PAPER x CRANES II

Ignorance

Kaitou sat uncomfortably at the desk and looked around. It was awkward, having an office, especially after having all of that field time. He sighed and decided to consider himself lucky to have struck it this big with only 8 years of 'service' under his belt.

By 'service', it meant anything from baby-siting for a night to helping out with big-time police investigations, sometimes even against the police themselves. Who ever paid the most had the pleasure of using all of KARD's resources, even pretending to agree to work for the other side to gain information.

And now, at the young age of 26, Shion Kaitou was now the youngest KARDs Dealer of the time.

He stretched his fingers in the white silk gloves. It felt different from the leather ones they wore on the job, but he wasn't allowed to get his hands 'dirty' anymore. That was a job for the others, not him. He looked down at his own hand as if it couldn't possibly be his. His office door opened and he glanced up.

Purple hair pulled back into a high ponytail, Gakuto stood, framed in the doorway, suite jacket crooked. He stood there, looking from the desk, to the walls, then to the man sitting behind the desk. A bitter smile crossed his face as he leaned against the metal door frame. "Congrats on the promotion." Gakuto ran a gloved hand along the trimming on the door frame, watching as the soft leather caught on one of the screws. He pulled his hand loose and focused his blue eyed glare at Kaitou.

"So, Shion. Where you really so busy trying to watch out for me that you forgot to mention your new office, or perhaps your new place of residence?" he asked, holding up a key on a loop. "Queen sent me here to give these to you, they're for your new apartment," he spat, tossing the keys at the blue haired. "Must be so hard, kissing up to the boss like that," Gakuto said, turning to leave the office.

Kaitou caught the keys and stood up. "You never give me the time to tell you anything anymore, so, stop blaming me!" He reached forward for the other man's arm, but Gakuto pulled his shoulder away and turned to face him with anger burning in the tears that ran down his face.

"And just why the hell do you think I'd iwant/i to give you the fucking time of day!" he shouted, shoving the much larger man back. "Why? So I can hear how brilliant you've been! How you get a raise every other fucking week!" His purple bangs fell wildly over his face, blue eyes burning behind them. "So I could hear another story about how you saved that damn Kagamine, or how you finally took down some good for fuck gang boss!" Gackuto straitened up and pushed his bangs from his face, closing his eyes, as if trying to regain his composure. But, when he opened them back up, although his face had returned to normal, his eyes churned with hatred and welled with sorrow. "Whatever. No matter what the hell happens to you, good or bad, is none of my concern," he said in a deflated voice. "Sorry for giving you a hard time, Sir." He turned to the other man but didn't look at his face, then turned out of the room.

The blue haired man stood beside his desk, looking down at his gloved hands. He didn't dare look up when the door paused for a long time before closing. The other man's footsteps slowly faded down the hallway. iAre these gloves even worth it?/i He wondered to himself. Was this life even worth it? To be on top of the city, to rise up to become the new King, only to sit on the throne alone? Kaitou wondered if he had spent too much time analyzing things, working his life out logically, basing his calculations on what he believed to be fact.

He spent the rest of the day with a gloved hand pressed to his office window, looking past his pale reflection to the skyscrapers below.

x x x

As evening came, Kaitou found himself sitting in the chair opposite Queen. The desk between them was covered with different case files and files of the KARD's most successful for the jobs. He picked up one that "Chess" scrawled across the tab. Interested, he let the folder fall open onto the desk. There wasn't much in the folder. A few papers outlining some discrepancies between the "Chess" and KARD. Odd, KARD didn't usually deal with it's own business, preferring always to handle cases unrelated to them.

"So, what did Chess do?" he asked Queen. She sat back, her brunette hair sweeping across her brow. Red eyes gazed across the table at Kaitou thoughtfully. She flicked a few strands of hair behind her ear with red fingernails and leaned forward to talk to him quietly.

"Chess was never really all that big," she said, "They never really got in our way of business. Always sitting on the sidelines." She ran her hand through her short hair and sighed. "But, very recently, they've been acting up. They always seem to get our jobs done right before we release the information to the KARD in charge of the mission," She leaned back in her chair and placed her finger tips together, long nails clicking. "So, I think that it's about time KARD did some cleaning up of it's own self."

Kaitou stood and raised his hand in a salute to her, not unlike a military salute. "Queen, I would be more than honored if you would allow me to help you with your search." His cool blue eyes looked seriously across the table at the woman.

"Kaitou," she laughed, "you don't have to be so formal. You are one of my ACEs after all. Just all me 'Meiko', or 'Meiko-san' if you feel the need." She motioned for him to sit back down in the chair he had just left.

"So, Meiko-san, if you've known this, why haven't you told anyone?" Kaitou asked, still holding onto the Chess file.

"Well, I can't very well tell either Kagamines, they'd let everyone know before the checks, they're so naive. Hatsune's my secretary, she's too... loose to tell this to."

"So, I'm the first to know, then?" Kaitou asked in disbelief.

Meiko nodded and leaned back in her chair. "So, you know what I want you to do, right?" she asked in response to Kaitou's look. "I want you to tail anyone who works in information and processing, can you do that for me?"

He nodded. "Could I have a list of names as to not arouse suspicion?"

She opened up a desk drawer and flicked through the papers. "Here," she said finally pulling out a short list of the names. Kaitou looked down the short list. Kotari, he had worked with her before, she was nice. He doubted she could do it. Further down the list, however, where characters that Kaitou was too used to reading.

"Wh-when did Kamui get into informations?" He asked, looking up from the paper.

"Oh, a while ago, why do you ask?" Meiko said, not looking up from her new found stack of papers.

"That would mean that he wouldn't be working outside jobs anymore, right?" he asked in a carefully measured tone.

Meiko nodded. "That's right, his field ID was terminated almost seventeen months ago. He's been doing desk work ever since."