Here's Chapter 2! I'm thinking of changing the title of the story... Just ideas still swimming around.

Happy reading!


Chapter 2

I squeezed the strap on my bag tightly in my palms as I walked the sparsely populated streets and reviewed my conversation with Riki a night before...

"Ok, you can talk to her first but you have to abide by our conditions."

I nodded obediently to Riki's tone that left no room for response.

"You'll wear your transmitter on for the entire conversation," he started.

'You're making me wear a bug?!' I almost screamed out loud before considering my position. At this point, none of them were trusting anything I said- no matter how much they may have wanted to.

"Takuto will be monitoring all your conversations remotely, so don't try anything funny."

I was taken back by how harshly and matter-of-factly he was speaking to me. It was like the night we first met- all business.

I shifted my weight from foot to foot as I stood outside of the Togoshi's door. Just as I gathered up the courage to knock-

*CRASH*

"Waaaah!"

"Oh, sorry!"

The door flew open inward as someone burst from the house, nearly bone-rushing me to the floor. Two large hands dug into my arms, saving me from busting my head open on the porch railing.

Whew! "Thank you," I said to my rescuer before looking up see who it was.

"Oh, Kiyuki! My bad!" A surprised Tatsuro's wide eyes were inches from my face. He made sure I was straightened up before releasing me and quickly looking away. "Sorry about that, Kiyuki." He apologized again as he stepped by me. "I just got called in to work and-"

"You're in a hurry. I get it. It's totally fine!" I gave him a bright smile. "You'd better get a move on, then!"

"Oh, shoot! You're right!" Tatsuro bolted pass me. He called back over his shoulder, "If you're looking for Ranko, she's knocked out in her room!"

"Thanks!" I called back to him, almost certain he didn't hear me. I let out a breath and walked into the house, locking the door behind me.

I made a beeline straight for Ranko's oh-so-familiar room and found her just as her brother had said, passed out over her laptop sprawled across the bed.

I put my bag down, feeling a bit guilty about waking her up. But this was important. I sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Ranko," I called gently. "Hey, Ranko, get up. I need to talk to you."

"Wha..." Ranko rolled over, her long octopus curls spreading all over the sheets and across her face. "Nngh..." She batted her hand like she was shooing off some minor annoyance.

"Ranko," I called louder, rattling her by the shoulder. "Wake up! We gotta talk! It's about a scoop."

Ranko's face twitched at the word "scoop." As I knew it would. She rolled over onto her back and let her eyes fall open. "What's the story?" she asked in a gravelly voice.

"It's about The Black Foxes."

She rubbed her eyes and felt around on the bed blindly until the back of her hand smacked into the side of her laptop screen.

Ow, I thought as Ranko yelped the word aloud.

"What's the scoop about The Black Foxes, Kiyuki? Spill!" A now wide-awake Ranko was looking at me expectantly while rubbing her smarting hand.

"You tell me," I said, looking over at the laptop. "How'd you find out who they were?"

"Say what?"

"I saw your blog post last night," I said. "A huge pre-tell-all about the identities of The Black Foxes. How'd you manage that one?" I spoke good-naturedly.

Ranko scrunched up her eyebrows and turned her laptop to face her, rubbing a finger wildly over the mousepad to wake the screen up. "Identities of The Black Foxes? Look, as much as I would absolutely LOVE to take the credit for that one, I haven't posted on my blog in almost a month."

"Say what?"

She turned the screen to face me. "See? I was just working on a comeback post updating my followers on stuff. I'm not even half finished with it yet."

I looked at the screen. Everything was as Ranko said.

"What is this about a - what did you call it? A 'pre-tell-all' article?"

"Yeah," I replied, stretching my fingers to the keyboard. "The title was... 'Why don't... the Black Foxes... hide.. their.. faces..?'" I typed it in the search bar as I said it.

"They don't? That's pretty bold, don't you think?"

I nodded. Honestly, I'd wondered the same thing when I went on my first mission. The guys had assured me everything was fine but I had - and still do - insist on tying my face with a bandana just in case. We're thieves for heaven's sake! How blatant is it to just go in with no safeguards on keeping your identity a secret?

"Amazing that they haven't been caught on even one security camera after all this time..." Ranko mused in awe as she tried to gather her wayward curls into a more controlled look.

With Takuto's skills any capture might as well have not happened at all. I quickly scanned through the results. "No, no, no... no, no... this isn't it either..."

"Kiyuki, what are you looking for so intently?" Ranko peeked over my shoulder as I continued scrolling and muttering to myself.

"The Black Fox article I told you about. It's posted under your name on a blog with your picture on it and everything. It even uses your writing style."

"Really?" Ranko's tone had gotten serious. "Every writer knows plagiarism of any kind is the blackest sin a writer can commit against a fellow writer. Using my name and style?"

"Found it!" I exclaimed triumphantly, clinking on a link that looked more promising than the rest.

"Lemme see!" Ranko pushed down on my shoulder, locked eyes on the screen for all of three seconds before squealing in disgust, "EW! And look at the picture they used! Could they have chosen a worse face-shot?!"

"The article, Ranko, focus." I scanned through the paragraphs. "Yeah, this is it. Did you write this?"

Ranko's eyes darted back and forth as she read the article. "I wish! Whoever this is, I am so jealous of them! Mad they used my name and that awful picture, but so jealous! If this is for real, it's the scoop of the century! Five good-looking guys... and a girl? There's a girl in The Black Foxes?!"

Ranko leaned so far forward it seemed she wanted to be sucked into the screen.

"Ow, Ranko. Ow." I pushed my back against her.

"Oh, sorry!" She plopped back down into a sitting position on the bed, caused the mattress to shake. "But I can't believe there's a girl in the group! Who would've thought?!"

Yeah... who would've thought...

"If this is for real, the only way this fake Ranko would know is if one of them told her. Not even the government can get a hold of these guys and she's claiming to know names?" Ranko drew in a long, loud gasp. "What if this person is the girl's friend?!"

"What?!"

"Yeah!" Ranko continued her theory excitedly, either ignoring or not noticing my panic. "No one's ever heard or even thought of a girl being in the group, right? And it says right here that she 'just recently' joined the group. That has to be it! Oh man, I wish that girl was my friend..."

She is your friend, I thought, my heart weighed down with grief. No, not grief; more like... regret? Anyway, I had a better thought to dwell on.

It's not her. Relief crashed over me like a tidal wave as that realization finally settled in. A smile tugged at my lips and I fought the urge to run from the room screaming. It wasn't Ranko!

In record time, I burst through LRN's door at full speed. "IT WASN'T RANKO!" I hollered at the top of my lungs like I'd just won the lottery.

"Shut up..." Takuto grumbled from his seat as Riki came down the stairs.

"Man, your month is huge. I could hear you all the way in my room." Riki took a dignified seat at the bar counter.

"It wasn't her!" I screamed again, happy tears threatening to spill down my cheeks. I was bouncing on my heels like I was having a sugar rush. My best friend didn't know our secret. Should I really be this happy about it?

"We know," Takuto said dryly. "We were listening, moron."

I blinked. I'd totally forgotten about the transceiver I'd been wearing the entire time. "Then you know I'm not lying just to cover for my friend!" I quickly shot back to hide my embarrassment.

"She could just be lying to cover it up," Hiro said.

"Ranko wouldn't lie to me about this," I countered resolutely. "I'm the first person she tells whenever she gets a huge scoop."

"Her reactions all seemed genuine," Riki said. "Congratulations, Kiyuki. Your friend is in the clear."

"Yes!" I pumped a fist in victory before I could stop myself.

"So now what?" Hiro asked. "The actual person who wrote this is still out there."

"Yeah, how do we find them before they spill?" Kenshi asked.

"We definitely can't afford to wait to see if they're bluffing or not about what they know," Boss said with a serious look on his face.

I was a bit reluctant to speak, but mustered up the courage to pipe in anyway. "Can't Takuto try tracing the IP address of the computer the article was uploaded from?"

"Did that," Takuto replied. "Matches your friend's."

"No way!"

"How is that possible? We all heard her say she hasn't posted in a month," Kenshi said.

"Either this girl is really good with computers or your friend's a really good actress," Takuto said pointedly.

"The girl is good with computers," I shot back. "Really good. I wanna find out who she is - for Ranko's sake as well as ours."

"Sounds good to me," Boss said. "How about we all look into what avenues for information we have? Check to see how far this article's gotten around."

"For such a big claim it's not even on the first page on the internet search results list," I remarked, remembering how hard I had to search for it to show Ranko. "It was actually on like the 6th or 7th page when I tried to find it earlier."

"Ploy." Takuto grumbled as his finger prattled across the keys of his laptop.

"That's all we can go off for now," Riki stated, standing. "Based on how the article was written, this girl seems like she's going to draw this out for as long as she can. Let's use that to our advantage."

"Right." Everyone nodded in agreement.


OK, my lovely readers! Thanks for reading, PLEASE review! Chapter 3 will be out next week. All ideas are welcome!

~Cascadedkiwi~