CHAPTER THREE
LEMON AND TANGERINE, TANGERINE AND LEMON

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THE FIRST THREE OR SO MINUTES OF THE TRAIN'S DEPARTURE HAD GONE SMOOTHLY. Black Cat was almost a quarter way through her box of Pocky, and she had convinced herself that the time it had taken for her to choose a flavour as simple as strawberry was completely valid. If she'd chosen a flavour she ended up disliking, her whole mood for the rest of the mission would've been ruined, and therefore throwing her off track and negatively altering her performance. All this just to feel better about taking five minutes to make a decision on Japanese snacks at a train station.

But things started to feel... iffy, when the two men who'd previously sat diagonally behind her, moved themselves to sit in the four-seater directly behind her. When she'd walked down the aisle looking for her seat before the train departed, she'd noticed a man in a furry brown jacket already sleeping, his head against the window. Sure, she found it odd how he was already sleeping, and the train wasn't even moving yet, but she had greater things to worry about, so sat promptly in her seat without batting an eye.

"You're safe now," the same voice, whom she'd heard swear at the tall shaggy man before, spoke up, and Black Cat's chewing of strawberry-flavoured Pocky slowed down in order to eavesdrop. "Your father sent us."

"You idiots work for my father?" A groggy Russian accent returned, a tone of exasperation apparent in his voice.

In Black Cat's line of profession, anyone who "works" for someone's father is never doing innocent business. Unfortunately, some people's fathers are just into some crazy, messed up shit, and hire money-hungry men to do their dirty work. And if you were to say she was a hypocrite, she would disagree; if someone's father hires her, she does it for the experience, not for the money... But sometimes the money, too.

"Technically, we're outside contractors."

That line was definitely a red flag.

Black Cat swallowed her mouthful of Pocky and packed up her snacks, tucking them away in the pockets of her coat once again. "Outside contractors" wasn't a good sign, either. Sure, she was one; in fact, she was completely independent in her line of work, until someone were to hire her. But when you're on a mission of your own, and in such a tight space where escapability is limited to one-minute stops every ten-or-so minutes, hearing the phrase, "outside contractors" was not a good look.

"I'm Tangerine, and he's Lemon."

And that was the confirmation.

Before, she'd given the men the benefit of the doubt. You know, maybe they worked under a prestigious company owned by this man's father, or they'd been hired by someone's father to do some building work on their house. But those names, Lemon and Tangerine, weren't names a kind mother gave their children. They were codenames.

Black Cat knew well of codenames and aliases. I mean, you didn't think her parents named her that when she popped out the womb, did you? She'd heard all types of things: The White Death, think of Batman and Superman, The Chomper – Hell, she'd even been paid to kill a gang member who went by the name of "Peter Piper." And now there was Tangerine and Lemon to add to the mix. These guys weren't going to make this mission easy for her, she suspected.

"Right. Your daddy hired us to get you out of the trouble you got yourself into, didn't you, naughty boy—"

The Cockney man situated right behind Black Cat was cut off by the Russian person, who was stuck wondering why these two fully grown men had such childish nicknames. You could sense the tension growing in the air between the trio as their nicknames were repeatedly pulled up as the topic of conversation.

"Oh, fuckin' hell!" The man scoffed, and Black Cat felt his seat wobble against the back of hers. He clearly had a temper he couldn't control. Not a good trait when you work in the art of espionage, or whatever it was he called himself, Black Cat thought. "It's not important, is it? What is important are the seventeen dead bodies we left getting you back from the triad that kidnapped you with the plans to ransom you to your extremely psychotic fucked-up father."

What a mouthful.

"Actually, it's sixteen," the other man Black Car recognised from the train station chimed in. His voice was calmer, lower, and in more control, compared to his yapping partner.

After a pause, filled with tension so thick in such a short period of time it would take a chainsaw to gnaw through it, the first man – Tangerine – replied, his voice audibly tougher than before. "What's that, now?" It was clear to Black Cat that he didn't like being told he's wrong.

"Sixteen kills, mate—"

"No, it was seventeen."

Black Cat rolled her eyes as she folded the train route map into the netting before her. These two partners seemed to be very comfortable talking about their kill count on a very public train.

Rule number one of contract killing: don't talk about your job in a public area where people are bound to hear. People don't want to hear about that shit while they're trying to get to the place they need to go, talk to the people they need to talk to, do the things they need to do. And, quite obviously, it could possibly breach your operation, by disclosing such information, the wrong people could get involved. For all she cared, she could use this against them, and devise her own plan to ruin their mission.

If the train ride got too boring, for the long ten-fifteen minutes she'd be there, she could mess with them a little, and maybe put some sense into their puny little brains that maybe they should be more cautious about the information they're talking about so loudly.

"Hey, listen," the Russian sighed, distracting the two fruits from their mini argument about how many people they'd killed, and if the civilian who'd been blown up by a car was their fault (which, if you asked for her opinion, Black Cat found extremely unprofessional; you're not supposed to get anybody else hurt who isn't worth the money you're getting at the end of the operation). "I'm just gonna get off at the next stop."

There was some rustling from the four-seater behind Black Cat as he was pushed back into his seat, followed by Lemon telling him to get back into his seat, which was followed by another round of silence.

"Do you know what they call your papushka?" Tangerine asked, resetting the tone from the previous argumentative one.

"Of course I fucking do."

"The White Death," Lemon stated, despite the Russian man already explaining he knew.

The White Death? these men worked for The White Death, and this Russian boy they had with him was his son?

Big red flag.

Black Cat glanced down at her coat, pressing on the material softly as if to check the briefcase was still sitting beneath it. She tried to control her breathing, but nothing could stop her heart from increasing in pace. Her mission just became ever so much more difficult.

"Our job is to keep you safe, and to recover the briefcase with the ransom money inside," Tangerine began to explain. "And I plan on completin' my job, and keeping..." Black Cat felt him lean forward in his seat as he lowered his voice. "Lemon?"

Lemon hummed in reply.

"Where's the briefcase?"

Right next to me, Black Cat thought, blinking as she turned her head around to the seat beside her.

"Oh, I stashed it," Lemon replied casually, and Black Cat could picture him shrugging and crossing his arms, sitting more comfortably in his seat as his increasing confidence seeped through his veins.

Tangerine's seat shifted again from behind her. "The case, Lemon," he repeated, tone now serious and authoritative. "Go get me the fucking case."

Lemon sighed, clearly frustrated that his partner didn't trust him, and stepped down the aisle to the baggage storage between carriages two and three, where Black Cat had stolen their briefcase from.

As he approached the sliding automatic door, Black Cat craned her head into the aisle in curiosity, leaning out of her seat to watch him go. She was unsure whether to take her leave now, or to wait for him to get back with the decoy and leave discreetly with the real case.

A phone began buzzing, and Black Cat pressed a hand to the breast pocket of her blazer, making sure it wasn't her mobile, but Tangerine stepped out of his seat, and answered the call.

He stood with his back to her, and she managed to take in the royal blue of his suit, and how perfectly tailored it was to his proportions. His hair was of a dark brown, slicked back well enough in a natural manner so that no strands came astray, but not in a way he looked overly-crisp, as though he'd applied countless amounts of hairspray to keep it looking perfect – you wouldn't believe the amount of greaseballs the woman had had to deal with who all thought that image was the peak of mens fashion.

"Do you have White Death's son?" A deep Russian voice crackled from the other end of the line.

Tangerine glanced behind him at the man that still remained seated. "What, you mean this dickhead with the silly face tattoos? Yeah, he's sat right here."

"And the briefcase?"

"Yes, of course I've got the case." Tangerine dug his free hand into his tailored trouser pocket, and he swivelled his body to the door Lemon had exited out of, and Black Cat peered into the aisle to follow suit.

Through the window in the automatic door, a large brown bag was thrown to the wall with a bump, and Lemon appeared, punching the air in a fit of anger, an outraged glint in his eye.

As the line beeped to an end, Tangerine slowly removed the mobile from his ear. He'd seen Lemon, too, she knew. And he set off down the aisle as a muffled voice chimed through the compartment, indicating the train's soon arrival to Shinagawa Station.

Black Cat decided this would be the perfect time to take her leave, and she pulled her coat off the case and took the handle in her hand. She stood up and pulled on her overcoat, holding the briefcase close to her body as she stepped out into the aisle.

She took a moment to shake her head, running a few fingers through the curls of her ponytail, and adjust her clothing so that she looked presentable and avoid suspicion. The woman let out an exhale, glancing back at Tangerine as he disappeared through the sliding door to see to his partner, and walked down the aisle in the opposite direction, and kept walking, until she was far enough down the line to not have any run-ins with The Fruits.

She'd reached the end of the economy compartments, and the train came promptly to a stop.

But as she stepped on the pressure plate, and the automatic door zipped open, allowing her entry into the small purgatory between compartments, two figures fell into her; one dressed in all white, with curly brown hair and an arm raised over his head as he charged the other man, lengthy dirty blonde hair covered by a cream bucket hat, and a khaki overcoat.

The case flew from her grip as she was shoved into the other door, her temple pounding into the strong glass from the weight of the two men against her. With a huff, Black Cat pushed off the slick surface, her strength and momentum sending them off of her.

With the roar of a tiger, the man in white, taken with the momentum of her retaliation into the next door, grabbed the material of Black Cat's long coat as he fell. and Black Cat, taken with the white man, grabbed the material of the other man's khaki trench coat, dragging him into the mix as they all flew back-first through glass.