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Chapter Twenty Two
Coy Blood
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“Uhh…”
The whole room turned to look at Ren, almost as confused as he was. “Okay, maybe I’d better take this one bit at a time. Why is Corey in a white t-shirt?”
“Because he got syrup all over his hoodie and it had to be washed.” Rook replied, motivating Corey to give him the scowl of all scowls in return. “Next question.”
“Where the heck is your frame?” Ren pointed at the empty space of wall typically occupied by the humanoid contraption.
“Ah,” Rook’s voice suddenly got awkward. “That. Uh. Yeah, so uh, that might need a bit of an explanation, I suppose… Where the heck do I start…”
“Try starting at the part where you lost the frame doing something stupid, and then get to the part where you profusely apologize.” Ren grumbled. “And why are you two playing video games this early in the day?”
“Tone said I could!” Corey protested, but Kohaku immediately intervened. “I suggested it since Tone had to step out. Is there a problem, mister Fukushi?” Even seated on the floor and twisting her body around, she still managed to dig her knuckles into her hips.
“That brings me to my last question.” Ren sighed, jabbing a thumb back at the open door behind him. “Where did Tone run off to?”
“Tone ran off to chase down our runaway boy.” Tone grunted, squeezing through the door with his arms wrapped around the frame, dragging it along behind him. “I used the restroom for all of two seconds and this thing got up, fiddled with the door, and scooted. It wasn’t too hard to track down, but you would not believe the route I had to take getting back here to keep it from being seen.”
“What?” Ren’s jaw nearly broke through the floor and into the apartment below. “It just got up and left?? But that’s not possible.”
“Neither is it existing, period.” Tone dropped the frame in the spot it typically occupied, rattling the room. “But it did get up and leave, all the same, so maybe there’s a few things we just don’t know. Oh snap are you on Coral Cove?” The burly brawler strode across the room and stood next to Corey, observing the television screen.
“Yup!” Corey beamed with all the happiness the world had to offer. “Kohaku’s really good at this. I didn’t think I’d get past the third boss without cheating somehow, but we found a winning strategy after a couple tries.”
Kohaku didn’t say anything, the straw of a juice box dangling from her mouth. She grinned back at Ren, flashing her teeth and throwing up a peace sign.
“Hey, maybe I should get back on the frame before it decides to run off again?” Rook mused. “I don’t know why it decided to up and leave, but it might not get the chance if I’m in control.”
“Fair enough.” Ren relented, motioning for Tone to fulfill the request. “Are you at a point where you can be done for now? We’ve got a lot of work to do ahead of tonight.”
“What does Corey need to do ahead of tonight that’s so important?” Kohaku’s voice implied she was looking for some way that Corey could get out of participating. “He’s going to be here the whole time, so-”
“No.” Tone’s voice was suddenly very serious. It brought the entire room’s attention with it, and he quickly adjusted it as he continued to the more relaxed attitude he had shown the entire day. “You and Corey got attacked the other day not because of you, but because of him. If we leave him here, alone, they will come to hunt him down and either leverage him against us or kill him.”
“Thankfully,” Ren grunted as he reached under the pile of clothing Corey had been napping on. “We’ve got what could be a nuclear weapon on our hands. You haven’t seen it in action yet, Kohaku, but this is the mask one of our dear friends who tried to kidnap you the other day wore.”
“Oh.” Kohaku grew visibly uncomfortable at the sight of Know’s mask reappearing from under the pile, turning to face it more and letting the straw fall from her mouth. “What, uh… Does it do, exactly?”
“Corey.” Ren tossed the mask underhand to the youngest member of the Wild Masks, who fumbled about with it for a moment. “What’s the one thing Corey would have absolutely no way of knowing?”
“Hmm.” Kohaku was still uncomfortable, but her typical attitude would not allow it to take center stage. “Okay, where’s the third gem of the fourth level of-”
“Conveyor section, right after the last flame emitter, hidden behind the cracked portion of the floor in the shadow of the belt itself.” Corey slowly lifted the mask off his eyes. “Hey! I could totally use this to one-hundred-percent complete the game! I could just write down all the-”
“Corey.” Tone’s voice carried the judgemental reprimanding air of an angry father, and Corey’s throat tightened as it reached his ears.
“Hold on.” Kohaku smashed the mask back down over Corey’s eyes. “Tell me this instead. What’s so special about this heist you guys are doing tonight? What’s the Kumagai collection?”
“It’s a series of art pieces commissioned by the late Rikuto Kumagai.” Rook replied, adjusting the suit atop his frame. “Rikuto used to be a crime boss with pretty expensive tastes, but after, uhh…”
“After a rival gang leader killed his son, he put the blame on us.” Tone interjected, in between slurps of seltzer water he drank through a straw and funnel. “Our boss Wild died in the same explosion that killed Rikuto. Collecting his lavish art pieces and hopefully either turning them over to the authorities or destroying them will not only honor Wild’s legacy, but complete his mission of destroying the Kumagai yakuza family.”
“Which leads us to tonight’s piece.” Ren spun the computer monitor around, revealing the image on screen. “The marble tiger. This thing is so massive, it needs specialized equipment to move, and is constructed around a base of old roman-style concrete and layered with specialized carved marble. It’s not the most valuable piece in his collection, but it’s definitely up there.”
“That…” Corey chimed in, turning towards Ren with the mask over his eyes. “That’s weird. I can’t focus on the tiger, it’s… It’s being protected by that demon eye.”
“That means our friends are already involved.” Ren’s face was very grave. “Go ahead and say it, Kohaku; we all know what you’re thinking, and it might as well be vocalized.”
“There is no way I’m letting you take Corey on this insane stunt of yours and put him directly in harm’s way!” She gestured with both hands towards Corey in her usual way. “These people are psychopaths and killers, and you’re gonna get him murdered!”
“True, that.” Tone mused, tapping his chin as the funnel fell out of the straw. “We’ll have to prove Corey is capable of handling his own. Rook, would you mind clearing everything out of the way?”
“Wh… What are you doing?” Kohaku stammered, watching nervously as Rook ungracefully pushed half the stuff in the room into one corner. “Ren, you’re being stupid again, aren’t you? I know that look, mister Fukushi, you’re planning something!”
“I think I’m catching your drift.” Mister Fukushi nodded towards Tone as he spoke. “Okay, Corey, since you’ve got that mask that tells you the future, let’s see you stop our attacks ahead of their occurring. If you can’t handle us, there’s no way you’ll be able to handle the Pangolins.”
Corey scrambled upwards, a bit of a smirk on his features, which suddenly disappeared as he reached the center of the room, all expression leaving his face outside of a cold preparedness. “Ready when you are.”
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“It’s getting dark.” Shou’s voice was as unenthused as ever, and the permanent expression of boredom smeared across his features was just as present as it had been the entire day and presumably his whole life, but there was still an implied amount of impatience in Race’s inability to give him a destination to head towards. “We’ll be out of gas soon.”
Race reached her fingers apart and pressed them into her eyebrows, squeezing them together as much as she could. She desperately wanted Ren’s input on whether or not Shou could be trusted with anything more than a casual level of information, but it was impossible to have that kind of conversation in his presence without him catching enough info to realize what was being discussed.
“Shou,” Race began, but stopped to caress her browline again, resting her forehead on her arm while leaning both against the airbag. “Can you keep a secret?”
“No.” Shou immediately replied, his manner entirely casual despite his immediate dismissal. How he managed to talk coherently with his mouth eternally puckered around a sodden cigarette was beyond her knowledge, but he seemed to make it work.
Which is why it drew her attention so easily to see it suddenly drop from his mouth. The world outside her open window seemed to grow horribly quiet as his fingers slowly crept around the shifter.
“We’ve got company.”
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