An ice cold bucket of water spilled across my soul, and I woke up from the dreamlike state I had been stumbling around in. All was clear.

But perhaps I should review.

My troubles all started with Keikaku, I think. That particular batch of troubles anyway. I was so desperate to regain my male form and all that comes <ahem> attached, that I let myself be talked into a deliberate transformation into a kamen. It was a stupid risk to take.

Soon after inviting kamen-hood upon myself, my least-favorite mysterious manipulator, Nigel Ramsbottom, deprived me of one of my magical girl 'anchors'. Kumiko AKA 'Captain Kawaii', to be precise. This led to a destabilization of the kamen transformation, that caused me to shift moods and alter decisions, seemingly at random. After an argument with my partner and a visit to the new Finn, I was sucked through a mysterious dimensional portal to... somewhere.

Upon arrival in this mysterious other place, I was put through a series of hallucinatory experiences and questioned about the way I was living my life. This rather upset me, as I've never taken kindly to other people questioning the way I lived my life. I assumed that my mysterious tormentor had no right to question me like that. I assumed wrong.

When I finally pierced all the illusions to get a good look at the one behind them, I found the author of all my troubles to be.... myself.

=====================================================

The latest installment of......

Magical Girl Hunters

Episode 27: One Brighter Tomorrow or.....

The Long, Slow Climb

As narrated by: Yoi Kurasaka

Edited and transcribed by: Matthew G. Campbell (mgcampb@clemson.edu)

With special assistance by: Philip Barkow, Eduardo Dilag, and

Tim Harahan

Presented by ImproFanfic (http://pixelscapes.com/improfanfic/)

Magical Girl Hunters created by Aaron Shattuck

And away we go.....

======================================================

I could think again. That was my first thought. Whatever had happened, at least it seemed to have broken the mysterious clouds that had covered my mind all day, making it hard for me to reason or make decisions.

Koi just stood there staring at me, a neutral expression on his face. I guess I should call him Koi-kamen, since not only was he my male body made flesh again, he was wearing a formal trenchcoat and mask. To my disappointment, I found that the separation from my 'better half' had left me once again female.

Koi said, "I suppose you're wondering why I've called myself here today."

I was glad at least some part of me was in a good enough mood to be a smartass. I told him, "Not really. I think I've got it figured out now."

Koi shrugged, managing to make it look like some incredible gesture of nobility. I could already tell that looking at myself as a kamen from the outside would be no more pleasant than experiencing it from the inside. Well, maybe a little more pleasant. He said, "Not surprising, us being the same person and all. I can't really know anything that you don't already know, even if you don't know you know it. You know?"

I'd never before realized how annoying I could be. I said, "Sometimes this magical girl or kamen stuff can make the transformee act differently when they're powered up than when they aren't. I saw that with H. I figure that all the 'noble protector' kamen ideals appeal a lot more to the part of me that is you, Koi."

Koi nodded. "The buried notions of honor and nobility that I represent were naturally the portions of your psyche that the kamen magic would choose to harmonize with. However, due to the destabilization of the magic, I've been summoned up at random all day. That's why you kept reversing yourself on even the simplest decisions and having impulses that aren't quite our standard method of operation."

There's a reason why Koi always seemed so on top of my mental state in those little conversations. After all, he didn't know anything I didn't know. I confess, I read psychology books in my spare time. That's probably what inspired me to create a mental visualization as complicated as Koi, instead of just having a nervous breakdown like any normal person. I once briefly considered a career as a psychologist, but gave it up when I realized I didn't give a shit about helping people. And my grades weren't that great, either.

"Getting pulled into this place made it worse somehow. We started trying to talk with each other like we did when the Balancers were helping us, but it got all confused. Instead of reaching an agreement, we started to struggle with each other through those hallucinations. Then... I don't know exactly. Somehow that Chaos gun put me into two bodies, at least for the moment."

I'm not going to try to break that one down into who said what. We were both talking at the same time, and it was all me, anyway. I do know it was the paranoid Yoi part of me that said, "Seems kind of suspicious though, that I just happened to get sucked into this place through some portal that just happens to get accidentally broken open."

Koi and I reached our conclusion at the same time, but he was a bit quicker to react. Moving so fast it wasn't much more than a blur to me, he knocked the Chaos gun out of my hand with a carefully aimed petunia. I didn't ask why he'd done it, because I knew why he'd done it. Instead I said, "That damn gun. It must have been manipulating probability somehow. Carrying it gave Ramsbottom- or somebody, a way to push me into ending up here."

Course I didn't have any evidence of that, but since when is that an impediment to a good case of paranoia?

I gave the Chaos gun my best kick, sending it as far off into the darkness as I could. No more using this magic stuff, I promised myself, knowing full well that I'd end up breaking the promise the next time it seemed necessary.

I saw Koi giving me this searching look, and I knew what it meant. Only this time, I _really_ wasn't in the mood. "No way Koi. I'm not up for another one of our little chats just now. Especially given the way you've been humiliating me all day. Kami, do you realize what a moron you made me look like in front of Ootaki? Not the impression I want to give my peers, no matter how much I may hate them. Let's just figure out a way to re-merge and you can move back into my subconscious where you belong."

"I can't Yoi." Hoo-boy, I did not like the sound of that.

I tried to reassure him, "Hey come on, I'm sure this isn't permanent or anyt-"

He cut me off. "That's not what I mean. This kamen magic, it isn't a curse, it's a blessing. It's given you... me... us, a whole new perspective. I can't just go away now. Those visions we went through earlier- I understand now, which means you do too."

I took a step back and looked away. As already stated, I was in no mood for a wrestling match with my subconscious. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to divert my attention. Black walls, black floor, black ceiling broken only by an empty frame where the shattered mirror had been. The only source of illumination was a light filtering through from a small hole in the ceiling.

Koi stepped forward into the place where the light pooled on the floor, giving himself something of a spotlight effect. Guitar music started to play in the background. Me, I felt nothing but shame, shame that any part of me could take to the speech-making, fight-avoiding, child-molesting kamen lifestyle so easily. I had liked to think I was better than that.

Koi said, "You're miserable Koi, and we both know it. Look what this life has led you to. You make money, but don't get to enjoy it. Every try you make at establishing a relationship fails horribly. You get no respect from anyone, and now you've managed to alienate your only friend."

Actually, I was the one who had walked out on Itami, but this was the voice of my self-loathing and thus unlikely to be open to mere logic. Depression started to sweep over me like a tremendous black wave, but I made a feeble effort to fight a holding pattern. "I do okay. Work that I enjoy, that I'm good at. Not everybody's got to be on some kind of freaking crusade, you know?"

"I know that you doubt, Yoi." More kamen started to creep into his voice as it got deeper, and the music became louder. "Engaged in such monstrous 'work', how can you not doubt? Isn't that why you created me, Yoi? To be a repository for the parts of you the were repelled by the life you lead? Can you look at me and tell me you don't have doubts?"

Like I said, I don't like other people telling me how to live my life. If this had been coming from anyone else, I would probably just have killed them and walked away. Coming from a part of myself, it was the most frightening thing that I had ever heard. Worse than anything that had ever come out of Shub-Niggurath or Ultra.

Hearing this from Koi meant that some part of me had been infected by the pink fluffiness that I had always hated. And the worst part was, I could feel myself giving in. What Koi was saying was starting to make sense to me. If I didn't come up with something fast, good old cynical Yoi might end up a small part of Koi's subconscious.

Koi continued his verbal battle, not letting up on me. "Join with me, Yoi. Let the part of yourself that I am out of the prison you've put it in. Together, we can take control of the kamen transformation. You could be male all the time and have powers to protect yourself. We can change, get out of killing business, leave that to Ootaki- No! We'll take Ootaki down before we go. We can be guardians. A man, protecting-"

I had to stop him, so I did what I always do when a response is called for and I don't have a witty retort. I resorted to mindless violence. Fists swinging, I did might best to wipe the floor with the sick fragment of my psyche. I was determined to pulverize him, before his words could make me give into despair. Unfortunately, try as I might, I failed to lay a hand on him.

With a speed I was immediately envious of, Koi nimbly dodged my wild swings. He used a judo move that I must have picked up somewhere to toss me to the floor. "A fight with yourself is something that can never be won. Give in, Yoi." The kamen was out in full force now, and I could feel it eating away at my mind, telling me-

No! I leapt back up and rushed Koi, trying to crush him against the wall. He easily stepped to the side, leaving me to plow into the stony surface. My ribs hurt like hell, but I didn't let it slow me down. I turned around and was at him again.

"Why are you trying so hard, Yoi? What are you trying to save? A job that almost gets you killed every other week? Do you enjoy being the subject of others' manipulations? They pull us.... me, around like a puppet on strings, Yoi. Do you know why? It's because we don't have anything worth fighting for. We have no goal in life, nothing to strive for. We just drift along from day to day, making do. We have no objective, nothing we're trying to work towards."

He had me there. Oh, I was saving up for a new sound system for my apartment, but somehow I didn't think that counted as a genuine 'goal'.

I hadn't stop going after him during this little dialog, and he hadn't stopped dodging, though somehow he found the breath to continue talking. It's a kamen talent. Finally, I had Koi literally cornered. He was backed into a junction where two walls met, and there wasn't room for one of his tricky side maneuvers. I ran at him, arms spread wide, determined to grab onto at least some part of him.

He threw a petunia at me, razor-sharp of course. As it flashed past my eyes and slashed open my cheek, I had a dart flashback and nearly collapsed from that alone. My legs weakened and I fell to my knees, allowing Koi to step around behind me. He grabbed my shoulders and whispered in my ear.

"A purpose in life, we'd like that, wouldn't we? We can have Aika and H. Itami will come over to our side, never fear. He'd follow you anywhere. Just give in, Yoi. You and I both know we're tired. Tired of running around to no gain, tired of fighting, tired..."

He almost had me. It seemed so seductive, so easy. No more killing myself trying to be my own man. I could just let the kamen instincts guide me in all things. Looking back, it always scares me how close I came. But then Koi said something that wasn't quite right, something that gave me the break I needed to fight back.

Koi said, "I'm who you always wanted to be, who you never thought you could be. You created Koi as the part of yourself that wanted to be something other than what you are, and now that can be a reality. I'm who you really are."

"No. I. Am. Not." Instead of getting depressed, I got angry. Pushing to my feet, I knocked Koi away and turned around to face him. "It's tempting, Koi, but you aren't who am I am. You aren't even anything I ever really wanted to be. What you are is a fantasy. The grass is always greener, Koi. I dreamed you up because I thought the good guys have it easier. That they get more sleep and work less hard and feel better about themselves. But you know what? That fantasy was back when I was just getting started. Since then I've had to see all these so-called good guys and good girls up close. They have just as many troubles and arguments and messed up relationships as I do. When you get right down to it, not a damn one of them is any better than I am."

He seemed to shrink back, and I thought I could see his eyes blinking behind the mask. It was as if the stronger and more forceful I was, the weaker he got.

I started walking towards him, and he backed away, keeping the same distance between us. " So I've had things a little tough lately. Big surprise. Does that mean that I should just change who I am on the off chance that it'll lead to something better? I like who I am. Maybe I fantasized about being somebody different and maybe that's why I created Koi, but that was just a fantasy. Everyone has those. I like who I am and what I do and who my friends are. Just between us, me and myself, I even like the danger a little bit. At least my life isn't boring."

Koi had retreated as far as he could go, his back coming up against a wall. Whatever force empowered him was definitely starting to flicker. His clothes hung loosely, as if the flesh were being burned away beneath, and sunken eyesockets peeked around the edges of his mask. Now he was the one who resorted to mindless violence, tossing another petunia my way.

Luckily for me, my grandmother could have thrown harder than that. Not that that's saying much. My grandma is one mean lady. I didn't even bother to dodge, merely catching the flower by its stem and tossing it to the ground.

Koi made a final attempt to turn the tide. He said, "Your life will still be out of control, Yoi. You'll still be a puppet to Yoshiko and Ramsbottom and even Keikaku, to be used up in whatever scheme they plan. You'll still be pushed around by forces you can't even comprehend."

For a moment, just a moment, I doubted. Koi started to strengthen, the color coming back into his cheeks. Then I had the answer I was looking for. "You're right. I have been letting people manipulate me. I've been acting like a kid, just drifting along from one thing to another, and assuming it's all okay as long as I don't manage to get killed."

Koi was perking up even more and started to take a step forward, but I spoke again. "But that's no surprise. I was a kid when me and Itami got into this business, right out of high school. Starting today, things are going to change. Instead of just trying to get by, I'm going to try and figure out how it all works, how to play the system my way. You know what I really want, Koi?"

My alter ego's momentary burst of strength had faded, and he clutched the wall for support. He nodded his head that he knew, but I told him anyway. "It isn't romance. That's good, but I can live without it. It isn't money. That's more than good, but I don't exactly live a lavish lifestyle. I could find some job, get by if I had to. It isn't even being a man again, exactly, though that's a big part of it."

Koi had almost become skeletonal, but he played his part and whispered, "What then?"

"I want control over my own life. I don't want to be pushed around or manipulated by anybody. I don't want to be a pawn anymore. And from today on out, I'm going to find ways to be tough enough, mean enough, and smart enough to be a real player instead of everybody's dupe. People keep telling me how much potential I have; well it's time to exercise a little of that potential and see if I can get a little power for myself."

I was on a roll, though later I would have cause to reconsider some of it. It was inviting an awful lot of work, and I never much cared for hard work. Still, I was resolved to at least _try_ being a little more proactive. For the moment, however, there was Koi still to deal with.

He croaked at me, "You can't just get rid of me. I'm part of you."

"That you are," I agreed. "But a person can change and I'm going to change so I don't need your part of me anymore."

Once upon a time, at the beginning of my career, I didn't bother going armed between jobs. Not with guns, not with so much as a knife. I figured that I could keep all the craziness at work, and live a relatively normal life the rest of the time. Hard experience had taught me the folly of that idea. By that late date, it had gotten to the point where I didn't just go armed, but was in the habit of always carrying a backup weapon or two in case I might lose my main armament. I had lost the Chaos gun, but at that point in time, my main backup was a small caliber .22 I kept in an ankle holster.

I rolled up my pant leg, pulled out the .22 and showed it to Koi.

He responded with a defiant wolf-whistle, doing his best to leer suggestively at my leg. It seemed that with the kamen side near defeat, a little of my old spirit had crept back into him. It was almost enough for me to like him again.

Still, there was too much of the kamen sickness remaining within him. He gasped, "You can't kill me; I'm you. I'm Yoi!"

I waggled my weapon at him for effect. "No, _I'm_ Yoi Kurasaka. This is my gun." Aiming carefully, I shot him right between the eyes.

As Koi slid fell forward on what remained of his face, a darkness overtook me. I could feel a burning sensation within my veins as the kamen magic flickered and died, killed by my complete and total rejection of it and all it stood for. Dropping to my knees, I managed to stretch out on the cool stone floor without busting my head open. Eyes closed, and I took a nice long nap.

*****

I don't know how long I slept, but when I awoke, nothing had changed. The room was still black, dim light still filtered in through a hole in the ceiling, and the mirror frame still stood empty. The only thing different was that I was all stiff and sore from sleeping on the floor.

There was no sign of Koi-kamen. No corpse, not a drop of blood, not even a withered petunia. Maybe since his body was formed of magic, he had dissolved to dust the way some youma do. Maybe he had never been physically there at all, and the whole thing happened inside my head. I didn't know. I still don't know for sure, but I do know that I carried a small scar on my left cheek for a while after. Damn petunias.

Taking the only exit out of the mirror room, I prepared to face the outside world. It looked a bit different from the last time I had seen it.

Oh, the fun house was still there, but everything was dusty and disused, as if no one had been through in a long time. The only exception was my own set of footprints, marking a clear path to where I had entered the mirror room before my encounter with Koi. There were no signs of any ghosts or those glowing creatures that I had fought.

In fact, now that I thought about it, I realized the ghosts and monsters were both straight out of a horror movie I had seen the week before. And mysterious trenchcoat man had been wearing a wardrobe out of my own closet. Obviously I had been even more out of it the... call it the night before. Obviously I had been even more out of it the night before than I had realized at the time.

The trip through that portal in the Finn's shop had brought Koi to the fore to such an extent that three-quarters of everything I had seen had been an illusion, my mind using the reality behind it as a backdrop to build upon. There was no telling how far I had wandered from my arrival point.

I followed the trail in the dust for as far as I could, but it petered out along with the fun house. In fact, when I took a closer look, it wasn't that the fun house was disused as it had never been used. Everything was hastily constructed and slapped together, as if someone had constructed a stage set of a fun house in a hurry for some mysterious purpose.

The whole thing was contained in a rocky cavern, completely covered by an arching stone ceiling a dozen meters high. Illumination was provided by veins of a fluorescent blue mineral running through the rock. Several tunnels let out of the cavern, each looking equally uninviting. They were marked in some sort of strange writing that I didn't have a clue how to read.

I picked one where the writing looked particularly non-threatening and followed it. The ground was smooth, hard but with a strange give to it, like some exotic variety of rubber. There was room for about five people to stand abreast, big enough so I didn't feel too closed in. Bits of blue mineral sticking through the rock here and there gave me just enough light to see where I was going.

I walked for about a kilometer or so before the tunnel expanded out into a wide canyon that then split into a v-shape. Being right-handed, I decided to take that branch. The ceiling had retreated far overhead, but I could still see faint blur streaks up there from the mineral when I looked. Nowhere was there the least hint of open sky.

A flash of movement to one side caught my attention. It was a waterfall of sorts, but like nothing I had ever seen before. The water bubbled out of the ground, then was pulled upwards against the force of gravity. Near the ceiling it broke up into a fine mist, most of which was somehow absorbed into the rock above. A tiny percentage of it managed to fall back down, blanketing everything with a fine mist that seemed to evaporate as quickly as it arrived. When I felt the wall, the water slid away at my tough, leaving the surface dray and not at all cold or damp.

The most amazing part was that the entire waterfall made not the slightest sound. No gurgling as the water boiled up at my feet, no splashing as it knocked against itself, rising into the sky, nothing. Just a steady, uncanny, total silence. I found myself humming just to be able to hear a noise.

After staring for a minute or so, I finally worked up the courage to move away from the wall and into the enormous open area surrounding the waterfall.

That was when it hit me. No, not a sudden inspiration or idea. I mean a rather solid-looking staff impacted the side of my head and sent me sprawled across the ground.

I lifted my head up, dazed, and got a good look at my attacker. It was a magical girl. No, a magical woman really. She was short, with red and green hair and a tan fuku. Yes, I know the hair sounds like a Christmas ornament. That's what it was though, red and green. The staff, made out of some silvery metal, she clutched in one hand

Her other hand waved at me in a gesture of greeting, as if hitting people over the head was just a technique she used to get their undivided attention. Sort of like my grandmother used to do with her broom stick when she thought I wasn't listening closely enough.

My first estimate of her age was about twenty-five, but then I got a look at those cold distant eyes and immediately revised the estimate upwards by an unknown, but large, amount. She loomed over me without giving any indication of preparing a speech, which was yet another bad sign. Some part of me was screaming 'not fair, not fair'. I was supposed to be the one ambushing her kind, not the other way around.

"Who are you?" I asked. Not that I really cared, but I hoped it would give me enough time to pull out one of my remaining weapons.

A confused look passed across your eyes and she muttered. "No, you don't speak yet. First I have to accuse you of being Ramsbottom and then you try to kill me."

I was none the more enlightened by that statement, but I didn't let it deter me from sneaking a hand down to my ankle holster. Suddenly her face cleared up and an expression of enormous rage crossed it. "Ramsbottom, how dare you cross me like that! Pretending to be the person whom I'm searching for. Well, I'll clear your pollution from the time stream for good!"

Even as a case of mistaken identity, threats to have my pollution cleared did not thrill me. I tried for a shot with my usual lightning draw, but it did me no good. As soon as I had the .22 in my hand, she rapped my knuckles with her staff. As if that wasn't showy enough for her, the instant the gun dropped from my fingers, she hit it out of mid-air with the staff and knocked it into the distance. I had a sinking feeling that the same thing would happen if I went for one of my knives.

In desperation, I resorted to trying to talk my way out of trouble. Rarely had such efforts worked, but it seemed like my only option. I gasped my plea out in a hurry, as the mysterious lady's staff was starting to hover dangerously close to my throat. "Lady, do I look like a time-controlling British youma-boss and general pain in the ass to you?"

The vague look returned to her eyes, and she started muttering again. "Next I tell you I have four messages and then I introduce myself as Styx and question you."

Well I had already had an idea I was in it deep, but this clued me into just how much trouble I was in. A whole lot. Allow me to explain.

Though I was no expert in magic or mysterious destinies, simple survival instinct had long ago led me to do basic research on my prey. Based on rumor, precious few facts, and no little personal experience, there were a few things about magical girls I felt I could be relatively sure of. One was that magical girls had been coming into existence for a long, long time. Oh, the current proliferation was utterly unusual, but there had always been at least one or so along each decade, though most of them stayed well out of the public eye. Firm records could be traced back to the Menji era, and rumor and legend went back much further than that.

There were even theories of ancient civilizations existing before recorded history that ran on magic and under the protection of magical girls. I wasn't certain I believed in that, though. How seriously can you take a theory that espouses the existence of something called a "Kingdom of Delight"?

Another fact is that magical girls tended to get more powerful with age, though this was a general trend rather than a firm law. Me, I mostly dealt with the small fry who were relatively new to the game. The tadpoles of the magical girl lifecycle, if you will. Those who survived more than a few years tended to get what they call "powerups" and become even more dangerous. A good example would be those Magical Women I had run into a while back. Or Sailor H, for that matter. Something like H-power was at least two powerups away from your typical MG.

As I believe I have mentioned, I didn't like to mess with those few who managed to pass from 'girl' status to female superhero. Not necessarily out of some strange moral beliefs, but just because they were so incredibly dangerous. Dangerous both in terms of raw power and in their sheer experience making them less likely to fall for my little traps and tricks. Again, take Sailor H as an example. Itami and I had to sweat through serious preparations and enormous firepower to fight the 'tadpoles' without getting hurt. H would typically recklessly charge in without preparation, outnumbered, and kill her all opponents without getting a scratch on her.

There is a point to get to before I go back to my confrontation with Styx. The 'tadpoles' and the mature fighter were the two most commonly seen stages of magical girl development. However, there was also a third stage, one I'd never actually seen an example of before.

Here we get into an area that was more hazy speculation to me than actual knowledge. Apparently some of these magical women didn't age normally. Not all of them by any means, but a very few of them who had become extremely powerful and fully triumphed over whatever respective menace they were trying to fight. Instead of getting old and dying like the rest of us mere mortals, they sort of...... Well, I was unclear on this point. They didn't seem to stick around forever. Itami speculated that they eventually ended up as some sort of guardian spirits, but he's always been much more into that Shinto stuff than I ever was.

In sum, Styx was one of the few of those undying ones that I had actually heard something substantive about. Even if I hadn't, she was one of those magical women with a mythological name, a sure sign of her ancient origins. She was on the job before all the good names were taken. From what I had heard, she'd dropped the first part of her name, formerly Sailor Styx, which is another thing the older ones tend to do. Styx had been around for who knows how long, and was somehow connected to control of time, from the vague stories I had heard.

I wasn't surprised she had managed to take me down so easily. Modern weaponry and surprise attacks allowed me to keep pace with newbie magical girls, who usually didn't have more than an energy blast and a fancy costume to their name. Styx was closer to a demi-god, and I was willing to bet she could knock bullets out of the air with that staff.

All of this flashed through my head in about two seconds as I watched the nutcase mutter to herself. As worried as I was, I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed. I had always figured the first time I met one of those 'third-stagers', I'd do a bit better. It was going to be one of those epic battles with me and Itami duking it out for hours and barely managing to escape with our lives. Instead, Itami wasn't in his usual place backing me up, and Styx was pushing me around like I was nothing but a little kid's doll.

As if that last thought had triggered an action, Styx grabbed me by the collar and pulled me to my feet, not bothering to be too gentle about it. Once I'd managed to find my balance, she stepped back and started to speak again.

"Understand that we've already met. I have four messages for you. Do you understand?"

She seemed to expect an answer, so I gave her an honest one. "No."

Tapping her staff against the ground, she closed her eyes and mumbled again. This time it was too faint for me to understand the words. When she opened her eyes, a more determined expression appeared on her face. She gave me a curt nod and said, "Making a temporal jump always scrambles my thought patterns a bit. It takes a little while for the universe to match up with the linearity of my thoughts." She paused again, then continued, "I am Styx. Have we met before? What's today's date?"

The conversation seemed to be escaping my control, but I'd just made a vow not to let myself get pushed around any more. I told Styx, "Before I answer your questions, you're going to answer some of my questions. You said you made a temporal jump. Is that some kind of time travel thing? Also, what was going on with shouting about Ramsbottom?" There, that was the sort of forceful not-being-pushed-around image I wanted to project.

She looked at me like I might have looked at Aika when the kid said something particularly naive during a job. "Young lady, I am not accustomed to being questioned."

Naturally, being called young lady did not make me any more inclined to cooperate. I folded my arms and glared at her, determined not to give in. I was prepared to wait all day, not having any outstanding appointments.

Evidently Styx did have somewhere to be, because she made an old-lady snort of submission. Like she didn't have any more time to spend bothering with me. It was strange hearing a sound like that coming from someone who I might have lusted over under other circumstances. Though I normally preferred my women a bit thinner.

Styx jiggled the staff she held in her hand, like I might play with a set of car keys. She said, "Fine, two questions for two questions. To your first question, the answer is yes. As to dear Nigel-" She stopped in mid-sentence, staring at me like a fly she had found in her soup.

Styx screamed, "Ramsbottom, how dare you-," she stopped, looking puzzled. "Wait, I've already said that, haven't I? Young lady, your temporal pattern seems oddly similar to that of Nigel. For a moment I thought it was his, though now I see his has more wear. How curious."

Styx seemed to forget I was even there for a moment, thinking aloud to herself. "I know he's been traveling back to this era causing more trouble. But what could have him so interested? I wonder... Perhaps..."

She recollected herself and managed to not notice me with the sort of casual avoidance my grandmother did when I was expected to do something without reminding. It would have been an exact match, but my grandmother didn't look like a twenty-five year old in a tan fuku. I got the message regardless.

"Never met you before today, Styx, and I think I would have remembered." Then I told her the date- or at least what it had been before I'd made my unorthodox exit from the Finn's shop.

The time lady nodded at me, as if I had only confirmed what she already knew. "Understand that we've already met. I have four messages for you of today, entrusted to me to deliver. In an encounter yet to come for you, already past for me, I have been placed in your debt, Yoi Kurasaka. This is my partial remittance on what I owe."

I moved a little closer, wanting to make sure I caught every word. Information from the future sounded like a good way to save myself a lot of headaches in the present. I must have violated her personal space, because Styx used her staff to give me a rap on the shins. I backed off again.

"Number one," announced Styx. She pulled a little piece of paper out from somewhere and started reading from it, though her outfit didn't have any pockets that I could see. "Trust Itami when he seeks your help for the family curse, no matter that it seems he will lead you to certain doom."

Trust Itami. Right, I could manage that.

I noticed Styx's lips moved when she read. "Number two. When you get an offer that may lead you to great power, recall that if it was really that easy, everyone would have great power."

Belatedly, the thought occurred to me that I should write this stuff down. Unfortunately, I didn't have a pen or paper, and I couldn't see myself asking Styx to loan me any.

"Number three. A new restaurant called the Palms will be opening up next week. It is an excellent place to take a woman, but make sure to dress up." Styx must have noticed the expression on my face, because she added, "I did not write these."

I was seriously wondering about the priorities of whoever _had_ written the list, but Styx had already started on number four.

"Number four. Koi will try to tempt you, but remember who you really are and-"

"Hey!" I interrupted. "I've already been there, done that with Koi, just a little while ago."

My companion wasn't phased. "It's difficult to make an exact landing. The currents of time move strangely in this dimension. Fortunately, I have an alternate. Alternate number four. There will be a shotgun hidden under the sink. That should save you having to fight hand-to-hand."

It would have been a fairly solid piece of advice, except for the fact that I had no idea where or when it would apply. I wondered aloud, "Was there a point to all that?"

Styx shrugged. "Certainly. The past is always changeable. It is only the future that is unalterable." That made no sense to me whatsoever, but I didn't press the point.

I was about to ask what next, when I got the answer without having to say a word. Styx raised her staff in the air, and it started pulsing with a dim brownish glow, like a dirty low watt light bulb. Finally tuned instincts told me to get some distance and quickly.

As the glow moved to engulf her, Styx said to me, "Good-bye young lady. If you continue to interfere as you did when I met you for the first time, I have no doubt we will encounter each other again in my own personal timeline." Then she was gone.

It was only after the time lady had departed that I realized I'd forgotten to ask her about a way out of wherever I was and back to Tokyo. Not that I thought she would have told me. As with my grandmother, I got the feeling Styx considered being helpful a useful trait for other people, not something that applied to herself.

*****

Without Koi shouting in my head every five minutes, I was able to make a little more sense out of the whole place. The was a strange feel to time there, like the space between one second and the next wasn't quite what I was used to. Given what I'd just gone through, that wasn't strange enough to so much as make me break a sweat. No, what had me wishing I'd applied an extra coat of deodorant was that the place felt _familiar_. Somehow I knew that I'd then there before, and it was driving me crazy.

I suppose I should try to describe more of the complex. After leaving the waterfall, I wandered around, trying different trails for quite a while. It's difficult though. I guess I'm not sure how to put it all into words. There were weirder things in there than that reverse waterfall. A hell of a lot weirder.

If I tried to describe them all, I could be talking all day. Let's just say there were corridors that went on forever. Doors that opened into the door across the hall. There was an enormous garden that grew by the light of glowing pools of water. See? I'm not a flowery type of guy, but I can't help but get a little flowery when talking about that place.

All of it was enclosed. I never caught sight of so much as a window. I didn't know if the entire weird dimension was that way or if I was stuck inside some kind of complex carved inside a mountain. Make that a mountain range. Either way, I was kind of glad I couldn't see a sky, because I was pretty sure it wouldn't have been an earth sky.

What creeped me out the most was that the entire complex was deserted. I saw an occasional chair or table or other fragment of human presence, but otherwise there was no trace of man or animal. As far as I could tell, I was utterly alone. Wandering aimlessly around infinite corridors without direction or hope. It was the sort of thing that could drive a man mad, but I'd already had my share of madness that day.

I stopped in a sphere-shaped room where gravity was all twisted so that down was whatever was under your feet. There were no walls, just a floor that curved up and around into a ceiling overhead. Folding my hands together, I made an effort to recapture some of the vision I had attained during the fight with Koi.

Take charge of your life, eh Yoi? Well here's the place to start. Once you get out of this place- and you will get out of this place -make it an opportunity, not just another reason to bury your head under the pillow. If nobody else is claiming it, then that makes it yours. Remember how you got out so you can get back in. You can use this place for target practice or rent it to somebody else or use it to store your spare trenchcoats or _something_!

A feeble first effort at opportunism, but I was a new student to that school of thought. My brief effort to think positive thoughts did have at least one good result. Without the noise of my footsteps, I could hear a sound. It was a sort of high-pitched rhythm, too faint to make out the details. I was sensing it as much from the vibration of air on my skin as from my ears.

It was coming from one of the staircases on the other side of the room. I walked over the curved floor to it and peered down into the darkness. Obviously, all exits from that room went down. The sound was still too faint to make out, but it was definitely there. I went after it. What else could I do? Despite my 'cheery thoughts', I had no ideas on how to get out of that place.

I palmed a knife, cursed Styx for losing my last gun, and descended into darkness. Literally, not metaphorically. I was still trying to do my best to think positive thoughts, though it was beginning to make my brain ache. Down the stairs, through the archway, and into the office area.

Yes, it was an office area. It seemed I had finally managed to stumble into a more recently inhabited section of wherever it was that I was. It could have been any gathering of faceless, soulless cubicles in a downtown Tokyo office building, except for a certain subtle diabolic pointiness to the furniture. I used my knife to poke at a Dilbert calendar, turned to next week's date.

The sound was coming in much clearer now. It was sobbing. Female sobbing, I was fairly sure. Naturally, this did not set my mind at ease. Most of the really dangerous people I knew were female, excepting Itami. And I'm convinced Itami learned it from his hideously large collection of aunts. I didn't want to keep going, but like I said, I was out of options.

Instinct pricking at my mind, I threw a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure Itami was backing me up. I then cursed myself for being an idiot, because of course Itami wasn't there. I hadn't seen him since making a fool of myself and storming out of the office. It didn't seem like it could have been more than two days before, but I was already missing having him around to guard my back.

Holding the knife in one hand and one of those heavy duty office staplers in the other, I crept forward to what would have been the reception area in a conventional place of business. I had already made up my mind that no matter what I found there, I was going to attack and subdue it out of principle. Well, unless it looked too dangerous, in which case I suppose I would have beat a hasty retreat.

The sound was close now. This was it. I tensed up, cocked my knife arm back for the throw, and peeked around the corner.

I fell in love. Well, lust at least. Now understand I had been forced to develop a certain tolerance to female beauty in my line of work. I'm no pedophile but some of the older magical girls, the ones in at least their mid-teens, tend to be 'developed' quite beyond their years. Hey, I wasn't that far out of high school myself. As much as I might have wanted to look, though, letting myself be distracted by those short skirts would have been a good way to get myself killed.

That's not even mentioning the fact that I was currently female myself. Whenever my hormones started to surge, a quick glimpse down at my own chest usually made me remember my circumstances. Don't get me wrong, I was still perfectly capable of ogling a woman. It's just that I wasn't going to go off my head because of a pretty face.

Until right that moment.

She was drop-dead utterly gorgeous. A mature beauty who made every other woman I could think of appear as a mere girl in comparison. Long slivery hair with just the right amount of curl to it trailed down a slim, willowy figure. Large gray eyes sat in a heart shaped face that I could only see part of, as she was crying into her hands. She was wearing a simple white dress, which was probably fine by anybody who saw her. You wanted to look at her, not get distracted by some dress.

It was a refined beauty, too. The sort that made you want to take her out for an long candlelit dinner before taking her back to your place to shag until the sun rose. If I had been a real woman, I'm sure I would have been a little awed and a lot jealous. I wasn't a real woman, so I felt free to just drool.

I must have made a noise, because she gave a sudden start and straightened up from her seat on the couch. She was looking right at me. I realized I still had my arm pulled back for a knife throw, and I carefully let it down. I didn't resheath the knife, though. I might have been stunned by beauty, but my survival instincts weren't totally dead.

"Who are you?" As you might expect, her voice was musical and perfectly pitched. You could have cut a CD of her reading the phonebook, and it would still have sold a million copies.

On another day I might have been lulled into answering her question. That day, however, I was still pumped up on willpower after having fought off my alter ego and taken back control of my mind. I threw her own question back at her.

"You first, lady. Who are you?" One of the various minor annoyances that had plagued me for months was what had happened to my voice. The transformation into a woman had sent my vocal chords back up into octaves they hadn't hit since before puberty. Contrasted with her, all of the sudden I sounded rough and masculine again. Strange how the little things can cheer you up so much.

The aforementioned lady dried her tears and got to her feet. She was a tall one for a woman, coming to maybe an inch under my own height. I tensed for an attack, but she just looked at me for a long moment before finally saying, "I am Qu-.... Veracity. My name is Veracity. And you are?"

"Yoi Kurasaka." The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could shut them off. It was that voice again, though repeated exposure was starting to lessen the effect.

To my surprise, a look of recognition entered those huge silvery eyes. She said, "One of the so-called Magical Girl Hunters, aren't you? I've heard your name mentioned."

I briefly considered denying it. Veracity wouldn't have looked too out of place mentoring or sponsoring her own group of magical girls. On the other hand, she hadn't sounded hostile, and it would be harder to get information from her if I had to remember to stick to some story I made up. So I admitted membership in the infamous group. "Yeah, that's me."

Veracity frowned ever so slightly, corners of her mouth perking down charmingly. "Forgive me Kurasaka-san, but I had been under the impression that you were... a man."

"I am. I had an accident." That was the short answer I had developed for such situations. The long answer generally took twenty minutes or so.

She gave me a look like she wanted to know more but was too polite to inquire on her own, so couldn't I please go ahead and tell her. I declined to fall for it, and we stood there in silence for a minute. I wanted to see what she'd say without me feeding her any more information. She was already one up on me, having recognized my name while I didn't have clue one from hers.

When Veracity did open her mouth, she did the last thing I expected. She stole my line. "Kurasaka-san, I'm afraid I must ask for your aid in escaping from this place."

"Whoa. Hold on for a minute here." Seeing that this might take a while, I pulled a chair out from behind the receptionist's desk and took a minute to look around.

It was a small area, just big enough to hold the desk and a couple of black leather couches upon which visitors might rest, waiting to be admitted. Veracity had been sitting on one of the aforementioned couches as she cried. Now she stood, something in her posture suggesting a small bird ready to take flight at the first sign of trouble.

The outer doors were frosted so that I couldn't see what waited outside. Based on previous experience, I sort of doubted it was the sunlit city street I might hope to see upon exiting from a more earthbound office complex. The desk held a small crystalline statuette of a woman looking contemplative. Beyond that, it was just typical secretary equipment such as a fancy phone, personal computer, and a holder full of pens. I lusted after the computer, which was one of the latest models I'd been reading about in the paper. I kept trying to talk Itami into buying one for the office, telling him we needed it to keep ourselves organized.

Itami said that firstly, it wasn't such a great idea for us to be keeping written records. Secondly, he figured I just wanted it to play computer games on in between jobs. This was true, but I still figured he was being petty about it. After all, I would have let him play too.

My survival instincts still on high alert, I'd been careful to keep one eye on Veracity all through this little interlude. Now I settled back into the chair and said, "Just where is 'this place'? What are you doing here, and where did you hear of me?"

Veracity considered my questions, her face screwed up in concentration. This added an enticing element of 'cuteness' to her otherwise elegant beauty, and I felt a light sweat break out across by brow. It was one of the few times I was actually thankful for my condition. I was pretty sure that if I had been male with hormones in full force, I would have offered to be her love slave by then.

"This is, or rather was, the administrative division and accounting department for the former organization known as the Balancers." The bells and chimes in her voice seemed to have faded slightly.

I could already see that this was going to be one of _those_ sort of talks. Clutching my head and resolving to make a box of aspirin part of my regular gear, I tried to get Veracity to clear things up a little more. "Wait. That doesn't sound right for a lot of reasons. Just for starters, I only got the heads-up from Matsura last night that the group was shutting down. Number two, I never got what the big deal was anyway. This Balancer group was supposed to be a committee of powerful types working together. What was so special about Yog-Sothoth that him pulling out broke up the group? Number three, I don't see why a group like that would need an office or accounting department or anything much more than a table to sit around and meet at."

Having decided I wasn't going to jump over the desk and strangle her, Veracity sat back down on the couch and began answering me. "In order then. Firstly, you must remember that time moves differently in this pocket dimension, Kurasaka-san. At least, in some places in it. One night and one day in the prime world can be much longer here. For instance, I myself have been here alone for... for quite some while. There has been plenty of time for everyone to- how would you say? Close up shop and go home."

"Yeah alright, I can see that." The coincidence of the Finn having a bunch of transport devices in his workshop suddenly made a lot more sense. No doubt somebody in the organization had decided to dump a few of their one-shot transport gizmos. Absentmindedly, I noticed that either I was getting used to Veracity or she had deliberately decided to turn the heat down. I had even managed to stop staring obsessively at her breasts.

"Number two. How best to put this? 'Alliances form and alliances dissolve. Treaties are written to be broken. Allies become enemies, foes become friends, and the cycle begins anew.' Other incarnations of the Balancers have existed in the past, and I have no doubt that there will be future such groupings, but the most recent such has come to its natural end." That bit in the middle had sounded like a quote, though she didn't volunteer a source.

She continued, "There are still, as they are called, cosmic troublemakers out there, but none so troublesome as Ultra was. His organization is breaking naturally back into competing factions of good, evil, and self-interest, as I'm sure you've noticed for yourself. In truth, this recent grouping of Balancers outlasted its natural lifespan by several months, mostly due to the efforts of certain self-interested parties. Yog-Sothoth deciding that membership cost more that it gained was merely the final.... ah, final straw."

That struck a familiar chord. "Yoshiko did say that members were starting to drift off. But she also said that the chaos was getting worse and-"

"Matsura Yoshiko." Not only had Veracity interrupted me, but her voice had gone to ice. "She is knowledgeable, but do not take everything she says as indisputable fact, Kurasaka-san. Even if Yoshiko believed what she was telling you, she is human and has not seen this pattern played out before. The very existence of a Balancers group is unbalancing, tipping towards the side of law. Now there will be chaos and worse, for a time."

I'd noticed the shift in tone, not being deaf. "You and Yoshiko not exactly friends?"

"No. As I said, Yoshiko did not understand the natural progression of these matters. You were right, Kurasaka-san, when you said that an organization such as the Balancers needed little more than a table to met around, each having their own resources. However, Yoshiko became involved in the group quite by chance, having the right knowledge in the right place, and she did not have such resources."

I was beginning to get a glimmering. "So you're saying that Yoshiko was manipulating the organization, using it to gain power for herself by skimming off the top. No wonder she was so happy after Ultra got put away. She must have figured it was going to get a whole lot easier for her, with the number one emergency taken off the plate. She didn't know that was going to be a signal to close up shop." A sudden wave of doubt hit me. "Wait a minute. Matsura always seemed like a pretty stand-up woman when I talked to her. I'm having trouble with this 'evil manipulator' role you want to stick her in."

Veracity seemed to be struggling with herself, but eventually the words came out. "I didn't say she was evil. As far as I may determine, Yoshiko is genuinely interested in protecting the prime world. She merely does not trust alien entities to work towards that end, and she may be right in that mistrust."

"So what's your problem with her?" I started absentmindedly fiddling with the small statuette atop the desk. Veracity's eyes went wide and she followed every movement of my hands.

Sounding distracted, she answered. "Yoshiko can be quite ruthless in her quest, Kurasaka-san. She forced me to be a part of her efforts, whether I would be or not. Not that I particularly minded working as a receptionist, but-"

I couldn't help it. I let a snicker escape. "Receptionist? You're kidding me. Come on, tell the truth."

I'd hit a sore spot with her. She stiffened up and gave me a that 'you offended me for a reason I'm not going to tell you, but you still better figure it out and apologize' look. I'd received it from more than one woman in the past.

I have this trick where I wiggle my nose at a woman. They seem to find it cute, and it's gotten me out of one or two romantic difficulties in the past. I hadn't tried it since my involuntary sex-change, but it was time to se if any of the old magic still lingered.

It did. Veracity actually giggled, which brought back some of the stars and hearts that had gradually dropped out of her voice. "I never lie, Kurasaka-san. I sometimes don't tell the whole truth, but I never outright lie."

"Uh-huh." The statuette dropped from my fingers back on the desk, which seemed to relieve Veracity immensely. I took note. "So all these desks and offices are from an organization Yoshiko was trying to put together under the nose of the Balancers committee?"

Veracity gave me the nod, my charming nose wiggle having apparently gotten me back into her good graces. "Oh yes. The various members were more than happy to let Yoshiko take care of matters herself with their separate support. Otherwise, they might have had to actually work together."

"That explains why she was so honked off she called me up. Stupid of her, though. Number one rule is not to tell someone that you're coming after them."

My silver-haired lady friend looked surprised. "She actually said she was going to take vengeance on you?"

I struggled to recall the exact details of the conversation. The kamen magic had already started to have Koi jabbering in my ear, so it was tough to retrieve the details. "Not exactly. She said the Balancers collapsed, it was all my fault, I'd better be careful in the future, and she was going to put something new together."

Veracity nodded along with my words. "Yoshiko does have a temper sometimes. No doubt she was just- what is the expression? Blowing off gas at you. Though I'm sure she was serious about creating her own organization. Yoshiko is a ruthless and knowledgeable woman who has had the opportunity to learn many secrets. If her anger at you passes, she may even attempt to recruit you for it."

That was a thought. I had other things to worry about at the time, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to try to work something out with Yoshiko. If what Veracity was saying was accurate, what had happened with the Balancers wasn't really my fault. Maybe Yoshiko would be smart enough to realize that, once she cooled down a little. On the other hand, when in my life had it ever been that easy?

All this information was very interesting, but it wasn't getting me any closer to escaping from what was formerly Balancer headquarters. I picked up the statuette that Veracity had been eyeing and hefted it in my hand. Time to put the squeeze on.

"So Veracity. You said you needed my help in getting out of here. Why is that?" I tossed the statuette a few feet in the air, then caught it again. Her eyes followed it through the entire arc.

"I... I... Please put that down." She put every bit of charm and heat she had in that voice. Damn if I didn't start to put the statuette back down, though I managed to keep my fingers curled around it as it rested on the desk.

"I'm sensing this is important to you. Why don't you tell me all about it." I gave her my best warm smile, just to see if it would loosen her up any.

Her face twisted up in an internal conflict I'd seen before. If that 'never lie' bit was true, I figured she was struggling with herself against telling me something. I gave her a little encouragement. "I'm not such a bad guy. Just tell me whatever it is and maybe I can help you out."

Veracity didn't look overwhelmed with confidence at my promise, but she did talk. "I am not quite as alive as I appear to be, Kurasaka-san. Though I can be solid enough, the manifestation of my spirit is tied to that statuette you are playing with. I am helpless to pick it up or move it in any way."

The light dawned. "So unless somebody moves this for you, you're stuck hovering in the vicinity. So if I carried it with me, you could lead me out of here."

Oops. I'd let slip more than I intended, and Veracity jumped on it faster than a cat on three day dead fish. "Lead you? You don't know how to get out of here, do you, Kurasaka-san?"

"Of course I do. I just meant that maybe you know a shorter, er..." I could see she wasn't buying it. "So maybe I don't. But maybe I'll figure it out if I roam around long enough. Who knows how long you could sit here without someone else coming for you? Especially with time moving slower here."

She gave me one of those sparkles and sunlight smiles. "You're right. How about a simple agreement? I'll direct you out of here and back to the prime world, and in return you take my statuette along with you."

"I can work with that." Picking up the statuette with one hand and holding the knife in the other, I made motion for her to lead the way. If there were any trouble ahead, I wanted the spirit running into it first. No matter how much of a babe she was.

*****

The simple metal door stood at the end of the corridor. There was a lit up red sign reading [EXIT] posted above it. I looked at Veracity. She just looked back at me and sort of shrugged.

"This was complicated exit that I needed to be led to?" Slight irritation at being snookered bubbled up inside me. For a minute I was tempted to use it for an 'Arousal of Unpleasant Intent' gesture of contempt, like I'd seen that fighter do on television. I wasn't sure I could get it right, though.

The silver-haired lady at my side gave a small laugh and said, "Well you could have spent a good five minutes going up and down to find the right corridor. You didn't really think the exit would be hard to find for people already inside, did you Kurasaka-san?"

Still grumbling, I responded, "I spent enough time wandering around before I found you. Why did the Balancers create a place this size, if all Yoshiko needed was that little area?"

She laughed again, but it was such a pleasant sound that I didn't mind. "Oh they didn't create this pocket dimension. This is just one of thousands of sub-planes of reality floating about the prime world. As they're all of differing sizes and natures, those who need a hidden area to operate generally just stake out a part of one that best fits their purposes and set up camp there."

It made sense. Most of my more supernatural clients operated out of weird worlds of their own. Ultra had been the exception, staging so many of his bases in hidden buildings in the city. Itami and I had quite an adventure about a year or so before, paying a visit to one of those strange dark dimensions to collect our payment.

I reached out and grabbed Veracity's arm. It was the first time I had made physical contact with her, and a shiver ran up and down my body. Not unpleasant exactly, but I let go as quickly as I had grabbed on.

"You seem to know an awful lot about, well, everything," I said putting on my positive face and giving her the nose twitch again. I hoped I wasn't overdosing her on it.

Veracity gave me an enigmatic half-smile that looked like it belonged in some sort of art museum. "I've been around for a long, long time, Kurasaka-san. Yoshiko sometimes found my knowledge most useful. I fear it was my recalcitrance in sharing some of that knowledge that led to her abandoning me."

"You said you didn't mind being her... receptionist. What got the two of you at such odds anyway?" I asked. A sparkle of a plan was beginning to take shape in the back of my head.

The steel came out again, and a hard look crossed the lady's face. "I can't get reception for a television or radio while I'm in here."

I waited, but no more explanation seemed forthcoming. "That's it?"

"That's enough! Tied down as I am, I don't get out much, Kurasaka-san. I need some sort of contacts to what's going on in the world! Yoshiko promised to bring me the newspaper, but she forgot about that half the time. I can be a good friend, Kurasaka-san, but I expect consideration in return.... or else!"

That last made me twitch, as it sounded a bit too threatening for comfort and reminded me that I really didn't know the lady that well. Still, I rallied and kept on with the idea that had been knocking about my head. "So did you have any plans for where you wanted me to drop your statuette once I'm out?"

It was instantly evident to me that she hadn't thought this one out. "Well, I..."

I pressed home my advantage. "Tell you what. It just so happens that my partner and I have need of a secretary type receptionist for our business. Having all your knowledge couldn't hurt either. Why not come to work for the Magical Girl Hunters? We can put a TV in our office."

She bit her lip, which of course looked cute. I was beginning to think she could manage to make a head cold look beautiful. She demanded, "I want a television, a radio, and my own newspaper subscription."

"Done!" I was feeling smug about closing the deal, when a belated thought occurred to me. "You, uh, don't have any problems with our business?"

For the first time, I caught a glimpse of something ancient and far away in Veracity's eyes. "I told you, I've been around a long, long time, Kurasaka-san. I don't always see things the same you modern folks do. You and your partner serve a valid purpose of removing those unworthy to have the power they hold. If they are worthy, destiny will ensure they survive."

Sounded like a load of hogwash to me, but I was happy to go along with whatever rationalizations she needed to get her through the day.

So was I crazy hiring her on the spot like that? I figured it was a great opportunity to get someone on the payroll who knew about the mystic stuff, Keikaku having proven himself unreliable. Not to mention that she was working dirt cheap. The fact that I'd get to look at that stunning face every day had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. Right.

Sure I couldn't trust her, but that was nothing new. I couldn't trust anybody other than Itami. Itami. Damn, I still needed to patch things up with him. I resolved to make that first on the new agenda. As I put my hand on the exit door handle, Veracity spoke.

"If you don't mind, Kurasaka-san, I'm going to rest now. Call me when you need to speak to me again." With that, she sort of dissolved into the mist-like cloud of sparkly lights. I didn't complain; it was better than then awful black oily stuff that everybody else seemed to break down into. The cloud swirled around and then entered the statuette.

I hefted the statuette in my hand and gave consideration to just tossing it over my shoulder and getting out of there. Sucker that I am, though, I could never resist an opportunity. I put it in a pocket of my trenchcoat and opened the door.

*****

Early afternoon sunlight nearly blinded me as I stepped out of the doorway. Squinting a bit, I took in my surroundings. A small park stretched out around me. It was just a tiny spot of green, covered with grass and a set of playground equipment in one corner. The concrete and steel of the city crowded the edges of the park all directions I looked.

When I heard the door click shut behind me, I turned to see what the exit looked like from the outside. With no doorknob or knocker, the surface was perfectly flat on the outer side, blending almost undetectably into a large piece of modern sculpture that dominated the center of the park. I pried briefly at the seams, but the door needed some sort of key to open back up that I didn't seem to possess.

I didn't sweat it too much. After all, I had just spent an indeterminate amount of time trying to escape from that place. If I wanted to go back later for some reason, I was sure I could eventually get the thing open.

Pondering the utter hideousness of the sculpture brought back some half-buried memories, and I suddenly realized exactly where I was. Firecracker Park, it was called. It had been the site of some magical girl type throwdown nearly four years before, a bit before Itami and I started up operations. It was a nasty piece of business. The whole area had been leveled, without so much as a brick left standing after the battle was over.

Even as land-hungry as Tokyo is, there are limits. No one was willing to build on a mystically blasted, almost certainly cursed piece of land. Not wanting to just let the ruins sit there, looking menacing and attracting rats, the city government eventually gave in and put up Firecracker Park to cover up the whole matter. It looked like all those developers had been right about lingering mystical forces. Someone had decided to install a mystical portal in the vaguely phallic sculpture that had been placed in the center of the new park.

Either that, or someone had built the sculpture around a pre-existing portal.

Not that I really cared about any of that. All that really concerned me was that it was going to be a long trip back to my apartment. My encounters with Koi, Styx, and Veracity really hadn't involved all that much physical effort, but the mental exertion had left me plenty exhausted all the same. Figuring that it wasn't like I had any outstanding appointments, I went over the swings and sat down, intending to get a little rest before walking back.

Given the way my life works, it's no surprise that I didn't get what I wanted.

It started as a vague itching, a twitching in the back of my brain. Sort of like being in a crowd and having someone try to get your attention, saying, "Pssst. Psssst." You know they're there, but every time you look, you can't pick them out of the crowd.

I slapped the side of my head, but it didn't make the twitching go away. Instead it seemed to get more powerful, and I started to recognize the source of the irritation. It was Aika. She was cursing, screaming threats.... she was afraid. I could tell.

Her voice wasn't blaring in my head like some soundtrack or anything. It was more like I had seen Aika angry and afraid before, and the feelings I had gotten from her those times were exactly like the feelings reverberating through my head. I'd seen enough of her, known her long enough, to translate the feeling into typical Aika rantings in my mind. Naturally, I had no idea what was going on.

I formed a theory after it was all over, though, after I had some time to think. Though the kamen magic was gone, it's initial creation had burned mental pathways between me and the three magical girls that had been used as my 'anchors'. These pathways had never had much of a chance to be put into use, given how quickly the whole kamen situation exploded in my face, but they were there.

Somehow Aika being in serious trouble had reactivated whatever tenuous connection remained. It wasn't all that surprising, given that I knew her the best of the three. She had spent three months working as backup for Itami and me, while H wasn't around half the time and didn't like talking to me if she was, and my total conversations with Kumiko probably didn't add up to ten minutes.

What I didn't know was whether this would be a one-time thing, or likely to continue. I fervently hoped the former. I had more than enough troubles with my own subconscious lurking in the back of my head, much less someone else's.

Like I said, all of this was what I'd think up later. When the 'buzz' hit me, all that I knew was that Aika was in serious trouble. The question became, was I going to go try and help her?

I was mightily tempted not to. Running off to answer some mental distress call like a rat after cheese was just the sort of thing I wanted to work against. No more being pushed around. On the other hand, I did owe Aika something. She'd become a part of the team over the past few months. Even if her romantic inclinations had me spooked, I still sort of liked having an apprentice. Someone to pass on my vast three years of experience to and to train in all my 'wisdom'. She was a friend.

Put that way, there wasn't much I could do. I let the 'buzz' orient me in the proper direction and stated running through the streets like a madman.

*****

It didn't take me more than two hundred meters or so to realize I wasn't up to making the twenty meter leaps of the typical avenging kamen. I couldn't jump from rooftop to rooftop, and I wasn't outracing cars. In fact, some kid on a bicycle passed me. Not to mention I was getting winded pretty damn quick.

A quick check of my pockets showed I barely had enough to buy a pretzel, much less pay a taxi. There was no help for it. I'd have to do something I normally avoided when I could. I'd have to take public transportation. Face wrinkling with distaste, I took a quick estimate on what neighborhood the 'buzz' was leading me to and descended down the nearest subway entrance.

It wasn't that it was particularly filthy or unpleasant smelling like I'd heard subways in other countries were. If it had been, I might have felt more at home. It was just, I don't know, watching all those people pushed around from place to place, no control over their own fate. And to know that I was one of them. That upset me on some deep level.

That's why I had my own car, despite the massive expense. It wasn't so much that it was useful for sudden getaways, though that was a consideration. I just hated getting on board some huge people carrier and letting some stranger I've never met be responsible for moving me around. If I can't drive, I'd rather walk.

Ruminations on public transportation aside, I took ahold of one of the straps hanging from the subway ceiling, though there were seats available. It was more comfortable to stand. The trip was mostly quiet, though the increasingly strong feelings of distress coming from Aika kept me from relaxing in any way. The only time I got a bit of distraction was near the end of the journey.

A gang of teenage punks, about six total, muscled in on me, smiling like idiots. They were about in the sixteen-seventeen range, and dressed in ratty old clothes that looked like they hadn't been washed in a week. I could smell them from four meters away.

Their leader was the biggest of the six, not surprisingly. His hair was cut short and there was a knife scar near one eye, which he probably thought made him look cool. To me, it just made him look careless. He elbowed one of his buddies, a viscous-looking little shrimp with a constant eye-twitch, and whispered something. They both laughed.

There wasn't much traffic that time of day, and I suppose a woman standing alone seemed like a good target for having a little fun. The leader sauntered over to where I was standing and sort of leaned in, invading my personal space. He gave me this leer and said, "Hey baby, how ab-". I let him have it with a kick to the shins before he could get any farther.

While he was still trying to keep his balance and figure out what happened, I followed with an gut punch and an elbow strike to the face. Then I grabbed his head and twisted it so far that I nearly broke his neck. Kneeing him in the crotch wasn't absolutely necessary by this point, but I had been having a bad day.

Then I twisted him around and gave him some acceleration from my foot to his butt. He stumbled wildly forward, collapsing against his five friends. They looked at me and one of them took a step forward, intending to take a little revenge for what I'd done to their body. I grabbed the hilt of my concealed knife and prepared to kick even more ass.

They were smarter than the average run of the mill punks though. Smart enough to recognize a fight they couldn't win. The twitchy little guy saw something in my face, because he pulled his buddy back and started whispering to the rest of them. They exited the car, pulling their fallen leader behind them, not taking their eyes off me for even a second. I let them go.

Punks. Guys like them aren't much threat to a professional, unless you're dumb enough to let them get you from behind or something. Now if they had been six unusually attractive schoolgirls, maybe carrying a cat around with them, _then_ I would have been worried.

*****

Once I got off the subway, Aika's 'buzz' led me to the right area pretty quickly. It was surprisingly quiet, given how much distress I had been getting off her in the twenty minutes or so since I'd first gotten the distress signal. Too quiet, really. There were no hints of monsters or explosions or gunfire. It was just a rundown commercial area, a quarter of the stores boarded up and empty.

I probably could have located the right place eventually, though it might have taken me a minute. The old motel looked like nobody had been in there in years, and there wasn't much to distinguish it from the other buildings. It was just little four story place, grayish paint starting to peel and a broken neon vacancy sign hanging by a single cable. Fortunately, I got a big clue.

My car was parked right outside.

I quickly considered sneaking in and casing the place, but Aika's 'buzz' of distress was feeling increasingly panicked, and I didn't think it was just because I had gotten closer. Time for a full frontal assault, then. I pulled my knife out of its concealed sheath, a little thing strapped between my shoulder blades. The knife was a smaller one, blade only about 25 centimeters long. It was all the weapons I had, though.

Walking up to the door and taking a deep breath, I tried in vain to see through the browned wooden planks that had been boarded over where the glass used to be. It was impossible to make anything out, but a quick test showed me that the door wasn't locked. So I tensed my muscles, pushed the door open, and jumped inside, fully intending to make sure the lifespan of anything in range was very short indeed.

Chaos was what I found on the other side. The soundproofing on the building was supernatural, because the first thing that caught my attention was a loud clanking and humming of machinery, something that damn well ought to have been audible outside. There was an occasional rustling whistling, like the special effects sound of a laser being shot in some movie.

Smoke covered the place, thick noxious, pink smoke. In fact, it was the same stuff that typically came out of the smoke grenades that Itami and I used to purchase from the late Finn. Still, I could just barely see through it all.

Someone had gutted the interior of the place, ripping out all walls separating the lobby and all the ground floor rooms, leaving themselves an enormous space to work with. Enormous machines bracketed most of the wall space, and were also scattered at random intervals throughout the room. I could also spot what looked like some kind of living space back in one corner, but I didn't have time to get a good look.

A hissing noise, like butter being dropped into a hot frying pan, pulled my attention to one area of the room in particular. It was Itami, engaged in some sort of sword duel. His latest blade of evil was giving off black sparks and hissing as it circled the sword of his opponent, which was shining with a bright red light. The noise was happening every time the swords clanked together, which happened a lot. It was almost like they were more interested in hurting each other than they were interested in hurting their respective wielders.

I didn't have time to get a good look at Itami through all the smoke, but from what I could see, he looked bad. He was moving slightly more slowly than usual and the red sword just missed ripping out his throat, even as I watched. Strangely, I could also see that he was dressed in a faded T-shirt rather than his usual rumpled suit and tie.

Itami's opponent was a bit more concealed by the smoke, but I could make out the outline of a female, as tall as Itami himself. She seemed to be wearing some kind of massive overcoat, but it wasn't slowing down her sword swings any. I was already moving to give Itami a hand, when a scream caught my attention.

Over in another corner of the room, Aika was strapped to a table. She was untransformed, just the ordinary teenager I had first met, rather than Pretty Deadly. Sensors were attached to her face, arms, and legs, and an enormous headband covered her forehead. Wires from all these attachments led back to a piece of machinery the size of a refrigerator. On the other side of the refrigerator-thing and connected with wires, was another table, this one with some sort of robot lying on top of it.

Supervising the whole thing was some scrawny little wimp of a man, barely over 150 cm. He was dressed in a white labcoat that almost matched the color of his skin, and bald as an egg. He bustled from read-out to read-out, scampering about with more hyper-activity than a children's show host on crack. Aika alternated between screaming and cursing the man, using words I hadn't thought she knew.

It was a hard choice, but Itami was on his feet and seemed to be holding his own. I ran for Aika, yelling like a banshee and waving my knife around in the air. I hoped to scare to little albino off without a fight, but he just reached over and flipped a couple of switches on one of his control boards.

Something I had assumed was a forklift got up and up and up. It was nearly five meters of mechanical monstrosity, and it lumbered towards me with what I swear was a contemptuous glint in the headlights that served as its eyes. Naturally, I tried to halt my charge in mid-run, but the floor was a bit too slippery and I ended up just within its range. At the same instant I tried to jump back, it caught me with a fist the size of a suitcase.

Even rolling with the punch, it hurt like hell. I skidded across the floor, ramming up against an inconveniently placed cabinet with a bone-jarring thump. I got to my feet, groggily, and saw that I had ended up in a kitchenette, of all places. Apparently this was the little man's living area, or something, stuck back to one side of the machinery in a corner of the room. There was a stove, a sink, and even a real refrigerator.

The mechanical guardian was still rumbling towards me, but it wasn't moving all that fast and I had a second to think. My opponent was a large, vaguely humanoid piece of machinery, like something you might find in a kid's toy chest enlarged about fifty times. It was powerful, no doubt about that, but whoever built the thing hadn't bothered to armor it very well. There were all sorts of vulnerable-looking cables and exposed motors and hydraulic lines. It would be risky, but if I could dodge around the slows swings of its arms long enough, I might be able to cut up enough vital bits to disable it.

Damn, I hated hand-to-hand. If only Itami were free, he could probably slice it up like-

A sudden thought struck me. It seemed crazy, but.... I ducked back over the sink, aware the metallic monster would be on me in about ten seconds. When I pulled open the cabinet below, I found a shotgun and box of shells, just like Styx had said.

Really makes you wonder about people, doesn't it? The little guy had giant robots for home security, and apparently he still couldn't feel safe without a shotgun under his sink. Paranoia of your typical bad guy and all that.

Hands shaking, I loaded the shotgun and aimed it at the robot. Even with this, I was going to have to be sure and hit the right area. I'm not normally much for shotguns, preferring something with a little better accuracy, but you have to work with what you've got. Targeting a vulnerable-looking knee joint, I let the thing have it.

The recoil was awful, but that just meant the ammunition was powerful. Waving away mixed pink and gray smoke from the shotgun and the room, I saw that I'd nearly taken the entire leg off. The robot was on the ground, its arms waving in the air as it tried to right itself. I stepped closer and used the barrel of the shotgun to pry up one of the few pieces of plating the robot did have. Figuring that if anything would have been armored, it would have been the brain, I let it have a blast there and it stopped moving.

Now I stalked towards the guy in the lab coat again, moving slowly and carefully this time. I didn't want any more surprises. He surprised me. Instead of activating another robot or running, the little guy charged me himself. I didn't know what he was thinking, and I didn't much care. A shotgun blast to the legs dropped him, and I quick-stepped over to Aika.

"Yoi!" she shouted. It didn't take her long to think of what she wanted to say next. "Get me out of here!"

I obliged as quickly as I could, wanting to get over and help Itami. The straps were tough, but my knives were kept sharp, and I managed to cut Aika free quickly enough. She sat up on the table, looking shaky, then seemed to spot something over my shoulder. Before I realized what was going on, she had wrested the knife from my hand and leapt off the table.

It was labcoat man. Apparently he wasn't as human as he looked, because the loss of most of his legs didn't seem to have slowed him down much. In fact, now that I took a closer look, I saw wires and metal peeking out the holes in his legs, instead of blood.

Aika swiped across his chest with the knife, but it just bounced off. A hint of more metal glinted through the hole she had managed to make in his labcoat. Aika wasn't beaten yet, though. She tackled the albino, using her weight to knock him to the ground. Sitting astride him, she took a two-handed grip on the knife and plunged it into one of his eyesockets, pushing as hard as she could.

That seemed to do the trick. The little guy went instantly limp, his hands falling away from Aika's neck where they had started to grip. When Aika pulled the knife out, I saw blood on it. She had finally managed to strike human instead of machine.

Getting up and running over to me, my apprentice caught me in one monster of a hug. For a second I couldn't breath or move as she squeezed and muttered things I could quite make out. Then Aika relaxed and sort of fell into my arms, like she'd drop to the floor if I didn't hold her up.

I did drop her to the floor. She was out of danger for the moment, and Itami was still in trouble.

The duel seemed to have continued without pause since I last looked in on it. Itami appeared unscratched, but his opponent had a slight wound on her arm. Most of the smoke had started to clear, and I finally got a good look at her.

She was in her late teens, early twenties, and entirely dressed in red. Red hair topped by a red hat with a red feather in it were the first things I saw. Continuing down her body was an enormous overcoat like a seaman might wear, except well, red. A wide red belt threaded through loops in tough-looking red trousers whose bottoms were tucked into red boots. There was a definite nautical, maybe even piratical look to the whole outfit.

Her distinctive appearance tickled something in the back of my mind, but I couldn't be bothered to review my magical girl files just then. Instead I raised the shotgun and looked for an opportunity. The woman and Itami were still too close together for me to risk an immediate shot.

Seconds ticked by, with neither of them seeming to take any notice of me. Finally, my chance came. Itami locked her sword in his own and moved in close, trying to push the woman onto her own blade. She responded by doing this complicated wrist maneuver and suddenly both their swords went flying into the air and both opponents tumbled away from each other.

I raised the shotgun to fire, but some sixth sense warned the woman. She made a diving roll for a weapon and came up, sword in hand, just as the kick from the shotgun rocked me backwards. There was crack like the sound of a whip and almost immediately after the sound of metal hitting metal. I blinked. Somehow 'Ms. Scarlet' had managed to block all the pellets from shotgun with her weapon.

The most astonishing part was that it wasn't even her own red-glowing sword. It was Itami's sword of evil. She looked down at the weapon in her hands, as surprised as I was. Then this almost orgasmic expression appeared on her face, and she pulled the sword in closer to her. I was still too startled to try taking another shot.

Itami appeared, having retrieved her weapon in place of his. Unlike her, he gave no sign of even having noticed the switch, eager to resume the duel. The woman in red looked at him, and then she looked at me. She must have weighed the odds and not liked them, because she sheathed Itami's sword someplace I couldn't see and took off running for the same main doors by which I had entered.

I was still trying to decide whether to take a shot at her back when Itami finally noticed I was there. "YOI!"

His reaction was a little unexpected. Doing a remarkable imitation of Aika, he caught me up in a hug, taking me completely off my feet and whirling me around three or four times.

This was not in character for him, and my suspicions were immediately aroused. As soon as he put me back down, I shoved him as far away as I could and pointed the shotgun at him. "Alright, who are you and what have you done with the real Itami!?"

Fortunately, Aika came running up before things could get any tenser. She pushed the barrel of my shotgun back down so that it pointed at the floor. "Yoi no, it's really him. He's just glad to see you."

I was willing to trust her on a tentative basis. Looking at Itami, who had resumed his usual impassive face, I said, "What's up with you, partner? So we had an argument and I haven't seen you in a couple of days. I still don't-"

Aika interrupted me, grabbing my arm and looking incredulous. A small rise in the level of Itami's eyebrows told me he was similarly shocked.

Aika told me, "Yoi, you've been gone for nearly three weeks!"

I definitely wanted to hear more, but as leader, it was time to make some executive decisions. I had been a bit too preoccupied to notice earlier, but all the machinery in the room seemed to have gone dead the minute Aika killed the albino. Glancing around, I was strongly tempted to just have the three of us take off and-

No, that was something the old Yoi would do. I was supposed to be the new Yoi, the Yoi who didn't let opportunities pass him on by. I said, "We need to get all this cleared up later. For now, let's loot this place."

"What?!" This was from Aika.

I touched her in the arm, trying to look reassuring. "I think this is the first time we've attacked one of these mad scientist type labs and chased everyone else out instead of getting chased out ourselves. All I'm saying is that we ought to take a look around and grab hold of anything valuable."

We split up, but confined our search to the main room without trying to go upstairs. I wanted to keep everyone within sight, trying to balance opportunism with survival tactics.

Itami and Aika were a little reluctant at first, but they got into the spirit of things pretty quickly. Aika in particular started treating the idea as a treasure hunt. After about ten minutes searching, we all got back together and compared notes.

Ever-practical, Itami had managed to find the albino's stash of money and jewels, as well as digging up a ham sandwich out of the refrigerator. I'd gotten a case full of computer disks that looked like they might contain all sorts of interesting information, though I didn't have the time or equipment to look at them. Aika had a sack full of exotic-looking weapons and devices, having just grabbed whatever looked good to her.

Even though I was the one who had suggested it, hanging around the scene of the crime, as it were, was starting to make me extremely nervous. Without more than glancing at everything I said, "Maybe we ought to get out of here and go back to the office."

Itami responded, "Now you're talking." He sounded strangely tired.

So we moved outside and, after digging about for a moment, Itami tossed me the keys to my car. I noticed that he still had the red woman's sword, but I didn't comment on it. Piling into the car, I drove us all back to the office.

*****

The crack was still in glass of the door, I noticed. I made a mental note to have someone come in and repair it. Then I felt Veracity's statuette in my pocket and changed the note to having her make the arrangements. After all, what point is there to having a secretary if you still have to handle all the petty stuff yourself?

When I stepped in to look inside, though, I was shocked. The place looked like a tornado had been through it. The dart board had been ripped off the wall and tossed to the floor. Papers were everywhere, and Itami's desk had been overturned. I noticed a hole in the wall where it looked as though someone had thrown something extremely heavy. Strangely, the only thing completely untouched was my desk.

I was about to ask Itami what the hell had happened, when Aika caught my eye and gave a sharp shake of her head. Shrugging I sat down at my desk. Aika and Itami picked up overturned chairs and likewise sat down. I said, "We'll get to my story in a second, but first how about the two you tell me what's been happening since I 'disappeared'."

Itami closed his eyes and rested his chin on his chest, apparently willing to let Aika tell the story. She said, "Itami told me you two had an argument. When you didn't show up after a couple of days, he got worried, went to your apartment and saw you weren't there either. He called me and together we, uh, 'persuaded' some people to tell us what they knew about what had happened to you."

I could imagine. Itami could be very 'persuasive' when he wanted to be.

Aika continued, "We traced you as far as getting sucked into that portal in the new Finn's bar, but there was no way to tell what had happened after that. All we could do was wait."

I asked, "And that was about three weeks ago?"

Itami's voice said, "Nineteen days," though I didn't see him actually move.

When Aika nodded in confirmation, I said, "So how did you end up strapped to a table with that freaky little cyborg. And who was that woman Itami was fighting?"

Aika answered the second part of the question first. "That was Queen Scarlet."

Ah yes, I remembered her now. Queen Scarlet, probably not really any kind of royalty except in her own ego. Fancied herself some kind of pirate, from what I had heard. She made a career out of attacking shipments of anything she didn't like, taking what she wanted, and dumping or making unusable the rest. 'What she didn't like' mostly seemed to involve various forms of machinery. There was an open bounty out on her head, which made me wish I'd taken that back shot at the motel.

My apprentice continued. "After you... left, she started making headlines fighting some sort of mechanical monsters. People disguised as robots and ordinary robots and other stuff like that. When Itami spotted this robot dog one day, he decided to follow it back to its base."

Robot dog. I'd spotted something like that the night I talked to Keikaku, though I'd had sense enough to leave it alone.

Aika said, "He figured that the bald guy- we never did get his name, was responsible for all that stuff Scarlet was fighting. Things seemed to be heating up, heading for a final showdown between her and the robot master. We knew she like to operate during the day, so Itami staked out the place for her. When she finally made her move, he called me up and we figured we'd take her out during the fight, when she was distracted.

One of the big problems with trying to put a hit on Scarlet was that no one could figure out much about her or where she might end up next. I said, "Sounds like a good plan. What happened?"

Aika's face darkened. "Turns out that we moved in too soon. They were engaged in a little pre-fight parleying, and when we busted in, they worked together to take us down. After they captured us, the robot master guy used some kind of scanner to figure out I was a magical girl, even though I wasn't transformed. He got all excited, wanted to transfer my mind into some kind of robot body so I could be his champion."

She shook her head, visibly bothered. "Queen Scarlet wanted some kind of duel to settle it all with the guy's champion, so she agreed. They strapped me to the table and the bald guy got to work. Then Itami managed to get loose from where they had him tied up. Bald guy had tossed the guns in some kind of disposal, but Itami grabbed a smoke grenade and his sword from where they left them on a table. Robot master guy was too busy working on me to even look up, but Queen Scarlet got really excited about fighting a sword duel. They started going at it, and that's when you walked in."

Itami spoke up. "Sorry. I screwed up. Just wanted to prove..." He lapsed back into silence, as if unable to continue.

I said, "I'm the one who's sorry, Itami. I said some stupid things, took it out on you just because I was feeling bad. The plan was a good one; I probably would have done the same thing in your place. You're as much a part of the business as I am and you're... you're my best friend." Damn, why is it so hard for guys to say stuff like that?

Itami turned up the corners of his lips at me. He surprised me, and even showed me some teeth. A tension that I hadn't even been aware was there seemed to evaporate, and I smiled right back at him.

As if slightly ashamed at being caught acting human, Itami cleared his throat and asked me, "Where you been?"

So I told the story to him and Aika, a bit out of order. I told them about Ootaki and the new Finn, even though they already knew something about that part. I told them about Styx and Veracity and what she had told me about Yoshiko, pulling out Veracity's statuette when I got that part. I told them about escaping the other dimension and feeling that Aika needed some help and how things had looked from my point of view when I busted in. Finally, I went back and told them about Koi.

Not all of it. Some things you need some time before you can tell even your best friend. Maybe especially before you tell your best friend. But I told them some of it and how I had a new philosophy about not being pushed around and how I was going to try not to be such a downer all the time. I talked and they listened and eventually I was done.

We sat there in silence for a little while. Finally, Aika said, "That's some story, Yoi."

I nodded agreement, then perked up as a thought struck me. "You two want to meet our new secretary?" As I spoke, I opened up my desk drawer and palmed something that was still right where I left it.

When Itami and Aika nodded their heads, I called out, "Veracity, please come out now. I'd like you to meet my partners."

There was a shimmering sparkle of lights in the air, and Veracity appeared in the center of the room. As soon as she had fully materialized and Itami had gotten a good look at her, I pulled the camera out of my desk and snapped a picture of him.

A photograph of Itami with a goofy grin on his face is one of those things to be treasured for years. The very definition of a Kodak moment. He didn't even seem to notice the camera.

I took a moment to admire Veracity's face and form, just as beautiful as I remembered. After swallowing a lump in my throat, I said, "Veracity, I'd like you to meet Itami and Aika."

She nodded and said in that same musical voice, "I am very pleased to meet Kurasaka-san's friends and associates. I know that we'll work well together and all be one big happy, eh... family."

It had the same effect as Itami as on me, but his natural stiffness appeared to be allowing him to recover a little faster. I got to my feet and snagged Aika, "Come on, kid, let's leave Itami alone to interview and approve our new secretary here."

Virtually dragging her along, I pulled Aika out the door. Before it closed, I could see Itami giving me a 'don't leave me alone with her' look. I just smirked and shut the door on him. After all that mushy stuff earlier, it was type for some guy-style friendship by leaving my buddy in a situation he couldn't quite handle. I almost regretted not staying to watch. I had me a powerful curiosity as to whether Veracity could actually get Itami 'Stoneface' Daikoku to _babble_.

Standing on the stoop outside, I looked at Aika. The daggers in her eyes almost drove me back a step. My apprentice said, "She looks _nice_."

It looked like the old green-eyed monster was on the prowl. I did my best to diffuse the situation, telling Aika, "Don't compare yourself with her. She's some kind of a spirit and you're human. You're in a class by yourself, kid."

She blushed and I congratulated myself on not having managed to say the wrong thing. To distract her further, I asked, "So what happened to the office?"

Aika looked serious. "Itami kind of lost it when you disappeared, Yoi. He started acting really tense, blaming himself because you argued and he wasn't there to back you up. He nearly beat one of those guys we were questioning half to death. When we reached a dead end on finding you.... He seemed alright for a few days, then out of the blue he just loses it and starts ripping the office apart."

That fit. Itami had him a long, long, long fuse. So long that almost no one ever saw what happened when it burned all the way to the end. Most of the time, Itami would efficiently and dispassionately deal with whatever was causing the situation long before that. I had only seen Itami get really angry twice in all the time I had known him. Twice was twice too often. When all that repressed emotion got blown loose, he made a berserker look like a kitten.

Hesitantly I asked, "He didn't hurt you, did he?" I would have been safe around Itami in a rage like that and probably H would be too, but I didn't know if he cared enough about Aika.

Aika shook her head. "No. Whatever was going on with him, it seemed to burn itself up pretty quick without anyone he could take it out on. He still wasn't okay, though. He started treating me like I was you, almost, asking what I thought we should do all the time. I'd always have to tell him I didn't know, though, and that just seemed to upset him more. I kind of downplayed it about our attack on that place. We really were reckless, Yoi. Itami didn't stop to scout out the situation at all. It was like he had just stopped caring."

Itami in a T-shirt.... Maybe he really had stopped caring. "Hopefully he'll be okay now," I told Aika.

She nodded. "I think he will be. He's already looking a whole lot better than he did this morning." She hesitated, then added, "I was getting pretty reckless myself Yoi. The thought that you might never come back...."

Gulp. Well now it was test time, wasn't it? Time to see if I could be a new Yoi, a Yoi who could deal with a situation I had been too cowardly to attend to for over three months.

"Aika.... for a while now, I've been getting the feeling that you maybe have some romantic feelings towards me." There, I'd come out and said it. No more avoiding the subject. Gulp, again. Was it too late to go back to being good old 'letting-situations-fester' Yoi?

She blushed again, and I realized that she really could look kind of.... cute. Sometimes, anyway. "I came to you asking you to kill me. That ought to about give you an idea of where I was when we met. Instead, you and Itami took me and made me part of your team. You never laughed at me or told me that I could never be good enough or anything that everyone else has always done. And that was great. It made me feel like my life wasn't over. It gave me a chance to do something I'm good at and hurt people I don't like. Maybe that makes me evil or something, but that's how I feel about what we do."

She stopped and I wondered if that was all she was going to say. Then, she continued. "But you Yoi. You were nice to me and really tried to help me. And you're so strong and forceful and you always seem to know what to do. You never abandoned me, even if it would have been easier to do so. I've had a chance to really get me head in order after what happened with the Balancers, and I know you would have rescued me sooner or later. You're.... You're everything I always wanted in anybody else."

I felt something had to be said. "I'm not so great. I'm rude and I don't care about most anybody else all that much and sometimes I screw things up."

She touched my cheek with her hand. I noticed her fingers were really soft. "I know you aren't perfect. You're a really messed up person Yoi, but I don't care. I am too. What I do know is that I love you."

I started sweating. "I'm a woman right now, you know. Doesn't that-"

She shook her head and moved closer to me. I could feel the heat from her body. "It doesn't. From the first minute I saw you like that, I didn't care. I think I might like you better as a guy again, but I want us to... to be together. Even if you're a woman forever, I want us to be together. I don't know if that makes me bisexual or what. Yoi, I love you."

New Yoi. New Yoi. New Yoi. New Yoi. I said, "I don't love you."

The way her face fell made me want to disembowel myself and take it back, but I continued, "I do like you though. I like you a lot. I didn't want you around at first, but over the past few months you.... you've sort of become a part of my life. I like you Aika, like you a lot, and I do want to help you out and.... be around you. I can't promise that I'll ever love you, but maybe eventually when we've known each other longer, I.... I.... Stick around, kid. Please."

She smiled and leaned in towards me. Her lips came near mine. I was still definitely unwilling to do anything else, but a kiss didn't sound that bad. Just a kiss. I could close my eyes and pretend I was a man.

Contact. My arms went around Aika without me consciously willing them to, and our lips met. Our breasts were pushing against each other, but the sensation somehow... wasn't all that bad. Then she opened her mouth and slipped her tongue towards mine.

All right, but this was definitely as far as it was going to go. Definitely. The kiss got deeper, and she felt warm in my arms. Finally it came to an end, and I pulled away, breathing heavily. Aika's face was flushed, and I'm sure mine was as well. We looked into each other's eyes.

Then a voice called out. "Aika, what are you doing!"

Aika's eyes widened, and she looked at something over my shoulder. She shouted, "Daddy!"

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Yoi swears that the events related in this story are completely and utterly true. The editor makes no such promises.

Join in next time, as a new transcriber takes on the irrascible Mr. Kurasaka, as Yoi undergoes true horror.... Meeting Aika's parents.

Or maybe not. Damn Mr. Kurasaka. Never lets slip on what'll happen next chapter.