CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Don’t worry, we’ll take great care of him, Thalia-san!” Saya assured her. “And thanks for this great stuff!”
“Enjoy it, because I won’t go there again after they called the news people on me,” Thalia said. “Kiri-san, is it possible to sneak out the back?”
“Anything is possible around here,” he replied with a cocky grin. He was getting his boots on.
“Where are you going?” Thalia asked, confused.
“You want to outrun them on foot?” he retorted. She looked dismayed. “That’s what I thought. I’ll drop you off,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said, grinning.
“No need for thanks, I just know how to treat a customer,” he scoffed.
They headed toward the back, quickly and quietly, but Thalia hesitated in order to take a look back at little Daishiro. Saya was enthusiastically explaining Rock, Paper, Scissors to him; he was grinning ear-to-ear, although she doubted he comprehended why paper beat rock. On the other hand, he was a very precocious child.
“How many ways do you plan to set yourself up for heartbreak and trouble?” Kirito asked, interrupting her thoughts. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to start another fight. I just wonder if you know what the hell you’re doing, because if you do, things could turn out beautifully. But if you don’t, a shit carnival awaits us all.”
He strapped on his helmet and handed the extra one to her.
The media had, of course, been keeping an eye on the back way. They had learned from their mistake, and had someone staking it out. Before Thalia could even tuck her hair into the helmet, a dozen reporters were there with at least three cameras, two of them video. They lost no time in shoving microphones at her with shouted questions.
“Lieutenant, is it true you’re the first female officer of the Shinsengumi?”
“How did you save the hostages from the hijackers, Miss Cairde?”
“What is the nature of your relationship with Nakamura Kirito?”
Thalia froze, but forced herself to face it. She had known they would catch up with her eventually, so she might as well take it with a good grace. Kirito put a supportive hand on her shoulder, and she smiled up at him. This would of course later turn into a suggestive photo for the tabloids to pick apart.
“Nakamura Kirito is a good friend, and does a great job when I need help with anything. He’s the best, and I recommend him for all your private investigative needs. As for the rest, I am not at liberty to discuss ongoing investigations, but I am sure your questions will be addressed by the Commander and Vice-Commander quite soon,” she said, pasting a fake smile onto her face as she finished tucking her hair into the helmet. “I’m afraid that’s all I have time for right now,” she replied to the barrage of further questions thrown at her, and ignored all the rest stoically.
Kirito was already on the scooter. Thalia mounted behind him, bunching her skirt up ungracefully behind her and sighing over it.
There were an anxious few minutes after Kirito revved up the scooter when the reporters seemed determined to trap her into an interview, but after a few scares involving near misses with larger vehicles, they were safely away in the flow of traffic.
There were more reporters waiting outside the Shinsengumi HQ gates; thankfully, however, there were also two officers awaiting her arrival.
“Thanks, Kiri-san,” Thalia said, dismounting and tossing the helmet back at him with a grateful smile. This, too, would become a photograph featured on at least one tabloid front page. She was picturesque in her unusual clothing, so they got as many shots of it as possible.
“Just make sure you come back for that kid,” he said. “And do it before lunch!”
“I’ll be there – probably late, but I’ll be there. Try to clean the éclair off your face between now and then, huh?” she called back over her shoulder with a twinkle, ignoring the questions tossed at her but mitigating her rudeness by smiling at the cameras.
“Tch – annoying woman,” Kirito muttered, then snuck a quick look in the rearview mirror to check his face for chocolate.
***
Thalia was relieved to get out of sight of the media; she was finding it increasingly difficult with every passing moment to repress her rage. She had been restraining the Fury in her ever since she had seen the blood dried on the side of Daishiro’s face and touched the livid corpse of his Obaa-san in the dark, desolate house the night before.
She was already more than halfway into Fury mode before she reached the Chief’s office. She had been asked to report in before she went to ‘discuss’ Daishiro-chan and his Obaa-san with the two criminals who had been responsible for what had happened to them. She didn’t mind, of course, but she was in a definite hurry. There was love in her, and grace, but the balance to that was the need for justice; for her wrath to have an outlet once it had been aroused.
Kato and Harada were already there, concluding a discussion that had largely been about her. Harada had opened it by confiding his concern over being teamed with Thalia on any regular basis, that he could not be properly focused and objective with her as a partner. This had the unintended effect of making Kato grin and clap him on the shoulder.
“Stop worrying, Tetsu,” he admonished. “You make a great team. A really great one, in every way.” As usual, the Chief’s appalling lack of subtlety made Harada blush.
“Kato-san, you know my feelings. I am not suited to family life; I could never make a wife happy. Besides, there are other complications in this case.”
“Name one,” Kato challenged.
“This was not what I intended to talk about,” Tetsuya protested, to no avail. “Fine. Seizo is one complication – he has feelings for Thalia also, though he claims they’re not romantic. He already threatened me once over being too close to her, and after what happened with Akemi-san, I can’t blame him.”
Akemi had been Okada Seizo’s beloved childhood friend; she had fallen in love with Tetsuya and dumped Seizo before the dojo moved to Edo to form the Shinsengumi. Tetsuya had done the best he could by them both, which was to reject her advances.
Even had he returned her feelings, which he did not, he knew she was far too naïve and fragile to live with the complexities and darkness in someone like him. He would be impatient with her, he knew; he would hurt her without meaning to every day - and Okada would have no option but to observe it all from up close. There was no future there.
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He knew that despite Seizo’s feelings, it was far better for her to stay in the country, to find someone outside the Shinsengumi to marry and have children with – someone who could give her the normal, simple, happy life she craved.
Harada never said any of this, however, but simply adopted a cold indifference toward her that he hoped would discourage her attentions to him. This had the unintended effect of leaving deep wounds in her sensitive psyche which she had blamed on Seizo. In a way, Tetsuya pointed out, the whole ugly story reinforced his argument against himself as a suitable husband. Seizo never forgave Tetsuya for the perceived insult to the same girl he himself had treasured, even after she died young of lung disease.
“Ah, I see,” Kato said. “Akemi-san, yes. That was unfortunate in many ways, Tetsu, but you and I know Thalia-san is an entirely different case. She looks as delicate as Akemi was, but she’s far stronger. She has balance; light and dark together, just as you do. I wish you could see from outside the way you two move together in a perfectly executed dance, even if you’re just walking, talking, or eating. That and the way you look at each other tells me there’s no way you just met last week. I know you feel that more than I do.
“You were right that you would not have been good for Akemi-san, Tetsu,” the Commander continued, “but you’ll be wrong if you use the same argument with Thalia-san. You’ve met your match there, anyone can see it. Seizo is an adult now, and will have to learn to deal with it in his own way.”
“I take it your mind is made up about teaming us up together, then,” Harada replied after a long pause.
“Yes, for now. Prove me wrong and I’ll reconsider,” Kato said.
As soon as Thalia entered, they knew there would be no tea-drinking this morning for her.
“Thalia-san,” Kato said, “Shouldn’t you calm down before you go in there?”
“What would be the point?” she asked, confused by the idea. Her pupils had ellipsed so her eyes were like a snake’s; her fangs were barely hidden.
“Kato-san, we should take her over there right away,” Harada said after one good look.
“Are you sure, Tetsu? She’s likely to kill them, by the look of her,” Kato said in a whisper.
Thalia responded, making the Commander blush. “I hear you, Kato-san; but that’s not the way I bring justice. I can only kill in the same ways other humans can, and if you like, I’ll promise not to even touch them.” This was said to reassure the Chief that she was still rational, even when her aura became terrifying.
Harada backed her up, knowing he’d done far more reading about her kind than Kato had. “Furies can drive a criminal insane if his crimes are bad enough; they can drive a murderer to suicide or heart failure, perhaps, but they cannot shed blood by supernatural means. That part of the curse of the gods is still on them, if I understand what I read,” Tetsuya explained, glancing at Thalia for confirmation. She nodded.
{And what would he do, Thalia wondered, if he remembered that he was the reason that curse had been put upon her?}
“Besides, the nature of a Fury is to bring justice where the balance has been disrupted. So even if she did kill them, I wouldn’t think it was excessive,” Tetsuya added. Thalia was so astonished and moved by this that her Fury faded.
“You trust me that much?” she asked.
He shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “Maybe I’m just hoping you’ll kill them,” he said.
“Let’s go, then,” Kato said, and from that moment it was all business. “We’ve corralled them in one room, Thalia-san, since it can’t hurt and may do some good for the rest to see you punish the two with whom you are immediately concerned. By the time you’re finished, we hope to get a few pretty big fish into the pan for frying, and then we’ll have a statement for those hyenas from the media. Which, by the way, is something else we need you for; we’ll make a statement and have you answer a few questions. It won’t be too painful, I promise.”
Thalia nodded, then put the reporters, the media, and Tetsuya from her mind for the moment, concentrating all her sense of love and fear, right and wrong, light and darkness, of balance, upon what had happened the night the hijackers came to rob the home of Daishiro’s Obaa-san.
The Fury shone fierce from her, showing itself in her eyes, her teeth, and her hair, which billowed about her as if caught in an otherworldly wind, curling around her like writhing red snakes.
She went in alone; Harada wanted to accompany her, but Kato reminded him that if she was not permitted to do things on her own, she would feel they did not trust or respect her.
The former hijackers looked up when she closed the door, though she did so rather gently. They didn’t immediately recognize her in her Steampunk clothes with half her hair swept up in a twist; some started to catcall, but as soon as her eyes reached them, their lust died. Her teeth were very predatory now; she resembled a tigress stalking prey.
The one who had told her where to find Daishiro cowered behind two of the others.
“Come out. Don’t make me say it twice,” she commanded, looking past the others directly at him. Her anger was so great by this time it seemed to fill the room, thickening the air with fear. “Where is the murderer?” she asked, directing her gaze at each of the others, watching them shrink back against the walls, unable to meet her penetrating look.
“He – he’s” –
“I’m not asking you,” she interrupted. She did not seem to raise her voice, yet it was like thunder on a stifling day. “I already smell the stench of blood on the guilty one.” She walked around the room one full circle, then pointed at the one who had struck Daishiro’s Obaa-san, leading to her death. “You,” she said.
“N – no!” he protested, backing up.
“There is nowhere you can run from me,” she told him, smiling. “Even without these walls, you would never be safe from me.”
“Who are you?” he cried out, covering his face with one hand.
“Justice,” she replied, and delivered a tremendous kick to his solar plexus. He flew back against the wall, then fell to the floor, eyes bulging, trying to recover his breath. “Consider this: you did the same thing with a baseball bat, four days ago. You did that to an old woman who later died of her injuries, leaving her four-year old grandson alone in the house. He was alone with her corpse until last night, when we found him. Think about what that level of atrocity deserves in punishment.”
She turned toward the first one, with whom she’d held the previous interview. He flinched away, so terrified his face looked gray. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” he gasped, trembling.
“No, that should be his line,” she corrected, pointing back at the grandmother’s killer. "That’s the only mitigating factor he has, so it would have been a good idea for him to bring it up,” she said. “You’re worse than he is. You, a grown man, punched a four-year old child in the ear. Twice. You knew what you were doing, no matter how much adrenaline you had flowing at the time.”
“I helped you!” he protested. “Without me, you might never have found the kid!”
She smiled down at him. “That’s why you’ll survive,” she said, and drove her knee into his ear; his eardrum shattered, satisfying her that he would never forget what he had done to an innocent, helpless child because of his greed. The man screamed in pain, his ear beginning to bleed.
Thalia did the next part in silence, subtly. She went into their minds and created an illusion, in which they would live through the same ordeal faced by the child during those four days of fear, pain, and confusion. Thalia wanted to hurt them more, but that was a fair sentence, so she restricted herself.
She left them on the floor and turned to address the rest. The aura of her Fury engulfed the room. “My suggestion to the rest of you is that you take this opportunity to come forward and explain who gave you your weapons, and who owns that dock. Should you fail to do so, I will find every evil thing you’ve done and punish you for it. Don’t doubt me.”
Five of them stated they wished to tell her what they knew. The others, she suspected, were too witless or frightened to volunteer. Of the five, she suspected one of having ulterior motives. He did not seem as affected by her Fury aura as the others; he was huge, like a Sumo wrestler, and despite his impassive attitude, she felt him staring at her tits or ass. She sensed potential violence in him, especially toward a powerful woman.
She left the room to consult the Chief.
“Well done, Thalia-san!” Kato said, clapping her on the shoulder when she got to where he and Tetsuya awaited her behind the one-way glass.
“The big one is trouble,” Thalia told them. “I’m guessing he wants to talk not to give me information, but to see if he can grab a piece of my ass before you guys can stop him. If that’s the case, I can still use him as an example for the others, so I’d like to take him on first, if that’s all right, Chief,” she said.
“Fine, but you and Tetsu are doing the interviews together. I intended that anyway, so don’t take it personally,” he said. “It might inhibit the big guy’s intent, too, which would overall be better for him, at least.”
“I’ll get two other officers,” Tetsuya said.
“We take them one by one, right?” Thalia asked.
Kato nodded. “I’ll observe while you and Tetsu interview them. The other officers are there as a precaution, and if things go wrong I can always come in – but I doubt you’ll have any trouble.”