MM Ch. 6

MM Ch. 6

Chapter 6: The Syndicate

"Damn..." Dain stormed into his jade-trimmed office with a sense of anger tearing at his voice, tossing his heavy peacoat to an empty metal chair beside a dark wooden desk to reveal the crisp-white blouse and deep violet vest beneath. "Damn, damn, damn, damn..." He sunk with a plop to a thick black leather chair situated behind the aforementioned desk, the stereotype of men who possessed great deals of power, and uttered his sixth and final "damn".
The confrontation with Jei and Conan should have been, as he believed, the perfect key to bringing down their ultimate powerhouse, Dameon. Without Dameon, they could easily be defeated. And his only halfway decent plan concerning the like for perhaps the next two decades had just flown out the window, disregarded.
He couldn't take it any longer. He needed a scapegoat. WIthout a second thought, Dain sait forward in his chair, grasping the thin, plastic handle of the intercom phone on his desk, punched one index finger with unnecessary force into the buttons which needed activation to get his voice over to one of the other intercoms scattered about the building, and leaned to one armrest, tapping his nails against the surface of his desk as he waited for someone-- anyone-- to pick up the other line.
He didn't have to wait long. Everyone always knew within a matter of moments when Dain was in a bad mood, and no one wanted to get on his bad side when he was in such moods.
"I--- had a feeling you'd be calling sometime soon, Lord Kazeni..." The voice from the other side was weak, timid, as most tended to be when speaking to Dain.
"What tipped you off to that? The ringing phone?" Dain leaned back in his chair again, pressing his free hand to his forehead and bowing his head forward, staring to the floor. "Do you know if any reports have come in yet from the hospital wing? How are the two we brought in?"
A silence from the other end. "I, ah-- n-no, sir... one of them... h--he's already dead. We tried our hardest, but... he just wasn't going to make it." Another pause. "But... officer Hukuda... he was lucky."
Both sides went silent, Dain staring down to the ground, shaking his head slowly, his thumb and forefinger pressed against either side of is head and kneading softly.
"Thank God... thank God..." He sat up in his chair, leaning forward against his desk as he slid the phone back up, parallel to his ear and mouth. "He's going to live, Hukuda is? Are you certain?"
"Yessir... he's going to be fine." Another pause. "We, ah... we just got news from the hospital wing a moment ago."
"Fine. It's perfect." Dain shook his head again, casting a sideways glance to the corner of his desk, atop which sat a half-empty glass of water, its age apparent by the number of air bubbles which had formed along its walls. Dain reached forward, clasping that glass in his hand and lifting it to his mouth, taking a quick swig of the water inside and swallowing, a sour look upon his face. "And one more thing... you wouldn't happen to know what Sayven's been up to, would you?"
"General TuTona?" Silence. "Why... n-- no, I haven't seen him all day..." The unidentified voice drifted off; it seemed apparent that he wanted to ask why Dain cared so.
"I see. That'll be all." Dain hesitated, pulling the phone slowly from the side of his face and looking down into its mouthpiece, before sliding it back down to its body, thus ending the conversation.
"He'll be okay..." Dain gave a queer sort of smile as he raked his thin fingers slowly through the lop of hair that hung before his face, and leaned forward, pushing off the arms of his chair to lift himself to his feet. He still needed his scapegoat, and he knew just where he was going to find one.
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"She's such a pretty woman..." Sayven TuTona leaned back against one wall of that unlit, abandoned hallway he enjoyed claiming as his, with one hand wrapped around his waist and the other held up before him, a rectangular photograph clenched between his index finger and thumb. "If Dain were ever to find out about her... and her connection to Regnum Noctis..." He paused to chuckle, slipping the photograph back into the inside folds of his heavy overcoat. "I'd be a dead man in a heartbeat."
"You're already rather close to being a dead man..." Sayven jumped, scuttling hurriedly to his feet, catching the rim of his overcoat beneath the heel of one shoe and splitting a rather noisy rip vertically along the material. Dain stood with his arms crossed, leaning up against the entrance to that hallway of Sayven's, half-darkened from the light depletion outside of the main hall.
"What do you want?" Sayven's voice lacked the respect so often shown to the man before him, barely managing to spurt the words out, let alone put in the extra effort to put in any emotion whatsoever. Dain laughed at him, shaking one index finger scoldingly at him.
"Have you heard?"
"Heard what?"
"The Communist retard went on a rampage downtown..."
"That's not my business... you're the one with the grudge against Dameon Lasser and the rest of Regnum Noctis." Sayven turned his back to Dain, his hands burying into his coat pockets. "I don't know why you need to tell me this."
"His attack..." Dain persisted further, moving in after Sayven. "... Was down by Nebula building. I thought that was your department to keep an eye on." He chuckled again, resting his head against the top of Sayven's shoulder, turning his eyes to their corners to stare across to Sayven's unfaltering face. "Had Kenzaborou Hukuda not risked his life down there, there's no telling what that idiot would've done."
"You're being overdramatic..." Sayven pushed at Dain, turning again and stepping back into the light of the main hall. "You and I both know Officer Hukuda's going to be fine as he ever was." He turned again, staring down to Dain's darkened form, still standing down the hall. "If you would just hurry and fill out my release papers, I'd be out of here and you wouldn't have to worry about my disobediance."
The mere seconds of silence that followed his words seemed like an eternity, as Dain turned over his shoulder and met his eyes to Sayven's, a rather malicious gleam causing Sayven to take an uneasy step backward. And then he was upon him, man upon man, elder pinning younger to one of the two walls composing the narrow hall in which their scene had taken place. Dain held the quivering Sayven in place with his right hand, the left fiddling with the nearest doorknob, and quickly pushing its door inward, Sayven moving in not long after. The room's occupant barely got a glance at the two before he hurried out to give them their privacy, and yet Dain never seemed to notice, continuing to push his newfound plaything to the floor, bending down over him and leaning his face up against that of his prey.
"But that would be exactly what you want..."
From the hallway, a warm breeze wafted through the room, carried from the open windows of the downstairs, dropping its hints of the oncoming Summer. It ran cold between them.