Chapter 3
It was 4:55 and Katsura was standing in the Edo Bus Station terminal. He was wearing his newly acquired Shinsengumi uniform still because, as much as it left a bitter taste in his mouth to wear the clothes of his hated enemy, they were the only clothes that he had at the moment. He was sure that he would have attracted much more attention wearing just his boxers. The Elizabeth print on them was pretty cute and he didn't have time to fight off the hordes of women that would have accosted him.
He also could have stopped at one of the many hideouts throughout the city where he had disguises stashed. There was one not a block from the bus station. However, he had other matters to attend and ended up not having time. In the end the uniform did make for a very good disguise.
He was observing a suspicious man coming off a newly arrived bus when he felt a familiar sensation. In a single motion Katsura whirled around, grabbed the hand of a man holding a knife, disarmed him and pressed him, face first, up against the wall with his arm secured behind his back.
The man was an Amanto. He wore a set of non-descript clothes though he himself stuck out like a sore thumb in a station filled with mostly humans. He was green skinned, scaly and looked very much like a man-shaped lizard with a short snout. He had a long way to go if he didn't want people to notice him and the first piece of advice that Katsura would have given him would have been to take a bath.
"You thought that you could sneak up on me you scum?" Katsura asked the Amanto menacingly pressing his face into the wall.
"I'm sorry," the reptilian man croaked. "I panicked. I expected you to be on the other side of the station."
Katsura kept pressure on the man's head. "Where is she?" he asked him.
"I don't know. I really don't!" he repeated when Katsura pressed harder, "They just sent me to tell you to open locker eleven with a key they gave me."
"Where is it?"
"It's inside my coat pocket," the man was in a near panic. "You're hurting me. I'm nobody. They picked me up off the street and told me to meet you here. I don't even know who they are."
Katsura believed him when he said that he was nobody important. Whether he believed that the man worked for the people who took Ikumatsu was another story. This man had Harusame practically written all over him. There was a chance, however, that that was exactly what her abductors wanted him to think. He'd be better off taking the man with him and interrogating him. If nothing else he could learn what the people who asked him to do the job looked like. Elizabeth could be very persuasive.
He pulled the Amanto from the wall, turned him around and gripped his arm tightly. "Let's walk quietly over to the lockers and see what's inside," he told him firmly.
Keeping a hold of him the two of them walked over to the lockers. The Amanto had a wild look in his eyes. The man was scared and Katsura knew that he had good reason to be.
When they reached the lockers Katsura motioned for the man to open number eleven. The man fumbled into his coat pocket and took out a small key. He inserted it into the key hold and opened the locker. Inside was a sealed unmarked envelope.
"Take it out."
The Amanto took the envelope and offered it to him. Katsura grabbed the offered item and opened it. Inside was a piece of paper. It read, To get her back we need something in return. Have the power to the northeast side of Edo turned off by 5:00PM tomorrow.
He looked up from the paper at the Amanto who was standing nervously waiting for him to let him go. That wasn't going to happen. Even if it were true that he was an innocent bystander he still had to know something about the person who recruited him to make the drop. His next move would be to take this man and the paper back to the safe house to see what information could be gathered from them.
Katsura took a hold of the Amanto's arm and started to drag him along. "I have some more questions for you. You're coming with me," he told him.
Suddenly the man went limp. Katsura looked down at the man, annoyed that he was fighting him. The Amanto's reptilian eyes stared blankly and shoved into the back of his neck was a needle like spike. The man was most certainly dead. Katsura tisked. He wasn't surprised that the kidnappers had him killed, but the person who did it had snuck up on the two them without him being detected. He found that to be disconcerting.
Not wanted to draw attention to himself he let go of the man's arm and walked away, blending into the crowd. While it was disappointing to lose a source of information, at least he had what looked to be twenty four hours to act to save Ikumatsu, and it wasn't like he had nothing to go on. The kidnappers had made a giant mistake and Katsura would make sure that they paid big for it.