Wearing the Cape 5: Ronin Games

by Marion G. Harmon

  “Hello?” I called softly, turning in a slow circle.

  I was being watched. Playfully.

  “Hello?”

  The petals kept falling to kiss my skin with spots of warmth, like the tree had been warmed by a much hotter sun than the one that peeked through the clouds now.

  “Hello?”

  The tree was blessing me. Laughing at me. Hiding itself from me? The laughter turned into the alarm and I sat up so fast I threw the blankets to the foot of the bed.

  “What did you mean?” Ozma asked beside me.

  “What?” I blinked, shook my head to clear it as the alarm chimed again.

  “You said ‘The world is full of weeping. How can I go?’”

  “I said that? Exactly?”

  She shrugged in her loose nightgown. “I often need to remember things I only read or hear once. What did you mean?”

  “I don’t know.” I ran fingers through my mess of hair, trying not to hyperventilate. Jacky wasn’t back yet, and the only light in the room was the ambient light of Tokyo and the alarm clock by the bed. Shell’s eyes glowed from Jacky’s empty bed where she watched me.

  My sleep-shirt had gotten twisted about and I straightened it, turned off the alarm and looked for the Compass Fish. First things first.

  This is so not good.

  I used the fish and map, drew the new line with a hand that shook only a little. Kitsune had moved again, but the newest red line still ran east through East Shinjuku. Dropping back down on the bed, I folded my legs up to sit yoga-style.

  The world is full of weeping. How can I go? I’d said that? Shell leaped across and climbed into my lap. I absently stroked her ears.

  “Did I really?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said.

  A memory tickled me and I chased it down, reciting: “‘Come away, oh human child! To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand. For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.’ The Stolen Child, William Butler Yeats.”

  “So, now you’re channeling a dead poet?”

  “No. I was at the tree again. And I was wide awake this time. In my dream, I mean.”

  “Well that’s not good. Is that Stage Two or something? And you heard that there? The whole ‘How can I go?’”

  “No. And I only thought of Yeats because that’s the only place I can remember reading about a ‘World full of weeping.’”

  The words were sort of the same but the sentiment was inverted, wasn’t it? Stay versus go. And why had I said it at all? Had the tree said it to me somehow? It sounded incredibly sad, which was the opposite of how I always felt at the tree. Tonight, tonight it had been so happy I’d wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

  I gathered up Shell and flopped back, stretching my legs out and dropping her on my stomach. She stretched out, sphinxlike, and dug into my sleep-shirt with a rumbling purr. Beside me Ozma was asleep again. She even snored elegantly. I wasn’t sleeping again tonight.

  “So,” I yawned, scratching Shell’s ears. “What’s it like? Being a cat?”

  “I want to chase sunbeams and lick my butt.”

  “Ew.”

  * * *

  I made myself the Keeper of The Fish for the rest of the night, checking on Kitsune when the alarm went off. Jacky got in just before dawn looking totally refreshed. She’d once explained that since she’d become a daywalker enough blood could substitute for sleep.

  And that sparked my question to Ozma; her answer was yes—a stronger infusion of Six-Leaf Tea could substitute for sleep too. She had enough for three nights; after that I’d need to leave Japan, get out from under the quantum-interdiction if I wanted to avoid the tree by “sleeping” in the Warden’s cloudhome while the others finished the hunt for Kitsune.

  Since I might have moved into what Shell had called Stage Two last night, Jacky wanted me to leave now. That argument chased me into the shower, and after that we took our Comprehension Drops for the day, ate breakfast ordered from room service, and dressed for the day’s hunt into East Shinjuku.

  People-watching yesterday using the fashion eye the Bees had given me, I’d noticed that Tokyo women’s fashion mostly ran to high skirts and high necklines and focused on legs instead of bust. I didn’t know if that was because of a different cultural aesthetic or because Japanese women weren’t as endowed as European and American women, but it worked for me; while nature had left me lacking in height and hips and bust, I did have nice legs and a tiny waist (Shell called me streamlined). There was just one wrinkle; the style ladies of Isetan Shinjuku warned us to wear what I thought of as “spanky shorts”—short-legged athletic shorts kind of like my sleep shorts—under our skirts to foil the up-skirt perverts. Really.

  I’d managed not to act like I’d had No Idea; Jacky had just smiled and bought a really nice slacks-and-blazer outfits that did nothing to hide the panther-like way she moved. Ozma went with long flowy skirts and dresses that would foil any perv not shamed away by her aura of royal perfection.

  With my waist-hugging skirt and light sweater, plus the fresh new do and expertly applied makeup I’d bought yesterday, I managed to look adult enough that I hoped most places wouldn’t card me if anyone looked at me at all. (Out of costume I tended to disappear beside Jacky and Ozma, and today I liked it that way.) Once again disregarding Jacky’s suggestion that I take the train to the opposite coast and then hug water until I hit the Chinese shore, I led us out. We decided to walk back to the station, entering East Shinjuku using the station exit through Lumen Est.

  The Isetan ladies hadn’t warned us about the gropers. They’d probably thought we knew.

  In the crush of the station crowd I got the first one because of my short skirt. It wasn’t a passing touch either—the groper palmed my butt under my skirt. So shocked I almost levitated, I reflexively pushed back and sent him flying through the crowd behind us. We managed to look as surprised as everyone else (we were), and the crush of packed bodies hid my push as easily as his opportunistic grope. Jacky and Ozma moved behind me after that, and we were okay although one guy behind Jacky screamed like a girl when she reached back and crushed his hand.

  Ozma had her mirror out by then so at least we were camera-free. In her bag Shell hissed something about taking a freaking taxi next time as we exited the station, but I wasn’t paying attention.

  I’d only caught a glimpse of East Shinjuku yesterday before we’d turned around, but now I got a good look and I was having a hard time not staring at everything we passed. The buildings here weren’t skyscrapers, but they were all tall and they weren’t like the buildings and towers of the Loop back home. Advertising took over every vertical surface, from walls and rooftops to benches and curbsides, with so many neon, big screen, and backlit signs in Japanese and English that I was willing to bet that at night the dark disappeared. And I couldn’t believe how clean the streets were; even the side alleys had no graffiti or litter.

  Japanese were big believers in pictures, too; pictures of food, pictures of karaoke rooms, pictures of entertainers told us everything we needed to know about what was inside the shops we passed by. Greeters dressed as uniformed powers or more flamboyantly costumed ronin stood outside entertainment shops and restaurants to call people in; everywhere there was something to see.

  We took a cab to Shinjuku Park to work our way back from there, west to east across the south edge of Shinjuku, making fish-checks every block or two, and didn’t experience any more gropers. But that was probably because the crowds weren’t tight enough for anonymity; what we did get was players trying to strike up conversations with really repetitive one-liners—the most popular one was sidling up at a corner pretending they knew one of us. “Ah! It’s been so long, how are you doing?”

  I even got a couple (What the hell? I mean really, what the hell?) until Jacky started pushing a bit of her vamp-influence to project a Go Away aura. As if that wasn’t enough, the Compass Fish kept consistently pointing north-by-something, tilting further east as
we went further west. Which made it official; Kitsune was in Kabukicho.

  Dammit. What was he doing there?

  Then, almost back to the station, we hit the intersection behind the Studio Alta building with its huge TV screen and I forgot about all of that. Because we were staring at us.

  What? Just…what?

  “Well that wasn’t there last night,” Jacky said.

  “How is that even— No—” I tried again. “It’s only been three days.”

  Shell stretched up for a peek and started laughing. Thankfully she was doing it from the bottom of her bag.

  Somebody had not only gotten hold of the picture we’d taken with the HWB flight crew, they’d used it to design and produce a convention-sized billboard print of the three of us. We stood in ridiculously dramatic postures, me on one knee (why?) ready to draw Cutter, Jacky standing behind me with gun drawn to cover my right while behind and above her (maybe levitating a bit?) Ozma gestured dramatically to my left.

  What. The. Heck?

  Shell wouldn’t stop snickering, something that sounded truly weird coming from a cat, but hearing her pushed me past my shock. Okay, maybe it actually made a bizarre sort of sense. The billboard art had to come from the picture we’d taken in Anhui. It had been taken with a digital camera; the crew had obviously taken copies with them, and if someone back at Heroes Without Borders in Shibushi had put it online then…but three days? Three days is all it took for that?

  Shell snuck another look and managed to control herself this time.

  “C’mon, Hope. Remember what I told you last night?”

  I nodded, still dazed. Shell and I had talked for hours last night, mostly about Japanese pop-culture and capes.

  Popular Japanese capes—power-idols—were managed and packaged to a degree that made the marketing stuff the Sentinels did look subtle and understated. Power-idols were not only trained to fight, they were groomed to perform. They had fitness-fashion specialists, acting, voice, and performance coaches, managers and publicists. Japanese capes were media personalities, pop-gods, and in Akihabara you could always find rabid cosplayers dressed in the color-coded skirted outfits of the Eight Excellent Protectors or the equally color-coded and vaguely military uniforms of the Nine Accomplished Heroes. Factory-made to be completely authentic.

  And Japan had a counter-culture—sort of like villain-rap culture but without the villain emphasis. The popular ronin weren’t supervillains, but they were seen as outlaws, rebels, and just like with power-otaku cosplayers, ronin-otaku showed their love by imitation; below the billboard I could see at least twelve coat-clad and shade-wearing Remarkable Ronin comparing costumes and posing for pictures with passersby.

  I squinted. The swords and guns couldn’t be real, not with Japan’s strict weapons laws, but—

  “Wait. It wasn’t there last night?”

  * * *

  The crowd circling the cosplayers beneath the billboard talked costume details while arguing about our stats and excitedly sharing the news of the Three Remarkable Ronin with curious passersby not yet in the know. Ozma politely inquired and was happily directed to an internet ronin board that tracked sightings, and with Shell’s prompting I managed to find it on our epad.

  The sight linked to news sources in China and confirmed our “kills” while crediting us with the successful medical mission, gave our “names,” Hikari, Mamori, and Kimiko, and speculated about our powers. The site’s writers correctly pegged me as some kind of Atlas-type, but guessed that Jacky was a physically enhanced teleporting martial artist (a master of gunjitsu). They had no idea what Ozma did, pegging her as a “supporting power.”

  Beyond that it was all pages of comments and vlog and blog-posts, all speculation, none of them even hinting we weren’t from around here. I could breathe again, and ask Jacky what she had meant about last night.

  For that conversation we found a coffee and karaoke shop and paid for a small party room. Our server’s cheerful greeting and the three cream puppies in latte foam-art that smiled up at me from my heavy mug didn’t do a thing for my black thoughts. I bit their cute little heads off and drank my coffee.

  Then my brain caught up with me. I set my mug down as Ozma finished thanking our server at the door.

  “Ozma? Would you mind taking Shell out for some fish? We’ve got our cellphones.”

  She nodded and put her compact surveillance-thwarting mirror on the table. Taking the bag from me and ignoring Shell’s “Hey!” she pinched the top of the bag against her attempt to scramble out. I closed the door behind them, listened to her walk down the hall promising tuna and cream.

  Jacky watched me from her comfortable chair, leaving her mug with its cream-puppy topping on the table to cool.

  “You went into Kabukicho last night,” I said, leaning against the door. She would have walked right by the billboard corner.

  “It has my kind of prey.”

  Players. Wannabe Romeos. Inebriated mobile meals that could be cut from the herd, left a few ounces lighter with a false and fuzzy memory of getting lucky. “I know. Is there a reason you didn’t tell us this morning?”

  “Like…”

  I made myself sit down, didn’t know what to do with my hands and settled them on my knees (debutante manners—they never leave you). “Did you—did you have to do anything that nobody should know about?”

  “And why would you think that?” My friend had gone still, like only vamps could and she still could even if she was a breather now.

  “Because you’re all about the intel. You’d tell us what you’d learned unless— Did you not want us to know you’d been there?” I swallowed. “It’s okay, you know. I know that sometimes you have to do things I can’t— It’s okay—”

  “Stop.” Jacky held up a hand in the universal stop sign, but she was smiling. It wasn’t a nice smile but it was better than her expressionless watching. “You sent Ozma and Shell away because you didn’t want them to hear if I admitted to a crime? Beyond my usual?”

  “…yes?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know!” And I really didn’t; it wasn’t as if Shell didn’t know all about the things that Jacky sometimes had to do, and Ozma…I’d long since filed her majesty under the category of Good, Not Always Nice—she’d be likely to understand.

  The sardonic twist to Jacky’s grin said she understood, which was totally unfair; it was like I’d regressed to high school and the BF’s code of silence. “So, why didn’t you share this morning? Since it’s obviously not a dark and bloody secret.”

  She actually laughed at me, reaching for her coffee.

  “When I came back this morning and until we’d walked across East Shinjuku, I didn’t know if we’d really be going into Kabukicho.” Her smile turned whimsical. “And being okay with what I do doesn’t mean you’re comfortable with it.”

  I blanched. “Jacky—”

  “Hope, it really is okay.” She held my gaze until she could see I believed her.

  I sighed, shoulders slumping. “…okay.” It didn’t feel right to let it go, like I was letting Jacky down, but what were we fighting about? “So, tell me about it?”

  “Not much to tell, really. I sipped from an office lady and an American tourist, and then found me a nice yakuza boy.” She tapped the base of her neck with two fingers. “They’re easy to spot by the tats, at least when they’ve got their shirts open three buttons down to show off their ink and shiny bling. Him I kept for a long talk.”

  “What did you learn?”

  “A lot and not much.” She sipped her coffee and grimaced. It was pretty good stuff, but even I could tell it wasn’t quite up to her own coffee-snob standards. “You know the yakuza isn’t like the Chicago Mob, right? They’re not just wise guys with tattoos. They have business cards. A local office listed in the phonebook. A public complaints department.”