Horsehair bristles dusted over moist skin, depositing loosened particles. Smoky pigment lined the crisp fold of the eye, settling between each individual lash. The brush blended outwards, softening bold accent into dusky skin. The socket became a crucible of shadow and light, of pigments manipulated in a way that emphasized the eyelid's natural shape. Quivering lashes fought for stillness, unaccustomed to the attentions of a mascara wand.

Look up, he whispered.

And so her violet eyes looked up. They traced the ceiling of the deserted department store, rigid walls reverberating nothing in the solitude that followed closing hours-- not even lips that threaded terse words into the fragile calm, nor the glide of the mascara wand only her nerve endings could hear.


As she dipped her hands into the grungy water compensated by its sparkling blue container, Himiko realized she never appreciated the concept of tossing change into public fountains. Nothing replaced the dogged determination in the pursuit of one's personal goals. Unless she was a street peddler living day by day, hard work and true sacrifice was not found in a meager coin, one which would not have been missed at the bottom of one's piggy bank. Great accomplishments did not merely fall into someone's lap following a tossed yen and a satisfying splash.

Or an engagement ring, for that matter.

"Found it," she announced to Kagami with contained enthusiasm. He ghosted to her side and looked over her shoulder at the submerged coins. The surface ripples calmed, freeing the pockets of light it once trapped within its folds, and became transparent. They saw a gold loop trapped a chiseled diamond. The rock glittered among the dull coins scattered by her submerged arm. "Exactly where he said it would be. Lucky for him it's still here."

Kagami's response contained a shrug. "Rich man, to toss a ring into the fountain. But it's just a rock without the woman. Three guesses as to what he was wishing for."

"I'm not here to ponder the personal lives of our clients. I'm just here to do the job." Himiko shook the water from her hand and straightened, stepping back onto the floor. Her hands lifted the shirt away from her rolling hips, and slipped the ring into a hidden pouch. She turned to him. "And this is as about as exciting as it'll get tonight. We transport the ring to the man as contracted and receive our payment. I don't see what makes it so worth your while to desert Babylon City so you could transform my life into living Hell."

Kagami rose off the side of the fountain, backlit by the weak glow of the fountain. The light fell against the angle of his jawline, slanting towards her. "I do." His lips moved into a smile. With a sly look that promised elaboration by the end of the night, Kagami stalked off to acquire some new clothes. As the two had discussed within the truck, his current attire would soon prove ill-suited for traveling, and their visit to the mall served a secondary convenient purpose of remedying that problem. Flanking him, Himiko stole a glimpse at his face through the dark. Her eyes met unreadable sockets bearing shadows beneath finely groomed brows. They seemed empty, lacking of promise-- merely false guises of all the personalities she believed existed within Kagami Kyoji.

You're just going to go steal them? Himiko had asked earlier.

Himiko, you've worked as a thief before, he replied.

I was contracted-- she began, but never finished, halted at the sight of Kagami mouthing her words with his own.

From Kagami, her eyes wandered and spied her composed self walking alongside the illusionist, stiff and emotionless in the reflection of the store displays they passed. The glass offered her the image she approved of: Lady Poison the mature, responsible professional that knew a life of independence, an identity shaped by her upbringing. Her business lacked all shades of gray. Once she accepted a contract, she would do everything in her ability to complete it with all conditions satisfied. She fought what battles lay in the way without fail, for to fail was to puncture the veneer that was Lady Poison. Each layer removed brought her closer to the Voodoo Child, a stranger in her comfortable world of black and white, a stranger that confused and scared her.

A store facade bent away from Kagami's hand, like glass that could not decide whether it was solid and liquid until they had already passed through. From knee to eye level, boxes covered two walls like a grid, stuffed with dark folds of varying intensities. Promotional signage denoted gendered spaces. Kagami stepped into the appropriate section. "If I'm not mistaken, the more you wear these, the better they look. Quite frankly, I'm tired of drycleaning." For all his flippant talk, Kagami leaned over to examine cuts and stitching detail.

Himiko passed her fingertips over some sandblasted material, although the waif-like mannequins in the window had already answered her tactile question. "Jeans? They're all the same. Just pick a few and let's go. Kagami--" The sound of the zipper deflected Himiko's gaze to elsewhere in the store. Her ears completed the missing picture: the sound of tailored garment swishing away in dignified retreat, followed by the struggle of firm flesh intruding a virgin garment designed to fit tightly. Curiosity drew her eyes back. Dark-washed denim rode up his long legs, hugging his hips and ass in a low-rise cut.

"They look great," she said tersely, turning her shoulder to the sight. "Now you look like a normal human being, not a custom-made monster regurgitated from a technologically advanced city of psychopaths posing as gods."

In the process of rotating his hips in the nearest mirror, Kagami paused. Blonde forelocks fell over the sockets that turned her way. His voice was a smile through the dark. "Look through your own world, Himiko, at the entities that control you. You know next to nothing about my people. First examine the monsters that exist in your life, as accessible and yet invisible as a pair of jeans in a sea of people." His hand dipped into a cubicle, rescuing another garment from the masses.

Himiko did not stop to contemplate Kagami's words until she seated herself in the window display. She passed the time beneath a ghostly mannequin, waiting for her stylish companion to through jeans like discarded lovers. Her mind roamed. Without thinking, she had plucked a random shirt off the display, and the price tag crisply pricked her arm. Her nose wrinkled at the three-digit retail value that preceded the decimal. For a moment, she forgot that it was Kagami who was stealing from the store and not the other way around. The dim light drew out letters printed on cloth label. They told of a country whose pronunciation escaped her tongue. Small human hands, not machines, had touched that shirt before she had.

"What do you think of these?" Kagami purred. He turned. Strategically-placed fades marked the hipbones just where they hit beneath the waistband. The stitching lines traced the natural planes of his anatomy, as though the garment were a intimate extension of his body. It was as if Kagami's confessions of self-love were woven into the seams of his jeans. Kagami smiled, for her eyes had answered his question. "Well, they seem to work. I only hope one day you'll fall in love with me, not how sexily I wear my clothes."

Indignation leapt out her throat. "I don't go for superficial creeps."

For a moment, Himiko hated the clothing designer that wrapped human desire around blue-dyed cloth, enticing her imagination to fancy, of all people, Kagami Kyoji-- for touching upon her animal desires and luring her eyes around his nether-regions. It taunted her like another enemy. She saw the corporation like the monster that hijacked her desires, thriving with the hollow heart of a CEO with cash for blood, and human labour and brains for muscle. "But at least you enslave virtual people and not real children around the world," Himiko added as an afterthought, her voice heavy in the silence. "I think one of your 'monsters' has come to mind."

Kagami joined her at the front of the store, looking as casual as any random young man she might meet on the street. His jacket hung from a sign like a dead swan. His shirt hung unbuttoned, strong and solid in its colour against the smooth tone of his skin. "Has your mind been wandering without me today, Lady Poison?"

"Infinite Castle is just a bubble compared to what's happening around us. At least your sad little hackers can't touch cultures that choose not to revolve their lives around technology."

"And even if they did, they would only hit societies containing people who've already been defeated by themselves," Kagami continued. "Helpless individuals who cannot survive, whether it be emotionally or physically, without their technology. Some accomplishment that is. Your heart seems to ache for the children working for pennies a day, but do not feel so smug. Think about the people around you who choose to live in the image of life rather than life itself. Corporations wrap sentimentality around inanimate objects because people actually buy them and grow attached. When they lose them, their heart aches for their return. They weep for these expired moments of the past."

"No wonder the Get Backers can stay in business for so long."

"And yourself, so dedicated to complete your work by-the-contract, leaving your employer to deal with all the gray areas so you can rest easy as Lady Poison? You're a mere extension of what these 'monsters' do, following orders and without questions."

"And yourself, as an extension of Babylon City? When you followed orders from both above and below, backstabbing everyone with your smile intact?"

"It's called being a hypocrite without an ounce of shame, Himiko. Learn to live beyond the boundaries people arbitrarily place on you. Corporations have created the very type of weak people that rely so much on technology, the same people who created it. The Infinite Castle was born from this. It is an escape from the unpredictable realities into a haven of predictable outcomes, where fate is determined through binary code, and whatever flavour of the month happens to drop in as a variable from the outside world. I got bored of observing life in this giant laboratory because I know I can live anywhere I wanted, so I left, with a little push from Akabane." He smirked. "Shades of gray. That's what real people are made of. Is Lady Poison just a signature on the dotted line? Let me get to know you, Himiko."

Long fingers traced the slopes of her face. Himiko abruptly backed up and a mannequin came crashing upon her, her face obscured by the wig of fake hair.


Bristles sighed over the curve of her cheek, drawing warmth to the surface of her skin. Was it the pigment or natural blushing? It was extremely hard to tell. Why did Lady Poison have to blush? Why the shame?

Do not blush so, Lady Poison.


A steady downpour thrummed water onto their heads as they approached the entrance to their client's house. Sheets of rain rattled down the long glass panes, and a depression in the courtyard soaked their feet through their shoes. Himiko found the doorbell and was glad to press it, for no amount of knocking upon the aged oak door may trickle through the relentless pounding the storm drove into the windows.

Nevertheless, they waited, while the rain flogged on. Himiko blinked water out of her eye and threw an uneasy glance upward, reassured a moment later by the yellow glow filling a room on the second floor. Beside her, Kagami gave his bangs a light toss. The rain matted his hair to his head and his clothes to his body. Contrary to her expectations, his white clothes remained tucked in the bend of his elbow instead of held over his head. He had chosen to join her in the rain, soaked like an stray cat, but looking beautiful all the same. He stood as silent as the mannequin in the store, yet he reminded her of his words.

Physical attraction combined with a certain attitude drives away the sort of people I don't want around me, he'd said.

For the first time, Himiko realized that while most people carried facades as shields, Kagami employed them as filters: transparent like glass, transparent, yet still a boundary. The obstacle repelled most people but drew in a select few. Somewhere during a debate varying qualities of jeans, Himiko had accused Kagami of being superficial for what must have been the fifth time that night. That must have broken the straw on the camel's back, for in reply, Kagami drove the Inner Beauty concept into the ground. He explained how the desire to gain acceptance had perverted the once-encouraging possibility that there rests a warm heart within unattractive people.

So when you meet an attractive person who takes great pride in his appearance, do you just not bother to dig?

Intimidated by the good looks of others, insecure people had associated shame with the natural process of good-grooming, while instilling pride in their refusal to preen. They knew only how to resist, not celebrate their own bodies. None of those people could ever get past the 'Man of Mystery' filter and find out who Kagami really was. Each individual is so complex that there are no such thing as shallow human beings, yet people only make them superficial in their own minds to legitimize their self-comforting beliefs.

Boring her eyes into the grain of the doorway, Himiko tried not to think of the few times she met confusion when contemplating her appearance and femininity, drawn and repelled at the same time.

Kagami's groomed appearance emphasized his self-love, but on the other hand, Kagami did not run from himself. He then pointed out the irony of the code name Lady Poison, for was poison not the substance that kills by inhibiting crucial enzymes, basically suffocating them? Himiko had created this second identity to cover up the Voodoo Child mystery that had shadowed most of her life, stifling whatever urges that did not conform to her ideal self.

"Perhaps we should give that doorbell another push," Kagami removed Himiko from her thoughts.

When the door opened, the stepped from one storm into the next. Their client, Kobayashi, beckoned them inside with a distracted mutter while a woman loomed the stairwell like a vengeful ghost. As soon as the door shut out the world, the couple filled every square inch of that mansion with cruel echoes of argument, clashing with no regard to the two transporters that occupied a corner of their domestic battle ground. Himiko stood composed, but no amount of her treasured professionalism rubbed off on the man and woman that raged like beasts. She held out the ring for the client to take. The man seemed to see the tentative motion of her rain-drenched arm in the corner of his gaze, and the light of the hallway shone in the corners of his eyes. He didn't turn. His words lanced across the room with no pause.

Himiko dropped her hand, the diamond reciting its visual poetry in the ugliness of the room. As the barbed insults rung over her head, she awkwardly stared at the rock in her hand that was supposed to celebrate love. Just how compatible were those two?


The tube opened with a soft pop. With each spiral came the scent of roses, captured in a single waxy stick. It smoothed colour in broad strokes, staining lips with that same intense glow that accompanied sexual arousal.

Perfect shade. It disappeared on her lips so well one cannot tell she is wearing it.


Kagami tilted his head to guide the rainwater out of his eyes, as silent as a rock in the midst of a crashing river. His eyes fell upon Himiko's extended arm, and the offering that went ignored at the tip of her hand. The engagement ring shone brilliantly, and he found himself wondering if Himiko had ever seriously contemplate if he were the right kind of guy for her.

If she had, she may be filtered out.

In search for belonging, the weak had the tendency to only seek out people who showed strength in certain areas, usually in areas where the seeker was weak. Kagami preferred to attract lovers of strength, in which he saw aspects of his own strength. He did not subscribe to the belief that opposites attracted each other for reasons any deeper than the quest for excitement and novelty. Kagami met many potential lovers that admired him for qualities they themselves did not possess because they were too afraid to seek it, and settled instead to merely sleep beside those qualities every night. Those people were not for him.

He squinted his eyes at the smashing of fragile objects, resisting the urge to tell Kobayashi that the woman realized he reminded her of herself, and that there was no use salvaging the relationship among the broken bits of china. He'd been in the house for a slow two minutes, and their insults had already given away the end of their romance story. Weak as she is, she will fall in love with a man who can compensate for her failings, someone who can fill in the gaps she's missing and lick her battle wounds, even when too much licking slows down the healing process. Their dynamic is predictable and tedious, but this predictability is what comforts them. They are strong when united, but only when united.

The strong remain so, even when alone. Kagami reached toward that glittering rock and cupped Himiko's hand in his own. She startled, gave him a sideways glare, and removed his hand. The expression made him smile. Himiko was still so young, confused, but contained the sort of inner strength Kagami was not used to seeing in people around him. In fear, she may have invented Lady Poison for herself, but she filled the role nicely. She possessed the very substance to become this tenacious, professional Lady Poison, if that was what she wanted. In contrast, most facades were lies, the result of people desperately wanting to become what they were not.

He could not imagine Himiko dissolving into emotional fits, crumbling under the memories of people who left her world. She scabbed over her losses with revenge, grim and determined. He saw Himiko riding the highways on her motorcycle, drifting to new worlds and new people, with no need to cling to one specific place she called home. Kagami could understand. He left Infinite Castle because he was not content with mere survival. Proud of every inch of who he was, he could not conform to the suffocating culture and submit to the pressure to become something he was not, simply to blend in with the people who surrounded him. He chose an adventurous life without shame and with no regrets. Would Himiko travel the world with him, watching the scenery and seaons change, crossing invisible borders defined by the beliefs in people's heads? Through the process, would they be sucked in by whatever dominant religion that happened to settle among the masses there and assimilate? He hoped not. Beliefs may hold people together, but he did not leave Babylon City, and their false gods, to be tied to someone else.

Through history, countries invaded, resisted, and destroyed, only to enslave their people in rigid hierarchies afterwards. He lost count of how many times he'd looked into someone's eyes and watch the micro-model of history repeating itself: alter-egos usurping an expired one in a never-ending sequels, and the true self is never celebrated, oppressed under all the fears kept in place, nurtured and reinforced by the people the individual chooses to surround himself with. Brushing aside soaked bangs, Kagami sought Himiko's gaze, but it had turned away, seeking shelter from the storm in a darkened corner of potted plants while Kobayashi loudly lamented his loneliness.

Kagami also lost count of how many times he'd observed a person claim loneliness despite being in a crowd. Those who seldom felt alone wherever they traveled were the individuals that attracted Kagami. Like eagles, they drifted carefree and proud, surrounded with the possibility of meeting a world full of strangers who would rather embrace the true strength within each other… and not merely look for the completion of their personal jigsaw puzzle. Despite his reputation for a man that knew more than everyone else, Kagami thrived, self-absorbed in the unknown, while others fought for security and comfort, clinging to their tight flocks, terrified if a piece of the jigsaw puzzle disappears from their lives, fighting like crabs if one makes a move for the top of the bucket.

"--But you complete me." Kobayashi decided to try the famous line that masses just adored.

Kagami winced and touched Himiko's shoulder. "Let's go and collect our payment tomorrow," he said. "We'll keep the ring until then."


Dawn bled over the horizon and granted Himiko a look at her face in the morning glow. A maelstrom of uneasy feelings coiled in her gut, brewing there in apprehensive silence since the moment she gave Kagami permission to give her a makeover, and with it, her promise that she would not steal a glance in the mirror until he was done. She did not expect relief to meet her in the looking glass. "I... look like I have hardly anything on." The mess of the cosmetics counter could not possibly have resulted in such a natural-looking face. Sets of brushes lay open like an opened crayon packet in the midst of a nursery school floor. Glittery powder greedily caught what light fanned in from the window. Jars upon jars of moisturizers sat in disarray beside their sealed and orderly neighbours, like soldiers of mutiny. Plastic sheets kept Himiko's body clean from the pigmented debris, a cocoon of her metamorphosis.

But the butterfly looked no different from the caterpillar.

The first murmurs of the morning rush hour penetrated the store, muffling Kagami's whispered reply, but Himiko thought she heard it for what it was. Were you expecting Lady Poison? The blonde man had risen to retrieve a box of tissue paper and a tube of cold cream makeup remover. Like strips of test paint, different shades of rose and plum smudged his hands in the search for the one that matched her lips. "Look closer," he said upon return, taking the mirror from her awkward hands to move it closer to her face. "It would be a shame if makeup was used to conceal. I played with shadow and light, enhancing the natural shapes of your features. It was rather dark as I worked, and I drew out your natural beauty as it would have looked under better lighting."

As Himiko turned her face toward the window, she saw that he spoke the truth. Tiny bits of silica and blush made her face glow as it would have after a fierce battle. Her lips... were flushed, as they sometimes tended to do. The approaching daylight softened the shadows on her face, as though melting them into her skin.

"The sun rises now, but... it was not rising nearly as fast as I yearned it to." Where Kagami's sentence ended, so did the space between their lips. Their union captured a heat rush that caught Himiko by surprise. She did not expect to find such heat, after an entire night of rubbing cold hands together and drying them after the rain.

They did not speak to each other again until after the ring was returned in the morning, and their payment received. The clouds thinned over the city, but still the streets basked in gray. They passed by the same cosmetics shop broken into, hours ago, at Kagami's suggestion, where they sought shelter from the rain, and an activity to pass their idle time. Himiko refused to look at it. She was quickening her pace when Kagami caught her hand.

"Himiko..."

She stopped.

"Does my presence still warrant the smashing of a perfume bottle against the side of Mr. No-Brake's truck?"


I can't help but to watch you as you sleep tonight, remember your words from yesterday, and can only think of what Akabane had told me shortly before you joined us.

Some time within the past few decades, the false gods within Babylon City realized what they were doing to themselves, hiding away from the world. And so, they tried to create a class of healthy humans with the latest biotechnology, a project of hope. As much as you like looking sexy, you weren't created solely for somebody's wet dream. Where you have good health, you have physical beauty. It was their way of helping evolution along. Who knows what can happen when it comes to genetic mutations-- bringing creatures like you into existence? For all we know, someone like you could have popped out by chance on an unlucky day.

Your meddling gods began to use Lower Town not just solely to amuse themselves, but simply as a virtual ecosystem to see what genetic combinations lived and failed. They extrapolated from ordinary cameras. As technology advances, humans cram in more dots per inch in the pictures, until the naked eye cannot distinguish between the two. They found a way to do this with all five senses, so the tell-tale boundary between reality and virtual fell just beyond the human experience. Someone managed to synthesize human emotion by cracking open a few neuroscience journals and applying the Myers-Briggs test. But inner strength-- perhaps not so different from this Inner Beauty concept you love to mock so much-- is not created in a petri dish.

Even with their efforts, they knew that only a handful would have enough will to escape to the outside world after growing up in a safe shelter. And not only that, never go back... and sometimes I wish you would and seal yourself in an aquarium forever. The stern, rigid culture was a test, Akabane realized. The city is safe and a great place to grow up if you want to educate yourself. At the same time, it gets mind-numbingly boring after a while, just so you can take your sadistic urges out on other people. You asshole.

If I remember correctly, Akabane compared it to a sanctuary of sorts for endangered species like you. Akabane sensed you resisting your boundaries and knew that you would escape to the 'wild' one day. The world's population is getting weaker and weaker as a handful of people invade other countries and buy up all the resources. (And I would hate to see you at a board meeting as a corporate psychopath.) Now I realize what sort of monsters you were referring to. Technology has allowed the weak to live among the strong, tampering with the process of natural selection. The poor are unable fend for themselves, breaking physically and emotionally under the strain of global ... infestation of sorts, driven by the greed for money. People become slaves to it. Digital networks-- the new transporters-- move money in and out of countries indiscriminately, wrecking economies and affecting helpless people that cannot survive without their domestic comforts, adjusted to a life of dependency upon others. People are too tired to think. They toe the line, while I complete my contracts. I don't want to become like them, merely surviving day by day without anything to look forward to. Your false gods probably realized this too. Surrounded by their technology and shunning the outside world, they recognized what was happening and saw they couldn't fix it. They could only try to redeem themselves. In a world of slavery, they tried to create humans that had the best chance of tasting freedom in their lives, these "endangered species."

Even the ones that deserved extinction. Asshole.

After he killed someone who died a little too easily, I remember Akabane mentioning in disappointment that natural selection is no longer only about physical strength. Emotionally, we are losing. As Akabane said to me, perhaps we are all growing a little mad. People are afraid of each other. They've stopped taking risks. They live isolated lives. They create alter-egos, taking them a little too seriously. They neglect their flesh and blood. They throw change in public fountains. Perhaps what we call the meaning of life-- Enlightenment, Nirvana, or the Great Whatever of your beliefs-- is not something that religion or even other people can hand to you. Unfortunately, we have too many people in the world staring at their own flaws or following old traditions and not enough people actively searching for it.

And perhaps Babylon City wasn't aiming to create perfect humans. As rational scientists, they'd know that evolution is a process. Akabane told me the process of life is what makes it worth living, not the end result or any captured moment to be preserved and hidden away. Moments are to be lived as they happen. Expired moments are not to be carried around in our pockets to light our fires on cold, nostalgic nights. They are life's consolation prizes.

Is your surface beauty maintained through self-love, and not the desire to be admired by others? How much of your life do you spend invisible, while the masses ache to be seen, to be heard, throwing themselves in front of cameras and validated by television? A human super-race was not the goal of Babylon City. They recognized that the world was getting too ugly and filled with sadness. They strived to create men and woman capable of loving themselves with their heads held high… because that was where they failed themselves. Even if these people ended up as people like you, killers and self-absorbed obnoxious bastards.

But I'll admit, sometimes I don't mind your narcissism so much if you have the capacity to love someone else. I know you only joined the transporting business so you could get me out of it. Why?

What do you see in the mirror today? Do you see me within yourself? Is that what draws you to me?