Well hello again. Sorry for the weird lapse in updates; some strange things came up and with the Olympics I found myself getting distracted. Therefore I decided to post this now to get some sort of schedule going.

Mai-hime and related items belong to Sunrise


Vanishing Point

The next set of orders reached Natsuki through the mail box attached to her apartment door. She picked it up that evening and undid the tape holding the manila envelope closed. Inside that envelope was a slim white envelope that contained the salary of the previous job. This she locked in a small box under her bed before returning to the padded envelope. She felt around it with her fingertips and frowned before getting out a penknife. With a few careful cuts the envelope's brown paper was cut apart to reveal a hidden set of papers. She extracted them and carefully undid the folds before smoothing them out.

Look outside.

She moved towards the veranda. As she stood against the wall leading up to it she tilted her head and peered through the crack between the drawn curtains and the window. Outside she picked out a black car idling near the complex. Her lips curled up into a sneer.

"That idiot."

A few minutes later she emerged out of her apartment dressed in another black suit with a burgundy shirt and gray overcoat. She quickly made her way out towards the car and slipped into the heated interior.

"Good evening. Eiji, you may pull out now."

The car began to move and Natsuki saw the scenery pass by through tinted windows. With a small sigh she turned and regarded the man sitting beside her.

"That was a dumb thing to do, Yamada."

The broker shrugged in his wrinkled attire. His style had changed little throughout the years that Natsuki used his services. The same ratty hat was pulled over his head and tired eyes peered over the tinted lenses of his glasses as he regarded her.

"Would you rather I knock on your door under the pretense of selling something?" he asked.

"It'd fit more than telling me to get into strange cars every other week," Natsuki scoffed as she crossed her arms. "Where did you get this one from? Looks like a company car."

"Ah. This was a gracious gift from the Fujino Corporation."

Natsuki tensed but remained quiet. Yamada observed the taciturn girl with a small smile before leaning back against the headrest.

"It's strange how I was hired by you to figure out what happened with the family, and now they've hired me to figure out what happened as well. Seems like you were on something big, Kuga."

"What do you mean?"

Yamada sighed. The snow was really beginning to pile up. They could hear the crunch of snow underneath the car's tires as the driver took them down one of the larger streets of the city.

"Fujino Shigeru is missing. He has been for a while now, but the company is showing its vulnerability now that the big boss has been missing for so long. The rest of the family has gone frantic. The only ones capable to lead are some old uncles that have retired from the business world years ago. They aren't sure what happened, but they're willing to pay hand over fist for me to tell them that it isn't some sort of fluke."

Natsuki clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth in a gesture of impatience.

"What are the odds that the Fujino themselves are the ones locking him up somewhere?"

"… Pretty high, actually." Yamada pushed his glasses up. "Records indicated that Shigeru was visiting his daughter in the hospital before his disappearance. There was also some news about a crash but that was given maybe an hour's worth of airtime before it got pulled."

"What do you think of it?" Natsuki asked after a moment.

"Not sure, really. But something's telling me that it's related to the accident you suffered back at Fuuka... And your condition."

There was a brief silence. Yamada looked over and saw that her fingers were digging into her arms. He quietly signaled the car to stop. It idled in front of a coffee shop and he opened the window a bit to let in some fresh air.

"This is your best chance to figure out what happened, Kuga. If you find Shigeru, I'm sure you'll find your Shizuru and the real cause of the accident."

"… How much will this cost you?" Natsuki asked while staring out the tinted windows.

"Eh. Not too much. The Fujinos are paying more than enough to keep me afloat for a few months." He looked out towards the coffee shop. "… Two coffees and a box of doughnuts would be nice, though."

A few minutes later Natsuki returned to the car with the requested items in tow. The sweet smell of the pastries filled the air as Yamada tore through one of the donuts with a satisfied grunt. The driver was given a doughnut and one of the coffees before the car began to go back to the apartments.

"Just remember one thing."

Natsuki paused before she could open the car door once more.

"What's that?"

"The Fujino family has enough money and power to bury you in an unmarked grave in Siberia if they choose to do so. So don't get too caught up."

Yamada raised his Styrofoam cup in acknowledgment.

"I should get his location by tomorrow. If I find anything else I'll let you know. Thanks for the coffee and donuts, Kuga."

Natsuki nodded and nimbly hopped out into a cold blast of wind that caused Yamada to squint before the door shut behind her. He watched her walk away without a comment before returning to his box of donuts.

The next morning a lone manila envelope occupied the space of her mailbox. It was soon dug up and tossed on the kitchen counter. Natsuki decided to ignore it for now in favor of breakfast. She grabbed the box of cereal and dumped a fair amount of flakes into a blue bowl before rummaging through the refrigerator for the carton of milk. After a preliminary sniff she deemed the milk as acceptable and poured a considerable amount in the bowl. She slid onto the couch, turned on the TV, and munched on her cornflakes.

"And now in the midst of the growing controversy over the Fujino conglomerate, an ambitious newcomer to the business world is fully intent on taking the company back on track to recover from a devastating second quarter loss…"

A cornflake fell from her slack lips.

She slammed the bowl down and leaned forward. Frantically she searched the screen for some indication of crimson eyes.

"Damn it, move!" she hissed at the young woman with green hair who was currently holding some sort of televised conference.

The news shifted to other headlines and she uttered a curse under her breath. So much for that.

Natsuki finished her cornflakes and dumped the empty bowl into the sink. As she ran that under water for a few seconds the manila envelope was now picked up and examined. She opened it with a spare steak knife and dumped the contents of the envelope onto the counter. Out came a folded sheet of paper and what looked to be a set of airplane tickets. She picked the laminated tickets up first with a curious frown. She already had a train card, what on earth was a plane ticket for? After flipping them over she figured out why.

"… To Sapporo?"

Now she unfolded the note with great interest.

To my little wolf,

Free Papa Bear, and I guarantee you'll run into Goldilocks. I hear he's too cold where he's at. Meet with Red Riding Hood in the arrival station.

Yamada

She smiled as she folded the paper and tucked it into her back pocket.

Finally.

One day later she stepped out into a flurry of thick snowflakes that covered everything in a layer of white. She stretched and looped the strap of her bag over her shoulder before trudging towards the exit of the airport. The train ride to Sapporo was relatively quiet and she took a short nap before arriving at the station. After a few minutes of uninterrupted walking she found someone's arm looped around her own. She turned her head slightly to her left. Instead of stopping she continued on with a crooked smile on her face as a girl with a rebellious shock of red hair and fierce green eyes walked in sync with her. For all intents and purposes they looked and functioned like a pair of close friends sharing body warmth but no one dared to get close enough to see the mild annoyance on the shorter of the two.

"What a waste of time… If I wasn't being given such a huge profit I would've booked the first flight south."

"Stop being so jerky," Natsuki muttered in response, causing the girl latched to her arm to stiffen even more.

"Shut up!" she hissed. "I'm just cold. Just cold."

"Mh. Alright."

Natsuki looked down and continued to smile in mild amusement.

"It's been a while, hasn't it?" the girl asked through chattering teeth. "You're still as surly as ever, Kuga."

"Ah. And you still shoot your mouth off when you don't need to, Nao."

The girl latched to her arm stiffened once more and Natsuki bit back a grin.

Their walk took them to a rather ramshackle hotel near the station. The proprietor gave them a strange smile before giving up a single room for the two girls. To their supreme annoyance they discovered why—the red silk sheets and complementary chocolate box of the honeymoon suite beckoned. Little Red Riding Hood finally detached herself in order to check out the room while the wolf merely peered out of the balcony blinds. Nao grumbled and lounged on top of the honeymoon bed as Natsuki let go of the blinds with a dissatisfied frown. The older girl sat on the edge of the bed and nudged the bedside drawer open to retrieve the complementary matchbox. She shook the matchbox to get Nao's attention, who in turn got up from the bed and fished through her coat. After retrieving a crumpled pack of cigarettes the two walked out to the balcony.

"So," Natsuki said casually as she flicked a match across the side of the box. "Tell me about Sapporo."

"What's there to say?"

Nao leaned her head forward so the cigarette could catch the flame. After taking a drag she exhaled.

"It totally blows. I've spent way too much time running around north of here freezing my ass off and finding nothing. There's not much to see other than snow."

"Is that so?"

Nao tapped her cigarette free of ashes.

"Yeah. Not much at all. Unless, you know, you take a train up to Asahikawa." She paused to take another drag. "There's an abandoned pharmaceutical lab up there with a pretty extensive network of warehouses. Fujino Corp. owns a 51-percent share of the enterprise. If there's a building you'd want to look at, that'd probably be it."

Natsuki was familiar with the city. She watched the tendrils of smoke disappear into the gray skies before she took in another breath.

"Found anyone else wandering around up there?" she asked finally.

"Only enough gun-toting foreign maniacs to make me want to get the hell out. Damn place has enough firepower to take out a small army. Fortunately they're as dumb as they are trigger happy."

Nao clapped her hands together before rubbing them to restore some warmth.

"It might be too cold for the outside fuse box to work properly, but you might not want to take fence cutters anyways just in case."

Nao finished her cigarette and exhaled slowly. With pursed lips she looked up at Natsuki.

"You realize, Kuga, that there's no more going back to your comfortable existence back at Tokyo after this. You might run into something you won't like too much."

Natsuki took in the warning tones and paused before shaking her head.

"The ends will justify the means."

A deliciously mischievous smile curled on Nao's lips.

"How cliché. You don't sound too sure of yourself."

Natsuki turned and walked back into the room to pick up her coat. She shrugged it on and fixed the collar before turning back to look at Nao. The younger girl leaned back against the balcony's railing with another cigarette poised on her lips.

"Don't die now, you hear?" The cigarette bobbed up and down when Nao grinned. "After all, your performance influences my paycheck."

"… I'll keep that in mind."

The train ride was relatively quiet and provided an opportunity for a short nap and a snack. Natsuki stepped out into blizzard-like conditions but the snow wasn't a detriment. She buttoned her coat and began to walk. The roads were familiar and unchanged from the last time she walked them. The distance was quite a bit shorter than she remembered before realizing that it had been years since the last time—she had been smaller then.

The facility was virtually unchanged. It sat near a vast river that diverged into several rivers that cut through the land, creating a rocky impasse that could only be reached through a singular road that fed directly into the lab's front gates. The gates were manned by a team of four guards but Natsuki wasn't paying any attention to that. From her vantage point up in the heavily-forested barrier around the facility she could see an easier way in through a patch of broken fence. She jumped and slid from the hillside down to the edge of the fence. After a few quick looks she snuck into the facility.

Despite the strange influx of men running around what should have been an abandoned area she discovered that most of the men avoided the main laboratory. She ducked into this building and ran down a flight of crumbling stairs before pausing. With a shake of her head she refocused and ran down the empty hallway before stopping in front of a familiar door.

S. KUGA

The door opened with a small protest after being subjected to a soft push. The room was largely empty save for a destroyed desk and file cabinet. Gloved fingers brushed against the mess, scattering papers that had collected an impressive layer of dust over the years. She covered her nose with a handkerchief when a large cloud of dust imploded in the room after poking through the desk drawers. When it settled she recovered an orange prescription bottle filled with small white pills. She stared at the pills as they bounced off the plastic.

Are you a human underneath a wolf? Are you a wolf underneath a human?

She pocketed the pills while rubbing her forehead. A final sweep around the room revealed nothing else of interest. The papers were unimportant. The history was all in her head, after all. As the top field researcher employed by First District, Kuga Saeko spearheaded the movement on splicing genes and creating hybrids. While most of the studies were done on creating more efficient crops there were a few backdoors experiments concerning wildlife and humans. It was a race to discover the pinnacle of evolution and realize the glories of the past.

"I wonder how much you agonized over all of this, mother," she muttered in the stillness.

The detour led to another set of doors in the basement that led further into the complex. Upon shoving the doors open a fierce blast of cold air nearly knocked her back. She steadied herself and carefully made her way out to the tundra-like inner grounds of the abandoned laboratory.

This was a frozen hell contained in the confines of one vast, windowless space. There was just something diabolical about this particular room even in the past when it had been fully furnished and lit. Now she stepped through ruins of what once was an area set up for the direct observation of successful test subjects. She had been in this room only once in her childhood but it was enough to guess at the intent behind the sterilized glass and steel.

They wanted to control gods. The afflicted only wanted a cure.

The search for beasts transmuted beneath human skin was extensive and necessary to bolster the First District's study on hybridization. Likewise those who did not understand what was lurking underneath them submitted themselves for the studies in exchange for some promise of normalcy. The trade seemed equal enough: research in exchange for a cure. They were gods in their own right, and yet they were chained in this laboratory to be subjected to tests and a hopeful cure for their affliction. It came as a pleasant surprise, then, when the laboratory's premier researcher had a child with the affliction present. When the glaring fact could not be hidden anymore, Dr. Kuga packed their bags and returned to Fuuka with her daughter and their dog. Their freedom was short-lived.

Natsuki barely suppressed a shiver that crawled out from the back of her brain as an unsteady glow began to seep through her good eye. The wolf underneath seethed from within its human prison but it stopped reluctantly when she patted her coat pocket. The jangle of pills served as a quiet warning that seemed to work for now.

"I have a job to do," she reminded herself roughly.

The past was trampled beneath her feet and clouds of dust swirled around her steps as she walked out of the frozen hell. The first thing to alert her to something going awry was the sound of footsteps pounding around when she entered an otherwise abandoned warehouse. She frowned and brought herself flush against the wall before peeking around through the opened doors. It was way too cold to be running around like that, she thought with an annoyed grimace. These numbskulls were probably the "gun-toting maniacs" that Nao had referred to. With that thought in mind she suddenly grinned. This, in turn, must be the jackpot.

She reached into her pocket and tossed several black balls out into the warehouse. They smacked into the floors and walls, releasing a thick smoke that engulfed the immediate entrance. Hasty gunshots ricocheted off their targets as Natsuki ducked behind several packing crates. More gunshots flew past her head and she squeezed herself into her impromptu shelter with her arms shielding her head. She looked up after a lull in gunshots signified a reload break.

With a deep breath she darted out from her hiding spot and charged the first armed man, catching him in the stomach with her shoulder and slamming him into a haphazard formation of crates. As the wood splintered and the crates clattered onto the floor they struggled for the dropped firearm. He retaliated with a punch to her shoulder that loosened her grip on him just as two of her fingers touched the black steel of the gun. He fitted a foot over her abdomen and shoved her off with a push but as she flew back she brought his gun up and leveled it towards his surprised face. Just as he shut his eyes she shifted her aim and emptied one bullet into his kneecap.

The others were alerted to the agonizing screams of their comrade just as Natsuki hit another stack of crates with her upper back. This fall she managed to turn into a backwards roll over the crate and back to the floor just in time to avoid being spotted by two more hired gunmen. She hunkered down and waited. If she was to get out of this situation unscratched, she reasoned, she would have to be extremely careful.

During the slight period of confusion where the gunmen tried to assess the damage done to their teammate Natsuki chanced a glance up from her hiding point. She couldn't waste anymore time. She shifted her weight and darted to the side, skimming the wall briefly with her fingers. The sentry by the basement door was unable to let out a peep as she clamped onto his face with her other hand. With a forceful shove he slammed into the wall and slid down while she carefully flipped over the basement entryway.

The sounds of a struggle alerted her to take the left hallway and she bolted down the lit corridor. She ducked just in time to avoid being planted to the floor by an airborne, flailing man who soon met his own date with the unforgiving concrete. Her run slowed to a jog before finally coming to a confused stop.

"What the hell…?"

Before her stood a man dressed in a rumpled and torn three-piece Italian suit complete with a silk pocket square. His hair was in wild waves that fell over his eyes but did not hide the pensive frown set on his lips. The jacket of the suit was slung over an upturned chair and his cuff links jangled in his pockets as he brought his fists up in a classic boxer's pose.

"Alright… let's go."

The polite Kyoto accent belied the explosive power within the man as he side-stepped to avoid the initial punch thrown by his first assailant. The attacker lurched forward with a pained grunt from the boxer's fist digging into his stomach. The man nearly lifted him up with his fist before shoving him off. Another decided to go for a back approach and jumped him, latching his arms around his neck in a messy attempt of a headlock. The boxer grasped onto the back of the man's shirt before throwing him over his shoulder. This was followed through with another heavy punch to the gut. The boxer breathed in deeply. As he looked up he picked up the sight of narrowed emerald eyes and dark hair.

"… Fujino Shigeru?"

He stood and rubbed his bare knuckles before pushing his unruly bangs back. If there was any indication of surprise from viewing the striking crimson eyes Natsuki failed to show it. Instead her lips parted questioningly as the man before her picked up his jacket and put it back on with a few practiced flicks to straighten out some wrinkles. He squinted under the harsh light of the overhead fluorescent beams.

"I am. Who are you, miss?"

"I was hired to rescue you."

He jabbed a thumb towards the ceiling. "Was that you with the commotion up there?"

In response he was shown the gun in her hand. He smiled a painfully familiar smile that shone through the beginnings of a scruffy beard.

"Well then. I'd be much obliged if you help me out of this mess."


AN: To be honest it seems like the outline is getting more and more muddled. But the story should be nearing the end of the "question" section and the beginning of our "answer" session.