Telltale Hearts Target RPer: Panda Narwhal Number of Participants: 1+ Mission Brief: Aranami Minato was recently released from the prison division, following repeated acts of heroism in the line of duty and exemplary behavior as an inmate. He has been returned to the Fourth Division as an unseated officer with a full pardon. He is also a known associate of a dangerous Rogue Shinigami, Uehara Hayato, who is rumored to have obtained a stay of execution for Aranami Minato on behalf of his sister, Uehara Aoi. Uehara Aoi took a leave of absence from the Ninth Division around the time her brother disappeared and, after obtaining leave, also disappeared. Aranami Minato was romantically involved with her before her disappearance and may know her whereabouts. Use Aranami Minato to find Uehara Aoi’s whereabouts.
Acceptance Notes: Aranami Minato has received a full pardon. Any actions taken against him will be considered as serious as if they were taken against any other member of the Gotei Thirteen. Victory Condition: Obtain solid information about Uehara Aoi’s whereabouts. Failure Condition: Uehara Aoi receives warning of the investigation.
The filing cabinet drawer, half off its runners from wear and tear and more abuse than any inanimate object can be fairly expected to survive, slammed shut with a noise carrying just enough scrape that it could not be honestly called a squeal. Mikhael turned and slapped six overstuffed files onto a stack of seven more that were only slightly less stuffed. The combined might of the amalgamated paperwork stood a good ten inches, maybe a foot, off his desk and teetered drunkenly. Suspicious, glacier-blue eyes watched the stack like a hawk. The top file leaned obstinately away from the stack, taunting him.
“Don’t you dare,” he told it, reaching cautiously for his coffee mug with one hand and the pot of badly-brewed swill with the other.
The file stopped moving at exactly the same moment the office door flew open, hinges growling at the unkind usage, and a frigid blast howled into the confines of the almost-warm general office. A seated officer of undisclosed numeric advantage stepped into the cluttered mess gathered atop and around several shoddy desks. Two other unseated officers yelped at the cold and glowered at the newcomer while Mikhael’s eyes narrowed to slits at the file that had oh-so-innocently flopped into the mess of other documents littering the surface of his desk.
The officer strode straight toward him, slapped yet another file down on top of the still-faltering stack, and watched it collapse into a disorganized heap. The much shorter, much smaller, much worthier man sniffed disgustedly.
“You should be more organized,” he suggested.
“You should be more absent,” Mikhael stated, voice flat and eyes cold.
“This mission overrides your current assignments,” the officer said, pretending not to hear. “Don’t let it get lost in this... mess.”
“Yes, sir,” Mikhael muttered, plucking the file from what previously had resembled a stack. He opened and flipped through it, reading at a glance, and grunted in disbelief. He said, “This is my current assignment.”
“Excuse me?”
Mikhael glanced up, cold blue eyes focused. “My current assignment—Uehara Hayato. This is part of my current assignment. Where did this mission come from?”
The officer shrugged, clearly indifferent. Mikhael grunted, sipped tepid coffee, and chewed solemnly at the grounds. Maybe it was time for a new filter. The officer shook his head and left the way he came in, slamming the door behind him. Another file flopped off the side of Mikhael’s desk and scattered on the floor. He glanced at it, frowned, and set the mug on his desk so that he could reach for it. Halfway through bending over, a familiar face caught his eye.
“Oh, right,” he murmured, plucking picture and a few of the only mildly rumpled pages from the floor. He remembered requesting this file the week before, right after Christmas.
Yamamura Eiji, a fellow unseated officer and assassin, stared out at him from a photograph that looked rather distinctively like... Mikhael eyed the picture and glanced at the file, lips moving along as he read. He dropped to his haunches over the fallen personnel file, thumbed through the other documents, and raised an eyebrow.
“Hungh. Wouldn’t have thought it of you,” he told the grainy, washed-out mugshot. He recognized the height markers and the yellowed walls in the background: Seventh Division processing center. Enough of Twelfth Division targets sprang straight from those walls that even an unseated officer could recognize one of their photos.
His eyes tracked back to the mission brief targeting Aranami Minato, formerly of the Seventh, before he tapped the corner of the photo and made up his mind. A second body always helped, but in this case it might also offer some constructive advice. Mikhael stood, glanced at the illegal-to-wear zanpakutou sitting on his desk, and snatched it. If anyone asked, it was a practice sword. It lacked the life and aura of a released blade, so maybe he could get away with it.
Maybe.
He strode from the office, sword in hand, and decided to guess. He headed for the bounty office.
The scarred reaper sat close to the lake located almost in the middle of the twelfth division grounds. He had spent a lot of his time recently just meditating, taking easy and trying to get a better connection with himself and his zanpakutou. And today was nothing out of the ordinary. He sat silently, the sword lay over his lap, concentrating and trying to enter its world.
The wind was still and the sun was shining bright on him. You could clearly see it as there was not a single cloud visible in the sky. Animals were running all over the forest, searching for food, for water, for a place to live. He could hear them walking across the grass, swimming in the lake and flying over his head. It was calming for his mind and made it easier to relax.
It took him not more than a few seconds to reach Kyoujin’s world usually but that was not his intent this time. He simply wanted to speak to the sword, to bond with it.
We’re about to have company, the zanpakutou told him, as the shinigami began speaking to his spirit.
I know. Who do you think it is?
I wonder...
The spiritual power could barely be sensed from where he was and Eiji had a hard time trying to recognize it. He had sensed it before, he just couldn’t figure out where.
Meanwhile, Mikhael felt the pangs of hunger and grumbled softly to himself. To passersby it must have seemed like a growl, because more than a few concerned looks passed his way. The public image of cold and angry and self-involved assassins occupying a dingy compound and doing hard-bitten, gritty things together turned out to be mostly wrong. The typical member of the Twelfth bore a startling resemblance to the typical member of, say, the Eighth or the Ninth or the Third. The only noticeable differences lay in the jobs they did, if they did them at all.
If Mikhael’s experience formed a foundation of understanding for the activities of the Twelfth, most of the assassins got handed impossible assignments that would keep them busy working tirelessly to achieve a whole lot of nothing. The big breakthrough in the Uehara case, little more than a coincidental sighting on Earth, represented the sum total of his successes so far.
His eye still hurt from that “success.”
He stormed into the bounty office, stopped grumbling long enough to look around and see no one of consequence, and kept storming straight through to the exit door. It bounced open, almost hitting him in the face, and a gaggle of other assassins came chattering into the office. He could have been invisible. He looked down to check, grumbled something unkind, and pushed through them before the door could slam shut. When it did, he was on the other side.
Blessed with good vision, he spotted Eiji from a distance and almost stopped mid-stride. His head cocked to the side and he approached somewhat more cautiously, stopping a few meters away. The man looked to be deep in meditation. It would be rude to interrupt him.
I know he is, I can sense him. I can almost smell him.
He’s calling for you.
Yeah, I’m not deaf. I can hear him.
You should respond.
Eiji slowly opened his eyes as he turned towards where the noise was coming from. He had clearly heard the assassin who called him and for once actually not ignored someone looking for him. He saw the scarred reaper approaching him and rose from his comfortable seat. The sword was sheathed in a flowing motion and he waited for Mikhael to reach him.
“Hmm?” Once he heard the voice he immediately knew who it was. This man had been a guest at the dinner Eiji had hosted but he knew not much more of him than what he had learned then. And most of it was useless information. He was a little intrigued by the man. He had managed to drag himself there, unknown to everyone who attended and yet made himself at home it seemed. Eiji wanted to know more about him.
“Right,” Mikhael said. “The Seventh Division photographs a lot of its new inmates.”
He pulled a loose scrap and a cigarette from his pocket. He passed the cigarette to his free hand and unfolded the scrap with his other, making a rather obvious show of glancing down at it before he raised it, made a hmm’ing noise, and flicked it across to Yamamura. He lit the cigarette and took a silent drag, hand falling back to his side with an ember burning between his middle and index fingers.
Normally, his eyes would narrow and he would growl something intended to be witty. In this circumstance, he needed the help and wanted the company. Best to be diplomatic.
“Isn’t that kinda obvious?” Eiji had a slightly cocky attitude when speaking to his peer, feeling a little bit superior to him, even if they held the same rank. He had been in the division for quite a bit longer and that gave him some confidence to speak as he did.
The attitude bothered Mikhael. His left eye twitched and he made a concerted effort not to make a comment about birds and jails and chicken coups. Instead, he lifted the cigarette and took a deep breath of scalding particulates and gasses. Nothing eased his temper quite like the soothing taste of charred tobacco leaves. He shook his head.
“It’s nothing to me,” he said, keeping his tone even. There you go. Be nice. “I got handed an assignment today. Stalking an ex-con—“ and if he could just avoid saying “—like you. Thought you might be able to lend some expertise.”
Eiji moved instantly, appearing almost immediately next to the scarred reaper. He grabbed the side of his head and pushed it down. The brute force he used would have smashed his head if he had not held back. The black-haired reaper meant to strike some fear into the assassin, at least enough for him to learn his place. Even though they were both unseated assassins, Eiji was a lot stronger than his peer. Mikhael did not even get a chance to react.
“You might want to be careful with the way you speak. Show some respect towards your fellow shinigami.”
The list of Mikhael Saraf’s good traits notably excluded cool-headedness. One moment he was standing, having a conversation, the next he was on the ground and his neck hurt. The in-between formed a hazy blur in his memory, one that he instantly and angrily attributed to Yamamura Eiji.
His palms slapped the dirt and he shoved himself up, teeth grinding, red in his eyes. Untamed fury rattled against his nerves. Absolutely no part of him, not even the tablespoon or so of rational thought left in his brain, wanted to avoid a fight. Habit breaks harder than waves.
He grunted. Angrish-English translation: Sorry, I guess that was a dick thing to say.
The more scarred reaper had gotten back up from where Eiji had pushed him down and asked again, this time nicely.
“Of course,” he replied. The assassin always wanted to help his comrades, especially those who come asking nicely. He figured that it could not be much more than a simple task, perhaps some sort of exercise or training mission; it had to be. Had they specified me in his mission or did he come to ask on his own account?
“Pretty much what it sounds like,” Mikhael explained. “A mission came across my desk today. Aranami Minato, formerly of the Seventh Division, is under surveillance in connection with a wanted rogue. The rogue’s case was assigned to me. I could use a second hand on the surveillance crew.”
What he failed to mention was that the personnel file for Aranami Minato, currently of the Fourth Division, did not paint the picture of a frail doctor. The man had been noted multiple times for excessive bravery on the field of combat and been released very, very early considering his crime—murder. Watching him could prove interesting.
Rather than elucidate, he merely added, “He works with the Fourth Division. You in?"
That’s it? Any normal person would ask such a thing, questioning the reason to why one would need more than a single assassin to keep track of a simple healer. And bringing along someone of Eiji’s strength almost made it overkill. But the scarred reaper did not really ask such questions. He knew that a lot of missions were more dangerous than they set out to be at first. Simple stakeouts could turn into hostile situations after a single misstep.
An assassin always had to be careful when grabbing a mission, especially one that involved someone who had done something to get themselves in the Enforced Criminal Service. There were seldom one-time offenders in the Gotei, at least to his knowledge.
Eiji’s agreement lifted a weight off Mikhael’s shoulders. The thought of tailing some sort of heroic combat medic of doom appealed only to his sense of the ridiculous. Actually doing it, actually stalking prey whose focused attention could turn him into a greasy spot on the floor, fielded a variety of new and unlikable problems. Having Eiji at least lessened the risks of dismemberment, spontaneous implosion, or miscellaneous torture.
“Now works for me,” Mikhael stated. He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and held it up for Eiji to see. “I’ve got his address. How hands-on do you think we should be with it? I don’t have a lot of experience with stalking people.”
“There are quite a few different ways to go at this, depending on how good you are.” The scarred reaper grabbed the paper and checked the address that was written on it. He did not recognize it but it would not be that difficult for them to track down a simple street. That was the least of their issues.
“It all depends on what kind of information you are after. Planting a bug would be the easiest way but then you’d have to have a hand in with the Research and Development guys. Following a trail is easy enough if you know what you are searching for. Getting intel from a person might be a bit difficult, depending on how much force you can use, if any.” The scarred reaper tried to think of all the times he had managed to snatch himself some easy mission, where he barely had to work. To this day, he could not think of a single one.
He had tracked before. He had followed everything from single footsteps to trails of spiritual pressure. He had been helped to enter minds and had to torture people for information. It was all a part of the job.
“Can’t use a lot of force,” Mikhael advised. “The brief didn’t come right out say it, but it sounds like this guy gets the kid gloves until we can prove he did something. Following him around won’t do much for us unless we can hear everything he says, and if Uehara continues the trend, his people probably know how to have quiet conversations in places we might not be able to eavesdrop.”
Mikhael shoved his hands in his pockets and thought about what he knew so far. Fact: Uehara Hayato, at one point, had enough strength and influence to get three sitting captains’ recommendation for a taishuu. Fact: he disappeared without even a trace of reiatsu to hint where he went, when he went, or how he went. Fact: his family closed ranks like a phalanx and said exactly the right things to bring the full weight of the law down on their side—every attempt by the Twelfth to investigate the Uehara family had been met with resistance direct from the chambers of the Central Forty-Six.
How that was possible, Mikhael had no freaking clue. Nobody short of judges’ families and the Four Houses on their mighty golden thrones could bring down political pressure like the kind he had gotten when he started asking questions to Uehara family members and business interests.
Fact: the remaining leads were unofficial persons of interest, like Aranami Minato, and those kinds of weak points had a tendency to either turn into good evidence or one more corpse to bag and tag.
The cold eyes shut as he thought, rubbing his chin with one beefy hand. The other brushed against something in his pocket and he had a flash of thought. His hand fell and the other rose holding a plain, nondescript, absolutely unmodified soul phone.
“He’s fresh from the Seventh. Think he would notice if we swapped his phone out?
A few minutes in a room with the target and Eiji would probably have gotten a lot out of him but that was unfortunately not an option. There was probably a reason for the order not to harm the target and this almost seemed to be a mission for the Second Division. Spies were usually a bit better to extract information from a target than an assassin was, seeing as it was their job. The scarred reaper did not mind though. A mission was a mission and he would usually do anything he was told to.
“I suppose not. If you can get in there with ease, I can create a distraction and keep him off your hands for a few minutes. Do you have a bugged phone we can plant?” They would have to be careful with the execution of the plan. A single misstep and it was all over. If Aranami Minato were to find out, the mission would be over. “I’m relying on you to do this.
Mikhael frowned and looked at the phone. As far as he knew, it was not bugged. However, the Ninth Division built every phone used by the Gotei Thirteen and he would stake his unborn firstborn’s life on the cynical assumption that they “bugged” all of them—and just accessed the information when asked through the proper channels. It seemed like the sort of thing a militant research and development bureau would do.
It’s what I’d do, he thought.
“Better than bugged, I think. I swap his phone with mine while you distract him. We nab the chip in his phone then swap the phones again. I can take the chip to the Ninth for analysis and he’s none the wiser.”
People trusted their phones too much. Mikhael wanted to know just what Aranami Minato trusted to the fickle fingers of technological convenience.
“We’ll have to erase your phone and make sure that it’s not traceable back to us. It doesn’t have a spiritual trail so we won’t have to worry about that. We simply have to remove all the prints and make sure that he doesn’t suspect us.”
Eiji thought the plan through in his head one more time before agreeing that it was the best course of action.
“I’ll handle the distraction. I’ll be able to keep him of your hands for a few minutes’ tops. Make sure that you are in and out as quickly as possible.
The question brought Mikhael up short for a moment. Is there anything?
He thought about it, really thought, because he knew his own shortcomings. Being closed-mouthed tended to be one of them. Working with other divisions, working with narcs out in Rukongai, it mattered less to him than the nameless janitors responsible for cleaning the latrines. Yamamura diverged from the norm. Mikhael had a responsibility to tell him any vital information.
“Nothing I can think of,” Mikhael said. “I’ve been on this case a while and gotten jack shit. Some advice though: if it feels like it’s going south, don’t wait to find out. It's been one of those kinds."
After a moment to let the warning sink in, Mikhael nodded sharply and started walking. Standing around on a lake shore would achieve nothing. It was time to act.
Everything was set for them to start. The assassins had prepared Mikhaels phone by erasing everything on it completely, to the point where it would not be recognized. Eiji had been briefed on the target as the moved towards the Fourth Division grounds. There was nothing special with the healer they sought except for the fact that he had been in the same place as the senior reaper. Both of them being held as prisoners gave Eiji an opening to start conversation with him.
Aranami Minato was quite easy to find. They had no problem to target his spiritual pressure signal, as Mikhael knew it and Eiji could locate him with the help of that only.
“I’ll move in on him and you make sure to remain unseen. If anything happens at all, bail immediately. I’ll try to keep him here as long as I can.”
With that, Eiji disappeared. He had flash stepped away swiftly and was in front of his target within seconds. Just as he had been told, there was nothing to discern the healer from any other shinigami, except for one thing. He still had marks on his wrists after the cuffs he had worn. They would not be visible to the naked eye, unless you knew what you were looking for.
“Say, haven’t I seen you before?” Eiji asked him casually, as he looked him right in the eyes. It wasn’t really a staring contest but none of them let their eyes wander.
