Slacker

It was ten months on, more or less. Kagami was thoroughly enjoying his idyllic new lifestyle trailing behind his more hardworking comrades. For one who once considered Lower Level slumming as the be-all and end-all of cheap thrill entertainment, it was certainly something else to regard the mundane world outside as his new center of gravity. He ate, slept, and played outside on the ground floor of salaryman existence, observing what the layman observed and picking up conventional pastimes. Who knew how fun 'normal' could be, distorted through the right prism?

Cornered by the grumbling ever-professional Himiko, he even managed to squeeze in his odd day of work within his full-time career of slacking off! Of course, he would sulk off and under-deliver if he discovered his assignment was beneath him.

"Who would've ever guessed that the mighty Man from Babylon City could be such a cheerful waste of space outside his element?" she muttered something to that effect on more than one occasion. "At least in Mugenjou he took up only virtual air. I'll bet he's still got some bubbles trapped inside his brain."

When Akabane tried to punish him, Kagami always had some way of twisting the situation around to feed his creature needs.

"Think long-term," Akabane brusquely advised the unsatisfied Himiko, refusing to discuss overtly any suggestion that he'd been manipulated. "You know yourself he won't be able to sit for a week."

"Our biggest challenge has been to get him to sit still for three seconds!" she said. "Where's he gone to now?"

"He'll be back when he's hungry."

"He's got no discipline whatsoever. The gods are fools to trust their walking inventions."

Akabane sniffed. "I trust they knew the risks when they made him invisible."

"I just don't understand how they ever managed to make him work!"

"There there, Himiko. Now you're making the assumption he was actually working those times before."

She didn't immediately catch on.

"You never see Kagenuma wearing a suit," Akabane said. "I'll wager Kagami just wore his for show."

"That's a lot of trouble to go to just to slack off."

"If he were really serious, why would he ruin such a professional look with such blatant lopsidedness around the head region?"

"You're the doctor. Prescribe something to him."

"My dear tortured Himiko, I was referring to his earring."

She slipped into disgruntled obscurity, and Akabane was forced to postpone their plans to the next day. It did not please Himiko to consider that Kagami had planned their every past encounter for his own entertainment. Akabane decided he was wise in refraining from voicing an alternate answer: to have been made to work, Kagami just needed the right bait.

Later she found Kagami at a magazine stand looking at porn. She hit him with a rolled up newspaper. No sooner had the loose pages hit the floor, he pointed out a headline. "Oh look, another office slave dead from karoshi."

"How the hell would that ever worry you?"

"What if it's hereditary? I hear the same fate befell the man whose genes gave me my irresistible looks."

"It was probably an STD."

"Why are you so upset?"

"Why don't you ever work?"

"I'm waiting for my new calling to hit me." His eyes went from the rolled newspaper to the porn magazine he dropped on the floor.

That was it. "I'm beginning to regret you ever joined us," Himiko said. "You goof around. You don't take things seriously enough. You take the simplest task we give you and complicate it to the extent the whole plan unravels at the slightest mistep. You are our weakest link. Good bye."

"You're firing me?"

"It's not like it really affects you!"

"What am I supposed to do now?"

"Everything you weren't supposed to do when you were supposed to be working, and now you can do them without Akabane kicking your ass (although you probably enjoyed that)."

"If you didn't give me the most boring assignments..."

"Yeah, yeah. It's been nice knowing you. May the ink stains on your face remind you fondly of our time spent together."

He followed her. "Now who am I going to bother for fun?"

"Just go away. Get out of my sight. Go back to where you came from before I flush you down the toilet myself."

Five days later, she tracked him down outside a supermarket. He was entirely visible, as though waiting to be found.

"I knew you'd miss me," he said.

"I can't believe I have to do this."

"Have to do what?"

"Akabane decided this morning that you're our next assignment."

"What do you have to do?"

"Deliver you back to Babylon City."

"Well, I refuse."

She inhaled Acceleration Scent.

"You aren't exactly marked Fragile."