Coffee Fumes

Togusa sat still as across from him, a heavily clad figure seated himself. A pair of perpetually seeing eyes gazed at him from a small gap between hood and collar.

'I heard about your ordeal after the incident,' the voice came in his mind. Togusa winced mentally, feeling crowded inside of his head, alloyed metal and flesh of his brain whirring silently to accommodate the extra data. Leave it to the Laughing Man to peep with such abandon.

"I wouldn't have expected less of you," he replied, looking down into his coffee. It was difficult not to show how unnerved he was by the sudden street-side café ambush.

'It must have been hard,' the boy mused introspectively. Or maybe extrospectively. It was hard to define things like that with the master hacker. Especially with the nagging distraction of someone's mind in his head. 'You know, they asked me to join them.'

"I see you turned it down," Togusa noted unnecessarily.

'Yes. I'm use to working by myself,' the Laughing Man shrugged. The Section 9 member looked out across the unseeing crowd. Nobody noticed the parka-wearing body sharing a table with the mulleted former prisoner.

"So what happened, anyway?" Togusa asked. "Did the Major really impersonate you?"

'There are always people impersonating the Laughing Man,' the hacker replied enigmatically, getting up again to leave. Togusa blinked.

Just like that, he was gone.

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