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Aki's typical morning started when she woke long before her children. She microwaved a quick cup of instant coffee and drank it.Her laptop went into the trail pack, the trail pack went into the carrier basket, and she jump-started her motorcycle. The engine purred between her thighs and the mechanical beast fairly leaped from the parking place and roared into the gathering dawn. The traffic was light before daybreak and she arrived at the high-rise, which the boy's manga publisher shared with dozens of other businesses, in typical time. She parked in the underground garage in her appointed and anointed half-slot. She boarded the cramped elevator to the tenth floor with a silent collection of suited salarimen, who worked at the brokerage on the fifteenth floor; with a pair of university students, who worked in the call center on the fifth floor; and with a single writer, who worked at Kadoyama Publishing with her, but on another manga storyline. As they exited the lift, he smiled broadly and nodded politely to her, just as he had done every morning Aki could remember.
This time, though, he spoke softly, "Aki, could we meet for lunch? I have an idea I'd like to run by you."
Must be an idea for a new manga line, she thought , Maybe he wants some pre-production sketches? "Certainly," she replied. "Come to my office?" She swiped her access card at the entry door to the left of the elevator.
The writer shook his head. "I'd prefer the noodle luncheonette down the block?" He swiped his own card and held the door for her.
She nodded, but wondered, why away from the office? She spent the rest of the morning distracted. She nodded often during art meetings. She doodled while on the phone. She scribbled her signature on a half-dozen authorizations and passed them along to be sent by courier. A permission note for Fuyuki to go on an outing somewhere-or-other arrived by FAX and she signed it automatically, with a flourish, and sent one of the art interns to FAX it back. All the while thoughts played weasel and monkey around the mulberry bush of her mind.
Giroro lay on the linen sheets next to the man-equin that most identified as Giroro. He'd locked the apartment door and then the bedroom door. His head was still buzzing and his earpads were ringing with the excitement and volume of his catered pre-ascension match party: the wrestlers, the minders, the staff, the models, and, of course, Sir Jeff had eaten, drunk, and conversed in loud voices over the louder music until well past 0200. The Amazing Bulk was there with his wife squeezed under one arm: he was well over two meters in height and she was barely one and a quarter. Serpent, a lower rated performer had come with his girlfriend, a sleek East Indian woman with dark lips and pearly white teeth. Every performer and all of the XWF staff had come with a spouse, or a girlfriend, or a lover, or a date: all except for Giroro and Sir Jeff.
Sir Jeff had taken him aside and explained his future responsibilities, "You're going to be the most watched performer in the XWF, Giroro, my man. You're going to attract a lot of attention. You'll have to live a little larger than most blokes and we've got to find you some arm candy."
Giroro had blinked, "What purpose would be served by sweetening my arm?"
Sir Jeff had guffawed and then explained the concept. As Giroro was given to understand the meaning: he would be required to be seen in the company of a lovely, thin, buxom woman, go to important functions with her, be seen shopping with her, and eventually share his apartment with her, though she could have her own room. The idea was to attract tabloid notice in addition to the notice of the trade papers and increase his name recognition score.
"Arm candy is excellent for attracting the mature female audience," Sir Jeff had explained. "They all dream about being next in your affections." Sir Jeff then had introduced him to single sub-super model after single sub-super model among his guests. They all met Sir Jeff's definition of gorgeous.
They did not meet Giroro's definition of gorgeous. They seemed vacuous and overly constructed: parts of them smelled of plastic and silicon, some of their faces carried a whiff of blowfish toxin. Giroro had tried to speak with them, but their words were slurred, their eyes bleary and his earpads hurt from the music. He was thankful when everyone left and Sir Jeff promised to have a cleaning crew come the next day, "Take the day off. Call somebody."
He looked to the business cards Sir Jeff had pressed into his hand before exiting: models from different agencies. Sir Jeff had inscribed important characteristics on the backs of cards that hadn't included head or body shots. These are, of course, who Sir Jeff means me to contact. This mission does not interest me. There is only one arm candy I desire. Giroro set the cards on the end table and rose. He removed the mobile phone from the man-equin's jacket pocket. He padded his way to the door, unlocked, and found a bottled water still capped among the abandoned drinks in the living room. He cracked the seal and let himself out onto the fifteenth floor balcony. Across the Hudson River channel he could see the sprawl of Manhattan and not far south a greenish-yellow dot: Ellis Island and the copper statue the American Pokopenians called Lady Liberty.
He swallowed a deep gulp of water and dialed.
Fuyuki was already late for school and he knew it. He was washed. He was dressed. He was hurriedly gathering his books when the phone downstairs jangled for attention. For a moment he considered not answering the electronic siren song. But it might be important? He dropped the books on his bed and charged through his bedroom door. He passed the bathroom door, used the lintel post to turn himself down the stairs and descended the steps two at a time. He grabbed at the phone receiver.
There was silence and then a dial tone. Darn, missed it!
He turned and trudged back up the stairs.
Giroro clicked the phone shell shut: disconnecting. They must all be away. I shall call later.
Natsumi scanned the students entering the upperclassman entrance. Saburo, predictably, wasn't among them. Thank the stars, she thought. She joined the crowd pushing in the doubled, double doors, I'm not avoiding him. I just don't want to think about him and Mois .... She clamped down on the thought and tried to replace it with something pleasant.
The floors had been freshly waxed and her shoes squeaked on the shiny surface. Her locker was two flights up, a right at the intersection of the long corridor, fifth from the end, but Natsumi turned in the opposite direction: three banks down and two lockers in was Koyuki's locker. I need a shoulder to cry on. Well not really cry, more like an ear to rant at. I haven't seen Koyuki all week. I was too busy with Sabu... She clamped down on the thought again. She quickened her pace.
Koyuki's locker was standing open, and Koyuki was nowhere nearby. Curiously, Natsumi peered inside. The shelf at the top was bare, the coat hook was empty. There were no papers below: no refuse. The only contents were two-thirds of a photograph spirit gummed to the slit-grated metal door just below the vents. Natsumi carefully teased the glossy slick loose. The picture was taken at the mall so many months ago that she'd nearly forgotten it. She, Koyuki, and Mois had piled into a mall photo booth and had a half-dozen snaps taken for 600 yen. Koyuki had chosen the picture in which she was closest to Natsumi: her chin practically on Natsumi's shoulder, her lips inclined towards Natsumi's ear as though sharing a delicious secret, and cropped away the smiling blond Angolan.
Natsumi turned the picture, but the back was blank except for the date and the film stock code. Natsumi tucked the photograph into her vest pocket. She almost felt a tear stick in the corner of her eye, but it was trapped somewhere between the then of then and the now of now: Koyuki is gone?
She closed the locker on the final emptiness.
Students were bent over their tests in grammar class, but Fuyuki was already finished. He was very much aware of Momoka next to him. She was still scribbling busily: her moist, thin lips moving as she subvocally pronounced the verbal conjugations and then her dainty hands inked katakana characters onto the worksheet before she finally committed to an answer by filling in the oval on the scan form. He looked beyond her to the pre-noon spring sun flooding through the bay windows. The classroom was on the subfloor just behind a riser of earth and though his view of the sports field was blocked; his mind was flooded with images of the ball lazily drifting over the plate to meet his swing. The bat met ball with a crack and lofted high, high over the outfield and into the sun...
"Fuyuki. Fuyuki Hinata." The teacher shook his shoulder. "Your uncle is in the office to pick you up." Momoka looked at the teacher curiously, then she looked at Fuyuki, then she bent and resumed her examination before the teacher noticed her unbowed head.
Fuyuki nodded as much to acknowledge the message as to clear the daydream. He handed the prim lady the test form and his worksheet. "I'm finished," his voice cracked. The teacher accepted the sheets and nodded. She handed him the hall pass from the office and ushered him to the door. He was halfway out the egress, following the student trustee, before the teacher's explanation penetrated. "Uncle?" he questioned under his breath, "I don't have an uncle!"
The sun was shining brightly nearer to the western horizon than to the apex while Kururu and Hanene set for their beachside picnic lunch. Safely under the protection of their chameleon cloth and an NMP field and an anti-barrier, they spread their meal of rolled seafood, onigiri, takoyaki, and spicy curry with various dipping sauces. Not that there was much need of all that protection? The beach was remote from the resort; they had the whole beach to themselves. True, there were a few low flying terns, but they weren't telling anyone of the two frogs arguing under.
"Puh-lease," Hanene was saying as she stabbed another crab cake. "The Legend of Zelda is the greatest video game series! The character stays the same, the plot is often the same, but the adventure is always different, yet recognizable."
"Nonsense," Kururu drawled, as he spooned the curry - his personal request - into his mouth. He chewed a moment before he spoke. "Final Fantasy has enjoyed a much longer run and greater fanbase. They were smart to switch to the Playstation before FF7 came out. It would have looked horrible on the N64."
"Pfft, r-i-i-i-i-ght," she stuck her tongue out and gave a raspberry of distaste. "Final Fantasy's characters and story change with each game. It takes time to get to know a new place, new characters, and a new story. Link is known everywhere because he hasn't changed."
"It grows old when a character doesn't change," Kururu countered. "Each game is fresh and new. You don't know what to expect, who you will meet. It makes each game exciting."
"Like you know anything about excitement!" she retorted, "I'll teach you how to have fun." She tossed a takoyaki at him. he octopus ball bounced off of his snout. The meat landed between them and rolled about on the blanket until it came to a stop. He looked down his nose cross-eyed behind his glasses. The aquamarine frog giggled at his stunned visage.
"You're going to pay for that," Kururu sneered. He side-armed a handful of curried meat at Hanene, which splattered across her cheek, cap and nose and dribbled in chunks past her mouth and onto her belly.
Their eyes met for a heartbeat before the tempest burst the confines of the teapot and became a free for all: soy sauce was dumped on her head, a takoyaki was wedged up his wide nostril. Food was flying everywhere until it became a struggle in the sand as to who would smear the other with the last package of duck sauce. They continued to wrestle and struggle until Hanene laughingly ended up being pinned by the hacker. A gobbet of sand and hoisen sauce dripped stickily off his nose and pelted her forehead.
Covered with food and sand, Kururu was surprised he had pinned her at all; he couldn't see with all the plum sauce and sand smeared on his glasses. He removed them for a better if somewhat blurrier view and his hearts skipped a beat.
Hanene's battle cap had come off during the struggle. Her hair was smeared with soy sauce, rice and curry. Her body was soaked with duck sauce. Her open mouth was still laughing, carefree. Her eyes were tightly shut against the grit of the sand.
Hanene slowly opened her eyes, and was shocked to see he had taken off his glasses. Her laughter stopped. She marveled at his eyes. She had only heard of this type of mutation before: where someone's pupils were so constricted they were almost nonexistent. The recessive gene made his eyes seem a solid gold, more beautiful now than in her first glimpse many months before through his cracked lenses.
They gazed at one another for what seemed an eternity before either moved; Kururu leaned down toward her.
Hanene quickly guessed at what he was planning - a cheek rub - he was already rumbling his own chirruping resonation. She turned her head so that her face was in the way of Kururu's destination, and he found his lips bumping hers for a moment. He felt her slide past his parted lips and an electric sensation of the papillae of her tongue sliding against his.
Confused, Kururu started backwards. His eyes questioned her.
"I'm going to go clean up," Hanene said quickly. She wriggled out from underneath him and trotted toward the water's edge. Her hat was along her path and she nicked it as her trot turned into a run.
Kururu sat in the sand, baffled and dripping with food. I try to do the most romantic thing a Keronian can do, and she touches lips with me...?
The student trustee opened the door to the office and Fuyuki ducked through. A queue of uncomfortable chair desks occupied both sides of the hallway adjacent to the Disciplinary Office. They were sparsely occupied by students whose only discipline problem was likely forgetting homework or being tardy or talking out of turn in class. In the office beyond, a counter divided the entryway from a pair of metal desks, which were piled with an abnormal amount of paper and file folders - so many that the computer monitor's vents were obscured. The two administrative assistants were busily filing, and typing... or, thought Fuyuki, playing their nine hundredth game of Windows solitaire.
Between and beyond their desks was an open doorway and inside the beefy headmaster leaned towards someone unseen at the left corner of his own desk. Fuyuki licked his lips and cleared his throat to announce himself, but the trustee spoke first. "Fuyuki Hinata is here," he announced to the closest assistant, but with sufficient volume that the headmaster could hear.
"Come in, Fuyuki." called the headmaster in his characteristic bellow: well-practiced from years of instructing students both placid and unruly. Fuyuki timidly swung the gate open and passed behind the counter. With trepidation he walked between the assistant's desks who watched him curiously - the Hinata children were familiar to them, but not in the context of being called to the headmaster's account. Fuyuki braced his hands on either side of the door frame and bowed deeply to the headmaster. He then stood almost at military attention with his head respectfully downcast. At the headmaster's wave he closed the door behind him. He glanced neither left nor right, but kept his eyes focused on the headmaster.
Uncomfortable seconds ticked by before the headmaster spoke, "Your uncle has come to sign you out of class today. He brought a note from your mother? Is this her signature?" He pushed a sheet of paper forward. The note was word-processed, but the signature was in his mother's hand and the FAX was timed and dated that morning. Fuyuki nodded at the paper only slightly and the headmaster nodded in return while withdrawing the paper to a file on his desk.
Fuyuki took the nod as his permission to turn. The shoes were black leather wingtips, size 10, European with adequately scuffed soles. The ankles were covered with lightweight white crew socks, that disappeared under the hem of the pinstripe black slacks. A large, gold belt buckle, emblazoned with the word "Idaho" in stair step Times New Roman, graced the waistband and firmly restrained the gray collared shirt. The neck was untied and the collar was open to the undershirt beneath the grizzled chin, beneath the narrow, carefully trimmed, snow white goatee and mustache, and the carefully combed salt and sawdust hair. The hair was topped with a flat cap. Until the man removed his Rayban sunshades, Fuyuki did not even recognize him, but the steely eyes gave him away. Seated and bereft of both his handlebar mustache and butler regalia, and painted with well-applied latex cheek, chin, and eyefold appliances, Paul was still an imposing figure. "Did you forget our appointment today, Fuyuki?"
Fuyuki was silent, but finally he found the lie for which he was combing his cranium, "I guess I did, Uncle."
"This is my Father's brother." He explained to the headmaster. "He's in town for a few days."
The headmaster smiled at the cooperative Fuyuki, and Fuyuki was suddenly very conscious of the framed photograph directly behind the headmaster and above his PhD in Education Administration: the headmaster was shaking hands with Bayo Nishizawa behind a large check crowded with zeros and commas. The zaibatsu logo was a prominent backdrop to the smiling pair. In the background, afore the backdrop, behind and between the two, a blurry, but clearly unsmiling Paul looked on expressionlessly.
The lunch counter was exceptionally busy, but the booth in the corner furthest from the door and the kitchen was the most secluded. Aki had the left-hand bench all to herself. The noodles were plentiful, but growing cold in her bowl. The attendant broth was watered to within an inch of tastelessness. She picked at the food sparingly. Neither her taste buds, nor her appetite, were particularly stimulated by the experience. She looked to the crowd. The writer had not yet arrived.
She toyed with the strap of her purse. She was aware of the appraising sidelong glances both businessmen and university students gave her: the eyes passing over the rarity of her muscular buttocks, hourglass figure, strong back, stairstep spine, flat belly, well-fleshed ribs and large breasts. They would glance away in the seconds before they met her eyes, but not before they saw the tiny glasses perched on the end of a nose that fronted typically Asian features. She sighed, the body of a westerner and the face of the girl next door? You'd think that after forty years I'd be indifferent? A sharp and poisonous glare was sufficient to frighten away a man in a silk tie and salary suit, who was seconds away from slipping into the seat across from her and saying hello.
She tapped one stick impatiently against the tabletop. This is like "Waiting for Godot" only without a tree and a rock. Life is good on the home front. Natsumi is playing with her plants more than that walking hormone factory. He seems to be off with Mois? Well, that's good too. And Fuyuki? My little boy is growing up... I saw him with a baseball mitt last week and I swear I saw him sneaking a kiss with that sweet Momoka on the couch last night. She sipped at the tea, which had accompanied the cold soup. What about me though? I'm the best at my job. I'm art editor for four hit manga. I've got that American Anime award for Best Manga. I was invited to New York Comicon last year - shame I couldn't go... too much work: two kids, two new projects in process, two major releases. Last year was a busy year.
She wasn't startled when the writer slid into the seat she'd been saving. She was surprised by the briefcase he opened and she was further surprised by the older man who slid in next to him. Neither had their lunch. Neither had even a cup of tea. Both seemed intent on talking and then departing as quickly as possible. The writer looked around nervously and then said, "You came alone? I hope."
Aki snorted at the cloak and dagger question and appraised that the writer was completely, if melodramatically, serious. "Of course," she dialed up her motherly patient voice. "You're being a bit secretive for an art meeting aren't you?"
The two men looked to each other and the older one ordered, "Show her."
The writer slid a slim red binder towards Aki. She opened the plastic cover. Protected behind a transparent leaf was the slick cover of a magazine. The cover shot screamed in large red characters "Plastic" and below were matted photographs of vehicles: fantasy space and otherwise. A smaller line murmured "build what you read". Aki glanced up, "What's this?"
"It's our new magazine, or it will be if you say 'yes'," the writer whispered conspiratorially. "It combines custom plastic modeling with a high quality graphic novel - the modeling ties in directly with the storyline. We'd like you to be editor-in-chief."
Aki looked at him blankly, then down at the slick. With trepidation she licked her fingertips and turned the page.
Where are we going? had been the question on the cusp of Fuyuki's cracking vocal cords ever since Paul had opened the door to the SUV. They turned corners, paced traffic on straightaways, and finally turned onto and then off of the highway. A few turns in the warehouse district brought them to a gated fence. The sign to the left said "No Trespassing". The sign to the right read "Caution: Live Ammunition in Use." The sign over the gate read "Nishizawa PL" in large block letters and then "Security" in smaller letters. Paul swiped his card at a terminal at the entrance, sat stock still as a laser scanned him, and then drove forward as the gate trundled open.
"This is our security training facility: combat with weapons and without. Your aim will improve if you practice." Paul parked the car in an available slot, of which there were many. "We're here to shoot." He dug behind his seat and dropped a stiff leather case edged in chrome -steel onto Fuyuki's lap. Paul triggered the toplock and the container sprang open on well-adjusted springs. Inside was a sportsman's handgun sans ammo and clip. There were empty depressions in the red velvet where they usually sat.
"Isn't this against the law?" Fuyuki asked apprehensively. Every person, from child to tourist, knew the gun laws of Japan by reputation; if not by letter. There was no private possession of handguns, swords, knives, except in certain limited circumstances. Even airguns and target shotguns had to be licensed, and their possessors licensed and subjected to safety, use, and mental exams. Only police owned guns legally. Only criminals owned them illegally.
Paul nodded gravely, "When you've enough money; you can buy your own law." He motioned to the Nishizawa logo imprinted between the grip and the trigger. "There's an exception for some paramilitary."
Natsumi stopped at Fuyuki's second floor Home Economics classroom on her way to the school's rear, double door exit onto the rise. Though her brother was old enough to walk home alone; they sometimes, still, walked home together. Like old times, she thought, before Keronians, before Koyuki, before Sabu.... She extinguished the thought like a cigarette: crushed it mercilessly and then stamped it underfoot. My plants are more important than him. He just uses up space on the planet. Think global, act local! A garden can save the world!
Natsumi's thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of Momoka. She spun like an unfettered ballerina through the classroom doorway into the hallway and stepped off down the hall; her black casual pumps made cheerfully audible clicking noises over the hub-bub of other students, who fled the classroom for more pleasurable pursuits. Her nose was in the air, which was not unusual, but there was a smile on her face, not of disdain, but of happiness, which was very unusual. Natsumi stopped her with a friendly tap on the shoulder, "Momoka?"
Momoka turned to Natsumi and bowed slightly, but formally to a respected underclassman, "Yes Natsumi-sempai. Can I help you?"
Natsumi nearly burst into giggles. I'm still not used to this. Momoka and Fuyuki bowing whenever I stop them in school. Like we're suddenly not friends because we're inside the walls. "Have you seen Fuyuki? I was going to walk home with him."
Momoka shrugged the slightest and cutest shrug Natsumi had ever seen, "My Fuyuki-kun? He left early. His uncle came to take him for the day."
Natsumi wrinkled her forehead and raised her eyebrow."Fuyuki doesn't have an uncle," she explained to Momoka's querulous look. "I don't have an uncle. Mama is an only child." She took Momoka by the shoulders and shook her. "Are you sure? Think Momoka."
"That's what the teacher said!" Momoka shrilled and squirmed. She related the story of how Fuyuki had finished his test early, of the trustee coming down with the note from the office, and of the teacher's dismissal of Fuyuki.
Natsumi loosed her grip on the girl and looked grimmer and grimmer. "You got that fancy mobile still?" she asked, and at Momoka's nod she added, "Let's get out to the street and call Fuyuki."
Fuyuki's mobile phone warbled a ringtone by Ai Otsuka: a tone keyed to Momoka's mobile phone number. He buttoned the final button on the camo-vest that Paul had found in the storage, which was miraculously only a half-size too large. Fuyuki had rolled the cuff double and buttoned the sleeve inside-out so that his wrist was free. Paul had demonstrated how to fasten the Velcro closures on the textured wrist support and gun grip combo and then left to change out of his outlandish Texas attire. Fuyuki was alone in the executive locker room.
Fuyuki fished hurriedly in the pocket of his bookbag, but the phone was deeply buried and the inflexible plastic encasing his forearm hampered his access. He encountered the sleekly silvery rounded teardrop with his fingertips just as the missed call tone mournfully played. The rear screen displayed the image of a little child. Childfind? he thought. No-one's tried that since I was lost in the mall when I was ten! Mama? or Natsumi? He flipped the phone and checked the missed callback number: Momoka? Now that's odd? How did Momoka get the password? He was about to return the call, when the entry door's pneumatic piston sighed softly and the door handle struck the rubber bumper on the catercorner wall. Fuyuki instantly and automatically snapped the phone closed and slipped the device back into his bookbag. Paul doesn't need to know Momoka tried to call me, though he probably already knows; some things are private or they should be.
Paul turned the corner of the bank of lockers. He smiled kindly at Fuyuki. The two were dressed similarly in black hiking boots, loosely fit camo-patterned, field grade shirts and reinforced knee, balloon-legged pants; though the camouflage wouldn't have disguised them outside of an explosion at a neon pigment factory. Fuyuki's clothing was patterned in teal, purple and yellow digital, while Paul's was bright red, orange, and navy tiger stripes. Both wore visor-less black helmets though with a switch on the earflap to deploy an active negative noise blanker. Paul wore a leather gunbelt with clips of ammunition slung down either leg in dual quick loaders and twin silver 9mm in cross draw holsters. He laid a similar gunbelt, minus the quickloaders on the bench next to Fuyuki's locker. "Would you like me to put it on you? Or can you figure it out yourself?"
Fuyuki made his best guess and snapped on the belt and strung the leg straps to the reinforcing loops at his knees. He noted that not only were there no loaders, but there was only a single hip holster and it was quite empty. He patted the empty holster and looked questioningly to Paul. The man smiled that same neutrally comforting smile. "Your gun is waiting for you at the range." he explained. "Follow me."
Natsumi grimaced in puzzlement at Momoka's mobile. She had entered the password for the Childfind function to Fuyuki's phone and the child's mobile had dutifully reported a GPS coordinates to the faraway server, which had translated them into a street address and served a street map image to Momoka's of the S3G mobile. The address was unfamiliar to Natsumi, though she knew the character of the area. She showed the map displayed on the wide screen to Momoka. "That's where Fuyuki is. What's he doing in the warehouse district?"
Momoka's eyes widened as she read the address in the little thought-bubble on the display. "I know that place!" She grabbed the mobile and pressed the speed message to summon her chauffeur. "We need to get there right away. My Fuyuki-kun is in terrible danger!"
Fuyuki watched as Paul walked through the loading of the cartridge: ten bullets each carefully inserted one-way-only into the spring loaded slot. The sixth bullet seemed wider than the others, but the cartridge was snuggly snapped into the pistol grip before Fuyuki even thought to voice the observation.
"These are light armor rounds," explained Paul to the musing youth. "The safety is on." He placed the gun on the ledge of the widow overlooking the indoor target range. "Now, look at it."
Fuyuki fixed his eyes on the gun with a mixture of curiosity, fear and dread.
"That's a deadly weapon, Fuyuki." Paul continued, "Deadly. Destructive. Dangerous in the wrong hands. Pick it up."
Fuyuki extended his right hand: the one braced with the firing glove. He sensed more than saw Paul's tension increase. Perhaps it was Paul's shift of weight onto the balls of his feet and the squinch of the shifting heel on the tile floor. Maybe it was Paul's subvocal hiccough. Perchance Fuyuki caught out of the corner of his eye the movement of Paul's own hand toward Fuyuki's. Fuyuki stopped.
"How do I pick it up?" he asked as nonchalantly as possible.
Paul relaxed visibly, "You've asked a good first question. Perhaps yours are the right hands after all."
The limousine arrived at the main entrance of the Middle school and Momoka expediently pushed Natsumi passed the nameless functionary who held open the door. She fearfully noted Paul's absence at the vehicle's door and the void at the seat across from her. The butler/protector's lack of attendance frightened her still further. "Driver," she instructed into the intercom. "Take us to the practice range!" then she repeated the address to be certain the driver did not dawdle or divert.
The limousine rolled away from the curb and accelerated with a shriek of rubber meets roadway, when Momoka shrilly commanded, "Quickly!"
"Sir, Momoka has requested to be transported to the kill zone."
"What of it? Paul will have the job done before she arrives."
"Show her in. Not that you could stop her."
Paul lowered his right hand pistol from the target and toggled the switch that trundled the target back to the shooting berth. He removed his noise canceling headphones and noted that Fuyuki, with his weapon properly holstered and with the safety properly set had removed his own only after Paul's weapon was returned to the bodyguard's belt. The boy learns quickly. I wish his progress wasn't going to be lost.
Paul held the target sheet up before Fuyuki's eyes and then lay it flat on the rail so Fuyuki could examine the scarred paper. "This is an ideal set." Paul explained, "There are two groupings: five are in the head circle? And five are in the stomach circle?"
Fuyuki nodded and his mouth opened with a question, but he closed it just as quickly.
Shame. He knows when to listen. He'd have been a good soldier one day. "What you can't see from the target is that the five here...," Paul tapped the grouping of the head circle, "and the five here...," he tapped stomach circle, "were from alternating shots. This one, then this one, then this one, then that." Paul indicated alternating holes high on the target and then low. At Fuyuki's comprehending nod, Paul continued. "Now, no-one expects that you'll be able to alternate accurately on your first try, but that's what we'll work towards. First time out? Just try to hit the page? Yes?"
At Fuyuki's nod Paul unrolled another target silhouette from the roller and pressed the stud. The torso and head target glided out to five meters distant. Paul stepped back from the firing line and Fuyuki stepped forward. The boy donned his headphones and checked them with a careful tap. He glanced over his shoulder to see that Paul had likewise donned his own headgear and then with clumsy and uncertain caution drew his revolver. He clicked back the safety and chambered a round before passing the gun to his right hand. Circuits in the gun clicked as the RFID chip in the gunglove and the coil in the pistol grip exchanged data and negotiated permission to fire. Fuyuki raised the weapon, lined up the sights as best he could and fired.
The first shot nicked the right-outer edge of the human form.
Only six more, Paul thought and tried to relax. The kill shall be nearly painless. The sixth bullet will stress the chamber and the seventh will backfire. The firing pin is loose just enough to take out his eye. Needle shot, straight through the brain.
Fuyuki re-adjusted his stance and aim, exhaled his held breath, inhaled and tried again: BANG! The second bullet nicked the opposite edge of the paper, still outside the printed man-form. Fuyuki grimaced and readied himself for his third try.
Paul grimaced. He's a good boy. I like him. Maybe I like him more than i should? Shame that he has to go this way, without even a fighting chance. Momoka likes him. The little bitch is growing up, and she likes them clever, like this one. Too bad Bayo disagrees. Fuyuki's third shot rang out and a puncture dimpled the silhouette just inside the center-most heart ring. The boy exhaled, shifted fractionally and without even inhaling snapped off his fourth shot into the head ring of the target.
Paul saw the barest trace of a smirk grace the left-corner of the boy's lips. He's becoming more confident. Last year he didn't know what girls were; this year he's taking my charge under the bleachers? Maybe Bayo-sama is right? Any boy is too much trouble. His mind played through what he'd seen of Fuyuki over the years: the first video recording from Momoka's necklace camera as she tried to tell him "I love you"; the boy attempting to divert Nishizawa paras; Fuyuki convincing the green Keronian not to launch a world destroying missile. The pleased look on Momoka's face when Fuyuki accepted her Christmas gift. Momoka with dreamy eyes following a sixteen year old Fuyuki into the shade with a bag of cookies.
Fuyuki's fifth shot snagged the edge of the first puncture, well within the heart ring. Even as Fuyuki quirked a smile, Paul's own face fell into a frown. His hand wanted to reach out. His hand wanted to stop the boy from firing the sixth bullet.
Fuyuki's wrist didn't even twitch within the wrist support as the sixth bullet quit the bore and ripped a larger than normal tear in the pulp forehead of the outline. Surely he felt the extra recoil? Surely he sees the crack in the ejector?
The muzzle angled a scant degree downward. The boy's eye lined up the sight. His breathing was normal, easy, regular - his eyes unblinking. His finger tightened on the trigger.
The limousine screeched to a stop just to the left of the "No Trespassing" sign and Momoka was out the passenger door before the dust had settled. Natsumi was close on her heels as the girl slipped through the narrow gap in the gate and bulled her way passed the astonished guard. Natsumi twisted and turned a bit to scrape through the gap and caught her blouse at the bosom on the sharp edges of the wire mesh. She took a moment to unhook the cloth and avoid a nasty tear. Momoka was already at a run, pounding the parking lot towards the entry door to the warehouse. Inside Natsumi distantly heard a muffled sound like a firecracker, then two more pops, then a pause and two more, then one loud bang: deeper and richer and somehow more meaningful than the previous five.
Momoka was through the door and Natsumi still had the expanse of asphalt to cross.
The door to the firing nest burst open as Paul's hand flew out and pushed Fuyuki's gun hand. The pop of the bullet's charge, and the screech of the cracked chamber was drowned under the bang of the door against the opposing wall. Fuyuki's head jerked right even as the weakened pin blew back. He heard a ringing and then static in his left ear. The elapsed time was the merest fraction of a fraction of a second.
Momoka crossed the room in the next few seconds and wrapped her arms around the startled boy. "Fuyuki! I'm so glad you're okay!"
"Of course I'm okay!" Fuyuki smiled tolerantly over her head. He clicked the safety of the gun with one hand and laid it carefully on the ledge before his arms wrapped her in a warm hug. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"Guns are dangerous!" Momoka shrilled in his ear, but the noise canceling on one side of the helmet blotted out the worst overtones. the other side produced louder whitenoise and a burst of shrill feedback.
"Awwww..." Fuyuki protested softly, "Paul was just teaching me how to aim and be steady. That's good for baseball too, you know?" He soothed her hair with one hand and then leaned in close to kiss. Her lips were moist against his and she shivered against him, even as she gripped him tighter. With one free hand he switched off the noise canceling and could hear her heartfelt sobs.
Paul stood just to the side, staring mortified at his own hand. Why he had saved Fuyuki or hadn't saved him, for perhaps Momoka's entry had, was writ large in horrified puzzlement on his brow. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply and then released the breath as an emotive sigh. The errant hand reached out and pressed the stud to retrieve the target. Other than the nicks of the first two failed shots, there were five tears in the paper. Even the final shot, which should have caused the fatal accident, and whose trajectory Paul had altered with the jostling, was dead on and had punctured the heart circle at the outer edge.
Momoka raised her head, slid her hand up behind his neck, drew him down the few vertical centimeters that differed between them, and kissed Fuyuki more deeply than he had kissed her. "I'm so glad your safe." She released him and turned her head to Paul. "I'm taking him home Paul." She snarled, "Do you have any objections?"
Paul instantly became the uptight and upright butler he had never truly been. He said in his best professional voice, "I shall have his school clothes cleaned and sent to his home."
"You do that," Momoka snipped. She unbuckled the safety helmet from Fuyuki's chin, removed it, and tossed the headgear to Paul. "Clean this while you're at it." She wrapped her fingers through Fuyuki's dark hair and kissed him a final time. The boy's breathing became labored more for the stirring in his pants than for the blocking of his respiratory tract. She released him. Her hips ground teasingly against the rising hardness in his not-so-camouflaging camouflage. "Lets get you home."
They left arm in arm, eyes mapping their lust and each other's faces, just as Natsumi appeared at the door. Her mouth was open, either to bark a command or raise an alarm, but she stopped dead as the couple slipped passed her. Her eyes followed them as they disappeared down the hall and out the door to the lobby. She looked back into the firing nest at Paul, who appeared befuddled, with the helmet gripped in both hands like a delicious dessert he was about to serve.
"I think I missed something?" she said.
Paul looked down at the shiny shell of the helmet and at the firing pin embedded in the fiberglass just over the left earflap. Had Fuyuki not snapped his head to look at Momoka; the pin would be lodged in the boy's brain.
"No," he said gravely, "I don't think you did."
"Did you ever stop to consider that they might be in love?"
"No, my wife. I would expect you to support me in this?"
"I do not. My daughter,... our daughter is growing up. You should leave her to find her own way."
Hanene stood on the opposite side of the net. "Are you ready, sweetie?" she called. She raised the Wilson over her head in her right palm and prepared to strike it with her left fist. She was once again blue under the matching Solar Protection Factor 80 sunscreen on her belly and face, shoulders and arms. The remains of lunch were already floating out with the afternoon tide.
"What do you mean ready? And don't call me sweetie!" Kururu protested. He'd washed the smears of curry and soy sauce off his yellow flesh with an extended sluice under the shower in the cabana. When he had finished washing, he dried himself in the partial shade of slitted sun under the shade of the porch and bamboo blinds. He was almost relaxed again and was considering the possibility of rejiggering the gamepad to check his e-mail, when Hanene had bounced around the corner, fresh from her swim, pounced on him and wrestled him from the comfort of the chaise lounger. Before he knew what was happening, she'd chased him onto one side of a net strung vertically between two palm trees and had retreated under the mesh obstruction to the other side.
Now she stood facing him with a ball that she appeared about to punch, and punch it she did. The white ball flew over the net, straight at his head and he had a scant and useless second to fling his hands upwards in a protectively warding gesture before the ball hit him directly in the snout and knocked him back on his froggy buttocks. The ball dribbled down onto the sand and then rolled under the net into Hanene's waiting hands. "It's called volleyball," she explained. "You are supposed to hit the ball back to me."
"Oh," he replied, muffled from his hand holding his bruised snout.
"Okay, now stand up, and I'll serve again and you hit the ball back to me. Are you ready?" She struck the pose again. She held the ball up and aimed her tiny fist at the underside.
Kururu scrambled to his feet. He surreptitiously raised his hand to the side of his head and triggered a tiny switch behind one of his headphones. One lens of his visor raised a detailed heads-up display. The legends were in Keronian mudscript, but the technology was purloined Yautja. Hanene became a beach temperature outline with darker greens and blues near the center of her mass and the center of her skull. A ghostly red triangular crosshair affixed the unserved ball and the track computation appeared as a slanted red line arced away in forward projection of the possible flight of the nasty white orb. He took a stance ready to leap in either direction, but more heavily weighted to the projected flightpath.
"Ready!" reported Kururu. I have you now, bitch!
Hanene's digitized infrascan squinted against the sun in her eyes and batted the ball in a high arc. The projector narrowed the path probabilities and Kururu jumped sideways to be in the flightpath. He struck the ball with one palm and it spun back towards her, but into the opposite corner. Hanene leaped to the return even as Kururu landed. The heads-up calculated her path, the velocity of the ball and projected the multiplex variable of the return, now even accounting for wind speed and air pressure. She fisted the ball high with both balled hands and skidded face first in the sand. She rolled and popped upwards like an anti-personnel mine to spike the ball downwards over the net.
Kururu was already where the ball would go. He slapped the projectile with a glancing blow of his palm and the backspin caused the orb to curve unexpectedly back away from the still airborne Hanene. She twisted in midair. The absurd flares of her cap caught the wind like sails and she flipped against the wall of pressure, abruptly right-angling her momentum. She tapped the ball over the net and it bounced neatly before Kururu could react. She landed with a flutter of her cap and joyful, playful laughter parting her lips, "My point!"
"You're cheating!" Kururu protested. "This is a Pokopenian game and I happen to know from numerous biological studies that Pokopenians cannot glide!"
Hanene retrieved the ball and retreated back to her own side. "I'll take any advantage I can get. Just like you do!" She tapped at the side of her head, just above her earpads and precisely where the switch would have been if she were wearing Kururu's headphones.
Shit, Kururu thought and almost muttered. How did she know? "Yare yare. Just 'serve'." I'll show you special powers!
Hanene tipped a quick salute, and without even a call to the ready, served the ball in a high arc over the net. Kururu sprang into action, carefully summoning nerves he hadn't used in many years. His fingertips felt suddenly alive, as though each follicle had become a power generator, which in a way: they had. He easily tipped at the ball, but straightaway so that Hanene had to look directly into the afternoon sun as she tracked the ball's descent. His palms left glowing prints that played over the ball's surface. She couldn't detect the faint halo as the ball fell, nor as she moved under it, nor as she struck it.
The energy projection around the ball exploded and Hanene was blown back several meters. The ball landed on the sand and stuck before slowly deflating with a floozy hiss of breaking wind. Kururu leaped over the net, scooped up the withered vulcanized sphere and strode to where Hanene lay dazed upon the sand.
"Point!" he grinned sardonically and tossed the deflated ball onto her belly.
He expected her to be angry. He expected her to rage. He was shocked when she just lay there, looked from the deflated ball to him and back and laughed. She laughed even as he stood there with his fists on his hips. She bounced to her feet. "I have other balls! It's your serve now!" she shrilled enthusiastically.
You have more balls than me. Kururu muttered as he trudged back to his side of the net and she returned with a newly inflated Wilson. She's going to teach me to have fun if it kills me.
The limousine cruised down the street and then parked in front of the Hinata house. The functionary emerged from the passenger seat to the left of the driver and opened the rear door. Fuyuki was the first from the back seat. He turned and helped Momoka by the fingertips as though she were a princess in a white lace ballroom gown and not a teenager in a black polyester school skirt. He stepped her to the sidewalk and then leaned to kiss her as his sister, unassisted, emerged. She glanced at the kissing couple, grinned with a twist of one corner of her mouth and whispered, "Get a room already."
Fuyuki and Momoka both giggled. "Would you like to come in and 'study'?" he asked. He stroked the bridge of her nose with a straight index finger and gave the upturned tip a gentle tweak between his knuckles. She nodded and they set off together, arm in arm, bookbags in tow, up the walk.
Natsumi's eyes followed them and she became aware of Saburo. He was casually leaning against the door frame. His fingers twiddled a lollipop. He saluted Fuyuki with the candy stick as the boy opened the door and slipped through with Momoka. The door closed and he turned his attention back to the walk and down the walk to Natsumi. Natsumi shouldered her own bag, nodded to Momoka's functionary, and strode up the walk.
"Natsumi," started Saburo as she stepped onto the porch, "we need to talk."
Natsumi sucked in her breath. She'd been both dreading and awaiting the moment. She found herself shaking her head and barely recognized the strong, unwavering voice that came out of her own mouth as her own. "Maybe you have something you need to talk about Saburo. I don't. I have chores and homework." She opened the door and he put his arm across the entry to grip the outframe: simultaneously barring her entrance and preventing her from opening the door farther.
"Okay, I need to talk, but you need to listen. If the eagle talks, the mouse will listen." Saburo insisted.
He held the lollipop in the other hand and he kept an insistent rhythm of gestures with the green translucent square and short plastic stick. He wore a denim jacket over his white collared shirt, but the tie was gone, though the battered sailor's cap remained. There were a few curly strands of hair gracing his once hairless chin. Natsumi couldn't remember whether the immature beard had been there the previous day, but she felt an immediate distaste for the attempt at gaijin affectation. She looked down at his arm and fleetingly thought to grab his wrist, twist the arm into a submission angle and then break every bone in his poet's hands.
She looked harshly into his eyes and said disdainfully. "Okay, I'll hear you out."
He stepped before her and held the door wide for her. He ushered and she stepped through. He closed the door with a flourish behind them both.
Paul approached the double oak doors that guarded the entrance to Bayo's inner sanctum: his private office. As he progressed, a light flared in a recessed cubby on the left and the right. Each light revealed a suit of armor, each posed in a more threatening aspect than the previous. The lights died behind him only to flare in the next pair of displays as he passed. The echoing of his own footsteps followed him and Paul swore that if he turned he would see all the animated armor, weapons drawn in invisible hands, ready to hack him to his death. He'd walked this corridor only thrice in his life: the first time was when Kaito died and I pledged my fealty to Bayo. The second was the night Momoka was born and I carried her to him. The third is now. It's more theatrical than I remember it.
Paul stopped before the door and the final set of lights played across the lacquered panels. He raised his hand to knock and then reconsidered and stalwartly gripped the gold leafed handle and depressed the thumb latch. He swung the door inward. The office was well lit by the late afternoon sun slanting through the grandiose bay window that looked out over the south lawn and over the conservatory. Bayo's chair was an imposing winged monolith behind the expansively overpowering mahogany desk. Ouka was perched crosslegged on one corner like a silver-haired bird of prey. She picked carefully at the dirt under her red polished fingernails with a bejeweled letter opener that could have once been an assassin's dagger now retired. Okay, now what was I thinking about theatrical?
The chair turned sharply and a tense stony Bayo regarded Paul and the half-open door through steepled fingers. His eyes flicked left to where Ouka had looked up from her warrior's manicure and ceased her industrious picking. She crossed the dagger hand across the forearm of the cleaned nail hand. The weapon was held casually and her free hand curved the red talons around the leather kneecap of her coal black pants. Bayo's eyes flicked back to Paul and he ominously ordered, behind his mouth obscuring digits. "Come in, Paul. Come in and sit." He gestured curtly to the only other chair near the desk before returning his hand to mask his face.
Paul crossed the room immediately. If they intended a trap, they would have sprung it long before.
"Do you know why you are here?" inquired Ouka.
"Yes, Ma'am, I do.", replied Paul as he reached the desk slightly to the left of Bayo and just out of weapon's reach of Ouka. He noticed her knuckles whiten on the hilt of the letter opener as he reached past the lapel of his formal jacket. He slid the envelope free of the interior breast pocket and scaled it the short distance onto the corner of the enormous blotter.
Bayo raised an eyebrow at the envelope even as Ouka reached for it and cut the fold above the flap. "What's this?" he asked as Ouka handed him the single folded sheet.
"It's my resignation, sir. I'm getting to old for this and I'm leaving." Paul announced without sitting in the indicated chair. The silence was all he desired as a response and he turned on heel to leave without being dismissed.
He had crossed the carpet and had his hand on the latch when Bayo's voice boomed from behind, "Stop! Who do you think you are?"
Paul turned. He smiled back to Bayo and his wife. "I'm an employee, sir, and I am a free man, and for the first time in a long time. I'm going my own way. I always be nearby if you need me, and I've written as much. I'm taking my retirement as per my contract with all the privileges I've earned."
Bayo was dumbstruck. His composure and surety seemed cracked if not shattered. Ouka looked to her husband for a clue as to her own reaction. Bayo was about to speak, but Paul was not finished, "and sir. I'll leave you with a warning. Stay away from Fuyuki. The boy is like a son to me and I promise you: if he or the Hinatas should come to any harm; I'll make certain to take you down first."
"Are you finished?" growled Bayo. At Paul's nod, he ordered, "Then remove yourself from my sight..."
Natsumi dumped another bag of desalinated seaweed into a plastic pail. The stuff was easy enough to make: stacks of it rotted on the docks when the fishermen cleaned their nets. She had shoveled two canvas bag loads for the cost of back straining labor and then carted the bags home in her wagon with the rest of her gardening supplies. the seaweed made a fine supplement to the store-bought humus. With the grass removed from the first of her plots, the soil was ripe for reclamation.
Saburo offered no help. He squatted on his jacket, which padded the crumbling, mossy cinder block. He was holding forth on the nature of love, sex, and companionship, "... a man gives love to get sex and a woman by turn gives sex to get love, that's what anthropology tells us...," he babbled.
Natsumi held the hoe in both of her gloved hands. She pulled the compost towards her and chopped it with the blade, then she pushed the cut earths away and drew in a fresh trailing. The rhythm was compulsively simple: pull, cut-cut-cut-cut, push, pull, cut-cut-cut-cut, push. Repeat and repeat and repeat. Saburo's words were a melody to the percussion of good gardening.
"I'm only a man Natsumi. I have needs and for a moment Monday: Mois was there to answer those needs..."
Mois, thought Natsumi with derision. She pulled the soil to her with more vigor and chopped more harshly. Natsumi could see Mois sweet, blond face in the pile and she imagined the blade cutting into the fine features: chop-chop-chop-CHOP, PUSH.
"I love you, Natsumi, but if you won't give me what I need; what am I to do? I am Saburo: a man not a poetry machine..."
Natsumi yanked another clump seaweed to her and dragged in a clump of horse manure for good measure. She chopped harder and buried the hoe up to the blade as her imagining became Saburo's face and she gouged out his eyes. Doesn't he ever stop, or does he love the sound of his own voice that much? She cut the image's mouth, shattering hypothetical teeth, slicing potential muscle, cutting the jaw loose all the way to the phantom spine.
Unaware of her thoughts, Saburo continued to try to convince his definitely-now-ex-girlfriend to come back to him.
Outside, the sun was setting over the Dororo woodland and inside the last of the ruddy sunlight spilled through the slits of the bamboo blinds. The exercise equipment had been cleared from the gymnasium and the erubescent shadows decorated the bare wood floor. Tamama sat cross-legged on a velvet mat under the rays of a 100 nanometer ultraviolet light: his skin purifying under the radiation. He was repeating the same six words over and over in inverted Latin.
At the stroke of 1800 hours, he rose, donned a robe of absolute, zerokay black and extinguished the purple florescence. In a mortar and pestle The Dark Frog had ground myrrh, frankincense and sulfur and loaded the loathsome mixture into the pan of a thuribulum. Now, he parted his lips and puffed his cheeks as though he were inflating chewing gum wad. A marble-sized bubble of Impact energy formed and then separated, lazily floating downward into the bowl. The incense caught fire and then guttered when Tamama snapped the censer closed. He raised the vessel on its five golden chains and circled anti-sunwise about the room, walking a circle of protection in the gathering dusk. The shadows skittered away from the smoke, though perhaps they were merely blotted out by the occluding incense fog. He hung the thuribulum over the altar on which he had arranged four silver bowls.
The first bowl contained dried and fine powdered soil from Pokopen mixed with sand from Keron. Tamama rubbed his hands in the dust, lifted the bowl to his lips, spoke a variation of the Latin phrase and set the bowl to the right of the diamond inscribed on the altar. Next came the bowl that he had filled with distilled heavy water rich in deuterium, he drank from the vessel, spoke another variation of the Latin phrase and set the bowl at the corner opposite the soil. He exhaled a single tiny bubble of energy to the third bowl and the oil within lit. He spoke the Latin over the fire and put the bowl at the northern corner of the diamond. He lifted the final bowl, which was empty except for the air. Tamama raised it to his lips and exhaled yet another variation of the Latin phrase into the bowl. He set the bowl at the southernmost corner of the diamond.
Tamama stepped back, raised his hands to either side of his head, his palms turned forward to the altar. He repeated the Latin phrase in yet another variation:
"By my own will, I summon thee!"
Fuyuki was akimbo on the couch. He had changed from the gaudy neon camouflage into baseball shorts and a t-shirt. Momoka was astride his thighs. Her fingertips were brushing his cheek and neck and sliding through his hair or stroking his chest through the t-shirt. she would alternately wriggle against him and lean in to kiss him. She's getting really good at this, he thought, I've a snake in my shorts.
He was unbuttoning the first button on her blouse when the phone pealed an insistent alert.
He glanced over his shoulder at the door to the back yard. Natsumi was still out there, and Saburo was still lecturing her, as per usual. Does she ever get tired of hearing him talk? There are heckamore fun things to do with your special-other. The phone sang again and Natsumi didn't seem to hear it.
"I'd better get that," he said.
"Noooooo," Momoka moaned. She grasped him by his shoulder and pushed him down. "Leave it. They'll call back."
"It might be important." Fuyuki insisted restlessly. "Please?"
"Okay," sighed Momoka. "Hurry."
On the other side of the world, Giroro sans man-equin, listened intently to his mobile phone completing the International call. He was much less tired than he was the previous night, but the feeling was right there, still haunting him. These Pokopenian model-females are not for me. I want my Natsumi. I want to tell her I love her. I need her help. Perhaps she can come here for some weeks. I...
The other end of the line stopped ringing abruptly and an almost male, almost female Pokopenian voice cracked at the other end, "Hello. Hinata home."
Suddenly, Giroro didn't know what to say.
Fuyuki listened to the other end of the line. There was silence except for the hiss and crackle of an international connection. He checked the Caller ID, but the indicator reported "Unpublished International". He said again, more loudly and more slowly, "Hel-lo. Hin-at-a home. Can anyone hear me?"
There was a distant clearing of throat and then an even deeper voice inquired, "Fuyuki, is that you? Is Natsumi available?"
"Yes, this is Fuyuki. Who is this?"
The voice did not answer, but repeated, "Is Natsumi available?"
Giroro tried to be careless in his asking, but his voice held a tense edge as he repeated, "Is Natsumi available?"
Fuyuki's voice said "She's out back studying with Saburo. I think he's reading more of his poetry to her. I'll go get her. Who's calling?"
Giroro's hearts squeezed together at the mention of the Pokopenian boy. He could see them in his mind's eye just as if it were yesterday: Natsumi laughed at the boy's jokes, and Giroro's knees struck the ground, and his hand shredded the flowers he had carried and she had laughed and laughed and.... Giroro closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, bared his fangs and shook off the memory. Around his tightening throat, he croaked the first lie he could think, "I am a classmate. I shall see her at school."
Before Fuyuki could answer Giroro disconnected the call. He collapsed onto the king-sized bed and buried his face in the suit's hands. She is still with him and I am still alone. On the night table, right where Giroro had left them the night before, was the stack of business cards. Sir Jeff insists I need this sweetening for my arm? He took the first card from the stack, read the female's six syllable surname six times to be certain he was pronouncing it correctly, and dialed.
Koyuki perched on the ledge of the tenement rooftop ten stories above the street: her balance perfect and her eyes unafraid of the depths. She stood. Her arm encircled a sewage pressure relief pipe that jutted from the tar papered concrete. She swung out and looked into the late afternoon sun and then quickly away. On the roof nearby were the few items she'd salvaged from her school locker: a pencil case, her gym leotard, her book satchel now empty, a few binders with half their looseleaf discarded, a Casio calculator and her mobile phone. She swung out again: her long hair unbraided, cascaded and rippled like a flag in an errant salt breeze that blew from the harbor. She swung completely around the pole: her feet in open air until she landed on the ledge again. She hopped down onto the roof.
He was there, with his wakizashi carefully slung across his back, his mask worn tight over his snout, his blue skin darkened in the long shadows, his white skin gray in the dusk. She knelt to be on eye level with him, her school skirt tucked protectively under her thin knees. She looked into his marvelously wide navy eyes and he looked into the depths of her greens. She opened her mouth to speak and no words were spoken. He opened his mouth behind the mask and only breathy silence emerged.
They fell into each others arms in a tight and needy hug. His short arms slithered around her neck. Her arms wrapped around his thick body. His webbed frog hands kneaded her neck. Her palms caressed his back. Her shoulder cradled his head and her school shirt absorbed his enormous tears. Her own tears trailed down her cheek and down his slight shoulder.
"I'm sorry I have to go." she whispered finally. "I need a change," she added lamely.
"I'm sorry my mission has changed." he returned, "I have discovered something more important than this planet. Something which needs my protection even more."
She held him at arms' length and he grasped her elbows. They looked deeply inside:
I'll never forget you, my Blue Ninja brother.
Neither shall I forget you, my Snowflake.
And they parted without a further word, jutsu or otherwise.
Aki parked her motorcycle just behind the black limousine in front of her house. The hour was late, as usual. The interior lights were on, which was not unusual, but the exterior lights were lit, which was. She removed her helmet, shook out her flowing hair, and could then hear the spritzing of a watering spray and the falling of water drops against the clay of the backyard. She sniffed then inhaled deeply. She could smell the earthy smell of humus, seaweed and manure.
Natsumi is really taking to this gardening hobby. I wonder if Mother's garden tools are still in storage? Aki looked up to the sky, as though to see her recently dead mother drifting among the heavenly spheres. She released her breath, closed her eyes and then shook herself out of the ancestral fugue. She shouldered the denim business bag from the bike carrier. Inside was the red binder and a packet of other papers: copies of contracts and non-disclosure agreements signed by herself, projections and budgets outlined by the older investor, and an outline for 24 months of graphic novel penned by the writer. I'll read this over tonight, then tomorrow? Fish or cut bait? Say 'no' and stay in my rut or hand in my resignation?
She opened the front door quietly and as was her habit did not announce her entrance. The television was chattering the late nightly news: wars in the Middle East, sports scores, a rise in arrests of smugglers. She set down her bag and removed her shoes. Her house slippers were under the bench next to the phone by the side of the staircase, but she eschewed them and tiptoed barefoot down the corridor and then left turned the jog into the kitchen. A bowl of noodles and stir fried vegetables was in the open microwave waiting for her and it smelled Natsumi-delicious.
Aki peered towards the den. From the angle of his cowlick peeking out over the cushioned arm, Fuyuki was sprawled across the couch on his back and looking more towards the ceiling than the television. From his even breathing he seemed to be asleep. Aki took the bowl from the microwave, opting to take her noodles cold rather than wake her son. She switched off the television, unfurled the quilt from the seatback, and covered her son. He rolled on his side and curled around the cotton insulation. On impulse, she leaned down and kissed his forehead and was unsurprised as he sleepily batted at the spot as though his mother's lips were an annoying and now-departed mosquito. Aki switched off the lights.
Aki sat at the empty table and ate in the near darkness. The outside passive lights illumined Natsumi's first pass at landscaping the backyard. Natsumi had relocated several ornamental shrubs and flowers to the fence and the corners of the house and carefully replanted them and backfilled the holes their removal had created. The food garden seemed to be patterned in a two by three grid with triangular wings extending into the front and back yards. Most of the removed grass had been relocated to patch gravelly, dry, or denuded earth and what remained of the thatch had been carefully chopped and added to a mulch bin made of chicken wire by the fence. Natsumi had hoed, tilled, and turned the unyielding clay and improved both nutrients and aeration. Store-bought composted desalinated seaweed had supplemented the natural loam and had added 10 centimeters of good topsoil, which was homesteaded by newly hatched earthworms.
Aki finished her near silent consumption of the cold stir fry and added the empty bowl to the sink. She cat-padded passed the sleeping Fuyuki and back to the front hall, donned her house slippers, snagged her work bag from the floor, and trudged up the stairs. She thumbed off the switch. Natsumi's door was closed and there was no light visible underneath. He own door was open and a pile of fresh laundry was on the bed. Aki moved them to her closet shelves and bureau drawers. She looked back to the bed and the workbag and the red binder that had almost slid onto the mattress. I'll take a shower, relax and then read. Today has just been too much.
Aki stripped. She hung her leather biker's jacket on the post and her work blouse over the chair. Her bra followed. Her jeans and panties were last as a single lump. She rubbed at the imprints the mass produced seams had cut into her waist, shoulders and under her breasts. She squeezed the fleshy mounds and was relieved to discover that there were no lumps: cancerous or otherwise. She slid the silk kimono from the drying racks and draped it over her shoulders, but did not tie the sash.
She slid through the darkness to the bathroom. A quick twist of the faucet handles and the water flowed into the showerhead and sprayed across the top: cold at first, but eventually hot enough to steam. She hung the kimono on the matching rack and stepped behind the curtain and gradually moved forward until her naked body was fully in the spray. she unfastened her hair and let it spill down her back.
I wonder if Kururu is up? Aki giggled. She tapped at the less than obvious camera lens hidden in the center of the showerhead and waved. I'd kill a man if he watched me shower, but there's something really hot about a frog? Oh, stop Aki, old girl, you just like showing off. Despite chiding herself, she made a show of soaping her back and buttocks and sluicing the suds off in the spray.
Kururu and Hanene had finally dragged themselves into their cabana, exhausted from the week: learning to surf, games of Volleyball, the food fight--they were ready for some stationary relaxation before they turned in for the night. Hanene plopped herself onto the bed, reclined against a pillow twice her size, and nabbed the remote control as though her life depended on control of the video entertainment.
Meanwhile, Kururu picked up his portable game system from the floor where it had fallen that morning. He rummaged in his survival pack and extracted a custom cartridge, which he slotted. He slid onto a stool by the small bar-top table at the kitchenette, tapped a few entries and linked to the nearby hotel's WiFi. His e-mail was empty, but a small alert showed live video in progress from the Hinata household. He clicked over, even though at this bandwidth and compression, the image would be grainy. Aki was showering: her dynamite body faced towards the camera and he had a full view of her ample cleavage and pert nipples and flat belly. She reached up and tapped at the camera lens and waved hello. Kururu almost waved back, but he stopped himself. Hanene was right over there, watching the international news and seemingly not even aware of him, but here he was playing voyeur with Pokopenian females? What does that say about me? he wondered.
Unconsciously his mind wandered back to the food fight. He hadn't been able to ask about the altercation since it happened, nor about the aftermath? I can build destructive mechas, make life-threatening viruses, and create new planets, yet I cannot figure out women! Suddenly itching with the need to know, he set his pocket console down, hopped lightly to the floor, and used the momentum to jump onto the bed, summarily blocking Hanene's view of CNN.
She blinked up at his hunchbacked form. "What is it, sweet cheeks?" she inquired.
"Why?" he blurted, unable to contain his curiosity. "Why did you avoid me earlier?"
Hanene closed her eyes and nodded, knowing that he would ask that question, and turned off the television that was still rambling news. "Well sweetie, you know that I am both a bitch and a tease. I can't help myself. It's just who I am." She held up her hands to show the helplessness of her personality. "But I also am used to being in a position of control. So when the tables were turned on me today, and suddenly you were the aggressor, instead of me? I was terrified of the sudden strength of my feelings for you. I knew that if I let you do what you wanted to do at that moment, I would have had you screaming my name in no time flat. But I am still a lady, and I want you willing."
Kururu blinked hard behind his glasses, and he flopped unceremoniously on his rump.
"I apologize if I hurt you in any way. Sometimes, you are just too damned handsome for your own good."
She flashed him a wink, then rose and padded to the bathroom. Kururu sat there for several minutes as he digested what she said. His curiosity finally satisfied, but leaving another, more foreign feeling in its wake, the exhaustion finally crept upon him, and he burrowed under the covers of the bed. Hanene returned to see Kururu in bed, and immediately crawled in with the yellow frog.
This time, as Hanene cuddled close to him, Kururu merely shifted to accommodate her and fell asleep.
----
Tamama had been chanting for hours. He had drawn symbols upon the diamond on the altar. He had drawn symbols at the compass points of the circle. His voice had risen from whisper to now a shout as he bellowed, 'Come forth, I command you!" and invoked the horrible name.
Tamama hauled back: breathing hard, eyes bloodshot, jaws open full and broad. "I Command You!" he shouted, "Im-Pact!!!" And a gout of energy passed his throat, amplified on his implant, and burst forth into the center of the pentagram. A hiss, staccato and segmented like a chuckle, permeated the room. The sphere of energy, caught and wavering in the center of the seal, spiraled and expanded and eventually dissipated around a slowly solidifying form. The demon, a spindly amalgam of a creature, only hissed its amusement more as it saw Tamama's shocked expression.
"Oh, what ever is the matter, little tadpole?" Its jaw dropped in a wicked grin, displaying a jagged array of needle teeth. "Surprised?"
Immediately Tamama regained his composure and stood straight and commanding. "No! You are bound and sealed, demon. You will obey me!"
The creature in return grinned wider, a forked tongue flicking dangerously between his fangs. "I'm afraid not." The hiss deepened, grew in power, "You're far to young to be meddling with that which you cannot control!" With a roar and coiling of sinewy muscle, the demon lunged, jaws aimed for the Keronian's throat. However, even as the attack began, the demon was jerked back by the power of the binding. Sparks arced along its body, tracing the bony limbs, the delicate membrane stretching from its arms to its torso, making the creature scream with pain and the rage of denial. Within seconds it ceased its attempts and settled, vulture-like neck retracting backwards, secondary hands folding almost contemplatively across its front. The amused hissing and sardonic grin returned as if nothing had happened, now accompanied by a glitter of cunning and subtle malice in the being's eyes. "I do believe I stand corrected."
Tamama shook very slightly, adrenaline racing through his system. He was confident in the bindings for he'd followed every instruction, to the spirit if not the letter, but the demon's attack happened so quickly that he was unable to follow. If the demon somehow escaped... NO. Tamama insisted to himself, I can't fear, can't back down. The words of the text echoed across his memory, a heavy and portent warning: ' The greatest downfall of an apprentice is to show weakness, to doubt. If ever once you waver in your conviction, the entity you summoned will be able to strike, and you shall wish you had never been brought into existence.' With a vigorous shake of his head, he cast doubt aside, and again assumed the role of a powerful and confident evoker. "Serpent, you have been summoned here for a reason. You will obey and grant my wi--"
"Yes, yes, of course. There is always a reason, always a desire, and it is my duty to provide." The creature's vaguely amphibian, vaguely serpent head swayed lazily, predatorily, back and forth; mirrored and opposed by its blunt, eel-like tail. "I am the granter of wishes, the master of temptation. I am the Serpent of Eden, who enticed the Pokopenian Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit, which contained knowledge both of good," the demon dropped its jaw and hissed softly, enticingly, "and of evil. It was I who brought about the downfall of Pokopenian David, who fell prey to the wiles of Bathsheba. You are wanting and I can give you what you wish."
Tamama felt a flickering, a light presence across the surface of his mind, which was gone more quickly than razors cutting through flesh. The demon bound before him seemed both bemused at Tamama and satisfied at the knowledge it had imparted and received. "Aaaah, power." It husked, "A simple desire, yet one many have. It was I who blessed your race with the Impact by which you summoned me." The demon's eyes glittered as he watched Tamama stare amazed at his hand. "I gave power to Morara the Brave, who formed the first Keronian Collective. I granted the P'raa of Regulus Six the strength to rule for a million years."
The young Keronian-turned-ritualist attempted to recall the names. They were familiar, and great, almost legendary historical figures known throughout the galaxies, but his mind was slow and hazy, and he could no longer recall exactly what happened to them. The Serpent's smooth as oil voice cut across his thoughts. "I can give you all this and more . Let me show you what you can become..."
The touch on his mind again and suddenly, Tamama's head was filled with visions: images not his own. Fleets of ships bearing his sigil scattering into space. Enemies screaming, fleeing in terror. Cities burning, destroyed and replaced by the might of the Keron Empire. Armies of thousands upon thousands, loyal and battle-ready, all awaiting the command of Grand General Tamama. The Keronian, entranced in the vision, stepped forward towards the edge of his protective circle. The demon hissed in anticipation, neck stretching out, tongue flicking out as if to taste the prey approaching.
The creature's voice entered Tamama's mind. Those who once looked down on you will be powerless against your might. An image of Mois, degraded, desiring and begging him for forgiveness. Giroro, minuscule in the great shadow Tamama cast, staring up with hatred in his eyes and venom on his lips. Dororo, twisted, bladed, destroying all that he used to protect, and beheading himself in despair. You will be the greatest, and none will question your authority. Kururu, emaciated, relying completely upon his machines to survive, unable to move on his own. And lastly Keroro, staring at his reflection, everything but his face withering, being absorbed and consumed by the mirror. You will have power, and they will regret ever underestimating you. You will be. Completely...
"Unstoppable." hissed the demon.
Startled, Tamama looked up. The demon was there, sinister, grinning, and before Tamama could blink a set of jaws slammed into the barrier a mere centimeter from his face. The Keronian stumbled back, tripped over his own feet, and fell back into the center of the circle. The jaws, set at the end of the demon's flat, sinuous tail, slowly retreated and all but vanished from sight, so they merely resembled the blunt end of a tail again. The demon, if possible, grinned more widely, hissing slightly in amusement.
"You are already strong. And wise. You have no need to fear falling prey to the power I shall bestow upon you." The Serpent's tongue flicked between its teeth once again and its eyes glittered darkly, piercing and hypnotizing. "I am certain that you will be able to control it."
Tamama was numb, still in shock, his mind fuzzy and unfocused and entranced. Through the haze in his mind, he managed only to register how good the offer sounded. Slowly, as if half-asleep, he nodded assent.
The demon's sibilant chuckle filled the room with a subtle sense of victory and self-satisfaction. It hissed, its eyes glinting, "Of course, I expect something valuable in return..."
Copyright ©2008 by the Chumducky, Origamigryphon and Lupus Draconis
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