“What was to be...it’s broken, now, isn’t it, Setsuna-Mama?”
“Yes...yes, it is, Hotaru-chan, but not destroyed.”
“But...the others are lost to us...”
“Some of them, but not all of them. We can start anew, try new things, try a different approach...This...she, and what she brings with her, will be the first step in this new path...The path of order has not opened the way to the brighter future.. embracing chaos just may...Then, we will be able to bring the others back to us...”
“I’m scared, Mama.”
“It’s all right to be, but not to let it rule you. You need to be strong when the time comes, Hotaru-chan...she’ll be afraid too...of what will be done to her, of what comes next...You’ll have to help her be strong again, so she can make you stronger...”
Gendo Ikari watched his wife with their only child, and knew sadness as he remembered what was lost and what was missed, and he knew cold rage at the remembered cause of it. Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself, working his hands through the exercises that always helped him center himself. It was a small thing, but it did help him reestablish his focus. Not completely though...Completion would take something else...
Revenge.
After the incident, his wife had turned to her work for solace, diving deep into the research that had nearly all been destroyed. For a time he had resented it, seeing it as another symptom of the collapse of what he and Yui had had between them. It was her castle, her defensive wall, that had shut him out..at first...But when her work had borne fruit in their painstakingly conceived daughter, Yui had come back to him....Not all the way, but enough that he knew it was now up to him and his work to complete their recovery.
And his work was vengeance on the Kunos. As long as those small-minded idiots led the charge against the work he and his wife did, as long as they held influence in the communities whose support the Ikaris sought, and held the purse strings that might otherwise finance their work, as long as the Kunos BREATHED with the implied threat that they might again threaten the Ikari family, Yui and their daughter were not safe. He had waited long for an opportunity to start pushing back, instead of just holding the line, and now an opportunity had revealed itself.
As much as he hated paying anyone of the Kuno clan, save in pain and suffering, he knew enough that snatching this prize out from under the nose of the latest imbecile to carry the Kuno name would be a big step towards completing the payback that would, he was certain, set things right again.
A phenomenal fighter by all accounts, the prize was in this first of battles, a master in all but name....That the fighter had been apparently laid low by financial cunning did not matter to Gendo; THAT he could teach. But he was not a physical man, and he knew the limitations of those lackeys he could hire; the incident had shown that all too well.
Their daughter would need a companion, a bodyguard...especially if anybody else learned of her...special talents.
Now, the next decision would be who to send to carry out this important task? If he went in person, he’d tip his hand to the Kunos. Likewise Fuyutsuki; the old professor was a well-known associate of his. Ritsuko Akagi? She might remind others of her mother’s work, and the leaked rumors that she’d had an affair with him during the dark times of his marriage....Perhaps that Katsuragi woman? Send an ex-slave to buy a slave? Or any of the three lieutenants under her? Yes...it would have to be one of them....
Pleased to be finally be taking action, Gendo made his decision.
“Peace be with you, Father Tom.”
“Peace be with you and the blessings of the Goddess, Brother Heathcliff. A ball of string while we await tea?”
“No, thank you, Father Tom. All work and no play,I’m afraid.”
“Working you like a dog, are they, in Marketing?”
“Too close to the truth, I’m afraid. Hardly a chance to enjoy the sun while I was down there, but our first imports to North America have gone off without a hitch. The Australians are producing ceramics nearly as of quality as the Europeans. We’re already getting second orders from the American markets.”
“Ah, that is good to hear! And here, our gynecological and child care clinics for the impoverished are doing well...we may actually get a few converts yet to the Goddess!”
“I’m sure the Mothers are pleased.”
“As a cat with salmon and cream!”
(shared chuckle)
“Are we set, then?”
“Indeed...The Mothers are most adamant that the Goddess not lose this one...The Mothers have already made ready for her.”
“And if we are outbid?”
“The Goddess has always preached patience in the stalk...There will other opportunities to pounce, if we follow and not lose the trail. And in the meantime, we may play with others along the way. Ah, the tea is here. Cream?”
“Please!”
Captain Goto raised one of his eyebrows; “He went for it?”
Young Asuma Shinohara looked less like the competent police officer Goto knew he was, or the rebellious young scion of the Shinohara industrial dynasty, and more like a nervous teenager tattling some family secret. “Hai. Sort of...He wants to express his gratitude for the heroine who saved his son’s neck and helped the ‘valiant police officers that protect our financial institutions’, but he also confided in me that if it was any other bank that had been invaded aside from that one, he would have found it cheaper to just buy all of Tokyo’s police officers new bulletproof vests. He also told me to tell you that he hoped he wasn’t being pulled along into one of your schemes, and if he was, he’d rather not know it...sir.”
“Then he’s not. And he won’t.”
“That’s....reassuring, sir.”
“For you or for him?”
“Sir...we are UP to something, aren’t we?”
“Can’t say. But you’re good representing our interests there?”
“I’ll be representing Shinohara interests, sir.”
“Good, Ill send Noa along with you for moral support.”
“Sir?”
“Can’t send Clancy...Nothing like a Hawaiian-American to stir up trouble at a slave auction, but Noa will steady you...”
“Ah, no offense, I don’t need steadying, sir.”
“You will...The rest of the section’s been pulled to help with the security for the auction...You’ll have Ohta outside...”
“...can Mikiyasu pull up any blueprints of the auction center? I’d kinda like to know where all the emergency exits are BEFORE I go in...”
“But as far as we know, this girl’s not a Christian! Why should we be protesting what the Shintoists do to each other?”
“Because this auction’s apparently attracting some of the biggest names in the community...It’s a ready made publicity stage! We’ll be able to prove, by our presence, that the One God is a loving God, and that he abhors the enslavement of ANY of His children, regardless of what false path they may be taking. We will protest the injustice, pray for the poor soul being dragged off to a dire fate, and get some good camera time!”
“I’ll get my gas mask....”
“A word with you, a moment of your time, Zaku-san.”
“May you remind you, Mister Kuno, that it is improper of you to address me on this matter?”
Tatewaki Kuno bristled momentarily at the Senior Adjustor’s omission of his proper titles, but checked his anger.
Though Adjustors were lauded by the Imperial Court, in those few declarations that mentioned them, as an essential part of the justice system, friends of those they worked on in that they prepared them for more peaceful and less anxiety-ridden transition to their new roles, and benefactors to the poor who had no recourse but redemption through service, the fact of the matter was, people avoided Adjustors. They were regarded by most Japanese as a necessary evil, and with quiet terror by those of the colonial properties. Not that they were despised like the burakumin, but more like executioners. Despite rumors, not all Adjustors were eunuchs; they had families like everybody else , but they kept to their own communities(the foreign press made a lot of the rumored goings-on inside those communities, as with the Americans’ ‘Stepford’ movies that were circulating through the black markets), kept to their own company for the most part, and revealed little to outsiders. People found them just disconcerting and hard to relate to; as they plied a trade that essentially broke and tamed people like livestock. Even in friendly conversation, one got the impression that the Adjustor was measuring just what responses to elicit, what buttons to push, and what behaviors to guide their companions into. That, or they seemed to be calculating how much they figured their conversation partners would fetch on the block. And they were no respecters of social stature...Like a gravedigger, they seemed to regard all others as equal in status; fallen nobles had gone under their ministrations just as had the lowliest of commoners.
Kuno found that lack of respect for station infuriating, but he forged on ahead anyway.
“I mean no offense, Zaku-san, nor do I mean to court trouble between us. I just thought it my duty to inform you...The fire-haired beauty you are to work on on my behalf has long been under the influence of an infernal wretch who has practiced the vilest of enthralling sorcerous magicks on her! He has been banished back to whatever hell may have spawned him only by my prowess, but his influence may still linger on in control of her soul, awaiting the moment to summon him back! I simply mean to warn you of this; it may be necessary to take extra...precautions...to fully exorcise his corruption.”
(rustle of paper)
“I see...I shall take that into consideration. Good night, Mister Kuno.”
“Hmmm....seems there’s a bit of a boil in the local community out Nerima way.”
“Ambassador?”
“Seems there’s quite a lot of sharks swirling around one little piece of meat in the waters. I wonder what the fuss is about? It certainly seems to have attracted a lot of attention already.”
The American Ambassador looked past the assembled staffers and the status meeting, out the window with cool scrutiny of the Tokyo skyline. Being the Ambassador to the Nihon Empire took a certain advanced skill; to be more inscrutable than his hosts, to tread even more carefully than a guilty peasant in the Imperial Court, to read the political currents more carefully than a High Lord, to hold steady against vocal complaints and sneering disdain, while maintaining one’s head held high, radiate pride of one’s own young superpower, hold forth with charm and friendliness to defuse tensions and invite cooperation, and keep that faint hint of frost about what America found reprehensible in the Imperial system. However, Ambassador Vetinari had sailed those treacherous waters well, aside from the occasional public gaff. Such as the time at that reception where he’d idly mentioned to a government minister of the Imperial government how it seemed to him that the process of slave Adjustment might, in the wrong hands, be turned to the mass subjugation of an unwilling populace by a tyrant, as long as mind control was approved and tolerated. He’d said it in range of several microphones...and in earshot of a Senior Adjustment official.
The Japanese press had had a field-day with the Ambassador’s comments. There had been talk of censuring the foreigner, demands for his expulsion(especially from the Adjustment community who’d trotted out their experts to defend the ethics of their practice), before it had died down to simply a case of an absent-minded foreigner spouting idle mind-farts...The Ambassador was tagged as just a harmless bureaucratic crank...
...But the look of momentary consternation and worry on the minister’s face had been worth it...
“That such a number of pillars of Japanese industry and society, and a cross section of others besides, should be roused by such a minor thing....It bears looking into, don’t you think? Especially with the Kunos...the Hawaii Kunos...so involved.”
The Intelligence officer caught the emphasis. His section would be working overtime now digging into everything they could, if they weren’t already...It HAD been them, after all, who had forwarded the local gossip reports to the Ambassador, as per his request.
“You’ll have my report and assessment of the situation as soon as possible, Ambassador.”
“Good. We wouldn’t want to miss anything, would we?”
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(Posted Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:28)
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