Thirty-seven minutes from midnight, the house is pitch-black when Emi awakens to the sound of screaming. Jashi sprints from his room, passing Emi’s bed just as lights start flashing in her display.
“Looks like we may have just won the lottery.”
[WANTED DEAD: INMATE 402156; REWARD: -￥100,281,333]
What happened?
“Intraspecific aggression—one of our Human’s killed another.”
We don’t own them.
Bee has already added the waypoint. “Better hurry, the whole mountain—”
Emi interrupts, I thought it was a volcano.
“Either way, the other predators will all be here soon. Lucky for you, I already powered off the lift.”
Emi pulls herself into the wheelchair waiting beside her and heads outside where the rain from the afternoon has turned to snow intermingling with ash. Why is there ash—
The flames from Jashi’s flamethrower whip across the night sky like a lasso at a circus—if the circus were run by pyromaniac clowns—herding the escaped Humans back inside their warehouses while off in the distance a group of engineers contemplates quitting their construction project before they’ve even started for a life as a bounty hunter. Seeing the fire in Jashi’s eyes, they think better of it.
What if he kills another one of them with that thing?
“Ownership of his inventory transferred to him the moment he paid off their debts. He can do whatever he wants with them.”
And if he decides to pay off my debt? Emi continues wheeling toward the waypoint, moving faster when she realizes just how steep an uphill climb the waypoint is facing. Her heart pounds; the hunt lights an easy fire inside her.
Bee calms her excited energy by pulling up her current debt: [CURRENT BALANCE: -￥100,281,333]
Is there anyone else in pursuit?
“Yes, plenty.”
[Jashi: What are you waiting for? Go!]
What?
“I’ll be damned…he’s buying you time. Talk about loyalty; even after what you did to start this riot.”
It was your plan!
“You’re the one who brought me to the terminal.”
Bee types back: [I’m sorry for what Emi did ? We’ll be right back to help clean up…assuming she doesn’t kill us on the climb. Thank you for this opportunity.]
[Jashi: No worries, you’ll make it up to me. Help is on its way.]
Emi’s wheels slide through the thin layer of snow, heading sideways for the ski lift. Why isn’t it moving?
“I told you, I powered it off to slow the chase.”
I have no working legs, how are we supposed to climb?
Bee displays the message for a second time, [Jashi: No worries, you will make it up to me. Help is on its way.]
What help?
Emi yelps, a snake having just bit her in the thigh of her uniform-covered leg. Futakuchi-onna mumbles with a mouth full of cotton, “Did you proud?”
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“Where did you come from?” Emi asks through her throat speaker.
The snake hanging where her knee should be releases itself and screams, “YOU SPEAK TO ME,” so loud Emi is forced to cover her ears as she sits helplessly in the fetal position atop her immobile chair.
Up the volcano, the escaped inmate with the bounty blinking over his/her head pauses its climb to look back and see what just created such a gut-wrenching sound.
Bee cuts the horrific reunion short. “Hitman, get us up this volcano in under ten seconds, and I will give you access to an all-you-can-eat buffet.”
The snake considers it; decides it likes the new nickname: “Hitman wants flavor.”
Bee lists the natural colors of the varyingly bleached hair included on the warehouse menu from when she took inventory yesterday: “38% black, 6% brown, gray/white 4.5%, natural blonde 1%, red 0.5%.”
Futakuchi-onna licks its metal lips, “What other fifty?”
Bee hesitates but also hurries. “50% bald.”
Hitman screams in anger, likely making any in close-by pursuit to pause and question if the volcano is erupting.
Hearing the fighting of bounty hunters and desperate people restarting their sprints up the volcano to be the one to claim the kill, Emi adds, “There are thousands of heads, still plenty of hair to choose from even with so many bald ones.”
Futakuchi-onna coils into a ball at her foot, “You try hit me on beach…that why you call me Hitman?”
Emi wiggles her cast to appeal to his logic. Futakuchi-onna raises its neck, more convinced by the scent of rotting milk than the broken leg, “I’m sorry, but you threw me from the wire.”
“Stop you from going in water. You no listen. They catch you anywho.”
Emi moves as if to kick it with her cast, then shows some impulse control for a change. “They took me because my leg was shattered.”
“In its defense, it did get us back 40% of the total 55% ownership stake AkuTaga had in us. The projected recovery amount was only 11%.”
Emi cocks her head at the snake. “How’d it pull that off?”
The snake stands tall, revealing the length of its neck with pride. “They think you a witch. Thought cursed them with me. I haunted. Stole hairs, tooths, electric, life. Whole ceremony to cast curse out. Mystery spirit in monocular told ownership stake offering needed.”
How much did Jashi take for himself? All of it?
“Ownership percentages amended as follows: AkuTaga: 15%; Jashi: 41%; Emi: 39%; Nygil: 5%.”
Emi looks back, watches the light from Jashi’s flamethrower illuminating his dark outline like he is some kind of mythological knight—a Kirin playing with divine powers—that send flames scaling up steel walls to fend off screaming humans trying to slip through the thin strips of windows.
Emi reaches a hand down to the snake, grabbing it by the throat and lifting it for the ski-lift wire. “Do we have a deal? Get me to the top of this mountain—”
Bee proves how annoying Emi’s earlier correction was: “I thought it was a—”
“Get us to the top of this hill, and all the hair not yet cooked will be yours.”
The snake bites down on the wire and starts to chew. “I Hitman.”
Emi is pulled off the ground, deciding trusting Hitman to hold her up again is worth the risk. She regrets it the moment the snake starts to move, the way it slinks over the wire to move up it resulting in her body swinging wildly as they go.
In no time at all, which in this case is just under ten seconds, the top of the volcano is in sight. Emi’s stomach threatens to protest; her body confused why her vision doesn’t spin with it. Emi points to the rising black smoke where the waypoint appears to be at rest.
Hitman stops, not letting Emi go until she says, “You can let go…thank you for waiting.”
After crawling over the cooled ground blanketed in black soot that grows thicker as the earth starts to warm, Emi turns on her thermal vision. The hot smoke camouflages the Human body hiding behind the curtain, but the flashing waypoint gives away the location.
She crawls forward, stopping when her heat sensors issue a warning: [WARNING: EXTREME HEAT DETECTED].
The light of the hot water blinds her, still glowing hot-pink even after she turns off her thermal vision. The waypoint appears to be under the glowing liquid, using it as cover but likely floundering at the floor of the hot spring not far from the yawning mouth of Mount Hachijo-Fuji.
“Smell of rotting eggs detected.”
I smell it too.
“It’s coming from your leg.”
Suddenly, the waypoint disappears as if evaporating within the black steam. Where’d it go?
[BOUNTY FAILED: INMATE 402156]
Emi breathes like she just got kicked in the chest. Luckily, though a speaker does need air to function, it doesn’t need it in the same way as a human voice: “Hitman, go fetch.”
Hitman dives into the pool, quickly heading for the body where the waypoint was last seen and clamping Emi’s tooth over the inmate’s throat to hold on tight while swimming to the surface like the world’s least effective dive rescue. When Hitman resurfaces holding the limp body of [Inmate 402156 (Charles), Status: Deceased], the droplets falling from the bloody tooth in the roof of its mouth turn to black smoke the moment they hit the surface of the hot spring.
Bee mocks Emi for being too slow in hopes it will eventually re-teach her a lesson on what it takes to be worthy of being called Assassin: “Current Balance: -￥245,333,826.”
Emi lets her body fall into the hole in the ground, swimming where the soul of the corpse she was pursuing left his body. She lets the warmth to embrace her while she lets go of her frustration in a throat tearing scream.
[WARNING: CLIPPING DETECTED]
Emi tells her eyes to close: Command: Eyeballs; Power Off.
The speaker gurgles as it tries to repeat the thought aloud. The sensation of choking causes her to suck down some of the glowing red-hot liquid; memories in the water consume her with their sudden coldness.
