Takamodo the Terrible

My mouth dropped open for a few heartbeats as I parsed that question. “TAKE A WILD GUESS, DETECTIVE CONAN!” I managed, waggling the saber’s point at the woman who’d just been trying to kill me.

“Koitsu–”

“DAMARE!” Ruriko cut off my assailant, one palm thrusting behind her at the swordswoman a few times for emphasis. Swinging her long blade up to rest over her shoulder, she stalked up to me.

“Forgive me if I’m grumpy,” she almost hissed, “but I just flew in from where you’re supposed to be staying, and boy, my arms are tired. So you had best EXPLAIN!”

“Oh I’m just out for a stroll, get some fresh air, maybe track down the EVIL GOD the size of a COMMUTER BUS who crawled out of the river OVER THERE–” I pointed at the marred riverbank with the bayonet– “before it EATS someone!”

She seemed to inflate with righteous fury as she glared dirks and daggers up at me. “This isn’t Hollywood you braindead asshole. Without Captain Chicken here that thing will kill you in ten seconds flat–”

“HE CAN GET IN FUCKING LINE!” I roared, poking my saber at the mysterious swordswoman. “God forbid a filthy YANKEE go running around loose but I guess Swordbitch McSlays-On-Sight is A-OK!”

Ruriko’s free hand came up, index finger ready to wag – and paused. She whirled ‘round so fast I had to backstep away from her shouldered long blade, and barked something sharp at my assailant. Rapid-fire Japanese ensued.

Ruriko sighed louder than a surfacing whale. Her sword; long enough to be a longsword in my hands, twirled gracefully over her diminutive height as she “sheathed” it, the crimson blade vanishing into a swirl of shadow by her hip.

“So now I have two busybodies,” she said. “… PUT YOUR GODS-CURSED SWORDS AWAY!”

Reluctantly, the swordswoman and I both sheathed – the saber’s scabbard had manifested with the blade. The fire faded from my veins, deep sibilant drumming in my breastbone more felt than heard subsiding to my mere heartbeat in my ears, and I almost staggered as gravity seemed to quadruple.

“I cannot believe you idiots aren’t both dead,” Ruriko said – then paused just long enough for it to be awkward as a regretful look crossed her face. She pointed at me. “You. THIS–” a thumb-jerk at the other end of the bridge– “is Takamodo Mizuki, of the Takamodo mage clan. She was hunting the monster, and detected its kagare – its taint – on you and mistook you for the mage that summoned it.”

“Wait, she knew about the whole summoning-binding-shapeshifting-mage thing how?”

“… do you have any idea who her family is?”

“If the way she’s glaring at me is any indication, the one at the back of the line.”

Ruriko’s mouth opened but she paused a moment, thought better of it, and turned back to Taka-murder-whoever. A brief explanation in Japanese later and her scowl had soured into disdain.

Ruriko pointed at the end of the bridge I’d started at, now behind Takawhosit, where a stately black government sedan was idling, driver door open. “We need to get out of here before the locals investigate the ruckus you just made, so get in. We’re going to Satsuki’s – the shrine,” she clarified for me.

The swordswoman and I made inquisitive sounds at the same time.

“Hai hai, both. In the back.”

“Are you shitting me?”
“Shoki desu ka?
“NOW!”

She stomped to the car as I retrieved my rifle, but when she opened the passenger-side front door found it fully occupied by several wooden boxes labeled with glowing magical script, piled rather haphazardly on the seat. She caught one before it could fall out. “ITTA JAN!” Ruriko snapped, and Takaowhosit slammed the door shut before opening the rear door and regarding it like someone peering into the depths of a sulfur mine.

I swapped the empty magazine in my SBR for a fresh one from my assault pack and pulled out two more flashbangs for my chest rig.

“We do not have time for this,” Ruriko said behind me.

“Yeah, I know,” I replied, charging the rifle and flicking the safety on before I clipped it back to my sling. “Which is why I’m going to hunt that gator down while the trail is still fresh.”

“No,” Ruriko said. “You are not.”

My back to her, I gazed at the riverbank where the gator god had slithered its massive bulk into the park. I unhooked my rifle from the sling and set it down again, then turned to face her, arms relaxed at my sides.

A moment passed.

“Are you squaring off with me?” she said, her tone baffled but quiet enough to qualify as dangerous.

I sighed. “I don’t know the subtle Japanese way of saying it, but in America we say “shit or get off the pot.”

She tilted her head; looking very much like her crow with her fluffy hair. “Why are you pushing this?”

“Because you people have no idea what you’re up against, and by the time you realize that someone’s going to be killed.”

She stalked towards me and I tensed myself to draw – but the only weapon she raised was an index finger.

“Who do you think you are, Yankee!?” she said, menacing me with her finger like officers use the knife hand. “You drop out of nowhere with a military APC full of guns and you think you can just gallop – galvanize – kuso, GALLIVANT! – gallivant around our country as you damn well please!? This is my home and I’m not standing for some thick-skulled impulsive Yankee running amok spraying bullets willy-nilly in populated areas because he thinks he’s the only one who’s ever hunted a dangerous spirit before!” She was so incensed she was trembling a little; fluffy hair seeming to expand like a puffed-up bird. She poked me hard enough to feel through the plate carrier, making me rock back a step. “Here I thought you might be useful; the staff we interviewed said you were polite but NO, you had to sneak out and go Full Yankee and run right into the people insisting all Yankees are the same idiotic barbarian cowboy!” I was shuffling back, her chasing me with the point of her finger like an advancing swordsman till I was backed up against the bridge rail. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve just caused me? Well, what do you have to say for yourself!?”

I crossed my arms and glowered right back. “It’s my job to kill that thing, and it’s only in your country because I didn’t get the job done fast enough. I’ll be thrice damned before I follow it ninety percent of the way just to stuff my thumb up my ass and watch while it starts murdering people. You think Americans don’t have idiot politicians and red tape? Or stuck-up mage clans who think the whole damn world revolves around their petty turf wars and act like dime-store hoods guarding their gang territory against mere government-employed mortals? Go ahead, call my boss, he’ll tell you I’m an equal-opportunity pain-in-the-ass. So fish or cut bait, sister, because I’ve got a job to do and not much damn time to do it!”

She processed that a moment, and The Finger lowered.

“You know why I’m here, right?”

“Apparently I didn’t slip the sentry as well as I thought.”

“No. You did. Apparently.” A brief shadow crossed her expression and I figured the shikigami user at the hotel was in for an ass-chewing tomorrow. “I was out tracking the thing too.”

I blinked. “After all that we-have-a-process stuff?”

She waved her hand dismissively. “The government certainly does, but I’m a private contractor, remember? And a bit of a workaholic. Utatte miro yo. Sue me, as you yanks say. There’s a reason I went private.”

“… so?”

“We do have to resolve this,” she said, lowering her voice and tilting her head subtly. I glanced over her at the swordswoman who was standing by the open door of the sedan, watching us.

I sighed. “Turf wars?”

“You don’t know the half of it, yankee. I’ll get some of my subordinates out here to keep tracking it, starting from that sign you found, which means” – she checked her watch – “in two hours. Okay?”

I exhaled slowly. “Well it sounds better than hopping to the hospital to extract our boots from each other’s asses, so I’ll take it.”

“Good. Oh, one more thing. Lean over.”

“Eh?”

“Itta jan!”

I obeyed the Officer Tone almost instinctively, and she reached up and slapped the side of my helmet hard as she could – I actually rocked a little. “There. Now get in the car.”

We walked towards the sedan, Takamodo slipping into it as she saw us approach. I opened the door, then paused awkwardly to remove the scabbard from my belt so I could take a seat. The woman managed to radiate haughty disdain as I awkwardly clambered in, juggling rifle in one hand and saber in another, without moving an eyelash. Ruriko stepped in, put the car in drive, and we vroomed away into the night.

We both settled down, scabbards gripped before us and between our knees, staring straight ahead as if we weren’t watching for the slightest twitch from the other from our peripheral vision.

Ruriko speed-dialed her phone and glued it to her ear. “Ai~koooooo~” she crooned, and received a sigh from the other end so loud we could hear it in the backseat. Well, it was past 0300 local time.

I thought of the tense car ride ahead, and whatever internecine mage politics pissing match awaited me, in a house with a grumpy woken-early miko mom who had every reason to break her gohei off in my ass, and thought that maybe I shouldn’t have been so maudlin about the whole solo duel to the death with an ancient alligator god I’d planned for my evening, because it was sounding better by the second.