The mask was looped onto Yami's face as they stepped out into the main sidewalk where more people were queuing at the crossing, staring at the police gathered in front of the pachinko parlor.
"Which safehouse?" Yami asked quietly, and Honda glumly held up three fingers, still mourning the loss of his bike.
Okay. Safehouse three was only a few stations away. Hiding in the crowd on the way there was their safest bet.
Yami took a turn down another narrow alley and kept parallel to the main road, spotting a flower shop on the corner beside the station entrance, and his heart skipped a hopeful beat. He made a beeline for the stand and reached into his wallet for a crisp bill, barely even glancing at the price of the largest bouquet as he picked it up out of the bucket and handed money to the florist.
The woman began to give him change, but Yami held his hand up, politely declining, and he accidentally tread on Honda's toes when he took another step back.
Honda hissed in annoyance, and Yami rolled his eyes, circling a smoking booth and deciding to stand behind it for cover. Piles of cigarettes littered the ground underneath his feet, and Yami wrinkled his nose as he ignored that to pull out his weapon to tuck it strategically into the bouquet, shedding flowers out of it as he went, aware of Honda's eyes on his every move.
"Great. You're taking a gun on a crowded train at rush hour. Super. Super fucking awesome," Honda groaned, and Yami gave him a sharp look.
"Keep whining and you can die. I'll leave you here," Yami snapped, his patience wearing thin because he was supposed to be on his way to his storage unit, and not babysitting a rogue gangster who'd been his delivery boy and messenger twice.
When he could feel the butt of the gun comfortably in the stems of the flowers, he wrapped the plastic around it for effect and held the bouquet up for Honda to inspect, and the man leaned away from him fearfully.
"Don't point that at me!"
"It's pointed at your feet, relax!" Yami snarled, officially out of patience. "Can you see it?"
"No. You did a great job," Honda replied hollowly, his face still pale with fear. "Now what?"
"Now we go and travel like we're friends," Yami said stiffly, stepping out from behind the smoking booth and walking down into the station tunnel, keeping Honda by his side as they rode steadily down the escalator.
"If you ever hear me say, "Rina misses you," just run. Leave me and go to the cops. Even a safehouse won't save you," Yami said calmly, and Honda lost even more color to his face as he nodded.
They walked through the station barriers in line with everyone else, and the droves of businessmen in suits and the children in school uniforms crowded on the platform, waiting for the next train.
"They won't come fuck up one of our trains, will they?" Honda asked anxiously, now filled with obsessive thoughts about how the train could blow up with them still on it.
"No. They were only sending a message," Yami reassured him with a lie, and kept his eyes peeled in the crowds, now wishing he'd stopped by his storage unit first so he at least had a way to contact Seto through an encrypted line, but that would have to wait.
Wind whooshed through the tunnel as the train stopped at the platform with precision, and the safety gates swung open, letting out droves of people while the people on the platform merged forward to get on the train.
Yami and Honda followed this flood of people and managed to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a crowded car, and Honda fidgeted nervously, sweating.
"Hey, relax. It's my date, not yours," Yami said calmly, shifting the flowers to his other hand and seeing Honda look away furiously.
"Is there someone I should call…before I…go on vacation forever?" Honda asked through gritted teeth, hanging onto the handrail as the train moved forward and began zipping through the tunnel at breakneck speed.
"I don't know. Is there?" Yami replied casually with a shrug.
"Will my calling them…give them trouble?" Honda breathed, his palms slipping on the rail with fear. "Because Rina went on vacation first without telling me. I don't want them all going on vacation too for no reason."
"Ah yeah, better to let them know the exact date of your vacation when your employer says you can make a phone call," Yami said with a playful wink, aware that his implications were dark. Would he understand?
Honda lowered his head so much, his shoulders sagged. Ah. He did.
Calling now might put a tag on his friends and loved one's locations.
If caught, he could beg for a 'last phone call', and that would be as good as it got.
Dark, but it was reality.
The train stopped and several people got out, and the doors closed quickly. They were on their way again, and Yami itched in his own skin.
It was silent in the entire car, as it usually was.
Another perk of riding in crowded trains in Japan. There were rarely rowdy crowds at rush hour, and the loudest people were usually tourists, easy to spot and avoid.
The train stopped again, and Yami gave Honda a nod.
"Let's get out here," he said quietly, and stepped off the train, feeling Honda follow him, hissing, "We're one stop away."
"Exactly," Yami replied cryptically as they passed through the ticket barriers, and he made sure to hold the flowers high over his head to conceal the rest of his face from the cameras.
Cool air rushed into his face as they walked up the steps and out into the street, and Honda saw a couple of his buddies on bikes, parked along the side of the road, smoking and loitering.
Relief flooded his face, and his shoulders relaxed.
"My dudes!" Honda said longingly, wondering if he should wave.
"Safehouse first, dude," Yami said quietly, pinching Honda's sleeve and pulling him down the road and into another narrow alleyway. This was a familiar feeling. Always ducking into small, twisted paths, never taking the main one lest he receive a syringe of poison in his leg from someone in the crowd.
They passed a ramen shop right beside a bar, and Yami saw a man with multiple facial piercings step into his path, blocking their way.
"You're not welcome here, spiky-haired freak," the pierced freak spat, sticking an unlit cigarette into his mouth. "You can leave Honda here with me. Our boss's message is this: get out of town. The Joker Pair is on your ass and will pay me to hand you over to them. They know you're in Japan and we aren't obligated to help you anymore."
Yami blinked and his stomach dropped to his feet. Behind him, he could hear Honda make a strangled noise.
"And you owe us 600k for the damage they did to the safehouse," the pierced man added, sticking the cigarette behind his ear that had various, spiked piercings. "Cash. Tomorrow, if you live that long. Drop-off location is the Midori Supermarket right across the street from the Kaiba Tower to make things easy for you, Yami."
Yami felt as if he was floating out of his body as his mind hummed while he processed what the man was saying.
If the Joker Pair had come this way already and had 'done damage' to the safehouse… That meant nowhere was safe, least of all…The Kaiba Mansion.
They knew he was living with Seto Kaiba.
Kaiba's meeting with them at the Tower had been a formality check.
"Hello, we know you're here and we're coming," was the message.
SHIT.
I shouldn't have left! Yami reeled, gripping the bouquet harder as Honda stepped around him and gave him the middle finger.
"And you owe me for Rina! Add 200k to that 600!" Honda hissed, ducking in through the flaps of the ramen shop, leaving him standing alone in the alleyway.
Sinking into the ground, Yami bit his tongue so hard, he tasted blood, shocking him back to his senses. He needed to move, now!
First, his damn storage unit.
Then, back to the Kaiba Mansion.
Japan wasn't safe until the Pair was eliminated.
Even the Yakuza were freezing him out.
This was ruining his life in more ways that he could count.
Fuck me, fuck me for letting my guard down! Yami raged at himself, dashing out of the alleyway, biting back tears of frustration.
It was fine. He would make it back in time. He always did.
Kaiba broke out into a cold sweat when he saw the man and woman from his office earlier standing at the gates of his mansion, each carrying a briefcase in hand.
Contact with Yami right now would be great.
Isono was stalling them, talking with them through the intercom and asking them "standard questions" before letting them in, but if they weren't let in eventually, they'd know their cover as 'the authorities' was blown.
Almost as if his thoughts had willed it, his phone rang, and he yanked it out of his pocket, seeing an unknown string of numbers across the screen. Oh thank god. This had to be Yami.
"Yami?" Kaiba breathed the moment the phone touched his ear, and Yami's similar sigh of relief was heard on the other end.
"Seto? What's happening on your end? Nothing I hope?" Yami asked calmly even though his heart was threatening to explode out of his chest. He'd finished servicing his gun with lightning speed and clicked the latches of the case into place before slinging it over his shoulder.
Instead of falling blindly in love with Seto and assuming they were safe under his piles of money and security systems, he should've kept this trusty friend at the mansion, locked up, but he couldn't risk Seto finding it and asking questions. It all didn't matter now. Seto had proved himself to be more than understanding, and if anything happened to the CEO or his brother, Yami vowed he would never rest until he murdered every last person responsible.
"So, your…two friends are here. Is this line secure?" Kaiba asked nervously, knowing deep down that it was, but he had to ask out of habit.
"Yes, it's secure. And I'm sorry for not figuring it out sooner," came Yami's deep voice, and Kaiba could hear clicking in the background. Oh hell. That better be Yami returning with the cavalry or something.
"In the lowest drawer on my side of the nightstand, you'll find two flares, a small handgun with spare bullets, and a pocketknife," Yami said calmly, sticking the helmet on his head and climbing on his bike, giving the engine an encouraging rev that made his bones rattle.
Kaiba swallowed thinly and circled the bed to kneel beside Yami's nightstand, staring blankly at the fingerprint pad device that had been attached to the front. Well. He'd been so blindly in love with Yami that he didn't even notice this. Multiple times, he'd reached into the upper drawers for lube but never bothered to look further down.
Yami's fucking secrets.
What was the code to this damn thing?!
"The code is your birthday," Yami read his mind eerily, his voice almost lost over the loud rumble of the engine. "Call Mokuba now and tell him to stop being so lame. He'll know what it means. Hold yourselves over until I get there. 7 minutes. Can you do it? And don't let them bring anything in. Explosives, remember? But it's likely they might be wearing some underneath their jackets. Don't touch them."
"Got it…" Kaiba hissed, tapping his birthday into the pad and seeing the drawer pop open. His heart swelled with a strange emotion as the line clicked off in his ear and he stared at the neat array of weapons tucked into the lower drawer. Yami had neglected to mention the grenades that were lying innocently side-by-side, right atop the small handgun, knife, the two flares, and the packet of bullets.
Fuck.
He shakily dialed Mokuba and heard his little brother pick up, sounding annoyed.
"Why are you calling me in the middle of tutoring? You said if I ace this—"
"Yami says to stop being so lame," Kaiba said hollowly, and there was a long silence on the other end.
"I love you big bro. Nothing bad's gonna happen," Mokuba said instantly, sounding more composed than Kaiba felt. "I'll keep Mr. Aoyama with me in the basement cuz he's stuck here now. Don't worry. Also, I hid something for you in the bathroom on the top shelf by the bathrobes. Love you again. We'll be okay."
And Mokuba hung up on him.
Now immensely glad Yami had prepped Mokuba for this and had also strategically left him weapons all over the house, Kaiba gripped his phone and broke out into a cold sweat.
He was willingly letting two insane murders into his home, and he couldn't do anything to stop them.
His phone chimed with a gate notification and a message from Isono, "Master Kaiba, don't leave the top floor. Yami says to relocate you to the library if possible. Keep away from windows and take a bottle of water with you in case you need it. Silence your phone completely. I will be following Yami's instructions from now. Please be well."
Kaiba grit his teeth and tucked his phone away, slowly reaching into the drawer to load the gun, tuck it behind his back while slipping the flares into his pocket, deciding to take the grenades too, wincing at the thought of blowing up part of his house. If the enemy got ahold of these grenades, that would be worse.
He stood slowly and walked out of the room as if in a trance, unable to believe that he was about to go to war with two strangers in his own home.
Shouldering the library door open, Kaiba froze when he saw a woman climbing in over the balcony railing, having scaled the side of the house with the harness she wore around her waist, and he instinctively ducked behind a bookshelf, cursing under his breath. SHIIIIIIT!
Yami's brilliant idea was to place him in the library where there was the most cover, but it happened to be their point of entry. FUCKING GREAT.
I'm dying today, Kaiba thought blithely, wondering how to click the safety off his gun silently.
The glass doors were slid aside, and he could hear sets of footsteps.
"He's got top of the line security and no alarm went off when we climbed up the side of his house," a man's voice said happily, and the sound of belts unclipping echoed dully while the woman added teasingly, "it's Atem's little love nest, be nice. Knowing him, the alarms are always silent. He's probably trained up Mr. CEO too with some secrets. I heard they're really in love."
The man laughed dryly, and his heavy boots thudded across the carpet as they walked towards the entrance.
"Love? That psychopath isn't capable of love."
The woman giggled and Kaiba could see their shadows through the bookshelves as they exited the library, arm-in-arm.
"We're in love, aren't we? And we have certificates of insanity signed by top prison doctors!"
The man laughed heartily, and Kaiba's stomach clenched. What was stopping him from leaping out from behind these bookshelves and shooting them now?
He might miss. It was likely he would miss entirely and die in the counter-fire.
He could give his safe position away and throw the mansion prematurely into war.
Yami had safeguards in place.
He had to trust Yami on this.
Their footsteps disappeared, and Kaiba sat tightly against the bookshelf, staring at the dark gaps of the books, his heart skipping terrified beats in his chest.
Goddammit Yami… Hurry the fuck up!
His phone screen lit up with a text, and he saw it glow through his pocket, so he dug it out frantically to see a message from Yami.
"I'm here. Don't panic. Any update?"
Kaiba hissed and typed furiously, "they climbed up the top floor's balcony and entered thru the library window. They didn't see me. I'm armed & panicking a lot thx."
And the reply wasn't as reassuring as he'd hoped.
"Will u be angry w me if someone died in one of the rooms?"
YES?! Kaiba reeled, but he understood that his own life was at stake, so he replied with, "….you know the answer to that one. Hurry up."
His screen lit up with an answer.
"I genuinely don't know. Please answer w y/n?"
"N. You do whatever you want anyway! Just keep Mokuba safe b4 me!" Kaiba replied, and he gripped his phone harder, hearing the footsteps approaching up the hallway again, so he sent another frantic text, "they're coming back into the library!"
"Where is everyone?" the woman's voice echoed up and down the hallway. "MR. CEOOoOOoo! Come out come out! I know there were people in here! Someone answered your door!"
"Something doesn't feel right," the man muttered, and Kaiba froze when he heard the boots thumping closer up the hallway between the bookshelves, so he flattened himself tighter against the wall, praying they wouldn't search between the shelves.
"It's Atem. He does this kind of sneaky shit all the time," the woman sighed, and there was a soft thump! as she threw herself down on the couch, pulling one of the books out from above her head, reading the title out lazily, "Sewing 101….. Boring!"
"Then how do you know we're not walking into a trap? He could've rigged this whole place to blow. Let's leave, babe," the man said, his voice edged with fear. "People say we're unpredictable, but we're second-best compared to him—"
"We'rethe best," the woman snapped poisonously, throwing the book aside with a clatter as it hit something and fell to the ground. "As a team. He works solo and he'll always be solo. Like you said, he can't feel love. This CEO is someone for him to use for a while. I doubt they even fuck. We only held out on killing Seto Kaiba in his golden tower because you wanted to get Atem first!"
"Seto Kaiba will always be at the tower. His movements are traceable! I'm right, admit it!" The man shot back, and Kaiba palmed his face tiredly, realizing they were actually fighting about this. Where was Yami?!
Yami was on the roof, scanning the library from above with a thermal sensor strapped over one eye while he mounted the long-range rifle on his shoulder, still remarkably calm because he knew he still had control over the situation.
There were two people by the far corner of the library, and one heat signature awkwardly in the middle of the room by the wall. That was Seto.
He pressed the head of the gun down against the tile and prepared himself to take at least one extra shot to get through the metal and the plaster. He'd checked the blueprints of the mansion himself, and even asked the builder what specific materials they'd used as insulation, making sure to choose a diameter of bullet that could go through it all, hence why he needed his heavy-duty Mana back from storage.
She never let him down, and she wouldn't let him down now.
Letting his breath out slowly, Yami aimed for the heat signature that was horizontal and lying down, and he prayed Seto would forgive him for messing up the couch and the roof before he pulled the trigger twice and immediately moved to the heat signature directly in front of it, making sure to tap it thrice, his shoulder and neck aching with thin muscle spasms as the gun pounded back into him, but he held himself steady, giving the horizontal figure another present.
Bits of plaster flew up and scattered around his feet as the barrel of his gun made holes in the roof.
The stench of gunpowder was strong, and Yami set Mana down carefully, peering through the holes he'd made in the roof and seeing two bodies on the ground by the reading nook, with the woman still twitching on the couch.
Ah shit. More evidence of his rustiness.
The muscle spasms of an old injury were coming back to haunt him too.
He notched the gun into his shoulder and lowered the head, immensely thankful they weren't wearing explosives on their bodies as he sent one between her eyes and saw her lay still at last. His heart was thundering in his ears as he itched to check their bodies anyway, because his old self was telling him to cover all the corners for Seto and Mokuba's safety.
Hooking the gun around his back with the thick strap, Yami carefully made his way back down the roof, hoping Seto wouldn't break up with him after this.
Kaiba was on the verge of wetting himself from fear when he saw three holes open up in the ceiling, bringing death to the two individuals in the far corner.
The man had barely managed to cry out, "BABE?!" And he'd died too, instantly. Swiftly. Silently, with maybe a pained gurgle, and then...nothing.
Yami had done that. Methodically and without even hesitating after taking out the woman first. He'd taken out the woman first.
Holy shit, Yami might have no soul! Kaiba reeled, gripping his hair and hearing Yami call out to him from the window.
"Nobody move! Stay there!" And a soft thump echoed in the library as Yami landed on his feet and rushed over to inspect the bodies.
Yami grimaced at the puddles of blood and at his own messy shots, but he checked the pulses for both bodies out of paranoia and began to pat them down, extracting every single weapon he could find. They had indeed strapped an entire armory to their bodies, but nothing explosive… Which meant they might've planted some along the outskirts of the property.
"Seto? Are you well? Can you stand?" Yami called, taking the man's blazer off and gently running his hands through the fabric, feeling for any hidden wires. When he found none, he folded it and set it aside, working on the man's shirt and pants.
N-No…I'm… Kaiba shut his eyes and tried to calm his rapidly pounding heart. Alive. He was alive. And thanks to Yami, those two didn't get anywhere near Mokuba in the basement.
"Seto, I need you to check the feeds to make sure they didn't bury any explosives around your gate outside," Yami said evenly, moving to strip the woman after having finished with the man. Rest in peace, Jokers Pair.
Their mistake was stepping onto Kaiba's grounds—his home.
But the real issue didn't end with them.
He needed to find who hired the Pair, and deep down, he knew it was the same people who had hired him two years ago. Time to take care of them too…
Kaiba staggered to his feet and walked out from behind the bookshelf, his bile rising when he saw two naked bodies with their faces bloodied from the high caliber shots. Small puddles of blood dotted the rug, and Yami was on his knees, neatly rolling it up, with a gun larger than himself strapped to his back.
His mouth went dry, and Kaiba could only hang onto the edge of the bookshelf and stare.
"Any…r—" His voice caught so he swallowed thickly and tried again. "Any reason they're both naked?" Kaiba managed hoarsely, pressing a hand to his throat to stop his adam's apple from jumping so much.
"Making sure they're not wearing a wire or carrying any detonators," Yami replied calmly, standing quickly and placing the clothes neatly on top of the bloodied rug. He propped the bodies upright against the wall to keep them from bleeding out on the floor and obsessively checked their pulse again, even though their skin had turned cold. The worst shock always came when someone he thought he'd killed had magically come back to life. He'd gotten so paranoid about it, he'd always allot himself enough time to stay with the bodies until they got stiff and started expelling fluids. Just to make sure they were really dead.
And now, for the arduous task of cleaning up the way a normal person would to cover a murder, Yami thought tiredly, aware that he couldn't just ditch the bodies at the location and run the way he normally would.
This was his home—Seto's home. He loved this reading nook. Now the wall probably needed repainting and the floor probably needed resurfacing to scrub out the blood.
He took out his phone and lifted the lockdown on the mansion by texting Isono, "got them. Please bring the bins + 2 extra men on your way up to the library and check the feeds to make sure they didn't bury anything harmful in the grass outside. Seto is too shell-shocked to do anything right now. Thanks for your help."
Yami stepped back and slid the gloves off his hands, tossing them atop the rug with a delicate wrinkle of his nose, making sure to put his gun down too and prop it up against the bookshelf nearest to him.
"S-So…What now?" Kaiba asked weakly, hating how the sight of the two bodies was reducing him to an anxious mess. Sure, they were two criminals, but still…they were dead bodies in his library…!
Author's note:
Shock! Drama :O