Chapter 48

"A party," I say, voice dead, deadened further by the walls of Ends Justified's ready room. "He's throwing some giant gala, when there's open war about to break out?"

"And Grenzer tapped us for the security," Vinci confirms, looking annoyed. "Granted, we've got the Ducal Guard and the other mercenaries watching the bridges from the rebel islands and most of the streets outside, but internal security is our lot."

"Why the hell-"

"Because the Doge isn't an absolute monarch," Jack rumbles. "There's a council he's head of, a parliament that normally runs the country. Nobles. Rich. And they need to be convinced the Doge is strong enough to deal with the rebels...and that things will remain 'business as usual'. Failing that, we've got to scare them enough to think that supporting our side is better than going over to Roberts."

"Okay, scaring the shit out of people is kinda our thing, I'll admit. How long do we have before this thing kicks off?" I ask.

"Three days," Vinci says. "Also, hope you don't mind a suit. We're supposed to blend in unless things go completely to shit." He looks me over, and I fold my arms defensively.

"The Doge better be fucking paying if he's going to have me in a monkey suit," I growl.

"Dahahahahaha! Don't worry, that's already taken care of. You've got an appointment with the tailor tomorrow."

"And the rest of the crew?"

"They'll have to make do with off-the-rack purchases. Helps we already have their sizes."

"Hrrm. You need my input on planning, or not?"

Vinci just grins. "I think if I tried to put you through another meeting we'd have to find a new first mate."

"You mean a new captain."

"Don't get too big for your britches, first mate."

We grin at each other for a moment, and Jack buries his head in his hands.

"You'll have to be in charge of the mess, though," Vinci says lightly.

"What," I growl.

"Me, Jack, Herman, and half the crew are stuck watching the bridges. Look. Don't worry too much about it- anyone trying to sneak through or attack'll have to get through us anyway. You've got C, Gin, Lauren, the Oni, and twenty guys to back you up, anyway."

I sigh. "Guess that means I do need to stay and plan this. I'm getting tired of meetings, captain."

"I know. But you have ideas?"

"...I'll need a floor plan, a guest list, and a lot of coffee."

"That's the spirit!"

C was feeling...well, he wasn't sure.

He thought it was annoyed. It was very cold where he was perched, now that the sun had gone down. Even with his little nook in the rooftop- among the gargoyles that decorated this place, jishakukuku- the wind still tore at him, made worse by the fact he was taking the brunt of it. A deliberate choice, to let his nose work, but still...very annoying. And worst of all he couldn't cover his nose, because it was what would give everyone inside the early warning they needed if they were attacked!

"Falcon to Vulture, checking in," Lauren's voice came in over the tiny baby snail tucked securely inside C's coat pocket, away from the freezing wind.

Well, at least he wasn't suffering alone. Lauren was up here too, and though she was on the lee side of the building, she didn't have his resistance to cold, being only human.

Well. Maybe he shouldn't say only. He was...fairly sure Ostavila was human, and she'd beaten him up even after he'd managed to stop some of her weapons. Some. He still needed to get better at moving more than one thing at once.

"Vulture? You there?"

Oh. Right. He had to talk back.

"Vulture here," he said quietly. "All smells quiet. You?"

"Clear scopes, Vulture. Keep an eye out."

"Yeah, yeah."

He almost wished someone would try and attack.

Wait…

He sniffed at the air, the mingled scents of a sleeping city, and snarled before yanking a small telescope out, spotting the black-clad shapes, dark against the night, instantly.

He'd been joking damn it!

"Falcon to Vulture. Saw something...ah fuck, that's a lot of bad guys. Looks like the Black Beards are coming out to play. How the hell did they-"

"Got a bunch on my side as well," he said. "I count sixty. You?"

"About the same, Vulture."

There was a muffled thump from the other end of the rooftop. "One down. Call it in to Mother Hen, then start thinning them out."

He nodded, and tapped the snail, connecting it to Brother's. "Vulture to Mother Hen. Black Beards are heading in, entire crew looks like. Prepare for party crashers."

Brother said several words C was fairly certain he wasn't supposed to repeat before shutting off the connection. C shoved the telescope back into his coat before pulling a strange left-handed gauntlet from another pocket and putting it on. It incorporated a sight along his forearm, distances noted and marked out on the scope. Lauren had helped him with it. From another pocket, he took a ball bearing, holding it between the index and middle finger of his left hand.

Sight. Aim at the target, a moving patch of black, the glint of a sword barely visible. A bit higher…

"Lorentz Sabot," he whispered, as he pushed the ball bearing forwards as hard as he could.

There was a sharp crack and the man's head exploded, his body tumbling off the rooftop he'd been running on and down to the street below.

One down, fifty-nine to go.

…

He was going to need more ball bearings.

The party was still going on. High society in all their glitz and glamour and pompous bullshit.

Ostavila kept the sneer off her face like she did all other expression as she moved past the edges of the crowd, grateful that she hadn't been forced into a dress and instead got to wear the same black suit and tie the rest of the crew did.

The Nightmares lined the edges of the gathering, around the pillars that lined the massive ballroom. Whatever this building was, it was ridiculous. The ballroom alone would've made it a major attraction anywhere else, but this was just one small part of the building. Some ancestor of the current Doge had had it built, apparently.

Either way, fancy or not, it was going to be a battleground soon. She could see Kaneki stepping up onto a table, getting everyone's attention and starting some spiel about an event elsewhere in the building, would everyone please go there and enjoy themselves, after all the acoustics are better there, ha ha ha. The crowd of rich people began to gravitate towards the exits. She tuned it out in favor of approaching her usual partner.

Pravilno looked like he hadn't slept, leaning in the shadow of one of the ballroom's fancy columns, smoking a cigarette. He glared at her. She glared back, and he sighed.

"The hell do you want?"

"Hands," she ordered crisply.

He froze. Then he dropped his cigarette to the tile, crushing it under a boot without looking at it, before shoving out his hands.

They trembled. Barely. Her glare intensified. "You're going to talk to the captain, after this," she said.

"Fuck no. He's got more important things to handle. And-"

"And?"

He looked away, all the cocky gangster swagger he'd affected for the months she'd known him suddenly gone. "And he might get pissed if I imply he didn't do a good enough job."

"Our captain? He'd probably take it as an opportunity to improve his work. And-or give you new hands." She punched him in the shoulder softly. "Woman up. We've got a trap to spring."

She looked towards the rooftops as the soft sound of suppressed gunfire rang out.

Kaneki wasn't a strategic genius. But he'd still known enough to figure out that there wasn't anything they could do to really stop a full-on attack, not without collateral damage.

But a trap, with no soft civvies in the way and the enemy coming in right where they wanted?

That changed things quite a bit.

Arnyek Rantas was not having a good time.

For one, the captain had been hired by some rich asshole to back up the pack of half-starved backwater inbreds who called themselves an 'army of Revolution'. Which meant a lot of trouble and having to bail out said inbreds, naturally. Troublesome.

And then they got told- told, not asked- to sneak across the bridges, spend three days shivering and hiding from the Ducal Guard, all so they could attack some other rich asshole's party. Even more troublesome.

Now, and most troublesome of all, was the fact that apparently the rich assholes (the ones in the party, not the one who hired the captain and crew) had had the two brain cells required to hire guards. Specifically, god-damned snipers, who had already taken down half a dozen men before the others got to cover.

He certainly wasn't going to peek out from the fence he was hiding behind and find out where on that lit-up fancy building said snipers were perched, either. Hmm.

He looked at the man huddled next to him, who was trying very hard to remain unnoticed, and smiled before grabbing the man by the collar.

"Boss, wait-"

He shoved the man up against the fence, head in clear view, and just barely peeked his own head out to the side, watching the rooftops of the big central building.

At the same moment there was a sharp crack and the man in his hand went limp, there was, for the briefest of moments, a flash of crackling blue light. That was all it took.

Rantas used his powers, and pulled the sniper forwards with all his might.

A blur of grey streaked overhead and slammed into the building behind him, blowing a hole through the wall. Rantas smiled, and then glared at the few other crew members in sight. "Get fucking moving and go do your job," he said.

They ran, the pissants.

Rubble cracked behind him. Rantas turned.

"Still alive, huh?" he asked, still smiling. His opponent, a tall, bald guy in a tattered trench coat and a skull-like mask, just cracked his knuckles.

"I'll see what I can do to fix that," Rantas said.

In retrospect, Gin figured, having an evacuation plan for the party that didn't sound like an evacuation plan wasn't all that bad an idea after all. It got all the high-society idiots out of the way safely without making them all that afraid, and out from under the fucking gigantic glass ceiling that this particular ballroom had.

At least he, and the rest of the crew, were off to the side, safely out of the way of any falling shards, and this ceiling was the only entry point...one that required breaking through C and Lauren's guard.

But now there were black-clad shapes crawling over the glass, and the sound of gunfire seemed muffled.

He hoped both of them were still alive- C was hard to kill anyway- but...well, hope in one hand, shit in the other.

The crew, Oni and 'normal' alike, was ranged out on the edges of the room, the entire place darkened, all the lamps put out. Only one moon, a full one, was out tonight, which made the light relatively weak, scattering faint rectangles over the tiled floor.

Gin began to spin his tonfa slowly, watching the ceiling. Some of the giant panes were beginning to crack as the pirates above hammered away. Several others were untouched as the pirates congregated on them instead.

He smiled, and kept up the rotation, gradually building speed. Couldn't quite manage Tempest Kick with his legs or with his tonfa, not yet, but that wasn't his job…

"One tail, two tail, three tail, four...Breath of the Dragon."

Four powerful slashes of wind from Kaneki's tails slammed into the laden glass panes. With so many pirates piled on top, that was all it took, and the panes gave way with a crash, sending sixty-plus pirates tumbling to the floor below in a shower of glass.

Some landed on their feet, including two who didn't seem fazed at all by the drop. Others didn't.

He ran a count. Thirty down, dead or just trying to figure out what to do with their compound fractures. About the same still alive and looking around, peering into the shadows. They all seemed dressed alike, like stereotypical ninja in all-concealing black clothing. Sloppy. Black was horrible for stealth.

Two that looked like officers. One looked almost like a less happy version of Kaneki, black clothes, black hair that framed his face, and a mournful expression on his sharp features.

The other resembled an angry walking shrubbery thanks to the gigantic beard that dominated his rotund form.

Gin grinned.

Seven sets of eyes blazed red in the darkness.

All hell broke loose.