Takina fired. Shooting accurately while running was next to impossible, but there was a slim chance she’d hit, and if she destroyed the enemy’s fresh magazine, it’d be game over for him. It was worth trying.
None of her bullets hit the target, though. The new 75-round drum magazine was in. Bulldog prioritized Chisato, who was running at him with inhuman speed. He took a few steps back, lifting the RPK to hold it under his arm.
Chisato pulled her bag off her back and threw it in front of her, tugging at a hidden string—and a ballistic airbag, the Lycoris tech department’s prize invention, explosively inflated in front of her. The white balloon completely blocked the corridor, stopping Bulldog’s bullets.
The bulletproof airbag was only usable for about a second, but that was enough for Chisato. By the time it burst from the impact of rifle rounds, Chisato was already right in front of Bulldog. Hoisting her bag onto her back again, she struck Bulldog’s hand on the RPK’s grip with her spiked gun, firing at the same time.
Even the best bulletproof gloves couldn’t completely protect the fingers. They were in fact quite vulnerable, and the combined impact from the spikes and the frangible plastic bullet crushed them. The RPK fell out of Bulldog’s hands, and he staggered.
Chisato wasn’t finished. She almost pressed her body against the man, aiming her gun at his lower abdomen. She fired repeatedly in between the plates of his body armor. A cloud of red filled the air like a mist of blood.
Bulldog staggered again. He took a few steps backward before dropping to one knee. He swiftly reached behind his back and drew out a kukri knife.
Chisato was out of bullets, but she didn’t even think of retreating. She leaped at the man and kicked upward, hitting his steel mask, and then downward, hitting it again with the heel this time.
Lycoris loafers had both tips and heels reinforced with steel. A kick with a shoe like that could smash a concrete block. Bulldog took two kicks, but it didn’t stop him from trying to attack Chisato with the massive knife.
“Chisato!”
Running, Takina dropped to the floor and slid with one knee up and her arms resting on it to steady her aiming. She fired all her remaining bullets at Bulldog’s knife. It shattered—and so did his fingers. Real blood spurted into the air.
Chisato finished reloading her gun. She grabbed Bulldog’s left bleeding arm and shoved the muzzle of her gun into the armpit opening of his armor.
“This is going to hurt.”
She fired all her remaining bullets so fast it seemed like her gun was fully automatic. For the first time, Bulldog didn’t silently endure the pain. Howling hoarsely, the mountain of a man crumpled to the floor. He could still move, even though he certainly had at least one broken rib and some damage to his organs. He started to stand up, but Takina, who’d only then made it to him, kicked him back down and shot at his hip joints to prevent him from standing up again. She wasn’t sure if her bullets would get through the armor, but it was better than nothing.
Chisato knelt down on top of Bulldog, digging one knee into his chest. She looked into his eyes through the slits in his mask. Their movements were shaky from shock at what was happening to him.
Chisato smiled, not without kindness.
“You’re tough, so I’m going to go harder on you than usual. Do your best not to die, okay?” she told him in English.
The emotion in Bulldog’s eyes changed from shock to resignation.
“Why? Will I win something by not dying?”
“Why not?! What do you want?”
“…A cup of good fucking coffee.”
“You got it!”
Without hesitation, Chisato fired all six rounds of her magazine—each round of .45 ACP hitting like a baseball bat—directly at Bulldog’s masked face. The red spider lilies of pain but not death were in full bloom.
Takina and Chisato charged into the underground warehouse. They combed through the large facility but only found some arms and a large stockpile of drugs.
“Chisato, Takina, sorry,” Kurumi said on the comms. “It’s my mistake. The target has escaped outside the factory.”
“What?” Chisato and Takina asked simultaneously.
There should have been only one way out of the warehouse.
“There’s an air duct… Probably wide enough for a person to pass through.”
“Are you kidding?! That’s straight out of a Hollywood movie!”
“Why is that getting you excited, Chisato?” asked Takina.
“Because, well, it’s just like in the movies!”
Unlike in the movies, real air ducts weren’t built to allow people to crawl through them. They were too narrow, wouldn’t support the weight of a human, and had metal dampers and meshes blocking the way. Infiltrating a facility or escaping from it using an air duct was a cool but sadly unrealistic fantasy for action movie fans, as Chisato explained to Takina.
“I’m assuming the dampers were removed from the air duct at some point to create an emergency escape route,” said Kurumi.
Damper removal was a noisy job, so it thwarted any attempts at stealth. This was not a problem when using an abandoned factory as a hideout, though.
Chisato was impressed at how the enemy appropriated a movie trope and gave it a realistic application, but what Takina appreciated was Bulldog’s code. It was only in retrospect that she realized the big man acted as a decoy to enable his boss to escape safely. He’d been guarding the entrance to the underground warehouse with such persistence that the girls had no doubt his boss was behind the door. Bulldog tenaciously guarded the spot, stalling for a time, perhaps even longer than was needed. He wasn’t planning on sacrificing his life for it but was prepared for that eventuality.
Dedication and thoroughness like that were admirable in Takina’s eyes.
“Sorry to spoil your mood, Chisato… If we’re going to follow the target, we won’t make it back early.”
“Huh?! Arrgh! Damn!”
“The target is heading toward the city on a scooter. I have a drone following them, but I’m not sure how long that’ll last,” reported Kurumi.
“Perhaps we should hand it over to the police.”
“We can’t, Takina. They may be armed. We don’t want it to become a high-profile incident.”
It was the job of the Lycoris to preserve the illusion of unbroken peace and safety in Japan. Takina knew that, of course. Police in this low-crime country weren’t trained, equipped, or mentally prepared for gunfights.
“DA hired us for this mission to deal with the targets swiftly, without any casualties. And…”
Chisato pointed to her gun.
“…to capture all targets alive. Which is something neither Japanese police nor DA’s own Lycoris can do.”
“That’s the spoiler you didn’t want to give out earlier?”
One of the reasons Chisato used nonlethal rounds was that capturing the foes alive could be far more useful than simply killing them… And as a rule, if targets could be neutralized with nonlethal methods, that should always be the default course of action.
In the case of drug dealers especially, capturing the criminals alive was essential for discovering their supply routes. Takina knew that, but to her, it was madness to take on a ridiculously strong enemy like Bulldog armed with subpar, nonlethal equipment. She didn’t have the skill to succeed in such a massively disadvantageous situation nor the fearless attitude required to try.
But Chisato did. Her extraordinary skills were extremely valuable, so DA didn’t want to lose her despite considering her a chronic troublemaker.
“Well, okay. If you don’t want to hand it over, that’s fine by me. So, what next?”
“We go after the target. What else?! Work’s work.”
“No movie today, then. Got it.”
“Ugh…!”
Takina remembered she was in charge of making ohagi that day. She’d only done the initial prep that morning and was planning to finish after returning from this mission. There wasn’t much she could do about that now. Mika would have to make the ohagi himself, carefully molding each rice cake into a dainty shape with his massive hands.
“Let’s go, Chisato.”
“Yeah…”