Nights like these when the air is thick with the vapour of blood misting over in the fog. Wet and sticky, it clings to his clothes and Kaku carefully brushes a speck off his cap. Not that it matters. He can always get another. He is not one to attach himself to physical things; CP9 agents didn't, shouldn't, have the need to attach to anything.

Lucci is seated on two copulating dead bodies, and he is calm, in the sense that he is not tense, wound tight with those narrowed eyes of his, those lips pressed together tight and firm in a thin line.

Kaku inhales the stench of steaming intestines strewn about on the ground, waves aside a whiff of leftover coffee, dripping from the bedside table – the only thing left intact in the room.

Kaku joins his partner; they are both clean despite the mess of cooling body parts, and only Lucci's finger is coated with a slimy red.

Kaku kneels and settles his hand lightly over an unyielding wrist – there is no resistance so he lifts that hand and cups his mouth over the bloodied finger.

"Are you done?" The statement is flat, and smacks Kaku not-so-gently on the side of the head.

He extracts the finger from his mouth, relieved that the expected Shigan had not blown apart his head.

He can sense distaste radiating from the older agent; he is not one for messy jobs. But they had been ordered to, and who were they to question orders?

Orders were what they needed, nothing else – the justice that rooted them down, kept the world from rotting to the core, held the pirate infestation at bay.

"Tomorrow."

Kaku understands what that word means, know what weight it holds.

Tomorrow the Pirate King will cross over from the New World, a journey home, and they would be waiting.

The air has cleared, and a night breeze rolls by. Kaku takes a look at the shadow by his side.

Tomorrow.