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"Sir, with all due respect—"
"That will be all, Konishi. Best of luck with the assignment. I have not a shadow of a doubt that you will perform admirably."
"Sir, as honoured as I am by your faith in me, surely I would have greater worth continuing to act in official capacity as an officer."
"We've many Players left to erase, and my proxy has requested assistance. As this week's Game is hers to run, I see fit to follow her instructions."
"I am not questioning the decision for the Reapers to erase Players directly today, though my analysis suggests that this reflects poorly upon your proxy's abilities."
"An astute analysis indeed."
"May I remind you that I have not yet lost a Game, sir?"
"I expect nothing less, Konishi. Given our present lack of officers, I expect you shall conduct the next Game."
"Thank you very much, sir. With that noted, I will need some time to prepare for the proxy's erasure, and therefore I humbly request to fulfill these impromptu harrier duties solo today. That will allow me to attain the efficiency requisite for both erasing my quota of Players, and for preparing for us to remain at a single officer for now."
"If you believe that you are incapable of bringing Minamimoto to heel, I shall assign him to a different partner for today's engagement."
"No, sir. Among our pool of potential candidates, I would fear for the life of any other harrier asked to partner with him. I fail to comprehend why you have not punished him for adamantly refusing a partner prior to this."
"He is not a social animal, Konishi. The man requires space. Tradition may dictate that all harriers have Reapers, yet the reasons for those particular rules have long passed the realm of possibility."
"I'm quite aware of the anti-Taboo provisions, sir."
"Of course. Informed as always, Konishi. That will be all."
"Sir, may I ask one more question?"
"Go ahead."
"If he is not a social animal, as you say, why not allow him to work alone? It would be enriching for all of us."
"Because my proxy has decided otherwise. Her failures will be suitably dealt with after her plan has completed. I see no reason to cease the timer ahead of time."
"Very well, sir. I hope that you do not mind if I break Minamimoto in."
"Should he break, he would have never worthed anything to Him to begin with."
♄ + ☿ =
Mitsuki had sealed the file, as Mr. Kitaniji had requested, the moment that the Player calling himself 'Minamimoto Sho' had become a Reaper. The name had quickly become one of the most unpleasant she had ever had the displeasure of scribing upon disciplinary hearing forms. Not a Game went by that she had not filed a report for him, that she had not read over a complaint filed by others, that she had not clicked her nails on her desk for at Mr. Kitaniji's dismissals.
As a support: for abandoning his post, for attacking Players—one time over a nametag of all things that he had to wear as punishment for a different crime—regardless of his role, for flouting dress code, for murdering fellow Reapers whom he claimed had picked fights with him, for giving out impossibly challenging tasks to Players, for crafting Noise beyond the established difficulty curve for the Game, for breaking into Dead God's Pad repeatedly, for creating eyesores in the Realground while still on the clock, for failing to refer to Mr. Kitaniji and his other superiors as anything except insults.
As a harrier: for all of the above, and for making a mockery of the Composer's art by somehow developing two extra pairs of wings.
She had taught students like him in the past. The brilliant ones who had coasted through the educational process on the basis of their intellect, who had found their sins forgiven over and over by a system caring more about numerical scores upon paper than raising upstanding citizens. Oh, yes, even the ones who had failed to make any club positions, so long as the school could utilise their test scores to print their averages on their little brochures and distribute them to middle schools across the country in advance of the application process.
The real world always crushed them. The moment that their little scores no longer mattered, and the obligation of the corporate ladder ran upwards to the heavens like a single spool of spider's thread, then they crumpled under their own weight no longer held up by years of praise and devotion.
Minamimoto Sho had not even made it that far. Plucked from the Realground at the tender age of eighteen.
Mitsuki prepared her research carefully. While she had sealed his file, she had memorised its contents by heart before doing so. Ohtori, by his father's marriage. A non-native to Shibuya, indeed the first of his family to ever set foot in the city. A ruffian from the street who had forsaken even his own parents in his complete lack of gratitude and short-sighted selfishness, saved by the timely intervention of the kindest and most merciful man in the city, a Mr. Doi. Nevertheless his arrogance had caught up to him sooner than it did most of those cut from his shadow-hued cloth. He had failed to pass his college entrance exams, and so he had leaped from the roof of Pork City. Even in death he had made a narcissistic nuisance of himself, traumatising passersby and closing a street for hours while they hosed his blood off the cement.
Truly a miracle that he could even stand upright, beneath the sheer mass of his ego.
Why Mr. Kitaniji continuously forgave him, she could not fathom. The lack of officers, perhaps. The curiosity of a Player who had found a way around the need for a partner, perhaps. The fascination with a Player who had earned more than enough points to earn reincarnation yet had opted, by choice, to become a Reaper, perhaps.
Or: the man once hushed as the wood had carved paths into his depths. Mr. Kitaniji had never become scrutable, but the inhumanity she had long sought for behind those reflective shades had given away of late, to a sticky streak of unease. It would not matter, in the end. If Mr. Kitaniji failed her like all of her superiors had failed her in the past, she would merely rise up to claim his place.
Until then, she would remain in the shadows, patiently poised.
She closed the mental rendition of Minamimoto's file with a sharp click of her nails on the Reapers' Lounge counter. He had absconded with a laugh the moment that Mr. Kitaniji had read the partnerships out. No matter. She would play the fourth Reaper sport with him if he wished.
Oh, yes, Mitsuki had taught students like him in the past. All of his bluster and all of his fire, but in the end he had nothing more to him than a rooster's crow.
♃ + ☿ =
"Of freakin' course I hate his little calculator-speaking ass! Aaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggh!"
"Easy there, girl. If you pop a vessel, who's payin' for my ramen?"
"Please continue with your statement, Ms. Yashiro. I appreciate your insight into our colleague."
"Thank you, ma'am. That twerp hasn't even been a Reaper for three Games and he's already shot ahead of me in points! I've been here for nearly two stinkin' years and that hotshot thinks he's such hot shit! Oooh, it makes my blood boil. Absolutely no respect for his superiors, whatsoever. I mean, no wonder he's shot ahead of everyone in points where he gets special treatment that he doesn't have to work with a partner. You know what I'd give to be able to snag all my points to myself instead of having a lazy bum like this chained to my ankle!?"
"Zing! Maybe I'll erase a whole Player today, just for you."
"Cram it! That guy can't go a sentence without spouting some cryptic nonsense! He's stolen so many of my rightfully earned kills! I send the Noise after 'em, and he shows up with his complete not-to-regulation monsters and chomps them up. Sometimes he even does it himself! I get in trouble for doing a little bit of creative erasing, thinking outside the box, tricking Players into offing themselves without breaking any rules, but he gets to murder them in stone cold blood and barely get a slap on the wrist? What is he, the teacher's pet?"
"Rest assured that I am doing my utmost for him to face appropriate disciplinary action."
"This is why you're an inspiration to women in the workforce everywhere, ma'am. Anyway, he has no regard for his fellow employees. People at the same workplace should look out for each other, shouldn't they? But here I was, just last week, finally returning to the lounge after a long day of hard work erasing snivelling brats, and he's just sprawled there on the foosball table—the foosball table!—like he owns the place. He even laughed in calculator in my direction. He hadn't even taken his grimy little boots off! But that's not the worst part!"
"Oh, yeah. You tell 'er. The stuff of nightmares, right here."
"The worst part is that he was eating my pudding! With my name on it! With his bare freaking hands! Not just any pudding! A very chic, very limited special edition pudding that I had been saving the entire week to finally treat myself on the last day. And there he was! Eating it with his bare hands! His bare hands! Like, how disrespectful can you get? What is his stinkin' damage!?"
"Oh, the humanity."
"And those wings of his? Ta-cky! Who does he think he is!? And—"
"Thank you very much for your insight, Ms. Yashiro. Mr. Kariya, do you have anything to add?"
"Me? Meh. He's funny. Complete basket case. I like having 'im around. Spices up the Games a bit, ya dig?"
"Kariya! You traitorous dog! You're buying your own ramen for a month!"
"All right, all right. Let's see. Heard he packed away a coupl'a guys last month. Reapers, that is. Dunno about you, but I'd prefer to keep it nice 'n' professional. We erase the Players, not each other, yanno? 'Sides, less Reapers on the force means more work for me."
"Thank you very much, Mr. Kariya."
"No prob'."
"Now, have either of you actually seen him today?"
"'Fraid not."
"Ma'am, is there anything else we can help you with? I'm always happy to accept more work, including running reconnaissance to hunt down that pudding-stealer. I'm already nearly done with my quota and everything!"
"I do have a suggestion for you, Ms. Yashiro."
"Anything, ma'am!"
"Next time that you speak to a superior officer, please consider cleaning up your language to reflect the maturity you presumably possess somewhere deep, deep, deep within you, if you ever wish to be considered for a promotion."
"...yes ma'am. Thank you for the advice, ma'am."
"Good luck with today's mission."
♂ + ☿ =
Shibuya housed so many people at any given moment, particularly during the day, and yet the total surface area of its shadows ran so woefully small. Flitting from shade to shade, passing by Reapers erasing Players and Players erasing Reapers, even Mr. Kitaniji's latest proxy who struggled to hold her own. Would the unfortunate proxy make a desperate last stand in the guise of Equus Cantus? Unfortunately Mitsuki would not bear witness to her utter humiliation at the hands of some uppity teen or young adult.
What a pity. She would have quite enjoyed observing the Players degrade the foolish proxy before Mitsuki stepped in herself to make short work of the temporarily victorious Players whose Imaginations would surely not meet criteria for even becoming Reapers.
Instead she triangulated Minamimoto's location. Simple enough, with how egotistical even his Soul sounded from afar, undoubtedly audible even from twenty thousand fathoms away.
She needed merely to follow the noise.
For not only did Mitsuki have to bring him to heel, as Mr. Kitaniji had instructed her, but she had to find him. For the better, then: she would glean some information yet about his absences and disappearances, about the places he frequented on his own time and turf. Erasing the Players would take almost no time at all, in comparison, once she clipped his wings and returned him to the henhouse.
Mitsuki found him past the Jupiter of the vexatious Monkey store on Cat Street. Visible through the glass doors of a quaint little café, Minamimoto lounged on the edge of the counter in the Underground with six wings gathered around him like a lazy blanket, a can of spray paint tossed dangerously up and down in his left hand, a can of whipped cream shoved into his mouth with his right, all six of his grotesque rail wings flurrying behind him. She read the sign: WildKat. The café's presumed proprietor leaned against the door with an unlit cigarette perched in the 𝑉 of his right hand.
She introduced herself to the proprietor and inquired whether he had had any difficulties of late. The proprietor shrugged at her, told her that the café was closed for the mo', let her know she could come back in a handful of hours if she really wanted a cuppa joe. Thanking him, she looked past him into the carnage Minamimoto had rendered: empty cans of cream rolling around the floor, some incomprehensible black and violet tag sprayed onto the ceiling, a veritable mountain of trash piled against the wall.
Had Minamimoto broken into a café on lunch break, now, to steal whipped cream of all things? She would consider it a new low, but she had never pegged a floor for his exploits.
Oh, she hardly required any analysis to plumb the depths of his intent. Acting out like this, seeing how far he could push things, vying for scraps of power and superiority over things to shore up his own failures, his own recognition that he had lost the game of life.
She, too, had worn Tigre PUNKS in her youth, surging with imagined power as she revved the gull-arm again.
But Mitsuki had grown up. She had exchanged her platform boots for heels, had given up her torn jeans for stockings, had substituted her leather jacket for a one-piece, had yielded her little game of play-pretend for the professionalism of genuine power in the office, had traded Tigre PUNKS for another brand of equal staying power. In three, four, ten years, when almost all the other brands of Shibuya would have died away, she had not a shred of doubt that the data indicated Tigre PUNKS and NATURAL PUPPY would survive. Like herself, with all of her staying power. Whatever chaos came, she would survive it. Whatever chaos came, she always bet on the winning horse, because she always ensured that whichever horse won would know she had bet on it.
Nothing but imaginary games. She had played the punk rocker, then, sewing patches into leather and spikes onto boots. None of that had mattered in the end. Now she could play the servant, the secretary, the maid. She had sold the world, yes, but she had bought herself a coating of iron.
If Minamimoto could not grow up with the world, the hammer would nail him down at length. Yes, one looked to the rooster for the loudness of his cry beneath the ake no morning star, but the moment that the rooster took to crying outside of that tick-tock clockwork, his neck would stretch out across the stump.
This particular weathercock merely pointed to the fact that things would continue to go south for him until the very end.
The café proprietor sighed at her and tucked the unlit cigarette back into the box. If she were searching for that noise that sounded an awful lot like a foghorn, he told her, he might as well unlock the lighthouse door.
♀ + ☿ =
"My analysis had suggested that you'd have leaped at the chance to erase Players directly."
"Heh heh heh. Her Iron Frostiness, willingly translating herself to my coordinates? Now I've seen everything."
"And you are misusing your time and mine by failing to follow Mr. Kitaniji's orders."
"Takes yottagrams of glucose to fuel my level of genius."
"And you are choosing to gain this glucose by thieving from a café?"
"Ha! This is my city now. Everything's more trash for my opus. Besides, I leave a fair exchange. Or is a four-eyed Fourier transform like you too re-sined to see the masterpiece behind you?"
"The...lump of waste. You have elected to craft a lump of waste in exchange for actual goods and services."
"No comments from the peanut gallery. Your opinions aren't worth a yoctogram!"
"The Realground considers that theft."
"And how do you define your variable? A cop? Policing is garbage! All that matters are my brilliant creations."
"Please enlighten me, brilliant creator, as to why you have opted to forego the one time that you have free reign to erase Players directly in your capacity as a harrier."
"Those zetta annoying meetings subtract from my arts 'n' crafts time."
"Are you referring to the disciplinary hearings?"
"Worked it out. If I wait for enough of those garbage Reapers to get subtracted like the worthless sums of digits they are, I can have a sum of fun and get away with the derivation, too. Heh. Funny thing about prepositions in this proof: the smaller the remainder gets, the softer the analysis. I've had enough improper Riemann integrals snapping at my harmonic progression. I can give it a slightly greater Δ𝑡 to get a zetta sexier summation."
"I see. Allow me to comprehend this. You believe that if you shirk your work for long enough, enough of your fellow colleagues will perish, such that your inevitable rule-breaking Noise and attacks will go under less scrutiny at the imminent disciplinary hearing."
"Ha! I've cooked up something zetta sexy for next time. Noise that fits right into those uninspiring parameters of the 'difficulty curve'."
"Truly wonderful. I anticipate recording all of that in future disciplinary hearing notes. However, I am referring to your task today."
"So zetta boring. Not a single tetrahedron with a non-negative taste value. Here's a pop quiz! How much work would it take for me to erase all the Players in the Game?"
"Edify me."
"Half a zeptojoule, if that! Ha ha ha ha ha! Patient Erasure Marks Deaths Ad Symphonia!"
"A remediation on Latin grammar would serve you well."
"No comments from the peanut gallery."
"You disgraced my ears with such vulgar vulgate. Cease defiling it if you would make such embarrassing mistakes. Oh? Did that strike a nerve?"
"I never miscalculate, you earless ellipsoid."
"You have no methods of dealing with being genuinely incorrect. An intriguing weakness in my analysis, to be added to your file."
"And you've got no methods to make me change my velocity vector. So scram. I've got more kilocal of π to go before I ramp up my motivation to create."
"No methods, hm? I never could have predicted that I would witness you running away from fear of a disciplinary hearing like some frightened chicken or some terrified little gir—"
"Shut the factor up!"
"Why, you even dropped your—"
"I'll radiamn kill you! I'll eradicate you from my spatial coordinates! I'll bisect your angle! I'll—hrrk—!"
"I will impart this lesson on you, once. A harrier like you can only wield so much strength, no matter how obstreperously you crow. Unshackling the binds of your limiters requires diligence, promotions into higher ranks, and knowing your place in the hierarchy until you earn such privileges."
"I'll surpass my limits! I'll iterate up to infiiiinity! Any Reaper could make officer! I'll make the freaking Conductor!"
"Are you threatening Mr. Kitaniji?"
"That deceitful decomposition still owes me a lesson or whatever the helix he was going to teach me!"
"Your brutality is second only to your intelligence. If you truly have so much intelligence, then you understand the value of data."
"The only integers I give a digit about are the Riemann-integrable ones."
"Perhaps witnessing the destructive power of an officer in action would give you something to integrate."
"Could yield a new theorem or two. Fine, I'll set a parallel vector. But listen, you delusional decitesla. Fear and mercy are garbage. I'm not scared of a disciplinary hearing. I can just think of a googolplex better ways to spend my time than a cyclic-jerk like that."
"Then is it erasure that you fear?"
"Ha! There isn't a 000 I fear! Denying death doesn't change the natural law. No amount of mental subtraction can negate the increase in entropy, and no amount of refusal to show the work can make the series diverge. I'll just keep running until my series converges."
"The valiant never taste of death but once. If you do not fear erasure, then surely you have sufficient imagination to concoct schemes to erase Players, even fettered by the Game's rules as you are? You may refer to it as boring, but you have the ability to make it more interesting by limiting yourself further and still emerging triumphant. Limitation breed creativity, after all. Or will you continue to run like a chicken-hearted little—"
"Don't underestimate my imagination. I'll derive the darkest parts of me straight into my own masterpiece. Fine! I'll try this quadratic restriction. Heh heh heh. Might be zetta fun."
"Then accompany me to complete our mission."
"When I finish adding this glucose."
"You rebarbative warbler!"
"Bite me."
"Very well. I will wait patiently. Patient erasure marks deaths ad symphōniam."
"...hectopascal."
☽ + ☿ =
In the rare moments that Mitsuki recalled her time as a harrier, she recalled this: the scent of iron. The taste of it. The feel of it. Oh, Players did not bleed. They simply vanished into the puffs of useless code that they were, worthless for anything but fodder for future Noise. A lovely thought, that: the Players who had failed would give rise to the very creatures that would consume their fellow Players. Friend twisted against friend. One of the most delightful aspects of Noise harmonisation. If only Players knew! If only she could witness their expressions upon learning that fact.
Yet even if Players did not bleed, the opening of their mouths, the widening of their eyes, the weeping of their tears, the flowing of their snivel, the gasping of their breaths, the cries of their abject terror: these bled, bled thick and sweet as any human in the Realground did.
And Minamimoto brought out that terror exquisitely. In the moment of his form breaking apart into shadow as he flash-stepped behind the unsuspecting Players, in the moment of him slamming his palm directly into a Player's back and then through their chest, in the moment of Minamimoto tearing out a Player's very heart.
Oh, yes. The Player did not have sufficient time to truly bleed before vanishing into static, but that sliver of their still-beating heart curved her mouth into a smile.
Not imaginary power at all, but Imaginary power. The kind that mattered. Not the pretend-play of punk, but something real and certain as natural law.
He had passed with flying colours. A+.
Minamimoto did not play his role perfectly. He all but zeroed out the Player sum, and then she observed him twist towards Mr. Kitaniji's struggling proxy seething against the final partnership. Two young women who had Equus Cantus on the ropes. Two young hearts ripped cleanly from their bodies, their Souls vibrating in decoherent pain, and yet Mitsuki could scarcely hear that euphonious swansong over the damned blood-roar blast of Minamimoto's own Soul, cacophonous in its pride and clamouring attention even now. That café proprietor had mentioned a foghorn. He could not have known the truth, of course. But precisely that: Minamimoto's Soul, a foghorn in a fogless city. She would need to silence that particular Noise if she sought to fully enjoy their screams.
Still, when Minamimoto grinned at Equus Cantus; when Equus Cantus shuddered to a stand, when he shoved a healing pin down her maw and stepped back; when Equus Cantus prepared to hush herself in gratitude and return to her Reaper form; when Minamimoto spread his six wings like a crown of thorns and gave his war-cry of mathematical drivel before he angled his hand up towards the massive singing horse to gash through her breast; the agonising and inarticulate death wail proved loud enough for Mitsuki to hear.
How lovely. Minamimoto had misinterpreted her comment about collecting data an officer's potential in the most macabre possible manner.
Such a massacre.
Mitsuki would not render this as part of her disciplinary hearing report, no. The Players had dealt her a mortal blow, and she had perished. Two completely accurate statements. A little equivocation of what transpired between the mortal blow and the perishing, a little omission of the healing and rematch, would not harm Mr. Kitaniji and would help the overall state of the Game.
Equus Cantus had already failed Mr. Kitaniji enough. Best to dispose of her and begin the search for officers and Reapers anew.
Hm. If nothing else, Minamimoto crunched garbage with exceeding force. A little flattery, a little mutual benefit, and she could wrap him around his pinky as well as all the others. Like any other metal, he seemed so immutable at first blush, yet—apply the right heat; strike at the right angle—and she could temper him as she might anyone else. It would take more time and effort than she cared to give him at this moment, but she could do so.
He bled iron as any other human. Scrutable. Readable. Eccentric and bizarre, but easy to foretell. Boringly so.
How predictable.
☉
