Note 1: Rīchi mahjong is a Japanese game played in Japanese. If you do not play this game or have not read Legend of Koizumi, Saki, Akagi, or other mahjong manga, this story will make absolutely no sense. Please go read something else. Game terms will be romanized using the Hepburn system. When not mentioned in dialogue, tiles will be identified as follows:
Pinzu/Dots: 1::, 2::, etc.
Sōzu/Bams: 1\, 2\, etc.
Manzu/Craks: 1#, 2#, etc.
Kazehai/Winds: E, S, W, & N. They may also be named in full: "east wind."
Sangenpai/Dragons: B, G, & R. The white dragon "Soap" tile is B, for "blank." They may also be named in full: "white dragon."
When someone completes a hand, a paragraph summary of the scoring will be included in the story in all caps. Skip over it if you don't want the numbers.
Note 2: All characters in this story are ridiculously fictionalized in the same way as the original characters of Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku / Legend of Koizumi. Nothing in this story should be taken as fact, including the mahjong. Especially the mahjong.
MUDAZUMO NAKI KAIKAKU
The Heisei 23 Incident
-The Oval Office-
Washington, DC
May 1st, 2011 (Heisei 23)
"Mister President! Urgent news!"
"Hmm?"
Barack Obama, Jr., forty-fourth president of the United States, adjusted his headdress. It was a magnificent and elaborate assembly of cloth and hippopotamus tusks in the tradition of his ancestors, the Luo. He did not look up from the papers on his desk.
"I've got an important bill to push through those bull-headed refuseniks in Congress," he said mildly, continuing to read. "I have to review the latest revisions by this afternoon. Can your news wait?"
"No, sir. I've got a report classified Top Secret from the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
Barack Obama looked up. Before him stood a square-jawed middle-aged Japanese man in a suit, tie, and a state of major excitement.
The President blinked. "Oh, Eric. How come it's you delivering the report, then? You're the Secretary of Veterans' Affairs. This isn't really your department."
Eric Shinseki shrugged. "I was the last Cabinet member to reach the Situation Room, so the rest of us made me come fetch you, sir."
Obama regarded him shrewdly. "Hillary made you do it, huh?"
Shinseki slumped. "Secretary Clinton was... insistent."
Obama shook his head. "Eric, you were a four-star army general before you retired. You're going to let her push you around?"
"She's Hillary Clinton, sir."
Obama sighed. "She is. Well, what's the news?"
"Top Secret, sir?" Shinseki prompted.
"Oh, that's right." Barack Obama reached into a drawer of his desk made of timber from the HMS Resolute and pressed a concealed button inside. A brief klaxon sounded and steel shutters rolled down over the windows and door of the Oval Office. Lines of laser light danced up and down the walls.
At length, a computerized voice said "Nixonscan has finished scanning your office. Twelve bugs were found. Would you like to quarantine or destroy them?"
"Destroy," Obama said. It looked like Chinese intelligence had gotten at the walls and ceiling again. How annoying.
There were a few more flashes of light and a puff or two of smoke. "Bugs eradicated. Nixonscan will continue to scan your office for threats," the voice said with a tinge of smugness.
"So what is it?" Obama asked Shinseki.
Shinseki slammed a sheaf of photographs down on the desk. "We've found him! He's really there!"
"He?" Obama echoed, looking at the photographs. Recognizing their subject, he froze.
With trembling fingers, he removed his headdress and put it down on the desk in front of him. The hippopotamus tusks clinked lightly as they hit the wood.
"Finally," he breathed. "It is time to make my mark upon history."
He drew a small framed photograph from the recesses of his desk. It depicted the previous president, a thin, stern-looking man wearing the long white coat of the Yale Skull and Bones Society. His ears were oddly large.
"You faced down Skorzeny and Rudel, Papa Bush," Obama told the photograph, "and now it's my turn. While you helped stop the Nazis on the moon from conquering the Earth, it falls to me to defend us from threats closer to home. Also... you Yalies think you're so great. I think it's time to score one for the blue and white of old Columbia."
He lifted his head and fixed Secretary Shinseki with a piercing gaze. "You're saying that Osama bin Laden has finally been tracked down. If we can defeat him, terrorists the world over will lose all hope."
Shinseki nodded in agreement. "Come on, Mister President. Let's meet up with the others."
Obama straightened his tie and put his headdress back on decisively. "Let's. My fingers are itching."
The Situation Room, on the ground floor of the West Wing, contained a long conference table and numerous wall-mounted high-resolution displays. It was the nerve center for any national security incidents that weren't serious enough to warrant evacuating the entire White House.
A woman with glasses and long flowing hair stood at the head of the table, narrating clips of surveillance satellite footage as they played on screen. Samantha Power: Special Assistant to the President, Harvard Law graduate, Pulitzer Prize winner, and basketball fiend. As she continued to speak with mounting excitement, the Irish brogue of her Dublin childhood began to color her voice. A faint shade of red appeared on her cheeks at the same time.
Barack Obama sat back in his chair and listened to her briefing: ever since a courier had been compromised, Osama bin Laden was suspected to be living in a compound in the city of Abbottabad in Pakistan. Special forces operatives from the Special Warfare Development Group "Too Good for the Navy SEALS" DEVGRU were sent to train for an assault while they confirmed bin Laden's presence.
Finally, Power said, this evidence had materialized.
"This last clip is footage from a KH-11 satellite which we enhanced using the Cray Jaguar at Oak Ridge. It's the most powerful supercomputer in the United States, so it is. Look closely, Mister President."
A building enclosed in a triangular wall appeared on screen and the view zoomed in. Windows on the top floor. The window on the right. A blurred face in the window.
"We're looking at it from above, so youse can't see it very clearly, but the Jaguar was able to virtually rotate the image. Enhance."
The face in the window turned towards the satellite, flattened out, and sharpened into recognizability. Turban. Beard. That face.
Power clasped her hands together in unconcealed glee. "'Tis him down there now, to be sure!"
"Let's hit him hard and fast," Obama decided. "Samantha, what assets do we have ready?"
Power took a moment to regain her composure. "DEVGRU's on the runway waiting for operational approval for Operation Neptune Spear. Once you give the okay, we'll send them in..."
-Eastern Afghanistan-
Near Jalalabad
The C-17 Globemaster III soared over the mountains of the Hindu Kush on the way to the staging point, its four jet engines howling with loud determination.
It carried a cargo deadlier than any munition or bomb: dozens of the United States Navy's deadliest warriors. DEVGRU had once been the sixth Navy SEAL team before being spun off into its own organization.
"We're beginning a cargo transfer," the pilot's voice came over the intercom, barely audible over the engines. "Open the rear ramp and stand by."
This elicited some confusion from the DEVGRU operatives. The only thing you could safely transfer at twenty thousand feet was aircraft fuel, and even then you needed a lot of finicky tubing.
The flight crew's loadmaster didn't bat an eye, though, and simply toggled the ramp controls. Special forces was one thing, but special forces logistics exposed one to so many bizarre things that there was no longer any point in asking questions.
As the open hatch played havoc with the airplane's flight, many of the DEVGRU operatives breathed a silent thanks for magnetic mahjong tiles which the wind couldn't blow away or the airplane shake loose. One of them had picked up rīchi-style mahjong while stationed in Okinawa and had introduced it to his comrades with great success. A game was currently taking place between four of the senior operatives with very simple stakes: winner got to shoot bin Laden. The rest of the squad was gathered around them to watch.
All they could see outside was empty clouds and sky, so they returned to the game, activating their radio headsets to hear each other over the roar of the wind.
"Pon," an operative said, claiming a green dragon tile from the player next to him and combining them with two of his own to form a triplet in the corner of the table.
He smiled. "Yakuhai. Now that's what I like to see."
He discarded a 1:: tile.
The player next to him grinned. Everyone else groaned.
"Ron," he declared, still grinning. "It's the legendary Koizumi combination: Kokushi Musou!"
He flipped down the thirteen tiles in front of him to reveal the rare and valuable hand. Each tile was either numberless or numbered 1 or 9, and all of them were unique except for a pair of 1\ tiles. Only the 1:: tile had been missing, and his hapless opponent had just been considerate enough to give it to him.
"How do you do that, Johnson?" one of his opponents griped. "It's the second time this week. And who's this 'Koizumi,' anyway?"
"I've been hearing things about this Koizumi guy who was Prime Minister of Japan a few years back," the victor explained. "He apparently got up to all sorts of things, and mahjong was involved more often than not. This hand is his trademark 'Rising Sun.' I think maybe a little of his luck is rubbing off on me because I've studied him so much."
The others rolled their eyes.
"Rendezvous," the pilot announced. "Stand by."
The DEVGRU operators looked out the rear of the plane to see something astonishing.
"A flying saucer!" one of them breathed. There it was, in the classic upturned-bowl-over-saucer shape.
Another of them pointed to a white-edged red circle painted on its side. "That elegant roundel... is this bird seriously with the Japan Air Self-Defense Force?"
"Looks like it," yet another said. "You can see some writing on the other side, looks like Japanese. I didn't know that Nintendo-land had invented flying saucers. Wouldn't put it past them, though. I saw some of their television shows once... you just don't know what to expect from these people, is all I'll say."
As the flying saucer drew closer to the transport airplane's open rear, they noticed something else.
"Looks like the red circle was painted over something. Where's my binoculars..."
"Wait, is it just me or is that...?"
"What in the name of Sam Hill?"
"Boys, I think we just went out of science fiction territory straight into the pulps."
Beneath the sun-red Hinomaru were the barely-visible but unmistakable remains of a swastika.
-Situation Room-
"How in the world?" was all Obama could say.
The man on the teleconference monitor had laugh lines and a mole on his forehead, but his eyes were clear and sharp. He was Naoto Kan, the Prime Minister of Japan.
"It's a bit of a miracle, to be honest," Kan replied.
"All the Nazi saucers were back on the moon at the time of the battle!" Obama said. "How did you manage to get one?"
Kan steepled his hands. "I said a miracle. We didn't go get a saucer. It was brought to us, instead... by ASIMO."
"ASIMO!"
The Honda-built humanoid robot had accompanied Jun'ichiro Koizumi on his mission to the moon to duel Adolf Hitler for the fate of the earth. However, at the end of the First Battle of Ragnarok, Koizumi was succumbing to his battle injuries and ASIMO, itself heavily damaged, was running off the last dregs of reserve diesel power. The arena on the surface of the Moon had subsequently collapsed and the remaining Nazis evacuated to deep space, seemingly bringing a close to a historical event known only to the most powerful people in the world.
"Yes, ASIMO," Kan said. "It turns out that there were some electrical connections in the ruins that were still usable. ASIMO managed to plug in before its diesel engine shut down. It spent an entire year slowly wandering through the ruins on one leg before finding an abandoned saucer. Then it figured out the controls and flew Koizumi-sama home. Since its transmitter was broken, we didn't know about this until the flying saucer landed. There was almost an unfortunate incident."
"Why didn't you tell us that Koizumi had come home?" Obama demanded. "There are important people all over the world who would like to pay him their final respects, especially knowing what he achieved. That is, if he's even dead."
"The saucer only landed fairly recently," Kan apologized, dodging Obama's last question. "We're still deciding what to do and say in the case of Koizumi. The saucer was available, though, so I decided to deliver you something to help deal with bin Laden."
"So what are you sending to us in this flying saucer?" Obama asked.
"Two Anti-Super Aryan System-equipped ASIMO units," Kan declared proudly. In the video feed of the DEVGRU aircraft, a hatch opened in the side of the flying saucer and a pair of camouflage-painted humanoid figures peeked out. Small rocket engines on their backs ignited, flying them right into the back of the plane.
The Situation Room erupted into pandemonium.
"What, you think our DEVGRU team isn't good enough?" Hillary Clinton snarled.
Naoto Kan waved his hands back and forth placatingly. "No, no, that's not it at all," he said. "Tell me, don't you think that it's going to come down to mahjong in the end?"
"Yes, that's very likely," Obama mused, shushing his Cabinet and National Security Council. As most international relations were determined by clandestine mahjong matches between world leaders, it was safe to assume that Osama bin Laden had quite a power level of his own as well.
"The system firmware is our new version two," Kan explained. "Version two implements the eighth ASIMO Weapon: ASIMO Telepresence. Remote control and mahjong aura transduction. I tested it the other day and was able to send my entire mahjong power through its hands. If it turns out DEVGRU can't face bin Laden, certainly the Anti-Super Aryan System can't. But when you control ASIMO, you definitely can. I'm loaning you two so you can outfit an entire doubles team, and I'm having control equipment sent over from our Washington embassy. It's our gesture of appreciation to you for our close relationship."
Obama rose and bowed to the screen.
"Thank you," he said. "This will definitely help us. Now I only have to choose a mahjong partner."
Dozens of pairs of hopeful eyes turned to him.
"I'm Japanese, Mister President," Shinseki ventured.
Obama shook his head. "No offense, Eric, but I remember the time you lost against the governor of New Jersey. Chris was insufferable after that, and it gave him what he needed to attack the teachers' unions. This match we're going to play now is international-level, so..."
Shinseki deflated. "Sorry, sir."
"What about the Pope?" Power asked.
"Benedict XVI died in the first skirmish against Hitler, don't you remember?" Hillary reminded her.
Irritated, Power crossed her arms. "No, of course not him, Mrs. Clinton; his body double! I've heard the replacement pope's decent, even if he's not on Benedict's level, and I think it'd be a powerful statement to have the Pope help to bring bin Laden down."
"And how about us Protestants?" Hillary asked with a frown.
"...good point."
"What about you, Minister Kan?" Obama asked. "I know you're a strong player. Didn't you invent a mahjong score-calculating machine that one time?"
Kan got a faraway look in his eyes. "Ah, to be a young physics student again, and to have such free time..."
He shook his head. "I think this should be an all-American operation, though. Why not Joe Biden? He's your vice-President, after all."
"I'd really like to, but it's a stupid idea to put me on the team. I just play poker," Biden demurred. "Mahjong's not for me."
"George W.?" Power suggested. "We know he's extremely strong."
Obama grimaced. "George says he's retired from both politics and mahjong. He wouldn't even play a friendly match with me last time I asked, even though I can't beat him anyway. Joe did get a poker game out of him, though."
"Wiped the jerk out, too," Biden grinned.
Obama scratched his head. "Anyway, who..."
"Too much arguing!" a voice rang out as a snow-booted foot kicked the Situation Room door open. "What you need is an outsider!"
Obama groaned and buried his face in his hands. "Palin."
"That's right, Barry, Sarah Palin has arrived." The former governor of Alaska, resplendent in anorak and snow pants, stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. She was wearing glasses and a short ponytail.
"Palin," Obama ground out. "What. Are. You. Doing. Here?"
"Us presidential candidates are always going around the country doing this and that," Sarah said. "I dropped by to see if anything interesting was happening in Washington, and imagine my surprise when I heard the news! Granted, I was listening at the door just now..."
"How'd you get past security?" Clinton demanded.
In lieu of an answer, Sarah held up her left hand and snapped her fingers. There was a gust of wind and everyone around her stepped back in sudden surprise. Papers blew off the table and fluttered around the room.
"What's going on?" Kan asked, confused.
"That was my mahjong battle aura," Sarah Palin explained. "Got me right past the guards. You may have heard of the Nome style of mahjong? It's said to be as sharp and cold as the weather in Alaska, and even Vladimir Putin respects it. Well… I founded it! They don't call me 'Barracuda' just because of that high school basketball championship, ya know."
"So you have the credentials," Obama said. "However, why are you stepping forward? We're going to be bitter enemies once the 2012 campaign starts."
Sarah sat down next to him and dropped her breezy demeanor. She pulled her glasses down her nose to look him directly in the eyes. "Sir, it's a matter of duty. You're going after one of our greatest enemies, and I am probably one of the best mahjong players in the country outside Washington. To be honest... I also haven't confirmed that I'm running in the election, so hey, a little bipartisanship wouldn't hurt. Put it all together, and, well, I felt I should do my part."
Obama thought about that, and then nodded. "We'll see."
He pressed a switch on the wall and an opening opened up in the conference table. An automatic mahjong table rose up to fill the opening and presented a neat pile of mahjong tiles from the motorized dispenser in its middle, face down.
"Form a random hand as though you were dealer," he told her. Sarah Palin drew thirteen tiles at random and arranged them in a neat row in front of her. She had a small smile on her face.
"Draw," Obama said.
She took a fourteenth tile and set it down on the top of her hand with a sharp clack.
"Well?" Obama asked.
"Tsumo," Palin replied coolly, her smile not wavering.
Obama shook his head. "That's to be expected. The important question is: what sort of hand have you made?"
"Tenhō. Tsūīsō. Daisangen." The Japanese terms sounded almost comical in her Wasilla accent.
Palin laid her tiles down to show that she had three red, three white, and three green dragons in her hand. The other tiles were winds.
"That's triple yakuman!" Power exclaimed.
"You really are international grade," Obama conceded with grudging respect. "Better than Hillary, possibly. Drawing a strong hand like that on the first try takes world-class luck, even without an opponent. No wonder you've been aiming at the White House."
"So we gonna do this, Barry?" Sarah asked him.
"I guess we are," he replied.
"Excellent." Sarah Palin and the president exchanged a solemn fist bump.
"How'd these tiles get so cold?" Shinseki muttered as he poked at Sarah's mahjong hand. It seemed to have somehow frozen to the table.
-Abbottabad-
Pakistan
"Hush, Cairo."
The Malinois dog kept barking.
"Hontō sumimasen," one of the ASIMOs said in an expressionless voice. "Inu-chan wa robotto ga hoshikunai ka." Nobody understood it.
"They're just robots, boy. Freaky Japanese robots, but they're just robots. Don't worry about them."
Cairo wouldn't give it up. One of the marksmen ended up putting himself between him and the ASIMO units, no mean feat in the cramped confines of a helicopter, and distracted him with a treat.
"He's got to keep his weight down, you know," a grenadier admonished him. "He's a working dog!"
"Hush, you." The marksman turned back to the dog. "Who's a good boy, then? Is it you? Isn't it you? Ready to bite some terrorists?"
Cairo barked enthusiastically.
Up front, the pilot rolled his eyes. "That's the thing about these new stealth helicopters," he told his copilot. "You can hear what they're saying in the back now, and sometimes, you just don't want to know..."
"You're just a cat person!" the marksman yelled from the back.
"Stay frosty," the squad leader said, silencing everyone. "We're two klicks out. Gunners ready."
The squadron of helicopters swung around to their final approach. Moments later, they came to a stop hanging over the compound.
"Off we go, Cairo!" the marksman said, and attached a line to a metal ring on the dog's tactical vest. Everyone, men and dog, prepared to slide down ropes out of the helicopters into the midnight darkness.
There was a flash from nearby and one of the other helicopters rolled to the side, then dropped to the ground.
"Must be enemy fire," the pilot muttered. He turned around and yelled, "We're touching down right here! Go go go!"
The helicopter landed just outside the compound walls and the SEALs and their dog spilled out, the two ASIMOs following them.
They scaled the wall and were inside. The other SEAL team in the crashed helicopter, uninjured, was heading for the building as well.
The next few minutes were methodical and deadly. The SEALS took room after room, floor after floor, exchanging fire with and killing three men and a woman, but seeing no sign of bin Laden.
"Too many kids," a SEAL muttered as he zip-tied yet another protesting civilian.
One floor left. "Proceed to the target!" the squad leader yelled.
"Objective sighted!" one of his men yelled back. "OBL, second door on the right. Possible escape attempt!"
"After him!"
The first soldiers to burst through the door were promptly thrown back by the force of an unseen impact. A mahjong tile flew out the door after them and hit one of their rifles hard enough to bend the barrel.
The squad leader pried the 9# tile out of his soldier's ruined weapon. "Chūwan," he murmured.
"Chūwan, the tile of ten thousand ninefold," a voice cackled from beyond the door. "And you infidels will face ninety thousand horrors if you dare to challenge me!"
"One Willie Pete," the squad leader said neutrally.
"WP away," a grenadier confirmed, and lobbed a grenade through the door.
"Fall back. Send in the robots," the leader said as the white phosphorus grenade did its work. Clouds of smoke and caustic chemicals filled the room where bin Laden was hiding within seconds.
Another burst of raw power soon dispersed the smoke, but by that time the injured soldiers had been dragged away and the robots brought forward to replace them.
"ASIMO reset," the squad leader recited, looking at a sheet of instructions. "English operation. Set mode mahjong weapon eight. Telepresence online; aura transduction online; host set CINC White House."
"ASIMO Fast Boot," the two little androids replied in unison. "Initializing."
"Shall I come out and bring the death to you?" bin Laden asked tauntingly. The remaining three chūwan tiles came flying out of his hiding place at lethal speeds.
Fingers of metal and plastic caught them just in time. At the same time, Obama's face appeared on the screen set in one ASIMO's faceplate.
"Too slow," he said, opening his hand to reveal the three tiles inside.
Palin's face appeared on the other Asimo's head. "We'll need this for the game," she added, taking the first chūwan from the squad leader.
"The voice of an infidel of infidels," Osama growled. "Come, then! You and your woman. I have been waiting for this day!"
"I'm not 'his—'"
Obama held up a hand and Palin quieted down.
The two all-American robots stalked into the room to see a table already set up. At one position sat a veiled woman, and to her right...
A man, a symbol. A black wavy beard and a mustache framing prominent lips. Dark eyes sparking with fury. A white turban.
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden.
"You are here," Osama said. "They raised me properly in Saudi Arabia and I have not forgotten my hospitality— I say this because I would offer you food and drink, you spawn of the devil, but you hide behind that godless technology."
He leaned forward and smirked. "And it isn't even yours. Honda is a Japanese company, I believe?"
Palin quietly tossed her tile to Obama, who caught it and placed the four tiles down on the table. He gave the tiles and automatic mahjong table an once-over with a practiced eye. Everything seemed legitimate.
"Let's roll," the president said.
The dice rolled. The tiles performed the dance of the four walls.
East First Round.
Osama, the dealer, paused before drawing the first tile. "Ah, I have thought of a way to be hospitable. You Americans like everything to be big— your cars, your food, your blasphemies, your women. We shall play with fifty thousand points each."
He thought for a moment. "Oh, yes. My wife," he said, gesturing to the faceless woman in the north seat. "Amal Ahmed al-Sadah."
Amal bowed silently. Obama and Palin turned to acknowledge her.
"Double rīchi," Osama added, slamming down a tile- the chūwan. "Look familiar?"
Back in Washington, Palin put down her dual-wielded Wiimotes and flipped up her Sony HMZ-T1 head-mounted display, suspending the connection to ASIMO. Obama did the same.
"He's cheating already," Sarah complained.
Obama shrugged. "Of course he is. Tell me, what do you think he's doing?"
Palin looked thoughtful for a moment. "'Tsubamegaeshi.' Four times in a row, never seen that before."
Obama nodded. "Right. He's no slouch in that department."
To secretly switch tiles in one's hand with the un-drawn tiles required speed and luck. Osama had the speed, doing it four times while the two Americans looked at his wife, but he didn't have quite enough luck to get an instant-win hand out of it.
They put their headsets back on and Sarah took her Wiimotes back up and waggled them to draw a tile.
"Heh," she chuckled. "Like you said: look familiar?" She discarded her tile- another chūwan.
"Funny thing," Obama remarked. He discarded a third chūwan tile. Safe discards for everyone—
"Ron," Amal declared, and flipped over her hand.
Four sequences, one pair, and no yaku to be seen anywhere. But to make it on the very first turn before drawing her tile—
"Yakuman," Osama said for his wife. "Renhō, the Hand of Man. We carry out Allah's work with the hands of men and women any way we can, even with the tools no one else would use. Amal's tiles were garbage, but in the hands of a jihadi, even garbage is useful for victory."
YAKUMAN: RENHŌ
123:: 678:: 234\ 456# 88#
EAST: OSAMA 50,000
NORTH: SARAH 50,000
WEST: OBAMA 50,000 – 32,000 = 18,000
SOUTH: AMAL 50,000 + 32,000 = 82,000
Obama jerked as the backlash coursed through his body in electric fury. Even though he wasn't physically present, the mahjong aura transduction system transmitted incoming damage to him even as it dished out his own attacks. Thirty-two thousand points was a massive blow.
"The providence of Allah," Osama said in mock surprise. "That I should have given you double starting points... if this had been a normal 25,000-point game, you would already have lost. Show some gratitude, Barack Hussein."
"That's dirty pool," Obama gritted out, his face still twitching. "Renhō on a no-yaku hand, holding back on the ron? Rules to allow that have to be arranged in advance!"
"Wow, you're a world-class cheater," Sarah marveled, realizing that Osama had used a fifth tsubamegaeshi to affect his wife's hand.
A smile slowly came to Obama's sweating face. "But a low-class mahjong player. All that fancy cheating and a no-yaku hand was all you two could manage? Yulia Tymoshenko would destroy you in less than ten minutes."
"You're no Tymoshenko," Palin told him.
"I bet it's the hair. And Yulia hasn't been prime minister since last year. Your point?"
"Eh."
"Nice shot," Sarah told Osama. "Well, it's my turn to deal now. Face the power of the Pitbull With Lipstick!"
"Oh, indeed," Osama said. "In this first round you were, as you say, 'beaten by a girl.' How convenient it is that you are no woman!"
Sarah did her best to ignore him.
East Second Round.
She slammed a tile down, her robotic hand a blur, and followed it with a 1000-point stick. "Stick Check rīchi!"
The stick bounced into the air over the table— and landed across Osama's knuckles with a loud crack, interrupting him in the middle of another tsubamegaeshi attempt.
"In the hockey rink, you use anything you can to block your opponent," Palin told him as the stick clattered to a stop next to her discards.
Osama, controlling his temper, drew his smarting hand back.
"It's my turn, anyway," Obama said, and discarded his tile.
He abruptly threw out a 1000-point stick of his own. "Koa Ihe Li'ili'i rīchi!"
This time, it hit Amal's palm head-on. She'd been trying for a tile switch of her own.
"Not bad," Obama noted sardonically, "but as I learned to throw shark tooth-tipped spears in my childhood in Hawai'i, I've used that ability against you. We weren't planning to use many rīchi, anyway, as we're just going to aim for yakuman."
Amal silently discarded a tile instead and play continued without any more interruptions. With their hands bruised and sore, the bin Ladens were unable to continue using tsubamegaeshi.
Eventually, Osama discarded a north wind. Sarah lit up immediately.
"The north wind! Something very familiar to me. I'm Alaskan, which means it's been like an old friend. And since I became the governor of Alaska, it's been at my command. This wind brings victory!"
She grabbed the tile. "Ron! North Wind Storm chanta shōsangen!"
DEALER HANEMAN: CHANTA 2 HAN, SHŌSANGEN 4 HAN, RĪCHI 1 HAN = 7 HAN
789:: NNN BB GGG RRR
SOUTH: OSAMA 50,000 – 18,000 = 32,000
EAST: SARAH 50,000 + 19,000 = 69,000
NORTH: OBAMA 18,000 – 1,000 = 17,000
WEST: AMAL 82,000
Osama had a ready reply to that. Declaring rīchi on his first turn in the next round, the next tile he drew was just right. He revealed a hand featuring triplet 4's and 7's.
"Ippatsu tsumo: AK-47 Headshot sūrenkō! The rifle designed in 1947 in the far north is the friend of all jihadis!"
YAKUMAN: SŪRENKŌ, 1 HONBA
444:: 555:: 666:: 777:: NN
SOUTH: OSAMA 32,000 + 32,300 = 64,300
EAST: SARAH 69,000 – 8,100 = 60,900
NORTH: OBAMA 17,000 – 8,100 = 8,900
WEST: AMAL 82,000 – 16,100 = 65,900
"N-no... tsubamegaeshi that time," Sarah eventually managed to say. "Think he got lucky."
East Third Round.
Obama, now the dealer, looked at his hand. "Our turn for some luck, now. Double rīchi!"
That put a damper on everyone else. The next few discards were made quietly, until Osama's turn when he put down a 6# tile.
Obama flipped his tiles. "Ron." He had pairs of 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9 wan, and he pointed to each in turn.
"Ryūwan, number six! The sixth of the United States' colonial colleges, Columbia, my alma mater! The first, Harvard! The third, Yale! The fourth, Princeton! The fifth, the University of Pennsylvania! The seventh, Brown! The ninth, Dartmouth!"
He pointed skyward. "The seven oldest Ivy League schools: great schools of American public education. Add seven historical women's colleges to get this hand: Ivy League And Seven Sisters chītoi chin'itsu! And with the dora tiles..."
The first dora was a 2#.
"Dora 2. The second colonial college, William & Mary, isn't part of the Ivy League, but it's still one of the best."
Having won on a rīchi, Obama flipped over the tile below the 2# as an ura-dora. 8#.
"Another dora 2. The eighth member of the Ivy League, Cornell! Or perhaps the eighth colonial college..."
He hesitated.
"Rutgers..." Sarah prompted.
"Rutgers," Obama echoed.
"You know, that public school in Jersey?" Sarah added helpfully.
"Scott Gration went there," Hillary added.
Obama shook his head. "Anyway, that's kazoe-yakuman!"
Forty-eight thousand points from Osama bin Laden. He clenched his jaw as he held himself from falling out of his chair.
DORA 3# 9#
DEALER KAZOE-YAKUMAN: CHĪTOI 2 HAN, CHIN'ITSU 6 HAN, DOUBLE RĪCHI 2 HAN, DORA 4 = 14 HAN
11# 33# 44# 55# 66# 77# 99#
WEST: OSAMA 64,300 – 48,000 = 16,300
SOUTH: SARAH 60,900
EAST: OBAMA 8,900 + 48,000 = 56,900
NORTH: AMAL 65,900
"The theme of that hand was a bit of a reach," Sarah sighed. "You can do better than that, Barry. You may be a liberal, but you can't be that lame."
"Hey, the Ivy League is full of reach schools," Obama pointed out, "and we're playing reach mahjong..."
Sarah just stared.
"Okay, if nothing else, school pride demanded it," he finished. "You're acting like I misspelled 'King Menelaus' in Lit Hum or something."
"That hand could have been a daisūrin," Sarah muttered, "but hey, yakuman is yakuman. Even if you had to fake it with a multiple-yaku hand."
Obama was dealer again. He looked down at his tiles. "They say Americans don't believe in overkill. Perhaps they're right. Tenhō."
Sarah groaned. "Seriously? I had ryūīsō tenpai and everything!"
Obama flipped his tiles. The first fourteen tiles he'd drawn indeed composed a valid hand. "Just a pinfu, certainly, but the right pinfu at the right time..."
"You call that mahjong?" Sarah grumbled before the pain hit her. "No sense of drama— erk..."
"Victory is more important than drama," Obama pointed out. "A lame win is still a win."
"H-hold on a moment," Sarah said raising a shaky hand. "That's the exact same hand Amal played at the start of the game! …I guess you have a sense of humor after all."
DEALER YAKUMAN: TENHŌ, 1 HONBA
123:: 678:: 234\ 456# 88#
WEST: OSAMA 16,300 - 16,100 = 200
SOUTH: SARAH 60,900 - 16,100 = 44,800
EAST: OBAMA 56,900 + 48,300 = 105,200
NORTH: AMAL 65,900 - 16,100 = 49,800
"You've run into… some of that famous American… friendly fire," Osama chuckled between gasps. "How do you like it? That smell of your own blood being shed by your ally?"
"Smells like victory," Sarah retorted as they started the next round. "So long as Barry here keeps performing well, I'll do what it takes to push him forward. He's president right now, after all. And you have two hundred points."
"Weren't you going after his job?" Osama asked with a wink. Sarah reflected that she never wanted to see him wink again. "Why, in a battle like this, who knows what could happen? A little accident, some unavoidable friendly fire..."
Sarah smiled. "Hahahahaha— no. In fact..."
She discarded an east wind tile. "Up Yours discard!"
Obama looked at her, quirking an eyebrow. "Really? You're taking your hand apart if you do that, and it doesn't even help me."
She smiled sweetly. "Just to spite him. Go ahead."
"All right. That's What She Said kan!"
The east wind joined three others belonging to Obama.
He won on the next round, seizing a west wind from Amal, now giving him four east and three west winds.
"Ron! The sun rises in the Atlantic east! It sets in the Pacific west! All in between, from New York to California, belongs to the United States of America! From Sea To Shining Sea tsūīsō!"
DEALER YAKUMAN: TSŪĪSŌ, 2 HONBA
EEEE WWW BBB GG RRR
WEST: OSAMA 200
SOUTH: SARAH 44,800
EAST: OBAMA 105,200 + 48,600 = 153,800
NORTH: AMAL 49,800 - 48,600 = 1,200
As the next hand started, Osama, face purple in rage, clenched his fists. "I fight in the name of the Almighty, and He will bring me victory!" He revealed a set of four 7\. "Allah Is Great kan!"
Four 8\ after that. "Allah Is Great kan!"
Four 6\. "Allah Is Great kan!"
There were now four dora indicators on the dead wall: 1#, 2::, 3::, and south wind.
"Something about this situation seems familiar..." Obama mused.
"Icicle Fall pon!" Palin snapped, her hand flashing out and snapping up Amal's 9:: discard.
"Prevented another triplet for him, good," Obama said.
Osama shrugged. "I am close enough to victory with the tiles I have now. Tekbir rīchi!" He looked to his wife, who gulped and lowered her head.
"We do what's necessary," he told her, and she nodded again, dropping a 5:: tile. "Martyrs Of The Faith discard!"
"Ron!" Osama declared, displaying his hand featuring quadruple 6's, 7's, and 8's. "Bismillah ippatsu sanrenkō sankantsu tan'yao dora 4! In the numerology of my beautiful language Arabic, the number-"
"786 represents 'in the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate,' the Bismillah," Obama interrupted. "I went to public school in Indonesia when I was nine. It wasn't a Muslim school, but I had many Muslim classmates. I paid attention, and I saw you coming! So here's a little something I learned in Catholic school when I was six: ron!"
Obama had a hand of his own: triplet 5's in every suit.
"All Fives sanshoku sanankō dora 1! Listen up, Osama, you terrorist: the Lord gave to Israel a fifth commandment: Thou shalt not murder!"
DORA 2# 3:: 4:: W, DOUBLE RON
SANBAIMAN: SANRENKŌ 2 HAN, SANKANTSU 2 HAN, TAN'YAO 1 HAN, IPPATSU RĪCHI 2 HAN, DORA 4 = 11 HAN, 3 HONBA
22# 345:: 6666\ 7777\ 8888\
DEALER MANGAN: SANSHOKU 2 HAN, SANANKŌ 2 HAN, DORA 1 = 5 HAN, 3 HONBA
123:: 555:: 555\ 555# 77#
WEST: OSAMA 200 + 24,900 = 25,100
SOUTH: SARAH 44,800
EAST: OBAMA 153,800 + 12,900 = 166,700
NORTH: AMAL 1,200 - 37,800 = -36,600
"Ouch," Sarah said sympathetically as Amal writhed in her seat. "Knocked out with a double ron."
"'You shall not murder'?!" Osama screamed in a rage. "Infidel dog! You've just murdered my wife!"
Obama was unfazed. "Did you think this was an international-grade mahjong match? Nonsense. You're no head of state! The mahjong powers we're releasing aren't anywhere near the lethal level, so your wife just needs to catch her breath. In any case, you put her into negative points first, and you got more points out of it than I did. I hope I never treat Michelle that way."
Indeed, Amal, though she was gasping like a fish out of water and her veil was soaked with sweat, was still sitting upright. She nodded shakily to her husband.
"Hey, we need a medic in here!" Sarah yelled. "Got a civilian, might be injured."
A corpsman attached to the DEVGRU team came in through the door. Sarah pointed to Amal, and the corpsman hurried over to her.
"Better safe than sorry," Sarah said to Obama.
"Good call."
The three remaining players waited while Amal was checked over by the doctor. Osama was about to complain about a strange man touching his wife, but after looking her over and checking her pulse, the corpsman simply shrugged and left her a bottle of water and an aspirin before leaving.
"We're about to finish here," Obama called after him. "Get the troops ready for extraction."
"Yes, Mister President."
With only three active players, play slowed down a little. Being out, Amal was required to discard each draw as though she was in rīchi, preventing her from forming a hand or scoring any points. Obama threw out another 1000-point stick. "Kennard Uncertainty rīchi!"
Sarah lifted her headset off, suspending the link to ASIMO again, and motioned to him to do the same. "Now wait just a second. Is that one of those Heisenberg Strikes they used on the moon?"
Obama frowned. "How'd you get that information?"
"I know George."
Obama sighed. "Well, then, I'll explain. You know Operation Paperclip?"
"Where we stole all the Nazi rocket scientists, turned them American, and used them to create NASA, yeah," Sarah nodded.
"Not all of them. Some of them went to the moon. Operation Paperclip-II was carried out after the battle there. Although we couldn't capture any scientists like the first time around, we and a group of Japanese researchers used ASIMO footage and neutrino readings to reverse-engineer the Heisenberg Strike and modify it into a version which regular humans can use without the use of Super Aryan. We named it after Earle Kennard, who proved the first rigorous form of Heisenberg's original uncertainty principle."
"A massive multiple wait, huh?" Sarah said. "I wonder what it is."
"That would be telling," Obama smiled, and slid the headset back on.
"Wish I could see it on the laptop screens like everyone else in the Situation Room," Sarah muttered.
"I wonder what you're playing at," Osama mused, staring down at his hand.
"No matter where you go, we'll get you," Obama assured him. "This has been our mission since 2001, and it's ending today."
Osama, hesitating for the first time, discarded a red dragon. He got away with it. On the next round he tried a 1\—
"Got you," Obama told him. "Long Arm Of The Law chin'itsu!"
"Could've been daichikurin yakuman, Barry..." Sarah muttered.
"No second-guessing, please; I get that enough from the press," Obama admonished her.
"I see!" Shinseki exclaimed back in the Situation Room. "The original hand was 2-3-444-555-666-7-8 with a seven-way wait!"
DEALER HANEMAN: CHIN'ITSU 6 HAN, RĪCHI 1 HAN = 7 HAN, 4 HONBA
123\ 444\ 555\ 66\ 678\
WEST: OSAMA 25,100 - 17,200 = 7,900
SOUTH: SARAH 44,800
EAST: OBAMA 166,700 +17,200 = 183,900
NORTH: AMAL -36,600 (OUT)
"And now it's time for the final strike," Obama announced. "Ready, Sarah? Let's use that special technique that Papa Bush invented. You've got the skills to prevent Obama from stopping it."
"You want to rely on George?" Sarah was surprised.
"Frankly, it's time for the GOP to pull its weight. You're providing decent support, Sarah, but you're down by 1200 points. There's no way this is your full strength. For this last attack, we both go all out."
Sarah smiled wryly. "Yessir. One Dubya Special, coming right up."
"I won't go down that easily!" Osama growled. "And you think something invented by that moron George W. is going to stop me?"
"Watch," Obama simply said. "Sarah, form the wall!"
As Sarah shaped the tiles into orderly rows, a cold wind began to blow.
Back in Washington, Secretary Clinton tapped Obama on the shoulder. "Mr. President, you can't see this with the headset on, but your shirt's disintegrating."
He shrugged. "I know, don't worry about it. I play enough basketball that I'm not worrying about everyone seeing my abs. Place my headdress on my head, would you please? Thank you."
Samantha Power was yelling in the background: "What the devil? Temperature in here's dropping like a stone! Someone turn on the heater before we all freeze to death!"
In Abbottabad, Osama reached out to draw a tile, but it wouldn't budge. It took a bit of pulling before it popped off the table with a sharp crack.
"What have you done?" he demanded.
"Chill of the Polar Night," Sarah declared. "A little trick I used to teach the folks in Alaska. The tiles are lightly frozen to the table. Good luck swapping them around now, you dirty cheater!"
"Unfair!" Osama exclaimed, his teeth chattering. "Your t-tiles aren't frozen!"
Obama shook his head. "Oh, but they are. Go ahead, touch them. See? Since we are using robots, our hands are strong enough to pull them off the table quietly. I'll tell you this: the United States may press an unfair advantage, but we never cheat. We're unlike the famous Japanese school of diplomacy in that since we already have all the natural advantages, we can afford to worry about honor. Now, let's pick up where we left off."
They finished drawing tiles and started the round. The dora indicator was a red dragon.
Obama discarded a 1\ tile. "Begin."
Osama looked quickly up at him, and then back down. He discarded another red dragon—
"Ron!" Obama shouted.
Osama frowned "What technique is this—"
"Ron!" Sarah added.
Realization began to dawn on Osama's face.
"Daichīsei!" Obama declared, showing his hand containing two each of the seven honor tiles.
"Renhō daichīsei!" Sarah added, showing an identical hand.
"No—" Osama breathed.
"The hand of seven great stars, taken to the second power, makes forty-nine stars!" Obama thundered. "This, plus the dora tile standing for the Lone Star of Texas is—"
"Bipartisan Collaboration Fifty Stars of the Red, White, and Blue!" he and Sarah shouted in unison.
DORA B, DOUBLE RON
DEALER DOUBLE YAKUMAN: DAICHĪSEI, 5 HONBA
TRIPLE YAKUMAN: RENHŌ DAICHĪSEI, 5 HONBA
WEST: OSAMA 7,900 - 195,000 = -187,100 (OUT)
SOUTH: SARAH 44,800 + 97,500 = 142,300
EAST: OBAMA 183,900 + 97,500 = 281,400
NORTH: AMAL -36,600 (OUT)
Taking almost two hundred thousand points' worth of damage, Osama bin Laden was blown backwards out of his chair. He was already dead before he hit the wall behind him in a cloud of tiles, point markers, and pieces of the mahjong table.
Amal immediately shot to her feet, screaming in distraught Arabic.
Obama shook his head. "I apologize, Mrs. bin Laden, but justice demanded it. The people he killed in New York and elsewhere..."
He turned away. "DEVGRU, we've achieved the primary objective. Carry out the remainder of the mission with the same excellence you've shown so far."
Obama and Sarah's ASIMO units shut down as the special ops soldiers rushed over to restrain Amal and take Osama's body. Johnson, the Koizumi fan, shot him in the chest just in case. He'd won the right, after all.
Back in the Situation Room, as calls of "Geronimo" came over the radio, Sarah Palin was contemplative. "Well, Barry, I have to thank ya for letting me play with the big boys there," she said. "Seeing what I saw, though, I think that on the whole I may not be ready for the White House. I am definitely reconsidering running in 2012. Go ahead and give me a big sigh of relief."
Obama obliged, then went back to looking for a replacement shirt.
"Well, anyway, that was fun," Sarah declared. "I bet your life hasn't been this awesome since they put you in The Amazing Spider-Man."
"Nothing's going to top Spider-Man unless it has to do with my kids," Obama agreed.
THE END