บท 22: The Nails That Stick Out
"Hey, Misaki? Ashihara said to check your inbox, there's been an order from the Chief."
Senior Police Officer Sawaki Itsuro barely managed to conceal his resentment as he relayed the message before walking back to his desk.
Like the rest of his brothers-in-arms at the RCPD, Itsuro had been shocked and dismayed when he reported for work that morning and found that the detainee that had been held in the interrogation room had died under mysterious circumstances. Even then, he managed to shelve his misgivings over taking advantage of someone's death to further his career long enough to consider the merits involved in volunteering to help inspect the crime scene and look around for any clues the perp may have left behind. It would've been the perfect chance for him to show his peers and superiors just what he could do, and to convey his desire to be transferred to Investigations.
'Hell,' thought Itsuro with a smirk. 'It'd let me do some actual good, instead of being stuck at a desk all day.'
He, Itsuro, honestly meant no disrespect toward his colleagues over here in Supply and Logistics. On the contrary, he knew full well how important their role was within the RCPD. After all, it was their department that ensured that all personnel had the supplies and equipment they needed, whether for office work or desk duty, and it was hardly an exaggeration to say that any holdups on their part could severely compromise the rest of the police force's ability to do their job. All the same, Itsuro simply felt his skills and talents were better off being devoted to the investigation of crime scenes and pieces of evidence, rather than being wasted spending the bulk of his time at work making phone calls, and placing orders for supplies and equipment, and dealing with piles upon piles of paperwork.
Unfortunately for him, their superiors had other ideas.
"Sorry, Sawaki," Detective Ashihara Riku said when Itsuro came across him in the hallway leading to the interrogation room. "Chief's orders – this one's ours to handle. Though since you're here anyway, there's something I need you to do for me…"
He didn't see the harm in it, so he obliged.
And then he found out, much to his irritation, that the 'something' Ashihara needed done for him was passing along a message.
'Honestly, am I a cop or a gopher?'
As demeaning as he found the task, Itsuro nevertheless agreed to carry it out. When he asked what the message would be, Ashihara did explain that recent events would require the placement of urgent orders for arms and ammunition. Beyond that, however, he declined to say just what exactly they would be ordering, on the ground that the Chief specifically instructed that only a select handful were authorized to know.
"All I can tell you for now is that it's something for the maniac who did this," said the detective as he jerked his head in the direction of the scene of the crime. "'Be prepared', they said. That saying very much applies here, wouldn't you say?"
'Be prepared', he said. If Itsuro's guess was right, the order was probably for new guns, bullets, or hardware – or, more likely than not, all of the above – separate from the standard-issue weapons and equipment with which they were supplied at regular intervals, though it was anybody's guess whether those new toys were for the use of the entire RCPD. If the Chief himself had made the call, that likely meant that whoever – or, God forbid, whatever – they were dealing with was dangerous enough to warrant something extra.
Maybe, just maybe, the rest of the force would finally get some new toys to play with.
'What wouldn't I give for some of those…'
In the past 2 years since Sawaki Itsuro had joined the force, he couldn't help but notice how the weapons and equipment available to members of Chief Hikawa Ryoma's personal staff tended to be different from everyone else's. For instance, the handgun normally issued to members of the RCPD was the New Nambu M60, a 5-shooter double-action revolver that first saw use in 1960 and had remained the standard sidearm for all policemen nationwide even well into the 21st century. Given the extremely rare occurrence of gun deaths in their country, coupled with the fact that their laws made it highly difficult for common citizens to have guns, the idea was that the average cop was unlikely to require much more in the way of firepower.
The Chief's boys always get the cool stuff, Itsuro bitterly noted, his fingers flying all across his keyboard as he hammered away at the report his immediate superior was expecting by the end of the day.
While they themselves didn't flaunt or otherwise draw attention to it, more than a few within the RCPD had noticed how the members of the Chief's personal staff all kept Western-made guns as personal firearms. Detective Ashihara's firearm of choice was a Colt M1911 that featured extensive customizations in addition to engravings that made it look cooler but otherwise provided no tactical advantage whatsoever. Ichijou and Narutaki both carried Beretta M9s, and even Senior Officer Misaki Satsuki – the petite girl he'd just been to see, one of three females who belonged to what the rank-and-file had come to refer as the RCPD's very own Dirty Dozen – carried the same variant of the Heckler & Koch Mark 23 that had once been adopted by the US special forces.
"Heh," he muttered to himself with a smirk. "I guess a cute girl with a big gun does make for quite the turn-on."
Chief Hikawa Ryoma himself favoured a Desert Eagle. In fact, that was the exact same gun he used whenever he'd demonstrate for the rookies during the RCPD's annual seminar on gun maintenance and gun safety. And though Itsuro hadn't seen very much of the others, it was easy to presume that their tastes in personal firearms were similar. When he asked Ashihara about it, the detective simply laughed and explained that their preferences had been influenced by all the first- and third-person shooters they loved to bond over in their downtime.
"We've all had to save up to 2 years' worth of pay to afford these, paperwork and all," Ashihara said. "It's not a cheap passion, in other words."
Indeed, it wasn't. Some of the rank-and-file couldn't help but sulk when they considered the vast difference between themselves and the Chief's personal staff in terms of equipment. Itsuro was more controlled and reserved about it, but even he couldn't stop himself from feeling a twinge of envy and resentment whenever he caught a glimpse of Misaki cleaning her Mark 23 every now and then when there was a lull in their work. Whether or not they'd bought those with their own money, there were quite a few in the RCPD who wondered if the Dirty Dozen's choice of firearms was their way of setting themselves apart from their colleagues.
'…Whatever.'
'The nails that stick out eventually get hammered down.'
Itsuro finally managed to finish the lengthy report an hour later, upon which he printed it out, placed it inside a plastic envelope, and sprinted out the door. He then made his way down the RCPD's west wing to his immediate superior's office, where he managed to walk in just as said superior had finished shaking hands with a visitor.
And when the visitor saw herself out, Itsuro promptly placed the envelope on his superior's desk. "Here's the report, boss," he said. "I worked on this all morning."
She smiled.
"Well done, Itsuro," his superior said with an approving nod. "I knew I could count on you."
He then turned to leave, but she stopped him.
"Hey, are you okay?" she asked, concerned. "If you want, you can stick around and tell me about it."
Itsuro took her up on the offer.
And when he did, the discussion that followed between him and his superior proved to be highly illuminating.
'The nails that stick out eventually get hammered down.'
------
That evening, at the other end of the city…
"Let's eat!"
Asakura Dan and his buddies shared a hearty cheer as they greeted the weekend at one of the many bars in Rakuen's bustling night market.
After the disastrous delivery a week ago, not to mention the harrowing encounter that followed, he and his boys agreed that a night's relaxation and enjoyment would do them all some good. They decided to meet at the city's night market for dinner, and possibly a few drinks at one of the many bars in the area. Once there, Dan then dispersed the gang all over the night market in twos and threes so they could buy food from the different stalls and booths that had set up shop for the evening. When they eventually returned to the long table they'd occupied in the middle, the gang had bought enough food to feed at least two dozen people.
"Eat up, boys," beckoned Dan with a sweeping gesture at all the food that sat on their table. "There's money to be made, and we do need our strength, don't we?"
And so they did. Dan watched the guys help themselves to the food they'd ordered, right before he himself took a huge bite out of one of the dozen triple bacon cheeseburgers he'd bought off one of the stalls. If there was anything he learned in the near-decade he'd been plying his trade, it was the importance of eating, drinking, making merry, and generally getting as much enjoyment out of life as was possible at any given moment. Theirs was a highly hazardous line of work, after all. And as they learned the hard way not too long ago, any one of them could meet their maker when they least expected it.
'...That was horrifying,' thought Dan as he ripped off more chunks from his half-eaten burger.
Having been at it for as long as he was, Dan had been sure that he'd seen and been through it all. He'd gotten into drawn-out and often bloody shootouts with rival gangs and the authorities alike. He'd taken his fair share of bullet and stab wounds, too, though thankfully, only a handful of those were to vital areas of his body. And unfortunately, he'd lost his share of friends to the life they led, and he'd even held a few of them as they died in his arms. In those cases, it was all he could do to slip an unmarked envelope full of money under his departed friends' doorsteps. But each and every time, they'd all managed to bounce back somehow.
'That kid, though…'
'…Just what the hell WAS he?'
Dan wasn't easily shaken. But as he devoured the last of the burger and moved on to a second, even he had to admit that the kid they'd run into that night was one of the few who managed to shake him. They shot him full of holes, only for him to stand back up and regenerate from those wounds as though they never existed. Hell, he shot the kid at point blank range, right in the middle of the forehead, but even that hardly did anything, if at all.
'Aren't people supposed to die when they're shot at least two or three dozen times?'
In the end, all Dan got out of the encounter was a nasty hit in his cranium from when the kid clocked him with the butt of his own gun.
'Damn, it still hurts,' he thought, wincing as he rubbed the bruise that laid right underneath his black bonnet that concealed it.
With the exception of Haru's friend Ayato, who they hadn't seen since, the rest of them somehow managed to make it out of it alive. Even so, Dan could tell from the looks he saw on his boys' faces the following day that they'd all been scarred by what happened. Haru in particular had barely spoken since that night. And when he, Dan, asked what was wrong, the only response he got was a dead-eyed stare not unlike what one would expect from war vets suffering from PTSD.
"Can't say I blame you, but you'll have to get over it sooner or later," he told the younger man. "Pull yourself together, Haru."
'Maybe you should listen to your own advice, Dan,' he told himself sternly in his head as he recalled the words he told his friend. 'You're dead if you space out in the middle of a job.'
Just then, Dan felt the smartphone in his pocket vibrate, so he took it out to see who it was and what they had to say.
'Oh, an email,' he thought when he tapped the notification and it took him to his mailbox. 'Another job, huh?'
Asakura Dan deleted the email as instructed, though not before downloading and opening the attachment containing the instructions.
'...A hired hit, huh?'
He scrolled down further…
'…Wait, what the hell!?'
…At which point Asakura Dan's eyes went wide when he saw just who the target of this contract was.
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