Chapter 31: The Beginning of the EndComing back to consciousness from drug induced means was a bit like traveling through fog if the fog was a liquid. It’s not an experience that makes sense to anyone who hasn’t felt it before. Risa had this feeling twice before today, the first time in Russia, when she almost ended up on the wrong end of a slave trade/weapons deal and the second was in Los Angeles after a particularly persistent CIA agent pegged her as a stepping stone in his career. For some reason, she had thoughts on the ATF agent, now former, that had rescued her.
‘I wonder what Makoto is doing now?’ floated through her head lazily as her head gradually cleared, still not really registering any outside sounds.
‘If I had taken up her offer for a partnership instead of coming back to Japan, how different would my life be?’
Before she could dwell any longer, the world suddenly came into sharp focus around her, via a lancing pain on her cheek, “Wake up, Gaki-san!” a familiar voice shouted, and the gunner found herself staring straight into Eri’s dark gaze. “Wouldn’t want you to miss this.”
The room was barren, except for the occupants, with concrete floors and walls of a dark grey. Eri stood in front of Risa, dressed in her uniform. To her right was Reina, suspended and bound in a standing position, and Sayu and Jun, both secured to chairs. The yankii was screaming obscenities at her partner, struggling vehemently against her handcuffs.
To her left was Ai, in a similar position as Reina and passed her was Aika, the only one not secured with handcuffs. The younger girl struggled against the ropes that entrapped her arms. Across from Risa was Lin Lin, Captain, and Maimi, all handcuffed to chairs. In the middle of the room was a small, locked, fiberglass case filled with wires, what looked like classic dynamite and attached to a digital timer that slowly counted down from a little over 17 minutes. Eri watched the gunner’s eyes widen in realization and began to speak before being rudely interrupted.
“Let us go, you bitch!” Reina cried, breaking out into hysterical laughter that quickly turned low and dangerous. Risa turned and realized that tears were flowing down her cheeks in hot rivers. “Who would have thought,” she growled, trying to sound commanding, but falling a bit short, “That a goody-goody like you would be capable of betraying us like this?”
Eri’s face contorted angrily and she stormed over to Reina, clamping a hand around her throat harshly. “I’m not a goody-goody!” And in a move that surprised everyone in the room, she kissed Reina deeply, thrusting her tongue past shocked lips. Then, after only a moment, she pulled away and without missing a beat, socked the yankii in the jaw, knocking her out.
Her dead weight slumped forward and Eri side stepped as the frame she was chained to broke, sending the girl to the ground with a painful sounding crash. Sayumi snapped out of her surprise by this point to take up screaming where Reina had left off, struggling against her own bonds in her effort to get at the cop.
“Enjoy the fireworks.” Eri glared at them all before heading for the door. She paused when there was a clattering of metal from behind her, followed by Lin’s voice.
“Kamei-san! Wait! You don’t have to do this.” The cop turned, eyes wide, to take in the hacker that was rising from her chair, handcuffs open on the ground beside her. “Whatever it is that you’re afraid of, we can all face it together.” Eri shakily drew her sidearm and pointed it at Lin, but the Chinese girl just smiled benevolently. “It’s alright, you don’t have to do this. We can all get out of this and then we’ll go take care of whoever it was that put you up to this.”
“Back up and get back in your chair, Lin Lin.” Eri warned sternly, but her shaking pistol told of her reluctance to use force on the sweet hacker.
The girl noticed and her smile grew more warm, “You don’t really want to do this. I know you don’t.”
“You are all bad guys.” The cop said in a strained voice, “Your deaths could at least help my father out.”
“We’re your friends, Kamei-san, even after this, if you asked us for help, we’d give it to you.” Lin reassured gently, watching Eri’s eyes begin to soften, “Just let us get out of here. You can come with us and we can help you. With whatever you need.”
Eri was silent, contemplating Lin’s kind words. Looking around the room, she met hopeful stares, everyone holding their breath at the confrontation. When the cop’s eyes landed on Risa’s, the other girl encouraging her silently to listen to the hacker, she seemed to come to her conclusion. A small smile touching her lips, Eri began lowering her gun, turning back to Lin to nod once. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
The shot that rang out in the stillness seemed to echo louder than any other sound Risa had ever heard. She took in Eri’s horrified expression, Lin’s almost comical surprise, the red stain quickly spreading across the hacker’s blouse. She heard Ai screaming as though she were very far away, the gunner barely registering anything that she was seeing.
All at once, she realized what had just happened, but by then Yaguchi, holding the still smoking pistol, was already dragging Eri out the door saying, “That’s how you take care of that.” to the still stunned cop, locking the door shut behind them.
“Lin Lin!!” Ai was screeching, sobs wrenching her throat as the girl began to collapse. “Lin!! No! Lin!”
Jun gave an anguished yell, followed by the sound of twisting metal and splintering wood, and she appeared in Risa’s field of vision as she fell to the hacker’s side, picking the girl up and cradling her gently with one hand while the other tried desperately to put pressure on her wound. The younger girl looked confused as she chattered quietly in Chinese to the hitter, blood quickly pooling around them.
Finally noticing Ai’s yells, the hacker turned to the older woman and tried to smile, “It’s okay, Nee-chan, it’s okay. I’m just a little cold. I’m just cold.” Her smile began to fade and tears seeped from her eyes, her voice becoming weak, “I’m just cold, I’m just cold, I’m just-” her breath left her and her eyes stared unblinkingly at the demo expert. Jun choked and set her on the ground, leaning over her to begin doing CPR.
For the first few compressions, Risa held her breath, hoping that maybe, just maybe it would help. As Jun continued on unsuccessfully, though, the gunner realized with a sinking heart that it was too late. Lin Lin was dead. Slumping her head forward and letting the tears flow, Risa tried to choke back her sobs, but it was hard, especially hearing Ai howling her pain right next to her.
Now was not the time to mourn, though, they were still in big trouble. Gathering herself, Risa sucked in a breath and called out to the one of them that was actually free to move around, “Jun. Jun! Stop, Jun. You can’t help her anymore.” The hitter looked up at her with the most distraught face Risa had ever seen on her, “Let her go, you have to help us now.”
“No! No!” Ai screamed, “Keep trying! Maybe it will work! Maybe it will work!”
“Ai.” Risa said sadly, “Ai, you know it won’t, she’s gone.”
“You don’t know that! You’re not a doctor! We can still help her!” the older girl begged piteously, gaining sympathetic looks from the others in the room. When Jun began to move away from Lin’s body, Ai lost it. “No! You’re as good as killing her if you don’t try! You’re as good as killing her!” Then she just degenerated into screaming Lin’s name again, almost unintelligible through her sobbing.
Jun, eyebrows knitted together in pain, eyes filled with tears, stood up slowly and looked to Risa for guidance. “Free Aika first, she can help the rest of us.”
The hitter did as she was told, quickly untying Aika, who handed her a small key, and the two got to work on the other girls. Ai was freed last and she immediately went over to cradle Lin’s body, her screaming having calmed to light crying.
As Sayumi went over to tend to Reina, the other four girls looked at Risa expectantly, “What should we do?” Aika asked what was on all of their minds. “Should we try for the bomb or for the door?”
Risa glanced behind her at her lover, now nearly catatonic, still clutching her friend. None of the others knew about bombs, Ai was the only one who could really do anything about the threat. “Go for the door.” The gunner commanded and Aika immediately got to work.
“It might take me a while, my tools aren’t suited to this lock.” Aika warned unnecessarily, holding out a hair clip and a safety pin and beginning to gently work them into the slot.
“We still have about ten minutes.” Captain hastened to reassure.
Risa knelt down in front of Ai and lightly touched her shoulders. “Ai-chan?” The girl reacted to neither the contact or her name. “Ai, you need to come back to us, we’re probably going to need you. Ai? Ai?” Bending forward, the gunner tried to peer into the older woman’s eyes, but met only a vacant stare. She decided to continue with her ministrations, if only to give herself something to do.
Maimi crept closer to Sayumi and Reina, the kitten with her head being cradled in the grifter’s lap. The Tanaka girl helped to move her boss onto her left side, citing something about the ‘recovery position’ to the quizzical Sayu.
A few tense minutes passed before Aika finally gave a cry of triumph, quickly followed by a dismayed sound. Risa looked up to see the problem, though the deadbolt had been opened, the door was also locked with a latch and padlock on the other side. “Jun, can you bust it down?” Risa asked the hitter hopefully, but the Chinese girl shook her head.
“The door and frame are both sturdy metal.” She gave a few knocks to demonstrate, “And I can even see the screws holding the latch on from here, they’re huge! I’d probably break my shoulder before I’d break the door.” Risa wilted a bit at her words.
“So what to we do, Niigaki-san?”
“What now?”
“Give us an order, boss.”
The questions came from all sides, everyone staring expectantly at the gunner. Risa looked around the room, taking in the broken wood, the bomb, the handcuffs, the chairs, rope. The floors and ceiling were all concrete. Everyone was counting on her to get them out of this situation in tact, expecting her to have the answers, but Risa’s mind was blank. She had no answers to give.
The hopelessness of everything hit her hard and she turned her back on all those hopeful looks, again looking toward her lover’s distraught state, “I-I don’t know…”
Everyone was quite for a moment, the fact that they were all probably about to die sinking in now that their leader had seemingly given up hope. Maimi stood and reached out for Saki, Jun put her arm around Aika, Sayumi gently began to stroke Reina’s hair. “And to think, this is all Eri’s fault. I never would have pegged her for a two timing, yellow bellied, ass kissing, mother fu-”
“Hey.” Said a voice from her lap, startling the grifter into silence, “Don’t talk bad about my partner.” Reina mumbled, reaching up to her mouth and removing a small key. “She was trying to help us after all.”
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
”Come on, guys! You’re way too slow!” Lin cried from the corner of the street, where she had marched off ahead of her two companions. Ai and Risa exchanged amused looks before increasing their pace a bit to catch up to the whining Chinese girl. Since it had been a while since the couple had spent any time with the hacker, they had decided to invite her along on one of their dates.
They both really loved the girl and the three were so comfortable together that Lin wasn’t even like a third wheel. Reina often joked that their family was already complete. “What’s the rush? There’s plenty of time till the movie.” The gunner chuckled as the couple came to walk next to her.
“We have to get snacks too!” Lin cried, “And I can never decide what to get, everything looks so yummy.” She grabbed each girl by the wrist and started to jog forward, pulling them both, “So come on~!”
Ai and Risa both burst out into surprised laughter as they were led along. Looking at the back of Lin’s eager head and then over to her lover’s smiling face, Risa wondered if this was what happiness felt like. Nothing could be better.()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
“Ai-chan.” The gunner called to the demo expert gently. Behind her, the bomb case lay open ,the key Eri had given them having fit perfectly, “We need you. You’re the only one who can do anything with this.”
The older girl said nothing, blank stare focused on the body in her grasp. Risa placed her hands on Ai’s shoulders and began to gently shake her. Still no response.
“Ai, please.” Risa begged, despair coming back over her. “Ai!” In desperation, she grabbed Lin’s body and started pulling it away. She was wholly unprepared for Ai’s hand coming at her, nails first and faster than she thought the other girl capable of. Everyone gasped at the angry, red lines that appeared on Risa’s face and the hateful look on Ai’s. The demo expert gathered up Lin’s body again and turned away.
The gunner was absolutely stunned for a moment, unable to process exactly what had just happened. She stared at the turned back of her grieving lover for a long moment before resolutely wiping away with the back of her hand the little bit of blood that had begun to seep through her wounds. Ai wasn’t going to be of any help to them today.
Risa moved over to the bomb and began to examine it a bit closer, ignoring the tense silence and the eyes that were glued to her. The set up seemed simple, but ambitious; twenty four sticks of explosives connected to a gutted timer, when the clock hit zero, the alarm would go off, the electronic spark triggering the blasting caps in the explosives. Boom.
Turning the timer around, Risa noticed that the wires were securely soldered to a chip set on the back. She thought that maybe she could just take the batteries out of the timer, but then she noticed that all of the wires involved were just bare copper, even the connections on the batteries. One wrong move and a spark would be produced anyway. Then, boom.
So, take out the blasting caps? Still, Risa had never dealt with explosives before, she only knew what little she had gathered from Ai and movies and, though she trusted one more than the other, she still had no idea what to do. She didn’t know how sensitive the caps were, if she disconnected the wires, would it spark? If she pulled out the blasting caps the wrong way, would they go off? The only bright side the gunner could see was that, being so close, she would at least die instantly.
Letting out a breath and trying to ignore the last two minutes counting down on the timer, Risa reached into the box and gently gripped one of the explosives. She dug her nails lightly into the top of it, just where the wire disappeared into the stick, and began to slowly pull it out. The cap was longer than she thought it would be and connected securely to the wire she loosely held as she unsheathed it. When the explosive was free, she set it aside, out of the box.
The whole process had taken her about 15 seconds and Risa, quickly doing the math, realized that, at that rate, she would never pull all the blasting caps and have enough time to get away from the still explosive threat. Resolutely she continued with her tedious work, the other girls huddled in the far corner for, hopefully, protection.
About three more caps in, though, a familiar presence came and sat next to her, toned hands reaching into the box and expertly disarming the explosive sticks. Risa didn’t look up at her lover, both concentrating on the task at hand, but her form brought about a feeling of relief and comfort. She knew they would get out of here alive. She knew it.
~@@~ Six Months Later ~@@~
Risa crept quietly into the dark bedroom, a defeated feeling still lingering from her fruitless day. It had been nothing but arguments, anger, and failed negotiations and all the gunner wanted to do now was to take solace in the only person that offered her understanding and love after everything was done. She slipped off her dirty jeans, shoes and socks already discarded on the way in, and climbed into the bed with the blanket covered form that already occupied the space.
The other girl turned at the first contact of skin to skin and Risa promptly buried her face into the other’s shoulder and let her tears flow. She was embraced gently, her companion rubbing her back soothingly as she sobbed sorrowfully into her skin, “It’s okay, I’m here, let it out…” The kind words relaxed her and Risa continued to cry.
Eventually, after her tears were spent, the gunner settled into a more comfortable position, on her belly, half draped across the other girl’s front. Risa sighed as dexterous fingers wound in and out of her hair in an almost subconscious fashion. Her eyelids felt heavy and she knew the other noticed when a gentle kiss was placed atop her head, “Good night, Risa.”
She wanted to respond, wanted to say something, anything that might show her gratitude to her savior. The girl had done this for her literally every night for two weeks. There were some many things that needed to be conveyed, but the only thing Risa managed to say in response before succumbing to sleep was, “Good night, Eri.”
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To Be Continued...
Topic: Black and Blue (Ch 34 6/4 The End!) (Read 159809 times)