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saitoh_hajime) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
gumi_reloaded2012-04-16 03:12 pm
Explanations and Explorations
Time: Late Afternoon - Early Evening
Location: New Meiji Department of Justice (Police Wing, Armory, Shooting Range)
Characters, NPC, Saitoh, Tokio
“YOU HAVE ACCESSED THE NEW MEIJI POLICE DEPARTMENT ANSWERING SYSTEM. PLEASE LISTEN TO THE FOLLOWING OPTIONS BEFORE MAKING YOUR SELECTION.”
Saitoh took an impatient drag on his cigarette and listened.
“TO CHANGE YOUR PERSONAL GREETING, PLEASE PRESS 1. TO LISTEN TO YOUR PERSONAL GREETING, PLEASE PRESS 2. TO FORWARD CALLS, PLEASE PRESS 3. TO ACCEPT FORWARDED CALLS, PLEASE PRESS 4. TO FORWARD A CALL TO A FORWARDED NUMBER, PLEASE PRESS 5.”
Saitoh swore, and tried to resist the urge to throw his office phone out the window, wishing that they would stop changing the options every few weeks.
“TO CHANGE YOUR RINGTONE, PLEASE PRESS 6, TO LISTEN TO AVAILABLE RING TONES, PLEASE PRESS 7. TO REQUEST A CUSTOM RING TONE FOR ALL FORWARDED CALLS PLEASE PRESS 8”
Exhaling smoke out of his nostrils in a murderous sounding snort, Saitoh slammed the phone down onto the charger with enough force that his terminal and desk shook.
“Yorimoto!”
Saitoh’s new secretary jumped in his seat, knocked over a picture of his mother and her passel of pugs, and then tried to give his commanding officer a smart, manly sort of salute. “Yes, Saitoh-sama!” Newly promoted from the office accounting pool, Yorimoto Katsume was a twitchy little ferret of a man, one whom Saitoh suspected had an unholy fixation with fountain pens. “How may I provide you with assistance, Sir!”
(Holy freaking hell…) Saitoh gave his newest secretary a long measured look. “What is the prompt on the automated phone system so I can listen to my messages?”
“That’s easy, Sir! It’s option 18. Would you like me to assist you in button pressing, Saitoh-sama?” Yorimoto said hopefully, eager to prove his worth.
“No.” Saitoh pinched the bridge of his narrow nose and prayed for patience, since his preferred course of action, that being strangling his secretary and shoving the body where the sun didn’t shine was generally speaking, frowned upon.
“Oh,” Yorimoto’s face fell. “Well, if you have any trouble, please know that you can safely rely on me to provide you with timely assistance.”
Saitoh pinched harder, reminding himself that slaying evil instantly was not applicable to the mentally deficient, no matter how annoying they might be, “I will keep that in mind.”
“Oh, and if you are wondering about that voicemail you received fifteen minutes ago, the transcript is on your desk.”
Saitoh glanced down at his desk and saw that there was in fact, a memo near his cigarette ash covered keyboard. (Unlike most people, he preferred typing rather than relying on voice recognition software) He frowned (due mostly to the smiley face stamp that was by Yorimoto’s name) and began reading.
MEMO:
To: Captain H. Saitoh
From: Office Secretary K. Yorimoto (recently promoted)
Subject: Voicemail from O. Murakami, DOJ (13:35:05)
Dear Captain Saitoh-sama,
Here is the transcript of a voicemail you received from one O. Murakami. Please review and let me know if you need any further assistance in this, or any other matter.
With the most profound respect that you could ever imagine,
K. Yorimoto ^__^
Start Message
“Hello, this is a message for Captain Saitoh-san. This is Oharu Murakami. I’m not sure if you remember me, but I was the secretary to the late Fujita Hiroshi? Yes, well… I am now working for Takagi Tokio, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney. She asked me to call and let you know that she will be stopping by your office to return an item that you lent her the other day and that you should anticipate her arrival no later than 15:30….
Saitoh-san, I heard about your injuries sustained in the line of duty. I hope that you will make a speedy recovery and that your boys, bless their hearts, are safe and well. If you have any questions, or can’t speak with Takagi-san during this time, please call me directly or send an email so that I can reschedule.
Warmest Regards,
O. Murakami”
End Message.
.
Part I
Saitoh glanced over at his secretary, who appeared to happily fiddling with yet another fountain pen and sourly wondered how much trouble he’d get in if he tried to swap secretaries with the attorney. (Hell, I’d be half tempted to let her keep the gun if she took this moron back with her…)
So, Takagi was coming to return the gun. He wondered if she’d have her regular issue side arm with her. (She better, or there will be hell to pay) While she’d dodged a bullet (several in fact) the day before, he knew all too well that luck generally didn’t last and that if the woman wanted to stay alive long enough to ever collect her pension, she was going to be more careful.
He frowned, took a deep breath of cigarette smoke, and exhaled slowly as an idea began to form. Several minutes passed, in which time he finished his cigarette, made a phone call and did some research on a certain grey eyed attorney.
It was immediately apparent that the woman was over-qualified for her position as an Assistant Prosecutor. Despite being relatively young, she was an experienced, successful attorney and had a highly commendable case record, with an impressive conviction rate. Saitoh noted that she’d taken on more than her fair share of corruption cases in Yokohama and surprisingly managed to win more than she lost, no small feat considering the rampant corruption that plagued every level of the New Meiji governmental
bureaucracy.
The second issue that stood out was the fact that her brother, Takagi Morinosuki, the lead prosecutor for the National Department of Justice, had assigned his younger sister to her current position. While Saitoh frowned upon any sort of familial favoritism, he also frowned on the notion that her brother would put place her in an office that had the highest employee mortality and corruption rates in the country. He knew Morinosuki and had worked with the man on a couple of cases and up until this point, always assumed that the man had his head on straight. (The damn fool has thrown his sister to the wolves…) Saitoh had a pretty good idea about why this had occurred, but intended to verify his theory when Takagi stopped by.
He looked at her employee picture and compared it against his recollection of the woman from the day before. It didn’t do her justice, not by a long shot. The woman he’d protected and who had been protected by was intelligent, capable and surprisingly kind, a quality that was in very short supply. She was also tough, capable of sending a bullet into a man’s brain, and resourceful, using a blouse to tie a tourniquet around a severed artery.
The picture could also never hope to convey the sense of peace she carried within her or how soft her skin was. Waking on that floor, in her arms had been a life-altering experience. Saitoh stood up and walked over to the window in his office and looked outside at the sprawling, festering megapolis that he’d called home for most of his adult life. (Something occurred between us, some sort of recognition) While Saitoh wouldn’t go so far as to say he was a religious man, he did have a deep respect and awareness that his existence and the lives of those he cared for was more than the mere sum of this mortal life. He’d seen too much while serving his country to believe otherwise.