Fancies Without Honor or Humanity
Repeated spiteful acts and incursions on their turf, countless subordinates and associates killed... capped off with arson in their precious lumberyard. Now, the chivalrous yakuza of Kibamasa would explode with rage against the cowardly Okiyama.
On the screen, the lead actor, Ken-san, spoke gravely. “My dead pop had a saying: ‘A man should fight once in his life. Just be ready to give up your life in that fight.’”
“Boss!”
“You’ll do it?”
And with that, Ken-san and his underlings threw themselves at the enemy yakuza.
Ah, what a bloodbath... this movie was enough to make Chidori Kaname, the viewer, find it all a little excessive. Since it was the climax, many “good guys” died, including an extremely young Matsukata Hiroki. Then Ken-san chased the enemy boss around, killed him with a dagger, and that was the end. Pretty much everyone involved, friend or foe, was dead—it was an ending without hope or redemption.
“Why are yakuza movies always like this?” Kaname whispered, gazing at the TV in the student council room. She’d been sitting around on a Saturday, channel surfing, when she’d come upon the old movie, Chivalrous Story of Japan, and ended up casually watching it for ninety minutes. “He didn’t have to charge in and stab him like that,” she said. “There were smarter ways of fighting. Set a bomb in their base, or shoot the boss from a distance...”
Here, Mikihara Ren, who was doing paperwork silently nearby, cocked her head curiously. She was a second-year who worked as the student council’s secretary. Her classic good looks and sleek black hair, combined with a graceful bearing and demeanor, had earned her the honorific nickname “O-Ren-san.”
“What a violent thing to say, Chidori-san. Talking of bombings and shootings... you sound like Sagara-san.” She was referring to the war-addled problem child, Sagara Sousuke.
“Geh...” This unpleasant comparison had Kaname at a loss for words.
“Besides... a stabbing is a fine thing. My respect for a man increases if he uses an honorable weapon like a knife rather than resorting to firearms,” Ren chastised her quietly.
Kaname was feeling a little flustered now. “You like yakuza movies, O-Ren-san?”
“No, not particularly,” she responded with a placid smile.
Kaname blinked in confusion and began packing up her things to leave. She said, “Well, whatever. Where’s Sousuke?” Sagara Sousuke had been watching the movie with her for a while, but he’d vanished not long ago.
“I saw him exit into the hallway with his cell phone,” Ren told her.
“Hmm...”
Just then, the door opened again. Sousuke returned to the student council room, looking unhappy.
“Where have you been?” Kaname asked. “You missed the rest of Ken-san’s movie.”
“Did I?” Sousuke responded listlessly, as if he didn’t care about the movie at all, before slumping back into his seat. He wore his usual sullen expression and tight frown... but Kaname felt like he seemed more forlorn than usual.
“Is something wrong?” she tried again.
“I just received word that one of my personal investments failed.”
“Investments? You play the stocks?”
“No... I was developing new equipment for military and police purposes with an old arms dealer acquaintance of mine,” Sousuke explained. “It integrated a number of high-tech systems and it would have been a revolutionary product... but there are almost no buyers. Only the FBI and the Miami Police Force invested.”
“Hmm...”
“I’ll have to take the rest myself,” he concluded.
Kaname laughed. “I don’t really get it... but life always has its ups and downs. Just cheer up! I’ll treat you to some trident-yaki at the Ohio-ya on the way back. C’mon!” She slapped him on the back and tugged at his arm.
Sousuke slowly stood up and began packing up to go.
“O-Ren-san? You’re not leaving yet?”
“I just finished now. I’ll accompany you,” said Ren, tidying up her own documents.
Kaname, Ren, and Sousuke walked together through the crowds on the shopping street in the evening. They turned off the main avenue crowded with shopping housewives and stopped at a taiyaki shop in a narrow back alley. Kaname made Sousuke try its specialty, trident-yaki (yogurt flavor), and he said, “delicious” with his usual expressionless face. If he’d had a tail, it might have been wagging back and forth.
“He really is a dog,” Kaname observed.
“Indeed,” said Ren.
“What are you talking about?” Sousuke asked suspiciously, diligently working at finishing his trident-yaki.
Just then, raucous voices echoed from an izakaya across the street from the taiyaki place, followed by the sound of glass breaking and a scream. The door opened with a bang, and two men rushed out. They had the traditional “hoodlum” appearance—a middle-aged man with a shaved head and a young man with a pompadour.
“Bring it on, ya piece of shit punks!” screamed one of the men.
“Come out! Come out an’ fight, assholes!” shouted the other, a beer bottle in hand.
It was then that six men of similar appearance filed out from the back of the pub. It looked as though, for reasons that were unclear, the two-man group had picked a fight with the six-man group.
“Whatcha want, asshole?!”
“Yeah, y’wanna geh, ehhh?!”
“Grahh! Yeah! Ragh!”
The men recited some kind of strange, inscrutable chant as they launched into a brawl. All the while, passers-by fled, signs were broken, and the izakaya staff panicked.
“Ah, a brawl. Don’t see those all the time,” Kaname said, swallowing her taiyaki. It wasn’t any of her business, so she’d gone straight into rubbernecker mode. Sousuke acted similarly, quickly returning the gun he’d drawn at some point to its holster.
Kaname held out her hand as if she were holding a microphone. “Sergeant. What’s your take, from a professional standpoint?”
“Sloppy. Their movements are too telegraphed. Even new recruits would do better,” he responded sternly.
“I see... Aha, here comes the trademark of any yakuza, the ax bomber. That one hurt. Oof, that one hurt too! By the way, who do you think will win?”
“Neither side has firearms or any particular fighting skill,” Sousuke told her. “In such situations, the force of numbers always prevails.”
While the two of them seemed completely nonplussed in their discussion, Ren looked deeply flustered.
Kaname laughed kindly. “Is it scary to watch, O-Ren-san?”
“Yes, very much so.”
“C’mon, they’re just yakuza. Let ’em fight if they want.”
“Actually... I really can’t just...” Ren stammered, looking very upset indeed.
Kaname tilted her head questioningly.
While they were talking, the fight came to an end with exactly the result Sousuke had predicted. The two-man gang, which didn’t seem to know how to do much besides charging and grabbing, ended up being bested by the six men. They were promptly kicked around, spat on, and robbed. Then, to finish the job, several of the men hefted each of them up and gave them a powerbomb of love and friendship.
After being slammed into the asphalt like that, the two-man group fell still.
“That’ll teach ya.”
“Now keep your noses outta our business.”
“You get it?!”
With one last line of threats, the six-man group cackled and left. As they departed, one of the hoodlums said, “The Mikihara Gang ain’t shit. Buncha gutless cowards. Ha ha ha.”
Kaname, hearing this, blinked in confusion. “Mikihara... Gang?” She looked over at Ren—Mikihara Ren—standing beside her.
But the girl just ignored her and ran across the road to the two hoodlums. “Shibata-san?!”
“H-Hey... Mistress?” the bald yakuza said with a groan as Ren called his name. “Geh... wish you hadn’t seen that... Ha ha...”
“Shibata-san. Were you harmed?” Ren drew closer to the man, who was unquestionably harmed.
“...Well, I think it’s pretty obvious I was... But I’ll be okay. Ow, ow...”
Ren helped “Shibata” up. “Who were those men? Friends of yours?”
“Oh, c’mon, Mistress,” Shibata scoffed. “They’re from the Ryujin Cooperative.”
“Oh. Were they?”
Shibata spat on the ground, his saliva mixed with blood, as tears entered his eyes. “Those Ryujin guys... they’ve been hornin’ in on our turf worse than ever lately, takin’ advantage of the boss bein’ sick. Just now they tried to shake down that pub, which is our usual stompin’ grounds... and when we tried to stop ’em, well, you saw the rest. It’s pathetic. Hrrrk...” He clenched his eyes shut in frustration.
“Don’t cry, Shibata-san,” Ren said soothingly. “There’s no shame in losing at an impromptu wrestling match.”
“Sorry. I’m so sorry...”
They seemed to be talking past each other entirely.
It was here that Kaname spoke up from behind. “Um, excuse me, O-Ren-san? First things first... Who are these men?”
“Oh, they’re workers at my father’s company,” Ren answered. “He runs a small business, you see...”
“A... business?” She has to mean a gang, right? And she means underlings, not workers, right? Wait... is O-Ren-san the daughter of a mob boss?! Kaname wondered. They’d known each other for a year, yet Kaname knew nothing about Ren. But before she could get too far with her reasoning, she was forced to back off as one of the underlings, the young man with the pompadour, started pointing at her with a scream.
“What is it, Takigawa?” Shibata asked with a frown.
“Bro, don’t you remember? It’s her! The one who sicced Bonta-kun on us at the amusement park!”
Shibata tilted his head, and then... “Ah.”
In that instant, the two of them recognized each other.
“Y-You’re...!”
“You’re...!”
Both moved into a defensive stance. Sousuke’s hand also moved for the holster on his back.
There was a reason for this reaction. Kaname and Shibata’s gang had gotten into a scuffle at an amusement park once. At the time, the one who’d saved Kaname had been Sousuke, dressed in the suit of the park’s mascot, Bonta-kun. Bonta-kun had taken the yakuza out with the force of a gale, thoroughly and without mercy.
To think those same men lived so close by... Kaname thought, and kept her bag raised cautiously as she stared the men down. “Wh-What,” she said defensively, “you wanna fight? I’ll call Bonta-kun again! He’ll fumo you within an inch of your lives!” This was clearly a bluff, but it caused both men to twitch.
“You... You can call him?” they asked, horrified. “Just like that?”
“Y-Yes, you bet,” Kaname told them. “I’ll whistle and he’ll come flying to my side!”
The two yakuza stood there frozen for a while. The younger, Takigawa, looked completely terrified, while Shibata seemed to be giving serious thought to something. Then he nodded firmly, placed both hands on the ground and prostrated himself before Kaname. “Ma’am!”
“Eh?”
“I didn’t realize you were Mistress Ren’s friend,” he said apologetically. “I’m so sorry for the trouble I caused you! Please... I beg you to forgive me!”
“B-Bro?! Where’s this coming from?” The young underling seemed as surprised as Kaname was.
Not sure what he was getting at, Kaname just stood there hesitantly as Shibata proclaimed, “And as I ask your forgiveness, I ask you a favor as well!”
“A... A favor?”
“Yes! The truth is...” Shibata explained his request.
As she heard it, Kaname sank to her knees, dumbstruck.
The office of the seventh generation of the Mikihara Gang sat in a corner of a residential block about a kilometer away from Sengawa Shopping Street. They called it an office, but it was really just an old tucked-away civilian residence, a wooden building with a flat roof and a large garden, and just a truck and an old domestic car parked in front.
The house’s master, Mikihara Kanji, was head of the Mikihara Gang, and a no-nonsense man. He had short-clipped salt-and-pepper hair, thick eyebrows, high cheekbones, and a narrow jawline without a trace of excess fat. There was an indomitable light in his eyes that hadn’t waned even in his illness.
He was sitting up in bed, gazing out at the trees of the garden, when his only daughter, Ren, arrived. His underboss, Shibata, was with her.
“Father,” she said, “it’s time for your medicine.”
“Ah, thanks again.”
Ren, in her apron, poured tea into a cup and held it out to him with a pill. He took it, downed the medicine with the lukewarm tea, and then coughed a few times.
“Father?!”
“I’m all right...” he continued hoarsely through a few more coughs. “I’m fine.”
“Try to be more careful,” she advised him. “It’s very hard to wash tea out of a futon.”
“...”
Ignoring the way Kanji had slumped over, Ren looked over at the waiting underboss. “Now, I believe Shibata-san has something to say to you, Father.”
“What is it, Shiba-san?”
His underboss, Shibata, was a man just over thirty. He was loyal and single-minded, but he was also overly belligerent and a bit too fond of drink. Once again, his shaved head was wrapped in bandages, and he had adhesive plasters on his face.
Kanji glared at Shibata. “Another drunken brawl? I told you to knock it off. You’re setting a bad example for the youngsters.”
“Ah. Well...”
“A man only needs one fight in his life, but you seem to get one a week. I don’t like seeing you treat your life so cheaply. You’ve got a five-year-old child, for pity’s sake.”
“Sir. But... it was different this time,” Shibata argued, abashed.
“Different how?” Kanji asked.
“It was the Ryujin Cooperative. They’re hornin’ in on our turf.”
“Hrm...”
The Ryujin Cooperative was a rising crime syndicate that had been rapidly growing its numbers lately. They had the backing of the Kadoyama Gang, a syndicate that controlled all of Kanto, and weren’t afraid to use force in the pursuit of profit.
Conversely, Kanji’s Mikihara Gang was a small one with only seven members, but their history and social standing traced back to the Edo Period, and their prioritizing of the traditions of loyalty and chivalry earned them the respect of the other bosses. Yet the Ryujin Cooperative was now muscling in on the Mikihara Gang’s extremely meager territory.
“Boss. Maybe this ain’t for me to say, but... we really can’t protect our turf all by ourselves,” Shibata was forced to admit. “It ain’t that me and the other guys don’t have guts to match the Ryujin Cooperative guys, there’s just too many of them. There’s no way we can fight ’em. Yesterday really proved that.”
“Hmm...”
“So... we need outside help, right? Why don’t we bring in a hired man? I happen to have just met someone who could do the job right.”
A hired man, eh? Not a bad idea... Kanji leaned forward. “Is he tough?”
“Yeah, for sure. He served as a soldier abroad for years, I’m told.”
“Aha.”
“The truth is, boss, I’ve already called him here,” Shibata confessed. “I really hope you’ll meet with him.”
“That’s awfully sudden... but ah, well. I’ll meet him.”
“Oh? Well then, in the interest of speed...” Shibata bowed, then from the breezeway facing the garden, he called to the front door, “Sensei! The boss will see you! Come on in!”
Soon after, the “Sensei” in question entered the garden. Appearing from the underbrush came... a curious mascot. It was two heads tall and rotund, with a face that was a bit like a dog and a bit like a mouse. It had two big, button eyes and a dapper little hat and bow tie. Behind it stood a pretty girl about Ren’s age.
The mascot walked up to Boss Kanji and said, “Fumoffu.”
“...”
“Boss. This is the mercenary, Bonta-kun.” Shibata introduced him. “And the girl behind him is his interpreter, Chidori Kaname-san.”
“Hello there. A pleasure,” Kaname said with a bow.
Bonta-kun bowed with her and said, in some strange language, “Fumo fumo fumoffu, fumooo... Fumoffu, fumoffu.”
“Er... Bonta-kun says, ‘I’m honored to meet you, Gang Leader. Leave the combat instruction to me,’” Kaname interpreted.
“Fumofumo, moffuru, fumoffu...”
“Er... ‘I’ll train your subordinates to be first-class fighters. There’s nothing to worry about. I am a professional.’”
Boss Kanji listened silently, then spoke. “Excuse me...”
“Boss?” said Shibata.
The next instant, Kanji sprang out of bed, grabbed a nearby dagger and drew it smoothly from its sheath.
“Boss?!”
“Father?!” The sudden act of hostility caused everyone present to freeze up immediately.
“Shibata... This is quite an intricate prank to play on a sick old man. But I’m the man they call ‘Buddha-slayer Kanji.’ I will not be mocked!” Kanji trembled, his husky voice straining.
“B-Boss!”
“Prepare to die, you ungrateful bastard!” Kanji slashed the long knife at Shibata, who tried to dive back. But just in the nick of time...
“Fumoffu!” Like the wind, Bonta-kun, who’d made it inside by this point, executed a spectacular jump kick on Kanji.
“Gah!” The boss was sent flying through a folding screen and hit the corridor wall.
Bonta-kun landed neatly in a crouch, then straightened up. To the now unmoving gang boss, he boldly said, “Fumo fumo. Fumoffu...”
“‘Calm down, Bossman...’” Kaname continued interpreting.
“Fumoffu, fumoffu. Fumo, fumooo. Moffuru.”
“‘Don’t judge a person by appearances,’” she continued. “‘That can get you killed on the battlefield.’”
“Y-You blasted mascot...” Kanji, using the dagger as a cane, attempted to stand up, but... “But you really are strong.” He collapsed again with a groan.
Soon after, Kanji returned to his bed and told Shibata to do as he liked. There was a sense of mournfulness about him. None of them knew that he would later be weeping into his pillow, grieving the death of the gang that had lasted for seven generations.
Regardless, Bonta-kun was now the Mikihara Gang’s hired man.
Obviously, it was Sousuke inside the suit. For some reason, activating the electronic equipment inside the Bonta-kun suit also activated the strange voice-changer mechanism, which was why Kaname had come along to interpret. In fact, she had a small transceiver that let her hear Sousuke’s voice in her ear.
On Bonta-kun’s instructions, the Mikihara Gang’s henchmen had gathered in the garden. They numbered a mere seven men, Shibata included.
“Fumoffu!” Bonta-kun cried from where he stood in front of the men.
“What’d he say?”
“He said, ‘line up,’” Kaname explained, and the seven gang members slowly formed a line.
Then Bonta-kun drew a pistol from somewhere and fired it at their feet. Blam! Blam! Blam!
“Wah!”
“Wh-What are you doin’?!” the gang members cried as they were forced into an impromptu tap dance.
“Fumo fumo. Fumoffu, fumoffu, moffuru...”
“Er... He said, ‘This gun is your enemy’s main weapon, a Norinco T54. Remember the sound and impact of its shots!’” Kaname told them. It was a Chinese-made Tokarev: cheap, easy to find, and easy to use as well. It was basically made for the Japanese underworld.
Bonta-kun went on. “Fumoffu. Fumo fumo. Fuuumo, fuuumo. Moffuru, fumo fumooooo...”
“‘Every single one of you is a piece of useless lowlife trash. But if you accept the training I offer and do as I tell you, you’ll be able to execute any mission asked of you. So you’d better take it seriously,’ he says.” Kaname hesitated as she felt the glares of everyone assembled on her. “Hey, don’t look at me! Bonta-kun said it,” she insisted, looking victimized.
“Er, sorry...” The gang members turned red and lowered their eyes. They seemed almost bashful.
Guess they’re actually pretty innocent types, Kaname thought.
“Fumoffu! Fumoffu!”
“‘First, let’s work on basic stamina. One lap around the block!’”
“Right. Okay...”
Blam! Blam!
“Erk!”
“Fumoooooooooooo!”
“‘Hurry,’ he says!”
Urged on by Bonta-kun’s pistol, the gang members took off in a desperate run.
One week later...
Their after-school training sessions with the Mikihara Gang weren’t going great. The henchmen seemed incapable of processing new information. Always keep your attention on all sides around you, and don’t shout when you charge the enemy, he’d told them. But they seemed incapable of focusing on anything that wasn’t right in front of them and continued to roar whenever they charged. No matter how Sousuke tried to teach them the basics of close-combat fighting, in the end, they always just lashed out with their combat knives, shouting, “I’ll murder your ass!”
“Fumoffu! Fumo fumo, fumoffu!”
“‘Get a grip already. You have to use your heads in combat,’ he says.”
The gang members looked confused. “But Sensei, my body moves before I can think.”
“Fumo fumo. Fumoffu, fumo fumo.”
“‘Don’t be stupid. You’re not some local gang of punks.’”
“Um, we are a local gang of punks, actually...”
“Fumo...”
Inside the Bonta-kun costume, Sousuke was feeling frustrated. I thought those gutless rugby players were bad, he thought, But these men have the exact opposite problem. Their hot-tempered attitudes made them sloppy, and Sousuke was trying to curb that impulse. They didn’t have to be actively stronger than their opponent, after all; they just had to put up enough resistance for the enemy to decide that dealing with them was too much trouble. It was the ideal strategy for anyone, from a weak nation to a bullied child.
But for the Mikihara Gang members themselves...
“Sensei. We’ve gotten pretty good, huh?”
“Bet we can take out all those Ryujin punks now, eh? Heh heh heh...”
The week’s training had given them inexplicable confidence, even though they were still terribly weak.
“Fumoffu,” Bonta-kun (Sousuke) barked.
“‘Don’t get the wrong idea,’ he says.”
“Fumo fumo, fumoffu, fumoffu.”
“‘You’re still delicate little greenhorns,’ he says,” Kaname told them bluntly.
“Not sure about that ‘delicate’ part...”
“Fumoffu. Moffuru. Fumo, fumo fumo. Moffuru, moffuru.”
“‘Shut up. Avoid combat with the enemy until I say otherwise. That’s an order,’ he says.”
“Right...”
“Fumoffu!”
Blam! Sousuke fired the Chinese-made Tokarev into the air.
“‘You get it now?!’ he says.”
The gang members straightened up and squeaked out a “Y-Yessir!”
A group of men stood on a building in the distance, watching the training go down. They wore chain necklaces, alligator-skin boots, high-quality smoked glasses—all typical hoodlum attire. They also had the nastiest faces you could imagine.
These were members of the Ryujin Cooperative.
“Heh heh... What’re those Mikihara Gang goons up to?”
“Playin’ house with a big stuffed animal?”
“How the mighty ‘Buddha-slayer Kanji’ has fallen...”
Each member let out a cold chuckle with his words.
“Looks like those little hurts we put on ’em ain’t done the job. Time to give ’em a final warning.”
“Yeah, you said it. We can up our game, too.”
“Hmm... like how?”
“Their boss’s got a daughter in high school, right? Let’s take her, and...”
“Ohh?”
“You know what I mean. Lots of fun and dirty things... heh heh heh.”
“Heh heh heh... You perv.”
The men’s expressions twisted into leers.
It was Saturday, the eighth day of Sousuke’s employment by the Mikihara Gang. When afternoon classes were over, Sousuke briefly parted ways with Kaname to recover the Bonta-kun costume from his apartment. Then he walked to the park near the yakuza office, suit in tow, and put it on in a public bathroom.
Systems activated. Sensors functioning. Drive system functioning. Communications functioning. Voice changer... functioning, despite my best efforts.
“Fumoffu... (Right...)” Brushing off neighborhood children that approached him, Sousuke as Bonta-kun headed for the office. But as he passed through the door, the gang’s members ran up to him in a panic.
“Ah! S-Sensei!”
“Fumoffu? (What is it?)”
“Takigawa went to school to pick up the mistress and Kaname-chan... and he just came back here, wounded...” The underboss, Shibata, seemed so rattled that it was hard to follow what he was saying. But the henchman, Takigawa, surrounded by the other gang members caring for him, was able to elucidate.
Sousuke exclaimed silently as he saw him. The man was battered all over, covered in blood and wounds. To add insult to injury, they’d also written “肉” (lit. “meat”) on his forehead in magic marker.
“S-Sensei... O-On the way back... these masked guys attacked...” Takigawa was heaving for breath and crying as he spoke. “I’m sorry... Sensei. The mistress and Kaname-chan... they took ’em... Ngh. Sensei... I fought as hard as I could, just like you taught me, but...”
“Fumoffu... (I see...)”
“Th-Those guys... they wore masks, but they were definitely Ryujin guys. Sensei, please... please, save the girls!” Takigawa took Bonta-kun’s squishy paw between his hands as he cried manly tears, and the other gang members teared up as well.
“Fumo... (Hmmgh...)” The news that the girls had been kidnapped had Sousuke feeling very nervous. He had to save them as soon as possible.
But the Ryujin Cooperative had forty members. There was no way even Sousuke could beat them all by himself without killing anyone. Given SAWs, Claymores, grenade launchers and high-performance explosives, he could certainly wipe them off the map, but he didn’t want to cause a rain of blood and leave behind a mountain of bodies. If he had even a few allies, he could come up with a relatively bloodless plan, but...
Perhaps pegging to his thought process, Shibata said, “Sensei! We’ll help you. I don’t know how much help we may be... but we’re prepared to lay down our lives if we have to!”
“Yeah. We’ll do it.”
“Me too. I’d give my life to save the mistress!” the men shouted, one after another.
“Fumo... (But...)” Sousuke thought and thought. They were awful fighters who couldn’t even use cover effectively. Even if he brought them along, they’d just die pointless deaths. But at the same time, he couldn’t do it alone...
If only we had appropriate equipment... Wait. That’s right. He did have equipment. Excellent equipment. Equipment he’d developed but failed to sell just the other day...
“Fumoffu. Fumo. (Come with me. Hurry.)”
Bonta-kun beckoned them to follow and ran for the gang’s truck.
After being shoved into a shiny black Benz, Kaname and Ren were taken to an old mansion on the outskirts of town. Our kidnappers’ base, I’ll bet, Kaname thought. There were the expected tough guy sorts loitering around the gate, the garden, and the grounds. Security looked tight, with some even wearing submachine guns they wore openly on straps over their shoulders.
The two girls were then shoved into a dank, mildewy basement.
Kaname whispered despondently, “Yeesh. I sure get captured by bad guys a lot, huh? Wonder why...”
“Oh... You have prior experience with this, Kaname san?” Ren asked, as if she didn’t fully realize the grim situation she was in.
“Yeah. And I could guess what idiot is behind it, but...”
“Goodness me,” said Ren. “I hope you take better care in the future.”
“You’re in this situation too, y’know...” Kaname reminded her.
About an hour later, several men arrived in the basement. “Hey... You’re as pretty as they say, girls,” the man standing at the front said appreciatively. He wore a green vest and spectacles with a towel tied around his neck.
“Um... Who are you?”
“Boss of the Ryujin Cooperative, Suganuma. Incidentally, my grandfather was stationed on an English tank destroyer for some reason. Ah, that’s not a joke anyone’s gonna get, of course,” he said offhandedly, and drank straight from the bottle of beer in his hand.
What a strange gang leader, Kaname thought. “Ahh... So, I guess I should ask. What exactly do you plan to do with us?”
Suganuma smiled. “Isn’t it obvious? It’s the old classic: I’m gonna use you to get the Mikihara Gang to forfeit their turf. Heh.”
“Use us? You don’t mean...”
A few men brought various objects into the basement. Lighting equipment, a video camera, and... maid, miko, and nurse uniforms.
Kaname gasped.
“First, we need to show them we’re serious... Heh heh heh. Hey, Kudo! Seino!” Suganuma snapped his fingers and the men approached the girls, fingers flexing wickedly.
“H-Hang on a minute!” said Kaname, beginning to panic.
Meanwhile, Ren seemed utterly clueless. “Er. Might I ask what you want from us, exactly?”
The Ryujin Cooperative members kept descending on them, grinning... When just then, there came a distant roar. The roof of the basement shook, shedding dust. The sound of an explosion burst out from elsewhere in the house.
“Eh?” Suganuma’s brow furrowed as he ordered his underlings to go check out the commotion.
The front gate of the mansion was a maelstrom of shouts and screams because a pickup truck had burst through the gate and was now racing through the grounds. It kept on driving until it crashed into the mansion’s front door, whereupon the whole wall crumbled, releasing a cloud of rubble and dust.
“What’s going on?!” The gang members on watch duty drew their pistols and shouted at each other as they fell on the truck.
But the driver’s seat was empty. There was no one there. The confused hoodlums looked around... and then, one by one, their eyes turned back towards the wrecked front gate.
“What...?”
“I-Is that...?!”
The blowing, swirling smoke slowly cleared, and beyond it, they could see seven figures.
“...?!”
They were all stout and two heads tall, their heads a bit like a dog and a bit like a mouse. Their button eyes sparkled red with malice.
It was seven heavily-armed Bonta-kuns, each of them carrying powerful firearms and distorting the air around them with furious auras.
“Fumo...” said the central Bonta-kun, raising a plush hand. In return, the six Bonta-kuns at his side pointed their weapons at the Ryujin Cooperative’s members. There were shotguns, rifles, submachine guns, Gatling guns, grenade launchers...
“Fumoffu!” The chief Bonta-kun cried out, and fire burst from each and every one of them. Tear gas, rubber bullets, and the flash of tasers rained down on the men.
“Gah?!”
“Gweh...”
“Hrrrk!”
One by one, the men fell. This blazing blitzkrieg attack had crippled the Ryujin Cooperative in seconds, and now the Bonta-kuns fell upon the mansion in a living torrent.
“Get them!” One gang member yelled from the entry hall, unloading his Tokarev on a Bonta-kun. Such an assault might have been fatal against an ordinary human, but his super-aramid fiber hide could stop even a rifle shot.
“Fumofumo... fumoffu!” Ignoring the merciless gunfire, Bonta-kun smiled confidently, then filled the gang member with rubber bullets in turn.
The man flew back, weeping at the unfairness of it.
The Bonta-kuns cleared out the room with overwhelming power. Not even the enemies who hid behind doors and walls could escape them. The Mass-Production Bonta-kun suits that Sousuke had doled out to the Mikihara Gang possessed infrared cameras that could seek out body heat and ULF sensors that could detect human heartbeats. They even had a power assist function adapted from arm slave control systems, which meant the wearer didn’t even feel the suit’s weight. With all that plus their bulletproof properties, their side hadn’t lost a single man yet.
They’re useful after all, Sousuke thought from inside the prototype model, tilting his head in confusion. Why didn’t they sell? He just couldn’t figure it out. He’d developed the power suit in cooperation with a Belgian arms dealer, and the only issue they’d had was that without the exact same voice changer as the prototype installed, for some reason, the electronic equipment wouldn’t work right.
The strike team, led by Sousuke, charged through one room after another.
“Fumoffu. (Clear.)”
“Fumoffu! (Clear!)”
“Fumoffu. (Clear).”
The strike team checked in via radio. They questioned one of the enemies they’d captured and, upon learning the girls were in the basement, headed straight there.
“Fumoffu, fumo! (Alpha, go!)”
Slam! They used a directed explosive to blow in the door, and the Bonta-kuns poured in.
Inside, the head of the Ryujin Cooperative was using Kaname and Ren as hostages with a pistol in his hand. “I-Impossible. Bonta-kuns?! My underlings were taken out by Bonta-kuns?!” the man shouted in fear as the four figures barged in.
Pointing his gun right at the man’s forehead, Sousuke responded, “Fumo, fumo. Fumoffu. (There’s nowhere to run. Surrender!)”
“He’s probably telling you to stand down,” Kaname, the hostage, interpreted with curious ease.
“D-Don’t be stupid!” the gang leader shrieked. “If I lose to a bunch of mascots, the other yakuza will laugh at me! I’ll be finished in this business!”
“Fumoffu... (I see...)” said Sousuke, shooting a rubber bullet straight into his opponent’s face with merciless accuracy.
“Gwah!”
Looking down on the collapsed gang leader, Bonta-kun said, coldly, “Fumofumo, fumoffu. Fumo, fumo. (You made one mistake. You underestimated your enemy’s firepower.)”
“I c-can’t understand what you’re saying...” the boss of the Ryujin Cooperative wailed as he spasmed in pain.
After the Bonta-kun team withdrew, the police, having received an anonymous report, descended on the building. The weapons and narcotics stored in the mansion came to light, their bribery schemes were exposed, and that was the end of the Ryujin Cooperative.
The gang members just seemed to mumble “Bonta-kun, Bonta-kun” in fear, and the police didn’t know what to do with that. (Except one female officer from the Sengawa Department who, when she heard the rumors, began ranting in a hushed whisper, “It’s him. He’s out again!”)
When the Kadoyama Gang, who controlled all of Kanto, heard that the Ryujin Cooperative had been crushed by a group of mascots, they kicked them out of the group. Yet word got around, and soon the yakuza world was awash with fearful awe of Bonta-kuns.
“The Ryujin Cooperative was defeated by Bonta-kuns?!”
“Watch out for Bonta-kuns...”
“Always do what Bonta-kuns say.”
And so, the rumors spread.
That resolved the issue at hand, but...
“What a pathetic way to be saved,” Kaname grumbled unhappily as they escaped in the truck driven by Shibata, who’d removed his own mass-produced Bonta-kun outfit. “I know that when I was watching that yakuza movie earlier, I said it was pathetic to see everyone wiped out like that... but I wasn’t expecting a mass of Bonta-kuns to come to my rescue instead of Ken-san...”
Ren just smiled brightly in response. “Really? I think it’s quite wonderful. And they’re all so adorable.”
“Oh, yeah?” Kaname sighed.
Meanwhile, in the bed of the truck, the other Bonta-kuns were singing a song of victory.
“Fumoffu! Fumo! Fumo?!”
“Fumo fumo! Fumooo?”
“Fumo, moffuru! Fumoffu!”
The cheerful but incomprehensible song echoed throughout the town as evening approached.
●
Extra
[Several weeks later, from a US news station]
TV Anchor: “This evening, the Miami Police executed a large-scale drug bust at a South Miami shopping mall. Officers took eight suspects into custody and confiscated fifty kilograms of cocaine. According to a press conference with the Miami chief of police, their forces had acquired new equipment with special funds to perpetrate the sting. This new equipment allowed officers to apprehend the criminal group ‘with extreme swiftness’ and dealt ‘a serious blow’ to their morale. One of our reporters was successfully able to interview a member of the SWAT team in their new equipment just after the sting. We’ll go to video now...”
Reporter: (holding out microphone) Well done. Did you feel in danger at any time?
Officer: Fumoffu!
〈Fancies Without Honor or Humanity — The End〉
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