A few minutes of searching and I pick up Mai’s familiar freesia scent at the base of a few tree roots, but it’s faint. She hasn’t been this way in a while.
I hope I can still catch her.
Dogs on tv make scent-tracking look like a cake-walk. It’s no where near that easy as you think it’d be. Sniffing at tree roots, I pad all the way around the trunk. Another dead end loop. My tail twitches back and forth irritably. Fedoras almighty, what the hell was Mai thinking? ‘Hmm, let me go take the most convoluted nonsensical walking path that I can just in case someone follows me.’
But then again…
I guess in this situation she’s completely right to suspect that. I take back what I said about finding Pua Moana being Hide and Seek: Never Find Me Edition. This is the real Hide and Seek: the Go Fuck Yourself Edition.
Moving on, I trot through the bracken and follow Mai’s scent down a new trail. One thing I do like about being a fox is how fulfilling it feels. I can see why foxes flock here, whether they need the chi or not. Putting a barefoot on bracken isn’t the same as putting a paw down. As a fox, a paw down in the forest feels like I’m an extension of the land. As a human, it feels more like being a socially awkward turtle in a rabbit’s world. Here, there’s nothing as satisfying as a quick breeze weaving in my fur, the fluid movements in my muscles just from walking place to place, or just way the instinct seems to know what to do better as an animal than human. I'm meant for it and I feel I'm meant for it. For once, I belong somewhere. I actually have a place.
Crack!
My ears swivel around.
A deer passes up a thorn bush a few meters away. Faint tendrils radiate from its body on the tawny coat. They disappear as the deer walks, but reappear as it stops.
My heart hammers against my chest. That must be chi. I’m sure I’m big enough to kill it. I can do this. It can't be that different from killing in Showguns. I know I didn’t come out here for chi, but I’ve been out here for a while and I haven’t had any chi in a while. Pressing my stomach to the ground, I creep behind a thicket. I keep an eye on the bobbing white tail and pad along the flank of my cover.
The deer stretches its neck to nibble at a fallen leaf.
My muscles tense. Just a few more steps…
The deer’s head shoots up. It pistons off, vanishing into the dark.
No! Adrenaline surges into my paws. I dash after it. My gaze tunnels on the back hooves. You’re not getting away!
It stumbles, losing ground. Close enough to kill.
My claws unsheathe. I spring.
From the corner of my eye, another shape leaps from the bushes.
Pain explodes into my left flank. I hit the ground. Air leaves my lungs. My flank hits the ground hard. There’s a furry weight pinning me down.
I look up to see the deer’s hooves getting farther and farther away.
Hot fury blazing under my fur, kick the body away and get up.
A blue-gray seven-tailed vixen staggers to her paws and shakes off her pelt. Breaths ragged, she throws me a look of pure venom. “What the fuck is wrong with you? That was my kill!”
My ears prick. That voice… “Vampire?”
Her eyes narrow. “Oh great. You.”
My tail lashes. “Yes me. I was trying to enjoy a nice hunt. So would you kindly fuck off?”
“Yours?” She snorts. “I was already after it. Your loud-ass paws scared it away!”
“My loud paws?” I can’t keep the growl out of my voice. “At least I almost had it! You weren’t close!”
Vampire flexes her claws. “That’s called stealth. Something you could’ve read the manual about!”
I can feel the fur on my neck rising. “Will you stop being so petty?”
She squints at me. “Bish, I will take you to Petty City. Try me.”
I snort. “I was doing just fine without you butting in.”
Her ears twitch. “Okay…” She lifts a paw. “First you play like shit and don’t know you’re shit. Now you hunt like shit and don’t know you’re shit. I'm detecting a pattern here, bish.”
A low growl rumbles in my throat. I dig my claws into the ground so I don’t claw her muzzle instead. Of all the people to run into, why this bitch? “What's your fucking problem? Ever since I walked in, you've been bitching.”
She bristles. "You have the tendency to fuck my shit up. ‘Scuse me, but I have the right to be pissed."
I force my claws to sheathe. Arguing won’t help. Maybe I can actually nip this in the bud. "Fuck you up, how?"
Vampire opens her mouth right away, then closes it. As if she had something prepared but I didn’t say what she wanted. Her fur flattens. “The name Yuki Nakamura ring a bell?”
I remember that. My first mission. When my gun got tagged in some freak accident. “Yeah. I had to try to detag it myself.”
Vampire’s lip curls. “And you shouldn’t have. I tried to fix that mess you made and I got fired for it.”
My mouth gapes open. “But that wasn’t even your fault.”
“Oh really?” She tips her head. “Tell me more of the obvious, bish.”
“Listen, Vampire. That wasn’t your fault or mine. My gun was tagged on purpose.”
She squints. “What are you talking about? Tagged on purpose how?”
“It happened again recently,” I say. “An assassin had my gun tagged. And I got blackmailed.”
Her fur starts to flatten, but her gaze is still wary. “Huh. I heard about a bunch of assassins getting blackmailed lately. But if that’s true then was it the same guy did it the first time?”
“Don’t know. I’m assuming it’s the same person.” Now that I think about it, I never asked Genji if he was the one who tagged my gun back then. But who else could’ve done it if wasn’t him? I don’t know anyone else who would want to get rid of me.
“Hmm…” Vampire looks down at her paws, and for the first time I notice that her leg is absent of the wound from work.
“You’re all better?”
“Oh, yeah.” She lifts her leg. “Pua Moana meds are the best,” Vampire says. “But I’m still sore.”
“I’ve been told,” I say. “But for this whole mess… Are we cool now?”
Vampire’s ears swivel around, and I’m glad that there’s no hostility in her gaze now. “I guess you’re okay. Besides, I was running out of creative insults.”
Warmth fills my muzzle, making my whiskers twitch. That would’ve been a sight to see. “And you…” I eye her. “I had a feeling you were something else.”
“Huh?
My tail swishes. “Not human. I saw you make the fox mudra in-game.”
Vampire’s ears pin back against her fur. “Tch! You ain’t human either, bish."
“But I didn’t use my powers in-game,” I say in a matter-of-fact tone.
Vampire waves her paw. "Oh details, details…" And for the first time, her gaze is warm. "By the way, bish your crouch was off."
"Off?" I echo.
"Yeah." Vampire couches low, but she leans her body so it looks like she’s tilted. “You were lop-sided like this, bish!”
I laugh. “I was quiet enough! You scared it off with your loud paws!”
Vampire laughs along too.
“Nice to see you both settle your differences.”
I straighten at once at the voice.
A wiry white nine-tail pads in from the direction Vampire came. Mai’s light brown eyes and the bullet wound in her chest give her away, even if her voice didn’t. But still, seeing her is surreal. I would’ve never imagined that she had any fox magic in her.
Much to my surprise, Vampire waves her tail the same way Heaven did to me earlier and barks. “Hey, hey. Didn’t expect you to show up so soon. When is that apprentice of yours going to show?”
Mai wraps her tail around her paws. “She’s right there next to you.”
Vampire gawks at me. “You? You didn’t tell me you knew Mai!”
I bump Vampire in the shoulder with
my head. “You smarty IT people can look that up.”
“And besides that’s not important right now.” Mai stands up. “Did you bring the regalia and your Gene Watch, Jun?”
I spring to my paws. “It’s not on me, but I can go get it.”
“Good. You get them and bring it to the inn’s garage. We can talk there,” Mai says. To Vampire she asks, “It will work right?”
“‘Course! Pan Pan and I have been testing this for a month,” Vampire chirps. “If we fail, you can have my tail for a pillow.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I say, then I leave the two to hurry for the lake.
But five minutes of looking for the lake by myself, makes me realize that I have no clue where that is from all the way out here.
What was it that Heaven said? Do something for the Reservation Patrol? I should’ve paid more attention. I try to backtrack with Mai’s scent only to find that my scent covers her trail because I walked all over it and that I can’t make heads or tails out of my own damn scent because it’s fresh and all over the place.
Oh why on earth is scent tracking so impossible? I do my best to pick out the weakest bits of my scent and I head in that direction.
The sunlight overhead starts to dim and thin to mere threads shining through the tree canopies—and speaking of those the trees are getting thicker and taller, much taller than even the giant cypress trees of Ise Shrine. The familiar smell of fox fades and is overlaid by something harsher and unfamiliar. An brown owl passes overhead and settles on a branch to leer at me. “Hoo? Hoo?”
But it sounds more like Who the hell do you think you are stepping in my neighborhood punk?”
I stop and look around. I think I came out too far. Though I guess I should’ve figured that when the smells started to change, but it’s not like it was a firm ‘oh this is fox land and this isn’t’ kind of line. It more like a huge blurry transition. I turn around to go back.
A line of brown rabbits stand upright, staring at me as though in a trance.
My paws prickle. As small as a rabbit is, you’d think it wouldn’t bother a giant hungry fox. But I have a funny feeling that eating them is out of the question. What’s going on here?
A buck slides in from the shadows with a doe and their stares are the same as the rabbits.
Then a low growl sounds behind me.
I turn around.
Yellow eyes like two chips of topaz, two huge gray wolfish creatures slip into view. I say wolfish because while they may have wolf ears, faces, fur, and tails, their forelegs are unusually thick and their forepaws and resemble a bear’s. The first wolf strides up to me, tail up, and no hesitance in his gait. A mix of harsh dog and earth scent overpowers my nose. “Trespassers have no right to walk our lands,” He says.
“Sorry, I was looking for the lake. I ended up here by mistake.”
My words trigger a round of chortling from the other animals. The second ‘wolf’ steps forward, black nose quivering as she scents me. “Seung Hwa, she is only a fox-pup. I think she speaks truthfully.”
Seung Hwa? That’s certainly not a Tokaido name. It’s more Tohenian-ish. Maybe these are the Ainu that Bo was talking about. I want to ask, but I keep my mouth shut in case I’m not on their good side yet.
Seung Hwa lowers his head to look at my neck. “That is Bo’s bib. Very well. Come fox-pup. We will take you back.”
I relax. Whew.
Seung Hwa pads in the direction that I came in and I follow close behind. The second she-wolf pads beside me, sneaking glances at me.
“So…You guys are Ainu, I’m guessing?” I ask.
The she-wolf’s chest puffs. “Of course we are. The great communicators of—”
Seung Hwa cuts her off with a glare. “Hyo Yeon, please.”
Hyo Yeon’s ears flatten. “My apologies.”
Seung Hwa glances warily at me. “How do you know of us, fox-pup?”
“Bo mentioned you guys when I said I was looking for a girl in a red cloak,” I say. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen her, have you?”
Hyo Yeon’s get wide, but she says nothing. Seung Hwa does not look at me.
“Please, if you know something about that girl, I need to know. She killed my best friend,” I say.
Seung Hwa stops beside a short tree. “We are here. Leave our lands and don’t come back.”
I suppress a growl. That’s no answer! “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”
“She has been here, and is not here anymore,” Seung Hwa says. Then he looks over his shoulder at me. “Does that satisfy you, pup?”
“Yes, why didn’t you say that first?” I ask, but Seung Hwa is already padding into the trees.
Hyo Yeon dips her head to me. “Please forgive him. He’s not usually this bad-tempered.” She backs into the shadows, her yellow eyes lingering on me, then she disappears completely.
5-3 'Ah'
“What took you so long?” Mai opens the garage door for me, frowning. “I thought something happened to you.”
“Sorry,” I mutter, ducking my head in apology. “I ended up getting lost and the Ainu found me. They helped me back.”
“I’m glad you made it back in one piece, but you should have said something if you didn’t know the way back.” She jerks her head inside. “Get in here.”
I step in to be face-assaulted with the strong odor of marijuana and motor oil.
Sprawled in a chair, Vampire swipes away on her phone with a thumb. She glances up from her phone with a smirk. “Bish, you had one job.”
“Oh don’t you start,” I say. “I already got an earful from Mai.”
“And you’ll get another if you call me Mai again.” Mai punctuates that statement by closing the door behind her. “Show Vampire your Gene Watch.”
I unclasp the watch from around my wrist and hand it over to Vampire who turns it over to examine the back of the face.
She studies it for a bit and then says. “I think Pan Pan and I can jailbreak it. What do you want us to put in it?”
Mai looks at me and I take the imperial regalia out and lay each artifact out on the desk for them to look at. Vampire appraises them quietly, but Mai is staring at her watch.
The garage’s side door swings open. Blue and white baseball cap on with a jersey cut off at the midriff, a brunette with blonde highlights about my age walks in with a slice of pizza in a paper plate. At the sight of Mai and me, her eyes go wide. “Woah…” She tilts her cap back a little. “I don’t think I ordered enough pizza.”
“We didn’t come to eat—” I glance at Mai who hasn’t seemed to notice the new arrival. “At least as far as I know.”
Baseball Girl’s gaze lingers on Mai for a little, and I follow her gaze to find that her eyes are on the gun at Mai’s hip. I can only assume that this girl didn’t get the ‘we-are-Showguns’ memo.
Vampire looks up. “These are the two I was telling you about Pan Pan. The watch should break in easy. It’s just the weapon customization bit that’s gonna be the hard part. The sword is corroded and I dunno what to do about this mirror. Gene Watches usually allow one melee and one projectile. We’ll just have to wing it.” Glancing at me, she says, “This is my buddy, Pan.”
Pan relaxes at the introduction. “Oh cool. For a minute, I thought maybe I was in trouble or something.” She waves at me then proceeds to plop onto the thin-cushioned sofa next to Vampire’s chair. “The way I see it, you’ve got two choices. Use the sword as a primary weapon and combine the mirror and bead-thingy as a projectile shield combo. Or combine the sword with the bead-thingy for a gun-blade and we can maybe squeeze the mirror in as a shield by itself.” She glances at me. “Depends on what you want to do.”
Well, a shield shooting bullets doesn’t sound that cool. “I’d rather have the gun-blade.”
Pan grins at Vampire. “Excellent choice.”
Mai puts her hands on her hips. “How long do you think it will take you?”
“Probably about thirty minutes to about an
hour,” Vampire says. “Might be a little more depending on if three items gives us problem or if the sword doesn’t get restored on the scan.”
“Good.” Mai puts her uninjured arm around me, ushering me towards the door where Pan came in. “Plenty of time to talk then.”
We cross into the inn’s living room again. Bo offers us a smile as he checks things off on his clipboard. “Didn’t know you were that popular, Jun.”
“You have no idea,” Mai says. We head up into the second floor. Mai fishes in her pocket for a key and opens the door. I enter first.
It’s a barebones room: white bed, sheets, pillows. Nothing decorative. Even the Nirvana, cheap as it was, has more life than this room. But then again, Bo did say that this place ran on donations, and people probably only visit more than they want to stay.
Mai shuts the door behind her. “Now about what Susano said…You already know about all of the lives of Amaterasu?”
"Yes.” I cup my elbows. “I’m still not sure how this is going to work. He didn’t say anything about how I join with you guys.”
Mai sits on the edge of the bed and drums her nails on her knee. “Is that the way he put it?” She shakes her head. “You have to go through a trial from each of us. And each is made up of your memories. You win the trial, we go into your body.”
“Then what happens to you?”
Mai shrugs. “We die.”
A stiffness comes over me. And I can hear my own heart beating loud between my ears. Sure when Susano had said I’d absorb them, I figured it would mean someone disappearing. But now as I stare at Mai in the face, the whole idea feels unimaginable. And so sudden. How could I kill the woman who’s always been there for everything I’ve done?
Mai’s jaw tightens visibly. “Jun don’t look at me like that. You have to do this for every life. Even me.”
“But Sensei…” My throat constricts. I’m not an assassin anymore. My records at PoleControl might say it still, but I can’t.
She only clenches the fist of her injured arm. “No buts. We can’t run the risk of CRISIS-D getting a hold of one of us.” Her light brown eyes burn fiercely in the bedroom gloom. “They nearly killed me. And I’m one of the stronger ones Jun. With genetic enhancements. If you don’t do it, you’ll only give them the chance to get all of us.”
Vicissitude Yang Side Page 45