Love Hina: A different path taken.
Chapter Nine.
Oo000ooo000oO
Keitaro stubbed the butt of his cigarette out in the ashtray on the coffee table and stood up.
"Well, I had better get going." he said to Kitsune, with whom he had been chatting.
"Okay." she said. "We can pick up where we left off when you get back."
"Right."
(1)Hitching up his shorts a bit- one of the drawbacks of carrying a sidearm concealed, gravity really made itself known through the couple of pounds of steel and plastic tucked into your waistband- and headed for the mudroom.
"Gotta get myself a new belt." he muttered as he slipped his sneakers on. "Stupid hippo."
Once he had his shoes on, Keitaro headed out. His objective for that day was to go talk to some heating and cooling guys to see what it would cost to have new gas lines installed at the Inn.
"Honestly, Grandma," Keitaro said to himself "Didn't you do any repairs?"
He frowned at the thought of the amount of repairs he'd had to do already. Most of them stemmed from inaction. The wiring worked, why bother to check it?
His counterpoint to that would have been that the wiring dated from when Granny Hina was a young girl, a time when two prong, twenty amp service would have been more than enough for the Inn. Nowadays, you needed forty amp grounded service just to deal with the load generated from personal electronics, fans, kotatsu in the winter, and so on. And that didn't even count the fact that most of the wiring was old and the insulation was rotting away-
Keitaro's mental rant was interrupted when he heard the sound of a large bird taking off nearby. Instincts drilled into him by Shinji made him stop for a second, then change direction, moving away from where he had been.
The reason why he did that was that in the field, if that happened, it meant you had blown your position. And that was a bad thing. So, giving in to hard won habits used to keep himself alive, he doubled back.
And that's when he saw Tsuruko walking the street with a large, gaudy, bird perched on her shoulder.
"Oh fuck, not you again." Keitaro thought irritably. "I do not have the time or the inclination to deal with you and your crazy right now. Go away. Shoo."
To her detriment, Tsuruko did not do as he wished, and Keitaro figured that he was going to have to deal with her no matter how much he didn't want to. Figuring that she'd be on her guard after his sneaking up on her six bit, he decided to try a different approach: Stay put and wait for hr to acknowledge him.
It took her just over five minutes to notice him leaning up against a lamp post, looking slightly bored. When she spotted him Tsuruko walked towards him at a stately place, and when she came up to him she was smiling pleasantly, nothing at all to hint at the wild-eyed swordswoman she had been the last time he had seen her.
"Urashima-san." she greeted him, giving him a slight bow.
Keitaro straightened himself up and returned the bow. "Miss Aoyama." he returned, keeping it polite. They were on a city street. Bad place to start something... "What I can I do for you?"
"My sword." Tsuruko answered. "I wish to reclaim it."
Keitaro let out a chuckle. "It's going to be a cold day in hell before I give you any sort of weapon." he told her, subtly and the social niceties be dammed.
Tsuruko's gaze hardened. "I am giving you an honorable way out-" she started to say, but was cut off by Keitaro.
"To hell with honor." Keitaro told her. "I couldn't care less about honor. What this is about is that I'm not going to give a weapon to a woman who showed up out of the blue, terrified the shit out of her sister, tried to drag her off to take up responsibilities that you dumped on her when you decided to go run off and play Suzy Homemaker, and then when you found out that she had lied to you, again, because she was terrified of you, you decided to go Toshiro Mifune on her.
A woman who would do that is not the sort of person I would trust with a stick of Pocky, much less a sword."
Tsuruko sighed and closed her eyes. "I tried to give you an out." she said. "But you insist. Be warned, to continue on this path is to continue to your destruction-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." Keitaro said "You're the terrifying swords woman. Death incarnate. That being said, I really don't want to fight you."
"Then give me back my sword."
Keitaro shook his head. "Not gonna happen." he told her.
"Then conflict is inevitable." Tsuruko responded.
"Only if you press the issue." Keitaro countered. "Go back home and tend to your house and husband. Let your sister decide when she's ready to take over your school.
"That is not your concern." Tsuruko pointed out.
"You came into my Inn, drew your sword, and threatened one of my tenets." Keitaro told her. "When you did that, you made it my business. And if you're so dead set on pressing the issue, we can go find some picturesque meadow somewhere, and we can get into some of that old Kurasawa shit."
"And I'll have a couple of my buddies on overwatch and they'll pop you before you can even draw, and afterward, we'll roll you into a hole and forget about you." he added mentally.
Tsuruko's eyes narrowed at his flippant reply. "Do not make light of my skills, Urashima." she said, her voice carrying a warning tone.
"Oh, believe me, I'm not." Keitaro told her. "I'm just saying that I'm better at killing things than you. More efficient, anyways."
Tsuruko huffed and looked down her nose at him. "Believe whatever you want." she told him. "But this is not over."
Keitaro merely shrugged in reply. Tsuruko turned on her heel and walked away, every inch of her graceful and poised.
"Well, crap." Keitaro muttered. "Apparently she can't take a hint. Fuck."
Sighing, he checked the time on his phone and started walking. "Man, I hope things go better with the contractors."
Oo000ooo000oO
The contractors, a father and son duo, were utter madmen. Completely and totally insane. The father was gleefully determined to dominate the world wide heating and cooling contracting market, and his son was enthusiastically helping him with that goal.
That being said, Keitaro went with them anyways, for a number of reasons. One of them was that they were very affordable. Another was that their work was very highly recommended, with none of the buildings ever being destroyed from a gas leak. True, three had exploded, but for two of them that was because they were in Nerima during the early Nineties, and the third had been blown up due to a stray missile launched by a mecha during a kaiju outbreak in the early 2000's.
Keitaro hadn't been fazed by the lighting that had flashed and the thunder that had rolled when he signed the work order. Hell, one of his colleagues was a Guild member and that sort of thing was routine for him.
"That reminds me..." Keitaro thought as he took out his phone.
Opening his mail app, Keitaro tapped out an email to his boss, telling him about the homicidal swordswoman and an update on what was happening with the Guild and Suu. Sending the email, he put his phone away and decided to go get a couple of cases of beer for later with Kitsune.
Oo000ooo000oO
Keitaro had just paid for his beer and was walking out the door when his phone started ringing. Grunting in irritation, he set the cases down and pulled his phone out of his pocket. When he looked at the display he was surprised to see that it was his boss calling him.
"Hey boss." he said when he picked up.
"Hey, Keitaro, my man. What's up?" Shinji cheerfully said in reply.
"Not much. I just got done getting some beer and then I was going to go work on the Inn some more." Keitaro replied. "Aren't you up kinda late to be calling me?"
"Not really." was Shinji's reply. "I'm in Tokyo right now."
"You are?" Keitaro asked. "Why?"
"Eh, just picking up some equipment." Shinji said.
The vagueness of his boss's answer told Keitaro that whatever he was picking up, it was something that he didn't want to talk about on an open line.
"Oh, okay." Keitaro said, being equally vague in his response. This was an old routine for him.
"Anyways, I got your email and was wondering if you'd mind talking about it over dinner with me and Rei." Shinji said, switching topics.
"Sure. You mind if I bring a plus one?" Keitaro asked.
"That reporter you've been boinking?" Shinji asked, a touch of wariness in his voice. Reporters had a nasty tendency to make it difficult for contractors to do business.
"She's a writer, but yeah." Keitaro corrected his boss.
"Okay, that writer you've been boinking?" Shinji repeated the question correctly.
"Don't worry, she's on the up and up." Keitaro assured him. "I promise."
Shinji was silent for a moment before responding. "Alright, but it's your ass if it goes south."
"Fair enough."
"Alright, we'll be at that little place in Shinjuku I told you about at eight. Dress nice." Shinji told him.
"Okay." Keitaro said. "We'll be there."
"Alright then. Later."
"Later."
Hanging up his phone, Keitaro put it back in his pocket and picked up the beer.
"So much for an evening in the guest house." Keitaro thought. "But I think she'll like this..."
Oo000ooo000oO
When Naru stopped by Kitsune's room, having not seen her lounging about in the common area with a collection of empty beer cans, she found her friend tearing through her clothes.
"Hey, Kitsune." Naru said, announcing her present.
"Oh, hey Naru." Kitsune replied as she held up a dress to herself in front of a mirror and frowned. "No, this doesn't do it for me..."
"What are you doing?" Naru asked, carefully stepping into her friends room, looking around at all of the clothes strewn about.
"Oh, Keitaro's boss is in Tokyo and invited him and me to dinner."Kitsune replied as she put the dress back and took out another one, a plain black mini dress.
Naru wrinkled her nose as if the mention of their landlord had brought a bad odor into the room. "You're actually going out on a date with him?" she asked, not hiding the disgust in her voice.
Kitsune smiled when she held up the dress to herself. "Oh, this is the one." she said to herself before answering Naru "Well, seeing as how we're already sleeping with each other, it's not that big of a stretch..." she added, catching Naru rolling her eyes at the edge of the mirror.
"You know, he's not that bad of a guy, Naru." she said as she turned to face her friend.
"Not that bad- Kitsune, did you not forget the fact that he pistol whipped me?" Naru exclaimed.
Kitsune nodded. "Yeah, I remember that. I took you to the emergency room." she said. "And from what Motoko told me, you swung first, so who's really at fault on that one, hmm?"
"You know, you could try taking my side for once!" Naru snapped.
Kitsune jerked at Naru's outburst, and she stared for a moment at her friend. She'd seen her get this way before. "Naru... what's wrong?" she asked.
Naru scowled at her friend. "We both know who-" she started to say, but was interrupted by Kitsune.
"No. Keitaro isn't the problem." Kitsune said. "He's just something you're venting at. You were this way after Seta left. What's wrong?"
Naru took a deep breath and worked out just what she wanted to say in her head. "The entrance exams are coming up." she said "And I've been having trouble studying with all that's going on."
"Ohhh." Kitsune said. "I can tell Keitaro, I'm sure he'll keep the noise down-"
"It's not that." Naru said, cutting Kitsune off. "It's everything else. Motoko's sister, Suu, you and him doing...that."
"I see." Kitsune said, putting down her dress. "And you're worried that with all that's happened, you haven't studied enough."
Naru nodded. "Yeah." she said. "I've been taking the practice tests, and I've been passing them, but..."
"But," Kitsune prompted.
"But, it's been pretty close a couple of times, and the areas I've been messing up on is stuff I know."Naru continued. "So, you can see why I'm kind of worried about this. I've worked so hard and for so long at this, I'd hate to screw it up now."
"I can see that." Kitsune agreed. "You've been working towards getting into Tokyo U for a very long time."
"And like I said, the last thing I want to do is mess it up." Naru repeated. "So if all of the other stuff would just take a break for a while, that would be great."
"Well, at least you won't have to hear Keitaro and I's play time any more." Kitsune told her as she walked over to her jewelry box.
"Thank God for small favors then." Naru opined as Kitsune started rummaging through her jewelry.
Kitsune, of course, couldn't resist the urge for a little mischief. "We use the guest house for all of our boning." she said with a grin that would make a priest nervous.
"Ewwww! Ew1 Ew! Ew! Ewwwwwww!" Naru said with a horrified grimace. "I did NOT need to hear that!"
Kitsune laughed at her friend's expression. "But I thought friends were supposed to share things between them..." she teased.
"Not that!'' Naru protested.
Kitsune laughed again. "Give it a couple of years." she said. "We'll be swapping stories."
"I doubt it."
Kitsune grinned cheekily. "Wanna bet?" she asked.
"No!"
Oo000ooo000oO
When Keitaro got back to the Inn he found a turtle-shaped mecha standing in the front yard with the cockpit open, which meant that the other source of his problems was home.
"SUU!" he yelled.
There was a clang of a wrench hitting the cobblestones and the blond teenager popped her head up from the back of the mecha.
"Heeey, Keitaro!" she called out, a maniac grin on her face.
"Hey." Keitaro said, his tone terse. "Just what the hell is this?" he asked, indicating the mecha.
"This is my turtle mech!" Suu told him. "I was just tinkering with it a little before I went to go test it in Nerima."
"Oh." Keitaro said. "You accept the Guild's offer yet?"
Suu shook her head. "No, not yet." she said. "I honestly don't want to, though. They seem kind of boring to me."
Keitaro's eye twitched and he felt a headache begin to throb at his temples.
"I'm more worried about what they're gonna do to you and the Inn than how interesting you find them." he told her. "This place is doing a fine enough job of collapsing into a pile of rubble by itself. It doesn't need your help."
Suu laughed and waved it off. "Collateral damage is all part of being a mad scientist." she said.
Keitaro felt the headache grow. "And I'm the one who has to clean up the mess and fix it afterward." he snapped. "Which is why I don't want you anywhere near here if you decide to reject their offer."
"Why not?" Suu asked, an offended look on her face.
Keitaro crossed his arms and stared at Suu. "Because they'll fucking level this place to get to you, and I don't want that to happen. The Hinata Inn has been in my family for over a hundred and twenty years, and I would like it to stay that way." he told her.
Suu blinked and thought about what he had said for a second. "Oh. That makes sense." she said, and then looked around at her surroundings. "And this is a really bad place to fend off an attack."
"Not the point I was trying to make, but I'll take what I can get." Keitaro thought to himself.
"Okay then." he said. "I don't care where you go, just as long as it isn't here."
"Okay! Not a problem!" Suu said. "But I got stuff to do, so I'll talk to you later Keitaro!"
Keitaro watched as Suu ducked back down and started working on her mecha again. He sighed and headed inside to hunt down some ibuprofen.
Oo000ooo000oO
Keitaro didn't find any ibuprofen, but he did find Kitsune, wearing nothing but a t back and stockings, which helped with his headache immensely. Afterward, they headed out to meet up with Shinji.
"This is the place?" Kitsune asked, looking up at the sign for Sakura Garden looming above them in neon.
"Yep. Keitaro confirmed.
Kitsune shot him a slightly incredulous look. "Keitaro, this is one of the most exclusive places in the city. There's a six month wait list!"
"Yep." Keitaro replied.
"Not to speak ill of your boss, but how does he rate a place like this?" Kitsune asked.
"Well..." Keitaro said, pausing to take one last drag on his cigarette "First of all, he pays me six figures US to do what I do, so what do you think his income is? And secondly, he has a forty percent stake in the restaurant, so he can get a table whenever."
"Oh.' Kitsune said as Keitaro tossed the cigarette butt into the street. "How'd he get into the restaurant business? From what you've said of him, he sounds like the last person you'd expect to invest in something like this."
"According to Shinji, he went to school with the owner." he explained. "Shall we go inside? He can explain it better than I could."
"Sure."
Inside, the decor had a heavy traditional Japanese influence blended with modern style, with kimono-clad women tending to the guests seated at tables arranged as if they were stones in a zen garden. Kitsune was impressed. She was even more impressed when Keitaro walked up to the matire d', told him who they were there to see, and he summoned a woman dressed in a kimono that probably cost more than most people's cars to escort them.
She went from impressed to surprised when they were taken upstairs to a private room where two people were residing: A taller Japanese man, dressed in a Seville Row with deep tan and the same way of carrying himself like Keitaro- calm, relaxed, and having a plan to kill everyone in the room- and a very pale, almost albino complexion, with blue hair pulled back into a bun and dressed in an Italian suit.
"Keitaro!" the man exclaimed in greeting. "How you doin'? The property manager business hasn't killed you yet?"
"Not for a lack of trying." Keitaro deadpanned.
The man chuckled and gestured for them to sit down at the table. "I can't wait to hear this." he said. "But first, why don't you introduce us to your friend?"
"Oh!" Keitaro said, remembering his manners. "Shinji, this is Mitsune Konno-"
"Call me Kitsune." she said after bowing.
"- and Kitsune, I'd like to introduce you to my boss, Shinji Akari, and our Chief Operations Officer, Rei Ayami.''
Shinji and Rei both bowed to her in greeting.
"It's nice to meet you." Kitsune told Shinji. "Keitaro's spoke very highly of you."
"Has he?" Shinji asked, looking at Shinji. "What kind of lies are you telling her, Urashima?''
Keitaro snorted as he sat down. "Hey, someone has to make you look good." he said.
"That's her job." Shinji retorted, jerking his thumb at Rei as he sat down. "Your job is to blow stuff up or defuse bombs so other things don't get blown up."
"You forgot to add 'get blown up and survive." Keitaro pointed out.
"That too."
"Don't worry, this is normal for them." Rei told Kitsune as they sat down.
"She's an odd one." Kitsune thought, noting how even and free of inflection the other woman's voice was.
"They're always this informal?" she asked Rei.
The albino woman nodded. "Yes." she said. "Even when they are being shot at."
"Huh." Kitsune said, and sipped at the glass of water placed at her seat, then held it up and looked at it with a frown.
"Something wrong?" Shinji asked her.
"A glass of water with a slice of lemon in it is no substitute for a beer." Kitsune pronounced, setting the glass down.
Shinji chuckled and looked at Keitaro out of the corner of his eye. "I like how she thinks." he said. "And on that note, lets get some beer in here."
"The usual?" Rei asked, picking up a tablet that had been lying near the edge of the table.
"This place has an app?" Keitaro asked, looking at the tablet while Shinji nodded.
"Actually, this place has tablets instead of menus." Shinji told him. "You put your order in, swipe your card, and they bring it to you."
Keitaro nodded, suitably impressed. "I hope they have good encryption on those things."
"Extremely good."Shinji told him. "We get some pretty high level government and business people in here."
"Ah." Keitaro said. "That reminds me- speaking of powerful idiots, I want to talk to you about Ms Aoyama's psychotic sister."
Shinji nodded. "Ah, yes, you mentioned that you had a run in with her in your email." he said. "She's staying away from your Inn?"
"Yeah." Keitaro said. "I think my Ithaca got the point across, but she's still out there and wanting a rematch, so to speak."
Shinji grunted and took out his cigarettes. "I get ya." he said. "And from what you've said, you don't want to give her a rematch."
Keitaro nodded. "Oh yeah." he said. "Mainly for the fact that she probably wants to have some big Kurasawa-style fight, and I'd just do the Mozambique drill on her-"
"Mozambique drill?" Kitsune asked, interrupting their conversation. "What's that?"
Keitaro and Shinji looked at each other for a second. "You want to tell her?" Shinji asked.
"Yeah." Keitaro said, then turned his attention to Kitsune. "The Mozambique Drill is where you shoot someone in the chest twice and then once in the head." he explained, demonstrating by tapping himself in the chest twice and once on the temple.
"Oh." Kitsune said.
"So, yeah, like I was saying, it'd be quick and she'd be dead." Keitaro said, picking up where he had left off. "And I'd rather not kill one of my tenets older sister, you know? It'd make things a little awkward."
"That's an understatement." Shinji observed as a kimono-clad woman wheeled in a cart with a stainless steel tub filled with ice and beer into the room.
Keitaro waited until the woman had left the room before responding. "It's an understatement of epic proportions." he groused. "And it's all because she wanted to go play housewife and dropped everything into her sister's lap."
"I was gonna ask what the backstory was on this." Shinji said as he started passing out bottles to everyone. "So, she drops everything on her little sister-"
"Motoko." Keitaro interjected.
"-and then she shows up one day out of the blue to make her take up her responsibilities?" Shinji finished as he opened his bottle.
"You got it.'' Keitaro said, opening his own beer and holding it up. "Cheers."
"Cheers." Shinji said, clinking his bottle against Keitaro's. "So why the trouble? The little sister not ready?"
Keitaro shook his head. "Nope." he said. "She tried to fool her sister by pretending that she was engaged to me, like something out of a romance manga."
"That didn't work, did it?" Shinji asked.
"No, not for long, at least. The older sister found out about it and was about to go full monster slayer in the baths when I shut that down." Keitaro continued. "And now she's prowling around the area, trying to goad me into a fight so she can get her sword back and then fight her sister."
"And you want to avoid that all together." Shinji observed.
"Yes."
"Without killing her."
"Also, yes."
Shinji sighed and took a healthy pull of his beer. "Damn. This could be solved so much easier if we could just pop her and call it good."
"Yeah, I know." Keitaro said. "But she's not an African "Freedom Fighter". People would actually care if she ended up dead."
"Hmmm." Shinji grunted and held up his beer to the light. "Since we cant take her out, what we need to do is make it so where she can't fight."
"We could knee cap her." Keitaro proposed.
"There's that." Shinji mused. "Hard to do, though, without attracting official attention."
"Which would just make the situation worse." Keitaro stated.
"True." Shinji said and drained his beer.
"What if you discredit her?" Rei suggested.
Keitaro and Shinji looked at her.
"No one will follow a leader that people cannot respect, or that they think is not capable." Rei continued.
"Now there is an idea." Shinji said as he got another beer. "No bodies, no injuries, nothing that can be traced back to you."
Keitaro nodded. "Yeah..." he said "But with that, the question now is, what can we use to discredit her?"
"You could use this." Kitsune said, holding up her phone.
Shinji, Keitaro, and Rei leaned in to watch as a video began to play on it's screen.
"Is that at the baths?" Shinji asked.
"Yeah." Keitaro answered. "This is when she confronted Motoko. You can see her there, standing in front of Tsuruko."
"Oh." Shinji said. "She looks cute. Waaaay too young for my taste, though. I like my women to be able to buy booze."
"Ah." Keitaro said as on the video the camera shifted to show Keitaro ghosting up behind Tsuruko. "And there I am."
Shinji watched on screen as Keitaro snuck up behind Tsuruko and jammed his shotgun in the back of her head, then force her to toss her sword. He grinned and sat back.
"Oh, that'll do. That'll do." he said and took a swig of his beer. "Urashima, I think we have a solution to your problem. All we need to do is get that video to the right people."
"Good." Keitaro said. "You wouldn't happen to know who those people would be, would you? I'm asking this because I'm pretty sure that Motoko, as terrified of her sister as she is, wouldn't be up for blackmailing her."
"Well, to answer your question, I don't know." Shinji told him. "But, I do know the people who do. I'll get you a list in a day or so."
"Ok, good." Keitaro said. "Now lets get some food in here. I'm starving."
"Okay." Shinji said, and gestured for Rei to hand him the tablet. "Got anything new to add about that would be Mad Scientist?"
"Nah." Keitaro said. "Though could you have Skeeter give me a heads up if they send anybody?"
"I'll let him know." Shinji said as he took the tablet. "Now, lets see what's new..."
Oo000ooo000oO
End.
(1) That comes from personal experience, I myself having been carrying for about three years now.
Author's note: And holy shit this one took a while to crank out. Life's been kind of busy on my end.