You know, I wrote this in a day. I edited this in three weeks. Why the hell is that.

T rating for language.

Chapter 2: Cat and Mouse, Mouse and Cat

When Izumi opened her eyes again, she saw a dim room with pale cream walls and a small, twin-sized mattress. It was...surprisingly innocuous for a Las Vegas apartment. She rubbed her eyes, and immediately wondered where her equipment was. A bundle of nervous energy got her out of bed, but it was too early to do anything but wander around aimlessly. Because of that, Izumi got to enjoy a brief tour of the apartment before she came upon a laptop computer lying carelessly out in the hallway. A very familiar laptop computer.

Her laptop computer. Quickly, she booted it up, checking all of her files for signs of tampering.

Behind her, someone coughed.

She looked over her shoulder and glared. "KM. What were you doing with my computer?"

The man was holding a plate with…ice cream? The sight startled Izumi – after all, only minutes before she had fallen asleep, he had been pointing a gun at her head. Now, with the sugary treat in hand, he looked almost normal. Even the atmosphere around him wasn't quite as threatening. "Standard identity check. Making sure you were who you claimed to be."

She stared. "You hacked in?"

"Was going to." KM sat down, not seeming to care that he had just broken a dozen rules of protocol. A loose white polo shirt covered his chest but the sleeves were ripped off, and he wore khaki pants that hung over his bare feet like a poncho. It was only then that she realized just how long his hair was. For all its advantages, complete darkness wasn't very good for observation.

And yes, he was still gorgeous. Izumi growled to herself at the thought. Good looks were always wasted on awful men.

KM suddenly tapped his ice cream bowl with the spoon. "Do you know why I'm here?"

She looked up from where she was busily reorganizing the files around and assigning new passwords to everything. "Because you like to screw with us?" she asked, bitingly.

He gave her a smirk in reply. "Besides that."

"Then no. I wasn't aware that you had another reason for helping us on this case." Izumi let that hang for a minute, not so subtly implying that it didn't matter to her.

"The government gave me an offer I couldn't refuse." He shrugged. "Not my fault."

"I didn't think you were that useful," she said tightly.

KM looked at her with smug, hooded eyes. "I didn't think you were that gullible."

She sucked in a deep breath and sighed. "Excuse me for that. How did you know that I was going to get out of the airport first?"

He shrugged. "Lucky guess."

"Right."

KM suddenly kicked his legs out and turned all the way around so that he was actually lying upside down. The ice cream in his hand was still perfectly balanced on the plate. "Orimoto, this is Las Vegas. If you're down on your luck, you're screwed."

"So I'm screwed?" Izumi scoffed in disbelief.

He stared at her with a raised eyebrow. "You would have been, if I was an ordinary con artist."

"But you're not," she muttered. Of course not. If Izumi hadn't known his history so well, she would have blamed him for the database disasters, but…it wasn't the kind of thing he would do. KM never left that kind of paper trail. He was good enough to lead them on a hopeless chase for the rest of eternity.

But instead, he was helping them.

Why?

As if he sensed the unspoken question, the man turned around and smirked at her. His entire expression screamed Wouldn't you like to know?

Izumi bit her lip. There was just something about him that caught your eye and wouldn't let go. It was no surprise that KM could trap even the most careful people into trusting him. Izumi herself wasn't completely immune, but her resistance was good enough for now. Hopefully. After looking away, she tried to refocus on the computer screen. Work first. Work always came first.

Her stomach protested, so Izumi revised that thought. Food first. Food always came first.

A light clattering sound to the left made her jump. A plate of blueberry pancakes landed next to her knee. Izumi looked up at the dark-haired man, wonderingly, only to find that he had apparently made an entire table and chair set appear that she couldn't remember seeing before. It was disorienting, to say the least.

"Are you coming?" he asked, motioning to the other chair.

Izumi blinked, then sighed, "I guess." Then she took a bite. Crunch, crunch. Mmm. Stop. Stare. "Did you make this?"

"Sure. Don't like going to the store."

She wanted to hit herself for asking such a stupid, inconsequential question. Really. There wasn't any time to talk about cooking, even if the food was delicious. Which it was. She ate the pancakes slowly and watched her colleague drip melted ice cream into his mouth like a little kid. It was disturbingly domestic.

KM left the room after a while, but when he returned, there was a thickly wired machine under his arm. He opened up the top, and Izumi realized with a shock that it was actually a heavily modified computer. There were so many connections that it looked more like two hard drives welded together than anything else, especially since there was no keyboard. KM hummed lightly as the machine whirled to life, but put most of his attention into tying a dark blue bandanna over one eye.

Izumi watched, more than a little puzzled. The black screen was completely empty of everything…except a single sentence that said, "We are born to live, but we live to die." She grimaced slightly, not at all surprised to find something morbid like that on his computer. Click, click, click. He suddenly began tapping his fingers rapidly on the two buttons. A stream of numbers filled the screen like ants, one after another after another in a seemingly endless march of zeros and ones. It looked completely meaningless until Izumi realized that he was typing an exact transcription of that sentence in binary code. As soon as he stopped, the screen downsized and she was left staring at a completely normal start up menu. Her temporary partner turned his head and looked at her mockingly.

She finally asked, "That's your password?"

His shoulders and chest trembled, just a bit. After that brief show of restraint, KM threw his head back and laughed viciously. "That's not the half of it. The sentence changes every two minutes. And you have to get the entire sequence of binary code in thirty seconds or the system goes into lockdown. Think you can do that?"

Izumi glared and hissed, "You're pretty confident, aren't you? Telling me these things?"

The smirk widened. "Of course. We're working together, aren't we."

"Don't."

"Hm?"

"Don't play innocent with me. I won't be your pawn, understood?"

His eyes turned serious so quickly that Izumi felt disoriented. "Likewise. I don't work for the government. You'd best remember that."

For some reason, Izumi didn't feel the least bit threatened. She just knew that KM wouldn't do any extra work unless the fate of the world was at stake. Maybe not even then. That was a pretty scary thought, but also gratifying...because she wouldn't have to prevent him from overstepping his bounds as a temporary agent. It didn't suit KM to 'help' them any more than he had already agreed to. He was too calculating and frugal with his energy for that. As long as the government made it easy for him to sit back and relax, the man was somewhat controllable. She hoped to hell that she would be long gone if he ever decided to rampage.

The database finally loaded, so Izumi moved on to the first step of their plan. Setting up a trap via security firewalls was complicated in and of itself, but trying to do it without breaking a single law took even more time and effort. It was roughly the equivalent of setting mouse traps without cheese. Izumi considered herself fairly talented - but there were others still better who were working for the other side.

Like the man right next to her.

KM, who also called himself Grey and Kendo and who knows what else. KM, who could take down just about anyone he didn't like and build them back up again if he was feeling magnanimous. Izumi was torn between respect and disgust for him. Working in the same room as him for so long was definitely not helping her decide which was stronger.

After a few hours of uninspired codework, Izumi finally felt confident enough to ask, "Do you know what the hacker wants?"

"Hacker?" His voice was distant. "That's an insult. He's not a hacker."

"Why?"

A dull, tense silence shimmered in the air, but he answered the question with a surprising amount of patience. "He broke a lot of long-standing rules."

"Hackers have rules?" Izumi turned around and stared at KM's ear, because his eyes remained firmly trained on the computer screen.

"Of course." When KM paused and typed something on his machine, Izumi decided to wait a day or two before asking for an explanation. To her surprise, however, he turned around and willingly elaborated, "It's more of a pride thing, actually. But that guy…he just went in and wrecked a few spreadsheets. Isn't that it?"

She bit back her protests and said, "I think so."

"Well, it's hardly anything to brag about. But he leaked the story to the media anyway. It's just attention whoring. He did the wrong thing for the wrong reason, and that's the real problem."

"So, I suppose it's not a problem that we got hacked." Izumi stared determinedly at her screen, not wanting to listen to him anymore.

KM suddenly grabbed her shoulder. It was just fast enough to catch the blond woman off guard and pin her to the wall. "Listen," he said in a slow, monotonous drawl, "I'm not here to listen to your self-righteous prattle. You asked, I answered."

"What kind of answer is that? He deliberately sabotaged government data – "

"And what does it matter?" He shook her a little. "We're hackers. We do it for the sake of proving that we can. Because it's enjoyable. That's not too much to ask, is it?"

"And for the sake of your egos, you'll scam innocent people? Hex our archives? Mess with satellite orbits? Shut down radio signals for entire cities?"

"Why not?" His other arm went around her and slammed against the wall. Their faces were only inches away from each other. "If we weren't here, would you be?"

She stared at him. "Are you seriously telling me that you hack for the sake of giving my people job security?"

"Not exactly," he admitted, "But it's human nature. We see a challenge, we take it. Just like you."

"And how, exactly, do you think that you're any different from our target? Isn't he doing the exact same thing?"

He groaned. "You don't get it. We know that it's possible to hack into the government system. That's why no one does it anymore."

"So. Attention whoring, as you so nicely put it, is worse than hurting people?" Her voice was quivering with frustration. "The world doesn't revolve around you, you know!"

"So what? You think that the rest of the world is any better than us? What about the documents that your government has been so carefully hiding, hm? Is it moral and right for them to cover up three prison breaks just so that they could salvage their own pitiful reputations?"

"You hypocrite," she hissed. "Don't switch sides just to save yourself! If there's nothing wrong with hacking, then why are you hunting this guy down?"

"I didn't say that there's nothing wrong with it," he retorted. "I said that it's stupid trying to be moral when no one else is – you know what, forget this."

He was gone before she knew it. Trembling, Izumi rubbed her shoulder where he had grabbed her and slid down the door.

The door suddenly slammed, and she winced slightly.

Three hours without fighting. It was probably a miracle that the peace had lasted even that long. Izumi pulled her knees up against her chest and wondered where he was going – before she realized that it was a stupid question to ask. Sin City was Sin City, after all. No doubt there was plenty for someone like KM to do.

Perhaps he was drinking. Or visiting the women. Or cheating someone out of their money. Sudden realization had her sitting upright, momentarily stunned. Of course. He was a con artist; that was probably exactly what he planned to do. And wasn't it her job to prevent things like that from happening around him?

Quietly ignoring her private objections, Izumi got off the floor and ran out of the apartment, only stopping to take her laptop with her. Holding the machine under her arm was so natural that she couldn't imagine doing anything without it, even if having a computer wouldn't help her at all. In the worst case scenario, KM would still take several minutes to get to the underground parking garage. Izumi would catch up with him easily as long as she ran, and she could do that just fine with or without the laptop.

Izumi slammed her hand on the elevator button, but ended up taking the stairs when it took too long.

She skidded down the steps and nearly fell over twice, because the staircase wasn't exactly well kept. Pieces of rubber were starting to peel off, forming a slippery base to step on. Izumi would have worried more about it if she didn't suddenly realize – that there was a time lapse between her nap in the car and waking up in his bed. So how did she find herself in a room three floors up? Did KM carry her?

The thought made her flush slightly, and being distracted, Izumi almost ran into the door that led to the lobby. The room was fairly dim, even with all of the windows, telling her that it was already late in the evening. The woman sitting at the desk looked up briefly; Izumi walked up to her and asked politely about her runaway partner. The lady blinked, once. Twice. Then she gave Izumi a slow, thoughtful smile. "I think he went outside."

"Just outside?"

The woman nodded and beamed knowingly at her. Izumi flushed, knowing that her question had been completely misunderstood, but left anyway. The more pressing issue on her mind was where KM had gone. The minute she opened the door and started walking off into the street, she had her answer.

They nearly crashed into each other.

As it was, KM had been looking down and not paying much attention to his surroundings, so when Izumi suddenly appeared behind the doorway, it took a bit of tricky maneuvering to keep them both from falling. Izumi rocked on the balls of her feet, and slammed against the wall. KM ended up going the other way, halfway sprawled on the sidewalk.

They stared at each other.

Izumi slowly rose up against the wall and hesitantly asked, "You okay?"

KM snapped back to reality and practically jumped up as if the ground had scalded him. "Yeah." Rearranging the bandanna that had fallen halfway off his head, he offered her a subtle grin. His one visible eye was glimmering in the soft light. "Why exactly are you here?"

"You kind of ran out of the room."

"Oh." He blinked long eyelashes against his cheek. "You're brilliant, by the way."

"Huh?"

"Running out of my apartment when you don't have the key to get back in. Absolutely brilliant."

"You're pretty brilliant too. Running out of your apartment and leaving someone who doesn't really like you inside. Alone." She tried not to feel embarrassed about going after him. Even if it was just for work, Izumi wondered why just being around the man made everything seem so convoluted and straightforward at the same time. They stood on the sidewalk, overlooking streets that finally resembled the Las Vegas of her imagination, complete with fluorescent neon bulbs. She stared at the light show for so long that KM had to get her attention with a soft cough.

"You ever been here before?"

"No," she shook her head. "This is my first time."

He raised an eyebrow. "And you're planning on working the entire time?"

"I don't gamble."

"Oh? Not the betting type?"

Izumi stared at him. "I prefer to keep my job, thanks."

His lips quirked, somewhat disappointedly. "Pity, that." KM took a long look at the skyline, before turning around and nodding to her. "Let's go."

She paused and looked back over her shoulder. "You first. I kind of want to watch."

Instead of leaving, KM casually dropped next to her. The thick curtain of hair over his shoulder shifted around as he tried to find a comfortable position against the glossy black windowpane. "You're not very worried about your safety, are you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You. Alone. In Las Vegas. Which isn't exactly a tea party."

Izumi wanted to laugh at the almost-joke, but a soft voice in her head that sounded very much like Ophan held her back. Underneath her shirt, she could feel the soothing, leathery edge of a holster. "But it is a party."

"Only if you know how." KM glanced at her. The shadowy window faded into the long strands of black hair that hung just over his forehead, as if he was part of the scenery. Izumi's heart hammered just a little faster in her chest and she quietly cursed her own lack of resistance. "We're already outside. Well?"

It was ridiculously hard to refuse that offer. Izumi laughed at how much she wanted to go, if only to see him in his natural element. Good looks and charisma, what more did you need to become a successful con artist? Absolutely nothing, if his police record could be believed. Izumi wondered why the man wasted so much energy learning how to hack when he was perfectly capable of scamming people without it. Suddenly upset by her own curiosity, she shook the thoughts off and tried to focus on the conversation again.

The man next to her was still waiting for a reply, so she said, "No," unhesitatingly but uneasily.

Unhesitatingly because KM had quite a…talent for manipulating other people's emotions. Izumi had seen dozens of his victims, both recent and past, all reduced to a whimpering pile of depression when he inevitably abandoned them. Her refusal came from pure self-preservation.

Uneasily because she could see something light up in his eyes - something that made her nervous.

Up ahead, the man shrugged, seemingly oblivious to her worries. More than anything else about him, his mood swings were the hardest to understand. They sat in silence for a while, listening to the frenetic energy that pulsed through the city. But no matter how hard she tried to ignore the solid presence to her left, he was resting just a little too close for her to enjoy the view. Finally giving up, she said, "I think I have jet lag. Can we go back?"

Immediately after the words left her mouth, Izumi wondered why she couldn't think of a better, more plausible excuse. KM looked at her doubtfully but said nothing about the obvious lie. Any other time, Izumi would have considered the silence a good thing, but she didn't know what to think anymore. Rationality went on a strike when it came to dealing with him.

They went up the stairs. It was the longest, quietest walk she had ever taken with another person.