Transmission #2-0-6-4 Addendum: Postmortem

Incident Report #340091

Date/Time reported: 11/29/1963 - 10:20 am

Location: Ginza

Incident Type/Offense: Terrorist Activity 273.145

Reporting Officer: Metro Chief of Police Yamato

Officially, she had to be listed down as a "Yamada Hanako" for the public record. Yamato made sure she'd be processed correctly and quickly, with as little attention to the unknown, unnamed, and strange woman found twenty yards away from the station. Strange because of everyone else found - to which when he'd left the count was up to eleven now, she was decked in the most eye-catching sort of wear the staid and homely people of Ginza would never be caught dead in.

Large, overflowing, trench-coat covering nothing but a scanty ensemble of fishnets, lace and revealing silk too unseemly to be worn at this time of year, in this sort of weather, and at that place in time. There was little doubt she was one of the "soap girls" normally seen working street corners and alleys of Shinjuku; obvious, by how pretty she looked. "She must've been one of the passengers," Yamato overheard. "Had to be coming from the city, but at this time of day? Who'd she come and visit?" They all gossiped.

Yep, her body being found among the wreckage caused quite a stir, and Yamato had to give to Anko: even dead, she ever had a knack of drawing all attention towards her.

Made it hard getting her into an ambulance unseen, play it off like he was tending to any other body found in the search. The EMT's didn't pay much notice, though; they were still in shock about he whole scene to really be all that attentive. Yamato didn't blame them, but still, was thankful they didn't push when he told them to deliver her and the other few bodies they found to the nearby morgue; Ginza was a small place, but death wasn't choosy over the quaintness of a location.

Which is how Yamato knew something like this incident here was going to stay in the public psyche for quite some time. Like a bad habit seeking its head out whenever misery looked for tragedy, another hot dose to to cleanse out the pain.

"Motherfucker," he curses, the tires of his squad car screeching as they pull into the vacant lot; the back entrance of the morgue was mostly empty, and made for an easy get-in, get-out. Yamato told the EMT's he could take it from there as soon as they dropped off the bodies. "Get back on site and see what else you can find," he says solemnly.

They leave, heads low, visibly shaken. Sirens blare as they pull off in their ambulance back into a shitty situation. For a moment, Yamato feels guilty; he should be there. But his second in command had everything in control. Nothing much else for him to do other than avoid the cameras which were being shoved into his face. Already he'd been bombarded by questions of sabotage and foul play.

They were right, but he wasn't going to cause a shitstorm in the middle of the day.

He clamps down on his fingers, pressing in on them to get the blood pumping; the industrial grade freezer kept the cleaning station to an almost unbearable level of cold. The mortician greeted the Metro chief, the hero-cop, the one he'd heard about in all the papers with all the deference of a man who never really talked to the living much. He muttered, stuttered, and fixed the glasses on his face before starting to slip the latex of his gloves over long fingers.

"Chottomate, Suzuki-san," he tells the man. For his own record, he'd like to take a look at the bodies one last time. "To make sure I got everything when I make the preliminary announcements later."

Nodding his balding pate, the old papa-san hands Yamato over the preemptive records he'd just finished writing down. He'll make the full autopsy report when he's finished, he says. Giving Yamato the room with the five chilled bodies in a line on stainless steel tables.

He breaths heavy, a hard weight sitting on his chest, unmoving when he makes the the long sigh.

Yamato moves down the line, noting the tags along each of them - trying his hardest not to see the smallest one of the bunch, and finally gets to the one he's looking for. Unzipping the bag she's kept in, her pale face pokes out with such serenity Yamato almost convinces himself it isn't her. But it is. And it's so surreal; she never looked this peaceful when she was out and about. Something about her never wanting to stay still, needing to be on the move. Trying everything, tasting everything; Anko used her title as a kunoichi as a means to free herself, whereas for Yamato thought being a ninja was meant for another person, for another time.

"You gods damned bitch," he goes, pulling out her file; Yamato reads it like it's a grocery list for a Daiei run. "Name: Unknown. Age: Unknown: Occupation:... Unknown. Height: 167 cm. And Weight: 45.8 kg - well, that's being generous." Cuts and scrapes have matted the blood into her off-color purple hair, turning her pale skin even more milky white.

This was his fault, he should've listened - she warned him the other night when she'd burst into his flat, nearly giving him a heart attack. And now Anko was dead because he acted a piss-ant, because for once he didn't want to deal with the Old Man or the oniwaban. Because for once he'd like to just be "the cop" and not the "asset", to keep in check all the little things going in and out of Metro. Of which there were too many to count.

For Gato had been making moves.

Under the guise of his Bando Group - port districts and slums near the Bay Area were garnering a lot of interest. With talks of construction or not, Yamato's people had all their attention set up there to curtail the rising drug running running rampant up; these two-bit dope sellers and weed connoisseurs thought they had the balls to deal in the middle of the day, all because Fang muscle was within eyeshot.

Yamato obliged them to think otherwise.

Not to mention the smuggling which still went on between North and South along The Wall (the only time both sides ever seemed to commiserate with one another), the prostitution problem, the simmering silence between most of Metro's gangs enforced by the Fangs, and word of a coordinated effort between the south's bōryokuda for...Hell, Yamato didn't know.

Yet.

To answer that required attention and real police work; not him heeding to a clandestine security group hiding in the Emperor's shaded gardens.

Metro's problems he could understand, but this..?

As he looked down at Anko's face, wondering if they chose the right guy for the job, his mind goes back to when they were just stupid young kids at the Academy; goofing off, getting their heads shaved, joking about better times only found at the bottom of their cups. Those days were fun, he thought. Better now that they're gone. Sort of made you forget all the bullshit they sifted through to be that happy again.

Made him remember her shit-eating grins, her snarky comments; those light-brown eyes that, when she hit you with them, you couldn't help but feel a little something...

In this instant, it was pure, abject, unadulterated terror; Anko's eyelids fly open, she shoots up on the medical table with a start, and..."AAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"AAAAAHHHH!"

"AAAHHH!"

"Ah!"

"Suzuki!" Yamato yells over to the mortician standing dumbstruck by the freezer entrance.

"Hai!" Suzuki nods.

"Leave!" Yamato commands

The man does; crashing through the doors, knocking over whatever was on the other side.

"Anko!"

"Yamato..."

"You're...You're..." Yamato is dumbstruck, looking over at this bride of Frankenstein come to forsake his ever waking moments.

"Not dead? Yeah, I know; third time this has happened. First time I was Thailand playing ping-pong in Ding Dang with a man named Ching-Chong. It was a high stakes game in an opium den and-"

"Anko! Cover yourself!"

She looks down; the zipper for the body bag came undone as she sat up. The fishnet coverings - or what was left of them, and the flimsy dress she had on was in absolute tatters. Not that she minded about such a silly thing like that anyway. Not when her focus gets drawn elsewhere.

To her right Anko takes notice of the line of shiny black bags carefully laid out beside her; her brain is still trying to wake up, and her heart rate continues to flutter, but the realization hits her like a brick to the side of the head. Suddenly, she does feel aware of her nakedness; Anko asks for Yamato's jacket, which he gives, no question. "So...?" her question lingers in her head, afraid to voice it out loud. The slight tremor in her voice tells Yamato more than she needs to ask. Putting his hand on her shoulder, he tells her the blast hit the train before it pulled into the station.

"I didn't make it in time..." She goes.

"Amazing you were even able to get here before it did," Yamato comments; average speed of Tokyo Blue was about 260 km per hour. From here to Metro, there was no conceivable way Anko should've made it here before the train got in. But she did, and the look on Yamato's face told her he still thought it was impossible.

"I had help from a friend," Anko answers, attempting to get up out of the bag; Yamato stops her.

"A friend?" He asks.

"Yeah, what's it you?"

"No 'friend' I know is fast enough to catch a bullet train, Anko."

"Wouldn't have needed it if you'd just stopped the trains like I asked." It's an accusation he knew was coming, and one he didn't sidestep, either.

Biting his tongue, Yamato hits her with a look. Not "the" look, the look everyone chides him for, but one telling her her assessment was just a tiny bit unfair. "The Police Chief of a city with over 6.2 million people decides to close down the rails, practically bringing work to a standstill; based on the 'hunch' of someone whose identity he can't reveal, from a group that exists, but doesn't exist, of an attack orchestrated by our nation's most heinous figure who everyone thinks is already dead. Is that what you wanted me to say?"

"Yes."

"ありえんわー! I do that and my reputation gets thrown into the shitter. Then who's the Old Man gonna go to without one of his cronies to boss around?"

"Lot good it did him now!" Anko fires back, teeth flaring in a snarl.

"I went to city council and told the mayor!" Yamato feels Anko's gaze bore into him while he paces. "I told everyone, and nothing happened, Anko. They didn't believe me, because I had NO evidence to show for it."

"I told you I was being watched when I made contact with my source."

"Being watched by someone you couldn't ID," Yamato points out. "With a source I can't use, because you're not telling me who they are. Funny, how you guys assume everything around here gets done on nothing but 'good faith'."

"For fuck's sake, Yamato..."

"No, don't 'for fuck's sake, Yamato' me! You think this is the end of'em? I got a whole list of unidentified still being processed; I don't know if I'll even be even able to leave here tonight. I didn't want this to happen, Anko - I tried. I did. He knew exactly what this position would be like for me. I'm no vigilante - to do my job, I need evidence. "

Words ring hollow in his chest, and his body gets colder; Yamato never normally got angry. His personality was usually too wooden for such outbursts as this. It was job, he knew that. This responsibility thrust on him once he was approached by the Old Man back at the Emperor's abode back in Kyoto. He'd completed his training, aced all his examinations, went through his own processing with ease thanks to a few greased palms and overlooks. The sun-bathed garden warmed the sand by of the rock garden, the pitter-patter of the koi pond's waterfall in the background. Tea was prepared for two, neath an ornate gazebo with red awnings.

Yamato's transition from North to South came a lot easier for him than most, because Hiruzen saw in him a quality he trusted. Or, according to Yamato's more cynical side, something he found useful.

Maybe he was more angry at himself for not doing the job Hiruzen expected of him, than simply living up to his position as Metro's Chief of Police?

Accidents like this the public can overlook: they are unseen, unknown, completely done at random. Yamato couldn't be blamed, not entirely. But would Hiruzen see it that way?

Or Anko for that matter?

"Bah, fuck it," She removes herself from the body bag - thankfully, his jacket was large enough to cover her lower half, and walks over to him. If she thought he was going to give her his pants, there wasn't a chance in hell. But she says nothing - she reaches out to pinch his trap with a hard squeeze. "We both screwed up; If I didn't get had before, this would've never happened."

It was a tough sell for Yamato to clear things up with the old mortician; in all his years poking around dead people, never had Suzuki-san encountered one that 'woke up'. The police chief tells the poor soul he'd handle her. "Better you than me," the mortician goes, shaking with shock. Yamato can figure it wasn't everyday one of this man's prospective clients got up and walked out of here. To best hide themselves, Yamato takes Anko through the back entrance toward the still empty lot. Another ambulance pulls in, just as he gets her into his squad car. She insisted on sitting up front with him.

"Put that fucking heat on please!" She says, fiddling with the nob.

Takes it a bit for the old car to start pumping hot air through its vents. Took as long as one of those Diesel engine trucks they got in the paddocks. Luckily, though, once it got warm the heat wouldn't relent. Even without his jacket Yamato began to sweat, whereas Anko looked to finally get some color back into her. "Can I use this?" She grabs at the two-way at his console without waiting for a response.

"Anko..?"

She effortlessly fiddles with the frequency, setting on an unused station that had been taken offline for years. Nothing but static responds as she dishes out the distress signal. " 2-54902-Genki-suda."

"Anko..?"

No response, though, one does come from the other end of the receiver; dots and dashes of morse code blip across Yamato's frequency. He recognizes the coordinates. It's a location northeast to the side of Ginza.

"Asshole better not be late."

"Anko I'm taking you to a damn hospital." Yamato tells her sternly, but she waves him off

"No chance of that happening; I already was on one gurney, I'm not getting on another. Take me to the rendezvous point, I know you haven't forgotten the code... Have you?"

Yamato gives her a pleading look, but knows there's no point trying to convince her. "I remember the naval codes, dammit. Better than you do."

"Then get me on the other side of town. My ride will meet me there."

They pull out of the lot onto the bustling thoroughfare where now all of Ginza came awake. The halfway store, sgrocery market, the little market square - all fly past with the number of people drawn to all the commotion. Despite the raw air and the warning sirens, like moths they're all drawn to the sight of the wreckage of Tokyo Blue. Yamato makes an attempt to steer clear from it, but Ginza was a small enough place where it'd be hard to miss. Anko doesn't shy away from the sight of the blown out train, its iron and steel entrails spewed out on the pavement, little spouts of fire here and there.

Yamato was briefed that the train blew about thirty or so yards away from the platform as it pulled in. The explosion knocked it off its rails, causing it to turn and T-bone the entry into the station. By the grace of whatever fortunate spirit was looking out for them, a quick thinking JSDF lieutenant managed to get enough people out and away before the crash ripped home. It wasn't all, but he managed to save enough.

"I was such a mess by the time I got here," Anko said as they drive past; she tries not to look into the faces of the people - the sight of concern and tears ever made her uncomfortable. "Barely had enough chakra to say a full sentence before I assume soldier-boy dragged me out. He okay?"

"First Lieutenant Yoji Itami is in one of the triage tents, but he was able enough to tell us what happened. Of you showing up a bloody mess, telling him to evacuate everyone before passing out in his arms."

"Sounds romantic." Goes her dry response.

"Anko tell me what the fuck is going on? And none of this vague shit - I was clear when I took this position, if you guys want me to help, I need you, him, everyone to be one hundred and fifty million percent clear on everythi-"

"Okay, okay, Yamato; spare me. I'll fill you in on the details. Just take this right over here..."

He does, leaving behind the twisted mess of steel, millions of yen slated for a rebuild, and thousands of hours of paperwork his office needed filing. There'd be no end to it for days, and worse so considering now an unknown "other" at play. Yes, Anko was right: someone indeed was hiding upon this crowded stage of Tokyo Metro, and it was put on him to find out who.

Anko spins a story he's not unfamiliar with: streets of silk and lavender, neon lights on cold, chilly evenings alighting the scores of girls trying to make ends meet. A scene replete with the smell of peppermint desperation, perfume added to the smiles and cheery laughs of people doing what they have to get by - whether they were forced into it or not. Anko walked among these people because their stories deserved to be known, if not told outright to any who'd care to listen (which, honestly, wasn't many). Pimps and whores and scabs and street thugs didn't need a whole lot of exposition; the better parts of Tokyo Metro already made up their minds about them a long while ago, despite them being as much a product of the divide as anyone else.

She tells him her "feeling" of being followed wasn't a one night sorta deal - it had been going on for weeks. Months even, if she could wager. At first, she thought it was some jilted soul, another guy wanting to lose himself for one night with a misfit toy. "A few nights wasn't all business; I made time for pleasure. I owe it to myself, I figured. Yep, honestly, thought it was some dude who wanted a little more than I cared to give. Played it cool a couple of nights. Safe. But...the more I got into it, realized whoever made me was careful not be seen. Not normal for a 'civilian' to be that good, though."

Shadows normally go away in the light of day; not many 'respected' individuals like to cling to last night's sins. Yet, Anko never could shake off the nerve to flinch. To shrug that trench coat of hers a little higher, keep those senbon needles ever at the ready, knives always sharped just in case. Was she afraid? No, she'd been doing this undercover shtick for a long, LONG time; Yamato knew it was the only way she could get her kinks. But the night she'd made the meeting with her source - a source she still frustratingly kept anonymous - that feeling of being watched put her on a bed of needles.

Any nightwalker is told from the get-go to develop a sixth sense when it came to shit like this; lust had a bad habit of turning obsession into a dark, nasty thing. She'd seen enough cut-up dancer girls, beaten up skirts, woe begotten little things in the 'soap palaces' and brothels in Shibuya. But this time was different.

"Can't be sure when the hell it started to get to me - last week, last month. Fuck, maybe since I started this whole 'madame of the night' routine. Had an itch at the op of my ass-crack someone was tailing me, watching my back wherever I went. Like most desperate guys out there, paranoia aint hard to pick up on the streets, either. But a couple of weeks ago, something inside me started to turn my head."

Anko reaches up to paw at her neck, lifting Yamato's jacket higher to her chin. He puts the heat on a little higher, figuring her body's still got to be freezing; she was technically dead for a good twenty-five or so minutes.

"There's no way anybody could ID you," Yamato says to her. "Half of all our records were destroyed after we graduated, and the Old Man's got the other half. Anyone good enough to trail you, and keep themselves hidden, must be someone close to you."

"Exactly what I said before," Anko retorts, but Yamato wasn't biting.

"In the Academy," Yamato presses. "Someone whose got intimate knowledge about you. And me for all I know. Or, potentially..."

"The oniwaban is a steel-trap. You think anyone who's on the outs within the group could keep it secret long enough to pull something like this off? No...I don't think it's anybody like that. What I was feeling the entire time was familiar. Like... I'd been around it before. Ugh, don't give me that look; I know what you're gonna say, and I'm not gonna go there. Not ruling it output because you're such a pansy, I aint saying his name. But, just saying, where I'd been going around has got into some kinky shit. Places where you wouldn't find lil ol' buddy, ol' pal straight chilling around the block."

"Should I put that in my report."

"Fuck off." She laughs a little thing; nothing big, but enough to lighten the tension in her face. First time Yamato noticed the lines around her cheeks, about her eyes; his had come in about four years earlier. He even thought he was getting some gray off to the side.

"My Yamado Taro made me out around the San'ya parts I'd been working. For a bit I thought our circles just happened to intertwine. A coincidence. But when I started working other spots - Pain! Not sharp, like when you get a stitch in your side. More a feeling when you stub your toe. And shit stayed with me. Made me double check every time I met my contact; must be someone from the other side, I thought. Had to be: watching me to get to him. Made sense."

"So it is a guy you've been meeting? Not surprised."

"死ね - it aint like that. He aint my type." Anko snorts, eye lingering on the police chief.

Yamato doesn't see that.

"So you knew you were being followed all while meeting with your Northern contact? Dangerous play, even for you." She was never that careless, Yamato thought, or desperate. But seeing her reaction, it apparently didn't seem to bother her all that much.

"Either him or me, and I was more concerned about me; so I set a meet-up at that ramen stand Ichiraku's. You know, the one near Akira-doji and Mitsuhara. Yeah, I go there in the hopes maybe putting my guy in the open might draw out my stalker. It did. But then I go and screw it up. I lost him in the rooftops after that."

"Rooftops...? So, definitely shinobi." Yamato notes.

"Clearly," Anko's fingers traces the cityscape in the distance by the fog in the window. Metro's skyscrapers cut the sky as if they were trying to give the finger to Kami himself; the concrete jungle was big, and was aiming to get bigger. The Bando group, the Metro city ensemble, Western hotel developers - this place was turning into a dungeon with too many doors, and far too many monsters behind each one. "Anyways, I lose him, and I go see you. Admittedly, I was...emotional."

One fucking way of putting it.

Yamato remembered seeing the crazy panic in her face, Anko's eyes gone wide, and her babbling so fast she was no longer speaking Japanese. Nine times out of ten Anko's word was good as gold; she'd never let the worst parts of herself get the better of her reason. Within reason, of course. But her rationale and her face hadn't matched up at all as she told him what she was feeling, what she believed was happening, what was 'about' to happen. "I've got a bad fucking feeling, man. This isn't right - I don't feel right." She kept saying over and over again.

In that moment in his room, moonlight streaming in painting her in a ghostly pale glow, he believed her fear.

But her reasoning...?

Not so much.

Shiro Ishii was dead, or in a place where wishing he was. Issuing a statement calling for a citywide shutdown, closing the trains and all transportation in and out of Metro, spreading out his officers all across the districts looking for Tokyo's most wanted madman was..dubious. Especially, when she couldn't answer why she'd even consider Orochimaru in the first place. "Don't use that name in front of me!" She practically screamed; first time Yamato ever heard Anko do so. But when he pressed, it only made her more irate. She stormed before he could even get out of his bed.

"I understand how I might've come across as a bit unhinged. More so than usual. But it's not for lack of information, I had a good reason. I know what the hell I'm doing, Yamato." Anko tells him

"I never said you didn't," he goes, rolling his eyes. "When Jiji picked you to investigate the old Akatsuki tunnels, I never questioned it. Half of all Metro's black market trafficking goes through them, but to find them at their source needed a person smart enough to work the field. And stay in it. And last. You were the best choice, Anko. I knew you would be."

"You'd be right in that assessment, Chief. Because, yeah, I found their source. Whoa! The shit?!" Anko is startled as she's nearly thrown through the windshield.

Yamato slams on the breaks. "You what?" He asks incredulously, perplexed.

That fucking network - the bane to all of Yamato's efforts trying to clean up Metro. Yet, another of those damned wounds leftover from the war which refused to scab; every old railway tunnel, overhead pass, and somewhat kinda maybe bridge was assumed to be one of the rebel groups former hideaway stations. No one knew for sure; most of their old eldership was dead and gone, and they'd never written anything down. Hells, people hadn't even figured they were real. Not until one of their manifestos was found on a person hiding out in a bomb shelter in Fukuoka prefecture.

First used against the Allies, then the Reds; the Akatsuki lived, fought, and died through their extensive system of elaborate runways which ran from Tokyo - BOTH sides, to every major base in the Republic. How everyone knew it was Akatsuki was simple: alls one needed to look for was the "red cloud" painted on every wall, house, or hidden stone to know the group's been there.

"You've got to be kidding..." He goes, but Anko nods in the affirmative.

"That's not even the half of it." She goes, leaving Yamato wanting - needing - to ask more question than they'd have time for; he noticed a yellow taxi pull up, the driver - a young man with skin pale like he hand't seen the sun in years, and a creepy smile - stares straight ahead. "The flood tunnels, Yamato," Anko's voice brings back Yamato's attention. "The one's starting over in Kusakabe. In the North. That's where they went..."

Yamato bites his tongue enough to have it cut from his mouth; every bit of her story making him want to shout, curse, throw himself into the goddamn Bay at how stupidly blind he'd been. Of fucking course the flood tunnels! The Metro waterworks hadn't used them as proper drainage system since 1944, shutting them down as a petty move to make the Northies suffer a bit. Yamato never paid them mind as nothing ever went North to South - the only logical method they'd be used.

But he ought to have known - it was his duty to "ought" to know a lot of things. He'd been so overconfident in his assessment where the threat really was coming from - the waterfront - he'd never stopped to consider. Anko tells him not to be so hard on himself. "You're not wrong keeping your eyes on the water, Yamato." She says to him; as it was the water how the bombs were put onto the train in the first place.

"After I left your place, I didn't know where else to go: my healthy dose of paranoia didn't leave, and I was too amped to go and sleep it off. So, went back into San'ya. Figured I'd asked around all day anyone who was willing to talk. A few people were. 'Yeah', they told me. 'A new face been popping up recently.' Not a usual customer, though - not like one of those business types needing to blow off steam, but another type. A guy who didn't like to be noticed, but got off being close to all the action. Places popular with the high-rollers. Mostly Bando group cronies and Fang muscle."

"So, I staked it out. Got me thinking: my perp had been trailing me to the point most of our spots of interest aligned. So, maybe, I thought, it wasn't me he was following. Maybe he and I just so happened to be looking for the same thing. Because later on that night, I catch the fucker. Again. But this time I'm the one following him. Along the waterfront, down to the where the discharge tunnels exit, up to the other side of the Bay."

Realization hits Yamato like a sheet of ice.

Gato had been ravenous lobbying for the reconstruction bid. The man had the money and influence to do so, save for the clean reputation most Metro council members looked for when divvying up jobs. Funny how that one small shred of integrity kept Metro from being bought out entirely by the bōryokudan. Yet, that was only going to go so far. And now if Gato was using the Akatsuki railway to clandestinely move armaments back and forth...

But he wouldn't be so bold as to fund an attack like this?

Would he?

Gato was a business in of himself, and a scorched earth policy wasn't profitable. Yamato wouldn't think he'd have the balls for something like that. Not with the entire Republic's legal looking into him.

Anko tells him of how she tracked her would-be stalker through the Akatsuki railway, consisting of five concrete retention silos standing 65 meters tall and measuring 32 meters in diameter, connected by 6.4 kilometers of tunnels sitting 50 meters below the surface. The entire system was a cover for the bombs being loaded onto the fishing trawlers crossing the Bay. "But they weren't Fang gangbangers helping him load this stuff," she tells him.

Ex-military, she says.

Either former IJA or something else. But they were high-strung, strapped to the nines, and spoke a dialect she'd a hard time understanding.

"At that point I lost my mark - couldn't tell ya where he went off, but figured I had more important things to worry for: I overheard one of those Chon talking about delivering a payload onto the platform for a delayed train coming in."

"Chon?" Yamato raises an eyebrow at that. "Wait, you're saying the men in uniform were Korean?"

"I don't fucking know," Anko snapped. "All I know is that as soon as I heard them talking, I got made. Some jerk had to take a leak right where I was hiding." She shook her head, a bitter smile creepingmonto her lips. "I was sloppy - no sleep, no food, no sex; just a bad case of insomnia, and those bastards nearly ran me through. Gave as good as I got, but swear there was a whole company down there. Got away before a Kalashnikov blows my head off. My mystery man, you see. Comes in like a flash, and gets me out of there before I pass out. Before I do, though, he says to me: 'Tokyo Blue - Ginza Station. Platform 4.' Shit goes black after that, but then I wake up. Here. In Ginza. And then, yeah..."

Yamato's mind races with the implications. Zainichi Koreans in military grade uniforms, orchestrating a bombing from the North, unknown friends in weird placed...This was a level of chaos he'd never anticipated.

Suddenly, the click of the squad car door opens and Anko steps out; the air is nice and fresh, Yamato feels like he can finally breathe again. He looks to Anko who's visibly tired, hungry, and looks to say something else. But she doesn't. Her ride's here, she says. Yamato nods, telling her to get some rest. She can trust him to take over a bit while she recovers.

"If it's the flood tunnels, I know where to start. I can begin preliminary searches there. Not a lot to go off of here, but this can be spun into a bigger search if needed. City council won't get in my way with this. Sad thing is, probably might make it easier for me to do what Jiji wants from me now. Maybe if I'm good, I can finally nab Gato and stop...whatever all this is in its tracks.

She smiles a sofstpoken grin, but shakes her head. "It's not enough; it's not only Gato. He's just another player, Yamato."

"I know that," Yamato responds, though he wishes what he felt was the opposite; he wanted to believe it was just Gato, he wanted to believe it was simply as easy as bringing down the Bando Group. "I got this, Anko. Really, I do. I'm not going to let something like this happen again."

"'We're' not, Chief - don't forget me when you go spelunking. You'll only end up getting yourselves lost down there without me."

Yamato chuckled softly, a bittersweet feeling settling in. "Of that I've no doubt - hey, curious, your mystery guy?"

"Don't ask, Yamato. I was running on near two days of no sleep and his face covered by a hood."

"Wasn't going to ask that. Was only wondering, that feeling - the one you said you got whenever you felt he was near...Well, did you feel it then, too? When you were close to him."

Anko stops in her tracks, and turns back to Yamato. "No," she says, she grabs at her neck again, but her face suddenly gets a soothing sense of calm. "No, I didn't. Didn't consider it before, but...nah, I didn't get the same vibe off that guy.

He nods, thankful at least she can at least get a small bit of reprieve.

The taxi leaves with Anko and her squire in tow, leaving Yamato in his squad car fidgeting with the heat; pants-less, the cool late autumn chill was getting to him. Before she'd left, Yamato thought it was only gentlemanly to give Anko his pants, too. Torn up trench coat aside - she needed something to go along with the prim police top he forgone. It was fine, he'd another pair stashed back at the office. Which is where Yamato figured he'd be spending all day and all night now.

Planning the counter-punch to what was about to come next.