It doesn't take long for Murakawa to start to flag. I have a shadow maid take him to one of the guest rooms.
I know where the end boss of this all is. It's in that mental hospital. I have a team and a plan but actually setting things up to where we can make the hit is going to take longer. An operation like this takes training and rehearsal. You have to block out each movement like a play. Ii says she thinks we'll need at least forty hours of training to get the team into any kind of shape to do this. That's going to represent at least a week. Realistically, with school and stuff like setting up a counter conspiracy, it'll likely be two weeks before we can make the kill.
Given the tempo at which the enemy has been hitting back, I suspect we'd see another attempt long before then, and if we're spending all our time training, stopping it will be a problem. Without good intelligence as to where the next strike will come from, a defensive parry is not something I can easily mount. Nor can I go for the knockout punch. That then means a spoiler attack. But what to hit? Maybe I can figure that out from the stuff I got from the warehouse.
The firearms I immediately decide to dump on Manako. None of them are ones I'm familiar with but I'm not really that interested in small arms. From the look of them, dusty, dinged up and worn, they were probably bought off some black market after a lot of use. I doubt they're much of a lead. After detailing some shadow maids to move them to the shooting range with a note, I turn my attention to the phones.
One of them, a nice Iphone with a satellite sleeve is obviously Murakawa's. When I turn it on it has a picture of Manako and him as the background. I consider it for a while, then check the security system. Murakawa is safely in his quarters, sleeping off a rough day. I switch to thermal, just to check he's actually in bed, and not a pillow. It's a paranoid precaution, the house would have alerted me if he'd started to wander.
I spend a little while on google figuring out how to remove the satellite sleeve. It covers the whole back of the phone and gives good cover for what I want to do. A shadow maid brings me my tools. First I remove the satellite sleeve, then I draw asymbol out on a stencil. The stencil goes on the back of the phone, then I cut carefully and wipe it down with a clear paint. When it's done, there's a near invisible rune on the back of the phone case. I slip the phone back into its sleeve, make sure it's reconnected and then check the connection on my own phone.
All good. The electrical impulses from the phone are fed back into my phone, letting me wirelessly hack it or listen in. I think for a moment then input the code into the front so that the screen lock won't say the phone's been restarted. I tip the rest of the phones back into the bag. Time to go find out some more about my enemy.
****
I set the phones I took off Van and Ichika to one side for later study. Those I can actually go through manually, rather than with the ritual I'm going to do now. Truth be told I'm not hopeful I'll get much out of either of them. They're probably mission phones. Expensive burners.
But the random mooks we picked up, those look like phones. Actual phones that people use. I collect the bag of holding with them in and my component bag and head out.
The guys they brought along were pretty much thugs. Obviously used to violence. Ex-police, ex-yakuza. Ex-colour gang and bikers. The kind of people who are easy to recruit, but who a certain kind of people miss, and who come from certain areas. If I can make the right connections I'll bet I can find out quite a lot by knowing where he got them from.
The Map Room is in a summer house down a gravel path a little way into the garden. It's basically a big single room, well lit from the ceiling by skylights and bright lamps, with several comfortable sofas and various cases for the maps. In the middle is a large mechanical table, rotatable and cog wheeled.
I search around until I find the large scale map of Tokyo and then take it over to the table. A panel on the side of the map lets me input the time and date and the table shifts to a precise angle. Then I just have to fix the edges down with carefully aligned black and white stones. The positions for each are marked on the edges of the table, if you know which ritual you're conducting you can easily plot it out without memorizing anything.
With all the prep done, I dump out the phones in a pile on the middle of the map, walk back to the casting spot and begin to chant. It's a low, almost wordless rhythm, spoken in a constructed language made up by a secret society sometime during the French revolution. One by one, the phones rise into the air, distributing themselves around the room, hanging in a cloud peaks of light form above areas of the map.
It was originally designed to allow a mage to rapidly assess enemy battle plans, referring to precise locations by visually spotting the loci on a map. Aratani adapted it to work on phones and I created a superior geomantic version linked to a map and local dragon lines from there.
Bars flower up across the map, stacks of light representing calls, colour coding representing numbers. On this view what I'm looking for are rainbow bars, places that all these assembled men had contacted. Where they had all been recruited. Some of these rainbows showed phones calling other phones that I had. If there were a large number of these it would mean I was looking at an organized group or a gang picked up wholesale. It didn't look like that was the case though. There were calls and messages sent within the group but fewer than I'd expect from an organized gang. Instead, there was a single glowing rainbow line near Ueno park. A number every single one of these phones had called.
I checked my phone. It was almost eight PM. Still early in the evening. This needs further study, but first I have another matter to deal with.
****
To contain a geomancer, put her on an upper story, and hang her up so she doesn't contact the ground. For an astromancer, put her underground, deprive her of timepiece, orientation and the battery she'll be using to contain the energy she pulls down from distant interstellar sources.
Ichika is in a cell in the basement, trying not to look worried. She has a set of spell bracelets around her wrists and ankles which can be stuck together on a keyword, but is otherwise unrestrained. There's food set out, and she's eaten. Alice checked her out and found no major injuries from Manako's less than lethal rounds, but the giant bruise across her face seems to be bothering her.
"Sorry to keep you waiting." I step inside and close the door. She's sat slumped over the desk, dinner tray next to her and doesn't say anything as I step inside. She's been sat like that, according to the cameras and viewing mirror, for around an hour.
I walk closer. I've got a pretty good idea of what she's going to try but I'm not going to do the obvious in case she really has fainted or something. Still, just walking into it is silly. I make a series of gestures, summon a shadow maid and endow it with my sounds. It walks forward to her. "Are you all right?"
She turns and lunges with the knife, sweeping it through the shadow form at throat level. I snap my fingers and her limbs bind together. She tumbles onto the floor, cursing.
I walk over and step on the knife, toeing it out of her hands and kicking it across the room.
"I allowed that, as they say, as a demonstration of futility."
She eels and tries to bite me. Alice identified and capped two special teeth implanted into her mouth but she tries anyway. I step back from the lunge, letting her sprawl out, then walk around and pro her with a toe "That's enough. I just want to talk."
"I won't tell you a damn thing. You know I'm an undercover Compliance officer, you have no right too--" She quiets down as I put a hand to the back of her neck, gripping her like she gripped me, but with more strength. Enough to make her aware that if I wanted to I could break her spine.
"It's always lame when the loser spits out weak threats like this, don't you think?" I've done it a couple of times myself. Glad I grew out of that. "It's better to greet life honestly."
She stills, and I pick her up and dump her in the armchair, then sit opposite. "I'm going to release the locks now. That was your one chance. If you come at me again I'll break your arms." I snap my fingers and the locks release. She sits there for a moment, breathing hard and rubbing her neck. She's silent, finally, so I continue. "I'm not going to interrogate you. I already know what I need to know. Compliance is backing this operation. If I want to oppose it I'd need to do it through legal channels." Which is of course, about the same as doing nothing.
She seems to come to a decision. "If you disclose our involvement then we'll discredit you. Your only chance is to surrender."
"You didn't make that seem like much of an option before."
"I can't promise anything." She rubs her neck again. "But, you're hard to kill, we can be merciful."
"I agree."
"Give me back my cuffs, I can arrest you and--" I look at her. She wilts visibly. "What do you want me to do?"
"Take my message to whoever your masters are. We'll arrange a nice little agreement with lawyers. I'll agree to anything up to house and school arrest for the duration."
"You'd agree to that?"
"Of course. I know I can't win a fight with Compliance."
She looks at me and suddenly laughs, her persona reengaging like a mechanism. "You're trying to catch that boy's attention aren't you? You're expecting Aratani to ride to the rescue?"
No, I simply know how to unbind the kind of restraints that Compliance uses to enforce such agreements. "The door's unlocked. I'm sure you can make your own way from here." I watch her leave. She walks slowly, maintaining her dignity. After she's out the door I follow her up. Tanigawa steps out of the side passage with a tablet. The quad-copter view on the screen shows my driveway. Ichika is a tiny figure, running now she's out of the house.
"Is it really safe to let her go?" She asks. "She'll know where you're based."
I chuckle. "If they want to come at me here, let them." I stretch. "Compliance is certainly involved in this operation, but I'm pretty sure it's a limited group. I wonder if they're in the process of cutting it loose even. They should have had a proper death squad waiting for us in Yokohama. The fact they didn't significantly reinforce the team they use to lift schoolgirls off the street suggests that they don't want to commit too much. Which makes sense. The crimes they're committing are disgusting enough that even the average Compliance head breaker would baulk."
"Not a fan of the police?"
"Honestly, no." I shrug. "Keep on her. See who she contacts. With any luck we can stand them off for a couple of days while they arrange a really devilish ambush."
"And what are you going to do in that time?"
"Following up a lead."
****
There are various ways I can gather intelligence about this. Criminal contacts. Paying the local homeless off. Drone observation. I am thinking of trajectories and battery life when it occurs to me that I could save myself a lot of time and effort by just calling the rainbow number. If a lot of otherwise unrelated people are calling it then chances are it's something that wants new people in it. It's not as if I have to worry about them tracing me.
The phone rings twice.
"What brings you to us?"
Urgh, this sounds like it might be a ritualistic response. I should have grabbed one of the guys to interrogate as well. Then again he probably wouldn't have been able to tell me much after the frog throat was at him.
"A friend who gave me the number."
A pause. I feel a surge of unfamiliar magic reaching out at me through my phone line. What the hell? I throw out an arm and grab the incoming spell within my house's wards. It hangs before me, snapping. A blind worm of black light and endless length, made solid in the silver mesh of the wards. Mental jaws snap and click at me, desiring something. I'm not a good enough mentalist to tell what it is but its mouth is narrow. Chances are it eats only one small slice of emotion. Hard to say exactly what it wants but it's probably hostile intent. I send it back unfed.
A pause. "The next date is tonight. Ten PM." He gives an address near Ueno park. "The password is 'Studied Onyx'. Cover is 5000 yen. Dress up pretty."
Click.
Dress pretty is easy. However, this is a place where bad guys are. Time to put on a disguise.
****
The nagging concern I have is a detail. That is that none of the mooks I've encountered so far is a woman. That's not that unusual in the Tokyo underworld of course, Van seems like he's probably a misogynist, so it wouldn't be that unusual for him to not recruit non-supernatural women to do his fighting for him.
On the other hand however, I can't really afford to risk it being some kind of gentleman's club or strip club or some other place that has some kind of rule about unaccompanied women. Also, because I'm tall and muscular and so on, I can do a pretty good line on masculine disguise.
I send a note to Junya: <<Hey. I need some help making a disguise.>>
<<Oh? And why does that need me?>>
<<I want to disguise myself.>>
<<And you need me for that why?>>
<<As a guy.>>
<<Did you decide that you're going to stop breathing?>>
<<Are you going to help or not?>>
<<Come to my shop.>>
I take the train across to Junya's shop. Usually the train calms me down, but I'm still annoyed by the time I get there. Junya is the one guy in my life who I can usually rely on to help me out with things, but there's something barbed about him. He'll give you his help, and there won't be any strings, but it'll be annoying.
I find him in the back of his shop with several suits in what I can recognize as my size. It's a little chilly today and the back room is nice, scented with incense, each flame and bulb carefully protected for the moths that flitter around the small garden behind. He looks me over. "So, you're really going to disguise yourself as a man?" He looks me over. "Two major questions remain about this outfit."
"I'm going to use a binder and illusion magic. It's no problem." I am colouring
"And here I was thinking you'd try some even more creative and dangerous use for a bag of holding." He moves to measure me again, a ritual of his I think. Perhaps even part of his magic. "Why don't you get the under parts on so I can actually cut it right?" He hands me a white dress shirt and some trousers.
"You already have an outfit in mind? I didn't know you thought about me that way."
"Your look isn't so individual as to require much creativity" He brushes my cheek. "Mostly it's just disguising the obsessions of your form."
I blush and fume a little, then turn away and step into the changing room to hide and put on my binder. "They're on you as well. They tried to hit Manako and I today. I'm assuming they'll try for you later."
"If they come for me in Ginza they're in for a great surprise," Junya says. "The lining, I assume tactical."
"Of course." I step out bound down and in the shirt, Junya looks me over an then begins to pin the suit up around me. Measurements made, I redress and sit with a cup of hot tea Junya's apprentice Luce brings me. It doesn't take long for Junya to construct a suit within this shop, and very shortly I am getting dressed: Black trousers with subtle midnight blue vine's embroidered on them, a heavy leather belt with a chrysanthemum buckle, and a gun metal grey waistcoat with elaborate, flower style pankou buttons. The sleeves are rolled up and Junya has traced the lines of new tattoos across my skin, scoring me very slightly. "You'll need black nail polish, and to do something with your hair."
"I look very femme." The binder keeps me tight, and there's no difficulty in blacking the tattoos for extra oxygen.
He catches my chin, perhaps to keep me still. "There is only so much fashion can do after you choose to look like that." He pulls a stitch tight and the illusion closes around my body. He makes minor adjustments. "Should I ask where you're going?"
"A club. Somewhere the goons that tried to lift me today congregated. Want to come?"
"Alas, a new predator stalks Ginza and that requires my attention." He makes a final line on my skin and steps back to examine the effect. "You are, as ever, more suitable for a girlish skirt, but this will serve."
"I'll take that under advisement." I happen to agree with him but there's no way I'm going to say it. The outfit looks good. Even if it is the kind of thing where you have to punch the shit out of a guy who mentions anything about it, even if it's a compliment.
Hair and makeup comes next, done in Junya's bathroom. My hair has grown out too long for a normal wig, but hair is dead, and it doesn't matter to much if it gets cut, so I have a shower cap style bag of holding that projects my hair out into another space, and then a glamor of normal boy hair on top of that.
The whole outfit looks great. I'm a little worried it's too expensive for the place I'm going. Those guys were low rent thugs, but given the cover charge it can't be totally without rich people.
Junya waits outside as I step from the shop. Smoke rises from a cigarette in his hands, waving away in a way that doesn't match the direction of the wind. I stand beside him, looking up at the light washed clouds above.
"It's the anniversary of me leaving for Italy next week." Junya says. "I'm going to my family's grave."
"Should I come?"
He looks at me and sighs. "No, just send a gift like you always do."
"Alright." I can't think of what else to say. "Goodbye."
****
I take the train across Tokyo. The area around Ueno park is a mass of narrow shopping arcades and market streets. At this hour, most things are shut down, stalls closed and zipped up, shops empty. There are a few people going about their business and some homeless from the park camps still out scavenging or panhandling. I drop them some bills in passing. Turning down an alley, I see a lit door ahead. Several men stand outside, cheap suits, ready for rowdy customers or a police raid.
"What's the password?"
"Studied Onyx."
"Alright, go down. Pay your cover at the booth."
I walk down a set of steps, through a kitchen and then to an incongruous old-style ticket booth behind a glass thing. A woman in the booth with elaborate hair takes my money and gives me a ticket. "There are lockers to leave your coat in through the door." There's something off about her voice, but I can't place it.
The door was not there when I looked a moment ago. I cover one eye when I step through it and watch space distort. Whatever this space is, it isn't entirely here. Soft music and the wave sound of dozens of conversations drifts up to me from below. Golden light shines up on the ceiling. I put my coat in a locker and walk down the steps to the landing, then pause, gazing down at the paradise beneath, and realize I've made a bad mistake.
There is a reason I shouldn't be here.
Demons. Fae. Spirits. Most of these beings exist in invisible realms far beyond ours. But not all. Even beyond once-human creatures such as vampires, there are substantial populations of physically incarnated non-humans of various kinds. Most live in the countryside, away from the city, but many come to the city.
For many years, the Mage Association and the Exorcists have attempted to genocide the non-human population to keep the Secret, to prevent them from trading with humans, or simply to stop the rampages of those who are malign. Sometimes with the cooperation of world governments, sometimes in secret from them. The First World War saw the last large scale conflict between the two, and the plague the Incarnated created in the aftermath slew perhaps a hundred million humans. It was that show of strength which led the conflict to fall to a lower eb.
There has never been a formal peace between humans and the incarnated, but after the Spanish flu, local peace became more possible. Increasing concerns about the Secret from the mage side, a desire to be left alone by the Yokai. Since then it's been regional flare ups. The wars in Indo-China and the Gulf, the numerous counter insurgencies in South America, even the Cultural Revolution were used by the Mage Trust or the Exorcists as cover to strike at various incarnated enclaves. Each was followed by retaliation in turn by incarnated guerrillas, and an eventual cooling of tensions.
I was wondering why a night spot that could charge that much would be so far away from the centres of the city's nightlife. Now it's obvious. They don't want that kind of attention.
This is still not a place that a magi should walk. Not even a witch. As much as I may hate the association, I am still of it. As much as I may loath what was done to the incarnated, the crime lingers. A cloak around the shoulder of every mage.
The space is huge, a great arena of balconies and boxes. Some have card tables. On one, several men in business suits play what looks like high stakes poker with a pair of tanuki. On another, another group of men are being plied with food and drink and bodies clad in scanty silk by a number of human and fox women. There is roulette, and black jack, and mahjong, and other games. Cock fighting, poker, even chess is being bet on.
And at the centre, amidst the lesser games and the distractions, an arena.
Two combatants face off. One is a woman, incredibly well-muscled and wearing a wrestling mask and little else. The other, an even more massive pig demon. As I watch, the woman darts in, grabs the demon and despite his bulk, lifts him into a suplex and slams him down on the mat. The crowd roars in approval as the bout turns into a rapid floor fight.
Should I turn around and leave? No, that'll be too suspicious. Nobody just pays a cover and leaves. I am committed now, and I should push myself forward. I walk to the bar and sit down to order something to drink. Have a good time, relax.
The barmaid is a kitsune woman with several tales, her kimono is the abbreviated, cosplay kind. She looks me over, then stands me a glass of sweet champagne. A favourite. I sip at it. "Is there an occasion?"
"A new guest is always an occasion." The fox smiles at me. Her voice is odd, as the voice of a fox should be. She has thick hair, and fox ears coming out the top, wild and prickly. "It is my talent to know exactly what each guest wishes to drink."
"Ah." I nod, take a long sip. It's good. I wonder, what else can she tell about me?
"You don't seem like you knew what you were getting into coming here."
"I got the number from an acquaintance of mine. They said it was a good time and I should check it out. I didn't expect this though."
She laughs. "No, most first timers don't. Some of them run. That can be troublesome. It would be bad if people blabbed about us. We need to keep this place exclusive after all."
"I imagine the cover helps with that."
She laughs, an evil foxy sound, then pats my hand. "The really smart ones don't run. They sit down at the bar and have a drink and hope that they can hide themselves from us."
In the bar mirror I can see that behind me, a small phalanx of Oni have appeared. They didn't come up, they were there after having been previously not there. There's eight of them, hulking evil looking ogre men and tall horned women. All are armed, large clubs and swords. A woman with nine fox tails and an undersized silk robe stands behind them.
I assess my options. This is a bounded space. No teleporting out. I am very outnumbered and the bar maid has a tight grip on my arms.
This is really bad.
"I'm not what you think I am."
"I'm just a barmaid. You can explain what you are to my boss."
Should I lunge at them? No. I'm not going to make it up those stairs. Not against nine of them at once.
They escort me through a side door, where another Oni is waiting. He's even taller than the ones around me, red skinned and single eyed, almost naked and built like a sumo wrestler. Behind him is a tall, rabbit eared woman with great legs, light pink hair and skin as black as the void between the stars. I recognize a dark sider moon rabbit from Laplace's description. She's wearing a dark outfit of leather and cloth, a long sleeved leotard thing with a sort of pretend skirt, that's actually a shade or two lighter than she is.The fox nods to them and then withdraws. Good.
I wonder how much of this was a trap. Was it just Van doing his business in a place magi fear to tread, or did he expect me to sooner or later get his hands on his minions phones and come in here? Into a trap. I'm going to have to make the next time I kill him particularly painful.
"So, thought you could just walk into my club for a night out huh? Pretty bold of you." He approaches, looking me over.
"I'm not Compliance. I'm trying to--" I stop talking as he drives his fist into my stomach. Two of the Oni grab me and hold me up. It's a hard blow, even if I've taken harder I wince and cough and am glad of the hard wearing nature of male clothing. I hope the buttons didn't get broken.
"You're still a mage though. A mage of the Trust. I can smell it on you." He sniffs, then blinks. "What is wrong with your soul?"
"That's not really the issue here."
"Guess not." He steps back. "The issue is, why should I let you live?"
I blurt out an explanation. It's half true, half bluff. "A man who works for Compliance is operating in your club. He's abducting your customers and using them in a mage war." I don't know Van is abducting them. He could simply be paying them. But it'll sound better if I imply slavery and force.
"That sucks. Thanks for telling me." He looks at me. "But I don't really need to leave you alive to stop that."
I consider my next response. The Oni are holding me, and he's not hitting me. Some guys do need to psyche themselves up to murdering something but Oni lords are not, generally, that. "I can pay for my life." I say, then yank power from the churning mass of mana pouring through the arena's geomancy and kick out both ways. The Oni on my right gasps as I break his knee.The one on the other side just goes over. The one behind grabs me and I headbutt her, hard enough to make her let go. The tattoos on my wrist glow as I power up a design written there, and I emit force.
The Oni lord stands through it and it breaks around the moon rabbit like a stone breaking the surface of water.
"And, because you can't take down the third best muscle wizard in Tokyo and expect all of your guys to come out of it alive."
"That's impressive." The Oni Lord says. He grins, not showing teeth and I start to relax, "Provide us a little entertainment, and then we'll talk."
This is good. It means he definitely doesn't want to kill me. He might even be willing to sell me information afterwards. On the other hand he probably needs to show his people that he's taking a tough line on me. I'm going to take a beating. Or I could try to make a fight of it.
"She'll need different clothes, and a mask." The moon rabbit says. "We don't want her to look like a victim, and that's a nice suit. I almost couldn't tell."
"Whatever you wish, Descartes, it shall be so" The Oni Lord smiles at me. "Or of course, you can try to fight your way out, mage. If you think you can."
"No." I stretch. "I'm intrigued to fight a Darksider."
"Oh ho." Descartes smirks. "I thought I recognized your form. Tell me, who trained you? Was it Laplace?"
I consider that a moment. "Fight me and find out."
"Well then. Let us see just how well you've learned." Descartes snaps her fingers and several more fox girls with fewer tails pour in through the side door, a wave of silk and smiles. The Oni Lord seems to want to stay and watch but she glares at him and he leaves, rather reluctantly.
Soon I'm being stuffed into a skimpy wrestler outfit, shorts and a short top that's one part sports bra, one part halter top, by at least six fox girls. This is not too unpleasant. As not unpleasant as it is it doesn't stop me noticing they're cleaning my skin of its scoring, removing everything but my grid. They tug off my own mask and bring in a black fox mask, then offer it to me. "This is what you want yes?" Descartes says.
"It fits well." I don't like how much the Incarnated can tell about me just by looking.
"Then we shall meet in the ring."
And so, a few minutes later I'm walking down towards the ring, looking up at the lights. I can't see the crowd except as shadows. As I step inside, the cage comes down around us, four sections of thin but very solid meshed steel attached to a fifth at the top, locking securely around the rim. The floor is round, stark white and shadow black, a yin-yang symbol.
I can't help myself, I raise my arms for them. The gesture is greeted by a roar of approbation. Even if I can't really feel good about them hating me for my actual privilege, it still warms me up inside.
Descartes is standing across the ring from me. She's added tall thigh boots to her outfit and waits with arms crossed. Her face is covered in a white mask that ends just above her lips and which looks too predatory to be a rabbit. We stand across from one another and I extend a glove, making sure my expression is sufficiently mocking under the mask. If I'm going to be the villain, I might as well lay the role.
I'm thinking, already, just how I'm going to beat her. She's not carrying a hammer, but the armored thigh boots suggest she probably uses something like the style that Laplace does. The moon rabbit style is very strike based, designed, so Laplace once told me, to take down moon beasts and other moon rabbits in ritual combat where no touch of the hands is allowed.
I'm not sure I believe that, but it's not as if mages can land on the moon what with the Moon Siren crisis. Assuming she is using that style then the best thing to do will be to power through and grapple. If I can ride her blows and get inside her stance.
The noise of the crowd raises again, then becomes cheering as Deserates ignores it. I drop my arm, fall into my stance. I'm going to lunge forward and--
Descartes pivots up into a side kick. The blow hits hard enough to shatter my ward and crack my ribs beneath. I feel myself gasp, my rush aborted as the sheer strength of the strike lifts me off the mat. I recoil a couple of steps before managing to get back into my stance.
How did she even know my distance?
The ring. She's fought here before, and she knows the distances across those black and white patterns. I take a deep breath, reset my stance, and then let mana flow into my tattoos fully. The tattoos, usually all but invisible on my skin, and faint even when I powered them for my disguise, pop out into sharp relief, geometries sketching across my body flowing black with mana. Smoke rises in some places as I unlock control restrictions. This place is full of mana. Pure mana flowing through it to centre right here. It flows into my tattoos like water into a cistern, pouring through every part of my body.
The pain in my side lessens as I bring my grid up to full military power. Lacking in reagents, components and even my gloves there's limits to what I can actually do with all this power.
Under her mask, I see Descartes smile, and then I launch myself at her in a wave of strikes.
I need to break her guard and get through to grab her but she won't let me. She gives ground slowly, alternating kicks, punishing me as I attempt to power through. Her long legs give her a lot of reach. In return I use what I've got, which is pure power. Energy to spare. I charge into her, blocking with all the force I've got, knocking blows away, kicking and punching my way through her blows, riding them when I can't get an arm or a leg in the way before they land. I have no option to be clever. I've just got to take her head on.
I catch a kick on a raised arm, then give a step and catch a second on my foot, then drive in again, arms open for the grab.
Descartes' hands snap up, impossibly fast, and walk a combination across the top part of me. I feel the mask driven back into my face, hard enough to cut, and fall on my face. Blood spots the ring but I push off and roll up onto my feet.
"Pathetic." The Moon Rabbit says. "Even with all the power of the geomancy in this arena, without your reagents, what are you?" She sniffs. "Nothing but an amateur."
"Made you use your hands though."
She glares, steps forward to deliver the finishing strike.
I could just let her beat me down. If I stand here the next blow will finish it. This is a ridiculous, rigged fight, done without armor, without any of the tricks that I'd usually use to make it more equal. I won't be hurt too bad. The only thing that's really on the line here is my pride.
I kick off the ring, hand standing into her and driving her back with a double kick. Her hands shootout to block one blow but I plant my other foot in her mask. There's a flash and she slides backwards from the blow, whatever ward there is in the mask absorbing the impact. I spin to my feet, and once again drop into my stance.
She glares, then raises her fists and comes in again. Laplace warned me once that darksiders were powerful but I had no idea it was like this. I should have challenged the Oni Lord instead. Damn. Why didn't I think of that?
I no longer seek to block every blow but turn with them, dictating where I'm hit. Her blows slam into me, each one leaving a bruise, some breaking skin. Blood flows down my body. She comes in, perhaps a little overconfident. I speak the word, turn my stance, then pivot up into a kick aimed straight at her gut. Mana lashes through me, forming through the wounds across my body, flowing into the tattoos on my leg and into my foot, then surging out ahead of my foot in a lance of force. Descartes gasps, setting herself in an instant but is still knocked back by the strike. I flip over, spinning down a second kick, smashing her guard aside and sending her flying back into the wall of the cage, the metal bends under the impact.
For a moment I think I've got her. I can just keep her at range and lash her down.
And then she just averts out of the strike. One second she's across the arena, and then she's right on top of me.
No fair! You took my teleporter off me!
She's in my face, her knee driving into my stomach. I feel my breath go as her hands go around me. "Good fight." She whispers in my ear.
I manage a wild blow that sends her backwards, the mask knocked from her face.
And then I fall back into darkness.
****
I wake up to laughter, and a lack of pain. I'm clad in a long blue silk robe, and my wounds appear to be healed, at least the one on my face is. I gently examine my ribs and find them okay.
I'm not restrained, which is good. I'm dressed in my suit again, which is also, quite frankly, good. The Oni Lord is reclining opposite, while Descartes sits in one corner, with a tall parfait, a glass of iced coffee and a PS Vita.The Oni lord raises a beer and drinks some. "Cheers. Good show. Good fight. You really leaned into it."
"Thanks." I roll up onto my knees. "I'd like to fight you again sometime Descartes-san."
"I'd like that too." Descartes pauses her game and looks up at me.
"Next time I'll have all my tools."
"I'd like to see that." She grins. A fox girl maid brings me a large glass of champagne and a line of coke. Full society girl special. I take the booze and ignore the drugs for now. "We made a ton of money off of you." The Oni Lord says. "That buys you a little chat."
"Well, I'm glad I was able to help you then." I sip the champagne and try not to let my voice get too acid. "So what happens now?"
"Well, you wanted to parley." The Oni Lord says, ignoring my tone. "So let's parley. You say there's an agent of Compliance here. Tell us more about it."
"Well, I think he's operating here cause he hoped I'd track him and then you'd kill me." I tell him about Van, the frog throats, the men I fought. He nods along.
"I know of him. You can't miss the thing on his throat. Bad business to put something like that on yourself."
"I don't disagree. What do you know about him?"
" He's a semi-regular. Comes here to drink and watch the game and get with the girls. He's popular among the human clients, but most of us avoid him for obvious reasons. I don't know much about him otherwise."
"Would you be willing to help me spy on him? Alert me when he leaves and launch a drone to track him?"
He looks me over. "Maybe, but that's a lot more than simply fighting in my arena would be worth, what can you offer me in return?"
I consider for a moment then reach into my bag, pull out a stack of 10000 yen notes and put them down in front of him. I have a particular holding area full of this stuff. I pull out one after another until I start to feel my blessing twang against injuries that actually haven't quite healed. "How about this much?"
The yokai considers, rubbing his chin, then grins. "Sure." He sits forward. "There is one thing I know about him. You see, he's spendthrift, and he often gambles badly." He grins. "So I just so happen to have his address."
****
Where would you think a man like Van lives? Maybe a small apartment where the neigbours whisper about them and there's garbage on the balcony. Or maybe an old creepy house out in the suburbs. Or with a rich mistress who's totally under his control.
It's a brand new house way out in Ota. A quiet three story convenient to the JR, perfectly cared for. It looks like the place a family would live, but there's no family in evidence. There's just Van, and a woman who looks like a housekeeper of some kind, and a security detail of four guys, in the neighbouring house. I can't spot any weapons, but they're very likely armed.
I don't approach close. I don't want him yet, but I note down the address. I'm sure I can find some use for this frog throat. Indeed, it will make the whole plan all the more reliable.
