Wearing the Cape 5: Ronin Games (22 page)

I started laughing, couldn’t stop.

“Can I get up now?” Jacky asked from my lap. When I let go of her hands she pulled herself up before I could help, turned her head side to side. “
That’s
never going to get old.”

I stopped laughing. “Don’t you
dare
—” Biting off the rest, I took a breath. “Twice is a career limit.
Promise
me.”

My fish rubbed my cheek and I jumped, spun to look at the little golden koi. It ignored me to watch the oyabun. All of the fish were. When Jacky stood I did too, staying close behind her, and when she looked back at me her smile was evil and her fangs were out.

“Let me borrow your little knife?”

“Are you going to kill him?”

“If he’s stupid enough to get on his knees.”
 
She hefted Cutter. Her preternatural strength wasn’t close to mine but I’d seen her pick up a three hundred pound man and dangle him by his throat; she could do the job of swinging Cutter’s hundred pounds for at least one good executioner’s blow. “Stopping me?”

“No.” The skin of my face felt like ice, and she stopped balancing Cutter to search my eyes.

I understood. I
did
. He’d
cut her head off
. She could have died and not come back, or worse for her come back halfway. And it was the deal—a blow for a blow. How could I tell her that, as much as holding her severed head in my hands was going to contribute to today’s nightmare fuel, seeing her kill a man in cold blood was going to be so much worse?

Whatever she saw in my face, she nodded. “Okay.” Resting Cutter on her shoulder she turned to the others. The mob boss stood talking to his pet onmiyoji.

Then / we are ready! The / final trade!

The oyabun nodded agreement, stone-faced. The sorcerer stepped up beside his boss, one of the Six Leaf Tea packets in his hand. I wanted to laugh hysterically. They’d watched that horrible scene, the oyabun had felt Jacky’s head come off under his borrowed blade, and they’d
lost
; even if his man could do for him what Ozma had done for Jacky, the best they could hope for was a draw—which still meant a win for us. So,
why
?

He’s hoping Jacky can’t do it
. My trapped laugh became a strangled choke.
Or that I’ll stop her
.

His gamble was breathtaking—hoping that we weren’t as ruthless as he was, that we’d forfeit. Sure we’d killed two of his men, but that had been in a
fight
; we were killers, could we be murderers?

The man bowed to Jacky, with a smirk as he showed her how it was done, and knelt. Adjusting his position, he nodded to her. My palms ached where my nails bit into them.

“One moment.” Ozma held up her hand, actually managing to look apologetic.

Yes? / Yes? / Yes?

“I feel that I should inform my colleague—” She bowed to the onmiyoji. “The tea treatment may not be so effective for your employer. Our friend has supernatural healing powers which, on their own, have saved her before. The tea may have sped the process considerably, but for your employer…”

“It may not be enough.” The rail-thin man studied the packet in his hand, returned Ozma’s bow. “Thank you for your warning. The choice remains my oyabun’s.”

The mob boss grunted without looking up. “Get on with it.” But his shoulders relaxed minutely and I choked down my unthinking protest. He’d taken Ozma’s warning as a ploy to shake him, which meant he really didn’t think Jacky could do it.

But Jacky wouldn’t risk a forfeit. Maybe for herself, but not for Ozma and me. She wouldn’t risk it.

She was going to do it.

And I was going to watch, because she deserved that from me.

I stopped breathing, opened my hands. I wasn’t going to hurl. I wasn’t going to move again until it was over. Then… I’d keep it together until we were out of here, until everyone was safe. And I’d find someplace I could be alone to deal with it without putting it on Jacky.

Jacky’s mouth moved, and I could have heard her but I wasn’t listening to anything but the rush of my blood. And she swung.

Blood sprayed, the oyabun’s head rolled as his body slumped—and then it didn’t. I blinked, gasping, and for one moment thought he’d pulled a Detective Fisher
reset
. No. No, my memory told me what had happened; I’d anticipated the awful moment so strongly that I’d virtually hallucinated it but there was no severed and rolling head and slumping corpse. Jacky had drawn in, sliding on her back foot as she’d swing to shorten the reach of her swing, and Cutter had kissed the yakuza boss’s neck with only the barest flick of blood to leave a long red cut right over the spot where Jacky would normally make her bite.

It barely bled, a thin red line to show where she had made her mark instead of a kill.

Done! / Done! / Done! / Done! /Done! / Done! / Done! / Done! / Done! / Done!
The fish danced an ecstatic gavotte.

My hands shook. I shook. Jacky had
forfeited
? Why?

You / have / won!
Our three fish gleefully announced. Ozma burst out in a beautiful, musical laugh.

She shook her head, laughing at Jacky and an increasingly red-faced oyabun.

“That is not possible!” All of his stone-faced stoicism had vanished. “I delivered the greatest blow! This gaijin could not do it! She barely even scratched me!” He swiped at his neck.

The fish were hardly insulted, and didn’t stop dancing.
Yes! / Yes! / Yes! / All trades / same!

Ozma’s laugh tapered off, but only because she considered excessive laughter improper. I had to look as confused as Jacky and the rest. Even Shell wasn’t talking.

She knows! / She knows! / She knows!

Jacky handed me Cutter, reached out with supernatural speed to grab her fish.
Everybody
froze.

“No more games,” she told it. “Or I’m going to see if you taste like tuna.”

Her fish laughed at her.

The gifts! / The oaths! / The blows! / The victor in / each the more / generous / giver!

Wait, what
— Oh.
I
started laughing. It wasn’t fair to Jacky—I could see in her face that she’d risked everything to draw a tie, both of them surviving their traded blows, and she had
no
idea.

“Ja—Artemis, the
sorcerer
said it.”

“Said
what
?”

“He said ‘Your
generosity
has defeated me.’” Ozma had given most generously. Kitsune had required an oath he could wait forever to ask me to keep and I’d done the same. The oyabun had tried to take Jacky’s life and she had generously spared his.

Yes! / Yes! / Yes! And so / you are / free! The others / and I have / much to do! / Goodbye!

“What—wait!” But all of our companion fish flared, blinding. I blinked desperately. “Wait! We need—”

We stood in a smoking crater surrounded by the steel and concrete towers of Kabukicho.

We were our magical-girl in black Japanese selves again.

We didn’t have Kitsune.

“YOU ARE ALL UNDER ARREST!”

And we were surrounded.

I’ve been arrested a couple of times. Neither time involved my “resisting arrest” even though one of those times had been a dangerous mistake. Why not? Because when you’re a breakthrough capable of doing significant collateral damage—forget about potentially fatal harm to the proper authorities attempting to arrest you—then you resist the authorities only if it looks like they’re trying to kill you and have a good chance of doing it.

Astra, 21st Annual Metrocon, Police Relations Presentation.

It was
nighttime
, and I’d deal with that later; I couldn’t see all of them behind the spotlights, but the uniforms I could see told me we were looking at capes from the Eight Excellent Protectors and their male counterparts, the Nine Accomplished Heroes. Overkill, much?

But I’d been ready for this all day. “Kimiko, can you manage one transformation?” Ozma nodded. “Break away, now.”

“DO NOT MOVE!”

Ozma vanished as Jacky scooped Shell up, and I saw a flash of emerald-green appear around her furry neck before Jacky disappeared into mist with her, whisking them all away in a rush of unbottled wind.

“DO NOT MOVE!”

“Cutter? How hard can you grip something?”

“Let me bite, girl, and I won’t let go.”

“Good. Stay
here
.” I drew and thrust him into the exposed rock at the bottom of the blast crater in one smooth motion, driving him in to just below his hilt. The two-handed move brought me to my knees and I stayed there, clasping my hands behind my head.

I hoped they’d appreciate my showing initiative.

Blacklock sells its line of heavy-duty superhuman restraints in Japan, too, and two obvious heavy lifters dropped out of the night and the spotlight glare to do me up with a very familiar rig before anybody else got close. I knew I should watch their moves, guestimate what they could do in case I had a chance to actually fight them later, but I didn’t much care. They’d be too professional for that, and I was just done.

Why fight? Whatever cell they put me in, I was going to exit through a metaphysical trapdoor soon enough anyway, leaving nothing but a mystery behind.

How do you restrain someone who can punch a hole in a tank? Material strength is only half the secret; Blacklock wrist-cuffs are narrow titanium bands connected by even stronger cables, they’re not padded
anywhere
, and the shackles have an inside edge on them. Cuffing my wrists behind my back, the two securing me ran a narrow cable from the cuffs up and around my neck, and then attached ankle-cuffs of the same design with their short cable connected to my wrist-cuffs.

That locked me into a kneeling position, hands behind my back, and if I tried to straighten my arms or legs I’d garrote myself on the neck cable before I broke the shackles. If I tried to break the cables joining my wrists I’d dislocate or disarticulate them before the cables broke. What was to keep me from flying away? After they secured the shackles they lifted me out of the crater and onto a heavy truck with an iron box on a concrete bed, attaching my ankle and neck cables to its locking clamp; sure I could lift the truck—but by my neck? I’d crush my windpipe. More narrow neck-cables locking me to the frame of the box ensured that pulling side-to-side would have pretty much the same result.

(Yes that left me inhumanely immobilized, but with superhumans you had to make allowances. I’d been on the other side of this drill before.)

After locking me in tight, they removed my earbugs and shades, ran security wands over me to find any other gadgets, and closed me up in the dark.
Let the psychological warfare begin
. The heavy truck lurched smoothly into motion and I laughed, hoping I confused or scared whoever was listening.

Because I’d lost. Kitsune was trapped in whatever weird little extrareality pocket we’d just played our games in, and now we didn’t even have a chance of going back to ask the game-playing fish if we could borrow the sneaky fox for a moment—or even play a second game for him. So sooner or later, I was going to go to sleep and fall down the rabbit hole.

Would I ever make it home?

But that wasn’t my problem now;
now
my problem was making sure that Defensenet didn’t figure out who I was, because if I could just hold out until I pulled my disappearing act then none of this would blow back on Jacky or Ozma. They’d be able to get themselves home, and our little adventure wouldn’t wreck their careers. They’d be able to tell Mom and Dad what had happened to me.

And Japan could just suck it.

I took the opportunity of the quiet (the box was soundproofed) to review what I knew about my situation. It was illegal for Japanese citizens to not register breakthrough powers with their government, and since I wasn’t registered they could detain me indefinitely until they were sure I wasn’t a threat. Normally this meant testing and registering me
involuntarily
if they had to—but since they’d almost certainly checked our faces against their citizen database and
we didn’t exist
, they had to already know they couldn’t even do that. I was Hikari, mystery-girl.

So they’d have to interrogate me until I gave them what they wanted. Japan was a civilized country, so “interrogate” didn’t mean “torture,” but there were lots of ways of breaking me down that didn’t involve extreme physical or mental trauma if they were patient and had the time.

I giggled in the dark. They didn’t.

Who knew the prospect of falling asleep and getting sucked into an extrareality realm would become the light at the end of my tunnel?

The truck eventually stopped for good, and then I felt the whole box lurch. Dismountable? I pictured them sliding my box into a wall of them. Another lurch and an echoing bang, shaking me hard as they locked the box in, confirmed my guess.

And then it was quiet again. I wondered when they’d come and talk. They’d secured me facing away from the openable wall of my box so I wouldn’t be able to see them until they moved around in front—but that would be hard for them to do with the small space and all the cables attached to me. Did the wall in front of me open too? How long would they give me to sit in the dark and work myself up before they began? If this was the movies, they’d start with blinding lights and disembodied voices. Something to look forward to, but if they decided to take it slow I might go to sleep before they started at all.

I was
so
going to hug that tree.

I was wondering why it was
nighttime
outside (did time go slower in the fish’s little extrareality pocket?) when I felt the tickle in my mind and almost garroted myself.

Crap crap crap crap crap
! They weren’t waiting to try and debrief or interrogate me, they’d brought in a freaking
telepath
! I started hyperventilating, forced slower breaths, counted them—a good start to build on.
Fight time
. I began singing in my head.
No backing down, no giving in—I pick my fights but I fight to win. Though the Reaper draws near me I cry, CONQUER OR DIE!

I love the classics.

Mindreading isn’t a common Psi-Type power—it’s seldom survival oriented and wannabe-breakthroughs pushing for psi powers usually wind up with telekinetic gifts or at best mental manipulation—but after last month’s Littleton adventure we’d all been deemed to know enough government secrets that the Department of Superhuman Affairs had sent experts to give us the counter-psi training course. That was on top of the exercises for detecting mental manipulation that Chakra had already taught me.

It had really seemed a government exercise in paranoia at the time, but I was desperately grateful for it now—because while mind-reading was illegal in most situations (a criminal invasion of privacy
at least
), it
was
legal if circumstances warranted. Very, very narrow circumstances, usually involving national security.

And apparently they thought I was a threat to national security.

But it’s not like on TV—a mind-reader can’t just rifle through your memories like a computer file index. What they really do is piggyback their mind’s-eye to yours (thus the “tickle” as the space in your head gets a little bigger). It’s like planting cameras in a room and then watching remotely as the room’s occupants put on a show; so the trick is to let them see and hear only what you want them to.

You can even fight back.

In training I’d chosen
Conquer or Die
by Have No Fear as my mental soundtrack of choice and karaoke’d to it until I could sing it in my dreams. The half-shouted lyrics, with the full throated scream on
CONQUER OR DIE!
, could give any mindreader a migraine if he listened too long, and I could keep it up for hours. If my mind started to drift, I could just keep replaying the awesome music video in my head.

And I could give my viewer more fun stuff to deal with; now was as good a time as any to take care of my own mental hygiene.

Because I’d killed a man today. I’d
had
to. Just like with Ripper and Volt in the Dark Anarchist’s “supervillain’s lair,” I’d been faced with someone too fragile to take a real hit from me—but who could have taken
me
given the least chance. My shoulder still throbbed and ached where Ki-Guy had brushed it, and I was willing to bet that if Doctor Beth took x-rays right now he’d find hundreds of tiny microfractures all through it.

Ki-Guy had seen me flying and swinging Cutter like a toothpick, he’d seen me survive one of his own ki-pushing attacks that probably would have exploded a normal person’s shoulder into bits of bone and red mist, and he’d
still
taunted me to come at him. Now I focused on that, replaying the scene in my head and hoping that the scarification art he’d flaunted had really meant what I’d thought it had; that he’d killed before and wanted me for another “notch on his gun.”

Because if he hadn’t…

Doctor Mendell had taught me the technique—replaying potentially traumatic memories while performing breathing exercises and calmly de-stressing them, deconstructing them and putting them into perspective. If I did the exercise soon enough after a bad situation, it helped detoxify it in my brain and lowered the chance of it becoming new nightmare-fuel.

And tonight for an added bonus, it couldn’t be fun for my “watcher” either.

The tickling went away before I’d cycled through three singing playbacks and detoxifying episodes, and I started giggling again. You wouldn’t think it was so bad for the poor baby, but “listening quietly” meant he had to suppress his own thoughts and focus solely on mine. He had to ride them with me, helpless passenger on my thrill-ride rollercoaster, and the only thing he’d learned was I’d killed somebody and knew an American hero-pop song.

With him gone, I finally gave in to the luxury of trying to figure out what the hell had happened in Golden Gai.
 
Not with the fish—that was just a bucket of crazy—but with our attack and ambush.

They’d known we were coming
, or had a pretty good idea that we would. Which meant that they’d been confident that we could track them somehow, or at least track Ozma. But they’d also been confident they could handle us, and we’d taken two of them even before I’d broken the onmiyoji’s fan. I’d captured the yakuza
boss
. And Kitsune might have been working with them, but he’d warned me of the boss’s power. If the fish hadn’t shown up, that by itself might have turned the ambush into a win.

When the moves don’t make sense, someone is playing a game you don’t understand
. So, whose moves stood out? Kitsune’s. The yakuza boss would have been insane to set all that up, and make himself part of it, if he hadn’t been totally confident that they could handle us. But the Three Remarkable Ronin had only been in one public fight so far, so we had to have been almost complete mysteries to them—unless someone
recognized
us. That would have been Kitsune.

But if Kitsune’s goal had just been for us to win and escape, he could have warned us before Ozma got snatched. Heck, he could have simply told his boss we were too tough to safely mess with and to leave us alone.

So he’d
wanted
the fight. Why?

If I hadn’t destroyed the fan, if the crazy fish had never known we were
there
, we might have won. We’d been
winning
. With the boss in my hands, we’d have made them take us back to Golden Gai…and we’d have taken Kitsune with us.

Could he be
that
sneaky? And if he was, then
why
?