Chapter I
It was early morning in the international airport of Narita, where the traffic was always immense. People were coming and going, destinations different for everyone. Polite announcements for leaving and arriving flights added to the atmosphere and always caused some kind of movement in the crowd.
Also the TV screens informing the travelers about the arrivals and departures were targets of keen attention.
"Well fuck."
"Delayed until further notice? Is that even legal?"
A group of four men was staring at the screen of departures; each one of them looking slightly disappointed and somewhat frustrated.
"Why does it always have to be our plane?" A boy with blonde hair and blue eyes wondered and tightened his grip on his bag.
"Karma."
"Well that is just hilarious, Aya. Fucking ironical. We get a mission and a vacation for doing it right and then we can't even reach our destination."
Indeed, these four were the invincible hunters of the light, Weiß, and indeed, they had been assigned for a mission to hunt down a top class criminal leader who had sadly enough managed to flee from Japan. Therefore the group had to follow him to Britain where Kritiker had tracked him down.
"Someone should go and ask what's keeping the plane," Aya noted and looked at the other three. Yoji was seemingly very pissed and looked like he was craving for a cigarette. Omi had a worried expression on his face and he still stared at the screen as if trying to make sure that it wasn't just an optical illusion they all shared and Ken... Well, the brunette had dug up a worn out napkin from the pocket of his jeans and was now folding a paper airplane out of it.
"Hidaka, you look like you have some spare time."
Ken lifted his gaze from the pathetic excuse of an origami and looked at Aya questioningly. He had obviously not been paying too much attention to the conversation.
"You. Run to get some information about why the plane is late."
"Oh, yeah." Ken put the paper airplane back into his pocket and took off.
"This is a big building, Ayan, he'll get lost," Yoji noted, his voice mockingly worried.
"Guess twice if that's the point."
"That is just cruel," Omi mentioned, "Care for coffee?" he added and pointed at the direction of a café nearby. Looking exactly like airport cafés usually did, it most likely had prices that would give Aya a small heart attack, but it did serve coffee, nevertheless.
"And a cigarette. And something with alcohol," Yoji added to the list and practically ran to find a free table. The two others followed him, their steps a little less hurried. Yoji offered to get them what they wanted and left to the counter.
Aya sighed deeply and glared at a commercial stand with a picture of a woman in illegally little clothing promoting some sort of 'exotic and sensual' new perfume. Commercials were becoming more and more shameless nowadays.
"Annoys me, too," Omi noted, apparently having misjudged the source of Aya's frustration. "Week is a very little time to complete a mission in any case, and now we have even less time because of the damn plane."
Aya didn't reply. He simply kept staring into the distance.
After a moment Yoji came back carrying a tray with three cups of black coffee and a bottle of something that looked heavily alcoholic. He put them down on the table and sat down himself, placing a cigarette on his lips. Omi lifted an eyebrow at this and pointed at the "No smoking" sign just above Yoji's head.
"Damn," Yoji sighed and put the cigarette back to the pack. "Oh, well, one of the two has got to be good enough."
The tree of them sipped their coffees in silence until Omi spoke up.
"I hope there's nothing terribly messed up. The cause of the delay, I mean."
Yoji sniggered. "Wouldn't a broken engine be fun? Or even better: two broken engines?"
"Don't beg for bad things to happen, Kudou," Aya warned.
They all lifted their gazes when they heard footsteps approaching the table, only to see Ken returning - obviously not lost.
"So? What is it?" Omi asked, honestly interested.
Ken shrugged. "They said something about the plane leaving at one o'clock at the earliest. Damages in two engines or something like that," he told and sat down with the others.
Aya turned to glare at Yoji, who grinned sheepishly, taking a long gulp of his alcohol-filled drink.
"Leave me the rest of that," Aya ordered.
After six hours of waiting and nine hours of flying, the four finally arrived in Heathrow. A luggage-reclaim later they headed for the underground to travel to their hotel near Kensington Gardens. Each one of them dozed from time to time but the knowledge of the fact that they would miss their stop if they all fell asleep kept them up.
They took a cab from the station and as they finally got into the lobby of the three-star hotel Kritiker had booked for them Yoji was something between asleep and dead and the others were just otherwise exhausted and swore never to place a foot on an airport ever again. Omi was the only one of them awake enough to go and check them in into their rooms.
It appeared that Kritiker had decided to save money and had only reserved two rooms, but the four of them were too tired to complain.
"Who wants to drag him up?" Ken asked, yawning, and pointed at Yoji who was fast asleep on an armchair. The younger half of Weiß turned to look expectantly at Aya who made a despairing face.
"You are not serious," he complained. The other two nodded, grinning sadistically.
"Have fun," Ken said and added a wishing of good night before stepping into the elevator with Omi. Aya was left alone in the lobby, trying desperately either to wake Yoji up or to get a proper hold of him so he could drag the taller man up to where their room was. After countless efforts he managed to get the zombie-like body up and haul it into the elevator with him.
He predicted that the week was ought to be pure hell.
Ken's dream about sweet pillows and blankets up in the clouds was disturbed by an irksome, beeping sound which refused to end. Drowsily he blinked the sleep from his eyes and pushed himself into a sitting position on his bed. He began to look for the source of the damned annoying beeping only to notice it was his own fine watch that was making the noise. It took him some time to find out how in the hell the sound would stop but he did succeed, eventually.
Omi had also been awoken by the sound and was now trying his best to hide under his pillow and covers. As if it hadn't been enough that the plane had been late, he was also suffering from a severe case of jetlag.
"I don't need to get up, do I? You can get the baddie without me, right?" he asked from under his pillow, trying to sound as small and vulnerable as possible.
"You're the brains."
Omi forced himself to get up, taking a hold of the wall in process and doing his best not to crash back to the sweet land of sleep.
"What time is it?" he asked.
Ken glanced at his watch. "According to this thing it's 6 AM, but I don't quite believe it."
"Take nine hours off of it. You get 9 PM. We've slept a little over six hours."
"Pay it forward. Wake up the oldies."
Aya awoke to the sound of a phone ringing next to his ear and grabbed it haphazardly, dropping a menu-card and an ashtray to the floor in progress.
"What?" was his groggy greeting to whoever it was in the other end.
"Hi!" rang Omi's ear-wrenchingly perky voice through the receiver.
"What do you want?" Aya asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He hadn't thought he'd be this much affected by the time-difference.
"We need to plan the mission. Or at least figure out how we can find the targ- hold on a second."
Aya waited patiently. He heard that some sort of conversation was had in the other room but couldn't make much of it. After a moment he heard Omi's voice again.
"All we need to do is to plan the mission. He will be in Chinatown for some business tomorrow - Ken just got a message from Manx – so it will be pretty easy. Especially if it will be little bit further from the busiest area - the restaurant the meeting he's attending to is held in, that is."
"Very much likely. Unless he is feeling lucky," Aya commented.
"I doubt it. Should we meet up in your room in fifteen minutes?"
Aya nodded and after having realized Omi didn't see it, said: "Fine, I'll try to get him up before that." With 'him' he was referring to Yoji who had showed no signs of waking up.
"All right, see you in a while then."
Aya hung up the phone and swung his legs over the side of his bed. He yawned and took a look at the blond in the bed opposite his. He was sleeping like a log, his blanket tightly gathered around him and his breathing steady. Well, there was no choice.
"Yoji?" he tried the soft way first.
"Are you alive?" he asked and reached his foot to kick Yoji's side. The man didn't as much as stir.
Aya raised an eyebrow. If anything else wouldn't work he'd have to get some cold water.
"Lazy prick..." he muttered to himself and stood up. He got his sweater from the back of a chair where he had discarded the article the night before, and put it on. Then he glared at Yoji for a while.
He thought for a moment. He could scare Yoji awake, he knew it was bound to work, but the question was what would be the most effective way of scaring?
Aya could have sworn that a little light bulb lit up above his head as he came up with a truly cruel idea. He walked beside Yoji's bed and knelt down. He glared for one more moment; just to make sure Yoji really was asleep, so he wouldn't make a complete fool out of himself. Yoji was asleep. No doubt there.
The redhead reached a bit further so that his lips were only inches away from Yoji's ear. He then blew out a little air and watched how Yoji stirred a slightly. Actually he was glad that the blonde didn't wake up yet. He traced his fingers along Yoji's jawbone and then leaned even closer to his ear.
"Good morning loverboy," he said in his most lisp tone and just as expected, hearing those words spoken out by a male-voice made Yoji snap out of his dream.
Aya stood up. "Get your ass up. We need to plan a mission."
Yoji stared at Aya for a moment, thought about the odd voice he had heard whispering to his ear and then decided against it. Aya did not have that twisted sense of humor. His own mind was the one doing weird things, he decided.
"Time is it?"
"Past nine. In the evening."
"Why am I up at nine in the evening?"
"Because we have a mission to plan, just as I said. Futsuyaki will be in Chinatown tomorrow evening and Omi and Ken will be here in a few minutes to give out the more specific details."
"Why do we have a fucking mission-planning at fucking 9 PM?"
"You have slept more than any of us so you shouldn't have anything to complain," Aya commented and sat down on the chair his sweater had inhabited few moments back.
Yoji groaned and sat up on his bed.
"Why am I dressed?" he asked after observing himself for a moment.
"Because after I had dragged you unconscious being up here I didn't feel like stripping you. "
"I might have confused you to a molester."
"Most likely."
There was a pause during which Yoji thought again if he should ask Aya if he had been whispering lewd things to him just moments before he had woken up, but, once again, decided against it. If Aya hadn't, he would think Yoji had hidden desires and if he had, Yoji would have to think of Aya as a sick, twisted person who entertained himself by scaring innocent fellow roommates.
A knock on the door broke the silence. Aya stood up from his chair and opened the door to let the two other members of Weiß in.
"Sleep well?" Omi asked casually, knowing very well that he had woken at least Aya up.
"Too little," Yoji complained. "So, what do we have?"
The four sat down around a sad excuse of a table in the corner of the room, which was most likely supposed to pose as the 'lounge' they had been promised.
"Ken went to get a restaurant guide from the reception, it should have the address of the-"
"It does. Here." Ken put the guide to the table and pointed at the name of the restaurant. It had been given only one star and there had obviously been nothing too good to say about the service or the food, since there was nothing aside from the name, the star rating and the address in the booklet.
"Suits him well. According to the information Manx gave us, he will be there at six tomorrow night. Two bodyguards and a driver plus the bodyguards of the man he has the appointment with. Kritiker wasn't sure about the number of them, but I think we should be able to take down Futsuyaki and his guards before he gets," Omi explained.
"The bodyguards aren't armed with anything but pistols. Sucks if they are good at aiming fast and unnoticed," Ken added. "Otherwise they should be pretty easy."
"What about civilians? Is there a chance they might see anything?" Aya asked, knowing very well what the fate of the unfortunate by-passers would be.
"It is a part of Chinatown, no matter what. We have to be extremely cautious. There won't be many people around. It would be for the best if we could get Futsuyaki and his guards to even more isolated place, but no can do."
"We could ask him," Yoji suggested. The three others turned to look at him as if he just had grown a second head.
"I mean, if his guards are what most criminal leaders' gorillas are – all muscle and no brain – it'll be easy to fool them."
"Even if we could fool the bodyguards, there'd still be his driver and Futsuyaki himself."
"Listen, one of his bodyguards is bound to be left outside to keep watch, right? So, Mr. Ice-block here-" Yoji pointed at Aya who frowned at the comment, "- will go to him and give him a little glimpse of the Blade of Death. The brainless ape will either be scared shitless and run or go and get the big boss if the Man with the Big Bad Sword tells him to do so. "
"You need to sleep more," Aya commented.
"I agree. But I think you do have a point somewhere there," Ken admitted. "Aya, you can be quite persuasive and even you have to admit that bodyguards are afraid of the combination of your katana and that shi-NE!-glare."
"Why do we suddenly think I'm some sort of a scary block of ice?" Aya asked, upset.
"That's because you are," Omi said and coughed. "Anyway, that might work," he rolled his eyes at this, "But we need to have a plan B – or more likely a proper plan A."
"Are you implying that I don't have the gift of planning missions? I'm the one who was PI, remember?"
"The key-word is 'was'," Aya reminded, receiving a mean glance from the blonde.
"Any suggestions?" Omi asked and looked at the three others. A heavy silence fell.
"So we just lure him into a dark alley along with his bodyguards and kill him there?"
The silence was still there.
"Actually I'm glad we get to have a little time off after the mission's over. We all need rest if this is the best we can come up with," Omi shook his head.
TBC.
Reviews very warmly welcome.
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