Episode 16: Job (Loyalty)

The swing on the tree outside of his son's apartment had begun to creak—when? Mauro wondered, listening to his small granddaughter play. Just one more reminder that everything aged, everything changed. The world kept moving...even if some aspects of it seemed frozen in time.

He was running out of excuses as to why no one was allowed to see Vampire, and it worried him excessively. Even with the beetle's plan for when the errants returned and the police's support, in the time before Clair's actual return the family remained vulnerable. No Vampire, no Echigo—as soon as the other families realized that no one could punish them for overstepping their boundaries, those thinly-drawn lines on the scuffed pavement would vanish. Anarchy would again reign in Judoh, and Mauro, without the backing of his employer, would be powerless to stop it.

No, he had to act as both Echigo and Vampire. That was the task his young master had laid before him, but he wasn't certain if he was capable of it. After all, he still had to go through the motions of his advisor duties—running the casino, checking the accounts—in addition to "reporting Vampire's wishes" after his "visits with the sick young man." Mauro himself wasn't a young man anymore; his employer had failed to consider that. His nerves could only take so much. So now, this quiet afternoon, he had fled to the security of his son's townhouse for one all-too-brief respite from running Judoh's underworld in secret.

Except he couldn't tear his mind from the casino and the office. The clock on Clair's empty desk was counting the same minutes and seconds he frittered away dozing in the sun, and he knew it. He couldn't enjoy himself, even though he told himself time and time again that his family was the most important thing in his life and he should count himself blessed to have this afternoon all to himself. Mauro could lie, and lie well, to almost anyone—the heads of the other families, the police, even Young Master if the need arose—but he could not lie to himself. This family, the family he had raised with his own hands and with his own weapon many years ago, was not the family he cared for the most.

His son knew it, he feared, and that cast another pallor over these brief moments in the light. Though he was the only child Mauro's late wife bore, there was another boy Mauro had raised who took precedence in all the old man's thoughts. Mauro justified the displacement on the grounds that this other boy got into many more scrapes and thus had to be looked after better, but the good son never wants to hear that the prodigal naturally needs more love. As long as Mauro worked for the Leonellis, his own son would always be distant to him.

"Grandpa, Grandpa!" His granddaughter Jody came rushing over to the door, her blonde curls bouncing around a face flushed with excitement. "Push me, push me!"

"All right, Jody," Mauro agreed, standing slowly and wincing as something twinged in his back. Old before his time—he wasn't even sixty. Was it merely the strain of putting his life on the line every day at work that had aged him so? No, no, it went beyond that.

She settled herself into the swing, antsy in her excitement; he pulled back on the chains and then let go, sending her rocking back and forth as he pushed her farther and farther out each time she swung back to him. She laughed aloud, and his heart warmed to hear it; yet overlaid with his small granddaughter's peals of joy in his ears, he heard the echoes of a boy prone to fits of mirth during much more inopportune times.

His son sidled out the door, watched them idly; his hands nursed a steaming cup of coffee despite the day's warmth. "Careful, Jody," he warned as his little girl flew higher and higher. "Don't let go."

She laughed off his warning, mischievously freeing one hand to wave; but soon she too sensed the danger and clung onto both chains again. "Just watch the way I do things, Mauro," the other child said in his mind, watching her; closing his eyes, he tried to blot the connection out. This was somewhere he would not let that boy reach. Not his granddaughter. He would not have his chosen career influencing Jody's chance at a normal, happy life free from the fear of dealing with such men as he confronted every day.

Finally he stopped pushing her and she slowed to a stop, still thrilled. "Again?" she asked hopefully, but he headed back indoors.

"Maybe your father will push you now, Jody," Mauro replied, fetching his coat from where he'd laid it by his chair. His son watched him pull it on with suspicious eyes.

"I thought you were staying to dinner," he said as Mauro buttoned up the front.

"I remembered something," Mauro replied shamefully—he had not even forgotten. There was no point in staying if his mind was elsewhere. He would only hurt his son's feelings even more with his distant, fretting eyes.

Putting down his coffee cup, Mauro's son blocked his exit, arms crossed. "Father..." He tussled internally with the right words to use. "Just because one old man in this city dealt his son a bad hand doesn't mean you have to..."

"That isn't why," Mauro replied. "You can't understand. I don't want you to understand. I don't want you mixed up in this..." His eyes wandered to the expectant child on the swings. "I'm not proud of..."

"Then why don't you leave?"

"Vampire needs me."

"More than Jody?" His son's tone gave the true meaning of the words away. "More than your own family?"

"Let me through, please." He tried to maneuver around his son, but the younger man was also taller and wider than he was. "I have so much to do..."

Cussing under his breath, his son let him go. As Mauro turned the latch on the gate leading out into the street, his son called behind him, "You know, Aurora snapped because his parents left him! What do you say to that?"

Mauro turned. "Only that I feel sorry for the poor man, but can't do anything. Give my regrets to everyone."

His son looked like he wanted to say more, but couldn't with his little daughter waiting. Jody nonetheless sensed something important but bad was going on, and watched Grandpa leave with wide, brown eyes. "Push me?" she asked weakly when he had gone, but her voice was more plaintive than eager.

Her father picked her up and held her tight. "Am I a good daddy, Jody?" he asked in her ear. "I'm a good parent, right?"

"You're the best, Daddy!" She hugged him back. "The best in the world!"

In his mind, he swore at the silhouette retreating down the street. Aloud he said, "Then I must be the only good one in all of Judoh."

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Kyoko slept in that night, the exhaustion of the day coupled with the rocking of the waves knocking her clean out until the sun had risen well into the sky. When she did emerge, it was to the less than dulcet sounds of a very, very annoyed Monica.

"WHY did he have to GO and run OFF when he's SUPPOSED to be doing all the THINKING here..."

"Oh no," Kyoko groaned, coming up on deck still in her pajamas. "Who's left now?"

The girl looked up from her rant to the ocean. "Oh, no one. I'm still mad at Shun." Noticing a pebble lodged in the tread of her shoe, she picked it free and flung it out into the water as far as she could. "If we'd been thinking, we'd have gotten Giovanni's cell phone number. That way we could call him and find out if they've found Clair yet."

Kyoko nodded: that did make sense. "We should have all traded numbers, not just us and them. That way someone could call Shun."

"Like he has his phone on!"

"Like Judoh phones would work in Magnagalia," Daisuke corrected, sidling up alongside the two girls. "Sure, if you've got the right provider, there are groups that give worldwide coverage just in case. I wouldn't be surprised if all Clair's stuff works, just because he can afford that kind of thing. But your average day-to-day phone...not likely. Plus we're stuck here anyway until the Celestials decide to leave." He grinned at Kyoko's disheveled ensemble. "Trying something new with your hair?"

"Oh! No, I just..." Her hands flew to the pink mess atop her head. "I was tired last night."

"Uh-huh. Hey, about last night..."

"The Celestials!" Kyoko interrupted, blushing; she did not want to talk about last night, especially with Monica listening. "Where are they?"

"Over with J in the cabin." Daisuke jerked his head. "Well, some are. Most are still in the bedrooms we put them in last night." In a way, Clair and his bodyguard's absences had worked in the rescue team's favor. The master bedroom, for a room aboard a boat, was quite accommodating. "They're a funny bunch."

"You don't say."

"Hey, do you think they would mind if I took some more pictures of them, Daisuke?" Kyoko marveled at the way the self-appointed leader of the rescue defected to the young man. What had he done to earn such respect from Monica?

"It's worth a shot. Have fun." She dashed off to get her camera; as soon as she descended below deck he smoothed a piece of Kyoko's hair into place, a crooked smile playing across his features. "Now. About last night."

"Daisuke...no." She looked down, ashamed of her behavior the previous evening. "Just because we haven't seen each other in a year doesn't mean we can behave like a couple of adolescents. We're both adults here. Let's...leave off the teasing, all right? It's not funny." She knocked his hand away from her gently, horribly aware of the bullet pendant hanging on her neck. "I didn't come because...I came because I couldn't stand not knowing if you were all right. Not because I couldn't stand not having you around. And I just...I want you to know that." Oh, she was botching this, she could tell. But it had to be said.

"Well, I'm all right," Daisuke assured her. "The only problem is, now what?"

She turned to stare out at the waves like Monica had—like Shun had enjoyed doing, she thought, then started; she thought of him in the past tense? As in she truly didn't believe he was coming back? "You said it yourself: we wait. Both for Giovanni to return and for the Celestials to feel safe again. We really should be honored to have them around. I just hope we have enough food to feed them all."

"Wait for Giovanni? Not Bro and Clair and Boma?"

She should have known he would have the intelligence to read between the lines of her words and the carelessness to voice their meaning. "Something is going on here. We know that. You were taken captive, the previous Vampire faked his death, and now Clair himself has been kidnapped? You've broken cases wide open with less evidence. Therefore, there's a very good chance those involved won't be returning. I include Shun and Boma because—well, Boma's even more wanted here and Shun...We don't know what it all means, but that doesn't really matter. It's none of our business."

"You're right," Daisuke agreed, then turned. "I'm gonna go talk to J about some stuff. Later, Kyoko." Waving a casual hand in goodbye, he wandered off to the captain's room.

Now alone, Kyoko leaned forward, propped her elbows on the railing and rested her chin in her hands. She had lied to him, and he had lied back. She wasn't sure if, had the situation been slightly different, Lorenzo Leonelli's schemes in Magnagalia would have mattered to her, but since Clair had become embroiled they now directly affected the future of Judoh, and thus were the Special Unit's responsibility. Daisuke smelled a mystery as well, she felt sure; and he never turned one down. No, he would be investigating in whatever capacity he as an escapee from—whatever; she still wasn't certain who had held him hostage—could.

When he came back on deck, she predicted, he would have a theory as to what exactly was happening in the city at large, and he would probably be right. Then off he would go to keep the peace, and she would scold him both before and afterwards for being so reckless. That was the way their relationship worked; that was how their lives functioned. She was the worrier, the fretter, the practical anchor for the errant knight defending the peace. She felt obligated to give disapproval to all his wild crusading.

Certain no one was watching, she touched the silver bullet against her lips. Secretly, though, she wouldn't have wanted him any other way.

O0o0o0o0o0o0o0

So this was how Mauro had felt, or might have felt, upon receiving Clair's runaway disc. This was how that stressed-out detective the kid was living with had reacted, or might have reacted, when he found the good-bye letter. He wanted to shoot something. Or someone.

Giovanni,

Decided against taking you all to Papa and left to go myself. I'll find him somehow. More likely, he'll find me. I have a lot to ask him and you'd all get in the way. Plus I don't trust his motives for wanting you all around. You know what to do. Anything Papa can do, we can too.

Don't worry about me. I've waited twenty years for this and I think I'm ready. Enclosed is a present from Mitchal and me. If Papa finds you...well, you'll need them more than me.

p.s. Next time you're alone in a strange city sleeping in a slum, don't sleep in so late. You're going to get yourself killed. That would just be stupid, and I don't tolerate stupidity.

"Damn you," Giovanni growled, crumpling up the flyer on which Clair had written and wishing he really did have something to shoot—or maybe something to drink, though he wasn't by nature a drinking man. "Just because Aurora thinks he's good enough to strike out on his own--"

"I heard my name." Shun sat up. "What sort of accu--"

"Vampire is gone," Boma said simply. "He left two hours ago, just after dawn."

Giovanni stared in outrage. "Y-you knew? You let him go?" Leaping to his feet, he grabbed the werewolf by his vest collar and shook him, to no effect. "Why'd you let him—where'd he go? Which direction?"

"He does not want anyone to follow him now," Boma replied. "I acquiesce to his request."

"Well, I don't! We're all getting up and you're showing me which way he went!" Nothing covered his mouth or nose, but he felt like he was suffocating. Like something was stifling him, slowly, from within. And it hurt.

Nona, rolling over as she woke, frowned and dug two tiny objects out of the small of her back. "What are--" she began, sitting up.

"Don't touch those!" Giovanni snatched the pair of purple dice from her violently, knocking her back onto the ground but not really caring. "You can't understand! None of you people can!"

"That is why he left without you," Boma said. "You would not understand how he feels."

This was the second time Giovanni's employer had tried to leave without telling him first. Did Clair really trust him that little? Did everything they'd been through together really count for nothing? Over ten years of service and caring, then just a casual note and "you know what to do"? Do with what?

"Is this yours too?" Nona held up a small piece of plastic and metal. "It was next to the purple things."

He grabbed it from her, turned it over in his hands. Yes...they'd packed those, hadn't they? Just in case they decided to split up...and they should still work...he did know what to do, now. Pushing the bud into his right ear, it slid invisibly into place. Company Vita had only the best in surveillance technology.

Sticking a finger into his ear, Giovanni flicked the transmitter on. "Damn you," he said aloud to the air.

A staticy laugh floated back to him; he sagged with relief. "I was wondering when you'd wake up," the young don of the Leonelli family half-scolded his bodyguard. "Did you get my other gift, too?"

"I am going to kill you," Giovanni breathed slowly, distance letting him vent his anger. "And Mitchal would too."

"Nah, he'd just laugh. Ian, though, would have a heart attack. That's why I kept the ring." Clair sobered. "Now listen. I'm still out looking for the apartment he took me to, but I'm guessing his flunky will find me first. When I get there, I'll still have this thing on. I'm going to ask him what he's planning on doing, and I want you to record it somehow. Paper, memory, microphone recorder, whatever. Then...I'll get back to you when I can. We'll meet at the boat."

"Clair, what are you planning on doing?"

"Call me Vampire. The old one's dead." The boy was in a good mood for some reason, spoke mockingly.

"Clair," Giovanni repeated firmly, not sharing his young master's enjoyment. "What is going on?"

A pause; what might have been a sigh. "Ask the Celestial," Clair said finally. "Ask her about Papa. I heard a lot last night, and when I woke up I knew what I had to do. So I left."

"Oh, that helps so much..."

"Don't be fresh with me!" the young man snapped. "I...I know what I'm doing, all right? So just do as you're told and shut up!"

So he was upset about something after all. Giovanni had a healthy respect, if not regard, for the layers of emotions in which the young don clothed himself protectively. "Vampire..." he started, but could think of no way to finish the sentence.

"I hate him," the voice on the other end mumbled, so faintly that Giovanni wondered at first if he had heard it. "I hate him and I'm going to kill him. But I want to know what he was planning first. Are you happy now?"

No. He wasn't. But he couldn't say anything, either. He could only, as the young man fell silent and those around him eyed him curiously, scratch his head and, wordlessly, start trying to get back to the harbor. Walking out of the tenement with his head high and Mitchal's lucky dice clutched tightly in a sweaty palm—dice the flippant man had given to Vampire just before dying horribly—Giovanni could only wish to God or whatever else might be looking that everything would turn out all right for the boy.

He could wish. But, despite how badly he wanted to, how badly he wanted everything to turn out well, he could not hope.

O0o0o0o0o0o0o0

What had started as a lovely day quickly dwindled in beauty; around ten o'clock, the clouds moved in, and by noon the skies opened and unleashed their furies once again. Aboard the Vita yacht, the Celestials gathered in the cabins below deck and waited out the bad weather in silence; Kyoko, Daisuke, Monica, and J all congregated in Kyoko's cabin to give their guests some room.

The thunder boomed outside, and Monica hugged Kyoko's pillow to her knees in terror, then caught herself. Not again. Not with everyone watching. She had to beat this thing, or live in shame forever.

"Oh well," she said aloud, voice loud to her own ears. "It's not like we can sink while we're docked—can we?"

"It is unlikely we would sink to begin with," J replied. "However, capsizing is never out of the realm of possibility. There is also a chance that the boat will hit the bulkhead with such force that the side will splinter and--"

"J?" Daisuke asked, glancing at Monica warily.

"Yes, Daisuke?"

"Here's a new one for you. If he's making a little girl cry, a man should shut the hell up."

"I apologize, Monica."

"I'm fine," she protested. "I'm not crying." Giovanni was out in that alone, she thought. Well, not really alone—but Boma and Shun weren't exactly good company, assuming Shun was even with them to begin with. The only way Giovanni would be with anyone, she figured, was if they'd found Clair already. And even then, he wasn't the most cheerful person in the world either.

She wondered if, when he'd been a kid, Clair had been scared and Giovanni had helped him too. Monica hoped that was the case. Then she could hope. After all, if even Vampire could have silly little scared spells but manage to become the leader of Judoh's organized crime, she herself could still grow up tough. Monica was determined to grow up tough. It was the only way, as far as she could tell, that anyone made it in the world. If you were an idealist, you got suckered and everybody laughed at you and left you poor.

A tremendous rumble outside rippled down her spine and she shut her eyes to block out the stares she felt certain the others would direct her way. She wanted Giovanni to be there, to talk with her. She wanted him to tell her stories about when he was little and growing up even poorer than she was. He hadn't had much fun then, but when he had—stories of tricking drunks and outsmarting the law had made her sides ache with laughter.

She couldn't find anything to laugh at now. She was ashamed of herself for becoming so quickly dependent on another's help, and for not looking to see if anyone was really staring at her. She squeezed one eye open to survey.

Kyoko knelt beside her on the bed. "Hey, Monica..." The girl turned her head away. "If we go in the city again, do you want to come?"

"We're not going anywhere," Monica said, her voice small and distant. "We're staying here and waiting. I'm not losing more people."

"Oh, Monica..." The young woman tried unsuccessfully to embrace the small girl. "No one's lost."

"We lost Clair. We lost Shun. For all we know, we've lost the others too." She sniffled as the thunder crashed again. "We just got D-Daisuke back and I don't want to..."

"Hey, hey." Daisuke sat down on the foot of the bed, leaned back and smiled at her; scandalized, Monica pulled on her skirt to be certain he couldn't see anything from where he lay. "No one's going anywhere yet."

"You said yet," she accused; he shrugged.

"Who knows what tomorrow brings...I may look into finding somewhere else for the Celestials, because let's face it: Leonelli's out to kill me, and where better to look than in his company's yacht?"

"Leonelli's what?" Kyoko cried. "Daisuke!"

"What, I didn't tell you?" He closed one eye lazily. "Yeah, the girl who attacked the crazy lab coat woman? She works for him. Calls him 'Master' and everything. Nice kid, when she isn't asleep."

Monica put the pillow down—squarely on Daisuke's face, with enough force that it startled a muffled yell out of him. "Tell us everything, now!" she ordered, sensing a welcome distraction at last. She wasn't planning on getting involved. She just wanted something other than thunder to listen to.

Fortunately, the story provided just such a diversion. And at the end, she was beginning to have second thoughts about further intervention into Magnagalian affairs . Before, it had sounded only like a mildly bad idea, due mainly to the fact that not only was it not their city, the police were also likely still searching for them.

Now, at least in her mind, getting further involved was out of the question. But she didn't think Daisuke saw it that way. Looked like she had some major explaining to do. Assuming he would listen, which was doubtful. Adults! They could be such a pain sometimes...

"You know it's out of our hands, right?" she asked. "That as soon as we get Clair back, we're kicking the Celestials off and getting out?"

It was Kyoko's turn to be appalled. "Monica, we can't! Not Celestials!"

"Why not?" Monica asked. "If Celestials like Clair's dad can order Daisuke's death and muck around with the syndicate, why can't we boot our load of them out?"

"You just can't," Kyoko protested, but Monica ignored her, mind made up. Celestials had lost their otherworldly appeal in her eye. It was as she had suspected: they were people too, plotting selfish creatures with agendas of their own. As such, they were on level ground with her and she could do with them as she chose. She was the leader, after all. These were the decisions that leaders made.

Right?

O0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The arena underneath the Barony was jam-packed as usual, but not with the usual motley gamblers and crooks. Crisply-suited officials and shareholders of the syndicate listened with mounting consternation and intrigue as their self-appointed Baroness, standing tall behind a podium in the center of the ring, spoke. Kneeling behind her were a tall, burly dark-skinned man and a slim, pale girl. No one dared to laugh at her eclectic choice of companions, or at the words she spoke. Both were too horrifying.

"--they cannot be trusted," Trinity declared, unfastening the top button of her lab coat. Professionalism wrestled in her mind with theatrics, and the latter won. Her hands strayed down to the second button. "And why should we trust them, when they have held us in captivity for nearly five hundred years? Why did our ancestors, torn and broken by years of war, war which should never have come about in a unified world-state, listen to these people? Because the Celestials were not from Earth, because they offered hope, because they offered technology we did not possess.

"Always are we curious about the new, the different, because we think it might be better, for we as a race live in perpetual discontent. I don't condemn this impulse, but only that it was not carried out more fully—our ancestors did not find a way to take this new technology for themselves." Last button; she held her coat closed, waiting. "Yet I, in my dealings this past year with one of them who sought to live among us, to manipulate us, have gone where those brave men could not. I have their technology." She held aloft a turquoise bottle, then set it down to confused and frustrated murmurs from the crowd. "And what's more, I have proof that those we herald as our 'saviors' are not benevolent, not selfless, not everything that set them apart as worthy of our respect! For would a benevolent creature do this??"

She ripped open her coat to reveal the now-unbandaged wounds underneath, black lace lingerie and red scratches standing out starkly as the lights of the stadium bleached her already-pale skin. The men in the audience gasped, then sat up straighter in their chairs. The view at this symposium had suddenly gotten a lot more interesting.

She saw them staring and smiled like a predator, then closed her coat again. No point in distracting them from the point of her speech. One little look was more than enough. "I was brutally attacked on their very ship by an assassin sent by one of them whom I trusted, who I let into my strictest confidences and to whom I trusted the fate of our fair city. Yes, I speak of the man who has been at my side for a year, the man you all know as Leorza." Another shocked ripple, but with far less active interest. "His minion did this to me. His secrets, unveiled by me, expose the Celestials for the frauds that they are. And therefore I say—we do not need them! Why should we let ourselves be trapped any longer? We cannot trust the good, trusting, law-abiding citizens of Magnagalia to take a stand; we need to stand ourselves! We alone have the power, more even than the police!

"Let any man deny it who will: we are the only true power here. Or we would be, were it not for the Celestials, these false friends who can't even take time out of their schedules to visit the prison cells more than once every eighteen years. Even our fine, upstanding, yet oh-so-impressionable police have more compassion." She raised the bottle high. "They are few, and we are many! They have no weapons except the fear of being cut off from our high-end systems! Well, the fuel for those systems is here! All that is needed to recharge them is one who is strong with the fuel himself. Or herself. Usagi, come here."

"Yes, Master."

Trinity thrust the bottle in the girl's hands. "Drink it. All of it."

"Yes, Master." Throwing her head back, she did as she was commanded; her body convulsed, then relaxed. Putting the bottle down, she smiled. "Is that good?"

Trinity pointed. "I give you—a Celestial of our own! You know her as Wolf's Prize, the top winner in the arena here! But soon the city will know her as their salvation! So—down with the tyrants! Down with the despots! Down with the Celestials! Kill them all, and seize the key to the fuel, the technology, for ourselves! Wolf's Prize and I shall lead you all to a new world, a world the way this planet was meant to be—a world by humans, for humans! Kill them all, and anyone seeking to hide them!" Finishing, she drew a deep breath. "This is the task I wish to lay upon all of you. Not only as your Baroness, but as a fellow human. Will we let this heartless regime continue?"

The crowd roared its discontent. She smiled again. "Then get to it!"

They stood, sensing she was truly done her rant at last, and filed out. Trinity watched as they left with interest. No, she hadn't convinced all of them; that was only to be expected. It didn't matter if they agreed with her or not; she herself bore Celestials as a species no ill will, and had made a few potentially deadly guesses as to the true importance of the blue-green fluid. But if there were no Celestials, there would be no Leorza, there would be no Leorza plotting only God knew what. There would be no Leorza daring to harm her or get in her way. She had underestimated him, dared to trust him, dared to...but she did not even dare admit what she dared! For making her dare that...that other thing, he would have to suffer.

Smiling, she led the wide-eyed and reborn Usagi out of the arena. Thanks for playing, Leorza. I simply love chess. But I just took your queen. No, no, wait. There was another...yes, purging the Celestials would take care of her too, wouldn't it? Really, it was a wonder she hadn't thought of this sooner...

Almost halfheartedly she fished her cell phone out of her pocket; her earbud had fallen behind her bed during the tantrum she'd thrown upon returning from Leorza's, and she'd been too preoccupied to retrieve it. "Hello? Baroness here. I hate to tack on petty details, but get the names of the females before you wipe them out. And if one's named Nona, I want her alive."