Wearing the Cape 5: Ronin Games (17 page)

This was
so
going to suck.

My first suggestion was that Ozma use her magic belt to “age us up” a bit, only to learn that the famed Magic Belt was a
magic capacitor
. She only used it when she didn’t have something in her magic box that would do the job and didn’t have time to whip up something in her lab. And between changing us the first time, transforming herself into a green crystal jar, catting Shell, and her stunt the previous night in the graveyard, she’d pretty much tapped it out and it needed to recharge.

Not
good news.

So we came up with a plan and armed ourselves—which in this situation meant
shopping
. The clothes we’d worn “under” our costumes, and the extra clothes we’d picked up in Anhui, were not nearly upscale enough for where we needed to go in fashion-conscious Tokyo. We needed serious upgrades, and could “age up” a little in our style choices.

Ozma called the lobby and they sent us to Isetan Shinjuku, Isetan’s flagship store and multiple floors of clothing, accessory, and even hair and makeup fashion. Armed with Shell’s no-limit credit cards, we hit the place for a complete Girl’s Day; that meant hitting one of the fanciest hair spas I’d ever been to for deep cleansing oil massages, shampoos, and blowouts along with manicures and face-care, and then the personal attention of a team of style-guides as we shopped till we dropped.

Sending the purchases we weren’t wearing to the hotel, we snacked and window-shopped our way up East Shinjuku (avoiding City Hall). That gave Ozma a chance to implement one of my ideas; buying a quality foldable city-map, she used it like a Girl Scout’s map and compass with her magic fish, stopping every half hour to check and draw a new red line orienting to Kitsune.

It looked like he was moving around (not all lines intersected at the same point), but the angles suggested he was staying in East Shinjuku. We’d check again from the hotel during the night hours; if he left Shinjuku we’d follow, if not then tomorrow we’d scout the east side.

Returning to Keio Plaza for a four-star dining experience, we went back up to our suite to confer with Shell over a walking-map of East Shinjuku that would let us make more Kitsune-checks without standing out too much.

When night fell Kitsune stayed in Shinjuku.

Dammit
.

We set an alarm so one of us would get up every hour to recheck Kitsune’s direction, just in case. Jacky expressed a need to hunt (she promised she’d be careful), so Ozma and I took one of the two big beds and left the other for her. The bath was big enough for us to share, but I wasn’t going
that
Japanese even if I knew the proper way from Shell’s explanation at the ryokan (wash off completely first,
then
soak in the bath).

I left the bathroom to Ozma while Jacky changed to go out, and found myself looking out at the city while waiting my turn.

The suite’s lights were low enough that I could see the glowing towers of Shinjuku and my own ghostly reflection in the window. It had been a few days now, and seeing myself still made me feel…unreal. Beautiful (especially after today’s pampering care) but not
me
. A shadow behind me turned into Jacky as she stepped up, looking over my shoulder at the Tokyo nightscape.

“What are you thinking about?” She watched my reflection in the window, and I suppressed the urge to bite my new manicure.

“Kitsune.”

“Why? Beyond the usual.”

“I— ” Why? What had changed? “If Kitsune— If he’s really a criminal… I don’t know.” Oddly, I’d been happy to hear Veritas’ theory that he’d been working for the Japanese government in the whole Littleton affair. A spy working for his government—that could be right, even honorable. If he was just a criminal who sometimes did government jobs… But thinking that didn’t feel right, somehow. And it wasn’t just wishful thinking. Why…

“What do you know about him?” Jacky asked quietly, watching my face in reflection.

“Everything you know.”

“Not his file. What do you
know
about him?”

For some reason I flashed back to the second time I’d met him—if
he
was the right pronoun. The first time he’d worn the dead banker’s face, then Mom’s, and then Yoshi’s granddaughter’s: a slide-show. But the
second
time…then he’d worn Yoshi’s younger face. He’d been nice, even sweet, but the
important
thing was that when Nemesis had shot up The Fortress gunning for him, when I still hadn’t known who he was, he’d stayed and helped the victims. And in the whole Littleton thing, he’d risked his game (
her
game—she’d been Allison then) to deal us into it. Because Shelly had been there.

And…
Oh
. I knew why putting Kitsune with the yakuza in my head didn’t work.

“The tree,” I whispered. My eyes were wide in the mirroring glass.

“What about it?”

My eyes met Jacky’s in the window. I didn’t know
why
I knew this but… “It’s
good
. The tree, I mean. The whole place. Doctor Cornelius called it the High Plane of Heaven and—I know it’s not
Heaven
, but—but I don’t think anything evil can be there.” Folding my arms, I hugged my chest. “It’s so…when I’m there I feel so—I really wouldn’t mind staying. But…”

But everyone I loved was here. My responsibilities were here.

Her reflected mouth twisted. “‘Not evil’ doesn’t mean good, but if there’s a moral requirement I understand why you can be there. You’re all ‘Please let me save everyone I see, ever.’ They don’t even have to be good—killing Heavenly Dragon hurt you, didn’t it?”

When I shrugged her smile thinned. “Yeah. But that fox is a trickster. He’s at least as morally flexible as I am. Criminals can be a mix, too.”

She sounded impatient, like she shouldn’t have to be stating the obvious, and I sighed.

“I know.” I looked down at the cross-hatched grid of lighted streets, relatively quiet now. “It still doesn’t feel right. I can’t put him and the tree and him and the yakuza in the same picture.” When she didn’t say anything I looked up. She’d stepped back from the window and into shadow.

“Maybe. But don’t get stupid now. Trust is something we can’t afford until you’re safe. Go to bed—I’m going out.”

I nodded but stayed by the window until I heard the door of the suite close behind her.

The Second Deed of Hikari is celebrated in Tenkawa, a small town in the mountains. Each year, during the week when the three days of the deeds are honored, the town fills with celebrants from across Japan and the families of Tenkawa hold a joyful festival. They publicly celebrate the day that Hikari, sent by Tenkawa’s own guardian kitsune, survived the death-dealing touch of a powerful shinigami and freed the town of its evil.

A History of the Brief Career of Hikari and the Three Remarkable Ronin.

A light breeze stirred the flowering tree, plucking white cherry blossoms away to fall like snow. No. The air was still, the waving branches the only sound, a soft rub and rattle of branch against branch as petals drifted to settle on me.

Why?

“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
?”