Chapter 13: Choices

"No," was what Tadashi said. "I won't."

It was enough that Mr.S had broken into Tadashi's house to speak with him, but now he was telling him he needed him to kill someone.

"You need to," Mr.S replied, looking like he was becoming hostile.

"I don't need to do anything. Especially kill someone."

"Well then have fun in prison, where your aunt and little brother will know that you're a bank robber, and where you can't pay for your brother's medical bills because the police have confiscated your money. Say goodbye to all the work you did, and the respect of your family."

Tadashi opened his mouth to reply, but said nothing.

"That's what I thought," Mr.S replied, surprisingly not being smug about it. "This needs to happen Tadashi. I can tell you where to be, when to be there, and give you what you need. All you need to do is carry it out."

Tadashi ran his hand through his hair, trying to figure out what he should do. He couldn't kill someone. He already had Yama's death on his conscience, and that wasn't even his fault. But Mr.S was right. If this guy lived, he was going to go straight to the SFPD, and everything would be ruined. Sure, it would be bad if Hiro and Cass found out how Tadashi spent his free time, but then the money would be confiscated by the police as well, which was worse. They needed that money. There was really only one option here

"Fine," Tadashi finally said. "I'll do it."

"Great," Mr.S said as he began walking towards the stairs.

"Wait," Tadashi said as he followed him, "what do I need to do?"

"I'll call you tomorrow," Mr.S replied. "I'll tell you everything you need to know." He began heading down the steps but turned around. "Oh, and Tadashi, this probably doesn't need to be said, but if for whatever reason, you don't go through with this, i'm, gonna be forced to do something no one wants to happen." And on that… odd note, Mr.S walked out the front door. Leaving Tadashi to wonder if he had made the right decision.

Of course he did. This guy worked for Mr.S, so he was probably an asshole. And he was going to go to the police and tell them everything. Tadashi couldn't let that happen, and the only way to stop it was to kill the guy… it just had to be done. There wasn't any other way… was there?

These were the thoughts that had filled Tadashi's head the rest of the night, as he waited for the next day.

The day he needed to kill a man.

Well, it was the next day, and Tadashi sure as hell could never be prepared for what he was about to do.

He was about twelve blocks away from the precinct, waiting for Mr.S guy to show up. His name was Christian Denunzio, and Mr.S had told Tadashi he didn't own a car, so he would be walking to the precinct. Mr.S had also left an unlocked car down the road that had everything that Tadashi needed in the trunk. Unfortunately, all he needed was a suppressed pistol.

He was waiting out in an alleyway where he and Mr.S had set a trap for Christian… with Tadashi being the bait. He was all alone on this one. He decided that it would be best if he was the only one to be doing this because, one: more than two people hanging out in an alley way would probably look pretty suspicious. And two: none of them would have came. Killing someone wasn't exactly something that you could just invite someone to without them flipping out on you, so he didn't tell his friends this was happening.

Tadashi really helped this went well because if it didn't, Christian could escape, tell the cops what he and his friends had done, and they would go to prison, or he would take the gun out of Tadashi's hand and shoot him. But if things went well, Christian would be dead, no one would go to prison, and the Krei Bank job would be back on. Piece of cake.

Tadashi's hands shook as he waited on the alley. Thank god the gun was in his back pocket, because if it was in Tadashi's hands, he was more than certain that he would have ended up firing a bullet that would ricochet off of the walls around him. God he was nervous. He was probably as nervous as… well someone who was about to kill a guy.

The plan was the lure Christian into the alley where no one would see him, and then put a bullet in his head. Robbing a bank was one thing. Nobody got hurt, the team got away with the money. But this was murder. Someone was going to die, and Tadashi would be pulling the trigger. He had thought about turning back, but he already had the gun, and God knows what Mr.S would do if he quit now.

He kept popping his head out from the wall of the alleyway to see when Christian was coming down the sidewalk, and on about the fifth time he did it, he saw him. Mr.S had shown him a picture of the guy, and he was pretty hard to miss.

The guy was tall, lean, and had a scar under his right eye. His hair was long like how Fred's was, but a bit shorter, and it was brown. even from a hundred feet away, he gave off a vibe that said he'd been through shit. And in a few moments, Tadashi would've been through enough

Tadashi got into position as he laid down on the hard ground gripping his leg, which he had covered in fake blood. The plan was to lure Christian into the alley by pretending to have been shot in the leg, only when he steps into the alley, he'll be the one with the bullet in him…

Tadashi waited, and waited, and waited, and then Christian walked in front of the alley way.

"Son of a bitch!" Tadashi yelled, gripping his head in false pain. That caused Christian to turn his head. "Help me!" Tadashi yelled. Christian hesitated before running into the alley, but it was't long before he was at Tadashi's side.

"Holy shit man, are you alright?" Christian said as he stood over Tadashi, moving his hands around like he wasn't sure what to do with them.

"I got shot in the goddamn leg!" Tadashi yelled

Here we go. I need to kill this guy. It had only been a few seconds, but in that time, Tadashi had thought about a lot. If this guy was kind enough to help a guy bleeding in the ground in a city like this, does he deserve to bleed himself? Of course not, but he needed to die. He needed to die because if he didn't, all of Tadashi's work would've been for nothing. This had to be done

Christian spoke again. "Do you need me to call an ambulance or-"

Tadashi quickly stood up, grabbed the gun out of his back pocket and aimed it right at Christian's head.

As expected, Christian didn't move and he put his hands in the air. "M… Mr.S sent you, didn't he?"

Tadashi had his finger on the trigger. "You know this can only end one way." Tadashi's voice quivered as he pulled his finger closer to the point of firing.

"If… if you're who I think you are, than you know as well as I do that Mr.S needs to be put behind bars."

Tadashi's finger stopped.

The way Mr.S had described the situation, this guy was going to the police for the reward money. But now Tadashi was hearing it straight from the man himself, and he sounded like he was doing this to put Mr.S in jail.

"You have no idea what he's capable of," Christian continued. "You were there when Yama was offed. You know what Mr.S will do to get rid of someone he doesn't find useful anymore, and everyone wears out their usefulness eventually."

"If you go to the cops, i'll be put away too."

"I swear to god I won't even mention you were involved. Just let me tell them about Mr.S, and he'll be put away for a long time," Christian begged.

"The cops are looking for whoever was physically at the repository, and if they have Mr.S, it's gonna be a cold day in hell before he decides not to give us up."

"Come on man, we're on the same side here. Don't tell me you don't think he's insane."

"Of course he is… but I can't let you tell anyone we were there. I'm sorry… but you need to die."

Christian closed his eyes, ready to die.

But death never came.

Tadashi tried to pull the trigger, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Christian was right. Mr.S was a psychotic lunatic who would kill Tadashi at the first sight of disloyalty. Should this guy really be put down for doing the right thing?

No. No he shouldn't. So Taashi knocked him upside the head instead.

Tadashi swped the gun at Christian's head and he fell onto the hard ground. the side of his head was bleeding, but he was still alive.

Tadashi grabbed the man's wrist to see if he could still feel a pulse, and let out a sigh of relief when he felt it. Luckily for him, Christian was pretty much the only person on the sidewalk aside from a few people too busy looking at their phones to notice an unconscious man in an alleyway.

What did I just do?

It wasn't really him worrying about what he did, but what he hadn't done. He was supposed to kill this guy, and Mr.S was going to find out that he wasn't dead.

Tadashi didn't know what to do. If he just left, Christian would wake up and go to the cops, but if Mr.S found out he was alive, he'd have Tadashi, his friends, his Aunt Cass, and Hiro killed.

"Oh fuck it," Tadashi finally said after arguing with himself. He pulled out his phone and dialled Wasabi's number. It began to ring. "Come on come on." Tadashi was tapping his foot rapidly on the ground. "Pick up."

"Yo," Wasabi said as he finally answered.

"Hey Wasabi. I… I have a problem."

Wasabi had picked up Tadashi plus a second passenger who was passed out in the back of Wasabi's car.

Neither Tadashi or Wasabi had said a word to each other since they loaded Christian into the back, and Wasabi nearly had a heart attack when he saw him.

"So," Wasabi finally spoke up as he kept his eyes on the road. "Is there any particular reason why i'm driving with my gun-wielding friend in the passenger seat, and an unconscious man in the back? I mean, i'm sure it's a long story and all, but seeing as you didn't tell me where to go, we have all the time in the world." Wasabi seemed calm about this entire thing… relative to ten minutes ago when he was screaming his head off.

Tadashi didn't speak at first. He stared out the window as the buildings moved past his field of vision. He found that to be the best way to think, but right now his mind was blank. "I think the name Mr.S will explain it all," he said as he still stared through the glass.

"Well I figured that much, but i'm gonna need some more details here. You had a gun, yet you hit him with it."

"I was supposed to kill him." Tadashi said as he gripped the gun in his hand with anger for what he had almost done."

"But you didn't," Wasabi said as he took his eyes off the road to look at Tadashi. He could get passed the fact that Wasabi was helping his move an unconscious body, but now he was ignoring driver's safety, so he must've been serious about this. "What happened."

Tadashi stopped looking out the window and looked at Wasabi, his friend, one of the best. He let out a sigh. "I found Mr.S in my house." Tadashi went on to tell Wasabi of how Mr.S needed Christian dead because he was going to tell the police about everything, including the names of those who robbed the repository.

"Shit," Wasabi said taking in the information. "But you didn't kill him. Why not?"

Tadashi grew silent for a moment. Why hadn't he killed Christian? This was something he had been asking himself over and over again. He knew he needed this guy dead, but at the same time, this guy could have put a stop to everything Mr.S was doing. He supposed the middleground was knocking upside the head.

"I couldn't bring myself to do it," Tadashi simply said although there was definitely more to it than that.

"Well don't feel so bad about not wanting to kill a person," Wasabi replied. "You say it like it's the end of the world."

"He was going to tell the police about us Wasabi. He promised not to tell the police about us after I pointed the barrel of a gun at his head, but Mr.S would have found out I let him go and probably kill us. Instead I knocked him out, and if he escapes, then he's not making any promises to me this time, or Mr.S could find out if he's alive, and so on and so forth."

"So then what do we do? Where are we going? If you're so scared about Mr.S knowing this guy's alive, then why is he knocked out in the back of my car?"

"Because we're going to hide him somewhere where Mr.S won't find him," Tadashi said confidently. "Does your dad still own that storage space uptown?"

Wasabi had a suspicious look in his eye. "Yeah, why?"

"Did you buy those handcuffs I told you to get?" Tadashi said as a smile spread across his face."

Wasabi stared at Tadashi for a moment. They were at a red light, so it was fine for him to not look at the road. "Did you get this strategy from the same book you found your money hiding spot in."

"I didn't even tell you what we were doing yet."

"Tadashi, I didn't get into college for not being able to put two and two together. Storage space plus handcuff equals you locking this guy in there!"

"It's...not a perfect plan," Tadashi mumbled as he stared out the window again.

"What are you gonna do with him? My dad probably won't go in there for another six months, but you can't just keep the guy in there until he decides he needs his four wheeler. What if-"

"Hey," a groggy voice said, "what's goin' on?'

"Oh shit!" Tadashi and Wasabi both screamed as Tadashi grabbed the pistol and whacked the now half awake Christian in the nose with it. Then there was silence.

"Is… is he…" Wasabi said, scared to look back.

Tadashi looked behind the seat. Christian was laying across the back seat with blood gushing from his nose. He wasn't awake, but he was still breathing. "He's alive."

"So," Wasabi said as he gripped his steering wheel, "the storage locker?"

"Yep."

The red light turned green, and the two road off in silence.

"And, bada bing." Tadashi said as he handcuffed an unconscious Christian to a pipe that ran up the corner of the storage locker. Tadashi made sure that he wasn't anywhere where he could grab something to get free. Wasabi's dad had a lot of stuff. There were two four wheelers, a lawn mower, some old furniture, and a work bench. It was a rather large storage space.

"Why does your dad have all this stuff in here?" Tadashi asked as he got up from his crouched position.

"We don't have a garage," Wasabi answered simply. "Like I said, my dad probably won't be back here for a few months."

"Well then, shall we be going?" Tadashi began walking to the exit, but Wasabi stopped him.

"Wait, we're just gonna leave him here?"

"Well what else can we do? He's restrained, Mr.S probably thinks he's dead, and i'm tired. We don't really have anything left to do."

"That's an understatement."

"Well what do you want to do, stay here and make sure the guy gets a good night's rest? He's fine where he is."

Wasabi gave Tadashi a looked that looked almost ashamed. "Whatever," he said as he walked out of the storage space. "But let me remind you that you're now holding a man against his will, and you've dragged me along with you down a path that you don't know how to walk down. I'll be in the car." With that, Wasabi walked out of the storage locker leaving Tadashi in the cluttered space with an unconscious man handcuffed to a pipe.

Tadashi looked at Christians unmoving body slumped against a wall. Tadashi didn't need Wasabi to tell him that he didn't know what he was doing. He was sure of that the moment he broke into a repository and got away with thousands.

Mr.S was probably sitting in a chair somewhere looking smug thinking about how clever he was. But like Tadashi didn't know what he was doing, neither did Mr.S. The man whom he knew almost nothing about and couldn't be trusted.

But Tadashi had trusted him anyway. He let that man use him to rob a repository, assault, police officers, blow up crime a crime lord, and almost kill a man who was doing the right thing.

Yet, despite all of this, Tadashi knew he needed him.

He needed him because, without him, he wouldn't be able to get into Krei Bank.

Without getting into Krei Bank, he wouldn't have the money to pay for Hiro's medical bills.

Without the money, his family would go bankrupt.

So no matter what Tadashi thought of him, no matter what it is he had done or will do, Tadashi needed him.

He needed Mr.S, and Tadashi couldn't do a thing about it.

(A/N) So… it's been a while. I'm SO sorry for the late update. I tried to upload this on Wednesday, but some personal junk got in the way, and I didn't have this chapter finished by then. But it's here now and I hoped you enjoyed. I laughed so hard writing the part where Christian woke up. But now Tadashi has a man in his captivity. I'll just add that to the list of unrecorded felonies. But, anyhow, again, sorry, and That's DaydreamDepartment out of your hair! )