Here, finally, is a 2012 world story, though its also really an AU. I hope it meets and even exceeds expectations.
She wondered the streets with his picture. Actually, it was a photo torn in half. She smiled bitterly and shook her head at the thought. Saki was so petty ...
She saw what he was doing tearing apart that picture of Tang Shen and Yoshi from when they were dating. It was the one she had taken for them, right before trying to kill Yoshi ... Saki had protected him then …
She shook her head again lips slightly parted and head bowed. She brushed a loose lock of hair behind her ear. A waste of money … That was what it had been to pay to have the son of the Hamato clan's leader killed by an assassin: the leader of the Hamato clan's real blood-son that is. Telling Saki the truth …
Her eyes stared ahead of her blankly. Her mind was filled with that fog that made her job more dangerous than it usually was. Yet, despite all this, she'd heard them behind her.
Their steps were heavy, really heavy. Their identical faces, forms, and suits only made them more obvious. What? Did they think themselves so great they did not have to hide?
She had asked a random person on the street if they knew who they were. That person had shrugged and said they'd seen them around, but never seen them eat, or go with a full basket into a laundromat, or even visit an ATM. That was odd information ...
A bit of mischief made her want to go down a dark alley and whip out her weapon if they followed and tried to corner her there, but instead she turned and waited. One identical form stopped, the other continued until he stood before her on the public sidewalk in front of many brightly lit places of business. It was late in the night, but not that late in the American city that never slept.
Her gaze swept over the figure in front of her. He seemed the perfect Grey-man. He looked so dull, part of her wanted to be bored in his presence. Her spine, though, was sending up shockwaves of warning. There was something too 'solid' about him. He was heavy, hard, and extremely cool.
In response, she gave him a bright smile with her heavily made-up face with bright-pink tones of blush, lipstick, and eyeshadow. She let the mischief inside her come out as she coyly asked. "Want me?"
"Kraang wishes to speak with you, if you are the one, who is known as the one who is looking for the one, who is known as 'Hamato Yoshi.'"
She blinked up at him. And she had been afraid "her" American English would be bad on this job? "Yes … I suppose I am.'"
"Kraang is also looking for the one, who is known as the one, who is known as 'Hamato Yoshi.'"
"Oh?" She hoped she sounded surprised. She was almost too 'actually' surprised by how he strung words together, to pretend convincingly she was surprised by the content of his words. She had a persona to keep up.
"Kraang is interested in the reason you are looking for the one, who is known as 'Hamato Yoshi.'"
She gazed up at him again with wide, hopefully seemingly innocent eyes. Again, she was trying to keep the real, confused and suspicious herself to herself locked behind a blank and innocent, baby face. The area between her sinuses hurt slightly now. Keeping up a persona in a country with a language and culture she had never done a job in before had been proving hard enough. This … this was a whole other level of language-puzzle to solve in order to communicate. And she also had to keep up her persona as she did so. She responded carefully thinking her character would be confused too. "I … was paid to find him … by his family." In a way that was true, Saki had called him his brother when he sent her. He had meant to be sarcastic and cruel at the time, but …
"If you find the one who is known as the one who is known as 'Hamato Yoshi,' please call Kraang."
The man handed her a card with a word, "Kraang," and a New York City phone number on it. That was it. The little business card was otherwise as plain and stark as the man's demand of her.
"Okay …" She had no intention of using it. Saki didn't share anymore. But she might as well attempt to get something out of this interaction.
She looked back up at this bland-looking, but strange-speaking man, and tried to ask her own question. She put on a "somewhat" innocent voice and a "somewhat" innocent expression (her persona wasn't too innocent after all.) She was just experienced and fake in a different way than the real her was.
Her character had been contacted by a loving brother who'd promised to pay her if she made his newly widowed and beloved brother feel very "welcome" in America. This question would seem completely normal coming from "that" girl. "Where did you last see him yourself, sir? And when?"
"Last week, in the abandoned train tunnels known as the abandoned train tunnels three blocks over, five blocks down, and one floor below us, when we are in this place that is known as this place that we are now."
She stared up and blinked at him again with that same blank, innocent face. "Okay …"
He turned and walked away from her. She relaxed slightly and allowed her eyes to narrow. He came parallel to the other man known as the man who looked exactly like him, who turned in the same direction as the man who'd approached her walked, and they continued to walk next to each other down the sidewalk. She turned and walked in the opposite direction ... for a while.
. . .
She dropped her hot-pink, fluffy, reminiscent of a tutu skirt onto the concrete roof of an apartment building. Then she bent at the waist to pull the light, clingy, black as ink material down to the matching shoes, so pliable and soft soled they almost might as well have been socks.
Her feet could take it. They were tough if not tougher than the soles of said shoes themselves. She dropped the wig on top of the skirt, but kept the hairpins holding her real hair in place. She finally pulled the mask of matching material over her head. She tucked the long part around her neck hiding every bit of her skin. She still hated how confining it felt around her throat, but she had been taught there were worse sensations.
She went to the correct rooftop someplace away from that where she'd stuffed her disguise and watched for him. There they were: Mr. Way-Worse-at-American-English-than-her and his double. She'd asked others if they knew where either of them ate, drank, or slept. No one, from the man who sold fresh fish still swimming in a tank to the man who sold snow cones on the street corner, knew.
She'd feared he'd be hard to track. Yet, he was like clockwork in where he passed on his daily and nightly walks. He didn't seem to sleep at all.
Yoshi had been as predictable in a normal way to someone trained like her. He had gone to the city his wife had wanted him to, half-way around the world, and there gravitated to places like his old home. Many in one such neighborhood had recognized him from the picture she'd shown around. She'd been so smug when even the person at the pet-store (the laundry-mat lady admitted to suggesting to him when he asked where she got her exotic bird) had recognized and given her info on him. From there, she'd lost him.
No one seemed to have seen him in over three weeks. Were these men to blame? These look-alikes? Had they scared him off? If they had, what would Saki want her to do to them? Had they given her all the info they could?
She followed the two grey-men to an alleyway where they met two more doubles. Was that the right English word now? She hadn't known identical quadruplets existed, or could plastic-surgery be involved? They all had the same voice, and atrocious way of stringing words together, which could "not" be that of the American English she'd studied before coming to this country on this job.
"Has the one, known as the one who is searching also, for the one known as the one known as 'Hamato Yoshi' and now 'the mutant rat' caring for those known as 'the four mutant turtles' agreed to help us find the one known as the one known as Hamato Yoshi, and now 'the mutant rat' caring for those known as 'the four mutant turtles', Kraang?"
It took some of her discipline learned through pain for her not to at least groan while listening to all this until the term "mutant rat" had come up. Mutant rat? That would explain some things if it were true. She had heard rumors of a sort of honorary member of The Association called in when no one else could do a job and The Association of Assassins didn't want to lose its reputation. He was supposed to be a mutant, but not a rat. And in one of those rumors, she thought she might remember … the word … "Kraang" coming up.
One of the men below was talking again. "She took the card known as the card with the phone number known as the phone number of Kraang, from Kraang, Kraang. Kraang believes this to be, that which is known as, 'a good sign.'"
Without the few gun-powder kegs of information lit in that exchange, she would been so bored by it. These grey-men addressed each other by the same name? And they all had the same face, body, and voice? "How" could they think "that" a good cover?
"Good. Then let Kraang return to the place Kraang know as 'Home.'"
And then, a pink, shining triangle large enough to be walked through appeared to their right and they all walked through it to disappear. Behind her black mask, her mouth dropped open. And if the rest was true …
A pang went through her heart. She felt her face contort in a way she hadn't thought it could. Yoshi …
God Bless
ScribeofHeroes