HEY, BROTHER!

HEY, BROTHER!

chapter 1

I

—

Their swords were drawn. Glittering flecks rose into the air, collecting there, waiting for the fateful moment of blood spray. There were five combatants against one. As for their opponent, the blade he should’ve drawn to counter them remained sheathed in a scabbard shaped like a crescent moon.

Look around. The location was an outlying area of the village of Satori in Sector Nine of the northern Frontier—the ruins of Castle Macula. There was a crowd ten or twenty deep composed of villagers from Satori, as well as the residents of the three neighboring villages of Elk, Tabi, and Fouran, folks who seemed from their style of dress to be instructors, travelers, bar girls, hookers and gigolos, performing troupe members, gamblers, outlaws, and peddlers of everything from booze and tobacco to medicines, swords and spears, synthetic meat, and motorized equipment, ad infinitum.

Just because this was a Frontier village, that didn’t mean they spent all day, every day, shooting and stabbing each other. So when something did happen, everyone in the village locked up their homes and shops and came running. However, there were so many vendors and tradespeople here, it almost seemed as if they’d come days ago and pitched camp. The proof lay behind the rows of onlookers, where roasted-mushroom vendors more suited to late autumn and dried-fish sellers had set up shops side by side, followed by the always popular kebob shops, peddlers of Frontier sweets, and a shop selling rainbow-colored beans, their gaudily illustrated tents lining both sides of the broad thoroughfare. It was just like a carnival boardwalk. In fact, among the crowd were children with eyes aglitter as they gnawed on candy sticks, while their fathers sipped syrupy narcotic drinks from paper cups. Though the smaller stalls had only started to set up two days earlier, people had been coming into the village of Satori for the past three days, and the cause of all this commotion traced back to a day earlier than that.

“Draw!” one of the men urged. He was a hulking fellow; his arms, legs, torso, and head all looked like they’d been assembled from enormous meatballs. Everything about him was round and plump, while his head and limbs were devoid of even a single hair. His adversary stood there as still as a shadow that’d taken form on a winter’s day, so he was practically begging when he continued, “C’mon, when I tell you to draw, draw already! If you don’t, we can’t have much of a sword fight.”

The man seemed truly in a bind, and his opponent finally responded, saying, “Come at me.” His right hand went for his scabbard, and then with a flash of prismatic light, his blade was drawn. More than the beauty of its glint, it was the subtle forcefulness with which the young man raised his arm that shook everyone.

“Son of a bitch!” snarled another of his opponents—a muscular giant of a man who was exactly how you’d expect a warrior to look. He sounded both disgusted and enraged. He had beady little eyes, a broad, flat nose, and terrible buckteeth. “You damn show-off. I’ll see to it you get yours!”

His boots made a determined step forward.

“Wait! Let me handle this,” said another young man, standing to the right of the first. He was the smallest of the bunch, and his weapon was a bit strange. From the back of his left hand, iron claws projected a foot and a half—he wore what the ninja had called a tekko-kagi, or “hand claw.” The average sword could cut down about four people before its blade was so coated with blood and fat that it was rendered useless. But with its row of four iron claws, the tekko-kagi could use its tips like a raptor’s talons to rip a foe open without the fat dulling the effect.

“No, I’ll do it,” the fat one said.

“No, me. I can’t stand pretty boys. You wouldn’t believe how many times they’ve screwed me over,” said the bucktoothed warrior, and he evidently meant it.

“Shut up. You geezers keep out of this!” the young man with the tekko-kagi shouted with so much force his body quaked, and then he kicked off the ground. An incredible jump sent him in excess of fifteen feet, and he swung his weapon down from where he’d raised it overhead. There was an unearthly, mellifluous sound, and then the young man flew back. It almost seemed miraculous, the way he followed exactly the same trajectory and landed back where he’d started the leap.

Cries of astonishment rose from the onlookers, while the warriors looked at each other.

“All of you can come at the same time,” the young man said. His voice had become hoarse.

Though his expression twisted with puzzlement for a second, the bald, fat man charged forward, saying, “I’m next!” From the way the bucktoothed warrior muttered, “The bastard’s done it again,” it seemed the fat man made a habit of stealing others’ places in line.

His charge, which made the very ground tremble, seemed little more than the mad rush of a fool.

“Is he an idiot?” the hoarse voice spat, and then the young man in black’s blade pierced the fat man’s thigh. The thrust felt odd. Though the blade sank into his foe, it didn’t feel like it was piercing muscle and fat. It was like jabbing a stick into a wad of rubber cement.

“Aaaaaaaaah!”

The fat man collided with him. From his face all the way down to his knee, the young man in black sank into the doughy flesh. At this point, it wasn’t the spectators who gasped in astonishment, but rather the other four warriors. No one had ever withstood the fat man’s charge. Merely planting one foot back a little, this young man hadn’t even been knocked off balance. However, if he were to remain like that, he was as sure to die of suffocation as an old-timer with a rice cake caught in his throat.

The fat man wrapped his pudgy arms around the young man’s back. At the same time, his face turned toward the sky. The young man’s left hand had pushed his chin up—and no sooner did the people see that than the massive white form was thrown backward with incredible force. Until he struck the ground within spitting distance of the crowd—having been knocked a good twenty-five feet—the other warriors forgot about launching their next attack.

“All right, now it’s my turn!” the bucktoothed man said, flourishing his sword once. His amazement at the young man’s strength had changed to delight. It thrilled him to the core to fight such a man.

“Just a moment,” someone called out. It was the last of the group—the fifth and final warrior. Framed by a head of red hair that seemed ablaze, her beautifully pale countenance also burned with determination as she gazed at the young man.

Everyone present had to wonder why a woman with looks that would have allowed her to lead a charmed life would choose to do this instead. In fact, they’d been pondering that ever since they first laid eyes on her. But now they realized something. She directed an unwavering stream of murderous intent at that inhumanly gorgeous young man. And on neatly drawing her sword, she struck a daunting pose. The woman seemed the most formidable adversary of the bunch.

“Well, I’ll be,” the hoarse voice rasped appreciatively. “What a surprise! This little lady’s tough!”

Extending her sword, the woman slowly raised it to shoulder height. Her left hand was outstretched, fingers curling. No sooner did the people notice that the woman’s blade was strangely straight and thin than it flashed out. The woman made a thrust; in fact, she made a dozen simultaneously. All of the silvery flashes appeared to pierce the young man who stood some ten feet away.

However, it was the woman who gasped with surprise. There wasn’t a mark on the young man, and she hadn’t felt the tip of her sword sinking into flesh. The gorgeous young man in black had moved with an alacrity that surpassed the lovely woman’s speed with the sword. What she’d pierced had been an afterimage he left behind. Her willow-thin eyebrows rose in anger. The murderous intent that billowed from her became an inferno. At that moment, the people realized the woman’s destiny. There was only one way this could play out.

The woman advanced.

But a tall figure stepped out in front of her. Their one-eyed leader.

“Out of my way, Mikado,” the woman told her colleague in a tone of pure spite.

“Call it a day. You can’t take him.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know exactly what I mean. I won’t have any of my people throwing their lives away.”

“I’ll never know unless I try.”

“Delilah,” the man said, his good eye reflecting the beautiful woman. Her blazing animosity suddenly vanished. “Watch real closely.”

And with that, there was a rasp of steel as the man they called Mikado drew the sword from the scabbard on his hip.

“Mikado?” the young man with the hand claw fairly gasped.

And the fat man, finally back on his feet, could only nod absentmindedly. “Mikado drew his blade,” he said, his voice shrill.

The world fell silent.

Mikado’s blade was low enough to touch the ground, while the young man squared off against him with his sword shoulder high and leveled at his opponent.

“Well, look at that,” a hoarse voice was heard to say.

Mikado had begun to shift his sword to a high position. At the same time, his face became as starkly white as paraffin.

Something was going to happen. Something outrageous. Sensing that, everyone waited with bated breath. The young man didn’t move. It was still as a holy winter’s night.

Without warning, Mikado lowered his blade. The color instantly returned to his complexion. Streaks of sweat rolled down his cheeks as if by popular consensus.

“I’m not ready to die yet,” Mikado creaked, squeezing a voice from his throat that was equally hoarse. It was like the sound of someone spitting up blood—or breathing their last. Turning to his compatriots, who were rooted to the ground in a daze, he said, “That’s about the size of it. He’s more than we can handle. We’re done here.”

A relieved murmur went through the crowd of spectators.

Mikado turned to face the young man once more. His opponent had already sheathed his blade and turned his back to the man. “Hold up,” he said.

The man in black halted.

“Why didn’t you cut us down? You don’t seem the sort to let somebody walk away after drawing on you.”

The young man began to walk away. Over one broad shoulder, a voice asked, “Why did you come at me one at a time?”

There was no way to describe the expression that wafted across the faces of Mikado and his people.

“Would you at least give us your name?” Mikado asked. “I’m Mikado, and the girl’s Delilah. The fatty’s Tong, the runt’s Enba, and the first guy you dealt with is Galil.”

They had their answer soon enough.

“D.”

The color drained from the faces of all five. “You’re—” one of them started to say. Or perhaps it was all of them. After that, the warriors said no more, merely watching the young man walk off. Though the wind gusted past him, the murderous intent it should’ve borne had already died out.

—

II

—

D didn’t stop until he reached the black ten-foot sphere that loomed near the center of the clearing. The lustrous sheen of its surface as it reflected the sunlight told him it was metallic. The stone walls and rounded columns scattered around it, as well as the remnants of a well, made it plain that the whole clearing was the remains of something belonging to the Nobility—the ruins of Castle Macula. Six days earlier, a powerful quake had struck the region, causing extensive damage. The ground had subsided and there’d been a rash of landslides, but the torrential rains five days ago were the final blow. The mountainside crumbled, muddy torrents coursed over it, and the clearing that at first had been little more than a cramped depression grew to over ten times its former size. And it was four days ago that a piece of history that’d been kept hidden by those thousands of tons of earth and stone was discovered—the black sphere before the Hunter. That was how it all started.

Twenty-four hours was all it took for word to spread from one member of the town hall’s damage-assessment team to the entire village of Satori, and then to travelers and merchants. A remnant from the Nobility. And in superb condition. Bolstered in part by the object’s somehow humorous form, those who worked up enough courage to go over and touch it or bang on it were unharmed, and that only spurred on the commotion. Villagers had swung mattocks and pickaxes at it, and the blacksmith had pitted first an acetylene torch and then a laser cutter against it, but nothing had even scratched the sphere. It could be struck by a hundred-thousand-degree beam one second, yet be cool to the touch a second later, glistening in the sunlight.

It took no time at all for the people’s thoughts to go from 
 What’s it made of? to What’s it for?—before winding up at Is there something inside? And those musings were transformed into a feverish morass of hopes and expectations when a physics instructor from a nearby school had come two days ago, spending half the day filling the walls and floor of his hotel room with scribbled calculations that ultimately spilled out onto the dirt of the clearing, until the fateful moment when he asserted, “There’s something in this sphere!”

Something? Could it be jewels and precious metals belonging to the Nobility, or the key to their ageless and undying nature? Drooling, with bloodshot eyes, the people set about trying to break the sphere open. Some shot at it with guns, while others planted dynamite around it. However, no matter what they tried, they couldn’t make this perfect sphere move even a fraction of an inch, despite its shape making it seem like it might roll away at any second. Time merely mocked them with its passing.

There was a reason for their feverish desire. Castles and ruins from the Nobility could easily be found anywhere on the Frontier. The northern Frontier was particularly thick with them, and the artifacts discovered there were purchased either by the government in the Capital or by local dilettantes for considerable sums of money, making communities and individuals quite rich. When signet rings, swords, clothing, sculptures, portraits, and the like could change hands for hundreds of millions of dalas, the villagers were forced to defend their interests. Ruins within the village bounds would be tightly guarded while surveys were conducted under watchful eyes. However, many of the sites turned out to be nothing more than ruins, and the people soon awoke from their fever to find mere fragments of an ancient dream littering the weedy wasteland.

The matter was simple enough. All the village of Satori had to do was keep possession of the site for four days. But a problem cropped up. The clearing in question was near the boundary between Satori and a neighboring village, in an area that by common agreement neither had laid claim to for the past five centuries. Their neighbors were vehement in their opposition. As the protests grew more violent, Satori decided to ignore its neighbors, who then hired a band of warriors to enforce their claim. At essentially the same time, D came into the employ of the village of Satori. Both sides had drawn their weapons to settle the matter of who owned the strange metallic sphere.

As D stood before it, a couple of men rushed over to him, forcing their way through the heavy crowd. They were public officials from Satori. One wore a tin badge on his chest—the sheriff.

“Nicely done! Our faith in you was justified,” said a skinny man with a mustache, rubbing his hands together. He was the mayor. “The sphere is ours now. We ought to throw a museum up around it and spread the word far and wide. Hey, don’t touch it!”

D was resting the palm of his left hand against the gleaming black surface.

“You’re out of luck,” a hoarse voice sneered.

The person in charge of public relations wore an expression at once angered, startled, and perplexed, for though the voice had most definitely come from D, it seemed inconceivable that it was really his. “Was that you? What do you mean by that?” He intended to drill the Hunter with his questions, but they had no force behind them.

Taking his left hand away from the sphere, D said, “There’s someone inside.”

The mayor and those around him froze. No doubt they felt as if the whole world had just iced over.

“You’re not kidding, I warrant,” said the sheriff, the first to return to his senses. With a massive frame and manly features, he was someone who could be trusted. He apparently possessed quite a bit of mettle, too.

“I have an interesting little story for you,” a hoarse voice said. “Once upon a time, there was a dog who was white all the way down to his tail. Ha, ha, ha—gyaaaah!”

Squeezing his left hand into a fist, D said, “It seems that as soon as the rocky hillside protecting it gave way, the resuscitation system was triggered. The occupant should be coming out before long.”

Low and cold, his voice called to mind exquisite steel. The group found itself spellbound by it before they could grasp the meaning of what he’d said.

Immediately returning to his senses, the mayor squawked, “When you say before long
, how soon do you mean?” D’s tone of voice was such that it had them believing the unbelievable just like that.

D said the damnedest thing: “A minute from now.”

The pronouncement was like a bolt out of the blue. Though everyone knew what he was talking about, their inability to fathom it left them looking first at one another, then staring stupidly at D, and finally focusing their gaze on the black object before them. They were speechless. Through a silence so absolute it seemed they might even be able to hear the sunlight raining down on them, the group waited.

“Ten seconds more,” someone murmured. There was no need to say the rest.

Five seconds . . .

The people saw four streaks run from the top of the sphere all the way down to its bottom. If what D said was correct, would it be a Noble inside? If it were, they wondered if the dazzling sunlight wouldn’t reduce him to dust the instant he appeared. Or would it be the stuff of legend—a wind gusting from the darkness of history, pregnant with evil, as a Greater Noble that could walk in the light of the sun returned to life?

The object was oblivious to all their speculation.

Zero.

There was a terrific whistle as white vapor shot from the top of the object. Steam. D alone remained, with the throng retreating, preceded by their own screams. To them, the sphere looked like a flower bud made of steel.

Slowly its four metallic petals opened, and from the still-billowing steam inside, a figure in black became visible. Brilliant sunlight rained down on the figure, but he didn’t cry out or writhe in pain. Instead, through the thinning white veil, the figure could be clearly seen stretching both arms as he said, “Ah, yes!”

“Is that a N-N-Noble?” the mayor stammered.

“Yes,” said D. It wouldn’t do to leave his employer’s question unanswered.

“Then . . . Then what we have here is a Noble who can walk in the light of the sun . . . and terrorize us by day, too?”

“That it is, I suppose.”

The mayor stared at D in shock. The last remark had been in the same hoarse voice he’d heard earlier. “Grab him,” the mayor said, his tone nearly a whisper. “Grab him for us. He’ll make a great tourist attraction.”

The metallic petals continued to move, opening to a full ninety degrees, while amidst the collection of unknown machinery within, a figure rose from what appeared to be a couch of sorts and stood, shrouded in black fur.

“Baron Macula?” D inquired.

A murmur went through the crowd. Did this gorgeous Hunter know the name of this Noble from untold antiquity? On further consideration, the ruins were called Castle Macula, making it possible to imagine the name of the lord of the manor. However, the people were so mesmerized by the gorgeous young man and his actions that they couldn’t even conceive of it. At the same time, another suspicion formed in the crowd’s mind: Could it be this Hunter had known these strange events would take place today and he’d encounter a Noble? But that suspicion vanished like mist thanks to the question D had posed and the answer that came next through the faint haze.

“That’s right,” a grave voice had replied.

“I’m D, a Hunter. You need to come with me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“What?” the mayor and sheriff both exclaimed. Unlike the fearsome Noble’s first reply, the second had been casual and flippant.

“This should be good,” a hoarse voice from the vicinity of D’s left hand murmured with amusement. “Looks like we’ve been thrown a curve.”

“Give us some wind,” D said in a low voice.

No one would’ve believed the sudden gale had gusted from the left hand of the inhumanly beautiful Hunter. Blowing away the faint steam, it left the Noble born from those petals exposed in the light of day.

The murmur that shook the air was like the deep rumbling of a quake.

—

III

—

The Noble was standing in his sphere a foot and a half off the ground. From there, he ceremoniously lowered his left foot toward the ground—but just as the tip of his boot was about to make contact, it halted. He didn’t pause because he’d remembered something. He was simply physically incapable of reaching the ground. Taking hold of the edge of one metallic petal, the man fidgeted a bit, then gave up.

“I’m getting down,” he declared haughtily. Then, in a lower voice, he added spitefully, “Are you going to give me a hand or not, you dolts?”

To the people, the scene called to mind a bear cub slipping and sliding its way down a tree trunk while a gigantic predator waited below. The Noble they’d so feared was stocky, less than five feet tall, and from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, he was covered with black, bristly fur. However, what brought gasps from the onlookers and made terror bubble up from the depths of their souls was the demonic bronze mask he wore on his face. Though they could tell at a glance that it wasn’t his real face, these people of the Frontier also felt it wasn’t just a mask.

“Give me some help,” he bellowed gruffly. “I can’t get down.”

It wasn’t so much an order from the mayor as a shove from behind that sent two men, presumably from the town hall, forward, with trepidation. However, just ahead of them the man-bear seemed to have a change of heart. Stretching out a plump arm, he said, “Do you think a Noble would place himself in the hands of some hideous humans? Hey, you over there—come here.”

On seeing who he was addressing, the whole group gasped; it was the handsome young man in black. The Noble’s sentiment was understandable. But wasn’t the young man a Hunter?

It may have been on account of this fact that the man-bear toned down the arrogance in his voice when he said, “What are you doing? Are you going to help me or not?”

D stepped forward. For a third time the crowd gasped. Before their murmurs had faded, D made his way through the people, took the man-bear by the arm, and roughly tossed him to the ground, chilling them all with terror.

Flipping over once, the man-bear hit the ground back first. “Ouf!” he groaned pitifully.

A Noble’s pain turned to rage, which would be visited on mankind—from the age of legends right down to the present day this horrifying truth had been etched into human DNA with bloody chisels and mallets of cold terror. But the man-bear lay sprawled in a mess on the ground, just groaning for a while before slowly picking himself up like a centenarian.

“You son of a bitch. You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that!” he cursed.

However, the way he massaged and patted the small of his back was enough to cause someone to remark, “He’s like a little old man or something, isn’t he?”

It seemed either their terror and expectations had been too great, or there was something fundamentally wrong here. Suspicions began to creep into the minds of the spectators, but they were still dealing with a Noble. The tension might’ve vanished from their faces, but the people surrounding him made no attempt to press any closer.

“Upsy-daisy!” the man-bear cried out like an old hillbilly as he stretched his back out. Looking up at the heavens, he lifted his stubby arms as if cheering hurrah! “Ah, what marvelous weather! And my first peek at the sun in five millennia. It hasn’t changed a bit,” he remarked with pleasure. After a pause of about two seconds, he glared long and hard at the crowd around him, asking, “Who the hell are you people?”

Though they couldn’t see any eye openings in the bronze mask, the people backed away noisily.

“What are you gawking at? I’m not on display!”

The mayor looked at D. He wanted the Hunter to begin a dialogue with the Noble. However, the handsome man in black just stood there, silent as a statue. Abandoning that notion, the mayor cleared his throat. The silence was so deep, that one cough echoed through the area like the roar of a greater dragon.

Perhaps the daunting position he was in impressed itself on the mayor once again, because he rested a rough hand against his chest, got his breathing under control, and desperately choked back his fear before saying, “I’m the mayor of the nearby village of Satori. Who in blazes are you?”

His voice trembled horribly, yet two thoughts occupied his brain at the same time. First, a Noble who walked in daylight was an exceptional fiend unlike any ever described. Second, a Noble who walked in daylight couldn’t exist. Based on the Noble’s words and actions up till now, he had to be lying. If that were true, the mayor decided that things would not go well for this man. Or such was his intent, but it didn’t go as he’d planned.

The mask turned to him, asking, “What the hell do you want, sodbuster?”

A great wind suddenly gusted by. The mayor tensed.

“So, you say you’re the mayor of these parts, you little prick? Have you forgotten my name, then? Have you? Have you forgotten the name of Baron Macula, Greater Noble and ruler of northern Frontier territories where so many rustic, pissant Nobles swaggered about?”

“No, I know that,” the mayor said proudly. His face was as drained of life as that of a wax figure. “But I’d heard that the baron died more than five thousand years ago. The very thought of him showing up again in this day . . .”

“You great, thick-skulled dunce. Whoever said I was dead? Who saw it? I’m right here. I never set foot outside my dominion. I’ve remained here in hiding for a certain lofty purpose. But it would seem I may have been a bit too leisurely.”

“What do you mean . . . a l-lofty purpose?”

The man-bear spat in disgust, “The brain of a Greater Noble is like the universe. Can the lowly maggots that crawl across the ground fathom the infinite vastness of the cosmos? Away from me!” He made a flourish of his arm, and the crowd backed away.

“But, um . . . You . . . Well, you’re walking around in daylight . . . You c-couldn’t be a Noble!” the mayor stammered in reply.

In return, he got a sneer—no, a mocking laugh. “Bwahahaha! Do you still have such stubborn notions stuck in your heads? So, am I to believe that through the five millennia I’ve slumbered nothing has changed, that you still fear the night, and when the sun goes down you shut the village gate and bolt your doors, quaking at the slightest howl of a monster through sleepless nights? Half your short lives are night. That you would sacrifice all that to pointless, antiquated notions—well, you really are a hopeless lot. Bwahahaha!”

“But . . . that’s the way it is . . . for all Nobles,” the mayor insisted, though he seemed to be speaking deliriously.

However, his words had an unexpected effect. The laughter of the man-bear, Baron Macula, stopped dead. His bronze mouth muttered a hushed, “What?” Then, “You say the Nobility don’t walk in the light of day? Impossible. This is no laughing matter. You mean to tell me even now Nobles live solely by the darkness of night? I can’t believe it!”

The voice that issued from the mask churned with deep-seated surprise and turmoil. But before the mayor could capitalize on the Noble’s melancholy, he was struck speechless.

“Nobles are still creatures of the night,” a steely voice said, causing all to turn and look. “Even now, the radiant light doesn’t belong to your kind. I need you to come with me.”

At that instant, the chubby figure leapt from the spot beside D to one ten yards distant, like a rubber ball with a good bounce.

“My guess is you have some of our blood in you. Are you one of those dhampir deals? And such a killing lust—you plan on destroying me, don’t you?”

D stepped forward without a word.

“Hey, now!” the pudgy figure exclaimed, making another jump that put him in front of the crowd. Screaming, the people pushed backward. And another leap—this one toward an area behind the crowd.

The wind howled. Catching the baron’s body in midair, it sent him back the other way, despite his alarmed protests. D’s left hand was raised. No one there recognized the tiny mouth that appeared on his palm for what it actually was.

As the terrific gale stopped cold, the baron was unceremoniously plopped down at D’s feet.

“That hurts,” the Noble said, rubbing his back.

True to form, D asked, “You don’t have any other tricks?” He sounded quite surprised.

“Don’t screw with me, or—oww!” the baron cried, glaring up at D from the ground. “I may be a Noble, but I’m a pacifist. In this place, I led the peaceful life of a scholar. I had no use for all that fighting and parrying and fleeing nonsense.”

“Then what was all that jumping and bouncing around?” asked D.

“Just some abilities pertinent to my hobby.”

“Your hobby?”

“Yes—martial arts, actually.”

Although the man-bear hardly appeared suited to hand-to-hand combat, D didn’t comment on that, saying only, “Next time you do that, I’ll cut you down.”

Fright seemed to coalesce in the baron’s features, and he fell silent. He wasn’t alone; the faces in the crowd surrounding them also went ghostly pale. They all believed D was serious.

“Sheesh. Do whatever you like,” the baron finally said in a rotten little voice, after some hesitation.

A streak of light zipped out. That glint was all the people saw. By the time they’d blinked their eyes, the bronze mask had fallen at the baron’s feet. It was split in two. However, no one had seen it break.

A murmur that defied description ran through the crowd. It was one of amazement at D’s skill, then acceptance, but the people’s expressions were those of disbelief.

The face beneath the mask was almost exactly what the people had imagined. It was a pudgy egg of a face with heavy eyebrows that looked like smears of charcoal, narrow eyes agleam with craftiness, a short, fat dumpling of a nose, and thick lips that looked like they might disgorge vomit at any moment. Yet it may have been his triple chin that leant an undeniable charm to his features.

Here and there, various comments were uttered. Glaring at those responsible, the baron asked in an intimidating manner, “You got a problem with me?”

D turned to the mayor. The old man appeared quite satisfied, with rosy color swiftly flooding his face. “We’ll hold onto the device he came out of,” the mayor said. “A pod that actually concealed a Noble—tourists will be coming to see it for the next century. Don’t touch any of the controls inside! The thing’s dangerous.”

Then turning back to D, he continued, “A Noble is more than even our sheriff can handle. If you’d be so good as to escort him back to the town hall. You’ll be paid there.”

The mayor grinned like a man enraptured. It was fairly unsettling to behold.—