METROPOLITAN BLUES
"This city is what it is because our citizens are what they are"-Plato
01: CUT
PRISS
I'm Priss-Priss Asagiri. I'm a singer, a fighter, a biker, and a Knight
Saber. I'm a friend to my friends and an absolute bloody terror to my
enemies. I'm a goddess to my fans.
I live in a trailer, in an abandoned part of town. I don't need much,
and what I've got I've got.
I was orphaned during the Quake. I can barely remember my parents.
That's all right, though. I remember their love, and that's enough. It doesn't
hurt like it used to. Friends help.
I was in the orphan factory for only a couple of years. It was a horror
there. But I found friends. They helped. They stole my first bike for me.
They introduced me to my man.
He died. It still hurts, sometimes. Friends help with that, too.
I'm not so tough. I know that. I'm not so callous. I feel too much to
be that. I'm a sucker, `cause I let myself feel even after I'm hurt. The
problem is that I don't think too much. I let myself be blind. The good
feelings are too important for me to push it all away. Even when he died. Even when
my friends died.
I used to wonder why I sang. I loved music, sure, but you can love music
without singing. I still don't have an answer. But I don't wonder anymore.
Music's too big for that.
You know, I never really got that whole "this is my friend, this is my
best friend, this is my bestest-best friend, tee hee" thing. Why try to rank
your friends? Friends are the family you choose, the ones that love you for you
without trying to change you or just using you (and I'm talking about TRUE
friends, here. They're the only friends that matter; everyone else is EVERYONE
ELSE, get me?).
But, well, if I were totally honest, I'd have to say that Linna-that's
Linna Yamazaki-is my, I dunno, best (?) friend. Not that I love her any more
than I love the rest of my friends, no, we've all been through too many of the
same fires for me not to love them all equally. It's just that . . . even at
the best of times, Sylia partitions herself away. I know, I can feel it.
There's a bit of her watching what we all do. And Nene, she's just so young. And
I know that I sound like one of those old rural grandmother matriarchs from
those television dramas, all hunched over and slightly bitter, but that's how
she makes me feel a lot of the times-too old. Linna and I are around the same
age, we've gone through a lot of the same things, so we have a lot of
commonality to bond us even without this thing we do, but we're also different enough
that it's not like talking to a copy of me.
I need my friends. I guess I'm just wired like that.
SYLIA
It is 2033; June. I find myself the most frightening woman alive. I am
called Sylia Stingray. I live in Mega-Tokyo.
My father was called Katsuhiko Stingray. This was not the name he was
born with. I do not know what that was. I do not care. He had ideas about
things, ideas about people, ideas about the world. He never showed the world his
ideas, begrudging them only his boomers, the least of his thoughts, a
digression. He showed me his ideas. He showed my brother. Then he began his
surgeries on us.
Our minds were made better. Our nervous systems made faster. Our bodies
better. Information is absorbed and processed faster. Everything faster.
Everything better. Everything stranger. Optimized humans.
This does not matter.
I am nearing the end of the first phase of my vengeance. I have tested
the enemy and found him wanting. He has gained a false confidence. He is
powerful, resource-fat, but slow, too slow, and filled with the fearful and
ambitious. Communication is weak within him. He is cumbersome.
He has a secret history to him. I would know this, though whether it
will speed my vengeance I do not know. It is a history that he and my father
shared in common. Is this why I feel such kinship and contempt for him? It is a
needless question and feeling.
I was given my father's death in a package. His associates prepared it
for me. It showed his execution, it showed his thoughts, his resignation, his
anger, his sorrow, and his nothingness. I was then given plans; my mind was
activated. I began my vengeance.
I have gathered comrades around me, each with their own motives for
joining my vengeance. The conditioning of the required responses is nearly
complete. The physical training, the settling of roles, and the familiarity to
weapons and tactics is done. The first part of my vengeance, the preparation, is
near completion. Soon the next phase begins. Everything is going as it was
made in my mind years ago. I feel so little surprise.
I shall take the high ground. And in the taking, I shall make a wound
that will slowly kill.
And then I'll be done.
LINNA
I'm the "normal" one. I'm Linna Yamazaki.
I'm not angsty like Priss, not that I could be. I'm not terrible like
Sylia. And Nene would be normal if she weren't so weird. Compared to them, I'm
a picture of conformity. I like socializing, I like dating, I like sex. I
like sitting in my living room, listening to some classical music and reading a
book. I like going to temple and praying. I like dressing up as a cow for
Halloween and giving kids chocolate.
But I love to dance and I don't do that anymore.
My parents didn't die in the Quake. They were in Tokyo (this was before
Mega was added) and they survived, but they were killed in the rogue boomer
attacks in the aftermath while they were helping to rescue people trapped in
rubble. There were a lot of people who died that way, died after the Quake, but
they all get grouped in with the Quake victims. But they're not. They died
after. They were both cops; that's how they met.
I was sent to an orphan factory afterwards and spent a brutal two years
there. I couldn't get into a Click; my "sponsor" got her kidneys cut out by a
five-year-old and no one else would touch me. You needed Clicks to protect
you from other Clicks and from the administrators. I spent a lot of those two
years hiding. Sometimes you can't hide, though. I eventually got found by a
friend of my parents and went to live with my grandparents. It was a relief.
It was also incredibly boring. They lived in a fishing village, my
grandparents. My uncles and aunts and cousins were fishermen or the wives or
girlfriends of fishermen. Even my relief over not having to worry about being
stabbed or raped turned to boredom pretty damn quickly. I guess that my
experiences made me feel cut off, alien, from my family. There wasn't any points of
intersection between them and me, beyond blood. It had been dangerous in the
factory, but I missed the lick of adrenaline. It's strange what you can get
nostalgic about. I think that I would have killed myself if it weren't for the
television.
I developed a sort of sick fascination with Mega-Tokyo, the city that
took so much from me. I hated it but there was something there. My destiny,
maybe. Certainly I wasn't going to be happy in the village, despite the love and
safety. Maybe I didn't deserve to be safe.
The television not only fed my sickness, it also gave me dance. I saw my
first Hikaru Hiyama movie one day, one of her earliest works, "Downtown
Cats." The way she danced on the screen drew me in. And I knew that I had to
dance. So I started taking lessons, though it was hard to find a teacher out
there in the boonies, and learning what I could on my own. I also got taught
martial arts, to help me build my strength and flexibility: Kung Fu and Aikido,
mostly. I got to be a damn good dancer.
I came back, because it's only here in Mega-Tokyo that you can dance. I
couldn't get a job doing it, though. There was too many others and I got lost
in a crowd.
But then, Sylia came to me and gave me a job.
Now I dance only in the street.
I learned something in the factory: you have to let go of the bad but
hold onto the good. I've gotten the first part down, it's the second part that's
giving me trouble. I always let the good get away. But I'm trying, I'm
really trying, to hold onto what I have right now. I'm not letting this go. I
let the Factory go, I let love go, but not this.
I still have my hope.
NENE
They call her Nene Romanova, the purple clad guardian of freedom and
defender of justice! Who, along with her daily life as a heroic A.D. Police
officer, protects the citizens of Megatokyo from crime and fear!
At least, that what I wish they'd call me. Someone. Anyone. C'mon now,
it's not that hard.
Nene Romanova-super hero!
Well, maybe not super, but a hero.
I've always wanted that. I've always wanted to be a hero, just like the
Sailor Senshi. I really loved their cartoon growing up. How they used to
beat up the monsters and stop the bad guy but still have fun and be people. I
loved that. I wanted that so much.
So I guess I'm living the dream. Only it's not as sweet as I thought it
would be. I thought that we'd go out there and stamp out all the bad in the
world with a laugh and nobody would get really hurt, not even the bad guys.
They'd just go away.
It didn't work out that way. I became a cop because . . . well, first
off, because it was a bit of a lark. You know, anarchist programming goddess
infiltrates the Man for fun and chaos. Then it became useful for the Knight
Sabers. But now I'm a cop. God help me, I believe. Sometimes, when the days
are just so rough and everything looks washed out and depressed, I think that
I'm a cop first, then a Knight Saber. But I know, I know, that if we were ever
to break up, it'd just kill me. I know it. I need this, somehow. I need
both of these things, but I need the Knight Sabers more.
And I love it. I love the challenge, the pressure that focuses me to
brilliance. Before all this, my energy was wasted on trivialities. Now I have
problems that need solving or people die. And because of my mind, people are
saved. That makes it worth it.
But I still think that it should be better than this. Every single
victory we have shouldn't always be so bitter. For instance, we should be taking
on Genom now, damn it! We shouldn't be just buzzing around, taking out those
guys that get too far out of line. We should be doing something about all
this.
You know, petty as this might sound, sometimes I feel guilty around my
friends. The main reason being, I had a pretty normal childhood. Both of my
parents are still alive. I should know; my mother calls at least once a day to
nag at me. What kind of a job is a policeman for a young lady? You should be
in school, finding a nice boy, getting married. We never see you anymore.
Your father misses you. Have you heard how your older sister went to a third w
orld nation and made it a paradise on Earth all by herself? Your brother's a
successful doctor, and your other brother's a successful banker. They could
introduce you to some of their friends.
(I hate being the baby of the family.)
(Come to think of it, I guess I have more in common with my uncle than
anything. He was a cop too and according to all the old family stories, a bit
of rebel. There have been cops before in our family, but none like him. I
really would have liked to have met him more times than I did.)
But, even though I feel guilty, I also resent the hell out of it when
they exclude me from their little orphan club and make me feel spoiled for having
loving parents who didn't die in front of me and leave me traumatized and all
that. I know Sylia doesn't act like that, but, c'mon, what other reason
could she have for all this? And Linna would never say it, but it's the way she
never says it that just announces that it's a big deal for her. And Priss is
just generally pissed off at the world for the bad hand she got.
Mackie, frankly, is the only one here that I feel like I can really,
really talk to. He and I are a lot alike. We're both young and terribly smart.
We understand computers, though of course I'm better than him. We're part of
the same subculture. I think he has a little crush on me. Do I feel the
same? Certainly not! Really!
I don't have time for boys. I'm too busy saving the world. And that's
not easy, nor as much fun as I'd thought it'd be. But still, it's worth doing.
MACKIE
I am named Mackie Stingray. And I fear I am broken.
Nobody else knows this. Ssshh.
I don't really remember Mother. The only memories that I am sure are
mine are the soft rush of fire in the kitchen and the soft smell of jasmine
around her as she held me tight. I know that it's jasmine because my sister wears
it sometimes. I don't know whether I like it or not.
I always knew that I was smart. No, that's not true. I know that I'm
not smart. I've always known that I was good with machines. I can see what I
want, sort of hovering in a space out of the sides of my eyes, and I can bring
it forward piecemeal. I've been told that's smart. All right.
I don't know if Mother died or not. Father never talked about it and
Sylia . . . Sylia never really cared all that much. At least I don't think she
did. She would have told me if she had.
I was born MacDonald Stingray. There was a reason why and Father told me
once.
From the time Mother left, which was as long ago as I can remember, Sylia
took care of me. I didn't know how much she took care of me until I stopped
and looked around me.
One day I sliced the palm of my hand. I don't know why. It was not a
bad cut, neither deep nor long and did not require stitches, but it was enough
to draw some amount of blood. A sudden impulse came to me and I put some of my
blood under a slide and microscope. There are things crawling in my blood.
I think there is something in my mind. I don't know who is thinking this. I
think it is someone put there by Father. He did surgeries on Sylia and me.
I never went to school much. Sylia somehow arraigned for me to be
home-tutored but did not actually provide any tutors. She placed books in front of
me and left me alone as she pursued her own studies. It was enough. I went
through high school ages ago but have not yet gone to college, though perhaps I
should; not now, but maybe later. Sylia needs me. I need her.
I live on the top floor of the Lady 633 and have been working in the
Silky Doll, a lingerie store, for more than a year now. It was a bit weird being
surrounded by all those frilly things and women and mannequins and all but I
got used to it soon enough. I can get used to anything.
I wonder if I'm human anymore.
Sometimes I feel so . . . thin, like all it would take is one deep breath
to rip what makes up me and out will hatch something strange, and this
stranger would look down and see the gauze that was me. I don't know if I would
like it or not. Maybe I would like it. I don't know.
I have strange dreams sometimes. I know they are strange because I never
talk about them. If they weren't strange, I probably would. I wonder if
they are messages from the thing growing in me.
I should give it a name.
I don't think I'm well. I think I'm in love with Sylia. I keep on
thinking about her smile. She has the best smile. It's not the one that everyone
else knows. Only I know it. Only I've seen it. It's wide, showing all of
her teeth, and her eyes are like spinning diamonds and there's this soft,
not-even whispering repeating gasp of breath and . . . and . . . like spinning
diamonds and her skin is so cool and her hair is rustling and the things that I
want to do on her, to her, with her, all of it.
I don't think I'm real. I don't think I want to be.
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