Disclaimer: Kazuya Minekura owns Wild Adapter. I do not.
Warnings: Violence, language. I have no beta reader and didn't edit this before posting.
Note: Now that I've graduated from college I can write, again. Sorry for the year-long hiatus.
Beretta
brkstrtrcr
December 2010
Sekiya and the Tojou youth gang have yet to intrude upon your life, so for the time being you push them to the back burner of your mind, simmering slowly but not a mental flambe like your boss sitting across from you in the otherwise empty dining room of this Chinese restaurant. In the chair beside you, Ryoji shifts slightly. Your eyes glance to him briefly before sliding back to the documents spread out across the chipped surface of the cheap black lacquer table around which this meeting takes place. There are photographs of the Toujo gang leaders entering well-established Izumo holdings, digital images of Sekiya himself loitering in Chinatown, one block away from the Toukohan too close for your comfort. That simmering stew is thrust abruptly beside the rusted black pot labeled 'Sanada' and it reaches a rolling boil.
"I have found no explanation as to their presence in our territory, and Sekiya is courting a rather nasty demise by parading through a known Triad's neighborhood. It's brash, reckless, and not at all their style," Sanada drawls. He sits back, lights a cigarette, and you ignore your instinctive revulsion at the clinging vanilla smoke. It's absolute torture sitting across the table from the man on a normal day, but knowing what little you do now about his involvement in whatever happened to Tokitoh…
Well, it's enough to turn up the heat on his little black pot until it glows like Hell-forged metal.
Beneath the table you flex your still-mending fingers and let the sharp ache ground you. If Sanada noticed their bandaging he said nothing of it. If he knows anything about Tokitoh's recurring memory loss he's been smart enough not to mention it. The knowledge that someday you'll slit his throat and watch him choke to death on his own filthy blood is what motivates you to maintain your self-control now. Someday the Izumo will recoil in absolute terror at the very mention of your name, but not today.
"What I want from your gang is increased security. As for the two of you, I need information. At this point I don't care how you get it, but I want Sekiya to talk. Find out what he knows about Wild Adapter." Your boss leans back in his chair and smiles. The expression is probably the same one he wore when he gave Osamu the order to kidnap your cat. "Then kill him. And don't be sloppy about it. The last thing I need is the police asking more questions." Ryoji arches an eyebrow at you but you ignore him for the time being. Everyone in this room is painfully aware of your penchant for ostentatious gunfights and arson, neither of which is low-key. You suppose that means your partner will be handling the logistics of this latest assignment. But then you have no intention of killing Sekiya.
No, it just doesn't add up, this latest concern of Sanada's. Sekiya and Toujo have been a thorn in Izumo's side for years, decades. That knife-wielding psychopath has been a threat to Tokitoh since the moment he laid eyes on the kid. Both gangs had trespassed into Triad turf when necessary. So why suddenly is your boss so damned convinced that Sekiya is dangerous enough to warrant an official Yakuza execution?
"You're both dismissed for the day." You stand automatically, match Ryoji's stiff, respectful bow, and your mind kicks into overdrive as you sort through your own chaotic thoughts in order to explain them to your partner the second that restaurant door closes behind you. But Sanada reaches out as you pass, takes the wrist of your broken hand in his, and stops you in your tracks. Ryoji falters, but the older man waves him away, and so he leaves you behind with a meaningful glance over his shoulder. You know that he'll be waiting just outside.
"Kubota-kun," Sanada says, his grip around your wrist sliding down to encase your badly-damaged fingers in an unspoken threat. "Are you a religious man?" You think about Latin prayers and stained glass, and your eyes fly to meet his knowing gaze and immediately realize that action as a mistake on your part. Your gut clenches and his cruel smile grows. He knows. That bastard knows that you found that old relic of a church in West Yokohama Crossing, and he knows that Tokitoh recognized it. But how-?
You register unbelievable pain in your broken hand as he applies enough pressure to make your knees buckle. You don't flinch, don't give him the satisfaction of crying out, but you can't stop the way your hands tremble. "You will not go digging for information for which I do not ask, Kubota-kun." It isn't a request. It's a demand and you don't ask what the consequences are for defying him. You have a vivid imagination. "If you have that difficult a time remembering to whom your loyalties belong, then I'm certain I can arrange a more convincing meeting with that broken little kitten of yours."
Sanada cocks his head to the side thoughtfully, grinding your bones together so agonizingly that your legs do give out. You drop to one knee beside his chair and hold his gaze and swear to yourself that you won't look away and give him any more satisfaction. "But from what I hear he isn't so much yours nowadays, is he?" the man smiles, patronizing and with a subtle undertone of malice. "From what I hear he has a hard time remembering things."
If you could draw your gun quickly enough to shoot him before he put a bullet in you there is no doubt in your mind that you would empty your entire clip into his cruel smile. But you can't, so you don't, and you hate yourself for the relieved gasp that passes your gritted teeth when he releases your hand and kicks you in the ribs with enough force to send you sprawling to the scuffed and worn linoleum. He chuckles as he gets to his feet, straightening his suit jacket and stepping over you and exiting the restaurant without further comment. Your head falls back to rest against the tile beneath you as the door clicks shut. You cradle your badly-damaged hand to your chest and just breathe for several minutes.
"How the hell does he know?" you ask the dusty ceiling fan spinning above you. Tokitoh hasn't made an appearance at your shared office since the incident with his sudden amnesia. Ryoji is the only person in Izumo who has been in Kou's shop in the last month, and if you can't trust him then you might as well shoot yourself now. Your uncle would sooner swallow his own duty weapon than consort with Sanada; he was the one who warned you about that man years ago, at the start of your ill-fated career with the Yakuza. As for Kou…
You push yourself into a sitting position with your good hand and shake your head. Kou has never given you a reason to doubt him. So with all of your people accounted for you can be reasonably certain that the leak is not from your end. Could Sanada have people tailing you? You snort and stand up, brushing dust and dirt from your jeans. It isn't impossible, but it is highly improbable. You would have noticed that by now, and even in the unlikely event that you haven't, Ryoji or Kou would have. Hell, Tokitoh would have. But how else could he have known-
"Shit, Kubota!" Your partner hurries through the door to the restaurant and ignores the wary glances its employees give him from the back, stopping at your side and trying to catch his breath. "I walked around the block and doubled back to check on you, but his car was pulling off. What the hell'd he do to you?"
You look up at the former reporter and open your mouth to give some off-hand, unimportant quip when your eyes land on something small, black and red on your partner's shoulder. He follows your gaze and rolls his eyes, flicking the tiny thing from his coat with an annoyed grumble. "Fucking ladybugs are everywhere this time of year."
Bugs. Your mind flies back past oil tankers and murder investigations to a cult and a hot summer day when you watched Tokitoh crush an electronic transmitter in his gloved hand. But how the hell would Izumo have gotten into the Toukohan to plant bugs? You sift through every person who has come and gone through Kou's shop in recent memory and come up with nothing overtly suspicious, no one worthy of investigating. So if the surveillance wasn't planted in the store, perhaps it's in a less obvious place.
"Kubota?" Ryoji is frowning beside you while he watches the gears in your head whir and churn. "What's wrong?"
What's wrong, indeed. Perhaps, you think with a mounting sense of sickening dread, Tokitoh's venture to the medical team wasn't just about drawing blood and running tests. Perhaps, because he spooked over the needles and you were the only person who could hold him down, those unscrupulous doctors had meddled. They were employed by Sanada, after all, and you couldn't watch them while restraining an angry and ridiculously strong young man against his will. "I think that if we're going to make it to the other side of town on time we'll need to take the subway," you finally say aloud, giving Ryoji a hard look that he acknowledges with a grim nod.
Once aboard a packed, noisy train car you explain your suspicions to him, and he slams his knuckles into the safety glass of the window beside you in anger. "He won't stop at anything to get what he wants, will he?" he growls rhetorically. "That rat bastard." His outrage is genuine, and that reassures you of his motivations. Good. Ryoji Takizawa is one less person in Yokohama that you'll have to kill. "How are we going to find it?" He's referring to the listening device that you're now positive they've implanted into your cat. For a long moment you wonder if Sanada enjoyed listening to Tokitoh's pulse-raising moans, his gut-wrenching tears, the way he whispered your name in his sleep. It makes you want to open fire on every innocent bystander on this fucking train, that complete and ruthless invasion of your privacy, that Sanada would turn Tokitoh into a tool to be used against you. And for what? To prove a point to you? To make you feel as powerless and nervous as he did when you decimated his youth gang?
Even Sanada is intelligent and observant enough to know that he can only meddle in your life but for so long before you kill him. He has to have realized by now just how fucking dangerous you are when provoked, and he's seen firsthand what you are capable of when Tokitoh is thrown into the mix. He knows how this game of his will end, as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow morning and winter will bow to spring. Prolonging this sordid dance is his only hope for now, but he's arrogant enough to use you to tie up his own loose ends where it concerns Wild Adapter and your cat. And that means that Sekiya has to know something about Sanada's involvement in WA, and that would explain his sudden burning desire for you to add to the metal content of Toujo's leader's skull. If you kill Sekiya now, you have no doubts that he'll take whatever he knows to the bottom of Yokohama Bay with him.
"We have to get Sekiya to talk," you say quietly into Ryoji's ear. "He knows something that Sanada's worried about." Your partner chews this over for a moment and nods.
"And how do we get that bug out of Toki-boy?" he asks.
"Carefully," you reply, leaning against the window and closing your eyes. You're tired. Every lead you get is either a dead-end or an answer that raises an onslaught of new questions. You know that killing your boss won't help you figure out how to fix Tokitoh, and you're finally able to admit to yourself now that this has been your goal all along. It's not enough to have him whole and breathing; as long as his hand is clawed and covered in fur he'll never be able to come out of hiding. As long as his nightmares chase him through his dreams he'll never be able to stop running. Getting rid of Sanada will deprive you all of answers that you so desperately need, and he'll only be replaced with someone who won't have the illustrious personal history with you to stay his hand in ordering execution. Anyone else would have killed you years ago, when you walked out of Izumo with too much information and a glimpse of what WA meant. Sanada's arrogance is all that's preserved your tainted existence for this long.
You don't care who Tokitoh really is, or where he came from, so long as he's alive. But Tokitoh does care, and so it became a priority for you as well. Sanada seems hell-bent on keeping you from obtaining that information, so you know that it's worth having. He played a hand in whatever happened to traumatize and break your flatmate. Perhaps Sekiya knows what that role was. Perhaps if you threaten to cut him the way he threatened to slice open your cat you'll stand a chance of convincing the bastard to spill his proverbial guts before you can spill his very real ones. You've always been persuasive, but you think the loaded gun and dangerous smile help.
"We'll need to get Tokitoh someplace that'll jam the signal," Ryoji frowns. "Or find something that can disable it temporarily." You reach into your pocket automatically and speed-dial Kou. If he's half as good at preventing the spread of information as he is at obtaining it, he'll know what to do.
He answers on the third ring and you explain your suspicions. Your theory is met with grave silence. He's probably more than a little angry at his shop being placed under indirect surveillance, and you're sure that the Triads will have an opinion on the matter. "I see," he says calmly. "I believe that by the close of business today I can have the merchandise you seek. It's difficult to guarantee the life of electronics, of course, but I believe you will be pleased with my inventory." And that's all he says before he ends the call. You nod to Ryoji's questioning look and slip your phone back into your pocket. Kou raised a valid point. If you destroy the transmitter, your boss will know. But if it fails slowly, over the next few days, he'll be less apt to think you tampered with it. If it's damaged in an accident, smashed against a headboard or shower wall, he certainly can't fault you for it. At eight o' clock tonight, once the Toukohan is locked and the blinds drawn, you're going to give Sanada a little radio show.