Chapter Four
After my hair was put in a long braid with wildflowers braided through it (courtesy of Train) and I was dressed in a gothic-style, knee-high light pink dress with lace on the bottom and three-quarter length sleeves, ("It looks so cute on you, Evekat!") Sven suggested that we take a drive to the local police station to see if there was any good bounty money for us to snatch. Rinslet said she had to redo her make-up, because it was smudged. Train snorted.
"Oh, really? It doesn't look smudged to me. You did it fifteen minutes ago!" Rinslet rolled her eyes, crossed her arms and muttered something about guys not understanding the intricacies of feminine necessities to look attractive. I interrupted and immediately transferred my voice into honey-sweet mode – sweet enough to win anyone over, especially Train.
"Your make-up is perfectly fine, Rinslet. I think Sven is right, we should check the police station, or maybe there are signs around the city for bounty money. Wouldn't you agree, Train?" I spotted Sven and Rinslet nodding out of the corner of my eye, but who I was really focusing on was Train. As I expected, he was nodding like a bobble head in no time. I smiled and headed to the door. But when I realized the rest of them weren't following my lead, I turned around and frowned.
"Sven, toss me the keys, please."
Clink, clack.
"Thank you."
"Well, are you coming or not?!"
o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o
"Stop, stop! Right here, Sven." Train glared at Sven as he barely slowed, so Rinslet tried her hand at convincing him instead. She put her red nails on Sven's shoulder, and lilted,
"Svenny-baby, why don't we stop here for a second? C'mon, S…" We were stunned at how fast Sven stopped the car. As the machine jerked to a stop, we caught Rinslet smiling at him and Sven ripping off his hat and licking his lips hungrily. I got a wink from Rinslet and got out of that car so quickly, I stumbled. Obviously, Train waited until I got a very close view of the sidewalk to lift me up and pull me to him. I pushed him away easily, and walked the rest of the way back to the police station.
o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o
Aoi and Tsutomu had been working at the same police station together for over seventeen years. As you would readily guess, they had gotten sick of each other long ago. Their manager, Masato Hariyuki, would rarely be at the police station, so the two of them usually had the place to themselves. Now, in this part of town, nothing ever happened. That is what made their job so easy.
Now, you might ask, how did they entertain themselves with all of this free time? Eventually staring at a corkboard full of posters reading "Don't drink and drive," "Cello for Sale," and others of the like would get boring, wouldn't you think? Well, at the moment, they were entertaining themselves with a very fierce match of Throw Darts at The Corkboard.
You see, the few spaces that the posters weren't occupying were very small. That's what made throwing darts at the corkboard so much fun. The catch was, you couldn't throw the darts at the posters – only at the corkboard. This was quite difficult, since the desk where the two of them sat was quite a ways away from the corkboard. The only rule was, you couldn't go around the desk to throw. Right now, it was Tsutomu's turn.
"No pressure, Tsu! You got this," Aoi said just as Tsutomu was going to throw the dart. Tsutomu glared at Aoi, and took aim between a poster saying "Cheap Window Cleaning" and an advertisement for baby's reusable diapers. Ew, he thought. Wouldn't it be filled with $h!t? Tsutomu threw the dart and waited for it to land in between the two posters. Would it? Tsutomu gripped the closed case of thirty darts and hoped for the best. Come on, come on, he thought. And then…
Clang, ding, ding, ding
"Hello there, gents! Playing a game of darts? Nice. Pass me one there… Tsutomu." Train squinted as he read the small black lettering on Tsutomu's nametag. Tsutomu swallowed his anger at throwing his own dart much too high and into another poster, completely off target, and handed Train a red dart. Tsutomu remembered that his own had been blue. I went up on my tiptoes and whispered into Train's ear.
"Train, weren't we supposed to be looking for bounty money?" Train ignored me and threw the dart. It made a perfect arc in the air and landed on another dart. A blue one. Aoi (I had read the nametag) clapped slowly five times and stood.
"Good shot. Tsutomu here threw that blue dart. So, stranger, what brings you here?" Train smiled good naturedly, and in the blink of an eye, he had both of the men grabbed by the neck, and he definitely did not look good natured. He looked at Tsutomu and then at Aoi and back at Tsutomu.
"Do you work for Chronos?"he whispered. Aoi choked out what sounded like a "no," but Tsutomu stayed silent. Train let Aoi go, and then his eyes locked on Tsutomu's neck. He gestured at the man's neck with his chin and rasped,
"Let me see your neck." Tsutomu's shaking hands brought down the collar of his police uniform for Train to inspect it.
"Other side." Tsutomu's head flipped to the other side. Train sighed, as Tsutomu's neck bore no signs of a tattoo. I turned away as Train mumbled the routine of saying that Aoi and Tsutomu were to tell no one that he had been here. Wandering over to the corkboard close to the door, I noticed something odd. Gasping, I called hoarsely for Train. As he sprinted over, I spoke quietly, my voice cracking on the last word.
"When you threw that dart… it landed on another blue dart, and that dart was on a poster. It's not just any poster, Train. It's a wanted poster, and it's a poster of me."