A/N: Well, guesses as to who the person in the CIA Headquarters are still welcome, I don't intend to reveal his relation to the other characters yet. And while there's maybe some minor plot development here, it ain't anything major, just getting ready for the next chapter, when the REAL fun starts. Or at least for me, I'll finally get to immerse myself in the absolute chaos I've imagined it to be. And besides, I like writing from the evil perspective. You know the phrase "Come to the dark side, we have cookies"? Trust me, they've got a heck of a lot MORE than cookies, and it's pretty damn awesome.
Disclaimer: Ikaru frowned as he whacked the Doommon over the head with his disclaimer sign. The smoke that arose from the burning flesh where the now unconscious champion digimon lay formed the symbol for the sin of Greed. Typical Barbamon, too greedy to use the energy to digivolve the Doommon to a more powerful level. Still, he'd managed to bypass the need for the sign now, so he shoved the sign back into hammerspace before bringing out a D-Phone. "De-Digifuse." He said simply. Within a few seconds, standing next to him was what appeared to be a walking sign with a head. The sign read 'Disclaimer', and the digimon the sign happened to be the main feature of was Disclaimermon (See Disclaimer of Chapter Eleven of Digimon Morphers).
Now ready to proceed through the labyrinth, Ikaru continued walking for a bit before it dawned on him. Should he though? It WOULD kind of ruin the fun…. Well, maybe just the labyrinth. "Disclaimermon, care to make the labyrinth vanish for me?"
"Sure thing. Disclaim: The labyrinth does not exist anymore."
Ikaru soon regretted making the labyrinth disappear. Whoever invented uber ninja armies of doom deserved to be dragged into the street and shot, in his opinion at the moment. After all, nothing says 'You're screwed!' quite so nicely and happily as an uber fire clone ninja army of doom. "Masamune from Final Fantasy Ten please. And make the standard I don't own it for me, would you?"
Disclaimermon grinned. "Disclaim: Disclaimermon and Ikaru Kakou are both holding Masamunes from Final Fantasy Ten, and neither of them owns Digimon or Final Fantasy." As the large uber swords of awesome-ness appeared in the hands of Ikaru and Disclaimermon, the scene slowly faded to black as once again the next chapter of Digital Demons came up….
Chapter Three: Plans
5:59AM/USA/Virginia/Langley/CIA Headquarters/Department of Digital Incidents
Lynn Smith was precisely one minute early for work that day. As it so happened, she soon came to the conclusion as she stepped out of the elevator that someone else had either arrived for work early or never gone home the previous night. Her conclusion was quite wrong, as she discovered when the man sitting in the swivel chair at the desk near the door to her office turned in his chair so she could see his face. Lynn had made it a point to memorize the face of every single person who worked in her department, and this face did not match up with any of them.
"Finally someone shows up, I've been waiting for twenty minutes." The man said.
"Who are you and what are you doing here?" Lynn demanded.
"A friend of a friend of a friend yours, looking for a friend your department keeps tabs on." The man replied. Having anticipated the question, he'd had time to keep his answer somewhat vague. "You'll find the last two friends I mentioned are the same person, and the second I mentioned is probably near her."
"Who are these friends?"
"The one I need the location of is Felicia Livingston. Labramon's location will do just as well."
Lynn raised an eyebrow. "Come into my office and we'll talk." She said, walking to the door and opening it and gesturing for the man to go in and sit down.
7:02PM/Japan/Tokyo/A street corner
Lilithmon gazed curiously at the television screen behind the window she stood in front of. The top story on the news show that was currently on the TV was tomorrow's public meeting between the King of England and Japan's Emperor, right in Tokyo. Despite her extreme lack of knowledge regarding such things as the Real World's politics, she understood Japanese quite clearly, and she also knew that she could sate a lot more bloodlust if they held off the attack until tomorrow. She turned from the TV and turned the corner, heading into the alley. Using a distinct ability the Demon Lords possessed, she contacted the other five aware of their status mentally and said, "We should wait until tomorrow to attack. It'll be much more fun."
Of course, she expected Daemon's response to this. "Tomorrow?! Why the hell should we wait until then? I want to kill people!"
Lilithmon's response: "There'll be more people to kill tomorrow, and more chaos to cause as well."
"Maybe. But I want to kill people now."
"So kill a Doommon, no one cares if they die. It's not as if we have a limited supply of them." Lilithmon smirked as she walked out of the alley and back into the main streets. She had a long time to wait, but there were ways to pass the time. Making sure her twenty Doommon followed her through the shadows, she made her way to a hotel, got a room for the night using money she'd stolen on the way over, and dragged a Doommon out of the shadows and onto the bed. She wasn't the Demon Lord of Lust for nothing, after all.
8:32AM/Japan/Tokyo/Office of Nakamura Hiroshi
Nakamura Hiroshi (Hiroshi Nakamura, when people failed to grasp the Japanese name order) was a very wealthy, very busy man. He ruled Tokyo's largest crime syndicate with an iron fist, and had contacts with almost every criminal of any kind in Tokyo that hadn't been caught by the police, and some who had. There were a variety of reasons for this, but chief among them was that Boss Nakamura covered his ass, so to speak. Since he was so wealthy, he was very capable of bribing the police to purposely 'miss' a clue in a case, or in cases where there was unavoidable and undeniable evidence, he would get them to come across it in ways that made it useless in court. On the rare occasion he failed to protect whoever had been working for him, he severed any connections with that person. He also protected his clients. They trusted him to get the job done without them being caught, and so he was paid much more than the 'hired help' alone would be paid, for any job. Usually at least two hundred fifty percent more. And he knew that if he failed to protect a client, he wouldn't get paid as much. And he would lose business. And lost business was unacceptable.
As it was, Boss Nakamura's crime syndicate specialized in assassinations these days, though they would still pull off just about anything else they were asked to. One of the reasons business was going so well these days was one of the new 'freelance' assassins he had come across. Sure, freelancers demanded a larger cut, but they also happened to include some of the better assassins in the city. The specific freelancer who was making Nakamura so successful was known by the media as 'The Sword'. Nakamura knew him as 'Twilight'. The name was obviously a fake, but Nakamura didn't care. Twilight's real name didn't matter, what mattered was that Twilight had some amazing abilities, a good head on his shoulders, and he was the only person who ever worked for Nakamura more then twice without Nakamura having to cover something up for him. As for Twilight's abilities, well, from what Nakamura had been shown the blade arms and an odd ability to sap the life from things were about it. But Twilight had hinted at other abilities from time to time. More powerful ones, some of them likely associated with that necklace the assassin wore.
That was aside the point though. What mattered right now was that life sapping ability, Soul Absorption or whatever it was called. Why was this important? Because a client had just called Nakamura with a very specific job. The Emperor and the King of England's public meeting at noon today made the Emperor vulnerable. And as such, the client knew this would be the opportune time to have the Emperor 'whacked', for whatever reasons the client had. It certainly did mean that Nakamura had to lower the asking price twenty million or so, but forty million US Dollars was still an excellent deal for the crime lord.
He looked through his computer database for Twilight's contact information, found the cell phone number (Twilight's phone apparently couldn't be traced or bugged), and called it. It rang once, and then Twilight's voice came through. "What do you have for me?" It asked in English, with a distinct American accent.
"The Emperor. Today at precisely 12:09PM." Nakamura replied.
"Thirty mill, US Dollars." Twilight replied.
"That's well over half." Nakamura said.
"Sixty mill was your standard price for world leaders last I checked."
"Forty mill when they're as exposed as he'll be."
"Wonderful. My price doesn't change, fifty percent of standard."
Nakamura grumbled a bit. He glanced at his watch. It was 8:45, fifteen minutes until his meeting with his old friend Matsubara's daughter, and whatever friends she brought with. "I don't have time for this. Twenty-five and seventy five percent on the next one."
"Fine. But the next one better be over six point six."
"Deal." Nakamura hung up and sat back to wait.
8:52AM/Japan/Tokyo/Streets of Tokyo
Kira was driving. The car had been in the garage back at the manor, and the keys had been left on the rack in the garage where the keys were kept. But frankly, she wasn't surprised. Boss Nakamura's daughter Hikari had no need to take anything from the house while she'd been watching it; after all, Nakamura had plenty of money to throw around. What was surprising to her was the odd righteous anger that came over her suddenly as she was driving. It was inexplicable, and she had no idea what the anger was directed at. She did know, however, that everyone else in the car had similar feelings. Except Felicia, for some reason.
"So, uh, what're you all angry at?" She asked, trying to hide her own inexplicable anger.
"We're not angry, our virtues are." Blake said. "The Demon Lords are here, and the only reason Felicia's virtue hasn't acted up is because we haven't driven by somewhere where Leviamon could be hiding." It sounded as if he'd been half expecting it, and recognized the symptoms from researching it before he came to the Real World. He probably had researched it. What else would you do in the digital world for fourteen real world years? The number of years it'd been in the digital world was over a thousand, that was for sure.
"How long were you researching that?" Kira asked.
"About a year."
"Out of how many in the digital world?"
"About twenty thousand one hundred sixty, give or take a few. It's been how many here?" Blake asked.
"Fourteen." Felicia said, blinking at the large number Blake suggested.
"Between eleven and twelve more years, then. Counting Leap Years, of course. You still have those, right?"
"Yes. Out of curiosity, how the hell do you still look like you're only thirty?" Wayne asked.
"Basic design of how things age in the digital world. They age with real world time, really, because the effects of aging were slowed down proportionally. It's buried somewhere in the programming of the whole place. Which is why birthdays aren't celebrated there past the first hundred or so, and not at all if you're human."
"You researched THAT how long?" Jeff asked.
"I didn't. It was my eighth birthday when the digital world finished getting made. Person who made it told me some stuff about it, then set me loose in it for what was supposed to only be a few minutes here, except I never came back. It was the last birthday present I ever got. It's too damn hard to keep track there."
"So…. When was the first time you came back?" Kile asked.
"This is my first time back."
Jaws dropped on everyone in the car except for Blake. All the digimon except Bearmon did the mental equivalent, being stuck in their partners' bodies again. Silence reigned until Kira pulled up to the building Nakamura's office was in, overlooking Tokyo Bay. Charity chose that moment to act up, bringing everyone's attention back to that problem. As everyone stepped out of the car, Blake said "Forget the demon lords for now. We'll burn that bridge when we come to it, but we're likely walking into a building full of Tokyo's best assassins and thieves, so let that be your focus while we're in there."
Everyone nodded.
9:00AM/Japan/Tokyo/Office of Nakamura Hiroshi
Nakamura looked up as his secretary let the six people, two women and four men, into his office. He recognized one of the women as Matsubara Akira immediately, as she was the only Japanese one in the whole bunch. "Good morning." He said.
"We know you speak English, could you please use that for the duration of the meeting? Some of us don't speak Japanese." That was the other woman. He faintly recognized her from some American news show.
"Certainly. So to what do I owe the pleasure of my good friend Matsubara's daughter and her friends coming to see me?" Nakamura said, slight annoyance at being ordered showing in his voice.
"Entirely personal business for us, sadly. We need to know where a certain assassin is. We need to speak with him about certain past occurrences, mostly from before you knew him." The man standing next to Akira said this. He had a necklace with what appeared to be a sun and some sort of odd symbol on it.
"Name?"
"We don't know the name he gave you. He can turn his arms into blades, if it helps." This was said by a rather athletic looking man. He had the look of a football player or something of the sort.
"Oh, him. The one the police have been trying to catch forever. Don't know him, personally."
"Drop the act. Aki told us you're acquainted with all the big players in the Tokyo crime scene. Surely he's one of them." The man who said this grinned as he said it. The mouth was full of sharp teeth, like a lion's. It was vaguely threatening, almost as if the man would bite him if he didn't tell.
"Oh? And what if I do know him?" Nakamura moved a hand under his desk. Matsubara's daughter or not, no one threatened him, and no one went running to the chief of police about him either. The button under his desk would call in one of his 'security guards'. Deadly acupuncture was the specific skill of the guard.
The man who had remained silent until now was suddenly pushing Nakamura (his chair had wheels) away from the desk with one hand, while the other had seemingly turned into a bear's paw with the claws sticking out. "You know, there are at least forty ways I could kill you right now and never get caught." Nakamura blinked at the statement. Of all his assassins, only Twilight had ever actually managed to scare him. Nakamura did not scare easily. But this man had a look in his eyes that made it quite obvious that he had severely understated the number of ways he could kill Nakamura without getting caught. Nakamura was scared shitless.
"Twilight?" He asked, hoping they might recognize the alias.
"He would use a name like that." This was the man next to Akira. "Let him go, Blake. But take out the button under his desk just in case he decides to use it anyway."
"With pleasure. Bear Roll." The man with the bear paw hand had turned the hand back to normal and now somersaulted through Nakamura's desk with enough speed to split the furniture in half. The crash of various things (including Nakamura's computer) falling to the floor was considerably loud.
"So where is he?" The newswoman asked.
"No idea. I know where he will be at 12:09 today." Nakamura said, two loads of crap now in his pants.
"Where?"
"Where will your station's Tokyo correspondent likely be?"
"Filming the meeting between…." The woman's eyes lit up with fear. "One or both of them?" She asked, obviously not referencing Tokyo correspondents.
"Just the Emperor. I'm getting ripped off for it not only by Twilight but the client too. Stupid one third off the price for added vulnerability policy." Nakamura had actually been in the process of changing this policy when the meeting had started. As it was, he didn't think he'd ever get to. He wouldn't.
The newswoman grabbed the one with the teeth and the football player and stormed out of the office, followed by the other three. It wasn't until they were back in the car that the other problem with that specific meeting out in public today dawned on her. "Tokyo is going to be under attack by 12:30 today." She said, glaring out at Tokyo Bay as they drove back to the manor.
End A/N: And there's the set up. You heard Felicia there at the end, next chapter Tokyo is under attack. Speaking of attack…. – slashes at another uber fire clone ninja before waiting as the Final Fantasy turn-based battle system takes its time getting back to him –
Oh, right, read and review, etc. I'm typing this last little paragraph at 9 at night while packing for a trip this weekend, so I won't even find out about your reviews or anything until at least Monday, but I'll reply to them eventually in one way or another. –coughs –ShiguyaonMSN–coughs–