Played us for fools

Ryou’s plan would take a few days to come to fruition, and would require a lot of time and effort from both her and Fujiko.

I was urged by my allies (both human and cat) to lay low and recover in the time before our challenge was issued. But I had a port of call before then.

“Aino. Walk with me.” I lightly tossed a raincoat to the girl lounging on the sofa. It seemed to take her by surprise at first, but her face quickly curled into a smirk.

“My, a lovers rendezvous? How darin-“

“Not happening. We got shit to talk to about. Get your ass moving.”

Aino seemed genuinely shocked at me blagging off her provocation. So much so that she quickly got to her feet and threw on the raincoat, like an obedient little pain in the ass.

I could make a ronin of this girl yet.

***

“You know, my love, for someone so adamant that we had something to discuss, you’re unusually quiet,” said Aino, a few paces behind me. I ignored her and kept walking.

The streets weren’t exactly busy, so I was pretty confident I could get away with not being eavesdropped on. Even so, I led her down a side alley between two abandoned corporate buildings. The front of each appeared to have been firebombed, so I was pretty sure no one would have bothered to stick around.

“As much as I enjoy your forwardness, this is hardly a place to take a lady-“ I turned around and pushed her against the wall, planting my left hand next to her head. “O-oh my, are you so taken by my charms alrea-“

“Shut it, Aino.” I was determined not to let her deflections and manipulations throw me off. I even had my human eye closed in case she tried her little trick again. “I didn’t wanna say this in front of the other two, but to be frank, I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you. That little speech you gave about wanting to see change in the world was all well and good, but it rang a little hollow from a woman who tried to kill me under corporate orders less than a month before. So give it to me straight, Aino. Why are you here?”

She looked genuinely taken aback at first, though her expression quickly softened into an almost wry smile.

“I had thought it was somewhat too easy to win your trust. I suppose I should hardly be surprised by this turn of events.”

“If you’re not shocked into silence, then get talking. What’s your angle?”

“My angle? My love, I have already told you ‘my angle.’ I wish to make a change in society, and you three seem to be the only ones truly striving for that goal.”

“Bullshit, people who benefit from the system don’t just suddenly choose to uproot it. So either you’re here to stab us in the back, or there’s something you’re hiding. And I can’t risk either of those. So talk. Unless you want a perforated everything.”

Keeping my left hand on the wall next to her, I reached my right into my inside pocket and brandished what I’d hidden inside.

“My dagger? When did you-“

“Being on the run for three years has its perks. You learn a thing or two.” I held the dagger up just beneath her chin. The look on her face told me she understood that this was no joking matter to me.

“…very well,” she sighed. “I suppose I ought to use my last resort. Please, retract the blade a tad.”

I slowly pulled the dagger back, not restricting her movement but also still within killing range if it came to it. As I did so, she began to unbutton and take off her blouse.

“Hey, the hell are you undressing for? I told you, that ain’t gonna work o- oh.”

Instead of some vain attempt to seduce me, she turned around and showed me something I had never expected. Protruding from her back was a long metal spine, reaching all the way from the base of her back to the bottom of her neck. It sat on the surface of her skin like armour plating, and seemed to bend in tune with her body.

Still, even if it perfectly imitated a real spine, it looked painful to have implanted and uncomfortable to have stuck on your back. It’s not something anyone would get done optionally.

“Not too long before I met you, I had a handful of run ins with the group you’re hunting. This ‘Kageno Kairai’ as they call themselves. My encounter with Z and W was a narrow escape, but I was hardly so lucky when the organisation first came for me. I caught a bullet in the spine for my troubles. Only survived because the MPs who betrayed me were sloppy.”

She ran her hand up and down the base of her spine. Since that’s where the plating was densest, I assumed it was likely the spot she was shot in.

“So, what, they paid off some MPs to kill you while your guard was down? Why were they so desperate to take out one random magical girl?”

Considering what was before my eyes, I couldn’t say I doubted her story, but it didn’t fully add up with what little we knew about Kairai.

“Truth be told, I had done some… investigating, shall we say. Eavesdropping on my employers had made the name ‘Kageno Kairai’ come around fairly often, though I had no idea who they were. Seems they caught on to my digging and attempted to silence me.”

“But, if you were betrayed by MPs and left for dead, why would you go straight back to working for them? You were on Kurogaisha’s payroll when we fought, right?”

“Exactly, my love. Kurogaisha. A company of fools lead by overconfident fools. They sincerely believed that they had the might and wealth to defy Kairai. And, well, you saw how that went.”

“But… other than the explosion, it wasn’t Kairai that took down Kurogaisha. It was us.”

“And why was Kurogaisha your target?”

“Because they were draining the slums dry and trying to merge with Komono?”

“And how did that information come to your ears?”

“I-“

I thought back on it. It was true that Kurogaisha had been desperate to recoup losses in the wake of our previous actions, but squeezing money out of the slums was hardly new practice. It was by word of mouth that we found out that they’d been putting on more pressure than usual.

Same with the merger. These were all things we found out through whispers from the streets.

Where had those whispers come from?

“I cannot say this for certain, but I believe your entire attack against Kurogaisha was set into motion by Kairai. They knew your MO, and that you were likely to begin asking questions. They believed they could kill two birds with one stone. You would destroy Kurogaisha, the bomb would destroy you. Two troublesome enemies out of the way at once.” Aino put her blouse back on and turned around to face me. “It’s likely that my death was also part of their calculations. They probably knew that, even were I to kill one of you, the other two would finish me in return. Your moment of mercy was their only miscalculation. That is why I decided to help you bring them down, my love.”

I contemplated everything in silence, slowly retracting my hand from the wall. If everything she said was true, Kairai had been playing us for fools. And as much as I wanted to believe she was making shit up to dodge suspicion, it just lined up too well. Kurogaisha did seem hostile to Kairai. Did they really move us like a sacrificial pawn?

Bastards. Who the hell did they think they were?

“Aino… no, Nabiki…” I said, slowly looking up at the girl before me. “Tell me bluntly. Do you think we can change Japan?”

“Hmm…” she stopped and looked off into the distance as she thought through her response carefully. “Even if we cut the head off the hydra, there is no guarantee it won’t grow back even more sinister. The end of Kairai could simply usher in a new and more brutal power. If we are to make Japan a safer, fairer place for all, there is far more work to be done than the mere assassination of a powerful few.” She tapped her foot as she spoke, as if her own words were making her anxious. “But if you ask if we can make a difference? My answer is yes. After all, who else is there with the power? I must believe we can achieve our goal, because if we cannot, none can.”

It was a good answer.

The exact one I was hoping to hear, in fact.

If she had declared the mission completely hopeless, she’d have been unreliable as an ally.

If she had declared certainty of victory, it would have been a clear attempt to get in my good graces.

But a realistic and vaguely hopeful answer? That was the only mindset one who could productively adopt in this situation.

It was so perfect an answer, that I almost wondered if she was still trying to manipulate me.

But the conviction in her eyes felt real.

“If that’s your answer, Nabiki,” I said, holding her dagger out for her to take and opening my human eye, “then I guess I have to make good on those expectations.”

“…my my,” she giggled as she took her blade back. “You do like to play with a girls heart, don’t you?”

We began the walk back home, and in my mind I was equal parts glad to have ascertained her real motivations and worried I was growing a reputation as a womaniser.

Though, with girls like these around, who could blame me?