Zero Sum Game (17 page)

Fujiya stared at her in surprise. "You shouldn't be able to do that. You…" He paused and got the same far-off look in his eyes as Hina did earlier. He broke Hina's grip. "You have a battle suit." He looked her up and down, as if she was a model stepping out onto the runway. "I guess Volon gave it to you. He's…dead, isn't he?" Sadness touched the man's expression.

"Yes," Hina said. She seemed confused by the man's sudden turn towards softness. Ozaki was as well.

"But that doesn't change what we are going to do. What we have to do." It sounded almost like an apology. Fujiya swung his other arm around, but Hina ducked. He grabbed for her again. She screamed. Ozaki got to his feet, still out of breath from the hit he had taken. He needed to help his student.

The two were locked in a grapple, pushing against each other but neither moving. Ozaki wondered how that was possible, the other man had several centimeters and at least fifty kilograms on her in his advantage. But the girl held her own; after the arm wrestling match he knew she was strong, but there was no way she was
that
strong.

"Help me voice," he heard her say.

They continued pushing against each other, trying to gain leverage. A combination of an upwards push and Hina losing her footing broke their stalemate, and Fujiya picked her up, his momentum carrying him forward, and he slammed her into the wall of the station. The bricks underneath Hina's back split and crumbled, but she seemed unharmed.

"Takamachi-san," he called out.

That broke Fujiya's attention, he must have forgotten about Ozaki. Hina drove a knee into the man. He let go of her, falling to the ground and wheezing. Hina rested against the wall, breathing hard.

"Okay," she said.

Ozaki wondered who she was talking to. He had to get her out of here. For whatever reason, Fujiya wanted to kill her. Ozaki needed to get Hina to safety.

She grabbed Fujiya at the back of his neck collar, her other hand grasping his waist. She heaved the large man over her head as if he weighed nothing and threw him down the length of the empty street. The man pinwheeled like a mannequin shot out of an air cannon. In the middle of the intersection, he hit a car, impacting against the trunk.

The car squealed to a stop. Ozaki stared at the dead man, his mind in disbelief. What happened next pushed him from shock into numbness: Fujiya sat up, shook his head, and got to his feet.

"You're right voice," Hina said. She turned to him. "Ozaki-sensei. We need to get going."

At the intersection, Fujiya swayed on his feet. The man looked at Ozaki, then walked around to the driver's side of the car. He tore the door off the metal frame and tossed it behind him. The makeshift Frisbee hit a light pole and clattered to the street. Ozaki didn't see what happened to the driver, but he was pretty sure his fate was similar to the door's.

A steel vice gripped his arm. He winced in pain and saw its source: Hina.

"Ozaki-sensei, we need to get out of here. That guy will kill us."

An engine revved and Fujiya's newly-stolen car raced towards them.

"Can I use your bike?" she asked.

That innocent question, so normal in a bizarre situation, made him regain some of his senses. He nodded at Hina's request. His bicycle still stood on its kickstand where he had left it. He reached for the handles but Hina cut in front of him.

"I'll pedal. Hold on behind me."

She straddled the bike and Ozaki sat on the back edge of the seat, trying to leave room for Hina. He wrapped his arms around her stomach, feeling embarrassment at the situation and amazement at how hard she felt, like grabbing a brick house.

Hina pushed off. She couldn't stand up to give herself more pushing power because Ozaki held onto her, his head above her left shoulder. She pedaled fast down the sidewalk, swerving around the late night pedestrians, and avoiding the piles of garbage bags waiting for morning pick up.

"Okay," Ozaki heard Hina say to her invisible friend. Or maybe it was her split personality. She veered off the sidewalk and into the street. She gained speed. Behind him, he saw Fujiya's car with its missing door chasing them.

"He's gaining," he yelled out to Hina.

She didn't look behind her, but pedaled harder. Her well-muscled legs moved faster than humanly possible. The wind pressed him as if he was driving a car on the expressway with the windows down. Hina dodged and swerved around cars, trucks, and buses. Ozaki had no idea how fast they were going, but he knew only motorized vehicles could attain this speed, not the legs of a fourteen-year old girl.

Hina swerved to the left to pass a sedan, and the pursuing car pulled alongside them. He glanced at Fujiya yelling at them. Ozaki couldn't hear him over the wind and engine noise.

Fujiya swerved his car towards them several times. Hina dodged, and he was forced to veer back into his lane to avoid hitting other vehicles. They continued playing cat and mouse, neither one gaining an advantage.

Fujiya tried another attack. "Hold on," Hina yelled and squeezed the brakes. Ozaki heard them squeal, and Fujiya shot past them. Hina turned right and slammed her foot onto the pavement. She swung the bicycle around and then pushed forward, trying to lose as little as momentum as possible. She raced towards the entrance of a shopping arcade, ringing the bell on the bike's handle to alert late-night pedestrians.

Ozaki heard the distant squeal of tires behind them, then the rumbling of an engine and the screams of people. Hina still pedaled fast as she swerved around corners and obstacles. Ozaki thought that she would lose Fujiya in the tight confines of the arcade, but it seemed he didn't care about who he hit or the damage he did to shops. A moment later there was a squeal of brakes and the crash of glass.

"This is too dangerous," he yelled into Hina's ear. "People are going to get killed. Get us back onto the street."

Hina nodded and raced towards the exit, taking another hard right as soon as she hit the street. Ozaki looked back in time to see Fujiya's car perform the same maneuver. In moments, Fujiya was beside them again, trying to sideswipe them. He jerked the car to the left. Hina kicked out her leg, hitting the car with her foot. The impact caused the bike to jerk to the side but Ozaki saw a small dent appear in the car's side. Hina kicked again and pushed the car to the right. A harder kick folded a piece of the fender, it was centimeters from tearing into the left front tire.

She called over her shoulder, "Hang on."

They pulled up beside the rear of the car. Hina leaned far to her right and grabbed the underside of the bumper. It crumbled like origami paper. She lifted the back end up. The front bumper slammed into the pavement, the combination of momentum and Hina's superhuman strength sent the vehicle into the air. It slammed onto its roof and slid down the street. They slowed to a stop. The car crashed into an unoccupied streetcar platform. The vehicle exploded, sending debris high into the air. The force broke the platforms glass enclosure and twisted the metal frame. Fire reflected off nearby windows, causing the conflagration to appear much more larger and intense.

A tire shot of the fireball and Ozaki ducked behind Hina. She screamed and batted it aside. It sailed across the opposite lanes of traffic and crashed through a window on the far side of the street.

"Right," she said, as if responding to an unseen person. She pedaled again and Ozaki's view of the ruined platform disappeared as Hina turned down a side street.

Ozaki couldn't take any more. Impossible images cluttered his mind and he couldn't sort them into any logical sense. He needed quiet and calm to regain his senses. "I live near Saty Mall," he said. "Take me towards there."

Hina pulled up in front of Ozaki's apartment building several moments later. He dismounted onto unsteady legs.

She held the handlebars towards him. "Here is your bike back. Thank you for letting me use it."

He pushed the kickstand down, surprised that the chain still worked. Hina stood there with her hands behind her back, breathing hard. He was sure it wasn't from exhaustion. His heart still raced but he hadn't heard any revving engines or squealing tires since Fujiya's car had exploded. They were safe for now. Hina stared at him with embarrassment on her face.

"You have some explaining to do." Hina opened her mouth to talk but Ozaki held up one finger and continued. "Not now. It's almost midnight and you have to get home. You have classes tomorrow. But you and I are going to have a talk after school and you're going to tell me everything."

"How do you know I won't lie to you?"

"You flipped a car into a streetcar stop. Is there any way you can lie about something like that?"

She didn't reply to that. She gazed at her feet. After a moment she said, "Good night, Ozaki-sensei."

"Good night, Takamachi-san."

Hina smiled at him, then jogged back towards home.

CHAPTER 15

"What was that about?" Voice demanded.

Hina reached the end of her block and slowed to a walk. Some street lamps provided pools of light every few hundred meters. She remembered walking streets like these with her friends in elementary school. They would run, scared, from one street lamp to another, stopping under them, feeling safe in the cone of light, then gathering their courage and running through the dark until they came to the next light, stopping in its protective glow.

"What's what?" Hina replied to Voice's question.

"The situation with your homeroom teacher. We had an opportunity to capture Fujiya and find out Shimizu's plans."

"There was no way I could have beaten him," Hina said, then lowered her voice as a dog barked, woken from its sleep. "He's stronger than I am. And he killed Ichihara, remember?"

"You two have almost the same level of strength. He is a better fighter, yes. But you have speed and surprise on your side. He doesn't know what to expect from you. You should have pursued him after you threw him into the car," Voice said in a level and cool tone.

"I needed to get Ozaki-sensei out of danger."

"You should have left him."

"I needed to save him." Hina heard her voice echo off the buildings.

"You can't save the world one person at a time," Voice said.

She stopped at the stairway to her apartment building. "Isn't that what we're doing, saving people? That's what you told me to do. That was your and Ichihara's mission, and now it's mine."

Voice replied in a cold tone. "You have to think about the big picture. If losing a few humans mean saving the rest, it is a necessary action. The ends justify the means, Hina. There is a saying: 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.'"

It was logical, she knew, and that chilled her. "No, they don't." She put her hand on the railing. "And don't talk to me about it for the rest of the night." She climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and snuck inside.

— — —

The train car rattled and swayed as it took Shimizu south to Kudamatsu. He had an afternoon meeting with the boss of an equipment supplier that sold to Amano Heavy Industries. The company had risen their price, and it was outrageous what they were charging. He was meeting the man face to face, to drive the price down. That fact that the man didn't know the meeting would be taking place didn't bother Shimizu at all.

The only other passengers in the car were three high school boys sitting in the double seats near the north-end doors. Two boys sat while the other used the holding straps hanging from the ceiling to do pull-ups. Shimizu was at the south-end of the car but he heard their every word as they talked about girls, complained about their teachers, and cheered as they scored on their mobile games.

His cell rang. "What is it?"

"It's Fujiya."

Shimizu gritted his teeth. "It says so on the ID screen. What do you want?"

Fujiya's voice took on a more apologetic tone. "We have a Noigel problem. The member of the Defiant from earlier."

Shimizu tightened the grip on his phone and it cracked. He forced his hand to relax. "You mean he's still alive?"

"Not exactly. He's dead, but he gave his battle suit to someone else. A human girl."

Shimizu would have thought it was a joke, but Fujiya didn't have a sense of humor. Even if he did, Fujiya had enough smarts in his peanut-sized brain not to joke about a matter like this. "You know this how?"

"I went back to the port to check on the submarine," Fujiya explained. "I saw a girl sneaking off it. She's probably a high school student, maybe middle school. I asked her what she was doing, and she knew my name. When I grabbed her, my battle suit told me she was wearing one too. In fact, it used to belong to Volon Tru. Somehow, he gave it to her before he died."

A yell went up at the back of the train; two of the boys were in the open area by the doors trying to prevent the other from inserting his two index fingers into the other's butthole.

Shimizu thought the game, called kanchou, was the stupidest thing he had ever seen. "Wait," he ordered Fujiya. He lowered his cell. "You're being noisy," he yelled out.

The two boys stopped and glared at him. "Shut up, old man," one said, clicking his tongue in disgust. They threw themselves into their seats.

Shimizu's anger flared, but he held it in check. For the moment. He put the phone back to his ear and lowered his voice. "And she got away, didn't she?"

He already knew the answer. "Yes," Fujiya said.

"A Defiant rebel and a human girl are too much for you to handle? I need help on this mission, not incompetence. And don't start saying you're sorry now." Shimizu let out a deep breath, glaring at the kids ahead of him. "We are at a critical juncture and you have a lot of potential to blow it. I don't kill you because I need you, but don't think I'll tolerate your mistakes."

"I'll find her."

"You're a bull in a china shop. You go after her and it will end up on the news." He had seen the morning news about the car accident. An out-of-control vehicle had drove onto a streetcar platform and exploded. The authorities were still searching for the driver's body. Shimizu now realized it had been Fujiya. "We'll continue on the plan. If she does know what we are trying to accomplish, she'll come after us. But stay away from her."