Megu and Suigin Tou's Excellent Adventures
A Rozen Maiden fanfic by Aondehafka
Disclaimer: the characters and concepts of Rozen Maiden are owned by Peach Pit, not me. This story is based on the anime, not the manga.
Chapter 4: Megu in the Lions' Den
The doors of the train slid open and Megu stepped out. Her eyes were wide open and her guard was up, but she wasn't spending any strength yet to disguise herself. She had no idea what challenges awaited her this afternoon, and figured it was best to conserve her energy until she really needed it. After all, anything that disturbed Suigin Tou as much as this Nerima place did clearly deserved caution and respect.
It said a lot about how greatly Megu had changed that she'd never once considered avoiding the ward. Indeed, she'd grabbed the first chance she got to visit, taking advantage of her angel's training mission in Sousei Seki's dreamworld.
"It doesn't look like anything much," the girl mused, stopping in the middle of the terminal and looking around. The boarding area was a wide, open-air expanse of concrete with a few lamp-posts and benches. On the far side stood the station building, where newcomers would purchase their tickets and through which those leaving the train would depart. About the only difference between this stop and the one where she'd embarked was the relative absence of people waiting here... and now that she thought about it, she'd been one of only a handful of travelers leaving the crowded train. Apparently Nerima wasn't a popular destination.
She glanced back at the train just in time to see someone's head appear above the roof. The next instant the boy was airborne, passing over a startled Megu in one mighty leap. He touched down on a lamp-post and just as quickly bounced away again, onto the roof of the station and then out of sight. The black-haired girl stared feebly after him, eyes wide and jaw dangling.
"Pardon an old woman's intrusion," came an elderly voice from a few feet away. "But if you weren't prepared to see something like that, you might want to hop back on the train."
Megu hitched her gaping mouth shut and turned to face the speaker. It was a nondescript elderly woman in a lotus-pattern kimono, who would have stood about Megu's height in her youth but was now beginning to stoop with age. "I wasn't prepared," Megu said frankly. "Is... is that sort of thing common?"
The woman allowed herself a snort. "Depends on what you mean by 'common'. Generally there's at least one of them up there, if not when the train gets in then when it leaves. And girls just as often as boys." She sighed. "Ah well, growing old means I can recognize the foolishness of youth as well as its glory."
"Come on, Grandpa! Get your rear in gear!" yelled a black-haired girl several years younger than Megu, appearing out of thin air in the middle of the platform.
"What's that, Rei sweetie?" came a cackle from behind. "Who's slowing us down, now?" Both girls spun around. Rei bit off several choice words on seeing the geezer in priest's robes peering down at her from the roof of the train, and leaped up to join him. Megu stared at the old man, far more shriveled with age than the woman next to her, and blinked a few more times.
"Then again, there's no fool like an old fool," the nameless woman muttered.
"I can't believe the train company just lets that happen," Megu protested, visions of the Tokyo Dome dancing through her head. Then again, the management of the Big Egg probably had more money available than whoever was in charge of the Nerima train service, and there couldn't be that big a pool of available specialists (even ones that weren't quite good enough to handle Suigin Tou) for hire in the first place.
Her companion shrugged. "Like I said, it's only one or two on the average. Not enough to have a real impact on profits. I suppose there's even a bright side – it makes a fine warning message for a nice young girl with no idea what she stumbled into." The woman gave Megu a concerned look. "I don't know what brought you here, young lady, but if it's business that you can walk away from, or a meeting where you can get them to come to you, I strongly suggest you follow me onto the train. It doesn't stay at this stop for long."
Megu smiled gently. "Thank you for your concern," she said, then focused her will. The illusion of soft, white-feathered wings spread out from her shoulders, flapping gently as she levitated herself several inches into the air. "But I think this is where I need to be for now."
"I see. Well, good luck to you then," the woman said, giving a nod that was polite but noticeably more distant than her previous manner had been. With no further ado, she turned away and boarded the train.
Megu watched her go, her smile and her illusion fading as she settled back to the ground. She sighed, then shook off the pang of melancholy. That encounter might have ended on an awkward note, but as awkwardness went it wasn't on the same island as the discussion in which she'd revealed things to her parents. As she headed for the station and the city beyond, there was even a faint spring in her step.
Fifteen minutes of normalcy hadn't been enough to sow doubts in Megu's mind. But she was beginning to feel a little impatient.
The streets around her were less busy than she'd seen in other parts of Tokyo. Still, the level of traffic wasn't low enough to register as remarkable, and that was the closest she'd come to seeing anything odd since leaving the station. For the twenty-eighth time Megu slowed her pace and looked carefully around, and once again failed to find what she was searching for.
'It almost reminds me of those stories Suigin Tou told me, about how she approached this time's conflict,' the girl mused. The First Doll hadn't flown right in at full strength. Instead, she led off with teasing, slowly-escalating tricks, to put the others off-balance and leave them worn out and frazzled when she was finally ready to make her move. 'Just like those people at the train station were there and gone before I could react.' Megu smiled. 'I guess that means if something else extraordinary comes and goes too quickly for me to catch up, I should be relieved instead of frustrated.'
Her smile widened and grew more whimsical at the conceit. Her life might have taken a fantastical turn lately, but she wasn't ready to credit an entire Tokyo ward with taking such personal notice of her.
That sense of perspective kept her patient and cheerful as she spent another half-hour rambling aimlessly through Nerima. She did allow herself one or two mildly exasperated thoughts at Suigin Tou, however... the First Doll could have at least let her see what was on that ill-fated business card. The name 'Mon Lon' wasn't in either of the phone books she inspected, and any lead Suigin Tou might have provided was sealed behind the promise her angel had extracted from her, never to ask anything about this place.
Of course, she expected Suigin Tou would release her from that promise after today. There was no way Megu was going to finish her business in time to be the first one home. No, Suigin Tou would find the note explaining her medium's whereabouts and intentions, and whether she came roaring into town raising enough ruckus to draw Megu to her or simply waited for her to return, Megu was certain the Rozen Maiden wasn't going to let the matter pass without discussion.
None of that, of course, brought her any nearer now to someone who could answer her questions or explain the lessons Mon Lon had said she needed to learn. Still, the day was pleasant, and the novelty of being able to walk briskly about in the open hadn't worn off yet. Because of this, it took nearly an hour for Megu to leave the main thoroughfares behind for small, twisty streets where she stood a better chance of being mugged.
This wasn't such an odd decision as it might have appeared. There was a reason she hadn't stopped any random passersby to inquire about a teal-haired Chinese minstrel – it hadn't been very pleasant, when that kindly old woman had seen past Megu's mask of normalcy and had erected her own barriers so swiftly and securely. However, Megu didn't think she would experience the same disappointment if she got such a reaction from a would-be robber or a gang of street punks. And if they didn't have any useful information, she could still come out ahead by relieving them of the yen they had doubtless stolen from less fortunate targets.
With that comforting thought in mind, Megu turned around and backtracked to a turn-off she'd passed a few minutes ago. The lane wasn't quite narrow enough to be called an alley, but it obviously didn't receive a fifth as much traffic as the road she'd been traveling. It was open to the sky, so in the unlikely chance that she was ambushed by something she couldn't handle, she could simply fly away. Megu walked along at the same brisk pace she'd been using, following the lane through five twists before slowing to a mosey, then an amble, then a complete stop.
One okonomiyaki vending cart in this out-of-the-way spot would have been odd enough. But two?
"Greetings, Honored Customer," chimed the vendors in perfect unison. Then, still synchronized, the girls broke off from their sales pitch, turned away from beaming at Megu, and began glaring at each other. This was easy enough to do, as their two carts were set up diametrically opposite one another. Each yattai was pushed back against the wall of a building, but even so there was barely enough space between them for six people to walk abreast.
Megu glanced from one vendor to the other, trying and failing to pick out the faintest noticeable difference between them. She wasn't certain, but she thought the girls looked to be around fifteen years old. Each had long, straight brown hair pulled back in a braid, tied with strands that strongly resembled yakisoba noodles. Their eyes were a lighter brown, only a few shades away from hazel. Both were clad in the same purple outfit, with the same black tights, and the same bandoliers of mini-spatulas slung across their chests.
After several moments of searching for something that just didn't exist, she gave up. The two were identical, down to the precise angle formed by their frowns. The air between them sizzled like a hot, freshly-oiled grill meeting the first okonomiyaki of the day. The more pragmatic half of Megu's mind regarded the scene, thought back to the stories she'd heard from Suigin Tou, and gave a mental nod. Advanced sibling rivalry, without a doubt. Her whimsical side, meanwhile, was holding out for the possibility of clones.
"I saw her first, Kaou," said one girl at last, breaking the silence.
"Don't you mean you blinked first?" the other shot back immediately, her glare replaced by a smirk. "And either way, she shouldn't have to settle for second best."
"That's my line!" the still-unnamed girl declared. "And for your information, little sister, being the one to break the stalemate means I'm the one who's not keeping my customer waiting!"
"And what customer of yours would that be, Rirakku?" retorted Kaou, glaring once more.
"Ah... excuse me," Megu ventured.
As one the duo whirled on her. "YOU STAY OUT... of... this..." they answered, starting out strong but trailing weakly off as reflexes were overtaken by realization.
With some difficulty, Megu swallowed a giggle. "Actually, I think I'm hungry enough to eat an okonomiyaki from each of you." She had finally discovered one difference between the two girls: although both of their menus boasted rock-bottom prices, said prices fluctuated by fifty yen here and there. She smiled at Rirakku, who happened to be slightly closer than her sister, said, "I'd like one pork deluxe," then turned to Kaou, smiled again and continued, "and one seafood special."
"You got it!" the girls chimed, again in unison, and again pausing for a brief synchronized glaring session. Then they turned their attention to their grills, spreading and mixing the okonomiyaki ingredients with surprising dexterity and speed. Somehow, Megu wasn't surprised that they finished simultaneously, even though they'd been preparing different dishes.
While she could have used the 'two-fisted' method to eat both okonomiyaki at the same time, there were limits to how far Megu was willing to go to tip-toe around such a silly conflict. She'd asked for pork as her first order, so that was the first one she accepted and ate. It disappeared so quickly that Rirakku only managed to get off two smug looks and a victory sign before the seafood special was vanishing as well.
After finishing the second okonomiyaki, Megu stood contemplatively silent for almost as long as it had taken to eat both of them. Considering the out-of-the-way location, the incredibly low prices, and how young the vendors were, she had braced herself for something about as appetizing as hospital food. But this...
"Well? How was it?" Rirakku asked eagerly.
"Did my masterpiece get all the taste of that first thing out of your mouth?" Kaou inquired.
"Are you ready for another? Maybe you'd like to find out what a real seafood okonomiyaki is like?" Rirakku countered.
"Or maybe you would like to find out what a real beat-down is like?!" Kaou demanded, no longer even pretending to focus on their customer.
With a smirk, Rirakku seized the opening. "At least you're finally admitting you've never managed to show me before."
"Why, you...!" From some hidden recess in her cart, Kaou whipped out a steel spatula nearly as big as she was. Rirakku did the same. The next instant the girls bolted out from behind their counters, charging to meet in the center of the lane with an earsplitting clang.
In its own way, Megu decided, it was the best fight she'd seen or even heard of. By now she had drawn several stories of the Alice Game out of Suigin Tou, mostly tales of the First Doll's battles with Shinku. However, supernatural beings flying around and attacking with charmed feathers and rose petals was one thing; two young, human girls moving so quickly and fighting with such force and skill was another entirely. Especially when they leaped toward each other, met in midair with a clang of striking spatulas, bounced so forcefully back from the impact that they hit the walls instead of the ground, and rebounded to meet again in midair five feet higher than their last clash. Megu actually breathed a faint sigh of relief when disengaging from this returned them to the ground, rather than initiating another wall-bounce and higher-yet airborne assault.
When the girls began hurling mini-spatulas with enough force to scar the walls of the lane, she decided it was time to take several long steps back. 'With as far as this has already gone, yelling that they were both the best okonomiyaki I've ever had couldn't be enough to stop it.'
She supposed she could always resort to other abilities to end the fight. However, she'd seen each girl use a barehanded strike to deflect a flying mini-spatula that would otherwise have struck home, and neither seemed any the worse for it. Megu settled for getting a safe distance away, stopping just before the bend in the lane which would have hidden the girls from her view.
No sooner had she done this than the twins abandoned long range attacks, charging in again with mega-spatulas swinging. The fast and furious exchange remained deadlocked for several long moments... and then, all at once, the impasse shattered. One girl—Megu had long since given up any hope of figuring out which was which—unleashed a massively powerful blow which sent her sister flying backward. The girl twisted in midair, but it apparently wasn't enough to keep her from slamming into the nearest okonomiyaki cart. The impact knocked the cart away from the wall, sending it skidding across the lane to stop at a right angle to the other yattai, with their nearest corners almost touching. Just as quickly the girl rolled back to her feet, the motion bringing her upright directly between the two carts. Megu wondered for a fleeting instant why her twin didn't charge in to press her attack, then realized it must be because the girl had lost her mega-spatula during her flight. It lay on the far side of the lane, well out of easy reach. 'I suppose that means the fight is over.'
"Thanks, sis!" the unarmed girl called mockingly. "You set me up perfectly!"
Megu was watching from behind and couldn't see the speaker's face, but she had a clear view of the way the other's eyes widened. The girl scrabbled desperately at her bandolier for a mini-spatula, found she'd already thrown them all, and blurted an oath that nearly burned Megu's ears.
The seconds this took cost her dearly.
"SOY SAUCE TSUNAMI!" screamed the girl closer to Megu, the cry nearly drowning out the clatter of cupboards on each yattai throwing themselves open. In the next instant twin surges of dark-brown liquid emanated forth from the carts, joining in midair into a single towering wave... which just as quickly broke and crashed downward, catching both girls and sweeping them along to smash into a wall.
Megu blinked. "Was that supposed to happen?" she asked.
It was just as well that neither of the twins heard her. They were already stressed enough without listening to questions like that.
"Ugggghhh," groaned the one who'd launched the attack, pushing herself onto hands and knees, then using one hand to rub her head.
"Good one, Kaou," the other said acidly. She was standing now, and appeared to be in better condition than her twin. "Go right ahead and try to pull off something neither one of us is ready for. Hey, maybe for an encore you can crash and burn with the Batter Dragon!"
"Oh, shut up," Kaou retorted, getting to her feet. "You're the one who tried to fix that guy a Miso Ostrich Okonomiyaki yesterday. You've got no room to talk about someone reaching too far and falling flat on her face."
Judging by the way Rirakku grimaced and looked away, she wasn't willing to argue the point further.
Megu decided it was time to rejoin the conversation. "Ah... would you like me to watch your carts while you go get cleaned up?" she offered.
"Nah, that's okay," Kaou said. "We may not have the Soy Sauce Tsunami perfect yet, but we can at least do this." She closed her eyes and concentrated. Megu watched in wide-eyed interest as all the dark, salty liquid rolled off and away from the girl, leaving her looking somewhat battered but basically presentable.
"That was very impressive," Megu said. "Although I think it still takes second place to your cooking. Those were the best okonomiyaki I've had in my life."
Both girls stood a little straighter under the praise, smiling broadly. "We're Kuonjis," Rirakku said with obviously false modesty. "It's what we do."
"If you've never had anything better, you must not have run into any of our relatives yet. Our dad can kick both our butts at once, in either fighting or cooking. Even after today, you still can't really say you've had an okonomiyaki until you've tried his." Kaou blinked, then hastened to add, "Not that I'm trying to say I don't want you as a loyal customer for my shop!"
"It's a bit late to be saying that now, don't you think?" Rirakku grumbled, pausing in her current labor of moving her cart back against its wall. "And your shop? Keep dreaming, Sis."
"You're right; I haven't met any of your relatives before," Megu interjected hastily, not wanting another brawl to erupt before she could get some answers. "Do they all live here? Today is the first time I've been to this ward."
"Not all of them," Rirakku answered. "A few years back it was just Cousin Ukyo. But this place has a lot to offer, so much that most all of the clan has migrated here. Our family moved in last month."
"Then you're new here too," Megu said. Hopefully even if they didn't have her answers, they would still be able to point her toward someone who did. She wasn't sure how to segue into asking those questions, though, and decided to continue with small talk. "Why are you set up like this, anyway? This lane can't get enough traffic to make it a profitable location. I wouldn't think there was enough business for even one of you, let alone both."
Kaou shrugged. "That's what we're supposed to change. It's only been a week since Dad set us up here with these carts. It's our job to snag loyal customers, to get them to consistently go out of their way to eat here."
"And the other half of the challenge is to see which one of us can leave the other in her dust," Rirakku added. She offered Megu a winning smile, and added, "Ready for that seafood okonomiyaki now?"
"I still don't understand," Megu said, ignoring the bait. "Are you saying your father is deliberately forcing you to try and drive each other out of business?"
"What's so hard to understand?" Kaou asked.
"Hey, little sis, remember she said she's new in town?" Rirakku inquired dryly.
"She also didn't freak out from watching us fight," Kaou snapped back. "She can't be that clueless about the kind of stuff that goes on around here." Turning to Megu, she said, "Yeah, you could put it like that, but he was also the one who gave us our startup equipment and funds. This is really just another way for him to look out for us, because competition in the seriously profitable areas is a lot more brutal than this. When I win our challenge, Dad will give me a stake in the ground at one of those places – cause I'll have shown him I can handle it."
"So it's kind of like throwing you into the deep end of the pool to learn how to swim," Megu said, "except that this deep end is still shallow enough that you can just barely touch bottom with your nose out of water?"
"Please, don't remind me about waves," Rirakku said with a smirk. Her sister growled but didn't otherwise reply.
"I suppose that makes sense," Megu continued. "But... have you thought that really he might have meant something else entirely?"
Synchronized blinks and replies of "Huh?" were her answer.
"Think about it," the black-haired girl continued. "What if his true plan is to get you to see past the surface rules and figure out the real, hidden goal?"
"And what goal would that be?" Kaou asked.
"Well, it's only a guess, but maybe to teach you how to work together, not fight with each other?"
Rirakku shook her head decisively. "We already work together just fine. Heck, as a team we can survive for almost twenty seconds against Cousin Ukyo going all-out!"
Kaou rolled her eyes. "While I'm as proud of that as you are, sis, that doesn't mean it means anything to her."
"You're right," Megu confessed. "Like I already said, today is my first time visiting this place. In fact, I'm only here now because someone said there were things in Nerima I needed to learn." She gave a quick bow. "Any help you could provide with that would be appreciated."
Rirakku gave her an inquisitive look. "Someone said you needed to come here and learn something? I'd be glad to help if I could, Honored Customer, but that's awfully vague."
"You're telling me," Megu said with a sigh. "I don't have much more to go on than a name. Have either of you heard of a Chinese woman named Mon Lon?"
"Not me." "Nope."
"It figures," Megu said, firing one more exasperated thought in the general direction of Suigin Tou.
"But you're asking the wrong people," Kaou added. "You should go to the Amazon Quarter with a question like that."
Megu's eyebrows rose curiously. "The... Amazon Quarter?"
Forty-five minutes later, Megu emerged from the maze of twisting little back-streets. It would have been much faster to backtrack to the road she'd been on prior to the detour which took her to the Kuonji twins, but she hadn't bothered. It wasn't like she was operating under a time limit. Plus, she'd halfway hoped she might run into another interesting encounter in the hidden bywaters of the ward.
Except for a cat that had sent an odd prickle down her neck, she hadn't found anything. And that had probably been her imagination, Megu admitted. Certainly the coal-black, blue-eyed tom had been friendlier and in better condition than she expected for a stray, but it hadn't actually done anything to support that faint tingle she'd felt. Megu supposed it was just another quirk from the part of her which had wanted the Kuonji twins to be clones.
"In any case, it won't be long before I find what I came here for," she murmured as she walked along the main roadway she had encountered. "Amazon territory... just keep heading away from the train station and look for the signs, and I won't be able to miss it." She ran the aforementioned signs back through her mind, wondering whether the younger girls had sneaked in a joke or two. 'Shops that post both Japanese and Mandarin billboards... almost all businesses will be restaurants, shopkeepers, artisans, or healers... no cars even on roads that look like they were meant for that kind of traffic... at least one empty, vacant lot every three blocks, with no fences or 'keep out' signs... Chinese teenagers with hair colors that I 'better not assume comes out of a bottle',' to use Kaou's words, 'oh, and if I see such a girl fighting a boy in one of those lots, and she's losing and looks happy about it, then I'm close enough to ask for more specific directions.'
The Kuonji girls had been vague about exactly where she needed to go. Both were certain she could find people there who could answer her questions, even after Megu had given them a brief summary of the changes her life had taken. The trouble was, neither had any idea how to get in touch with those people. Kaou thought she'd heard talk of a certain bookstore. Rirakku dredged up the memory of someone mentioning a cat-themed ramen joint. But as far as actual names went, the girls had both drawn blanks.
"Still, you're not in any hurry, right?" Kaou had asked. "You've got all the time you need to wander around and play tourist."
"It's probably a good idea to take it slow anyway," Rirakku added. "Even for Nerima, there's a lot of power concentrated there. And it sounds to me like it's the upper-level people you need to talk to. You're bound to be way better off if you get some kind of idea what you're dealing with before you meet someone like that." She wrapped her arms around herself and gave an exaggerated shiver. "I'd hate to think of going in blind and facing someone like Matriarch Cologne."
Kaou snorted loud enough that Megu's ears rang. "I keep telling you, those stories have got to be Amazon propaganda. Or urban legends."
Thinking back, Megu had to smile and agree. A tiny little old lady who had lived for hundreds of years on strength and skill alone, and had enough of both to level city blocks single-handedly? Clearly she wasn't the only one who enjoyed flights of fancy. Still, there was usually a grain of truth at the center of rumors, even ones so overblown as that. Reduce the rumored age by three-quarters and the reputed power level by ninety percent, and what was left would still be someone Megu would be eager to meet. And all the more so, that whimsical corner of her mind whispered, if by some chance the stories really hadn't been exaggerated.
"WOO-HOO! WHAT A HAUL, WHAT A HAUL!"
The gloating, chortling cry split the air. Megu jumped involuntarily and whipped her head from side to side, searching for the origin of the sound. Upon finding it, she stood gaping in shock.
Just ahead of her, the road she was on intersected with another. The crosswise lane was even wider than her current route, wide enough for a crowd of young women to charge down at breakneck speed without actually breaking their necks. Ahead of them bounced a tiny figure in a worn maroon bodysuit, with a mask tied over his face and a bulging sack behind him. The mask didn't hide his pointy little mustache or the fact that he was mostly bald, allowing Megu to identify him as male. His sack was easily three times his size, but by progressing via leaps and bounds he kept it from dragging on the street. Perhaps that explained his choice of locomotion, or perhaps not... no matter how nimble they were, it was hard to believe legs that short could possibly run fast enough to keep him ahead of the crowd.
Even as Megu watched, several girls—apparently finding new energy in the wake of the old man's yell—blazed forward from the front of the pack, two on his left and three on his right, attempting to nail the sprightly senior citizen with a pincer assault. This would have been bad enough if they had been empty-handed, but that was only the case for one of them. The others were carrying a sword, a pair of daggers, a bladed flail, and a baseball bat with nails in it.
In the back of Megu's mind, a lone voice of reason was yammering, trying desperately to get her moving in time to save their target from certain death... not that she had any idea how to accomplish this. However, that unfrozen cluster of brain cells had only managed to hitch her jaw most of the way shut by the time it became academic. The old man blurred, spinning on an impossible course that saw him and his sack safely through the converging girls, the daggers embedded in a wall, the bat entangled in the flail, and the sword shattered under a redirected strike from the empty-handed attacker.
Oh, and while he was at it he managed to snag the bras away from the two girls who had still been wearing them. Megu wasn't able to follow the actual motion of liberation, but his follow-up caressing of the undergarments, followed by carefully stowing them in his sack, was clearly visible.
Needless to say, her jaw was once again dangling as low as it would go.
Not that her mind had completely frozen even now. It was just that the active corner was spending all its resources to activate her legs, taking several long, careful steps backward... but if she was thinking that action would be helpful, she was sadly mistaken. Everyone else who had been on the road with her, or on the intersecting road ahead, was running away at full speed. Megu's precaution only served to make her stick out like a sore thumb.
"Well, hello there, cutie," said the old man as he skidded to a stop in the intersection, pulling off his mask and looking right at her. There was a brief pause in the dialogue as the crowd of girls caught up with him and spun round and round like a whirlpool attempting to devour a tiny spire of rock. Through the occasional gap in the melee, the man continued to eye Megu with a quizzical stare, even as he dodged, redirected, or outright blocked attacks that should have torn him limb from limb. "I don't think I've seen you before. C'mon, say hello to Grandpappy Happi and join the fun."
"F- fun?" Megu echoed, far too quietly for anyone normal to hear over the noise of the melee. She stared for a minute that seemed an eternity to her, watching the old man effortlessly deal with insane levels of violence. As far as she could tell, the only counterattacks he made were humiliating grabs at the prettiest girls' tops and bottoms. If he missed even once, it didn't happen when she was watching. "Join... that?" she said at last. "Are you out of your mind?"
Impossibly the old man redoubled his pace, now moving fast enough to direct the flow of battle with exquisite control. At least, that was the only possible explanation Megu's frazzled mind could come up with for the fact that suddenly, even though the hunt-pack of girls was fighting harder than ever, there was always a clear path between her and the geezer. "It doesn't look appealing at all?" he asked. "No dreams of being the one to finally take down the terrible, horrible Happosai? You wouldn't just be saying that to try and get in a cheap shot when my back is turned, would you?"
Megu shook her head, her eyes wide and her lips clamped together. The situation wasn't enough to make her wish for the safety of her old, unlamented hospital bed, but she was definitely feeling a desire for the haven she and Suigin Tou had established at the top of a Tokyo skyscraper.
"Ah well, I must have been mistaken," the ancient master said with a shrug. "I thought your aura felt at least a bit like that gloomy little cursed doll from awhile back. But you haven't got any of her guts—and considering how she didn't even have a midsection, that's saying something."
With a gasp that actually carried over the din of battle, Megu staggered to the side. Her legs couldn't seem to decide whether they wanted to retreat or charge forward. "W... What?" she asked, but it seemed Happosai was no longer paying attention to her. The narrow gap he'd opened between the two of them had closed, and Megu could no longer even see the tiny terror. The only evidence of his presence at the center of the melee was gloating commentary from him as he dodged death and copped feels, and the counterpoint of feminine squeals and screams of fury.
Megu stared for a few seconds longer, silent and motionless. However, her thoughts were anything but still. As amazing as her angel was, she knew good and darn well that Suigin Tou couldn't hope to match the combat prowess she was witnessing from Happosai. It was obvious from the old man's words that his path and Suigin Tou's had crossed recently... and suddenly, the First Doll's reaction when Mon Lon mentioned Nerima made a lot more sense...
"How dare he do that..." Megu whispered, not even realizing she was speaking, "you..." this in a normal tone, and now she had awoken to the reality of her own outrage, and the impossibility of ignoring it, "HOW DARE YOU!"
Throwing caution to the winds, she leapt straight up into the air, shooting in an instant to a three-story height directly over the intersection. She had fully intended to follow up the move with some kind of attack—probably an imitation of the energy blasts she'd seen a few of the attacking girls use during the brief span when their target wasn't completely surrounded—but her new bird's-eye view revealed a problem with this. Namely, there just wasn't a big enough open space at the center of the fight for her to only hit Happosai.
Even in the midst of her outrage, she wasn't about to sacrifice others for a shot at vengeance. But that left the knotty problem of what to do next.
She was concentrating too hard on that problem, and missed the moment when Happosai turned to regard her hovering form out of the corner of his eye, an unmistakable gleam of renewed interest showing there. But when she just continued to hang motionless and lost in thought, the gleam died down (though it didn't vanish entirely) and the ancient lecher returned his full attention to the fun at hand.
Meanwhile, Megu wondered... how to target someone as skilled and agile as the old man without making collateral damage out of the girls attacking him? In her experience, the power of the Rose Bond could be made to do almost anything physical that she could imagine, but the amount of energy required was based at least in part on how well she understood what she was doing. For example, flying had been almost impossible at first, until Suigin Tou watched her attempts closely enough to realize that she was doing something very different from the Maiden's own effortless glides. They had worked together to first learn what Suigin Tou's method truly was—an instinctive N-field manipulation, to shunt gravity out of the real world in her immediate vicinity—and then teach it to Megu as well.
Based on this, it wasn't at all surprising that flight now came so easily to her... much easier than the emotional projection tricks she'd developed from her encounter with Key, for instance. She didn't understand those well at all yet. It was a pity, too; she suspected that if she had mastered those abilities, they could provide an effective way to handle the present situation.
Even at her current level, Megu was confident that she could broadcast a blanket of apathy, wide enough to affect everyone in the battle at once and powerful enough to bring the fight instantly to a halt. After all, that was one emotion with which she had plenty of experience. Unfortunately, that wouldn't do what she wanted; the girls fighting below were simply moving with too much speed and force. She could shift them instantly into a state of mind where they no longer cared about anything, but that wouldn't erase residual velocity from the girls or their weapons. If as few as ten of them ended up slashed, bashed, or skewered, Megu would count herself lucky. No, that option was out.
At last, with no idea of anything better to try, she lobbed a weak, carefully-configured energy blast at Happosai. She wasn't in the least surprised to see him dodge it; what was surprising was that it didn't hit anyone else either. She tried again, with identical results as far as she could see, and yet again.
Megu had been wrong when she assumed no difference between her second attempt and her first. Happosai had gotten an odd twinge from the first blast, but hadn't been paying enough attention to figure out what that unusual taint to it had been. For her second, he repeated his dodge-and-make-sure-no-one-else-takes-the-hit tactic, but this time he paid the attack enough attention to figure it out. And so, as Megu's third blast streaked down toward him, he blithely sidestepped while nudging the nearest cutie into its path.
It passed harmlessly through her, just as Megu had intended.
Happosai favored her with the most obnoxious grin Megu had seen in her whole sheltered life. "Try again, sweetcheeks—WHOA!" The old man gave an exaggerated dodge, weaving through the three MUCH stronger blasts that Megu was now confident enough to throw.
Despite the fact that they had no real effect on the girls they hit, those unfortunates were knocked out of their battle groove anyway. "What the hell is your problem?!" one of them shouted up at Megu. "Don't hit us, hit him!"
"Those will only hurt men, not women!" Megu snapped back. "You've got nothing to worry about, unless you're cross-dressing!"
This turned the other girl's snarl into a smile. "Nah, the old lech weeded those guys out at the very beginning. Sorry I yelled at you; throw as many of those things as you like!"
This bizarre response was enough to knock Megu as much off-balance as her unintended targets had been. Then, with a shake of the head and a reminder of why she was fighting, she returned her attention to the battle. As far as she could tell, nothing much had changed since she first took to the air. The women were still circling the lone, tiny male at high speed, doing their best to snuff him from existence. And he continued to defeat their best efforts with a flair that made it look easy, while keeping up a steady stream of gropes and lewd remarks to ensure none of the ladies lost the fine edge of their bloodlust.
She watched for a few seconds longer, this time paying full attention to Happosai rather than splitting her focus between her objective and her options. She quickly became convinced of one thing—if she kept lobbing small spreads like the last one, she'd use up all her energy long before she made a positive impact on the battle. The old man was just too good to succumb to them.
And so, Megu took a deep breath and burned two-thirds of her remaining strength, launching a fusillade twice as wide as the melee below.
The massive energy expenditure caused her to drop a few feet before she could shake off the wave of weariness and recover herself. By that time the hundreds of blasts she'd launched had covered three-quarters of their journey, but were still so tightly packed as to have less than two inches between adjacent pulses of energy. No matter how good this mysterious Happosai was, she knew he couldn't dodge that.
She regained her focus just in time to see the old man pull a pipe out of one sleeve and spin it above his head, not only intercepting the blasts that would have nailed him, but also pulling in the ones that would have missed by less than a yard. They dispersed with a hiss and a crackle, the unbound energies flowing away from the pipe and into the sack that Happosai had impossibly carried with him the whole time. The old man let out a cackle and looked up at her. "Thanks, girlie!" he called as he returned the pipe to storage. "There's only one thing better than lovely silky darlings freshly charged with feminine energy, and that's supercharged silky darlings. C'mon, throw another one of those!"
The melee around Happosai had slowed noticeably due to her barrage, but was still too energetic for her to use the only tactic that might make a difference now. Megu's shoulders slumped. She gritted her teeth, turned her head, and closed her eyes. 'I suppose it was stupid of me to think I could win a fight like this. Not if Suigin Tou herself couldn't handle this little... whatever-he-is.'
She might have abandoned all hope of defeating Happosai and looked away, but the ancient lecher was still paying attention to her, while only giving the resurging battle enough of his notice to avoid being creamed. "Don't quit on me now, my dear. Right after you manage your best attack yet is no time to give up!"
The raven-haired girl shook her head involuntarily, and began to slowly drift away.
Happosai frowned up at her, the expression fraught with such menace that Megu felt it even without looking. She froze, her head turning automatically back to look at him. "You're new here," he said in a conversational tone that shouldn't have reached her ears as clearly as it did, "so let me give you a piece of advice. I don't like it when people don't give their best when they go up against me. It makes me feel sad and unappreciated. And that's really not a good idea at all. HyyAHH!"
The cry at the end of his monologue accompanied the reappearance of his pipe, spinning in a pattern that made Megu's eyes hurt as it seemed to bend across more than three dimensions. The old man slammed it into the ground, triggering a shockwave that knocked all the girls around him back at least ten feet. The wave wasn't circular, though, but rather C-shaped; for two hundred seventy degrees around Happi his attackers were thrown straight back, but there was a ninety-degree arc where they were cleared out of the way entirely.
Happosai wasn't finished yet. He brought the pipe quickly to his lips, drew in a deep breath through his nostrils even as the bowl suddenly glowed a cheerful red, and then breathed forcefully out. A huge rolling mass of smoke and flame roared forth as if the pipe were the maw of a dragon. The Siamese-twin miasmas streamed forward through the newly-opened gap in the crowd.
The smoke kept its position in the lead, and was the first element to reach beyond what had previously been the outer limits of the brawl, traveling uneventfully for thirty feet—
—then it rolled over the figure of a girl slinking carefully away, and Megu blinked in confusion, because suddenly she was aware that the girl had begun making her retreat half a minute ago, she had seen it clearly but something had kept the sight from registering until now—
—then the fire reached the nameless girl and washed over her, leaving her speckled with ash but not actually burned. And it was easy to tell that she hadn't been burned, because every scrap of clothing that had covered her was now enjoying a second life as the aforementioned ash.
Nor did Happosai see fit to leave it there. He blazed forward along the open path, putting the lie to Megu's earlier thoughts about how fast he could possibly run. He reached the girl and gave one last spin of his pipe, which didn't even seem to touch her... but nonetheless she was flung up, up, and away, sailing far higher than Megu's drifting height and vanishing into the distance with a swiftly-fading howl.
For the first time in what was not nearly long enough, Megu felt her heart skip a beat. 'He... he... I don't believe it... just like that, he killed that girl...'
Horror such as she'd never known surged through her, freezing her body motionless even as her eyes shied away, fleeing the patch of empty sky that had tracked one helpless girl's passage from life to death. Distantly, as if in a dream, she noticed that the remainder of the girls were still picking themselves up from Happosai's knockback attack, and the lecher himself was ambling back to meet them with a renewed cheerful grin on his face. "You can cut and run if you really want to," he called over his shoulder to Megu, "but I can't promise you'll like what happens next."
The ice, the horror, they were only growing thicker... and then, with a faint sigh, Megu released them all.
A wave of sadness descended upon the battlefield, a weight too crushing to allow any effort greater than breath, released from a girl who'd never wanted to feel that way again. 'Just a moment longer,' Megu told herself as she watched everyone below her sag to a halt. No-one yet had been moving fast enough to hurt herself or anyone else with her left-over momentum. It was the first and only time the battle had provided her with such an opening; she wished with all her heart that the price hadn't been so high. 'Just one more moment, and then I can set them all free. But first...' She stared grimly down at Happosai, motionless along with the rest, and once more touched those deep, dark memories of her old life.
Her new attack was, if anything, more powerful than the last. But it was condensed into a single bolt, the width of a finger and the color of corroded lead, which lanced down straight for Happosai.
He scooted effortlessly to the side, watching with interest as it bored a sixty-foot path straight down through the ground. "Yowza. Where'd a cute young thing like you learn to throw chi like that?" he asked, looking up at her with his pose of disability now long gone, replaced by an unmistakably curious gleam in his eyes.
"What does it take to stop you?!" Megu wailed.
"Way more than you've got, I assure you. Now come on down and let's talk. You've managed to interest me enough that I don't feel like playing any more."
Megu clamped her lips together and shook her head wildly, beginning to drift unconsciously backward.
Happosai's eyes narrowed. "This is me, asking nicely. For the last time, I might add."
With a wordless cry of fear and shame, Megu whirled and bolted for freedom. Behind her came the bizarre exclamation of "Bean Jam Blowout Revised!" Right on the heels of the cry followed a minor whirlwind, which grabbed her and began dragging her gently but inexorably backward.
It felt like it took all the strength she had left, but Megu managed to twist around so that she could at least meet her fate with her eyes open. "Suigin Tou... I'm sor—huh?"
She hadn't had a chance to dispel the apathy blanket over the girls, but nonetheless from the edge of the pack one of them was now charging straight for Happosai: a girl clad in a dark brown gi, about her own age with short, blue-black hair and an expression like grim death. She had one fist cocked back for a haymaker... but as she closed within ten feet of Happosai, her other hand pulled a plastic bottle out of nowhere Megu could see, and the fist came around to smash through this and release a cloud of water.
And suddenly there were two short-haired girls charging side-by-side toward Happosai, identical save that one was stark naked.
"SWEEEET-O!" the ancient lecher caroled, bounding toward the predictable target. The naked girl broke stride at the last instant, letting her twin get one pace ahead as Happi soared through the air toward the object of his delight. The girl not currently breaking the public decency laws brought her fist around and up, slamming into the completely unguarded lecher and sending him into the stratosphere like the world's ugliest surface-to-air missile.
Both short-haired girls panted in fury for a few moments, before the one who still had clothing pulled out another flask, this one made of metal. A bright red aura danced around her hand for a few moments, at the end of which time she dumped the flask's contents over her head. Her nude twin wavered and vanished.
That, Megu decided, was just a little too much. She drifted the rest of the way to earth, dispelled the lingering apathy shroud almost as an afterthought, and then, with a profound sense of relief, fainted dead away.
The first thing she became aware of, as she struggled her way back to consciousness, was the smell.
To someone with a greater range of experience than Megu, it would have brought many things to mind. A spring morning in a meadow far from civilization. The crisp, fresh air that follows a cleansing storm. A garden in the cool of the evening, when some flowers close for the day even as others begin to open. A poet could have done a lot of quality work on a single breath of that aroma.
In Megu's case, the best she could manage as she stumbled awake was 'bracing and very nice'.
Her eyes focused on the cup of tea that was being wafted around in front of her—the source of the aroma. Her mouth was already watering. Her hands twitched, almost moving of their own accord to grab the cup away from the one holding it. Meanwhile, Megu's eyes traveled from the cup to the hands circled around it, to the arms supporting them, to the girl responsible for it all: her short-haired, gi-clad rescuer from before.
"Good, you're awake," her host said, setting the cup in front of Megu and pouring a second for herself. "Drink up." As Megu reached for the offering, the girl added, "If you want more than what we've got in the teapot, you're going to have to pay for it yourself."
"Hmm," Megu murmured after a few careful sips of the dark orange liquid. "The best okonomiyaki and the best tea I've ever tasted. This town does have its good points as well as its bad."
"So the little pervert was right about you being new here." The mystery girl grimaced. "Why am I not surprised. It sure would be nice to see him make a mistake nowadays, even if it was too small to bite him."
Megu blinked. She didn't think she'd really been intended to hear that last part, considering how quietly it had been muttered, but it was nonsensical enough that she couldn't keep silent. "What? Why would that matter? I mean... you killed him, didn't you?"
Judging by the way the other girl's eyes bugged out, and particularly by the peals of sardonic laughter that followed, Megu guessed the answer was probably 'no'.
"No..." the girl said, shaking her head and letting out a last few chuckles. "I'm afraid not. All that did was buy me enough time to bring you here, to a place where he won't go."
"And where is 'here'?" Megu asked, the question coming automatically. Rather than thinking about what she was saying, she was now looking around and studying her surroundings. The two of them were seated in a corner booth of a sparsely but elegantly decorated tea shop. The walls bore several beautiful landscape prints, a few of which featured writing that Megu hesitantly identified as Mandarin. The furniture looked oddly heavy and sturdy to her, and the glass in the windows was at least three times regulation thickness. There were four waitresses she could see, none of them with black hair and only one with brown eyes. Before her host could answer the question, Megu turned back to her and continued, "Is this... the Amazon quarter?"
"Right in the middle of it, yeah," the girl said with a grimace. "The one part of town where you'll never see that miserable little pervert."
As they were both seated at a table Megu couldn't bow, but she inclined her head as deeply as her position allowed. "Thank you very much for bringing me here. My name is Megu Kakizaki."
"Akane Tendo, and you're welcome. By the way, you don't live with anyone who's allergic to horses, do you?"
Akane watched the mystery girl crumple gracefully to the pavement. Behind her the rest of the girls began to stir, and in a few particularly hardy cases pull themselves to their feet. Before she could decide what to do next, she was distracted by a new element—the thunder of approaching hoofbeats. "It figures," she muttered sourly.
Turning around, she saw the utterly expected sight of a handsome young man on an even more handsome steed, a snow-white stallion charging down the road to the site of the recent battle. "HAPPOSAI!" bellowed the rider, brandishing an oversized tea-strainer, as big as a katana and with equally sharp edges. "Where are you, villain?!"
"Oh, Daimonji-san, you literally missed him by seconds," said one of the girls, staring up at him with sparkling eyes. "Tendo-san used a desperation attack to knock him far away."
The teen slumped momentarily. "Then it seems I'm too late."
"Funny how often that happens," Akane muttered.
"But no! I was too late to help try to bring him to justice, but I'm not too late to provide help to you girls in recovering!" He jumped down from his seat and opened one of his saddlebags, bringing out a large, aromatic sack. "This green tea is the best blend for soothing weary muscles and restoring lost energy that my family can make." He walked around to the other saddlebag and retrieved a large teapot and hot-plate. "It might not be worth its weight in gold, but silver isn't so very much of a stretch. And if all I can do on behalf of my gender to apologize to yours for the existence of Happosai is to offer this free of charge, then that is what I'll do!"
"And when you get home you'll write it all off under advertising costs," Akane commented, though she retained enough goodwill to keep her voice too low to be heard. Honestly, Kentaro was just like his cousin Sentaro had been when Akane first met him—basically good-hearted, but with more cash than courage or wisdom. Shaking her head, she walked over to his unattended steed.
"Excuse me?!" Kentaro yelped as Akane took hold of the horse's bridle and began leading it over to Megu's position. Noticing exactly who that girl taking his horse was, he quickly moderated his tone. "Ah... Tendo-san, what are you doing?"
Akane favored him with a flat stare, then gestured toward Megu. "Happosai wants to talk to her, and I wouldn't wish that on anybody. But I don't feel like doing a fireman's carry all the way to safe ground." She placed one hand on the horse's withers and pressed down authoritatively. The animal knew better than to balk, and knelt without delay. Akane moved around to pick up Megu and set her in place. "I'll send Pretender here back to the Daimonji compound after I'm done."
"Um... his name's Defender, actually..." Kentaro let the protest trail off. "Right. Take as long as you need."
Megu blinked. "What? Allergic to horses? No, but why on earth would you ask?"
"That's how I carried you here," Akane explained.
"Really?" Megu asked, her eyes wide. "So not only can you split yourself into two people, you can even change into a completely different form?"
"A borrowed horse." Akane closed her eyes and massaged her temples. "You'll jump to a conclusion like that, but you didn't realize Happosai would shrug off a little ten-mile flight?"
"Well, which one of those is really less believable?" Megu protested. "I mean, considering how you beat him."
"I suppose you're right," Akane conceded. "Still, you've got a lot to learn about how things are here."
"You're telling me?" Megu said with a faint smile. This faded into a tense look as she asked, "So... if he wasn't really hurt by what you did... does that mean he didn't kill the girl he threw away either?"
Akane snorted. "Not unless she was angry enough to burst a blood vessel. Judging by the angle he launched her on, I think she landed in a local 'guys only' hot spring."
"Oh dear." 'At least she seemed to know how to hide in plain sight.'
"That's the Anything Goes Grandmaster for you," Akane said with a twisted smile. "He'd run a mile over broken glass before he'd inflict a half-inch cut on a pretty girl, but he'll put you through training that makes you wish you were dead."
Megu considered this for a moment. "Would running a mile over broken glass be an actual problem for him?"
This time Akane's smile was a little more genuine. "Nope. You're catching on."
"But I've still got a lot to learn about how things are here," Megu quoted, with a wider smile. "Can you help me with that?"
"That's why I'm here," Akane said, her tone and expression suddenly weary. "That's why I went that far to rescue you from my own so-called 'master'."
Megu stared across the table in shock. "W-what?" she managed after a long moment. "That... Happosai is your master?"
Akane shrugged. "He's the founder and Grandmaster of the Anything Goes school of martial arts, and that style is part of who I am as a Tendo. I've known that ever since I was old enough to start learning what it meant, way before the little pervert crawled out from the rock he was hiding under and introduced himself. I'm not about to give it up on his say-so, and I'm damn well not going to take any life-lessons from him—except in what not to do," she said fiercely. "Which is why we're here, with me helping you in spite of what he's going to have to say about it."
"And what will he say?" Megu half-gasped, half-whispered, horrified at what she was hearing.
" 'Ah, Akane, it does my old heart good to see you finally progressing in the philosophical side of our Art. Ready for your next lesson?' " The Tendo girl's effort to imitate Happosai's voice and trademark leer were half-hearted at best, since she knew she couldn't do them justice (and was frankly just as happy about that).
Whatever Megu had expected, it wasn't this. "What?" she said blankly. "He'll be glad that you defeated him like that?" She hesitated, then said, "I mean, I might be able to see it if he'd actually landed on that naked copy of you, but..."
"It's not a copy," Akane said. "It's me just as much as the body that keeps my clothes on. As soon as either of us gets splashed with hot water, I'm back in one body again with the memories from both of them."
"Really? That's a very interesting ability. How did you learn to do it?"
"It's a curse, and it certainly wasn't my choice. It was what happened the one time I told Happosai to his face that I wasn't going to quit practicing Anything Goes but I also wasn't going to listen to him when he said I wasn't putting enough effort into training." Akane stared fiercely down into her still-untouched cup of tea. "He said it was his idea of a compromise."
"And... you hate to use it, but you did anyway because it was the only thing that would have worked... and that's what will make him happy? What will encourage him?" Megu asked, stretching her guessing skills to the limit. Akane nodded. Megu took a minute to think about what encouraging Happosai would likely mean. When the images became too disturbing she pushed them away, gulped, then forced out, "Then... I'm sorry. I never meant to cause you such trouble, Tendo-san."
"I know you didn't. Now, why do you think I told you all that? It wasn't to make you feel bad," Akane said. When Megu simply gave her a helpless look, she continued, "Of course you didn't mean to do something like that. You had no idea it would happen, but it did anyway. That's one of the most important things to understand about Nerima—there's power here like most people wouldn't even believe, but if you mess around with things you don't understand, there will be consequences."
Megu squeezed her eyes shut. "If... if there's anything I can do to make it up to you, please just say—"
"Will you stop and think for a minute?" the other girl interrupted, her tone dry but not harsh. "Yes, I'm going to have to put up with grief from Happosai now instead next week or next month, but it's nothing that wasn't coming anyway. I never go more than ten weeks without something like that, and it only lasted that long once because of the Paris Lingerie and Swimwear Expo. Anything you owe me will be paid back by just listening and really understanding what I'm trying to tell you."
"I... yes. I'll do that," Megu said, nodding emphatically.
"Good," Akane replied, meeting Megu's gaze. "One person who screwed everything up by not paying attention to what was really happening is enough for this table."
Megu blinked and ran that last sentence back through her mind. It sounded like something that Akane should have muttered under her breath, speaking so quietly that she wouldn't have thought Megu had heard her. But no, the Tendo girl had said it in the same tone as her previous lines. Had Akane intended her to ask what she meant by it?
Before Megu could do so, Akane was talking again. "Obviously I couldn't pay much attention to you during Happosai's 'group training session'," she continued, speaking as if those three words pained her. "But I could tell you didn't look confident with those powers you were throwing around. Either you haven't had them long, or you're a really good actor. Which one is it?"
"The first one," Megu answered. "That's why I'm here, I think. At least, a woman named Mon Lon asked me how long I'd had my abilities, and when I told her I gained them recently she said I needed to come to Nerima to learn some important lessons."
Akane smiled thinly. "Right. How would you say that's going so far?"
Megu paused for thought. She sat in silence for a minute or two, then took a deep breath, smiled, and said, "I think it's going very well."
Akane's jaw dropped. "W-what?" she asked feebly. "But you... I mean... Happosai!"
"Of course that part wasn't much fun," Megu said. "...Okay, actually it was pretty terrible toward the end. But the reason it was terrible was because I thought things that simply weren't true. Because I couldn't understand what was actually happening. It's the lesson you were trying to teach me earlier, Tendo-san, and I know very well that you were right. Ignorance is not bliss." She noticed the other girl try and fail to suppress a wince at her last sentence.
"Well, I'm glad I got through to you there," Akane said slowly. "But what about the rest of what I said?"
"You mean when you warned me about how high the stakes could get here? I heard," Megu assured her. "But let me tell you a story now.
"I was born with congenital heart disease. Because of that I spent my first seventeen years in the hospital. Out of duty, my parents sent me tutors, and out of duty I listened to them, at least for awhile. But duty wore just as thin as everything else, and by the time I was twelve I was simply waiting to die. And it was another five years before my angel came into my life, and nearly two more years before we learned how I could share her power.
"So after hearing that, do you know what the worst part of today was for me? At least based on what I know now?" Megu's gaze sharpened. "It wasn't anything Happosai did. He was playing games with everyone... but they were trying to kill him."
Akane grimaced but didn't look away. "Maybe you're forgetting what happened to Noriko, for daring to try sneaking away with a stealth technique before she totally exhausted herself. We were fighting him exactly the way he wanted us to." She grimaced more painfully after the last sentence. "You know, saying that out loud doesn't make me feel any better about it. But not for the reason you said."
Megu shrugged. "Well, it does for me."
"Oh, really?" Akane replied sharply. "Then do you want me to take you to Happosai after all, so you can have that conversation he wanted?"
"Um..." The longer-haired girl wilted slightly. "I don't think I'd go that far."
"Good. At least you haven't—" Akane cut herself off. She was silent for a few moments, her eyes tightly closed. Then she opened them, and in a quieter tone said, "Look... I'm sorry. You've got a point, but it's not one I can listen to. I don't care that in his own twisted way, Happosai is actually pretty benevolent. I don't care that he's designed his little pleasure sprees to be very effective training for girl fighters. None of that makes it any easier for me to listen to someone else defend him, let alone someone my own age who was floating too high for him to get at her bra and panties."
"Hmmph," Megu said, finding a bit of spirit. "Maybe you should take me to him, and I could just stay four stories up while we talk." It would give her a chance to get more information about Happosai's earlier encounter with Suigin Tou. If it had proceeded at all like hers, then the First Doll might well have been more frightened than she ought to be.
Akane gave her a flat stare, then dumped her now-cold cup of tea over her head. Megu noted that the naked girl appeared between the clothed one and the wall, a position which hid her from anybody who was currently within sight. "Remember what I said about how I got this 'ability'," the twins said in bitter stereo.
As the short-haired girl repeated her trick with the metal thermos, Megu was forced to concede the point. "Okay, I understand. I'll stay well clear of Happosai." She supposed it would be better to ask Suigin Tou for those details anyway.
"Good. But don't think that will be enough. You can't afford to think that," Akane said, her tone hovering a few degrees away from pleading. "Happosai is a huge pain in the ass, but in the end he's only the biggest, most obvious symptom of the real prob—" After cutting herself off again, and once more pausing for a few silent, eyes-closed moments, she heaved a sigh and said, "The real situation."
"You're talking about Nerima itself, aren't you?" Megu asked shrewdly. "Because I've been here for less than three hours and already seen so many impossible things."
"Yes," said Akane. "That's exactly what I'm talking about." She stared down into her empty teacup. For a moment she seemed much farther away than just the opposite side of the table. "It wasn't always like this, you know," she said quietly. "Oh, it was weird all right, and there were more fighters with more styles than maybe anywhere else in Japan. But comparing that Nerima to what we've got today... it's like an egg and a chicken. That's how different it is."
"So why did it change?" Megu asked.
As far as she could tell, Akane ignored her completely. She was still looking down into her cup as she continued, "Nowadays, Nerima is a place where almost anything can happen, which means sooner or later it will. I already said something about the kind of power here, and how there's consequences for playing with it. But I'll be honest—for every loser, there's a winner, or even more than one. If you're ready to give enough of yourself to training, to get the strength and skill and knowledge you need, you can work miracles on your own, without needing a guardian angel to watch over you." Akane's lips had quirked into a faint, bittersweet smile as she said that last sentence. The expression faded as she continued. "Almost anything you can think of, you can have it if you're willing to fight hard enough for it."
Then she looked up, her eyes boring into Megu's with piercing, frightening intensity. "But the kami have mercy on you if you think there's something you shouldn't have to fight for."
Megu sucked in a few ragged breaths. "Tendo-san... are, are you speaking from your own life? Did you lose something important to you?"
"I did," Akane said grimly. "The rules changed, other people changed with them, but I refused to admit it or do the same until it was too late.
"Don't ask for details; I've only said this much so you would understand how important what I'm telling you is. What's happening in Nerima is supposed to change the whole world. If you let it pull you in and you aren't careful, it's certainly big enough to change you whether you want it or not."
Thinking back to the moments when the girl across from her had been two girls, Megu supposed Akane had the right to say that. Still, she couldn't let the entire message pass without challenge, or at least without clarification. "To change the whole world? Why? And how is that even possible?"
"How is easy," Akane said. "Or at least, the idea is easy to understand. Think of powerful people as being like pieces of uranium. Slap a whole bunch of them together and you've got an atomic pile... and if you set it up wrong, you've got a horrible, out-of-control reaction or even an explosion. But if you did it right, the energy is self-increasing without causing a disaster."
Megu frowned thoughtfully, putting aside the question of 'why' for the moment. "I see... is it working?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I try not to pay that much attention to the big picture," Akane said. "I don't give a damn how much it irks Cologne or Happosai, that ninety-nine people out of a hundred in the world would just laugh if you said a normal person could learn to punch through an inch of solid steel. I've sat through lectures on wasted potential from both of them, and even if I couldn't out-argue Cologne about how terrible it would be to not even know what's possible, I don't have to agree with her." Akane frowned bitterly. "That wrinkly little mummy is hundreds of years old... what does she remember about what it's like to be young, or to care about ordinary things?"
"Hmm," Megu said. She hesitated, thinking of the best way to phrase what she wanted to say. "Then here's my next question. Is there... training... here that would let someone help others who were too weak to choose it for themselves? To bring people like that up to a point where they could go forward on their own?" It was her turn to fire an intense stare at the girl across the table from her. "Could an ordinary person, whose heart wasn't weak and leaky, learn to heal someone whose was?"
"I don't know," Akane replied. She paused for a moment, then admitted, "...Probably. Considering the technique Happosai used to save a little girl with leukemia, I guess I'd bet on it."
"That's all I needed to hear," Megu said. She offered Akane a beatific smile. "I won't forget your warnings, Tendo-san, but let me tell you something I've learned. You can't have life without risk. The most you can have is existence, and it's a very poor substitute."
"Maybe you're right," Akane said reluctantly. She looked down at her hands, clenched tightly around the teacup. "I guess scars can make you stronger. Even if they are ugly, and still hurt sometimes."
"In any case, I owe you more thanks than I can easily repay," Megu said. "Both for rescuing me and for telling me all these things."
"Don't forget paying for the tea," Akane said, trying for 'humorously' and making it at least halfway. "Amazon chi-restoring blends don't come cheap."
Megu blinked, focused inward, and blinked again. Her strength was almost fully recovered. Pushing the surprise off to one side, she refocused on the task at hand. "Then that makes this even more appropriate. I'd like to pay for something special for you, if it's okay?" It would wipe out the money she'd been saving, but under the circumstances that was no concern at all.
Akane gave her a curious look. "Like what?"
The long-haired girl smiled gently. "A ticket to hear a very special singer."
Author's Notes
Can't think of much to say here. What was outlined for the next chapter will conclude Megu and Suigin Tou's Excellent Adventures, but it's growing so long that I'm all but certain I'll need to break it into three pieces. Until next time.