Chapter 9

When Kudo first heard the muffled whir of an approaching helicopter his face had been pressed to the glass of an office on the 29th floor. The glass panes stretched floor to ceiling and he was trying to get a glance at the little slivers of exterior glass between rooms and floors of the building that would be very difficult to see from the inside. By the time he located an irregular black box adhered to the glass in one such spot, the vibrations humming against the window panes had grown more distinctive, more clearly the chop of helicopter blades rapidly growing closer.

The curious sound pulled him out of his investigation somewhat; so before Kudo tried to locate any more unusual boxes on the exterior glass, and before Kudo moved to confirm the nefarious nature of the box he had found, he dialed Sonoko.

"Hey, you're not expecting any late night helicopter landings here are you?"

"No, we're not." Sonoko's voice answered, somewhere between boredom and annoyance at the number of questions he'd posed regarding her work tonight. "Not to mention there's no way one would be cleared to land on a building with window cleaners at work. Why?"

"That's what I thought," Kudo mused to himself.

"Hey, Shinichi, hey," she nagged, "Why do you ask?"

"Would you and Elaine meet me at your office?"

"Sure," Sonoko intoned, still plainly annoyed, "let me just get her out of the bathroom." Kudo waited through the static shuffling of Sonoko walking over to the bathroom and the weak groan of opening stall doors. "Uh, Shinichi?"

"Yeah?"

"I may have been too harsh before, when I said you were going to be an overbearing father," Sonoko announced, her voice backed by a mechanical thrumming audible now on the top floor where the lounge was located.

"After all the times I used that same ruse, I can't believe you fell for it."

"Shut up, where do you think she ran off to?"

They were possessed then by a unison of thought; foreboding and unshakable.

"The roof."

...

The noise from the approaching helicopter had been just one of the many complaints Elaine lodged in her attempt to get Touma to take her back inside. There was very little left in their immediate surroundings that she hadn't voiced a complaint about. Even stuff that didn't bother her, to the point she'd moved on to include some things that weren't even true. The air was too cold; the ground was too uneven; there were too many bugs out here; the harsh lights hurt her eyes, and even the wind was bothering her.

She figured the best way to hide the fact that she was suspicious of Touma's intentions was to pretend as if she wasn't. And since she wasn't going to act afraid of him, there was really no reason she would listen to his directions when they made her uncomfortable. He didn't seem that much older than her, certainly not enough older that he could tell her what to do.

Finally fed up with waiting on this unsatisfactory patch of roof, Elaine sulked her way over to the metal stairs and began to clomp down them.

"But they said they're coming here, so shouldn't we..." Touma tried to put in: a deaf protest to her growing tantrum.

"But there is only one access door, right?" Elaine didn't wait for him to follow but still heard the telltale clangs behind her. "We can't miss them if we wait right by it."

"Well I suppose-" He had nearly reached the bottom rung of stairs as Elaine came up on the door.

It swung open before her, and her chest lifted with the thought of her rescue. She was so sorry, she would have to tell her Uncle Kudo that she was so so sorry. The thought was a growing chant in her head as Elaine lunged at the first long pair of legs that came through, wrapping them in the kind of hug that was sure to show him how sincere she was about it. She pulled in breath to let out all her overlapping thoughts of apology, but it caught in her throat in what was more likely to become a sob than a word.

"Oh, excuse me," a man's voice she did not recognize said above her, an apology for their contact like it was his mistake. Pure terror shot through her. She startled back from the stranger, quickly checking the now three faces who'd passed through the door. If any remaining part of her still hoped for Uncle Kudo to meet her here it was squelched now.

She jumped at the sound of the door snapping shut, not from its own weight but from the last of them slamming it back with the heel of his boot.

"Touma," the tallest of them called out. He was the only stranger among the three who seemed like he might be familiar, not like someone she knew, but like someone she'd seen in passing. "Your older brother sent you on quite the errand. But don't worry, we've got it from here, we'll make sure she gets into the right hands."

"Yeah, he did. Yeah, I'm sure that's for the best." Touma blurted quickly. He didn't sound as certain as he claimed; or at all. And his shoulders were all bunched up by his ears

"You must be the young miss everyone's been looking for then. Pleased to meet you," he greeted her, "you've been quite a lot of trouble to track down, you know."

Elaine didn't like the feeling of this tall stranger one bit; even if he sounded like the man at the front desk of a hotel, the kind of man who didn't really know how to talk to kids, but really gave it a lot of effort anyways. It wasn't that exactly, and it wasn't just that Touma seemed afraid of him. It was something else, something creepy like the spindly legs of a bug on her back.

Elaine didn't respond to his greeting, she didn't even nod. She glanced at Touma, finding he hadn't moved from the bottom of the stairs either.

"Are you alright?" He asked, still to no response. His unnerving smile wound its way through his audience settling on Touma. "Does she speak Japanese?

"Usually just when I annoy her," Touma supplied, too awkward a jest to really be funny

"Hey!" Elaine protested, her outrage breaking through her terror. "That's not fair, you were causing a lot of trouble.

The tall stranger chuckled, "seems you're right about that. In any case, you should be on your way. Like I said before, we'll take things from here."

"Yes, right." Touma scurried across the dark recess of the roof toward the door, his eyes hardly straying from his feet.

"Shouldn't we all go inside, to wait?" Elaine chanced, fighting the oppressive feeling that had settled around her

A warning flashed in Touma's eyes as he passed her.

"No," a hand, hard and demanding clutched over her shoulder, "this is the meeting point after all. It's where you're expected and we shouldn't go running off any more than we already have, right?"

His squinty smile reprimanded her, a razors edge from rage.

Elaine nodded, pretending to be cowed at his words, and started back in the direction of the stairs. The iron grasp released her arm just as she heard the automated lock on the door slide back.

The sound of it set her off like the shrill of the referee's whistle at kick off. She scrambled back to the door, ducking the tall stranger's grasp this time, and screeching, as if she may have been possessed, all the while.

The stranger closest to it snapped the door closed once again, even before Touma could pass through, and the one in the middle snatched her into his arms, not by her shoulders this time but around her mouth to muffle her wailing. Her still free arms flailed for any purchase, scuffing against the coarse brick and then catching a small insubstantial handle. Small as it was she clung to it with all the strength and determination of her nine years.

All told the little blue handle remained in her grasp no more than a second, but as the stranger wrenched her from it, the handle swung out.

An alarm a hundred times louder than any scream she could have made followed; only slightly muffled by the wall separating them from it. And then, not muffled at all as the lock on the door released once more.

The scream of the alarm; the pounding thwap thwap thwap of helicopter blades; her own rising panic which seemed to make a noise all its own like a drumming that only thumped faster and faster and faster; all of it competed for space in her ears. Loud and disorienting, but still only a backdrop as she thrashed against the arms encasing her; she kicked, and clawed, and squirmed, as they swung her about, and carried her up that flight of stairs, and toward the now overwhelming roar of wind and machine.

She was growing light headed from screaming against the hand clamped over her mouth, and soon she couldn't seem to scream at all. It felt like someone was giving the inside of her chest an Indian burn. She only really noticed the shiny metal side of the helicopter before her as someone slid the door open.

Mere seconds from being carried into the cabin, her whole body was wrenched toward the ground, in a jumble of limbs and pavement and a new ringing in her ears. But, at the same time, breath; air flooded her lungs, and she choked it down in gulps.

A bang that was, somehow, impossibly, louder than everything else had popped in her ears at the same time as the strange man holding her collapsed to the ground. Understanding came to her slowly as she pushed back from the man now clutching his shin instead of her. He looked rather like someone had kicked it when he wasn't wearing the proper guards.

Her head still swimming, she only remembered there were two other grown ups she should be running away from when a hand caught her arm and dragged her up onto her feet. She tried yanking free after a few paces, but at her first sign of resistance a large hand snapped across her face. It came as such a shock she only registered the harsh sting of it as her tears began to flow down her now burning cheek.

"Stupid bitch, you want to die?" The tall stranger threw her over a shoulder and began to run.

Her vision was once again a swaying blur of pavement, as the world around her fell to a chaos she couldn't make sense of. She wanted nothing more than to stop taking it in. Everything was too much banging, and shouting, and thwaping. Too much blurred pavement, and darting figures, and stinging tears. She was passed down from a height from one person's arms to another, and she didn't even think she fought it. And then her back was pressed against something cold and uneven, an arm across her chest to keep her there.

Elaine thought that she might have been there for some time, because the world began to make sense once again. The wall at her back was cinderblock, and had itty bitty craters in its surface. She found that it was just rough enough that it left tiny white scratches on her fingertips, but not enough to hurt. The night sky stretched on in a familiar infinity beyond the city, and the wind merely flirted with the ends of her hair and coat instead of rudely snatching at them. If she looked up above the cinderblocks she could see that sickly glow of the lights around the helicopter landing pad, but she didn't need to do that.

At some point the arm pushing her to the wall had gone. The man was still nearby, winding a rope into a loop around his hand and elbow. It was only then Elaine noticed the ropes tied from one pillar to the next all across this level of the roof, like very strangely placed handrails. And the ground, it wasn't flat like all the other levels of the roof she'd been on tonight, it was slanted.

"Twelve feet should do it." The stranger spoke through his teeth, and sliced a knife through the rope he had been coiling. "It'd be better if I could take the harness off Touma, but that's not an option."

Elaine glanced about to see who the man might be muttering to, but found only the two of them on this level. Just them, and the oddly placed ropes, and the city beyond.

"Alright," he said, and this time Elaine was sure he spoke to her. It sparked tears, immediate and involuntary even before he said anything of consequence. He sighed. "I'm making you a repelling harness. Hold still when I do, otherwise you could fall out of it when you really don't want to be doing that. Got it?"

She nodded shakily.

He knelt before her, and although her sight was blurred and stinging from tears, she felt him jerk the rope about her waist, tie a series of knots just below her belly button and pull the two ends between her legs, then to either side. She stumbled a bit as he pivoted her to face left and then right, cinching the rope tight to the back of both thighs. After a few more knots on her left side, he hooked a metal loop through the bundle of overlapping ropes below her stomach and it was over almost as quickly as it had taken them to discuss it.

"This next part might be scary. I would carry you if I could, but I'll be needing my own two hands for it as well." He attached a scrunchy cable to the metal loop at her waist and the other end to the closest rope handrail. "You'll be tempted to close your eyes or look off the edge. Don't. Watch your feet. Follow the line. Be quick. Most of all be quick. That's it. Oh, and don't touch the rope grab, it'll follow you on its own."

Before she had time for any questions, and really before he confirmed she understood at all this time, he walked again onto the slanted rooftop, this time with urgency.

When she didn't follow right away he turned to urge her on, "You can't go back up there, that's not what you want, right?" He pointed behind her, toward the sickly glow and sporadic banging still echoing above. "Come on then, I don't have time to hold your hand."

And again he turned and began to walk away from her and toward the edge, but this time she followed.

...

To say the firefight in the helicopter landing area hadn't gone to plan would be a grievous understatement. It had fallen to pieces from the first shot, and although that shot had been his, Gin really hadn't seen any way around that.

The imbecile carrying Elaine had been covering both her mouth and nose, and her body strained with the very dregs of its remaining fight. Gin had more than his fair share of firsthand experience with suffocations, and so had a feel for the more subtle cues of the process. But mostly, he just wasn't an idiot. His initial plan had been to wait for Elaine to be seated in the cabin so he could properly cut off their access to her, but whether the yakuza holding her was a sadist or just that incompetent, it wasn't safe to wait that long.

The severity of the disabling shot served as Gin's only compensation. A clean shot through his shin probably would have been sufficient to subdue him, but the special agony of severing his Achilles' tendon better suited Gin's mood.

It left Gin on the far side of the helicopter from where Elaine fell however, and relinquished his small advantage of surprise all at once. These obstacles he might have been able to overcome were it not for the rather untimely arrival of security personnel. Who were headed by an old enemy, taller now, and a full-fledged detective, but no less a brat.

What ensued was messy, as the uninvolved and uninformed became the dominant force. Chaos and confusion can be useful tools in a fight, but in this instance, they had played against him, as the new arrivals favored the would be kidnappers garbed in worker's uniforms over Gin who was trying to stop that attempt. Every step forward toward Elaine's yakuza assailants left him triply open to the group closing in on his back; every victory was steeped in allowing some vulnerability.

By the time Gin downed the first yakuza carrying her away he'd already passed her to another a level down, and men he had no inclination to kill flanked all sides of his would-be-cover.

Ridding himself of that predicament had cost time, most critically the time between when he first noticed an opening at the last remaining yakuza and when he was free to take the shot. During which time the yakuza made his way to the edge and strapped Elaine and himself to the repelling rig there. Gin held only a handgun, his beretta. The shot would be risky with a rifle; it was downright foolish with a mere handgun.

By then they weren't the only ones on that level of the roof, Kudo had found a way down as well and nearly slid with reckless abandon across the sloped surface toward them. But he was nearly as far away then as Gin; merely in length instead of height.

The yakuza sat with Elaine on the very edge and prepared to step off. Out of time, and out of options, Gin willed a steady hand and precision he supposed may have made him a fine surgeon in another life

But mastery of a skill was found only in practice, and in this life that was here. His finger on the trigger of a gun, this gun.

The man tipped back, the back of his skull no doubt in pieces. Gin could only thank fate that he hadn't tipped over the edge and taken Elaine with him. The equipment would have prevented a large fall, but Gin doubted dangling with a corpse was anyone's version of unscathed. It was bad enough that she would have to face the sight just behind her. Gin watched Elaine turn back with agonizing slowness, wishing he could have spared her from it. But, impossibly, someone did stop her, a neon arm caught the light as it reached up from the edge of the roof and stopped her from twisting to look properly behind her.

Then a little neon hood popped over as well, a very little hood. Gin had never even noticed another child on the roof until that moment. His only guess was that the kid was already down there, or had otherwise edged his way around the perimeter of the landing pad area, just over the lip to remain out of sight.

Kudo was nearly to them now, but it didn't seem to matter as Elaine and the mysterious neon-clad child dropped over the edge, leaving behind the disconnected corpse of what should have been the final yakuza kidnapper.

author's note: hey guys, hope you're doing well in these crazy times. Okay, so the next chapter is written and will be posted tomorrow evening. i'm just trying to avoid the confusing double posting thing. Anyways, get ready for the Gin Sherry reunion! (it's about time, I know).