Joseph didn't sing.
Not at karaoke, not in the shower, and not when he was being questioned. He knew when to keep his mouth shut and, if needed, when to bite down on the cyanide tooth the government had so generously provided for him. He didn't think that this was going to be a cyanide tooth scenario, but then again he had been called an optimistic man before….by people who didn't know him at all but still. He liked to hope for the best and plan for the worst…and this was far from the worst.
The worst could have been President Suzuki himself leading him down the hallway.
It wasn't President Suzuki who was flowing close behind, no, it wasn't even Vice President Suzuki or any of the others. It was Minegishi, Shigeko's right hand…person. Right now their right hand held what looked like some kind of giant, carnivorous plant. It could have been a Venus flytrap but he assumed that Venus flytraps didn't have thorns for fangs. He also assumed that Venus flytraps couldn't hurt people, though he would have to try and look that up later. Much later. He did NOT want to learn firsthand what those things were capable of.
He lit a cigarette.
"Want one?" asked Joseph as he casually held the box out to them. They just glared at him. The effect would have been worse, maybe, if they hadn't been wearing a bright pink Sailor Moon t-shirt. Honestly with this difference in height, and weight, and the fact that he was naturally stronger than them to begin with….in a physical fight he knew that he would have won….but he could feel their aura. They were pissed. He knew why, he knew how it had looked, and there was no way to set them straight. No, he had not been sitting and drinking with Shigeko for any of the reason that they were probably thinking…but he couldn't exactly have gone and told them that he was a spy, now could he have?
He put his cigarettes away.
"Keep walking." Said Minegishi, getting closer to him. Not smart. He could have easily overpowered them, physically, if he had needed to. Hell, he could have lifted them if he'd needed to…but that plant kept the playing field even. He lit his cigarette. The smoke at the end turned a light pink. He could feel their aura crowding against his. He made an effort to look defensive.
He could turn offensive, if he needed to.
"Any particular destination?" asked Joseph
"Forward." Said Minegishi. If he had to fight them then…well, this was Claw and people got into fights all the time. Just earlier that morning someone had nearly bitten someone else's finger off over a stolen syrup cup. Claw wasn't exactly the center for peace and love that Shigeko was trying to turn it into. There were a lot of immature people here, mostly guys, and they fought….she would have been unhappy with him, though, Minegishi was her right hand…best friend. She liked that term better. Minegishi was her best friend and if he harmed a hair on their head, even in self-defense, that might have been enough to get him ousted from the inner circle…and he barely had a foot in it as it was.
He tongued his cyanide tooth.
He'd been interrogated before and it always started off like this. You got walked away from your cell, the longer the walk the better it was for building dread, and then they took you to either a very dark and unpleasant room or a very bright and nice room depending on how they were trying to break you. Minegishi seemed like the 'dirty room with a single light coming from a naked bulb on the ceiling' sort of person. Stories about them were legendary, though few. Apparently even Suzuki didn't like having girls doing his dirty work, or any real work at all. He wondered if Minegishi would have appreciated some solidarity from him, Claw was actually pretty hard to break into the upper ranks of if you were a girl and your name wasn't Suzuki.
He glanced behind him.
They glared. Probably not. Also they didn't like to be referred to as a girl…maybe if he pissed them off enough then they would call off whatever this was. This was something that they'd planned on their own. Shigeko didn't suspect him…right? It was so hard to get a good read off of her. She was just as bad as Suzuki. They were both pretty stone faced a lot of the time and they both said and did things that he was sure made perfect sense to themselves but none to the rest of the world. Like Shigeko's idea about reverse spaghetti and meatballs. How that was supposed to work he had no idea.
Maybe Minegishi did.
"So, did you hear what Shigeko's planning? Reverse spaghetti and meatballs. I don't know how she's going to do it-" said Joseph
"Do you ever shut up?" asked Minegishi. Ok, they weren't in any kind of a mood right now….though they were always in a bad mood. They could even be kind of explosive if they got pushed too far. Make them explode? He knew that they could destroy a body in less than ten minutes…and he knew that they were Shigeko's favorite. There was no way in hell that they were going to get even so much as a slap on the wrist for killing him…if they were planning on killing him…
But he would have killed him, too, if he was truly the kind of person that he knew people thought that he was.
"I like to talk, it fills the awkward silences, especially on long trips." Said Joseph with a practiced ease. As far as they knew that he knew he had no idea what they were planning. Maybe if he played dumb for long enough he could escape and then…and then maybe lay low for a little bit until some other kind of upper echelon drama captured their attention…that would have worked…
They stopped walking.
"Well then it's a good reason that we're here, now isn't it?" asked Minegishi. He had no idea where 'here' even was. He'd been led down the stairs to the lower floor and then walked deep down a barely used corridor. There were still posters from summer up, and it looked like someone had drawn on the walls, too. There were crumbs on the floor…he never had cause to come to this part of the building. He lived lower down with the rest of the foreigner squad. This seemed more like Awakened's quarters…
Oh dear God no…..
"Where exactly is 'here'?" asked Joseph
"That door back there leads to a storage room that even the Awakened won't go into." Said Minegishi
"Why? Is it haunted?" asked Joseph with a laugh. They just held eye contact.
"It's full of spiders, actually." Said Minegishi
"So you're going to feed me to spiders?" asked Joseph
"No, of course not. That would take too long. I'm going to cut pieces off of you and feed you to this plant in my arms. When I'm done with that then I'm going to leave your body here to rot. Then, the next time a man my age shows interest in Mob, I'm going to bring him here and show him what kind of fate awaits him." Said Minegishi. They held eye contact. Nothing. It was like they were talking about their weekend plans….he didn't let himself so much as sweat. He wasn't scared. If he got scared then that made him guilty and he had done a lot of things in his time, terrible things, but whatever it was that they were imagining was not on his list.
The things he did for this job.
He had been authorized to use any means necessary, and that included honeypot like means, but he was doing everything he could to avoid outright proposing such a situation but still leaving the door opened incase Shigeko even felt like something like that…but it hadn't come to that. He'd been pumping a dry well for a while now, apparently Suzuki had stopped telling her his whereabouts, and yes other information like Suzuki adopting Hatori was decent it wasn't what his handlers were looking for…but he hadn't crossed that line yet…
He poked at his cyanide tooth. It was better than a bomb in his chest.
"You're serious right now?" asked Joseph. Time, time, time…he had to buy himself some time. He needed to think of something…he could fight them…but that needed to be a last resort. A second to last resort.
"Yes." Said Minegishi. He watched them, studied them as best as he could in those few seconds, and he didn't get much. They were just as nonplussed as ever. Low current of hostility there but that was actually pretty normal for them. They were always pissed off about something….maybe if he came up with a bigger something….no, fighting fire with fire just kept the fire department in business…he didn't need to piss them off, he needed to wind them down.
He needed to get them to stop, just for a second, he needed to use something that they cared about….
"And you don't think that Shigeko is going to notice that I'm not there?" asked Joseph, with that same practiced ease. Their eyes widened a little at that. They took a step to the side…a weak spot. Shigeko. He could us this.
"I'll tell her you ran away." Said Minegishi, with their own practiced ease. They were actually trying to bullshit a bullshitter. They were worried about what would become of Shigeko if she, once again, dealt with the sudden loss of someone she cared about. Ran away…they should have known better. Shigeko had textbook abandonment issues. They were smart enough, or at least they should have been, not to make them even worse than they had to be.
"We both know that would devastate her. I mean after what happened with her mom, and now with the President, is that really going to be good for her?" asked Joseph. He leaned against the wall…there was a room on the other side. He could feel it with his aura. He exhaled again. He needed to get some ambient smoke in this corridor, enough to make a wall. Then he could bust through to the other side of this room and, if this floor was set up like the others, get could make his way either through the wall or even into the ventilation system. The vents were big enough for a man to crawl through, probably one of the President's design features. The man was obsessed with tunnels…Joseph wondered if he had ever envisioned someone using them for this.
"Shut your mouth." Said Minegishi quickly. He had them on the ropes. Good. Best case scenario he got them to drop this whole thing. Worst case scenario he came out of this with some cuts and bruises that he was going to have to see the healer about. It wouldn't have been so bad. He'd just avoid Shigeko until Minegishi got distracted, with Shimazaki back in town it was only a matter of time, and then he could rekindle his friendship with Shigeko and maybe, just maybe, get some information worth getting out of her.
It was a long game that he was playing but nobody had told him this would be easy.
"I'm just saying-" said Joseph, exhaling again. It was hazy in this hallway, now, a light pink sort of haze. He had imbued the smoke with his aura and, if he needed to, he could make a quick escape. They took a step towards him. He reached out and took some of the smoke in his hand, ready to harden it at a moment's notice if it came to that.
"Do you ever shut up?" asked Minegishi, coming even closer still. The height difference between them was more pronounced, now. They were only five-five after all, he was six even. He could have picked them up…that would have been the worst thing that he could have possibly done right now…he was putting too many of his own personal desires into this. His own anger. His number one priority was getting out of here alive, his pride didn't matter in the least bit….that plant was too close…he needed to react, not act. If he only reacted then it looked better. Priority two was staying in Shigeko's good graces.
He couldn't fuck this up.
"I'm just saying that she's been through a lot and the last thing that she needs is to lose another friend." Said Joseph. They were close enough that he could see their roots. Black. Barely there, strips of it, but standing out against the purple. He could feel the plant brushing up against the sleeve of his coat….he looked down…flecks of purple and black. It was beautiful, in a way, though he didn't have much time to look at it. He never had that kind of time, time to just stop and smell the roses or whatever that thing was called, he had a job to do.
And he was always on the clock.
"I said to shut your mouth. You need to learn to listen." Said Minegishi. Joseph couldn't get a single word out before he his arm erupted in what had to have been a thousand tiny ants marching through his veins. He looked down. The plant had dug into him, right through his coat. The silver of his sleeve was blooming red…he could see blood running down his hand and leaking onto the floor…
The plant wasn't letting go.
"Fine then, maybe I won't kill you. Maybe I don't want to make Mob's life worse than it already is…so take this as a warning. Stay the hell away from her or you're plant food, and I will tell her you ran away…or maybe I can just tell her that her father reassigned you. He has it out for you too, you know, and I honestly think that he might be a sadist. You're not Ryou, you're not nearly as useful to Claw, and Mob isn't nearly as attached to you. You're not untouchable, so don't act like it." Said Minegishi. The plant in their arms began to pull back…and he could feel his flesh going with it. Whatever connected muscle to bone…skin to muscle…he could feel it being pulled away. He tried to move with it but he found his arms and legs bound by plants. He tried to scream, his cigarette fell down onto one of the vines holding him.
It pulled back.
Minegishi hissed in…pain? Their aura…the plants were infused with their aura. It was the same sort of trick that let him harden smoke. Similar, but not the same. Smoke wasn't a living thing after all, it just acted like it. Minegishi might have been very connected to those plants…he couldn't move enough. He couldn't reach his lighter. He couldn't try that trick again…it was an electric lighter anyway…he needed to try that again. This could have been just the piece of information that he'd been looking for!
Minegishi let him go.
"Take that as a warning." Said Minegishi before they walked off, leaving him to nearly collapse into a pile of his own blood. His arm flesh was exactly where he had left it, though it was swollen and bloody now…he needed to see that healer. Afterwards he was going to contact his handler. It may have been pure speculation but it may have been worth it to. Minegishi was weak to fire…most living things were…but their plants were notoriously tough to get through.
This could have been useful.
Not useful enough to get him out of here but useful enough to line his pockets, and maybe even keep him from getting that bomb implanted in his chest. There were, supposedly, no such thing as useless information but when the highlight of your daily report was 'Mukai invented reverse spaghetti and meatballs and now it was a cafeteria menu item' your bosses tended to get a little on edge. Testy.
Angry.
He tried his best to pick himself up off of the ground…some kind of poison. Maybe it wasn't worth it to get it purge. Maybe it was useful to science or something. It was said, by Shigeko so he trusted the information, that Minegishi could create entirely new fruits and vegetables. Apples with peach flesh, carrots that bled sweet juice, turnip potatoes…which were decidedly less impressive, and even square watermelons on demand. He didn't know much about botany but he figured something useful could have come out of there…no, not useful. Not what they were looking for. If it wasn't going to get him a bonus or keep him alive then what was even the point?
He got up and carried himself down the hall.
He had to think of himself. Keeping himself alive was priority one. Priority two was fulfilling the mission. Priority three was getting the hell out of here…a nice thought. One that carried him down the hallway. There was going to be one hell of a power vacuum when Claw feel but he wasn't going to be around for it. No, he was going back home. Probably with a new name and face but he was going back home. Thanksgiving, real hockey, his family…from afar. It was worth it…it was going to be worth it…it was always going to be worth it. Once the mission was done. Once he had earned his freedom and enough money to never have to work a day in his life again…once he could get out of this business…it was all going to be worth it.
Joseph didn't dream, not at night, and not to cope with life, but…but he could plan. Nobody had ever told him he couldn't plan.