The Fire Shadow

RYUU

Predictably, Yuki was already there when Ryuu got to the Warehouse at 8 o'clock in the morning. She had probably been there for half an hour already. She was waiting in one of the briefing rooms, a small space, bare-walled, with a couple of old leather couches and a wide low table, on which Yuki had already projected a variety of maps and instructions from her phone.

"Good morning, Tiny Boss," said Ryuu, thowing his body next to her in the couch.

Ryuu was three times as big as Yuki was, but she kept his friendly tackle at bay with a firm push of her small hands.

"Don't," she said. "I will kill you."

Her voice was serious, but Ryuu laughed at the teasing glint in her eyes.

"So we're going together again, huh?" said Ryuu. "It's been a long time."

Yuki nodded. Ryuu and her had always been sent on most operations together, but Ryuu had had some trouble in his last operation, and it had already been four months since Nguyen had called on him.

"Will you be alright?" asked Yuki, frowning slightly.

"Yeah," he said. "Where's Kaito?"

Yuki looked doubtful, but she let it go and shrugged her shoulders.

"Present," came a voice, loudly, and they both turned to see Kaito entering through the door, with Nguyen Thanh in tow.

Ryuu, Chinatsu and Kaito had known each other since they were children, when Kaito arrived one sunny winter day at the Hanaoka Orphanage, after both his parents were killed on a robbery at the fruit shop they owned. The three of them entered the Fire Shadow on the same day.

Kaito's nose was swollen, and the skin under his half-shut left eye, was an ugly purple color. Some nights before, Kaito had gotten drunk on The Arcade. Usually, he was a pretty chill guy, as chill as someone owning two snakes and a tarantula as pets could be, but that night he had been on edge for some reason he hadn't bothered to tell them, and so his drunkenness had taken on an aggressive tone. It was the first night in a very long time that they had all managed to meet for drinks at The Arcade, and no one had been willing on being the one to tell him to tone it down. That was, until he lost a game of poker dices, and instead of having the appointed loser shot, he started shouting at everyone involved in the game about cheating and foul play.

Yuki was a very calm and patient person, Ryuu knew, until her pride was wounded, which was, he had to say, a pretty easy thing to do. After just ten seconds of Kaito's angry and drunken accusation, Yuki grabbed his shoulder and landed a punch to his nose.

"Shut the fuck up, you drunk clown," she had said, and then swiped his feet from under him, so that he landed on The Arcade's sticky floor, grumbling.

The next day, when Ryuu texted him to ask how he was feeling, he told him he had a terrible headache and a broken nose.

"Good morning," said Nguyen, sitting in the free couch.

They all nodded back. Nguyen was no nonsense man, so as soon as Kaito took a seat next to Ryuu, he started explaining their oncoming assignment.

"As you can see, I sent the instructions and necessary materials to Yuki," started Thanh. "She will be the leader this time."

Ryuu had already known Yuki would be the leader. Neither him nor Kaito were very good at planning and maintaining a cool head in difficult situations. Their specialties lay elsewhere. As long as they had clear orders, they would do their work without problems.