Kagami slipped out of the apartment after dinner and climbed up to the roof, stretching her arms and shoulders as she did so. Her shoulders and neck screamed in protest after spending most of the afternoon sitting in meeting after meeting with clients. First, it had been a stop at ChowaKyoku Bunpu to present Takagi-san with the publicity information for Kitty Section's upcoming album. That meeting had taken longer than expected, as Kagami attempted to explain the delay in the album's recording schedule. After that had been a meeting to present the latest version of Super Akuma Battle to the distributor. Three clients had requested meetings at the Tsurugi Group's Tokyo headquarters for that afternoon, after which she had finally been able to stop and visit with their new shipping company.
Even six months later, that still stung. Until her uncle's death, his had been the only shipping company that the Tsurugi Group recommended to their clients. But since then – since Nihonto Yunyo had become a front for the Yakuza – they had been forced to search for a new shipping company. Just walking into the conference room had been a reminder of her failure: she had been there, and she had been able to do nothing to save her uncle. It was a far smaller loss than that suffered by her aunt and cousins… but it was one she still had to live with. All she could do was to move forward – move forward, and help Shiro to make it right.
Twisting her back in either direction, Kagami stepped through the door and out onto the flat roof, looking around carefully for any sign that she wasn't alone. So far as they were aware, no one knew that Shiro, Kimiko, and Aunt Miki lived here; Kagami would not be the one who got them killed through carelessness. The wind whipped around her briskly, and she shivered involuntarily. Despite the daytime warmth the temperature had dropped with the sunset. But her miraculous suit would insulate her, and the physical exertion would warm her.
Shiro had once told her that his group did not patrol, at least not in the same way as the Heroes of Paris. Where the Heroes of Paris scheduled all of the heroes to patrol in pairs on a nightly basis, with more on patrol for particularly important events, Nihon Hiro Chimu was laser-focused on their need to stop the Yakuza. Almost all of their activities in Tokyo were directed toward that goal: watching Yakuza locations, intercepting Yakuza deliveries, preventing yakuza from collecting shinogi.
Kagami chuckled ruefully. While she could appreciate Shiro's focus, there were other benefits to patrolling.
"Are you ready, Kagami-san?" asked Longg, poking his head out of her purse and looking up at her expectantly.
With a quick glance to make sure that she had shut the door behind her, Kagami nodded curtly. "I am ready, Longg-san," she answered, before transforming. The transformation barely complete, Ryoku jumped off the building's roof into the void, twisted around twice in a backflip before her feet contacted the side of the building, and sprinted straight down the wall. Reaching the halfway mark, she leapt away and spun through a flip, angling herself toward the next building. Her heart finally caught up with her body as she reached the roof of the building next to her aunt's, and she hit on her shoulder and rolled to her feet, coming to her feet at a dead sprint and barely catching her balance as she reached the edge of the roof and sprang off. Angling herself carefully, she landed on the next building without missing a step. The wind whipped her hair behind her, stinging her eyes. She grinned in exhilaration as she raced from rooftop to rooftop down the street toward downtown Tokyo.
"I wondered if I would find you out and about!" called Kunoichi, approaching her at an angle from a cross street and matching her pace easily a little over a kilometer from her aunt's apartment building.
Ryoku smirked. "I can only take sitting inside for so long before I lose my mind," she responded, jumping out into space and holding her arms out to catch on the breeze, giving herself a slight boost across the longer gap.
"I completely understand," replied Kunoichi, using her trident to vault off of one roof onto the next. "This is a nice city to see at night!"
"Considering that the last two times I was here, I ended up fighting the Turtle and the Yakuza, it'll be nice to just see the city!"
Kunoichi hummed. "I wouldn't exactly count out the possibility of fighting the Yakuza," she pointed out. "They are still around, remember."
"True," Ryoku allowed. "But even with their Odoshi-gumi thugs in the mix, I can handle that a whole lot easier than all the lunatics running around Paris."
"Oh?"
Ryoku arched an eyebrow knowingly. "Looking for insider information to tell your Joey?"
Kunoichi shrugged. "Call it simple curiosity."
Ryoku furrowed her brows in concentration, picking her route carefully across a rooftop strewn with loose tilees. "You know that there are a bunch of criminals running around with miraculous, of course."
"How could I forget?" Kunoichi's jaw clenched. "Considering that one of them was using Koala-Kat's miraculous…" She let out a breath. "Thanks, by the way."
"Not like I was there for it," Ryoku responded, raising an eyebrow. "But I'll pass that along next time I see Sent-Bee or the others." She clenched her teeth. "We got that one back, but there are still plenty more criminals out there with miraculous they shouldn't have."
Kunoichi scoffed. "You don't need to remind me. Levii still hasn't forgiven the fact that Zapp is in the wrong hands."
"Yeah… I'm not exactly thrilled that Killer Bee still draws breath." Ryoku frowned. "But that's pretty much Paris: if it's not the criminals with miraculous, it's the lunatics with other random powers who are causing trouble. And most of them in service of a man who continues to hidd in the shadows. The only good thing, I suppose, is that I hear that Mecha-Man has been pretty quiet since the Tarasque: I think he's had a bit of a change of heart."
Kunoichi hummed, glancing in either direction as they came to a wider street. "A few of the Odoshi-gumi have been quiet, too," she confided. Her eyes narrowed, and she paused on the edge of the roof, leaning over and staring hard to the left. "But they aren't the only super-powered enforcers in the Yakuza's employ…"
Ryoku cocked her head, looking down the street in the same direction as Kunoichi. Outside of a small convenience store, a man and woman were in the middle of a heated discussion with an older man with grey hair. The woman held her hand out, and a ball of white light glowed in her palm, illuminating all three of their faces so brightly that stars danced in Ryoku's eyes. "Damn," she muttered under her breath.
Kunoichi knelt on the roof with one hand on the edge, studying the three closely. "The woman must be Kamihikari," she murmured. "Kamikaze has mentioned her. Not sure about the man, though… But he's got to be Yakuza, if he's with her." Her mouth set in a thin line.
Ryoku opened her mouth to respond, but there was another flash of light, and the older man covered his eyes, backing up into the wall behind him. Kamihikari took another step forward, holding the ball of light up even closer to the man's face. Ryoku let out a low growl. "Do we intervene?"
"I'm game if you are."
Even before she had finished speaking, Ryoku had already backed up a step and taken a running leap off of the roof. Holding her arms outstretched, she whispered, "Lightning Dragon!" Electricity danced in her eyes, time almost seemed to slow for a fraction of a second, and she vanished into a lightning bolt. Scanning the street in both directions as carefully as she could, Lightning-Ryoku crossed the distance in a flash and rematerialized between Kamihikari and the shopkeeper, drawing her sword in one smooth motion and leveling it against Kamihikari's neck. "Hustling a grandfather is hardly honorable behavior," Ryoku informed her in Japanese, her eyes narrowing. "What happened to your ninkyo? Have you thugs no honor?"
Kamihikari's face glowed brilliantly, her eyes flashing to white. "We hustle no one," she retorted, backing away from Ryoku the slightest bit to move her neck away from Ryoku's blade. "We merely request funding from those who benefit from our protection and assistance. Izumiya-san's store has flourished under our care; do you not think it right for him to return to us some of the profits he has enjoyed?"
Ryoku's grip on her sword tightened. "Only if such is offered and given freely, without coercion," she told her evenly. "This looks to be neither."
"What are you even doing here, Hero of Paris?" the man demanded, folding his arms. One foot slid back.
"Am I not free to visit Japan?" Ryoku smirked. "I only came to see the sights; that I can stop a couple of you Yakuza street thugs is a bonus!"
"We shall see about that," the man told her, his voice dropping to a growl. Surreptitiously, he reached into his pocket and withdrew something small. Ryoku's eyes immediately focused in on his hand – a moment too late as he flung something at her. Almost faster than the eye could follow, the ball bearings rocketed toward Ryoku's chest, and she twisted to one side, spinning her sword as she did so to deflect the ball bearings away. Behind her, Izumiya-san let out a startled cry. Eyes narrowed in concentration, Ryoku caught one with the flat of her blade and sent it clattering down the street away from them. The other, however, went high and struck the brickwork of the store behind her, sending a crack rippling up the wall. Izumiya-san dropped to to a crouch, huddling against the wall and covering his head with his arms. Even before the ball bearings had reached Ryoku, the man who had thrown them sprinted away from her, almost turning into a blur by the time he reached the intersection two blocks away. Kamihikari's hands began to glow a bright white. Ryoku turned back and forth, her attention switching back and forth between the two yakuza. With a snarl, an enormous wave of light emanated out from Kamihikari in all directions, illuminating the street as bright as midday. Ryoku turned her face away from Kamihikari, clenching her eyes shut to protect her vision.
"Inky Depths!" Sudden darkness engulfed them all around. Kamihikari let out a gasp. Something clattered against the pavement. Ryoku dropped into a defensive stance, attuning to her hearing as the outside world turned black. A pair of shuffling footsteps moved backward in front of her, and Ryoku adjusted her stance, bringing her sword around to defend from that direction. Another sound echoed from her right, and she automatically slashed in that direction just as a voice let out a grumbling curse. The blade deflected off of something metallic. "Quit it! That's me!" shouted Kunoichi. A whoosh of wind swept past them, almost hiding the sound of footsteps, and Ryoku leaned backward. Moments later, the darkness dissipated, and Ryoku and Kunoichi stood alone in the street, Izumiya-san huddled behind them near the front entrance of his store.
Ryoku let out a breath and sheathed her sword. "Are you okay, sir?" she asked Izumiya-san, who nodded jerkily.
"Let's get you inside," Kunoichi told him, gesturing toward the doorway.
Ryoku searching the street in either direction carefully while Kunoichi helped the man back into his shop. "Cowards," she finally spat. "Cutting and running away instead of fighting."
Kunoichi raised an eyebrow. "Smart strategy for them under the circumstances."
"Of course," a vaguely-familiar feminine voice called from the far side of the street, "they don't exactly know you quite as well as I do." A petite woman whose long black hair flowed freely around her shoulders stepped out of the alleyway beside the convenience store and into the light of the streetlamp at the corner.
"Kamimizu," Kunoichi greeted her evenly, nodding. "It's been a while."
"I've been around," she replied, glancing back and forth between Kunoichi and Ryoku. "Though I could say the same to the two of you."
"Were you watching us?" asked Ryoku, eyeing her warily and resting her hand on the hilt of her sword.
Kamimizu raised an eyebrow, glancing down at Ryoku's hand on her sword. "Oh, not exactly… More like I… happened to be in the neighborhood."
"Why should we believe you?"
"Why would I lie?"
Kunoichi let out a breath and held up one hand. "Wait. After you helped us out last time, I don't exactly want to fight you."
"So don't."
"As long as you don't give me cause to fight you…"
Kamimizu scoffed, backing away from them down the street, her hands still visible in front of her. "I guess we'll just have to see what the future holds, won't we?"
