7th Moon

Days passed as the four espers traveled through the Kanagawa prefecture. It was an empty wilderness now, nobody had lived in this region since the raid three years earlier, and that settlement had been the only one after fifteen years of abandonment. There was nothing left of that settlement now, it had been mostly burned down and the ashes had already been overgrown by weeds. All the same, they stopped there for a while to pray for the lost souls, that they may find rest in the next life.

As they continued on, they found more old buildings from over twenty years ago, but they were all covered in weeds and breaking down, inhabited by bugs and other wildlife. This was not entirely unexpected, they would stay the night in the most stable looking structure and eat vegetation that Douji would forage for with Kichiku’s help. Hidariude would hunt for small game, and Keisei would cook the food. When morning came, they moved on and repeated the routine as they crossed the countryside in search of civilization.

Some nights they heard strange sounds, howls and scratching at the door. They had no idea what these sounds were until one night they were attacked by what appeared at first to be a person. Hidariude drew his sword in defense of the group, “Stay back!” The creature did not respond except to jump at Hidariude who had no choice but to skewer it. Upon closer inspection he realized what it was. “Gaki.”

Kichiku recognized the name and asked Hidariude “What about Gaki?”

“My last night on Seventh Moon, I found a file about me and the Shrine of the Golden Dragon that mentioned Gaki.” Hidariude explained as he used a rag to wipe the blade clean. “He came here and spread a disease a long time ago. That’s why nobody’s here, everybody became like him, only worse, they have no minds left. Most of them either killed everybody around them or got killed by Seventh Moon to contain the disease and prevent the spread before they had to admit blame. Damn, this is why we have to fight and put an end to Seventh Moon, to prevent any more of this, assuming we aren’t already too late.”

It was a somber thought to go to sleep on. Fortunately, the next day they finally found a sign of hope, over the horizon they saw the silhouette of a city. It took until sunset for them to reach it and lights started to go up in the buildings as it got dark, and the buildings were so tall they seemed to touch the sky. There were still people all over, walking down the streets. The people gave them strange looks because they were noticeably different and stood out like a sore thumb, but the four were so awestruck by the first time they were actually in an Earth city they didn’t notice the looks people gave them.

At least, they didn’t notice anything until a stranger said, “Hey, you got a moe ho! But I thought they were all bat girls, I didn’t know they had any cat girls. Are you new?”

Keisei realized the stranger was talking about her. She turned to him “I’m sorry, we are new in town; may I ask you about these…what did you call them again?”

“Moe hos, from the Moe club in the Harajuku district. Don’t tell me you don’t know?”

Keisei started to get impatient. “How do we get there?”

“The fastest way would be to take the train.” He pointed down the street. “The station is down that way. If you get on there, you’ll be on the Yamanote line and the third stop northbound would be Harajuku. Once you’re there, just look for the bright neon sign with a batgirl that reads ‘Moe Club’.”

Keisei tore off for the train station. Kichiku picked up Douji and he and Hidariude followed after her. When they got there she tried to board a train. A man stopped her, “Excuse me, ticket please.”

“What?” Keisei asked.

“A ticket, you need a ticket to board the train, if you want to board you need one and if you don’t have one go get it from the ticket window. We leave in five minutes, so be quick!”

She led the group back to the ticket window where a woman asked them for seven hundred yen per person. Of course, none of them had any yen, they hadn’t even been educated on money. They heard an announcement for the southbound train leaving the station. Keisei got desperate and ran off until she could find a way to the roof of the station. She faced the northbound exit of the station and looked at the train as it started to leave.

Hidariude suddenly realized what was happening. “Keisei, tell me, you are not thinking what I think you’re thinking.” She leapt off the roof of the station and landed on top of the train. Hidariude and Kichiku followed suit, with the latter holding Douji tightly. “Okay Keisei, what exactly are you so interested in that you are willing to risk our lives for?”

“The man mentioned bat girls. There were four on Seventh Moon, Aikou, Tenshi, Okesa, and Einji. If they are here, I want to see them and find out what they are doing here. Either they need our help, or they are part of the problem. Either way, it’s our first lead.”

Now that Hidariude understood, he helped her count the stops and as they approached the third, he looked for the sign the man mentioned. He had a hard time seeing anything, he was blinded by the bright lights from all of the neon signs. One giant sign was actually a screen that played an ad for “New World Enterprises, making a new world that’s better for everyone! Food, fuel, and pharmaceuticals!” The ad featured Han Toromi and it took them a moment to realize that this was the name the company was operating under on Earth. They all thought the same thing, the company was lying to everybody, and for good reason, nobody would do business with them if they knew the truth, that the same resources that went into food, medicine and energy also went into a private army to literally kill the competition.

As the train entered the Harajuku station, they jumped off the train and landed in an alley. They stepped out to the street and saw the sign from the club they were looking for. They walked up to the front door to enter.

A bouncer saw Douji and stopped them. “Whoa, that kid is way too young to come in here. In fact it’s way past curfew, you should be in bed young man.” Then he looked at Keisei and his expression changed as he noticed her ears and tail. “You may enter.”

Keisei started to go through the door and Hidariude tried to follow, but the bouncer stopped him and demanded he pay a cover charge. Keisei interrupted, “He’s with me.” The bouncer let him through.

Hidariude turned to Kichiku. “Are you coming?”

“No, I have to stay with Douji.” Kichiku replied. “I wish you luck.”

Inside they found the building seemed to be one large room that was rather dark and it took time for their eyes to adapt to the dim light. There were two lines of neon lights that ran around the walls just above their heads. The only other source of light was the square white stage in the middle of the room that seemed to be lit up from beneath. The stage was surrounded by chairs and tables where men sat with drinks or cigars, sometimes both. The smell was a mix of smoke, alcohol, and some other smell that reminded them of the cherry trees back at the shrine, but not in a good way. Music played but seemed to come from nowhere. It was loud and crude, and reminded Keisei of some of her worst nights on Seventh Moon.

The stage had four brass poles, one on each corner. As they looked at the poles at the corners of the stage, they saw shadows slide down them. The shadows had forms that somewhat resembled Keisei, only instead of tails, they had bat wings and they also had shorter hair. They were hanging upside down on the poles, wearing nothing but their scant fur. They seemed to slither down the poles and as they reached the bottom they pulled themselves up, and then performed a split as they dropped to the ground. They crawled to the edge of the stage where they would stand up, running one hand up their shapely bodies while the other hand gestured to men to come closer. Those men that approached them dropped yen on the stage at the girls’ feet while the girls got within an inch of the men and danced in an erotic fashion. The girls would also toy with the men a little by kissing their necks, and occasionally, they would bare their fangs, implying that they would like to do more.

Keisei sauntered up to the stage, making her presence known with every step. The girls saw her and recognized her. They stopped entertaining the men and approached her. The men watching whistled and hollered as they the bat girls put their hands on the new girl and appeared to stroke and caress her and try to disrobe her. All of the regular customers knew this was not part of the usual show, but they were curious where it was leading. Two of the girls noticed Hidariude still behind Keisei and pushed through the crowd to get to him.

“Don’t touch him.” Keisei warned the girls coldly.

One girl took Keisei’s face in her hand and turned it back towards her. “Don’t worry, Aikou and Einji will take good care of him. Let Okesa and I take care of you.”

“We could use you,” Okesa continued, “This place is getting busier, and Tenshi and the rest of us could use another girl to handle all of the men.”

“What are you doing here anyway?” Keisei asked. “Why aren’t you on Seventh Moon?”

“Our masters thought we could do better work here.” Tenshi answered. “We did such a great job of pleasing them that they wanted to share us with Tokyo.”

As they carried on this conversation, they had been subtly pulling her robe off and left her wearing nothing but her fur on the stage. Keisei actually didn’t mind being naked, but she kept her fans and her ofuda in the robe and being without them made her feel more vulnerable than being without the robe itself. Soon the men started whistling and hollering at her. She didn’t like these sounds, it reminded her of the way she had been treated on Seventh Moon. Then the men started to reach out and touch her and the bad memories really started coming back. She started kicking the men away.

“Feisty!” The men shouted. “We like that!”

Keisei had a sudden flashback and panicked. She shook her head to try to get it out of her mind and looked at Tenshi and Okesa who held her robe giggling the whole time. She saw her ofuda in a pocket of her robe and lined up two fingers in front of her face. “Kayakujutsu, ignite!” The ofuda lit on fire and the fireball rose out of the robe strangely without even singeing it, then splitting in four directions, aimed primarily at each of the bat girls, but also flaring out at the men in the audience. She lunged at the robe to fetch her fans and took a defensive position. Hidariude had been waiting for Keisei to handle things on her own, but once the flames went for the two girls trying to distract him, he realized she needed him and leaped up to the stage to take a defensive stance at her back.

At first the bat girls were scared of the fire, but they were agile enough to avoid it as it hit the walls. Once they realized Keisei had used up her fire power and would be fighting only with fans, they got braver and approached her. The patrons, on the other hand, were not nearly as brave and started a stampede for the door. As the fight continued on the stage, Hidariude’s blades did scare off the girls, who moved to surround Keisei. Hidariude kept his eyes on the girls, ready to defend Keisei.

After a few seconds of a cautious standoff, Einji tried to take on Keisei. Keisei blocked the attack repelling her against the wall. This created an opening that Okesa tried to take advantage of by attacking Keisei while her side was open, but Hidariude quickly blocked the attack with his sword and she just barely managed to stop herself and pull back, only suffering a small cut as the tip of his sword glanced against her. She fell back holding a hand to her wound. Aikou and Tenshi were enraged by seeing their sisters getting hurt and jumped in the middle, seeing that Hidariude and Keisei had both left the space between them open when their attacks went outward. As the girls bought into the feint, Keisei struck down one of them with her fans while Hidariude knocked the other down with the pommel of his sword bringing the bat girls down between the two of them. With one foot and weapon each on Aikou and Tenshi, they looked back toward the other girls, holding up their defense for a second round of attacks. Einji and Okesa got back up and looked hesitantly at the scene, torn between helping their sisters and getting themselves in more trouble.

The momentum of battle got cut off as another person stepped out of the back room. He was clapping his hands slowly, saying “Bravo.” Hidariude recognized him, it was Gaki. “Somehow, I figured if we set up shop here, eventually you’d show up.”

Hidariude looked at his former commander with disgust. “So this was all a trap for us?”

“Well, yes and no.” Gaki answered. “The company just wanted to have some people in Tokyo, and this seemed like a good set up. In the outlands we have our own governors minding those who do not or cannot enjoy the pleasures of city life, but it’s harder in the cities because we need them to at least have the illusion that they still have sovereignty. They have their own government, we just have an economic influence, a large influence, but still limited. We can’t just walk the streets claiming we are the head honchos because that would piss them off, and we prefer their cooperation. That’s where our power comes from, making sure everyone else who is powerful is on our side. They probably couldn’t do anything if they wanted to, but just to be safe we run this little club. More powerful and important people come through here than you’d realize and they don’t want everyone else knowing that they are here, so we make a deal, they cooperate with us and we keep their dirty little secrets.”

“You’d know all about dirty little secrets wouldn’t you?” Hidariude accused Gaki. “How many people have you killed? How many villages have you burned?”

“How many women have you sold?” Keisei added.

“I don’t really keep track of how many. These four girls are the only ones I pay attention to, although I’ve heard we’ve got a few more going out here and there. As for the killing and burning, I lost count years ago.” Hidariude lunged at Gaki with rage, but Gaki just waved a finger as he snapped his fingers with his other hand. “Look behind you.” Hidariude turned around and saw the bouncers bringing in Kichiku and Douji. One held Douji with a blade to his throat, a retractable cyber blade like Hidariude and Seichei. “I believe you recognize the bouncers, a new line of robots designed in your image. Model…some number or other, we just call them slashers. They have malleable features so they can look like whatever or whoever we need them to be. Here they act as bouncers and whatever else we need. Right now they’re hostage takers.”

Hidariude reluctantly retracted his cyber blades and sheathed his sword. “What do you want?”

“We want the boy. Remember that girl you encountered back at your shrine? The one who turned into a dragon? Well, she’s not doing too good since then. The boy seems to be in more stable condition despite the fact that they both suffered the same ordeal. I don’t suppose you have any idea why she would be transforming every time she wakes up while he appears to remain in control? Has he transformed at all since then?”

Hidariude shrugged. “Support from his family. We used a Shinto charm to restore him to normal in the first place, and he’s been normal ever since. Maybe if you guys were more spiritual you would be able to handle her better.”

Gaki laughed. “Spirits! Ha! If you won’t take this seriously, then we’ll just do this the hard way.” Gaki shifted his gaze from Hidariude to the slashers around Kichiku and Douji. “Bring me the boy, kill the rest.”

The two slashers who were holding Kichiku extended their blades and attacked him. Kichiku reacted quickly and grabbed them by their hands and slammed them together so hard that they collapsed on the floor. The other slasher picked up Douji and ran towards Gaki. Keisei tried to stop the slasher but Okesa leapt in her way and knocked her to the floor. In one swift move, Hidariude drew his sword and sliced the robot’s head off then extended his other arm to grab Douji before he hit the floor. Gaki’s expression didn’t change, he just waited for the bat girls to get up and block the exits. It was hard for them to get around Kichiku though, his only weakness was Douji and as long as Hidariude had him safe, Kichiku had no problem using his full strength to protect himself and his friends. Aikou made an attempt to stop him anyway, carefully approaching him with her chest puffed out to try to distract him. Usually this technique worked, but Kichiku was different, and as soon as she tried to attack him off guard he defended. He tried to be merciful and not hurt this girl too bad, but she and the others were more afraid of Gaki at this point and continued to fight.

Okesa continued to tumble with Keisei while Tenshi attacked Hidariude. He tried to fight one handed, using his cyber arm with blades fully extended while trying to hold Douji with the other hand, but Tenshi was pretty good at dodging and managed to attack Hidariude with carefully placed kicks as she cart-wheeled around Hidariude. He was at a disadvantage fighting this way but he was afraid to let go of Douji again. Without him realizing it, Tenshi managed to get him close enough to Einji for her to grab the boy from behind and run off after Gaki.

Hidariude glanced at his comrades and gave them directions telepathically. Kichiku grabbed Aikou and threw her in the middle between the others. Keisei mustered as much strength as she could to throw Okesa as close to Aikou as possible and then ran after Einji. Hidariude brought his sword around to Tenshi’s opposite side from the others and unleashed an electric slash toward all three girls, stunning all of them as they fell into a pile on top of each other. Kichiku hurried up to join Hidariude and Keisei as they chased down Einji, Gaki and Douji.

Gaki had run out the back door into an alley. Einji stopped to try to slow down their pursuers but Kichiku was impatient and hit the ground opening up the ground beneath her trying to stop her. Unfortunately, her wings were functional and she simply flew above the fissure and dive bombed her opponents. Keisei was also losing patience and guided Einji’s body between her fans into the club behind them and closed it after her.

While Keisei and Kichiku were busy clearing out the last of the batgirls, Hidariude continued to chase after Gaki who was jumping up fire escapes to the roof. Hidariude was undeterred and leapt up right after him. They leapt from rooftop to rooftop across the Harajuku district until they got near the Meiji shrine. For some reason, the kami seemed to favor Hidariude here somehow and for no apparent reason Gaki lost his footing and slipped and fell, dropping Douji. Hidariude was on Gaki in a flash with his sword at his throat.

“Go ahead, put me out of my misery.” Gaki said with cold resolve.

“What are you talking about?”

“I know the file you were looking at the last time you were on Seventh Moon, the one Keisei mentioned, you know about the Kanagawa plague and my role in it. What you may not know is that wasn’t the first viral outbreak I was involved in. A long time ago, before you were born, there was another experiment in altering the DNA of adult soldiers. They infected us with retroviruses that were supposed to give us all the same special abilities you and your cohorts have. Only there was a problem, the viruses still had enough of their original genetic programming to be dangerous. They mutated in our systems and we became unstable, psychotic even. Nearly half of Seventh Moon was quarantined while they tried to come up with a cure. In the meantime, we turned against each other, killing each other. By the time the cure was ready, I was the lone survivor. The worst part is the cure wasn’t really a cure, it was just a treatment to stabilize me; they didn’t want me to lose my powers that they had so heavily invested in. In order to get this treatment and keep my sanity, I have to do whatever they say. Without it, I am overcome by a thirst for blood. If I don’t kill the people I feed off of, they become infected and degenerate even faster and worse than I do. They have made me into a killing machine, I have no choice, in order to survive, I must destroy others, either to feed my own hunger or to serve the whims of my handlers. Before you ask me again how I could do what I’ve done, why I’m such a monster, know that this is my answer, I have no choice, this what they made me. I envy you and your friends for escaping, but I can’t do anything, because even if I did try to help you, it wouldn’t be long before I was turned against you by my own madness. So if you want to kill me, go ahead, you’ll be doing me a favor and I won’t have to worry about any of this anymore.”

Hidariude didn’t know what to say to this, he held his sword at Gaki’s neck trembling, angry at him and pitying him at the same time. He thought about the creature they had encountered the night before outside the city. That monster had once been a human until it got infected with the same thing Gaki had. If he allowed him to live, he would have to face becoming like that. If he didn’t get his treatment, he would be that eventually and then Hidariude would have to kill him anyway. But was it right to kill him when he was no more responsible for his sins than Hidariude and Kichiku were?

As the sun rose, Gaki laughed a melancholy laugh, “Another side effect of my disease is that it causes a severe allergy to sunlight. I have to stay indoors all day, I haven’t seen a sunrise in over twenty years. This will be my first, and my last.” His skin began to turn red and blister. Right before Hidariude’s eyes, Gaki melted in the light of the rising sun. His bones even turned black and crumbled from the infection.

Keisei and Kichiku caught up just as the last of his remains blew away on the morning breeze. Keisei asked “Where is he?”

“Gone.” Hidariude replied.