“I was expecting,” she swallows, “I don’t know what I was expecting, but I figured you’d at least have a bloody robe for me.”
“One wasn’t in there?”
“No. Besides,” she takes a step closer to him, “I thought you liked seeing me like this.”
“I don’t, not right now anyway. My delivery will be here soon.”
“Your humandroid?”
Kodai nods.
Sarah’s eyes fill with excitement. “Ooo, I want to see her. It was a her, right?”
“Yes, it is a she, and absolutely not,” he says firmly. “Now please, get your clothes and leave. I will come see you when I’m ready.”
Sarah starts to say something but stops herself. She turns away and purposefully sashays so he can take a long, hard look at her ass, if he so chooses.
Kodai smiles. The audacity of this one. It’s why he likes her, and it’s why he plans to keep her around for a little bit longer.
(0)__(0)
Once Sarah has left his apartment, Kodai moves to the window to take in the view. He can see the glimmering waters of Tokyo Bay, the tops of the trees in the Imperial Garden, the rooftops of smaller apartment buildings, the daytime running lights of the aeros as they zip through the air.
He stands there admiring it for a good ten minutes until he naturally focuses in on his reflection. Kodai runs his hand through his short black hair, fixes the crease of his collar, and turns away from the glass.
His thoughts shift to his younger brother at the very moment Tamana betrayed his shitty little guild. A natural smile forms on Kodai’s face. It feels good to be in control again, it feels good to remind Ryuk where he stands in the pecking order.
A message from Gorira flashes on his iNet screen.
Gorira: She’s here.
Kodai: Send her up.
“Live feed.” The cameras in the lobby of the apartment complex play out on his retinae.
He purposefully doesn’t zoom in when he sees his new humandroid, hoping to save the close up for when she is standing directly before him. However, through the feed he can tell that she is just under two meters tall, lean, with short black hair pulled into two tight ponytails at the back of her head.
He moves to his coat rack to put on his suit jacket. Kodai checks his tie, makes sure the knot is pulled all the way up, and smooths his hands over the front of his shirt.
A video feed on his iNet screen alerts him that she is now in front of his door.
With a simple thought, the door clicks open, and the thin humandroid enters into his apartment.
She has western features with eastern European cheekbones and dark green eyes. She’s in a tight black bodysuit with the word SECURE in offset gunmetal gray on her sleeve and a slim-line pair of minimal combat boots.
She bows deeply. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Kodai Matsuzaki,” she says in flawless Japanese.
“Your name?”
She smiles at him and his heart flutters. “You can name me whatever you’d like, or you can call me by the name used during my training.”
“Which was?”
“Tesla.”
“After the aeros company?”
“My handler was fond of a Model T from the 2020s that he restored.” She takes a deep breath and steadies her gaze on him.
“Before we go any further, I’d like to test what you can do. Then I have some business to attend to in a Proxima world.”
“Tritania?”
Kodai takes a step back and regains his composure. “How did you know?”
“I was briefed on your recent interests by MercSecure.”
“I see. One moment, please.”
Kodai: Who is on the way out?
Gorira: Of our own men?
Kodai: Yes, best to start there.
Gorira: Yugio. He’s been late twice in the past three months.
Kodai: Bring him up. If he asks any questions, tell him you are escorting the droid back down.
“You are sending someone?” Tesla stands perfectly still, poised on her heels with an undecipherable look on her face. The more Kodai stares at her, the more he can’t tell what ethnicity she was modeled after. While earlier she looked western, she now looks Central Asian with her cheekbones and the cold look on her face.
She is, without a doubt, a most incredible work of art.
He’s startled when Gorira knocks twice and lets himself in. Gorira is joined by Yugio, a thin but muscled thug in a freshly pressed suit. His hair is slicked to one side, shaved on the other. Like the humandroid, the look on Yugio’s face is indecipherable.
Kodai approaches Yugio. “May I have your weapon?”
Yugio double-checks the safety is on and hands his weapon to Kodai, who then clicks the safety off and points the gun at Gorira.
“Give your gun to Yugio,” Kodai instructs his biggest thug.
If Gorira is surprised or scared, his visage doesn’t give it away. Kodai keeps the gun trained on him as the big man hands his firearm to Yugio.
“Good,” Kodai says, “now take off your jacket and kill her.”
“Hai.” Gorira removes his jacket, places it on the coat rack, and rolls up his sleeves. He looks to his shoes.
“You can keep them on,” Kodai says.
Gorira approaches and once he’s just outside of striking range, he lifts his brick-sized fists. He pauses, moves his fist back to his side, and bows. Tesla does the same and as she comes up, her eyes dilate and return back to their normal dark green color. She lifts her much smaller fists as well, and ever-so-slightly shifts one foot behind the other.
Gorira swings, and having seen Gorira kill a man with a punch to the face, Kodai knows just how powerful and fast the big man can swing.
Seconds later, he’s doubled over, trying to move away from the humandroid, who has avoided his swing by meeting it with a very precise knee to the gut.
The big man staggers back, sucks in a big gulp of air, and charges forward. Tesla levels him with a fist to the face. Gorira hits the ground hard enough to shake the floor. Blood dribbles out of his lips as he tries to lift himself.
“Finish him,” Kodai tells his new humandroid, his eyes narrowing on the blood that has started to pool on his floor.
With the speed of a striking cobra, Tesla steps slightly in front of Gorira, lifts her foot, and brings the back of her heel down on the big man’s neck, cracking his chin against the ground and killing him instantly.
“Good.” Kodai turns to Yugio. “Get two of the others and get this body out of my home. Also, don’t be late again.”
Chapter 5: A Scar is a Success Story
Morning comes faster than it should. A flashing icon tells Ryuk that a new episode of Flight Feet,フライトフィート, has been posted. He blinks his eyes open, happy that his room is slightly dark from thick curtains, and rolls to his side.
How did I get back to my bed? he wonders. His thoughts come to a halt as he recalls the Attla spider. A quick glance at the corner of his room and he sees that, at least at the moment, there are no digital spiders waiting to sink their fangs into his flesh.
He takes a breath and sits up, noticing that there is a box on his desk with the Proxima haptic gloves inside.
After a yawn, Ryuk blinks his eyes shut and begins his daily routine of checking Tritanian leaderboards. His attention falls back to Flight Feet. The blue-haired bombshell has recently finished leading her guild through Spider Skull Island. They are now outside the city of Waringtla, home to the Saiduka Giants.
A prompt from Hajime stirs his reverie.
Ryuk selects the strawberry covered honey toast and gets out of bed.
After a quick shower, most of which he spends playing a game of Pong over iNet with someone in his building, he enters the dining room area to find Hajime just finishing up on the toast.
“Did you see your Proxima Haptics? Rakuten delivered them while you were diving.”
“I sure did. I’ll deal with them after breakfast.”
“Good.
Care for whipped cream?” Hajime asks, his hair pulled back into a tight bun. The humandroid wears a light blue apron with an image of Totoro on it. Pinned to the front of his apron is a button that says CHEF.
“Please, and where did you get the apron?”
“I’ve worn it before; you’ve just never noticed. I see you’ve slept well,” the humandroid says, his eyes dilating slightly.
“I did.”
He transfers the thick toast from the oven to the plate in front of Ryuk. He returns with the strawberries and whipped cream and adds it to the top.
“I made coffee for a change of pace. Care to have some?”
“Sure,” Ryuk says, just now noticing the smell of coffee. Was I really that lost in my own thoughts?
Hajime returns with a coffee and takes a seat in front of him.
“Um, are you going to watch me eat?”
“What else am I supposed to watch?” the humandroid asks. “Watching humans eat is interesting, to be honest. Some of you become quite animalistic once food is placed before you.”
With what Hajime has just said in mind, Ryuk slowly eats his toast, careful to cut each slice proportionally and making sure not to coat his face with whipped cream. He pauses before finishing the last bite. “What happened to the weapons from yesterday?”
A series of flashes come to Ryuk – Kodai holding a humgun and Gorira smashing into the apartment with a pistol; his brother falling through the coffee table; the scattering glass.
What an experience.
“I’ve put the weapons away for now.”
“In the drawer?” Ryuk looks to the drawer in question. “We may need them if he comes back.”
Hajime nods. “Yes, we may, although I have a feeling that when and if Kodai comes back, it will go poorly for both of us.”
“Then why don’t we leave? Why don’t we run?”
“Run where? It’s an odd situation we’ve found ourselves in. Your family’s men are protecting us downstairs. If they wanted to come at us, they could, right now actually. But they haven’t and they won’t. Similarly, if we leave in a way that raises suspicion, they may come after us. Then again, maybe they won’t.”
“So we are under house arrest?”
The humandroid smiles. “If we wanted to leave, I believe we could. So no, we aren’t under house arrest. I do, however, see this situation escalating.”
“I need to log in,” Ryuk says, in place of anything better to say. When in doubt, escape. There really is no other mantra for a gamer.
“And there goes your monkey mind. Like a monkey, your mind goes from tree to tree, rather than dealing with the situation at hand.”
“I’m dealing with stuff in there too, in Tritania. You, of all people, should know this.”
Hajime nods, considering what Ryuk has just said. “Okay then, what are your plans for today?”
“To get to Polynya, the second floating continent, and try to get into contact with my old guild. It’s not going to be easy. For one, there’s been an attack on the capital city of Porthos so the gates are closed.”
“And what do you hope to gain from contacting them?”
“Advice and hopefully some assistance before things really get out of hand.” Ryuk’s face hardens. “Tamana doesn’t know about NPCs being able to take humandroid bodies. I never discussed this with her when she was with us. But if the Shinigami find out, I do believe our world, this world, will be in for some real trouble.”
“I see.”
Ryuk recalls the serpent woman behind the golden door. “There are other things happening in Tritania too, which may relate to all this.”
“And so the ultimate quest becomes even more intriguing.” Once Ryuk is finished eating, Hajime looks at down at his plate. “Are you going to read your note card?”
Ryuk moves his plate to the side and flips the placemat to find a card with a phrase written on it: the most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten – breathe.
“So breathe more?” He takes a deep breath to make a point. “How’s that?”
A rare grin spreads across the humandroid’s face. “Before you log in, I’d like you to join me in the living room for ten minutes of breathing. Turn everything off. Disconnect from your world. It’s a breathing exercise.”
“Hajime … ” He stops his protest. The person just about to protest was the old Ryuk, the Ryuk that didn’t emphasize differences, the Ryuk who was weak and feeble. “Sure,” he finally says. “Give me a second to disable my iNet feed.”
(0)__(0)
That was troubling, is the only thing Ryuk can think as his avatar takes shape in their room at the Mondegreen Hostel. He had done as Hajime instructed, and he’d been able to maintain his relaxed breathing for a good five minutes until the image of Tamana came to him, hovering over him holding her ironing board of a sword.
It was too hard to concentrate after that with his “monkey mind,” as Hajime put it, running rampant in the jungle of his skull. Still, the breathing exercise was good while it lasted.
“Phew!” Ryuk shudders as the wretched stench of goblin meets his sniffer. Hiccup snores loudly, his arm hanging off the bed and the blanket barely covering his dimpled ass. After a squeaky poot, the goblin blinks his eyes open for a moment, turns, and falls back asleep.
Damn goblin, Ryuk thinks, for old time’s sake.
Hiccup has grown on him, and however vulgar he is, the goblin always seems to come through at the very last moment. And even if he can be quite critical of the guild members – Ryuk especially doesn’t like being called “emo” or “snowflake,” whatever the hell that means – Hiccup seems as if he would literally die for the Mitherfickers.
The Mitherfickers.
The guild’s stats appear and he swipes them away as he sees a flashing message from FeeTwix.
FeeTwix: He has arrived!
Ryuk: Let me guess? The room upstairs?
FeeTwix: Close, but no cigar. We’re in the lobby.
Ryuk tiptoes out of the room, careful not to wake Hiccup. He finds Zaena sitting on the couch while the Swede stands before her, twirling a staff. Jim the Hostelier is behind the front desk, reading a Hotel Managers Quarterly scrollazine.
“Isn’t that the … ?”
“Yes,” FeeTwix says, “it’s the shaman staff we got from the Tuskarr back in the Hills of Hillshire. Our very first hard fight! As you know,” he says, his eyes black as ever, “my subclass is Mystic, something which I haven’t really done anything about. My fans sent me tons of suggestions – pretty sweet stuff, really. So I figured I’d work on enhancing those skills.” He shrugs. “Or I’ll just stick to firearms. We’ll see. It is nice that all the mystic abilities are natural extensions of an avatar’s being, meaning they don’t use Mana, which is useful as fick. Speaking of fick, we let the goblin sleep in.”
“I noticed.”
“And we’re out here because of the smell in there.”
“I noticed.”
Zaena laughs. “I don’t know how I ended up in a guild with two commoners and a goblin, but as we say in Thulean, chekchek tranaikh roonana marfakh.”
“Which means?” Ryuk asks.
She thinks for a moment. “The best way to translate it would be a scar is a success story.”
“Wonderful.” FeeTwix claps his hands together. “Now, how we practiced … ”
Zaena looks him dead in his black eyes and slowly parts her lips. “I know what many of you are thinking, I know that you’re worried that Valentine’s Day is less than a week away and you have nothing, nothing, to give your sigother. Well, your problems are solved!” Her orange eyes twinkle as she crosses one leg over the other. “TwitchTube Red is partnering with the Proxima Company to offer you and your sigother matching TwitchTube Red NV visors that come with a two-year discounted streaming membership. These limited edition visors will surely be collector’s items.” She gives FeeTwix the double thumbs up. “They’re kind of cute too.”
“Great work, babe!�
� A mirror appears in FeeTwix’s hand and he angles it at his face. “Okay, everyone! I’m stoked to see you all here, ready to venture with us to Polynya in the next hour or so. Keep the mystic hints coming in – I want to be full-on trancing out by the end of the day! Oh, and don’t forget: I’m announcing the winner of the TwitchTube Red lifetime membership at the end of the day, so get your entries in now while I discuss a few things with the guild.”
The mirror disappears and he claps his hands together. “All right, team, how should we wake the goblin?”
Jim the Hostelier stands. “If the goblin is waking soon, I’d better have breakfast ready. And you three? What will you be having?”
“Konakhchani Rohva.”
“Ah, over easy then?”
Zaena nods.
“And what do you think your goblin companion would like?”
“No telling, but make it as greasy as you possibly can.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged.” With that, Jim promptly steps into a different room.
“So the plan,” Ryuk says. “We need to take the next airship out of here.”
“Not a problem,” says FeeTwix. “I’ve already booked one.”
“Can you go blue for a moment?”
His eyes flash blue. “They really hate it when I do that. There are close to two million people livestreaming my feed, which isn’t the largest number I’ve seen, but it’s pretty damn good.” He sighs and runs his hand through his blond hair. “They are exhausting me a bit, to be honest. But no matter. I had a full night’s rest. I’ll get over it!”
“There are several things we need to discuss, the first of which is payment to your banker friend for the loan he gave us.” Ryuk takes a seat on the arm of the couch. “We’re up about fifteen thousand rupees. I know that isn’t enough, but … ”
FeeTwix snaps his fingers.
“What did you just do?”
“Check the coffers.”
A number appears on Ryuk’s display: 75, 309. His eyes light up. “Where did you get this kind of money?”
“A check came in and I converted it to rupees.”
“A check for how many days?”
Fantasy Online Polynya Page 5
