Challenge Fic - Dead to Rights
Title - Dead to Rights
Author - unwritten_ideas
Rating - PG-13
Word Count - 2,562
Characters - Gackt, Jun-ji, Chirolyn
Disclaimer - don’t own squat and if I did, I’d be posting this with pictures
Summary - They're the best money can buy and always complete the job. What happens when the hunter becomes the hunted?
Notes - For the gacktjob_fics March 2011 challenge.
My rules were -
1) AU setting
2) use secondary Job members as main characters
3) the pairing shouldn't be the main focus
4) include some humourous elements
I was partnered with write_my_dreams (touinplus) and she added
5) Action-adventure setting
6) Gackt x Jun-ji pairing
Phew!
I hope this fits the requirements.
Jun-ji took one sip from his cup of coffee and nearly spat it back out again. The black, unsweetened liquid had been prepared so long ago that it had not only cooled to the point that it had chilled the porcelain of the cup, but was also growing what Jun-ji could only describe as a thick and disturbing looking skin on top. A few more hours and he wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen life begin to crawl out of the swamp.
He looked at the clock, surprised at how late it was. Time flies when you’re busy playing solitaire.
He hated this, this waiting. He hated being the one left behind with toxic coffee and card games he could never beat. The last update he'd received had been eight hours ago and had consisted of nothing more than an hastily typed email confirming his colleagues had arrived at the hotel bar and would, from that moment on, be maintaining a radio silence until the job was done.
The job had been, on paper at least, one of their more straightforward commissions. Get to the bar, find the target, isolate him and complete the task. For professionals of their calibre, it should have taken two to three hours at the most.
It had now been just over eight hours since his colleagues had left the hotel room he currently sat in. Jun-ji knew that he worked with the best, but even so, he was worried.
He knew that he should never have become emotionally involved and certainly should never have fallen for that cocky smile and the man it belonged to.
Jun-ji was interrupted from his musings by the loud click that signalled that finally, the hotel room door was opening. He jumped to his feet and breathed a deep sigh of relief when his two colleagues walked into the living room of the hotel suite, both looking as smart, whole and uninjured as they had when they'd left it those many hours ago.
Chirolyn headed straight for the heavily stocked mini-fridge in the corner of the room, pausing in his steps only to remove the black tie that had been tightly knotted around his neck, and helped himself to a large shot of brandy. He smiled at Jun-ji and then sank back into the plush armchair by the window. "Don't look so worried, Jun-ji," he said, taking a sip of brandy, "your boy did good. Again."
Jun-ji turned his attention to the other man in the room. Gackt stood beside the desk that still housed Jun-ji's laptop and game of solitaire, but the laptop had been closed and pushed to one side in order to make room for the black leather briefcase that was never far from Gackt's hands. It was closed and locked, but Jun-ji didn't need to see the inside to know what it contained.
"So, how did it go?" Jun-ji asked.
"Murderous," Gackt replied simply as he swiftly removed his black suit jacket and draped it over the wooden chair at the desk.
Jun-ji scowled. "That's not funny."
"Hm, probably not," Gackt replied with a smile, "but accurate."
"What took you guys so long anyway?" Jun-ji asked. "I thought this was going to be a quick and easy job."
"So did we," Chirolyn agreed "but tonight, the target decided to get so drunk he couldn't stand and then serenaded us all with really bad love songs."
"They were awful," Gackt agreed, "if I wasn't being paid to do it, I might have killed him anyway just to stop the pain."
Jun-ji shook his head with a chuckle and sat down upon the two-seater couch that was adjacent to Chirolyn’s armchair. He’d been in this game long enough to have known that some days, no matter how much preparation you do, your target could still be unpredictable. He should also have known that there was no situation possible that Chirolyn, and especially Gackt, could not have handled.
Jun-ji’s eyes fell to the briefcase on the table again. Gackt’s fingertips were resting on the black leather of the case, idly tracing a seam in the stitching. To anyone who had seen Gackt in that bar a few hours earlier, he’d have looked the same as any of the other high flying businessmen that frequented such a pricey and high class hotel. Gackt’s suit was the best that the finest tailors in Tokyo could offer, custom made and tailored perfectly to his body, something Jun-ji was always appreciative of. That black leather briefcase could have housed important documents, life changing contracts or large sums of money. But, for a professional assassin like Gackt who always had to look his best, all it contained was his trusty handgun and silencer.
Gackt finally removed his fingers from the briefcase and walked over to the couch, dropping heavily onto the seat next to Jun-ji before swinging around so that his long legs fell over the arm of the couch and his head was comfortably nestled in Jun-ji’s lap. “Now that we’ve finished the job,” Gackt began, “what’s next on the agenda?”
“A vacation,” Chirolyn answered, “we’ve been working on this target for two months. We deserve one.”
Gackt snorted dismissively. “Vacations don’t pay the bills. What contracts are on offer?”
“There are none,” Jun-ji answered. “The boss hasn’t offered any to us at all during these two months.”
“Nothing at all?” Gackt asked incredulously. He tried to sit back up again, but was pressed back down onto the couch by Jun-ji’s hand that firmly kept him in place. “What is the boss thinking? We’re the best he has!”
“We’re the most expensive he has,” Jun-ji clarified, his brown eyes fixed on the blue that stared up at him. “We have to charge high prices to pay for your eyeliner and cologne bill.”
The laugh that threatened to break free from Chirolyn was soon stifled by one piercing glare from Gackt and instead turned into an awkward cough. It took a few seconds, but Chirolyn was finally able to make his own clarification. “All of the new contracts are going to that new team on the block. It seems that hiring forty-eight high school girls is cheaper than hiring us. They get the job done, although in a noisier and higher pitched way.”
Gackt hummed quietly, his earlier surprise at their lack of work long forgotten due to the gentle fingers running through his hair. “How do you know all of this, Chirolyn? You always know the office gossip.”
“It’s my job, isn’t it?” Chirolyn asked. “Jun-ji co-ordinates, I sneak around and gather information and you finish the job.” He paused. “So to speak.”
“It’s what’s made us so successful that we’ve priced ourselves out of the market,” Jun-ji mused. “Maybe we should reconsider…”
Jun-ji’s speech was stopped by the sound of a sharp knock at the door of their suite and the overly enthusiastic voice of the hotel staff member that had rapped his knuckles against the door. Chirolyn looked over at Jun-ji and Gackt who were both staring at him with expressions that quite clearly stated that they had no intention of moving. He sighed, ran his left hand through his light pink Mohawk, and answered the door.
Chirolyn walked back into the living area of the suite with a plain, brown envelope in his hands.
“What’s that?” Gackt asked, his curiosity causing him to rise from his comfortable position on the couch so he could stand besides Chirolyn.
Chirolyn turned the envelope over in his hands. “It’s blank. No name or address.”
“Could it be from the boss?” Jun-ji asked. “A new hit? We’ve been given jobs like this before.”
“Well, Jun-ji dear,” Gackt said with a smile, “there’s only way to find out!”
Chirolyn could only sigh in frustration when the envelope was quickly snatched out of his hands by Gackt’s eager fingers. The envelope was soon opened, and Gackt reached inside to pull out a stack of Polaroid photos.
“Polaroids?” Jun-ji questioned. “I didn’t know they still existed.”
“Must be the next target,” Gackt said with a shrug before casually dropping the photos onto the low coffee table beside the couch. “Let’s see what we… Oh.”
The photos, all twenty of them, were of Gackt. Nobody else. Just Gackt.
Chirolyn sighed heavily. “These look like they were taken in the hotel bar, while we were waiting for the target to leave.”
Gackt didn’t move and didn’t lift his eyes from those square pieces of plastic and card on the table that showed his image, but answered anyway. “They were, I think. You can tell by the furniture and decorations.”
Jun-ji knelt beside the table and started spreading the photos out, hoping that somewhere, on one of the photos hidden beneath others, there might be a clue. “Who could have taken these? And why? Why send them to us? How did they even know we’re in this room?”
“Who knows,” Chirolyn answered as he flopped back down into his previously vacated armchair. “Owe anyone some gambling debts, Gackt?”
“No,” Gackt said quietly. “I have no idea why these photos were taken or who could have done so.”
“An angry relative of someone you’ve killed?” Chirolyn suggested.
Gackt shook his head, but his eyes remained fixed upon the photos that had now been spread neatly across the table by Jun-ji. “I doubt it. I’m too good and careful to be caught like that.”
Jun-ji finished spreading the photos out and picked one up. It showed Gackt, seated at the bar with a whiskey on the rocks placed before him and a look of concentration on his face. The photo had been snatched quickly at a distance, the slightly unfocused fuzziness of the shot was enough to prove that, but despite its flaws, it was a nice unguarded shot of a man that permanently played a role.
“Jun-ji…” Chirolyn began, “there’s something written on the back of that photo you’re holding.”
Gackt’s eyes snapped up from the photos on the table, and he saw that Chirolyn was right. On the thick black plastic that covered the back of the Polaroid was something written in what looked like white correction fluid. Jun-ji placed the photo on the table, face down, and the three men all stared at the words that were neatly written on the back.
“I’m
watching
you,
Satoru”
Silence fell upon the trio for a few seconds as they all processed the words. Jun-ji frantically began flipping over the other photos to see if they contained any other messages, but they were all blank. There was one message only, and Jun-ji couldn’t take his eyes from it.
Chirolyn scoffed. “What kind of idiot signs his name to something like this?”
“It’s not going to be his real name,” Jun-ji said with a hint of disbelief, “the guy who took these wouldn’t have done that.”
“Well, who chooses ‘Satoru’ as a pseudonym?” Chirolyn asked. “Aren’t they usually cooler? I mean Satoru is pretty…”
"It's not his name," Gackt said quietly, but in a tone of voice that instantly quietened Chirolyn. "It's not his name," he repeated, "it's mine. He hasn't signed the photo at all; he's just making sure I know that he's watching me."
“Your name is Satoru?” Jun-ji asked, incredulously. “You never said that Gackt wasn’t your name.”
“Nobody has called me Satoru in a very long time,” Gackt mused. “I left that name behind many years ago and it means nothing to me anymore.”
The distinctive sound of Gackt’s cell phone interrupted Jun-ji’s further questions, and Gackt excused himself with a slight bow, his eyes drifting back to the message on the photo before he took the call in the suite’s bedroom. Chirolyn and Jun-ji stared at each other.
"You didn't know your own boyfriend's name?" Chirolyn asked. "What else is he hiding?"
"I don't know!" Jun-ji exclained. "I'm more worried about these photos right now and what they mean."
“Guys,” Gackt said as he came back out of the bedroom, “it’s the boss. He has a new job for us and is emailing some information over.”
Jun-ji stared at Chirolyn, but said nothing as he made his way to the desk and reopened his laptop and closed the solitaire game that was still running. As expected, there was one email sitting in his inbox. He opened it and quickly scanned the email and accompanying files while Gackt and Chirolyn both waited quietly, Gackt now purposely avoiding the sight of those photos that still lay on the table.
“Woah,” Jun-ji said, his eyes opening wide, “this is a special one.”
“Special?” Chirolyn asked.
“Yes… The information is very limited, but the money…”
Gackt’s eyes lit up. “How much money?”
Chirolyn sighed. "How limited?"
Jun-ji looked at the two men. The two questions summed up their differences perfectly. Gackt was here for the money, he’d made no attempts to hide that since he’d first been paired with Jun-ji five years ago. Chirolyn had only joined the team a couple of years ago as their researcher and he lived for the chase, for tracking down the target and cataloguing their life.
As for Jun-ji… well, he didn’t know what his motivations where. He was the backbone of the team, the one who collated the information and ensured Gackt didn’t rush in before everything had been adequately researched. Beyond that, he really didn’t know anymore.
“The money,” he began, “is ten times the amount we were paid for this job.” Jun-ji ignored the appreciative whistle that came from Gackt and continued. “The information is extremely limited. No address, no photos… Just details of the last few sightings of the target and possible leads.”
“Sounds tough,” Chirolyn summarised.
“Hmm,” Gackt said, “I can understand why the money is so high and why it was offered to us. So, where are we heading this time?”
“Do you think it’s wise to accept this?” Jun-ji asked.
“Why wouldn’t we?” Gackt asked.
“We have nothing to work with,” Jun-ji explained, “and we have the issue of those photos.”
Gackt snorted dismissively. “Don’t worry about the photos. I’m not scared of or worried about some freak with a Polaroid who knows my birth name. I am worried, however, about being paid and this is too much money to turn down.”
“I don’t care about the money,” Chirolyn said as he read some of the files that were still displayed on the laptop, “but I like a challenge. I’m sure I can track this guy.”
“That just leaves you, Jun-ji,” Gackt said with a cocky smile. “Are you in?”
Jun-ji sighed. It was a lot of money. Enough for him to finally quit if he desired, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that those photos of Gackt that still lay upon the table were something to be worried about. He took a deep breath and replied. “I’m in.”
“Great!” Gackt exclaimed. “Where are we going?”
“Kyoto,” Jun-ji replied. “All of the leads are in Kyoto.”
It was only slight, and anybody who didn’t know Gackt as intimately as Jun-ji did wouldn’t have noticed it, but that cocky smile on Gackt’s lips faltered a little. It was only for a fraction of a second and was so subtle that Chirolyn didn’t notice it, but Jun-ji noticed. He always noticed.
“Kyoto…” Gackt repeated. “Okay. Let’s go visit some shrines.”
~owari
Extra notes
1) Okay, obviously there's going to be more than this. It's just not going to be done before the deadline so consider them sequels, and not extra chapters.
2) Chirolyn remarks that all of the contracts are going to a group of high school girls that are cheaper. That's a reference to AKB48 and the tabloid rumour that they took Gackt's Wonda Coffee advertising contract because they were cheaper. According to the tabloid, he wasn't a happy bunny because he needs the money. I thought it'd be fun to throw it in there...
Author - unwritten_ideas
Rating - PG-13
Word Count - 2,562
Characters - Gackt, Jun-ji, Chirolyn
Disclaimer - don’t own squat and if I did, I’d be posting this with pictures
Summary - They're the best money can buy and always complete the job. What happens when the hunter becomes the hunted?
Notes - For the gacktjob_fics March 2011 challenge.
My rules were -
1) AU setting
2) use secondary Job members as main characters
3) the pairing shouldn't be the main focus
4) include some humourous elements
I was partnered with write_my_dreams (touinplus) and she added
5) Action-adventure setting
6) Gackt x Jun-ji pairing
Phew!
I hope this fits the requirements.
Jun-ji took one sip from his cup of coffee and nearly spat it back out again. The black, unsweetened liquid had been prepared so long ago that it had not only cooled to the point that it had chilled the porcelain of the cup, but was also growing what Jun-ji could only describe as a thick and disturbing looking skin on top. A few more hours and he wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen life begin to crawl out of the swamp.
He looked at the clock, surprised at how late it was. Time flies when you’re busy playing solitaire.
He hated this, this waiting. He hated being the one left behind with toxic coffee and card games he could never beat. The last update he'd received had been eight hours ago and had consisted of nothing more than an hastily typed email confirming his colleagues had arrived at the hotel bar and would, from that moment on, be maintaining a radio silence until the job was done.
The job had been, on paper at least, one of their more straightforward commissions. Get to the bar, find the target, isolate him and complete the task. For professionals of their calibre, it should have taken two to three hours at the most.
It had now been just over eight hours since his colleagues had left the hotel room he currently sat in. Jun-ji knew that he worked with the best, but even so, he was worried.
He knew that he should never have become emotionally involved and certainly should never have fallen for that cocky smile and the man it belonged to.
Jun-ji was interrupted from his musings by the loud click that signalled that finally, the hotel room door was opening. He jumped to his feet and breathed a deep sigh of relief when his two colleagues walked into the living room of the hotel suite, both looking as smart, whole and uninjured as they had when they'd left it those many hours ago.
Chirolyn headed straight for the heavily stocked mini-fridge in the corner of the room, pausing in his steps only to remove the black tie that had been tightly knotted around his neck, and helped himself to a large shot of brandy. He smiled at Jun-ji and then sank back into the plush armchair by the window. "Don't look so worried, Jun-ji," he said, taking a sip of brandy, "your boy did good. Again."
Jun-ji turned his attention to the other man in the room. Gackt stood beside the desk that still housed Jun-ji's laptop and game of solitaire, but the laptop had been closed and pushed to one side in order to make room for the black leather briefcase that was never far from Gackt's hands. It was closed and locked, but Jun-ji didn't need to see the inside to know what it contained.
"So, how did it go?" Jun-ji asked.
"Murderous," Gackt replied simply as he swiftly removed his black suit jacket and draped it over the wooden chair at the desk.
Jun-ji scowled. "That's not funny."
"Hm, probably not," Gackt replied with a smile, "but accurate."
"What took you guys so long anyway?" Jun-ji asked. "I thought this was going to be a quick and easy job."
"So did we," Chirolyn agreed "but tonight, the target decided to get so drunk he couldn't stand and then serenaded us all with really bad love songs."
"They were awful," Gackt agreed, "if I wasn't being paid to do it, I might have killed him anyway just to stop the pain."
Jun-ji shook his head with a chuckle and sat down upon the two-seater couch that was adjacent to Chirolyn’s armchair. He’d been in this game long enough to have known that some days, no matter how much preparation you do, your target could still be unpredictable. He should also have known that there was no situation possible that Chirolyn, and especially Gackt, could not have handled.
Jun-ji’s eyes fell to the briefcase on the table again. Gackt’s fingertips were resting on the black leather of the case, idly tracing a seam in the stitching. To anyone who had seen Gackt in that bar a few hours earlier, he’d have looked the same as any of the other high flying businessmen that frequented such a pricey and high class hotel. Gackt’s suit was the best that the finest tailors in Tokyo could offer, custom made and tailored perfectly to his body, something Jun-ji was always appreciative of. That black leather briefcase could have housed important documents, life changing contracts or large sums of money. But, for a professional assassin like Gackt who always had to look his best, all it contained was his trusty handgun and silencer.
Gackt finally removed his fingers from the briefcase and walked over to the couch, dropping heavily onto the seat next to Jun-ji before swinging around so that his long legs fell over the arm of the couch and his head was comfortably nestled in Jun-ji’s lap. “Now that we’ve finished the job,” Gackt began, “what’s next on the agenda?”
“A vacation,” Chirolyn answered, “we’ve been working on this target for two months. We deserve one.”
Gackt snorted dismissively. “Vacations don’t pay the bills. What contracts are on offer?”
“There are none,” Jun-ji answered. “The boss hasn’t offered any to us at all during these two months.”
“Nothing at all?” Gackt asked incredulously. He tried to sit back up again, but was pressed back down onto the couch by Jun-ji’s hand that firmly kept him in place. “What is the boss thinking? We’re the best he has!”
“We’re the most expensive he has,” Jun-ji clarified, his brown eyes fixed on the blue that stared up at him. “We have to charge high prices to pay for your eyeliner and cologne bill.”
The laugh that threatened to break free from Chirolyn was soon stifled by one piercing glare from Gackt and instead turned into an awkward cough. It took a few seconds, but Chirolyn was finally able to make his own clarification. “All of the new contracts are going to that new team on the block. It seems that hiring forty-eight high school girls is cheaper than hiring us. They get the job done, although in a noisier and higher pitched way.”
Gackt hummed quietly, his earlier surprise at their lack of work long forgotten due to the gentle fingers running through his hair. “How do you know all of this, Chirolyn? You always know the office gossip.”
“It’s my job, isn’t it?” Chirolyn asked. “Jun-ji co-ordinates, I sneak around and gather information and you finish the job.” He paused. “So to speak.”
“It’s what’s made us so successful that we’ve priced ourselves out of the market,” Jun-ji mused. “Maybe we should reconsider…”
Jun-ji’s speech was stopped by the sound of a sharp knock at the door of their suite and the overly enthusiastic voice of the hotel staff member that had rapped his knuckles against the door. Chirolyn looked over at Jun-ji and Gackt who were both staring at him with expressions that quite clearly stated that they had no intention of moving. He sighed, ran his left hand through his light pink Mohawk, and answered the door.
Chirolyn walked back into the living area of the suite with a plain, brown envelope in his hands.
“What’s that?” Gackt asked, his curiosity causing him to rise from his comfortable position on the couch so he could stand besides Chirolyn.
Chirolyn turned the envelope over in his hands. “It’s blank. No name or address.”
“Could it be from the boss?” Jun-ji asked. “A new hit? We’ve been given jobs like this before.”
“Well, Jun-ji dear,” Gackt said with a smile, “there’s only way to find out!”
Chirolyn could only sigh in frustration when the envelope was quickly snatched out of his hands by Gackt’s eager fingers. The envelope was soon opened, and Gackt reached inside to pull out a stack of Polaroid photos.
“Polaroids?” Jun-ji questioned. “I didn’t know they still existed.”
“Must be the next target,” Gackt said with a shrug before casually dropping the photos onto the low coffee table beside the couch. “Let’s see what we… Oh.”
The photos, all twenty of them, were of Gackt. Nobody else. Just Gackt.
Chirolyn sighed heavily. “These look like they were taken in the hotel bar, while we were waiting for the target to leave.”
Gackt didn’t move and didn’t lift his eyes from those square pieces of plastic and card on the table that showed his image, but answered anyway. “They were, I think. You can tell by the furniture and decorations.”
Jun-ji knelt beside the table and started spreading the photos out, hoping that somewhere, on one of the photos hidden beneath others, there might be a clue. “Who could have taken these? And why? Why send them to us? How did they even know we’re in this room?”
“Who knows,” Chirolyn answered as he flopped back down into his previously vacated armchair. “Owe anyone some gambling debts, Gackt?”
“No,” Gackt said quietly. “I have no idea why these photos were taken or who could have done so.”
“An angry relative of someone you’ve killed?” Chirolyn suggested.
Gackt shook his head, but his eyes remained fixed upon the photos that had now been spread neatly across the table by Jun-ji. “I doubt it. I’m too good and careful to be caught like that.”
Jun-ji finished spreading the photos out and picked one up. It showed Gackt, seated at the bar with a whiskey on the rocks placed before him and a look of concentration on his face. The photo had been snatched quickly at a distance, the slightly unfocused fuzziness of the shot was enough to prove that, but despite its flaws, it was a nice unguarded shot of a man that permanently played a role.
“Jun-ji…” Chirolyn began, “there’s something written on the back of that photo you’re holding.”
Gackt’s eyes snapped up from the photos on the table, and he saw that Chirolyn was right. On the thick black plastic that covered the back of the Polaroid was something written in what looked like white correction fluid. Jun-ji placed the photo on the table, face down, and the three men all stared at the words that were neatly written on the back.
“I’m
watching
you,
Satoru”
Silence fell upon the trio for a few seconds as they all processed the words. Jun-ji frantically began flipping over the other photos to see if they contained any other messages, but they were all blank. There was one message only, and Jun-ji couldn’t take his eyes from it.
Chirolyn scoffed. “What kind of idiot signs his name to something like this?”
“It’s not going to be his real name,” Jun-ji said with a hint of disbelief, “the guy who took these wouldn’t have done that.”
“Well, who chooses ‘Satoru’ as a pseudonym?” Chirolyn asked. “Aren’t they usually cooler? I mean Satoru is pretty…”
"It's not his name," Gackt said quietly, but in a tone of voice that instantly quietened Chirolyn. "It's not his name," he repeated, "it's mine. He hasn't signed the photo at all; he's just making sure I know that he's watching me."
“Your name is Satoru?” Jun-ji asked, incredulously. “You never said that Gackt wasn’t your name.”
“Nobody has called me Satoru in a very long time,” Gackt mused. “I left that name behind many years ago and it means nothing to me anymore.”
The distinctive sound of Gackt’s cell phone interrupted Jun-ji’s further questions, and Gackt excused himself with a slight bow, his eyes drifting back to the message on the photo before he took the call in the suite’s bedroom. Chirolyn and Jun-ji stared at each other.
"You didn't know your own boyfriend's name?" Chirolyn asked. "What else is he hiding?"
"I don't know!" Jun-ji exclained. "I'm more worried about these photos right now and what they mean."
“Guys,” Gackt said as he came back out of the bedroom, “it’s the boss. He has a new job for us and is emailing some information over.”
Jun-ji stared at Chirolyn, but said nothing as he made his way to the desk and reopened his laptop and closed the solitaire game that was still running. As expected, there was one email sitting in his inbox. He opened it and quickly scanned the email and accompanying files while Gackt and Chirolyn both waited quietly, Gackt now purposely avoiding the sight of those photos that still lay on the table.
“Woah,” Jun-ji said, his eyes opening wide, “this is a special one.”
“Special?” Chirolyn asked.
“Yes… The information is very limited, but the money…”
Gackt’s eyes lit up. “How much money?”
Chirolyn sighed. "How limited?"
Jun-ji looked at the two men. The two questions summed up their differences perfectly. Gackt was here for the money, he’d made no attempts to hide that since he’d first been paired with Jun-ji five years ago. Chirolyn had only joined the team a couple of years ago as their researcher and he lived for the chase, for tracking down the target and cataloguing their life.
As for Jun-ji… well, he didn’t know what his motivations where. He was the backbone of the team, the one who collated the information and ensured Gackt didn’t rush in before everything had been adequately researched. Beyond that, he really didn’t know anymore.
“The money,” he began, “is ten times the amount we were paid for this job.” Jun-ji ignored the appreciative whistle that came from Gackt and continued. “The information is extremely limited. No address, no photos… Just details of the last few sightings of the target and possible leads.”
“Sounds tough,” Chirolyn summarised.
“Hmm,” Gackt said, “I can understand why the money is so high and why it was offered to us. So, where are we heading this time?”
“Do you think it’s wise to accept this?” Jun-ji asked.
“Why wouldn’t we?” Gackt asked.
“We have nothing to work with,” Jun-ji explained, “and we have the issue of those photos.”
Gackt snorted dismissively. “Don’t worry about the photos. I’m not scared of or worried about some freak with a Polaroid who knows my birth name. I am worried, however, about being paid and this is too much money to turn down.”
“I don’t care about the money,” Chirolyn said as he read some of the files that were still displayed on the laptop, “but I like a challenge. I’m sure I can track this guy.”
“That just leaves you, Jun-ji,” Gackt said with a cocky smile. “Are you in?”
Jun-ji sighed. It was a lot of money. Enough for him to finally quit if he desired, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that those photos of Gackt that still lay upon the table were something to be worried about. He took a deep breath and replied. “I’m in.”
“Great!” Gackt exclaimed. “Where are we going?”
“Kyoto,” Jun-ji replied. “All of the leads are in Kyoto.”
It was only slight, and anybody who didn’t know Gackt as intimately as Jun-ji did wouldn’t have noticed it, but that cocky smile on Gackt’s lips faltered a little. It was only for a fraction of a second and was so subtle that Chirolyn didn’t notice it, but Jun-ji noticed. He always noticed.
“Kyoto…” Gackt repeated. “Okay. Let’s go visit some shrines.”
~owari
Extra notes
1) Okay, obviously there's going to be more than this. It's just not going to be done before the deadline so consider them sequels, and not extra chapters.
2) Chirolyn remarks that all of the contracts are going to a group of high school girls that are cheaper. That's a reference to AKB48 and the tabloid rumour that they took Gackt's Wonda Coffee advertising contract because they were cheaper. According to the tabloid, he wasn't a happy bunny because he needs the money. I thought it'd be fun to throw it in there...