[center][url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5278655][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/617914243760783381/866258589646323732/thumbnail_yuuya.png[/img][/url][/center][i]When he didn't know whether to pity the others or envy them, Yūya resigned himself to waiting, and listening. He ached with anticipation; a breath went stale in his lungs. At this point he almost—almost—[/i]hoped[i] for something as boring as a stakeout. Just imagining the look on Tamura-san's face as she realized she'd be trapped with him for hours, days—that alone could have made wasting two or three days in a family restaurant or a train station worthwhile. Hell, if he grossed her out so much, why [/i]not[i] tease her a little? If Ishida-san wasn't gonna give him the means to have fun, of [/i]course[i] Yūya would make his own. Who wouldn't? Yonaka-chan and Li-chan were probably putting together their good-cop-bad-cop routine down in the parking lot as he spoke. Oh, oh, and Marada-san; she had that singsong tone of voice, like she was [/i]deigning[i] to spend lunchtime babysitting the boss's toddlers, down to an art form! She had to be tiring of sitting in a leather chair up in a penthouse somewhere while all the action happened down on street level.

But this compromise was not to be, as Ishida grabbed Yūya's thoughts, small and tender, and dashed them against the rocks of his conviction:

"[b][color=fff200]Tomorrow night, you two are going to meet at Teiko Middle School, and beat whichever punk they choose as their fighter,[/color][/b]" he said.

For those thirty-five seconds, Tamura Ana may just as well have never existed at all.

"[color=fff200][b]There's no telling if they'll be a boy, girl, or whoever else. One of the Diamonds is supposed to be in attendance to deliver the real invite to the summons to whichever gang wins. And that's going to be us.[/b][/color]"

Yūya pumped his fist in triumph. He didn't seem aware that he was grinning, either, in his side-cocked, leering way. "You just sit back and let us take care of it, [/i]kanchō,[i]" he declared. "You ain't gotta worry 'bout nothin’."

And here he’d been worried that Yonaka-san would see the most of the excitement. Yeah. [/i]Hell[i] yeah. If those glittery pricks were trying to make plays, better to squash them while their master plan was still small, undeveloped, and fragile, like knocking a defenseless cocoon off a leaf. Give ‘em no chance to sprout their wings and they couldn’t fly away and out of reach. A two-on-two bop sounded real good right about now, too. Nothin’ to lose.[/i][hr][indent][indent][indent][i]22 hours later, on a public road in Itabashi Ward ...[/i][/indent][/indent][/indent][hr]... Well … that was yesterday. And it wasn’t yesterday anymore.

[i]Kuso.[/i] He’d been so excited back there, he hadn’t even stopped to think a little. Moron!

[i][color=fff200]Tomorrow night, you two are going to meet at Teiko Middle School, and beat whichever punk they choose as their fighter.[/color][/i]

“Whichever punk”? What sequence of coincidences and happenstances had led to Ishida knowing that there was a meeting, but not who would fucking be there?

A curt honk behind him. Yūya looked up; the light inside the traffic light had skittered down from the red lens to the blue. He cried out a [i]Gomen, gomen![/i]—lost to the muffling of his helmet and the din of the evening work-rush—and turned his head and bowed to the frayed salaryman behind him, at the wheel of an overworked, underpaid Toyota. Hurrying his left hand to the clutch, his gearbox into first, Yūya leaned the Honda backward, taking weight off its front forks, with the urgency of his acceleration, strangled downward like he was a sick, sick man, and the throttle cable his battered housewife.

... Unless Ishida [i]did[/i] know. But why? Why entrust a mission to them if they couldn’t be trusted to keep it confidential? And ... and why go to such lengths to keep it a secret from the others, only to keep it a secret from the participants, too, anyway? He seriously shooed Yonaka and Toronaga and Umeko off the roof just to clam up in front of Yūya and Tamura, too?

[i]More [/i]chūnibyō[i] bullshit ...[/i]

Yūya’s peripheral vision suddenly filled with a red flare. He looked up from the road to see that the Mitsubishi in front of him was braking for some danger further ahead. With no time to brake himself—not without locking up his rear wheel—he gave a nominal glance to either mirror, found his escape route, and swerved into the passing-lane. As yet another driver hit the brakes to stop from slamming up into the motorbike’s rear fender, Yūya flashed his thanks in his rear indicators.

[i]... Okay, maybe save the theorizing for when I get there.[/i] It wouldn’t do to break his promise to Akina-chan so quickly, nor to such worthless ends. She’d at least understand if the Diamond guy or the Teiko girl turned out to be some hulkin’ motherfucker that the two scrawny Sarayashiki kids didn’t stand a chance against. But a crash? Smear himself on the pavement like a meat-crayon and Yūya wouldn’t even be a back-page addendum to the footnotes to the children’s coloring-book of history. Road rash didn’t give a shit who you were or what you had come to do.

[i][color=fff200]One of the Diamonds is supposed to be in attendance to deliver the real invite to the summons ...[/color][/i]

[i]Not now, shithead![/i] As the words once more intruded upon his thoughts, like rain soaking through his undershirt, Yūya turned the droplets to flies and swatted them away. He had to focus; the phonebook said there’d be a Lawson’s around here somewhere, right across the street from a florist … there! Even from around a corner and past a house he recognized the blinding white glow spilling out onto the sidewalk, a late-night oasis on many a stumble home with friends, whether from the liquor in their blood or the fresh wounds pounding in their skulls ... He was close. Just past the convenience store, on the right, would be [i]3-chōme-10[/i], and on the left ...

Itabashi Teiko Junior High. Yūya braked just hard enough to get a good look at the sign screwed to the wall beside the sliding gate. Once he was sure, he sped up again. Didn’t want any sentries or lookouts knowing they were coming ...

... right?

[i]Okay, park first. Around the block should be fine.[/i] He found an alley between two closed-down storefronts; near the street without being right next to it. If a cop saw, he’d tow the bike for loitering, not paying the meter, or some other crap. But if Teiko saw ... popped tires? A knife through his brake lines? They’d strand Yūya here and then call for backup. At least he had to assume as much. For his own sake. If he didn’t care whether he rotted out here then no one did. Not Ishida. Not Tamura.

Umeko ...

... Anyway, were Teiko Junior High and the Diamonds [i]expecting[/i] this little knock-knock on their front door? Or was this supposed to be an ambush? Leaving his helmet on his mirror—pocketing his key and shouldering his baseball bat, retrieved from the struts of his [i]san-dan[/i] seat—Yūya accosted the front gate to find out. It was the hour of evening strolls, dog-walks, and last-minute grocery trips, so when the gate tugged away and dug its heels in protest, he decided not to make too much of a scene. He circled around the north side, where it would be quieter and, maybe, they’d left a gate open for their so-called “summons.”

[i]So if this is an ambush, we gotta take out the Diamond, too. Buy ourselves a few more days to move before he gets back to his little hive and rats to his buddies.[/i] But considering Ishida didn’t even have his own hallways locked down, wasn’t it too early to be moving against another school?

... Wait, and what did he mean, “Ishida’s hallways”?

[i]...Anyway, then it’s [/i]not[i] an ambush. They’re expecting us. So why is the gate locked? And ... hold on. Is anyone looking?[/i]

Yūya checked both ways, watching the shorter, quieter street on the north side for any idlers who could end up gawking; he scanned the parking lot up the way for just the same. There was a single woman smoking a cigarette in her cucumber-green power-suit, but she looked too disheveled and frayed to be paying attention. The building looked to be a hospital.

[i]Heh. Well, they won’t have very far to go after we’ve ground them into hamburger paste, in any case.[/i]

Yūya chucked his baseball bat over and into the courtyard; rolling up the left leg on his [i]tokkōfuku[/i], he retrieved the kitchen knife stowed in his boot and clenched its octagonal handle between his teeth. Almost as quickly as he’d jumped and grasped, he was over the fence, bracing in his knees and ankles for a landing on naked concrete. No sign of Tamura; not surprising. Seeing as that bitch took the trains, she’d arrive when the civil workers decided she would; that is, if she hadn’t chickened out and stayed home first. Well, he’d give her until twenty-thirty to declare her a no-show and start trying doors on his own.[center][hider=Recommended Listening][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDKoY-_6cfo[/youtube][/hider][/center]Yūya, after shedding the upper half of his jumpsuit and tying it to his waist, reached into its folds and knotworks for his cigarettes. Nobody on the roof or stairwells. No one patrolling the courtyard. The flicker of his lighter and the glow of the tobacco would have given him away, but—

Click. Scrape. Crackle. Click. Inhale.

—maybe that would've been best. He certainly wouldn’t have to go in and find them if they raised the alarm. And maybe their reaction would help a few [i]more[/i] things make sense.

Ishida knew about the meeting but not who would be in attendance. He’d said something about the Diamonds choosing the gang that “won.” So then ... he and Tamura were champions; representing their schools, proving their mettle in some kind of contest? But now something else didn't make sense. If this was the Diamonds’—raise, draw, linger, blow—idea, then were they petitioning for allies? Handpicking the strongest gangs? 

Something else Ishida had said now crept to Yūya's toes, his fingertips, like venom from a spider bite:

“[color=fff200]Ikebukuro is letting their power-plays get out of hand.[/color]”

“[color=fff200]Ikebukuro is letting their power-plays ...[/color]”

“[color=fff200][i]Ibekuro is ...[/i][/color]”

And once the venom reached his core, it broke from its crawl into a dead sprint, striking Yūya like a heart attack.

Yūya wanted to deny it. But at the same time, it was too plausible to just discard like all the other theories: Sarayashiki, a nobody-school with no fingers in the city, winning this strange little contest. Proving it’s got some guts, and even a little skill and strength to match. Winning the approval of this “Diamond representative.” And ... what came next? God damnit, what else [i]could[/i] come next? Why else was Ibekuro pitting schools against each other in controlled-environment, regulated tests? Only one outcome seemed possible anymore: the Diamond, nodding in approval, would take them to their next challenge, or maybe to the guy who’d orchestrated the whole thing to report the results. And knowing that this “Sarayashiki” place had what it took, they’d ...

Were ... Were Yūya and Tamura joining some kind of newfangled [i]rengō,[/i] handpicked and headed by the Ibekuro Diamon—

Ishida! Were Yūya and Tamura just his fucking double-agents; his spies?!

No more waiting. Forgetting (or no longer caring) where he was and who might be listening, on the enemy side or his own, Yūya kicked the baseball bat skittering across the walkway. He ripped up a fistful of flowers from the decorative bed and cast them to the ground, leaving them bent and broken.

“You fucking scumbag!” he roared into the still, empty schoolyard air, “This ain't what I signed up for, [i]kor-r-raaaaaa![/i]”

Maybe Ishida was innocent. Maybe Yūya had just dreamed up the whole scenario again. But one thing now was certain in the roiling adrenal soup of his thoughts: that little prick was gonna start spilling more of his beans at rooftop meetings from now on. Whether Yūya found out the quiet, civilized way, or whether he had to wring that scrawny little neck like a wet mop. Whether Ishida didn't trust [i]him[/i] personally or he simply didn't trust anyone at all in [i]his own gang[/i], or he thought it too unimportant to mention, or it just slipped his fucking mind that night, starting tomorrow, the reason didn't matter: if he didn't wanna tell them how their missions fit into the big picture, then he could get off his futon, go out his front door, and do it him-damn-self!

[i]"It's not in my nature to be mysterious," my fucking ass![/i]

A damn shame that Yūya had to even try and find out this way, but maybe the Teiko twerps had more to divulge than Sarayashiki's [i]illustrious leader.[/i] He tried the first doorknob, to one of the classroom wings, then the next, to an infirmary, both locked.

[i]Sorry, Tamura,[/i] Yūya said halfheartedly to himself, as if to project the words telepathically along the Chūō line, or to the Tamura household, or wherever the hell she was right now. [i]I'll save one for ya.[/i]