Homeplot (2)

[babyviper]

Chapter 1:
The Empty Room in Osaka

Apartment 217, in a nondescript block of an apartment building on the outskirts of downtown Osaka, Japan.

Laying on a bare floor, a clunky mobile phone began to ring. Despite the amount of money such a phone would cost in the late part of the eighties, before the big rush really began, it wasn't even the most expensive item in the room. The real treasures in this tiny, bare apartment had to do with what was in the closet, which bore a simple combination lock.

The ringing seeped into O-Ren's consciousness even as she struggled to wake up. How late had she been out last night? That wasn't like her, and surely Angua and Dean would have had questions. Was she sick, then? Why the heavy haze around her? The fucking ringing was beginning to wear itself out, too.

O-Ren snapped up from her futon so quickly that she had to brace against the window. She was no longer even a bit sleepy, so aware she couldn't keep her hands from shaking as she patted herself down. Same self that had gone to bed the night before.

But a look around confirmed this was her old apartment. Only a few pots to boil ramen in. Blood spots she'd never bothered to clean up. Locked closet. Mobile phone ringing on the ground. She'd cut the regular telephone line herself, preferring this.

It stopped ringing, and O-Ren took a deep breath. "What the fuck."

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Chapter Three:
The Train to Tokyo


Several minutes later, O-Ren stepped out of the cramped restroom with a clean face and hands. She considered herself lucky that there had been no blood in her hair. What was on her clothes would just have to wait.

A severe look at the other riders had them shuffling out of the car-- those that hadn't fled upon their arrival, anyhow.

She sat down, a bit heavily, on the empty row of seats. "If this is a dream," she said to Arya, "do you think I'll have bothered to dream police to go with it?" While they might have overlooked the killing off of yakuza scum if it were quiet, they'd made a hell of a scene already.

[lonewolflives]

Arya reached up and grabbed one of the circles hanging from the ceiling, letting herself sway with the motion of the train as an exercise in balance.

The shoes weren't so bad. She spent a lot of time on the balls of her feet anyway. One of them was still leaving red scuff marks wherever the heel landed, though.

"If you remember there being police, you might dream up police," she said. "I never met a guard I couldn't slip by, at any rate."

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"If I dreamed it, then I would dream you being able to do that," O-Ren said in quiet agreement. She slid her now clean sword back into its sheath. "It doesn't matter, anyway. The police are on the outside. This is a yakuza war now. They don't get involved unless for appearances."

She shook her head. "No. It'll be if someone assumed Matsumoto's position."

[lonewolflives]

Arya nodded once. She knew about war, even if this was a different kind. Normal people did their best to stay out of the way, or they got trampled.

A lot of the time they did anyway.

"What's that mean for us?"

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O-Ren was quiet for a moment then. That stupid movie hadn't shown her how she survived this part. "There's several outcomes. Matsumoto's men were loyal, but only because that's what is required. They didn't love him. If they want me dead enough to waste more of what's left, then it's because whoever is in charge believes I'll come after him." She let out a breath. "I killed almost all of them, the ones involved in my parents' deaths. There is only one still alive."

[lonewolflives]

Arya watched the scenery flash past the window behind O-Ren, and thought about the movie, and what she'd suspected upon seeing the conclusion.

"The man in the white suit," she said, hesitating over whether to say more.

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"Un," O-Ren agreed softly. "I didn't take him for a coward, but killing Matsumoto made me a threat. Only a coward would have killed a little girl under a bed. The man who kills his enemy is-- smart."

She let her head thump against the window.

"But he's like a ghost. I never found his name."

[lonewolflives]

I was a ghost, once. I was the ghost in Harrenhal. She wondered if that was why she was here; maybe it took a ghost to find a ghost.

She looked at the floor of the train and thought, and thought hard, until she was sure.

"O-Ren," she said, "I think I know his name."

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Her stomach turned over. How could Arya know?

I let her watch the tape.

The dread flooded through her, but she kept her eyes open. She always kept her eyes open. "Tell me."

[lonewolflives]

Arya crossed to the window just to the side of O-Ren and leaned forward to breathe on it, misting it up.

"The man in the white suit, he was wearing a ring," she said, reaching out to draw a line in the fogged up glass. Then a pair of loops. "That part was just a drawing, one of those moving ones, but later on, I saw a ring that looked just like that one, except not a drawing."

Three more lines; a short one, then two longer. Then she dotted the i, finishing the name.

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O-Ren mouthed the name without sound, and then she stood up, and was very quickly to the door where trains connected, throwing up violently into the wind and steel. She counted seven long seconds, and then returned to her seat.

"Then she did me a courtesy, that woman." O-Ren drooped sideways, suddenly a tired flower rather than a sickened and enraged killer, and rested her cheek on the bench. Her eyes stayed straight forward.

"Then he'll be in Tokyo."

[lonewolflives]

Arya sat down next to her and folder her hands awkwardly in her lap, head tilted just enough that she could see O-Ren out of the corner of her eye.

"Then when we get there, we'll find him," she said.

She didn't think she needed to be explicit about what happened next.

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O-Ren didn't need to see their space to push up with her feet, just so that the temple of her forehead rested on Arya's thigh. Her own hands were searching out the sword, which she cradled to her chest.

"You saw the film. I think he'll be there. We'll be ready."

[lonewolflives]

Arya hesitated, then rested what she hoped was a reassuring hand on O-Ren's shoulder.

Not that she thought O-Ren needed reassurance, exactly.

"Just so," she agreed.

He'd been good, though. She remembered that. But they were good, too, and what's more, they were unexpected. And experience had taught her that counted for a lot.

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Whatever part of O-Ren Ishii had been melting from ice to girl there on the island responded, her cheek falling naturally to the back of Arya's hand. Soft as the movement was, these would be no mistaking the wired strength flowing through the rest of her.

"We ride to the end of the line," O-Ren said. "That's where we get off."

[lonewolflives]

"We'll need to pick up a few things," Arya said, although she still had the gun and all the ammunition O-Ren had provided, given that she'd used one of the yakuzas' weapons instead.

What she'd really like was a sword, or two, but she didn't know if that was possible.

More certain was the probability of having to find new clothes, which she was going to hate.