Ginoza had called Kogami nearly ten minutes ago, and he still hadn't gotten any response at all. This was absolutely ludicrous. Did Kogami have a death wish? He must, because that was absolutely the only thing Ginoza could think of that could have resulted in Kogami completely ignoring a call from his Inspector.

It better be some damn good ramen.

"Has he said anything else?" Ginoza snapped to Kagari. They were still ostensibly walking around doing random hue checks, but Ginoza was seething so intensely he doubted he would notice any sort of problem unless his dominator alerted him.

"Nope," Kagari said. "Still just the one message."

"Give me that," Ginoza said.

"Gino, I know how to read…."

Despite his protests, Kagari flicked his watch on, and held his wrist out to Ginoza, who snatched it to peer at the message from Kogami. The message was "bwws gw,l" followed by a ramen emoji.

"Enforcer Kagari," Ginoza said dangerously. "Are you telling me that you saw this message, and assumed that Kogami was getting ramen?"

"Well…yeah," Kagari said. "I mean, it has a ramen emoji. See? There. I didn't know what the first part meant, but…."

"At best, I think it's clear that Kogami's watch is malfunctioning. At worst, and I do think this is more likely, he tried to message us and was unable to complete or proofread the message for some reason. Either way, our next course of action is very different than it would be if Kogami was just getting ramen."

"Alright, alright, sorry," Kagari said. "Is he still in trouble? Am I in trouble?"

"I'm not sure if he's in trouble," Ginoza said stiffly. "That still depends on the reason he didn't answer my call. Either way, if I can't get in touch with him, I think it's time to contact someone who can."

Ginoza tapped on his watch, bringing up the contact information for Karanomori, who was sure to be able to track down a wayward enforcer. And that was all this was: Kogami wandering off again, perhaps breaking his watch somehow, and ignoring Ginoza's summons. Karanomori simply offered the easiest path to retrieving Kogami. Ginoza had the approximate locations of all of his enforcers, of course, but the GPS wasn't very accurate, and he could only narrow the radius to a few blocks. Karanomori, however, could easily run a trace on Kogami's watch, and pinpoint his exact location down to the foot. And then, Ginoza could go find him and extricate him from whatever mess he may or may not have gotten himself into, after of course properly chastising him for ignoring his supervisor.

And that all would have worked out very nicely, except Karanomori didn't answer, either. Still seething, and starting to wonder if the problem was his watch, or if all of his enforcers had agreed to play some sort of horrible prank, Ginoza called Kunizuka.

He wasn't very surprised when she also failed to pick up. Not surprised, but extremely displeased. Verging into downright furious, if he had been asked to name the exact emotion.

"You had better pick up, or I'm transferring the lot of you," Ginoza hissed at his watch, and called Masaoka. He could see Kagari's vaguely concerned expression out of the corner of his eye, but he chose not to acknowledge it.

"Nobuchika? This sure is a surprise. Did you need something?"

Ginoza growled at Masaoka's use of his despised first name, narrowly holding himself back from shouting. Still, Masaoka was the only one who'd bothered to actually pick up, so he let it go (for the moment).

"Where is Karanomori?!" Ginoza snarled into his watch. "Kogami's vanished, and he won't answer my calls! I need Karanomori to run a trace on him immediately."

Masaoka looked around, then showed Ginoza an empty office behind him. "Um, Shion went down to the 'supply closet' about two hours ago. And I can't find Kunizuka, so I figure she's probably down there too."

"No one needs that long to get supplies," Ginoza pointed out with what he felt was almost transcendental patience. "Go down there and get one of them!"

Inexplicably, Masaoka colored and shook his head briefly. "You realize they're- you know what, never mind. All you got is me, and I have…no idea how to run a trace, or any of that tech-y shit. I can't do that, and I definitely can't find Kunizuka or Shion."

Ginoza felt as though he were very close to crying with frustration, but before he could do that in front of Masaoka, of all people, he hung up.

"Um, so they can't help us?"

Ginoza rounded on Kagari, who had somehow managed a complete upset of the rankings and become his least annoying enforcer in two minutes flat.

"We're going to have to go find Kogami ourselves!" Ginoza said angrily.

"Cool," Kagari said. "Um…how are we gonna do that? Do you know where he is?"

Ginoza showed Kagari his watch. "I don't have his exact location, because for some reason all my enforcers seem to be busy, but this should get us close enough. He's not more than a few blocks from us, see?"

"Awesome. Do you want me to look up if there are any ramen places around there, or…?"

"For the last time, he's not getting ramen. He messaged you nonsense, Kagari. We don't know what he's doing, or why."

"Alright, if you're sure. Lead the way, Gino."

"Don't call me that."

Kogami wished that he knew how to slow his heartbeat or calm down his breathing. Blood was pounding in his ears, and his breath was whistling in and out of his lungs, and it was making it awfully difficult to listen for anyone else who was coming to attack him. He had realized soon after he'd stumbled away from the first body that he had absolutely no evidence at all that he was the only guy after him. Which meant that Kogami needed to be on his guard, which meant that he needed to listen.

Instead of hearing sound, what he felt he'd mostly managed to do so far was create it. He had made it maybe fifteen paces from the guy with the pipe before he had tripped over a crate, and gone sprawling. The fall had made the pain in his broken arm ratchet up to such overwhelming levels that for a moment he'd been sure he would be sick. It had taken a while for him to calm his breathing down enough that he'd even been able to stand. If whoever else was in here was nearby, they surely would have heard him fall, which was terrifying to think about.

So far, though, no one had come after him. If they had, he wasn't sure he would still be alive right now. He couldn't move his arm, and he was dizzy with pain. He was pretty sure his teeth were chattering. He had his pipe now, but that wasn't actually all that helpful when he couldn't see what he was trying to hit at.

Kogami stepped forward, and bumped lightly into an unfinished wall. The ache in his arm was so intense that it traveled from his fingers across his chest and down to his hip. But at least he knew he wasn't in the center of the room anymore, and that had to be a good thing, right? Maybe he had partial visibility here. Although clearly, last time he'd thought he was hidden, he was very, very wrong.

Either way, he needed to try to contact Ginoza. He was backed into a corner, figuratively, not literally. He couldn't see enough to find an actual corner. If someone did come after him when he was in this state, he was pretty much as good as dead. At this point, he would be better served by contacting Ginoza than he would by trying to stay silent.

His watch was on his left arm, which was going to hurt. A lot. Kogami didn't want to speak loudly enough to activate the watch - he had to call Ginoza, but he didn't have to announce his presence to anybody else who was in the building at the top of his lungs.

Gritting his teeth, Kogami tried to move his injured arm towards his face. He was expecting it to hurt, but he wasn't expecting the sick wave of nausea that crashed through him as soon as his bad wrist so much as twitched. Despite himself, his arm stopped moving, hanging limply at his side.

Kogami didn't say anything aloud, but he mentally ran through every bad word he knew and then made up some new ones for good measure. And then, he carefully reached down and took hold of his broken arm.

Kogami gasped, then bit his lip to muffle any sound. He was probably about to bite through it, but that was better than screaming. His head pounded with the pain, and he was pretty sure that if he'd been able to see anything, the room around him would be swimming. He wished he could have sat down for this, but if he did, he didn't think he'd ever make it back to his feet.

His lip split open, and Kogami swallowed back a bloody yelp as his arm pulsed in response. He stopped as soon as he thought he'd gotten close enough to his mouth, feeling his swollen eyes start to tear up again, this time with the pain. That hurt too, and this time Kogami couldn't stop a whimper from escaping as he opened his mouth to activate the watch.

"Enforcer…hng…K-Kogami. Call…Inspector-" Kogami broke off, panting sickly. He swallowed back nausea, and more blood from his broken lip, and pushed onward. "Inspector…Ginoza."

He waited, head swimming, for the annoying chime that would tell him the watch had heard his commands. Nothing. Kogami waited a few more seconds, but the watch remained stubbornly silent.

No. Kogami let his head dip downwards in sudden, horrible understanding. He'd stopped the pipe from caving his skull in with his left arm, and he'd assumed the sound of something breaking was entirely from his bones. But now, he let his right fingers drift downwards, gritting his teeth against the pain until he reached the shattered watch face.

Definitely broken. Not good. Even if he had been able to see, Kogami had no idea how to fix one of the MWSPB watches, and he certainly couldn't do it blind. Unless someone actually came and found him, expecting any sort of help was right out.

Okay, first things first. He had two options now. The first was to try to find the stairs he had come up. If he could do that, he thought maybe he could retrace his steps back out to the front of the building, and from there onto the street. Once he was on the street, he would surely be able to ask one of the civilians for help - they would be able to contact Ginoza, at the very least.

His other option was to find somewhere to hole up here. That hadn't actually gone that well the last time, but he hadn't died, at least. And Ginoza was bound to come for him eventually, once he decided Kogami was actually missing and not just off screwing around somewhere.

Although it was impossible to say how long that might actually take. Knowing Ginoza, it could probably be days before he decided it was time to start worrying about Kogami.

Kogami honestly had no idea how to find either the stairs or a hiding spot. Maybe his plan should be determined by whichever thing he found first. It could be kind of an…open-ended plan. That was probably the only kind of plan that was really possible when one was blind and had a broken arm.

Things surely would have been easier for Kogami if he'd dropped the pipe - then he would have had one usable arm, at least - but he didn't dare. He just started forward, feeling with his feet instead of trying to reach out with his hands again, keeping one shoulder pressed against the wall. He thought about trying to open his eyes again, but the thought of adding the stinging, burning pain to his already worn out body was too much to think about.

Eventually, Kogami's shoulder left the wall. It was unexpected, and he had a panicked moment where he was sure he would fall, but he managed to keep his balance. He felt blindly with his elbow until he had the vague dimensions of a doorway in mind.

He was pretty sure he hadn't gone through this doorway originally - he thought he was going pretty much the opposite direction from which he'd come. But he didn't think he could retrace his steps - he was blind after all, and he'd gotten turned around during the fight. Going forward was probably just as likely to help him out.

Cautiously, Kogami stepped through the doorway. His elbow and shoulder were no longer touching the doorframe, and Kogami felt suddenly dizzy at the idea of being stranded without a wall again. Carefully, he turned towards where the wall had to be and stepped forward.

Nothing. Kogami stumbled another few steps forward, extending the pipe out in front of him and hoping desperately to make contact. It would be loud, but at this point Kogami would trade the risk of noise for the advantage of knowing where he was in a room.

Kogami's pipe stubbornly refused to hit the wall, even when he spun in a frantic, messy circle, reaching all around him. His heartbeat returned to thumping loudly in his ears, drowning all other sound, and Kogami could feel the adrenalized panic making even his injured hand shake.

He'd somehow gotten lost just walking through a door, which Kogami knew was a very bad sign for his continued survival. And he'd made noise by doing it - Kogami thought that whoever was in the building would probably be able to track him by his breathing alone. It was loud, and fast, and it sounded like a hunted animal's, because that's what he was.

Kogami had to get away from…wherever he was. Even if they could follow him easily, he wanted to get out of the middle of the room. If he kept going in a straight (ish) line, he had to run into a wall eventually, right?

Kogami's legs were staggering forward before his brain had really accepted the makeshift plan. He clenched his hand on the pipe and gave in - it wasn't like he could think of anything better. He was in so much pain that he was shaking with it, and the adrenaline filling every nerve ending of his body was making him equally as exhausted as energized.

Kogami stumbled again, and fell, the crashing pain in his arm forcing a strangled cry of pain out of his lungs. He had no choice by to lay there panting until he thought he might be able to stand.

If they hadn't known where he was before, they certainly would after the noise he'd just made. He abandoned any attempt to feel out his pathway with the pipe and lurched forwards, as quickly as his damaged body could handle. His arm throbbed with every step, the pain traveling up through his wrist until it felt like his whole body ached, and the pain was all he could think about.

That was probably why he didn't notice the floor until it was too late.

One second, he was lurching forward, pipe outstretched, and the next second, he was falling sideways. For a moment, the feeling of falling sent every thought from his mind, and all he was aware of was panic. Then, he thought that his overworked body had probably decided to give up on him, and he had simply collapsed.

Then, he realized that his leg hadn't given way. Actually, it was the floor that had given way beneath him. He must have unknowingly wandered into a section of the building that hadn't been finished yet. That probably explained why he couldn't find a way. The thin plaster flooring hadn't been designed to take an adult man's weight, and him stepping onto it had caused it to buckle.

Kogami realized, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he was trembling violently. That was probably bad. Everything else aside, he should really be trying not to move. He didn't know why the ground had given way only beneath his right foot, and that meant that the ground could give way beneath the rest of him at any time. Movement would make that more likely. And if the ground collapsed beneath him, and he freefell to the floor below….

Kogami didn't even want to think about that. In his current state, it didn't sound like something he could survive.

Careful not to let go of his pipe, Kogami began trying to explore the ground with his knuckles. Plaster dust crunched beneath his hand. He rapped experimentally on the ground beneath his left knee, which had folded beneath him - it felt solid enough. Maybe he was on a beam or something. It was impossible to say. It also didn't mean he was safe.

When Kogami started exploring the hole that had trapped his leg, he felt something wet. That was…weird. At first, he wasn't sure what the substance was - it was warm and just the slightest bit thick-feeling.

And then, the pain - which had been the missing piece - hit Kogami. The floor was plaster, but it seemed that there was a layer of particle board beneath that, and that hadn't been able to support Kogami's weight either. When his leg had gone through that, it had scraped him up from calf to thigh. Now, it seemed like there was a long piece of wood jabbing into him about halfway up from his knee. Without letting go of the pipe, he couldn't really tell how deep it went, but he knew that it hurt.

He'd already determined that there was a good chance he wouldn't be able to get out on his own. If he tried to boost himself out of the hole, the floor beneath his hand might give way - he had no way to tell from feel what was stable and what wasn't. But he also might do further damage to his already-injured leg - he had a horrible vision of a jagged edge of flooring somehow slicing through his femoral artery. He wasn't sure he could remember exactly where that was, even if he'd been able to see. As it was, sightless, he didn't think he could risk it.

Kogami pulled once, just to make sure, and the wood digging into him shifted. He felt more blood drip down his thigh and pool at his knee, and a second later the pain came with it, harsh enough to deter him from any further movement. He wasn't getting out of this, at least not alone.

Kogami was trapped.

Ginoza looked up and down the street, searching for Kogami, or for any signs of Kogami. He wasn't sure exactly what that would be, possibly a cluster of concerned citizens, or a broken window, or any of the other chaos Kogami might leave in his wake. Ginoza was fairly certain that he would recognize his Enforcer's trail.

"What are we looking for?" Kagari asked plaintively from behind him.

"For Kogami," Ginoza snapped. "Have you already forgotten?"

"I mean, how are we going to know where to look, if he isn't just on the street?"

Ginoza decided not to answer that. He wasn't sure yet, and telling Kagari that he was looking for signs of Kogami's presence sounded far too much like the ridiculous "intuition" Kogami was always going on about.

Ginoza rounded a corner into a dead end street and sighed heavily. At the far end of the street was a half-finished building, covered in scaffolding and looking both unwelcoming and unremarkable. There was absolutely nothing about it to suggest that anything remotely suspicious was happening within its partially completed walls, which in Ginoza's experience, was the surest way to draw Kogami's interest.

"Tch. We're going to start looking in that building," Ginoza told Kagari. "Come along."

"Oh. Why do you think Ko's in there?" Kagari hurried smartly after Ginoza, which almost made Ginoza feel kinder about his incessant questioning.

"I shouldn't have to explain everything to you," Ginoza said, lengthening his stride and trying his best to leave Kagari behind him. He stopped in front of the entrance, where the bright yellow, impossible to miss warning tape had been pushed aside. Ginoza shook his head with disdain and pulled the door open.

"Kogami," he called loudly as soon as he entered the building. "Kogami, come out right now! You've wasted enough of my time, and of yours! Even Kagari's, come to think of it. I'm sure you don't want this to end up in my final report!"

Ginoza was greeted only by silence. Kagari looked around, obviously bored, then shrugged at Ginoza.

"He's making us go after him," Ginoza snapped. "Ridiculous. He's going to regret a great many things when I find him, I'll tell you that much."

"You don't think he's in trouble, do you?" Kagari asked. "It's weird that he wouldn't answer…."

Was it weird that he wouldn't answer? It mustn't mean much. If he was really in trouble, he surely would have tried harder to contact Ginoza, or at least answered the call, and there was, of course, the chance that he wasn't even in this building at all….

"He's probably absorbed in…whatever it is he's doing. We just need to collect him, and then we can figure out what to do from there."

The building was in shambles - Ginoza found stairs, walked through a doorway, and nearly tripped over a metal bucket. He understood the building was still under construction, and whoever was working on it wasn't expecting anyone to be walking around. But still. That wasn't any excuse to be this cluttered.

"What's this?" Kagari asked, bending down. Ginoza looked, and saw that there was a puddle of water spreading around the bucket. There were a few wet spots farther away too - it looked like it had been dropped.

Ginoza opened his mouth to tell Kagari it was just water, but Kagari had already stuck his finger in the deepest part of the puddle. Instantly, he reeled back with a hiss.

"It's caustic?" Ginzoa asked, surprised.

"Yeah, it burned me. Man, I hope my finger ends up being okay. Look, it's already turning red, and I don't even have anything to wash it out with…."

"That's why you shouldn't touch unknown substances without following proper procedures first," Ginoza said. But he was distracted, his heart wasn't in it. Did buildings usually need corrosive substances to get built? Why would there be a puddle of acid lying around? He was starting to have a bad feeling about this whole situation, and the fact that Kogami still hadn't answered was only making things seem worse.

"I wanted to know what it was…."

"We need to keep looking. But…be ready."

The words had barely left Ginoza's mouth when there was a sound from somewhere deeper in the building. It wasn't clear what it was. It sounded like something heavy falling, or maybe something breaking.

"Damn," Kagari said. "Do you think that was…?"

"I don't know what it was."

Ginoza moved forward without bothering to wait for an answer from Kagari, pulling his Dominator into a ready position. Silently, Kagari fell into step beside him, and they passed by the acid, traveling deeper into the building.

Kagari led the way through the next doorway, stumbling as he did so. "Gino, is that-"

Ginoza looked down, feeling his eyes widen despite himself. Kagari had managed to trip over a body, tracking blood deeper into the room as he backed away.

"It's a dead body," Ginoza told him, before he realized that Kagari might have been speaking rhetorically. The body was that of a man, although it was hard to tell what he'd looked like, or what age he'd been, because his head was gone. That wasn't entirely accurate, now that Ginoza looked closer - his face was gone. Repeated impacts from…something had pretty much ground his skull into a misshapen mass of skin and bone, making it impossible to identify whatever was left of it.

"Do you think it's the guy we were supposed to check out?" Kagari asked. "Aww, man, Gino, I got blood on my shoes."

Ginoza ignored him, instead scanning the remains with his watch. He waited for a few seconds before the database scans confirmed a 97% likelihood that the body in front of him belonged to the individual that had been picked up by the Hue street scans.

"Well, this is great! Apart from my shoes, I mean. Looks like Ko got him, and we can just go home."

Ginoza bristled. "I don't know what part about this is great to you, Kagari. A man has been bludgeoned to death, and my most…concerning…Enforcer is still missing! We still don't have all of the information regarding this situation, and I'll thank you to keep your guard up."

Ginoza's lingering annoyance at Kogami had drained away, replaced with a sick feeling of dread. At this point, Ginoza felt that it was a safe conclusion that Kogami had killed the man in front of him, and while Kogami could be violent, even brutal at times, the scene before him was…disturbing. Kogami was still in trouble, or at least he thought he was, and when Kogami was in trouble, he was dangerous.

"Enforcer Kogami," Ginoza called. "Stand down."

No answer, but Ginoza heard something shift deeper in the building, and he thought he might have heard a low, painful sound. If Kogami was too far gone to answer him, then the situation was even worse than Ginoza had expected.

"Come on," Ginoza said to Kagari, forcing himself not to hurry too fast into the depths of the building. As much as he didn't want to admit it, he was worried about Kogami, but that didn't excuse a lapse in protocol.
He and Kagari made their way further into the building. The walls had been mostly finished with drywall at first, but now they were hardly more than sheets of plaster, and there were some areas where he could see the exposed beams.

Ginoza heard the rustling sound again. It was closer, definitely closer, and he could pinpoint it more accurately. "This way," he said to Kagari, and even Kagari was acting serious now - he gave Ginoza a sober nod.

Ginoza and Kagari rounded a corner, made their way through a half-finished door, and then stopped dead. "What…?" Kagari started.

At first, Ginoza didn't understand what he was seeing. Kogami was in the center of the room, turned away from them, and he seemed to have gotten about a foot shorter. Ginoza blinked, and then he realized Kogami was on his knees. Or, more accurately, he was on one knee - it looked like his other foot had gone through an unfinished portion of floor. The plaster beneath him was cracked, and slightly bowed towards the hole he'd made. It looked like not only was his leg trapped, if he moved, his whole body could go right through the floor.