Chapter 40

V 1.0

Port of Thong Sala, Koh Pha Ngan Island,
Surat Thani Province,
Gulf of Thailand
Early July
Mid day
(day after pirate attack)

A/N 1: Contains fighting and a scene of gross physical abuse/torture.

The two men were running full tilt through the marketplace, the Thai crashing through stalls and displays, the pursuer following in his wake. Another man was trying to keep up on a moped but stuck to following alongside on paths and roads, causing almost as much havoc.

Bursting out of the marketplace, the Thai teen frantically looked around before starting to sprint along the side of the market toward the port. He knew that he could not run through the open square toward the government buildings in spite of having relatives working there that could protect him, as not only could the foreigner chasing him catch up – even running through the marketplace he had been able to close the distance between them – the other man on the moped could literally run him down.

Dodging through the blaring cars and trucks in the roadway, the Thai teen ran up to a three meter chain link fence surrounding the port loading facility and almost without slowing down scaled it and dropped to one knee trying to catch his breath. That was a bad move, as his chaser saw him through the fence and ran toward him, intent on replicating his move. Sobbing under his breath – his chest was on fire from all this unaccustomed running, and his broken jaw did not help – the Thai teen began running again, intent on losing his pursuer among all the stacks of shipping containers.

Seeing a stack of wooden pallets alongside a container, the teen had an inspired thought and quickly climbed to the top of the stack and from there jumping to the top of the container. From that container he ran to another higher container and jumped up, his hands barely gaining purchase on the top edge but enough to allow him to pull himself up. He repeated this again so he was on a third level container before finally crouching down, trying to get his breathing under control. All he had to do was hide on top of the high stack of containers so his pursuer could not see him from a lower level and wait him out. After he was sure he was clear he could hit his family up for some money and go visit some distant relatives for a while. With the payday he and his uncle had just come across, getting out of Samui for a long while sounded like a great idea.

Just as his breath was slowing down, the teen heard scrabbling sounds from the far end of the container he was on. To his horror, hands appeared on the edge, then a dark haired head, then a face wearing dark glasses looking right at him as his pursuer pulled himself up. Springing to his feet, the teen ran and jumped to the next stack of containers alongside the one he was currently on, as they were stacked about a double arms width apart. His pursuer did the same, the chase now resembling a demented case of leap frog.

This continued for about five minutes and almost three dozen leaps before what looked to be a stroke of luck occurred for the Thai teen. The loading and unloading of the container ships had continued throughout this chase, and the two had finally wound up in one of the active work areas. The teen had almost been literally cornered at the corner of a large group of container stacks when the Thai had seen a large forklift moving to pick up the container. Crouching down, the teen was not seen by the forklift driver until the container was clear of the stack and moved over to the other side of the roadway. Upon seeing the teen, the driver immediately stopped the forklift and started shouting and waving his fist at the teen, but at that point the teen had jumped from the container to another stack it was alongside.

Turning back, the teen could see his pursuer was standing at the edge of the previous stack of containers. The distance between the two groups of stacks was twenty five meters, it was way too far to jump. As his pursuer would have to climb or drop down from his stack of containers and climb up a stack of the group he was on, all the teen had to do was get out of sight long enough and there would be no way for the pursuer to find and catch up to him. He was home free.

Laughing, the Thai teen gave his pursuer the middle finger and turned to start running away when he saw something that made him stop and turn back. His pursuer had backed away from the edge to where he was half down the length of the container. Instead of climbing or jumping down, the pursuer bowed his head for a long moment and then looked up, fixing his prey with a stare apparent even through his dark glasses. Shockingly, he then began running toward the edge of the container, in the direction of the teen he was chasing.

Frozen in disbelief, the teen would only watch as his pursuer sprinted toward the impossible gap between then, and when his foot hit the edge, instead of flying forward or falling down, his pursuer… disappeared.

Keitaro Urashima was not a very good runner, at least in his mind. He ran when he had to, for cardio fitness if nothing else. In school he had been careful to be in the middle of the pack when they had their track sports rotation; the last thing he wanted was to be drafted for the school track team and add that activity to his intensive school and college prep studies as well as his martial arts practice. But here he was now, his heart beating like crazy, his lungs pumping like a bellows and his legs burning like they were on fire as he sprinted after his target, dodging both people in the way and objects his prey was running around, over and through.

His target was running like the devil himself was chasing him. After a frantic morning of searching the port shantytown for the young man in question, mostly by the dual expedient of offering American twenty dollar bills to the semi-cooperative and slamming others repeatedly face-first into concrete block walls, Keitaro and Gaz had finally gotten a fix on their quarry. And of course, the first thing that had happen was for the swollen-faced young man to glance over and see another young man approaching him, and their target knew. No matter that Gaz was sitting on a rented moped a few yards and out of easy sight, that the man looking at him was wearing a tropical shirt and shorts with dark glasses on his face and no expression, the Thai teen knew that the other man was hunting for him, and immediately bolted.

Finally, just when Keitaro thought that he had finally cornered his prey on top of the containers, it looked as though his target was going to get away after all. Now that the Thai teen knew that he was being searched for, he would crawl into a deep dark hole and stay there. And while he could eventually be found again, by that point it would be far too late for Sarah.

Seeing the teen laughing and flipping him off from the other group of stacks caused something to snap inside Keitaro. He knew this was the person that was responsible for Sarah's kidnapping. He was the only person available that could tell them where the American girl was now – the blonde teen was literally too valuable to keep in a backwater island like Koh Samui. If the teen managed to get away now, Sarah would be gone forever.

Moving back to the middle of the container he was on, Keitaro bowed his head as he searched inside himself. Finding the familiar but sealed core within, he concentrated. This was the reason he had been clumsy when he was younger, why sometimes he would almost trip on air, why he had to dedicate himself to countless hours of tai chi in order to have anything resembling normal coordination. There was no way to release the seals either quickly or safely, but there was one thing that he could do with the chi energy he did have access to, energy to perform a last-ditch technique.

Looking up and glaring at his prey, Keitaro felt the chi inside him start to burn. His chest, his arms, his legs were all on fire when he finally started to move. Sprinting toward the edge of the container, his eyes were fixed on the frozen teen 25 meters away across open air, the ronin had only one thought on his mind, one word on his lips.

Feeling his foot hit the edge of the container, Keitaro whispered "shunpo…" and with a loud crack disappeared.

Todai Expedition Site
Koh Tao Island,
Surat Thani Province,
Gulf of Thailand
Early July
late evening
(day before, right after pirate raid)

"Goddamnit Yuri, let me treat you! It doesn't have to end like this!" Gaz was trying to convince the Russian merc to let him treat his wounds, only for the man to keep pushing him away.

"Leave me be, Gaz. You have more important things to do." Yuri jerked his chin toward Seta, who was laying on an improvised litter a short distance away. Gaz had given the wounded Todai professor a field blood transfusion with Keitaro being the donor. With great reluctance and at the young man's urging, Gaz had transfused two pints of blood before disconnecting the IV setup. Keitaro had wound up looking more than a little pale, but he insisted he was all right. However, Seta was looking a bit better, with more color on his face and the bleeding stopped for the moment.

After hearing Gidget's and Nyamo's shocking announcement, Gaz and Keitaro had immediately hauled Seta and Yuri out of the cave and headed toward the Higgins boat, intent on pursuing the escaping pirates, only to be brought up short at the sight of the boat. Apparently the tide had been going out when Gaz had beached the boat, so the Higgins boat was now completely out of the water on the sandy beach, as well as the remaining three pirate speed boats. There was no way to push the Higgins boat across the sand, and even if they managed to get the speedboats afloat and hook up tow lines to the Higgins boat, they would still not be able to refloat their own vessel. Taking a speedboat to Samui was out of the question as well, as the boats had no navigation gear, and even if they transferred fuel and topped off the tanks, would still not have the range to reach the bigger island. Pirate speed boats usually operated in tandem with a larger mother ship that would tow and fuel them, so there was no need for extended range for the smaller boats.

Given that they would have to wait a minimum of ten to twelve hours before the tide would come back in and the water would be high enough to refloat the Higgins boat, there was nothing the contractors could do but wait. Of course, this did not keep Gaz from bursting into a long string of curses in at least a half dozen languages, apparently both extensive and vile enough to impress Yuri, who's time in the Russian military had exposed him to practically every form of cursing and vulgarity possible, at least in Russian and some allied languages.

After Gaz had calmed down, he had turned to Keitaro and helped move Seta and Yuri to the tree line, then directed Keitaro to try and scrounge up any undamaged gear and possessions from the ruined tents. Moving back toward the two wounded men, Gaz summoned Nyamo and Gidget, and using the islander girl as a go-between, carefully questioned the giant turtle as to what she had seen of the pirates. This was more than a little difficult; although Gidget had intelligence at a level between dolphins and gorillas, she did not think the same way that humans did. Even so, after about a half hour of simple yet extensive questions, Gaz was able to get as much out of the turtle as he could.

Leaving Nyamo to watch over the two wounded men, Gaz moved toward his younger compatriot, who had just finished stacking the pitiful few bags of belongings he managed to recover. "What did you find?" Gaz asked in a clipped tone.

"Most of the tents burned down." Keitaro wiped his forehead with his arm as he spoke. "I don't think they got away with much if the only ones who escaped were the ones that grabbed Sarah, but it looks like a Coleman lantern got hit and the rest of the tents caught fire as well. Seta's tent was the epicenter, everything there is gone, clothes, gear, electronics. The really valuable stuff we still have because it was hidden away." Seta had taken duplicates of their paperwork, some credit cards and about ten thousand dollars American and buried it in a steel and plastic waterproof lock box a short distance past the tree line but still in sight of Seta's tent. "Yuri and your tents caught fire, but I was able to save your bags, everything else in the tents is gone. Nyamo is such a neat freak and has so little that even though her hut caught fire and collapsed, her bedroll and duffle came out of it intact. Sarah's tent went up completely, nothing was recoverable there. My tent was burned up, my duffle was scorched but intact, my paperwork and books went up though. And the supply tent went up completely, including the weapon footlocker. That was actually the worst since all the ammo cooked off in the fire. What little is left of the tent looks like Swiss cheese now." The young Japanese man looked toward the rest of their group. "How are Yuri and Seta-sensei doing?"

"Seta's stable, I managed to get the bleeding to stop, but he is still going to need surgery for the chest wound. It looks like the bullet in his leg didn't hit the bone directly, lucky bastard. If it had been a solid hit, the bone would have been smashed to pieces and he would have probably lost the leg. Yuri…" Here it was Gaz's turn to rub his head, "The dumb bastard won't let me treat him more than he is. His chest wound is worse than Seta's, he's actually coughing up blood, but he put plastic wrap over the wound so the lung will inflate properly. What's worse, the round clipped his spine so his legs aren't working right. It could be temporary hydrostatic shock from the bullet, but it could be actual physical damage instead. I think I know what that damn Russian is thinking, if he really does have spinal damage he would not want to live with it," Gaz finished saying. Looking at the younger man, the Briton could see on his face a look that he recognized. "I can tell you don't want to tell me something, just spill."

Sighing, Keitaro reached across his tactical vest to one of the pouches. "After I finished checking the tents, I went and dragged those two dead pirates in the tent area into the jungle, I didn't want to leave them in the open." Pulling open the flap, he pulled out a late model Glock pistol with a satin nickel slide over the black polymer frame and handed it over the puzzled Brit. "I checked them to see if there was anything of interest, and I found that."

Gaz frowned. "This is an expensive pistol for some raggedy pirate to have, Keitaro." While firearms and especially handguns were cheap and easy to purchase in Southeast Asia, it was mostly war surplus from the various conflicts in the area, all the way back to the Pacific War. Even police officers carried WWII arms, mostly American GI .45 pistols and Vietnam-era M16 rifles. Fancy handguns like the one he was holding were available but usually at double or triple the purchase price in the West.

"I thought so as well. Then I cut open their pockets and found this as well. Please tell me it's not what I think it is." Reaching into his vest, Keitaro pulled out a thin leather wallet and passed it to Gaz.

Dreading what he would find, Gaz flipped the wallet open to see that it was a credentials case holding two laminated ID cards. One card had nothing but Thai script on it, but the other card was a photo ID with an elaborate coat of arms, one with both Thai script and the English words "ROYAL THAI POLICE" embossed on it. "Well, shit."

"That's just about what I said." Keitaro said with an unsmiling expression. "That man also had a newer M-16 rifle with him, and was dressed a little better than the rest of the rest of the pirates. He was wearing a tropical shirt, shorts and sneakers, everyone else was wearing t-shirts, cut off jeans, and sandals. I'm pretty sure this man was in charge, obviously."

"Obviously," Gaz echoed, thinking furiously. Things were getting worse faster than a bunch of drunken bootnecks and paras running into each other in a bar on leave. He had known that the local constabulary was corrupt to a large extent, but this meant that they could not involve the police at all, since they probably worked with the now dead pirates and would not react well to how they got that way. Not that he expected them to do much, since even if they had not been involved with the pirate group, they or their bosses were almost certainly getting paid off by them. But he had been hoping that they could take Seta and Yuri to the government hospital in Koh Samui, but with this revelation they would probably have to take them to the mainland or maybe even to Bangkok, if not out of the country before they could consider themselves relatively safe.

Looking back at his solemn compatriot, Gaz realized he had information he had to share as well. It was not much, but it was a lead they could follow up on as soon as they managed to get off the island and back to Samui.

"I can't believe it, but I was able to get some information from Gidget with Nyamo's help on the pirates that got away. Never would have thought a turtle could be that smart." Gaz pulled off his Union Jack ball cap and ran his hand over his short brown and grey hair. "Gidget said that one of the pirates was older and looked like the fishermen she normally stays away from, something about them always trying to either catch or kill her. The other bloke I got a better description on, Gidget said that he was not a young boy but not a fisherman, his skin was too pink from the sun. That means he's probably a village or city kid, not one that works on boats. But Gidget said something I don't quite understand. She said the kid's face was too big."

"Too big?" Keitaro blinked at that tidbit.

"Yeah. Gidget could not explain it better than that." Gaz watched Keitaro as he thought for a moment, frowning before looking up at the older man.

"Mind if I take a crack at Gidget?"

"Be my guest." Gaz gestured toward the area where the rest of their group was resting. Before Keitaro could step away the Brit handed the pistol back to him, causing him to raise an eyebrow in a silent question. "Two things to learn here, padawan. First, striping the dead of valuables and keeping them for yourself is a time-honored tradition for mercenaries. That pistol is as good as gold in some areas." The young ronin gave a slight grimace but did not say anything. "The second is that pistol had the serial number stripped off and is now pretty much untraceable. Better to use that for a black flag op in case you have to toss it later on than your government registered sidearm there." Gaz nodded toward Keitaro's own Glock pistol holstered on the side of his armor plate carrier.

After a moment Keitaro nodded in acceptance and tucked the purloined Glock back into the empty pouch. Turning, he walked toward the giant turtle and her companion, Gidget softly crooning while Nyamo wiped the sweat off the brow of a still unconscious Seta. Yuri was sitting up leaning against a tree, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. A small fire lit the scene, the flickering light dancing over everyone's faces.

"Gidget, Nyamo, can I talk to you for a minute?" Keitaro dropped down on one knee in front of the turtle, while the young islander girl sat indian-style next to her friend. "You helped a great deal with what you told Gaz, but I want to see if I can get something more, OK?" The turtle chirped her agreement, while the girl merely nodded.

"This is about the two men that took Sarah, the more information we have on them, the better the chances we can find them. First is going to be the older man. Did he have short hair," here Keitaro pointed at his own head, "or long hair?" This time he motioned toward Nyamo, who had the longest hair among them.

Gidget gave a short chirp and whistle, which Nyamo promptly translated as 'long hair.' A quick give and take determined that the older man had shoulder length grey hair, dark tanned skin, a lined face, and had been wearing a sleeveless white shirt and faded cut-off jeans. What had made the descriptions a little interesting is that Gidget did not know the name of colors per se, but instead would equate them with items and sights she was familiar with. For example, when describing the color black, Gidget would say 'the color of strong burn sand', which took them a few moments to figure out was the black volcanic sand that was present on some island beaches. Meanwhile, Gaz stood nearby taking notes without comment.

After a few minutes, the subject changed to the young man that had taken Sarah. His description turned out to be dark hair worn tied back (Keitaro had almost cracked a grin when Gidget described the boy as having a tail on his head), a pinkish complexion, a faded red t-shirt, jean shorts, and oddly enough, sneakers, which tended toward Gaz's and Keitaro's thought that the kid was not a sailor but probably a town kid.

Finally, the questioning had gotten to the point where Gaz had been puzzled. When Keitaro asked about the kid's face, the turtle had answered that his face was too big for his size, that it looked like it should have been on a larger body. Trying to figure out what Gidget meant by that, Keitaro finally had an inspiration.

"Gidget, was this guy's face big all over?" Keitaro circled his own face with his hand. To speed the questioning, Keitaro and Gidget had settled on a high chirp to signal 'yes' and a lower whistle to signal 'no.' Right now the turtle whistled 'no.'

"Big forehead?" A whistled no. "Big jaw?" A chirped yes. "His jaw was big?" Keitaro moved his hand across his lower face, and to his surprise Gidget whistled no. "Big mouth?" Another whistled no. Keitaro almost scowled in frustration, but managed to keep it from appearing. Giving a sigh of frustration he instead rested his hand on the side of his face, only to jerk it away when Gidget started chirping rapidly. After a moment he realized what the turtle was trying to say. "You mean the *side* of his face is bigger, not his whole face or his jaw!" Gidget happily chirped agreement. "Which side was his face bigger, this side," he touched the right side of his jaw, and the turtle whistled. "Or this side?" On touching the left side of his face the turtle chirped again. Pondering for a moment, Keitaro's thoughts came to a crashing halt as a possible explanation came to mind. Closing his eyes for a long moment, the ronin finally looked up at the curiosity filled faces of Gidget and Nyamo.

"Did the side of his face that was bigger have a different color?" Gidget chirped yes. "Did he have hair there, like a beard?" A whistled no. And now the important question. "What color was it?" Here the turtle whistled and chirped for a few moments,

Nyamo turned to Keitaro to translate the response, a slight frown on her face. "Gidget say that man's face the color of sky when sun goes down, when almost all sunlight is gone."

Keitaro gave a long sigh, an aching tiredness being felt throughout his body. "I think she means the color purple." The color of bruising, of old blood. Turning back to the turtle, he asked the questions to put the last nails in the coffin, "Gidget, did you hear this guy talking? Did he sound different?"

Gidget chirped and whistled for a few moments, and Nyamo promptly translated her answer. "Gidget say man speak strange, sound like mouth full of stones, no could understand what he say."

Bowing his head, Keitaro closed his eyes, feeling the tiredness increase to an almost crushing exhaustion. After a few moments, he looked up to see everyone looking at him, curiosity now on everyone's face, even Yuri. Finally, the young ronin spoke up. "I think I know who the young guy is. It's that kid from the port town that got Sarah drunk and tried to take her. I broke his jaw with a punch when I took her back."

Port Facility, Thong Sala,
Koh Pha Ngan Island,
(day after pirate attack)

Keitaro stared at the snarling face before him, trying to ignore the agony racking his body. Using a high level technique like he just did was bordering on insanity; with most of his chi sealed away, forcing what he did have access to would at the least severely burn the chi channels in his body, and in the worst case use up all the life force in his body and kill him, although it looked like just the former had occurred. As it was, the ronin now was going hand-to-hand with a bad guy feeling like someone had poured lava into his veins.

When Keitaro had whispered the name of the kinjitsu as he hit the edge of the shipping container for an eternal moment he had seen nothing but colored streaks. Contrary to what some people would think, shunpo was not teleportation; it was using chi to massively increase the speed of a person's movement. In the lower levels of skill it could only be used to move in a straight line, across unobstructed space. More importantly, it was really not supposed to be used to cross open space, like jumping from one shipping container to another across 25 meters of open air. Yet that is what Keitaro had just done, using the edge of the shipping container to push off in a shallow arc that landed him on the same container as the Thai teen he was chasing. And since he had been both not practicing this technique since learning it years ago and doing it while most of his chi was sealed, he was not able to stick the landing, resembling the crashing and burning ski-jumper from that old American sport program. Luckily his tumble had knocked over the Thai teen before he was able to take off again. Unluckily, the Thai started fighting like a scalded cat.

Almost immediately, the fight deadlocked when the Thai's fist rocketed toward his face, and his hand was able to deflect the fist and grab onto the forearm. A punch from the other hand had the same result. And as the two men were sprawled across the top of the shipping container, they wound up rolling around trying to pin the other down, right up to where they both rolled over the edge of the container, dropping down to the next level, falling a distance of three meters and getting the breath knocked out of both of them.

After a few seconds, the Thai teen managed to scrabble to his feet, but just before he took off running Keitaro was able to grab him by the ankle and yank him back down. Seizing his belt and shirt in his hands, the ronin threw the Thai into the adjacent container face first, stunning him long enough to get to his feet, and as soon as the Thai turned, punching him in the gut full force.

Grabbing the doubled over and gasping Thai by his longish hair, Keitaro slammed him face first into the container wall, once, twice, three times, finally producing a shriek of pain from his opponent. Holding his face against the wall for a moment, Keitaro reached into a pocket and drew a balisong knife he had taken off one of the dead pirates, the handles clicking rapidly before he pressed the point of the blade behind the Thai's ear, his struggles instantly halting.

With his off-hand against the back of the Thai's neck to hold him against the wall, Keitaro tried to slow his rapid breathing. After nearly fifteen minutes of extreme physical effort, he was pretty much running on adrenaline at this point. He was not about to drop out from exhaustion, but he would not be able to go full out for much longer.

Looking at the panting Thai, Keitaro could see the side of his face not pressed against the wall. Gidget had been right, the young man's face was swollen on one side to the point where his head looked out of balance. His skin was flushed red from all the running and fighting, but the injured side of his face was dark purple and green, with massive bruising and swelling consistent with a broken jaw.

Finally getting his breathing under control, Keitaro spoke, his voice raspy. "Where's the girl? Where's Sarah?"

"What the fuck you talking about, man? I don't know no Sarah…" The teen's words became a shriek as Keitaro took the point of the knife away from behind his ear and instead pressed the flat of the blade hard against the bruised and swollen jaw.

After about ten seconds of screams the ronin took the blade off the jaw and put it behind his ear before speaking again. "Sarah, the blonde haired blue eyed girl you tried to steal away by getting her drunk in town. The girl you were seen taking yesterday from Koh Tao Island, you pirate piece of shit!" Keitaro was trying to maintain his calm, but it was slowly slipping as evidenced by his cursing.

"Fuck you man! I didn't do shit!" Now that he was listening, Keitaro could hear that Gidget was right about the other part of her description of the teen; it did sound like he was trying to talk with a mouthful of rocks.

"Someone SAW you, you idiot. They described you to a T! And you already tried taking Sarah before! I should have killed you that day instead of just punching you!" Upon hearing Keitaro's words, the Thai was able to turn his head far enough to get a look at him before cursing and starting to struggle again.

"You fucking bastard! You the one that fucked up my face! You ruined my life, you fucking shit!" The Thai started cursing in his own language before Keitaro pressed his face into the wall and the teen started screaming again.

"How did I fuck up your life?" Keitaro was not really interested, but he need to know how the teen thought if he was going to get intel from him.

"You broke my jaw, I couldn't pay to get it fixed right! Girls just laugh at me now, tourists don't want to hire guide that looks like I do! All I do now is work on boats in hot sun, pay there for shit!" The teen was gasping now. "Everyone laughs at me now, it's all your fault! Fuck you!"

Keitaro continued holding the teen against the wall as he thought. After a few moments he decided to take it up a notch, as the teen was apparently angry enough at him that his current approach was not working. Giving himself a short sharp nod, the ronin pulled the knife away, closed it and put it back in his pocket before drawing back and punching the Thai hard in the kidney.

Throwing the gasping teen down on the roof of the container they were on, Keitaro dropped his knee onto the small of his back to hold him in place and put him into an arm bar, cranking it up until the Thai was gasping again in pain. Using his left hand on the Thai's wrist to hold the arm bar in position, his right hand moved over to the other's hand and stopped there.

"Once again, where is Sarah? Where is the girl?" Keitaro asked, his voice even.

"Fuck you, asshole! I'm not telling you shit!" The Thai snarled, not realizing that he had essentially admitted to being a part of Sarah's kidnapping instead of denying it as he did before. Which made Keitaro feel a tiny bit less guilty about what he did next; reaching down to the Thai's hand, he wrapped his fingers around the smallest finger and with a sudden motion broke it like a twig.

Pressing down with his knee, Keitaro maintained the arm bar, holding the Thai down as he flopped and screamed, the volume and pitch increasing as the ronin slowly worked the broken digit around, feeling the fractured ends grind against each other. After about 30 seconds he stopped, and he gave the man under his knee a few moments to catch his breath after screaming that whole time before he asked the questions again. "Where is Sarah? Where is the girl?"

"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you and your entire family!" The Thai started to go into some detail about Keitaro's legitimacy, lineage, and ancestry before he was interrupted by the ronin taking hold of his ring finger and repeating the process.

After letting the Thai catch his breath from almost screaming his throat raw a minute later, Keitaro spoke quietly. "You know, you have six fingers, two thumbs, and not a lot of time left. Just tell me what I want to know and I'll let you go. I promise. Otherwise I'll start using my knife on those fingers of yours."

"Fuck you…" the Thai moaned. Keitaro could tell that he was at the breaking point, one more push was needed. Regretfully, he reached down and took hold of both the middle and index fingers and snapped them as well.

After the Thai stopped screaming and started sobbing, Keitaro said softly, "Are you going to talk now?" The Thai nodded, still sobbing. Moving slowly, Keitaro stood up and pulled the Thai up with him, releasing the arm bar and once he got him on his feet, put him in a relaxed arm lock, one that could break his wrist in half a second.

"Tell me, where is Sarah? Is she still here on the island?" By standing, Keitaro could look at the Thai in the face, not that he was looking back at him.

"No. Girl like that stand out too much, too many people talk, even in Samui. Too much money to be made. We put her on boat to Surat Thani, they take her by truck to Phuket, she be there by now." The Thai's head was bowed as he spoke.

Keitaro's thoughts started to race. Surat Thani was the capital of the province they were in, but it was not much of a tourist destination, not like Koh Pha Ngan or Koh Samui. Phuket however was a larger town on the west coast of Thailand, and it was a much more popular tourist destination, especially for the sex trade.

"What is the name of the person receiving her in Phuket?" Keitaro was focusing on the Thai's face, and even so he could start feeling tremors on the arm he was holding.

"Pavel Popov, Russian I think, owns bars in Phuket. He businessman, involved in many things. Likes young girls, always offering high price for untouched."

At this point Keitaro had to consciously calm himself. The last thing he wanted to do is scare the teen before he finished giving up all the intel. He only had one or two questions left though.

"Nothing was done to Sarah before you send her away?" The way the ronin's voice was going flat should have been a warning, but the Thai did not pick up on it.

"No, like I said, get higher price for untouched. We knock out with ether, so she no struggle and damage self. Anyone try to touch under underwear, boss get angry, beat up, no get money. Can always pay for whores with money from job, plus get discount from boss' girls." There was a faint smile on the Thai's face, as though he was reminiscing.

Keitaro blinked slowly before sighing. "How much money did you get for Sarah? And who is the one who paid you?"

"Blonde girls not common in Thailand, young tourist girls rare too. Both together, high finder fee. Double pay, so $500 American. Can use to get face fixed, when uncle get back from Surat Thani." The smile was getting larger on the Thai's face, which still looked grotesque from the swelling and bruising.

"Your uncle a fisherman? The other one on the raid on the island?" Keitaro was still focused on the teen, but now he kept an ear out for a particular sound.

"No, uncle is lieutenant in Royal Thai Police, he part of marine patrol. Get cut of all business, legal, illegal. He take blonde girl to Surat Thani in police boat, one of his sergeants on raid with us."

Keitaro swore mentally. Their suspicions had been confirmed in a spectacular way. But now the sound he was waiting for was approaching, and it was time to put the endgame into play.

Moving both himself and the Thai to the edge of the container, they could see a forklift approaching on the access road. The container it was carrying was in a high position so the driver could see clearly in front of the forklift, but the load was blocking the driver's sight of the top of the stacked containers where Keitaro and the Thai were standing.

"I'm going to keep my word and let you go, but if I ever see you again, I'm going to kill you, understand?" The Thai nodded frantically. "We're too high for you to just drop down," they were on top of a second level container, "so as soon as this forklift goes by I'm going to ease you down and you follow after it. I'm going in the opposite direction, so don't look back." The Thai nodded again and turned toward the edge of the container, watching the approaching forklift.

Standing behind and to the side of the Thai, the two could see the large vehicle approaching, the enormous ridged tires stirring up dust on the hard packed dirt road. The driver was not visible behind the load, which meant he could not see them either.

"Ready…" As the Thai waited for the forklift to pass, he was pushed over the edge of the container, falling six meters and landing facing downwards in the road.

Gasping in pain, as he had landed hard on the hand with the broken fingers, the Thai was able to flop around so he was facing up but still on his back, just in time to see the enormous ridged tire that ran over his chest and head.

The ronin walked through the facility gate, carefully brushing the dust from his clothes. Turning right, he walked up to a man sitting on a moped next to the chain link fence, an older man wearing ballistic sunglasses and a ball cap with a Union Jack patch on it, a tropical shirt untucked over cargo pants. Keitaro stopped and stood there, the emotionless look on his face matching Gaz's.

"How much did you see?" Keitaro broke the silence first.

"From when you took your flying leap." Gaz opened his hand to show a monocular scope. "Not bad for an amateur."

"The chase or afterwards?" Keitaro tilted his head slightly.

"Both." Gaz paused for a moment before speaking again. "Tell me you got actionable intelligence?"

"Yes. Both the good and bad kind." Keitaro watched as Gaz paused for a moment again before nodding slightly.

"Get on, we can't hang around here." Gaz waited until Keitaro had gotten on the moped before asking the last question. "And that last part?"

Keitaro looked straight ahead as he gave his answer. "Black flag op."

A/N 2: So roughly two months have gone by, when I wanted it to be only one. Cest la vide. *sigh*

We finally get to see what is haunting Keitaro now that he is, to borrow a phrase used by American troops during the Vietnam War, back in the World. It is not just the fact that there is blood on his hands, it's how it got there. And while he can justify to himself at that time what he did, hindsight is always 20/20. This is one of those things that Keitaro does not want to ever tell anyone about, and this is only the beginning.

Some of you may be thinking that Keitaro is very out of character, being this violent and brutal with no emotional reaction. I will explain it in greater detail in later chapters, but there is a reason for Keitaro being this cold-blooded, and it is not just that a fourteen year old girl has just been taken to be sold into sex slavery. If any of you have seen the movie Taken with Liam Neeson, you will remember the line about how if a victim is not recovered within four days, they are essentially gone forever. I've been informed that in Real Life the time line is actually four hours from the time the girl is kidnapped to when the girl is 'broken in' (yes, I am being euphemistic) and sold, usually in that order. After being stranded on Koh Tao for almost twelve hours, Keitaro and Gaz are literally racing the clock, and after hearing the other contractors talk around the campfire about previous experiences, he has a good idea on what has to be done if they want to recover Sarah, let alone in one piece. There is also something else to explain Keitaro's behavior, and it is tied to his family training and his chi core being sealed. Keep in mind that even though the story is taking a dark turn, there are going to be elements of humor in it, especially once Keitaro, Seta and Sarah leave Thailand.

Thanks again to AZ MII and PCH for their mad beta skillz.

As of 0015 PST 17Feb15, this story now has 204K words, 526,482 (!) Views, 623 Reviews, 59 C2 listings, 1,022 (yeah!) Favorites listings and 921 Alert listings. Winner of Most Unusual Place to read this story is the Ukraine (in the middle of a war they are reading MY story?!). Most Numerous (Non-Primary English Speaking) Readers are Sweden for January and Poland for February.

Thanks again to everyone reading this story.