The Shadow Chasers

Chapter 7

Downtown, Tatsumi Port Island- Following morning

After a restful night and early breakfast at the hotel, Sam, Alex, and Clover had left to walk to the nearby downtown district to be ready to act on a moment's notice. Impressive skyscrapers and upscale shops were accompanied by sidewalk landscaping, such as large flower planters and small leafy trees.

People walked about, a few taking notice of the three foreign young women.

The day went on with a bit of sightseeing. The girls checked in with Asahi and Sam did some online sleuthing via her X-Powder, but came up empty. After lunch, they returned briefly to their room at the hotel for more focused X-Powder research on leads. Soon, though, they went back out and headed west to explore a new part of town.

"Why's it taking so long to find an address on this guy?" Clover mused as they stopped at a busy intersection to wait for a walk signal. An insect buzzed by her face, which she swatted away absently.

"Good question," replied Sam with a sigh. "I tried looking up addresses with the WOOHP text translator, but the guy seems to have gone off the map for a while," she added and shrugged listlessly.

Alex made eye contact with Sam, exhaled quietly. She looked ahead of her on the pristine stretch of wide sidewalk currently populated by a few middle-aged and elderly people on errands to various destinations. The steady whoosh of cars and an occasional bus filled the air. Parts of Japanese spoken by various people nearby were translated into English thanks to their Earring Translators.

"Last night was so... surreal," Alex finally said after gathering her thoughts. "All those people we met, what they did for the world without anyone knowing..." she trailed off.

"Kind of reminds me of us in some ways," Clover replied, looking at Alex in consideration. "Sounds like they've been through a lot too," she said quietly.

Sam nodded, then startled by a hum from her X-Powder. Clover and Alex looked to her in hopeful expectation. They stopped walking and moved to a nearby circular bench around a planter of colorful flowers and shrubbery. Sam quickly swung her backpack off and around to bring it out and take the call. Thank goodness for teamwork on this one, she thought.

"Hello?" Sam answered hopefully.

"Hey, this is Asahi. Our guy's been covering his tracks for a while, but I finally got an address," the middle-aged man's voice replied. After a moment of typing the data was transmitted over. "Oh, Mitsuru told the police not to worry about those relics of hers and that her team will bring him in. She's trying to keep police or anyone else from getting involved with possibly running into Shadows, but you may want to work fast before someone goes over there," he said.

"Thanks! We're on our way," Sam replied, ending the call.

She showed the X-Powder screen to Alex and Clover, who'd heard the conversation. On the X-Powder screen was a map of the city, with a green dot signifying the X-Powder's location for them, and a red dot for their destination.

"Time to change and jet?" Alex inquired.

Sam and Clover nodded, and they walked into an alley to duck behind a building to be sure no one would see them. They each pressed a button on their respective X-Powders to cause their casual outfits to be replaced with their spy suits, then took off using their jetpacks, rocketing into the partly cloudy morning sky.

Tatsumi Port Island Pier

Kaito disembarked from the bus at the eastern side of town wearing a black backpack. He walked purposefully down the sidewalk in the relatively quiet part of town. The young man stepped onto the concrete of a particular pier he'd researched in advance. His destination was the cannery that had shut down in recent years; a large grey rectangular peak-roofed structure set near the end of the short pier. Nearby he saw large metallic shipping containers of red, blue and green. Men at a nearby pier had set extra containers there so they could be accessed by the nearby crane since the cannery had shut down.

He walked around the back of the structure, dropped his backpack, unzipped it and pulled out the ring.

This isolated place would be perfect to hide out in until the full moon rose. And was spacious enough to accommodate the many guests he planned to invite.

I'll deal with any uninvited guests too, Kaito thought. For now, though, he merely needed to get inside.

A/N: Thanks for reading.  Hope you're enjoying this.  Please vote and share your thoughts if you like.  Thank you.