An able-bodied woman dressed in business attire watched as teams prepare the press room of the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. Her eyes scanned the room one last time as she listened to all the security teams check in. She turned and left the room, walking past many offices, many secured doors that she opened with her ID and eye, and finally stopped before a large, mahogany door that read, 'Director of FBI.'
She knocked, waiting for the green light. Once the door unlocked itself, she turned the handle and peeked in, "Sir, we're ready for your press release."
A man was standing near the window, looking out pensively. His expression cleared as he turned to look at her, nodding simply. He let out an inaudible sigh as he followed her lead, acknowledging with only a nod as three more FBI agents flanked him.
Kazumi Yukihira walked on stage. Cameras clicked. He stood on the podium. After a pause, he started, "Citizens of the United States. Residents of our great country. The Federal Bureau of Investigation serves you; we are here to protect your freedom, your liberty, and your life. What we believe was in your best interest is to start a project featuring our best agents. There was indeed a team called The A Team comprised of the best from both FBI and CIA. I say, 'was' because they have been disbanded. Whether or not the rumors are true, they were let go due to their inability to serve our mission." He stopped.
The reporters began asking questions, thinking he was lingering on the stage to deliver answers. But he neither addressed a reporter, nor answered a shouted statement. He continued firmly. "My sources have confirmed...all eight members of The A Team were killed in an explosive accident." There was a spur of noise as reporters reacted in surprise and shock, and camera men clicked away. Yukihira breathed deeply. Then he repeated his statement. "Yes, members of The A Team are dead. No matter what the media said, what people thought of them - they were good people, and great investigators. They will be sorely missed. Thank you." He nodded once, turning to walk calmly off the stage as he bared himself against flash after flash and question after question that he neither answered nor acknowledged.
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The A Team
Aspirator
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Narumi sat sullenly on his couch, beer in one hand. Not as drunk as he'd like to be, his ears quickly caught the light scrape of metal that came from lockpicking. He was anticipating what came next. The barrel of a gun? A bomb thrown in his home? Or will he see the face of his attacker first?
He sure wasn't expecting Hotaru Imai to amble in, send a cursory glance over his tragic state, and still stand stoically in front of him.
"You're pathetic." She commented first.
Narumi offered up a loopy grin, "but not drunk yet. What is it?"
Hotaru launched into the speech she wanted to deliver him, with the anger that he knew she had bottled inside. "You know I always thought it was odd that Mikan came to us exactly three years after the incident. And Luna counted down the months...everything was timed so perfectly." She leaned in and Narumi swore she was baring her fangs. She gritted out, "You knew all along?"
Narumi sighed, his face sad. "I was in love with Yuka...I...made mistakes. They caught onto it. I did them a favor but I was - I knew she would be okay with your team anyway."
Hotaru stood back, her arms crossed. "You put the team in danger."
"I sent her to you so you could keep her safe." Narumi disagreed.
Hotaru scoffed, looking away and disgustedly glancing over the state of his living place.
"Hotaru." Narumi caught her attention, "How did you find me?"
"You weren't hard to find, Narumi. You weren't trying. Especially since I didn't have to use a computer." She turned to look at him.
He gave her a quaint smile. "I was trying, thank you very much. But I -"
"Stopped trying." There was a slight pause before Hotaru quietly commented, "Why? You're about to be a dead man, Narumi. You're a-"
"Loose end." Narumi breathed deeply. "They must feel elated when tying up shoelaces." He laughed, but his audience was not with him. He looked up into her eyes, "And I'm not saying you should take advice from a dead man, but I think you should look a little bit closer."
Hotaru gave him a curious stare.
"There's more to Mikan than that," Narumi stood up, beginning to shuffle through the mess and piles he's got around him, "you of all people should have been the first to believe that."
"I'm a scientist, I look at facts. And the fact is - they got to her and now she's after us." Hotaru scowled at the man's optimism. "I have nothing, Narumi. Didn't you hear me? She destroyed all the files and back-ups and -" She let out a miserable exhale, "everything."
"I wouldn't be so sure," He found what he was looking for. A small microchip. "You haven't seen all the facts."
Hotaru accepted it but was not pleased. "If I so much as touch technology I might as well send out a blipping signal on their satellites. The way I use a computer - I have a digital signature."
"Then don't use your signature."
"No one on the team is as good as I am! We'd get nowhere!"
"I'm sure there's a few hackers around here you can threaten with a gun." Narumi replied cheerfully. He felt around the cushions of the sofa, stuck his hand in one of them, then pulled out some more microchips. "There it is! I knew I had more." He winked at her, "They didn't check me for back-ups." Then he tapped his chin, "But Mikan should've known. I guess she let that go."
Instead of gratitude, Hotaru sent him a dark glare. "How many secrets are you keeping from us?"
Narumi only smiled. He was a dead man, for sure, but he still wasn't giving out secrets like it's Victoria's.
"Nevermind," Hotaru grumbled, "I'll find out soon enough."
When the door slammed, Narumi sank into the couch, a grim smile set on his lips. "Of course you will." He waited a few bated breaths before he picked up his phone and called the director of FBI. "Kazumi." He spoke as the other end picked up. "The package has been delivered." He paused before stopping the other man from hanging up. "Is that all we can do? Cross our fingers and hope for the best?" He sighed when the other man answered. "We did what we could. I know." They two men hung up at the same time, both dissatisfied with the world.
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"So what now?" It was Anna who asked the question.
After the attack, they could've split. They understood what Mikan was telling them. She couldn't kill them, but she could fake it. And so when she "killed" them, they needde to stay dead. They could've gone anywhere, done anything.
But everything was stripped from them. Their job, Mikan, their belongings, their reputation, and ultimately, their lives. They had nothing but each other. So they ended up sticking together and finding an old warehouse. They had lock picked their way in, knowing it had no connection to any of them. They were living off the grid.
"We do what we always do." Hotaru stated, and she smiled, almost evilly.
"Eat?" More than one person voiced.
Hotaru glared at them condescendingly, "We're going to investigate."
They didn't understand until she connected the projector cord to some random hacker's laptop she stole. Her screen showed them a secret surveillance tape. The camera seemed to be in high elevation, overlooking Narumi's entire office. The only place it could have been located to catch such an angle was on one corner of the room, where the ceiling met the convergence of two walls.
"Where'd you get this?" Natsume asked suspiciously.
"Narumi." Hotaru stated curtly.
"How did you even - " Yuu paused, "nevermind, I don't want to know."
Hotaru disregarded the comment, and merely typed a few more keys, playing the tape.
Mikan was sitting in front of Narumi.
Narumi grinned, "I have a mission for you."
Mikan cocked her head to the side, considering the privacy of the meeting. Cautiously, she replied, "I haven't heard the word mission since CIA."
"It's not exactly a mission. It's a case, and once you've solved it, it will turn into a mission." Narumi explained.
He slid over a black file folder - it seemed as if there weren't much in it. Then he nodded, as if giving her permission to open it. Curiously, she flipped the manila cover over.
On top of a pile was a large picture, the size of a piece of paper. The first seemed to be a tattoo of some sort on skin. The tattoo was the outline of a star, and inside was just the letter A.
Mikan gasped sharply. Then she seemed to have lost the ability to form coherent sentences.
Silently, Narumi's hand reached over to slowly spread the stack of pictures out in front of her one by one.
"Chicago," Narumi stated, when he spread out the second picture.
The second picture was an action shot of a black figure running. The figure was a female. Her hood had fallen off, showing a ponytail of brown hair. One couldn't tell how long the ponytail was for the figure was running so fast it was almost a blur.
"Boston,"
The third was another action shot of the same female figure using a small knife in her left hand and stab a man on her left, and at the same time kicking another man into the wall in front of her. There were two men already on the ground, presumably dead.
"She's using local gangs, seemingly as practice, or information." Narumi voice continued, the first time the original A team has heard him state a phrase so seriously.
"She and some others are planning something big and we have to stop them while we still can."
"You have reason to be afraid of her," Mikan's voice came through, "but how do you know there's more of her and she's - their - planning something?"
Instead of answering her question directly, he only stated, "Miami," spreading out the fourth picture.
The fourth picture was of the mystery woman seemingly interrogating someone. She had a gun tucked under a man's chin, who was on his knees and he seemed to be yelling something in desperation, hands up in surrender. Behind her were three men, dress in all black just like her, and in the middle of fighting (defeating, rather) ten men that presumably belonged to the man on his knees.
"That," A finger tapped the man on his knees, "is the drug cartel lord, Fernandez Amero. I'd say she either needs something to be delivered, or information."
Mikan remained silent.
Narumi's hand swept over the fourth photo, placing it somewhere else, and revealing the fifth photo. "This was from man being interrogated is Gregory Hun, head honcho of another local gang."
This time, the man had one hand on the edge of the roof of a tall building, desperately hanging on. The woman was crouching, talking to the man, with her foot on his hand.
Though the angle of the camera was from the bottom of the building, one still couldn't see her face. All it caught was a curve of soft pink lips. Beside her were again three men, each had a gun, seemingly to be patrolling the area, scouting out threats. Protecting her.
"She was smart - very careful in keeping her face at the right angle so that it was hidden either under her hood, or arm, or just unrecognizable." Narumi explained. "Merciless, too, because when she got her information - assuming, she did, because we caught her smile there - and dear Gregory seemed to think he was safe there, but she just kicked him, and let him fall 57 stories." There was a pause, then he continued, "there were more. Reliable sources have placed her in Los Angeles, Houston, D.C., San Antonio, even Phoenix."
"You want me to catch her?" Mikan's statement came out as a question.
"No, I want you to research," Narumi answered, "who she is, who they are, what her motive is, and what she wants. For now, our theory is that she's taking out competition. But we all know that's a stretch. After research, come to me with the information. Then we can talk about making this a mission."
There was a moment of silence. Then Mikan spoke, almost darkly, "you know who they are. The Alices."
Narumi's eyebrows rose at this, "You said you didn't remember."
"I don't - not completely." Mikan crossed her arms. "You chose me because of my memories - that are slowly returning thanks to Luna, actually." At that statement,
Narumi sat back in surprise, but Mikan barreled on, "That tattoo had to be mine. You only got five pictures and they travelled all over the country. You obviously wouldn't have been able to get a close shot of their heel."
"Excellent," Narumi nodded like a teacher, smiling, "Actually, one of them was found dead - we snatched him up before they could clean up their mess. He's in the morgue, if you wanna see him. Here's the authorization papers," he slid over a slip.
The tape ended there.
"So that was why Mikan went to the morgue and the 'dead' Alice was actually alive and went inside the morgue to try to find the Alices files from three years ago." Yuu stated hesitantly, putting the pieces together. "And also kidnap Mikan."
Hotaru nodded, "Two months ago, when Narumi was being impersonated, the Alices files were stolen. Probably turned to ashes by now."
"Obviously they're tying up all kinds of loose ends, getting back at the people who shut them down..." Anna tapped her chin, "but who is that woman that Mikan was researching on?"
The team looked at Natsume, who looked at Hotaru. They both turned back to the team and shook their heads.
Nobody knew.
"Sounds like the Alices' trump card." Yuu spoke quietly.
Hotaru tapped a few keys and the tape played again. They could easily tell it was edited so that only certain parts of surveillance played and others were deleted.
The screen lit up to show, what appears to be, the head of FBI's office. Mikan sat comfortably in the chair in front of the head of FBI. Meanwhile, Kazumi Yukihira stood at the window. He then turned, striding to his desk, and sat down.
The date stamp read a week before their A Floor blew up and the chain of events that followed.
"I'm your uncle, Mikan." Kazumi emphasized, "please. Listen to me." When Mikan didn't respond, he continued. "You don't have to do it - the mission they told you. That's their way of initiating you back into the Alices."
Mikan didn't look at her uncle. "I know."
"Then why don't you take the chance?!" Yukihira exclaimed, causing Mikan to rear back. Gently, he continued, "You're already out, Mikan." Kazumi looked at her with sad eyes, "You could've made it. You could've just left, you could've ran, you could've lived your own life, do what you wanted."
"But I'd always be looking over my shoulder. They'll catch up to me eventually." Mikan shook her head. "They'll catch up to them first. I did take a chance...this is my only chance to make it right for Natsume, and Hotaru..Yuu, Koko, Nonoko, Anna, Mochu, Kitsuneme. Taking that mission was the only way I could tip the odds and control the outcome just one last time."
"You could tip the odds and control the outcome for the rest of your life if you had just left when you could." Kazumi pursued his point.
Mikan frowned. "I wouldn't have been able to do anything in their favor."
"There were other choices. There's always other choices."
Mikan sat up. "You don't understand. This was the only choice that could give them a life."
Kazumi was now raising his voice in frustration and agitation. "But it cost you yours!"
"It'll be worth it." Mikan's voice remained quiet.
"Will it?" Kazumi spoke in a quietly, hoarsely, "They won't know. They won't even thank you. Worse yet, they'll hate you. They'll loathe every living cell of yours for doing this to them."
"They don't need to know." Mikan looked away. Quietly, she said, "if they knew, they wouldn't stay put. They wouldn't stay safely away."
"But they should. They should understand the sacrifices made for their sake. They should know that you'll be trapped in the Alices, you'll be doing their dirty business for years, you'll be trying to hold on to your soul, trying not to succumb to the darkness - your life for eight."
"I won't. I won't succumb to the darkness."
"That's what Yuka said. That what Izumi promised." Kazumi looked at her in grief, "they shone beams of light in the darkness that was the Alices, and what the Alices do for them? They killed them."
"Yuka was never pronounced dead."
"So where is she now?" Kazumi snapped. When Mikan didn't respond, Kazumi went on softly, "You can't come back from a mission like that alive, Mikan, it was a death sentence."
"Wait, who's Yuka?" Anna asked cluelessly.
"Her mom." More than one person answered impatiently.
The next tape was back to Narumi's office, only two days after Mikan's talk with the director of FBI.
"I know who she is - well, not specifically." Mikan started, "But I know her codename is the Princess."
"So now you're telling me?" Narumi responded with a grin that didn't match his tone.
Mikan looked up in question and alarm at Narumi.
Narumi sat forward, in one of his rare serious moments. "I know you did your research. I know you decided to sit on your information. Question is, why? Why didn't you want to tell me? And why do you choose now, right before you're about to ruin the lives of your teammates, to tell me?"
Mikan frowned, "why does everyone know about my mission?" She avoided eye contact. "I've been debating on what I want to tell you, and what I want to keep. This is close to the heart of the Alices."
"The mystery woman or what she's doing?"
"No, what she's doing, I suspect, is training." Mikan softly disclosed.
"Training?!" Narumi incredulously repeated.
"You government agencies train with dummies and simulations. Nothing like the real thing. So when your agents get out there, you're not prepared for the real world. Once we get up to higher levels, us Alices train with the real thing, then we're prepared for the real world." Mikan explained.
"So who is she?" Narumi asked curiously, "The Princess?"
"Like I said, I don't know." Mikan looked up at him. "I thought she was Aoi Hyuuga. I thought they were training her, and that they were finally going to use her for something."
"You thought?" Narumi quickly caught on to the past tense.
"I found her at Cornell. Aoi can't be the Princess." Mikan looked down. "Maybe it's someone I knew as an Elite, maybe it's someone I've never met. I don't know."
"And you're going back to the Alices to find out?" Narumi asked dubiously.
Mikan bit her lip, contemplating. Finally, she told him, "I think she's trapped in the Alices. I think the Master's got a leash on her, just like me."
"You're not trapped yet." Narumi disagreed. "Not if you escape now."
"That's what Kazumi said." Mikan shook her head, smiling grimly. "Narumi, I'm not running away."
Narumi groaned, "No, Mikan - please -"
"You can't convince me otherwise." Mikan interrupted firmly.
After a dejected sigh, Narumi softly let out, "You're a lot like Yuka, you know. Always sacrificing herself for others."
"That fucking-" Mochu looked at his teammates, "he's just gonna admit defeat like that?"
"He didn't even try to really convince her!" Kitsuneme protested.
The others, though agreeing, shushed them as the tape continued.
Mikan neither agreed nor disagreed. She only quietly confessed, "I didn't know she was my mother, or he was my father. They were just my teachers. They never told me. They never told me about my uncle, Kazumi, either."
There was a moment of silence, where Narumi let out another sigh. This one more sad than anything else. "There's more, isn't there?"
Mikan looked up again, as if to say, 'so now your read minds?'
"Please, Mikan, help me understand." Narumi begged.
"If I did run away, I couldn't have run away far." Mikan looked up, as if to reminisce. "I would've been running to UK and the Alices headquarters there."
"What?" Narumi was caught off guard by that one.
"Yuka." Mikan made eye contact with the senior agent. "She was sent on one last mission -"
He knew where she was going with this. "Mikan - no - you know she couldn't have come back from that - Mikan - She's -" he had a hard time saying it himself, but he'll do it for her, "she's dead, Mikan!"
Mikan shook her head in denial. "But there has to be a reason - Yuka couldn't have just been assigned that mission - I looked and Master had nothing to gain from sending her there! It was not connected to any other mission and there was nothing she had to retrieve -"
"Of course there was nothing to retrieve! He didn't want her to come back! He was sending her to her death!" Narumi argued as their voices rose.
"But why?!" Mikan matched his raised voice. "Why, all of the sudden, did he want her to die? Why, all of the sudden, did Izumi - my father - die? In the same month! They had a reputation and they were important in the Alices. They were teachers of the Alice Academy - in fact, after they were gone, Alice Academy suffered for two years and finally shut down without them." She lowered her voice, and with conviction, she said, "there has to be a reason."
"You're going back to hell just to chase ghosts, dig up graves, and turn over stones not meant to be turned over." Narumi shook his head, "please, you don't need to do this, Mikan."
"I do." She nodded firmly, "and I want the team to be out of the way and safe when I do."
The team was startled by a loud thud when the screen blackened, and turned to an angry Natsume. Throughout the progress of the tape, Natsume had stood up, paced around with clenched fists, and finally, at the end, proceeded to punch the nearby wall.
Mochu was also miffed, crossing his arms. He exclaimed, "Her damn hero-complex! She don't need to save the whole damn world! We could fucking find out about her parents with her - out of the way my ass!" When the room was quiet, he looked around disbelievingly, "we're not going to just stay low, right? Right, guys?"
No one answered.
"She was right." Koko shook his head. "She didn't want us to know because if we did, we wouldn't do what she wanted us to do."
"She went to all that trouble to get us safe." Anna leaned forward, looking at the rest of the team seriously. "If we just show up and helped her then what she did would've been in vain."
"You remember what she said about the costume designer, Ephemelda?" Yuu added onto Anna's argument. "Their master killed somebody just because she slowed down a mission by five minutes. If we -" he paused, shaking his head. He decided on a different approach, "we're her mission. If we show up, that means she failed her mission, and who knows what her master will do."
Nonoko gasped, horrifically voicing, "he might kill her, right then and there."
Koko mumbled in a small voice. "She did all that for us. The least we could do is honor it."
Mochu looked at his team members with a slack jaw, then he turned to Natsume. They all turned to Natsume.
Natsume didn't want to back down. He didn't want to run away like a coward.
But what could he do? What was there to do?
They were defamed in America, they were publicly dead, and they had absolutely nothing.
He looked around the room. He looked at Hotaru's weary face, the many bags under her eyes from not having slept for the past forty eight hours. He looked at Koko and Kitsuneme's crushed spirits, no longer the cheerful jokesters that they were. He looked at Mochu's tattered baseball cap, the only thing he had left to distinguish his quirky personality. He looked at Anna and Nonoko's pleading expression to save one of their own by calling in defeat. Finally, he looked at the wise Yuu, who smartly let nothing show on his face but respect and loyalty for whatever Natsume may choose to do.
With a tone of finality, he finally spoke up, defeated, "we honor her stupid fucking wishes."
That night, they left, traveling first by foot. When they got to the city, they stole a few cars and got far, far away. Far away to Nevada. They stopped at a trailer lot. They'll blend in there. They took two trailers, promising its former owners the two cars they stole.
By the time they settled down, it was night. They tapped into their limited supply of food they had stolen from a food truck that passed by earlier.
They had been reduced to this. Living like savages.
That night, Natsume sat outside their temporary home.
Natsume had never felt so helpless. His very own sister, one that he couldn't find for so long, finally, he knew her whereabouts. Finally, he struck gold. Thanks to the other love of his life. Both under the same man's grasp.
He swore he would protect them both. And now, Natsume scowled bitterly, look how the tables have turned.
With strength and determination he didn't know he had, Natsume looked at the sky, "I'll find you."
A shooting star flitted across the sky.
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Somewhere very far away, Mikan felt a tug in her heart. She shoved the feeling to the back of her mind as she stood before the Alices, now one of their own.
"Welcome to the Elites, Mikan Sakura." A soft female voice echoed through the dark room. "Or should I say, welcome back."
Mikan knew the woman before she had to take off her hood. Maybe she's always known, deep down in her guts, she just couldn't believe it. So this is what happened to her childhood best friend. They were both trained to be killers since birth.
Mikan greeted back, taking her hand, but instead, pulling it into a hug. "Sakura Kinomoto, the Princess, I should've known."
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A/N: As you can see, for this chapter, we delved into why Mikan did what she did.
This is the "season finale" of the story. Notice how there's more questions that popped up than answers, so stay tuned for my sequel.
Much appreciated if you'd..Please, please comment below with your idea of Mikan's codename for my sequel! All ideas - good, bad, joke or not - are welcome! C'mon, am I gonna judge? No. But I will respond.
A special thank you to those who reviewed or will review. Thank you all for reading and participating in my journey to unleash imagination!