Even the people looked perfectly respectable. Lots of short dark-haired men in old-fashioned suits hurrying about on business, and women in modest dresses shopping at the stores. There were a lot of androids in evidence too. Inugami bodyguards in sleek suits of light body armor who shadowed some of the businessmen. Cute little catgirls in colorful dresses who accompanied the women, or scurried about on errands of their own. Even a few fox morphs, men and women both, looking like they’d stepped out of the office to run a few errands.
It was strange how comfortable it felt. This was obviously the kind of rigidly stratified society where everyone had their place, and didn’t dare step out of it. But it wasn’t like Takeo Station, where the humans were so high and mighty they didn’t deign to walk down the same street as the lowly androids. Here a foxgirl on her lunch break might hurry to step aside so a man with a bodyguard at his side could pass, but he’d nod politely to her as he did.
I marveled at the strangeness for half a block. Maybe these people weren’t as bad as I’d thought?
There were hints of darkness beneath the facade, though.
We passed the entrance to a place called the Renair School of Infiltration and Assassination, with a sign showing a young girl casually balancing a knife point-first on her finger. Following the ER tag to their datanet site revealed that they specialized in human students, and they were exactly what they looked like. I was sure I ought to be horrified by that, but browsing their curriculum made me kind of jealous. Classes in poisoning and demolition sounded a lot more interesting than anything I’d learned on Felicity.
There were little shops that sold customized weapons and armor, which sounded odd until I realized their real service must be helping you pick the right tool for the occasion. Right next to it was a place that sold specialized nanotoxins, capable of doing much worse things to a target than just killing them. That was a little icky.
Then we passed a ‘taxidermy’ shop, and I realized that it wasn’t in the business of selling stuffed animals. Their datanet site went into horrifying detail about how they could preserve your enemies in a state of perpetual torment forever. Just cut their heads off, paralyze them and attach them to a little wall-mounted life support unit. Or transplant their brain into a cybernetic appliance that let them feel their surroundings but not move. They had mannequins, furniture, ash trays, toilets…
I stopped looking with a shudder. What kind of sicko would do something like that?
After that I stopped looking at the datanet sites. Just admire the pretty sakura trees, Alice. Check out the fish in the decorative ponds. Don’t ask questions when you can’t do anything about the answers. Stealing that guy’s customer list so you can hunt them all down and murder them isn’t something you can get away with.
Yet.
Our path took us across several meandering blocks of shops and small businesses, until we reached another plaza. This one was mostly empty, with just a few guys in suits hurrying back and forth. On the other side steps rose to a huge entryway guarded by a platoon of heavy warbots. A guy in a black suit and dark sunglasses met us just outside, and asked us our business.
“Ah, yes. You are expected, Captain Sokol, Miss Long. This way, please.”
He turned to lead us into the palace, and a pair of armored inugami fell in behind us. Idly, I wondered how many of the combative dog girls there were in this habitat. There didn’t seem to be any official numbers on the datanet, but judging from the size of the place the civilian population had to be well into the millions. So, tens of thousands of them at the least. Probably hundreds, considering how much violence the Masu-kai got up to. There must be whole sub-levels full of them somewhere in the guts of the city.
So why was one of them familiar?
I opened a private com channel. Captain? The inugami behind me is one of the ones who tried to grab Naoko.
There was a long pause before he answered.
Are you certain, Alice? They make numerous copies of each appearance template, so resemblances are to be expected.
A human would have had an ID transponder to confirm their identity, but the inugami were all carefully anonymous in the electronic realm. They didn’t even have ER tags. But they couldn’t fool me.
I see a lot of fine detail that would be different even for androids fabbed from the same template, sir, I told him. Things like the exact length of every hair on her head, and the wear patterns from the way she brushes it. Either it’s the same inugami, or someone went to a lot of trouble to make a perfect duplicate.
A message, then, he decided. The Masu-kai are fond of that sort of thing, although often they’re so subtle that the point is entirely missed by the intended recipient. I suggest you simply ignore her for now.
Understood, sir.
The palace they led us through was as overblown as anything I’d ever seen in a vidshow. There were endless hallways full of trophies, fancy artwork and ancient furniture that was probably carved by hand by some clan of traditional artisan monks. There were suits of gold-plated armor in designs that went out of use three hundred years ago, and equally ancient weapons hung on the walls. And swords. Lots and lots of swords. Someone definitely had a thing for edged weapons.
The audience hall our escort finally led us to was stupidly huge. The floor was made from little planks of dead wood that looked like they’d been fitted together by hand, and the walls were covered with hand-painted murals. Banners with the devices of the twelve branches of the Masu-kai hung from the high ceiling, which was made up to look like it was supported by wooden beams. Fake windows along the sides of the hall let in sunlight, and showed holographic images of lushly forested mountains.
We had to hike almost a hundred meters to get from the doorway to the raised dais where the oyabun sat, in a big wooden chair that was obviously meant to look like a throne. There was a whole platoon of inugami guards in the room, and nearly a hundred people just standing around watching us go by. As we approached I saw that the floor of the dais was covered with tatami mats, and all of the people up there were wearing slippers instead of proper shoes.
Geez, these people were really in love with their past, weren’t they? Maybe I should look into that when I had time.
The guy in the throne, who my ER tags said was named Saburo Himura, looked even older than Dusty. His face was all wrinkled, and his hair had all turned white. Honestly, he looked like we should be rushing him down to medical for an emergency anti-aging treatment. Why would anyone let themselves go like that?
Standing next to the throne was a boy who looked just a couple of years older than me, who the ER system labeled Akio Himura. A grandson? No, it said Akio was Saburo’s son, and he really was sixteen. Wow. I hope Saburo got that done the artificial way, or I was really going to feel sorry for the mother.
I copied the captain, and bowed when we reached the foot of the dais. That was harder than I expected for some reason. Some instinct was screaming at me that I was bowing way too deep for a mere yakuza boss.