I shot out of my bed, head swiveling in wild panic. Quickly, I looked down at my feet, covered in white, white socks, and felt a calm wash over me.
Except they weren't white. They were alternating in the dark of my room. Red, blue, white, red, blue, white, red, blue, white. Red, red ,red, red.
Outside my door, I heard the hurried approach of my mothers heels, stamping across the wooden floor of the house.
I was barely able to tear my gaze from my socks, time having blurred the colors together in a panic induced state.
A quick knock knock knock. I could feel her apprehension from here, that she was waiting for me to speak.
I went to the window, the curtain was a stark red with sharp black designs that were unusually disquieting in this moment when I could see the flashes occurring behind them light them into strange shadows. When thunder sounded from beyond them, I pulled them open, looking out across the street.
Police cars, three of them, were right past. They'd clogged the street, and I was unceremoniously reminded of the fact that Kaina's family were actually rather high profile.
There was no hesitation in my voice, eyes glaring sternly at the terrible moment in front of me.
My words were a howl, like old spirits calling vengeance against old sinners. Like tides tinted red crashing over an unprepared surfer.
Not a moment to waste. I smashed through the window, and rocketed out, Khepri's speed launching me across the street.
There was still a chance, had to be a chance! I burst past the police lines, ignoring their shouts, hurled myself through the front door, splintering it. Screams went without acknowledgment as I ascended the stairs to Kaina's room, jumping across wall after wall to dart upwards rather than just run.
I landed at the neck of the house, the stairs ending on a landing just before the last door.
I didn't dare break this door, what if she was behind it? She could be hurt by that.
It opened, slow and steady like pulling off a bandaid bit by bit to see the wound.
Light spilled into the half furnished space, whose dust hung like a specter over the room. Clean, yet neglected, a place barely touched even by its owner. The bed was made, not slept in since two nights ago and there was a pile of clothes in the corner from a somewhat lazy, though not unorganized occupant.
I slumped into the room, stumbling over my own feet to her bed. Sharp hands scratching gouges into the cold metal of the bed frame, I reached down, ripping her blanket - her least favorite blanket, too scratchy, too cold - from the bed as if I'd find her folded flat beneath it and that's why there wasn't a lump of adorable child deforming it. Adorable friend. Only friend.
But there was nothing there. Just a stupid bedsheet, one with characters from a popular series I know for a fact she's never watched.
I turned back, and there, in the door, was the detective I had met the other day. Officer numero uno. I growled, seeing his hand raise half way, before slumping down to his side, his eyes glaring the floor into submission.
"No." I said, answering his unspoken question. I am not ok, "But we will be."
I considered going back downstairs, but the officers were no doubt waiting for me there. Couldn't have some kid do their job for them, that'd make them look bad, better to arrest her instead. That's probably what they were thinking.
So no. Not through the entrance, but this was the attic. The top floor. And ceilings were a luxury I cared to afford for only one member of the Tsutsumi family.
I jumped, ignoring the noise of frightened protest from the detective and burst through the ceiling, coming out above the building. The Tsutsumi's lived in an American style house as part of a population experiment from the 2050s, so no quirk materials to make things difficult.
The moment my foot touched the top of their house, I jumped.
Bouncing from building to building, and ignoring the assault of my mother's call, I ran into the cement jungle of Tokyo.
Eventually, I ended up huddled under an overhang on the terrace of an abandoned apartment complex. I marked the building on my maps app just in case.
Kaina had been kidnapped. No doubt about it. And I was going to find her.
First things first, I needed to get information on the kidnappers. I had figured out their trick of escaping sight before they went to their base, but I still hadn't triangulated any potential locations.
There was no telling how their quirks worked. One of them was allowing them to avoid detection, so for all I knew their base was miles away from where they left the view of cameras.
But most quirks look a lot stronger than they actually are. The key point. I had noticed it when I'd first looked into them two days ago.
If you could avoid detection completely, why be seen at all?
At the time, I had posited that it was because they were attempting to put others off of where they actually had their base. That was probably still true too.
But they could do it alot better if nobody ever saw them at all.
Notably, some of the publicly available evidence came from civilian cameras which recorded it for one reason or another. This implied two weaknesses: Surprise and duration.
Surprise was out, too much luck was necessary to make it valid.
But duration was workable.
I returned to the public evidence charter and, using my phone's map function, slowly plotted out the three key parts of each event. The point of kidnapping, the escape route/duration of camera visibility, and the disappearance point.
They spent no more than ten minutes in view of a camera. And all disappearance points were within forty miles of each other. Now comes the hard part, finding likely candidates within the forty mile radius. The onset of quirks and quirk violence meant that many properties in Japan were abandoned, or destroyed. It's not uncommon to pass by a derelict building, and it's even less uncommon for a gang to take up residence in one.
The police have almost certainly done this already. It may be more efficient to break in and steal the necessary information.
But no, that would be foolish, and much more likely to result in my own arrest. Better to let them look uninterrupted. They might even find her before I did.
Besides, there was one more thing giving me hope.
Kidnapping was a highly inefficient crime.
It was costly. It costs money to feed a person after all, it costs money to house them, it costs money to transport them and it costs money to find buyers. That meant that with such a rash of kidnappings over the last five years, they had to have access to a lot of space. Wherever they holed up probably had some kind of soundproofing.
That meant they wouldn't be in any housing facilities, like defunct hotels, old apartment buildings, or villas, as they would cost money to soundproof, that meant contractors and that meant witnesses.
Check, check, check. One hour, by this point I'd started to feel a little tired. I didn't know that was even possible with Khepri.
Couldn't be anything too damaged, it'd be too public to repair. Collapsed walls, roofs, and total decimation.
Check, check, check. Three hours.
Had to have been abandoned in the last six years. The extra year is to account for operational set-up.
Check, check, check. Four hours.
Hmmm, anything I'd missed?
Ah, couldn't be a shelter. Too much public scrutiny, too many eyes.
Check, check, check.
By the time I'd finished, it had been six hours since I'd left home. I was actually feeling a bit hungry. I hadn't really 'finished' either. There were thousands of properties, and it took time to go through each one.
Still, a couple hundred had been crossed out, and that was as good a start as any.
I couldn't return home until Kaina had been found. Officers would be watching it, and they'd probably station someone they think had a chance against me if I was violent.
No point in risking it all.
Besides, I didn't want to hurt my speed. Kaina was a top priority.
Landscapes passed behind me, falling into blurs as I zipped across rooftops to reach my destination. I felt something shine upon me, the tingle of heat that feels like a kiss from the sun.
Personas didn't speak much, but when they did it wasn't usually in words. I hadn't felt much from Khepri, so it was no small relief to know that I had more than mindless automata on my side. Wishing me good luck it seemed.
An hour later and the warehouse was in sight. Khepri was still energized.
It wasn't dilapidated per say. I could tell even from across the street on a whole other building that the warehouse they'd chosen was surprisingly intact. It occurred to me that if this was a criminal hideout, they might be older than the quirk riots era. Given the intact nature of the building, it was likely they'd had something keeping people away back then.
I made a note of it. Once I had Kaina safe and sound, I would tell the police about what I'd found.
I slipped down off the roof, almost tripping on the wet slope, and crept across the street and around the bunker. A broken window up above had me leap up to grab it's edge. The cut of the glass dug into my fingers, and I had to bite my tongue to keep a yelp down. I scrambled over quickly, not letting myself let go for fear of wasted time.
Once I was in the room I flopped onto a cot. I looked around, noting the desk and lamp at the side, a small trash can with dozens of crumpled papers, each singed at the edges. I reached in and pulled one out, unfolding it and sighed, irked, as I realized it was a complaint letter to someone named 'Nao'. Apparently working in the basement was a huge pain for him because there wasn't much airflow.
The complaint itself meant nothing to me, but working in a basement is somewhere to start. This place is obviously inhabited. Or was. I couldn't hear anyone.
I opened the door, leading out to the center of the warehouse, a balcony overlooking a makeshift living room, with a kitchen tucked away under a larger, suspended room.
First I'd check the basement to see what their work is, then I'd check the bigger room. If that was the bosses, it'd probably be a generally good place to look.
No less cautious now, I crept downstairs, and found a door leading to a basement room. I flinched at a creaky step three times but every time no one came to find me.
Finally, I reached the bottom. It was… messy. Very messy. And fairly small. Dug out in a way that screamed 'I'm not on any official floor plans'. There was paper everywhere. A fax machine, printer and two lamps jury rigged into the electrical system. The lamps lay on two separate tables, one a small table with three chairs in the middle of the room and the other an even smaller table shoved into the back of the room. The light of the lamps didn't connect either, so there was a dark gap in between them.
Most of the papers had been strewn about haphazardly on the floor, but one, on the table at the far end of the room, lay neatly before its chair.
I walked over, squeezing past the table in the center of the room and soon was looking at the note.
It was just a list of various names. It struck me as odd. Any kidnapper with a brain would have a target in mind from the start. This kind of dart throwing was just too inefficien-
Kaina Tsutsumi, Quirk: Rifle.
I nearly crumpled the paper then and there, growl stirring in my throat, Bastards.
At least I was on the right track.
I rocketed upstairs barging through the larger room I saw from earlier and blowing the rickety doors off their hinges.
The room wasn't much neater than the basement. Kaina wasn't in it. There was a bed, a desk, and a lamp. It was just as destitute as every other room. There were, however, two splashes of color to look at.
A tape recorder on the desk, and a doll on the bed. I also noted some important looking papers on the desk.
I stood at the desk, and clicked the tape recorder, grabbing the papers to go over at the same time.
"Hi dear, it's Himiko."
The first paper didn't look promising. Just a love poem, scrawled with angry questions. I tossed it aside.
"Now I know it's no fun to be away from me for long, so I bought you a doll of me - custom made."
This one was better, a budget. It's not screaming 'here we are' sure, but budgets can't just be numbers and objects, there needs to be some kind of location as well. There were a few sirens outside, but I dismissed them. There was no reason for them to come here. Passing by, no doubt.
"But I know you know this is important. The mercs are busy right now and we need extra hands for this job."
Ah, here. A shipment of storage containers to Whetly Exports. I whipped out my phone, quickly looking up the location. About two miles from here. Easy. I picked up the recorder, keeping it on as I left.
"So I'm having you scout out a target with them. Far away from base. My quirk won't work on them so don't get mad. Two of them are gay, so."
She stopped, as if shrugging, and I started jogging downstairs to see if I could find an exit.
"Anyways. I have to go, Honey. Will you love me?"
Ha. No. That's a weird way to say goodbye, but these two were apparently a weird kidnapper couple so maybe that's just natural. Ah, here we go, side door.
I opened it, and came face to face with a dozen police officers.
"Kotone Shiomi, you're under arrest."
A/N Fun fact, because Anxiety 1.4 took so long, 6, 5, 7, and 8 have been done for ages. 9 is the only proper unfinished one, the finale just needs a redo because 9 ended up going a different direction. But like, 1.4 was so bad guys. I could never bring it up to snuff : (
Next chapter is a sexy sexy interlude. Minus the sexy parts. Unless you're like me and would kiss incredibly good writing on the lips. #humble #Stayhumbleguys
