The Fault in Our Shareholders

As far as Koyuki was concerned, the Smith & Wessen 500 was a bad gun.

That was, of course, not to say it had limited firepower or any glaring deficiencies as a tool of pure murder. Quite the opposite; it was the single most powerful handgun ever created. Someone in the S&W products team took a look at the Desert eagle, rubbed his American jowls thoughtfully, and pondered, “What if we doubled that? What if we made a handgun so nasty, accompanied by the creation of the most powerful handgun cartridge to date, one that could hold bullets up to 40 grams, bullets so heavy they belong in an assault rifle. Would that sate my American overcompensation? Would my morally bankrupt anglo-saxon parents finally get back together once they see the school-shooting monstrosity I have conjured from the depths of hell?”

No to the last two questions, but the Smith & Wesson Model 500 and the .500 S&W Magnum was born from this diseased western mind, the most powerful handgun made to withstand the trauma of firing the heaviest bullets from the most advanced handgun cartridge yet.

And until the last 3 minutes, its lethality had not mattered to Koyuki. She had never, ever had to face one in combat before because it never ever sold in the Japanese underworld. It wasn’t for lack of trying. The Kaitei brought over their first and last shipment of 500s to Tokyo in 2010 when she was still learning the ropes. They sold a dozen at most, and none of them had ever emerged. Probably fancy paperweights or on ornate walls somewhere.

One was claimed by a certain Public Security agent masquerading in deep cover as Yakuza. Unlike the rest, it was being put to stunningly annoyingly good use at the moment-

And it was still a bad gun.

From a gun trafficker’s perspective, it did not sell. Vanity ruled the few purchases they made, not practicality. It had a limited market niche, to put it lightly. From a assassin’s perspective, it was too heavy, too loud, too large, all things anathema to the discretion of the trade. The extreme recoil was too much. Rapid fire was hard. It was a gun built on overkill foremost and it was no surprise that its primary purpose was found in hunting and putting down bears.

It was a bad gun.

And it was the only thing keeping Sae Yamamoto alive and not diced to tiny pieces in the opening move where another lighter, more practical gun might have fail. Because this crazy bitch loaded her gun, the same gun she supposedly brandished for mere security, with 45 gram Tazza hardcase lead bullets. If it wasn’t that, it was something as heavy. Koyuki had fully intended to follow through on her stride, slice through the bullet, and gut Yams in one fell swoop.

She was forced to stand her ground and deflect instead. It costed her a second and that second counted.

It also made her cautious in a way that she might not have been with, say, a glock 17 or her own sig sauer. She could take a bullet to the shoulder and grind through the pain; she couldn’t take the absence of a shoulder, which would very much the promise of the 500. Her coat was Kevlar-lined and she had absolutely zero confidence at all it would help against a direct hit from this monster gun.

So instead of planting her heel on Shito’s back, yanking out her sword, and facing a fully primed uber-gun waiting for her to the side, Koyuki opted for a more expedient approach to intercepting the incoming bullet.

Expedient… and much more painful for a certain impaled Yakuza.

Gripping both hands on the hilt, she drove the edge of her borrowed Katana through his flesh, carving it through the fat beneath his armpits, and ripping it free in a violent shower of blood and chunks that splatter-painted the wall behind them, Koyuki’s suit, and presumably Sae. It all happened in one messily smooth motion. The blade, now free of the confines of flesh, continued in a vertical arc that bisected the bullet into top and bottom halves, as Koyuki rushed in, using the brief period of recoil to grab at the skyward barrel, her fingers moving along the length of the gun and wrestling Sae for control over the trigger, trying to force and bend the gun backwards, inching closer to the traitor's head-

While her other arm raised her sword high in a reverse grip and plunged it into Sae’s left shoulder, intending to pin her violently to the wall.

“L-e-m-o-n O-n-e-s.” Masuyo-san said, giving voice to the text message she was sending out. She looked up from her phone, her eyes shifting from the two woman fighting it out in the corner, and then to Shito bleeding out on the ground and frowned. “Could you guys, uh, help the guy out please? Can’t pay hazard pay if he’s shuffled off the mortal coil.” Two of the guys closest to the action sheathed their guns and dragged Shito to relative safety, a trail of red leaking behind him. They tried to stem his bleeding. Tried being the operative word. It was like trying to plug a flood with a stone.

Masuyo-san seemed to lose interest quickly, returning her gaze to the fight. “No, actually.” she responded to her business partner. “She just grimaces at everything. Watch a movie? Grimace. Gotta kill someone? Grimace. Throw her a birthday party? Grimace. Win the lottery? Grimace. It’s not a tell, it’s her shining personality shining through that mask of practiced stoicism.”

"No, I am sure that's a tell," Elizabeth replied, silently thanking herself for not opting for the Mannington carpet. Blood stains would never get out of that.

The yellow eyes of the Winterbourne heir studied the blade as it exited the burly man’s armpit, painting red across the far wall of the room like the stroke of a painter’s brush. "It's the way her grimace tightens at a certain interval. You see, the human body isn't divided into regions. Every muscle and fiber connects to another in some way. The depressor anguli oris beneath in her mandible has a close association with a tendon in the wrist that closes the grip, meaning she's about to strike. You can quite literally read her face."

Despite her nonchalant delivery, Elizabeth could still feel those eyes staring at her from the side. The finger at her chin scratched the skin, raising a brow as Koyuki lunged and seized Sae’s weapon.

"The descendants of a wandering Madhhij warrior-scholar shared it with me after they saved my jeep from a herd of starving camels. Wonderfully courteous people. Turns out camel tongues are quite the delicacy." Elizabeth licked her lips unconsciously. Oh, was Koyuki about to-?

Yes, Sae realized. She was about to stab her.

Her focus was initially on the yakuza’s face. That youthful expression plastered with blood and cold, murderous intent filled Sae with a worrying sense of nostalgia. She’d seen faces like hers countless times in her past. In the halls as co-workers, in the streets as informants, in the mirror as her morning countenance. So much of her younger years were a haze of stink and sweat. It was almost a relief when she was taken away from it all. She could think clearly. Days were warm and nights were quiet.

Yet, her blood was running. Time slowed to a crawl. Every bead of sweat, every contour of muscle, every harsh breath stood out. Like the blood from Koyuki’s sword that just tapped her cheek; the flashy twirl and the reverse grip.

The blade was a centimeter away from Sae’s shoulder before it suddenly stopped its deadly descent. The security chief’s gloved hand gripped the sword tightly with a flex of dense muscle along her forearm. Her hands wrestled with her handgun in one and a tempered blade in the other. The Firearms and Swords Control Law was working out about as well as it had been back in her day.

“I don’t think camels actually eat-” Masuyo-san trailed off, recognizing the folly in focusing on that dubious sentence of an already dubious paragraph. It sounded like abstruse horseshit, but a life spent in the Japanese underground had enlightened her to the low wonders of the world; of Ninja and Samurai and swordsmen and other such mysteries in the modern nights of Japan. One such foul-tempered mystery was fighting in this very room right now, wearing the guise of Yakuza to hide allegiance to an even more ancient, brutal order. Surely other cultures have their old traditions that refuse to give way to the present, who had insight into the human condition that contemporary science failed to account for. “I’ll take your word for it, Miss Winterbourne.”she finally said, her eyes still fixed on the tense, if temporary, stalemate between the two combatants. The two halves of the weapon struggle seemed to contrast each other; the war for the gun a mad scramble of fingers and thumbs as the firearm in question swerved back and forth and up and down and in every direction as both combatants sought to wrestle the barrel in the general direction of their opponent. The sword struggle, on the other hand, was a quietly deadly affair, with Koyuki's blade slowly, ever so slowly, sliding past the hold of Sae's defensive grip, grazing the surface of her jacket, hungering for the tender flesh beneath fabric. They had been at it for half a minute.

Where Winterbourne seemed excited, Masuyo-san seemed merely politely interested, as if this was just another usual day at work. “And I do wonder what my dear Ko would have to say about your comments about the foundation of her sword skills being-” She raised her voice suddenly and oh so dramatically, her mouth opening wiiiide to enunciate the coming words. “-Predictable aaaaaaaaaaand Basic.”

As if in response, Koyuki spat a glob of saliva into Sae's eyes. With patience, the stalemate was hers to win. She was stronger than Sae... but also evidently far less willing to gaze lovingly into her opponent's eyes for any length of time. Unlike Sae, she saw nothing in her opponent's face to wax poetic about. Only age and regret and the folly of treachery. And so, she decided to redecorate it with a generous helping of spittle. At the same time, she jerked the gun barrel toward Sae's face. Not enough. Even with her mouthy distraction, she wouldn't be able to get the muzzle cleanly pressed right to her face, but she opted for her second choice.

She jerked the 500 as close to Sae's face as possible, all but a centimeter from grazing her cheek, the barrel pointed up at the ceiling and fired it sky high. The resulting thunderclap of sound from the single, loudest handgun ever made, one that was banned at indoor ranges because it had the chance of blowing up the overhead lights above, reverberated more keenly than ever at such an intimate range. It seared at the Yakuza Captain's ears, a punishing crackle that overtook her hearing, and the only comfort was that whatever discomfort this was doing to her applied to her opponent tenfold.

Who knows, she might even losing her hearing. Just moments before her life went with it.

Actually, Elizabeth was very impressed with Koyuki’s swordsmanship. Cleaving through dense muscle like that in a single stroke was a difficult task even with a tempered blade. A perfect cut took years to master, a lifetime to perfect. No, Koyuki had dazzling swordsmanship. Not necessarily predictable, but rather…mechanical. Efficient. Straight to the point. No funny business.

She wouldn’t have been a whole lot of fun to spar against. However, for the express purpose of killing, Elizabeth could understand where Koyuki served her purpose, for she did it exceptionally.

Sae could attest. Although she was too busy struggling between two lethal weapons inches away from her head to give much attention to her assassin’s finesse. Staying alive was first and foremost, but she didn’t want to let this fight drag out much longer. Not while there were still six others left to deal with after Little Koyuki. Sae’s mind raced even as her muscles ached. She figured she could hold this deadlock until she came up with something decisive. Unfortunately for her, Koyuki - ever the perpetually restless, impatient beast of a person - decided to move things along and spat in her eye.

Classy.

Thankfully eyesight had next to nothing to do with grip strength. She kept her hold on the weapons tight, refusing to budge an inch. It wasn’t the first time she'd been eye sniped by a saliva bullet during a brawl; it wasn't even the first time a yakuza had done it to her. Would have been worse if she'd taken the moment to gargle. But all she had to do was give Koyuki an instant; a half-second of weakness to exploit. Whether she’d wanted to or not, that was exactly what Sae ended up giving her.

The next thing she heard was an explosion going off next to her ear. A high-pitched ring cut out the sound from her left ear. The impulse to scream died along its predetermined route inside of her brain as an electrical storm wreaked havoc inside of her skull. She grit her teeth, feeling a wave of adrenaline rush through her veins.

Her free hand would reach up and grab the back of Koyuki's head, pulling her down as Sae's head threw itself up and smashed into the bridge of her nose. A quick attempt at stunning the yakuza so that Sae could work her leg up from underneath and brace it against Koyuki’s stomach. The security chief’s quads flexed as she went to kick the lighter woman off of her, sending her into a front flip onto the coffee table and the half-full jasmine tea pot on its surface.

Ingratitude.

That was the great obstacle of Masuyo Ai’s life. She was surrounded by fences and walls and ramparts and veritable fucking fortifications, all forged from cast-iron thanklessness. Her fundamental (and some might say only) character flaw was generosity and it was one that she could not overcome. She gave and gave and gave and all people saw was a vulnerable, ungloved hand waiting to be snapped up for yet another morsel of meat.

Why, just in this room itself…

There was the budding sociopath, sent along with the Kaitei expedition force to Tokyo, practically dropped into a foreign city by her clan as a child because of some kind of fucked up thirdborn child initiation rite. Something about cuckoos turning into dragons or whatever. The customs of the oldest and most powerful Kaitei clans eluded her. Lost, angry, and too proud to ask for help, Masuyo offered guidance, mentorship, education, and even affection. She raised her up to stand at the top of the Tokyo underworld and what did she do to repay her?

Fight her decisions every step of the way.

No, Masuyo-san, we need to murder everyone and feast on their blood like fucking twilight vampires. No, Masuyo-san, i need to play golf and I cant help you win a bet with some limey. No, Masuyo-san, your office decor reeks of the impotent weakness of corporate frailty. No, Masuyo-san, I gave my word that I would purge their bloodline down to the last child, do not make a liar of me. Mass Murder is the only honorable recourse. No, Masuyo-san. No, Masuyo-san. No, Masuyo-san-

No, Masuyo-san, don’t become a principal shareholder of the martial arts promotion I’m wasting my weekends on. The purity of unarmed homoerotically-charged combat is sullied by your stacks and stacks of stinking moooooney. I don’t like you and you look like a pirate waaaaaah.

Shut the actual fuck up, Koyuki Sanada.

How were the young adult years somehow even worse than the puberty ones?

Then there was genderbent Judas in the purple wig. Mmm whatchu Sae Yamamoto. A living, breathing PSB molerat of a human void responsible for no less than several million yen worth of therapy sessions over the last 13 years. Which was mostly money wasted down the drain because her rapidly-replaced rotation of therapists all rounded back to the same damn issue:

Trust, trust, trust, trust, and trust.

And the absence of it was, uh, kind of a necessity for survival in her profession and position.

Case in point: she chose to trust Sae, and she was down an eye. And an additional billion yen for the legal repercussions of her little molerat snitching. Repercussions that she had initially escaped, even took advantage of, when Sae scurried off back to her eusocial molerat colony with her molerat twink lover, but eventually reared their ugly head her direction in the waning days of the Obama Administration when Black Dumbo began his sauntions against international organized crime.

She cost her a lot of money. And besides a good movie, her daughter, and the other two crazy murderhobo pseudo-daughters that somehow managed to frustrate her in polar opposite extremes, there was nothing she loved more than money. And Sae took a lot of it, certainly more than she ever made her.

But it was never the right time to kill her. Masuyo kept tabs on her on and off over the years, watching with utter boredom as she charted the blissfully dull waters of domesticity, lost her traitor twink husband in a perfectly preventable car accident that would not have happened if he remembered that, hey, he was a naked molerat and thus couldn’t see outside in the light, and raised a molerat daughter in conditions that would be very conducive to a molerat colony, but quite a bit less so for a human being.

But instead of seizing on the chance to kill her at her lowest point, she took the pity she felt for Yams and made a breakthrough with her therapist. See? Everyone won. Except for the therapist. He kinda had to be silenced. Her breakthrough monologue was riddled with passionate, lurid, and very convictable details.

Then there was the tech heiress in white. She-

Okay, she hadn’t done anything yet. But she told a really stupid story about camels, and Masuyo had decided to hold her in equal (perhaps even greater) contempt than the other two fuckheads just for that.

And well…

Here they were. Amazingly, Masuyo Ai did not buy into Momentum to forge it into a purgatory to cage and torture either of them. No, that would be silly and petty. She invested into Momentum in spite of them because at the end of the day, the money came first, and Momentum was the best choice on the table, the first but most certainly not last of her major ventures to steal vice from under the eyes of the Osaka clans while they watched helplessly as their illicit market share was chipped away over the years.

She just did not expect a fucking CEO to bring a mere Security chief to the damn meeting. All that effort to fool the background checks into thinking it was an Osaka clan and keep Yams in the dark for a little bit more until it was too late gone up in smoke.

Welp…

So those two did what they did best. Yams shot, Ko deflected. They closed in. Elizabeth watched with the thrilled excitement of someone who actually enjoyed her own product, and Masuyo watched with the bored disinterest of someone who absolutely did not. The novelty of watching Koyuki slice through flesh and bullets had lost its novelty approximately three gang wars ago. Where once it startled and impressed, now it simply was. She cut things. She worked a long time to get very good at cutting things. If only she showed the same interest in the corporate governance that was the fundamental part of the modern Yakuza framework, moved up from queen of the tokyo dungheap to the bright skyscrapers of Shinjuku, so Masuyo could retire in a decade. But noooo, corporate bad, illicit murder good.

And when Yams sent Ko into and then onto the table, a flash of silver in her hand accompanied her as she was unceremoniously tossed from their stalemate, flipped onto it, reflexively smacked the launched-and-returning-down-to-earth teapot away so hard it flew across the room, and smashed into and through the window overlooking the Osaka skyline - and then the table collapsed, its legs giving out from her weight. A very, very expensive table. She scurried with uncharacteristic panic, righting herself from the heap, practically trying to dart behind one of the sofas before she realized-

That she had the gun. In the divorce of their stalemate, the gun was relinquished for custody. Yams had no visitation rights. Koyuki looked at the gun, then up at Yams, and her posture straightened dramatically. She raised-

Okay, no. Probably shouldn't kick off her relationship with the entire welsh economy with murder. They had their fun.

"Ladies," she said. "Ko, put the damn thing down. Kinda a bitch move to shoot her after all that crap about guns being lame."

"I wasn't-"

"And Mole." She blinked. Shit, called her a molerat too much in her mental place. "Yams, we have all the guns in the room. You have a sword, and not a great one. No offense." she patted Elizabeth apologetically on the shoulder. "And nothing's going to happen. Just girls being girls. Water under the bridge. If you feel so strongly against this, we should talk about it. Like civilized women. Look, I'll even-"

She reached behind Elizabeth's desk and retrieved the wastepaper basket. It was fortunately empty. "Gentlemen." she said, "One by one. Toss all the dakka in. Keep the ammo. Gently please."

One by one, the Yakuza grunts dropped from their firing stances and slowly and very reluctantly peeled away towards the lifted up wastepaper basket like a bunch of children in a queue. They dropped their empty guns in.

"And Ko-" came that motherly voice.

"No." Ko said, Yams' oversized gun still raised.

"Not just the two guns you have on you. I'm gonna need your coat, your shoes, and all the knives and weird shit in them."

"No."

"Yams, will you hear me out if Koyuki puts her very expensive coat and shoes into the pacifism box." Masuyo said, waggling the wastepaper basket like it was a begging cup. "You can keep the sword if it so suits you."

"Do you know how expensive kelvar coats-" Koyuki seethed. "I'll never wear it again if it goes in there-"

"Oh, cry me a river."

Sae was up from the floor the moment Koyuki was off her. She rose with the full intent to run Koyuki down, throw her back down to the floor, and go for the throat with one of the splintered table legs before Koyuki had a half an opportunity to stop her before that deranged head was no longer spinning. Instead, a small, metal click froze her feet to the floorboards. Her red-violet gaze was suddenly staring down the barrel of a gun.

Shit, one might have thought, they have me beat. The gentlemen surrounding her must have been thinking the same. The collective relaxation in their posture was clear now that they did not have to fear a stray bullet nor the errant slash of a madwoman’s sword. Sae did not make any sudden moves. Whether the condescending lecture she would be treated to had any effect was next to unreadable upon her usual countenance; furrowed brows and half-lidded eyes that moved between Little Koyuki and the White Devil as they exchanged verbal blows. It was curiously nostalgic for her. Even the demands for surrender.

Fifty raids, three-hundred and four undercover operations, more dead bodies than her mind could process; not once did that course of action pass through her mind. Surrender and death were one in the same in the world she’d left behind. Perhaps when you were loyal to nothing but quick cash and senseless violence, that was an option a well-groomed coward might consider.

Public Safety agents, on the other hand, were subject to mystifying concepts like integrity, willpower, and benevolence. How unfortunate for Sae. She would have to go down shooting.

"All she has are empty chambers." Her left fist uncurled its fingers, revealing six X-frame cartridges that should have been inside of her obscenely powerful handgun. They were considerably less freighting in the palm of her hand. What was much more unnerving was the glock that she pulled from behind her back and aimed for a spot between Koyuki’s eyes. "And all you have is a room full of dead men.”

That was one common issue with yakuza that wore suits everywhere they went: there were only a couple good places to conceal a weapon. Sae managed to beat the odds on that draw the moment after Koyuki attempted to ram her through along with the poor fellow on the other end of her sword. Before she rolled away to safety, the Security Chief’s hand found its way into his coat and slipped his firearm away for safekeeping. A small series of movements and split second decisions that led to this moment. The former PSB agent and her two former high-value targets at the opposite end of a barrel. A perfect shot.

Sae tensed her legs and prepared to move.

Ready?

One-

“Two guns." Elizabeth’s voice crept in at her right side. The General Manager of Momentum was suddenly between the two of them, Sae’s stolen firearm was in her left hand and Koyuki’s equally-pilfered revolver in her right. The Witnerbourne heir was looking between the two weapons with almost infant-like fascination, only a few steps from the now-empty hands she’d taken them from. Sae’ face twitched slightly in the faintest hint of surprise. "Yours is awfully heavy, Sae-san. Arthritis might catch you first if the bullets don't."

Momentarily, Elizabeth broke free from her trance and offered Sae a bashful grin. There happened to be a surprising number of occasions in her life where the disarming techniques of that old, isolated master of Arnis she’d met on the Filipino coast had come in handy. From the precise angle, with the right timing and grip, stealing a weapon away from even a warrior’s hands was as simple as taking candy from an infant. It was easier for Elizabeth to accomplish when an opponent was off guard. Of course, it didn’t always work out that way.  She still had some scars to prove that.

“Masuyo-san is right. There’s nothing good to come from bloodshed now. I’m unsure of what past the three of you have led, but it’d be in everyone’s best interest if you two could put it to bed. Sae is no longer an officer of the law. Henceforth, this is strictly a business venture. No surprise raids, no looking behind your back every other step down the hallway; this is our Chief of Security and nothing more. I can promise you that. Sae is one of the many resources at your disposal, should you need them. And she will offer her full cooperation for the betterment of Momentum and our mutual investment into Japan’s media promotion. Is that agreed, Sae-san?”

“On what basis do you think I would stoop to entertaining a room full of terrorists? The only promise I'll give each of you is a shallow grave-”

“Just shut up and agree, Yamamoto.”

Sae looked to her superior silently. Reluctantly, her head turned towards the two at her front, folding her arms and exhaling through her nose. “Agreed. It'll be easier to watch you under my thumb regardless.”

When asked to recount the events after Sae's sudden reveal of the Glock, Masuyo-san would insist that it had gone down exactly like that one scene in Season 4, episode 9 of Breaking Bad. She, in raw emulation of Giancarlo Esposito, would march down Yams even as she fired off warning round after warning round at Masuyo-san's feet, her arms spread wide as if daring the security chief to shoot her dead. With her bluff called, Yams had no choice but to slink away with her tail between her legs, but not before giving Masuyo-san a brief, barely perceptible nod of respect. She would later find her crying in a motel and fuck her brains out, and they would never speak of it ever again.

The reality started with Masuyo-san's eyes flashing wide and her shouting, "Shit! Shit! Shit! Down! Down! ", one hand going to her pocket as she dived behind Koyuki. Her disarmed men followed suit, finding desks and sofas and whatever bit of furniture they could. An S&W 500 had, appropriately, 5 rounds. The standard Glock had a minimum of 15. If she didn't miss (and belligerent bullet-deflecting samurai girls aside, Yams didn't miss), she had enough ammo to kill the room twice over.

Koyuki's reaction, on the other hand, was typical Koyuki; a complete absence of actual priorities. A flash of confusion as her eyes shot to the confiscated S&W in her hand, followed by a snarl of annoyance at being tricked as she crushed the 500 in her hands, compressing the better part of the barrel, hand guard, and grip into a mangled mess of aluminum and carbon steel, and then finally relief as she stood her ground against Yams and her raised gun, staring her down with the cold, dead eyes of a particularly murderous shark. She raised her free hand, and wagged her middle finger in a 'bring it' gesture.

"To be clear, and not that I'm doubting you, my dear." Masuyo-san said, her tone casual despite her undignified situation; bent low and crouch behind Koyuki, her nose pressed into her young subordinate's blazer. "This isn't empty bravado, yes? You're not gonna scramble away and fail at bodyguard 101."

"She is going to die in the next 30 seconds." Okay, okay. Cool. cool, cool. Not really an answer. "And once I'm done here, me and Kana are going to track down every last cadet from her academy-spawned batch. Graduating class of 1956, was it?"

"You know she's as young as me, right? These old people jabs are very hurtful."

"And I'm going to feed them to their children."

"Technically, that goes way over our quota of dead officers as agreed upon with our arrangement with the NPA. Detectives, especially, are frowned upon as targets-"

Koyuki suddenly jerked violently to the left, the hidden dagger in her left sleeve jutting out as she seemingly sliced through thin air, as if she sensed something. The flash of confusion stayed this time, as she found herself missing the broken gun in her other hand. Then came the fear as her mind trailed through the possibilities for a micro-second, before she found Winterbourne and Yam's equally disarmed, equally surprised face. "What the fuck-"

"Miss Winterbourne!" Masuyo-san exclaimed, popping out from behind Koyuki. She plucked the dagger out of Koyuki's hand, who didn't resist as she stared at Winterbourne, openly perplexed. "You saved us from these fools! And this-" she plucked the destroyed 500 out of the tech CEO's hand. "And this-" She took the glock, making eye contact with Yams as she dislodged the catridge. "And this-" she said once more, waving the dagger in her other hand. "All go into the pacifism box." she said, obnoxiously dropping them one by one into the wastepaper basket on the table. "Sealed forever. We will now usher in a new era of peace-"

"That was Southern." Koyuki said, still transfixed on Winterbourne. "Old Escrima. What the actual fuck is-" Her head jerked back towards Yams and, surprise aside, she produced another dagger from her right sleeve, advancing on-

"Nuh uh."

"What."

"Pacifism box."

"You cannot be serious. You think-"

"I think," Masuyo-san said. "That i have had about enough of this. I don't believe-" she pointed a finger at Yams "-her promises and my Ko here is a child of impulse. Yet, that is no excuse. I would require a gesture from you, Miss Winterbourne. A sincere, heartfelt gesture to demonstrate complete control over your employee, and I will extend to you the same. From my end, I offer this." Masuyo-san turned towards Koyuki, spread both hands, and said:

"Kneel."

And there was the flash of confusion again on Koyuki's face, followed by a familiar, old dread from a childhood that required quite a bit of discipline. "No." Koyuki said, her voice came out strong, but one got the impression she was trying not to plead. "I'm not a child anyone. Not in front of this purple-haired grandmother-"

And that was when Masuyo-san whipped out her deftly concealed S&W 38 and fired a bullet right into Koyuki's chest.

And in the aftermath of that shot, her barrel smoked, and so did Koyuki's charred fingers as she tightly gripped the caught bullet in her palm, hot blood leaking through her closed fist. She seethed in undisguised pain, her eyes full of hate, but refusing to let the bullet drop to the ground, as if trying to save as much pride as possible. "What are you-"

"Look, I can take one step forward and fire one more, and we both know you'll catch it even this close BUT, but, but, but then you're going to embarrass me again, yes? Which would really suck on both our accounts, so I'm gonna say this one more time and you are going to suck it up and," she said the final word in a harsh whisper. "Kneel."

Koyuki didn't take her eyes off Masuyo-san as she went to her knees.

Masuyo-san cocked her head, touched her chin, and said. "You're going to apologize to our esteemed partner Miss Winterbourne for your part in the destruction of this office-"

"I did not start it."

-And you're going to swear no violence upon Sae Yamamoto while KTGM holdings has a stake in Momentum. You guys are, of course, free to work it out in the ring. Let it not be said I am an unjust and cruel god, and you will obey Miss Winterbourne in all things that is towards the betterment of this enterprise. Her word is my word- Sae, why are you staring at me like that?" Masuyo-san segued, then looked at her gun. "Oh. Right. My bad. Pacifism box." She chucked it in. "-And we will be working as a team towards the success of this venture. and most of all you WILL respect the pacifism box. You WILL empty your entire arsenal in that overpriced coat into it, and you will, uh, I ran out of things to say. Now bow your head and say it with the utmost sincerity-"

With a snarl a mile wide, Koyuki's head touched the floor. Her palms, uninjured and blood smeared from catching a bullet alike, pressed on either side of her kowtowed head. One could feel the murder emanating from every fiber of her being. "I deeply apologize-"

"Queen's English please."

And Koyuki said it. It was long, halting, and didn't really have a lot of verbs, but she said it. She did not say the part about the pacifism box. Masuyo-san, in her merciful grace, chose to overlook it.

Sae was angry. It might not have been easy to tell beneath that empty countenance, but it was there. In the blink of an eye, she'd had her gun stolen and thrown into the Pacifism Box (the dumbest thing she'd heard this week, honestly.) Her only advantage and all that work she'd gone to conceal her final card, and Elizabeth just swept it away like that. Now she couldn't even guarantee who would be leaving this room alive.

"Okay, right then. This is an awful lot of heat for one office. A Gun Devil might appear, you know." Elizabeth remarked as she took the safety bucket and placed it on her desk. She had moved right behind Masuyo as soon as she’d taken the guns away and dumped them into the treasure trove the Welsh woman was now carrying as fast away as humanly possible. Exciting as this day was turning out to be, she wasn’t about to sacrifice any more of her plaster to bullet holes. She wasted no time in ushering them away and well out of arm's reach, but not entirely out of mind. Especially not for two particular human storm clouds raining over everyone else's parade.

Sae's scowl didn't budge an inch, only matching Koyuki's intensity with her usual cold-blooded demeanor. She didn't stop thinking of ways to eliminate this woman because she could assure herself that Koyuki was doing the exact same thing. In fact, she openly prognosticated such intentions only a few moments later, so that made predicating her next moves simple. Sae did not intend to let her guard slip even once around Koyuki. Not even during their entire argument. Not even when she had the balls to call her a "grandmother".

Not even when Masuyo pulled out her gun and shot her in the chest.

…Alright, she had to admit that she did not see that one coming. Fucking showoff.

"That was dangerous."

"She's an assassin. Eats bullets for breakfast. I saw it once when she was ten." Sae said clearly, both as a statement and a warning. "A monster in human skin. The last of a clan of murderers from what I read on her dossier. They sell blood for money and use the money where blood would leave a mess. The only thing she cares about is the next assignment her master scrapes up for her. No empathy, no principles. Just a tempered blade to throw at whatever enemy stands in their way."

Elizabeth glanced at her Security Chief. "Something you two have in common then?"

Sae didn't look back at her. "...at one point."

Silently the two watched the debacle unfold between the yakuza handler and her human-shaped weapon. A momentary surprise flashed across Sae’s stone-faced features at the sound of an awfully genuine-sounding apology. Even if she could see right through, the utterance of those words alone from Little Koyuki’s lips felt ethereal and eerily unnatural. Like hearing words in a language spoken by a visitor from a distant, unrecorded land. It didn’t quite fit.

Sae looked at Koyuki. Her violet gaze detached and unfazed before it returned to Masuyo. This time with a slight scoff before she muttered to herself. "You train your dog well."

“Sae, a moment.” Elizabeth tugged the sleeve of her security chief and led her away to the windows past her desk. The fact that Sae was led away with little resistance spoke to the strength hiding underneath the Welsh woman’s finery.

Sae yanked her sleeve away and faced the businesswoman. “I have no intention of bowing my head to cutthroats for a second time.”

“Whatever gave you that impression?” Sae furrowed her brows. “No need to get bent out of shape. All we’re asking is for hostilities between two, consenting parties to cease.”

“You are a hubristic playgirl that bought this company on a whim and you are actively putting lives in danger.” The Japanese woman’s face wrinkles. “Yakuza clans do not stop at concessions and armistice. Every organization is founded upon bribery and extortion at every level, and you just happened to fall in with the most dangerous family in the entire Pacific. AFW can not be associated with their bad name.”

Elizabeth felt her lip slowly curl into a smile. “Organized crime is perhaps your forte, Sae, but you have no sense for your own country's economics.”

“Yakuza membership isn’t illegal. Most yakuza-owned businesses are openly-advertised. Even your own police force shows next to no action against them. Do you know why that is? Because no one fears the yakuza as entirely unjust. Their underdogs, a necessary evil that society permits. At least within the public perception. We’ve already hired several members onto our roster, both former and current. Some of them are practically heirs. Connecting criminals to the administration of a company as large as this one isn’t that far-fetched. It’s hardly even scandalous.” Elizabeth tapped the woman dead center above her chest. “Whether you like it or not, Ms. Yamamoto, everyone assumes the worst when it comes to business practices in Japan. Marketing around a scandal will be easy.”

Her better half seemed unconvinced. The knot in her stomach was giving her pains. “You are going to get yourself killed.”

“Are you scared for me? What’s death to worry about? Long sleep and no more tax sheets.” Elizabeth placed a hand on the Japanese woman’s shoulder. "Nobody is asking you to bow your head. Just holster your gun, don't kill anybody, and watch them from a distance. Their interest in AFW is a certainty. I only extended the invitation."

"I-"

"We can keep track of them here. We keep them close instead of letting them conspire a takeover. And while we have them, we can use their assets to Momentum's advantage. We can't expect to move this arena forward without a bold move or two. All Masuyo cares about is money and AFW can guarantee that for her. I am not allowing them free reign over my company, only a foot in the door as a sign of good faith. Something that is very important in building a partnership. Sae, I wouldn't have put together this meeting if I wasn't confident in your ability to keep them under control. You know this organization better than anyone in the world. I am putting my trust in you. So please trust me."

Sae did not have a rebuttal for Elizabeth. Silently in her head, she mulled the possibilities. Each of them was unthinkable to the security chief only a moment ago. However, she suddenly felt inclined. Maybe it was that look in the aristocrat’s eye; the first hint of sensibility she’d seen in this woman since they had met. Maybe she was just feeling her back pressed against the wall and desperately looking for a way out.

It was most likely that she was inclined to agree because Elizabeth was mostly right. It would be easier to keep an eye on them. If she rejected them, there was no telling what they could end up plotting in the shadows and out of the light where Sae would much rather prefer they stay. Even if the potential for damage was great, it was relatively the same as the potential devastation if the two of them were left unchecked. At least in this scenario, if something went wrong - when it wrong - she would be in a position to act.

Sae raised her head and breathed deeply, letting out a heavy sigh before promptly turning away from Elizabeth. She faced the two yakuza at the other end of the room, letting her gaze drift from her former superior to the black-coated Hime Cut at her side. What followed was a long march across the broken furniture and shattered glass along the linoleum. Her heavy boots crushed the debris with every step, carrying her soldering weight closer to her target. The footsteps stopped in front of Koyuki mere inches apart from their soles touching. Sae stared at the young woman only briefly before her arms reached out and wrapped around Koyuki in a big, warm hug.

“I sincerely apologize for the undue harm I caused you. It was wrong of me to jump to conclusions. I hope that you will accept my sincerity for whatever it might be worth and that we can move forward peacefully.” She eased back and placed her hands gently on the yakuza junior’s shoulders. "Thank you for your restraint in the face of my absent-minded aggression. Know that I will work hard to make it up to you and ‘Suyo, Little Koyuki.”

"Actually, the gun devil is a fabrica-" Masuyo-san stopped herself. She may have been a career Yakuza boss elevated to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company to serve as the Kaitei-Gumi's chief agent in influencing Tokyoian politics, maximizing profits in both the legit and illicit business domains of the Kaitei, murdering their enemies while minimizing media coverage, slowly suffocating the foreign criminal element by eating up their revenue streams, stalemating law enforcement with banal compromises at the top that rendered officers on the ground completely powerless to affect real change, blindsiding and neutralizing domestic intelligence agencies, and, and, and, the list went on and on and on. She was a very busy girl. She had a hand in every cookie jar worth stealing from in Tokyo, and a knife in the other if they dared put a lock on it. She had killed dozens personally, and slew thousands by proxy across a two-decade career of violence, corruption, and criminal capitalistic imperialism, but even she had lines she wouldn't dare cross.

She would not willfully spoil something.

That was just beyond the pale, especially for a charming little shounen like Chainsawman. In fact, she liked it so much that she decided that she couldn't leave its animated adaptation to chance. She poured real money into ensuring that such mediocre overrated studios like WIT or Ufotable wouldn't come anywhere close to this wholesome little tale. No, it had to be Mappa. Only they could conjure up the grisly CGI needed to truly impart the horror of devil kind. When president Maruyama insisted that they had the time and expertise to forgo the CGI, she calmly explained what would happen to him, his family, his pets, the plants in his garden, and every living soul that had ever come into contact with him if gnarlish, jittery, out-of-place CGI wasn't used in the Chainsawman fight scenes to highlight the eldritch nature of the chainsaw devil and its antagonistic kin. He acquiesced.

It was coming out at the end of next year. It was gonna be fuckin' great. Her only regret was that the public would never know what was nearly stolen from them thanks to the short-sightedness of a studio president's mewling 'We can draw! We're too good for CGI!'

Koyuki, on the other hand, was not thinking about the animated adaptation of Chainsawman, set to debut sometime in 2022 to what would surely be unanimous praise. In fact, she was instead thinking of the most painful way to rip out Masuyo-san arms and drill it down both of Sae's eye sockets. With her forehead kissing the floor and her hands pressed down on either side of her head, she had to endure Sae's barbs while she postrated herself before the traitor. This was not the first time she had done this. Hell, this was not even the first time she had done this in front of Sae. Koyuki had been drilled from a young age on the necessity of theatrical obedience in service of the image of her superiors. Occasionally, Masuyo-san needed to project power, and there was no better person to seemingly cow into subservience than her indomitable, unruly enforcer. And she hated it every fuckin' time. This time especially so because she thought it was over. She wasn't some child or teenager that needed to be reined in, she was a grown woman under her own power, with her own command, with her own powerbase-

Wait, did the purple whore just call her an orphan?

Her head popped back up in confusion, only to return back to the floor when Masuyo-san gave her a less-than-subtle shoe nudge on the side. Insult? Or was police intelligence so bloated by incompetence and bureaucracy they couldn't tell fact from Masuyo-san's frequent insistences that she was raised in the jungle by a pack of vegan hyenas?

"Cat," Masuyo-san corrected instantly at the assertion of her doghood. "A dog would have gone down instantly. She always makes me work for it."

And then came a shuffle of feet, and the purple-haired traitor and the gaijin were at the window, discussing in hushed whispers. Cowards.

"You can get up now."

Koyuki did not budge.

"Kooooooooooooo, you really gonna do this every time? Get up."

Without raising her head, she lifted her right hand -the still-bleeding hand that had caught the bullet- and flipped her off.

"No, seriously, I need you get up and lip-read them for me."

"My respect for the pacifism box weighs me down."

"Oh, grow up."

"Am I not to act for the betterment of the Winterbourne? Surely she would not want me to eavesdrop on her private conversation."

"Get. The Fuck. Up."

With a disgruntled sigh, Koyuki pushed herself up to her feet, dusted off her coat, and stared in the general direction of the conversation. Seconds passed.

"Well?"

"They really don't like the pacifism box."

"Stop it."

"They think it is the product of a diseased mind."

"Har har."

"And-" Koyuki's raised her voice so everyone in the room could hear. "-Masuyo-san would like to assure you there will be no takeovers. She pinkie swears." Her words came in a mix of Japanese and English, enough of the former not to sound like a gorilla, and enough of the latter so Winterbourne could unambiguously understand. She raised her right pinkie sarcastically. "She would also like to say she is really, really good at quashing scandals even far from Tokyo. She's built an entire corporate skillset in her golden years good for anything except actually being a dyed-in-the-wool red-blooded Yakuza- OW."

Masuyo-san stepped on her foot hard enough for the entire room to hear the "Smack!" before slamming her hard against the blood-splattered wall where Koyuki had tried to impale Sae. She stared her down, and Koyuki returned her stare for a few seconds, before looking down and averting her gaze.

"I'm sorry for her intrusion into your privacy," Masuyo-san said, slowly removing her hands and turning back to the pair with a smile on her face. "Take all the time you need."

You would think that would be the peak of her humiliation for Koyuki today, and you would be wrong. Because not too long later, Sae broke away from her conversation with Winterbourne, and headed their way with the heavy purpose of someone who really, really, really, really didn't want to do something. For once, Sae Yamamoto did not trigger any danger in her, just abject confusion - confusion that turned to panic as she stopped right in front of her-

And hugged her.

Koyuki was not proud to say she fought down every urge to flail. What the actual fuck was this duplicity. One of her spring-daggers peeked out of her coat sleeves, and she would have raised her arm and stabbed right through one of Sae's kidneys if not for a swift, sharp glare from Masuyo-san from behind them. Without the ability to employ the obvious solution to this situation, Koyuki didn't really know where to put her arms. They just kinda hung in the air while Sae wrapped her up in a big, fat hug. Just enough to smother, not enough to hurt, as Koyuki looked around in confused horror.

This was so much worse than dying. She barely even registered the words. Sae must have felt the full depth of her arsenal that she carried around through the hug. And yet, she hugged on.

"And she forgives you." Masuyo-san said for her. "Now, that little interlude was diverting, but we really ought to get back to the discussion at hand. At least we still have one surviving sofa. It'll be a bit of a squeeze though-" Masuyo-san poked the sofa, matted in blood and dust and holes, and it crumpled into two neat slices. Clearly one of Koyuki's slashes found it in her rampage.

With a sigh, Masuyo-san said, "Floor it is then." and plomped down on the ground.

Elizabeth felt her chest begin to flutter at such an endearing sight. No matter how obscure their shared past may have been, the sense of respect and lasting affection for one another shone through with one heartfelt embrace.

It was unabashedly fake, of course, and somewhat ruined by the blood-splattered walls and scent of fresh gunpowder in the air. However, it was the thought that counted. She made a mental note to formally commend Ms. Yamamoto for acting not only in the best interests of her employers but the welfare of Japanese society as a whole.

Sae, for her part, took the first out she could find. The former agent did not hesitate to pull away the instant she felt Koyuki relent. Whether or not Sae’s kind gesture would be taken in the manner it was intended did not concern the Security Chief in the slightest. Being able to walk away without a fresh stab wound in her back was conciliatory enough. Compliance came first. She maintained her cover like the officer she was trained to be. There would be another time, she told herself.

She turned and promptly returned to Elizabeth’s side. The Welsh magnate was already taking a seat on the debris-laden floor.

"Now that we've gotten all that out of our system, let's talk strategy." Elizabeth pulled a remote from her coat pocket and pointed at the portion of the ceiling running adjacent to her far-back windows. One press brought a massive screen sliding down from between the tiles. Its screen flashed on as it stopped, projecting a series of histograms, analytics, and a diagram of the Momentum arena at its center.

"With KTGM Holdings' generous endorsements, we have all the resources necessary for - in my personal opinion - what should be our first pay-per-view event. Momentum could use the PR, and the fighters we’ve recruited thus far could use some fresh action. My first suggestion was a roster-wide round robin using live locations to show off the facility, however-”

“Absolutely not.”

Elizabeth’s head nodded towards the agent. “That. So I’m thinking of something smaller in scale, but still grandiose. Showy, but manageable.”