Mettre La Charrue Avant Les Bœufs [TBtP: Shinobu]

[Lyra d'Aiglemort]

Lyra perched atop the crate like she was meant to be there, staring at the figure she had just finished tying securely to a chair, and questioned where things had gone so wrong.

It hadn’t been two days ago when she had gotten her assignment. Father had smiled at her over breakfast and left her with the encouraging notion that he wasn’t concerned at all about her potential for failure. She still didn’t remember the last time she had been to Japan, with only a smattering of foreign words floating around in her head as proof of the trip, so that had been particularly reassuring.

It certainly hadn’t been the flight itself – because for all Lyra hated wasting time cooped up doing nothing, she had rigidly held herself to a sleep schedule which permitted the necessary feat of walking off the plane without massive jetlag.

Though jetlag could explain how fuzzy details had gotten in the last few hours. Ever since Lyra woke up this morning, having spent that first night exploring the area where her target frequented, things had been just a little off-kilter.

First, it was the absurdity of so many schoolchildren biking around on a Saturday – Lyra instinctively shied away from the potential audience, and it took her a while to realize they would peter out once school started. It was fine though. Lyra knew what she was doing. She may not have liked random details popping up and ruining her carefully laid plans, but she was capable of adjusting.

That it left her with a lingering sense of discomfort – the nagging worry that one thing going wrong meant more was to follow – was a problem for post-working hours.

Finding her target so quickly, where she had been expecting the man, seemed like the hand of God reaching out to snag the runaway train that was her anxiety and place her back on track. Everything was working out fine. Even the act of getting her target away from a populated area had gone well – maybe too well, she had prepared for a fight, or at least a bit of goading - he was known for his short temper - and yet nothing of the sort occurred.

It had struck her as weird that such an arrogant figure responded to the opening of, ‘come with me’, by agreeing, but maybe that was a cultural thing? She hadn't prepared a clarifying question so it was a moot point. Lyra had let herself believe he was waiting for privacy before he beat her up and that certainty had carried them thus far.

Except now she was staring at her target in a corner of some well-kept warehouse putting off calling it in because it just didn’t feel right.

Lyra crossed her legs, very much a power move, and then leaned forward conciliatorily.

“Mizu. Uh… Kimi ka?”

She frowned and shook her head. Lyra had the sinking feeling she should have studied more Japanese before landing in Tokyo.

[Shinobu]

Shinobu sat with her head ringing and wondered exactly what she'd stumbled into.

Maybe she'd made someone angry?  She'd just wanted to go out for a night on the town as a man- one, uh, smug, arrogant man.  The kind she'd seen so many of, patients at the hospital accompanying their wives or children, self-assured and believing they knew best.  It was hard to argue with them, but she made the most of it!  And did a good job, usually, because someone's health was at stake, even if she just wanted to cave.  So she thought....maybe she could try it out.  See how it was to walk around and be one of those Assured Manly Men who only did Manly Things Ever.

As it turned out, it...wasn't very enjoyable.  She was hyperaware of the way that people backed away from her, flinched, their eyes skittering off of hers.  Or the way that blonde man had responded as though she'd just insulted his entire family lineage just by meeting his eyes.  Thankfully she'd met that arm wrestling contest with no shortage of well-founded confidence, and won handily, or else she knew everyone's impression of this...guise of hers would hit rock bottom.  Would that be such a bad thing though?

It was also weird how many people had seemed to recognize her.  Which was impossible of course, so that meant someone else that looked like the appearance she took on frequented that bar.  Not good.  After trying to hit on a few women (very, very badly.  She winced, trying not to think about it.  No, no she was not meant to be an arrogant, smug man, and she really needed to not watch so many K.Dramas) she decided it was time to throw in the towel and get away before anything else happened.  That was it!  She didn't hurt anyone...she didn't think...god she'd feel so sorry if she did!  She was just experimenting, honest!

And then a lady walked up to her and asked that she come with her.  Shinobu didn't recognize her but that meant nothing.  She didn't recognize anybody, especially not in different places.  It was so reflexive she just...forgot that no one could know her.  She was tired, and worn down, and surely that was enough reason to follow a strange women who'd asked her to come.  Besides, she was such a cute li-

No, that had nothing to do with it!

N o t h i n g.  At all!

BEING TIRED had made her drop her guard, so here she was, yes.  That was it.  Which was why they got a little further away from streets she'd normally seen and then took a blow to the back of the head.  Which turned out to still be quite effective when she wasn't prepared for it.

Which led to this place now.  In a....in a...a warehouse?  Oh god.  I'm tied up in a warehouse.  Why am I tied up in a warehouse?!"  She wailed inside as she looked around.  Just the one woman who'd smacked her in the back of the head, yep!  Her male body shifted, testing the bonds for a moment and then realizing they were rope.  Okay, good, so at least she could get free if she needed to.  That was nice, at least.  Yup.  Definitely not looking for silver linings.

The foreign woman's voice brought her out of her reverie.  She looked, frowning slightly at the body language, but decided there were more important things.  Like why she was being asked if she wanted water.  Not a fluent speaker then.  She smiled brightly, quite unaware of how that might look on a smug bastard's face, and said, "Yes please!"  Then she paused, looked to the side for a moment, hesitating before she continued English, "Is...this better for you?"  Um...I must admit, I don't know why you've kidnapped me?  If you uh...if you give me a chance, I can prove it!"  The last words were said more shrilly than she'd anticipated, but she looked up at the woman with pleading eyes, searching for clues that would tell her how to put this pretty cu-PRETTY DANGEROUS WOMAN into a better mood!

[Lyra d'Aiglemort]

Relief bloomed like the sun rising from behind the mountains, radiating outwards softly at first and then all at once. She exhaled with a grateful nod and switched to her neutrally accented English. “If you’re comfortable this will be much easier, yes.”

Technically, Lyra could interrogate someone without speaking their language. That seemed like some sort of awful thought exercise. Lyra briefly, for one terrifying moment, considered whether Father had intentionally set this up – but that didn’t make sense.

The client was a friend of a friend. He wouldn’t risk her messing things up. She repeated that, like a mantra, as she slipped off the crate and dropped to the concrete floor.

Rising slowly from her crouch, Lyra walked out of the man’s line of sight briefly, only to grab the bag she’d stashed behind said crate. “Do you know how many people say that to me?”

Fighting with the zipper which was on its last legs (betrayal at the worst moment and after all this time) she gave a final jerk and revealed the contents of her backpack. It was basically just more rope and duct tape. Lyra shook the bag until her water bottle surfaced like a rock worming up through sand. It was lukewarm but she couldn’t do anything about that.

“Though,” she glanced up, tugging on the strap of her backpack so it wouldn’t divest itself of her multiple rolls of duct tape, “most people try to tell me I got the wrong guy first before they start in on the reason.”

Letting the bag slide through her hand until it met the floor with a quiet thud, Lyra spared half a thought towards appreciating how clean this place was. Aesthetics were important but Lyra had to admit it was nice not having to worry about where she put her stuff.

She looked directly at the target, holding the bottle aloft like a question mark. "I can't untie you," she said flatly -- and then shrugged, unable to hold the man's eyes for long. "Sorry about that, it's just protocol."

[Shinobu]

The moment she spoke English she knew- yes, this woman understood that language.  Whew!  Crisis averted!  She wouldn't get a bullet between the eyes just because the kidnapper couldn't communicate with her!

Truly, a glorious moment.

I feel like I might be missing the point here, Shinobu thought idly, the idea faint but bemused.  Like...maybe there was something better to be thinking about.  Which there definitely is.  She was sure this kidnapper had excellent reasons to capture someone but um...well, okay, she couldn't think of them right now.  Mostly because she didn't know why she'd been kidnapped in the first place!

At least...she didn't feel threatened yet.  Mostly because these ropes couldn't hold her, and she was fairly sure she wouldn't die from a gunshot.  Unless it hit something vital.  Then she could describe in awful detail how she was going to die.  Because she'd treated those victims.  Focus Shinobu, focus!

The woman started to talk and Shinobu flinched.  That was actually a uh...very good point.  Her face scrunched up as she pensively thought about that.  Yes, that did sound like something most kidnappers would hear.  'Oh no not me, please don't take me, there must be some mistake.'  But the problem was...there was one!  But she couldn't show it because it wasn't exactly natural or normal or anything else!  She could just transform here and now but then...well, getting stabbed, or shot, or anything else, while listening to this woman scream bloody murder didn't sound good either!

No, no she'd just sit tight for now and argue it out.  Yes, that sounded like a good thing.

"All too many I suppose, yes," Shinobu admitted, sighing as she hung her head.  Well, damn.  But she really wasn't whoever they thought she was!  Her head whipped back up after a second though.  Wait, they'd done this before!  So they were a professional?

...is that a good thing or a bad thing for me?"[/i]

She tried to smile again, as humble and agreeable as could be, "Actually, everyone there thought I was someone else all night long.  I don't even know who that was though!"  She hesitated, looking at the woman holding a water bottle aloft and wondering how she was going to drink that even as she continued to speak, "What's the description of the man you were supposed to kidnap!  I bet you we look different, just with...somewhat similar faces, that's all!"  Yeah, that was it!  And then she could apologize to the woman who'd kidnapped her and be on her way out of here!

Right, and you don't think she won't try and silence you once she's realized she got the wrong man?

...that would be most unfortunate, but Shinobu would survive.  She knew she could.  She just wanted to prevent this from devolving to violence though, that was all.

She nodded sagely at the comment about not being able to untie her.  Shinobu agreed in principle.  Make sure your victim couldn't strike back in a moment of carelessness and pity.  "Of course, I understand," she said easily, sympathy writ large across her face.  Kidnapping must be hard work right?  "It could just be a trick for me to attack right?  Well, how about this!  Just put it in my lap with the cap off, I'm flexible enough to drink it," she finished with a bright, agreeable smile. Of course she was...she controlled her own flexibility!

[Lyra d'Aiglemort]

Lyra peered at her target as if she might develop X-ray vision, suspicion curdling in her stomach in a way that felt an awful lot like failure. Was… was he making fun of her? Not that it mattered – Lyra had no pride to defend, it wasn’t as if she cared what her victim thought about her, or how dumb they assumed she was. Except, she was pretty sure a better kidnapper would care, right?

Should she be taking more pride in her actions?

In this one instance it all equaled out and Lyra didn’t have to struggle through that puzzle for the right answer. She needed to be sure of the identity of this man and the best way of doing that was to show him that she was serious.

Lyra held back her nods of understanding, choosing instead to stare blankly at the man as he went on and on and on. It wasn’t a half-bad defense, actually. She felt a twinge of concern – Lyra had never mistaken her target before but it wasn’t implausible. Maybe that was why she couldn’t remember her last trip to Japan?

She swallowed, steeling herself to ignore the yawning chasm of apprehension burrowing through her chest cavity.

Focus on what you can control.

After a long pause that stretched into the neighborhood of foreboding (an atmosphere quite at odds with the warehouse which seemed an artful juxtaposition in Lyra’s mind), she broke the seal on the water bottle and stepped forward to place it securely in the man’s lap.

Doubt at how he was going to get water to flow upwards even if he could reach the bottle warred with gratitude she didn’t have to hold it for him. Too many people assumed she was going to drown them or something which put a real dampener on her good-cop routine. Why would she tie them upright if that was her intention?

Lyra debated crouching to continue this conversation, putting yourself on the same level as the target would create a false sense of equality, but unfortunately, she wasn’t tall enough that there was much of a disparity. Weren’t the Japanese supposed to be short? Was that an outdated assumption?

“Okay,” she said, measured and controlled because Lyra was a consummate professional when she was supposed to be. “Say that I believe you – why don’t we start with you telling me your name. And where you were that everyone seemed to recognize you.”

[Shinobu]

Thank god for small favors. Like this water, which, while warm, was still better than the alcohol she’d had earlier. Shinobu bent...and bent...and bent to get her mouth down to the water bottle, her back arched at a nearly impossible angle while her wrists were still tied to the chair. Teeth clamped down on the plastic and she picked up the bottle that way, quickly closing off her mouth before it made her start drowning, and then leaned back. The water bottle stuck into the air, clenched ferociously between her teeth, a look of pure determination on her face as she started taking careful gulps. Careful, careful...can’t lose control and inhale a bunch of water right? That would be bad!

And then tilt back forward, breathe carefully, put the water bottle back into her lap…

She almost made it before the woman asked for her name. Shinobu started, jolting like a startled rabbit, and nearly dropped the bottle. As it was, she barely kept her teeth on it as she quickly lowered the bottle back down and then whipped back up.

Fuck. Fuck. A name. Um. Wouldn’t it be bad to give her real one? You know, a name she could be found by. How many Yagami Shinobu were in Japan? Probably only a few, and certainly only one in Tokyo. But! She’d be uh...a woman, right? Would that make it okay?

...except that her ID card was on her. Oh. Oh no. Her drivers license. Um. UM.

I’m beginning to suspect I’m not good at this shapeshifting thing, the sardonic thought was the only thing preventing her from panicking completely as she looked to the side. Aaaaanywhere but the woman’s face right now.

Calmly Shinobu, calmly! Take it slow. What should you do? Lie? If she realized it, you’re screwed. Very immediate, very bad. If you’re forced to transform in front of a normal person, you’re boned anyways or it’s going south. So...don’t lie? Maybe pretend like you’re in a very, very good disguise? (Isn’t the bone structure different? Is it?) So...don’t lie.

After several seconds of very visible panic, Shinobu just sighed and sagged in her chair. Her brain hurt. Give her an academic pursuit and she could handle it but this… ”I’m Yagami Shinobu. I was at a bar, the Old Imperial Bar, and people were acting like they knew me and didn’t like me. It was my first time there! But they were...well, you know. Angry, aggressive, confrontational...people avoided me all night long. It’s why I left earlier than I expected.”

Don’t ask for more don’t ask for more please don’t ask for more.

[Lyra d'Aiglemort]

Lyra had seen a great many strange things in her thirty-odd years but watching the target contort like a bad graphic in a horror movie was up there. And not necessarily due to the painful-looking motions but rather the man's shock when he finally returned his attention to his captor. Everyone lied. It was a universal rule.

That face did not look like the face of a liar.

Which meant she was either dealing with a pro or she had taken the wrong target. The odds of this being Lyra's mistake were a lot higher than the job being mislabeled. Father was never tricked like that.

Her head began to pound. Or maybe it had been for a while and now that she was standing still Lyra noticed the incessant ache. She rubbed at the bridge of her nose in a futile effort.

"Alright. Let me get this straight." Lyra halted, her intent to summarize the story floundering as she realized naming conventions didn't translate easily.

Was this guy's name Yagami? Or was he using the Japanese method even while speaking English? Wasn't it rude to use first names in Japan? Neither of those really sounded like first names though. Or surnames. Or any comprehensible sounds Lyra could reliably replicate without mangling and thus terribly insulting her captive.

Deciding no name was better than cultural insensitivity, Lyra started again as if the pause had never occurred. "You went to the bar tonight, even though you had never been there before, and when everyone acted aggressively towards you you decided to leave early."

"What were you doing at the bar that you wanted to stay in an atmosphere like that? And why did you choose that bar tonight?"

She spoke flatly, keeping her questions direct and allowing the lack of intonation to speak for her. People did a lot when you gave them free rein to assume aspects of an interaction. Lyra had messed up big time, but knowing how Yagami (or Shinobu?) responded to questions would help her figure out whether this was a case of mistaken identity or something much worse.

[Shinobu]

Shinobu didn’t even notice the woman’s pause. She was too caught up on her own worries to see the thoughts crossing the kidnapper’s mind. At least she seemed to have gotten away with it for now, right? Yeah! That was a good thing. A great thing even. No need to ask about why she’d gone to the bar and stayed there when it was so awkward, or why she’d been trying to pick up girls like a smug prick, or any of that. Nope, definitely not needed.

She got to hold onto that dream for another three seconds before Lyra crushed it like a drained soda can. She flinched, her smug and arrogant face twisted into a decidedly worried expression as she glanced to the side. Oh alright it wasn’t that bad but…

But if someone told you that they’d gone and tried to be a smug bastard, without being one, you’d look at them weird!

That she was trying to make sure that her kidnapper had a positive impression of her completely escaped Shinobu. Really, what was so wrong with that? They might end up being friends, you never knew!

Shinobu looked down, quite out of sorts as she stuttered, “W-well, uh. Yes. That’s exactly what I did.” She wanted to sweat, but it steadfastly refused to come. Instead, it was a blush that started to spread across her masculine face, a crimson patch which appeared in seconds. Shinobu looked up, almost begging for the woman to understand what she’d been doing as she said, “L-look, um. Have you ever wanted to just try to be someone else for one night?” She appealed, looking around like she’d done something horribly wrong. “Maybe it’s just me I…” She sighed and slumped a bit. Oh, there was no way this strong, confident woman ever doubted herself. No, no way at all. How could Shinobu tell her what it was like?

Better question, why would she care?

She sighed again and then looked up. “I just wanted to be self-confident for a night and tried to act it. Among other things. Turns out that’s...well, not me.” She coughed dryly before speaking quickly and firmly. “It was a bit of a disaster, so I’m never, ever going back there again!” No need to ask what happened! Nope, no need! At all! Especially not this woman, nope!

...please?

Oh, she was doomed wasn’t she?

[Lyra d'Aiglemort]

Lyra had provided enough rope for the target to hang himself – and indeed, he filled the silence after each pause, emotion the punctuation after a rush of words.

It was an effective technique. She nearly fell for it, too, but the attempt at humanizing himself was too obvious. Abduction 101: Get your captor to think of you as an individual, a person, and they will have a harder time hurting you or be more likely to release you.

That he took such an unorthodox approach, pulling on a demeanor that was shocking and unexpected, was likely meant to throw her. None of this was what Lyra had expected. She’d been shaken by the oddities, wracking her brain for her mistakes, but now it all made sense. That was part of his plan.

“You are a very poor liar.”

She shook her head slowly, letting disappointment at herself filter through as judgment against her target. If he really was a pro Lyra wouldn’t be able to get him to break character. But she still needed to confirm. The background on her target had been sparse, it was possible this was him, or someone pretending to be him.

At least she had time. Lyra had used the Shadows to arrive at the warehouse which had been set up by the client. It was a secure space. And she’d checked him while he was out, there weren’t any sort of tracking devices or bugs that she could find.

Lyra wasn't infallible. She was well trained but not particularly noteworthy. Father didn't like to draw attention and his associates wanted someone skilled yet domesticated. While Lyra could feign mastery the truth was she mainly dealt with intimidating and overpowering your average human or a newly developed supernatural talent.

Her fingertips tingled. Anxiety. Was this bad luck or was Father testing her? She hated kidnapping jobs. Father knew that, of course, which only ratcheted her alarm higher.

Lyra sighed.

“All right. Let’s try something different, shall we?”

She pivoted smoothly on her heel, striding back and forth in front of the target with the heavy thud of boots on concrete. One hand dropped to her side, a knife appearing casually as if it had always been there, and Lyra turned back towards the man.

It was a careful mix between theatrics and skill. Too exaggerated and he’d realize she was on to him; Lyra needed the target to trust the openings she projected. Outright incompetence or understated expertise were a lot easier to sell although far less interesting.

Strange that Lyra enjoyed this role most.

Her knife skipped from palm to palm, appearing in her left where the bright lights slid down sleek metal. She tilted her head and gestured at him with her blade.

“I’ve been hired to kill you.” A beat of silence. "Unless you have some better proposition."

[Shinobu]

Her breath caught in her throat, strangled by hope and the countervailing fear as the woman shook her head. The words were good for her. The tone was bad. If she was a poor liar- which was like saying the sun was hot- then why was there such disappointment in her voice? That wasn’t a good thing for her at all. Shinobu’s eyes followed her kidnapper as she walked, feeling tension burning in her chest. It wasn’t fear exactly- or at least, it wasn’t fear for her life. She was pretty sure she’d live through this. Instead it was a crippling fear for, well, breaking the supernatural masquerade. At least, she was fairly certain there was one. Or else why would she have never heard of it until now?

Plus, she was going to shock this woman! She didn’t want to do that if she couldn’t help it! No one wanted to see Shinobu’s power...it was horrifying, and she knew it. For just a moment her face twisted with melancholy until she realized that she was still on trial and it faded back into anxiety.

The hand dropped as quickly as her heart did as a knife appeared there, and Shinobu knew it was going to happen. The only question was, would she have time to talk or would she have to defend herself?

The answer was talk, something for which a powerful relief overcame her. Shinobu sighed, closing ‘his’ eyes for a moment as it flooded her. No violence, okay, she could do this. Much better to talk to this woman anyways. She tracked her kidnapper and would-be murderer carefully and watched as the blade gestured at her.

Shinobu smiled brightly, “I do actually! I can prove that I’m not who you think I am! But, um,” the smile faltered as she looked up, concern writ large upon her face as she peered at the kidnapper. This might cause a worse reaction, but she really didn’t want to be stabbed. She continued cautiously, eyes filled with genuine worry, “It might get a bit creepy, and I’m sorry in advance, okay?”

And with that understatement out of the way, Shinobu focused her will on the image of herself she had carefully built up over the last few months. It took training to get the body right, and she was at least mostly certain she got it correctly nine times out of ten. The face was harder, but it wasn’t like this woman had ever seen her before. That was good, because if she screwed up on one of the details then she wouldn’t be busted!

Whew. That would be bad.

The clothing went first. It shifted style, color, texture, immediately altering itself to a green shirt with enough room for what was to come. Pants dissolved into a black dress, and then the rest of her body followed in a burst of reiatsu. Flesh flowed, altering its color and properties as it started to take on a new shape. Now it was paler, smoother and free of blemishes, not as muscular as the male body she’d just tried on. The bone structure melted and changed, nerves faintly changing place. She frowned for a moment, the sight a ghastly mockery of any human expression as the sensations overtook her. Everything was warping, changing, her body crying in twined ecstasy and horror as it shifted, a wrenching sense of loss filling her. But hot on its heels was a burst of satisfaction, as though the new body she had formed was the real her- no matter what it was, she always felt like it was her own, even as her mind screamed in denial. Fortunately that scream was distant this time, as the body truly was the closest to her ‘own’. Black hair flowed longer, down to her back, and her bust began to fill the shirt.

In a mere four seconds a different person entirely sat in the chair before the kidnapper, and Shinobu smiled up cautiously, her eyes searching for signs of distress. “Um….please don’t freak out? I just couldn’t think of anything else to do,” she asked plaintively.

[Lyra d'Aiglemort]

Lyra often didn’t know what was going on. That was simply a facet of her life she had come to terms with. She still tried, of course, to hold onto the details and make wise inferences. No one expected her to guess right but that didn’t dampen her hope – the constant optimism, that maybe this time she could figure it all out on her own without disappointment.

She was used to feeling as if the walls had tilted and left had become down. There was a sort of trick to navigating the world when most of it was wrong – you didn’t cling to any one surface, and you might still get shaken around but at least you wouldn’t fall.

Watching the target melt like a child’s rainbow crayon project her first thought was not surprise, but rather a settling satisfaction. That explained how he had been able to drink the water she had given him.

Acceptance wasn’t the same as happiness, of course. Lyra stared at the woman now sitting in place of her target and allowed despondency to sweep in, high tide taking out the sandcastles along with her carefully crafted hopes.

She couldn’t take her shame out on a guest. Lyra flipped her blade so that she caught the handle and deftly sheathed it at her side. “Yagami Shinobu, I presume?”

This newest shape matched the IDs she’d found on the target. Ones Lyra had initially assumed were forgeries of some kind. So much for that idea.

“I’m not freaking out,” Lyra said calmly, holding her hands up palms out in a belated attempt to reassure the woman. The cool intensity that Lyra pulled on for jobs like this peeled away, leaving a blank pokerface, which no longer radiated danger and yet managed to feel creepier in its plasticine qualities.

Telegraphing her intentions before the motion, Lyra stepped backwards until the crate was at her back, and then slid to sit on the concrete floor. She pressed her palms against her thighs and tilted her head back so that their eyes connected.

She sighed with a nearly nonexistent shift. "My name is Lyra, by the way."

[Shinobu]

Shinobu carefully watched the woman for signs of panic, but there were none. Just what was apparently a slowly dawning acceptance that she’d gotten the wrong target. But Shinobu knew very well she was terrible at reading faces, so she kept watching, scared that she’d just made this far worse. The knife could come for her at any time.

But as the seconds ticked by, the blade returned to its sheath, and Shinobu’s face collapsed in relief. An explosive sigh escaped, but she kept watching anyways, the worry comically obvious as she watched. A quick nod at the words before she confirmed it verbally anyways, “Yes, that’s me.”

It took until the woman said that she wasn’t freaking out for Shinobu to fully relax, sagging into her chair. Oh thank god. There wasn’t going to be a screaming fit today. It had happened once, much to her infinite dismay. But...why wasn’t it happening? Curiosity rose, but she tempered it immediately. Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth, right? If she wasn’t screaming that was good news!

Lyra’s face, and how creepy it was, was completely missed by Shinobu though. It was just a face! Instead, she happily seized on the name that had been provided to her. “Lyra! That’s a good name, miss uh...kidnapper?” Shinobu paused for a moment, feeling the disconnect in what she just said, before she shook her head with a wry smile. “I’m sorry. Um. Maybe I should explain a little bit more now that you know...what I can do.” She gave a helpless smile as she looked at the assassin. It was the least she could do to explain to this woman what had happened, right? Especially since she apparently wasn’t going to die right now. That was good.

“This is still really new to me. I only started to be able to do this a few months ago. So I wanted to...well, you know!” She suddenly exclaimed, becoming far more animated. “I just wanted to become someone else for a bit! Someone confident and...well, arrogant and cocky. Like the people you see in dramas! So I wanted to see what it was like.” Abruptly Shinobu sagged in her chair again, withdrawing into herself as she recalled how that went. After a second she spoke again quite hesitantly, “And it...turns out that I’m really bad at it, and I guess the form I took on was very similar to someone else. But I don’t know who that is, I’m sorry. I’m...actually very, very bad with faces.” The last was said with a completely genuine sense of sorrow and helplessness as she shrugged. “So I’m really, really sorry I got in the way of your job, Miss Lyra. Is there anything I can do to help make up for it somehow? I’m really, really quite sorry.”

What she was offering to assist with was, it seemed, temporarily forgotten for now.

[Lyra d'Aiglemort]

Lyra cocked her head to the side, listening to her ex-target ramble. As far as monologues went this one was informative. The mixed signals Lyra had been picking up on all along fit much more neatly with the persona Shinobu had slipped into. Her body language remained the same, a discordant thing to watch – the slender shoulders and softer face matching gestures and expressions which had seemed out of place on the masculine body.

This, Lyra concluded, was a useful ability. She wondered if Father knew. Yagami wasn’t a surname that Lyra recognized, not from any of the genealogies he poured over. A buzz settled along her bones, prickles climbing each knob in her spine.

Is that why Father had sent her? Shinobu was new to her powers. And hesitant in a way that heralded deeper vulnerabilities. She was the sort of person Father would enjoy helping.

Keeping her breaths even, Lyra relaxed the fists she had formed without conscious thought and took a moment to fastidiously smooth at the fabric of her pants. Nodding along passively as the woman spoke, to show her attentiveness, even as her thoughts spun in far-off directions.

“May I ask, what are your parents’ names?”

The job was to locate her given target and deliver him to this warehouse before calling it in. Nothing in there indicated Lyra was supposed to be looking for anyone else. There was no reason to think that was expected of her, right? That Father had seemed certain she wouldn’t mess this up was not conclusive evidence. He hadn’t told her anything outright. (Father of all people knew that Lyra couldn’t be trusted with these decisions on her own.)

A chill seeped into her thighs from the concrete beneath her. Lyra kept up her easy ministrations in spite of the fact that there had never been any wrinkles in her clothes to begin with.

“It seems this is a case of mistaken identity. I apologize for the confusion, Miss Yagami.” Lyra guessed, this time, as to the issue of surnames and given names.

“This wasn’t your first time impersonating someone not yourself?” She spoke quietly, working to distract herself from the answers Lyra didn’t want to hear. “Your facility with the human shape is commendable, but you are not very skilled at acting. Do you spend any time watching people? It may seem counterintuitive, but body language and tone of voice matter far more than your physical appearance.”

She tilted her head back in the other direction, a bird studying the splattered remains of roadkill without the conscious thought that this had once been a living thing.

“Not to discount your ability. It is only that if you wish to become someone else for a time that you will need to hide much deeper than beneath the skin.”