twiststheblade | Angels: Act Two

Angels: Act Two

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Yokohama.

Japan's biggest port city.

Hub of trade, export, and import.

Modern, classical, new and ancient. If a thing is new 'it was done first in Yokohama'.

It is late by the time the two bikes purr through the suburbs, heading for the heart of the financial district. Late, and the rain has stopped. The surfaces are slick with water, lights reflecting off anything and everything, a shifting kaleidoscope.

The buildings are an odd mix. Darkened office buildings, except for the odd window where a worker is up late into the night. Bars, restaurants, the odd shop, spill light and sound and smell out into the streets.

Eventually, Miho waves an arm, slows, and pulls over to the side of the road. She hops off, braces the bike, and smoothly uses her entire body-weight to lift it onto the stand. She pushes her visor up, and smiles.

"Well, this is it."

There are two buildings that stand out. One is rounded, almost like a tower, stabbing up into the night. Next to it, seperated by only a narrow alleyway, is a mirrored tower-block, curved frontage, glass elevators running up the outside of the building. It has an enourmous lobby, brightly lit, edged by small shops, and a few restaurants.

"That's the one we want," she says, pointing to the rounded building. "And this is the one I thought we could go across from."

She grins.

"Anyone for sushi?"

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Miho pauses just before a corner in the corridor, keeping her voice very low.

"Okay, unless I'm wrong, the vault is just around the corner. There ought to be a pair of guards outside, which shouldn't be a problem. And we can blow the doors, right Goldy? And then it's just the inner doors."

Goldy nods, moves to the corner, and leans back against the wall. Once in place, she pulls out a compact from her jacket pocket and flips the lid open. She then spends the next thirty seconds checking her make-up and touching up her eyeshadow.

She catches Miho and Alanna's disapproving looks in the mirror and turns to them.

"What? I can't go on a raid and still look good?" she whispers, smirking at each of them in turn. An eye roll follows. "You two are the limit. Have a little faith!"

She holds the set away from her face and angles the mirror slightly, so she can see around the corner and down the next corridor. "Yep. One vault. And two nervy guards ready and waiting for us."

"I've got no shot," she comments next. "Oh well."

She presses one of color squares in the palette, clicks the lid back down and casually lobs the whole compact around the corner. There's an immediate cry of alarm, but it's drowned out by a thunderous blast—a huge explosion that rocks the floor and walls. In fact, the whole building seems to shake for a few seconds.

Everything settles eventually, and the roaring dies away. A cloud of dust billows past the corner where the girls are. At this point, Goldy peeks up from her duck-and-cover crouch, hands still over her ears.

"Oh. Sorry, girls," she says, biting her lip guiltily. "Did I forget to say 'fire in the hole'?"

"-fire in the bowl?"

Alanna's ears are roaring. Palms pressed up against the wall as if trying to hold it up, she slowly turns her head and gives Goldy an incredulous look.

"WHAT BOWL?"

Grumbling under her breath, she looks around the corner. Huge chunks of twisted metal litter the hallway, and the outer vault doors are mangled and blown in, dangling uselessly.

"ALL CLEAR. YOU AND YOUR TOYS!"

Miho is torn.

On the one hand, bloody great explosion.

And on the other. . . bloody great explosion!

She settles for giving Goldy an arch look, and heading around the corner, shaking her head slightly in a totally vain attempt to clear the ringing in her ears. She twists the look over her shoulder, lips quirking.

No-one could expect her to resist, could they?

"You were only supposed," she points out, "to blow the bloody doors off."

A giggle.

"But that's two guards we won't have to worry about again. Come on, time to air our criminal talents."

Laughing softly, Goldy gets to her feet and heads around the corner to view the destruction for herself.

"Ooooh! Yeah," she notes impressedly. "It is possible that a smaller charge would have done the job."

Remorse is definitely lacking. Instead, there's a wicked grin and a gleeful brightness in her eyes.

She turns to Alanna as they all trot down the hallway towards the vault. "You don't like my toys? I think you ought to get acquainted with some of my less destructive, and more...," she sends an amused glance to Miho, "pleasurable ones. You're sure to change your mind."

She can keep a straight face. Honest.

Miho picks her way around the debris, making a face at the remains of the guards - they're not very pretty. Not that she minds the gore, particularly, but these are new shoes.

She makes her way through the gaping hole, edged by twisted shards of metal, that is all now left of the vault doors her father had been so rpoud of, smirking slightly. The inner doors are still intact, and she gives them a curious look.

Goldy is so weird.

Flushing, Alanna sticks out her tongue and steps nimbly over the guards, careful not to look down. The stench of death is heavy in the air, and she knows she doesn't have time for remorse.

"How do we get these doors open? Because if you plan on using explosives, please give me a head start."

Eyes bright with interest, she runs her palm down cool metal and spins the dial.

"You mentioned an x-ray?"

Goldy joins them at the inner door, picking her way through the dry wall wreckage and around tangles of sparking wires hanging dangerously from untiled ceiling panels. She stops Alanna's hand mid-twist.

"X-ray. Yes. One of you, or both of you, just put your goggles back on and press the left hand button. You should be able to see part-way through the door. Then just twist the dial clockwise and anti-clockwise until you line up each disc's indentation under the latch mechanism."

"Simple."

She takes one of her guns back out and retreats towards the rubble-strewn corridor.

"I'll watch your backs."

Miho rolls her eyes, but follows instructions - although she presses the directed button before putting her goggles back on. Getting bllinded again would just be silly. It is just possible that she has a big grin on her face whilst twisting dials, because this? Is cool.

It's possible Alanna directs a gentle and friendly kick at Goldy's rear before doing as she's told. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pulls the goggles back on and presses the appropriate button.

Now that? That's pretty neat.

"Miho, you have lovely bones."

The other girl seems to be doing an admirable job of lining up numbers, so Alanna just watches with a grin on her face. Not that anyone sees it.

Goldy looks back when she hears the heavy clunk of the latch falling into place. She has nice bone structure too, just for the record.

"Are we good?"

"Oh yeah," Miho says, grinning, and shoving the vault door open with her hand on the lever and her body weight behind her shoulder. The door's on pneumatic hinges but it's still damned heavy.

She steps through, and looks around curiously. The vault's neither huge nor particularly small - lined with shelves, on which are, for the most part, files - box files, lever arch files, document wallets, pocket files, expanding files, legal wallets. Filing cabinets. Archive boxes stacked up to ceiling height.

She doesn't see the swords, but there are plenty of places they could be.

Alanna follows, pushing the goggles off again. Better safe than sorry, just in case the world goes green again.

"Would they be in something?"

She gives a filing cabinet a thoughtful look.

Goldy remains on guard at the demolished outer doors. All is fairly quiet in the corridor beyond. The light from the vault joins with the fainter glow from unaffected strip lights at either end of the hall. Fire alarms around the building are wailing and flashing, but power seems to have been lost permanently around the blast zone.

Good thing too. If the sprinklers had activated and got Goldy wet again, there would have been hell to pay.

She glances back absently.

"Come on! Two big ass swords can't be that hard to find."

"They're not that big," Miho calls back, forwning as she looks around the vault.

There actually, now she comes to look, isn't anywhere they could be. This is all. . . paperwork.

"Fuck."

Kicking over a box, Alanna mutters something much to the same effect.

"Where else could they be?"

Goldy turns around, hands on hips. She has a glib remark all ready to go, but the look on Miho's face forces her to bite her tongue and wince sympathetically instead.

From the street below, the distant sound of sirens can be heard.

"I think my pyrotechnics may have attracted some extra attention," she notes hastily. "If they are still here somewhere, we had better hustle."

She's a lot of things, but she's not a cop killer.

"They're not here," she says, shortly.

"Come on, let's get out of here."

She turns on her heel, and heads out of the vault. She pauses in the doorway, and blinks for a moment, allowing Alanna to pass her. Then, without so much as a change of expression, she returns to the vault, tips a pile of papers ouf of a filing caninet and into the middle of the floor, kicks them up, and sets fire to them.

Once the little blaze is steady, and spreading, she nods to herself, and leaves.

Behind her, blackmail material, crooked accounts, details of traffic in human flesh become so much ash.

Wincing at the disappointment on Miho's face, Alanna watches the fire flare to life and wonders what's getting consumed by the flames.

Dulled shouts join the sirens outside. Tearing her gaze away, Alanna starts down the hallway.

"We're about to have company." She squeezes Miho's shoulder as she pulls level. "We'll find them."

"I know where they are," dully.

"We have to go back. We do anyway for my door, but. . . I know where the swords are."

Goldy has more idea of what the blazing materials consist of. She nods approvingly at her petite lover, and adds a comforting hand to her shoulder.

"Back it is then. Let's blow this joint."

She catches the worried glances from her companions.

"Not literally!"

And with that, the three women start jogging off down the corridor. Goldy's griping can probably be picked out as they disappear into the mist of the overhead sprinklers.

(Act 3)

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Angels: Act Two

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