[JE] [JEF #4] Past Flaws 4/12
Title: JE Fleet IV: Past Flaws 4/12
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: R (m/m activity)
Genre: AU, crack, sci-fi
Word count: 54,000
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the guys or random song lyrics that appear in this fic. Credit for naming the Yunaka goes to maya_morning.
Summary: When Akanishi Jin runs away from Earth, falling in with thieves along the way, the last thing he expects is to attract the attention of rookie Lunar/InterPlanetary Security officer, Kamenashi Kazuya.
Chapter 4
The next day...
"Don't give me the puppy-dog eyes, kid, you know I'm easily susceptible."
Kame sat in Captain Maynard's office, watching his boss pace a neat circle round the desk, and wondered which expression of his could be considered "puppy-dog eyes". Given his lack of sleep again last night, he thought that "panda eyes" might be more appropriate.
"Ishida blames you for the fiasco yesterday. Says it's your fault for not handling the situation properly, letting the communications get out of control so all hell broke loose out there. I believe he also said you were singing and dancing on duty?"
"One line, sir. I sang one line." Kame tried to maintain his professional composure. "And I wasn't dancing. The internal stabilisers were having a few problems."
"Hmm." The captain ceased his pacing and perched on the edge of his desk. "That's as may be, but the fact remains that you were on the comm with these boys when the situation blew up. It took six hours to clean up the mess and by that point most of the ships in the area had left. It's a miracle no one was killed."
Privately, Kame thought "dumb luck" was a more likely explanation, given how many ships had been firing in the end. "The holographic craft looked real, sir. You can't blame everyone for taking off - they all thought they were under attack by a ship gone rogue. So did we."
"And what should've been a simple stop-and-search turned into a firefight. What happened to the..." Maynard checked his datapad, "...Yunaka? Could they have had a hand in it? You *were* talking to them at the time."
Kame rubbed his eyes and wished the captain didn't look so annoyingly awake. "They were the first ones hit, and I know they couldn't have been generating the hologram. I lost sight during all the chaos, though. Should I attempt to trace them, sir?"
"For what was probably an accidental weapons discharge? You're overzealous, kid."
"For firing upon another ship in a secure zone and carrying undeclared personnel. That third man might have been a terrorist! We only have their word for it that the first shot was accidental."
"You probably heard more from him than anyone else - did he sound dangerous?"
"Well..." Kame cast his mind back to the previous day. The third man - Akanishi, if he remembered correctly - hadn't sounded like much of a threat. Sort of goofy and goodnatured, really. Up until he'd started singing, at which point he'd definitely caught Kame's attention. "No," he admitted. "He didn't sound dangerous. Sounded pretty nice, actually."
"Then in the absence of blood-curdling threats to destroy the sanctity of the universe, I'm going to tell you not to worry about him and forget chasing after the Yunaka. We've got bigger things going on than non-payment of fines."
Kame's stomach lurched like a tug caught in a gravity swell. If Ishida had lodged a formal complaint against him, Kame wouldn't need to make up his mind about trying to make sergeant.
Captain Maynard frowned. "You look sick, Kamenashi. Digestive system giving you trouble?"
Kame blinked in surprise. "No, sir - why do you ask?"
"Because I need you to go to a restaurant and you'll be useless if you throw up after the starters. Might be necessary to keep going to dessert, and even, dare I say it, to the coffee and biscuits. All on expenses, of course, so you might as well order the good stuff. No alcohol, mind - this is strictly business."
"What is?" Kame couldn't figure out what his boss was getting at, unless it had something to do with a party to celebrate the impending birth of Lieutenant Bennett's first child.
"The surveillance, of course," Maynard said impatiently. "Weren't you there for the briefing on Monday?"
The briefing, as far as Kame could recall, had involved a discussion on where to hold the unit Christmas party, a chat about the rising price of hyperdrive fuel, and a truly in-depth conversation about Ishida's new hat. Riveting stuff. He didn't remember anything about surveillance in a restaurant, though.
"Remind me, sir."
The captain smiled indulgently. "All right, but only because it's you." He rummaged around the debris on his desk, coming up with a loosely-bound file. "Here. You know the Luminous Steakhouse down on Aldrin Avenue?"
Kame did, though he'd never eaten there. He hadn't been out for many meals since moving to Lunacy. "I...know where it is?"
"Good enough. Take a look at the first profile in your hand - he should be familiar to you."
The profile belonged to one Taguchi Junnosuke, a tall, dark-haired Japanese male with a bright smile and a penchant for video games. More than a penchant, in fact. Taguchi was a thief, with two very unusual quirks to his modus operandi: he only stole from gaming companies and if he encountered any innocents while committing the theft they were always left incapacitated with laughter.
While these traits made him somewhat unusual, they hadn't, till recently, been enough to deserve attention from LIPS. Not until one month ago, when Taguchi had graduated from breaking into buildings on Earth to intercepting supply ships from Saturn, containing the latest in virtual reality consoles. He'd annoyed some big names in the game industry, and with the expansion of his interests to those between planets, he'd earned himself a LIPS file.
Which Kame had inherited. Two weeks ago he'd nearly caught up with Taguchi during a stake-out at the launch of Final Fantasy DCLXII, but the slippery thief had hit him with some sort of gun that left him helpless with laughter for the better part of the afternoon, and Kame had giggled hysterically on the floor while Taguchi, clad in a long black cape and carrying a giant sword, had lost himself in a crowd of cosplayers. "Mortified" didn't even begin to cover it.
"Yeah, he's familiar," Kame said through gritted teeth. "What about him?"
Captain Maynard leant down and pulled the next sheet from the file in Kame's hands. "We've finally received confirmation that he's going to be meeting this fellow here, and *he's* one we're really interested in."
The second profile was headed 'Ueda Tatsuya', and the tiny, badly-blurred photograph depicted a slender figure with plump lips and long, dark hair. That was about all Kame could make out.
He blinked. "That's a pretty girl, sir, but why are we interested in her?"
The captain snorted. "That's no girl, Kamenashi, no matter how pretty she - uh, *he* is. That's the only photograph anyone's ever managed to get of Ueda - we thought we had one with short, blond hair once, but no one believed it was the same person - so take a good look. I want you to bring him in."
"For what, sir?"
"For his involvement in over a hundred serious crimes, of course! Damnit, kid, weren't you paying attention at Monday's briefing?"
Kame rolled his eyes and prayed for some hapless underling to interrupt with a tray of coffee. "I have a bad memory, sir."
Maynard clapped his hands to his head. "Of course you do. I knew that. Ueda's a canny one. Has his hand in everything but never leaves a trail; he's a thinker and he's the one you go to if you want someone to disappear. Doesn't take care of it himself, of course. He's the man with the plan. We think he's behind half the assassinations in Lunacy, only we can't prove anything, and some of his suspected victims have worked for us before.
"He's got a better network of informants than we have, I'll warrant, and they know better than to talk to us. However..." The captain paused for a big dramatic flourish, and seemed disappointed when Kame didn't immediately give him a big, shiny-eyed look of anticipation. "We know he's meeting Taguchi tomorrow night. Ueda, shall we say, dabbles in the acquisition of specialised goods as a sideline, and there's a pair of original Famicom controllers going on display in the museum this weekend. Taguchi will go after them, there's no question about it, and word has it that Ueda has a buyer for one of them. He'll be getting Taguchi to do the work and giving him a cut of the sale."
"If you know this much already, why not just wait till Taguchi strikes the museum and catch him in the act?" Kame asked politely.
Captain Maynard seized the folder from Kame's hands and threw it back on the desk. His eyes shone with fever in a way Kame hadn't seen since the last time the captain had bawled out Ishida for skipping a shift to go to a strip club.
"Do that, and we'll only get Taguchi. Kid, I need you to be in that restaurant, recording their conversation, and we'll be able to get something concrete on Ueda. He's the important one. He always meets his agents in person once before letting them pull the job, and this is the first time we've had the details. I don't give a damn what happens with a couple of antique video game controllers but if I can nail Ueda we'll all be in line for promotion and maybe the academy will stop sending me hopeless slackers." The captain coughed and added, "Present company excepted, of course."
Kame spent the rest of the day filling out paperwork, in such a sleep-deprived daze that he occasionally signed his name 'Akanishi Kazuya' by mistake. This wouldn't have been a problem if Ishida hadn't been peeking over his shoulder at the time, and had somehow managed to remember that 'Akanishi' was the third man on board the Yunaka.
It was a long shift.
-----
Kame did slightly better in the sleep stakes that night, so by the time he made it to the restaurant the next evening, he felt reasonably confident that he wouldn't end up slumped over his steak. He'd managed to get the location of his quarry's table (Taguchi had made the booking under the not-particularly-subtle alias of 'Sephiroth Strife'), and it hadn't taken much persuasion on his part to guarantee himself and Aya the table next to them.
It certainly helped that the waiter had been so preoccupied with staring down the front of Aya's slinky black shirt that he'd have agreed to anything, up to and including signing his own death warrant. Kame, who'd seen it all before in the line of duty, suppressed a smirk and allowed himself to be shown to his seat.
They were taking no chances of screwing this one up. There were no table ornaments, no shrubs, no forms of decoration, absolutely nothing in the restaurant where a microphone might be secreted and everything was a bright, shiny white - aside from the furniture, which was transparent. Surveillance equipment would've stood out a mile.
They hadn't been able to fill in the steakhouse staff for fear of a leak, which meant Kame couldn't count on assistance from anyone other than Aya and the stunner he knew she had tucked in her evening bag. She sat with her back towards Taguchi's table, the better for the microphone concealed in her elaborate braid tie to pick up their speech.
This left Kame with a good view of his targets, when they arrived.
Taguchi Junnosuke showed up first, looking much more attractive than Kame had remembered. Perhaps it was the lack of a swirling black cape. He beamed brightly at the waiter, made a joke about "trouble and Strife", and settled down with a handheld game console to wait for Ueda, content to ignore the disgruntled stares of his fellow patrons.
Ueda Tatsuya put in an appearance at the same time as Kame's starter, nearly causing the unfortunate LIPS officer to spill soup down his shirt. Other diners, less coordinated, suffered unavoidable damage to their clothing.
Ueda's fault for being striking, Kame thought. The blurred photo hadn't done him justice by any means. Long, black hair spilled over the shoulders of his matching coat, which gaped open on a velvet V-neck with silver trim. The man was a study in black and silver; delicate, like fine jewellery, yet solid steel at the core. All eyes in the restaurant turned to watch as he took his seat...and every single one of them looked away again a second later.
Aya, chewing noisily on her chicken wing, had missed the whole spectacle. "Oi, Kamenashi, why does it feel like the temperature just dropped fifty degrees in here?"
"Ueda," Kame mouthed silently. He and Aya both had earpieces tucked under their hair so they could follow everything picked up by the microphone in addition to recording it on the small chip embedded in Kame's skull ring; the mic was controlled by a set of hidden buttons on Aya's bracelet.
They were treated to five minutes of Ueda and Taguchi placing their orders - the waiter kept dropping the stylus as he tapped the details into his datapad, which dragged the process out considerably - and it wasn't until the drinks arrived that the real conversation started.
"It's off," Ueda said flatly. "Thanks for dinner."
Taguchi's smile faltered for a brief moment before resuming its million-kilowatt brilliance. "But...but you said if I met you in person, we'd be okay. I didn't pass?"
Ueda shrugged. "Nothing to do with you. I was going to ask you to pick up a little something else for me while you were in there, but it was stolen a couple of days ago, before the museum ship left Earth, and I know it won't be on display anymore. Pull the job if you want but I'm not interested."
"And the buyer?"
"There was no buyer."
Kame groaned inwardly; the mouthful of sirloin steak, delicious only a second ago, lost its flavour and he swallowed it down with a gulp. If there wasn't going to be a crime committed, he was hardly going to get anything incriminating on Ueda.
Taguchi looked confused, sheepish, and slightly miffed all at the same time. "I'm kind of in a tight spot financially right now," he admitted. "I was counting on the sale. You think you could find a buyer, if I come out with both controllers?"
"I'm sure there are other gaming addicts out there who are as obsessed as you," Ueda assured him. "Though most of them aren't so..."
"Charming? Out-going? Handsome?"
"Narcissistic. I've never met a guy with so many pictures of himself in his room. Talking to you over the comm was very educational."
Aya giggled. "Is he good-looking, Kamenashi?" she whispered. "I can't see behind me."
Both of them were, though Kame wasn't going to admit it aloud. He waved his fork to hush her and stared at the side of Ueda's head, willing him to say something useful.
Taguchi unwittingly lent him a helping hand after he'd tucked into his main course with relish and he and Ueda had made comical small talk concerning tap dancers and vampires. "So what were you going to ask me to get for you?"
Hostile silence swamped their table, and Kame shook his earpiece irritably. He could see Ueda's mouth moving, but nothing was reaching him through the microphone. It took him a moment to realise that Ueda wasn't even whispering, merely mouthing the words. Kame's lip-reading wasn't bad, but his eyesight wasn't fantastic - consequently, he couldn't be sure he was picking up the correct words.
"Why's it called that?" Taguchi asked at normal volume.
"Don't you keep up with the news?"
"I'm not a jewel thief. The only diamond I'm interested in is a virtual baseball one."
"And the only one *I'm* interested in is Kizuna," Ueda said. "Named for the small flaw in the centre that looks like a pair of entwined rings - a bond, you know? It was supposed to go on display here this weekend, but it was stolen from a jewellery store in Tokyo a few days ago and no one's seen it since."
Ueda's expression was darker than his wardrobe; he was furious, albeit in an understated way. Kame slipped a discreet hand under his jacket to reassure himself that his stunner was within easy reach.
Aya raised an eyebrow at him. "This isn't the time to be feeling yourself up, Kamenashi."
"I'm not - oh, forget it." Kame didn't want to get embroiled in conversation lest he miss something at the next table; it was easier to let Aya think whatever she wanted.
Taguchi completely misread the danger signs written in large letters all over Ueda's face. "You've got a buyer all lined up, huh? And now you don't know where the diamond is."
"Don't think I won't find out." Ueda glowered at his giant T-bone steak with such venom that the meat practically separated itself from the bone with no need for a knife and fork.
Heavy boots clomped across the pristine restaurant floor, scattering serving staff in their wake, and Kame tore his eyes away from Ueda's lips to find he and Aya were no longer the only LIPS officers in the room.
Ishida Makoto and his fanclub had arrived.
"Nobody move!" Ishida strode up to them, groupies at his heels, and flashed his badge in Ueda's face. "Don't even think about going for a gun."
Ueda favoured Ishida with the same glare he'd used on his steak, but to less effect. "I'm not carrying a gun," he said mildly. "I don't believe in dressing up for dinner."
The comment went down well with Taguchi; less so with Ishida, to judge by his snarl. Kame was torn between demanding to know what the hell he thought he was playing at, and staying absolutely still in the hopes that no one would notice him. He went with the latter option.
"Don't believe in paying your parking tickets either, do you?" Ishida sneered. He waved a fistful of papers under Ueda's nose, dropping a few on his plate.
Ueda pushed his parking-ticket-covered food away in disgust and rose from the table, only to be pushed back down by Carl. "Not so fast," the big LIPS officer cautioned.
The temperature dropped another twenty degrees. "Take your hands off me before I break them."
"Four hundred and twelve unpaid parking tickets and threatening an officer of the law!" Ishida crowed. "Ladies and gentleman, Ueda Tatsuya-san has just won himself an all-expenses paid trip down to his local LIPS station!"
Taguchi scratched his nose. "You guys are LIPS? Then why do you care about parking tickets?"
Kame thought this was a valid point. Parking tickets, even those relating to spaceships, were generally the concern of the regular police force.
Ishida flashed the tickets before Taguchi's eyes. "He's parked his automobile illegally in two hundred and eight different cities, covering four planets, two moons..." he hesitated as he read out the top ticket, sounding slightly incredulous, "...and one semi-deserted asteroid?"
"I don't even own a car!" Ueda protested.
"Save your story for the courts."
Ishida pulled out a pair of handcuffs just in time to get his eye blackened by Ueda's killer left hook.
-----
"And that's when the fight started," Kame finished. He'd been called into Captain Maynard's office again, this time to explain why Ishida was skulking around with a swollen face and Ueda and Taguchi were both residing in Kurogin orbital prison.
The captain frowned. He'd been doing that a lot lately. "And where were you while all this was going on?"
"About half-way through my main course, sir."
"I see." Maynard pressed a button on his desk; the office was immediately filled with a low whine. The privacy settings were on high. "Look, Kamenashi, I like you, and more importantly, I trust you. So I trust that what I'm about to say won't leave this room. You got that, kid?"
Kame fervently hoped that the married father-of-two wasn't about to proposition him. Sleeping his way up the ranks wasn't an appealing prospect. "Got it, sir."
Maynard nodded. "I just wanted you to know that...Ishida and the others weren't acting on my orders last night. Or rather, Ishida wasn't. The rest will do as he says; I don't blame them for their part in it."
That was a surprise. "I...didn't expect to see them there. If we had all those parking tickets on Ueda, why not use them before?"
"Because we didn't have them. False, every last one. Somebody else knew Ueda was going to be there last night and wanted to make damned sure Ishida got to him, cutting you, me and everyone else out of the loop." The captain rubbed a weary hand across his brow.
"And Taguchi?"
"I think he was incidental. If he hadn't gotten caught up in the fight, he'd probably have walked."
From Kame's recollection, it wasn't so much that Taguchi had "gotten caught up in the fight", as that he'd accidentally tripped up Carl while diving for cover under the table. It had been enough to earn him a cell next to Ueda's.
"No, Ueda's the one they were after," Captain Maynard continued. "I've suspected Ishida of moonlighting for a good few months now, and nothing anywhere near as legal as your sideline as a poledancer!"
Kame felt his cheeks grow warm. "It was just one night, sir. I couldn't pay my bar tab, that's all."
Maynard winked. "Of course it was. Excellent performance, I thought. Must take the wife there sometime, I bet she'd like it.
"Anyway, my primary concern is that Ishida may be working for Johnny Kitagawa - on a freelance basis, at least. The old man's got his finger in a lot of pies, and if he didn't have help on this side of the law he'd have gone under by now. It would've been child's play to have those parking tickets faked, and if anyone could've known Ueda was in Lunacy, it would've been him."
Kame had heard of the Kitagawa Family - he'd lived in Tokyo, after all - but he'd never had dealings with them personally and maintained he was safer that way. Getting involved with gangsters, no matter how many legal interests they had, didn't do wonders for one's life expectancy.
"Ishida wants something from Ueda," Maynard mused. "He plans to question him personally. There wasn't much on the recording you and Aya got, though, and frankly, the man never struck me as the type to want video game controllers, no matter how valuable."
"They cancelled the job," Kame said absently, thinking back over the conversation. "Taguchi wanted to go ahead because he needed the money, and Ueda said he could probably find a buyer but he wasn't keen. He hadn't wanted the controllers in the first place."
Maynard snorted. "I know *that*, kid, but Ueda never said what he was after!"
But Ueda had, hadn't he? Kame remembered. Kizuna.
"Sir, you know anything about diamonds?"
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame
Rating: R (m/m activity)
Genre: AU, crack, sci-fi
Word count: 54,000
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the guys or random song lyrics that appear in this fic. Credit for naming the Yunaka goes to maya_morning.
Summary: When Akanishi Jin runs away from Earth, falling in with thieves along the way, the last thing he expects is to attract the attention of rookie Lunar/InterPlanetary Security officer, Kamenashi Kazuya.
Chapter 4
The next day...
"Don't give me the puppy-dog eyes, kid, you know I'm easily susceptible."
Kame sat in Captain Maynard's office, watching his boss pace a neat circle round the desk, and wondered which expression of his could be considered "puppy-dog eyes". Given his lack of sleep again last night, he thought that "panda eyes" might be more appropriate.
"Ishida blames you for the fiasco yesterday. Says it's your fault for not handling the situation properly, letting the communications get out of control so all hell broke loose out there. I believe he also said you were singing and dancing on duty?"
"One line, sir. I sang one line." Kame tried to maintain his professional composure. "And I wasn't dancing. The internal stabilisers were having a few problems."
"Hmm." The captain ceased his pacing and perched on the edge of his desk. "That's as may be, but the fact remains that you were on the comm with these boys when the situation blew up. It took six hours to clean up the mess and by that point most of the ships in the area had left. It's a miracle no one was killed."
Privately, Kame thought "dumb luck" was a more likely explanation, given how many ships had been firing in the end. "The holographic craft looked real, sir. You can't blame everyone for taking off - they all thought they were under attack by a ship gone rogue. So did we."
"And what should've been a simple stop-and-search turned into a firefight. What happened to the..." Maynard checked his datapad, "...Yunaka? Could they have had a hand in it? You *were* talking to them at the time."
Kame rubbed his eyes and wished the captain didn't look so annoyingly awake. "They were the first ones hit, and I know they couldn't have been generating the hologram. I lost sight during all the chaos, though. Should I attempt to trace them, sir?"
"For what was probably an accidental weapons discharge? You're overzealous, kid."
"For firing upon another ship in a secure zone and carrying undeclared personnel. That third man might have been a terrorist! We only have their word for it that the first shot was accidental."
"You probably heard more from him than anyone else - did he sound dangerous?"
"Well..." Kame cast his mind back to the previous day. The third man - Akanishi, if he remembered correctly - hadn't sounded like much of a threat. Sort of goofy and goodnatured, really. Up until he'd started singing, at which point he'd definitely caught Kame's attention. "No," he admitted. "He didn't sound dangerous. Sounded pretty nice, actually."
"Then in the absence of blood-curdling threats to destroy the sanctity of the universe, I'm going to tell you not to worry about him and forget chasing after the Yunaka. We've got bigger things going on than non-payment of fines."
Kame's stomach lurched like a tug caught in a gravity swell. If Ishida had lodged a formal complaint against him, Kame wouldn't need to make up his mind about trying to make sergeant.
Captain Maynard frowned. "You look sick, Kamenashi. Digestive system giving you trouble?"
Kame blinked in surprise. "No, sir - why do you ask?"
"Because I need you to go to a restaurant and you'll be useless if you throw up after the starters. Might be necessary to keep going to dessert, and even, dare I say it, to the coffee and biscuits. All on expenses, of course, so you might as well order the good stuff. No alcohol, mind - this is strictly business."
"What is?" Kame couldn't figure out what his boss was getting at, unless it had something to do with a party to celebrate the impending birth of Lieutenant Bennett's first child.
"The surveillance, of course," Maynard said impatiently. "Weren't you there for the briefing on Monday?"
The briefing, as far as Kame could recall, had involved a discussion on where to hold the unit Christmas party, a chat about the rising price of hyperdrive fuel, and a truly in-depth conversation about Ishida's new hat. Riveting stuff. He didn't remember anything about surveillance in a restaurant, though.
"Remind me, sir."
The captain smiled indulgently. "All right, but only because it's you." He rummaged around the debris on his desk, coming up with a loosely-bound file. "Here. You know the Luminous Steakhouse down on Aldrin Avenue?"
Kame did, though he'd never eaten there. He hadn't been out for many meals since moving to Lunacy. "I...know where it is?"
"Good enough. Take a look at the first profile in your hand - he should be familiar to you."
The profile belonged to one Taguchi Junnosuke, a tall, dark-haired Japanese male with a bright smile and a penchant for video games. More than a penchant, in fact. Taguchi was a thief, with two very unusual quirks to his modus operandi: he only stole from gaming companies and if he encountered any innocents while committing the theft they were always left incapacitated with laughter.
While these traits made him somewhat unusual, they hadn't, till recently, been enough to deserve attention from LIPS. Not until one month ago, when Taguchi had graduated from breaking into buildings on Earth to intercepting supply ships from Saturn, containing the latest in virtual reality consoles. He'd annoyed some big names in the game industry, and with the expansion of his interests to those between planets, he'd earned himself a LIPS file.
Which Kame had inherited. Two weeks ago he'd nearly caught up with Taguchi during a stake-out at the launch of Final Fantasy DCLXII, but the slippery thief had hit him with some sort of gun that left him helpless with laughter for the better part of the afternoon, and Kame had giggled hysterically on the floor while Taguchi, clad in a long black cape and carrying a giant sword, had lost himself in a crowd of cosplayers. "Mortified" didn't even begin to cover it.
"Yeah, he's familiar," Kame said through gritted teeth. "What about him?"
Captain Maynard leant down and pulled the next sheet from the file in Kame's hands. "We've finally received confirmation that he's going to be meeting this fellow here, and *he's* one we're really interested in."
The second profile was headed 'Ueda Tatsuya', and the tiny, badly-blurred photograph depicted a slender figure with plump lips and long, dark hair. That was about all Kame could make out.
He blinked. "That's a pretty girl, sir, but why are we interested in her?"
The captain snorted. "That's no girl, Kamenashi, no matter how pretty she - uh, *he* is. That's the only photograph anyone's ever managed to get of Ueda - we thought we had one with short, blond hair once, but no one believed it was the same person - so take a good look. I want you to bring him in."
"For what, sir?"
"For his involvement in over a hundred serious crimes, of course! Damnit, kid, weren't you paying attention at Monday's briefing?"
Kame rolled his eyes and prayed for some hapless underling to interrupt with a tray of coffee. "I have a bad memory, sir."
Maynard clapped his hands to his head. "Of course you do. I knew that. Ueda's a canny one. Has his hand in everything but never leaves a trail; he's a thinker and he's the one you go to if you want someone to disappear. Doesn't take care of it himself, of course. He's the man with the plan. We think he's behind half the assassinations in Lunacy, only we can't prove anything, and some of his suspected victims have worked for us before.
"He's got a better network of informants than we have, I'll warrant, and they know better than to talk to us. However..." The captain paused for a big dramatic flourish, and seemed disappointed when Kame didn't immediately give him a big, shiny-eyed look of anticipation. "We know he's meeting Taguchi tomorrow night. Ueda, shall we say, dabbles in the acquisition of specialised goods as a sideline, and there's a pair of original Famicom controllers going on display in the museum this weekend. Taguchi will go after them, there's no question about it, and word has it that Ueda has a buyer for one of them. He'll be getting Taguchi to do the work and giving him a cut of the sale."
"If you know this much already, why not just wait till Taguchi strikes the museum and catch him in the act?" Kame asked politely.
Captain Maynard seized the folder from Kame's hands and threw it back on the desk. His eyes shone with fever in a way Kame hadn't seen since the last time the captain had bawled out Ishida for skipping a shift to go to a strip club.
"Do that, and we'll only get Taguchi. Kid, I need you to be in that restaurant, recording their conversation, and we'll be able to get something concrete on Ueda. He's the important one. He always meets his agents in person once before letting them pull the job, and this is the first time we've had the details. I don't give a damn what happens with a couple of antique video game controllers but if I can nail Ueda we'll all be in line for promotion and maybe the academy will stop sending me hopeless slackers." The captain coughed and added, "Present company excepted, of course."
Kame spent the rest of the day filling out paperwork, in such a sleep-deprived daze that he occasionally signed his name 'Akanishi Kazuya' by mistake. This wouldn't have been a problem if Ishida hadn't been peeking over his shoulder at the time, and had somehow managed to remember that 'Akanishi' was the third man on board the Yunaka.
It was a long shift.
-----
Kame did slightly better in the sleep stakes that night, so by the time he made it to the restaurant the next evening, he felt reasonably confident that he wouldn't end up slumped over his steak. He'd managed to get the location of his quarry's table (Taguchi had made the booking under the not-particularly-subtle alias of 'Sephiroth Strife'), and it hadn't taken much persuasion on his part to guarantee himself and Aya the table next to them.
It certainly helped that the waiter had been so preoccupied with staring down the front of Aya's slinky black shirt that he'd have agreed to anything, up to and including signing his own death warrant. Kame, who'd seen it all before in the line of duty, suppressed a smirk and allowed himself to be shown to his seat.
They were taking no chances of screwing this one up. There were no table ornaments, no shrubs, no forms of decoration, absolutely nothing in the restaurant where a microphone might be secreted and everything was a bright, shiny white - aside from the furniture, which was transparent. Surveillance equipment would've stood out a mile.
They hadn't been able to fill in the steakhouse staff for fear of a leak, which meant Kame couldn't count on assistance from anyone other than Aya and the stunner he knew she had tucked in her evening bag. She sat with her back towards Taguchi's table, the better for the microphone concealed in her elaborate braid tie to pick up their speech.
This left Kame with a good view of his targets, when they arrived.
Taguchi Junnosuke showed up first, looking much more attractive than Kame had remembered. Perhaps it was the lack of a swirling black cape. He beamed brightly at the waiter, made a joke about "trouble and Strife", and settled down with a handheld game console to wait for Ueda, content to ignore the disgruntled stares of his fellow patrons.
Ueda Tatsuya put in an appearance at the same time as Kame's starter, nearly causing the unfortunate LIPS officer to spill soup down his shirt. Other diners, less coordinated, suffered unavoidable damage to their clothing.
Ueda's fault for being striking, Kame thought. The blurred photo hadn't done him justice by any means. Long, black hair spilled over the shoulders of his matching coat, which gaped open on a velvet V-neck with silver trim. The man was a study in black and silver; delicate, like fine jewellery, yet solid steel at the core. All eyes in the restaurant turned to watch as he took his seat...and every single one of them looked away again a second later.
Aya, chewing noisily on her chicken wing, had missed the whole spectacle. "Oi, Kamenashi, why does it feel like the temperature just dropped fifty degrees in here?"
"Ueda," Kame mouthed silently. He and Aya both had earpieces tucked under their hair so they could follow everything picked up by the microphone in addition to recording it on the small chip embedded in Kame's skull ring; the mic was controlled by a set of hidden buttons on Aya's bracelet.
They were treated to five minutes of Ueda and Taguchi placing their orders - the waiter kept dropping the stylus as he tapped the details into his datapad, which dragged the process out considerably - and it wasn't until the drinks arrived that the real conversation started.
"It's off," Ueda said flatly. "Thanks for dinner."
Taguchi's smile faltered for a brief moment before resuming its million-kilowatt brilliance. "But...but you said if I met you in person, we'd be okay. I didn't pass?"
Ueda shrugged. "Nothing to do with you. I was going to ask you to pick up a little something else for me while you were in there, but it was stolen a couple of days ago, before the museum ship left Earth, and I know it won't be on display anymore. Pull the job if you want but I'm not interested."
"And the buyer?"
"There was no buyer."
Kame groaned inwardly; the mouthful of sirloin steak, delicious only a second ago, lost its flavour and he swallowed it down with a gulp. If there wasn't going to be a crime committed, he was hardly going to get anything incriminating on Ueda.
Taguchi looked confused, sheepish, and slightly miffed all at the same time. "I'm kind of in a tight spot financially right now," he admitted. "I was counting on the sale. You think you could find a buyer, if I come out with both controllers?"
"I'm sure there are other gaming addicts out there who are as obsessed as you," Ueda assured him. "Though most of them aren't so..."
"Charming? Out-going? Handsome?"
"Narcissistic. I've never met a guy with so many pictures of himself in his room. Talking to you over the comm was very educational."
Aya giggled. "Is he good-looking, Kamenashi?" she whispered. "I can't see behind me."
Both of them were, though Kame wasn't going to admit it aloud. He waved his fork to hush her and stared at the side of Ueda's head, willing him to say something useful.
Taguchi unwittingly lent him a helping hand after he'd tucked into his main course with relish and he and Ueda had made comical small talk concerning tap dancers and vampires. "So what were you going to ask me to get for you?"
Hostile silence swamped their table, and Kame shook his earpiece irritably. He could see Ueda's mouth moving, but nothing was reaching him through the microphone. It took him a moment to realise that Ueda wasn't even whispering, merely mouthing the words. Kame's lip-reading wasn't bad, but his eyesight wasn't fantastic - consequently, he couldn't be sure he was picking up the correct words.
"Why's it called that?" Taguchi asked at normal volume.
"Don't you keep up with the news?"
"I'm not a jewel thief. The only diamond I'm interested in is a virtual baseball one."
"And the only one *I'm* interested in is Kizuna," Ueda said. "Named for the small flaw in the centre that looks like a pair of entwined rings - a bond, you know? It was supposed to go on display here this weekend, but it was stolen from a jewellery store in Tokyo a few days ago and no one's seen it since."
Ueda's expression was darker than his wardrobe; he was furious, albeit in an understated way. Kame slipped a discreet hand under his jacket to reassure himself that his stunner was within easy reach.
Aya raised an eyebrow at him. "This isn't the time to be feeling yourself up, Kamenashi."
"I'm not - oh, forget it." Kame didn't want to get embroiled in conversation lest he miss something at the next table; it was easier to let Aya think whatever she wanted.
Taguchi completely misread the danger signs written in large letters all over Ueda's face. "You've got a buyer all lined up, huh? And now you don't know where the diamond is."
"Don't think I won't find out." Ueda glowered at his giant T-bone steak with such venom that the meat practically separated itself from the bone with no need for a knife and fork.
Heavy boots clomped across the pristine restaurant floor, scattering serving staff in their wake, and Kame tore his eyes away from Ueda's lips to find he and Aya were no longer the only LIPS officers in the room.
Ishida Makoto and his fanclub had arrived.
"Nobody move!" Ishida strode up to them, groupies at his heels, and flashed his badge in Ueda's face. "Don't even think about going for a gun."
Ueda favoured Ishida with the same glare he'd used on his steak, but to less effect. "I'm not carrying a gun," he said mildly. "I don't believe in dressing up for dinner."
The comment went down well with Taguchi; less so with Ishida, to judge by his snarl. Kame was torn between demanding to know what the hell he thought he was playing at, and staying absolutely still in the hopes that no one would notice him. He went with the latter option.
"Don't believe in paying your parking tickets either, do you?" Ishida sneered. He waved a fistful of papers under Ueda's nose, dropping a few on his plate.
Ueda pushed his parking-ticket-covered food away in disgust and rose from the table, only to be pushed back down by Carl. "Not so fast," the big LIPS officer cautioned.
The temperature dropped another twenty degrees. "Take your hands off me before I break them."
"Four hundred and twelve unpaid parking tickets and threatening an officer of the law!" Ishida crowed. "Ladies and gentleman, Ueda Tatsuya-san has just won himself an all-expenses paid trip down to his local LIPS station!"
Taguchi scratched his nose. "You guys are LIPS? Then why do you care about parking tickets?"
Kame thought this was a valid point. Parking tickets, even those relating to spaceships, were generally the concern of the regular police force.
Ishida flashed the tickets before Taguchi's eyes. "He's parked his automobile illegally in two hundred and eight different cities, covering four planets, two moons..." he hesitated as he read out the top ticket, sounding slightly incredulous, "...and one semi-deserted asteroid?"
"I don't even own a car!" Ueda protested.
"Save your story for the courts."
Ishida pulled out a pair of handcuffs just in time to get his eye blackened by Ueda's killer left hook.
-----
"And that's when the fight started," Kame finished. He'd been called into Captain Maynard's office again, this time to explain why Ishida was skulking around with a swollen face and Ueda and Taguchi were both residing in Kurogin orbital prison.
The captain frowned. He'd been doing that a lot lately. "And where were you while all this was going on?"
"About half-way through my main course, sir."
"I see." Maynard pressed a button on his desk; the office was immediately filled with a low whine. The privacy settings were on high. "Look, Kamenashi, I like you, and more importantly, I trust you. So I trust that what I'm about to say won't leave this room. You got that, kid?"
Kame fervently hoped that the married father-of-two wasn't about to proposition him. Sleeping his way up the ranks wasn't an appealing prospect. "Got it, sir."
Maynard nodded. "I just wanted you to know that...Ishida and the others weren't acting on my orders last night. Or rather, Ishida wasn't. The rest will do as he says; I don't blame them for their part in it."
That was a surprise. "I...didn't expect to see them there. If we had all those parking tickets on Ueda, why not use them before?"
"Because we didn't have them. False, every last one. Somebody else knew Ueda was going to be there last night and wanted to make damned sure Ishida got to him, cutting you, me and everyone else out of the loop." The captain rubbed a weary hand across his brow.
"And Taguchi?"
"I think he was incidental. If he hadn't gotten caught up in the fight, he'd probably have walked."
From Kame's recollection, it wasn't so much that Taguchi had "gotten caught up in the fight", as that he'd accidentally tripped up Carl while diving for cover under the table. It had been enough to earn him a cell next to Ueda's.
"No, Ueda's the one they were after," Captain Maynard continued. "I've suspected Ishida of moonlighting for a good few months now, and nothing anywhere near as legal as your sideline as a poledancer!"
Kame felt his cheeks grow warm. "It was just one night, sir. I couldn't pay my bar tab, that's all."
Maynard winked. "Of course it was. Excellent performance, I thought. Must take the wife there sometime, I bet she'd like it.
"Anyway, my primary concern is that Ishida may be working for Johnny Kitagawa - on a freelance basis, at least. The old man's got his finger in a lot of pies, and if he didn't have help on this side of the law he'd have gone under by now. It would've been child's play to have those parking tickets faked, and if anyone could've known Ueda was in Lunacy, it would've been him."
Kame had heard of the Kitagawa Family - he'd lived in Tokyo, after all - but he'd never had dealings with them personally and maintained he was safer that way. Getting involved with gangsters, no matter how many legal interests they had, didn't do wonders for one's life expectancy.
"Ishida wants something from Ueda," Maynard mused. "He plans to question him personally. There wasn't much on the recording you and Aya got, though, and frankly, the man never struck me as the type to want video game controllers, no matter how valuable."
"They cancelled the job," Kame said absently, thinking back over the conversation. "Taguchi wanted to go ahead because he needed the money, and Ueda said he could probably find a buyer but he wasn't keen. He hadn't wanted the controllers in the first place."
Maynard snorted. "I know *that*, kid, but Ueda never said what he was after!"
But Ueda had, hadn't he? Kame remembered. Kizuna.
"Sir, you know anything about diamonds?"