Despite the fact that he was a fresh-faced lanky disheveled man, there were very few people who would get in Rin Yun Quan's way when he was fuming. It wasn't just the stigma that having a Chinese name and heritage meant that you were some sort of martial arts ass-kicker, either - Most of the employees at the ISSP headquarters had either seen or heard of Rin's various exploits when his temper was pressed. He cut an almost comical figure as he slammed the door to the ISSP Special Terrorist Response Unit's office open. His dark brown hair was tussled and wild, and his golden brown eyes were aglow with a wild sort of rage that his calm face did well to hide. His voice was smooth and low, one of the many warning signs of what could rapidly degenerate into a severe frenzy.
"Who was it?" Rin asked calmly, eyes darting this way and that through the small enclosed area that served as his workspace. "Who was the Cowboy?"
"Glad to see you, too." Guy responded with a low grunt. The over-weight officer had a knack for recognizing his companion's moods, and adjusting his own mood fittingly. His mustache twitched in just the sort of way that annoyed Rin the most as he sought to direct all that anger towards himself, a target he knew Rin wouldn't unleash on. "And nice work with the survivor, too. He probably didn't need that foot."
The mostly abandoned office was only a collection of file-cabinets and two desks, sloppy and poorly lit. Besides he and Guy, there were only three others in the room, two of which didn't even belong there. All of them stayed the hell away from Rin as he descended upon Guy like a hawk. "Who? I'm not screwing around, Guy. I want to know who the hell that was and how the hell he knew where we were."
Sighing with the classic irritability the old felt towards the young, Guy jerked his thumb back to the office behind him. "Ask Browley. He wants to talk to you, ASAP."
Rin didn't need much more inclination then that. He marched straight into Browley's office. It was meticulously well kept with a strong inclination towards anything of historical significance - several old world guns including a classic colt .45 revolver were mounted atop of the wall, along with a model 1800s era train. Browley himself was a classic pencil-pusher, although the small balding man with glasses had more fire in him than most people were aware. He hardly even glanced up from his paper-work as Rin stepped in. "Sir."
"Rin..." Browley focused his gaze on him, and Rin instantly saw that something was distracting him. Something bad. "Rin, have a seat, please."
Rin hesitated. He consciously chose the harder route. "I'd rather stand, sir. Do you know who that Cowboy was? The one who-"
Browley cut him off with words that sliced through Rin's own calm menacing tone like a sharpened knife. "Clarissa's dead, Rin."
First there was only shock, a sense that he had heard Browley wrong. Immediately after a sense of irritability that Browley would say something like that. It was only after a few seconds that the full impact of what his commanding officer had just said hit Rin like a brick wall.
"Wh... what?" Rin struggled for words, the facade of calmness melting beneath a look of confusion and bewilderment. "Sir? There must be some mistake. I just talked to her two hours-"
Again, Browley cut him off. "There was an explosion, downtown, at Rockefeller Square." He carried himself with the same sort of grim dignity that a funeral mortician did, and despite Rin's fondness for the man he found himself unable to feel anything more than a throbbing hatred for the man. "It happened just a little less than an hour ago. Over eighty people died..."
"You couldn't know so soon after an accident." Rin instantly retorted, features narrowing into strict and violent anger, anger towards Browley, anger for assuming the worst so quickly. Browley just shook his head with the calm patience and sadness of a man who had done this a hundred times before.
"Her body was one of the first identified. One of the medics on the scene recognized her, and called me personally. Rin, I know this is hard, but-"
This time it was Rin who cut him off. The length of his fist slammed down into the center of Browley's desk like an anvil. No longer was his rage hidden beneath a calm exterior. His face was contorted in the purest of emotions, fire burning in his blood. "Tell me what the fuck happened."
Even Browley, for all his years of experience, felt a slight ebb of fear at Rin's sudden pure rage, but he pushed it aside as he continued to speak in that slow and paced style. "We don't know details yet. She was working on her current case, the one with the murders down at the wharf. She got an anonymous tip, and drove there herself with Frederick... Frederick's alive, but in critical care. They don't expect him to make it out the night." Browley sighed and quickly worked to take Rin's mind off of the tragedy, to try and get him to focus himself on something else. "Rin, do you know if she has any family? Anyone who needs to be contacted?"
Rin's anger began to diffuse itself, finding nothing but sympathy surrounding him. With nothing to destroy or focus his hate upon, it quickly began to drift into fear and pain. "I..." He leaned away, taking a step back. "No, no one. Her mother died last year. What..." His frantically searching mind caught onto something to focus upon, and he dove into it with the frenzy of a pirahna. "You said an explosion. What kind of explosion?"
Eager to help Rin think of something else, Browley reciporcated. "We don't know, but we suspect it was the act of a terrorist of some sort. We're getting details on the anonymous tip, it might have been linked. Maybe whoever iced Craggscleft's boys knew what was going down and when, and decided to take some of the heat off of themselves."
"I want to investigate." The deliberacy and determination in Rin's voice made Browley inwardly shudder.
"You need to take time off, Rin. Your friend just got killed. I'm not even letting you clock in for at least the rest of this week." Browley paused. "We're all here for you, Rin."
Rin was adamant. "We all handle our grief differently, Browley. I handle mine through work. Let me investigate, or I'll use the time you give me off to investigate on my own."
Browley frowned. He could order Rin to stay away from the investigation, even arrest him if he found him snooping about, but he knew how effective that would be in keeping Rin under cover. No, the best way to diffuse this situation was to give the kid what he wanted - and simultaneously keep him steered out of the way of the real investigation, so that raging temper of his wouldn't put a damper on their attempts to find out who the hell had been responsible. "All right, Rin. But you listen closely, and listen good." Browley leaned forward in his chair and eyed Rin with those hawk-like eyes. "You do this my way. If I hear about so much as a suspect accidentally bumping his elbow against your desk, you are not only off this investigation, you'll have to find a new job. Are we clear?"
"Crystal." Rin replied blankly, golden eyes devoid of anything that Browley could read. Somehow, he didn't think Rin got the point.
Frederick hadn't just been someone Rin knew offhandedly, he had been a friend. His picture was on his apartment wall, for Godsakes, along with Clarissa and Rin from when they had gone fishing last year. Seeing him in the ICU with more wires hooked up to him than a computer, half of his face resembling something you'd see in a tissue after blowing your nose in it, wasn't easy. Rin nevertheless took it in stride.
Frederick had all ready been interviewed by the police earlier, but he had been too exhausted to do much more than wheeze and fall asleep again under the all-embracing wonders of morphine. The doctor had been against Rin's presence in the room and eager to let Frederick get some much needed rest, but he changed his tune shortly after Rin had convinced him of the necessity of this with his fist. For all Rin knew, the doctor was now blissfully napping somewhere down the hall where Rin had stuffed him in a broom closet shortly after their very short and abrupt discussion.
"Hey, Frederick." Rin quietly announced his presence to the wheezing lump of burned flesh which had once been one of the few people he considered a close friend. "Guess things aren't working out so well, huh?"
Frederick's right eye, the only remaining one that looked any good, slid over towards Rin and seemed to recognize him. He blinked but made no sound, the only other noise in the room from the constant raspy breathes the nearby machines made for him. A slip of paper had been placed near his hand with a pen, where faint scribbles were collected.
Rin crouched down besides Frederick. "Frederick." His voice was direct and stark, a level of honesty and rawness uncommon for the often calm mask Rin wore. "I need your help. I need you to tell me what you saw. What you saw before the bomb went off."
Frederick blinked again, slowly, before his eye flittered down towards the piece of paper. His partially bandaged hand twitched as he began to write in a slow sloppy hand. ALBINO.
Rin stared at the word for some time before he looked back to Frederick. "An albino?"
The ICU erupted in chaos as several burly figures dressed in security uniforms slipped in, lead by an extremely irate doctor sporting a black eye. He murmured something to the two of them as they drifted into the private room behind Rin, both glowering menacingly at the slender tall man. He hardly gave them a glance. "Excuse me, sir. We're going to have to ask you to leave."
Rin brought his hand down reassuringly, touching the back of Frederick's. "I'll find him, Tommy. Just pull through this, and let me handle the rest. You hear?"
If Thompson Frederick understood what he was saying, he didn't look it.
