Wearing the Cape 5: Ronin Games (24 page)

He smiled briefly. “But you seem to have acquired a rather interesting cat. That, at least, is somewhat traditional.”

He gave me a chance to interject, went on when I didn’t comment to confirm or deny anything.

“You are also trained to a level only generally observed in elite government and military superhumans. This strongly suggests that despite your apparent youth you are government operatives. And yet you are operating openly on Japanese soil in contravention of many Japanese and international laws. I cannot imagine why any foreign power would authorize such a mission and yet you have behaved like ‘superheroes,’ publicly fighting and doing good deeds here and in China.”

“Here?”

He cleared his throat. “Forgive me. I should have said that we know of your activities in Tenkawa. We do not know precisely how you exorcised the shinigami there, since spiritualistic magic does not appear to match your displayed skill sets. Your actions in Golden Gai have not been similarly beneficial, however.”

“Did anybody die?” Despite my resolve to stay cool the question came out in a trembling whisper. I’d been careful not to think about that since seeing the crater.

He regarded me thoughtfully, ventured a thin smile. “No, Hikari-san. Assets in Golden Gai reported your rather aggressive entry and Defensenet triggered an immediate civilian evacuation of the neighborhood. This station was already watching Golden Gai and I ordered the mobilization of the Eight and the Nine. We found the gate through which you departed, and when Raiju came back through the gate and died quite explosively, the surrounding establishments had been emptied.”

He clinically measured my relief. “However, your fight has destroyed much of Golden Gai, nearly one hundred small drinking and eating establishments in a historic quarter of the city.”

“I am sorry.”

“This is one of the reasons we do not tolerate adventurous and powerful ronin.” He closed the slim file, folded his hands. “Now, are you going to tell me where you are from and why you are here?”

“No. I am sorry.”

“I see. Can you at least confirm my belief that it has something to do with the Miyamoto family kitsune?”

“I—excuse me?”

“I sincerely hope that it does, and that you will be able to help us.”

He let me sit and stare at him. Not that I had a lot of choice, about the sitting or the staring. How did he
know
? And why wasn’t he following the script?

I licked my lips, focused on my breathing, tried to slow my racing heart. Nothing had changed. Not really.

When I didn’t break and start asking questions or explaining myself, he smiled. A tight, humorless smile—respect that I wasn’t falling into the silence-trap?

“So, Hikari-san. You have been trained to fight, to resist mental intrusion, and apparently to recognize conversational interrogation techniques. A most comprehensive package. I appreciate this. If you know the steps, you will know when I do not dance. Will you listen to what I have to say?”

“‘The enemy of mine enemy is my friend.’ The earliest known expression of this basic strategic concept is found in a 4
^th
Century BC treatise written in Sanskrit. The unspoken follow-up is also important: ‘Until we have dealt with our enemy.’ Atlas, who has never read much history, has his own take on it: ‘We take care of these guys first, and then we talk.’”

Professor Charles Gibbons,
Modern Experience and Superhuman Policing
.

You remain a complete mystery and one I do not have the time to solve
. If he’d really been our personal Inspector Javert since we’d gotten here, what did
that
mean? And why was he even here now if he wasn’t the one who’d caught me? Defensenet had been watching Golden Gai?

None of this made any sense, but I realized Agent Inoue was still waiting and quickly nodded. Settling himself, he folded his hands.

“Much like yourself, the Miyamoto kitsune is a mystery. We do not know his origin, and are certain only that he, or she, identifies himself with the fox-spirit of Miyamoto family legend. As a seven-tailed kitsune, he believes himself to be centuries old, a sort of family guardian, and he is very, very powerful.

“His known abilities are total physical transformation, at least into any living creature larger than a field mouse and smaller than a tiger. He also possesses some gift with illusions, and we believe he may be able to travel to extrareality kami realms although none appear to be his home. When he is human, which is most of the time, his preferred faces are those of past Miyamoto family members.”

It was time to cooperate a little. I nodded again and the agent’s smile grew more natural.

“Then you have met and recognized him. More than once?”

“I’ve seen two Miyamoto faces. He introduced himself by the family name the second time we spoke.”

“Interesting. Do you consider him an ally?”

I actually laughed. “More of a mystery and nuisance, really.”

“Good.” The agent nodded agreement. “He is not evil or amoral, and like many breakthroughs who self-identify as kami, he has a kami’s personality traits. He cannot lie, directly, and he will obsessively fulfill any debts, formally accepted or perceived. This includes collecting on debts for wrongs done to him or others he likes. He is not— He is honorable but not tame, if you understand my meaning.” He gave me a moment to think about that.

“Why does he work for you?”

Agent Inoue’s eyes sharpened. So did his smile.

“He can sometimes be convinced to work for the Japanese government, when the good of Japan means the good of Tenkawa.”

I shook my head. Maybe the pain was making it hard to think, but… “But the last members of the family are dead. There are no more Tenkawa Miyamotos.”

“True enough, but I have no doubt that, human passions being what they are, there are a few unknown family members still around. Likely in Tenkawa. In any case, he seems to consider the family and the village to be much the same thing.”

“Yes, he—” No, I wasn’t going to tell him about the secret shrine kept by Tenkawa’s children.

Agent Inoue waited for me to finish my thought, went on when I didn’t.

“Three weeks ago, he disappeared. That in itself isn’t unusual—indeed it is unusual for us to know where he is—but he disappeared in the middle of a mission vital to our security. He was attempting to infiltrate certain nationalist and criminal underworld groups to determine the whereabouts of a very dangerous Verne-Type breakthrough, a Chinese nationalist who we believe has been brought into Japan to carry out a terrorist attack for Beijing.”

“But— Japan isn’t militarily involved in China.”

“No. But we have been
materially
involved since the beginning of China’s current troubles. We have donated staggering amounts of humanitarian aid to the breakaway states, sent them tools and machines for rebuilding their own industries, sent them military arms to defend themselves. We leave the boots on the ground to America and the rest of the League, but we have done everything possible to help them develop. Even if not all of our leaders think it wise, it is a debt.”

“And Heroes Without Borders.”

“Yes, Hikari-san. And that. Although you are the first ‘Japanese nationals’ to perform a mission there.” His smile widened and his eyes even twinkled a little, like he was aware of the irony. “In any case, he believed he was close to learning his target’s location and how he was getting his materials. His last call was made from Kabukicho.”

My breath hitched, flashing pain into my shoulder. “The gates.”

“Yes. We saw one gate yesterday. And you came out of it. Our kitsune is not
now
in Kabukicho, but since you went from Tenkawa to Kabukicho I can only hope that you yourself came here seeking him. Can you tell us where he is?”

I was sure my heart actually skipped a beat before it started racing.
This
was it, the reason for our friendly talk, and my breath stuttered. Did I actually have
leverage
here?

“You can’t use the gate?” I asked weakly.

“It appears to be closed. It may have even moved.”

Maybe. Doors, plural, the crazy fish had said. What else had they said? I really hadn’t thought through the whole bizarre experience yet; there was too much I wanted to forget about it.
Jacky’s head, rolling on the ground
. I blinked the memory away.

Your secret agent is trapped in the weird home of a mad little god
. Would it help at all for me to tell him that?

At least now I understood—maybe—why Kitsune had played his game; he’d wanted us to
extract
him. For some reason he’d been stuck with the yakuza group he’d infiltrated. Because of the boss’s power? He couldn’t get away to complete his mission, so he’d sucked us into a fight that had had a chance of breaking him loose. And we’d failed.

But, what had the fish said? We could win the use of its doors? I swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. Agent Inoue had just told me that kami couldn’t lie, at least directly. We’d certainly won the game, and the “use of its doors” implied a lot more than just permission to leave.

Defensenet
couldn’t get in—they didn’t have
permission
—but I was trying to breathe again.

Ozma and Jacky couldn’t find me here, and last night I’d been imagining them getting out of Japan, going home and trying to use whatever leverage Blackstone could bring to bear to spring me—if the Japanese ever admitted they had me.

But that wouldn’t be their first priority, would it?

They’d still want to get to Kitsune, to solve my little problem. Maybe they’d even try and enlist him to find and help spring me if he wound up seriously owing them. Would Ozma and Jacky remember what the fish had said—that we had won the right to use those “doors?” If they thought of it would they try and go back on their own?

Not just yes, but hell yes.

Stupid, stupid, stupid
. And of course they’d thought of it. Maybe not Jacky, but Ozma? She’d been the head of state of the land of trick questions and she’d negotiated like a pro yesterday; there was
no way
she’d miss it.

They weren’t just going to go home. They were going to go back after Kitsune and I couldn’t do a thing to stop them.

I’d closed my eyes to think and when I opened them Agent Inoue was still there, watching me with mildly curiosity. I swallowed again, licked my lips. “I—we—may be able to take you to—to Kitsune.”

He nodded. “That is very good, Hikari-san. We are trying to keep somebody very dangerous and very angry from turning Tokyo into an ashtray. And what do you require in return?”

Clamping down on the hysterical giggle that tried to climb out of my throat, I managed to answer with a voice that was only shook a little. “I’ve got a list?”

My immediate release was non-negotiable, along with a full amnesty for all of us. Defensenet would return my communications gear, but before I’d use it they had to provide assurances that they would let the mystery of the Three Remarkable Ronin go and not seek to prosecute us for any of our activities since arriving in Japan.

I expected Agent Inoue to tell me he couldn’t do that, or at least to say he needed to talk to his superiors, but he agreed immediately and without conditions. Either he was a lot higher up Defensenet’s command-chain than I’d imagined, or they were in an even more desperate hurry than I was.

They never even brought the somnolence cap; at the conclusion of our conversation the screen blanked and recessed further into the wall, sliding open to become a door. Two armored guards waited for me in the hall, but they didn’t bring shackles—instead they just escorted me to an elevator that took us to an infirmary level. There the medical staff (all dressed like something out of sci-fi anime) stripped me out of my jumpsuit to give me a full medical exam while x-raying and scanning my shoulder. Doctor Arai, a no-nonsense lady nearly as petite as I was, helped me get dressed before showing me the results.

“Your injury matches that of four victims we have in our superhuman-crimes data base, Hikari-san.” She showed me images of my shoulder. “Each of the victims experienced crushing damage to bone and muscle, with no apparent source of the trauma. The lethal force appears to have erupted from inside their bodies.”

I watched the cycling images in queasy fascination. I’d been right about the micro-fracturing and the soft-tissue damage; the black areas in the colored scans showed where tissue in my left deltoid and trapezius muscles had simply burst on a cellular level, shredded by exploding ki-force. Part of me was
dead
.

“Ki-use,” she continued, “
chi
-use in China, is a fairly standard breakthrough power for martial artists although this level of force is unusual. Ki attacks carry their own individual and unique signatures, and since yours matches the others in signature if not degree, we are now able to close four superhuman murder cases.”

“Um, you’re welcome?”

She smiled where someone else might have laughed. “The investigators may thank you later, Hikari-san. Since you are the first known surviving victim, you are my concern now.”

That didn’t sound too good. “What do we need to do?”

Her look pinned me to the examination table. “We need to operate. Immediately. The necrotic tissue must be excised thoroughly, before it poisons your system. It is already damaging tissue surrounding it.”

“But I heal—”

“Do you wish us to immobilize your shoulder and test whether or not your body can fight off systemic infection while it purges the necrotic tissue? The muscles in your shoulder are dying, Hikari-san. Perhaps too fast for even you to heal.” She looked abstracted for a moment, shook her head. “It would be good for science, but not for you.”

I nodded weakly,
really
wishing I could introduce her to Dr. Beth. “I need to make a phone call.”

“And I will prep a surgical team.”

Agent Inoue had promised the return of all of my things, and he delivered before Doctor Arai was ready for me. The bundle included my earbug and I wiggled it into place and turned it on, trying to hide my relief. “How’s my little magic kitty?”

“Ho—Hikari! Where are you?”

“I’m in Defensenet’s Shinjuku base, and I’ve cut us a deal. I’m—I’m about to go into surgery for my shoulder. I’ll be fine, but I needed to know if Kimiko-san could deliver some drops?”

“…got it. We’ll send a courier.”
I closed my eyes and waited. One long beat and…
“Are you okay?”

The concern in her voice almost broke me down. “I will be, promise. They need a friend of ours more than they want us, and we’re going to help them. Tell—tell everyone to sit tight? Please?”

“…got it. Be safe? Be here soon?”

I nodded, scrubbed my eyes and held back a sniff. Spend one night in the local lock-up and I was losing it. Jacky would laugh. “Okay. Bye now.”

Steps one and two accomplished: Jacky and Ozma weren’t going to be stupid without me there to be stupid with them, and I wasn’t going to suddenly revert to English.