As good as her word, we were soon ensconced in a hotel room, my arm wrapped around her waist while we both sat on the bed. I had taken a shower the moment we entered the room, and while Akiko was still dressed, I was just in my shorts, the only part of my clothing that hadn’t been covered with gore. I had rinsed the armor off, including my miraculously undamaged hat, and now it was hanging all over the room to dry.

She had looked at my garb curiously when I got out of the shower and started to peel off her top, but I had shrugged and just flopped down, wrapping an arm around her. I needed contact, not sex.

“I assumed you didn’t want to be around my family?” Akiko asked.

I nodded, “Yeah. I mean, the J-coin was nice and all, but I am getting a bit tired of being led around by the nose. I am done with that, and I get the feeling that simply showing my face would be enough to get Noboru’s hamster running on its little wheel. Your father is a real piece of work.”

She nodded, “I am not going to apologize for him, his little plot caught me by surprise as well, but our clan is not exactly the most powerful supernatural group in Japan, let alone the world. We have our strengths, but shadow illusions are rather limited. They work fine when dealing with humans, but against creatures like the Oni… Even I have had to hop to their tune more than once.”

I nodded, scooting down to the end of the bed to start unlacing her shoes. She was wearing crimson silk, Nehru-collar short-sleeved shirt, and skinny jeans, and I got the black running shoes and socks off in seconds, starting to rub her feet with my thumbs.

She half-closed her eyes, and said, “If you are trying to seduce me you are doomed to success.” I chuckled a little.

“Not really. For the first time in a long time, I think I just want to talk and rub feet instead of instantly getting naked.”

She nodded, “I get it. I am not going to spout meaningless platitudes and dwell on the pain, and I know you need to get home soon to deal with the fallout. She was my friend too. I miss her, and I know you intend to do something about it. Would it be too much to ask what your plans are?”

I shook my head, “No, I am going to kill someone, and I want to do it without instantly hitting the DMA’s top ten villain list. You know how to do it, and I don’t.”

She smiled a little, “Despite what you may think, I have never been an assassin. I am a bounty hunter, and I’d like to think the ones I have had to kill deserved it. I am probably rationalizing, but I don’t hunt law enforcement, and you don’t get on Kjootoo or the Yakuza’s hit list by being a decent person.”

I nodded, “I get that, but the person I need to kill isn’t a decent person. Well, two people actually, but the second one is going to be a real challenge.”

She shrugged, “Are you sure you want to tell me about it? I mean, you already know you cannot trust me, I lured you into Kyoto, and you only have my and my father’s word that I didn’t know his plans.”

I started brushing my thumbs more firmly into the arches of her feet, brushing along her pads and then under her toes, and she sighed in apparent enjoyment. “Did you know or support his plans?”

She shook her head, “No, but you don’t know if I am lying.”

Akiko Theresa Shinasami (Kyokudai)

Kitsune 18%, class E(D)

Aspects: body, shadow

Power: 136

Conditions: 22 days until menses

Projected lifespan: 115 years barring mishap. Current age: 26

healthy, relaxing, mournful, interested, candid

Powers: Shadow melding, shadow walking, shaded weapon

I smiled slightly, “What makes you say that?”

She shook her head, “I have lied to you before.”

I nodded, “Yes you have. But right now I am rubbing your feet. I know you are a kitsune and not a metahuman, and if I concentrate hard enough I can see the fox in your spirit. I know you are genuinely sad because of Lauren, and trying to be honest with me, and if I tried to push things towards sex you would be fine with that. I do have to ask though… The night before last, that was you, right? Not a dream?”

She nodded, “Yes, although you were sort of half out of it. It was pretty amazing, and one of these days I want to find out what you are like when you are fully awake. It hurt a little, you are… bigger than I expected, but we both just healed from getting torn to pieces, it was totally worth it.”

I nodded, “Yeah, amazing was definitely the word for it. I don’t know what to expect now.”

She smiled again, curling her toes against my fingers. “You know I am not like Vectress, I cannot just surrender my will to someone else, but I would be happy to call you my friend, maybe more in time.”

I snorted, “Oh, believe me, I get it. My life is not some harem story where every girl I get intimate with suddenly loses all will and personality and instantly becomes my happy, obedient slave. I will take what I can get, and what you have to offer is definitely worth pursuing. Heck, even what Lauren was offering had its sacrifice, one I was more than willing to pay if that’s what it took if we had the chance.”

She looked at me in surprise, “Wait, you didn’t…”

I shook my head, “No. We were going to, but that wasn’t what she needed right away.”

She sighed, leaning back against the top of the bed and pushing her feet more into my hands, I obliged by massaging them thoroughly. An unfinished medical degree had to be good for something.

“You are almost too good and noble for words.” She said.

I chuckled a little, “No, I just play that on TV. Honestly, my only real virtue is patience. I used her to masturbate while I dreamed about playing with Caelo, and then while we were getting ready to head out I made her strip her top and show her tits and talk dirty to send the video to Aquantis and tease her. My armor is black with gold highlights instead of shining for a reason. I am a very bad person. I just knew that she needed to feel… controlled more than she needed to get laid, so I used that entirely for my own benefit. I even got off on spanking her.”

She chuckled, “Did she get off on your spanking her?”

I nodded, “Yeah, afterward she said she came half the times I swatted her butt. I mean, I hoped for it, but I was sort of withholding sex on purpose, because she wanted it, to show her I had the power.”

She nodded, “And that was exactly what she needed. That’s why I said noble, not chaste. You gave her what she needed first and then worried about your own needs. In my case, when we were wrapped up in your wings, and you were half-asleep and exhausted, you still made sure I had what I needed first.”

I nodded, “Maybe I just want the reputation for being an amazing lover so no girl would ever hesitate to jump me.” I changed the subject, getting a little uncomfortable with the praise. “You said I was just human.”

She nodded, “It’s a complicated story. The world a long time ago was a very different place, full of enchantment. There were people here already, enchanted people or maybe just animals, the stories are a little unclear, but then humans showed up. Some people say they were ancient astronauts, others say Adam and Eve, but however they did it, they showed up and were...changed to fit the world.”

I nodded, “Sounds fair. I heard about some kind of a barrier being put up against magic?”

She nodded, “Not all the creatures here were nice, or even as tolerable as lions and bears. Humans arrived and started to tame the world, but whatever the change was, either magic or technology or something else, made them incredibly powerful. The Fae liked to say they were here long before humans were, and they were probably right, but humans showed up and a lot of them became pretty much gods.”

I nodded and she continued. “Eventually, they found a way to lock out the really bad stuff into the chaos lands, the region where magic comes from. Humans had freely bred with the various species here, the near humans, fey, and even monsters in some cases, not always voluntarily. One of the species they bred with was resistant to magic and very prolific. Most of the humans today are from that union mixed with a bunch of other stuff.”

“So when the veil was relaxed, all those little foreign bits started activating again?” I asked.

She nodded, “When the blood of the original creatures is thin enough, other things can peek out and manipulate magic. It’s a bit random, though, and tied to their creativity. You seem to be able to detect if the primal blood is thin enough, but metahumans activate the gifts of whatever their ancient forebears bred with. That’s why metahumans tend to come in types like elements or single-role powers.”

I smiled a little, “And parahumans?”

She shrugged, “As far as I can see, you don’t have any odor of the native types. You are like a throwback to before the blending. Basically, full, 100% imported human. Proteus doesn’t like to admit it, but some of those they tested didn’t register as metahumans despite having powers. Proteus has made some of them disappear, and some I have helped to hide. Even shifters and vampires show up on their tests as metahumans, but more than a few humans can use powers of some kind and just don’t register on their tests.”

I smiled and leaned forward to gently twist her right foot, stretching out the muscles and ligaments with my fingers. “Normal Humans don’t generally have wings.”

She nodded, gasping a little and then relaxing to a flop on the bed. “That’s an aspect of being in a high magic environment. Some of them grew wings and were called angels even though they had no relations to divine messengers. Some grew Gigantic and were called Giants or Titans, and some were just tough as hell or could become so, like Beowulf and Cuchulain. Some of them could do magic, like Merlin, and a lot of them became magical bards, like Taliesin. All of them lived an awfully long time, around a thousand years, and usually gained a couple of abilities at least, in your case the ability to create magical substances and your wings.”

I switched to the other foot and repeated the treatment, and ignored the fact that apparently getting totally relaxed also turned her on something fierce. Her scent was in my nostrils as usual, but I was still depressed. “So basically this is it, right? No more weird and unexpected abilities or forms?”

She shook her head, “Honestly I have no idea. That’s about everything our history has preserved. If you want to know more, you’d have to talk to someone who actually has contact with things that have lived long enough to remember. Our history has a long duration, and we have both the spoken and the written word on scrolls, but even though our lives are long, they don’t even come close to the lifespans of other stuff, like some of the monsters.”

I pulled her feet up and kissed her toes, smiling a little. “Thank you. I am not happy, but you distracted me, and I appreciate it. I won’t have my phone on for a little while, but if I come back, is there a way to get you without your father noticing?”

She nodded, “I was actually going to head out to the gulf for a while to visit Caelo. Someone has to tell her. If you would like to come with me, I can use the jet to get us to National Airport, we can lay over for a day so you can check on Windfall. Normally, I’d let Vectress know I was there… but I guess if I let them know we are coming you can fly us there?”

I nodded, it should be fun and fairly distracting, and the only person so far I’d flown was Lauren herself, but if I was going to move Alison and Toby to safety, we might have to get a boat instead. “No shadow walking?” I asked.

She shook her head, “Not unless it’s a life or death thing. The Shadowlands are incredibly dangerous, especially if you use them for a long trip. I only did it before because Chikau would have died if I didn’t, but living creatures in the shadowlands put off a vibe every single dead thing there can feel. To get you there, I needed to burn off two crystals to keep us hidden for the whole trip.”

“So who is so horrible that they are on your hit list?” She asked curiously as I started tugging her socks back on, and then tied her shoes for her. Oddly enough, she seemed to enjoy the attention as much as she had me rubbing her feet.

“First is a man named Ferron Grumman. He is a venture capitalist, which means he is protected. Second, is another man named Cadmium. He is going to be hard to find, and even harder to get to. The last one? Well, I don’t know if he has to die or not, but if he does, I will let you know.”

The last man that might have to die would be the All-American hero, Commander Freedom himself.

I thought about Akiko’s explanation. It seemed… sketchy, but it was the closest thing to a reasonable explanation I had ever heard.

I bought into the Adam and Eve explanation myself. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was a pure metaphor and could have meant almost anything, as could the temptation of the serpent. Even in the Bible Adam and Eve’s offspring Cain meeting and marrying ‘the peoples of the land of Nod’ was considered established. Were these people the locals after they had been transplanted here?

It was an interesting question, and also would explain why I could detect them, but it still felt incredibly incomplete. Supposedly Adam and Eve, and their offspring like Methuselah, lived for damned near a thousand years. Many of the other creation stories were similar. Some people were created by deities, established on Earth, and expected to thrive here while meeting and marrying the locals.

When she heard I was going after Grumman, Akiko sounded oddly excited. “I already have plans in place to deal with him. I am a bounty hunter, not an assassin, but when I found out what was going on with Vectress, I wanted to target him so badly. Not to kill him, but to ruin him.”

I had thought that her clan was hard up, but I had only seen a fraction of it. They had some serious wealth, and I began to understand why the Oni had savagely suppressed them. The Clan of the Fox had a private aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 10x, which probably cost upwards of seventy-five million dollars. They must have been a goldmine for the Yakuza Oni clan, who likely brought in billions each year.

“You know,” I told Akiko as I sat down across from her. “I just realized something. The Shakoti-Gumi have had your clan under their thumb for what, decades?”

She shook her head, “Try centuries. They have their own business interests, of course, but they have been draining upwards of 80% of our income as well as occasionally murdering and raping us since about the twelfth century. Our business efforts are not entirely legitimate, but Takahashi is a well-known and well-respected medical technology conglomerate that has been a front for their money laundering since the end of the Great War.”

I nodded, “And now, between the four of us, we have more or less shattered their leadership. I am sure that The House of the Fox will not let them regain their prominence any time soon?”

She nodded and narrowed her eyes a little, “I can see where you are going there. Yes, my father’s gift was a pittance for the help you provided, but the fox clan is weird about debt. We owe you, but if you want it in money a lot of us would be honor bound to try and find a way to rip you off. It’s a lot safer to talk about favors, even if those favors are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”

I shook my head and smiled, “No, I was actually thinking of taking it out in trade for your delicious body.”

She looked startled, “Umm… Seriously? I like to think I am pretty, but I already told my father I wouldn’t be used as a token in political games. I like you very much, but I am not going to get married to tie people to the clan.”

I laughed, “No, I am not serious at all, I am just...starting to feel a little better and wanted to flirt with you. I just realized that I am probably going to need a lot more money than I can earn easily without joining a corporation or something, but I have things I can offer if I can find the right middleman. Takahashi has both legal and Quasi-legal avenues, And I could probably make both of us an awful lot of money, especially if Takahashi is already known for producing medical technology.”

I shrugged, “First, I want to know how your brother put me in a ring.”

She sighed. “Any creature that has enough mystical energy, or essence, can be trapped inside a vessel, like a ring or a bottle. Pure spirit creatures like Djinn, Ghosts, and the like can be trapped involuntarily, but to do it with a creature that has a physical body, they have to be both strong enough spiritually, and they have to agree to it. Chikau tricked you into agreeing to help in any way you could, and it was enough for the old magic to work, but you are still physical enough that it wouldn’t have been able to last very long, especially with how weak the vessel was. You were fighting against its hold, and in another day, maybe two, you would have destroyed the vessel.”

I nodded, that conformed to my own estimates, and she continued, fastening her safety belt as the lights in the luxurious plane turned on. “If he had used something stronger, like a warded bottle, it could have held you for several weeks or even a month, but apparently the point was to get you into the Shuten-Doji’s hands, not to imprison you permanently. That and if he had a big, ornately-gemmed and warded bottle, covered with runes and with a seal of Solomon on it, you might have been suspicious.”

I nodded, “I care about you, but if he ever tries to do that again, I will find a bottle to put him in instead. I don’t have the magic to do it, so I’d have to content myself with making sure that the pieces were small enough to fit.”

She nodded gravely, “Believe me, I understand, and I am pretty sure he does too. I wouldn’t blame you for doing it either, it’s one of the most rotten tricks imaginable. That’s why I was more than happy to meet you outside of the hold. I trust you, you have been nothing but honest, but there was a worry that in your grief over Vectress you might choose to take it out on the closest target, the Takahashi clan.”

I nodded, “If I hadn’t had a night and a day’s worth of flying over China to get some of it out of my system, I might have. Not you, of course, but I was, and still am, pretty messed up. She trusted me to keep her safe, and I failed her in the worst possible way.”

She raised an eyebrow. “She was a Class E, did you tell her to stay in the battle?”

I shook my head, “No, I expected her to go home. But she thought the reserve camp would be safe. I should have ordered her to leave. She would have if I had done so, and the only reason she was even there in the first place was that she was bringing us, and thought she could help with Evac.”

She nodded, “How did she get killed?”

“There were four of the giant command Kaiju. Apparently, each time the voids open, they go to a different part of the chaos realms. This time, the creatures were immune to heat, and Commander Freedom was fucking around with one of them using his heat rays. So I helped him kill the one he was working on, but he kept dicking around. We got three more, but I was still getting used to fighting on the wing, and one of them got far enough away to hit the camp while we were screwing around.”

She nodded, “And where was Galactica during this?”

I shrugged, “I have no idea. I intended to pick up a guy that could launch bombs, but I never had the chance, and the invasion ended quickly, so I suspect she might have ferried him around instead. The air attackers were weak and sparse, and from what I understand her job usually involves keeping them corralled. Mostly the stuff was pretty weak, I was even able to solo the last Kaiju myself while Freedom headed out to deal with whatever it is he does to close the portals.”

“So, while the Camp, that was filled with class D and Class E noncombatants and the wounded, was getting attacked by the most dangerous enemy on the field, he left you, a class C, to handle it on your own while he flew off to deal with the portals? And he never even tried to stop the invasion early, if he could have?”

I nodded, “Yes, that’s exactly what happened. He can fly at what, Mach 7 or even higher? Enough to escape Earth’s gravity well, at least. I am lucky to push three hundred miles an hour, and yet he was barely ahead of me when I was trying to intercept the monster. The man is able to punch a mile into the earth’s crust, and yet he was stopped by a bunch of worms my wings could chop up easily.”

She sighed, “So basically one of three things happened. The first one is that you are a hell of a lot more dangerous than a class A, which seems really unlikely. The second is that Commander Freedom was intentionally trying to interfere with the raid and get as many people killed as possible.”

I nodded, “That’s what I figured. I know I am not a city-wide disaster waiting to happen, even with my potions. When I was flying across China, some guy took a pot shot at me with an old AA launcher and almost got me. The new stuff mounted in cities to protect against meta attacks could have slapped me down like a bug. What’s the third option?”

“That whoever you spoke to wasn’t Commander Freedom.”

I unsnapped my safety belt once the lights had gone out. I wasn’t going to walk around the cabin much, since even the extended overhead was too short for me to walk without crouching a little, and looked at her curiously. “I hadn’t considered that. How is that possible?”

Suddenly Caelo was sitting in front of me. She smiled cutely, and I felt a sudden rush of desire for her. “Like this.” She spoke, and her voice sounded… different from how it had in my dreams. After a moment I could sort of see through it, and realized it was Akiko, cloaked in a way similar to what the Onis used. “Illusions are very easy. It could have been someone else that looked like him.” She said, and the illusion faded.

I nodded, “Yes, but I sort of have the ability to see through them to some extent. I didn’t see through whatever he was doing.”

She nodded, “Did you expect him to be there? Was he doing what Commander Freedom usually does?”

I nodded, “Yeah, although when he spoke he was all dude this, and shit and bitch that. I have seen him on TV and he was always very precise and old-school. He’s been around a long time, but he has never, ever missed an invasion.”

She nodded, “Was he using laser eyes, or did he just look like he was using laser eyes?”

I thought about it for a moment and then switched seats to sit next to her. The seats were very comfortable and spacious, if a little short for me, and she smiled as I lifted up the armrest and pulled her legs over to rest on my lap. “I honestly don’t know. I saw it, and it had basically no effect at all, but I figured that was because the creatures were almost immune to heat damage. When I cut the armor off and opened up the carapace, he flew inside and tore it up and then came out when it was dead, so he’s pretty strong, at least. Then again, when I got inside of one I was able to practically blow it up just by mincing it inside and opening my wings.”

She nodded, “Did you get a chance to analyze him?”

I sighed and shook my head, resting my hands on her knees. “I should have done it while he was where Lauren died, but I wasn’t thinking straight, I just had to get out of there as fast as possible.”

She nodded, “So it might not have been a phantasm, it might have just been a simple light illusion. Phantasms can be broken with an effort of will, but light illusions are just that, images made of light. They don’t feel real or have any real effects like a phantasm, but you are actually seeing the real light manipulated, so a simple effort of will won’t dispel them. Do you know anyone that has the ability to manipulate light, can fly and has at least class C strength and toughness?”

I nodded, “Yeah, Rainbow. But he’s dead.”

“Rainbow Warrior is dead?” She asked in surprise. “I know he was in trouble after he blew out a Harlem tenement last month, and might lose some sponsors, but he’s been in several invasions.”

I nodded, “Apparently he was fighting some elites and got jumped and killed. He was a coward, so that sort of surprised me, but I guess he got what was coming to him, even if I didn’t get to kill him personally as he deserved.”

She nodded slowly, “Are you sure?”

I nodded, “Yeah, Commander Freedom said he died a… hero…”

Motherfucker.