The Ultimate Nemesis
Flashback: The Case of the Usual Suspects
Port of Nagoya, Japan
Several days ago
Naegi watched carefully through the car's windshield as the pair of unmarked white vans pulled up alongside the shabby wharf down the block. One of the drivers leapt out and - not bothering to turn off the vehicle's engine or even close the door behind him - ran up the gangway to the weather-beaten ship moored there.
He gently shook his partner, who was currently napping while stretched out across the car, his lap serving as a pillow. Kyoko Kirigiri stirred and looked up at him with her violet eyes.
And yup. There went Makoto's heart skipping a beat, right on schedule. "Hey," he whispered. "Something's happening."
She suppressed a yawn and sat up, pushing her white hair. She was still in the process of growing it out again after cutting it short for her disguise during the Togami case two months ago. It hadn't quite reached her shoulders yet, but she'd at least recovered enough length to start putting it into her usual side braid. Makoto was glad to see the plait back. Though he of course hadn't said anything, he'd missed it. "They've taken the bait?" she asked.
"Seems like."
They waited. After about ten minutes, the crew of the M/S Redfoot (Argentinian flag, based out of Salaverry, Trujillo, Peru) came streaming out of their vessel onto the wharf. Even in the dark, Makoto could tell they didn't seem happy. He spotted several carrying pipes and longer-than-legal knives. Two of them even had rifles slung over their backs. They all piled into the vans and slammed the doors shut. The vehicles went peeling off in a rush - almost as if they'd received a very concerning email from a not-at-all-hacked account that suggested their erstwhile business partners might be backing out of their deal.
Makoto glanced at Kirigiri. "I counted twelve. You?"
"Same." She pulled her Glock out of the glove compartment and holstered it beneath her coat. "Let's move."
It turned out the crew was mindful enough to have retracted the gangway leading up to their vessel before leaving. This left the investigators with no choice but to shimmy up one of the ropes connecting the ship to the shore. Once on deck, Kirigiri drew her firearm and signaled for Makoto to do the same.
The boat seemed to be deserted, at least as far as Naegi could tell. Kirigiri led him to a hatch by the bow that she slid open, revealing a ladder down into the hold. He covered her with the revolver as she descended, then followed her in.
They crept down a short length of corridor before another hatchway led them into a larger room. "Geez," Makoto muttered.
The Redfoot's hold was crammed full of people, each one wearing a large Monokuma helmet over their heads. They looked Chinese, probably from one of the fallout zones. Women and girls, mostly. A few boys. Some of them couldn't have been older than five. They all sat completely still, staring at a pair of flatscreen televisions positioned at the center of the room. The stench in the air made it clear that none of them had been allowed to bathe themselves in at least a week, if not longer.
Human trafficking in the post-Tragedy age. Even with the Despair side mostly gone, Makoto thought, the technology they'd created was still enabling as much human misery as it possibly could. Maybe that'd even been their plan all along.
Naegi knew the drill at this point. He took out his phone and started snapping pictures. Kirigiri went over to the TVs. Carefully averting her eyes from the video being played on loop on both screens, she pulled a flash drive out from the side of the small media player connected to both of them. The televisions went blank.
(That wouldn't be enough to wake the captives, Makoto knew. The control helmets would still keep them docile. Still, best to interrupt the indoctrination process as soon as they could.)
Kirigiri came back and wordlessly passed him the drive. He hooked it into the waiting cable dangling from his phone and pulled up one of the Future Foundation custom apps. The software only needed to work for a few seconds before promptly confirming:
MEMETIC HAZARD DETECTED
TYPE: DESPAIR-2/ULTIMATE OBEDIENCE/MINION RECRUITING
REPORT + FILE CHECKSUM SIGNED AND SAVED
Naegi glanced at his phone's screen. "No signal down here," he whispered.
She nodded. "Hull must be shielded. Go back up on deck. Upload the proof to Togami."
"What, now? Why?"
"We need the police here before the crew comes back."
"I know that!" Naegi hissed. "Why are we splitting up before we've cleared everything down here?"
Kirigiri sighed. "Because I need to handle those."
She pointed at the two packages of C-4 placed neatly on either side of the hatchway they'd come in through.
"Oh. Well, that's... charming." Naegi noticed the short antennas sticking out from above the blasting caps. "Those remote detonators?"
"Yes." She pulled out a pair of wire cutters from one of the pouches sown into the lining of her purple trenchcoat. "Six more attached to the hull in this room alone. Likely more in the engine room."
Meaning they likely had some kind of relay set up, Naegi thought. Meaning that the captain could probably set off the charges from his phone any time he wanted to, just in case they needed to get rid of the evidence in a pinch. He met such lovely people in this line of work.
Regardless, time for him to stop questioning orders. "I'll be right back," he whispered. She nodded, already lost in studying the bombs. He turned and ran.
Makoto went up the back way and checked out the bottom of the house, just to make himself feel better. Holstering the revolver, he stepped out onto the deck and queued up the file uploads. CONFIRMED, he messaged Togami. MAKE THE CALL.
NOW, PLEASE, he added as an afterthought. ALSO THERE ARE EXPLOSIVES. JUST FYI.
He checked the upload. Both the first photo and the video report had already been sent. Good enough. He slid the phone back into his coat and rubbed his hands together.
Then he looked over and saw the big hulking white dude leaning against the deck railing, a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth. Who was, in turn, staring straight back at Naegi.
Crap. Makoto swallowed and forced a weak smile on his face. "Hey," he said casually. "How's it going?"
The first hit the gorilla landed sent Naegi staggering back through the hatchway into the house. This put him back in what looked like the ship's galley. Because that's what you called the kitchen on a boat, he thought woozily. A galley. He'd just learned that from Kiri the other day.
Makoto picked himself back up and put up his fists. "That the best you got?" he croaked.
Naturally, he got his answer in the form of a jab to the face.
Makoto had learned a lot working with Kirigiri. Those things did not include self-defense, at which he continued to do whatever the exact opposite of excelling was. (Decelling? Was that a thing? Anyway, the point was that he still sucked.)
He had, however, gained a certain amount of experience in taking a beating. He managed to turn with the punch, then with the followup hook to the gut.
Naegi bounced back, a little pleased with himself. "C'mon," he muttered, a cocky smirk on his face. "C'mon."
The sailor reached over and picked up a metallic paper towel holder off the galley counter. Pulling off the roll left him with what looked like a fairly serviceable bludgeon.
Makoto dropped his fists. "Oh, now that is just cheap." Time to run? No, wait, balls - he couldn't. That'd give the gorilla a chance to call the captain or whatever. Well, damn. This was gonna suck...
The sailor stepped towards him, the towel holder raised...
He heard a crack. The sailor blinked slowly, then fell over sideways. Revealing Kirigiri standing behind him, taser in hand.
Makoto let out a tiny sigh of relief. "Bombs?" he asked.
"Disarmed. Also found and dismantled the relays, just in case." She fished a pair of handcuffs out of her coat. "Gun."
"Where?"
"As in, you have one," Kyoko snapped. "Is there a particular reason you chose not to use it against someone with at least twenty kilos of muscle on you?"
"He got the drop on me!" Also, still not one hundred percent on the whole killing people thing, Makoto thought. Even if they are walking moral garbage fires.
Kirigiri sighed and cuffed the sailor to the rung of a nearby ladder. "Bricks Marlin," she said in English. "If you can hear me, I highly recommend you avoid moving. I also suggest you thank whatever gods you might have that you wound up facing this lucky idiot instead of me."
Makoto paused as he mentally translated her words. "... wait. His name is Bricks?"
"Working alias, but yes." Kirigiri cut him off before he could ask another question. "May we please save any conversation about that particular detail until after we check the rest of the house for explosives?"
Naegi shut his mouth and nodded. "Yeah, I think I can get behind that."
"It's a triangle." Up on the Redfoot's bridge, Kirigiri hooked up the laptop to the ship's GPS navigation console. On the deck below, the police guided the disoriented but now helmet-free prisoners out of the hold and towards the waiting ambulances on the shore. "Along the same lines as the Atlantic slave trade of the 19th century. The ship smuggles drugs provided by the Marquez Cartel from South America to Guangzhou. They receive their 'cargo' in exchange and bring them to the Kobayashi-gumi Yakuza here in Nagoya. Then it's back to Peru to start the cycle all over."
"With you so far." Makoto held an ice pack against the side of his face. "So how does that help us figure out where the Kobayashis have been getting their Despair tech from?"
"My Interpol sources mentioned something I found quite interesting." Kirigiri sent a text message on her phone. A few seconds later, the mouse began to move on the laptop's screen as one of Togami's tech people took over remotely. "It seems this ship left Trujillo a little over two months ago. It turned up in Guangzhou fifty-two days later."
"Which is important because...?"
"Because even fully laden, a ship of this class should be able to make that journey in forty-five days at most."
"So they had engine trouble," Naegi prompted. "They ran into the Coast Guard and had to backtrack. They stopped somewhere for pizza and margarita shooters, then made it a weekend after they all woke up with hangovers."
"Don't be ridiculous, Naegi." Kirigiri studied the laptop's screen as the technician worked. "Nobody has margaritas with pizza."
Makoto smirked. "Point taken. But otherwise?..."
"Otherwise, all of those scenarios are completely plausible." Kirigiri leaned back in the navigator's chair and stretched. "Any of them could very well prove to be the case at this point."
"But you don't think so," Naegi said. "You think they stopped somewhere on the way to pick up the video and the helmets. And you're hoping their nav system still has the location stored."
"That is my working hypothesis." Kirigiri shrugged. "I could be wrong, however."
"Hey, seems like a solid bet to me. But let's say it doesn't work out. What's the plan then?" Naegi didn't need to ask if there was a plan to begin with. Kirigiri always had a plan.
"Then unless the police manage to get something useful out of the crew, I'm afraid it's back to step one." Kirigiri sighed. "The Kobayashi-gumi will be watching for us here. We'll have to try some of the unaffiliated bunraku parlors further north."
"Gotcha. Just promise it won't end with me in a maid costume again."
"I will do no such thing."
Makoto let out an exaggerated sigh. "Aww, c'mon, Kiri. My leg hair's just started to grow back."
"I will not concede Naegi-chan as a possible resource," Kyoko said primly. "She is best girl, after all."
Her phone buzzed. Kirigiri glanced at it. "It seems fortune has spared you once again, Naegi. We have a lead."
"I really wish I could believe that." Makoto looked as she showed him the text message from the technician. It read: KOSHIGOE ISLAND.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Japanese notes for non-weebs: gumi is the suffix added to the end of the names of Yakuza groups. Naegi-chan is a sort of cutsy nickname one might give to a little girl... or to the female alter-ego of one's partner after one has gleefully forced him into cross-dressing, ostensibly for a case but in reality just for one's own amusement. Speaking hypothetically here, of course.