2004-11-06 - 1:50 a.m.

This is for Kid E, who can now stop guilting me for not writing her into the big story. I had more, including a Japanese goth rave, killing redneck yakuza, and Floggling Molly live at the Budokan, but I’m going to save that bucked of precious for another time.

Editor’s note: This takes place before events in Battle of the Clash… or whatever the hell the story is called.

Cue Intro:
They said that New Japan was a dragon on crack. Looking at the streets of Neo Tokyo, ace reporter Quentin Holte agreed with this sentiment. The Paper had sent him to Japan to do a story thing, a kind of Lonely Planet thing with a touch of E TV, tame with the slightest hint of the naughty, typical bullshit to feed the mindless Red fucks in the Midwest and South who fancied themselves internationalists because they jerked off to Fox News. But the moment he stepped out onto the streets, all that went right out the window.

There was a buzz in the air, a kind of kamikaze zeitgeist that made everything here seem more sharply defined, if only to highlight how fucking insane this town was. Especially at night, when the neon holograms all along the Ginza danced like kabuki and glowed with the sheen of a Blowjob Red lip-gloss. Life, death, sex, technology, religion, punishment, tradition, modernity, post modernity, post apocalypse all seemed to blend here, in the fevered speedball-ed brain of the dragon. Saki and schoolgirls mixed with materialism, pop music, amphetamines, manga, Zen, ninjas and a permanent erection. Of the clitoris.

Or at least that was the vibe he was getting from the pink haired Shinjuku Sex Puppet wearing the low cut halter top that showed off the dragon tattoo on her right breast who was giving him fuck-me hentai eyes while fellating a Pocky stick.

Gunfire ripped the air. Quentin turned and saw two cyborgs, from their prostheses colors members of rival speed tribes, weaving through traffic on their cyber bikes, exchanging small arms fire. Maybe it was a ritual. Maybe it was a drama as emotionally complex as a Noh play. Maybe it was just what you did on a Thursday night in Crackhead Dragon Country. Before he could move though, a dark shadowed seemed to peel off from nowhere and fall like a Tengu raven demon, black wings flaring out. It took a second but then Quentin realized that it was a woman in a black long coat carrying what looked like twin sickles.

Her name is Yoshimi…she's a black belt in karate,
Working for the city…she has to discipline her body
Cause she knows that it's demanding to defeat those
Evil machines…
I know she can beat them….

Kid E. Neo Tokyo’s newest, most infamous street samurai. Some said she was an agent of the Ministry of Civil Defense, a government assassin brought in to kill the cyborg shoguns of the resurgent yakuza. Others speculated that she was a mercenary, just killing her time by killing people who offended her sensibilities. What was undisputed fact was that she had a rep as the baddest bitch in town. As well as her won web site…and fan club of obsessive otaku (mostly male) who speculated on everything to the schematics of her weaponry to the exact number, designs and placement of her tattoos.

She landed in front of the bikers with the grace of a Balinese dancer and swore with the easy fluidity of a Filipino bar girl.

“OKAY YOU HALF-CHROME, TINY DICKED, COULDN’T-GET-A-HARD-ON-UNLESS-YOU-WERE WANKING-OFF-OVER-SOMETHING-THAT-HAS-YAMAHAA-WRITTEN-ON-IT, PIG FUCKING, CUM STAINS, THIS SHIT ENDS NOW!!!!”

Oh Yoshimi
They don't believe me
But you won't let those
Robots eat me
Yoshimi
They don't believe me
But you won't let those
Robots defeat me

One biker snarled and charged, leveling his gun. Ignoring the hail of bullets that zipped around her, Kid E stood still in the road, unmoving, unimpressed. At the last moment, just as the cyberbike was almost on her, she side stepped smoothly and brought both of her sickles up and carved into both man and machine. Or rather, let both man and machine cut themselves on the blades.

There were a lot of stories about Kid E’s blades, almost all of them threads on her fansite. Some said that they had been made by a high tech metallurgical firm, the metal created from some ally used on space shuttles and hammered and sharpened to a monomolecular edge. Others said that an ainu blacksmith of unmatched skill in the old ways made them for her. One myth was that she bought them on accident from a retro thrift store in Singapore along with her clothes and her ‘80s music; she’d merely bought the complete set of Echo and the Bunnymen cds and the sickles were, for some reason, in the cardboard. Whatever their origin story, Kid E’s blades were the most infamous weapons in Neo Tokyo…right behind Kid E herself.

Those evil natured robots - they're programmed to
Destroy us.
She's gotta be strong to fight them,
So she's taking lots of vitamins.
‘Cause she knows that
It'd be tragic if those evil robots win.
I know she can beat them

A fact that the speed tribesman found out as one blade cut through the steel and electronics of his bike like a hot katana through tofu and the other took his head off just above the chin.

The second cyberbiker spun his Akira cycle and road off into the night.

Oh Yoshimi
They don't believe me
But you won't let those
Robots defeat me
Yoshimi
They don't believe me
But you won't let those
Robots eat me

“OH I DON’T FUCKING THINK SO!!!” Kid E screamed, turning to face the retreating biker. Her long coat billowed out and the onlookers could she was dressed in black leather with all sorts of arcane weapons strapped to her body. A mere ten feet away, two fanboys standing next to Quentin Holte fell down to the street in a mild epileptic fit—their combat RPG trading hologram duelist card wrist decks cracking on pavement—as they took in her womanly curves sheathed in black leather, the bright chrome of blades and guns almost glowing like gemstones on jeweler’s felt. He wasn’t sure if it was the curves or the weapons that had had the effect but then knowing fanboys, it was probably both.

‘Cause she knows that,
It'd be tragic if those evil robots win.
I know she can beat them….
Oh Yoshimi
They don't believe me
But you won't let those
Robots defeat me
Yoshimi
They don't believe me
But you won't let those
Robots eat me….

Kid E sneered at the retreating biker and pulled a throwing blade from a weapon belt: it was bright silver, razor sharp and shaped like an ankh. With a snap of her wrist, she sped the goth-a-rang on its way. It hit the back of the cyberbiker’s skull with a thunk, the cross hilt pressed against the back skull so tight it made a dent, the blade sticking out of the biker’s left eye. With an almost comic wobble, the cyberbike itself fell on its side, skidded, and then crashed into a near by noodle stand.

“THAT’S WHAT YOU GET FOR INTERRUPTING MY SMOKE BREAK AND MAKING ME THROW AWAY HALF A CLOVE!!!” With that, she disappeared into the night.

Yoshimi
They don't believe me
But you won't let those
Robots defeat me
Yoshimi
They don't believe me
But you won't let those
Robots eat me
Yoshimi….

Quentin Holte shrugged. This town was definitely on crack. He then turned his attention back to the Pocky fluffer.

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