Chapter 10

"Asuna!" Negi's voice came from outside the door and Asuna grumbled, "Are you getting out any time this year? Your friends are here." Negi continued and Asuna rolled her eyes.

"I'm done when I'm done baka-Negi!" she yelled before returning to applying her makeup. Geez... why couldn't he ever get that this was a delicate process? If she messed up she'd look like a clown and THAT was out of the question. She DID have an image to uphold.

Outside the door, however, Negi rolled his eyes too. He walked down the stairs and looked out into the hallway where Asuna's friends were waiting. It was the usual three of them. First was the athletic girl who had said his name yesterday, Setsuna. She was graceful girl with a slim body, one that Negi had gotten both one and two thoughts about. Second was the dizty little girl that was Asuna's closest friend, Konoka. This girl was so naïve and innocent that Negi had almost been unable to believe it, she was a girl he'd get twice the usual for. Last was the pale little wallflower Asuna had for some reason befriended and now followed her everywhere like an adoring puppy, Sayo. Negi had idly realized that she reminded him of Ako.

He shrugged when he looked at them, indicating the stairs.

"Her royal highness of the painstakingly annoying appliances of makeup will be along as soon as her exaltedness deems us unworthy mortals worthy of her divine presence." he said with a snooty voice, making an elaborate bow while indicating the stairs. Sayo snorted at this before immediately realized what she was doing and forced herself to be quiet. No doubt she would be the laughing stock of the group for making such a noise in front of him Negi thought as he suddenly heard Asuna in the stairs.

"Miladies!" he continued with that nasal voice, "Rejoice, for her exal-OW!" the last exclamation came from the fact that Asuna had nailed him in the head with a slipper. Stalking past him with a sour glance at him she greeted her friends with a smile and got into her shoes.

"I'm off then." she said and Negi raised his hand.

"Have fun," he said, "I'll be home by two today by the way."

Really?" Asuna asked as she put on her jacket, Negi could see that the news gladdened her.

"Yeah." he continued, "So what do you say we have dinner somewhere?"

"Sorry, we were going to eat out today." Asuna said, indicating her friends. Negi shrugged at this.

"Why not invite me along?" he asked, noticing how the girls around Asuna tensed at this. "It's a win-win," he continued, "You get someone who pays for it all and I get a chance to hit on your friends." This time he dodged just in time to avoid another slipper and retreated into the kitchen. "Spoilsport!" he yelled just before the door opened and, a few seconds later, slammed shut.

When Negi was sure that Asuna had left he grabbed his jacket and walked outside, locking the door as he took out his cellphone. Opening the phone-book as he walked into the kitchen he quickly picked out one of the numbers and called it. At first there was no answer, only a steady rhythm of beeps, then, after a good while, a voice answered.

"Yeah?" the gruff voice asked as Negi got into his car.

"Is everything ready?" he asked as he turned the key and felt the engine start.

"Ready an' able," Kotaro said in the other end, "The guys are all geared up an' we're just waiting t' roll." Negi backed the car out from the driveway and rolled his eyes.

"Stop acting like you're in the army," he said with a serious tone, "I'm not in the mood for stupidity." Kotaro fell quiet at this.

"Okay sure," he said eventually. "Wait a sec..." the other end fell quiet and Negi could hear some quiet sounds to talking in the background. After a while Kotaro returned. "Sorry, Kei wanted me to ask how quiet we must keep this."

"It's the slums moron..." Negi deadpanned as he drove through the streets, "Remember where we grew up, you really think there will be any real investigation?" When he had said this he could almost see Kotaro's grin on the other end of the line.

"Got it boss." Kotaro almost giggled, Negi wondered what the madman was planning now. But who cared? Kotaro was a mad dog, Negi knew that, but as long as the White Dragons died he was satisfied and he could keep the dog leashed after that.

Soon Negi swung left and drove his car into the alley, cruising up to the large warehouse that was the basis of his empire and parked it next to the entrance. He noticed the large vans that were parked right outside the building, two of his men standing outside one of them smoking. Stepping out of the car he gritted his teeth when he for a second had to put weight on his crippled leg. He still had that limp from the time the junkies had jumped him. It was something he kept as a reminder though, a reminder to never get complacent or drop his guard. As he was walking up towards the vans both the men snapped to attention when they saw him.

"Good morning boss." they both said but Negi just walked past them towards the doors to the club. He didn't bother to even acknowledge the grunts, if they wanted him to see them they would have to prove that they were worth his time. Really, it was the best system, thugs to hold a gun went thirteen on a dozen, by only keeping one eye on them he'd pick out those who were worth anything.

Slamming the doors into the club open he was met with the sight of his men standing in front of a table that stood right below his office. They were currently going over the contents of the table, namely a pile of weapons. Automatic rifles, sub-machine guns, shotguns, it was all there and he could see on the men's faces that they were excited about this. Idiots, for them this was just a spiced up trip to the shooting range. Well as long as they kept shooting...

He then noticed Keitaro, his lieutenant seemed to have recovered from last night. He was currently standing by a large ammo crate and twirled a pair of mini-UZIs around his index fingers, having inserted them in the trigger guards. It was quite fascinating to see how the guy that originally had been a clumsy and jittery idiot now handled the two guns like out of some movie. Whirling them around he eventually came to a stop, the two handles landing in his palms and the fingers clenching around them immediately as he pointed the guns forwards.

"Congratulations," Negi said dryly, "You're in Matrix four, now stop playing around with the guns, you're gonna shoot someone." Keitaro turned to look at him, as did many of the men. However his lieutenant, having reverted to the state that most of the men only knew him in, only held up the guns, showing that both of them had the safeties on. Negi rolled his eyes and wished that his lieutenant wasn't so god damn unflappable when he was like this.

Still: Keitaro really was one of the most interesting men he had met. At the beginning the man who currently was putting bullets inside a clip had been one of the Mahora Guns, a drug-addict and loser who was pathetically easy to bully. But as time had gone on he had shown several qualities that made his stand out, his hard-working attitude amongst other things. If you gave him an order he would complete it somehow, always.

Physically he wasn't anything special at all, he was of average length and in fact thinner than most of the thugs that now surrounded him. Still, his relative geekiness was offset by the white-bleached hair and the eyes, eyes that betrayed the man's mental instability. Owing to a life of having been treated like a scum and his heavy drug-use, the man was borderline insane. Still, the lanky man's madness had actually turned out to produce some pretty useful side-effects.

As Negi analysed that man's quick movements with the gun he was currently loading he remembered how useful the man's meekness and madness had turned out to be. During these last years Negi had discovered how easy it was to mess with people's heads. It was incredible when he had realized how he could meld Keitaro after his wishes, almost addictive. The result had been beautiful, a stone cold psycho of a murderer.

It really was interesting to see how deeply he had fallen. Negi knew much about Keitaro, more than the man perhaps knew about himself and not the least from the stories he had heard yesterday. He knew that the guy had once upon a time been the greatest goody-two-shoes that existed. Poor little submissive Keitaro, a clumsy but well meaning fool that had gotten the short end of the stick. Now Negi had personally seen to his transformation into the man that was even colder then he at times. Especially that one time came to mind.

Flashback:

The man yelled in fear as Keitaro held onto his suit, holding him over the edge of the tall building. Keitaro was watching the man with utter impassiveness in his eyes as the only thing that stopped him from falling off the edge was the grip Keitaro had on his tie.

"P-please!" the man whined , "I didn't tell anyone, I swear!" Keitaro didn't even react though. Only looked around on the roof, except for them it was empty.

"Listen here!" he said after a while, looking straight into the man's eyes. "You are a rat, a traitor and a scum. For that, you will become a dead man.Your pathetic excuse for an existence is finished and soon my friend," Keitaro stated, looking at the ground where the shadow hid how far the man actually had to fall, increasing the fear factor, "I will let you go and watch you fall about ten stories to the ground where you will become a wet spot on the ground." The man whimpered as this but Keitaro wasn't done, peering into the black alleyway he continued when seeing how deep the drop was, he couldn't even see the street clearly.

"But I'm going to give you a chance." he said, reaching into his clothes, "I'll give you one chance to end it all now" With that he took out a gun with his free hand and held it up in front of the man. The matte black gun was like a hole into the abyss for the terrified man.

"This is your saviour," Keitaro said, indicating the gun, "If I let you you'll drop for a long time before you die, but if I shoot, It'll be all over at once." he told the man, calmly and clearly. "Start to count down, if you want to die quickly, count down from ten, when you reach zero I'll shoot you and end it all."

Now Keitaro suddenly loosened the grip on the man's tie, making him slide a few inches further towards death. The man screamed in fear as Keitaro continued. "Start counting, the drop is much longer than ten seconds!" he demanded.

"A, AH!" the man screamed, "T-t-ten! N-nine! Eight! Se...seven!" Keitaro looked impassively at the man as he continued to count. Waving him along with the gun Keitaro listened how the man counted down, driven by his desperate fear of dying. "Si-ix! F-f..." the man trailed off and Keitaro spoke up.

"Don't stop counting" he said calmly, jerking the man to continuing. "I won't spend all day standing here and my arms are getting tired." Keitaro now flexed his other arm. "Perhaps I should go to the gym more often?" he mused before stopping with a apologetic look on his face. "Sorry I was interrupting you. Continue."

Helping the man along as he counted down towards his death Keitaro counted together with him. "Five... four..." he said impassively, cocking the hammer of the gun back. "Three... two... one..."

"Zero!" the man screamed with tears streaming down his face and Keitaro lifted the gun, pointing it at the man before he sighed.

"You know there were you stopped in the middle?" He asked, scratching his forehead with the gun. "That's not good, if you're counting down you have to do it in one swoop. And now... since you didn't play along the rules..." he stopped now and shrugged. "It's really your own fault." These were his last words before he let go of the man, watching how he disappeared, screaming, over the edge and fell down towards his death.

End flashback:

With Kotaro being known as the mad dog amongst his second-in-commands Keitaro had soon gotten the nickname Neko, the cat, from how he played with his victims. In some sick way Negi almost felt like a father to the older man, he had personally seen to this transformation after all, created a perfect murderer out of a meek loser, not necessarily skill-wise, but mentality-wise.

Looking away from Keitaro he looked to see if he could find Kotaro somewhere. He got a pleasant surprise when the man was coming his way dressed up, as always, in those expensive suits of his. He was currently holding a large mug of take-away coffee in his hand and was sipping at it.

"Morning Negi." Kotaro said as he approached, "I got everyone together, figure it's just as well to hit with all we've got."

"AK-47s..." Negi said, looking around, "Uzis... MP5s... is that a machine gun?" he noticed that one of the burlier guys in the group was currently holding something that looked way too heavy to be a normal assault-rifle.

"Yep." Kotaro said, "As said, hit with all we've got."

"Good." Negi said before he looked around, "Now where's Saito?" he muttered. He had plans for that little snake. Eventually he noticed the man hiding near the other end of the large table, looking decidedly uncomfortable. Negi smirked to himself as he made a "come-hither" motion with his hand towards Saito. The man flinched at this but nevertheless came over, his face betraying his wariness.

"Good morning Saito." Negi said with a smile, "Bad night?" he continued, "You look kinda down. Give him a sip of your coffee Kotaro." He indicated for his friend to offer Saito some but the blonde man declined.

"I am just fine:" he said with a forced smile "Thank you for asking."

"Good." Negi said, clapping his hands in front him and keeping the pleasant look on his face "Then this won't be a problem." Reaching over the the table Negi grabbed hold of one of the guns and held it up on front of Saito. "Today's your first kill, aren't you excited?" he continued and Saito's eyes went wide. "Take the gun." Negi said when the man didn't move. His voice had dropped into a deep, ice cold one now. It was the voice that demanded obedience and that wouldn't accept a no. Kotaro and Keitaro both reacted when they heard the voice and within a second they both stood beside Negi, glaring at Saito.

Eventually the man took the gun, his hand shivering as he did so. Negi smiled at Saito again when the blonde's hand was fully clasped around the handle. Patting the man on the head he turned to Kotaro.

"Get the guys into the vans, it's time to roll."

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" Asuna yelled as she darted into the schoolyard, her friends right after her. They had been caught up along the road when Sayo had dropped her bag and the contents had flown all over the street. Setsuna had even been forced to climb into one of the trees to get hold of some of the handouts that had flown up there. Even if the athletic girl had gotten up and down the tree quickly they had still been badly delayed and now they were already five minutes late. Sensei would kill them!

Darting into the building the girls all removed their shoes at the lockers and flew up the stairs. Asuna looked at her watch and swore again, not good! Not wanting to be one second more late than they already were the girls threw themselves at the door handle and tore it open.

"Safe!" Asuna yelled as they all tumbled inside, making a loud racket and calling the attention of the entire class to them. It was first when Asuna had said this that she realized that what she just had done might not have been the best idea. Their teacher was currently glaring at them from behind his desk. All one hundred ninety centimeters of him was seething with irritation and Asuna realized what could come next.

"We'll..." Asuna pointed out into the hallway, "Just go stand out here then..." Without waiting for an answer she shut the door slowly. This happened all the time anyway, Asuna was used to it. Lining up to stand in the hallway Asuna smiled at her friends, "Looks like he was having the red week." she whispered to her friends, referring to the joke they had been making that their teacher got periods. Konoka and Setsuna both snorted while Sayo only blushed.

"I..." Sayo begun after a while, "I'm sorry Asuna-san..." she said quietly, the meek little girl almost whispering. "It's my fault, I should have kept a better grip on the bag." Asuna stopped her by putting her hand over Sayo's mouth however.

Her meek friend always did this, her self-confidence was as low as it could be and she somehow always found a way to blame herself for what happened. Ever since Asuna had met the girl the first time three years ago Sayo had always been too timid to ever speak up. It had been one time during the winter when Asuna, Konoka and Setsuna had been going home from school. They had suddenly come face to face with the scene of two delinquents harassing a girl. They had grabbed hold of her bag and had emptied it on the street, laughing at how the girl tried to pick the things up and kicking away some of the items every now and them.

Asuna had seen red that time and yelled at them to stop. She hated that kind of losers, thugs picking on the weak just for fun, scum! Before the thugs could react she had already shoved one of them, making the delinquent fall down to the street. She followed this up with a trick Negi had learned her and put her shoe to his groin, hovering it a few inches above the package ready to stomp. It was funny to see how meek they became when threatening their balls and the delinquents had pulled back immediately.

When the delinquents were gone Asuna and her friends had helped Sayo to pick her things up. The girl had only mumbled a short thanks before trying to run off again but Asuna had stopped her, noticed that one of her knees had started to bleed from when she had had to crawl on the ground like that. She had half taken, half-dragged the girl home to her house, which was just down the road, and made sure that the wound was taken care of.

It hadn't been to much more after that, Sayo had thanked them and left for home when the wound was fixed up. However one week later Asuna had seen the girl again, this time on the train. She had decided to go up and say hello to the girl but had been taken aback when Sayo had looked positively terrified. After a short talk Asuna had realized what the problem was though. Someone was groping her, and it was the man right next to Asuna!

"YOU SICK PERVERT!" had echoed through the train as Asuna had kneed the man in the groin with all she had, making a scream of pain echo through the cart. At the next station Asuna had grabbed hold of Sayo and run off with her. It was first when they had left the station that Sayo had broken down into tears, having been terrified by what had happened.

Asuna had done her best to comfort the girl and after that she had refused to let Sayo out of her sight. Asuna wasn't a girl that would stand for that kind of things to happen and decided that she'd become Sayo's friend that day. The meek girl had become shocked when she said that though and tried to apologize, saying that it wasn't necessary for Asuna to do that, but Asuna had cut her off, telling Sayo she didn't need to apologize for everything that happened.

That was something that had remained a constant fixture thus far, Sayo would always be apologizing for things and Asuna would stop her and say that she didn't need to do that.

"You're just silly now Sayo-chan." She said with a smile, "It''s not like you meant to drop it, right?" She now removed her hand from Sayo's mouth, allowing the girl to talk again.

"But..." Sayo begun and now Asuna glared playfully at her.

"Right?" She asked with a slightly harsher tone and Sayo caved immediately.

"N-no..." the girl said immediately and Asuna smiled.

"Stop blaming yourself for everything between heaven and earth Sayo-chan." she said kindly, "It's not your fault." She had said it a hundred times before, and she'd say it a thousand times again.

"Quiet out there!" Sensei's voice came thundering from within the classroom and Asuna "eep"-ed as she immediately stood straight again and kept quiet. For a while everything was quiet before Asuna begun to make faces at her friends, condemning them to spend the rest of their penal time trying to not laugh.

The car sped along the street, trailed by several vans and other cars. In the car at the front, a large SUV, Negi sat in the front passenger seat. The driver's seat was occupied by one of his the goons, the man keeping his eyes fixed on the road, knowing that mucking about was a sure ticket to death.

Behind him Saito, Kotaro and Keitaro was sitting, the former was sitting in the middle, doing his best to not shake and to not look at the gun he was currently holding in a feverish grip. The second was sitting to the right and was methodically cleaning his Desert Eagle with an old rag and an industrial solvent, he was almost religiously methodical and careful. The last was sitting to the left and was loading shells into a shotgun, moving his hands in an almost trance-like way. Negi, who had looked back to watch his lieutenants, eventually slapped Kotaro on the leg.

"Call ahead." He said to Kotaro, who glanced at him before taking up his cell-phone. Kotaro had been the one who had dug out the White Dragons' hiding place and he had posted one of his men to keep an eye at the place. The man had hid at one of the nearby crack-houses for a week now and kept a lookout. Kotaro dialled the number with one hand, keeping the other still around his coffee and glancing down at the small screen. Looking up from the screen he raised the phone to his ear

"Yo." Kotaro said when someone answered in the other end. "How's it lookin'?" For a few seconds Kotaro was quiet, listening to the voice in the other end, before his face suddenly split in a grin. "That so?" he asked, his voice suddenly having sunken into the low tone of savage glee Negi knew all too well. Kotaro glanced at him now and winked, his teeth still showing in his large, savage grin. This intrigued Negi, it seemed that the outlook had good news. Keitaro had come back to reality too, the man was now sitting with his cheek resting on the stock of the shotgun and the barrel into the floor, using it as a crutch for his head. "Keep both eyes on it," Kotaro said, "We'll be there in five."

As Kotaro closed the cellphone Negi raised an eyebrow at him.

"Did something nice happen?" Keitaro asked from the other side of the back-seat and Kotaro glanced at him.

"He said some dressed-up guy in a fancy car arrived," the burly man said as he put the cell-phone back in his pocket. "Waltzed right in as if he owned th' place." At this Negi's eyes widened and Keitaro leaned backwards.

"He's their bankroller," The bleach-blonde man said, closing his eyes and smiling softly, "I call dibs."he continued, almost sing-songing.

"'Ey!" Kotaro suddenly said, that man had just taken out his gun and started to look it over again, "You got that rat," he continued, "Stop hogging all th' fun."

"First come first served." Keitaro said monotonously, "And don't break out that solvent to wank off your gun again, it reeks." Kotaro was just about to snap back when Negi interrupted.

"Lay it off!" he snapped and his old friend quickly stopped. "I swear you are like a pair of kindergarteners." he continued as Kotaro leaned back, sulking in the back seat as Keitaro smirked. "Just for that you are sharing him, now shut up." He continued, turning back to look at the street and leaving his two psychos to lieutenants to figure out how they were going to share torturing someone to death. The goon eventually turned to the right and swung off the main road, heading towards the slums.

"Home sweet home." he muttered sarcastically, watching the broken windows, trash covering the streets and tonnes of graffiti that showed where they were. The Tokyo slums, the shit-end of Tokyo, the worst place in Japan. Wryly smiling to himself he realized that he felt something akin to nostalgia as he watched the streets of the hellhole he had lived in for almost ten years.

"This really is a dirty place." Keitaro remarked as he looked outside the windows and saw how they passed by one of the alleys. "I can't tell if that's trash or if it's people."he pointed at something by one of the corners. Kotaro turned to look at it and furrowed his brow.

"Whatever it is it looks like shit," he said with a pondering voice, "An' that's literally."

"Charming," Negi said absently as he looked across the street, trying to see if he could spot anything that might be the White Dragons' base, "You just won the upper class twit of the year competition, have you already forgotten half your life? Fifteen years ago that was you." He looked into the rearview mirror he noticed that the vans suddenly swung left, disappearing behind one of the ramshackle houses. They had to be close if the vans were moving into position.

"Hey I didn't smear myself in shit," Kotaro protested at Negi's comment, "An' take right 'ere." he suddenly said to the goon, who nodded and immediately swung right. They drove into a small alleyway and Kotaro picked up his phone again, waiting for Negi's command.

"Give the call."

The cars suddenly came swerving around the corner and screamed as they ran down the street. Outside the warehouse the three gang members who had been keeping lookout all started. They knew enough to immediately pull out their guns but they were too slow. Only a few seconds later a swarm of bullets mowed down them all as the men in the cars shot their sub-machine guns and assault rifles at full auto against them. The wall behind them was sprayed with blood and bullets and the cars continued down the street just as swiftly.

It was now that a series of small vans came roaring too, these grinding to a halt outside the warehouse and the back-doors of them slammed open as heavily armed gang-members poured out. One of them ran up to the warehouse door and tore it open, firing an entire magazine of bullets inside before he ran inside, followed by the others.

Inside the gang, the White Dragons, had been taken by surprise and most of them didn't even have their guns at the ready. Negi's thugs however were fully armed and the resulting battle was more of a slaughter. The White Dragons did take cover as soon as they could, hiding behind shelves, overturned tables and large crates to desperately shoot back. However Negi's men didn't lack answers. Kotaro and Keitaro were both at the forefront now and as the White Dragons' desperate barrage forced them to take cover behind a crate Kotaro grinned. Keitaro swung back in behind the crate after having managed to take two of the gang-members out and looked at his colleague.

"Time for some gore!" Kotaro roared as he reached into his clothes and took out something, Keitaro didn't flinch at the sight even if most people would have pissed themselves at the sight of the grenade now in Kotaro's hands.

"Overcompensator." Keitaro deadpanned as Kotaro tore the safety pin out with his teeth and threw it towards the large row of crates where a big group of men were hiding. The roar of the battle around him nearly drowned out his voice but Kotaro heard.

"Fuck you an' enjoy the fireworks!" he yelled as he waited for the blast. When the explosion rocked the room Kotaro's smile was almost saintly and he took up his gun. "Killer time!" he whooped as he got up and quickly survived the scene. The grenade had hit dead on and Kotaro could make out the carnage that was currently covering the floor there. He raised his gun and blew the head off a guy that was crawling out from behind the crates, his face already torn apart by the explosion. "Kill 'em all!" Kotaro roared and Negi's men pressed forwards. Kotaro and Keitaro took the lead, gunning down any man unfortunate enough to be seen by the two psychos.

"Drama queen." Keitaro said as he raised one Uzi and peppered the legs of a guy gunning away from him. The young boy, seemingly only 16 years, screamed from the pain before Keitaro hit his head too. Kotaro rolled his eyes.

"Whine whine whine." he said, blasting the arm off a gang-member trying to shoot him. "Can't ya do anythin' other than whinin'? The girls ain't likin' that ya know."

Keitaro suddenly had to step back to avoid a guy leaving out from behind a crate and swinging a knife at him. Kicking the man in the balls Keitaro made him collapse to the ground before he shoved his mini-UZI into the man's mouth and pulled the trigger. "Well the girl last night didn't complain." he shrugged, getting up from the corpse of the man who's head now lacked the back half.

Kotaro stopped to stomp the head of a badly wounded man, his heavy boots crushing the skull at the third stomp and spreading the messy contents across the floor. "So what did ya name th' hooker this night?" He asked, reloading his Desert Eagle and moving on, leaving a gooey red footprint after himself.

"Haruka." Keitaro said, suddenly noticing someone hiding behind the supervisor's office. "...I thought to try something new..." he muttered as he raised his UZI's and unloaded them, quickly inserting two other magazines and firing at the thin walls the man was hiding behind. The armour piercing bullets tore through the thin sheet metal walls and a scream of pain could be heard from behind.

"Is it Christmas?" Keitaro asked to himself as he went to look behind the small office building. When he got there he saw that the man he had hit was a man wearing an expensive designer suit and who was staring at him in blind terror, trying to crawl backwards. "It is!" he said, turning towards Kotaro, "I found him!" he said loudly and Kotaro slapped his hands together at this.

"Jackpot!" he man grinned, "Sit on him or somethin' so he ain't leavin'." he continued as he turned around. "Okay guys!" he roared, "Dig through th' place an' cap any survivors." he gestured towards the further parts of the warehouse. "When the boss gets here I ain't wantin' no gunfire so hop to it!" The men immediately fanned out and started to go through the warehouse, a gunshot being heard every now and then as they killed the surviving White Dragons.

Throughout the hall now bodies lay scattered, some of then Negi's men but most of them the White Dragons. All in all over forty corpses covered the floor, some of them in pieces. Kotaro surveyed the scene for a while with a large smile on his face before he reached for his phone and called Negi.

"You work fast." Negi greeted him when the man answered, "Did you start throwing grenades again?" he continued and Kotaro grinned.

"Hit 'em with all we've got." he said and he could hear Negi sigh on the other end.

"If the merchandise is fucked it's coming out of your hide." he said and Kotaro could hear how the line died as Negi hung up. He quickly looked around and grabbed hold of the nearest gang-member.

"Oy." he said, "what's your name?" The guy was about to answer when Kotaro shook his head, "Doesn't matter, the boss is on the way in, bring him up to speed with all the details, I have some shit to take care of, got it?"

"Uh..." the young man said, taken aback by the sudden events, "Yeah boss." he eventually said and hurried towards the door. Kotaro grinned as he rubbed his hands and walked towards Keitaro, time for some fun...

Asuna gasped from the exertion as she managed to get out of the frothing sea of students that raged in front of the canteen. She was panting, sweaty and she only hope that her makeup wasn't running. Still, she had gotten hold of the food and could with a tired smile pass it to her friends that were standing by the wall in front of her.

"God, bloody, damn!" Asuna panted as she passed the items out. Sayo thanked her as she gave her the melon bread she wanted, "Tomorrow I'm gonna beat Negi until he makes me a bento or something. This is crazy!"She shook her head.

"Poor Negi." Setsuna deadpanned, "Do you ever get him to do anything without beating him?" Asuna grinned at her athletic friend now.

"Nope," she said, "Because I'm an asshole like that. Come on, let's go to the classroom and eat, I'm hungry." Her friends agreed and they all set course towards the classroom. "Nah but seriously," She said after a while, "He'd do it, I don't think he'd ever say no to me."

"You never feel like you're abusing him?" Konoka asked, "Sometimes it's like you're talking about your house slave. It's just that... well... hasn't he enough to do? You said he was running a night-club, isn't that a lot of work?" Asuna smiled to herself, there it came again. Konoka thought she was so smart and hid it so well but Asuna knew. She knew that her friend had a crush on her big brother the size of a house.

Still, she did have a point. But Asuna wasn't concerned about that. "Hell no," she said, "You can't overwork him, it's impossible. I know, because I've been with him all my life."

"How do you mean?" Konoka asked. Asuna shrugged as she started to ascend the stairs towards their classroom.

"Back when we lived in the slums I hardly even saw him." She looked back at her friends and noticed that they had all snapped to attention. Apparently there was something about the fact that she had spent her first years living in the worst parts of Tokyo that got them to snap to attention whenever she talked about it. She continued her story however.

"He worked at a café at Mahora, that was before everything went to hell there, and back then he worked like fifteen hours a day. It was insane really, from morning to evening six days a week. And when it did go south and the café was firebombed he just ups and gets something done. Managed to get a loan and starts up that nightclub of his. If anything he's cruising easy street now, he decides his own work hours and all. With all that in mind it's only good for him if I make him slave a little." Now Asuna grinned, "That way he won't get lazy."

"Well at least you don't have a big brother complex." Konoka said as they reached the top of the stairs. Asuna rolled her eyes now.

"Oh for the love of..." She begun, "He's my brother, that would be sick!"

"Still." Konoka said silently, "Have you never thought about him in that way?" The girl stopped now, pursing her lips as she thought.

"Well..." she begun, "Don't get me wrong, I know he's hot. If nothing else I can look at you three whenever he's within twenty feet to see that." She said wryly. Sayo blushed at this and Asuna continued as she walked into the classroom and sat down by her bench, "But really, he's my brother and that's like a big fat NO sign hanging off him. I mean, he used to bathe me when I was a kid." Asuna pulled the wrapper off her food and sunk her teeth into it.

"It's..." she said with her mouth full, "He's not even a man to me, he's Negi, he doesn't have a sex. So you don't need to worry Konoka." Now Asuna winked at her friend, "You won't have any competition from me" Konoka blushed brightly now and raised her hands to deny that she meant it like that.

"N-no!" She exclaimed, waving her hands, "I didn't mean it like that."

"Reeeally?" Asuna asked, the grin on her face almost shark-like. "So what about that picture of him that you're keeping under your pillow?" Konoka went beet red at this and Asuna kept going, "How you can't even talk to him without blushing? Or what about..." Asuna made a rectangular motion with her hands, indicating something roughly the size of an envelope, and now Konoka's eyes went wide as saucers

"Um...Um..." Konoka's eyes were like those of a a mouse caught by a very dangerous predator. Her face glowed like a flare in the dark of the ocean floor until her mind gave up and performed a perfect backward drop into the land of unconsciousness.

"Works every time." Asuna said smugly.

The man gurgled as he tried to spit out the blood and teeth that were swimming around inside his mouth, however all he could do was to feebly eject it from his mouth, causing it to run down his cheek and onto his bloodstained suit.

"Hey." Keitaro said to him now, gently slapping him in the face, "Are you still with me?" the bleach-blonde man gently clapped the man's face as he supported his cheek with the other hand. "Look what you did Kotaro," Keitaro said now, "He's all messed up."

Kotaro, who was sitting on a chair a pit away and working with a large revolver, looked up now and shrugged.

"His own fault, dont'cha think?" the man said as he took out a bullet out of his pocket and put it into the gun. "If he just had played along with us 't wouldn't have happened." pushing the cylinder into the gun Kotaro spun it around, making it spin rapidly before he stopped it. "Wanna go first?" he asked Keitaro, holding out the gun towards him, handle first.

"By all means." Keitaro said, taking the gun with a smile. "So mister, what do you think?" he asked the man who was currently resting against the wall, his face a bloody mess and blood seeping from it. Keitaro held up the man's face now, placing the gun against his forehead. "Six possibilities, one bullet." he said, "What do you say? Shall we spin the cylinder one more time? If the bullet is in the barrel you'll die if I pull the trigger now. You could escape death that way, what do you say?"

A distance away Negi glanced at his two lieutenants' sick games with a sense of exasperation. Neko and Inu, they played well together, Keitaro's mind-games and Kotaro's sheer, animalistic savagery. He'd have to rein them in some time soon. Still, at the moment he was more interested in the drugs that his men was packing into the vans. The White Dragons had been stocking a lot of it indeed and as it was Negi wasn't going to let that be lost.

Looking around himself he thought about what the consequences would be. Word would spread, that was inevitable, but he had kept it confined to the slums and it was enough of a mess left behind that the police wouldn't be able to deal with it. A series of black vans, they could have belonged to anyone. With the corpses cleanly left behind and little collateral it was the easiest thing to do to just clean up and forget about it.

Yeah it would take something like a special task-force out to get him before this would mean anything.

""There is actually a possibility that he really is an honest man trying to get up in this world."" the grizzled man quoted gruffly, "What a fucking meathead..." they had spent the last hour being berated by the lawyer of the criminal they had been trying to get arrested for years now. They had only recently managed to get him into a hearing but that eel had slipped out of their grasp and had made it all a large PR-gig. Thanks to that the chief was an inch from closing the entire case and it was only just that they had managed to dodge it.

"He's a good lawyer." His partner, the much more level-headed of them, admitted.

"He's an asshole." the first man said as he stopped to get a cup of coffee. "We work our asses off to nail a fucking scum and that cunt sits behind his desk and insinuates that we've made it all up." he took his cup and headed off towards his desk.

"It's not that easy and you know it." his partner continued, "There were holes in the investigation and..."

"That's bullshit!" the man hissed, "Well I'm not going to let this fucker get away..." he said as he sat down, his partner doing the same.

"Neither am I but this time we got to be more careful." the man said, "Let's try to work from the bottom." he pulled out a few noted from the mess on his desk. "Let's see now..." the first man pulled up a chair and they both started to go through the notes, hoping to find something that could aid them. They were interrupted after only a second though, a large mug of coffee landing in front of them. Looking up from their papers the two men came face to face with a tall, dark-haired man wearing sunglasses and an expensive suit.

"Officers Nakajima and Takuma?" the man asked, his words given extra weight by his dark voice and the emphasis he seemed to put on every word.

"Yeah?" the first man said now, looking up at the newcomer with an irritable look.

"Special agent Wakamura of the National Police Agency." the man introduced himself, showing them his badge. "Your case is under our jurisdiction from now on. You're relived of your duties, hand over all documents to me and report to your superiors for re-assignment."