Difference between revisions of "To paste into TVR later"

From WeaselWiki
Jump to: navigation, search
m
 
(3 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
−
For all that happened last night, Rikiya does not remember falling asleep. He jolts awake in the futon, with just a small ache in his chest. His eyes focus themselves on the still-dark ceiling, a bit more readily than yesterday. Before he can be aware of anything else, something begins to shake, deep within him at first, but soon, all around him. It becomes strong enough to rattle the shelves and signs on the dining room walls. The noise becomes deafeningly loud within seconds, and a framed picture falls off the wall behind him. As Rikiya tries to bend up to see through the window, something grabs him by the ankles and begins to drag him, into the hall, out the door, into the painfully bright front yard. It finally lets go of him, and he squints his eyes to try to see what this force was. The light shining on him is still too bright for him to see, beyond two silhouettes, and the rumbling is too loud to know if either of them are talking, until one of them crouches over him.
+
Kei Hayasaka, again wearing her favorite striped V-neck, shrugs her shoulders behind the table. "I don’t know why you needed me to look into this one; those asses are everywhere," she says.
  
−
"You, boy. You're not supposed to be in there. You're not even supposed to be alive." It's a rough and ugly voice, suited only to a select few terrible people, and perfectly clear to his ears, despite the din around him. "Not from the way I shot you before. So this time, I'll make you watch." Tetsuo Tamashiro, clad in a demonic red suit that fits his persona to a tee, marches just out of view.
+
"Well, it's more that I'd like you to pull on a specific thread. I've got a name for you to run. Uh, that is, if you have the means to do that kinda thing." Rikiya realizes that he does not fully know the extent of Kei's awareness.
  
−
Rikiya tries to raise his voice after him. ''You're not supposed to be alive, either!'' But his voice does not work, and his mouth does not open. He wants to lash out and hit this person, but his arms fail to move. Every function Rikiya can think to use is seemingly disconnected from him.
+
"I'll give you the low-down on it anyway, though, seeing as you've only been conscious for the last couple days." She looks off in a random direction from the outdoor dining table, and spots a man in a blue uniform across the street, with similar shorts and mesh tactical vest. It isn't Sugiyama this time; he seems to be on patrol around the shopping arcade. "That guy over there? He's local security. Argus Security Solutions, specifically. I guess they only started to become a thing around here, about five years ago?"
  
−
"And speaking of things that aren't supposed to be here," Tamashiro's voice shouts from just behind him, "how about this fucking eye sore of a house?" The rumbling seems to begin anew, louder this time, until nothing can be heard over it. From just beyond his peripheral vision, a huge blotch of yellow slides into view until it dominates his sight. "Tear it down! AGAIN! Get this shit out of here!" From somewhere off to Rikiya's right, a massive bulldozer plows forth as if nothing stands in its way.
+
"Which is why I hadn't heard of them…"
  
−
''Haruka! Yuta! The kids! I gotta…'' Rikiya tries to get up again, but his chest once more begins to throb, until an expensive dress shoe clamps down on his neck. ''Aniki! Help! KIRYU!'' The shoe's wearer bends over and kneels down, until his face is close enough to Rikiya's that he can almost make out its features. The callously slick hairdo, the cold, traitorous eyes… ''You're here, too?''
+
"Something happened here in Okinawa in…oh, god, what, eight years ago? Nine? There was a big jailbreak, my sources were trying to tell me. Somebody was saying that there was a big ol' scandal and a big-time exec in the police department killed himself over it, but none of that really adds up, to me." Kei takes a sip from her can of Strong Zero. "I mean, I can keep asking around about that part, but you wanted to know about Argus."
  
−
"Call out for your beloved aniki. He didn't save you last time, and he can't save this place either," said the man that he was sure was Yoshitaka Mine. Rikiya's vision suddenly sharpens to its full clarity, as the bulldozer smashes through the supporting walls of the orphanage. He does not hear any screams over the engine's roar - least of all his own. The old building crumbles into dust in an instant, no different from the sand, as Mine briefly turns his head to watch it all happen.
+
"Yeah, I did." Rikiya steals a piece of shrimp off of Kei's plate.
  
−
"Now that he's seen what I want him to see, we don't have any need for him alive," says Mine, with his shoe still crushing Rikiya's neck. "Give me the gun. I'll do it right this time." He receives an old Russian handgun from Tamashiro, then plants its barrel directly against Rikiya's forehead. "Want to cry, now? Do you think he'll hear you, from whatever far away place he's at?" He squeezes the trigger with tormenting slowness, the spring audibly tensing inside the mechanism and echoing through Rikiya's skull, until the hammer drops. There is no sound or flash. The world around Rikiya, especially the two villains standing over him, come to a complete halt, and all is sudden silence to his ears. Even the bulldozer has ceased its roaring. Mine, Tamashiro, and the light all begin to melt away from him, into the featureless abyss, until nothing remains around Rikiya at all. All is a sea of blackness. A hole with no bottom. The event horizon.
+
"So it was a couple years later. Nobody can really say why, but the Okinawa job market is suddenly flooded with people looking for work. Lot of people claiming they've got backgrounds in law enforcement, but nobody that can actually back it up. Okinawa's police force deny any involvement, saying that none of these people have ever worked for them. You could almost wonder if they used to be Family men, but most of the Families have been gone for longer than that, and this mess happened a lot more suddenly."
  
−
Null and void.
+
"Yeah, I was…kinda there for one of those. The Tamashiro Family in particular, wasn't it?"
  
−
----
+
"That's right. You were there? Wait, do you mean…"
  
−
Rikiya jolts awake again, his eyes having snapped open so fast that the morning light blinds him. His throat still feels as if he's been stepped on, and his chest burns so badly that he ponders inhaling a fire extinguisher. His hand reaches over to the horrible rectangle on his heart, and to his relief, both it and his arm are still there and working. He is almost finished with his self-checks when there is a ringing sound next to his head. ''Damn! My phone!'' Rikiya grabs for it so quickly that he nearly flings it into the kitchen. It is, thankfully, still ringing by the time he recovers from his fumble. “Hello?”
+
"Mm-hmm." Rikiya points at the hole in his shirt, having still not found an adequate replacement for it. "Tamashiro's the one who shot me. Was kind of a blur afterwards, but thinking about it, I'm pretty sure he got shot right back. Doesn’t surprise me his family died out right afterwards." Sure doesn't stop the asshole from showing up in my dreams, though…
  
−
“Is this Rikiya Shimabukuro?” asks a pleasantly professional-sounding woman on the other end.
+
Kei sips from her can again. "Well, point is, the big flood of newly unemployed guys? Near as I can find, none of them were Tamashiro's. They came from somewhere else, and I feel like it has something to do with that scandal. I'll have to put some feelers out about that again, I think. But more importantly, all of those people had to get jobs somewhere, specifically somewhere that didn't give much of a shit about where they came from. And that's where Argus came in."
  
−
“Yeah, it’s me,” he rasps, needing a glass of water again.
+
"Argus Security Solutions…"
  
−
“It’s Nurse Hayasaka from the hospital. How are you feeling?”
+
"Yup. Now, the locals aren't real fond of the Argus men. They became Okinawa's top security contractor within the last five years or so, which is unheard of for a new business in a place where there's not a ton of need for their services. But get this: they started replacing cops on the street. Normal police patrols in downtown Ryukyu are hard to find anymore, because you're way more likely to find an Argus man. People are paying 'em, obviously, but I'm hard pressed to find anyone who'd admit to it. Maybe this is the conspiracy nut part of me, but I think there's a reason behind that, and given how some of their guys act, I think it's because they're run by ex-yakuza."
  
−
''Hayasaka!'' Rikiya has almost never felt so relieved to hear somebody's voice. “Mostly fine, aside from some aching.”
+
"Which reminds me about that name. I figured out who the guy in the shades was, that was harassing the doctors yesterday. His name's Sugiyama, or at least, that was the name on his uniform. He's an Argus man, too, and I just ran into him again an hour ago." Rikiya begins connecting the dots. "Given how he was acting, I'll bet Argus is just an old-school protection racket, just with uniforms and equipment to make them look the part."
  
−
“Not doing anything too strenuous?”
+
"You didn't get into another fight with him, did you?" The look on her face reminds Rikiya of a high school teacher he once had. "After all I told you about not doing anything too strenuous?"
  
−
“Trying not to.” ''But you know how dreams can get sometimes.''
+
"I thought you were off-duty," Rikiya laughs. "But nah, no fights this time. Guy looked almost embarrassed to be seen in that get-up. Wandered off before anybody could raise a fist at him."
  
−
“Well, when you get time, can you come by the hospital? We’d like to give you a check-up, just in case. We don’t have a lot of coma patients just wake up, the way you did, and get to go home the same day, let alone… the stuff you did yesterday.”
+
"It's possible Sugiyama's a fake name," Kei warns. "But I can have my contacts ask around about him. In the meantime…he's seen you, he knows you know he works for Argus, and it's entirely possible he'll have warned his buddies about you. Especially if he's got any kind of authority with them."
  
−
“If I find the time, sure.”
+
"I appreciate it. Really, thanks a ton, this helps me catch up on stuff around here."
  
−
"Looking forward to seeing you again!" He almost hears the smile over the phone, feeling a strange warmth spreading from his ear towards his feeble heart. He hangs up the phone and begins to gather his things. His shirt is still hanging from one leg of the upturned dinner table, seeming a bit more hopeful of life this morning. Rikiya dons it, letting the tails hang out instead of tucking them. ''Maybe I shouldn't get rid of it, but I need to figure out how to fix these holes. Maybe I'll see about that as soon as I've got some money again.''
+
"You know it, good buddy," she grins. "Anything else I can get you info on?"
  
−
----
+
"The abandoned building in the alley behind the shopping arcade…" Rikiya decides he might as well ask about the family office, too. "Is it still owned by Shigeru Nakahara?"
  
−
He carefully takes the last of the 45 stairs leading down from the monorail station and checks his pulse. ''… Yup. Still there.'' The pain has yet to return, today, but after so many brushes with death on Day One, there's no reason not to be careful. Rikiya scans the area for a nearby velotaxi, but does not find one. ''Maybe up the block.''
+
Kei's face indicates she's attempting to memorize the name. "I'll see if anybody at City Hall can help me with that one, see if the title deed comes up." She makes to get up from her chair, before bending over the table and giving Rikiya a solid stare in the eyes. "But first, there's the matter of compensation." Her face suddenly looks more intense and serious than it did, even at the hospital.
  
−
Rikiya starts walking, but the first thing headed his way is not a velomobile, but a tall, somewhat plump American man, with a very Dwarven beard and a long pony-tail, probably the most…obviously a tourist… that Rikiya has seen in years. He stops, gives the most exaggerated bow he can, then begins to speak. “[Good morning!] ...Oh, um, good morning!” The tall dwarf awkwardly switches from English to a stilted, textbook Japanese.
+
"Uh…yeah, that. Still owe you some favors, don't I?"
  
−
“Hi!” Rikiya greets, not much of a stranger to tourists. “Did you need help finding something?”
+
"Well, a little bird told me you just came into some cash…"
  
−
“I’m feeling great, thank you!” replies the tall dwarf, with a triumphant pump of his fist, to a question nobody asked. “Do you know about English?”
+
Rikiya reaches for his new wallet, the gift from the Tall Dwarf, but his hand stops before it reaches his pocket. "No way, that's my living expenses right now. I can't just keep slumming it."
  
−
''Do you know about…? What a strange question, what about it would I--wait a second.'' "Uh… no, I'm not great with English," Rikiya says, trying not to slur his syllables together too much.
+
Kei stands up straight and folds her arms. "You're gonna have to pay me some actual money eventually, bud. I'll add it to your tab for now, but keep an ear out, I might need you sooner than later." She grabs the food tray off the table, covered in wrappers and used napkins. "And don't think I didn't notice you stealing my fried shrimp. That's the best part."
  
−
"Well, that's no good." The tall dwarf scratches his beard, beneath one of its elaborate Nordic braids. "[I was going to ask if you could help me find someplace, but I don't know how to do that in Japanese. Curse me and my lack of foresight!]" Snapping his fingers, the dwarf Hi-Ho's in the opposite direction and disappears around a corner. ''I almost feel bad for the guy, but I can barely understand what he's saying. I hope he can find somebody that can talk to him, anyway.'' Rikiya shrugs his shoulders, figuring that he's done all he can, and finally finds the taxi that he's looking for.
+
-----
  
−
----
+
I can't believe I'm actually doing this again. Rikiya ducks under the caution tape, still valiantly clinging to the front door of Tamashiro's family office. The scent of blood still lingers in the air as he marches up the stairs. Today, he is filled with purpose. He once again reaches the top of the staircase, feeling less winded than last time, but still keeping a careful monitor on his heart rate - what energy he has in him today must go to a specific cause. He lets himself in to the patriarch's office, like he did before, and looks at the leather backed chair. The dust has more or less settled, as has the loose polyurethane foam from the hole in its head rest. But, to Rikiya, it's still a reasonable chair, and this move represents him taking back from that asshole that sat in it. And this time, I'm probably not going to get shot at for it.
  
−
The Greater Ryukyu General Hospital seems an awful lot more inviting on the way back in. Rikiya strains a bit to get out of the velotaxi, but thanks the driver profusely for his service. He holds a hand to his brick of a heart again. "This is it," he says to it, "time to see how you're doing."
+
He reaches for the window and shoves the thing open. The dust in the room stirs in the breeze, irritating Rikiya's nose a bit. He reaches beneath the chair and lifts it up by its casters. It is lighter than expected, given the wooden parts in the legs and arm rests. He anchors the chair against the windowsill, lifts, and tips it over the edge. It almost seems to sail in the air, from the third floor window, floating like a chair normally does not. What feels like seconds later, it impacts on the concrete outside with a dull puff that echoes off the nearby buildings. The chair, amazingly, is still intact, though Rikiya notes the cloud of dust and foam particulate coming from it. This task complete, he makes his way back down to street level.
  
−
He is barely into the lobby when a familiar-looking nurse in pastel teal scrubs waves to him from next to a rather nice-looking indoor plant. Kei Hayasaka certainly looks well today; maybe she just couldn't wait for him to show up. Then again, that nonsense downtown sure took a while. "Hey, welcome in," she greets. "Here for the check-up?"
+
I guess everything I own's just going to have to have a bullet hole in it. Rikiya shoves the high-backed office chair into a corner in the main room of the empty Ryudo office, stepping over the detached sliding door on the ground. But at least I'll have somewhere to come back to, to sit and rest. Hardly anybody in the east side of the block paid him any mind as he wheeled the chair across town; the only thing stopping him from going back and looting the rest of Tamashiro's office was the damn staircase.
  
−
"I'm a man of my word, aren't I?" he grins.
+
He slouches into the chair, paying no mind to the awful noise it makes, and digs out that wallet again. He flicks through all the cash inside of it, thinking about what he ought to do with all of it. The smart thing would be to put it towards something he can depend on, like a vehicle. Stock investments were supposed to not be a bad idea either, but Rikiya had never been too keen on the math side of the business; that was always Mikio's department.
  
−
"This way, then." Kei leads him through a couple of corridors and up an elevator. They skip past most of the little triage rooms and the gift shop, and she seats him on a bed in an exam room that nobody seems to need just yet. "Want to open up your shirt for me, real quick?" she asks, rummaging in a drawer for a stethoscope. He does so, being careful not to rip the fabric any more than it already is. The stethoscope is shockingly cold to the touch, but Rikiya grits his teeth and tries to put up with it as she runs it over his chest.
+
Mikio… He thinks about him one more time. For so much of his time working under Nakahara, Mikio was both a subordinate and an equal; more frequently the latter, he figures. The little brother of the Ryudo family. Rikiya often handled duties of a muscular nature, but Mikio held his own, too, keeping the peace in the fish market. And the last time he saw him was in the hospital… in the same hospital he'd wind up in, himself, untold hours later.
  
−
"Huh, does that thing still work when it's not a real heart in there?"
+
He digs the business card back out of his pocket. Mikio Aragaki, driver. The face on the business card, to him, feels more like a cabaret club thing than a taxi service thing, but it is very much Mikio's face staring at him from the card. The hair isn't blonde anymore, and he does look as if he's lost a few pounds over the years, but there's no denying it's him. The question still burns within him. If this is where Mikio is now, what happened to old man Nakahara? He and Mikio were the only people Nakahara employed. His title as captain was ceremonial at best. Did Nakahara move out? When? If he didn't, what happened to him? Who would be able to answer? The only thread he can bear to pull at is Mikio. Something deep within him tells him that, whatever happened to the boss, he is not prepared to handle.
  
−
"Gotta listen to your breathing and your guts, too," she says, and listens as intently as she can. Her face doesn't make it look like she's happy with what she hears. "So, you're sure you haven't been doing anything too strenuous?"
+
-----
  
−
"Well..." Rikiya bashfully lowers his head. "To tell you the truth, I did kind of get into a fight before we met up yesterday, and then someone tried to shoot at me, and then..."
+
A half-hour later, Rikiya has finished making the rounds at the fish market. Most of the vendors setting up shop there have been in Ryukyu for long enough that they'd know who Mikio was, but most of them can't be sure where he went in the past ten years. The most Rikiya can find is that he hasn't been "on patrol" around here for a long time.
  
−
"Oh boy." She picks up a little hand-scanner device from the bedside table and waves it over his chest. With a little beep, it starts displaying all kinds of diagnostic data. "The defibrillator's gone off...four times, in the last day. That's not normal," she understates, squinting at the scanner to make sure she's read it correctly. It isn't lying - there are timestamps, even.
+
-----
  
−
"...and then I had a nightmare. About what happened ten years ago."
+
Kaoru Sayama exits the executive jet on to the tarmac of a wide-open, sun-lit private airstrip. The ocean breeze whips her tied-up hair around like the tail of an antsy feline. She turns towards the old man who brought her here. "This isn't Osaka," she says indignantly. "Why'd you really bring me here?"
  
−
"Any sudden massive chest pains to speak of?"
+
Joji Kazama straightens his vest and necktie as he descends the last step of the boarding ramp. "In regards to wanting you along as an expert familiar with the Omi Alliance, I was not lying about that part."
  
−
"Yes. Every time."
+
"But you were, about going back to my old stomping grounds?" She starts to follow Joji as he walks towards the control tower. "I was hoping I'd get to see my old Sotenbori again, but look at this, I'm not even dressed for it." The pantsuit she used to wear as a police detective, at least, still fits her correctly, though it is a bit stiff for not having been worn in over a decade. The Okinawan sun is already beginning to heat the black jacket up more than is comfortable.
  
−
"That's *definitely* not normal," Kei says, with a hand up to her head. "No, this thing's having to work unusually hard. I need to go get Dr. Hanzawa. Do you think you'll be okay for a few minutes? I'll be right back." She drops the scanner on the bed, by Rikiya's leg, and speedwalks out of the exam room before Rikiya can answer her.
+
"We needed to make a move quickly, before any part of the equation got cold feet and backed out on us."
  
−
''Not normal?'' Ten years ago, Rikiya would have taken it as a compliment. ''Maybe I am some kind of genetic freak. How else could a guy survive being shot almost directly through the heart, and survive?'' Even if it did take ten years for him to recover from it? Rikiya reaches for the scanner, still displaying the diagnostic data from his metal heart. The entire past day, starting from around noon, is perfectly timelined down to the second, in the most clinical detail possible, organized by time of occurrence. 4 Alerts, 17 Cautions. '''Caution:''' Strenuous activity. '''Caution:''' Heart rate exceeded recommended level. '''Alert:''' Stoppage detected, attempted restart. '''Alert:''' Stoppage detected, attempted restart. '''Alert. Alert.'''
+
"And that includes me, too, I assume." I wonder if it's standard Agency procedure to lie like that. She follows him for another few hundred meters. It almost feels like the control tower isn't getting any closer. "And why are we walking? Surely we could have had transport arranged for us, Mr. CIA."
  
−
He has to cry a bit. Brushes with death used to be exciting. Not that Rikiya was any daredevil to begin with, but he certainly never backed down from a fight. Even the ones that ended with him with his face in the pavement. He thinks hard about it and realizes that he's never really lived a peaceful and relaxing life. He isn't sure he even knows how.
+
"They'll be here. But I have business first."
  
−
The nurse and her doctor burst into the room together. "Ah, it's you!" exclaims Dr. Hanzawa. "Er... Rikiya, was it?"
+
The pair climb a flight of spiral stairs leading up to the control tower, where a single person watches a blank radar screen on an antiquated computer, some NEC model from the late 80s. He wears an army jacket, patterned in flecktarn, with a matching boonie hat keeping his scraggly hair out of his face, its brim scrunched up at the sides by the headset crammed over it. The operator notices them immediately, and slides off one ear of his headset. "Yo," he waves.
  
−
"Yeah." Rikiya realizes he's still holding the hand-scanner, and hands it to the doctor.
+
Kazama flashes his CIA badge at him. Sayama, following suit, flashes her LAPD instructor's ID. It is Kazama who speaks first. "Your name is Kurita, correct?"
  
−
"Mm-hmm..." Hanzawa doesn't have to glance at it for very long. "I guess I should have figured, for a former yakuza. Iwata certainly made the right call."
+
"Yup." He sounds like even more of a yokel than expected, despite his few words.
  
−
"Which call was that?"
+
"I need to know if you've seen any local traffic with these tail numbers." Kazama takes a page out of his pocket notebook and hands it over; it is a short list, with only three entries. Sayama does not get a good enough look to memorize any of them.
  
−
"He made the decision to implant a miniature defibrillator in your heart, alongside the pacemaker. The very latest medical technology, at the time. All this time later, it seems like it's still doing its job. Though we might need to change the battery soon." He looks more relieved than he should.
+
"Ain't seen much traffic 'round here 'cept for you, lately." Kurita only barely glances at the piece of paper, before turning his eyes back to the radar screen. "Been about a week since we got folks even landin' here."
  
−
Kei draws the doctor's attention back to the screen. "Sensei, look at the timestamps."
+
"Do you have a log of that?"
  
−
"Oh. ...Oh, my." The look of concern finally takes him over. "Four times in a day? I'm surprised this thing hasn't killed you by now."
+
"Eh, it ain't nobody you'd be interested in. Little commercial airline, tourists more likely than not, came via Sapporo from…" He awakens a nearby laptop, an aging Powerbook with a black-and-white screen. "PDX."
  
−
"Killed?!" Rikiya exclaims, louder than he intends.
+
"Portland International Airport," says Kazama. "Did you note down the tail number?"
  
−
"No, no, maybe that's the wrong word. Um..." Hanzawa scratches at one of his temples, searching for the right phrase. "The human heart is a remarkably fragile thing, for how important it is. I'm...primarily surprised that, for as long as it has been since the last time it's had to do any real work, the device hasn't failed to do its job, even with mere hours between discharges. I'd say you're lucky, but at the same time, this little gadget refuses to let anything happen to you. It's a tenacious little thing."
+
"Right here." He double-clicks the relevant line of text, highlighting it; Joji whips out a pencil and precisely scratches the call numbers on a fresh page.
  
−
"Maybe a bit like the man wearing it," Kei adds with a sly smirk.
+
Sayama is now distracted by all the strange and ancient computers lying around the control tower. It's clear that this place's last modernization was 30 years ago; every machine connected to the tower's instruments is some old NEC or MSX-based machine, with haphazard coils of cables sticking out in random directions. The Powerbook is almost the only exception, and even it is only a few years newer than the rest of the tower. "Kurita, was that laptop already here when you started this job?"
  
−
"So every time my chest hurts like that, it's that little robot inside my heart zapping me back to life?" asks Rikiya, tapping on the rectangle again. "Might explain why it went off when I was..."
+
"PB-chan? Nah, she's my baby. Been keepin' her up here for a while now, good for note-takin' and not a whole lot else."
  
−
"When you were fighting someone? When you were being shot at?" Kei finishes for him. "I mean, I suppose I can't tell you how to live your life, but you really need to avoid that kind of stuff in the future. I don't know how many more times this thing can save you."
+
"Does it connect to the network?"
  
−
Rikiya wants to tell her it's no big deal, that he's been through worse. Not a single thing he can think to say, would reassure her at all. "Alright," he finally tells her. "I'll do my best to keep it in check."
+
"Hell, she's too old to do that. Ain't got that module or connector or whatever. Hell, she ain't even got a battery no more." Kurita holds the laptop up to show her; the battery slots are both empty, and the only thing tethered to the machine is the power cable. "Used to have a real problem with 'em exploding, back in the day. I mighta got one still on the shelf, but I ain't gonna try and use it like that."
  
−
----
+
"That's all, then. Thank you, Kurita." Sayama readies herself to leave again; Kazama is carefully punching the letters from the notebook into his ruggedized smartphone, but stops her from leaving just yet.
  
−
His trip back out of the hospital lobby is slower, more measured and careful than usual. ''Maybe too careful,'' he suspects, ''but why push it?'' Just in case, he does look both ways before exiting the main doors, in case a certain somebody is lying in wait for him. With the way clear, he leaves, to find the velotaxi from before still waiting for him. The driver waves to him and gestures to get in.
+
He shows her the screen without saying anything. It's a transcript of a departure log from PDX from the previous week, bound for Okinawa via Sapporo. Most of it looks consistent with a civilian commercial airline, but the cargo and passenger manifests are not filled out at all. He then puts the phone back into his vest pocket, like a fancy pocket watch, and stares disconcertingly at Kurita. "Regarding that flight. Did anybody board or disembark from it? Were you watching?"
  
−
"Wanna go back downtown?" he asks with a grin.
+
"Now, it's been a few days so I can't rightly remember all of it," Kurita prefaced, "but from what I recall, they taxied up real close to the building. I don't think I saw nobody getting on or off it. I recall thinkin' it was kinda weird, but we got one of them bike-cab stands by the roadway out front, so I figured they just didn't want to walk that much. Was here a few hours, then they called for clearance to take off again."
  
−
"Yeah, sure," he says, feeling more tired than he'd like to be. He climbs into the back and swipes his transit card in the machine, then once he is properly strapped in, the driver begins pedaling.
+
"And that's the only aircraft that landed here all week?"
  
−
"Y'know, I never thought I'd get used to driving something this big without an engine, but you'd be surprised how easy these things are to move," the driver begins, as he brings the vehicle on to the side road. Going by his voice, he's a local; it's hard to mistake the way an Okinawan talks.
+
"The only one, sir."
−
 
 
−
Rikiya sighs, remembering what the nurse just told him. "I'd almost want one for myself, but my heart probably can't take it now."
 
−
 
 
−
"Shame to hear. Way better than the old compact van I used to drive, y'know." The driver's speech has a certain quality to it that Rikiya recognizes, a bit. "Plus, y'know, does help ya lose some weight!"
 
−
 
 
−
"I'm sorry if this is kinda personal to ask, but did you used to be in one of the yakuza families around here?"
 
−
 
 
−
The driver has to laugh for a second as he slows the velotaxi to stop at a red light. It's a mirthful, but conditioned laugh, like he's had to laugh on purpose for one reason or another. "Y'know, it's been a few years since somebody asked me that, I got to thinking nobody ever would again, since I quit bleachin' my hair and wearin' those flashy clothes."
 
−
 
 
−
Rikiya looked down at his ragged shirt, that seemed uncomfortably bright now, even compared to the bright orange vest that the driver wore. He would need to consider getting something less obvious, now, if he intended to not be in any more fights.
 
−
 
 
−
"Nah, to answer your question, yeah, used to be, but that was years ago. Family ain't around, now, so I went legit." He scratched at the back of his head, where his hair showed only the tiniest hint of having ever been anything but dark brown. "Didn't used to get a lot of customers, but I've known this place like the back of my hand for years, and I did always love showing tourists around."
 
−
 
 
−
Rikiya thinks about the Tall Dwarf again, and briefly wonders if he should have given him a referral to this driver in particular. "I was, too, is why I'm asking. Found out I'm not in nearly good enough shape to keep that life up anymore. Was almost going to ask for some pointers, but if it's going to involve a lot of pedaling, it might not be for me."
 
−
 
 
−
"Hah, nah, nah, don't worry about it. If you're looking for some odd jobs, I hear they just opened a Hello Work office, it'd be up the boulevard a bit. I, uh, can't take you there directly, these things aren't allowed on the faster roads."
 
−
 
 
−
"I appreciate it, either way," says Rikiya.
 
−
 
 
−
The taxi pulls up to a stop, next to the staircase leading to the monorail station. The driver turns as far as he can in his recumbent seat and looks at Rikiya out the side of his eye. "Thanks for riding with us, and if you're ever in need of a ride in a pinch, we've got an on-demand service, too. We got that fancy app for those newer phones, but just in case, I'll give you my card." He reaches into his vest and fishes out a little plastic badge with a name on it, which Rikiya accepts without looking at it. As soon as Rikiya's out of the vehicle, something beeps between the handle bars. "Oh, speakin' of which, got a request coming in. Gimme a call whenever, aniki!" With this, the velotaxi takes off again, coming up to speed somewhat faster without the extra weight of a passenger.
 
−
 
 
−
''Aniki...?'' Rikiya doesn't recall hardly anybody calling ''him'' aniki. Except... he looks down at the plastic business card in his hand. On one side of it is the company logo, Ryukyu In Motion, Inc. He flips it over. ''Mikio Aragaki.'' He kicks at the sidewalk a bit. ''Did he recognize me? How'd I not notice it was him? Where'd the time go...?'' He slips the card into one of his pants pockets. ''Well...I guess it'll have to be some work, first of all,'' he thinks, and sets off towards the main boulevard.
 

Latest revision as of 14:05, 20 October 2022

Kei Hayasaka, again wearing her favorite striped V-neck, shrugs her shoulders behind the table. "I don’t know why you needed me to look into this one; those asses are everywhere," she says.

"Well, it's more that I'd like you to pull on a specific thread. I've got a name for you to run. Uh, that is, if you have the means to do that kinda thing." Rikiya realizes that he does not fully know the extent of Kei's awareness.

"I'll give you the low-down on it anyway, though, seeing as you've only been conscious for the last couple days." She looks off in a random direction from the outdoor dining table, and spots a man in a blue uniform across the street, with similar shorts and mesh tactical vest. It isn't Sugiyama this time; he seems to be on patrol around the shopping arcade. "That guy over there? He's local security. Argus Security Solutions, specifically. I guess they only started to become a thing around here, about five years ago?"

"Which is why I hadn't heard of them…"

"Something happened here in Okinawa in…oh, god, what, eight years ago? Nine? There was a big jailbreak, my sources were trying to tell me. Somebody was saying that there was a big ol' scandal and a big-time exec in the police department killed himself over it, but none of that really adds up, to me." Kei takes a sip from her can of Strong Zero. "I mean, I can keep asking around about that part, but you wanted to know about Argus."

"Yeah, I did." Rikiya steals a piece of shrimp off of Kei's plate.

"So it was a couple years later. Nobody can really say why, but the Okinawa job market is suddenly flooded with people looking for work. Lot of people claiming they've got backgrounds in law enforcement, but nobody that can actually back it up. Okinawa's police force deny any involvement, saying that none of these people have ever worked for them. You could almost wonder if they used to be Family men, but most of the Families have been gone for longer than that, and this mess happened a lot more suddenly."

"Yeah, I was…kinda there for one of those. The Tamashiro Family in particular, wasn't it?"

"That's right. You were there? Wait, do you mean…"

"Mm-hmm." Rikiya points at the hole in his shirt, having still not found an adequate replacement for it. "Tamashiro's the one who shot me. Was kind of a blur afterwards, but thinking about it, I'm pretty sure he got shot right back. Doesn’t surprise me his family died out right afterwards." Sure doesn't stop the asshole from showing up in my dreams, though…

Kei sips from her can again. "Well, point is, the big flood of newly unemployed guys? Near as I can find, none of them were Tamashiro's. They came from somewhere else, and I feel like it has something to do with that scandal. I'll have to put some feelers out about that again, I think. But more importantly, all of those people had to get jobs somewhere, specifically somewhere that didn't give much of a shit about where they came from. And that's where Argus came in."

"Argus Security Solutions…"

"Yup. Now, the locals aren't real fond of the Argus men. They became Okinawa's top security contractor within the last five years or so, which is unheard of for a new business in a place where there's not a ton of need for their services. But get this: they started replacing cops on the street. Normal police patrols in downtown Ryukyu are hard to find anymore, because you're way more likely to find an Argus man. People are paying 'em, obviously, but I'm hard pressed to find anyone who'd admit to it. Maybe this is the conspiracy nut part of me, but I think there's a reason behind that, and given how some of their guys act, I think it's because they're run by ex-yakuza."

"Which reminds me about that name. I figured out who the guy in the shades was, that was harassing the doctors yesterday. His name's Sugiyama, or at least, that was the name on his uniform. He's an Argus man, too, and I just ran into him again an hour ago." Rikiya begins connecting the dots. "Given how he was acting, I'll bet Argus is just an old-school protection racket, just with uniforms and equipment to make them look the part."

"You didn't get into another fight with him, did you?" The look on her face reminds Rikiya of a high school teacher he once had. "After all I told you about not doing anything too strenuous?"

"I thought you were off-duty," Rikiya laughs. "But nah, no fights this time. Guy looked almost embarrassed to be seen in that get-up. Wandered off before anybody could raise a fist at him."

"It's possible Sugiyama's a fake name," Kei warns. "But I can have my contacts ask around about him. In the meantime…he's seen you, he knows you know he works for Argus, and it's entirely possible he'll have warned his buddies about you. Especially if he's got any kind of authority with them."

"I appreciate it. Really, thanks a ton, this helps me catch up on stuff around here."

"You know it, good buddy," she grins. "Anything else I can get you info on?"

"The abandoned building in the alley behind the shopping arcade…" Rikiya decides he might as well ask about the family office, too. "Is it still owned by Shigeru Nakahara?"

Kei's face indicates she's attempting to memorize the name. "I'll see if anybody at City Hall can help me with that one, see if the title deed comes up." She makes to get up from her chair, before bending over the table and giving Rikiya a solid stare in the eyes. "But first, there's the matter of compensation." Her face suddenly looks more intense and serious than it did, even at the hospital.

"Uh…yeah, that. Still owe you some favors, don't I?"

"Well, a little bird told me you just came into some cash…"

Rikiya reaches for his new wallet, the gift from the Tall Dwarf, but his hand stops before it reaches his pocket. "No way, that's my living expenses right now. I can't just keep slumming it."

Kei stands up straight and folds her arms. "You're gonna have to pay me some actual money eventually, bud. I'll add it to your tab for now, but keep an ear out, I might need you sooner than later." She grabs the food tray off the table, covered in wrappers and used napkins. "And don't think I didn't notice you stealing my fried shrimp. That's the best part."

I can't believe I'm actually doing this again. Rikiya ducks under the caution tape, still valiantly clinging to the front door of Tamashiro's family office. The scent of blood still lingers in the air as he marches up the stairs. Today, he is filled with purpose. He once again reaches the top of the staircase, feeling less winded than last time, but still keeping a careful monitor on his heart rate - what energy he has in him today must go to a specific cause. He lets himself in to the patriarch's office, like he did before, and looks at the leather backed chair. The dust has more or less settled, as has the loose polyurethane foam from the hole in its head rest. But, to Rikiya, it's still a reasonable chair, and this move represents him taking back from that asshole that sat in it. And this time, I'm probably not going to get shot at for it.

He reaches for the window and shoves the thing open. The dust in the room stirs in the breeze, irritating Rikiya's nose a bit. He reaches beneath the chair and lifts it up by its casters. It is lighter than expected, given the wooden parts in the legs and arm rests. He anchors the chair against the windowsill, lifts, and tips it over the edge. It almost seems to sail in the air, from the third floor window, floating like a chair normally does not. What feels like seconds later, it impacts on the concrete outside with a dull puff that echoes off the nearby buildings. The chair, amazingly, is still intact, though Rikiya notes the cloud of dust and foam particulate coming from it. This task complete, he makes his way back down to street level.

I guess everything I own's just going to have to have a bullet hole in it. Rikiya shoves the high-backed office chair into a corner in the main room of the empty Ryudo office, stepping over the detached sliding door on the ground. But at least I'll have somewhere to come back to, to sit and rest. Hardly anybody in the east side of the block paid him any mind as he wheeled the chair across town; the only thing stopping him from going back and looting the rest of Tamashiro's office was the damn staircase.

He slouches into the chair, paying no mind to the awful noise it makes, and digs out that wallet again. He flicks through all the cash inside of it, thinking about what he ought to do with all of it. The smart thing would be to put it towards something he can depend on, like a vehicle. Stock investments were supposed to not be a bad idea either, but Rikiya had never been too keen on the math side of the business; that was always Mikio's department.

Mikio… He thinks about him one more time. For so much of his time working under Nakahara, Mikio was both a subordinate and an equal; more frequently the latter, he figures. The little brother of the Ryudo family. Rikiya often handled duties of a muscular nature, but Mikio held his own, too, keeping the peace in the fish market. And the last time he saw him was in the hospital… in the same hospital he'd wind up in, himself, untold hours later.

He digs the business card back out of his pocket. Mikio Aragaki, driver. The face on the business card, to him, feels more like a cabaret club thing than a taxi service thing, but it is very much Mikio's face staring at him from the card. The hair isn't blonde anymore, and he does look as if he's lost a few pounds over the years, but there's no denying it's him. The question still burns within him. If this is where Mikio is now, what happened to old man Nakahara? He and Mikio were the only people Nakahara employed. His title as captain was ceremonial at best. Did Nakahara move out? When? If he didn't, what happened to him? Who would be able to answer? The only thread he can bear to pull at is Mikio. Something deep within him tells him that, whatever happened to the boss, he is not prepared to handle.

A half-hour later, Rikiya has finished making the rounds at the fish market. Most of the vendors setting up shop there have been in Ryukyu for long enough that they'd know who Mikio was, but most of them can't be sure where he went in the past ten years. The most Rikiya can find is that he hasn't been "on patrol" around here for a long time.

Kaoru Sayama exits the executive jet on to the tarmac of a wide-open, sun-lit private airstrip. The ocean breeze whips her tied-up hair around like the tail of an antsy feline. She turns towards the old man who brought her here. "This isn't Osaka," she says indignantly. "Why'd you really bring me here?"

Joji Kazama straightens his vest and necktie as he descends the last step of the boarding ramp. "In regards to wanting you along as an expert familiar with the Omi Alliance, I was not lying about that part."

"But you were, about going back to my old stomping grounds?" She starts to follow Joji as he walks towards the control tower. "I was hoping I'd get to see my old Sotenbori again, but look at this, I'm not even dressed for it." The pantsuit she used to wear as a police detective, at least, still fits her correctly, though it is a bit stiff for not having been worn in over a decade. The Okinawan sun is already beginning to heat the black jacket up more than is comfortable.

"We needed to make a move quickly, before any part of the equation got cold feet and backed out on us."

"And that includes me, too, I assume." I wonder if it's standard Agency procedure to lie like that. She follows him for another few hundred meters. It almost feels like the control tower isn't getting any closer. "And why are we walking? Surely we could have had transport arranged for us, Mr. CIA."

"They'll be here. But I have business first."

The pair climb a flight of spiral stairs leading up to the control tower, where a single person watches a blank radar screen on an antiquated computer, some NEC model from the late 80s. He wears an army jacket, patterned in flecktarn, with a matching boonie hat keeping his scraggly hair out of his face, its brim scrunched up at the sides by the headset crammed over it. The operator notices them immediately, and slides off one ear of his headset. "Yo," he waves.

Kazama flashes his CIA badge at him. Sayama, following suit, flashes her LAPD instructor's ID. It is Kazama who speaks first. "Your name is Kurita, correct?"

"Yup." He sounds like even more of a yokel than expected, despite his few words.

"I need to know if you've seen any local traffic with these tail numbers." Kazama takes a page out of his pocket notebook and hands it over; it is a short list, with only three entries. Sayama does not get a good enough look to memorize any of them.

"Ain't seen much traffic 'round here 'cept for you, lately." Kurita only barely glances at the piece of paper, before turning his eyes back to the radar screen. "Been about a week since we got folks even landin' here."

"Do you have a log of that?"

"Eh, it ain't nobody you'd be interested in. Little commercial airline, tourists more likely than not, came via Sapporo from…" He awakens a nearby laptop, an aging Powerbook with a black-and-white screen. "PDX."

"Portland International Airport," says Kazama. "Did you note down the tail number?"

"Right here." He double-clicks the relevant line of text, highlighting it; Joji whips out a pencil and precisely scratches the call numbers on a fresh page.

Sayama is now distracted by all the strange and ancient computers lying around the control tower. It's clear that this place's last modernization was 30 years ago; every machine connected to the tower's instruments is some old NEC or MSX-based machine, with haphazard coils of cables sticking out in random directions. The Powerbook is almost the only exception, and even it is only a few years newer than the rest of the tower. "Kurita, was that laptop already here when you started this job?"

"PB-chan? Nah, she's my baby. Been keepin' her up here for a while now, good for note-takin' and not a whole lot else."

"Does it connect to the network?"

"Hell, she's too old to do that. Ain't got that module or connector or whatever. Hell, she ain't even got a battery no more." Kurita holds the laptop up to show her; the battery slots are both empty, and the only thing tethered to the machine is the power cable. "Used to have a real problem with 'em exploding, back in the day. I mighta got one still on the shelf, but I ain't gonna try and use it like that."

"That's all, then. Thank you, Kurita." Sayama readies herself to leave again; Kazama is carefully punching the letters from the notebook into his ruggedized smartphone, but stops her from leaving just yet.

He shows her the screen without saying anything. It's a transcript of a departure log from PDX from the previous week, bound for Okinawa via Sapporo. Most of it looks consistent with a civilian commercial airline, but the cargo and passenger manifests are not filled out at all. He then puts the phone back into his vest pocket, like a fancy pocket watch, and stares disconcertingly at Kurita. "Regarding that flight. Did anybody board or disembark from it? Were you watching?"

"Now, it's been a few days so I can't rightly remember all of it," Kurita prefaced, "but from what I recall, they taxied up real close to the building. I don't think I saw nobody getting on or off it. I recall thinkin' it was kinda weird, but we got one of them bike-cab stands by the roadway out front, so I figured they just didn't want to walk that much. Was here a few hours, then they called for clearance to take off again."

"And that's the only aircraft that landed here all week?"

"The only one, sir."

Retrieved from "http://www.greyserv.net/wildweasel/index.php?title=To_paste_into_TVR_later&oldid=474"