REFRACT || bnha oc

🪞blood in the water

blood in the water by grandson

. . . . .

TOBI TOUCHED DOWN atop the cargo containers, the ocean breeze tousling his hair and etching white lines across the ocean as waves crashed in the rhythm of the cloud-hidden moon.

He kept himself low, crouching close to the boxes with one hand keeping his balance as he moved stealthily towards the edge. He could see the dock, more than a hundred feet below him, foamy water lapping at the steel-sheathed pier. Barnacles latched onto the lower wooden supports, the low drone of the ship's engine and the bellow of its horn drowning out any other sounds.

The scene was a familiar one -- Tobi and Linh had been casing the docks for upward of three months now. It was the penultimate step in their plan to curtail crime in Takoba. The final one would entail demanding government involvement and attention from the pro heroes. Certainly his least favorite part of their mission, since it was bound to be fraught with crisis and scandal.

He shook his head, clearing his thoughts as he did a quick headcount of the people on the dock. Twelve were guarding the entrance to the pier, four to each armored truck. They were wielding firearms -- not that they were necessary. Most of them had Quirks well-suited to combat.

Those that didn't were deeper in on the docks, assisting with the unloading of the smaller cargo from the lower containers. Tobi and Linh had disabled the port cranes last time they'd been here in an effort to draw out their stronger members. And it had worked.

Since the advance of Quirks, the yakuza had slowly dwindled and died out, more or less the endangered species of the criminal underworld. They clutched desperately to their old game -- dealing drugs, performing hits, loan sharking -- even in a world where their sense of "honor" and "chivalry" were becoming increasingly obsolete.

Now, Tobi was no fool, but he just couldn't see what was honorable and chivalrous about human trafficking. The core of the yakuza operation here wasn't gambling, or Trigger, or anything that they'd done so extensively in Naruhata. It was kidnapping children and shipping them off to some unknown location.

Last week, three of his classmates had stopped showing up to school. He and Linh went to their families, expecting them there, skipping class or working a job, only to learn that they never returned home.

The leads on where they were being taken had fallen short, frayed ropes on the edge of a cliff that would never reach low enough for the victims trapped below.

This afternoon was the final chance to canvas the location before Tobi and Linh ripped the traffickers a new one. Several new ones, actually. If the police force of Takoba wasn't on yakuza payroll, they would've taken part in it, too. But they were as corrupt as any other pillar of justice in the city, including the few and far between pro heroes that spent more time clubbing than crime-fighting.

Tonight was the last step -- crisis, fiasco, scandal. Linh would swoop in with no less than four police helicopters from northern Musutafu, armed with the knowledge of each individual's Quirks on the docks below. From there, she'd take up a post within an incomplete high-rise a few blocks away. She'd set up her computer systems, mount her sniper rifle, and wait for the real action to kick in.

The night would end with the police arresting thirty-nine of the forty yakuza currently running the docks. The final member, a teen by the name of Shiozaki Uehara, would be warped to Linh's building. His belongings would be confiscated, his phone searched and uploaded to Linh's computer, and he would be warped back home to his little sister with a substantial sum of money so they could leave the city.