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Chapter Twenty Seven
Boiling Over
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“You’re coming in too fast.”
“Not fast enough.” Tone growled, clutching Rook’s shoulder tighter as he held on. “Speed up, we need this to be close.”
Shou didn’t want to be the one to say he was losing his grip on the case with the masks, but as Rook sped towards the building and abruptly stopped, the case shot out of his grip, bounced off the wall, and plummeted downwards. A moment later, however, Rook was two stories lower than before, and caught the case in between his ankles as it fell behind him.
“Good.” Shou tried to hide his surprise at seeing Rook’s mask in action. “I don’t want to think about how that just happened. Can we get in now?”
“You’re up.” Rook extended his arm, allowing Tone the opportunity to crawl across it and touch the glass of the window opposite. After a few moments of tense silence, the window softly dissolved into powder and fell into a pile on the sill.
“Looks unoccupied,” Tone mumbled, stepping through the heavy curtain as Rook floated in behind him. “You get these to the other three, and Rook and I will move in the moment we start hearing noise. Tell Ren to-”
The door slowly clicked open. Shou reached for the gun with its singular remaining bullet. The silhouette that appeared slowly fumbled about for the light switch, gave up, staggered over to the lamp, and with a shuddering sob turned it on.
“Six months.” The stranger gulped, watching the floor with a look of utter misery twisting his features. "I couldn’t even make it to six months!!" Struggling something out of his suit pocket, the stranger clutched a small glass bottle in his hand and with a sudden surge of fury threw it at the floor, recoiling back as it exploded into a million shards. “I should NEVER have gone to America! I wouldn’t be trapped in this endless cycle if I had… Oh, why did I never listen to mother?!”
Storming into the restroom, the stranger began filling the hotel room with the sounds of his wailing, sobbing into the sink. Tone shared a worried glance with Rook, and after a moment tentatively stepped forwards.
The stranger reappeared, his guilty features on the brink of absolute exhaustion. Leaning heavily on the handle of the bathroom door, he blinked furiously at the trio. “Wh-Who are y- what are YOU doing here??”
There was an uncomfortably long pause which was finally broken by Rook. “Drugs?”
“Oh.” The stranger’s eyes began to roll backwards, but he pulled himself together for a brief moment. “Tell them to… to…”
Slipping off the handle, the stranger collapsed on the hard laminate flooring with a THUD that shook the room. It took another five seconds after he landed for Tone to straighten his posture and approach him, searching his suitcoat for I.D.
“Shinsuke Kaneko, driver’s license revoked… AA card in his breast pocket.” Tone sighed, turning him over. “Poor kid. Get going; Rook and I will haul him to his bed and then find somewhere else to wait things out.”
“Drugs.” Tone grumbled as Shou slipped out the door, carrying the black camera case behind him. “The least plausible reason you could possibly give for our being here. I can’t snort anything with this mask on my face, and you don’t even have a nose.”
“I mean, you could pour it down a straw.” Rook shrugged as he slowly lifted Shinsuke by the shoulders. “Then all you’d have to do is try not to burn your nostril as it all went down.”
Tone had lifted up Shinskue’s ankles and was about to march him to the bed, but paused for several seconds after Rook’s comment instead. “I really hope you’re happy I don’t have my arms free right now.”
“I appreciate the offer for a hug, but I’m good.” Rook gently laid the unconscious Shinsuke down at the head of his hotel bed. “What other hotel room are we going to break in to? I can only use the drugs excuse once.”
“Thankfully.” Tone glanced at the sturdy door. “Let’s kill the light and see if we can make it to the roof. I’m going to check if he left his phone in the restroom, 'cuz he didn’t have it on him.”
As Tone entered the restroom and began looking about, Rook flicked off the lamp and plunged the room into darkness. Turning back towards the window, his eyes landed on the distant silhouette floating at eye level.
It smiled.
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“What did Wild tell you about his mask?”
Ren slowly looked up from the bottom of his glass. Oisim had become absorbed by his performance, chatting loudly with the other patrons that had gathered around him, all of whom were likely part of his organization. Then, the sound around him, while not dissipating entirely, noticeably softened as the giant spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
“He…” Ren hesitantly began, but quickly realized anything Oisim was asking him he likely already knew the answer for. Wild’s journal had disappeared a long time ago; the patriarch of Koi Blood was just as likely a candidate for its theft as anyone else.
“He always said it maxed out his physical capability to the limits of what was humanly possible. That whatever could be done by the perfect athlete he was capable of.” He turned to glare sharply at Oisim. “Why are you asking me this?”
“He was a liar.” Oisim casually observed the dregs in his shot glass as he lifted it from the bar. “It is impossible that he did not know how his mask truly operated. His level of experience with it and the feats he accomplished paint him as one. Why he would decide to lie to you is beyond my understanding.”
That was enough to get on Ren’s nerves. He slammed the glass down onto the bar and wheeled around towards Oisim, but his mind barely registered the lightning-fast hand that grabbed him by his shirt front and held him in place. Oisim glanced back at his shot glass as he returned it to the bar with a very gentle motion, keeping his opposite hand knotted around Ren’s previously unwrinkled dress shirt.
“You need to control that.” Oisim mumbled as he reached across his arm and almost directly into the face of Shou, who was rummaging around in the black case he held. “Your temper is not your master. Get ready.”
As Shou handed over the wolf mask, Ren reached into the open case and retrieved a slim metal bat, which he stuffed up his right sleeve. With a nod from Oisim, Shou closed the case and departed, making his way towards the quite obvious sign of Corey stuffing his face with hors d’oeuvres while the staff that manned the appetizer table looked about in concern as to whose lost child this was.
“They have orders not to hurt Corey.” Oisim opened his palm, revealing he also held the radio. “Keep him out of sight all the same. Remember you have Koi Blood at your back.” With a grunt, the massive Oisim whirled around and flung Ren over the heads of the crowd around the bar, launching him across the room.
Ren slipped the mask over his eyes, spun around, and kicked off a table to carry his momentum from the throw. A man holding a wireless microphone had stood up and was preparing to speak; Ren snatched it out of his hands as he zipped by, slamming both heels into the middle of one of the many tables in the dining area to stop his momentum.
"WILD MASKS!!"
The call sounded out across the entire building. Corey, in the middle of Shou trying to subtly grab his attention, turned with his mouth full of pastries to the source of the noise. Race quickly drew herself to her full height and started scanning the crowd to locate Shou. Security immediately began descending on Ren’s location, seemingly oblivious to the sudden sharp and menacing movements of the old laborer who tended the sand garden.
"On our blood - we AVENGE THIS DAY!!"
The security team bellowed something in Japanese and raised their weapons at Ren, but were suddenly disarmed, grasping at the air in front of them. The crowds of people inside the building started to panic, rushing past Race and knocking her to the ground, only for her to look up and see Shou remove the mechanical-looking mask off of his mouth and offer it to her.
“Shou?” Race’s eyes were drawn to the armful of guns he held at his side.
“Shusui, if you please.” Shou replied, tossing the mask to her and reaching for another cigarette. “Koi Blood will handle the people. We’ll be backing you up the best we can.”
“‘We’?” Race slowly stood, donning her mask and looking Shou directly in the eyes. "Who’s We?"
Bursting out from the walled-off sand garden, a bundle of long robes and ill-fitting samurai armor slammed into Ren full-force, the wolf mask allowing him to react fast enough to intercept most of the blow, but not enough to keep him on the table. Spilling backwards, he rolled onto his feet and looked up as the bundle of cloth spun around from the impact and fluttered into the middle of the room, two glassy wings buzzing furiously to keep it aloft.
“Odgu,” Ren huffed as the inhuman hand that struggled out from the attire tore off the majority of the robes to reveal the leader of the Pangolins. “The media was unfair to you; when I heard there was a giant cicada I assumed you were much more corpulent.”
The wooden rake Odgu held swung viciously, clipping Ren’s tie and sending a jagged tear down the side of it. Before Ren could quip again, the rake swung six more times in lightning-quick succession, forcing him further and further back as his mask compensated as best it could. At the end of the barrage, however, Ren landed a solid kick in the center of the handle, cracking it in two and surprising Odgu enough for an opening.
Recalling how Odgu had somehow taken down Chubasco, it seemed a direct physical approach would not be opportune. But his eyeballs looked vulnerable enough, so with a wide arc Ren smashed the metal bat in his hand down towards one of the crimson eyes that glared hate into him.
Two inhuman hands caught the metal bat. It vibrated slightly, and Ren looked down at the cold, concrete floor, the clear tubes with their razor-sharp entrances sticking into his body, the bizarre angle of the floor making him tip to the side. He tried to compensate for the tilt in the geometry, but he fell all the same.
His eyes snapped open a split second later, just in time to catch himself as he hit the ground. Turning back towards Odgu, it was difficult to read the clearly insect features he possessed, but his body language and the fact that he wasn’t attacking him seemed to point in the direction of bewilderment.
“Uh…” Odgu stared, giving Ren plenty of time to return to his feet. “I… My condolences. I didn’t know it was like that, or I wouldn’t have struck out as I did.”
“You saw that?” Ren’s voice was calm, but his eyes were burning with anger.
“Like I said,” Odgu replied, lifting into the air as he spoke. “My condolences. If there’s an aftermath for you to attend, I’ll see about helping you if I can.”
“I don’t need your help.” Ren tapped the radio at his hip. “Tone, I need you on ground floor. We’ve got the Pangolins right where we want them. Do you read?”
The distant ceiling far above the ongoing conflict suddenly exploded, Tone hurdling through the air with very limited success at slowing his descent with ceiling decorations and smashing into a very expensive-looking couch. Worming through the hole was a gigantic Koi, its unnaturally small head and eyes only serving to heighten the grotesque level of terror radiating from its long, lumpy, unnatural body. Splashes of orange and black glistened across the sickly-looking ivory scales, shimmering as the leviathan slowly drifted through the air, seemingly unaware that anything out of the ordinary was going on.
“We are here.” Shou leaned towards Race, his casual attitude completely neglecting the horrified expression in her features. “The Kin Gin Rin.”
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