“Onjy nl wdyl! Iyw’v cyw e jnzy nl!”
“Come on then! Let’s get a move on!”
Felicia rolled her eyes at the brute shouting orders as she skidded down the backdoor’s railing. Four more thieves came panting after her, barely swinging the door shut before a spray of gunfire hit it. The thieves threw themselves down the steps in a jumble to get clear, where Felicia stood perched at the end of the railing. With three well-timed shots through the door, three bodies hit the ground on the inside of the building, and Felicia holstered her weapon with a grin.
“You couldn’t have done that before?” one of the Ronin thieves asked, exasperated. His expressions were obscured by the dark of night, but the tone of his voice betrayed his fear at the close call.
“Last set of bullets,” Felicia sighed, turning out the ammo bag on her side. “Funds are tight.”
The Ronin band collected themselves for a moment, the majority of the group exhausted and clutching their earnings tight.
“I’ll call ahead for the pickup,” she started. “We’re far away from-“
Felicia felt the cold steel against her head just a split-second before the gun was fired. Her vision split as the trigger was pulled, the rough metal of the gun sliding against the side of her mask. Her hands flew up to her ears, but the sound was too sudden and threw her off guard. She stumbled as the first moment passed, barely parsing the presence of a man holding the gun beside her head.
White dots finally faded from view as she regained her footing and slapped herself back into focus. Crashing into the trash cans beside the building, she spun to face the attacker. He fired silently, picking off the final members of her crew in flashes of white. Felicia held still, barely registering their deaths as she angrily shook her head. The ringing in her ears was too much.
By the time Felicia could open her eyes again, the man had turned to face her, watching calmly. He wore the uniform of the Tokyo Police, but she recognized his face instantly. She warily put a hand on her waist to pull a hidden knife, but he spoke first:
“Don’t draw arms. Your team is dead and I know how to use a firearm just as well as you now.”
Felicia’s gold eyes narrowed into slits, her lips peeled back into a snarl. The man stood calmly with the gun pointing down, but Felicia could feel the tension in the way he held himself. Every bit of common sense was telling Felicia to stand still, to finally give in and end this peacefully so she could show him up another day. But that same instinct was also pointing towards the arm cast the man was in. He’d broken his arm recently. If she struck his left side with enough force then-
The man fired a shot into Felicia’s leg before she could even twitch a muscle. She let out a howl of pain before dropping. She began crawling towards the brick wall in a haze of confusion, but her body was pulled up by the man and placed gently in a sitting position against the wall before she could make it that far. Gripping the bullet wound with both hands, Felicia let out a shuddering sigh as the gun was placed against her skull.
“Are we done, now, sister?” Felicia’s eyes flashed up to her brother as he watched with indifference. She spat on the ground at his feet, and he gave a bit of a shrug before holstering his gun. Pulling out a little flipbook on his side, he made a tally mark, then sat down beside her.
“Felicia Felicia, is that what you’re going by? Do I need to call you that, since all your reincarnating buddies are dead?”
“The Drifters left already. This was just the dregs of the Ronin family,” Felicia hissed through pained breath, still clutching her leg. Blood sept through the denim, gluing her fingers to the unsightly fabric. “Do I need to use a new name for you?”
“I’m just called Yellowtail here,” he admitted. “It’s a type of rat. Figured you’d find me faster if I made it easy like that.”
“Didn’t realize that dad made you a cop until I saw you chasing us after the ramen shop incident. I would have covered my trail a lot better if I’d known that you had all those resources at your disposal. Fuckin’ unfair, by the way. Do you know how long I’ve been crashing at the Ronin headquarters because I can’t make a goddamn cent in this godforsaken town?”
“Unfair, huh? Sure. Do me a favor and lean forward so I can actually see how unfair your fate was.”
Yellowtail reached over and gingerly began untying the cat mask around Felicia’s face. She tried to withdraw, but shock had settled into her system and her movements were meek at best. As her brother fussed with the mask, she instead focused her time into positioning a hand onto the knife behind her waist.
He paused for a moment to reach by her ear. With a yank, he pulled the communicator out from where she’d positioned it back there. Overwatch’s voice was indistinguishable as Yellowtail inspected the device, and with an exasperated look at Felicia he clicked the device off and threw it aside.
With a grimace, Yellowtail finally pulled the mask off, inspecting Felicia’s face. The side facing him was better healed than when he’d seen her last, but she could tell from his expression that he wasn’t pleased. That was fine, neither was she.
“When dad let you out a few months before me, I had no idea what he was going to do to save you. Where did he take you?”
“Nowhere important.”
“I thought that he’d heal your face, but he didn’t. You look like shit. There’s actually a goddamn hole in your face.”
“Oh shut up.”
“Where did dad take you?”
Felicia kept her hand frozen behind her back, trying desperately not to move. It was easy since moving threw her leg into spasms. “If I say you won this round, can I bleed out in peace?”
Yellowtail sighed before pulling his gun back out again and bouncing it loosely in his grip. “Lady P said I just have to bring you back. Didn’t say I had to keep you intact.”
Felicia paused for a moment. It was a hollow threat, but she needed him distracted anyways.
“He brought me to a time and place that could treat the wound. It wasn’t as modern as this place, though. He had me staged as an injured villager, rescued by a band of Apothecaries, and recruited into their ranks a while later. By the time I made myself at home, he fetched me to come here and compete.”
Felicia’s grip slowly tightened on the hilt of the blade. Yellowtail made no indication he’d seen her hand move behind her back, and instead was messing about with a pack of cigarettes.
“Speaking of getting medical treatment,” Felicia said though gasping laughs, “Can I please go now?”
But Yellowtail remained stubborn, lighting up a cigarette and taking off his officer’s cap. “Why didn’t you listen to Tai when she sent all those letters? You were working for Lucielle Johnson, you know that right? The man who started all this shit with Lady P and your little Drifter pals?”
“The Patriarch is a man to be feared, little brother,” Felicia laughed. “Just because you don’t get it doesn’t mean that you have to hate it. He saved my life. He was supposed to help me beat you.”
Yellowtail’s eyes went wide as he lit the cigarette. “Holy shit, you’ve actually gone off the rails. Do you even realize-“
There were three breaths where Felicia took action. The first breath that Yellowtail breathed was when she began to pull the knife from her back. Her spine twisted at an awkward angle as she attempted to spin against brick wall without moving her injured legs. The second breath was hitched as Yellowtail registered the movement. He slammed the bone of his arm across her chest, trying to pin her before she could sink the knife into his kidney. As Felicia pulled a second knife with her free hand, allowing the first to bounce off the brick wall, she realized her mistake. Yellowtail only had one good arm, now thrown against her, and in that arm he still held the loaded gun. Yellowtail drew his third breath as Felicia’s knife scraped along his outstretched arm, in a knee-jerk reaction his finger twitched on the gun’s trigger.
Felicia’s head swung back and then slumped forward, the bullet jostling her body. Yellowtail threw the gun away as her body went limp. He waited for a second, unsure of what could have happened. He was worried whether she was faking it, or whether perhaps he’d shot her in a vital organ. As he peeled away his arm, however, he found the bloodstain issuing from the upper portion of her shoulder. His brow furrowed and after a few long moments he let out a long sigh.
“Damn it.”
Reaching for his radio, Yellowtail gritted his teeth. The knife she’d raked across his good arm had sliced deep through his entire forearm, rending it near useless.
“Hey, it’s Yellowtail. Caught those Yakuza behind the old market. One’s still alive, needs an ambulance.”
“You found em’? Congrats, Yellowtail! Was your sister one of them this time?”
“Yeah,” Yellowtail said, shifting over to try to position Felicia’s limp form onto the ground. “That’s the one that needs medical attention.”
“Oh shit, but you actually caught her? I thought you’d be out for months trying to-“
Yellowtail turned the volume on the radio down slowly. No need to pretend to be friends with these people any more now that he’d won the game. He laid down cautiously on his side, leaning on his hip to prop him up as he tried to use his “good” hand to stop the bleeding from Felicia’s shoulder. Ideally, the other Ronin members’ bodies should have been moved, but he didn’t have the time or stamina to pull that off. For now, he just wanted to make sure Felicia stayed alive.
There was silence for a while as Yellowtail laid there, waiting for help to arrive. It came faster than he hoped, in the form of a man in plain black robes.
“What a city.” The man said breathlessly, staring through the alleyway up at Tokyo. “A good place to have your first win in, what, six months?”
Yellowtail kept silent at the remark, choosing instead to press his forehead into the asphalt in a weak attempt at a bow.
“Help is on the way for your sister. Then, we can talk about the next place in mind. I’ll need you to pick up some groceries.”