-- Quote from the short-lived TV show Fishing And You, 2043
"Mmmm. How about one of my kama?" Nonon proposed And I could tell she was just as curious as me.
"Sure." I said and picked it up from the counter where I apparently left it. "Okay, how do we do this?"
As soon as I asked, a new window popped up in my HUD with a video showing a UI straight out of some game with a grid and capacity and stuff. It also showed a chibi cartoon ninja with fox ears putting a finger on her temple in concentration, and a sword slid out of her arm.
"That's adorable." Shinon cooed.
"Huh... So I just need to think about like wanting to store it?"
"Sounds like it." Nonon commented tilting her head to the side in contemption.
"Well, here goes nothing." I said, then tried to send a mental command to store the kama.
Next thing I know is that the patterns on our hand started to glow and the drones making it up shifted around and pulled it in until the inactive bde disappeared into the forearm like some kind of shark fin.
"Okay, that was trippy." I frowned at my arm turning it this way and that.
"How fast can you recall it?"
"I don't know, but I can try to see it."
I sent the mental image of the kama shooting out into and my hand gripping the end of the handle at the storage module. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the line "Synchronization complete." popped up in the console and the kama shot out at a blinding speed, and I automatically grabbed the very end of the shaft.
"That..." I frowned, then repeated the whole process a few more times.
The storage and the drones making up our arms worked together fwlessly to execute the command exactly as I intended it to happen.
"I wonder..." I mused and picked up my naginata.
With another mental command, it was quickly swallowed from both ends, like the inside of our arm was some kind of endless abyss. Then with another command, the drones making up our forearm started to shift and bulge as if something was trying to borrow up from under an old cobblestone street. The bde slowly emerged, and when it fully cleared the arm it turned on with a hiss.
"Gods... This is terrifying." Nonon said with an excited quiver in her voice. "Just imagine, someone is trying to pick a fight with us, and *wham* surprise void naginata to the face."
"Yeah, this will be really useful."
After a bit of experimentation, it became clear that we could have the bde emerge from anywhere on the arm. My favorite was the knuckles and the inner side of our wrist.
By that time Nonon's spiders arrived, so she gave them the command to store themselves.
And store themselves they did, they climbed up my legs then onto our arm then kinda borrowed into it like the scarabs from that old movie about a mummy. It was a little freaky if you ask me but Nonon loved it.
We even found out that they can accommodate the functions of the storage system, and shift in the same way as the drones making up our arm to transfer stuff in and out.
"Okay, enough pying around. We have pces to be." I finished the rest of our almost-forgotten drink and made my way back to the parking garage.
It didn't take too long to get to the first shop on our list. It was one of those hole-in-the-wall stores next to an alleyway. Just like the whole surrounding area, it was drowning in neon and advertising that sold almost anything but the kitchen sink. With just enough space to pass between the isles, whoever’s running the small store clearly wanting to get as much as they can out of the small footprint.
"Are all the pces on the list like this?" Nonon asked as we took in the store from across the street near the entrance to the big market.
No, this one seems to be set up to specialize in household necessities, such as "food" cleaning products and toiletries, and a surprisingly wide variety of alcohol.
"Why did you say food like that?" I frowned in confusion.
Shinobu, some of the items contain less nutrients than the packaging they come in.
"Okay, that's fair." I conceded as I looked down the street both ways. "This area doesn't really stand out in any way. It looks basically the same as it would 3 streets over."
"Yeah, it's weird." Nonon replied thoughtfully. "It's... You can't even see tags left by gangs that are usually in pces like these."
"Speaking of, who controls this area?"
"I believe the Elephants." She said and pulled up a window in our Augs showing some info and a map of their territory. "They are one of the Asian gangs. From what we know it's run by a woman called Sri Lankan. No idea if that's her real name or just an alias. They specialize in arms deals and manufacturing. From what people say online, they also try to act as a local peace keeping force ever since the metropolitan police pulled out of the area."
I frowned at the map. "Nonon, can you put the other stores on this map? Something doesn't feel right."
"Sure, here you go."
After taking a closer look at the map, it quickly became apparent that all 5 pins were in this gang's territory's high-traffic areas.
"I think whoever is behind this is trying to frame them... It might be worth giving this Sri Lankan a call, but first, we should take a closer look at this store." I said as I made my way across the street.
"I'm gonna drop one of the sensor drones, and take a look around in the back." Nonon said as we entered, and I could feel one of the spiders crawl out of our arm, up my shoulder then down and out from under our hoodie.
The inside was exactly what you'd expect from the cramped rows of shelves. There was a counter with an old register to the right of the door. Shielded by the same “bulletproof” plexigss, you could see everywhere. There was a vending machine taking up one of the corners, selling bullets of various calibres, and behind the counter was a gun locker. I was willing to bet that there was at least a sawed-off shotgun under the counter too. All in all, nothing out of the ordinary for this area. What was odd though was the fact that there were way too many cameras for a store of this size. And even from a gnce, I saw that the door leading to the back had a lock that was way too high-tech.
"Hey." I greeted the man behind the counter. "This might be an odd one, but have you seen this girl around?" I asked as I held up a pic of Elena on my phone. All but shoving it in his face so he can see it.
"Never seen her in my life." He said without even gncing at the phone, and just stared at me with irritation.
"Boo, I found a vent that leads to the back. This pce is..." She trailed off, clearly distracted with what she found.
"Okay, what about her?" I scrolled to another pic from our list of missing people.
"No." He squinted with what I took as raising suspicion. "Are you going to buy something or just ask me about joytoys?"
"Okay, that's just rude, if he answers like that again, I'm gonna break his ad blocker and sign him up for a lot of junk mail..." Nonon grumbled.
"No, It's just you see my friends gone missing, and I want to find them."
His eye twitched in irritation. "Okay, that's it! Get out! If you ain't buying shit and just harass me about some whores, you can get lost."
"Okay, dude!" I raised my palms in a show of defence. "I just want to find my friends, you don't have to be a prick about it..."
Having bought enough time for Nonon to get her spider deeper into the store, I gave the clerk the finger and walked back out to wait in the adjacent alley.
A few minutes ter, Nonon spoke up. "Okay, the drone is on its way back."
"What did you find?" I asked, leaning against the wall in the alley.
"Not much, there is a server bank in the basement, but I can't access it from the drone. However." I could feel her raise a finger. "There should be a network maintenance access point for this block on the roof."
"Okay, how do we get up?"
"There are some AC vents we can climb up?"
"Hmm." I murmured in thought as I turned to look at said vents. "I have an idea." I activated the cws on our new arm and tried to dig them into the brick wall. "I think we could just climb the wall outright." Sure enough, with a little bit of effort, the cws dug into the mortar between the bricks. "Okay, I will need the armor just on the feet and our other hands.”
It didn't take long to get into the groove of climbing a wall like a cat woman and with a few little hops we were on the roof. I spotted a few chunky antennas with the access panels right away, pulled the cable from our left wrist and jacked into the one belonging to the store.
"Jeesh." Nonon winced as a terminal window flew open. "They have some aggressive defences, and real good ICE. But my stuff is better."
"There, you go.” Nonon cooed at the terminal triumphantly as she quickly took over the system. “Now you can stop bothering me and py some solitaire while I poke around..." and another window opens with a game, then.... it starts to py itself?
Did she just… She trailed off, lost for words. Did she just sent the ICE to py solitaire?
"I think so..." I confirmed, as I scratched my head in confusion.
How? Cinydr’s tone bordered on outraged. I'm an AI with near-limitless computing power, but... this is just absurd.
"I know… and welcome to my life."
"Okay." Nonon cut us off, and I got the impression of her leaning closer to a screen with curiosity. "There is a bunch of stuff here... There is the stuff you'd expect, like skimmed cards and whatnot. Oh, that pervert!” She shouted. “There is a hidden camera looking up people's skirts... and... One in what looks like some kind of drug b? I think? But anyway, I found some info on a few of our missing people and some logs that their info was sent off somewhere else. I tried to track it but after a few proxies the trail went dead."
"I see... Can you tell when their info was sent out?"
"Let's see... Yes, and it looks like most of them went missing 2-3 days after it was sent off."
"I see." I sighed. "Send off ours too."
"I don't have to. It was sent just after we walked out."
"Of course it was..." I sighed. "That means, the clerk is in on it and we have about 3 days until they come and get us."
"Unless, I make a copy of our file, and we send it off again from the other stores too? Maybe?"
"Well, there is nothing to lose." I said and sent a ping to our bike. "In the meantime, Cinydr can you get me the contact info of this Sri Lankan?"
Here you go.
A New contact entry opened in my vision, but I put it off to the side for now. "Thank you, let's poke at the other stores too. We can call her on the way home."
After paying a visit to the rest of the stores they turned out to be simir to this one, except one. That pce was weird. Sure, the front was a store like the others, but the rest was more like a weird cross between a gang's hide-out or club and a brothel. It was really hard to put it into words. One thing was clear though, whoever controlled this pce was not the Elephants.
We were sitting on the railing of a balcony some floors up, looking at a feed from one of Nonon's drones and a wall of video feeds from the pce’s security system.
"Just what is this pce?" I asked not expecting an answer.
"I don't know, but it gives me the creeps..."
There were a bunch of small rooms with a bed and not much else. We tried looking the pce up, but there was nothing, and we were not exactly in the red-light district either. That was until we spotted a girl on the drone’s feed. She was no older than 15, sprawled out on a bed with her ankle and wrists in cuffs.
"Okay... I spent enough time on the internet to have an idea what's going on here..."
I dialled Sri Lankan's number. It connected immediately, and an irate-sounding woman's voice came from the other end.
"Who is this and how did you get this number?" Her voice was raspy like she smoked 3 packs a day for the st 30 years.
"A... Concerned citizen. And my AI dug up your number."
There was silence for a few seconds, then she said in a tone filled with suspicion, "Your AI... and you expect me to believe that?"
"Yuuka Nagamoto, 58. Born in Sapporo, Japan, immigrated to the UK when you were 19. Multiple arrests on record." I read out the note Nonon pulled up. "Do I need to keep going?"
"Fine." She said with a sigh. "What is this about?"
"Just curious, what do you know of a dollhouse just off of Mornington Crescent?"
"Dollhouse?"
"Yes, the front is a small shop, but in the back, there is what looks like a dollhouse." I sent her the address. Along with a few pictures. "As far as I know that's in the Elephants' territory."
"It is, but that's not ours..." She said, clearly frowning. "Yuri! Get your ass over here! Here, I just got a call from a fucking samurai saying that someone is running a FUCKING DOLLHOUSE on our turf!" She went silent, probably listening to the poor sod she called over. "I don't give a fuck! No one is allowed to run shit like that here! NO ONE! You hear me? 'Yes Boss?!' Is that all you have to say? And just tell me why are you still standing in my office? Incompetent baboon..."
"I don't want to make your day worse, but there is more to it."
"Wonderful…,” She sighed. “Go on, Miss Samurai."
"Shinobi, call me Shinobi." I took a deep breath and then went on to expin the situation. "All the stores seem to be under the control of someone else. They are registered to one of the Numbers, and send off data somewhere about people who fit the profile."
"I see, that is a problem. And a big one at that."
"Don't cmp down on them just yet, I have a bait set out and waiting for them to bite."
"How much time do you need?" She asked.
"Only 3 days, based on what we found."
"I see. We will take care of that Dollhouse... Shit like that doesn't fly with me, especially not after that purge that happened a few years back."
"Good, I'll leave you to deal with this then."
"Thank you for the heads-up Shinobi. Now, if you'll excuse me? I have some people to chew out."
And with that, the line was cut.
After another minute of waiting, the scout drone made its way back to us and integrated back into the armor we were wearing to protect us from the rain.
"So, we just go home now?" I asked as I gnced over the clock. "It's getting te, and we still need to update Katelin."
"Might as well. I don't think there is anything else we can do for now." Nonon replied, sounding a little tired.
"Okay." I nodded, then jumped off the balcony, raking my cws on the wall to slow our fall.
"You know, you could have used the fire escape..."
"Oh shush, you. It was fun." I teased as I got on our bike and set off home.
It didn't take too long, especially with us ignoring traffic ws. We went straight to Katelin's door and knocked.
"Elena?!" She almost shouted as the door flew open, her eyes filled with hope. Hope that slowly faded when she saw us.
"Can we come in?" I asked with a pained expression.
We didn't get an answer, she just turned away and walked deeper into the apartment. After a moment's hesitation, I walked in and closed the door.
"Nonon, if you would." I whispered.
"Got it." A few seconds ter she spoke up again. "All cameras and microphones disabled, we have complete privacy."
"Katelin. What I'm gonna say, can't leave this room. I have to come clean about a few things." I disabled our disguise as I sat down across from her. "My name is not Emily it’s Shinobu. Some concerned citizens reached the organisation I’m part of, and they sent me here to look into the exact kind of disappearances like what happened to Elena.”
"What do you mean?" She frowned as she looked me up and down with worry. "Just who are you?"
"For the most part? I'm a nobody. At least I was. As of today, I'm a samurai." I said bashfully as a wave of self-consciousness hit me.
"I see." She said, her eyes fixed on my hand. "Did you find anything?"
"We have a lead. All the people who fit the same profile as Elena visited one of the same 5 stores. They marked them and sent their data off somewhere."
"But how does that help?" She asked as her shoulders sagged in defeat.
"I put a target on my own back. On paper, I fit the profile perfectly and went to all five of the stores to ask some uncomfortable questions."
"But then..." Her eyes filled with worry.
"It's okay, I know it's a stupid, dangerous pn, but this is the fastest and most surefire way to find where they take their victims. Elena was only taken today. And after the fuss I raised, I expect that they will come for me either tonight or tomorrow." I smile with what I hoped came across as reassurance.
"I see." She stood up, walked around the table and pulled us into a hug, sobbing into our shoulder. "Please find my girl. And make sure to stay safe. I don't want you to get hurt."
We talked a little more, then made our way back home. By the time we had dinner, finished our shower, threw out the now -thanks to the T.A.I.L.S.,- redundunt contactlenses and climbed into bed, it was well past 10. Falling asleep was surprisingly easy too. We had a hell of a hectic day, between fighting aliens, saving people, getting our arm torn off, and making huge progress in our current case we exhausted ourselves more than I thought.
The next time I opened my eyes was to Cinydr sounding the arm that someone was trying to force their way into our apartment followed by the sound of the door being kicked in.