Ion 417: Raiju (36 page)

TOC

JU SHI

I arose with the first rays of sun through the window, though it wasn't really the sun itself. Sol was coming from the other side to light up the mountain, and what bounced back toward the window woke me.

I liked the shipsuit's ability to dry rapidly after a thorough washing last night, and it had even mended over the hole. If I got the chance while in the city to stop by Takeru's shop, then I wanted him to see me looking better. Maybe he could tell me more about this Raiju that people were calling me.

I went down and started cutting up the pieces of fruit that we had bought on the way home. I managed to get most of it cut up without bleeding when Akita walked in on me. He told me that Sakura was still in bed; her ribs were hurting again, and she had asked him to help me get the fabric for my project. He joked that at least he could keep me out of trouble this way, "Fabric shopping shouldn't involve armed robbery or violent crowds."

While he was helping the children dish out what was left of the fruit, I went up to check on Sakura. After her time with the bio bed yesterday, her ribs shouldn't have been hurting. I found her lounging in bed without a sign of pain.

I was puzzled, "You don't look in pain."

"It was the best way to get Akita to take you shopping. This way he can see that you're not a problem. Just try not to get in the middle of some big catastrophe or whatnot."

If I hurried I could get to the prefecture offices to see about the temple. Now that I knew that there was a chance that it was purchasable, I could discover what forms that would require. I think I already had all of the identification I needed, so it was a matter of probably ten or fifteen forms to make the office workers happy. If Akita was correct, and they would accept a mere ten million for the forms, then I could become the new owner today.

I wanted to hurry so that I could get back to Izumi's shopping district in time to buy the fabric. Akita wanted to take the car, but this was a chance for me to use the motorcycle and feel the rushing wind as we rode. Plus, I had been wanting to try it out.

Akita seemed hesitant, "There aren't any helmets. What happens when you hit something?"

"It has a gyro stabilization strong enough for the hover mode, and active shielding for low speed impact. I'll keep it under two-hundred kilometers per hour."

When I'd mentioned to Sakura about riding the hover bike, she gave me a scarf to hold the wig in place. It blended in with the scarf dress that I'd donned again. The one surprise was that I hadn't expected his arms to wrap around me.

Akita had to hold close to me as we sped off down the road. Luckily the signs were readily visible, and pointed me toward the city without getting lost. The bike was great in that it could squeeze between some of the other vehicles on the road. Twice he had to remind me that there was a limit to how fast vehicles could travel on the road; that was what had caused trouble for my friend that first night.

We were winding around a corner toward the beginnings of Sendai when a car sped around us going even faster. I glanced over and noticed that the two men inside were dressed in black with those fancy masks. It was like those men in the bank yesterday, only without the weapons shooting me. Their car swerved around another corner, barely missing another oncoming vehicle.

There was barely time for a breath before the pursuing police cruiser skidded around the corner, cutting even closer to us than the first car. Lights on the top were flashing red, casting the lights from the buildings along the road in sync with the oscillating alarm blaring through the morning stillness.

Mere moments later, the alarm siren was joined by a loud squealing, and then crashing glass and metal. The siren died away in a long descending wail to near silence.

As we rounded the next corner we found the source of the crashing noise. The car had collided with a bus full of children not much older than Hiro. According to the sign on the side, they had been headed for the beach from Kunai Academy. Both of the Shinjin Oni men were collapsed against the control panel for the car, and looked like they had passed out from the impact. I could deal with them in a moment.

The police car had swerved and missed joining the collision with the bus. Instead they had stopped their movement by ramming a power transfer pole. The force had severed the pole, and dropped the live wires right across the bus. All of this I saw in the second before I nearly joined in the multiple collision.

With only meters to spare, I swerved the bike between two buildings, bringing it to a stop in the alley behind.

I knew that there was no way for those children to get off the bus while those wires sputtered across the top with several hundred volts. There was enough power in them that the wires were dancing on the ground with small arcs. The first child to step off that bus would be electrocuted from that power. I'd already learned that other Humans didn't fare so well with electricity.

As I jumped off the bike, I looked at Akita, "I have to go."

I couldn't wait while he thought about options. Those children probably wouldn't stop to think if it was safe before stepping down. I stuffed the wig and dress into his hands in a hurry. A cloud of tan fell slowly to the ground as I charged up my energy. With a smile I ran around the corner, just in time to tell a child not to step off the bus. Whether it was my words or sudden appearance, he stopped in the bus door to stare at me.

First things first, I needed to get the wires off of the bus before it was too late for them. The top half of the power transfer pole looked a bit too big to carry, even in Earths low gravity, so I settled for snapping the wires loose from it. I just hoped that my body could handle outside electricity as well as I threw it.

Whoever had built it, had used simple glass insulators to hold the wires in place, and those shattered easily enough when I yanked the wires. Thankfully the power in the wires merely tingles as it surged across my body. If anything, it woke me up more than I already had been. The power flowed through me like a river of energy, increasing my strength enough that I felt like I could fly. Little bolts were jumping from me to nearby things as I got the wires clear. Now the children were safe.

One of the sparks touched upon a puddle of fluid leaking out of the car. It immediately burst into flames that sped under the car. I'd nearly forgotten that those things used flammables to operate.

The next urgency was to get the men free before they burned. The fastest thing I could do was to shove the car out of the flames. The fire was getting very near my leg as I muscled the car a dozen meters back. Electricity was fine, but that fire was going to scorch me fast.

By now one of the shop keepers was running out with a hose to splash water over the flames. That kept them from following along the path under the car. Those men would be fine.

I turned and stepped toward the police car, only to find that he was already being pulled loose from his car. That was the last of them. I turned back to the bus to find that the children were all lined up in the widows pointing those phones at me. Even there, with the wires gone, people were helping them get off the bus. My task was done. This wasn't going to be as easy to get away from as the bank had been. There were a lot more people watching. Oh well, it worked last time, maybe... I jumped over a car blocking an alley and ran down it.

My pouch was dangling from the bike, so it was no problem to hide behind a shed and spray my tanning. It didn't cover the body suit though. That still made me stand out from everyone else. I spent several minutes trying to plan an exit, before I heard Akita calling my name. He was walking down the alley looking behind things as he went. I called, and he ran over to me; the wig and dress were stuffed into his shirt. It made it look like he had eaten too much.

By the time I got back in costume, there were two more police cars in the street and an ambulance. The police officials seemed to have everything under control. I noticed there was one of the officers heading toward the other end of the alley where I'd gone in. So, even now they were still trying to find me.

The car I'd pushed into the street was burning now, sending a black column of smoke to mark the spot. One of the shop owners had a hose he was using to spray water on it. The men from the car had been captured and confined to the back of the police car where they couldn't cause more harm. Everything seemed to be under control.

According to that little book that I'd read three times last night, now was when I should leave before anyone could corner me. I eased the bike out of the end of the alley, and looked back over my shoulder at the mess in the street. There was more that I could do, but doing that would bring too much scrutiny on myself and anyone near me. I turned back toward the heart of Sendai.

Akita waved a hand in the direction of the crash, "Now's your chance to enjoy the fame you've earned. That it, if you wish to be famous."

I just shook my head no, and hit the energize control, "According to that book on super heroes, I get to do the hard stuff and then vanish before anyone asks questions."

He was a security guard, and so he was used to seeing the whole thing complete before his job was done. He had wanted to help, but had no way to touch those wire. I told him I had done what I needed to do, and I knew that the police could do the rest. They needed to be known as heroes too.

Akita held on in silence for a few kilometers, leaving me to mull over the incident alone. I couldn't help but replay it in many alternatives, only to realize that I had done the best that I could do. There were some things I might have done differently if I'd have had the time to think them over. I didn't have that time. Some things may have been done better, but they wouldn't have made a dramatic difference.

We finally arrived at the prefecture office; only a half hour later than I had planned for this trip. Provided that the office workers didn't take too long to find all of the forms needed to purchase the temple, if it could be done, then I would still have time to take him fabric shopping. I only hope that he knows a good place to do that, or I'll have to stop at the dress shop and ask them.

We were directed up to the seventh floor to find the property office. We bounced back and forth between the residential side, and the commercial side trying to find someone that knew what I'd need. So far I had collected nine special forms, and then someone realized we were talking about a temple. Away went the nine forms, and we had to go down to the sixth floor for the religious liaison's office. Here I gained back four of the forms before they figured out that I was talking about an abandoned temple. That's what I said in the first office!

Four more offices, and seven forms later, I was trying to decipher a map to find the right location. With Akita's help I managed to follow the road lines back up through Izumi, and located the path which wasn't even labeled. A little dashed line circled the temple and path, along with a big portion of the mountainside nearby. It took the girl another ten minutes to locate the record associated with the mark on the map.

It had been declared abandoned ten years previously, and it was claimed by the prefecture now. Nobody had even inquired about it in all the years. All that was required was to file paperwork assuming responsibility for the property and payment of the outstanding taxes. An inspector would visit the location within two weeks to ensure that improvements were happening. A small fee would be assessed at that time, unless I failed to meet expectations, and in that case I would have to forfeit the property once more.

It sounded simple in theory, but locating the paperwork for that particular location took an hour. It took another hour to get all the correct signatures on the forms from four different offices. Our final stop was a clerk who needed to receive payment. She asked several questions about property loans, and financing. Luckily Akita was there to explain it to me. When I realized she thought I would need someone else to help me pay for it, I nearly laughed.

The taxes were valued at eight hundred fifty thousand Yen. I pulled out my little plastic card and handed it to her. There was a puzzled look on her face, and I knew she was skeptical about it working. She slid it through a machine that beeped at her, and then she handed me the bundle of papers for the property.

"Congratulations on your ruined temple. Good luck finding a priest."

It had taken a little longer than expected, but now I was a step closer to protecting the only friends I had anywhere in the galaxy. The whole way down in the elevator I was muttering to myself about what color fabric I should use. Akita's idea to use a golden yellow, like the temple had originally been painted, sounded about the best.

The front steps of the government building were crowded with people. Many of them held cameras like they had at the robotics show. There was a man facing them from the top step answering questions the reporters kept asking. He looked a bit flustered as the questions came faster than he could give answers, and most of his answers were that he didn't know the answer.

"Is she really an attempt by your party to quell the gang unrest?"

"What comment do you have to the rumors that this is all a publicity stunt for a new movie?"

"If she were serious about being a hero, why did she choose Sendai instead of Tokyo?"

"The Human Alliance charges that you have endorsed this effort by an obvious Saikou robotic weapon test within the city."

Finally he waved his arms wide, "I've given you all the information we currently have. Police Chief Yomogawa will be leading his own investigation into these events, including how she endangered a bus load of children this morning."

That answer sent a shiver down my back, but I guessed that he wasn't really meaning dissection. Or maybe he did. I couldn't take that chance by revealing myself to ask him. I had to keep in mind that I was protecting some very important people that wouldn't stand up to dissection very well.