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Chapter Twenty
Thermoregulated
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“What day is it?”
“More sad than yesterday.” Ren replied, adjusting his tie in the mirror. “I thought you’d be out jogging right now.”
Tone groggily stepped away from the bathroom door. “You know how busy we’ve been, with everything going on and those hooligans after us… I didn’t want to risk something going wrong ahead of tonight’s raid. Better to play it safe.”
"…What?" His masked face slowly reappeared. “What do you mean more sad than- No. No stop. Ren, don’t you dare, I know that look.” Tone threw a hand forward in protest at the smug grin which beamed off of Ren’s face. “Just because there’s no bigger joke here than you, that’s hardly an excuse to-”
“It’s Sad-” Ren began, but paused to glare at the mention of his life goals. “Sadder day. It’s Sadder day. Rook, please tell me at least you got it.”
“The joke, or whatever clawed its way into your cranial cavity and died?” Rook replied, prompting Tone to drop his disappointed scowl and look directly at the sentient mask in surprise. “I knew your egg joke from a few nights ago was rotten, but this one really puts the turd in Saturday. If all your day puns are really this Monday-ne, I’d rather have some night puns even if they involve dark humor.”
“I’m about to throw up for all the right reasons.” Tone tried to fight back a grin as he walked away from the flabbergasted Ren. “Want me to wake Corey up yet? We’ve got a lot to get done today, y’know.”
“…No,” Ren said, holding his forehead for a moment in disbelief. “I want him to get as much sleep as possible for this one. Uh, could you give Race a call, see what’s going on with the broadcast?”
“No need to.” Tone gestured with his head towards the computer. “Government stepped in and tried to hush it all up, but it didn’t work. Somebody close to things leaked the world’s worst shaky cam footage. It’s a horrible mess up there.”
“Then I’d better be the one to call.” Ren slipped into his suitcoat and snatched up his phone from the restroom counter. “I’ll be back in a couple hours. Call me if anything happens.”
“But Ren-!” Tone began, only for the leader of the Wild Masks to slip out of the room and down the stairs. “Welp, I guess he’ll just have to find out on his own. You know what’s sad, Rook?”
“His sense of humor?” Rook mused. “No wait, is it Corey having fallen asleep on the pile of laundry instead of his mattress?”
“Nah.” Tone glanced down at the slumbering Corey, his hoodie nearly inverted over his head in the contorted position he ended up in. “It’s how Ren went to the ends of the earth to stop the leader of the Pangolins and all he got for his troubles was a new tourist attraction.”
–
“Right, I’ve got to go now. They’re getting suspicious.”
“What’s going on?” The heavy footsteps of the PSIA agent announced his arrival as Race quickly pocketed her phone. “I thought we said no outside contacts until your group was screened!”
“Just checking the time.” Her face remained as flat as her voice. “It’s taking literally forever to get verification over here. Shou, I told you not to smoke around the equipment.” She glared at Shou, who quickly swiped a cigarette butt off of the rock he was seated on in time to throw it behind him for the PSIA agent to witness.
“We’ll need to take a look at your phone regardless.” The agent frowned as his eyes returned to meet Race’s. “Your team got out here awfully fast despite having no way to tell this… thing was headed to Mt. Fuji, and- Yeah.” He held his finger against his ear for a moment, blocking the spiraling cord that lead to it from view.
“Sate, minasan, watashitachi wa ie ni kaeru koto ga dekimasu.” He turned back towards Race. “We’ll be getting in touch in a couple days. Don’t leave the country, don’t talk to any other reporters who might leak something. And try to avoid seafood for the next few days if you can.”
Race trudged towards Shou, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. “Thanks for that one. We’d better get going before Fumihito panics and tries to drive out here himself.”
“You sure it wasn’t one of these guys that leaked it?” Shou asked, his disinterested expression seemingly a permanent feature of his face. “I’m not a camera expert, but that seems a little hard to achieve.”
“I’m sure.” Race looked up at the remains of Chubasco, wrapped multiple times over itself and impaled through various sections of its body on a de-limbed Japanese pine tree, its jaw at a horrible angle. “The only way someone could have taken that footage was from further out, in an aircraft of some kind. The angle won’t allow for anything else.”
“But who’s got a lens that precise?” Shou motioned to the rest of the crew to start packing up. “You’d need to be able to spot this thing, through the trees, all the way in Kyoto, and then somehow zoom in on it to the degree that you could make out what it was, all from a helicopter or something. Air traffic over Fuji is closely monitored, especially after this; they don’t let anything electronic get that close, not even a drone. And there’s no camera in the world that could manage that from any greater distance.”
“I know.” Race sighed. “And it was filmed in daylight, meaning it wasn’t done before people got involved, so there’s got to be another explanation. I just wish I knew what…”
As Shou turned away, Race glanced at the open sky, trying to determine if Hawk was still there.
–
"“That’s what I said.” Pakka swallowed, fearing some dreadful ramifications for what he had witnessed. “Mister Makuei said he would inform you, so I don’t see why he hasn’t-”
There was a horrible noise on the other end of the line. “Okay! Okay! I’m sorry! I should tried to call something, I guess… Your old phone got destroyed, but I still should’ve tried.”
“…No, it’s okay.” Pakka gripped his opposite arm with his free hand. “I’m fine. I was mostly calling because I was loitering around the hotel, and guess who I just saw go in.”
“Yep. He came here and went straight to the front desk.” Pakka grinned smugly. “You better believe I did. I trailed him all the way to the managerial office; he’s been trying for an hour to see if he could get tickets to the event tonight.”
“I guess he just didn’t think that far ahead.” He shrugged. “I’d better go, I just heard someone leave the front entrance and it could be-”
“You okay?” Ren asked, tapping the hunched and clearly suspicious Pakka on the shoulder. The phone shot straight up into the air, but before it could land on the ground and shatter its screen, Ren caught it in between two fingers.
“Yesfinethankyougoodbye” Pakka blurted out as he swiped his phone back and immediately walked off, trying desperately not to turn his hoodie too far and reveal his face. He rounded a corner and, as soon as he was out of sight, flopped down on his stomach and peered around the corner from its base, observing the leader of the Wild Masks as he shrugged, got back in his car, and drove off.
“…Yeah, that was him just now.” Pakka whispered into the phone. “Don’t worry, he didn’t see anything. I saw a great deal, though; he didn’t end up getting those tickets.”
–
“I don’t get it.” Fumihito mopped his forehead with the seven sheets of paper in his hand. “That was five hours ago that she went out there. Next thing I know the police call, there’s an interview from people at the PSIA, I’m being threatened with lawsuits and subsidizing if I don’t keep everything there sealed, until they or some above them gives me word. How am I supposed to know what not to leak if I don’t even know what it is? And where is she after all this time, without so much as a phone call?”
“You need to calm down.” Ayumi kindly laid a hand on his shoulder, but Fumihito pulled it away. “I can’t afford to get anyone in trouble because of this. We were depending on that being the morning timeslot, and instead we had to drag our heels and hope that dancing about various topics would tie people over.” He kicked at a small metal trash bin, sending it flying across the room and spilling paper everywhere.
“Yuuto,” He said, loosening his collar. “If you would clean that up. I can’t take this anymore; I’ve gotta get some air.”
“You can’t go outside!” Ayumi gasped, her mouth twisted in horror at the notion. “They said they would be watching if anyone left; you’d be inviting even more trouble if you did that!”
“They didn’t say anything about opening a window.” He sighed, stalking towards the other end of the room. “And besides, what are they gonna do if I do pop my head out for a moment? Shoot me?”
Reaching the window, he undid the latch and grabbed it with both hands to slide it up, freezing in place as it reached the halfway point. The opposite building was shorter than the one he stood in, and across the rooftop of it he noticed a dark figure peeking out from behind the far edge, concealed by the elevator shaft. There was no mistaking the long, black object he held as anything other than a gun.
His eyes focused on the reflection in the glass. Ayumi was directly behind him, stooping to pick up the paper he had spilled. There was no way for him to move without putting her in danger, and there was no way to warn her to move in time. The clock seemed to slow to an impossible crawl as time obliged his mental processes however long they needed to finish.
There was nothing between the glimmer of the rifle the assassin held and the fate that seemed utterly inescapable. Fumihito closed his eyes, failing to notice the large black object hurtling towards the window from the roof of the building.
BANG
The crushing pressure on his ribs suddenly relieved.
Fumihito opened his eyes to take in the blinding white light of the ceiling light. Off to his left, breathing in ragged, exasperated gasps, was a massive cicada, the two claws on the end of each of its limbs serving as fingers as it felt about at the newly-formed dent in its chest. Finally prying out a tiny, smoking metal disk from the crater, it scrambled towards the shattered window and threw itself out.
“Was that A GIANT CICADA?!?!” Ayumi screamed.
“P-Presser, get me a presser.” Fumihito trembled, fighting between excitement and physical shock as he tried to dust the broken glass off of his body. “And someone come sweep this up, I think I have a broken rib. But get me that presser! And- No, wait, story hasn’t broken yet. Ayumi, get in the broadcast room now!” His eyes sparkled as he felt around his broken rib. “I think we’ve just beat that other story with one of our own, so let’s get it out there before some other government agency tries to stop us.”
“That’s too risky!” Ayumi pleaded, but Fumihito held up a hushing finger. “I’ve got a guardian angel, honey. And I’m about to give him free publicity.”
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