Episode 9: Chaos (Glimpse)
Though he heard the explosion and correctly surmised its origin, he did not turn back. J would lead them in the right general direction, but it was up to him, as a native Magnagalian, to perform the more difficult task of pinpointing their quarry's exact location in the first place. At least, he perceived his duty as such in his mind. He had not bothered to inform anyone else of this responsibility.
Eyes darting warily about him, Boma kept to the shadows as he headed for the Barony, a prominent hotel and worst-kept-secret hideout for the darkest figures of Magnagalian society. Even now, after all that he had run from and escaped, slipping unseen through the revolving doors sent the briefest stab of fear and hatred through his mind. These were the people who had used Brad. These were the people who had tricked him into killing his friend.
The beast master...had he worked for these people as well? Was that how the Barony and its ilk stayed in business—the scientists of "justice" played both sides? A low growl of rage escaped his lips, but as soon as he became aware of it he stopped. He had made his piece with all that; he was not a thinker but a doer, a feeler, but a feeler of the most impassive sort. He followed instincts, not emotions. Those instincts, he trusted, would lead him to Daisuke.
Assuming he wasn't caught and dragged back to "justice" first; the word could not even stand alone in his mind anymore, though he had spent most of his life killing for the sake of its unlawful version. No, that could not even be an option, he would not let it be so. Boma struck "capture" from his list of possibilities and, in that moment, became invincible. For if he did not wish for something to occur in his world, if he had power over it, it did not happen. That was how he had been trained, how he had trained himself.
A group of raucous drunks swaggered into the lobby; the desk clerk ignored them, especially after one plunked down a hefty tip. Boma padded in the direction whence the drunks had come—that kind of handout reeked of freshly made money, and where there was quick prolific cash to be had, he would find the syndicate.
He had to maintain the belief that finding the syndicate would also mean finding Daisuke. Otherwise he'd just handed himself over to the enemy for no good reason.
O0o0o00o0o
"That is disgusting," Monica said blanketly as J, gently but firmly, shook off the heavily made-up woman clinging to his arm. Behind him, Shun and Giovanni dealt with similar difficulties, except Giovanni brushed his would-be alluring leech off while still holding his gun. "Even for whores."
"Hey, when business is bad..." Giovanni muttered to himself as the brothel receded behind them; Shun looked like he wanted to run to the nearest laundromat and stuff his coat in a machine to rid it of the woman's touch.
Kyoko's earlier faint facial shade of green blurred to an indignant red."But accosting pedestrians on the street! Have they no sense of propriety??"
"People like that are the worst," spat Clair, his former exhilarating high after the narrow escape now completely sunken in a mire of disdain for the entirety of humanity. "They think degrading themselves is actually appealing. If they can't respect themselves enough to turn somewhere else, they deserve everything they get."
"Extremely traumatizing early life experiences culminate in a feeling of hopelessness," J explained to no one in particular, eyes riveted firmly ahead as the group tramped down the dingy street. Kabuki Road had seemed metropolitan in comparison to what passed for a pleasure district in Magnagalia. "They are not wholly responsible for their actions, but are instead byproducts of a corrupt and downtrodden society."
"I hate that kind of thinking too," Clair groused, kicking at a discarded beer can. Kyoko, for her part, shrugged in amusement. J standing up for prostitutes...Daisuke would have been rolling on the ground laughing.
Thinking of him made her breath catch in her throat; she adjusted the handgun in her holster. "So, J, can you tell which building?"
"It is difficult to determine. As I said, the signal has gone underground."
"Where's Boma?" Monica asked suddenly; Kyoko started as she realized the man had, indeed, disappeared.
Clair shrugged. "He'll turn up again. That's his way, isn't it?"
Nodding, Kyoko couldn't keep a worried frown from sneaking loose. "I just hope...well, he's Boma, right? So he'll be okay."
"Boma's body has been genetically enhanced to near-invincibility," J replied stalwartly. "The chances of his losing a battle are fractional."
"I don't like this," Shun grumbled. "He could have abandoned us, for all we know."
The others turned to him in astonishment. "Sh-Shun..." Kyoko gasped. "Boma is...well, he's honorable. He wouldn't do a thing like that."
Shun laughed bitterly. "I see. A cold-blooded killer is 'honorable.'" The unspoken contrast with a certain other escapee from the justice system hung in the air, but no one dared bring it up. Kyoko wondered what had really caused the blond man's paranoia. Was it really just blatant distrust of a man he considered unworthy of such confidences?
But suspecting Daisuke's older brother wouldn't help her find the young man himself any faster. And at that moment, lost in the seedier districts of a foreign city, her mind and will had to be focused on him and him alone.
O0o0o00o0o
The cell door clicked shut; the door to the room slammed to a close; he lay down on the bed; a shadow moved in the corner, and he fell off in surprise.
"...Boma!" Wincing, Daisuke stood, rubbing his sore back. "Don't do that!"
"You are not surprised?" the dark-haired man asked; Daisuke tilted his head contemplatively.
"In retrospect...I wish I could say no, but I can't. You shouldn't be here! What if they find you? They'll catch you again and--"
"They cannot hurt me," Boma assured him, his tone flat. "Usagi is gone."
Opening his mouth to reply, Daisuke thought better of it and chewed his lip in thought. He had to get the older man out of the cell before said "gone" young lady chose to make a surprise appearance; just because he hadn't seen her all day didn't mean she wouldn't suddenly barge in on him and traumatize his friend. In addition, he didn't want Boma to have to fight the girl. He wasn't sure the man could win.
"All the same, better safe than sorry and all that."
"Coming from you, that means nothing."
"Ouch. Thanks." He gestured to the cage, eager to change the subject. "So, about this little arrangement...I prefer my apartment in Judoh. Think you could maybe help me move?"
"Not alone. Security is too high. I cannot, alone, take you unseen far enough."
"Oh." Daisuke's face fell, but he was more confused than disappointed. "And the point of this little visit then was...?"
"I know where you are now. I will return with the others." Stepping back into the corner, Boma vanished. Daisuke swore under his breath.
"What others? Boma? Boma? Who came? Hey, are you even still listening to me?"
o0o0o00o0o
Their paths crossed entirely by accident; it was the sort of encounter that could happen any day, to any two perfect strangers. The old man had left the hotel, hands stuffed in his pockets and, with his head bowed, furiously contemplated his next move in the grand system that he in his younger, more idealistic and yet more covert days had devised. Feeling a need to immerse himself in the life he knew and hated even as he pitied it, the reasons behind his planning, he turned his polished footsteps to the back roads and sleazy alleys, seeking to wash his doubts away with the tide of other people's sin. The young man walked those very same streets seeking not vindication, not escape, but confrontation: he had several goals to achieve and needed no prodding whatsoever to accomplish any of them.
The old man walked alone, and preferred it that way. Other people could never connect to him, not after hearing the strange things he dreamed of and the means by which he had chosen to enact those dreams. What few stragglers who did come, magnetized by his charisma the way a sponge draws water, were below him entirely. Oh, how he loved them and yet hated them! He was not a part of that world, but one day they would all be a part of his. And until the two worlds were one, neither could be happy.
The young man walked with confederates, and was content. As long as other people distracted him and kept him safe, nothing could happen to him. He would have liked for the others to come like water to his sponge, but had learned life did not, for him at least, work that way. So he put up with as much idiocy as he could for the sake of the greater benefits being a part of the group provided. His goals, at least for the long term, had not and likely would never solidify in his mind, but his immediate plans were all too concrete and pressing. He had too many agendas to juggle, but was reluctant to let a single one fall.
They could just as easily have passed each other by without even noticing the other's presence, but the old man sensed something was wrong and scanned the crowd for the threat. His people were renowned for their sensitivity, and he had learned to trust it. Some called him overly cautious, but his wariness and instincts had never failed him yet.
The young man had no such knowledge of what precisely drew his half-bored eyes to skim across the crowd; a faint notion, perhaps, of burning eyes upon his neck, watching every movement he made with scorn. He had not felt the suffocating weight of others' expectations in the waking world for nearly a year now, and was enraged that some upstart nobody in the masses packed along the dingy roads would dare send his senses prickling.
Their eyes met, connected, and widened. Both kept walking, though the young man stumbled slightly. In an instant, the connection was severed as the old man stepped into a doorway, keeping his eyes on the young man. It seemed to the latter that the former's gaze had rested with disapproval especially on his mouth; no, on something on his mouth...
The same mouth gasped in dumb disbelief, a wave of fear and hope and utter, total helplessness knocking the wind out of his lungs even as the crowd thinned and the sun came out from behind the clouds. No one heard him; indeed, to him they had all disappeared. There were only him and the phantom face in the entire world—yet that face had not been ethereal, but concrete. Just as he remembered it, only terribly, horribly out of place.
So he tried to vocalize it, tried to admit what he had seen, to call out and make the vision real; but terror of the consequences and repercussions seized his gut and choked the voice out of him. He ended up expelling the word as a breath of air, a puff on the wind that nonetheless would not dissipate. For the word had hung over his head his entire life.
"Papa..."