Zero Sum Game (24 page)

Fujiya continued before she could speak. "He was doing what he thought was right. So am I." He ran his eyes over her short sleeve blouse with its blue ribbon, and dark blue skirt. He raised his head, and both his mouths hardened their expressions. "Without the suit, you'd be dead in a heartbeat. It's disgusting to see Noigel technology sink so low as to take on…that…form. I wish I could cut it right off your body."

He hurled the disc at her. She screamed and threw her arms up in protection. The disc bounced off her bare forearms and shot back to Fujiya's hand. She lowered her arms and looked them over. Not one centimeter of skin was broken.

"Our scientists built these battle suits too well. They're impervious to our own weapons." He moved the useless disc towards his left hip. The black suit created a pocket that he slipped the disc into. "I'll give you one chance to take off that battle suit and hand it over." He held out a four-fingered hand. "Take it off, or I'll choke you into unconsciousness and strip it off."

Hina had enough courage to stand on her feet. The image of him running his alien hands over her body almost made her vomit in disgust and embarrassment. "Wait," she said, holding up her hands like a pleading criminal in a cop drama. "I don't want to die." She stood there with tears in her eyes.

"I can't promise that," Fujiya said. His hand still stretched towards her. "Give it to me. Believe it or not, I really don't feel like stripping a fourteen-year old girl. I understand that is a very young age for a human."

For some reason, Hina believed him. He was giving her a choice. This was the second time he had shown a hint of compassion towards her. But there was another choice besides the two he offered. She kicked two large stones at him. He snatched them from the air like a frog catching flies with its tongue.

She raced towards him, jumped, pulling her legs underneath her in a move Voice had told her about a second ago. He couldn't react in time. Her legs shot out into his chest like twin steel pistons. He crashed through a tree, flew several meters through open space until he smashed through two more trees, snapping them like dry twigs. A third tree finally stopped him. He fell to the ground.

Before he had hit the third tree, Hina ran for her life.

CHAPTER 20

She ran and ran and did not stop. On the main highway, Hina pumped her legs as hard as she could. She swerved around cars and trucks, moving too fast to be seen as anything but a blur.

Fear fueled her now. She had been targeted and almost killed. They wanted her dead. She couldn't believe it. Fujiya's pursuit earlier had been scary, but he had been at a distance, a bad man chasing her. This had been different. He had run her down and beaten her. Had wanted to kill her. Voice wanted to keep fighting him. He had suggested that if they defeated him, they could learn specifics about the Noigel's plan. But she had panicked; as soon as she saw a clear chance, she escaped. She admitted that Voice's kick had been impressive, but when she had seen the Noigel hurled so far away, the instinct for flight had been too strong to ignore.

She ran down the expressway exit leading towards Hiroshima's city center. She went through the gate and turned onto a major thoroughfare. She slowed down, but was still fast enough to be a blur. She trusted Voice's reflexes to save her in an accident. She raced around parked cars and blazed through intersections. She slowed to a jog when she reached her apartment's street. She had never been so happy to see the worn-down building.

She launched herself up the first step. Still overexcited from her encounter, her muscles were not used to the slower pace, and they exerted too much power. Her right foot slammed down on the metal step, bending it, and she hurled upwards, stumbling at the unexpected flight. She crashed against the metal railing that surrounded the second floor landing. Her invulnerable body bent several of the metal rails that let out squeaks of protest. She collapsed on the landing. After a moment, she sat up, the abrupt stop giving her time to get clear her head. She heard a doorknob turn and shot to her feet. As the door to apartment 201 opened, Hina glanced at the rails and moved in front of the worst damage. A woman in her seventies opened the door wide enough to fit her head between it and the door frame.

"What happened?"

"I was coming up the stairs and I tripped," Hina said, pointing to the top step.

The woman stepped out of her apartment. "You should go to the hospital. Come inside, and I'll call them and check—"

Hina waved her hands at the old lady. "No, no, please. I'm fine." She smiled at the woman. "See?" She spread her arms out and the woman gave her a once over. "Nothing wrong. I was a little clumsy." She held her breath.

"Ah, the young," the woman said.

Hina bowed, and the old woman retreated into her apartment.

Hina ran her hands over her face. That had been close. She studied the damaged rails. They were bent out of shape, but she couldn't fix them now—the old lady would hear the noise and come out to investigate again. She resolved to fix them tonight.

She climbed the remaining stairs at a normal pace, willing her muscles to relax, and reached for the knob on her apartment door, then stopped. It was her dad's day off and he would be home. What would she tell him? Would he know something was wrong with her? Did she look normal enough? She twisted the knob, but it didn't turn. She let out a breath. Her dad wasn't home.

She leaned on the landing's railing. Across the street was this apartment building's parking lot: a small area with seven slots, covered by a simple glass carport. The first floor had one apartment, the rest of the floors had two each. She saw that her dad's car, an orange Toyota Aqua, was gone. She smiled to herself, unlocked the door, and went inside.

She threw herself on her bed. She wondered if Fujiya had managed to follow her here, and a portion of the fear from earlier returned.

"Do you think Fujiya could have followed me home?" she asked Voice.

"No," he said.

She curled into a ball. Wetness formed in her eyes, then spilled over. Huge sobs shook her body. She hugged her knees tighter and cried, and the tears washed away some of the day's stress. The short, staccato breaths expelled bits of the fear. When she finished, she dabbed at her eyes and dried her face. Certain no more tears were coming, that she had her emotions under control, she put on her makeup, making herself the fashion model Ami said she should be.

As the fear lessened its hold on her heart and body, a new emotion crept in: embarrassment. If she was honest with herself, a little bit of shame and depression also.
Some protector I turned out to be
, she thought.
I ran when I got my first chance. When it came to the flight-or-fight instinct, I was flight all the way.

The thought saddened her. She should have fought Fujiya, to get as much information as she could from him about Shimizu's next step. She hadn't expected to see a Noigel, a real breathing alien, standing in front of her. She hadn't realized how big and strong he was. How could she fight something like that; someone like him? A professional soldier versus an eighth grade schoolgirl.

Those were excuses; she had been scared and she had run. What would Voice's former owner think of her? Would he had given her the suit if he could have looked into her heart and seen how easily scared she got? What did Voice himself think? She almost asked, then closed her mouth without saying anything. Her makeup was finished and she stared in the mirror. She looked pretty, she admitted. She didn't look brave.

She put away her makeup and walked onto the balcony. She rested one knee on top of the air-conditioner generator (grateful her father always had her clean it) and leaned on her forearms against the railing, dangling her hands over the side.
She heard small yells and screams. Two kids, a boy and a girl, chased each other in the street below. She looked both ways, making sure the street was clear. They were first or second graders, running with abandon and fun. The girl wore a bright yellow randoseru, its flap decorated with anime characters. Hina recognized them as the latest incarnation of PreCure, the popular magical girl anime. She smiled to herself, she had often watched the same anime series when she was a child. The boy pushed the girl, she took off running and the boy gave chase. They ran until the girl stopped and took a step backwards. The boy smashed into the hard backpack and went sprawling to the ground. They laughed; the boy stood back up, and ran after her.

Hina's eyes followed the cartoon randoseru until the girl was out of sight. She remembered watching those anime as a kid; the brave heroines fighting monsters from other dimensions, who were bent on finding some objects of power so they could release an evil being and bring an innocent world to an end.
Isn't that what Shimizu is doing?
she thought. He may not be searching for magical diamonds or pieces of a star, but he was intent on destroying an innocent world. The similarity made her uncomfortable. She wasn't a magical girl kicking and punching her way towards peace. She was a scared teenager who ran, not fought.
Am I that different from the girls of Sailor Moon or PreCure?
she wondered. Yes, those girls fought monsters and looked cool doing it.

But anime couldn't show what they were feeling during the fight. Were they scared, unsure, wanting to run away like she did? Hina thought maybe they were. Nobody, anime character or not, felt confident in a fight. The warriors of PreCure were frightened they wouldn't defeat the bad guy, and the monster-of-the-week wasn't sure it could defeat the heroes. Everyone was scared.

Hina realized it was what a person did with that fear that made her the heroine who defeated the black blob of evil, or turned them into the cowardly bystander who ran away. The girls of PreCure and other anime kept fighting; and the more they fought, the better warriors they became. They practiced fighting the way she practiced weightlifting. Hina may be the strongest person in school, but she hadn't started that way. When she had begun weightlifting in first grade, she had been clumsy and uncoordinated. But she kept training, and over time the amount of weight she could lift increased. She had gotten better through training.

"That's what I need, Voice," she said.

"Must I remind you, I'm a battle suit, not a mind reader?"

Hina smiled; not even Voice's snarkiness would get to her. "I was scared. I should have fought Fujiya and found out his plan. But I ran the first chance I had."

"Yes, you should have."

"I need practice. Not like martial arts practice or anything like that. I mean, fighting practice. If I'm going to face Fujiya again, and eventually Shimizu—"

"Most likely the two of them at the same time," Voice interjected.

Hina hated that thought but continued. "Then I need to get over the fear of fighting."

"No one gets over that fear, not even professionals like Ichihara and Fujiya."

"But they're brave enough not to run away from a fight when they need to. That's what I need."

"I'm not following your train of thought, Hina."

She realized her plan sounded crazy even before she said it aloud. "I need to be like a heroine. I need to help people, stop bad guys from hurting them. If I can stand up to human criminals, maybe I'll have more courage when I meet Fujiya again."

The battle suit was silent, long enough for her to ask, "Voice?"

"Your logic is flawed but somewhat reasonable. While I do not agree with this plan, I understand the basic need of it. I will try to assist you. How do you intended to find these criminals? May I point out that, compared to the rest of the world, Japan is a relatively safe country?"

That was true. It may not be as violent as America, but crime was crime. "Can you monitor the police radios or something like that? Like they do in movies? Let me know when a crime occurs, then I can try to stop it."

"Yes, I can. But I remind you, crime happens at any time. What if it occurs during class? Do you intend to run away from school every time an alarm goes off?"

Voice had a good point, she admitted. She remembered all the anime and movies she had seen as a kid; it seemed evil beings always managed to attack when the heroine was out of school, as if they were forbidden to do nasty activities from eight to four pm. She needed to help people, but she couldn't raise suspicions either. Her friends and her father couldn't know what she was up to.

"No," she said. "I'll handle whatever I can after school. If I start skipping classes or I'm always late, everyone will get suspicious. I'll have to…I don't know…pick my crimes, I guess. It's the only thing I can think of right now." She and Voice could work out a better plan later.

Her crime fighting career would have to wait a bit longer; her father was pulling into their apartment's designated spot. He got out, opened the door to the back seat, and took out several heavy grocery bags.

Hina went inside the apartment, and when she heard her father coming up the last flight of steps, she held the door open.

"I'm back," Mitsuo said. "When did you get home?"

"Welcome back. A few minutes ago," she said.

Mitsuo held up three bags. "Could you take these?" His arm shook with the strain of holding them up. Hina slipped her hand underneath her father's through the handle, and he pulled his hand free. She lifted them as if they were filled with air instead of heavy cans and boxes. Hina took her bags into the kitchen and put them on the table.

"Start putting things away," her father said as he came in and slung his bags on the table. They landed with a thud.

As she returned from putting food in the refrigerator he asked, "Are you okay?" Concern covered his face.

Her heartbeat sped up. "Yeah. Why do you ask?"

"You seem…like you had an exciting day. A little flushed."

She smiled. "I guess I did."

— — —

Shimizu accepted the Noigel scanner from Fujiya. As they stood in the foyer of Shimizu's luxurious apartment, Fujiya's face pulsated like a bubble about to burst; his mouth formed a thin line and blotches of red colored his cheeks. He had the worst poker face Shimizu had ever seen.