SUPERWORLD

Toshiro VII

He awoke on a bed that wasn't his own. His skin was still clammy from the nightmare he had only just escaped. Swirling visions of Chihiro melting into a beast as he watched powerlessly, held to a chair by Ōni. Sango was there, weeping in the corner, her stomach ripped open as if something had clawed its way out.

Kill...

He thought as he forced himself up to his elbows.

Kill them...

He swung his feet off the overly plush bed.

Kill them all...!

He stood but stumbled and fell to his knees.

"Toshiro!" It was Ryusuke, he heard his partner run over and felt his hands pick him up. "It's ok, be careful, you had one helluva fall."

"No...it's not." Toshiro sobbed. "I spent years looking for her...they took her, they have to pay..."

"They will, believe me, we're not letting this go. We'll get the bastards but we'll only go after them when we're at one hundred percent."

Toshiro sat on the bed again and looked at the glow from the other side of the room. Makoto was typing away at the keyboard so fast that her fingers were a blur.

"Oi, you....get anything?" He asked.

"Close." She said, barely there, "Think I almost found their secret facility. There are forty-two Kageyama buildings around Japan, mostly warehouses where materials and products are stored. But, I found a couple of emails in the drive, like four, that reference Site A2-B. It's not listed on official ledgers, and I can't find any reference to that site outside of those four instances. I think that's where they have the children." Makoto explained

"Good. Ryusuke, when she finds it, we'll put on those masks and pay them a visit." Toshiro said to his friend.

Ryu just nodded,  affirming what Toshiro already knew: his partner was a good friend and cop who would follow him through the gates of hell. The roiling in Toshiro's stomach turned to a fire, his eyes no longer stung with tears, but with the fury of a father. He stood up, and this time, he didn't stumble. They would need guns, they would need access, and they couldn't get any of it through official channels

Toshiro knew just the man to go to.

They left Makoto to work and loaded up into Toshiro's sedan.

The Yakuza owned a tavern closer to Toshiro's house than the old cop would have liked. He busted it a few times, but was transferred away from narcotics and into homicide within a year of being there. He had always thought that his quick transfer was suspicious, but as long as he got to fight crime, it didn't matter what avenue he was put in, that and his senior officer at the time, an old man named Noguchi, told him to drop it.

The tavern was as suspect as they come, with none of the ornamentation one would expect from a bar trying to get customers. There wasn't even an 'open' sign, because everyone that belonged in there knew when it was open. The building was tucked between a nail salon and a noodle restaurant in the lower end of the Hiroshima business sector. Toshiro walked through the door without an ounce of fear in his heart, and he walked across the old stained wooden floor as if he were the bar's owner.

You're lost if you show fear in the face of the yakuza.

The small rabble created by the few and scattered patrons, some old burly men with scars and others young punks with stupid haircuts and just as many tattoos. All of them public school rejects with more anger than brains.

"Oi, Oi, Oi! Where's Aito?!" Toshiro demanded.

A bald man with tattoos in place of hair stood up, he was around the same height as Toshiro, but nearly twice as wide with one eye pale as milk. Toshiro saw the bartender, a female punk with tattoos and gauges, pick up a phone behind the bar.