Imamimi Notanobu - VIII

At a little after ten minutes, Mad Dog returns with a bike lock and a plastic bag. With a nonchalant look on her face, she struts into the building and stares at me. I can’t help but give a strange expression. There’s no way she took this long just to find out the guy was in the building, right?

I look at her. “Where were you?”

Walking to the man on the floor, Mad Dog crouches and pokes him in the forehead. “Chasing whoever was following us.”

“He was waiting inside,” replies Yuura, with a subtle annoyance at ‘inside’, casting a wayward glance to the beaten man.

Mad Dog shakes her head. “I knew this one was inside. But there was another.”

“Another?”

She nods. “Two people were watching us.” Mad Dog gestures towards a corner of the room. It’s near the door, but tucked away in the shadow of a desk. “Two sets of footprints. Different size. A kid with a camera.”

It’s true. Imprinted in the dust are two different sets of footprints, standing next to each other.

“A kid,” Yuura says. “What did they look like?”

“Couldn’t see very well. Too fast. But the person was short.” She places a palm at chest-level. “Maybe stunted growth big man. I don’t know.”

Too fast. I regard that statement with a degree of odd speculation. Too fast. Just how fast does he have to be to escape Mad Dog?—someone who is, by all intents and purposes, able to leap across a room in one move?

Without further ado, she sets down her plastic bag and fixes the bike lock around the man’s neck, attaching it to a nearby chair. She then carries him up the stairs and sets him in the corner of a room.

The man doesn't bother to struggle. He's clearly conscious, though. Just too tired and smart to try anything else. In a minute, we have everyone gathered around him, and in two, we have the self-assured look and gusto for questioning.

I don’t have an exact sense for how it’s supposed to go, and just throw out the first thing that comes to mind.

“You're a mage, right?”

I lift the evidence I got from his leather jacket. A series of yellow talisman paper. The text on them matches the one on the joss paper we saw earlier. I have no idea precisely how they work—but I can guess at it.

An incantation. A somatic gesture, perhaps. And a close-enough distance to them for the spell to take effect—hence why he was there. Magic tends to be based around real-world traditions or concepts, and I’m assuming this one is something close to Taoist make.

I stop to gather my questions, but realise something quite obvious.

I live in the modern era, and I have access to the internet.

I take out my phone and search online for any relevant information. Eventually, I stumble across an entry from a Taoist encyclopedia and go through the article. From my understanding of it, the fulu—or talisman paper they use is meant to invoke the power of gods, spirits, and even ancestors. Though in recent times they’ve even started to call on the names of powerful Chinese warlords or figures, a form of modern-day deification.

Similar to how Yuura invokes a kami’s influence by way of music, I suppose.

Thinking about it, does it mean that the sound Yuura detected was just the presence of a fire spirit? Dammit. What’s with all these mages and their summoning rituals? Can’t we stick to good old fireballs, and apportation instead?

I continue reading.

There’s some other stuff about Five Elements and how they interlink with each other, though I save the technicalities of that for later.

He eyes the paper in my hand. “Careful,” mocks the man. “Did you forget how the other one burned up?”

“You're welcome to try. Though I'm not in the greatest of moods right now.” I make a show of gripping my baton. “And men set on fire rarely, if ever, make sound decisions.”

“Okay, okay, pretty boy. No need to be so angry, yeah?”

“Well, I won't need to if you just play nice and tell us what we want to know.”

His eyes are somewhat smug. Erring towards confidence.

“Did you kill Li Zezhang?”

An uncomfortable stillness takes his body. I notice his face turning in on itself in a strange emotion, before returning back to normal. Strange.

“I don’t think so,” he says after a few seconds of silence. “Is he the guy who died in this room?”

I nod.

“Yeah, not me,” he replies, with an uncharacteristic solemnity.

“Who did?” I follow up.

“Ever heard of client confidentiality?” Back to loud and sly. “What do you think will happen if people discover I rat out whoever I work with, eh?”

That is a good point. Assuming he’s a mercenary of sorts, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t try to weather this out and keep business going.

“You know, I was thinking about torturing you, but really, torture has a habit of forcing out confessions, regardless of whether they’re true or not. So, how about we play nice, and I make it up to you instead?”

“Make it up to me? I like how this is going. Don’t tell me.” He does a dramatic ‘look-away’ with his head. “Does it come with you putting on a skirt, some lipstick, and going down on two knees? Provided you don’t have bug parts down, there, I’d be more than up to get frisky.”

“I mean, if it's what you're into.”

Yuura takes a few steps forward and, looking genuinely upset, stares at the man bound in rope.

“She joining too?”

“Join?” she mumbles.

“Do I need to say it out loud? It starts with three, and ends with way. So, join, yes or no, baby?”

“I'll join your legs together with a welder, that's what I'll join—you no good scoundrel!”

“Calm down,” I say quickly, before facing the guy once again. “Let’s think this through. We have evidence that you’ve tried to assault a civilian and may be complicit in a series of murders. It wouldn’t take much to send all this information to someone who could get you in trouble.”

That’s not wholly true. While the country does have a 99% conviction rate, the only reason it is that way is because they only take cases that are ironclad to solve. Hence, why no one’s bothering with the Tearer, for one.

The man doesn’t need to know that, though. And judging from his expression, he doesn’t seem too.

“True,” he agrees, with a surprising amount of wisdom. “Japanese prison sounds like a pain.”

“It is,” says Mad Dog deadpan. “The food sucks.”

“It does?”

“Yeah. They’ll feed you fermented soybeans. And fish semen. And fermented soybeans mixed with fish semen.” She stops for a moment and moves in front of the tied man. “But it will be worse back home. Duì bú duì?”

There it is. The element of surprise. Seeing what might be his own countrymen makes the man raise a left brow and twitch his leg in some gesture of tension.

I’m not sure what Mad Dog is playing at here, but I’m going to try my best to go along.

“You think they have time for a small-time crook like myself?” asks the man. “Have you seen the state of the country?”

“Not you.” With a stern, serious voice, Mad Dog replies. “But your boss. Yes. We have been watching your boss for a very, very long time.” She turns to look at me. “I will take him home to the National Magic Council.” Mad Dog nods. “We will open his little brain and get our information then.”

I can almost read the guy’s face. ‘Shit. This lady’s working with the NMC? The very specific, and very Chinese organisation dedicated to investigating and taking people like me down?!’

For a second, even I become convinced by Mad Dog’s words, only to realise that, hey, it doesn’t really matter, since I’ll have to make my point regardless, and choose not to think about it.

“Torture,” I say, “didn't you just hear what I just said about that?”

“Not torture.” Mad Dog moves behind the man. She then mimes splitting his head open, scooping out the remains, and putting it in some half-blender/half-mortar contraption. “Magic. Like, miracle of barbeque. When meat gets heat and becomes brown. We will boil his brain with the power of magic, and extract what is left.”

Yuura nods in appreciation. “That sounds wonderful.”

“Ok. Then mission is done.”

With a resolute gesture, Mad Dog hoists the man over her shoulder. He struggles in place. An expression of uncertain fear on his face.

“I won’t accept this,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Flying him to China, breaking his brain? That’ll take too long. By the time you’re done turning his mind to Chinese soup, the Tearer would have taken another life, or two, or three—who knows.”

“I agree!” adds the man being carried. “Of course, I’m speaking from a place of self-preservation here, but-but—but, I think we can manage something. Something that benefits us both.”

“Time to make soup. I love soup,” sings Mad Dog. “Soup. Soup. Soup.” She continues forward, making for the stairs. “Human. Brain. Soup.”

I pat her on the shoulder and give a thoughtful look. She stiffens and turns her head. “Are you stopping me?”

“Yes,” I say. “Well, I'm trying to anyway. I imagine if it comes to actually fighting, that I might fail. Hence, I'm going to use the subtle art of diplomacy and try to talk you out of it. So, wanna talk?”

She stops. This time for a second longer. But not too fast. Not enough to make it seem like she's easily convinced and that this whole ordeal is one big sham, with the acting quality of third-grade students on a deadline.

“Ok, talk.”

I lean into her ear, cup my hand around my mouth, and speak. “Pss Psss. Ah, yes, today and tomorrow. B. D. C. Totally using vowels to make it sound natural. A i u e o.”

I then lean back and wait for her reaction. She gives a small nod. “I am convinced. I will spare weak criminal from Chinese justice.”

Mad Dog sets the man down. He looks pleased, all things considered. I would be.

“Help us. I won't try to appeal to your good conscience, so I'll just say, help us, and I'll make sure you don't get your brain melted.”

“Okay,” he replies, faster than I expected. “What do you want to know?”

“Who the Tearer is.”

“That isn't an easy answer to give, pretty boy. Especially given that I don't know who they are either. I’m just on cleanup duty.” There’s a short silence as he bites his lip and suppresses some unrecognisable emotion. “I come when the job’s done, modify the decor, and leave just as fast. I’m a bottom-rung white collar, and the Tearer’s the rich CEO who fucks the economy, your mom, and your girlfriend, got it?”

“But how do you contact them?”

“I don't. What janitor talks to a CEO? I’m telling you, they reach out to me via an intermediary. A big guy—kinda bulky, kinda bulking, kinda balding. We meet up after I get the job done. There are layers to this, you know. Like a Chinese onion.”

Mad Dog raises a brow. “There are different types of onions?”

“Hmm,” I say, considering his words, and momentarily seeing an image of an onion. “But you can take us to your intermediary, correspondent, whatever, right?”

“That?” says the man, with a smirk on his lips. “Can be arranged shortly.”