The Fault in Our Shareholders

"Not spotless." Masuyo-san conceded, her fingers tapping, tapping, tapping away on the expensive Italian leather. If she were offended by the not-so-subtle insinuations, it didn't show in her smiling face and eye. "Not unblemished. Not without whispers and rumors, but never, ever implicated. Even in a hypothetical world where KTMG Holdings isn't purely a vital pillar of the Japanese economy and is, as its detractors would seek to paint it as, the largest front for criminal activity in the East Asia region-"

Koyuki rolled her eyes. She was just tooting her own horn now. It did not go unnoticed by Masuyo-san. Without breaking her verbal stride, Masuyo-san stopped her tapping long enough to flash a finger right in her face. Tapped her on the nose twice for good measure.

"-I wouldn't worry at all. To humor this absurd conspiracy theory," Masuyo-san continued, her tone as light as ever. "I invite you to imagine the number of people -important people within the highest level of society- necessary to conduct this alleged criminal enterprise on a national level. It's not a fighting promotion fad dependent on the good favor of an archaic tv station run by the actual dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. No, that criminal enterprise would be the Indominous Rex, a sum total of the most resilient, adaptable creatures on the planet past and present spliced together into a perfectly lethal killing machine that will sweep every single thing in its wake-"

"Masuyo-san."

"Sorry, sorry." Masuyo-san waved lazily in apology. "Dominion's coming out and I promised my daughter we'll catch it on day 1. It's been on my mind. Right, what I'm saying is it's an absurd accusation. The Yakuza are on the decline." She flashed an L sign at every suit in the room to zero response; the rest because they didnt dare offend, Koyuki because she wasn't going to dignify this grown woman's juvenile antics. "Their numbers are diminishing. They won't even be a thing in a century. That goes very much against some tall tale about secret criminal megacorps."

Numbers you helped juked, Koyuki thought. Fewer Yakuza being identified. And if they werent identified and registered, they didn't go into the national stats. Everyone won in this grand deal. Without doing anything, The government bureaucrats could claim victory in the forever war against organized crime to get re-elected or whatever dull goal it was that motivated them, while the Kaitei and other major Yakuza groups could grow in the shadows even as the war was allegedly won in the public eye. The Kaitei were the first of the Shitei Bōryokudan, a designation meant to censure dangerous criminal organizations operating on Japanese soil, but with the way things were set up, that status would never extend to KTMG Holdings and other such fronts.

"She means yes." Why was she even helping move this along? But of course she was. She wasn't going to change anything here. My as well get out of this meeting as soon as possible. "Assurances." she repeated, enunciating the word with some difficulty.

Elizabeth clapped her hands together. “Then that’s all I need to hear! Blimey, I wish all my meetings were this efficient.”

The young tech mogul leaned back into her leather and locked her fingers together over her lap. That was easier than she'd hoped. Most crime lords didn't hide their impatience when they had to deal with foreigners. Masuyo was refreshingly open-minded. This was the first conversation with the Far East she’d had in months where someone hadn't threatened to remove her head. Openly, at least. She still couldn’t help feeling the cold steel pointed at her throat.

Yet, she couldn’t help being attracted to the dysfunction. Risk coupled with ambition and a dash of madness produced some of the greatest miracles of the modern age. Despite the stoicism surrounding her, Masuyo was a welcome mind capable of reason. Her companion was less fun, but manageable. Maybe they even had a weakness for sweets. There would be time to explore all of that later. For now, she just had to sail these uneasy waters and hope nothing knocked them off course to soo-

Click!

One of the handles turned from the other side of the door. The sound cast a sudden silence over the room as the hinge creaked and slowly drew the door open. The light from the reception area bled into the room ahead of the silhouette that strode forward into the thinly-spread air of the meeting room. Once inside of the room, the door shut and the red-eyed gaze of Sae Yamamoto regarded not the guards watching her from the respective posts.

She did not offer a greeting nor speak candidly to her superior sitting comfortably on the other side of the desk. The security chief remained silent, her brows furrowed with a rare intensity and pupils strained with a hyper-focused pressure.

The entirety of Sae was taken by the one-eyed phantom lounging on the couch in the middle of the room. The security chief stared ahead as if she was witnessing a phantom. A pale shade whose impossible existence turned her blood cold and sent her mind racing.

The guard at her right was closest and the first one in the room to move. His heavy foot shook the short distance between them as he stepped forward silently to check for any weapons on Sae’s person. It was all routine for him, but all the security chief knew at that moment was who would be faster. Sae’s gaze had not moved away from Masuyo. Her hand was deft and swung behind her back, grasping the pistol grip holstered between her belt and with a simple click of the hammer-

“Sae!” The security chief froze. With some effort, she managed to bring her attention away from the white-haired woman on the couch to the one peering back with a detestable smile from behind her desk. “Took you long enough! We’ve almost wrapped up. Did you bring the Jammie Dodgers?”

Close one.

"...What the hell is this?"

If it walks like a cop, talks like a cop, stares like a cop, moves its hand to the back to grip a holster with what Koyuki could barely make out was the vaguely shaped snub of a 500 Magnum like a cop....

Well, It's a cop, and there was no abiding a Keikan that went straight for the draw.

Winterbourne barely got the first word out before Koyuki dug into her own coat holster and whipped out her USP, bringing it leveled and aimed at the purple-haired woman with her left hand as she rose from the sofa. Her right arm, on the other hand, had the proud duty of shoving Masuyo-san by the face and all but pushing her over the sofa and to the back of the overpriced sofa as she rose. She fell with a comical 'eep!" in an undignified heap. Her USP's click was accompanied by a micro-second later by half a dozen mixes of P220's and VP9's. Seven Yakuza had their guns trained on the new entrant into the room in the time that it took machine-gun mouth Winterbourne to try to stop an incident that was inevitable the moment the woman walked through that door.

Well, Six. Koyuki tapped the sofa with her free hand once, waggled a finger in Winterbourne's general direction, and the closest one to Winterbourne swung his P220 to aim for the heiress behind the desk instead.

And so here they were. Presumably, the woman would go straight for her 500 and they would find themselves in a Mexican standoff. Six to one. Six black suits scattered across the room against a woman who could very well just exit out the door but wouldn't. The tension was palpable.

Like the snubnose she so clearly failed to hide, there was an intense familiarity with this purple-haired woman. What was the name Winterbourne said? She talked too fast and spoke with too much slang. Say? Sai?

"Yams?" came a pained Masuyo-san-shaped voice from behind the sofa. "Is that you-"

And then it clicked into place.

"Owl." Koyuki hissed in Japanese. She laughed a bitter, bitter laugh. "I was told-" the ever slightest sideye in the direction of the sofa "-you were dead. You've aged."

"Rude."

"If you're not going to contribute to the defense of your assassination, please sh- make yourself comfortable behind the sofa."

"She's not here to kill me."

"That's what you say everytime! They're all here to kill you. 'Oh let's leave Kana in the lobby, the frickin ninja's gonna creep Winterbourne out. Also her drip makes me insecure. Nobody's gonna kill me in a nice fancy meeting' Well, fuck you. Respectfully."

Owl.

Amazing, wasn't it? How one word was enough to replay a thousand memories, pieces in time you thought were lost forever. Sae was a woman that never brought her work home with her. The same went for her past. The deeper the truth remained buried, the better it would be. For herself and the world, she'd given a piece of herself to protect time and time again.

One moment she was a glorified bodyguard to a primer wrestling league that wasn't paying her enough for the hours she was expected to work. The next moment, she gripped the handles on a twin pair of doors and stepped through to the past. Two phantoms with familiar faces confronted

"Little Koyuki." Sae said with all the endearment the name deserved. She gazed around the room, allowing herself another glance at the situation the Little One had turned this into. Five guns, one hostage, and six bullets in the chamber. Her body was loose, and her hand kept steady, locking eyes with the humorless assassin ten feet away. "You didn't bring enough men."

The hammer on her revolver clicked.

"Pardon." Elizabeth chimed in, easing up from her chair as she stepped around her desk. "I am glad we're all getting along. Really I am. But the tone of this conversation is starting to sound…counterproductive. I think if we all take a deep breath and-"

"Shut your mouth, Ms. Winterbourne."

Elizabeth stopped and looked at Sae. "Now you see? That's exactly what I'm-"

"Shut."

"But-"

"Hush."

"I-"

"Silencio."

"Lady Yamamoto, por favor."

"I'm not fooling around. These two can't be trusted. Keep your head down while I take care of your mess."

"Neither am I! Do you have any idea what a joint venture? It’s quite self-explana-ow." Elizabeth flinched, not noticing that she'd walked her forehead right up against the barrel of a pistol. The pistol that had been pointed at her head from the moment the Chief of Security entered the room. This close, she could see the yakuza's knuckles clenched white with a finger eased against the trigger. "-explanatory. You need two parties, working together, that won't kill each other to meet a mutual goal. I'll give you a crash course another time, but I would rather settle for putting the firearm away. All of us."

Elizabeth reached up and pushed his gun away in the summer manner she'd done to a tree branch during her morning walk. The guard readjusted his aim as she walked past him. Her eyes barely left Sae, who couldn't help hiding the surprise on her face. Just for an instant before she returned to the task of mentally lining up the bullet that would enter Koyuki's skull to hit the guard behind her. Chess moves. "I am ordering you, Ms. Winterbourne. Whatever you three were discussing, it's over."

She wasn't listening. The frustration was almost palpable upon Elizabeth's angelic features. She knew it was a possibility that things might transpire this way, but the Welsh woman had underestimated how bullheadish ex-agents could be on their former quarries. Things wouldn't simmer down without the proper leeway.

The CEO looked at the yakuza leader; the one Sae was mentally lining up a bullet towards. "Masuyo, I don't want to presume too much on the state of your employee code of conduct, but could we please do something about your subordinate?""

Little Koyuki.

Koyuki Sanada was 10 when she first met Sae Yamamoto. She was at the time a little girl whose head barely reached anyone's hips. An elusive, tiny shadow in a kimono that couldn't sit still. She stared too long, couldn't be trusted with knives, was an actual (and actualized) fire hazard, but was oddly diligent with what few menial tasks were given to her. You think that would even out but nooooooooo. But I digress. Koyuki, as a young, bright-eyed girl whose sole wish was to sit atop a mountain of the broken dead while she shot arrows at the fleeing survivors, didn't know the words Public Security Intelligence Bureau or Domestic Espionage or Deep Cover or Proof of Evidence-

But she did know that Sae Yamamoto couldn't be trusted from the very day they laid eyes on each other.

They first met at some gathering of sorts; the young Yakuza princess staring unashamedly from behind a then two-eyed Masuyo-san's pants, the older woman looking down and meeting her open stare for but a few seconds before she got into character and waved hi. And those few seconds were all that was needed to forge a chain of everlasting hate. The Owl saw something inside the young Yakuza princess, something that repulsed terrified her so utterly that even the skilled, craven liar that she was couldn't hide it for but a second, and Koyuki saw an honorless bitch that had no intention to ever step on the Path. Koyuki never suspected her to be an outright traitor until near the end, but she had pegged her early on as a void of character, a silver-tongued nothing that would say anything she needed to get what she wanted.

She vocalized her suspicions often enough. Privately at first, then publically as the years wore on and she started wearing the suit. But it was always "Why would Sae betray us, girl? She's served well and without error for many years. Your dishonor your clan with these accusations!" or the more personally galling "Another Yams rant, Ko? The dedication to this conspiracy theory is cute and all, but it's getting old. She's a friend. Trust. You're just threatened by her stunning good looks. I get it. I was a teenager once too-"

Yeah. Trust. How's the eye, you old crone?

And now here they were: Triumphant, stronger than ever, and with a seat at the table for Tokyo's movers and shakers. Even after the massive, massive, massive setback one single PSB operative and her stupid dullard of a boytoy were able to inflict in the roaring 10's.... and still having to suffer the presence of Tokyo's most famous rat. They've negated everything she worked for and she was still here like the fucking cockroach that she was.

Nah. Her belated death was going down today, office politics and big money be damned.

And so the standoff dragged on. Each side waiting for the right moment to bet it all. Sae offered bravado in the face of impossible odds. Winterbourne whined and bitched and moaned as if she could just smooth it all over like cheap butter. They verbally sparred. Masuyo-san was being uncharacteristically silent behind the sofa.  The shock of seeing phantoms went both ways, she supposed. And while Sae played chess with the pieces on the other side of the board, Koyuki played Karuta: observation, attention, primed reflexes. Working her way towards that killing zen with each passing breath of the traitor, each droplet of sweat, each slight twitch, each micro-gesture, finding that moment-

"Well, the fault seems to be a tad mutual." Masuyo-san said, as she popped out from behind the couch and propped her hand on Winterbourne's shoulder, as casual as can be; but it was a clear soft hostage situation. Sae couldn't hit her without risking taking out Winterbourne. "And while the middle ground's nice and all for nice corporate folk like us, Miss Winterbourne, I think these girls - If that barrel so much as comes close to me, Uechi, I will rip out your soul." Masuyo-san said, her face hardening slightly as the Yakuza trained on Winterbourne suddenly found himself hurriedly readjusting his gun towards Sae. "Their blood runs red. They gotta settle it their way. There's a lot of misunderstandings-"

"Misunderstandings? The only thing we misunderstood was the depths of her treachery." Koyuki said in Japanese.

"And blame on both sides-"

"In that I blame her and she is to blame."

"Let them blow off some steam. Then we can all agree to let bygones be bygones and move towards the future as friends-"

"WHAT."

"You want a duel or not?"

She didn't even hesitate.

"Guns are inelegant. Only cowards use them in duels."

"Uechi? If you don't mind." Masuyo-san said, gesturing to the case next to Elizabeth's very expensive table. "I'll compensate you for this, Miss Winterbourne."

Uechi smashed the glass with his gun, retrieved the sword, and tossed it over to Masuyo-san who, in turn, tossed it to Koyuki. She caught it in the air with her free arm, her eyes solely for Sae, watching for every opening where she would shoot. An honorless pig like her would strike even where etiquette demanded hands were stayed.

"Good enough for you?"

Koyuki unsheathed a tiny bit of the blade with her thumb and pressed against it.

"Fake." English. As much for Masuyo-san's ears as it was for Winterbourne.

"... Apparently I have to compensate a lot less than I thought I would have."

"It is brittle and poorly made. But steel is steel. It will do."

Masuyo-san turned -truly turned- to Sae Yamamoto for the first time since this whole debacle. "And what about you? Free shot at Kyoto's prodigal daughter. No official retaliation. If you kill her, we leave and you will never see another Kaitei in the hallowed halls of Momentum as long as you work here. She bests you.... Well, business as usual. You welcome us into the Momentum family with open arms and a heart of gold."

"Posthumously." Koyuki said. "And those are markedly different terms than what I was told."

"Yup, I'm tailoring the message to the target audience." Masuyo-san said shamelessly, staring at Winterbourne, waggling her elbow at the point where it met the heiress' shoulder. "C'mon, you kinda wanna see this, right?"

"I want my Jammie Dodger," Elizabeth grumbled her attention still drawn to the steel that Masuyo's second had stolen. Fake or not, in the right hands, it was as lethal as any weapon. Although it might make little difference against Sae Yamamoto. Elizabeth had seen her work; heard of tales through the grapevine and received excellent references from her security consultants overseas. A sharp sword would not get the best of her. Not even ten of them, by her calculations.

But then again, she had also seen Koyuki's prowess in Momentum firsthand and it was nothing a sane person would dare to characterize as 'gentle'. Now that same woman, with a blade in her hand, moving to kill? Who knew what sorts of methods she would employ against her subordinate? What sort of lethal techniques, what esoteric arts would she see before her? Firsthand?

Right here.

Right now.

The Winterbourne's brows furrowed, taking a long and silent look at the Security Chief. The two locked eyes. The temptation was there but in the end…

"Do whatever you must do, Ms. Yamamoto! The choice is all yours!” Elizabeth folded her arms, an excited smile growing on her face. “Just make it brilliant!”

Sae simply took this moment of deliberation to make it a point to find whoever said "time heals all wounds" and beat the crap out of them. For years, she’d done more than any person should have to to ensure that her old life had been left behind. That the phantoms of her past wouldn’t return. Not for herself, but for her family. Her daughter. It felt like a lifetime had passed her by, yet here she was. Paying for her shortcomings with these demons in suits and ties still nipping at her heels.

If there was any sort of sentimental weight burdening Sae's ironclad heart, it didn't show in the face of her old "comrades''. Even as she was berated by her then junior. Treachery, after all, implied being on one's side, to begin with. She didn't expect a rabid dog like Little Yuki to grasp the difference. Her black-and-white perception of the world was as vivid in the girl's childhood as it was now. Protecting the maniacal interests of her half-blind Mother Goose.

Nothing changes.

Sae regarded the proposal with a subtle stretch of her fingers along the chrome grip of the firearm behind her back. She looked past Koyuki to Masuyo. She couldn’t help eyeing the fresh wrinkles on the woman’s forehead. "That is an awfully tempting proposal…Boss. I have a better idea."

Sae, a woman whose second life was led by the Rule of the Quickdraw, didn't wait to hear the white-haired demon's response. She drew and fired a deafening shot from her revolver. The massive bullet kicked the gun's barrel towards the ceiling as it sped through the air to blow a fist-sized crater through Masuyo’s demented skull.

The bullet sailed through the air, found a home in Masuyo Ai's forehead, hollowed it out to make a nest, and then decide it didn't like it after all and tried to exit out the back of her head. It failed and stayed lodged in her shattered skull. A shower of blood and brains drenched the now-worthless sofa (Or, seen another way, incredibly valuable now for a certain class of homicide collector), the equally worthless carpet, and the still worth-a-lot heiress that was right next to the murder victim. In the immediate aftermath of the murder, Elizabeth Winterbourne's white hair was flecked with red, her face looked like someone had splashed a tub of very pulpy wine on her face, and well, she wasn't gonna wear the same suit twice anymore, was she? It would not be missed. A small bit of brain matter trailed down her lips and got in her mouth. The walking corpse of the Yakuza leader took a step backwards, and another, and then spun dramatically and fell onto the desk, her ruined mess of a head smearing the wood with gory wetness and leaking the rest of her mind onto its surface, bringing the total amount of furniture devaluation up to a solid seven-digit figure. The Yakuza started firing. Glass shattered. A bullet caught the lights and the room fell to darkness. Someone screamed in Japanese; a death keel, followed by another-

Was probably what Sae wanted, but Koyuki had other ideas, and she executed one of those ideas when she zipped right in front of heiress and boss with monstrous speed, caught the bullet on the edge of her shitty makeshift 'katana' as she swung in a wide diagonal downward arc, and neatly sliced it in twain. The two bisected halves of the destroyed bullet clattered onto the ground and bumped against the too-expensive shoes of Winterbourne. The blade smoked where blade and bullet had made contact, a thin wisp that trailed towards the ceiling. A true sister blade to the Tenka-Goken, she mused, would not have chipped.

Sae Yamamoto was not the only one who believed in the quickdraw. The only difference was the choice of weapon.

Koyuki took only the time to take a quick breath as she steeled herself. This was not an easy feat even for her and she understandably did not get too much live practice. Just as she had but the briefest of moments when Sae drew to react, so too did she only have a moment now before the snubnose readjusted from recoil. This 'blade' would not withstand multiple impacts. Koyuki moved in, her feet a patter of hurried sound as she swiftly closed the distance, a two-handed side grip on the fake Tenka-Goken raised to deflect, seeking to plunge the blade through Sae's chin and out of her skull as she had intended for her victim. Or through her belly. Or carving through her arms and letting her bleed out on the floor while she screamed for whatever lame gods she believed in. Probably a fuckin' Buddha.

She really wasn't picky about how Sae Yamamoto died, only that she be buried in a nameless grave next to a dumping ground, her family never told.

"That’s amazing!" Elizabeth plucked the bullet from the floor and brought it close to her eye. Cut straight down the base. Her mind leaped back to the Hiruzen technique from those old, anti-colonial warriors of the north Ainu tribes. None of their cuts were this delicate. Even with the ringing still fresh in her ears, Elizabeth's infatuated smile grew a shade brighter. "Blimey! Where did you-?"

But she was already gone. Elizabeth’s eyes caught the afterimage of Masuyo’s savior as she lunged for her aggressor, who was notably less enthusiastic.

The shot she should have taken ten years ago was cut down like that. Sae felt a mix of emotions. Frustration, anger, envy, disbelief? Pride. Pride was there. They’d had this debate before once. Little Yuki insisted that her marksmanship would be hopelessly futile in the face of a “competent warrior”. Even then, when she was still drinking apple juice from a carton. It was hard to believe this demon with a suit was the same flippant, dour child she’d met all those years ago.

Well. No.

Eighteen feet. She should have been safe, but this was Koyuki. That eighteen might as well have been five. Sae could see the blade coming for her neck and stopped thinking at that moment. Instincts were all she could rely on.

Without taking her eyes off Little Koko, Sae reached behind her and wrapped her fingers around the perfectly-done tie of Masuyban’s guard. The short-lived shock in his face gave way to sudden, overwhelming vertigo as Sae wrenched him forward and threw him in Koyuki’s direction. The security chief used the momentum to channel a spinning back kick to his lumbar, ensuring he wouldn’t be able to stop on his own.

Her sights were trained on his back. Whether Koyuki evaded him - or just sliced through him to get to her - the only thing she’d find on the other side was an X-frame chamber and 60,000 pounds of pressure per square inch tearing a hole through her abdomen.

Masuyo Ai was a woman of many, many skills big and small. The ability to pick a decent ringtone was not one of them. The ability to keep her phone on silent was also yet another vital skill that had thus eluded her for all her adult life. Combined, she brought a horror far beyond the violent death match unfolding before the two CEO's into the room:

The wrenching death-rattle of a Nick Jonas single.

Baby I'll just take a chainsaw to the sofa, where I held your body close for so long, so long~

Lyrical mediocrity poured out of her coat pocket. She retrieved her phone, noted the caller ID, and frowned.

Walk in the house, lights are off. In the closet by the door, there's your coat~

Before either combatant had the chance to form a truce and kill her out of sheer principle for her ghastly choice of ringtone, she picked it up, her eyes returning to the battle as she said, "Sup." she said in English. "Kinda in the middle of something."

Faint urgent murmuring from the other end was all Elizabeth would hear as Masuyo conducted her little private call.

"Yeah, you heard right. Yup, that was a gunshot. No, she's fine. I'm fine too, thanks for asking. Oh, no, no. It's not like that. Of course she's not picking up her phone. Captain Sanada just got into her monthly blood-honor death match. It's kinda like her period at this point. Lots of blood. Practically happens same time without fail. Yes, in an office. Oh no, still alive. Yeah, alive. No, I'm not repeating myself a third time. With who? Oh no, no, you barely remember her. Some lady called Yams that used to work with us. You probably don't even recall-" Masuyo rolled her remaining eye. ""She's not THAT iconic. Don't "she's a legendary figure in domestic espionage worthy of the annals of the Iga" me. Stop being so proud of treachery. It's very rude. I'm a victim of that 'legendary domestic espionage'. Do you know the amount of shit I had to pull to fight off 800 counts of Conspiracy to Engage in Organized Crime? A lot MORE organized crime, that's what. That's not even counting all the other charges- Look, I'm digressing. Stay where you are. We have this under control. Actually-" Her eye went to Elizabeth, the heiress fully enthralled in the fight. She probably wasn't even listening. "-Can you get me some Jammie Dodgers? They're biscuits. British, yes. Oh my god, just google them. Yeah, it's a stupid name. I know. Just get them. Yes. Uh-huh. It's an international supermarket. Of course, they have it. Yeesh. Oh and, uh, one more thing. Get us the doctor, please. Kay bye."

She plopped her phone back into the pocket with an annoyed sigh before she plastered the smile back on her face and propped an elbow on Elizabeth's shaking-with-excitement shoulder. If she had any apprehension about how the fight was unfolding, she had about as much reaction to it as she did to almost having her head blown off. Which was to say not at all. "So Jammies are on the way. How are we feeling, Miss Winterbourne?"

Neither Masuyo-san's incessant chatter nor the asinine ringtone was registered by Koyuki Sanada at any point in the fight. Her snarl, however, did coincidentally widen as the ringtone popped up. She swiftly ate up the distance between herself and Sae Yamamoto, quickly nullifying the advantage of range and bringing Sae within the bisecting reach of her crappy katana-

But the traitor couldn't go five minutes in her life without breaking some unspoken rule or befouling the righteous tenets of a woman-to-woman duel. She lived without principle, the only thing getting her to wake up in the morning was the chance to espouse yet another dishonorable act. She insulted herself with her every move, and what Koyuki aimed to make the last disreputable act of her traitor life was to take a hostage, one Mr. Shito. No, not a hostage in truth, she thought as Sae kicked him forward, just another body to served as distraction and opportunity, to buy her an extra few seconds before her inevitable end.

Koyuki would be lying if she said one of her first instincts wasn't to cut Shito down and drive her blade through the bullet waiting for her behind his meat corpse. She had very little respect for the abilities of the rank-and-file, and few of them met her admittably obscenely high standards. The bulk of the soldiers was of Tokyo stock, recruited from Tokyo to hold Tokyo as a stronghold for the Kaitei-Gumi; defeated gumis annexed into the Kaitei, street punks given purpose and discipline, radicalized dojo students, failed police and defense force recruits too aggressive to pass their respective academies... and that was the core of the problem, wasn't it? They lacked the steel of Kyoto Yakuza born and bred. Warriors were forged from birth. Tokyo stock were trained too late. Their bodies were too weak, too inflexible. They had all forgotten the face of strength. Their defeatest Tokyo mindset had already taken root, and few fully undid that physical and mental rot away.

But.

They were still her men, and she would not strike them down for the mere mistake of carelessness. She was not a moral void like the opponent she faced now.

Which was why Shito was going to survive what she did next.

She made split-second eye contact with Shito before she made her move. It was as much an apology as he was ever going to get from her. She shifted her blade without breaking stride, angling it for a forward thrust. From Sae's perspective, one moment their bodies were hurtling towards each other, a too-close meat shield that would buy her that much-needed shot off. The next, Winterbourne's blade erupted out the back from Shito's right shoulder at an alarming speed, angled downwards in a bid to carve through where Koyuki expected the gun to be held, disabling it, and stabbing cold, wicked steel straight through Sae's abdomen and into the wall behind, using both the blade and the Shito's weight to utterly pin her to it.

Shito screamed. He screamed loudly and in a way people only screamed when they were in deep, enduring pain. She bit back the urge to tell him to man up.

Blood.

The first thing she saw after looking down the sights of her sidearm. Not her own, not from Koyuki. A thin geyser sprayed from the suited back of the muscular man caught between the two vixens. All at once, it escaped as a fine mist that painted itself against the ceiling. Sae was at a loss for a moment.

Did Koyuki just slice through her partner? Why would she do that? Did she mistake him for her in some momentary lapse of her bloodstained stream of consciousness?

All of those questions danced in her head for the slightest fraction of an instant before the thin blade coming at her through the poor man's seeping wound provided the answer for her.

Sae raised her leg and kicked at his back, trying to keep him and Koyuki's weapon at a distance, but she had no leverage. After a half-hearted struggle, Sae was left stumbling back on one foot towards the wall. Her back hit the surface and the blade would have dashed through her chest a second later.

The ex-agent dove to the side and rolled away onto one knee. Deftly, she turned and aimed at Koyuki and let another round free aimed at her center mass. She led her shot, guessing the yakuza princess' next move, and aimed for her intestines. Once her guts spilled free, the others would start running. Then, she would deal with each of them. One by one.

Terror and brutality were all these thugs understood. It worked before, it worked again.

Elizabeth did not even attempt to understand what Sae's end goal was. Her attention was fixated on the smaller details, the subtle pieces of this encounter that everyone without her appraising gaze would miss. The subtle shift in Koyuki's stance as she readied her sword, the minuscule adjustment of Sae's grip along the oak wood material of her revolver. Every slight motion is so smooth and fluid, guiding their next step.

"The ones with lemon mixed in." Elizabeth added without taking her eyes off the rumble. Her fascination was palpable. So much so that it caught the discerning eye of one of Masuyo's henchmen, somewhat concerned by the lack of…well, concern for her security chief. It wasn't a feeling he was unused to, but at least he was convinced the violence served some purpose. Most days.

And there was a purpose to this! Vengeance! Research! Good conversation! Better reasons than she'd ever heard for two people to want to fight to the death.

"Does Little Koyuki always grimace like that when she's about to lunge? I'm quite surprised Sae can't read swordsmanship." Spoken like a woman that had held every sword on the planet. “Is that a nervous tic you induced?”