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Bullets shot out in the dark, and he hoped that the phone would answer him. For god’s sake, please, answer the phone!
“Pupurun All-Natural-Girls Express Service! What would our dear customer most enjoy today?”
Toba cringed at the woman on the other end. Did they really have to pretend with all this bullshit? People did know about them. They weren’t going to stay secret forever. Hell, even he knew, and he’d only stepped foot in his grandfather’s homeland two weeks ago, because of business with his uncle. That, and trying to escape the fucking maniac trying to kill him.
Two bullets pierced the back of his car, and he swerved violently to the right, hoping to lose the asshole who followed him to Japan. Why couldn’t he stay in america!? Why was he after him?
“G-gimmie a fuckin’ assassin bitch who can help! I’m being chased!”
There was a pause. Did she not understand? Goddamn it, if Ichigo and the guys lied to him about this site, he’d fucking wring their necks if he survived.
His eyes flicked to the slumped body in his passenger seat, amending his thoughts to ‘if both he and they survived’. Castle mows down yakuza like wheat whenever he gets a chance. Motherfucker.
“I see,” the bitch on the other end finally said, as more gunshots rang out. This one smashing his rear view, meaning he couldn’t see the goddamn punisher on his motorcycle. “Who is after you?”
Jackie Toba heard his last living guy get a bullet while he tried to fire out the back windows at Castle, slumping over and falling out the car, across the boot.
He didn’t piss himself. That was the other guy; they do that when dead. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck!
“Frank Fucking Castle! The Punisher is after me! Help!”
The phone went silent. Eventually, the bitch at the end hung up on him.
He slammed it onto the dashboard over and over again, roaring in anger as he accelerated as fast as he could.
“You stupid! Fucking! Cowardly! Useless bitc-”
Toba took a bullet right through the back of the head, exiting above his right eye, and his car then drove uncontrolled at 62 miles per hour into a wall.
—
Frank Castle looked over what he could from the car. He only had a minute before cops, bystanders, and other Yakuza could arrive, and he was only fine with one of those three groups to show up right now.
He’d been hunting Jackie Toba for weeks. His group sold drugs, and bad ones too, and it got a lot of people killed with how they had cut it. Unfortunately, the bastard had flown to Japan, both fleeing him and taking advantage of the larger yakuza in an attempt to kill him.
Thumbing through the contact list of the dead wannabe drug kingpin, he made notes of all the names and accounts on the phone. A rare, rare few of them would be mundane acquaintances, but most would be part of the underworld. Co-workers, bosses, underlings…
He had time before he left. He could clean house a little.
An idle part wondered if he’d kill more Yakuza than Logan did the last time he was in japan, before dismissing it.
He looked at the last contact. Maybe he was reporting to his boss, or-
“Pururun All-Natural-Girls?”
The Punisher raised an eyebrow. Why would he be calling an escort service at this time?
He picked up his duffel bag of equipment, poured some gasoline over the car, and set a match before heading off. He knew in his mind that he would have to do some investigation, if only to separate business contacts from personal ones.
—
“Ugh! I lost it!”
Kei groaned aloud in frustration. She’d lost her book! She needed that for her mock examinations! She had bookmarks and notes and everything!
“Lost what, Kei?” Dahlia asked her. The sniper was busy doing post-work maintenance on her rifle as their transport drove back to drop them off.
They’d gotten a request to stop a small gang of drug dealers with too much ambition from making a scene, and it had almost gone downhill when one of the people leading it turned out to be a mutant.
Kei still killed him, knife hands or not.
“My mock test book for my accounting course! I musta dropped it earlier today!”
Daria simply sat and chewed her candy, the traitor. Meanwhile, the pink haired college student ruffled through her bag, looking for her book. Gun, wetsuit, body armour, spare rounds for Dahlia’s sniper rifle, knife, binoculars…
“Wait a second! Dahlia, I need to check your bag!”
Her roommate glared at her. “Did you really leave your exam stuff in my rucksack!?”
“Jeez, I just packed things in the wrong bags! They look identical anyways!”
“But you bought keychains to differentiate them, Kei!”
Kei held up her backpack. “I got matching ones, the others weren’t as cute!”
Dahlia checked and saw that Kei indeed had gotten the same keychain figure for both her backpack and Dahlia’s.
Dahlia sighed a groan of defeat and handed Kei her backpack to rummage through.
“Shit, I don’t think- oh! It’s here! Thank you!”
Mr Wig, their driver, took the time to speak up.
“This is why you keep leaving your gun in your bag, isn’t it, Kei?”
Kei made an annoyed face, pulling her lips up to show off her gums as she looked away and groaned. “Ugh. For real? You’re still on my back about that?”
“I’m getting on your back about it because I don’t want you to get into any unnecessary trouble, Kei.”
“Yeeeeeaaaah,” Kei stretched out aloud.
Their van stopped, and Kay and Daria hopped out of the back of it, into headquarters, where their boss was waiting.
All of their equipment was sorted out, checked for bugs for a second time, and then moved back into storage, and with a double check, Kay also made sure to leave her gun for once.
The boss however, wasn’t done.
“Kay, Dahlia.”
The girls turned to her as Mr Wig carried the sniper rifle into the back. “Yes boss?”
“I’ve recently learned that someone very dangerous has arrived from overseas, and I’ve been telling the girls that I do not want to throw my employees' lives away at half-baked attempts on his life from idiots,” She slid over several photos of an american man. “If you see this guy on any future mission, I want you to leave the area immediately. Check everything on you for bugs, burn it if you have to, keep an eye out for drones. Be careful out there.”
“How long are we gonna be careful, Boss?”
She thwacked the back of Kei’s head with the wooden spoon she was holding. “You should be careful all the time, idiot!”
“Owie…”
“But at least until three weeks after he leaves for the states again.”
“You got it! Keep away from this-” Kei looked at the photos again, and read the name out. “Frank Castle guy.”
“Oh, and good work, girls.”
Dahlia and Kei then left the base that fronted as a rather crap bar that sold terrible ramen, and got on Kei’s electric scooter to go to their shared apartment. A few minutes into their traffic violating ride home (Kei keeps going on pavement instead of designated bike lanes), Kei had to ask the question burning on her mind.
“So who is this Frank Castle guy anyway?”
Dahlia fell off the scooter in shock.