Visual Kei

Chino,

I know you may never forgive me for this, but I felt that you should know the truth from its source. Kiiro has been kidnapped. I was the one who tipped The Oni off to his location. Were it not for Alice’s interruption during our meeting, I might never have had the chance to tell you the truth until I was on the opposite end of your gun.

I know you will rescue him. When I gave away your location, my intent was never to harm you, or even to harm Kiiro. You told me long ago that you would not help Kami in his endeavors, even if you supported his ideas, because his methods were too extreme. I’m sorry to use such methods, but in a time of war, it may be the only available means. I hope this will make you consider joining our cause. You are valuable allies and Kami needs you. If you refuse us, I understand, but you must understand that this war is my first priority, currently even over your comfort. I’m sorry, Chino, but war has changed me into a colder person that I must be.

UMI

I found the note lying on the kitchen table, having been flattened out purposefully. Two, perfect creases in the lined paper kept it from being completely level, but each section was flawlessly proportionate. The note was folded in perfect thirds, the likes of which I couldn’t do even if I had a superpower for it. Her writing was skinny, curved, and long, with faint, dainty strokes. It looked more like art than any calligraphy I’d seen before and seemed very carefully written. Chino had taken care to leave the note in mint condition. The pale blue envelope lay beside it on the table, a pocket knife doubling as a letter opener lying over the top of it.

Chino, Rei, and Tsurara had left earlier that morning to investigate their suspicion that Kiiro was being held in Okinawa and would be gone for the day and the better part of the night, too. I had spent the night with the men, sleeping in one of the beds while Rei slept on the floor, although I had been hesitant to accept his insistence. I woke up too late to see Rei, Tsurara, and Chino off, and found the note as I’d been in the kitchen to find something to drink. I interrupted Shinji from building another of his Gundam models to ask him a bit about Umi and her note.

“What do you want to know about it?” he asked, looking more solemn than usual. His large eyes, one bright red and the other a silvery-blue, studied me with caution and a hint of concern.

“When I met Umi, she seemed to be on good terms with you guys. Was that an act?”

He looked at the unfinished Gundam that stood on his desk, plastic mechanical parts sticking out of its helmet like Yugioh hair. “No, it was not false, but I’m not sure what I should say about that. You see, Chino and Umi were... engaged once. Circumstance broke their engagement, and that put strain on our friendship with her, but they seemed to want to put their old relationship behind them and remain friends so we attended parties and the like with her. I always thought we were friends… until now.”

“That explains why they are awkward with one another, but what caused their engagement to fail, anyway? I don’t see any problems.”

“Ironically, it was her affiliation with Kami. Chino has always wanted to stay out of politics, and Umi wanted to drag him into it. He became sick with stress and worrying about her, so he broke their engagement and tried to distance himself from it.” Shinji looked down a bit sadly. “At first, he meant to return to her side after he recovered, but then he thought better of it. He knew he couldn’t stress himself like that again unless he wanted to get sick again.”

“Why did she stay with Kami and the rebels? Did she think it was worth losing Chino?”

“Even though Chino was born with a power that marks him preternatural by humans, he is still genetically human. The United Nations recognizes him as a human, regardless of his power. Umi stayed because she believed that if she could help the rebels create a world in which the same laws applied to both mortals and the supernatural, she could be with Chino without interference from the supernatural branches of law.”

“But she involved him in their affairs when it wasn’t her place. Couldn’t she have been involved independently of their relationship, without pulling him into the fighting?”

“Ask that same question of mortal companies dealing in espionage. It isn’t so different.”

“I guess that makes sense,” I said with a shrug. “Thanks for talking about it. I would have asked Chino, but I guess… it didn’t really seem right.”

“He wouldn’t have wanted to talk about it,” Shinji agreed with a slight, almost sad nod. His eyes caught on the flash drive swinging at my neck. “Where did you get that?” he asked suddenly, taking it gently in his skinny hand.

“My brother gave it to me. Originally, there were two of these, and they were earrings.” I smiled at the memory. I missed my brother.

*******************************************************************************

1:30am at a stupid café with hard chairs and tiny tables. And they screwed up my order.

I sat next to Shinji and across from Rei, reclining a little in the stiff-backed chair, trying in vain to get comfortable. Rei sipped his cappuccino-frappuccino thing with little star-shaped marshmallows floating in it. It had a large spiral of whip cream drizzled in chocolate syrup with more marshmallows lodged in it. The drink looked more American than any other part of the café. Staring at Rei’s “coffee”, I wondered how much of it was really coffee and how much was sugar. Still, coffee’s nasty, so I approved a little that he’d tried to drown out the taste with sugar. Shinji, drank bubble tea through a huge straw with a contented smile on his face, as usual.

On a slightly more annoying note, Emiko was with us. She was sipping strong, black coffee from a cutesy little teacup. She seemed happy when they had come home that night—she’d got her nails done somewhere special and the roots of her hair dyed to match the rest of her highlights. As much as I hated to admit it, and as annoying as she was, she could really be pretty cute. The “happy” died pretty fast when she came back to find that Chino and Tsurara hadn’t returned yet, and when they had, Chino bore some unpleasant news: they had limited Kiiro’s location down to two places, but in any case, they had heard some leaked information regarding his detention. Kiiro was to be moved to a “facility” outside Japan. Early.

“Hello…? Anyone in there? Anyone?” Emiko asked, waving her hand in front of my face so that her palm almost touched the tip of my nose. I could feel as she wiggled her fingers and disturbed the air in front of my face.

“Yes,” I half-snapped, half-grumbled, jerking my face back a safe distance away from her ‘delicate’ nails with strange, pink and white stripes and an inane amount of glitter/stick-on jewels. “And they’re about to go Chuck Norris on you.” She smirked at my attitude, glad to have annoyed me. “There’s this great new invention you could try. It’s called a nail file for your talons.”

She pouted, inspecting her nails halfheartedly, as if double-checking that they were actually nails and not talons.

“If you’re done throwing a temper tantrum, let’s hear your plan.”

Her pout disappeared almost immediately, her eyes lighting up with the knowledge that she was now to be the center of attention. “Well, since Chino and Tsurara are going to the one in Naha-shi, we’re going to the one here.” She pointed one of her ridiculous nails at the map. One of the islands was circled. It was smaller than the rest. “It is certain to have high-tech security protocol, but as far as I know, the procedure is the same. There are actually very few sentinels to guard the place, but if we want to make it inside, we should avoid them as much as possible.”

“Seems obvious enough,” I said indifferently. “Get to the important part.”

“Well, this is where Rei gets to decide,” she responded, her eyes narrowing at me in a half-glare. “We can either have someone steal a uniform and let us in through this passage,” she said, sliding a new map onto the table. It was less like a map and more like a blueprint. “It’s used only for transporting cargo, but the person to infiltrate would have to dispose of the two guards at its entrance and come back and retrieve the other two. Or,” she said, pointing at a nearby building, “we could wait for them to try transporting him out. We would set up shop here and ambush the vehicle. But I wouldn’t suggest that. It’s tricky, and I’m sure that there will be much tighter security.”

“What do you think?” I asked Rei and Shinji, leaning back fully against the back of the chair. My ass hurt. “Like she says, it wouldn’t be easy to try attacking the transport.”

“And sneaking into the compound would be?” Rei asked flippantly. “Still, if I had the choice, I’d rather take action than wait for the action to come to us. Yes, I think an ambush had more chance of failure.” He leaned to look at the blueprint on the table. Shinji inclined his head to get a better look, too, as he fished out one of the spheres at the bottom of his cup.

“And what will you be doing this whole time, Nostradamus?”

“Fighting isn’t my forte,” she responded calmly, a small smile on her face. Perhaps she thought it would upset me if I didn’t piss her off. “So I’ll be sitting this one out.”

“Do you mean to let her do that?”

“She would be more a hindrance than a help. Trust me, Alice,” Rei said absently. “But she could serve some use while we’re away, I think.”

“What does that mean?” she demanded, offended. “I’m useful!”

He waved a hand, dismissing her words. “You said it yourself, you aren’t a fighter. So while we’re gone, you can clean the apartment.” She pouted and protested in a whiny, childlike voice.

Shinji laughed. “I like that idea!”

I knew what we had to do now. It would just come down to if I would be competent enough to handle it. And if time would permit.