Kagami tipped a martini glass to his lips, and watched the robed man flow into the silent bar like a ghost, sweeping the floor with his steps. The local children called him the Dust-Buster, among other names. Older residents, aspiring to convey some level of public maturity, practiced a little more discretion and just said he was eccentric-- but in a way that could be respected. The blonde softened a smirk around the slow chewing of an olive. "A pleasure you've come to join me, Kagenuma," he said elegantly, after swallowing. By then, his solemn visitor had occupied a bar stool, roosting majestically like the proverbial wise old owl. He sat, watching Kagami with eyes that looked entranced. Kagami knew enough to allow time to take its course.
"Your time has come," Kagenuma said at length.
Kagami blinked, trying to clear his mind of juvenile jokes last heard in the local playgrounds. He gave a low sigh-- one which could have easily passed as one of resignation-- and gave his long body a good stretch. "You know, I have been waiting. For my time to come." He nodded with a grave expression, lowering his arms to his sides. The disc spun languidly by his ear. "In fact, I have been waiting for as long as I can remember, for the sands of time to shift, for the stars to align, for My Time to descend upon me as I idly quench my base desires... here in this lonely establishment."
Kagenuma's nod was of thoughtful approval, his eyes refocusing. "Destiny awaits you," he said. "You... are ready."
Dust-Buster wants to be a mystic! A mystic! He hides fantasy books in his security blanket! Kagami blinked again, biting lightly on his tongue. He brought the martini glass to his lips, only to remind himself that it was empty. "What's my mission?" he inquired of the lengthening shadow. The robed man had placed his hands on his knees and stood up. Watching him with a lifting gaze, Kagami set his glass down. "...Kagenuma?"
"The next generation awaits your power," came the solemn answer.
Kagami caught Kagenuma's conspiratorial nod, and following his gaze, found that it was directed to someone beyond his line of vision. Clicking heels approached from the corridor beyond the bend of the bar's entrance, and a svelte pair of legs strode into the room. A second later, Kagami looked up. Golden locks flowed around a heart-shaped face illuminated with large violet eyes. Framed with long, wispy lashes, they seemed even bigger. Not a blemish distracted his gaze from this woman's dainty features, whose skin appeared airbrushed in the dim bar lighting. With the grace of a ballerina, she descended upon the stool that Kagenuma left vacant. "Hey there." The words fell soothingly into his ear from painted lips. The woman tilted a shoulder and let her golden hair frollick down the arc. A wisp of it brushed her temple, brushed her cheek, and brushed the protruding tip of her glossy pout. It dragged a thin shimmery line of red across her chin. She was poetry in motion, before the ink had dried.
"You..." murmured Kagami.
"My name is Mar--"
"You," Kagami said firmly, hating to be interrupted, "are wearing too much make-up. My lady, why does one of your privileged origin condescend to hiding her natural looks with manufactured pigments? A touch of it here and there for enhancement speaks of healthy pride, but you, as far as I can tell, are wearing a mask. Do you deny me the privilege of witnessing your true face?" Or are you simply a waste of perfectly good blonde hair? Out of instinct, his eyes skipped to Kagenuma for answers, although he suspected he'd hear nothing out of the departing man. "And please explain your relevance to my mission."
"Kagenuma had a vi-sion." The woman tapped a manicured nail to her groomed head, apparently ignoring everything but what lay in her skull. "He told me this morning that we would become husband and wife. We will have two children together. You and me, Kagami. It's not a mission. It's our future."
"My apologies. The man is mistaken." Kagami wondered if he was being artfully slighted by the soft-spoken Kagenuma. A matchmaking session, was this? Of all the genetically engineered women in Babylon City, how did he get arranged with one which required cosmetics to look half decent? What did he do recently that was so bad to deserve this? Kagami Kyoji did not need a match-maker. "Unspeakable..."
"What is?"
Kagami shook his head. "Nevermind." Recovering himself, the glass-user looked between the lady and the bar, and prepared to live up to his reputation as a gentleman. "It is unfortunate our first meeting was the result of this error, but it was a pleasure nonetheless. May I get you a drink?" He forced a smile to disarm, which failed.
"No. Listen to me. You know how it works." The woman's face had outlived its shocked expression and now wore one of smug assertion. "Kagenuma already described his vision to many of our elders. He told all the gossip queens. He even told all the little kids that make fun of his clothes because they listened to him. I made sure he told everyone, and they all agreed that it would be true, before it was told to you. Kagenuma cannot be 'wrong.' He is never wrong. You cannot change The Word. This whole society is bound by it."
Kagami looked at his watch. "Well, like they say, there's always a first time for everything."
"Not in Babylon City. Not with my father."
Her implied connections to political heavyweights made Kagami pause momentarily. Politics reigned above reason in this sheltered civilization, one which obsessed over the future while wallowing through its tired precedences. One mis-step and Kagami could land himself in a cesspool of consequences. "What did you say your name was?" he asked.
"Mary," she answered with the pain of denied entitlement. "Of the Su family. Don't you recognize me? I'm famous. Everybody knows me."
"I recognize people whose faces don't change every--"
"A lot of power--" she exclaimed, "great power-- is within your reach, Kagami." She was doing something passionate with her fist and an open palm. Kagami looked at her, dazed, as though Jaganed. "Be with me. Don't be a fool," she said, jabbing him in the chest with her finger.
"Think of how much power I'd have if I proved Kagenuma wrong," Kagami spoke with flat sarcasm, staring right past her and at the exit. "Think of the anarchy, the revolution. Does that not tickle the imagination of one as romantic as yourself?" He waved a hand idly and rose. She caught his wrist.
"Why not me?" she asked in a breaking voice. Reality dawned upon her, and reality was heavy. Despite her connections to one of the most powerful families, Kagami Kyoji was a known wildcard among the younger generation. He associated with the experimented folk. He sometimes left the Castle. Despite his conforming appearances, his actions did not fall into a neat equation for the elders. He was a roamer, one which needed to be tied down in marriage before he ventured too far into the world. He clashed weapons with Akabane. He saw his eyes. He knew. Kagami may follow. His future was too distant for her near-sighted imagination to make sense of. All she wanted was a family: two beautiful Babylonian children. What did Kagami find out there, where she never wandered? Who has he met? Her eyes wavered around the edges, long lashes no longer feathery with every quick blink, darkened at the roots. A black tear streaked the blushed curve of her right cheek. "You must have met someone else. Who is she?"
An identical tear gathered in her left eye, but Kagami stopped it with his finger. He smirked, about to quip something charming, something insincerely apologetic, when something about her face stopped him. Letting his hand fall, he watched that dark blotch of moist mascara on her cheek as though it meant something more than just a dark blotch of moist mascara. "You remind me of her, right now," he relented. He saw her eyes flicker. "Please do not be so distressed, my lady. I'm sure there are men, plenty of men, who see you every day and secretly wish to see you in a wedding gown. Why limit your future to a man who 'predicts' the season finales of the Lower Town Reality TV Show?"
It was working. The woman's over-tweezed brows stopped pinching and her lips paused in their trembling. Something seemed to dawn on her. "Why limit myself to someone who was eliminated in the last episode?" she continued for him. "I could have anyone. My status and my beauty combined will find me my suitor. Meanwhile, you can run away with that dark-skinned savage."
Kagami blinked. "A classy Babylonian is not racist, and this 'dark-skinned savage' is more deserving of my company than most people I've come to know up here. There's no telling what's in all of our genes." That's how they ensure we have no roots to return to, no other culture to explore, if we decide to leave. He suppressed the urge to tell Mary Su he had hacked into the files of all the powerful Babylonian families ages ago and discovered her genetic disorder; she looked fine now, but she would gain weight and fall into the catty pubescent girls' definition of 'cow' by her twenty-second birthday. He'll gladly accept Himiko's curse over that. "And I beg your pardon, but I was not 'eliminated,' my lady," he said with forced patience. "My clothes were in dire need of drycleaning and it was not worth my while to stay longer than I did. Now if you'll excuse me, I require a moment with Kagenuma."
He freed his wrist from her hand and turned to her, eyes slimming above a genki smile. "Until we meet again, gentle Mary of the Su family." He left quickly, fearing contamination.