petronia

Title: Traffic

Series:Viewfinder

Characters/Pairings: eventual Asami x Takaba, this part is mostly OCs

Rating: R for drug use, language, and violence

Disclaimer: Feilong, Tao, Takaba, Kou, Asami's goons and Asami himself were created by and belong to Yamane Ayano. All the rest are OCs.

Spoilers: Set some months before the Naked Truth arc, immediately before the New Year's Eve one-shot.

Notes: The structure is loosely inspired by the Soderbergh film Traffic, hence the title. It's basically a straight-up attempt to fill in the seinen gangland thriller lurking in the background of the manga, where the foreground is the Asami-Takaba-Feilong triangle. This story is now complete in 7 parts; I'll be posting the rest at the rate of 1-2 chapters per day. Thanks to my betas,

sub_divided and

marej. ^_^

Previous Chapters: Parts I-II | Parts III-IV

***

Sonoda Masaya, age 22
Driver, Shunsan Construction Y.K., Yokohama

Lay off that shit for a few days, Jouji had said. Something big is going down.

Masa's private conviction was that he did better on "that shit" than off. These days his nerves jangled, sometimes, when he was baseline; say if there were cops milling around, or if a customer tried to short them. Then the lights would get too big somehow, bright and cold. He didn't want to take chances on the job. But Jouji was the one who made the calls, and he'd never led Masa wrong. So he'd only had a blue one at noon, right after getting up, and a top-off at dinner: enough to keep him anchored in the moment, there.

Two days ago Jouji had shown up at his garage after shift, carrying a miniature black Samsonite suitcase.

"Can't bring this home to the old lady," he'd said. "Nowhere to keep it at work"—Jouji waited tables four days a week—"so I need you to babysit it. Keep it in the cab if you have to. Just don't let it out of your sight, you dig me?"

The case had been padlocked. "What is it?"

"The cream of the new crop," had said Jouji. He'd grinned, showing off nicotine stains. "Two thousand units as payment for future services. Our ticket to the pro league. How'd you like to party in Shinjuku for Christmas?"

"We can't sell two—"

"Makkun. You let me worry about that. Just get a good night's sleep and wait for my call."

Masa had tried to open the case when Jouji was gone, not letting himself think hard about why (it wouldn't be missed; Jouji wouldn't hold it against him; it belonged to them, payment for services, and there was so much), but the lock had held. He'd felt more sick relief than frustration. A bad sign, though he didn't let himself think about that either.

***

He'd stowed the case under the driver's seat. It was still there, well out of sight, and if he reached back with his foot he could nudge it and make sure. He resisted the temptation. Three of Jouji's buddies were crammed in the back seat, not talking, and the air was thick with violence mustered and leashed.

There were two more cars in the convoy, two different outfits. The one they followed was full-fledged Harunoyama; the other was – Masa thought, but couldn't be sure – Chinese. He'd never seen that crew before.

He pictured the same scene happening elsewhere in Yokohama. Dozens of blinking red arrowheads viewed from overhead, like a satellite map in the movies, moving across the agglomerative sprawl of the harbourside industrial zones. Converging on their targets.

"What now?" he asked. Jouji stared out the passenger seat window, tapping the arm rest with his fingers.

"Scared?"

"No," Masa said. He would have been, of course, but the top-off pill had gotten between him and it somehow; like mere potential consequences no longer mattered. Jouji flashed his teeth again, but didn't turn his head.

"Now we take out the Miura," he said. "Now we fucking lay waste to them."

***

They dropped off the armed crews around the corner, to avoid giving the alarm. Their people took off down the street, but the Chinese stayed back, assuming lookout positions. The one Masa pegged as the general – a thin-faced, tanned man in a black overcoat – lingered by the vehicles, conferring quietly with his driver. A minute or so later they both looked his way, and he met the general's gaze head on, enduring some obscure point of pride in not dropping his eyes.

After a moment the man glanced at his phone, said something else, then straightened and headed in Masa's direction.

Masa started to roll down his window, but the Chinese man skirted around, opened Masa's passenger-side door and slid in without a by-your-leave.

"They're going in through the back," he said. "We're going to take point on mop up. Drive slowly – very slowly – down the street until you can see the front gate, then stop and kill the engine."

Masa thought of protesting; thought better of it.

The building was two stories, brick, and non-descript. Grimy windows lined the façade, papered over on the inside, but the first floor lights were on. It stood back from the sidewalk in the centre of a concrete yard, circumscribed by not-very-high chain link fencing. The front gate was closed.

They waited. Masa watched the windows, but the lights were steady – no wavering shadows that would have betrayed movement within. Gradually, he noticed that their target was the only lit building along the block; all the others were entirely dark.

"I don't like this," the Chinese man said, suddenly, after a minute. "Start the car."

"But I thought—"

"Just do it."

Masa started the car.

It happened like in the movies. A ball of fire blew out the building's windows, all the glass panes shattering at once. The sound was louder than sound, a physical pulse that impacted the side of the car like the invisible hand of a giant. Masa fell hard against the steering wheel, breath knocked from his lungs. The car rose on two right wheels, slid, and crashed to all fours again. The windshield miraculously held.

Somewhere, an alarm was shrieking.

Masa raised his head, gasping for air. To his right, the Chinese man had thrown open the car door and half tumbled out onto the sidewalk, but Masa wasn't paying attention. A black figure had burst out of the front door. It was Jouji.

Jouji was running for the gate, or trying to. The way he moved was wrong. He lifted his head, saw Masa, looked into his eyes. It was a matter of fifty metres. His mouth opened but there was no sound at all.

Go

A noise like the whine of an insect, then another; the impact absorbed by Jouji's body. Masa saw him stumble and come to a stop. the Chinese man's raised arm was in Masa's peripheral vision – something angular in his hand – but before he could turn to scream at him he saw the other shape by the side of the building fall back and clutch at itself. Then Jouji was falling to the ground, and Masa was screaming for real, tearing at the seatbelt that kept him in place, and the Chinese man had dived back into the car and grabbed hold of the wheel and the windshield cracked—

***

He didn't pass out, because when conscious thought reemerged from the black he was driving, still, and the Chinese man was saying, "Kid. Kid, you need to pull over now."

He couldn't see properly. At first he thought it was his eyes, then the world snapped back into place and he realized it was the shattered windshield. He was swerving all over, into the oncoming lane and back, although the road was deserted.

He took his foot off the pedal. The Chinese man waited until he had pulled over and wrenched the gear into park, then raised his phone again to his ear.

"Pull all the crews out," he said, then a long stream of something that was probably Chinese. Or it was Masa, maybe, who was losing the faculty of comprehension. He was still gripping the wheel, and his fingers didn't want to let go. He needed another pill. He needed—

The Chinese man hung up, and looked steadily at him for a second.

"Piece of advice, kid," he said. "Get out of town for a few weeks. Liquidate your stock if you have to. You're not cut out for the coming attractions."

The car door opened and slammed behind him. Masa didn't look.

"Jouji," he tried saying, knowing with a weird, hemmed-in clarity that no sound had been made. His lips were flapping, soundless and convulsive, against clenched-shut teeth. He dropped his forehead to the wheel, entire body shuddering. His legs jerked, and his heel bumped something.

The Samsonite case was still under his seat.

Payment for—

Sirens in the distance.

His hands were shaking so hard he was barely able to hit the scroll button on his phone's keypad. No one picked up at the first number he dialed. Nor the second, nor the third. He kept trying.

Part VI