[AMG][FanFic] Gods Willing Part II (yes, that's what I said)

[Benjamin D. Hutchins]

Aah! You thought it was dead, didn't you? A series begun so long ago
that the rec.arts.anime.* hierarchy didn't exist yet, risen from the
ashes of my Terminally Stuck Project File... enjoy.

--G.
--
_O_ Benjamin D. Hutchins, cofounder, Continuity Line Editor, webmaster
[. .] Eyrie Productions, Unlimited - An AnimeTech Limited Company -><-
- Cyberleader Darul says: "0 dB SPL is the lowest level of 1KHz tone
the average person can detect." WWW: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

---cut---

Not long ago, nor far away, but infinitely removed from our world...

Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents

G O D S W I L L I N G

Part II: We'll Always Have Boston

It is the middle of October. Keiichi Morisato, having been ejected
from his dormitory by Young Republicans, is now living in a modest
apartment at 88 Elm Street in Worcester, not far from campus. His
housemates are a pair of ex-WPI students by the unlikely nicknames of
Gryphon and MegaZone, and a beautiful young woman with the equally
unusual name Belldandy Wishbringer. Gryphon and Zoner don't know it,
but Belldandy is a goddess, her destiny tied to Keiichi's by a wish
the latter made in a moment of rashness. Life continues as normally
as it can, and all the residents of this apartment are unaware that
they will soon have a visitor who will change their lives forever.

FRIDAY 14 OCTOBER 1994 08h50 88 ELM STREET

"You realize, brother dear," said the voice on the telephone,
"that when Mom and Dad find out you're living off campus with a
foreign girl, they're gonna flip."
"I know, Megumi, I know," Keiichi replied, "but what can I do?
Bel is a really nice girl, and anyway, it's not as if we're... " He
ground to a halt, embarrassed by what he had been about to say.
Megumi's voice at the other end became impish and amused.
"Ahhhhh, Kei, Kei, Kei... it's good to see that America hasn't changed
my brother. He still wouldn't know what to do with a woman if she bit
him."
"Megumi!"
"Sorry... it's just that you're so funny sometimes. I'm sure
she's a very nice girl, and you're going along at your own pace, which
is good... but if Worcester is really as boring as you say, maybe you
ought to take her someplace more exciting sometime."
"Such as?"
"Isn't Boston right near there?"
"About an hour away, I suppose."
"Well, tomorrow is Saturday, right? Take her to Boston, see
the sights. Have a good time! It can't be any harder to get around
in than Osaka."
"You know, I think you're right, Megumi. I'll do that. Yeah!
That's a good idea. Thanks!"
"No problem, brother mine. Now if you'll excuse me -- *yawn*
-- it's almost eleven at night over here, and I've got to get some
sleep. Good night, Keiichi."
"Good night, Megumi." Keiichi listened to the click at the
other end and sat pondering the conversation he'd just had with his
sister until the telephone began blaring that red-alert sound phones
make when you leave them off the hook too long. At this point,
startled, he dropped it on the floor, then picked it up, hung it up
incorrectly, corrected it, got the cord tangled around his arm, and
knocked it to the floor again, at which point he gave up and left it
there, leaning back in the blue chair and losing himself in thought.
Boston! He'd been there once before, of course -- his flight
from Tokyo had landed at Logan Airport. He hadn't seen very much,
though; only what he'd glimpsed through the windows of the shuttle van
which carried him out of the city and halfway across the state to
Worcester. Still, Megumi was probably right. Boston couldn't be that
much different from the cities back home. It was a small city by
Japanese standards, which should help.
He even had transportation! Most of the housing fees WPI had
refunded him were being saved, to be given to his parents when they
inevitably found out he had moved off-campus in an attempt to mitigate
their wrath, but some of the money had gone to get Keiichi a way to
get around. His international driver's license was valid, and with it
he had been able to get a local one, with the proper local equivalents
to the endorsements he had back home.
Even with those factors, he had been uncertain about his
ability to find a viable motor vehicle for what he considered to be a
reasonable amount of money. He didn't want to spend much of the
housing refunds, since they weren't technically his money; only his
need for transportation, living so far from campus, drove him to
commit even the minimal act of dishonesty he was engaging in, and he
didn't want to go too far. However, in this, as in so much these
days, it appeared luck was with him -- for right there in the
neighborhood, on the way to class, he had spotted the perfect find.
Thus it was that Keiichi Morisato was now the proud third
owner of a nearly-mint-condition BMW OL-SP touring motorcycle, with
sidecar, and a set of snow tires therefor. Insurance, even for
someone his age, was quite inexpensive (which had surprised him), and
he was now perfectly set to take a trip to Boston.
"Right!" he announced to no one, getting to his feet, his face
set in a mask of determination. "I'll do it!"
"Morning," Zoner mumbled from the doorway to his room, nearly
startling Keiichi out of his skin. "Do what?" the bigger man inquired
as he shuffled through the living room toward the bathroom and the
start of another day. "Hang up the phone."

WPI CAMPUS 09h53

Toshiyuki Aoshima, who, like Keiichi, was a freshman from
Japan, was making his way across the Quad, heading for the Wedge and a
quick snack at Mini-DAKA before ascending to his third-floor room in
Daniels Hall and studying for the quiz to be given in his elementary
computer science course. He didn't really see what FORTRAN
programming had to do with telecommunications, his stated choice of
career, but the ways of WPI are subtle and not to be questioned;
CS1010 was a required course for anyone in the Management and
Information Systems track, and so Toshi Aoshima, well aware of his
responsibilities, was taking it.
His first two months at WPI had gone well academically, but
personally, he was starting to wonder if coming here had been such a
great idea after all. To be sure, he wasn't a complete stranger --
his cousin Sayoko was a junior, and through her network of friends, he
knew quite a few people on campus. Most of them were, in Aoshima's
modest opinion, complete cretins, and their plainness grated on him.
Besides, most of them were also male, and as such held little interest
for Aoshima -- because what he really wanted, more than money (which
he had) or power (which he could get with his money), was beautiful
women -- as many of them as possible.
Sayoko, being his cousin, didn't count. Besides, she was far
too crafty for Aoshima's taste -- almost as crafty as himself, and
just as goal-oriented. They made a good team, but they would be a
lousy couple. No, the woman Aoshima was looking for --
Was on her way across the Quad at this very moment. Angels
sang. Saints wept. Somewhere, Dire Straits was playing -that- song.
Aoshima nearly tripped over one of the bricks in the Quad's decorative
inlaid brick walkway (the particular brick was labeled "JOSEPH Z PROVO
'94") as he caught his first good look at her -- impeccably dressed,
her extremely long, golden-brown hair done into a tremendous braid,
with sprigs flying loose in front to frame a sprightly, smiling face,
walking with a purposeful but carefree gait -- every part of her
moving in symphonic harmony with every other part to convey an
impression of lightness, gaiety, perfection itself.
In one of the rare moments of revelation which invade the
lives of the fortunate, Toshiyuki Aoshima saw his destiny walking
toward him.
He caught himself before he could start to properly gape,
smoothed back his already-perfect hair, and stepped toward her. It
was a point of particular disappointment for Aoshima that he had never
developed the superhuman ability to produce large bouquets of snow
roses from his coatsleeves at will, so he settled for plucking the
carnation from his lapel, and moved in. Rules of Conquest #1: First
impressions are critical.

10h21

Aoshima sat at his desk in his room on Daniels Third, thinking
black thoughts. Not that his first meeting with that amazing girl had
gone poorly -- no, he had been quite charming, he thought, and she
very friendly and cheerful. Then again, she was friendly and cheerful
to everyone she met, if her greetings to other students she saw along
the walk to Salisbury Labs were any indication. But still, their
conversation had gone well, and he thought he had even managed to give
her the impression he had business in Salisbury and wasn't simply
following her there.
No, the problem was the young man who had met them when they
-arrived- at Salisbury. Of all the... Keiichi Morisato, Mr. Nobody
himself, had been waiting on the steps of the building with a bookbag
in one hand and a lunchbox in the other, and the girl -- Belldandy,
her name was, and what a marvelously -odd- name, he thought -- had
greeted him with the biggest, warmest, most jealousy-inducing hug
Aoshima had ever witnessed, and introduced him with all the adoration
of a small child introducing her father, the firefighter. Aoshima had
concealed his reaction well -- after all, hiding himself and providing
a false front was what Toshi Aoshima was all about -- but he had,
after making a polite exit, seethed all the way back to his room, and
now he sat at his desk, seething still. He remembered Morisato from
freshman orientation; he had been an irritatingly ordinary person
then, and he still was now. What the hell Sayoko, who for some
bizarre reason was practically lusting after the fool, saw in him was
quite beyond Aoshima.
The telephone on the desk rang, startling him out of his
irritated reverie, and he snatched it up. "What?!" he inquired
crossly, before he could check himself.
"Tch, tch, Toshi," Sayoko's voice replied from the other end.
"Not very smooth."
"Ah, Sayoko," Aoshima replied, forcing himself to relax.
"Sorry. I've got a lot on my mind just now, is all."
"You've met Belldandy Wishbringer, then."
"Is that her last name?"
"So they say."
"How extraordinary."
"I'll take that," Sayoko said dryly, "as a 'yes'."
"How did you know?"
"Because you've got the same tone in your voice as everybody
else who's just met the wench."
"Sayoko! Is that jealousy I hear in your voice?" Aoshima
cajoled his cousin, a grin spreading over his too-handsome face. If
there was something he loved more than the hunt, it was needling
Sayoko. "Afraid that the... gentlemen... of WPI will decide they
prefer her enigmatic beauty to your Asian ordinaire?"
"Call me ordinary again, Toshi, and you'll be laughing out of
the other side of your neck. Since she waltzed into school last
month, that woman's been nothing but a thorn in my side... and the
most annoying part is, she can keep up that maddening innocent act, as
if she doesn't even know that she's threatening my position. As if
she's got no guile at all! I tell you, Toshi, it's enough to drive me
to distraction. And as if that wasn't bad enough -- "
"She's got Morisato in her proverbial back pocket, yes, I
know. I saw them just a few moments ago. Repellently cute, they
are."
"Say, Toshi," Sayoko said, her voice taking on a familiar
conspiratorial tone, "it occurs to me we might have a common goal
here. What say we work together on this little problem?"
Perhaps needling Sayoko and frustrating her belonged in the
same category, Aoshima mused as he responded smoothly, "That's awfully
nice of you, cousin, but I've a couple of options I think I'd like to
exhaust on my own first, if you don't mind. Rest assured, though,
that I'll give your offer my most serious consideration, all right?"
He could almost hear the chill in her "All right. Goodbye,
Toshi," and as he put down the phone, Aoshima chuckled. Ah, life was
good.
He cast his mind back to what he'd heard as he walked out of
earshot of Belldandy and Keiichi:
"Say, Bel... would you like to go into Boston this weekend?"
"Why, I'd love to!"
A slow smile worked its way onto Aoshima's face. Boston, eh?
That suited him just fine. The two of them, in Boston on the weekend,
would give him a fine opportunity -- for there were many things about
Boston which Toshiyuki Aoshima, who had spent his high school years in
an expensive private institution in Cambridge, knew that he was quite
certain his rival did not.
Oh, yes... if he could just find out when they were going,
Boston would suit Aoshima just fine.

88 ELM STREET 18h02

As he climbed out of his pickup and shouldered the door shut,
Gryphon tried to remember when he'd had a more rotten day at work, and
failed completely. The end-users got stupider all the time, and the
questions had lost all their novelty. Nowadays, when a user asked him
a question he hadn't heard a million times, he hadn't the faintest
clue what the answer was because the question was so esoteric, or so
poorly worded he didn't understand it. The queue seemed to be getting
hairier, although that could just be his imagination -- but the fact
that today's queues had been more than usually nasty was something he
was sure of. The service database had decided to go down at around 4,
too, crippling the office for the last hour and a half he was there.
He didn't know why, but today, a normally quiet Friday had become a
total circus.
Grumbling, he picked up his briefcase and walked across Elm
Street and up the three steps to the front porch. There he put the
case down and confronted the mailbox, which was experiencing a slight
traffic problem. The postman had put the usual assortment of bills
and junk for himself, Keiichi, Belldandy, and Zoner's six misprinted
aliases (MegaZone, Mega Zone, Meg A. Zone, Megan Zone, A. Megazone,
and Margaret Ann Zone) into the narrow box, and then shoved in a
largish padded envelope which would probably have had trouble fitting
into the box by itself. The slight compressibility of the other mail
and the padding of the envelope had allowed the envelope to be shoved
in, but getting it out was going to be a bit of a problem, as it
contained something rigid and about the same size as the cavity inside
the mailbox.
A bit of grunting and subdued swearing later, Gryphon had
extracted the contents of the mailbox with minimal damage, and then,
juggling the padded envelope, the other mail, his briefcase and his
keys, let himself in the front door and climbed to the second-story
landing. Once inside, he shouted one of his usual greetings ("Lucy!
I'm home from de club!"), dropped his briefcase, sorted through the
usual mail, and then assessed the padded envelope. It quite clearly,
from its size, shape, rigidity and the slight rattling noise it made
when shaken, contained a videocassette. That suited his expectations;
one of his net.friends had been rumbling lately about he simply had to
see Anime Series X right quick, and this was probably a tape of same.
Gryphon ripped off the end of the envelope and tipped the tape into
his hand, scrutinizing the label.
He couldn't remember exactly what the title of the anime
series his net.friend wanted him to see was, but as said series
concerned a giant robot, Gryphon would have bet a considerable sum of
money that its title wasn't "The Goddess Video Company Presents Sexy
Sister".
"What the hell are you supposed to be?" he inquired of the
tape, looking again at the envelope and receiving a partial
explanation for why this made no sense. It wasn't for him at all; the
envelope was addressed in a painstaking block capital font to Keiichi.
No return address, either. How odd! With Belldandy here, Keiichi
would certainly not have ordered such a thing -- with a title like
that, Gryphon figured he knew pretty well what it was, after all --
and he didn't seem all that interested in the subject anyway.
And in that bit of incomprehension, he found his answer. The
tape had come -because Belldandy was here-. Someone, probably Tom,
Gryphon figured, had sent this along in a rather immature attempt at
getting poor Keiichi into hot water with his girlfriend. A cruel
prank...
... and one, Gryphon thought to himself, doomed to failure.
He'd had a bad enough day -- there was no point in allowing his
roomies to have one. No, he'd just intercept this little box of
trouble right here, before it could spring its trap on Keiichi.
He looked at the wall clock, noted the time, and smiled.
Friday evening? Nobody would be home until eight at the earliest.
Curious (and, well, let's face it, deprived), he went through the Holy
Seven Steps of Activation (a very catechistic faith, stereotism),
powered up Zoner's audiovisutainment system, put in the tape, and
started it. Then he headed for the kitchen to waste the leader time
getting something to drink.
Cheesy music had started playing before he could leave the
kitchen, and as he re-entered the living room, Gryphon could see that
yes, this was going to be a particularly poorly-made film, as most of
its ilk tended to be. He shrugged inwardly; sometimes, there were
factors that made up for the poor production values. Not often, but
sometimes.
Right now, however, the tracking was off, and that needed
adjusting posthaste. Putting down his drink on the corner table, he
made his way across the room, reached above the TV, and began fiddling
with the tracking knobs on the VCR. On the screen, through the video
snow, he could make out the fact that the camera was panning along the
reclining, and mostly (ornately) clothed, body of a woman, one with
darkly tanned skin, and quite impressive. The snow was elusive,
though, jumping this way and that to avoid the twists of the tracking
knobs, and always remaining on the screen. Gryphon's aesthetic
submerged in his technologic as he became more and more annoyed with
the recalcitrant tracking.
A voice spoke from the box, and the words it said, in a sultry
tone, were:
"Adjust the tracking all the way to the left, honey."
Unconsciously, he obeyed, twisting the Tracking and Slow
Tracking knobs both all the way to the left.
"Thanks."
Gryphon glanced down from the controls to the now-clear screen
in time to see a green-eyed, snowy-haired beauty wink at him, and then
he was sitting in a crumpled heap on the other side of the room, by
the kitchen doorway, and said beauty was extracting herself from the
television tube. Which was quite impossible.
A normal man would have been terrified beyond all capacity for
rational thought by such a glaring, spectacular impossibility. One
must keep in mind, however, that Gryphon had spent his entire life to
date dreaming of the impossible and the spectacular.
Which, admittedly, changed his reaction not one bit.
To his credit, though, at least he didn't scream.
The white-haired woman -- the rational bit of his mind which
always remained gauged her age at somewhere in her early twenties --
finished climbing out of the TV and nearly fell into the videotapes,
performing an interesting mid-air skip-hop over them to come down with
a slightly irritated backward glance in the middle of the room.
Recovering her composure rapidly, she adjusted the flowing grey cape
she wore, throwing it back over her shoulders, and flicked her hair
back as well with a sweep of one long-fingered hand.
"Hi!" she announced cheerily.
Oddly enough, the first thing Gryphon noticed about her was
her outfit. It was quite ornate and not particularly revealing; sure,
it fell rather low in front and sure, one side was split up to her
belt, but there was a hell of a lot of material involved in it, and an
intriguing interplay of navy blue and tiger-striped yellow-orange
trim. Even with all that, though, there was something in the outfit
and the bearing of the woman inside it which conveyed a coherent
impression of intense, gleeful, and willing sensuality.
Oh, my oh my.
Oh, my yes.
Oh.
My.
The second was the way her glittering green eyes actually
focused on his when she spoke to him. He had noticed that few people
actually did that any more; the only other he could think of, right
off the top of his head, was Belldandy. This newcomer rather
resembled Belldandy, actually... her skin was darker, her hair and
eyes different colors, but there was something in her face's
aquilinity that was, though harder-edged, very familiar.
Too familiar?
Shaking off the bizarreness of her entrance with an alacrity
that surprised him, Gryphon got to his feet and brushed himself off,
maintaining eye contact with the new arrival and wondering what he
ought to do next.
Her eyes narrowed in annoyance. "Hey, you're not Japanese.
You aren't Keiichi Morisato, are you?"
"Uh, no."
"Well, that's just great. You've screwed up the whole plan!
What's the big idea, opening other people's mail? Who the hell are
you, anyway?"
"Er... my name's Ben. Ben Hutchins. I live here too. Sorry
about that... I opened the tape without really looking at the
envelope. I'm sort of expecting one of my own, you see, and... " He
trailed off, realizing the absurdity of the situation. "Er, by the
way, ah... who the hell are -you-?"
The woman looked resigned, and said, "I'm Belldandy's sister,
Urd." She blinked, looking at him closer. "Ben Hutchins, huh?" Urd
scratched at the back of her head, lost for a moment in thought. "Why
does that... " She shrugged. "So you're Morisato's roommate, then.
Maybe you can help me -- what's the deal with those two, anyway?"
"I'm afraid I don't follow."
"Well, they've been living in the same room for what, a month?
And has anything happened? No! Nothing! They hardly ever even kiss!
It's driving me up a wall."
Gryphon blinked. "Er -- the pace bothers you?"
"Damn right!" Urd replied. "I mean, it's obvious they're in
love -- why don't they -do- anything?"
"Perhaps they don't feel ready to take that step yet. Give
them time, I'm sure they'll get to it -- "
"Time! By the time those two figure out what they're doing,
they'll be too -old- to do anything! No, the problem here is that
Morisato doesn't have a spine -- and unless he develops some
confidence he'll never -ask- her to do anything. And I know my
sister; unless he asks she'll never even hint at how much she wants
him."
Gryphon looked skeptical.
"Oh, you don't deny -that-, do you? I've been watching you,
too, buddyboy. And you've been watching -her-. You probably know her
better than he does!"
Gryphon looked more skeptical.
"Well, look at the situation! You -talk- to her, at least.
Morisato just kind of sits there and basks in her presence. Which is
fine, and ever-so-cute, but doesn't really accomplish anything, now
does it? Sometimes, the boy frustrates me so much I just want to
smack him! Which is why I came here, but of course -you- had to go
and screw everything up!"
There was a momentary pause.
"You feel very strongly about this, then," Gryphon observed
dryly.
"Damn straight!" Urd replied sourly, and for a moment, they
stood at an impasse, one bemused, the other glaring.
"What did you plan on doing about it?" Gryphon finally asked,
recovering his mug of soda and taking a drink. "You won't be able to
change Belldandy."
"Oh, believe me, I'm aware of -that-," Urd replied, shoving
aside the coats and flopping down in the orange chair. She put her
fingertips to her forehead, closing her eyes as if stricken by a
migraine. "She's always been impossible. But the Spineless One...
well... I might be able to get somewhere if I work on -him-. Like I
said, all he really needs is a spine." She smiled, a sly,
not-entirely-nice kind of smile. "I think I can put some stiffness
into him."
Gryphon declined to voice his instinctive response, instead
sitting down in the recliner and saying, "Uh huh."
There was another long pause.
"So," Urd said, finally. "Anything good on TV tonight?"
Gryphon nearly commented, but chose to consult the TV Guide
instead.

THE WEDGE 19h52

MegaZone was not having a pleasant evening. He wasn't
entirely sure why he'd come up to the Wedge this evening. Perhaps he
had thought he'd have fun, hanging around his old haunt and seeing the
sights, but if that were the case, he'd made a grave error of
judgment. The only people here he recognized were Keiichi and
Belldandy, and they were busily fitting in far better than he did. He
sort of sat in the corner of one of the Wedge benches, looming and
trying not to look too ominous, refraining from launching into any
When I Was Your Age diatribes, and generally feeling quite a bit older
than he really was.
He was also feeling as much suspicion as he could remember
feeling in recent history. There was another Japanese fellow in the
Wedge today, one Toshi Aoshima, who was leaving a trail of salesmanly
ooze all around the enclave. He was being tremendously nice, and
overwhelmingly polite, and his schtick was so completely false it was
almost nauseating Zoner. Oddly enough, it didn't appear anyone else
in the Wedge could actually smell the stench of insincerity, and
perhaps it says something for Zoner's cynical nature that he could
spot the slime trail where no one else could. Aoshima was putting his
best facade forward, and almost everybody was buying...
... almost.
Zoner sat, and watched, and absorbed. It wasn't quite the
right time to act... yet.

BLUE JEANS PIZZA - ABOUT THAT SAME TIME

"There's just one thing that I wonder," Urd said, playing idly
with her plastic fork as she and Gryphon sat waiting for their order.
Her clothing looked a bit more conventional now, if not by much; she'd
dispensed with the cape in favor of a black leather trench coat, and
the slit skirt in favor of black velvet trousers, but the top of the
outfit under the coat still looked much the same.
"Oh?" he replied.
"Well, like I said before, I've been keeping an eye on all of
you for a while now... I wanted to make sure that my little sister
hadn't fallen in with some kind of creep who was going to take
advantage of her."
"And now that you've determined he's not some kind of creep,
you're here to make sure he takes advantage of her."
Urd narrowed her eyes in mock irritation and pointed the
plastic fork threateningly at him. "Don't interrupt me, little boy."
"I'm sorry, ma'am. Go on with your speech."
"Right, anyway... I'm just curious, mind you. Keiichi is a
nice guy, but he's so... I dunno, unimpressed about everything. He
lacks enthusiasm! He doesn't have any drive! He'll drag his feet
until the end of time -- I think he's afraid to take any kind of
initiative! You're different. You're lazy, yes, but you're not
afraid to make decisions. So I wonder... why haven't you tried to,
you know, take over for him?"
Gryphon gazed impassively at her for a moment before replying
dryly, "Don't be an idiot."
"Who are you calling an idiot?!"
"You, if you honestly think I -could- do something like that,
let alone think I -would-. For one thing, I -am- afraid to make
decisions, especially big ones which will radically affect the way I
live. I have a carefully cultivated talent for putting my head in the
sand. No... no, that's not true. Usually, if I'm in a situation like
that, I end up deciding to run blindly toward the danger and get it
over with... but I digress." He paused, gathering his thoughts, and
then came at the topic from a different angle.
"Maybe I'm out of line here -- but if you think I'd try
something like that, you haven't been paying attention -- to me, or to
your sister. She loves him -- you know that, you've said so yourself.
If you think I would try to intrude on that, you don't know me as well
as you seem to think, and if you think Bel would stand for it, you
don't know her nearly as well as you should. She may be unworldly,
maybe even naive, but she isn't stupid."
Urd pondered for a moment, then smiled. "How anachronistic of
you."
"That's me; both hands on the keyboard, one foot in the Swing
Age. I could afford it, I'd drive a car with tail fins."
"Must be difficult -- restraining your instincts that way."
"You seem terribly interested in my instincts."
"Just trying to figure out if I can trust you."
"Trust me to what?"
"Help get those two moving, of course! I don't want to bring
somebody into my plans who's going to try to use the situation to his
own advantage, after all. That'd mess everything up."
"Ah. I see. So this is all a test, then."
"You could say that."
Gryphon shrugged, a gesture which said okay, whatever, no big
deal, then said, "So what's the deal with you and your sister,
anyway?"
"What do you mean?" replied Urd, the look of bewilderment on
her face comically unconvincing.
"Oh, let's not be coy, shall we? I mean, a woman who mails
herself on a videotape and climbs out of a TV set when the tracking is
properly adjusted isn't quite normal, and it logically follows that
her sister isn't either. I'm not stupid (nor am I nearly as unnerved
as it occurs to me I really ought to be, but I digress)... what's
going on? Are you witches, angels, space aliens, what? Mind you I'm
just curious, it's not as though I've any particular prejudice, but I
do like to know just what's living in my corner room."
As Urd recovered from the snickering fit his monologue had
caused, she replied, "Okay, you win. You were close with 'angels'...
we're goddesses."
Gryphon blinked, then took a drink of his RC and said
thoughtfully, "I'm not as surprised as I'd expected. I wonder why?
Perhaps my mind is going."
"Oh, come on, you expected to be surprised? You've accused my
sister of divinity more than once, as I recall."
Gryphon fixed Urd with a deadpan stare and replied in the most
boring monotone of a voice she'd ever heard, "I was speaking of
divinity as a metaphor. A metaphor. Not to be taken literally."
"Uh?"
"Forget it," he said, switching back to his normal voice.
"Hm. Bel's a goddess. Well. That explains a thing or two."
"Such as?"
"Well, there are the little birds that follow her around -- I
mean, little birds aren't supposed to be able to survive in the toxic
atmosphere here in Worcester... " Urd was about to comment on that
when something inside his mind clicked over. "Wait a minute," he
murmured. "Your name is Urd... and Belldandy is your younger sister."
He turned his housemate's unusual name over in his mind.
"Belldandy... Urd... -- you've got a kid sister named Skuld, don't
you."
"As a matter of fact. I'm surprised you knew that."
"Belldandy's name has changed a bit, but other than that, the
parallels are there to recognize."
Urd shrugged. "She thought 'Verthandi' would sound strange to
people. Why she thought 'Belldandy' was any more normal, I really
don't know -- personally, I don't care if people think my name is
strange or not. Then again, I don't come to the Surface World all
that often."
"What's your sister doing here, then, besides living in my
apartment and making sure we don't starve?"
"She's here because that idiot Morisato -- uh, actually, I
don't think I should tell you. You people aren't supposed to know how
this stuff works."
"Ah. Well. An attitude I'd expect from a divinity."
"Hey, don't blame me. There really -are- some things mortal
man isn't supposed to know. It's a cliche because it's true."
"Sounds like something I'd say." He took another drink,
reflected, and said, "So basically, you want me to help you do
something I'm not particularly convinced needs doing, without
explaining to me just what the hell is going on, just because you
asked me to do it."
"Basically."
"Forget it."
"What?! You'd refuse a request for assistance from a goddess?
What kind of creep are you? I thought you cared about Belldandy!"
"I do."
"Then why -- "
"I'm not convinced what you want would be particularly good
for her -- in fact, I suspect it would be pretty bad. Feel free to
correct me if I'm wrong, but basically, you want me to help you throw
my housemate and your sister into bed together before they decide
themselves that they're ready to go that far, because -you- are
getting impatient."
"Do you have to phrase it so coldly?"
"Do you have to take such an interest in things which aren't
any of your business?"
"Don't presume to tell a first-class goddess what is and isn't
her business, chum, unless you're looking to take a quick trip back
down the food chain!" Urd growled, standing, her irritation evident in
her eyes.
"Number forty-two!" the counter girl shouted. "Large
pepperoni, extra cheese!"
Gryphon got to his feet, slipped out of the booth, and went to
collect, remarking offhandedly as he went, "How can I get any lower
than grease?"
Urd remained where she was for a moment -- hands outspread on
the tabletop, arms tense, brows crashed together into an angry V.
Then her knees weakened, dropping her back into her seat, and the
angry tableau dissolved into a fit of inopportune giggling.
"That was completely unfair," she informed Gryphon when he
returned.
"Nothing's unfair when you're at as much of a disadvantage as
I am," he replied, seating himself and regarding the pizza for a
moment. "Ahh," he said, pitching his voice lower in his throat than
usual. "Grease."
Urd snickered again, then recovered her composure. "So you
don't think it's any of my business," she persisted.
Undeterred from his course by her previous display of anger,
Gryphon extracted a piece from the pizza, sawed off its tip, and
replied matter-of-factly, "No, I don't," before eating it.
She pondered for a moment, selected a piece of her own, folded
it in half, and inquired, "What would you have me do, then, if it were
up to you? I can't help but be concerned for my little sister, after
all."
"If you're that concerned," he replied, pausing to excise and
eat another section, "the best thing for you to do, I would imagine,
is to offer what support you can, stay out of the way, and, ah... let
nature take its course. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind that
they'll end up where you want them eventually anyway... have a little
patience and you'll get what you seem to think is so important."
"A brave man and a philosopher! You're quite a package for a
mortal," said Urd sardonically.
"Some guys got it," Gryphon replied with heavy counter-sarcasm,
"and some guys don't."
"How about this, then. This date they've got planned for
tomorrow, you think that's a good idea?"
"I'm afraid I don't have the faintest idea what you're talking
about."
"Oh, right, right, I forgot. They're going into Boston
tomorrow, apparently just to wander around and see the sights."
Gryphon shrugged. "Sounds good to me... do either of them
know anything about Boston?"
"No."
"Oo. That's not so good."
"Have any objections to, say, shepherding them on their way?
Making sure nothing untoward happens to them?"
"No, not as such. Sounds like they could use a guide...
although Keiichi might resent other people hanging around. It is
supposed to be a date, after all."
"I'm not talking about letting them know we're there... we'll
just lurk in the background and steer trouble away."
"What's this 'we'?"
Urd grinned, a somewhat predatory expression, and said, "Well,
I figured you'd want to come along. You can make sure I'm not trying
to push them into the sack if it bothers you so... "
"There's a point," Gryphon conceded, and grinned back. "I
don't seriously believe I'm having this conversation, you know, so
what does it matter, really?"
"Believe it," Urd replied. "I'm in your life now, kiddo, and
I'm not leaving until I'm good and ready."
"I should have such a curse," Gryphon muttered, and she
pretended not to hear.

THE APARTMENT - LATER

Gryphon was cruising on autopilot, letting his instincts guide
him through the afternoon as his mind worked at something else. He
was fairly certain that he hadn't really grasped the significance of
what he had just seen and learned, so he had part of his mind chewing
on that issue, hoping that when he -did- fully comprehend, he would
still find it all as positive as he thought he did at the moment. He
was also busily digesting a funny feeling of creeping dread, the
source of which he could not readily identify.
Urd was back in the orange chair, her hands steepled before
her, eyes closed; either lost in thought, or just asleep, he couldn't
really tell. Gryphon sighed and reclined the blue chair, putting his
hands behind his head and closing his own eyes. What a crazy day.
He was almost asleep when Urd, in a voice that sounded as
sleepy as he felt, said, "Tail fins?"
"Yeah," he replied, picking up the thread without difficulty.
"Tail fins. Big ones. On a big car, a Cadillac, say about 1957."
"Oh," said Urd.

THE WEDGE - 21h34

Aoshima couldn't figure it out. He'd been in the Wedge
people-watching for a couple of hours now, and was becoming more and
more confused by the moment. Morisato and the girl, Belldandy, had
been sitting next to each other in the Wedge booth for the last two
and a half or so hours. Both had contributed to the lively
discussion, to which Aoshima had paid only peripheral attention. His
concern had been with watching the interactions between the two of
them, throwing out the occasional loaded comment, seeing if Morisato
was paying attention. How close were they? How much effort would it
take to get her away from him? These were the questions on Toshiyuki
Aoshima's mind tonight.
Morisato, however, was proving a disappointing adversary at
best. He had missed all of Aoshima's double meanings and veiled
attacks, taking the words, which were usually complimentary, at face
value and responding with polite thanks. This wasn't the way it was
supposed to go at all! He was supposed to notice, to instinctively
spot the other fellow sniffing around his back porch, to be put on the
defensive -- the girl was supposed to be the one who missed Aoshima's
barbs, to think that her companion was simply being over-possessive,
and so the whole house of cards would fall apart. This technique was
failing miserably.
There was -another- wild card in the situation, though. That
large, loutish-looking fellow who lurked in the corner of the booth.
Aoshima didn't know him, but he didn't like his eyes at all -- he had
spent the whole evening watching Aoshima watch Morisato and Belldandy.
-He- knew what Aoshima was up to, even if Aoshima's intended adversary
didn't, and it was clear from his baleful, unwavering gaze that he
didn't like it a bit. But what was his interest? Who was he, and why
did he care?
[Of course. He sees what I'm doing,] said Aoshima to himself,
[and he's annoyed that he didn't think of it first. Well, don't be too
upset, old chap... it's not working very well for me, is it?
Morisato's just too thick for this tactic to work. You look like you
could be useful, my large friend.]
Aoshima decided to call the large fellow's bluff. He got up,
stretched his arms out, smiled, patted Morisato's shoulder, and said,
"Ah, sir, you are truly fortunate. The gods must smile upon your
entire family to have blessed you with such a lovely companion."
"Oh, uh... thank you," he said, reddening slightly, an effect
mirrored enchantingly by said companion.
Smiling his best smile at them both, Aoshima waved and walked
away, around the corner toward the wedge-terms. Out of the corner of
his eye, he spotted the big one getting up and following. Good --
now he could test his theory, and possibly recruit the lout's
assistance, without having to do it in front of everybody. Whistling
a little tune, he entered the narrow alleyway parallel to the entrance
corridor which contained a pair of battered VT220s, one on the
wallboard side, one on the glassed-in side of the corridor.
Seating himself at the terminal by the wall, Aoshima logged in
and waited. For a long moment, as he perused old mail and pretended
to be interested by it, he thought that perhaps he had been wrong --
that the large person hadn't been following him at all, but leaving.
Maybe while Aoshima turned off to the wedge-terms, he had gone
straight through to the mailbox part of Daniels.
Maybe this was all a waste of effort. Could he have been
imagining the whole thing in the Wedge? No... the look that guy was
giving him was definitely the look of a man with something on his
mind. So had he given up? Or --
Aoshima nearly jumped out of his skin when that selfsame large
man brushed past him, coming from the rear of the gweepery, and seated
himself at the terminal by the windows. Aoshima hadn't seen him go
by, nor had he heard him approaching.
He calmed himself as the large fellow sat down and started
typing, but, stealing a glance, Aoshima noticed that the terminal the
large man was at wasn't even working. Hmm.
Aoshima decided to make the opening move himself.
"Nice couple, aren't they?" he inquired pleasantly, not taking
his eyes off his own screen.
"Mm," said the big man, not looking away from his own dead
terminal.
For a moment, Aoshima thought that this would be the end of
the conversation, scintillating as it had been; but as he prepared to
log out and take his leave, the large man spoke again.
"Be a shame if anything happened to drive them apart."
Well, this wasn't what he had expected to hear.
"Oh, uh, yes, indeed," Aoshima replied.
"They're friends of mine. If anything ever happened to split
them up... " The large fellow paused for a moment; then, without
preamble, he raised one large fist and brought it crashing down on the
monitor of his terminal, causing the entire table to jump. The
monitor flickered and sprang to life, even if the text was a bit
wobbly. Aoshima did jump, this time.
"... I really don't know what I'd do," the big man finished.
Turning, he smiled a pleasant smile, a smile entirely unlike the smile
of a man who has just soundly thumped a VT220. "You know?"
"So, I, ah, so I see," Aoshima replied, logging out of the
terminal, getting up, and backing away, trying not to seem as startled
as he was.
MegaZone got up, left the gweepery, and leaned against the
glass partition wall, arms folded. He smiled a private little smile
as he watched Toshiyuki Aoshima beat his hasty retreat up the stairs
into Daniels Hall.
That ought to hold him for tonight, anyway.

ELM STREET - 22h02

"Urd?"
"Yeah?"
"Aren't the other gods going to notice that two of the three
Norns have gone missing?"
"Probably not. Belldandy isn't missing, she's supposed to be
here. And I'm... uh... on vacation."
"Huh. Well, I suppose. If Death takes a holiday, why
shouldn't Fate?"
Urd had no response save to chuckle a bit, and the silence
continued for a few moments longer. Downstairs came the crash of the
front door to the house, followed by thumping feet and the muffled
sounds of conversation. Urd started, bolting out of the chair and
looking toward the door.
"Damn! They're home. I can't let Belldandy know I'm here --
she'll probably get mad at me for trying to help, like she always
does." She looked around, spotted the door leading out of the room to
the left of the entryway, and darted through before Gryphon could stop
her; the door to Zoner's room was closing even as the apartment door
opened.
Gryphon sighed and sat back, trying to look unconcerned, as
his housemates returned, filing through the narrow corridor one at a
time. Pleasantries were exchanged; Zoner distributed his customary
"Yo," Keiichi waved, and Belldandy asked how Gryphon's day had gone.
He smiled, lied, and said it had been OK; she gave him a look that
told him she knew he was lying, but wasn't going to make an issue of
it. This happened just about every working day; it had become a sort
of tacit agreement between them not to look too closely at the reports.
Zoner tossed his jacket on the couch, made a mental note to
tell Ben to keep an eye out for that Aoshima guy, and proceeded into
his room to change out of his street clothes for the evening.
[Oh, grand,] thought Gryphon as he watched Zoner head into his
room, and he put his face in his hand.
Zoner had kicked off his shoes, pulled off his shirt, and
emptied the pockets of his jeans within the first ten seconds of
entering his room. Dropping his pocket stuff on his bureau, he
proceeded to the Laundry Heap to retrieve his sweats and evening
t-shirt, and was halfway out of his jeans before he actually bothered
to look up and notice that

HOLY SHIT

there was someone in his bed... !
"GyAAaA!" he remarked, recoiling reflexively as Urd waved
cheerily to him. His feet immediately fouled in the pool of denim
that had been his pants a moment ago, and his balance went to hell; he
fell back into his comics boxes with a resounding CRASH!!
Out in the living room, Belldandy turned toward the sound of
the crash, calling out, "Oh dear -- MegaZone, are you all right?"
Zoner, more startled than hurt, looked up to see the stranger
sitting on his bed smile an impish smile and hold a finger to her
lips, shaking her snow-maned head.
"Uh," he shouted through his door, "we're fine, we're all fine
here, situation normal."
"What happened?" Bel called back.
"Uh, had a slight balance malfunction, but everything's OK
now. We're fine, everything's fine. Uh, how are you?"
"Do you need help?"
Urd shook her head more firmly this time, so Zoner responded,
"Ah, negative, negative... we've had a, uh, a comics spill here,
large spill, very dangerous. Give us a few minutes to lock it down."
"Okay... if you need help, just let us know."
Disentangling himself, and simultaneously aware that a) his
unknown visitor might well have been the most beautiful woman he had
ever seen and b) he was mostly unclothed and in a very, very, very
stupid-looking position, Zoner hissed, "Who are YOU?"
"Shh," Urd replied. "I'll explain everything... later." With
a wink and a nod, she disappeared, sinking into the mattress in a play
of light, leaving behind no trace of her presence -- save the bruises
forming on Zoner, and the horrendous mess his comics had become.
Confused, Zoner finished dressing, and decided to just call it
a night.

NEXT MORNING 08h45

The following day was bright, clear and slightly cool, but not
too cool for motorcycle travel, and so it was Eastward Ho for Keiichi
and Belldandy. At highway speeds, wind noise basically rendered
conversation impossible, but Keiichi wasn't inclined to think it was
all that necessary anyway.
So, off they rode, eastward on Interstate 290, thence to I-495
and on to State Route 2 (a course which, coincidentally, Zoner and
Gryphon would both become most tediously familiar with in the coming
months), all in the name of moving ever toward the mighty capital of
Massachusetts, that glittering Gotham men call Beantown.
Or something.
Four cars behind, Toshiyuki Aoshima slouched insolently behind
the wheel of his altogether-too-expensive Ferrari and smirked.
Everything was proceeding according to plan.

Thirty-five minutes later, a battered, greenish-blue Chevy
pickup of indeterminate vintage, sporting out-of-state license plates,
charged down the Lincoln Street on-ramp onto I-290. Behind -its-
wheel, Gryphon slouched not, neither did he look insolent, nor did he
smirk. He looked, in fact, somewhere between angry and worried.
As usual, he'd overslept, and, unknowingly, left chaos in his
wake as he barrelled out of the house.

[Hmm,] Zoner said sleepily to himself as he was partially
awakened by the ruckus of Ben charging out the door. [I wonder where
Ben's going in such a hurry? Must be running late for work.]
Unconcerned by such petty issues as being on time for work, Zoner was
just about to go back to sleep when it occurred to him,
[Wait... it's Saturday.]
"I can't believe you overslept!" a woman's voice filtered
through the wall of Zoner's room that bordered on the stairwell.
"They're probably halfway there by now."
"Glass houses, Urd," Gryphon replied, the front door crashed
open, and they were gone.
"Holy shit!" Zoner announced when it sank into his brain whose
voice had berated Gryphon. He bounced out of bed and dove for the
porch door, earning himself a headlong sprawl in his still-scattered
comics for his haste, and by the time he extracted himself, Gojira was
roaring off down Elm Street, taking the right onto Sever with more
alacrity than Zoner thought he had ever seen from the old truck.
"What the fuck is going on here?" Zoner demanded, but there
was no one home to answer him -- and in that, as he paused for a
moment to think about it, he found his answer.
"Shit!" he declared, and carefully-but-hastily picked his way
over his comics, snagging clean clothes from the heap-o-laundry and
heading for the bathroom.
If what he suspected was happening, was happening -- it wasn't
good.

"This isn't good."
Gryphon's eyes narrowed in frustration. "Thank you, Urd, I
was aware of that." He didn't bother looking at her; he was much too
busy guiding his truck through traffic to care what she was doing.
"Can't this thing go any faster?"
"This truck's ten years old going on forty. I'm surprised
it's going as fast as it is," replied Gryphon.
'Surprised' was really a mild word for it; the old engine had
over 200,000 miles on it, and Gryphon had a suspicion that the
transmission was starting to go, but here they were, rocketing down
Interstate 580 at a mind-numbing eighty-three miles per hour. At this
speed, he could just keep the red blot of Aoshima's Ferrari in sight,
far ahead on the other side of Lake Quinsigamond.
Of course, going so damn fast on such an important-but-hard-to-
explain mission was just asking for...
... the police to show up.
"Damn!" Gryphon snarled, slamming a hand against the steering
wheel and hitting the brakes.
"What? Why are you slowing down?!"
"Well, you see, Urd," said Gryphon through his teeth, "here in
the real world, there are these people called 'police' whose job it is
to stop regular people like me from doing damnfool things like this."
"But if you stop we'll lose him!"
"And if I don't stop, then soon the nice police car behind us
will be several nice police cars, and then they might set up a nice
police roadblock, and then Ben would go spend some time in the nice
police JAIL and I don't really feel like doing that this weekend!
OK?"
Urd had nothing to say to that, and simply sat quietly fuming
as Gryphon pulled over and composed himself. No need to take it out
on the officer. After all, he's just doing his job.
Hmm. I didn't know the Worcester PD had patrol Neons. How
cute.
The black and white Dodge Neon pulled in behind the truck
(which sat with engine ticking, like a person's leg muscles twitching
after an unexpected run), and the driver got out.
OK... so, -she's- just doing -her- job.
Gryphon could count on one hand the number of times he had
encountered a police officer who was an attractive young woman, if he
discounted reruns of "T.J. Hooker". But here was one now, dressed in
the natty two-tone blue of the Worcester Police Department, short
sleeves, white shoulder cord, white gloves, sensible shoes, long black
hair in a braid. She looked severe, but then, she'd just bagged him
speeding like a maniac, so that was to be expected.
"Hi," was the remarkably original conversation opener Gryphon
selected when she arrived next to his door.
"Good morning," she said. "Do you have any idea how fast you
were going?"
"Eighty-three miles per hour on my dial," replied Gryphon
pleasantly. "What'd you get?"
Officer -- Gryphon had to squint to read her name tag --
Kobayakawa? -- blinked and looked momentarily taken aback, then
replied, "Eighty-one."
"Ah. Well, I thought I might need a new speedometer cable
soon... What do you say we split the difference and call it
eighty-two?"
In the face of this unusual lack of attitude, Officer Miyuki
Kobayakawa couldn't help but smile a little. "You're awfully calm for
someone who's looking at a three-hundred-dollar fine."
Gryphon shrugged philosophically. "Well, when I'm nailed, I'm
nailed. No point in being a jerk about it."
"So what's your hurry, anyway? I probably don't have to tell
you that at speeds like that you're a danger to yourself and everyone
around you."
"Would you believe me if I told you I was in hot pursuit of
an evil man in a red Ferrari who has dishonorable designs on my
housemate's girlfriend?"
Miyuki came close to an actual grin. "Probably not," she
replied with a hint of mischief in her voice.
"Well, then, let's just go with the old reliable 'I guess I
just wasn't paying attention to how fast I was going, Officer.'"
"Works for me," said Officer Kobayakawa.
"Would you like to see my license and registration?"
"Please."
"Coming right up."
Gryphon leaned over to open the glove compartment and retrieve
the truck's registration, and as he did so, Urd muttered to him, "I'm
going to be -sick-."
"Oh, stow it," he replied, fishing the yellow slip of paper
and a proof-of-insurance card out of the plastic pouch in the glove
compartment that held all the important documents. Sitting up, he dug
out his wallet, removed his license and handed the three objects over
to the policewoman. He waited for her to notice that the license and
the registration did not agree as to state.
She didn't disappoint. "Hmm... you're a Massachusetts
resident?"
"For a few months now, yeah. I've been waiting for the
truck's Maine registration to run out before I register it here."
"Well... I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to take care
of that sooner rather than later. Technically, I should cite you for
that too -- " She trailed off, blinking in surprise as something on
his license caught her eye.
"Problem?"
"Oh, uh, no, no problem." She took out a pen and purposefully
filled out a citation. "Sign here."
Gryphon took the citation pad, read the little block of text
informing him that his signature only confirmed receipt of the
citation and was not an admission of guilt, signed, and gave back the
pad and pen. Officer Kobayakawa tore off his copy and handed it to
him along with his license and registration.
"There you are. Please try to keep the speed down, even if
you are on a desperately important mission, OK? It's better for
everybody. And get that truck registered in-state as soon as
possible!"
"Roger wilco, Officer," replied Gryphon. "Be seeing you."
"Sooner than you think," murmured Miyuki as she stepped away
from the truck.
"Pardon?"
"Oh, uh, nothing, sir," replied Officer Kobayakawa, apparently
startled she'd been heard. "Have a nice day."
"I thought police weren't allowed to say that any more," said
Gryphon with a grin.
"Oops!" replied Miyuki, matching it. "Sorry."
"'Sall right," said Gryphon. He put the truck in gear,
flicked on the blinker, and merged with traffic as smoothly as a man
driving a mid-eighties full-size pickup with an oil leak can merge.
"Well, -that- was a sickening display," Urd observed.
"Sorry. I don't usually flirt with law enforcement. Don't
know what came over me," Gryphon replied, guiding Gojira into the
middle lane. "We'll never catch him now... we'll just have to settle
for catching up once we reach the city."
Urd slumped back into the seat, folding her arms and making a
disgruntled noise, but said nothing.
"Say," Gryphon observed cheerfully as he glanced over the
ticket. "She only hit me for ten over! What a sport."

"Well, -that- was a sickening display," observed Officer
Natsumi Tsujimoto as her partner returned to the patrol car. Unlike
Urd's tone, though, there was amusement in Natsumi's.
"Sorry," replied Miyuki. "I don't know what came over me. He
was awfully nice about it, though. He's the only speeder I've ever
had talk me -up- a mile an hour."
"Weird. What was he, some kind of an idiot?"
"No, I don't think so," Miyuki replied. "Just in a strange
mood, maybe. We'll be seeing him again, though, so you'll be able to
decide for yourself sooner or later."
"How do you know that?" Natsumi grinned. "Does he have the
Unmistakable Look of the Habitual Offender?"
"No," admitted Miyuki, "but he lives in the downstairs
apartment in our building."
"D'oh!"

Disaster. That was the only word which would really sum up
the state of affairs in Boston.
Oh, it had started off well enough. Keiichi had found his way
to the Alewife T station without too much trouble. He'd parked his
cycle and everything had gone smoothly, down the escalators, to the
token-vending machines, through the turnstiles and down to the train
level.
Alewife, in Cambridge, is the northern terminus of the Red
Line -- trains only leave it in one direction. They arrive, empty,
are given a cursory inspection, load up and depart, one on either side
of the platform, at intervals of about five minutes. Some distance
past the center of the city, the Red Line forks into two branches; the
eastern one curls out along the coast and ends in Braintree, while the
western one keeps going mostly due south before ending in Ashmont with
a little trolley line continuing to Mattapan.
Where Keiichi and Belldandy were heading, it didn't matter
which ultimate destination the train they got on was heading for --
they were first bound for a point long before the split, still in
Cambridge north of the city proper. They boarded the empty train and
found seats easily; it was one of the newer Red Line trains, with the
cloth seats, all silvery and sleek on the outside and much quieter
inside than the older white-painted trains.
This property of the train allowed them to chat amiably,
albeit aimlessly, through the first two stops, and they left the train
at Harvard Square right on time. By then, the train had filled fairly
well, and the influx of people heading into the city from Harvard
Square Station filled in the gaps fairly well. Large crowds of people
milled here and there on the platform, passing the subway musicians.
There are always musicians hanging around on the platforms at
Harvard Square Station. Today, on the inbound side, there were three,
positioned just far enough apart to be irritatingly dissonant without
one drowning the other out. Two of them were together, a short and
wizened accordionist squeezing out wildly improvised polkas,
accompanied by a bored-looking fat man with a tuba; the other, a
blonde girl with the world's most battered guitar.
And well toward the two-man oompah band's end, Toshiyuki
Aoshima slipped off the train and into the crowd, lurking unnoticed
behind his unsuspecting quarry.
It was a pleasant fall day in Harvard Square, and, as always,
there were plenty of things to see and shops to visit. They meandered
through Mass Army-Navy, looking for a new winter coat for Keiichi,
whose battered yellowish jacket wasn't going to be up to the full
force of a Massachusetts winter. They didn't find anything that
caught Keiichi's fancy, and decided to try the one in Kenmore Square
later on. They browsed the somewhat musty confines of New England
Comics. They rode the narrow escalator up into the top level of The
Garage and checked out the anime stock at Man from Atlantis, poked
through the shelves and racks at Newbury Comics (actually a record
store in the main) and the Pandemonium bookstore, were mutually
embarrassed by Condom World, and then wandered into the little
freestanding kiosk by the escalator which sold odd jewelry. Belldandy
explained the runes to Keiichi in broad strokes, and he bought her a
pendant bearing the one she said was attributed often to her, Isz, the
rune of stability and constancy.
Then they went downstairs and had some lunch at Sab's Grill &
Sushi. Keiichi's initial awkwardness melted like snow in the face of
Belldandy's radiant happiness, which would probably have been unabated
even had he taken her to someplace which ran completely counter to her
own personality and preferences, like, say, a tractor pull, as long as
it was he that took her there. He didn't understand that as such, but
that was all right -- he didn't have to.
Everything was, in short, going marvelously.
Until the time came for them to get back on the train.

Keiichi had always gotten a certain strange thrill out of
subways - a normally reticent and peaceful soul, he took a perverse
joy in elbowing his way onto a crowded Tokyo train, and fighting his
way back off at something approximating the appropriate station. By
those lights, the T was a bit of a disappointment; people actually got
on and off in well-mannered streams rather than huge,
white-blood-cell-like clusters. The only thrill was to be had in
arriving at the platform as the train was just about to leave, and
running for the doors - which he and Belldandy were doing just now, in
fact, hand in hand, he with a little bit of a lead.
"Come on, we can make it," Keiichi called, and she laughed,
easily keeping stride with him. She was fully capable of overtaking
or even outrunning him easily, of course, but that wouldn't be polite
- it was his game, after all.
Little did they know that, from the corner of the platform,
they were being watched.
"Perfect," murmured Aoshima to himself. He raised a small
radio to his lips, thumbed the push-to-talk and said calmly, "Now,
gentlemen."
It was at that moment that two large fellows in college
sweatshirts sprang into action, one getting off the train, one getting
on. They did play football, but this fact shouldn't be held against
them, in and of itself. Both were actually fairly nice fellows; true,
Aoshima had paid them to do what they were doing, but they thought it
was all in the name of a friendly prank. And lest you think them
stupid, the one getting on the train was maintaining a B average with
a major in English literature at Boston University, while the one
getting off had a solid A average in mathematics at MIT.
All of which is largely irrelevant to the fact that, when
their paths crossed those of Keiichi and Belldandy in an interaction
complex enough that it would take a Zonkastrator to make it entirely
clear, they had the effect of pushing Keiichi onto the train with
greater alacrity, while pushing Belldandy -away- from the train.
Simple physics coupled with a cursory knowledge of anatomy will
confirm that this act separated them.
Not only that, but a moment later, the doors of the train
closed and, with unfeeling electric grace, it swept Keiichi away -
without Belldandy.

AND NOW, A BRIEF COSMOTECHNICAL DIGRESSION

Now, as anyone who is familiar with the workings of the
Centurionics Valhalla (tm) Celestial Wish-Fulfillment System knows,
this sort of thing is supposed to have been impossible since 1992, the
year the System Software was upgraded to version 7.0. (Well, 7.04c1,
to be precise. 7.0 never quite worked, and the administrators in
Heaven know better than to install a .0 release on a production
system.) The major improvement to that software for version 7 was the
introduction of the "Ultimate Force" (a name obviously invented by a
Marketing executive), a mechanism for wish protection.
The way it works, in broad strokes, is like this: some guy (eg
Keiichi) makes a wish which grants him some boon or another (eg
Belldandy). The transaction is entered into the Valhalla (tm)
system's database. The wishmaker (eg Keiichi) and the boon granted
(eg Belldandy) are both given an ethereal mark (never mind how it
works; the physics are quite beyond twentieth-century Earthly
understanding). Behind the scenes on the Metatron (the big UNIX
machine in the sky), ufcd (the Ultimate Force daemon, pronounced
"uff-cee-dee") polls all marked wishmakers and their boons constantly,
running the database from top to bottom and starting again at the top.
This currently takes about a second. It then checks the results
against a very clever destiny-correlation algorithm to make certain
that they aren't being separated or in danger of being separated
against their will (assuming, of course, both parties -have- will,
which obviously isn't the case if the wishmaker wished for, say, a new
television set).
If they aren't, all is well - ufcd goes on with its job. If
they ARE, ufcd forks off a child process whose job it is to handle the
situation. The Ultimate Force daemon is smart; it knows lots of ways
to handle situations, and the child processes have a modicum of
autonomy, giving them considerable flexibility in managing crises such
as this. An ufcd child in this situation might smite the two Blocker
Lemmings with lightning, although ufcd is programmed to do things in
the least noticeable or most forgettable way possible, to avoid
jarring the senses of reality of the unenlightened onlookers there
inevitably are in these situations. Or it might simply choose to
arrange events so that Belldandy ends up on the train anyway, or plunk
Keiichi, confused but unharmed, back on the platform.
This time, though, ufcd failed to do -anything-.
Why?
It wasn't running.
The official cause entered into the system logbook will be
"administrative error".

AND NOW, BACK TO THE EPISODE

"Keiichi - !" cried Belldandy, but it was too late; the train
had already pulled away. She caught a glimpse of Keiichi's face in
the train door's small window; he was shouting something, though she
had no idea what.
"Gosh, I'm sorry," said the large fellow in the MIT sweatshirt
who had run into her. "I should pay more attention to where I'm
going. I was in such a hurry I didn't see you."
Belldandy was too polite to ignore him, her situation
notwithstanding; she graciously accepted his apology, and after he
departed the platform, she stood there looking at the empty tracks and
wondering frantically what she should do. Should she get on the next
train? Perhaps Keiichi would get off at the next station and wait for
her. But what if he got on the next outbound train at that station
and came BACK to Harvard Square? That wouldn't do at all; they could
miss each other all day playing that game. Maybe she should go back
to Alewife. He'd have to go there sooner or later to get home. It
might be dangerous to hang around a parking garage all day, though,
and it would certainly be boring. Who knew how long he would wait or
ride the rails between the two stations before giving up or having the
idea that she might have gone back to wait?
"Excuse me," said a polite voice to her left.
"Miss... Wishbringer, isn't it?"
She turned to find Toshiyuki Aoshima smiling at her. "Oh,
Mr. Aoshima," she said. "Hello."
"You have the air of a troubled woman about you," said Aoshima
solicitously. "Is something wrong?"

"Damn, damn, damn!" Skuld cursed, then looked reflexively over
her shoulder. No one had heard her, but she reminded herself to be
more careful. Frumpy old Jean, the archangel who managed the
Information Services group, disapproved of his employees cursing,
especially the younger ones - and Skuld was by far the youngest
employee in the Celestial Network Operations Center. It did no good
for Skuld to draw herself to her full height and pointedly inform the
old angel that while -he- was merely an -archangel-, -she- was a
full-blown -goddess-, a spark of God Himself. The Almighty had
informed Jean of His youngest daughter's temper and bade the Archangel
of Lightning pay no attention; and besides, her full height was a good
eleven inches shorter than Jean's. She was, after all, only thirteen.
And so, Skuld did the jobs she was assigned, for the most part
without grumbling. Though debugging the Metatron was rather less than
a glamour assignment, Skuld knew she was destined for greater things
someday - how could she not, being the Norn of the Future? - and
anyway, the truth of the matter was that she rather enjoyed the job.
She was now cursing only because she'd just noticed a broken wish
alarm, a remarkably rare occurrance since the installation of Valhalla
7.04c1. Plunging into the syslogs, she searched for the cause of the
ufcd failure which such an alarm made obvious.
"A-ha," she murmured, narrowing her eyes at the syslog line
she'd found:

Oct 14 17:35:51 metatron ufcd: cant open /var/spool/wishes/bringers/verthandi
File is locked by root
Oct 14 17:35:52 metatron ufcd: exiting on signal 666

Skuld scowled. Signal 666 was some Valhalla programmer's idea
of being cute; it was the signal code for a panic exit made by ufcd
when one of its devices was unpollable. A stupid limitation, one to
which a fix had been promised Real Soon Now but which no one in the
CNOC expected to be repaired sooner than the next scheduled Valhalla
upgrade. The problem arose in the fact that wcheck, the CNOC's
monitoring tool (a home-grown application written in perl), locked the
data node belonging to whatever wishbringer it was monitoring. So,
wcheck a wishbringer when ufcd wanted to poll it, and you'd crash the
daemon. If the daemon noticed wcheck was running when it -started- a
poll, it'd wait until the wcheck process was gone, but a wcheck
started in the middle of an ufcd poll could screw it up, if the
wishbringer being wchecked hadn't yet been polled.
Worse, bringing the daemon back after crashing it out was a
non-trivial task, requiring a complete re-hashing of the wish
database. Before -that- could be done, any outstanding wish alarms
had to be manually repaired.
Which meant that until Belldandy found Keiichi, the stupid
thing was going to go on being broken. If Charlie Shumway in Seattle
chose that particular moment to drop his lucky quarter down a storm
drain, that would open -another- wish alarm that someone would have to
clear - by going down the storm drain, finding the coin and giving it
to Charlie - before the daemon could be restarted. And so on. Wish
alarm situations could drag on for days and waste the time of every
field agent in the Relief Office. Everyone hated them.
Skuld checked the sudo log to see which CNOC operator had
wchecked during the poll interval, and wasn't surprised to see that it
had been Urd.
Muttering darkly, she hit the button on her desk phone that
paged Jean. This one was going to require escalation to Management.

A couple of miles from Alewife, Gryphon, who had been
developing a tension headache and trying vainly to relax for the
entire drive, almost leaped out of his skin as a high-pitched beeping
filled the pickup cabin.
"Relax," said Urd. "It's just my pager." She pulled it from
her belt, squinting at the small display. "What the hell do you want,
Skuld?" she murmured, thumbing the button that scrolled through tiny
screens of text. "... oh, -no-," she added a moment later.
"Something -else- going wrong?" asked Gryphon as he guided
Gojira onto the Alewife Station off-ramp.
"Maybe," Urd replied, putting the pager back on her belt.
"Maybe very wrong."
"Oh, well, that's reassuring," Ben muttered to nobody in
particular. "What is it now?"
"You wouldn't understand the particulars - but something has
separated Belldandy from Keiichi, and that is not supposed to happen."
She seemed quite emphatic about that. "So we need to do something
about it. Do you know anyone who knows anything about something
called a 'red line'? It's in Boston somewhere and right now it's the
problem."
Ben let a part of his mind ponder that briefly while the rest
concentrated on his driving. "The Red Line is one of the main
subway lines through Boston. Rat knows it better than I do - he
rides it all the time."
"'Rat?' Not what one would call the most appetizing of
appellations."
"Aren't -we- using the fifty-cent words today. Don't let the
nickname fool you. He's really an okay guy. And he knows more about
Boston than anyone else I could get ahold of. Speaking of which, you
wouldn't happen to have a cellphone to go with the fancy pager, would
you?"
Urd produced a small lump of plastic from the same nonexistant
pocket that held her pager. "What's the number?"
"I don't know; my big white-board is hanging on the wall in
the apartment. Call information. He lives in Holbrook, last name
Pieri." As Urd flipped open the phone he added, "The number is 411
down here."
"Teach your grandmother to suck eggs," growled Urd.
"You know, those phones will give you brain cancer," Gryphon
replied affably.

HOLBROOK, MA 10h05

The telephone next to Rat's head chirped twice in rapid
succession. It would have been annoying had it done so while he was
still asleep. But as it was, his brown eyes had spent the last half
hour or so just staring at the ceiling. Long, brown hair which
normally would be tied in a tail that reached halfway down his back
was a disheveled tangle around his pillows.
Propping himself up against the wall beside his futon, he
answered it with a tired-sounding, "Hello?"
"Rat?"
He blinked. "Yeah?"
"It's Ben. We have a bit of a problem here and... I didn't
wake you up, did I?"
Rat looked at his alarm clock. "No, but what are you doing up
so early?"
"Sorry, no time. How soon can you meet us at Alewife T
Station?"
"Ummm... I need to take a shower... call it an hour and a
half, give or take a bit."
"We'll meet you at Braintree in an hour, then. That okay?"
"Yeah, sure. Uh, laters."
"Bye."
There was a click as Ben hung up on his end.
Rat looked at his clock again, rubbed the stubble on his chin,
and figured he would shave while he was at it.

Toshiyuki Aoshima stood on the platform of the Red Line
station in Harvard Square, chin in hand, looking quite thoughtful. He
was very proud of his "thoughtful" expression. He had spent a good
deal of time and invested a lot of effort in cultivating it - a look
of deep consideration, suggesting the workings of a thousand hidden
gears and levers, every fiber of his being bent toward the solution of
some vexing quandary. When used in situations where observers were
led to believe all that harnessed computing power was being directed
at -their- problem, the look had a tendency to instill tremendous
feelings of gratitude and indebtedness, even if he had so far failed
to do anything but shape his face into a particular expression.
"Well," he said at length - he found that counting, mentally,
to 20 made for just about the most efficient length of time to use
The Look. He knew exactly what he was going to suggest - after all,
he'd planned the whole day in advance - but achieving the desired
effect required him to make it look spontaneous.
"Well," he repeated, still looking thoughtful, "where were you
planning to go next?"

Fifty-five minutes after taking Ben's call, Rat was looking
quite a bit less like a drowned example of his nicknamesake, though he
seemed no less puzzled by Ben's calling him at least two hours earlier
than his friend's normal Saturday wakeup time of noon.
He pulled his brilliant white Mercury Cougar into the parking
garage at the Braintree MBTA station, a much less imposing structure
than its counterpart at the other end of the Red Line. With only
three small levels, split into two slightly offset sides to deal with
the slope of the hill it had been constructed on, it was less than
half the size of the garage at Alewife, and as a result it filled up
much more quickly during the week, so he usually took a bus to the
station on his way to work. On a weekend it was mostly empty; Rat had
no problem finding a parking spot at ground level near the entrance to
the station.
The station itself resembled Alewife not at all. The Red Line
tracks south of the Boston city limits are on the surface, rather than
under it, and most of the stations were built to match, with stairs
and escalators up to the platform level instead of down.
Sauntering up to the turnstyles in the station like he did it
every day -- which in fact he did -- he was not what many would call a
preposessing sight. If he tried he could make his several inches less
than six feet look quite good in a tuxedo, which he did the previous
summer at a friend's wedding. Today he had gone for his more
customary faded jeans, a somewhat worn T-shirt (the last of his Bloom
County Ts: "Billy and the Boingers" featuring Opus on Tongue -- it was
on top of the clean laundry pile), denim jacket, and black walking
shoes.
"Timing is everything," he said to himself when he noticed Ben
coming down the escalator from the platform above the station. He
made a brief mental note of the woman behind him, the only other
person on the escalator. With a practiced motion Rat removed his
wallet from his pocket, his train pass from the wallet, swiped the
card through the reader at the turnstyles, and paused, not hearing the
sharp thunk of the mechanism that locked the turnstyle unlocking. He
took a step back, a step to the side, then forward again, repeating
the swipe in the next turnstyle's reader. That one immediately made a
satisfying thunk and Rat pushed his way through the gate, restoring
his pass and wallet. There's always one that isn't working, he
reflected. Modern technology at work.
Ben was on his way over to the turnstyles. Rat waved. "Hey,
what's up?" he asked. Then he realized that the attractive woman that
he though was behind Ben was actually with him. A part of his mind
figured that if she had been wearing heels she would be that much
taller than him. Another part noted that she was appraising him much
as one would what the cat dragged in. "Nice to meet you, too," he
deadpanned at her before Ben could get a word in, then turned back to
his friend. "Mind telling me what's going on?"
"Right. Rat, this is Urd. Urd, Rat. I'll explain on the
train."

11h25 PARK STREET STATION, RED LINE

As the train rumbled to a stop, Rat said, "so, I'm supposed to
be looking for a Japanese kid, about 5 feet tall wearing a rumpled
yellow jacket and a maroon baseball cap." He looked up as the doors
ground open, as he usually did in the downtown areas, out of a mild
paranoia. Besides, if he was supposed to be looking for someone, he
figured now was as good a time as any. He made note of usual riders
to be found on a weekend, a much more varied cross section of the
population than normally found during rush hours.
Rat didn't believe in luck, but he did believe in karma, and
that sometimes the most unexpected things happen, good or bad. But he
was not thinking of it at that moment, because as the boarding
passengers cleared the doors he saw a smallish-looking guy, wearing a
yellow jacket and a WPI cap, sitting dejectedly on a bench on the
central platform. He jumped up and managed to catch the train's doors
before they slid shut, causing them to reopen, then waved and called
Ben and Urd to follow.
"Ben!" said Keiichi, jumping to his feet with a look of relief
on his face as he recognized his approaching housemate. "How did you
find me? Have you seen Belldandy?"
"Dumb luck," said Gryphon, who did believe in it, "and that's
the next step. Where did you lose her?"
"Harvard Square. We got tangled up in a couple of big guys, I
wound up on the train and she got stuck on the platform. I went back,
but she'd gone... so I went back and forth a couple of times,
but... well, now I don't really know what to do." Keiichi seemed to
notice Gryphon's company for the first time. "I'm sorry, uh... who's
this?"
"Keiichi, this is Rich Pieri - " said Ben.
"Call me Rat," said Rat.
" - and - "
"I'm Urd, Belldandy's older sister," said Urd.
"Sister? I didn't know Belldandy had a sister," said Keiichi.
"Who's Belldandy?" wondered Rat.
"My sister," said Urd, as if it were the most obvious,
informative thing in the world.
"Keiichi's girlfriend," said Gryphon.
Keiichi reddened. "Well, sort of," he said.
"That's exactly the kind of attitude that's gotten you in this
mess, Morisato," said Urd.
"Urd, not now," said Gryphon.
"Huh?" said Keiichi.
"Where are you parked?" said Rat, trying to inject an element
of practicality into the discussion. "Alewife?"
"Huh? Oh, yes," said Keiichi, nodding.
"Wouldn't it make sense for her to go back to your car and
wait for you there? You've got to go back there to get home," said
Rat.
"I've looked there, she wasn't there," said Keiichi, too
flustered to bother pointing out that he didn't have a car anyway.
Rat frowned. "Well, that makes it a little more complicated.
What's she look like?"
"Well," said Keiichi, "um... she's... about my height... she's
got long brown hair... and... " He paused, looked a little
embarrassed, and added, "Well, uh, she's very pretty."
Rat nodded. "Short, long brown hair, very pretty. That
narrows it down."
"Oh!" said Keiichi, brightening. "And she's got markings on
her face, kind of like Urd's. It's, uh... " Keiichi ground to a
momentary halt as he realized he didn't want to blurt out that
Belldandy was a goddess right there in the subway station. He worried
about what might happen if the fact got out, and although Ben and his
friend were probably trustworthy, he didn't want to take chances.
Still, he had to finish that statement SOMEHOW, so he opted to go with
the half-truth that is not a true lie.
Keiichi wasn't a very good dissembler, though. "... Some kind
of religious thing... or something," he finished lamely.
"That's not makeup?" Rat wondered, taking another look at Urd.
"Nope," said Urd.
"Must have stung a bit."
"Were there any buskers on the platform at Harvard?" asked
Gryphon suddenly.
"Were there what?" asked Keiichi.
"Buskers, street musicians," Gryphon replied.
"Um... yeah!" said Keiichi. "Yeah, there was. There was a
blonde girl with an old guitar."
"Sounds like Mary-Lou," said Rat with a smile.
"Well, let's head up there and see if she's still there. Maybe
she noticed which way Bel went."
"Good idea," said Rat. "Let's. And maybe get some food, I
skipped breakfast."

Belldandy was beginning to pass from "concerned" to "downright
worried". Not about anything Mr. Aoshima had said or done - he had
been extremely helpful and solicitous, and she was grateful for his
assistance - but because they had so far been unable to locate
Keiichi. Their quest had taken them all over Cambridge and Boston,
from Kendall to Kenmore, into all the stores she and Keiichi had
planned to visit, down Newbury Street and around the silent bulk of
Fenway Park, and they hadn't seen any sign of him.
By now it was nearly dark, and would be getting cold. Bel
wasn't worried for herself; she was a Norse goddess, she could handle
colder weather than an October night in Boston could supply. But
Keiichi had had only his thin yellow jacket, and if he had given up
and gone home, he might catch a cold, or worse. The proprietor of the
Kenmore Army-Navy hadn't seen him, so he hadn't followed up on their
plan to get a coat there. But where could he have gone?
And what on Earth or in Heaven could have happened to the
Ultimate Force?
"Maybe we should ask the police for help," Belldandy mused as
she and Aoshima walked back down Lansdowne Street.
"I'm afraid they can't do anything until a person's been
missing 24 hours," Aoshima replied. "Besides, surely it's not as bad
as all that. He's probably still wandering around the Red Line.
Listen," he said, as though the idea had just occurred to him. "I'm a
member of a club not too far from here. Why don't we stop there for
dinner?" He adjusted his tie and smiled. "I have quite a network of
associates in Boston. I'm sure if I put the word out from the Cobalt
to look for him, one of them will turn him up before the evening is
out. They'll bring him to the club, problem solved."
"That's very kind of you, Mr. Aoshima," said Belldandy. "I
hate to be a bother - "
"Oh, no bother at all!" Aoshima said breezily. "As an
upperclassman it's my duty to help you and Morisato in any way I can!"
"Membership clubs are quite formal, aren't they?" Belldandy
inquired. "I haven't anything to wear... "
"I'm sure we can find you something," said Aoshima. "The
Cobalt Club has had ladies within its walls before. Don't worry about
it!"
"Well... all right, then. I certainly appreciate all you're
doing to help."
"No trouble at all, my dear. No trouble at all."

Rat came back from his conversation with Mary-Lou and joined
Urd, Gryphon and Keiichi next to the Fruitopia machine. As the singer/
guitarist started her mellow, best-guess-at-the-lyrics rendition of
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" behind him, he made his report.
"Mary-Lou remembers seeing you get separated," he said to
Keiichi. "Belldandy stood on the platform as though she didn't know
what to do, then a guy in a suit showed up. They talked for a little
while, and then she left with him on the next train." Rat scowled.
"She said it looked funny to her, that the guy in the suit had watched
the whole thing go down. It was too convenient."
"As if the guy in the suit had set the whole thing up,"
Gryphon mused, and Rat nodded.
"Who would do something like that?" Keiichi wondered.
"Toshiyuki Aoshima," said a voice behind Keiichi, making him
jump and yelp in fright. He whirled to see Zoner standing there, his
denim jacket slung over his shoulder. "Sorry," Zoner went on. "I
don't know how it is I keep sneaking up on people."
"I'd have figured you for being in bed at least another two
hours," Gryphon observed.
"Who can sleep with you and whoever-she-is banging out of the
house at twenty after nine? Who -are- you, anyway?" Zoner demanded
of Urd, shifting gears on the fly. "And what was up with the magic
trick you pulled in my bed last night?"
Rat stifled a bark of laughter, earning a dirty look from Urd
before she said to Zoner, "My name's Urd. I'm Belldandy's sister."
Zoner shot a look at Gryphon. "Are we living a college
version of 'Bewitched'?"
"Something like that," Gryphon replied.
Zoner shrugged. "OK, as long as we're clear on it."
Keiichi, who had stood silent and puzzled through this whole
exchange, suddenly burst out, "Why would Toshi Aoshima - "
Then he stopped, as the answer became painfully obvious.
" - That - that - !"
"Bastard," Zoner offered.
"Son of a bitch," countered Gryphon.
"Slimeball," Rat opined.
"Creep," said Urd.
" - Right!" sputtered Keiichi. "Where could he have taken
her? Why would she go with him? Oh, my God, if anything happens to
her... "
"She probably doesn't realize what he's up to," Zoner said.
"I watched him at work last night. He's very smooth. You two aren't
cynical enough to spot him."
"Where could they have gone?" Keiichi wondered again.
Gryphon looked at Urd. "I don't suppose you've got a Norn
detector in that utility belt of yours."
"No," said Urd, pulling out her portable phone, "but Skuld
might be able to find her."

"Use the Metatron for an agent search in the middle of a
wish-alarm crisis?!" Skuld hissed into her desk phone. "Are you
nuts?! You're in enough trouble as it is! Don't try to drag me down
with you!"
"Skuld, this isn't about me, it's about Belldandy," Urd
replied, her tone clipped. "I know you'd never do a favor for me, but
I'm not -asking- for me."
Skuld scowled at the phone.
She especially hated it when Urd was right.
"OK, fine," she said. "If I get caught I'll be busted back to
Third Class Provisional... "
"So don't get caught," said Urd. "You're smooth. You won't
get caught."
Skuld said, "I'll call you when I've found her," and banged
the phone down. It only occurred to her after she'd started the trace
that Urd had just paid her a compliment.

"My goodness!" Toshiyuki Aoshima exclaimed as Belldandy
emerged from the room she'd been lent to change in. "You look
absolutely stunning."
For once in his life, Aoshima was completely sincere. The
gown old Giles the club chamberlain had rustled up for her to wear was
of a creamy, slightly metallic satin, almost like gold leaf, with
broad straps but no sleeves and a fairly daring neckline. From there
down it was essentially a sheath, not indecently tight but nicely
conformal. The girl who had left it behind at the Cobalt had looked
vampish and sexy in it; Belldandy looked demure. She'd done something
simple but elegant with her hair and the shoes she'd been lent fit all
right with a bit of tissue stuffed into the toes. The gray fur wrap
around her shoulders offset the white-gold sheen of the dress quite
nicely.
She smiled and blushed a little. "I feel a bit strange
borrowing someone else's clothes," she said.
"Nonsense, not a word of it!" Aoshima replied. "That gown was
made for you to wear tonight, I'm sure of it." He offered his arm.
"Shall we?"
She took the proffered arm diffidently, and as they went
toward the stairs that led down to the club's restaurant and lounge,
she asked, "Is there any news of Keiichi?"
"Not yet, my dear, but my associates are scouring every
station on the Red and Green Lines. It's a big system, that kind of
thing takes time, but don't worry - they'll find him."
And keep him far away from here, Aoshima assured himself. His
smile broadened a little at the thought.

One of Skuld's xterms beeped, and she took a moment from more
log-scrounging to check the message.

wtrace: verthandi: is on sw1
wtrace: verthandi: is at al3329.5992.1039
wtrace: verthandi: alert: wish alarm condition

Skuld grinned. "Gotcha," she said, and picked up the
telephone.

It took a mad crosstown dash in Gojira and the Daytona from
Hell to get the five seekers to the Cobalt. There wasn't anywhere to
park that was convenient; the club's parking lot was valet-parked and
members-only, and the streets around the club were Boston's usual
congested mess. Zoner found a quasi-legal spot near a Dumpster to
leave the Daytona, reasoning that nobody was likely to want to empty
the Dumpster on a Saturday night. Gryphon left Gojira semi-sort-of
alongside a hydrant, hoping that if a cop came by he'd let it slide,
and unconsciously resigning himself to paying -another- ticket for the
privilege of being on this expedition.
Getting into the Cobalt presented less of a challenge than
they thought it would. They couldn't get in through any frontal
channel, obviously, but sneaking in the back wasn't all that tough.
Nobody paid much attention to the comings and goings of the kitchen
staff, including the kitchen staff itself. They acted as if they
belonged there and nobody paid them any attention, and soon they were
all crouching behind a potted palm tree, peering out into the Art Deco
vault that was the main room of the Cobalt Club. There was a decent
jazz orchestra playing, some ornately-dressed people dancing, and a
few more being served by tuxedoed waiters at the tables arranged
around the floor.
Two of the people at the tables were Belldandy and Aoshima.
Keiichi was about to protest, but Rat waved him to silence and
tried to hear what Aoshima was saying, which was a challenge with the
music and restaurant noises in the air.
" - ease don't worry. I'm sure he's fine. By now one of my
associates has probably found him and is bringing him down. Just
enjoy the - "
"He has people out looking for me?" Keiichi wondered. "That
doesn't make any sense, if he set it up so that we'd be separated on
purpose. He's lying to her!"
"His sort usually does," Zoner said, his voice a mixture of
sadness and anger.
"I can fix that," Urd said with a cruel smile. "Rat, do you
see that blond waiter?"
Rat looked. "Uh-huh."
"Would you say he's about your size?"
Rat grinned. "I like the way you think."
"What about me?" Keiichi said. "I have to do -something-."
"You go with Zoner, find a formalwear shop and get some better
clothes."
"Clothes?!" Keiichi blurted.
"You want to be suitably dressed when you ride in on your
white horse to save your lady, don't you?"
"All-Nite Tux on Bradford," said Rat. "Left at the lights,
three blocks down on the right."
"Let's go," said Zoner. He and Keiichi went back to the
kitchen.
"As for you two," Urd said, "listen carefully."

It was too bad that the blond fellow had to take a clouting
and be stuffed into a laundry basket, but that, Rat mused, was the lot
in life of extras in caper movies.
He looked down at the small glass vial Urd had given him. It
was about the size of his thumb tip, capped with brass, and contained
a thick blue liquid that seemed to be glowing. Urd hadn't explained
exactly what it was, but that was all right. Rat got the feeling he'd
be finding out soon enough.
He smiled and shoved his long hair down the back of his
collar. It itched, but it made him look just clean-cut enough to
pass as a waiter if nobody looked too closely at him. It wasn't the
best of disguises, but it would have to do - he certainly looked the
part better than Gryphon, and anyway none of the waiters' tuxes would
have fit the bigger man.

"Okay," said Gryphon, watching as Rat performed the
planned-upon modifications to a carafe of water, placed it on a tray,
and prepared to become a waiter. "Rat's just about ready to do the
deed."
"Great -- oh, crap! I think the pigeon's getting ready to ask
Belldandy to dance. If they move away from the table now, there's a
good chance Rat will get waylaid by somebody else while they're away
-- and I think we both know how bad that'd be, right?" Urd replied.
"Right. So what do we do about it?"
She pondered for a second, her green eyes narrowing as she
watched Rat make his way toward the table Aoshima and Belldandy were
at, and then they seemed to light up with a sudden idea.
"Listen," she said, turning to Gryphon and seizing his
shoulders. "Can you dance?"
"No," he replied. "Why?"
"Because you're about to learn," she replied. Before he could
protest, she dragged him behind the potted palm and did something
unspeakable to him.

Toshiyuki Aoshima couldn't remember the last time an evening
had gone so perfectly. He was not -surprised- that it was, mind you;
his ego would not permit such a thing. His confidence was running
high, and everything he'd seen so far this evening had merely served
to confirm the unbeatability of the evening's combination. The
atmosphere of the Cobalt Club, the gentility, the food, and, of
course, his own unparallelled wit and conversational skill, were all
working at full power. By the end of the night, he was quite certain
he'd have Belldandy eating out of his hand -- so to speak.
[The management feels compelled, at this point, to apologize
for Mr. Aoshima's frame of mind. Bear in mind that he is, after all,
a pig, and as such, he's -supposed- to offend you.]
"Belldandy, my dear," he said, reaching across the table to
take her hand. "Would you care to -- "
He was interrupted by a sudden roll of thunder from the
bandstand which punctuated a drop in the house lighting. Turning in
his chair, he saw the Cobalt Club Orchestra's drummer pounding out a
swinging intro rhythm, a classic swing pattern that had everyone in
the club tapping their feet in very short order. He was taken aback
not so much by that as by the man standing in front of the bandstand,
though -- and so, with a shock of recognition and a sharp intake of
breath, was Belldandy.
Gryphon was standing at the top of the band platform, his arms
folded across his chest, tapping his foot to the rhythm. He was
dressed uncharacteristically for Gryphon, in a hyper-sharp, navy-blue,
pin-striped suit and narrow black tie, a rose in his lapel, a black
snap-brim fedora on his head, and the look on his face was one of
rakish expectation and glee.
As the beat rolled out from the drummer, he bounded along with
the rhythm down the steps to the dance floor (which was clearing so
rapidly an observer might think it was on fire), sliding to a halt on
the smooth soles of his spit-polished black dress shoes. He threw
away his hat, and the motion left his arms open to receive his dance
partner.
Belldandy's disbelief became complete when she realized that
the stunning woman her housemate was dancing with was her older sister
Urd. She, too, had changed clothes, to a simple strapless dress made
of black velvet, the knee-length skirt slit up to her waist on the
left side.
And then they danced.
Swing music has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, but
even when it wasn't heard anywhere outside of old records and National
Public Radio, people recognized "Sing, Sing, Sing". Benny Goodman and
his Orchestra made it famous; it was one of their best-known numbers.
It's got a part that sounds like a spy movie theme, and a part that
sounds like a speakeasy, and shuffling drum solos throughout, and a
massive crashing ending. It's shown up in about every movie about the
European Theater of World War II.
This particular performance was magnificent. The horns filled
the room and the drums pounded to the beat of the hearts of everybody
in it, and when the clarinet raised its reedy voice about the
orchestra the first time, a few of the aficionados in the group
recognized the man wielding it, impossibly, as a man it could not
possibly be: the late Benny Goodman himself.
But most people weren't concerned with the impossible
orchestra, magnificent though they were. Most people were watching
the improbable couple on the dance floor as they, metaphorically
speaking, tore it up. The man did not look particularly suited for
the things his body was doing. He was a bit short and quite stout,
the sort of man you expect to see in a comfortable armchair.
It took tailoring, and a good deal of it, to make clothes hang
on Gryphon's ungainly frame so that they looked elegant, and the suit
he was wearing had all it needed. In that suit and chain he reminded
the more literary members of the audience of a young Nero Wolfe
(despite the fact that Wolfe, by all accounts, was an athlete in his
youth and only attained his legendary corpulence in middle age).
Still, he moved well for a big man, and he carried most of his
extra bulk around the middle where it didn't impede his steps. He
moved with surprising lightness on his feet and his face wore a look
of gleeful sensuality.
The men in the crowd at the Cobalt tonight weren't looking at
him, anyway. They were looking at the woman he was dancing with, and
only took note of her partner so as to regard him with impersonal
envy. Whoever she was, wherever she had come from, she gave the
impression of smoldering, barely-contained desire for the fat man in
the blue suit. That had to be part of the act, of course, but it was
convincing.
All eyes were on the dancing pair as they swayed, swung,
jumped and leaned to the jamming beat of the band. Aoshima didn't
even notice when his glass of water was refilled by the waiter with
his hair stuffed down the back of his shirt, a waiter who immediately
slipped away into one of the back rooms to pour the rest of his water
down the laundry drain.
The song ended with a flourish, and as it did, the fat man and
his stunning companion seemed to vanish into the shadows beyond the
bright lights of the dance floor. Applause rang throughout the room.
Aoshima felt hot and nervous, vaguely threatened, although he couldn't
imagine why. He picked up his water glass and drained it.
Rat, Urd, and a sweating, panting Gryphon peered out from the
potted palm and watched tensely.
Aoshima put down the water glass, got out his handkerchief and
mopped his forehead. Belldandy, still puzzled - what on Earth could
Urd be doing here, dancing with her housemate? - looked across the
table at him and noticed his discomfiture.
"Mr. Aoshima, are you all right?" she asked.
He swallowed. My God, the caring look in her eyes as she
asked that. She barely knew him and she was really worried! What
loveliness of character. What utter malleability! His heart hammered
in his chest, but the visions of beauty and peace couldn't last. His
baser instincts rumbled in the back of his mind. He mopped at his
forehead again, looked around for more water, didn't find any and
swallowed hard again. His mouth was dry. His eyes felt like burning
coals. God, his heart! Her eyes! The creamy flesh revealed by the
gown's decolletage!
Aoshima jumped to his feet, his eyes glowing with a feral
light, and he snarled, "All right, out of that dress, by God! I've
got to have you right now!"
Belldandy was so shocked, she momentarily had nothing to say.
She got up slowly, embarrassed by the eyes of everyone around them as
the scene stilled more and more conversations and got more and more
notice.
"Mr. Aoshima, you're not well - " she said.
"Well enough!" Aoshima roared. He seized her shoulders, his
fingers leaving red marks against her white skin. "Off with it!
You're mine and I'll have you!"
Gryphon, adrenaline and God knows what else still pumping
through him from whatever Urd had done to him, balled his fists and
started to step forward. Urd clamped a hand on his shoulder and
dragged him back.
"My sister can take care of herself," said Urd. "Watch and
learn."
"Mr. Aoshima," Belldandy tried again, in a cooler tone, her
eyes narrowing a little bit, "you're hurting me. Stop it right now.
You're sick, you need to lie down."
"Oh, I'll lie down all right," Aoshima leered. "But don't
worry - I won't hurt you. I'll be very gentle... " He cackled.
People were starting to gather in a loose circle. There were
mutterings about the police.
"Mr. Aoshima," Belldandy said, her voice now completely cold
and her eyes as hard as stone, "unhand me -this instant-."
"No need to play hard to get," Aoshima said, and giggled.
"Come on, then. Give Toshi a kiss." He leaned into her face.
It was as though he'd kissed a live circuit breaker. The next
thing he knew, Toshiyuki Aoshima was lying sprawled on the buffet
table covered in shrimp cocktails and ice chips, his whole face
stinging and numb. The second or two it must have taken him to travel
from Belldandy's side to his current position were totally erased from
his mind.
Whatever had hit him had also lifted the red fog of... of
-whatever- had come over him. He sat up and felt at his face, trying
to piece together the last few moments. When it all came back to him,
he looked up in horror.
Belldandy stood by the table, gathering her wrap around her
shoulders and looking at him with a mixture of scorn and
disappointment in her lovely eyes.
"It's clear you're no gentleman, Mr. Aoshima," she said
coolly. "Don't bother getting up. I'll show myself out."
Aoshima whimpered pitifully and passed out in the shrimp.
She turned and went toward the door; the shocked patrons of
the Cobalt Club parted before her, giving her a wide berth and a clear
path.
Urd, Gryphon and Rat shared high-fives all around.
Shortly before Belldandy reached the door, it suddenly burst
open and Keiichi skidded in. He looked a bit panicked, but elegant in
a white tuxedo and gloves, his hair wrestled into submission with a
little help from MegaZone's comb. His face lit up in relief as he saw
the girl in the cream satin dress.
"Belldandy!" he cried, rushing to her.
"Oh, Keiichi," said Belldandy, stepping into his embrace.
"I'm so glad you're safe."

Skuld grinned as the wish alert in her status window went out,
kicked off the database rehash and ufcd restart script, and leaned
back in her chair with a smirk. Another job well-done.

Gryphon sat on the bench at the bus stop, slumped and looking
at nothing in particular. He felt burned out. The adrenaline high
had long since passed, and he felt empty, depressed, and cold. His
suit was rumpled, collar open, the shine long since faded from his
shoes. He felt like Cinderella after the coach has turned back into
the pumpkin. So long, thanks for all your help... don't call us. In
the confusion after the incidents at the Cobalt Club, Zoner had headed
home, Rat had seen Belldandy and Keiichi to the T before they went in
separate directions to the ends of town, and Gryphon and Urd had
walked around the corner...
... to find that Gojira had, apparently, been towed.
Gryphon's mood had been deflating anyway by that point, and it
was punctured entirely by this development. Seeing his dejection, Urd
had told him not to worry, that she'd take care of it, and then she'd
disappeared up some side street. He'd been sitting on the bench for
over an hour now. It was after one in the morning. The T system was
shut down for the evening. The streets were deserted and dark, the
city eerily silent. The Cobalt, not surprisingly, had shut down early
after all the excitement.
He supposed he should get up and try to find his way to a
police station, find out where they'd taken his truck, and try to get
home somehow, since Urd was apparently not coming back. He supposed
he shouldn't be surprised. He had, after all, served his purpose.
What obligation did she have to stick around and help the mortal tool
find his way home?
Sighing, he stood up, hands in his pockets, and trudged down
the sidewalk, looking at the pavement and feeling low and tired.
There was a slight chill in the air, and he wished whatever Urd had
done to put him in the suit had been nice enough to throw in an
overcoat. But then, one wasn't needed, was it? He whistled "Harlem
Nocturne" as he walked, then switched to singing Robyn Hitchcock's
"Raymond Chandler Evening" under his breath.
It took him several seconds to realize that he was being lit
from behind, his shadow long and sharp on the sidewalk in front of
him. As he kept walking, the light stayed on him, the sound of an
almost-idling engine very softly audible behind. It dawned on him
that he was being shadowed by a car, and an unusually quiet one, too.
Oh, great, thought Gryphon, just what I need. As that thought
crossed his mind, the car's horn honked. He kept walking, only to
have the horn sound again. Hoping he wasn't about to become an urban
violence statistic, he walked a little faster and tossed a glance over
his shoulder at the car.
He stopped, turned around, and looked again.
The car trailing him was a hulking beast by the tiny, rounded
standards of the day. It had a vast expanse of hood, rakishly pointed
housings around its headlights and a broad, blunt nose with two
black rubber bullets jutting out from the bright chrome bumper. Aft,
a pair of chrome-edged tail fins pointed proudly the way the car had
come. It had a white convertible top, up, and dark glass. The big
chrome V on the front of the hood, surrounding a distinctive shield
badge, shouted its V-8 power to the world. It glided to the curb and
stopped.
Gryphon stood regarding it for a moment, wondering what could
be going on, before the driver's door opened and Urd emerged.
"See? Told you I'd get your car back," she announced.
Relieved to see her and yet confused, Gryphon frowned. "Urd,
this isn't my car."
"What do you mean?" asked Urd, entirely too innocent. "It's
got your name on the registration."
Gryphon was about to comment on the impossibility of that
statement when he noticed that the car did, in fact, sport his
license plates. In fact, closer examination by the light of the
nearest streetlight indicated that the car did appear to be the
correct color, a unique blue-green achieved by his father's random
mixing together of leftover paints in the garage. Withholding
comment, he walked slowly around the car, taking in the details.
The car had the same combination of missing and present hub
caps as his truck had possessed. It was the same irreproducible
color. It even had the same dent on the right side, a relic of a time
when he'd gotten a tad too close to a drive-up ATM while arranging a
transaction for a passenger. He finished his walkaround and looked
inside. Same maroon seats (with small tear on passenger side upright)
and black-and-maroon interior, not matching the external color at all
(Gojira had originally been black). Same scattering of tapes on the
middle of the bench seat. Same aftermarket radio/cassette player
installed in the dash. Same "no smoking please" sticker on the ash
tray cover.
He climbed in, opened the glove compartment, and examined the
contents. Two battered Bic pens, one black, one blue: check. Owner's
manual, missing front cover: check, the condition anyway. It matched
the car. Half a roll of Tums: check. Seven assorted parking garage
receipts: check. Forty-two cents in change, twenty of them Canadian:
check.
He took out the yellow registration slip and unfolded it. It
looked like the one he'd handed to the policewoman earlier that same
day (well, technically, the previous day) - same folds, same dog-eared
corner, same coffee stain on one corner from the somewhat sloppy clerk
at the Orono PD. It was indeed a Maine state passenger car or light
truck registration, number 2065 D, in the name of one Hutchins,
Benjamin D., of 34 Main Street, Apartment 1, Orono, Maine. The
particulars on the car were filled out just as if they belonged there:
Year, 1957; Make, CAD; Model, ELDO; Body Style, CONV; Color, GRN;
Doors, 2; Cylinders, 8. He looked in the plastic pouch where the
registration had been. A State Farm proof-of-insurance card agreed in
all particulars with the registration. Behind that was a folded
tread-life and road-hazard warranty card for the car's five Goodyear
whitewalls. It was stamped with a replacement voucher from the time a
couple of months back when he'd driven through a storm drain (off of
which some Worcester DPW half-wit had left the cover) and ruptured a
sidewall. Last in the pouch was the receipt and warranty for the Die
Hard battery he'd bought last winter.
Gryphon put the documents back into the glove compartment, sat
back in the seat, closed his eyes, breathed in the wonderful smell of
old car, and tried to wrap his head around the fact that, apparently,
he now owned a 1957 Cadillac Eldorado convertible.
As Urd slid into the passenger seat, he opened his eyes and
looked at her in amazement.
"How did... ?" he wondered.
"Don't look at me," she said, shrugging with over-feigned
innocence. "I just went to the impound lot and bailed your car out."
Gryphon considered protesting, trying to drag some explanation
out of her, but her face was set in a perfect innocent blank and he
gave up the thought. Not only wouldn't it get him anywhere, but he
rather liked her face that way, and pressing her on the point would
only make her scowl and ruin the effect.
He adjusted the seat and mirrors, turned up the window
defogger, and noted the absence of seat belts. Momentarily, that
worried him, but he decided that thousands of people had driven 1957
Cadillacs in the years since 1957, and it hadn't killed most of them,
so he might as well trust in probabilities and get on with it. He
stepped on the brake, started the engine, pulled the gear selector
down into Drive, looked around, and then guided the car away from the
curb.
It went willingly, not nearly as mushy or sluggish as he'd
always unconsciously expected a late-fifties pleasure barge would
feel. He felt his dark mood begin to erode. A smile twitched at the
corner of his mouth. He drove through the dark streets, found
Huntington Avenue and eventually got the car on the Mass Pike heading
west.
The Cadillac lunged up to 65 miles per hour and stayed there
without protest, gliding through the night in an eerie silence, and
Gryphon's smile took that opportunity to be fully born. He reached
down and flicked on the radio; "Old Time Rock & Roll" poured out of
the speakers. He looked over at Urd. She grinned at him.
They stopped at the Framingham rest area for a much-needed
beverage, then sat in the parking lot for a bit watching the sparse
late-night turnpike traffic blow by and enjoying the quiet. Gryphon
kept running his free hand over the top of the big, smooth steering
wheel, his thumb making a rhythmic thump against the points of the
finger-grooves.
"Feel better?" Urd asked.
"Lots better," he replied. "Thanks."
She shrugged. "I owed you one. Anyway, all I did was get
your car back."
He nodded, the look in his smiling eyes letting it be known
that he considered the matter dropped.
"Well," he said, raising his Pepsi in salute, "here's to
Keiichi and Belldandy."
"I suppose I'll drink to that," Urd replied with a smile.
"You want to go out sometime when we're -not- trying to save
your sister from predatory upperclassmen?" he wondered.
"We'll see," she replied. "You're a little young for me, even
if you are a good dancer."
He sighed, then raised his Pepsi again. "Well, we'll always
have Boston, anyway."
"That's true," she replied, tapping her can to his. "We'll
always have Boston."
Gryphon finished his soda, tossed the can in the back, and
aimed the Cadillac for Worcester.

Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins, MegaZone and Richard "Rat" Pieri

THE CAST:

KEIICHI MORISATO
BELLDANDY WISHBRINGER
URD SNOWMANE
SKULD RAVENHAIR
TOSHIYUKI AOSHIMA
SAYOKO MISHIMA
MIYUKI KOBAYAKAWA
NATSUMI TSUJIMOTO
GRYPHON
RAT
and
MEGAZONE
as
THEMSELVES

A FARAWAY VOICE THAT SOUNDS AS CLOSE AS YOU FEEL
as
THE VOICE OF MEGUMI

and

MAN #1 and MAN #2
as
THE GUYS ON THE T

and featuring

BENNY GOODMAN AND HIS ORCHESTRA
as
THEMSELVES

THE BIG BLOCK O' DISCLAIMERS

WPI is a real place. Boston is also a real place, though some of the
particulars in this episode are not. Everybody listed as "themselves"
except the Kosuke Fujishima characters are real people whom we asked
before using them as characters, except Benny Goodman and his
Orchestra, whom we could not ask, as they are unfortunately deceased.
Everybody else is made up.

Copyright (c) 1999 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited