Author's Introduction:
I never seem to have much to say at the beginning of the chapter, but at the end, trust me, you'll wish I would shut up. So just read on, and I'd love it if you let me know if you're having fun by leaving a review. I read them all and I'm grateful for every one—especially the ones that tell me what the readers like the most, or even what they don't like so much. I learn from stuff like that, so I appreciate all of it.
Okay, folks—not everyone lived through the first chapter. Let's find out why.
Cross My Heart, And Hope To Die
A Ronin Warriors fanfiction by Firestar9mm
Chapter Two: A Sudden Death
A gasp of breath,
A sudden death:
The tale begun.
(Dean Koontz, The Book of Counted Sorrows)
The light was low, and a smoky haze hung in the air. The adversaries leveled steely gazes at one another across the battlefield.
"Awright, ya losas," Rowen drawled, adjusting a visor that looked rather comical on his blue hair—he had insisted on both that, and being the dealer. The other boys had allowed both—the best way to defuse Strata's sillier moods was to let him have his way. "Let's see what'cha made of!"
"You are so going down, Strata," Kento chuckled maliciously from the other side of the table. Rowen hadn't had a single good hand since the game had started.
"You wish. Ante up."
Every boy threw an Oreo into the center of Ryo's dinette table as Rowen dealt cards with quick movements of his hands. Each boy had a small pile of junk food beside him; some had more than others.
"I open with three Chee-tos," Ryo announced in a very businesslike manner that was completely at odds with the "money" he was putting into the pool.
"See your Chee-tos," Sage said, equally businesslike. The heat had finally gotten to him and he'd discarded his dress shirt along with his sport jacket, revealing a pale t-shirt over his trousers. "Raise you a Yodel."
"Oooh, big spendaaaa," Rowen teased, adding a Yodel of his own to the pool.
"Kento's eating the money," Cye complained.
"I won it," Kento protested. "I should get to eat it." This last was said around a mouthful of Twinkie; his pile of junk food had been steadily decreasing since the game had started, and not just because he'd lost a few hands.
"If you keep eating everything, Kento, you won't have anything left to bet with, and we're not giving you any more credit," Sage admonished. His own pool of snacks had been neatly sorted into like groups.
"You guys suck." Kento flipped a Twizzler into the pool as Rowen dealt more cards.
"Call," Rowen said. "Let's see 'em."
"Two tens," Sage said, displaying his hand.
"Fold," Ryo groused, tossing his cards onto the table. "I got nothing."
"I'm out," Kento agreed. "I need to stop trying for a flush."
"Sage beats my two threes," Rowen said. "Cye?"
Torrent's grin was ever so slightly smug. "Full boat," he said in triumph. "Aces and ladies. Read 'em and weep." He chuckled as he collected his junk-food winnings, while his opponents groaned at yet another loss.
"How does he keep doing that?" Ryo exclaimed.
"I know," Rowen said. "Out of all of us, who'da thought that Cye had the best poker face?"
"I couldn't believe it when he drew to that inside straight," Sage agreed.
Kento gave Cye a playful shove. "Looks like you're a regular card shark, fish-boy!"
The phone purred. "That'll be Mia checking in," Ryo said, looking relieved. "I was starting to worry."
Sage echoed Ryo's sentiment with action instead of talk—he immediately put his cards facedown on the table and moved to answer the phone, but Rowen beat him to it with a waggle of his blue eyebrows.
Instead of passing the phone to his friend, Rowen picked it up himself. "Yo, yo." The other boys watched as he smiled, propping his feet up on the table, leaning back in his chair. "Heya, gorgeous! Ready t'come down? We'll float ya two Twinkies an' a Ring Ding. Me n' the guys are—"
Something happened on the other end of the line to interrupt him mid-sentence. His expression darkened, brows meeting as he listened. "Wait, what's wrong? Are ya cryin'?" As the others looked on, Rowen's smile dropped and his eyes became steely. "Wait. Wait. What?"
Ryo and Sage exchanged concerned looks while Cye mouthed What's wrong? Rowen ignored them, one hand gesturing nervously as he spoke.
"Mia, it'll be okay. Stop—stop cryin'. Tell me exactly what happened." He listened, and then his nightsky eyes shot wide open and his feet dropped from the table to plant solidly on the floor. "What??"
"What?" the other four chorused, getting to their feet.
"Rowen, what is it?" Ryo demanded.
Rowen gestured wildly, as if to say Give me a minute! "Wait, whoa, back up a second," he said. "Ya found a what?" His eyes were open so wide the lashes were touching his skin all around. "Where? Are ya okay? Are ya hurt?"
"Give it to me," Sage and Ryo both said at the same time, reaching for the phone.
Rowen pushed his chair back from the table, keeping the phone away from them. "We're comin' t'get ya, 'kay? We're on our way right now. Sit tight an' don't let th' bastards get t'ya, okay? We're comin' right now."
In times of trouble, the five boys had been known to almost share a brain. This time was no different as the other four yelled, "What happened?"
Rowen put his hands out in a "whoa" gesture. "Okay, I couldn't really get all of it 'cause she was cryin', but we gotta problem."
"She was supposed to be here hours ago," Kento said. "I didn't think her meeting with that colleague of hers would take this long. Did something happen to her?"
"Not t'her," Rowen said. "To her colleague. When he neva showed up, she went t'the library t'look for him an' found him in there."
"Dude," Ryo breathed. "Is he okay?"
"He is severely not okay." Rowen shook his head. "He's dead."
"Dead?" Cye exclaimed. "How awful!"
Sage's visible eye was pale with shock. "Wait," he said, fighting to keep his voice level, "where is she now? Don't tell me the police are questioning her."
All the boys looked to the warrior of Strata. Rowen's eyes were midnight dark with apprehension. "Dunno," he said finally, shrugging helplessly. "Couldn't really undastand 'er at that point. Said they weren't lettin' her leave, just askin' th' same stuff ova an' ova again."
It might have been quite a while since mystical armor and magical swords, but now and forever the boys were a team, and once they'd grasped the situation they acted like one.
"Money and a car," Ryo said. "Who's got what?"
"I've got twenty…no, thirty dollars," Cye said, thumbing through his wallet. Pulling the bills out, he tossed them onto the table. "What about you guys?"
Ryo threw a crumpled-up ten on the pile. "It's all I have."
Wordlessly, Sage tossed neatly folded bills alongside Ryo's ten.
Kento snickered. "Do you iron your money or something? Seriously, dude, you need to lighten up a little."
"Don't tease him, Kento," Cye said, noting how Sage's eyes were scanning the room like nervous radar. Even now, the blond tensed up when Mia was in any kind of danger.
"I haven't got anything on me, but if we stop at an ATM I'll get whatever we need," Kento promised.
"Car," was the next item on the list. "Whose should we take?"
"No," Sage said when he saw Kento about to speak up. "That junk heap of yours will fall apart the minute I take a turn."
"Who said you were driving?" Kento asked, not taking Cye's advice.
Ryo stepped between them to stall the impending argument. Sage's Fairlady was definitely faster than Kento's CJ-6, but they were definitely not all fitting in the Fairlady, even without Mia. "We can't all fit in your car, Sage, it's a sport model."
"Then I'll meet you there." The blond's arms, crossed over his chest, were singing with tension.
"No good," Cye said. "We should go together—we don't want to make trouble or look suspicious." As he spoke, he tread on Kento's foot, pressing down hard on the other boy's toes.
Kento finally took the hint. "We'll take mine. Here, Sage. You can—" He tossed the blond the keys, and Sage snatched them ferociously out of the air, already heading for the door. "—drive."
Rowen scooped the money off the table, and the rest of them followed.
"Up front, Kento," Sage ordered. "Where's your bank?"
"Take 24th street, I'll tell you when to turn," Kento answered, striking a dramatic pose in the passenger seat. "To the rescue!"
Sage stomped on the gas, and the tires squealed in pain.
"Hey! Take it easy, Takumi Fujiwara," Kento warned as he was thrown back in his seat. "I just fixed the brakes on this thing."
There had been one time when the guys had been staying at Mia's house for the weekend that Rowen had thought it would be fun to play a joke on Sage. He'd switched the sugar and salt containers before heading off to bed, expecting to have a good laugh the next morning when Halo poured his tea.
Of course, Mia had gotten up early that morning to make breakfast, and she'd poured a liberal amount of "sugar" into her coffee, unaware of what Rowen had done. She'd spit the awful mixture out all over the counter, drinking milk straight from the carton to wash the taste out of her mouth.
The police station coffee sort of tasted like that.
They'd offered her the cup of questionable liquid when they'd first brought her into the interrogation room; she'd accepted politely but wasn't drinking it, simply letting it cool between her cupped hands as she repeated the same story over and over again. It had all started badly when they'd called her "Mrs. Koji" and hadn't liked that she'd corrected them. She didn't understand the "good cop, bad cop" scenario people were always talking about. One of the officers just looked completely bored with her, and the other was treating her like she was a total nuisance, too stupid to know what had happened to her.
She had no idea how long she'd really been sitting there—there was no clock on the bare grey walls, and the high windows gave no clues to the progression of the dark night outside, just black sky beyond the smeary glass. Sitting almost forlornly on the sill was a plastic basket of plush animals—things like a bunny leaking stuffing from a few burst seams, a long snake with big, googly eyes, a pony whose neck was flopping over from too many instances of being clutched tightly in terror—probably for when they wanted to comfort a child they had to question. The thought of a child being in this unfriendly room was appalling to Mia, and the battered toys scared her even as her hands itched irrationally to pull one to her chest and hug it. She was very aware of the absence of White Blaze at her side. He was the best toy—warm, solid, alive, ready to scratch hell out of anyone who even looked at her funny.
The detectives were looking at her funny.
"And you're a…novelist, is that right, Mrs. Koji?" the bored detective, who had introduced himself as Detective Shiga, asked. His hair was clipped very short, leaving his ears marooned on the sides of his head, and Mia wondered exactly how much overtime had conditioned him to keep his appearance as low-maintenance as possible. His dress shirt was wrinkling beneath the shoulder straps of his holster, adding to the overall air of weariness that shrouded him.
"Yes," Mia repeated, brushing her bangs off her forehead for what felt like the thousandth time. The interview room was poorly ventilated, and the enclosed space was humid; her skin prickled with heat. The chair they'd insisted she sit in was straight-backed and stiff, and she resisted a paranoid urge to wipe any fingerprints she might be leaving on the table's surface away with the sleeve of her jacket. "Hiro Imamura used to teach alongside my grandfather at Shinsai University. I was my grandfather's research assistant at the time, and Hiro wanted to cite me as a source for his upcoming book, so we agreed to meet on campus. When he didn't show up at the appointed time, I remembered he'd mentioned going to the library and went to look for him there. That's where I found him." She'd figured out how to compress the story into a manageable bite by now, but she still couldn't bring herself to say "the body".
Detective Kozu was considerably shorter than his partner and reminded Mia of a small, angry puppy. He was obviously suffering from the heat of the room as well—his shirt was stained dark beneath his arms and his face was shining in the overhead lights. His hair kept flopping over onto his forehead, and he kept pushing it back, doing his best to show her he could tough it out better than she could. "And this was strictly a business meeting?" he asked, imbuing the word "business" with half a ton of innuendo as his eyes flickered over the crumpled remains of Mia's white pinstriped suit for about the eighth or ninth time since they'd been questioning her.
Mia's glare threatened a lawsuit.
Detective Shiga, apparently envisioning the citizen's complaint forms flying in, tried to salvage the situation. "I apologize for my partner, Mrs. Koji. We didn't mean to infer—"
Mia interrupted, hands tightening on the Styrofoam cup until coffee lapped out onto the table. "The listener infers, Detective. The speaker implies. And you are speculating." Her meaning was clear. "And for the last time, it's 'Ms'."
He sighed, flipping his notepad back a few pages. "If you could tell us one more time from the beginning…"
Her elbows rapped sharply on the table's surface as she propped her arms up, but if it hurt her, she didn't show it. "I don't suppose saying 'Cross my heart and hope to die' would convince you," she said. "I've told you what happened over and over again. I know nothing else." She offered one hand to the detectives, little finger extended. "Pinky swear," she finished whimsically.
Kozu's face darkened. "Are you friggin' kidding us?"
Mia took her hand back. "No, Detective. I'm just being as ridiculous as you are." She pressed her lips together. "Am I under arrest, or may I go now? My boys are waiting for me."
The two detectives exchanged glances. "Sit tight, Mrs. Koji," Kozu said, and they left her alone in the overheated room, fuming.
"If you wear a track in the tile, the city's going to be pissed off," Ryo said conversationally to Sage, who was on his forty-fourth trip around the waiting area in the police station. "They'll bill us for it."
Sage glared from his visible eye, but stopped his pacing.
Ryo was sitting on an uncomfortable wooden bench. The waiting area was just inside the double glass doors, which made it a lot easier for you to leave in a bad temper when you realized the desk sergeants were ignoring you and didn't care how long you'd been waiting for whoever they were keeping bottled up in the rooms down the hall.
While Ryo was not the most intuitive of the Ronin—he had earned his reputation for being a hothead for more reasons than just his armor—it had been obvious since they'd left the apartment that Sage was taking this rather hard. "Stop worrying," Ryo said. "Making yourself crazy isn't going to help her. Sit down. Really. I'm getting dizzy."
Sage sat. "I feel like we should be doing something."
"We are doing something," Ryo assured him. "She needs us, and we're here for her."
Sage's voice was hard. "In case you haven't noticed, this is a little beyond our usual jurisdiction," he said, waving his hand to emphasize that "this" meant their surroundings.
Ryo only smiled at his friend. Sage couldn't help it. His entire life had been governed by structure and rules. When confronted with demonic, absolute evil, Sage had no problem carving it into chutney with his no-dachi, but skirting the law wasn't his thing.
"Cheer up, man," he advised, giving the blond a playful punch in the shoulder. "Mia wouldn't hurt a mouse. They're just yanking her chain. They'll let her go soon."
By contrast, Rowen and Kento were treating the whole thing like a lark. They returned from an expedition to explore the rest of their current confines with smiles on their faces. Well, Kento was smiling. Rowen was tossing a can of coffee back and forth between his hands. "Hot, hot, hot," he complained, his breath coming in little puffs.
"You guys gotta check out the vending machines," Kento said, clutching a double handful of snacks. "Man, I wish I was a cop! They have everything!"
"Not everything," Cye corrected, following them. "But a lot. Canned coffee and soda and sandwiches and things. D'you guys want anything—should we get something for Mia? Poor thing's probably starving."
"Haven't they had enough time to ask her questions?" Sage wondered aloud.
"It's better we're here," Cye soothed. "If there's trouble, these are the people who can do something about it. These are the people who are—ticketing our car," he interrupted himself in dismay, having caught sight of two officers at the CJ outside the double doors.
"CJ!" Kento cried, tossing his snacks at Cye and bolting for the double doors, visions of the Denver boot dancing in his head.
Cye muttered a curse and handed Kento's snacks off to Rowen, who happily accepted them. "Be right back," he promised, following Kento outside.
Ryo nudged Sage with an elbow. "I want a soda. Come on."
Wordlessly, the blond followed. Rowen loped after them, shoving a donut into his mouth.
Detective Shiga was having a bad eight hours of it.
He was trying not to think of how it was his weekend to have the kids and the minutes kept slipping away while he was stuck at the job. Another accidental death; at least this one hadn't been torn up like the others. Slip-and-fall—it was looking pretty cut and dried. He hoped they could close the book on it sometime before the sun came up or his ex-wife was awarded full custody.
Shiga wished their witness had seen more, but she was frightened and upset, and stuck stubbornly to her story. The detective's opinion was that she was telling the truth, but she'd been first on the scene and there were no other witnesses, so they'd had to do their due diligence questioning her.
Detective Kozu wasn't faring much better; he was positive the steaks his girlfriend had gotten from the grocery were long cold by now, and he wasn't convinced that the young woman's story rang entirely true. Worst of all, the vending machine wasn't taking his dollar.
"Here, take one of mine," Shiga handed his partner a bill. "Would you calm down?"
"Something isn't right about this." Kozu smashed a fist against the plastic front of the machine, buckling it so the reflections of the treats inside were warped. "We're really supposed to believe that girl is a novelist? I've got neckties older than she is. She can't be more than twenty-five." He jabbed fiercely at the buttons on the machine.
"Shinsai University confirmed her grandfather used to teach there, and I've seen her books in the library," Shiga said wearily.
Kozu winged a brow upward at his partner. "Don't tell me you read." A second later, he ducked Shiga's attempt to smack him upside the head.
The taller detective frowned. "I don't think she knows anything. She's sticking to her story and we've got nothing to hold her on. We've got to turn her loose."
Kozu wasn't satisfied. "We should throw her pretty ass in the tank. Then we'll see what she's better at—making smart remarks or keeping a civil tongue in her head. Did you see that outfit she's wearing? That's an expensive suit. My girlfriend's always bitching and moaning that she can't afford threads like that. It's not the kind of thing you just wear out wherever. I'm thinking Miss Hot-Shot Writer in there was doing some extracurricular work."
Unfortunately for Kozu, he made this unkind remark just as the three Ronin rounded the corner and arrived at the vending machine, and the detective hadn't bothered to keep his voice down, uncaring who overheard him.
Rowen's mouth was full of donut, and he couldn't step on Sage's foot in time. The blond's eyes froze over, and he fixed that basilisk stare on the two detectives as he leaned against the vending machine, just close enough to be invading their space. His voice was like the musical purr of a cat to its dinner as he said, "Maybe you gentlemen can tell me where I go to report an attack on someone's character?"
After getting nowhere with Mia, Kozu was in no mood for piss-take. "Who the hell are you?"
"I the hell am Sage." The blond never moved from his relaxed position against the machine, but still managed to look positively predatory. Likewise, the other two fanned out easily to surround their target—a practiced maneuver that they pulled off effortlessly without even thinking. "Sage Date."
"His father's first name is Detective," Rowen piped up gleefully. "His ancestor's first name was Masamune."
Ryo knew things were going badly when it was up to him to be the diplomat. "We're friends of Mia Koji. We've come to take her home."
Detective Shiga cast a jaundiced eye over the three young men, looking exhausted rather than intimidated. "You must be her…'boys'," he said dryly.
"You bet'cher badge," Rowen said, straightening up and looking suddenly serious despite the powdered sugar all over his shirt.
"We heard you brought Ms. Koji in for questioning," Sage said crisply, arms folded over his muscular chest. "Unless you've been at the vending machine making slanderous remarks for the last few hours?"
Ryo shot a warning glare at Sage. Turning back to the detectives, he said, "Look, we're Mia's best friends. We know everything about her. I'm not sure how much anything we say is worth, but we can assure you Mia wasn't romantically involved with any of the professors at Shinsai. She takes her work too seriously for that."
"Yeah," Rowen said. "'Sides, she ain't had a boyfriend since we chased—I mean, since she dumped th' last one."
Ryo's warning glare swung to Rowen, who looked sheepish.
Sage's patience had run out. "Is Ms. Koji under arrest?"
The machine rattled, spitting out a stale strawberry bear claw wrapped in plastic. Kozu retrieved the snack, then shoved it into Sage's chest. "Sit tight, Blondie. Enjoy the hospitality." Turning heel, the smaller detective stalked back down the corridor. His partner ambled after him with the dull leisure of someone who'd walked the path too many times.
Sage bristled, but Rowen neatly restrained him with one arm, under the pretense of taking the bear claw. "Ya gonna eat this? Nah, ya don't want this. Y'should give it t'me."
Ryo and Sage watched him unwrap the cake and bite happily into it. Ryo looked almost impressed at Strata's resilience, but Sage seemed mildly bewildered. "Rowen, do you think you could possibly take this less seriously?" he quipped.
Surprisingly, Ryo backed Rowen up. "I think Rowen has a good point. Mia's probably very upset. If we freak out, then she will too."
"Ay, I'm like a brand-new box o' crayons," Rowen said around a mouthful of bear claw. "I am full o' good points."
"I don't like it." Sage's jaw was tight. "I don't like it."
"We don't like it any more than you do," Ryo said. "But if Mia sees us lose our cool, it'll only make her more upset. What she needs from us are calm heads."
"That's what I'm sayin'," Rowen said. "Just pr'tend it's no big deal. Laugh it off. Can ya do that?"
Sage blinked. "I don't know."
The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a pale, rumpled Mia, looking very small between the two detectives, who were escorting her down the corridor towards the boys. Her blood-bright hair was mussed, as if she'd been running her hands through it over and over, and it looked like she'd been crying—her face was smudged in the right places. She didn't see them right away; her gaze was focused on the tiled floor in front of her, as if the task of putting one foot in front of the other required all her concentration. But when she lifted her head and saw them standing there, the look of exhausted relief on her face was precious. "Ryo. Rowen. Sage."
Rowen took the helm with a grin. "Ay, gorgeous. We was just about t'get ya somethin' from the vendin' machine. Whaddaya think? Rolos or those peanut butta crackers?"
"If I eat anything right now, I will throw up," she sighed, rubbing at the shadow under one eye.
"What happened?" Ryo asked gently, putting a hand on her shoulder.
Mia's ocean eyes clouded over with weariness and her lashes drooped. "If I tell that story one more time in this building, I will also throw up. When we get outside and I can breathe real air, I'll tell you."
Sage had apparently decided that the best way to mask his agitation was to say as little as possible, but his feelings bled into his voice, clipping his words. "Cye and Kento are waiting outside with the car."
Detective Shiga pressed something into Mia's hand—the handle of a leather satchel. "You almost forgot this back in the interrogation room."
Mia blinked as she took the satchel, curling her fingers around the handle. She looked as though she wanted to say something, but instead she simply murmured, "…Thank you."
"Don't leave the city, Koji," Detective Kozu said. "We may need to speak with you again. Where can we reach you?"
Mia lost her temper. "Again? What could I possibly have left to—"
Ryo interrupted by handing the detectives a phone number scribbled on a piece of paper. "She's staying at my cabin. My apartment's number is on there, too. Ryo Sanada."
Rowen and Sage flanked Mia. "S'okay," the blue-haired Ronin murmured to the girl as the blond treated the detectives to another freezing stare. "We're takin' ya home now."
Detective Shiga raised a brow. Seeing the boys' reactions to their treatment of her seemed to have changed his opinion of her. "And what do you bring to this dream team, Ms. Koji?" he asked, finally getting the "Ms." part right, as if he'd suddenly decided she weren't a complete waste of time.
"Comic relief," Mia answered dryly. "Good night, Detective." Sweeping past him as regally as she could, she exited the station into the tender care of Cye, who spread his windbreaker over her shaking shoulders and anchored it with his arm.
"We've got you," he promised, much like Rowen had. "We're going home now."
They walked to where Kento's CJ-6 lay comfortably battered in the moonlight. Even in the dark, the stitches where the canvas soft-top had been mended were clearly visible, and the jagged edges of the holes in the bumper gleamed like teeth. The dent in the passenger's-side door was a cup of shadows, and Kento had to kick it a few times before it unstuck and opened.
"Oh for crying out loud, Kento," Mia said. "What have you been doing to this poor…whatever it is? Are we even going to make it home?"
Kento grinned. "Hey, princess. This is as shining-armor as I get. If you want a knight on a noble steed, read a fairy tale. You want a car that'll live through anything, come to me." Stroking the CJ's elongated hood, he soothed the car. "She didn't mean it, Ceej."
There really wasn't enough room for all of them, even in the CJ. Sage flatly refused to let anyone else drive, and Cye took the front passenger seat to keep Kento as far away from the irate blond as possible. The remaining three Ronin sat in the back and Mia ended up stretched uncomfortably across their laps, the satchel clutched in her arms.
"How th' hell did I end up in th' middle?" Rowen asked.
"Because you were dumb enough to get into the car first," Ryo sighed tiredly, moving his arm so that Mia could rest against it more comfortably, cupping his hand around her shoulder. "It's not that long a ride, Ro."
"Sorry," Mia mumbled, face burning with shame. "I'm sorry you guys had to do this."
Immediately penitent, Rowen patted Mia's knee, which was resting on his thigh. "Neva ya mind, gorgeous. S'not a problem."
No one really wanted to ask the question, but Mia wasn't volunteering any information on her own. She was stubborn, and when she had a problem she often kept it to herself, not wanting to make her boys worry. Naturally, this drove the guys crazy, because they wanted to help if they could, but no amount of gentle scolding had been able to break Mia of the habit.
The five Ronin mentally drew straws, and Ryo, of course, lost.
"Mia," he said softly, stroking his thumb over her shoulder. "What happened?"
Mia caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Everyone looked at her, waiting; Cye craned his neck over his shoulder and Sage stealthily focused on her in the rearview mirror. "Hiro was late," she murmured. "I went to the library to look for him, and he was…at the bottom of the stairs. There was something...there was something wrong with his neck. It was…" Her voice dropped to nearly a whisper. "It was broken."
"His neck was broken?" Rowen asked, wincing. "Mia…are ya sure?"
Mia closed her eyes, the memory still vivid against the backs of her lids. "We're talking full-on Exorcist twist. I'm sure."
Everyone exchanged disquieted looks.
"This is fun," Cye said whimsically. It was enough to break the tension, and when Mia was the first to laugh, the other guys felt all right joining in, except for Sage, who shifted gears almost violently, his eyes locked on the road. Mia had seen a similar expression on Ully's face once in an arcade when the younger boy had been playing Pole Position.
Laughter eased the tight pain in Mia's chest, and a tear slipped past her smile as she relaxed a little. "They think he fell. I mean, that's definitely what it looked like." She sighed. "Poor Hiro. If only I'd been there, maybe…"
"Don't," Cye said softly. "He fell, Mia. It was an accident. There was nothing you could have done."
Mia shook her head absently, staring into a middle distance. "We'll never know now."
The CJ shuddered and pitched forward as Sage slammed on the brakes. Another car slithered across the intersection, barely missing the CJ's bumper.
"Sage, will ya calm down?" Rowen said in exasperation. "You do that one more time an' I'm goin' to end up in th' dashboard."
"Sorry," was the muttered reply.
"It's cool, man," Ryo soothed. "Just try not to get pulled over, okay?"
Sage was holding his head very stiffly, and his arms jerked at the wheel and the turn signal with none of his usual grace. "M'fine," he said through gritted teeth, just as another red light forced his foot down on the brake again. Rowen muttered a curse as his nose met the back of Cye's headrest. The three in the backseat were jostled by the sudden movement, and Mia's head struck the windowframe, her foot flipping up dangerously close to Kento's nose. She gasped at the sudden quick pain, so she was the only one in the car who didn't join forces in yelling, "Sage."
Mia met Sage's eyes in the rearview for just a second, and he fled her gaze as soon as he was aware of it. "Sorry," he mumbled again. "I'm…I'm sorry."
Feeling like a complete and utter nuisance, Mia huddled miserably across the laps of the three Ronin in the back. Kento sensed her discomfort first. "Easy now," he soothed, wrapping his hands gently around her ankles and pulling her feet onto his lap. "We gotcha. We're almost home."
Home; the word had a nice ring to it. Her lashes drooped, head bumping against Ryo's shoulder, once, twice, and then there was nothing but the hum of tires of pavement, the warmth of her friends' arms and an airy dark.
In her dream, Mia was in the interrogation room. Ryo, Rowen and Sage were on the other side of the two-way mirror, but they couldn't see her. She called their names, but they didn't hear, even when she beat both her fists against the glass. Ryo was tossing Rolos to Rowen, who was catching them in his mouth, while Sage leaned moodily against the glass, his expression distant. Mia reached to touch his face, the glass cold beneath her fingertips, her pale reflection superimposed on him.
Behind her, the battered toys came to life, hopping and slithering out of their basket. Mia heard the hiss of the googly-eyed snake and whirled, circling the table to keep it between her and their advance. The tattered bunny hopped from the sill to the table, bleeding stuffing all over the floor, followed by a ridiculous puppy with an oversized head and a fox with one button eye dangling loosely from its face by a thread.
They were coming for her. Mia dashed out the door, but it didn't lead to the precinct hallway. Instead, she ran up the stairs in the university library, pursued by the demon toys. Hiro Imamura was at one of the bookshelves, his back to her. Desperately, she reached to tap his shoulder, but when he turned, his head flopped grotesquely to one side, his neck broken.
She woke with a cry, sitting bolt upright. Rough fabric scraped her bare arm as she moved; the swaying shadows around her refused to resolve themselves into recognizable surroundings. Chest heaving, she blinked to straighten the blurry darkness, head whipping back and forth. A blanket clung to her sweat-dampened skin, and she pushed it aside hastily, whooping in deep breaths of thick night air.
Water, her dazed mind supplied, and her parched throat agreed with the sentiment. Willing her limbs out of entropy, she swung her legs to an empty space and groped for the floor with her feet. Instead, her toes touched something warm and solid. Startled, she jerked to one side, weight distributing unevenly. Her foot slid on the strange surface and she pitched off of what she was lying on. Her cry of surprise was drowned out by a hoarse gasp of pain from somewhere else in the dark.
Mia huddled in a miserable bundle on the floor, counting aches and pains. Elbows, knees, shin, wrist hurt; a strangled sob escaped her throat.
A snapping sound, and then the darkness fled from a circle of buttery light. A boy stood sleepily in the middle of it, one hand on the switch of the freestanding lamp, the other running through his tousled blond hair. "Mia? What's wrong?"
Strange what a difference light made. Mia's eyes bounced from a familiar baseball jacket hanging on the closet doorknob to the green laces on the Converse sneakers by the door. Ryo; those things belonged to Ryo; she was in Ryo's apartment.
"Ryo…" she murmured.
"No," the boy said patiently. "It's Sage. Your name is Mia."
She frowned, the cobwebs clearing a bit with mild irritation. "I'm on the floor, not retarded," she hissed, and was rewarded by a sleepy little laugh from Sage, but it ended in a yawn that he tried to hide behind his hand. "I meant, we're at Ryo's apartment."
"Yes, we are." His gaze was even, but he didn't volunteer anything else.
She glanced around. A blanket and one of the sofa pillows were folded into a makeshift sleeping pallet on the floor next to the sofa—she'd stepped right onto Sage's chest before she'd fallen. A thought occurred to her. "I fell," she said. "So I'm on the floor."
He still wore that patient smile, the kind you use for slow learners at school. "Yes."
"Why are you on the floor?" she asked, looking at how close he'd been sleeping to her. "Why didn't you take the sofa?"
Even as she asked, she knew it was a stupid question—Sage would rather die a painful death than disrespect a lady by making her sleep on the floor, and his look told her not to waste his time with inane observations.
"Thank you," she said softly, chastised by those eyes. "You didn't have to do that."
Sensory memory supplied her with the feel of the rough sofa covering scraping her arm, the carpet under her bare feet—someone had removed her jacket and shoes, leaving her more comfortable in a camisole and her skirt. She didn't remember anything beyond the drive away from the station.
She felt a little tug at her heart wondering which of her boys had carried her up here rather than wake her, and a smile curled her lips.
"Are you all right?" he asked, eyes softening just a bit. "Bad dream?"
Suddenly embarrassed, Mia averted her gaze. "Yes," she whispered.
He didn't ask her about it, and she was incredibly grateful for that. She studied him, preoccupied with the rarity of seeing the normally impeccable Sage Date rumpled and wrinkled from sleep. His hair was sticking up all over his head, and there was a crease in his cheek from having his face pressed against the corner of a sofa pillow. His breathing was still uneven, as if he weren't fully awake, his chest rising and falling beneath a white muscle shirt that showed his hard arms to perfection. Strange how even at his least polished, it was hard to take her eyes off him. "I'm okay," she said softly. "I'm sorry I woke you."
He shook his head. "Don't be silly." Nodding towards the sofa, he extended his hands to her. "Don't stay on the floor. Get up," he said, but not unkindly.
Nodding, she took his hands and let him pull her to her feet. She climbed back onto the sofa while he padded out of the room on bare feet. She willed her heart to stop pounding and glanced at the clock on Ryo's wall. Four AM. She prepared to lie awake for another couple of hours—there would be no comfort, no sleep, until the sun came up.
Sage returned with a glass of water, and she blinked in surprise at his foresight as he handed it to her. "Thank you," she said.
"Take this and drink that down," he said, pressing an aspirin into her other hand. She obeyed, watching the room go wavy through the water at the bottom of the glass as she drank. Sage stood like a sentinel, watching her as if she were an unexploded stick of dynamite.
"I'm all right," she said softly.
Sage's most arresting feature was easily his eyes. He could just about talk with them, and all his moods started with them and spread outward. The droop of lashes, the arch of a brow, the slow darkening of the irises all revealed what he was thinking. Right now a flicker in the winter-cool depths of those eyes told her the mistake she'd made. Sage was a human lie detector; trying to fool him was nearly impossible, even when he was exhausted and the lighting was bad.
Exhaustion settled over her like a blanket. She was afraid to close her eyes, afraid to dream, afraid to be awake.
"How long have we known each other?" he asked, looking somehow weary and sad.
The question nettled her for a second, and photograph-memories flashed behind her eyes as the years rolled back to that first day in the street, five boys falling from heaven to save the day. "I don't know—um—four—five years?"
"Five years," he repeated, those sad eyes searching hers. "Twenty seasons. We've run under more than fifty full moons together. We're your friends, Mia. You don't have to act tough in front of us."
Unable to come up with an answer to the sharp edge of common sense, Mia placed the empty glass on the nearby coffee table and licked her lips, eyes stinging from the harsh light and sudden tears. Make it go away, she thought wearily. Just make it go away.
Eyes bouncing around the room, she realized she could make it all go away. Thrusting an arm towards the lamp, she turned the switch and plunged the room into darkness once more, just in time for the first tears to slice hotly down her face.
"Mia. Listen to me," Sage said in the dark, a note of impossible tenderness in his voice. "Ryo's in the next room. I'm right here."
Mia's chest tightened at the words he didn't say. You are safe.
"I'm going to lay down," he continued, his voice close—he was back on the floor beside her. "But I'm right here. If you need anything in the night, just…step on me again."
She laughed, softly, tearfully in the dark, and let out the breath she hadn't known she was holding. She lay staring up into nothing, the tears dripping down the side of her face to touch her ears and dampen her hair.
"Sage?" she asked softly. "Do you really snore?"
She could hear but not see his smile. "Let me know in the morning."
Author's Notes:
Kento referring to Sage as Takumi Fujiwara (whom some of you might recognize as Tak, the main character from Initial D) is anachronistic—YST aired in Japan in 1988, and Initial D didn't air until ten years later in 1998, if I remember correctly. This is a nod to the fact that Sage likes to race cars (There's pictorial evidence of this in an OVA—might be Message.) An old coworker and I used to "play" Initial D by driving as fast and as crazily as we could over the hilly section of the Island where we worked. Sometimes, we'd play Initial D golf carts.
If I remember correctly, Sage's father is in law enforcement. I have no idea what his actual rank is. I have no conclusive proof that he is actually a detective; that was just creative license on my part. Even if you're not a fan of Sage, if you're bored one day I seriously recommend looking up the history of his ancestor, Masamune Date. It's fascinating.
The Denver Boot: The city of Denver, Colorado had a lot of outstanding parking tickets in 1953. Their solution to this was the Denver boot, a wheel clamp invented by Frank Marugg in order to help his pals in the police department crack down on delinquent parking violators. I'm not sure if it's used in Japan, but Kento seemed rather horrified at the idea when I told him about it, and raced out to check the CJ. Homer Simpson has already demonstrated the damage that trying to drive with the Denver boot on your wheel will do to your car (and the road) in the Simpsons episode "Homer vs. The City Of New York".
Mia makes a reference to William Friedkin's classic 1973 film The Exorcistwhen describing Hiro's broken neck; this is a reference to the famous scene in which Linda Blair's head appears to spin 360 degrees while she is possessed by the devil.
I had a lot of fun writing the scenes in the police station—I had no idea that Detectives Kozu and Shiga were going to be so interesting, and I'm so glad I got to know them. I hope everyone else was as entertained by those scenes as the detectives and I were. Except for Mia and the Ronin—we were definitely not expecting them to be entertained. Don't worry, Kozu and Shiga are going to be the least of their problems.
The Book of Counted Sorrows: Author Dean Koontz, whose works include The Vision, Intensity, Dragon Tears, and my personal favorite from when he was writing under the pseudonym "Leigh Nichols", Shadowfires, often quotes from something called "The Book of Counted Sorrows" in his novels. People have beaten their brains out searching for this book. In reality, it doesn't exist—sometimes, Koontz says, he'd be stuck for a verse to open a chapter with, so he began making them up and saying that they came from this imaginary book. "The way you made up footnote sources for fabricated facts in high-school English papers," he says. "Oh, come on, yes you did." Any way you slice it, the poems contained in the imaginary Book of Counted Sorrows are often pretty and mysterious. They can be found sprinkled liberally over Koontz's novels, or if you like, you can read them all at: http/ /www (dot) veinotte (dot) com / koontz / sorrows (dot) html.
Next chapter: The boys and Mia still haven't learned that anytime they try to take a vacation, something that requires their attention will inevitably take center stage. Still, they're going to futilely try to pretend this is still a normal week for them. My heroes!