“Nin,” Ai said from behind me, whispering. I ignored her for the moment. She grabbed my cloak and pulled me around.

“What?” I said, agitated.

“Where are you going?”

“Straight up to the mansion. I’m gonna—”

“Yeah, yeah, listen. The mansion is heavily guarded.”

“I know that,” I said.

“And I don’t think I can last long enough with my summon Sachi to help you get through the entirety of Keith Smith’s gang. I mean, maybe, but …”

“I don’t need your summon Sachi.”

She remained silent.

I said, “I don’t. I’ll—”

“Do you want to actually help Shun?”

“What do you suggest? The longer we wait, the longer that sick fuck has a chance to get his hands on her.”

“I think that, maybe, you’re being a bit irrational and can’t see that we should obviously sneak in,” she said.

A hooded person in a black cloak walked by, muttering to himself: “Edddd—God. Dead … God.” He seemed to shake as he passed. Maybe he was drunk or out of Sachi powder. We moved into an abandoned side alley, away from his mumbling. No time for his drunken contributions to our conversation.

“How?” I said, folding my arms.

“We go buy face paint,” Ai said.

“For …?”

“For me. I got really good at it before my dad got me the costume.”

“Ai, I don’t know if I want to bank on your makeup abilities to save Shun.”

“I think it’s your best option. Plus, I can be alluring when I want to be. And … there’s always Caelziax in an emergency.”

I considered her a moment. “What, so then we walk up to the mansion, knock on the door, and I act like your fucking owner or something?”

She nodded her head. “Exactly.”

“Fucks sake,” I said, turning and running my hands through my hair.

“You got any better ideas, sugar tits?”

I slowly turned. Her calling me sugar tits did an entirely different thing to my body.

She laughed. And I joined her. Here, in an alley in Onfidlack, where I’d likely sucked cock for Sachi. I laughed.

“It might work,” I allowed. “It might.”

“Yeah, and if it doesn’t, you can do your Chudo storming the gates thing. And if that doesn’t work—”

“Caelziax,” I said awkwardly.

“Right. Three-cocks.”

“I was trying to get his name right.”

“And you did so well,” Ai said. “Coming?”

After we picked up the paint and an outfit for Ai, along with a brown wig, some sunglasses, and street clothes that would cover up my suit, we went back to the Sachiblade dealer near the display cases. I bought two Sachiknives from him, each the length of my forearm, so I could keep them inside the long sleeves of the outfit I bought.

On the main strip, I used some of the credits I got from my Hinote job to get a hotel room. From there, we could see the front doors of the mansion at the top of the hill.

We walked into the dingy, dimly lit hotel room. There was one bed in the shape of a heart, and the carpet underneath was a stained beige. Ai closed the door and locked it with the keycard we got from the front desk. There was a bathroom on the far-left side of the room.

“You change first,” Ai said, taking off her mask and giving me a grin. She took off her hood, and her long red hair spilled out. I paused there near the doorway, looking at her from under my own hood. I became hyper-aware of the fact that we were the only two in the room. “What?” she said, that smile still on her face, her ruby-red eyes flashing an amber color for just a moment.

“Ok,” I said, walking to the bathroom with my outfit and my new Sachiknives. I closed the door and started taking off the cloak, the large Sachiblade on my back making that a difficult task. I turned off the back magnet and set my blade on the bathroom floor’s stained carpet. It smelled like piss in there. I unwrapped the scarf around my neck and considered retracting my Sachiarmor to hide it even more in case someone saw it through my clothes, but decided against it. At that moment, though, I heard footsteps outside the door, and I wondered if maybe I should retract it just in case the owner of those footsteps decided to knock on the door, to ask to come in, to …

Shun, I thought, I must think of Shun. I have to help her, and I should be faithful to her for once.

Besides, if I had to, I would use this woman to draw out Morfran. I couldn’t get too close.

I shook off the thoughts and decided that if Ai did knock, I would not let her in. My suit opened at the forearms in long slits, and I put the Sachiknives in them, then they closed at my mental command. I put on my long-sleeved black shirt and pants, then pulled out the long brown wig and sunglasses. Looking in the mirror, I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What?” Ai called from the other room.

I turned and walked out of the bathroom, smiling. She covered her mouth and let out one laugh, stood up to inspect me more fully, then let the full music of her laughter pour out over me. I smiled, watching her. The robe was gone, and she wore jeans and a t-shirt, which was almost like seeing her naked after mainly seeing her in the robe. Her red hair bobbed with her laughter, and she clapped her hands in delight.

Shun, I reminded myself.

“Now you,” I said, stepping away from the bathroom door.

“Alright,” Ai said, biting her lip. “I hope you like it.” She walked past me. The comment sent a jolt through me. She closed the door. I stood for the first while, then sat on the red heart bed. I took out the bag of lightning-invested Sachi powder from a breast pocket in my suit underneath my shirt and put it in my pants pocket so I didn’t have to mess with it later.

The bathroom door opened as I chewed on a stick of meat we got from a vendor down on the street.

Ai’s skin was pale, milky like mine, not a trace of grey to give her away as Sallis-Faint. Her hair was still red, but there were red-headed people in the world, after all. She somehow curled it, and it spilled down in red twists every foot or so all the way down to her tailbone. One curl laid over her naked shoulder to cover an exposed breast. I followed the chest line of her black dress to the other breast, which was covered, but when she turned, I could see the nipple poking through. One thin strap held this side up. She breathed hard, and I wondered if it was nerves or something else.

Her lips were painted red, her lashes long and coated with black, making the ruby red pop out even more, like a fire. I followed the upper half of her dress down to her midriff, where the dress split in a slash, exposing her belly to me. It was not hard but soft, though she was not fat. It was just the right amount of soft for a hand to maybe grab, for lips to brush against and push into. The dress continued down in one strip that spread out to cover one leg down to the mid-thigh while it only covered the other to the hip.

Ai spun for me. She wore a black thong that exposed half of her backside, and I could see the start of two bumps from this angle, just underneath. She turned back around. I screamed internally: Shun, Shun, Shun, SHUN!

“What do you think?” Ai said behind the curl that dangled over a breast. She moved the curl back and smiled.

“I think you will have no problem whatsoever getting into that mansion,” I said, trying to keep the shaking from coming out in my voice. I stood up from the bed. “Are you ready to go?”

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“Yes.”

“I’m leaving my Sachiblade, so we’ll have to come back after we get her.”

Ai nodded her head, looking up at me with those ruby reds. I wrenched my gaze away from hers and headed to the door.

“Ningyo,” she said from behind me. I turned to look at her, my heart skipping, but my resolve strong. There wasn’t time to waste. She held up the keycard and smiled. “You’ll need this.”

“Yeah,” I said, taking the keycard from her and opening the door. We walked down the stained hallway carpet and out into the murky streets of Meek Onfidlack.

The hill up toward the mansion was daunting. Like the alley to the display cases, it was filled with vendors out in carts and brightly lit stores behind glass windows. We passed a fighting studio where two women were currently sparring, and I thought of Shun and wondered how she had gotten caught. In hand-to-hand combat, she could probably beat me, though we’d never actually tested that out. Further on, a street forked out to our right, and in between the main road and the forking one was a raised cobblestone sidewalk with what looked like a junk shop. Through the windows, I could see all kinds of things piled up inside, but behind the shop was a mound of trash like that of the trash sea between the Meeks. Outside, there was a sign with a blade on it.

Passing the junk and weapon shop, Ai was starting to attract quite a lot of attention. Mostly the reason was obvious, but I also wondered if it was strange for a woman that looked … like her to be walking up to Keith Smith’s mansion without a large escort.

“You aren’t worried about this leaving a trail for you?” I said, giving a dirty look to a man with a line of hair in the middle of a shaved head, who lowered his glasses to get a better look. “Healing Sachi isn’t really heard of in the Meeks. Two in one night—”

She put a naked hand on my arm. My heart raced again, and black spots swam at the edge of my vision. God, she needed to put some gloves on. Though … I thought that might actually help us get in.

“Any Chudo could be blamed for paying with healing Sachi. Especially in Meek Onfidlack,” she said.

I nodded my head, staring down at the cobbles for a moment. She wasn’t wrong. Chudo frequented that pit of depravity when they were off duty. I wouldn’t have been surprised if some of the children we saw running around there, dirty-faced, were Chudo bastards.

“You need help with any other pieces of the plan? We’re right here,” she said. I looked up. Gold filled my vision. Shit. I turned around for a moment, pulling the Sachi powder from my pants pocket, taking a big snort before turning back around. “Ningyo!” She dusted some powder from the front of my suit.

“Thanks. Ready?”

“Mhm.”

She walked in front of me. There were trees to either side of us, lit by Sachilight, and there was grass on the front lawn, fake grass, and trees, but a strange sight in the Meeks nonetheless. The golden steps leading up to the mansion’s entrance had raised flower beds to either side every five feet or so, filled with real flowers. I could smell them. I gave Ai a look, wondering if they came from the field she took from. She nodded her head. As we reached the top of the steps, Ai took my arm. I saw the two guards standing in their red uniforms, and I gave them a big smile.

I said, “Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to—”

“Not another step,” the one to the right said, raising an endorphingun.

I stopped, holding both hands up, maintaining the smile and the act. Ai went perfectly still like she’d practiced it many times, but the curl of red hair in front of her right breast tumbled away, exposing it to the guards.

“My friend and I here were just wondering if Keith Smith might … be interested,” I said.

“Do you have any idea how many girls we get knocking on Keith’s door? Get lost,” said the guard on the left.

The guard on the right looked over to his companion. “Donnie. Are you serious? Look at the bitch,” he said. “If he finds out we turned her away, we may lose more than just our jobs.”

Donnie said, “Yeah, and let’s say she’s got a bomb strapped to the inside of her skirt, or—”

Ai spun in a circle, exposing the open back of her dress to the guards and managing to bend over slightly as she did. They both stared at her, slowly lowering their guns to the ground.

“No bombs here, gentlemen. Only the goods,” I said, making myself want to puke. “I agree with your friend there, Donnie. And she’s fresh. Never been touched.”

“No, I don’t like it. She looks great, and if it were my house—”

Ai sauntered up to the two men, and as she approached, she tugged at the part of her dress that covered her left breast. With open mouths, they raised their weapons as if confused if they should shoot or hold out to see.

Ai held up the green gem of healing Sachi.

“Donnie … shut the fuck up,” said the guard to the right, gesturing with two fingers to us. “Come on up.”

Ai handed the guard the healing Sachi, and I started to follow into the mansion as they opened the two red doors.

“Not you. You stay,” the guard on the right said.

“Of course. I’ll just wait right outside,” I said.

They turned their backs to me, and the blades were out of the forearms of my suit before they took two steps. The Sachi raged through my veins and my two knives. I ran up to them, reaching my arms in front of each of their faces, bringing the pommels back up under their noses with all my strength. I caught them as they fell. The doors were open only slightly. I nodded to Ai, and she walked in. I pulled the guards into a large plastic bush to the right of the entrance, stripping one down and putting his red uniform on over my Sachiarmor. I took off my sunglasses and brown wig and donned the man’s black-billed red hat that covered my ears, eyes, and the sides of my face. There was a screen within the hat that replaced my normal spectrum of vision with a vignette.

I put the knives back into the forearms of my suit and picked up the man’s endorphingun, plugging the receptor cable into my spinal and feeling the pull of it on my endorphins like a small wave of fatigue. I walked up to the mansion’s front doors that still sat ajar, inching the them open with the sight of my gun, walking slowly and silently. The carpet was white, and a large chandelier spilled bright Sachilight into the circular entrance chamber, reflecting in the many gold-framed mirrors hanging from the walls. There were paintings of naked children with angel wings. Two long pieces of furniture that looked like day beds mirrored each other on the far walls from the entrance, and in between them was a set of large golden doors.

A stair to my right curved around the room and ended on a landing with three doors. Two more red guards were escorting Ai to the far-left door, her exposed hand gliding along the banister as she walked to it.

“You’ll have to wait down here until Keith can get to you, miss. He’s a little busy at the moment,” said one of the guards. I turned around to face the door. “Hey, Donnie!”

I stiffened.

“Hey! Asshole! I’m talking to you!”

I slowly turned around.

“Boss wants you on his door up here, Donnie. Where’s your little friend?”

I tried to lower my voice slightly, adding some gravel to it to sound like the unconscious guard.

“Left. Said fuck this place.”

“That’s the second this week! Shit. Alright, you head up here and guard Keith’s door. We’ll get Alvin from one of Keith’s visitors’ doors.”

Looking up, I saw Ai going down a set of dimly lit stairs, then the other guard closed the door behind her and locked it with a keycard.

I walked up the set of carpeted steps to my right, circling the side of the large entrance chamber. From this vantage, I could see more profane artwork. The largest of these was a devil with a woman, enraptured, in a pit of flame and dark worshippers, whispering their approbation. Directly above this was a preacher-man with milky white eyes, swirling white tendrils surrounding him, filling him.

There were three doors on this landing. I stopped in front of the biggest: the golden one in the middle. I kept my gaze on the carpet as the two guards passed me and went down the stairs. I looked up at the devil with the woman, and I thought of Shun, probably in the room behind me, and Ai in the dungeon. Shun, whom I thought I should be faithful to, and Ai, who made me want to do the opposite. Which was I? The devil? The crowd? The woman? All three?

Who are you really, though?

I shook my head, looking away from the paintings. With my free hand, I tried the door behind me. Locked. I started toward the door where they took Ai to.

“Back to your post, Donnie. Don’t need you peekin’ on the girls again,” said a voice behind me. He smiled. The eye visor didn’t allow me to see whether his smile touched his eyes, but I got the feeling this one enjoyed his higher position than whatever the fuck Donnie’s was. “What was your wife’s name? Rebecca. That’s right. Probably wouldn’t be too happy about you losin’ your job, now. Back to your post. I brought you a friend.”

“Hey, Donnie,” said the man I assumed was Alvin. He was a bit bigger than the other guards I’d seen so far, and I could see he had a chipped tooth. I nodded my head to Alvin, trying to keep my face looking elsewhere. Only my mouth and nose were exposed, but I feared a full-on look at me would tell anyone with a functioning brain that I was a woman and very much not Donnie.

“You ever been back here, behind this one?” Alvin said.

I shook my head.

“You’ve been here a while. You shoulda been back by now, right? That’s where all the seasoned guys go.”

“Never made it.”

“Why?”

“Got in trouble,” I lied. I have no idea why. Sounded like Donnie looked at the girls? Whatever that meant.

Alvin made a sympathetic sound in his throat.

“I wonder what it takes to get in the room after that, though,” Alvin said. “You know where they take the girls to Keith?”

I felt the blood filling my face, and I clenched my fists, the leather creaking around the metal of my endorphingun. I never liked the things, but never had I wanted to use one so badly. Alvin wanted nothing more than to be in there while that filthy fuck Keith Smith touched Shun.

Trying to keep cool, I said, “You think he can’t get off without his friends watching.”

“I think power gets to your head. And he wants ‘em to see what power gets him. But he gets the hottest bitches around, so I wouldn’t mind—”

I slapped my fist against the wall.

“What the fuck, Donnie?”

The door behind us opened. I looked for an opportunity, but the door closed faster than I could see, and if Shun was in there, I didn’t want to risk her being hurt by one of these ‘seasoned guards,’ or worse, Keith Smith himself.

Two men walked out of the golden door wearing uniforms like mine, but black. They turned right and marched to the door where Ai was taken, opening it up with a keycard. One stood guard while the other went down the steps. Three minutes later, I saw Ai walking up, her hair and makeup still perfectly intact, coiling around one breast. Behind her was Shun, who wore a white dress with black lines. It was form-fitting but less revealing than Ai’s. Another woman with dark skin and long auburn hair came last, both breasts out.

Ai passed without looking at me but Shun met my eyes and shook her head in a gesture I took to mean “do not intervene.” It took me back to that day five years ago. She shook her head in just the same way at Asahi. Or was it at Morfran? Or me?

The ringing in my ears was all-consuming. My vision went red, and I could feel the pulsing of blood in my brain. I tasted copper, and it was hard to breathe. I collapsed onto the floor, my infantryman hat falling off.

“Who the fuck is that? I never hired her! Take her to the dungeons!” said one of the black guards. “You, Alvin, and … you.” I don’t know who the other person was.

The last thing I saw was Shun looking panicked before they ushered her through the golden doors to go meet Keith Smith and his despicable appetites.