TENIPURI AGENTS: RISING ROOKIE

Chapter One - Encounter

Saeki flipped the carton into the trash can with indifferent accuracy. He was sorry to see it go; that brand of apple juice was his favourite.

Most people asked, at least once in their lives, why he loved apple juice above all other drinks. This was as inane as questions went, in his opinion. Did he really need a reason to like apple juice? Mostly he responded by questioning their fondness for beer or red wine or Ponta.

Smacking his lips and savouring the last of the fruity sweetness in his mouth, the young man continued his way down the road towards the small convenient store at the corner of the block. He was in no hurry; it wasn't like there was anywhere important he needed to be anytime soon. Having just barely graduated from college, he was still looking for a job. Luck hadn't been on his side so far. There weren't many posts that welcomed a very green Creative Writing major from one of those average, nothing-special colleges.

He didn't worry about his lack of income. One more week of looking through newspapers and job finding websites, and he'd forget about using his degree and just go to the local community center to inquire if they needed any new tennis coaches. He wasn't elite, true, but then it didn't take a tensai like Fuji or a hyperactive enthusiast like Kentaro to do the job. Most of those kids didn't take the lessons seriously anyway.

Humming pleasantly and enjoying the wind ruffling his black and white hair, he reached the store and stepped inside at the tinkling of a small bell that announced his arrival.

"Morning," he greeted the girl behind the counter before heading off to the drinks section. His father had been bemoaning the lack of coffee in the house all morning, and Saeki found it rather harder to concentrate on his job hunting while the man stomped around like a bear with a headache.

God alone knew why the guy didn't just go and get some coffee from this store less than two blocks away, instead of complaining about it.

Dropping his navy blue sports bag--his makeshift shopping basket--onto the floor beside him, he turned to the jars of concentrated instant coffee on display. The brand he normally got was sold out. He had never tried any of the others before.

Coffee A, coffee B, names, names, names... Is there really even a difference?

Soon, while comparing the prices and contents of two large bottles of brown powder, he sensed that there was someone beside him. Looking up, he saw a man, middle aged with sunglasses and a black baseball cap on, picking through the powdered milk adjacent to the coffee shelf. To his amusement, he found that the man had a sports bag identical to his own, and had placed it right next to his. Strange, he thought idly, I thought that kind of bag went out of fashion years ago. It was one of the things he had kept from his high school days. The bag he used to carry his tennis rackets around.

I wonder if any of the others kept theirs?

He could picture, without having to look, the large scribbling of words sprawled on one corner of the bag's rough fabric. Saeki Kojiroh, Rokkaku High. It was a mark of an unforgettable part of his past, which everyone else seemed to have forgotten, ironically. The old gang had split up and gone their separate ways when they had all graduated from high school.

He hadn't seen anyone from the tennis circle in years.

Finally, the man seemed to have finished with the milk, and not found anything satisfactory, left. Having chosen a new brand of coffee, Saeki picked up his bag and prepared to pay for it at the counter. Grasping the dark blue strap, he heaved--and frowned. When he had left home, he had emptied that bag. Now it felt as heavy as though a couple of bricks had been put into it.

Carefully setting down the glass jar in his hand, he unzipped the bag, peered inside and gave a sharp intake of breath.

Stacks of banknotes, all worth 1000 yen, were piled neatly within.

Obviously enough, this wasn't his. Saeki's mind raced, and flashed back on the man from before, their two identical sports bags. It's his, Saeki concluded. He mixed up our bags and took mine instead. Swiftly zipping it up again, he strode hurriedly out of the store, abandoning the coffee; he would come back for it later. Once out on the street, he scanned the area carefully, searching for that distinctive baseball cap. The man couldn't have gone too far yet.

In the distance, he thought he saw a patch of black bobbing along the sidewalk. He broke out into a run. "Hey!" he yelled. "You've got the wrong bag!"

But the man didn't appear to have heard, and didn't stop. Saeki gave chase for another few blocks before slowing--he'd lost sight of his quarry. Breathing evenly--his tennis training had not stopped its effects on his body yet--he looked around in mild confusion. How could he have missed the man? The guy had been walking while he, Saeki, had been running full out. But the baseball cap and owner of the bag in his hand was nowhere to be seen.

Damn. There was so much cash in this bag. It wasn't something he could ignore. He had to find that man.

To his right was a small alleyway which was pretty much the only place (that he could see) where the guy might have disappeared into. Now, normally he would have thought at once that entering into such a dark and lonely place with a small fortune in tow wasn't really a hot idea, and would have abstained. But this time he could come up with no other way to return the bag--it wasn't like he knew enough about the owner to track him down by other means--and he did want his own back.

Marching boldly into the alley, hanging loosely on to the black strap of his burden as though it were of no real importance, he moved quickly along the straight, narrow path between two houses. They had probably been neglected for quite a while, judging by the grime on the windows.

On and on he went, but there was no sign of the man, or anyone else, for that matter. The place seemed totally deserted. Finally, he hit a dead end. His brows furrowed in a frown as he glanced around and found no further alley beyond that. Just a blank, dirty brick wall crumbling with age. A small chunk of red brick detached from the wall at that moment, making him jump.

Something about this alley didn't make him feel quite comfortable. He was starting to wish he had never come into it, especially not with the bag he now clutched, unconsciously, slightly harder.

A shadow.

Saeki tensed. He had been wrong; the houses were not empty. Someone had left one of the windows a second ago.

A second shadow.

In the other house! There were people on both sides of the alley. He held the bag closer to his body.

The alley was about four feet wide. At least seven meters of concrete towered on either side of him. And behind, a solid wall. No way out, except for the way he had come in.

His feet were moving as his heart began pounding, and his mind raced, sending pure chemical messages to the rest of his body as he picked up speed, empowered by adrenaline. He had to get out there, he knew it. He had to get out, and fast, or something bad would happen. Saeki knew this, the gut feeling rebuking him strongly for putting himself in such a position.

Taking off at a sprint, he hurdled for the main road, as a small pinprick of light, indicating the end of the alley came into view.

Almost there, almost there...

He relaxed a little; he would be out in the open in ten seconds. Everything would be fine. He would drop off this infernal bag at the police station and be done with it. Never would he have to set eyes on it again and remember the trouble it had caused.

Everything would be--

Crash!

He had spoken too soon. His flying footsteps screeched to a halt as a shower of glass cascaded down onto his escape route, right in front of him. Instinctively, he turned back, but found his path littered with shrapnel there as well.

He was trapped.

Saeki drew the bag, the only bulky item he had with him, closer, clutching the root of the long shoulder strap tightly, ready to throw, hit or block as two figures landed on either side of him. He looked around wildly, desperately, in a last ditch attempt to run.

"There's no way out," the first figure spoke, in a flat, monotone of a voice. "The bag, E-eight-four-one."

E-eight-four-one? Should that mean something to him? Did that mean anything to him? He couldn't think, he couldn't reason...

And that was before the assailant drew out his gun.

"Hold it!" Saeki's voice rang out, unnaturally high. "Hold on! I'm not who you think you are. I don't know anything about this E-eight-four-one--"

"Save it," the second figure spat. "Redstab doesn't think highly of our intelligence, true, but we aren't quite so stupid as he assumes. We followed you from the meeting place, E-eight-four-one. We've made no mistake."

Redstab? Meeting place? What--? Backed against the wall, Saeki looked warily from one newcomer to the other. It was then he noticed that these people weren't dressed at all like secret agents or secret police (for that was what they could only be, going by code names like E-eight-four-one and Redstab). In fact, they hadn't even hidden their faces or changed their voices. The man, blocking him from the road had on a tight black T-shirt and stretchy jeans, a faded blue cap worn backwards on his spiky brown hair. The woman, on Saeki's other side, was wearing a simple blouse and a fitting cotton bottom. Black hair. Matching black eyes.

"The bag," the man repeated again, sounding bored, yet with an underlying intensity in his voice. He leveled his gun to Saeki's chest. "That money won't buy you a life. And your one's not going to be around a lot longer, if you don't hand the bag over now."

Saeki's mind was spinning as he fought to clear his panic. He's not going to just let me go. Maybe he had read too many mystery novels and seen too many action flicks, but he knew that in every scenario in which the criminals showed their faces, the people they made contact with always ended up dead. No body wanted to be tracked down, especially if they walked around with a gun. The fact that these two had not bothered to disguise themselves was omnious.

And yet the man hadn't opened fire. Saeki knew this could hardly be out of benevolence. But then, it registered that he was holding the bag in front of him, over his heart.

There's something in here that they don't want to hurt.

Whatever that was, besides a whole lot of money, was anybody's guess, but Saeki didn't think about that. This was the loophole in what would have otherwise been a hopeless case. His only hope of survival. He now focused his eyes intently, zeroing in on all the details of the alley--the height of the walls, the position of the windows, the distance to the road, where cars zoomed by...and the long, slim metal bar behind his foot, at the base of the wall he had his back against.

There!

"The bag," the man insisted once more, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw the woman take out a six-inch knife.

Saeki laughed awkwardly. "I can't say this means too much to me anyway. I don't even know what's inside, besides a bit of cash. Guess I'll let you have it, then."

Faint surprise registered in the man's expression, and had not yet died away when Saeki suddenly launched the item this couple seemed to want so much at the gun wielder, momentarily blinding his eyesight.

Now!

In one smooth movement, Saeki grabbed the metal rod at his feet and turned to face the woman, who had her blade poised. He struck, swiping it out of her hand with a hit from the side which landed heavily on her hand, and hearing her yelp, he whipped around to see the man fumbling with the bag, too preoccupied to protect himself or his weapon when a second later, the rod slammed onto his wrist, sending the gun spinning neatly into the air and through one of the broken windows.

Sensing motion behind him, the kendo practicer didn't hesitate in thrusting the end of the pole backwards and felt it connect with the woman's stomach. After another such jab into the chest of the man, knocking the air out of his lungs, Saeki dropped the rod and barreled away from them, racing for the growing light, and the sound of cars.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Gunfire erupted from the couple he had just left on the ground. Apparently they hadn't just had one firearm between the two of them. Three successive shots were fired rapidly. The first two missed completely, but the third grazed Saeki's arm as he fled.

No, no, no!

The loud noises and searing pain of bloody, torn muscles sent his brain into overdrive. The exit was so close, yet so far away. Too far away. He was going to be shot. In the back, with no chance of dodging. The next one bullet would not be off target. He was going to die and--

"Hold your fire!"

Saeki kept running, hopeful yet terrified that at any moment, the command would come and the shooting would resume. Then--

"Saeki!"

Saeki? That's...that's me, isn't it...? Bewilderedness added on to the blinding fear.

And miraculously--or nightmarishly, as of that moment--his body slowed, and he stopped, though in the years to come, he could never think for the life of him why he had done it.

"Saeki," the voice called out again, echoing in the alley and nearing him even as he turned, shaking and weak-kneed.

He looked into his savior's face, and his lips parted in a gasp of stunned recognition. "Kurobane?"

Author's Note: Now, eventually someone's going to bring it to my attention that Fuji doesn't make an appearance in this chapter. Yeah...sorry about that. But I hope you understand that since Fuji was in the Network first, and becasue of the nature of his post, he doesn't really run around attacking people or saving them. Not all the time, anyway. I hope you'll be patient. He'll come out as soon as I can work the plot. I'm going full speed, please understand.