Losing Masks

by Nicholas Metelsky

  “Take me as your student!”

  “Huh?”

  “Teach me to fight!”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Train me in martial arts!”

  “You know where the door is,” I said, waving my hand towards the door and went into the kitchen.

  “Shi-inji-ee.”

  “Get out, Mizuki. You have a whole clan to teach you.”

  “Please, pretty please.”

  “Your grandfather is a Virtuoso, what do you want from me?”

  “I'm not asking you to teach me techniques, only hand-to-hand combat. Without Bahir. Ple-e-ease.”

  “Anyway, I can not be better than your grandfather and father.”

  “My grandfather is not a good teacher, and my father... He taught me from the very beginning, and what? You came and won. Please, please, please.”

  “You are delirious, Mizuki. Akeno-san is an excellent and knowledgeable teacher...”

  “I'm not arguing with that,” she didn’t let me finish, “but what if you're better? He will teach me the techniques, and you will teach me martial arts. Plea...”

  “That's enough. Be quiet. Chill out. You see, I'm making coffee.”

  “Please, please, please, please.”

  “Leave me alone, Mizuki. Ask around in the clan. I'm more than sure, you will find a decent hand to hand fighter. I'm telling you for the hundredth time, my knowledge is not designed to be used with Bahir. You will have to be retrained.”

  “Please, please, please.”

  Thank God, we reached the school gates. Finally, she will leave me alone. Even when I was in the shower, I heard her “please.” I'll start flinching soon from hearing this word! Cripes, Mizuki, I had no idea that you were capable of bringing such a terror.

  “... please ...”

  “Hello, Rydon! I'm so happy to see you, buddy.”

  “Huh? Me too,” he answered carefully, squinting at the silent girl.

  “Okay, why are we standing around here? Let's go to the classroom. Later, Mizuki! Don’t be late for class.”

  “What happened?” The guy asked when the girl disappeared from our sight.

  “You're not gonna believe it, but she's been begging me to take her on as an apprentice all morning. She is asking me! What a joke. She drives me nuts.”

  “Oh. Umm...”

  “I know, I have no idea why she's so obsessed.”

  “I see. Actually, that's not what I'm talking about.”

  “What's up?”

  “If you don’t want to take her as an apprentice... maybe you'll take me?”

  “Get out of here with your stupid jokes.”

  Today, for the first time since I had started at Dakisyuro, I was called out by a teacher. In the usual silence of the class, in which the rustling of clothes, the pencil tapping on the desk, and the quiet creaking of someone's chair were obviously heard, I headed to the board. I quickly solved the equation and returned to my seat. I wondered, what they were expecting? A volcanic eruption? An extraordinary situation? Ha! I had elementary and middle school behind my back—did they think I'd never been called to the board? What could have happened? It was a quite regular situation. The only exciting thing was that this happened for the first time in this high school.

  Teijo met us during the long recess, and, without even greeting me, began to pester.

  “Shinji, teach me to fight. What's the big deal? Let's meet two or three, well, four dozen times.”

  Bastard. Rydon is a bastard. When did he even have time to tell him?

  At lunch, there was only Kagami’s bento. Aniko was quick on her feet to figure out what was up.

  Why did she even get involved in this match? I don't get it at all why they are doing this. Don't they have anything better to do besides preparing bentos? For some reason, I don't believe that they care about me so much. Kagami—a great woman—she's the only one who always cared about my nutrition. What's their deal? Selfless love? Three times “ha”! Oh, I do not understand these women.

  “Well, how was it, Shinji?” Shina asked when I finished with her bento.

  “What do you mean? Tasty, as usual.”

  “You...” She reached out to me with her hand, making grabbing getures. “Fine, I'll remember that, kiddo.”

  That? What did I do?! No, I do not understand them.

  Aniko didn’t say anything the whole time. She had a half-smile on her lips, that was all. I didn’t share my bentos with Rydon and Teijo this time. I scarfed everything down myself. They should know better than to make fun of me like that.

  Traditionally, after lunch, we went outside to get some fresh air. By the exit, we saw a crowd of students looking at something near the building. I was hoping to see a spectacle.

  The crowd was not too dense, just a bunch of people surrounding something. As it turned out, they were watching a fight, or rather a beating. I had no other way to describe it. A tiny, short girl was sitting on top of some guy and was methodically punching him into the asphalt. Judging by the cloud of dust that escaped from under every one of her blows, as well as the fact that there was no blood on the guy’s face, he had on the “armor of the spirit”. He was on his last leg, though. Sluggish attempts to defend himself failed with every blow of this shallow fury, who had a vindictive and an utterly dirty smile on her face.

  Just then, the little hand that was pushing the guy in the chest and holding him against the ground curled up into a fist, grabbing his clothes. This small but deadly fist finally went against the guy’s face, which was not protected by the “armor”. That was that—a knockout. Frankly, I thought for a moment that she wouldn't hold back and would kill the poor fellow, but no, he didn't even have his nose broken—he was just very competently knocked out.

  After inflicting a couple more blows and letting him bleed, the girl looked at the people gathered around her. With a challenging and mocking look, as if asking for someone to give her an excuse to repeat her beating, she looked around. And then her gaze rested on me.

  “She’s a beast not a woman,” whispered Teijo.

  “Honestly, Shin,” Rydon remarked, “I'm shocked.”

  Aketi Toremazu. A little, sweet girl that freezes in my presence. She used to faint in front of me. I didn’t recognize her at first. And now I stood there, staring at this psychotic person, and thought about how great the danger was of being in this guy’s place. Not in the sense that she would beat me up, but that she could attack me. Now, it makes sense why her sister was so surprised. Damn, she was probably shocked like Rydon was at that moment.

  Toremazu froze, just like she always did when she saw me. While I was lazily reflecting on my own thoughts, the expression on her face went from cocky to surprised, then to frightened, and at the end of this metamorphosis, she simply froze with a wax mask on. Slowly rising away from the guy, she walked with a wooden face somewhere in the direction of the club building. It is noteworthy that people kept out of her way, and no one thought of approaching her defeated enemy.

  How is it possible that no one asked him how he was? What about his friends and buddies? There are even a couple of teachers standing here, not saying a word. They did not stop the beating—they stood, like everyone else, watching. Who is he, this guy?

  “Come on, let's see what happened to her victim,” I said to my companions.

  “What for?” Rydon was surprised.

  “The nurses will take him. What can we do to help him?” added Teijo. “There are teachers, they will deal with it.”

  “Why didn't they stop the beating?” I asked.

  “This is Dakisyuro, Shin,” Rydon looked at me as if I were a kid. “If it were two people beating him, then someone would interfere. And even then, he could have asked them not to bother. If it was a duel, they’d definitely not butt in.”

  “But what kind of a duel is this?”

  “Is it not?” Teijo grunted. “There were two of them fighting against each other. Call it whatever you want: a fight, t
rampling in the mud—a fact is a fact—this was a duel.”

  “Uh...” There was nothing to say. “Technically, yes, but... What if he is a Warrior and she is a Veteran? In my opinion, this is a little unfair.”

  “If he would have asked for help, they would have stopped the fight,” Rydon said. “But you tell me, would you ask for help yourself? No. And no one would. If you don’t know how to fight, don’t get involved in a duel, and once you get involved, be quiet and just take it.”

  “Maybe he had no choice? This is chaos. Maybe she just came up and punched him hard?”

  “Well, then, her family's in trouble,” Rydon shrugged. “No one likes psychopaths.”

  I scratched my forehead and decided not to make a big deal out of it.

  I'm sure there are many nuances, but now is not the time to thrash them out. I'd rather go to my neighbors today, have dinner, and clarify this. Ugh, no, I can't do it today. Well, then another time.

  “Alright. What's taking so long for someone to come and help him? Again some aristo rules?”

  “No,” Teijo shrugged. “No idea, really. Maybe he has no friends.”

  Indeed, who knows.

  “Why don't you tell us,” Rydon said, “what was up with Aketi? She saw you.”

  “No comment. I don't get it myself.”

  This annoying world. In general, I understand their philosophy. I'm like them, but damn it... What if someone was beating up a girl? I mean, two girls turned on each other? This battered guy would never do that. So two girls, one Veteran, and one Warrior. What if the Warrior was my daughter? I would have started a third world war right here. Bloody samurai. Do you know what else is terrible? I have no idea what's going on in other countries. But I very much suspect that the mentality there does not correspond much to the one in my world. Eight years. I've been here for eight bloody years. And I still can’t get used to it. All I have to do is hope that in eight more years, this defect will disappear. Or it will decrease.

  ***

  “Excellent weapon,” Kuroda said, firing off the last bullets in the cartridge. “How many were delivered?”

  “Two hundred,” I answered, taking away the binoculars from my eyes. “You did quite well, I see.”

  We were at our open training polygon, and Svyatov still could not get enough of the new toys, over and over again issuing short lines next to us.

  “You can't drink away experience,” the former policeman said, glancing sideways at Svyatov. “In this, I might agree with the Russian.”

  Though everyone was shooting all over the polygon, I still heard distant shots from the side of the abandoned factory.

  “Who's messing around there?” I was surprised. “I thought the oldies were supposed to be at lunch now?”

  “It's Takaki. He just can't calm down. If this continues, his group will be the best in the company.”

  “Are they not the best now?” I completely neglected to follow the learning process.

  “No. The old man Kikku's group is leading now. Svyatov's group takes second, Takaki is third, Torenchi and I share fourth.”

  “Aren't you ashamed?” I grinned.

  “We aren’t far away from each other. Today I'm in fourth, tomorrow it'll be first,” Kuroda didn't bat an eye. “Besides, some of the best of my and his people were taken to the sniper group.”

  “Fine,” I smiled, “let's assume you've got an excuse. In half an hour, everyone meet me in my office. Tell that kid to wrap it up too. Find Antipov. He might be of some use.”

  “Done.”

  Half an hour later, I was sitting at my desk with my men standing in front of me. Svyatov and Kuroda were dressed in urban camouflage, and Antipov wore something amorphous and khaki-colored.

  “Grab some chairs and sit down,” I said, taking a few folders from the table and a pile of maps. “Our first target is rather banal...”

  Chapter 6

  “Rabbit-one to Koschey: target-one is outside. He's lighting up a cigarette. Do you copy?”

  “Copy, Rabbit-one. Koschey to Daddy-Rabbit: Rabbit-one is on the Veteran, 10 second readiness. Rabbit-one: fire at will. Over.”

  Rabbit-one and Rabbit-two were our sniper groups, and Daddy-Rabbit was Kuroda. In fact, the snipers, Kuroda, Svyatov, and even the former governor all had their code names, but after watching them complete the obstacle course—a replica of the one that I had to pass in my world— I realized that these people were such grief-warriors that they clearly didn't deserve their personal code names for a long time. Someone had to be responsible for their poor preparation. Since our valorous officers could not do anything about it, I decided that they were unworthy of normal code names. In this sense, the poor snipers were less fortunate: they didn't really have time for all that. But I didn’t want to make the private corps and their commanders equal, so I now had five rabbits and sixty baby rabbits. To exercise a right of the most important rabbit, I took my old code name from the former world.

  Wild Rabbit, aka Svyatov, was now undercover, just in case. I knew that there was no one to put a knife in our backs, but this tactic was never useless. Dirty Rabbit, who received his codename because he had come to me to have debates about the topic after the practice of hand-to-hand combat, was now at the base. Someone had to stay there, and since Tanaka couldn’t argue with two officers, he was the one that stayed.

  I didn’t hear the shot. Besides that, Rabbits one and two were sitting on the roof of a two-story building 1000 feet from us, and their Htec rifles had silencers.

  “Rabbit-one to Koschey: target-one destroyed.”

  Three seconds later, “Targets-two and three are destroyed. Do you copy?”

  Excellent—the external guard, consisting of two buttheads who loved to smoke on the post, had been removed.

  “Copy, Rabbit-one. Koschey to Daddy-rabbit: snipers completed the assignment, we will proceed. Over.”

  I addressed the group consisting of ten rabbits: “Go.”

  Our current target was a small port warehouse that consisted of hundreds of containers and several buildings, of which only two had security. There were about thirty guards there: fifteen at one end of the warehouse and fifteen at the other. Two of them were always outside. Of these thirty, there were ten Warriors and one Veteran. Actually, the forces were somewhat excessive for such a place. There was nothing to protect here.

  Both the northern and southern security buildings were one-story gray boxes. Running up to the northern one, I kept sight of the entrance. Stopping at the door and waiting for the two threes to take their places on the sides of the building, I signaled that we were starting. Almost simultaneously, the two side groups threw tear-gas checkers into the window. In a second or two, Baby Rabbit-seven came out from behind my back with his shotgun and a nozzle on it for knocking out locks and hinges. One shot and the door had no lock. Meanwhile, the fighter moved slightly to the side, allowing us to move forward. Letting three Baby Rabbits go first, I followed them. The last to come in was Baby Rabbit-seven. The groups at the windows were to wait for the first shots, and ten seconds after, two people from each of them would begin storming the building through the same windows. And the remaining fighters would control the outer perimeter.

  By the time I got into the hallway, I could already hear the guard's shouting and even a couple of bursts from the Nail. Slightly bending over and looking in front of me, I moved forward quickly. The first two people that went inside came out of the side room and followed us. Another body fell out of a room in front of us. Bursting in front of the person walking behind him, rolling over his head by the door and then kneeling down, Baby Rabbit-ten kept the hallway and the two remaining doors at gunpoint.

  Glancing quickly, I threw a fragmentation grenade into the room in front of me. Explosion. One more. The sounds of the last one came from the rooms ahead of us. The guys started to attack. One more glance. Moving forward. After my “greeting”, two people were shaking their heads in the room; one of them was even doing it standing up.
They must have been Warriors. Two short bursts to the head, a step to the side, and a long burst to the one that was standing. Another one. That's it, he's dead meat. A seven-sixty-two is not a toy gun, and a Warrior is not a terminator. At this moment, Baby Rabbit-seven, who walked in after I finished off the second Warrior, and Baby Rabbit-eight examined the room for survivors.

  “All clear, boss.”

  Like I couldn’t see that.

  “Baby Rabbit-one: all clear,” they reported to me in a few seconds.

  “Baby rabbit-four: all clear,” I heard almost immediately after the first.

  “Koschey: all clear. How is it outside? Do you copy?”

  “Baby Rabbit-three: all clear.”

  “Baby Rabbit-six: all clear.”

  Great. Although there was nothing complicated there, no one liked surprises in this business.

  “Koschey to Daddy-Rabbit: everything is clear here. The building is wiped. Copy.”

  Ugh, that old Eraser’s habit. I'm used to everything being wiped. Well, he won't understand that and will just think that the young newcomer made a mistake.

  “Daddy-Rabbit to Koschey: last check here. Yes, everything is clear. Do you copy?”

  “Koschey to Wild Rabbit: Identify your situation.”

  “Wild Rabbit to Koschey: clear and calm. We could barely hear you. Do you copy?”

  “We've finished here, grab Legless and get to us. We proceed to the second phase. Over.”

  Yep, Legless, aka Taro, was here too. Someone must lead the robbery. That is, the collection of trophies.

  “Daddy-Rabbit to Koschey: there is a problem. We could not take the prisoner. Do you copy?”

  Damn it! What the...

  “Meet me in front of the office building. Did you send a group there? Do you copy?”

  “Yes, Koschey. Already going through it. Do you copy?”

  “Over.”

  That sucks, but whatever. What now?

  We needed to get out of there. Tapping Baby Rabbit-seven on the shoulder, I addressed him.