stars piercing through the leaves. The ground was murky from an early storm that had passed, which doused Hei's and the young man's clothes with mud.
Hei had been on the run, hiding in different countries or living on islands with little population. However, no matter where he went, somehow he was always hunted down.
He figured he would be safer here in Australia, but he was wrong.
Hei clenched his knife to get a better grip on his blade, took in one last deep breath, and charged at his opponent. The man in the jump suit followed in suit and met each other dead center to strike their weapons, as Hei exhausted all his energy.
They stood with their backs at each other, Hei breathing heavily again while the jump suit man stood perfectly still. Within seconds, Hei cringed in pain, snatched at his side and gazed down at it to see his shirt and hand covered in blood.
He struggled to stay on his feet, searching the deepest portion of his body for any strength, but he found none and fell forward to lay in the muck that was now his resting place.
The man in the jump suit looked back at Hei, and then up at the stars in time to see BK201's star fall. He looked back at Hei and smiled ear to ear. He whipped his sword to remove Hei's blood, sheathed it, and walked off into the woods.
Xxx
Late in the night at a secluded area hidden from the CIA, Kirihara Misaki, who was still going by the name Ichinose Yayoi, sat in a small cubical to catch up on paperwork, but she instead stared out the window to gaze up at BK201's star, wondering where he was. It had seemed like forever since the last time she had saw him with his Doll.
She wondered if he was still handsome, kept in shape, and was doing all right. Apparently something was up with him tonight since his star had been shining like a phone constantly ringing off the hook.
It had been on and off with BK201. He would go two to six months inactive, and then he would go all out. She breathed out a sign of relief when his star wasn't blinking hysterically and stayed glued to the sky.
However, tonight's story ended differently.
Misaki gasped as she watched BK201's star fall from the sky. She stood from her seat, ran over to the window, and looked up to see if she might have been seeing things.
To her displeasure, she wasn't. Where his star had shined the brightest was dark and empty. Misaki grabbed at her heart, feeling an emptiness fill inside it, as the man she had been chasing for four years was dead.
What was she going to do now that Li-kun was gone? To her, it felt as though her own life was at an end.
Twenty-Seven Years Later:
The fake stars sparkled above to shine some light down on the darkened Tokyo city. A few of the building's lights illuminated the sky with signs glittering to brighten up the streets.
In the Shibuya district, a nightclub's wall echoed from loud techno music banging against it. Outside was a line of girls dressed in skimpy outfits and guys waiting to grind against them and perhaps get lucky!
A Japanese man in a flashy red shirt that was unbuttoned at the top, and had on shiny black pants, walked up to the front of the line and showed a pass. The Japanese man, who had spiky hair and a crooked nose, was holding a black briefcase and chewing a piece of gum.
The bouncer waved him through.
The Japanese man entered the club to have it feel as though his eardrums were shattering. The room was dark with lights beaming back and forth over a crowded dance floor of jumping people. Some guys were pressed up against girl's back ends, as other guys held their beers and bounced slightly to keep up with the beat.
A D.J. booth stood next to the dance floor with a bar across from it. To the left of the bar were tables, booths, and a staircase that led up to the VIP rooms.
The Japanese man walked over to the stairs, showed the bouncer his pass to him, and headed up the staircase. Once he reached the second floor, he passed a couple making out in one VIP room, girls having a blast drinking shots in another, and a group action in a third room. He came up to a fourth VIP room to see a plump man with twin girls wearing cougar outfits on his sides sitting on a leather couch, and two guards standing behind them. The guard to the left was holding a silver case.
"A Yatutsu Reoka!" cheered the plump man. "Finally decided to show up! Have a seat."
The Japanese man named Yatutsu sat across from the plump man with a glass table separating them.
"You… you got the doe?" he asked.
"Yeah, yeah, I have the cash. But before we get down to business, how about you have something to drink, and maybe to get to know my new friends here."
Reoka smiled, and then said, "I would love to, but I'm kind of in a rush."
"What's the hurry, mamma needs to put her boy to bed?"
The girls chuckled. Reoka looked at them, betting these broads were only hanging out with him for his money, and they were only laughing at his ignorant jokes in hopes of him coughing up some cash.
He looked back at the plump man, and replied, "No, I just don't like crowds."
"Really? You seemed to like playing dress up for crowds. How much did that shirt cost you?"
"Why does that matter?" Reoka shrugged. "Can't we just make the deal?"
"Sure, sure. If you want to."
The plump man raised his left arm and snapped his finger for his guard to come forward. The guard on the left did so, placed the silver case on the glass table, and opened it. Inside was a microchip the size of a fingernail.
Reoka did as well to show a blank card in it. The guard took the card, pulled out a rectangular device, and put the card on it, as if scanning it.
Within seconds, the guard put the card back in the case, and looked down at the plump man.
"The money's been transferred, Boss," he said.
"So we're done here," said Reoka, reaching to grab the microchip.
The guard slammed it shut before he could obtain it. Reoka looked at them baffled.
"Not so fast, Reoka," said the plump man. "Or should I say, Detective Yatutsu."
Reoka began to sweat, as his heart pounded heavily.
"Wha… what was that?" he questioned with a half chuckle. "Me, detective? Where'd you get that crap from?"
The plump man waved his right hand forward for his other guard to come forth. While doing so, he pulled out photos to throw on top of the glass table. On them were him talking to a girl with brown hair, brown eyes, wore a white shirt that was unbuttoned at the top and kaki black pants.
"Didn't think I'd have you followed?" said the plump man. "Cute girl there."
"Yeah, so, she's some girl giving me a B.J. So what?" challenged Reoka.
"Oh, really. You know, I had some of my nerdy men do some checking on her. They do a heck of a job. That's why they have a job. And you know what they found out about her? She's a cop."
"News to me." Reoka shrugged.
"Is it, or are you pulling my strings? Unbutton your shirt."
"Why?"
"I said, UNBUTTON IT!"
Reoka frowned, knowing this wasn't going to be good, and started to unbutton it to reveal a microphone taped to his shirt.
"How much you wanna bet your girlfriend is listening to us? I bet she won't be happy when I have my men put a bullet in your head."
"No she won't," replied Reoka. "And it's Detective Kimara Ryo."
The plump man smiled, stood from the couch with his girlfriends, picked up the silver case, and motioned for his men to take out the trash. The plump man and his dates exited the VIP room to avoid being witness to the execution, and headed downstairs to leave the club.
The guards aimed their guns, as Ryo glared down the barrels of the forty-fives.
"Anytime now, Megumi," he blabbered.
Within seconds, a group of people with badges hanging around their neck or clipped to their belts appeared out of the blue and pointed their guns at the two guards. The girl from the pictures was one of them.
"Drop your weapons!" she shouted.
The guards aimed their guns at the officers, forcing the officers to open fire, and cover them in a blaze of bullets. They stumbled backwards, and fell back to lie in their own pool of blood.
The officers holstered their weapons, as Ryo turned to face the brown-haired woman.
"Took you long enough!" he shouted. "Didn't you realize my cover was blown when he called me detective?"
"Sorry, had problems with the bouncer out front. I thought about giving him a B.J. to get us through the door." Ryo pursed his lips while nodding in a disbelieving matter. "Where's the chip?"
"The suspect took it. Didn't you stop him while you were busting in?"
"No, we didn't see him."
"Didn't see him? How could you have missed him, Megumi? Perhaps you need glasses like your mother!"
Megumi tightened her jaw line, and said, "Maybe he took a back exit."
"Maybe he did. Search the premise. The CIA wants that chip since it gives names of non-contract agencies!"
Megumi nodded and motioned her unit to head out.
Xxx
Out on the streets, the plump man sat in his limo that was traveling down the road. He was making out with his dates, giving them shots of sake and other liquors, laughing as they listened to a J-rock song playing through the speakers.
"Ne, Yao-sama, you really showed that cop guy," said the girl to his right.
"Bwa, ha, ha, ha! I know" laughed the plump man. "Nobody can out smart me, Yaoyatsu Iubuyu. Now, all this talk about a B.J. has gotten Chibi Yao all stiffy. How about you girls help me out."
"Oh, but we had other plans for you," said the girl to his left.
"Oh REALLY! What is it?"
The girls smirked, and at the same time, they said, "For you to die."
"EH?"
The girls highlighted in blue, as their eyes burned red. The plump man freaked out, and then felt his head begin to expand. Within seconds, his head exploded to have his brain, skull, blood and hair spatter everywhere in the back. The driver looked back startled, stopped the car, and jumped out of it to run for his life.
However, he only got twenty feet before he felt his own head expand, and then explode.
The two girls exited the car with the microchip in their possession. The girl on the right took out a small device, typed in, We got the chip! and sent it. The girl put away the phone and smiled at her sister.
Suddenly, she felt a knife strike her back. She gasped for a second, her eyes rolling up in her socket, and then fell forward dead. Behind her stood someone in the dark.
"Who… who are you?" said the girl on the left. "Don't come near me, or I'll blow your head off." The figure ignored her warning and started approaching her. "Fine, you're dead!"
She began to highlight in blue, hoping to scare the person, but he continued forward. She released her useless power, and started to run with the case. She only took ten steps before a blade pierced the back of her head.
Like her sister, her eyes rolled up into her socket, but her body ended up twisting while falling dead. The figured person walked over to the corpse, picked up the case, and headed off into the shadows.
A few minutes later, cop cars pulled up to the scene. Ryo and Megumi exited a red oval shaped car that had a Toyota Camry logo on it. They walked up to the scene with their weapons drawn, looked in the car to see the beheaded plump man, and then the girls with knives stuck in them. Megumi also spotted the driver.
"These were the girls that were glued to Yaoyatsu," said Ryo. "What happened here?"
"Attention all units!" said a male's voice through the CB in Ryo's car. "BY454 and YB545 's stars had been active in Shibuya, but now they have fallen."
"I think there's your answer," said Megumi. "Looks like they wanted the chip, but someone else wanted it more."
"But whom?"
Xxx
Ryo sat in the conference room next Megumi to with their boss, Kagawa Hayate, sitting at the front of the table. He was a middle-aged man with grey and black messy hair, wore a business suit, and had a scrubby face.
Two other members of the Foreign Affairs sat across from them. One was a man who wore a black coat and blue jeans, and the other was a female wearing a tan skirt, white blouse, and black hair cut short. She happened to be just out of the academy and was hired for her intelligence.
"The CIA isn't happy about what had happened," said Hayate. "I've been getting chat calls from them on the hour, expressing their displeasure, and threatening to shut us down. They only kept us up because they needed a policing unit in this city, and to make the locals happy.
"We better get our priorities straight or we will be looking for new jobs outside the city."
After the CIA took over the city, they had put down strict rules and used their own Military to police Tokyo. In other cities in Japan, local police offices still had control over their jurisdictions.
As the years went by, the CIA found it harder to patrol Pandora and the streets of Tokyo, and reopened the Foreign Affairs. However, it still had been strict. Because of these problems, a lot of Japanese people living in the city noticed their daily traditions fading away. Some speculated that in fifty to eighty years from now, the Japanese culture would be extinct.
Their language had been disappearing due to American's living in the area. Only small locations in nearly dead neighborhoods kept up on their ancient writing. The schools in the vicinity no longer taught Japanese, except Tokyo University. The University alone was hard to get accepted in nowadays. They took in a certain amount of Japanese since the Americans wanted their own race located in the city.
A lot of young folks forgot mere gestures, like not leave before their bosses at work, or taking off his or her shoes in the house.
Megumi was one of the few Japanese descendants that still abided by it.
"Now, what do we know about the two Contractors that were killed," said Hayate, changing the subject.
The young woman across from Ryo and Megumi stood while coughing, and said, "Not much, Sir. All we know is that their power is to implode someone's head, but it doesn't exploded unless they use it together, which makes their obeisance to rely on the other to help.
"We theorized that they are apart of the non-contract agency, were sent here to retrieve the file to save their agency, and perhaps locate other agencies to either kill them or make deals."
"And whom was the one who theorized this, Sakura?" Hayate asked.
"Me, Sir," replied Ryo.
"Section-Chief Kimara, what did I say about theories. This organization does not put together theories, only facts. We follow the rules of our predecessors before us."
"I know the rules, Sir, but it doesn't hurt to throw those thoughts out there."
"You maybe right, but we stay to the facts to please the CIA."
"But, Sir!"
"It's not your ear that's getting ripped by the CIA. It's mine, and I say we stay on the right path. Do we know who killed them?"
"No, Sir," replied Megumi, as she stood while Sakura returned to her seat. "We had the lab check for finger prints on the blades, but there was nothing. We then checked the manufacture on the blades, but there is none."
"None? Aren't all weapons implanted with model numbers these days since it's illegal throughout the world to own a weapon: even a kitchen knife."
"Yes, Sir," nodded Megumi. "It would seem that the blades were illegally forged. We had the metal tested to see where they might have come from, but we're not getting any hits. Whoever this person is, he or she doesn't want to be found."
Hayate sat in silence for a few seconds, and then said, "Good work, Detective. Your mother would be proud of you."
Megumi smiled, as she tried to hide a frown in it. She loved her mother, but she was sick and tired of being compared to her. She wanted to be her own person, not her mother.
"Thank you, Sir," she said instead, and sat back down.
"Do we have any leads on the whereabouts of any of the non-contract agencies?" Hayate asked.
"From what the Astronomy lab has noticed from specters, there seems to be activity in the rundown neighborhoods," said Ryo. "I plan on going down there with Megumi to talk with an informant. Perhaps he could tell me what's going on."
"Who's the informant?"
"Someone I busted for illegal immigration two years ago."
"Make sure you report back everything you find, Section-Chief."
"Yes, Sir."
Xxx
Ryo sat on the left side of the car with Megumi to his right, as they headed towards their destination that had been programmed in the GPS.
There was no roar or purr from the engine since every vehicle that was manufactured were battery powered. It had been law for the past fifteen years, and because of it, new laws were placed to have all vehicles that were battery operated be placed under highway traffic control called The Traffic Control System, also known as, TCS.
TCS was an automatic function system that ran out of a Traffic Control Headquarters posted every one hundred kilometers from each other. It operated every registered vehicle purchased off a dealer lot and kept them in the proper lane and destination. Towers that boosted the signal was spaced around like cell phone towers.
The weather outside was raining, which required the traffic to travel at a slower pace.
"You're jealous, aren't you," spoke up Ryo.
"Of what?" Megumi asked, staring out the windshield.
"That you weren't chosen as Section-Chief."
Megumi chuckled, and said, "Far from it. I'm happy where I'm at."
Ryo looked over at her.
"Why did you choose to come work out here?" he asked. "Why leave your job and family in Yokohama? They live by the old way."
"All this time we worked together, now you ask me these questions. Mainly because I wanted to see Tokyo. My mom talked about it when I was growing up. I knew it was hard to get approved to live here, and when I was approached last year at the Yokohama police force, I took it."
"What did your mom say about you leaving?"
"She told me to be careful."
"Words to live by."
The red car pulled up to their destination and stopped before a rundown building. The street had potholes from lack of care, garbage scattered everywhere, and broken down cars. There were a dozen light poles that were cracked, and a couple of them that flickered on and off.
The buildings were moldy and damaged, sign lights broken and flashing occasionally, and missing, broken or stained windows. A few of the rooms had working lights.
Ryo and Megumi exited the vehicle to stare up at it.
"Like the sight of Tokyo now?" teased Ryo, causing Megumi to smile brightly.
They headed up the staircase to the third floor, walked by a few doors, and stopped in front of apartment 334. Ryo knocked on the door with his middle knuckles. There was no answer, coercing Ryo to knock again.
The door unlocked, followed by the doorknob turning, and then it creaked open enough for a pair of dark eyes to peek out.
"Oh, hell no! Not you!" shouted the man inside.
He went to close the door, but Ryo kicked it open and stepped inside the room. The man held up his hands and backed off to give the two officers room. He was a dark skinned, muscular man with a buzzed cut and wore a gray hooded sweatshirt.
"Hey, copper, I done nothing, man!" he stated in English.
"I didn't say you did," replied Ryo in English. "But I'm obliged to find out if you did due to the way you treated me at the door."
"Yo, man, every time you show up at my crib, I'm always making a trip to your big, fancy building."
"Whenever I show up at your door, Danny, it's because you've done something illegal, or broke your probation. I'm not here for anything but information."
"Info? Of what?"
"Anything you've seen unusual around here? People here that shouldn't be?"
"Yeah, two cops. But yet, I see one who is hotter than my ex." Dan glared at Megumi and pursed his lips at her. "Damn, girl, you can cuff me anytime. Oh, what's the matter, hotty, don't understand what homie here is saying? That's okay, we don't need words for a little banging, do we."
Megumi smiled and walked up to Dan. She hit him in his stomached, twisted his right arm behind his back, and kicked his feet out from under him to throw him to the ground with her knee in his back.
"No, we don't need words for a little banging," she spoke in English. "And the name is Detective Itashi Megumi."
"Ouch! Damn!" whined Dan. "Okay, bro. I'll fill you in with what I know. Just get your woman off me."
"I'm not his woman." Megumi tightened her grip, compelling Dan to scream. "Start talking, or start thinking about how to pay your doctor's bill."
"Yo, man, this is harassment!" Dan felt his arm tightened to the brink of breaking. "Ouch! Okay! Look, some dudes and two hot brads showed up three days ago. They've been chillaxin' a few blocks over. I went to take a peek, mostly to check out the hot brads. No offence, hotty, but they were twice as hot as you."
"None taken."
"You get a look at the guys and what they had in their place?" Ryo asked.
"Man, you out yo'r mind!" shouted Dan. "Hell no. Danno don't play that way. I only had eyes for the brads. I could give you their cup sizes, if you like."
"No need. They're lying in our morgue as we speak."
"Say what, dog? They dead? Oh what a waste. They looked good to tap. Mm, mm!"
"And they were Contractors," informed Megumi.
"What? Contractors? The way they were stroking each other in the shower! Hell no!"
"Sorry, pal, but they were," replied Ryo.
"Man, you two just ruined my lonely nights."
"Get a doll. A blow up doll," stated Megumi. "What apartment building and room?"
"Second building to the right from here. Fourth floor. Room 403."
Megumi released her hold on Dan to head out the front door with Ryo.
"Oh, and don't go calling yourself Danno. That's reserved for the television show, Hawaii five-0," chimed in Ryo. As they drew towards the stairs he said to Megumi, "And he's right. Those twins were hotter."
Megumi tightened her jaw line as she forced another smile.
They descended the stairs, walked over to the second building, and began checking out cars and vans parked along it with their guns drawn. After spending five minutes peeking around, they headed up to the second floor to cautiously walk over to room 403.
As they drew near it, they noticed an old man, wearing thick sunglasses and a raggedy coat with graying long hair and a beard, trying to enter room 402.
"Excuse me, Sir," whispered Ryo to the old man. "Foreign Affairs. We need you to step back."
The old man looked towards them, and then slowly shuffled back. Megumi placed her back to the right of the door, her gun pointing downwards, while Ryo took the other side with his gun pointing upwards.
Ryo held up three fingers, and started to count down. Three… two… one…
He pulled away from the wall, faced the door, and kicked it in.
However, unknown to him was a bomb connected to the door. It exploded, sending the door back at Ryo, and knocking him off the railing to his death. Megumi was blasted backwards and sprawled on the ground with cuts and bruises.
She looked up at the ceiling, unable to comprehend anything as her ears rang. The old man came at her side and looked down at her. He had removed his glasses; at least she thought he had. She couldn't tell as she lost consciousness.
The last thing she recalled were murky colors mixed in with the brightest blue she had ever seen.