Vicissitude Yang Side

by Destine Williams

  Heaven sweeps it into her palm and sniffs at it. The tiny patches smell faintly of lavender and vanilla. Then she looks back up at Flame. “You’re sure this is her?”

  “That’s her scent,” Flame says. “And besides, white foxes aren’t native to Tokaido. The small ones that hang around the shrine are orange like my form.”

  “Then that’s going to be our next focus,” Heaven says. “Did you try to track her?”

  Flame puts an arm around the back of his chair. “I did, but I lost the trail. There were some other scents near her trail.”

  Heaven frowns. “Then someone else found her.”

  Flame shakes his head. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  Lips pressing into a line, Heaven puts the fur back on the table. Then an idea sparks in her head. She snaps her fingers. “What about Mura or Masah? She’d recognize them too, wouldn’t she?”

  Flame’s eyes narrow. “Them? My Lady, they are chicks.”

  “Actually, not anymore,” A new feminine voice says.

  Heaven and Flame both turn their gazes to the stairs where a wiry coffee-skinned woman walks down with a high-cheek-boned smile. “They both became human today.”

  “You were here all this time and said nothing, Bastet?” Flame asks.

  “It is enough that I have to babysit chicks. I do not want to have to babysit a turtle too,” Bastet says wryly.

  Flame huffs. “Babysit me? There is nothing childish about my—”

  “That’s great,” Heaven says. “What do they look like?”

  “Why don’t you come see for yourself?” Bastet says. “All they’ve asked since changing is ‘where is mother?’”

  Heaven makes her way to the stairs, then looks back at Flame. “Did you see them already?”

  Flame looks away with a frown, his fingers drumming on the table. “Yes. No need for me to do it again.”

  Sensing a change in his mood, Heaven remains at the stair base a heartbeat more, then she follows Bastet up to the condo’s second floor. They go two doors down in the hall to the half-cracked door, where voices and sword fight sound effects blare through the opening.

  Bastet gently pushes the door open. “Hey there, chickies. Someone is here to see you.”

  Heaven peers inside. Exactly as Bastet said, there are two girls now where there were once birds, exactly identical, and in the human image of her co-worker Megumi. One sits on her bunk, scribbling into her sketchbook while the other is at the computer desk with their laptop open, watching an anime of what Heaven can only guess to be The Red Hood that Megumi was raving about.

  The twin on the bed perks immediately at Heaven’s presence. “Mother!” She jumps off the bed with her sketchbook, hugging Heaven. “Mother I missed you sooooooo much!”

  Heaven’s heart soars at the first twin’s warm welcome, but her face heats too. Even though she knows the twins are just babies, it’s hard to ignore that they have her co-worker’s face, her voice, and that one even adopted her same preference to watch anime. “I missed you too.” Then her gaze slides to the second twin.

  The other chick only spares Heaven a brief uninterested glance and returns her gaze to the screen, muttering, “Good evening, Mother.”

  Heaven hugs the first twin back, resting her head on hers as she watches the other twin through thinned green eyes. She recalls Megumi’s reports commenting on the chicks different activity levels. That must be Masah Mune. Meaning that this chick in front of her must be Mura Masah. “Did you watch that show all day, Masah?”

  “Actually, I—”

  “Mother! Look at what I drew for you!” Mura chirps, stepping back to hold up her sketchbook. It’s a drawing, startlingly accurate, of her and Mura.

  Heaven gives a smile at the chicks overeagerness to share. “How come you didn’t draw your sister in it?”

  Mura puffs up one cheek. “I wasn’t finished with it.” Then she beams. “But you like it, right?”

  “I do.” Heaven picks it up and admires it. Now that she’s paying full attention to it, there really isn’t any room to draw another person; Mura drew the figures far too big. “It’s very nice, dear.”

  Mura hurries back to her bed with a self-satisfied smile. Heaven looks at the other chick who’d been rudely interrupted, but Masah seems so engrossed in her anime that Heaven doesn’t want to interrupt her again. Instead she turns for the hallway and steps out.

  “Also before I forget, I believe a Genji Fujiwara came by looking for you,” Bastet says.

  “About what?”

  “About your Akuma cell research,” Bastet says. “And the Tokaido Research Institute. He wishes to hear from you.”

  Heaven pauses. How does he know that? Of all the workers at the research institute, only about a handful are working with the Akuma gene. Yet even still, researchers who are willing to work with Akuma cells are so rare in the public sector. Perhaps it’s some kind of private enterprise like hers? “Sounds interesting. Did he leave any contact info?”

  “I believe he left his phone number and email,” Bastet says. “Let me see where I put it…” Bastet slips down the hall. “I know I put it in your room.”

  Heaven takes a step after her, patting her pockets; she frowns at their emptiness. “Where’s my phone? I swear I just had it.” Must’ve left my phone in my bag downstairs. She closes the door behind her and takes the stairs down.

  Once Heaven is out of earshot, Mura cranes her neck to peer at the door. She slips a hand into her own hoodie pocket, pulling out a thin blue-cased smart phone with an alpaca charm attached to corner. With nimble fingers, she swipes through the passcode screen and scrolls through Heaven’s call logs and text messages. Megumi. Megumi. Megumi. A sour scowl plasters to Mura’s mouth. “Hmph.”

  At her sister’s noise, Masah looks back. Her eyes narrow at the phone. “Isn’t that Mother’s?”

  “It is,” Mura says. “She sure talks to this Megumi character an awful lot.” She returns to the phone’s home menu. “I don’t like it.”

  Masah turns all the way around in her chair. “Why are you going through Mother’s things? How do you even know her passcode?”

  Mura shrugs. “I watch her when she uses it.” Mura gets up. “Someone has to watch over Mother, since all you do is watch that stupid cartoon.”

  Masah opens her mouth to retort, but Mura cuts her off. “Mother is always gone for so long and I bet that it’s got something to do with Megumi. And all that Akuma stuff.” She scratches her head. “What is Akuma anyway?”

  “Akuma is Oldspeak for ‘devil’,” Masah says.

  Mura tilts her head. “How do you know that?”

  “Rose said it on The Red Hood.”

  Mura stares at her other sibling in disbelief. “That cartoon taught you that? How…” Mura’s words stop there. She puts a hand to her mouth. Her eyes widen. “Mother might be in trouble then.”

  Masah scrunches her eyebrows. “Why? Megumi is not dangerous.”

  “And how do you know that?” Mura says. “You think it’s okay for Mother to consort with devils?” She gives an incredulous shake of her head. “We are gods. We must protect Mother.”

  “Megumi is the one who took care of us,” Masah says. “She is nice.”

  “She kept us away from Mother. She could be pretending to be nice,” Mura retorts. “If I would’ve known, I’d have pecked her instead of that ginger dummy that looks like Flame.”

  With a deep sigh, Masah turns back to the laptop and clicks on the next episode of The Red Hood. “Sister, I thought you said you couldn’t control that?”

  “Well, yeah, he made me really mad but…” Another thought crosses through her mind. Mura turns to her twin and puts her hands on her hips. “Hey, Megumi and Mother go to that lab place, right? We should go there.”

  “Sister, you are overreacting,” Masah says. “There’s no evidence that she will harm Mother.”

  “I’m not overreacting. You just want an excuse to sit there and be useless,” Mura snaps.
r />   Masah’s hand curls over the mouse, shaking. “I’m not going with you.”

  “What?”

  “I said I’m not going with you. You go by yourself.”

  An unnatural quiet steals into the room. Then trumpets of The Red Hood introduction sound.

  Mura glares at her sister’s back, her own fists quivering, body temperature skyrocketing, breaths struggling to stay even. What a useless lump of feathers! Doesn’t even want to protect their own mother! Doesn’t she see that Megumi is taking their mother away? It’s their duty as gods to protect everyone.

  She storms up behind Masah and grabs a fistful of her twin’s hair. She yanks her sister back. Masah’s head bangs against the chair post.

  Masah opens her mouth to cry out, but Mura clamps her hand over her sister’s mouth, muffling the scream.

  “You’re coming with me, and you better not tell Mother,” Mura snaps. But even despite her sharp tone, her heart palpitates like a wrecking ball smacking a building. She can’t bear Mother knowing—can’t bear Mother’s displeasure.

  Masah’s eyes water. Tears fall warm against Mura’s hand.

  At that, Mura pulls her hand back, wiping the wet spots away, staring at the wet spots on her hands. She chokes out a disjointed-sounding, “Sorry. I…I got mad again.”

  Masah doesn’t say anything. She only pulls herself up and rubs the back of her head, sniffling and hunches closer to the laptop. “Fine. I’ll go.”

  Mura’s shoulders slump. An apology after that probably just sounds like a lame lie.

  The door opens back. And Heaven steps in. “Hey, did either of you two see a phone I might’ve dropped here?”

  The sound of their mother’s voice erases all of her stormy feelings in an instant. Mura pivots, holding Heaven’s phone out with a smile. “Here. You dropped it.”

  Heaven smiles and takes it. “Thank you. I needed this for something for something important.”

  For talking to Megumi? Mura’s chest clenches at the notion. As Heaven turns and walks away, the clenching only gets tighter.

  I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you Mother. Whatever it takes.

  A panel slides to the right. Tiny hands feel all over the wooden box. Another panel gives from a push from a tan thumb, revealing the bite-sized green tea cream wafer hiding inside. Eight-year old Jun removes it from the wrapper and pops her reward into her mouth.

  Mai looks up from the tea kettle just in time to see the wafer disappear. She smiles. “Finished already, hmm?” Leaning over, Mai pours green tea for her company: a woman looking no older than her twenties casually dressed in a white hoodie and denim.

  The woman brings the cup to her mouth, keeping her gold eyes trained on the child. Rising steam-warmth heats her lips. “Very impressive.” She sips. “About her parents…Where are they?”

  “Out to dinner, I think,” Mai says, bringing the kettle back to fill her own empty cup. “Hikari is going to try to explain…” Her gaze flicks to Jun. “You know.”

  The woman’s smile shortens. “Ah, she was nervous about that too when we spoke. Things seemed strained enough between them without this move to worry about.”

  Chair legs scrape on the floor, making the pair look across in the same instant. Jun seats herself at the table in front of a new puzzle box. A model of Ise. The eight-year old gazes at it with wide eyes. “Can I try?”

  “Of course,” The woman says. “I brought it for you.”

  Jun tilts her head, studying the whole model. She starts touching trees, the river, the tori gates. Twisting them this way and that. She squints, scratching her head.

  The woman lowers her cup. “Stuck?”

  Frowning, Jun shakes her head. “This one is different.”

  The woman hides her smile in a swallow of tea. Different indeed. “I’m sure you’ll solve it.”

  “Why don’t you take that upstairs, Jun?” Mai suggests.

  “Mmkay.” Jun takes the puzzle away from the table, studying it from different angles as she tromps up the stairs.

  The moment the two women are alone Mai asks, “Ama, did you find out anything else about CRISIS-D? I’ve looked into them, but I still haven’t found anything besides the fact that they’re dragons.”

  “That’s because they’re not based here in the Brother World,” Ama says. “They’re a magical terrorist group from the Sister World, so they don’t have records here, and no chi signals you can track them by. So until they turn up and do something, all we can really do is hope they’re nowhere near us.”

  “Magical terrorism?” Mai echoes. “That’s new.”

  Ama shrugs. “Lack of better terminology, but you’re right about it being new.” She sets her teacup down and reaches for her bag at the edge of the table. “They can hack into a person’s mind, manipulate their thoughts, memories, and recently they’ve been attempting to manipulate spirits and rig them into ordinary things like a computer virus. Apparently Tokaido is where the majority of the testing happens, but I don’t know the exact location of everything.”

  Mai shudders at the thought of someone else invaded her thoughts. She brings her cup up to her lips. “Huh…But are they using that to steal the Ise puzzle boxes? That just seems a little…”

  “Excessive? Yes, for that.” Ama pulls out a small gold snake-shaped pin with a small ruby for an eye and a small silver chip with a runic inscription on it. She tosses it across the table for Mai to see. “But I’m thinking that the spirit-rigging is used for something else. From what I’ve observed, they’re new at it. But dragons have always been good sorcerers. They’ll get somewhere in a few years. And if they’re successful…” Ama’s mirth fades from her expression. “I worry. All this testing they’re doing might be connected to Jun.”

  She takes both the pin and the chip into one hand. “You think they’d try mind manipulation on her?”

  Ama shakes her head. “Not mind manipulation. They can’t get into the minds of people like us. But there’s no protection against spirit manipulation as far as I know. It’s not like getting possessed. The spirits affected are complete puppets.”

  Mai’s stomach lurches. “She’s just a child.”

  “But she won’t always be,” Ama says. After a beat of quiet, she says. “Hopefully when her power peaks, she won’t need our protection. She’s not going to always be able to hide from everyone either.”

  Mai thumbs the pin and chip in her hand. “You pull it off easy enough.”

  Ama stares into her teacup. “I’m no use to them even if they did catch me. You can’t break into a god’s mind, and my power is waning just like yours.”

  Mai huffs. “If you’re going to talk like that, then why don’t we just tell her everything now and be done with it?”

  “The only thing that would accomplish is stealing the enjoyment out of her childhood. And even if we did, Jun’s power will not peak for many years. With how rough her life is already, I think she deserves some semblance of normalcy, Mai.”

  Mai glances toward the stairs. True. It was bad enough that Jun’s mixed heritage makes it hard for others to accept her. Adding additional worry for something Jun can’t even take care of would do nothing but upset her.

  “I’d advise you to be ready for anything in the coming years.” Ama finally stands up. “If they perfect spirit manipulation, there’s no telling what they’ll be able to hack. Anything can happen when magic is involved.”

  2-1 'Ah'

  Mai’s exit from the stage sends whispers and murmured questions through the crowd. And everyone is asking the same thing: why didn’t Mai announce a successor? Who is the new leader of the Silent Seven?

  I descend from the stage, standing tiptoe to try and find Mai in the sea of taller people. How can she walk off that fast? Maybe she’s in the parking lot? Mai isn’t the type to stick around a party for long anyway. I shoulder past two laughing IT guys and make my way to the lot’s edge, only to get head off by the Geisha and his narrow-eyed scowl.

  I draw
in a breath. “What do you want now, Geisha? If you keep showing up all the time, people might start thinking I’m fucking you.”

  He snorts. “I wouldn’t dream of beastiality, Hound. What was that all about on stage?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “What Mai said to me?”

  His lip curls. “No, I don’t care about her sappy story. Why didn’t she name the next Silent Seven leader?”

  “The hell if I know.” I fold my arms. “When I spoke to her, she didn’t say anything to me about that.”

  His hostility subsides into a thoughtful smirk. “Hmph. If she doesn’t even tell you, that’s remarkable. She must be up to something.”

  Must be where you get it from.

  The Geisha rubs his chin, looking out toward the other cars. “Very well, Hound. You’re off the hook for tonight, but I should have your assignment soon if my connects get back to me.” Then his gaze shifts back to me. “Have a nice night, Hound.” He doesn’t wait for me to respond and heads to…actually I’m not sure where he’s going. It looks like he’s going back to the party, but I have no clue what for since it’s over.

  A tiny flare blazes through my muscles. Thanks for wasting my time. Shaking my head, I wait for a silver convertible to pass before I cross to the next row of cars. At this hour, it’s hard to tell the dark gray cars and the navy blue cars from the black ones. I hope she didn’t leave already. I stop under a streetlight, pull out my issued phone, and call her number.

  The dial tone brrrrs twice. Loud chatter and car noise roar in the background. “Hello? Jun?”

  “Sensei? Where are you? I want to talk to you before you leave,” I say.

  Her voice comes in choppy. “What? I…barely hear you. You’re…”

  “I said where are you?” I repeat. “I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m parked…PoleControl…ding.” Static fuzzes her voice. “Come there.”