Game of Wits
Jenny
The lowest level of Tokyo was very different to the city they saw at the edge of the bay. It was much darker, despite being the middle of the day, thanks to the shadows of the colossal skyscrapers and towers. It was also damp and smelly, the streets decorated with large kanji characters in bold neon. They were advertising all kinds of things; illegal cybernetic implants, prostitution, tattoo parlours, more fast food – it was somehow comforting to see that every city, no matter how much of a metropolis it appeared from above, had the same seedy underbelly to enjoy. And it was places like that where Jenny had always thrived, thanks to her predisposition for work that fell into a bit of a grey area (as she would describe it; the authorities always used much crueller terms.) A glowing, blue trail formed in front of her, an AR illusion guiding her to the safehouse location courtesy of her newly-repaired OCF. Oswin limped along a few steps behind her.
"I could get a tattoo," Jenny said, growing distracted by the tattoo parlour on her right, "Or a body mod. I miss having a robot hand sometimes."
"I don't know that Clara would be too happy about that."
"Clara's old-fashioned," said Jenny.
"Ah – so you'd prefer a girl a bit more futuristic, hmm? A bit more your-speed?" Oswin asked wryly.
"I think I tried a dating pool in your century once, and ended up stuck with Jack for months," Jenny said, turning back around to look at Oswin. Oswin was probably about to say something witty (or at least something she thought was witty) in response, but when Jenny turned she slipped and would have fallen had Jenny not caught her arm. "You alright?"
"Slipped in a puddle," Oswin winced, grimacing at the floor. Whatever she had stepped in was pink. "Not even water. Cleaning run-off from the buildings."
"What do you mean?"
"How do you think they keep them all so shiny up there?" Oswin challenged, "Spray them. With chemicals. Which get washed off the rain and come all the way down here where they don't evaporate outside of direct sunlight."
"Right – aren't they supposed to be against pollution here?"
"The chemicals break down naturally after a few weeks, they're no more dangerous than water," Oswin explained, "They're just not very accommodating for poor one-legged holograms who aren't good at balancing. Why can't your illegal safehouse be somewhere a bit nicer?"
"I told you, Akwana's gorgeous…"
"…Look, I hate to ask, and this isn't me coming onto you-"
"For once."
"Could you just let me hold your arm? It's just, you know, my legs. You didn't give me a chance to finish my wheelchair." Oswin looked at her pleadingly.
"Oh…" Jenny paused, then smiled and held out her arm, "Sure." They continued to walk, looking like a couple now, and it struck Jenny that if it were Ravenwood clinging to her they would look exactly the same to outsiders. It was then, traipsing through the glowing, wet streets following the glimmering directions in her digital lenses, that she remembered something. "I heard you've been really angry at my dad in the last few weeks."
"I heard that you've been really angry at your dad in the last few weeks," Oswin countered.
"That's my business, though." Jenny was asking questions she knew the answers to already, thanks to Donna's frequent attempts to 'catch her up' every time she was gone to Hollowmire for a few nights. "It's just – I heard you were upset with him on my behalf."
"Who've you been talking to?"
"Donna."
"Don't listen to Donna. She thinks we're in love with each other. Maybe she's trying to matchmake; she's never been particularly impressed by Mitchell, or by your dirty habit of casually fucking Other Clara."
"Were you angry, though? With the Doctor?"
"Maybe I'm just overly sensitive to stories of parents who neglect their children and then act all high-and-mighty about it later," Oswin muttered. Jenny hadn't thought of that, but she'd never been the one Oswin came to with her family issues – probably for the best, she'd have no idea what to say. She wasn't good at family matters, evidently.
"…I think it's just here," she said after a minute of silence. She regretted saying anything about her father to Oswin now. She'd only been curious because Oswin treated Eleven with so much disdain, while Jenny knew she was one of Oswin's favourites, and it perplexed her because everybody always insinuated that she and the Doctor were like two peas in a pod.
Her directions had led them down a very narrow alley, which was so narrow so as to barely be an alley at all and Jenny marvelled at how they really got anything in, to a door whose only marker was a thin, purple UV light above it.
"So, how are we getting in?" Oswin whispered, "Fingerprint reader? Retinal scan?" Jenny ignored her and knocked on the door in a very distinct pattern, then stood to wait. Oswin gasped exaggeratedly. "A secret knock! Tell me that was a secret knock!" she grabbed Jenny's arm, then said in her ear, "I'm so wet for you right now."
"Eurgh, go away," Jenny pushed at her and leant in the opposite direction while Oswin sniggered.
"Honesty is the best policy. But, really, is a secret knock really the best thing for your clandestine organisation?"
"It's not a secret knock, it's a normal knock."
"You did a fancy pattern!"
"I've got a song stuck in my head from some advert that's always on when Clara's watching TV!"
"Wow. My underwear has dried right up now. It's like the Sahara."
"That's a relief…"
The door was opened from within by an enormous, hulking man, almost as wide as he was tall – and he was very tall, over six feet.
"I'll tell you what," Oswin began stage-whispering to Jenny, "I'll sit on your shoulders and we'll go buy a trench-coat to disguise ourselves with."
"Shut up."
"I don't speak any English," said the giant in Japanese, Jenny assimilating the language instantly.
"Sorry about her," Jenny apologised, "She doesn't speak Japanese, so-"
"Erm," Oswin interrupted, "I do, actually." To Jenny's great horror, Oswin also answered in perfect Japanese. "It's one of my dozen-or-so languages. I told you, Flek and I wanted to come to Tokyo one day; it only took me, like, three days to learn." Jenny rolled her eyes.
"I'm Zero," she introduced herself, "I'm-"
"She's a member of the Biting Society," Oswin interjected. If it was anybody else standing next to her, Jenny would surely have punched them in mouth by now. Oswin was the kind of person who would really benefit from a broken jaw, Jenny thought, if only she were capable of receiving one. Anything to stop her from talking…
"Zero-sensei!" he boomed, "You're famous. Never been seen, never been caught, the prodigal daughter of Akwana. Come in!"
"You people are very indiscreet to say you're a bunch of elite thieves," Oswin quipped as the man stepped out of the doorway and let them in, down a very narrow, metal staircase where Jenny had to carefully help Oswin down each and every step.
But when they got into the actual safehouse, which was less of a safehouse and more of a black-market shop selling plenty of stolen goods, it was as though all of Jenny's Christmases had come at once. Weapons and gadgets galore. Even her anti-war, anti-violence father would love some of the devices being kept in that little basement, which made Jenny's eyes light up with wonder. Compact cannons, long-range rifles, an astonishing array of knives she could think of all sorts of uses for.
"If only I hadn't just got a new sword this week…" Jenny said, staring at a wall of more ornate swords than she knew the names of, as well as a very nice metal bat that looked to made of solid tungsten. Any blow with that would be certain death from anyone with even a shred of strength.
"You what?" Oswin asked, Oswin who had immediately flocked towards a range of illegal cybernetic enhancements, like even more weapons you could have surgically implanted. Jenny had always been a fan of the large blade implants you could get – just as a last resort, of course – but had never had the inclination to actually get something like that. Although… maybe it would be cool… "Where did you get a sword from?"
"Rose gave me a sword. She got it from an old friend of mine. It's called Jenny."
"You have a sword named after yourself?" Oswin questioned her, Sprite jumping down from Oswin's shoulder to look at the cybernetics closely. Their host, however, didn't like Sprite – who was significantly less remarkable in the 52nd Century and didn't really need to be hidden or lied about – crawling all over the merchandise.
"Hey! Keep that thing on a leash," he ordered, making Sprite jump in fright and scurry over to Jenny for protection. Jenny wasn't a huge fan of having the robot centipede crawl up her back, but let him be.
"Sorry," Oswin apologised, "He gets excited."
"Non-Society members aren't supposed to be allowed down here," he warned Jenny, meaning Oswin. "…Tell me how the great Zero dropped off the map. There were rumours of your death under mysterious circumstances. You look like you've been through a war." She didn't think she looked quite as bad as someone who'd been through a war, with all her broken pieces, but didn't argue. Most of her brain capacity was currently taken up thinking about advanced weaponry, anyway. "I might say that both of you do." He'd spotted Oswin's fake leg as well as her cane.
"I fancied a change, went a few centuries in the past and decided to be a pirate for a while. Someone tried to kill me and now I'm… between hobbies," Jenny explained carefully.
"Hobby?" he asked, then laughed, lowering himself down into an enormous chair befitting of his enormous form, in front of a board game. Oswin didn't give any explanation as to the state of her legs. "The best thief we've ever had, and you call it a hobby!" She would never really call it a profession. In fact, Jenny wasn't sure she'd call anything she'd done a profession, even her military services; really, they were all just things she did to pass the time. "I wish I could call it a hobby. I retired a decade ago, long after the whispers of you died away, Zero-sensei, and here I still am." He didn't even mention the implied discrepancy with her age – but eternal youth was something that had been technologically achieved years ago. Maybe he thought she was using some sort of disguise.
"Only a decade? Maybe I've heard of you."
"Maybe – under the name Oni." He moved some of the small stones on the game he was playing.
"Oh! You're the guy who used to punch through walls, right? Crush skulls?"
"A long time ago."
"Speaking of help," Oswin interrupted, peering very closely at what looked like fabric to Jenny's untrained eye, "What kind of material is this? Because to me it looks like a silk-thin exoskeletal mesh with nano-densi threading."
"You can have it, for a price," said 'Oni.'
"…What kind of price?" Oswin asked carefully. He shrugged.
"You could let me have a look at your robot." Sprite cowered behind Jenny's shoulder.
"…No, thanks. I think I've got the general gist – coating microfibres in densi, though. Clever. Stuff can withstand a direct meteor shower."
"On the topic of meteors," Jenny began, "I'm here for information more than anything else. Information sharing is still the right etiquette for the Society, isn't it?"
"What's mine is yours," he said, leaning back in his chair.
"Great, see, the thing is – oh! Are you playing Go?"
"Against yourself?" Oswin added, glancing over. It was Go; she thought she'd recognised it. Leaving the strange fabric alone, Oswin limped over crookedly to examine the board.
"Never anybody to play it with."
"Can I have the densi mesh if I beat you?" she challenged, to Jenny's surprise.
"What do you want that mesh for?" she questioned.
"I'm assuming it's supposed to be used as a body-armour, but it's got plenty of medical applications I can think of. I could line the spacesuits with it if I come up with a modified version," she explained. Fair enough, thought Jenny. "Could even make you something for your hand." It did look more comfortable than her clunky cast.
"You think you can beat me at Go? I used to compete at Go when I was your age," Oni said, "What do I get if you lose?"
"I don't know – the pleasure of somebody stroking your ego? Come on, let me play. I've never had anyone to actually play it against. We had an old version my brother and I used to play, but he gave up because he could never win," she said. Jenny wondered which brother. Oni gave up in the end, grinning, and indicated to Oswin the modest chair opposite as he re-set the stones. "Do you know, there's more possible moves in Go than there are atoms in the universe?"
"That only matters if you're able to think of them all. Who is the girl, Zero-sensei? Is she in the Society?"
"No. Oswin's… freelance. She's kind of like… tech support."
"I'm the Oracle to her Nightwing."
"I have absolutely no idea what that means," Jenny shook her head.
"It means we're both hot and there's a very blatant undercurrent of sexual tension. And also that I can't walk and you can do a lot of fancy acrobatics."
"Of course it does," said Jenny, disinterested, crossing her arms and standing behind Oswin as she placed little, black stones on the board.
"What information are you after, Zero-sensei?" Oni asked.
"A meteor came down in the bay at some point in the last month. Glows bright red and potentially deadly. I thought it might have passed under the nose of the Society; I was commissioned to retrieve it."
"By who?"
"Nice try," she said. She wasn't going to tell him that she was under Pasznoxo's thumb. Maybe he was playing a friendly game of Go with Oswin, but Jenny certainly wouldn't put him down as a trustworthy confidant. He was a thief, after all, and a violent one at that. The moniker 'Oni' had a very bloody history associated with it, even if it didn't already bear its mythic connotations. There was a reason he had it, after all, just like there was a reason she was Zero. "Do you know about it, or not?"
"Maybe," he said, "I'll have to think about it. You're not thinking about your moves very closely, are you?" he directed a question at Oswin.
"Carefully enough," she said, "I think very quickly. Y'know, they could've used a mesh like that to fix my leg. It would be perfect for holding damaged bones together."
"Or you could just reprogram yourself," Jenny muttered.
"Or Flek could have amputated both of them to begin with," Oswin complained, "If I'd been anywhere else at the time, they would have taken them both and replaced them with cybernetics, and I'd be all the better for it. A word of advice: don't date an idealistic doctor who thinks she has a right to make decisions about your body when you're unconscious after trying to kill yourself. Of course, Oswin being comatose certainly means she wants to be stuck with useless, mangled limbs for the rest of her existence…" She monologued while quickly moving the stones around the board; Oni was right about her hardly paying attention.
"Have you had a chance to think about it yet?" Jenny asked Oni coolly.
"Why? So that you'll leave before I can finish my game?" he nodded at the board. Jenny narrowed her eyes. How long would it take for one of them to win?
"…You'd really want cybernetic legs?"
"Why not? You had a cybernetic hand, Jenny-chan."
"Don't call me-"
"Jen-chan?" Oswin flashed her a grin, which was met with a glare, "I love it when you do that." Not even looking at the board, Oswin placed one of her stones in a new position. Jenny was sure that the black stones – Oswin's – were the ones given to the player at a disadvantage.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You are, you're being all serious. It's sexy."
"If you're such a big fan of removing and replacing broken things, why are you always on Martha's side when it comes to my thumb?"
"Jenny-chan, if you actually rested your cute, little thumb like the good Dr Jones told you to do, it would be fine by now. But you keep hitting things. Now, if you'd had almost your entire hand blown off by a bomb… you'll notice that when it was burned off by alien acid-blood, like your eyes, we didn't try to save them at all. Which I actually argued with Flek about, not that you'll remember; she thought it'd be better off if we left you blind." Jenny hadn't known about that, but was very glad of her eyes being replaced, even if growing them back had hurt tremendously.
It surprised her so much she took out her phone – which was, frankly, ancient technology compared to the OCF she was still wearing – and texted Clara Ravenwood: Oswin just told me Flek wanted to leave me without any eyes after they were gouged out that time. After she did, though, an alert came up that the Helix interface she had downloaded after Oswin had created it some weeks ago had finished updating – and more.
Chemical traces identical to the chemical traces GEORGIA was set to scan for detected in your immediate vicinity, Major Young, it read. Outside of her annoyance that Oswin had programmed Helix to also call the ship by the name she had given it (though she did like that she was now being called 'Major Young'), she was also highly intrigued. If traces of the meteor they were scanning were present in Oni's safehouse, that meant the meteor definitely had been there, and recently. But he would notice if she started sneaking around, and she didn't really want to get her head crushed.
Clara replied: You'd still be hot even if you didn't have any eyes.
Jenny changed the subject: What are you having for lunch? I've had a MOUNTAIN of sushi.
Speech bubbles popped up, and within a second she had a response: Just a sandwich. Then: Sally's here bothering me.
Jenny wrote: If you tell her how much you want to sleep with her she's bound to leave you alone. Clara sent back the flat-expression emoji and Jenny smiled to herself.
"Did Clara say anything interesting?" Oswin interrupted her. Jenny put her phone away; she'd missed a fair few of Oswin's moves.
"Just that Sally's annoying her."
"I think Sally goes out of her way to be annoying."
"Really."
"Yeah. It's pretty messed up, right? I mean, who would go out of their way to be annoying on purpose?"
Jenny glared at the back of Oswin's head and said stiffly, "I have absolutely no idea what kind of person would do that."
"A lunatic, probably."
"I'd certainly say so."
"Aww," Oswin turned to her and laughed, "You know you love me really, Jen-chan. That's, uh, checkmate, by the way."
"What?" asked Oni.
"Checkmate," she repeated.
"It's not chess, Oswin," Jenny told her.
"Whatever. All your liberties are gone, you're surrounded, I win," Oswin nodded at the board. Oni could not believe his eyes. It had barely been ten minutes, and Oswin had triumphed. She gave him what Jenny knew to be her sweetest and most attractive smile, leaning on her elbow on the table, "Can I have my mesh now, Oni-san? And the information lover-girl's after."
"The meteor," Jenny reiterated. Oni nodded at Oswin and waved his hand in direction of the mesh. Oswin stood up carefully and then shuffled across the room again, while Jenny turned all of her attention on Oni. "What happened to it?"
"I only heard rumours," he said, "And then government salvage boats fished it out of the water and that's the last I've heard of any space debris."
"You're lying. I know it was here recently. It could still be here for all I know."
"I'm lying?" And then he stood up, threatening her, towering nearly two feet above.
"Uh… Jenny?" Oswin asked unsurely nearby.
"Yes, lying. It could be used to make a bomb, it could blow up Tokyo – is that really what you want?"
Oni laughed coldly, "A bomb? You're naïve, Zero-sensei."
"So you do know about it."
"Fine. I was only trying to save your life…"
"I can save my own life, thanks."
"The government took it. I stole it. And then sold it on. That's what we do here."
"Who bought it, and what for?"
"Why should I tell you? It's not anywhere you'll be able to get it, so why bother? There are some things even you couldn't steal. But I do wonder whether stealth is your only real asset – how well would you do in a fight?"
"Jenny," Oswin hissed at her.
"I'll decide what I can and can't steal and who I can and can't fight," she said, crossing her arms.
"You haven't even got two good hands."
"Just tell me what happened to the meteor and I'll be on my way. No need for you to do something stupid and hurt yourself." She had insulted him which, despite horrifying Oswin, did the trick: it made him decide that he was going to pummel her, perhaps even try to kill her. And when he decided that, it meant he also didn't feel any risk in bragging about who he had sold the meteor debris to. The thing Oni didn't know was that he was outmatched.
"Nobukane Tanabe brought a group and bought it. Nobukane Tanabe, an aniki of Tanabe-kai."
"So, what? I'm supposed to be scared of a mobster now?"
"A mobster!? Tanabe-kai has been the biggest yakuza syndicate in Japan for almost two-hundred years, Zero-sensei," he laughed at her again, "Nobukane is noted for being particularly violent. Even more violent than me."
"I'm not scared of the yakuza, and I'm even less scared of you." She smiled at him. That really ticked him off, and without so much as a cliché, now you're in for it, he swung one of his enormous fists straight at her face, a lot faster than she had been expecting. Perhaps he had experience boxing, he was famous for his punching. But while he was fast, Jenny was faster.
As Oswin tried to make herself as small as possible on the other side of the room, Sprite also frightened and hiding behind her, Jenny dodged Oni's first punch and dropped into a roll on the floor – she was going for the knife collection. His massive foot came down next and almost succeeded in crushing her ankle, but just like he had lost to Oswin at Go in a matter of minutes, he was destined to lose to Jenny even quicker. It was simply a matter of avoiding his blows for long enough that she could get her hands on a weapon, and a sai happened to be the first thing she grabbed. While it was better for stabbing than slashing, she could definitely use it. Oni had barely seen the glint of the blade before she dove to the floor, between his legs, and tore savagely at the back of his knee. He wailed and she sharply kicked him in the same place where she'd just slashed the muscles to pieces, and there was a sickening crunch until he toppled forwards onto the floor, crashing and bringing a table down with him.
"What the fuck!?" Oswin shouted at her, but Jenny had already dropped the sai and was hastening to her feet, using her OCF to contact the emergency services.
"Door, now," Jenny ordered her.
"No! He's going to die, that's his femoral artery you chopped! He'll bleed out within minutes!"
"Os-chan," Jenny retaliated, "Do you know how quickly an ambulance response is here? It's the most advanced city in the human empire at this point. They'll get here less than thirty seconds after I call them, so let's go. And by the way, Oni-san, if you dare warn Nobukane to expect me, I'll come back and make sure both your legs end up in an even worse state than hers," meaning Oswin, "Now let's go."