Mokona and Saiki (Listening to Just Communication)
The subway was deserted; which wasn’t surprising considering the fact that it was 3 in the morning, and
there had been no trains running for a year and a half. And yet there were footsteps in the silence.
Advancing through the tunnel was a young woman in a skirt and T-shirt, a bag across her back, ears plugged
by the earphones of her personal stereo. Sometimes as she walked she clicked her fingers, occasionally
muttering under her breath and looking at the few signs that she passed by. Despite the fact that the tunnel was as dark as a ravens wing, she didn’t use a torch and seemed able to find her way around effortlessly. Finally she stopped at a long-abandoned station and climbed onto the platform, ignoring the hindrance of her skirt. As she dusted herself off and turned off the mp3 she was listening to, she looked around the dingy platform with a slight hint of disgust on her face. Finally she heard a rustling noise down the tunnel, put her hands on her hips and sighed. “Baka-chan! Where’ve you been?”
A man of about her own age stuck his head round the corner of the platform and stuck his tongue out at
her, then scrambled onto the platform and stood beside her. He too carried no torch, but he knew where he
was and what he was doing. He watched her as she pulled a sheaf of papers from the green canvas bag, and
smiled a little. “Well, ‘Otome’, I got the wrong station. Stood for half an hour five stops down.” Then winced as she hit him on the head with the rolled up files.
“I told you before, don’t call me that! I’m no maiden!” She coughed slightly and regained her composure, ignoring the injured look her would-be-partner gave her, then showed him the papers she had just hit him with. “If you go this way, and I go that way, then we’ll find it.”
The man rubbed his head and groaned slightly. “Refresh my memory. I’ve forgotten what it is that we’re looking for. It must be something to do with the thump on the head.” He added pointedly. She hit him on the head again for good measure.
“Hey, maybe repeated hitting will knock your braincell back in the hole!” She unrolled the papers again and flicked through them until she found the one in particular she was searching for, and held it up to him. It was an A3 colour reproduction of a large jewel, deep purple in colour and certainly very beautiful. The man looked at it, and sighed a little.
“I’m sorry.”
The woman blinked. “What’re you on about? Did I knock your braincell right out your ear?”
The man shook his head in silent despair, and suddenly in the darkness they were both surrounded. A gun muzzle was pressed into the small of the womans back and she froze, then glared at the shamefaced man.
“Why?”
He shook his head again. “It wasn’t my fault. That sounds lame, but it’s true. My sister...she...” he stopped, unable to continue. It didn’t melt Codename Otome’s heart. Ignoring the gun, she stalked up to him and slapped him round the face. The man behind her with the gun, after his initial shock at her lack of fear, stepped forwards and caught hold of her long hair. She span round and kicked him at the same time, knocking the gun from his hand with her high-heeled foot. He stared at her, or rather, at her skirt. She realised, went red, and kicked him again, this time in the head. “Ecchi,” she muttered under her breath, looking at the man’s prone body. She tried to ignore the click of a safety catch by her right temple, although it was quite difficult since the owner of this new gun seemed to be intent on pushing the muzzle halfway into her head. Behind her the man gasped. “Mokona! You have a death wish or something?!”
“Shut up, Saiki.” Mokona muttered under her breath; then, to the man with the gun to her head: “What do you want?”
The man, larger than the one she had just kicked, pointed to the A3 sheet she still held. “That. As I’m
sure you know, that gem holds certain properties that could be, ah,” he paused slightly, “very profitable.”
He leaned slightly closer to her, and she involuntarily wrinkled her nose at the uncannily large amount of aftershave he was wearing. “We want you to lead us to it, since you appear to know where it is so well, and precisely how you reach it should be a matter of great interest to us. And after all, you wouldn’t want any harm to come to his sister now, would you?” He gestured with the gun to Saiki without even looking at him.
Mokona shrugged. “What happens to his sister is no concern of mine.” She ignored Saiki’s moan of
protest. The man leaned closer to her still, until he was about a nose length away from her cheek. “What
about your own sister? What about Sakura?”
She paused, feeling a chill run down her back but covering it up admirably well. “I know for a fact that my sister is far away from you people and is perfectly well.” She claimed coldly. The man just laughed, sending another chill up her spine. She was just about to reply to the laugh when the sound of a commotion behind her made her look round in surprise, and was in time to see Saiki rip the gun from the hand of the man beside him and aim it at the over-aftershaved man beside Mokona, and pull the trigger. She sighed and covered her eyes with one hand as she heard the yell of anger from the man at her side and heard the impact of a bullet into a wall. Saiki must have never been trained to use a gun before, she reflected. You just can’t trust men with anything. Almost as soon as Saiki had fired, the man fired his own gun. She winced slightly at her partner’s yelp of pain as the shot hit him in the right arm, then yanked the jack out of the earphone socket and turned on the stereo. Slightly tinny, but incredibly loud, music rang out round the subway, distracting the man from killing Codename Aoi and turning his attention to her again. Unarmed as she was, she was still extraordinarily dangerous, and the man, armed as he was, wasn’t expecting to be kicked in the
stomach by a foot still clad in high heels. And he definitely hadn’t been expecting to be hit in the neck by the side of a delicate, long fingered, very strong hand, he thought as he fell to the ground. And he certainly hadn’t been expecting to be hit repeatedly on the head with a lump of masonry by Saiki. After several repeated thumps, Mokona gently put her hand on his shoulder, signalling to him that maybe he should put down the plaster and get a grip, which he obediently did. She then switched off the stereo and turned her attention to the gunshot wound in his arm and bandaged it up for him with a roll that she always carried with her. After all, she was a special agent, and unlike Saiki, she knew to always come prepared. “I have only one thing to say to you, Aoi.” She said sternly.
“What?” Saiki looked confused.
“Learn to fire a gun, Rookie.” She hopped down from the platform and continued to walk down the
tunnel, previous plans carefully ignored as she had planned they would be. He stared after her a moment
longer, then climbed down after her and walk-jogged to catch up with her. “What’s that supposed to
mean?”
“It means what I said. Learn to fire a gun.”
He shrugged, and ran a hand through his soft black hair in a gesture of uncertainty. “So. What was that
music you were listening to?” He couldn’t see her expression in the gloom: his eyes hadn’t properly
adjusted to the nightsight operation yet.”
“Gundam.” Unlike him, Mokona could see perfectly in the dark and saw the slight smile on his face.
“Well, what would you rather I listened to? Rayearth?” She noted with some satisfaction that the comment wiped the smile from his face. They walked in silence for the rest of the way.
When Mokona finally stopped, she did so without giving Saiki any warning, and he carried on walking.
He only realised she had stopped when she caught hold of the collar of his jacket and towed him backwards.
“Hey! What gives?”
Mokona sighed. “We’re here. Will your nightsight ever kick in?” She dragged him backwards until he
almost fell over a track and they reached the platform. “Climb up, and don’t fall off. This is your chance to show me that you can do things without screwing up.” While Saiki obediently did as he was told, the silver-haired woman looked at the maps again, and muttered to herself: “yep, this is definitely it.” Rolling up
the map again, she climbed up onto the platform also, keeping her balance easily despite the fact that the
surface beneath her feet was in an advanced state of disrepair. Saiki looked to be having slightly more of a
problem; while walking across the floor to the wall, he looked as though he was climbing a mountain. She
stopped halfway across the platform and stared at him as he almost fell over a larger-than-average lump of
broken flooring.
