Chapter 20
Recollection

Giroro was exhausted even though the man-equin had done all the work, all the travel, all the glad-handing and hand-shaking and back-slapping. The flight into the warzone had been decidedly primitive, even by Pokeponian standards, but the trip outbound had been ever so much more luxurious. Some "small tree" had sent a grandiose jet to ferry Giroro and the wrestlers home. He had avoided the bubbly champagne that was passed around, because the impelled gasses made him sneeze. He had turned his nose up at the cheese since it was still so much rotted milk to him. The crackers and tiny fish were all he could stomach. The entourage departed under the cover of darkness. In-flight, he was introduced to "important people", as Mennings, the attorney, described them. Each one wanted to shake his hand. There was talk of honors, and medals, and races to commercial authority locations in which he should participate. Moreover, each one wanted a photograph with the Genuine American Hero.

Giroro didn't feel like a hero. He felt like a dried shark fin - utterly pounded into powder. Why would I want to "run for office"? he thought as he turned the key in the lock of his apartment. I cannot even walk.

Sir Jeff been waiting at the back exit from the International terminal at the destination airport. In the long limosine ride back to New york City, Sir Jeff babbled happily about the media coverage and the rising fame of Giroro. He also explained that Charlene had held a vigil during his incarceration and had gathered friends around her to "keep her from worry".

"It is just for appearances Giroro," Sir Jeff insisted then advised "They may still be there. Be charitable when you ask them to leave."

Thankfully, Charlene's friends were not in evidence. Giroro sniffed the air, still redolent with the smell of too many Pokopenians. Charlene was asleep on the couch with her cat Taffy curled in her cleavage. Ever since the fur stole incident, he had come to resent the arm candy's recreational shopping, though he had relented on the purchase of the wide-screen plasma television, which had no doubt been put to good use during his incarceration. She was also so much the ghost - pale skin, pale eyes, pale hair, pale and dazzlingly consequential teeth - but she didn't hold a candle to his Natsumi in either looks or bravery. Yet, he had thought of Natsumi only occasionally since his famous on-air outburst so long ago. Three years of travel, performing, acting, one profitable low-budget B movie and autographs, autographs, autographs had intervened. Charlene must be doing something right.

Giroro hrumphed deeply and tread carefully from the doorway, through the dimly lit livingroom, passed the spacious kitchen with the broad counter, passed the long, wooden dinner table, down a short, angled cubby-corridor, and through the double doors to the bedroom with the double bed. A single push at the center of the knob locked the door behind him. He removed his silk tie and starched white shirt and lay down in a well-worn groove in the mattress. The man-equin settled into the space as though it belonged there. He thumped the chest of the shell three times. The shoulders cracked along the seam and the chest split down the sternum. Giroro rolled out of the sensory foam on which he lay. He closed the clamshell access port and hung the oh-say-can-you-see necklace around the inert man-equin's neck-space so that any person looking at the shell would see what they expected to see Giroro: media star, New York vigilante, Hero of Lands Far Away, Most Dangerous Man in the Universe - asleep.

Finally, I'm free of that prison. He hopped from the bed to the carpeted floor. His bath was to the left and he twisted the gold-plated controls hard over to fill the tub with steaming water.

His stomach rumbled with deprived hollowness. He reached to his helmet and twisted the NMP field to full strength. He peeked out the door and padded into the semi-darkness. Charlene was still asleep, but Taffy was awake. The feline sat up, leaped to the floor now and hissed loudly in Giroro's direction. The green glow behind her electric-blue eyes followed him. Giroro opened the fridge and suddenly the unfriendly cat was at his feet, meowing up into the lighted shelves.

The way to a cat's heart is through her stomach. Giroro grunted. He saw a plate of smoked salmon on a wilted bed of lettuce, probably the leftovers from Charlene's vigil "party" or perhaps from a much earlier earpad-assaulting soirée. He tossed a few salmon slivers to the floor and watched with satisfaction as the Siamese snapped one up and chewed. She purred like a buzzsaw. He found some sushi on a tray in back of a decorative plate of softening fruit and rotting milk dip. He sniffed the rolled crabmeat, horseradish, rice and seaweed. The meal had not yet spoiled.

He closed the fridge, sat on the floor and ate facing the cat. His bath was run, and a soft beeping announced the water level at about the moment his stomach was full. He tossed the plastic tray in the trash. Charlene was still asleep on the couch. She did not even stir as the cat returned to her perch between the woman's mammary mounds.

Giroro returned to his bedroom and locked the door behind him. He removed his helmet, downed the NMP field and hung the headgear over a chair by the bed. A few hops, which his cramped muscles begrudged him greatly, and he was sliding into the hot water. His blood thinned almost instantly and he relaxed into the water's embrace. Shortly a reedy blast of methane escaped his intestines. Bubbles percolated through the water. He triggered the fan with a single word and the noxious cloud was siphoned away from his sensitive nose. He bathed and soaked and contemplated. His eyes sagged shut and before long he was snoring.

----

Natsumi exchanged money for a neatly wrapped parcel and smiled at the customer. He was a scheduled purchaser, a snake owner, who drove 15 clicks to Osaka's outskirts to buy rats for his downtown reptiles. He claimed his snakes wouldn't eat food from anywhere else, though she believed that he came largely for familiar company and enjoyed the long bus ride.

Nick had shrugged when she explained her theory, "It's customer loyalty no matter the excuse, Natsumi. He buys here and we pretend to believe his reasons why. There aren't that many stores that sell live food." When Natsumi had looked doubtful Nick had added, "Really, go exploring. You'll discover I'm correct."

So Natsumi had gone exploring with her mobile and after a dozen calls she was satisfied. Nick was correct. Nuwah's Pets was the only purveyor of live mice, rats, and rabbits for the exclusive use of feeding reptiles. In fact, they were one of the few that carried imported reptiles and amphibians at all. They were certainly the oldest such establishment and all the students in the environment club were envious of her job there. The money wasn't the greatest, but she didn't tell her classmates that she'd make far more selling fast food to overweight geeks and mothers with screaming brats. Where else could she have such personal interactions with customers and pets alike and the admiration of her peers?

The man accepted his package of squeaking, scrabbling mammals and made his way to the door. As he was about to push through the exit, back first, Natsumi waved. She beamed at him with false affection and called, "Thank you Hosha, Come again!"

"Oh I will, " the customer enthused with his usual explanation, "My snakes won't eat mice from anywhere else." He pushed through the door and with a tinkle of the entry bell, he was gone.

Natsumi smiled and returned to her textbook. In between customers was the ideal time to study for her college boards. Nick understood the needs of her education. He understood, even not being Japanese, that the boards were the turning point in many a student's life - they separated the wheat from the chaff: pass by a wide margin and the world would open to Natsumi; fail or just pass and Japan would be all Natsumi saw. So, he permitted her, even encouraged her, to study whenever she wanted and study she did.

----

Dororo lay on his belly in his carefully constructed blind on the rooftop across from Nuwah's Imported Pets. His man-equin and skimmer were safely hidden under a chameleon cloth tarp in the alleyway between this and the neighboring building. He climbed up here every day that Natsumi worked, watched her for her entire shift, and followed her bus home. He was never seen. Never even sensed. He was a bodyguard. He was ninja.

He pressed the spy's lifelens to one eye and watched as Natsumi, the largest life force in the store, bent over a book. She was seated alone at the front counter. The older male Pokopenian had not yet arrived, but that was his pattern as near as Dororo could tell. After only three years, Dororo marveled, my Natsumi is trusted to open and close the store herself. She is most efficient and productive.

But someone must watch her, and I am that someone. He smiled viciously and absently munched on a puffed rice brick he had brought. He had gone from Dororo, Ninja protector of the Environment to Dororo, Ninja Protector of Natsumi, but he was happy. In the three years since he'd gained this affection for her, he'd not once experienced the trauma of his youth: not once. He'd not cried. He'd not worried. He'd not missed a lonely practice or failed at a silent meditation.

Perhaps Koyuki's absence had also helped. She was no longer there to interrupt. Koyuki was gone, moved to Tokyo to business training there, but Natsumi had stayed and so Dororo had stayed. I shall protect her from all harm, he remembered explaining to Koyuki, much as Giroro failed to do, and where he failed I shall always succeed.

Koyuki had understood.

----

Giroro's eyes snapped open at an insistent trio of unfathomably sourced beeps. I must have fallen asleep..., he mentally declared. He raised his hand and observed the too plump condition of his skin. ...hours ago. A self-heating tub was an excellent idea. I need not refill it at regular intervals. I should not fall asleep here though.

The trio of beeps sounded again from the direction of his bedroom, where the lifeless man-equin was still dead and de-powered upon the bed. Giroro rose from the tub, stretched and then shivered in the artificially cooled air. Giroro had learned through hard won experience that Charlene was not entirely unintelligent. She knew how to set an air conditioner thermostat.

For the hundredth time he thought, If only I were a mammal; this environmental setting would be perfection.

The beeps sounded again and the Keronian hopped from the tub to investigate.

----

Fuyuki took careful aim at the target: one, two, three and squeezed off a round, then another, then another, then another. He pressed the button on the wall and the paper target sheet trundled up the length of the shooting range. Paul stood behind him and nodded approvingly at the cluster of precisely punctured rips in the sheet. The boy had vastly improved in the last three years. Paul replaced Fuyuki's sheet with a fresh one and pressed the button. He held it until his target sheet was twice the distance away as Fuyuki's had been.

Fuyuki reflected, as Paul assumed firing stance, that his lessons were going well.

"You must learn to protect yourself," Paul had explained. "Enough of the bookish nonsense. There are greater and more pressing dangers than alien invasion. Other men protect the planet. We must protect our own."

"My own?" Fuyuki had asked curiously. "You mean Mama and Natsumi?"

Paul had nodded gravely and then added, "Momoka's father will respect you far more if you can protect his daughter from harm."

Paul fired 10 shots in rapid succession until the half-loaded clip was fully empty. He recalled the sheet of paper. He grimaced. His shots were not as tightly clustered as Fuyuki's were and they were more to the gut circle than the heart circle. One had even missed the human outline completely.

"I'm getting older, Fuyuki. And so is Momoka. She does not listen to me. Not that she ever did. She does listen to you, Paul had observed sagely on the day he gifted Fuyuki with the 9mm.

Fuyuki had locked the gun in his bedside safe. The ammunition was stored under his bed. The two items came together only here on the firing range. Paul had insisted that be the way of things. Mama would throw a shit fit if she knew about the gun, Fuyuki thought, as he replaced Paul in the booth and slapped another clip into the grip. Fuyuki's eyes already tracked the target as it trundled outward. He flicked the slightest glance sidewise.

At a nod, he locked on the target and fired.

----

Keroro was using the base computer to outline an assembly strategy for his latest concept: a Gunpla mashup for an article he planned to write for Aki's new magazine. She was expecting the instructions by noon and he'd only just barely finished manipulating the carefully digitized scans in Kururu's CAD/CAM program. He was about to begin writing a segment on the methodology of creating the extra fins from pieces of scrap injection molding when he heard the sound.

The noise was curious and reedy and only vaguely familiar - Mois' communication console was beeping: sets of three, and then a long pause, then another set of three, and an equal pause. Over and over. Over and over. "Mois!" he called. "Would you pick up the 'phone'?"

There was no Mois at the console and the beeping continued. "Mois!" Keroro called again, "The console."

His words echoed through the empty command center.

He was about to amble over to the console and try his own hand at retrieving whatever incoming message had seen fit to interrupt him when Mois skidded into the room. Her hair was askew as though she'd just awoken. Her clothes were hastily arranged as though she'd just grabbed them from the floor and pulled them on. Her make-up was haphazardly applied. Her eyes were wild and panicked. She knew she was late.

"Long night?" Keroro observed rhetorically. It's been two years and six months of long nights ever since she took up with that Pokopenian. I wonder if they're screwing? That would certainly explain her... "You're late. Again."

"I was, you see, very busy, Sergeant." Mois said as she slid into her seat. "I had a lot of reading to do."

"Reading?" Keroro grinned. So that's what they're calling it nowadays. Mois had already donned her headphones and straightened her operator's microphone. She was industriously turning knobs and pushing buttons. Keroro returned to his typing and diagramming.

He looked up from the screen only when he heard a gasp from Mois' direction. He regarded her sternly, crumpled one brow and raised the other. "Yes?" he asked.

"Un-un-cle" she stuttered.

She hasn't called me Uncle in two years.

"Uncle", Mois tried again, "The message from Headquarters. You and the platoon..." She trailed off again. Gulped. Stood. Wobbled uncertainly and walked over to his seat. She knelt, both her knobby knees pressed against the cool tile. She gripped the pleather armrest and looked up at him with her large blue eyes. "Uncle, we're all..."

----

We're all being recalled? Giroro grimaced. All Keronian citizens and personnel on Pokopen? He clicked the button on the skimmer's communicator and scrolled through the text message again. It wasn't a personal request, but a form letter: a general alert. All military personnel were being recalled. All civilian associates were to be evacuated. Keron was in a state of civil war. All hands to battle stations. Defend the homeland. We're paying you enough to do that, aren't we? A dry, crisp, utterly effective guilt trip.

Invasion is no longer in my hearts, Giroro reflected, but this is different. This is protecting my home...

Instructions were given - limitations on the weight of luggage and personal possessions. Directions to the pick-up zone: times, dates, organized and enumerated and categorized by platoon, detachment, and classification. He scanned the list for his own designation.

... but haven't I made a home for myself here? Giroro asked himself.I have friends. I have more power than I ever had in the military. I may not be the most dangerous man in the universe, but I'm a hero to my fans and now to many another - I have, by effect of fame, conquered more of Pokopen than Keroro ever did. I could stay. I would stay. I'd enjoy staying...

His pickup time was in three days... in Japan.

Giroro wanted to swear, but resisted. He wanted to kick a large object and settled for the skimmer. The vehicle was solid and he kicked it thrice more even though his foot hurt. He wanted to destroy it. The motivator had been installed last year after he'd performed in a particularly successful entertainment video. The success had come not in the theater, but from distribution of the DVD. Sir Jeff had pushed him to take 25 cents on each DVD sold and do the movie for "scale" and he'd made enough money to repair the little craft pennies at a time. I wish I hadn't fixed it. There was no point. Now, I cannot use my broken skimmer as an excuse to miss the escape transport.

He considered buying a sledgehammer and smashing the skimmer to bits.

He limped over to the bed and seated himself on the corner of the expansive mattress. He bowed his head. I cannot just not go. No matter the excuse. He surveyed the spacious bedroom. His earspots could detect the even breathing of his hired girlfriend and the purring of her nasty pet feline, and beyond them the sounds of the city warming - delivery trucks crunching their way through the streets, the trains of the underground clacking down the tracks, the summer birds stirring in their nests at the expectation of the rise of the summer sun. This feels like home, but it is not truly.

Absently, he normal-spaced his strattaker. The hefty machine pistol was as clean as the day he'd stowed it after fighting Paul. Idly he flicked at a dribble of long-cooled Osmium that clung perniciously to the muzzle. The sharp metal cut his fingertip. He traced a smear of Keronian blood down the barrel, across the injector housing, and over the lever for the shoulder stock. Keron needs a few good men. No, they shall need many good men, many good men to hold the Imperium together, and I am still one of the best. No matter that I like it here. There is a duty to perform.

He straightened resolutely, for Keron then. He raised the strattaker vertically on his lap, "Well, my old friend. We are together again, with places to go and people to kill."

But first, he thought, there are people to whom I must explain myself.

----

Natsumi picked at her lunch. Nick had called at 10:00 that morning. He wheezed. He coughed. He sounded sick. "Allergies," he'd explained in between wheezes, "Do you mind handling the store by yourself?"

Natsumi had heard the explanation every spring and summer. She remembered the first time that she'd sent him home from the shop with assurances that she carefully had watched him everyday; she could count the day take, balance the till, order supplies, and make the deposit at the bank. He'd left the store to her that first time only reluctantly and had called every hour to make sure she was okay.

By now, though, he was confident. Natsumi was a competent employee. She could handle the store by herself and he had told her so. "I'm sure you can handle it." he wheezed, "But do you mind? Do you have any plans?"

She didn't and said so. "It's a slow day. I won't have any problems. Go to bed and let the Seldane do its work."

----

"Mr. Giroro. You can't go in there." the executive assistant protested as Giroro barged past her in mock anger and burst open the double doors to Sir Jeff's office.

Sir Jeff looked up, startled, at a huffing, impetuous, yet restrained Giroro standing in the doorway. "Excuse me", he said into the phone, "I'll have to call you back Senator." He shooed away a harlot who knelt at his feet, fixed himself, and zipped up his fly. "Scoot." he ordered her and scoot she did.

She passed Giroro on her way out. He spared her not a glance. He was well familiar with Sir Jeff's "type": hyper-thin, with breast as large as melons and hair and earrings sized to match. Giroro didn't understand the appeal. She closed the double doors behind her.

"So Giroro", said Sir Jeff soothingly, "to what do I owe the pleasure of this interruption?"

Giroro strode wordlessly over to the bookcase and opened the bottle of Maker's Mark. He poured a tumbler for each of them: a hefty one for Sir Jeff and one weak and watered enough to be token for himself. He placed one glass on the corner of Sir Jeff's green and leather desk blotter and nodded to his superior. He then sat in the center chair and regarded his boss with a stony stare. He motioned to the drink.

Sir Jeff seemed unaffected. He lifted the glass and took a polite sip, "Starting early today, are we?"

"I have an announcement to make, and I would rather you be well prepared chemically." Giroro nodded and took a sip of his own tumbler. Sake had always pounced on his senses, but he'd discovered through careful experimentation with Charlene that he could imbibe a very weak Scotch without losing his control or his faculties. He added simply, "I am retiring."

"You're what?!" Sir Jeff said incredulously. He pounded back a larger mouthful of Scotch and with hands on the desk half rose to his feet. "Tell me you're joking! Giroro, my lad, you're at the top of your game! You're more famous than the day I took you in. The Senate wants to pin a medal on you for chrissakes!"

"Of this I am aware. However, it changes nothing. I must go." Giroro leaned towards Jeff. He edged to the brink of his seat, This is the powerplay moment. The moment when he either says yes or makes threats. Be strong, Giroro, be strong.

"Please tell me that it's not the pressure? You can't take the pressure. You need some space. Please don't tell me that." Sir Jeff angrily begged.

"I can take any amount of pressure," Giroro said. He nearly blurted I'm being recalled, but his tongue caught at precisely the right moment and replaced the truth with a convenient half-truth, "I am being recalled... to Japan. There is important family business and I am needed. I must leave tonight."

Sir Jeff lounged back in his chair, which he idly half spun so that he could look out the window at the city arrayed to the left and the river arrayed to the right. He sipped at the drink, suddenly contemplative. Giroro sat silently, sipping at his token Scotch and Water and waited for the pronouncement. They sat in silence for several minutes. The minutes stretched into a half-hour. Giroro refilled his tumbler - this time with cranberry juice. The phone rang and Sir Jeff ignored it.

"Have you told Charlene? When you leave, she's out of a job." Sir Jeff asked suddenly.

"She was still asleep. I left her a note." Giroro explained. I am unwilling to buy a ticket on that guilt trip. Charlene can take care of herself and even if she cannot she is hardly my responsibility.

Sir Jeff was disappointed. Surely Giroro had developed some affection for the hired "help" - his performers often did. He considered the landscape beyond his window again. He sipped his drink idly and put it down when it needed a refill. Giroro poured him another and more minutes passed.

"Does it have to be tonight?" Sir Jeff asked. "Could you put off for a day and record a farewell to your fans? We could have Crush take your place and chase you off, film the whole thing down in the garage."

Giroro considered the chances of successfully flying at twice the speed of sound over the US and across the wide ocean in a day after filming all afternoon. There wasn't a chance he could make the journey; even if the aging skimmer would hold together. He'd arrive shredded from the windspeed and exhausted from the journey and still have to travel to the pick-up point. "My travel time is critical. I must be there by Wednesday."

"Airline troubles?" Sir Jeff asked with a tilt of his eyebrow.

"Exactly."

"Problem solved then. We'll take the Gulfstream. I can have you there by Wednesday, easy as pie." Sir Jeff reached into the drawer of his desk and flipped through his paperwork. "You're lucky I still have contacts in Japan. We'll fly out tomorrow morning."

Giroro wasn't certain which question was more important and both fought for control of his tongue. Finally, as Sir Jeff scaled Giroro's US passport into the lap of the man-equin, one question prevailed, "We?" asked Giroro.

"Of course 'we'. You think I'd let my biggest asset travel half the globe without a chaperone?" Sir Jeff rose to his feet, wobbled slightly, and saluted Giroro with his tumbler. "Salud, my friend. This will be the entertainment retirement that the mags will write about for the next decade."

Giroro stood and clinked glasses with the Britain. He could already see the wheels turning. Sir Jeff was writing the exit scene script in his head.

----

Aki arrived home to a flurry of activity. The kitchen table had been pushed into the front hall, where she bumped it as she entered. She made her way around the side, carefully avoiding the chairs stacked atop in hurried disorder. She sidled around the tight corner to the front living room just in time to see Kururu disappear down the hidden elevator shaft. There were stacks and stacks of boxes and crates and machinery resting on 3 millimeter plastic. Mois was moving up and down the pile with a clipboard. She was applying labels and noting down contents. Hanene rode a small forklift up and down the line. Boxes were carted out the double sliding doors, which had been removed for easier access.

Fuyuki was in the side lawn. He pointed the business end of the Keroball (if a sphere can be said to have a business end, Aki reflected) at Hanene's unloaded cargo and then pressed a combination of buttons unfamiliar to his mother. A scanning beam would sweep left to right across the pallet, and the box, crate or equipment would vanish just behind the swath of light. He'd check his own clipboard and call out a number and Hanene would arrive with the correct box just as he would shout, as though she had anticipated his call.

Keroro was darting back and forth between them all, obviously harried, obviously disorganized, and obviously attempting to micromanage a situation that needed no managing at all. Aki cleared her throat loudly over the alert sound of Hanene's vehicle backing across the tile. When the sound failed to raise Keroro's attention, Aki coughed. When that sound failed to bring her notice she announced, "I'm home!"

She expected the whole enterprise to freeze, but it did not. Hanene spared her not a glance and continued to steer the forklift. Mois continued to climb over the pile. Kururu brought up another load of boxes on the elevator and her son continued to punch buttons on the Keroball.

Only Keroro seemed to take notice of her. He skittered over and held out his hands placatingly, "I am sorry about the mess Mama-san, but it is somewhat of an emergency."

"You're planning to conquer Earth by becoming the world's second largest freight carrier?" Aki inquired with a lift of her eyebrow. Watch out DHL and FedEx; the frogs are coming to town.

"No, no, no, " Keroro waved his hands, "We're being recalled to Keron. There's a civil war. We must join the battle."

"You're not planning to erase our memories again are you?" Aki asked. "I had migraines all month the last time you did that."

"Certainly not!" Keroro bridled. "We wouldn't want to risk brain damage."

"Well thank the universe for small favors." Aki sighed. She looked for a place to sit, but all the livingroom furniture was gone. She wrestled a seat from atop the table and collapsed into it's friendly embrace. "Just don't let Mois put a sticker on my head if I fall asleep."

"Deal." enthused Keroro and he started towards Kururu, then he turned and knitted his fingers together under his belly. He looked bashful and apologetic. "I am also sorry to inform you Mama-san that my article on Gunpla will be a few years late."

Aki felt an urge to giggle. Instead she smiled like a mother should. She leaned forward and kissed the surprised frog between his bulbous eyes. "I think we can find some filler. Don't stress."

Keroro looked cross-eyed at where Mama Aki had kissed him, then he smiled, bowed and walked to Kururu with a spring in his step. He even whistled and wiggled as he walked.

He seems to happy to be going home. Aki thought as the frog's arse wiggled and wobbled around the corner and finally disappeared into the tangle of boxes. I wonder if Natsumi knows yet?

----

Natsumi had finished counting the money. The afternoon had been hectic: two deliveries had been made, three customers had come all wanting to order rare pets. A fourth customer, who had been hanging around forever, suddenly showed up and plunked on the counter 240,000 yen in large bills to buy Nick's champion five year-old breeding pair of Piebald Royal Pythons. When she'd called Nick to tell him, he was ecstatic. "I've been hoping he'd finally buy them. See what I mean about customer loyalty?"

She saw, and did not see, and even though Nick had suggested she close the store for the day; she'd stayed open to "catch the passing trade". There had been none and after she had cleaned some of the display tanks she had kept her nose buried in her study manual. The antique wooden schoolhouse clock, one of Nick's most prized heirloom, ticked over to 19:00 or 7 post-meridian as the antique read. The sun had set over Osaka and all the shops on the block were closed - all except Nuwah's Imported Pets. Natsumi turned the page in her book. As soon as she finished the chapter, she would close the store.

The bell at the store front tinkled its merry announcement and Natsumi looked automatically to the entryway. The man wasn't Japanese. He wasn't even purely Asian. He was some odd mix: sallow skin, dyed to grey hair, three day stubble of beard on his chin. He wore a light leather duster that reached to his knees. He isn't our usual sort of customer, but he's not out of the ordinary. She smiled her warmest greeting smile and enthused. "Hiya! How can I help you?"

He jerked as she spoke and he sidled up to the counter. "I'm interested in some fish." he said. His affect was flat. His Japanese was unaccented - not even a flavor of local color.

Natsumi turned to take a fish carry bag and a catch net off the wall. "Certainly, sir. We've got a great selection. We just got in the most beautiful..." And the words caught in her throat as she turned into the muzzle of a gun. The accoutrements of the trade fell from her nerveless fingers.

The man's face ticked. "Money. Now." He lofted a wadded plastic shopping bag on the counter. "Now!"

----

Dororo dropped the life lens and leaped into action. He slid down the drainpipe into the alley and into the neckspace of the waiting man-equin. With a forceful pull he sealed himself inside. He reached out with his senses, feeling what the syntheflesh and gyrostabilizers could transmit, and also feeling beyond. He could hear the gruff and angry words of the robber. He could hear the sound of Natsumi's heart. He could hear the safety being removed from the gun.

He ripped the chameleon cloth from the hiding place and jogged the mechanical suit across the empty street. Even as he ran, he drew the man-equin's full-sized wakizashi. His blue eyes burned with icy fire. His mind burned with hatred. His heart pounded in his chest.

I'll save you, Natsumi!

----

"C'mon. C'mon", urged the thief as he locked the door one handed. "I haven't all night!" He snicked back the hammer on the ancient revolver and squinted at the girl as she opened the register and began to stuff the contents of the till into the bag.

"Hurry up!" he implored. He was too close to miss. Too far away for the counter girl to grab his gun arm. Too well protected in front of the counter for her to kick him in the testicles. He knew what he was doing. He'd planned his heist perfectly.

He hadn't planned for the crash behind him. He hadn't planned to have his back peppered by errant flying bits of glass.

He turned and leveled his gun at the blur of motion that crossed the open space in less than a second. He squeezed off a round and the explosion and muzzle flare bounced and reflected off the windows. The bullet caught the onrushing man full in the belly, but he did not stop.

The thief hadn't planned on that, either.

An arm came up with a sword and the thief found himself falling away. The blades merely scratched his cheek.

The thief fired again and then again. Slugs bounced wildly off the chest of this sudden intruder. He maneuvered around this indestructible menace with the bright blue eyes, whose sword snicked the open air, and whose wide grin seemed to take a pleasure in the blood flowing down his quarry's cheekbone. The thief fired and kept on firing as he fled out the door.

Dororo stood at the entryway, framed by the lights behind him. Five slugs were embedded in the man-equin's abdomen and chest and he could perceive the pain of their penetration, even though they had not actually penetrated his own thin skin. The suit was heaving - trying to draw in extra air to cool itself. Reluctantly, Dororo stepped from the door and prepared the power down sequence. He must have hit a cooling line. I'll have to bring it to Kururu. Dororo thumped three times on the chest of the suit and it disgorged the blue frog. He bounded over the glass to the clear floor.

"Natsumi!" he called, "You can come out now."

There was no reply. Dororo bounced to the countertop and bellowed in his loudest voice. "Natsumi! You can come out now!"

Silence and then a pained whimper.

Dororo looked backwards, over the rear edge of the counter. Natsumi was slumped against the wall, a smear of arterial blood traced all the way down to where she sat. Her face was pale. Her eyes were empty. Her white shirt was soaked in red. An angry wound pumped blood just over her heart.

Dororo jumped to the floor next to her. She didn't track his motion. She didn't look in his direction.

Two enormous tears welled up in Dororo's eyes. He threw his head backwards. He screamed into the ceiling lights.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"