Disclaimer: I do not own Psycho-Pass or the Characters.

Rated M

Chapter 1

Ginoza

It's not always easy to take someone's life, not everyone can do it and some who can just can't quite cut it effectively. If it was that is easy to do and everyone could simply do it, my job would have little to no value in the eyes of others. It's not just about putting a bullet in someone's head. It's much more than that. It takes precise calculations and careful planning, taking another's life is an art and it must be treated with uttermost delicacy.

There are certain methods that I prefer most, like the long distance kill for instance is my go to option. It allows me to keep my distance, it's a clean death, it minimizes the chances of injury to myself and I can make my get away that much quicker and easier without raising any attention to myself. However, this option isn't always possible and sometimes I find myself having to get close and sometimes a simple bullet to the head just won't do depending on the job request that I was given or the circumstances that I'm faced with.

In the end it really doesn't matter what is the job or who I have to kill, I never miss my target. I don't care how long it takes me to do my kill, it could take a few days or a month but ether way I'll get you and before you even know what's happening you won't have to worry about your problems any longer.

To be honest, this job took much longer than I had first expected. I couldn't get a good visual of my target long enough to get a direct hit while using the long distance approach and there was no way that I could have sneaked in to get close to him either.

I'm not sure if he had known for some time that he was being targeted for dead or he was just simply a paranoid individual but his security level was high and his men were clearly well trained which proved to be quite the challenge but in the end I still managed to get my target.

I'm good at what I do; I have no problems in taking another person's life. It doesn't matter who they are, what their gender is or how old they are. A target is nothing more than a target. Whether you live or die really doesn't bother me in the slightest. As long as you meet my price, I'll take the job and then just make sure to get out of my way.

Things always feel strange when I return home after completing a job. Everything is always exactly how I left it and it's not like I even expect that something will be out of place but it never truly feels like home. It's hollow and empty and yet it's modernly stylish and well-furnished but that's all it is…

"You're back, but you really should start being a bit more careful before you get a bullet in your head."

I want to laugh at that comment but I don't, it's not like I wasn't expecting Shimotsuki to be sitting at the kitchen table in the first place and it's not like I wasn't expecting her to scold me for my carelessness when I arrive home either. I knew she was here the moment that I entered the house, unlike her I pay attention to every small detail. I have to otherwise I wouldn't be good at what I do, spotting the smallest of details will often save my life and make my job that much easier.

"Yeah…" I mutter back. "Like that's ever going to happen." I add before sitting down in front of her and besides I know better than to leave any traces of myself behind on a job, I know better than to leave witnesses alive that could identify me. I'm not that careless and besides if I get found out, Shimotsuki will be in danger just as much as I will and for her sake I can't make that mistake.

"Right…" She agrees with a slow nod. Clearly not believing my claim but she doesn't seem to want to start an argument tonight which I don't mind, I'm not in the mood for one after the job that I just did.

"I got you something, a welcome home gift." She blurts out, her smile a bit forced as she presents a bottle of wine.

"Thanks…" I mutter, looking at her oddly as I accept the bottle.

It's a very good year, well-aged red wine and obviously of great quality. Not bad… However, a welcome home gift is rather unusual for her, especially since she's just my agent but with the years we have grown close.

Shimotsuki is the one who manages my client list, decides which jobs are more promising and more profitable and then she's the one who has the job of gathering the pay load. She also has the task of forging passports and booking places for me to stay until I can finish the job that's been assigned to me. Basically I do the work and she manages everything else, everything that's involved with money and massive paper work, she takes care of it.

"The price has been paid in full; I took the liberty of taking my percentage already. Everything is on the counter, minus the amount you wished to have placed in the bank so you don't have to bother with that. I took care of it." She tells me.

Shimotsuki always does more than she needs to especially since she's just my agent, often it feels like she's more of an assistant of the sort but I couldn't ask for a better agent. As much as I hate to admit it, without her I wouldn't be able to function properly. I'm too used to having her around, to manage all of my affairs.

To say the truth, she's becoming a weakness; I should get rid of her for my own safety because she knows way too much already. She's a dangerous liability to my survival but I still trust her even though it makes absolutely no sense. I trust her with everything in my affairs but I don't have any feelings for this woman and I know for a fact that she doesn't hold any feelings for me either. Everything is platonic and professional on both our ends.

"You didn't have to do that. I would have managed."

The look she gives me clearly says it all that she didn't buy my lack of effort of a lie but she doesn't comment on it and that's how we often leave our arguments. We just know each other too well at this point, it has come to a point that we just know what the other is thinking without saying a single word. We've become just too familiar to each other…

The thing is that we've worked together for so long that we just know each other's habits and that in turn helps us on a professional level. Shimotsuki can better choose job requests that I'll be able to handle more smoothly without problems but sometimes I still land some problematic ones just like the one that I just did but there's something that's lurking in the back of her mind. I know so just by the way that she keeps staring at me and her body language gives away that she still has something to say.

"What is it?" I ask and her facial expression suddenly changed as if she was just waiting for me to ask a question in order to give her a green light to bring forward whatever she had on her mind.

"Look I don't want to tell you how to do your job but…" And here it comes… It shouldn't come much to a surprise that the results of my job has reached her ears already and of course she's not done, "That was quite the body count on this one, Ginoza. We were just being paid for Tougane, was it necessary?"

The thing is that I couldn't get to Tougane, it didn't matter what tactic I tried I just couldn't get to him without spilling more blood than needed. He had hired special mercenaries for protection, those men were highly trained to protect him and there was just no way for me to get to Tougane without eliminating the opposition along the way first. It was kill or be killed.

To me honestly, it didn't matter that I had to kill over twenty men in one night; all that matters is that I left no one alive who could have seen me, who could have identified who I am. I eliminated any possibility of being identified and become someone else's next target. I killed my target, that's all I care about; I don't care how many I had to kill. I accomplished the task that I was given and now it's done and over with.

"It had to be done." I tell her briefly.

"Did it?" Shimotsuki asked raising an eyebrow, not really buying my answer to her question. "Ginoza, did it?" She asks again.

I don't expect Shimotsuki to understand what my situation was. Sometimes things just don't go as planned and you have to modify your tactics in short notice in order to succeed. That's what happened on the last job, I couldn't afford to waste too much time, I could have been spotted and I would have seemed suspicious to his personnel. It had to be done.

"There was no way I could have gotten close enough to Tougane without being seen and besides they were trying to kill me." I further add to my defense.

"Of course they were, you were trying to kill them so what did you expect? Anyway as your agent I am obliged to tell you we just got an absolute fantastic new offer but that last job, well I think you need a break." She further tells me and I can't help but sigh as she recommends that I take a break from my job which I don't need in the slightest and the fact that I have another job offer already waiting for me doesn't come much to a surprise. That's how it always is. I do a job, come home and then another one is already waiting for me to take and then I'm off to the new job and that's how I prefer things to be.

"Is it worth the pay load?" I ask, ignoring the break offer.

"Well yeah, the pay load is huge for just one target but Ginoza, you're about to crash. You can't keep this up, just skip this one. They'll give it to somebody else." She answers.

She should know better by now that no matter how many times she tries to persuade me into taking a break, it's not going to work. That's not how I work. I don't take breaks because there's no room for it. All I have is my job and nothing else because in the end that's all there is. My job will never leave me when everything else does, in the end all I have is my job. It's all that ever remains.

"They won't pay that much to somebody else." I tell her the rather obvious thing.

When it comes to killing people, it's not about bragging or being overconfident in my skills. I'm good at what I do, and I don't miss my target. When a client hires me for a job, they can be confident that the individual that they want dead will die. My reputation isn't empty, my reputation guarantees success so my price is high but I know they wouldn't pay such a high amount for another. That I know as much.

"You're right, they asked specifically for you. The location is in there, I'll call you when I get the target but it should relatively be easy." She says and I want to wince at not knowing my target beforehand but it's not uncommon. I've had many jobs like that before. They give you a price and a number of targets and if you accept then you get the names a couple of days later. It's a way for the client to make sure that the targets do not get warned beforehand, that there is no possible way for them to survive the assassination attempt, meaning that the client is also very desperate to have the target killed.

"Yeah…"

"Get some sleep; you have to leave first thing in the morning for Japan." She adds before getting up and giving me a light pat on the shoulder and walks away.

I take out the file from the large yellow envelop that Shimotsuki left on the table. The pay load offer is two hundred thousand dollars for just a single target; it's double what I ask for so the client has to be very desperate for wanting this individual killed. Most of the time my targets are people who don't even deserve to live, they are some of the biggest crooks in the world so killing them just makes it ever the more easy to do. This one will be just the same.

XXX

XXX

"The client says that he needs you there a couple of days early." Shimotsuki tells me over the phone but she sounds like she's also doing something else at the same time. I can tell that she's a bit distracted and from the tone in her voice she's still probably hoping that I drop the job.

"Why?" I ask, trying to hide my annoyance in my tone.

"No idea. He said that's part of the deal and that he wants you to wait." She answers which doesn't help to reduce my annoyance at all but rather fuels it instead.

"I just want to get this over with; you know I can't sit still Shimotsuki." I tell her and not to mention that Japan is the last place I want to be right now.

I lived my whole childhood dreaming of leaving that country behind and then I pretended like the time I spent there had never happened. I never thought that I'd ever return, actually I never wanted to return but here I am returning where I came from. Not sure how I feel about that…

"Ginoza you have a five days waiting period, take that time to relax and unwind a little. I hear the view in Japan is gorgeous-"

I hang up the phone before Shimotsuki can finish telling me her story, not that I wanted to hear it to begin with. These waiting periods are not going to be spent as if I'm on a holiday and it's not something that I expected her to understand either. The moment that I set foot onto Japanese soil, I enter into enemy territory. My client is just as much of a danger to me than my target is, there is no room for relaxation and until my target is dead, the clock is ticking and only then can I relax and not before.

I didn't want to leave Italy for Japan but it wasn't just because of going back to Japan per say, it was the fact that the location in my contract was for me to go to the Okinawa Prefecture in the city of Naha. In a single job I'm returning home, never would I have imagined that I'd be returning this way. That I would actually get a job to kill someone on the soil that I grew up on and got sick of.

The day that I got onto the ferry to go to the mainland was the best moment of my life and then I got onto a plane and never looked back and now after so many years that have passed, here I am returning on the same ferry when I had left.

The mainland has changed, the years have aged it well but the further I've gone south as I entered the Okinawa Prefecture it hasn't changed much. It has evolved to fit the current age but it's still the same as ever. It is quiet and boring with nothing to do so my waiting periods are not going to pass quickly.

Shimotsuki however, was able to book a beach house for the month though and like always she managed to get one that is away from any other housings. That way I'll be able to concentrate on the task at hand, I won't have to bother about the possibility of catching someone's attention too much and things should be somewhat easier. From the address of the house I know it all too well, it's a house with its own private part of the beach, she's still trying to get me into a vacation, she just doesn't stop but I have to give prompts to her effort.

The only bright side that I have about having a job here in my own home is that I know this island by heart. It doesn't matter how many years have passed, I know the main locations and events and point bonus I'm Japanese. That alone will allow me to blend right in without attracting too much attention onto myself…

When the ferry finally docks, I waste no time getting off the platform. Avoiding any eye contact with anyone and head straight to the beach house. The last thing I want to do is to converse with the people around. When the target is unknown right at the start of a job, the last thing you want to do is to jeopardize yourself right before the job even begins.

Just like Shimotsuki had said, the beach house has been well kept and there's nothing to do with it and it's completely ready to move in much to my pleasure. The last thing I'd want to do is have to tidy the place up before I can settle in. All I want to do is to get ready and start planning my possible locations for my kill.