Mind Games - Chapter 25

There's a common misunderstanding among society at large that all criminals are stupid.

Law enforcement would have a much easier time doing their jobs were that true.

That said, crime does tend to attract people who, while not unintelligent are often unwilling to apply their intellect. Or, and these are particularly annoying, people who believe themselves smarter than 'the system' and deliberately position themselves in opposition to it to show that off. What I'm getting at, in other words, is that there's an emotional component to crime that the average salaryman or housewife usually ascribes to simple malice instead of properly understanding.

After all, if all criminals are simply uniformly evil then you don't have to feel bad when the human washing machine with super powers punches one of them in the face and breaks their jaw.

In reality, malicious criminals only make up about a third of the total population of evil-doers.

The other two-thirds are composed of people who are simply desperate to provide for themselves and/or their families any way they can. Legality tends to be a secondary concern when your mortgage is due and your children need food. The final third, as aforementioned, are the egotists. The ones who consider themselves above the status of the common cog in the corporate machine and seek 'freedom' by sticking it to the man.

Any single member of these groups can be as stupid or intelligent as any other member of a given occupation.

The unfortunate truth, however, is that the smart criminals tend to be as far away from the crime as possible.

Which was why I wasn't going to get anything more than a lieutenant from the local villain gang during this raid.

Moreover, turning over a lieutenant from a gang to the authorities rarely yielded actionable intelligence for several reasons. The first was the threat of retaliation, especially towards that person's family. The second was simply the feeling of brotherhood that most gangs evoked in their members. Another was the idea that doing time behind bars would demonstrate commitment and earn a higher place once you were released. Oh, and a general hatred and distrust of police and heroes, can't forget that. Given that most people who became gang members had at least semi-legitimate reasons to distrust authority figures, well...

No, if I wanted to make an actual dent in the operations I'd discovered, I needed to be a bit more circumspect than simply breaking down doors and bashing in skulls.

Which was what saw me walking through the doors of a small-time high-end gadget store operating out of an alleyway in Akihabara.

Stereotypes got started for a reason, I suppose.

The walls of the admittedly small and somewhat cramped store were lined with everything from specialty batteries to the not-ethernet cables the modern world used to various replacement components for small motors. My eyes slid towards the glass cases with 'spy gadgets' sequestered away from teenagers grubby hands with price tags that were suitably intimidating for what were generally cheap pieces of crap made out of even cheaper plastic.

The middle-aged man behind the counter looked up lazily from the military hardware magazine he was reading...

...and instantly slid back down, losing interest once he registered the fact that I had breasts and was visibly too young to hold a stable job that could pay for the products that decorated his walls.

“We don't do phone repairs, kid,” he muttered. “Or computer repairs. Or whatever shit you broke but can't ask mommy and daddy to buy you a new one of. There's a place down the street-”

“I'm Venus Barbata,” I interrupted him, giving him a snort of mild disdain. “I hope the stuff you said you had is better than what you've got behind the counter.”

The man visibly blinked, sitting up properly to study me. “You're Venus Barbata?”

I rolled my eyes and stepped up to the counter to pull out my phone and show him the chat log from the forum I'd found him on. The middle-aged man studied the text for a moment, bringing out a pair of glasses and squinting brown eyes as he cursed lowly. Reaching up to scratch at his black hair, he huffed in mild disbelief, but leaned back in his chair to study me with new eyes.

“Money?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.

I pulled out an envelope from my jacket and flipped the top open, letting a stack of bills slide a quarter of the way out. “Five-hundred-thousand, like we agreed on.”

He squinted at the money suspiciously before swiveling his chair and aiming his mouth towards the back of the shop. “Hodu!”

Crash!

“Ah-shit! Sorry Nakamura-san, I was just-” A voice called out from the back, noticeably younger than the man in front of me.

“Nevermind that! Get Barbata's order out here, pronto! She's here to pick it up!” He yelled back, still overly-loud.

I heard a faint and disbelieving, “She?” from the back, but shrugged it off when the shopkeep held out a hand and snapped his fingers.

I flipped through the bills and found where I'd folded the corner of one, pulling that stack off from the bulk and handed it over. “Half now, half after I look everything over.”

The man grunted and accepted the fat stack of cash that was roughly equivalent to two and a half thousand dollars American. He immediately reached over to the side and grabbed what looked like a highlighter, uncapping it with his teeth and fanning the bills before running a line over at least half of them. He eyed the ink for a long moment as it failed to change color, grunted again, and capped the marker before stacking the cash and beginning to count it carefully.

A moment later, a brown-haired hafu with red eyes and... I'd wager Indian descent stumbled out of the back room with a large paper bag in his hands. A few years older than me, he had the look of someone who'd missed a few meals here and there, his clothes hanging off him a bit too much.

“Oh teri!” He muttered under his breath as he caught sight of me.

'Oh shit,' in the local parlance.

I raised an eyebrow and replied in Hindi. “That the way you greet all your customers?”

Nakamura paused, gave me another measuring look, then reached out and grabbed the bag before placing it on the counter between us. “Check it, then cough up the rest of the cash.”

I nodded and unceremoniously opened the bag before pulling out all sorts of interesting little toys. Nothing was the kind of quality engineering that one of my past lives jokingly referred to as Bat-Grade, but they were still a cut above anything on the civilian market. None of it was exactly pretty, either, with rough 3-D printed casings and hand-soldered pins in many cases, but it was all at least clean and fairly neatly done.

“I did it all myself,” Hodu spoke up, his voice breaking around a noticeable accent. Flushing, he cleared it and tried again, holding up a finger as a tiny flame emerged from it. “It's my q-quirk. Flame Fingers. It might not be very flashy, but it makes me great with stuff like this.”

I hummed and nodded, snapping the casing of one of the devices closed and turning to the store owner. “I'm missing the battery-powered solder knife.”

Nakamura turned a foul shade of puce and rounded on Hodu, who winced.

“I had it on the charger! Sorry!” He yelped, then turned on his heel and sprinted into the back, something falling and hitting the ground as he vanished.

“Sorry, the kid's new,” Nakamura grunted, looking even more displeased with having to offer any sort of apology.

I handed him the rest of the money, which seemed to appease his temper. “S'fine. That's why I check. Shit happens.”

As the kid emerged from the back again and offered me the missing piece of equipment, Nakamura nodded after ritually checking the other set of bills. “Smarter than the usual lot I get in here. Anyway, your money's good and you didn't show up drunk or high out of your mind. Plus you didn't whine like a bitch over something stupid. You're welcome back anytime, don't make me regret it.”

I nodded at the man, already packing away the contents of the bag into my own pockets and shoulder bag.

“Uh-hey, that's a lot of serious stuff,” Hodu began tentatively, fidgeting in place as I looked at him. “What all do you want-”

His boss reached up and dope-slapped him. “Idiot! You don't ask those questions! Fool!”

I snorted and nodded at the man, then moved my gaze to the teen. “Listen to your boss. Whatever I'm going to do with a bag full of surveillance gear like this is going to inevitably piss someone off. If I was doing white-hat work there'd be other places I could pick up gear like this from a brand name supplier that produced a paper trail I wouldn't need to hide.”

Nakamura grunted again and stacked the bills to put back in the envelope. “Stupid kids... unless you're going to buy anything else, you know where the door is.”

I paused. “Stun-gun, Taser, Bear Spray, and a pair of Extendable Batons.”

Nakamura frowned. “I don't carry weapons. Just tech.”

“Would you be willing to source them for me?” I put my hands in my pocket. “Or if you won't act as a reseller, how about introducing me to someone who does?”

The older man hummed, reaching up to rub at his five-o'clock shadow before nodding slowly. “I know someone. I'll send you a selection of their products over the chat. Tell me the ones you want and you can pick them up two days from then. Make sure to let me know if you want extra battery packs for the first two.”

I dipped my head. “Thank you for your service.”

Then I left, hearing the first faint echoes of the store owner berating his employee... if less severely and more affectionately than he'd been willing to do in front of a stranger.

I grinned a bit at that. The two had enough features in common that the boy was likely some kind of relation... probably a nephew or a younger cousin of some type. I'd also put good money on the boy being one of the lesser forms of an illegal immigrant or refugee who'd simply let his paperwork lapse and faded into the background. In the grand scheme of things, though, doing off the books electronic work for hackers and scammers was a less-severe crime than I was really looking to prosecute at this point. Besides, the old man was cautious enough in his selection of clientele from our online interactions that I doubted he knowingly dealt with anyone serious.

Once I took down the major trigger-smuggling ring I'd found traces of, then I'd evaluate exactly what kind of threat they might be if that proved to be necessary.

As for now, though?

I had a pawn shop to visit.

…

I sighed as I walked away from the train station, shaking my head.

“I have got to get that fucking bike soon,” I muttered with a grimace.

As convenient as the Japanese rail system might be, and speaking as an American it is a fucking godsend, it just wasn't ideal for a vigilante to rely on public transit. It was acceptable at the moment because it let me keep my head down as well as pretend to be a civilian, but it simply wouldn't work in the long term.

The problem was that I'd shelled out for the Pocket Apartment, then again to give Himiko access to the space without needing me there to open the way for her. I still had eleven credits left, but those were both a rainy-day fund and a reserve for a potential template for Himiko... something that she and I still needed to discuss. As long as it was ironed out before the entrance exam to UA took place – or before any formal quirk evaluation if Fuyumi raised a fuss – it wouldn't be a serious issue, though.

The issue was that, very soon, I'd need a level of independent transportation that I simply didn't have.

Which was why I was here, walking into a pawn shop.

“Hello, welcome!” A man in a suit called as he stepped out from behind a counter with a bow. “Welcome to our humble store. May I help you with anything?”

I smiled at the attendant, a man who probably wasn't even ten years older than myself. “Yes, I'm part of the A/V Club at my school and we're looking to pick up a few occult items for use in a film project. I'm sorry to show up so late, but my cram school just let out an hour ago.”

“Not a problem, not a problem!” The man assured me with another bow, waving me over. “We don't have the best selection of items fitting your request, but we do have a few! Come this way, please!”

I followed the man through the pawn shop.

Or, in Japanese, shichiya... which held a different connotation than the term 'pawn shop,' really. While a great many western-style pawn shops carried a number of goods of questionable quality and were generally kind of, well... sleazy, the Japanese version focused on catering towards a higher-end customer looking for good condition used luxury goods.

So instead of heading into a rundown strip mall, I'd entered an upper-middle class shopping arcade with large front windows that showed off a variety of restored antiques, jewelry, and the classier kinds of media merchandise. Everything was well-lit, the floors were clean, and the employees were bright and attentive to anyone who walked through the door.

Japan, after all, was a society that traded on the reputation of its members.

It was almost unthinkable that anyone would be breaking the law in such an upright and prosperous establishment with the kind of carefully-documented inventory this company had.

Which was what made it a great choice for doing so.

Because, unbeknownst to most, there was an old Dark Age bunker underneath this shopping arcade. This store, of course, possessed an access corridor into said bunker, though it had been officially sealed three decades ago according to government documentation. Which, in turn, meant there was no need to worry about anyone moving anything into, through, or out of said bunker.

Especially trigger.

As the clerk led me through the main displays, I let my eyes trace over the general structure of the building, looking for dead space that couldn't be accounted for.

Let's see... that's too contained to be anything but a closet... I think that's the office area, good to keep in mind. Hmm... they'd probably want it near the loading area...

“Here we are,” the employee stated, walking me through a doorway into a rear display room that was a bit smaller and more cluttered with various objects that weren't as easy or compact to sell. “I'm sorry for the lack of showmanship, but these items are commensurately cheaper than the ones out front, I assure you.”

“I suppose occult paraphernalia isn't exactly a hot-selling segment of your merchandise,” I commented idly as I was directed towards a specific wall of goods.

“Ah... there are perhaps a few... though those are likely outside of a student's budget,” the employee hedged.

“My budget might surprise you,” I replied candidly, narrowing my eyes at a lacquered box. “May I?”

“Please, allow me,” he bowed slightly, pulling a pair of white gloves from his pocket and lifting the top of the box.

Honestly, I was surprised the cards hadn't been thrown in the trash with how worn the contents were. The individual cards were scratched, rubbed raw in places, and had the occasional tear that had been patched.. admittedly, the repairs were quite good, though. Some of the ink on the original designs had also been restored closely enough that the colors matched quite closely. The differences could be put off to some fading from age.

I glanced at the price again and understood these people had no idea what they had.

Granted, even I didn't exactly know what they were without a closer look. But, still... I couldn't exactly leave these lying around, either, given the way they felt to my senses. “I'll take them.”

“Excellent, young miss. Over here we have a crystal sculpture of a skull...” The employee stated, flipping a switch and turning a small LED from blue to red.

In the end, I bought several things I didn't need. Both to camouflage my true purpose in scouting the store... and because I was apparently still a shitty impulse shopper when put in front of weird shit that I'd otherwise have no use for.

“Have I spent enough to trouble you to look at the more select collection?” I probed bluntly as he counted out the cash and boxed up my purchases.

The twenty-something paused for a moment, frowning lightly in thought, before nodding his head. “A brief glance, I suppose. Perhaps something to aspire to?”

I smiled obligingly and was led further into the back of the complex, even as I marked the excessive number of security cameras discreetly mounted behind black globes. In and of themselves, those wouldn't be an issue if I was planning to rob the place, but if I was planning to plant the devices...

Looks like I'll have to get more creative than I thought. Glad I checked for the fucking solder knife, ugh...

Absently, I noticed a large stretch of paint that was just a bare shade off the color of the rest of the building.

Yeah, that wall was deliberately installed to hide something. Or, at least, obscure the fact that the dimensions of the rooms around it don't line up...

That was it.

“Now, I will ask you to be especially careful around these items. Many of them are both valuable and antiques of significant rarity. A few of them do have legends attached to them which might make them appealing to you, but their value is predominantly historical.”

Sliding a key card into the slot, he opened the door and bowed at me as I entered the room before him.

My gaze immediately snapped to the small series of idols set on the shelving against one wall.

Internally, I sighed.

Small, ugly, crude things made with skill, but... obviously ancient, the crafting marks worn smooth with the age of uncountable eons. Their shapes were foul things that scraped at the senses and made me wonder how anyone... Ah, I belatedly realized those items in particular were behind smoked glass, tinted to make the objects barely visible.

I was just both more sensitive and more resilient.

I turned in a smooth movement to appreciate the swords on the wall and make small-talk with the employee. There were other items in the room that had lesser auras about them, bare wisps of accumulated power I couldn't be sure were intentional creations or happy accidents. Legends of tsukumogami weren't always just fanciful tales, after all. Still, nothing had the primal energy of those small statues.

“And these?” I asked, eyeing the price, which was... a bit rich for my blood, what with all of the things I'd already bought.

“Oh, those are quite interesting!” The employee smiled. “Authentic early Jomon era pottery figurines! Very rare! We keep them under protective tinted glass to preserve the glazing they used.”

The way the man's smile stretched a little thin and how he avoided looking directly at the items in question told me that was a lie.

The tint is so that you can't feel them looking at you when you get too close.

“I see. Well, they're certainly interesting. I can see what you meant by these items being both expensive and fitting my needs. Still, I think you were right. I've already made too many purchases today to fit something like this in.

The employee's shoulder relaxed as we stepped away from the tinted glass.

From there, I managed to talk my way into using the facility's private restroom, giving me another glimpse of the layout and how it differed from the official documents I'd pulled from the neglected servers in the city's administration.

Then I left without incident, my purchases wrapped up neatly and ready to be deposited at the Apartment. Stepping into an alley and through the portal, I reappeared in my bedroom and dropped my bag off before pulling out my phone and shifting to my male form.

“Hey Dad,” I spoke into the phone. “Yeah, just wanted to let you know I'm almost done. Nope, no danger, just needed to look into a few things for my other employer. I should be home in an hour-ugh, yeah, we can have a late dinner. You lost track of time again, didn't you?”

I shook my head, told my dad to get cleaned up and prep what he could for dinner when I got home.

Then I slipped back into my female form, grabbed the bag full of surveillance gear, and stepped back out from whence I came. This time, though, I continued on through the alley towards the rear of the shopping arcade I'd just left. Counting buildings, I picked out the back entrance and loading dock of the shichiya and looked up to trace the various wires affixed to the exterior...

“Hmm... yeah, looks like I was right, they installed the security system recently. Or upgraded it,” I hummed, estimating the range of the cameras and carefully avoiding them. “Which meant that they got lazy and didn't do it the right way.”

Although that may not have been an option if they're leasing the space. Some landlords get pissy about drilling holes in the walls to feed wires through.

“Now, if I just wanted to cut the feeds, I could cut the wires, but...” I chuckled and made my way to the exterior breaker box, flipping it open.

The problem with simply cutting the wires would be leaving an obvious and immediate trace that would alert anyone who came to investigate. However, while the breakers weren't labeled...

Since the CCTV system had been installed later than everything else...

I pulled out a small power screwdriver and took the face of the breaker box off, exposing the insulated wires plugged into the breakers themselves. The style was a little different from what I remembered, but... “There you are.”

I took a calming breath, then flipped the master breaker and turned the whole panel off.

Okay, five minutes max... more than enough time, but let's see if I can do it in under one.

I popped the breaker that was attached to the CCTV system first, then used the hot solder knife to render it inoperable. Then, to obscure my path, I popped two others out and did the same to them, simulating a set of burned out breakers. Replacing all three as well as the outer panel, I glanced at my watch as I crouched behind a stack of discarded panels and pulled up my hood to hide most of my purple hair.

One minute and thirteen seconds. Close, but I guess I need practice.

Unfortunately, it proved that the staff was particularly slow on the uptake and it took them ten minutes to finally send someone out.

While the three men with flashlights, all of which bore significant bulk and tattoos, walked around to find the breaker box, I slipped in behind the door they'd left open and got to work. The next two minutes were blessedly dark as I made my way through the backrooms towards the office section I'd seen earlier, grinning as I dodged into the room and pulled out a set of key-loggers and taps for the hardline connections.

My eyebrows rose as I saw a phone on the desk, prompting me to retrieve the most expensive device I'd purchased from Nakamura's illicit shop.

A moment later, I had a clone of the phone and the original was riddled with spyware.

Unfortunately, no one else had been stupid enough to leave theirs unattended in the office.

As a last-ditch fuck-you, I smirked as I put my hands on the office safe and shunted the entire thing into my Pocket.

The lights finally snapped on and I bit back a curse as I kept moving, snatching a lanyard off someone's desk and dragging the key-card along with it. That was the most important part of the mission done, at least.

Next, though... almost as important...

I ran for the antiquities room, using the key-card I'd stolen to access it before slipping in with a quick check to make sure no one had seen me.

Again, the name of the game was obfuscation. I'd planned on stealing valuables from the place anyway, just to cover my tracks, but the statues made it jump up my priority list. Still... this was a criminal organization...

Two authentic four-hundred year old blades from the shogunate era, authentic Ming Dynasty vases, neo-classical ink paintings from the mid-twenty-first century on the burning of Tokyo... all of it went into my Pocket. And, of course, the statues. Anything with a faint spiritual aura was snagged, too.

“Almost done, almost done...” I hummed, moving quickly towards the door and taking a peek out-

“Oh, hey-”

My hand lashed out, grabbing one of the men's faces and pushing his cheeks between his teeth. I struck the other in the solar plexus, then used my grip on the first to bash his head against the door, knocking him unconscious while I threw him into the antiquities room. The other man followed shortly as I dragged him in under a sleeper hold as he gasped for breath.

The door shut and I pulled out a set of zip ties to secure them.

Then, quickly, pulled their phones out and cloned them, implanting spyware as I did.

Oh, and I pulled the cash from their wallets while taking snapshots of their photo IDs.

Checking the time, I clicked my tongue in dissatisfaction.

Faster, faster, need to move...

I was out in the hallway again, moving towards the walled-off section of the building. Finding the card-reader, I slid the stolen card and-

The light went red, emitting a soft buzz.

Damn, I didn't get someone important enough to have access. Let's see, I could...

“-just get down and check on things! I don't care if power was only out for a few minutes! Make sure the refrigeration is still going!”

“Fuck!” I muttered, looking around-

My head snapped back the way I'd come, looking for a way to-

I almost smacked myself and opened a portal, stepping into my Apartment just as the figures rounded the corner.

Taking out my phone, I pressed it to the very edge of the invisible gate and turned on the recording function-

“-down to check on things, just cool it. So what if we had a few breakers blow, everything down there should be fine!” A mountain of a man stated, glowing rocks showing through his bulging skin.

“I don't want to hear 'should,' Taireki! It's not your head on the chopping block if these people get angry because an entire batch of the precursors went bad because the power went out!” Another man in a suit, an admittedly suave-looking blond man shouted, his hair cut short and spiked as his eyes glowed black. A neon green snake tattoo crawled up his neck as he mouthed off to the larger man.

“Fine, Fine!” Taireki responded, waving the man off as he slipped his card into the reader and reached to put it back in his pocket-

My hand slipped out in the brief instance where the door opened and their attention was absorbed.

Stepping back from the portal, I grinned as I held up my new key-card with a grin.

“Boom, Baby!”

~~~

As promised, here's the next chapter of Mind Games!

Join Hitoshi as he starts in on a quick jaunt undercover to find out the details of a trigger smuggling ring.

Which is, of course, all a side quest for the real goal. But these things have an order to them.

I hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Next up is going to be a chapter of the Marvel side of Industrious! I'll also try to get something else out before the month ends, too. So look forward to that!

PS: Higher number of errors this time around, so I updated the post. It's usually too much trouble, but apparently I spazzed out this time around