Dani kept her weapon trained on the target, and whilst she wasn’t weak by any stretch of the imagination, the rifle wasn’t exactly built to be held up without any support. For now, she tried her best to simply keep it up.

Two-minutes until alarm.

Whilst the boy seemed innocent and even cutesy in a way, the subconscious recoiled and hissed at their presence. They were a threat, a big one, one big enough that the sight of being aimed at by a rifle wasn’t something that triggered their flight response, nor their fight response.

They were surprisingly blasé, and that just made her worry all the more… Despite her reputation as ruthless, she had made it equally her reputation that she was clean and thorough, a scalpel rather than a broadsword, one that was precise even when it had to look brutal.

And it was clear this kid wasn’t part of the target.

“I’ll assess that…” she calmly answered at them claiming they didn’t mean any harm, it was part cop and part assassin talking, and equal parts mistrust.

But their attitude and non-action allowed her to quickly sling the rifle onto her back, before taking out a handgun to train it onto their center mass as she stepped closer to them, if only because the least dangerous escape route was exactly behind them.

Annoyingly, this all cut into the time she could take to clean up after her, take down her rifle, dump it in a specific spot, disappear into the night, every ticking second meant less clean results.

“I’d appreciate it if you moved aside…” she spoke, calmly like a flight attendant trying to get around a passenger who took their time stuffing their luggage away.

Her watch buzzed underneath her jacket… Ninety seconds left.

Tag: Arc Bishop

Dani let out a soft breath as she listened to the voice on the other end of the line. All of it seemingly uninteresting drivel of a lover who messed up one too many time and had forgotten the tenets of healthy relationships too often.

Just for that alone Dani felt beholden to put them out of their misery, both to take away their awkward put on shame and give a little bit of satisfaction for the many jilted lovers they had played.

Instead her rifle was trained on his chest for a different reason, but ultimately the same effect. The raindrops bouncing off the cold polymer her eyes were trained on the target in the same way that she had done so many times before, years of training and conditioning to keep a steady breath and merely focusing on the dot rather than what the dot was aimed at.

“Target in sight, copy for call.” she spoke into her comms to the handler that was probably on the other side of the country relaxing after dinner with a family which was oblivious to their other job.

Finding the target had been easy enough, a politicians son who loved flaunting his money and family connections to the many hostesses around Tokyo. Telling them all fancy stories of being the one, being taken out of the excruciating grind of the business, only to of course find the next pretty face.

From the few details Dani had dug up in her planning, she knew enough that they weren’t even the main target. Whoever their father had pissed off, they were petty enough to hurt them like this.

What she was about to do was a gross injustice even in the dubious world of underworld getting-even. The other Dani would hate her guts for even doing it, but not even that side knew anything else than to never question a target.

“Copy call, Daybreak.” a male voice spoke from the other side of the country, the feed of her scope fed back to ensure her job was done in the bespoke manner that was necessary.

The trigger pull was soft and crisp, the movement of the recoil caught by her shoulder and bipod. Almost like a cruel artpiece the target slumped into their seat, a singular bullet through the heart.

“You can go to ground, now, good evening Daybreak.” the voice spoke before the call dropped.

With trained precision and focus she started packing the tools of her trade, she probably had three minutes before the bodyguards would find the body, but she’d be long gone.

At least, that was until her ears picked up sound of movement behind her. Too big to be cats that like to hang out on rooftops, she moved her body and trained her weapon at the figment in the dark.

If they were a bodyguard, they were fair game. But she merited herself on cleanliness, so she sure as hell hoped it wasn’t a witness…

Tag: Arc Bishop

Sipping on her morning latte, she and a few others squatted around the back entrance of an apartment building looking like the usual types of unemployed that had nothing better to do than hang around until they heard of a place to get day labour.

Of course, the five of them were hardly that, rather they were undercover and watching the dew slowly trickle down the side of the concrete buildings waiting on the inevitable call to action.

They had been planning this for months now, meticulous old-school policework to track down a small time gang of dope pushers and purse snatchers that had been terrorizing this particular ward of Tokyo with efficiency that made it obvious that they were a small spider in a very large web.

Taking down these clowns, though, would bring them one step further to the top, and Dani felt the hunger she’d usually feel when something big was about to happen. This case was in her hands, and whilst she wasn’t the type that was ambitious to get off the streets and into a cushy office job, this was a chance to establish her name, and get the right people to notice her talents.

… Of course, it figured that on this day specifically there had been a call from up top that they had dispatched a handful of heroes to assist them. Heroes that would undoubtedly not play backup, but rather jump headfirst into the action looking to bust some heads themselves and push the people that did all the work into a tiny byline.

Drinking the remainder of her latte, she put it into a trashcan before facing her colleagues. “So, we’re just going to sit here and wait for the heroes to steal our thunder, because the way I see it, we’ll have these chumps in cuffs before we know it.” Dani spoke with the self-confidence and cockiness that she had become somewhat notorious for.

Fortunately for her, people found it endearing, especially because she tended to back up her attitude with great police work, and a tendency to be right.

Taking out her sidearm, she did the routine checks before stuffing it into its holster, swapping it for the safer option in the form of a taser.

“I know what I’m going for, how about we get the article cover for a change?” she’d propose with that confident smile, removing the ballcap that oppressed her girlish features.

First her partners reacted laconically, a few jokes where bandied about as they assumed it was the usual semi-nervous banter ahead of a door getting kicked in. But they knew Dani was serious, and whilst firstly it was a hotshot agreeing with her, making a duo of rookies follow suit not wanting to look bad, before eventually the old heads relented and made the party complete.

Dani nodded at them all as they made their way into the back entrance, slowly moving up the staircase she pressed her earpiece. “We saw some movement, we’re heading in before the targets get spooked.” Dani told a white lie to the police backup half a block away, who chittered something about protocol which Dani’s subconscious filtered out.

“I’ll take point, let the kids stack the staircase.” she whispered, removing her jacket to reveal her body armour with “POLICE” emblazoned both front and back.

This was going to be routine, after all, the stirring in her gut meant that they were on the cusp of something big, and this bust was going to crack everything open…

Tag: Shirayuki Mai