[FFML] [FIC][Illusions] Fool's Minstrel (01)

[Mike Ching]

Three claps in the cold autumn air, and the grave was
silent again.

Before the stone pillar, written across it the life
and times of a great
old woman, stood a girl deep in prayer. The symbols
written on it echoed
the elegant brushstrokes of old Japanese lore,
themselves evoking a
shadow of the Chinese who had invented their early
texts. In Kanji, the
name of Beautiful Shadow--Mikage--was as beautiful as
it was permanent,
etched in stone as finality to a long life.

Sayo had knelt before this, her adoptive grandmother's
grave, for weeks
since her passing, hoping, or wondering if a sign
would appear, to give
her guidance the way her old guardian had.

Yet as time passed, she became increasingly aware of
it, the loneliness
she had felt when the one other person in her life had
left years
before.

"I'm sorry, Grandmother. I can't stay here," she spoke
in a gentle yet
firm voice. Looking up from her prayers, the wind
silently whispering in
one ear to stay, but she paid it no heed. For sixteen
summers Sayo had
lived here, safe in this country town, away from the
world. Now, she
would fulfill her promise, one that she had given
years before. "I'm
going to the city, to find Shion. One way or another.
I'll bring her
back."

"You have to forgive Shion. She wasn't the patient
sort," she explained
to the gravestone, then stopped. It would change
nothing. Maple leaves
fell, reminding her that the too, could not turn back
time.
"Grandmother, you told me that many things for good
were being used for
the wrong reasons in the world. But how can people
know that if nobody
tells them?"

The sky and trees were silent; not even the whisper of
a wind gave an
answer.

"I'll tell them. I promise you. I'll seek out
Shion-Aneechan and bring
her back," she swore, bowing reverently to the grave.
The whispering
winds began again, warning her of trials to would
face, unknown dangers
to one as young as she. Again, the girl paid them no
heed.

Finally, Sayo rose to her feet. Gracefully, as her
grandmother taught
her both strength and dignity; traditions she embraced
but her elder
sister chafed against. They would be either her
weaknesses or her
greatest strengths; she knew not which. With one last
solemn bow, she
turned away, to the future.

"Shion, big sis...I'll find you. No matter what it
takes," Mikage Sayo
set forth, towards the city she had never once seen.

MegaTokyo.

=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Fool's Minstrel
01.
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=

Shingo Iwanaga wrinkled his nose at the sight.

It was not out of the smell, which was normal for the
half-dead bay and
sea that stretched outward from Japan. Nor was it from
the sight of the
dead man, sprawled across the rocks like a mockery of
many catholic
frescoes. He and his partner had seen corpses in far
worse shape than
this, though this was admittedly the first they'd seen
wearing diving
gear.

What Iwanaga was wrinkling his nose at was the charge.
At first sight of
the dead man, Shingo knew he should have asked for a
higher daily fee.

"Okay bud, pop quiz..." the man beside him shrugged.
Tomoru Minazuki
then knelt down to take a better look at the corpse.
"Cause of death?"

"Drank the water in the bay, then collapsed of food
poisoning. Then the
seagulls pecked him to death. Saw it in an old gray
vid once, birds
going to war with humanity."

"You're no fun," Tomoru pouted, even as he took note
of the reddish-
brown skin of the man. The duo's fashion sense could
not have been more
different; Iwanaga preferred trenchcoats to go with
his rumpled suit and
tie, saying that the romantic image of a Private
Investigator required
appropriate dress. Minazuki preferred more pragmatic
clothing, and was
simply glad his partner didn't smoke and didn't wear a
fedora like that
forgotten actor in the old gray DVDs did. Why Shingo
still kept his
movies on an obsolete entertainment medium, he had
never asked. "I'm
guessing Southeast Asian or South American, compadre."

"Bit out of our league," Iwanaga drew a breath,
cursing under it. He and
Tomoru had been given a job by an individual who
wished to remain
anonymous. The task sounded simple enough; they'd
gotten the offer the
day before, he'd assumed it a simple investigation by
a fairly discreet
MegaCorp. But of course, this was MegaTokyo--one hell
of a town to get
killed in. "Mafia hit, maybe?"

"Whatever happened to sticking his feet in a tub and
pouring cement?"
Tomoru grumbled. At first glance there seemed no signs
of a gunshot, and
there were no knife wounds he could see. The only hint
he had was the
shocked expression on the man's face as he lay
contorted in rigor mortis
along the fetid shore.

"Oh shit," Shingo suddenly tapped his partner on his
jacketed shoulder.
"We got company."

Minazuki took a deep breath, then replied: "It's
McNichol, right?"

He had hardly turned to rise when he saw the
gray-streaked blond officer
stalk straight toward them. AD Police chief Leon
McNichol was a mustang,
having run up the ranks of AD Police for nearly a
decade before finally
being appointed as the division Chief.
Notwithstanding, the pair of
private detectives were the last thing he wanted to
see this early hour
of the day. Shingo looked at his partner, caught the
twinkle in the
latter's eye, and stepped back as the career ADP
officer stepped up.

"Shouldn't you be chasing after rich divorcees?" the
police head
muttered as he looked both men in the eyes. "Why are
you two messing up
my crime scene?"

"We got bored of taping the sexual exploits of Granny
Wonderchild for
the sake of her hubby," Tomoru smirked, hands in his
jacket pockets. "A
guy's gotta have a hobby."

"What's A.D. Police doing here, anyway?" Iwanaga
answered alongside. The
ADvanced Police division was primarily used as an
elite force unit,
deployed during incidents of boomers--intelligent
techno-organic
humanoid machines--going berserk or otherwise used for
criminal activity
in the city. "I don't see any boomers ripping up the
streets..."

"-I- get to ask questions here. Seriously," Leon then
put a hand to his
head, swearing his precious crown of gold-brown hair
was turning ever
more gray this very moment. Minazuki and Iwanaga were
as much a thorn in
his side as P.I.s as they had been in the regular
police force; McNichol
sorely hoped it wasn't karma for the times he'd driven
old Toodou
insane. "WHY are you two even in the VICINITY?"

"Oh, all right, Leon-pea," Tomoru shrugged, savoring
the way McNichol
bristled at the childish name. Minazuki had been with
ADP long enough to
know some of his former teammates' pet peeves. "A
private citizen wanted
us to check on a yacht that frequented this bay,
that's all."

"Oh," Chief McNichol crossed his arms at this. "And
that's all?"

"That's all," Shingo nodded, as if to underscore the
unspoken statement
he and his partner directed at Leon. A statement that
involved an
upraised middle finger. "And no, we can't divulge our
client's name."

"I got it. I got it," Leon finally waved a hand in the
air. His
encounters with the pair had always ended up in heated
arguments,
consisting mostly of insults to each others' manhood.
He had no time for
such idiocies today, and would breathe easier once he
had Minazuki and
Iwanaga gone from the site. As far as he was
concerned, any suspicions
he had about them or their client would have to wait.
There were enough
problems at the moment. "Alright. You two can go."

"You never told us what ADP was doing here," Minazuki
remarked.

"Fuck off. Now."

"Yeah. And fucking blah blah blah to all you public
servants too,"
Tomoru spat back as he gave a flourishing, exaggerated
bow before
turning to leave. Iwanaga said nothing, simply giving
the Police Chief
the evil eye all the way out, even as a trio of AD
Police troopers
escorted them away from the scene. Already, the other
police officers,
both ADP and metropolitan, began cordoning off the
area.

The two detectives walked off, neither of them any
wiser about the dead
man.

=*=*=*=

As soon as the two P.I.s left, Leon bent down to check
on the corpse.
There wasn't much time to do so--as soon as the cordon
was complete, the
corpse would be lifted away. He pulled on a pair of
gloves, latex
sanitized ones he'd filched from the morgue interns,
and then rolled up
the wetsuit sleeve on one rigid arm. Nothing the
morticians wouldn't
find later, but he was instructed to look for it.

The officer held his breath as he recognized the mark.
At once, he
understood why ADP had been called in. The ADvanced
Police was indeed
primarily an Anti-Boomer unit, but it was also an
anti-terror unit, as
far as it's original concept had been intended.
Looking at the
disturbing mark on the dead man's arm, Leon felt
certain that it was a
call to ADP's other primary skill. One that had
atrophied, no thanks to
the constant boomer rampages that once razed the city.

*No wonder Daley turned this job down,* the thought in
his mind chided.
Although Daley Wong was next in line after the
previous ADP chief
stepped down to retire, he'd passed on it. Wong would
later mention that
a different sort of leader was the order of the day
for ADP, a man who
rose from the ranks as a beat cop, knew firsthand the
experiences of
being in the field of fire...Somehow, everyone thought
of Leon McNichol.

One of the things McNichol had not looked forward to
upon taking the job
was the mess. Not long after the Knight Sabers' heyday
in the mid
2030's, things had begun to finally settle down for
everyone. Except, of
course, the various Police departments, for whom
everything from boomer
rampages to failed bank assaults always seemed to
create a heady wave of
finger-pointing.

Leon put a hand to his forehead, and reflexively
reached into his shirt
pocket--then groaned as he realized that he hadn't any
cigarettes on
him. He badly needed a smoke, despite his wife's best
efforts to get him
off the habit.

Even today, accusations and a series of "Not I's"
still flew in a
roundabout spiral of blame as to whose responsibility
it was to monitor
terrorist activity. Being a frontline man with the
ADP, and a beat cop
in the Metropolitan Police long before that, McNichol
knew the risks the
unit faced out in the city. He'd seen too many
officers ripped to shreds
facing battle boomers and the like. Early on, it was a
concern, since
ADP had originally been designed as an antiterrorist
team. The solution,
obviously, was to get bigger guns and better support
equipment,
culminating with the T'n'T-sponsored Nightingale Ride
emergency medevac
units. Two decades and thousands of dead troops later,
ADP had become
second to none in the world when it came to boomer
control...but at the
cost of its original counterterror capability.

"And now this happens," McNichol rolls the sleeve back
down, taking care
not to disturb anything else. That an individual such
as this would be
here, dead, meant that darker times lay ahead for the
ADP. Still, the
question bothered him as he made out the small black
tattooed scroll on
the corpse's arm.

*Why would a United States Army Ranger be caught
dead--literally--
floating in the middle of Megatokyo harbor, anyway?*

=*=*=*=

A single leap.

She touched ground with silence, eyes and ears alert
as she scanned the
areas with both her natural senses and her enhanced
ones, taking care to
avoid overextending her abilities. Softly but quickly,
she crept half-
crouched across the empty corridor. Her eyes swam
across the visible
spectrum towards infrared, coming up empty, but she
still approached
with caution.

The Genom Tower in MegaTokyo, at night, was unlike any
other building
the girl had ever snuck into, save for T'n'T's own
Tower. At night, some
sections were still populated, the living quarters for
Chairman Mathan
and some of the other higher-ranked officials still
abuzz with activity
even in the deep night covering the city. It was an
office and a home,
just like T'n'T. Only these halls were dark and
silent, without the glow
of light that the hallways she was once used to. It
wasn't intentional;
unlike the slim spires of the T'n'T tower, the
distinctly mountain-
shaped Genom Tower was stout all around, with a cat's
cradle of hallways
buried deep within it's cavernous maw. Hallways that,
at such a late
time in the day, remained unlit to save on the
company's already-
monstrous energy bill.

It was easy for someone fully Kuromoroboshi-trained to
avoid the sentry
boomers and security cameras in the place. The
security was above and
beyond adequate to prevent a recurrence of the ABLS
shootings or any
other such terrorist attacks on the Tower. Any other
person in here
would have been suicidal. But for a single person
concerned with pure
stealth, it was practically child's play.

For Tsurugi Tsubame, one of Negako Moroboshi's most
dedicated students,
the level of security here was almost insulting. A few
feet more and she
arrived in the living quarters area, freezing in her
tracks as she saw
movement.

*Aha,* Tsubame nearly licked her lips in anticipation,
but did not,
keeping silent to ensure that not a single movement of
hers could be
detected. *So THERE you are.*

A glance. Three, fully human, armed with Reaperguns.
The fourth, a woman
whom two of the three carried by her shoulders, sagged
unconscious as
they swiftly made their way to the elevators. The
fourth was of the 33-S
series sexaroid model, but not just any boomeroid
unit.

*Deidre Mathan,* she identified her both by sight and
response code. The
biological and technological daughter of the infamous
Chairman Quincy
was unconscious, not responding to Tsubame's net
interface, but was
otherwise okay. Since the man's mysterious passing
years ago, she had
been sharing the CEO position with four others on a
rotational basis,
but many regarded her as both figurehead and
intellectual leader of the
MegaCorp today. Tsubame had no patch-in available to
the Genom Tower's
security system, but from her earlier reconnaisance,
Tsurugi found no
immediate threats. If she could take down the three
kidnappers fast
enough, she could evacuate Mathan without anyone--not
even the Genom
staff--any wiser. *Easy.*

The ninja crept silently behind the small squad,
drawing her Gaikatana
as she did so. Forged in Zero-G conditions of pure
Durasteel alloy, it
was probably one of the most durable melee weapons
ever developed,
having a monomolecular edge sharp enough to cut down
certain armored
vehicles with ease. With a casual twist of her wrist,
she reversed the
weapon. The mission called for no casualties, not even
enemy ones.
Anyone daring enough to raid the Genom Tower and
kidnap it's head CEO,
plus have both the brains and brawn to actually pull
it off, was
definitely worth questioning.

The squad stopped at the elevator, and the leader
quickly stepped
forward, reaching for the down button. He never
touched it.

A solid flat rod of Durasteel solidly smacked the top
of the man's
skull, rendering the still-standing man consonscious
instantly. With a
speed born of training and the enhanced reflexes of a
boomeroid cyborg,
Tsurugi lashed out with both feet. Her heels slammed
into the noses of
the two men holding Diedre, causing both to lose their
grip on the CEO--
at the same instant that both were thrown backward
across the hall. The
fight was over even before the first man hit the
floor.

"Hope I didn't hit them TOO hard," the Kuromoroboshi
whispers, eyes
playing across the three men and the Genom CEO before
she kneels in
front of her fellow sexaroid and leader of GENOM. The
men were alive,
albeit unconscious. The leader, she gives a longer
look at, wincing as
she imagined the migraine he was going to wake up with
the next morning.
Sighing relief, she then hefted Mathan to a sitting
position, to give
her a proper analysis.

And with shock, she saw Diedre's mouth open wide,
splitting in half as a
giant ion cannon tore out and blasted her head open at
point-blank
range.

Her eyes went red an instant and then the room cleared
to a dark grey
hue as the training session exited.

Badly.

Shaking her head, Tsubame picked herself off the
darkened floor,
reminding her addled mind that she was not inside the
Genom Tower, and
nowhere near Japan. This was Canada, specifically
Force Special Defence
Command, where she and other Kuromoroboshi had been
cross-training with
Canada's finest for the past three weeks. The
simulation was a test,
just one of the many things she'd had to try out, but
the result was far
worse than Tsubame had expected.

"Great," she groaned. "Game over."

=*=*=*=

Traditions die hard. Although the office of the 21st
century was
effectively paperless for efficiency and environmental
reasons, there
still existed small, tucked-away corners of the
building reserved for
documents and paperwork. MegaCorps and other large
multinationals
usually kept their information in virtual storage
drives isolated from
the worldwide network, yet accessible to their
executive officers and
like high-level stockholders. Smaller offices
preferred portable drives,
the easier to keep in safes and safety deposit shells.
Only Government
offices still used actual paper in their archives,
more for red tape
paper-pushing than any truly practical reason.

Such was the case of the ADP Documents Room. To its
credit, the only
real paper documentation in the archives were the
request forms each and
every officer had to fill out in order to access the
sole locked
terminal in the building. For security's sake, updates
between the net
and the ADP archives had to be carried out by the
physical transfer of
flash drives from the active network into the archive
computer. Requests
made to permit the use of digital writing tablets to
replace the
paperwork had fallen on the mayor's deaf ears.

Likewise, it meant that relatively small updates like
the closing of
archived case files meant actual hands-on editing
permission of the data
at the terminal, something allowed only under
supervision of a ranking
officer. Which was why Daley Wong was there, sitting
beside another ADP
officer, placing the final closure on that morning's
mystery death.

"I don't like sweeping it under the rug, sir," the
officer on duty
replied as she tapped the close function on the file
they had on the
harbor death. Reluctance crossed the female officer's
face as she
finished, pulling her glasses off a moment to rub the
space between her
eyebrows--migraine forming quickly as she spoke. "I
mean, I know it's
not ADP's responsibility to investigate murders that
clearly aren't
Boomer- or terrorist-related, but handing this one
over to the higher-
ups..."

"Well, it's out of our hands now, Yuzuki. Not even
Metro police had a
choice in it," Daley shrugged. It had been a cursory
inspection, one
that the ADP hadn't really worked hard on, as it was
passed to higher-
ups in the chain of metropolitan police command.
Although the regular
police had been miffed at being shut out of the
investigation, nothing
more could be done for it. He had some idea who it was
who caused the
closure, but wasn't about to reveal any secrets to the
younger officer.
She was a stickler for the rules and an idealist--far
too risky to let
her know about the way things were run in the real
world. Despite his
odd attitudes and often laid-back demeanor, Wong
didn't stay alive in
the ADP by being careless. "You know how it is. We all
have to answer to
someone higher up."

"I wish I was that high up. That way I could give
myself a higher salary
every time I did nothing, like they do at the JSDF,"
the data controller
replaced her glasses and looked her immediate boss in
the eye. At 30,
Yuzuki Kawamura was what some old-fashioned career
folk called a
'Marcie'--brilliant in her field of expertise, but
socially inept, and
hopelessly single. As Wong listened to her unsolicited
opinion, he could
see why: most men didn't like women with a mind of
their own, even in
the 21st century. The fact that she was an
unrepentant, devout catholic
was probably another reason males avoided her like the
plague.
"Sometimes, sir, I wonder if mum--god bless her
soul--wasn't right, that
I should've just gotten married and let some poor fool
bring home the
bacon for me."

"Seriously, Yuzuki. There hasn't been a single-income
family in Japan in
the last three decades. And you'd just go bonkers
doing housework all
day," Daley reminded the girl. He found it a shame,
because Kawamura
could have been a charmer if she'd bothered with more
preening and
pampering, as most token office ladies did. But what
they needed in the
force was talent, not window dressing. And ever since
Nene Romanova quit
the ADP years ago, the force had lacked for real
talent behind the
control and data centers. Yuzuki was no Nene Romanova,
but still one of
the best they had. "As for better salaries--Well, you
could always join
one of the MegaCorps..."

"Taking the fall for the capitalist boss, being turned
into a boomer, or
getting decapitated by one aren't exactly what I'd
call appealing fringe
benefits, sir," Kawamura replied with a completely
straight face, her
tone of voice not indicating whether she was serious
or merely being
deadpan. "I'd rather be in ADP. All the free instant
coffee I don't want
or need, and I wouldn't need to bleach my hair
platinum blonde. The
stress'll age it naturally."

"I'd hardly call that 'natural', Kawamura," the voice
of Chief McNichol
suddenly cut between the pair as the man himself
entered the documents
room. The door behind him slid shut in silence.
Neither officer saluted,
which pleased him. Leon hated the trappings of rank;
the only reason he
accepted the position of Chief was because no one else
cared enough to
get the job right. "I'll sign off on this one. Nobody
in Internal
Affairs can read Daley's handwriting."

"Oh, there you go again, Leon. You know that air of
responsibility
doesn't become you," Wong chuckled, looking at
Kawamura shrug before
handing a pen and an approval form to her superior.
"Speaking of which,
who were those two P.I.s you chewed out at the site
this morning?"

"Those two blockheads were Minazuki Tomoru and Iwanaga
Shingo. Used to
be Tokyo Metro cops, Investigations division before
Minazuki pulled for
transfer to AD Police, and his buddy Iwanaga
followed," McNichol
remarked as the data tech finished locking down the
archive computer
once again. Left unsaid, but apparent from his pause,
was that he had a
long history with both men. "Got tossed out of ADP two
years after for
some minor altercation."

"Minor altercation," Daley hummed to himself, taking
note of the smirk
forming on the police chief's face. "Okay, I'll
bite..."

"Minazuki slugged a dietman."

Daley looked his onetime partner straight in the eye.
"He did =what=?"

"Slugged a dietman," Leon replied almost nonchalantly
as he kicked back
and leaned next to the room's doorway. His left hand
began to reach into
his pocket before he stopped himself, inwardly wishing
he'd never quit
smoking. "Eiichi Harada's model S-77 went bonkers one
night. Tomoru took
the unit down...Then promptly got sued for wrecking
'his property'."

"He punched him just because he got sued?" queried
Kawamura, interest
building.

"Sorry," Leon chuckled. "I left out the part where
Dietman Harada got in
his face with the stock politician
'Do-You-Know-Who-I-Am' line and
stepped on his foot. Tomoru claimed self-defense.
Harada spent close to
2 million American greenbacks to put his nose back on
right."

"Ouch," Daley winced. "You knew Minazuki personally?"

"Went to Tokyo Metro Police Academy together with his
best buddy Shingo.
Transferred to ADP at 'round the same time, too," The
ADP chief took a
long swig of his brandy-laced coffee. "Those two are
like coffee and
milk. Iwanaga's the straight-laced by-the-book nice
guy, while
Minazuki's the wild-eyed hothead with the occasional
flash of
genius...TMP lost themselves one hell of an
investigator."

"Why Leon-chan, if I hadn't known better, I'd have
thought you were
describing the both of us."

"Daley, you're no wild-eyed hothead," Leon muttered
back, twirling the
pen in his fingers as he did. "Oh by the by--make sure
you're free
tonight and tomorrow afternoon. We're going for a
ride."

"Ooh, is that an invitation to a tryst?" Wong's lips
fluttered, more out
of concealed laughter than anything. It'd been a long
time since he'd
needled his former partner like this. "My, my, I'm
tempted, but what
would your missus think?"

"Laugh it up wiseguy. Seven tonight, sharp," the chief
pointed the pen
to the door, and Daley followed the direction out.
Turning back to the
data tech, he relaxed slightly. "Kawamura, take a
break. I can't let
this guy abuse you forever."

"Yes sir," Yuzuki replied as she stood and headed to
the station's
pantry for cup of charcoal-black brew. "I'd offer you
coffee, but I'm
the only one in this station stupid enough to drink
this poisonous pig
swill for free."

Leon rolled his eyes, chalking up Kawamura's sense of
humor to the Irish
side of her family. Without another word, he followed
his longtime
partner out--Daley was the only person he could trust
to keep mum about
his plans.

=*=*=*=

"...situation in Eritrea, the on-and-off border war
between neighboring
Ethiopia seems never to end," the television droned on
in the Police
Department cafeteria. The news was on, video footage
trying to emphasize
the facts as the reporter grimly continued his report.
"But ever since
the sudden appearance of two-legged assault
battlemovers on both sides
of the conflict, the war only seems to worsen. Sudan
and Ivory Coast
have already called for military aid, but the UN
remains deadlocked
while both the EU and United States trade accusations
as to who supplied
the unregistered Battlemovers to South Africa."

Whatever news was on seemed to bother no one at lunch.
Despite advances
in communications technology and the long existence of
the worldwide
computer network, or 'Net, people still had television
sets, and it was
still profitable for television stations to operate in
an information
SuperAge. TV, like Radio, refused to die a natural
death. Unlike the
Net, TV did not require settings, and most left their
sets on with no
real purpose than to see and hear people on screen
talk. Many watched,
few listened. Even fewer paid attention.

Arwen Sasaki was one of those few listeners.

"Shit," she cursed, digesting all of what the report
had been saying.

"Hey Sarge," an ADP regular waved, breaking the
sergeant's train of
thought. Without asking to--Arwen never stood on
formalities with her
squad--he and a pair of other officers set their lunch
trays at her
table. "What's with the long face?"

"Nothing," Sasaki took a bite from her meal--an
all-vegetarian burrito,
which she judged to be the safest food in the
cafeteria--then looked to
the TV again. "I just thought that it sucks to be in
living South Africa
this time of year."

"Hey, don't worry. That'll never happen here, sarge,"
one of the younger
ADP corporals in the group remarked, stopping only to
wave at a pair of
passing, modestly pretty comm techs. Neither paid him
as mush as a look,
and at that defeat, he returned to his steaming bowl
of risotto,
spooning heaps of rice and tomato sauce into his
mouth. "No way you can
sneak something as big as that into the city. Genom
and the other 'corps
are gonna rip it apart before we even get there."

"Shut up when your mouth's full, Peppins. And KEEP it
full," Arwen
snapped, and felt like swatting the young man. Partly
because of his
lack of faith in his own service, and partly because
it HAD happened in
MegaTokyo, three years ago. And because it happened,
there almost wasn't
a MegaTokyo to come back to. All of a sudden, the
half-eaten burrito on
her plate seemed wholly unappetizing, as she recalled
her near-brush
with death, that New Year's Eve of 2039-40.

She knew about the battlemovers in Ethiopia and
Eritrea, the cyclopean,
yet swift dinosaur-like battle machines that slid with
murderous ease in
between buildings on the TV news footage. Arwen was
one of the few to
have taken a potshot at one and escaped alive. Since
that time in 2040,
appearances of that new type of battlemover; one
equipped with high
agility, heavy armor, and seemed impervious to most
current military-
issue beam weaponry, had increased. It was the kind of
weapon developed
to kill heavy combat boomers and other battlemovers.
In aged,
conventional armies like that of Ethiopia or the
militia units of
neighboring Eritrea, such a device was outright
overkill.

*And not just South Africa,* she remembered. Many
other nations, lacking
the economic and military clout of the EU, China, and
the US, suddenly
found themselves possessing advanced weapons
technology that only Genom
and other megacorps used. And none shied away from
using that tech, like
Afghanistan did their sole Battlemover in a failed
attempt to sink the
US Navy's Arsenal Ship Ronald Reagan last year. Or
revolutionary forces
in Sierra Leone, Uzbekistan, Kurdistan, and a host of
other tiny
countries most would not even find on a map.

It wasn't just the small boonie regions; developed
countries gave in to
the new Battlemover arms race as well. Indonesia had
three battlemovers
in it's service, with which they tried to threaten
Papua New Guinea and
Timor to re-absorb themselves into their country--that
foolishness was
only stopped when joint forces from it's neighbor
nations Malaysia,
Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines threatened to
take action. Not a
shot was fired in the week-long standoff that
followed, but Indonesia
promptly withdrew its membership from both The
Association of Southeast
Asian Nations and the UN, accusing the 'Evil White
Devil Nations' of
sabotaging their battlemovers, and thus their right to
defend themselves
from foreign encroachment.

The last straw was probably when three square acres of
desert in
Mongolia declared itself a sovereign nation against
Mainland China--
their one battlemover didn't even have legs, and was
actually pulled
around by a dozen oxen. Which would have been
hilarious but for the fact
that all of it's other weapons were fully functional.

All this happening, and the world still pretended that
nothing had
changed. The news was now about a lighter topic: Who
would be the next
Vision? The newscaster happily rattled off a series of
up-and-coming new
singers--nothing that interested Sasaki.

*What's this world coming to?* she thought to herself.
Soon, she stood,
picked up her plate, tossing the remainder of her
lunch aside. There was
simply no way she could eat anything, not after
hearing the news and its
implications. Unlike other people, Arwen Sasaki could
not simply sit
back and pretend it wasn't happening.

She never would have joined AD Police if she was
capable of thinking
that way.

=*=*=*=

The pale-brown tumbler of beer in Priscilla Asagiri's
hands seemed to
bubble with mirth as she set it down, the lone item on
the glass-topped
countertop as she scowled at the almost beatific
smiles shot back at her
by two of her oldest friends.

"Amateur night? Do I owe you money?" Asagiri muttered
with a low growl.
It had been lacking the acid tone that characterized
her over the past
decade, though. Unlike those old days, she no longer
had a need to feel
bitter or alienated. What Priss thought was a response
laced with threat
came out oddly jovial. Not that she minded her lack of
venom any longer.
"What, you wanna torture me or..."

"What's this? The Ape-woman is AVOIDING a nightclub?"
Nene Romanova
snickered evilly at her old friend. Priss noted the
strawberry-redhead's
hair tones were leaning more toward pink now, bleached
by the Los
Angeles sun she had been spending so much more time
with. Romanova, as
well as their mutual friend Linna Yamazaki had spent
much time away from
Japan since last they met. There had been many changes
between the trio,
but apparently, their penchant for ribbing Priss had
not been one of
them.

"I'm not avoiding nightclubs. I'm avoiding THAT
nightclub, Dammit!"
Asagiri banged a fist on the counter, to emphasize her
point, then took
a great swig from her beer. "Hot Legs is something I
left ages ago."

"So you still haven't paid your tab," Nene wags her
finger at her hot-
tempered friend.

Priss swore back acidly. The real reason was that she
wasn't certain
about the place any longer. Hot Legs had been one of
her first big
breaks, her first shot at a life, singing it all out
each night when she
wasn't riding bikes at the edge of each razor-sharp
turn in life, daring
the reaper to take her. The nightclub would have
either changed from the
last time she'd been there, or still exactly the same
as she'd left it.
Priss didn't know which idea disturbed her more.

Despite being the one in the trio who had remained in
MegaTokyo, she had
never bothered to check out Hot Legs since 2040.

"Come ON, Priss, stop being such a wet blanket," Linna
chided with a odd
tone of seriousness. "Lighten UP! It's not like we get
together and take
a night out EVERYDAY. What, it's been how many years
since the three of
us have partied together? Besides, the nostalgia's
gonna hit you real
good."

"The only thing I want to hit right now is you--And
NOT in the sense
you're thinking of, ribbon-brain," Priss muttered at
her friend.
Inwardly, she didn't want to admit that a part of her
was begging to go.
Sentimentality she denied having, putting up a brave
front and
pretending she was as tough as her old reputation had
set. It was that,
an old sense of bravado, that now began to goad her,
wordlessly
challenging her to give it a shot, see the old
neighborhood. That, and
the smiles --half-pleading, half-challenging-- on her
friends' faces
finally wore her down.

"Oh all right, fine!" Priss waves one hand in defeat
while finishing off
her beer.

"YES!" Romanova yowled, slamming a high-five with
Yamazaki. "Now if only
Sylia were here, it'd be perfect!"

"Nope. If she were here, I'd be long gone," Priss cuts
in.

"Don't give us that act, you miss Sylia as much as we
do," Nene pouted.
Sylia Stingray had been the glue that held them all
together years back,
who was both their friend and boss long before the
changing times
brought them to separate shores. A brilliant and
talented woman, her
presence was wordlessly but sorely missed. Giving up
her lingerie shop
for a more profound career as one of the heads of
SHYTech in 2040 left
her with less time to socialize without schedules.
Despite Priss' words,
they all seriously missed Stingray's company. Finding
herself musing
about their incomplete reunion, Romanova slapped both
her own cheeks, a
gesture of focus. "Oh, forget it! Let's just get going
before Ape-Woman
changes her mind!"

"And away we go!" Linna pointed a finger in the
general direction of the
nightclub. With a mock shooting gesture, snapping off
a mild 'tsk', then
making a show of blowing nonexistent smoke from her
finger. "Now, all we
need to do is make you take the stage again!"

"Yeah, right!" Asagiri laughed, but it rang hollow in
her soul.

As far as she was concerned, Priss and the Replicants
had left the music
world forever.

=*=*=*=

"You can't be serious," Daley muttered as he leafed
through the final
pages of the report. It was the end of the day shift,
and Leon had taken
his former partner aside to discuss their planned
short trip to the
suburbs of Oshika. McNichol hadn't been clear on
anything, instead
handing him the report folder. It was printed on
paper, the better for
data security purposes, but hell if the
environmentalists ever found
out. After the paper had been read, Daley wondered if
he should burn it
and talk Leon out of this insanity. "This is nuts.
It'll never fly."

"It's been done before, Daley," Leon retorted. He got
in the driver's
side of the Road Chaser, Wong following in the
passenger side. The
vehicle accelerated, and was soon out on the freeway.
"The German GSG-9
did it in 2028. It's a plan that might work for us,
too."

"...shelve is under 'To Do' and forget about it for
the next week or
so?"

"You know, that MIGHT have worked in the old days, but
now I've got
responsibilities to take care of," McNichol cracked a
familiar, laid-
back smile. "We'll both check out to meet this whiz
kid. He might just
be the future of AD Police waiting to happen. We just
need to work on
it."

"In case you haven't noticed, Leon-CHAN," Daley ribbed
him on purpose.
"The GSG-9 is three times bigger then AD Police.
Working on a mere
concept like this is outright nuts. We can't spare the
extra manpower,
training a squad or two for this reshuffle."

"That's why we're going to do the whole ADP at once."

The normally soft spoken Daley then expunged
expletives fierce enough to
make even the Police Chief blanch.

=*=*=*=

The flight into MegaTokyo had been uneventful for the
many who returned
there, low in spirits and mood to be back in the same
corporate
netherworld they had spent their holidays escaping.
All of the
passengers disembarking the JAL flight wore glum,
displeased faces into
the airport arrival queue.

Save one.

Of slim build and a face easy on the eyes, he wore
sunglasses, partly to
shield his eyes from the flourescent glare of the
noonday sun, and to
conceal the long scar on his otherwise perfect
features. His platinum-
blonde hair was cut short, dyed to a deep ochre.
Though he missed the
feel of his formerly long locks, he was not so large a
fool to let
personal vanity become his downfall.

Wordless, he strode down the arrival gate, depositing
his passport upon
the desk of a young, female, and quite impressionable
customs official.

"Good morning, madam," he spoke with a
properly-intonated English
accent, surprising the woman with his subdued flair.

"Good morning sir," she flustered, then began to
analyze his pass.
Despite her experience, the woman would never realize
that it was an
expert forgery, made by the same people who made
genuine Belgian
passports. A frown crossed her face as she read
through it. "Sir...I
seem to have difficulty spelling..."

"Arachnus, my dear. Elliot Arachnus," he smiled,
disarming her with a
warm, gentle look. He felt no need to use his powers
wastefully. Not
when simple charm would work.

"Yes sir, your papers seem in order," the woman at the
arrival counter
smiled, almost dreamily as she handed back his
passport. "Reason for
visit?"

"Visiting an old friend," he chuckled dryly. That was
the last thing the
man named Arachnus would ever call Eva Maertel.

=*=*=*=

M.Y. Home. The little restaurant seemed different from
the ones she'd
passed earlier, more a side-stop cafe than a true
dining area. The kind
that people went to not necessarily to eat, but to
simply gather round
and talk, as with the tea house that Sayo's
grandmother had frequented
so many times before, and where she herself had worked
part-time in her
younger years.

*It's a start, at least,* Mikage took a deep breath,
mentally preparing
herself as she took a step forward, gently pushing
back the door of the
restaurant. She didn't know where to begin her search,
but there were
more pressing matters for her to think of. Food.
Lodging. A job. The
cafe she had entered promised all three, or so the
sign outside had
stated: Wanted: Waitress, Bed and Board inclusive.
Sayo wasn't entirely
sure of herself while walking from the station; the
urban complexity of
MegaTokyo stunned her with its blunt directness.
Twice, she had simply
stared awestruck at the size of things; from the huge
airliners roaring
just above her head, to the giant mountain of glass
and steel that was
the Genom arcology in the distance. The country
bumpkin within her could
not quite reconcile the sights of the future with the
quiet country life
she'd had living further north.

Even now, Sayo took care not to appear too overwhelmed
as she stepped
into the cafe. Part of the reason she'd entered this
one was the lack of
flashing video screens and quasi-neon lights. M.Y.
Home was down-to-
earth, simple in its presentation as it sat along the
street, an honest
small cafe in the sea of technological madness.

The other reason was that it was currently empty. Save
for one girl
quietly sweeping the soft blue-and-white of tile
floor, no one was
within the cafe, despite the pooling masses Mikage had
seen just across
the street. In a way, she felt relieved, as that meant
the more
troublesome sort would stay away.

Taking a breath, she approached the lone girl in the
cafe. She wore a
checkered pink outfit and white frilled cap that
combined girlish
innocence with a more coquettish, tempting air. There
was something
about the way it flowed, like a dolls' dress fitted a
bit tightly on the
girl's shapely frame. Sayo wasn't entirely sure she
could wear such an
outfit; raised conservatively by her grandmother, the
very idea of
wearing a skirt whose hem rose above the knee made her
blush. But she
knew also that work was work; as long as it wasn't the
sort of work her
granny would bolt out of her grave and curse her for,
it would be okay.
Mikage steeled herself for the question she spoke
next.

"E--excuse me?"

The girl in the waitress costume turned, and Mikage
did a double-take.
Broom in hand, she seemed to have a look of
sleepy-eyed, vapid
contentment on her face that made Sayo wonder if she
hadn't made a
mistake in entering. For the next few seconds, both
girls stared
awkwardly at each other. Mikage recovered first,
asking what she'd
originally meant to ask.

"Um, are you the owner?"

"Eeeeh?" the waitress smiled, completely blank. It
wasn't just her face;
Sayo could have sworn she saw dust bunnies fly through
one ear and out
another. The girl with a broom seemed to scratch her
cheek, lost in
thought. Then she turned to one side, the area of the
kitchen, calling
out with an oddly singsong voice: "Yuu-saaaaann! Some
strange country
girl is here to see you!!!"

*Strange country girl,* Sayo felt like dropping dead
on the spot. She'd
been wearing a conservative frock to her knees, and
her old school
jacket over her blouse. For a second she wondered
whether it was her
actions that made her so obvious--then remembered that
she was probably
the ONLY female in the city not wearing pants, tight
shorts or
miniskirts. All she lacked now was the stereotypical
straw hat and her
brown hair in braids. *I'm done for. The owner is
going to walk out of
the kitchen, take one look at me and laugh...*

Sure enough, the cafe's owner stepped out of the
kitchen. However, she
was not quite what Mikage had been expecting.

She didn't appear all that much older than Sayo, as
she walked up with a
bright smile. Dressed in the same waitress garb as the
other girl, she
wore her hair in ribbons. Mikage remembered her
grandmother's old tales,
that a woman actively looking for a husband often kept
ribbons in her
hair. But she decided not to ask; it was too forward
of her, and she
doubted modern city-folk had much use for old
traditions and tales.
Also, she took note of the way she limped, her foot
wrapped in light
bandages.

"I'm Yuu Asuka," the owner nodded, and Sayo now
noticed she was speaking
directly to her. The voice seemed a bit odd; as if it
was well-used to a
more cheery tone than the one she now spoke with. It
wasn't from pain,
but a somewhat tired, weary smile. "Can I help you
with...anything?"

"Um, M--my name is Sayo. Sayo Mikage. I--I saw your ad
in the window.
I've worked at a restaurants before, and," Mikage
began explaining,
going on about how she was new to the city, and that
she wasn't looking
for much. That was when she noticed the owner was
looking deeply,
intently at her. "Er... Is something wrong?"

"I just noticed, you have lovely blue eyes," Asuka
smiled, a bit
bashfully. There was more to it, but she did not
continue the train of
thought as she focused on the new girl. "Do you have
any experience with
cooking?"

""Y--yes," Mikage nodded in reflex, then corrected
herself.
"Actually...just Okonomiyaki and Takoyaki. And some of
the basics."

The petite frown on the owner's face worried Sayo a
moment. There was no
mention of needing a cook, making her wonder if city
folk were always
like that--expecting so much more than what they asked
for. However, Yuu
merely turned to the other waitress, asking: "Teresa?
Do you think you
could teach her?"

The other girl nodded sagely, the cheer never leaving
her face.

"Very well, Sayo-chan," Yuu turned back to her new
employee, smiling
again, but more warmly this time. "You're hired."

"Ah--th--thanks! I'll do my best, Miss Asuka!" Sayo
mumbled, grinning
nervously at first, then enthusiastically.

*...How hard could it be?*

=*=*=*=
=*=*=*=

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<i>"I figured Daredevil must be Catholic because only a Catholic could be both an attorney and a vigilante."</i> -<b>Frank Miller</b>
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