Maohden Vol. 2

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  Hyota soared skywards. The shooting star flew towards his face. Right Part’s kick had sent his shoe flying. Go high or go low and one was guaranteed to connect. A perfectly timed attack.

  Seeing his shoe strike home, Right Part stabbed the umbrella at Hyota’s midsection, a killing blow.

  The shoe came to a sudden halt right below Hyota’s nose. Hyota grabbed it in his mouth. The umbrella thrust wavered. No resistance met the jab, the tip transmitting only a slight impact.

  Right Part stared harder. Hyota perched on top of the umbrella. Right Part let go of it. Hyota jumped backwards. Startled, Left Part retreated as well, his faith in his partner’s abilities badly shaken.

  Hyota was faster.

  Left Part didn’t wait to get his legs under him before throwing a right jab. Hyota spun around, planted his hands on Left Part’s head, and vaulted over him, at an almost leisurely speed.

  By the time he’d stuck the dismount—as well as any gymnast—his two opponents had splashed face-down onto the sidewalk.

  The rain engulfing his body like a cloak, without a backwards glance, Hyota ran back to Mephisto Hospital.

  Creepy creatures converged on the two dead men from all directions. Then the scene went gray and winked out. With a flick of his fingers, Mephisto turned off the monitor and instructed the electronics to store the images for future reference.

  Hyota entered the room a minute later and bowed.

  “Quite the performance. I knew from the first moment we met that you were far from the ordinary.”

  “I appreciate your kind words.”

  Mephisto announced through the intercom that he was going out. They proceeded to the front foyer, Hyota in front. The world outside was muddled and misshapen behind the haze of rain, stained with a rainbow of eerie hues.

  “Climb on board.”

  “What?”

  “Piggyback. It is much faster than a taxi.”

  “Fascinating.”

  Mephisto did as Hyota asked. Hyota set off running. Wherever they were headed, the sudden intensity of the wind and rain notwithstanding, the curious shape of the two of them soon disappeared out of view.

  Chapter 3

  Setsura furrowed his brows and grumbled, “Still no good.”

  In front of him was a human figure covered with a slippery substance. The mannequin was coated with the custom-made oil. The same compound that covered Hyota’s body.

  Here was the reason he’d failed a second time to fell his foes. Hyota in Golden Gai. Then Gento in Shinjuku Gardens. Devil wires that could slice through tempered steel slid off this oil and vectored harmlessly away.

  He had no other way to permanently take out Hyota and Gento.

  Since returning to his safe house that morning, in a monotonous exercise in trial and error, he’d given it a thousand more tries on top of the ten thousand to date.

  No matter what the angle or speed of the attack, he couldn’t get past the oil coating to the body beneath. No satisfactory solution had presented itself yet. Setsura had no recourse but to keep on trying.

  After more than a thousand attempts without a rest, his left arm was beginning to burn. “Might as well try the right.”

  Setsura had to be adept in wielding the devil wires with both hands. And yet small discrepancies were showing up in his almost supernatural abilities.

  Ever since Yamada’s skull sank its teeth into his arm, he’d been favoring his right hand and playing it safe. He flexed his fingers. The index finger to the ring finger were fine. The reflexes in the pinky, though, proved a smidgen less reactive, not that a normal person would notice. But it checked the limits of his abilities.

  Setsura examined the teeth marks in his wrist. The wounds weren’t deep, but there might be further damage. This was why he couldn’t keep Gento from escaping the Coliseum.

  Setsura pinched his right forefinger and thumb together, measuring the diameter of a devil wire that no one else could even see. The tips of the slender digits could detect the diameter of the sub-micron thin titanium wire.

  “The threads are at the limits. Everything else depends on my own skills.”

  A knock came at the door. A familiar sound. Setsura opened the door without answering. He was met by a big fat frame wearing round black-rim glasses. Yoshiko Toya walked in, huffing and puffing as loud as a steam engine, her body quivering like a bowl full of jelly.

  “What’s up?”

  She wiped the back of her neck with a handkerchief and drew an exaggerated breath. Moving her almost two hundred and fifty pounds a dozen yards was as exhausting as a marathon. It took her a good five minutes until she was ready to say anything.

  “I got some messages for you.”

  “Who from?”

  “All kinds. One syndicate in particular. They figured out who you were by the way you fought. They’re on the warpath, and they promise to draw and quarter you when they find you. You really must have thrown a monkey wrench into that high-falutin’ murder show of theirs. They’re plenty pissed.”

  “Good grief,” Setsura muttered, nodding to himself. “Who’s the godfather in charge of this particular bunch?”

  “Tosuke Kokonori.”

  “Hmm. He runs the Shinjuku Restoration Society. Am I the only one they’re gunning for?”

  “No. One more. Nobody knows exactly who this chap is, but my gut—and I’m never wrong—points to Gento Roran.”

  “What brings you to that conclusion?”

  “My gut, I told you.”

  Setsura peered curiously at the puffy, round face. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was nothing more than a tenement landlady haggling over the price of radishes at the local greengrocer—not Shinjuku’s best information broker.

  She wasn’t just there to deliver a message from the crime syndicate. She was telling him about them. And yet no one ever got to her, made a threat that stuck. She didn’t use a single computer. But the word on the street was that anybody who messed with her would never sleep easy in Shinjuku again.

  “Then this excavation business.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Seems the people behind the scenes are at last making their moves. A hearse pulled up in front of the Fuji Television studios.”

  “What about the driver?”

  “Not bound to be one.”

  “Figures.”

  “I’m all for cutting to the chase and all, but cruising around Fuji TV in the middle of the night is a real bad idea. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.” Yoshiko clapped her fat hands together and intoned an earnest Buddhist prayer.

  Setsura said, “Meaning nobody’s dumb enough to sidle up to the Fuji TV lobby and take a look.”

  Yoshiko hiked up her brows. “Damned right.”

  “I was thinking of heading over there myself.”

  “But that’s where—”

  “All the more reason to go to where the treasure is buried.” He glanced at the door. “You bring them here on purpose?”

  “Yeah,” Yoshiko nodded. Her quadruple chin shook like a turkey’s wattles. “They’ve been hanging around the place. The customers don’t notice, but it got me worried. Thought I might as well lead them here so you could deal with them in one fell swoop.”

  “You couldn’t wait until I took care of business with this Kokonori fellow?”

  “The sooner the better.”

  Setsura gestured to his right. Yoshiko looked at where he was pointing and frowned.

  “Afraid you won’t fit?”

  “You’re a cruel man.”

  Setsura watched with an intrigued expression as Yoshiko approached the bathroom. She opened the door and stopped, apparently estimating the width of the door frame.

  The young senbei shop owner didn’t avert his eyes, watching with the intense curiosity of a behavioral psychologist. Yoshiko hesitated, before resolving herself and plowing straight ahead.

  She’d barely taken a step when she stopped again and glanced back at Setsura. Now he airily turned hi
s gaze elsewhere.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m sure you find this all very interesting.”

  “No need to get testy.”

  “What are you really thinking? Out with it.”

  “I have to say, I’ve never been so intrigued by the sight of someone walking into a bathroom.”

  Yoshiko Toya frowned and faced the door again. She stepped inside. And stopped a third time. Her hips—her ample butt, to be precise—had caught in the door jamb.

  “What’s the problem?” Setsura asked, eyes bright, smothering a smile. Though he was not one to usually find humor in the travails of others.

  “You can damn well see with your own two eyes,” Yoshiko fumed.

  “What if you turned sideways?” Setsura proposed, with a totally straight face.

  “I can’t move. Get me out.”

  “I was wondering when this day would come,” Setsura said, as if it were a question for the ages. “I truly intend to, but don’t have the time. You’ll have to stay that way for now. The guests you brought along have arrived.”

  “Get me out of here!”

  Yoshiko wriggled and struggled, but her ass remained stubbornly glued to the frame. Setsura turned toward the door to the apartment. The lock released with a dull click. A split second later, the door cracked open. A silver tube rolled across the floor and erupted in a cloud of gas.

  Setsura jumped up from the foot of the bed, slumped to his knees on the floor, clawed at his throat and crumpled forward. Still stuck in the door, Yoshiko grew quiet as a kitten.

  Three minutes later, the door slowly opened wider. Three men wearing dark suits and gas masks burst into the room holding Winchester “Cruiser” submachine guns in their hands.

  The popular assault rifle was designed for close-quarters combat and held fifty rounds of caseless ammunition in the magazine. Winchester officially sold the gun to police forces and military organizations, but competing head-to-head with the German H&K and the Czech-model Uzi, generous inventories found their way to the black market.

  Though within a dozen foot radius, the model of the gun didn’t much matter. A one second burst of eight rounds would pretty much tear any living thing to shreds.

  “Well, that was easy,” said one of the men, his voice barely muffled by the gas mask.

  “Just to make sure, once he’s dead, we’d better take the body along. Yo, give him a round each to finish him off.”

  “Got it.” The three nodded in unison and aimed their weapons.

  “Hold on,” said the first. “What’s that weird-looking broad doing there?”

  “What the hell? She human? That’s one fat pig.”

  “That information broker. She’s stuck. Hey, it’s real live Looney Tunes.”

  “Leave her be. Stick to business. No freebies.”

  They again leveled the muzzles of their guns. A second later, two of them reeled around, eyes wide, bodies turned into human honeycombs, riddled with 9 mm caseless Luger rounds.

  “Sorry about that.” The gas having already dissipated from the room, Setsura rose to his feet like a ghost. “I can make a dead man dance, including the living dead.”

  Setsura’s necrodancing technique.

  Just as a single strand of devil wire could control the nerves and muscles of the recently departed and bring the dead back to a false life, so could those same threads transform those same tissues into a perfect facsimile of lifelessness. Hence a literal living death.

  Setsura had played possum, stilling his heart and pulse and lungs, the flow of blood through his veins, while keeping his brain functioning and retaining full control of the devil wires.

  This was undoubtedly the means by which he’d sprung back to life in the Coliseum infirmary after being injected with the cryo-preservation fluid.

  “How about you take me to visit your boss? You drive.”

  The sight of the young man’s countenance, as calm as if being caressed by a spring breeze, stole the words from the assassin’s mouth. A moment later, his entire body was twined in devil wire, the same that made him turn his gun on his accomplices.

  “I’m sure you came by car. Let’s take a ride to Fuji TV.”

  Setsura pointed toward the door. Still cradling the assault rifle, the assassin walked forward with barely an unsteady step.

  Leaving the apartment, Setsura cast a sideways glance at the bathroom door where Yoshiko Toya was still stuck, softly snoring. “The hell of it is, she’s going to wake up sometime. What to do, what to do—”

  “Hmph.” A sound like that massive ass was answering for her. She was no ordinary fatso either. “Hey! Get me out of here!”

  “It’ll take time. Wait until I get back. I’ll bring along a crane. Or a backhoe.”

  “This is the last time I’m doing business with you!”

  Setsura flicked his right hand.

  “Ouch! Shit!” she cried out. Yoshiko reared back. With a pop like a champagne cork, her ass heaved out of the door frame.

  “Given the proper motivation, people can do the most surprising things.”

  “I’m gonna remember this!”

  Carrying his one possession—the suitcase—Setsura left the room without a backwards glance.

  Then on to Kawadacho and what was left of the Fuji TV studios. Something was waiting for them there—something that would even make a woman as stouthearted as Yoshiko Toya tremble in fear and invoke divine providence.

  Part 5: Bureau of Magical War

  Chapter 1

  Shadows covered the land, the shadows cast by the surrounding buildings. Wherever they fell, the residents of Kawadacho scowled, raised their faces towards the heavens and cursed their misfortune.

  Not because these shadows aroused supernatural physical phenomena like those of the Government Freezer in North Shinjuku. But simply because they blocked the sun and presaged the inevitable night.

  The longest reached almost two hundred feet, covering a stretch of land occupied by eight hundred people.

  Nevertheless, as the earth revolved in concert with the sun, those who chose to abide in the kingdom carved out by these shadows turned their eyes skyward with disgust and spat contemptuously on the ground.

  For the past ten years, a grotesque creature had made its nest there. Repeated eradication campaigns hadn’t exterminated or driven it away, and it stubbornly remained. An awareness of its presence alone left the residents of Kawadacho in a permanent state of unease.

  Even when the car carrying Setsura Aki came to a halt on the street, wrapped in the wan darkness, they stared instead up through the dense damp fog.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Setsura said to the driver with a friendly smile. The driver, of course, was one of the three assassins who’d assaulted him in his safe house. It was easier than calling a taxi.

  Only his hands and feet could move freely. Every other part of him was immobilized by a stabbing pain penetrating down to his bones. These were the same devil wires that like a magic marionette had turned his gun on his fellow conspirators in Setsura’s safe house.

  “Tell you what, escort me the rest of the way and you’ll be free to go.”

  Setsura poked his arm out the window and pointed at a building of postmodern design perched on a slight rise, almost hidden behind the smoky haze.

  The driver blanched. A fear separate from the pain froze the blood in his veins.

  “Fine, then. You’d better beat a fast retreat and sleep it off while I am still me. Next time somebody asks you to do a job like that, you can tell them honestly that you’d rather die. I’ll be paying your boss a visit before long.”

  He got out of the car. Sporting the face of a dead man, the driver sped off, twice as fast as when they’d arrived.

  Setsura set forth, the rain drumming down. On the wide street before him, across Yasukuni Avenue, was the Akebono Bridge Station on the old Toei Shinjuku line. The gates yawned wide open.

  He glanced to
the right. There was only the bridge on East Gaien Street between Yotsuya Sanchome, Ushigome Yanagicho and Waseda Tsurumaki. And that was the Akebono Bridge.

  The original span came down in the Devil Quake. What stood there now was built six months later. Forty-five men died laying the pilings, remembered by forty-five granite stones lining the footings of the bridge.

  Setsura crossed Yasukuni Avenue. The traffic was light, people and vehicles alike. Now and then a hausfrau darted across, deliberately averting her gaze from some unknown quarter.

  He turned down a lane. There was a ramen restaurant on the left, a tea house on the right. The street was lined with shops and arcades, mostly prefab units built after the Devil Quake. He’d gone a dozen more yards when a woman’s taut voice reached his ears.

  “Say something, Chie. C’mon, say something. It can’t be true that those eyes are on you.”

  In front of a coin laundry on the right, a woman in her fifties clung to a girl of twenty-five or six, shaking her by the shoulders. The fingers dug into her flesh. With each push and shove, the girl’s neck swayed back and forth, flinging drops of water into the air.

  The girl’s buxom figure and voluptuous visage were aglow with a rapturous joy. Her face alone was turned toward that place that everybody was doing their best to pretend wasn’t there.

  Whatever was there, Setsura alone strode straight in that detested direction.

  The pedestrian shopping street ended. The small hill rose up above him. The cracked concrete paving revealed the dark earth beneath. The reconstruction efforts here after the Devil Quake had long ago slowed to a crawl.

  In the third official restoration plan it had gotten as far as being designated a high priority redevelopment area before being abandoned, left as is, becoming one of those landmarks emblematic of Demon City.

  Even so, not a single sightseer now stepped in front of Setsura or followed the shattered stone stairway to the top. According to the Demon City Tourist Guide, “The following places and locations are to be avoided at all costs—”