by H J Peterson
“Now, the first thing we need to do is decide the details of your identities,” the man, Horatio, said. He was an older, Alvaresan man, one with a look in his eyes that told her that he wasn’t quite right in the head. “Do either or you have any names that are special to you? A sibling’s name, perhaps?”
Adelric thought about it for a second, then shook his head. “I can’t think of anything.”
Horatio wrote something down. “Alright, we’ll go with the name… Niels Achthoven. Yes: that’s a good, Vorbereicher name.”
He looked up at Hiro. “What about you, inspector? You have any ideas about possible names for yourself?”
Hiro thought about it for a second. There was only one name that she could think of: her mother’s name. Why she thought of that after all these years, considering all those things she’d gone through because of her.
“Yumi,” Hiro said.
“Good, good,” Horatio said as he wrote the name down. “Yumi… Kato. No; Yumi… Kurosawa. No. What if we made you only part Hanjan? Yes, that’s it: you’ll be Yumi… Yumi Hruska. That sounds about right. That will give you an in with Bator and anybody else.”
Hiro frowned. “Part Magyaran? But… I don’t know any Magyaran.”
“We have a way of getting some into that head,” Horatio said. “We’ll do it in a few days, after you’ve had time to recover from what we’ll be doing, today. If not, you can claim that you never knew your father: it’s plausible enough.” He looked up at them. “Now, I would like you guys to start calling each other by your pseudonyms; it’ll be a good way to avoid any sort of mix-up while on the job.”
Biermann looked over at her. “Alright… Yumi. What a beautiful name. Is that your mother’s name or something?”
“Actually, it is… Niels,” Hiro said. “Thank you for noticing, I guess.”
“Excellent!” Horatio said. Did he think this was fun? Because it wasn’t. “Now, for the back story. Where are the two of you from? I’ll let the two of you help out more on this one: just try to be realistic about it.”
Adelric began to rub the back of his neck, apparently embarrassed. “So… I guess suggesting that Niels Achthoven be some sort of suave Alchemist sharpshooter is out of the question?”
Hiro managed to keep from laughing. “A what?”
“An Alchemist sharpshooter,” he said, even more embarrassed than he was, before. “You know, like that serial that used to be in the papers. What was it called? The Adventures of Klaus Wien?”
Horatio frowned. “What are you talking about? What serial?”
Adelric frowned. “You’ve never heard of that serial? My mother used to read it to me every Saturday; it’s what made me okay with the fact that I’m an Alchemist.”
“As adorable as that is, I think that basing yourself off of a character in a newspaper serial is a terrible idea,” Horatio said. He looked down at his paper. “Let’s see… you said you’re an Alchemist, right? And you were some sort of street musician before you got arrested?”
“Yes, on both counts. What about it?”
“Well… maybe you’re a street magician,” Horatio said, sitting back in his seat. “Yeah; you’re going through a bit of a rough patch, thanks to all the public nuisance citations, and you want to see the pigs fry for it.”
“And how is that more believable than my idea?” Adelric asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Because there’s a chance that it’s real,” Horatio retorted. “Now, you’re going to want to start practicing some magic tricks. You not being very good will actually be best: if you’re too good, they’re going to start wondering why you’ve never performed at the Überhaus or something, and the last thing we need is someone snooping around, trying to figure out who you are.”
He turned to look at Hiro as Adelric sighed, dejected, and began to rub some coal on his hands, apparently doing some sort of trick with his powers. “Now, what about you, Ikeda? What’s your story?”
“I… don’t know,” Hiro said. “I guess I’ll trust you on this.”
Horatio seemed kind of surprised by that, but he didn’t question it. Instead, he smiled manically, like a mad scientist who was just told that he had free reign to do whatever experiments he wanted.
Which was definitely not something Hiro wanted to see out of that man.
Horatio began to bite the end of his pencil. Judging by the look of the poor thing, it wasn’t the first time he’d done that.
“Let’s see… what sort of a woman is Yumi Hruska?” Horatio mumbled to himself. “You emigrated from Hanjai when you were younger, didn’t you?”
Hiro nodded. “That’s right.”
“I’d like to keep that part,” Horatio said. “Yes. You emigrated from… a major port, but not the capital. Let’s go with Kunosai. You heard that life might be a little easier for a war orphan like yourself in Vorbereich, especially one of mixed race, so you made your way over here and found yourself in a clothing mill. You didn’t appreciate the foreman getting handsie with you, so you slapped him, and he fired you. You ended up with Niels here and have been working as a sort of assistant to his little magic act for money to pay the rent. And now you’re going to the Archangel in the hopes that he’ll make things better.”
Hiro found herself swallowing. Some of that was pretty close to her real life.
Horatio smiled as he wrote that all down. “I love it; it’s absolutely brilliant, if I do say so, myself.”
Adelric frowned as he finished scribbling things down on his paper. “So, I get to be some sort of magician, and she gets to be a war orphan? How did I end up with the lame story?”
“Well, I’m sorry that I couldn’t do that ridiculous story you suggested,” Horatio said as he set the pad of paper down on the ground. He began to rub his hands together, preparing to do something. “Now, let’s get to changing that mug of yours, shall we?”
Adelric sighed and laid down. “How much work are you going to be doing? Because I really don’t feel like being laid up for the rest of the day.”
“Enough that nobody there is going to be able to recognize you, even if they’ve met you, before,” Horatio said as he cracked his knuckles, preparing himself to transform Adelric’s body. “So, yeah; you’re probably going to be laid up for the rest of the day.” He put a hand over Adelric’s eyes. “Don’t be so sore about it; it’s not like you had much to do other than this today, anyway.”
Adelric began to wince in pain. When Horatio moved his hands away from his eyes, she saw that they were now very, very different. They had gone from being a dull brown to being gray.
Hiro’s jaw dropped in amazement. She knew what sort of things Docs were capable of, but she’d never thought that… well, she didn’t think it would be nearly that instantaneous!
Adelric began to squint. “Horatio, why can’t I see right?”
“Because you’re going to have glasses,” Horatio said as he gently pressed his hands against Adelric’s cheeks. The muscle on Adelric’s face began to change, becoming thicker in some parts, thinner in others, until Adelric’s face was rounder. “And before you complain, remember that all of this is to keep you from getting murdered.”
“What makes you think I’m going to get myself killed?” Adelric asked.
Horatio shrugged. “Civilians don’t exactly have the greatest track record at this sort of thing.”
He moved his hands to the roots of Adelric’s hairs. As if by magic, his hair went from being a dark brown to being a coppery brown. If she’d seen him on the streets like that, she probably wouldn’t have recognized him.
But would people who knew him better than she did recognize him? Because if they did, they were dead.
Adelric sat up and ran a hand through his hair. “How much did you change, exactly?”
“Hair color, eye color, sight quality, and the muscular structure of your face,” Horatio said. “We’ll get you fitted for some glasses and get your hair trimmed once I’m finished up with Ikeda–umm… I mean, Yum
i.” He began to rub the back of his neck. “I should probably start calling the two of you by your pseudonyms, shouldn’t I? You guys need to get used to hearing them as soon as possible.”
Adelric and Hiro traded spots. She took in a deep, shaky breath as she laid back down and Horatio began to flex his hands, preparing himself to change her appearance.
“Is this your first time doing this?” Horatio asked as Adelric took a seat, rubbing his temples in an apparent attempt to relieve a headache.
Hiro was about to nod, but she stopped herself, remembering what happened with the Archangel. “Is this going to hurt?”
“Not too bad,” Horatio said. “Just relax, alright? This is just going to feel a little funny, is all.”
The first thing he did was gently put a hand to her eyes. She took a deep breath and waited for it to be over.
The truth was, it really didn’t hurt. Her eyes just felt like they were itchy as he worked. By far, it was a much better experience than… last time a Doc worked on her.
Horatio moved his hands. Hiro found that her eyes were aching a bit, is if she’d just spend the night with her nose in a textbook, but she felt just fine otherwise. And, luckily for her, he hadn’t changed anything about her vision.
“What color did you make my eyes?” Hiro asked as Horatio put his hands on her hairline. Her hair began to feel like something was tugging on it.
“They’re blue,” Horatio said. Her scalp began to tingle. Heaven knew what that meant. “I’m also making your hair longer and a tad lighter. I may also change the structure of your face a little: people aren’t usually able to discern one Hanjan face from another, but you never know with the mob.”
Hiro sighed as Horatio moved his hands away from her hair and began to inspect his work. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking: his face was a stony mask, revealing nothing that she could use to gauge how successful he thought he was in all this.
And dear heaven, did that worry her.
“Actually, I don’t think I’ll have to change your facial structure, at all,” Horatio said, stroking his chin as he seemingly considered the possibilities. “Yes; if I just change your skin tone a tad, I think you’ll look pretty convincing.”
He put his hand on her forehead, like an anxious mother making sure that her child didn’t have a fever. “Now, don’t panic; this one will feel a little uncomfortable.”
Hiro tried to relax.
She felt it the second Horatio began to manipulate her body. It started as a tingling in her skin, but the sensation soon turned. Her skin began to pulse uncomfortable, almost painful heat, and it was spreading across her body. It felt like she was standing much too close to a hot stove, or a raging fire.
Hiro squeezed her eyes shut. Now, this was a little close to what the Archangel did to her for comfort.
Finally, the sensation dissipated, leaving Hiro feeling a little cold. Horatio took his hands away from her forehead and smirked. Apparently, she’d turned out pretty well. Even Adelric looked amazed at how she now looked.
“You look perfect, if I do say so, myself,” Horatio said proudly as Hiro sat up and held her hand out in front of her face: her skin was now a soft, olive color. The same complexion as every Magyaran she knew. “Well, I guess the uniform kind of gives you away, but that’s a pretty easy fix.”
Hiro looked over at Horatio as she ran a hand through her hair. She was surprised to find that it was now long and thick, reaching down to the bottoms of her shoulder blades in gentle waves. That, and it was now the color of chocolate. “Do you have a mirror?”
Horatio nodded and handed her a small, hand-held mirror.
The woman she saw in that mirror wasn’t her. The first thing she noticed were her eyes. They weren’t just blue: they were startling blue, almost… bright. They were still that almond shape they’d always been, though: one of the only features that still felt like her own. Her hair flowed thick and brown, free from the tail it was usually in. Her skin was no longer Hanjan, but she still kind of looked… well, Hanjan. She was fairly certain that her own family wouldn’t recognize her, at that point. Not even Ichirou.
In all honesty, despite the fact that there had been plenty of times where she’d wished that she didn’t look so Hanjan, she wasn’t sure that she liked it.
Before she could share any of that, however, someone poked her head into the room. Hiro didn’t recognize her: she must have been an intern.
“Are they ready for wardrobe, Horatio?” the intern asked.
Horatio nodded, then looked over at them. “I guess you better get over there; Tielo will kill me if I keep you any longer.”
Adelric and Hiro left the room.
What else could they do to disguise them? She already didn’t feel like herself. Nobody could possibly recognize her if she didn’t even recognize herself.
XXXIX. ADELRIC
Adelric looked up at the ceiling, scared out of his damned mind. It was here: after a week of preparation, of constantly going through his back story and trying to acclimate to his new identity as Niels Achthoven, the time had come. The next morning, the two of them were going to step back into the underworld, back to where Bator, Klara, and the Archangel ruled. Where people that wouldn’t mind seeing the two of them dead were waiting. As he stared up at the ceiling of the room in Vergesse he would be sharing with Hiro during their operation, waiting to fall asleep, he couldn’t help but wonder what all this would mean for him. Would the police kill him, thinking that he was with the Archangel? Would he die after getting all of his fingernails ripped off by the Archangel? Would he manage to get out of this alive?
Finally, he sat up and scratched his head, sighing. “Yumi, are you asleep?”
Yumi–aka, Inspector Ikeda–sat up in her bed and looked over at him. “Of course not.”
The sound of her voice kind of made him jump out of his skin. The woman didn’t even sound like herself, anymore. How was she such a natural at this?
He stretched his arms above his head and yawned. “So… what should we talk about?”
Hiro raised an eyebrow. Well, at least there was one part of her that hadn’t changed: everything else, though… well, if someone were to somehow figure out who she was, then they probably deserved whatever would come next.
“You want to talk?” she asked. She sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “Your weird habits will never cease to amaze me, will they?”
“Probably,” Adelric said. “I guess I just… want to know more about you, now that we’re about to do this. For two people that are supposed to trust each other with their lives, we sure don’t know all that much about one another, other than the junk they told us about Niels Achthoven and Yumi Hruska.”
“I’m pretty sure that that’s so we don’t start spouting off things about the wrong person,” Hiro said. “Do you really want to risk that? What if you start talking about my real life to the wrong person and they find out?”
“I don’t know,” Adelric admitted. “I don’t think I’ll do that, though: I’ve done enough things like this with less of a disguise than we have right now, and I was just fine all those other times; why should this be any different?”
Hiro didn’t say anything to that, not at first, anyway. She just looked over at him, then sighed, cursing.
“There isn’t much to say about it,” Hiro said. “I was born in Hanjai, came over with my brothers, and made a life for myself. The end.”
“So, you have siblings? I haven’t really heard about them in the news or anything.” Adelric couldn’t help but be a tad jealous: he probably did have siblings, in a way. All he really knew about his family was that his mother was a prostitute, and his father had been a soldier before he got blown to bits. They’d put a violin in his hand to try and earn some extra marks to and, well, the rest was history.
“That’s because I like to keep that part of my life as private as I can: my older brother is a very private person, and my younger brother… well, people finding out about him mi
ght have ruined some of my chances at the police academy,” she said. “Ichirou never mentioned it to anybody, and frankly, I was worried that his boss would fire him if he found out that his sister was trying to become a police inspector. Aki doesn’t lead the best of lives, and if my opponents knew about it, they probably would’ve used it to get the academy to kick me out. Not to mention what would’ve happened to him.”
Adelric found himself wincing. Of course, he’d managed to hit one of her sore spots. He was pretty good at that.
“So, I guess you don’t know who your parents are, either?” Adelric asked. It was kind of weird, that she knew her siblings and not that.
“No, I do,” Hiro said. “My father died on his way back from the war, and I haven’t spoken to my mother in fifteen years. I think she’s still alive over in Hanjai, though.”
Fifteen years?
“Well, why that long?” Adelric asked.
“Because she stopped caring about us after Dad died,” Hiro said. “What about you? You got any dirty laundry to air out right now, or is that too ‘private’ for you?”
Oh, he sure had plenty of that.
“Well, my mother was a prostitute,” Adelric said. “I don’t know who my father was, and she died when I was young. I probably have some siblings, but, well, who knows.” He sat back against the wall. “You know that brothel kind of by factory row? The one with an opium den for a basement?”
Hiro raised an eyebrow. Of course, she knew about the place: there wasn’t a police officer in Königstadt that didn’t know about that brothel.
“You were born there?” she asked.
“And I lived there until I was sixteen and managed to rent a place out on my own,” Adelric said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yep; not the best childhood, I guess, but it’s what I’ve got.”
Hiro folded her arms over her chest, sighing. “Well, I kind of figured that we would have that in common. Nobody seems to have that great of a family life, here; not even the nobles.”