A/N: Yay! This is really getting good, and I am SO happy! Where to go next…..
Thanks:Shirubaa Kitsune, Shos-lady, Vera-Sama, Sakuraloveu, Notta Writer, seshygirl04, cryearthstearsfalltou, evil-pillow, Hoshi-Hiru.
Chapter X
"I believe this information will vastly help us, Cousin…" Kari said as she scanned the web for more information. "We now know how this man died….."
"He was killed, by a gun."
"Yes."
"But the killer was never found…."
"Sadly no…"
"Neither were the circumstances…" Ichigo sat down upon the bed. "That's called a cold case…"
"Correct."
The blonde girl thought about this. So Kitazawa was murdered. Gunned down…. He died so young. Tears formed in her eyes. But he's the key to saving my family….. "There's nothing more for us here, Kari, we have to return to Japan." Her cousin nodded eyes still on the screen. "We will, I've booked us a noon flight…." "The only lead we have now is, Sho…." "And my people." "Sho will find Yoshiki….." "Meanwhile, I'm finding out who this Yoshiki is…" Kari taped the keys a bit more. Ichi leaned over her shoulder. "Family tree?" "Mmmm…" "Can you do that?" "It's called hacking." "You can do that?" "If I try hard enough, its not one specialty I'm proud of…." The older girl sat back. "How fast can you have the information…?" ":It will take a while, this site's security is hard to crack…" She bit her lip and continued to type, trying various key words. "So what am I supposed to do…." "Why don't you check up on, Nakano…?" "Nah. He'd just snap at me. He's like that sometimes. Moody, you know. I think he's part female sometimes…" She lay on her belly and munched away at some more Pocky. Kari rolled her eyes. "Aren't you full yet?"
"Not really…"
She continued to snack.
Ichigo then flopped onto her back. "Tell me when you've cracked it okay…" She closed her eyes, Pocky stick still in her mouth. "Of course." The blonde fell asleep to the sound of incessant keyboard-pecking; to her it was a lullaby. The younger woman looked over her shoulder and frowned at the indecency of her cousin's skirt hiked up her thighs and her silky golden hair fanned over the top cover. No wonder that creep Yamamoto was after her—and every other horny guy. She sighed and resumed tying to access the site. Access Denied. "Kuso!" She swore and started over again. Her eyes scanned the screen. She had double checked and was extra sure this was the Kitazawa family they were looking for. Kari pulled over the picture of Kitazawa to her. It was black and white. Kitazawa was a decent looking man, he looked friendly. Uncle Eiri knew him… He was young way back then. Her eyes bore into the picture. What is their relationship? She refocused on the computer. Kitazawa's relation is the key now…. Only with him can we go forward. She snapped back to attention, attempting to hack into the system once more, her cousin's soft breathing in the background. "Let it be this time…"
"Ichi, wake up, wake up!" Ichigo was woken up to the urgent voice of her cousin. She came awake, sitting up abruptly.
"Yeah!"
"I'm in….I have to make this quick…" Kari hurriedly scrolled through the page, eyes scanning for the names Yoshiki and Yuki.
"Well, well!" She sounded like Shuichi, bouncing on the bed.
"I'm looking!"
"I'll help." Ichi leaned over her shoulder.
Kari grunted at her cousin's weight on her shoulders.
They looked together.
"THERE!"
The blonde shouted, jabbing her index finger at the screen. "There it is!" Kari's eyes shot towards where the elder girl pointed. "Yoshiki…" "And Yuki." "They're siblings!" they said together. Kari grinned her chilling smile. "Well, nailed that!" She looked eager and sounded pumped up. "Let's go to sleep…. That's as far as we can go for now…" She swept up after herself, making sure to cover her tracks she'd made when hacking in. Then she closed down her computer and set it on the table near her bed. Kari and Ichigo then went about their nightly ritual of putting on their night clothing. Ichi wore a kawaii blue two piece Pjs and was brushing her teeth when the other girl padded over to her in her cotton gown. She yawned then looked back to the dark sky and beautiful lights. "Hurry up, Ichigo…." "What's the rush?" She deliberately brushed her teeth slower. "It's not like we have an early flight…" "You're doing that on purpose." "Doing what?" She replied, pretending to look innocent. "You know what I mean." Ichi kept brushing and giggled, sounding very much like 'Aunt' Shuichi. "You're growing more bubble-headed the older you get, you know?"
"That only makes more to love about me!" She then spit in the sink, her hair braided for bed. "All done!"
Kari sighed. "That made no sense…"
Her cousin giggled once more and skipped out of the bathroom.
Kari sighed and began her own nightly ritual.
Ichigo jumped into her bed, pulling the covers up to her chin like she always did. "Pika pika, pika pika…….." She murmured as she proceeded to fall asleep again. Three minutes later her cousin joined her in the king-sized bed. "And stop with that pika pika nonsense…It'll keep me awake all night!" "It's how okaa-san rocked me to sleep you know that." "Go to sleep…" Silence. She looked over her shoulder gazed at her closed-eyed cousin. Ichigo was sleeping on her stomach just like her father. "Typical." She turned over to rest on her side.
Kari heard the sound of Blind Game Again in her head, and suddenly realized it was the ring tone on her cousin's cell phone.
That was how she woke up.
"Ichigo…" She shook her. "Ichigo!"
Giving up when her cousin did not awake, she reached over and answered the cell phone. "Moshi moshi." She answered, trying to wake up. "Ichi?" Kari frowned. "No, Nakano, it's the other girl. The one who's not Pocky addicted." "Oh. Is Ichi awake?" "No, but I'll wake up up anyway, she'll want to talk to you." She then began to prod and poke at her cousin's prone form. The older girl didn't stir for a while. She poked at her some more. "Ichigo!" she hissed in her cousin's ear." Wake up, noroi! It's Nakano." (1) "Wha…" She shoved the cell phone towards the other girl. "It's Nakano. Talk to him." Ichigo took the phone and murmured in a sleep drugged voice, "Yeah, Sho, what's up…" "I may have the information you want." She checked the clock. "That fast?" It was 2:30 am. "I said, I'd have it within 6 hours. I just cut it shorter than that is all." "Good job, Sho. What's the info?" There was tapping heard in the back ground as if one was tapping on a computer. "Kitazawa Yoshiki lives in Tokyo currently, lucky us…." Ichigo got excited. "That's great!" "No. That's luck." He retorted curtly. "Ever the pessimist…" "Better than being an optimist…" "Now, wait just a sec-!" "Chil, Ichi. Slow your roll, jelly." (lol)
There was a pause.
"As I was say, he's in-"
Sho stopped speaking, and suddenly he line went dead.
"Sho!" Ichi panicked. "Sho! SHO!"
Kyoto, Japan
Hiroshi Nakano set his son's phone down back on the cradle and frowned, Shuichi Shindou, Eiri Yuki, and Tohma Seguchi in the door of the young man's bedroom.
"Why did you not tell us you've been in contact with Ichigo & Kari, their parents are worried sick?" Hiro asked his son.
"Welll…"
"You're lucky your mother is visiting her parents at this moment."
"Well…."
"You better have a good explanation, Sho Nakano!"
"Well…"
"Please, Sho. If you know where my Ichi is, please tell us." Shuichi intervened looking concerned.
He sighed. "Ichi and Kari are in New York."
"Yes, we know that much…."
"But why?"
"I think I know why…" Tohma said somberly.
Yuki looked troubled, "You mean?"
His brother in law nodded. The girl's were digging up the past. Tohma was filled with dread, if Shindou found out what had happened, if his daughter or his niece did…He didn't think he could look them in the eye. He'd lost Mika; he would not loose the rest of his family. Tohma resolved to do something about it!
New York
The next morning the girls got up early and prepared themselves for their flight, packing up briskly. The two girls had breakfast downstairs in the restaurant first. Kari watched as he cousin ordered a big order of pancakes and sausages with bacon and biscuits. The young woman herself ordered lemon tea and steaming hot oatmeal. While waiting for their meal to arrive, she turned on her lap top and showed Ichi the information that had been sent to her computer via email. "You know I think we did pretty good, seeing as how we don't have Mr. K's connections?" Ichigo commented, grinning. "You mean a gun?" She muttered scrolling through the info. "Brutish American, the way he waves those firearms around like that." Many "Americans" looked towards the two Japanese girls. Ichi looked up and snapped. "What!? Haven't you people ever seen foreigners before? Sheesh! What rude people!" The brunette tried to hush her loud-mouthed intolerant cousin. "Senpai, sit down and be quiet!" She jerked the other girl into her seat by the sleeve of her tight, long-sleeved black blouse. "Sit!" "I'm sitting, I'm sitting. Sheesh! When did you get so bossy?"
Ichigo sauntered up to the room and found the bell hop who had showed her concern looking at her with hungry eyes. She dismissed this, turning her nose up as Kari followed. "C'mon, Kari-chan!" She called out, inserting the keycard into the door and opening it. Kari followed the other girl into it as they closed the door.
The boy had watched the Japanese girl in her tight blue jeans. She had a cute rear, and she didn't look Japanese, that was what was exotic about her. Japanese, yet not. He smiled perversely.
"Flight 205 is now boarding. Please have your proper identification out and your boarding pass out." Said the clerk at the counter.
Kari & Ichi rushed to it, hauling their small carry on items with them. "Did you REALLY have to stop at that Japanese market, we could have missed our plane!?" "It sold Pocky, and I was low…." The elder one whined. "So! You wouldn't have died! Now come on!" They approached the boarding podium. Intercontinental flights are a pain… Ichigo thought. "They wouldn't be a problem if you would hadn't had the cab make a detour…" Kari commented as if reading the other's mind. "I need snacks, Kari-chan." "You as well as I know you could have gotten those in Japan." (lol didn't mean to rhyme lol) She replied briskly passing the woman their boarding passes and I.Ds. She checked them out and nodded, smiling and telling them to have a nice flight. "You are such a baka, just like your "mother"." "There's nothing wrong with my okaa-san…" Ichi sounded miffed. "He's perfectly fine as he is!" Americans and some Japanese passengers looked up. The Japanese-Americans smiled understanding the word 'okaa-san' while the Americans just looked strangely at them. Tourists, she thought. The two found their seats storing their carrying-ons under the seats in front of them.
The blonde took a seat by the window.
Hopefully this flight won't seem like too long…. Kari thought as she looked out the window, waiting for the jet to take off.
Tokyo, Japan
It had taken them awhile, but the large Shindou-Uesugi-Seguchi-Nakano party (long huh) stepped onto the concourse of the international airport, looking when flights from New York were coming in. "Ichigo's my friend, Dad." Sho muttered. Hiroshi just glared at him. "Anyway, it's not like she told me to keep her secret, I chose to." He shrugged, pushing a hand through his short reddish-brown hair out of his blue eyes. "I didn't think there was much harm in it." Tohma sighed, looking at the schedule once more. "You were obviously trying to be a good friend to my little Blossom, so I see no harm done." "No harm done!" Yuki interjected. "Seguchi, are you out of your ever loving mind!?" "Eiri-san, as long as the girls are safe that's all that matters." "If they're safe..." "Yuki, don't say things like that!" The "little mother" sounded panicky. He walked away leaving Shuichi all anxious. He might've been grown up but inside he was still a baka that much Hiro agreed on with Yuki. Hiro patted his son's shoulder and stared out at the passer-byes. There were several flights out of New Yor- "Seguchi-san!" he called out to the president who stood nearby.
"Yes, Nakano-san,"
"If Kari had traveled out of the country wouldn't she have given the air lines your name?"
Tohma made a face as if this suddenly hit him. "You're quite right, Nakano-san. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier." He then immediately turned on his heel to have a talk with someone who could help them.
Shuichi watched the blonde disappear and approached his best-friend. "Hiro…Where's, Seguchi-san going?" "To get some answers." "Oh."
"Hey, Ichigo, wake up…" She shook the other girl.
The blonde had fallen asleep again, a box of Pocky sitting in her lap.
"Ichigo, wake up! I want to talk to you about something…"
The other came awake fitfully, the Pocky being thrown from her lap and scattering to the floor. "Oh no!" Ichi exclaimed bending to gather it as far as the seat belt would let her. "Forget it! This is more important, baka-chan." "What!?" Ichigo snapped, irritable. She had an ugly look on her face, it was a Yuki look. "What do you want?" "Well didn't we get up on the wrong side of the airplane this afternoon." She laughed at her own joke. The other just glared. It was obvious she didn't find it funny. "What?" she repeated. "I was just thinking about Yoshiki Kitazawa…." "What about him?" Ichigo said coming more awake. "Do you think he'd be willing to share his brother's secrets with us?" (2) "I don't know. I guess we'll know when we get there and ask him." "There is that, but there's something else that trouble me, Ichi…" "Hmmm?" "Sho's line going dead." Ichigo waved her cousin off. "It's probably nothing to worry about, Kari-chan, we just lost the connection is all…." "If you say so." "I do. Now let me get my Pocky…" She leaned over and started picking up her Pocky and putting them back in the box.
"Fine." Kari leaned back and closed her eyes, waiting to touch down in her homeland of Japan.
"Tou-san!" Ichigo shrieked practically dropping a Pocky stick from her mouth.
Eiri Yuki stood with his arms folded across his chest, looking quite menacing, and glaring at his errant daughter. "Well?"
He obviously wanted an explanation
"Um…." Shuichi appeared, looking a bit stern himself for a change..
One would have expected her "mother" to scoop her up in his arms. "Ichigo Hana Shindou-Uesugi, what do you have to say for yourself?" He was tapping his foot.
"Well-I-that is–you see…." She laughed nervously.
Oh boy am I in trouble…..
Next Chapter: Return to the Homeland
(1) Noroi: lazy
(2) Okay like I said to make it good they still think he's male, for any of you who have read vol. 9 of Gravi. Well you'll see…
A/N: TA DA! Isn't it wonderful!? I think so and I can't wait for your reviews!