All stuff from previous chapter applies, plus -- added violence this time 'round.

- Part Two -

For a while, a handful of seconds at a time, everything failed to fall apart. They were just where people weren't looking, never quite seen, never quite caught out. Some people would have called it luck. The Trickster called it talent. He read the situation, the Gentleman supplied relevant facts, and they watched one another's backs as they moved onward.

There was definitely something going on, in a distant part of the complex. Gunfire, and a lot of shouting. All the gunfire was distant, but the shouting seemed fairly widespread. It did, indeed, sound like Kirihara was probably enjoying himself. Most of the personnel they saw were in a state of panic, and shouted exchanges about faulty sprinkler systems seemed to indicate that Kirihara had set fire to something, at the very least. Neither the Gentleman or the Trickster could imagine him stopping at just that. Kirihara could be friendly if he decided he liked someone, but there was frequently something bordering on demonic about him. In a gentler time, he would have been imprisoned long ago. Now, people gave him work as a professional troublemaker.

"Turn right here. Third door on the left. It'll be locked, possibly more than once. Might be guarded. Yanagi says he took special care with the surveillance equipment there, though."

The Trickster nodded, and eyed the surroundings. Whoever had decided that it wasn't worth the cost of making sure all the pipes and cables in this place were neatly covered up was a friend to him for the moment, he decided, launching himself awkwardly up the wall to grab hold of a sturdy-looking insulated pipe above him. Swinging himself up into the guts of the facility, he grinned down at the Gentleman, winked. The Gentleman nodded, turned, and strode down the passage, looking for all the world like he knew where he was going and was far too busy to be stopped. With Kirihara's help, people were probably distracted enough that they wouldn't notice anything wrong with the picture; the Gentleman was well dressed enough to look like he belonged, in any case. The Trickster followed above, trusting to the fact that people rarely looked up even when they weren't in a state of panic.

There were two guards on the door. They looked like they were quite happy with their position, presumably because there wasn't any gunfire in that area, which many people seemed to consider a bonus. The Gentleman felt almost sorry for them, just for a second, before the Trickster dropped on one, cracked him hard across the back of the skull, and had pressed his gun to the back of the other's head almost before the man could have registered his presence.

"Quietly," he hissed, "The gun has a silencer, the security cameras are fucked, and I can clear up a little blood,"

The Gentleman decided that this situation was under control, for the time being. All he had to worry about in the immediate future was getting the locks disabled, as quickly as possible. Niou was secretly glad that Yagyuu had such a good kit for this sort of thing, or he might be a bit lost, but as it was the Gentleman made short work of the three locks.

"Is anyone inside?" he heard the Trickster ask the guard, who probably shook his head, because after a moment the Trickster continued. "Good. Then I'm sure you won't mind going first."

Turning his head, he saw that the Trickster had the man in a hold, gun still against his head, and was using him as a kind of shield. He gave the unfortunate man a humourless smile, and stepped aside, gesturing for the Trickster and his victim to go ahead. He grabbed the unconscious man the Trickster had more or less landed on top of, and prepared to haul him inside. It wouldn't do to have him lying around where anyone could just trip over him, after all.

The Trickster kicked the door open and pushed through, alert and edgy. It was lucky for the man being used as his human shield that he'd told the truth, and the room was empty of people; the Trickster simply clubbed him over the head with his gun. He wouldn't have hesitated to shoot him if the man had lied, the Gentleman knew. He closed the door carefully behind him, deposited the unconscious man he was dragging unceremoniously next to the one the Trickster had just knocked out, and looked around. The Trickster had got his moment of fun, now it was time for the Gentleman to do his job. The Trickster was there to watch his back and make sure nothing went wrong while he was distracted. He checked through the instructions once more, for good measure, though he'd memorised them already: it never hurt to be certain.

The room was full of... well, full of technology. There wasn't really any other way to put it. Two walls were covered with digital storage units, probably mostly holding entirely uninteresting corporate records, and shelving units held all sorts of other things which Niou didn't really recognise, but the Gentleman probably should have. There was a diagram of what they were after, which was really just as well. It still took a while to locate it, and the Gentleman was very aware that they could be interrupted at any moment. All it took was someone noticing that the guards were absent; not necessarily a sign that something further was wrong, given the general confusion at the moment, but a reason to at least check, which would mean they noticed the locks had been tampered with. The Trickster was aware of this, too, and moved restlessly by the door, casting impatient looks in the direction of the Gentleman.

The unit was much like the others in the room, but ever so slightly larger, with an unfamiliar logo imprinted on the casing, rather than the corporate logo visible on the rest. The Gentleman reached for his tools, and began to dismantle it, working carefully to disable the alarms built into the case. If this thing was as significant as they'd been led to believe then tripping one would probably bring half the guards in this place straight to them, which wasn't something he particularly wanted to experience. It was painstaking work, but Niou as the Gentleman was fairly sure he could do it. He just had to take it slowly, and trust Yagyuu as the Trickster to handle any outside problems.

"Yagyuu. We might have company, get down," the Trickster's voice sounded a little strained, and as the Gentleman moved behind a rack to continue working he wondered if it wasn't a sign that the real Yagyuu was feeling the pressure of being the one on watch for once. The case was almost opened now, anyway. Yagyuu could probably have done it a lot faster, but he was good enough. As it came open, he let out a long breath. That was the worst of it, thanks to the alarms. Now it was just a matter of detaching the chips they'd been sent for and... fuck, was that shouting outside?

-----

The Trickster tensed and readied his gun, checking the clip and kicking the link with the goggles into life so the targeting aids showed up across his vision. Yagyuu was pretty sure Niou didn't need to use these often, but he was damn glad they were there. There were several people in the corridor, and they all sounded angry, which was fine by him. They could go on being angry at each other for as long as they wanted, especially if it meant they forgot to check the door. He stood to one side, got the gun pointing at around chest height in the centre of the door, and waited to see if they were in shit yet or not.

The first guy through the door went down hard, taking a shot between the eyes as the Trickster managed to pull the gun up, grateful for the targeting system. Yagyuu as the Trickster was pretty glad that he'd seen fit to get his reflexes tuned up, if not in such an unsubtle way as Niou had. The second guy had more of an idea of what was coming and could probably have avoided the shot if he'd been a little faster; the bullet clipped the side of his head, and he went down anyway. Niou would have hit him squarely, but it didn't matter too much.

After that, however, it was pretty much all downhill.

"Yagyuu. Hurry the fuck up!" the Trickster gritted his teeth, wincing. His right arm hurt, where a bullet had grazed it. He didn't think it was too badly damaged, but he sure as hell felt stupid for not being more careful. They'd managed to attract the attention of at least a small part of the staff now, and holding them off wasn't going to work for much longer. He didn't even want to think about how they were going to get out; as it was, he was under cover, firing off shots towards the doorway almost more to put people off the idea of entering than specifically to hit anyone. The blood running down his arm was making the grip of the gun slippery. Damn.

Someone slammed into him, knocking him sideways into a wall, and the gun flew out of his grip. Shit. Someone with wired reflexes or worse, probably. He'd barely seen that coming. There was a hand at his throat, choking his breath away, so he went limp. Hopefully that'd convince them to let go, for now. He was dropped, and slid down the wall, letting himself land like a rag doll. He didn't even gasp when his damaged arm jarred against the floor.

"Well look at this," an unfamiliar voice drawled, "it's the trickster and the gentleman. Never thought I'd see the trickster go down so easy, though. How disappointing."

Yagyuu as the Trickster forced himself to remain still, hoping they wouldn't notice if he opened his eyes just a fraction. Who the hell was this? It wasn't Akutsu, that was for sure.

He took in as much of the room as he could without moving, from half-closed eyes. The view this gave him was mostly of people's legs, but he could make out Niou as the Gentleman, crouched a little way away, face still carefully blank. He could imagine the flash of anger in those eyes, though, behind the glasses. He thought he saw Niou palm something, but he wasn't sure, and then the Gentleman was surrounded. He still had no idea who their attackers were, but he was fairly sure at least one of them -- whoever had managed to throw him against the wall -- wasn't standard corp security.

-----

The Gentleman looked up at the people surrounding him, and carefully flicked the box he'd just finished putting the components in up his sleeve, out of sight. Not something Yagyuu would have done, but hopefully no-one would notice where the small box had gone. He couldn't make out exactly what had happened to the Trickster, but he didn't think he was as far gone as the newcomers seemed to believe him to be. He couldn't deny he'd felt a little shock of fear when he saw the Trickster collapse, but surely Yagyuu was tougher than that.

"The gentleman. Yagyuu Hiroshi. What an honour."

He looked up, and took in the face of the man standing over him.

We may be fucked, he sent quickly to Yanagi, just so you know. He didn't really care, any more, if it didn't sound like Yagyuu sending the messages. His mouth curled again into that little humourless smile.

"Oshitari Yuushi," his gaze flicked around the other faces, "Mukahi Gakuto. Shishido Ryou too? So good of you all to welcome us like this."

Somehow, he hated it more when he was up against other people who were on some level or other like him (though he hesitated to compare himself too strongly with, say, Mukahi). Faceless corp security was one thing, but there was always a weird feeling in fighting against people he might have been working alongside if they'd run into a different guy in the bar the night before. He had worked with Oshitari a few times, before he'd run into Yagyuu again. He thought it was Shishido who'd managed to get hold of Yagyuu just now; he was definitely fast. Oshitari was pretty dangerous hand-to-hand unless you could surprise him enough, and Gakuto was something of an unknown to him, beyond that he was rarely hired without Oshitari, these days.

Whatever Mukahi might be good at, he currently had a gun pointed at the Gentleman's head, which was enough of a reason to be wary of him. Niou quite liked his head as it was.

Oshitari's suddenly blank expression indicated that he was probably engaged in conversation over some form of link. Niou supposed he was being told what exactly to do with them, and doubted it would be anything pleasant. However, while he was distracted...

It was a gamble, sure, but he didn't currently have a lot to lose. One hand snaked out, his already enhanced speed given an extra edge by raw survival instinct, and struck a pressure-point on Mukahi's arm. He hit it just right, sending the gun clattering to the floor. The small redhead gaped, but Niou didn't have time to savour the moment; he gave it a few more seconds before the shock of Yagyuu Hiroshi performing pressure-point strikes wore off and then he'd be right back in the shit. He needed to make the most of those moments the switch had granted him. First things first: Oshitari. One foot kicked up, connecting hard with the man's jaw; thank goodness for the distraction that was mental linking. Shishido was surprisingly on the ball, though, and as Niou swung a fist at him he ducked aside and caught the punch with one hand. He wasn't about to let go to give his attacker another chance, but fortunately Niou wasn't out of tricks yet. He flashed Shishido a grin which was purely his own, in no way Yagyuu, and flexed his wrist. Shishido yelped, and flinched backwards, clutching at his hand. Niou noted blood oozing between the man's fingers and treated him to an even wider grin as he retracted his wrist-blade. No-one messed with Niou and Yagyuu without regretting it.

He took stock of the situation. Mukahi was scrambling for his gun, which had skidded away under one of the shelves. Oshitari was back from whatever conversation which Niou had so rudely interrupted, but looked more than a little stunned from the kick. Shishido was using an impressive array of colourful language, but it'd be a few moments before he was with it enough to cause trouble. Seemed like this had been a good night to resurrect the switch after all. He wondered if they'd even figured out what had happened yet. Oshitari would probably figure it out as soon as he had a moment to think -- the guy had more brains than he could possibly need -- but Shishido just looked confused as hell. And angry, but that was ok; Niou was angry too, in a cold sort of way. They'd shot Yagyuu, and they'd made Niou experience a moment of fear. He wasn't going to forgive either of those points easily, however much he was aware that they were just doing their job, as he and Yagyuu were doing theirs. What else? He didn't have a gun, but he had some nice implants, one of which Shishido had just discovered. Yagyuu was-- where was Yagyuu? He looked at the space where his partner had been sprawled, looked back up... to see Yagyuu, conscious and upright if a little pale, pressing a gun against Oshitari's back. He hadn't stopped his bleeding properly yet, Niou noted, so they'd better get this over quickly before the idiot collapsed again. It was weird to look at him like this, because his expression was all Yagyuu, full of determination and drive, but everything else was still Niou.

It didn't take much to end it, after that. The trio were shocked enough and felt threatened enough that they backed down without too much persuasion, for at least long enough that Niou could grab Yagyuu's wrist and practically throw him out of the room, before diving after him and pulling the door shut, leaving their opponents alive but unable to reach them. It bought time, at least. He was more than half expecting to find himself facing a kind of impromptu firing squad as soon as they were in the passage; he'd almost resigned himself to dying, earlier, and the feeling that everything might just be ok was a distant and weird one which some part of his brain was saying must be false. There was no-one, though, and it struck Niou as almost suspicious. Why wasn't there more resistance? Then again, maybe he was just being a paranoid bastard. There had been plenty of people trying to kill the pair of them only minutes ago, after all.

He checked the link with Yanagi, and noted a large number of increasingly irritated messages demanding more information.

Ah, never mind, he sent, it wasn't so bad after all.

Yanagi wasnot going to be impressed.

-----

"Niou?" Yagyuu groaned, staggering against the other man.

"Shut up. You're not bleeding too much any more, and no-one is trying to shoot us. Enjoy it while it lasts, you idiot," Niou scowled at him, without any real malice, and tightened his grip around Yagyuu, holding him up.

"We didn't even succeed, did we?" Yagyuu muttered, "Though I suppose I should--" he winced as Niou accidentally knocked his arm, "--just be glad it didn't get any worse."

"Didn't succeed?" Niou fished around in his sleeve and pulled out a small box, which he waved in front of Yagyuu, "My dear Hiroshi, you underestimate me. We've got our employer's precious piece of technology right here."