Nishifune Nozomi is a cursed witch in a Tokyo not quite like our own, trying to survive love, politics, crime and the minions of the outer dark.
The Troubled Schooldays of Nishifune Nozomi
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Chapter 1-1: Schools and Libraries
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I've almost broken into the library when the girl with the goggles drops on me.
She's shorter than me, but then I chose to be tall for a girl. Her gear looks like it's high-tech rather than mystic; a form-fitting suit in dark, migraine pattern digital camouflage, equipment webbing; and the goggles. I'm into those goggles. A whole array of lenses, eight of them, a pattern of fourth-generation night vision, and another optic I don't recognize, possibly thermal. You can't buy goggles like that, I've tried.
It's a stylish and practical outfit, and I admire it a little as we come together in a rapid exchange of blows. Even so, I prefer my white hoodie, black skirt, shorts and thigh highs with red stitching, a long coat, and red-accented black fox mask. She's got a somewhat easier time sneaking about but I can disappear into a crowd. At least mostly.
She's quick, impossible quick. She's not as strong as I am but the initial drop strike knocks me down and forces me into a frantic spin kick up, which drives her back just long enough for me to regain her feet. She's poised to come right back in after, short jabs transitioning suddenly into longer punches and kicks as she measures me.
I'm assuming she's here for the same reason I am. Thieves don't like to share.
"You're pretty good." She drives me back with a jab, then jumps back as I snap up a kick, just avoiding its arc.
"I know." I look at her, head on one side. "You too. Am I telegraphing? You're reading my moves or something."
"Just a talent I have."
She comes in again, a rapid series of elbow and knee strikes, a sudden transition to punches and longer kicks as I try to step back out of it. I'm glad of the armour spell I put on myself, and the more mundane concealed layer in the jacket as I ride several punches.
She's seeing the future.
I don't have time to check, as it would require I cover my eye in a symbolic sacrifice for wisdom, but I'm almost certain she's not a mage.
Looks like I'm fighting my first Esper.
The building isn't really where you'd think you'd find a library of dark and eldritch power. I got a tip that this was stored up here from one of my contacts, and decided to check it out. It's the top story of one of those white mid-rises in Shibuya, above a real estate agent and three levels of paper records for an antiquarian book company which, given they also own the top floor, needs serious investigation. After I'm done ripping them off I'll probably inform the proper authorities.
I'd just got into the main library, and found the floor covered with record binders and strewn papers and one safe open. That's when Goggle Girl dropped on me. The infiltration was pretty easy up to this point, but now I'm in the fight of my life.
I speak a word of power and emit an omni-directional wave of force. She was already dodging back, but her sight didn't give her enough time to get away, and she gets knocked sprawling, then flips head over heels and lands on her feet across from me.
"A mage, huh?" She smiles. "Not security I'll bet. You're here to steal the book."
She's not supposed to know about that. Someone has been talking out of school. "I don't know who you are, but the black books can only bring you sorrow."
"Well I mean, I'm not going to keep it." She waves a package, then seems to blink. "Wait, books?" She dodges behind the shelves as I launch a shadow bolt at her. I go over the top, throwing out a pair of sparrow knives, only for her to catch them in a heavy volume of records, and then kick the bookshelf over. I drop backward away from the fall, only for her to erupt through it, one of my own sparrow blades seeking for my throat. A quick yank on its runes spins the blade away and try I a kick, but she ducks past it, carrying me over into a hold she abords halfway through to flip away before I can set her on fire.
"You're persistent. Don't you think you've got bigger things to worry about?"
My phone, connected to the building security system on the way in begins to buzz. A silent alarm has been triggered.
"Bye-bye." She runs and jumps through a window, taking advantage of my momentary distraction. I launch another bolt of force at her but it misses her fleeing form and blows a divot out of the wall next to me. I get there just in time to see her swinging away on a line, impossibly graceful. I turn back to my work. Things have now officially gone wrong.
The alarm brings no immediate response. No shadows coalescing into fearful eyeless hounds or hidden coffins opening to release undying things. I have at least some time to work.
I wonder where goggle girl got her information from. She obviously knew exactly which safe she wanted, but apparently not about the other black book. I'd say an insider, but people who have libraries like this tend to have ways to ensure the loyalty of their troops.
An inspection of the safe shows warding symbols which implies the previous presence of a black book. My information says there are two volumes here, so one is up for grabs, plus whatever is in the other safes. I pull the safecrackers out of my webbing and set them down on the shelf. They're spidery electromechanicals, eight legs with various tools. Each one clicks through a functions check, then begins to move to one of the safes.
The remaining books should make coming here more than worth it.
My phone buzzes again and I check it, bring up video from my drone. A security response is arriving, and not the one I expected.
When you break into the library of a group linked to eldritch horrors like those found in the pages of the black books, you kind of assume they'll come at you a certain way. Vaguely octopoid horrors, shadowy creatures, long-range death curses. I've got a full suite of stuff meant to deal with just that, but this is a surprise. The men pouring out of the pair of mismatched utility vans below belong to some other place, some other city.
There are twenty of them, all big and bulky, clad in a variety of civilian clothes that almost but not quite makes them look like civilians. Kevlar helmets, balaclavas, night vision, plate carriers and body armour with military webbing over it. Moving tactically forward behind those ubiquitous American rifles. All the same gun. Same gear too.
Japan has, on average, about six gun deaths a year, and hasn't been much of a target for foreign terrorists, so Tokyo doesn't have a system like London, where the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorist Unit can appear a score of grey-clad men with brand new Swiss carbines on some poor false alarm. I lived in London for a while. It's a funny place.
And these aren't police. I know what the Tokyo Metropolitan Police emergency response team and the national level special assault team look like, and even if they were to go around in civilian clothes, their gear isn't this new, and they carry submachine guns, not rifles. They're not the TMP's shiny new anti-Esper unit either, who carry a lot more ordinance, gas grenade launchers and .50 cal rifles with fancy high tech scopes.
This is interesting.
No way to run. The building has a fire escape but they've got it locked down, and the countermeasures in here prevent teleporting out of the building even if I was willing to leave my prize behind.
I'll fight.
The men clear rapidly, two floors at a time, four men per room, with the spares covering up and down. By the time I've got organized, they've reached the third floor, coming off, pointman aiming his gun up into the gloom above.
He sees a dark shape coming down on him.
"Contact!"
The gunfire is loud and brassy in the confined space. Rounds rip into my coat as it drops on them. The man covering the left door glances up at the noise. In the confined space, even a suppressed round is loud. Others see me burst through the door on the right, and turn that way, shooting. Another illusion, a mirror image. In fact, I'm through the right, the light bent around me to reduce me to near invisibility as I slam a knee into a man's face. He gasps, knocked backwards into the stair rail, and I ride him over it, down onto the steps below. Gunfire erupts to my side and I felt at least one bullet slam into my armour but not pierce the layer of magical reinforcement.
We land badly, but with me on top, and him still moving. Above I can hear shouting. Men on the stairs swing around to aim at me.
I speak a word of activation. The runes I left on the walls of the third-floor offices blow out. The overpressure brings down dust and shatters the windows. The man aiming at me vanishes in a spray of dust and fire.
I roll off the one I'm on top of. I wanted one for interrogation. The guys up there probably aren't all dead, but they're not going to be talking. That ambush was maybe a little risky just to get a prisoner but as I said I'm curious.
My captive moves weakly; he's wearing jeans, a dress shirt, and suit jacket. Something about the subtle mismatch puts me on edge. Tactical gear over civilian clothes is common enough but why that outfit? I pull the rifle away from him and cut his webbing away, pulling his weapons away as I step back. Just in time, as the mask tears and writhes. A mass of white tentacles explodes out at me. I fall over and then turn it into a side roll, coming back to my feet as the body jerks up on invisible strings, an impossible mass of worming white pouring free of his dislocated mouth.
I punch them as hard as I can. My movement, long-practiced, is just so, completing the circuit which will flow magical force from air and down my arm. The horror goes flying, smashes into the wall, and sets fire.
I breathe hard under my mask, and almost snatch it off before thinking better of it. I've seen creatures like this before, and I'm suddenly far more afraid. Not of them but of what they work for.
I pull out my phone, a little shakily, and turn off the building's sprinklers, then begin to chant up fire. Flame erupts above me, catching on carpets and internal fittings. Air is pulled up, sucking at my skirt. My coat reforms on my arm, none the worse for wear. There's the popcorn sound of bullets cooking off as the weapons on the floor above heat up. I wince as a round spans off the stairs near me.
On my phone, the safecrackers report the safes are open. Fire is between me and them, but the anti-teleport mesh is only in the outer walls of the building, not the middle.
I still have to get what I came for and neutralize the ones on the outside of the building, but it's long past time I was gone from here.
Do well in school. Do cram school too. Go to a top university. Enjoy the springtime of your youth. Get a job, work all day in a career you hate. Marry a good man, or one who's just okay, or one you hate. Drink yourself to death. Get a part-time job, don't raise a family. Get a full-time career and kill yourself from overwork. Have ungrateful children. Rush in every morning. Fight off the advances of your boss. Get bullied by your coworkers. Come home late every night. Work away your best years for honour, for your family, for the company, for the shareholders, for nothing at all.
That's not for me.
My name's Nishifune Nozomi and I'm a thief and a witch. I stole someone's place in a top school by cheating on the tests, and I'll do the same thing for one of the nation's finest universities. Not because I want an education, or a job, or a tall, rich husband who understands me. No. I want power. The University of Tokyo is home to one of the greatest collections of mystic esoterica surviving in Japan, and I want access to it. That achieve no less a stepping stone to my desire than the evil arcana I stole last night.
I never had any desire to go here, to a school. I was just going to mark time here. To do the minimum I needed to make my passing hours. To deceive people into thinking I was brilliant while missing all the tiresome stepped on minutiae of academia. To just walk along through my school life without anyone noticing me.
How did I end up liking it here? How did I end up enjoying this as much as I enjoy winning? Is it really normal life that calls to me?
As if this is normal life either.
Fujisaka Jogakuin is an all-girls private high school on the western outskirts of Tokyo, where the city starts to merge with the mountains. It's actually quite high up, with a really nice view. Its buildings are deliberately old-looking and somewhat careworn, but lovingly restored by various grants. It's a school that seems like it should be boarding, but is just faking the aesthetic to pull in the daughters of the upper-middle-class professionals and lower rich who are its main clients. It has a good academic record and good relations with Tokyo University.
It's an artificial place. A postmodern Maria-sama ga Miteru reference without the religion for the credulous new rich. Elements stolen from British education, stuff that owes more to Kyoto or Osaka than the Kanto region.
So why do I kind of enjoy coming here?
Well, it has uniforms I like. A deliberately retro black Serafuku with a white collar and a blue scarf. If I'm honest with myself, that's why I'm here. There's an option to add black thigh highs, and I use it. There are plenty of girls' schools with good grades and good locations, but I have a look and I want to maintain it even at school.
Also it's haunted, but I'm not really involved with that.
To be honest there are things here I could do without. Like having to attend while aching where my armour took bullets last night, or my tiresome position in school politics. But I can deal. It's not so bad.
There are two hundred and ten days left of my sakura-coloured school life.
Given I'm dying, maybe I shouldn't wish them away.
Time to go home. The lunch period was mostly filled with signup for non-sports clubs. I'm too hurt to feel sociable today, and I have another engagement this evening which I'm kind of dreading. I can at least, go home and--
"Gokigenyou Nozomin-chan!"
There is a certain type of girl at this school who gives me a lot of attention. Not the most popular people at school, but I have a kind of crossover appeal to both the nerds and the athletes. Stuck up on top of a mountain without even any male teachers, of course I get a lot of attention. They're a clowder of starving cats. I'm tall and athletic with test scores regularly in the top ten percent, mysterious, standoffish, beautiful, with white hair that is unusual in a sea of black. I'm an albino, did I mention?
I think the lack of male teachers is because of the haunting.
The first speaker, able to get in first because she sits closest to me is Manako. She's one of the weirdest girls in the school. Knows all the legends of the local area, urban or otherwise. I think she's the one most into my witchy self. She's shorter than me, and kind of plain in a way that I really go for, wears big thick glasses that make her seem less capable. She's actually pretty athletic, went to the nationals in second-year track, but you can't see it past the glasses.
"Manako-chan, how was your spring break, you were going to Hawaii weren't you?"
She beams at me, pleased I remembered. "Yes. It was nice, but hot. We went shooting. How about you?"
"I went to London." I rise, getting my bag. "I'll show you some pictures later, though I'm afraid I can't stay too long tonight."
Manako is basically my best friend. I've known her since middle school. She told me her family put her up to it, after they heard I was a rich orphan with no friends.
"Did you see Buckingham Palace?"
"Yes. Also lots of protests." I head for the door with Manako trailing. A bunch of the other girls are studiously ignoring this spectacle or giving Manako looks about how loud she's being.
"I'm jealous. I'd like to see London. I hear there's all kinds of--"
"Gokigenyou Nozomin-san." At the door, I'm ambushed by several members of the visual arts appreciation society, of which I am a distant pseudo member in that I'm their friend and main financier. We do cosplay together and I sometimes go to meetings when I don't have sports.
"Ah, Fumi-chan." Their spokeswoman is a slim, short-haired girl named Nakata Fumi who has ambitions to be a voice actress. "Did you get your interview?" I gently fend off Manako, who's started simmering, as I turn my best smile on this new block.
"Ah." She blushes. "Ah. Yes. It was only a very minor role though." She brushes her hair back self consciously, aware that such a gig is not so minor a thing for a wannabe voice actress. "Will you be attending our evening sessions this year?"
"I'm afraid with exam prep and volleyball I probably can't, but I'm sure I can drop in some lunchtimes or if I'm ever have an evening free. Figure out what blu-rays you want this year, I can still finance them. Also, we should meet and discuss our outfits for the summer."
"Yes! Thank you!"
We get through the door, Manako talking about gun safety and the limits of Hawaiian shooting ranges. Almost free.
"Hey! Nozomi-chan."
Akagi Akari is the only girl at Fujisaka Gakuin as tall as I am, a fit, slim, muscular girl who seems to be all legs. Akari is the captain of the volleyball team, to which she forcibly recruited me. Last year we went to the final, this year she hopes for more. "Hey Akari, what's up?"
"Hey, come to signup in your kit tomorrow. I want to have something impressive happen during signup, so we're going to play two vs. two."
"You don't think the pair of us might scare of the small fry?"
"If they're scared I don't want them."
"Sure sure." I wave to her in passing. "I'll see you at practice."
"Alright. How about tonight? An extra game?"
"Sorry, I have a prior engagement."
"Alright." She sighs. "Hey, help me study as well right? If I'm going to do university volleyball I need to actually get into university."
"Sure."
There are three secrets to my academic success. The first is that I only need to sleep more than one night in five. The second is potions that allow me to boost my memory and recall of information. The third is rampant magic-enabled cheating, I'm a thief, I told you. I don't actually go to cram school, I'm just blackmailing a gambling addict teacher to tick me as having attended. Occasionally I show up, but it's not a thing I really do, just an appearance. I have other things to do in the evening.
I head up to the third floor. I'll cut back down the stairs at the other end of the building and leave by the other door, that should avoid most everyone. The top floor is mostly club rooms, so it's not used that much when things aren't setting up till tomorrow.
The only person up here should be-- "Hoshi-san, are you hiding?"
Hoshi Rei, president of the student council is a very serious, very squared away girl with stylish glasses. She's a mass of perfect test scores, and a secret. Right now she's covertly glancing out through the blinds in a way that seems kind of comical from the inside. "Ah, Nozomi-san." She steps back from the window, radiating a burning aura of awkwardness that almost sets the room on fire. "Gokigenyou."
"What's up?" I step inside, walk to the window and look out. From this height you can see the outer waiting area. Among the shiny new cars and parent people carriers I note a figure at the back, a girl on a motorcycle. "Friend of yours?" I give her a suggestive look.
"Ah, yes. She's not supposed to come here and now my parents messaged me to say that they're picking me up. I need to find a way to get her to leave and pick me up later! She doesn't know my parents car well so she might wave at me or something and then I'll have to answer questions. I've texted her three times but she's not picking up her cell!"
I pat her shoulder. "No problem. I'll take care of it."
She slumps into her chair, melting with relief.
I head down the back stairs, change my shoes and out, walking towards my car on a trajectory that takes me past her. On the way I wave to the cute Underclassman who has to handle the ghosts. Smooth as could be. It looks perfectly natural as I walk past motorcycle girl. As if I am there purely by accident.
"Her parents are here. Get her later." I whisper. The girl, who has short, dyed blonde hair and with a cigarette in her mouth nods.
"Thanks. Fancy a lift?"
I consider it. If anyone asks, I can tell them it's my cousin, and it'd provide a tradecraft way to get her out of here.
"Sure." I hope Rei-san isn't too jealous. I hop on the back and put the spare helmet on.
I do kind of like it here.
Every month, the collected Wizards of Tokyo hold a party, for that I'll need a dress.
After my activities last night, I also have another reason to visit my tailor.
J-to-Me is a small but fashionable shop in Ginza. It mostly caters to men. Male suits and so on, but the owner is an old, well, let's say friend of mine, who will tailor me jackets and dresses.
Honestly I think it's mostly because he hopes to redefine my aesthetic for me.
He smiles at me coolly when I step in through the back door, and see Junya in the workshop, pinning a suit together on a dummy. "Nozomi-chan."
Junya is five years older than me long-haired with glasses and a ponytail. He wears a suit, coal-black. Usually, a suit is a coffin for the male physique, meant to disguise the imperfections of a man. Not so Junya. His is so sharp you could cut yourself, rigorously tight across his frame, showing off a body at the peak of fitness, and the cold expression of a sadist.
Junya is another of the strays the house Aratani took in like my own family. Their fate was happier than mine, death only, not betrayal. Junya was away at the time, learning tailoring and magic in Italy to keep him away from the other side of his family, a powerful and extremely corrupt house of exorcists and priests.
He is both handsome and beautiful. And oh he's cruel.
"Junya-kun. I'm here for my dress for the party tonight."
"Of course. If you'll follow me? I believe I have something that will fit."
He leads me into the back, and waves me into a changing room. "Let me measure you, see that you haven't grown any larger." I allow this, the tape snapping around with quick, whip-like motions, snapping across me.
I bite my lip a little.
"You really went to the trouble of compensating for the curse's impact on your health, and then overcompensating." The tape snaps across, lifting me up slightly on my toes, then away. "What a showoff you've grown to be." The tapes movements start to remind me of the demonic wire he uses as his primary weapon.
I run a finger down the front of his suit. The cloth is a little rough under my fingers, and I can feel his breath and hard muscles under it "You would know all about that."
His smile shows teeth and he snaps his fingers. My outfit begins to unravel, the dress spinning up around me as it goes, replacing the other. With a lazy motion, he covers his eyes.
The dress he's made for me an elaborate floor length affair the colour of fresh blood. All silk. It covers most of me, but still lets me move enough to fight. Most of is a simple waterfall of silk, but elaborate stitching and embroidery decorates the collar and shoulders makes it hug my figure.
"Main colour red?" I raise an eyebrow. He's pushing the boundaries of my aesthetics here.
"A young lady must learn and grow." He smirks. "Though perhaps you shouldn't grow anymore."
"I had an interesting encounter last night."
"Oh? That little affair in Shibuya?"
"It's that big a news?"
"Guns, books and cosmic horrors. If those three things come together it's a fair bet you're involved." His fingers move up my spine, testing stitching and dress integrity. "Don't worry, our secrets are still mutually kept."
Most people don't know that besides being a tailor, Junya is a cleaner, a man who works for both the police and organized crime dealing with problems, usually supernatural, that are too much for them to handle. I've helped him out on some cases before. Supplied him information on others.
We know we can rely on one another.
"I met someone interesting there. An Esper. Female, about my age, perhaps younger. Wore quite excessive goggles and could see the future."
It all started about five years ago. Young people gaining strange powers, seemingly superhuman gifts that redefined everything we knew about physics. The powers we imagined psychics might have, teleportation, pyrokinesis, telekinesis, stranger powers.
The sudden existence of physics-defying superpowers was a surprise to everyone. Especially those of us who were members of much longer term physics-defying conspiracies of superhuman power like exorcists, vampires, mages and other monsters.
We were doubly surprised when they figured out how to induce them, even if it only works for some people. Of course, the induced ones aren't the problem. It's the ones who appear from massive stress. Especially in war zones or prison facilities. These five years have not been kind for the Middle East, China or America. Of course, places like Japan and South Korea gets a fair few stress Espers, but if you develop superpowers due to cram school you're less likely to want to overthrow the government than due to being randomly detained by police.
"I'm surprised your own information sources do not have something on such a person. Is the famous fox mask falling down on the job?"
I sniff. "She gets her information like anyone else. By asking people who might know."
"Well, in this case you're in luck. I do know of the Esper you're talking about, though not her name. She's been responsible for a string of robberies, corporate espionage. She put a couple of police officers in hospital a few weeks ago."
"But no known organizational allegiance?"
"Probably simply to money."
He makes final adjustments to the dress and pulls up the mirror, showing me the elaborate red of it, a black ribbon at my collar. A perfect witch. I imagine black lipstick and like the thought very much. "What exactly did you get from that facility? Rare arcana, but what?"
Here's a secret I'm not ready to share. "Ah, nothing of any great interest in turned out. My new friend got away with the real prize."
He chuckles, leans forward. "I almost believe that. You should practice before you have to tell it to Aratani."
I turn and bat my eyes at him. "Perhaps you could come to the party with me. Watch and see if I mess up or not."
"I'm not one for parties." His fingers touch my lip. "If you wish to stay here though..."
"Ah haha! No." I say quickly. "Thank you, but no. I must attend."
And avoid something that'll only hurt you when I die.
She's shorter than me, but then I chose to be tall for a girl. Her gear looks like it's high-tech rather than mystic; a form-fitting suit in dark, migraine pattern digital camouflage, equipment webbing; and the goggles. I'm into those goggles. A whole array of lenses, eight of them, a pattern of fourth-generation night vision, and another optic I don't recognize, possibly thermal. You can't buy goggles like that, I've tried.
It's a stylish and practical outfit, and I admire it a little as we come together in a rapid exchange of blows. Even so, I prefer my white hoodie, black skirt, shorts and thigh highs with red stitching, a long coat, and red-accented black fox mask. She's got a somewhat easier time sneaking about but I can disappear into a crowd. At least mostly.
She's quick, impossible quick. She's not as strong as I am but the initial drop strike knocks me down and forces me into a frantic spin kick up, which drives her back just long enough for me to regain her feet. She's poised to come right back in after, short jabs transitioning suddenly into longer punches and kicks as she measures me.
I'm assuming she's here for the same reason I am. Thieves don't like to share.
"You're pretty good." She drives me back with a jab, then jumps back as I snap up a kick, just avoiding its arc.
"I know." I look at her, head on one side. "You too. Am I telegraphing? You're reading my moves or something."
"Just a talent I have."
She comes in again, a rapid series of elbow and knee strikes, a sudden transition to punches and longer kicks as I try to step back out of it. I'm glad of the armour spell I put on myself, and the more mundane concealed layer in the jacket as I ride several punches.
She's seeing the future.
I don't have time to check, as it would require I cover my eye in a symbolic sacrifice for wisdom, but I'm almost certain she's not a mage.
Looks like I'm fighting my first Esper.
The building isn't really where you'd think you'd find a library of dark and eldritch power. I got a tip that this was stored up here from one of my contacts, and decided to check it out. It's the top story of one of those white mid-rises in Shibuya, above a real estate agent and three levels of paper records for an antiquarian book company which, given they also own the top floor, needs serious investigation. After I'm done ripping them off I'll probably inform the proper authorities.
I'd just got into the main library, and found the floor covered with record binders and strewn papers and one safe open. That's when Goggle Girl dropped on me. The infiltration was pretty easy up to this point, but now I'm in the fight of my life.
I speak a word of power and emit an omni-directional wave of force. She was already dodging back, but her sight didn't give her enough time to get away, and she gets knocked sprawling, then flips head over heels and lands on her feet across from me.
"A mage, huh?" She smiles. "Not security I'll bet. You're here to steal the book."
She's not supposed to know about that. Someone has been talking out of school. "I don't know who you are, but the black books can only bring you sorrow."
"Well I mean, I'm not going to keep it." She waves a package, then seems to blink. "Wait, books?" She dodges behind the shelves as I launch a shadow bolt at her. I go over the top, throwing out a pair of sparrow knives, only for her to catch them in a heavy volume of records, and then kick the bookshelf over. I drop backward away from the fall, only for her to erupt through it, one of my own sparrow blades seeking for my throat. A quick yank on its runes spins the blade away and try I a kick, but she ducks past it, carrying me over into a hold she abords halfway through to flip away before I can set her on fire.
"You're persistent. Don't you think you've got bigger things to worry about?"
My phone, connected to the building security system on the way in begins to buzz. A silent alarm has been triggered.
"Bye-bye." She runs and jumps through a window, taking advantage of my momentary distraction. I launch another bolt of force at her but it misses her fleeing form and blows a divot out of the wall next to me. I get there just in time to see her swinging away on a line, impossibly graceful. I turn back to my work. Things have now officially gone wrong.
The alarm brings no immediate response. No shadows coalescing into fearful eyeless hounds or hidden coffins opening to release undying things. I have at least some time to work.
I wonder where goggle girl got her information from. She obviously knew exactly which safe she wanted, but apparently not about the other black book. I'd say an insider, but people who have libraries like this tend to have ways to ensure the loyalty of their troops.
An inspection of the safe shows warding symbols which implies the previous presence of a black book. My information says there are two volumes here, so one is up for grabs, plus whatever is in the other safes. I pull the safecrackers out of my webbing and set them down on the shelf. They're spidery electromechanicals, eight legs with various tools. Each one clicks through a functions check, then begins to move to one of the safes.
The remaining books should make coming here more than worth it.
My phone buzzes again and I check it, bring up video from my drone. A security response is arriving, and not the one I expected.
When you break into the library of a group linked to eldritch horrors like those found in the pages of the black books, you kind of assume they'll come at you a certain way. Vaguely octopoid horrors, shadowy creatures, long-range death curses. I've got a full suite of stuff meant to deal with just that, but this is a surprise. The men pouring out of the pair of mismatched utility vans below belong to some other place, some other city.
There are twenty of them, all big and bulky, clad in a variety of civilian clothes that almost but not quite makes them look like civilians. Kevlar helmets, balaclavas, night vision, plate carriers and body armour with military webbing over it. Moving tactically forward behind those ubiquitous American rifles. All the same gun. Same gear too.
Japan has, on average, about six gun deaths a year, and hasn't been much of a target for foreign terrorists, so Tokyo doesn't have a system like London, where the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorist Unit can appear a score of grey-clad men with brand new Swiss carbines on some poor false alarm. I lived in London for a while. It's a funny place.
And these aren't police. I know what the Tokyo Metropolitan Police emergency response team and the national level special assault team look like, and even if they were to go around in civilian clothes, their gear isn't this new, and they carry submachine guns, not rifles. They're not the TMP's shiny new anti-Esper unit either, who carry a lot more ordinance, gas grenade launchers and .50 cal rifles with fancy high tech scopes.
This is interesting.
No way to run. The building has a fire escape but they've got it locked down, and the countermeasures in here prevent teleporting out of the building even if I was willing to leave my prize behind.
I'll fight.
The men clear rapidly, two floors at a time, four men per room, with the spares covering up and down. By the time I've got organized, they've reached the third floor, coming off, pointman aiming his gun up into the gloom above.
He sees a dark shape coming down on him.
"Contact!"
The gunfire is loud and brassy in the confined space. Rounds rip into my coat as it drops on them. The man covering the left door glances up at the noise. In the confined space, even a suppressed round is loud. Others see me burst through the door on the right, and turn that way, shooting. Another illusion, a mirror image. In fact, I'm through the right, the light bent around me to reduce me to near invisibility as I slam a knee into a man's face. He gasps, knocked backwards into the stair rail, and I ride him over it, down onto the steps below. Gunfire erupts to my side and I felt at least one bullet slam into my armour but not pierce the layer of magical reinforcement.
We land badly, but with me on top, and him still moving. Above I can hear shouting. Men on the stairs swing around to aim at me.
I speak a word of activation. The runes I left on the walls of the third-floor offices blow out. The overpressure brings down dust and shatters the windows. The man aiming at me vanishes in a spray of dust and fire.
I roll off the one I'm on top of. I wanted one for interrogation. The guys up there probably aren't all dead, but they're not going to be talking. That ambush was maybe a little risky just to get a prisoner but as I said I'm curious.
My captive moves weakly; he's wearing jeans, a dress shirt, and suit jacket. Something about the subtle mismatch puts me on edge. Tactical gear over civilian clothes is common enough but why that outfit? I pull the rifle away from him and cut his webbing away, pulling his weapons away as I step back. Just in time, as the mask tears and writhes. A mass of white tentacles explodes out at me. I fall over and then turn it into a side roll, coming back to my feet as the body jerks up on invisible strings, an impossible mass of worming white pouring free of his dislocated mouth.
I punch them as hard as I can. My movement, long-practiced, is just so, completing the circuit which will flow magical force from air and down my arm. The horror goes flying, smashes into the wall, and sets fire.
I breathe hard under my mask, and almost snatch it off before thinking better of it. I've seen creatures like this before, and I'm suddenly far more afraid. Not of them but of what they work for.
I pull out my phone, a little shakily, and turn off the building's sprinklers, then begin to chant up fire. Flame erupts above me, catching on carpets and internal fittings. Air is pulled up, sucking at my skirt. My coat reforms on my arm, none the worse for wear. There's the popcorn sound of bullets cooking off as the weapons on the floor above heat up. I wince as a round spans off the stairs near me.
On my phone, the safecrackers report the safes are open. Fire is between me and them, but the anti-teleport mesh is only in the outer walls of the building, not the middle.
I still have to get what I came for and neutralize the ones on the outside of the building, but it's long past time I was gone from here.
*****
Do well in school. Do cram school too. Go to a top university. Enjoy the springtime of your youth. Get a job, work all day in a career you hate. Marry a good man, or one who's just okay, or one you hate. Drink yourself to death. Get a part-time job, don't raise a family. Get a full-time career and kill yourself from overwork. Have ungrateful children. Rush in every morning. Fight off the advances of your boss. Get bullied by your coworkers. Come home late every night. Work away your best years for honour, for your family, for the company, for the shareholders, for nothing at all.
That's not for me.
My name's Nishifune Nozomi and I'm a thief and a witch. I stole someone's place in a top school by cheating on the tests, and I'll do the same thing for one of the nation's finest universities. Not because I want an education, or a job, or a tall, rich husband who understands me. No. I want power. The University of Tokyo is home to one of the greatest collections of mystic esoterica surviving in Japan, and I want access to it. That achieve no less a stepping stone to my desire than the evil arcana I stole last night.
I never had any desire to go here, to a school. I was just going to mark time here. To do the minimum I needed to make my passing hours. To deceive people into thinking I was brilliant while missing all the tiresome stepped on minutiae of academia. To just walk along through my school life without anyone noticing me.
How did I end up liking it here? How did I end up enjoying this as much as I enjoy winning? Is it really normal life that calls to me?
As if this is normal life either.
Fujisaka Jogakuin is an all-girls private high school on the western outskirts of Tokyo, where the city starts to merge with the mountains. It's actually quite high up, with a really nice view. Its buildings are deliberately old-looking and somewhat careworn, but lovingly restored by various grants. It's a school that seems like it should be boarding, but is just faking the aesthetic to pull in the daughters of the upper-middle-class professionals and lower rich who are its main clients. It has a good academic record and good relations with Tokyo University.
It's an artificial place. A postmodern Maria-sama ga Miteru reference without the religion for the credulous new rich. Elements stolen from British education, stuff that owes more to Kyoto or Osaka than the Kanto region.
So why do I kind of enjoy coming here?
Well, it has uniforms I like. A deliberately retro black Serafuku with a white collar and a blue scarf. If I'm honest with myself, that's why I'm here. There's an option to add black thigh highs, and I use it. There are plenty of girls' schools with good grades and good locations, but I have a look and I want to maintain it even at school.
Also it's haunted, but I'm not really involved with that.
To be honest there are things here I could do without. Like having to attend while aching where my armour took bullets last night, or my tiresome position in school politics. But I can deal. It's not so bad.
There are two hundred and ten days left of my sakura-coloured school life.
Given I'm dying, maybe I shouldn't wish them away.
Time to go home. The lunch period was mostly filled with signup for non-sports clubs. I'm too hurt to feel sociable today, and I have another engagement this evening which I'm kind of dreading. I can at least, go home and--
"Gokigenyou Nozomin-chan!"
There is a certain type of girl at this school who gives me a lot of attention. Not the most popular people at school, but I have a kind of crossover appeal to both the nerds and the athletes. Stuck up on top of a mountain without even any male teachers, of course I get a lot of attention. They're a clowder of starving cats. I'm tall and athletic with test scores regularly in the top ten percent, mysterious, standoffish, beautiful, with white hair that is unusual in a sea of black. I'm an albino, did I mention?
I think the lack of male teachers is because of the haunting.
The first speaker, able to get in first because she sits closest to me is Manako. She's one of the weirdest girls in the school. Knows all the legends of the local area, urban or otherwise. I think she's the one most into my witchy self. She's shorter than me, and kind of plain in a way that I really go for, wears big thick glasses that make her seem less capable. She's actually pretty athletic, went to the nationals in second-year track, but you can't see it past the glasses.
"Manako-chan, how was your spring break, you were going to Hawaii weren't you?"
She beams at me, pleased I remembered. "Yes. It was nice, but hot. We went shooting. How about you?"
"I went to London." I rise, getting my bag. "I'll show you some pictures later, though I'm afraid I can't stay too long tonight."
Manako is basically my best friend. I've known her since middle school. She told me her family put her up to it, after they heard I was a rich orphan with no friends.
"Did you see Buckingham Palace?"
"Yes. Also lots of protests." I head for the door with Manako trailing. A bunch of the other girls are studiously ignoring this spectacle or giving Manako looks about how loud she's being.
"I'm jealous. I'd like to see London. I hear there's all kinds of--"
"Gokigenyou Nozomin-san." At the door, I'm ambushed by several members of the visual arts appreciation society, of which I am a distant pseudo member in that I'm their friend and main financier. We do cosplay together and I sometimes go to meetings when I don't have sports.
"Ah, Fumi-chan." Their spokeswoman is a slim, short-haired girl named Nakata Fumi who has ambitions to be a voice actress. "Did you get your interview?" I gently fend off Manako, who's started simmering, as I turn my best smile on this new block.
"Ah." She blushes. "Ah. Yes. It was only a very minor role though." She brushes her hair back self consciously, aware that such a gig is not so minor a thing for a wannabe voice actress. "Will you be attending our evening sessions this year?"
"I'm afraid with exam prep and volleyball I probably can't, but I'm sure I can drop in some lunchtimes or if I'm ever have an evening free. Figure out what blu-rays you want this year, I can still finance them. Also, we should meet and discuss our outfits for the summer."
"Yes! Thank you!"
We get through the door, Manako talking about gun safety and the limits of Hawaiian shooting ranges. Almost free.
"Hey! Nozomi-chan."
Akagi Akari is the only girl at Fujisaka Gakuin as tall as I am, a fit, slim, muscular girl who seems to be all legs. Akari is the captain of the volleyball team, to which she forcibly recruited me. Last year we went to the final, this year she hopes for more. "Hey Akari, what's up?"
"Hey, come to signup in your kit tomorrow. I want to have something impressive happen during signup, so we're going to play two vs. two."
"You don't think the pair of us might scare of the small fry?"
"If they're scared I don't want them."
"Sure sure." I wave to her in passing. "I'll see you at practice."
"Alright. How about tonight? An extra game?"
"Sorry, I have a prior engagement."
"Alright." She sighs. "Hey, help me study as well right? If I'm going to do university volleyball I need to actually get into university."
"Sure."
There are three secrets to my academic success. The first is that I only need to sleep more than one night in five. The second is potions that allow me to boost my memory and recall of information. The third is rampant magic-enabled cheating, I'm a thief, I told you. I don't actually go to cram school, I'm just blackmailing a gambling addict teacher to tick me as having attended. Occasionally I show up, but it's not a thing I really do, just an appearance. I have other things to do in the evening.
I head up to the third floor. I'll cut back down the stairs at the other end of the building and leave by the other door, that should avoid most everyone. The top floor is mostly club rooms, so it's not used that much when things aren't setting up till tomorrow.
The only person up here should be-- "Hoshi-san, are you hiding?"
Hoshi Rei, president of the student council is a very serious, very squared away girl with stylish glasses. She's a mass of perfect test scores, and a secret. Right now she's covertly glancing out through the blinds in a way that seems kind of comical from the inside. "Ah, Nozomi-san." She steps back from the window, radiating a burning aura of awkwardness that almost sets the room on fire. "Gokigenyou."
"What's up?" I step inside, walk to the window and look out. From this height you can see the outer waiting area. Among the shiny new cars and parent people carriers I note a figure at the back, a girl on a motorcycle. "Friend of yours?" I give her a suggestive look.
"Ah, yes. She's not supposed to come here and now my parents messaged me to say that they're picking me up. I need to find a way to get her to leave and pick me up later! She doesn't know my parents car well so she might wave at me or something and then I'll have to answer questions. I've texted her three times but she's not picking up her cell!"
I pat her shoulder. "No problem. I'll take care of it."
She slumps into her chair, melting with relief.
I head down the back stairs, change my shoes and out, walking towards my car on a trajectory that takes me past her. On the way I wave to the cute Underclassman who has to handle the ghosts. Smooth as could be. It looks perfectly natural as I walk past motorcycle girl. As if I am there purely by accident.
"Her parents are here. Get her later." I whisper. The girl, who has short, dyed blonde hair and with a cigarette in her mouth nods.
"Thanks. Fancy a lift?"
I consider it. If anyone asks, I can tell them it's my cousin, and it'd provide a tradecraft way to get her out of here.
"Sure." I hope Rei-san isn't too jealous. I hop on the back and put the spare helmet on.
I do kind of like it here.
*****
Every month, the collected Wizards of Tokyo hold a party, for that I'll need a dress.
After my activities last night, I also have another reason to visit my tailor.
J-to-Me is a small but fashionable shop in Ginza. It mostly caters to men. Male suits and so on, but the owner is an old, well, let's say friend of mine, who will tailor me jackets and dresses.
Honestly I think it's mostly because he hopes to redefine my aesthetic for me.
He smiles at me coolly when I step in through the back door, and see Junya in the workshop, pinning a suit together on a dummy. "Nozomi-chan."
Junya is five years older than me long-haired with glasses and a ponytail. He wears a suit, coal-black. Usually, a suit is a coffin for the male physique, meant to disguise the imperfections of a man. Not so Junya. His is so sharp you could cut yourself, rigorously tight across his frame, showing off a body at the peak of fitness, and the cold expression of a sadist.
Junya is another of the strays the house Aratani took in like my own family. Their fate was happier than mine, death only, not betrayal. Junya was away at the time, learning tailoring and magic in Italy to keep him away from the other side of his family, a powerful and extremely corrupt house of exorcists and priests.
He is both handsome and beautiful. And oh he's cruel.
"Junya-kun. I'm here for my dress for the party tonight."
"Of course. If you'll follow me? I believe I have something that will fit."
He leads me into the back, and waves me into a changing room. "Let me measure you, see that you haven't grown any larger." I allow this, the tape snapping around with quick, whip-like motions, snapping across me.
I bite my lip a little.
"You really went to the trouble of compensating for the curse's impact on your health, and then overcompensating." The tape snaps across, lifting me up slightly on my toes, then away. "What a showoff you've grown to be." The tapes movements start to remind me of the demonic wire he uses as his primary weapon.
I run a finger down the front of his suit. The cloth is a little rough under my fingers, and I can feel his breath and hard muscles under it "You would know all about that."
His smile shows teeth and he snaps his fingers. My outfit begins to unravel, the dress spinning up around me as it goes, replacing the other. With a lazy motion, he covers his eyes.
The dress he's made for me an elaborate floor length affair the colour of fresh blood. All silk. It covers most of me, but still lets me move enough to fight. Most of is a simple waterfall of silk, but elaborate stitching and embroidery decorates the collar and shoulders makes it hug my figure.
"Main colour red?" I raise an eyebrow. He's pushing the boundaries of my aesthetics here.
"A young lady must learn and grow." He smirks. "Though perhaps you shouldn't grow anymore."
"I had an interesting encounter last night."
"Oh? That little affair in Shibuya?"
"It's that big a news?"
"Guns, books and cosmic horrors. If those three things come together it's a fair bet you're involved." His fingers move up my spine, testing stitching and dress integrity. "Don't worry, our secrets are still mutually kept."
Most people don't know that besides being a tailor, Junya is a cleaner, a man who works for both the police and organized crime dealing with problems, usually supernatural, that are too much for them to handle. I've helped him out on some cases before. Supplied him information on others.
We know we can rely on one another.
"I met someone interesting there. An Esper. Female, about my age, perhaps younger. Wore quite excessive goggles and could see the future."
It all started about five years ago. Young people gaining strange powers, seemingly superhuman gifts that redefined everything we knew about physics. The powers we imagined psychics might have, teleportation, pyrokinesis, telekinesis, stranger powers.
The sudden existence of physics-defying superpowers was a surprise to everyone. Especially those of us who were members of much longer term physics-defying conspiracies of superhuman power like exorcists, vampires, mages and other monsters.
We were doubly surprised when they figured out how to induce them, even if it only works for some people. Of course, the induced ones aren't the problem. It's the ones who appear from massive stress. Especially in war zones or prison facilities. These five years have not been kind for the Middle East, China or America. Of course, places like Japan and South Korea gets a fair few stress Espers, but if you develop superpowers due to cram school you're less likely to want to overthrow the government than due to being randomly detained by police.
"I'm surprised your own information sources do not have something on such a person. Is the famous fox mask falling down on the job?"
I sniff. "She gets her information like anyone else. By asking people who might know."
"Well, in this case you're in luck. I do know of the Esper you're talking about, though not her name. She's been responsible for a string of robberies, corporate espionage. She put a couple of police officers in hospital a few weeks ago."
"But no known organizational allegiance?"
"Probably simply to money."
He makes final adjustments to the dress and pulls up the mirror, showing me the elaborate red of it, a black ribbon at my collar. A perfect witch. I imagine black lipstick and like the thought very much. "What exactly did you get from that facility? Rare arcana, but what?"
Here's a secret I'm not ready to share. "Ah, nothing of any great interest in turned out. My new friend got away with the real prize."
He chuckles, leans forward. "I almost believe that. You should practice before you have to tell it to Aratani."
I turn and bat my eyes at him. "Perhaps you could come to the party with me. Watch and see if I mess up or not."
"I'm not one for parties." His fingers touch my lip. "If you wish to stay here though..."
"Ah haha! No." I say quickly. "Thank you, but no. I must attend."
And avoid something that'll only hurt you when I die.
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Chapter 1-2: The Party and the Corpse
- Pronouns
- She/Her
To strike while the iron's hot, here's chapter 2, thanks for everyone who's liked and commented so far.
Operational Procedure for a Tokyo Mage Trust Monthly Party, 2019 number four (April)
Alleged purpose of party: Find someone to marry.
Actual purpose of party: Show up the haters by dressing better than any of them. Meet your few sort of friends. Don't die of heartbreak.
Methodology: Put on super cute custom J-2M dress, augment with black silk thigh highs, black lipstick, platinum and silver jewelry, black opera gloves white Bottega Veneta bag and black designer shoes to remind everyone you may be an evil witch but you're certainly richer than they are. Leave hair white to offset how dark the outfit is.
Go to party via car, admire the intricate nature of the underground tunnels under Tokyo it takes place in. Enjoy the giant stairway and the slight wheezing complaints of some of your peers as they are forced to walk up and down all these steps. Admire the vault itself, an old underground train siding constructed in the war to protect locomotives, grabbed for cheap by the Mage Trust and converted for events like this. Especially admire the ceiling painted which is painted with a beautiful image of a dragon and a tiger chasing one another across a starry sky.
Arrive, be announced, to dead silence as if a ghost entered the room followed by slow resumption of festivities. Listen to mutters about how it's awful that they're letting taint souled witches who are almost certainly simply fingers of eldritch powers and or the dolls of corrupt immortal magi into parties like this.
Go to bar.
Parties like this are a big thing for mages, and they suck,but at least they let me drink and be bi. Not that there's much point because absolutely nobody here will do anything with me. Except mutter as I go past, watch me, stop in the middle of conversations.
Once every few months, the mage houses of the Kanto region meet up to socialize, to gossip, to politic, and to investigate one another as prospects of marriage.
I would do almost anything to get out of this. They're not even usual places for me to network because nobody wants to be seen here in case a rumour starts that they're going to marry me. There's a bubble around me when I go to the bar. People clear back two or three chairs like I have an infectious disease.
I decide I'll get a drink, or several. I order red wine. In Japan drinking age is twenty, which is another law mages don't care about. It'll make it hard for my life to be adapted into an anime of course.
A mage's house is not just a family, it doesn't even need to be related by blood. It's more like a tradition, a way of mage craft, a set of institutional knowledge. Usually it's a family also, but it doesn't have to. Once I was in house Aratani, then the greatest of Japan's houses. Now I'm in house Kondou, which is two people: myself and my teacher. As he's one of the most powerful mages in Japan, that still makes us important. Of course, since I'm cursed, and he's also one of the most hated mages in Japan, I'm not exactly a great marriage prospect. The ritual here involves every potentially eligible scion of a mage house dancing with every other potentially eligible scion of a mage house so they can perhaps pair off.
This creates a log jam of people who are trying to avoid dancing with me until they have no other choice. I've tried to force it before and it doesn't work.
The food is good though. After I have a drink I wander over to the buffet and start filling my plate with unusual canopies. I don't have to queue, but can get straight on to loading and emptying my plate.
An arm snakes around me and a blue-gloved hand plucks an hors d'œuvre off my plate. "I came to dance, but you seem to have another partner."
I look around gracefully into the beautiful face of Kurusu Nanase. The only mage in Tokyo outside of Junya (who only half counts) that I would really call a friend. Even if she's cultivating me as a resource I don't care. She's learned that the best way to get me to do things for her is to be my friend and that's fine for now. Nanase is a year older than me and first daughter of her house, possibly the grandest in Tokyo, and the most eligible person here. Same-sex marriage legislation is still pending in the Diet, but that doesn't stop us mages, who've been marrying sons to sons and daughters to daughters for a couple of millennia and conceiving kids in magical jars.
Even if her reasons are selfish, I need all the allies I can get.
Nanase is tall, about my height but willowy, waist-length black hair cascading down in a long mane only barely contained by several white ribbons and gold jewelry. Her dress is silver, the same silver of her strange eyes. I'm a bit distracted by them. Those blue gloves really set them off.
"Please do me the honour of accepting the first dance." She bows over my hand. I let my plate go, telekinetically sending it back to the side board.
"It would be my pleasure." We move onto the floor together, then begin to go through the formal steps. People are watching, but there's no muttering. If Nanase wants, then Nanase gets. The Kurusu are the most powerful mage clan of Japan, and she is their miracle child.
"I have one of the arcana you wanted." I whisper to her as we come together.
She smiles. "There's quite a flap going on about that. They say there was gunfire."
"Things got interesting."
She tips me back, eyes looking into mine, her smile is still there but her eyes are cooler. "Don't let them get too interesting where I'm concerned."
"Nothing will tie back to you. I did it for my own reasons."
"Very well."
The dance comes to an end and I step back, feeling a flashbulb sense that I've somehow messed up. Great. So now we've reached the isolation and intrusive thoughts phase of the party.
No one else wants to dance with me.
I'm going to go fix my makeup.
Was black lipstick the right choice?
I like high-contrast makeup. Makeup in general is tricky for me because I'm so pale. If you're not careful you can end up looking orange. I order in a bunch of custom stuff. I have good skin but I still use foundation and concealer (and you know, magic) so that my skin looks uniform. I think the effect is good but it only accentuates how pale I am, especially when I combined it with black lipstick, and how tall and powerful I am.
Nanase seemed to like it but I got a lot of attention, maybe more attention than I wanted. Maybe I should have gone the other way, tried to look like a normal person rather than rub the fact I'm a colourless witch in everyone's faces.
I worry that I stick out too much. I definitely have my own style, but is that the right strategy? Shouldn't I just try to fit in, dye my hair black and stop being so obviously tainted? Dress down rather than always try to be the most stylish and the most eye catching?
Should I have made myself another short waif? Someone who can be pitied?
They'd still hate me, but less. They might help me because of that.
Fuck that. Let them mutter. I'll show them all.
I check myself in the mirror, and then force myself to close my makeup kit and put it back into my bag. It's perfect. I need to go back in.
I step out of the door to the restroom in time to see another party leaving. There's one guy in front, a tall, hefty young man with a very square head in a conservative dark suit. Behind him, two men and two women, in party clothes that say hanger-on more than centre of attention are dragging a man along. Small fairy fire whips move around them.
Is he drunk? He doesn't look in good shape. Sick friend?
Abduction attempt?
Hell. It'll mean I don't have to go back into the party.
I wait till they're around the corner then slip my shoes off and follow them. The tunnel floor is cold but dry under my stockings. I make a sign of protection against damage and pick my way forward being quiet, listening to the sound of high-heeled boots and stilettos ahead of me. I make a sign next to my ear, amplifying the sound going into it.
It's pretty easy to follow them, as the light they're using throws around the corner, giving me a pocket of twilight to follow.
"Think we went far enough?"
"Sure. Unless you want to be able to dump the body in the river when we're done."
The sound of boots coming to a stop. "Look, he just gossiped about something he shouldn't have. We're not going to be dumping his body."
"Whatever you say, Boss."
"Okay, wake him up."
The sound of a fist impacting skin and a man yelps. He doesn't sound like he's used to being hit. "Well now." It's the leader's voice. "I'm disappointed in you Keiichi-san. Telling tales about my sister's love life."
A new voice, terrified. "Please! I'm sorry Nanke-sama! I didn't mean to speak out of turn! Please let me go!"
"I'm sorry too Keiichi-san. I take matters of family honour very seriously. You have to learn what you can talk about in our society." A pause. "Don't worry, I'll make sure it doesn't show."
Nanke huh. That has to be Nanke Daikai, first son of the Nanke family. It sounds like he's really mad at this guy.
I should ignore this. I never thought mage society was nice. It's like Daikai said, stuff like this happens in mage society. I shouldn't borrow trouble.
Keiichi gives a pitiful cry that turns into a cough as Daikai hits him.
I stop in the corridor, take a deep breath.
Having a young mage under my thumb wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
No, even if I save him, he'll probably be ungrateful.
It will be a chance to let off some steam.
And get myself into even more trouble.
There's really nothing quite as good as beating some proud guy, especially when you get to save another in the process and take it out of both of them. One will know I beat him, the other will know I saved him.
Why don't I just be honest with myself?
I take another breath and turn around.
"Hey, Keiichi-chan," I step around the corner, "Where did you go off too, I thought we had a-- oh." The space beyond is a room concrete walled, graffitied, obviously some lost sub-basement of the transit system.
The group's two women are holding Keiichi up while the guys watch. Daikai is standing in front of him, fist cocked for a blow. He's removed his suit jacket and the guy on the other side is holding it.
The other man is blocking my way.
"Get lost." He says. "Your boyfriend is--"
He's about my height, so I grab him by the lapels and headbutt him. He stumbles back but I still have a hold of him, and bring my knee up into his gut. His eyes go wide and he collapses.
The other four clear for action fast. They're probably not as good as me, but I can't be lazy here. I kick the guy I knocked down to keep him down then hop back a bit.
Nanke looks at me, head on one side. He's at the group's back, next to the guy but now stepping back, clearing for action. "A corrupted mage who's thinks she's a hero of justice?"
"Witches need to work hard to make friends."
The other guy has stepped into blocking position between us, hands raised in a stance I recognize as one to channel mana from a major constellation. He, like mel will be using martial arts to summon his power, though I think he'll be using a different source than me. I know how to draw on constellations, but it's not my specialty. It's honestly they're too much work.
In general, there are three sources mages use to summon mana. The energy of the sky, which is ruled by constellations, the energy of the earth, which is ruled by leylines, and the energy of the air which is weak but near universal. There are two other more advanced techniques, summoning power from other dimensions or from the basic universal force, but both are much more difficult and generally used only for rituals.
This guy is definitely using a constellation. The girl behind him, who has begun a fire chant, is doing the same. Meantime the other girl has pulled a potion from her bag and injected it, and is now field mixing another.
Nanke, meantime stands aloof at the back, waiting to see if his minions can take me out.
I don't particularly want the women to get a chance to really prep so I go straight in at star guy. He snaps out a punch, faster than I thought he'd be able to. The guy must be a mathematical genius to be able to construct an aligned star move so fast. I'm forced to block, taking the blow across my arms and a surge of spoken power. This would be much easier if I was wearing my armour.
The blow knocks me back on my heels. I jump to the side, expecting a quick followup, but there isn't one. Instead he stands where he is, falling back into his stance.
Ah. I see it. "That's disappointing, but clever."
He snarls. "What did you say?"
"Your technique. I thought you were doing on the spot calculations to determine stance, but you're not are you? You worked out the symbol and move that would give you the most power in this day. You probably have a chart on your phone saying so and so sign for so and so hour."
Bullseye. He's glaring. I can't take too much time to gloat though, Fire Girl is taking a bit of time with her chant, probably to burn me rather than her friend, but I don't have much time. "Anyhow, it's clever but it makes your move set too limited." I step forward, judging distance.
"Damn you!" He takes a step forward, trying to move in the same stance, but I take a step back with him and then pivot on one foot to kick him in the head. He drops like a puppet with cut strings.
The two women back up. Both have almost completed their rituals and look back at Nanke to give them more time, but he doesn't seem to want to bother. It might not matter though, because they're just finished. Potion girl raises her arm to throw, and while her companion's chant raises to a climax.
I'm inspired to grab their friend I just kicked and yank him up in front of me as a shield. Potion Girl's aborts her throw but fumbles the veil—the hissing stuff hits the floor in front of her and starts to throw up dust. I throw my human shield at the fire mage, knocking her down in a tangle and disrupting her chant, which dissipates in a spray of smoke and sends her coughing.
Confident she's out for now, I go in on Potion Girl, running around the edge of the hole her transmutation potion is making and hitting her with a rapid combination of blows. She's able to stay with me for a few moments thanks to the strength potion she injected, but she's not nearly as practiced at fighting as I am. I put her down with a punch to the face, then zap fire mage with a shadowbolt as she gets out from under star guy, slamming her into the tunnel wall.
Keiichi has run for it down the tunnel, so it's just Nanke and me facing one another next to the dusty hole.
"He's a worm you know? A gossip and a scoundrel." Nanke circles left, stance casual. "I suppose that would be useful to someone like you."
"Truth is, I'm just mad you're all so reluctant to dance with someone as beautiful as me."
He laughs and drops into a stance. "Then, perhaps I can be your dance partner?"
Honestly, Nanke isn't so bad looking. He's just not really my type. I don't really go for hefty heavyweight guys. He begins to chant and I feel geomantic power building, sucked him from all angles this far down, and a network of runes glow around him.
He comes at me in a blur, driven to great speed by the power now flowing through him. Geomancy's great for that, and I should know, it's mostly what I use. You always expect big guys to be slow, but Nanke isn't. His combinations are simple, boxing blows, but he delivers them in rapid succession, fast enough I can hardly counter them.
I have a dilemma here. I can fight him at this level and maybe get hurt. I can reveal one of my tricks, or--
I kick up a wave of dust from the transmuted hole and then send it on a word into my opponents face. His chant stops abruptly as he starts to cough, and then I plant a blow in his stomach. He doubles over then goes back down with a knee to the face.
He looks up at me, wheezing, and I realize he's laughing. "T-that was cheap."
I shrug. I'm an evil witch after all. He closes his eyes and lies back.
"Still frightened of getting hurt, Nozomi?"
I look around and see Horie Yuuki step out of the shadows.
"Oh, you're here. So Aratani has finally arrived?" I raise an eyebrow. "He's putting on some airs arriving this late in the evening."
"We had a case."
"Of course you did." Horie Yuuki, is one of the deadliest hand-to-hand fighters in Tokyo and another old friend of mine. She's shorter than me, actually kind of short by any standards, with boyish hair. A real cutie. She's wearing a short, particularly daring white party dress, which I am endeavouring not to pay too much attention to.
"Come on. He wants to see you."
"Alright." I resummon my shoes and slip them on.
"What was that even about?"
"I'm a hero of justice now. Haven't you heard?"
She gives me a look.
Aratani Kaito is waiting for us in front of the entrance. The man who was my betrothed is a beauty. About two years my senior, carefully styled golden hair his major concession to the unusual. He's tall, but only slightly taller than me, well muscled, and filling out a white suit that clings to his form almost as well as the one Junya wore earlier. He wears small, serious glasses and carries a jewel top cane.
I shouldn't compare them so. I suppose it's just that I'm attracted to a lot of women, and very few men, these two among them. I've known them both since I was a child, and had my part in destroying their lives. It's hard not to.
"Nozomi." He looks at me, a slight smile as his eyes take in, no doubt, a dozen subtle signs I've just been in a fight. "Did we interupt you?"
I don't blush or anything, I have enough control for that, and run a cleaning and fixing enchantment on my dress. What does my makeup look like? Fuck. "Not particularly. You know how these things are for me. What about you though? You seem to have almost skipped the party entirely."
"I had to deal with an affair with a corpse."
"That seems common with you." I fall in beside him. "People will start to take you for a necromancer Kaito."
"At least that'd make it less gossip worthy for us to be seen together."
"So what's so interesting about this corpse?"
We step in through the doors, and the herald announces Aratani with fanfare.
"Later." He offers an arm. "For now, would you do me the honour? I believe it must be the fifth dance."
The body is splayed out, opened up, in a full state of post autopsy revelation. Beside it, dozens of objects are laid in a medical tray in neat lines. Aratani is still in his slim suit, but I took time to change. I'm not messing up my dress at the morgue. Now I'm wearing white. White Italian boots, a white Italian jacket, white silk shirt, white silk gloves that just happen to have pentagrams stitched into them. The only reason I don't look like a snow bank is black thigh-highs, and a blue silk cravat. I picked the outfit just for the morgue. White suit on white walls makes the colour and black stand out all the more.
The dumpy old police detective and police doctor are both giving me funny looks. I can't tell if it's because my heels make me taller than either of them, or because my heels cost more than they make in a month. They also keep glancing at Horie, is (rather stubbornly) still wearing her party dress and slowly freezing.
"You better take her back to the party when we're done here," I whisper to Aratani as we go, "or I might have to assassinate you for real."
He smiles. "You're so unobservant sometimes."
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing. Let's concentrate on the dead body shall we?"
I frown at that, still not getting it, then shrug and approach the corpse, pulling up a surgical mask. "So, what's the context for this?"
The detective looks at Aratani questioningly, then coughs and speaks. "This is Tanaka Reo, unemployed, well, employed as a gang member. He was one of a number of men hired by," a look at Aratani, "a criminal enterprise in Roppongi. He and his accomplices engaged Aratani-san and his party, along with police special forces. He proved to be extremely fast and strong. It took Horie-san to take him down." He wipes his glasses, which are steaming up. "A second man with similar implants was encountered earlier this week, and was able to fight off dozens of police officers before we called in Esper Down."
"What kind of abilities did he have?"
"Officers said that he was incredibly fast and strong, and he could project blades of shadow that cut through a stab vest."
"Huh." I look at the corpse. "He wasn't an Esper?"
Aratani speaks. "He was twenty-nine." The oldest known Esper is twenty-five. You only manifest younger than twenty. "The autopsy found numerous foreign objects which had been implanted across his body. They initially thought they might be some kind of cybernetic implants, but there's no electronics present. You are an expert on--" Dark powers, the implantation of magic into the body, and thus the spirit, "magic like this, so…"
"You brought me in." I peer over at the tray and then at the wounds. "There are 108 of these?"
"108, exactly." The doctor says.
"You have some gloves I can use?"
After I get the gloves on, I move to examine the objects, first without picking them up.
Each is a small disk of dull copper, with a symbol embossed into its back. When I pick one up, it sticks to the tray slightly. A magnet? Thick enough that it might be hollow. I shake it. It rattles. The workmanship is crude, the edges cracked and uneven, with spots of discoloration from uneven temperature, and some evidence that the worst of it has been ground down. Terribly shoddy. Kondou-san would scold me for turning in something like this.
Aratani looks at me expectantly, he already told me that both the cop and the doctor are more or less in the know. Given how cold Horie is looking I decide I won't draw things out. "This man has been wired with a geomantic grid." I lift the disk. "There's a lodestone in here, a magnet. It realigns the man's body energies in line with the local geomancy, lets him draw on it for power."
Horie shivers, and not just from the cold this time. "But his energies would constantly bleed into the greater energy of the local dragon lines. He might gain great strength for a while, but each time he used it he'd become less and less himself."
"There are ways around that. None of them are fitted here though. With a grid of this type, he'd rapidly lose contact with normal human emotions. He'd become prey to whatever flowed down the leylines and into him." I put the implant down. "I suspect that he may not have known what he was getting into. These aren't very well fabricated. Maybe some street gang found an old book--" No, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
Aratani is, of course, quick to jump on my lapse in logic. "It seems like you'd need considerable skill to come up with something like this, even if the surgery and manufacturing are a little crude, Nozomi. I don't believe either Yuuki-san or I would have known how to build this. Could you have?"
Always testing me. Just how much do you really know? It's always traps within traps with our Sherlock Holmes. "I could have, but if I was going to, I'd have done it better. There's no need for all this copper, indeed it just makes the process even more toxic and dangerous. Who wants super soldiers that go mad after a short time? No. Even if the person who made this has some skill, this is crude."
Aratani frowns. "So you are saying that whoever we're looking for is good at geomancy and black surgery, but not as good as you."
"Correct." I consider. "Or they're made in a way that's meant to debilitate the person using them over the long term."
"Is there a way we could detect or disrupt it?" Horei asks.
"I'm sure your boy has already guessed." I look at Aratani, who smiles and looks smug. "With an arrangement like this it's easy. All you need is a magnet."
I should, I suppose, as we go further into this, say a few words about the nature of what mages variously refer to as dark power, forbidden arts, unclean techniques. This also requires a little history of the Black Books, which are so much a part of this story. Magic, in general, works by the channeling of various arcane forces through symbolism. That symbolism can be a literal symbol, from a rune to a word, or it can be a symbolic action. To conduct a scan for local magic, shut one eye, sacrifice half your sight for wisdom as Odin did. Less sacrifice, less wisdom.
That's magic. Exorcists, priests, and infernalists may also call power by making deals with spirits, demons, ghosts and gods, but most mages don't, at least openly. Summoning, making pacts with, employing spirits is the least forbidden of the forbidden arts. It's not even really frowned on, it's just not something that one admits to.
What manner of arcane forces you employ varies. It can be the energy of the earth, magic of the stars, of the elements, of human sacrifices, of other dimensions. Here we get into the real meat and drink of forbidden arts. Channeling the wrong power in the wrong way can be dangerous, and can get you known as a black magician.
In general, mages don't like craft by which arcane power is introduced into the body in anything like a permanent way. They don't like anything that can change how symbolism works. Magic is about reason, they don't like anything that can pollute it, or that disobeys what reason would suggest.
But this isn't universal.
Some thousands of years ago, all the forbidden, twisted powers of the day were recorded, techniques written down in ciphered tomes, mighty spells used to symbolically, and thus actually, trap the knowledge that mages disliked in a series of grimoires, the black books.
Of course, there are two flaws in this plan. First, that such secrets can still be rediscovered, and second that the black books might be read.
I get home late. What with the party and the morgue, it's annoying. I have a treasure by I haven't been able to look at yet waiting for me. Maybe I should leave it another night, wait until I'm fresh. It's late. School will be far too soon in the morning. I planned to try to get some sleep tonight.
Fat chance. I can't resist any longer. I'll have to look through the book.
The Witch's House. My house is set back from the road in its own walled garden. There's a gate, gravel, then a four-story mansion built around a central courtyard. The gate opens, the garage door opens, and the card slides quickly inside, even as both portals rapidly shut.
I'm safe.
"Hello House."
"Hello Nozomi." The house's voice is warm and feminine, with an aristocratic British accent.
"Any intrusions or messages?"
"A parcel was delivered earlier, I believe it was your blu-rays."
"Great." I take off my shoes and hand my jacket into the hands of an unseen servant. It's nice and warm in here. The chill of the morgue didn't leave me even outside it. It's annoyingly cold this April. There might be snow. I shut the door and let the tension flow out of me.
I pull my cravat off and dump it. "Is a bath ready?"
"Yes Nozomi." The house says.
"Great." I walk upstairs, heading for the main bathroom on the third floor. I'll relax in the bath and run my first probes by remote. I put the book straight into the vaults. By habit, I glance at the central garden and then out of the long windows towards the street. Something stands under the lamp, watching the house. I stare at it, my heart suddenly hammering. It's so indistinct, a dark idea of a person in the pool of the street light.
It raises its head and looks at me.
Operational Procedure for a Tokyo Mage Trust Monthly Party, 2019 number four (April)
Alleged purpose of party: Find someone to marry.
Actual purpose of party: Show up the haters by dressing better than any of them. Meet your few sort of friends. Don't die of heartbreak.
Methodology: Put on super cute custom J-2M dress, augment with black silk thigh highs, black lipstick, platinum and silver jewelry, black opera gloves white Bottega Veneta bag and black designer shoes to remind everyone you may be an evil witch but you're certainly richer than they are. Leave hair white to offset how dark the outfit is.
Go to party via car, admire the intricate nature of the underground tunnels under Tokyo it takes place in. Enjoy the giant stairway and the slight wheezing complaints of some of your peers as they are forced to walk up and down all these steps. Admire the vault itself, an old underground train siding constructed in the war to protect locomotives, grabbed for cheap by the Mage Trust and converted for events like this. Especially admire the ceiling painted which is painted with a beautiful image of a dragon and a tiger chasing one another across a starry sky.
Arrive, be announced, to dead silence as if a ghost entered the room followed by slow resumption of festivities. Listen to mutters about how it's awful that they're letting taint souled witches who are almost certainly simply fingers of eldritch powers and or the dolls of corrupt immortal magi into parties like this.
Go to bar.
*****
Parties like this are a big thing for mages, and they suck,but at least they let me drink and be bi. Not that there's much point because absolutely nobody here will do anything with me. Except mutter as I go past, watch me, stop in the middle of conversations.
Once every few months, the mage houses of the Kanto region meet up to socialize, to gossip, to politic, and to investigate one another as prospects of marriage.
I would do almost anything to get out of this. They're not even usual places for me to network because nobody wants to be seen here in case a rumour starts that they're going to marry me. There's a bubble around me when I go to the bar. People clear back two or three chairs like I have an infectious disease.
I decide I'll get a drink, or several. I order red wine. In Japan drinking age is twenty, which is another law mages don't care about. It'll make it hard for my life to be adapted into an anime of course.
A mage's house is not just a family, it doesn't even need to be related by blood. It's more like a tradition, a way of mage craft, a set of institutional knowledge. Usually it's a family also, but it doesn't have to. Once I was in house Aratani, then the greatest of Japan's houses. Now I'm in house Kondou, which is two people: myself and my teacher. As he's one of the most powerful mages in Japan, that still makes us important. Of course, since I'm cursed, and he's also one of the most hated mages in Japan, I'm not exactly a great marriage prospect. The ritual here involves every potentially eligible scion of a mage house dancing with every other potentially eligible scion of a mage house so they can perhaps pair off.
This creates a log jam of people who are trying to avoid dancing with me until they have no other choice. I've tried to force it before and it doesn't work.
The food is good though. After I have a drink I wander over to the buffet and start filling my plate with unusual canopies. I don't have to queue, but can get straight on to loading and emptying my plate.
An arm snakes around me and a blue-gloved hand plucks an hors d'œuvre off my plate. "I came to dance, but you seem to have another partner."
I look around gracefully into the beautiful face of Kurusu Nanase. The only mage in Tokyo outside of Junya (who only half counts) that I would really call a friend. Even if she's cultivating me as a resource I don't care. She's learned that the best way to get me to do things for her is to be my friend and that's fine for now. Nanase is a year older than me and first daughter of her house, possibly the grandest in Tokyo, and the most eligible person here. Same-sex marriage legislation is still pending in the Diet, but that doesn't stop us mages, who've been marrying sons to sons and daughters to daughters for a couple of millennia and conceiving kids in magical jars.
Even if her reasons are selfish, I need all the allies I can get.
Nanase is tall, about my height but willowy, waist-length black hair cascading down in a long mane only barely contained by several white ribbons and gold jewelry. Her dress is silver, the same silver of her strange eyes. I'm a bit distracted by them. Those blue gloves really set them off.
"Please do me the honour of accepting the first dance." She bows over my hand. I let my plate go, telekinetically sending it back to the side board.
"It would be my pleasure." We move onto the floor together, then begin to go through the formal steps. People are watching, but there's no muttering. If Nanase wants, then Nanase gets. The Kurusu are the most powerful mage clan of Japan, and she is their miracle child.
"I have one of the arcana you wanted." I whisper to her as we come together.
She smiles. "There's quite a flap going on about that. They say there was gunfire."
"Things got interesting."
She tips me back, eyes looking into mine, her smile is still there but her eyes are cooler. "Don't let them get too interesting where I'm concerned."
"Nothing will tie back to you. I did it for my own reasons."
"Very well."
The dance comes to an end and I step back, feeling a flashbulb sense that I've somehow messed up. Great. So now we've reached the isolation and intrusive thoughts phase of the party.
No one else wants to dance with me.
I'm going to go fix my makeup.
*****
Was black lipstick the right choice?
I like high-contrast makeup. Makeup in general is tricky for me because I'm so pale. If you're not careful you can end up looking orange. I order in a bunch of custom stuff. I have good skin but I still use foundation and concealer (and you know, magic) so that my skin looks uniform. I think the effect is good but it only accentuates how pale I am, especially when I combined it with black lipstick, and how tall and powerful I am.
Nanase seemed to like it but I got a lot of attention, maybe more attention than I wanted. Maybe I should have gone the other way, tried to look like a normal person rather than rub the fact I'm a colourless witch in everyone's faces.
I worry that I stick out too much. I definitely have my own style, but is that the right strategy? Shouldn't I just try to fit in, dye my hair black and stop being so obviously tainted? Dress down rather than always try to be the most stylish and the most eye catching?
Should I have made myself another short waif? Someone who can be pitied?
They'd still hate me, but less. They might help me because of that.
Fuck that. Let them mutter. I'll show them all.
I check myself in the mirror, and then force myself to close my makeup kit and put it back into my bag. It's perfect. I need to go back in.
I step out of the door to the restroom in time to see another party leaving. There's one guy in front, a tall, hefty young man with a very square head in a conservative dark suit. Behind him, two men and two women, in party clothes that say hanger-on more than centre of attention are dragging a man along. Small fairy fire whips move around them.
Is he drunk? He doesn't look in good shape. Sick friend?
Abduction attempt?
Hell. It'll mean I don't have to go back into the party.
I wait till they're around the corner then slip my shoes off and follow them. The tunnel floor is cold but dry under my stockings. I make a sign of protection against damage and pick my way forward being quiet, listening to the sound of high-heeled boots and stilettos ahead of me. I make a sign next to my ear, amplifying the sound going into it.
It's pretty easy to follow them, as the light they're using throws around the corner, giving me a pocket of twilight to follow.
"Think we went far enough?"
"Sure. Unless you want to be able to dump the body in the river when we're done."
The sound of boots coming to a stop. "Look, he just gossiped about something he shouldn't have. We're not going to be dumping his body."
"Whatever you say, Boss."
"Okay, wake him up."
The sound of a fist impacting skin and a man yelps. He doesn't sound like he's used to being hit. "Well now." It's the leader's voice. "I'm disappointed in you Keiichi-san. Telling tales about my sister's love life."
A new voice, terrified. "Please! I'm sorry Nanke-sama! I didn't mean to speak out of turn! Please let me go!"
"I'm sorry too Keiichi-san. I take matters of family honour very seriously. You have to learn what you can talk about in our society." A pause. "Don't worry, I'll make sure it doesn't show."
Nanke huh. That has to be Nanke Daikai, first son of the Nanke family. It sounds like he's really mad at this guy.
I should ignore this. I never thought mage society was nice. It's like Daikai said, stuff like this happens in mage society. I shouldn't borrow trouble.
Keiichi gives a pitiful cry that turns into a cough as Daikai hits him.
I stop in the corridor, take a deep breath.
Having a young mage under my thumb wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
No, even if I save him, he'll probably be ungrateful.
It will be a chance to let off some steam.
And get myself into even more trouble.
There's really nothing quite as good as beating some proud guy, especially when you get to save another in the process and take it out of both of them. One will know I beat him, the other will know I saved him.
Why don't I just be honest with myself?
I take another breath and turn around.
"Hey, Keiichi-chan," I step around the corner, "Where did you go off too, I thought we had a-- oh." The space beyond is a room concrete walled, graffitied, obviously some lost sub-basement of the transit system.
The group's two women are holding Keiichi up while the guys watch. Daikai is standing in front of him, fist cocked for a blow. He's removed his suit jacket and the guy on the other side is holding it.
The other man is blocking my way.
"Get lost." He says. "Your boyfriend is--"
He's about my height, so I grab him by the lapels and headbutt him. He stumbles back but I still have a hold of him, and bring my knee up into his gut. His eyes go wide and he collapses.
The other four clear for action fast. They're probably not as good as me, but I can't be lazy here. I kick the guy I knocked down to keep him down then hop back a bit.
Nanke looks at me, head on one side. He's at the group's back, next to the guy but now stepping back, clearing for action. "A corrupted mage who's thinks she's a hero of justice?"
"Witches need to work hard to make friends."
The other guy has stepped into blocking position between us, hands raised in a stance I recognize as one to channel mana from a major constellation. He, like mel will be using martial arts to summon his power, though I think he'll be using a different source than me. I know how to draw on constellations, but it's not my specialty. It's honestly they're too much work.
In general, there are three sources mages use to summon mana. The energy of the sky, which is ruled by constellations, the energy of the earth, which is ruled by leylines, and the energy of the air which is weak but near universal. There are two other more advanced techniques, summoning power from other dimensions or from the basic universal force, but both are much more difficult and generally used only for rituals.
This guy is definitely using a constellation. The girl behind him, who has begun a fire chant, is doing the same. Meantime the other girl has pulled a potion from her bag and injected it, and is now field mixing another.
Nanke, meantime stands aloof at the back, waiting to see if his minions can take me out.
I don't particularly want the women to get a chance to really prep so I go straight in at star guy. He snaps out a punch, faster than I thought he'd be able to. The guy must be a mathematical genius to be able to construct an aligned star move so fast. I'm forced to block, taking the blow across my arms and a surge of spoken power. This would be much easier if I was wearing my armour.
The blow knocks me back on my heels. I jump to the side, expecting a quick followup, but there isn't one. Instead he stands where he is, falling back into his stance.
Ah. I see it. "That's disappointing, but clever."
He snarls. "What did you say?"
"Your technique. I thought you were doing on the spot calculations to determine stance, but you're not are you? You worked out the symbol and move that would give you the most power in this day. You probably have a chart on your phone saying so and so sign for so and so hour."
Bullseye. He's glaring. I can't take too much time to gloat though, Fire Girl is taking a bit of time with her chant, probably to burn me rather than her friend, but I don't have much time. "Anyhow, it's clever but it makes your move set too limited." I step forward, judging distance.
"Damn you!" He takes a step forward, trying to move in the same stance, but I take a step back with him and then pivot on one foot to kick him in the head. He drops like a puppet with cut strings.
The two women back up. Both have almost completed their rituals and look back at Nanke to give them more time, but he doesn't seem to want to bother. It might not matter though, because they're just finished. Potion girl raises her arm to throw, and while her companion's chant raises to a climax.
I'm inspired to grab their friend I just kicked and yank him up in front of me as a shield. Potion Girl's aborts her throw but fumbles the veil—the hissing stuff hits the floor in front of her and starts to throw up dust. I throw my human shield at the fire mage, knocking her down in a tangle and disrupting her chant, which dissipates in a spray of smoke and sends her coughing.
Confident she's out for now, I go in on Potion Girl, running around the edge of the hole her transmutation potion is making and hitting her with a rapid combination of blows. She's able to stay with me for a few moments thanks to the strength potion she injected, but she's not nearly as practiced at fighting as I am. I put her down with a punch to the face, then zap fire mage with a shadowbolt as she gets out from under star guy, slamming her into the tunnel wall.
Keiichi has run for it down the tunnel, so it's just Nanke and me facing one another next to the dusty hole.
"He's a worm you know? A gossip and a scoundrel." Nanke circles left, stance casual. "I suppose that would be useful to someone like you."
"Truth is, I'm just mad you're all so reluctant to dance with someone as beautiful as me."
He laughs and drops into a stance. "Then, perhaps I can be your dance partner?"
Honestly, Nanke isn't so bad looking. He's just not really my type. I don't really go for hefty heavyweight guys. He begins to chant and I feel geomantic power building, sucked him from all angles this far down, and a network of runes glow around him.
He comes at me in a blur, driven to great speed by the power now flowing through him. Geomancy's great for that, and I should know, it's mostly what I use. You always expect big guys to be slow, but Nanke isn't. His combinations are simple, boxing blows, but he delivers them in rapid succession, fast enough I can hardly counter them.
I have a dilemma here. I can fight him at this level and maybe get hurt. I can reveal one of my tricks, or--
I kick up a wave of dust from the transmuted hole and then send it on a word into my opponents face. His chant stops abruptly as he starts to cough, and then I plant a blow in his stomach. He doubles over then goes back down with a knee to the face.
He looks up at me, wheezing, and I realize he's laughing. "T-that was cheap."
I shrug. I'm an evil witch after all. He closes his eyes and lies back.
"Still frightened of getting hurt, Nozomi?"
I look around and see Horie Yuuki step out of the shadows.
"Oh, you're here. So Aratani has finally arrived?" I raise an eyebrow. "He's putting on some airs arriving this late in the evening."
"We had a case."
"Of course you did." Horie Yuuki, is one of the deadliest hand-to-hand fighters in Tokyo and another old friend of mine. She's shorter than me, actually kind of short by any standards, with boyish hair. A real cutie. She's wearing a short, particularly daring white party dress, which I am endeavouring not to pay too much attention to.
"Come on. He wants to see you."
"Alright." I resummon my shoes and slip them on.
"What was that even about?"
"I'm a hero of justice now. Haven't you heard?"
She gives me a look.
Aratani Kaito is waiting for us in front of the entrance. The man who was my betrothed is a beauty. About two years my senior, carefully styled golden hair his major concession to the unusual. He's tall, but only slightly taller than me, well muscled, and filling out a white suit that clings to his form almost as well as the one Junya wore earlier. He wears small, serious glasses and carries a jewel top cane.
I shouldn't compare them so. I suppose it's just that I'm attracted to a lot of women, and very few men, these two among them. I've known them both since I was a child, and had my part in destroying their lives. It's hard not to.
"Nozomi." He looks at me, a slight smile as his eyes take in, no doubt, a dozen subtle signs I've just been in a fight. "Did we interupt you?"
I don't blush or anything, I have enough control for that, and run a cleaning and fixing enchantment on my dress. What does my makeup look like? Fuck. "Not particularly. You know how these things are for me. What about you though? You seem to have almost skipped the party entirely."
"I had to deal with an affair with a corpse."
"That seems common with you." I fall in beside him. "People will start to take you for a necromancer Kaito."
"At least that'd make it less gossip worthy for us to be seen together."
"So what's so interesting about this corpse?"
We step in through the doors, and the herald announces Aratani with fanfare.
"Later." He offers an arm. "For now, would you do me the honour? I believe it must be the fifth dance."
*****
The body is splayed out, opened up, in a full state of post autopsy revelation. Beside it, dozens of objects are laid in a medical tray in neat lines. Aratani is still in his slim suit, but I took time to change. I'm not messing up my dress at the morgue. Now I'm wearing white. White Italian boots, a white Italian jacket, white silk shirt, white silk gloves that just happen to have pentagrams stitched into them. The only reason I don't look like a snow bank is black thigh-highs, and a blue silk cravat. I picked the outfit just for the morgue. White suit on white walls makes the colour and black stand out all the more.
The dumpy old police detective and police doctor are both giving me funny looks. I can't tell if it's because my heels make me taller than either of them, or because my heels cost more than they make in a month. They also keep glancing at Horie, is (rather stubbornly) still wearing her party dress and slowly freezing.
"You better take her back to the party when we're done here," I whisper to Aratani as we go, "or I might have to assassinate you for real."
He smiles. "You're so unobservant sometimes."
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing. Let's concentrate on the dead body shall we?"
I frown at that, still not getting it, then shrug and approach the corpse, pulling up a surgical mask. "So, what's the context for this?"
The detective looks at Aratani questioningly, then coughs and speaks. "This is Tanaka Reo, unemployed, well, employed as a gang member. He was one of a number of men hired by," a look at Aratani, "a criminal enterprise in Roppongi. He and his accomplices engaged Aratani-san and his party, along with police special forces. He proved to be extremely fast and strong. It took Horie-san to take him down." He wipes his glasses, which are steaming up. "A second man with similar implants was encountered earlier this week, and was able to fight off dozens of police officers before we called in Esper Down."
"What kind of abilities did he have?"
"Officers said that he was incredibly fast and strong, and he could project blades of shadow that cut through a stab vest."
"Huh." I look at the corpse. "He wasn't an Esper?"
Aratani speaks. "He was twenty-nine." The oldest known Esper is twenty-five. You only manifest younger than twenty. "The autopsy found numerous foreign objects which had been implanted across his body. They initially thought they might be some kind of cybernetic implants, but there's no electronics present. You are an expert on--" Dark powers, the implantation of magic into the body, and thus the spirit, "magic like this, so…"
"You brought me in." I peer over at the tray and then at the wounds. "There are 108 of these?"
"108, exactly." The doctor says.
"You have some gloves I can use?"
After I get the gloves on, I move to examine the objects, first without picking them up.
Each is a small disk of dull copper, with a symbol embossed into its back. When I pick one up, it sticks to the tray slightly. A magnet? Thick enough that it might be hollow. I shake it. It rattles. The workmanship is crude, the edges cracked and uneven, with spots of discoloration from uneven temperature, and some evidence that the worst of it has been ground down. Terribly shoddy. Kondou-san would scold me for turning in something like this.
Aratani looks at me expectantly, he already told me that both the cop and the doctor are more or less in the know. Given how cold Horie is looking I decide I won't draw things out. "This man has been wired with a geomantic grid." I lift the disk. "There's a lodestone in here, a magnet. It realigns the man's body energies in line with the local geomancy, lets him draw on it for power."
Horie shivers, and not just from the cold this time. "But his energies would constantly bleed into the greater energy of the local dragon lines. He might gain great strength for a while, but each time he used it he'd become less and less himself."
"There are ways around that. None of them are fitted here though. With a grid of this type, he'd rapidly lose contact with normal human emotions. He'd become prey to whatever flowed down the leylines and into him." I put the implant down. "I suspect that he may not have known what he was getting into. These aren't very well fabricated. Maybe some street gang found an old book--" No, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
Aratani is, of course, quick to jump on my lapse in logic. "It seems like you'd need considerable skill to come up with something like this, even if the surgery and manufacturing are a little crude, Nozomi. I don't believe either Yuuki-san or I would have known how to build this. Could you have?"
Always testing me. Just how much do you really know? It's always traps within traps with our Sherlock Holmes. "I could have, but if I was going to, I'd have done it better. There's no need for all this copper, indeed it just makes the process even more toxic and dangerous. Who wants super soldiers that go mad after a short time? No. Even if the person who made this has some skill, this is crude."
Aratani frowns. "So you are saying that whoever we're looking for is good at geomancy and black surgery, but not as good as you."
"Correct." I consider. "Or they're made in a way that's meant to debilitate the person using them over the long term."
"Is there a way we could detect or disrupt it?" Horei asks.
"I'm sure your boy has already guessed." I look at Aratani, who smiles and looks smug. "With an arrangement like this it's easy. All you need is a magnet."
*****
I should, I suppose, as we go further into this, say a few words about the nature of what mages variously refer to as dark power, forbidden arts, unclean techniques. This also requires a little history of the Black Books, which are so much a part of this story. Magic, in general, works by the channeling of various arcane forces through symbolism. That symbolism can be a literal symbol, from a rune to a word, or it can be a symbolic action. To conduct a scan for local magic, shut one eye, sacrifice half your sight for wisdom as Odin did. Less sacrifice, less wisdom.
That's magic. Exorcists, priests, and infernalists may also call power by making deals with spirits, demons, ghosts and gods, but most mages don't, at least openly. Summoning, making pacts with, employing spirits is the least forbidden of the forbidden arts. It's not even really frowned on, it's just not something that one admits to.
What manner of arcane forces you employ varies. It can be the energy of the earth, magic of the stars, of the elements, of human sacrifices, of other dimensions. Here we get into the real meat and drink of forbidden arts. Channeling the wrong power in the wrong way can be dangerous, and can get you known as a black magician.
In general, mages don't like craft by which arcane power is introduced into the body in anything like a permanent way. They don't like anything that can change how symbolism works. Magic is about reason, they don't like anything that can pollute it, or that disobeys what reason would suggest.
But this isn't universal.
Some thousands of years ago, all the forbidden, twisted powers of the day were recorded, techniques written down in ciphered tomes, mighty spells used to symbolically, and thus actually, trap the knowledge that mages disliked in a series of grimoires, the black books.
Of course, there are two flaws in this plan. First, that such secrets can still be rediscovered, and second that the black books might be read.
*****
I get home late. What with the party and the morgue, it's annoying. I have a treasure by I haven't been able to look at yet waiting for me. Maybe I should leave it another night, wait until I'm fresh. It's late. School will be far too soon in the morning. I planned to try to get some sleep tonight.
Fat chance. I can't resist any longer. I'll have to look through the book.
The Witch's House. My house is set back from the road in its own walled garden. There's a gate, gravel, then a four-story mansion built around a central courtyard. The gate opens, the garage door opens, and the card slides quickly inside, even as both portals rapidly shut.
I'm safe.
"Hello House."
"Hello Nozomi." The house's voice is warm and feminine, with an aristocratic British accent.
"Any intrusions or messages?"
"A parcel was delivered earlier, I believe it was your blu-rays."
"Great." I take off my shoes and hand my jacket into the hands of an unseen servant. It's nice and warm in here. The chill of the morgue didn't leave me even outside it. It's annoyingly cold this April. There might be snow. I shut the door and let the tension flow out of me.
I pull my cravat off and dump it. "Is a bath ready?"
"Yes Nozomi." The house says.
"Great." I walk upstairs, heading for the main bathroom on the third floor. I'll relax in the bath and run my first probes by remote. I put the book straight into the vaults. By habit, I glance at the central garden and then out of the long windows towards the street. Something stands under the lamp, watching the house. I stare at it, my heart suddenly hammering. It's so indistinct, a dark idea of a person in the pool of the street light.
It raises its head and looks at me.
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Chapter 1-3: Monsters and Criminals
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I scramble into my workroom fast. "House, lock internal doors, set defensive wards to maximum sensitivity."
I yank open the back refrigerator and pull one of the high purity component bottles out of the top. Four balls of reagent go into my alabaster and ebony casting bowl. They're a mix of sulfur, beeswax, butter and gold dust. Four should be enough, at this level of purity each one would have the killing power somewhere between a tank main gun round and an anti ship missile. Unless this thing is tougher than any of the previous things that hunted me, it'll die to that.
"Mirror. Show me across the street." I call out, raising my hand and making the ritual gesture. My mirror flickers for a moment, then shows a photorealistic image of area under the street lamp, tracking what I wanted to see.
Empty.
"Show me the park."
Empty. "Thermal overlay." The view flickers to bright black and white. Still nothing. "Etheric." Glowing magical lines, pools of green mist and rising tides of magic, but no figure.
Shit shit shit! Where is it? "House. Launch the drones!" I have a sudden, horrid, thought, pull up the security system on the room's terminal, listed alongside the integrity on every door and window, internal and external cameras. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Pure technology, wired in to the computer in this room, unhackable without some serious magic I should be able to detect.
I snap around, looking behind me, guard up, checking the room.
Empty. Just me.
I bring up the feed from the drones. Nothing. A few passers-by, coming back from the last train, but no one with the same aura as that figure. I'd know if I saw them again, I'm sure of that. Could it have cut into a building? I use the mirror again, scan through the neighboring houses. Just people going about their business. No sign of it.
It's gone.
I have a condition: the symptoms are migraine headaches, seizures, and being hunted by monsters from the outer dark. I'm eighteen years old. If I don't find a cure, I'll be dead by twenty-one.
When I was thirteen, my father killed my family. He didn't mean to. The Nishifunes have always been a family connected to magecraft, involved with bringing the learnings of Western magic to Japan, and the learnings of Eastern magic to the West. It was only in later generations that we fell on hard times. My great grandfather sunk most of the family fortune, much of our mystic lore, and himself in an ill-advised venture during the Second World War. It wasn't a particularly monstrous enterprise, not like some, but it killed him and broke the family.
My grandfather was dead before I knew him, killed by the pressure to scramble his way up from nothing. My father tried to rebuild, sought safety in service to another of the great Mage families, the Aratani. He married, and had me, his daughter, who he betrothed to the Aratani's younger son, Kaito, who you have already met.
Only, he made a mistake. He didn't consider the character of Kaito's elder brother Eitaro, and how unsuitable he was to be heir.
I remember the night when Aratani Nonoka, the family matriarch, called him in. I was playing outside the door, my mother, a non-mystic exiled upstairs. It was in the drawing-room of the Aratani clan's giant old house. I don't really remember what she said but I remember how she looked at him, the pity in her eyes. The calm way she explained what had to happened. How the match was now impossible, as Kaito had become heir.
I remember the way his face froze. How no one seemed to realize how angry he was except me.
That awful expression. That black rage only his family saw.
I ran out and went to the summer house. It was dark, but I couldn't stay inside. I was afraid. I couldn't stay in there. The summer house, a woody space of spiders and chill in the dark was still the refuge I took in the day.
I think it was the distance that saved me. No one in the house survived.
I was curled up on the sofa inside with my knees up to my face, crying, when I had my first attack.
It started as a sharp pain behind my eyes, a swirl of colour across my vision. I felt hot and sick and the light hurt.
And then through it, I saw.
My father walked down the steps to the basement. Each step took him lower, towards something else. Towards the place I dreaded.
The Aratani family are keepers of the forbidden. They kept the black books, they kept other things. The worst thing they kept was in the basement, something they kept locked up.
There was blood on him, and on the sledgehammer across his shoulder. Not his. As he approached, I could hear him chanting, unsealing the magic around the door At the door to the basement he stopped, pushed a bloody hand onto the code pad. The door hissed open.
Behind it, the basement, a long glass window. Behind it, the spider stood. My father hit the close button on the door and shut it to seal.
It spoke to my father as if they were old friends.
For long the Aratani have imprisoned me, and see how their fortune has grown.
"You have had nothing to do with that."
Then why am I in a glass cell, why not sealed in a warded box a thousand meters below the earth? Why can you speak to me?
"They betrayed me. I was to become a member of their household. My poor daughter, she was to be married to a scion! We were to have a fortune."
A sad tale, but why waste time on such explanations? You are committed are you not? You killed to come down here.
"The legends say that a deal with a spider can grant great fortunes, not just for one generation but for all that follow."
I have heard such things.
"Will you grant my family fortune? If I free you?"
If you free me, then your family shall have all the fortune that is mine to grant.
"You swear to it?" My father looked back behind him, there was the sound of banging, someone at the door. I arched in agony, hoping desperately they'd break it down. Hoping for the bang of an explosive charge, the flare of fire or the crack of a gunshot to kill my father where he stood, anything to end the terrible pain in my head.
I so swear.
My father lifted the hammer and swung it into the engraved glass of the cage. "Then go free!"
The convulsions almost broke my back.
When I came back to myself there was screaming. The air was screaming. People were screaming.
Something was hunting me. I knew it as certainly as I had ever known anything. I got up and ran out of the summerhouse, out into rain suddenly pouring down from what had been a clear sky. I looked at the house once, saw energies flickering around it, impossible colours, and the thing coming after me.
I remember every step of getting to the road, the entire run a single long flashbulb, I remember hearing the thing getting closer and closer behind me. The alien sound that its breathing. So close. So close!
I got to the road and saw the lights of a car coming out on me. I thought it was going to hit me, and fell over and screamed but instead, it stopped and a man stepped free. He was a tall, long-haired and dark-eyed, so handsome, seeming both younger than my father and far, far older.
I sometimes wonder what would have become of me if not for the complete coincidence of him passing. Or did he sense something amiss and come to see?
I said something like "Monster!" and pointed. I saw it for the first time then. It was a thin horror, taller than a man, faceless and emaciated. I knew it was not the spider, but could feel it held a part of its power. He looked down the slope, saw the thing and raised a hand. I turned in time to see him yank the lightning down, the blast catching the hunter in a flash so bright it washed out the colours flickering around the house. I was awestruck. He walked forward to me, dropping to one knee before me, bringing him to a little above my eye level.
"So, young lady, what--"
I wanted to say, say something. Say that I was sure my father had done something terrible. Thank him for saving me or maybe just burst into tears. I wanted to warn him about the estate and the madness that was happening again.
I wanted never to feel so helpless again.
"Teach me! Teach me to do that!"
He laughed, looked me in the eye. "Alright."
And that's how I met Kondou Yuu, my teacher.
I don't get any sleep that night. There are ways around it. Instead I check out the black book, and take initial probes. Actually penetrating it is a long process which takes most of the time till morning. Then I crack it open for real and find that the whole thing is written in a cipher that I can't read.
This is obviously quite unacceptable, so I start the process of getting information. For starters, I call up the people who gave me the information to acquire this black book in the first place. I have school today, and I don't want to miss volleyball practice, so it is agreed they will come here, as soon as the call has ended.
The Kaneda brothers are a pair of shady import-export guys who run supplies for several foreign convenience store chains for expats, antiquarian items, and, as a sideline, a business buying and selling artifacts of the occult. They also sell information.They sold me on a certain antiquarian book chain having a secret archive and what it might contain. This is a good time to give them their reward in person, to see what information they have about the people using the artifacts, and to scare them.
I spy on them magically in the car. The younger one doesn't want to be up so early, is complaining he hasn't had any breakfast and that if he'd wanted to keep hours like this he'd have become a salaryman.
"You're not smart enough to be a salaryman," the older one, Tanaka, grunts, looking up at my house.
His brother gives him a look, then glances up at my house. "Shit. She really lives alone in a place like this?"
"Don't say any of that shit when we're inside." Tanaka looks back at him. "She's our ticket to real money if we play our cards right. You better not give away the show."
So. I get up from in front of the mirror and head down. The door opens and the two guys come in, leaving their shoes at the door politely. "Uh, Nishifune-San?" Tanaka asks.
"Come straight in." My voice comes out of the wall, what they might think is hidden speakers. The security door swings open. The two shrug and walk in on me in the living room. I'm wearing my school uniform, sitting at a table and eating breakfast. "Gentlemen. I figured you might be hungry."
"Kind of you Miss," Tanaka says, sitting opposite. "Your agents got the goods for you then?"
"My agents, yeah." I smile a little, and wave a hand food begins to serve onto their plates. Both men goggle. "I have a full continental spread here, so do tuck in."
"Ah-ah." The younger one looks at the toast like he's seeing things. "How the fuck--"
"I was spying on you in the car you know." I lean forward, let a smug smirk come over my face. "I can spy on people wherever they go."
"Ma'am. Please forgive--" Tanaka starts, then gasps, fingers going to his throat, wrestling for invisible fingers. His brother tries to get up, then finds himself straining against nothing. Then he also feels a grip on his throat.
"Don't interrupt me." I give them a cold look, release a bit of the pressure. "We've done good business together. So I'm disappointed. I'm really disappointed. First you sell me books that are ciphered, and now you're plotting to take me for everything I've got. I'm actually upset." my invisible grip tightens.
Both men are watching me eyes very wide. I tap a finger on the table "So, do you have the cipher that these are written in to sell me?"
"Ah-ah." Tanaka goes pale. "Well uh, uh, I know where they are, I had them but--"
The hand tightens on his throat briefly then releases. He pants.
"Tell me what happened."
Tanaka doesn't look like he wants to speak so his younger brother takes over. "Well you see," he takes a deep breath, "there's this gang... "
There's a gambling house, Kanezawa Palace, a fairly low-rolling underground place, that specializes in items of minor occult interest. There must be a hundred places like that, a thousand, in every city and in every continent. If people aren't auctioning mystic knowledge or stealing it, they'll be gambling it.
This particular gambling house has got a hold of the cipher key for these books, a glass reading device which on its own is just a magnifying glass that won't break and won't get dirty. The brothers here were planning to see how much money they could get out of me for it, and hoping to grab me into the bargain. They didn't have the device yet, but they had a contact inside the casino, who was going to make sure they won it.
Then someone gave a particularly vicious but ultimately forgettable gang called Boxcutter access to superpowers, and they grabbed every underground operation not protected by one of the more powerful syndicates.
Worse, after what happened in the last few days, they're liable to get raided by the police soon, which will put my cipher key in the much harder to reach Tokyo police evidence room. So all I need to do is raid the club before the police get there and while being hunted by a supernatural horror.
Easy.
The younger Kaneda completes this story and then looks at me imploringly.
"Well, thank you. You've been very helpful. If there's no further unpleasantness, I'll pay you your usual rate. I hope we can do more business in the future."
Both men bow, and withdraw.
They never do end up having breakfast.
I start the ball rolling on intelligence collection that day. Human intelligence (HUMINT), consists of sending an encrypted message to a certain Yakuza acquaintance of mine looking for any information on the Paradise or the gang who run it. Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is provided by one of my drones, this one with alchemically doped batteries and the antenna. The antenna is the front end of a police Stingray mobile phone intercept system to hover over the club and pull in any mobile phone signals used in proximity. Another drone provides imagery (IMINT) from a camera, checking the place out. Both are painted blue and white and should hopefully avoid detection.
Finally, I set up my magic mirror to show me the clubs inside. This takes a complicated ritual and an even more fiddly set up of my digital camera so it can record what the mirror is showing while I am out.
With all that done, I head to school.
It's kind of dumb to worry about showing up for volleyball recruitment when I have a hunter on me. I should just stay inside my security, work through the intelligence as it comes in, be practical.
Maybe, but I can't help feeling like if I start down that path I'll go out less and less, do less and less of the things I like, until there's nothing left of me but work.
What's even the point of living beyond twenty-one if I don't have a life?
As far as I can tell, the hunter isn't on me now anyway. I'm running periodic checks, the car driving in counter tailing patterns, several drones as outriders, cameras checking surrounding streets for anything following. Nothing.
The thing has vanished.
There's frequently a stage of the hunt like this, where the hunter shows itself and then vanishes, sometimes for weeks, before the active phase begins.
That day I eat lunch with Manako in the shade of the trees where the school grounds start to fall away. She always has a fantastic bento, which she prepares herself, way better even than the expensive prepared ones I get.
"I made extra today." She offers me a wrapped box. "Do you want it?"
"Yes! I definitely want it." I unwrap it. "I hope I can eat all this and mine."
"Urgh. I wish I could eat like you.How is your figure so nice?"
"Relentless exercise mostly." I lean back. "I exercise a lot, it helps with my condition."
"How is that anyway?" she asks.
"No attacks lately." That's interesting, actually. Usually, I seize when a hunter comes. This one is different. I'll need to be careful.
"Do you think you'll go to the nationals this year?"
"I think we will." I stretch. "I want to close my last year out with a bang."
"What are you going to do after university?"
"I don't know yet." I'm going to be dead after university most likely. Actually a lot worse than dead. "Travel maybe. I've got enough money I'm never going to need to work. I might put a lot more time into my Instagram cosplay."
"Must be nice. My parents are already talking about a career and a husband."
"Both at once huh?" I smirk. "How modern of them." She blushes a little.
"Do you ever think there might be more to the world than this?" She looks out over the valley, the fringe of her hair blowing a little in the breeze in a way that makes me want to comb it. She has a pixie cut, but somehow always manages to make it look untidy.
"What do you mean?" I look at her.
"I mean, everything is so grey. I want to see something more." She sighs. "I mean even Espers are getting drawn into the grey. Turning into just another way to take exams. I just wish there was something more. "
For a moment, seeing the expression on her face, I almost lose it and tell her everything.
But I can't. I can't just pull someone over the threshold. Not with what's coming after me.
"Don't be too down." I give in and start to comb her hair back. She lets me. "There's still a whole year of school, and there's college."
"Urgh. Even school's not so good. I hate cram school." I'm so glad I don't have to actually do that. I really do not have time.
Manako relaxes under my hands, eyes closing. "Sometimes I feel like my whole life was already determined when I was born," she mutters.
"There's always decisions in life." I lift the comb away. "You just have to grab them when they come by."
In retrospect, this is not the wisest advice I've ever given.
After school, and helping recruit a new generation to the volleyball team, I have a doctor's appointment. Akigawa Alice, my doctor, is kind of a sketchy weirdo, but then all mages are. She operates a small clinic in the back streets near Sangenjaya Station. I take the train there to vary my routine from a random station and realize halfway that it's on me.
It's hard to check for followers in the crowded conditions of a Tokyo subway at this hour, but equally hard to follow. The best time to spot people is as the car clears out, look for people who pause near the doors, in position to watch who leaves.
And there she is.
I decide that I'll call her Office Lady. I always make a name for my hunters. In her human guise, she looks like a woman in her forties, dressed for work in a frumpy suit. Just another pink-collar worker on her way home from work.
Look closer and the discrepancies multiply. She's wearing sunglasses on the subway. Her tie is on backwards. Her shirt is light blue, not white, and her shoes, seen through a gap in the crowd, are on the wrong feet.
She looks at me, head tilted slightly as the car cleans out, and for a moment I think we're going to go at it right there in the subway car. Then people flood into the car between us, and the moment passes.
I cover one eye, a simple bit of symbolic magic, sacrificing for wisdom. She's still there, a void of life-force among the brightness of the other passengers, watching me. Waiting. We stand like that watching each other as the next station rolls up, and people pour out of the car.
At the last second, as people are coming in, I push my way out against the tide. A guard yells at me for my rudeness, but I'm off and running, whispering words that'll obscure my identity to facial recognition cameras.
Is she on me? I dare not look back. Instead, I bolt up out of the station, hitting my IC card on the ticket machine while barely slowing and bolt around the corner, down a series of alleys, just random turns until my breath runs out and I make a sudden turn, coming up with my hands raised to cast.
Nothing. No running steps, not even the shouting of angry station staff about people running in their station.
I do a slow circle, one eye covered, looking, looking. No sign of it to the limits of the vision this spell will give.
With shaking hands I open my bag and stuff my school uniform's top layer and tie into it, then, reaching into the folded space of another fold pull out a white jacket with a rather fetching red rose on it, zip it on and pull out my mobile phone. How did it find me? I should have detected magic to locate me. It was just there. Close enough it could have walked over and touched me.
I'm going to double back and change lines. It's not that hard to get to Sangenjaya.
I text Alice that I might be late.
"You look terrible," Alice says cheerfully as I come in. "What happened, did you run here?"
"Ran into a complication. Had to do some E&E."
"You know, even compared to me, Nozomi, you're a fucking nerd."
Alice's is a medium height, languid, gothy young woman with glasses, very dark hair and very white skin, which I think maybe an experimental side effect. She has a habit of wearing really high heels and a really short skirt under a white lab coat. The office is mostly normal, except for the Dreamcast 3 and Playstation 4 set up semi-covertly under the desk next to a rack of trauma centre disks and a handful of other games.
Alice is in her early twenties, still in the middle of a PhD in biology. I don't know what she did to get her medical license so early, but she's the best magical doctor I have access to, and genuinely one of the best in Tokyo.
"Were you being chased?" she asks raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah, there's a hunter on me." I rub my eyes. "I think I lost it though. I've checked a dozen times on the way in."
She walks over to her computer and checks the external cameras. "Well, if it does break in here, then I'll finally have a live one to study." She gets up, grabs me by the shoulders and steers me into the back. The second room of the clinic is much stranger, a mass of heavily customized medical machinery, an eclectic mix of older machines thrown out by hospitals and cutting edge computer equipment brought off the shelf.
"So, if you're being hunted, you had another attack?"
"That's the odd thing. No. I've felt fine for like a month. My last attack was in London, and I killed that one."
"Alright, well, dump your clothes and get on the scanner."
I remove my clothes and step into the scan pod. It's a sinister-looking reclining bed thing that I think started out as an MRI but now has half a dozen different high-tech components bolted onto it. "You didn't get any additional metal implanted into you since we saw one another last, right?"
"No."
"Cool." Alice does something and the machine begins to shift and ripple around me, caressing me with various scan types. "Hmm."
"Hmm?"
"Your life energy is still being drained, but I'm not seeing any new holes." She walks over as the machine completes its cycle. "The drain doesn't appear to have speeded up either."
"So this isn't a fresh phase of my symptoms?" I'm still doomed, but hearing that makes me feel better. I was worried, not just about the monster, but about what it might mean.
"No." She walks over and frowns down at me. "You're sure this is a hunter?"
"It looks like one." I rub my eyes and pull myself out of the machine, starting to reassemble my outfit. "It acts like one." I rub my eyes. "I know you know? When I see one. I know that it's one of them."
"Hmm." She sits at the desk and taps her lips with a carbon stylus. "We've known for a while that your vital force is being consumed, but everything we've tried hasn't stopped it. Sometimes you just have a new hole." She puts the stylus down and looks at me. "I want to introduce internal sensors." She rummages around and pulls out a pack of sterile fluid. "I want to be able to record what happens at the exact moment of you having an attack."
"Alright." I take the sensor and look at it carefully. There's something in the fluid, like iron filings "So what? I swallow it?"
"No, it's injected. Here." She pulls out a gas injector, then loads the fluid and puts it on my chest under my breast. There's a thump and a chill of the injection. Alice checks the monitor then nods. "Okay, it's giving me good telemetry. Memory looks good too."
I put my shirt back on. "You know, we could probably induce something like an attack by triggering my curse. It's not exactly hard to do."
"No." Alice shakes her head. "The acute symptoms you get from that are too dangerous. In my medical opinion, you shouldn't risk it."
"But--"
"Who's the doctor here?" Alice gives me a cool look over her glasses. "Oh yeah, it's me. So stop asking."
I'm cursed to have money. If I ever drop below having a billion yen, then I have a severe physical reaction, (like the kind of reaction you get when you're hit by a car) and I suddenly have more than a billion yen again.
My Dad wanted our family to be wealthy and prosperous, well, now we are. Forever. Or at least until I die at twenty one. Unfortunately, there also seems to be an upper point. At more than two billion, I suddenly can't make any more money. Investments flatline, the market moves against me. Without action, a downtrend starts and within a few months, the curse triggers again. I pay an expensive broker to keep my fortune up, and make sure to spend more than a little of the proceeds.
"I also have some new post-seizure medication." She pulls out an inhaler. "One puff as soon after the seizure as possible to restore normal functioning. If you're in an emergency situation, two puffs will put you back on your feet from almost any wound that's not immediately fatal. It'll just really fuck you up if you don't get proper medical attention afterwards."
"Thanks Alice."
"You stay safe out there." She musses my hair. "Want a lollipop?"
I'm still moving the sweet around my mouth and trying to decide if it was worth it when I check my messages.
Phones are very insecure and you should never use one for any kind of criminal enterprise. That's why my phone actually isn't a phone. While it looks as if it's the latest Samsung Galaxy, the only things it actually shares with that design are the screen and the case. The inside is all custom micro-electronics built for me by a group of American specialists. The phone is linked through a zero-latency-magical link to The Exchange, which is the big server that links all my electronics together through an array of encryption and ZLM links.
Backing all this up, I have a series of runes hung on my devices which state that they cannot be tracked. This is all most mages bother with. This isn't actually that hard a technique to pull off for a mage, and is very effective against non-magical opposition if what you're doing is non-obvious. Of course, against another mage, and the Japanese government also has mages, even a little pressure will cause the normal rules to reassert themselves.
So I have the exchange, and I have a bunch of encrypted systems.
This is great because it means I always have five bars of signal, even on the oldest areas of the subway.
I took the subway half out of bravado, half out of a part-formed plan to ambush the Hunter if it showed its face again. It does not, and now I'm glad. Riding the subway makes it much faster to get to a late-night meeting in Kabukichō. I need to go meet the Yakuza who wishes he were my dad.
I change clothes again before I get to Kabukicho, and do my makeup. The heyday of the crackdown on Yakuza and the like has well passed, but it would be bad to go around there in even a barely recognizable Fujisaka Jogakuin uniform. I change in a public toilet, and dump my school stuff into the bag of holding in my handbag, then head down to the non-descript offices of Hagino-Gumi.
Kabukicho is busy enough tonight to present a challenging environment for counter-surveillance, so I alert them I'm being followed, get an escort in. The Yakuza leaves me near the door, saying he's got stuff to do, so I go in alone.
There's a couple of the younger guys in the outer office, who do a bit of a double-take when they see me, but I'm known here, and the guy running the lobby gives me a "Yo, Nozomi-chan!" as I enter.
"Eiji-san." I wave, then snap my fingers. "How's the new wife?"
"She's great! First kid is on the way." He nods. "Boss is expecting you, go straight up."
"Thanks." I head up the stairs, hearing the three of them talking in voices they think I can't hear.
"Is that the Boss's woman?"
"No you dickhead! She's his business partner, and don't let him hear you imply otherwise."
"A girl like that is in business with the Boss?"
"I don't understand it either."
I smile a little as I step into the second-floor office. Nagoshi Ryuta, Captain and second ranked man in Hagino-Gumi is sat behind the desk smoking when I come in. In his fifties, now, he's still a big man, muscular like an aging wrestler with skin weathered by cigarettes and fistfights.
"Nozomi-san." He waves me to a seat. "Are you well?"
"So formal Ryuta-kun." I stretch out a little on the chair and look at him. Ryuta really wants to be my father. I think he had kids and then messed up their upbringing, but even after I got him out of a tight spot with a murder charge a few years ago, he treats me like I'm a kid. In return, I suppose I mock him a little. "Your men already suspect what we're doing up here."
He blanches, then sighs. "I have the information you wanted." He pulls out an envelope. "What are you getting into something with a gang like the Boxcutters for?"
"Let's say that we have a difference of agreement."
"They cut up one of your school friends?"
I frown a bit, he's spoiling my timing, but finish anyway. "They think they should keep the mystic artifacts in their possession. I think otherwise."
"Ah. I heard they'd got involved in other side of the city stuff." He puffs, "You know there's gangs recruiting Espers now? Or colour gangs led by Espers. The countries going to hell. It'll be like America soon."
"Hey, at least the police don't have the resources to worry about organized crime anymore."
"That's the truth." He brightens a bit before glaring at me. "Be fucking careful of these guys though, they were vicious psychos even before they started getting fucking magic. You know why they call themselves the Boxcutters?"
"They all use them?"
"Their initiation right is to slit some poor fuck up with one."
"How have the cops not come down on that?"
"Run up to a guy, slash him with your cutter and run. A lot of them get caught, but if you talk, you become the next target for initiations." He sighs. "In the old days, the Yakuza would have made sure shit like that stayed off the streets."
The idea that there was an old time when the Yakuza were a bunch of goodhearted outlaws who kept the streets clean with their own moral code is, as far as I can tell, something every generation of Yakuza has believed in.
His look turns speculative. "You sure you don't want us to go get whatever this thing is for you?"
I relent. "I know you'd do that for me Ryuta-san, but I don't want to get any of your men killed because of something I did."
"You know, you could have a good life on that inheritance of yours, without risking it involved in shit like this."
I pull the box I bought with me, anti-snooping charms for their phones. "No, I honestly couldn't. Thanks for your help Ryuta-san."
"Stay safe."
Reading Ryuta's folder, Boxcutter come off as even less pleasant than previously reported. Most criminals are just poor, desperate, they join gangs for control, or because it seems badass, or because they really don't have any better prospects
Boxcutter go way beyond the stuff you'd expect from colour gangs, or even the more security conscious, less 'acceptable' criminals like triads or drug gangs. Apart from the violent initiation they practice various ritual scarring and end their ceremonies by drinking blood mix with sake. I wonder how much of this is a product of their implants, if they all had them, or whoever gave them the gear picked a gang who's culture would already support it.
The most interesting thing though is their corporate ties. They've apparently done dirty work, (like kidnapping homeless people for medical trials) for a company called Kamitouge Group, but recently broke from it in violent fashion. I suspect that link is the only reason they haven't faced a massive police crackdown, and it's only waiting now on Kamitouge to finish its own internal cleanup.
Bloodthirsty psychos with a lot of loyalty and fear of one another. It's a hard place to crack, but there are some weak points. Guys like this don't like to clean their own floors. The next night I pay a visit to a certain woman, and a large amount of money changes hands between us. I get floor plans, intelligence on the gang, ideas.
I'm set. I'll do it on Friday Night.
I yank open the back refrigerator and pull one of the high purity component bottles out of the top. Four balls of reagent go into my alabaster and ebony casting bowl. They're a mix of sulfur, beeswax, butter and gold dust. Four should be enough, at this level of purity each one would have the killing power somewhere between a tank main gun round and an anti ship missile. Unless this thing is tougher than any of the previous things that hunted me, it'll die to that.
"Mirror. Show me across the street." I call out, raising my hand and making the ritual gesture. My mirror flickers for a moment, then shows a photorealistic image of area under the street lamp, tracking what I wanted to see.
Empty.
"Show me the park."
Empty. "Thermal overlay." The view flickers to bright black and white. Still nothing. "Etheric." Glowing magical lines, pools of green mist and rising tides of magic, but no figure.
Shit shit shit! Where is it? "House. Launch the drones!" I have a sudden, horrid, thought, pull up the security system on the room's terminal, listed alongside the integrity on every door and window, internal and external cameras. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Pure technology, wired in to the computer in this room, unhackable without some serious magic I should be able to detect.
I snap around, looking behind me, guard up, checking the room.
Empty. Just me.
I bring up the feed from the drones. Nothing. A few passers-by, coming back from the last train, but no one with the same aura as that figure. I'd know if I saw them again, I'm sure of that. Could it have cut into a building? I use the mirror again, scan through the neighboring houses. Just people going about their business. No sign of it.
It's gone.
*****
I have a condition: the symptoms are migraine headaches, seizures, and being hunted by monsters from the outer dark. I'm eighteen years old. If I don't find a cure, I'll be dead by twenty-one.
When I was thirteen, my father killed my family. He didn't mean to. The Nishifunes have always been a family connected to magecraft, involved with bringing the learnings of Western magic to Japan, and the learnings of Eastern magic to the West. It was only in later generations that we fell on hard times. My great grandfather sunk most of the family fortune, much of our mystic lore, and himself in an ill-advised venture during the Second World War. It wasn't a particularly monstrous enterprise, not like some, but it killed him and broke the family.
My grandfather was dead before I knew him, killed by the pressure to scramble his way up from nothing. My father tried to rebuild, sought safety in service to another of the great Mage families, the Aratani. He married, and had me, his daughter, who he betrothed to the Aratani's younger son, Kaito, who you have already met.
Only, he made a mistake. He didn't consider the character of Kaito's elder brother Eitaro, and how unsuitable he was to be heir.
I remember the night when Aratani Nonoka, the family matriarch, called him in. I was playing outside the door, my mother, a non-mystic exiled upstairs. It was in the drawing-room of the Aratani clan's giant old house. I don't really remember what she said but I remember how she looked at him, the pity in her eyes. The calm way she explained what had to happened. How the match was now impossible, as Kaito had become heir.
I remember the way his face froze. How no one seemed to realize how angry he was except me.
That awful expression. That black rage only his family saw.
I ran out and went to the summer house. It was dark, but I couldn't stay inside. I was afraid. I couldn't stay in there. The summer house, a woody space of spiders and chill in the dark was still the refuge I took in the day.
I think it was the distance that saved me. No one in the house survived.
I was curled up on the sofa inside with my knees up to my face, crying, when I had my first attack.
It started as a sharp pain behind my eyes, a swirl of colour across my vision. I felt hot and sick and the light hurt.
And then through it, I saw.
My father walked down the steps to the basement. Each step took him lower, towards something else. Towards the place I dreaded.
The Aratani family are keepers of the forbidden. They kept the black books, they kept other things. The worst thing they kept was in the basement, something they kept locked up.
There was blood on him, and on the sledgehammer across his shoulder. Not his. As he approached, I could hear him chanting, unsealing the magic around the door At the door to the basement he stopped, pushed a bloody hand onto the code pad. The door hissed open.
Behind it, the basement, a long glass window. Behind it, the spider stood. My father hit the close button on the door and shut it to seal.
It spoke to my father as if they were old friends.
For long the Aratani have imprisoned me, and see how their fortune has grown.
"You have had nothing to do with that."
Then why am I in a glass cell, why not sealed in a warded box a thousand meters below the earth? Why can you speak to me?
"They betrayed me. I was to become a member of their household. My poor daughter, she was to be married to a scion! We were to have a fortune."
A sad tale, but why waste time on such explanations? You are committed are you not? You killed to come down here.
"The legends say that a deal with a spider can grant great fortunes, not just for one generation but for all that follow."
I have heard such things.
"Will you grant my family fortune? If I free you?"
If you free me, then your family shall have all the fortune that is mine to grant.
"You swear to it?" My father looked back behind him, there was the sound of banging, someone at the door. I arched in agony, hoping desperately they'd break it down. Hoping for the bang of an explosive charge, the flare of fire or the crack of a gunshot to kill my father where he stood, anything to end the terrible pain in my head.
I so swear.
My father lifted the hammer and swung it into the engraved glass of the cage. "Then go free!"
The convulsions almost broke my back.
When I came back to myself there was screaming. The air was screaming. People were screaming.
Something was hunting me. I knew it as certainly as I had ever known anything. I got up and ran out of the summerhouse, out into rain suddenly pouring down from what had been a clear sky. I looked at the house once, saw energies flickering around it, impossible colours, and the thing coming after me.
I remember every step of getting to the road, the entire run a single long flashbulb, I remember hearing the thing getting closer and closer behind me. The alien sound that its breathing. So close. So close!
I got to the road and saw the lights of a car coming out on me. I thought it was going to hit me, and fell over and screamed but instead, it stopped and a man stepped free. He was a tall, long-haired and dark-eyed, so handsome, seeming both younger than my father and far, far older.
I sometimes wonder what would have become of me if not for the complete coincidence of him passing. Or did he sense something amiss and come to see?
I said something like "Monster!" and pointed. I saw it for the first time then. It was a thin horror, taller than a man, faceless and emaciated. I knew it was not the spider, but could feel it held a part of its power. He looked down the slope, saw the thing and raised a hand. I turned in time to see him yank the lightning down, the blast catching the hunter in a flash so bright it washed out the colours flickering around the house. I was awestruck. He walked forward to me, dropping to one knee before me, bringing him to a little above my eye level.
"So, young lady, what--"
I wanted to say, say something. Say that I was sure my father had done something terrible. Thank him for saving me or maybe just burst into tears. I wanted to warn him about the estate and the madness that was happening again.
I wanted never to feel so helpless again.
"Teach me! Teach me to do that!"
He laughed, looked me in the eye. "Alright."
And that's how I met Kondou Yuu, my teacher.
*****
I don't get any sleep that night. There are ways around it. Instead I check out the black book, and take initial probes. Actually penetrating it is a long process which takes most of the time till morning. Then I crack it open for real and find that the whole thing is written in a cipher that I can't read.
This is obviously quite unacceptable, so I start the process of getting information. For starters, I call up the people who gave me the information to acquire this black book in the first place. I have school today, and I don't want to miss volleyball practice, so it is agreed they will come here, as soon as the call has ended.
The Kaneda brothers are a pair of shady import-export guys who run supplies for several foreign convenience store chains for expats, antiquarian items, and, as a sideline, a business buying and selling artifacts of the occult. They also sell information.They sold me on a certain antiquarian book chain having a secret archive and what it might contain. This is a good time to give them their reward in person, to see what information they have about the people using the artifacts, and to scare them.
I spy on them magically in the car. The younger one doesn't want to be up so early, is complaining he hasn't had any breakfast and that if he'd wanted to keep hours like this he'd have become a salaryman.
"You're not smart enough to be a salaryman," the older one, Tanaka, grunts, looking up at my house.
His brother gives him a look, then glances up at my house. "Shit. She really lives alone in a place like this?"
"Don't say any of that shit when we're inside." Tanaka looks back at him. "She's our ticket to real money if we play our cards right. You better not give away the show."
So. I get up from in front of the mirror and head down. The door opens and the two guys come in, leaving their shoes at the door politely. "Uh, Nishifune-San?" Tanaka asks.
"Come straight in." My voice comes out of the wall, what they might think is hidden speakers. The security door swings open. The two shrug and walk in on me in the living room. I'm wearing my school uniform, sitting at a table and eating breakfast. "Gentlemen. I figured you might be hungry."
"Kind of you Miss," Tanaka says, sitting opposite. "Your agents got the goods for you then?"
"My agents, yeah." I smile a little, and wave a hand food begins to serve onto their plates. Both men goggle. "I have a full continental spread here, so do tuck in."
"Ah-ah." The younger one looks at the toast like he's seeing things. "How the fuck--"
"I was spying on you in the car you know." I lean forward, let a smug smirk come over my face. "I can spy on people wherever they go."
"Ma'am. Please forgive--" Tanaka starts, then gasps, fingers going to his throat, wrestling for invisible fingers. His brother tries to get up, then finds himself straining against nothing. Then he also feels a grip on his throat.
"Don't interrupt me." I give them a cold look, release a bit of the pressure. "We've done good business together. So I'm disappointed. I'm really disappointed. First you sell me books that are ciphered, and now you're plotting to take me for everything I've got. I'm actually upset." my invisible grip tightens.
Both men are watching me eyes very wide. I tap a finger on the table "So, do you have the cipher that these are written in to sell me?"
"Ah-ah." Tanaka goes pale. "Well uh, uh, I know where they are, I had them but--"
The hand tightens on his throat briefly then releases. He pants.
"Tell me what happened."
Tanaka doesn't look like he wants to speak so his younger brother takes over. "Well you see," he takes a deep breath, "there's this gang... "
*****
There's a gambling house, Kanezawa Palace, a fairly low-rolling underground place, that specializes in items of minor occult interest. There must be a hundred places like that, a thousand, in every city and in every continent. If people aren't auctioning mystic knowledge or stealing it, they'll be gambling it.
This particular gambling house has got a hold of the cipher key for these books, a glass reading device which on its own is just a magnifying glass that won't break and won't get dirty. The brothers here were planning to see how much money they could get out of me for it, and hoping to grab me into the bargain. They didn't have the device yet, but they had a contact inside the casino, who was going to make sure they won it.
Then someone gave a particularly vicious but ultimately forgettable gang called Boxcutter access to superpowers, and they grabbed every underground operation not protected by one of the more powerful syndicates.
Worse, after what happened in the last few days, they're liable to get raided by the police soon, which will put my cipher key in the much harder to reach Tokyo police evidence room. So all I need to do is raid the club before the police get there and while being hunted by a supernatural horror.
Easy.
The younger Kaneda completes this story and then looks at me imploringly.
"Well, thank you. You've been very helpful. If there's no further unpleasantness, I'll pay you your usual rate. I hope we can do more business in the future."
Both men bow, and withdraw.
They never do end up having breakfast.
*****
I start the ball rolling on intelligence collection that day. Human intelligence (HUMINT), consists of sending an encrypted message to a certain Yakuza acquaintance of mine looking for any information on the Paradise or the gang who run it. Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is provided by one of my drones, this one with alchemically doped batteries and the antenna. The antenna is the front end of a police Stingray mobile phone intercept system to hover over the club and pull in any mobile phone signals used in proximity. Another drone provides imagery (IMINT) from a camera, checking the place out. Both are painted blue and white and should hopefully avoid detection.
Finally, I set up my magic mirror to show me the clubs inside. This takes a complicated ritual and an even more fiddly set up of my digital camera so it can record what the mirror is showing while I am out.
With all that done, I head to school.
It's kind of dumb to worry about showing up for volleyball recruitment when I have a hunter on me. I should just stay inside my security, work through the intelligence as it comes in, be practical.
Maybe, but I can't help feeling like if I start down that path I'll go out less and less, do less and less of the things I like, until there's nothing left of me but work.
What's even the point of living beyond twenty-one if I don't have a life?
As far as I can tell, the hunter isn't on me now anyway. I'm running periodic checks, the car driving in counter tailing patterns, several drones as outriders, cameras checking surrounding streets for anything following. Nothing.
The thing has vanished.
There's frequently a stage of the hunt like this, where the hunter shows itself and then vanishes, sometimes for weeks, before the active phase begins.
That day I eat lunch with Manako in the shade of the trees where the school grounds start to fall away. She always has a fantastic bento, which she prepares herself, way better even than the expensive prepared ones I get.
"I made extra today." She offers me a wrapped box. "Do you want it?"
"Yes! I definitely want it." I unwrap it. "I hope I can eat all this and mine."
"Urgh. I wish I could eat like you.How is your figure so nice?"
"Relentless exercise mostly." I lean back. "I exercise a lot, it helps with my condition."
"How is that anyway?" she asks.
"No attacks lately." That's interesting, actually. Usually, I seize when a hunter comes. This one is different. I'll need to be careful.
"Do you think you'll go to the nationals this year?"
"I think we will." I stretch. "I want to close my last year out with a bang."
"What are you going to do after university?"
"I don't know yet." I'm going to be dead after university most likely. Actually a lot worse than dead. "Travel maybe. I've got enough money I'm never going to need to work. I might put a lot more time into my Instagram cosplay."
"Must be nice. My parents are already talking about a career and a husband."
"Both at once huh?" I smirk. "How modern of them." She blushes a little.
"Do you ever think there might be more to the world than this?" She looks out over the valley, the fringe of her hair blowing a little in the breeze in a way that makes me want to comb it. She has a pixie cut, but somehow always manages to make it look untidy.
"What do you mean?" I look at her.
"I mean, everything is so grey. I want to see something more." She sighs. "I mean even Espers are getting drawn into the grey. Turning into just another way to take exams. I just wish there was something more. "
For a moment, seeing the expression on her face, I almost lose it and tell her everything.
But I can't. I can't just pull someone over the threshold. Not with what's coming after me.
"Don't be too down." I give in and start to comb her hair back. She lets me. "There's still a whole year of school, and there's college."
"Urgh. Even school's not so good. I hate cram school." I'm so glad I don't have to actually do that. I really do not have time.
Manako relaxes under my hands, eyes closing. "Sometimes I feel like my whole life was already determined when I was born," she mutters.
"There's always decisions in life." I lift the comb away. "You just have to grab them when they come by."
In retrospect, this is not the wisest advice I've ever given.
*****
After school, and helping recruit a new generation to the volleyball team, I have a doctor's appointment. Akigawa Alice, my doctor, is kind of a sketchy weirdo, but then all mages are. She operates a small clinic in the back streets near Sangenjaya Station. I take the train there to vary my routine from a random station and realize halfway that it's on me.
It's hard to check for followers in the crowded conditions of a Tokyo subway at this hour, but equally hard to follow. The best time to spot people is as the car clears out, look for people who pause near the doors, in position to watch who leaves.
And there she is.
I decide that I'll call her Office Lady. I always make a name for my hunters. In her human guise, she looks like a woman in her forties, dressed for work in a frumpy suit. Just another pink-collar worker on her way home from work.
Look closer and the discrepancies multiply. She's wearing sunglasses on the subway. Her tie is on backwards. Her shirt is light blue, not white, and her shoes, seen through a gap in the crowd, are on the wrong feet.
She looks at me, head tilted slightly as the car cleans out, and for a moment I think we're going to go at it right there in the subway car. Then people flood into the car between us, and the moment passes.
I cover one eye, a simple bit of symbolic magic, sacrificing for wisdom. She's still there, a void of life-force among the brightness of the other passengers, watching me. Waiting. We stand like that watching each other as the next station rolls up, and people pour out of the car.
At the last second, as people are coming in, I push my way out against the tide. A guard yells at me for my rudeness, but I'm off and running, whispering words that'll obscure my identity to facial recognition cameras.
Is she on me? I dare not look back. Instead, I bolt up out of the station, hitting my IC card on the ticket machine while barely slowing and bolt around the corner, down a series of alleys, just random turns until my breath runs out and I make a sudden turn, coming up with my hands raised to cast.
Nothing. No running steps, not even the shouting of angry station staff about people running in their station.
I do a slow circle, one eye covered, looking, looking. No sign of it to the limits of the vision this spell will give.
With shaking hands I open my bag and stuff my school uniform's top layer and tie into it, then, reaching into the folded space of another fold pull out a white jacket with a rather fetching red rose on it, zip it on and pull out my mobile phone. How did it find me? I should have detected magic to locate me. It was just there. Close enough it could have walked over and touched me.
I'm going to double back and change lines. It's not that hard to get to Sangenjaya.
I text Alice that I might be late.
*****
"You look terrible," Alice says cheerfully as I come in. "What happened, did you run here?"
"Ran into a complication. Had to do some E&E."
"You know, even compared to me, Nozomi, you're a fucking nerd."
Alice's is a medium height, languid, gothy young woman with glasses, very dark hair and very white skin, which I think maybe an experimental side effect. She has a habit of wearing really high heels and a really short skirt under a white lab coat. The office is mostly normal, except for the Dreamcast 3 and Playstation 4 set up semi-covertly under the desk next to a rack of trauma centre disks and a handful of other games.
Alice is in her early twenties, still in the middle of a PhD in biology. I don't know what she did to get her medical license so early, but she's the best magical doctor I have access to, and genuinely one of the best in Tokyo.
"Were you being chased?" she asks raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah, there's a hunter on me." I rub my eyes. "I think I lost it though. I've checked a dozen times on the way in."
She walks over to her computer and checks the external cameras. "Well, if it does break in here, then I'll finally have a live one to study." She gets up, grabs me by the shoulders and steers me into the back. The second room of the clinic is much stranger, a mass of heavily customized medical machinery, an eclectic mix of older machines thrown out by hospitals and cutting edge computer equipment brought off the shelf.
"So, if you're being hunted, you had another attack?"
"That's the odd thing. No. I've felt fine for like a month. My last attack was in London, and I killed that one."
"Alright, well, dump your clothes and get on the scanner."
I remove my clothes and step into the scan pod. It's a sinister-looking reclining bed thing that I think started out as an MRI but now has half a dozen different high-tech components bolted onto it. "You didn't get any additional metal implanted into you since we saw one another last, right?"
"No."
"Cool." Alice does something and the machine begins to shift and ripple around me, caressing me with various scan types. "Hmm."
"Hmm?"
"Your life energy is still being drained, but I'm not seeing any new holes." She walks over as the machine completes its cycle. "The drain doesn't appear to have speeded up either."
"So this isn't a fresh phase of my symptoms?" I'm still doomed, but hearing that makes me feel better. I was worried, not just about the monster, but about what it might mean.
"No." She walks over and frowns down at me. "You're sure this is a hunter?"
"It looks like one." I rub my eyes and pull myself out of the machine, starting to reassemble my outfit. "It acts like one." I rub my eyes. "I know you know? When I see one. I know that it's one of them."
"Hmm." She sits at the desk and taps her lips with a carbon stylus. "We've known for a while that your vital force is being consumed, but everything we've tried hasn't stopped it. Sometimes you just have a new hole." She puts the stylus down and looks at me. "I want to introduce internal sensors." She rummages around and pulls out a pack of sterile fluid. "I want to be able to record what happens at the exact moment of you having an attack."
"Alright." I take the sensor and look at it carefully. There's something in the fluid, like iron filings "So what? I swallow it?"
"No, it's injected. Here." She pulls out a gas injector, then loads the fluid and puts it on my chest under my breast. There's a thump and a chill of the injection. Alice checks the monitor then nods. "Okay, it's giving me good telemetry. Memory looks good too."
I put my shirt back on. "You know, we could probably induce something like an attack by triggering my curse. It's not exactly hard to do."
"No." Alice shakes her head. "The acute symptoms you get from that are too dangerous. In my medical opinion, you shouldn't risk it."
"But--"
"Who's the doctor here?" Alice gives me a cool look over her glasses. "Oh yeah, it's me. So stop asking."
I'm cursed to have money. If I ever drop below having a billion yen, then I have a severe physical reaction, (like the kind of reaction you get when you're hit by a car) and I suddenly have more than a billion yen again.
My Dad wanted our family to be wealthy and prosperous, well, now we are. Forever. Or at least until I die at twenty one. Unfortunately, there also seems to be an upper point. At more than two billion, I suddenly can't make any more money. Investments flatline, the market moves against me. Without action, a downtrend starts and within a few months, the curse triggers again. I pay an expensive broker to keep my fortune up, and make sure to spend more than a little of the proceeds.
"I also have some new post-seizure medication." She pulls out an inhaler. "One puff as soon after the seizure as possible to restore normal functioning. If you're in an emergency situation, two puffs will put you back on your feet from almost any wound that's not immediately fatal. It'll just really fuck you up if you don't get proper medical attention afterwards."
"Thanks Alice."
"You stay safe out there." She musses my hair. "Want a lollipop?"
*****
I'm still moving the sweet around my mouth and trying to decide if it was worth it when I check my messages.
Phones are very insecure and you should never use one for any kind of criminal enterprise. That's why my phone actually isn't a phone. While it looks as if it's the latest Samsung Galaxy, the only things it actually shares with that design are the screen and the case. The inside is all custom micro-electronics built for me by a group of American specialists. The phone is linked through a zero-latency-magical link to The Exchange, which is the big server that links all my electronics together through an array of encryption and ZLM links.
Backing all this up, I have a series of runes hung on my devices which state that they cannot be tracked. This is all most mages bother with. This isn't actually that hard a technique to pull off for a mage, and is very effective against non-magical opposition if what you're doing is non-obvious. Of course, against another mage, and the Japanese government also has mages, even a little pressure will cause the normal rules to reassert themselves.
So I have the exchange, and I have a bunch of encrypted systems.
This is great because it means I always have five bars of signal, even on the oldest areas of the subway.
I took the subway half out of bravado, half out of a part-formed plan to ambush the Hunter if it showed its face again. It does not, and now I'm glad. Riding the subway makes it much faster to get to a late-night meeting in Kabukichō. I need to go meet the Yakuza who wishes he were my dad.
I change clothes again before I get to Kabukicho, and do my makeup. The heyday of the crackdown on Yakuza and the like has well passed, but it would be bad to go around there in even a barely recognizable Fujisaka Jogakuin uniform. I change in a public toilet, and dump my school stuff into the bag of holding in my handbag, then head down to the non-descript offices of Hagino-Gumi.
Kabukicho is busy enough tonight to present a challenging environment for counter-surveillance, so I alert them I'm being followed, get an escort in. The Yakuza leaves me near the door, saying he's got stuff to do, so I go in alone.
There's a couple of the younger guys in the outer office, who do a bit of a double-take when they see me, but I'm known here, and the guy running the lobby gives me a "Yo, Nozomi-chan!" as I enter.
"Eiji-san." I wave, then snap my fingers. "How's the new wife?"
"She's great! First kid is on the way." He nods. "Boss is expecting you, go straight up."
"Thanks." I head up the stairs, hearing the three of them talking in voices they think I can't hear.
"Is that the Boss's woman?"
"No you dickhead! She's his business partner, and don't let him hear you imply otherwise."
"A girl like that is in business with the Boss?"
"I don't understand it either."
I smile a little as I step into the second-floor office. Nagoshi Ryuta, Captain and second ranked man in Hagino-Gumi is sat behind the desk smoking when I come in. In his fifties, now, he's still a big man, muscular like an aging wrestler with skin weathered by cigarettes and fistfights.
"Nozomi-san." He waves me to a seat. "Are you well?"
"So formal Ryuta-kun." I stretch out a little on the chair and look at him. Ryuta really wants to be my father. I think he had kids and then messed up their upbringing, but even after I got him out of a tight spot with a murder charge a few years ago, he treats me like I'm a kid. In return, I suppose I mock him a little. "Your men already suspect what we're doing up here."
He blanches, then sighs. "I have the information you wanted." He pulls out an envelope. "What are you getting into something with a gang like the Boxcutters for?"
"Let's say that we have a difference of agreement."
"They cut up one of your school friends?"
I frown a bit, he's spoiling my timing, but finish anyway. "They think they should keep the mystic artifacts in their possession. I think otherwise."
"Ah. I heard they'd got involved in other side of the city stuff." He puffs, "You know there's gangs recruiting Espers now? Or colour gangs led by Espers. The countries going to hell. It'll be like America soon."
"Hey, at least the police don't have the resources to worry about organized crime anymore."
"That's the truth." He brightens a bit before glaring at me. "Be fucking careful of these guys though, they were vicious psychos even before they started getting fucking magic. You know why they call themselves the Boxcutters?"
"They all use them?"
"Their initiation right is to slit some poor fuck up with one."
"How have the cops not come down on that?"
"Run up to a guy, slash him with your cutter and run. A lot of them get caught, but if you talk, you become the next target for initiations." He sighs. "In the old days, the Yakuza would have made sure shit like that stayed off the streets."
The idea that there was an old time when the Yakuza were a bunch of goodhearted outlaws who kept the streets clean with their own moral code is, as far as I can tell, something every generation of Yakuza has believed in.
His look turns speculative. "You sure you don't want us to go get whatever this thing is for you?"
I relent. "I know you'd do that for me Ryuta-san, but I don't want to get any of your men killed because of something I did."
"You know, you could have a good life on that inheritance of yours, without risking it involved in shit like this."
I pull the box I bought with me, anti-snooping charms for their phones. "No, I honestly couldn't. Thanks for your help Ryuta-san."
"Stay safe."
*****
Reading Ryuta's folder, Boxcutter come off as even less pleasant than previously reported. Most criminals are just poor, desperate, they join gangs for control, or because it seems badass, or because they really don't have any better prospects
Boxcutter go way beyond the stuff you'd expect from colour gangs, or even the more security conscious, less 'acceptable' criminals like triads or drug gangs. Apart from the violent initiation they practice various ritual scarring and end their ceremonies by drinking blood mix with sake. I wonder how much of this is a product of their implants, if they all had them, or whoever gave them the gear picked a gang who's culture would already support it.
The most interesting thing though is their corporate ties. They've apparently done dirty work, (like kidnapping homeless people for medical trials) for a company called Kamitouge Group, but recently broke from it in violent fashion. I suspect that link is the only reason they haven't faced a massive police crackdown, and it's only waiting now on Kamitouge to finish its own internal cleanup.
Bloodthirsty psychos with a lot of loyalty and fear of one another. It's a hard place to crack, but there are some weak points. Guys like this don't like to clean their own floors. The next night I pay a visit to a certain woman, and a large amount of money changes hands between us. I get floor plans, intelligence on the gang, ideas.
I'm set. I'll do it on Friday Night.
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Chapter 1-4: Win and Lose
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Friday brings with it air that stinks of oncoming sleet. There's a low overcast, dark and full. The weather forecast says it'll hit tonight. I'm walking across the school's third-floor corridor, looking to have lunch today in the cafeteria. The food is actually quite good here. Casually, for practice more than anything else, I look out over the school.
Office Lady is standing at the gate, staring right up at me.
I grab for my phone, hit the app I use to draw designs for complex casts, then look up. She's gone. Where'd she go? I cover one eye, look for her, expecting her to be gone again, but she's not. She's moving along the perimeter of school grounds, going fast, a bolt of empty cold in the mountain's life.
"Gokigenyou Nozomi-san!"
Manako is right behind me. I didn't even notice her. "Ah, Manako-chan." I turn, try to smile.
"Is there something in your eye?"
"I uh, just have one of my migraines." I try to smile. "Sorry, we said we'd eat lunch together didn't we?"
"It's quite alright." she nods, looking at me in concern. "I just wanted to make sure you're okay. Should I take you to the nurse's office?" Without a material component, any attack I make on the thing is going to be much less powerful, but I can still probably fry it.
"No. That's okay. I'm sure it'll fade soon." I maintain my smile, maybe it looks better now? Inspiration strikes. "Could you get me some water from the vending machine?"
"Oh, yes." She runs off and I look down at my phone, page through the preloaded designs till I find the one I want, and turn to track the creature, starting to whisper names. I've got it. It's still moving, pacing around the edge of the school.
I launch the spell at it, mana surging between the design on the screen of my phone and the words I'm whispering, reaching out towards it to set it on fire.
The creature blocks the strike as if it's nothing. There's not even an explosion.
It turns and starts to make its way into the school.
"I have your water Nozomi-san." Manako comes back, offering me the bottle. "Uh, are you okay?"
All my usual poise seems to have deserted me. I'm wretched scared. Too scared. I should think up an excuse but all I have is: "Ah. I'm sorry Manako-chan. I-I I got to go!"
I grab the water and run. I need a plan.
There's the abandoned art block on the other side of the campus, almost unused now since the new one opened, and still in the process of being redecorated. I can head in there. Using the water and my emergency kit I should be able to get a better kill spell going, especially if I trick into a fixed position.
I sprint across into the building, then pick an internal room. A quick rune on the wall in water to decoy my presence and I dodge around another corner, drawing up a circle on the wall.
Footsteps outside. I lean against the wall, finger above the activation glyph. Someone is walking down the corridor outside, steps quite. They're almost at the point, almost. Just one more step.
The footfalls stop. "Nisfune-san?" A voice calls.
I blink, put a hand to my eye. The presence outside is not a void, but very much alive. There's something less alive next to it, but again, something fundamentally Of This World.
No sign of the hunter, not anywhere in my radius of vision.
I know who this is.
"Reijou-san." I step out. "And companion." Reijou Yuuko, a seventeen-year-old second year, short-haired, athletic, average height. I've always thought she looks like an otome game protagonist. Next to her is a large black dog, now fading back into the ether as it senses the danger from me is less.
Remember how I said the school was haunted? Well, Reijou is from a long line of exorcists who paid for her to come here to keep the place out of trouble. Exorcists tend to be a lot more into actually containing outbreaks of the supernatural than mages are. We've helped one another a few times in the past, mostly me giving her semi-cryptic hints to cover up the fact that I don't know that much about ghosts.
"Are you alright Nisfune-san? Something came onto campus. When I confronted it, it just turned around and left."
I sometimes wonder exactly what power rests inside Reijou Yuuko's slight frame.
Right now I'm too frazzled to be anything but gracious. I bow. "Thank you Reijou-san. You saved me." The words feel a little bitter. I should be able to save myself.
"What was that?" She asks.
"You know how I once said that you shouldn't get involved with me Reijou-san?" I take a long drink of water, then collapse on one of the old chairs. "Well, that was one of the reasons why."
She frowns at me. "If it threatens the school--"
"I know! I know alright!" I rub my eyes. "I'm dealing with it tonight. If I can't," then it won't be a problem anymore. "If I can't, then I promise I'll tell you everything, and we can deal with it together."
I don't want to bring this sweet girl into my family's grubby legacy. She has her own concerns. She doesn't need mine.
I need to end this tonight.
I know that these things are somehow linked to my life energy, so there's the possibility that they can use that to track me. However, there are metaphysical problems with that. The number one being that I've already thought of that and taken precautions. I can't stop the life drain, but I can bounce the signal around. If it was tracking me through my life, then it would have bounced to one of the offsets and I'd have got the drop on it.
Other than the soul link, there's only a limited number of ways that you can track a specific person in an area the size of Tokyo. Scrying would be detectable. Fate manipulation is one I considered, I'm not actually that good at it but I can pay someone. A check with a specialist tells me, I'm not entangled.
You can't track my phone. Even a military-grade electromagnetic sensor wouldn't be able to do it without detectable scrying. I'd have noticed a follower. So what does that leave?
Actually, something fairly obvious.
It's at high altitude, a long-winged design. One of the older American models.
A drone.
I thought horrors from the outer dark wouldn't use technology, but then I already met some that did. More American equipment, and injected into Tokyo's busy air traffic pattern. This has some implications.
And why am I being stalked when I didn't have an attack? Well now. What else have I been doing lately?
"I'm an idiot," I mutter myself. Manako gives me a look from beside me in class, concerned. I smile at her, trying to tell her that it'll all be okay, and finally feeling like it will be. Now all I have to do is come up with a plan.
There's snow falling when I depart home, sneaking out a side door. My car left earlier, and Office Lady appeared in proximity. I'm still not sure how it's moving but it's definitely not near me. I was pretty certain they were tracking the car, because it would be a nightmare to track a single pedestrian in Tokyo from a high altitude drone.
Of course, my house has multiple ways that you can move out, covered against the most common detection methods like thermals. I get out onto the street and merge with the flow of civilian traffic. I'll get the subway across town, and play some poker. Office Lady can chase her own tail for a while. She'll be able to track me down eventually I'm sure, but I have time.
Kanezawa Palace is in Roppongi, a rich area of nightclubs and upmarket houses where foreigners tend to hang out. It's at the edge of it, built into an old nightclub which was abandoned after its previous owner went down for two life sentences for drug trafficking.
I don't take any chances on approach, eye-covered scan, check for any voids. Nothing. Good. The building is about what you'd expect from an old nightclub, a grand but dilapidated place, with peeling finery dating back to the middle of the nineties. A time capsule.
There are two men lounging on the door, who pay attention as I approach, as well they should. My outfit is devastatingly monochrome and expensive, which I hope will distract from the really vital element of it, which is the white silk gloves. I picked a pair that basically vanish into my skin and hope they won't notice. The jacket has an inserted layer of anti-stab material, and some kevlar, some magic enough to stop the kind of bullets I'm likely to encounter here. I have a handbag, Italian and red, and a briefcase, that's where the money is and where I want them to look.
I can't say that they're well dressed. Both are trying to look like they might actually work here, in cheap blue suits and colourful host shirts, but neither of them can pull it off. They look like a pair of schoolboys who've just rolled down a hill. Hoodies and jeans would have fit them better.
"Yo Ojou-chan." One grins, no, it's really more of a leer. "You looking for a good night?"
I'm pretty sure if I don't go willingly they're going to grab me old school and hold me hostage in there. "Maybe I am. I hear you've got a poker game here with some interesting stakes?"
"Ah." Both nod to one another, any concerns they had about why someone dressed as expensively as I am would be in a place like this. "You have a stake?"
I hold up the briefcase on my hands and flip it open, showing the money inside. This is going to be the tricky part. It's possible they're going to just grab for the bag, and then try to do something to me. If so, well, I have a contingency. It's just a lot neater if they let me in.
I relax a little when the left one speaks "Lemme call the boss." He runs a hand over his chin. "He'll get you settled right in."
His friend titters. I don't have to wait long for a tall, older guy, kind of heavy and muscular. He's doing better than his doormen, wearing a jacket without a shirt, and a big knife stuck in a sheath on his hip. We go through another round of "Ojou-chans" and him eye-fucking me before he leads me out of the cold and towards the back room.
The outer area of the club is set up with a bunch of different, mostly fairly low stakes betting tables, with a group of mostly low-stakes party-goers wandering around. The decoration is about what you'd expect from a semi-abandoned club, a lot of fresh paint trying to cover up decay, though as I noticed from some of my recon, they sure do have a lot of pot plants. Staff seem to be dealers and a few women in bunny girl outfits, none of whom look more than surface-level happy to be here, wander around with drinks, and I'm pretty sure helping the house cheat. There's also gangers, mostly at the bar, some in suits, most in hoodies and jeans, having a good time. Some are gambling, but only some. They mostly seem like security.
The boss leads me into the back, making a show of instructing a man to bring me chips on the way. It's not quite a room, not quite not, The door is a curtainless arch, and at the right angle I'll have a good view over the whole club. There's a green felt card table and a circle of men around it. I'm the youngest and the only woman. A bunny girl waits to one side with a tray of drinks. I make a mental note of her position. Not going to let her get behind me.
The prizes stand at one end, mystic objects stand like prizes at a fair, or a legal casino, each with an amount of chips you need to win it in front. There is a book with gold leaf pages, a broken knife, a carved clay statue, a jade bowl, and there at one end, the mystic glass. Going cheap.
Of course, given who these guys are, and the way they're looking at me then I'm pretty sure they're not going to let me go that easily.
Still, for now, it's just time to play poker.
There are four other guys playing tonight: A big, scar-faced yakuza with a caterpillar mustache and tattoos peeking out of an open shirt. A thin, dangerous-looking bald man wearing leather driving gloves and a sharp suit. An empty-eyed businessman, grey at the temples who is giving me a look just as predatory as any of the gang, and a white-haired guy in an actually not bad looking white suit who is looking increasingly uncomfortable with the company he's keeping.
Now to see how the poker club stacks up against these guys.
It turns out, not so badly. I win more than I lose, though I'm not as good as the bald guy who strikes me as maybe a professional player. If I was planning to actually win the game, this would be a problem.
We're five hands in, just about to deal when the gang leader comes back in. "Well now." He grins, and I get a sinking feeling that it's going to be something nasty. "It seems that we've got a special prize today. Just found, snooping around outside." He's looking at me, smirking, and the sinking feeling grows.
Two of his men pull a girl in. They have a bag over her head but I know who it is before they pull it away. Manako looks different outside school uniform, her hair tousled up, glasses askew from the bag. They have her arms locked up behind her, and she looks terrified. "Nozomi!" She blurts. "I'm sorry! I followed you! I shouldn't--"
She breaks off as the leader puts a boxcutter to her throat. "Easy there honey." He smiles. "If your friend can really play, you're in no danger." He looks up at me, eager. "If she can't, well I'm sure she can be a prize too."
The white-haired man glares. "So, that's the kind of place this is is it?"
"Yeah. That's right." The gang leader stares him down for a long moment. The Yakuza and the bald guy look mostly unbothered, the businessman is perking up. Creep. I make a decision about him. "Well, play on then."
One of his toughs comes and stands behind my chair, hands on the back. Another is holding Manako. She's not crying as much as I expected, her eyes are almost eager. I take a deep breath, wait for my cards.
"Hey bitch! You can't just walk in here."
Here we go.
The two men at the door are facing a disheveled figure just stepped in out of the rain. She's old and greying at the temples, dressed for work. Shoes still on the wrong feet. The two gangers step forward, menacingly, but she ignores them, looking at me. I look back. As I watch, one of the gangers grabs her by the shoulder, then screams as she unfolds.
Human guise falls away as the hunter elongates. It's pyramidal, centauriod, four legs on the bottom, two sets of four arms, one on each side. On the two, a three-cornered head with a lamprey mouth. Pure white, the same white as the worm things in the mouth of the man I killed.
It lifts the ganger who grabbed it up in one had and pulls him in two with a quick gesture. People start to scream running for the exits. The other players are on their feet, shouting.
"Fucking monster." The other man on the door shouts. "Fucking monster!"
The leader pulls his knife and points it at the horror. "This is our club!" He shouts. "Our! Fucking! Club!"
His men cheer, snarling like wolves. I see them breath in and clench up, igniting their powers. They pull weapons and charge the thing on mass. The guy behind me hasn't moved but he's looking. I pull the wire coil I have in my pocket out and slap it against him.
He feels it in time to wonder before I juice him with it and his implants go completely haywire. He drops, going into spasm. The other one comes at me around the table, but he's in the magnet's range and his motions become an uncoordinated stumble that end in a kick to the head.
"Don't fucking move!" the one in front of Manako grabs for a knife. "Don't move or I'll--"
I spit a word that yanks him away from her, then slams him into the wall. "Manako! Grab the magnifying glass!" I point at the cipher key. "We need too--"
The businessman grabs me from behind, bearing me over. "Leaving so soon?" He giggles. "Leaving so soon? Leaving so soon?"
White worms coil out of his throat.
I don't want to open my mouth and have one invade my throat so I shove a hand up into him and splay my fingers just so. The blast knocks him flying across the room and I speak a word of fire. He burbles, rises, more armoured than the previous one, then the white-haired man knocks him down with a chair. He twitches a few times then starts to burn in earnest.
Male formal fashion is actually so bad that even these things can get the hang of it.
At the door, the gang are coming at the thing in a rushing mob, moving too fast and smooth for humans, blades of darkness outlining their hands. It meets them with alien grace, limbs extending to grab and strip, space bending as it gyrates, superpositional, tearing through men one after another, even as they hack and beat at it, opening up great wounds.
The pro and the Yakuza look at one another, rising too, looking between me and the screaming carnage at the door. "I only want this." I indicate the cipher key in Manako's hand. "Take whatever you came here for if it's anything else."
Both men look at one another, then one grabs the bowl, the other the knife. They run for the fire exit. The bunny girl has already gone through it and out. Manako, showing a surprising amount of initiative, grabs the book and the statue.
The old guy is waiting at the exit, holding it open for us. "This part of a plan of yours young lady?" He asks, a little disapproving as we run for it.
"Apart from my friend getting held at knifepoint." I look down the alley. Rain and snow is pouring down now, and there's a distant rumble of thunder. "My car is down the alley. Go to it and get in."
"No way!" Manako grabs onto me. "If you're staying, I'm staying with you!"
"That's not--" I don't have time to remonstrate with her as the gang leader stumbles out of the fire door. He's missing an arm, blood drenching his suit.
"You bitch," he slurs, "you did--"
The hunter steps out behind him and twists his head off. Manako cries, and clings onto me tighter. It's beaten up, covered in cuts and dripping white fluid, but it still advances, claws up.
I take a deep breath, tasting the rain beating down on me.
At some point, you reach the end of indirect means, of pawns. You reach the point where you have to fight.
I've fought Hunters before, killed then in traps or with ritual magic, blasted them away from a distance.
I've never fought one this strong before and never hand to hand.
I've picked fights all over Tokyo, from dojos to streets, against karate masters and yakuza, MMA professionals and delinquents. I've faced mystic martial artists, spirits and undead.
My hands are shaking.
I clench them and take a deep breath.
Gently, I detach Manako from me and take a step forward. Quiet words begin to draw geomantic power up from the ground around me, pouring into the crystalline circuits fitted into my jacket, tattooed invisibly into my skin. Silver in my clothes, black against my pale skin. I whisper words of power, fixing the alley into a bounded field, preventing it from fully phasing. Holding it to a single position.
The Hunter stops, its wounds dripping, sleet sluicing the white blood down its flanks. It watches me, yellow eyes gleaming. Its arms are triple jointed, the clawed hands clenching and unclenching.
It moves so gracefully, this many place thing, shifting back and forth like a snake. It's movements are so languid, so unconcerned. And then it rushes, coming so fast that it leaves raindrop streaks in its wake.
I dodge back, then aside, desperately shaping a spell out of my movement, holding it into only a single position. Clawed hands flicker in and I dodge and block in frantic haste. It's impossibly fast, fast enough I can't get even a single strike off, just block, dodge, and give ground. The alley moves under me in a blur, and I'm gut scared I'll trip on something.
Manako and the old man giving more behind me, crying out. They know I'm losing. I'm scared, really scared, and embarrassed too. This was my chance to show Manako how cool I really am and I'm messing it up, losing to this monster. After everything I pulled to get it to this point, I still can't beat it. Even after I beat its main weapon, its superposition, I can't--
A claw finds a gap in my guard and slashes me open. The blow cuts through the stab liner and sends me flying, cut to the skin. I hit the alley wall, bounce off and turn it into a roll and kick out, coming back to my feet just as it arrives, to block and roll through another wave of strikes. The side of the alley looms up behind me, claws tearing up stone chips as I dodge to the side, and then I'm out of options. I touch my medallion and teleport, reappearing in a slide that at least gives me distance.
The creature doesn't pursue, it stands there, watching me. I pull myself upright, feel it tug at a wound I didn't know I had. Blood drips down my side.
It looks at me, head on one side, mouth working. It seems almost disappointed, Or maybe that's just me. I'm disappointed with myself.
I pull fire out of the air, hurl it in front of a word of power. The creature's parry cuts the spell away. I dodge back again, throw more fire, then a trash can. It flicks each strike away, walking up my attacks like a man straining against a fire hose.
My muscles are burning hot and I'm taking in air in great lungfuls. The cut in my side is starting to sting badly, a hot needle even through the layers of my system's geomantic reinforcement.
This isn't working.
I've made the most elementary of mistakes. I got into a fight without a plan on how to win. I sort of thought I might dodge around it, pick at its defences, wear it down, but it's too quick, too tough.
Well then.
I can't defend and attack. I can't win if I don't attack.
I kick a second garbage can at it, and then use the time it buys me to get into my pocket and pull the inhaler. Two puffs. The drug burns through me. The creature comes in, too casual, underestimating me. I teleport into it. It's eyes widen but I'm in close, punching a fist through its guard and slamming it into one of the wounds on its side. It screams loudly and lashes at me, but I ride the blow, not backing off, taking one strike after another to land hit after hit in return. I hammer the wound in its side with kicks and punches, then shape my fingers into a rune and slap it down into the creature's blood. There's a moment's delay and then its side detonates.
It reels back a pace, but I don't give it room, just step in and ram a knee up into an armless section of its stomach. It makes a horrible buzzing noise, then slashes across my forehead, glancing me as I lean back, blood getting into my eye but not enough to stop me crushing its face.
It clutches its mouth, stumbles back a step, then collapses to its knees.
My outfit is extremely colourful now, unfortunately, that red is mostly my own blood.
The rain stings at the cut in my forehead.
The hunter shakes itself, pushing up on its lower arms.
If I don't bring this to a conclusion into the next thirty seconds I'm going to pass out.
It gets up and charges at me, roaring and I go to meet it, jumping up in a long spin kick aimed straight at its yellow eye. I put everything I've still got into the kick, mystical and physical, for a moment linking directly to the local geomancy, cutting the limiters off my tattoos.
Claws slash at me, and I feel them burn along my stomach. The landing is bad and I half roll out, coming back to my knees, guard up.
The Hunter sways, then collapses, its decapitated neck spraying purple fluid.
For a moment I stay upright, swaying, and it comes to me how good that felt. How wonderful it was to test my limits against something so strong and come out the victor. Then I fall sideways.
"Nozomi!" Manako rushes forward, jumping over the fallen creature to grab me. She pushes down on my stomach wound, applying pressure. "Nozomi! Stay with me!"
"I'm not going anywhere." I whisper, there's blood in my mouth but I'm pretty sure it's from my forehead. "Not without you." The world swims in and out. "E-except a doctor maybe."
She laughs, sort of crying. "You dumbass! Stop trying to be cool."
"Card, in my wallet-- has the address." I blink. "I-Injector in my pocket. The blue one. Jab me with it and press the button."
My vision swims. The old man is looking down at us. "I'll get my car." He says. Manako searches and comes out with the injector. I feel the cold sting of it against my neck and the growing pain eases away.
I lapse, I think, into something like unconsciousness.
I come back to myself to find Manako leaning over me. I'm on a bed surrounded by a variety of medical devices, a semi-familiar white ceiling above me. Several monitoring systems beep out my status.
Manako looks very frazzled. There's blood on her, dried, and presumably mine. "Looks like I didn't make it." I mutter. "There's an angel here."
Manako does a double-take then hugs me. "That's not funny!" She mutters into my shoulder.
Alice steps up and looks over me. "Glad to see you're feeling better." She's eating a lollipop, one of her tells for stress. "You gave us quite a scare there."
"Sorry." I lean back, look over at Manako, who's blushing and kind of wish I hadn't thrown out a lame line like that on waking. "No pain, is that good?"
"Probably." She looks at me. "Lift your legs." I do. "Good, looks like you don't have any nerve damage. I thought I was going to have to shove you in the tank."
"My clothes were totaled?" I'm in a paper surgical gown.
"I had to cut them off you." She looks at the other two, and whispers. "You know they're civilians right?"
"If they were before," I lean back, "they sure as hell aren't now."
"Alright, but be careful."
I look down at my body, which is covered in fading lines of cuts where her magic wielded my wounds together. "Yeah, I'll do that."
I get out of there in about twenty minutes, exchange cards with the old guy, who turns out to be a collector of esoterica, and then head off with Manako.
"So, you're some kind of secret Esper?" She asks.
"I'm a witch." I smile a bit. "I live in the hidden world. It's a dangerous place, as you found. I'm sorry that I--"
"No." Manako's hand stepped back but now she grips my arm tightly. "No. Don't say that you're sorry you got me into it. I got myself into it, and I wanted to. I wanted to see the real you, and now I see her I want to see more of her world."
I consider for a moment, should I do this? Can I? Shouldn't I heroically refuse as I always have and just not get close?
No. I'll be honest with myself. "It'll mean a lot of danger, and a lot of hard work."
"I'm ready for that."
"Alright." I take a deep breath, surprised that nothing hurts. "Alright, then let me take you home. I'll tell you everything."
Office Lady is standing at the gate, staring right up at me.
I grab for my phone, hit the app I use to draw designs for complex casts, then look up. She's gone. Where'd she go? I cover one eye, look for her, expecting her to be gone again, but she's not. She's moving along the perimeter of school grounds, going fast, a bolt of empty cold in the mountain's life.
"Gokigenyou Nozomi-san!"
Manako is right behind me. I didn't even notice her. "Ah, Manako-chan." I turn, try to smile.
"Is there something in your eye?"
"I uh, just have one of my migraines." I try to smile. "Sorry, we said we'd eat lunch together didn't we?"
"It's quite alright." she nods, looking at me in concern. "I just wanted to make sure you're okay. Should I take you to the nurse's office?" Without a material component, any attack I make on the thing is going to be much less powerful, but I can still probably fry it.
"No. That's okay. I'm sure it'll fade soon." I maintain my smile, maybe it looks better now? Inspiration strikes. "Could you get me some water from the vending machine?"
"Oh, yes." She runs off and I look down at my phone, page through the preloaded designs till I find the one I want, and turn to track the creature, starting to whisper names. I've got it. It's still moving, pacing around the edge of the school.
I launch the spell at it, mana surging between the design on the screen of my phone and the words I'm whispering, reaching out towards it to set it on fire.
The creature blocks the strike as if it's nothing. There's not even an explosion.
It turns and starts to make its way into the school.
"I have your water Nozomi-san." Manako comes back, offering me the bottle. "Uh, are you okay?"
All my usual poise seems to have deserted me. I'm wretched scared. Too scared. I should think up an excuse but all I have is: "Ah. I'm sorry Manako-chan. I-I I got to go!"
I grab the water and run. I need a plan.
There's the abandoned art block on the other side of the campus, almost unused now since the new one opened, and still in the process of being redecorated. I can head in there. Using the water and my emergency kit I should be able to get a better kill spell going, especially if I trick into a fixed position.
I sprint across into the building, then pick an internal room. A quick rune on the wall in water to decoy my presence and I dodge around another corner, drawing up a circle on the wall.
Footsteps outside. I lean against the wall, finger above the activation glyph. Someone is walking down the corridor outside, steps quite. They're almost at the point, almost. Just one more step.
The footfalls stop. "Nisfune-san?" A voice calls.
I blink, put a hand to my eye. The presence outside is not a void, but very much alive. There's something less alive next to it, but again, something fundamentally Of This World.
No sign of the hunter, not anywhere in my radius of vision.
I know who this is.
"Reijou-san." I step out. "And companion." Reijou Yuuko, a seventeen-year-old second year, short-haired, athletic, average height. I've always thought she looks like an otome game protagonist. Next to her is a large black dog, now fading back into the ether as it senses the danger from me is less.
Remember how I said the school was haunted? Well, Reijou is from a long line of exorcists who paid for her to come here to keep the place out of trouble. Exorcists tend to be a lot more into actually containing outbreaks of the supernatural than mages are. We've helped one another a few times in the past, mostly me giving her semi-cryptic hints to cover up the fact that I don't know that much about ghosts.
"Are you alright Nisfune-san? Something came onto campus. When I confronted it, it just turned around and left."
I sometimes wonder exactly what power rests inside Reijou Yuuko's slight frame.
Right now I'm too frazzled to be anything but gracious. I bow. "Thank you Reijou-san. You saved me." The words feel a little bitter. I should be able to save myself.
"What was that?" She asks.
"You know how I once said that you shouldn't get involved with me Reijou-san?" I take a long drink of water, then collapse on one of the old chairs. "Well, that was one of the reasons why."
She frowns at me. "If it threatens the school--"
"I know! I know alright!" I rub my eyes. "I'm dealing with it tonight. If I can't," then it won't be a problem anymore. "If I can't, then I promise I'll tell you everything, and we can deal with it together."
I don't want to bring this sweet girl into my family's grubby legacy. She has her own concerns. She doesn't need mine.
I need to end this tonight.
*****
The first rule of the magical world: things do not just happen. Sinister horror monsters still have to find you like everyone else.
I know that these things are somehow linked to my life energy, so there's the possibility that they can use that to track me. However, there are metaphysical problems with that. The number one being that I've already thought of that and taken precautions. I can't stop the life drain, but I can bounce the signal around. If it was tracking me through my life, then it would have bounced to one of the offsets and I'd have got the drop on it.
Other than the soul link, there's only a limited number of ways that you can track a specific person in an area the size of Tokyo. Scrying would be detectable. Fate manipulation is one I considered, I'm not actually that good at it but I can pay someone. A check with a specialist tells me, I'm not entangled.
You can't track my phone. Even a military-grade electromagnetic sensor wouldn't be able to do it without detectable scrying. I'd have noticed a follower. So what does that leave?
Actually, something fairly obvious.
It's at high altitude, a long-winged design. One of the older American models.
A drone.
I thought horrors from the outer dark wouldn't use technology, but then I already met some that did. More American equipment, and injected into Tokyo's busy air traffic pattern. This has some implications.
And why am I being stalked when I didn't have an attack? Well now. What else have I been doing lately?
"I'm an idiot," I mutter myself. Manako gives me a look from beside me in class, concerned. I smile at her, trying to tell her that it'll all be okay, and finally feeling like it will be. Now all I have to do is come up with a plan.
*****
There's snow falling when I depart home, sneaking out a side door. My car left earlier, and Office Lady appeared in proximity. I'm still not sure how it's moving but it's definitely not near me. I was pretty certain they were tracking the car, because it would be a nightmare to track a single pedestrian in Tokyo from a high altitude drone.
Of course, my house has multiple ways that you can move out, covered against the most common detection methods like thermals. I get out onto the street and merge with the flow of civilian traffic. I'll get the subway across town, and play some poker. Office Lady can chase her own tail for a while. She'll be able to track me down eventually I'm sure, but I have time.
Kanezawa Palace is in Roppongi, a rich area of nightclubs and upmarket houses where foreigners tend to hang out. It's at the edge of it, built into an old nightclub which was abandoned after its previous owner went down for two life sentences for drug trafficking.
I don't take any chances on approach, eye-covered scan, check for any voids. Nothing. Good. The building is about what you'd expect from an old nightclub, a grand but dilapidated place, with peeling finery dating back to the middle of the nineties. A time capsule.
There are two men lounging on the door, who pay attention as I approach, as well they should. My outfit is devastatingly monochrome and expensive, which I hope will distract from the really vital element of it, which is the white silk gloves. I picked a pair that basically vanish into my skin and hope they won't notice. The jacket has an inserted layer of anti-stab material, and some kevlar, some magic enough to stop the kind of bullets I'm likely to encounter here. I have a handbag, Italian and red, and a briefcase, that's where the money is and where I want them to look.
I can't say that they're well dressed. Both are trying to look like they might actually work here, in cheap blue suits and colourful host shirts, but neither of them can pull it off. They look like a pair of schoolboys who've just rolled down a hill. Hoodies and jeans would have fit them better.
"Yo Ojou-chan." One grins, no, it's really more of a leer. "You looking for a good night?"
I'm pretty sure if I don't go willingly they're going to grab me old school and hold me hostage in there. "Maybe I am. I hear you've got a poker game here with some interesting stakes?"
"Ah." Both nod to one another, any concerns they had about why someone dressed as expensively as I am would be in a place like this. "You have a stake?"
I hold up the briefcase on my hands and flip it open, showing the money inside. This is going to be the tricky part. It's possible they're going to just grab for the bag, and then try to do something to me. If so, well, I have a contingency. It's just a lot neater if they let me in.
I relax a little when the left one speaks "Lemme call the boss." He runs a hand over his chin. "He'll get you settled right in."
His friend titters. I don't have to wait long for a tall, older guy, kind of heavy and muscular. He's doing better than his doormen, wearing a jacket without a shirt, and a big knife stuck in a sheath on his hip. We go through another round of "Ojou-chans" and him eye-fucking me before he leads me out of the cold and towards the back room.
The outer area of the club is set up with a bunch of different, mostly fairly low stakes betting tables, with a group of mostly low-stakes party-goers wandering around. The decoration is about what you'd expect from a semi-abandoned club, a lot of fresh paint trying to cover up decay, though as I noticed from some of my recon, they sure do have a lot of pot plants. Staff seem to be dealers and a few women in bunny girl outfits, none of whom look more than surface-level happy to be here, wander around with drinks, and I'm pretty sure helping the house cheat. There's also gangers, mostly at the bar, some in suits, most in hoodies and jeans, having a good time. Some are gambling, but only some. They mostly seem like security.
The boss leads me into the back, making a show of instructing a man to bring me chips on the way. It's not quite a room, not quite not, The door is a curtainless arch, and at the right angle I'll have a good view over the whole club. There's a green felt card table and a circle of men around it. I'm the youngest and the only woman. A bunny girl waits to one side with a tray of drinks. I make a mental note of her position. Not going to let her get behind me.
The prizes stand at one end, mystic objects stand like prizes at a fair, or a legal casino, each with an amount of chips you need to win it in front. There is a book with gold leaf pages, a broken knife, a carved clay statue, a jade bowl, and there at one end, the mystic glass. Going cheap.
Of course, given who these guys are, and the way they're looking at me then I'm pretty sure they're not going to let me go that easily.
Still, for now, it's just time to play poker.
There are four other guys playing tonight: A big, scar-faced yakuza with a caterpillar mustache and tattoos peeking out of an open shirt. A thin, dangerous-looking bald man wearing leather driving gloves and a sharp suit. An empty-eyed businessman, grey at the temples who is giving me a look just as predatory as any of the gang, and a white-haired guy in an actually not bad looking white suit who is looking increasingly uncomfortable with the company he's keeping.
Now to see how the poker club stacks up against these guys.
It turns out, not so badly. I win more than I lose, though I'm not as good as the bald guy who strikes me as maybe a professional player. If I was planning to actually win the game, this would be a problem.
We're five hands in, just about to deal when the gang leader comes back in. "Well now." He grins, and I get a sinking feeling that it's going to be something nasty. "It seems that we've got a special prize today. Just found, snooping around outside." He's looking at me, smirking, and the sinking feeling grows.
Two of his men pull a girl in. They have a bag over her head but I know who it is before they pull it away. Manako looks different outside school uniform, her hair tousled up, glasses askew from the bag. They have her arms locked up behind her, and she looks terrified. "Nozomi!" She blurts. "I'm sorry! I followed you! I shouldn't--"
She breaks off as the leader puts a boxcutter to her throat. "Easy there honey." He smiles. "If your friend can really play, you're in no danger." He looks up at me, eager. "If she can't, well I'm sure she can be a prize too."
The white-haired man glares. "So, that's the kind of place this is is it?"
"Yeah. That's right." The gang leader stares him down for a long moment. The Yakuza and the bald guy look mostly unbothered, the businessman is perking up. Creep. I make a decision about him. "Well, play on then."
One of his toughs comes and stands behind my chair, hands on the back. Another is holding Manako. She's not crying as much as I expected, her eyes are almost eager. I take a deep breath, wait for my cards.
"Hey bitch! You can't just walk in here."
Here we go.
The two men at the door are facing a disheveled figure just stepped in out of the rain. She's old and greying at the temples, dressed for work. Shoes still on the wrong feet. The two gangers step forward, menacingly, but she ignores them, looking at me. I look back. As I watch, one of the gangers grabs her by the shoulder, then screams as she unfolds.
Human guise falls away as the hunter elongates. It's pyramidal, centauriod, four legs on the bottom, two sets of four arms, one on each side. On the two, a three-cornered head with a lamprey mouth. Pure white, the same white as the worm things in the mouth of the man I killed.
It lifts the ganger who grabbed it up in one had and pulls him in two with a quick gesture. People start to scream running for the exits. The other players are on their feet, shouting.
"Fucking monster." The other man on the door shouts. "Fucking monster!"
The leader pulls his knife and points it at the horror. "This is our club!" He shouts. "Our! Fucking! Club!"
His men cheer, snarling like wolves. I see them breath in and clench up, igniting their powers. They pull weapons and charge the thing on mass. The guy behind me hasn't moved but he's looking. I pull the wire coil I have in my pocket out and slap it against him.
He feels it in time to wonder before I juice him with it and his implants go completely haywire. He drops, going into spasm. The other one comes at me around the table, but he's in the magnet's range and his motions become an uncoordinated stumble that end in a kick to the head.
"Don't fucking move!" the one in front of Manako grabs for a knife. "Don't move or I'll--"
I spit a word that yanks him away from her, then slams him into the wall. "Manako! Grab the magnifying glass!" I point at the cipher key. "We need too--"
The businessman grabs me from behind, bearing me over. "Leaving so soon?" He giggles. "Leaving so soon? Leaving so soon?"
White worms coil out of his throat.
I don't want to open my mouth and have one invade my throat so I shove a hand up into him and splay my fingers just so. The blast knocks him flying across the room and I speak a word of fire. He burbles, rises, more armoured than the previous one, then the white-haired man knocks him down with a chair. He twitches a few times then starts to burn in earnest.
Male formal fashion is actually so bad that even these things can get the hang of it.
At the door, the gang are coming at the thing in a rushing mob, moving too fast and smooth for humans, blades of darkness outlining their hands. It meets them with alien grace, limbs extending to grab and strip, space bending as it gyrates, superpositional, tearing through men one after another, even as they hack and beat at it, opening up great wounds.
The pro and the Yakuza look at one another, rising too, looking between me and the screaming carnage at the door. "I only want this." I indicate the cipher key in Manako's hand. "Take whatever you came here for if it's anything else."
Both men look at one another, then one grabs the bowl, the other the knife. They run for the fire exit. The bunny girl has already gone through it and out. Manako, showing a surprising amount of initiative, grabs the book and the statue.
The old guy is waiting at the exit, holding it open for us. "This part of a plan of yours young lady?" He asks, a little disapproving as we run for it.
"Apart from my friend getting held at knifepoint." I look down the alley. Rain and snow is pouring down now, and there's a distant rumble of thunder. "My car is down the alley. Go to it and get in."
"No way!" Manako grabs onto me. "If you're staying, I'm staying with you!"
"That's not--" I don't have time to remonstrate with her as the gang leader stumbles out of the fire door. He's missing an arm, blood drenching his suit.
"You bitch," he slurs, "you did--"
The hunter steps out behind him and twists his head off. Manako cries, and clings onto me tighter. It's beaten up, covered in cuts and dripping white fluid, but it still advances, claws up.
I take a deep breath, tasting the rain beating down on me.
At some point, you reach the end of indirect means, of pawns. You reach the point where you have to fight.
I've fought Hunters before, killed then in traps or with ritual magic, blasted them away from a distance.
I've never fought one this strong before and never hand to hand.
I've picked fights all over Tokyo, from dojos to streets, against karate masters and yakuza, MMA professionals and delinquents. I've faced mystic martial artists, spirits and undead.
My hands are shaking.
I clench them and take a deep breath.
Gently, I detach Manako from me and take a step forward. Quiet words begin to draw geomantic power up from the ground around me, pouring into the crystalline circuits fitted into my jacket, tattooed invisibly into my skin. Silver in my clothes, black against my pale skin. I whisper words of power, fixing the alley into a bounded field, preventing it from fully phasing. Holding it to a single position.
The Hunter stops, its wounds dripping, sleet sluicing the white blood down its flanks. It watches me, yellow eyes gleaming. Its arms are triple jointed, the clawed hands clenching and unclenching.
It moves so gracefully, this many place thing, shifting back and forth like a snake. It's movements are so languid, so unconcerned. And then it rushes, coming so fast that it leaves raindrop streaks in its wake.
I dodge back, then aside, desperately shaping a spell out of my movement, holding it into only a single position. Clawed hands flicker in and I dodge and block in frantic haste. It's impossibly fast, fast enough I can't get even a single strike off, just block, dodge, and give ground. The alley moves under me in a blur, and I'm gut scared I'll trip on something.
Manako and the old man giving more behind me, crying out. They know I'm losing. I'm scared, really scared, and embarrassed too. This was my chance to show Manako how cool I really am and I'm messing it up, losing to this monster. After everything I pulled to get it to this point, I still can't beat it. Even after I beat its main weapon, its superposition, I can't--
A claw finds a gap in my guard and slashes me open. The blow cuts through the stab liner and sends me flying, cut to the skin. I hit the alley wall, bounce off and turn it into a roll and kick out, coming back to my feet just as it arrives, to block and roll through another wave of strikes. The side of the alley looms up behind me, claws tearing up stone chips as I dodge to the side, and then I'm out of options. I touch my medallion and teleport, reappearing in a slide that at least gives me distance.
The creature doesn't pursue, it stands there, watching me. I pull myself upright, feel it tug at a wound I didn't know I had. Blood drips down my side.
It looks at me, head on one side, mouth working. It seems almost disappointed, Or maybe that's just me. I'm disappointed with myself.
I pull fire out of the air, hurl it in front of a word of power. The creature's parry cuts the spell away. I dodge back again, throw more fire, then a trash can. It flicks each strike away, walking up my attacks like a man straining against a fire hose.
My muscles are burning hot and I'm taking in air in great lungfuls. The cut in my side is starting to sting badly, a hot needle even through the layers of my system's geomantic reinforcement.
This isn't working.
I've made the most elementary of mistakes. I got into a fight without a plan on how to win. I sort of thought I might dodge around it, pick at its defences, wear it down, but it's too quick, too tough.
Well then.
I can't defend and attack. I can't win if I don't attack.
I kick a second garbage can at it, and then use the time it buys me to get into my pocket and pull the inhaler. Two puffs. The drug burns through me. The creature comes in, too casual, underestimating me. I teleport into it. It's eyes widen but I'm in close, punching a fist through its guard and slamming it into one of the wounds on its side. It screams loudly and lashes at me, but I ride the blow, not backing off, taking one strike after another to land hit after hit in return. I hammer the wound in its side with kicks and punches, then shape my fingers into a rune and slap it down into the creature's blood. There's a moment's delay and then its side detonates.
It reels back a pace, but I don't give it room, just step in and ram a knee up into an armless section of its stomach. It makes a horrible buzzing noise, then slashes across my forehead, glancing me as I lean back, blood getting into my eye but not enough to stop me crushing its face.
It clutches its mouth, stumbles back a step, then collapses to its knees.
My outfit is extremely colourful now, unfortunately, that red is mostly my own blood.
The rain stings at the cut in my forehead.
The hunter shakes itself, pushing up on its lower arms.
If I don't bring this to a conclusion into the next thirty seconds I'm going to pass out.
It gets up and charges at me, roaring and I go to meet it, jumping up in a long spin kick aimed straight at its yellow eye. I put everything I've still got into the kick, mystical and physical, for a moment linking directly to the local geomancy, cutting the limiters off my tattoos.
Claws slash at me, and I feel them burn along my stomach. The landing is bad and I half roll out, coming back to my knees, guard up.
The Hunter sways, then collapses, its decapitated neck spraying purple fluid.
For a moment I stay upright, swaying, and it comes to me how good that felt. How wonderful it was to test my limits against something so strong and come out the victor. Then I fall sideways.
"Nozomi!" Manako rushes forward, jumping over the fallen creature to grab me. She pushes down on my stomach wound, applying pressure. "Nozomi! Stay with me!"
"I'm not going anywhere." I whisper, there's blood in my mouth but I'm pretty sure it's from my forehead. "Not without you." The world swims in and out. "E-except a doctor maybe."
She laughs, sort of crying. "You dumbass! Stop trying to be cool."
"Card, in my wallet-- has the address." I blink. "I-Injector in my pocket. The blue one. Jab me with it and press the button."
My vision swims. The old man is looking down at us. "I'll get my car." He says. Manako searches and comes out with the injector. I feel the cold sting of it against my neck and the growing pain eases away.
I lapse, I think, into something like unconsciousness.
*****
I come back to myself to find Manako leaning over me. I'm on a bed surrounded by a variety of medical devices, a semi-familiar white ceiling above me. Several monitoring systems beep out my status.
Manako looks very frazzled. There's blood on her, dried, and presumably mine. "Looks like I didn't make it." I mutter. "There's an angel here."
Manako does a double-take then hugs me. "That's not funny!" She mutters into my shoulder.
Alice steps up and looks over me. "Glad to see you're feeling better." She's eating a lollipop, one of her tells for stress. "You gave us quite a scare there."
"Sorry." I lean back, look over at Manako, who's blushing and kind of wish I hadn't thrown out a lame line like that on waking. "No pain, is that good?"
"Probably." She looks at me. "Lift your legs." I do. "Good, looks like you don't have any nerve damage. I thought I was going to have to shove you in the tank."
"My clothes were totaled?" I'm in a paper surgical gown.
"I had to cut them off you." She looks at the other two, and whispers. "You know they're civilians right?"
"If they were before," I lean back, "they sure as hell aren't now."
"Alright, but be careful."
I look down at my body, which is covered in fading lines of cuts where her magic wielded my wounds together. "Yeah, I'll do that."
I get out of there in about twenty minutes, exchange cards with the old guy, who turns out to be a collector of esoterica, and then head off with Manako.
"So, you're some kind of secret Esper?" She asks.
"I'm a witch." I smile a bit. "I live in the hidden world. It's a dangerous place, as you found. I'm sorry that I--"
"No." Manako's hand stepped back but now she grips my arm tightly. "No. Don't say that you're sorry you got me into it. I got myself into it, and I wanted to. I wanted to see the real you, and now I see her I want to see more of her world."
I consider for a moment, should I do this? Can I? Shouldn't I heroically refuse as I always have and just not get close?
No. I'll be honest with myself. "It'll mean a lot of danger, and a lot of hard work."
"I'm ready for that."
"Alright." I take a deep breath, surprised that nothing hurts. "Alright, then let me take you home. I'll tell you everything."
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Chapter 2-1: Abduction
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There's something wrong in Tokyo that April. Everyone feels it but me. It grows sunnier and brighter in the evenings but something is off. People do jobs or schoolwork with frantic energy, desperate to be home before dark. Parents drive their kids to school and children go home in groups. The conversation of drinkers are muted or too loud, full of false bravado. The homeless watch with helpless eyes, concentrating themselves for defense..
April has been a strange month for a while. It had been April five years ago when Espers had first appeared five years ago. That April when spectacular meteors lit the sky over Japan.
Perhaps that's why I miss the signs. For me, it was March, when the Spider emerged and my life fell apart that was the month to watch. The bad time of the year.
Rumors fly. Local news so severe as to momentarily displace even the continuing esper insurgencies in China and the Americas. Even the rout of another Brazilian army in the Amazon not enough to move the disappearance of several young middle-class women off the front pages.
People talk of a series of murders, a violent street gang dismembered and burned in their own club, supposedly by the Yakuza. Rumors were that they'd attacked the place with swords and axes, chopping their enemies into pieces before setting the place on fire. I know the real story and so don't pay much attention. It blocks me from seeing the pattern. I don't pay close attention to the first disappearance of a teenage girl, or the murder of a prominent business man. I miss the feeling in the air.
To be honest the reason isn't anything as metaphysical as I'm describing. The real reason is I'm distracted. There's the black book, with its descriptions of strange creatures and unknown spectrums, of dark and twisted extra-dimensional mana.
And there's having the time of my life.
"First, pronounce each syllable individually. Then make them into a word."
We're in the lab space in my basement, a great rough chamber where I test spells I'm building, the walls already marked with scorch and blister of combat magic.
Manako looks down at the page in concentration, mouths each sound written before her, then speaks it, and then says it faster and faster. She's wearing a tracksuit, ear protectors and a look that's beginning to frustration. Her pronunciation is improving. She says the word and a ball of light flickers into existence in front of her.
"Oh my god." She looks at it. "I did it."
"Well done, now--"
The light flickers, turns blue, and then explodes violently like a firecracker. Manako jumps, holding her ears.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah." She gets up, removes her ear protection and hangs her head. "I didn't get it right."
"Too much emphasis on the first syllable." I sit down next to her. "Still, you managed a verbal cast. That's nothing to sneeze at."
"Magic is hard." She sighs. "I'm no good at calligraphy either. It takes me ages to get the symbols right!"
"Let's try something else." I look at her. "You like shooting right?"
"Uh. Yeah."
I walk over to a locked box to one side and pull out the weapon within. When I knocked it down in the building, the security thing dropped its carbine on the stairs, and I snagged it on the way out. Guns are rare in Japan and outright illegal for civilians to own, but it's not that difficult for a mage to make bullets. Manako moves over and cautiously inspects the gun. "An M4?"
"I thought they were called M16?"
"No. This is an M4 SOPMOD," She inspects it. "It's derived from the carbine version of the M16. American and JSDF special forces used to use these. They had one of these at the gunshop I went to when I was in America but they said I was too small to shoot it! They made me use these lame .22s!" She makes a face. I wonder just how much time she spent at the gun range when she was in the USA. "Where'd you get it?"
"I stole it." I grin, then lay out two magazines of ammunition. "Do you know how to work it?"
"Yeah." She walks to the computer and begins googling, then nods. "Yeah!"
Manako really does have the best energy.
"Alright, two mags, there's twenty five rounds in each." You can load thirty but I was always taught to underload the clip to increase reliability. "I want you to double tap each target as fast as you can." I check my own ear protectors and then clap my hands. There's a flicker on the walls and the image of a hunter snaps into focus. Manako fires.
She is, I quickly realize, quite good. Actually, she's inexplicably good. Not that accurate, but not hesitant about the gun the way I am. She's not John Wick or anything, but still stunning coming from a Japanese schoolgirl.
"Manako, when you were in America, how often did you go shooting?"
"Oh, about five days a week. My Uncle said we should. Said that it was something we wouldn't be able to do back in Japan." She looks down at the rifle. "I'm rusty though. I used to be better."
I knew she could use a gun but nothing like this.
"There are ways you can shoot more accurately. Let me show you." I lift the gun and pull out one of my markers and sign a rune onto the receiver. "Close your eyes."
"You're going to draw on me?"
"It's UV ink." I pull out a different marker and draw around her left eye. She's left-handed.
"This feels strange." She shoulders the rifle again and aims. I snap up a pair of person silhouette targets with score groups on them. Manako shoots, puts several rounds through the centre group. "Wow. The bullets just-- go where I want them."
"It's a version of a technique pioneered by mages like Aleister Crowley in the last century. It's called a Crawley effect. With a sufficient magical charge y,ou can influence how forces work by willpower alone." I wave. "Let's get through the rest of the set."
We go through about two thirds of the targets before I snap up one that looks like a man. Manako's finger tightens on the trigger, then stops.
"Problem?" I ask.
"It's a person!" She looks at me. "I can't shoot a person!"
"Even if they're trying to kill you? Or me?" She gives me a look, and I relent. Or pretend to, because actually this whole drill is part of a killer idea I just had. "There are ways you can vary the amount of force a bullet carries, or transmute it into another kind of force." I tap the gun gently on the top, careful not to jar it. "If you painted the right symbols on this, then you could knock someone out without killing them."
"Really?"
"Yes. Runes I think would be the most reliable way for you to caste. You can draw them on a computer and then use your phone screen, or cut them out and spray them on the gun with a stencil. You can even make them with light and shadow." I give her a stern sensei look. "Go up to the second floor library. Figure out the designs you'll need and have page numbers and drawings of the signs you'll need by eight tonight. I have to go out but I'll review your work with you when I get back."
"Thank you for trying so hard to teach me." She takes my hand. I let her.
"You're doing fine Manako. You have a lot to learn but you're making acceptable progress." I push her back and look into her eyes. "Did you think learning magic would be easy?"
"I guess not." She sighs and looks at the floor again.
"Now, remember to be careful upstairs. Don't go into any of the bedrooms, some of them are traps."
"I remember." She begins to tend the rifle. "You should go though, you'll be late."
I'm not so good at this stern sensei thing, at least with her. In that moment, looking at her just stripping the rifle into its component sections, fingers moving lightly, explorative, the sense of fascination on her face, I want her more than I've wanted anything ever. I almost say something, or kiss her, or pull her collar down and bite along her neck--
But I can't do any of that.
I'm dying.
I'm dying and I've let myself get close to her and in three years I'm going to take away her best friend, her teacher, and her crush. Maybe make her destroy the husk that claims to be me.
Should I really be thinking of leaving her without a lover as well?
I've got to get myself under some kind of control.
I will, I decide on the way, buy Manako some more different guns. The M4 I have heard in some of the forums I read, not all that good as a weapon (though some swear by it). I'll get a selection of pistols and rifles and ammo for Manako, and practice with her. I'll need to teach her how to do without sleep and make a new supply of memory potions. I spend the journey on my phone, ordering out of the small arms catalogue of one of the Mage Trust's go to arms smugglers.
My mentor's house is ugly. A strange and mishappen reef of domes and blocks, assembled in a way that draws the eye oddly, off putting in its angles. Some say that this ugliness reflects the ugly powers he consorts with. Others that it reflects his singular genius at the geomantic arts.
Personally I think the ugliness is of an unfinished thing. Even the most beautiful building rarely seems that way when it's half constructed. This sprawling house in the country outside Tokyo is my teacher's life work, the final culmination of a life spent learning geomancy that stretches back to the Sengoku Jida.
Since that time just after my thirteenth birthday, this house is the one place I've ever felt truly and completely safe. I played freely in its vast gardens, learned the arts of combat, magic and, espionage from its master and his servants.
I spent three years living here. Now I come back only when I wish to see my teacher in person.
I do a short breathing exercise to calm down before I approach the door.
I arrive by car and knock on the door. Laplace, the head maid, answers as she always does. She's a tall, silver haired woman of a willowy, slightly unreal beauty, made a little more unreal by the french maid outfit and the rabbit ears poking up through her hair. She is, according to both her and my Master, from the moon. I'm not quite sure how this is possible. She's the one who taught me to fight, to detect and evade followers, all the skills I'd need to survive.
Laplace wasn't my first crush, but she was the first time I had a crush on another woman.
Behind her, the hall has changed again. Now it's warm and golden black, shining in a way that makes me think of syrup or molasses.
"Nishifune-san." She bows. "Kondou-san is waiting for you in the rotunda."
"Of course."
My teacher is famous in his dislike of honorifics. He sneers at mage families who's patriarchs require themselves to be addressed as sama, or even worse dono, and refuses even Sensei. When we talk in English, he is always my teacher, not my Master, when we speak in Japanese, he is simply Kondou-san. Nothing else.
Laplace leads me through and I watch the changes in internal style. The black and gold repeats a lot, but there's also a huge amount of living plants out now, the bright greens and white flowers clashing violently with the new decor. The black and gold might appear random, but I know enough to understand that it's meant to alternately absorb and refract geomantic energy, probably sucked from a wide area by the root system.
The unified purpose of the design though? Even I, who considers herself one of the best geomancers in Japan couldn't tell you.
When I find Kondo, he's sitting in a wicker chair, long dark hair falling down his back and playing astral chain on his switch. He looks up as I step into view and puts the game aside. "Nozomi."
"Enjoying your birthday present I see." Laplace pulls out another chair and I sit opposite. Another maid, this one a mass of vaguely feminine shadows brings tea and small cakes in English fashion.
"Things were so much more boring in the past." He nods in thanks to Laplace and she and the other maid bow and withdraws. "We had so few ways to entertain ourselves. No one can work all the time, not even me. So, what brings you here?"
"An achievement, and perhaps a mistake. Also a request for permission." I outline the events of the previous nights. "I failed to conceal my activities, and a school friend followed me. I ended up telling her about, well, myself. Magic."
"You're a sentimental girl sometimes." He sips his tea. "So what do you intend to do with her?"
"I was thinking I'd train her as a mage. It wouldn't do for the skills I've learned to die with me."
"And so you come seeking my permission to take a student." He looks at the pool.
"That and one other thing that could bring us trouble."
"You've always resisted getting close to anyone before." Anyone but him. Until he sent me to live on my own. "What's different about this girl?"
"She's strong willed. She followed me into danger and I couldn't spot her." That still rankles a little. "She saw a hunter and still wished to be taught."
"Wishes are all very well, but you're putting her in quite a lot of danger are you not? Can she survive it?"
I look down at my tea. "I don't want to be alone anymore. I've tried but I can't just live a life that's all secrets. I've been trying but I can't--" I sort of choke off. He looks at me, expression suddenly bland in that way he always gets when he's actually feeling profoundly awkward.
Eventually, he speaks. "Do as thou wish. That shall be the whole of the law. If you wish her to be your student then train her. I would like to test her though, as it will be some of my teachings you pass on."
"Alright, but do not try to steal her from me. She is my student, not yours."
"Of course, of course."
"Speaking of which. I acquired a rather interesting item."
"Oh?"
"A black book and the means to read it. I haven't dived into it yet, I felt like I should take precautions."
"Remarkable." Kondo smiles. "I am interested in the results of such research, so of course I'll assist you." He makes no sign that I can see but a few moments later Laplace returns with a gleaming red leather book. "Here. All my procedures for handling such objects. Be careful."
"Yes Kondo-san."
"Speaking of forbidden things, what was this report that you sent to Laplace about some bandit with a geomantic grid?"
"Yes. Aratani threw them in front of me. A particularly nasty street gang is using it. Crude, but still quite effective. I suspect that he intends to use me as a stalking horse for his own investigation."
"That young man will go far." Kondou rubs some of the dirt on his fingers and feels the consistency. "Though, he's got us, we can't just ignore this, amateurs experimenting with geomancy could set off who knows what effects."
"No. Though I'm going to see if I can turn the tables on him, and at least steal their research."
He nods, looking pleased. "Very well. Then I shall make the arrangements for your student to enter our house."
"Thank you Kondo-san." I really don't have time to do the administration that you need to do to get a student right now. I have things to do. "The last thing is this." I wave at the pond and bring up an image of the drone, still circling over tokyo, following me. "The hunter used this to track me. I'm almost certain."
"Really? I wonder where they acquired something like that." He looks at the drone. "Well, this won't do at all will it?"
"I want your permission to shoot it down."
"Shooting it down over Tokyo will draw to much notice. No, let me show you how it's done." He raises a hand, palm open and then brings the other palm down on it. The drone discorporates away to mist. "There."
My teacher is such a showoff.
There's so much to do to induct a pupil. You have to let the Society know that you have a new mage so they can place the right processes in place with the government and the right flags on records. That takes ages. You also have to arrange a coming out party. I'm putting that off, nervous about how Manako will take the reaction of my peers. Will she find this less glamorous when she knows I'm so hated?
Manako seems worried too. We'd meet up in a restaurant after she'd finished cram school, and spent some time looking over her homework, which was mostly fine. I'd had to correct a few designs that had got perhaps overly ambitious, but I'd prefer an ambitious student to the alternative. She'll need all the ambition she can get to catch up.
"You're doing well." I tell her. "Make sure you keep taking your tablets when you study."
"Alright." Manako looks doubtfully at the pill bottle I've slipped her. "Are you sure we should be doing something like this?"
"It's quite safe. Tested for ages." I tap my head. "The human mind alone isn't quite up to magic. You need to give it a boost. This is the one that mages settled on."
"Do you use it?"
"Along with a few other methods." I check my phone and begin to pack away the books. "I'll have to teach you how not to sleep to."
"How not to sleep?" She looks surprised, but not as pleased as I hoped, then smiles. "That sounds great actually." There's a pause while she loads her bag, drawing out whatever she wants to say. I decide I'll give her a few moments and then if she hasn't come clean ask her straight out. "My family invites you for a meal." I consider and reject making a joke about dating her. She's still looking bothered, but not about this I think. "Would that be okay? They think that you're lonely. I told them some stuff about you, as we're going out a lot, and it'd let us work on stuff at my house"
"That's fine. I'll be in my best behaviour. What day?"
"Tomorrow."
" Should I wear a wig?"
"No, they know that your hair is white." She gets up. "Sorry to take another of your evenings."
"It's fine. I'll bring you some new texts." I get up and put some bills on the table. Manako follows me.
I arranged some additional volleyball practice with Akira. I still want to know what's up with Manako though. I decide I'll just ask her straight up, and wait for a good opportunity as step into the streets. There's a long silence and I decide to inject myself into it. "So what's bothering you?"
Manako looks over at me, sudden and guilty. I give her a reassuring look. "I know you very well Manako, something is bothering you. What happened?"
"It's probably nothing, he probably just forgot." She takes a deep breath, seems to examine what she's said and tries again. "It's my Uncle. You know he travels a lot?" I know Manako's uncle is her favourite relative. He was the first to take her shooting. Amd tells her stories from around the globe. "He always comes to see me to say goodbye when he leaves Japan, but this time he didn't."
"Did you have a time arranged and he no showed?"
"Not really. He was staying in our guest room, and then he left. My parents say he left early, and we just missed one another because I was out on Sunday." Ah, guilt, I'm no stranger to that one. Now I feel a little guilty too.
"I'm sorry you missed him."
"It's fine! Training is important." She sighs. "I'm more worried about him though. I would have thought he'd have at least left me a note or called."
"Did you call him?"
"Yes. No answer, but he might still be on the plane. He was travelling to the Philippines."
"I can check up on him for you. It wouldn't be difficult." A quick check on entry and exit records should suffice to know that he left the country safely.
"Really?" Manako smiles. "Thank you."
"I'll text you when I get a result." We're approaching Manako's station. "I'd better head off, I have volleyball with Akira."
"Sure." Manako waves and heads off up the steps into the station. I turn away, headed for the nearby subway entrance, when my phone buzzes. A text for Akira. Maybe she can't make it?
"Hey, how do you tell if someone is following you?"
"I keep seeing this guy behind me. He's got a brown coat on, like a detective, and a loud shirt."
The simplest way to determine if you're being trailed on foot is to pause and turn one hundred and eighty degrees as if you forgot your umbrella. This will work most of the time unless you're up against a team with a substantial number of people. It has some problems however, like revealing that you believe that you're being followed. Laplace trained me in quite a few of the better tricks, the ones that can detect even a team, such as noticing the most common formations that teams will use to follow you. Generally there'll be one or two behind on the other side of the street, and one ahead on your side of the street, or visa versa.
"Don't look back, just walk normally but slowly. Window shop a little. Keep your head up and watch your surroundings."
I don't want Akari to give herself away, so I don't want her to pause and turn. If she is being followed then I don't want her to do anything until at least I get there. Instead I'm going to conduct the other type of check you do. Get a confederate to a vantage point and have them mount a check for you. I use my phone to quickly plot out a route based. With the GPS location from Akira's phone it's fairly simple to figure out an intercept point. She's staying on populated streets and walking straight and slow, window shopping a little as she moves.
We're talking to one another in voice, partly for safety, partly because it makes coordinating what we're doing easier.
"You're really accepting this pretty easily."
"I guess you were right that I'm someone who knows about people following her." History hovers over this conversation. That one time that our worlds really intersected.
She laughs a little weakly. "Should I call the police?"
She should, but my blood is up and I kind of want to know who's following my friend. "When we're sure you're being followed, Then we'll call them."
Neither of us is in uniform, so unless the follower has really done his homework he shouldn't connect us, though will my colour scheme imply it? I'm in mostly black today. Black skirt, black jacket, black thigh highs, white shirt and red tie. For one of my best friends, I'll tint myself. I switch the black in my outfit to a progressively lighter blue as I hurry the subway. What about my hair? If the follower knows me too then that'll give me away even at a distance. If I'd known this was going to happen I'd have worn a hoodie.
I'll just have to trust that my own previous counterintelligence precautions would have alerted me to someone watching or investigating the school or me.
It's an agonizing twenty minute series of connections to get me where I want to go, with several short sprints between trains to get the algorithmically perfect course. Finally, I leave the last JR station and fast walk up into the second floor of a large department store then out into the skybridge across the main street. I pause, check my phone and locate Akari in the crowd. It's not to hard. She's tall enough to stand out. She makes a turn into this street, she'll pass below me. We're actually already past the in door sports centre who's volleyball court we tend to use for out of school training between the two of us, but that's into a series of less populated backstreets that maybe aren't a hundred percent safe.
And there behind her is the man. He's fat, gross looking man, cheaply dressed, brown detective coat, shirt that is yes, loud. A lurid blue Hawiian that looks very out of place in this weather. The collar of his coat and shirt are both up around his neck but it's open underneath, like a cape. His face is might be pleasant enough except for it's total dissipation and the smirk of total contempt for the world around him. I pull out my phone, zoom the camera in on him and then take a series of pictures of his face. Then I cover one eye and check what's inside him. That shirt is freaking me out.
There's a glow of life force in there at least. It's hard to make out more in a crowd situation like this, but he's not a walking void like a hunter or someone full of worms. There's something off about him though.
"I see him. He's definitely tailing you."
"Okay. I'm going to call someone."
"Alright. Call me back when you're done." She rings off. I walk back into the department store, buy a hoodie (white with a red rose) and cap (plain black) and put it on, stowing my coat in my bag then merge out into the street.
After what seems like an age Akari comes back on the phone. "They're sending someone. Where are you?"
"Behind him." I can see him in the crowd in passing glances, the bobbing flash of bright green on the shirt collar. "I've got eyes on you both."
"I thought we were going to play volleyball, not spy vs. spy."
"Hopefully there's still time for that."
"Okay, the cops are here. I'm going to ring off."
"Okay. I'll see you on the court."
Two police officers are cutting through the crowd to Akari. She pauses, then turns and points back towards shirt man. They nod to her, talk for a moment, and then tell her to stay put. Both cops walk towards the man, who stops, waiting for them. I keep walking, keeping my pace slow, not quite looking at him.
There's something I don't like about the way he's standing. It's too confident. He's been caught red handed following a girl and is about to be confronted, but his body language isn't at all defensive. The cops reach him, talk, then seem to stop. He doesn't show them anything but they begin to walk away. I see Akari's mouth drop open as he starts towards her and will her to turn and run, but she doesn't, held to the spot presumably by whatever force compelled the cops away.
I pause by a shop window, as if admiring something. The man reaches Akari and puts an arm around her. She goes meekly with him.
I fall in behind them. Reaching into my bag I find a particular chain and fasten it around my head like a princess, mostly concealed by my hair and the cap. Then I pull on my gloves. The man is walking Akari in towards a side street. I follow slowly. He seems like he has a particular destination in mind, not just heading for the nearest deserted alley. Residential neighbourhoods are not far off the main streets, and are only lightly trafficked. If he's on the ball he'll spot me as soon as we get there, so I'll take him before he can react. I close it up till I'm only a few people behind, looking anywhere but directly at him. A criminal superstition: a watched cop will always look.
I'll use a kick. Instant take down hopefully, then grab Akari and run for it. We turn off the street and I feel something awful, like a disgust at the street I'm about to turn into. Even with the chain it's enough to stop me for a moment and make me stumble as I come through.
The man turns and looks at me. Behind us, passers-by move unconcernedly. I stop a short way from him.
"So." He says. "You're hunting me?"
"Take your hands off my friend."
He doesn't, holding Akari close and smirking at me. Her eyes are blank and she has a strange smile fixed on her face. "Ah. I guess I'm unlucky. I never guessed she'd have a friend like you. Are you an exorcist? No." a sly smile. "A mage."
I fix on his voice. It's surprisingly deep and attractive for such an ugly man, a complex baritone, like an opera singer. I could get lost in that voice. Never return. Each word seems to have weight and power powered into it.
That might be almost literally what he's doing. A reverse spell, pouring might into words so that his words have power. It's a technique many mages use for low-level mental effects, often on themselves. This man has turned it into something far more powerful. Each time he speaks I feel myself sinking deeper.
"Don't worry." He pats Akari. "Your friend will come back alive. She'll be a sobbing ruin, with her personality crushed. Probably have a phobia about sleep but after a few years of drugs and therapy I'm sure she'll be vaguely functional. Why don't you come along? See how we treat her."
Despite the chain burning against me his words are getting through. I can't imagine what this must be like for someone without protection. I need to stop him talking. I'll play along so I can get time to plan. Or is that something I'm rationalizing to go along with him? Your brain can do that if the mental control goes deep enough. "I'd like that."
"This way." He waves. "You're both so tall. Very beautiful." A wave of warm emotion. It's hard to want anything but to go along with whatever he wants from me. "I like that. Keep your distance please. At least five steps between us." He stands with Akaira between us.
The street ahead is clear, empty. There's a large van parked and four men and a woman waiting. Three of the men are just muscle, the others is a grossly overweight man in a business suit, and is of similar aspect to my escort, while the woman is young and dressed in college student casual.
This isn't going to work. "You have a nice voice." I need a new plan.
"Why thank you. I'm really borrowing it though. Aren't you uncomfortable with that chain on you? It looks hot."
"It's burning." My hand rises towards the chain. I can't disobey him directly. It feels too good. The chain doesn't seem to be helping much. Maybe I can throw it at him. Or at least cool it down.
Oh, that's a good idea. I speak a word and switch the heat coming off the chain into sound. Maybe it'll block his voice. No, it's just really annoying.
A loud hiss fills the street. The chain almost instantly heats back up and the hissing grows louder, almost unbearable. I can only partly hear him through it. "That's annoying."
Got you. I make a sharp chopping gesture and sound ceases. The man's eyes go wide and his lips move. He's silenced. Damn. I should have silenced myself. At the van, his confederates start to move forward, one raising hands to cast a dispel.
I punch the fat guy in the throat. My fist hits something squishy and gross. The sensation is so disgusting that I recoil back a step, looking at my glove. Fortunately it's not stained, even though there's a spreading green slime forming around the man's scarf. He falls on his bottom, clutching himself.
The rest are charging at me.
Akari is on the ground, clutching her head, twitches running through her whole body. No time to think about that now.
The three men are coming, the woman is casting, switching from dispelling gestures to what looks like a fireball. Then, the fourth, the fat man, starts to sing. The sounds hit me in layers and I come to a stop.
The chain is still hissing, and its hot, its functions switching to maximum as this even worse wave of words hits me. It's hard to concentrate even on the heat and noise. Hard to concentrate on anything. The effect reminds me of the crash I experienced the one time I had MDMA. It was at a party in London and I was sixteen and had just found out what would happen if I committed suicide. I'd taken some of my hosts mollies, and it had been great, until it wasn't and I just lay in bed and didn't do anything as the bleakness of an overloaded reward centre reduced everything to grey.
"She's out?" The woman says. The three toughs are advancing on my cautiously, batons up.
The man licks his lips and stops his chanting. A weird susurration is coming from his throat. "Mostly. Be careful. The chain on her head is giving her some resistance even to the voice."
"What about Kin?"
"She messed up his implant. Don't lift the silence on him. It wouldn't be safe for us either."
"Poor thing. She did so well and now she's going to suffer for it."
I don't want to do anything. I just want to stand here.
I'm going to end up with Junya or Aratani rescuing me.
Even through the bleak haze, this thought is so disgusting I'm forced to action. It takes all the effort in the world to do it, but I make a gesture and reshape the silence. I almost but not quite just drop it entirely, but instead switch it into a ring. A bubble of silence with myself in the skin, Akari outside and the man with the damaged throat inside with his companions.
Sound snaps off, and I'm free. I'm still groggy, slow, but it doesn't matter. The sound the damaged one is making does my work for me. The Mage raises her hands to cast then starts to seize. The four toughs jerk around like puppets on strings, muscles firing randomly.. The fatman is able to stumble a few more steps towards me before toppling forwards.
I don't wait to see further results of this, but grab Akari in a fireman's carry and just run for it.
The direction is random, and I just go as fast as I can. After a block I lower her to the ground and check her out. She's unconscious, body twitching. I check her pulse and its fast and ragged. Searching around in my bag I find a healing potion and a general-purpose cure all and inject both. Akair stirs and moans, then her eyes open.
"What happened?"
"Something bad." I point down the street. Somehow, perhaps familiarity we've come out near the sports centre. "Head inside for a bit, I've just got to check something. I'll be back soon."
"Shouldn't we call the police?" she asks.
"It's--" I look back the way we came. "It's one of those Nozomi things."
"Ah." She pulls herself up. "Don't tell me anymore. Just stay safe."
"I'll be back in a bit."
There's the sound of distant car alarms, the silence has obviously dropped. I remove the hoodie and cap, stow them both in my bag of holding and put my coat back on, then pull a quick illusion across my hair, staining it black. There are people starting to move that way in numbers now, others coming out of their houses. A small crowd is forming by the time I reach the battle.
The kidnap team are all down, twitching, though no longer so badly. Drool, blood and vomit leak out of them in various quantities. I push through the crowd and approach: "I'm a nurse. Let me through!"
"An ambulance is coming!" someone calls. "Be careful!"
As I approach the reason for the clear zone becomes evident. Both of the fat men are emitting a low, almost subsonic hum from their necks. I begin to make a show of doing first aid, which I actually do know, and steal a look at the second fat man's neck. Below his collar is a complex vocal organ that resembles something between a frogs breath sack and severe cancer. It's green, oozing slightly and I am suddenly feeling quite unwell. Blood is fine, vomit is fine, but this just isn't right.
It doesn't stop me from stealing his wallet though, nor the womans. The other men seem like they're much less important to this. The IDs inside will certainly be faked but you can tell a lot from a fake ID.
The ambulance comes and I leave it to the paramedics, exchanging hurried words with them before retreating, vanishing back into the crowd and finding an alley to change my look again. Only then do I allow myself to check the wallets.
As I expected, the drivers licence and other ID papers they contain seem bland enough. Internet searches of the names show thousands of results. Almost certainly fakes. More interesting at the other items. Neither wallet contains much cash, but each contains a black credit card from the same company and bank. I'd be willing to bet good money that these are linked to the same account as well. A potential security weakness, though the bank also provides a good cutout for operational expenses.
Pretty soon, someone is going to check the necks of those two guys and panic. Esper down will be called and the Japanese state will become well and truly involved. As I begin to walk towards the sports centre, I call Aratani. Much as it galls me to admit, I'm going to need a favour.
I text him. <<Hey. Are you free today? I might need some help with a police thing.>>
<<Ah. Sorry I'm in Osaka. I'll be here for a while. If things go bad though, ask for prosecutor Tanigawa Junko. Use my name.>>
<<Alright.>>
<<I might need to call in this favour soon.>>
Become in my debt Aratani. I want that so much.
I try to put it out of my mind for now. I'm not going to call this prosecutor for at least a little while. This episode has been dangerous and frustrating and I want to burn off some of my energy. I want to play some volleyball.
I arrive at the sports centre, a long, large, square building up a series of steps and head inside to get changed. Akari is already out on the court, playing two on two with three guys who look like college students. She's holding her own pretty well.
"Everything okay?" Akari asks as I join her. The game turns into three on three, with the one guy on our side looking happy as punch.
"Yeah, for now let's just play ball."
April has been a strange month for a while. It had been April five years ago when Espers had first appeared five years ago. That April when spectacular meteors lit the sky over Japan.
Perhaps that's why I miss the signs. For me, it was March, when the Spider emerged and my life fell apart that was the month to watch. The bad time of the year.
Rumors fly. Local news so severe as to momentarily displace even the continuing esper insurgencies in China and the Americas. Even the rout of another Brazilian army in the Amazon not enough to move the disappearance of several young middle-class women off the front pages.
People talk of a series of murders, a violent street gang dismembered and burned in their own club, supposedly by the Yakuza. Rumors were that they'd attacked the place with swords and axes, chopping their enemies into pieces before setting the place on fire. I know the real story and so don't pay much attention. It blocks me from seeing the pattern. I don't pay close attention to the first disappearance of a teenage girl, or the murder of a prominent business man. I miss the feeling in the air.
To be honest the reason isn't anything as metaphysical as I'm describing. The real reason is I'm distracted. There's the black book, with its descriptions of strange creatures and unknown spectrums, of dark and twisted extra-dimensional mana.
And there's having the time of my life.
*****
"First, pronounce each syllable individually. Then make them into a word."
We're in the lab space in my basement, a great rough chamber where I test spells I'm building, the walls already marked with scorch and blister of combat magic.
Manako looks down at the page in concentration, mouths each sound written before her, then speaks it, and then says it faster and faster. She's wearing a tracksuit, ear protectors and a look that's beginning to frustration. Her pronunciation is improving. She says the word and a ball of light flickers into existence in front of her.
"Oh my god." She looks at it. "I did it."
"Well done, now--"
The light flickers, turns blue, and then explodes violently like a firecracker. Manako jumps, holding her ears.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah." She gets up, removes her ear protection and hangs her head. "I didn't get it right."
"Too much emphasis on the first syllable." I sit down next to her. "Still, you managed a verbal cast. That's nothing to sneeze at."
"Magic is hard." She sighs. "I'm no good at calligraphy either. It takes me ages to get the symbols right!"
"Let's try something else." I look at her. "You like shooting right?"
"Uh. Yeah."
I walk over to a locked box to one side and pull out the weapon within. When I knocked it down in the building, the security thing dropped its carbine on the stairs, and I snagged it on the way out. Guns are rare in Japan and outright illegal for civilians to own, but it's not that difficult for a mage to make bullets. Manako moves over and cautiously inspects the gun. "An M4?"
"I thought they were called M16?"
"No. This is an M4 SOPMOD," She inspects it. "It's derived from the carbine version of the M16. American and JSDF special forces used to use these. They had one of these at the gunshop I went to when I was in America but they said I was too small to shoot it! They made me use these lame .22s!" She makes a face. I wonder just how much time she spent at the gun range when she was in the USA. "Where'd you get it?"
"I stole it." I grin, then lay out two magazines of ammunition. "Do you know how to work it?"
"Yeah." She walks to the computer and begins googling, then nods. "Yeah!"
Manako really does have the best energy.
"Alright, two mags, there's twenty five rounds in each." You can load thirty but I was always taught to underload the clip to increase reliability. "I want you to double tap each target as fast as you can." I check my own ear protectors and then clap my hands. There's a flicker on the walls and the image of a hunter snaps into focus. Manako fires.
She is, I quickly realize, quite good. Actually, she's inexplicably good. Not that accurate, but not hesitant about the gun the way I am. She's not John Wick or anything, but still stunning coming from a Japanese schoolgirl.
"Manako, when you were in America, how often did you go shooting?"
"Oh, about five days a week. My Uncle said we should. Said that it was something we wouldn't be able to do back in Japan." She looks down at the rifle. "I'm rusty though. I used to be better."
I knew she could use a gun but nothing like this.
"There are ways you can shoot more accurately. Let me show you." I lift the gun and pull out one of my markers and sign a rune onto the receiver. "Close your eyes."
"You're going to draw on me?"
"It's UV ink." I pull out a different marker and draw around her left eye. She's left-handed.
"This feels strange." She shoulders the rifle again and aims. I snap up a pair of person silhouette targets with score groups on them. Manako shoots, puts several rounds through the centre group. "Wow. The bullets just-- go where I want them."
"It's a version of a technique pioneered by mages like Aleister Crowley in the last century. It's called a Crawley effect. With a sufficient magical charge y,ou can influence how forces work by willpower alone." I wave. "Let's get through the rest of the set."
We go through about two thirds of the targets before I snap up one that looks like a man. Manako's finger tightens on the trigger, then stops.
"Problem?" I ask.
"It's a person!" She looks at me. "I can't shoot a person!"
"Even if they're trying to kill you? Or me?" She gives me a look, and I relent. Or pretend to, because actually this whole drill is part of a killer idea I just had. "There are ways you can vary the amount of force a bullet carries, or transmute it into another kind of force." I tap the gun gently on the top, careful not to jar it. "If you painted the right symbols on this, then you could knock someone out without killing them."
"Really?"
"Yes. Runes I think would be the most reliable way for you to caste. You can draw them on a computer and then use your phone screen, or cut them out and spray them on the gun with a stencil. You can even make them with light and shadow." I give her a stern sensei look. "Go up to the second floor library. Figure out the designs you'll need and have page numbers and drawings of the signs you'll need by eight tonight. I have to go out but I'll review your work with you when I get back."
"Thank you for trying so hard to teach me." She takes my hand. I let her.
"You're doing fine Manako. You have a lot to learn but you're making acceptable progress." I push her back and look into her eyes. "Did you think learning magic would be easy?"
"I guess not." She sighs and looks at the floor again.
"Now, remember to be careful upstairs. Don't go into any of the bedrooms, some of them are traps."
"I remember." She begins to tend the rifle. "You should go though, you'll be late."
I'm not so good at this stern sensei thing, at least with her. In that moment, looking at her just stripping the rifle into its component sections, fingers moving lightly, explorative, the sense of fascination on her face, I want her more than I've wanted anything ever. I almost say something, or kiss her, or pull her collar down and bite along her neck--
But I can't do any of that.
I'm dying.
I'm dying and I've let myself get close to her and in three years I'm going to take away her best friend, her teacher, and her crush. Maybe make her destroy the husk that claims to be me.
Should I really be thinking of leaving her without a lover as well?
I've got to get myself under some kind of control.
*****
I will, I decide on the way, buy Manako some more different guns. The M4 I have heard in some of the forums I read, not all that good as a weapon (though some swear by it). I'll get a selection of pistols and rifles and ammo for Manako, and practice with her. I'll need to teach her how to do without sleep and make a new supply of memory potions. I spend the journey on my phone, ordering out of the small arms catalogue of one of the Mage Trust's go to arms smugglers.
My mentor's house is ugly. A strange and mishappen reef of domes and blocks, assembled in a way that draws the eye oddly, off putting in its angles. Some say that this ugliness reflects the ugly powers he consorts with. Others that it reflects his singular genius at the geomantic arts.
Personally I think the ugliness is of an unfinished thing. Even the most beautiful building rarely seems that way when it's half constructed. This sprawling house in the country outside Tokyo is my teacher's life work, the final culmination of a life spent learning geomancy that stretches back to the Sengoku Jida.
Since that time just after my thirteenth birthday, this house is the one place I've ever felt truly and completely safe. I played freely in its vast gardens, learned the arts of combat, magic and, espionage from its master and his servants.
I spent three years living here. Now I come back only when I wish to see my teacher in person.
I do a short breathing exercise to calm down before I approach the door.
I arrive by car and knock on the door. Laplace, the head maid, answers as she always does. She's a tall, silver haired woman of a willowy, slightly unreal beauty, made a little more unreal by the french maid outfit and the rabbit ears poking up through her hair. She is, according to both her and my Master, from the moon. I'm not quite sure how this is possible. She's the one who taught me to fight, to detect and evade followers, all the skills I'd need to survive.
Laplace wasn't my first crush, but she was the first time I had a crush on another woman.
Behind her, the hall has changed again. Now it's warm and golden black, shining in a way that makes me think of syrup or molasses.
"Nishifune-san." She bows. "Kondou-san is waiting for you in the rotunda."
"Of course."
My teacher is famous in his dislike of honorifics. He sneers at mage families who's patriarchs require themselves to be addressed as sama, or even worse dono, and refuses even Sensei. When we talk in English, he is always my teacher, not my Master, when we speak in Japanese, he is simply Kondou-san. Nothing else.
Laplace leads me through and I watch the changes in internal style. The black and gold repeats a lot, but there's also a huge amount of living plants out now, the bright greens and white flowers clashing violently with the new decor. The black and gold might appear random, but I know enough to understand that it's meant to alternately absorb and refract geomantic energy, probably sucked from a wide area by the root system.
The unified purpose of the design though? Even I, who considers herself one of the best geomancers in Japan couldn't tell you.
When I find Kondo, he's sitting in a wicker chair, long dark hair falling down his back and playing astral chain on his switch. He looks up as I step into view and puts the game aside. "Nozomi."
"Enjoying your birthday present I see." Laplace pulls out another chair and I sit opposite. Another maid, this one a mass of vaguely feminine shadows brings tea and small cakes in English fashion.
"Things were so much more boring in the past." He nods in thanks to Laplace and she and the other maid bow and withdraws. "We had so few ways to entertain ourselves. No one can work all the time, not even me. So, what brings you here?"
"An achievement, and perhaps a mistake. Also a request for permission." I outline the events of the previous nights. "I failed to conceal my activities, and a school friend followed me. I ended up telling her about, well, myself. Magic."
"You're a sentimental girl sometimes." He sips his tea. "So what do you intend to do with her?"
"I was thinking I'd train her as a mage. It wouldn't do for the skills I've learned to die with me."
"And so you come seeking my permission to take a student." He looks at the pool.
"That and one other thing that could bring us trouble."
"You've always resisted getting close to anyone before." Anyone but him. Until he sent me to live on my own. "What's different about this girl?"
"She's strong willed. She followed me into danger and I couldn't spot her." That still rankles a little. "She saw a hunter and still wished to be taught."
"Wishes are all very well, but you're putting her in quite a lot of danger are you not? Can she survive it?"
I look down at my tea. "I don't want to be alone anymore. I've tried but I can't just live a life that's all secrets. I've been trying but I can't--" I sort of choke off. He looks at me, expression suddenly bland in that way he always gets when he's actually feeling profoundly awkward.
Eventually, he speaks. "Do as thou wish. That shall be the whole of the law. If you wish her to be your student then train her. I would like to test her though, as it will be some of my teachings you pass on."
"Alright, but do not try to steal her from me. She is my student, not yours."
"Of course, of course."
"Speaking of which. I acquired a rather interesting item."
"Oh?"
"A black book and the means to read it. I haven't dived into it yet, I felt like I should take precautions."
"Remarkable." Kondo smiles. "I am interested in the results of such research, so of course I'll assist you." He makes no sign that I can see but a few moments later Laplace returns with a gleaming red leather book. "Here. All my procedures for handling such objects. Be careful."
"Yes Kondo-san."
"Speaking of forbidden things, what was this report that you sent to Laplace about some bandit with a geomantic grid?"
"Yes. Aratani threw them in front of me. A particularly nasty street gang is using it. Crude, but still quite effective. I suspect that he intends to use me as a stalking horse for his own investigation."
"That young man will go far." Kondou rubs some of the dirt on his fingers and feels the consistency. "Though, he's got us, we can't just ignore this, amateurs experimenting with geomancy could set off who knows what effects."
"No. Though I'm going to see if I can turn the tables on him, and at least steal their research."
He nods, looking pleased. "Very well. Then I shall make the arrangements for your student to enter our house."
"Thank you Kondo-san." I really don't have time to do the administration that you need to do to get a student right now. I have things to do. "The last thing is this." I wave at the pond and bring up an image of the drone, still circling over tokyo, following me. "The hunter used this to track me. I'm almost certain."
"Really? I wonder where they acquired something like that." He looks at the drone. "Well, this won't do at all will it?"
"I want your permission to shoot it down."
"Shooting it down over Tokyo will draw to much notice. No, let me show you how it's done." He raises a hand, palm open and then brings the other palm down on it. The drone discorporates away to mist. "There."
My teacher is such a showoff.
*****
There's so much to do to induct a pupil. You have to let the Society know that you have a new mage so they can place the right processes in place with the government and the right flags on records. That takes ages. You also have to arrange a coming out party. I'm putting that off, nervous about how Manako will take the reaction of my peers. Will she find this less glamorous when she knows I'm so hated?
Manako seems worried too. We'd meet up in a restaurant after she'd finished cram school, and spent some time looking over her homework, which was mostly fine. I'd had to correct a few designs that had got perhaps overly ambitious, but I'd prefer an ambitious student to the alternative. She'll need all the ambition she can get to catch up.
"You're doing well." I tell her. "Make sure you keep taking your tablets when you study."
"Alright." Manako looks doubtfully at the pill bottle I've slipped her. "Are you sure we should be doing something like this?"
"It's quite safe. Tested for ages." I tap my head. "The human mind alone isn't quite up to magic. You need to give it a boost. This is the one that mages settled on."
"Do you use it?"
"Along with a few other methods." I check my phone and begin to pack away the books. "I'll have to teach you how not to sleep to."
"How not to sleep?" She looks surprised, but not as pleased as I hoped, then smiles. "That sounds great actually." There's a pause while she loads her bag, drawing out whatever she wants to say. I decide I'll give her a few moments and then if she hasn't come clean ask her straight out. "My family invites you for a meal." I consider and reject making a joke about dating her. She's still looking bothered, but not about this I think. "Would that be okay? They think that you're lonely. I told them some stuff about you, as we're going out a lot, and it'd let us work on stuff at my house"
"That's fine. I'll be in my best behaviour. What day?"
"Tomorrow."
" Should I wear a wig?"
"No, they know that your hair is white." She gets up. "Sorry to take another of your evenings."
"It's fine. I'll bring you some new texts." I get up and put some bills on the table. Manako follows me.
I arranged some additional volleyball practice with Akira. I still want to know what's up with Manako though. I decide I'll just ask her straight up, and wait for a good opportunity as step into the streets. There's a long silence and I decide to inject myself into it. "So what's bothering you?"
Manako looks over at me, sudden and guilty. I give her a reassuring look. "I know you very well Manako, something is bothering you. What happened?"
"It's probably nothing, he probably just forgot." She takes a deep breath, seems to examine what she's said and tries again. "It's my Uncle. You know he travels a lot?" I know Manako's uncle is her favourite relative. He was the first to take her shooting. Amd tells her stories from around the globe. "He always comes to see me to say goodbye when he leaves Japan, but this time he didn't."
"Did you have a time arranged and he no showed?"
"Not really. He was staying in our guest room, and then he left. My parents say he left early, and we just missed one another because I was out on Sunday." Ah, guilt, I'm no stranger to that one. Now I feel a little guilty too.
"I'm sorry you missed him."
"It's fine! Training is important." She sighs. "I'm more worried about him though. I would have thought he'd have at least left me a note or called."
"Did you call him?"
"Yes. No answer, but he might still be on the plane. He was travelling to the Philippines."
"I can check up on him for you. It wouldn't be difficult." A quick check on entry and exit records should suffice to know that he left the country safely.
"Really?" Manako smiles. "Thank you."
"I'll text you when I get a result." We're approaching Manako's station. "I'd better head off, I have volleyball with Akira."
"Sure." Manako waves and heads off up the steps into the station. I turn away, headed for the nearby subway entrance, when my phone buzzes. A text for Akira. Maybe she can't make it?
"Hey, how do you tell if someone is following you?"
*****
"I keep seeing this guy behind me. He's got a brown coat on, like a detective, and a loud shirt."
The simplest way to determine if you're being trailed on foot is to pause and turn one hundred and eighty degrees as if you forgot your umbrella. This will work most of the time unless you're up against a team with a substantial number of people. It has some problems however, like revealing that you believe that you're being followed. Laplace trained me in quite a few of the better tricks, the ones that can detect even a team, such as noticing the most common formations that teams will use to follow you. Generally there'll be one or two behind on the other side of the street, and one ahead on your side of the street, or visa versa.
"Don't look back, just walk normally but slowly. Window shop a little. Keep your head up and watch your surroundings."
I don't want Akari to give herself away, so I don't want her to pause and turn. If she is being followed then I don't want her to do anything until at least I get there. Instead I'm going to conduct the other type of check you do. Get a confederate to a vantage point and have them mount a check for you. I use my phone to quickly plot out a route based. With the GPS location from Akira's phone it's fairly simple to figure out an intercept point. She's staying on populated streets and walking straight and slow, window shopping a little as she moves.
We're talking to one another in voice, partly for safety, partly because it makes coordinating what we're doing easier.
"You're really accepting this pretty easily."
"I guess you were right that I'm someone who knows about people following her." History hovers over this conversation. That one time that our worlds really intersected.
She laughs a little weakly. "Should I call the police?"
She should, but my blood is up and I kind of want to know who's following my friend. "When we're sure you're being followed, Then we'll call them."
Neither of us is in uniform, so unless the follower has really done his homework he shouldn't connect us, though will my colour scheme imply it? I'm in mostly black today. Black skirt, black jacket, black thigh highs, white shirt and red tie. For one of my best friends, I'll tint myself. I switch the black in my outfit to a progressively lighter blue as I hurry the subway. What about my hair? If the follower knows me too then that'll give me away even at a distance. If I'd known this was going to happen I'd have worn a hoodie.
I'll just have to trust that my own previous counterintelligence precautions would have alerted me to someone watching or investigating the school or me.
It's an agonizing twenty minute series of connections to get me where I want to go, with several short sprints between trains to get the algorithmically perfect course. Finally, I leave the last JR station and fast walk up into the second floor of a large department store then out into the skybridge across the main street. I pause, check my phone and locate Akari in the crowd. It's not to hard. She's tall enough to stand out. She makes a turn into this street, she'll pass below me. We're actually already past the in door sports centre who's volleyball court we tend to use for out of school training between the two of us, but that's into a series of less populated backstreets that maybe aren't a hundred percent safe.
And there behind her is the man. He's fat, gross looking man, cheaply dressed, brown detective coat, shirt that is yes, loud. A lurid blue Hawiian that looks very out of place in this weather. The collar of his coat and shirt are both up around his neck but it's open underneath, like a cape. His face is might be pleasant enough except for it's total dissipation and the smirk of total contempt for the world around him. I pull out my phone, zoom the camera in on him and then take a series of pictures of his face. Then I cover one eye and check what's inside him. That shirt is freaking me out.
There's a glow of life force in there at least. It's hard to make out more in a crowd situation like this, but he's not a walking void like a hunter or someone full of worms. There's something off about him though.
"I see him. He's definitely tailing you."
"Okay. I'm going to call someone."
"Alright. Call me back when you're done." She rings off. I walk back into the department store, buy a hoodie (white with a red rose) and cap (plain black) and put it on, stowing my coat in my bag then merge out into the street.
After what seems like an age Akari comes back on the phone. "They're sending someone. Where are you?"
"Behind him." I can see him in the crowd in passing glances, the bobbing flash of bright green on the shirt collar. "I've got eyes on you both."
"I thought we were going to play volleyball, not spy vs. spy."
"Hopefully there's still time for that."
"Okay, the cops are here. I'm going to ring off."
"Okay. I'll see you on the court."
Two police officers are cutting through the crowd to Akari. She pauses, then turns and points back towards shirt man. They nod to her, talk for a moment, and then tell her to stay put. Both cops walk towards the man, who stops, waiting for them. I keep walking, keeping my pace slow, not quite looking at him.
There's something I don't like about the way he's standing. It's too confident. He's been caught red handed following a girl and is about to be confronted, but his body language isn't at all defensive. The cops reach him, talk, then seem to stop. He doesn't show them anything but they begin to walk away. I see Akari's mouth drop open as he starts towards her and will her to turn and run, but she doesn't, held to the spot presumably by whatever force compelled the cops away.
I pause by a shop window, as if admiring something. The man reaches Akari and puts an arm around her. She goes meekly with him.
I fall in behind them. Reaching into my bag I find a particular chain and fasten it around my head like a princess, mostly concealed by my hair and the cap. Then I pull on my gloves. The man is walking Akari in towards a side street. I follow slowly. He seems like he has a particular destination in mind, not just heading for the nearest deserted alley. Residential neighbourhoods are not far off the main streets, and are only lightly trafficked. If he's on the ball he'll spot me as soon as we get there, so I'll take him before he can react. I close it up till I'm only a few people behind, looking anywhere but directly at him. A criminal superstition: a watched cop will always look.
I'll use a kick. Instant take down hopefully, then grab Akari and run for it. We turn off the street and I feel something awful, like a disgust at the street I'm about to turn into. Even with the chain it's enough to stop me for a moment and make me stumble as I come through.
The man turns and looks at me. Behind us, passers-by move unconcernedly. I stop a short way from him.
"So." He says. "You're hunting me?"
*****
"Take your hands off my friend."
He doesn't, holding Akari close and smirking at me. Her eyes are blank and she has a strange smile fixed on her face. "Ah. I guess I'm unlucky. I never guessed she'd have a friend like you. Are you an exorcist? No." a sly smile. "A mage."
I fix on his voice. It's surprisingly deep and attractive for such an ugly man, a complex baritone, like an opera singer. I could get lost in that voice. Never return. Each word seems to have weight and power powered into it.
That might be almost literally what he's doing. A reverse spell, pouring might into words so that his words have power. It's a technique many mages use for low-level mental effects, often on themselves. This man has turned it into something far more powerful. Each time he speaks I feel myself sinking deeper.
"Don't worry." He pats Akari. "Your friend will come back alive. She'll be a sobbing ruin, with her personality crushed. Probably have a phobia about sleep but after a few years of drugs and therapy I'm sure she'll be vaguely functional. Why don't you come along? See how we treat her."
Despite the chain burning against me his words are getting through. I can't imagine what this must be like for someone without protection. I need to stop him talking. I'll play along so I can get time to plan. Or is that something I'm rationalizing to go along with him? Your brain can do that if the mental control goes deep enough. "I'd like that."
"This way." He waves. "You're both so tall. Very beautiful." A wave of warm emotion. It's hard to want anything but to go along with whatever he wants from me. "I like that. Keep your distance please. At least five steps between us." He stands with Akaira between us.
The street ahead is clear, empty. There's a large van parked and four men and a woman waiting. Three of the men are just muscle, the others is a grossly overweight man in a business suit, and is of similar aspect to my escort, while the woman is young and dressed in college student casual.
This isn't going to work. "You have a nice voice." I need a new plan.
"Why thank you. I'm really borrowing it though. Aren't you uncomfortable with that chain on you? It looks hot."
"It's burning." My hand rises towards the chain. I can't disobey him directly. It feels too good. The chain doesn't seem to be helping much. Maybe I can throw it at him. Or at least cool it down.
Oh, that's a good idea. I speak a word and switch the heat coming off the chain into sound. Maybe it'll block his voice. No, it's just really annoying.
A loud hiss fills the street. The chain almost instantly heats back up and the hissing grows louder, almost unbearable. I can only partly hear him through it. "That's annoying."
Got you. I make a sharp chopping gesture and sound ceases. The man's eyes go wide and his lips move. He's silenced. Damn. I should have silenced myself. At the van, his confederates start to move forward, one raising hands to cast a dispel.
I punch the fat guy in the throat. My fist hits something squishy and gross. The sensation is so disgusting that I recoil back a step, looking at my glove. Fortunately it's not stained, even though there's a spreading green slime forming around the man's scarf. He falls on his bottom, clutching himself.
The rest are charging at me.
Akari is on the ground, clutching her head, twitches running through her whole body. No time to think about that now.
The three men are coming, the woman is casting, switching from dispelling gestures to what looks like a fireball. Then, the fourth, the fat man, starts to sing. The sounds hit me in layers and I come to a stop.
The chain is still hissing, and its hot, its functions switching to maximum as this even worse wave of words hits me. It's hard to concentrate even on the heat and noise. Hard to concentrate on anything. The effect reminds me of the crash I experienced the one time I had MDMA. It was at a party in London and I was sixteen and had just found out what would happen if I committed suicide. I'd taken some of my hosts mollies, and it had been great, until it wasn't and I just lay in bed and didn't do anything as the bleakness of an overloaded reward centre reduced everything to grey.
"She's out?" The woman says. The three toughs are advancing on my cautiously, batons up.
The man licks his lips and stops his chanting. A weird susurration is coming from his throat. "Mostly. Be careful. The chain on her head is giving her some resistance even to the voice."
"What about Kin?"
"She messed up his implant. Don't lift the silence on him. It wouldn't be safe for us either."
"Poor thing. She did so well and now she's going to suffer for it."
I don't want to do anything. I just want to stand here.
I'm going to end up with Junya or Aratani rescuing me.
Even through the bleak haze, this thought is so disgusting I'm forced to action. It takes all the effort in the world to do it, but I make a gesture and reshape the silence. I almost but not quite just drop it entirely, but instead switch it into a ring. A bubble of silence with myself in the skin, Akari outside and the man with the damaged throat inside with his companions.
Sound snaps off, and I'm free. I'm still groggy, slow, but it doesn't matter. The sound the damaged one is making does my work for me. The Mage raises her hands to cast then starts to seize. The four toughs jerk around like puppets on strings, muscles firing randomly.. The fatman is able to stumble a few more steps towards me before toppling forwards.
I don't wait to see further results of this, but grab Akari in a fireman's carry and just run for it.
The direction is random, and I just go as fast as I can. After a block I lower her to the ground and check her out. She's unconscious, body twitching. I check her pulse and its fast and ragged. Searching around in my bag I find a healing potion and a general-purpose cure all and inject both. Akair stirs and moans, then her eyes open.
"What happened?"
"Something bad." I point down the street. Somehow, perhaps familiarity we've come out near the sports centre. "Head inside for a bit, I've just got to check something. I'll be back soon."
"Shouldn't we call the police?" she asks.
"It's--" I look back the way we came. "It's one of those Nozomi things."
"Ah." She pulls herself up. "Don't tell me anymore. Just stay safe."
"I'll be back in a bit."
There's the sound of distant car alarms, the silence has obviously dropped. I remove the hoodie and cap, stow them both in my bag of holding and put my coat back on, then pull a quick illusion across my hair, staining it black. There are people starting to move that way in numbers now, others coming out of their houses. A small crowd is forming by the time I reach the battle.
The kidnap team are all down, twitching, though no longer so badly. Drool, blood and vomit leak out of them in various quantities. I push through the crowd and approach: "I'm a nurse. Let me through!"
"An ambulance is coming!" someone calls. "Be careful!"
As I approach the reason for the clear zone becomes evident. Both of the fat men are emitting a low, almost subsonic hum from their necks. I begin to make a show of doing first aid, which I actually do know, and steal a look at the second fat man's neck. Below his collar is a complex vocal organ that resembles something between a frogs breath sack and severe cancer. It's green, oozing slightly and I am suddenly feeling quite unwell. Blood is fine, vomit is fine, but this just isn't right.
It doesn't stop me from stealing his wallet though, nor the womans. The other men seem like they're much less important to this. The IDs inside will certainly be faked but you can tell a lot from a fake ID.
The ambulance comes and I leave it to the paramedics, exchanging hurried words with them before retreating, vanishing back into the crowd and finding an alley to change my look again. Only then do I allow myself to check the wallets.
As I expected, the drivers licence and other ID papers they contain seem bland enough. Internet searches of the names show thousands of results. Almost certainly fakes. More interesting at the other items. Neither wallet contains much cash, but each contains a black credit card from the same company and bank. I'd be willing to bet good money that these are linked to the same account as well. A potential security weakness, though the bank also provides a good cutout for operational expenses.
Pretty soon, someone is going to check the necks of those two guys and panic. Esper down will be called and the Japanese state will become well and truly involved. As I begin to walk towards the sports centre, I call Aratani. Much as it galls me to admit, I'm going to need a favour.
I text him. <<Hey. Are you free today? I might need some help with a police thing.>>
<<Ah. Sorry I'm in Osaka. I'll be here for a while. If things go bad though, ask for prosecutor Tanigawa Junko. Use my name.>>
<<Alright.>>
<<I might need to call in this favour soon.>>
Become in my debt Aratani. I want that so much.
I try to put it out of my mind for now. I'm not going to call this prosecutor for at least a little while. This episode has been dangerous and frustrating and I want to burn off some of my energy. I want to play some volleyball.
I arrive at the sports centre, a long, large, square building up a series of steps and head inside to get changed. Akari is already out on the court, playing two on two with three guys who look like college students. She's holding her own pretty well.
"Everything okay?" Akari asks as I join her. The game turns into three on three, with the one guy on our side looking happy as punch.
"Yeah, for now let's just play ball."
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Chapter 2-2: Homicide
- Pronouns
- She/Her
After I'm done with the game, I begin the administrative work to smooth out this latest set of complications. I start off by hiring a team to watch out for Akari. It's possible, though unlikely that this magic enabled kidnap was meant for her, rather than just some random young woman. The fact that several other women have vanished leads me to suspect otherwise, but it might be so. That takes me a bunch of work on my phone while I eat a light dinner in a family restaurant I like not too far from the sports centre.
After that, I have to go to Kabukicho. Arrange more intelligence gathering on the boxcutters, and now check into the kidnapping attempt and Manako's Uncle as well. Taking a student, allowing myself to open up to someone feels like it should have been one of those thresholds in a story where you're suddenly much happier, and I am, but I didn't expect the amount of sheer busy work that I'd end up doing to read a book and make a friend.
My phone beeps, information from the Japanese passport office. Nobody of the name in question left the country yesterday.
Shit. How do I tell her? Should I call now or at least text? She should be on her way home from her tuition by now. At least I hope. I should call her. I ring her phone as I'm headed from the sports centre towards the station. "Hey Manako."
"Hey Nozomi." She can hear I'm being serious. "Did you get news on my Uncle?"
"Yeah. He didn't leave the country. I'm going to start checking it out with my contacts. Can you send me more details of him? Everything you've got. Social media, phone number, stuff like that?"
"Sure. I'll email it." Worried but trying to put a brave on.
"Great." I decide to be reassuring. "If he can be found, I'll find him." Even if I have to sick Aratani on the case when he gets back from Osaka.
"Alright. If you need any help then," her voice distorts weirdly. The phones charms jangle. It's on my end, "uh, can you hear me?"
"Yeah." I look around at the streets around me. It's got quite dark, almost unseasonably, given its still only about seven. The sun seems caught behind high buildings and the atmosphere has got suddenly much spookier. People around me are hurrying, and the air almost stinks of the eldritch. "I'll have to call you back."
I put the phone in my pocket and cover my eye. Anything that can disrupt my phone's transmission is bad news. The ZLM link is top of the line, and should resist even the kind of military-grade etheric countermeasures that off-world realms or the house of gates have access to. I could still talk, but to even make the line crackle. . .
Energies flicker around me, an apparently uniform bank of strange mana imposed on this area like a dark fog.
A light drizzle begins to fall, pouring along the dark and the street lights. People hurry all around me, and I join the crowd, moving with them, what the hell, what the hell is this?
And then just as quickly as it came, the effect dissipates. Everything very suddenly returns to normal. People around me perk, awakened from a dream. I keep walking, taking deep breaths and quartering the area around me, on the lookout for anything unusual. I'm concentrating hard enough that my phone makes me jump.
Nagoshi's ringtone. I pick up. "Ryuta-kun." The familiarity feels a little forced. "What a coincidence, I was just on my way to you."
"Hey Nozomi-san. That's good." His voice lacks something some of the usual Yakuza bluster maybe. "I'm going to have someone meet you at the station. Where are you coming in?"
"I'll be into Shinjuku on the JR." I head up to the platform. He clearly doesn't want to talk about it on the phone. "I'll see you soon."
There's something very sad about people who died by surprise. The face always has that glassy startlement, the impossibility that their life could so suddenly terminate, surrounded by the trappings of his life. A carefully tended potted plant, a stack of papers awaiting processing. Even the new wooden desk. Expensive dark stuff, getting rarer and rarer.
The body is still sat in his swivel chair. A bald man in a colourful suit and white shirt, the collar open to reveal the beginning of full-body tattoos and the ugly red line where the neck's been broken. Someone's shut his eyes, but I've been told they were open when he was found. A laptop is open in front of him, gone to screen saver, next to an open file. Financial statements of some kind. He was killed, by the look of it, while doing paperwork a few feet from an office full of Yakuza. None of them heard anything.
"You alright?" Nagoshi asks.
"Just seems like a bad way to go." I lean away from the desk and look at him, hoping I don't look too green.
This is the mortal remains of Hoga Reo, head of the semi-independent Hoga group, a small clan. A man with riches and success. In the prime of his years, with thirty more good ones ahead if his liver didn't give out from the tattoos or his lungs from all the smoke. Instead whatever his success was ended here, in this cramped office in front of a stack of financial statements.
I called Manako back during my walk here after getting the first wave of data. Her Uncle's phone is off, battery out, GPS down. As far as I can tell it went out before he went to Japan. Confirmation if he actually left still waits, but while a ticket was bought, the electronic registration of his passport shows no out scan. Wherever he went he's still in Japan.
And then I got to the murder scene. Another mystery in a pileup of mysteries.
"You wouldn't have liked him." The third man in the room says.
"No?" I look over at him. He's a tall, scar faced man in his early thirties, black hair with tinted glasses, purple suit. An almost stereotypical Yakuza, except for how fit he is.Good skin too, which is unusual. The tailored suit does little to hide the pantherish musculature moving underneath. I know of him. Aochi Kenshi, Taguchi-gumi's demon. Renowned on both sides of the city as perhaps the underworld's most skilled fighter. Legend says he once killed a dozen Russian Mafia ex-spetnaz by himself. As far as I know, he has no magic at all while doing it, which just makes the way he's looking at me more exciting. He keeps sizing me up, and I don't get the impression it's because he wants to sleep with me either. I'm doing the same to him. There's an itch there, to find out which of us is really better. I suppose I also have a bit of a reputation too, down in this circle of hell.
"Can't imagine any woman would like that guy if he wasn't paying her too. He was a pimp, the bad kind, ran all kinds of scams to get girls, fraudulent host clubs and such, getting girls into debt then offering them sex work as a way out."
"People still do that?" I walk around the body, inspecting it again. No other marks than the neck break that I can see. No defensive wounds. He was killed fast. I'm not exactly a pathologist, I'm mostly looking for evidence of magic. There's none of the usual overt stuff. No signs burned into anything, no eldrich dripping liquids, but there is mana.
I pause to covertly download his computer with a spell. No need for the two Yakuza to know I did that.
"Not many given the amount of police scrutiny it gets, but some. Hoga was old school. He always said he had protection." He shrugs.
"Like he was an informer?"
"I don't think that was it." Aochi shakes his head. "We'd have known if he was talking to the cops. Still, it's a problem he's dead, for everyone. The guy was holding some territory here, a buffer zone if you like, between our groups. Now everything's up in the air."
"Are you going to call in the cops or just dump the body?"
"Up to his boys." Nagoshi says. "Can you tell us what happened to him though? How was he killed like this with a room full of his boys in the next room?"
"I mean, magic, obviously." I look up at them. "Does this building have anti-teleportation mesh?"
"Yeah actually. Guy was paranoid about espers."
"Even so, there's a bunch of ways you could do it. Sneak in invisible and just silence the room. Or something more esoteric like cutting space open and sticking you hands through, or summoning something that doesn't obey the normal rules of matter. Telekinesis as well perhaps."
"But it was definitely magic?" Nagoshi asks.
I close an eye. "Yeah. There's still some wisps around." Of very strange mana. I find an enchanted bottle and collect a sample. The mana is dark and I'm reminded uncomfortably of the cloud from earlier.
"Could you do it?" Aochi asks.
"Oh yeah." I look around at him. "I didn't though. And I wouldn't have done it like this."
"How would you have done it?"
"He'd vanish on his way home and I'd decant his secrets out before I killed him." I pull back from the desk and clear for action, because that's the kind of question you ask when you're going to jump someone.
Nagoshi steps deliberately between us. "Okay, enough. Nishifune-san would only have reason to do this for us, and if we'd done it, we'd have done it openly, like men."
"You're real old school too aren't you Nagoshi-san?" Aochi grins, his scars pulling the expression up.
"That's right." Nagoshi rolls his shoulders slightly. "Maybe you'd like to find out how old school I am."
"I'm going to go report to my Boss." Aochi grins and waves. "So long Nagoshi-san, see you later Miss Witch."
"Not if I see you first."
Nagoshi sighs and we leave. "You shouldn't get involved with men like that."
"I'm not interested in him romantically, I just want to fight him."
"That's so much worse." We step out of the office. Kabukicho is just starting to light up around us. The crowds are just starting to come out. Nagoshi pulls out a cigarette. One of the small crowd of minions who are shadowing us comes forward to light it, then retreats. I wince at the heavy stink of the smoke. Second-hand smoke is an occupational hazard around Yakuza but I don't have to like it.
"Is there going to be a war?" I ask as we walk back towards the Hagino-gumi offices. "Over this killing I mean."
"I doubt it'll come to that. The higher-ups are too worried about the Chinese and the Osakans. Tokyo's not so high on the totem pole of organized crime anymore." He puffs the cigarette. "Doesn't mean it'll get settled without blood. Probably they'll send some young punk to fire a round into our door, or maybe slash up one of our guys. Then we'll respond in kind, and then old man Hagino will hash out a truce with the higher-ups. It won't necessarily be in our favour, but it won't be an actual war."
"Anything else I can do?"
"Find who did it? Don't you know a detective?"
"He's out of town. I'll check into it though."
"So what did you want from me? You were on your way here, and it didn't sound like just a social call."
"I'm looking into young women going missing." I'd googled it on the train. There have been twelve cases in the last month, all college or highschool girls,. "I have a pretty good idea what might be going on, but I need information."
I explain, briefly, what happened. Nagoshi listens grimly, nodding a bit. "This is pure Other Side of the City stuff, but I'll see what I can find out." He pauses. "They really tried to grab your friend off a busy street?"
"Yeah. Talked a couple of cops down to do it."
"Huh." He takes a long drag on his cigarette and then tosses it on the ground and stomps on it. We're in front of the office. "That's real interesting."
"Oh yeah?"
"Your friend goes to that rich girl's school you do right? She's not some delinquent?"
"Her father's a stockbroker I think. Her mother manages a chain of cosmetic stores. She doesn't drink or anything I know of."
"Right, so if she didn't come home, her parents would miss her. She'd be noticed right away, and the police would launch a major operation to find her. If you just wanted to kidnap a bunch of young girls, then you'd take ones people won't miss."
"So you're saying there must be some other qualification."
"Is your friend a virgin?" I give him a look, and he shrugs. "Come on, it's an obvious one. Lot more virgins go to rich all girl school than places they wouldn't be missed."
"I haven't asked her, and I'm not going to. That said, virginity is a very out of date ritual practice for mages. Mostly it's just flat out pseudo-magic, and in the rare cases it is relevant it's just a matter of a cleansing ritual and overriding a couple of meridians." Being an albino makes it hard to cover when you're blushing.
"You're pretending I know what any of that shit you just said means." We reach his office and he waves that his minions should stay out in the cluttered outer office space. They really are doing well for themselves to have offices on two floors of this building.
"It means that whatever the qualification is, that's not it. I'll see if I can find out anything about her though. It could be something like ancestry or even blood type."
Once inside, he opens a the drinks cabinet and pulls out a bottle of whisky. To my surprise he pours me a glass too. I return the favour, pouring his drink and then sitting back to taste mine.
"Mind control throat cancer huh?" He gives me a disgusted look. "Your side of the city is something else."
"It is what it is." I shrug. "I'm worried though. I got kind of blindsided by all this, but now I feel like something big is going down. Just before I called you, I got this flash, like the area around me was full of dark fog. I didn't want to tell Aochi, but that was about the time the murder would have been."
"That is bad." He frowns. "Though if you can prove it, it'll help us. The big issue right now is they think I had you off him to grab his territory. We had a disagreement. I didn't like his methods."
"I sort of figured."
"Come to think of it, didn't some civilian bigshot get offed just the other day?"
"Maybe. I haven't been keeping up with the news."
He laughs. "That's rare, new boyfriend or something?"
I look down, blush. "Maybe a new girlfriend, it's not too serious. I'm just training a student."
"A student you've got the hots for, right?" He knocks back some of his drink. "Huh. I guess I suspected, but then the way you look at some of my guys…"
"I can go either way." I look over at him, embarrassment turning to annoyance. "Aren't you going to tell me to be careful or its a phase or something?"
"Fuck that, I'm old but I'm not stupid. I've met all kinds, besides, she's probably from your school. Girl or guy, I'd rather you date someone from that world than down here. You want to scare me, take up with some host."
"I'll try to keep that in mind." I finish my own drink. "I'm going to head home and see what I can find out about this mana and the other stuff. Call me at any hour if you find out anything at all."
"Alright." He tips the mostly empty glass at me. "Stay safe."
I'm feeling a little paranoid, so. I take the subway for the first part of the way home, going out of my way to break pursuit. I'll take the JR back from the end of the line. With a long connection ahead, I plug my phone's screen into my eyes through my grid and start to send out messages. Encrypted messages to various of my less important contacts to see if they know anything. A request to a certain corrupt cop of my acquaintance for the case file on any missing girls or mysterious killings.
I manage to get a position by the door, pushed up against the wall with my back to it, where I can observe the rest of the carriage. We're still in the dregs of rush hour, people working overtime or going out with friends. Enough people that it's standing room only though not quite the absolutely massive press you'd have had even an hour ago. Still, there are enough people it's a fairly challenging counter surveillance environment. My main gambit is to occasionally get off and either take the next train or walk out of the station and back to the nearest subway entrance from there. Sometimes I'll change my look in between.
It's while one of those is ongoing that Manako calls me again. "Hey Nozomi, I found a clue. Can we meet in Yokohama?"
"At the station? Alright." I frown. I'm worried she's going to run off without me. "I'll be there shortly."
"Thank you!"
"Wait, what have you found?"
"I was looking at my Uncle's social media. He follows this guy who I remember meeting once named of Shiba Aoba. They both work in import-export."
"I'm just going to switch to my headset so I can text while we talk." I pull a pair of Bluetooth headphones out of my bag and tether them to my phone. They're actually modified with several sets of encryption and a directionality function which prevents anything not my phone interacting with them. I don't want anyone listening in. "Okay, I'm back. So this guy is in Yokohama?"
I text the Kanedas <<What do you know about an export-import guy named Shiba Aoba?>>
"Yeah. I told my parents I'm going out to meet you so we can study together. I'm at the JR now."
"Right." I've managed to go the right direction for Yokohama by sheer luck. Now I just need to dog leg back down to it. "I'll see you there."
Tanaka gets back to me. <<I know he's deeply sketchy. He's in the mystical artefact business. Is he offering you something?>>
<<No. But if he was, should I accept it?>>
<<If he sold me a car on the promise it had four wheels I'd walk around and it and check.>> There's a pause and a long period of typing alerts in the chat program. <<He's involved in some bad stuff too. Drugs and girls. Watch yourself.>>
Myself isn't what I'm worried about.
It takes us a little over an hour to reach our destination. Manako arrives, wearing a sweater and shorts with knee socks in white and green, looking ultra-cute and extremely worried. "I-I'm not sure if this is a good idea. It's actually really late. Will he be still at his office? We still have to get home afterward. I told my parents we'd stay over but—"
"I think we should check now." I give her a serious look. "I checked up on Shiba with some of my contacts. Apparently he's not a nice guy. If he's holding your Uncle or something, every second counts."
"I can believe it." She sighs. "When we met I thought he was a creep. My Uncle kept trying to stay behind us."
"It's fine." I give her a hug. "I can deal with creeps. If he's still there, we'll ask him some questions. If he's not, then we'll break into his office and rip off his computer to see what he's got in it. "
Manako blinks and covers her mouth, but I can see her grin under it. "Alright."
"Stay close to me."
We head through the crowds of Yokohama evening, through the neon glitter and the sound of a noisy crowd. It's brightly lit here, coloured lights up to the top of the many skyscrapers. The fragile new prosperity as global supply chains redirect back to Japan due to the chaos in America, China and India. The prosperity is made all the more frantic by the boom's obvious unsustainability.
Shiba's office is in a back street near the port, in one of the null zones that exist between the busy industrial and port areas and the glittering office spaces and entertainment districts around Chinatown.
It's strange walking down the backstreet, very still. Most of the lights of the offices are off, but the one we're looking for is on. I pause, holding up a hand for silence. Arguing up ahead. Outside the office, the quick flicker of a cigarette.
"There are people there. We'll check on them."
I walk forward. A big, criminal looking guy with tattoos (sailor, not yakuza) is standing outside and smoking. He watches us approach. "We're here to see Shiba-san." I suggest.
"Oh yeah, what about?"
"About Murakawa-san, his business partner." Manako blurts.
The big guy's eyes narrow and he bangs on the roller door next to it. It opens up. The office is actually more of a warehouse inside, with two large benches and stacked wooden crates and cardboard boxes. Several dozen men, all rough-looking, Japanese and a half dozen other nationalities look up from what looks like a pretty serious discussion. "They know that bastard Murakawa." The doorman growls.
"Manako." I speak loudly and clearly to be sure she hears me. "Back off a bit. I don't want you to get hurt.
"You're not going anywhere!" The doorman steps forward. I step into him and punch him in the throat. He stumbles backward, eyes bulging. I use the time to pivot up and put a full extension kick into his solar plexus, pulling it just enough I don't rupture his organs. He goes flying backwards into the room, crashing into the table.
"No, I'm not." I kind of want to show off more to Manako but fighting in public isn't very smart. I step inside The men give ground, suddenly afraid, dogs finding the cat they were chasing is a tiger. "I'll be a few minutes." I reach up and pull press the switch for the shutter.
The door falls with a clatter.
"Can you teach me to do that?" Manako looks around in awe at the wrecked warehouse and the slumped, unconscious bodies of the men. Her eyes are wide, and thrilled in a way that I am sort of into.
"A half dozen ways I'm sure. Now, let's find the boss. Here." I hand her a pair of gloves. "Put these on. Don't want to leave any prints." I walk over to the one guy I left in a condition to speak. He's caucasian, maybe American or Australian, I can't quite tell, now extra pale as he clutches the arm I snapped when he tried to cut me up with a machete.
"Y-you broke my arm." He cradles it miserably.
"Looks like it." I pull an injector out and put it before him. "Tell me where your boss is and why he's angry with Murakawa and I'll give you this. It'll make the pain go away. I'll even let you leave."
He swallows, looking at the injector. "Murakawa ran for it--" He leans back. "Then, the boss—" he slumps back. "Go see for yourself. He's upstairs."
A feeling creeps over me. It's not dread, but it's something akin to it. A little voice that says that I've walked into something I don't like. I give him the injector. He fumbles with it a moment before managing to get it against his wrist and gasps as the gas fires. A moment later he staggers to his feet and runs out, slamming the door behind him.
"Let's go up." I look at the office. "This might not be nice."
"Nozomi, I saw like a dozen guys get torn apart by that hunter. If he's dead up their or something it can't be worse than that." Manako grabs onto my arm. "You'll protect me, right?" Her voice is so serious it's distracting.
What we find in the office kills my mood pretty effectively. The office is about what you'd expect, a single desk next to the window drawn up so the occupant can watch the door but doesn't have his back to the window. A laptop on the desk in sleep mode. Some metal shelves with box files.
Shiba is still in his office chair. His neck is broken. I hear Manako give a little gasp next to me.
I've seen this before. I take a deep breath and then pull out my phone, snap the corpse's picture twice and walk around. "Are you good?" My voice is steady but I don't feel that steady. There's something so spooky about men being killed this way, their friends close by.
This means that Manako's uncle is involved in that. Well. Nagoshi will be happy at least.
"Yeah."
"Check the box files. We'll want anything that looks like records of what he was shipping, diaries, names places.
"Are we taking them with us?"
I consider. I'd like to leave the police with a fully intact office and thus less clues than us, but with a caucasian guy running away with an obviously broken arm is going to attract attention sooner than later. I pull the bag of holding out of my bag and open it. "Put it all in here."
I walk over, shut the laptop, then pause, looking over the body. Around his neck is a thin chain with an array of charms. I pick a pen off the desk and carefully pull them off the body. There's a half dozen of them, about as powerful a set of ward signs as you can use without some actual skill with magic to know how to lay them in. Apparently it didn't help. I take samples of the local mana as well.
I'm probably fucking up any chance of getting a conviction off the physical evidence here. Then again, unless they're some kind of esper who can somehow remote neck snap someone through anti-teleportation netting this is probably not going to end in court.
In for a penny, in for a pound as the English say. I walk over to the wall and extract my knife.
"What are you doing?" Manako asks as I begin to cut into it.
"Checking if there's anti-teleportation mesh." My knife strikes something and I peel the wallpaper away.
Here it is. Anti-teleportation mesh is an alloy of several metallic compounds, primarily copper and osmium shaped into a matrix that can prevent teleporting through it.
Only there's something wrong with this. The mesh should be a shiny colour, copper coloured with bands of shiny silver. It certainly shouldn't be a dull black and leave a dark discolouration on my knife blade where it touched it.
I pull back hastily and bag the knife, putting it in the bag of holding as well, adding the charm set and the laptop.
"Should we check the desk draws?"
In the distance, I can hear sirens. "I don't think we've got the time. Come on."
I pull the shadows around us as we leave. A pair of police vehicles are already nosing down the alley, with an ambulance behind them.
"What do we do now?" Manako asks.
"Hmm. I'm going to call a friend of a friend." How many of these things should I be thinking are a single complex? Obviously Manako's missing uncle is linked to the killings, but what about the frog throats? What about the fact this is going down when Aratani is off in Osaka?
"Can you tell me what's going on?" Manako gives me an annoyed look.
"Sorry." I rub my eyes. "Are you hungry?"
"Sure. I kind of skipped dinner to come out here."
"Good. Let's go sit down and I'll talk you through it."
When I get home I analyse the material I've got. The laptop records are useless. They're financial stuff written in some kind of code. I send them off to a specialist, but all I can immediately tell is that he was in the red starting last month. The profit drop is two days before the first kidnapping, five days after the first murder. Given how Shiba died though, the link is still pretty obvious even without the financials and given how coded everything is it doesn't help much.
With that hole dry, I turn my attention to the stuff I am an expert in, the mana I collected from the scenes of the two murders. As I suspected, or feared, it's identical in structure and spectrum. Deep and dark. When I place a sample in an emitter it spits out spectrums way up in the range of ultra-low-frequency radio waves. The kind of stuff submarines use to communicate. I know enough to guess this is extra-dimensionally sourced. Geomantic, stellar or atmospheric energy doesn't behave like this.
It's definitely the same stuff as I saw during the event at the time of Hoga's murder, or so near as to make coincidence all but impossible. I should have taken a sample of that too.
Something about this nags at me. While I haven't had time to do an extensive inspection of the black book I've looked through it. I've seen something like this before. I open the vault with it in and begin checking the pages. An illustration I think it was. A frequency graph.
The section is titled: "On Beings that Do Not Exist."
"The Bringer of Doors. First portal of the realm of a thousand voices." A shadowy mass of discrete components. Whispy suggestions of organs, of eyes, of hands. An arcane formula for the altered laws of space that the creature obeys.
What's on the opposite page catches my attention more however. A tall, white pyramid of a being, four arms, and four limbs and long claws. Head triangular and lamprey. "The slasher of distance. Third of the white realm, the knight of worms."
That looks a lot like office lady.
After that, I have to go to Kabukicho. Arrange more intelligence gathering on the boxcutters, and now check into the kidnapping attempt and Manako's Uncle as well. Taking a student, allowing myself to open up to someone feels like it should have been one of those thresholds in a story where you're suddenly much happier, and I am, but I didn't expect the amount of sheer busy work that I'd end up doing to read a book and make a friend.
My phone beeps, information from the Japanese passport office. Nobody of the name in question left the country yesterday.
Shit. How do I tell her? Should I call now or at least text? She should be on her way home from her tuition by now. At least I hope. I should call her. I ring her phone as I'm headed from the sports centre towards the station. "Hey Manako."
"Hey Nozomi." She can hear I'm being serious. "Did you get news on my Uncle?"
"Yeah. He didn't leave the country. I'm going to start checking it out with my contacts. Can you send me more details of him? Everything you've got. Social media, phone number, stuff like that?"
"Sure. I'll email it." Worried but trying to put a brave on.
"Great." I decide to be reassuring. "If he can be found, I'll find him." Even if I have to sick Aratani on the case when he gets back from Osaka.
"Alright. If you need any help then," her voice distorts weirdly. The phones charms jangle. It's on my end, "uh, can you hear me?"
"Yeah." I look around at the streets around me. It's got quite dark, almost unseasonably, given its still only about seven. The sun seems caught behind high buildings and the atmosphere has got suddenly much spookier. People around me are hurrying, and the air almost stinks of the eldritch. "I'll have to call you back."
I put the phone in my pocket and cover my eye. Anything that can disrupt my phone's transmission is bad news. The ZLM link is top of the line, and should resist even the kind of military-grade etheric countermeasures that off-world realms or the house of gates have access to. I could still talk, but to even make the line crackle. . .
Energies flicker around me, an apparently uniform bank of strange mana imposed on this area like a dark fog.
A light drizzle begins to fall, pouring along the dark and the street lights. People hurry all around me, and I join the crowd, moving with them, what the hell, what the hell is this?
And then just as quickly as it came, the effect dissipates. Everything very suddenly returns to normal. People around me perk, awakened from a dream. I keep walking, taking deep breaths and quartering the area around me, on the lookout for anything unusual. I'm concentrating hard enough that my phone makes me jump.
Nagoshi's ringtone. I pick up. "Ryuta-kun." The familiarity feels a little forced. "What a coincidence, I was just on my way to you."
"Hey Nozomi-san. That's good." His voice lacks something some of the usual Yakuza bluster maybe. "I'm going to have someone meet you at the station. Where are you coming in?"
"I'll be into Shinjuku on the JR." I head up to the platform. He clearly doesn't want to talk about it on the phone. "I'll see you soon."
*****
There's something very sad about people who died by surprise. The face always has that glassy startlement, the impossibility that their life could so suddenly terminate, surrounded by the trappings of his life. A carefully tended potted plant, a stack of papers awaiting processing. Even the new wooden desk. Expensive dark stuff, getting rarer and rarer.
The body is still sat in his swivel chair. A bald man in a colourful suit and white shirt, the collar open to reveal the beginning of full-body tattoos and the ugly red line where the neck's been broken. Someone's shut his eyes, but I've been told they were open when he was found. A laptop is open in front of him, gone to screen saver, next to an open file. Financial statements of some kind. He was killed, by the look of it, while doing paperwork a few feet from an office full of Yakuza. None of them heard anything.
"You alright?" Nagoshi asks.
"Just seems like a bad way to go." I lean away from the desk and look at him, hoping I don't look too green.
This is the mortal remains of Hoga Reo, head of the semi-independent Hoga group, a small clan. A man with riches and success. In the prime of his years, with thirty more good ones ahead if his liver didn't give out from the tattoos or his lungs from all the smoke. Instead whatever his success was ended here, in this cramped office in front of a stack of financial statements.
I called Manako back during my walk here after getting the first wave of data. Her Uncle's phone is off, battery out, GPS down. As far as I can tell it went out before he went to Japan. Confirmation if he actually left still waits, but while a ticket was bought, the electronic registration of his passport shows no out scan. Wherever he went he's still in Japan.
And then I got to the murder scene. Another mystery in a pileup of mysteries.
"You wouldn't have liked him." The third man in the room says.
"No?" I look over at him. He's a tall, scar faced man in his early thirties, black hair with tinted glasses, purple suit. An almost stereotypical Yakuza, except for how fit he is.Good skin too, which is unusual. The tailored suit does little to hide the pantherish musculature moving underneath. I know of him. Aochi Kenshi, Taguchi-gumi's demon. Renowned on both sides of the city as perhaps the underworld's most skilled fighter. Legend says he once killed a dozen Russian Mafia ex-spetnaz by himself. As far as I know, he has no magic at all while doing it, which just makes the way he's looking at me more exciting. He keeps sizing me up, and I don't get the impression it's because he wants to sleep with me either. I'm doing the same to him. There's an itch there, to find out which of us is really better. I suppose I also have a bit of a reputation too, down in this circle of hell.
"Can't imagine any woman would like that guy if he wasn't paying her too. He was a pimp, the bad kind, ran all kinds of scams to get girls, fraudulent host clubs and such, getting girls into debt then offering them sex work as a way out."
"People still do that?" I walk around the body, inspecting it again. No other marks than the neck break that I can see. No defensive wounds. He was killed fast. I'm not exactly a pathologist, I'm mostly looking for evidence of magic. There's none of the usual overt stuff. No signs burned into anything, no eldrich dripping liquids, but there is mana.
I pause to covertly download his computer with a spell. No need for the two Yakuza to know I did that.
"Not many given the amount of police scrutiny it gets, but some. Hoga was old school. He always said he had protection." He shrugs.
"Like he was an informer?"
"I don't think that was it." Aochi shakes his head. "We'd have known if he was talking to the cops. Still, it's a problem he's dead, for everyone. The guy was holding some territory here, a buffer zone if you like, between our groups. Now everything's up in the air."
"Are you going to call in the cops or just dump the body?"
"Up to his boys." Nagoshi says. "Can you tell us what happened to him though? How was he killed like this with a room full of his boys in the next room?"
"I mean, magic, obviously." I look up at them. "Does this building have anti-teleportation mesh?"
"Yeah actually. Guy was paranoid about espers."
"Even so, there's a bunch of ways you could do it. Sneak in invisible and just silence the room. Or something more esoteric like cutting space open and sticking you hands through, or summoning something that doesn't obey the normal rules of matter. Telekinesis as well perhaps."
"But it was definitely magic?" Nagoshi asks.
I close an eye. "Yeah. There's still some wisps around." Of very strange mana. I find an enchanted bottle and collect a sample. The mana is dark and I'm reminded uncomfortably of the cloud from earlier.
"Could you do it?" Aochi asks.
"Oh yeah." I look around at him. "I didn't though. And I wouldn't have done it like this."
"How would you have done it?"
"He'd vanish on his way home and I'd decant his secrets out before I killed him." I pull back from the desk and clear for action, because that's the kind of question you ask when you're going to jump someone.
Nagoshi steps deliberately between us. "Okay, enough. Nishifune-san would only have reason to do this for us, and if we'd done it, we'd have done it openly, like men."
"You're real old school too aren't you Nagoshi-san?" Aochi grins, his scars pulling the expression up.
"That's right." Nagoshi rolls his shoulders slightly. "Maybe you'd like to find out how old school I am."
"I'm going to go report to my Boss." Aochi grins and waves. "So long Nagoshi-san, see you later Miss Witch."
"Not if I see you first."
Nagoshi sighs and we leave. "You shouldn't get involved with men like that."
"I'm not interested in him romantically, I just want to fight him."
"That's so much worse." We step out of the office. Kabukicho is just starting to light up around us. The crowds are just starting to come out. Nagoshi pulls out a cigarette. One of the small crowd of minions who are shadowing us comes forward to light it, then retreats. I wince at the heavy stink of the smoke. Second-hand smoke is an occupational hazard around Yakuza but I don't have to like it.
"Is there going to be a war?" I ask as we walk back towards the Hagino-gumi offices. "Over this killing I mean."
"I doubt it'll come to that. The higher-ups are too worried about the Chinese and the Osakans. Tokyo's not so high on the totem pole of organized crime anymore." He puffs the cigarette. "Doesn't mean it'll get settled without blood. Probably they'll send some young punk to fire a round into our door, or maybe slash up one of our guys. Then we'll respond in kind, and then old man Hagino will hash out a truce with the higher-ups. It won't necessarily be in our favour, but it won't be an actual war."
"Anything else I can do?"
"Find who did it? Don't you know a detective?"
"He's out of town. I'll check into it though."
"So what did you want from me? You were on your way here, and it didn't sound like just a social call."
"I'm looking into young women going missing." I'd googled it on the train. There have been twelve cases in the last month, all college or highschool girls,. "I have a pretty good idea what might be going on, but I need information."
I explain, briefly, what happened. Nagoshi listens grimly, nodding a bit. "This is pure Other Side of the City stuff, but I'll see what I can find out." He pauses. "They really tried to grab your friend off a busy street?"
"Yeah. Talked a couple of cops down to do it."
"Huh." He takes a long drag on his cigarette and then tosses it on the ground and stomps on it. We're in front of the office. "That's real interesting."
"Oh yeah?"
"Your friend goes to that rich girl's school you do right? She's not some delinquent?"
"Her father's a stockbroker I think. Her mother manages a chain of cosmetic stores. She doesn't drink or anything I know of."
"Right, so if she didn't come home, her parents would miss her. She'd be noticed right away, and the police would launch a major operation to find her. If you just wanted to kidnap a bunch of young girls, then you'd take ones people won't miss."
"So you're saying there must be some other qualification."
"Is your friend a virgin?" I give him a look, and he shrugs. "Come on, it's an obvious one. Lot more virgins go to rich all girl school than places they wouldn't be missed."
"I haven't asked her, and I'm not going to. That said, virginity is a very out of date ritual practice for mages. Mostly it's just flat out pseudo-magic, and in the rare cases it is relevant it's just a matter of a cleansing ritual and overriding a couple of meridians." Being an albino makes it hard to cover when you're blushing.
"You're pretending I know what any of that shit you just said means." We reach his office and he waves that his minions should stay out in the cluttered outer office space. They really are doing well for themselves to have offices on two floors of this building.
"It means that whatever the qualification is, that's not it. I'll see if I can find out anything about her though. It could be something like ancestry or even blood type."
Once inside, he opens a the drinks cabinet and pulls out a bottle of whisky. To my surprise he pours me a glass too. I return the favour, pouring his drink and then sitting back to taste mine.
"Mind control throat cancer huh?" He gives me a disgusted look. "Your side of the city is something else."
"It is what it is." I shrug. "I'm worried though. I got kind of blindsided by all this, but now I feel like something big is going down. Just before I called you, I got this flash, like the area around me was full of dark fog. I didn't want to tell Aochi, but that was about the time the murder would have been."
"That is bad." He frowns. "Though if you can prove it, it'll help us. The big issue right now is they think I had you off him to grab his territory. We had a disagreement. I didn't like his methods."
"I sort of figured."
"Come to think of it, didn't some civilian bigshot get offed just the other day?"
"Maybe. I haven't been keeping up with the news."
He laughs. "That's rare, new boyfriend or something?"
I look down, blush. "Maybe a new girlfriend, it's not too serious. I'm just training a student."
"A student you've got the hots for, right?" He knocks back some of his drink. "Huh. I guess I suspected, but then the way you look at some of my guys…"
"I can go either way." I look over at him, embarrassment turning to annoyance. "Aren't you going to tell me to be careful or its a phase or something?"
"Fuck that, I'm old but I'm not stupid. I've met all kinds, besides, she's probably from your school. Girl or guy, I'd rather you date someone from that world than down here. You want to scare me, take up with some host."
"I'll try to keep that in mind." I finish my own drink. "I'm going to head home and see what I can find out about this mana and the other stuff. Call me at any hour if you find out anything at all."
"Alright." He tips the mostly empty glass at me. "Stay safe."
*****
I'm feeling a little paranoid, so. I take the subway for the first part of the way home, going out of my way to break pursuit. I'll take the JR back from the end of the line. With a long connection ahead, I plug my phone's screen into my eyes through my grid and start to send out messages. Encrypted messages to various of my less important contacts to see if they know anything. A request to a certain corrupt cop of my acquaintance for the case file on any missing girls or mysterious killings.
I manage to get a position by the door, pushed up against the wall with my back to it, where I can observe the rest of the carriage. We're still in the dregs of rush hour, people working overtime or going out with friends. Enough people that it's standing room only though not quite the absolutely massive press you'd have had even an hour ago. Still, there are enough people it's a fairly challenging counter surveillance environment. My main gambit is to occasionally get off and either take the next train or walk out of the station and back to the nearest subway entrance from there. Sometimes I'll change my look in between.
It's while one of those is ongoing that Manako calls me again. "Hey Nozomi, I found a clue. Can we meet in Yokohama?"
"At the station? Alright." I frown. I'm worried she's going to run off without me. "I'll be there shortly."
"Thank you!"
"Wait, what have you found?"
"I was looking at my Uncle's social media. He follows this guy who I remember meeting once named of Shiba Aoba. They both work in import-export."
"I'm just going to switch to my headset so I can text while we talk." I pull a pair of Bluetooth headphones out of my bag and tether them to my phone. They're actually modified with several sets of encryption and a directionality function which prevents anything not my phone interacting with them. I don't want anyone listening in. "Okay, I'm back. So this guy is in Yokohama?"
I text the Kanedas <<What do you know about an export-import guy named Shiba Aoba?>>
"Yeah. I told my parents I'm going out to meet you so we can study together. I'm at the JR now."
"Right." I've managed to go the right direction for Yokohama by sheer luck. Now I just need to dog leg back down to it. "I'll see you there."
Tanaka gets back to me. <<I know he's deeply sketchy. He's in the mystical artefact business. Is he offering you something?>>
<<No. But if he was, should I accept it?>>
<<If he sold me a car on the promise it had four wheels I'd walk around and it and check.>> There's a pause and a long period of typing alerts in the chat program. <<He's involved in some bad stuff too. Drugs and girls. Watch yourself.>>
Myself isn't what I'm worried about.
*****
It takes us a little over an hour to reach our destination. Manako arrives, wearing a sweater and shorts with knee socks in white and green, looking ultra-cute and extremely worried. "I-I'm not sure if this is a good idea. It's actually really late. Will he be still at his office? We still have to get home afterward. I told my parents we'd stay over but—"
"I think we should check now." I give her a serious look. "I checked up on Shiba with some of my contacts. Apparently he's not a nice guy. If he's holding your Uncle or something, every second counts."
"I can believe it." She sighs. "When we met I thought he was a creep. My Uncle kept trying to stay behind us."
"It's fine." I give her a hug. "I can deal with creeps. If he's still there, we'll ask him some questions. If he's not, then we'll break into his office and rip off his computer to see what he's got in it. "
Manako blinks and covers her mouth, but I can see her grin under it. "Alright."
"Stay close to me."
We head through the crowds of Yokohama evening, through the neon glitter and the sound of a noisy crowd. It's brightly lit here, coloured lights up to the top of the many skyscrapers. The fragile new prosperity as global supply chains redirect back to Japan due to the chaos in America, China and India. The prosperity is made all the more frantic by the boom's obvious unsustainability.
Shiba's office is in a back street near the port, in one of the null zones that exist between the busy industrial and port areas and the glittering office spaces and entertainment districts around Chinatown.
It's strange walking down the backstreet, very still. Most of the lights of the offices are off, but the one we're looking for is on. I pause, holding up a hand for silence. Arguing up ahead. Outside the office, the quick flicker of a cigarette.
"There are people there. We'll check on them."
I walk forward. A big, criminal looking guy with tattoos (sailor, not yakuza) is standing outside and smoking. He watches us approach. "We're here to see Shiba-san." I suggest.
"Oh yeah, what about?"
"About Murakawa-san, his business partner." Manako blurts.
The big guy's eyes narrow and he bangs on the roller door next to it. It opens up. The office is actually more of a warehouse inside, with two large benches and stacked wooden crates and cardboard boxes. Several dozen men, all rough-looking, Japanese and a half dozen other nationalities look up from what looks like a pretty serious discussion. "They know that bastard Murakawa." The doorman growls.
"Manako." I speak loudly and clearly to be sure she hears me. "Back off a bit. I don't want you to get hurt.
"You're not going anywhere!" The doorman steps forward. I step into him and punch him in the throat. He stumbles backward, eyes bulging. I use the time to pivot up and put a full extension kick into his solar plexus, pulling it just enough I don't rupture his organs. He goes flying backwards into the room, crashing into the table.
"No, I'm not." I kind of want to show off more to Manako but fighting in public isn't very smart. I step inside The men give ground, suddenly afraid, dogs finding the cat they were chasing is a tiger. "I'll be a few minutes." I reach up and pull press the switch for the shutter.
The door falls with a clatter.
*****
"Can you teach me to do that?" Manako looks around in awe at the wrecked warehouse and the slumped, unconscious bodies of the men. Her eyes are wide, and thrilled in a way that I am sort of into.
"A half dozen ways I'm sure. Now, let's find the boss. Here." I hand her a pair of gloves. "Put these on. Don't want to leave any prints." I walk over to the one guy I left in a condition to speak. He's caucasian, maybe American or Australian, I can't quite tell, now extra pale as he clutches the arm I snapped when he tried to cut me up with a machete.
"Y-you broke my arm." He cradles it miserably.
"Looks like it." I pull an injector out and put it before him. "Tell me where your boss is and why he's angry with Murakawa and I'll give you this. It'll make the pain go away. I'll even let you leave."
He swallows, looking at the injector. "Murakawa ran for it--" He leans back. "Then, the boss—" he slumps back. "Go see for yourself. He's upstairs."
A feeling creeps over me. It's not dread, but it's something akin to it. A little voice that says that I've walked into something I don't like. I give him the injector. He fumbles with it a moment before managing to get it against his wrist and gasps as the gas fires. A moment later he staggers to his feet and runs out, slamming the door behind him.
"Let's go up." I look at the office. "This might not be nice."
"Nozomi, I saw like a dozen guys get torn apart by that hunter. If he's dead up their or something it can't be worse than that." Manako grabs onto my arm. "You'll protect me, right?" Her voice is so serious it's distracting.
What we find in the office kills my mood pretty effectively. The office is about what you'd expect, a single desk next to the window drawn up so the occupant can watch the door but doesn't have his back to the window. A laptop on the desk in sleep mode. Some metal shelves with box files.
Shiba is still in his office chair. His neck is broken. I hear Manako give a little gasp next to me.
I've seen this before. I take a deep breath and then pull out my phone, snap the corpse's picture twice and walk around. "Are you good?" My voice is steady but I don't feel that steady. There's something so spooky about men being killed this way, their friends close by.
This means that Manako's uncle is involved in that. Well. Nagoshi will be happy at least.
"Yeah."
"Check the box files. We'll want anything that looks like records of what he was shipping, diaries, names places.
"Are we taking them with us?"
I consider. I'd like to leave the police with a fully intact office and thus less clues than us, but with a caucasian guy running away with an obviously broken arm is going to attract attention sooner than later. I pull the bag of holding out of my bag and open it. "Put it all in here."
I walk over, shut the laptop, then pause, looking over the body. Around his neck is a thin chain with an array of charms. I pick a pen off the desk and carefully pull them off the body. There's a half dozen of them, about as powerful a set of ward signs as you can use without some actual skill with magic to know how to lay them in. Apparently it didn't help. I take samples of the local mana as well.
I'm probably fucking up any chance of getting a conviction off the physical evidence here. Then again, unless they're some kind of esper who can somehow remote neck snap someone through anti-teleportation netting this is probably not going to end in court.
In for a penny, in for a pound as the English say. I walk over to the wall and extract my knife.
"What are you doing?" Manako asks as I begin to cut into it.
"Checking if there's anti-teleportation mesh." My knife strikes something and I peel the wallpaper away.
Here it is. Anti-teleportation mesh is an alloy of several metallic compounds, primarily copper and osmium shaped into a matrix that can prevent teleporting through it.
Only there's something wrong with this. The mesh should be a shiny colour, copper coloured with bands of shiny silver. It certainly shouldn't be a dull black and leave a dark discolouration on my knife blade where it touched it.
I pull back hastily and bag the knife, putting it in the bag of holding as well, adding the charm set and the laptop.
"Should we check the desk draws?"
In the distance, I can hear sirens. "I don't think we've got the time. Come on."
I pull the shadows around us as we leave. A pair of police vehicles are already nosing down the alley, with an ambulance behind them.
"What do we do now?" Manako asks.
"Hmm. I'm going to call a friend of a friend." How many of these things should I be thinking are a single complex? Obviously Manako's missing uncle is linked to the killings, but what about the frog throats? What about the fact this is going down when Aratani is off in Osaka?
"Can you tell me what's going on?" Manako gives me an annoyed look.
"Sorry." I rub my eyes. "Are you hungry?"
"Sure. I kind of skipped dinner to come out here."
"Good. Let's go sit down and I'll talk you through it."
*****
When I get home I analyse the material I've got. The laptop records are useless. They're financial stuff written in some kind of code. I send them off to a specialist, but all I can immediately tell is that he was in the red starting last month. The profit drop is two days before the first kidnapping, five days after the first murder. Given how Shiba died though, the link is still pretty obvious even without the financials and given how coded everything is it doesn't help much.
With that hole dry, I turn my attention to the stuff I am an expert in, the mana I collected from the scenes of the two murders. As I suspected, or feared, it's identical in structure and spectrum. Deep and dark. When I place a sample in an emitter it spits out spectrums way up in the range of ultra-low-frequency radio waves. The kind of stuff submarines use to communicate. I know enough to guess this is extra-dimensionally sourced. Geomantic, stellar or atmospheric energy doesn't behave like this.
It's definitely the same stuff as I saw during the event at the time of Hoga's murder, or so near as to make coincidence all but impossible. I should have taken a sample of that too.
Something about this nags at me. While I haven't had time to do an extensive inspection of the black book I've looked through it. I've seen something like this before. I open the vault with it in and begin checking the pages. An illustration I think it was. A frequency graph.
The section is titled: "On Beings that Do Not Exist."
"The Bringer of Doors. First portal of the realm of a thousand voices." A shadowy mass of discrete components. Whispy suggestions of organs, of eyes, of hands. An arcane formula for the altered laws of space that the creature obeys.
What's on the opposite page catches my attention more however. A tall, white pyramid of a being, four arms, and four limbs and long claws. Head triangular and lamprey. "The slasher of distance. Third of the white realm, the knight of worms."
That looks a lot like office lady.
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Chapter 2-3: Conspiracy
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Like all the women who associate with Aratani, Tanigawa Junko is surprisingly young, beautiful and well dressed to hold a position as responsible as that of public prosecutor. I don't know what alchemy of fate he wrought to be surrounded by hot girls (and not a few hot guys), but I'm not complaining. I'm meeting her late, after eight, but she shows no sign of being about to go home.
I suspect she's someone talented enough and driven enough that they can't really shuffle her off to some nothing post, but that they handed her this job because it keeps her mostly out of the way. Her office certainly gives that image, a minimalist space without an ashtray, paperwork endlessly neat.
This job being the kind of strange supernatural cases my once fiance usually handles. It's the late afternoon of the next day, and I'm due at Manako's in a couple of hours. I told Manako to let me handle the initial approach alone. I'll tell her how it goes after dinner.
For this approach, I'm wearing mostly white. I've got a rather gorgeous white Italian Jacket and skirt suit with blue detailing on the cuffs, and have matched it today with one of my favorite black silk shirts, black tights and a blue silk cravat. Aggressive makeup. The kind I wear at parties. Black lipstick, Platinum earrings, signifiers of how rich I am. It's pretty hack stuff but I'm walking into the office of someone who's over a decade older than me, and has been all but running Tokyo's supernatural caseload since Aratani was a boy detective. I did my homework on this lady. I'll need all the armour I can get here.
It seems to be working though. Tanigawa, who's own business wear is just about unstylish enough to be taken seriously in a court of law is giving me eyes that are one part each envy, annoyance and a little respect.
"So, the Yokohama police tell me they found a warehouse full of men, all with injuries requiring hospitalization who swear, those of them who can speak that a pair of girls one of whom dressed very much like you did it."
"Did they mention how they were coming at her with a machetes and bats and belaying pins?"
"That was implicit." She sighs. "Of course there's no way I can actually charge you with something that minor is there Magi?"
I give her my best worst smile. "No, there isn't."
"Probably fortunate given Aratani has run off to Osaka." She looks me over. "So what exactly brought you to my office?" A subtle interrogation. I hold up a hand.
"Before that, I want to talk about our relationship. I'm acting on behalf of my apprentice, and her family are civilians. I don't want them, or her, subjected to investigation that will compromise her role in mage society to them."
"If you can supply full and frank information, then I'll have no need to investigate her."
"Don't mess me around." I lean forward. "I want a proper undertaking from you that she'll be left alone by the police."
She glares at me for a moment, testing, then pulls out an envelope and pushes it across. Inside is an agreement, stating, in normal terms that if I cooperate on the crime being investigated they'll be no interference from the Japanese state with me and mine. "You'll want your lawyer to look that over."
"I know." I make the document vanish and then decide to give her some ground. "Provisionally though, shall we talk over what we both know?"
"Provisionally." She smiles a little then rubs her eyes and seems to shift mental gears. "Would you like some tea?"
I decide I'll extend trust and tell her what I know as we drink. The fact is, if Aratani is out of the city, she needs me more a hell of a lot more than I need her. She might be able to compromise my friends from this information, but if Aratani trusts her I don't think she'd pull a stunt like that. The Japanese government wants the mask to stay up as much as we do.
She sips at her tea and then brings up a document. "So far, we have eight deaths including Hoga and Shida. Only the method, necks broken silently in what should have been secure areas marks them as related."
"I'd like to see a full report on their injuries."
"A full report? Well maybe you can make more of it than I can." She pulls out an folder and hands it to me. No sign of external marks on the body. The neck broken by unknown forces. "Vocal cords destroyed?"
"It could just be a matter of the position of the break. Though, given what you reported about these frog throated men, maybe not. Do you believe those are linked?"
"I don't know. It's a big city, but well. Mysterious killings and spikes of mana and suddenly some supernatural force is putting a lot of resources into kidnapping people. It feels like it's related."
"Alright, well, let's assume it is. Let's talk about the victims. So far it's been a Mr. Haga, a writer. Mr. Fukuga, the owner of a car rental business, Ms. Ichii, the owner of a hostess club, Mr. Sato, a landlord, Mr. Kizu, an Artist, and the man today, Mr. Goda, who ran a real estate agency."
"I've heard of a couple of those. Fukuga was a best seller wasn't he? And Kizu, I think I have a piece of his. The rest were all successful?"
"Rich and successful yes. That's the only thing that really links them. Up until Hoga and Shida, we didn't believe any of them had major criminal connections either. Even Ichii ran a mostly above board business, or so it seemed."
"In terms of the criminals both Shida and Hoga were involved in human trafficking one way or another. Hoga was apparently involved in scamming girls into prostitution, so it would be logical to think he was involved in international procurement of women as well."
"And now women are vanishing off the streets of Tokyo."
I take a drink of tea and warm to my subject. "An acquaintance of mine said something to me that I keep thinking about. He asked why they would kidnap people off the street rather than people who no one would miss. I wonder if they had a supply of people no one would miss, and now it's been interrupted somehow."
"A supply to what purpose though? Virgin sacrifices?"
Non-mystics sure are obsessed with virgin sacrifices.
"Some kind of ritual components certainly. They're probably alive though. Generally rituals that require an unwilling human want that person alive. Unless you're going to trap the soul, which is extremely difficult and inefficient."
Tanigawa is giving me an alarmed look "Aratani said you knew a lot about forbidden sorcery, but I had no idea."
I smile around the cup. "That isn't even really forbidden sorcery. Did he really never explain this stuff to you? I would have thought cults doing ritualistic horrors to people would be your people's bread and butter."
I'm not going to confess that I have a very good idea what might be being contained. Aratani would definitely ask "How do you know?" and that leads immediately to "because you have a truly forbidden piece of forbidden lore."
She laughs, then sighs. "Nothing so glamorous. Mostly we deal with low end mages making dodgy schemes to get rich quick using magic. It's better I suppose, knowing I'm not going to find a mass grave full of young women."
"So what's our next move?"
"You're leaving that up to me?"
"I'm not an investigator. If you want a great detective, call Aratani and talk it over."
"I did. He was very evasive. He's up to something."
"So, he's still alive and conscious."
That gets a smile and she thinks for a moment. "I want you to look into this man Murakawa. We interrogated Shida's crew, and they said that Murakawa was supposed to meet them yesterday but no-showed. There was some problem with the pipeline. They think he messed up somehow and took off."
"And the kidnap squad I hospitalized?"
"Uncommunicative. Not resisting interrogation but still unconscious. We're keeping the frog throat men in an induced coma, the rest are pretty messed up. We're keeping them at a secure location but I don't know how secure it could be."
"They have strong mind control powers. I imagine that a lot of resources were invested in making them but if there are any more, things could get very Babylon very fast."
"I was thinking about that too. I want to keep the numbers on this as small as possible. We only have so many warding devices in the department, and I have no idea how effective they'll even be given what you reported."
I'm currently wearing two. "The best way is to silence them. Just stop them speaking."
"There might be a way to do that. I remember reading an article on it. I'll see what Public Safety can provide."
"So do you want me to do this alone?"
"I think it'd be better if you had someone with you with legal authority. I'm assigning you a detective. A woman. She's relatively new but I think that would make it easier for you both given your age."
Okay, well this might not be completely awful.
*****
When I get home, I have a routine. First I do my combat training, training sword, knife, unarmed combat and a little shooting against several practice golems. Then I take a shower and wash my hair, and then soak in healing alchemicals for a while while I read a book. Studying, both academic and mystical goes on until around three in the morning, and then I watch chill for four hours with manga, anime or a video game. I sleep about one day in every five, less if I'm using go pills, which I am now. This may not be the healthiest way to operate but I'm dead in three years so why worry.
I'm just sitting down to this weeks manga magazines when my phone goes. It's not a tone I'm used to hearing. "Reijo-san. This is a surprise."
"I'm sorry. Did I wake you?"
"No. Just strange to hear from you at this hour."
"I um. Would you be willing to come out? I just-- something unusual." She's breathing hard, out of breath. "It seems, well it seems like something you might know about. We can pay."
"I seem to remember you saving my life. I'll come right away." I'm wearing a loose silk robe, and have a brief flash of what Reijou might do if I wore this out to her. "Just give me a little time to dress."
The trains have shut down and Tokyo is pretty quiet. Just drunks and cops and a few lost tourists out at this hour. We're out in Ueno, near the park, but actually pulled up in front of a small shrine tucked in between a bunch of houses.
My car purrs up to where Reijou is standing on the curb looking very uncomfortable and out of place, with a lanyard around her neck and an ID. She's pale and a little shaky looking, without makeup, and wearing a slightly thrown together looking outfit of jeans, long sleeved T-shirt and school sweater.
Behind her is a very reserved looking young man who looks about my age, wearing a sharp suit and another ID lanyard. The way he's looking around says he' her bodyguard, the level of stern resolve in this task says he has the hots for her.
"Reijou-san." I incline my head. "The Exorcist Society is working you hard. And on a school night."
"This is an emergency situation." The bodyguard glares at me. "We were forced to call upon Yuuko-san's power to resolve things, even at this hour."
"And what exactly was the situation?"
"It's easier if I show you." Reijou begins to walk towards the shrine. "Something attacked the shrine, locked onto its spiritual energy. A group of exorcists responded but-- they were all killed."
There's another pair of exorcists further towards with several body bags. No wonder Reijou is so jumpy. I don't think her missions usually have body counts.
"Are you okay?" I ask her quietly.
"I-"
"If they didn't call you before the team went in, there's nothing at all you could have done."
She looks up at me, a little hopeless. "I-- knew one of them. Not well, but he helped teach me." She bows her head slightly then speaks even more quietly. "It felt like that thing at school. That's why I called you."
I feel a little chill inside. "It's dead though?"
"It's inert, I drove out the spiritual energy inside it."
In plainer language she blew its soul out. It's a relatively standard, though high level trick exorcists use against other supernaturals. The driving out of mana, of energy, of the soul. Go after an exorcist with a gun or a knife and they don't have anymore recourse than a nromal human. Unless you're a magi or a monster. Then they can send you into an agonizing mana crash of even, as Reijou did, fission your soul from your body.
No wonder she looks so pale and worn. The bonds that hold a soul to a living body are every bit as strong as the bonds that hold an atom together.
The serious guy pushes the doors of the shrine open and I look inside. The thing lays in the middle of the floor near a pool of water and a large blood stain. It's actually kind of short, maybe five feet tall, and looks deflated,like a balloon with some of the air escaped. It's green in colour and looks horribly mutant and cancerous. It looks a lot like the implant I saw on that man's throat earlier, just torn off and made ambulatory.
"It came into the shrine and started to draw on its energy."
"How did your team die?"
"They killed one another." Reijou hugs herself a little. She really does look awful. "It could get inside your head. Like a thousand voices shouting all at once."
I look at her over cautiously. "Are you alright?"
"I'm just a little tired." she says. Trying to be tough. I'll let her. Instead I pull on a mask and drugs and cautiously approach it.
I extract a sample of the thing's flesh in a plastic tube and do some magical analysis. There's human DNA in here, or something very like it. "I'd like to have a friend of mine take a look at this." I step back away from the empty shell. "She's a doctor."
Reijou looks at the guy, who coughs. "I can consult with the sight commander, but do you have any idea what it is?"
"Maybe." I text Alice, and connect the sample bottle to my phone. There's a pause and she texts back checking. "I'm not sure I should prejudge the results but I think maybe this is linked to all the deaths that have been recently."
"This monster has been going around killing rich people?" Reijou asks.
"Not quite. I think--" how do I even say this? "I think this is what hatched out of them."
This revelation doesn't quite land as well as I'd like it to as at that moment, we get yelled at. An older man in a much more rumpled suit looks in, practically grabs the serious guy by his shirt and yells in his face. "What is she doing here?"
For a moment, I think he's talking to me, then I realize he's referring to Reijou, and make the snap decision I'll wait and watch. This might be interesting.
The serious guy is too much of a good soldier to talk back and instead just straightens up. The older man continues his tarade. "I told you to stay on watch outside the shrine on standby! What if another of those monsters appears?"
This apparently gets the boy sufficiently and he shoots back. "Reijou-san is in no condition to fight again tonight. She requested to step into the shrine to investigate the--"
"Investigate?" The older man cuts him off. "And what skills do you have in investigation."
Oh no. Serious is going to turn around and point me out and it's going to be incredibly awkward.
Reijou saves me, again, by quietly collapsing in a dead faint.
"When was the last time you guys lost someone on an operation?" I ask serious as he helps load Reijou into my car. She's increasingly feverish.
"It's not that." He looks back at the shrine. "The man who led the first team was Tani-san's brother. Tani-san ordered him in here."
I nod, find a blanket and wrap it firmly around Reijou. She mutters in her sleep. "So, you, you're her bodyguard hmm? Do you have a name?" Reijou's hound materializes and snuggles up to her sleeping form, pushing me away a bit. I pet its head, and it licks my hand before settling down.
"Tamura, Tamura Kenichi." He says. "I hate to ask this, Nishifune-san, but as Reijou is a school friend of yours, can you put us up under your roof tonight?"
Up until that point I'd sort of decided to leave this be but now he's really peaked my interest, and I decide to interrogate him. "Well, if you think it's alright to stay under a witch's roof. Shouldn't you tell your commander first though?"
He gets even more serious. "If you would allow, I'd like to avoid that."
I tap the car's side and it gets into motion, then look at him intently. "Allow it, yes. I might, if you tell me why."
"How much do you really know about Reijou-san?" He looks her over.
"She's a powerful exorcist. Her best subjects are Japanese and English. She likes archery." I scratch behind the black dogs ears and it hangs its jaws open in pleasure. "I suppose that's not what you're referring to though."
"Reijou is one of the most powerful exorcists on record. We've had many powerful people in this generation, but she is the best, yet she's not from any grand exorcist family. She's an orphan, adopted by an old man who's long lost his powers. It's too far to take her back to her uncle's house, and I worry--"
"You worry that if you take her to some other exorcist clan she may not come out again?" I swear, exorcists are as bad as the Yakuza sometimes.
"Maybe nothing so dramatic, but I'd prefer she be in your debt that theirs."
I put a hand on Reijou's feverish head. "I already owe her my life. So I think giving her a roof is fine."
But that's not going to stop me from calling Junya as soon as we get in and settled and finding out exactly what I've got myself into.
The cop and I have a breakfast meeting. It'd be eyebitingly early if I actually slept, but it seems like Yoshitaka, police officer is one of those people who likes being up early and getting moving. Reijou and her boy are still asleep upstairs in different room, Reijou connected to the house's remote medical systems, but really suffering from nothing more than a fever and slight anemia caused by power overuses. I'll talk to her after the meeting is done.
I couldn't get hold of Junya last night. Luce said he'd call me when he got a chance. I wonder if I should be worried about him.
Yoshitaka is what I'd expect from a female detective in this line of work, but younger. A fresh faced graduate of some top school, placed here, like her boss, because she's too competent and motivated to dump in media relations or some other desk duty. Fit, prim and wearing an intensely grey, intensely dull trouser suit with an open collar. She's pretty enough, and her face set off by small glasses. In turn I'm armoured up, both literally and figuratively one of my J2M jackets in black, a black silk with a red jewel mounted into the embroidery on the collar, and a very expensive french designer skirt which I see her recognize.
"So you're another one of Aratani-san's friends?" Friends is doing a lot of work in that question. I decide I won't tell her we used to be engaged. You never know what kind of reaction you'll get with the women Aratani surrounds himself with.
"I'm not his lover if that's what you mean. We're more like rivals."
"Rivals huh? So you're not doing him a favour?"
"I mean, I probably am, but it's not my intention. I got pulled into this because of a friend of mine." I briefly outline what I know so far. "I assume you've been briefed on this though. Am I a good subject for interrogation practice?"
She smiles. "I was hoping you'd be a little more hostile I suppose. The Prosecutor said you were a school girl. I kind of expected you to be smaller, and probably infatuated with him."
Trying to draw me. Make me angry and blurt something. Or is she just jealous? I have no idea why all these girls want Aratani but aren't willing to share. Surely the fantasy of going with him is that you also get a shot at Yuuki Horie, and the Prosecutor, at me, at that tsundere exorcist girl he hangs with, at his other fiance or any of the rest. Heck, his male friends aren't exactly bad either. He's a package deal.
I don't understand romance.
I decide I'm not going to rise to it at all and shrug, stretching in a way that draws attention to how much I'm bigger than she is. "Sorry to disappoint you."
"How old are you?"
"Eighteen. Third year high, which I'll need to go to soon."
"Urgh." She looks me over again. I can't tell if it's jealousy or desire or both. Maybe I'm getting my hopes up. She's probably straight. "I've got the government record on the two persons of interest." She hands me a pair of paper files. "We've got almost nothing on the girl, no criminal record, no criminals in the family. Date of birth and so on, but nothing that looks particularly abnormal. Blood type B, nothing too unusual in her family background, except a very distant blood relation to the imperial family."
"What about the other girls who vanished, any matches with them?"
"Nope. No royal blood there. We checked. No common birth dates either. Numerology spent quite a while checking that with every calendar they could find."
"We couldn't be lucky enough for them to all be born on the hundred and eighth day of the year or something." I rub my eyes then look through the data again. "They're all from relatively good backgrounds. Private middle school, then admission to a variety of excellent private schools and top public highschools. All high school aged. All female, so those are requirements, but nothing that lets us narrow it down. "What about those human traffickers I took down?"
"We have confirmed they were bringing women into the country, teenage girls mostly. Cambodia, Bangladeshi, other places, the normal profile. We're still pursuing the other end of the line, but their Boss was the one who knew most of it."
"You got the records from his laptop I sent you?"
"Yes. Though I'm not sure it's admissible in court."
"Well, sorry about that. I couldn't take the risk of me not getting the data if you refused to work with me. I'm not a forensic accountant though."
"We're still working through it." She sighs. "It looks like it'll be useful to potentially shut down a lot of black financing but in terms of telling us what he's doing, we don't have anything. Just that their profits started to crash a month back. "
I tap my fingers on the desk. "So what we have, basically, is the girls. Unless we find Murakawa. Any leads there?"
"None. We've got his picture up across the Island as a person of interest but he's dropped off the face of the earth. It would be easier if I'd let us approach his family."
"No." She glares at me. I hold her eyes until she drops them.
"Then let's hope we can turn up a pattern, because that's all we've got."
I suspect she's someone talented enough and driven enough that they can't really shuffle her off to some nothing post, but that they handed her this job because it keeps her mostly out of the way. Her office certainly gives that image, a minimalist space without an ashtray, paperwork endlessly neat.
This job being the kind of strange supernatural cases my once fiance usually handles. It's the late afternoon of the next day, and I'm due at Manako's in a couple of hours. I told Manako to let me handle the initial approach alone. I'll tell her how it goes after dinner.
For this approach, I'm wearing mostly white. I've got a rather gorgeous white Italian Jacket and skirt suit with blue detailing on the cuffs, and have matched it today with one of my favorite black silk shirts, black tights and a blue silk cravat. Aggressive makeup. The kind I wear at parties. Black lipstick, Platinum earrings, signifiers of how rich I am. It's pretty hack stuff but I'm walking into the office of someone who's over a decade older than me, and has been all but running Tokyo's supernatural caseload since Aratani was a boy detective. I did my homework on this lady. I'll need all the armour I can get here.
It seems to be working though. Tanigawa, who's own business wear is just about unstylish enough to be taken seriously in a court of law is giving me eyes that are one part each envy, annoyance and a little respect.
"So, the Yokohama police tell me they found a warehouse full of men, all with injuries requiring hospitalization who swear, those of them who can speak that a pair of girls one of whom dressed very much like you did it."
"Did they mention how they were coming at her with a machetes and bats and belaying pins?"
"That was implicit." She sighs. "Of course there's no way I can actually charge you with something that minor is there Magi?"
I give her my best worst smile. "No, there isn't."
"Probably fortunate given Aratani has run off to Osaka." She looks me over. "So what exactly brought you to my office?" A subtle interrogation. I hold up a hand.
"Before that, I want to talk about our relationship. I'm acting on behalf of my apprentice, and her family are civilians. I don't want them, or her, subjected to investigation that will compromise her role in mage society to them."
"If you can supply full and frank information, then I'll have no need to investigate her."
"Don't mess me around." I lean forward. "I want a proper undertaking from you that she'll be left alone by the police."
She glares at me for a moment, testing, then pulls out an envelope and pushes it across. Inside is an agreement, stating, in normal terms that if I cooperate on the crime being investigated they'll be no interference from the Japanese state with me and mine. "You'll want your lawyer to look that over."
"I know." I make the document vanish and then decide to give her some ground. "Provisionally though, shall we talk over what we both know?"
"Provisionally." She smiles a little then rubs her eyes and seems to shift mental gears. "Would you like some tea?"
I decide I'll extend trust and tell her what I know as we drink. The fact is, if Aratani is out of the city, she needs me more a hell of a lot more than I need her. She might be able to compromise my friends from this information, but if Aratani trusts her I don't think she'd pull a stunt like that. The Japanese government wants the mask to stay up as much as we do.
She sips at her tea and then brings up a document. "So far, we have eight deaths including Hoga and Shida. Only the method, necks broken silently in what should have been secure areas marks them as related."
"I'd like to see a full report on their injuries."
"A full report? Well maybe you can make more of it than I can." She pulls out an folder and hands it to me. No sign of external marks on the body. The neck broken by unknown forces. "Vocal cords destroyed?"
"It could just be a matter of the position of the break. Though, given what you reported about these frog throated men, maybe not. Do you believe those are linked?"
"I don't know. It's a big city, but well. Mysterious killings and spikes of mana and suddenly some supernatural force is putting a lot of resources into kidnapping people. It feels like it's related."
"Alright, well, let's assume it is. Let's talk about the victims. So far it's been a Mr. Haga, a writer. Mr. Fukuga, the owner of a car rental business, Ms. Ichii, the owner of a hostess club, Mr. Sato, a landlord, Mr. Kizu, an Artist, and the man today, Mr. Goda, who ran a real estate agency."
"I've heard of a couple of those. Fukuga was a best seller wasn't he? And Kizu, I think I have a piece of his. The rest were all successful?"
"Rich and successful yes. That's the only thing that really links them. Up until Hoga and Shida, we didn't believe any of them had major criminal connections either. Even Ichii ran a mostly above board business, or so it seemed."
"In terms of the criminals both Shida and Hoga were involved in human trafficking one way or another. Hoga was apparently involved in scamming girls into prostitution, so it would be logical to think he was involved in international procurement of women as well."
"And now women are vanishing off the streets of Tokyo."
I take a drink of tea and warm to my subject. "An acquaintance of mine said something to me that I keep thinking about. He asked why they would kidnap people off the street rather than people who no one would miss. I wonder if they had a supply of people no one would miss, and now it's been interrupted somehow."
"A supply to what purpose though? Virgin sacrifices?"
Non-mystics sure are obsessed with virgin sacrifices.
"Some kind of ritual components certainly. They're probably alive though. Generally rituals that require an unwilling human want that person alive. Unless you're going to trap the soul, which is extremely difficult and inefficient."
Tanigawa is giving me an alarmed look "Aratani said you knew a lot about forbidden sorcery, but I had no idea."
I smile around the cup. "That isn't even really forbidden sorcery. Did he really never explain this stuff to you? I would have thought cults doing ritualistic horrors to people would be your people's bread and butter."
I'm not going to confess that I have a very good idea what might be being contained. Aratani would definitely ask "How do you know?" and that leads immediately to "because you have a truly forbidden piece of forbidden lore."
She laughs, then sighs. "Nothing so glamorous. Mostly we deal with low end mages making dodgy schemes to get rich quick using magic. It's better I suppose, knowing I'm not going to find a mass grave full of young women."
"So what's our next move?"
"You're leaving that up to me?"
"I'm not an investigator. If you want a great detective, call Aratani and talk it over."
"I did. He was very evasive. He's up to something."
"So, he's still alive and conscious."
That gets a smile and she thinks for a moment. "I want you to look into this man Murakawa. We interrogated Shida's crew, and they said that Murakawa was supposed to meet them yesterday but no-showed. There was some problem with the pipeline. They think he messed up somehow and took off."
"And the kidnap squad I hospitalized?"
"Uncommunicative. Not resisting interrogation but still unconscious. We're keeping the frog throat men in an induced coma, the rest are pretty messed up. We're keeping them at a secure location but I don't know how secure it could be."
"They have strong mind control powers. I imagine that a lot of resources were invested in making them but if there are any more, things could get very Babylon very fast."
"I was thinking about that too. I want to keep the numbers on this as small as possible. We only have so many warding devices in the department, and I have no idea how effective they'll even be given what you reported."
I'm currently wearing two. "The best way is to silence them. Just stop them speaking."
"There might be a way to do that. I remember reading an article on it. I'll see what Public Safety can provide."
"So do you want me to do this alone?"
"I think it'd be better if you had someone with you with legal authority. I'm assigning you a detective. A woman. She's relatively new but I think that would make it easier for you both given your age."
Okay, well this might not be completely awful.
*****
When I get home, I have a routine. First I do my combat training, training sword, knife, unarmed combat and a little shooting against several practice golems. Then I take a shower and wash my hair, and then soak in healing alchemicals for a while while I read a book. Studying, both academic and mystical goes on until around three in the morning, and then I watch chill for four hours with manga, anime or a video game. I sleep about one day in every five, less if I'm using go pills, which I am now. This may not be the healthiest way to operate but I'm dead in three years so why worry.
I'm just sitting down to this weeks manga magazines when my phone goes. It's not a tone I'm used to hearing. "Reijo-san. This is a surprise."
"I'm sorry. Did I wake you?"
"No. Just strange to hear from you at this hour."
"I um. Would you be willing to come out? I just-- something unusual." She's breathing hard, out of breath. "It seems, well it seems like something you might know about. We can pay."
"I seem to remember you saving my life. I'll come right away." I'm wearing a loose silk robe, and have a brief flash of what Reijou might do if I wore this out to her. "Just give me a little time to dress."
The trains have shut down and Tokyo is pretty quiet. Just drunks and cops and a few lost tourists out at this hour. We're out in Ueno, near the park, but actually pulled up in front of a small shrine tucked in between a bunch of houses.
My car purrs up to where Reijou is standing on the curb looking very uncomfortable and out of place, with a lanyard around her neck and an ID. She's pale and a little shaky looking, without makeup, and wearing a slightly thrown together looking outfit of jeans, long sleeved T-shirt and school sweater.
Behind her is a very reserved looking young man who looks about my age, wearing a sharp suit and another ID lanyard. The way he's looking around says he' her bodyguard, the level of stern resolve in this task says he has the hots for her.
"Reijou-san." I incline my head. "The Exorcist Society is working you hard. And on a school night."
"This is an emergency situation." The bodyguard glares at me. "We were forced to call upon Yuuko-san's power to resolve things, even at this hour."
"And what exactly was the situation?"
"It's easier if I show you." Reijou begins to walk towards the shrine. "Something attacked the shrine, locked onto its spiritual energy. A group of exorcists responded but-- they were all killed."
There's another pair of exorcists further towards with several body bags. No wonder Reijou is so jumpy. I don't think her missions usually have body counts.
"Are you okay?" I ask her quietly.
"I-"
"If they didn't call you before the team went in, there's nothing at all you could have done."
She looks up at me, a little hopeless. "I-- knew one of them. Not well, but he helped teach me." She bows her head slightly then speaks even more quietly. "It felt like that thing at school. That's why I called you."
I feel a little chill inside. "It's dead though?"
"It's inert, I drove out the spiritual energy inside it."
In plainer language she blew its soul out. It's a relatively standard, though high level trick exorcists use against other supernaturals. The driving out of mana, of energy, of the soul. Go after an exorcist with a gun or a knife and they don't have anymore recourse than a nromal human. Unless you're a magi or a monster. Then they can send you into an agonizing mana crash of even, as Reijou did, fission your soul from your body.
No wonder she looks so pale and worn. The bonds that hold a soul to a living body are every bit as strong as the bonds that hold an atom together.
The serious guy pushes the doors of the shrine open and I look inside. The thing lays in the middle of the floor near a pool of water and a large blood stain. It's actually kind of short, maybe five feet tall, and looks deflated,like a balloon with some of the air escaped. It's green in colour and looks horribly mutant and cancerous. It looks a lot like the implant I saw on that man's throat earlier, just torn off and made ambulatory.
"It came into the shrine and started to draw on its energy."
"How did your team die?"
"They killed one another." Reijou hugs herself a little. She really does look awful. "It could get inside your head. Like a thousand voices shouting all at once."
I look at her over cautiously. "Are you alright?"
"I'm just a little tired." she says. Trying to be tough. I'll let her. Instead I pull on a mask and drugs and cautiously approach it.
I extract a sample of the thing's flesh in a plastic tube and do some magical analysis. There's human DNA in here, or something very like it. "I'd like to have a friend of mine take a look at this." I step back away from the empty shell. "She's a doctor."
Reijou looks at the guy, who coughs. "I can consult with the sight commander, but do you have any idea what it is?"
"Maybe." I text Alice, and connect the sample bottle to my phone. There's a pause and she texts back checking. "I'm not sure I should prejudge the results but I think maybe this is linked to all the deaths that have been recently."
"This monster has been going around killing rich people?" Reijou asks.
"Not quite. I think--" how do I even say this? "I think this is what hatched out of them."
This revelation doesn't quite land as well as I'd like it to as at that moment, we get yelled at. An older man in a much more rumpled suit looks in, practically grabs the serious guy by his shirt and yells in his face. "What is she doing here?"
For a moment, I think he's talking to me, then I realize he's referring to Reijou, and make the snap decision I'll wait and watch. This might be interesting.
The serious guy is too much of a good soldier to talk back and instead just straightens up. The older man continues his tarade. "I told you to stay on watch outside the shrine on standby! What if another of those monsters appears?"
This apparently gets the boy sufficiently and he shoots back. "Reijou-san is in no condition to fight again tonight. She requested to step into the shrine to investigate the--"
"Investigate?" The older man cuts him off. "And what skills do you have in investigation."
Oh no. Serious is going to turn around and point me out and it's going to be incredibly awkward.
Reijou saves me, again, by quietly collapsing in a dead faint.
*****
"When was the last time you guys lost someone on an operation?" I ask serious as he helps load Reijou into my car. She's increasingly feverish.
"It's not that." He looks back at the shrine. "The man who led the first team was Tani-san's brother. Tani-san ordered him in here."
I nod, find a blanket and wrap it firmly around Reijou. She mutters in her sleep. "So, you, you're her bodyguard hmm? Do you have a name?" Reijou's hound materializes and snuggles up to her sleeping form, pushing me away a bit. I pet its head, and it licks my hand before settling down.
"Tamura, Tamura Kenichi." He says. "I hate to ask this, Nishifune-san, but as Reijou is a school friend of yours, can you put us up under your roof tonight?"
Up until that point I'd sort of decided to leave this be but now he's really peaked my interest, and I decide to interrogate him. "Well, if you think it's alright to stay under a witch's roof. Shouldn't you tell your commander first though?"
He gets even more serious. "If you would allow, I'd like to avoid that."
I tap the car's side and it gets into motion, then look at him intently. "Allow it, yes. I might, if you tell me why."
"How much do you really know about Reijou-san?" He looks her over.
"She's a powerful exorcist. Her best subjects are Japanese and English. She likes archery." I scratch behind the black dogs ears and it hangs its jaws open in pleasure. "I suppose that's not what you're referring to though."
"Reijou is one of the most powerful exorcists on record. We've had many powerful people in this generation, but she is the best, yet she's not from any grand exorcist family. She's an orphan, adopted by an old man who's long lost his powers. It's too far to take her back to her uncle's house, and I worry--"
"You worry that if you take her to some other exorcist clan she may not come out again?" I swear, exorcists are as bad as the Yakuza sometimes.
"Maybe nothing so dramatic, but I'd prefer she be in your debt that theirs."
I put a hand on Reijou's feverish head. "I already owe her my life. So I think giving her a roof is fine."
But that's not going to stop me from calling Junya as soon as we get in and settled and finding out exactly what I've got myself into.
*****
The cop and I have a breakfast meeting. It'd be eyebitingly early if I actually slept, but it seems like Yoshitaka, police officer is one of those people who likes being up early and getting moving. Reijou and her boy are still asleep upstairs in different room, Reijou connected to the house's remote medical systems, but really suffering from nothing more than a fever and slight anemia caused by power overuses. I'll talk to her after the meeting is done.
I couldn't get hold of Junya last night. Luce said he'd call me when he got a chance. I wonder if I should be worried about him.
Yoshitaka is what I'd expect from a female detective in this line of work, but younger. A fresh faced graduate of some top school, placed here, like her boss, because she's too competent and motivated to dump in media relations or some other desk duty. Fit, prim and wearing an intensely grey, intensely dull trouser suit with an open collar. She's pretty enough, and her face set off by small glasses. In turn I'm armoured up, both literally and figuratively one of my J2M jackets in black, a black silk with a red jewel mounted into the embroidery on the collar, and a very expensive french designer skirt which I see her recognize.
"So you're another one of Aratani-san's friends?" Friends is doing a lot of work in that question. I decide I won't tell her we used to be engaged. You never know what kind of reaction you'll get with the women Aratani surrounds himself with.
"I'm not his lover if that's what you mean. We're more like rivals."
"Rivals huh? So you're not doing him a favour?"
"I mean, I probably am, but it's not my intention. I got pulled into this because of a friend of mine." I briefly outline what I know so far. "I assume you've been briefed on this though. Am I a good subject for interrogation practice?"
She smiles. "I was hoping you'd be a little more hostile I suppose. The Prosecutor said you were a school girl. I kind of expected you to be smaller, and probably infatuated with him."
Trying to draw me. Make me angry and blurt something. Or is she just jealous? I have no idea why all these girls want Aratani but aren't willing to share. Surely the fantasy of going with him is that you also get a shot at Yuuki Horie, and the Prosecutor, at me, at that tsundere exorcist girl he hangs with, at his other fiance or any of the rest. Heck, his male friends aren't exactly bad either. He's a package deal.
I don't understand romance.
I decide I'm not going to rise to it at all and shrug, stretching in a way that draws attention to how much I'm bigger than she is. "Sorry to disappoint you."
"How old are you?"
"Eighteen. Third year high, which I'll need to go to soon."
"Urgh." She looks me over again. I can't tell if it's jealousy or desire or both. Maybe I'm getting my hopes up. She's probably straight. "I've got the government record on the two persons of interest." She hands me a pair of paper files. "We've got almost nothing on the girl, no criminal record, no criminals in the family. Date of birth and so on, but nothing that looks particularly abnormal. Blood type B, nothing too unusual in her family background, except a very distant blood relation to the imperial family."
"What about the other girls who vanished, any matches with them?"
"Nope. No royal blood there. We checked. No common birth dates either. Numerology spent quite a while checking that with every calendar they could find."
"We couldn't be lucky enough for them to all be born on the hundred and eighth day of the year or something." I rub my eyes then look through the data again. "They're all from relatively good backgrounds. Private middle school, then admission to a variety of excellent private schools and top public highschools. All high school aged. All female, so those are requirements, but nothing that lets us narrow it down. "What about those human traffickers I took down?"
"We have confirmed they were bringing women into the country, teenage girls mostly. Cambodia, Bangladeshi, other places, the normal profile. We're still pursuing the other end of the line, but their Boss was the one who knew most of it."
"You got the records from his laptop I sent you?"
"Yes. Though I'm not sure it's admissible in court."
"Well, sorry about that. I couldn't take the risk of me not getting the data if you refused to work with me. I'm not a forensic accountant though."
"We're still working through it." She sighs. "It looks like it'll be useful to potentially shut down a lot of black financing but in terms of telling us what he's doing, we don't have anything. Just that their profits started to crash a month back. "
I tap my fingers on the desk. "So what we have, basically, is the girls. Unless we find Murakawa. Any leads there?"
"None. We've got his picture up across the Island as a person of interest but he's dropped off the face of the earth. It would be easier if I'd let us approach his family."
"No." She glares at me. I hold her eyes until she drops them.
"Then let's hope we can turn up a pattern, because that's all we've got."
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Chapter 2-4: Slavery
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A/N: After this chapter, I'm going to try to move to a twice a week update schedule to make this more approachable.
Still no message from Junya. My phone calls go to voicemail, texts not viewed, and phones to J2Me tell me he's still out. Should I worry? Maybe, but Junya is a big boy and can look after himself. If he can't, well, he has a half dozen girls and several guys closer than I am to look after him.
I am just surrounded by womanizers I guess. It's my doom.
Instead, I have an exorcist to look after. I did some scans during the night. She's not in serious danger but she made herself very sick. I put her up in one of the third-floor guest rooms overlooking the central garden, with every kind of scan I know how to mount pointed at her. It's pretty fascinating to watch the after-effects of soul fission on the exorcist involved. It seems like she actually ripped the thing's soul out by making herself so attractive to it that it tore the bonds linking it to the body. Unfortunately for her, it also meant she was flooded with eldritch energy.
By the time I'm done with Yoshitaka, Tamura has slipped off to check-in, leaving a note for Reijou. His bed is unslept in, but I notice the marks of him in a chair next to her bed. Reijou is in one of my silk nightgowns, which I had the house use my sowing machine to adjusted for her shorter frame, and still looks pale and feverish, despite the medicine I gave her. Alice should be over soon. She promised a house call this morning, though I think part of it is to check out the scan results. It's not every day you get to grab a bunch of data on the spiritual and physiological wellbeing of one of Japan's greatest exorcists.
As I come, her eyes open and she mutters something. A name I think, not mine. Then her eyes clear and she looks towards me. "Nishifune-san." She tries to rise. I push her back gently.
"Just stay there. You're still weak."
"But I have duties back home at the shrine." She lies back, but reluctantly, protesting. "And school."
"So diligent." I smooth her hair back and replace the damp cloth on her forehead. "Just relax, your friend already left to make your excuses at home, and school will still be there tomorrow. I already called them to say that you won't be in today. Do you feel like eating?"
"Not really."
"Try this at least." A shadowy maid form comes in carrying a tray with a drink that's about half smoothie and half parfait with a long glass straw. I apply it to Reijou's lips and she sips, then drinks greedily. "More?"
"I think that's enough." She lies back. "I feel like I have the flu."
"If you're going to banish the souls of magical beings, you need to learn to do it without eating them." I stroke her hair gently. "You took a lot of that thing's spiritual energy into yourself and it's made you sick." It's actually pretty similiar to what happens to someone using a geomantic grid without limiters. I could try to suck that eldritch energy out of her, but I think I'll leave that to Alice. She's the doctor.
"It was whispering to me." She shivers slightly. "I had to stop it. I couldn't listen anymore."
"What did it say?"
Her eyes blink closed. "Nothing, just nonsense." Her hand squeezes on the sheet. I take it. "It said-- it said that I should give myself to it. That it would stop its parent twisting the world."
I give her hand a squeeze.
"Do you fight things like that?" She asks.
"Sometimes." I sigh. "It's not like you with ghosts. I mostly do other things. Just, I suppose it's something I'm involved in." I rub her hand slowly. "I don't really have any choice you know?"
Reijou is about to say something else, then stops as the house speaks up, its softly female voice filling the space. "Nozomi, the Doctor is here, and it's almost time to leave for school."
"I have to go. Alice will look after you. She's very good. She'll get you back on your feet and take you home."
Reijou nods slightly then closes her eyes as I head down the stairs.
School that day is just school. I pay attention as best I can, though I'm distracted by everything that's going on. I want a chance to question Akari, and that's going to be delicate. I end up waiting all day, distracting myself in free time with talking to Manako about runes and reading history books from the school library.
After volleyball practice though, I get a chance. We had a good session. The underclassmen this year have real talent. "Hey Akira." I wave as we go out. "Want to walk to the station with me? I'm taking the train today."
"Sure." She falls in beside me. "Kind of wish you were offering me a lift though. I'm a little beat."
"Do you want me to call it?"
"Nah. I should probably walk it off rather than cramp up in a car seat." She gives me a look. "Not walking home with that nerd from the track team?"
"She got carted off in a car to her parents. I'm going to dinner there tonight."
"Going steady are we?"
I blush. Akari knows more about me than most people. "I made that joke to her too."
"'Joke,' right." She laughs, then sighs.
"Jealous?" I give her an arched eyebrow.
"A little." She laughs. "I'm glad I met you, but--."
"I'm the one who said no to you remember?" I look up at the sky. The overcast has burned off and I can see blue. There's a stubborn lack of passing aircraft, but I can see a vapor trail. Down in the parking lot, the Student Council President is putting on a helmet handed to her by a blond haired girl on a motorcycle. "You shouldn't feel guilty about us. I'm not someone you should get involved with if you want a normal life."
She nods. "I'm sorry."
I'm sorry too, but there's no point dragging this onwards. "Talking of which, I need to ask you some stuff about what happened the other day."
"Oh yes?"
"Don't freak out on this, but we think that you were targeted for a reason. It doesn't make sense they'd try to abduct someone you know, from a good family who'd be missed right away."
"So will they try again?"
"I doubt it. There's covert police protection and some people I hired watching out for you. Plus, you know, I'm in your corner. I'm just trying to figure out what could be different about you that they need you rather than some random girl."
"I mean, I guess I'm a normal girl. Except for-- you know? That and a bunch of other things. I like sports. I barely got into highschool but did at the last minute cause of tutoring, half of it from you. I'm great at volleyball." She's right. There isn't anything odd about her. Something she just said nags at me though. "I guess I'm fortunate in some ways, could it be because of that?"
"It's possible." I sigh. "If so that doesn't narrow it down much."
They went to private middle schools. They got into good public or private high schools. Akari has a problem in that profile. What is it? What is it?
We're almost at the station. "Do you want to go and play a few matches one on one?" she asks.
"I--" then it hits me. "Actually need to get ready for dinner with Manako and, I think I just figured out a break in the case."
Akari takes a deep breath and then pulls me into a hug. "You be safe out there Nozomi. Don't kill yourself trying to solve other people's problems."
I give her shoulders a squeeze. "I'll see you tomorrow." It's more of a promise than a goodbye. I watch as she walks into the train and pull out my phone. "Detective Yoshitaka? It's Nishifune. Can you get me the middle school files and mock exam transcripts from the victims?"
"I could. It'd take some work, but it should just be a matter of asking for them. Do you have something."
"So far it's just a hunch. All of the victims were good girls from rich families. They did well on their highschool exams and got into good schools."
"Yes."
"But my friend isn't that." I begin to walk towards the next station. I hate not to be in motion. "She had real problems in middle school. We didn't think she'd make the entrance exam for the school we're in now. She had extensive tutoring."
"And what do you think this means?" Yoshitaka sounds interested but not convinced.
"I don't know yet. Just, those transcripts all show girls who are academically gifted, and my friend kind of isn't that. She almost destroyed herself passing her exam."
"Let me get back to you. Will you be available later this evening?"
I check the time on my phone. "I'll be at dinner with a friend's family in about two hours till five hours from now."
"That's fine. Call me when you get out. It'll take us till then to track down the data you want." A pause. "What should we do if we come up against hostiles? The kidnap team you put in a coma vanished out of the hospital. The human traffickers too. The guards on the door have no idea what happened."
Shit. Of course. "The ones I met appeared to be overweight men wearing clothes that cover their throats. If you see someone like that you must not approach or speak to them. Just call me or whatever other magical support group you have available. Unless you're willing to shoot them from a distance."
"That would be extremely difficult to cover up. We'll call you."
"Thanks."
Train to a car pickup and then to Manako's house, and try to put myself in the right mood to meet her parents.
The house is a large, kind of boring property boom mansion in the suburbs. The kind of place that her father probably boasts to his friends about getting super cheap. It has a large garden with a tree and a carefully kept lawn, and a pair of big shiny cars outside it. I had a long discussion today with Manako about what to wear, and we jointly decided that my normal clothes might freak her parents out, so I'm still wearing my school uniform.
Manako meets me at the door and takes me inside. She looks a little nervous. "Mum, Dad, Nozomi-chan is here."
I see her father first. He's sitting in the living room, and rises with a smile which looks almost not fake. He's about what I was expecting, somewhat overweight guy, quite grey and looking like he works way too hard so he can bust other people's balls about how he works harder than them. I'm surprised that he's in at this hour rather than either working or out drinking with his buddies. "Ah, you must be Nishifune-san. Manako's told us a lot about you."
"Hi. All good I hope."
"Oh, of course." He comes forward. He's only a little taller than I am. "Wow, you're tall."
"Dad." Manako mutters.
"I play volleyball a lot."
"I can imagine."
Her mother pokes her head out of the kitchen and saves me from a response to this. She's an elegant middle age woman, well dressed in a long blue skirt and white shirt, with kind of a Yūki Amami as Ayane Mita vibe to her. "We thought it would be nice for you to be at dinner with someone dear. It must be awfully lonely all on your own on days like this when girls are getting kidnapped off the streets."
"Ah. I'm really fine, my house has a great security system." Was that the right response? Ah well. "Thank you so much for inviting me though."
"Do you cook yourself?"
"Sometimes but mostly I have staff to take care of me. Is there anything I can do to help?"
"No no, I won't hear of it. Just sit down. Do you want something to drink? A soda?"
"Just mineral water if you have it."
"I'll open a bottle. Or we have a water filter just put in."
I restrain myself. "Either is fine, thank you."
The rest of dinner isn't too hard to handle. I have well-rehearsed lies for all their questions, most of which are about me, checking me out. As much as I joked with Manako about this, I get the feeling that this dinner has about the same function as if I was a boy. There's this weird, tall white haired girl who's suddenly our daughter's best friend. Let's find out if she's okay.
Do they know? I don't think so. I mean I'm not positive myself, I just strongly suspect. If they did, they'd probably be trying to stop this. With that in mind, I just give them friendly but surface answers to their questions.
The food is good too, rare beef, which Manako's mother rather proudly tells me she learned how to do during her husband's posting over in America. This gives me a good segway to talk about the time I lived in London. At the end of the meal, Manako starts to talk about studying and we manage to escape to her room. She slumps. "Sorry about all that."
"It was fine." I step behind her and massage her shoulders a little. She lets me, sighing. "They aren't so bad."
"Yes they are." She leans into me. "All those questions. I thought it would never end. It was like we were going to get married or something."
"You know, in mage society, people of the same sex can get married? It's like Britain or America."
"Oh." She pauses, considers for a moment and then reaches under her matrice to come up with a set of papers. "Here's those of my Uncle's papers I managed to save. I read through them but nothing seems too useful."
I look through them. "This might actually be good." The papers show at least what ports he had contacts in, and may show who the contacts are. There's a bunch of stuff here, mostly print outs of books with at least semi-coded entity names. A leaflet for some educational group marks one of the pages. "Really we need to know where he might go in Tokyo though. Or Japan. If sounds like he left under his own power. Can you think of anywhere?"
"Do you think he knew what he was involved in?" She looks down at the ground. "I've been thinking about it. Like, how do you not know that you're involved in something like that?"
I maintain the smooth motion of my hands on her shoulders."Do you think he was the kind of man who might have been involved in that if he'd known?"
"I don't know." she sighs. "I don't know why now if he didn't know."
"It might be that he sort of knew, but maybe he told himself it couldn't be true. It couldn't be that evil, until one day something happened to make him realize it could."
Manako looks up at me. "Has it happened to you, like that I mean?"
I avert my eyes. "Once. I'm not--" pause, catch it, start again. "I'm not a good person Manako. I've done bad things. I'm not just dangerous to be around. If you find out all about me you might not like me very much." I lift my hands away, suddenly uncomfortable, then feel a start of surprise as she grabs them.
"Nozomi, I know you're not a good person." Her eyes are very big, made bigger by her glasses, and she squeezes my hands. "You led that monster to the club, didn't you? You knew what would happen. That it'd tear those men apart."
"I--" My face says it, even if I can't.
"It's alright. They told me what they were going to do to me if you lost. They deserved to die too." She takes a deep breath. "I don't need you to be a good person. I just need you to give me a life that isn't one identical day after another. Just, please save me."
And then she kisses me.
It's actually my first kiss.
The truth is I think I needed someone to do this for me. In terms of what happens next, I think I can hold my own. I'm quite aware of my own desires, but I've never really understood other people's.
I needed someone who'd follow me. Who'd push herself into my world and show me that yes they were really serious, and yes they really do want this.
I want this so much.
She tastes of the ice cream. Her lips are very soft. The chair is in the way but I can feel the heat of her, the fabric of her clothes against mine as we press together. Her eyes are my whole world, almost as shocked as mine must be, behind her glasses, which have gone askew somehow. She wobbles, the chair in her way, and I reach out to steady her. It almost tips over. She pulls back, almost trips and I catch her.
Then my fucking mobile phone starts to ring.
"Is that yours?" Manako's father shouts from downstairs
Manako blinks, woken out of whatever this is and pushes me back. I hand her back her glasses and she takes them, annoyed. "It's Nozomi-san's!"
I check the number. "I'm sorry. I have to take this. It's about your Uncle."
"Alright." Manako steps away, still annoyed.
I pick up "Yoshitaka?"
"You were on the money on those grades. Every one of them was failing in middle school and then turned it around."
"Do we have any idea how?"
"Not yet. We're going to talk to the parents right now. I'll bet my paycheck there's some common factor though."
"No bet. Maybe a tutoring firm or something."
"Do you want to come to the interviews?"
"A lot of distraught parents with missing daughters isn't really my style. Tell me when you find something, don't worry about the time."
"Alright." She rings off.
Manako is sitting on the bed, I sit beside her.
"Sorry." She says. "For suddenly kissing you like that. I just- Well I mean, you're kind of obv-" I don't want to hear that so I lean in and kiss her again. Her arms go around me and I tip her back till she's almost against the bed. There's a moment of shock when I realize that I'm lying on top of another body, warm and moving and alive against me through the clothes. A second when it hits me that I'm kissing another girl on a bed and think where that could go and then I just relax into it, her hands around me. Finally I pull back. She looks up at me then pushes me back a little.
I should tell her.
This is so not the right time.
"I've been expecting you to be the one to do that." She frowns. "You're so obvious! I got tired of waiting."
"Was it the quip about you being an angel?"
"Yes! It was absolutely that!"
I go and sit on the chair, obtaining careful separation. "Manako. I um." There's really no good way to say this. "You know I have a medical condition right?"
"Yes." She looks worried. I hurry on.
"It's not contagious or anything, but if nothing changes it is terminal. At twenty one I'll die, and it only gets worse from there."
"Worse?"
"Yes. After I die, I'll come back as something else. Something more akin to the thing I fought at the alley than what I am now." I almost say "we shouldn't get involved" but then realize how that will sound. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"No." Manako rubs her eyes. "I wasn't sure even before you told me that. I just always thought I'd find a guy you know?" She looks down. "And now this."
"Should I go?"
"No." she pats the bed next to me "but don't sit all the way over there." I go over and sit next to her. She's glaring a bit. "For years it seems like you've been doing this. Stop trying not to hurt me so much that you hurt me."
I look at the floor. "I'm sorry. I just wasn't sure." I make a circle with one foot. "What do we do now?"
"Maybe just," she takes my hand, "see what happens."
The thought of going further into this without a plan is utterly terrifying.
For the need of something to do, I ask Manako about her rune homework, and update her on the case. "Can you think of anywhere he might go?"
"Not really." She sighs. "I've been trying to think."
"I'd really like you to bring you to my house and show you some files I have, both from the guy at the port and this dead Yakuza who was connected as well. I want to see if you recognize anything."
"I think we could get my parents to drive me. We can say we want to use your books to study." Manako walks to the door and has a brief conversation with her parents. It's agreed her mother will drive, her father apparently being already exhausted.
The Murakawa family loads up officially and we head off, with Manako's mother driving. Their car is a giant people carrier which could seat about six. Apparently Manako has three older sisters, now off at college. On the way, Manako's Mother peppers me with questions as we go which I do my best to answer. It's an effective distraction and almost makes me not notice--
"Hey, this isn't the way to my house."
"Oh, how silly of me." She blinks and pulls over. The area around us is as isolated as Tokyo gets, a bunch of old warehouses and a rotting apartment block left over from the nineteen nineties.
I assume it's going to be a car bomb or a spray of bullets and trigger a shield around Manako and her Mother. It turns out to be far worse as the passenger side door opens and the fat man I last saw spasming on the street gets in.
"Gently now."
I've considerably enhanced the mental protection I'm wearing but they seem to have empowered this guy beyond what he was earlier and I'm back at square one. Feeling like I'm drowning in hot honey. Next to me, Manako stiffens, eyes wide, frozen.
"How many women do you have Nozomi-chan?" He laughs. "First going with that tall volleyball champion, and now the track star. You're such a player, in more ways than one. Unfortunately you made one mistake. You forgot your new police friends protection was in Osaka." The side door opens and Tanigawa Junko and Yoshitaka get in. Both are blank eyed. They grip onto my arms, holding me in place. It'd only slow me down but combined with his voice that's enough. "Quite unfortunate for you he's out of town really."
The car starts again, heading now properly towards my house. They'll want to clear any evidence from there.
"Are you sure this isn't some elaborate trap he laid for you?"
"He does have rather that reputation doesn't he?" He smirks. "I bet you'd really hate it if he did ride to the rescue, but don't worry. He really is in Osaka. Staying well away from this one."
"Why?"
"It's all politics." He smiles. "Your boy detective is in a delicate position. He doesn't just want to be a boy detective forever. He wants to rebuild his house, to become one of the greatest in Japan once again. Unfortunately for you, such ambitions require sacrifices." He whispers to Manako's mother and we drive again. "Now, take your phone out and call your friend Akira. Tell her to come to this address." He hands me a card. "And take care of her protection too."
"No." I shake my head.
He turns to look at me. "Don't worry. Once this is done you'll never have to care about anything. All that responsibility, all that burden to just survive, it'll be over. There'll be pain, but you won't have to choose, or worry, not ever again."
That's worth a laugh, even through the honey of his words. "You think that's what I want?"
"I can torture your friend's mother until you do it."
I hear Manako give a small, awful intake of breath next to me but I can't give in. Not now.
"You're going to anyway, right? None of us are getting out of this in one piece. Besides, she's driving."
We're almost there.
He rubs his eyes. "You're really starting to get to me Nozomi-chan. What are you using to block the effects of my voice?"
"T-th-the chain around my wrist" I grit out. "A-and th-the jewel under my hair."
The women beside me let go of my arms. "Take them off." He can't help leering as he says it. It's a pretty great expression for him to be wearing as I take the gem's off and the silence effect I set to trigger if it was removed switches off all sound in the car. By the time I've got his head in my hands and am slamming it into the car door, it's turned to an expression of almost comical shock.
He bounces off, then grabs my arm with a startlingly strong grip. I punch him in the face, and he grabs my other hand, an awkward grapple between the car seats.
Manako reaches over and traces a rune of sleep on his forehead. His eyes flutter and he's out. I put the jewel back in and the silence drops out. "Thanks."
"These are the guys after my Uncle?"
"Yeah." I pull out a marker and draw a rune of sleep along with an extended rune of silence on a piece of tape and attach it to the man's forehead.
"Mum?" Manako says. Her mother is still glassy eyed, driving robotically. "Mum!"
"Don't touch her. We could crash." We're coming up to my house. "Hang on. Let her turn in and stop the car, then I'll check her. Best case we might not even have to reveal anything."
"Alright." Manako is trying not to look panicked. Her mother slides the car into the driveway.
I get out and open all the SUV's doors "House."
"Yes Nozomi."
"Concealment mode one, illusions around this vehicle to depict only myself, Manako and Manako's mother. Take this man and these two women inside. Restrain the man in quiet room I prepared."
"I hear and obey Nozomi."
A chorus of shadowy maids form in the driveway and begin to ship the passengers inside, carrying them gently but with great strength.
Manako is still hovering around her mother, looking at her closely. She glances at me, terrified as I come in to check. She's breathing regularly but she's in a deep trance state. This kind of magic leaves no memories. Presumably they intended to send her home afterwards.
"Will she be okay?"
"Yeah." I look at the house. "I'm going to give her a shot of something to bring her out of this gently. And arrange protection for your father. They probably phoned her up and took her over today. Does she work?"
"Yes, but only part time."
"While she was out then." I look down. "Sorry. I should have been more careful."
"This isn't your fault." Manako insists.
"Yes it is." A shadow maid comes up with the large doctor's bag which is the house medical kit and I load up an injector, then call Alice and have a brief conversation about the patient before finding I got it right and injecting her. It takes a moment but she blinks, eyes open. I palm the injector so she can't see it.
"Ah, Nozomi-san. I think I had a funny turn."
"You looked like you'd zoned out for a moment."
"Ah, alright. Well," she laughs. "I feel fine now. I'll see you later. Manako! Make sure you eat right if you stay over, and don't leave your underwear here."
"Mum!" Manako blushes red. Her mother laughs then reverses out of the driveway. Manako slumps and I smile.
"Your family is kind of nice."
"I mean, they're not bad. I just wish they'd let me do more stuff." She sighs. "And, I'm worried about them now."
"Let's make sure our new friend is secure." I look at Manako as we step inside. "Actually, it's possible that we might have some more guests, so you can open your presents early. I left a bunch of rifles down in the training room for you. Can you go down and load one up on your own?"
She nods, determined. "I can!" She heads off, determined and I go check on the detective and the prosecutor. They're both deeper in than Manako's mother and, after talking to Alice more, I end up putting sleep rune sticky notes on them and leaving them on the sofa to sleep it off. Then I go down to the holding cell I've prepared for the guy. Manako is in the armoury, hard at work on with a rifle and my rune printer, spraying on the stuff she wants. Good.
"I decided I'd try a bullpup! An ST-Kinetics BR-18! I've mounted a foregrip, a hybrid sight, a taclight, a suppressor and a laser in case I have to fight with night vision goggles." She tells me a little breathlessly as I pause in the doorway.
"Right. I'm just going to check the guy. Want to come?"
"Yes!" Manako slings her new gun, fiddles with the stock, and does a couple of practice cheek wields, then nods and charges the gun. "Ready."
The cell is down in the second level of the basement. It's a large, mostly unworked chamber I've previously used for testing magic. The really secure stuff is somewhat further down, in a specially built area linked to the house by a separate elevator shaft on the upper floor. I fitted one end, conveniently dug out when I was testing some nasty attack spell, with a cage door, wrote a ward barrier around it, then placed a heavy duty chair I got from Alice with a keyboard and screen. One of my old school laptops safely cleared of files lets him type in and have the results mirrored and potentially read by a text to speech device.
The whole area is under a silence effect.
The house has put him in the chair and fastened the restraints, then shut the cage. Good. All the tells on the outside say fully secure.
"Should I cover him?" Manako asks. I think for a moment, then remember how strong he was.
"Yes. Move around to the left. I'll approach from the right." I look over. "If he moves suddenly, don't worry about me. Just shoot." I chant a quick forcefield and then move up.
She aims the rifle but doesn't take the safety off, her thumb hovering over the selector. I walk up, check the restraints once visually, find everything in order and so open the cage, then do a manual check. "Okay, he's in."
Manako, to her credit, doesn't relax. I step out of the cage and shut it, "I'm going to go shower and change. Come up with me. We'll lock this whole area."
"Shouldn't someone guard him?"
"You can watch him on the cameras. No offense but you're still really new to this." I look at her. "Then I'll do the same while you get changed. I got you a tactical vest and everything."
"Alright." A small smile creeps over her face and she lowers the gun to a ready position and follows me to the door, which I shut. That could all have gone much much worse.
I spend quite a bit of time picking my outfit for the interrogation. Manako paces around the living room a bit but the right look is important. Something aggressive. I've been going with the whole jacket + silk shirt + short skirt + thigh highs thing a lot lately. The jackets are partly practicality. You want something to mount armour into, and even with magic that's easier with a jacket. I'm going to wear one of my corsets, in black, and then a white shirt with a red jewel collar, a white J-2-Me tactical jacket and a black skirt. Red thigh highs. I like the way that looks.
Manako apparently has an overnight bag with her, and changes into a really cute combo of coffee coloured shorts and cream sweater, which I actually thinks even better with the tactical vest over it. She puts on a ballcap, and looks at me under it, big brown eyes behind her glasses. I'm momentarily entranced and then force myself back on track.
"I'm going in from the left. Cover me."
"Okay." Manako aims the rifle again and I move forward cautiously, open the cage and open his collar.
The organ beneath is swollen, green shading into blue. Dozens of small gems have been set into it in flowing runic shapes. Veins extend down from his neck and into his flesh.
I swallow then take some pictures, a sample, various scans. I should just cut this whole thing out but it seems like that'll kill him. It's definitely eldritch, but it's not as bad as it could be. It's not hollow spider. My guess is that it's something otherworldly that's been modified into an implant. Despite myself I'm fascinated. Small tendrils of the stuff extend through his whole body, and it seems to have fundamentally altered his metabolism as well.
As I suspected he's got a full geomantic net. He was crazy strong earlier. The design is similar to the ones I saw in the box cutters, but better crafted. More curious is a small brand on his wrist, a complex symbol, data dense, more like a QR code than a rune.
I step behind him, careful not to get into Manako's fire arc, and yank the tape free.
His eyes snap open right away and he looks at Manako, says something, then frowns and cranes to look back at me. I give him a little wave and indicate the laptop, then leave the cage, shutting the door after me.
"Nishifune-san. You are every bit as good as reported." The words flash up deliberately. It seems like he can touch type which is handy. It'd be annoying to wait for him to use two fingers.
I pick up the keyboard on the outside and type a response "You flatter me. You almost had me." Actually I'm sure I could have got out of it another way, but no need to tell him that.
"There are no prizes for almost." He smiles slowly. "So, what happens now? Are you going to torture me for information?"
"Torture doesn't work and I've got no taste for it. Not so sure about the two public safety officials whose minds you messed with though. The Japanese police aren't particularly nice people and there's no chance you'll go esper on them."
"Can I trouble you for some water?" I pick a bottle off the table and send it into the cell on TK. He drinks gratefully. On the monitor, his temperature is starting to rise slowly. I wish I knew more about his physiology. I should have got Alice down here. He types again. "So I talk and you what, let me go?"
"Perhaps I could trade you back to whoever it is you work for, if you're willing to tell me who that is."
"You wouldn't know of them."
"Wouldn't I? Well, I know who they associate with. You're records are clean but the technology you use makes it clear. You're connected to Kamitouge Group. You had a mage with you, this means you have connections to a mage house, so you're also a compliance violation. Even if you weren't openly going up against public safety."
He begins to laugh, silently.
"What's so funny?" I glance at the monitors. His pulse is starting to spike, breaths growing faster.
"My dear. Why do you think that your fiance is out in Osaka chasing something else? The Japanese government doesn't oppose us. If you could ask those two pretties upstairs you'd know. Compliance is on our side too. What we're doing is far too important to let legalities get in the way. We are a body constituted by numerous prominent people for a more general good. Your friend knows better than to oppose that. He lacks the strength. And you aren't even as much as him."
His throat implodes, his throat collapsing in on itself as most of the body falls into the centre. A thicket of mutant limbs explode out in a wave of lashing, grasping hands, small enough to get through the bars of the cage.
I hear the click of a selector switch, and then the creature detonates in mid rush. Manako's rounds glow blue as they pass through the air, multiple runes lending them power far beyond normal 5.56mm rounds. The mass tears, trying to reconstitute itself against the wave of damage, then flops back.
I make a gesture of flame and the rest begins to burn.
Manako lowers the gun. She's breathing rapidly but her hands are very steady. "It's much easier when you have the computer draw them."
I watch Manako head upstairs, then pull out my phone and sit down on the steps. Time to make a call.
I'm gripping the phone hard. Very deliberately I stop and force my fingers to ease up and press the button.
Aratani picks up almost right away. "Nozomi."
"Bastard! When I asked for help, was it hard not to laugh at me?"
"I just smiled because you were ahead of where I thought you'd be."
"Ahead! Yes. I'd say we're pretty far ahead of where we should be. I have both of your friends from public safety here with their minds fried. A frog throat almost had me on the way back to my house!"
"I must admit I did miscalculate a little. I didn't think that our enemy would act so openly or in such strength. I honestly don't know that much Nozomi. I really do have an important case in Osaka."
"And, conveniently, you get to do that and let me run up against an operation backed by Compliance and the Japanese state!"
"Yes. I'm not going to make an apology for this Nozomi. It's nothing like the whole government, or the whole of Compliance. Just a faction. Some group backed by a major house, by highly placed people at cabinet level. Probably the PM. But these institutions are holographic. If I'm the one to go against them, then they will be angry at me forever. All of them."
"And how will you avoid it?"
"If I resolve this Osaka business successfully I gain some influence, a powerful ally. A base of power I can use to work to take them down, but I have none of that yet. So I set you up as my stalking horse. That you were friends with a potential victim just accelerated things."
"Why me?" I sound so petulant I hate it. "Why manipulate me into this rather than use someone who you could just ask? You have many more friends than me."
"Because you're the one I can rely on to get it done without me."
He's saying what'll get me to go on. I know that. Of course, if he says something like that to me he actually believes it. I don't want to feel good about his approval but I do. After everything my family has done to his, he says something like this.
Damn him.
"Nozomi? Are you alright?"
"You owe me for this."
I ring off, put the phone next to me so I won't break it.
He always does this to me. Makes it so I have no choice but to dance to his tune. I haven't had any choice but to be the agent he wants me to be from the moment he dropped the corpse in front of me. If I was to try to resist then he has leverage. Like a club and two score dead bodies that were suddenly generated a few nights after a mage so concerned with geomancy was shown their gang using geomantic grids.
I wish I could get rid of this need to impress him. This need to do well to justify his confidence in me.
Just once, I want to be the one to beat him.
*****
Still no message from Junya. My phone calls go to voicemail, texts not viewed, and phones to J2Me tell me he's still out. Should I worry? Maybe, but Junya is a big boy and can look after himself. If he can't, well, he has a half dozen girls and several guys closer than I am to look after him.
I am just surrounded by womanizers I guess. It's my doom.
Instead, I have an exorcist to look after. I did some scans during the night. She's not in serious danger but she made herself very sick. I put her up in one of the third-floor guest rooms overlooking the central garden, with every kind of scan I know how to mount pointed at her. It's pretty fascinating to watch the after-effects of soul fission on the exorcist involved. It seems like she actually ripped the thing's soul out by making herself so attractive to it that it tore the bonds linking it to the body. Unfortunately for her, it also meant she was flooded with eldritch energy.
By the time I'm done with Yoshitaka, Tamura has slipped off to check-in, leaving a note for Reijou. His bed is unslept in, but I notice the marks of him in a chair next to her bed. Reijou is in one of my silk nightgowns, which I had the house use my sowing machine to adjusted for her shorter frame, and still looks pale and feverish, despite the medicine I gave her. Alice should be over soon. She promised a house call this morning, though I think part of it is to check out the scan results. It's not every day you get to grab a bunch of data on the spiritual and physiological wellbeing of one of Japan's greatest exorcists.
As I come, her eyes open and she mutters something. A name I think, not mine. Then her eyes clear and she looks towards me. "Nishifune-san." She tries to rise. I push her back gently.
"Just stay there. You're still weak."
"But I have duties back home at the shrine." She lies back, but reluctantly, protesting. "And school."
"So diligent." I smooth her hair back and replace the damp cloth on her forehead. "Just relax, your friend already left to make your excuses at home, and school will still be there tomorrow. I already called them to say that you won't be in today. Do you feel like eating?"
"Not really."
"Try this at least." A shadowy maid form comes in carrying a tray with a drink that's about half smoothie and half parfait with a long glass straw. I apply it to Reijou's lips and she sips, then drinks greedily. "More?"
"I think that's enough." She lies back. "I feel like I have the flu."
"If you're going to banish the souls of magical beings, you need to learn to do it without eating them." I stroke her hair gently. "You took a lot of that thing's spiritual energy into yourself and it's made you sick." It's actually pretty similiar to what happens to someone using a geomantic grid without limiters. I could try to suck that eldritch energy out of her, but I think I'll leave that to Alice. She's the doctor.
"It was whispering to me." She shivers slightly. "I had to stop it. I couldn't listen anymore."
"What did it say?"
Her eyes blink closed. "Nothing, just nonsense." Her hand squeezes on the sheet. I take it. "It said-- it said that I should give myself to it. That it would stop its parent twisting the world."
I give her hand a squeeze.
"Do you fight things like that?" She asks.
"Sometimes." I sigh. "It's not like you with ghosts. I mostly do other things. Just, I suppose it's something I'm involved in." I rub her hand slowly. "I don't really have any choice you know?"
Reijou is about to say something else, then stops as the house speaks up, its softly female voice filling the space. "Nozomi, the Doctor is here, and it's almost time to leave for school."
"I have to go. Alice will look after you. She's very good. She'll get you back on your feet and take you home."
Reijou nods slightly then closes her eyes as I head down the stairs.
*****
School that day is just school. I pay attention as best I can, though I'm distracted by everything that's going on. I want a chance to question Akari, and that's going to be delicate. I end up waiting all day, distracting myself in free time with talking to Manako about runes and reading history books from the school library.
After volleyball practice though, I get a chance. We had a good session. The underclassmen this year have real talent. "Hey Akira." I wave as we go out. "Want to walk to the station with me? I'm taking the train today."
"Sure." She falls in beside me. "Kind of wish you were offering me a lift though. I'm a little beat."
"Do you want me to call it?"
"Nah. I should probably walk it off rather than cramp up in a car seat." She gives me a look. "Not walking home with that nerd from the track team?"
"She got carted off in a car to her parents. I'm going to dinner there tonight."
"Going steady are we?"
I blush. Akari knows more about me than most people. "I made that joke to her too."
"'Joke,' right." She laughs, then sighs.
"Jealous?" I give her an arched eyebrow.
"A little." She laughs. "I'm glad I met you, but--."
"I'm the one who said no to you remember?" I look up at the sky. The overcast has burned off and I can see blue. There's a stubborn lack of passing aircraft, but I can see a vapor trail. Down in the parking lot, the Student Council President is putting on a helmet handed to her by a blond haired girl on a motorcycle. "You shouldn't feel guilty about us. I'm not someone you should get involved with if you want a normal life."
She nods. "I'm sorry."
I'm sorry too, but there's no point dragging this onwards. "Talking of which, I need to ask you some stuff about what happened the other day."
"Oh yes?"
"Don't freak out on this, but we think that you were targeted for a reason. It doesn't make sense they'd try to abduct someone you know, from a good family who'd be missed right away."
"So will they try again?"
"I doubt it. There's covert police protection and some people I hired watching out for you. Plus, you know, I'm in your corner. I'm just trying to figure out what could be different about you that they need you rather than some random girl."
"I mean, I guess I'm a normal girl. Except for-- you know? That and a bunch of other things. I like sports. I barely got into highschool but did at the last minute cause of tutoring, half of it from you. I'm great at volleyball." She's right. There isn't anything odd about her. Something she just said nags at me though. "I guess I'm fortunate in some ways, could it be because of that?"
"It's possible." I sigh. "If so that doesn't narrow it down much."
They went to private middle schools. They got into good public or private high schools. Akari has a problem in that profile. What is it? What is it?
We're almost at the station. "Do you want to go and play a few matches one on one?" she asks.
"I--" then it hits me. "Actually need to get ready for dinner with Manako and, I think I just figured out a break in the case."
Akari takes a deep breath and then pulls me into a hug. "You be safe out there Nozomi. Don't kill yourself trying to solve other people's problems."
I give her shoulders a squeeze. "I'll see you tomorrow." It's more of a promise than a goodbye. I watch as she walks into the train and pull out my phone. "Detective Yoshitaka? It's Nishifune. Can you get me the middle school files and mock exam transcripts from the victims?"
"I could. It'd take some work, but it should just be a matter of asking for them. Do you have something."
"So far it's just a hunch. All of the victims were good girls from rich families. They did well on their highschool exams and got into good schools."
"Yes."
"But my friend isn't that." I begin to walk towards the next station. I hate not to be in motion. "She had real problems in middle school. We didn't think she'd make the entrance exam for the school we're in now. She had extensive tutoring."
"And what do you think this means?" Yoshitaka sounds interested but not convinced.
"I don't know yet. Just, those transcripts all show girls who are academically gifted, and my friend kind of isn't that. She almost destroyed herself passing her exam."
"Let me get back to you. Will you be available later this evening?"
I check the time on my phone. "I'll be at dinner with a friend's family in about two hours till five hours from now."
"That's fine. Call me when you get out. It'll take us till then to track down the data you want." A pause. "What should we do if we come up against hostiles? The kidnap team you put in a coma vanished out of the hospital. The human traffickers too. The guards on the door have no idea what happened."
Shit. Of course. "The ones I met appeared to be overweight men wearing clothes that cover their throats. If you see someone like that you must not approach or speak to them. Just call me or whatever other magical support group you have available. Unless you're willing to shoot them from a distance."
"That would be extremely difficult to cover up. We'll call you."
"Thanks."
Train to a car pickup and then to Manako's house, and try to put myself in the right mood to meet her parents.
*****
The house is a large, kind of boring property boom mansion in the suburbs. The kind of place that her father probably boasts to his friends about getting super cheap. It has a large garden with a tree and a carefully kept lawn, and a pair of big shiny cars outside it. I had a long discussion today with Manako about what to wear, and we jointly decided that my normal clothes might freak her parents out, so I'm still wearing my school uniform.
Manako meets me at the door and takes me inside. She looks a little nervous. "Mum, Dad, Nozomi-chan is here."
I see her father first. He's sitting in the living room, and rises with a smile which looks almost not fake. He's about what I was expecting, somewhat overweight guy, quite grey and looking like he works way too hard so he can bust other people's balls about how he works harder than them. I'm surprised that he's in at this hour rather than either working or out drinking with his buddies. "Ah, you must be Nishifune-san. Manako's told us a lot about you."
"Hi. All good I hope."
"Oh, of course." He comes forward. He's only a little taller than I am. "Wow, you're tall."
"Dad." Manako mutters.
"I play volleyball a lot."
"I can imagine."
Her mother pokes her head out of the kitchen and saves me from a response to this. She's an elegant middle age woman, well dressed in a long blue skirt and white shirt, with kind of a Yūki Amami as Ayane Mita vibe to her. "We thought it would be nice for you to be at dinner with someone dear. It must be awfully lonely all on your own on days like this when girls are getting kidnapped off the streets."
"Ah. I'm really fine, my house has a great security system." Was that the right response? Ah well. "Thank you so much for inviting me though."
"Do you cook yourself?"
"Sometimes but mostly I have staff to take care of me. Is there anything I can do to help?"
"No no, I won't hear of it. Just sit down. Do you want something to drink? A soda?"
"Just mineral water if you have it."
"I'll open a bottle. Or we have a water filter just put in."
I restrain myself. "Either is fine, thank you."
The rest of dinner isn't too hard to handle. I have well-rehearsed lies for all their questions, most of which are about me, checking me out. As much as I joked with Manako about this, I get the feeling that this dinner has about the same function as if I was a boy. There's this weird, tall white haired girl who's suddenly our daughter's best friend. Let's find out if she's okay.
Do they know? I don't think so. I mean I'm not positive myself, I just strongly suspect. If they did, they'd probably be trying to stop this. With that in mind, I just give them friendly but surface answers to their questions.
The food is good too, rare beef, which Manako's mother rather proudly tells me she learned how to do during her husband's posting over in America. This gives me a good segway to talk about the time I lived in London. At the end of the meal, Manako starts to talk about studying and we manage to escape to her room. She slumps. "Sorry about all that."
"It was fine." I step behind her and massage her shoulders a little. She lets me, sighing. "They aren't so bad."
"Yes they are." She leans into me. "All those questions. I thought it would never end. It was like we were going to get married or something."
"You know, in mage society, people of the same sex can get married? It's like Britain or America."
"Oh." She pauses, considers for a moment and then reaches under her matrice to come up with a set of papers. "Here's those of my Uncle's papers I managed to save. I read through them but nothing seems too useful."
I look through them. "This might actually be good." The papers show at least what ports he had contacts in, and may show who the contacts are. There's a bunch of stuff here, mostly print outs of books with at least semi-coded entity names. A leaflet for some educational group marks one of the pages. "Really we need to know where he might go in Tokyo though. Or Japan. If sounds like he left under his own power. Can you think of anywhere?"
"Do you think he knew what he was involved in?" She looks down at the ground. "I've been thinking about it. Like, how do you not know that you're involved in something like that?"
I maintain the smooth motion of my hands on her shoulders."Do you think he was the kind of man who might have been involved in that if he'd known?"
"I don't know." she sighs. "I don't know why now if he didn't know."
"It might be that he sort of knew, but maybe he told himself it couldn't be true. It couldn't be that evil, until one day something happened to make him realize it could."
Manako looks up at me. "Has it happened to you, like that I mean?"
I avert my eyes. "Once. I'm not--" pause, catch it, start again. "I'm not a good person Manako. I've done bad things. I'm not just dangerous to be around. If you find out all about me you might not like me very much." I lift my hands away, suddenly uncomfortable, then feel a start of surprise as she grabs them.
"Nozomi, I know you're not a good person." Her eyes are very big, made bigger by her glasses, and she squeezes my hands. "You led that monster to the club, didn't you? You knew what would happen. That it'd tear those men apart."
"I--" My face says it, even if I can't.
"It's alright. They told me what they were going to do to me if you lost. They deserved to die too." She takes a deep breath. "I don't need you to be a good person. I just need you to give me a life that isn't one identical day after another. Just, please save me."
And then she kisses me.
*****
It's actually my first kiss.
*****
The truth is I think I needed someone to do this for me. In terms of what happens next, I think I can hold my own. I'm quite aware of my own desires, but I've never really understood other people's.
I needed someone who'd follow me. Who'd push herself into my world and show me that yes they were really serious, and yes they really do want this.
I want this so much.
*****
She tastes of the ice cream. Her lips are very soft. The chair is in the way but I can feel the heat of her, the fabric of her clothes against mine as we press together. Her eyes are my whole world, almost as shocked as mine must be, behind her glasses, which have gone askew somehow. She wobbles, the chair in her way, and I reach out to steady her. It almost tips over. She pulls back, almost trips and I catch her.
Then my fucking mobile phone starts to ring.
"Is that yours?" Manako's father shouts from downstairs
Manako blinks, woken out of whatever this is and pushes me back. I hand her back her glasses and she takes them, annoyed. "It's Nozomi-san's!"
I check the number. "I'm sorry. I have to take this. It's about your Uncle."
"Alright." Manako steps away, still annoyed.
I pick up "Yoshitaka?"
"You were on the money on those grades. Every one of them was failing in middle school and then turned it around."
"Do we have any idea how?"
"Not yet. We're going to talk to the parents right now. I'll bet my paycheck there's some common factor though."
"No bet. Maybe a tutoring firm or something."
"Do you want to come to the interviews?"
"A lot of distraught parents with missing daughters isn't really my style. Tell me when you find something, don't worry about the time."
"Alright." She rings off.
Manako is sitting on the bed, I sit beside her.
"Sorry." She says. "For suddenly kissing you like that. I just- Well I mean, you're kind of obv-" I don't want to hear that so I lean in and kiss her again. Her arms go around me and I tip her back till she's almost against the bed. There's a moment of shock when I realize that I'm lying on top of another body, warm and moving and alive against me through the clothes. A second when it hits me that I'm kissing another girl on a bed and think where that could go and then I just relax into it, her hands around me. Finally I pull back. She looks up at me then pushes me back a little.
I should tell her.
This is so not the right time.
"I've been expecting you to be the one to do that." She frowns. "You're so obvious! I got tired of waiting."
"Was it the quip about you being an angel?"
"Yes! It was absolutely that!"
I go and sit on the chair, obtaining careful separation. "Manako. I um." There's really no good way to say this. "You know I have a medical condition right?"
"Yes." She looks worried. I hurry on.
"It's not contagious or anything, but if nothing changes it is terminal. At twenty one I'll die, and it only gets worse from there."
"Worse?"
"Yes. After I die, I'll come back as something else. Something more akin to the thing I fought at the alley than what I am now." I almost say "we shouldn't get involved" but then realize how that will sound. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"No." Manako rubs her eyes. "I wasn't sure even before you told me that. I just always thought I'd find a guy you know?" She looks down. "And now this."
"Should I go?"
"No." she pats the bed next to me "but don't sit all the way over there." I go over and sit next to her. She's glaring a bit. "For years it seems like you've been doing this. Stop trying not to hurt me so much that you hurt me."
I look at the floor. "I'm sorry. I just wasn't sure." I make a circle with one foot. "What do we do now?"
"Maybe just," she takes my hand, "see what happens."
The thought of going further into this without a plan is utterly terrifying.
*****
For the need of something to do, I ask Manako about her rune homework, and update her on the case. "Can you think of anywhere he might go?"
"Not really." She sighs. "I've been trying to think."
"I'd really like you to bring you to my house and show you some files I have, both from the guy at the port and this dead Yakuza who was connected as well. I want to see if you recognize anything."
"I think we could get my parents to drive me. We can say we want to use your books to study." Manako walks to the door and has a brief conversation with her parents. It's agreed her mother will drive, her father apparently being already exhausted.
The Murakawa family loads up officially and we head off, with Manako's mother driving. Their car is a giant people carrier which could seat about six. Apparently Manako has three older sisters, now off at college. On the way, Manako's Mother peppers me with questions as we go which I do my best to answer. It's an effective distraction and almost makes me not notice--
"Hey, this isn't the way to my house."
"Oh, how silly of me." She blinks and pulls over. The area around us is as isolated as Tokyo gets, a bunch of old warehouses and a rotting apartment block left over from the nineteen nineties.
I assume it's going to be a car bomb or a spray of bullets and trigger a shield around Manako and her Mother. It turns out to be far worse as the passenger side door opens and the fat man I last saw spasming on the street gets in.
"Gently now."
I've considerably enhanced the mental protection I'm wearing but they seem to have empowered this guy beyond what he was earlier and I'm back at square one. Feeling like I'm drowning in hot honey. Next to me, Manako stiffens, eyes wide, frozen.
"How many women do you have Nozomi-chan?" He laughs. "First going with that tall volleyball champion, and now the track star. You're such a player, in more ways than one. Unfortunately you made one mistake. You forgot your new police friends protection was in Osaka." The side door opens and Tanigawa Junko and Yoshitaka get in. Both are blank eyed. They grip onto my arms, holding me in place. It'd only slow me down but combined with his voice that's enough. "Quite unfortunate for you he's out of town really."
The car starts again, heading now properly towards my house. They'll want to clear any evidence from there.
"Are you sure this isn't some elaborate trap he laid for you?"
"He does have rather that reputation doesn't he?" He smirks. "I bet you'd really hate it if he did ride to the rescue, but don't worry. He really is in Osaka. Staying well away from this one."
"Why?"
"It's all politics." He smiles. "Your boy detective is in a delicate position. He doesn't just want to be a boy detective forever. He wants to rebuild his house, to become one of the greatest in Japan once again. Unfortunately for you, such ambitions require sacrifices." He whispers to Manako's mother and we drive again. "Now, take your phone out and call your friend Akira. Tell her to come to this address." He hands me a card. "And take care of her protection too."
"No." I shake my head.
He turns to look at me. "Don't worry. Once this is done you'll never have to care about anything. All that responsibility, all that burden to just survive, it'll be over. There'll be pain, but you won't have to choose, or worry, not ever again."
That's worth a laugh, even through the honey of his words. "You think that's what I want?"
"I can torture your friend's mother until you do it."
I hear Manako give a small, awful intake of breath next to me but I can't give in. Not now.
"You're going to anyway, right? None of us are getting out of this in one piece. Besides, she's driving."
We're almost there.
He rubs his eyes. "You're really starting to get to me Nozomi-chan. What are you using to block the effects of my voice?"
"T-th-the chain around my wrist" I grit out. "A-and th-the jewel under my hair."
The women beside me let go of my arms. "Take them off." He can't help leering as he says it. It's a pretty great expression for him to be wearing as I take the gem's off and the silence effect I set to trigger if it was removed switches off all sound in the car. By the time I've got his head in my hands and am slamming it into the car door, it's turned to an expression of almost comical shock.
He bounces off, then grabs my arm with a startlingly strong grip. I punch him in the face, and he grabs my other hand, an awkward grapple between the car seats.
Manako reaches over and traces a rune of sleep on his forehead. His eyes flutter and he's out. I put the jewel back in and the silence drops out. "Thanks."
"These are the guys after my Uncle?"
"Yeah." I pull out a marker and draw a rune of sleep along with an extended rune of silence on a piece of tape and attach it to the man's forehead.
"Mum?" Manako says. Her mother is still glassy eyed, driving robotically. "Mum!"
"Don't touch her. We could crash." We're coming up to my house. "Hang on. Let her turn in and stop the car, then I'll check her. Best case we might not even have to reveal anything."
"Alright." Manako is trying not to look panicked. Her mother slides the car into the driveway.
I get out and open all the SUV's doors "House."
"Yes Nozomi."
"Concealment mode one, illusions around this vehicle to depict only myself, Manako and Manako's mother. Take this man and these two women inside. Restrain the man in quiet room I prepared."
"I hear and obey Nozomi."
A chorus of shadowy maids form in the driveway and begin to ship the passengers inside, carrying them gently but with great strength.
Manako is still hovering around her mother, looking at her closely. She glances at me, terrified as I come in to check. She's breathing regularly but she's in a deep trance state. This kind of magic leaves no memories. Presumably they intended to send her home afterwards.
"Will she be okay?"
"Yeah." I look at the house. "I'm going to give her a shot of something to bring her out of this gently. And arrange protection for your father. They probably phoned her up and took her over today. Does she work?"
"Yes, but only part time."
"While she was out then." I look down. "Sorry. I should have been more careful."
"This isn't your fault." Manako insists.
"Yes it is." A shadow maid comes up with the large doctor's bag which is the house medical kit and I load up an injector, then call Alice and have a brief conversation about the patient before finding I got it right and injecting her. It takes a moment but she blinks, eyes open. I palm the injector so she can't see it.
"Ah, Nozomi-san. I think I had a funny turn."
"You looked like you'd zoned out for a moment."
"Ah, alright. Well," she laughs. "I feel fine now. I'll see you later. Manako! Make sure you eat right if you stay over, and don't leave your underwear here."
"Mum!" Manako blushes red. Her mother laughs then reverses out of the driveway. Manako slumps and I smile.
"Your family is kind of nice."
"I mean, they're not bad. I just wish they'd let me do more stuff." She sighs. "And, I'm worried about them now."
"Let's make sure our new friend is secure." I look at Manako as we step inside. "Actually, it's possible that we might have some more guests, so you can open your presents early. I left a bunch of rifles down in the training room for you. Can you go down and load one up on your own?"
She nods, determined. "I can!" She heads off, determined and I go check on the detective and the prosecutor. They're both deeper in than Manako's mother and, after talking to Alice more, I end up putting sleep rune sticky notes on them and leaving them on the sofa to sleep it off. Then I go down to the holding cell I've prepared for the guy. Manako is in the armoury, hard at work on with a rifle and my rune printer, spraying on the stuff she wants. Good.
"I decided I'd try a bullpup! An ST-Kinetics BR-18! I've mounted a foregrip, a hybrid sight, a taclight, a suppressor and a laser in case I have to fight with night vision goggles." She tells me a little breathlessly as I pause in the doorway.
"Right. I'm just going to check the guy. Want to come?"
"Yes!" Manako slings her new gun, fiddles with the stock, and does a couple of practice cheek wields, then nods and charges the gun. "Ready."
The cell is down in the second level of the basement. It's a large, mostly unworked chamber I've previously used for testing magic. The really secure stuff is somewhat further down, in a specially built area linked to the house by a separate elevator shaft on the upper floor. I fitted one end, conveniently dug out when I was testing some nasty attack spell, with a cage door, wrote a ward barrier around it, then placed a heavy duty chair I got from Alice with a keyboard and screen. One of my old school laptops safely cleared of files lets him type in and have the results mirrored and potentially read by a text to speech device.
The whole area is under a silence effect.
The house has put him in the chair and fastened the restraints, then shut the cage. Good. All the tells on the outside say fully secure.
"Should I cover him?" Manako asks. I think for a moment, then remember how strong he was.
"Yes. Move around to the left. I'll approach from the right." I look over. "If he moves suddenly, don't worry about me. Just shoot." I chant a quick forcefield and then move up.
She aims the rifle but doesn't take the safety off, her thumb hovering over the selector. I walk up, check the restraints once visually, find everything in order and so open the cage, then do a manual check. "Okay, he's in."
Manako, to her credit, doesn't relax. I step out of the cage and shut it, "I'm going to go shower and change. Come up with me. We'll lock this whole area."
"Shouldn't someone guard him?"
"You can watch him on the cameras. No offense but you're still really new to this." I look at her. "Then I'll do the same while you get changed. I got you a tactical vest and everything."
"Alright." A small smile creeps over her face and she lowers the gun to a ready position and follows me to the door, which I shut. That could all have gone much much worse.
*****
I spend quite a bit of time picking my outfit for the interrogation. Manako paces around the living room a bit but the right look is important. Something aggressive. I've been going with the whole jacket + silk shirt + short skirt + thigh highs thing a lot lately. The jackets are partly practicality. You want something to mount armour into, and even with magic that's easier with a jacket. I'm going to wear one of my corsets, in black, and then a white shirt with a red jewel collar, a white J-2-Me tactical jacket and a black skirt. Red thigh highs. I like the way that looks.
Manako apparently has an overnight bag with her, and changes into a really cute combo of coffee coloured shorts and cream sweater, which I actually thinks even better with the tactical vest over it. She puts on a ballcap, and looks at me under it, big brown eyes behind her glasses. I'm momentarily entranced and then force myself back on track.
"I'm going in from the left. Cover me."
"Okay." Manako aims the rifle again and I move forward cautiously, open the cage and open his collar.
The organ beneath is swollen, green shading into blue. Dozens of small gems have been set into it in flowing runic shapes. Veins extend down from his neck and into his flesh.
I swallow then take some pictures, a sample, various scans. I should just cut this whole thing out but it seems like that'll kill him. It's definitely eldritch, but it's not as bad as it could be. It's not hollow spider. My guess is that it's something otherworldly that's been modified into an implant. Despite myself I'm fascinated. Small tendrils of the stuff extend through his whole body, and it seems to have fundamentally altered his metabolism as well.
As I suspected he's got a full geomantic net. He was crazy strong earlier. The design is similar to the ones I saw in the box cutters, but better crafted. More curious is a small brand on his wrist, a complex symbol, data dense, more like a QR code than a rune.
I step behind him, careful not to get into Manako's fire arc, and yank the tape free.
His eyes snap open right away and he looks at Manako, says something, then frowns and cranes to look back at me. I give him a little wave and indicate the laptop, then leave the cage, shutting the door after me.
"Nishifune-san. You are every bit as good as reported." The words flash up deliberately. It seems like he can touch type which is handy. It'd be annoying to wait for him to use two fingers.
I pick up the keyboard on the outside and type a response "You flatter me. You almost had me." Actually I'm sure I could have got out of it another way, but no need to tell him that.
"There are no prizes for almost." He smiles slowly. "So, what happens now? Are you going to torture me for information?"
"Torture doesn't work and I've got no taste for it. Not so sure about the two public safety officials whose minds you messed with though. The Japanese police aren't particularly nice people and there's no chance you'll go esper on them."
"Can I trouble you for some water?" I pick a bottle off the table and send it into the cell on TK. He drinks gratefully. On the monitor, his temperature is starting to rise slowly. I wish I knew more about his physiology. I should have got Alice down here. He types again. "So I talk and you what, let me go?"
"Perhaps I could trade you back to whoever it is you work for, if you're willing to tell me who that is."
"You wouldn't know of them."
"Wouldn't I? Well, I know who they associate with. You're records are clean but the technology you use makes it clear. You're connected to Kamitouge Group. You had a mage with you, this means you have connections to a mage house, so you're also a compliance violation. Even if you weren't openly going up against public safety."
He begins to laugh, silently.
"What's so funny?" I glance at the monitors. His pulse is starting to spike, breaths growing faster.
"My dear. Why do you think that your fiance is out in Osaka chasing something else? The Japanese government doesn't oppose us. If you could ask those two pretties upstairs you'd know. Compliance is on our side too. What we're doing is far too important to let legalities get in the way. We are a body constituted by numerous prominent people for a more general good. Your friend knows better than to oppose that. He lacks the strength. And you aren't even as much as him."
His throat implodes, his throat collapsing in on itself as most of the body falls into the centre. A thicket of mutant limbs explode out in a wave of lashing, grasping hands, small enough to get through the bars of the cage.
I hear the click of a selector switch, and then the creature detonates in mid rush. Manako's rounds glow blue as they pass through the air, multiple runes lending them power far beyond normal 5.56mm rounds. The mass tears, trying to reconstitute itself against the wave of damage, then flops back.
I make a gesture of flame and the rest begins to burn.
Manako lowers the gun. She's breathing rapidly but her hands are very steady. "It's much easier when you have the computer draw them."
I watch Manako head upstairs, then pull out my phone and sit down on the steps. Time to make a call.
I'm gripping the phone hard. Very deliberately I stop and force my fingers to ease up and press the button.
Aratani picks up almost right away. "Nozomi."
"Bastard! When I asked for help, was it hard not to laugh at me?"
"I just smiled because you were ahead of where I thought you'd be."
"Ahead! Yes. I'd say we're pretty far ahead of where we should be. I have both of your friends from public safety here with their minds fried. A frog throat almost had me on the way back to my house!"
"I must admit I did miscalculate a little. I didn't think that our enemy would act so openly or in such strength. I honestly don't know that much Nozomi. I really do have an important case in Osaka."
"And, conveniently, you get to do that and let me run up against an operation backed by Compliance and the Japanese state!"
"Yes. I'm not going to make an apology for this Nozomi. It's nothing like the whole government, or the whole of Compliance. Just a faction. Some group backed by a major house, by highly placed people at cabinet level. Probably the PM. But these institutions are holographic. If I'm the one to go against them, then they will be angry at me forever. All of them."
"And how will you avoid it?"
"If I resolve this Osaka business successfully I gain some influence, a powerful ally. A base of power I can use to work to take them down, but I have none of that yet. So I set you up as my stalking horse. That you were friends with a potential victim just accelerated things."
"Why me?" I sound so petulant I hate it. "Why manipulate me into this rather than use someone who you could just ask? You have many more friends than me."
"Because you're the one I can rely on to get it done without me."
He's saying what'll get me to go on. I know that. Of course, if he says something like that to me he actually believes it. I don't want to feel good about his approval but I do. After everything my family has done to his, he says something like this.
Damn him.
"Nozomi? Are you alright?"
"You owe me for this."
I ring off, put the phone next to me so I won't break it.
He always does this to me. Makes it so I have no choice but to dance to his tune. I haven't had any choice but to be the agent he wants me to be from the moment he dropped the corpse in front of me. If I was to try to resist then he has leverage. Like a club and two score dead bodies that were suddenly generated a few nights after a mage so concerned with geomancy was shown their gang using geomantic grids.
I wish I could get rid of this need to impress him. This need to do well to justify his confidence in me.
Just once, I want to be the one to beat him.
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Chapter 2-5: Assault
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I sit on the steps for a solid thirty seconds after the call ends. I know from experience that I'm wearing that ugly, angry face that I make whenever I get manipulated or beaten this way. I shouldn't, I tell myself (others have told me) get so upset he got me into this. The chances are if he had told me the whole truth I still would have got involved.
But he didn't. Because I will only allow myself to be his enemy. Because ultimately family is important and my family killed his.
No. Because whatever he maybe he is a hero, and I chose long ago to be the villain.
I can't just sit here. I need to start getting things organized. The first thing I need to do is get Alice around here to see to the two brain fried public safety officials upstairs. "You're having me do a lot of house calls lately." She sighs after I explain the situation "You know that I'm expensive hmm?"
"I don't want to try to ship a cop and a prosecutor all the way across town, so money isn't really an issue."
"Well, I guess you're the person I'm most likely to use new equipment on anyway! It's just such a waste of time to be out of the lab."
My phone buzzes, another call coming in. Junya. He's still okay. Tension I didn't quite realize I was holding flows out of me. "Ah. I have someone else calling. Come soonest okay?"
"Okay!"
I switch to Junya's call. "Junya-kun. I'm here, don't hang up."
"I was starting to think your new girlfriend had taken care of what you wanted."
I colour. "Where have you even been?"
"Unfortunately I had some delicate matters to attend to, The kind that don't take kindly to a buzzing phone. I assume you were calling me about these whispering horrors."
"That and some other things. I need information on exorcist politics, and you're in touch with that too."
"That's information I can supply but I need your help in turn." Junya may be a jerk but he's refreshingly straightforward about asking me favours. "I have a delicate problem in Ginza and I need some backup."
"Alright. I'll be there soon." I put the phone down and get up. "Manako. I'm going to need to head out."
Somehow we've dropped honourifics. When did it even happen? Was it when she french kissed me, or when her bullets tore through the tentacles reaching out for me?
"Where are you going?"
"Ginza. A friend of mine needs help. I assume it's related to all this."
"Should I stay here?" She looks kind of put out by the idea and I make a decision.
"No. Come with me. We'll go on the motorcycle."
"A motorcycle?" Manako perks up. "You can ride a motorcycle?"
"Yeah, though I'm not that good. Go get your gear together. Find yourself some armour that's comfortable, night vision and so on. Use one of the blue striped holdalls. They have extra-dimensional space in them which keeps the weight down."
Manako looks breathlessly excited at this and hurries off.I pull up the secure messaging ap and text the team I have on Akari. Better get an update there before I set off on yet another adventure.
<<SITREP>> I send it via the encrypted messager app that we're using. Texting the protection team requires a small mystical unlock on my phone designed to be difficult if your thoughts are hot molasses because some frog throated fuck is hitting you through a mind shield.
The watch team I hired are a smallish outfit, five main members plus a shifting array of muscle and hangers-on, including two mages, an ex-cop, and a JSDF airborne soldier turned mercenary commanded by a pretty, short-haired mercenary mage named Ii Aoi. Ii has two prosthetic arms and is, even more than most of the other pretty, deadly people I encounter, really just my type.
I wonder if Manako is going to have a problem with my wandering mind. In mage society, this is pretty standard, but normal people don't go for that.
Don't get distracted.
<<Was just going to message you. SITREP follows>>
<<Ready to copy>> The whole ready to copy thing is strictly unnecessary over text where you have a log, but it's another procedure we put in place to detect if the person on the other end is under external influence.
Pause, longer message.
<<No attempts at intrusion detected. All targets for protection appear to be following normal routine. No watchers accept the police. Half an hour ago they pulled out>>
I think for a moment then send.
<<Information and tasking follow.>>
<<Ready to copy.>>
<<INFORMATION: Public Safety compromised. Consider all Police, public safety and other state authorities unfriendly as of this time. Compliance may also be unfriendly. Lift attempt unlikely as hostile forces know that target is likely under observation>>
Pause, new message.
<<TASKING: maintain observation on the primary. If hostile forces attempt a lift, do not intervene unless you believe there is a danger to the life of the primary or her family. Maintain contact and inform me of where they take her. Avoid contact with all other agencies. Will pay 200% bonus due to adverse conditions and authorize the use of firearms for team protection.>>
Longer pause.
<<Copy on all. What kind of guns?>> I relax a little. I thought they might pull out if I told them the truth, but no.
<<Wait one.>> I head down to the room where Manako is finishing gearing up. As I expected she's sticking with the BR-18 and the pistol she grabbed earlier. I shut the gun cabinet and then key in a code sequence, linking it to the shared holdall I gave Ii. <<New items placed in your holdall. Should all be clean guns.>>
<<Nice. Will text if anything changes.>>
I put the phone down and begin to assemble my own gear. Manako is starting to look worried. "Sure you're okay coming with me?" I think of taking her hands as I ask her but decide it'll seem like I'm pressuring her one way or another.
"Will I get in the way?" she asks.
I put a pistol under my jacket in a shoulder rig, then consider whether a larger gun would be helpful. I usually don't bother because if I need to kill someone at range then I can just conjure fire or whatever but now I have guns available, I'm wondering if taking one might not be good. "Hey Manako, what's a good submachine gun to use?"
"How about a UMP?" Manako holds up another gun she's runed up. "I-I actually was going to carry this before I saw the BR-18. It's light and easy to handle and has good stopping power with the .45 caliber round."
The gun isn't very large, which is good. I hang it on my chest and see how my jacket will cover it. The answer is not very much. After a while I settle another bag of holding under my shoulder and push the gun into it. "If it comes to a fight I'll give you this okay?"
"Alright." I step over to check she has the armour on properly and that it's hanging in a way that won't look too weird and obvious, and do a little retrofitting to how she's wearing it. "So who are we meeting?"
"An old friend of mine. By day he's a tailor. By night he keeps the district safe from the supernatural. And the natural really."
"So he's like a superhero?"
"He's way too much of a sadist to be a superhero. He's more like a private investigator, just a private investigator who can kill ghosts."
"If he's a sadist, should I be careful around him?"
"He's not the kind of sadist who'd do stuff to you you don't want, except tease you." I'm colouring again. Damn my skin sometimes.
She considers that a moment then nods. "Then I'm ready."
We head up to the garage, a large, slightly echoing space the smells of oil and is mostly filled with the outdoor workbenches I use for anything that's too messy for inside the house. It's a big, chilly space, though a little magic and a space heater warms it up when I'm working here. Several drones, partly disassembled, lay on the bench, while I shovel two more and a charging station into the holdall.
Past the workbenches, the car and a few other vehicles are drawn up. I select one of the motorcycles, then fit the helmet on, Manako does the same and we get comfortable on the bike.
"Why are we taking the bike not the car?"
"A bike is just a lot more fun." I check Manako is on and then think of something. "Oh yeah, should I say that you're my apprentice or my girlfriend?"
Manako seems to give this very serious consideration, then hands go around my waist and squeeze lightly. "Say that I'm your girlfriend."
The helmet hides my blush and the big dumb smile that's forming on my face. "Okay. lets get this show on the road."
I trigger the doors and we accelerate out onto the highway.
We're still on approach to Ginza proper when my grid trips. A status symbol lights in my vision telling me it's drawing mana that will be dangerous to my health. The grid's cleanser seems to be taking care of it, but I hope there's nobody nearby with a more primitive grid or a busted limiter or they're in real trouble.
More signs of a problem as we approach. Men in mysteriously sober and fashionable suits, worn casually without ties but with an air of fashion you just don't see in most Yakuza clans. These are Ginto-kai, the Yakuza group that operates in this area. Junya isn't one of them them but is intimate with their chairman. I think they're probably on and off sleeping together. They fought together when the latter was betrayed and had to cut a bloody swathe back to the leadership of the group.
I can see paper birds perched in some places. Junya's eyes. I prefer drones but his origami has a certain flair to it.
We park somewhat short of the ring of pedestrianization around Ginza, and walk the last few blocks to where Junya's phone claims he is. We launch the drone on the way in, so it's not too difficult to find him, talking with another man on top of a building. His companion is a devastatingly handsome man in his mid-twenties wearing an exquisitely tailored suit. Kodai Ryu, the chairman of Ginto-kai. They're standing close together and I suddenly feel bad for interrupting. Junya looks up at the drone and sighs.
Manako and I climb up to join them. "Junya-san, Chairman." I give a short bow. "My apprentice and girlfriend, Murakawa Manako."
"So." Junya smirks. "We were wondering just who it could be that had managed to break through to this exquisitely carved lump of granite."
"I just kissed her. That seemed to work." Manako says, and bats her eyelashes at him. I am blushing again. Nobody told me that getting a girlfriend would mean getting ganged up on.
"So what exactly," I say testily, "is going on here?" We're looking down over a large building with all the lights on. It's clearly the nexus of all the Ginto-kai activity, and I can see several more of Junya's paper birds.
"The building down there is run by a nasty little cult called the Strength and Wellness Society."
"I think I saw a Compliance bulletin on them." I pull out a pair of binoculars and turn them on the building. "They're some new religion who have actual spiritual power."
Junya sniffs. "If you can call them that. They've got some magical remedies that are almost but not quite as effective as conventional medical treatment. Still, that's enough for them to have got themselves a lot of followers and a lot of money. They found out the building down there was a place of power and brought it up."
The lights are on and I can see what must be hundreds of people standing inside. Just standing, apparently motionless.
"Looks like something found them."
"It's similar to the shrine near Ueno by the look of it. It seems like it's feeding on the spiritual energy source in there." He turns and looks at me. "I hear you inserted yourself into that mess and kidnapped the exorcist agency's golden girl. There are several houses who are quite mad at you."
"I wasn't going to let my cute little underclassman get tied up in a moon moth cocoon or whatever other evil fate." I lower the binoculars, then cover an eye measure. "It's odd though."
"That it's gone after this geomantic well rather than another? Yes. I noticed that too." He frowns. "When I heard about Ueno park I rather expected it to pay me a visit. I do control the greatest nexus in this area."
"I don't think we're going to find out standing out here."
"Do we know how many of them are in there?"
"At least a several hundred. They called in a lot of their followers soon after the possession started. A lot of them are armed as well. Only knives and sticks but still enough to make things complicated." Kodai says. "We're wondering when it'll provoke a police response, but so far nothing."
"How did something like that make it this close to Ginza without you noticing?" I ask.
"It was born in there." Junya says. "At least that's what I think. It was born in there from one of them."
I stretch. "Well, we should resolve this quickly then. Do you have a plan?"
"Now you're here, I suppose your desire to pretend all that useless meat you put on your body isn't conspicuous means you want to sneak in?" Junya looks me over again.
"I put a lot of work into this, don't want to get it damaged."
"Let me show you the building plans." Kodai leads us down to an office at the top of the building where a couple of lieutenants are coordinating with the building plans. "We think the geomantic well is in the buildings atrium. We figured you'd want to go in through the roof and drop down while we stormed the front."
"We'll need to mute the whole building. Don't take anyone who can't coordinate by sign language." I look over at Manako. "Manako, I want you to come with me and cover me from the roof."
"Okay." Manako begins unloading her rifle.
Kodai frowns. "These are very rich people mostly, please don't kill them."
"Don't worry. It's runed to fire less than lethal rounds." Manako gives a thumbs up.
"The SMG is fitted for that too right?" I get it out and lay out ammunition.
"The UMP? Yep!"
Kodai looks pained. "Please no guns in the open."
"Don't worry. We'll pick up the brass and everything." I pat him on the arm and then begin to double-check my gear. Time to put together an assault plan.
In Sun Tzu, there is a concept of a pair of forces, the 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' forces. In general the ordinary force has the job of directly engaging the enemy while the extraordinary force sneaks around the side and does the more exciting job of attacking the enemy from an unexpected quarter.
A mistake made by people applying Sun Tzu, especially Westerners is the idea that because a force is extraordinary, it must be stronger in combat power. This is not the case. It is the ordinary force, who fights the enemy directly who needs the majority of the army's combat power. The extraordinary force should have only as much combat power as it'll need to accomplish its mission.
In the case of our assault on the Strength and Wellness building, the ordinary force is Junya, Kodai, Junya's apprentice Luce, and a bunch of picked Ginto-Kai enforcers going straight in through the front entrance. The extraordinary force is Manako and I, going directly for the central source of spiritual power in the building. That should be where the horror is.
Before anyone goes in, Manako and I are going to draw a pair of large runes on the roof to mute the building. The normal procedure would be to put everyone to sleep, but with the way the local geomancy is acting, we don't have power for both, and we're less sure that sleep will work against the whispered cultists inside. We'll see if this actually works on people under the whisperer's control, but there's no point in not doing it.
According to the plans and drone and bird observations, the nexus point is a pool in the centre of the building's atrium, surrounded by greenery and decorative stone statues that the cult claims have great spiritual significance.
This is where I start to get a little worried about our quickly drawn assault plan, because I really don't think that placement makes sense from a geomantic perspective. It's possible that it's just a very deep well but I'm not sure that makes sense. The readings look good but just covering your eye is not the most sensitive instrument.
Still, the atrium entry is obvious. In order to avoid injury to anyone below, we've cut the glass atrium's roof open and removed it with telekinesis. Manako will cover me with her rifle, as I drop down into the atrium, find, engage and destroy the horror.
Junya's group are already engaged. I'm watching through a drone. Junya's is in first, a pollution mask across his face and Ginto-kai men spreading out around him with heavy sticks. A phalanx of beige and whtie uniformed cult security pour in on them as they breach the lobby. Junya moves like a snake, throwing a man over his shoulder, punching a pressure. The sleep rune doesn't seem to have done much, but then I didn't expect it to. We couldn't get that lucky. Even so, the cult guys can't stop the assault force. Kodai is beside him, knocking men down with heavy, fast blows.
The security pulls back and a man rears up from behind the counter with a double-barrelled shotgun. He swings it towards Junya and his mouth opens, spit flying as he shouts his hatred into the silence. Junya's eyes narrow, hand already extending as the gun comes online. The weapon jerks off target, then yanks against his body and discharges. The man's silent shout becoming a scream of pain as near-invisible wires whip around his body. He jerks like a puppet and his clothes shred, bloody lines appearing everywhere as the wire bites. Lifting the gun like a club, he charges towards the next security man, terrified eyes wide as the wire forces him into motion..
Junya has only got better with that demonic wire he carries. Apparently he hasn't figured out a way around the weapons ban. The demonic queen that powers it requires that anyone it hits who is not killed must suffer humiliation, the destruction of their clothing and outer seeming.
I should stop watching. The one-man I trust can be trusted to look after himself. I'm on the roof, the world silent around me. I tear my eyes away from the drone feed and look back at the atrium. The lid of glass and steel is cut through now, my spell having completed its work. Next to me, Manako checks a rune she's stenciled onto the bottom and gives me a thumbs up. That'll check any change in temperature or airflow giving us away to anyone below.
I grab the top and using telekinesis as much as the strength of my grid, shove to whole mass of glass and metal off to one side. I wouldn't want to drop it down there and hurt someone. That done all that remains is to smooth the lines of my outfit, and a final check on what's below. The outfit is almost all black with only the white fox mask with its red highlights for colour. I keep the mask up for now as I peer down into the dark.
Below the atrium is dark. There's only three spotlights falling on the pool. In their reflected light I can see scores of motionless figures, each standing stock-still by themselves. It would have been too much to assume that we could have taken them down like that, but hopefully, with the whispers cut off they won't be able to get new orders.
At the edge of the pool, and connected into it I can see a tentacle. A long wavy rootlet of strange and cryptic flesh dripped down into the water.
So, I was wrong. It's here.
Manako gives me the thumbs up and I pull her into a kiss, pull the mask down and step off. My safe fall enchantment is the same kind that armsmen use during an airdrop. The first part of the fall is actually accelerated, a terrifyingly fast plunge down, followed by a rapid deceleration.
It's at the start of that deceleration, just before it gets too severe, that I realize my instincts were right. Up close, seen from down here rather than up there, I see the tentacle for what it is. A fire hose that's been painted purple and redecorated with what look like growths.
The curious ambivalence I always feel at times like this comes. That feeling that maybe someone got me, but man, that was a good one.
The pool isn't the centre. This whole room is decoration.
Also an ambush.
I hit the ground, roll to kill my remaining momentum and come up into a wave of charging men. Not security, just ordinary cultists, but big and fit and left here to cover this entrance. Iron bars and mancatchers wielded by people who've obviously had at least some training to use them. I catch one of the sasumata before it can fully get me and slam it sideways into the first wielder, knocking him sideways. A man swings a metal bat, the blow hard enough to crack the floor tiles when I dodge to the side.
I'm in real trouble here. Eldritch power is pouring into the local geomancy and my limiters are working overtime to keep me alive and powered up at the same time.
Another man comes in with an iron bar, making short, powerful blows, too quick for me to dodge without overloading my geomantic limiter and it knocks me sprawling. A mancatcher comes down on me, then another, and I reach up and channel electricity down the handle past the insulation, knocking the wielder down.
Too late. Too slow. Men charge from all sides. I raise my hands to protect my head as a dozen blows come down on me.
It's fortunate that this isn't the first time I've done something like this and I made sure to give my girlfriend up above something a bit more dangerous than a rifle.
Having a partner just makes it all the easier.
Up above, Manako draws an activation rune on the case of a white and black object from my kit, then heaves it into space. It falls unnoticed, men contesting me in silence, busy as they swarm me from all directions, opponents flung backwards by one strike after another. The phantasm grenade airbursts and the room is filled with sputtering, silent light and shadow. The rune on my mask comes to life, shielding me from the effect and my vision blacks out for a moment, replaced a moment later by a strange, too bright false colour.
Men stagger around me, laughing, crying and twitching, all in ghastly silence as the illusions the grenade is spinning tear into their vision. One by one they collapse. One man falls into the pool and I pull him out so he doesn't drown. I check them perfunctory to make sure nobody is having a heart attack, then pull out my phone.
<<Thanks.>> I text to Manako.
<<Is it there?>>
<<No. I'm going to find it. Stay put and make sure nobody comes up behind me.>> That's less tactical advice than giving her a job she'll think is important so she doesn't try to come up behind me and get in trouble.
I move around to examine the pool. Even a decoy use of spiritual energy like this must come from somewhere. If I was the geomancer doing this, I'd do it by piping water up from underground and laying a bunch of geomantically reflective substances in the bottom of my fake pool. It looks like that's exactly what they've done here. I pull out my phone and check the building plans. Through one of the doors on the atrium's left there should be a way down into the basement. Once I'm down it's simple. Just follow the geomantic power through concrete tunnels and water damaged service ways. Down, down, down into the deep well of the city.
I meet resistance on the way. Small groups of men in overalls and hard hats, obviously given orders to repel before the silence hit. They come at me through the overlight passages, eyes glassy and fanatical. I take them down with speed and economy, moving onwards.
Junya texts. <<Situation?>> He'd consider it gauche to ever say a military style code like SITREP.
<<The atrium was a blind. I'm moving through the basement for the true source. You?>>
<<We've broken out of the lobby but they're swarming us. Ginto-kai has brought in more people to hold them off. I'm heading to your location.>>
If it was anyone else, I wouldn't wait, but Junya and I don't really have anything to prove to one another. I stop unsling the UMP and cover the corridor ahead. My phone vibrates, then vibrates again.
I put the gun up as Junya comes around the corner. His hands move in rapid sign language. "Anything?"
I sign back. "No, but I think it's just up ahead."
"Alright. You want to take lead?"
"Always."
"I doubt that."
Always! Always he makes me blush!
I move up on the door ahead. I've been looking at it while I'm waiting and I'm pretty sure this really is it. Not just because my grid is tingling to the waves of corrupted geomancy pouring out of it, but also because the structure of door. It's a hatchway like on a ship, implying there's water beyond.
We move up to the door, one on either side. It really is a watertight door like on a ship. No porthole. Junya shuts his eyes concentrates, then holds up 3 fingers, then makes the armsman hand sign for "monster".
I nod, take aim at the door. Junya grabs the handles, careful not to get in my line of fire and yanks it open. I throw a flash spell through then go myself.
I dive in through the door into a mostly bare natural cavern. There's pipes on the wall, taking water from the pool upward. On either side of the pool, a policeman is aiming his revolver at the door. There's muzzle flashes but I don't get to hear the bullets as they pass over me. There's just the vibration of the UMP's recoil as I cut it across them both. The rounds knock them down, jerking with the stun.
Junya leaps over me as tentacles lash out of the shadows. The thing is at the far end of the pool, tendrils writhing in the water. Wire and flesh meet, and purple fluid sprays as wire wins the battle. I put the creature in my gun's sights, override the runes that reduce lethality and kick all the power I can down the boosters. The gun vibrates against my shoulder and I hold the barrel down with all my strength and fire sustained burst.
The mass of the creature cores out and splatters as my bullets tear through it. I drop the mag, changing it with only a small difficulty then aim at the deflating thing.
Seems pretty dead. No sign of regeneration.
Junya touches my arm and points. Behind the ruined thing another man is lying. He's richly clad in white robes that suggest those of a Buddhist monk or a Christian priest, without being too similar to either. He's shaking with fear, trying to speak, though he can't in the silence.
I move forward towards him, gun ready, Junya at my side. Junya pokes the thing on the way past, concentrates, and is apparently satisfied, gives me the thumbs up. I cut the silence off and sound returns.
For a moment I think it didn't work. The man's mouth is moving but no sounds are coming out. Then I see his throat bulging. His eyes go wide and then his head snaps to the sound. There's a horrible sound of breaking bone and his jaw starts to hinge. Something wormlike and cancerous starts to crawl its way out.
I raise the gun, then think better of it. It's not moving fast and seems almost sluggish. If we're going to fight these things, then maybe one to study wouldn't be a bad idea. "Can you catch it?"
Junya's wire snaps out, grabbing the thing and yanking it up amid a forest of wires. He pulls out a paper box and dumps the worm inside, then shuts it and makes it vanish, the wire coiling back into his sleeve. "Well, that's done then. Let's get going before any of them wake up."
"Do you think they'll remember anything?"
"It would be so much simpler if they didn't."
But he didn't. Because I will only allow myself to be his enemy. Because ultimately family is important and my family killed his.
No. Because whatever he maybe he is a hero, and I chose long ago to be the villain.
I can't just sit here. I need to start getting things organized. The first thing I need to do is get Alice around here to see to the two brain fried public safety officials upstairs. "You're having me do a lot of house calls lately." She sighs after I explain the situation "You know that I'm expensive hmm?"
"I don't want to try to ship a cop and a prosecutor all the way across town, so money isn't really an issue."
"Well, I guess you're the person I'm most likely to use new equipment on anyway! It's just such a waste of time to be out of the lab."
My phone buzzes, another call coming in. Junya. He's still okay. Tension I didn't quite realize I was holding flows out of me. "Ah. I have someone else calling. Come soonest okay?"
"Okay!"
I switch to Junya's call. "Junya-kun. I'm here, don't hang up."
"I was starting to think your new girlfriend had taken care of what you wanted."
I colour. "Where have you even been?"
"Unfortunately I had some delicate matters to attend to, The kind that don't take kindly to a buzzing phone. I assume you were calling me about these whispering horrors."
"That and some other things. I need information on exorcist politics, and you're in touch with that too."
"That's information I can supply but I need your help in turn." Junya may be a jerk but he's refreshingly straightforward about asking me favours. "I have a delicate problem in Ginza and I need some backup."
"Alright. I'll be there soon." I put the phone down and get up. "Manako. I'm going to need to head out."
Somehow we've dropped honourifics. When did it even happen? Was it when she french kissed me, or when her bullets tore through the tentacles reaching out for me?
"Where are you going?"
"Ginza. A friend of mine needs help. I assume it's related to all this."
"Should I stay here?" She looks kind of put out by the idea and I make a decision.
"No. Come with me. We'll go on the motorcycle."
"A motorcycle?" Manako perks up. "You can ride a motorcycle?"
"Yeah, though I'm not that good. Go get your gear together. Find yourself some armour that's comfortable, night vision and so on. Use one of the blue striped holdalls. They have extra-dimensional space in them which keeps the weight down."
Manako looks breathlessly excited at this and hurries off.I pull up the secure messaging ap and text the team I have on Akari. Better get an update there before I set off on yet another adventure.
<<SITREP>> I send it via the encrypted messager app that we're using. Texting the protection team requires a small mystical unlock on my phone designed to be difficult if your thoughts are hot molasses because some frog throated fuck is hitting you through a mind shield.
The watch team I hired are a smallish outfit, five main members plus a shifting array of muscle and hangers-on, including two mages, an ex-cop, and a JSDF airborne soldier turned mercenary commanded by a pretty, short-haired mercenary mage named Ii Aoi. Ii has two prosthetic arms and is, even more than most of the other pretty, deadly people I encounter, really just my type.
I wonder if Manako is going to have a problem with my wandering mind. In mage society, this is pretty standard, but normal people don't go for that.
Don't get distracted.
<<Was just going to message you. SITREP follows>>
<<Ready to copy>> The whole ready to copy thing is strictly unnecessary over text where you have a log, but it's another procedure we put in place to detect if the person on the other end is under external influence.
Pause, longer message.
<<No attempts at intrusion detected. All targets for protection appear to be following normal routine. No watchers accept the police. Half an hour ago they pulled out>>
I think for a moment then send.
<<Information and tasking follow.>>
<<Ready to copy.>>
<<INFORMATION: Public Safety compromised. Consider all Police, public safety and other state authorities unfriendly as of this time. Compliance may also be unfriendly. Lift attempt unlikely as hostile forces know that target is likely under observation>>
Pause, new message.
<<TASKING: maintain observation on the primary. If hostile forces attempt a lift, do not intervene unless you believe there is a danger to the life of the primary or her family. Maintain contact and inform me of where they take her. Avoid contact with all other agencies. Will pay 200% bonus due to adverse conditions and authorize the use of firearms for team protection.>>
Longer pause.
<<Copy on all. What kind of guns?>> I relax a little. I thought they might pull out if I told them the truth, but no.
<<Wait one.>> I head down to the room where Manako is finishing gearing up. As I expected she's sticking with the BR-18 and the pistol she grabbed earlier. I shut the gun cabinet and then key in a code sequence, linking it to the shared holdall I gave Ii. <<New items placed in your holdall. Should all be clean guns.>>
<<Nice. Will text if anything changes.>>
I put the phone down and begin to assemble my own gear. Manako is starting to look worried. "Sure you're okay coming with me?" I think of taking her hands as I ask her but decide it'll seem like I'm pressuring her one way or another.
"Will I get in the way?" she asks.
I put a pistol under my jacket in a shoulder rig, then consider whether a larger gun would be helpful. I usually don't bother because if I need to kill someone at range then I can just conjure fire or whatever but now I have guns available, I'm wondering if taking one might not be good. "Hey Manako, what's a good submachine gun to use?"
"How about a UMP?" Manako holds up another gun she's runed up. "I-I actually was going to carry this before I saw the BR-18. It's light and easy to handle and has good stopping power with the .45 caliber round."
The gun isn't very large, which is good. I hang it on my chest and see how my jacket will cover it. The answer is not very much. After a while I settle another bag of holding under my shoulder and push the gun into it. "If it comes to a fight I'll give you this okay?"
"Alright." I step over to check she has the armour on properly and that it's hanging in a way that won't look too weird and obvious, and do a little retrofitting to how she's wearing it. "So who are we meeting?"
"An old friend of mine. By day he's a tailor. By night he keeps the district safe from the supernatural. And the natural really."
"So he's like a superhero?"
"He's way too much of a sadist to be a superhero. He's more like a private investigator, just a private investigator who can kill ghosts."
"If he's a sadist, should I be careful around him?"
"He's not the kind of sadist who'd do stuff to you you don't want, except tease you." I'm colouring again. Damn my skin sometimes.
She considers that a moment then nods. "Then I'm ready."
We head up to the garage, a large, slightly echoing space the smells of oil and is mostly filled with the outdoor workbenches I use for anything that's too messy for inside the house. It's a big, chilly space, though a little magic and a space heater warms it up when I'm working here. Several drones, partly disassembled, lay on the bench, while I shovel two more and a charging station into the holdall.
Past the workbenches, the car and a few other vehicles are drawn up. I select one of the motorcycles, then fit the helmet on, Manako does the same and we get comfortable on the bike.
"Why are we taking the bike not the car?"
"A bike is just a lot more fun." I check Manako is on and then think of something. "Oh yeah, should I say that you're my apprentice or my girlfriend?"
Manako seems to give this very serious consideration, then hands go around my waist and squeeze lightly. "Say that I'm your girlfriend."
The helmet hides my blush and the big dumb smile that's forming on my face. "Okay. lets get this show on the road."
I trigger the doors and we accelerate out onto the highway.
*****
We're still on approach to Ginza proper when my grid trips. A status symbol lights in my vision telling me it's drawing mana that will be dangerous to my health. The grid's cleanser seems to be taking care of it, but I hope there's nobody nearby with a more primitive grid or a busted limiter or they're in real trouble.
More signs of a problem as we approach. Men in mysteriously sober and fashionable suits, worn casually without ties but with an air of fashion you just don't see in most Yakuza clans. These are Ginto-kai, the Yakuza group that operates in this area. Junya isn't one of them them but is intimate with their chairman. I think they're probably on and off sleeping together. They fought together when the latter was betrayed and had to cut a bloody swathe back to the leadership of the group.
I can see paper birds perched in some places. Junya's eyes. I prefer drones but his origami has a certain flair to it.
We park somewhat short of the ring of pedestrianization around Ginza, and walk the last few blocks to where Junya's phone claims he is. We launch the drone on the way in, so it's not too difficult to find him, talking with another man on top of a building. His companion is a devastatingly handsome man in his mid-twenties wearing an exquisitely tailored suit. Kodai Ryu, the chairman of Ginto-kai. They're standing close together and I suddenly feel bad for interrupting. Junya looks up at the drone and sighs.
Manako and I climb up to join them. "Junya-san, Chairman." I give a short bow. "My apprentice and girlfriend, Murakawa Manako."
"So." Junya smirks. "We were wondering just who it could be that had managed to break through to this exquisitely carved lump of granite."
"I just kissed her. That seemed to work." Manako says, and bats her eyelashes at him. I am blushing again. Nobody told me that getting a girlfriend would mean getting ganged up on.
"So what exactly," I say testily, "is going on here?" We're looking down over a large building with all the lights on. It's clearly the nexus of all the Ginto-kai activity, and I can see several more of Junya's paper birds.
"The building down there is run by a nasty little cult called the Strength and Wellness Society."
"I think I saw a Compliance bulletin on them." I pull out a pair of binoculars and turn them on the building. "They're some new religion who have actual spiritual power."
Junya sniffs. "If you can call them that. They've got some magical remedies that are almost but not quite as effective as conventional medical treatment. Still, that's enough for them to have got themselves a lot of followers and a lot of money. They found out the building down there was a place of power and brought it up."
The lights are on and I can see what must be hundreds of people standing inside. Just standing, apparently motionless.
"Looks like something found them."
"It's similar to the shrine near Ueno by the look of it. It seems like it's feeding on the spiritual energy source in there." He turns and looks at me. "I hear you inserted yourself into that mess and kidnapped the exorcist agency's golden girl. There are several houses who are quite mad at you."
"I wasn't going to let my cute little underclassman get tied up in a moon moth cocoon or whatever other evil fate." I lower the binoculars, then cover an eye measure. "It's odd though."
"That it's gone after this geomantic well rather than another? Yes. I noticed that too." He frowns. "When I heard about Ueno park I rather expected it to pay me a visit. I do control the greatest nexus in this area."
"I don't think we're going to find out standing out here."
"Do we know how many of them are in there?"
"At least a several hundred. They called in a lot of their followers soon after the possession started. A lot of them are armed as well. Only knives and sticks but still enough to make things complicated." Kodai says. "We're wondering when it'll provoke a police response, but so far nothing."
"How did something like that make it this close to Ginza without you noticing?" I ask.
"It was born in there." Junya says. "At least that's what I think. It was born in there from one of them."
I stretch. "Well, we should resolve this quickly then. Do you have a plan?"
"Now you're here, I suppose your desire to pretend all that useless meat you put on your body isn't conspicuous means you want to sneak in?" Junya looks me over again.
"I put a lot of work into this, don't want to get it damaged."
"Let me show you the building plans." Kodai leads us down to an office at the top of the building where a couple of lieutenants are coordinating with the building plans. "We think the geomantic well is in the buildings atrium. We figured you'd want to go in through the roof and drop down while we stormed the front."
"We'll need to mute the whole building. Don't take anyone who can't coordinate by sign language." I look over at Manako. "Manako, I want you to come with me and cover me from the roof."
"Okay." Manako begins unloading her rifle.
Kodai frowns. "These are very rich people mostly, please don't kill them."
"Don't worry. It's runed to fire less than lethal rounds." Manako gives a thumbs up.
"The SMG is fitted for that too right?" I get it out and lay out ammunition.
"The UMP? Yep!"
Kodai looks pained. "Please no guns in the open."
"Don't worry. We'll pick up the brass and everything." I pat him on the arm and then begin to double-check my gear. Time to put together an assault plan.
#
In Sun Tzu, there is a concept of a pair of forces, the 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' forces. In general the ordinary force has the job of directly engaging the enemy while the extraordinary force sneaks around the side and does the more exciting job of attacking the enemy from an unexpected quarter.
A mistake made by people applying Sun Tzu, especially Westerners is the idea that because a force is extraordinary, it must be stronger in combat power. This is not the case. It is the ordinary force, who fights the enemy directly who needs the majority of the army's combat power. The extraordinary force should have only as much combat power as it'll need to accomplish its mission.
In the case of our assault on the Strength and Wellness building, the ordinary force is Junya, Kodai, Junya's apprentice Luce, and a bunch of picked Ginto-Kai enforcers going straight in through the front entrance. The extraordinary force is Manako and I, going directly for the central source of spiritual power in the building. That should be where the horror is.
Before anyone goes in, Manako and I are going to draw a pair of large runes on the roof to mute the building. The normal procedure would be to put everyone to sleep, but with the way the local geomancy is acting, we don't have power for both, and we're less sure that sleep will work against the whispered cultists inside. We'll see if this actually works on people under the whisperer's control, but there's no point in not doing it.
According to the plans and drone and bird observations, the nexus point is a pool in the centre of the building's atrium, surrounded by greenery and decorative stone statues that the cult claims have great spiritual significance.
This is where I start to get a little worried about our quickly drawn assault plan, because I really don't think that placement makes sense from a geomantic perspective. It's possible that it's just a very deep well but I'm not sure that makes sense. The readings look good but just covering your eye is not the most sensitive instrument.
Still, the atrium entry is obvious. In order to avoid injury to anyone below, we've cut the glass atrium's roof open and removed it with telekinesis. Manako will cover me with her rifle, as I drop down into the atrium, find, engage and destroy the horror.
Junya's group are already engaged. I'm watching through a drone. Junya's is in first, a pollution mask across his face and Ginto-kai men spreading out around him with heavy sticks. A phalanx of beige and whtie uniformed cult security pour in on them as they breach the lobby. Junya moves like a snake, throwing a man over his shoulder, punching a pressure. The sleep rune doesn't seem to have done much, but then I didn't expect it to. We couldn't get that lucky. Even so, the cult guys can't stop the assault force. Kodai is beside him, knocking men down with heavy, fast blows.
The security pulls back and a man rears up from behind the counter with a double-barrelled shotgun. He swings it towards Junya and his mouth opens, spit flying as he shouts his hatred into the silence. Junya's eyes narrow, hand already extending as the gun comes online. The weapon jerks off target, then yanks against his body and discharges. The man's silent shout becoming a scream of pain as near-invisible wires whip around his body. He jerks like a puppet and his clothes shred, bloody lines appearing everywhere as the wire bites. Lifting the gun like a club, he charges towards the next security man, terrified eyes wide as the wire forces him into motion..
Junya has only got better with that demonic wire he carries. Apparently he hasn't figured out a way around the weapons ban. The demonic queen that powers it requires that anyone it hits who is not killed must suffer humiliation, the destruction of their clothing and outer seeming.
I should stop watching. The one-man I trust can be trusted to look after himself. I'm on the roof, the world silent around me. I tear my eyes away from the drone feed and look back at the atrium. The lid of glass and steel is cut through now, my spell having completed its work. Next to me, Manako checks a rune she's stenciled onto the bottom and gives me a thumbs up. That'll check any change in temperature or airflow giving us away to anyone below.
I grab the top and using telekinesis as much as the strength of my grid, shove to whole mass of glass and metal off to one side. I wouldn't want to drop it down there and hurt someone. That done all that remains is to smooth the lines of my outfit, and a final check on what's below. The outfit is almost all black with only the white fox mask with its red highlights for colour. I keep the mask up for now as I peer down into the dark.
Below the atrium is dark. There's only three spotlights falling on the pool. In their reflected light I can see scores of motionless figures, each standing stock-still by themselves. It would have been too much to assume that we could have taken them down like that, but hopefully, with the whispers cut off they won't be able to get new orders.
At the edge of the pool, and connected into it I can see a tentacle. A long wavy rootlet of strange and cryptic flesh dripped down into the water.
So, I was wrong. It's here.
Manako gives me the thumbs up and I pull her into a kiss, pull the mask down and step off. My safe fall enchantment is the same kind that armsmen use during an airdrop. The first part of the fall is actually accelerated, a terrifyingly fast plunge down, followed by a rapid deceleration.
It's at the start of that deceleration, just before it gets too severe, that I realize my instincts were right. Up close, seen from down here rather than up there, I see the tentacle for what it is. A fire hose that's been painted purple and redecorated with what look like growths.
The curious ambivalence I always feel at times like this comes. That feeling that maybe someone got me, but man, that was a good one.
The pool isn't the centre. This whole room is decoration.
Also an ambush.
I hit the ground, roll to kill my remaining momentum and come up into a wave of charging men. Not security, just ordinary cultists, but big and fit and left here to cover this entrance. Iron bars and mancatchers wielded by people who've obviously had at least some training to use them. I catch one of the sasumata before it can fully get me and slam it sideways into the first wielder, knocking him sideways. A man swings a metal bat, the blow hard enough to crack the floor tiles when I dodge to the side.
I'm in real trouble here. Eldritch power is pouring into the local geomancy and my limiters are working overtime to keep me alive and powered up at the same time.
Another man comes in with an iron bar, making short, powerful blows, too quick for me to dodge without overloading my geomantic limiter and it knocks me sprawling. A mancatcher comes down on me, then another, and I reach up and channel electricity down the handle past the insulation, knocking the wielder down.
Too late. Too slow. Men charge from all sides. I raise my hands to protect my head as a dozen blows come down on me.
It's fortunate that this isn't the first time I've done something like this and I made sure to give my girlfriend up above something a bit more dangerous than a rifle.
Having a partner just makes it all the easier.
Up above, Manako draws an activation rune on the case of a white and black object from my kit, then heaves it into space. It falls unnoticed, men contesting me in silence, busy as they swarm me from all directions, opponents flung backwards by one strike after another. The phantasm grenade airbursts and the room is filled with sputtering, silent light and shadow. The rune on my mask comes to life, shielding me from the effect and my vision blacks out for a moment, replaced a moment later by a strange, too bright false colour.
Men stagger around me, laughing, crying and twitching, all in ghastly silence as the illusions the grenade is spinning tear into their vision. One by one they collapse. One man falls into the pool and I pull him out so he doesn't drown. I check them perfunctory to make sure nobody is having a heart attack, then pull out my phone.
<<Thanks.>> I text to Manako.
<<Is it there?>>
<<No. I'm going to find it. Stay put and make sure nobody comes up behind me.>> That's less tactical advice than giving her a job she'll think is important so she doesn't try to come up behind me and get in trouble.
I move around to examine the pool. Even a decoy use of spiritual energy like this must come from somewhere. If I was the geomancer doing this, I'd do it by piping water up from underground and laying a bunch of geomantically reflective substances in the bottom of my fake pool. It looks like that's exactly what they've done here. I pull out my phone and check the building plans. Through one of the doors on the atrium's left there should be a way down into the basement. Once I'm down it's simple. Just follow the geomantic power through concrete tunnels and water damaged service ways. Down, down, down into the deep well of the city.
I meet resistance on the way. Small groups of men in overalls and hard hats, obviously given orders to repel before the silence hit. They come at me through the overlight passages, eyes glassy and fanatical. I take them down with speed and economy, moving onwards.
Junya texts. <<Situation?>> He'd consider it gauche to ever say a military style code like SITREP.
<<The atrium was a blind. I'm moving through the basement for the true source. You?>>
<<We've broken out of the lobby but they're swarming us. Ginto-kai has brought in more people to hold them off. I'm heading to your location.>>
If it was anyone else, I wouldn't wait, but Junya and I don't really have anything to prove to one another. I stop unsling the UMP and cover the corridor ahead. My phone vibrates, then vibrates again.
I put the gun up as Junya comes around the corner. His hands move in rapid sign language. "Anything?"
I sign back. "No, but I think it's just up ahead."
"Alright. You want to take lead?"
"Always."
"I doubt that."
Always! Always he makes me blush!
I move up on the door ahead. I've been looking at it while I'm waiting and I'm pretty sure this really is it. Not just because my grid is tingling to the waves of corrupted geomancy pouring out of it, but also because the structure of door. It's a hatchway like on a ship, implying there's water beyond.
We move up to the door, one on either side. It really is a watertight door like on a ship. No porthole. Junya shuts his eyes concentrates, then holds up 3 fingers, then makes the armsman hand sign for "monster".
I nod, take aim at the door. Junya grabs the handles, careful not to get in my line of fire and yanks it open. I throw a flash spell through then go myself.
I dive in through the door into a mostly bare natural cavern. There's pipes on the wall, taking water from the pool upward. On either side of the pool, a policeman is aiming his revolver at the door. There's muzzle flashes but I don't get to hear the bullets as they pass over me. There's just the vibration of the UMP's recoil as I cut it across them both. The rounds knock them down, jerking with the stun.
Junya leaps over me as tentacles lash out of the shadows. The thing is at the far end of the pool, tendrils writhing in the water. Wire and flesh meet, and purple fluid sprays as wire wins the battle. I put the creature in my gun's sights, override the runes that reduce lethality and kick all the power I can down the boosters. The gun vibrates against my shoulder and I hold the barrel down with all my strength and fire sustained burst.
The mass of the creature cores out and splatters as my bullets tear through it. I drop the mag, changing it with only a small difficulty then aim at the deflating thing.
Seems pretty dead. No sign of regeneration.
Junya touches my arm and points. Behind the ruined thing another man is lying. He's richly clad in white robes that suggest those of a Buddhist monk or a Christian priest, without being too similar to either. He's shaking with fear, trying to speak, though he can't in the silence.
I move forward towards him, gun ready, Junya at my side. Junya pokes the thing on the way past, concentrates, and is apparently satisfied, gives me the thumbs up. I cut the silence off and sound returns.
For a moment I think it didn't work. The man's mouth is moving but no sounds are coming out. Then I see his throat bulging. His eyes go wide and then his head snaps to the sound. There's a horrible sound of breaking bone and his jaw starts to hinge. Something wormlike and cancerous starts to crawl its way out.
I raise the gun, then think better of it. It's not moving fast and seems almost sluggish. If we're going to fight these things, then maybe one to study wouldn't be a bad idea. "Can you catch it?"
Junya's wire snaps out, grabbing the thing and yanking it up amid a forest of wires. He pulls out a paper box and dumps the worm inside, then shuts it and makes it vanish, the wire coiling back into his sleeve. "Well, that's done then. Let's get going before any of them wake up."
"Do you think they'll remember anything?"
"It would be so much simpler if they didn't."
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Chapter 2-6: Discussions
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's spooky, walking out of the quiet building with an alien mind parasite in a paper bag. The silence effect is down, but the cultists are all down, slumped into what seems like sleep. I check one on the way past. He's in deep, eyes moving under his eyelids. "Should I call someone for this?"
"No." Junya says. "There's too many people here. Let your mage Compliance and the Association secret keepers blame this on a gas leak. We've done our job, let them do theirs."
I reload the UMP and stick it back into its holster under my arm. "I just don't want it to come back on me with Compliance. I suspect at least some of them are involved in a plot of this magnitude, and well, I'm not their favourite person on my best day. I have responsibilities now."
Junya's smile quirks up. "Your new girlfriend. The one who sneaked up on you."
"She's really very sneaky." I rub the back of my neck. "I still can't believe that she managed it really. This all feels kind of ridiculous. One moment I'm floating between a bunch of people who flirting with but not going out with, then I have a girlfriend. I don't even know whether she's even okay with all the other people who are interested in me."
Suddenly he's very close, not quite kabedoning me but definitely in front, in my personal space.
"And what about you Nozomi? What do you want?"
I don't blush or fluster because I've been expecting this for a while. "I like being flirted with by attractive older men, but I think I like having a girlfriend more."
He laughs, then steps back and falls back in beside me. "I always thought it'd be Aratani who'd steal you away."
"Funny. I always thought you'd get together and gang up on me."
"Interesting idea, but I don't think we ever could. He's far too respectable for me. Besides, I already have an important fiance."
We arrive at the ground floor of the building. Ginto-kai troops are cleaning up around the cultists. I do a quick sweep of the atrium for any casings that dropped down from above, find and pocket a couple then direct the clean up crew down into the basement. I scattered about twenty casings around down there, and frankly I don't want to have to be the one to pick them up when they have to retrieve the corpses from down their anyway.
We step outside, and then return to the command post, where Manako is just coming in from the roof. "Everyone alright?" I give her a hug.
"Yes. I picked up all my brass." She shows a handfull of bullet casings. "I need to go check the hall. Some of it fell down."
"Here." I hand her back the spent cartridges.
"Nozomi." Junya waves me over to where Kodai is standing with his lieutenants. I step into the circle. "Do you have any idea how many people infested with those creatures there are? And in what positions?"
"So far, no. I was hoping that studying the one we found might give us some clues." I push my hair back, which is actually a signal between Junya and I meaning "I need to talk to you privately." He nods, says something to Kodai, who goes back to directing things. Junya and I step into the corridor.
"I found reference to that thing in one of the books that I retrieved from the library raid."
Junya's mouth quirks. "The black one?"
"Yeah." I lean on the wall and then the exhaustion of the raid and the day and everything hits me and I slide down it. "I was thinking-- this is twisted, but I was thinking maybe Aratani has played me all the long the line, Maybe he knew that this was going on, maybe he's even the one who tipped me about that archive. He probably has some card he can play in reserve to get the black book from me, and in the mean time, I deal with his mess without him having to get dirty."
"You're right, that is twisted." Junya squads beside me. "You worry too much about Aratani."
"I hate him." I pull my mask off and look at it. "He's the one person who can ever play me."
Junya reaches out and pats me on the top of the head. "Everyone gets played sometimes Nozomi. The reason he always beats you is because he's managed to make you play yourself."
I pinch the bridge of my nose and then take a deep breath. "Can you bring Kodai-san to a meeting? I'm going to get in touch with Reijou and her group as well. I've got two public safety officials who might know something. I want to try to get one of these people alive. Before they hatch. Maybe we can question them about who the others are."
"Alright." He hands me the paper package. "Take this, go home. Deal with it, and then let's actually sort this out. We need to do that, even if it's Aratani's game." He gets up and offers me a hand. I take it and let him pull me to my feet. "Maybe you can come up with a way to get something you want out of it as well. More than just living through the misfortune."
I nod and heft the package. "I'll call you when I'm ready."
Alice is waiting when I get home, standing in my entry hall with her hands in the pockets of her white coat. "I've got them both sleeping. It looks like that's most of what the brain needs to throw this stuff off." Her eyes fall to the paper package and she raises her glasses. "What have you got there?"
"It's mine." I lift it out of her way quickly. "It's a parasite, but I want first crack at it."
"Oh you big baby. We can share!"
I need to improvise here. I don't want Alice to know what I have. "Okay fine! You go to my first floor lab. The readouts will come out there. I'm going to stow this in containment."
"Jealous of your containment lab are you? You plan to keep me in there one day hmm?"
"Maybe I do. Unfortunately, it'd be a little unethical, as I'm your patient~"
She sputters. I glance at Manako to see how she's taking it but she's busy adjusting her rifle. I touch her on the shoulder and she jumps, then comes with me. "How was your first fight?"
"Scary." She takes a deep breath. "I didn't expect it to be so difficult given I wasn't the one in danger. I-- well I was glad it was you fighting down their not me. Then I felt guilty about that. It was awful."
"Combat is a bit like that." I pull her into a hug. "It's very memorable. Adrenaline." I take her hand. "If you want to talk about it, then we can sit down later."
"Alright." She squeezes my hand. "I want to go clean my rifle. You should always look after your rifle after you fire."
"Can I give you my UMP as well." I take it out and hand it over.
"Oh. Sure. Though you really should clean your own guns!"
"I have to dissect this slug thing." I wave as we reach the arms room. "See you soon."
Manako waves, then almost drops the guns, and manages to right herself before stepping inside. Finally I manage to get downstairs, and place the package inside a containment hex. This lab is near the one I used to contain my previous prisoner, and quite different in aspect from the above ground house. No carefully painted walls here. My underground work spaces are clean and sterile, like a hospital or a morgue. A place where my experiments won't be disturbed. This containment lab has a workbench with a platinum containment hex on it laid out so it can be electrified or spun with laser light if desired. Cyclopian scientific equipment is placed around it at intervals, looking in at the hex, and then various physical and magical baffles can be lowered over it.
After I've made sure the wards are fully up and all the various instruments in the room are set up properly, I lower the baffles and speak a burn word which dissolves the creatures prison. It rises off of the desk in the hex, twitching as it tries to get free. "You seeing this Alice."
"Okay." Alice's voice says. "I have good telemetry."
I check the repeater screen which is showing various readouts on the creature within. It's almost hollow, like a set of lungs. Alice begins to talk to herself about its biology but I am busy at the vault. I open the secure shelves, pull out the black book and search through it for a while. Since I found the name I've been searching the rest of my collection for references to the The Bringer of Doors. There's frustratingly little. Then again apparently this is a being that does not exist.
"It seems like it's meant to link to other creatures." Alice says. "There's a softening of space around it, information is going back and forth, but apparently to nowhere." A pause. "It's growing fast too. The hex is keeping it in check but don't take it out. It'll grow into one of those things in short order if it has food. I don't understand how it stayed in someone's throat without killing them a long time ago if it's like this."
"Could we track it to where it's going?"
"If it was going somewhere. At this point it doesn't seem to be."
I think back to Reijou's words earlier. What did it say? "House, tell me what Reijou said the creature said to her."
Reijou's voice fills the air. Repeating the creature's warning warning about twisting the world plays. But that's not what I pay attention to. It's the word "Parent."
"Alice, could the spacial link have been keeping it from growing?"
"Possibly."
Annoyingly, given the arcane formula in the black book if I could get one that was connected, then it would be simple to find all the others. Time to try something else. I set a search spell going on the black book. Not looking anymore for the Bringer of Doors, but for the realm of a thousand voices.
There is a segment.
"In the realm of a thousand voices there is no different between a word and a thought, for each are equally compelling." That's simple enough. I translate the next part. "There is no difference between word and speaker. No difference between to describe and to be."
"Each voice is spoken by a different mouth, but each is unified by the doors. Woe to foes who attempt to close the doors. Woe to those who seek to separate the voices, for when seperated, a thousand voices may become a thousand thousand. For each word is a world, and each mouth may speak a thousand words!"
That's certainly first order cryptic bullshit, but let's compare it to what we have so far. We know it's spatially linked to other creatures. We know if those links drop, it seems to grow really fast.
Oh gods.
It's not a realm of a thousand voices. The realm is a thousand voices. This thing isn't just a creature, it's the building block of an alien realm.
Does that track? Could they be more easily thought of as just an alien hive mind? I haven't seen any of them do anything to the world yet, just to a human mind.
But it said it to Reijou. My parent will twist the world. Words are constituent. The word and the world as one.
I look away from the book and shake my head. I'm suddenly not sure if this rush of strange logic was my thought, or that of the books. I'm not sure if my own logic really makes sense but I'm set into the idea that something terrifying will happen if I don't do anything.
Alice, gives me the thumbs and I yank the sleep runes off both public safety official's foreheads. The two blink, eyes clouding for a moment, then come around, looking up at me.
"Where am I?" Tanigawa winces. Beside her, the Detective rubs her eyes.
"At my home in Den-en-chōfu." I sit down opposite. "These are some of my associates. Exorcists."
Reijou, the serious boy who is her bodyguard and a slightly cruel but very handsome creature I'm almost certain is not entirely mortal sit on one sofa, Junya and Kodai Ryu on the other. Reijou is looking intensely nervous. I know the feeling. No matter how many times you fight the supernatural, the pressure of social expectations, of authority, is harder. If you're fighting a monster you just have to kill it. That's not usually an option with public officials, or at least not a good one.
Manako sits in an armchair, also nervous but fascinated, while Alice seems unbothered. The Doctor moves over and peers into their eyes. "I'm a doctor. Is there any pain or discomfort?" She kneels next to Yoshitaka, who seems to be having a worse reaction.
"No. I just feel like I've slept really heavily." Yoshitaka winces.
"What's the last thing you remember?"
"My phone rang. It was a public safety number so I accepted it, and the voice on the other end sounded so good." Yoshitaka said.
Tanigawa doesn't say anything for a moment then. "I went into my office and found that fat man waiting for me. What happened to him?"
"He's dead. For now at least." I stretch out.
"That's good at least." Tanigawa leans back. "Are we okay doctor?"
"No permanent damage," Alice says. "You've been subjected to a fascinating process but it doesn't seem to be much different from normal mind control in its basic effects."
"Would you like some coffee? Or drinking chocolate?" I ask. I'm drawing this out a bit, letting the discomfort of a crowded but silent room make them want to answer more.
"Coffee," Tanigawa says. The detective nods. A shadow maid comes in with a coffee pot and two cups on a silver tray.
"When did you first realize that public safety had been infiltrated?" I ask after both have taken a sip.
Tanigawa sighs and looks at the table. "How do you know I even knew?"
"I worked it out a little while ago. You mostly work with Aratani and he recommended me, but I can't imagine you actually using a schoolgirl by choice. The Japanese state has its own mages. If you didn't know what was happening you'd have thanked me for my information and gone to find them instead."
"I didn't know until I found that man in my office." Tanigawa said.
"But you suspected enough that you wanted to call on me, not on Japanese state resources?"
"Yes."
"Do you know who in public safety is running point for the opposition?"
She looks at me, angry. Public safety's internal traumas are not what she wants to give up, until I think I'm going to need to prompt her. "I think it's my Boss's Boss, Director Tsutsui of the special section."
Tsutsui Haruto is not quite what I expected. Every other one of these people has been in some way or another debauched, in some way or another showing the evidence of fine living. The Director of Public Safety's special section, in charge of all of the bits of that vast organization that don't fit into the rest, seems not to enjoy his power very much. He lives in a fine but small house, out in the suburbs where the countryside starts to leak in, with a wife who is younger than him but not really glamourous seeming. He's thin, skeletal, and shows no outward sign of either heaving eating or drug use.
The bodyguards though, that marks him out as something special. Most guys of his rank will have some bodyguards with them. His close protection detail is four ministry men and one personal hire, all experts in a variety of martial arts. Not a particularly large force, though they're all extremely good.
No, the strange thing is the counter-assault teams, two whole vehicles full of armed men that move in seemingly random patterns around the director when he's moving that gives him away as abnormal. This is the kind of protection the prime minister might get, if there was a specific threat to him.
Truth is I'm growing increasingly sure this is a trap.
I'm watching his house right now, moving along the street, just a young girl, a college student or something. Well dressed, black coat, black skirt, black tights, a white scarf and bright headphones. Just another girl having fun in spring in Tokyo, walking along the suburban streets to some bus stop or other.
Encrypted voice message: "Two rats, left side of the street, grey Toyota."
"Seen."
Another vehicle, not the CAT, is hanging out across with the hood up, faking an engine fault, two men at the front pretending to check it out while they watch the house, the director and the pedestrians. Are they bodyguards or some kind of too obvious surveillance team.
"Hey Miss." One of them steps into my way. I can feel that someone else is out behind me.
I project calm, even though my heart thumps. I pretend not to hear, then pull my headphones off, music triggering as they're removed. "Yes?"
"Can you show me some ID? You look pretty young." He pulls out a police ID. Pretending like he's koban, even though he's obviously way to big, too muscular. I bet he does sumo.
Ah. They're not here for him. They're here for me.
I make no sudden moves. Just pretend to be a schoolgirl. They apparently aren't sure, or they would have grabbed me. I know there's a guy behind me, waiting for me to make a sudden move, so I make a show of surprise and pull my ID out of my pocket.
It's fake of course. A Tokyo University student ID, listing me as nineteen years old, and show it to him. He inspects the card, then nods to himself and pockets it. "Would you please accompany us?" Not saying the name on the card. It's a good forgery so it should have passed. Still. I am thinking I'm got. Who are these guys?
"Am I under arrest?" Fight? Run? Lie?
A hand reaches up from behind and grabs my wig, yanking hard. I take a deep breath as the cap below somehow unravels and my hair spills free. "Yes Nishifune-san. You are under arrest."
"Compliance, are you?" No point in starting a fight with them on a public street. "Show me your sigil." The man in front of me raises another ID, this one with a complex flickering symbol on it. Compliance. "What am I charged with?"
"Conspiracy to kidnap a protected person. Raise your hands."
I lift my hands, let him put the cuffs on comfortably. "You've been handcuffed before."
"I mostly prefer to be doing the handcuffing but I've been known to indulge." There's a hex bound into the cuffs, a powerful one, designed to disrupt any magic I might caste, especially by grounding local geomancy.
The man pushes me into the back of the car as his friend closes the hood. The one behind, another big beefy fellow gets in beside me, still holding my wig. The one who stopped me gets in to drive while the third one gets on in the other side, sandwiching me between them. They belt in, and secure my seatbelt.
The question now is, do they plan to kill me?
The car peels away from the curb. "It would go much easier for you if you'd just confess now." says the talkative one.
"I'm not saying a thing without a lawyer and my teacher's being informed."
The man with his hands free punches me in the stomach. It knocks the wind out of me. "I don't think you really understand the situation." says the one in the front. We're moving out of town, away from the freeway and away from town.
"I think I understand it pretty well."
The fist comes again. I cough. We drive in silence for a while, turn onto a secondary road.
"Take her jacket off." The driver orders. "She'll have armour in it. It was in the brief."
"But she has cuffs on." the guy hitting me protests.
"Just unbutton it."
Everything is so seat of the pants with this. I feel a sudden flash of pity for the men who are about to beat on me. They're also flying blind. Also doing extremely dangerous emergency stuff. The minion with my wig drops it on his lap then pulls up my arms and the other starts to unbutton my jacket.
"I don't want to tell you your jobs, but you're compliance agents right? If you're going to torture me why are you punching me, not putting a symbol of pain onto me or something."
"The secret is we want you to confess darling." The driver turns off. "If we use magic, it'll show up on later scans. How many fights have you been in lately? I bet you can't prove where you got another set of bruises. We're going to beat a confession out of you, and you'll go to jail. Maybe you can get out of it eventually, but not fast enough to prevent us stabilizing the situation."
"You're not really used to this are you?" The hitter has my jacket open and then punches me hard. I cough harder. It hurts much worse without the armour but I'm not exactly unused to pain. "What do you usually do for Compliance? Security I'll bet. Or catching normal criminals for the Japanese state."
"Shut the fuck up!" The hitter plants his fist in my stomach again, deep this time. I cough, and actually almost puke, and spit up a mass of blood onto the car interior.
"Fuck!" the driver says. "Fuck! Not until we're out of the--"
A large white van which has been coming up behind the car suddenly swings wide and pulls hard across its path. The driver screams something and hits the break but can't stop in time and the car stops, airbags slamming out in the front.
There's a sudden something a feeling of unknowable pour ripping the air and all three men convulse, screaming loudly for a moment then twitching to a stop, barely moving. The driver gropes for the glove compartment, managing to get it open on the third try and gets his hand on the big pistol within.
He's too late though. A figure has stepped out of the van and is levelling a rifle at him. Her face is masked, but her aim is steady.
The man sees her, hand still on the gun and his eyes go wide. Slowly he starts to take his hand off the automatic and raise it. She shoots him twice, walking around left to shoot the other man, then the third man as he bails out of the car and tries to run. The rifle makes no sound but each round glows red as it hits a its target.
The man in the front twitches, jerking in pain.
I lean forward and retrieve the keys to his cuffs. "I don't think that my girlfriend appreciated you beating on me meat boy."
I get out carefully. Reijou, who's power I assume mana crashed the three agents, both her guys, and a couple of Ginto-kai men. "How are we doing on time?" I ask.
"Road's blocked up behind us. A couple of cops we know and a spell that the Cleaner left." says one of the Ginto-Kai men. "We've got time to load these guys up."
"Alright, we'll take them with us. Get them loaded." I make no move to help.
"Are you alright?" Manako asks.
"Got a healing injector?" She hands me one and I apply it, the pain eases away. With any luck the kidnap team will have the location we need, but the truth is I doubt it. The next part of the extraction is up to Junya.
"No." Junya says. "There's too many people here. Let your mage Compliance and the Association secret keepers blame this on a gas leak. We've done our job, let them do theirs."
I reload the UMP and stick it back into its holster under my arm. "I just don't want it to come back on me with Compliance. I suspect at least some of them are involved in a plot of this magnitude, and well, I'm not their favourite person on my best day. I have responsibilities now."
Junya's smile quirks up. "Your new girlfriend. The one who sneaked up on you."
"She's really very sneaky." I rub the back of my neck. "I still can't believe that she managed it really. This all feels kind of ridiculous. One moment I'm floating between a bunch of people who flirting with but not going out with, then I have a girlfriend. I don't even know whether she's even okay with all the other people who are interested in me."
Suddenly he's very close, not quite kabedoning me but definitely in front, in my personal space.
"And what about you Nozomi? What do you want?"
I don't blush or fluster because I've been expecting this for a while. "I like being flirted with by attractive older men, but I think I like having a girlfriend more."
He laughs, then steps back and falls back in beside me. "I always thought it'd be Aratani who'd steal you away."
"Funny. I always thought you'd get together and gang up on me."
"Interesting idea, but I don't think we ever could. He's far too respectable for me. Besides, I already have an important fiance."
We arrive at the ground floor of the building. Ginto-kai troops are cleaning up around the cultists. I do a quick sweep of the atrium for any casings that dropped down from above, find and pocket a couple then direct the clean up crew down into the basement. I scattered about twenty casings around down there, and frankly I don't want to have to be the one to pick them up when they have to retrieve the corpses from down their anyway.
We step outside, and then return to the command post, where Manako is just coming in from the roof. "Everyone alright?" I give her a hug.
"Yes. I picked up all my brass." She shows a handfull of bullet casings. "I need to go check the hall. Some of it fell down."
"Here." I hand her back the spent cartridges.
"Nozomi." Junya waves me over to where Kodai is standing with his lieutenants. I step into the circle. "Do you have any idea how many people infested with those creatures there are? And in what positions?"
"So far, no. I was hoping that studying the one we found might give us some clues." I push my hair back, which is actually a signal between Junya and I meaning "I need to talk to you privately." He nods, says something to Kodai, who goes back to directing things. Junya and I step into the corridor.
"I found reference to that thing in one of the books that I retrieved from the library raid."
Junya's mouth quirks. "The black one?"
"Yeah." I lean on the wall and then the exhaustion of the raid and the day and everything hits me and I slide down it. "I was thinking-- this is twisted, but I was thinking maybe Aratani has played me all the long the line, Maybe he knew that this was going on, maybe he's even the one who tipped me about that archive. He probably has some card he can play in reserve to get the black book from me, and in the mean time, I deal with his mess without him having to get dirty."
"You're right, that is twisted." Junya squads beside me. "You worry too much about Aratani."
"I hate him." I pull my mask off and look at it. "He's the one person who can ever play me."
Junya reaches out and pats me on the top of the head. "Everyone gets played sometimes Nozomi. The reason he always beats you is because he's managed to make you play yourself."
I pinch the bridge of my nose and then take a deep breath. "Can you bring Kodai-san to a meeting? I'm going to get in touch with Reijou and her group as well. I've got two public safety officials who might know something. I want to try to get one of these people alive. Before they hatch. Maybe we can question them about who the others are."
"Alright." He hands me the paper package. "Take this, go home. Deal with it, and then let's actually sort this out. We need to do that, even if it's Aratani's game." He gets up and offers me a hand. I take it and let him pull me to my feet. "Maybe you can come up with a way to get something you want out of it as well. More than just living through the misfortune."
I nod and heft the package. "I'll call you when I'm ready."
#
Alice is waiting when I get home, standing in my entry hall with her hands in the pockets of her white coat. "I've got them both sleeping. It looks like that's most of what the brain needs to throw this stuff off." Her eyes fall to the paper package and she raises her glasses. "What have you got there?"
"It's mine." I lift it out of her way quickly. "It's a parasite, but I want first crack at it."
"Oh you big baby. We can share!"
I need to improvise here. I don't want Alice to know what I have. "Okay fine! You go to my first floor lab. The readouts will come out there. I'm going to stow this in containment."
"Jealous of your containment lab are you? You plan to keep me in there one day hmm?"
"Maybe I do. Unfortunately, it'd be a little unethical, as I'm your patient~"
She sputters. I glance at Manako to see how she's taking it but she's busy adjusting her rifle. I touch her on the shoulder and she jumps, then comes with me. "How was your first fight?"
"Scary." She takes a deep breath. "I didn't expect it to be so difficult given I wasn't the one in danger. I-- well I was glad it was you fighting down their not me. Then I felt guilty about that. It was awful."
"Combat is a bit like that." I pull her into a hug. "It's very memorable. Adrenaline." I take her hand. "If you want to talk about it, then we can sit down later."
"Alright." She squeezes my hand. "I want to go clean my rifle. You should always look after your rifle after you fire."
"Can I give you my UMP as well." I take it out and hand it over.
"Oh. Sure. Though you really should clean your own guns!"
"I have to dissect this slug thing." I wave as we reach the arms room. "See you soon."
Manako waves, then almost drops the guns, and manages to right herself before stepping inside. Finally I manage to get downstairs, and place the package inside a containment hex. This lab is near the one I used to contain my previous prisoner, and quite different in aspect from the above ground house. No carefully painted walls here. My underground work spaces are clean and sterile, like a hospital or a morgue. A place where my experiments won't be disturbed. This containment lab has a workbench with a platinum containment hex on it laid out so it can be electrified or spun with laser light if desired. Cyclopian scientific equipment is placed around it at intervals, looking in at the hex, and then various physical and magical baffles can be lowered over it.
After I've made sure the wards are fully up and all the various instruments in the room are set up properly, I lower the baffles and speak a burn word which dissolves the creatures prison. It rises off of the desk in the hex, twitching as it tries to get free. "You seeing this Alice."
"Okay." Alice's voice says. "I have good telemetry."
I check the repeater screen which is showing various readouts on the creature within. It's almost hollow, like a set of lungs. Alice begins to talk to herself about its biology but I am busy at the vault. I open the secure shelves, pull out the black book and search through it for a while. Since I found the name I've been searching the rest of my collection for references to the The Bringer of Doors. There's frustratingly little. Then again apparently this is a being that does not exist.
"It seems like it's meant to link to other creatures." Alice says. "There's a softening of space around it, information is going back and forth, but apparently to nowhere." A pause. "It's growing fast too. The hex is keeping it in check but don't take it out. It'll grow into one of those things in short order if it has food. I don't understand how it stayed in someone's throat without killing them a long time ago if it's like this."
"Could we track it to where it's going?"
"If it was going somewhere. At this point it doesn't seem to be."
I think back to Reijou's words earlier. What did it say? "House, tell me what Reijou said the creature said to her."
Reijou's voice fills the air. Repeating the creature's warning warning about twisting the world plays. But that's not what I pay attention to. It's the word "Parent."
"Alice, could the spacial link have been keeping it from growing?"
"Possibly."
Annoyingly, given the arcane formula in the black book if I could get one that was connected, then it would be simple to find all the others. Time to try something else. I set a search spell going on the black book. Not looking anymore for the Bringer of Doors, but for the realm of a thousand voices.
There is a segment.
"In the realm of a thousand voices there is no different between a word and a thought, for each are equally compelling." That's simple enough. I translate the next part. "There is no difference between word and speaker. No difference between to describe and to be."
"Each voice is spoken by a different mouth, but each is unified by the doors. Woe to foes who attempt to close the doors. Woe to those who seek to separate the voices, for when seperated, a thousand voices may become a thousand thousand. For each word is a world, and each mouth may speak a thousand words!"
That's certainly first order cryptic bullshit, but let's compare it to what we have so far. We know it's spatially linked to other creatures. We know if those links drop, it seems to grow really fast.
Oh gods.
It's not a realm of a thousand voices. The realm is a thousand voices. This thing isn't just a creature, it's the building block of an alien realm.
Does that track? Could they be more easily thought of as just an alien hive mind? I haven't seen any of them do anything to the world yet, just to a human mind.
But it said it to Reijou. My parent will twist the world. Words are constituent. The word and the world as one.
I look away from the book and shake my head. I'm suddenly not sure if this rush of strange logic was my thought, or that of the books. I'm not sure if my own logic really makes sense but I'm set into the idea that something terrifying will happen if I don't do anything.
#
Alice, gives me the thumbs and I yank the sleep runes off both public safety official's foreheads. The two blink, eyes clouding for a moment, then come around, looking up at me.
"Where am I?" Tanigawa winces. Beside her, the Detective rubs her eyes.
"At my home in Den-en-chōfu." I sit down opposite. "These are some of my associates. Exorcists."
Reijou, the serious boy who is her bodyguard and a slightly cruel but very handsome creature I'm almost certain is not entirely mortal sit on one sofa, Junya and Kodai Ryu on the other. Reijou is looking intensely nervous. I know the feeling. No matter how many times you fight the supernatural, the pressure of social expectations, of authority, is harder. If you're fighting a monster you just have to kill it. That's not usually an option with public officials, or at least not a good one.
Manako sits in an armchair, also nervous but fascinated, while Alice seems unbothered. The Doctor moves over and peers into their eyes. "I'm a doctor. Is there any pain or discomfort?" She kneels next to Yoshitaka, who seems to be having a worse reaction.
"No. I just feel like I've slept really heavily." Yoshitaka winces.
"What's the last thing you remember?"
"My phone rang. It was a public safety number so I accepted it, and the voice on the other end sounded so good." Yoshitaka said.
Tanigawa doesn't say anything for a moment then. "I went into my office and found that fat man waiting for me. What happened to him?"
"He's dead. For now at least." I stretch out.
"That's good at least." Tanigawa leans back. "Are we okay doctor?"
"No permanent damage," Alice says. "You've been subjected to a fascinating process but it doesn't seem to be much different from normal mind control in its basic effects."
"Would you like some coffee? Or drinking chocolate?" I ask. I'm drawing this out a bit, letting the discomfort of a crowded but silent room make them want to answer more.
"Coffee," Tanigawa says. The detective nods. A shadow maid comes in with a coffee pot and two cups on a silver tray.
"When did you first realize that public safety had been infiltrated?" I ask after both have taken a sip.
Tanigawa sighs and looks at the table. "How do you know I even knew?"
"I worked it out a little while ago. You mostly work with Aratani and he recommended me, but I can't imagine you actually using a schoolgirl by choice. The Japanese state has its own mages. If you didn't know what was happening you'd have thanked me for my information and gone to find them instead."
"I didn't know until I found that man in my office." Tanigawa said.
"But you suspected enough that you wanted to call on me, not on Japanese state resources?"
"Yes."
"Do you know who in public safety is running point for the opposition?"
She looks at me, angry. Public safety's internal traumas are not what she wants to give up, until I think I'm going to need to prompt her. "I think it's my Boss's Boss, Director Tsutsui of the special section."
#
Tsutsui Haruto is not quite what I expected. Every other one of these people has been in some way or another debauched, in some way or another showing the evidence of fine living. The Director of Public Safety's special section, in charge of all of the bits of that vast organization that don't fit into the rest, seems not to enjoy his power very much. He lives in a fine but small house, out in the suburbs where the countryside starts to leak in, with a wife who is younger than him but not really glamourous seeming. He's thin, skeletal, and shows no outward sign of either heaving eating or drug use.
The bodyguards though, that marks him out as something special. Most guys of his rank will have some bodyguards with them. His close protection detail is four ministry men and one personal hire, all experts in a variety of martial arts. Not a particularly large force, though they're all extremely good.
No, the strange thing is the counter-assault teams, two whole vehicles full of armed men that move in seemingly random patterns around the director when he's moving that gives him away as abnormal. This is the kind of protection the prime minister might get, if there was a specific threat to him.
Truth is I'm growing increasingly sure this is a trap.
I'm watching his house right now, moving along the street, just a young girl, a college student or something. Well dressed, black coat, black skirt, black tights, a white scarf and bright headphones. Just another girl having fun in spring in Tokyo, walking along the suburban streets to some bus stop or other.
Encrypted voice message: "Two rats, left side of the street, grey Toyota."
"Seen."
Another vehicle, not the CAT, is hanging out across with the hood up, faking an engine fault, two men at the front pretending to check it out while they watch the house, the director and the pedestrians. Are they bodyguards or some kind of too obvious surveillance team.
"Hey Miss." One of them steps into my way. I can feel that someone else is out behind me.
I project calm, even though my heart thumps. I pretend not to hear, then pull my headphones off, music triggering as they're removed. "Yes?"
"Can you show me some ID? You look pretty young." He pulls out a police ID. Pretending like he's koban, even though he's obviously way to big, too muscular. I bet he does sumo.
Ah. They're not here for him. They're here for me.
I make no sudden moves. Just pretend to be a schoolgirl. They apparently aren't sure, or they would have grabbed me. I know there's a guy behind me, waiting for me to make a sudden move, so I make a show of surprise and pull my ID out of my pocket.
It's fake of course. A Tokyo University student ID, listing me as nineteen years old, and show it to him. He inspects the card, then nods to himself and pockets it. "Would you please accompany us?" Not saying the name on the card. It's a good forgery so it should have passed. Still. I am thinking I'm got. Who are these guys?
"Am I under arrest?" Fight? Run? Lie?
A hand reaches up from behind and grabs my wig, yanking hard. I take a deep breath as the cap below somehow unravels and my hair spills free. "Yes Nishifune-san. You are under arrest."
"Compliance, are you?" No point in starting a fight with them on a public street. "Show me your sigil." The man in front of me raises another ID, this one with a complex flickering symbol on it. Compliance. "What am I charged with?"
"Conspiracy to kidnap a protected person. Raise your hands."
I lift my hands, let him put the cuffs on comfortably. "You've been handcuffed before."
"I mostly prefer to be doing the handcuffing but I've been known to indulge." There's a hex bound into the cuffs, a powerful one, designed to disrupt any magic I might caste, especially by grounding local geomancy.
The man pushes me into the back of the car as his friend closes the hood. The one behind, another big beefy fellow gets in beside me, still holding my wig. The one who stopped me gets in to drive while the third one gets on in the other side, sandwiching me between them. They belt in, and secure my seatbelt.
The question now is, do they plan to kill me?
The car peels away from the curb. "It would go much easier for you if you'd just confess now." says the talkative one.
"I'm not saying a thing without a lawyer and my teacher's being informed."
The man with his hands free punches me in the stomach. It knocks the wind out of me. "I don't think you really understand the situation." says the one in the front. We're moving out of town, away from the freeway and away from town.
"I think I understand it pretty well."
The fist comes again. I cough. We drive in silence for a while, turn onto a secondary road.
"Take her jacket off." The driver orders. "She'll have armour in it. It was in the brief."
"But she has cuffs on." the guy hitting me protests.
"Just unbutton it."
Everything is so seat of the pants with this. I feel a sudden flash of pity for the men who are about to beat on me. They're also flying blind. Also doing extremely dangerous emergency stuff. The minion with my wig drops it on his lap then pulls up my arms and the other starts to unbutton my jacket.
"I don't want to tell you your jobs, but you're compliance agents right? If you're going to torture me why are you punching me, not putting a symbol of pain onto me or something."
"The secret is we want you to confess darling." The driver turns off. "If we use magic, it'll show up on later scans. How many fights have you been in lately? I bet you can't prove where you got another set of bruises. We're going to beat a confession out of you, and you'll go to jail. Maybe you can get out of it eventually, but not fast enough to prevent us stabilizing the situation."
"You're not really used to this are you?" The hitter has my jacket open and then punches me hard. I cough harder. It hurts much worse without the armour but I'm not exactly unused to pain. "What do you usually do for Compliance? Security I'll bet. Or catching normal criminals for the Japanese state."
"Shut the fuck up!" The hitter plants his fist in my stomach again, deep this time. I cough, and actually almost puke, and spit up a mass of blood onto the car interior.
"Fuck!" the driver says. "Fuck! Not until we're out of the--"
A large white van which has been coming up behind the car suddenly swings wide and pulls hard across its path. The driver screams something and hits the break but can't stop in time and the car stops, airbags slamming out in the front.
There's a sudden something a feeling of unknowable pour ripping the air and all three men convulse, screaming loudly for a moment then twitching to a stop, barely moving. The driver gropes for the glove compartment, managing to get it open on the third try and gets his hand on the big pistol within.
He's too late though. A figure has stepped out of the van and is levelling a rifle at him. Her face is masked, but her aim is steady.
The man sees her, hand still on the gun and his eyes go wide. Slowly he starts to take his hand off the automatic and raise it. She shoots him twice, walking around left to shoot the other man, then the third man as he bails out of the car and tries to run. The rifle makes no sound but each round glows red as it hits a its target.
The man in the front twitches, jerking in pain.
I lean forward and retrieve the keys to his cuffs. "I don't think that my girlfriend appreciated you beating on me meat boy."
I get out carefully. Reijou, who's power I assume mana crashed the three agents, both her guys, and a couple of Ginto-kai men. "How are we doing on time?" I ask.
"Road's blocked up behind us. A couple of cops we know and a spell that the Cleaner left." says one of the Ginto-Kai men. "We've got time to load these guys up."
"Alright, we'll take them with us. Get them loaded." I make no move to help.
"Are you alright?" Manako asks.
"Got a healing injector?" She hands me one and I apply it, the pain eases away. With any luck the kidnap team will have the location we need, but the truth is I doubt it. The next part of the extraction is up to Junya.