At the rear exit of the airport, Drake was delighted to see a cab waiting for him. When he enquired about it, the pilot said that he had one of the crew radio ahead to have one waiting. Drake bowed, and then shook the man's hand, covertly slipping Y1,000 into his pocket. Getting in the cab, the driver turned to him and asked Drake where he was going. Without thinking, Drake told the man to wait, so he could make a phone call. Dialing quickly, Drake got hold of the chief, and told him where he was. The chief said for Drake to go to HQ and wait for him there, so that they could discuss the case. Drake confirmed, and told the driver where he was headed. Five minutes later, Drake was standing in front of the Tokyo police station, waiting for the chief.
While waiting, Drake decided to call the customs agent, and have the packages waiting for him delivered to his hotel room. When the agent asked for his claim number, and Drake gave it to him. The agent laughed when he told Drake that he had already been ordered by the Chief of Police to do that already, and gave Drake the official address of where he was staying; it was one of the only Hilton Hotels in all of Japan. With a grimace, Drake thanked the man, and hung up.
"How on Earth am I supposed to afford this? I hope that someone else is picking up this tab..."
Not long after his phone call, the chief pulled up in one of the cruisers. The thing about it that Drake didn't understand, was why he was in a suit and not his uniform. Then, with a shock, Drake realized that the Chief he had talked to those years ago, had become The Chief! He was the new head of Tokyo police that Drake had read about in the paper on the plane He was glad to see that the years had been kind to the Chief, because even their brief meeting had given Drake a lot of respect for the man. He hoped that the Chief would recognize him under all his hiding, and impulsively wiped off the makeup to be sure.
The man stopped and bowed to Drake. "Drake, we meet again. It is a pleasure to see you, I just wish that it were under better circumstances. Please, let us go to my office."
Drake returned his bow, and said, "The pleasure is mine. I am glad to see that you have progressed through the ranks of the force. I'm expecting to hear how it happened."
With a grin, the man told Drake that he would hear of that, if he wished."Although I would prefer to get the case out of the air first. It is a most troubling subject."
"Of course. This place is yours, so we will conduct this in a manner that is fitting for you."
The Chief laughed and showed Drake into the building, and then to his office, where they could share stories and discuss what needed to be said. On their way, though there was a few things that the Chief wanted to speak with Drake about, including his call earlier in the week. It wasn't the call that he was interested in, though, as much as it was the timing of said call. He brought this fact up to Drake, who began to laugh outright.
"Aye, you'll have to forgive me, Chief. I try to keep tabs on my contacts so that I'll have a heads up if there is trouble. I just happened to look in on you at the exact right time." Drake had been chuckling through out his explanation, but he stopped suddenly, as if humor itself had just been murdered. He began to look about the elevator car as if it had grown in size, and that is when the Chief even registered that something was very, very wrong. He began to glance about the car, in hopes of seeing what Drake could not, but neither could he spot the exact center of the problem. He could feel it emanating from the very walls of the car, as if there was a great fan that was blowing fetid air directly into the car. Drake began to flush with anger, and the Chief could feel an even more palpable force begin emanating from the large man beside him.
"Drake, what is it? Can you tell me what's wrong so that I might help?" he asked, hoping to calm the Irishman down. This sudden bout of anger that was welling out of Drake reminded the Chief of one of the things that Drake had told him on the night they met: "If I ever seem to begin getting angered at a single place; if you can feel the very air itself; start to sing. One thing that I am not proud of is my temper; if it gets the better of me, I tend to lash out, physically as well as mentally. My mother refused to allow me to even come home if I was in a pet. She'd make me go walking on the moor so that I would destroy nothing but a few trees; in the house, I was likely to bring the very roof down on our heads."
The Chief had no idea what to sing, so he began with one of his favorite Karaoke songs: When Irish Eyes are Smiling. He had only gotten past the third line when Drake suddenly stopped and looked at him. He was still very red, but his anger quickly abated into laughter. The Chief, embarrassed, asked Drake what in the name of Buddha what was so funny. Drake looked at him, tears streaming down his face, and said, "I've heard many a man sing that song, but never had I heard it sung so well from anyone that wasn't kegged!" The Chief blushed even deeper, knowing that Drake meant his comment as a compliment, and his blush made Drake laugh all the more. His laughter seemed to diminish the force that was flowing around the car, and soon the Chief was also laughing; not from humor, but for the simple release it brought.
When the elevator chimed their stop, Drake's laughter slowly ebbed into awe, as he found that the entire upper Suite was the Chiefs office. Taking in his surroundings, Drake wandered the room; the Chief, however, took his customary seat behind his desk. Looking at the name plate Drake was finally given a name to address his companion by, instead of calling him "Chief" as did his subordinates.
"Chief Tsu Aramai...a handsome name. Would I be too informal if I called you, Aramai-sama?"
"Drake...you honor me! Not only did you say my name properly, you knew the correct suffix in which to use! I am impressed!"
Drake laughed, and waved the compliment away. "Now, now...you needn't be so amazed. Did I not spend a week with you here on my last vacation? I called you 'Chief' because it was the only name I heard you addressed by; I did some studying before I came. 'When in someone else's home, it is best not to complain of their cleaning.' Is that not how the saying goes?"
"Hai, but you have the saying out of context. I think you mean, 'When in Rome...'"
To the amusement of Aramai-sama, Drake blushed, and nodded. Without addressing his correction, he asked Aramai-sama to fill him in on the last of the details that he was lacking. Drake knew about the fact that it was a Wendigo, there was an attack, and that it had its corporeal form destroyed. What he was looking for, though, was how many it killed, where they were killed, and if there had been an y suspicious packages, people or the such brought into the country before the attacks. In the back of his head, he thought that he had most, if not all, of the answers that he was looking for; he just wanted confirmations and further explanations on most.
Before starting, Aramai-sama asked Drake if he would like a cigar. Drake declined that, but when he was offered sake, he accepted with gusto.
"Well, Drake-san--"
"Just Drake, if you please. No offence, but the honorary suffixes sound like shit on my name."
"Of course! It is one thing when giving a man shit, but it is another if it injures their name. Before I continue, I have to ask: Is your brogue thick than the last time we met?"
Drake laughed, "Aye, that it is. I spent most of six months back home on vacation. I guess that I got so used to Gaelic, that my English got a bit rusty. Now, if you don't mind me asking, has your English gotten better?"
Now it was Aramai-sama's turn to laugh, "Yes, actually, it has. My son is in California studying business management, law, and police enforcement tactics. He chose your LA because he thought that they would offer him the best courses. Most of his letters come in English, so I had to be a quick study so that I could respond."
Both men shared a good laugh at that, and sat with their thought for a moment before carrying on with the topic at hand. Drake took another glass of sake, enjoying the warmth is spread through his body. "Better than Guinness any day..." he thought, and returned his attention to the topics at hand.
As the night turned to morning, both men found themselves still in Aramai-sama's office talking. Both had talked family, friends, and other endeavors, and as the sun rose, Drake became solemn. "You know, I think you told me just about everything there is for a one man to tell another. I think that it is high time that I tell someone my story. I'm sure that I told you some the last time we met," Aramai nodded. "Well then, here is my whole story. Just stop me if I lapse into Gaelic, I tend to do that when I'm drunk." Aramai said that he would, but he never needed to; Drake spoke directly to his mind.
"I was born and raised on the moors of Ireland. My father was in England looking for work, leaving my mother to raise the clann. I was raised during the last years of one of the many potato famines to creep through our area. My athair would send us home money every week so that we could have food, but our letters never seemed to reach him, so we could tell him that what he was sending wasn't enough. My big brother, Russ; Cyruss his name is, but we mostly called him Russ, took a job at a neighboring farm at 13 to help back the money that our father was sending, and it really saved us. As a kid, things were pretty basic, sleep, wake, shower, eat, shit, sleep. Day in day out, that was my routine. Until me thirteenth birthday, that is..." Drake took a pause, to take a drink, and started again after he drained his glass. "That was the day you could say shit really hit the fan for me..." As Drake was talking, his mind began to wander back to those times with a vivid clarity that he could feel. He knew that this was a memory induced vision, and hoped that he didn't scare Aramai-sama too badly if he could see it too.
Drake had been wandering the moors as he did so often at those times. His bloody head would get to throbbing so badly it felt like it was going to pop like a grape under a boot. He had a method for getting rid of his headaches, but today it just want working. He thought that his headaches were caused by the constant hounding of the poltergeist in their house, but he thought that some of it was stress, too. With his big brother at work on the neighbors farm, it was just him, his máthair and the new baby that had come after his athair visited last time. His headache was blocking most of his thoughts, but there was one that was constantly dogging him that week: On the coming Saturday was his brothers 23 birthday, and he had no way to gut Russ a thing. "Cac!" he swore to himself. "Is there no way for me to get anything? I have to be able to get a job somewhere!" This thought train was his mantra of the week. After his brothers birthday, it would return to, "Fucking potatoes. Damn headaches. SHIT!" as was almost a common for his thoughts.
He wondered if any of the local farms needed someone to slop out the barns. It was a job that he hated, but if it would make him a few dollars for a gift for Russ, he thought that he could live with the fact. If there was something better he would take it, but he thought that shit work would be the only thing he would get. If he wouldn't have had to sell his bike, he could've rode to town to see if there were any of the shops that needed a cleaner, someone to unload the trucks, or something in that vein. But, he did sell his bike, and he couldn't ride into town, so it was off to one of the local farms to look for work. He thought that he should try to get on at the farm with Russ, but he was afraid that he would cause Russ to loose money if he did. "Off to MacLeod's stead...Damn but I hate that drunken bod."
Drake's dislike for Joseph MacLeod stemmed from a fight that happened between him and Russ over the matter of $80. Joseph blamed Russ for four of his pigs getting killed by a wolf that had gotten into the barn through an open door. After he beat the bejesus out of Russ and took the money, it was found later that Joseph himself left the door open after a drinking run that ended with him in barn after his wife had kicked his "drunken useless ass" out for the night. While he never paid Russ back, when he showed up at MacLeod's shop he never allowed Russ to pay for anything related to the farm for the next several months. According to MacLeod, it was due to an overpay on the Masters farm tab; Drake and Russ knew it was him trying to ease his guilty heart.
Drake almost missed the path to MacLeod's home, being in a brown study as he was. With a shake of his head, mostly wondering if it was really such a good idea, he walked up to the front door. After knocking, he took a step away from the door, in case it swung out, like the one that brained him as a babe. As the door opened, "In..." Drake thought with an inner smile, he saw that it was one of MacLeod's daughters, Maura, that answered, instead of the Missus. He found that he had lapsed into thought over the fact when she asked him if he was, "going to stand there gaping or come in."
With a laugh, Drake walked into the foyer, as it were, and asked about Mr. MacLeod's whereabouts. "I could really give a high squat about where that addled fool is." was the response he got. Gape mouthed and lacking reply, the young woman continued. "My cBpraid athair has been out on the moor for more than a day. We can hear the truck now and again as he comes to the barn for supplies, but he never sets foot in the house. Mother went to look for him this afternoon, but she hasn't come back yet...and I'm scared."
The sudden drop in her mood startled Drake, and his instant reaction was to try to comfort her. He shifted his weight and began to put an arm around her shoulders, when she crumbled into his chest, crying. Startled, but not stupid, he put his arms around her and began to talk to her; much like his máthair did when his little sister was hurt. His words worked, though, and she calmed under his hands; soon her tears lessened to sniffling, which subsided to nothing. She pulled back a bit to look at him, and his head began to fill with heat, like when his migraines came. He apologized, and went outside to clear out his head. She followed him, felling that she should because he had helped her. Sitting next to him on the rail, she could feel a moderate heat radiating from his body, as if he was deep in fever. She knew he wasn't though, because the heat hadn't been there as he held her.
For Drake, her sitting so close mad the heat in his head worse, a phenomena that he had no explanation for. Suddenly, an unbidden thought shot into his mind. "It isn't me...it's her! I'm feeling her sudden want for me!" As soon as he gripped this thought, all of the heat left his head and traveled...south. They turned to each other at the same instant, and Drake then found himself lost in the heat of he kiss. His mind filled with thoughts, some of them from the stories his brother had told him about some of the women in town. The heat began to climb, when she suddenly took his hand and tugged him to the left of the house and he followed, curious. She led him, after a check of the path ahead, to the barn, and then to the hay-loft. He paused as she climbed, thinking, "Is this me? This beast of heat and lust?" He told the thoughts that he was, when her had appeared over the edge of the loft, her slip in hand. When he got to the top, he was struck by her scent(as his mind insisted it was, and would forever after), and then was lost in the heat of their renewed kiss...
Drake awoke sometime later to the yelling of Joseph, and could initially not remember where he was. Then he saw Maura sleeping with her head on his chest, and both of their clothes in a pile beside them. The thought of what had transpired brought the heat back into his body, but he willed it away, knowing that Joseph was prob'ly looking for his daughter.
"Damn it, girl! You was supposed to have dinner ready when I got here! If yer hidin from me you had best show yourself afore I get more angry than I am!"
Drake nudged Maura awake, and began to carefully move for his clothes in the same moment, when he heard Joseph's yelled, "Got ya!', from below. Knowing that there was little chance for escape, Drake decided to take what he had coming, but kept running the thought, "Don't find us!" over and over. Joseph got to the top and looked directly at both Drake and Maura, and then climbed back down! Hearing the man leave, Drake let his breath loose. "I don't know how he missed us, Maura, but he did." She grinned at him, much as she had earlier, and kissed Drake reaching down and helping the heat find where it was meant to be. They then enjoyed each other again, purely in celebration that they would live another day.