Don't fuck
with someone who was there from the start! Sano Mitsuo sighed in
depression. Helping his best friends with their vendetta had taken
him down roads best never walked.
When he had a
high schooler framed and expelled from her school her guardian
finally popped up like a toad from a boiling pond. All a matter of
how to smoke people out. Now that retard tried making trouble instead
of go down and disintegrate like a good kid. Only after the loss his
mother's hospital care and Mitsuo making sure the wife got fired from
her job for stealing, did the man understand what kind of opponent
Mitsuo was.
Still, didn't
expect her to take her life as well. Bah, shit happens.
Mitsuo knew
rumours were spreading. He did the spreading after all, but the last
week rumours of a digital bakemono making their way to him weren't
his, and Mitsuo wondered who the hell were digging up shit on his
targets behind his back.
His father's
teachings worked for the dirty job he was doing now, but repressive
suppression methods from early Showa just weren't applicable on-line.
And someone did
anyway. Who the hell are you? He sighed again. I'm too old
for this shit. Damn, I'm twice too old!
Contacts from
organised crime refused to talk to him over the phone. A friend of
his as well as a mole flat out told him to get his arse to Osaka if
he wanted to talk banking frauds and refused to continue the email
conversation.
The last day or
two Mitsuo's suspicions grew. One out of two. If the boyfriend, then
a major pain in the arse, admittedly a damn skilled pain. That was
the good option.
If it was his
granddaughter, if it was Tina, then it was time to get the hell out
of the area. From what he read in her eyes Mitsuo knew you didn't end
up sorry if you stood in her way; you ended up dead. She was his
relative through and through. She was also the only person he knew
who scared him.
A phone-call to
his friends revealed that they were absolutely clueless. The
Wakayamas were as ruthless as naive. One of the reasons Mitsuo loved
them so much.
What do I do?
That Ulf kid didn't scare him. He could probably be talked with, even
included for mutual benefit, but Tina. If it was Tina he could end up
dead before she even knew.
Unbeknownst to
either of the latest arrivals Mitsuo had milked Ashiga James for as
much information as possible. Mitsuo never expected to stay in Tokyo
for a second evening, but when it came to Christina Agerman, The
Billion Dollar Empress, there was no end to the stories. She was a
long way removed from the Princess of Scandinavia, and Mitsuo
wondered what had turned her into a monster.
He knew, that she
knew, that both of them knew, that you couldn't feign innocence and
lack of knowledge. Chag was her personal beast, and Chag ate people
all over the world.
A doctorate in
history, it turned out, was a highly efficient vessel for memorising
and classifying data pertaining to society. In fact Ashiga James was
a goldmine when it came to anything relating to the upstream world
before he arrived here.
I have to risk
it.
Mitsuo's next
target was a businessman. He had two sons, and the younger could be
tied tighter to the yakuza, if Mitsuo paid the right kind of people
some money. Nothing much. What Mitsuo wanted was for the business to
get associated with organised crime. The kid could just lie down and
die for all he cared.
I don't think
Natsumi and Tadao would agree, but you both knew I was broken from
the beginning. Mitsuo shook his head. And you still called me
to fight your war? What am I getting myself into? Anything bad
enough for his two friends to give up their decency had to be
disgustingly bad. I hope you'll be able to live on when it clings
to you. This kind of dirt can never be washed away.
Oh
well, I need to know. He prayed
he had guessed right and sent Ulf Hammargren an email. After
that it was time to hang enough shit around the throat of an eighteen
year old child to make sure he wouldn't be accepted at university.
Nothing less would make his father budge.
And I'm
one of the good guys? Sheesh, where did the world go wrong?
Grinning more honestly now Mitsuo
rang a contact of his, who didn't know exactly where he was going to
be hit by a drunk motorcyclist. After the accident Mitsuo wasn't
needed any longer. The former athlete knew how to spin a web of lies
well enough without any instructions.
There
was a response to his email. Yes! Thank all gods!
Would
the kid be interested in cooperation?
Yes,
but what was in it for him?
Money?
No,
he made enough of those. Names and places.
What the hell?
They were hunting the same people. Or
almost the same people. Difference being Ulf didn't want anyone
killed, and Mitsuo didn't need a naive kid to tell him how to solve a
problem.
And
then, very suddenly, Mitsuo found out there were two persons in the
world who scared him. In less
than ten minutes he had no working phone, no assets in the bank, and
a paper delivered to where he was walking, by means
of a taxi, told him in no
uncertain terms what would happen to his ownership of that spa south
of Ise if even one
more person died.
Sano
Mitsuo, almost a hundred years old subjectively and forty
objectively, grinned like a retarded teenager when his telephone came
alive again. Hell yeah! Whenever you want to marry Tina,
just say the word and I'll walk her down the aisle.
Guts
and integrity. What was there not to like? Never before had anyone
dared to bring down the hammer of doom on his head without a moment
of hesitation. Natsumi eventually did, but Mitsuo was certain there
had been quite some deliberations before.
I had
forgotten how much more fun it is with new arrivals. Fine Ulf, I'll
deliver them by their balls. Alive, but by their balls.
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