Worship at The Smokehouse Cathedral

Chpt 1. Complications

Wrong place, wrong time. Isn't that how all really bad movies begin?

Kaia absorbed the impact on her back, but pushed back just in time to swing her thighs up and connect a hard foot with the lanky body lunging toward her. The room that had been so quiet only four minutes prior swam dizzily in her vision for a moment, but there was no time to think, no time to react as pure adrenaline pushed her back off of the much-more-solid-than-it-looked wall and away from the second body that turned towards her with a curious piece of gleaming metal waving from a sure hand.

Shit, he has a gun.

Or, at least that's what she would have thought had her body not been on automatic, plowing deep into the unforgiving bamboo tatami beneath her splintered feet. The bullet blast was loud and jarring—a thundercrack in a room of tin, sweeping her away on waves of ear-rendering percussion, acrid, smoke and gagging mercury.

That was close.

But even she knew she couldn't do that again.

“Please don't shoot! I'm not armed!”

But even as she said it, Kaia knew it was useless. First off, the guy was trained, and from the spiked burnt umber hair and ultra-bright titanium glasses, she was guessing it wasn't from the military. Secondly, she was speaking in English, and he, well, wasn't. Which wasn't strange since it was she who was in the foreign country, not he. Study abroad broadens your horizons, my ass.

And then, of course, there was the small problem of the gun already being cocked and loaded in much more than just her general direction.

As if “point blank” could be general.

The guy glowered. At least she thought he did. It was really quite difficult to tell given the bug-shaped glasses and all, which was kind of annoying her. After all, Kaia figured, if she was going to die, she wanted at least to see the features of the last face she would ever see on earth. Commit it to memory and feast on the image as it faded from the general swamp of consciousness that would ooze from her shattered cranium onto the stiff bamboo-woven floor. She shivered.

Ewww...it it possible to gross yourself out about your own death right before you die?

“I mean...could you take off your glasses at least? I'd like...at least that dignity before you...you know.”

The orange-haired man seemed to contemplate her for a second and then made a sharp move. Kaia was certain that was it—goodbye world, goodbye parents, goodbye life—but he simply ripped off the oversized glasses to throw them aside in the pile of refuse that had once been the dining table.

And that was when it hit her.

That face.

That hair.

How could she forget?

“Oh...”

SHIT...

***

Hiragawa Riosuke was not having a good day. Correction, he was having a rather pissy day to be exact. First, the Red Monkey clan had picked off The Golden Emporium, one of their largest clients for extortion money and insider dirt on the local politicians. Ricky Fujito would have hell to pay when the boss got wind of what went down. You don't just decide to stop paying the boss—fuck, you diddn't decide to tie your shoelaces without permission in his city. His city.

Even if he couldn't blame them.

After all, it was just last Thursday that Old Man Futo buried his only son.

“FUCK! Gimme a smoke, will you?”

Eiji fumbled in the inner pocket of his too-tight designer suit, hasty to comply with his volatile boss' request. He had been a late recruit to the organization and often wondered if that was the reason why he had been placed with the crazy boss—the one nobody wanted to work with because they would either end up dead or in some situation that normally involved lots of cops, bars, and indefinite confinement. Not that he could complain, even with that. The organization had given him clothing, money, women, and most importantly, a purpose, so...crazy or not he was hooked to his boss till the death.

It just irked him that the “till death” part always seemed to be only a day away.

Eiji finally managed to light the cigarette that Riosuke waved and relaxed infintesimally as his boss slunk into the seat, enjoying the nicotine rush and calming down to normally accepted levels of craziness. This had been a stressful week. Between this new, unknown gang making a move into their territory and the...complication...things had been going awry since before dawn on Sunday.

Eiji chanced a quick glance into the backseat. There she was. The complication. Still glaring hatefully at him from underneath deep chocolate bangs and a reinforced gag. If looks could have killed, Eiji would have been twelve feet under—six for each eye.

He knew he really shouldn't say anything. Riosuke was on a hairtrigger as it was. But there would be no turning back if they didn't let the girl go—she would become something much more than a minor irritation and blosson into a full blown pain in the ass.

And Eiji really didn't want to be around when that happened.

“Say, um, boss...I was just thinking...You know, we made our point. Only a few of the group's men got hurt—no big deal. But this girl in the back, well, you know...we don't really have a use for her. And she's um...well, she's American, you know...we might be bringing a lot of trouble for taking her...” Eiji trailed off as he watched his boss from the corner of his eyes

Riosuke took a long drag on his cigarette, his cheeks hollowing and then stilling as he held it for a long moment before responding. The air seemed to coalesce into a shapeless pudding while Riosuke thought, reality taking on a leaden, surreal sheen as Eiji zoomed in on the slightly pocked face, the neat goatee, the silver nose ring that moved with each long drag. He swallowed. This wasn't good. His boss wasn't meant to be a thinker. And by that, he simply meant that things could be bad to begin, but once Hiragawa Riosuke's mind began to whirl, it was normally into the depraved depths of sex and violence that only the institutionalized were privy to. It was better to keep him a bit unstable and liable to lash out. At least then he lashed out shallowly. It might hurt for a bit, but no real damage done. But if he had time or the inclination to really think things through...

“You're right Eiji. We can't just take the girl. We've got to get rid of her. Take me to Osaka.”

Shit. Osaka was a good eight to ten hours from where they were, and rush hour traffic was still not over. It would take them at least twelve hours to get there. Which meant there would be plenty of time for Riouke to think. Which meant that there was going to be a world of trouble when they finally arrived.

For both Eiji and their little...complication.

The girl was silent until she heard the word Osaka and noticed Eiji pulling onto the highway, at which point she began to flail and kick the seats with a violence the hit man never knew she possessed. So much for a quiet ride.

Eiji cursed his luck and reached into the backseat to gain control over the girl's bound legs while keeping his left hand on the steering wheel to maintain control of the car. Any second now he would swerve into the median on his left or into the passing car on the right and that would be it—goodbye gang, goodbye Japan, goodbye world. Riosuke continued to calmly smoke his cigarette while Eiji cursed and swerved, not concerned in the least, and again Eiji found himself wondering how he got stuck with the psychopath boss in the yakuza. Just leave it to his luck to find the one crazy out of an organization of thousands.

“Listen, girl! GIRL! Stop it! Do you want to die! I can't drive and control you at the same time!”

Eiji couldn't understand what she was saying due to the gag, but he could imagine that it wasn't something along the lines of “Oh, OK, I'm really sorry I've been messing up your evening and all, but do you think you could turn me on the other side? This one's numb.”

Indeed, as he looked at her form as it flashed as wildly as it could get in its bound form, he registered that absolutely none of her body was apparently either numb or tired. Just then, one of the girl's boots connected with the back of his head, and Eiji saw dark nothingness for a split second before he swerved left to avoid crashing into the nearby car.

Great. The toughest boss in all of Tokyo and his right hand man were going to die in a car crash on their way to Osaka.

Due to a...complication.

Eiji gripped the wheel hard, primed to turn around and knock the girl unconscious with the butt of his gun, when his boss pulled a long, thin instrument out of his inner jacket lining and pulled back a white and silver rod from its back.

And then his boss was gone.

Eiji didn't even have a chance to register what it was that his boss had pulled out as Riosuke managed to flip himself into the backseat (how he managed to do that without kicking Eiji in the head or so much as disturbing a single generously gelled spike of orange hair was well beyond him), pull back his arm and jab the needle downwards deep into the girl's carotid artery.

She froze.

“Now, I think you're a fairly smart girl. You would have had to have been in order to get this far. But I'm a killer. This is what I do. Soooooo...you could lie down and behave like a good girl until we get to our destination or I could inject this syringe full of air into your carotoid artery, cause you to have major cardiac death or a stroke within moments, and drop off your corpse in front of the American embassy. Your choice.”

He said all of this in Japanese, but the girl would have been fool to not understand the intent. Ever so slowly, she laid down until her body was laid out ramrod straight and rigid in the back seat, and Eiji marveled for a second that she had to be short—even compared to a Japanese woman. But you didn't have to know Japanese to know crazy.

Riosuke was quite universal in that way.

“I'm glad we've come to an agreement.” Riosuke twisted the needle deliberately, and the girl gave a startled cry before he removed the needle with a flourish. Luckily, it was a needle with a small tip, and he immediately tore off a piece of his shirt to place on the gushing pinprick-large stream of blood that was released. The cloth turned red, but it would hold. The damage had been minimal, and as long as the hole was not enlarged and the girl did not move, she would live for many more years to curse them both.

But for now she was mercifully silent, large tears sinking down warm, chocolate-colored cheeks, sobs strangled in her throat so that they would not move her fragile neck any more than necessary.

Eiji's heart sank.

“So. To Oasaka.”

Riosuke didn't bother to look at Eiji. He would do as he was told, or the girl wouldn't be the only body that he left in the town of his birth. But he was sure that he already knew that.

Helooked up into the rearview mirror and took a long glance at the girl, who was straining to prevent herself from completely falling apart—her body shaking with the effort to prevent crying. Her ripe curves jiggled slightly, breasts shaking in the confinement of her fitted blouse. She was beautiful...or would have been if she had had a penis, which was more his style, but he could still appreciate her overall attractiveness. Really, he could have done her without much coaxing if the minx could have stayed out of his goddamned business, but there was no help for it now. This situation was her own fault—if she had just minded her own business...

A small sniffle sounded and Riosuke glanced back up into the rearview mirror. The girl was falling asleep, either the adrenaline rush from earlier finally petering out or the reality of the situation causing her to withdraw into herself. Either way, she was finally falling quiet and with a final flutter, her enormous eyes closed in a fitful slumber. Laid out that way, hands bound behind her back outlining her chest, legs tied the way he wished she looked absolutely delectable, and Riosuke found himself lengthening within the tight confines of his leather pants. If it kept up, he wouldn't be able to will it down and they would have to make a pit stop so that he could relieve himself soon.

Really, he had to stop saying he was gay. Bi would fit him much better.

Riosuke checked his watch and took one final look in the rearview. There was a button missing. On her blouse. It might've gotten torn earlier, or perhaps when he jabbed the needle in her throat, but it was gone and in its wake was an expanse of deep ebony flesh that hinted at a firm, round globe, pert nipples percolating through the silken fabric. Riosuke could count the beads of sweat that dotted her collarbone and imagine how it would pebble underneath his fingers as he...

Shit.

“Eiji. Drive faster.”

It would take at least twelve hours to get to Osaka. More than enough time to figure out his next step, and hopefully take care of his exponentially growing problem, because after all...

...there was more than one way to take care of life's little complications.

***

A/N: I like to write, but I'm hopelessly shallow and am motivated by reviews. If you like and want to see this continued, please let me know. PS--the more reviews, the quicker installments come :-)!