A Feudal Fairytail

Chapter 26

"That moron! That freaking incompetent son of a bitch!"

Yoshida Saburou was raging, ranting, every other word a curse, angrier even than he had been when Kagome escaped. The men observing him could not help but feel that it was fortunate for Yamazaki that he was already dead. Their leader would not have granted him a quick death for his failure as the cop had done. In fact, that was probably part of Yoshidas fury, that he could not exact painful retribution on the newly departed for his continuing and egregious mistakes. For now, Yamazakis former comrades sat silently, waiting for their leaders ire to subside and trying not to draw attention to themselves.

It took awhile, but eventually Yoshida did calm down. Only then did he set about explaining the full situation to his subordinates.

"As you already know, that idiot Yamazaki got himself killed," he spat viciously. "At Iwate University. By a freaking cop!"

"What was he doing there, boss?" Ishikawa asked through the phone sitting on the table. Perhaps being over a hundred miles away at his post in Tokyo had given him more courage than his comrades.

"I gave him a very simple taskwatch Sasaki and make sure he doesnt go to the police. Then I told Yamazaki to eliminate him; he was becoming too much of a liability, and we didnt need him anymore."

"No arguments here, boss."

"Good. So Yamazaki did actually complete the missionin the most asinine way possible! The jackass shoots Sasaki in the back of the head, less than a block from the fucking police station!

"And I also told Yamazaki to break into Sasakis office at the university, find the ID card, and destroy the hard drive of his computer. He was also supposed to turn the house over to make sure Sasaki didnt bring anything home, though I doubt he would have as long as we were there. This is why it was so important to kill Sasaki in a private place and dump the body later, or at least make it look like an accident. The cops wouldnt have flown to Iwate University if the professor hadnt been murdered on their bloody doorstep!

"But no, the retard does it so every cop in Morioka is out looking for him, and gets caught in the act, then killed by an old geezer detective whos almost ready to retire!"

Silence reigned over the gathering, no one daring to make a noise for fear of giving Yoshida a new outlet for his mounting frustration. But the mercenary captain kept control of himself, and was already moving into strategic mode.

"So, people," he began evenly, appearing like some sort of deranged army general. "We must consider the very real possibility that the authorities now have the ID card and whatever information Sasaki stored on his computer."

"Didnt you tell him not to record anything electronically?" Ishikawa asked.

"Do you think he listened? Academics are all the same; they have to write everything down. I figured if we let Sasaki think he was getting away with it, it would be easy to deal with later. And it wassmash the hard drive and thats ituntil a persistent moron messed up on everything."

"So worst case, the cops know what we know. So what? Its not like weve never dealt with local cops before."

"It wont be local cops, you moron! The government is all up in arms over this Crimson Cat thing. They wont let the locals handle a credible lead on his identity. The Higurashi shrine could soon be crawling with government agents. That is the worst-case scenario."

Now the men were quiet for a different reasonfear of not getting paid. To think that all this was for nothing Yoshida must have sensed their distress, for he took control of the gathering once more.