Mission Start [Jessica]

[Thoma Hirako]

Thoma woke up early that morning, hoping that he wouldn't be too early, but he wanted to get going. He clothed himself in a suit, as usual, and walked to the other bedroom that the hotel room had, "Laura, we should be going soon!" he called in.

[Jessica Jane]

The door slid open, revealing Jess, in turn, set and ready to go. She'd opted to go classy enough so that she could get by in a business establishment but casual enough that she wouldn't stick out in a crowd. Between the blue blouse and black slacks, she figured that she'd pulled the task off admirably.

"Then let's get going." She said.

Thankfully, bad dreams had woken her earlier than she'd expected, otherwise she wouldn't be ready nearly as early. It was one of those rare times when bad luck was actually good luck. Ironic, really.

[Thoma Hirako]

"I've arranged a ride," he said, leaving her and going towards the kitchen, gesturing to the table, "We have time to eat before we have to leave."

He sat down and leaned forward, putting his hands together, "As I said, I arranged us a ride to Tokyo. When we get there, I need to check in, and then we'll go to the station the report came out of and begin looking for the officer in question."

[Jessica Jane]

"Mhmmm." Jess nodded. She followed him back into the kitchen area and began pulling utensils and bowls from the cabinets. She wasn't much of a cook by this point, which was why she was surviving off of the prepackaged stuff most of the time.

"My chief concern would be my tagging along after you. Unless you make a regular habit of escorting young homeless gals through the offices on a regular basis, me being in a restricted area would probably draw all sorts of wrong attention. I'm pretty sure that neither of us want that."

[Thoma Hirako]

He looked over at her, "Look at yourself; you hardly look like a homeless girl. I'll see to it that you get through without problem."

He stood up and walked over, "I'll cook something, if you want."

[Jessica Jane]

Again with the insistence that she was more than a fugitive. Sure, that line might have worked for some sort of self-help class, but in her situation it didn't do much good. What was she supposed to do? Go into protective custody and let the corrupt fish eat her alive? No thanks.

"If you're so confident, go right ahead." She didn't bother to clarify whether she was talking about the food or his plan to just waltz into Dekaland with her. That was his problem to unravel. "There's not much to work with."

[Thoma Hirako]

Yeah, that could have gone either way; he wasn't sure which. He still started to make eggs, "Well, we'll figure this out. It'll be fine. I may be confident, but I know we can do it. My confidence is for a reason."

[Jessica Jane]

"That's fairly reassuring." She tried to make that sound less accusatory than her last remark had and to turn it into more of a joke. "Sorry if I sound snappy or anything... I've never done anything this legally gray before. That's not quite the impression you Dekarangers are supposed to have, ya know?"

[Thoma Hirako]

"I completely understand," he said as he made eggs, "As an officer, I've had more verbal abuse than your occasional snaps; trust me, I can handle it."

[Jessica Jane]

"Oh, well, in that case, I'll have to try harder." His remark served her right for being nice. "If I can't reduce a grown man to tears, then I'm obviously losing my touch. But enough of that. Do you have any plan beyond just randomly walking up to your suspect and hitting him between the eyes with your suspicions?"

She needed to deflect the conversation back onto neutral territory, otherwise she could potentially end up having to spill some of her backstory. While Jess had her doubt that Thoma would react to her parents' death the same way that he'd reacted to his girlfriend's, that was still too big of a chance for her to take.

[Thoma Hirako]

"My plan is this," he said, his back still to her as he worked, "We'll get in there and drop the bug; I can handle that." He hadn't done it before; not even for blackmailing schemes, but he knew what he was doing, he figured. He knew how he was supposed to do it, and that he never planned on speaking to the man, so there would be no suspicion, "Then we'll go to the records and find the official report. Cross reference that with other reports by that same officer, and from that same year, and see if there's anything else...interesting.

"For any deaths, we should have reports filed away somewhere else, so we'll talk to the morticians and find out where those are, say we're following up on a case and need to see the reports. Those should be unaltered, but we'll get the actual reports first, to search for suspicion. It'll be easier that way.

"Then, we can figure out if it was the one report about Yuka, or more reports that were doctored. If it was just one, then someone wants it covered up. If multiple...then there's a conspiracy of some sort going on, I'm certain."

[Jessica Jane]

"Either way, you're in for a rough time. The moment that people find out you're pulling old records, you're going to have a target painted on your back. In the States, you have to have permission to re-open an old case." Jess pointed out. "We're going to have to move fast if we're going to avoid getting nailed. But we'll do what we've gotta do."

The table was set by now. All that was missing was the centerpiece of actual food. After looking at it again, Jess retrieved a carton of juice from the refrigerator and poured out two glasses. She set the orange liquid next to each bowl, finishing off her part of the work.

[Thoma Hirako]

"I'm not reopening any case, just looking through the files," he said, putting eggs on a large platter on the table, "There's a distinction, so it'll be harder for anyone to actually know what's going on, at least. If the case were to be reopened by me, then they'd all know. At this rate, someone would have to see what we were doing and figure it out. We can be careful enough to avoid that."

[Jessica Jane]

"Or so we hope. Honestly, I think we're going to be making ourselves pretty transparent, here, but, eh, there's no help for that." Jess shrugged to end her sentence.

She took her seat at the edge of the table and began fishing into the eggs with a large spoon. She pulled a nice helping out of the platter and dropped it into the bowl. She then nodded to Thoma.

"Thanks for breakfast by the way. It's appreciated."

[Thoma Hirako]

"You're helping me; breakfast, among everything else, is the least I can do."

After putting some on his plate, he added, "I don't care if the world falls around me; if I end up dying in the end. All I want, all I need, is closure. I'll do whatever I have to in order to get it."