Wearing the Cape 5: Ronin Games (27 page)

“I’ve been to a few extrareality worlds in my years of wearing the cape: the odd but pretty mundane Littleton Pocket, the
[redacted]
, the cinematically superheroic Universe Alpha, Oz. The weirdest place I have ever been was the
[redacted]
. Learning what it really was didn’t make it less weird.”

Hope Corrigan, aka Astra (An excerpt from heavily redacted files available in the Sentinels Historical Library.)

The underworld is a pretty quiet place when nobody’s taking their fight there—which might have been the point. We found ourselves standing on the “frozen” pond again, the purple hills mostly invisible behind the ghost-shapes of the crater and the still-standing buildings of Golden Gai. The stars were beautiful, something I hadn’t had a chance to appreciate before.

With no sign of nosy golden koi anywhere.

“Okay, well?” The fan was rock-steady in Jacky’s hand, but her other hand was full of one of her Vulcan-made superscience pistols. It hummed softly, reminding me of Cutter.

I turned in a full circle. Nope, no fish. “Now we find Kitsune.”

Kochi had told us that in this kind of extrareality realm the topography, landscape, even directions and distances tended to be purely metaphorical things. Listening to our description, she’d posited that the pond above the ice represented a kind of “lobby” or central access. The sleepers below the ice, each with their accompanying silver koi, could be actual sleepers or could just as easily be representations of guests the godfish had placed into their own little pocket realms. Even through the “fog” that was the projection of the crater floor, we could see dozens of them drifting in the slow currents.

How long had they been here?

I shook my head and tried to clear my thoughts. According to Kochi, trying to use Ozma’s magic compass in here was one risk too many—but she believed that I might be able to locate Kitsune through my “special link.” It was worth a shot.

“Well?”

I couldn’t help the smile. “I’m concentrating…” So, which Kitsune to focus on? The white seven-tailed fox? The one I had always met at the tree? I tried for only a moment, gave that up and settled on a young Yoshi Miyamoto. That was how he’d introduced himself to me that night in The Fortress, when he’d charmed me with romantic poetry and then stuck around after the shooting to help injured club patrons.

It seemed ridiculous that after everything I’d still think of Kitsune as Yoshi, but there it was.

And… I pointed. “Look down.” We hadn’t visibly moved, but looking straight down beneath our feet we could see a sleeping Kitsune. He wasn’t the white fox-spirit, but he wasn’t exactly Yoshi either; androgynously beautiful, he (she?) looked enough like Yoshi to be a brother or sister. Fine white hair drifting in the sub-surface currents, seeming to caress his own hypnotically focused silver godfish.

Jacky rested her gun on her shoulder. “So much for finding him alone.”

“Maybe. But Kochi said everything here is likely metaphorical—maybe the godfish with each sleeper just means that it’s aware of them and linked to their dreamworlds? The shoal of gold koi we talked to last time might have been just a metaphor for the kami’s attention.”

“
Hold on
,” Shell murmured. “
I’m sending these images to everyone. FYI, the difference in time-rates is really annoying—you guys are taking
forever
. And they agree. Took ten minutes of arguing, but Ozma says that this place is like the fairy realms. It should respond to sufficiently strong will
.”

“Well that makes it easier.” Jacky holstered her gun and knelt, putting her free hand on the “ice.” Which wasn’t ice, it was a
metaphorical barrier
. I had one second to realize what she was doing and grab her shoulder before the ice gently softened and we sank into the pond—which turned out to be air. Air that supported us like water but was just fine to breathe.

A vampire’s will is a weapon of its own.

The silver koi didn’t so much as twitch as we sank down beside Kitsune, but I still held my breath when I almost brushed it. What would happen if I poked a metaphor? I had the sudden and insane urge to put my hand between Kitsune and his watcher-fish. What would happen?

I crushed the urge. When you have no idea what will happen if you do something, and you don’t have to do it,
don’t
.

“He’s kind of cute this way,” Jacky observed. Kitsune’s black yakuza business suit waved around him in the current, his narrow tie floating almost vertical above his chest, moving with each sleeping breath. “I say we just grab him and go.”

“Works for me.” I carefully took his hand, eyes on the godfish. Still nothing.

Jacky held up the fan. “You first—I don’t want to accidentally leave you without this.”

I nodded, closed my eyes and took a calming breath. Ozma had said—and Kochi agreed—that leaving would be as easy as entering; I could click my heels three times and think “There’s no place like home.” Well not in those
words
, just focus hard on returning to the crater.

I
really
wished for that crater, opened my eyes. No crater.

So much for the easy way.

Kitsune was
stuck
.

At least that was the professional opinion of our experts. Anchored was probably a better word, but it was their considered opinion that he was stuck in a dreaming sub-pocket realm of his own and so not in the “lobby” where we could slip him out the door.

Meanwhile every move we made was making me
twitch
; I felt like Indiana Jones, staring at a golden idol sitting on a booby-trapped pedestal and wondering if tomb raiding was really a good career choice. Because any second now we were going to do something stupid and get squashed by a huge rolling boulder.

Think of Tokyo. Ashtrays
. If it wasn’t for what Agent Inoue had said, I’d walk away and take my chances with a tree—which, just from the feels, I was pretty sure loved me. Thirty-two million people I’d never met said I couldn’t. Jacky was right—I wanted to save everybody, ever.

Neither of us said anything as we waited while Ozma and Kochi conferred some more—even Shell was keeping communication to a minimum just in case. Opposite me, the “water” around us made Jacky’s longer hair float like jet-black seaweed in the warm current, giving her the look of an angel of death as she floated over our sleeping and beautifully kissable Prince Charming.

And whoa—where did all
that
come from?
Obviously from remembering that I was kinda-sorta
engaged
to this…this…
arrghh
. This was so
not
helping.

“There’s Plan
V
,” Jacky said quietly and I jumped. “There’s always Plan V—if I can’t shoot them I vamp them.”

“That’s—” I swallowed my automatic denial. It was risky as hell, but it was why Jacky had come. And it might work. Maybe. If Jacky forced Kitsune awake, then that would bring him to “our side” of this pocket and we could drop out of this weird place with him. If we moved fast. Really,
really
fast. Maybe.

I gave everyone on the other side of Shell’s relayed link a chance to weigh in with objections or better ideas.

“They’ve got nothing.” I could hear the very real fear in my BF’s voice.

Sometimes when you have no idea what will happen if you do something, you have to do it anyway.

“Do it.” Realizing I was still holding Kitsune’s hand, I let go.

And looked away. To watch the fish, really. But my super-duper hearing worked just fine here, and I heard Jacky move, heard her take off her shades and loosen his collar. And bite. And somehow I was holding Kitsune’s hand again. Watching Jacky, who had just become totally fascinating. I could…

I let go again, pulled back and thought about
anything
else. The fish. The nearest drifting sleepers, beautiful in silk court robes. The question of how we could
breathe
this stuff that was thick enough to float in—
anything
but the pull of Jacky’s mind. Seconds crawled by like minutes and—the pull snapped and was gone.

And Kitsune’s eyes were still closed.

Now
I hissed. “Jacky! What the hell
was
that?” When she looked up I flinched and looked away.

“What was what?” She only sounded frustrated—she had no idea.

“I could
feel
you! You know, like when you’ve bitten me. You were in my head!”

“When I—” Her eyes went wide. “I couldn’t pull him out of it—it was like trying to wake up a drunk halfway to a coma. You felt it?”

I nodded, almost choked on the stuff we shouldn’t be able to breathe. “Wait—” It could
work
. “What if you vamp
me
?
”

“What?”

“What if you vamp
me
instead? Send me into his dream? I’ve obviously got this—” I searched for a word “—
thing
with him. He’s been in my mind, or at least in my dreams. Which is where we just connected, right? In
his
mind? We need him, now!”

Jacky’s eyes turned dark, hooded. She wasn’t buying it.

“If we can’t do this—” I chose my words carefully. “If we can’t get him out of this, things are going to get real bad for people. If we can’t do this, then Plan B is to talk to the fish. Close the fan, say hello, and hope we can make a deal. Because we can’t leave without Kitsune.”

“I can always vamp you and send you home and talk to fishy myself.”

“I’d come back.” Absurdly, I was grinning back at her black scowl. “You know I would. And look, you won’t even need to bite me—it’s only been a few days, I should still be plenty susceptible to your vampy powers.”

“And if I can get you in but can’t bring you out?”

“Then you can talk to the godfish.”

Still no move from the silver fish watching Kitsune—I was beginning to think the individual fish really
were
purely representational—physical markers of the godfishes’ awareness, and the awareness of the silver koi was only of their sleepers. If I went in, would it be aware of me?

Did it matter? If we couldn’t sneak me in, we were talking to it anyway. “Should I be touching him? Will that help?”

Jacky sighed and gave up. “A Sleeping Beauty kiss might be appropriate. Yes, just—stretch out where I can see both of you at once. Try and picture a mental scene of your own. Something natural, with both of you in it.”

Okay. I could do that. Moving in and carefully stretching out along Kitsune’s side, I tried to imagine a more natural scene than this. The tree? Nope,
not
a good idea.
We’re in Burnham Park, watching the boats on the lake
. I could see it; we’d just eaten lunch and had stretched out in the shade to drowse in the summer heat and think about nothing at all. A warm wind pushed my hair in my face and I tucked it away, shifting to rest my head on his shoulder.

I forgot about Jacky and just dozed. The day was too beautiful to do anything else, and—

“What are you doing here?”

I stopped running and stared up at the astonishingly beautiful—and frowning—lady. “Shinji ran this way. I think he’s hiding in the cave.”

“Do you?” The lady laughed and sat on a fallen tree, arranging her fine yukata—made of embroidered silk and fancier than anyone in the village had ever seen—and watching the woods around us. “And who’s Shinji?”

That was silly. “Shinji is— Shinji is—” I didn’t know.

The lady nodded. “And who are you?”

“I’m—” I didn’t know that, either. I burst into tears.

“Oh, well, we can’t have that. Come with me.” Standing up again, she offered her hand. I took it. Did she know where I was supposed to be?

Stepping over twigs and brush so that the skirts of her yukata made no noise, mindful of my much smaller legs, the lady led me down the wooded hill. We didn’t walk very far to reach the open grass, long and waving in the afternoon breeze, and saw the village.