"Let's go to war," she said to no one, to everyone, to herself.
Behind her, three hundred engines roared agreement.
The Dragon was awake.
And she was starving.
The convoy moved through Tokyo like blood through arteries—necessary, inevitable, impossible to stop. Hanae exhaled another stream of smoke and watched it curl against the Mercedes's beige leather ceiling. The cabin was sealed tight against the storm, creating a bubble of climate-controlled silence while chaos roared outside.
A soft giggle broke the quiet.
Hanae's eyes slid to the left without moving her head.
Sitting beside her, looking small enough to fit in a shopping bag, was Reina. She had the kind of face that made people want to protect her—porcelain skin, doe eyes, hair tied in twin tails that bounced when she moved. The Gothic Lolita dress with its layers of black lace made her look like she'd wandered out of Harajuku and gotten lost.
People always underestimated Reina. Right up until they bled out.
"Finally," Reina whispered, more to herself than to Hanae. "I was getting so tired of scanning barcodes, Boss."
Hanae knew what was under those lace sleeves. A roadmap of scars, most of them self-inflicted during the six years of forced normalcy. Reina—codenamed "The Viper" for reasons that had nothing to do with snakes and everything to do with how fast she could open someone's throat—didn't cope well with boredom.
"Six years." Reina leaned her head back, staring at nothing with eyes that had forgotten how to focus on things that weren't moving. "Do you know how many bento boxes I heated up in that 7-Eleven microwave? Thousands. Beep. Beep. Beep."
Her finger twitched, pantomiming the scanner motion. The movement looked compulsive. Haunted.
"Every customer who threw their change at the counter instead of handing it to me..." Reina's hand slipped into the folds of her skirt and emerged with a curved blade—matte black karambit that drank light instead of reflecting it. She spun it around her finger in a blur that defied physics. "Every drunk salaryman who tried to grab my hand when I gave them their receipt... I imagined it. Just a little cut. Just to see if they were red inside like everyone else."
"But you didn't," Hanae said quietly.
"Because you told us to wait." Reina's voice dropped to something approaching reverence. She looked at Hanae with the kind of devotion people usually reserved for religious icons. "You said 'Sleep, Viper.' So I slept. I scanned the barcodes. I smiled. I said 'Irasshaimase' ten thousand times. I was a good girl."
Guilt hit Hanae like a fist to the solar plexus. She'd dismantled an empire so she could play house, and she'd left her wolves to starve in cages made of fluorescent lights and minimum wage.
"You don't have to be a good girl anymore, Reina," Hanae said, and meant it. "Tonight you can eat."
Reina's smile widened, exposing teeth that looked sharper than they should. "Itadakimasu."
In the driver's seat, eyes watched them through the rearview mirror. Tired eyes, crinkled at the corners, set in a face that looked like someone had carved it from granite and then left it out in a sandstorm for a decade.
Ren. "The Gearhead."
He didn't talk much—never had. A cigarette dangled unlit from his lips, purely for the oral fixation since Hanae had quit and he'd followed suit out of solidarity. His hands rested on the steering wheel with surprising gentleness for someone who could drift a garbage truck through rush hour traffic.
"Ren," Hanae said, breaking the moment. "How was the sanitation department?"
Ren's eyes flickered in the mirror. He shifted gears—smooth as silk despite the rain-slicked roads—and the Mercedes accelerated as they merged onto the expressway toward Roppongi.
"Smelled," Ren rumbled, his voice like rocks in a cement mixer. "Garbage trucks. Bad suspension. Terrible turning radius." A pause. "No soul."
His palm brushed the steering wheel almost affectionately.
"This though? German engineering. V12 engine that wants to run." Another pause. "She's been patient. Like me."
Hanae looked out the window. The rain was coming down sideways now, pushed by wind that made the streetlights sway. Behind them, the convoy stretched for what had to be half a mile—a mechanical dragon of black steel and burning purpose winding through Tokyo's streets.
She looked down at her hands. Black leather gloves covering knuckles that were probably still bruised from the gym, from breaking that recruit's nose, from six years of holding everything in until her bones ached with it.
For six years she'd worried about dishpan hands. About breaking a nail because Kenji said it looked "unkempt" and "low-class." About keeping her hands soft enough that they wouldn't betray what they'd done, what they could still do.
She flexed her fingers. The leather creaked.
These aren't housewife hands, she thought. These are the hands that strangled the Red Dragons' boss when I was nineteen. These built the Kurosawa Clan's golden age from blood and broken bones.
"Boss." Takeshi's voice from the passenger seat, vibrating with barely contained excitement. The massive former chef was practically shaking, still wearing his mud-stained white jacket because there hadn't been time to change. He'd pulled a meat cleaver from under the seat—custom forged, heavy enough to split a skull, kept sharp enough to shave with. "Crossing the perimeter. Roppongi Hills coming up."
Hanae ground out her cigarette in the pristine ashtray.
"Show me."
Ren tapped a button. The privacy partition lowered with a hydraulic whisper, giving Hanae an unobstructed view through the windshield.
Roppongi.
The district had always been Tokyo's id made manifest—foreigners and art galleries and clubs where a bottle of champagne cost more than a car payment. Where money and culture and crime blurred into something that pretended to be legitimate.
Rising ahead of them like an accusation was the Kurosawa Headquarters. The Ivory Tower.
Forty stories of white glass and polished steel, floodlit from below so it glowed against the stormy sky like something holy. Her father had built it to make a statement: We're not thugs. We're businessmen. We're legitimate.
But as they got closer, Hanae saw the rot.
The plaza in front—once a zen garden where silence was enforced, where every stone had meaning and purpose—was a fucking disaster.
Sports cars scattered across the sidewalk like a child's abandoned toys. Lamborghinis in neon green. Ferraris wrapped in chrome gold. A Bugatti parked on the fountain. Music thumped from somewhere, trashy eurobeat that made Hanae's teeth ache.
And the guards.
God, the guards.
"Look at them," Hanae hissed, leaning forward.
They weren't wearing the crisp black suits of the Kurosawa Clan. They were in designer tracksuits—Gucci and Versace and other brands that screamed new money, no class. Heavy gold chains. Sneakers that cost more than a salary. One of them was actively pissing in the fountain that her father had commissioned from a master stone carver.
This wasn't a yakuza stronghold. This was a frat house.
"Disgusting," Ren muttered, and coming from him that was practically a speech.
"Jiro's New Guard," Takeshi growled, gripping his cleaver until his knuckles went white. "Mercenaries. No loyalty. No respect. They treat the territory like it's a fucking playground."
"They don't own it," Hanae said, voice arctic. "They're just renting. And the lease just expired."
She studied the concrete planters Jiro had installed—anti-vehicle barriers designed to stop truck bombs. They were formidable. Professional. Actually well-placed.
"Ren."
"Yes, Boss?"
"Can we clear those planters?"
Ren looked at the barriers, then at the reinforced SUV leading their convoy—the "Battering Ram" piloted by two former sumo wrestlers who'd gone into security after their careers ended. His eyes tracked angles and momentum with the precision of someone who'd spent his life calculating exactly what a vehicle could survive.
"The Ram can take the first barrier," he said after a moment. "But we'll lose momentum on the second. To breach the lobby doors effectively, we need to hit them at forty kilometers per hour minimum."
"So improvise."
The corner of Ren's mouth twitched. On anyone else it would've been a grin.
"Hold on."
He grabbed the radio handset. "Unit 1, Unit 2. Formation Delta. Pincer the barriers. Make me a ramp."
Through the windshield, Hanae watched it unfold like choreography.
The two lead SUVs didn't slow down. Didn't hesitate. They accelerated, then swerved at the last second—Unit 1 slamming into the left side of the first planter, Unit 2 taking the right.
CRUNCH.
Metal screamed. Sparks fountained into the rain. The impact twisted the heavy concrete planters, knocked them askew, created a narrow gap between them.
Not a hole. A funnel.
"Go," Hanae whispered.
Ren's foot hit the floor.
The V12 roared like something waking up angry. Five hundred horsepower transferred to wet pavement through German engineering and pure fucking will. The Mercedes surged forward.
Reina giggled, clutching her knives. Takeshi braced himself against the dashboard. Hanae sat perfectly still, watching.
The guards in front of the tower looked up. Saw headlights approaching at a speed that meant someone had made a terrible decision. They dropped their cigarettes. The one pissing in the fountain fell backward into the water with a splash.
They scrambled for weapons—shiny gold-plated pistols that had probably never been fired outside a range, if that.
Too slow. Too late. Too soft.
Ren threaded the needle. The Mercedes shot through the gap between the smashed planters with maybe six inches of clearance. The side mirrors sheared off with a crack but the chassis cleared.
They hit the curb and went airborne.
Just for a moment. Just long enough for Hanae's stomach to drop. Then they came down hard, suspension bottoming out, racing across the plaza directly at—
The revolving glass doors.
"Brace," Ren said, calm as someone ordering coffee.
Hanae didn't brace. She sat there watching a guard's face behind the glass go from confusion to terror to acceptance in the space of a heartbeat.
SMASH.
The sound was the end of the world in miniature.
The reinforced grille hit the tempered glass and the glass exploded. Shards—millions of them, some as small as dust, some as big as knives—blasted inward like diamond shrapnel. The revolving door tore free of its moorings and spun across the marble lobby like a giant's discarded toy.
The Mercedes plowed through the reception desk—computers and paperwork and someone's forgotten coffee cup all flying—before Ren brought them to a perfect stop in the center of the vast white atrium.
Steam hissed from the radiator. The airbags stayed deflated—Ren had disabled them years ago because they got in the way.
For exactly three seconds, there was silence.
The lobby was destroyed. Glass covered every surface. The "New Guard" thugs were scattered, coughing in dust, trying to process what had just happened to their invincible fortress.
Then the rear door of the Mercedes clicked open.
A black leather boot stepped out onto glass-covered marble.
Crunch.
Hanae emerged and stood to her full height. She smoothed the lapels of her suit with movements that were almost meditative. Looked around the lobby—all white marble and white pillars and white leather furniture, like someone had designed a hospital for billionaires.
"Too sterile," she said to no one in particular. "Needs color."
From the other side of the car, Reina hopped out and landed like a cat. She twirled her twin tails, karambits catching the harsh halogen lights.
Takeshi kicked his door open—literally kicked it off its hinges—and lumbered out looking like a nightmare in a white chef's jacket, cleaver in hand.
Ren stayed in the driver's seat, racking a shotgun he'd pulled from somewhere under his seat. "Keeping the engine running, Boss."
Smart man.
The "New Guard" captain stumbled forward from the elevator bank. Bleached blonde hair, cheap suit straining over muscles built in a gym instead of in fights. He had a cut on his forehead, bleeding into his eye.
"Who—" He wheezed, pointing with a shaking finger. "Who the fuck do you think you are? Do you know whose building this is? This is Jiro-sama's territory!"
Hanae looked at him. Didn't shout. Just adjusted her gloves.
"Reina," she said quietly. "He's pointing at me."
Reina's eyes lit up like someone had flipped a switch. "Can I?"
"You may."
The air in the lobby seemed to warp.
Reina didn't run—she vanished. Six years of forced stillness released in a burst of speed that made her look like she'd been edited out of several frames of film.
The captain blinked.
In that blink, Reina was inside his guard. Too low, too small, too fast to track. She slid across the polished marble on her knees like she was stealing home base.
As she passed him, her hands moved in two distinct arcs.
Slice. Slice.
The captain screamed—not in pain yet, but in confusion. He collapsed, tried to stand, couldn't. His legs just wouldn't work anymore because his hamstrings were no longer connected to anything.
Reina stopped ten feet behind him. Stood up. Licked a droplet of blood from her right karambit and winked at the horrified thugs gathering on the mezzanine.
"One down!" She chirped, voice bright as a game show host. "Ninety-nine to go!"
That was the signal.
From the shattered entrance behind them, the Ghost Squad poured in. Veterans in dark suits, moving with purpose, wielding pipes and bats and swords that had been kept sharp out of faith that this day would come.
The "New Guard" roared and charged from the staircases.
What followed wasn't a fight. It was a correction.
Takeshi moved like a natural disaster. A thug charged him with a baseball bat. Takeshi didn't dodge—just caught the bat with his free hand, ignored the impact that would've shattered a normal person's bones, and swung his cleaver.
Not at the man. At the weapon.
The cleaver sheared through the wooden bat like it was made of breadsticks, and the flat of the blade continued into the thug's chest. He flew backward, hit a white marble pillar hard enough to crack it.
"Raw!" Takeshi bellowed, looking at the unconscious body. "Undercooked! Weak!"
He grabbed a marble reception chair one-handed and hurled it into a cluster of three attackers. They scattered like bowling pins.
In the center of the chaos, Hanae walked.
Straight line. Unhurried. The violence swirled around her—a hurricane of blood and breaking bones—but she was the eye of the storm, calm and cold and untouchable.
A man in a Versace tracksuit lunged at her with a switchblade.
Hanae didn't stop walking. As the blade came toward her ribs, she rotated her hips. The knife passed through space where her body had been a microsecond earlier.
She reached out. Her gloved hand caught the back of his head, fingers finding pressure points she'd memorized before she could drive.
She didn't punch him. Just used his momentum. Guided his face down while bringing her knee up.
CRACK.
The sound was wet and final. She released him and he dropped, unconscious before he hit marble. She stepped over him without looking down.
Another attacker—bigger, wrestler build, someone used to winning through sheer size—tried to tackle her.
Hanae pivoted. Caught his outstretched arm.
(Flashback: Standing in her kitchen, folding Kenji's dress shirts. "You have to fold along the seams, Hanae, otherwise it wrinkles.")
Fold along the seams.
She applied pressure to his elbow joint. Against the seam.
SNAP.
The wrestler howled. Hanae spun him around, using him as a human shield against a thug trying to tase her. The prongs hit the wrestler instead. He convulsed and dropped.
"Wrinkled," Hanae murmured, releasing him. "Disappointing."
She reached the center of the lobby. The white marble wasn't white anymore—smeared red, littered with groaning men in designer streetwear. Her Ghost Squad was systematically dismantling the opposition, six years of frustration channeled into every punch.
Reina was cackling on the mezzanine, dropping onto guards from the railing. Takeshi was using a velvet rope stanchion like a spear.
Hanae stood before the golden elevator doors.
Three men blocked her path. They looked more competent than the others—Jiro's personal security, probably. They held collapsible batons and had the stance of people who'd actually trained.
"Stop!" The middle one tried for authority. "The elevator's locked! You can't—"
Hanae pulled out her cigarettes. Put one in her mouth. Didn't light it yet.
"Reina," she called calmly. "Clear the path."
From above—literally from the chandelier—Reina dropped.
She landed on the middle guard's shoulders. Before he could process the weight, she drove the hilts of both karambits into his temples. He dropped like someone had cut his strings.
She backflipped off him—actually backflipped, because Reina had never met an entrance she couldn't make dramatic—slashing the wrists of the guards on either side. They dropped their batons, clutching bleeding hands.
Reina landed in a crouch at Hanae's feet, looked up with her face speckled crimson, twin tails messy.
"Ding!" She mimicked an elevator bell. "Ground floor. Going up?"
Hanae lit her cigarette. Stepped past the moaning guards.
Pressed the call button.
The golden doors slid open with a pleasant chime. The interior was mirrored and pristine, playing soft jazz—some elevator-music version of "Fly Me to the Moon."
Hanae stepped inside.
Reina skipped in after her, wiping her knives on her frilly skirt. Takeshi squeezed in, breathing hard and looking like a butcher at the end of a long shift, filling half the elevator car.
Hanae studied the control panel. Didn't press 20 or 30 or any of the middle floors.
She pressed 40. The penthouse. The throne room.
The doors began to close.
Through the narrowing gap, Hanae saw her men victorious, zip-tying survivors. Saw Ren flash the Mercedes's headlights once—all clear.
The doors clicked shut. The sounds of violence cut off instantly, replaced by gentle humming machinery and jazz that had been defanged into something safe.
Hanae looked at her reflection in the gold-tinted mirror.
The suit was still immaculate. Just one drop of blood on her white collar betraying anything.
"Takeshi," she said, watching the floor numbers climb. 1... 2... 3...
"Yes, Boss?"
"When we get to the top, Uncle Jiro will try to offer us tea. He'll try to talk. Stall. Negotiate."
Takeshi grunted. "I hate talking."
"Me too." Hanae watched smoke from her cigarette drift toward the ventilation fan. "If he offers tea..." She paused. "Throw him out the window."
Reina swayed to the elevator music, humming along. "The 40th floor? That's a long way down. Think he'll bounce?"
"Let's find out," Hanae said.
Her eyes were fixed on the ascending numbers. Up toward the sky. Up toward the past she'd tried to bury. Up toward the father who'd let her be exiled and the uncle who'd sold her city for profit margins.
Ping.
The elevator slowed.
Hanae cracked her knuckles. The sound was louder than the music.
"Showtime."
The doors opened.
[End of Chapter 5]