Still Waters Another Turn, Chapter 18
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There I Go, Turn The Page.
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Takahata and Kotarou nonchalantly approached the door to the hotel, stepping inside as if they were travelers looking for a place out of the rain.
The man behind the counter looked up. "No vacanc—" and was silenced by Takahata's severely toned-down iaiken.
Kotarou gave a low whistle. "Nice."
"Thank you," Takahata said as he went around the counter and dug through the drawers for a moment until he found what he sought. He placed the book on the counter and flipped through it, motioning Kotarou over. "It's a layout of each floor," he explained as he flipped through the pages. "It seems to be a standard hotel design... Circular hall, stairs and elevator on the east and west ends. Twelve stories tall." He paused and looked at the rack where keys would normally be placed behind the reception desk. "But with keys for only the first eleven."
"So they don't use the top floor?" Kotarou asked, not sure exactly what the older man was getting at.
"That's where the hostages will be," Takahata said, finally finding the floor plans he was looking for. "We'll have to check each room on the twelfth floor, along with any bathrooms or closets, just in case the hostages may be hiding there," he explained.
Kotarou nodded, so Takahata hid the injured man and put the book back in the drawer, making it seem as though the receptionist had simply stepped away for a moment. They searched for the nearest elevator/stairwell, and Kotarou groaned. "Out of order. That figures," he grumbled as he opened the door to the stairwell.
They slogged their way up eleven floors without incident, until the stairwell came to an end on the eleventh floor.
"Hey, Takahata, I thought you said this place has twelve floors?"
"There should be a hidden staircase somewhere," Takahata said thoughtfully. "It's probably in a storage room…let's go."
A quick search revealed no signs of life on the eleventh floor. "No vacancy, indeed," Takahata murmured when he met up with Kotarou again.
"It looked like a storage room over on the other side, but the door's locked and I didn't want to make a big fuss, so…"
Takahata nodded. "I understand."
The two approached the room and Takahata tried the door, finding that it was, indeed, locked. The older man wasted no time, knocking the lock out with a quick shot of iaiken. They heard a startled grunt within and the scrape of chair legs across the floor. Takahata gave the door a light push and stepped aside while the door slowly swung inwards to reveal a very…large man.
Takahata was about to step forward, but Kotarou put his arm out in front of him. "Don't worry about it, I got this one, Takahata! Go after that artist nee-san, I'll be up in a minute."
The teacher smiled lightly. "Very well. Don't take too long, Kotarou-kun."
Kotarou gave an arrogant smirk. "Hmph, worry about yourself. This should be fun!" Kotarou said as he flew forward, driving the big man into the wall while Takahata strolled to the stairs in the corner of the room. Kotarou glanced back long enough to see Takahata disappear through a door at the top, then turned back to the big man, who had regained his feet and was cracking his knuckles.
"You are strong for a child," the man said, his incredibly deep voice booming through the room. "I may not have to go easy on you."
"Hah! More like I won't have to go easy on you!" Kotarou said, not realizing his words didn't reflect his meaning.
The corners of the big man's mouth twitched, lifting his everlasting frown a few millimeters.
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Takahata stepped through the door with an air of casual indifference and pulled it shut behind him. He crushed out what was left of his cigarette in an ashtray on a table by the door and took a quick look around. As with all the other floors, there was a security camera in each corner, and those which were visible were pointing at directly at him. He wondered absently how long they had known that he and Kotarou were there, and decided it was probably since they entered the building. He went to the first room on the left, opened the door, and ducked his head in. It was an empty room, probably used for storage. The next was the same way. The third contained a rather disturbing blood stain, and a quick check of the surroundings showed tiny bits of bodily tissues clinging here and there on the walls and floor. Hands in his pockets, he turned around just in time to avoid the ki shot that had been aimed at his head.
His eyes widened a fraction of an inch when the stark man before him sidestepped his iaiken.
"So you are no normal man," Takahata said conversationally, pulling out another cigarette and lighting it.
"Neither are you. Smoking is not permitted here," the stranger said offhandedly.
"My apologies. Was this the girl?" Takahata said, not even bothering to gesture to the mess behind him.
To his surprise, the man's dark expression changed to one of annoyance. "No. The girl is alive. That was one of my subordinates," he said, a hint of distaste visible on his face. "He disobeyed orders and tried to rape her," he said as his right arm hand shot to his left elbow and his left hand flashed up. Takahata calmly sidestepped the ki shot that blew another neat hole in the wall behind him and waited for the broken pieces of window to stop falling before he resumed his questioning.
"Are you the leader here?" Takahata asked, using iaiken, which the man again sidestepped.
"Yes. My name is Rav, at your service. And may I ask the name of the iaiken master I am fighting?"
"Takahata Takamichi. Nice to meet you," Takahata said, meeting the other man's ki shot with his iaiken, the two canceling each other out in a quick blast of wind. Takahata backed into the room to within a few feet of the back wall, and Rav entered and shut the door, both preferring the bigger space of the room to the narrow hallway.
The two faced each other across the room, each waiting for the other to move first. Takahata flicked his cigarette through the broken window and put his hands in his pockets again, while Rav assumed a stance that looked for all the world like that of a gunslinger from those American cowboy movies Shizuna teased him about.
"I am unfamiliar with your stance," Takahata said conversationally, using iaiken again, which the other man sidestepped. He didn't dare use it full power inside the building, lest he bring the whole structure down.
"I developed it through years of research," Rav said slowly, trying to feel out his opponent. Takahata dodged the ki shot. "You are from the other world," he added with surety after a moment.
"So I am," Takahata replied. He used iaiken again at the same instant Rav used his ki shot, both collided in a bigger gust than last time, ripping wallpaper and making the sheets on the bed flutter.
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Kotarou dove at the big man, punching and kicking wildly as his opponent blocked every blow. The big man was incredibly quick, and Kotarou realized he may be in trouble this time. They separated and Kotarou called out to the man. "Hey, oji-san, what's your name?"
"I am Kage," he said, his deep voice filling the room. "And I have dragon's blood in my veins," he said, spewing dragon's fire from his mouth that splashed where Kotarou had been standing an instant before, spreading liquid fire everywhere.
"Whoa whoa, are you sure it's ok to use that here?" Kotarou called from his new position to the left of the dragon-man. The fire was catching; already a large pile of newspapers was burning merrily.
Kage grinned. Or at least, twitched his perpetual frown into a shape vaguely reminiscent of a grin. "It doesn't matter," he answered.
They closed again and Kotarou was reminded of the Chinese martial arts Negi used. Apparently, this big man was trained in the same thing. Well, Kotarou had sparred enough with Negi to know most of the tricks, so that wasn't a problem, and— His train of thought was cut off when a massive back-handed blow sent him across the room and into the far wall.
"Don't get sidetracked," Kage said, and shot another blast of fire at him.
Kotarou barely managed to roll out of the way. His head still ringing from the blow, he scrambled to his feet as Kage approached.
Before he could react, the big man leapt forward and grabbed Kotarou's neck in one massive hand, lifting him high into the air until his hair brushed the ceiling. The dragon-man drew back a fist, and Kotarou called out desperately for his wolves.
They appeared from nowhere, snapping at the big man's heels and forcing him to drop Kotarou. He caught his breath, then got to his feet and prepared to face his attacker. Kage was sending the wolves flying with horrific blows that would shatter ribcages and liquefy organs with one shot…Kotarou was thankful that the wolves couldn't actually be killed. But enough was enough, this was supposed to be a quick mission, after all. Besides, Natsumi-nee-chan was worried about him, and Chizuru-nee-san would scold him if he wasted time and got hurt.
Gathering more energy in his fist than he ever had before, Kotarou readied his blow as the dragon man grabbed the last wolf and ripped it in half, unsummoning it instantly. He looked down at Kotarou and his frown deepened when the wolf-boy darted forward, throwing his highly-charged punch.
The blast shook the building and blew out the wall behind the dragon man, who had somehow, amazingly, blocked the main force of the blow by crossing his arms in front of him; it didn't stop his from being blasted backward, though. The eleven-story fall through the broken wall to the ground below would be harder to survive, no matter how you looked at it, Kotarou thought as he rushed up the stairs to the twelfth floor.
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Takahata and Rav held their balance as the building lurched, and Takahata's eyes narrowed slightly at a startled scream came from another room.
"I smell smoke…shouldn't you be escaping now?" Takahata asked, making calculations and steeling himself for what would likely come next.
"I could say the same," Rav said, crouching ever-so-slightly.
Takahata's kanka blast drove straight through the walls and ceiling behind Rav, who dropped flat to the floor and rolled away at the last instant, finally catching Takahata with a ki shot that sent him flying into the already damaged outer wall.
Kotarou chose that moment to leap onto Rav's back from behind, slowing him down while Takahata delivered a brutal iaiken punch that sent Rav and Kotarou both flying through several walls. Takahata rushed to the room the screams had come from and forced the door, revealing Haruna and Kazumi. Wasting no time, he led them to the hidden ladder and began climbing down. "Hurry," he said as he went. "The building will probably come down."
"Ah! What about my pactio card?!" Haruna shouted.
"Where is it?"
"That weird guy took it," she replied, describing Rav.
"Kamo-kun can make another one," Takahata said as the group ran through the heavily damaged eleventh floor.
They quickly ran into Kotarou, who was favoring his leg. "Is this everybody?" he asked, looking at Haruna and Kazumi.
The group went down the stairwell, finally emerging on the first floor, Haruna and Asakura wheezing, only to find Rav standing in front of the entrance door.
"No way!" Kotarou shouted. "How did you get down here before us?"
Rav looked at him as if he were a flea. "I used the service elevator." He took a long, serious look at Kazumi, who cringed back behind Takahata, before finally fixing the older man with his blank gaze. "You are the first to defeat me, congratulations. It will not happen again, however," he said. He flicked Haruna's pactio card toward the girl, then turned and went through the doorway with a severe limp, disappearing into the evening. A quick check outside showed that Kage, despite falling eleven stories to the concrete below, was gone as well.
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Negi and Asuna approached the side of the massive warehouse carefully, while Mana circled around to the back. Asuna summoned her harisen and waited for Mana's signal. A minute passed, then another and another. Finally, at the three minute-mark, Asuna was about to barge in when gunshots rang from somewhere inside the building, bringing out startled shouts from the other side of the wall as people ran to investigate.
They waited for an agonizing ten seconds, then Asuna kicked the door in and darted inside, followed by Negi, rapid fire gunshots ringing through the building from somewhere in the back.
Asuna had a glimpse of four startled yakuza standing at a table before Negi finished chanting a spell that blasted them into a stack of crates, shattering the boxes into scrap wood and burying the men underneath. Takane just stared at them open mouthed while Mei, behind a bar on the opposite side of the room, looked at them blankly.
"Bwahaha! What's with the bunny suit Takane-san?" Asuna asked as Takane's face reddened.
"Stop laughing, this isn't funny!" the girl shouted as she tried to cover herself. Negi, embarrassed, passed her his mage robe.
"Where is Nodoka-san being held?" he asked.
Mei piped up at this. "I can show you," she said as she hurried over to the door in the back. "It's on the second floor. Ku Fei-san is here too, but I don't know where she is," she added.
"Ok, let's go!"
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Mana's diversionary tactics had worked wonders, drawing well over a dozen people to her location and away from Negi-sensei and Kagurazaka's entry point. She quickly dispatched them and reloaded her guns. A quick glance showed nothing but groaning yakuza in the hallway, so she slipped through an unlocked door to her right, coming face to face with two more yakuza. One quick gunbattle later, they were on the floor as well. 'These tranquilizer bullets I got from Hakase are quite powerful,' she thought, making a mental note to obtain more of them when they returned to the campus.
A quick check of the two doors on the right wall showed two empty rooms, but the office door on the left seemed more promising. The man standing in the large office on the other side looked ordinary for a yakuza except for the twin custom berettas he held, pointed directly at her head.
She dropped to the floor and dove behind a nearby desk as the man's guns blasted, then threw a few random shots over the top to force the man to take cover. There was a quick clatter of something falling from an office desk on the other side of the room and then silence flooded through the office, and only the sound of her own breathing reached her ears. Something thunked against a desk followed by a muffled curse, and then Mana was out and shooting at the same instant as the man on the other side of the room. They moved almost in unison, finally closing at the far side of the room, guns blazing as they emptied magazines and reloaded again and again in a wild display of theatric gun-fu.
Twisted, wild grins were plastered to the faces of both shooters as they went all out, flipping, shooting, and running around like characters in a John Woo film. The walls were riddled with bullet holes, the office desks were coming apart, bits of paper torn and burned by gunshots fluttered around the room as the two combatants finally stopped moving and faced each other.
"How many have you got left?" the man asked.
"One shot in each. You?" Mana replied in a nonchalant manner.
"The same. I'm Saga Jin, and it's nice to finally meet someone like you."
"Tatsumiya Mana, likewise."
Four shots rang out almost in the same instant.
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"Come on, Takane-san! Hurry!" Negi urged the girl to go faster, but her high heels kept tripping her up. Finally fed up, she kicked them off and followed.
From the sound of it, Mana had either hidden a machine gun somewhere on her person, or was else facing an army. Asuna slowed to look wonderingly at the room with all the gunfire as they passed, until a stray bullet shattered the door's window. She quickly caught up to the others.
"In here! Mei had to shout to be heard above all the gunfire as she opened a door. The guard in the room greeted her nervously and unlocked the door behind him; he never saw Asuna, Takane, or Negi enter until Asuna bashed him over the head with her harisen, knocking him out cold.
Negi threw open the door. "Nodoka-san! Let's go!" he shouted, grabbing Nodoka's arm and pulling her through the door.
"O-ok!" the shy girl replied, looking nervously at the drooling guard on the floor.
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The gunfire had stopped by this point, and the door they passed a moment ago had been shot off its hinges. Asuna glanced into the room and saw Mana holding her shoulder and looking at a man on the floor.
"Asuna-san, please help Mana-san find Ku Fei-san," Negi said. "I will take everyone else downstairs and clear the way."
Asuna nodded. "Got it. Take care, Negi."
Negi nodded and lead the others away.
Asuna entered the bullet-riddled room. "Mana-san? Are you all right?"
"It's nothing."
"Is he…?" Asuna asked, indicating the man on the floor.
"Unconscious. Help me find Ku," she said. "She should be behind this door," Mana said, indicating a door at the back of the room. Asuna tried the door and found it locked. Mana motioned for her to go ahead, so she stood back and kicked the door down, revealing a glaring Ku Fei, wrapped up in a straightjacket, hanging on a coat hook in the storage room. Mana stepped up and ripped the strip of tape off Ku's mouth.
"Ow, that hurt aru!"
Asuna stood by while Mana lowered Ku Fei from the coat hook and cut her loose.
"Can you run?" Mana asked as the blonde girl stretched and moved around to get her blood flowing again.
"Running, no problem, aruyo."
The trio made their way back to the front room where they rejoined Negi and Nodoka, and made their way out of the warehouse.
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Author's Note: Well, that's it for the rescues. Poor Ku Fei, huh? Heh. And Saga Jin was designed as a good natured mix between Revy and the Triad guy from Black Lagoon, in a package that looks like Rock. Rav on the other hand...not so good natured. And what about that look he gave Kazumi at the end?