[fic] The Things We Can't Control - Chapter 100 ~The Parallel Chase~
Title: The Things We Can't Control
Author:
prettyorianna
Pairing: Akame. Others to be added later.
Rating: NC-17.
Genre: crime drama au
Beta by: my cat Gemma. okay, seriously, nobody
Disclaimer: I don't own KAT-TUN, any of its members, any other JE people. I write this for fun and for other fans of these fine folks. But don't steal my plots, mmkay? I put a great deal of time into them except for when I'm randomly spastically spitting words onto a page. But I value those too...
Summary: Two criminals with vastly different styles meet by chance one day. They immediately clash but is that all they'll ever be? How much is fate and how much choice? And how will their meeting change the world around them?
Author's Note: My life must hate you guys. Seriously. But here's the update for you!
BANNER BY DESHISORABA and it is pure awesomeness!!
Warning: This gets graphic often occasionally, containing at the very least foul language, character death, nefarious crimes, rape, etc etc.
The Master Posts:
On my journal - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the akame_ Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the akame_fanfics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the je_kamenashi Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the kattun_fanfics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the jin_fics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
Chapter 100 ~The Parallel Chase~
It was as Kame feared. Yurina and Shuta had already left for the evening. They could be at any of the clubs on the list or at Yasu’s house already or on Mars for all he knew. Mars was certainly the better of the choices, as long as they brought him a souvenir, but it was by far the least likely. Their chances of being on Mars were only slightly better than his chance of even finding them at all. Still, he had to try.
But even if he found the two of them before Yasu did, he’d eventually have to deal with the man. Some arrangement was needed because the man wasn’t going to drop the issue just because he asked nicely.
Maybe the best thing would be to go straight to Yasu’s place and hope to catch him before he found Yurina and Shuta? The convicts he talked to a little over half an hour ago said the man was reasonable. If he rounded up the money taken from Yasu’s dead dealers and returned it, would that suffice? Or would death be the only currency to cover this debt?
If that was the case, Kame had no idea how to fix this.
Better to take the money with him. And… and while he was here, it wouldn’t hurt to check his data to see if he could find any more information about the man. He started collecting that information with the goal of helping others but there hasn’t really been time recently to worry about it, first with following Suzuki around and then with the hunt for a job. But if it helped him now, he’d make time for it in the future even if it meant staying up later.
When he pulled the box out from underneath Yurina’s bed, he found it in total disarray. Apparently Shuta and Yurina did some research of their own before their little ‘missions’.
Though he was still very worried, it made him feel a little bit better to know that they did that. Kame did not for one minute believe what Yurina was doing had anything to do with the money. She may have convinced Shuta it was about the money or, hell, maybe he knew better too. Yurina might be the only one suffering under the delusion it was anything other than a misguided revenge.
But going through the box under the bed meant she still held onto some of her normal intelligence, even in the face of her overwhelming anger and grief. It was a small relief to him but one very appreciated.
Hmm…
Nothing on Yasu himself aside from that he was the gang’s leader but there was a bit on his gang, Janne Da Arc. He had four men directly under him that were the elites of the gang. They handled a lot of stuff themselves and not always in very good ways. Two of them were involved in the drug distribution - one on acquiring/producing and the other on selling - and the other two were in charge of the muscle of the group, both for guarding the higher-ranking members and for collecting on loans or scaring their lower-level members (often it seemed those two were the same). There were rumors that JDA was losing control of their territory because they spread too quickly and couldn’t hold that much.
Rumors on the street were about as reliable as the men who spread them so he couldn’t count on that but it would explain why the last dealer Yurina and Shuta killed was not working for JDA but was in their territory.
It wasn’t much information but maybe if he gave the money back from the first two men and stressed how the last one was an intruder…
Time was running out. He’d think on the go.
He had no idea where Yurina kept the key to her cabinet so the quickest way in was to pick the lock. Nice to know he hadn’t forgotten how…
Kame shoved every bit of that money into a backpack and his switchblade into his pocket. He doubted he could sneak a gun into a club though in all fairness, he wasn’t familiar with the club scene. All he knew was learned working for the twins at The Club and from the vague memories of going somewhere when the paranoid Jiro forced that pill on him. At the last minute he grabbed a map and put that into his pocket as well.
The bus didn’t stop right outside the dealer’s house so he had to walk but he was used to that. The area was actually fairly nice for being south of the river. Not lavish like, say, the neighborhood his father’s house was in, but nice nevertheless. Certainly not what he’d expect for a drug dealer, not after his experiences with Jiro’s crappy apartments and Abe’s tiny duplex.
A quick glance at his watch told Kame it was already seven thirty. Three hours had passed since he was told that Yurina and Shuta have been targeted. God, what if… already…
No. No, he couldn’t afford the time it would take to panic.
With a deep breath to calm his almost-shot nerves, Kame stepped up to the door. He knocked but there was no answer. In all the windows he could see, none of the lights were on though it wouldn’t really be dark for another hour so that didn’t necessarily mean anything. There wasn’t a car in front. If it was later (read: darker) he would sneak around back to get a better look, but there was no way he’d risk that right now. Just because he couldn’t see anyone watching didn’t mean they weren’t there and he sure as hell didn’t want to get caught sneaking around a drug dealer’s home with a backpack full of cash. They’d probably think he stole it.
That wasn’t far from the truth.
Well, this was a bust. Time to move on. There were four clubs on the list but only one of them was within walking distance. That made Kame’s choice an easy one.
Frentzen had a red exterior decorated with an equally red convertible held up at an angle by four metal poles to the right of the entrance. The entrance itself was surrounded by more metal bars and some black lights with a short red carpet leading in. This was not a place that screamed “class” by any stretch of the imagination. In other words, it was nothing like The Club.
Kame cringed at the thought of Yurina and Shuta in such a place. Hell, he didn’t want to think of himself in such a place. At least the line wasn’t all that long and moved at a slow but even pace. It only took him about ten minutes to get inside and find out the inside was just as blindingly red as the outside. He had no idea what color the actual walls were, not with those horrid red lights. It also made it difficult to search the crowd for a specific face.
He was just grateful the man at the door let him through even though he wasn’t particularly snazzily-dressed, was carrying a backpack, and had no ID. Apparently, being a pretty boy (it’s what the doorman called him and he wasn’t the first) did have its advantages from time to time and this place was seedy enough to not find a backpack suspicious… or, more likely, considered the backpack an expected suspiciousness to be overlooked.
Forty minutes later and Kame still hadn’t found them. He had found a disturbing number of people wanting to sell him “something fun” which probably meant drugs. It was almost a relief that nobody in there could remember seeing either Yurina or Shuta or at least not recently.
It took another long walk back to the bus stop and a shorter bus ride for him to reach the next club, a place called Oasis. It was themed after its name, with neon palm trees to either side of the entrance and sand-colored stone walls. At least that one was right near the bus stop. It was already pushing ten by the time he got there.
The inside had similarly sand-colored floors with blue-green walls and it took him thirty minutes of waiting and an argument about the backpack (he ended that by flirting with the doorman) just to see it. He wasn’t impressed.
Several people remembered seeing them Friday night. They called her a spoiled rich girl traveling with her very own father-assigned goon, complaining about ‘daddy’s stupid rules’ and flirting with some nervous little X dealer who responded to her teasing like he’d won the lottery or something and hadn’t he turned up missing since he left with her?
Someone made a crack about the Dealer’s Black Widow and everyone listening laughed.
It made him sick. These people had no respect for the fact that a man was dead. Yes, it was true that Kame had killed people before but at least he recognized what a big deal it was that - no matter how much he felt they deserved their fates - those men drew breath no longer. These people didn’t even have that much. It was an amusement to them.
“Yes, but have you seen her tonight?” he asked for the third time.
No one had.
Another bust.
It was half past eleven by the time he made it to the third club, a place called Hanabira. The quickest route from the bus stop to the front entrance cut through the parking lot. With a start, Kame realized that if Yurina and Shuta had indeed driven to the club, their Taurus would likely be in the parking lot.
And it was. Thank goodness!
Out of all of the places he’d gone so far, this one was both the cleanest and the classiest. Unfortunately, that made it harder to get in. The doorman didn’t want to let him in with the backpack.
Without so much as a thought about what he was doing, Kame said in a low voice, “Then you can be the one to go in and tell Yasu-san he won’t get this.” He turned away as if he was leaving but secretly he prayed this worked. He was in JDA territory so it was likely the man knew the name.
Otherwise, he was going to have to find a way to break in. They were in there so he had to get in there too. He didn’t have the sort of good luck he’d need to just wait for them to come back outside so he’d have to make his good fortune instead.
He choked back a sigh of relief as the man reached out to stop him. “We don’t want a problem. Tell Yasu-san he’s always welcome at Hanabira.”
Kame looked at the man like he was stupid and said, “You really think he has time to hear anything I have to say? When’s the last time you spoke to him personally?”
The doorman didn’t say another word. He just let Kame in, backpack and all.
It worked? Thank goodness! Curse his father for every lesson he ever taught but at least some of Kame’s ability to read people and manipulate them was proving so useful. Now he just had to find them in the crowd, get them to go home. Then he’d track down Yasu and figure out a solution that hopefully didn’t begin with him dying and end with him in some shallow grave nobody will ever find.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The story continues:
Chapter 101 ~The Tape~
A/N: Okay, I figure it's okay to end this chapter here instead of where I originally intended. Chapter 101 will include expanded scene of the tape and all that (because I switched it to that instead of just including a bit at the end of Chapter 99 to cover it) which means it's acceptable to move the rest of this to Chapter 102. That way you guys can have an update now and I can go make fruit soup. Yum yum! I figured this way was better instead of doing a Ch 100 part 1 and part 2.