“About what?” the woman asked suspiciously.
“No matter,” Setsura softly intoned. “Let’s get it on, then.”
In response to that quiet invitation, the wicked vibe swirling around the three condensed into solid intent.
The teenager took one step forward. “I’ll take care of him.”
The ground crunched beneath his synthetic leather flip-flops. He cocked his foot back behind him. A second later, his right hand slashed upwards. A tearing sound brushed by Setsura’s ear. A black hole opened up in the concrete wall behind him.
The teenager gaped. Flying forward at a hundred and twenty miles per hour, the nail embedded in the heel of the sandal should have hit Setsura right between the eyes.
“Missed,” Setsura said, like the kid was shooting spitballs at him.
“Out of the way! I’ll take care of the bastard!”
The father’s growl was drowned out by a shrill shriek. A blue-white flame trailing behind it, the mini-missile streaked at Setsura.
The nose suddenly pitched up.
The man yelped in surprise. Setsura danced through the air, the hems of the slicker spreading out like the wings of a demonic bird of prey. The coattails folded together with a snap, and the next moment they separated—Setsura and his slicker.
He rounded his back and hugged his knees. The coat spread out like a black stain. The missile chose its mark and shot through the fabric, spitting out its tongue of fire.
Setsura landed softly on the ground in front of the man, who’d finally figured out what had happened. The man raised his foot, snapping it like a whip at Setsura’s head.
The heel grazed Setsura’s nose—the heel of a foot no longer connected to the ankle. Setting down the smooth stump on the ground, slick with the spouting blood, now sans the foot, the man stumbled forward like missing a step.
The kid clucked to himself, and turned around and ran, leaving the woman behind. He probably didn’t feel the red line tracing down his back until after he dodged between the boulders and disappeared from view.
Setsura turned to the man writhing on the ground and the woman standing there still unharmed. “You know what it means to be hoist by your own petard?”
The woman nodded. “Yeah. That bastard Hyota meant you to do us in.”
“I suspect he was hoping for some mutually assured destruction,” Setsura said, glancing down at the spreading pool of gore like it was an inconvenient mud puddle. “It seems he didn’t acquaint you with my particular skills. A pity.”
“No way that bastard’s getting away with this, jerking us around like that.” She glared at the skies, her trembling, upturned eyes reflecting the shimmering blue. “You want to kill me, too? The wound on the kid’s back—the blood’s not going to stop, is it?”
“One way or another.”
“I get it. The blood’s gonna keep flowing. That can’t go on long before you’re dead and gone. Just deserts for raising a hand against the likes of you. But let me even the scales first.”
“Even the scales?”
“Give me this one break so I can pay this Hyota bastard back. If I’m going to die anyway, there’s no sense wasting that death. This guy too, the kid too, we’ve got chemistry, you know. You know the law of the evil broods?”
Setsura nodded. As long as they lived as a family, they would deport themselves as a real and loving family. Thus the parents would revenge the loss of a child, the child revenge the loss of his parents. Pretend parents prowled the streets of Shinjuku dealing justice to the killers of their pretend children.
“That means you are going to find Hyota before the next time we meet.”
“That’s what it means,” the woman said, looking him in the eye. And it meant as well that the next time they met, the one would kill the other without mercy. “This is one I owe you, then,” she said, and turned around and walked away.
Setsura watched her disappear amidst the rubble, complaining of her aches and pains and the bad hand of cards life had dealt her. And then another roll of thunder turned his attention to the heavens and the distant black clouds.
“Dammit, Gento,” Setsura grumbled. “When are you making your next move?”
Chapter 2
The clouds Setsura had seen at dawn lingered over the city, waiting until noon to fill the air with streaks of silver.
Rain.
A Shinjuku rain.
A Demon City downpour.
Residents and tourists alike immediately sought shelter beneath roofs and eaves. What everybody who lived knew about the rain was clearly spelled out in the tourist guidebooks.
Fifteen years before, the Japan Meteorological Agency hemmed and hawed and finally came up with a term that most accurately described the phenomenon: phantom-infused precipitation.
According to the guidebooks, “When it rains, do not under any circumstances get close to holes, cracks, fissures or exposed raw earth.”
A drunk climbed a pile of debris in Kabuki-cho. The thick smell of alcohol filled the air around him, with each step the odors overlapping like the layers of a translucent painting, flowing along and twining together again.
His blood alcohol level right then was about a hundred and eight proof. Until a few minutes ago, he’d been imbibing “Shinjuku Spirits” in a bar behind the Koma Theater. That was the beginning of his problems. There was nothing wrong with distilled spirits. They were sold everywhere, though at thirty percent higher prices than outside the ward.
Shinjuku Spirits went for a tenth that. A cup of the stuff could be had for fifty yen. It didn’t taste half bad, either. With a mild taste and texture and a quirky aroma that hit the spot, this refined sake competed with the best.
It delivered a quick buzz—regardless of how much or little was imbibed—in less than two minutes. No matter how much was imbibed, there was never a hangover.
Everybody from carping food critics to the hard-drinking hoi polloi acclaimed it as a drink for the masses. But visit any drinking hole in the city and that label would be found nowhere on the shelves.
The reason for that was simple: if it was, the cops would be busting down doors before the day was done.
The reason for that was simple, too: this ten proof booze, with the pleasantly intoxicating effects of name-brand, had as its principal ingredient rain. The rain that fell on Shinjuku, on Demon City. The rain that was ninety-nine percent phantom-infused precipitation.
However the barfly was aware of the falling rain, he couldn’t flee the scene.
Five years before, he had undergone strength-enhancing surgery. He was confident he could go toe-to-toe with a brown bear. The rain showered down on him, its unique properties bit by bit soaking his body.
If he’d been a normal man, these concentrations would have little effect on him. But as he was imbibing fifty gallons of the stuff a year, eighty-five percent of it as Shinjuku Spirits, the results could vary a lot from the normal.
He was a looter of sorts, a dumpster diver. He plunged into the depths of these oceans of wreckage and debris—that others could not hope to reach—and retrieved lost items and valuables. For himself.
He had no scruples about robbing these makeshift graves either, especially if the body was that of a rich man. A diamond ring, a cash card, a solid gold necklace—any one of them would keep him happy as a clam for the next six months.
But even he feared the rain.
One more search, he told himself, and he’d hightail it out of there. But he wasn’t going to make it. The mountains of brick and cinderblock around him shook and shimmered. Creatures shaped like dark green rods splashed from beneath the concrete slabs and rose into the air.
A moment later, bumpy nodules covering them opened outwards, forming the wide blades of poisonously green leaves.
The world around him transformed into a verdant field. The luxuriant weeds stood six feet tall, reaching the height of the man. Sensing his body heat, the stalks flexed and bent. The blowholes at the tips spit out fine fil
aments.
A sweet fragrance filled the air. Green lines wrapped around the man’s neck. These feelers were certainly part and parcel of the vegetation.
Threads that at a glance seemed slender and weak proved as strong as reinforced nylon. This man, who possessed the strength of fifty, could not easily extract himself.
Other plants lassoed his hands and feet. The typical prisoner of these carnivorous plants would slowly starve to death. In time, the body would decay. The feelers would absorb the nutrients needed to sustain them.
In this horrifying case, though, the worst was far sooner to come. The blowholes trembled and spewed a honey-like fluid over the man. Smaller droplets squirmed and fidgeted inside the clear viscous clumps that coated him, as the tiny lumps burrowed into his skin.
The fluid must be a kind of incubating medium. The same way flowers cast pollen to the wind to extend the reach of their life force, these weeds coated the skin of entrapped humans with seeds and fertilizing fluids, which burrowed through the flesh and embedded their buds there.
The fate that awaited the human was to become the pot for the plant. Here and there amidst the rubble, peeking out from the fissures and cracks, were the half-mummified bodies, the desiccated corpses of men and women.
This man, though, was no inattentive pedestrian or naive tourist. The medical augmentations he’d undergone five years before came to the fore. He flexed his muscles with all his might and unleashed all the power in his internal organs.
A muscular energy density of .01 horsepower per gram yielded six hundred horsepower that overwhelmed the combined efforts of the plants. Raising a guttural scream, he tore out the feelers by the roots.
The exhausted, wilting stalks coughed up more of the translucent liquid as the rain streaked down. The rest of the weeds fared no better. They had met their match.
“Fucking freaks,” the man wheezed. Today just wasn’t going to be his day.
Speaking of which, tomorrow was the Night of the Falcon. The man raised his scowling face towards the weeping heavens and climbed down the mountain.
His feet slipped out from under him. He fell on his ass with a heavy plop. Green moss coated the soles of his shoes. The concrete beneath his feet was covered with green. Only where his feet had tread showed the gray skin of the earth.
Fields of green reached as far as the eye could see. Those weeds were everywhere, sprouting up, their shimmering, wavering feelers on the hunt and in search of food.
The man clambered to his feet. In that moment, his number finally came up. The years of imbibing Shinjuku Spirits bore fruit.
A separate sense of will blossomed inside his head. Amidst the shadows and darkness, he felt a keen and unfettered burst of aspiration. He whirled around. Everything in his life up to now had been a waste of his time. There was only one place for him to go, one place that he should be.
Arriving back at the peak of the mountain, the man carefully removed the bricks and shattered cinderblocks, creating a space just big enough for his body to fit.
The mummies on either side stared at him with their hollow eyes and almost seemed to smile. The man smiled back at them, his most genuine expression of emotion in years, and laid his body down between them.
Here was the reason Shinjuku Spirits was banned even in this city. The phantom-infused precipitation implanted a will within that hearkened only to the call of the monsters without.
Rain, rain, go away.
A tide of red flowers unfurled from the cracks in the streets. Rainbow-colored mushrooms sprouted on the sides of buildings. The rain-soaked city blossomed to life in all its luxuriant gory glory.
Come again another day.
Dodging the downpour, shortly after noon a small man arrived at the front lobby of Mephisto Hospital. Even without seeing the face beneath the long hair that reached his waist, from the way his body was bent forward like a hinge, this was clearly Hyota.
He told the receptionist the reason for his visit and was promptly shown to an examination room. Where Mephisto was waiting.
“You must be the servant of Gento Roran, the man I met at the Coliseum.”
“That is correct.” Hyota bowed. He was already so twisted over that from the back, the gesture seemed to make his head completely disappear.
“So, how can I help you?”
“If you would accompany me—”
“Right away?”
“As soon as possible.”
Mephisto glanced out the window. “A house call in the rain. It’s been a while.”
“I truly appreciate it.” Hyota bowed again.
“There is something I must tend to first.”
Mephisto smiled. Hyota blanched a bit. There was something about that face that sent a chill down even his warped spine. It was not evil that suffused the smile that rose to those lips, but a far more fundamental source of dread and awe.
Not even that genie Setsura Aki, himself a child of the darkness, along with Gento Roran, could muster up such a smile. This was Doctor Mephisto, after all. Perhaps the very devil himself.
“What do you wish me to do?” Hyota said, unable to suppress the slight tremble in his voice. This frightening man himself was more frightened than when he’d encountered Setsura in the Golden Gai.
“There’s a little conflict I wish to settle.”
Hyota had guessed as much. His shaken features grew all the paler. Fighting Mephisto as well had never been in the cards. And yet a ruddy glow crept into his eyes.
“There’s no need to fret so. I have no desire to come to blows with you,” Mephisto smiled again.
“You don’t?”
“Last night, two of our colleagues interrupted a hallowed competition and carried off the prize as well. That upset some folks. They have me under surveillance. I’d like you to take care of it.”
“Understood,” Hyota said at once, like an executive secretary arranging for a car to pick up the company president.
Except that the men Setsura and Gento had “upset” at the Coliseum were hardly the typical fight promoters. More like the godfathers of their own gangs. When they put their efforts into a task, they should be able to track down the slipperiest suspect.
They’d concluded it was Mephisto that helped make Setsura look like a corpse. It was only natural that they’d view him with equal suspicion.
“Setsura and your master can fend for themselves. I, on the other hand, have no retainers of my own. Perhaps I could get you to do a little bodyguard work?”
“A piece of cake. And where are these troublesome insects?”
Mephisto gestured with his right hand. A portion of the wall turned into a snapshot of the real world, the holographic monitor.
“On the street in front of the hospital.”
Hyota focused his gaze. Behind the hair hanging down to his chin, his eyes narrowed to barely more than slits.
Kuyakusho Street. The camera slowly panned to the left, past a row of restaurants, revealing two men in suits in the adjacent alley. They were looking at the hospital with reptilian eyes. The camera stopped.
“Them?”
Mephisto nodded.
“It will take but a minute. But—”
“But—?”
“Kill two cockroaches and there will soon be a thousand more just like them.”
“I couldn’t care less. The problem is not those two in particular, but your particular skills.”
“You will have no reason to be dissatisfied with those skills.”
Hyota left the examination room and returned to the lobby. Outside it was raining. Crushed beneath his feet, the rusty red flowers gasped out puffs of crimson pollen. The rain grew heavier, the spray flying off his body. He practically disappeared, obscured by the mist surrounding him.
A plastic awning sheltered the alley where the men were waiting. These canopies had been erected by the ward government. Several other pedestrians had taken shelter there as well.
The two men stood at the entrance to the a
lley. The slicked-back hair of one was parted over his left temple. The other had his hair parted over the right. Each was holding an umbrella.
Hyota stopped in front of them. Their eyes flicked downwards in a what the hell expression. Outside Shinjuku, the weirdness of the scene would have been overwhelming. Here it was barely out of the ordinary.
“Yeah?” said the one with the hair parted on the left.
Hyota peered up at him. “Come with me,” he said.
He spoke in subdued tones, his voice rising up like a ghostly miasma. But the men clearly heard him. Mr. Left Part lowered his hips and settled down in a boxing stance. The bulge in his black suit under his left shoulder was clearly that of a gun. But he was the type who preferred to settle disagreements with his bare hands.
Mr. Right Part stood there, not moving.
Hyota turned and proceeded toward Kabuki-cho. If these punks had class to match their threads, they would follow him.
They didn’t.
Right Part made the first move. Holding the umbrella with a reverse grip, he charged at Hyota, aiming for the back of his neck.
Hyota scooted forward. The tip of the umbrella slashed through empty air, striking a stone on the sidewalk and cleaving it in two. The tip of the umbrella was made of ballistic-grade synthetic polymer. Considering the force behind it, the man had to be heavily juiced.
Hyota came to a halt. “So, a swordsman, eh?”
Right Part raised the umbrella in an en garde stance. Left Part circled around Hyota, blocking any attempt to retreat.
As the rain pounded down on them, the two men might have already realized the folly of engaging this particular opponent. So low to the ground, their well-honed fighting stances grew stiff and overextended.
Hyota rose no higher than the man’s waist, forcing him to bend over all the more to get within striking distance. Whether fighting hand-to-hand or with a sword, striking at an opponent lower in height than the outstretched arm diminished the power and speed of a blow.
With a rebel yell, Right Part charged at him, drawing back the umbrella to the right as he kicked up his left foot. A black mass flashed through the air like a shooting star, all but searing the air.
Maohden Vol. 2 Page 8
