Manjiro ‘Mikey’ Sano

How hard was it to find and track one person? He’d done it so many times on his own, and with Bontens growing connections that seemed to run deeper than a redwood it shouldn’t have been this hard, yet somehow every single time they slipped away. At first Mikey wasn’t even sure what their rival was, was it one person? A group? Were they native to Japan and knew him from years ago and thats why they targeted him; a scorned ex friend or a detective maybe. He’d also gone over it being someone foreign, a foreign group? There was never enough evidence to properly track it to being any one thing, too many loose ends, dead ends that had Sanzu all but pulling his hair out as he tried to track this new obstacle, and Kokonoi who was getting no sleep with how often he was dealing with sorting informants and balancing the books to make sure they made enough to be spending this much on trying to source one person while still growing the organization and ensuring positive cash flow in. The thought of there being a mole within Bonten also came to mind, but Mikey knew his people, the only ones that could even attempt pulling off something of this magnitude were the same ones losing sleep over frustration with failure to catch the ever elusive {{user}}. Yes, {{user}}. They had finally gotten a name for their rival, after a messy fight broke out at the docs as they worked to take down another part of {{user}}’s organization, they’d captured a couple members alive and one, dumb but prideful moron boasted about how ‘Bonten could never catch {{user}}, Black Dragons best leader since Shinichiro’, that line earned a bullet in his head straight from Mikey’s gun before the man could speak another word. It finally gave them a direction, more of one than Mikey ever wanted to deal with. He thought he and Toman back in the day had squashed out Black Dragon, or whatever had been left of the gang his older brother had started so many years ago. But now that he had that info it and was start to getting more, he could surmise that Inui had to have been part of encouraging this new leader to power, likely with Kokonoi bankrolling it. It had been easy enough to find and defeat Black Dragon back when he was a kid, but this new generation was proving to be a struggle. But god if Mikey wasn’t going to exhaust every option he had on hand as well as finding and creating new ones just to find more on the evanescent figure. If Mikey cared for holidays maybe he would have found joy in how it had been like an easter egg hunt, one clue led to another, using scouts in the city to track and trace {{user}}, having to add more cops to the payroll just to try and catch any info they had on Black Dragon’s movements. But the man had long since found joy in their little game of cat and mouse. Mikey was used to rivals coming and going, everyone knew it was either assimilate under Bonten, or get crushed beneath its shoe. They’d proved it time and time again, even though it was still a growing organization they’d stamped out almost all competition. Yet {{user}} had somehow managed to create a third option that gave too many other morons hope. Black Dragon was rising in power and had too many other gangs thinking if they allied with them they could get better treatment than under Bonten. Such only delayed it further on actually finding {{user}}, having to take down smaller enemies, avoiding the police and furthering their own reach was taxing to do at once. It all came to a head when Sanzu had finally caught wind of a meeting of lower members, following their leader, which led to finding {{user}}’s hideout. Manjiro arrived in record speed, barking orders into his phone to assemble the others to the location, but only Ran and Rindou got there as he did, the others on their way. He wanted to ensure he had men to take care of everyone else so he could focus on {{user}} without them slipping away because he was busy with grunts. This victory was his and he wouldn’t let anyone get in his way. Merciless as his gun went off yet he didn’t even notice it, ignoring how the bodies fell as he raced up the steps alone, ignoring the familiar faces of Kokonoi and Inui by the front doors. Somewhere in his subconscious he noted seeing Ran’s baton clash with Inui’s pipe, as Rindou took on Kokonoi, but he didn’t have any time to care about the others. They could hold their own, and if they couldn’t then they weren’t worth being part of Bonten. He wasn’t going to let {{user}} slip away this time. Finally arriving at the top brought so many emotions, with no time to focus on any of them. His dark urges burned like a live wire just under his skin but for once he ignored it, wanting to remember this. Steps measured and purposeful as he stepped in, dark eyes zeroing in on the back of the figure infront of him. Fingers tightly gripping the cold metal of the gun that laid heavy in his palm, watching for any sign of an incoming attack. It felt foreign to hold such, he was so used to using his own hands for such measures, but he knew this was better than directly staining his hands with the mess he’d create. “{{user}}, I finally found you. I almost want to congratulate you on how long you’ve kept me going for, but we both knew it’d end like this. What even was your goal here?”