She tightens the black bow that pulls back all of her metallic hair, excluding a few strands that fell down-framing her face. Her white dress flutters in the harsh, ice cold wind; she pulls her black jacket tight over her shoulders.. She takes a deep breath-ignoring her racing pulse- before opening the flap of the tent and leaving the rain for the canvas shelter. She walks, with her head held high, towards the woman who seemed to be in charge.
"Inspector Akane Tsunemori?" The metallic haired young woman questions. The woman who looked to be in charge turns around, facing the nervous looking young woman.
"Inspector Thea Akarie?" Akane asks.
"Yea, That's me." Thea informs the dark haired woman. "Today is my first day." She continues, twisting a lock of fallen silver hair around her 's face hardens.
"Sorry about getting such a bad case on your first night." She apologizes. "I won't have time to give you the rookie treatment, due to low man power." Thea smiles, excited for her work to start. A large armored van rolls up close to the tent. She lifts the corner of the canvas and stares at it as the doors begin to open. "The people you are about to meet are humans just like us, but they'll handle crimes with judgement criteria differently than we will. Trust them, but at the same time be careful of them. Remember who they are. Underestimate them and you're bound to get hurt. Those people are what we call enforcers. And they're all subordinate to you." Akane rambles.
"That sounds rehearsed." Thea mumbles before slapping her hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry I wasn't thinking." She apologizes. Inspector Tsunemori ignores her, continuing to go over the basics for being an Inspector.
"These are the enforcers that both you and I are in charge of." Akane says.
A man with dark hair pulled back, wearing a white button down shirt and a black suit jacket, walks out of the van. He's followed by two young women who are chatting with each other. One of the young women has short pink pigtails, sticking of the side of her head. Her curvy figure is clothed in a short black skirt and a white button down blouse. Her grey eyes sparkle with amusement. The other woman has long black hair pulled into a high ponytail. Her clothing was similar to the other womans, except her's was slightly more conservative. A young man who couldn't be older than twenty walks out of the van. His blood red hair falls into his face in slight waves. His eyes change color with the shadows and light. The young man's lanky figure is covered with a pale orange, buttoned coat. They line up, facing Inspector Tsunemori and Inspector Akarie.
"Hi. My name is Thea Akarie. It's nice to meet you all." Thea introduces herself; she fails to notice the confused stares she was getting. "Let me guess. You are Nobuchika Ginoza." Thea guesses, pointing to the dark haired man. "You must be Yayoi Kunizuka and I think you are Saya Kokoru." She says, gesturing to the dark haired then the pink haired women in turn. "And that leaves you, Sho Hinakawa." Thea pales at the blank faces the enforcers were giving her. "Did I get that right or did I totally fail?" She questions. Ginoza laughs.
"No. You got it right. It's just I've never met an Inspector who learned their Enforcer's names before they actually met them." Thea tilts her head, confused.
"I mean we're going to be working together. Why wouldn't I learn your names? " She inquires.
"We're latent criminals, many inspectors look down on us. I mean that's your job." Ginoza adds.
"I can do my job without disrespecting you guys."
"What did I say? Remember who these people are." Akane repeats. Thea glares at her senior inspector.
"What did I say. I can do my job without disrespecting the enforcers." She scoffs.
"She's worse than you were, Tsunemori." Ginoza chuckles.
"I think I am supposed to take offence to that. Am I right?" Thea asks. Ginoza just continues to chuckle as he walks towards a nearby drone.
"Do you know how to use a dominator?" Akane asks her new partner. Thea nods. The drone opens, revealing six large handguns. Thea picks one up, extending out her arm, holding it away from her body. Letting the Sibyl program run, she wraps both hands around the dominator. Thea can't help but admire the power of the weapon she holds.
"The man we're after is Su Kurokami. Last we were able to get a read, his crime coefficient was 294. He took his wife and six year old daughter hostage. We've sent the drones in, but they haven't been able to locate the three. Our mission is to find him and either paralyse him or use the lethal setting on our dominators on him, depending on his crime coefficient." Tsunemori explains. "Hinakawa and Kokoru, go with Inspector Akarie. Ginoza and Kunizuka, you're coming with me. You'll start on the bottom, we're going to start on the top. Search the floors. Find him. Good luck Inspector." Akane finishes before running off, Ginoza and Kunizuka right behind her. She takes a deep breath before I turn to my enforcers.
"I can't believe you were allowed to dye your hair an unnatural color." Kokoru says the moment I turn.
"Last time I checked, people aren't born with red or pink hair." I laugh, motioning to her and Hinakawa's hair.
"We're latent criminals. What we get to do is different than what you get to." Kokoru explains.
"What would you like me to call you?" Akarie asks, sprinting to the door of the building. She holds the dominator low at her side.
"You know our names, Big Sis. Use them." Hinakawa states, following the metallic haired young woman. Akarie stops, halfway through the doors.
"Big Sis? How old do you think I am? And since when was I your sister?" She inquires.
"Hinakawa calls every woman Big Sis." Kokoru informs, walking ahead of her Inspector. Thea starts to scour the first floor of the building, struggling to drop Hinakawa's comment. She struggles until she fails.
"Answer me, how old do you think I am?" She demands while swinging into a room, scanning the room for the suspect.
"I'd say at least twenty, maybe twenty-two." Kokoru guesses.
"I'm eighteen." Thea scoffs, making her enforcers stop dead in their tracks. It takes her a moment to notice that her enforcers were no longer following her as she changed rooms.
"What's wrong? Aren't you supposed to follow me? I thought enforcers had to follow their inspectors. Was I wrong?" Thea pokes her head in the previous room to see Kokoru and Hinakawa slowly following her.
"You're only eighteen?" Kokoru asks. "I'm turning nineteen in a few months." She answers, starting to become scared. "Is that bad?" Hinakawa shakes his head.
"It's just you have to be the youngest person in the CID. Saya and I are considered young. She's twenty-one and I'm twenty. You being eighteen is just-" Thea holds up her hand, cutting him off. In front of them, a door creaks shut. She smirks.
"Gotcha." She giggles. Akarie gingerly opens the door and steps out on a platform of the staircase. A woman's bloody corpse is sprawled across the steps. A man stands just above it, holding a switchblade to a child's neck. Thea stretches out the dominator, checking the man's criminal coefficient.
"347. Wow. It went up quite a bit." Kokoru mutters, making her way through the doorway. A determined look sparks in Thea's eyes.
"Do exactly as I say. Okay. Nothing more, nothing less. Do not disobey me or there will be a lot blood." She threatens. She cracks her neck. She looks calm for a moment, but this is the calm before the storm. Thea scales the stairs between her and Su Kurokami. She slams her dominator into his temple. He collapses, losing his grip on his daughter. Akarie elbows him in the stomach right before dodging his punch. For her every move, he counters. Su slashes at her with his knife, slitting open her cheek.
"Akarie!" Hinakawa exclaims.
"Get the girl!" Thea screams, rolling out of the way of Su's raging knife. "Get the girl and cover her eyes!" She shouts taking a punch or a slash in between each word. Hinakawa runs to the girl.
Su presses Thea over the railing, threatening to slit her throat and push her over the edge. She loses her grip on her dominator and cries out; it falls several stories and shatters as it hits the ground. Cursing, Thea punches the man in the face. Behind her Kokoru and Hinakawa scream, asking for instruction. Su and Akarie move backwards, slowly climbing the stairs. She bends her knees so he narrowly misses her face with the knife. She punches him behind his knees; he falls to the ground. Su pulls himself back to his feet.
He strikes out at Thea. She grabs at his wrist-ignoring the searing pain left behind by the knife that slit her arm open, elbow to palm. She pries the knife from Su's hand, grinding her other fist into his temple. Thea turns back to her enforcers the second Su collapses. The knife impales itself in the wall, millimeters from Hinakawa's head.
"Cover the damn girl's eyes or next time I won't miss!" Thea threatens, her eyes burning with red hot anger. Blood trickles from the corner of her mouth. She wipes it away and spits over the railing. A dripping red tooth plummets towards the dominator below.
"Move, Akarie! Let me shoot!" Kokoru shouts. Behind Thea, Su gets to his feet, pulling his arm back and clenching his fist.
"Akarie!" Hinakawa calls. Thea turns around, grabbing the fist that was just about to collide with her head and judo flips him. Su groans as his spine almost shatters against the staircase.
"Hinakawa. I know what I'm doing. Just cover her eyes." She instructs, kicking Su in the head as he tries to get up. Thea turns to the child for a moment.
"Your name is Kirimi, right? My name is Thea. I need you to close your eyes for me. Okay, sweetie?" Thea asks, her voice kind, Hinakawa pales at the squirming man who lays at Thea's feet. "Can you do that for me, Kirimi?" She asks, sprinting up the steps to a platform diagonal from the enforcers and the young child. Thea pulls herself up onto the rail that surrounds the platform. She ducks her head then kicks out as Su tries to push her over the edge.
"Hinakawa? Are her eyes closed?" She gasps. Her chest heaves, sweat trickles down her back.
"Her eyes are covered." He shouts up at her. Thea draws a breath before pushing herself off the edge of the rail and into the air.
"Now, Kokoru!" She screams falling a few meters before her feet hit the platform directly below.
The dominator whines in Kokoru's hands and soon lets out a high pitched blast. Su's body bloats and then explodes the second the blast hits him. Blood and flesh are sent flying. Kirimi fights Hinakawa, her curiosity winning over. She looks up at her father's remains, them down at her mother's body. Finally, the young girl's eyes find the bruised and bloody Inspector Akarie. Kirimi runs towards Thea, tears streaming down her face.
"Thank you for killing him." The child sobs into Thea's shirt. Her eyes widen at the child's gratitude for her father's death. A high pitched whine echoes through the staircase. The child collapses at Thea's feet. Kokoru stands behind the girl, lowering her dominator.
"What was her crime coefficient?" Thea inquires, staring at the paralysed child. "104.3" Kokoru answers. Thea sighs. She presses a button on her wrist band, turning on her holo-talk.
"Inspector Tsunemori. Kokoru, Hinakawa, and I found the Kurokamis. Both Su and his wife are dead. Kirimi has a coefficient of 104.3. We'll bring her out. Can you warn the medics. They have a few injuries to tend to." She lists off to her senior inspector.
"Are they okay? Did Hinakawa or Kokoru get hurt." Akane asks. She takes Thea by surprise. She hadn't thought that Akane cared about her enforcers. The scared look in Akane's eyes prove her wrong. "Nope. They're both okay. I'll meet you outside." Thea's voice shows her exhaustion.
"I'm gonna need one of you to tell the medics that we are in need of a few sets of stitches as well as a splint for a broken ankle." She informs the enforcers.
"A broken ankle?" Kokoru questions. Akarie laughs a strained laugh.
"I fell about four meters and landed on my feet. From the pain, I'm guessing I snapped it in two. The stitches are for me too." Thea pauses embarrassed. "Most my cuts look worse than they are, but he still managed to slit the vein up my arm." Her voice gets more and more weak as time goes on. Her legs waver underneath her. "I've been losing so much blood. I think I might pass-" One of her knees buckles. "-out."
She falls to her knees, unable to even cry out as her weight falls on her bad ankle. Hinakawa sprints over to his inspector.
"Saya, get the kid. Akarie is gonna bleed out if we don't get her to the medics soon." He scoops up Thea, cradling her in his arms. She struggles to wrap her arms around his neck. Blood the same shade as his hair, streams from her arm, through his shoulder blades, and down his back.