A/N: Hawly crud, what is this? Two updates in a week? Have the gods gone crazy?! No, I just couldn't help myself. This thing just came out, somehow. Without the usual writer's block bull that I usually put myself through.
I had way too much fun with this chapter, can you tell?
Hope you guys enjoy.
Thanks to sayalovesdiva, Eclipz, MuseOfRock and DezoPenguin for their reviews last chapter!
Chapter Eight: For Great Justice!
"The moon! The moon will fall soon!"
– Wong, Episode 3
Sei leaned on her elbows, her hands clasped under her chin as she looked between Meg and Amy, her dark eyes searching for any arguments. Meg polished the dust flecks off her new Desert Eagles, trying to seem absorbed in the task while listening to Sei's instructions intently. It had been a skill Jo had used frequently, she recalled – a look of boredom, but accompanied by a keen memory for detail.
"This should not be a long mission," Sei told them gravely. "Amy has already narrowed the base to one of five possible locations. Agents have been dispatched to the sites, and are working on confirming the presence of the goods we seek. The Longinues family are eager to obtain their family heirlooms, you see."
Amy yawned widely, and then began to toy with a stray lock of hair. "What a boring job. Theft recovery for the lose."
Sei looked at the hacker levelly. "We take what we can get, Amy. Bai-Lan has lost a sizable amount of agents – we need to appropriately recoup our loses before we are able to accept any large-scale missions again."
Meg bit back the first thing that came to mind – there was always the RAPT case to work on. Always. But there had been no new developments on that front in half a month now, not since Meg had found the abandoned subway laboratory and spoken to Maria. For every day that passed, Meg's gut got a little heavier, a little more anxious. She supposed the worry was getting to her – every moment that they struggled after Jo was a moment that Jo was in RAPT's hands.
She'd been unable to capture the video call from Maria, nor had she been in the presence of mind to do so after she'd seen the contents of the… jar…
Even the combined efforts of Nana, Hachi and Amy had been unable to trace the source of the video, Meg remembered uneasily. RAPT was still just outside their grasp, a wisp of vapour that they knew was there, but could never catch. Nothing in the lab had indicated the next RAPT location, much to Meg's frustration.
Meg snapped back to the present as Amy waved a hand in front of her eyes.
"Gawd, I thought you'd finally slipped into dementia," Amy told her haughtily, turning back to Sei with a sniff.
The offended redhead crossed her arms over her chest. "I am not that old," she complained loudly.
With a groan, Sei rested her face in her hand, obviously unable to deal with the usual vitriolic banter that day. More and more, it seemed like her position as Bai-Lan's leader was draining the vitality and life from Sei. Now that she thought about it, Meg was unable to remember the last time she'd seen Sei relax. She looked tired.
"Just be ready to move out tomorrow morning," Sei told them in exasperation. "Do as you like until then. Dismissed."
Meg rose quickly, glad to be done with the briefing today. A boring briefing for a boring mission, that was for sure, no matter what the situation at Bai-Lan was. She itched for some action – her injuries had healed, and now she was bitten by the bug to move around.
Amy followed her out of Sei's quarters, easily falling into pace at Meg's side as they quickly made their way down the Elizabeth's halls. As they walked, Meg noted that Amy was stealing sidelong glances at her.
Odd.
"Have I got something on my face?" Meg drawled as she stopped at her room, not bothering to shield the code from Amy as she unlocked the door. The hacker had proved, time and time again, that such measly security measures meant nothing to her 'mad skills'.
Amy hesitated, leaning on the wall next to her. Meg rolled her eyes, waiting.
"What are your plans?" the hacker asked, suddenly.
Huh, she never asks what my plans are, Meg thought dryly. Maybe she should humour her younger colleague…? The mercenary shrugged, giving Amy a grin.
"I'm waiting on some new intel on a few hits I've been contacted about," she told the girl next to her, not bothering to add that she'd basically ignored those deals since the RAPT project came to the forefront of her mind. "After that, I guess I'm going to the firing range on the edge of town."
"Sounds like a real blast," Amy said, rolling her eyes. "God, you're almost as bad as Jo used to –" the hacker suddenly cut herself off, realizing her mistake.
"Jo is," Meg finished for her. The good mood in her soured a little. "Yeah, Jo's always like that." She was very careful not to talk about the missing woman in the past tense. Jo was alive. She knew that for sure. Or did she? Had Maria killed her already? Had Meg's subtle efforts to locate the new RAPT base angered Maria, causing her to hurt Jo?
Meg shook her head, realizing that she'd been staring into the distance. She gave Amy a smile that she didn't feel.
"Meg… We're worried about you, you know?" Amy's voice was a little hesitant. "Sei, Leo, me… we're doing the best we can to find her, but you gotta remember that it isn't easy. They're good at hiding."
Forcing herself to ignore the yawning pit of worry in her stomach, Meg slung her arm around Amy's shoulders, pulling the hacker close and pressing their cheeks together in a show of exaggerated affection. Amy spluttered, struggling to get away from Meg even as the mercenary cooed,
"Aww, ickle Amy's worried about me?" Meg released the wriggling girl quickly, dodging a wildly-flung elbow that would have gotten her healing ribs.
The hacker's brown eyes narrowed in anger as her cheeks flushed. "No! I mean, not any more! You stupid, fat cow," the offended girl huffed, stamping off. "I got a call to make. Try to make sure that big ass of yours doesn't get caught on the way in to your room!"
Meg smirked. "So long as that big ego of yours doesn't get stuck in the door first."
Her smile faded as she heard Amy's stomps fade into the distance. She slipped into her room quickly, locking the door quickly behind her. Her throat felt tight as she leaned her forehead against the metal of the door, and she forced herself to breathe out.
God only knew what triggered her these days. Honestly, Amy hadn't meant it. For her, Jo had been dead for five years. For Meg, she'd been stolen. Her fingers curled into fists so tight that the leather creaked.
She wanted to be doing something, anything. These stupid, low-key missions Sei was handing out were driving her crazy, the progress on the RAPT front was going nowhere. And damnit, if they didn't find something soon, the trail would go cold and she'd never find Jo.
Meg sagged, moving over to her bed and collapsing on it with a groan. Blindly, she reached out for the tattered cream scarf, fumbling with her gloves until she felt the worn wool on her skin. It was soft, probably the softest thing Jo ever allowed herself to wear. Meg rolled onto her back, staring at the scarf clenched in her hand.
Five years gone by. Jo, where are you? Would you be proud of me?
She tried to imagine warmth in the gunner's eyes, but came up empty. It had been a long time since Jo had truly smiled at her, even before the RAPT HQ incident. Meg let her hand fall back onto her forehead, the soft scarf touching her cheek.
Sometimes she wondered if Jo's fondness for her was fading. In that final year together, as partners in Bai-Lan, Meg had gone from being self-sufficient and worthy to a… a…
"Freaking damsel in distress!" she bit out. The rawness hurt in her heart. That had been why Jo had left her on that beach. She'd been a burden to Jo. If only she'd tried a little harder, worked harder, actually did something, then maybe Jo wouldn't have had to choose to leave her on the beach. Maybe they would have gone together, as partners. Not as Jo and her fangirl. Meg's teeth clenched –
The speaker-phone by her bed crackled suddenly, that familiar but impersonal voice coming from it.
"Ms Mitarai, we have detected an incoming video call for you. Would you like to receive this call, Ms Mitarai?"
Meg withdrew her arm from her eyes, willing herself to calm the hell down. It was Hachi this time, though few would notice the difference between the two robots.
Breathing out, Meg pushed herself up and swung her legs around. She quickly combed her fingers through her hair to make herself presentable. No need for anyone else to know how dark and self-pitying her thoughts had gotten.
"Who is it this time?" she demanded of the robotic cat-woman on the small screen. Maybe that RAPT employee would give her more information. God, Meg hoped that was the case.
"The caller has made herself known Ms Takane Katsu."
Meg sighed. So much for hoping… "Thanks Hachi, I'll answer. Otherwise Takane will come to Tokyo to kick my ass for 'having a face as long as a horse's', as she'd put it."
There was a moment of silence as Hachi connected the call, then Takane's beaming visage was all over the screen.
"Heya Meg!" The policewoman greeted her energetically, that ever-present bokken rested on her shoulder, tapping up and down. "I ain't heard from you or Amy in a while, so I figured I'd make a small call! Courtesy, y'know?"
Meg forced herself to smile back. "Courtesy, of course," she agreed. "So what's new? Do I have to come down to Osaka and do your job for you again?"
The woman on the screen spluttered loudly, and suddenly that bokken was pointed directly at the video screen. It might have been mildly threatening, had Meg actually been there. As it was, she stifled a laugh.
"I'll have it be known that it was once. RAPT mutants weren't exactly our thing back then, and Jango R is specially equipped to deal with that there shit."
"Sure, sure."
"Speaking of jobs, I'm currently in your neighbourhood this week, since my da sent me up here to supervise a major operation. I was thinking, we're a tad short on manpower right now. We've got a pretty serious rumble going down near ol' Shibuya." The sword was back on Takane's shoulder, tapping up and down restlessly.
"Huh, that does sound serious. I wondered when you pussy-footers would get to cleaning out Shibuya," Meg drawled, drawing one of her new Desert Eagles. If Takane was going to wave that sword around…
"Don't be thick, Mitarai," Takane snorted. "You think we have the manpower to take Shibuya? We'd be lucky to survive an hour in that hell hole. No, what we're looking at is still pretty damn serious. It's a drug ring, one of the worst we've had to deal. Listen, you wanna come bust some skulls with me? Just like old times, right? C'mon!"
Meg hesitated for a moment. She wasn't sure she could take Takane's enthusiasm for the law today, but…
"Busting some skulls sounds pretty good, actually," the redhead admitted, surprised by the truth in her words. Maybe that was what she needed – some action. She nodded to herself to reaffirm her decision.
"Awesome! You get your ass down to the station now, 'cause we're moving out soon. Don't you hold us up!"
And with that enthusiastic and loud response, the video call clicked off and Meg was staring at a blank screen. She blinked, stretched once and got to her feet. Maybe she'd be getting in over her head, but it had been a while since she'd helped out in a good, old-fashioned drug bust. Holstering her Desert Eagles and packing some extra ammunition, she made her way down to the hangers.
Her bike's engine shuddered to a halt as she arrived at the Tokyo-Osaka Hanshin Police Initiative's station. She grimaced – that name even sounded like a mouthful in her head, but who could argue with the name when people like Takane were backing it to the hilt? Clearly, they thought TOHPI was a good acronym. Never mind that some of the crims nicknamed them 'dopey TOHPI'…
After the mess RAPT had made of Tokyo, it had been up to the law enforcement in the other major cities to sweep up the debris and restore order. The Hanshin force from Osaka had stepped up to the task, and later the TOHPI had been formed. Meg had welcomed the change, as the Initiative's major goals included the arrest and lawful trials of RAPT and their associates. Bai-Lan had been largely left alone – there were some fish, like Shibuya, the Initiative were unwilling to tackle with so many other major ones to fry.
The station was smaller than RAPT HQ had been – the Initiative favoured smaller, more widely dispersed stations rather than the one solitary fortress in the centre of the city. If there had been one thing Sei's attack on the RAPT HQ had proven, it was not a fantastic idea to put all of your men in one building and hope that nobody blew it up.
Meg swung her leg back over the bike, lowering her goggles to around her neck and walking through the front door of the station. A few of the Initiative employees gave her waves, and Meg had to wonder if she was on the Initiative's watch list as a probably criminal. She tried to keep her more violent activities low key, but her cleanup methods were not exactly perfect.
"Ohayo! Meg!" Takane's brunette head stuck out from one of the briefing rooms, and the policewoman waved her over. Meg approached warily, but Takane grabbed her bicep and tugged – hard. Dragging the mercenary into the room, Takane shoved her unceremoniously into a chair at the large table. Meg rubbed her arm sheepishly, giving the people in the room a quick glance over.
Six Initiative men, and eight Kanbaku, she noted with a frown. Plus Takane and myself. Just how heavy is this going to get, if she's calling in favours from her gang?!
"SO!" Takane announced, pacing back and forth, procuring a remote control from the sleeve of her trench coat and flicking on the screen behind her. It was nowhere near the level of tech Bai-Lan packed, but it was good enough.
The details from a few files began to spill out across the screen, the photos of a few men and women plastered over the top.
"Now, what we have here is a not-so small drug ring, thriving in one of the warehouses near that rat nest Shibuya," Takane lectured, whipping out her bokken and tapping one of the first photos on the screen.
"This fella is known as Tom Shates. Far as we know, he's an immigrant who rocked into our city not three years ago, back when he was fourteen. Some orphan kid, got in before the Initiative really got a handle on Tokyo. After he got in, he vanished off the radar. 'til now, that is."
There were a few sniggers from the Kanbaku, and suddenly Meg knew who had tracked Shates down and determined his place in the drug ring. The Kanbaku were everywhere, had sources in every bar in every town. It was little wonder…
"Shates has been determined to be the little mastermind of this whole song and dance. He and his group have named themselves the 'Red Dragons', as creative as that shit is. 'til a few weeks back, these Red Dragons were a fairly harmless little stunt group. Always in the wrong place and the wrong time, but nothing we could ever truly pin on 'em. Nothing too heavy, y'see."
Takane fumbled around with the remote for a second, cursing under her breath before she found the right buttons. The screen changed, and suddenly there was a photo of a powdery substance, followed by a list of psychological symptoms.
"Now, sometime between then and now, they got their mits on some pretty nasty stuff. We got no freaking clue of where it came from, only that this drug they called 'Mirage' is doing some vicious shit to our citizens. Vivid hallucinations, vomiting, fever, loss of co-ordination. The body shuts down, but the brain. The brain is workin' overtime. And this shit has the worst addictive effects we've come across since the Liore drug of '25."
Meg's eyebrows rose. That was quite a statement – Liore had crippled nearly a third of the Osaka underworld before being completely eliminated from the market, except for tiny pockets. For this drug, 'Mirage' to be compared to that…
So that was why it was getting so heavy.
"Shates got his hands on this stuff somewhere, and we gotta learn where. If there's another load of this stuff out there, we need to know about it. That's why we need to catch Shates and his cronies alive and kickin'. You got that?" Takane clicked the remote again, bringing up the blueprints of a warehouse, tapping the front entrance to the building with her bokken.
Not far from Shibuya my ass, Meg noted sourly. That's on the edge. If the crims there figure out there's a raid going on, you might have a full riot on your hands.
"Now, you Initiative kids are going to take the front of the warehouse. Make sure you're wearing riot gear, Wilder's gonna lead you, so watch what he says and his word is law. I trust him. You guys are gonna be the A-team."
Wilder, a man with dark hair and a neatly-trimmed goatee nodded. He was a fairly burly man, Meg noted, with scars criss-crossing down both of his arms. From the look of his rank, it looked like he was a sergeant.
"The Kanbaku are taking the side entrances, here and here," Takane told the bokken-wielding women in the room. "I'm gonna leave Kirin and Kagari in charge of the two teams. A, B, and C teams, your task is to secure the entrances and make damn sure nobody gets out. You got that?"
There was a round of nods from the teams, and finally Takane turned to Meg.
"Me and my friend Mitarai are gonna take the back. It's our job to apprehend the assholes leading this shit. I'll do it my way, and I'm sure Mitarai knows how to do it her way." Takane's grin was just a little bit savage. God, the woman could be fierce when it came to the law.
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna make our way to that warehouse and we're gonna bust a few skulls. Nobody screws with the Initiative's civilians, and it's time these Red Dragons learned that."
It took nearly half an hour for the Initiative and Kanbaku teams to make their way within a few blocks of the Red Dragons' warehouse. Takane arrived a few minutes after Meg had, looking flushed with glee as she vaulted off her bike.
"Man, I love a good drug bust!" the woman declared, looking positively devious as she watched the rest of her team roll up. After the last straggler pulled up, Takane nodded to them, allowing them to disperse. They'd keep in contact via comm. link, Meg was told airily. That's how they'd figure out when everything was in position.
So casual, Meg thought with a smirk. Nothing like Sei's iron discipline at all. Just 'go in, do your worst and try to keep a few people alive to snitch'.
Takane gave her a wink.
"It's showtime, girl."
The pair of them began to thread their way through the heavy crowds – those they could not moved around, Takane jabbed with her bokken. Meg rolled her eyes – that thing was like Takane's all-in-one tool for everything. Someone annoyed her? Bokken. Someone needed a beating? Bokken. Her bike was out of gas? Bokk- oh wait.
Takane was one person Meg had been able to consistently relate to, had been able to stand when Sei's distraction rubbed her raw, when Amy's vindictiveness finally made her snap. There was something about Takane that made it all… not matter. So what if Meg had been unable to track Jo and RAPT down? So what if Meg had failed her latest mission? When Takane was in town, it didn't seem so bad.
(("People make mistakes, you know? There are plenty of other people who want to beat you up over them, without adding yourself to that list," Takane declared, frowning at her cards. "Say, you got any jokers?"
"Go fish."))
The warehouse came into view just as the sun began to set, staining the building in reds. It was certainly a shoddy looking building, that was for sure. Graffiti and posters covered almost every surface in reach, and what wasn't in reach was peeling and old. It had been a long time since that warehouse's glory days, Meg decided as Takane slowed to a halt.
"A, B, C teams! Status report!" she snapped into the comm. link on her wrist.
"A-team, in position. Waiting for the good to go."
"B-team nearly there. Give us five or so minutes."
"C-team ready. Just waiting on those B-team idiots to stop fooling around."
"Good to hear, guys. Won't be long," she told them, switching off her comm. link and turning to Meg. "I trust you remember what frequency my link's on?"
Meg smirked. "How could I forget?"
"Jo always does," Takane pointed out. "This way. There's a path to our left that goes around the back, but we can't risk bein' seen by some slack-jawed guard who happens to be getting lucky with a hooker in the alley. We're going through the building next to it. It's near-abandoned, mostly homeless folk living there."
The redhead nodded, following Takane through the run-down building next to their goal warehouse. A few of the homeless looked shocked to see a Kanbaku member and a mercenary moving through their shelter. The detour went largely without incident, though, and the two emerged into the darkening alleyways out the back of the warehouse. Meg could have sworn she'd seen a few of the designs before, in the subway-
"You know, Meg, you should be using a bokken today. Nice experience, let me tell you that." Takane's voice was sly as she launched them right back into their repeating argument.
Meg pretended to gawk at Takane. "You seriously want me to use a toy sword against a pack of well-armed drug-runners? Are you insane?"
"Toy sword?! Better than your stupid-ass promise to be 'non-lethal'. Non-lethal shot or not, sometimes that's jus' considered wanton assault by an officer of the law!"
"Yeah, and 'bustin' open some skulls' isn't considered assault either, huh?" Meg drawled as they fell into position outside the warehouse's loading dock. She drew both Desert Eagles, double checking the ammunition she had left.
Fully loaded, Meg noted with satisfaction.
"I resent the implication that I am anything other than gentle with my crims," Takane gave a feral grin, and then spoke into her link. "Yo, you guys ready?"
A brief chorus of quiet affirmatives made Takane's smile even wider.
"Then on the count of three then, guys. One, two, three!"
Meg blasted the door open with a single, well-placed kick of her iron-shod boot, flicking the safety off her guns and shouting as loud as she could,
"HANSHIN INITIATIVE! WEAPONS DOWN!"
A blast nearly knocked Meg into the other woman as it shook the entire warehouse. Takane whooped, raising her bokken before her face.
"For great justice!" she declared at the top of her lungs, racing forwards and into the warehouse's dark interior.
There was a tangle of panicked voices from ahead as the Kanbaku poured in from the sides, the Initiative blasting in from the front. Smoke clouded Meg's vision, and she lost precious seconds strapping her goggles to her face again.
Gunfire erupted from the centre room – Meg's eyes made out a dozen, give or take, sheltered behind a truck. They were returning the Initiative's gunfire, but they appeared ill-equipped to face a raid from the Initiative. Had they not planned for this possibility at all? She had no idea where Takane had vanished to.
A grin spread across her face as she made out the distinctive figure of Tom Shates crouched by the truck's front wheel, his mouth locked in a snarl of fury as he used a semi-automatic to track Wilder as the man dodged from cover to cover. Meg took her time in aiming for his shoulder, letting a single round fell him. Shates collapsed with a scream.
"Damnit! Fire from behind?" One roared, turning a fraction, his eyes locked on Meg's position and bringing his gun down to open fire on her.
Takane descended from above, knocking him flat with a flick of her bokken. Blood leaked lazily from the head wound he'd sustained. Takane ducked as another man took a wild haymaker swing at her head, and she rammed him with her shoulder as he fell off balance. He fell to the ground, clutching at his mouth as his teeth smashed on the concrete. Determined not to let Takane get the glory, Meg took out another three Red Dragons with a few well-placed shots.
With the Red Dragon's forces dropped below seven, Wilder skidded forwards from the crates he'd taken cover behind. The men his gun tracked fell, the backs of their heads exploding as his rounds tore through. Panting from wrestling and handcuffing a Red Dragon woman, Takane looked up with a curse at the still-shuddering bodies.
"DAMNIT WILDER, I SAID NON-LETHAL!" the cop roared, ducking behind the truck as one of the bigger Red Dragon women lurched towards her. Meg crossed the floor in a flash, her mind racing. She wasn't sure what Takane was up to, but if it'd end this fight quick, she was wholly approving of it.
Meg ducked the wild swing the Red Dragon made, darting in and pistol-whipping her across the face. The woman cried out as pain bloomed in her cheek, and Meg caught hold of her flailing arm and shoved her hip into the woman's side. With a twist, Meg dislocated the woman's arm and threw her against the truck. There was a muttered curse from above, and she lunged to the side as a man on top of the vehicle fired down on her.
Rolling to her feet, Meg angled a volley of quick shots at the man. She swore as none of the shots hit true.
Where the hell is Takane?
As if in answer, there was an unsteady creak from above. The redhead craned her neck upwards again – hanging from pulleys fixed to the warehouse rafters and tossing something small and metallic up and down in her free hand, was the wayward cop.
"Think fast!" the woman roared, ripping the pin free with her teeth and hurling the object to the ground. Meg's eyes widened, and then quickly screwed shut. It was nothing lethal, so that limited the possibilities as to what that thing was.
Meg was glad she'd closed her eyes as the device went off, the world flashing around her so brightly that Meg's eyes watered from behind their lids. She wiped them with a sleeve and staggered towards where the remaining Red Dragons had fallen to the ground, groaning and clutching at their eyes. Grimacing, the mercenary put the last three out of their misery with a few well-placed blows to the back of the head.
She glanced up at where Takane had been hanging, giving the cop a quick thumbs up. The woman dropped down to the top of the truck with a resounding thud – Meg was always surprised that Takane didn't seriously hurt herself more often than she did.
The mercenary grinned at Takane as the cop vaulted down off the truck top, panting slightly.
"Geez, you took your time about it all," she told Takane as the woman turned over a few of the Red Dragons, snapping cuffs around their wrists. Now was the boring part – cleaning up the trash.
Takane shrugged. "When you wear the badge, you make the rules. I only jus' thought of that little trick, else I might have mentioned it in the briefing, y'know?"
Meg snorted. "Might have."
"You know me. I like to keep my troops thinking sharp and on their toes."
"So that's what you call such unorthodox procedures these days, Katsu," a gruff voice said from behind Meg. Wilder had two of the Red Dragons by the hair, grinning as they struggled weakly to get free. Meg frowned – the man, frankly, made her skin crawl.
Takane waved a hand. "You say that, Wilder, but you don't mean it. Now slap some handcuffs on these guys. The Kanbaku will watch 'em and take 'em back to the station for processing, to make sure they don't make a cryin' bid for freedom. You, Mitarai and me will transport Shates here –" with the name, Takane grabbed the man by the good shoulder, tightening the handcuffs around his wrists quickly, "-and move him into the interrogation room. The Initiative boys will take the contents of this truck here and put it into custody."
Wilder nodded, shouting orders to the Initiative police to get cracking on the truckload. Takane smirked and radioed for the squad cars to move in.
Shates sat in the interrogation room sullenly, staring blackly at the cop lounging across the table from him, boots crossed on the desk, chewing loudly on a skewer of meat she'd picked up on the way back from Shibuya. From behind the one-way mirror, Meg watched Takane take another mouthful of meat, washing it down with a huge gulp of soda.
Interesting theatrics. Hell, even I'm getting eager to move onto the damn questioning already. Meg wasn't sure why Takane had asked her to stay back a little longer. Normally, Meg would help apprehend the drug-runners with the Initiative and leave as soon as the fighting was over and her statement recorded.
Takane belched loudly from behind her hand, tossing the skewer into the small wastebasket in the corner of the room. Only Meg noticed how the unerring precision of the seemingly negligent toss.
The policewoman leaned forwards, swinging her boots down from the table. "So, Tommy. I'll make this nice and easy for ya. State your name for the Initiative's records."
"Tom Shates, though you already know that." The man's voice was cool, if tinged with a bit of pain. Meg made a face – the bullet had barely grazed his shoulder, and it had been cleaned and bandaged just now. Wuss.
"Yeah, yeah. Just started with somethin' easy. So, your little friends we arrested tell us you're the leader of the Red Dragons. That right?"
"I founded it, yeah. We were just hanging out in the warehouse, man. Seriously, what the hell did we do to deserve a fucking Initiative raid?!"
Takane raised an eyebrow, digging around in her coat pockets for something. "I wonder. And keep the potty mouth off of my records, thanks." She pulled out a small, clear packet of white powder. "We found a shit-tonne of this stuff in the back of that truck in your little cubby house. Know what this is?"
Shates stared stonily at the wall.
"I believe you dubbed this stuff 'Mirage'." Takane tossed the packet to the wooden table, resting her chin on her fist. "You knew what it could do. Three of your Red Dragon buddies were admitted to the emergency ward, a few weeks back. Symptoms were vivid, persistent hallucinations.
"One of those men still hasn't really recovered – still seeing spiders crawling down his walls and the buzz of cockroaches he's sure have nested in his ears. And that's not even getting into the withdrawal that killed the other two. I almost think they were the lucky ones."
His eyes cut towards her, his face pale. Meg had to wonder if they'd bothered to check up on their members, after they'd dumped them off at the hospital.
"So how 'bout you tell me where you got this nasty stuff from? If you're nice and helpful, I may cut you a deal, kiddo." Takane studied her fingernails, smirking at the teen.
Shates' stony stare lifted from the wall, and he clenched his teeth. He was breaking under Takane's good-cop routine, even without a 'bad-cop' partner to work with. Maybe, his shoulder reminded him of what the alternative was. Damnit, though. Shates was just a kid.
The Red Dragon leader inclined his head sharply in a nod.
"Fine," he told the cop across from him, his teeth clenched. "My group… we used to hang out somewhere quieter than Shibuya. The abandoned subway."
Takane nodded, urging him to keep going.
"We were wandering the lines there, decorating the old walls with our slogans, just foolin'. Then Keito comes running up, says he found something big. We follow him, and suddenly we see this building, right in the middle of the abandoned subway, where an old station used to be."
Meg's breath caught in her throat.
No freaking way.
"We sneak in, and find a truck being unloaded in there. It's Mirage – we pinch the truck. For the laughs. Wasn't 'til later that we decided to sell the stuff in the back." Shates sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. "That's all I know."
There were a few moments of silence as Takane digested Shates' story. She slowly reached into her coat's pockets, drawing out a tattered, dog-eared fold of paper. As she smoothed it out, it became clear that it was an old subway map.
"Could you mark on the map, where you think that building was?" Takane passed Shates a black marker. "Just a cross would do it."
Shates wordlessly examined the old map, then drew a bold 'x' on it. Meg couldn't work out the exact location – but it was damn close to where the old lab had been.
"Now Shates, is there anything else you can tell us?" Takane drawled, taking the map back from him and tucking it into her coat's pockets again.
Shates hesitated a moment, frowning.
"Keito stayed behind a while, to make sure none of the guards were following us back to camp. He said… he said…" Shates paused, his face contorted in thought. "The guards. They said, 'Damn it! Now we gotta move to a new one… is it going to be A-12 this time?'." The Red Dragon shrugged. "I dunno, I wasn't the one who heard it. But Keito was damn sure they said 'A-12', since we were canvassing the place, looking for where their new base was. If Mirage became a hit, we wanted to know where to get more."
Meg felt numb as she watched Takane push her way out of the interrogation room.
"So, Meg. I take it you heard all that?"
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. A-12. A clue that Amy could work on.
Takane nodded in satisfaction. "This drug, it had RAPT's fingers all over it. I'm not surprised – I thought it'd be some idiocy like this, so I asked you to stay. You think you can use this info? The lab was not enough, but maybe that big-mouthed guard gave us the shove we needed to get this thing really rolling."
Still breathless, Meg grinned at Takane. "A-12. I'm sure Amy can do something with that."
The council room was shrouded in darkness as Sei entered, the heavy smell of perfume and cigar smoke hanging in the air like a haze. She sketched a stiff bow to Bai-Lan's funding council, ignoring the dull ache in her body and the beginnings of a stress-born migraine in her temples. No matter how she loathed these people, she had to be polite.
"Sei Laoban, current don of Bai-Lan. Be at ease," a voice to her right told her, and Sei's eyes slid over to the source. She could not make out the speaker through the shadows, she realized with annoyance.
Sei forced herself to relax, to breathe. It was just the council – no longer were they in charge of the ins and outs of Bai-Lan's missions and alliances. She and she alone controlled that – her grandfather that made sure of that. Sei had not inherited a puppet's position in Bai-Lan after he'd passed away, and she had to thank him for that.
The council still held power, though – with the right financial pressures, Sei knew they could strangle her into submission. If they dared. She tried not to clench her teeth in anger. They knew they had the power, but they hadn't had the stomach to use it, yet.
Her stomach clenched as she wondered why they'd summon her before a whole council, if that was the case.
Calm.
"What business does the council have with me?" Sei questioned, her tone as level as she could make it, her face a frozen mask of apathy.
Don't show emotion. Don't show your nerves. Be the don of Bai-Lan, as grandfather taught you so long ago.
"The recent mission for Ormicon… troubles us," a voice said to Sei's left, a cold voice. "You lost many Bai-Lan agents in that operation, all destroyed by a madman. Then it turns out that Kruegar is a goldmine of technology! Instead of recouping Bai-Lan's substantial losses from the Ormicon operation, you send that loose cannon Mitarai out and-"
"For the record, councillor, I did not send Meg out-"
"-and lost him! God only knows where the cyborg man is now, other than beyond our reach!"
"This is an unacceptable loss, Sei." A voice from the centre of the shadows, now. "Not only do you persist in chasing non-existent shadows, wasting the organization's funds, you refuse to allow us to recoup our losses when we can!"
Calm. Stay calm. They're getting under your skin, Sei.
"Councillor, driving out the last of RAPT's insidious roots is not an unworthy mission," Sei pointed out. "In doing so, we have won the favour of the Initiative and gained operations we normally would not have had access to. Not only that, but upon close investigation, Ormicon and RAPT-"
"You are dismissed, Sei. We will reconvene on this matter next week. Know that we are exceedingly disappointed in you – you were such a promising leader. To see it all go to waste on conspiracy theories and paranoia… well," The central voice told her heavily. "We'll have to consider our actions, regarding this pressing matter."
Sei bowed stiffly again, forcing her emotions to still, to stop reflecting on her face. She left the council room, straight-backed and proud, but her mind working furiously.
So the council finally decided to grow some balls after all, a cold voice in Sei's head told her. Show them that Sei Laoban isn't going to be whipped like that.
Sei nodded to herself as she reboarded the small aircraft that had taken her to the council chambers, entering in the coordinates to the Elizabeth quickly.
No, she wouldn't be taking this lying down. Not with everything at stake – her dreams, her plans. Still, the council's blatant dismissal of RAPT and Ormicon's connections to the outlaw organization was… worrying. Given the council's alliance with RAPT five years ago…
Sei's stomach was soured. This was not good. Not good at all.