Ugh, I hate heat. It's about ten degrees Celsius warmer than I feel comfortable in.

Still, enjoy :)

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters that appeared in the show.


"You know what's odd?" Penny asked before taking a bite of her toast.

"That you have suddenly become a proponent of morning sex at five am while you normally kicked me out of the bedroom?"

"Hey, I never hear you complain when I mount you." she moped.

"And you never will." he laughed. "The only issue is that it somewhat screws up my run."

"Why would it do that?" she wondered.

"You try running a few miles after you have a hundred and twenty pounds of lean mass bouncing on your hips for fifteen minutes."

"Well, if that's the case, then I just stop." she smiled innocently.

"Don't you dare." he gasped. "Anyway, what's up?"

"Well, now that I finished the courses, I suddenly have no problem getting up that early."

"And that's a problem why?"

"That's not me." she argued. "I love to sleep in. But somehow, now that I have time on my hands where I don't have to prepare to go through a course, I don't quite know what to do."

"You should train." he shrugged. "Go to the dog park with the boys, then join me at the university for lunch. Remember, you are still employed there as my lab assistant."

"So, what am I going to do there?"

"Sweep my lab." he told her.

"Hey, have the decency to smile so I know you made a joke." she huffed.

"Seriously though, you still should use the gym daily." he counseled. "If only to retain what you have."

"No worries." she said and started stretching.

After they both finished, Leonard whistled for the dogs to join them and they took the elevator downstairs. They walked to the park and began running, the canines dutifully staying at their sides while they jogged for ten miles. After the run, both used a bench to stretch some more before walking back in their sweaty clothes. On the way, Penny walked into a bakery, getting some bear claws and other goods for breakfast while Leonard stayed outside with the dogs.

After their return, they both showered, then sat down on the couch to have their leisurely breakfast while the newscast told of the increasing activity among the various gangs in the city. Penny was almost inclined to laugh at all the experts they rolled out to try to explain what caused this current increase in violence but the damage they were doing prevented her from feeling any humor.

"They're calling it the great heroin famine now." Penny told Leonard when he came back from the bathroom.

"Given that the gang I took out supplied heroin to most of the city, I believe it." he nodded. "They did find almost ten tons of the stuff in that warehouse. Plus all that money of course."

"When I heard that, I couldn't believe that these guys could be that brazen." she said. "I mean, wouldn't warehouses have inspections from time to time?"

"Yeah, but usually they're announced, except if it were food related." he shrugged. "I don't know, maybe because of their parent organization they felt secure."

"Leonard, you in there?" Howard's voice came from outside.

"Yeah, come in, Howard!" Leonard called back.

"I got the autopsy report you asked me to get." Howard proclaimed upon entering, holding up a small folder.

"Thanks man." Leonard said and opened it, finding several pages.

"Is is usually so many pages?" Penny asked when she saw the amount of paper.

"No, but I found some files connected to this report that had been sealed for some reason and I got them too."

"What am I looking at?" Leonard asked.

"The translation might not be perfect but the gist of it is, that Yua Sakurai died from a heroin overdose, injected straight into her carotid artery." Howard told him.

"She put a lethal dose of heroin straight into her neck?" Penny gasped.

"That's just it, I don't think she did." Howard retorted. "Look at the second sealed page."

"That is odd." Leonard nodded.

"What is?" Penny walked around behind Leonard to look down at the file.

"The needle went in from above." Leonard said. "If you inject yourself into your neck, you would do it either straight from the side, or more likely, from a downward angle because your own hands are below your neck."

"Whereas an injection from above suggests that someone else put the needle into her." Howard continued. "Not to mention that the autopsy didn't show any other needle marks on her body, old or new, except her upper left arm where a vaccination would go into."

"Heroin addicts would have a lot of them on their arms." Penny stated, having seen some heroin users in her prostitute days.

"Also, Yua was found in her apartment, which was very clean." Howard added.

"Why is that important?" Leonard asked.

"Heroin addicts look for oblivion, they want the drug to dull their senses, their pain of existence." Penny told him. "That's why you find overdose victims often in squalid apartments or alleyways."

"How do you know so much about that?" Howard wondered.

"I had some... acquaintances in my darker days." Penny said.

"That would explain the inconsistencies of the other pictures." Howard shrugged.

"Other pictures?" Leonard looked at him.

"The latter pages." Howard said. "Look at her fridge."

"That definitely does not look like the fridge of a hardcore heroin user." Leonard admitted, seeing neatly stacked tupperware boxes with salad, along with healthy drinks.

"But the real clincher is on page four." Howard pointed to the folder in Leonard's hands.

"It's a laboratory examination of the heroin in her system." Leonard read. "Why is that important?"

"Why indeed." Howard smiled and handed him a second folder.

"What's this?" Leonard asked as he read the contents.

"I sniffed around in the LAPD's files about the gang you took out." Howard replied. "When they and the FBI mopped up the organization of the gang you killed, they tested some of the heroin they found in the warehouse."

"Wait, this is the exact same purity that was found in Kenta's sister." Leonard stated, reading the autopsy analysis of the drug.

"Which means what?" Penny wanted to know.

"The heroin that the gang had in the warehouse was extremely pure." Howard explained. "From them, it went to various distributors in the city who then cut the heroin into smaller packets, before it goes to the dealers, who then often added some things to it, be it another chemical or even flavor, anything they can to increase the amount they can sell."

"So, what are you thinking?" she wondered.

"That either Yua Sakurai, sitting in an apartment in Sendai, one day decided to end her life by buying an overdose amount of heroin from a gang in Los Angeles and using it by injecting it directly into her carotid from above..." Leonard began.

"... or someone from that gang traveled to Japan to kill the sister of an assassin?" Penny finished, albeit a bit incredulous.

"Not from that gang." Leonard corrected. "We know that the gang was just part of a much larger organization. Who's to say that they don't have affiliate branches in Japan or if they aren't working with the Yakuza."

"That's a bit far-fetched, isn't it?"

"True, it's a reach." Leonard agreed. "However, if you know about a first-class assassin who loves his sister more than anything in the world and you kill that sister and then approach the assassin and say that you can help him to find his sister's murderers, or in her case, the drug providers, the risk could be worth it. Kenta is certainly an asset to any organization."

"But wouldn't he become suspicious if nothing happens after several years?" Penny wondered.

"Who says nothing has happened?" Howard interjected. "If I was ruthless enough to kill the sister of an assassin, I could find a patsy to take the fall for it. Even use that same assassin to take his revenge."

"Knowing Kenta, he wouldn't have stopped and checked if the claims were true." Leonard sighed. "Even if it was just a bit believable, he would have acted on it."

"That's pretty sick." Penny said. "Would Kenta really go medieval on anyone without knowing the real truth?"

"Penny, if my dad was killed and I got information about possible killers, I would most likely go on a spree myself, especially if I was still grieving." Leonard sighed. "From what I knew about Kenta when I started, after his parents died, his sister was the only family he had left and he was always doing everything possible to keep her safe and allow her to have a comfortable life."

"Wasn't his sister sick or something?" Howard wondered.

"Maybe, I don't know." Leonard shrugged. "And I certainly won't ask him. The last thing I want to do is reopen old wounds while he's looking for me for a job I did."

"He doesn't know he's looking for you, right?" Penny asked.

"Still, I won't take the risk." Leonard shook his head. "Kenta is not just a regular assassin, he's quite brilliant in his own right."

"How do you mean?" Penny wanted to know.

"Well, I am quite smart, yet for certain things, I still use the services of people like Howard or Bernadette." Leonard said. "Kenta does pretty much everything himself, though he usually used direct methods of taking out his targets, so he never had any use for poisons. The only time he used organization assets was when he either needed information or had bodies to remove."

"You make him sound like Sherlock Holmes." Penny chuckled.

"Nothing like that, but he could find people on his own and kill them." Leonard shrugged.

"Am I remembering it wrong or did Kenta love to use a sword as a weapon?" Howard wondered.

"No, you're remembering it right." Leonard nodded. "He often had to make his victims disappear to avoid the police realize that there's a single killer."

"Then how did he prove that his target was dead?" Penny asked.

"By taking pictures." Howard told her. "Leonard could do the same, kill his target, take pictures of them being dead and call the cleaners to get rid of the body."

"My usual way doesn't make that necessary though." Leonard said. "And in others, I don't need to get rid of the corpse because the killing wouldn't be connected to me."

"You make it sound as if the police wouldn't look at you." Penny chuckled.

"Nothing like that." Leonard said. "But even when you were seen with someone who the police found dead, you can simply say that you asked for the time or whatever. When you don't have a personal relationship with someone and you lack an obvious motive, you're quite safe."

"How often have you been at a risk of discovery after a job?" Penny asked.

"In most cases, I get all my information about a target without ever being seen with the person." he told her. "In others, I already know enough and can take them out from afar. In others again, I don't have to hide the deed because nobody looks twice or it needs to be known, like my job in Colombia."

"What did you do there?"

"Killed the leader of a FARC cell with a sniper rifle." he shrugged. "After I did it, my most important goal was to get away without being noticed."

"Did you have contacts there too?" she asked. "Do you even speak Spanish?"

"Barely." he chuckled. "For that particular contract, the person who placed it also provided support. Specifically a driver, someone who lived in the town that was closest to the base."

"So, if they had all those resources, why didn't they kill the guy?"

"Maybe because their resources weren't enough to attack a highly trained unit of soldiers or they needed a middleman like me to avoid retribution if the assassination had failed." he explained. "There are many nuances in high profile jobs."

"Not so much in the low profile ones?" she chuckled.

"There isn't really much ambiguity about someone wanting his ex-wife dead." Howard said.

"Are these guys ever found?" she wanted to know.

"The husbands who place the contracts?" Howard inquired and she nodded. "Quite often."

"Really?"

"As with most crimes, it's always follow the money." Leonard elaborated. "When you pay someone a six-figure sum, it becomes hard sometimes to hide the payment."

"But wouldn't that risk one of us if the husband were to talk about it?"

"I don't think any assassin worth their salt would ever tell the contract placer their names." Leonard chuckled. "At least not their real one. There's a reason I use aliases."

"Like John Smith?" she grinned, remembering the day she learned about his fake name.

"Like John Smith." he nodded. "And some others. Like my job last year, that required me to become a different person."

"How does that work?" she wondered.

"You get your hands on a farmed ID and learn everything about the person you're supposed to become." he shrugged. "For those kinds of jobs it's an advantage to have a good memory and the ability to compartmentalize to avoid mixing real memories with fake ones."

"It's essentially the same that people have to do who have to take on a new identity when they flee from either the law or a criminal organization." Howard added. "But, we need to head out."

"Yep." Leonard nodded and turned to Penny. "You'll join us for lunch?"

"Will do." she nodded and gave him a kiss goodbye before sitting down on the couch to watch some TV.


"Here." Robert said as he threw two bound stacks of money on the table. "Bribe whoever you need to get me those damn information."

"Where did you get that from?" Ricardo asked. "I thought you didn't have any coins to exchange."

"Did a small job." Robert shrugged and flopped down on the couch, where he quickly downed a bottle of beer before opening a second. "Easy money, just killed some guy by triggering a car accident."

"Wait, was that you?" Ricardo asked shocked, pointing at the TV where the news of an accident was being played.

"Yep." Robert nodded, drinking more.

"What the fuck did you do?" Ricardo gasped. "They say that four people died in that accident."

"Yeah, the husband was the target." Robert nodded.

"What the fuck did you do?" Rricardo repeated. "We don't kill people during our jobs that have nothing to do with it! And certainly no children!"

"Will you shut up?" Robert shouted. "I have a headache."

"You're insane!" Ricardo didn't get any quieter.

"I TOLD YOU TO SHUT UP!" Robert screamed at him. "I'm doing my jobs the same way my brother did and how our dad taught us."

"Yeah, and see where it got your brother." Ricardo shook his head as he picked up the money before turning around in order to leave.

"Don't ever mention him." Robert glared.

"No wonder he got himself killed if he..." Ricardo started before feeling a sharp pain in his side, seeing the knife handle sticking inside his hip. "What the fuck did you just do?"

"Never talk about my brother." Robert hissed as Ricardo dropped to the floor and stopped moving.

"Hey, I got the... OH MY GOD!" Aaron's voice sounded from the door right before the thud of two bags of food dropping on the floor. "What the fuck happened?"

"He got what he deserved." Robert shrugged as he walked towards the door. "I'm going to the drugstore, call the cleaners to get rid of his body."

"You're fucking insane." Aaron said in shock, even though Robert had already left.

Aaron sighed and put down the food he had bought. He walked over to Ricardo's body and knelt down, sighing again at the insanity of it and he took out his phone but just when he was about to call the cleaners, Ricardo coughed and opened his eyes.

"Is he gone?" Ricardo asked with his mouth contorting in pain.

"Jesus Christ!" Aaron gasped again, almost falling backwards. "You're not dead?"

"I played dead and hoped Robert would not administer a coup de gráce." Ricardo groaned. "Help please."

"Fuck, you need an ambulance." Aaron said and was about to call for one.

"NO!" Ricardo stopped him with a bloody hand. "Don't call one, Robert will be back long before they can take me away.

"Fuck." Aaron grimaced and helped Ricardo stand up, the knife still embedded in his side. "Want me to pull it out?"

"No, that would probably make it worse." Ricardo shook his head as they limped towards the door. "Don't forget your laptop."

"Forget that thing." Aaron said.

"Are you planning on coming back here?" Ricardo looked at him, pain in his eyes.

"Good point." Aaron nodded and left Ricardo at the door, where he held himself upright using the frame while Aaron got all of his gear. "What about the money?"

"Take it." Ricardo told him. "Robert killed two children to earn that money?"

"Seriously?" Aaron gasped once again. "He took a contract to kill children?"

"No, they were collateral damage he just accepted." Ricardo said. "Now lets go."

Slowly, Aaron helped Ricardo downstairs, the three floors agony for the Latino. During the descend, due to him using the leg, the knife moved slightly, causing the wound to enlarge and blood seeping out much quicker than before. Aaron cursed and quickly put Ricardo into the backseat of his car, laying him out so the wound was on top.

"You need a hospital." Aaron said as he started the car.

"No hospital, they'd only ask too many questions." Ricardo refused.

"The hotel is thirty minutes away, or more, depending on traffic." Aaron reminded him. "You'll bleed out before that."

"Take me to this address." Ricardo said, handing him a piece of paper. "It's about five minutes from here."

"Christ!" Aaron cursed and started driving. "What's there?"

"Someone we can trust." Ricardo said and went silent to conserve his strength.

Aaron drove to the address, the roads he used as empty as they could be in a city like Los Angeles. Every bump in the road caused a moan from the backseat, the blood of his friend dripping into the upholstery and he knew that he'd have to rip it off and dispose of it but right now, his friend was in dire need of medical help.

"Can you get up?" he asked after parking the car in an alley next to a nondescript apartment building.

"Fuck!" Ricardo cursed in pain. "Apartment 3M."

"Luckily there's an elevator this time." Aaron said. "And nobody around seeing you."

He hit the button for the third floor and exited with Ricardo's arm over his shoulder. He almost dragged him through the long corridor until he reached the aforementioned apartment where he knocked urgently until he heard footsteps and a deadbolt being opened.

"Qué estás haciendo aquí?" the woman, who opened the door asked, then saw the knife and bleeding wound. "Mierda!"

"Hello Carmen." Ricardo smiled. "I need some help."

"No shit." Carmen said in accented English. "Get him in here."

"Where should I put him?" Aaron asked.

"There." Carmen pointed to the couch, where she put plastic sheeting down before Aaron could put him down. "What happened?"

"Um..." Aaron hesitated, now knowing what or how much he could say.

"It's okay, she's my sister and she knows." Ricardo said. "One of our colleagues who we work... worked with lost his mind and did this."

"The guy dead?" Carmen asked.

"Not yet." Ricardo chuckled. "But if he continues on his path, he will be."

"Can you help him?" Aaron asked.

"Quisás." Carmen shrugged and got a medical bag, producing a surgical kit from which she took a needle, some thread, gauze, dressing material and medical alcohol.

"Need help?" Aaron asked as she dunked some gauze into the alcohol and began cleaning the surroundings of the wound.

"Hold him still." she said and Aaron did while Carmen slowly pulled the knife out.

She doused a piece of clean cloth into regular water and pressed against the wound, producing a fresh batch of blood, which she wiped with the cloth. She held it against her nose and smelled it, making Aaron wonder what she was doing. She nodded to herself and then began to deftly sow the wound shut, not even bothering to use any form of anesthetics, Ricardo groaning in pain every time the needle pierced his skin.

"Why did you smell his blood?" Aaron asked once she was done and taking off her rubber gloves.

"To see if the knife has perforated his colon or kidney." she told him. "Any would give out a different smell."

"Has it?"

"No, luckily not." Carmen sighed. "So, who is this guy who stabbed my brother?"

"Another assassin we're working with. Or used to, I guess." Aaron shrugged, looking at Ricardo who seemed to be fast asleep.

"And why did he do it?"

"Beats me, I wasn't there." Aaron told her. "I only came in when he was already on the floor."

"What job requires three of you?" she asked.

"The other guy, Robert, wants to kill one of our... colleagues." Aaron said. "Said colleague killed Robert's brother because Robert's brother tried to kill the colleague."

"Don't you have enough targets for killing to go around?" Carmen wondered. "And why would you and my brother help this Robert?"

"It's complicated." It was Aaron's turn to sigh. "But through my association with Robert, I wonder if I made a horrible choice."

"Sin mierda." Carmen laughed. "If you need more to make that realization, you're not as smart as you should be for this job."

"I'm more of a desk assassin." Aaron shrugged.

"You kill people with desks?" Carmen smirked at him and bumped her hips against his side, Aaron feeling a bit confused at that.

"No, I use my computer skills to kill the characters of my targets." Aaron clarified. "So, you're a doctor?"

"No, a nurse." Carmen shook her head.

"Oh, okay."

"What?" she looked at him.

"Well, you're the first nurse I've seen that can stitch up a wound like this." Aaron shrugged his shoulders.

"I was a combat medic until a few years ago." she said and lifted her shirt sleeve to show her the unit tattoo she had gotten. "Third Infantry Division, two tours in Iraq."

"Impressive." he nodded as a beep came from Carmen's computer.

"Hijo de puta!" Carmen cursed as she looked.

"Something wrong?" Aaron asked, joining her.

"Pendejo internet connection keeps breaking." Carmen complained. "Maldito router or whatever doesn't like me downloading large files."

"What are you trying to get?" Aaron looked at the screen.

"I want to stream some movies but I never can watch them without interruptions because the meando connection is too slow. Or the fucking cables going through the walls are too old." she described. "So I try to buffer them completely, which can take an hour sometimes but then the connection fails and I have to start from the beginning."

"Want me to take a look?" Aaron offered. "I'm good with computers."

"He really is." Ricardo's voice came from the couch.

"How are you feeling?" Aaron asked him.

"Like someone stuck a knife into my hip... Oh wait, someone did." Ricardo smirked.

"Chico divertido." Carmen rolled her eyes. "A dónde crees que vas?"

"No debería qzedarne aquí." Ricardo replied, Aaron wondering if he should turn on a translator on his phone so he could understand them.

"Estúpido idiota." Carmen yelled and even Aaron understood that and Carmen gave her brother a bottle of pills. "Take three of these and sleep. You can take the bed in that room"

"Fine." Ricardo nodded and took the proffered pain pills before going towards the room she had pointed out. "Whose bed is it?"

"My roommate's." Carmen said. "She's visiting her parents for the week."

While Ricardo went to bed, Aaron walked over to her computer and started working, seeing the problem right away after opening her router page. The internet connection was way too slow to allow the smooth playback needed to watch a movie. Luckily for her, he had just the thing she needed.

First he created a VPN on her computer to start whenever she boots it up. Next, he changed the address her router used to create the connection to the internet to the one leading to Unity, the transpacific cable that linked Los Angeles to Japan. He saved the settings and exited the router configuration before rebooting the router itself.

"Done." he proclaimed.

"What did you do?" she asked, leaning over his shoulder to look at the desktop.

"Router speed is about twenty times what it was, it will never break down unless they cut the transpacific cable and from now on, it's free." he smiled.

"Damn, it's even in 4k." Carmen gasped after starting to stream a movie. "How did you do that?"

"I created a VPN and it connects to the transpacific cable that runs from Japan to Los Angeles." he explained.

"Won't they notice that?"

"Nah, your connection comes in between places they could find it." he waved her off. "And if you ever move, or get a new router just copy the connection data into the new one and you always connect to that cable."

"Increíble." Carmen grinned. "So, you need to head out?"

"No, I got time." Aaron said. "You need something else? Or you wanna get some coffee?"

"Coffee sounds nice." Carmen nodded. "After."

"After what?" Aaron wondered.

"Hombre tonto." Carmen winked and took his hand to pull him into her bedroom. "What do you think?"


End of chapter here. The Spanish is mostly google translated, so please overlook the most likely many errors ^^

Review please :)