What a good choice!!!! Also thank you so much, that’s really kind of you. Honestly, thank you.
If anyone else wants to send me prompts, the post is here!
42. “I’m only here to establish an alibi.”
Warnings: adult women discussing adult things, and it gets a bit steamy at the end, but no explicit action.
“I’m only here to establish an alibi.” Jirou Kyouka murmurs the words softly enough that Momo makes a point of tilting her head to hear them. If that makes her hair fall over her bare shoulder and catches Jirou’s attention, well, thank the universe for happy accidents. She offers Jirou a polite smile: as if they haven’t met a hundred times before today, as if neither of them is armed to the teeth, as if they haven’t both tried and failed to assassinate the other.
“I’m sure.” Momo lets Jirou loop her arm through hers: the tuxedo suits her, she muses, absently, letting her eyes run lazily over the way the satin presses along the lines of Jirou’s body. Jirou cocks an eyebrow at her as she leads her towards the centre of the casino. The thick carpet is red as fresh blood, and it turns even Momo’s stiletto heels into nothing more than a cat’s footstep. The ceiling drips with chandeliers.
“See something you like?” Jirou’s tone is dry, and faintly amused. Momo lifts one shoulder, pretending not to notice the way the silk of the her dress slips a little further down her upper arm.
“You said you wanted an alibi. I assume I’m not meant to be your cousin.”
This prompts a wider grin from Jirou: one full of mischief that’s mostly a flash of canine and a dimple. “Don’t go saying that, princess, I’m sure you’d make excellent gal pal material.”
Momo blinks, and considers with fondness the last time she’d bumped into this woman. It had been on an oil tanker in the Atlantic. She’d kicked Jirou off a balcony. Jirou hands her a martini and Momo takes it, not bothering to check for anything suspect. That would be a rookie mistake: and if there was one thing Jirou wasn’t, it was a rookie. By Momo’s reckoning, she’d been in the business nearly as long as she had.
“So what do the Japanese want with Emmanuelle Bourdette?” Momo asks the question as calmly as if she’d been commenting on the weather, leaning against the high cocktail table beside which they’re standing in a way that she knows does favours for her bosom.
Jirou spares her a glance and looks away, dark eyes scanning the room with the slow, brilliant intelligence of a predator. “What do the Americans want with him?”
Momo pushes a curl behind her ear. “I’m not the one who needs an alibi.”
Jirou tilts her head: an acknowledgement, but not an answer. In one corner of the room, Bourdette sits calmly at a game of poker. Behind him, his daughter slumps, bored and pretty in a silver slip of a dress. Jirou sips at her passionfruit daiquiri, watching him carefully. She doesn’t look away when she says, quietly, “favour for a favour?”
Momo runs her finger around the rim of her glass. “Depends on how good the favour is.”
Jirou meets her eyes now, and Momo feels her trying to peel back her mask: to see behind the facade. She raises her eyebrows, and gives a girlish laugh, covering her mouth with her hand. “Come now, you don’t think it’s going to be that easy, do you?”
Jirou grins in a way that wrinkles her nose and is all too familiar. “I suppose not. We’re not here for the father, actually. It’s the daughter, Annette.” She pauses, and drinks a little more of her cocktail. The cufflinks on her sleeves glitter with sapphires. The assumption that they’re some kind of surveillance device is a given. “Triads.”
She doesn’t say anything else, she doesn’t need to. By itself this is more than enough, and Momo lifts one hand calmly to her ear to mute Mina’s excited half-shouting. Jirou smirks. “People always forget how loud they are on those things, don’t they?”
Momo glances demurely away to cover her own brief surveillance of the room. Guards at the doors, but that was to be expected. A handful of mercenaries. Nothing she, they, couldn’t handle. “One of life’s many joys.”
Jirou grins, and finishes her drink, stepping back from the table as Momo does the same. She holds out her hand. “Ready to dance, princess?”
Momo presses one hand to her chest: her skin is warm, and her heart is already beginning to race. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Then she whirls and kicks the closest mercenary in the head.
What follows is a whirlwind of broken glass, splintered wood and mass panic as Jirou and Momo systematically eliminate every dangerous element in the room. Whilst they do, Annette Bourdette and her father try to take advantage of the chaos to leave through a fire exit. They do not, apparently, bank on exactly how efficient Momo and Jirou can be when they’re working together.
Jirou spins just as Emmanuelle starts to open the door, flinging a black metal dagger from her sleeve with all the grace of a circus performer. It lodges, shivering, in the wood half an inch above the man’s head and he flinches. Annette curses, shoving her father out of the way as she grapples with the door. But by this point, Momo has crossed the room, and she shoves the door shut with a slam, offering both father and daughter a charming smile.
“So sorry to keep you, but my partner was hoping to catch you before you left.”
With a wordless shout, Annette draws a pistol from her purse and aims at Momo. Momo disarms her without difficulty, twisting her arm behind her back. When Emmanuelle tries to grab her, reaching to pull her back by her hair, another of Jirou’s daggers finds its way to his throat.
“I really wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Emmanuelle, it is becoming increasingly obvious, is not the mastermind of this operation. Momo is somewhat embarrassed that she ever thought he was. Whilst he blusters, red faced, Annette sinks into a cold, calculating silence. “Why? Do you mean to kill me?”
Jirou slips her dagger back into her sleeve. “Not at all. But it’s not me you should be worried about.”
Momo offers the man another charming smile and kicks his groin, hard. As he folds, she slips a pair of handcuffs over Annette’s wrists. Jirou’s mouth twists in a wry grin. “I have my own, you know.”
Momo blows a strand of her out of her face. “You looked busy.”
“Could you two save it?” Annette’s voice is dripping venom. Momo raises an eyebrow.
“No one likes a sore loser, cherie.”
“Here.”Jirou steps forward, syringe in hand, and she is good – Momo hadn’t even seen her take it out. She steps behind Annette, locating a vein easily and pushing the sedative into her veins. “Sleep it off.”
In the morning, Momo yawns and stretches lazily, relishing in the pull of her muscles like a big cat before rolling out of bed and moving to the kitchen. When she gets back, she has fresh coffee. Her handcuffs are sitting on the bedside table like discarded jewellery.
“So, an alibi, huh?”
Jirou groans, turning over and pushing the covers down. She takes the coffee from Momo with murmured thanks, sitting up in bed. Neither of them wear anything, though Momo supposes that doesn’t mean they can’t hurt one another. Not in their profession.
“Not my best line, admittedly.”
Jirou sips her coffee, and the tension runs out of her shoulders. Scars litter her skin: stars and stripes, some of them there by Momo’s hand. Not that Momo doesn’t bear her own, in kind. “Have I mentioned today that I love you?”
Momo snorts. “Not since about 3am, no.”
Jirou looks at her seriously, and the sunlight falls dancing over her choppy black hair. “I love you.”
Momo smiles, moving her thigh, and lifts one naked shoulder. “Prove it.”
Jirou grins, sharp and dangerous, setting the coffee down on the bedside table, even as she trails her calloused fingers up Momo’s inner thigh. “Is that a challenge?”
Momo laughs, softly, falling back against the duvet as Jirou pushes her down. “Will you take it?”
A little later, Annette Bourdette handed herself in to the Japanese embassy for the crimes of arms dealing, human trafficking, and grand theft auto, among others. She provided a full written testimony, and went peacefully.
Ever so magnanimous, that.
Lesetoilesfous 