Chapter One: Wanted

Within the walls of a perfectly inconspicuous building, tall and touching the sky like every building beside it, two men were convened. They were speaking in a room with exactly one door, and exactly no windows. The lighting was poor, and the air was only warmed slightly because of the tight insulation—otherwise, it'd be freezing, exactly like the winter air outside. There was a table between the two. The man behind the table had his long, black hair tied back, fedora perched squarely on his head, while his companion on the table's other side had clouded blond hair and glasses, the fair hair contrasting starkly with his dark hat.

Ashura Ou straightened his tie, and drummed his fingers upon the table. His eyes flickered from Yukito Tsukishiro's golden ones to the table and back. They'd both been waiting for nearly half an hour since breakfast and there was still no word. "Where's he at?" Ashura said quietly, a slight foreign slur covering his words. "He was supposed to be back by now."

Yukito licked his lips and looked over his shoulder—to the open, empty doorway. "I do not know," his accent was more familiar—a city accent, a tough accent that was at odds with his soft voice. "All I know is that he told me he was going to shoot crap, and would not be back until the early morning. But now I am thinking…" he glanced down at his watch and back to Ashura with frowning lips.

"That he might not have won?" Ashura raised his eyebrows and smiled. "Doumeki always wins. Even when he does not want to. And who does not ever want to win? He will—"

"He can lose. Once. Like that one time, remember?" A perfectly smooth, delicate, unaccented voice entered the room, along with its owner. The blanketed body of Kamui Shirou sat at the table between the two gangsters. He smiled tiredly and put his hand lightly on the briefcase. "That was a good one, wasn't it? Three times the one I got last week, and it was barely over an hour." His bare legs dangled over the edge of the table, and he held the white sheet around his otherwise naked body.

"He didn't lose," Yukito said reassuringly. His eyebrows furrowed and he leaned in toward Kamui. "It wasn't long, but was it hard? You look tired. You can go back to sleep—you know that the boss doesn't like you overworking yourself." Kamui glanced at him with narrowed eyes and shook his head slowly, almost thoughtfully.

Ashura's head perked up, his eyes glued to the doorway. "Finally." They turned in time to watch Doumeki ease into the room and slap the neatly rubber-banded wads of green bills onto the table, in the space beside Kamui's thigh. As Ashura picked them up to count, Doumeki raised one eyebrow at Kamui, and shrugged, pulling out a chair from the side of the room and plopping down on it.

"So you won? Again?" Kamui asked, walking from the table to Doumeki, perching on the edge of his lap precariously. "Because last night, I could've sworn I heard a gun shot go off, and I thought it might've been you. I thought you'd lose this one."

Doumeki blinked lazily, wearily. "No. I won. But he was nervous, so he used loaded dice. He wouldn't give 'em up, so I had to track him down afterward. He died, but I got the loaded dice and the dough. Done deal, fair play. You had a tough night?"

"It wasn't even two hours," Kamui said, yawning. "And I got three G's for it. He has a wife and she's older than all of us four put together."

"Ain't that grand?" Doumeki put his hands behind his head, and leaned back. "I'm knocked out. Tell 'im I'm catching up on sleep. I will not probably be up until after lunch, but I will be shooting crap again the night after. I can help around tonight. Kamui, d'you…?"

Kamui had gone back to the table, and was resting his head against his palm. He raised his eyebrows and looked bored. "No. Not tonight. Unless th' boss surprises me with a new set. But you don't remember? Tonight's that night. I probably will have someone special, then. Th' boss will choose."

"We're going to Kazeshi tonight, Doumeki," Ashura said, snapping the briefcase shut from placing in Doumeki's addition. "Th' boss has bimonthly business to attend to there. If all goes well, we will be back here in three days, meaning you will have to miss your plans for the night after."

Yukito looked up at the ceiling, his head tilted back, as he leaned against the table, hands steadying him. From the corner of his eyes, he peered at Doumeki and shrugged one shoulder, smiling. "I hear that the crap has floated to Kazeshi. They are new. If you're lucky—which you always are—you can whip 'em out of ten G's or more."

Doumeki made a sound of consideration. "Should I get him now, then?" Kamui said, looking to Ashura with the large, childish eyes. "He'll sleep until we have to leave if I don't. And as Doumeki said last week, the heat is on. If we don't make the pass to Kazeshi at the pinpoint, then we'll be caught." He looked to Yukito. "Isn't that right? Your boss is getting it, too?"

"Seishiro will manage," Yukito smiled complacently. "The police have been remaining in Kyoringo for the most part, so Kazeshi is easier dealt with at these times. Even being here for a week to escort you fellows has been hard on me. I've never had to be this high on guard back home."

Kamui looked miffed. "Th' boss is as capable as th' Maestro. He's acquired four more this week alone. Sakurazuka better have the dough ready if he is to buy from th' boss. We don't come cheap and every time this month I am requested from your group, I always am the prize for a new one—overexcited and stupid."

Ashura sighed with a resigned smile. "It might change. Go wake him."

Kamui padded through the room, closing the double doors behind him. The room was filled with plush carpets and tables—treasures and antiques that went past the time the country was even formed. The curtains were still drawn, and the figure breathing silently on the bed was still fast asleep. He dropped the sheet that'd been covering him on the floor and climbed onto the bed.

"Are you intending to sleep like the dead through the day?" he asked, swiping away the blond hair to unearth a soft, pale ear; his fingers caressed the piece of flesh and his mouth touched low near it. The figure beneath him squirmed restlessly and a voice as airy and boyish and clean of any accent as Kamui's own began to speak.

"Get off of me." Kamui rolled off, and leaned back against the silken pillows, as the figure arose from the cascades of blankets that'd, until a moment ago, been cocooning him. Fai Fluorite yawned, sitting up and stretching his arms up into the air, the sunlight glinting against the satin stripes of his pajamas. He looked sleepily and pleasantly at the naked young man beside him in bed. "Good morning."

"Good afternoon would be more appropriate." Kamui looked at him sarcastically and slid from the bed, walking to Fai's wardrobe. Fai watched the prostitute slide his hands over the handles of the wardrobe's painted white doors, before opening them slowly, the tendons of his wrists protruding as he did so. Kamui leafed through the various suits and hats, pulling out a pair of breeches and a white shirt that looked at least a decade or two outdated. "Could I borrow this for tonight?"

Fai clapped his hands together and smiled broadly. "Actually, I think that'd be perfect. The newbie Seishiro's having you serve used to be a paperboy back in the day. I think he'll love to reminisce. After all, I always thought you looked the paperboy sort. You would have made a wonderful one." He heard Kamui snort in a rather derisive manner, as he began pulling the clothes on.

"Who is this new one?" Kamui looked round at his boss.

"Can't break the rules now, can I?" Fai smiled, clapping again as he motioned for Kamui to spin around slowly in a circle, once he was dressed. "Especially since I'm the one who makes them. You'll find out tonight, anyway. And we all love surprises."

Kamui dug around the wardrobe a bit more before flinging a Gatsby onto his head. He stepped in front of the white full-length mirror on the wall beside the bed and winced. "I look like a newsboy. I look like a child. The newbie will want to do a man who looks like a woman, not a child, unless his mind is intensely perverse."

Fai extricated himself from the bed and crossed the wide room, standing beside Kamui so their reflections were shoulder-to-shoulder. He gazed at their mirrored selves. "No. I think he'll love you. Anyhow, those clothes bring memories back, don't they? We could reminisce all day."

Kamui's eyes hardened. "Memories that shouldn't be remembered. Memories unworthy of being reminisced over." His fingers subconsciously drifted to the tip of the Gatsby, brushing against the rough cloth. "Why would anyone want to remember what we've been through?"

"No reason," Fai began unbuttoning and slipping out of his clothes, diving into the wardrobe for a change of his own. He smiled as he took out an entirely black suit, gloves, a thick piece of cloth and a fedora as sky and as blue as his own eyes. "I wasn't serious. I don't remember myself. You probably remember more than I do—and ever will."

Kamui narrowed his eyes as Fai adjusted his lapels for a final time and fitted the fedora over his hair, bringing the swirling, pale strands to hurricane around his face. "This is my way of bringing in back-ups. You know and remember perfectly well. I had it worse. I can't get rid of it. You're just lucky you've got Ashura."

"That I do, and that I am," Fai tilted his head in a backward fashion in order to playfully wag his eyebrows at Kamui. "Besides, you're far more wonderful than I am. You do everything better. And Ashura only does it as a sort of…brotherly favor to me. He looks at us equally, but I think he's always liked me just a bit more. That's all."

"Hm." Kamui rolled his eyes. "Brotherly. That's a right way to exploit the word. Anyhow, I can do without for just as long, if not longer, than you can."

Fai stepped up to Kamui and tapped his finger over the dark-haired young man's lips. "We'll see." He smiled. "I have a feeling you'll love tonight. He's special, this one. I could tell."

"That's what you always say."

"Like I said." Fai winked, and tipped his fedora in a way Kamui knew could make—and had made—ladies swoon to their deaths. "You'll see."

In a series of high brick apartments, in the innermost rooms, Subaru Sumeragi walked steadily down the halls, carrying a briefcase at his side and a warm gun at his other. The sparse men, similarly dressed and armed, that stood speaking quietly in rough, accented voices in the doorways he passed looked at him in a mixture of respect, wariness, fear, and slight disgust.

He entered the room at the very end of the hall, entered without knocking, and closed the unlocked door behind him, shutting out the little light left in the building completely. With the glow of the setting sun leaking in just by the only window in the room, Subaru could make out the outline of the man seated behind the desk—the only set of furniture in the worn room. He pushed the briefcase over the desk, toward the man. As he made to speak, the man spoke first, quietly and huskily, "I can smell your gun."

"There was some trouble."

"Not much, I hope? You don't seem hurt."

"No, sir. They were, though."

Subaru could hear the man smile. "Come round the desk."

"Yes, sir."

As Subaru rested his gun on the desk, and came around it, complying to the order and letting the man pull him down by the tie, until their faces were inches apart, the sun shifted enough so that the man's face was seen. Subaru watched as Seishiro Sakurazuka smiled at him beatifically. "What's with the uptight talk? What did I do this time?"

"Nothing, sir."

"Well, now." Seishiro's smile touched Subaru's lips—in the literal sense only, as Subaru's face remained solemn. "Calling me sir…it doesn't sound as bad after I have the chance to become accustomed to it. It's rather becoming. If it's put into the correct contexts, that is." He reached up and pulled Subaru down further, kissing him lightly on the mouth. "Look at that. The sun's already going down. I believe it's time for bed. What about you?"

Subaru ghosted a smile. "Yes, sir."

It was known throughout Kazeshi that Seishiro Sakurazuka—from the moment he'd appeared on the speakeasy scene—had always Subaru Sumeragi by his side. And it just so happened to be known that Subaru had a right, dangerous shot. There were even more rumors circulating that Subaru was Seishiro's "doll". His lover. But they were only ever rumors. Anything otherwise, and the person would strangely disappear.

Rumors, however, were rumors. There were only two things that mattered when it came to judging around these parts of the city, and that was alcohol and money. And when it came to Seishiro Sakurazuka and his mob—the mob that ruled Kazeshi—alcohol and money were there for the taking, for the selling, for the buying, and for the stealing.

Plus, Seishiro's mob was the only one that had managed to coexist and trade and partner with the one from Kyoringo without breaking into territorial war. And whether one was involved in underworld matters or not, territorial war affected all those in the vicinity. No one was safe. Not men, not women, and not children. If you were a man, you could be shot. If you were a woman, you could be raped or prostituted. If you were a child, you could be raped, sold, or shipped—if you were lucky, you'd be recruited as a "newsboy".

No one wanted territorial war. Not the people of the cities, and especially not the mobs. As much as the citizens hated and feared and admired in a twisted way the fashions that these mobsters lived their lives, and envied the money they brought, none of them ever spared a thought about the fact that these mobsters, like Seishiro, had more riding on than just a life.

To these people, all the say were the faces on the Wanted posters pasted throughout the cities, whispering and gossiping about who would be caught, when and where. Throughout the country, in conservative suburban neighborhoods, everyone was watching what the mobs, and the mobsters who ran them, did. Seishiro knew it was they themselves who provided every pathetic well-bred, trimmed-grass, law-abiding citizen in this country with excitement enough to keep them alive. It made these citizens feel as though they were some part of the glamour and the infamy.

Seishiro always had hated authority. Hated law. Hated conforming.

He loved crime. Loved snubbing authority right up the nose. Loved breaking every law there was just because he could. Loved being Wanted.

Head Police Chief Kurogane You-ou banged his fist on his desk, right over the face of a masked man's Wanted poster. He scowled down at it, peeled it from the desk, and shoved it in his vice-chief's face. "What the hell is this?" he asked. "Do you know what this is?" With every word, he was getting angrier, meaning his city accent was steadily growing thicker and harder to understand. "Do you know what this is?"

Touya Kinomoto stepped back a few paces and tried his best not to mimic the head chief's scowl. It took everything he had to keep his face from contorting in a similar manner, but he knew that he had to keep his temper under check, as the chief certainly never did so. "A Wanted poster of Kurokamen?"

"No." Touya could practically watch the steam shooting out of Kurogane's ears and nostrils. "No. Kurokamen is dead, you halfwit. He's been dead. I know that you are new. But just because you are new does not mean—" Kurogane banged his head on his knuckles. "All right. Here. This one is Shirokamen. Remember?"

The vice-chief hid his offense at the way he was being spoken to. If they were going to work at this, one of them had to simmer his temper down, and since it wasn't going to be Kurogane, it might as well be Touya. Even if Touya had more reason that Kurogane did to have his temper shooting up through the holes, Kurogane was the one in charge, and thus, Touya would have to keep it low. "We've never even seen him, sir. No one's ever seen him." But Touya didn't tack on to the end what he wanted to so dearly: Instead, we would be better off searching for someone who has loved ones to actually miss him, and someone who is in real existence.

"Not yet," Kurogane growled. "But we'll see him soon, and soon happens to be tonight. So you better get the rest of 'em armed and ready. I've got full proof that they are going to be heading over to Kazeshi tonight."

Touya absentmindedly fingered the edge of the frayed poster, staring down at the masked face—the fedora was tipped jauntily on his head, and the black and white quality made it seem even sketchier. But it was obvious that the airy strands that seemed to float around the covered face were pale—probably blond. "It might be false information."

"It's not false this time around." Kurogane fiddled around in his desk drawers for a moment, and came back up with a shiny bullet in his palm. He rolled it around below Touya's sight. The chief's red eyes locked seriously with his subordinate's darker ones. "That gunshot case last night, 'member? I said it cannot be anything else but one of them. And I was right. Someone used loaded dice against the Kiunjin—I asked around."

Touya's eyes narrowed as he slowly took the bullet and held it up to the light. "Cleaned?" Kurogane nodded. "Was the man identified?"

"It was just another crap shooter. He would have been caught and thrown behind bars anyhow. He has family, but I do not think they'll mind so much that he has kicked the bucket."

"Whoever it was," Touya paused, looking back at his chief, "He could've returned home that night a broke man, but a man alive. The Kiunjin is one good hell of a shot. He has a temper, that one. Will he be on the load to Kazeshi, too?"

"Yeah. All of them will be there. The full lot. Aiyoku will be there," Kurogane said, giving Touya a significant look.

Touya blinked and scowled, hitting his hands down hard on the edge of the desk. "I will not—"

"I know. It's just a warning—just a reminder," Kurogane said, taking his gun from the wall and slinging through his belt. "I lost over ten officers to him, and you're too damn good to lose. So don't be an idiot tonight—we got no room for mistakes. Get my hat, for me, will you? Every single face on those Wanted posters will either be behind bars or shot through by sun-up."

A/N: Okay. We've got some things to establish before I do my usual review-begging. First off, the thing with New York 1920s speech that I've noticed is that they almost never use contractions. If you watch the way they talk in Guys and Dolls, it's rather hilarious with their "can not"s and "does not"s and so on. They use contractions, but only the minimal. Secondly, I didn't like how this chapter turned out, but I usually never like how my first chapters of anything turn out, as it takes at least four to five to ten chapters for me to get the hang of characterizations and things whenever I'm starting a new series, especially a historical fic. Thirdly, if you notice, even though the two big cities were New York and Chicago, I'm not using American terms. I'm not even using correct timeline-ing and stuff like that. I'm just using the setting. As in, yes, there are two cities, and once you get both their names, you can try to figure out which one is which, by translating them. (Cookies to whoever can). And fourthly, I'm quite proud of the sadsobstoryzomgscandalous past that I've come up with for the characters (Fai) in this one, and I hope all of you are satisfied, because it's a bit more twisty than the one in Secrets. So once again, none of this takes place in America, there is no America and New York and Chicago. I'm just using the situation of the cities and the concept to create sort of an alternate way of it, y'know?

Anyway, I've also noticed that you all only review when I ask (like in Secrets, after that, in Intrigue and Compelled you seem to have neglected me 0_0) So I shall beg now once more: Reviews?

(And I'm only putting this up because the poll convinced me to, sort of. So reviews might convince me to write and put the rest up simultaneously while I'm doing Compelled and Unveiled.)