Demon City Shinjuku: The Complete Edition (22 page)

A few seconds later, the vagrant's face paled. With vacant eyes, he came to his feet. These were a species of “mind master” vampire insect particular to Demon City. Having sucked up the blood in a host's body, they took control of the brain and turned it into a sleep walker, guiding the host to the next victim.

Someone must have reported the outbreak. A yakuza-looking guy dressed all in black ran up and fired a flame thrower, turning the vagrant into a human candle.

Just another day in Demon City. When everything was weird, nothing was.

A teenager with half a cyborg face. A girl straddling an artificial beast, some random mix of bear and wolf and reptile. A gorilla man with the eyes of a dead fish, characteristic of the kind of addict that spent all his time bar-hopping for mutant morphing drugs. A gangbanger dressed in guerilla fatigues, with a caseless sub-machine gun on his hip.

Parading in ones and twos and groups down the sidewalk. All criminals run out of business and out of town in the outside world.

And those who, at a glance, appeared to be respectable citizens in respectable dress. But their severe expressions and the bulges at their sides or on their hips revealed them to be heat ray-packing assassins.

On what passed for the surface roads, frenzied music spilled out of the prefab “flash” clubs. Here a deep water cyborg and a mutant bear man grappled with each other. There a lone yakuza swaggering down the sidewalk was grabbed by another gang hiding in the shadows, dragged down an alley and made a victim of their torture machines, scalpels and needles and various other implements attached to the tips of their hands and feet.

A scream. A giant snake clad in shirt and pants twined around a seventeen or eighteen-year-old girl. The kid who appeared to be her boyfriend fired a pocket rocket on his wrist and blew away the head of the snake man. As they patted their chests in relief, a giant leech the size of a ten-foot-square carpet dropped out of the window of an abandoned building and enveloped them.

The pedestrians in the vicinity didn't spare them a second glance.

Only idiots walked next to a building if they didn't know exactly what was lurking inside. Five minutes later, the engorged leech disappeared, leaving only its slippery trail and a pair of desiccated corpses behind.

The cabbie who'd driven them from the Shin-Okubo street market said this was the one place they shouldn't go, and he wasn't kidding. The nervous system of a normal person would shut down after walking a dozen feet, and not long after that, the vultures would drag them into the shadows.

Here were all the reasons Shinjuku was called “Demon City.”

Kyoya and Sayaka had come to Center Street. They'd reconnoitered Shinjuku station, but the edifice and the side buildings were all rubble, and all the entrances were impassable. But seeing that the Sorcerer and his associates could come and go as they pleased, there must be a hidden accessway. What they needed was somebody with detailed knowledge of the station.

“This would seem the perfect place to ask,” said Kyoya, glancing around.

Sayaka didn't answer. Mouth half-open, she stared amazed at the glorious awfulness of the sights and scenes around her.

His next thought was:
Yeah, I probably should have sent her packing
.

After scouting out the station, he'd made another effort to send her outside the city, but she wouldn't agree. And when he tried to force the issue, she looked up at him with her big brown eyes and whimpered, “You promised,” and Kyoya buckled.

Naw. She'd be back like a boomerang
.

Wishful thinking in any case that they'd happily meet up again the way they had in the DMZ. And if she fell into the hands of those demons, game over. Plus they didn't have the time. If push came to shove, he'd knock her out and park her someplace safe.

So he let her tag along, though having no idea what was going to happen next.

Drawn along by the currents of the weird and the strange, the two of them ended up at the Koma Theater.

“Where should we go to find a person like that?” Sayaka wondered aloud, coming back to her senses.

“Good question. I suppose we could start with the local hotels. A thousand credits should loosen lips around here. But let's hang out for a while. What? We won't do ourselves any good running around like chickens with their heads cut off. We've still got all of tomorrow. Don't rush it.”

Kyoya shut his mouth too late. Sayaka's eyes brimmed with tears. “Hey, hey,” he said soothingly. “Just joking. Let's go find us an informed hotelier.”

“Yes!” Sayaka smiled.

Kyoya breathed an astonished sigh of relief. This pretty lady had as many facets to her personality as a cut diamond, and could seemingly display them virtually all at once. Eighteen was still too young to grasp all of its complexities. On the verge of tears one moment, back to the playful ingenue the next. Kyoya had to admit she could pretty much push his buttons at will.

That was where the enemy made its move.

Cylindrical magnetic propulsion boosters strapped to their backs, three young men glided over their heads at an altitude of fifteen feet or so.

“Shit!” one of them shouted, patting the back pocket of his jeans. A second later came a hard thump on the ground a couple yards away. “Hey, lady,” he called out, stopping in midair. “Some help here? Dropped my wallet. Toss it up, if you don't mind.”

The booster's magnetic balancers interacted with the earth's magnetic field, warping the air beneath him like heat rising off a hot road.

Fetch it yourself, buster
, Kyoya thought to himself.

But not the kind of thought that would ever occur to Sayaka. She ran over to where the wallet had landed. With a crack and a hum, a black whip-like strand shot down and entwined around Sayaka's waist.

“Damn!”

Kyoya took off running but was a second too late. Sayaka was yanked into the air and into the arms of the punk who'd dropped the wallet. The whip appeared to carry an electrical charge. Her head hung limply down. A fresh new strategy for exploiting a moment of carelessness.

“Heh heh heh. Thanks for the girl, kid.” The three punks laughed.

“What do you plan on doing with her? Any funny business, and you and me are going to have words.”

But for all his bark, that fifteen feet was a bit too far for him right now.

“Not gonna happen,” said the punk holding Sayaka. “We're not the ones you should be talking to. Seems there's bad blood between this girl and our boss. Yoshiko of the Hippopotamus Group.”

For a moment, Kyoya couldn't place the name. And then it occurred to him. “Ah, that fatso in Shin-Okubo!”

“You're a quick one. And the girl made our boss lose a lot of face. Since yesterday she's been in one helluva foul mood. She said to find you two, even if we had to dig up every square inch of downtown Shinjuku.”

Kyoya clucked to himself. An unexpected opponent had made an appearance at exactly the wrong moment. Of course, he should have sent Sayaka home when he could. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty.

“What do you plan on doing with her? You looking for a ransom or something?”

“I'm sure the boss will want to dote on her personally,” the punk sneered. “She can't bear the existence of any woman cuter than herself. Don't matter if it's a hot young chick or some MILF. It's really kind of sad, the way she abuses them. In the end, she'll gouge out their eyes and cut off their noses and the like, no anesthetic.”

“Shut it!” Kyoya roared. “Where is the bitch? I'll give her a diet that'll cut her weight in half in a few minutes, tops.”

“Nice try. I got nothing to do with you. Looks like you know how to use a sword. Don't worry, we're finding you an opponent. You two can have it out. You win, give us a call. Bye now.”

The three sailed off in the direction they'd come, over the block that was home to the old movie theaters. Kyoya tried to follow them, but found that his feet were glued to the ground.

A dozen yards away—in front of what, according to his memories of the map, had once been a pachinko parlor—stood a dark shadow. With confident steps, it slowly strode toward him, radiating an evil vibe quite different from that when he faced off against the demons and the undead.

The kind of killer vibe that only a practitioner of the martial arts could possess.

The shadow stopped six feet in front of him. Even in the already strange precincts of Kabuki-cho, it was strikingly strange. Or perhaps even more strikingly
normal
.

The man was dressed like a samurai. More precisely, the kind of samurai found in 3D midnight movies: a traditional shaved pate and top knot; a “bat wing”
haori
with short, wide sleeves favored by the Edo Period samurai; straw
waraji
sandals; and long and short swords tucked into the waistband.

And on his face, a particularly distinguishing characteristic.

So it's him!

In a flash, Kyoya saw through the facade.
An impersonation android
. An android with an implanted personality. Kyoya recalled seeing a show on television that followed the manufacturing process through to the test runs. Using human data extracted from archives and a wide swath of information sources, the characteristics of a person, the substance of his mind and soul, were calculated and compiled with the known biometric parameters to create an android reproduction with a high degree of fidelity.

In a sense, the science of robotics had produced a way of resurrecting the dead.

The original intent was to create actors for completely realistic blockbuster movie productions. But the mercenary possibilities presented by extraordinarily skilled heroes lacking any will of their own encouraged criminal organizations to channel the technology onto the black market. The gunfighter Wyatt Earp facing off against the legendary ninja Sasuke Sarutobi, or Hercules wrestling judo champion Shiro Saigo—it took the concept of “ultimate fighting” to a whole new level.

Production of these androids was currently on hold. This model was the property of the Hippopotamus Group.

The warrior standing before Kyoya was something more than an electronic twin, the sculptured amalgamation of large-scale integrated circuitry and artificial bone and muscle. The proof was that very human bloodlust, that he hadn't felt to this point, no matter what the strength, shape or form of the opponent.

The residents of Kabuki-cho who blithely shared the streets with the worst murderers and thieves stood still in amazement, sucked in their breaths, and watched to see what would happen next.

The warrior settled into a fighting stance, his left foot forward, the sword held high over his right shoulder.

A strange thought occurred to Kyoya. No matter the genius of swordsman resurrected to stand before him, as long as his skill set was limited to what was humanly possible, he couldn't match Kyoya's
nenpo
.

And yet Kyoya couldn't help wanting to test his skills against him, without resorting to his
nenpo
. This once in a lifetime chance to meet the best fighter of an era on the field of combat and prove himself would stir the blood of any young athlete.

Thoughts of Sayaka and the fate of the world faded away. He raised Asura to the
en garde
position. “Kyoya Izayoi is honored to stand in your presence,” he said. “Tell me your name.”

“I am Mitsuyoshi Jubei Yagyu.”

The one-eyed warrior. The most famous swordsman of the early Edo Period.

The sight of such a bizarre duel was unique even by Kabuki-cho's standards. In the center of an asphalt ring formed by the ruins of the desolate buildings, surrounded by people whose dress and manner could be mistaken for that of madmen, the two fencers faced off against each other.

The one was undoubtedly a samurai warrior in the prime of life. The other a jeans-wearing kid. Both were radiating bursts of terrifying energy that made the onlookers turn their heads as if leaning into a strong gale.

Everything else in the world seemed to come to a halt. Everyone there felt the tension approaching the breaking point. And the moment it shattered—

“
Yaa—!
” With a shout, the android embodiment of Jubei Yagyu attacked Kyoya, sword raised high over his head, leaping across the six-foot distance without the slightest indication of his next action.

“
Haa!
” Answering with a scream of his own, Kyoya barely managed to check the blow, his father's
nen
sealed inside Asura. For now, it was nothing more than a wooden sword.

The two blades came together with a collision strong enough to almost dislocate Kyoya's shoulders. The “Miike Tenta” sword, a striking reproduction of Jubei's favorite, dug halfway into Asura. Then a moment later swung laterally at his torso.

Dodging the blow, Kyoya made a big backwards jump.
A simple parry took all my strength
, he thought.
This isn't a guy I have the skill to defeat
. Though fending off two attacks already was something only a prodigy could have accomplished.

Jubei pressed forward. Behind Kyoya was the mountain of rubble in front of the Koma Theater. He had no more room to retreat. His death became a real possibility.

A cruel smile of victory rose to Jubei's lips as he thrust forward with inhuman speed. And met only thin air. Kyoya had vanished. A blue slash of lightning ran across the flash of steel, followed by the crunch of breaking bone,

The crowds gasped. The expected victory slipped from his grasp. Jubei Yagyu slumped to his knees holding his right shoulder. Instead of being speared through and through, Kyoya rose up from the ground.

As soon as he'd sensed the straight-ahead thrust, Kyoya spread his legs wide and tumbled forward, slamming his left heel against Jubei's right shoulder. Realizing that his sword was useless to him—and in the few tenths of a second after realizing that Jubei was going for a thrusting move—he'd released an explosion of Shorin Kenpo footwork.