#ch25

As we learned yesterday, Jayce is taking on a new role at UBrite, taking him out of the lecture hall and into the boardroom. While representing the University at academic events in Britechester and beyond and attending quarterly meetings, he'll have the opportunity to spend more time at home with his wife and young children.

Mutsumi is stress baking <3 She must have been really worried about Taiyo—this is his first solo mission, and he's undercover so he can't easily call in backup. But she knows there's no point in stressing over it, so she's focusing on stuff she can control. Love the optimism of that cake!

Shinzo becomes a ball of anxiety and hides in his trash can until it's over. My poor baby is so bad at stress management <3

Shion is slightly more proactive and takes out her stress on people who deserve it. I hope this became one of those crazy legends about the Yozakuras: "Don't mess with those Yozakuras, man! I heard that when this one guy badmouthed a Yozakura, their sister went on the warpath and totally ruined the guy's life!"

Kengo is making a new mask for Taiyo in case Taiyo's face gets grievously injured. Kind of an unnerving coping mechanism, but ok!

Awwww Nanao is stocking up on meds for Taiyo! Not an unreasonable precaution, especially since Taiyo actually does come home with his feet all messed up and multiple injuries.

Futaba is unfazed! It's really sweet that Futaba has faith in Taiyo and isn't worried too much about him getting hurt. She knows that he'll pull through when it matters. Since Goliath is included in the shot, I like to think that he also trusts Taiyo and isn't particularly worried.

Kyoichiro is also not worried, but for different reasons. Horrible horrible man <3

And of course we have this adorable scene when Taiyo finally returns:

To wit, he was pushed harder in gym class, until an inescapable physical exhaustion claimed his body and he fell. This was received with amusement by his peers, especially when it was usually followed by a yardstick to the rear and accusations of laziness. For the rest of the year he was at the epicenter of his tutor’s storm, miserably exhausted and never able to improve his physical state. Yet adult Mordecai would look back on those months as an important learning experience, one he subscribed to even neck deep in the Savage Family Corporation.

If he wanted something done right, he should remove the middleman and simply do it himself.

While he hadn't been particularly successful with an extracurricular exercise routine - life seemed to develop an uncanny ability for throwing proverbial spanners in those particular cogs - a discernment of keen proprioceptive capabilities in adolescence allowed Mordecai to ‘hack’ his biological malleability. 

According to the physiology books, proprioception is an awareness of where one’s appendages remain in space without thinking. Realising he’s acutely aware of this sense, preteen Mordecai would consciously engage his entire body’s muscle framework while he undertook mundane tasks like paperwork to enforce an almost ambient regime into his schedule. 

The initial results were as expected; a deep seated exhaustion and a dread of repeating it all tomorrow, which he almost surrendered to on a monthly basis. Every night, he’d collapse into bed, his entire body aching but thankfully too exhausted to be kept awake by pain. He'd sleep fitfully and awaken with residual soreness in his core, both a physical and mental battle of wills to overcome and rise before the day even began, but he persevered regardless.

Until one day he realised the pain was simply gone his mind and body finally in sync as both analysis and reaction became a seamless response to any stimuli. While Mordecai never became the Olympic contender he'd envisaged as a kitten, he gained something more useful; a finely tuned core strength that enabled swift, precise movements within a tiny window of inaccuracy, a margin of error easily rectified with basic calculations.

It still bothers the tuxedo that he can't pinpoint a day his muscles adapted. Applying tension upon waking eventually became automatic, as much a part of the mask he wore to sequester his emotions. This skill is what made him an exacting amateur surgeon for interrogations, a formidable foe with a firearm and a swift, decisive hand in high tension altercations. 

It likely saved his life the night Fiores attempted to murder him also, though as he sprints through the back alleys of Queens in driving rain, path heralded only by the cloud-crested moon, the unanticipated limitations of his biological hacking quickly become apparent. Already fatigued from constant flexion, his core muscles reject the sudden exertion and begin to ache as they drown in an excess of lactic acid, low base energy stores swiftly exhausted.

His legs feel immensely heavy, his chest tightened by an underdeveloped lung capacity, but as a shot whistles past his ear the tuxedo forces himself on through sheer willpower, towards the station he can see a few blocks away. A small part of Mordecai's mind agonises over his missing satchel, but there is no time to return for it; he has no money or papers, just a pen, a pocket watch, and a useless safe code wrapped around a dime in his pocket.

An awkward step on the cobbles and he stumbles. Mordecai gasps and barely prevents a fall onto the glistening streets by grabbing at the nearest wall in desperation, claws digging into the mortar with an unsettling scratch across brick. He pauses only long enough for the moon’s shine to glint off of the barrel of a pistol and pursuer’s eyes before pushing off the wall, ignoring the growing stitch in his side and the burning in his lungs, hellbent on survival.

The station is barely fifty feet away when a thought hits him. I can't purchase a ticket. A revelation that is swiftly accompanied by a trajectory shift towards the unfenced tracks extending from the southern side of the illuminated building. It troubles Mordecai to know riding the train without procuring a ticket is theft - something he refused to indulge even in the depths of poverty - however, he decides imminent mortality is an effective extenuating circumstance to allow it this once as by divine doctoring, a train pulls out of the station when he's a mere twenty feet away. 

With a grunt and a final surge of energy, Mordecai sprints the distance with a burst of speed before he leaps forward, jumping for the nearest carriage as the rear stairs draw level.

Time seems to stop when airborne. Breath caught in his throat and heavy body suddenly weightless, his heartbeat becomes a rapid, dicotical metronome in his ears and throat as hot smoke envelops his body. Suddenly blinded, the tuxedo is forced to have faith in his calculations and physical reflexivity, reaching through the choking gray smog with little more than a muttered prayer to a god abandoned years prior.

When his hand closes on a cold metal railing, time resumes with a sudden explosion of sensation; rain raps heavily on his bare head and chugging engines are thunderous in his ears as he clings to the railing for dear life, soaked loafers slipping on metal steps before finding purchase. Exhausted but relieved, he clutches onto the guide rail and sucks deep breaths into aching lungs, unstable legs threatening to give as he casts his gaze out in search of his pursuers.

Between the darkness, smoke and driving rainfall, viability is poor. Mordecai squints towards the alley he'd fled from as the train begins to pick up speed, pulse still hammering and breaths drawing deep. He can see nothing; lanterns eaten by darkness, smog too thick to dispel. Assuming they can’t see either, the tuxedo finally sags against the guide rail, acutely aware of the patter of rain on his head and the deep thrumming of engines rattling through his teeth.

As the adrenaline surge begins to wane, his body comes alive with aches and pains. Both his throat and lungs burning with exertion, his thighs aching almost as much as his blazing calves, a stitch in his right side flaring with each heavy breath. Whipping winds and unsteady legs mean he dare not release the guide rail lest he simply fall into the tracks, so he remains steadfast as they gain momentum, taking a moment to recover from-

A bullet pings off the train car barely a half inch over his head. Hair waving wildly in crosswinds between carriages and eyes startled wide, Mordecai ducks behind the guide rail with a gasp just before another shot dings off the metal right where his head had been moments before. The tuxedo peers around the edge of the carriage behind his own and squints in the smog, until he sees two dark figures hanging off a guide rail two train cars down, attempting to fire as the rails jostle their aim.

His second adrenaline rush is more like a trickle, a heavy delay between noticing the danger and acting on survival impulses. He jerks back being the train car between them as a third shot pings off the metal guide rail and with the last of his remaining strength, Mordecai wrenches open the rear door and throws himself inside, slamming the door behind him.

The air within the train car is still, the trundling of the train and heavy rainfall muted by thick window panes and thick metallic architecture. A couple of yellowed or green pairs of eyes turn to observe their belated fellow passenger before they return to their books, newspapers or work. None take interest, nor inquire of his arrival mid transit, merely sneaking a covert glance as he stumbles down the middle aisle to an empty pair of seats at the front of the carriage and collapses against the window.

Finally safe, if only for a short period of time with his pursuers just two carriages down, Mordecai allows olive eyes to flutter closed as he can truly catch his breath. He barely feels the usually uncomfortable sensation of soaking clothes on coarse fur or the way his hair sticks to his face, his mind distracted processing the events of the night with the clarity of a man aware of his imminent demise. There's no time to dwell on misfortunes when it's at a premium.

He shuffles through data, from limited inventory to loose ends, until finally, the tuxedo has a course of action to follow. Sitting straighter in his seat, he first pulls a pencil from an inside pocket and digs it into the inner lining of a coat pocket, destroying stitches he'd added the week prior to extract the dime, and paper wrapped around it containing the safe code in his apartment bedroom.

Using a tissue from another pocket, he soaks up the worst of the water from his right knee and folds his right leg over the left. It's only as he begins writing he truly notices his left glasses lense is cracked, but it does not stop him from transcribing his last words.

Mother,

Forgive my unannounced departure. Circumstances relating to my employment have required me to travel on short notice. It may be some time before I am able to correspond again, but you will find savings in my rented room above the dry grocery adequate for living. Give Mrs. Kovitz the name Ezra and she will allow you upstairs. There is a safe hidden in the southeast corner behind the baseboard.

He makes sure to outline the safe code where it had faded slightly from formerly hurried penmanship. He may have sat there for hours procrastinating the end of the hastily scrawled letter were it not for a sudden  and short lived increase in engine noise and driving rain. The rear carriage door opening and closing, a shuffle of fabric as someone silently takes a seat, an additional passenger changing carriages amidst the rainstorm worrying for the pursued tuxedo. Incensed to finish his letter, Mordecai carries on.

Please use some portion of it to relocate to more suitable living space, expeditiously. Purchase somewhere if you are able. The building is poorly ventilated, molded and unhealthful.

-M

Before he can sign his name, a thick drip of red falls to the crumpled page. The tuxedo pauses to stare at it, distracted brain struggling to comprehend what it is and where it might have come from, before a thick warmth oozing down his lip preludes an accompanying second drip of blood joining the first. Mordecai rubs at his snout with the back of a hand and pulling back, is greeted by a smear of red on dark fur. His own body betrays him, coating his only note paper in blood of all things, which he cannot send his mother lest she worry or ask questions of unsavoury people in the city.

“Damnit, damnit.” He rubs his nose roughly on his sleeve, inadvertently smearing the blood across his muzzle, before ripping the bottom of the letter away to remove both his blood and the laments regarding Mother’s current housing. Casting a glance over his shoulder as he crumples the soiled paper in hand, he spots Brady’s sour face immediately beside a man Mordecai recognises as Gabriel’s chauffeur. 

They don't meet his gaze, but Brady smirks for the briefest of moments, hand thumbing something in his pocket. Dark ears folding flat as time speeds past, the non-stop train journey to Missouri rapidly closing in on its, and his, inevitable end.

Fatigued adrenals activate a final time when he turns forward to find an unfamiliar man in a flat cap also observing him over the back of a seat. This man watches him openly, a lit cigarette dangling from thin lips and a brow quirked in a question the young tom cannot decipher. Noticing the three men briefly sucks the air out of the carriage, a suffocating sensation making it nigh impossible to draw breath.

Fear isn't an emotion Mordecai entertained often in recent years. He'd become as adept at masking that weakness of character as any other, sequestering it beneath a stony façade and severe tone most were themselves too intimidated by to query. In the face of death however, a young tuxedo cannot prevent bile churning in his stomach any more than the rapid jittering of his leg, an outlet for the intense anxiety created by knowing his time is running short.

Mordecai inhales and the spell is broken; the man in front turns away and lights a cigarette, the train still trundles along its track, rain beating mutedly against thick panes of glass. With a ragged exhale, he digs in an inside coat pocket for the blank envelope that so recently held a thick wad of cash and presses the folded letter to his mother inside. The sealing glue is bitter on a dry tongue, taste lingering as he scrawls her name and address on the front.

This very envelope previously had once contained a payout, monies accrued through sanctioned abuse, suffering bloodshed at his own hand. 

As a kitten, Mordecai was enraptured by fairytales not for their whimsy and wonder, but the dichotomy of good and evil so frequently portrayed. Black and white, heroes and villains, light and darkness. The concept had made perfect sense; that badness was as inherent to a soul as was blood to a paper cut, to know even as a child whether you were good or evil. It was a comfort in an otherwise difficult childhood to know he was good and that would never change. 

Joining the Savage Corporation had congealed bad and good into various shades of malignant gray. In order to benefit his family he was forced to entertain fixed odds, inflated prices, lying and stealing his way to middle management in an organisation with its very foundations rooted in moral debauchery. The kitten so sure of his integrity had become tainted by shadows and soon, was no better than those who now sought his death.  

All before one final, poorly conceived embezzlement endeavour had left Mordecai staring down the barrel of his own pistol. He grimaces, pencil stilled on the last digit of his family address, his grip on the shaft so tight his hand shakes. It's almost poetic that the former vessel of such funds should deliver his final words home but the prospect that money tainted by moral ambiguity required his untimely demise before Mother could discover and utilise the funds?

In hindsight, that is nothing short of zemblanity, but now is not the time for lamentation. The tuxedo tom tucks his pencil away safely and leaning forward, he speaks softly to the man sitting in the row in front of his own. “Excuse me,” Mordecai begins, then clears his throat softly to attract more attention. Though his eyes never leave his paper, the man’s head turns toward him, which is enough for the desperate tom. “You wouldn't happen to have a postage stamp, would you?”

“Sorry kid, I don't.” The man goes back to his paper without pause, leaving Mordecai to mumble half hearted thanks and lean back in his seat, ears flat to his skull and tail tucked beneath his legs. While the response is polite, it's useless; even if he manages to alight in St Louis and find a post office, he can't afford to buy a stamp with just a dime to his name. 

Resisting the urge to surrender to anxiety he casts his gaze around and spies a finely dressed woman reading, one seat back and across the middle aisle. Suppressing the growing anxiety in his chest as the train speeds towards its destination, Mordecai turns in his seat to try a more direct approach. “Pardon me, uh… perhaps I could impose on you to post a letter? I wouldn't ask a stranger, except that it’s-”

The carriage plunges into darkness as it enters a tunnel, a cavern of semicircular bricks and mortar that couples as an echo chamber, exponentially and rapidly increasing the thrumming of metal wheels on tracks. A clamber of engines and a heavy trundle of bolts and divots of very carriage pulled forthwith all join the cacophony of screeching couplings, rattling window panes and screeching horns that only grows by the second, a locomotive thundering through a wonder of modern architecture with all the disruption that seemingly accompanies industry.

With the accumulation of these sounds, the carriage interior almost becomes intolerable. Yet Mordecai does not notice intense auditory stimuli that would normally cause him great discomfort. Instead, the sight of a man standing in the aisle, a glimmer of something in his hand catching tunnel lighting as it flashes past, has his blood run cold. White fingers tighten on the pivotal envelope still in his grasp as desperation devolves into desolation, for as Close as he came to achieving his objective, this is where it must end.

The figure takes a step closer, the cover of darkness and intermittent flashing of passing lanterns keeping his identity shrouded in mystery. The glinting in the figure’s hand comes closer and the tuxedo flinches, eyes squeezing shut and head turning away. Final breath caught in his throat, he awaits an inevitable oblivion as overt peril draws his overwhelmed mind inwards, to a nauseatingly empty vacuum sans the rapid biological metronome drumming in his ears.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

Chest burning with depleting oxygen, his body tense for anticipated pain, it takes until early morning light falls on his face as the train exits the tunnel for the tuxedo to date squint as his executioner. Mordecai is not met by the barrel of a gun however but rather, a visage he will remember for decades to come as a moment his life changed forever; a gray tabby with pure white across his muzzle, a glinting cane under one arm and a newspaper under the other, the pale tips of his fur illuminated like a beacon of hope by the sun’s tender morning rays.

While not a particularly spiritual man, Mordecai is captivated by the imagery even as the tabby takes a seat directly opposite, placing his newspaper down out of sight before resting his cane against a hand. Impeccably dressed; a sharp three piece of better quality than anything Mordecai could dream, fitted leather gloves and manicured whiskers, he's flawless even as he stoops to spark up a cigarette, a habit the tom holds with a deep level of scorn as a wasteful vice.

As if feeling the young tom's gaze upon, the man tilts his head to regard Mordecai in return. Despite his obviously ruffled appearance, this businessman looks upon him without distaste or irritation, but a curious interest. Dark ears turn forward as yellow eyes meet olive across the gangway, a long moment of mutual, silent study before the gentleman turns his gaze to the rolling Missouri fields outside.

Time speeds past and soon, the train is pulling into its final stop in St Louis, Missouri. Palms slick with a nervous sweat, Mordecai watches as the gray tabby stands and disembarks without a second glance, leaving the newspaper on his seat. Mordecai’s only respite is seeing the unfamiliar man in a flat cap at the front of the carriage follow, after briefly meeting his anxious gaze. Not another assassin then, but a concerned third party, or perhaps a bored traveler concocting gossip for his next tiresome meeting.

The relief is short lived, for when the well dressed woman also stands to depart, it leaves him alone with Brady and his chauffeur. The tuxedo feels his nerves fray as they stand, wordlessly reaching into their jackets, cold eyes and wicked smiles telling of their intentions. Breath so heavy yet fruitless, the young tom feels he might faint. He clutches onto the seat in front of him and murmurs a quiet plea to the God he’d lost faith in years prior. 

One last chance, that's all I ask. One more-

It's surely coincidence alone that he notices the glint across the aisle at that moment, a metallic shimmer catching the sun’s still virgin rays. Wide olives settle on the newspaper the gray tabby left behind and finally sees the gift wrapped within; a revolver with an ornate handle, ivory or bone to contrast a brown casing and the sleek sliver of a metallic barrel. A custom piece, one not left behind easily, and a clear direction for a lost kitten to take.

Mordecai dives across the center aisle just as a shot embeds in the seat in front of the one he'd occupied. He crouches between one bench seat and the backrest of the next as he retrieves the revolver, a heavier kind than he's used to. A swift check of the chamber to know precisely how many practice shots he has before he can't afford to miss - four shots, far more than necessary to recalibrate - and he's ready to take this final chance seriously.

With the swift mobility he's come to rely upon, the tuxedo rises, aims and fires at the chauffeur within a second and a half. As expected, his aim isn't sure with an unfamiliar weapon; a shot intended for the chest instead rips through the chauffeur’s left bicep. Mordecai ducks just as Brady curses and takes a shot, the bullet searing a path through air so close to his face, the tuxedo feels the heat of expulsion graze his face before the bullet embeds in the seat behind him.

The proximity doesn't phase Mordecai now he has a tool to wield. He takes a breath and makes a swift stab at ballistic trigonometry. Intersecting axes, angles and calculations overlays the memory of his failed shot behind sharp olive eyes until the basic math completed, Mordecai once again rises, aims according to estimated mathematical adjustments, and fires. This shot lands just shy of his intended mark, striking the chauffeur in the lower right lobe of his heart for a fast, fatal wound.

Blood blossoms on a white shirt as the strong scent of iron fills his nostrils. The man screams in terror, a gun clatters to the floor as shaking hands clutch at a punctured heart, desperate wails swiftly suffocated by blood rising up his esophagus. Brady hesitates, his gun raised but eyes averted to the chauffeur. It's all the time Mordecai needs to reload the chamber, adjust his aim and finish the job.

Only once Brady hits the floor beside his compadre does the world flood back into focus; screams and shouts echo beyond the train car, fluffy of shadows in all directions as panicked passengers scramble to flee the platform. A whistle screeches over the noise as calls for police cut through the chaos, orders for men to surround and search each carriage issued in short order. Mordecai has to get out of here, before he's apprehended holding the murder weapon in a strange city, with no papers or credentials.

Pocketing the ornate revolver, Mordecai skulks low between the seats to the rear exit, diligent as to not step in the rapidly widening pools of crimson around his former pursuers. Unseen from without as chaos unfolds, Mordecai unlatches the door and slips into the masses, joining civilians fleeing the gruesome scene of a double homicide that will make the papers in just a few hours.