Out of the Deep Fryer...

Perched on a salvaged chair, I nibbled at tepid chicken as the chaos of a rapid clean-up operation churned around me.

The Japanese response was impressive – but I supposed it was easier to deploy crews across Japan than the vast expanse of the continental United States. They choppered in agents of the National Police to establish an initial security cordon, but a sizable cleanup crew was on-site via bus within the hour; removing anything obviously at odds with the cover story and subtly feeding said bullshit to the dazed staff and customers even as they interviewed them.

It was mostly the latter this time; half because the store was so thoroughly trashed that not much set-dressing was needed to match “gas explosion,” and half because cover isn’t hard to maintain. The veil never needed a conspiracy to maintain in the first place. Once upon a time the magical and mundane existed side-by-side: technology and magecraft both passed down from master to apprentice and jealously guarded from would-be rivals, and belief in both the supernatural and religion was nigh-universal. But in the modern age, with computers and blinkenlights all around and magic nowhere to be found, most people’s minds rejected the supernatural flat-out the instant someone offered them something more seemingly plausible. Sure, forty percent of Americans still believe in ghosts – but they expect them in the margins of the world, not ripping an entire fast food restaurant apart on a sunny summer afternoon, and apparently Japan was no different.

So my respite was short, but sufficient – to finish my meal, and do the thing I liked least.

Think.

I was washing down my chicken with some more Coke (the drinks dispenser had miraculously survived) when Midget Mage and Boy Scout dragged up some surviving chairs and sat across from me, faces stern.

“Let’s hear that summary of the fight again,” the bespectacled woman said, pushing her glasses up with a finger. “Without leaving anything out.”

“So what’s the verdict on gator-jira?” I asked. “Or more precisely, why didn’t he throw down right there at the temple?”

She blinked.

“Would’ve been easier if they’d given me a paper placemat and a pack of crayons with my meal, but even I can figure a few things out on my own. Count Crokula’s strong enough to be worshiped as a minor local god. Still can’t figure how he’s strong enough to bust out of a ring of holy trees after swimming in holy water but not enough to stop me from shanking his disciple.”

“That’s what I was going to tell you, before you drove through the pond,” Midget Mage said with a scowl. “He had… he–” she swallowed. “Let’s just say a talisman embedded in his body. I’ve only ever read about it before, but once I managed to get a direct call with your boss, it was undeniable. That monster wasn’t a god per-se… it was a shard of a god.”

“… a what now?” I asked.

“Instead of bequeathing knowledge or an ability to draw on his power, this thing implanted in him a shard of its… soul.” She almost spat the last word.

“… so, not a minor local god, I take it.”

“Well, your yankees apparently finished counting up arms and legs because your boss said they’ve gotten a few positive ID’s on the shaper’s victims and they’re known voodoo occultists. Specifically, the very, very unpleasant kind. With that in hand – Dan, was it? – says everything points at a local deity in New Orleans said to inhabit the river delta.”

“… of the Mississippi river.”

“Yes.”

I rocked my chair back on two legs and stared at the wrecked drop-tile ceiling. “Well, fuck.”

“As to how he escaped,” the clean-cut young man cut in, “when you killed his disciple in the pool, it desecrated it. Well, diminished it, at least. Which wouldn’t be enough, usually, but–”

“–river god in water,” I finished.

“Yes. Which also means that when you drove away from there in a Humvee leaking that desecrated pond’s water, right through the binding circle of holy trees, it gave him a way out.”

“… oh,” I said.

“Yes,” the young man said, elbows on the table and hands clasped before him. “So, considering you just set the equivalent of a minor evil river god loose in a rice farming community, because you wanted lunch, perhaps you could explain how you’re not a red streak on the tile right now?” I suppose the jan-ken-grenade had made an impression because he didn’t say “before I rectify that personally” but his gaze did it for him.

I let my chair fall back to level, legs cracking brightly on the tiles, and leaned in a little. “Simple. I led him to another temple.”

Now it was his turn to blink. “Nani? I mean, what?”

I tapped my smartphone, lying on the table by the koi. “Never knew the Colonel was such an interesting character. He could swear like a sailor, and he even got into a gunfight in the thirties with a business rival – that he won.” I sipped my drink. “After he sold the company, it sued him for dragging the quality of the food. He counter-sued, won, and took a smaller settlement than offered – but only on condition that he could give the new execs a cooking lessons” I grinned. “And Japanese KFC is definitely the best I’ve ever had.”

“Oh come on–”

“You’ve got iconography in front of every store–” I pointed to the plastic statue by the doors, “–you made eating KFC a holiday tradition, and in the west Christmas is a hell of a lot more significant than just a date-night holiday for lovers.”

The young guy looked dubious, but Midget Mage’s expression was going blank, eyes widening.

“Apparently ‘Kentucky Colonel’s’ a title the state bestows on those considered cultural ambassadors for Kentucky, and since there’s a Japan/America association of Kentucky, he arguably has his own formal cult–”

Midget Mage popped out of her chair and started waving. “AIKO! AIIIIKOOOOO!” I turned to see MikoMom stalking towards us, gingerly stepping through the the glassless wall-windows and sparing me a poisoned look before Midget Mage joined her a few steps away for an animated conversation in Japanese. MikoMom’s expression steadily soured with every syllable. She looked over her shoulder at the plastic statue – a touch warily, I imagined – then stomped up to me and said something curt and angry.

“She thinks you’re full of shit,” Midget Mage said.

MikoMom fairly doused me with flaming Japanese for a good twenty seconds, hands on her hips and in high dudgeon.

“If he helped you, you’d just describe how, but you’ve never had the aid of a kami before so you knew we’d call you on it,” Midget Mage translated.

“… that’s all?”

“She also expressed some theories about your parentage and ancestral line, but I didn’t think those were germane to the conversation.”

“Hmm. Well.” I plucked the receipt from my meal from the serving tray and proffered it to MikoMom. “Tell her to look at that.”

She snatched it from my hand – then dropped it like it’d burned her. She stared at it with the same wide-eyed, blank expression I’d probably had when Sanders sat down across from me in a pink tutu.

Midget Mage blinked. “She says it’s an ofuda.”

I reclined in my chair and flipped MikoMom a cocky fingergun.

Midget Mage crossed her arms and scowled at me. “So how did he help you?”

“It was amazing. A bunch of glowing circles appeared–” I pointed at one of the waxed cardboard KFC buckets, the occupying koi still contentedly nibbling at a nugget, “–and fried chicken legs started firing out of it, like, like some sort of unlimited cluck works–”

“Really!?” the young guy asked, leaning over the table a little, only to recoil from the sharp glances Midget Mage and MikoMom threw his way.

“We’ve got a problem on our hands,” Midget Mage said, her scowl sharp enough to pierce now, “so if you would kindly get to the point?” Her reserve of We Must Make Accommodations For Yankees was clearly spent.

I sighed. “Well, the Colonel picked up his cane and beat that scaly sumbitch like a drum, pretty much.”

“Nani!?” Midget Mage said, then turned and translated for MikoMom, who immediately emitted a “NANI!?” of her own before lunging to plant one palm flat against my forehead. A gohei appeared in her other hand to trace small circles over me as she muttered a spell in Japanese.

“Uh,” I said.

MidgetMage squatted slightly to look me in the eye under MikoMom’s arm. “You’ve received a strength blessing, then? Which god? A native American one, I presume?” She made a complex sign with both hands; conjuring a notepad and pen out of thin air.

Up until then the conversation had gone exactly as it did with American mages on the rare, regrettable occasion this topic came up, so I was completely nonplussed. “Uh–”

MikoMom released me and said something in frustrated-sounding Japanese. Midget Mage returned a clipped sentence that sounded even more frustrated. Midget Mage’s finger was coming up and beginning to wag, MikoMom leaning over her and menacing her with little waggles of her gohei.

At last they crossed their arms and huffed. Then, with the ponderous intent of a battleship turret, they swung to bear on me.

“… what!?” I said.

“It’s extremely rare for kami strong enough to be considered patron gods to manifest to anyone,” the young man supplied. “Mrs. Satsuki’s great-great-great grandmother was the last one to see the god of their shrine, for instance. They typically only do it for those they’ve chosen to make their… I suppose ‘prophet’ is the closest English word.”

“Well he liked me well enough, but I doubt the Colonel’s chosen me to carry the Good Word of Fried Chicken to the masses.”

“If you can see your god,” Midget Mage cut in, “you gain the ability to see all kami, big and small. Mostly they can only be sensed unless they’re manifesting physically, or you use certain spells. Even if you were a mage, to see even a minor god who doesn’t wish to be, you need very good spells. One that could fit on a concealable amulet would be a legendary artifact; I would’ve heard of it before.” She scowled darkly enough to emulate a thundercloud. “That just leaves spirit-sight.”

The young guy snorted and said something in Japanese, only to jump a little when Midget Mage snapped back with real venom. She turned back to me and studied my expression. “Am I right?”

I shrugnodded.

“Why didn’t you just say so!?”

For the first time I returned her glare, scowl for scowl. “Would you have believed me?”

Her expression softened, breaking eye contact for a moment. She seemed taken aback a little. “I… see your point. Spirit sages aren’t as rare as true sages, but I’ve never, ever heard of one not born from an old magical line. The youngest in recorded history on either side of the Pacific to produce one was some fifteen generations of actively practicing magi.”

I crossed my arms, closed my eyes, let my head drop back and sighed. It was none of their business, but maybe it’d get them off my ass, so– “That’s because I wasn’t born with it.”

Now Midget Mage was completely baffled. “Then how on earth did you gain it?”

I opened my eyes to look at the ceiling; missing drop-tiles revealing the shad”owed space of ductwork and cabling behind, like a grin with missing teeth. “Mosul.”

A brief inquisitive sound from MikoMom, then a reply from the young guy, who’d been translating for her, and she fell quiet too.

I stood up. “By the way,” I said to MikoMom, pointing at the KFC buckets. “I believe those are yours.” I walked away, and thankfully, they let me – though Midget Mage was still squinting at me like a nerd at an unsolved Rubix’s cube when I turned away.

We’d started our operation at six AM, and it’d been near midnight when I’d caught up with the shifter in the Louisiana wilderness. With two back-to-back life-or-death fights on top, it added up to a long goddamn day – but this wouldn’t wait. Walking into the middle of the parking lot, I gazed at the cloudless summer sky, sighed, and dialed Dan.

He picked up on the first ring. “They beat you to death, or did they leave some for me?”

“You want a mage, hire someone with magic on his resume, not a MOS,” I snapped. “You want someone who can field-strip a machine gun blindfolded or someone who can quote that Harry Potter shit bible and verse?”

“This is on you,” Dan said.

I slammed my palm into the side of my head, but couldn’t say anything, because this time, he was right. “What resources do we have in-country?”

“By this time tomorrow you’ll have the run of any American base and armory in Japan, but if you need anything unusual or… well, you know, we’ll have to fly it in. From D.C. that’s a good fourteen hour flight, so plan accordingly, eh?”

“Right. Got it. Catch you later.” I hung up, and muted the phone when it started buzzing a few seconds later. I hopped into the Hummer, stretched out over the engine housing running down the vehicle’s centerline, and let my eyes fall closed.

I had my work cut out for me tomorrow.