Chapter Three

Chapter Three

“That was fast.”

She confirmed his face through the peephole and smiled. Hamada had gotten back from gremlin hunting early today. They’d be able to eat breakfast together for a change.

Playing it safe, though, she got the Ruger P22 off the shoe shelf. There was always the possibility that a competing gang was trying to strong-arm him. And there were plenty of others who were plain jealous of her—though she didn’t worry about them too much.

She opened the door and stared in surprise. “What in the world—!” Perhaps for the first time in her life she was at a loss for a snappy reply.

Her yakuza had come home bearing a striking portrait. Except that the figure wrapped in the black slicker had bulk and weight. And a haunting bad vibe. No human angel could be so beautiful.

“What you staring at? Though I suppose it’s no wonder. Put down the gun at least. And get out of that negligee and put on something decent. We’ve got a guest.”

The man barking out these orders was the same Hamada. His face and throaty masculine voice now filled with the substance and gravitas that a first impression would have led anyone to expect.

“I owe this guy a lot. Gotta do right by him. Spare nothing until he’s back to his normal self.”

“Fine with me,” she said, making her way to where Setsura and Hamada were standing. “Such a nice-looking man. Why haven’t you introduced us before?” she whined.

“Idiot. Ain’t the kind of guy you introduce to a yakuza’s floozy. Just take a look at him.”

“You have a point. Hey, mister,” she said with clumsy politeness. “Won’t you please come in?”

Her contours of her breasts and bottom—tightly covered by a pair of black panties—were visible through the lace negligee, a fact that didn’t appear to arouse in her the slightest bit of self-consciousness. When confronted by a guy this good-looking, bashfulness went out the window.

“He possessed by something?”

“Looks like it. Let’s lie him down and call the doc.”

They sat the vacant-eyed Setsura down in the kitchen and stripped the bed, changing the sheets and pillowcases. They considered undressing Setsura, but that seemed a—sacrilege. Encouraged by Hamada, Setsura obediently lay down.

“What’s his problem? You think he got dumped by a girl and took it real bad?”

“Don’t be silly. He ain’t me. Anyway, go get Doctor Saionji.”

Saionji was the head of the residential hospital fifty yards or so down the street. The woman came back with him thirty minutes later. She gave Hamada a sharp look and said, “You better not have gotten any funny ideas while I was gone.”

But the best doctor in Kawadacho’s up and coming redevelopment zone couldn’t restore Setsura to normal.

“So what do we do?”

To the yakuza’s question, the amiable doctor said, “The best thing we can do for him now is take him to Mephisto Hospital.”

“You’re probably right. But there’s bad blood in them parts with me and mine.”

“The director of the hospital doesn’t care about things like that. He treats all of his patients the same. He’s no do-gooder. Because he’s a different sort of bird altogether.”

“Still leaves me in something of a bind, getting in and out of another gang’s territory.”

“Or a good witch or warlock or apothecary in Takada no Baba. There’s a few I could introduce you to.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

The doctor got out a prescription pad. Scribbling a note with a ballpoint pen, he glanced at the bag next to the headboard of the bed. “What’s that?”

“Ah, um, a watermelon.”

They’d taken the head from Setsura and put it in a grocery bag together with a freezer pack. They weren’t about to say it was a woman’s head.

After the doctor left, the woman asked, “What do we do next?”

“No choice. Take him to Takada no Baba.”

“What about your gang’s mob doctor, you know, the guy who teaches qigong breathing techniques?”

“Oh, yeah. You mean Doctor Hokorin.”

“He’d be perfect. I’ve heard his qigong is the best way to cure stuff that’s wrong with your head. Tell him if he fixes this guy, I’ll give him a freebie. He’s guaranteed to come up with a cure.”

“Great idea!” Hamada clapped his hands. Though when he paused to think for a second, he couldn’t let it get around that he was pimping out his girlfriend for favors. What he really wanted to do was keep Setsura here and nurse him back to health himself.

“Give it up, dear.” The woman leaned against his shoulder. She said, as if reading his mind, “Looks like that’d be too much for you, too. It’s not even on a human scale. While you’re down here working up a sweat just to make your little gang break even, he’s heading to the stars. Me, I’m the best thing you’ve got going. Let’s hurry and fix him up.”

While she was talking, the yakuza closed his eyes and listened. He sighed and nodded. “You’re right. Sooner the better. We’ll head over to headquarters for a while. The rain seems to have let up.”

He left with Setsura. Two hours later, the woman went to the kitchen and was astounded to see an old man with a white beard standing in the foyer.

“Who the hell are you and how did you get in here?” The intruder alarm at the front door was still armed.

The old man looked around and said, “Where is Setsura?”

The demonic glow in his eyes was an ill match for his otherwise well-bred features. The woman didn’t answer and instead yanked the flame thrower off the wall. She pulled on the trigger. The igniter flashed. An oily tongue of flame licked out six feet in front of her.

The old man didn’t appear startled in the least. He held out his left hand, at a right angle to the floor, the palm facing her.

“Die, you old geezer.”

His hand blocked the flames shooting toward his chest. The fire reversed course and plunged on the same trajectory back into the nozzle. Instantly, the weapon was literally hoisted on its own petard. The fuel tank and the flame thrower resting against her hip exploded.

Her skin scalded, and her hair lit up as the temperature reached six thousand degrees. Her body groaned. The waves of heat suddenly withdrew. He was holding her. As she struggled against his embrace, she noticed—the upper half of her body still burning like a torch.

And she could clearly hear the sound of the rain outside the window. That was when she screamed.

“You don’t feel it because of me,” said Kikiou, tightening his arms around her slender waist. “But the flames are consuming your skin and flesh as we speak. Here, I’ll show you—”

The white-hot heat scorched her to the marrow of her bones. She screamed. The sound was sucked into Kikiou’s mouth, pressed against hers. The murderous heat disappeared again. She convulsively gasped for air.

“Do you want to die like that? Or this? How about it?”

“Stop—help me—” she implored.

“Then speak. Where is Setsura? Oh, I could pick up his trail, but it does tire me out. Besides, hearing it whispered from the mouth of such an amorous woman is a nice perk. My, my, my. You do have a lovely body. Our little conversation can wait. What do you say we see how my new physique works first?”

Kikiou deftly stripped the garments off the flaming woman. The adjacent shelves and the curtains had already caught fire. Her skin was sparking and smoldering all over. In the midst of this volcanic hell, the woman’s white thighs raised up.

The flesh was seared in a flash. Regardless, Kikiou ran his lips across the skin. The woman moaned and writhed. These weren’t cries of pain but of satisfaction. Getting ravished under such extreme conditions heightened her senses all the more.

She had the entrancing body of a yakuza woman, nothing diminutive or frail about her. Every time she twisted and ground, her large breasts heaved and swayed. Kikiou pressed his hands against her chest and parted her legs.

“Ah, what a feeling. The sensation of being surrounded by hot flesh. It is wonderful. I am deeply grateful, Doctor Mephisto.”

The old man in the long robes laid his body against the body of the burning woman.

The headquarters of the Mad Men Society was located in a corner of the housing block in Sumiyoshi. The gang had fifty members at this point. Not a big gang, but it hadn’t ceded any territory after clashing with bigger opponents. According to Battle Front, the newspaper that covered their trade, that was because “Every last one of them has something off about him.”

That was clear from the reception Hamada and Setsura got at headquarters. Of the gang members there, one had hair completely made of wire, another had three eyes in his forehead, and as to the third, blue-white sparks shot out every time he clenched and opened his hands. This was a den of crazies not even “normal” gangbangers wanted to hang around with, to say nothing of “normal” people.

Collecting the most radical and violent from among the population of Shinjuku, the Mad Men Society had come to be known as the “Mutant Yakuza Corps.” Their personal histories were all over the map.

“What’s with the gigolo?” airily asked the half-faced cyborg. He’d killed the black market doctor who botched his reconstruction surgery.

“Hey, Hamada, you been keeping him all to yourself?” The pale corpse of a man licking his lips was a soldier who’d been possessed in a crematorium, and while the flames were lit, busted out of the incinerator and escaped.

This bunch, who as a general rule didn’t express interest in mortal men other than in terms of appetite, stared at Setsura with entranced eyes.

“What’s this? What’s this?” From the back of the room came the gang’s capo, Kyuzan Jinbo. He was wearing western dress for a change. People around these parts were hardly surprised to see him strutting around buck naked.

As would be expected of the man who could bring together such a band of outcasts and lead them into battle with bigger gangs, he carried himself with a fierce dignity. The sinews on the arms jutting out of his sleeves and the neck sticking out of his collar glinted like steel bands.

He glanced at Setsura. His thick lips parted and he all but gaped at him. “So this is your unusual guest?”

“Well, to tell the truth—” said Hamada.

The subsequent explanation took up a good ten minutes.

“Sounds good to me.” Jinbo clapped his hands on his knees, raising a clunking sound like brass balls covered with cloth. “You do right by us and we do right by you. Whatever it is you’ve got, go ahead and stay here till it gets all better. Just one thing to watch out for. As you can see, leave him in the care of anybody else and even I can’t guarantee things won’t get a little hairy. Hell, he makes even my heart go pitter-pat.”

“Thank you,” said Hamada, bowing his head.

“The qigong sensei will be here tonight. He can rest in the back until then.”

“Okay.” He said solemnly to Setsura, “Let’s go, okay?”

Hamada had started for the door when the ping of a guitar string snapping rang out. They all turned curiously toward the source of the sound. One of the younger members—though as bald as a billiard ball—clasped his hand to his left shoulder.

“What happened?” he was asked, though like it was no big deal.

Baldy didn’t answer. After Jinbo and the other two left the main room, he took his hand from his shoulder. The blood impatiently gushed out. Among the eight there, Electric Hands was the only one who visibly reacted, with a “Huh, how about that?” expression. For them, blood was no more remarkable a sight than spilled coffee.

“The lady killer?” asked the guy with lumps squirming beneath his clothing, pushing out and sinking back in.

“Yeah. He’s a nice ’un. I was tossing a little love dust in his direction when it happened.”

“Tossing?” Steel Hair turned around. His hair jangled like wind chimes. “That guy nailed you before you even acted. He saw it coming before you did. In any case, better you than me.”

“You’re telling me. But I’d better get this blood stopped.”

Baldy reached into the pocket of his pants and took out a translucent patch of artificial human skin and applied it to the wound. The engineered cells fused with the natural cells at the molecular level, sterilizing and cauterizing the wound.

The devil wires Setsura’s unconscious cast out sliced a foot through Baldy’s shoulder, almost down to his lungs—surely he must feel the pain.

“I’ve heard of this gift,” said Three Eyes.

“Ah,” said Dead Guy, putting two and two together. “Shinjuku’s best manhunter. I’ve heard the rumors. There’s a thing or two I’ve been thinking of having him search for.”

“That face and those skills—just my cup of tea.”

Lumpy shivered all over. His undulating body swelled up. A viscous wave of emotion—either of wonder or murderous intent—swept through the room.

But the voice from the sofa in the corner quenched it like a dash of cold water.

“Something’s—coming.”

Like an oracle prophesying from the ruins of Delphi. Seized by a state of sudden foreboding, everybody turned.

“Something evil—this way comes. And will kill—every one of us.”

For a long moment, the room fell into silence. The sound of the rain filtered in. Then somebody said, “Well, that sounds interesting for a change.”