2012-08-23 - Loaded: Life Has Been Unfaithful

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LOADED: Life Has Been Unfaithful
Featuring: Tatsuya Sudou, Nika Rumyantseva, Shoji Yamashita (NPCed by Mariko Ohmukai)
IC Date: September 19, 2011
OOC Date: August 23, 2012
Location: Club Zodiac, Sumaru
Summary: A traitor to the Yashida-kai crime family meets with Tatsuya Sudou, and plans are formed that will in no way go wrong.

Once upon a time there was a man named Shoji Yamashita. Shoji was a father, and a husband, and a little bit fat from too many years of not enough exercise and a love of rich food. His sedentary lifestyle was a side effect of his job -- crunching numbers, doing math, making phone calls. He was an important man, albeit a man with an amorphous jelly sac of a head, his neck bulging out of his suit collar like a muffin top. His haircut gave the top of his round head a squarish dimension that did not suit it, and his beady eyes and fat fingers only added to the general sense of ill fit that he exuded.

Of course, it's wrong to use the past tense about Shoji for the moment. Still, let's not forget what makes Shoji's job so important: he's the top accounts man for the Yashida-kai, a branch of the Yamaguchi-gumi seated, tenuously, in Sumaru. That alone is good reason for him to feel nervous, to sweat a bit more than usual, as he walks through Club Zodiac, sunglasses as ill-fitting a disguise as his suit is in general. He was told when to arrive, he was told what table to go to.

Shoji's palms are wet, one greased around the handle of a briefcase containing enough to get him killed a thousand times over. Tellingly, he uses his four-fingered hand to hold it. He walks and tries to keep cool. It's hard. He's making a huge mistake.


They let him through the employees-only door next to the bar, covering his entry with the strategic, precision timing more appropriate to well-trained soldiers than to the staff at a nightclub. But that's the Red Dragon's kingdom for you.

The trip through the Maze would have been disorienting, fraught with danger; treading too closely to certain floor panels, sadistically unmarked, brought a lash of sparks or a small gout of flame to zap and scorch unwary ankles. Every ivory wall looked the same, and the red miles of capricious flooring bore as little indication of direction as it did about its hidden traps. Even the dragons, carved and engraved and omnipresent, seemed to follow his progress with their empty eyes. Time lost all meaning.

Ten minutes or an hour or a year later, Yamashita would have stumbled across the grand door to the VIP Lounge. Within, tattooed Sumiyoshi-kai lounge upon luxurious furniture, drinking and smoking and gambling amongst themselves. Here and there, a Dragon lounges as well, identifiable by the deference of the yakuza if by no other device or distinction. They are mostly women, Yamashita might realise.

The buzz of conversation stills as he enters, but only briefly. One SK jerks his head toward a branch of the curving staircase. Sudou, the Red Dragon, holds court atop the mezzanine, his unmistakeable voice audible above the hush.

There are more dragons here, carved and engraved and frescoed and sculpted, and they all seem to have eyes, expectant and judgmental, for Yamashita alone.


Among the women is a gaijin girl, but she is not smoking, drinking or gambling. She's playing with a delicate-looking rosary necklace hanging from her neck, eyes surveying the persons gathered. Her interest in them seems minimal. Her gaze is fixed on the silver cross hanging at the end of the rosary.

Only when fresh blood enters do her green eyes wander. Her interest in the robust man with the briefcase is incredibly fleeting; he's gross, so her gaze filters him out for the time being. Sudou will get to him eventually, not that she really cares. Why is she even here?

Rolling out like some fat feline on the couch, she pushes the seated girl out and off, her actions met with a heavy huff before the nameless barely-legal wanders off to sit elsewhere. She exhales with a clearly-bored sigh, fingers rolling through the rosary beads to kill time.


Shoji Yamashita does not make eye contact with any of these men. He did not get to be this old by being stupid. Not that this isn't stupid. That's the thought Yamashita has -- it's written on the timorous curl of his too-full lips -- as the man himself enters and makes himself known. It's then, as everyone's attention gathers to one spot, that he notices the women.

To say the Yashida-kai has respect for women is to say that Hitler was one gallery showing away from really making it as a painter. Not only is it wrong, it's laughably inappropriate considering the reality of things. What are all these -- women doing here? Again, the question is slow but steady across Yamashita's expression, as his dark-lensed gaze passes over one, another... and Nika, in turn.

Gaijin women.

Still, Yamashita is led along until it's time to take the long walk by himself. He walks slowly up the staircase -- maybe a bit too slowly, but then, it's a great moment in history, so it's his right to savor it. When he reaches the top, he walks until the coterie of bodyguards make it obvious with their stairs that he should tread no further. And then the man bows, deeply, more deeply than his gut should really allow. "Sudou-san," is all he can think to wheeze, briefcase held against his shins.


Most of the conversation breaks off as the saiko-komon approaches, but the Sumiyoshi oyabun does not deign to take notice of Yamashita until after he's finished speaking -- and laughing. It's a high, bombastic sound, gleefully raucous; hearing it may feel rather like stepping into too-hot sunlight. But it's not as bad as-

"Yamashita-san!"

-Sudou's fire-red gaze, which snaps to the Yashida traitor and locks on, a glass-focused sunbeam enfleshed. The dragon king waves one languid hand inward, the finely-crafted kiseru entwined within his long white fingers leaving a trail of bluish smoke to hang lazily in the air as a species of directional marker. Surely Yamashita can grasp that, yes?

Further inspection would reveal that, in contrast to the glee in his voice and the flickering of his single eye, the rest of Sudou appears to have been all but poured into his brocade-upholstered couch. His collar is undone, the blood-red shirt revealing his white throat and a splash of the colour lately embedded into the perfect canvas of his skin; his sleeves are rolled to the elbow, but no tattoos extend beyond them. Irezumi take a great deal of time to complete, and Sudou has not been an oyabun for long.

"Sit, sit." A bodyguard shifts to the right, revealing an armchair. While Yamashita gets himself settled, the pale blond props himself up on a stack of pillows, crossing one long leg over the other as he moves, and generally makes no more than a token attempt to treat with the traitor as an equal, or anything like one. "What have you brought me?"

It's said with all the anticipation of a child eyeing a returning parent's suitcase, certain that their recent holiday has produced a fantastic souvenir.


Yamashita doesn't think to take off his sunglasses as he rises up and walks to be seated. His mouth hangs open stupidly -- not like a jawbone resting on the floor, but with just enough slackness to suggest some manner of illness. He lowers his heavy frame and rests the briefcase on the table. His jacket stays on. His arms are covered. Still, when he puts his hands down atop the briefcase, there are nine fingers to count. It speaks more than irezumi ever could.

The Yashida-kai breathes out. "Documentation," he says, averting eye contact with the leader of the opposition. "Front businesses yet to be employed by our own services... titles and deeds and plans of action kept in reserve for future laundering. I drafted them myself. No one knows them but me. Details of shipments that I have arranged... with this information, you would eat up seventy percent of the Yashida-kai's next shipment. Easily." He's looking at his hands. He is stuffy hesitance in the face of Sudou's languid, opium-laced candor.

"I... am concerned, Sudou-san," he notes, the sound quivering in his throat. "I wish to know who you will be using to receive the shipment... to perform the exchange." He almost looks up, then doesn't. "I will have to use some of my own people for this -- not Yashida-kai, independent contractors who care little past the cash -- but I need to know who I will be telling them they will be meeting. Otherwise... they will become suspicious... and may go above my head."

Yamashita finally looks up.


Nine.

Indeed, that number is telling.

Sudou stretches backward, then, and something pops. "Ahhh, a valuable gift indeed," he purrs, voice husky with smoke, his feline grin audible. "Tell me, and I'm certain you know I don't like to be lied to, how many copies of these documents are there?" One white hand cups his knee, then slides down a few inches as he speaks, coming to rest upon his thigh. Gathered into the confines of the couch like this, Sudou seems as coiled as the legendary beast he's adopted as his symbol. There's just so /much/ of him, and the black pinstripes racing down his ash grey waistcoat and trousers serve only to deceive the eye into believing him even taller and longer of limb.

He uncoils a bit after a moment, rolling over and wrapping around his nest of pillows, pressing his scar into the silk as Yamashita looks down at his maimed hands. The maneuver, completed easily and with no lack of grace, results in a disturbingly feminine drape.

It's what meets the saiko-komon's gaze as he looks up.

"'Concerned,'" Sudou repeats. He appears to be digesting Yamashita's fears, eye half-lidded in thought, iris a drop of blood behind a fence of white-gold. The kiseru touches his ghost-pale lips, its mouthpiece gleaming wetly as it finds the dragon's tongue, and he finally takes a contemplative drag off of the pipe.

That drop of blood slides up to Yamashita as he exhales, a red sun veiled by smog.

"Sestrenka!" is his only reply, loud enough to be heard below the mezzanine.


From the sofa a green eye lazily shifts toward the gathered saiko-komon and his newfound friend. There's no real look of interest in the blonde's gaze as she just blankly stares from over her knuckles, over the pearly-white beads of the rosary.

Only when there's a cry that's familiar to Russian-speaking ears does the young woman actually turn her gaze to the source of the voice. There's a vaguely bothered look on her face. Is he calling her that? Her lips pull into a thin line across her pale face.

"Tch," is her response, her body lazily rolling off the cushy sofa and getting back onto her two feet. "What?" she calls out, rubbing at the back of her head.


"I am not in the habit of making copies of anything," Yamashita says, quietly but resolutely. "I neither need them nor welcome the complications. These are yours. Once given, they cannot be taken back."

Then: Sudou calls out for his little buddy, and from the floor, that little buddy calls back. In a voice. A gaijin's voice. A gaijin woman's voice.

Even behind the sunglasses, the widening of Shoji Yamashita's small eyes is obvious, as is his alarm and displeasure. A gaijin, a woman, what the--


Tatsuya Sudou is not fluent in Russian, though what command of the language he does possess is passable. He is exactly the sort of asshole who insists on speaking to foreigners in their own language -- at least, enough to show he can; Nika has not escaped this quirk of his. It's customary for yakuza to refer to one another with familial terms and, in Sudou's mind, this is enough license for him to call her thus. Sestrenka, 'little sister.'

"Is that so?" the blond oyabun replies, watching the smoke rise from the bowl of his kiseru. "How exceptionally reassuring." Fangs gleam in his smile.

A little more loudly, "Be a good girl and come introduce yourself to Yamashita-san. He has a little task for you, one that will help us undercut the Yamaguchi-gumi." Honey drips into Sudou's voice as he speaks, still draped so artfully over that mound of pillows.

He pauses, then, as he glimpses the look of alarm that spreads across Yamashita's face.

"Yamashita-san..." The honey remains, but is now poisoned. "Is something wrong?"


Marching up with a notably harsh step to her stiletto heels, the tall blonde gives the nervous Yamashita a look that's sort of likened to a pissed off Rottweiler, but not so much the urge to rip his face off. She doesn't like him any more than he likes her. It shows.

Then Sudou goes and makes things worse. That elicits a pissy look from the Russian girl. She almost looks ready to pounce the one-eyed oyabun, but instead responds by delivering a derisive snort and tossing her head.

"Lady," is her response. She doesn't give a name at all. "Is all he needs to know."

As for undercutting the Yamaguchi-gumi, there is a rather disappointed look that follows. "What, no killing? Is this legitimate bullshit? Not interested!" Her hands rise, cross at the wrists before she shakes her head defiantly. "Get Izverg--Susumu--to do the bureaucratic shit. Is what Hideo has him around for and is grooming him for."

She concludes it with a face that looks very much like a Mister Yuck sticker.


Yamashita-san is, for better or for worse, a professional. Both Sudou and the gaijin catch him gawking, and at that moment his four-fingered hand goes to his tie, adjusting it without loosening it. My, he sweats a lot.

"...you are... an unconventional man, Sudou-san," Yamashita says, sounding like he's trying to smile through a mouthful of vomit and keep it from leaking out through his teeth. "Lady," he repeats, breathing in once, deeply. Not quite a sigh. Close.

"My person will be a courier. She has no affiliation to anyone, and she never knows what she's carrying. She just knows who to give it to and to go the fuck home. Some... dyke bousouzoku." Yamashita waves a hand dismissively. "You decide the location, tell me, and I tell her. And she'll go. She'll use the password phrase in the files here." He pats the briefcase again.

"But..." Yamashita asks, pointedly of Sudou and not of Nika, "will she be meeting... Lady, or this 'Susumu'...?"


Sudou meets Nika's feral glare with a playful grin, daring her to pounce the way her bright green eyes threaten. Yamashita may get a carnal vibe off of their momentary posturing, suspicious and prejudiced as he is.

"I need you," he replies to Nika's objections, blood-red eye flickering. "Should anything go awry, I need you to protect Kamiya-kun." His voice is honey again, golden and dripping out around the scale-etched mouthpiece of his kiseru, but it carries a note of iron; he will not be refused.

Smoke curls upward, dragging bluish fingers through Sudou's flaxen bangs. "'Unconventional' is certainly /one/ way to put it," the dragon king remarks. His gaze burns a streak in the air as it tracks from Nika to Yamashita. "...Perhaps I ought to remind you, if you didn't know already, that I cannot abide racists." Despite the heady opium-tinged smoke in the air and his boneless, feminine posture, Sudou speaks with steely clarity. "Do you happen to know why that is?"

He lets the question hang, the tension between them stretching it taut.

"Your courier will be meeting one, the other, or both," Sudou continues, as cheerfully as if the previous few moments had not happened. "Where one goes, the other tends to follow." The shrugging of a broad shoulder depresses a divot into a silken pillow. "Tell her both will come, but not to get her knickers in a twist if she only sees one. You worry too much, Yamashita-san." He exhales, dismissively.


The question is answered -- after a fashion. Yamashita's anger -- what little of it sizzles under the blubber -- is tamed by the veiled ferocity of the younger man, and his head dips, chin-like expanse between jaw and neck quivering for a second. He is a shamed man. "I... understand," he murmurs.

The talk returns to business. Yamashita seems relieved by that, if mildly uncomfortable with -- well, all of it. But what's a little light treason if not uncomfortable? "Very well, then," the man says, and with his fat hands he pushes the briefcase forward across the table. "I believe our business, then, is concluded." There will be pleasantries. A bow. Men leading a man away. It's all quiet and mundane, exactly how things tend to be before catastrophe.

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