Chapter Text
I’d, as always, been at the wrong place at the worst time.
And I hadn’t managed to leave well enough alone, also as always. But the two burly men clad from head to toe in black like they had sprung straight from some kind of two-rate gangster movie threatening the slip of a girl trapped between them and the wall to the port administration building wasn’t just something I could live with myself with if I ignored it.
I was still clad in my work-overalls and boots, but I’d left my hard head at the office, along with my cell phone I’d come back to get. I’d just clocked out, but I still definitely looked like someone who belonged at the docks after dark, unlike the two shady figures, using it as a backdrop for their gangster-movie reenactment.
The taller of the two figures grabbed the girl's hair, a natural-looking strawberry-blond color, unusual for all that she looked, to my European eye, otherwise entirely Japanese.
When she let out a strangled cry of pain, I took a deep breath and stepped out of the shadows. This was a stupid idea all the way, but what other choice did I have?
‘Evening, boys. Hate to break up the party, but this area is employees only.’
I tried to affect a casual tone and manner, as if I didn’t know exactly what it looked like. I’d been prepared for the crooks to get physical, but I’d definitely not been prepared for the short, stocky one to immediately pull a gun on me. A gun was not where my first thought went in these situations, so sue me.
I took an involuntary step back and made eye contact with the girl the gangsters – and they were definitely not wannabes anymore– had turned their back on, and tried to convey with my eyes that this was the perfect opportunity for her to get away. Instead she just looked at me with wide eyed panic for a moment before a cool mask slipped on her face and she turned her head to the side, breaking eye contact. The look on her face was downright bored now.
I had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well for me.
Short and Stocky still had his gun trained on me, but the other man I dubbed Tall and Mean in my head, had his hand on it, pushing it down.
‘Idiot!’ He hissed. ‘Do you want to bring attention down on us? We were never here, remember?’
Short and Stocky looked surprised for a moment, but he obediently put his gun down. His mistake. I turned on my heel and broke into a sprint, aiming for the Maze, as me and some of my younger colleagues called it. The jungle of shipping containers you could only navigate if you’d stacked those containers up yourself.
I never made it that far. A sharp pain hit me over the head and I tumbled to the ground. I tried to cry out, but Tall and Mean had clamped a hand over my mouth and was squeezing, hard. I had never seen him move. How was a man his size so fast?
Tall and Mean turned back around and me with him. I tried to struggle, but my vision was swimming and I absently wondered if Tall and Mean would let go of me if I vomited against his hand.
‘Sherry. Hand it over. You said it needed more testing, didn’t you? Now you have the perfect opportunity.’
His voice was ice cold and sent a shiver down my back. He could have been talking about the weather as casual as he sounded.
The girl, apparently Sherry, pushed away from the wall and approached us with measured steps.What I could see of her face looked cold and unaffected. Maybe I had dreamed the short spark of panic earlier. Sherry reached into the pocket of her white coat, a lab coat, I realized belatedly, and wordlessly handed a small case over to Tall and Mean, who was basically radiating homicidal thoughts by now.
I must have blacked out for a moment, because next thing I knew, Tall and Mean was yanking my head back by my hair and shoved something down my throat. I swallowed on reflex. Dimly, I thought that that had definitely been a mistake. I tried to stay conscious, but my vision was graying out at the edges when Tall and Mean shoved me at the ground again. I barely heard their voices talking through the fog that was my head but I thought I heard footsteps leaving. But before oblivion could swallow me completely, a sharp, white-hot pain shot through my whole body. The pain was worse than anything I’d ever felt before. Worse than wisdom teeth removal, worse than my appendix bursting and worse than getting my finger stuck in the knives of the electric plane that one time. Even getting shot had felt like a mild bee sting compared to this.
I’m sure I was screaming with pain. Numbly I felt a hard kick in my side and then the sensation of falling, before the shock of ice-cold water hitting my face jerked me back to temporary lucidity, before another flash of pain hit me.
I opened my mouth to scream and regretted it immediately, as I swallowed a mouth full of water. I tried to kick up to where I hoped was the direction of the surface, but a sudden current dragged me down again.
Another flash of pain hit me and I could practically feel my lungs filling themselves with water and my kicks got weaker and weaker.
I was barely clinging to consciousness now. I didn’t want to die like that. But a last desperate kick and the current abruptly changing propelled me far enough that I finally broke the surface.
I coughed as I tried to dispel the water from my lungs and get my shoes off at the same time. My struggle had dragged me quite a ways out from the harbor, going by the pinpricks of light visible in the distance.
I thanked God that I hadn’t swallowed as much water as I could have, after my urge to cough up my lungs subsided. I treaded water for a while, taking stock. The white-hot pain had settled into a dull ache sitting deep in my bones and my head was throbbing with what I hoped was only a mild concussion. Also the disgusting harbor water I had swallowed was definitely going to be a problem, but right now the immediate concern was getting out of the water and somewhere safe.
And then…I paused. These guys had just tried to murder me. Had fed me some kind of poison and thrown me in the harbor. I had to suppress the sudden hysterical laughter that threatened to escape me. The only thing missing were a fitted pair of concrete-soles for my shoes. A breathless giggle escaped me. Those gangster-wannabes should have taken the time to do that, because I was apparently a cockroach.
I angled my tired limbs towards the pinpricks of light and began to swim. It was thankfully a mild night and the water gentle, the currents that had grabbed me farther down.
When only a short while later I practically bumped into the harbor wall, I finally realized that the pinpricks of light in the distance were the city. With an embarrassed shake of the head I reached up to grab the ledge to haul me up, only to fall short. I frowned. Had I lost enough time for the tides to change already? I ducked down and jumped a little out of the water, just grabbing the edge to haul myself up. It took more out of me than I was used to and when my body finally lay on the cold, hard ground, I took a moment to close my eyes and just listen to my still racing heart and the waves lapping at the harbor wall.
When I finally found the strength to get up from the ground, I nearly fell down again. I looked down to see what had tripped me up and found my feet tangled up in the dangling legs of my waterlogged overalls. I looked down at myself. My overalls that had previously fit me perfectly well were now too long in the legs and too wide in the hips. Now that I was paying attention I could feel that one of the shoulder straps had slipped down my shoulder underneath my jacket as well. My jacket, whose rolled up sleeves now dangled past my wrists. I stared at my sleeves and then sat down hard on the ground.
What… What the everloving fuck had just happened to me? Had I shrunk in the wash or something, I thought hysterically.
I mentally slapped myself out of another oncoming panic. Dry clothes and antibiotics first and then I could freak out about the rest.
Ignoring everything for now and taking advantage of the fact that I was already sitting down, I rolled up my pant-legs and stood up again. I wobbled a bit as I tried to take a step but soon found my footing and made for the direction of what I thought was another harbor administration building.
Thank god for flimsy locks, I thought fervently.
The door to the building had yielded to my keycard that had thankfully still been in the front pocket of my overalls and the combination locks on the lockers were flimsy at best.
The second locker I opened had overalls that would nominally fit me if I tightened the straps and rolled up the legs and a flannel button down that was warm and dry and I nearly cried as I put it on. Shoes that'd fit on my now definitely much smaller feet, I had found three lockers further. Along with a mirror. I didn't only have the size of a five year old, I also looked like a five year old. I firmly told myself to freak out later. Whatever that drug was supposed to do to me- kill me, most likely- had instead reverted me to the size and looks of a five year old. All the proportions were accurate. I didn't look like an adult shoved in a tiny body, or like I had dwarfism. Honest to God, I looked like I had as an actual five year old. This was something straight out of some cheap sci-fi book. Or maybe a horror story.
I shook my head and firmly told myself to freak out later as I made my way out of the locker room, now in dry clothes.
Either I had the worst luck possible or the best. Or maybe the best luck in the worst situations.
I didn't have any further plan after I left the building but to get as far from here as possible. After some deliberation I chucked my keycard, my wallet, my keys and my old water-logged boots into the harbor. Then I turned and left the port for the darkened streets of Tokyo.