"Let's go to war."
Hanae exhaled a long plume of gray smoke, watching it curl against the beige leather ceiling of the Mercedes S-Class. The cabin was hermetically sealed against the storm raging outside, a quiet capsule of expensive air conditioning and suppressed violence hurtling through the neon veins of Tokyo.
Next to her, a soft, chilling giggle broke the silence.
"Finally," a female voice whispered. "I was getting tired of scanning barcodes, Boss."
Hanae turned her head slightly. Sitting to her left, looking small enough to fit in a gym bag, was Reina. To the uninitiated, Reina looked like a university student, perhaps an idol trainee who had washed out. She had pale, porcelain skin, large doe eyes, and her hair was tied in twin tails that bobbed with the motion of the car. She was wearing a Gothic Lolita dress with frilled lace—a stark, jarring contrast to the grim, black-suited men surrounding them.
But Hanae knew better. She knew that beneath the lace sleeves, Reina's forearms were a roadmap of scars. She knew that Reina—codenamed "The Viper"—didn't play with dolls. She played with Karambits.
"Six years," Reina sighed, leaning her head back, staring at the ceiling with a dreamy, psychopathic expression. "Do you know how many bento boxes I heated up in the microwave at the 7-Eleven in Akihabara? Thousands. Beep. Beep. Beep."
She mimicked the sound of a barcode scanner, her finger twitching in a spasm of phantom repetition.
"Every customer who threw their change at me... every drunk salaryman who tried to touch my hand..." Reina pulled a curved blade from the folds of her skirt. The steel was matte black, designed not to reflect light. She spun it around her index finger, a blur of motion that defied physics. "I imagined opening their throats. Just a little. Just to see if they were red inside."
Hanae took another drag of her cigarette. "But you didn't."
"Because you told us to wait," Reina said, her voice dropping to a devout whisper. She looked at Hanae with eyes that held religious adoration. "You said, 'Sleep, Viper.' So I slept. I scanned the barcodes. I said, 'Irasshaimase.' I was a good girl."
Hanae felt a pang of guilt in her chest, sharper than the smoke. She had dismantled an empire to play house, and she had left her wolves to starve in cages of mediocrity.
"You don't have to be a good girl anymore, Reina," Hanae said softly. "Tonight, you can eat."
Reina's smile widened, exposing teeth that looked surprisingly sharp. "Itadakimasu."
In the driver's seat, a pair of eyes watched the interaction through the rearview mirror. They were tired, crinkled eyes, set in a face that looked like it had been carved out of granite and left in a sandstorm.
Ren. "The Gearhead."
He didn't speak. He never spoke much. A cigarette of his own dangled from his lips, unlit, purely for the oral fixation. His large, calloused hands rested on the steering wheel of the Mercedes with a touch that was surprisingly gentle.
Hanae remembered finding him six years ago, just before the exile. Ren was the best wheelman in Kanto. He could drift a tank through a crowded intersection without spilling a drop of coffee.
"Ren," Hanae said, her voice cutting through the cabin. "How was the sanitation department?"
Ren's eyes flickered in the mirror. He shifted gears, the car accelerating smoothly as they merged onto the highway leading to Roppongi.
"It smelled," Ren rumbled. His voice sounded like gravel grinding in a cement mixer. "Garbage trucks have bad suspension. Bad turning radius. No soul."
He tapped the steering wheel of the S-Class.
"This is better. German engineering. V12. She wants to run."
Hanae looked out the window. The rain was slashing horizontally now. Behind them, the convoy stretched for half a mile—a snake of black steel winding its way toward the heart of the city.
She looked at her own hands. They were encased in the black leather gloves Takeshi had given her. Underneath, she knew her knuckles were still red from the gym.
Housewife hands, she thought bitterly. For six years, I worried about dishpan hands. I worried about breaking a nail because Kenji said it looked unkempt.
She flexed her fingers. The leather creaked.
These are not housewife hands. These are the hands that strangled the leader of the Red Dragons when I was nineteen. These are the hands that built the Kurosawa Clan's golden age.
"Boss," Takeshi's voice came from the front passenger seat. The giant chef was practically vibrating. He had discarded his chef's hat, but he was still wearing his white jacket, now stained with mud from his prostration in the street. He had pulled a massive meat cleaver from under the seat—a custom piece of steel heavy enough to split a cow skull. "We are crossing the perimeter. Roppongi Hills in sight."
Hanae extinguished her cigarette in the car's ashtray.
"Show me," she said.
Ren tapped a button on the console. The privacy partition lowered, giving Hanae a full view through the windshield.
Roppongi. The district of foreigners, art, and excess.
In the distance, rising like a middle finger to the gods, was the Kurosawa Headquarters. The Ivory Tower.
It was a forty-story skyscraper of white glass and steel, illuminated from below by floodlights that turned it into a beacon of purity. It was the symbol of the Kurosawa Clan's legitimacy. Her father had built it to say, We are not thugs; we are businessmen.
But as they drew closer, Hanae saw the rot.
The plaza in front of the tower—once a pristine Zen garden where silence was enforced—was crowded.
Flashy sports cars—Lamborghinis in neon green, Ferraris in chrome gold—were parked haphazardly on the sidewalk. Music thumped from unseen speakers, a trashy Eurobeat rhythm that clashed with the elegance of the building.
And the guards.
Hanae's eyes narrowed.
"Look at them," she hissed.
The men guarding the entrance weren't wearing the traditional black suits of the Kurosawa. They were wearing designer tracksuits, heavy gold chains, and sneakers. They were leaning against the glass doors, smoking, laughing, checking their phones. One of them was openly urinating in the fountain.
This wasn't a Yakuza stronghold. It was a frat house for criminals.
"Disgusting," Ren muttered. "No discipline."
"Jiro's New Guard," Takeshi growled, gripping his cleaver until his knuckles turned white. "Mercenaries. Punks. They have no respect for the turf. They act like they own the city."
"They don't own it," Hanae said coldly. "They're just renting it. And the lease has expired."
She looked at the blockade of concrete planters that Jiro had installed to prevent vehicle attacks. They were formidable barriers, meant to stop a truck bomb.
"Ren," Hanae said.
"Yes, Boss?"
"Can we clear the planters?"
Ren looked at the concrete barriers. He looked at the reinforced steel bumper of the lead SUV in front of them—the "Battering Ram" vehicle piloted by two of the Ghost Squad's heaviest sumo wrestlers.
"The Ram can take the first one," Ren analyzed instantly. "But momentum will die on the second. We need to hit the glass doors at forty kilometers per hour to breach the lobby effectively."
"Improvise," Hanae ordered.
Ren's lips quirked up in a microscopic smile.
"Hold on."
He grabbed the radio handset. "Unit 1. Unit 2. Formation Delta. Pincer the barriers. Make a ramp."
Through the windshield, Hanae watched the choreography of violence begin.
The two lead SUVs didn't slow down. They accelerated. But instead of hitting the barriers head-on, they swerved. Unit 1 slammed into the left side of the first planter. Unit 2 slammed into the right.
CRUNCH.
Metal screamed. Sparks showered the wet asphalt. The force of the impact dislodged the heavy concrete planters, twisting them, creating a narrow, jagged gap between them.
It wasn't a hole. It was a funnel.
"Go," Hanae whispered.
Ren floored the Mercedes.
The V12 engine roared like a waking kaiju. The luxury sedan surged forward, 500 horsepower transferred to the wet pavement.
Reina giggled, clutching her knives. Takeshi braced his massive frame against the dashboard.
The guards in front of the tower looked up. They saw headlights approaching at impossible speed. They dropped their cigarettes. The one urinating in the fountain fell backward into the water.
They scrambled for their weapons—shiny, gold-plated pistols that they had probably never fired in anger.
Too late.
Ren threaded the needle. The Mercedes shot through the gap between the smashed planters with inches to spare. The side mirrors were sheared off with a sickening snap, but the chassis cleared.
They were airborne for a fraction of a second as they mounted the curb.
Directly ahead: The revolving glass doors of the lobby.
"Brace," Ren said calmly.
Hanae didn't brace. She sat perfectly still, her eyes locked on the terrified face of a guard behind the glass.
SMASH.
The impact was deafening. It sounded like the sky falling.
The reinforced grill of the Mercedes shattered the tempered glass of the lobby entrance. Shards of glass, millions of them, exploded inward like a diamond shotgun blast. The revolving door was torn from its hinges, spinning wildly across the marble floor.
The car plowed through the reception desk, sending computers and paperwork flying, before skidding to a halt in the center of the vast, white atrium.
Steam hissed from the radiator. The airbags didn't deploy—Ren had disabled them.
Silence returned to the lobby for exactly three seconds.
The lobby was a wreck. Glass covered every surface. The "New Guard" thugs were scrambling, coughing in the dust, trying to understand what had just happened.
Then, the rear door of the Mercedes clicked open.
A black leather boot stepped out onto the glass-covered marble. Crunch.
Hanae emerged.
She stood to her full height, smoothing the lapels of her suit. She looked around the lobby. It was white. White marble floors, white pillars, white leather sofas. It looked like a hospital for billionaires.
"Too sterile," she critiqued. "It needs some color."
From the other side of the car, Reina hopped out. She landed lightly, like a cat. She twirled her twin tails, her Karambits glinting in the harsh halogen lights.
Takeshi kicked his door open—literally kicked it off its hinges—and lumbered out, a white-clad giant holding a meat cleaver.
Ren stayed in the car, racking the slide of a shotgun he pulled from under the seat. "I'll keep the engine running."
The "New Guard" captain—a man with bleached blond hair and a cheap suit—stumbled forward from the elevators. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead.
"Who..." he wheezed, pointing a shaking finger at them. "Who do you think you are? Do you know whose building this is? This is Jiro-sama's territory!"
Hanae looked at him. She didn't shout. She adjusted her gloves.
"Reina," she said softly. "He's pointing at me."
Reina's eyes lit up. "Can I?"
"You may."
The air in the lobby seemed to warp.
Reina didn't run; she vanished. It was a burst of speed fueled by six years of repressed boredom. She was a blur of black lace and pale skin.
The captain blinked.
In that blink, Reina was inside his guard. She was too low, too small for him to target. She slid across the polished marble on her knees, passing him on the left.
As she passed, her hands moved in two distinct, scissoring arcs.
Slice. Slice.
The captain screamed. Not in anger, but in confusion. He collapsed.
He tried to stand up, but his legs wouldn't work. His hamstrings had been severed with surgical precision.
Reina stopped ten feet behind him. She stood up, licked a droplet of blood from the blade of her right Karambit, and winked at the horrified thugs gathering on the mezzanine level.
"One down!" she chirped. "Ninety-nine to go!"
That was the signal.
From the shattered entrance behind them, the Ghost Squad began to pour in. The veterans. The exiles. They stepped over the wreckage of the Mercedes, wielding pipes, bats, and swords.
The "New Guard" roared and charged from the staircases.
The Meat Grinder began.
It wasn't a fight. It was an execution.
Takeshi moved like a bulldozer. A thug charged him with a baseball bat. Takeshi didn't dodge. He caught the bat with his free hand, ignoring the impact, and swung the cleaver.
He didn't aim for the man. He aimed for the weapon. The cleaver sheared through the wooden bat like it was paper, continuing its arc to slam the flat of the blade into the thug's chest. The man flew backward, crashing into a white pillar with enough force to crack the stone.
"Raw!" Takeshi shouted, looking at the unconscious man. "Undercooked! Weak!"
He grabbed a heavy marble reception chair with one hand and hurled it into a group of three attackers. They scattered like bowling pins.
In the center of the chaos, Hanae walked.
She moved in a straight line toward the elevators. The violence swirled around her, a hurricane of blood and noise, but she was the eye of the storm.
A man in a tracksuit lunged at her with a switchblade.
Hanae didn't stop walking. As the blade came toward her stomach, she simply rotated her hips. The knife passed through the empty space where her body had been a microsecond ago.
She reached out. Her gloved hand grabbed the back of his head.
She didn't punch him. She used his own momentum. She guided his face down, accelerating his forward motion.
CRACK.
She introduced his nose to her rising knee.
The sound was wet and definitive. She released him, and he dropped to the floor, unconscious before he hit the ground. She stepped over him without looking down.
Another attacker—this one bigger, a wrestler type—tried to tackle her.
Hanae pivoted. She caught his outstretched arm.
Flashback:Hanae standing in her kitchen, folding Kenji's dress shirts. "You have to fold along the seams, Hanae," Kenji had scolded. "Otherwise it wrinkles."
Fold along the seams.
Hanae applied pressure to the wrestler's elbow joint. Against the seam.
SNAP.
The wrestler howled. Hanae continued the motion, spinning him around and using him as a human shield against a thug trying to shoot a taser. The taser prongs hit the wrestler. He convulsed and dropped.
Hanae released him. "Wrinkled," she murmured. "Disappointing."
She reached the center of the lobby. The white marble was no longer white. It was smeared with red, littered with groaning men in tracksuits. Her Ghost Squad was systematically dismantling the opposition, venting six years of frustration with every punch.
Reina was cackling somewhere on the mezzanine, jumping from the railing onto unsuspecting guards. Takeshi was using a velvet rope stanchion like a spear.
Hanae stood before the golden elevator doors.
A final line of defense stood there. Three men. They looked more competent than the others. Jiro's personal security. They held collapsible batons and looked nervous but determined.
"Stop!" the middle one shouted. "The elevator is locked! You can't—"
Hanae didn't slow down. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her cigarette pack. She put a fresh one in her mouth.
"Reina," she called out calmly. "Clear the path."
From the ceiling—literally dropping from the chandelier above—Reina descended.
She landed on the shoulders of the middle guard. Before he could process the weight, she drove the hilts of her Karambits into his temples. He dropped like a stone.
She backflipped off him, slashing the wrists of the guards on the left and right. They dropped their batons, clutching their hands.
Reina landed in a crouch at Hanae's feet. She looked up, her face splattered with speckles of crimson, her twin tails messy.
"Ding!" Reina mimicked an elevator bell. "Ground floor. Going up?"
Hanae lit her cigarette. She stepped past the moaning guards.
She pressed the call button.
The golden doors slid open smoothly. The interior was mirrored, pristine, playing a soft, soothing jazz version of "Fly Me to the Moon."
Hanae stepped inside.
Reina skipped in after her, wiping her knives on her frilly skirt. Takeshi, breathing heavily and looking like a butcher after a long shift, squeezed into the car, filling half the space.
Hanae looked at the control panel. She didn't press the button for the 20th floor, or the 30th.
She pressed the button for the 40th Floor. The Penthouse. The Throne Room.
The doors began to slide shut.
Through the narrowing gap, Hanae saw the devastation of the lobby. Her men were victorious. They were zip-tying the survivors. Ren flashed his headlights from the wrecked Mercedes.
The doors clicked shut. The sounds of screaming and fighting were instantly cut off, replaced by the gentle hum of the elevator and the soft jazz.
Hanae looked at her reflection in the gold-tinted mirror.
The suit was still immaculate. Only a single drop of blood on her white collar betrayed the violence.
"Takeshi," she said, watching the floor numbers climb. 1... 2... 3...
"Yes, Boss?"
"When we get to the top, Uncle Jiro will try to offer us tea. He will try to talk."
Takeshi grunted. "I hate talk."
"Me too," Hanae said. She watched the smoke from her cigarette drift toward the ventilation fan. "If he offers tea... throw him out the window."
Reina giggled, swaying to the elevator music. "The 40th floor? That's a long way down. He might bounce."
"Let's hope so," Hanae said. Her eyes were cold, fixed on the number 40.
The elevator climbed. Up toward the sky. Up toward the past she had run from. Up toward the father who had let her be exiled, and the uncle who had sold her city.
Ping.
The elevator slowed.
Hanae cracked her knuckles. The sound was louder than the music.
"Showtime."