Author's Note: Apologies to Koushun Takami for the not-so-original character introduced in this chapter. But for anyone not familiar with Mr. Takami's work, he's not some guy from Excel Saga you forgot about, he's from the novel Battle Royale – y'see, since the actress who plays Gogo Yubari, Chiaki Kuriyama, played Takako Chigusa in the movie version of Battle Royale, it seemed like…well, yeah, you get the idea.
3. Queen of the City Council
When Kabapu and Misaki arrived, they found their subject held motionless, not by bars or drugs, but by a spinning painted disk Shioji held in front of her eyes. Excel's gaze was riveted by the mysterious swirling colors, and a strand of drool had begun to work its way down her chin.
"Fascinating!" Kabapu boomed, standing in the doorway. "Is this some novel form of thought control, Doctor? I can already imagine the many applications in the management of a civilian population…"
"I would suspect," said Misaki, walking past him, "that the crux of the effect exists in the subject's mind, more so than in that device."
"Mind putting that in a little plainer language for your supervisor, Misaki?"
"She's an idiot."
"Well, Shioji?"
"I'm afraid Miss Matsuya – is correct."
"Hmm. Although when it comes to that, your average citizenry…"
Misaki put a hand on his arm. "Why not stop train of thought right there, sir."
Shioji pocketed the device; Excel immediately returned to what passed for normalcy, shaking her head, spitting and frothing. She looked rapidly around with dilated eyes.
"I – where am I? Kill…gonna kill…" Seeing Kabapu and Misaki, she leapt back. "You!—You're that guy! And you're that girl! Who, who—did the thing!"
"Please relax, young lady," said Kabapu gruffly, through his moustache. "We are representatives of your government."
"Also," added Misaki, "we may be, at the moment, your best friends in the world."
"I don't understand this! What're you doing here! What—" Excel shut here eyes, and a process of simplification, known in the literature as cognitive dissonance, took place. Misaki was wrong: her brain worked potently, with remarkable speed and power, to reorder the world into something it could more easily understand. She opened her eyes. "Oh, hey, it's you guys!"
"You are Miss Excel – Excel?" said Misaki. She was dressed formally, in a purple business suit, and carried a briefcase.
"Yep! And didn't you used to live, like, right next door to me? And—"
"Our past histories are irrelevant," said Misaki. She glanced around the room for a place to set her briefcase down. It was a conference room, formerly for military use, and folding chairs were established in front of a projection screen. "What matters," she said, setting her briefcase on one of the seats, "is that, at the moment, we have similar interests – or at least, our Commander tells me so."
Excel, glancing over at Kabapu, noticed that he had added a meaningless admiral's cap to his usual business suit. It looked no sillier than anything else about his appearance.
Kabapu cleared his throat. "That is correct. Miss Excel Excel, your country needs you."
"And from the look of things, you need it just as badly." Misaki glanced at Excel's twenty-two year-old, unarmed body, and Excel wilted. "Do you really expect to take on the most dangerous man in all of Japan, where Daitenzin and battalion upon battalion of the Self-Defense Force have failed?
"Well – yeah? Kind of. Hey, I killed Hatchan! Twice!"
Misaki clicked her tongue. "Sit down, Miss Excel, if you would; and take a look at what we have to show you. I promise it won't take long, and then we can put our cards on the table."
Inside the briefcase was a roll of film, which she removed.
"Most dangerous man in Japan? Hey, that rhymes!"
Misaki frowned. "Hito doesn't rhyme with Nihon."
"She must've been reading the translation," Kabapu whispered. "Proceed with the briefing, Miss Matsuya."
Excel peered at the film in Misaki's hands.
"And who the heck still uses old film like that, anyway? Shouldn't it be on a CD-ROM, or—hey, come to think of it, even 'CD-ROM' is outdated; who still says R-O-M? But anyway—"
"Shioji!" barked Kabapu. The doctor obediently held the spinning plastic disc in front of Excel's eyes until they began to glaze over, and the noise coming from her mouth slowed to a creaking halt.
"You've gotten quite a bit of mileage out of this place," Kabapu muttered to Shioji, as Misaki tinkered with the projector.
"Yes, sir. And I can't thank you enough for rezoning it – and, of course, for handling all those pesky complaints about—"
"Oi, you two! I'm not playing this thing twice!" Misaki yelled; and the screen had begun to display the grainy film. Excel's eyes slowly returned to normal, and she blinked.
"Heh? What's going on; who are these guys?"—even as she spoke, though, something in the film caught her eye. A dark shape in the background: tall, broad-shouldered, silent. Her fists clenched. Shioji, seeing her, was alarmed; a different and entirely more capable person seemed to have replaced her for a moment.
"Pay no attention to the man in the shadows," said Misaki. "It's that little girl in the foreground you should be concerned with." Then, pausing the tape, she explained: "As you may or may not be aware, a certain individual, who may as well remain unnamed for the moment, recently extended his dominion as far south as our capitol, Tokyo. This footage, captured by our esteemed scientist's miniature spy cameras,"—she put out a hand to Shioji, who smiled—"dates from shortly after that unfortunate conquest – to be specific, five or six weeks ago."
The static image on the screen showed three individuals, not including the ominous male shadow behind them – a middle-aged man; a younger man; and a petite, smiling, pink-haired and pig-tailed girl.
Excel's eyes widened. "Oh, Cosette-chan!—And is that the mayor?"
"Indeed," said Kabapu. "My treacherous former subordinate threw in his lot with the conquerors, not long after ACROSS's flag was raised. Look at the little bastard. Smiling like that. Makes the blood boil. Makes the—"
"Please, sir," said Misaki. "As you may imagine, Miss Excel, the mayor is of little consequence. This meeting has been convened to announce ACROSS's dominance over the city in the eleventh day of urban warfare, and—" the first touch of real bitterness crept into her tone of cold civility—"to give the Tokyo City Council a chance to grovel at Lord Ilpalazzo's feet."
"Hei—" The word almost escaped Excel's mouth; but as her arm began to shoot up involuntarily, she seized it, digging her fingers into the flesh.
"Are you quite alright, Miss?" said Shioji.
Excel gritted her teeth. "Fine. Go on."
Misaki, stepping forward, pointed at the young girl. "I understand you're already acquainted with Miss Cosette Sara?"
"Well, sure! She's the Young Girl who Lives in Our Neighborhood, after all."
Kabapu grimaced. "If that's all you know about her, what you're about to see might come as a shock."
"That's okay," Excel said, quietly. "I'm used to that kind of thing."
Misaki unpaused the film. The static Cosette Sara leapt to life, smiling and bowing in her adorable Chinese suit, her pigtails bobbing.
"Thank you, Mister Tokyo Mayor!" she trilled. "That was a wonderful speech! Clap-clap!" Others applauded, including the familiar mayor of F City, but the young man on Cosette's right was silent. Misaki had not introduced him. He was hot, Excel thought, you could say that much. Pure blue eyes and impeccable hair, swept back; an eerily perfect face; a school uniform.
"Now," Cosette went on, "since you have all been such good sports, I think you all deserve a nice big reward!" She turned to the man "K-san?"
Misaki paused.
"The man on the right," she said, pointing, "is the former chief of the largest Tokyo city Yakuza clan. When ACROSS invaded, his cooperation was essential to a quick transfer of power – and in exchange, he was handed control of every betting parlor, brothel and soapland in the city. A shrewd move, from a very shrewd man."
"What's his name?"
"Nobody knows, except that his initials are K and K – they call him K.K., or K-san. I understand he prefers the latter. He and Cosette have a lot in common. At nineteen, he's the youngest chief a major Yakuza clan has ever had – and at nine, Cosette is by far the youngest mayor the city of Tokyo has ever had."
"Mayor?"
"Watch."
She unpaused. K-san, with his dazzling eyes set in an expressionless face, reached into his school coat and produced a bundle of thousand-yen bills. The camera changed its angle – the members of the city council lunged forward like dogs as K-san pitched the notes into their midst. The angle changed back: over the sound of the snarling men, Cosette still smiled, K-san remained expressionless.
"Don't knock yourselves out, guys!" Cosette said playfully. "Think of your age!"
Misaki paused again. "I'm going to fast-forward. I'm afraid I don't enjoy the sight of once-respectable city officials making asses of themselves."
Kabapu sniffed sentimentally. "Me neither, Miss Matsuya."
"When's it gonna get good?" Excel whined. "You said it was gonna be shocking!"
"Coming up…" said Misaki, then a mist of blood suddenly filled the fast-forwarding image. "Ooh, missed it." She rewound, and a man's head reattached itself to his body; blood flowed backwards into his neck. Misaki hit play.
"Murasaki-san," Cosette said, sweetly. "Whatever do you mean?"
The camera angle changed to show one of the officials, a man with sagging cheeks and thinning hair, his spectacles held together in the middle by a piece of tape. His mouth was set indignantly.
"That's Section Chief Ichiro Murasaki," Shioji whispered.
"I refer," said Section Chief Ichiro Murasaki in a desperate, reedy voice, his jowls vibrating, "to the perversion of this illustrious council – at the hands of a fascist madman, and his ridiculous flunkies!"
The other council members shouted from offscreen: "Shut up!—Don't rock the boat, Murasaki you fool!"
But Murasaki went on, his voice rising to a pitch of emotion: "My father, and my grandfather before me, served as Section Chief on his council, and while you laugh and bray like assess, they weep in the afterlife!—that a contemptible, iron-fisted tyrant should not only conquer this city, but then choose to show his contempt for us by appointing as our new mayor – a nine-year-old, barely out of diapers!"
There was a whistling sound. Murasaki's head erupted like a watermelon on the beach in summertime. Blood spattered the camera, and the angle changed.
Cosette still grinned, although a spot of blood had marked her forehead. Suspended from her index finger, a banana-yellow yo-yo bobbed up and down. Two circular blades, bright with Murasaki's gore, surrounded either of its sections. The room was silent except for the hiss of the yo-yo as it rose and fell, and a dripping sound from offscreen. Then one of the council members let out of a moan of terror.
Cosette twitched her finger, and the yo-yo's blades retracted. She slipped it into her pocket and clapped her hands. "Well," she said briskly, "that might have been a bit much, but I don't think that was a very nice thing for Mister Murasaki to say, now was it?"
The camera showed the council members. Slowly, as one, they shook their heads.
The camera showed Cosette again. K-san, glancing at his reflection in the metal table, brushed at a fleck of blood in his hair.
"Now, I'm gonna say something, and it's gonna be super important so I think I better say it in English!"
"Ooh!" said Excel, raising her hand. "I like English!"
Misaki paused this tape. "This may be as good a time as any to review Miss Cosette's history," she said. "The girl was born to an American soldier – to an American man, hence Sara, and French tourist girl, hence Cosette. This half-American, half-French army brat made her first acquaintance with death at the age of four – when she witnessed the murder of her father and the fatal wounding of her mother at the hands of Japan's most ruthless Yakuza boss: 'Bossu' Matsumoto."
"I, uh, kind of already know this story," said Excel. "It was in Episode Se—"
"Stop!" Kabapu thundered. "I will not tolerate any breaking of the fourth wall! The thread of plausibility connecting events in this story is thin enough as is without any gratuitous self-aware humor, so I demand that you stop immediately!"
"But you just—"
"Immediately!"
"So you know," Misaki cut in quickly, "that her mother passed away, that Cosette was forced to work as an hitman for Matsumoto, that by the age of seven she was already one of the best-known female assassins in Japan…"
Excel waved her hand. "Yeah, yeah. Yep."
"…and how, at the age of the eight, she got her revenge."
"Ooh! This is new."
"Alright," said Misaki. "This is the story. Fortunately for Cosette, Boss Matsumoto—" she paused for dramatic effect—"was a pedophile."
There was a brief silence.
"Pardon me, Miss Matsuya," said Shioji, "but are you looking in my general direction for any particular reason?"
She cleared her throat. "Not at all, youpervert."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Just something stuck in my—I apologize. Let's get on with the briefing. As I was saying, Boss Matsumoto was a pedophile. Cosette was able to gain access to his – private chambers, and dispatch him."
"Wait," said Excel, scratching her head. "But in that case, how come she's still going around thwapping off people's heads and stuff?"
Misaki shrugged. "Apparently the act of revenge wasn't as redemptive as she might have expected. As you can see—" she pointed at the still, smiling face on the screen—"that isn't a normal, healthy human being. If there ever was a child within Cosette Sara, that child died long ago."
"So all this is basically a really long way of explaining why English is Cosette's native language?" said Excel.
"Basically, yes."
Misaki unpaused the tape.
"As your leader," Cosette began, while the unctuous F City mayor translated. When she spoke English – precisely, smoothly – she suddenly sounded far from nine years old. "I encourage you from time to time, and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic! If you're unconvinced a particular plan of action I've decided is the wisest, tell me so!—but allow me to convince you, and I promise you right here and now, no subject will ever be taboo!"
She paused.
"Except, of course, the subject which was just under discussion.
"The price you pay – for bringing up either my sponsorship or my age as a negative is – I collect your fuckin' head."
She suddenly lifted a scrap of greasy dark matter off the table; Excel realized it was a piece of Section Chief Murasaki's scalp. Cosette held it over her head as she screamed, like a child throwing a tantrum: "Just like this fucker here!—Now if any of you sons of bitches – got anything else to say – now's the fuckin' time to say it!"
There was another pause.
Cosette smiled again, and said pleasantly: "I didn't think so."
She let the scrap of hair float to the ground.
"This meeting is adjourned," she said in Japanese.
Misaki stopped the tape.
"Not pretty, is it?"
Excel swallowed.
"So you see," Kabapu took over, "if you intend to kill Lord Ilpalazzo himself, as we assume…"
Excel nodded vehemently.
"…your task may be far more difficult than you imagined. And all this is to say nothing of Ilpalazzo's own combat abilities, which are nothing short of superhuman. You don't even want to see what he did to our beloved Ropponmatsus. Cosette is Ilpalazzo's second-in-command—"
"Second-in-command!" shrieked Excel. "Why that little hussy! What's he think he's doing, replacing me with a model like—" She caught herself, looked to the side, and huffed. "Not that I care! See if I care! So what!"
Kabapu cleared his throat. "I have no doubt you don't care in the least. As I believed I was saying, to get to Ilpalazzo, you would have to go through Miss Cosette; and to get to Miss Cosette, you would have to go through K-san."
Excel stroked her chin. "So…Cosette-chan has that bladed yo-yo thingy; what about K-san? What's his thing?"
"As I said," said Misaki, "he and Cosette have a great deal in common. Like his new boss, K-san, while extremely intelligent, seems to lack all human feeling. That's why some call him the Tin Man."
"Tin Man?"
"That's one nickname; another, more disturbing one is Typewriter."
"Taipuwaita?" Excel pronounced, awkwardly.
"That's correct. Why? Because apparently his weapon of choice, an Ingram submachine gun, sounds something like a typewriter. I wouldn't know firsthand – but if I did, I doubt I'd be standing here."
"That's…not good?"
"No," said Kabapu roughly, "it isn't. But there is hope. Shioji must have showed you his latest pinnacle of weapons technology. With the destructive power of the VE-6050 Pfadfinderin, and your own, ah, considerable enthusiasm, there may yet be hope of overcoming Ilpalazzo's forces – of doom!" He glanced quickly at Misaki. "What did you think of that 'of doom?' I'm thinking of working that into my rhetoric, you know, little by little."
"I'm afraid it seemed extraneous," said Misaki. "However, Excel-san, my supervisor is correct. The plan is simple. We will provide you with use of the 6050, as well as any other weapons in our arsenal we can spare. Then, utilizing the full strength of our forces – though I doubt you'll appreciate the sacrifice – we can provide you with a beachhead into Tokyo, by launching a diversionary attack."
Excel raised her hand.
"Yes?"
"Um…couldja maybe put that in smaller words, please?"
"Stick with us," said Shioji, "and we can get you to Lord Ilpalazzo."
"Yeah! Now you're talkin'!"
Misaki spoke again. "According to our reconnaissance, Lord Ilpalazzo will be dining tomorrow night at a well-known establishment in Tokyo – known as The House of Blue Leaves."
Excel's preview: "Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a poor and paltry player who—hey, did I fool ya, sounding smart there for a second? Huh? Huh? Anyway, if death is a ripe tomato, then in our next episode we're makin' salsa! There's also music, dancing and two really really cute guys, so bring some popcorn, bring a friend, come one, come all, to Death Rides a Bicycle's next chapter, "Tear the b&# apart!"—Jeez, I hope all those random symbols don't mean me."
Author's Note: I feel like the story should settle into a more even groove after this chapter. It's hard to balance the serious and comedic elements – even the humor in KB is more situational than gag-based – and it's hard as hell to write Excel's dialogue. Although it's disturbingly easy to write her previews…
