A Frank Exchange of Insults

Rural Saitama scrolled past outside; dim moonlight interspersed with the sallow glow of sodium streetlights; the picturesque profile of my unwanted companion next to me briefly revealed as they approached and receded. I tilted my neck and felt my spine realign with an audible crack and noticed the swordswoman’s hands tighten a little on her scabbard.

“Miss Karasawa, can you tell little Miss Taka-murder here to chill the hell out so I can get some painkillers out of my pack?”

“I hear okay, yan-kee,” the swordswoman said with a heavy accent.

I let my head fall back and sighed at the roof. “Does everyone in this country speak English? What happened to all that xenophobia I was told about?”

“We go school to learning, not cowboy gun fight,” Takamodo said, her voice sounding like regal velvet dipped in oily disdain despite the imperfect translation.

With exaggerated motion I turned over my wrist to check my watch. “Twelve hours and twenty minutes or so. A new record. Go ahead, hit me with the free healthcare, too.” I popped two Alieve and washed it down with my canteen – then, just for fun, offered the bottle and canteen to Takamodo, who almost managed to stay stone-faced but for the slightest downward twist of her mouth.

“You hurt?” Ruriko asked.

“She hit me with some kind of wind blast,” I replied. “Lifted me clean off my feet.”

“If you survived the landing, she went easy on you.”

“Think it had more to do with a triple-dose of .458 SOCOM putting her on–”

“Take more pill, cry baby,” Takamodo said, voice rising, pristine expression quavering with a suppressed wince.

“Crack a rib? Might wanna add a trauma pad enchantment to that silk robe, sweetheart.”

“You fly same good as Marine. Maybe I give new lesson.” Her finger drew a spiral in air. “Get rid of smell too.”

“I’m surprised you don’t like Marines. They carry swords and try to kill things on sight like a rabid dog just like you do.”

“You LOOK like dog!” she snapped, turning to face me and inhaling for the next fulliside. “AND you–”

“And you look like–” I said turning to retort, only for both of us to fall silent at once.

In the heat of combat you can look at things without seeing them – funny thing about swords, they tend to command your attention like that. It was my first time actually seeing her face up-close and even in the sedan’s dark interior she didn’t look like… what was I even about to say?

She looked just as nonplussed, and remembered herself about when I did. We both turned to face forward again, the silence holding till we pulled up to the parking area for the shrine. Ruriko eyeballed me as I unfolded myself from the backseat, weapons in hand.

“Interesting mix of gear you drag around in that Humvee,” she commented.

“Eh, you know how it is.”

“I do?”

“I don’t know about here, but in America even the most stuck-up mage will just pull out a nine-millimeter sometimes, y’know?” I thumped my body armor. “It’s why I wear this when I can. Y’never know.”

“Don’t they enchant their guns?” she asked, starting up the grass path through the rice paddy towards the tree grove – the ruts from my Humvee still evident. Takamodo was ahead of us, striding away fast and stiffly.

“Sometimes. As it’s been explained to me that kind of enhancement is difficult as hell. We’ve got magic swords out the wazoo because humanity used them for five thousand years; and they’re dead-simple on top of that, and within a few hundred years we go from a flat piece of steel you can scribble moon-runes on to immensely more mechanically complex firearms.” I drew the Colt and swapped the magazine for a fresh one from my carrier, pinching the used one between index and ring finger when I ejected it to slip it into the other’s pouch.

“They can’t be that complex,” Ruriko said. “I mean, artificers exist.”

“Sure, they were making clockwork whizz before the Mechanical Turk was built, and you do see more than a few enchanted revolvers floating around due to that, but a modern automatic is tricky because it’s mechanically simpler, but the actual sequence of operation is more complex.” I held up the Colt and pointed as I talked: “Recoil spring here, absorbs the energy of the expanding gas in the projectile, sends the slide backwards – then pushes it forward again with that stored energy to chamber a new round. If you don’t hold it stiffly enough and let the frame recoil with the slide too much it’ll jam.”

“… a careful balance of forces,” Ruriko said. “Like elemental magic, but…”

“Yeah, it’s not magic, so you can’t just throw in a few more funny Latin words or whatever to make your terms sum up right.”

“It’s hard enough to channel elemental power through matter precisely enough for complicated things,” Ruriko said. “Having to account for purely mundane forces too… hmm.”

We reached the trees. Takamodo was ahead, bowing with crisp perfection to Aiko – Miss Satsuki, I corrected myself, lest I slip up and get that pebble-filled slipper upside the head after all. She met us in turn, chatting amicably enough with Ruriko despite the bags under her eyes, and studiously ignoring me completely. We were ushered through the shrine proper and into the keeper’s cottage alongside, which joined the shrine proper via a breezeway. It was as old and traditional as the shrine itself, though modern amenities had been installed by craftsman so skilled I only noticed it when I looked to see where a lamp had been plugged in. The living room was paper-walled and grass mat floored, looking much like the hotel I’d been sent to; though a big-screen LCD TV dominated one wall and a game console sat in the low table/cubby supporting it.

Takamodo walked straight to the table from the doorway and knelt upon reaching it, which made Ruriko’s eye twitch for some reason. She sank down with well-rehearsed grace, back to us, only her long, fluffy, slightly curly chestnut hair visible, reaching almost to the floor.

Miss Satsuki returned with a laden tea tray, rolling her eyes a little when she saw Takamodo kneeling but saying nothing as she motioned with her chin for us to do same. I walked ‘round opposite to Takamodo, who’d fixed her gaze some three hundred meters behind me, hands folded carefully in her lap. Unhooking my rifle and tucking the scabbard behind me, I sat down cross-legged, getting a good look at her in full light.

Clear, sharp features; defined chin and cheekbones, almond-shaped gray eyes, slightly dusky skin or maybe just a light tan. Chestnut hair in voluminous curls; side-locks escaping the ponytail she’d tied it up in to tumble fetchingly down each shoulder. Aiko – Miss Satsuki – had finished setting out the tea, so I turned my direct gaze from the table right to her and gave her the I’m-here-for-this-briefing-but-don’t-mistake-that-for-giving-a-shit look I’d practiced to perfection.

She cut her eyes down at my crossed legs, the corner of her mouth suggesting a sneer.

“My ninth great-grandfather was a Hessian that settled in America after the Revolution and married a native woman so I’m actually one-five-hundred and twelfth Algonquin. Stop oppressing my culture, you ethnocentric bitch.”

She raised one eyebrow. “What culture?”

I raised my right palm. “How. Chief Big Totem-Pole Make Picture Talk. Behold, Thunder Bird.” I flourished my wrist into the middle finger.

Aiko cut her eyes between us as she took in that exchange, sighed, and took a small, expensive looking black bottle from the table, filling her teacup with it. Ruriko gave her a sympathetic look and the faintest shrug as she sat down.

“Before we start, I’m going to cast a spell.”

“Magic missile?” I asked.

Ruriko gave me a Look.

“Listen, if you insist on asking me dumb questions I get to float some outdated pop-culture references every now and then.”

She didn’t dignify that with an answer, instead pulling out some paper slips from her purse and a lacquered wooden case that yielded a small ink bottle and brush. Working swiftly and precisely, she covered it in kanji symbols, then fished around in her purse for something else and sprinkled some sort of dust on it, tracing the symbols as if she wanted it soaking into the ink. Magic mumbo-jumbo issued from her mouth as she focused in intense concentration as she fanned the ink so it’d dry quicker, then she folded it in half, then in half again, punctuating them each with a sharp, declarative phrase. With a small ritual dagger (this produced from inside her robe) she carefully cut the talisman in four along the fold-lines, and handed one piece to each of us.

I examined it. “Okay…?”

“You sound as unrefined as you look, Yankee,” Takamodo said – in perfect English; her regal bitchiness now sharp as a freshly-stropped blade.

“First, introductions-” Ruriko began, but Takamodo hushed her with a hand.

“I know who he is. He doesn’t belong here.”

“Now just a damn second–”

“Neither do you, defector,” Takamodo said, Ruriko’s face going dangerously neutral.

“My continent, my monster, my mess to clean up,” I said. “Unless you think you can stop me.”

“I doubt you know how to draw that… cleaver from a seated position to begin with,” she said, looking down her nose at me, “but since you sat so rudely, it doesn’t really matter.”

“Y’know the quick-draw duel at high noon’s just a movie thing, right? If you needed a quickdraw you were usually shooting over some double-dealing snake over a card table.”

Takamodo’s eyes sharpened, the tensing of her body visible even through her silken robes–

“TSUKI!” Aiko snapped, slamming her hands on the table hard enough to make the teacups bounce. Takamodo’s flawless resting bitch-face actually cracked a bit; for her it qualified as looking rather taken aback. “Tsuki,” Aiko continued. “First of all, mind your manners.”

“… yes, Satsuki-san,” Takamodo said quietly, sounding a bit abashed; though she still slid me a venomous glance.

“And you,” she said, whipping her gaze to me, “I don’t care how badass you think you are, you’re on my turf right now. I’ll throw you out of here so damned fast you’ll break the sound barrier if you test me, do you understand?”

“With potent and regretful intimacy, yes.”

She blinked, but took it in stride. “Good. Now talk, and keep it down because Himari’s asleep and she has school tomorrow.”

Takamodo nodded – then refocused on me, this time without an (obvious) scowl. “It’s quite simple. That sorcerer he slew; the god he brought – it’s connected to something bigger. To the Kurogane. And it’s not the business of the government–” she narrowed her eyes at me– “of any government. It’s a Takamodo matter. And we will clean it up.”