Chapter 15:
(11/03/01)
After shaking off the bizarre dreams of the previous night, the cabal began their search for the three pieces of the dagger that, if given to the Fujito Corporation, would supposedly buy Bria’s parents back. Ra Lei’s father had told her about Akame, a very mysterious man who owned a pet shop in Tokyo and seemed to know a lot about what we needed, and he had managed to get us an invitation to attend dinner at the man’s house. However, Kenley and Wan were curious about the pet shop itself and wanted to go there before dinner to see the kinds of animals that were there. The rest of the cabal decided to tag along, too.
Akame’s pet shop turned out to be an enormous place, with almost any animal you could imagine available to be purchased. The cabal went a little bit nuts picking out pets. Kenley and Joe bought three penguins. Jennifer bought a monkey, which she named Babbage. Bria bought a raven. Wan bought an owl. Sadira bought a weird, fluffy animal with a goofy grin and big teeth that bit everyone but her when they tried to pet it. Plus, both Ripple and Wan were offered “special” pets. Akame offered Ripple several tigers that could emerge from a tapestry on which they were painted, but in the end she refused. Wan, on the other hand, decided to buy a snake that could camouflage itself by turning into a pile of sand. When he bought it, he also had to sign a contract with three conditions: he couldn’t show it to anyone who wasn’t awakened, he had to feed it regularly, and he had to keep it on his person at all times.
After buying the pets, it was time for dinner, and Akame led everyone into the lower levels of the building. There, he showed us into a large room with a table and many Japanese men sitting around us. We soon learned that this was a meeting of the Bone Court, one of the largest and most powerful groups of kuei-jin in Japan, and that Akame was the leader of this group. The cabal ate dinner and made small talk, but really just wanted to get it all over with.
The business negotiations began after dinner. The Bone Court, for reasons they never made clear, knew the location of all three pieces of the dagger and was willing to give us that information—in exchange for something of ours, of course. Soon, the cabal hit upon the arrangement of bartering the services of the cabal (on three separate occasions) for the necessary information. (Several cabal members did suggest giving them Marcus’ planimal egg, but that idea was resoundingly shot down as too risky.) After making the deal, the Bone Court told the cabal what they knew. The blade of the dagger was in a secluded area on the northern island of Hokkaido. The stone was in the lair of the Kumo (devil-spider) within Tokyo. The hilt was in one realm of Yomi, the Japanese hell. (They narrowly averted having to trade another favor for passage into Yomi when Bria called in a favor from Archmaster Porthos.) The Bone Court gave the cabal directions to all of these places, as well as the continued services of one kuei-jin, a man named Takeshi.
The cabal thanked the Bone Court for their help and was just about to leave when Akame suggested a way in which we could fulfill one of our favors that night, if we so desired. He pointed to Shishio, another one of the kuei-jin who appeared simply to be an old, blind Japanese man, and explained that Shishio was a great warrior (who had at one time been known as Cui—yes, the same guy from the Dabu Six). He was intrigued by the cabal and wanted to test their abilities in battle. If they would fight him, one of their favors would be considered done. The cabal agreed and stepped into the arena. Although they fought well, in the end they were no match at all for Shishio, who nonetheless deemed them worthy opponents and sent them on their way.
Leaving the pet shop, Ra Lei decided she didn’t want to go back to the hotel and invited the rest of the cabal to stay at her father’s house for the night. However, only Christie, Michael, and Ripple took her up on that offer, and the four of them spent the night getting to know one another better. Everyone else returned to the hotel, where Jennifer tried to teach her monkey to use a computer (with little success) and Kenley turned her penguins invisible and let them swim in the hotel pool and terrorize tourists. Meanwhile, Bria sat in her room with her new raven and soon learned something rather interesting about him: Not only could he talk, he was a veritable repository of strange knowledge. He told her his name was Huntz, and agreed to help her learn whatever she needed to know about all sorts of information.
The next day, the cabal met to discuss their options. Deciding that the blade of the dagger sounded like the easiest piece to retrieve, they bought plane tickets to Hokkaido and prepared to leave in search of the first objective in their latest quest. However, Michael elected not to go, saying he would rather stay in Tokyo and see what he could learn there, since he was sure the cabal was more than capable of handling themselves without him.
While still in Tokyo, Ripple decided to go visit Timber in person. There, she learned the surprising bit of information that he was employed by the Fujito Corporation. Apparently, he was doing sex-related research for one of their more obscure departments, and that he was only one of a number of Tradition mages who were freelance employees of the corporation. It all sounded more than a little suspicious to Ripple, especially given the corporation’s connections with Seko and other nasty things, but since it had a completely untarnished public reputation as a philanthropic organization and all-around good company, she couldn’t convince Timber to stop working for them and let the matter drop.
Meanwhile, Christie became curious about Takeshi and took some time getting to know him. They soon discovered they had a lot in common and began a romantic relationship that, while unusual to most people (he’s dead, she’s a Hermetic), was completely taken in stride by the rest of the cabal.