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The door came swinging open so fast that it slammed into the wall it was attached to and then slammed itself shut. A light feminine voice could be heard cursing from the other side of the door as it came flying open again. This time a tall man, who was unconscious, and a very short woman who was struggling to keep him standing, came stumbling through the doorway and into a small two-bedroom apartment on the second story while the door slowly shut behind them and locked itself automatically. The woman was still cursing and mumbling under her breath with an angry expression on her face. Not only were there cool streams of water running down her body from the rain, but there were also warm streams of blood as well. She was no taller than four foot seven and had long blonde hair tied into a ponytail. She Continued to help the man from falling and pushed him into the bathroom. The man unconsciously stumbled backwards and fell into the bathtub with his legs draping over the sides. 933Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjDGid0ggew
The woman stood there and sighed deeply as she said softly but angrily, “You big dumb bastard. Always taking things to far…”
She knelt down and opened the cupboard under the bathroom sink and grabbed a surgical medical kit. As she stood back up, she noticed the trail of blood leading into the bathroom and became even angrier. After turning on the cold water, the shower rained down over the man as she began to cut off his shirt with a pair of scissors she took from the surgical kit. As she slowly cut the man’s shirt, pools of blood came streaming down as she revealed he had been stabbed and shot multiple times. Her face scrunched up into the most possible angered expression a human could make as she began to dress his wounds. She was now cursing the man’s name out loud as she viciously cleaned and stitched his wounds up.
“Asshole has one drink and has to fly off the rails.” She messed up a bit of the stitching and growled as she screamed, “Stupid Matteo! We weren’t even on the clock so now you’re cutting into my weekend!”
After about twenty-five minutes of dressing and stitching up his wounds, she turned the shower off. After briefly leaving the room, she returned with shorts and a t-shirt. She cut the rest of Matteo’s clothes off and then dragged him by one leg into the living room where she had a couch waiting for him. She quickly slid the fresh clothes the best she could on him before propping him onto the couch. She had a stand with an I.V. waiting for him. After wrapping his body with bandages like a mummy, she stuck the needle into his arm and draped a blanket over him. She set the I.V. machines parameters and for a slow but steady drip and walked over to the closet where she rolled an E.K.G. monitor over to Matteo and hooked him up accordingly and turned the volume to low.
The woman bent over him and with a frown began to slap his face back and forth until his face was bright red. She then left the living room and came back with a mop and bucket and began to clean up the blood trail running to the bathroom. The quiet beeping of the E.K.G. quietly filled the emptiness as she scrubbed the wooden floor and continued to mumble profanities under her breath. The last bit of blood had been cleaned up as the woman inspected the floor, but some of the blood had already been stained into the wood and left faint red stains. She growled as she pushed the bucket and mop back into the kitchen and then she disappeared down a hallway. She returned wearing boxers and an extra-large button-down pajama shirt that appeared to look more like a kimono on her. The freezer door on the fridge swung open as she peered into it and grabbed a large bucket of ice cream. She slammed the door shut and grabbed an open bottle of red wine off the kitchen counter and headed back into the living room. She smacked Matteo’s face once again as she passed him and checked the screens on the machines before sitting on the couch cross legged at his feet.
She slammed the ice cream and wine on the coffee table and wrapped herself in a blanket with only her face exposed. She lifted an arm out from under the blanket and turned the T.V. on. The light from the television ignited the rest of the room behind them into a bright blue hue as the television revealed a movie that had been on pause the whole time she was gone. After pressing play, the movie continued. Even though the bottle of wine was already halfway empty, it didn’t stop her from pouring another glass that was already on the coffee table. Once she topped off the glass, she began to chug what was left in the bottle before placing it on the table. She would occasionally glance over at the machines and make sure Matteo’s vitals were at a sustainable level and then focused back on her movie. An occasional laugh would escape from her time to time and eventually Matteo made a snorting noise and began to moan.
“Shiro,” he quietly moaned. “Shiro.” His moan turned to a louder groan. “SHIRO!” He eventually cried out in pain.
The woman watching a movie asked, “What? Do you even know where you are right now Matteo?”
Without opening his eyes Matteo laid perfectly still and answered, “Home. We’re at home.”
Shiro responded sarcastically, “Very good! We are at home. Do you remember what you were doing before you made it home?”
Matteo was silent for a moment and then said, “Not really. No.”
Shiro paused her movie and said, “For some reason you went to the bar and picked a fight with two Yakuza gang members. They beat you, stabbed you, and shot you. They then called me on your phone, being that I’m the only number in your contacts, and told me to come pick your ass up before you died on their bar’s property. So, I picked you up, brought you home in the rain on my motor scooter, took care of your wounds, and here we are.” She took a deep breath after sighing and said, “So, once again, I saved your life. Now lie there, don’t move until I tell you too or I’ll just kill you myself.” She pressed play on the remote and continued to watch her movie.
Matteo moaned, groaned, then said, “Thanks Shiro. I’d be dead if it weren’t for you.”
Shiro scoffed and said, “No need to thank me. I actually laid here for about twenty minutes convincing myself to go get you. Doing our job alone sounds like too much work. So, I can’t let you die…yet.” She shoveled a large spoonful of vanilla ice cream into her mouth while she continued talking. “Also, you’d actually be dead if it wasn’t for my brilliant and impressive surgical skills.”
Matteo asked, “What am I going to do about work Monday morning?”
Shiro said, “Being the good partner that I am, I already called and left a message to your work that you broke a few ribs and your arm, so you’ll be out for a while.”
Matteo groaned in pain and then asked, “Did they call back?”
Shiro was highly annoyed by this conversation and said, “Yea, they called me to replace you until you’re up and running again. Now you’re talking way too much for someone who has sustained major injuries so if you could shut up and let me watch my movie that would be awesome.”
A series of coughs and painful laughs came from Matteo as he laid there in pain.
Before he could say anything Shiro said something first, “One of these days one of us won’t be able to save the other and one of us will die. And when you do stupid shit like this it only makes your clock shorter. And if you die before me, I don’t know what I’ll do but it won’t be pleasant.”
Matteo said, “Your hair is going to fall out quicker if you keep thinking like that.” He adjusted his body on the couch and let out a groan and said, “We can’t die until were old and miserable. So, for now just think about your future. Like meeting a handsome young man and having a big-headed baby with him. I mean I’ll still come over but I’m definitely going to make fun of that big ass head and drink all your husband’s beer and take dumps in your bathroom every time I come over.
Shiro’s was blushing hard as she said angrily, “What in the hell are you talking about? You’re either tripping or have become completely retarded. I have no interest in anybody’s love or loving anyone.” Embarrassed, she tightened the blanket around her head tight enough to only reveal her eyes. “If anyone is getting married around here it will be you, and I’ll come over and laugh at your ugly big-headed baby.”
Matteo smiled with his eyes still closed as he quickly said, “In that case, you mean OUR big-headed baby.”
Shiro was blushing even harder under her blanket as she quickly said in an evil tone, “If you say one more word, I will put you in a medically induced coma for an undetermined amount of time.”
Matteo laughed nervously because it wouldn’t be the first time, he’s pissed her off and that was her go to reaction. She was incredibly gifted in the world of medicine and surgical practice. She could have easily been a world-renowned surgeon and Doctor. She graduated high school at fifteen with a perfect GPA and graduated college by the time she was eighteen. There wasn’t anything she couldn’t learn or do after a while of practice. Her only downfall was her height. She was incredibly short. Like really short. Almost considered a dwarf short. Despite excelling at everything, as she grew older, she never looked or grew a day past six-teen. Even though she was twenty-five currently, most people she makes contact with treats her like a young teenager. Besides for work, she never leaves their apartment alone when she doesn’t have too.
Matteo rolled over wrapping his I.V. cord around himself, grunted, and said, “Goodnight Shiro” in a painful grunt and fell asleep. Shiro sat there in the dark with her blanket still wrapped around her face as she stared at the television still embarrassed thinking about Matteo’s joke about babies. Once Matteo was fully asleep and snoring loudly Shiro seized her chance to say out loud what was on her mind.
“Ya know that falling in love with people and having children just makes our job harder. If we had kids, they’d probably get kidnapped and held for ransom. Or if one of us died what would we say happened? Daddy got shot in the face by a stranger and is dead now? Or Yeah mommy was buried by some bad people who won’t tell us where she is? Or what if we both came home at the same time to some grunt already in our house sitting with our children with guns to their heads, telling us to sit down and have some dinner while we talk?”
Even though she had been making fun of the idea out loud, inside her head she envisioned having a nice home in the middle of the woods. There were countless numbers of children running about. Her husband figure was just a blacked-out frame of a human and not Matteo. She herself was a foot and a half taller in her mind and everything seemed perfect. Before she knew it, she was opening her eyes and realizing she must have fallen asleep while imagining her vision and was curled around Matteo’s legs on the couch. She quickly let go and stood on her feet in a quick rage of embarrassment.
She thought to herself out loud, “What trick did he pull to get me to do that? I only said a few sentences so, how and when did I end up passing out?”
While she stood there thinking to herself, she heard a few car doors slam shut outside the apartment building. After quickly moving to the kitchen sink, she looked out the window and saw an unusually large number of cars currently parked in the parking lot outside, and saw more vehicles pulling in quietly with their headlights out, even though it was pouring down rain outside. On the other side of the apartment, she could hear footsteps surging across the floor of the bottom levels making their way up. With lightning like reflexes, Shiro moved to her smart fridge and sequentially typed in a code on a small keypad in the upper right corner. The screen changed to a series of camera footages throughout the building’s exterior showing a mob of Yakuza members making their way to their apartment and more members surrounding the building and its exits.
There was no time to put a plan together or escape. Matteo must have done something outside of a bar fight to get this many people wound up to come out and try to exterminate him in this magnitude. Shiro calmly turned around and walked to the kitchen table. Only wearing her Kimono PJ’s with chopsticks keeping her hair up, she knelt and reached underneath the table and after a few seconds, and the undoing of some Velcro straps, a large and custom looking Dragunov Sniper Rifle with wood finish plopped into her hands. With it were two full magazines. After retrieving the weapon, she stood up and removed the two largest butcher knives out of the knife block on the table and laid on a spot on the floor in the kitchen watching the front door. She inserted one of the magazines and prepped her rifle. She had laid the knives at her side while she aimed down the front hallway towards the door. She wasn’t looking through the long-range scope but using a custom pair of canted iron sights and held the gun at an angle as she patiently waited.
The sound of pattering footsteps finally came to an end as Shiro heard them stop in front of her apartment door. After a brief moment the door handle slightly jiggled followed by some cursing by a couple of men on the other side of it.
“Come on just fucking open the door,” Shiro heard a man quietly say irritated.
“I’m trying!” another voice whined back. “Something’s up with this door. It ain’t normal boss there ain’t even a keyhole on the damn thing.”
Shiro was trying not to laugh and blow her position on the other side of the door because she knew the apartment door was a high tech, mechanicalized and magnetized piece of equipment while also being voice activated that her and Matteo installed for this very reason. So, they weren’t getting in without making some noise.
Without moving a muscle, Shiro lied there looking down sights waiting for the enemy to breach the apartment. She lied there so long that she began to think that no one was going to be able to get past the door. The noises of blow torches, chains, and the slamming of what must be a sledgehammer slamming against the door echoed through the apartment as the Yakuza members tried to break through. After becoming impatient, Shiro said, “Door unlock.”
A mechanical noise surged through the door and everyone on the other side jumped back startled at the sound. A moment passed before a man put his hand on the door handle and pushed it open slowly. Before anyone tried to enter a man in an all-black suit wearing sunglasses tossed in a cylindrical like can. The can bounced a few times off the ground and rolled towards the center of the kitchen. It suddenly began to spew out a thick cloud of gas that started rapidly filling the room immediately followed by footsteps running into the apartment.
Multiple gunshots began to roar out of Shiro’s rifle as she shot through the smoke and blasted the first two men who entered the apartment out the doorway and over the railing of the balcony. As the two men went over the rail and fell below, the man in the black suit tossed in another smoke grenade as three men with swords darted into the apartment. Shiro couldn’t see them enter but she could hear them and knew there was three targets that had entered. Before dropping her rifle, she fired off one last shot through the smoke that tore into one of the swordsman’s shoulders causing him to drop his sword. By the time his body hit the floor, Shiro rolled under the table with both butcher knives in her hands. She rolled to her feet while still under the table in a crouching position. One of the men with swords was cautiously stepping through the smoke while Shiro shot out from under the table and kicked the sword right out of the swordsman’s hands. While the sword flew through the air, Shiro raised her foot over her head and brought it down around one of the swordless swordsman’s arms, grappling it and using her body weight to toss the man into a flip onto his back. The other swordsman swung in the direction of the commotion. Shiro used the man as a shield as she rolled onto her back and blocked the other swordsman’s attack with his ally’s body. The man cried out in pain as a sword pierced his back and Shiro kicked him off her and towards the attacking swordsman. Shiro got to her feet when she heard a gun in the distance cocked back and bullets started tearing through the air followed by the echoing gunshots throughout the apartment.
The first swordsman she shot must have recovered enough to pull out a pistol and opened fire on her when he saw fit. Shiro did a series of handless cartwheels, dodging the oncoming gunfire while she closed the distance between herself and her enemy. The smoke was still blocking all vision, but it didn’t stop Shiro from moving in closer to her enemy. Once close enough, she kicked the gunman’s hand with the gun in it up towards the ceiling. The man shot a few rounds into the ceiling while Shiro dropped down to her hands and spun her leg, sweeping out the gunman’s feet from underneath him. The man crashed into the floor while Shiro grappled his arm, with the gun in it, with her body forcing him to aim at one of the swordsmen still by the table who was just now getting up from the last attack. Bullets tore through his body while Shiro forced the gun in the arm she was grappling to fire multiple times until the swordsman, who had been slashed on his back, was pressing his gun into the back of Shiro’s head. She didn’t know when he had gotten to his feet and advanced on them without her knowing but within the flash of a second, she raised her hand, grabbing one of the chopsticks that was keeping her hair up, and fiercely pierced it through the man’s finger, wedging itself behind the trigger stopping him from pulling it, while he cried out in pain. While the man hollered out in pain, he felt the cold hard steel of the butcher knife being driven into his back. As he fell to his knees, he noticed through the fog, the man Shiro had been grappling the arm of, had a butcher knife driven into his chest. His body collapsed next to his ally and disappeared under the smokey fog.
Shiro moved back into the kitchen and picked up her rifle. She laid back down on the ground and caught her breath before saying out loud, “Anyone else coming in?”
The man in all black was standing out of view by the front door on the balcony and said back, “You’re quite the lively one, aren’t you?” The man cleared his throat nervously as he could only imagine what all the commotion entailed and how quickly he just lost five men. “If Mr Matteo gives back what he stole we can forget about all this… trouble and move on. Shall we?”
Shiro’s voice rang out from the doorway, “Fuck you! You guys just wrecked my apartment and owe me a new one.”
The man responded, “You wrecked five of my men!”
Shiro laughed as she said, “Trespassing, Breaking and entering, assault, with intent to kill. I was only exercising my rights to protect myself and my home.”
The man shouted, “Just give me back what’s mine and we can end this.”
Shiro shouted back, “Well I honestly don’t know what the hell he took but he’s half alive and I didn’t see anything when I picked him up, so I guess your shit out of luck!” Shiro could hear sirens in the distance slowly getting closer. She said, “I don’t care if you are Yakuza if you step one foot inside my home, I’ll turn it into swiss cheese.”
The man in black chuckled as he said, “Oh, we aren’t Yakuza little lady. We are much more enthusiastic about our work.”
The man grew irritated because he too could now hear the sirens in the distance approaching. He was stroking his bare chin as if he had a goatee deep in thought for a second. He stopped and said out loud, “Fuck it!” He quickly dropped his head down halfway of his height towards the ground and sprinted into the apartment with his arms raised backwards behind him. The smokey fog was still present but visibility was much better as Shiro fired off a few shots at the intruder. His body made bizarre movements at what seemed like inhuman speeds causing Shiro to miss every shot. Once he was in jumping distance, he leapt at Shiro and kicked the rifle sideways out of her hands. At the same moment he was slashing at Shiro’s face with a short sword he had concealed in his jacket. While her rifle was spinning out of her hands, she quickly grabbed it by the barrel before it flew out of reach, and she smashed the man in blacks face with it, driving him directly into the ground in front of Shiro. The man made a small, short, whelping noise as his face was smashed into the carpet. His body remained still while Shiro nudged it with her foot.
The sirens were right outside the apartment complex and Shiro could hear gun fire, the sounds of cars screeching off, and shouting as the cops and remaining mysterious gang members clashed for a bit before the police gained control of the area and drove off the remaining assailants.
While heavily armed policed men where making their way up to the apartment, Shiro dragged the bodies in her apartment out to the balcony railing and tossed them over causing them to smash into the cars down below that were left behind by the now deceased assailants. By the time the heavily armed police erupted into the apartment shouting and pointing their guns in every direction, Shiro was already sitting cross legged at the kitchen table on a high-rise stool with one leg draped over the other one, holding a lit cigarette in one hand, and a badge and I.D. in the other hand. The apartment had a light fog still lingering and smelled of gunpowder.
Shiro said sarcastically to all the police in the room, “Nice of you to join the party guys. I mean I guess it’s already over but go ahead and help yourselves to the tea in the fridge.”
Some of the soldiers made an opening and a man wearing a trench coat entered and was cursing up a storm under his breath. He went over to Shiro’s fridge, opened it, took a jug of tea out, slammed the fridge door, and sat at the table with Shiro. He pulled his own small glass out of his jacket, that he usually drank his whiskey out of, filled it halfway with tea, but then pulled a small flask out of his pocket and emptied the rest of its contents into the glass of tea before chugging it all in one go.
After slamming the glass on the table, he asked, “What in the ever-loving fuck happened this time Shiro?”
Shiro smiled nervously while scratching her head and said, “Well, you see…”
Shiro explained the whole night to the man and he listened and only responded in a series of “Oh lord” and shouting, “Fuck!” very loudly throughout her explanation. Once Shiro finished the man had his face buried in his hands as he moaned and groaned.
“Look Shiro, we have to relocate you and Matteo because of this. Those guys definitely weren’t messing around and most likely will be back. But this is seriously, the last time.” He raised his face out of his hands with streams of tears raining down his face as he said, “I have my own precinct and officers to take care of. Every time we have to move you two it comes out of my pocket and I’ve about bled all I have left.”
Shiro said gratefully, “Thank you, Sir! And if I may ask, can you make it the exact same set up as this one?”
The man asked, “Any reason in particular?”
Shiro said embarrassedly, “I just like this layout…”
The man stood up and cleared his throat while he said, “By the power invested in me, Commissioner Fredrick Joseph, will make sure the spoiled brat gets what she wants.” Fredrick then turned around, put the glass back in his jacket and said, “Thanks for the tea. I’ll contact you.” Before walking out of the apartment with the gaggle of heavily armed soldiers. 933Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT035btEc0C
