Noir Fan Fiction ❯ Red and Black ❯ Dark Crossing ( Chapter 21 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Red And Black - By Kirika

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The twenty-first chapter. At last! Action! Plot! >_<

- Kirika

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Chapter 21 - Dark Crossing


“You’ll crease your suit lying like that.”

Mireille’s chiding tugged Kirika’s head to roll toward the bedroom’s door, herald for the towel-wrapped woman’s appearance. Mireille had declared that Kirika shower before her to allow her the opportunity to unearth suitable clothing for the imminent ‘assignment’ from the wardrobes their baggage supplied. The outcome had been the squeaky clean younger girl welcomed back from her morning wash by her slate-grey business suit and a white shirt with a red decorative cord for the collar arranged for her on the bed, and the blonde responsible for the service only now finishing her own lavations.

Remaining inert, Kirika’s eyes; exempt from her body’s indolence; moved with Mireille as the blonde strode to the chest of drawers standing against the wall to the left of the bed; and to the left of Kirika sprawled upon it; arms outstretched and her legs apart as wide as her skirt permitted. The bed wasn’t made, a match for the girl’s untidy lassitude, although the covers had been sloppily pulled to the pillows in a disheveled show of order. Idly Kirika mused whether she had creases in her clothing the same as the messy bed sheets, as per her partner’s warning. She didn’t think it would matter much to her cover if she did, but Mireille acclaimed a neat presentation of one’s self, so for that sake she hoped to have escaped a rumpling. Mireille would usually see to it herself to straighten Kirika up if not. The close, personal attention wasn’t something to really deserve shunning however, and the girl supposed it was for that particular reason that she was in no hurry to observe Mireille’s direction… for now.

Mireille grappled at the towel wrapping around her as it apparently threatened to slip and unravel, and stripped off the hood made from a second towel she wore over her head with a yank from her other hand, wet flaxen hair spilling loose in a tangled affair. Her back was to Kirika, but it was still hard to look away. There was appreciation to discover in all aspects of Mireille’s figure, and from every angle. Perhaps prolonging her comfortable view of her sculptured beloved was one more motivation to linger in lethargy.

Kirika sat up to the blare of the hairdryer going, choosing the edge of the bed furthest from Mireille to swing her legs over before her feet touched the floor. There was a threshold for how long she could shirk an instruction from Mireille. She didn’t want to get a stricter scolding after all. Moreover, there was an instinct, an inherent need, to obey her blonde partner encoded within Kirika. The longer she disregarded supervision given by Mireille, the greater the urgency to fulfill it she felt. As the rebellious seconds ticked, each was synonymous to a step toward navigating deeper into a thickening minefield. Kirika became progressively restless, on edge; her thoughts grew to focus on nothing else but her lapse, and physical irritation manifested though missing a tangible source; her skin itching in, conveniently, awkward to reach spots, and aches that weren’t there before suddenly were. Whatever activity she was doing or repose she was in was cursed, sucked of appeal and comfort.

Yet for all the penalties of defiance, seldom did Kirika suffer them. Kirika was punctual to mind Mireille’s word because she wanted to. Whether there was distinction between the innate impulse to do as she was told and the desire in her heart to, she couldn’t deduce it. It wasn’t relevant. Their goals were the same, and pleasing Mireille was the end result.

Heedless of locating and smoothing away any wrinkles in her outfit she might have, Kirika’s head crept over her shoulder, choosing the ecstasy of drinking in her love’s splendor once more, her eyes addicted to it and her heart to the woman inside who modeled it. Mireille’s stream of blonde locks were the main attraction as their alluring owner methodically ran her wooden hairbrush down their length under the heat of the hairdryer, spun gold coming to luster as the damp was gradually coaxed out. It was always that brush of rosy wood with the faded gold detail around the rim of the back face; wherever in the world Kirika and Mireille went, it traveled in their company.

Kirika had wondered before if the hairbrush carried personal importance for her partner; some keepsake of her home in Corsica, maybe? It looked as if it had a history with its dulled decorative pattern; the colour likely as bright as Mireille’s tresses at that history’s beginning. It might have belonged to her mother. If it had, it was to some extent Kirika’s keepsake too. A memento of the person who had blessed her with the seed that would bear a greater existence than the hateful one originally intended for her, even while Kirika had been at the point of extinguishing hers. Kirika could never forget her or the kindness she had shown in the face of her death, to its harbinger no less. Kirika could see her in Mireille--in heart and spirit, and even in looks. Odette Bouquet lived on in her daughter.

Mireille dedicated a prolific amount of time in the morning and even more so at night to combing her hair with her favoured brush; stroke after stroke, over and over that Kirika gave up keeping a tally of how often it parted and caressed those silken strands. Like magic the hairbrush brought out the best in Mireille’s hair; somehow polishing the mane to a glossy sheen and inspiring a buoyant bounce to the way it fell and moved. Kirika ached to brush her beloved’s hair to that brilliance. To spend the hours peacefully watching up close as her brushstrokes glided down the blonde cascade, being near enough to pick up its scent, near enough to let her fingers flow through the locks whenever she craved the divine sensation of softer than silk. If only Kirika had the daring to ask and the confidence she could brush Mireille’s hair in the proper fashion. If only. In the deficiency, Kirika had to be content at admiring the perfect beauty with a distance forever a buffer. Perhaps radiance as Mireille possessed wasn’t meant to be touched but merely treasured with the eyes… and longed for in the heart.

She could have sat staring all morning--she could have sat for as long as Mireille was there to behold--but eventually Kirika stood up from the bed, running her hands over her skirt to flatten it out this time around, just to be safe. A straightening tug on the bottom of her jacket later and she was wandering toward the bedroom’s sole window, knowing the sights it had on offer behind the shut drapes. It was a school day, after all.

With the forethought of the vigilant, Kirika eased open a break in the curtains, employing a single finger; the gap a nigh on incidental crinkle in the fabric to those on the outside of the glass windowpane, but a peephole for the orchestrating girl on the inside. The sun however, never the fool like those it shined on below, leapt on the opportunity to cast a bright limb into the room, yet Kirika had foreseen and sidestepped even its reach. It was a risk gazing out the window; any antagonist could be gazing back, and the unnecessary security breach would vex Mireille if too gaudy or possibly even out of sheer principle; but Kirika had tweaked the odds of the gamble radically in her favour. The assassin was no more exposed to a sniper scope or camera lens than she was to an onlooker’s eye. A critiquing azure look at her back was the greater peril on her mind, however Kirika trusted her canny approach would prove to mitigate that.

The window was host to the street in front of the Yuumura house below, a slice of suburban living spread out with skyscrapers of the city distant, behind the trees and power lines and neighbours’ houses. It was a threshold to what might have been; to the other world.

A gaggle of giggling high school girls roamed the pavement outside the house, tracing a path Kirika used to follow and still remembered. The uniforms were the same, although the weather saw coats worn over the blue winter version of them. Tsubaki High School went on without her. Kirika wondered what had become of her classmates. She recognised none in the group below. Were the girls and boys of class 2-4 still there? Did they speculate on where she had suddenly gone? Did they remember her sometimes? Or had it been as though Kirika had never been a part of their class, their school, and her disappearance was akin to an eraser removing a mistake--dismissed without a vestige remaining to mark her existence? It was in the realm of Soldats to have lubricated her departure once Japan had seen Kirika and Mireille’s backs; paperwork vanishing and faculty coerced into forgetting about one quiet, unassuming girl. It wasn’t as though Kirika had formed friendships in Tsubaki High School or left an impact on any of her teachers. Even in the world of light she had tread in darkness; she had been of the friendless, a shadow while everyone around her had been bright. The stigma of a killer, a sinner, was not something shed with a simple loss of memory. Kirika had never been one of them.

The girls down there… glass separated them, but they and Kirika were a world apart. Their world was not Kirika’s, just as Kirika’s world was alien to them. Their naivety to it made them safe; kept them smiling. Kept them in the light. It was better for them to not know her. Like Heaven and Hell were separated, a demon was out of place in paradise. Kirika would always see their world through a window; she’d never truly live in it. Still, she hoped that one day she might find a place of sorts in it, but Kirika’s eyes had seen too much death and her hands been wet with too much blood. The light would never wash the shadow from her, not completely.

The hairdryer switched off, and Kirika let the schoolgirls blur as she focused her gaze on Mireille’s reflection on her side of the glass, the blonde’s image overlapping the group. In the choice between light and dark, Kirika would always stand where it was blackest for as long as Mireille chose the dark--beside the woman she loved. That was her purpose this morning and the next, and for every one thereafter while they lingered in their sinister world. The girls walking to school could not allege to have an equal or more important function, and in that sense Kirika had something over them and their peaceful existence. Something beautiful flourished in the deep blackness, like a flower blooming in a land otherwise constantly ravaged by war. It was that lone flower Kirika held in her heart for succour and what caused a euphoric swelling there in her breast. She fought in support of Mireille, to ensure the darkness didn’t claim the breathtaking woman’s life--that nothing would. It was an honour made in love and upheld with love, and even if they did manage simpler, quieter lives together one day, that honour would persist. Mireille and the amazing feelings they shared was Kirika’s pinprick of light in the vast dark, but it was vibrant and clear, and couldn’t be encroached by the void around it.

<Sinners always try to justify their crimes; do you think you are any different? Sin is sin; the grey world doesn’t exist. Nothing glorifies it.>

Kirika watched Mireille in the window as the blonde walked over to their luggage, the girl’s brow creasing slightly as she tried hard to concentrate on her adored partner alone. The voice in her head belonged to Altena, but it didn’t speak like her. Kirika was starting to doubt if her other self had been the prodigy that she had always thought her to be; the perfect student of Altena and her enclave, robotic in following their creed. Altena had relished in submerging herself in sin; she of anybody found grandeur in it. Then again, the voice was not to be trusted. She worked to undermine Kirika, stoking her fears while gnawing at her spirit. To what end, Kirika did not like thinking about.

Mireille bent over to dig around in her bag, and Kirika discovered her eyes alighting on her partner’s upraised bottom. It turned out to be as engrossing as every other occasion her gaze loitered on it, clearing her mind of her perturbing thoughts--all thought, really. Her mind, ordinarily an indiscriminate sea of churning waves and drifting streams went quite silent and still; what always happened during the moments she was particularly mired in gazing deeply and fondly at Mireille. The towel covered most of the blonde’s posterior--it was rare to catch it exposed, and then only flashes--but in the dim outline the window-turned-mirror provided, Kirika thought she could *just* see up inside it. If only the angle were better….

It became an unnatural obsession--Kirika subtly tilting her head this way and that to see whether the new perspectives created would let her view more of the cheeks of her love’s rear. Mireille’s bottom sashaying a little from side to side while she rummaged only heightened Kirika’s level of heady enthrallment. It always moved, swayed, so… so…. Kirika didn’t have a word for how it moved, but it was nice to watch. From far, far away a tiny thought mused on why naked bottoms weren’t shown on television. Or for that matter, naked women like Mireille. That might be a program Kirika would enjoy and make an effort to see. The girl guessed it was due to propriety again; there were some places on the human body that were just hidden as a rule. Kirika would cover herself too while dressing sometimes, when she remembered. But again, it was merely because it was something she believed she was meant to do. At least when she forgot to Mireille didn’t admonish her for it, probably because Kirika was either in the privacy of their bedroom or secluded behind a curtain in a store’s changing room.

Mireille stood up straight, Kirika’s toil to see what she wasn’t meant to for naught, and the girl’s mental faculties returned to her, though how she was feeling disappointed was the first thought shaped. Kirika didn’t budge from her position however, still hopeful for more. There had never been an assignment so dangerous that could match these feelings--the sensation of spicy anxiousness, the flavour of genuine fear nearly, but fear she *wanted* to face and that tamed her breathing to a slow and measured tempo. When her gun was in her grasp Kirika was never afraid or eager for the possible exchange of fire ahead. She felt nothing. This was something else. She tingled with life inside.

From Mireille’s likeness in the window Kirika could pick out a lacy pair of black panties and matching bra in the blonde’s hand, delicate things unlike the underwear the younger girl had. Mireille’s undergarments came in an array of colours and styles, and in fabrics like satin and silk and lace. Kirika’s were so very plain by comparison--cotton mostly cut in straightforward designs, and white and pink and blue the usual shades. She supposed her underwear served its purpose well enough, but Mireille’s was pretty, especially once on the woman’s body. Kirika had even glimpsed panties that left the blonde’s bottom cheeks bare! It was strange to wear garments that looked so nice when no one got to see them under your clothing. There had to be a reason, but it was a mystery to Kirika.

Still, Kirika wouldn’t have minded so much trying on attire like that, but Mireille didn’t possess the same devotion she had choosing Kirika’s undergarments as she did the rest of her partner’s wardrobe. They were always selected in a hurry, with rarely much browsing involved. It continued to the instances when Mireille laid out her clothes for her; the woman let Kirika decide on her own what to don underneath it. This morning had been no exception; Kirika’s suit had been missing a set of underwear. The girl didn’t know why. True, it wasn’t often she thought she needed to wear a bra. She simply put on the clothes she had and it didn’t seem to make a difference lacking one. Mireille always wore one, or something like it, however she was a lot bigger up there. Maybe Kirika’s size was why Mireille didn’t bother spending the time.

Mireille paused suddenly and glanced over her shoulder, and for a second Kirika thought she was going to get in trouble for peeking out the window, or worse, caught peeking at her. Mireille didn’t like it when Kirika watched her change. Kirika was shooed away rather brusquely when she had first sat there staring after moving in with the blonde, teaching her not to look so obviously again. Kirika had undressed and dressed in the company of her classmates for gym without generating an acrid reaction, but perhaps there were different standards in school.

Apparently Kirika’s spying on both counts was overlooked or unnoticed for now, as Mireille was content to look away and put on her panties. She slipped them on underneath her towel however; the veiled approach her normal habit while Kirika was around. But after a wiggle of her hips to get comfortable in her black underwear, the towel fell from Mireille to encircle her feet, and Kirika was treated to her partner’s bare back. The dimple of perfect alabaster skin down the center that followed that sinuous curve, ending at the woman’s albeit panty-clad round bottom, only for two long, slender, beautifully toned legs to carry on the rest of the way downwards…. Kirika’s eyes didn’t want to leave. It was as close to seeing all of Mireille without the blanketing distraction of clothes that Kirika was ever privileged to. Mireille packaged herself attractively in elegant apparel, but regardless of how stylish the clothes were there was no fabric on par with the blonde’s naked flesh--her true, unadorned self.

Mireille threaded her arms through the shoulder straps of her bra, and then after fiddling with it at the front, fastened the clasp at her back. She bent at the waist again to retrieve something out of her bag, but it was for the shortest of moments. However, as consolation, when she rose her stretched underwear was pushed a little bit between the two cheeks of her bottom, creating some delightful contours.

At last Mireille turned around--side-on to at least allow Kirika to properly revere her stature in lace underwear--and she walked over to sit on the edge of her half of the bed. She gathered together what looked like a tan knot of material in her hands and reached down to her feet. When the blonde sat back up, sheer nylon was unrolled along her calves. Mireille got to her feet to pull the remainder of the elastic material past her thighs and over her hips, and then shimmied those hips to and fro as she adjusted the pantyhose to her liking, her thumbs stretching and twisting the waistband about. She grumbled wordlessly under her breath throughout--low mutterings, probably deliberately subdued so that Kirika wouldn’t hear, however they failed to be amply muffled that the girl’s receptive ears weren’t piqued--and pulled a variety of discontent expressions before finally leaving the waistband alone. Tights weren’t a favourite of Mireille’s, but her penchant for very short skirts saw them as part of her garb all too frequently. On one of their numerous fashion-related forays, Mireille had sternly educated Kirika on the topic of pantyhose being a poor and distasteful substitute for thigh-high stockings and garter belt, or even just the stockings. She didn’t remark why exactly, but her abhorrence was unmistakable.

Kirika had her theories she tossed around in her mind, of course. Pantyhose were plain--black, brown or white were the only hues Kirika had observed in her partner’s wardrobe, and with no patterns or designs to speak of--whereas Mireille was fond of pretty things. Contrary, Mireille’s stocking collection, while not having many extra colours, had lots and lots of diverse decoration. Kirika had seen stockings resembling netting; loose like a chain-link fence or tight akin to mesh; stockings with stitched butterflies, stockings with vertical stripes, stockings with horizontal stripes, stockings with checkers--then there was the lace band at the tops, and the garters too! The assortment was as great as their wearer’s taste for them.

Perhaps pantyhose had a comparable selection, but Mireille simply didn’t entertain it. Kirika wasn’t as offended by tights as the blonde; she wore a tan pair like Mireille did now, although granted it was uncommon--hosiery didn’t fall under the category of underwear according to the woman, and was typically set out for Kirika by her--but she had to agree that stockings were nicer. Kirika felt fine wearing pantyhose herself; the texture of nylon was rather pleasant to run her hands down; and they did accentuate Mireille’s legs as superbly as thigh-high stockings did, but stockings; and especially when complemented with a garter belt; had an allure unmatched by their lengthier sister. That stockings didn’t completely cover the whole leg, sparing a tantalising space of thigh above an eye-catching lace design, made them the winner in Kirika’s opinion. She got to look at Mireille’s legs attractively attired and yet still had some of her love’s skin on open display--a sampling of both beauties. And while it was correct that Kirika couldn’t catch sight of Mireille’s panties once the blonde was fully dressed, she didn’t like how pantyhose fit so high on her partner’s hips. She felt it was a shame to obscure pretty underwear of the kind Mireille had during the times it was revealed.

Kirika hadn’t had the experience of slipping on a set of thigh-high stockings of Mireille’s sort, and never a garter belt. Hers were always basic like the blonde’s tights, and cotton, and the lace was absent. Similar to her underwear in fact, which rendered Kirika musing on the secret of why Mireille didn’t handle her hosiery the same as she ministered to her undergarments. She tried, but Kirika wasn’t sure she’d ever understand fashion, or at least Mireille’s interpretation of it.

Mireille made to walk back to her bags, however she stopped when she was faced with Kirika at the window, and as though seeing the girl there for the first time, struck a rigid, officious pose; her hips swung to one side and a hand found purchase on the raised swell. She frowned like that at Kirika’s back for a second or two, her look predictably disapproving, but then resumed her course to the foot of the bed.

Once there, Mireille leaned over her luggage, hovering on one foot while the other lifted for balance behind her, and with her fingertips plucked a white shirt from one of her bags by its collar. “There must be something very interesting out there,” she remarked as she shook out the shirt. The blonde must have felt she had enough clothes on now to tolerate Kirika’s visual attention.

Even so, Kirika was sluggish in turning around and leaving the curtain, the acclimatised convention for when her partner was dressing keeping her chary while also that she had been spying making her unwilling to present herself as too keen to look. “Mmm… not so much,” Kirika said, her finger slipping from the drape. The outside didn’t beguile so much this occasion; for all its temptation it was the inside that sported the greater lure. Peace and wishes were for tomorrow; the gun and a promise were for today.

Mireille seemed grim when Kirika finally faced her head-on, the woman concentrating too fixatedly on finding the sleeves of her shirt for her arms. She tugged sharply on the shirt’s lapels, the fabric answering with a crisp snap, and then began to button it from the top downward. “We’ll be home soon,” Mireille said after she had worked about halfway down the shirt, not looking up from her fastening fingers. She had spoken of the return home seldom, yet the hope was everlasting hanging in the air amidst Kirika and Mireille, and the times she had given them voice were notable enough for the declaration to have neared becoming a mantra, or perhaps a prayer; one shared by them both.

“Mm,” Kirika nodded. She tried to draw comfort from Mireille’s assurance whenever the woman gave it; to believe her; but each time it was uttered some of its promise eroded in the girl’s heart and in her partner’s voice. Today would see if Mireille’s conviction was vindicated, or if the assuring veneer would be abraded to a false hope underneath.

Mireille finished doing up her shirt and procured a lavender skirt and jacket from her bag; a matching set. She tossed the jacket on the bed and then stepped into the skirt before pulling it up to her waist, wriggling her hips again--which Kirika took notice of, hopefully not too obviously--to ease it along. It was rather petite like Kirika had suspected, climbing high on her thighs well above her knees, and with a slit down the side of the left leg to expose more pantyhose. Although it would give more freedom of movement than Kirika’s much longer grey skirt that was cut to just beyond her knees and had its slit in the back, the girl was positive that Mireille hadn’t decided on it for its strategic good sense.

Mireille ensured that her shirt was tucked into her skirt smoothly by way of her hand feeling under the waistband’s circumference, and then walked back to the chest of drawers. It wasn’t just a place to style her hair; Mireille had set up a makeup station there on top of the drawers as well. She leaned close and stared into the little mirror she had propped up against some books, and reminiscent of an artist to a canvas, applied her special paints to her features. Her eyelashes were teased with brushes and her lips carefully coated with lipstick, powder was dabbed and then coloured pencils were used for the final touches. It looked complex and painstaking, but Mireille was packing away her cosmetics bag for another morning in no time.

Kirika hadn’t tried painting her face, at least not for the titivating aim her partner did; camouflage mix for dense foliage and black smears for especially treacherous night assignments were her colours, and the application of both were empty of the delicate diligence the blonde demonstrated with her bevy of attractive shades. Mireille had yet to introduce the practice to her either, the absence of a teacher all but ending any exploration into the ritual before it could begin. Nonetheless, Kirika didn’t feel as though she was less for not wearing makeup. She had stared into a mirror a few times, straining to imagine what her visage might look like with a glaze of cosmetics, but the face staring back at her didn’t alter a notable extent. Kirika took that as her features being fine without makeup, however it would have been nice to try wearing it once. Imagination was no substitute for the real thing, and she could have been wrong about its effect.

Mireille didn’t truly require makeup either actually, and yet following the woman’s efforts Kirika was always happy she had pursued it. Mireille looked ravishing plain-faced, but the cosmetics she put on toiled to highlight that beauty, emphasising her rich blue eyes, long eyelashes, lush lips, and flawless complexion. The blonde’s immaculate features were more… out there, for all to see. Kirika didn’t think her love was more gorgeous with makeup, just that the reality was much more obvious, even to her.

Mireille grabbed a fancy-looking spray bottle partway filled with a golden liquid off the chest of drawers, and then arched her head back, accentuating her throat. She sent out several plumes of fine mist into the air in front of her, before stepping slightly into the rapidly vanishing wafting clouds. She did similar at her left wrist, squirting a puff of not exactly sweet, but a pleasantly heady fragrance above her pulse point. Mireille replaced the perfume after that, and straight away rubbed the insides of her wrists together to spread the aroma.

Kirika had consistently found this behaviour baffling. The girl was of the belief that it would be more effective for Mireille to spray the scent directly on her body. And why the blonde was so sparing as to wipe her wrists together to anoint the odour to her neglected pulse point was awkward to rationalise too. Was perfume expensive? For as long as Kirika had known her Mireille had never been stingy with money--being a freelance assassin was extremely profitable; there forever seemed to be someone who wanted someone else dead, and the skills sought for a precise and reliable execution never came cheap. Furthermore, that guess was in dispute with Mireille not electing the efficiency of spraying her perfume straight on her body. Was it toxic in large doses? That thought was scary, even if it did make Mireille smell very… peppery, pleasingly so. Her presence was rendered all the more imposing just by that bouquet. Be that as it may, its toxicity was in question. Sometimes when Kirika roamed the cosmetics counters in stores in the company of Mireille, the combined fragrances mimicked a hostile gas attack. The girl wondered if in high quantities it would burn her throat and eyes. She hoped Mireille knew what she was doing, and wasn’t making another sacrifice for her beautifying activities.

If Mireille gave perfume up, as good as it smelt, Kirika wouldn’t mourn it too greatly. The woman’s own splendid scent was the best. If that could be bottled and its potency increased, Kirika would definitely adore her beloved’s use of perfume. With that bait, she might have even garnered the nerve to ask Mireille if she could wear some herself.

It appeared as if Mireille still had more to do at her provisional hair and makeup station when Kirika sighted her producing a series of hairpins. Mireille took up her hairbrush again, and looked into the small mirror while she gathered and combed her hair into a ponytail held in her left hand. From there Kirika started to lose track of movement of Mireille’s hair, although her acute eyesight still traced the blonde’s hand motions. The ponytail disappeared into a funnel of flaxen lacks, and Mireille stuck pins seemingly haphazardly in a forming blonde bonnet. When the woman’s hands slowed into patting loose hairs into position, Kirika could take in what she had done.

Mireille had folded her long mane somehow in upon itself, the crease visible at the back of her head. It was like two winding waves meeting and plunging together down a narrow crack, or alternatively blonde silk bubbling up from a crevice. Kirika recognised it as a bun of some style. A mound of hair coiled somewhat on top of Mireille’s head gave her extra height, but it wasn’t total neatness with a large tress allowed to lightly curl down her left cheek. It was elegant, yet the faint disarray alluded at a wilder charm. For all its complex grandeur, the style could not measure up to Mireille’s hair hanging loose and natural about her shoulders and sinuous down her back. Other styles did have their individual virtues, but Kirika liked that simple, free, unembellished style best, which providentially the exquisite woman normally retained. It was how she saw Mireille for the first time waking in the morning, and was her last vision of her when she went to sleep at night--relaxed and as herself. The classy makeup, the piquant perfume--what they afforded was appealing and not the least bit unwelcome, however it was lazing Mireille in her nightwear that Kirika remembered most.

There was no more beauty to be coaxed from Mireille’s body; all that remained was to arm it, the thorns to a rose. Mireille seized her pistol and ammunition holster from where it was looped over one drawer’s handle, and then strapped it onto her torso. Her Walther P99, definitely out of place among the hair and cosmetics items, was grasped next. The suppresser was already fitted to its barrel, and subsequent to checking that there was a bullet in the gun’s chamber via a partial tug on the slide, the blonde secured it firmly in the holster against her ribs.

Observing Mireille caused Kirika to be conscious of her own pistol flush to her body stuck in her skirt behind her back and covered by her jacket, concealed, silenced, and loaded. When it was next revealed at her behest, it would be the death of at least one soul.

Mireille picked her jacket off the bed and put it on over her holster and the weapon within the leather sleeve, and fastened its two front buttons to hold it closed. She flicked her shirt’s broader collar outside over the jacket’s, inspected her cuffs, and finding them satisfactory favoured Kirika with her attention. The woman smiled a little at the younger girl, only just an arc to her mouth, and approached her, her eyes focused below Kirika’s own.

Wordlessly Mireille touched the red cord tied into a loose bow at Kirika’s throat, before deciding to tighten the knot slightly with both her hands. Kirika peered downward along her nose while Mireille did; noting that the woman’s nails neared if not matched the lavender tone of her suit.

Mireille lifted her eyes to Kirika’s when she was content with the bow, although her fingertips lingered on the girl’s collar. The blonde probed with her eyes, searching for doubt or hesitation--searching if the reluctance she had surely sensed throughout their four days of waiting had matured into something deeper. But Kirika knew there was nothing to find; even her early reservations were under control today. Despite the sadness, the wishes for home, and the longing for another day of quiet waiting, when the moment to kill arrived, it was easy to fulfill. It was the aftermath that ate at her soul to admit the darkness. But Kirika fought for Mireille; she fought to protect her. She had to hold onto that and remember why the sins were permissible. She had to hold onto it as a talisman against the creeping darkness inside herself. With that defence Kirika could do what she had to, just like she had in the Metro station, the club in Pigalle Place, and in Albert Laroque’s estate back in Paris. If it was for Mireille, Kirika could and would do anything.

Kirika’s steely reddish-brown gaze proved her resolve before Mireille’s intent eyes. The dark haired assassin gave a small brief nod, and Mireille’s lips creased into a slightly fuller smile. Compunction would trouble Kirika no more.

******

The train sped along its tracks, the latest curve jostling Mireille into a fellow passenger; a bespectacled man in a suit who accepted the shove as an inevitability, leaning with it but displaying no other reaction. Mireille, not so accustomed to these rigours, strengthened her grip on the handle attached to the railing overhead and used it to rock herself back into her tiny cubby amid the jam of commuters, her jaw set tightly as she battled mounting irritation. It was the early hours on a weekday morning--a hectic time to travel wherever you were in the world. However, the carriage seemed to be packed to capacity--and pushed rather beyond it, to the likes Mireille--albeit no veteran with merely a narrow exposure to riding public Parisian trains--hadn’t witnessed before on the Metro back home.
Businesswomen and businessmen on their way to the office and schoolchildren on their way to school made up most of the crush, with those in suits outnumbering those in uniform. Mireille and Kirika mingled fluidly dressed as they were, although the illusion might have been improved if the latter teen girl had been clothed in her school uniform.

With so many bodies crammed together like an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle, the atmosphere was stifling. The reek of other people’s cheap cologne, the pong of those filthy individuals that hadn’t washed and then attempted to hide their stench beneath a cloying blanket of deodorant, the stinking sweat oozing from dozens of overheating bodies despite the cold weather outside the speeding train, the bad breath puffing over her shoulders from too near passengers; it all combined pungent forces into a single polluting environment bent on offending Mireille’s nose and reinforcing her distaste for public transportation. This had to be it at its worst. Japan had much too many people, or perhaps every one of them had just opted to board this train today, after also stuffing the first train Mireille and Kirika had rode on in Kawasaki.

The railway was the quickest and easiest--although that last was beginning to look disputable from Mireille’s standpoint--mode of travel into Yokohama and to its courthouse, and the assassins, seemingly just like the majority of the morning’s travelers, had chosen to make full use of it. The claustrophobic train was the third in succession the young women had stepped aboard--the first in Kawasaki, and into a similar press of people, to take the pair to the second that had transported them to Yokohama to shortly later catch the present train that would drop them in the vicinity of Yokohama District Court. The second train hadn’t been the ordeal the first was, and that the third was being; a fortunate mercy, since the time aboard had been the longest of the three up to now. The bullet train running between Kawasaki and Yokohama had contained a comfy seat for every passenger and there had been abundant vacant, qualities that had championed a quiet and relaxed transit. Furthermore, whilst it was true it had been the lengthiest leg of Mireille and Kirika’s trip to the courthouse, it had taken fewer than thirty minutes to switch cities. The luxury of the intercity carriage so soon after the cramped conditions of the local Kawasaki train had also seemed to propel the bullet train down the track at even greater velocity. Comfort could condense the longest voyage, while the want of it could stretch out the shortest… in particular if you were one of a multitude of sardines in a tin can, and one without a seat.

Although standing with almost no room to move, Mireille’s legs weren’t throbbing--she would be a miserable contract killer if her fitness was that appalling--but when the option was there, sitting down was always better than standing up in a densely crowded and lasting setting such at this. Yet Mireille had been stanch in rejecting her chance to keep off her feet. Kirika hadn’t uttered it openly, sparing with her soft-spoken voice as she was, but the blonde had sensed the girl’s insistence that she take the lone available seat when they had initially boarded the train. Mireille had had to really beat the proposition back, and even then it had been no small accomplishment given how accommodating Kirika was, and how habitually the older woman took advantage of her obliging demeanor. Mireille was aware she invited that altruistic behaviour; her passive acceptance the same as active encouragement; and thus Kirika did not turn from sacrificing her own well being to promote the blonde’s at every opportunity. Subsequent to much unsure dithering on Kirika’s part, Mireille’s eventual recourse had been to firmly fold her arms in finality and flat out state that Kirika sit down. The idea of threatening that someone would steal the seat if neither of them occupied it before long had crossed Mireille’s mind, but it would have been just like Kirika to opt to stand beside her in that case and share her level of discomfort. Mireille felt it not past her to have given her sometimes vexingly loyal companion a little push into the seat if it had come to that.

Mireille was starting to wonder at her decision now, and the occasional dubious look Kirika gave her wasn’t helping her shaky selfless resolve. Kirika was very much raring to donate her seat at a split second’s notice; she wanted to, the Corsican could tell; all she had to do was ask. However, Mireille thought of the temptation she would never--she hoped not, anyway--yield to and the unpleasant proximity of the other passengers around her as penance for earlier this morning and what's more it served as grooming for her to be the hospitable one from time to time. The woman did like Kirika’s helpful nature; like it a bit too much that she was beginning to take it for granted. That Mireille’s guilt over feeling that way and over Kirika deferring to her constantly was remote and glossed over was a sign of concern. If they were going to be in a… a real relationship, there had to be equal give and take between them… more or less.

Mireille sighed at herself. She was spoiled and bossy and she knew it. It wasn’t going to be simple or painless to break out of her self-centred habits. Being Kirika’s elder automatically put her in the commanding role too and allotted justification to her dictatorship, a position she additionally maintained in their work. But it couldn’t be the same; Mireille was in charge of assignments because she was the more capable in that responsibility. It was life and death there, not life and love. In their private life Mireille’s leadership should be exercised to merely guide and advise--not rule. Kirika wasn’t her servant; she was her partner… her lover. Her equal. It was the ideal, and would hold in spirit; however Mireille would probably always retain some dominance over the younger girl as a consequence to her age and experience. But she would see it diminish as much as it could.

Kirika took respite from pouting at Mireille; unbeknownst to the girl granting her grateful partner a reprieve as well; to turn her head around and favour the window behind her and its streaming views broken by the occasional overpass or tunnel with her doe-eyed stare for a while. Guilt smeared across the blonde’s conscience, and stern tolerance of her circumstances standing in the tight throng rose where a pit of complaint only had root before. This was Mireille’s penance as much as it was her start at a more considerate self. The blonde had immediately felt shamed upon chiding Kirika for her customary window gazing back at the Yuumura house, and the remorse had worn on her from then on. As understated as the comment had been, Mireille was cognisant that she had intended there be sarcasm; sarcasm Kirika likely hadn’t figured out going by her response. That innocence in the face of the Corsican’s callousness could have brought a lump to her throat if she’d been a less disciplined woman. But Mireille could no longer tame her heart when it concerned her beloved partner, and it was shown no such leniency. It hurt. She was trying to make amends in her tacit fashion; amends for a slight Kirika probably wasn’t even aware of; but it still hurt. Perhaps it was because it was penance more to soothe herself, seeing as Kirika was ignorant to her wrongdoing. Moreover, she was causing her partner some added distress too in not sitting down in Kirika’s seat like the girl desired, even though it was secretly for her benefit. Mireille had never been good at apologies--she’d had little practice at it given that her conscience seldom bothered her to make any. But it was something, and Mireille was nothing if not a woman who took responsibility for her actions… when they harmed someone who mattered to her.

Mireille believed the tension of the morning was the culprit for her prickly mood earlier--being in Japan under Breffort’s conditions grated on her relentlessly--though the time to shake Soldats and the conniving man off her and Kirika’s backs was now. But their being here wrested a toll from Kirika too. Every traveller of the black path had their method of coping with its severity and adversity; some smoked compulsively, some drank for numbness; some found peace with family or in the arms of lovers, others in the euphoria of mind-altering substances. Kirika had her windows and whatever vista she saw through them. It was a tiny and simplistic vice for one so tortured. The girl had pursued another pastime before in painting, but leisure that involved people not on the path had a tendency to steer them toward it, and normally not of their own volition. That lesson had been inked in pain inside Kirika.

Mireille shouldn’t get in the way of her partner’s unobtrusive diversion--she couldn’t interpret it herself, nevertheless what her lover saw from her windowsill roost had to be meaningful and worthy of interest--although before this morning she’d seen no reason to meddle. That reason today of course had been baseless and uncalled for--there could be dangerous eyes outside their safehouse, but Kirika was not some amateur hired gun; she was arguably the finest professional killer in the world. She knew perfectly well what to be on guard for when indulging in her usually harmless window-watching fetish, and her precautions were no doubt impeccable. Kirika was not some young girl--she was an assassin just like Mireille.

And as for Mireille’s distractions, she was partial to shopping in boutiques and dining out at fine restaurants, these days with Kirika to join in on her pleasures. The company certainly improved upon the outings, not to mention having someone else to buy clothes for. There were many cute ensembles that Mireille had always fancied, but she knew would not suit her. Kirika’s body and general air was not so fraught, to Mireille’s great delight and continued entertainment.

Mireille smiled faintly to herself, gazing down at Kirika. Even while they were closing in on another meeting with opposing travellers on the black path, the feelings Kirika drew from her could still keep her warm. She’d always have that console, no matter how dire the twists and how barbed the turns on the dark road became. Something beautiful took the journey with Mireille; something pure and good that couldn’t be corrupted in the immorality surrounding her life, something private just for her… and for the girl who made that beauty possible. It made the difference in the Corsican’s days. Mireille hadn’t really lived until falling in love.

Simply looking at Kirika rubbed away the passenger cage, pushing it back; well back; to some place behind Mireille’s senses. The annoyance the train generated became an equivocal sentiment; the reason for even having the feeling a developing mystery the blonde didn’t care to study. As Kirika watched the passing streets and buildings outside the window Mireille watched her, and discovered the view just as enchanting.

Suddenly Kirika’s eyes veered from the glass and in the next fraction of a second her right hand shot out while her body stretched to catch up, seizing something behind Mireille. The something gasped as Mireille jerked into full wakefulness, and the woman turned, her own hand thrust inside her jacket for her firearm and with no time to curse her daydreaming.

Kirika had caught a man’s wrist, his hand, rigid and trembling in the assassin’s white-knuckled grip, kept mere inches from touching Mireille’s rump. There was no weapon in his grasp, but in his other was a briefcase. On inspection he appeared an everyday businessman in suit and tie; albeit with a face drawn and horrified; a commuter in a host of commuters on his way to work.

Mireille blinked a few times, it taking a moment for her would-be assailant’s intention to sink in. He’d wanted to grope her. He’d wanted to grope her… *her*…!

Mireille shuffled her rear as far as she could from the outstretched claw, cold death in her blue eyes for the petrified pervert owner. The audacity! She wasn’t certain if she wanted to let go of her gun, but eventually she removed her hand from within her jacket and signalled to Kirika in the form of a grudging scowl to release her almost molester. Mireille wagered her partner’s crushing fist was sufficient castigation while being appropriately lowkey, unlike what the Corsican *wished* she could inflict. She knew his offence didn’t warrant getting shot--well, except perhaps if the wandering hand…. She shooed that image away--but at the minute nothing seemed too brutal. Mireille let her emotions go swiftly however; her violence was not without temperance, and, for that matter, was not unnecessarily sadistic when employed. Still, she hoped the man was right-handed. He’d find today at the office rather pain-ridden and frustrating.

As the groper disguised as a businessman clutched his injured wrist and melted back into his camouflage of passengers before anyone noticed his vile action, Mireille was reminded it wasn’t just people’s odours and their pooled heat that posed problems in these close quarters. There were dangers in a crowd; it held the potential to be as treacherous as a stormy ocean. A weapon could very circumspectly be drawn and continue to go unnoticed within a swarm of oblivious people, and the target for that weapon in the swarm could be approached with all secrecy under a mimicked air of casualness. When the body fell amongst the maze of feet and people started to stir from apathy, the slayer would by then have blended into the sea of faces, the corpse her or his only sign of being there. Mireille had had her brushes with killers in crowds and had been one herself more than once, but the lecher could have been another rival assassin with her demise in mind; the one that had succeeded if not for Kirika’s steadfast vigilance.

Kirika studied Mireille’s face for a moment before leaning back into her seat, however she seemed to find it a task leaving her partner’s features alone for longer than a couple of seconds.

Mireille’s chin dropped, and her eyes were pushed askance from Kirika’s prying looks. The warped contours of her lips articulated her displeasure, but it was not for the girl before her. Mireille had been concerned about the problems her partner’s sentimentality could bring to their business, yet it looked as if it was her own she needed to begin seriously cracking down on. Affectionate behaviour in front of those who could use it as a tool against them was the bounds of the blonde’s worries for how Kirika might handle the changes between them, but nothing to give validation to that concern had transpired. Granted, it was still very much the beginnings of their romantic relationship, and still in private Kirika had yet to branch out from being the quiet and withdrawn girl Mireille knew her as. Regardless, in the meantime Mireille was an ever-ripening tumult of emotion. Tender emotion she had grown to adore, but there was a time and a place for the feelings, and when working was neither. Kirika had kept her head about her; Mireille must have no less focus, or *she* might become the one to commence the inappropriate intimate touches whilst adversaries looked on, if her carelessness didn’t see her dead first.

The blonde blanched and then cringed at the thought--at the thought of being rendered unable to keep her hands off Kirika, that was to say; it was a nightmare for some reason more demoralising than being killed for negligence--and blew the flaxen tress suspended by her cheek out of her face, just for it to fly back into its former spot. Mireille’s hair was done up in a French twist--part of her small effort to alter her appearance from her norm. Ryosuke and Vincent could recognise her on sight; even a slight variation to her looks would help to ease their eyes over and past her. The clump of hair in her face obscured her features a little too, and if not for that Mireille would have considered donning glasses to give further doubt to her identity. Nothing she could do would hold up to a close inspection however, and her being a foreigner who stuck out did much to counteract her masquerade as an insignificant court attendee.

Kirika, her face known by their prey too, had difficulties as well with her cover despite being Japanese--she was a high school aged girl and might cause attention wandering the courthouse because of that. However, she wore a suit like Mireille to blend in and such tactics had worked in the past. Perhaps onlookers saw Kirika as simply a short woman, or as a youth with familial grounds to be in court. Still, up close she would easily be identified also. It was hard to overlook such a cute face.

But the Corsican assassin didn’t intend for them to get near enough that either of the men or their personnel could distinguish her or Kirika as Noir, not until she decided to at any rate. And then whether they recognised them or not wouldn’t matter.

More distaste kept Mireille’s expression sour and poor Kirika perturbed as the seated girl divided her time staring at her and trying not to. Like it or not, that was what Ryosuke and Vincent and those they had spread the information to regarded Mireille and Kirika as--Noir, the hands of Soldats. Severed hands, if the men had believed the Corsican when she had denied the association with the organisation. In any case, her and her partner’s label was unlikely to change now, and the woman had to put up with it if not celebrate being saddled with the title. It was the truth at the end of the day, for all of Mireille’s dislike and refusals. She and Kirika had earned the name like no other who had adopted it before, and it was not so straightforwardly renounced. At the very least, the reputation that came with the name should put fear into their quarry and any who would join Ishinomori’s side. Fear was a good edge to have. A terrified target made irrational mistakes and hesitated when confronted with the face of their fear, and a fleeing target put up paltry resistance. Mireille had no reservations against shooting someone pleading for their life.

Mireille could tell that it wasn’t in Ryosuke’s nature to beg, however. Vincent, maybe…. Yet each man had faced down Noir with cool composure and blazing gunfire. The Corsican assassin recognised talent when she saw it, and this pair had enough to keep her sharp. They knew the path and had treaded it for a long time. But Ryosuke and Vincent were still going to die.

There were others apart from Ishinomori’s crew to watch for. The courthouse would probably have descended into a hubbub of activity over Kaede’s Ishinomori’s high-profile attendance, with media presence thick. That meant people with cameras, a weapon as prospectively lethal to anonymity as a gun was to a human being. Mireille and Kirika would have to be sure to stay clear of their shots as though they were bullets, at least when the real bullets started to fly. Photographic evidence linking them to the hit being plastered over tonight’s news generated renown Mireille would rather not have.

There were the closed circuit cameras of the courthouse itself to avoid whenever possible as well, although even knowing where each was thanks to Jacques’ blueprints, it would be quite a game of hide and seek to win. The cover of the crowd and the young assassins’ ability to become one with it would be their defence if caught on either type of film; as long as they appeared innocuous in the background, seemingly distant from events, they were virtually inoculated to exposure. That said; nothing more than cooling bodies and harmless empty bullet casings was the preferred calling card.

The Japanese police would be out in force like the media, and manning select chokepoints equipped with metal detectors and x-ray machines. The courtrooms themselves, particularly the one where Kaede’s trial was to be held, would be all but inaccessible to someone carrying a firearm, but the bigger hindrance was the security station screening all visitors that ventured outside the lobby area to access more of the courthouse. Smuggling a Walther P99 and a Beretta M1934 past that would border on impossible. But of course, a professional assassin didn’t voluntarily wander through a metal detector or into a waiting frisk when it wasn’t in her interests, and there was never merely a single way to enter and move around in a building, irrespective of how fortified it was. Jacques’ blueprints had spared no detail.

The train slowed down, and Mireille braced herself for the coming jolt as the bed of air she had been riding began to feel more and more like solid ground. The parroting chirp of the announcer from a speaker somewhere overhead declared the approaching station twice over--sweet relief for some, and a welcome milestone for those remaining. It was Mireille and Kirika’s final stop too, but while their relief might flow sweeter than most for more reasons than just escaping the cramped conditions, bitterness was there to dampen it. They shouldn’t be here, but here they were. Nothing could help that now, though. At least the days of difficult waiting were at an end, and Mireille and Kirika had the chance to shape their own fate at last.

Mireille looked at Kirika, and her partner returned the stare. Their eyes were the same. There was nothing more to say or to think about--except going home. The blonde assassin hadn’t forgotten about Langonel’s Manuscript, but the stolen tome could be buried with Ryosuke and Vincent for all it mattered now. Whatever intentions they had for it would die with them. The book had importance, and Mireille would have scooped it up into her own safekeeping if given the opportunity, but it wasn’t vital in the sense she and her partner must go out of their way to retrieve it. Let it be lost again, an overlooked relic amongst a dead family’s possessions.

The jolt Mireille had been anticipating arrived, staggering her slightly, and the station’s platform rolled to a dead stop in the train’s windows. The carriage’s doors opened with a whoosh, and Kirika got to her feet to stand close beside Mireille.

Noir had a court date to attend.

******

The column of black sedans and one limousine carved through the Yokohama morning traffic with the conviction and resulting ease an outward portrayal of authority sanctioned; the bumper to bumper line of expensive and important-looking vehicles forbidding enough for the average motorist to give the right of way to. Conduct yourself like you are meant to be where you are and doing what you are doing, and only those with mettle questioned your being. Ryosuke believed the motorcade could push through red lights and teeming pedestrian crossings if willing. Strength was uncommon among the mundane and complacent masses. They would rather bend in the wind than throw themselves against it and risk snapping.

There was none of that wretched sort in this car--at least those that mattered were not. Vin sat on Ryosuke’s right, dressed in a yellow suit and red tie that spoke loudly of his probable aspiration of trampling all over the district court’s decorum. He fiddled with his new knife; a butterfly knife to succeed the switchblade left behind in a mansion’s library in Paris; flipping its bite handle open to expose the length of sharpened steel for a second and then snapping his wrist in the opposite direction, letting momentum close the two handles together again over the blade.

“Just like in the movies,” Vin muttered, before thumbing off the handles’ latch and spinning the knife edge into view once more.

Ken was at Ryosuke’s left side, occasionally glancing at Vin while he played with his latest toy. He sat stiffer than his laidback habit, his many ring-adorned fingers--the nine that could--clutching his parted knees. He was probably worried about Kaede and her fate, but he needn’t have. This appearance in Yokohama District Court was a formality, and Ken was aware of it. He was a worrier by nature, though.

Ken had clothed himself smarter than usual for the occasion in spite of its redundancy--a crisp white suit and Hawaiian shirt of giant orange blossoms on cream was prim for him. He would always look the gangster no matter what he wore, but sometimes Ryosuke thought he embraced the yakuza stereotype and fed on that image. The older man likened it to a peacock’s show of fanned feathers; it had its uses as warning to the weak and lure to the curious, although Ryosuke doubted Ken was as lucrative with the ladies as Vin. Only certain kinds of women considered an openly dangerous and brash criminal a thrilling romantic liaison for long.

Taking up the black leather seats across from Ryosuke and his brothers were three women who likely preferred the company of gangsters, although Ken still had no chance with any of them, even before Ryosuke’s objections. Kaede sat in the middle directly opposite Ryosuke, fashionably clad in one of the pantsuits she seemed to like. Ryosuke recognised Dominique’s hand when he saw it. The girl he knew had liked skipping about in colourful floral summer dresses, not the severe and rigid business attire of today. It pained Ryosuke that she had become like him. Kaede was as strong as anyone he knew, but he had never intended for her to live his life.

The mother hen in a skin to pair her to her chick, except a skirt and stockings substituted for the pants, sat alongside Ryosuke’s little sister, their legs pressed against one another despite the spacious seating. Ryosuke was sure Dominique had arranged herself that close to Kaede just to rankle him. Kaede’s decline had started with that woman and it would end with her. No matter what she liked to think, Dominique wasn’t family. She was a foreign invader in Ryosuke’s hate-filled eyes, and a Machiavellian puppeteer, and he would find a way to cleanly extricate her deeply sunken claws from his only remaining kin before she completely destroyed all that his family had accomplished… and destroyed Kaede, too. She was Soldats, and just as accountable for his mother and father’s passing as the other Soldats members they were fighting. Watching Dominique’s influence twist his sister into a sick protégé of hers became more grueling every day. Dominique loved to parade Kaede’s prevailing affection for her in front of him, such that even steel’s patience would start to bend.

Spotting the attention, Kaede grinned at Ryosuke and mouthed ‘Big Brother’ before giving him a little wave, her crumbling mind that of a simpleton’s to her sibling’s troubles. Ryosuke merely stared back while Dominique shot Kaede a sidelong disapproving look and irritated frown. There was still hope.

The last woman in the back of the limo was Fumiko Morita, sitting on the other side of Kaede. She could have been mistaken for a mere friend of Kaede’s, albeit a shy and reclusive one. The young woman was clothed as Kaede would have been in a better time; in a straightforward moss-green dress under a white shawl, and a white sunhat with a garland of black and white ribbon and lace atop her green locks. She looked pretty, but Fumiko always was. That was *all* she was--a pretty thing to look at. Fumiko had amounted to nothing greater since Ryosuke first saw her, but in her defence opportunity for becoming something more had been cut from her destiny. Still, it wasn’t an excuse for being weak and pathetic. Courage and strength was best found during adversity, and Fumiko lived her harsh life in just such a realm.

It was demonstration of the depth of Fumiko’s captivity that she was here in the limo today, outside and unshackled in the free world--outside, yet a caged animal still. The bars of her prison traveled with her now wherever she went. Ryosuke wondered if Fumiko ever toyed with the thought of escape these days, or if she had accepted what her life was now. The woman had tried to flee when initially awarded to Kaede like a wad of banknotes; however her keeper was fond of her, and was unyielding in demanding obedience. It hadn’t taken many recaptures and subsequent punishments for Fumiko to stop running away and submit herself to Kaede’s wants. She had been domesticated, a dog that came and sat at her mistress’s direction.

To Ryosuke, Fumiko was one of the feeble masses in the streets outside the limo, taken into a world too unkind for her. Had fear trapped Fumiko in her cage? If she was that desperate for freedom, Ryosuke believed nothing would keep her from striving for that hope. But there were no more escape attempts from her, no more screaming and bawling; no more defiance for a very long time. She had given up. Was it fear, or did Fumiko like it? Did she like serving? Would she become as disgusting as Claire, a willing whore who moaned in ecstasy in her slavery? Or had Fumiko already become as filthy, deep down inside?

Ryosuke wanted to hate her, despise her and spit at the thought of her as he did Claire--who Kaede had thankfully left behind at Ishinomori Tower, against Dominique’s suggestion that the slothful and pampered redhead should accompany her. Ordinarily Ryosuke abhorred frailty as Fumiko possessed with every fibre of his indomitable being, but he knew himself enough to recognise he forced himself too hard to deride her existence. Fumiko was so quiet, and seemed so… small. If not for her beauty, one could forget she was in the room. Ryosuke wanted to hate her, but in his heart there was little of that for Fumiko. How could you hate something so fragile and beautiful? What was the point.

The smoky windows of the limousine prevented onlookers from peering inside, but they were not curtains, and the morning’s rays pierced inside the backseat where people’s eyes could not. Ryosuke’s round sunglasses where there to meet the glaring sunbeams that got through however, the blue lenses glinting like jewels. The windows first role wasn’t as a privacy screen--they would halt a bullet. The vehicle’s chassis too was resistant to gunfire among other ordnance--its armour plating was thick and durable to the degree a determined rocket propelled grenade would not penetrate. The tires were still vulnerable being not completely immune to puncture, however they would fill with some jelly-like substance if pierced, ensuring that the limo’s wheels would continue rolling and keep it on the road.

There were possibly more countermeasures Ryosuke wasn’t aware of, but he knew of ample to realise the limousine was a secure way to move around the city. It wasn’t a tank, but it came close. Dominique had ordered and overseen the construction of the vehicle, and while the defensive upgrades had cost more than the car itself, the woman hadn’t skimped on the bill. Ryosuke grudgingly understood her meticulous attention. His mother, Hikaru, had lost her life travelling in a motorcade. Ryosuke had heard that the car she’d been in had been reinforced, but hadn’t been robust enough to withstand the furious Soldats assault that had assailed it. Dominique had been there, so he had been told; hence, her background aside, she knew well what armaments Soldats could potentially bring to bear against them. It was strange to Ryosuke that Dominique could survive in a bullet-ravaged car without a scratch while his mother succumbed. People had consoled her for her loss for a long time, and she had looked dejected, but Ryosuke couldn’t stop himself manufacturing secret plots centring on the French woman in his head. Maybe Dominique had been involved in his mother’s murder as well as his father’s. Maybe she had tired of Hikaru, and seen the future in Kaede. Would she tire of Kaede too, once she had wrenched all use out of her? Ignoring her obnoxious gestures, Dominique did appear to care about Kaede’s physical wellbeing. Whether because she genuinely worried for Ryosuke’s sister or worried for her as someone did their precious possession, was yet another nefarious notion unproven one way or the other.

Through the azure shade of his sunglasses, Ryosuke glimpsed the brief looks Dominique snuck at Kaede. He didn’t think anyone else in the backseat noticed them; perhaps not even Dominique herself realised her behaviour--but he did. She was nervous, but it wasn’t about the trial. Kaede had been confined to the protection of Ishinomori Tower almost since their mother’s death under Dominique’s direction; the girl hadn’t even gone out to visit their parents’ graves. Ryosuke had gone in her stead and passed on her love and respects; Dominique wasn’t concerned about his safety like she was his little sister’s. There was freedom in that though; Kaede had none, although Ryosuke didn’t believe it had dawned on her. Today was the first time she had gone out into the city like this, and it was the first time the outfitted limousine with its primary occupant inside was put to the test. Ryosuke admitted he wasn’t exactly relaxed about Kaede leaving the shelter of home, but he was confident that she was safe. He was here after all, as was some of the Kanagawa Kotetsu, packed into the last car of the convoy. Kaede could always place her faith in them, like her older brother did. Dominique didn’t think much of Ryosuke’s comrades or the Ishinomori family’s soldiers--‘drones’ she had cruelly remarked once, when she’d known he was listening and Kaede was not--but she should have had trust in her own personnel riding in the other cars to guard Kaede; the gaijin was their leader, and a good leader should believe in those that followed them. Ryosuke didn’t have that trust in Dominique’s followers himself of course, however he had witnessed the black-clad women at work and they were top-rate at what they did… when they weren’t letting his brothers-in-arms die in their stead. Then again, they were still Soldats. How could anyone in that group, even amongst the rebels, trust anybody else in it? It was in their nature to be cunning and treacherous.

Ryosuke heard the crowds before he saw them. The media hive had been shaken this morning, and journalists and photographers buzzed around Yokohama District Courthouse’s steps. It was a waste of their time; there was no story here but of a quick acquittal. Drug charges, of all things… if the law only knew the horrors Kaede had perpetrated. Ryosuke would have laughed if he still remembered how, and if his nightmares were not the stuff of those horrors, starring the distorted, demonic image of his beloved sister of present day.

The motorcade parked in front of the courthouse, each car waiting for the one behind it to catch up and stop before the doors started to swing open. The bodyguards were the first on the pavement; Kanagawa Kotetsu members and Dominique’s supporters, who pushed back the mob wielding cameras and microphones. Ryosuke’s men weren’t shy regarding that job--he heard their raucous bellows even above the media’s squawked inquiries. For his brothers’ sakes he hoped they kept it to shoves and shoulder barges; Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals did have a respectable image to represent, or it had before all this trouble. At any rate, repairing it could do without assault charges being filed against Ryosuke’s men. It would be something new for Dominique to rub in Ryosuke’s face and bemoan to Kaede also, and he could do without that.

A woman belonging to Dominique’s faction opened the limo’s curb-side passenger door--part of Kaede’s personal bodyguard that the French woman had forcibly appointed to loiter around Ryosuke’s sibling. The rest of the group erected a niche focused around the door while maintaining watch on the rabble they kept back with hard looks or the eyeless stare of dark sunspecs; black monoliths cold as stone and just as still and silent.

Vin ambled out of the vehicle before anyone else, antagonising Dominique and the guards with his disrespect, whether that was his intention or not. Female tongues clicked to condemn him; even the statues lapsed for a pithy flicker of life; and Ryosuke would have frowned on Vin’s slight toward Kaede as well, but a look at his spacey sister verified she didn’t seem conscious of it, and Ryosuke wasn’t one to raise objection to his partner’s larks when it incensed the Soldats mutineers satisfyingly so.

Dominique had to lay her hand on Kaede’s forearm to alert her to the fact they had arrived at the courthouse, and the roused Kaede, like a toppled domino in a row, pushed Fumiko toward the open limousine door. Fumiko, who until then had been sitting passively like a doll with its strings put down, furtively stepped into the shadow of the courthouse, her skittering frightened blue eyes absorbing the wild media circus waiting for her. For a moment a pang of understanding struck Ryosuke, but it didn’t live long enough to make a dent in his heart. It was sympathy for an animal scared by loud noises and too much attention. Kaede should have left all the pets at home.

Kaede exited the limo at Fumiko’s heels, the chum in the water that whipped up the swarm of journalists and cameramen, their hunger great enough to tempt pushing against Ryosuke and Dominique’s soldiers. The yakuza and Soldats renegades saw to it that the renewed pluck was short-lived. Kaede never spoke to the representatives of the media anyway. For one, she was in the haven of home as a rule, and declined all requests for statements or interviews from those who wished to breach that haven. It was Dominique who actually issued the refusals--it was she who spoke for Kaede, the white-haired puppet on her lap. He could grumble, but Ryosuke imagined it was a wise choice on his foil’s part. Kaede’s blather was frequently a window into her insanity, and heaven knew Ryosuke was no wordsmith. It was a weakness having Dominique as Ishinomori Pharmaceuticals official voice to the public; it was one more rein firmly in the gaijin’s hands. She did a good job though--as expected with that forked Soldats tongue in her head--and for now looked to agree with Ryosuke’s interest in appearing as a benign and lawful company.

‘Appearing as a benign and lawful company’. When Ryosuke’s mother had reigned, her business’s appearance had been truly clean. There was nothing pure about it now. The home he remembered fondly only existed in his memory and heart.

Dominique curled her made-up lips at Ryosuke before she gathered her handbag and documents and followed Kaede--a kind and rather beautiful smile if you weren’t aware of the undertones. Ryosuke only saw a stuck-up and provoking smirk.

Ryosuke remained seated as he heard the hubbub move away from him, making their way up the stairs to the courthouse. Dominique’s lawyers were likely with Kaede and the others by now, fending off questions from the avid media like bodyguards would attacks. The lawyers were attached to Soldats like every other woman allied with Dominique, armed with briefcases and law degrees. They weren’t warriors, their intellects were their weapons. There were many like that in Dominique’s service, and like the brawn, the brains were in the top of their fields.

Ryosuke thought four solicitors excessive for today’s affairs, but they didn’t have much to do usually, so maybe they were overeager regarding this last morsel of work. It created a striking show of force, at any rate. Three of them were foreigners as well, which routinely made an impression. However, with countless foreigners accompanying the Ishinomori family nowadays, the appeal should have worn off long ago.

Ryosuke turned his head to Ken briefly; who had calmed down if he had ever been tense; and the two men shared an expressionless look. They may as well get this meaningless demonstration over with.

Ryosuke climbed out of the limousine to behold Kaede and her band of guards and attendants, and the media mass attached to the collective entourage, reach the court step’s entrance plateau and squeeze into the building’s lobby. Vin was nowhere in sight, probably smothered in the crowd somehow despite his bright suit, but a couple of Ryosuke’s men were hanging around the cars despite the glares the Soldats women who had also stayed put were hurling at them. The glares turned to Ryosuke and Ken when the latter shut the limo’s passenger door, their coldness speaking of the women’s dislike at their punctuality.

Ryosuke adjusted his sunglasses and shrugged off the inhospitable looks with the ease of habit, and marched up the steps to the sounds of car engines revving in his wake. He glanced over his shoulder as the motorcade moved to the opposite side of the street to park for the long-term, and caught Ken waving at the Kanagawa Kotetsu pair to abandon the face-off and come to him. Ryosuke paused mid-step on the stairs, watching his subordinate as Ken shielded his eyes from the little sun there was with a hand over his brow, waiting for the two men to reach him. Ryosuke felt it ill-advised pulling the men from the motorcade and leaving it solely in the women’s hands, but he guessed needless conflict could arise if the two were left alone and outnumbered by their female counterparts. The visit to the courthouse shouldn’t last long in any case, and while Ryosuke didn’t trust Dominique’s guards and drivers, he did trust their abilities. It still didn’t sit right on his shoulders as he resumed his ascent, but he let it go.

Ken and the two gangsters--Nobuo and Takeo; Ryosuke put names to the faces; he remembered every one of the men who had thrown in their lot with him--jogged up the stairs to join him, falling in line beside him. “No choppers,” Ken muttered. Ryosuke guessed that he was searching the skies earlier, not blocking the sun.

“Lost interest now the show’s moved inside,” Takeo drawled between chews on his gum. While Ken dressed to fit and played the part, Takeo accented his speech to bark like a classic yakuza in the movies. There was more to being a gangster than wearing the skin and talking the talk, but neither man was a weakling pretending to live the life. It was just their way.

“Or we’re not as high profile as we think,” Ryosuke grunted. There had to be something more fascinating happening in Yokohama than an inconsequential court case. Damn slow news day if there wasn’t.

By the time Ryosuke, Ken, Nobuo and Takeo strode into the courthouse, Kaede and most of her flock had passed into the corridors leading to the courtrooms, shedding numerous journalists and photographers as the throng dealt with a security checkpoint’s restrictions. Ryosuke’s sister and the privileged in her party--namely those wearing black--were free of such delays; greased palms and delicate coercion days earlier saw clear and easy passage through Yokohama District Court’s halls. The bought freedom didn’t extend to the Kanagawa Kotetsu, whose members mingled with the discarded press. Dominique had purchased permits for her Soldats society; none of Ryosuke’s men were listed on them. Ryosuke had tried to pay his and his colleagues’ way by himself; however Dominique had figuratively salted the ground after she had wrung what she needed from it, as every guard his men had approached had shut the Kanagawa Kotetsu out. Brazen yakuza were too noticeable and Ryosuke’s group too well-recognised, the once pliable guards had nitpicked, and even a roughing up hadn’t changed the weakest court policeman’s mind; only made him bolder in resisting. Consequently the Kanagawa Kotetsu was forsaken to loaf around the courthouse’s lobby, none prepared to surrender their arms while joined by Soldats soldiers who had not. But not everyone with Ryosuke was yakuza.

Vin strolled up to Ryosuke, his flashy attire and grandiose gait suddenly easy to pick out amongst the quietening and thinning crowd of people queuing up orderly to be security screened, or settling down in the lobby, or being smart and leaving this meagre blurb in a newspaper altogether. “Here,” Vin said without preamble, stepping near and drawing his two pistols from the holsters under his jacket before stuffing them into Ryosuke’s grasp, followed by a bundle of magazines. “And don’t lose this.” The smaller gangster’s new knife spun out from behind his back and was slapped into his partner’s palm to be secreted away inside Ryosuke’s customary long black coat with everything else.

With a grin and tip of his head, Vin walked away to merge with the others waiting in line at the security checkpoint, his only remaining weapons that which his body could become. More than adequate, Ryosuke’s cocky friend had assured when they’d discussed his being there in the courtroom’s audience last night. Vin would find a way to rearm himself regardless if things really did somehow spiral into a firefight, but he had the skill to survive one without a gun. Ryosuke trusted he wouldn’t let Kaede down… that Vin wouldn’t let *him* down. Ryosuke would have been at his little sister’s side too--*should* have been--yet circumstance turned as it willed and wasn’t something one could command absolutely. Moreover, he had an aversion to taking off his coat outside of his quarters. Ryosuke wondered if that translated to Kaede having more courage than he, seeing that she hadn’t donned such armour since her yakuza days. More daring perhaps, but she wasn’t in her right mind, and the mad could know no fear… and were oblivious to dangers a blind man could see.

Ryosuke interest in the queues diminished as the number of people populating them did, yet as he turned his head the swish of long blonde hair snapped it and his curiosity back to where they had been. His brow clenched as his violet eyes below narrowed and honed, trying to establish a straight path through the heads and shoulders strewn between him and the source of the yellow flash. Noir. It came out of nowhere, the thought of them being here blindsiding him like a shiv in the kidney from his closest friend. He had put them out of his mind, left them and the memory of them behind in Paris. Ryosuke had no time for Noir. Dominique, that stupid bitch. If her petty rivalry with him had set the Parisian wolves pointlessly on their scent, *Kaede’s* scent….

The face of a Soldats rebel he had seen before under the blonde tresses in the distance came as a relief, however bitter abhorrence quickly followed. She was stationed there just past the security checkpoint as rearguard--Dominique and her rebels didn’t even trust the Kanagawa Kotetsu to guard the courthouse’s lobby. The French woman heaped insults upon Ryosuke and his brothers unendingly that one would think him and his men numbed to them, dare say accepting. But at least one of them, Ryosuke, had a long memory; a memory written in grudges and prevailed through tempered hate, slow and deep. So very deep. He was glad it wasn’t the blonde half of Noir that he had caught out of the corner of his eye, yet it was Dominique’s fault that he had been made to suspect the rebel as the assassin--in a roundabout way, but still *her* fault.

Ryosuke finally let his gaze drop from the security checkpoint, and took out a cigarette. Nobuo and Takeo sparked into action, competing to see which of them could fumble out a lighter or match first. The young ones could sometimes act so green. Nobuo was the victor, and while lighting the cigarette in his mouth Ryosuke noted coolly that the yakuza’s hand holding the flame didn’t tremble at least.

The smoke swirling into Ryosuke’s lungs comforted and then the streams exhaled out his nose calmed. He snorted, plumes of his addiction puffing into the air, and took the cigarette from his lips to stare at it. His mother would never have approved of his smoking. Hikaru Ishinomori wouldn’t have approved of many things he did and had done.

Ryosuke blew on the end of the cigarette, the smoulders glowing and ash knocked free to float on his breath. He watched for a moment, before putting it back in his mouth for another drag. Nostalgia was for the dying. The living lived in the now, no matter what it was like.

“Hey! You can’t smoke here!”

The call of a courthouse police officer attracted the grim attention of Ryosuke and the gangsters with him, but the officer didn’t balk, the institution of the law they were inside and the presence of other officers within it probably reassuring even while facing such yakuza that made up the Kanagawa Kotetsu.

Takeo moved forward with purpose in his step, as if he was going to start something, until Ryosuke’s raised hand slapping against his chest held him in place. The right to smoke in the building or not was a small thing to come to blows over, especially with the police.

“Satsu…” Ken jeered, shaking his head a little. “Hah! Damn world is too healthy nowadays. Makes me want to have a smoke.” He sneered, showing his teeth, and felt inside his jacket for his cigarettes. “Nobuo! Where’s that light!?”

“Enough,” Ryosuke said. “Remember why you are here.” Ken and the others’ antics ceased and they had the decency to look sheepish; for gangsters anyway.

Ryosuke glanced at the policeman one last time and then walked toward the lobby’s main entrance. He would feel better anyway watching over the motorcade that only Dominique’s soldiers were overseeing. Maybe Noir wasn’t here, but Soldats--the one Dominique and her women hated--could be. And then there was always the enemy within--the ones who wore black.

******

Mireille’s right leg kicked where it lay crossed atop the left, as though it were a gasping fish on land, until her conscious mind took notice of her unconscious one’s behaviour and she reigned in the tick spurred on by boredom… or was it nerves? It would be the day of her retirement from the life of taking lives if the professional contract killer admitted it were; however there was tension within her regardless of her inner disavowals. To describe her being on an assignment of a personal nature as typical was generous--then again, since meeting Kirika actually being paid for an assignment was what had become atypical. Not that she was struggling for funds; those in the business who were good enough to survive past a few contracts learned to stash away ample for emergencies, though ideally it was retirement money for when they stepped off the black path once and for all. Mireille was better than ‘good enough’ however--she had some expensive tastes but wasn’t overly extravagant in her spending; it would take several years bereft of proper work before she’d have to think about dipping into her rainy day savings.

Personal assignments had their own rewards in place of money, and normally when weighed against a cheque their worth was considerably greater, priceless, which made the assignment itself of more consequence. Mireille and Kirika fought for their own agendas, not some anonymous client’s veiled behind a letter, or email or telephone call. The added, private, pressure to succeed could very well encumber as it could support. Emotions weren’t for a cold killer, but here Mireille sat, emotion within her--the passion to accomplish her mission at all costs and the dread at the outcome of failure. Her mind, accustomed to a state of cool and calm was there to bring her roiling feelings into accord and promote professional detachment, but the emotive thoughts remained on the outskirts of the void, pressed down yet not blotted out.

There were a lot of people in Yokohama District Court, and Mireille had seen the even bigger crowds waiting outside its doors before she came in. Plenty of human cover--a boon as long as it continued to work to her benefit; as long as she continued to be part of the throng. She felt suitably at home inside the lobby with a newspaper in front of her face, blocking all but the rudely inquisitive to her foreign features. Mireille was a lawyer… a reporter… a translator. A curiosity, but one quickly dismissed once a casual explanation was put to her. She belonged.

The newspaper was chicken-scratch to Mireille without her mop-headed partner to interpret, but her eyes were meant for more than the headlined goings on in Yokohama and the rest of Japan. Her concern was for just a tiny speck of the city--the entrance hall of this municipal building.

The blonde’s gaze skimmed over the top of the newspaper in intermittent bursts to take in her perspective of the lobby from sitting in its lounge--picked just for that unsparing perspective--rising and falling with apparent waxing and waning offhand interest to avert answering interest; blue eyes spying, watching--waiting. And if those eyes sometimes drifted across the foyer to pick out a certain girl, Mireille did all she could to keep the interest from shining too brightly in them.

Kirika milled about with the other visitors to the district courthouse, going nowhere yet appearing to have some unreachable heading known only to her. Her nomadic disorientation was postponed every so often by fits of loitering where she simply stopped and looked at her surroundings as though they were new to her, letting the people flow past her like currents in a river, and she the stone. It was cute; sweetness that touched a smile to Mireille’s lips, however the woman hoped her partner wasn’t selling the lost child cover too forcefully. It wouldn’t be a disaster or even a hindrance if a police officer or Good Samaritan identified Kirika’s ‘plight’ before their targets showed up, but the younger assassin had to maintain believability for suspicion to not be levelled at her, now, or later when law enforcement reviewed the lobby’s security camera footage. It was fine to be caught on film if determined to be an innocent bystander.

Perhaps it was because Kirika, with her apparent fragile petite figure and ingenuous face prone to innocent expressions, could look perfectly helpless without the façade. All the combat experience, all the murderous know-how--Kirika was still a withdrawn and naïve teenage girl. Who knows; maybe Kirika wasn’t acting over there, but just being herself.

It wasn’t until Mireille noticed the portly balding man sitting on the sofa opposite looking at her that she realised the newspaper in her hands had sagged in her wilting grasp and her little smile for her love’s endearing manner had had a growth spurt… and that the man was returning it, thinking it for him.

The smile died quickly, Mireille’s throat clearing in its passing with a slightly embarrassed cough, and the blonde hurriedly shifted the newspaper higher over her countenance. She was sure the man would remember her, although not in a dangerous way… but in a way still unwelcome.

A rapidly escalating flurry of activity congregating around the front entrance grabbed Mireille’s attention away from the grin of a stranger and put it back on track. They had arrived.

Like pigeons to scattered breadcrumbs the up until now loafing reporters flocked, erecting an effective screen on all sides of this morning’s celebrities. Flagging journalists and photographers yet threw themselves into the jam, in futile hope of a breach that would get them closer to the quarry they unwittingly had in common with Noir.

The ball of people travelled with the Ishinomori procession, making it easy for Mireille to follow her enemies’ progress across the foyer despite not actually laying eyes on them. The latter handicap changed when the mob bumped into the security checkpoint policing the courtroom traffic. Faces as foreign as her own began to emerge as the crowd was siphoned into single files, a fact Mireille found novel although she had no reason to suspect a full Japanese entourage was attached to Kaede Ishinomori after seeing Breffort’s newspaper clippings and surveillance photos. It was a little difficult not to automatically have kinship toward the women sharing her central facial characteristics while herself a stranger to the nation, but the impulse passed swiftly. At the end of the day it would simply make them stand out as clearly as she did.

While not everyone next to Kaede was from overseas, they did have the same dress sense. Black was in vogue, the Soldats rebels not so separated from their forebear that they had discovered colour. The suits were crisp and the sunglasses smart, but goons were still goons. It was hard to think of any of them as Altena’s ‘priestesses’--or whatever station had been theirs in the woman’s cult--however a finely tailored suit was a far cry from pseudo-religious robes and habits.

The face of Kaede Ishinomori finally surfaced in the centre of the little revolutionaries, one of the older priestesses--if they could still be called that--bent at her ear. The young woman hadn’t branched out her wardrobe since Mireille had seen her pictures in Breffort’s office, emulating her splintered Soldats bodyguard outfits closely. In person Kaede Ishinomori didn’t look like much; not that much more than a girl somehow with too much power at her fingertips... if it were true. She had time in the yakuza under her belt, but any dregs were labelling themselves gangster these days. Mireille wondered what influence she did have in the mutiny, or if Altena’s former circle allowed her any. Having a dead mother as a member could only go so far, and Altena had always enjoyed wielding power through others. Her disciples were likely the same.

Mireille couldn’t see Kaede’s brother or the man he travelled with in the wholly feminine melange--strange that they wouldn’t be here, especially Ryosuke when his sibling had a day in court. It was slightly perturbing--the blonde assassin considered whether the pair was hanging back somewhere out of sight…. It made Mireille’s skin itch, like their predatory eyes were inexplicably on her all of sudden, waiting for their chance to surprise her. She shook it off quickly, however the wariness stayed. There was no need to be too relaxed.

Slaying Kaede Ishinomori should be suitable show of Noir’s ‘loyalties’ toward Soldats if Ryosuke and Vincent didn’t crop up before the hit, but Mireille disliked leaving loose ends. There was vengeance to consider, and she really didn’t want either of the men knocking on her door with a barrage of bullets back in Paris one day in the future. The possibility of planning a second assignment in Japan targeting Ryosuke Ishinomori and Vincent Hsu was odious, but it was a thought for a later time.

Mireille almost overlooked the downcast young woman trailing at the edges of Kaede’s party. At first Mireille had thought she was an impatient bystander who had somehow elbowed her way into the party’s rear and had been on the verge of dismissing her, except it quickly occurred to the assassin that the priestesses weren’t moving to restrain her. No guard was that lax, however the woman looked very out of place amid her companions. She was in a world all of her own; even from Mireille’s outlying location she could sense the distance within her. Ironically the discouraged young woman was dressed the most upbeat amid the prevalent darker tones; a green dress and white shawl, and a white sunhat she held in her hands in front of her. Whoever she was, she was definitely with Ishinomori after further observation, moving in synch with the group and being waved through the security checkpoint without pause.

Mireille’s analytical mind wheeled into motion, digesting with the vivaciousness of a ravenous lion what she had witnessed. The police at the checkpoint had to be paid off to sanction the high profile defendant’s and her gang’s unrestrained access. The metal detector portal’s warning beeps sounded out unheeded with each Soldats rebel it admitted, and none of the briefcases some of the priestesses carried were subjected to the x-ray machine. It appeared security wouldn’t be weeding out the armed members of Kaede Ishinomori’s party. It was not a setback--it simply meant the mission wouldn’t be a pure pushover. Indeed, Mireille had figured at least one or two of Kaede’s bodyguards would manage to smuggle a firearm into the courtroom. The new circumstances wouldn’t cause a hitch in the blonde assassin’s plans… but she was going to change them nonetheless.

Still as smooth and composed as she had been since she sat down, Mireille folded her newspaper and put it under her arm, uncrossed her legs, and got to her feet. The man who had been staring at her had twisted himself in his seat on the other sofa to instead stare over the back of it, eating up the hubbub taking place in the lobby which was evidently a better dish to him than an unreceptive though beautiful Western woman. There was no complaint from Mireille; she welcomed being ignored. It was what she wanted.

She repaid his disregard by quietly and unobtrusively leaving his company whilst availing herself of his coat draped over the sofa, sweeping it up as she passed without missing a beat. Mireille held it slung over her left arm at her hip as she continued her stride; the newspaper under her right a screen for the other arm’s doing; and moved through the man’s blind spots until the heaving crowd clustered in the centre of the foyer eliminated all hope of him detecting her and his loss. Though, if Mireille had underestimated the man’s alertness, she was confident she could shake off his pursuit in the crowd. An untrained civilian was simple to mislead and elude. Mireille wouldn’t be seeing the man again.

Mireille nudged, sidestepped, and sneaked a clear route to the security checkpoint.
The newspaper found itself tumbling into a trashcan on the way, and Mireille’s admirer’s coat became hers when she threw it on soon afterwards. It was large for her slender frame, but it would serve its purpose. As the metal detector gateways and x-ray conveyers loomed close, Mireille slapped on her sunglasses and buttoned the coat over the lavender shades of her suit. Her normal fashion sense would not help her here, but thanks to a little good fortune there was still opportunity to be had. She was deviating from what she and Kirika had sombrely planned yesterday, but sticking to a plan no matter what was for mechanical grunts lacking initiative, lacking enterprise; willing to face defeat for peace of mind. Knowing when to adapt was for leaders. The move came with risk, yet so did what the original plan specified. What wasn’t a gamble on an assignment? Your life was the wager throughout. This was the better path, with the better odds. Mireille didn’t hesitate.

Kirika was no doubt making her own move now too, proactively searching for ‘aid’ if an empathic passerby or policeman hadn’t ‘come to her rescue’ beforehand. Mireille dared not seek her out with her gaze at this late juncture, irrespective of how affectionate she might ultimately feel. The time for emotions was over; in truth the blonde was meant to have left them at the Yuumura house.

Mireille slotted herself metres behind the Ishinomori party, putting some people between them and her--not too close, not too far; merely a tardy bodyguard or rear watch. Her foreign looks were actually helping her fit in for once.

In the minutes Mireille had to wait in the queue it felt like time was in no hurry to go by, but the assassin didn’t sweat the delay. When trying to blend, your will had to be in it; appear like you were out of place, and people would think you were. You had to be bold, you had to be calm. Blown cover typically entailed a drastic, and violent, aftermath.

The final genuine member of Kaede Ishinomori’s entourage trickled out of the lobby to join her comrades on the other side of the security checkpoint, none the wiser of the extra member at their heels. It was Mireille’s turn to leave and for her disguise to be tested.

Armed with the haughty carriage exuded by the preceding priestess and more entrancing grace in her swaying hips, Mireille sailed through the chirping metal detector as soon as her path to it was clear of other visitors. In her peripheral vision she saw police officers look at her, but none stepped out to challenge her. They had indeed been compensated well, and had respect for their bribers--too much. Fear of possibly impeding one of them kept their hands in their money-lined pockets and let a lion through the door. Mireille suspected almost any foreign woman in black would have gotten through the checkpoint unopposed this morning.

It was over in seconds, but every one of those seconds had belonged to her. Cowed officers perhaps, but to them Mireille had been one of Ishinomori’s bodyguard. She was inside clean.

That was not to say her guard was lowered, but her cover was cast off; there was no need for it past the checkpoint, and it wouldn’t hold up under the scrutiny of real priestesses. Mireille was simply a visitor of some sort now, one of many.

The quantity of people on the other side of the checkpoint had been watered down compared to that in the nearby foyer, but there was still ample to brush shoulders with in the narrower halls. Kaede’s group had gained some distance on the blonde assassin whilst she was slowed in the security line, but it was of no consequence. Mireille knew without a doubt where they were going.

The priestesses weren’t all with Kaede. The surveying eyes skewered Mireille, and a lesser person would have been impaled to the floor and held fast. Kaede had left a rearguard just past the checkpoint, the *true* rearguard Mireille had imitated. Somehow Mireille had wandered into her watch, and for some reason had not wandered unnoticed through it. The priestess had been with Altena before all this--did she recognise Mireille? Did she know her face? Did she know Noir?

Mireille didn’t freeze, tense up, or so much as glance sidelong in the priestess’s direction; but continued on, calmly, maintaining her composure that had seen her through security. If the blonde reacted negatively it would all but confirm her as a threat in the rearguard’s eyes; that she had something to hide, a cause to fret over the woman’s study. There was still the prospect of easing out and manoeuvring free of that skewer.

Mireille’s pace didn’t quicken, but she did hunt for the thicker tufts of people to walk through to foil the priestess’s easy observation of her. If there was any reservation regarding her identity or the danger she posed in the Soldats rebel’s mind, Mireille wanted to stoke it, and keep stoking it until she decided the blonde wasn’t worth the trouble, and was written off as *probably* harmless. Pulling the priestess’s eyes further and further from her post as Mireille walked down the hall would increase the pressure, forcing the guard to choose between remaining on watch there or abandoning her position to tail and eventually confront the other woman. It was the priestess’s frustration that was Mireille’s true ally here; they were the coals for the fire of uncertainty she was brewing; and she did everything she could to raise it while sticking to her indifferent façade.

A glance with just a turn of her eyes rather than her head into the shiny skin of a trashcan depicted a distorted dark shape advancing behind Mireille amid the benign lights of bystanders, the menacing blob stretched up and down the curved silver like a monster’s sinister shadow. The priestess’s dedication to duty was stauncher than the cops’. Mireille wasn’t really surprised; she was reminded of Altena’s followers’ suicidal zeal when she and Kirika faced them and their mistress down in the Manor. The blonde had hoped of course that perhaps with the loss of their leader the bulk of their fanaticism had been stripped away in the demise, but this priestess had enough left in her to hound the slowly and discreetly retreating assassin. Or the priestess did indeed know at least one face of Noir. There would be no rid of her hunt if that were the case, and a virtual guarantee she’d report the sighting to her allies. But the priestess, for now, followed where Mireille led… and where Mireille walked death awaited.

A sign ahead pointed down a corridor, the writing gibberish but the pictograph indicating restroom facilities. Mireille had been expecting it, the buildings blueprints still laid out in her head. She took a right into the corridor, and she wasn’t far along it before she sensed the priestess walking it with her. The corridor provided a means to the restrooms and to a couple of the building’s service entrances for maintenance crews, leaving it much less travelled, although the noise from the lobby and the wider hallways to the courtrooms still easily found a way in. Mireille may not have been able to hear the priestess’s footsteps over the drone, but she could feel the woman at her back. It was instinct honed through years of service on the black path; always active, always right--well, right most of the time to have Mireille still breathing.

Mireille pushed open the door to the female restroom and, without breaking her stride, quickly took stock of it while the door swung shut behind her, separating her from the priestess for now. It wasn’t empty as the assassin would have liked, but that would have been asking for too much. One of the three standard stalls was occupied--the one in the middle--and the disabled toilet was free. Not alone, Mireille needed to kill time before she could the priestess.

The blonde slipped into a stall and shut and locked the door just as she heard the restroom door creak open. It was almost silent here but for the dripping of a leaky tap bouncing off the tiled walls and floor. The priestess’s heels echoed soundly as she arrived; and then louder, marking her path nearer the toilets. They stopped abruptly however, then started more softly and sporadically as she seemed to pace, waiting for Mireille to finish her business inside the stall… whichever stall that was. With now two of the stalls occupied, it afforded the assassin the delay she sought. Unless the Soldats rebel wanted to chance harassing an innocent civilian by kicking down the cubicle doors, her hands, or in this case her feet, were tied. Involving bystanders on the black path was more often than not a loathe scenario--their reactions were unpredictable and their tongues loose. You killed them when there was no other choice, and with cold immediacy. Their life was worth less than yours--everyone’s was. Or almost everyone’s.

The commode in the stall neighbouring Mireille’s flushed, and shortly after its lock clicked open and a new set of footsteps took up the beat the priestess’s had started. Mireille heard a squeak, and the sound of running water the flushed toilet had begun completely filled the restroom. The only woman that wasn’t armed was at a sink, putting her back to the toilet cubicles. Time had been slain.

Mireille eased open the lock on her stall door as swiftly as she could manage, the rushing water resounding obliterating the solid click. She opened the door a tiny fraction and peeked through the slit. Her pistol was in her hand.

The other woman walking out of her stall had snatched the priestess’s attention, if only for that fleeting moment. But it was all the opening Mireille needed. The black-clad woman was already turning back to the cubicle where she knew Mireille must be, however that shred of distraction had her flat-footed when the assassin shot out of the stall and jammed her weapon’s silencer in her ribs. Mireille’s left arm smacked into the Soldats mutineer’s throat as she slung the limb around her neck and locked the Ishinomori guard in place in front of the gun’s barrel. The blonde then pulled her arm back fiercely, constraining her prey to arch her body awkwardly and throw herself off-balance indefinitely. With the woman’s head craned back it brought her ear to Mireille’s mouth. “Silence,” the assassin whispered. Mireille had her.

The squeak of the sink faucet and the halt of one source of running water robbed Mireille of the rest of her moment of professional satisfaction. The woman at the basin turned to presumably go to the hand dryer, but the shocking sight of the blonde death dealer and her pinned captive jolted the civilian to a dead stop.

Mireille didn’t want to have to control *two* prisoners, and quickly seized hold of the situation before it became a *situation*. Adopting one of her most charming but largely seductive smiles of her vast repertoire, Mireille nuzzled the Soldats guard’s ear and kissed her neck with all familiarity of an old lover, capping it off with a teasing wink that promised more to come at the dumbfounded woman looking on. The Corsican could feel the priestess tense in her grasp and heard the intake of air as indignant protests amassed in her throat--or was it a gasp of enjoyment…?--however the merciless grinding of the Walther P99 in her kidney saw any response from Mireille’s hostage short-lived.

The hasty ruse had the desired affect--the civilian’s senses returned to her at the Sapphic spectacle and she smiled weakly, before all but jogging to the restroom’s exit, hurriedly wiping her wet hands on her skirt as she fled. Mireille couldn’t help a genuine grin.

Mireille ushered the tottering priestess toward the disabled toilet; half-pulling, half-dragging her into the spacious stall. The faint crackle of a radio sparking to life gave pause to the assassin, and she listening intently to the German whisper. “Gisela--come back.”

The fingers of Mireille’s free hand reached up and tucked the guardswoman’s fair hair behind her ear, baring the murmuring earpiece. German was once more broadcast softly into the again quiet restroom--“Gisela, do you read? Do you have anything to report? Come back.”

“The…” Gisela’s voice was hoarse--as well it should be since Mireille had ordered silence from her--and she spoke in German like the broadcaster. “The microphone is in my left sleeve. Do you… do you understand?”

Mireille said nothing. Then in the silence, a muffled snap immediately followed by a wet thud. The priestess gasped, and there was no mistaking what sort of gasp it was this time. Mireille pushed her buckling body over the toilet, Gisela’s stomach finding the seat first, and aimed her pistol at the back of the dying woman’s head. A second and another gunshot later, and Gisela was just plain dead.

Mireille holstered her weapon and bent over the corpse, looking for that microphone. The Corsican had weighed whether she ought to let her prisoner give the all clear to her colleague, but she simply hadn’t trusted Gisela to blurt a warning despite the sure death that would ensue. Self-preservation had been second to duty under Altena’s leadership.

Mireille lifted Gisela’s limp wrist with the microphone set against what used to be a pulse point to her lips. She flushed the stall’s toilet, and, recalling her victim’s Germanic voice, gave the all clear to whoever was listening on the frequency, the combination of the blonde’s mimicking of Gisela and the interference from the nearby flushing toilet hopefully passing the assassin off as the dead guard merely on a bathroom break. It seemed to work--the radio fell quiet after an acknowledgement.

Mireille nudged the stall door closed with her hand and locked it in case of some random bathroom-goer stumbling upon her, and then went about the somewhat grisly task of stripping off the radio and microphone lashed around Gisela’s caress for her own eavesdropping purposes.

In rummaging through Gisela’s person to detach the radio and mic, Mireille discovered a handgun harness containing a Glock 18 machine pistol and a few extended magazines, and what the blonde guessed was a backup firearm; a stubbier Glock 26; at the small of the priestess’s back. It provided Mireille some idea of the hardware she and Kirika would be up against if most or all the guards were equipped thus, and the Corsican contract killer made mental note of the intel.

It wasn’t until Mireille had fitted the Soldats’ radio on her body and was propping up Gisela on the toilet in a pantomime of use that she noticed the very familiar silver symbol on the lapel of the woman’s suit jacket. Almost without thinking Mireille picked it off the black fabric, staring at it as she brought it closer to her eye. She had seen the emblem nearly all the years of her life on the pocketwatch her father had owned, and again on the face of the book called Langonel’s Manuscript. Soldats… but more accurately, *Noir*. Two women wielding swords before one another, dressed in robes. Altena’s Noir existed only in metal. And it was principally just a symbol of the Soldats splinter group now, the badge of the old.

Mireille kept the pin, thinking it might come in handy, and arranged Gisela’s droopy feet flat on the floor to appear normal to anyone who might peek under the cubicle’s door. It simply took a hundred yen coin to turn the straightforward lock to ‘occupied’ status once outside the stall--the morbid fact that the guardswoman was dead probably wouldn’t be realised for hours.

Mireille washed her hands and ensured she was as presentable as always in the restroom mirror; blood had a tendency to splatter on you at close range. However it looked as if Gisela’s gore had only stained the toilet and porcelain tiles; Mireille was spotless.

She took off the stolen overcoat and smoothed any dishevelment from her infinitely more attractive suit. Laying the coat over her arm, Mireille smiled briefly at the attractive and bright face in the mirror and left the restroom. She hoped Kirika hadn’t been waiting for her for long.

******

Kirika selected a spot on the Yokohama District Courthouse lobby floor and picked a staggered route through the other building’s visitors toward it. When she reached it, she looked around the foyer from her new perspective for a while and at random picked another spot to mosey on to. Disorientation seemed to tag along wherever she drifted, and her mystified expression showed she knew of her travel companion.

But on the inside Kirika was something else, something much deeper than the lost girl she played. She’d had training for this kind of deception; at least that was what the phantom images from her shattered memory suggested; and her life before had all but consisted of pretending to be something she wasn’t. It was a technique of an assassin, hiding in plain sight, a subterfuge that led to the kill, and Kirika was all about killing today. For Mireille who she loved, and for the blood price that had to be paid for their freedom.

If Kirika had a preference, she liked pure stealth more than trying to blend into a crowd of people. Sneaking around, working quietly in the shadows, not being seen at *all*… there was security in the dark anonymity, away from eyes. But Mireille was responsible for the planning of an assignment’s operation, and the older assassin’s typical predilection was to hide with the non-combatants when such were present in number within a target’s general proximity. It was the wisest alternative for this mission being the safest and most auspicious means of entry and execution; however Kirika couldn’t spin a tale and assume a role as smoothly as Mireille was able to. The blonde had been gifted with undeniable charm and the sweet tongue to match that Kirika knew the pleasant magnetism of intimately well. Mireille could ooze her beguiling wiles whenever she required--was it the look in her suddenly deep, endless gaze, or the perfect way she contorted her body to that of a master sculptor’s life’s work in flawless alabaster flesh, or was it the carefully picked words she crooned that went straight to your heart while airing out your head?--and they *made* you want to do everything in your power to accommodate her requests, just to see her pleased with you and your efforts. Or that was what Kirika felt when rushing to oblige her beloved blonde angel, anyway. It couldn’t have been much different for other people trapped under Mireille’s enamouring spell--Kirika had witnessed how they behaved. Even though those people had not been in love with the woman like she was, they had looked it in those moments.

A cover with a speaking part wasn’t Kirika’s strong suit when charm was a foreign trait to her that she had no hope of exuding herself, but fortunately her partner, the adept strategist, knew that. Mireille kept Kirika’s disguises as light on the roleplay as feasible; they were generic backgrounds, positions in which people rarely had a reason to speak up much. The soft-spoken Kirika played those roles as though she lived them.

Mireille’s plan for the Ishinomori hit had Kirika posing as a lost girl, somehow separated from her family already inside a courtroom. She was to find her way into a court police officer’s custody and be escorted to the security room linking the lobby to the courtroom access hallways where she would await Mireille; acting as her guardian; to claim her. Then they would both leave the security room via the door to the courtroom areas, thereby circumventing the lobby’s metal detector’s and x-ray machines. The sly sidestep was the sticky part; if the officers in the security room were alert, it would occur to them that Mireille had come in from the lobby side and was leaving through the courtroom side. But if questioned, Kirika was confident that Mireille would convince the guards that it was alright to let them slip on through. In the event of such a failure that they were confined to the lobby, the contingency proposal was to strike at Ishinomori on the street as her and her group left the district court. That would be messy and the danger high, probably calling every member of Kaede’s bodyguard she had in the region down on them and every police officer too, and out in the open, however in the chaos Kirika and Mireille’s objectives could still be achieved. A panicked crowd immersed in bedlam tended to have poor memory recall after the fact, and neither Kirika nor Mireille were assassins who depended exclusively on the shadows to succeed. A heated shootout against multiple aggressors was usually the worst case scenario, but it was a scenario the young women had plenty of experience winning.

The throng in the lobby stirred up into a commotion, and Kirika knew its centre before it appeared. In the last seconds before the action really started she tried to find Mireille through the mob of gathering people, but the smitten girl had to settle for disappointment. For all Kirika knew her partner may already be on the move. She had better get a move on too.

Kirika made sure to get a glimpse of Kaede Ishinomori before stepping up her lost girl feign, just to be sure it was really the moment to put the mission into motion. A tiny fissure in the swarm and a fraction of a second was all that was needed; the assassin instantly mirrored the face of the white-haired woman smothered by bodyguards and reporters to the photographed individual’s she had memorised in Breffort’s office. Kirika tried not to think about her name and who she was too much; it made it easier to overlook that they had a past and a life and people who knew them; loved them even. That they had a future. *Had* a future.

<Taking lives is a sin, even their lives. But how terrible a sin, really? Is it murder to put down a rabid animal? Monsters--demons--forfeited the right to be regarded as people. Their future is another’s pain. Put them down. Put them down.>

Kirika did her best to overlook Altena’s whispering too.

Kaede Ishinomori was not alone of course, but Kirika didn’t belabour sizing up her bodyguards either. The target had some; that was everything the girl needed to know. No matter whom they were, no matter how experienced or armed, the outcome would not change. If the women in black suits stood with their doomed charge when Kirika and Mireille descended, their fortunes were as promising as Kaede’s.

Kirika’s keen ears reached above the lobby’s clamour to pick up the bang of a heavy door swinging shut on her other side of the room away from the crowd. The blueprints of the courthouse flared in her mind, and she homed in on the security access door on the distant foyer wall. A police officer briskly trotted across the lobby’s floor in the wake of the door closing, a rolled up brown paper bag in one hand while the other struggled to pin a security swipe card to his belt. It didn’t take the appraisal of a practiced assassin to tell that he was in a rush, the man needing several tries before he got the card securely fastened. His hat was on squint too, but it looked too big for his head to begin with, and his hair underneath was scruffy. He barely seemed to notice the furore in the middle of the lobby. The policeman’s distraction was welcome for Kirika’s objective.

Kirika set her meandering path of disorientation on an intersect course with the police officer’s hurried jog. When the policeman looked up from adjusting his black tie, the teenager was there in front of him, her sudden appearance almost bowling him over. His shoes squeaked on the floor and his arms flailed as he battled to come to a halt, all but stooped over the shorter Kirika when he finally did.

“I’m lost,” Kirika said simply, staring up at the man.

The policeman blinked at her for a moment while her words sunk in following his excitement beforehand. “Oh. Umm…” He glanced about fretfully, as though Kirika’s guardian would be readily visible nearby, or that maybe someone else would be able to help her. “Did you… did you come here with family?”

Kirika nodded solemnly. She thought it funny how easily the lies came. None unsettled her.

The police officer sighed, scanning the lobby again, as if Kirika’s missing family, now confirmed by the assassin to exist, truly would materialise from thin air somewhere close. But no such luck. That family would only show up when she wanted to.

“Okay, you better come with me,” he admitted half-heartedly, however his supportive smile and kind eyes told that his lack of enthusiasm was reserved for Kirika being in a predicament, not for the girl herself.

Kirika trailed after the policeman, who had slowed his pace to normal after their meeting. When they reached the security office, he held the door open for her to pass by him and enter first.

The office was nothing particularly unique. It was an office host to desks and chairs and papers, although with the added exception of a security camera station housing multiple black and white monitors, and the occasional wall-mounted gun rack where pump-action shotguns were the sported arms. It was all quite orderly, documents stacked nicely and no loose ammunition lying around.

“Ah, so that’s why you were late!” one of the two other officers in the security room smirked as the tardy policeman escorted Kirika to a chair in front of one of the desks, pulling the swivel chair out and gesturing for her to sit. “She’s cute. Which high school?”

“Funny,” Kirika’s police officer said dully, sounding like he didn’t think it was funny at all, whatever the joke was.

Once Kirika had taken her seat, the officer sat on the edge of the desk, his back to his workmates, and launched into his gentle interview of her.

“What’s your name?” was the first question he asked as he took off his oversized hat and tossed it and the brown paper bag after that on the desk. It might have been his desk.

“Kirika Yuumura,” Kirika said truthfully. Her name didn’t exist anywhere except on the student card she carried; it was as good as an alias, as that was what it had once been. Her Tsubaki High School records had been no doubt expunged by Soldats, and everyone else who knew it was either dead or lived in darkness, out of reach of the law. Or was a high school student. However, Kirika didn’t see herself living long in their memories. The policeman would forget it too before the day was out. When Kirika thought about it, it was only Mireille who uttered her name aloud. But for all that; she *was* Kirika Yuumura. Another name would be simple to conceive, but her real name, such that it was, mattered to her. When she could, Kirika shunned perverting her identity behind a false name. She would not lose this one.

The policeman continued his line of questioning. “Who were you here with?”

“My aunt,” Kirika replied. A half-truth; Mireille was the only family she had, and their bond was thicker than blood and truer than name.

“And her family name is Yuumura too?” Kirika nodded, and the policeman jotted down the information on a notepad and then tore off the leaf. “Okay…” He hopped off the desk to his feet. “I’ll get an announcement made over the PA system for your aunt to pay us a visit, and take a look around for her myself. You just sit tight, okay?”

The policeman put down the notepad and unrolled the top of the brown bag and stuck his hand inside, coming back out with a chocolate bar in his grip. “Here you go,” he said, tendering it to Kirika.

Kirika regarded the chocolate bar listlessly, wondering if there was a risk or if the treat was as innocuous as it looked. There were many insidious poisons in the world, and when you had the knowledge of their effects it was challenging not to beware what food and drink strangers offered you of their own volition.

“Oh, are you allergic to nuts?” the policeman asked, for a second browsing the chocolate bar’s packaging.

“Mm, mm,” Kirika denied, shaking her head from side to side slightly. She took the bar from him and studied the bright yellow wrapper idly. She had a cover to maintain, after all.

The police officer smiled, obviously pleased that Kirika had accepted, and then left the office to alert the girl’s ‘aunt’ of her ‘niece’s’ whereabouts.

Kirika tore open the treat’s wrapper and nibbled at the chocolaty outer shell. Meanwhile her gaze panned the room carefully, her indolent reddish-brown stare the thick coating masking the scrupulous scrutiny of a high-class assassin.

The chatty officer was at another desk, squeezing a small orange rubber ball in one hand while reading a piece of paper in the other, Kirika’s presence apparently dismissed. The policeman who had remained silent was at the surveillance camera station, dividing his attention between the newspaper in his lap and the monitors, with the newspaper getting the bigger slice. A few seconds spent watching the neglected screens had Kirika up-to-date with Kaede Ishinomori’s and her bodyguards’ positions just outside the target’s scheduled courtroom. Kirika hadn’t seen Mireille in one of the black and white images, but then she hadn’t actually presumed to. The blonde had a habit of unconsciously walking in a camera’s blind spots when she knew where they were, even when they weren’t on an assignment.

There wasn’t a CCTV camera in the security room with Kirika, but the teenager didn’t need the monitors to fathom that. The building’s blueprints had pointed out the lack, and her survey of the room had validated them. Kirika could almost relax here in the den of law enforcement. She chewed on her chocolate bar, liking the taste and texture and wondering if Mireille would get her more. Mireille hardly ever ate chocolate, which more or less meant Kirika hardly ever ate it either. When the woman did though, the little prettily shaped chocolates she brought home were very rich and delicious and sometimes had creamy middles that mixed in Kirika’s mouth with their chocolate casings so delightfully. But this chocolate bar was good too. It had a crunch to it and was fun to chew.

It was roughly ten minutes later with Kirika bent over at the waist in her chair, searching under the desk for a waste bin for her empty chocolate bar wrapper, when Mireille breezed into the office. She arrived by the other door into the security office, the one that led around the lobby’s security checkpoint; for the police officers’ convenience and queuing visitors’ peace, Kirika imagined. It was a departure from what Kirika had expected, yet a gainful one. Mireille must have seen an opening to improve their plan. The black coat slung over her left arm had possibly eased that opening a little wider--she hadn’t left the house with it.

“There you are!” Mireille exclaimed cheerily, making quick work of the space between herself and Kirika and stooping low to engulf the rather taken aback girl in a big warm hug where she sat. “I was worried. You shouldn’t wander off like that.”

“Mm…” was the entirety of Kirika’s muttered answer as she meekly put her arms around Mireille. She found one half of her face squished against her partner’s neck and shoulder, and all she could smell was the woman’s strong perfume, and below that, a whiff of her natural scent. Some cover roles were nicer than others.

Through the one eye that wasn’t forced shut because of the enthusiastic blonde’s reunion with her ‘niece’, Kirika saw the helpful police officer loiter uncomfortably in the doorway, scratching an itch underneath his hat. “It, uh, was pure luck I bumped into your, your aunt…” he said clumsily. Luck had nothing to do with it, unless her name was Mireille. The policeman’s gaze seemed to persist dragging toward Mireille’s back then pull away violently, only to be dragged back again almost instantly. “I-I guess she’s your aunt through marriage?”

Mireille loosed Kirika from her embrace as she straightened, however her hands slid up to remain on the younger girl’s shoulders. “Of a sort,” she said, a knowing smile blossoming for Kirika only. The blonde turned to the police officer. “I fancy ‘big sister’ to ‘aunt’, since I’m not *that* old, am I?” The charm was out to play.

“Oh, uh, no,” the policeman stammered. “You are very… young.” There was a guffaw from one of the two other officers behind Kirika, but whatever the joke it must have had meaning for him alone.

“Thank you for taking care of my niece,” Mireille said, glossing over the man’s clear-cut comment. The policeman started to mutter some sort of gauche reply, except the assassin didn’t wait for it. “Oh, I found this coat unattended in the lobby,” she said, lifting the coat on her arm as though she just remembered it was there. “Perhaps you have a lost and found?”

“Umm… um, yeah, let me take that for you,” the policeman said, struggling somewhat to keep up.

Mireille handed the coat into the officer’s care, and then bid Kirika to rise through a pointed look in her eyes and slight tilt of her head. “Thank you, again,” she said to the policeman while putting an arm around Kirika’s shoulders, grasping the left. Mireille didn’t want to stick around for the man’s goodbye, guiding Kirika to the door she had entered from.

“Bye, Kirika,” the officer said to the teenager’s departing back.

Kirika felt Mireille’s arm tense around her, but her partner waited until they were in the hall before she spoke up. “You told him your name.” It was a statement of fact, not an inquiry.

“Mm,” Kirika acknowledged anyway.

“I suppose there’s no real harm…” Mireille admitted, but one glance at her serious expression and Kirika could see the wheels in her head turning, divining how her partner revealing her name could threaten their anonymity in the future. But the wheels didn’t turn for long with so negligible a thing to power them. Ahead of the misgiving about to set in Kirika anyway, the girl’s shoulder was squeezed tenderly and her petite body coaxed close to her love’s, for her to bask against for an idyllic, too short, instance before Mireille’s necessary separation. They had been niece and aunt in the lobby and security room, but here beyond those places they were strangers. Kirika could yet feel Mireille’s warmth touching her side; she would have to savour that flicker of heavenly sensation until what they had come here to achieve was through.

“I have one of their radios,” Mireille said while she and Kirika walked with each other down the hall, mingling amongst the other suits, the distance between the two assassins gradually growing.

Kirika said nothing. She didn’t need the details, though she could envision them. She doubted one of Ishinomori’s escort would have given the hardware up willingly. The radio would help to tell them *exactly* when Kaede Ishinomori was leaving her courtroom, and what route she was taking out of the building. It took the spying and guesswork out of the equation, replacing it with coordination and pinpoint accuracy. Kirika would have to stay in eyeshot of Mireille to recognise when to move, however having to hold her attention on the blonde was definitely a perk of the job.

The intersection looming harked back to the young women’s predestined separation; one hall for Kirika and one for Mireille. The black thread tying them together would bring both back as a whole when the moment was ripe, and the lives caught between the pair at that instant would be smothered by the darkness that coloured the string. Kirika and Mireille separated as lovers, but they would reunite as killers. Today, it was the way it had to be.

******

“Case dismissed!”

The judge’s gavel rapped, and immediately the uproar, held in so long by those observing in the gallery, was unleashed. Some of the prosecution stood up to shout protests above the din behind them--mistrial, perversion of justice, and that rot--but the smarter ones realised total defeat when they saw it and wallowed in their failure. With no witnesses the prosecution’s case had been based on circumstantial evidence--Yolanda, Uzumi, Karen and Fatima; the team of lawyers defending Kaede and fellow sisters themselves; hadn’t broken a legal sweat. But Kaede herself had seen to her own defence with a more hands-on approach days earlier; the prosecution’s sole witness, Aki Matsumoto, a nothing factory worker turned whistleblower whose conscience had led him fatally astray, was in little pieces of meat dumped in Tokyo Bay. Digested meat, by now. The family that survived him had been suitably compensated for their loss… and cooperation. Aki Matsumoto’s life had been worth a surprisingly low sum to his wife and child all told.

Dominique ran the gamut of the media gauntlet that was seconds prior a well-behaved courtroom gallery in company with Kaede and her bodyguard--oh, and her little pet; she was so very easy to overlook--microphones waved in her face and camera flashes shocked her eyes, all throughout the jumbled questions and requests for comments assailing her ears. The lawyers would fend off the rabble with their garrulous statements and diplomatic responses of how unshakable their confidence had been in Kaede Ishinomori being found innocent of the crimes laid against her, once they had all vacated to the halls outside the courtroom. And while they wooed the crowd with their effusive showmanship and inspiring poise, the celebrity of the morning and her escort would quietly slip out the back.

“Pfft, look at this lot. Makes you think they were expecting a conviction, or an escape attempt, or *something* more exciting than an acquittal. Worse, there’s not a looker among them!”

Vincent’s pointless prattle was what scathed Dominique’s ears the worst. His unrelenting idiocy even had him trying to fight the clamour with a loud voice so everyone, Dominique, Kaede et all--maybe he even wanted the members of the gallery included in his insight too--could hear his inane observations, as if they held something redeemable. He’d even talked during the actual trial, whispering dry comments of questionable wit at every opportunity. Why was Vincent even here? He should be wherever Ryosuke was--out of Dominique’s hair.

“When I start eyeing you women-in-black that’s when you know it’s bad.”

Behind the dark lenses of their sunspecs longsuffering glances were exchanged between sisters, and Dominique was positive more than one sigh was heaved. How… how this, *this* man, was purportedly a ladykiller, the French woman would never comprehend. She supposed she had to concede that he was beautiful, though in a feminine vein that she had difficultly believing attracted women favouring men. But it was his personality. Vincent’s personality was absolutely ignoble, intolerable, and insulting to the women he would later bed, or attempt to, while downright cruel to his rejects. A well, if luridly, dressed and pretty caveman was all he was. Dominique hoped she would be compensated for accommodating Ryosuke’s long-time partner; that when he eventually fell in the war against Soldats--and he *would*, she would make it so--his abilities had furthered her and her sisters’ struggle in some grand manner beforehand. Though, when suffering in his repugnant presence, she did feel that an unremarkable and abrupt death would be satisfactory enough.

More reporters waited to ambush Dominique and her charge in the hall, jockeying for a coveted position at the front of the pack that the bodyguards kept at arm’s length with their foreboding manner and looks. Yolanda and the other solicitors flitted past the shoulders of their martially inclined peers to wrestle the crowd into a loose civil passivity using their verbal arsenal and presence of a dissimilar but no less intimidating sort of their own. What the legal team said never touched Dominique’s ears for longer than a handful of seconds; while the four corralled the commotion into a measure of calm, their leader; the girl the gathered journalists *really* wanted to talk to; and her left over retinue, vanished into the corridors of Yokohama District Courthouse. Though their methods differed, the lawyers were as much the rearguard as their sisters equipped with firearms and left behind to support them were.

Their company smaller, it was tantamount to strolling inside the walls of Ishinomori Tower for Dominique and Kaede as they travelled through the halls swiftly and without attracting too much interest, on route toward an isolated alleyway emergency exit, unlocked and the connected alarm deactivated prior to their arrival at the building. The route was told to be a seldom trafficked one by visitors and courthouse staff alike, and thus far lived up to its repute. Sisters awaited them at the commandeered emergency exit to link up with and lead them to the motorcade, and then it was a short ride home in the limo while one car stayed behind to wait for the sisters still in the building. The thought of Kaede in the limousine again, even outfitted as it was, dried Dominique’s throat, but she was conscious that it was an illogical response, governed by emotion… and the past. Nothing would happen, she told herself. However, deep down, the woman was ready if something did.

Dominique smiled a little tremulously down at Kaede, but stiffened her lips before the girl saw it and beamed brilliantly in return. Vincent grinned back at her too, the lout. Dominique didn’t like him walking so near to Kaede. The child shared her mother’s taste in companionship, but still… Dominique didn’t like it. Vincent was certainly an awful character and the French woman would have hated if her charge picked up any of his dreadful attitude, but there were also dangers everywhere, even from within the rebellion. His association with Ryosuke was one thing, but at the core Dominique viewed Vincent Hsu as an outsider. He wasn’t a sister, he wasn’t Ishinomori family; he was analogous to the ragtag bunch that blindly followed Ryosuke, and yet, not one of them either. She knew his background, his life preceding Japan, yet wherever Dominique saw Vincent, she saw suspicion as well. She did not want him befriending Kaede like he had Ryosuke. Dominique would not lose Kaede to anything… or anyone.

“Cristina here… You can’t raise her? All this time? Could be a malfunction; there’s thick concrete in some sections. Send a runner to check on--” Radio chatter. After being around it so long, Dominique was accustomed to tuning out the bandied words of varying languages. The sisters trained in arms and military tactics were disciplined, especially those taking care of Kaede, but even they gossiped on the radio frequencies like it was a phone line now and then.

“…Check the bathrooms if she isn’t there… Yes, I know she isn’t the type….”

Kaede had been discharged quickly without a fuss, much less a conviction; Yolanda, Uzumi and the rest had performed a job well done waylaying the media hounds; and everything remaining was progressing along according to schedule--just the way Dominique liked it. There was a satisfaction gained when events unfolded as you predicted; rather, engineered them to be. It was akin to knowing the future, precognition, like watching a machine in motion and understanding that motion, each cog and spring doing exactly what it was meant to together in sequence--a triumph of logic, perfect in its--

Dominique heard the footsteps before the woman strode out from the corner ahead. She could hear the purpose in each resounding hard click, and then saw it in her stride. The woman was a foreigner, at least a foreigner in the provisos of this country; blonde hair and blue eyes and fair features. Beautiful. She was well-dressed in a suit and skirt, if a tad flashy in her chosen lilac shade, and her hair was done up in an adventurous twist. There was something… something in her face….

The woman reached behind her head as she turned on her heel to face Dominique and those with her, releasing her long tresses to fall about her shoulders. She shook out her mane, tossing her head gently from side to side, and stood there in Dominique and Kaede’s path--in everyone’s path. Her expression was blank, cool nothingness, yet there some *something*… *something* about it….

A memory was pulled grudgingly out of dust and cobwebs; all but dust and cobwebs itself; a flake of recall. The time and the place came slowly, made nebulous by age. It was years ago, the place… warm, sunny. The Mediterranean. There was a child; a girl. An important girl. Dominique had seen her only then, and only from a distance. It was during her sojourn in the personal service of Altena, when she had lived and worked humbly at the Manor as a robed and pious sister; not that she was any less devout now. Dominique had been much younger then; Altena too, but still wise and carrying her force of presence that would only grow stronger with the years. And the child had been a child, young and innocent, a native to the island--yes, it had been an island…--and pretty, with blonde hair and blue… blue eyes….

“No…!” someone gasped, barely a voice powering the word.

A muted spit, another and another and another, and then thunderous bangs erupted behind her, tearing into reality and literally jolting Dominique from her astonishment. But as rational thought kick started, so did terror spawn to subvert it. The screams, the shouts around her, the--the gunfire! Gunfire everywhere, driving her deaf; hammer’s blows against her eardrums, and hammered nails in some unfortunate’s coffin. She remembered it. The aggression of it. The *violence* of it, so ferocious and frank that it could only be reality despite your mind’s fraught refusal it was happening. The chaos. The blood and death. Dominique remembered it all.

Her body did as well. She ducked down, sitting on her heels, head covered--cowering. Instinct. All the instances she mourned the past, wished for a chance to go back and do it differently somehow, do it better; all the vows of readiness for this, *this* which was taking place right now. Dominique had been deluding herself. She reacted like anyone would. She reacted like she had back then. She froze. She cowered.

There was an explosion, a boom not of gunpowder, then a hissing like a snake, and thick vapour surged over her, about her; breathed by the serpent--a poisonous serpent. Gas! They were using gas! Dominique’s shuddering hand somehow made it to her mouth, although what little logic her mind yet commanded exclaimed that the gesture was senseless.

Something heavy smacked against Dominique’s back, splaying her out on the floor. Her chin hit tile, and her glasses bounced off her nose to crack in front of her face. There were bodies with her on the floor, mercifully blurred, but myopia couldn’t censor the red pools and spatters on the while tiles near them. God. No. No, it could *not* be. How could the old fossils send them?! They were…! They were… *gone*! Broken off from Soldats! They…! Dominique could scarcely *think* the word, but it was there, laced with her fright where it rightly belonged. The Black Hands, *here*! Their swords against *her*! Against…! Oh god, *Kaede*!!

Terror of a dissimilar sort, arguably more potent than the first, gripped Dominique, and she whirled her head around to find Kaede, fervently praying she wasn’t one of the slumped black shapes. Her weak, squinted vision located Fumiko first, the green dress an unmistakable tip off. The girl was like Dominique had been seconds before, crouched in a ball, but with her eyes shut and her hands over her ears. It could have been attributable to Dominique’s strained eyesight, but Fumiko’s face looked disturbingly impassive--the French woman was certain she didn’t even flinch as blood splattered across her right cheek.

Kaede was close, being restrained by Vincent of all people. Both were kneeling on the floor, the child fighting in Vincent’s clutches feverishly, clawing at his arm across her chest.

“My katana!” Kaede shrieked, ceasing her clawing for a moment to thrust her hand at the air, reaching for the sword that wasn’t there. “Who has my katana?! Give it to me! *Give* it to me!!”

“No one has it! You left it at home, you ditz!” Vincent barked above the gunshots and yells. He was searching the floor for something, pawing at it with his available hand while simultaneously scuffling with the thrashing Kaede. He obtained what he was looking for--a pistol looted from one of Dominique’s fallen brethren. “Your brother’s coming, okay?! Stay still and wait for him!” He let Kaede off his leash with a shove, his sneer symptomatic of his brusque dismissal if his tone and push weren’t enough.

Vincent hurriedly ejected the magazine of the stolen gun, inspected it with a glance, and then slapped it back inside. He went to cock the weapon when all of sudden he happened to look up, catching Dominique’s scrutiny from where she was prone, pinned to the floor by what she regrettably knew had to be a dead sister. Vincent did no more than watch her in her grisly predicament, tapping the pistol’s barrel against his leg as seconds and bullets passed, seeming one in the same to him. There was obvious mocking in his look, but there was something predatory too. Dominique had the uneasy impression of what a lame wolf would feel like being sized up by the more able of the pack. She started to writhe under the body and strive to get a hold of her glasses--or a gun.

Vincent flashed Dominique a lopsided grin, gritted teeth behind it. He cocked the pistol in his hands roughly. Dominique abandoned her spectacles for a gun. There was blood on her palms and in between her fingers, wet and sticky; her sisters’ blood; but had no weapon to show for the macabre hunt. Kaede had quietened down, panting violently like a feral animal, seething. She mumbled spite and lunacy; chilling atrocities after each hard breath, however she was berserk in her head only; she was in the eye of the coordinated attack and ragged, faltering defence, but she was not a part of the fracas. There would be no aid from the child; she was as shut off as Fumiko. Dominique needed that gun.

“Time to do my thing,” Vincent said through his teeth. He bolted into the grey smog which didn’t seem to be gas after all, body hunched and pistol raised, back the way he and Dominique had come. The distinctive pitch of unrestrained gunfire that had been lacking began anew in a rapid barrage. Awful man.

Vincent had the right of it, though. It pained Dominique to have been shown by *him*, but shamed her more. Leaders had to fight sometimes too, and she had more reason to than anyone. It was not just her life.

Dominique winced and grunted as she heaved her stricken comrade off her. She retrieved her broken glasses, and with them found a gun. They were Noir, but while she prayed for deliverance, Dominique knew that at least one angel was listening.

******

Kirika listened at the edge of the stairwell on the floor below for the parade of footsteps that would come overhead. It was silent and empty; they would not know she lurked underneath. She rested against a wall, patient as a spider on its web, her pistol already in her hands, though concealed behind her back should someone wander out this way. The teenager could understand why Kaede Ishinomori had picked this remote route for extraction from the courthouse, but as a price for the infinite potential hazards and hindrances avoided by forgoing a public exit, they had honed the deadlier threats left over. Kirika surmised that Ishinomori’s bodyguards thought that the residual dangers would be easier to detect and combat in the open, lonely halls. However, in the isolated corridors they were equally cut off. They would not see the threat to detect it beforehand, and when it was time to combat it… it would be hopeless.

There weren’t any security cameras around here; well, too few and far between in this section to worry over. Reinforcements for Ishinomori’s retinue were some minutes away, as were the municipal building’s police officer contingent. They would turn up eventually, inevitably, but Kirika and Mireille would have finished with time to spare before then. They would rescue corpses, arrest no one. They were lucky. They would live through today.

There was a rattle on the web; many footsteps tramping above. Like the spider, Kirika waited while they tangled themselves completely in the invisible threads. This was a web weaved by two spiders, and it was the second who would reveal to their prey how black the spun silk they had walked into was.

The marching stopped. Kirika broke into action, stealing up the stairs as fleet of foot as though she really did have eight nimble legs. She leaned out from around the corner at the top of the stairwell, sighting the target and her escort. The all-female bodyguard protected Kaede ably--Kirika had no shot at the lead Soldats’ agitator. It would have been nice to have ended it quickly, and with fewer deaths. Then again, the women had all seen Mireille’s face; the blonde wouldn’t have been satisfied until it was the last thing each of them saw.

Although Mireille met Ishinomori’s group, it was Kirika who dealt the first bite. They never saw it coming, too captivated by Mireille; their backs to Kirika. Dying with the woman’s beauty as the final image in your eyes wasn’t such a bad fate when Kirika considered it.

Kirika shot the nearest bodyguard in the back of the head. She crumpled instantly. The assassin’s follow up shot took another in the temple as the woman turned, knocking her off her feet. The third gunshot of the opening volley pierced the breast of a yet another. She collapsed into her friends, sliding onto her rear and then toppling over onto her side.

Kirika ducked back behind the wall as she received heavy fire in answer to her ambush. She had done as much damage as she could in those scant seconds of surprise, eliminating approximately a third of the enemy’s strength. Mireille had exacted her own toll too before retreating to shelter in a neighbouring hallway, but there was still the primary target--and those standing in the way of her.

Kirika’s back slid down the wall, the assassin lowering into a crouch. Bits of cracked and chipped plaster flew overhead, powder plumes bursting in the aftermath of their launch. The bullets pounding the wall around the corner weren’t enough to suppress her.

The girl’s back spun away from the wall, her body rotating to poke her head and arm and pistol outside the edge of her cover. There was no one down here but the last guard she had shot, lying on her side, bloodying her white shirt red while drunkenly and lethargically squeezing the trigger of her handgun in Kirika’s general vicinity, each shot wilder than the one preceding it. Blood dribbled from between her lips, but Kirika put another bullet in her chest regardless. The guard might have gotten a lucky hit.

Kirika emptied the rest of her magazine into two other bodyguards too intent on above to remember below; two rounds in one woman’s sternum and the final slug in another woman’s stomach before dipping behind the wall again. She made a mental note that the latter guard might linger with the stomach wound and to not discount her. The assassin swapped her depleted clip for a fresh one, and stood up. The little crouching trick wouldn’t work as well again, but the guards still had to reload sometime.

Their initial panic subsiding, Kirika could tell that the black-clad bodyguards were good, better than the average mercenary and underworld criminal. They outshined their male counterparts Soldats had sent after her and Mireille also. These women were like the priestesses Kirika and Mireille had fought in the Manor, women who had admired Altena and who had devoted themselves, life and all, to Le Grand Retour. Like it was a religion itself, Mireille had once said. Women like these, dressed in robes and habits, had trained Kirika into what she was.

<Thank them for it. Show them how much you have learned, what a *good* student you were…>

Kirika ignored the grim voice, but demonstrated her talent nonetheless on her former teachers. The priestesses’ own elite abilities counted for little in the exposed position they were left in, with no cover but the dead at their feet. They used it all the same, getting low and hauling their departed peers upright as fleshy shields. It was callous, cold--it was necessary. Kirika’s tactical mind would have directed her no different. And if they were alive to comment, the human armour would probably feel it an honour to be used so by their surviving sisters.

A bullet hit the fire extinguisher mounted on wall, the rupture billowing carbon dioxide into the hallway in a hissing stream. Stray shot or deliberate, it was to the priestesses’ advantage. The fire extinguisher sketched a veil across Kirika’s line of sight--and, the teenager imagined, Mireille’s as well--before the canister hollowed out, the grey a ready mélange with the priestesses’ black suits. In the materialised murk Kirika’s eyes couldn’t distinguish what was a shadow or a corpse and what was a priestess still armed and on her feet.

Flashes of straggling muzzle flare and her memory gave the assassin direction however--Kirika maintained her fire, aiming where she recalled priestesses yet lived and where spurts of light emanated to confirm it. Return fire had waned, maybe only a single pistol insisting her sporadic withdrawal into cover. Vision ahead was still hazy, but Kirika juggled with the intuitive idea of pressing the attack home to deliver an immediate finishing assault in close quarters. She had superiority in her position right now, but time was a factor which was fast becoming a critical issue. The girl could kill what still breathed quicker up close, the mist a two-way cloak that would cover her rush until she was upon the women. Friendly fire inside the fumes from Mireille was a worry, but Kirika’s gut placated her with groundless yet persuasive assurances. Mireille would not shoot her; *could* not, like it was a physical impossibility irrespective of circumstance. It made no sense, but Kirika believed it. Maybe it was her heart doing the talking.

Kirika reloaded her Beretta and moved out around the battered corner, but a peek of yellow kicking up swirling tides in the thinning carbon dioxide plume stayed her charge. The sudden blasts of muzzle flare and thunderous hail of streaking lead sent Kirika springing back to her refuge while the wall took a fresh pummelling. When the volley lifted, the assassin bounded out to counterattack the renewed resistance.

She never got a chance to bring her gun to bear. One of the men from the Soldats mansion in Paris, where Langonel’s Manuscript had been found, was there in front of her. The smaller man, Vincent Hsu. And he had her right wrist.

“Braaaaaat…” he crooned.

Vincent’s other fist, clasping an empty pistol, whacked her in the face and off balance, and then clean off her feet too as he released his grip on her wrist. Unseen in the pack of priestesses he’d had the same strategy as Kirika, except he had beaten her to the punch in quite the literal sense.

Kirika fell from the top of the stairs, her head rattling and cheek throbbing into numbness, but she fell like a cat, grace in every tumble; turned shoulders absorbing impacts and her petite body loose and submitting to the flow of the sloping plunge. She fell like she meant to fall, and when she came to rest on the landing at the bottom of the steps, she was stretched out on hand and feet, stomach low to the floor and her gun, still there in her clutches, aimed at where she had descended from. The assassin had fallen like a feline, but she was still the spider.

Kirika fired as soon as she was right way up, however Vincent had skipped down the stairs after her while she had tumbled and was already upon her. His foot lashed out as she pulled the trigger, knocking her gun’s sight askance, the ignited round pinging piercingly off the guard rail and ricocheting to places unknown. A yellow pant leg flung a brown leather shoe sole straight into the teenager’s face an instant later, and through the stars blinking in her eyes and in her head she felt Vincent seize her wrist again.

He had dropped his empty gun to grab it, and with his right hand he hit Kirika in the head once more with the speed and force only a trained practitioner in unarmed combat could muster. Vincent’s left swung her hand with her Beretta into the metal stair railing again and again, battering it in an effort to slacken her hold on the weapon. It wasn’t until the man’s right hand snapped purposefully at her wrist did her muscles involuntarily spasm and hurl her firearm across the landing, out of her reach. He had known exactly where to strike to cripple her hand for the split second needed.

But it was the split second Kirika needed too. Committing himself to disarming her had left her assailant open, and the dark-haired assassin wasn’t dependant on her gun to kill. Vincent tried to follow up his precise jab by backhanding Kirika, and he was very fast. Yet Kirika was faster. In spite of the blows to her head, she moved with viper-like reflexes. It was just pain; the actual wounds inflicted were minor. Her body could push through it, keep working. It would take something severe, potentially mortal, to slow her. Pain was merely an old acquaintance.

Kirika arched her head back, Vincent’s fist whipping past her nose. Her left hand flashed, her fingers stabbing into the man’s throat. He immediately choked; a clipped, garbled wheeze all he could get out, but it was all Kirika needed to know the attack had been effectual. That and his fingers relaxing around her wrist.

Kirika’s right hand broke loose and Vincent jumped back, his struggle for oxygen not sapping the nimbleness from his legs so far. Her own agility in perfect form and both her hands now free, Kirika planted her right palm on the landing as her body flung up into the air, effectively cart-wheeling in place as much as her skirt’s breadth allowed. Her whirling feet clubbed Vincent across his face, and as he recoiled his heels struck the bottom step of the stairway, tripping him over onto the other steps.

Kirika wheeled upright and snatched a hold of the railing with both her hands, before throwing her legs, pressed together, and with the weight of her body and momentum of her sidelong leap behind them, at Vincent’s chest.

Vincent bared his teeth as he rolled his body aside and against the wall, Kirika’s feet stamping on the stairs in his place. “Fuck you, brat,” he croaked hatefully, still suffering the detriments of his throat being temporarily crushed. He pushed off the wall, reversing his roll while casting his leg out to hook Kirika in mid-flight.

Kirika bounced off the steps, propelling herself enough distance from Vincent that his kick took his aggression out on the air instead of her. The gangster’s failure didn’t deter him; it seemed to incense him to more furious heights of violence. As the girl landed, Vincent, definitely not short of breath if short on voice, pounced at the stairway handrail, employing it as a platform in an imitation of Kirika to thrust his feet at her skull.

The younger assassin matched her enemy’s pace and increased it, bending her knees that little more during her landing that she ducked under his legs. The swinging limbs grazed through her hair, the margin as close as their respective alacrity was. The room it left didn’t accommodate mistakes, but Kirika wasn’t one inclined to make them. The cost was always dire, and the chance it was your last high.

Kirika turned to confront her foe as Vincent’s feet found the floor behind her. There was space for them to manoeuvre now that they were face-to-face standing along the length of the landing, and the triad member pitched himself into the opportunity. His left fist opened the second stage of the brawl and Kirika weaved under and away from the arm, then buried her own fist below his ribs.

Vincent’s torso screwed up awkwardly, agony in his movement; however his right fist was still able to maintain the pressure on Kirika. He threw it lower than its match, carving downwards from above his shoulder.

Kirika darted back, but straight after bounded forward during Vincent’s follow-through, her leap providing her the height to punch him square in the face. He reeled to the side, his head and left shoulder crashing through the frosted glass of the landing’s only window. Blood matted his black hair and dripped over his ear, and broken glass shards littered the floor amongst the dotted red splotches he spread.

“Graaa!!” Vincent roared, clapping a hand over his ear and the wet side of his head. He snatched a handful of glass splinters, heedless of their points and edges, and lobbed them at Kirika like shrapnel.

The glass was nothing without an explosion to launch them, and Vincent’s anger was no substitute. Kirika shielded her eyes, losing sight of the gangster but for his legs. They telegraphed his moves however, and when he dived upon the opening he thought he had wrought, the Soldats trained assassin was prepared for it.

Kirika deflected Vincent’s crescent kick with a slap of her right hand as she hurtled herself forward. She grabbed his dangling necktie that she had noticed whipping about throughout their confrontation and yanked it down as hard as she could while jumping into the air, leading her climb with a lifted knee. As bone cracked against bone, the latter namely Vincent’s chin, Kirika distantly hoped she hadn’t torn her skirt.

Kirika grasped Vincent’s shoulder and flipped herself over the stooped man, almost rolling along the slope of his back. She brought his necktie with her, a second fierce tug snapping his spine in the opposite direction; his hunch violently pulled into an arched stretch backwards.

Kirika had broken necks with the technique before; there was never a shortage of tie wearing men to hone the move on, especially around Soldats types. However the familiar wrenching snap never came, Vincent’s taut neck muscles reinforcing the joints. His death would be slower then. Kirika rammed her elbow into his back and pulled his tie even tighter over her shoulder with both hands now, the red garment his noose and the girl the gallows for his hanging.

Vincent fought against his strangulation, scratching and tugging at his necktie while his feet kicked and scuffed the floor, but his poor footing was nothing to build an escape on, other than going limp and surrendering to the noose. He began to swing his elbows, trying anxiously to hit Kirika and perhaps weaken her grip; however his reach was too limited, the angle too vast. Kirika pulled harder.

Suddenly Vincent’s feet were on the wall, and he had traction. He was moving. Up. He ran up the wall and then pushed off it with his legs, the force propelling him over Kirika in a reversal of her somersault that had pinned him. Kirika looked upwards in time to see his fist smash into her forehead as he passed above her.

Kirika staggered, letting go of Vincent’s tie. The gangster himself collapsed into a corner of the landing, coughing madly while his knees appeared to muse with the thought of buckling. They both saw it at once. Kirika’s Beretta M1934.

Vincent dived for it, sudden strength in desperation. Kirika had read his intentions and had sprung for her weapon too, meeting him in a frantic grapple on the floor. The gun skittered away from them, tumbling down the next flight of steps to the lower level.

There was no finesse in their fight when up so close to each other; Kirika bludgeoned and battered her adversary with everything she could; hands and feet, knees and elbows, and Vincent matched her assault blow for blow. The eyes were a common target, Kirika having to defend them often from being squashed in or clawed out while she attempted to blind the hitman just the same. Vincent’s groin turned out to be a particular vulnerability that he battled feverishly to protect once he realised the area was under threat, breaking off his current attacks. Kirika exploited it fully.

The two assassins’ wrestling quickly saw them thrown down the stairs in their violent embrace, the crude brutality enduring all the way to their landing, neither able to call upon their respective adroitness to control the fall. They struck the floor heavily, finally spilling apart from one another.

“I can’t believe how much I’m going to kill you…” Vincent growled as he and Kirika picked themselves up onto their hands and knees. Kirika met his promise of death with apathy in her answering gaze, the vision of his death in her mind all the pledge she needed, but shouts from one end of the corridor they had been dumped into precluded both vows for now. The police had arrived.

In a last ditch effort Kirika lunged for her pistol, seizing it in her two hands--one to hold and one to steady--and fluidly rolled over to slide supine across the floor, firing above her head at Vincent. The gangster flung himself back toward the stairs, the railings his cover for the nine millimetre salvo. Kirika rolled onto her stomach and then leapt to her feet, entering the stairway and running down the steps to the building’s lower floors two at a time. She shot in Vincent’s direction until her clip was expended, then didn’t look back. Her time was up.

Vincent’s yelling overhead while she plunged down the stairs told her she had missed, but sticking around risked her being seen by the authorities in detail that could be described clearly. Likewise, fighting it out with police who were alert and in growing number was undesirable, and an option only if cornered.

“Not me; the brat!” Vincent was screaming. “The brat! Get the brat! The… the *girl*!! I don’t even have a gun, you dumb fucks! She does!! The kid!!”

“The kid?”

Loud and fast footsteps followed Kirika on the higher flights of stairs she left behind. Police officers were in pursuit. She’d lose them, or she’d kill them. Either way, Kirika would make her rendezvous with Mireille. Nothing and no one could keep them separated for long. She hoped Mireille had had more success than she did.

******

Mireille slipped behind the wall of an adjacent corridor as a sudden torrent of bullets threatened to eviscerate her, the passionate opposition coming as a surprise after the woman and her partner, Kirika, had seemingly decimated the majority of the bodyguard priestesses--and with luck, Kaede Ishinomori herself together with them--along the length of first hallway to the point of dead or dying. While the blonde bided her time in her cover with the patience experience had taught, she noted the shots were as unreserved as they were uncoordinated, slugs embedding themselves in the walls and ceiling further down the other corridor, and with no signs of stopping until the magazine ran dry. The priestess doing the shooting was certainly not a markswoman--perhaps she was one of Kaede’s lawyers or that woman in the dress. Although, if Mireille hadn’t moved back, at this range the priestess’s untamed aim would not have been a drawback for her. Smart people always tried to avoid gunfire when they could regardless of the accuracy however, and Mireille was smart. Arrogance bred carelessness, and then sooner or later you were no longer alive to regret your overconfidence.

Mireille continued waiting, listening for the telltale click of an empty clip and the signal to pounce. The priestesses had been wise; taking turns firing upon Mireille’s position while the rest at this side of the hallway took the opportunity to reload. Perhaps they had changed frequencies, but their radios had fallen silent too at the beginning of the shootout after a call for reinforcements and broadcasting their position, denying the blonde insight into their tactical minds. The priestesses in the Manor had fought without such communication technology to her knowledge; maybe they had no dependency on it. Still, Mireille had kept her radio’s ear bud in.

This priestess had no such discipline in her handling of firearms. The fog issued from the fire extinguisher was clearing; the Corsican assassin would probably only need a single round to terminate the amateur’s foray on the Black Path.

“Halt, damn it! I said stop right there, you trash!”

Mireille’s head swung in the direction of the shouting and drumming of feet; down the corridor she was taking refuge in. She made a face. It was the police--two uniformed cops; each with a hand on their revolver holsters; chasing three men whose shady attire gave off classic underworld vibes. They were all heading right for her.

The men saw Mireille the same time she saw them. Hands went behind backs and inside jackets, heedless of the law on their heels. So it was like that. The yakuza were with the priestesses. Strange company… but Mireille could mull over it later, when she had fewer predicaments. The men, police included, had trapped her in a budding crossfire--gunfire from the Soldats rebels still capable of lifting their arms and from the gangsters and police would be a bullet sandwich for the blonde assassin, her former cover even shielding either side from accidentally hitting one another thanks to the T-junction’s shape. The policemen might take out the gangsters before they had a chance to shoot, but then Mireille would soak fire from the authorities a second after.

So many problems were solved simply by killing everyone. They had seen her face anyway.

Mireille dropped into a crouch and swivelled around to face the newcomers proper, before promptly shooting one yakuza in the chest. It bowled him off his feet, depositing him flat on his back.

“Shit!”

The other two thugs panicked, stopping dead in their tracks and ducking their heads, as if they believed they could rely on their lacklustre reflexes to miraculously dodge any more incoming bullets. The elder of the pair realised the foolishness of standing out there in the open and snatched his younger companion’s collar, dragging the still startled man with him as he threw his shoulder against the nearest door leading out of the corridor; a small janitor’s closet if Mireille remembered correctly. The door wheeled open, flying on its hinges, and the men bundled clumsily inside after it.

The gangsters had no cause to fear the assassin just yet; they had not been in Mireille’s sight. The police officers behind them had her dire attention, mutually having forgotten their pursuit of the thugs and drawing their pistols against the obvious threat Mireille posed. Their efforts were pointless, however. Before the barrels of their revolvers cleared the leather sleeves, the blonde had put a round apiece in their chests. The cops were just doing their job, but so was Mireille. And she was better at hers.

“Takeo~! Just stay put!!” one of the gangsters hollered from the closet. ‘Takeo’ yet lived, although for how much longer was a dubious subject. There was no question that he was staying put though; he laboured terribly to merely pick his head off the floor. Takeo spat, a wad of pink gum bouncing along his chest and blood spraying down his chin. His right hand lifted, shaking. There was a gun in it. His lips moved, but nothing came out bar more blood.

Mireille bolted across the hall into cover, keeping low in her crouch as Takeo fired at her, his friends added their steadier shots to his. She squeezed off a couple of slugs as she ran, one drilling into Takeo’s shoulder. Mireille heard him wail.

The blonde assassin tucked in her shoulder and rolled across the floor as soon as she was out of the gangsters’ line of sight, spinning about-face, aware that in evading them she had exposed herself to the Soldats mutineers’ position in the intersecting corridor. The carbon dioxide shroud over them was gone, and the carnage it bared would have been jarring if Mireille was not so accustomed to creating such scenes. Besides, it was the people still alive, not the casualties, which concerned her.

In a minute sliver of a second Mireille sized up the situation; one bodyguard lived, wounded in leg and hip, anxiously staring at her while she raced to shove a clip into her Glock; the lawyer clutching a visibly empty gun was crouched below her, her glasses fractured and blood in her inordinately long hair--her off-balance stance branded her as the amateur of the armed duo; the woman in the dress sat behind them with her hands over her ears against a wall--the Corsican could safely determine her a non-combatant of low threat; and then there was Kaede Ishinomori, regrettably still alive and appearing unharmed, but for her gibbering and twitching on the floor, lying on her side amidst the corpses and blood stains. She was smiling. The smile never moved; a paralysis to her lips while she ranted. Had Mireille and Kirika’s assassination attempt driven her mad? There was no sanity in the woman. Killing her might be a mercy.

Mireille dropped onto her side and snapped off two shots in the same instant the last surviving bodyguard unleashed a final fit of futile resistance against her. The one bullet the priestess managed to squeeze off sailed harmlessly overhead--Mireille’s shots had much more of an impact when they ravaged her chest. The woman toppled to be with her other cohorts littering the floor.

“Move it!!”

Mireille instinctively dipped her head as gunfire thundered above her, the hail of slugs delving into the wall behind the assassin to dribble flakes of drywall onto her shoulder and in her hair. Glaring, the Corsican saw that one of the yakuza had poked his pistol and only his pistol around the corner of the neighbouring passage, firing blindly at her location. If she hadn’t been on the ground the blind shots might have actually struck her. The thug was intelligent enough to appreciate the danger she was; enough to hide from her. Intelligent, but it would only protect him for so long.

Reacting quickly, Mireille let loose a volley at the gangster’s weapon, her third shot tearing his semi-automatic from his fingers, and hopefully tearing some of those fingers too with it. He howled, but abandoned his handgun where it had clattered to the floor. The man had done what he had set out to do--sidetrack Ishinomori’s would-be killer for a while.

The distracting fire had covered Kaede’s and her party’s remnant’s withdrawal to the gangsters’ position in the other hallway. Or at least the commencement of that retreat; the thug responsible for the diversion probably hadn’t expected to be disarmed so swiftly. The last priestess, the possible lawyer, had even roused the traumatised woman in the dress to follow her while she ushered Kaede, enclosed in her arms, to relative security. But no safe-haven existed on earth for Kaede Ishinomori today.

The opening was a slim one, governed by lightning reflexes, but Mireille required a bare minimum to work with. Her piercing eye followed her gunsight as it snapped to Kaede, and across it she witnessed the end of this farce Breffort had coerced her and Kirika on. Mireille pulled the trigger on her Walther P99, the woman cool in the moment of the ordained kill.

Mireille’s eyes widened when the bullet punctured the lawyer’s bicep; the priestess’s body somehow there, shielding Noir’s target. If it had been her goal, it wasn’t obvious. The Soldats rebel shrieked as though in her death throes, yet to her credit she kept running… out of sight.

A swear word came to mind as Mireille leapt to her feet, but she contented herself with a sharp breath past her teeth instead. She bolted around the corner after her prey, her haste fraying her caution. The blonde’s shoes slid on the tiles as she abruptly back-pedalled behind the wall again, hot lead almost searing tunnels in her flesh. The yakuza were there, watching Kaede and the other women’s backs; the older hoodlum had pulled a backup pistol from someplace, and the younger, though trying to haul his badly haemorrhaging and all but comatose friend down the corridor by his arm, had joined in pinning Mireille in her spot with his own peppered gunfire. Blood had streaked the path the gangster had dragged the wounded Takeo--his toil would be for naught; death’s grip could not be shaken off. Naïve.

Mireille clenched her jaw and carried out some blind firing of her own around the worn corner. She cleaned out what was left of her clip in the rapid burst, the vehement curses uttered in the linking corridor and the ceasing of suppressing fire ambiguous hints of the attack’s payoff.

The assassin traded her magazine for a new one, and threw herself around the corner to face her assailants. They and the women had made off a fair distance, the injured gangster forsaken beside the dead policemen. More than injured now--Takeo was dead.

The elder, near bald thug had a limp in his right leg; however it didn’t seem to be hampering his frenetic pace. Then again, Mireille was at his rear; adrenaline could be a powerful painkiller, and fear a powerful motivator. He had Kaede within his arms now, shepherding her onwards while the priestess and the woman in the dress ran ahead. The priestess cradled her arm stiffly, still holding her empty Glock 18 machine pistol, while the woman in the dress held her blood-encrusted sunhat to her breast like a shield and skipped more than she ran. The young thug followed behind jogging and looking over his shoulder, and accelerating into a run for brief periods to catch up with the rebels.

Her weapon steady in her two hands, Mireille fired down the hallway. The young yakuza cried out and stumbled, then hopped, slapping his hand over the left side of his lower back, but he still moved forward, albeit erratically.

“Drop it!!”

Mireille’s right arm swung toward the voice, and she fired twice. The cop who had shown up at the top of the stairwell shouldering a shotgun tumbled, his limbs tangling in the railings halfway down the steps. A thought went out to Kirika, pushing through Mireille’s single-minded concentration on the mission. Mireille hadn’t seen her partner since the opening stages of their assault, and now the girl’s position was unguarded. She shouldn’t be concerned; Kirika was more than capable of defending herself, yet the uneasiness stuck inside the blonde. Doubt crept in. Imagination fired up. Perhaps it was another natural behaviour, given Mireille’s deep affection for the younger assassin. But it wasn’t the time for uncertainty; for distrust when there shouldn’t be a trace of any. Kirika was the same girl she had been yesterday, equipped with the same amazing skill. Mireille had to put her love, girl and feelings both, out of her mind.

When the Corsican contract killer looked back along the corridor she saw neither Kaede nor any other soul. Kaede Ishinomori, her hoodlum rescuers, and the priestess and woman in the sundress, were gone. Fool!

Mireille sprinted down the other hallway at full speed, which despite being clad in her dressy suit and heels was achieved without impediment. Indeed, such clothing was as combat gear to the blonde subsequent to years of work dressed in style; style that integrated her into the nondescript populace, but style to fit a catwalk all the same.

Kaede and her company were heading to the motorcade out front for certain. It was their escape. Mireille just had to beat them there. Chasing them through the courthouse would have been folly; there were too many cameras outside of this area, and the police had already emerged from the direction the rebels took. In addition the stairwell behind Mireille was compromised with Kirika’s absence, however the woman knew of a smaller one close by that would serve just as good.

Mireille kept her Walter P99 unholstered since she was unbound from the threat of being taped while armed, and moreover there could be Soldats reinforcements closing in who were familiar with her identity. Consequently, the blonde was forced to skid to a halt at each bend and blindspot to check if it was clear to go on, lest she run straight into a trigger-happy priestess or a cop hellbent on detaining and interrogating her. The precautions slowed and as a result aggravated the assassin, but they didn’t aggravate Mireille enough for her to forgo them and jeopardise her life.

Mireille arrived at the stairwell’s door in a time that felt too lengthy, but couldn’t have been longer than a minute or so. She paused at the door, gingerly pushing it open with a foot while the barrel of her gun did the surveying of the narrow passageway behind it. When it was clear there were no surprises on the other side Mireille resumed her dash, this time down steps that led to the ground floor.

Sound echoed in the tight concrete shaft, and after a couple of flights the assassin was quick to realise she was not alone. The bass of hurried footsteps reverberated up, too fast and many to be a single person, however the original beats were high in pitch, suggesting raised heels--women’s shoes. It was policewomen or priestesses. Mireille didn’t bet on it being the former. She’d have to sight them to be sure in any case. It might simply be a pair of civilians that she wouldn’t have to confront.

No matter what, Mireille couldn’t reduce her pace. The ticket home was slipping away, and that was one trip she *must* make, and not just for herself. Least of all for herself.

The Corsican held her pistol low just behind her leg, although her gut said it was wishful thinking that she’d need to conceal her weapon and ultimately avoid combat.

The glimpse of black suits immediately followed by a short-lived rain of automatic fire that suddenly ricocheted and sparked off the metal handrails proved Mireille’s instincts correct once again. Those Glock 18s. They’d be quite potent and not to mention lethal in these close quarters, but Mireille didn’t have the time to trade shots with the two rebels on the stairs below her.

Putting caution to the wind and faith in ability, Mireille vaulted over the railings with her left hand, pivoting her body one hundred and eighty degrees in the same motion. She fired in midair, a bullet for each of the rebels, and which found their marks as keenly as if she had been aiming at length on the ground. The priestesses rolled like boned fish down the stairs to the next landing, piling together in a softly whimpering heap, and Mireille landed firmly on a step with a solitary hard rap of her heels. Machine pistols; or any kind of firearm; were useless if you didn’t pull the trigger.

Roadblock destroyed as immediate as it had been erected, Mireille descended the stairs with all urgency. As she trotted over the bested women, she shot both again in passing whilst sustaining her harried stride, her eyes never seeing them. It wasn’t in Mireille’s makeup to leave her victims merely wounded. There were still a few others left for her to administer the coup de grace to, and it would so nag her if they weren’t put out of their misery.

*******

Dominique hurtled headlong through the fire door, her scuttling legs contained in her tight and unforgiving skirt nevertheless practically unstoppable whilst taken by her mad dash. If she had been of sounder mind she would’ve forever cursed her high heels with the skirt; once again she almost rolled an ankle and tripped over her own feet.

The fire alarm squealed and she stumbled together with the heavy swinging door, the arm she *could* use reaching to clutch the long handle bar and steady herself. Blood wiped the chrome crimson where her hand slipped; her own for sure this time.

Dominique was in an alley, the strident noise of the streets as welcoming as the melodies of songbirds in a peaceful glade. Freedom at last. Safety mere metres away in the mobile bastions waiting for them. She wanted to continue to run and run and run, but what if *they* were waiting for them as well? There were two of them; the other one could be *ahead* of them!

And then there was Kaede. The child wasn’t able for this. Dominique shouldered the guilt for bringing Hikaru’s daughter outside the walls of Ishinomori Tower. Kaede hadn’t been ready. Dominique should have *seen* that! She should have found *some* means for Kaede to sit her trial in absentia. The girl’s current bodyguard, butchered like lambs at the sword points of the Black Hands. It could not end here… Kaede had to make it out. She had to live. If she were to be slain, Dominique would not be capable of lifting her head to face Hikaru.

“G-Give her,” the woman swallowed, whetting her throat, and looked back inside the stairwell, “give her to me.”

The slovenly man in the white suit; one pant leg darkened by seeping blood; who held Kaede favoured Dominique with an impatient expression, and hobbled over to her. Suddenly his hand slapped against hers; against the hand she kept rigid against her chest, still gripping the gun she had borrowed in stone-like fingers. She screamed and her fingers felt as flesh again. Her arm screamed with her. The gun was dropped but she never heard its landing. Dominique hadn’t ever been shot before; not even when she and Hikaru had been ambushed. But then Hikaru had seen to that. The angel was only here in spirit now however, not body, as was the too dear and painful cost of such selfless love. May she protect Dominique and Kaede even so.

“You can’t,” Ryosuke’s boy stated beyond the haze of anguish.

Through the tears in her green eyes Dominique observed the other thug shamble down the last few steps, one hand leaning on the railing and holding his pistol, and the other pressed to his hip. Blood poured past his fingers and covered his hand, and his suit appeared as if he had traipsed carelessly through a slaughterhouse. His youthful countenance was ashen.

“I… I can’t…” the boy huffed, hunching over the handrail once he made it to the landing. “I’ll stay put… here… wait for her. Get… Kumicho out of here.”

The older gangster stared silently at the boy, hard and obdurate, but a moment later he nodded soberly. “Here.” He tossed his pistol to the mortally wounded young man. A bloodied hand caught it easily. The older yakuza grinned lopsidedly. Dominique meanwhile questioned the intelligence of giving up their last working firearm to a corpse.

“You. Stay close,” the white suited man barked at Fumiko, the useless whore dithering in a corner of the stairwell. “You,” he coarsely addressed Dominique. “Move!”

Dominique was virtually pushed outside into the alley by the hoodlum, but the sight of two sisters at one end of it erased her fear and anger. “Y-You there! We need you!” The sisters; guards likely posted in the alley as security for Kaede’s and her retinue’s rear extraction; came running.

“Aniki! …No, she’s… You didn’t-- it was an ambush! No, no, no! Stay at the front! We’re almost to you!” The gangster had replaced his gun for his mobile phone. Dominique had her sisters; he had Ryosuke. For once Dominique wouldn’t have minded Kaede’s brother’s presence nearby her.

The sisters’ chests’ erupted in bursts of blood, showering Dominique’s hopeful face and dotting the lenses of her glasses. They faltered and crumpled before the woman’s feet. *She* was behind them, another door open further down admitting death into the alley. The fear returned as if it had never gone.

“Move!!” the gangster roared. Dominique moved.

She heard louder gunfire behind her and bullets hitting bricks; she chanced a glance over her shoulder to witness the dying young man speed toward his ultimate demise, propped against the fire-door while braving the blonde assassin with his two guns blazing. Dominique didn’t watch longer, but when his guns went silent she could imagine the woman’s blade had cleaved him in half.

The gunfire had panicked bystanders; the street in front of the courthouse was gripped in a riot. The fire alarm probably hadn’t helped nerves either. But through the screaming, swirling people Dominique saw the limo and the rest of the motorcade, and more sisters armed and ready. One held the limo’s passenger door open, beckoning her frantically into its fortress interior. She was going to make it. They were… Kaede!

Dominique whirled around, almost literally being bowled over by someone’s shoulder smashing into hers, searching for Kaede and the gangster. For the few seconds of bafflement the French woman did not fear the Black Hands and what they would do to her, but was terrified for the child she had sworn to look after.

She spotted them at the edge of the courthouse; he was taking her elsewhere; up the steps of the courthouse, to him. To Ryosuke. Dominique should have anticipated his loyalties! She had run too far ahead. She had to get Kaede into the limousine where she had *guaranteed* protection, which *wasn’t* found in the company of a common yakuza!

Dominique looked back at the limo pensively, but she knew her course. Maybe some sisters could assis--

The sister at the passenger door was enveloped in flame, and a pyre was ignited into destructive life within Dominique’s vision. She felt as if she was falling, but something or someone caught her. Something hard cracked against the back of her skull, and darkness swam before her eyes to devour the conflagration. The darkness…. Noir.

******

“Ken-- what’s wrong? Kaede, is she-- What’s happening? …Ambush? I’m coming to you! …Ken?! Damn it!”

Ryosuke barged a path through the raving people back to the front entrance of the courthouse, frequently blowing men and women off their feet to be trampled unsympathetically by others. When it came to one’s own survival it was rare when another’s mattered more. Ryosuke was one of those rare people who had someone whose life was genuinely valued greater than his own, however. And he had to reach her.

The fire alarm had had him return to the lobby, but Ken’s anxious phone call had torn him back out again, vastly more concerned than before. Ryosuke had heard it in the yakuza’s voice--this was bad. It hadn’t been since the altercation that had cost Ken his finger that Ryosuke had heard his voice sound like that. End of the world stuff. The world that mattered, anyway.

“Aniki!!”

Ryosuke shoved another pedestrian out of the way and saw Ken at the foot of the building’s steps, on the left side. The relief on Ken’s face was so strong it was unsettling. Fumiko was with him, and… Kaede. The amount of blood on the trio widened the black-clad man’s eyes behind his sunglasses. She was hurt. Where was Vin??

Then he saw *her*, and whether Vin was even still alive came into doubt. The blonde woman from Paris; standing there, unmoved in the frightened crowd of weaklings. The Japanese girl must be here too. The so-called ‘Noir’. They had followed.

Ryosuke’s mobile phone fell from his hand, kicked away and then crushed by the fleeing masses. There was no time to swear oaths against Dominique and her small-minded meddling that had led the assassins here--no time for anything except to draw his gun. Hers was in her hand already, rising; she knew his vulnerabilities and had the drop on him, or worse, his sister. Their eyes met, and the silver plating of his pistol flashed in the sun as his coat disgorged it. No time. Ryosuke prayed she was aiming for him.

There was a shrill whoosh, and then tremendous explosion rocked the street. Instinctively Ryosuke’s arm shielded his face, ready for fire, shrapnel--anything. The motorcade had been bombed. No, not bombed; struck by some explosive. The limo had been the target, but that civilian tank was better armoured than he was; it was intact, if dented and on fire in places. Some of Dominique’s soldiers lay motionless on the road and pavement; a few charred past human, others maimed and gutted that frailer sorts would wish weren’t human. Pedestrians had suffered also, sharing a likeness to the rebels in the brutality of their deaths.

A second whoosh and Ryosuke saw a line of smoke being drawn in the air, a missile or rocket or some explosive airborne projectile as the pen. It was a white streak across buildings for mere seconds before it touched down upon the car in front of the limousine, blowing the merely lightly reinforced vehicle into scrap. The detonation was mammoth, storeys high as the car’s fuel tank lit up in response. It shook the very earth, Ryosuke having to take a step back to maintain his balance. The cloudy trail had originated from a rooftop on the opposite side of the street. It was difficult to see through the black smoke billowing into the sky, but he saw men up there making good their escape. It was probably Soldats; the one Dominique and the others were at war with. Noir might be working with the many-eyed beast after all in spite of their denial, and had brought their benefactors with them as support.

Scant moments had lapsed, but Ryosuke threw his attention back to the blonde half of Noir angry at himself and hoping his slip, however short, hadn’t been capitalised on. Ken laboured up the courthouse’s steps, his heavily bleeding leg source of his disability, escorting Kaede with him. Fumiko tagged along at the rear, luck liable to be solely responsible for the pathetic dog still breathing this day.

But the crowd had swallowed the Parisian woman. Of Noir, there was no trace.

******

The ringing of the fire alarm followed Kirika as she ran down the final flight of stairs. It had started some time ago, while she had been evading any police officers on her tail by wiping the blood from her nose with her sleeve and exiting on another level to then change stairwells. The alarm had turned out to be to her benefit; the evacuating staff and visitors had been simple to dissolve into.

The young assassin thought she had heard an explosion minutes ago as well; part of the fire, maybe? Her thoughts dwelled on Mireille. Their separation was lasting too long. Kirika had to hurry to their rendezvous point to soak her eyes in her love’s perfection and relax in her reassuring aura once again, whether they had succeeded or failed in their mission a subject for a later hour; it wouldn’t matter to the teenager at that moment. Kirika expected Mireille to be there; the other negative possibility could not enter her mind. Painful what-ifs did not bear thinking about… when she could help it.

Making it to the ground floor, Kirika jogged toward the fire exit. Suddenly the noise of the hectic courthouse entered the previously quiet stairwell from behind her. A door had opened.

“F-Freeze!”

Kirika responded faster than a heart could beat, half-turning and firing her Beretta twice from her hip. She breathed in sharply.

It was a policeman, and the shock on his face shone in the reddish-brown of Kirika’s widened eyes. He had given her a chocolate bar. How he was here now, if he had somehow tracked her; the answers didn’t matter. Whatever they were, it was moot now.

The policeman’s mouth hanged open, and he looked down at the two bullet holes in his chest as he slumped against the doorjamb. His jaw worked, but nothing was said.
He slid to the floor and looked up at Kirika, something in his glassy gaze; imploring and confusion… then hollowness.

Kirika’s hand holding her gun dropped to her side. Sometimes meetings in the darkness ended this way, where and when the two different worlds crossed. More than just sometimes. People with faces, with futures that should be secure from this type of end, died.

<He was just on the wrong side. You or him, him or your *partner*; the choice isn’t difficult.>

The choice *was* clear, but too many always seemed to be on the wrong side. Too many lives. But at the end of the day Kirika was glad she was alive. She was glad Mireille was alive. There was forever the regret, the guilt of a demon at her grisly toil; but it had never stopped her. And what worth were their lives when balanced against Mireille’s? Kirika would trade them all for her love’s life.

Kirika left the policeman’s body where it sat, and pushed open the fire door.

******

To be continued….


Author’s ramblings:

This has got to be the longest chapter I’ve ever written! I’ve very glad to have finally finished it. T_T

Satsu = Yakuza slang for cop.