Worker 3 takes the Total Defense action and moves away.)
He's board-man, he's arrow-man, but he's not hit-man - the wild swings are well off the mark, and Takao doesn't have to expend any breath to dodge them. The other guy - whose only contribution so far was being able to briefly trip up Takao - decides that he's had enough from Takao's haymaker and stumbles off, weaving past the general chaos on his way to the exit.
"One of your buddies is down, and one's running away. Are you going to back down, or do I have to bang your head a few more times against those boxes?"
"Mura will certainly hear about this. First, you don't give me my stuff, then you try to beat me up. I should call Ikishi's men here for that. And what's with those arrows? That doesn't look legal at all!"
Reluctantly - very reluctantly - the worker leads Takao to a less-demolished corner of the warehouse, then hands over a stack of scrolls. Perusing the documents, Takao can't locate the shipping number he remembers from Genji's manifest - either the shipment hasn't gotten here yet, or it never passed through here in the first place, or something sneakier is going on.
A top-to-bottom search of the warehouse seems imprudent, especially as Takao can hear whistles in the distance, coming closer - if he doesn't miss his guess, that's the sound of the police.
"See, that wasn't so hard", Takao says as he finishes leafing through the scrolls.
"I believe I've imposed enough on our time, and it looks like you have some cleaning up to do."
Takao strolls out of the warehouse, and keeps up a leisurely pace until he's out of sight. Then he picks up the pace substantially. It can't hurt not to be around when the police gets there. And he had another appointment anyway.
Discretion is the better part of valor, and Takao knows when he's outstayed his welcome. With swift steps, he hurries outside and into the side alleys, putting some distance between him and the police whistles. A few tense minutes later, he's certain enough that he's lost them, and picks his way back through the city towards the canals. It's early afternoon by the time he makes it back there, catching Ta in the middle of her well-earned lunch break. As she sees him approach, she smiles and points for him to sit next to her on a blanket. When he sits down, she picks up her well-stocked bento box and puts it between the two of them.
"I heard the cops are backing off on their investigation, but you don't like you got the message," Ta says with a smirk, drawing the back of her finger over her cheek - no doubt miming some minor cut Takao took in the warehouse fight without even noticing. "Find out anything?"
Takao sits down on the blanket and puts the bottle of shochu that he picked up on the way between them.
"You sounded a bit disappointed that the others don't take you along for drinking. I can't guarantee that I'll stick around long enough for you to drink me under the table, but it's a start."
"It's... complicated", he replies to her question. "Justice will be served, I promise you that."
"I have a question for you: last night, which two points were connected by the route on which Iromi, Sho, and Hideo were keeping watch? I think someone took them drinking to keep them away from the canals."
Ta gladly uncorks the shochu and pours herself a finger or two into her cup. As she sips it, she thinks about Takao's questions for a moment. "Well, the thing is, they weren't on duty. We don't get much priority traffic after nightfall, so we just keep one route open and close the rest." She nods to a nearby bollard. "You see that? We run a chain across the channel and lock it at both sides. You can run an empty flat barge under those if you're careful, but anything that's loaded won't get through."
That prompts a new line of thought from her. "Come to think of it, Hideo's route - route three - that was open in the morning. I didn't think much of it, he's forgotten it before, but...hm. The traders should know better than to use a canal with no guide on station, but if anyone came in here last night that I didn't see, they would have gone that way. All the routes lead into the city lake and the canals from there, so there's not much difference in the routes - I mean, it takes you past a few houses, but..."
"Cutter! Cutter" comes the call, amidst the thunder of hooves - and Takao's barely gotten up from his lunch. He turns to see RZA on a galloping horse heading down the dirt path along the canal, his face shrouded in panic. With a yank of the reins, he stops the horse just in time to keep from trampling Ta, but can't avoid it rearing up, almost falling off the beast. The horse has barely settled down again when RZA reaches behind his back and throws Takao a cloth-wrapped bundle - which contains Takao's swords. He doesn't know how RZA knew where they were stored and doesn't even want to venture a guess as to how the ninja got them.
"We've cocked it up!" RZA shouts. "Get up here, I'll explain -"
(Peter Jackson Chase Cam: a steel-shaft arrow rockets across the lake, leaving a wake in the water beneath. Time slows down as it approaches the group, clearly heading for Takao's head. Bullet-time rotation until we end up on RZA's belt, where a hand ever-so-slowly reaches for something that glints in the light. Zoom in on the shuriken, lock on it as RZA throws it - two more glints to each side, for a total of three bits of metal he sends flying. As the shuriken carve through the air with their own wakes, bullet-time again to rotate to the side, catching the shuriken and arrow from the side as they go on a collision course. Rotate further, falling behind the arrow as an impact knocks it off its path, to the right and below. Chase Cam as it flies just past Takao turning his head - the wake of the arrow hits Takao in the face, making him squint a little - then back to normal speed, still chasing the arrow, which rapidly crushes to black.)
"Bloody hells!" Takao hears RZA call behind him, but his eyes instinctively fix on something on the lake - and though it is two hundred yards away, Takao can see it clearly: a man clad head to toe in black, except for white bandages covering his entire right arm. His left hand holds a bow as tall as a man that glints like obsidian. Takao can feel the figure's glare on him even from that far away, and just as he realizes that the figure is not actually on top of a boat or a platform or, really, anything, it sinks down beneath the water.
And that's when Ta screams. All eyes fly to her as she scurries away from the steel-shafted arrow that had lodged into the ground almost up to the fletchings. Nobody seems to be hurt, but...
He turns back to the lake: "What the hell was that??"
The threat seems to be over for now, but who knows what else the mystical bowman has up his sleeve. Takao swings himself onto the horse. "Who on earth did you piss off this time?"
"Oh, that was all you, cutter," RZA replies, turning the horse back around and letting it pick up speed. "I was just minding Mura's business for him, flipping a few pages here and there, when this lad comes running down the alley shouting his name - I made my exit right quick, good thing that, because fatman stomped up the stairs with the runner. He didn't much fancy what the lad was telling him, something about you showing up someplace and making a right mess of it? Circumstances being, I figure I'm not getting back in there without a fight I don't want, so I better go find you and get you off the street before Mura does it. And I swear to the bloody gods I have no idea who that archer was."
"Also, if you've got a hidey-hole hereabouts, I wouldn't mind going there right now!" RZA adds.
"Lie low? Now?? We just kicked the... Wait, you didn't want any credit. I just kicked the hornets nest and got results beyond my wildest expectations! We need to figure out what's actually in that warehouse. I found crates of arrows, which I thought was a bit weird, because I thought Mura was more dealing in gonnes. There's got to be something else there, otherwise Mura wouldn't send a silencer after me."
"Tell you what: you go back into that warehouse, and I'll make sure everyone's looking in the right direction. How did you get my blades, anyway? Did you get the gonnes, too? Oh, there they are. I'll need that horse. I'm going for a ride around the lake."
Takao was a bit more concerned than he let on. None of the thugs had run before the brawl, and it hadn't been a half hour since. They had found him fast, and the archer was good, no doubt. Fortunately for Takao, that bow didn't look like a good weapone for a fight in the city.
"Did you get anything else from the fat man, or from the records?"
"Woah woah woah woah, cutter," RZA says. "That was me sounding a bloody retreat! You've got rather a lot of people cross with you, don't you? At this rate Ishikawa's after your arse, too, so it won't do for me to be seen with you. I'm getting away from this load of bollocks. The weapons are my going-away present - but they're, uh, well, I nicked them, so you might not want to go showing up at the pawn shop and ask for a bloody refund, savvy?"
RZA sighs.
"If you want to stay here and get a flagpole rammed through your noggin, that's your call. Take the bloody horse, too, I'll just nick another. But you're in your own time now, cutter. This ninja's headed back home, to lose some heat and rethink a few of my life choices."
"Why would Ishikawa be after me? I haven't done anything illegal. I went by a warehouse to ask a few questions. The workers decided they wanted to punch my face in, which I had issues with, but I didn't start the fight."
"And what's your plan, anyway? Hide, and hope they don't find you? Look, there is a lot behind this, is all I'm going to say. There are big plots in motion that could change the face of the Empire forever, and your friend Ishikawa is among the people who stand to lose everything. But to stop these plots, we need evidence that they are occurring. Mura is involved somehow, I'm almost certain of it, and by the way he's reacting, I've poked into something sensitive. You can go on an run, but if I've ever needed a ninja, it's now.
"If you're not going to stay, you might as well take the horse. I won't need it."
"Uh huh," RZA says. "You went by the warehouse, or in it? You took a peek inside, didn't you, talking about the arrows and what. You see, there's getting jumped on the street, and that's not a crime. But then there's trespassing and putting the beatdown on people who wanted to throw you out of their place. Bit of a difference, that."
"Listen, cutter, you sound a little confused. Ishikawa is not my friend. You're not my friend. I think you're both agreeable sorts and I'll work with you if there's coin in it. But the plots you're talking about? Doing the right thing? That's shite. If I had cause higher than coin, I wouldn't be a bloody ninja. Change the face of the Empire forever my arse! Whoever ends up on top, there'll still be work for me. So, unless there's a payday in this - and a good one! - I'm not sticking my neck out for it. Did you get all that?"
MikeS
