Chapter 10 - Part 1

Chapter 10

Sarah Mackenzie and I were on the long haul back to Yoshida's place. I'd already anonymously forwarded copies of the data packet containing all the dirty little secrets of Ikehara and the Raidon Solar Electric company. The news outlets had picked up the ball and started running with it in record time. It was the number one trending story in Japan.

“So, now that we've exposed that twally for the shite he is, what's the next step in your scheme? I have some ideas about what exactly it'll entail.” Sarah asked from the driver's seat.

“Oh, I'll be handling that shortly. Thanks to Kurosaki Imperial Crown, I've already got all the info I need to sail slide through that little maneuver.” I replied.

“You know, ye never did answer my question from before. Just did a little shuffle around it. I'm curious as to why you nearly went belly-up when you did.”

“Why? What does it matter?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah narrowed a glare at me, and I could tell what she was thinking. In hindsight, I guess it wouldn't take an Einstein or a Sherlock Holmes to have seen that I didn't want to talk about myself. Even though we both knew the answer, Sarah gave it anyway to try and prompt me.

“For one, it goes to your performance. If you plan to be dogging it like that again, I need to know so I can make the mental adjustments necessary. Beyond that, I'm curious about you, personally. You're an interesting one. Younger than I am, but just as skilled, and plum smart to boot. You've got a real fire of a determination in you. I'm wondering how exactly all of that came about.”

It took a second, but I got a static jolt of surprise when it hit me that I was considering answering her. Sure, she was a looker to make most any other woman green with envy at a glance and had a head on her shoulders I couldn't help but respect to boot. That probably would have been enough for any straight guy to be trying every gambit in the book to try and friendly up with her, but I wasn't most guys.

For me to be thinking of letting anything real about me fly represented a fundamental shift in my usual state of being. Sarah Mackenzie was the most spectacular number I'd ever encountered in my life, but I'd known her less than a full day. She'd already proved herself several times over in my mind, but could she have really caused that big a chink in my armor?

Short as it was, maybe it had just been the time I'd spent with her so far. I wasn't exactly a social person. Most of my time was spent in as little proximity to the general rabble as I could arrange. I reached the conclusion that I'd spoken more to Sarah Mackenzie since we'd met than anyone else on the planet for at least four years.

“Why don't you put your own money where your mouth is?” I asked her.

For the first time, I saw her give a glint that she might not have seen that one coming.

I went on. “You're not exactly lacking in the intriguing category yourself. Scottish girl, obviously not yet thirty, professional problem solver, not afraid to kill, a relationship to the biggest and only mob in Neo Tokyo, and with such a reputation for being good at your job, it literally opens doors. That's more than just a little extraordinary for someone... how old are you anyway?”

With that, something of a warmth spread back into her features, and her mouth twitched into a grin.

“I turned twenty-six three months ago, next week. And I take it you're offering a bit of tit for tat? I show ye my cards, ye show me yours? Seems to be a recurring theme with you. Ye like getting something out of your interactions, don't ye?”

I had nothing to say to that. There was nothing to say. She'd hit the nail on the head, which was somewhat unnerving.

“But, I'll go ahead and indulge ye for a bit. To start, my full name is Sarah Joanne Mackenzie. Born in Inverness, Scotland, and a citizen of the European Union. My childhood was happy and ordinary, and although there are a number of stories I'd recant for the sheer fun of it, not one noteworthy event happened until I reached high school.

We were a well-off family. Not rich, but right on the cusp. Of course, unlike here in Japan, that didnae have anything to do with the quality of nanos we're given as wee ones. Anyway, thanks to our prosperity, I was able to attend a prestigious, all-girls school for the first of my formative years.

That was where I discovered what would eventually become my profession. For weeks, one of my girlfriends had been getting to look glummer and glummer. Finally, I made her tell me what her problem was. It was the old story. Her boyfriend turned out to be a real arse who got his jollies slapping her around so she'd know who was in charge. To someone else, it might have seemed just pitiable, but she was my friend, so I had to do something. The real shite of the matter was that the guy was the son of one of the town's high pillows, meaning nothing much would be done, even if she talked.

She wouldn't go to the polis, and wouldn't dump the bastard either. I don't know if she was scared or thought he'd change, but as I said, she was my friend, so I couldn't let that stand. You know what I did? I started out by buying some of those micro spy cameras for watching your babysitter or something of the like. After that, I pretended to get drunk one night and let the constable take me to the nearest station where everyone from that part of town went. In the interrogation room, while I let this burly oaf play the 'fatherly officer,' and let him think he was saving me while he was looking down my blouse, I planted one of the cameras.

On the following Saturday night after that, at the local dance club, I seduced my girlfriend's BF right there on the floor. It wasn't all that hard in his case. While he was off getting alcohol, drugs, or maybe condoms for all I know, I placed a little call. Out in the side alley a few minutes later, thanks to my friend's story, I knew exactly how to present myself to trigger him into hitting me. I let him do it. Needed it for the night vision camera I'd hidden out there the day before.

Thanks to my call, the black and white pulled up just in time to stop him before things went too far. Back then, I hadn't yet had some of the training I've put myself through since, so I'd accounted for that.

The next morning, I remotely retrieved the stored video from the one I'd left in the station, and got exactly what I'd been hoping fer. The idiot, and that same burly oaf, having a good laugh over what he'd done to me. They went through a whole song and dance where the guy confessed to hitting me, my girlfriend, and several others. Turned out later that he'd struck one of the others so hard she had to get surgery to fix her jaw. And the oaf of a cop gave him this bit of a warning, not even really telling him not to do it again, and then let him on his way. I had it all on tape, and I released it all onto the web, along with the footage of when he hit me.

Needless to say, it went viral. The arsehole's family tried to get it swept under the rug, but there was no doing it. He got charged and convicted for multiple counts of assault. Went to the slammer, and with him out of her life, my friend came back to herself, and even to how wrong she'd been about him.

To be tying up the rest of the story in a bow, that was how I discovered not only that I'm good at it, but I enjoy the mental challenge of sorting out a problem for someone else. I handled a few, more minor dramas during the rest of my school years.

With some of the favors garnered there, I went right out to the big city to start my kind of firm, you might say. I got jobs, solved some problems for people, and started making money at it. My skill at the task and reputation grew until I emerged onto the international stage. I was eventually recommended to a task for the Yoshida. I handled the issue, and one or two more over the last couple of years, resulting in their bringing me in on a different matter, right when you came calling. So, there you are. The story of my life, up til now.”

If I'd thought she was impressive before, by the end of that tale, I was blown away. She was brilliant. How she'd done in that one jerk was nothing short of ingenious, and probably how I would have done it if I'd been her.

“And the killing people part?” I asked, momentarily enthralled by her.

“Whenever possible, I try to find solutions within the boundaries of the law, but I found early on that it can't always work out that way. Sometimes, things get messy. It isn't pretty, but neither is the world we live in, and I'm a professional. I take no pleasure in it, but I do what is necessary to achieve the ends my client wishes for, and so far, I have a more or less perfect track record.”

Made sense to me. It was an answer I could accept. I might not have considered it possible before, but Sarah Mackenzie had just become even more remarkable.

“Alright, it's your turn now. That was the bargain.” She informed me.

I should have seen that one coming, but I'd become so engrossed by her story that I'd plum forgotten. For a minute, I thought to just clam up. Keep my mouth shut, and not say anything more until we got back to Yoshida's.

“Oh, just do it!” Was my next thought. “If the job doesn't come off, you'll be up daisies anyway, so what's the difference? Might be kind of nice to have one person know something about me before whatever happens tonight.”

“Okay, here comes mine.” I started. “Born right here in Japan, a little before the city was Neo Tokyo. My dad was full-blooded Japanese, but my mother was fully Italian. Explains how I look, right? Her parents came to the country like forty years back, when it still had a decent economy and job offers. If I remember right, my mother was like four then, so she grew up here.

Anyway, she met my dad in college, marriage, all that yada yada. She got pregnant with me, but then the Japanese market bottomed out. Whatever my Dad's startup business had been went south, and my mother's promising career in this one tech corporation went along for the ride. Everything gone, that's how they ended up living in a two-room shanty in the Minato dock slums, where I was born.

Ughl! I hate that place. I was seven before I learned the air wasn't supposed to stink like dead fish. I don't remember much about how my folks made money in those days. Just that there wasn't much of it, and I spent the first half of my life in that glorified outhouse.

Then, the mega-quake happened. Money got even tighter, but we'd actually been at a park when it happened, and our shack had somehow survived the shaking, so there was that. Me, I wouldn't really get what that had meant to the town for a couple of years.

Anyway, I'm nine years old. My parents tell me that mom has to go into the hospital. Standard surgical checkup, everyone has to do it now and then, they told me. It was to get the servos of her joints checked out. Cybernetic healthcare is free, so they told me she'd be back in a day, two at the most.

The night my mother had her surgery, dad got a call in the middle of the night. We made a special trip to Tokyo Metropolitan General, and its morgue. I saw her sheet-covered body in that drawer, and her dead face when the doctor pulled it back. My dad fell to pieces right there. I can plainly remember him crying.

It was only later on I'd learn that when the hospital had lost power for about a minute, nobody'd been able to see what was one little piece of airborne matter float down into her. Caused an infection, got to her bloodstream, and that was it.

So, mom was dead, and things changed accordingly. Dad tried his best to take care of me on his own, for a while, anyway. He went to whatever he did for work and brought back food, but that was about it. He didn't even really talk much. By the end, I was the one doing all the cooking, and cleaning, and seeing myself to school.”

“What about your grandparents? Surely, they could have helped.” Interjected Sarah.

“Dad's were already dead, and Mom's croaked during the mega-quake. In any case, I guess my dad's need to have his wife with him outweighed his duty to his son, cause he punched his own ticket three months after her. Guess what lucky stiff found the stiff.

I don't know if I'd thought it then, or if it was some subconscious idea that broke through later, but I just knew, I was on my own. There wasn't anybody to take care of me, so I needed to do it myself.

I got bounced around the system for a while. You know how it is. The only thing I got to take with me was my mother's old laptop from when she'd had her real job. I had to fight to hold onto it more than once, but I did. It became the one thing I could do that was for me.

Studied it day and night, when not in shitty public school. Found out about hacking, practiced, and got good at it. Eventually, I figured a way to bust into the code of my nanos and reprogram them to boost my height. Even with the height boost, I knew I'd never pass for rich, and it wasn't my goal. Just wanted to provide myself with whatever advantages being tall would give me.

I kept studying, found I was good at fixing things, and when I was fourteen, I busted out on my own. Been a lot of odd jobs ever since, a lot of work to get by, and hone my craft, but, I knew I needed to do it. Nobody ever helped me any step of the way.”

“So, then, all of this, it's really all been just to take care of yourself?” Sarah asked.

“I've got me, and my life. I mean to keep both intact.”

Sarah mulled that over for about a kilometer before piping up again.

“I guess I can see what ye mean. Still, I feel a touch sorry for ye. Sounds about the loneliest existence I've ever heard of.”

That one I declined responding to. If there was any card I'd never wanted or expected to be played in my favor, it was pity, and I wasn't about to start then.

We rode in silence the rest of the way back to Yoshida's. Along the route, I took out my tablet and got things rolling on the next step without telling Sarah. Using the contact information in the files taken from Kurosaki Imperial Crown Bank, and using a burner account with an IP address at McMurdo Station, I sent off a carefully worded email.

Upon arrival back at the mansion in the woods, I got my first real look at the place, and it seemed to me to somehow combine the spires of a Gothic sanctuary with the lines and layout of a traditional, Japanese palace. It was weird to look at, like they'd purpose-built it to be haunted or something. Yoshida, Daichi, and a selection of gun-toting goons came out to greet us.

“We've been following the news and Ms. Mackenzie's updates. Quite an interesting little swath of carnage you're carving out.” Yoshida announced like he was passing solemn judgment.

“Haven't done anything that wasn't required for the timely expedience of the grift. I told you I could deliver in a day, I want to hold up to that.”

“There was an explosion today in Minato-ku. At the address you provided.” Daichi chipped in.

“Anybody bite it?” I asked.

“No.” The big boss answered.

“No extra collateral and any pesky trace evidence gone. Where's the issue?”

“You didn't say you had it rigged for a preview of purgatory! If we'd sent someone to check, they would've been sky high!” Daichi proclaimed.

“No, they wouldn't have. I engineered that room for the blaze to spread out fast, and the concussion to be funneled out both the door and the windows. If someone tried, the most that could happen is they spend a couple of days with the white coats and nurses.”

“Yoshida-san,” Sarah said, stepping forward. “I've been interacting with this man all day, as you know. I've learned a little something about him. I trust that his commitment to this task is absolute. I believe you can rest assured that he will do everything to see it through.”

Yoshida turned his peepers back to me, and I got the idea he would have gone poking around my brain attic if he could. In full view of the other six, I took out and help up my gun. Everyone flinched back a step, and the gorilla squad drew a bead on me, but I didn't flinch. Right before their eyes, I ejected the cylinder from the grip.

“The resonance chamber. No resonance chamber, no shots. Heater's dead weight without it.”

I tossed the chamber at Daichi, who caught it one-handed.

“Any issue with me keeping my property now?”

The iron was secured in my back waistline again before anyone could answer.

“I've been working at this all day, and she's vouched for me now. Is there a problem with going forward?” I asked the assembly.

“No. There never really was an issue. Just wanted to reaffirm we're all on the same page.” Came from Yoshida.

“That's good. Cause we're almost at the end of this. Here's how the final act is gonna play out.”

On the front steps of the creepy mansion, I laid out my plan for all of them.

“As you can see, Aimi and Eito, the protest here at Raidon Solar Electric has only intensified. Police are keeping the crowd back for now, but this reporter feels it may be a wasted effort. While a violent mob is never a site one wishes to behold, it is difficult to not feel sympathy for this group. The information which leaked online only hours ago paints an undeniable picture of the abuse of power, resulting in squally conditions throughout the affected regions.

Truly, many in the named districts often find themselves either unable to afford to power their homes, or unable to use it due to unreliable, and previously believed temporary exportation methods. How this development will unfold is anyone's guess, but does leave us with two clear questions. How much, if any, was Mayor Hamada Bashira aware of her long-time supporter's misdeeds, and how will this affect her reelection? For channel three news, this is Fujino Yuki.”

“Off,” Bashira commanded the wall-screen.

The mayor's campaign headquarters had been abuzz with activity even since her race for reelection began, but from the second the scandal had dropped, it'd been like someone had lobbed in a volume bomb. If the private office she was using hadn't been soundproof, she thought she might have gone insane.

One room away, chaos had taken the reigns. The phones were ringing in a never-ending din, with every line constantly occupied. Every news platform in the city and a couple from the international networks had people camped out on the ground floor, waiting for her to make a statement. Protesters both in flesh and digital form were slinging abuse at her from the streets below and all corners of the internet, demanding to know why she'd let that happen, and how corrupt she was.

For the first time in her career as an elected official, Bashira had no idea what to say. She'd had no clue that Ikehara was pulling that. Despite putting his oft flirtations objectionable, and having known the man was a fierce money grubber if it wasn't for him, there hadn't been any real indications. Every time his sites and books had been reviewed by city officials, they'd always been given a clean bill of health. If she'd had the slightest inkling of what was going on, Bashira would have personally shut him down, campaign funds be damned.

All those people in Shiki, Koshigaya, Higashimurayama, and Kashiwa, having to go without such a basic amenity. Forced to live in increased poverty just so that man could line his pockets and ask for tax breaks. It sickened her!

“Alright, get it together, Bashira!” She told herself. “You can handle this. You did not know of this, and there's nothing to say otherwise. The truth will out. You just need to make a statement and express your profound, and genuine sympathy for the victims of this crime. Make sure you explain to them that as soon as you're reelected, you'll initiate a committee to look into the best way to fix it, and resolve the situation so it never happens again.”

A few calming breaths and she could her coming back to herself. It was a crisis, but a manageable one. She would have immediately started to craft her statement for the press, but her campaign manager, Enomoto Goro, came in then without knocking.

“Goro, how's it going out there?”

“That's... that's an insane asylum out there I can't deal with at the moment, but we have bigger problems. Mayor, you're down! All across the board! Fifty whole points, and it's still going down!”

“What? But... that doesn't make any sense. Except that Ikehara was a contributor, nothing is connecting me to that man, and certainly not this scandal. I knew it'd to go down some, but fifty points? I didn't think the public would be that fickle.”

“Mayor Hamada, if we don't do something, you won't have any chance when we go to voting in two months, and this is the crunch time.”

“Okay, so, you know the drill. Talks shows, press conferences, personal appearances, the works.”

“Uh... that's, uh, the other thing, ma'am. There are some calls you need to return.”

In the half-ruined house where he was hiding, Genkei was working at a fevered pace. He'd last spoken with Benjiro over half an hour earlier. The last thing he'd said to him was to keep watching the place and report anything that happened.

Genkei was gonna get that helmet-wearing bastard if he had to chase him through hell itself! It all made sense now; perfect, horrible sense! They'd been busting up the Yoshida's toys for months with barely a hint of a blowback. He'd always thought it wouldn't have been much longer before they'd need to go more underground and be more spook-like about it, but it turns out the Yoshida hadn't wanted a war either.

Instead of soldiers, they'd sent an infiltrator to worm his way in with honeyed promises to lead them right into a shooting gallery! The guy had even purposefully played the asshole like anybody would be to not give himself away, and Genkei had fallen for it! He knew he'd never forgive himself for how he'd let his friends down, but he'd do it with a slightly lighter conscience once he knew his buddies had that guy down there in hell with them to tear apart for themselves.

Genkei was making every adjustment to his bike he could with the tool kit he had on hand. He was greasing the mechanics, adjusting the physical timing, and making the suspension tighter in case of bumps in the computer. The helmet guy had a bike of his own, and it wasn't a bad one. Genkei this thing would likely come down to some kind of race between them, and he was fixing to be the winner.

The phone beeped, and Genkei sprung on it like a cat.

The text read, “Got an update. They're back. The guy and the hot skirt. Watched 'em drive in not long ago, and the two old men and a bunch of their bozos came out to talk to 'em.”

“What happened? Exactly?” Genkei wrote back.

The waiting to get responses was galling for him, but he could tolerate it a little better knowing that without Benjiro, he'd have never been given this chance for revenge.

“It wasn't much of anything. The old men and gun monkeys came out, and then they all stood around shooting the shit for a while. Looked pretty cozy, honestly, if you ask me. There is one other thing, but I'm not sure if I should say it or not.” Benjiro's text said.

“What is it? Anything might help.” Genkei fired back.

He waited, and when the next one came, it was like a knife to his belly.

“Well, you got to know, I'm pretty far away, you know to stay hidden. I was using the phone camera to zoom in and see better, but my angle ain't the best either. So, uh, at one point, the helmet guy pulled out a heater from behind his back, and I can't be sure or nothin', but I had an idea that it kinda looked like Souta's. Like I said, I don't know, but if it was, well, then you'd know what that means.”

Genkei felt his rage transcend to a new plane of existence. With the daintiness he would use to touch a baby bird, Genkei put his one line to Benjiro out of the way. He then sent a banshee wail of fury and sorrow through the either as he punched the wall with all the strength his upper body had. He didn't stop until his hands were slick with his blood.

Genkei took a second to absorb the pain. To feel it, remember it, and swear he'd give quintuple fold when he caught his quarry.

Mayor Hamada ended the last of the calls she'd needed to return. They were gone. Each and every one of her major financial backers for the campaign. They'd all called to say they were withdrawing their support, and that there would be no more funds. Bashira had talked to all of them until she was blue in the face, trying to explain how nothing of the scandal would ultimately touch her, or any of them. She'd tried reminding them of her dream of restoring Neo Tokyo to something like the Utopian metropolis it had once been, and how much progress they'd already made towards that goal. None of them had accepted any of it. They'd still pulled out.

“Goro, you, uh, you spoke to the accountants?” Her voice broke a little as she spoke.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And?”

“Assuming that public donations don't diminish by more than a third of the regular average, we can continue to fund everything needed for the campaign for maybe two weeks, if we scrimp.” He said.

“Two weeks,” Bashira mumbled absently.

Two weeks was all it would take, and she wouldn't be capable of continuing her dream any further. Bashira didn't understand how it all could have gone so wrong. She'd run for office in the first place not because she was ambitious or because she wanted to exploit the position. She'd genuinely wanted to help improve the city. To get construction projects finished, gentrify the impoverished communities, and put a real dent in the crime rate.

Bashira had wanted to recondition the city back into the kind of place she remembered from when she was a little girl. To have it be the kind of city where parents could reasonably let their children go out and play by themselves without the fear that the child would be murdered, kidnapped, or in some other way molested. She'd convinced her wife and daughters to go into a kind of exiled, protective custody so that the yakuza couldn't threaten them just for that goal. When her two then seven-year-olds came back home to stay, she'd wanted it to be a far better place than they'd left.

Bashira's thought process was interrupted by the fresh ringing of her phone. Looking down at the screen, she saw that she didn't recognize the number. Being the mayor, that wasn't an altogether uncommon occurrence. It could have been a reporter or one of those influential social media people she'd sometimes talked to during her campaign. It even could have been her wife, calling to offer some sympathy, and Alpha and Omega Security changed their numbers semi-frequently.

Bashira decided that she could still do damage control, and with some work, maybe dig her way out before it was too late. The best place to start would be by answering that phone call. She swiped the icon to accept.

“Hello. This is Mayor Hamada. Whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”

“Mayor Hamada, you aren't having a very pleasant afternoon, are you?”

The voice coming from the other end was deep-toned with electronic distortion. Her attention was thoroughly seized.

“Who is this?” She asked.

“Someone in a position to know why all of your financial backing has fallen through, and how you can rectify the situation. Play ball with me, and you'll be able to get things back on track like they were never derailed.” The voice said.

Bashira had to take a beat to weigh those options. On the one hand, there was always the chance she could scrounge up some new moneybags willing to back her before things got critical. The city was full of people with stacks of coin just waiting to burn.

On the other hand, public opinion was an unpredictable thing with a life force all its own. While she could prove on paper that she'd known nothing about Ikehara's actions, it didn't necessarily mean people would believe her. It would take everything she had and all capital possible to fight back uphill and have a chance by the time the polls opened.

She'd wanted to keep herself clean through her entire career. If she'd been in it for profit, she would have taken the Yoshida's first offer way back. Still, maybe the compromise the voice was offering wouldn't be one to weigh too heavily upon her.

“What do you want?” She uttered, finalizing her decision.

“Come to the Meiji Jingu Shrine. Come through the Chozuya torii gate to reach the main shrine. I'll come to you. Be there no later than midnight, and come alone. If I see one suit or thug from Alpha and Omega, I'll pull up stakes, and you'll be on your own. There will be no further communication until then.”

The line went dead.

“Mayor Hamada, you're not going to-”

“I can at least go hear what they have to say. If I don't like the terms, I don't have to strike the deal, and no harm done.” Hamada broke in.

“But what if this is a trap? You do have enemies, ma'am? You need to at least take someone to protect you.”

“Anyone with the capability to know behind-the-scenes details of what's happened will be serious about their warning. They won't come, and on the off chance they do have something to help, I need to take the risk. I've worked too hard and accomplished too much already to chuck it all without looking up every alley for an answer.”

Goro deflated. He knew when his boss was going to make a try of something, despite anything she was told.

“Very well, ma'am. But please, stay safe.”