Luciana fist-bumped her nephew as she took off her helmet.
“Hey, it’s my favorite Achy-Breaky!”
“Don’t call me that,” complained Akio, but he was still grinning at the old nickname. “Got any cool stories from your work?”
“Hi, Auntie. Are you staying for lunch?” Kee, her niece, looked up from her laptop. “It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, it has. Sorry ‘bout that. Work has been so loco you wouldn’t believe it.”
Kee scoffed. “Um, I’ve been reading the news. I can definitely believe it.”
“As have I.” Luciana’s sister, the beautiful and cultured Maria Furukawa (née Chavez-Alesci) glided down the stairs. “Have you been careful?”
“Yeah, sure.” Luciana scratched her cheek even though she couldn’t feel much through the silicon covering. Really, she hated wearing this thing.
“Fine, fine. I know you well enough to know you’re lying.” Maria gave her a hug and a peck on her (real) cheek. “It’s good to see you.” She smiled, sly but still elegant. “I made troccoli.”
“Okay, you’re my favorite sister ever.”
“Oh, hush.”
The low hum of the security door opening alerted them to the entrance of another person. Maria immediately frowned. “But Yoshiro wasn’t supposed to come in for another few hours,” she murmured to her younger sister. Immediately, Luciana’s hand slid to her gun and as stepped in front of her family.
“I’m home,” said a deep, familiar voice. Yoshiro. She reduced her guard just a little bit. “I brought company. I hope you don’t mind, dear.”
Maria glanced at her younger sister. “No, of course not, love. Ah, Luciana’s also here.”
“I see.” Yoshino, a tall man whose bearing screamed more-upper-class-than-your-daddy’s-dreams, adjusted his cufflinks. “Well, may I introduce my new partners?” A man and a woman, both ethnically ambiguous but so similar they had to be related, followed in. Their suits were expensive-looking as her brother in law’s. “Idris and Naomi Eun.”
“Nice to meet you,” mumbled Luciana as the others gave more polished, proper greetings. Out of habit, she scanned their faces with her cyber-eye and tucked away the information for later. “Well, I gotta go. Good to… uh, see you.” She ducked backwards, ignoring the protests of Maria. Yoshino only looked blanked-faced as usual, and his guests only took a bare-minimum notice of her. No matter what, there was no way she was going to sit through a formal “luncheon.”
“HQ,” she hissed as she went out the back, “I know it’s my day off, but you got anything I can handle? Like, legit, anything?”
The low, grumbling voice of the current operator crackled online. He sounded exhausted, and surprisingly—for the immaculate operators—completely unprofessional. “You were already briefed about the Dominguez brothers, right?”
“Yeah, those petty thieves.” Luciana had considered taking their case before, but other stuff kept coming up.
“With all the shit going down on the LR line—”
“Wait, what?”
“How the fuck did you not hear?” Woah, another curse-word. Things were intense in there.
“I’ve been offline for the last couple hours,” she said sheepishly. Luciana had taken the opportunity to shut everything off and just work on her bike while blasting the newest synthcrunk album from D-E-Cita. Then, she’d gone straight to her sister’s—and Maria was not a fan of people being uplinked in her house.
“There was a bomb on the line. It’s pure chaos. We’re doing our best to clean it up, all hands on deck.”
“Oh, merda. I sure picked the wrong day to take a break.”
“Yeah, well, you can help things by taking on the Dominguez brothers, lighten the load for the rest of us. Knowing them, they’re probably taking advantage of the mayhem. These geniuses were last seen in their usual spot, 8th district’s southern areas. Check there? You’ll be suitless, so getting a firefight would be stupid, but finding them would be a big help anyway.”
“Sure, wilco.”
“HQ, out.”
[hr]/[hr]
All Luciana had to do was follow the music. With her newly amped motorcycle, she roared down the streets towards the direction of the obnoxious Latin re-disco. Screams and laughter mingled with drunken Spanish shouts.
She turned the corner and rain right into the gang of Rabbits, the two brothers, and a whole pack of hanger-ons, JoyGirls, and rimbos. All were packing heat—as HQ said, a straight-on confrontation might not be the best way to do it. Empty beer cans were being thrown around, and not-empty beer cans were being dumped on the JoyGirls (and the occasional JoyBoy). Judging by the pile of cans covering the street, it seemed like the party was about to wrap up.
So much for the borthers laying low. With more flare than necessary, Luciana parked the bike and took off her helmet, flipping her hair. Cat-calls followed.
“¿Eres la Rimbo?” shouted one, a man with a rainbow-mohawk and a sólo Dios puede juzgarme tattoo scrawled across his neck. The older one—Benny.
Really, they thought she was the Rimbo? Half her face was… oh, right. She still had the silicon cover from the visit to her sister’s. Luciana was pretty sure she sucked at undercover crap—even though the last case had been an undercover one— but she could probably use this to her advantage. She pursed her lips, pretended the man was attractive, and gave her best sex-bunny impression.
“Si, si, vine por ti, jefe.”
“Oooh!” The other brother, with long and equally gaudy hair, slapped Benny on the back. “This chica has some Nuevo Miami chispa, eh? I can tell that accent from a mile away!”
“Oh yeah, their chiquitas are the hottest. Remember Camila?”
“How could I forget those knockers? This one don’t got those, but man, those legs stretch forever. Bro, can I have her?”
Benny threw an empty can at the wall. “Yeah, sure, knock yourself out.”
Cha Cha gestured towards her with his middle finger. “Come ‘ere, zorra! We gonna have some fun.”
Luciana sauntered towards them, smiling even as every other part of her tensed. When she came into grabbing range, Cha Cha did just that, pulling her onto his lap after giving her butt a loud smack. Luciana did her absolute best not to tear his head off, instead laughing and slinging an arm around his shoulder.
“Ay, what’s your name, girl?”
She drew a blank and said the first name that popped into her head, “Maria,” and gave a silent apology to her sister.
Benny snorted. “Yeah, yeah, you’re all Marias, sure. You’re real late, too, you know.”
“Yeah,” said Cha Cha loudly, clearly beyond sobriety, unlike his brother. “We got a super lucky break, man, and this is our goin’ away party! We’re about to leave for—”
“Callate, Cha Cha.” Benny’s glower shut his brother up in his tracks. “And if you want to get freaky with this Rimbo here then you better hurry the fuck up.”
“Why rush, bro? You go on ahead. We’re gonna split up, anyway, righ—”
“Callate, you donkey mother fucker.” Still, the thought gave him pause. After a second of deliberation, Benny nodded. “Ok, fine. I’ll take the boys. She’s not just a JoyGirl but a Rimbo, too, right? So you’ll probably be safe. I’ll leave Rico and Pom Pom with you, just in case. Hurry up, okay?”
“Oh, you know I can’t, brother!”
With a roll of his eyes, Benny crushed a stray beer can under his foot.
For a gang of wannabe mobsters, they cleaned up real quick. Under Benny’s watchful eyes, the JoyGirls and hanger-ons and regular gangmembers disappeared, leaving no trace but the horde of cans and dripping alcohol. Rico, a blue-haired, short man and Pom Pom, a muscular man with an afro, were the two who were left to linger by the walls.
“Let’s go inside, chica,” Cha Cha whispered in her ear, his breath smelling of cheap alcohol. “This’ll take a long time, boys!”
Both men gave a half-hearted catcall as Luciana allowed herself be led inside one of the shacks.
“Baby, give me—"
The second they were out of sight, Luciana smacked him on the back of his head, knocking him out almost immediately. He slimped to the floor, and after waiting for a couple moments, Luciana dragged him out.
“Sorry, boys, he had a little too much to drink.” Luciana gave them a coy smile as they both groaned and shook their heads.
“Great,” said Pom Pom. “Now we gotta drag his fat ass to the docks.”
“I could drive him,” she offered immediately. “I got my bike.”
They gave each other looks. “Ah, what the hell.” Rico shrugged, picking up a half-full beer can from the ground. “He’s always a whiny bitch when he wakes up. Might as well let the Rimbo deal with it.”
“Where do I gotta to go?”
“The docks, on the east side.”
“Thanks, boys.” With a smile, Luciana drew her gun and shot two shock-darts (non-lethal, of course) at each one. Her aim was spot on, and she watched with satisfaction as they fell to the floor. With a blink of her eye, she connected to HQ.
“What?” crackled the voice.
“I got Cha Cha boys and two gangbangers. I could probably manage to get them both on my bike, but
think Benny is planning on fleeing via the eastern docks. Dunno if I can drop of the boys and make it in
time. Think I could get an extract for them or something?”
“I’ll see what I can do, Hammer. Maybe I can spare an MGU, though I doubt it. Well, at least you got one of them. Bring who you have in. Clear?”
“Roger, HQ. Hammer, out.”
RPG
