Ion 417: Raiju (33 page)

I watched as he brought it up to point straight at me, the weapon shaking slightly in his hands as he fought against fear. I could probably stun him before he shot me, but it would be close. Our staring at each other was interrupted by a moan from the first man I'd hit.

I leapt about ten meters in a dive over the desks to where the man was regaining consciousness. I grabbed the gun and threw it toward the bank manager. If he was regaining consciousness, then the other wouldn't be far behind. A dozen quick steps brought me to the last one; the one that had actually managed to shoot me. I yanked the weapon from his grasp, and sent it flying into the back of the bank with a good kick. It left a gouge in one of the wooden panels as it bounced off.

The whole time, the manager held the weapon pointed at me, though it was starting to drop. Worry began to filter through my head that he might still shoot me. I was now the green woman standing in his bank. In the nervous tension I almost sent more electrical arcs when the little flashes came from the crowd of other people. My hand stayed closed as I noticed that it wasn't weapons they held, but imagers -- little phones.

I was stuck in a closed room, being stared at by about twenty some odd witnesses that I couldn't just zap. Sakura stood from behind the desk, shoving the wig into her purse. Luckily I was the only one looking in her direction. She saw my shoulder and came toward me. I waved her back. I didn't want her getting dissected alongside me. My secret was out now. At least I knew that she would do what she could to protect my shipmates.

The manager was walking toward me hesitantly like he didn't know whether to shoot me or thank me. Or, he could do both. He still held the rifle. I knew that he knew who I was from the last little while sitting in the back room. Even yellowish-green, and without the wig, there was no mistaking my eyes. I'd spent enough time standing next to him.

Suddenly another masked man ran into the doors shouting to hurry up, "Grab what you can and let's go! The police are... what the..."

I didn't let him finish as another lightning bolt knocked him backward through the doors. The manager had lifted the rifle and fired at him. A mass of tiny fragments tore the air where the gunman had been standing. They shattered the glass of the door that man had walked through. Now I knew that it was just a different type of pellet gun. It would hurt a lot. The manager turned to stare at me, the rifle pointing at the ground between us. Now was the chance to break the stalemate.

"I should go."

He nodded and pointed toward the back of the bank. I ran that way without even glancing back. Sakura would be fine if they didn't connect her to me. I ran the way he pointed with him following right behind. There was a side door that he waved a card at. It beeped and opened into an area between the buildings.

The door closed with a solid sound behind me as I stepped through it. He had stayed inside. Now he was safe as well. It took a few seconds to realize that I actually had been given a chance to escape. Maybe it was only the government type officials that I needed to fear.

TOC

JU SAN

I leaned against a pole trying to will the pain to stop. Slowly the blood quit seeping, but the pain was still bad. Sakura was probably running for her life. She must know what happens to aliens on this planet. At least I hope she was running the other direction. Please run and protect your family. I stuffed the wad of tissues into a recycler bin, and ran down the tiny road behind the building. When I heard voices coming around the side of the bank building, I jumped over the nearest wall. Hopefully the gate here would keep them out. Their voices echoed slightly in that narrow alleyway.

"Did you hear what we're looking for? A manga monster, that's what! Is the chief serious?"

"Some description, huh? Two meters tall, totally green, flaming eyes that shoot lightning. Sounds like my wife's mother if you ask me. C'mon, nothing back here."

I listened to their footsteps receding as they walked back toward the bank. My guess was that they were police officers from the way that they talked. They kept talking about how dumb it was to keep searching for something that didn't exist, especially since they had already captured the thieves.

I hadn't noticed anything unusual about my eyes. Did they really look like flames? Mr. Motogawa had commented about that when he was making my identification. Would he tell? No, I don't think he'd want to explain to Akita about bringing the police down upon him, since I suspect the work he'd done would have them looking at him too.

"Are you here to rob me, or just stand in the corner of my garden trampling my beans? Go do your cosplay somewhere else!"

I hadn't heard him approach, but there was a man standing not even five meters from me. Maybe I'd been too busy just jumping over the wall to see him. Beans?

My eyes dropped down to my feet. I was standing in an area of dirt with tiny plants growing. The dirt had been carefully arranged so that it had a swirling pattern around each plant. Someone with a great love of them had taken the time to shape it that way. His hands held a metal-tipped pole. The fingers on the end of it would make a fine match to the swirls I had just stepped all over.

"I... uh... That's the second time I've heard that. What is cosplay?"

His eyes widened, and the pole slipped from his grasp, "You're bleeding! Come in quickly."

A glance at my shoulder confirmed that the bleeding hadn't actually stopped after all. The shipsuit was soaked with it all the way down to my belly. That meant the bullet was probably still in me. I followed the man inside the door leading into a small shop. It was filled as much as it could hold with shelves full of what looked to be little boxes on end.

There were so many of them; I looked closer to get a better idea of why they were there. Books! Real books written in ink on paper and bound by thickened paper cases. Most of them seemed to be quite old. Relics from a time before data terminals? He had me sit on a stool beside the tiny counter as he got a small towel wet and started dabbing at the blood on my shoulder, trying to wash it away. Bit by bit it soaked into the towel. It hurt, but I held the pain back. He discarded that towel for another, once the first had turned red with my blood.

"Is this your blood? I see a hole in the shirt, but you should be bleeding more. Yes, there's a small wound here. What's your name? Why are you dressed this way? It just keeps coming."

He kept on talking to me about how he thought it looked like a bullet hole, but the wound was too small. He even asked me about the police that had been in the alley. So, those were police. I had guessed they were. I couldn't help but watch the concentration on his face as he tried to remove all of the blood. The more he tried, the more oozed from the hole to soak down the wetted cloth.

Maybe if I tried explaining, "They tried to rob the people in the bank. I stopped them, and got hit by one of them. I can't see the police; they would want to cut me open."

I'm not sure he was even listening to what I was saying, because he kept right on talking without pause. His attention was on the blood and the hole in my shoulder. I think I ceased being a person and shifted into being a puzzle he was trying to solve. No, that wasn't it. He cared; I could tell from his touch, and his voice. The blood was something in the way of him helping me. Maybe my luck hadn't run out after all. I thought there was a chance I could even ask him not to turn me in to be cut up.

Suddenly the dabbing of the cloth stopped, and he stood straighter, "Wait, this isn't make-up -- what are you?

I felt the intensity of the question as he looked straight into my eyes. His grew rounder as some thought surfaced behind them. Without another word, he jumped up to start searching along the shelves of books. The move startled me so much that I zapped the stool I was sitting on.

Not that it mattered much; the metal creaked a bit but held me. He hadn't even noticed. About midway along the third shelf of his search, he emitted a sound as he pulled a tall book down. It flipped open to reveal that it was full of paper sheets with writing -- just as I'd suspected, though a little cruder. This wasn't even printed; it had been hand written. As he turned through the pages, there were a few drawings as well.

His face was still buried in the tome, "What kind of Youkai are you?"

"What is that you're looking at?"

"It's a book -- you know, storage of knowledge from a pre-internet fixation. Kind of like a web spot, only less ad garbage trying to sell you on stuff you don't need."

"How do you get the images to move?"

The policemen walking the back road probably heard the sigh he let out, "The problem with all the tech garbage is that it loses the feel of the real thing. The books I have here are ones that go back to when people actually took the time to think and dream."

It wasn't that I didn't know what they were; I got the feeling that he had been in this debate many times, as he defended his shop's existence. He complained that was the trouble with the modern world. Too much loss of the old ways. I had to reframe my question to ask about the particular book he was referencing.

He loved the paper books, "You can tell just how important the author thought their work was, just by the feel of it. The original authors put a lot of thought behind what they drew their words on, and often spent weeks deciding on the perfect cover to honor the importance of the work within. There's nothing to feel with computer books."

Back to the original question: I had to tell him that I wasn't a monster, "But what book are you looking at? You called me a Youkai. Why would you want to cut me open?"

"Why would they cut you open?"

"Isn't that what you do to things you don't understand? It's what I read about... about people like me."

"That's not right. The flamboyant stories get filled with so much exaggeration that the original is long lost."

"I need to be going. I'm endangering you just by being here. If the police find me..."

The police officers might have given up, or they could be lurking around the corner with a trap ready to spring. I had studied so many of the thoughts behind military strategists, that I could picture hundreds of methods they might employ to capture me. Often those methods caused great harm to those nearby. As I started to stand he grasped my shoulder bringing a wave of pain that forced me to sit again. There was blood on his hand as he pulled it away.

"Oh! I'd forgotten. So sorry. See? You are injured. That needs a doctor my friend."

"I can't go to a doctor. Last time I went to a doctor he was going to give me to FBI, whatever that is. It didn't sound like I wanted to find out."

"You need help. Trust me."

I couldn't think of a single reason to trust him, yet I went along as he wrapped a big coat around me. He handed me a cloth wrapped stick that unfolded into a portable roof at the push of a tiny button. If I held it low it covered most of my head. For some reason it had been adorned with a comical looking white feline. I was bundled tighter than that first night rescuing Panzo.

I could hold the umbrella low enough to cover my face, and still watch where we were going through the clear pattern of the smiling cat's eyes. In the back yard of his shop, next to the little garden with my trampling footprints, was a small car. He helped me into that, before opening a gate that led into the alley.

The police were no longer searching the ally for me. Let me just hope that my luck won't fail this kind man. Let me also hope that he actually is a kind man, and not just pretending to be one. The same tactical studies told me that he was most likely the lure that activated the trap. I would know within a kilometer or two.

When he exited the alley and turned onto the main road, there were still police cars lining the side in front of the bank. A few people were standing around trying to see inside. There were also half a dozen vans bearing the marks of the news reporters parked wherever they could squeeze into.

Many of those trying desperately to catch a look inside the bank were holding microphones and cameras. One person was standing on the corner looking all around. In a sea of faces looking into the bank, she was obvious for looking outward. I didn't have to look twice to know who it was.

"Sakura!"

"Wha..? Who?"

"That lady on the corner. Let me out there by her. That's Sakura."

He pulled over closer to her and rolled his window down a little. As I started to get out he pulled at my shoulder sending another wave of pain through my side. Getting his help was certainly painful. I could manage the level of it with ease, but it was that he kept grabbing my shoulder to send another searing wave of it through me that was hard to manage. He called out the window.

"Sakura? Hurry get in."

She looked at him as though trying to connect his face to someone that would know her. At first she hesitated and then saw me in the other seat with the umbrella askew. Sakura wasted no time in getting in the rear seat. She was trying to get a better look at me as she sat down, but the acceleration threw her back against the seat and slammed the door closed. There was a bit of a squeal from the tires as they endured the sudden demand for motion.

"Are you alright, Ion?"

He glanced at me, "Ion?"

"That's my name. Please, where are you taking me... us?"

He was yanking the wheel back and forth, swerving through the stream of cars on the road. His words coming in bursts between changes of direction, "You've got... a bullet in you... That's why... it hurts so much. So sorry for grabbing it... earlier. We have to get it out of you."

I pleaded, "If you stop long enough I might be able to yank it out, but not easy."

He had steadied the motion of the car somewhat, though still outpacing the other vehicles, "It takes a doctor to pull one out, and doctors have to report any bullets they remove. Sort of like thinking that the only way to get a bullet in you is doing something illegal."