The Black Snow
By Icha
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: Batman, Wonder Woman, Dr. Light II, and Katana belong to DC Comics. All Japanese characters with the exceptions of Dr. Light II, Katana, Yasu and Imako are from my imagination. Thanks to Athena Phoenix for beta reading. Sorry for the crow lecture at the first pages, I just couldn't resist writing about it! Besides, it shows the history of Iwamura clan and Masahiro that are very important in this story.
Chapter 7. Descendant of the CrowWhen he was little, Masahiro was a loner. Born of a troubled family (a drunken father and a helpless mother), he used to run away from his father to stroll the dense hill behind his little village, east of Kyoto. He learned a lot from nature; the silent patience of a crane before it struck a fish in the pond, the stealthy movement of a wildcat hunting its target, the graceful flaps of an eagle's wings. But amongst all the animals, young Masahiro was mostly attracted to crows.
According to Japanese mythology, karasu, or crow, is the messenger of God. It was once said that thousands of years ago the Heaven sent a giant crow to guide a young man in his journey through the mountains of the Wakayama Prefecture to Nara. Once arriving in Nara, the young man established the first capital city of Japan. He then became Jimmu Tenno (Emperor Jimmu), the first emperor of Japan, also the direct descendant of Amaterasu Omikami (Goddess of the Sun).
The young Masahiro loved the crow tale so much, he often asked his mother to retell him the story before bedtime, while nursing the wounds they both suffered from his father. From his mother, he learned that the crow was also the symbol of prosperity as well as functioning as a talisman against evil. However, he soon found out as well that there were crow demons (karasu tengu) that resembled humans with beak, claws, and big black wings; hence it was sometimes considered an omen. Masahiro didn't mind the darker side of crows. In fact, he grew fond of both versions, crow as the graceful messenger from Heaven and crow as the representation of demonic spirit.
Then came the day when his father overstepped the boundary by slapping and hitting his mother so hard that she fell down, hit the wall, and passed away immediately. The ten-year-old Masahiro was so angry with his father that he attacked him with all his might. When the neighbours heard the noises, they went to Masahiro's house, only to find his very wounded father, sobbing helplessly, begging for his son not to kill him. Yet the neighbours couldn't find Masahiro anywhere. The young boy had run away.
Masahiro fled in anger. He was so close in terminating his own drunken father when he heard the neighbours come in. He actually couldn't care less if he was caught killing his own father – after all it was his father who killed his mother. But he still remembered his mother's last words. My son, forgive your father. He does not know what he's doing...
Those words, and only those, prevented him from terminating the old man. So instead, Masahiro ran away through the hills, desperate and not knowing what to do next. He didn't know that his father then died that night from the wounds, or that his neighbours buried his parents the day after. He just kept running from his anger and his sickening past.
Then he saw it. A very big black crow, sitting on the branch of a tree, watching him. The crow's black eyes pierced his heart so deeply, it seemed that it understood all his pain and suffering. Then suddenly the black bird took off to the blue afternoon sky, flapping its large wings, towards Tokyo.
Masahiro blinked twice, then without further hesitation he followed the bird. He arrived in Tokyo after two –weeks of walking, where he started his new career as a servant in a sake shop in a shabby district in the outskirt of the capital city. He didn't pick the shop as his first career. The crow did. In fact, it just landed and perched itself at the old roof, didn't move anywhere, didn't do anything but stare at Masahiro with its piercing black eyes. A few minutes later, the sake shop owner went out, saw a filthy but determined young boy outside of his shop, then declared in five minutes that he might need an assistant.
It turned out that it wasn't a good career at all. Masahiro's new boss was as drunk as his father, and worse, because he wasn't the young boy's father, he had all the freedom to treat Masahiro as he liked. It was true that he provided Masahiro with shelter and food, but he also barked and scolded him for very tiny mistakes, or whenever he felt in the mood to do so. The only reason Masahiro stayed there was the crow.
In the evening of his fifth day in the sake shop, Masahiro already felt the urgent need to kill his new boss. As he went out to the backyard, trying to calm himself, he saw the crow again, perching at the wooden fence and scrutinizing him with its black eyes. As Masahiro approached the bird (in an attempt to ask it bluntly and loudly why it led him here, and why he was so stupid to be led by a nasty black bird), he heard some noises at his neighbour's yard. Thrusting his head over the fence curiously, he witnessed the most impressive scene of his childhood. An elderly man in kimono and hakama, holding a pair of swords (katana and wakizashi), practicing a series of sword fighting scenes. Masahiro didn't have any trouble registering all the movements in the darkened evening. In fact, he could remember almost everything just by observing the man's shoulders and the directions of his movements. He couldn't see the foot movements due to the darkness, but he oddly absorbed everything easily.
And at that moment, Masahiro suddenly understood why the crow led him there. He had to learn sword fighting from that very talented elderly man. Without realizing, Masahiro had already jumped across the fence and dragged himself towards the samurai. He kneeled before him, begging the old samurai to take him as his student. The samurai told Masahiro to speak of his past, his parents, his family, and his reason to be in Tokyo. Bluntly Masahiro told everything (excluding the crow). After ten minutes of silence, the samurai accepted him as his student.
And so Masahiro's short career in the sake shop ended. Instead, he then learned the two-swords fighting style, Iaido, and other ancient techniques from his new teacher. Sinoguchi Gonosuke, his teacher, was truly an accomplished samurai. He detected the Masahiro's eagerness to learn, as well as the dark spirit within him. Gonosuke didn't mind. In fact, Gonosuke was also an opportunist who wouldn't hesitate to take a chance to improve his lifestyle and make himself more famous.
The opportunity came a year after he accepted Masahiro as his student. Hayada, a Yakuza clan in Tokyo asked him to teach the young Yakuza guards the proper ancient sword fighting. Without hesitance, Gonosuke accepted the offer. He then moved to a better neighbourhood in the heart of Tokyo, dragging Masahiro with him. That was Masahiro's first career within the Yakuza circle, as the student and assistant of the Yakuza sensei.
Masahiro proved to be an excellent sword fighter as well. He and Gonosuke were the assets of the Hayada family, with Gonosuke as the sensei and Masahiro his silent assistant. The Hayada respected them, and for the first time in his life, Masahiro felt that he had finally found a group whom he could relate to. Or so it appeared, until a few years later when Masahiro was in his twenties, some of the Hayada set them up, possibly out of jealousy, and managed to kill Gonosuke in a gunfight. Masahiro was enraged. Miraculously he survived the ambush, and killed all the twenty gunmen with only Gonosuke's katana and a gun he seized from the nearest gunman.
Afterwards, Masahiro left the Hayada clan. He swore not to affiliate himself ever again with any other Yakuza clan. Instead, he built his own clan, taking his mother's maiden family name (Iwamura) as the clan's name, and the flying crow as his mon (family crest). The crow itself, the one who had led him to Gonosuke, had flown away years ago, while he wasn't looking. Masahiro felt that the crow understood that his life was improved then, thus it decided to leave the young man to his own faith.
With his new clan, Masahiro started spreading his own wings. He had a good sense of business, thus he managed to preserve his assets in a relatively short time. Soon, his crow mon was a symbol of fear in Tokyo, even among the Yakuza clans. In between his 'business', Masahiro still took time to thank the crow for bringing him to his current life. By that time, Masahiro had learned that the Celts of Western culture depicted crows as the symbol of evil and death. The mixed symbolism of the crow as the messenger of God as well death had convinced Masahiro that he indeed chose the 'right' mon for his clan.
As his children grew up, Masahiro also grew fond of telling the crow tale to both of Akoya and Suijiro. Their reactions were different. Akoya would then just sketch some crows and a little boy running in the forest, giggling happily when she showed his father her work. On the other hand, Suijiro just looked at the mon solemnly, as if he wanted to absorb all its power.
Unsurprisingly, both of the Iwamura children developed different attitude towards crows. Though Akoya became an animal lover, she despised the crow populations in Tokyo. She disliked their loud voices and their habit of destroying garbage bins to find some food. And it was true that the South East Asian jungle crows (Corvus macrorhynchos) were becoming annoying pests in metropolitan Tokyo. Over the years, the growing human population in Tokyo and surroundings had changed the natural environment, hence forcing the crows to migrate to the city. As the black birds with wingspans up to one meter and sharp beaks flooded the capital city, they turned the tides by disturbing the human populations. Not only pecking the garbage bins for food (and leaving the spot in a mess), the birds also attacked passersby and picnickers in the parks, especially during their breeding season of May-July. The crow population in Tokyo had grown from 7,000 in 1985 to 14,000 in 1996, and 21,000 in 1999. The attitude of those birds was increasingly annoying (they even attacked kittens and other small animals) that not only once Akoya asked her father to change the Iwamura mon for something else (which Masahiro rejected with a smile).
Suijiro, on the other hand, grew very fond of crows. He didn't mind the crow attacks that frequented Tokyo in his teenage years. He saw the crows the way he saw the Iwamura clan; a fearful force that ruled and clouded Tokyo with its power. It so happened that the growing population of crows in Tokyo coincided with the growing power of the Iwamura clan. In 2001, the Tokyo crow population reached its peak of 36,400 – a number that even worried the government. When the government started a lot of ways to curb the crow population (from using crow traps, installing garbage nets, removing crow nests and eggs, even promoting 'eating crow-pie'), Suijiro just smirked.
"They may be able to decrease the crow population here. But they will never be able to curb the Iwamura clan."
His men understood that Suijiro was serious. By that time Akoya had died and Masahiro had left his throne, disappearing from the whole Yakuza activities. So they naturally turned to Suijiro to lead their clan, despite his demeanor. Suijiro was trickier than Masahiro, plus he was cruel. Very, very cruel. He even overstepped his father's rule of protecting Iwamura's own people. Not only once or twice Suijiro slept with the wives or partners of his men, mostly done with the women's consent though, as Suijiro's charm was indeed hard to resist. Suijiro also infiltrated political networks in Tokyo, making his tentacles harder to avoid.
Yet, as Tokyo determined to lower its crow population, the Tokyo police department also determined to hunt down the Iwamura (and other Yakuza clans) and make the karasu no mon disappear from Japan.
Hence, Suijiro became very alarmed with security issues. His Black Snow trade in the U.S. had given him more profits than ever, but it seemed that the luck of the crow would soon leave him. The recent rumour that the New York network had been decapitated had made him very careful with the future trade in the U.S. (he was thinking of U.K., Europe, and Asian markets instead). Realizing that his men had let in two strangers to the Black Snow headquarter in Ginza, he grew very anxious. When he reached the Ginza HQ by another secret passage in Ginza Park, he was ready to kill Tadaki for his lack of security and common sense.
xxx
Diana had infiltrated some illegal trade headquarters before, but she had never dealt with drug business. Usually she raided those who sold women and children or dealt with slimy bosses that paid his workers very low wages forced them to work in very unhygienic and unsafe places. So when she entered the Black Snow headquarters in Ginza, it felt like being in a very sterile lab, only with a grimmer ambience.
With a quick glance, she and Tatsu scrutinized the whole headquarters. There was a room at one end, separated with glass walls, where they could see lab equipment as well as workers in white measuring various substances, doing distillation, and various lab work. In the room where they stood now, other workers were packaging white powders (seemingly produced during the process in the other room) in plastic bags. They also neatly placed the plastic bags in black leather bags (possibly to be delivered to Narita and other departure ports).
The room was guarded by many men and women in black hakama or suits. Realizing that those people were examining them silently, Diana straightened herself and patted her Louis Vuitton bag. I'm a rich girl here. Let's do business.
The man in hakama who greeted them gestured to follow him to another tall bearded man with dense eyebrows, clearly his supervisor. The overall appearance of this man reminded Diana of a big grizzly bear. The bearded man also wore the same hakama and jinbaori, his hands holding a katana and a wakizashi. He nodded to the first man, moved to face Diana and Tatsu, and spoke to them in accented English.
"Diana Prince and Kawaguchi Hanako, my name is Kuma Tadaki. I'm the supervisor here. I understand that you would like to do some business with us."
Tatsu nodded. "I'm here with my colleague from Gotham City, U.S., to make a new arrangement of the Black Snow shipment to the U.S. Diana Prince here –" on cue, Diana flamboyantly fixed her De Rigo spectacles that perched on her fine nose, "-represents a very large network that will boost your profit better than your previous partnership in America."
Tadaki studied Diana carefully with his deep eyes, hooded with dense eyebrows. Diana looked back at him, didn't move an inch. No one had ever intimidated her (even her beloved but scary Batman), so this grizzly bear surely wouldn't be able to.
"Our activities in Gotham were very successful, I don't see why we need a bigger network there to link directly with Tokyo," Tadaki muttered. "Unless you are..."
Diana glanced quickly at Tatsu, who had remained stoic since they arrived in the basement. Oops. Don't tell me we are busted so soon...
"...the rival of our liaison, the Giovanni gang, in Gotham, and you want to take the profit out of their hands."
Tatsu snorted in relief, and with this signal Diana stepped forward.
"The Giovanni you're talking about are cowards. They ran away as the policemen approached their warehouse, nearly giving the evidence to the police. Our men had been tailing them, and decided to save all evidence from the GCPD." She kept talking with Tadaki, nose held up high. "Thus, I think the Iwamura should reconsider the partnership with them, and consider partnering with the Prince for the future."
Tatsu also stepped forward. "We've been talking to Suijiro-san, if you wonder about it. He was pretty impressed with the Prince's records, and decided to give us the opportunity for a quick factory tour." She looked right to Tadaki's eyes. "I take it that your boss told you that we're coming."
Tadaki looked back at Tatsu. "As a matter of fact, Hanako-san, your names are not on my list today."
"Well, then. Surely a mistake was made." Tatsu's voice had not changed a bit; her eyes were still fixed on Tadaki's.
"I am here to offer a very fruitful partnership for the Iwamura, as of course noted by your men during the earlier screening," Diana added. "I surely hope to avoid any misinterpretation about my presence here. Or would you like to confirm that with Mr. Iwamura himself?" Ouch. Better not.
Tadaki seemed to consider the option. But then he smiled and waved his hands.
"No outsiders should find out about our secret codes. It should be enough to justify your presence here. I will talk to Suijiro-san's secretary later, informing her about this... recklessness." He bowed deep. "Now that it is sorted out, I guess we can talk business then."
"I'm glad we come to that conclusion," Tatsu smiled and, together with Diana, bowed as well. "Now... we would very much like to see your procedures then. How do you create such a fine substance like the Black Snow? I think that's what Ms. Prince here would like to know."
Tadaki nodded, and gestured to both women to follow him. He led them through the first step of Black Snow making, explaining in detail their method of extracting essence from a special black flower to be added with heroin and cocaine.
"This, ladies..." he proudly held up a stem of a black lavender-like flower, "...is also called Kuroyuki. It is a very rare flower that only grows in several secret places of the Hokkaido Island, in the remote snowy areas. This flower is the secret of the Black Snow. Mix this with the usual heroin and cocaine... and we have the deadly Black Snow ready to be shipped to the U.S."
Diana took the Kuroyuki flower and scrutinized it the way Bruce would. "Very interesting. But surely it is not only by grinding the dried petals with the rest of the stuff, that would produce the Black Snow?" She handed it over to Tatsu, but couldn't resist sniffing the flower. "Smells good!" she exclaimed. "I would think it is a flower for perfume."
Tatsu took the flower hastily from Diana's hand and smelled it as well. "You're right. It has a very nice fragrance. Tadaki-san, are you sure this is the main ingredient of the Black Snow?"
Tadaki chuckled. "In fact, ladies, peasant women who lived in nearby villages in Hokkaido used to crush Kuroyuki for their perfumes during the New Year festivals! That is if they were lucky, of course, as the flower was very hard to find. They didn't know then that a high dose of this flower is deadly. The deadly essence is not evoked by merely crushing the petals."
"Then how did you find its potential?" Tatsu felt her interest rising.
"Ah... then I would have to tell you the story of my grandfather, the inventor of the essence of Kuroyuki. He was from Hokkaido, of course – so I was also from the snowy island. One day..."
Surprisingly, Tadaki was very talkative with the Kuroyuki story. Diana began to believe that Tadaki's grandfather had truly invented the way to extract the essence of the Black Snow, when she felt a tingling need to glance at the farthest section of the room. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a man talking hastily on his mobile phone. Diana recognized him as the first man who greeted them at the basement. She frowned. She would bet her new Louis Vuitton bag that the man was calling someone important – perhaps Suijiro himself. That only meant that Tadaki still thought he should check with Suijiro about their presence. It also could mean danger for her and Tatsu.
She realized that her suspicion might be proven sooner than she thought when the man finished talking to his mobile and approached Tadaki with firm steps. Tadaki had finished explaining the history of Kuroyuki (Tatsu seemed to be genuinely impressed with the story), and was about to begin explaining the extraction process. He was a bit annoyed when the man gestured to talk to him in private. Diana found this a bit amusing – Tadaki clearly had a high sense of belonging with the Black Snow processes, if not the whole business.
"I'm sorry, I have to excuse myself. But Shiori here will tell you how to further extract Kuroyuki." He gestured for a woman in black hakama to move forward, then left.
Shiori was one of the women who had searched Diana and Tatsu earlier. A slender woman in her thirties, her long reddish hair was pinned on top of her head. She had a very pretty face with a fine nose, but her long slim eyes were very cold. Methodically she explained the extraction process of Kuroyuki, as well as the rest of the procedures until the Black Snow was ready for shipping. She led Diana and Tatsu to several sections in the basement, each having its specific role in producing the deadly substance.
The whole Black Snow tour took almost twenty minutes, and by the time it ended, Diana had a very clear idea of the lethal effect of prolonged exposure to the Black Snow, and how to make the countermeasure. Batman was not the only scientist in the League, and Diana had paid good attention to her chemistry lessons during her time in Themyscira, as well as during her scientific discussions with the Batman. She was determined to make an antidote to the Black Snow once this whole Iwamura business was taken down.
"...and as it is packed in sealed plastic bags, the Black Snow is ready to be sent to any destination in the world." Shiori had just finished her lecture. She spoke perfect English with almost no accent at all, Diana could picture her as an English teacher better than a Yakuza woman. As if on cue, Tadaki approached the group, his steps wide and sure.
"Good news. Apparently, Suijiro-san is very interested in the prospect of having business with you, Ms. Prince. He seeks to see you again in person. He will arrive in a few minutes, so I suggest we just wait for him."
Tatsu and Diana exchanged a quick glance, then Tatsu smiled brightly. "Perfect. It is time to make everything clear."
xxx
A luxurious black BMW parked behind a black Audi on a corner of the Ginza Park, nicely hidden from the crowd that night by a group of tall trees. Suijiro stepped out, carrying his pair of katana and wakizashi. Uchida, his second in command, and three other men walked out of the Audi. Accompanied by them, Suijiro walked briskly to a small wooden shack that looked like a gardener's hut, opened the door with a key, and entered the darkness.
The wooden shack was actually another entrance to the Black Snow headquarters. As all of them entered, one of his men closed the door. Suijiro walked to one of the corners and opened an old wooden box. Inside, there was a panel with several buttons and a screen. He hit a combination of numbers and put his right palm on the screen. A large piece of 'wooden floor' nearby suddenly moved backwards, revealing descending stairs to the underground. Quickly, he and his men entered the basement. The 'wooden floor' moved back again to its original position as the last man disappeared into the shadows.
Inside was a long corridor heading to Eiga Department Store. Followed by his men, Suijiro moved along the corridor to the headquarter. It took them less than five minutes to reach the end of the corridor; a steel door with a panel and a screen on its left side. As Suijiro did the earlier procedure of verification, the door slid open, revealing another door, this time made of glass, where a man in a black suit stood guard. Behind the glass door, Suijiro could look into the Black Snow headquarter, where all his staffs, dressed in black or white, was busy working. In another room across the hall, he saw a foreign blonde woman and an unfamiliar Japanese woman talking to Shiori and Tadaki.
xxx
"I assure you that Suijiro-san is on his way here, and that you will meet him in five minutes," Tadaki waved his hand to dismiss Shiori, then glanced at the exit door. Upon seeing that Suijiro had arrived, he turned back to Diana and Tatsu and smiled, "In fact, he's here already! Now you two can have a nice business talk with him."
Knowing that his presence was acknowledged, Suijiro changed his pace, walking slowly but surely toward Tadaki. He didn't have to pretend to be a scary daifu (godfather); his pace showed many people that he was indeed a man of power. Yet, the two guests seemed not to be intimidated by his presence, though he was sure that they knew that he realized they were impostors. That wasn't good, as it only meant that the two women were as powerful – or worse, more powerful – than he was. As he got closer, he stopped and scrutinized them with his crow-like eyes, his men busily bowing to him.
"Suijiro-san!" Tadaki also bowed, then continued in Japanese. "These two women came here saying that they had met you in person about the Black Snow business to Gotham. We are –"
"- wondering if they are impostors, or genuinely interested in doing business with you," Diana snapped in fluent Japanese. "I don't think that such a great daifu like you would miss the chance for a better profit in the U.S. Or am I mistaken?"
"Only if you truly own a business in Gotham..." Suijiro leaned towards Diana, his eyes narrowed into small slits. "...Ms. Prince..."
"Oh, I assure you, Suijiro-san..." Diana also stepped forward facing the Godfather, "... that I truly have a good business in Gotham." One day...one day... opening a homeopathic spa and cafe under the Wayne wing...
"...in which I apparently have forgotten, then." Suijiro smirked, then turned to Tatsu. "I also have totally forgotten that I've met you before... Hanako-san." His mind searched for his memories, as he seemed to have seen this strong Japanese face somewhere.
Tatsu didn't even blink. "Then, I regret to say that you must have a very poor memory for a daifu, Suijiro-san."
Suijiro opened his mouth to comment, but Uchida's mobile phone rang just before he spoke. He turned to Uchida to bark, but Uchida just glanced at the phone screen and whispered, "Narita."
The Daifu's face tensed. Somehow he felt that the phone from Narita wasn't going to be good news. He nodded to Uchida who hastily punched the 'talk' button and growled, "What's up!"
Uchida's phone was the latest incarnation of Nokia with a sophisticated video conference option. The Godfather's second in command activated the video link and listened for a few seconds as the guy at the other end talked briefly in Japanese. Whatever he was talking about, he wasn't happy about it, and seemed to be talking while running. That was very apparent in the screen, as it was just showing the man's face jiggling while he ran. All the other people around Uchida abruptly stopped and tried to listen to the phone conversation, including Diana and Tatsu. And suddenly the man on the other line yelled in pain, and he stopped talking.
"What the -!" Suijiro had enough of this and grabbed the phone from Uchida's hand. "Hey, you there! Talk!" he barked to the screen. He was half hoping to see the man again, but instead he saw a shadowy dark figure appeared on the screen. The Daifu's face suddenly turned pale.
"The Batman! What is he doing there!"
Uchida answered quickly. "Police came and ransacked the Narita. Apparently they have Batman and Dr. Light with them!"
"How come the superheroes know about the Black Snow!" Suijiro's wrath was similar to his anger at Shindo before. Only this time, it surely would get worse. He looked furiously at all of his staff in that room, as if they could provide him some answers. None of them spoke.
Suijiro then turned back to Diana and Tatsu. Both women were also silent. They realized what was happening, and understood that soon they would have to defend themselves. Suijiro studied them more deeply, then came closer to Diana. He peered behind Diana's spectacles with a manner that somehow reminded Diana of the Batman while he was questioning his prey. Slowly, Suijiro took off Diana's glasses, revealing the unframed azure eyes behind it.
"I know I've seen you somewhere..." the Daifu whispered in English.
"I was actually considered a photo model back in the U.S." Diana didn't move an inch. Of course. National Geography, People, Ms., Cosmopolitan...
"We'll see..." Suijiro leered, then suddenly his hands grabbed Diana's blonde hair, uncovering thick raven hair pinned behind. With a Don Juan style, he reached for a hairpin to undo it, but his action was halted.
"You don't have to do that. I can help myself." Grabbing his wrist, Diana stopped Suijiro's hand and looked at him in the eye. Quickly she removed the hairpins, and shook her hair to let it fall to her shoulders.
"Wonder Woman." Suijiro commented, matter-of-factly. "I knew it the moment I saw your blue eyes."
"Well, thank you for being such a loyal fanboy, then." Diana let go of his hand.
Turning to Tatsu, Suijiro mocked. "I suppose you can show me yourself, then... Tatsu Yamashiro?"
Tatsu didn't flinch while she took off her faux hair with one stroke. "So you talked with other Yakuza oyabun then, about me?" Oyabun in Japanese is 'boss', another term to address Yakuza godfathers. Just like Dr. Light, Katana had fought against some Yakuza gangs before.
"Let's just see that I've been collecting information about you, Dr. Light, and other Japanese superheroes. If Wonder Woman is here, she should be accompanied by a Japanese hero, no? It should be either you or Dr. Light. As Dr. Light is with Batman in Narita, then Katana should be the one with Wonder Woman here."
"Impressive," Tatsu threw her faux hair across the room. "I assume that you are ready to surrender, now?"
The Godfather snorted. "It seems that I should be the one who says that, ladies." Suijiro stepped backwards, his hands signaling his men for action.
Author's note:
Okay, there you go! Sorry it took me so long to get from Chapter 6 to 7. I hope you enjoy Diana and Tatsu, though they haven't done any aikido, karate, jujitsu or sword playing this time (it will be on Chapter 8, promise!). And yeah, re: the crows attacking Tokyo, it was true. Until now, crows are plague for Tokyo citizens. Check the google if you don't believe me! It's just such a coincidence that the symbol for the Iwamura clan (which I picked out of the air) was the crow that was also a nuisance to Tokyo.