She gives him a confused look.
“For your information, Tammy, Hiccup is a shortened version of the ancient Thulean word, hiccupanaratapana, which means, ‘a sword which has had one side of its hilt broken off yet has maintained its balance and is actually a better weapon because of it.’ Another interpretation could be: ‘a sudden change that seems like it will greatly affect you but doesn’t turn out as bad as it seems.’ Kind of like our little shitshow here, and if I might add, my addition to the group.” He clears his throat and straightens an invisible tie. “All right, I need to get back to Twixy to make sure he doesn’t lose all our fickin’ money. We were up, bigly, and I’d like to see it stay that way. Have the cuffs and the message delivered and Ryuk … ”
“Yes?”
“Prepare my bed. I’ll need more pillows than that and I want the bed furthest away from the Thulean, just in case she tries something funny.”
“If I wanted you dead, you’d already be dead,” Zaena reminds him.
“Good to know. See you kiddos in a bit.” With a middle finger salute, Hiccup dematerializes, the healing potion gripped tightly in his free hand.
(0)__(0)
With the goblin gone, Ryuk returns his attention to Tamana. His words run together as he explains who Zaena is and their guild’s efforts to find Tamana. He hardly gives her a moment to respond with anything aside from a nod. He’s never this garrulous, but seeing her has filled his heart with hope. The pain of watching his best friend die still scrabbles at his consciousness, but it’s easier to ignore now that she’s here.
Zaena reenters the room. “The package will be picked up in five minutes or less. I’ll, um … ” She glances from Ryuk, who is on the floor sitting on his knees, to Tamana. “I’ll join the others and give you two some privacy.”
“It’s okay … ” Tamana starts to say, but Zaena is gone before she can finish her reply.
“Sorry, I’ve been rambling too,” Ryuk tells her. “I want to know exactly what happened.”
Something flashes across Tamana’s eyes. Her brow furrows and she bites her lip, reliving the memory in an instant. “I logged out, you know, right after we beat those trolls. I was in my dorm room and the walls started to come apart. A gyunsakhai, remember those things?”
“How can I forget land dragons?” They’d fought several in Ultima Thule. Wingless and always bad-tempered, the creatures were an amalgamation of dragon, giraffe, and hippo.
“One tore through the wall of my dorm room. I started running and made it outside, but then it burst out the window and crash-landed on the streets below. I saw it eat someone! I was trying to message you, I think I messaged you.”
“You did.”
“It chased me and I thought I could kill it with the subway train. Stupid, I know, but I just had this feeling that I could make it to other side before it did and kill it.”
“But how did you know the train would come at that time?”
“I take that train twice a week; I’ve memorized the schedule. So I tried, I leapt and … ” She tries to recall how it played out. “I didn’t feel a thing. I just woke up on the chaise in our guild, like I was having an in-game dream or something. As soon as I did, someone pulled a black bag over my head and struck me with a blunt instrument, which knocked me down to two or three HP. I was cuffed, and lifted over someone’s shoulder. As all this was happening, prompts from the Proxima Company came to me, letting me know that I successfully had become an RPC. Reborn Player Character … ” Tears return to her eyes. “I still can’t believe it, I still feel like I can just lift my finger and log out! Imagine what it’s like to not be able to log out!”
“I can only imagine.”
“As I was being dragged away, a video of the final minutes of my life auto-played and I saw, through other people’s live iNet feeds as well as the subway surveillance feeds that I jumped in front of the train. Then my own iNet feed played, showing me push through the crowd, jump, and ...” she rubs her hand over her eyes, “getting struck by the train. It was horrible!”
After a moment of silence Ryuk says, “I should probably tell you about the research Hajime has done regarding real world attacks that stem from the Proxima Galaxy. All have come from Tritania, specifically from resetters.”
“All are coming from Tritania?”
“That’s right, and you aren’t the only one who was attacked. I too had one of these experiences. I was in my bedroom when a Thulean warrior appeared and attacked me. If it hadn’t been for Hajime, I don’t know what I would have done.”
“Has anything happened since?”
“No, it hasn’t. But NPCs are trying to come to our world, and something about being a resetter is triggering it. We need to speak to Sophia, or anyone in the upper echelons of the Knights of Non Compos Mentis about this. They’ll know what to do.”
Tamana nods in agreement. “We’ll have to get to Polynya first, and I’m thirteen levels away.”
“There’s no way to get a message to her?” He shakes his head incredulously. “Surely there’s a way for us to do that.”
“We need to do this in person. It is too sensitive to try to send via carrier, or through another player. No, we need to get there.”
As she fixes her white hair, pulling it back over her elven ears, a question floats to the front of Ryuk’s mind. “While you were imprisoned, did you see or hear anything that could help us fight the Shinigami? I know you said your head was covered, but did you maybe hear something?”
Tamana considers this for a moment. “The guild is a mixture of RPCs and a few mid-level NPCs. I heard one of them speaking about that. They didn’t really say much though, and I was in and out because of my low HP. One of them did mention something about the basement of the guild, and a powerful source of energy there. Whatever that is, it may be fueling the Shinigami.”
“Then we should destroy it,” Ryuk says firmly. “We should do what they least expect us to do. They expect us to run, and if we run, they will chase us like dogs. But what if we level up and then bring the party to them? There’s five of us now and you’re a healer and a warrior.”
Tamana’s eyes soften. “Something has changed about you.”
He feels embolden by the way she now looks at him. “We have Hiccup, a Shield Thief; FeeTwix, a Berserker Mystic; and Zaena, an Assassin Brawler. Now we have you, a White Warrior – it’s a well-rounded guild if you think about it. About the only thing we don’t have is someone exclusively casting magic, but my skills make up for that, at least a little. Let’s turn the tables on them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s go after the Shinigami and do so on our own accord. It is the only way to emphasize the difference between our guilds. We play to our strengths, and our strength should be the patented sneak attack due to our low levels. They won’t be expecting us; they’ll be out looking for us.”
Tamana nods. “If that’s what you think we should do, I’m in. If we can figure out what is going on and why resetters are being attacked by NPCs in the real world, it’ll help everyone, both here and in the world out there. I don’t think it is a stretch at all to say the Shinigami are behind it.”
“Let’s go then, now.” He stands, ready for anything.
“Now?” Tamana laughs. “Tomorrow, Ryuk, I need to rest. That’s another thing about being an RPC – suddenly, I have to rest in-game and I need to eat whereas before, those things didn’t really matter as much. Speaking of which, I’m starving. The only thing they fed me was some terrible-tasting broth.”
“I’ll tell the others to bring us something and the concierge must have some snacks for sale. That settles it. Tonight, we rest. Tomorrow we’ll level and armor up, and tomorrow night, we’ll bring the fight to the Shinigami.”
Ryuk turns to the door.
“Last question: did you ever come up with a name for our guild?”
He hesitates for a moment.
“What?”
“The Mitherfickers,” he
says, and surprisingly, it doesn’t pain him much to do so. “Our guild’s name is the Mitherfickers.”
Chapter 20: A puppetless puppetmaster
Kodai silently follows Gorira through the door to the back office of the Hinomaru soapland in Yokohama. The day has not progressed well, and the trip to Tachikawa to personally survey the damage done by the American airmen has added nothing to it.
A pigtailed eighteen-year-old sitting on an extra sukebe isu – a pervert stool – leaps to her feet as he enters, and bows deeply.
“I do not pay you to sit on your shiri!” Kodai kicks the stool and it flips down the hallway and smacks into a shelf stacked with cans of nuru gel.
“Hai!” The young woman scrambles to retrieve a rag and begins scrubbing the nearest surface she can find.
A soapland is a uniquely Japanese combination of bathhouse and brothel, and the back office is a perfect example of what goes on behind the scenes. From industrial-sized boxes of condoms to mundane supplies such as toilet tissue and disinfectant – everything needed to run the business is kept on hand. A fresh load of laundry starts up in the adjacent room.
This is yet another one of Kodai’s additions.
The previous manager outsourced all of the laundering, which was incredibly stupid. Why fork over yen for a third party to do laundry when Hinomaru has no less than four girls on the clock at all times?
A chime sounds and a red light on the wall flashes, interrupting Kodai’s brooding. The holoscreens on the manager’s desk flash and display the feed from the front room.
Kodai takes a seat and watches as the new manager he’s hired as of today greets a gaijin customer, politely instructing the thick-necked gaijin to remove his shoes. Kodai hears a door shut as the woman he has just chastised steps into the bathroom to freshen up before greeting the patron.
“Rooms.” Three of the screens in front of Kodai change, showing a bird’s eye view of the rooms that are currently in use.
In the first two rooms, a man lies nude on a massage table as a woman slathered in nuru gel slides herself up and down his body. The soapland experience in the third room has just begun; the man perches on the pervert stool as a bored-looking young woman attends to his personal hygiene with soft hands and a removable showerhead.
The young woman unsuccessfully stifles a yawn.
Hiring college dropouts and pretty girls from the countryside still makes good economic sense, but the high turnover and low morale always manages to bite him in the ass. One day when it does become more economical, he’ll hire humandroids for the job…
“Hey,” he calls over to Gorira. The big man quickly approaches him and peers over his shoulder. Kodai taps on the screen. “See yawning beauty here? Have the new manager handle this, now.”
Gorira fires off a message to Okami, the new manager, who then fires off a message to the woman. Kodai watches in the live feed as she suddenly feigns excitement and enjoyment.
“Better.” He stands from the desk.
As Kodai moves towards the door to the basement, he eyes a handwritten, heart-shaped, pink posterboard sign that reads: Did you check for stains? Are they all gone? Make sure the towels are clean! A kawaii drawing of a happy young girl with her thumbs up is tacked to the bottom of the reminder.
He waits for Gorira to open the door, and he descends into the basement. A single LED bulb at the base of the stairs provides the only light; the muffled sobs of Meosa, the soon-to-be former manager of Hinomaru, the only sound.
Kodai enters the room and nods at one of his triggermen. After he inserts a pair of foam earplugs and dons a pair of latex gloves, the man hands him a suppressed, small-caliber handgun. Gorira takes his place on the opposite side of the door and puts his fingers in his ears; the triggerman does likewise.
Kodai steps onto a blue tarp, in the center of which former manager Meosa is naked and duct-taped to a pervert stool. Tear tracks moisten his cheeks; his fear-filled eyes are wide above the red rubber ball gag that’s encrusted with his snot.
As Kodai raises the weapon, an acrid yellow puddle forms around the base of the stool and he grimaces in disgust. Gorira and the triggerman avert their eyes, embarrassed to witness Meosa’s cowardice and loss of face – when all that is left is for one to die, one should at least die well.
Even with the suppressor, the report in the enclosed room is surprisingly loud.
The subsonic .22 caliber hollow point bullet enters Meosa’s skull but does not exit; instead, it ricochets through his brain tissue and gives him a more merciful death than he deserves. Other than the shameful loss of bladder control and a small trickle of blood around the entrance wound, there is almost no mess, of which Kodai approves.
He considers the now empty meat sack for a moment. After clearing his throat, he hands the weapon to the triggerman and motions for Gorira to follow him up.
(0)__(0)
Kodai is ushered into the back of his hostess bar in Shinjuku.
He goes through the kitchen, where a cook batter dips chicken for frying and into the main room, lit by dim red lights and tea candles floating in red liquid. He stops at the bar, and moves into the shadows and exhaled vapor of the pollute area.
First introduced to Japan about twenty years ago, pollutes quickly replaced cigarettes as a favorite Japanese inhalant. The fact that they are designer intoxicants in a land defined by its conspicuous consumption only made them more popular. The ones offered in Kodai’s bars and clubs are of the strictly legal variety – of which there are many – but the real money is in the illicit trade of banned pollutes.
A Nikka whiskey is placed in front of him and he takes a sip from it, savoring its smoothness. With his glass in hand, Kodai turns to the front of the hostess bar. He spots Sarah immediately – hard not to – and watches as she playfully pours a glass of champagne for a salaryman still in his work clothes.
As Kodai takes another sip from his whiskey, a twinge of jealousy makes him tense his hands. He sets his whiskey down on a coaster and motions the bartender over. “Pollute mask.” The bartender bows. It takes almost no time to produce a pollution mask shaped like an anime skull with green polypropylene lenses for eyes and the BAPE brand label in about the same place where forty minutes earlier, Kodai served Meosa with his separation package.
The bartender feeds the pollute tube to an adjustable hook that keeps it free from the bar top. Kodai places the mask over his head and a cute bunny appears on the insides of the mask’s lenses. The bunny bows repeatedly as it explains to Kodai how to use the mask and asks if he’d like to sync the mask with his iNet feed.
He declines.
Kodai doesn’t sync his feed with anything if he can help it, as doing so is a surefire way to have one’s data tapped.
A meter appears on the right hand side of his pane of vision. The bunny starts to ask a question regarding the type of experience he’d like, but Kodai silences him by saying aloud, “I want something to calm me.”
An hourglass appears over the bunny’s head as it interprets his request. A few seconds later, a single option appears: Dior Aeolian Deposit.
“Fine.”
The meter on the right adjusts the dose. After it reminds Kodai that he can adjust it manually, or by syncing his iNet feed, the experience begins.
Inhale, exhale.
With the mask over his face, Kodai experiences a brief moment of calm, which is, of course, interrupted by his disappointment in the outcome of his day.
He’s losing control, which is something that plagues him in a way that reaches to his very core. Inhale, exhale and relax, he reminds himself, things are going according to plan. He thinks back to the proceedings of the day and a slight grin tugs at the corner of his mouth. He is just about to manually up the dosage when Sarah approaches him.
She reaches him before he can take the mask off, places her elbows on the bar top and leans forward in a way that arches her back end.
Sarah is in a sheer black dress tonight that barely covers the cheeks
of her ass. Criss-crossed spaghetti straps over her chest keep her funbags from spilling out. The black choker collar around her neck is accented by a small trinket shaped into a diamond studded spade, and she wears long earrings which dangle to the bottom of her neckline.
“Do you mind if I have a puff?” she asks.
“I don’t normally share.”
“I don’t normally ask a client to share.”
“Fair enough.” Kodai unclips the mask from behind his head and hands it to her. The action of taking the mask off overwhelms his senses for just a moment – suddenly, he’s back in the dimly lit club and even with the dark spaces, color has returned to everything. An image of Meosa’s face and the trickle of blood flashes in his mind’s eye. It disappears as quickly as it came.
Without strapping the pollute mask to her head, mostly to avoid messing up her hair, Sarah takes three fast puffs. On her final exhale, she turns to Kodai. “Is there something bothering you?” she asks.
“My brother,” he says in Japanese.
“Your what?” she asks over the loud music.
He switches to English. “My business. Every time I get a leg-up, something makes sure to take my knees out from beneath me.”
“Have another hit,” she tells him.
He obliges, takes the mask from her and inhales deeply. A thought comes to him, “What do you call a puppetless puppetmaster?”
Sarah moves closer to him and motions for him to bend towards her. Once he has done so, she says in a voice just above a whisper, “If it’s control you want, Kodai, you can control me, any way you want.”
He shifts away from her and cocks an eyebrow. “You’d like that?”
She nods. “I would.”
“Why?”
“It’s what I like.” She brushes a single curl of hair out of her face.
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