While I was worried after the call with my uncle, I couldn’t exactly call everyone up and tell them that someone I trust had a gut feeling so we should all speed things along. Not to mention, going unprepared in a situation might be more dangerous than whatever was going on with the military.
So I kept my cool and kept driving.
I managed to arrive at the coordinates Jun sent us without any further incident. They led me to a big building located in the Sentai’s clan main district. A large outer courtyard separated the edifice from the road. It was a blocky modern looking structure, half of its front side was glass, and the rest was a metallic white. It was three floors tall.
I parked my car behind Alex’s sedan. She and Revy were on the sidewalk waiting for me. There was a strong smell of gunpowder coming from them.
“Might want to take a shower and change your clothes.” I pointed out.
Alex gave me a sardonic smile. “If only I had gone to my place to grab a change.”
“I have some clothes you left over in my place.”
She tilted her head slightly. “You kept them? Thanks.”
“What about me?” Revy demanded.
“You can have some of mine, just don’t touch the hoodie,” Alex reassured her.
Immediate concerns resolved. We walked to the courtyard.
Two gangsters stood guard, one of them waved us in when we approached. “Wait at the entrance.” He said.
The building’s entrance was a big sitting area. The interior of the building was opposite in style when compared to the exterior. Darker colors dominated the space, neon lights illuminated the environment. Luminescent graffitis were on the walls, predominant were the depictions of Chinese dragons and tattooed men and women wielding katanas.
A few people were sitting at some of the tables, they were drinking, smoking, and gambling. They had numerous tattoos that were visible on the exposed parts of their skin. They paid us no mind.
Right when I was about to suggest sitting down a woman that looked to be in her twenties entered the room and walked straight towards us. Her hair was black and short. Two crimson eyes adorned her face. A tall and lean build with defined muscles was covered by combat boots, pants, and a tank top that stopped at her midriff. A sheen of sweat covered her figure.
While approaching us she smiled widely and called out to us. “You must be Jun’s friends.”
The statement made me think, before I could say anything Revy spoke, “That’s us.”
The woman nudged her head towards the corridor she came from, “Good, follow me, I was told you might need some rooms to stay in.”
When she turned, I saw that the entirety of her back seemed to be covered in colorful and continuous tattoos.
We went after her, walking through long corridors. While moving she spoke enthusiastically. “I’m Vera, by the way, it’s nice to meet you. Jun has spoken lots about you. Well, he complained lots, but he always does that so it’s nothing new there. I think he likes you or he wouldn’t have stuck around with you as long as he has. He hasn’t worked with the same group of people for so long ever since… well it’s not my place to say.”
We started climbing a set of stairs, and the gangster just kept talking. “Sorry for the appearance, by the way, I was in the middle of some spars. We do those in the right wing of the second floor if you’re interested, don’t be shy, there are both good and bad fighters in there. If you need clothes, we have some athletic gear for both men and women. Just ask and I’ll get you some.”
We reached the third floor and moved through more corridors. Vera was still talking.
“Though I’m guessing you might want to take a shower first, got into some shoot out on the way ey? The guest bathroom is at the end of the corridor where the guest rooms are. That is to say, the end of the corridor you will be staying at.”
She stopped suddenly at an intersection where the corridor split right and left. She pointed to the left. “The second door to the right is Jun’s room, he doesn’t want anyone entering there.” Then she pointed to the right. “That’s where the guest rooms are, take your pick, they’re all empty currently. If you take the stairs to the left, you’ll get to the roof, it’s got a nice view of the city, especially at night.”
She turned to us and clapped her hands “So, who wants clothes for sparring?”
“None for me, thanks.” Was Alex’s immediate reply.
“Yes, clothes! I’ll have some of those.” Revy enthusiastically followed.
I was still processing the deluge of information, after a second I said, “Don’t need them.”
Vera finger gunned towards us. “One set for the pretty redhead then, feel free to start carrying your stuff in the rooms, locks will connect to your neural interface once you enter a room.”
She started walking away, but then stopped and turned to us once more.
I dreaded the possibility of another monologue.
Vera smiled widely once more. “Welcome to the Sentai Clan. Well, more specifically, the Ishikawa family, but you-“
Alex chose to save humanity. “Thank you, Vera, for the warm welcome, we got this.”
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Vera winked at us one more time and mercifully left.
I turned to Alex. “She’s as bad as you during your science lectures.”
“I’m not that bad.” Alex protested.
Revy crossed her arms. “You guys are mean, she was just being nice.”
We both looked at her in shock. Was she being more mature than us?
I shook my head and started walking back to my car.
After moving all my stuff to one of the rooms I left Alex’s clothes to her and went to the roof. It did have a nice view. You could see downtown’s tall skyscrapers not too far away, and to the side you could see the ocean. The district itself had a lot more greenery when compared to where I used to live.
I had no intention of going to the sparring area. My left side was a collection of blue bruises that I’d rather leave alone.
The breeze felt nice, I spotted a bench and decided to take a nap to kill some time while we waited for Jun and Batou. Laying down on my right side I closed my eyes.
I was woken up by a call from Alex.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Revy and Vera are duking it out, want to see?”
“Sure.”
I switched my view to hers.
The sounds of cheering and fists striking flesh assaulted me.
Alex was looking at one of the fighting rings in the center of a large room. On it, Revy and Vera were trading blows, both were dressed the same way the gangster was when she greeted us. The fast hits that they both threw suggested that Vera was also with cyberware designed for speed. While fast, they both were not going as fast as they could, they had to go easy on each other to avoid serious injuries.
It looked like they were even.
Things changed when Revy committed to a right straight aimed at Vera’s face. Vera dodged low and stepped forward with her right leg, her right arm following her body’s movement and landing a liver punch.
A normal person would have been floored by that. Revy fell to her knees and gasped for air. Vera gave her some time to recover.
After a few breaths Revy must have pretended to be still winded because suddenly she went from being on her knees to delivering a low sweeping kick that caught her opponent by surprise, Vera fell ungracefully on her butt.
The crowd of gangsters cheered at the foul play, I also approved. It was good to see her wising up when it comes to fighting dirty.
Vera grinned as she got back on her feet, she kept her distance while delivering quick punches and using her tall stature to keep away from the shorter redhead’s range. Revy was dodging and blocking well enough, but whenever she tried to close the distance she was rewarded with a fist to the face. Revy had a bloody nose by now.
Realizing the futility of trying to close the distance, she went for a kick to the side with her right leg. The hit connected, Vera grunted and stumbled but did not fall. Revy went for a second kick with her right, this time the gangster caught the offending leg. Revy rotated her body and went for a kick with her remaining leg while aiming for the face.
The kick connected, snapping Vera’s face to the side. In a daze, she dropped the leg she was holding. Revy fell but quickly stood back up. Seeing her opponent with her guard up but still in a daze, Revy started pummeling away at the gangster.
Vera went on the defensive for the next several seconds, recovering from the kick to the face. But now she switched back to offense, a feint with her right arm resulted in Revy raising her guard only for a knee to connect with her exposed stomach. This time she was knocked down. And that was the end of the match.
Vera helped her up while complimenting Revy for her performance, especially the foul play.
It had been a good fight. While I felt like Revy’s superior specs helped her fill the gap caused by the lack of fighting experience, I had to admit that she had grown a lot since she joined us one year ago.
Alex gave voice to my thoughts. “Always nice to see them grow.”
“She could kick our ass ten times over.” I reminded her.
“Only because she’s cheating.”
“I feel like she could kick your ass regardless.”
“Hey, that’s not true, I’d blind her.”
“So you would resort to cheating yourself.”
Our silly banter was interrupted by a message sent by Jun.
Jun:
We rendezvous in the meeting room located in the left wing of the second floor in 20 minutes.
Guess we will soon meet the rest of Jun’s criminal family.
Twenty minutes later we entered the meeting room. A large, sleek table that looked like glass dominated the center. It was a holo table that could show your projections to others, useful when you didn’t want to share your neural interface with others because you had something to hide.
At the head of the table was what I presumed to be Jun’s mother. She had black hair and green eyes, she looked young, and what looked like tattoos were actually very thin black chrome lines that revealed her cyborg nature. To her right was a man with Asian features that had the same chrome setup, probably Jun’s father.
Other family members and their retainers sat on the table according to seniority, those closer to the head of the family being more important. Jun and Batou were seated halfway, they indicated the empty seats next to them when they saw us come in. Vera sat opposite Jun, she gave us a wave and a smile.
I sat next to Batou. By the looks of it, we were still waiting for a few stragglers, nobody was talking. Out loud at least, probably a lot of subvocalized conversations going on right now.
Jun sent a group encrypted call to me and the others. He then subvocalized, “As you probably have already guessed we are going to be targeting a corpo executive to get the info we need. However, not everyone at this table knows why we are doing this. So, do not go sharing around details.”
Alex subvocalized back, and while the voice was electronic, I could imagine the deadpan delivery. “I most certainly will not go sharing this around with my family.”
Batou and Revy chuckled at that, breaking the silence of the room. They then proceeded to shift awkwardly and stare at the surface of the table.
Eventually, the family head pressed one finger to the table, and the holo image of a heavily chromed man with long white hair appeared on top of the center of the table. She spoke with authority. “For reasons you don’t need to concern yourself with, we need to capture and extract information from an LA Tech Industries corpo executive. Since they do not grow on trees there are only two places where one can find such a target. The archologies, which might as well be considered an impenetrable fortress. Or the spaceport, in which currently the top executive of the science department is overseeing the three-year construction of the new spaceships.”
“We already have intel on the target’s movements, you will depart tomorrow, verify the intel, and strike the day after. If you have any questions about the plan of action direct them to your group leaders, they have all the details.”
“Dismissed,” she said with a wave of her hand.
During the evening Jun shared the details with us, a lot more people were involved when compared to when we did the hit on the senator. Which meant that everyone had very specific roles that they would carry out. I had to silently snipe a couple of guards from a roof and keep overwatch, Alex had to hack some cameras and provide vision of an area, and so on.
That night I could not fall asleep, the nap from before had taken care of any fatigue. I decided to go to the roof and take a look at the view during nighttime.
Alex was sitting on the bench. She was wearing my hoodie, it was too big for her. She wasn’t looking at the riot of colors that were the city lights ahead, instead, she was staring up at the empty void of space.
I sat next to her. She sent a ping to share her interface, accepting it I saw what she was seeing. The dark canvas was painted with millions of stars, shining their light through thousands of light years, until it reached us.
While I liked the rain, this was nice too.