by James Darcey
"I'm a little tired, but that machine really did me good."
She was nearly skipping as we walked down the street to the bus stop, and headed out for the train station. We had to go all the way into Sendai to reach the bank. Not that I minded; being out with people felt good after the sterile lab I'd grown up in.
The train felt good with the flow of its energy so close. I felt like if I reached up to touch it, that it would light me up like a neutron star. Add that to the bath I had taken, and drinking another liter of the water, and I felt rather energized. Sakura was feeling a bit better too. The train dropped us off at the same station we had been just yesterday. It seemed so long ago with all that happened.
Even in the heart of Sendai there were trees. Sakura overheard my quite comment about it, and laughed, "Sendai is known for being the city of trees. Most cities in Japan have plentiful trees, but Sendai tops them all."
Add that to the list of things I really enjoyed about the city, though someone had the nerve to mark one of them with black paint in the form of a horned face. Sakura scowled at it as we walked past, though I didn't get a chance to ask her why.
When we reached the bank I followed the line of people visiting the women at the counter. When I finally reached the front I began stacking the lumpy gold bars onto the counter before the girl. By the third one she was calling to the manager. He seemed even happier to see me this time as he escorted us to a room in the back of the bank.
We only had to wait a few minutes before another man joined us with a scale to weigh the misshapen gold. He was surprised when even measuring down to the milligram, there was very little difference between the bars. Once he'd measured all of them, he opened his little terminal and converted that number into even larger numbers. The manager was partially excited, and yet nervous as each figure was jotted down on a form. I caught the amazed look from Sakura as the figure topped over one hundred sixty million.
The manager took a breath as he turned to me, "I know that you deposited a sizable sum just yesterday, but there is requirement I must fulfill with a gold transaction before I can issue you the full amount. It should be available within three to six days."
Flashing a smile, I assured him that would be fine, "I mostly wanted to ensure that it was in a safe location until I need it."
He smiled with what seemed relief, "Arigatou gozaimasu. I will see to it that ten percent is applied immediately to your account, should you have any sudden urge to spend it."
Now that I knew that I could only use a tenth of the gold I'd brought, I was very glad that I'd brought as many of the lumpy bars as I had. I had lots of cloth to buy. The only question remaining now, was should I get it with bright flowers or perhaps stripes.
Between the two men they had my account updated, and ready for my use before he led us back out to the front. Now I was the one receiving the honor as the bank manager bowed deeply to me and Sakura.
We had spent the better part of an hour getting the measurement done, and by the time we left the back room the bank had become a lot more crowded. They had brought out a third counter girl, but still each line had close to a dozen people waiting.
We were just passing the desk where I had sat the day before to create my account, when three men rushed into the bank wearing elaborate horned masks. They were all waving obvious weapons around as though they intended to shoot someone.
I ducked behind the desk pulling Sakura down beside me as soon as I saw them. I remembered that power armor incident and I didn't want her getting shot like Panzo had. She had already gotten hurt on our last trip, and now she was vulnerable again.
Between the staccato burst of their weapons shooting the ceiling, and the screams of terrified people, it was hard to hear what they were shouting. All I caught were things like 'quiet' and 'money'. I could feel Sakura starting to shake a bit next to me.
She'd gotten hurt yesterday on account of being with me, and now these guys wanted to repeat that; I don't think so! These guys had to be stopped before they hurt anyone. The thrill of the confrontation was swelling inside me, bringing with it a good charge rippling along my body. I wanted to take a chunk out of these... These... If they wanted to hurt people, they weren't any better than the scum on Rage's moon that shot Panzo.
I let the charge ripple across me as I pulled off the wig. A cloud of tan flakes drifted to the ground. They were shouting above the screams for everyone to get against the wall with hands up. This had gone far enough. I started to stand, but she pulled me back down.
"It'll be fine, just stay down."
She nodded, and started pulling at the scarf dress. I understood now, with her help I slipped it off. No sense in ruining another of my dresses by getting a bloody hole in it. One of the men was yelling for everyone to drop phones and jewelry into a bag. I stood up. There was no hiding now. The man in the middle was looking right at me.
"Hey you! Get out from there and join the others! Anyone with you, cosplay girlie?"
Old lessons learned about fights came drifting through my thoughts. I needed to know everything I faced before I took on the first one. It only took a quick glance to see the extent of what I faced, and a smile curled my lip.
I could see the one guy standing on the counter like he was in charge, and the other one was shoving people against the wall. I let a bolt hit that man square in the back to send him flying over the lady he had been pushing. He hit the wall with a thud, dropping down into the group he had been holding the bag out for their jewelry.
To my left the leader cried out in surprise, "What the...!"
The guy on the counter swung the big rifle toward me. It looked a bit big for a simple pellet shooter, but I wasn't about to wait and find out if it held more power. The end of it was coming to bear on me, and if he missed it might even hit Sakura still hiding behind that desk. I didn't have to worry much though; pellets are no match to electrical arcs. Lightning lit him up as he vanished over the counter in an aerial tumble.
He was still feet upward as his body slammed into the top of the open vault. The big weapon hit the ground a split second before he did. That left the guy in the middle. He was staring straight at me now. I just had to know.
So I asked, "What's a cosplay girlie?"
I doubt the growl was really the correct answer. He lifted his big pistol and fired. The sound of the staccato shots disappeared in the buzzing hiss of my bolt. The lightning wrapped around him for a moment, and he seemed to dance. A shifting rope of electrical energy made several loops around him as it sought a connection to the floor. Something slammed into my shoulder. I knew I'd been hit. I had counted nine of the pellets whizzing past, but this had connected. It had connected hard too. My fist closed cutting off the bolt. With the charge gone there was nothing to hold him upright, and he sagged to the floor.
I sat back against the desk as the throbbing began in my shoulder. This hurt almost as bad as the bear biting that same shoulder. He probably chipped the bone again. At least without the large gashes in my side I wasn't losing as much blood. No way were they taking me to another hospital with waiting FBIs to cut me open.
In the silence that followed, I heard gasps from across the room as people began realizing there were no more men with guns pointed at them. After taking a few more deep breaths and I got the pain down to a tolerable level. Teyrn had liked testing my grasp of pain. For my part I liked denying him the pleasure of watching me squirm under his attempts.
There was a box of tissue on the desk that I used to help stop the flow of blood. From over where all the customers had been gathered, I could see them looking at me with faces that I couldn't begin to read. A sound to the left drew my attention to the manager coming out from behind the counter holding the big rifle. He was looking around for somewhere to point it.
I watched as he brought it up to point straight at me, the weapon shaking slightly in his hands as he fought against fear. I could probably stun him before he shot me, but it would be close. Our staring at each
other was interrupted by a moan from the first man I'd hit.
I leapt about ten meters in a dive over the desks to where the man was regaining consciousness. I grabbed the gun and threw it toward the bank manager. If he was regaining consciousness, then the other wouldn't be far behind. A dozen quick steps brought me to the last one; the one that had actually managed to shoot me. I yanked the weapon from his grasp, and sent it flying into the back of the bank with a good kick. It left a gouge in one of the wooden panels as it bounced off.
The whole time, the manager held the weapon pointed at me, though it was starting to drop. Worry began to filter through my head that he might still shoot me. I was now the green woman standing in his bank. In the nervous tension I almost sent more electrical arcs when the little flashes came from the crowd of other people. My hand stayed closed as I noticed that it wasn't weapons they held, but imagers -- little phones.
I was stuck in a closed room, being stared at by about twenty some odd witnesses that I couldn't just zap. Sakura stood from behind the desk, shoving the wig into her purse. Luckily I was the only one looking in her direction. She saw my shoulder and came toward me. I waved her back. I didn't want her getting dissected alongside me. My secret was out now. At least I knew that she would do what she could to protect my shipmates.
The manager was walking toward me hesitantly like he didn't know whether to shoot me or thank me. Or, he could do both. He still held the rifle. I knew that he knew who I was from the last little while sitting in the back room. Even yellowish-green, and without the wig, there was no mistaking my eyes. I'd spent enough time standing next to him.
Suddenly another masked man ran into the doors shouting to hurry up, "Grab what you can and let's go! The police are... what the..."
I didn't let him finish as another lightning bolt knocked him backward through the doors. The manager had lifted the rifle and fired at him. A mass of tiny fragments tore the air where the gunman had been standing. They shattered the glass of the door that man had walked through. Now I knew that it was just a different type of pellet gun. It would hurt a lot. The manager turned to stare at me, the rifle pointing at the ground between us. Now was the chance to break the stalemate.
"I should go."
He nodded and pointed toward the back of the bank. I ran that way without even glancing back. Sakura would be fine if they didn't connect her to me. I ran the way he pointed with him following right behind. There was a side door that he waved a card at. It beeped and opened into an area between the buildings.
The door closed with a solid sound behind me as I stepped through it. He had stayed inside. Now he was safe as well. It took a few seconds to realize that I actually had been given a chance to escape. Maybe it was only the government type officials that I needed to fear.
TOC
JU SAN
I leaned against a pole trying to will the pain to stop. Slowly the blood quit seeping, but the pain was still bad. Sakura was probably running for her life. She must know what happens to aliens on this planet. At least I hope she was running the other direction. Please run and protect your family. I stuffed the wad of tissues into a recycler bin, and ran down the tiny road behind the building. When I heard voices coming around the side of the bank building, I jumped over the nearest wall. Hopefully the gate here would keep them out. Their voices echoed slightly in that narrow alleyway.
"Did you hear what we're looking for? A manga monster, that's what! Is the chief serious?"
"Some description, huh? Two meters tall, totally green, flaming eyes that shoot lightning. Sounds like my wife's mother if you ask me. C'mon, nothing back here."
I listened to their footsteps receding as they walked back toward the bank. My guess was that they were police officers from the way that they talked. They kept talking about how dumb it was to keep searching for something that didn't exist, especially since they had already captured the thieves.
I hadn't noticed anything unusual about my eyes. Did they really look like flames? Mr. Motogawa had commented about that when he was making my identification. Would he tell? No, I don't think he'd want to explain to Akita about bringing the police down upon him, since I suspect the work he'd done would have them looking at him too.
"Are you here to rob me, or just stand in the corner of my garden trampling my beans? Go do your cosplay somewhere else!"
I hadn't heard him approach, but there was a man standing not even five meters from me. Maybe I'd been too busy just jumping over the wall to see him. Beans?
My eyes dropped down to my feet. I was standing in an area of dirt with tiny plants growing. The dirt had been carefully arranged so that it had a swirling pattern around each plant. Someone with a great love of them had taken the time to shape it that way. His hands held a metal-tipped pole. The fingers on the end of it would make a fine match to the swirls I had just stepped all over.
"I... uh... That's the second time I've heard that. What is cosplay?"
His eyes widened, and the pole slipped from his grasp, "You're bleeding! Come in quickly."
A glance at my shoulder confirmed that the bleeding hadn't actually stopped after all. The shipsuit was soaked with it all the way down to my belly. That meant the bullet was probably still in me. I followed the man inside the door leading into a small shop. It was filled as much as it could hold with shelves full of what looked to be little boxes on end.
There were so many of them; I looked closer to get a better idea of why they were there. Books! Real books written in ink on paper and bound by thickened paper cases. Most of them seemed to be quite old. Relics from a time before data terminals? He had me sit on a stool beside the tiny counter as he got a small towel wet and started dabbing at the blood on my shoulder, trying to wash it away. Bit by bit it soaked into the towel. It hurt, but I held the pain back. He discarded that towel for another, once the first had turned red with my blood.
"Is this your blood? I see a hole in the shirt, but you should be bleeding more. Yes, there's a small wound here. What's your name? Why are you dressed this way? It just keeps coming."
He kept on talking to me about how he thought it looked like a bullet hole, but the wound was too small. He even asked me about the police that had been in the alley. So, those were police. I had guessed they were. I couldn't help but watch the concentration on his face as he tried to remove all of the blood. The more he tried, the more oozed from the hole to soak down the wetted cloth.
Maybe if I tried explaining, "They tried to rob the people in the bank. I stopped them, and got hit by one of them. I can't see the police; they would want to cut me open."
I'm not sure he was even listening to what I was saying, because he kept right on talking without pause. His attention was on the blood and the hole in my shoulder. I think I ceased being a person and shifted into being a puzzle he was trying to solve. No, that wasn't it. He cared; I could tell from his touch, and his voice. The blood was something in the way of him helping me. Maybe my luck hadn't run out after all. I thought there was a chance I could even ask him not to turn me in to be cut up.
Suddenly the dabbing of the cloth stopped, and he stood straighter, "Wait, this isn't make-up -- what are you?
I felt the intensity of the question as he looked straight into my eyes. His grew rounder as some thought surfaced behind them. Without another word, he jumped up to start searching along the shelves of books. The move startled me so much that I zapped the stool I was sitting on.
Not that it mattered much; the metal creaked a bit but held me. He hadn't even noticed. About midway along the third shelf of his search, he emitted a sound as he pulled a tall book down. It flipped open to reveal that it was full of paper sheets with writing -- just as I'd suspected, though a little cruder. This wasn't even printed; it had been hand written. As he turned through the pages, there were a few drawings as well.
His face was still buried in the tome, "What kind of Youkai are you?"
"What is that you're looking at?"
"It's
a book -- you know, storage of knowledge from a pre-internet fixation. Kind of like a web spot, only less ad garbage trying to sell you on stuff you don't need."
"How do you get the images to move?"
The policemen walking the back road probably heard the sigh he let out, "The problem with all the tech garbage is that it loses the feel of the real thing. The books I have here are ones that go back to when people actually took the time to think and dream."
It wasn't that I didn't know what they were; I got the feeling that he had been in this debate many times, as he defended his shop's existence. He complained that was the trouble with the modern world. Too much loss of the old ways. I had to reframe my question to ask about the particular book he was referencing.
He loved the paper books, "You can tell just how important the author thought their work was, just by the feel of it. The original authors put a lot of thought behind what they drew their words on, and often spent weeks deciding on the perfect cover to honor the importance of the work within. There's nothing to feel with computer books."
Back to the original question: I had to tell him that I wasn't a monster, "But what book are you looking at? You called me a Youkai. Why would you want to cut me open?"
"Why would they cut you open?"
"Isn't that what you do to things you don't understand? It's what I read about... about people like me."
"That's not right. The flamboyant stories get filled with so much exaggeration that the original is long lost."
"I need to be going. I'm endangering you just by being here. If the police find me..."
The police officers might have given up, or they could be lurking around the corner with a trap ready to spring. I had studied so many of the thoughts behind military strategists, that I could picture hundreds of methods they might employ to capture me. Often those methods caused great harm to those nearby. As I started to stand he grasped my shoulder bringing a wave of pain that forced me to sit again. There was blood on his hand as he pulled it away.
