NARCOLEPTIC DOGS PRESS, IN ASSOCIATION WITH COHERENT COMICS
UNINCORPORATED, PRESENTS...

WARDEN: AN ASH UNIVERSE COMIC
Copyright 1999 by Matt Rossi III

(ASH property of Dave Van Domelen.  Warden property of Matt Rossi and Dave
Van Domelen.  All Rights Reserved.)

ANNUAL NUMBER ONE: ALIENATION (PART 1)

(Adult content, language and situations - Please be advised.)

     [COVER: An homage to Frank Miller's classic graphic novel RONIN.  
      Warden is standing in the center of the picture, wearing a black
      T-shirt with a green cartoon rodent on it and a long Russian Naval
      Officer's coat, both slashed and torn to rags.  He holds his right 
      arm in front of his chest horizontally, and in it he holds a 
      gleaming midnight blue katana.  He is sweaty, disheveled, and 
      marked by dozens of slash-marks. In the shadows behind him, a 
      polished silver Ankh can be seen.]

"Does a brave man fall 
in unrequited love? 
I grieve, and yet 
this fool of a brave man 
has fallen into longing 
*Prince Toneri, #117 Poem 


     Dark.  Dark, and cold, and pain.
     As if muffled, he could hear breathing.  It wasn't his; he'd
instinctively held it when he woke, trying to understand why he couldn't feel
the walls.  Why he couldn't see into anyone's minds.  Why he couldn't make
his body ignore the pain.  Why he was weak and hurt and feeble.
     Why he was merely Thomas, and not the Warden.
     He was laying on his side with his hands tied behind his back, and his
knees were pressed into his chest.  His feet had been bound with loose strips
of cloth, but he could feel the play in them and knew it would be the act of
a moment to slip his feet free, even weak as he was.  His hands would take
longer.  The floor under his cheek was wood, cold and smooth.
     "I think the ugly white man is awake."  The voice was speaking Japanese.
Thomas spoke it, slightly; he'd learned it from an Otakuza member in Central
Park, before...it was hard to think through the pain, and he couldn't think
the pain away, either.  "He's holding his breath."
     "Go make sure."  Thomas could feel the floor shake, but it wasn't enough
to pinpoint anyone.  Panic began burrowing away at the base of his spine, but
he forced himself to calm down.  Wherever the Warden was, he still knew what
he knew.  He still had the knowledge in him to act.
     He remembered a sunny day he had never seen.  A slim chinese girl in her
teens putting on a blindfold for the first time and walking into the Chamber
of Discipline, where the knowledge of the dark was beaten into her day after
day.
     _Learn to strike without light, faster than light, with the darkness no
impediment.  Learn to be aware, Varru'Ke._
     Her knowledge was his.
     Eyeless and blind he was, but never helpless.  He knew the arts of the
Onyx Eye.
     The floor stopped shaking, and hot breath flowed over his face.
     "Ugly white man, are you..."
     Thomas moved, pulling his legs up as he rolled onto his back, and locked
them around his questioners throat.  He could feel the muscles cramping.
Knowing that surprise would be more effective than strength, he didn't bother
to free his feet but rocked backward, tossing his enemy (who would have him
tied up but an enemy?) over and away with the motion and rolling to his feet
as he did.  The loose cloth around his ankle slipped free as he did so, and
he stood on swaying legs in the impenatrable darkness, hearing only his own
breathing and the woosh of air as the other flipped into the floor.
     A creak to his left.
     He slid his hands out of the sweat-soaked bonds.
     He barely got the block up in time, taking the blow on his bicep instead
of his temple, biting his lip rather than showing the pain.  He didn't manage
to block whatever it was that hit him in the back, taking his right leg out
from under him and dropping him to the floor, hard.  A woosh of air alerted
him to a foot aimed for his genitals in time to bridge his neck and get back
up in one move, but he couldn't avoid the blow to the face that nearly
knocked him unconscious again. He dropped to one knee, a distant howling in
his skull making him nearly deaf as well as blind.
     The floor shook again, and he lashed out with a kick to his rear,
catching one of them in mid-leap.  Impact rode up into his spine, shoving him
forward onto his arms and rolling again, and as he rolled he could feel the
loud impact of someone dropping in pain to the floor.
     Then he felt four or five arms all tangling in his, and he was lifted
bodily and held helpless off of the floor.
     "Well, there seems to be some fight left in you, Hoder.  That is good.
You'll need it."  The voice was accented English; apparently they didn't know
he spoke Japanese.  Best to pretend ignorance.
     "My name is Thomas..."
     "That is not what the bearded man said.  He called you Hoder and said
that an Avatar must be master of his gifts, not their prisoner, so he has
removed them from you."  There was silence for a few moments.  Thomas could
smell sweat, and even a little blood on his own face, most likely his own.
"Apparently, you still retain some of them."
     "Apparently so.  Am I to be held like this forever?"
     "No.  But before I can begin to teach you...you must learn respect,
Hoder."  There was a sneer in the man's voice, and Thomas clenched his
muscles in preparation for the pain he knew was coming.  "Break him."
     Then all was darkness punctuated by grunting and the small starbursts of
impact.

               *              *              *              *

     Shingen looked into the main training facility.  On the black wood, the
white man his master had delivered to him was defending himself from three of
Shingen's best.  A week's worth of beatings had heightened his remaining
senses nicely...it didn't hurt that he'd obviously learned some sort of
blindfighting technique somewhere along the way that was among the most
vicious Shingen'd ever seen.  And somehow...familiar.
     Kabun swept in on the white man's left side, only to be greeted by a low
kick that crashed into the side of his knee and dropped him to the floor.
The eyeless round-eye then backflipped up and over Harada and landed behind
him.  Shingen was almost unsure whether or not they were truly Anchoring the
strange eyeless one or not.  Logic dictated that they were; if not, according
to the master, he would have most likely beaten them all half to death and
left.  But his eyes hadn't returned yet.  Even with all of them working
together, and even without the strength and speed the master had spoken of he
was doing better every day.
     It was...encouraging.
     Shingen walked away from the sounds of men beating each other senseless
and stepped into a small, heavily shielded room. A hand on a wall-plate
caused the door...six inches of steel layered with a millimeter of collapsed
aluminum...to slide shut.  Lit by numerous screens, it looked entirely out of
place in the seeming timelessness of Shingen's facility.  He seated himself
and tapped in a series of numbers on a console to his left.
     A carrier signal, a series of encryption flashes, and Sentai found
himself staring at the image of his master.
     "How goes the work?" the man asked in unaccented English.
     "He recuperates quickly."
     "Even Anchored?"
     "Yes.  Other than being thin, he is in excellent condition.  He has
already graduated to fighting three at once."
     "I'm surprised."  The master adjusted his optics.  "I had assumed that
without his powers, he'd be malleable."
     "I think he may be at that.  He's naive, and he is but a man at the
moment...a strong man, but a man.  And as you taught me, men can be broken."
Shingen smiled.  "Once we have him convinced he is this 'Hoder' you wish him
to believe he is, I think you'll find him most useful."
     "You have a question for me, Shingen?"
     "A small one.  Why do you need him at all?  You yourself are most deadly
and resourceful..."
     "Yes.  But I have enemies, and I have plans.  I desire a killer of my
own, one I can point at whomever I choose.  Once 'Hoder' has been broken and
remade, he'll suit my needs admirably.  Excellent work, Shingen."
     "I live to serve."
     "And will for as long as you do."  The master's optical implant swept an
iridescent light over the screen.  "I believe it's time to cut the dead wood
loose...."

               *              *              *              *

     In his cell, Thomas controlled his breathing and ignored as best he
could the liquid agony running up his side.  In the last fight, they'd sprung
his rib, and it still throbbed.  They were feeding him gruel and working him
as hard as they could without killing him, and he didn't even understand what
they wanted.  The past three weeks had become a haze of pain alternated with
soft words, trying to lull him into a state of trust.
     It was maddening.  He didn't even get any privacy...everywhere he went,
he could smell or hear one of them.  They smelled like fish oil and some kind
of alcohol, and occasionally he could hear the high-pitched whine of
electronics.  Occasionally they would laugh at his ignorance in Japanese,
mocking him, and that pretty much confirmed things for him.
     They were anchors.  Six or seven anchors, always hovering about.  It was
like the hospital all over again, the special ward where he'd spent years
motionless.  And this Shingen, trying to be his friend even as he
orchestrated everything...it was the Mentor all over again. A couple of years
ago, Thomas would probably have fallen for it.
     Before he learned the truth about the Mentor.
     Before he'd decided no one would ever use him again.
     For now, of course, there was little he could do.  As long as the
anchors were awake, he would be Thomas and not Warden.  And Thomas, skilled
as he was, didn't have the ability to escape.  Thomas didn't even know where
he was.
     Sitting there, trying to understand, he almost missed the soft *whump*
of a concussion carrying through the walls.  The sound of his guard scraping
his stool back as he stood up.
     The explosion of the door leading to the cell was harder to miss.
Thomas barely had time to roll, and even so shards of shattered, burning wood
buried themselves in his forearms as he managed to put his guard between
himself and the explosion.  A harsh voice grunted something in a language he
didn't recognize...
     And then, as the death-rattle of the anchor filled the room, he *did*
recognize it.
     It was Korean.
     He spoke it now.
     "...all of them! Kill..." shouted someone in that language.
     There were three of them in the room, armed with large rifles that stank
of gunpowder.  The walls were ten feet away on either side of them, and he
could feel them.  The man in front slid the bolt back on his weapon, and
Warden could hear the casing slide into place as the sound echoed off of the
back wall, giving him a perfect three-dimensional picture of the entire
scene.  He didn't even have to look through their eyes to see it.  Up was too
predictable, and down too vulnerable.
     So he moved forward, lashing out with his foot as he did so, driving the
barrel of the gun into the forehead of the gunman while using his body as a
human shield.  The other two opened fire anyway, their bullets chewing
through their ally's armored body, and Warden could smell the ozone as
cyberimplants began shorting out.
     Arcing above them, twisting in the air, he landed behind the smallest
one and reached out almost placidly, placing his right hand around the
cyborg's throat and his left just behind the right ear.
     Then he *twisted.*  Cartilage, bone and metal sheared and snapped, and
then Warden was on the last one before he had time to shoot, striking the gun
so that it discharged directly into the man's knee and amplifying the pain
signal as he had so many times before.
     It was familiar, but different.  Even as the Warden, it was hard to
think clearly, easier to merely act...and had he just killed a man?  He
thought he had.  It disturbed him to realize that he hadn't even *thought*
about it until he'd already *done* it.
     He had little time to feel guilty, however.  Six more of the attackers
were coming up the stairs, their heavy feet sending vibrations through the
wood even as they attempted to be quiet.  He had maybe thirty-seven seconds
before they were on him.
     He sniffed the air, forcing himself to ignore the manifold distractions,
and found the smell.
     It was a familar smell...the only familar smell.  His own.
     And of course, it led past the six on the stairs.
     _Not an option right now._  With that thought, he abandoned his bundi
and hook sword.  Turning, he fled away from the stairs towards a iron shutter
that had dropped over the window, stopping only to lift one of the cyborg's
dropped weapons.
     He knew how to use it now.
     He chambered a grenade and fired behind himself, striking the wood
lintel of the staircase and blowing the entire structure of the doorway to
ruins.  He could hear the attackers below him flatten and scatter to avoid
the blast, and more importantly, the groaning of the ceiling above him as it
began to collapse.
     Then he fired again, this time at the iron shutter.

               *              *              *              *

     On the streets below, over a million ordinary people were enjoying a
rather ordinary Tokyo night when far above their heads, an explosion blew an
iron shutter and a sheet of armored glass that had served to camoflage it out
into the night.
     People were shocked, of course. 
     A few words about Tokyo in the 21st Century. 
     It is not New York.
     Not even close.  As Warden leapt out of the hole he'd made, he could
taste the difference.  It was a combination of factors...the temperature, the
diet of the inhabitants, the structures around him.  He had no idea where he
was, of course, other than the familiar sensation of plunging downwards at
high speeds.
     *That* he recognized.  The buildings and people?  Utterly alien to him.
     He was amidst a square arrangement of buildings, each as tall as
anything he could have found in Manhattan.  He could hear the distant wailing
of high pitched sirens, and the sound of helicopter blades as they scourged
the air maybe three city blocks away, no doubt attracted by him...if not the
transport for the cyborgs.
     Warden began slowing his descent.  He drove the butt of the rifle
against the nearest wall, using the friction as a brake.  It wouldn't stop
him, of course.
     He didn't need it to.  He could hear the burbling and smell the slight
mineral content of water below him.  Using a nearby pigeon as his eyes, he
saw a large fountain with perhaps five feet of water standing in it...of
course, the pigeon's scale was harder to translate, but it was the only thing
not running about in panic below him as the debris smashed into the square,
so it would have to do.
     Warden kicked out from the building, managing to clear the hundred yards
between it and the wires on which he'd snagged the gun barrel.  They broke,
arcing with electricity, but not before stealing more of his momentum.
Warden used the half-second of resistance before the arm-thick cables broke
to flip himself up and over the discharge, then spread his arms and free-fell
the remaining eighty feet to the next set of cables.
     These ones, at least, did not break.  And they stole momentum for him as
well, as he arched his back and bounced, using the rifle again on the walls
of the facing structure clear across the square from where he started.  The
barrel broke off, and a score-mark cut into the firing chamber, but Warden
wasn't concerned with ever *using* the thing again.
     Two hundred feet from the ground, the gun came apart in his hands, and
Warden free-fell again, all the way down to the fountain.

               *              *              *              *

     In the years since the world changed, Tokyo has also.
     For starters, it has become Asia's refugee center.  On the run from the
repressive dictatorship in China?  Starving to death in Siberia, cut off from
the government that no longer exists?  Exiled from Austrailia during the
return of the Bunyip and afraid to go back?  Disaffected Singaporean?
     Tokyo became a common place of refuge.  At a time when the world's
population was drastically lessened, Tokyo saw a much smaller drop as those
who died were replaced by newcomers desperate for a new place to live.
Services that had been interrupted were resumed.
     For an example, take the family of Suryen Kanatchen. 
     His mother was Russian, driven out along with her family during the
return of the great dragon-wizards and Koschei the Deathless.  They fled
south, down along the islands until they reached Tokyo, which is where Allibe
met Suryen's father, Baiji.  Baiji and *his* family left Taiwan when it
became obvious that it was soon to fall into Chinese hands, and came to Tokyo
to escape.  They met, fell in love, and began a family.
     All of which ultimately led to Suryen watching in awe as a half-naked
black-haired man with black and purple bruises spotted all over his visible,
and pallid, skin dropped into the Fountain In Memory Of Those Who Should Not
Have Died.
     "Suryen!"  Next to him, shouting as if he was not standing two feet
away, Suryen's intended wife Eliza spoke Pigdin Japanese to him.  It was the
language they shared, his first tongues being Russian and Chinese and hers
being English.  "Come on! We have to run!"
     "But he may be hurt..."
     "He's obviously Otakuza!  You saw the tattoos!  Let's go!"  The accent
Eliza had inherited from her parents, that twangy Australian broadness in the
vowels, thickened in her fright.  Suryen turned to look at her, still
somewhat amazed at what was happening.  It wasn't the Otakuza way to make
such a public disturbance...she should know that.  And as far as tattoos were
concerned, that was ludicrous.
     "Those were bruises...."
     The man stood and stepped out of the fountain, shaking water off as he
did.  His hair was short and black, and plastered to the top of his skull.
As Suryen had thought, his entire upper body was covered in hideous purple,
black and yellow bruises, many of them long and curving around the length of
him.  His ribcage on the right side of his body was a livid, furious red.  He
was naked except for a ragged pair of denim pants that were shredded in
literally dozens of places, but none of that was the most disturbing thing
about him.  Not even his seeming fall from the sky was that.
     No, it was the eyeless blank above his sharp nose that scared Suryen
immobile.  He could see two armored and armed members of the _Keisatsu_
rushing from the nearby Koban to intercept the sky-fallen stranger, but he
couldn't move to say or do anything...and then he felt as if there was
something inside his eyes, and the stranger leapt out of the water and on top
of the statue of Ameratsu left behind by the goddess during her brief stay in
Tokyo decades earlier.  The queen of the Kami had loved the Hama Rikyu Tei-en
and had reshaped the wholesale market so that she could spend her evenings
there.
     "Suryen, *come on!*" Eliza was pulling on his arm.  Why was he thinking
about things that had happened before he was born?  And what was that sound
overhead?
     It turned out to be an assault helicopter.

               *              *              *              *

     As the machine guns pounded the square, Warden leapt.
     Putting the statue between himself and the bullets...knowing that
nothing short of an atomic weapon could penetrate diamond hardened by a
god...he tackled the Keisatsu officers and rolled with them, carrying them
behind the edge of the nearest shop, a small store dedicated to selling
upscale fish products like _samma_.  The bullets thudded into the stony
surface of the shop and blasted through the windows, scattering pike guts and
crystal fragments over the three of them.
     Then, sure that the policemen would stay down, he hopped over the edge
of the windowsill and became an inhuman blur, weaving around the bullets and
past the slowly disintegrating interior of the fishmarket.  Tuna and shark
became great clouds of red and white marbled flesh, glistening and hanging
suspended as he rotated at full speed past them, watching all of his own
actions from the eyes of the stupid, stupid man standing in harm's way out in
the square.  The smell of salty fish being singed by the heat of the bullets
turned his stomach, unaccustomed to more than thin gruel over the past few
weeks.
     He leapt out the other side of the store, zig-zagging as he reached out
with his strange gift and twisted the gunner's perception, forcing the shots
to go wild.  Keeping alert despite his profound exhaustion took up too much
of his energy for him to do more.  Using the statue of Ameratsu, he
ricocheted on-top of the shot-up fishmarket, bounced off of the wall of the
skyscraper-tall building it was set into, and flung himself into the
helicopter's open bay door, slamming his foot into the surprised man working
the machine gun.  Kicking the pain impulse over into severe vertigo, he left
the man gasping and nauseated as he moved for the pilot.
     "What kind of demon *are* you?"  The pilot spit out in Japanese.  Warden
easily prevented him from drawing the sidearm from his belt by removing his
tactile sense and wrapped a hand around his throat, yanking him out of his
seat with little regard for the task he was performing.
     "The kind who wants to know what's going on...and you're going to tell
me."  A foot smashed open the door near the pilot as the helicopter lurched,
and then Warden was tumbling in the night air, a screaming man pinioned
beneath a slender arm that pinned him as steel would.  They came to a
surprisingly soft landing as the aircraft smashed into the plaza, sending a
red-gold burst of flame into the Tsukyi night.
     Backlit by the fire, Warden hefted his prize into the air above his head.
     "You're Japanese...but the attackers inside spoke Korean.  Why?"
     "We were ordered to...!"  A sudden convulsion caused the man to bite
through his own tongue, spitting blood out onto his goatee and onto Warden's
arm. Before he could do anything else, Warden was forced to watch his
prisoner die, for no reason he could understand.
     "Otakuza implant."  The stupid, stupid man was speaking to him in
Japanese worse than Warden's own.  Warden turned his head to 'look' at him.
"Security device.  It's in the latest manga...Silver Shadowsword #217, when
he has to decide between his loyalty to the Oyabun and his love for Violet
Whisper."  Warden didn't respond to that...while he understood the words, the
actual meaning was absolutely opaque to him.
     "Who *are* you?"  The woman who'd been pulling on the stupid, stupid
man's arm all during the firefight spoke now, a small pale girl who sounded
as if she'd screamed her throat raw. Warden spent a few moments trying to
understand what was happening to him, and failing miserably.  He could hear
the Keisatsu he'd rescued calling in for backup, and expected that he would
be arrested soon.
     "Isn't it obvious?"  The stupid man spoke before Warden could think
about the question.  "He's a gaikokujin superhero!  He saved our lives,
didn't he?"
     "Excuse me," Warden broke in.  "I am in Japan?"
     "Yes...you are in Tokyo.  The Tsukiji marketplace.  I am Suryen, and
this is Eliza.  We owe you our lives!"
     "Hardly."  Warden felt dizzy.  He was in Tokyo.  He had a hundred
questions to ask and no one to answer them, and his whole body throbbed with
pain and exhaustion.  And the local Keisatsu were coming, and there was no
way he was going to stick around and try to explain this.
     He turned to Suryen.
     "Please give me your coat.  I have to be going now."
     The young couple looked at each other for a moment, Eliza's eyes
pleasing, Suryen's set and narrow.  Finally, she nodded wearily, and he
grinned.
     "I have a better idea, foreign superhero."

               *              *              *              *

     "So, Commandant, what happened to our deal?" an irritated man asked in
Japanese.
     The spear-bald man in the immaculate suit listened with ill-humor to the
person on the other end of the phone line.  In the shadows around him stood
six figures, four male and two female, each apparently at home in the
darkness.
     "It was not the Keisatsu, then?  Who was it?"
     The scowl on his face became a deep, livid frown.  The veins in his
forehead rose underneath the skin.
     "I see...well, then, I suppose I shall handle it on my end.  Goodbye,
Commandant."  Hanging up the phone, he turned his attention to the five in
his office.  "The local constables from the Kobun said that the helicopter
was attacked by a half-naked gaikokujin.  Who do we know who can produce
beings who can defeat armed helicopters, besides ourselves?"
     "The Eyes of Black."  A deep male voice answered him from the darkness.
     "EUROPA."  A high-pitched female voice from the other side of the room.
     "It could be either, yes, but were it EUROPA our men inside the rogue
school would have been captured, not killed.  I believe something else has
occurred...I think our defectors were working with the Eyes of Black, perhaps
hiding one of their assasins in preparation for a strike against us, when our
own attack caught them off guard."  The spear-bald man hesitated.  "I wish I
understood who called us with their location, though.  It feels like we are
being manipulated.  I dislike that arrogance."
     "I know a way to discover the truth.  Bring in the gaikokujin and rip
the answers from him."  The deep-voiced man stepped forward, out of the
shadows; he wore a mask of elaborate black and navy blue, with intricate
tattoos that vaguely resembled wiring running along his exposed upper body.
His legs were clad in leather, down to the thick black boots he wore, and he
had a katana in a navy-blue scabbard on his back.  "A naked white man cannot
hide for long from us."
     "You will serve me in this, Tetsukamen?"
     "As I always have, my master Otomo."
     The shapes in the shadows nodded their accord.
     "Then go and find this interloper for me, Sentai Bushikamen.  I trust
that you will not fail me."

               *              *              *              *

     Warden woke up with a start.
     He'd been so tired that as soon as Suryen and Eliza led him into their
tiny apartment, after a short walk from the Waseda subway station (and, as
Warden had expected, he'd been forced to borrow Suryen's old-style Russian
Army coat to conceal his half-nakedness) he'd practically collapsed onto
their small leather couch.
     Now, he was awake, and rather uncomfortable.  The room was so small that
sound bounced about it haphazardly, and it smelled of salty fish stored in
the small refrigerator.  Eliza and Suryen were laying in their own cot-like
bed some twelve feet from the couch; Warden could tell by listening that
Eliza's breathing was erratic and her heartbeat more active than allowed
during REM sleep...she was almost awake, unable to relax with him in the
room.
     A much wiser attitude, Warden reflected, than that shown by her
companion.  Suryen was so convinced that Warden was some sort of 'superhero'
that he was actually *glad* to have him there.  Warden shook his head in
disbelief.  All he wanted to do was find out how long he'd been out before
he'd woken up in the fishmarket district of *Tokyo*.  It wasn't exactly a
short walk home from there.
     The last thing he'd remembered were those Otakuza goons with shock-
staves, and the man on horseback...
     "Excuse me."  The voice was the tremulous woman; Warden swiveled his
head to 'look' in her direction.  "It isn't that I'm not grateful for your
help last night, but..."
     "You'd like me to leave.  I don't blame you." Warden stood up, most of
his bruises faded to a dull violet color with brown about the edges.  "If I
could trouble you for some clothes, I'd be very grateful."  Then he added,
dropping out of the pidgin Japanese the couple spoke, "And I speak English."
     "Good.  My Japanese is...."  She shrugged.  "Most of the Australian
refugees went back when the United World took over, but a few stayed here,
like my parents."  She got out of bed, careful not to wake Suryen, and walked
over to the small closet.  With hurry created by fear, she quickly picked out
a black T-Shirt with a small green rodent leaking flames from its eyes, a
pair of old parachute pants, black sunglasses made from hard plastic and a
pair of black boots that didn't look like they had too many wearings left to
them.  "I'm sorry for the shape these are in...we don't have a lot of money,
which is why we live in Shita-machi."
     "Thank you."  Warden dressed quickly, pulling the tattered rags off of
his legs and switching to the borrowed outfit.  "Tell him I'm sorry I'm
stealing his clothes, but it won't be safe for you if I stay.  I don't know
how I got here, and I don't know who those people were shooting at me, and
I'm no superhero."
     He pulled the long grey naval jacket on and stepped out the door before
she could answer him, not that she seemed about to.
     He spent the rest of the day walking about, trying to get a feel for the
city.  It was practically impossible.  Unlike New York, which has a certain
geometry to it, especially on the island, Tokyo was more a fusion of villages
glued together by time and economy.  He walked south into Shinjuku more by
accident than design, lost in the teeming crowds and smells of the city that
almost wasn't.
     At least it seemed more like New York than the parts of Tokyo Warden had
already blundered into.  It was dirty, somewhat dilapidated and the police
moved about in groups of five, armed with taser batons and GPS beacons that
allowed them to summon help in seconds.  It seemed somewhat like overkill to
Warden, who'd sensed greater potential for violence in the suburbs of New
York than he was detecting here, but it all seemed part of the landscape.
Shinjuku, he soon learned, was where a great portion of the Chinese refugees
had come to live following the diaspora from Taiwan two decades earlier.  As
he walked, he could smell the difference in the air, as Japanese and Chinese
restaurants waged an olfactory duel.  He could hear the languages shift back
and forth, one block pure Cantonese, the next a mixture, then more or less
Japanese, and back again.
     There was a sense of unease in the neighborhood.  When he heard Japanese
spoken, it was sharp and strident in tone, seeking to overpower and dominate.
Those who spoke Chinese were quiet, concilatory, seeking nothing more than to
blend in.  The policemen who marched about walked right past any obviously
Japanese people and made sure to hassle those of Chinese extraction who
caught their attention.  Yet the fear such confrontations caused was not
one-sided; Warden could feel the panic in the uniformed men, their fluttering
heartbeats, the sweat on their skin acrid and strongly pungent with urea.
     It was all disconcerting, and he kept feeling the urge to act, but he
didn't know who to act against or what action to take.  Distracted, he walked
by a store selling large televisions and heard them talking about him.  It
did little to reassure him.  Even the warm sunlight only seemed to highlight
how out of place he felt.
     "...the disturbance to the normal tranquility of our night, and the
wanton destruction inflicted upon our once-bustling marketplace, cannot be
forgiven.  This kind of wanton lawlessness has no place in civilized Tokyo."
     He tuned the rest out (it concerned a rash of thefts at the Roppongo
Industrial Complex, whatever that was) and kept walking, unsure what his next
move was to be.  He was penniless, friendless (unless you counted a demented
russian expatriate who thought he was the Green Hornet) and in an alien land
where he stuck out like...well, like the Green Hornet.  He wasn't even cool
enough to be the Pain Miser.
     Then he heard a strange noise up in the ultrasonic range. 
     It was active sonar.
     And it was aimed at him.

               *              *              *              *

     "Tetsukamen...I've found the gaikokujin.  He's walking the streets of
Shinjuku as bold as a native."  The woman on top of the building wore a grey
and white mask in the same design as Tetsukamen's, and her whole body was
sheathed in a spandex and leather costume in the same colors.  On her hip
were two wheels with blades radiating out from them and a rope-braid grip on
each.
     "Excellent work, Dolphin.  Can you keep him in sight until we arrive?"
     "I'm sure I...."  She turned her attention to the street, and saw that
the white man was gone.  Somehow he'd vanished without her noticing; in fact,
even now her sonar said he was standing in the same spot, but she saw people
actually walking *through* him. "...Tetsukamen, he's *vanished*.  Repeat;
he's..."
     "Who are you, and why are you following me?" asked a voice in harshly
accented Japanese.  She jumped to her feet and whirled around at the voice.
The gaikokujin has somehow gotten up behind her without her noticing him, and
was crouched on the edge of the building, his long grey coat trailing out
behind him.  She thumbed her palm control, throwing her neck-mike wide open
so the others could hear him.
     "I ask the questions, outsider.  Did the Eyes of Black really believe
that we'd allow them to assasinate our lord Otomo?"
     "I have *no* idea what you are *talking* about."  Warden looked deeply
pessimistic.  He could hear a strange bouncing sound leaping over the nearby
rooftops, but he was unprepared for what landed next to the woman he was
speaking with.
     It was a man in a uniform similar to her own, save that it was green and
grey, and the mask was stylized so that it bulged around the eyes.  Clinging
to his back was another woman, this one in blue and grey...and then a man in
brown and silver clambered over the south wall of the building, accompanied
by another man in black and silver.  They all had similarly stylized masks,
each slightly different from the other, and they surrounded him in a quick,
synchronized manner.
     He might have done something to prevent that, if he'd had any idea what
they were.  Just watching them through a nearby rat's eyes was odd enough.
     "Now, outside country person, you will tell us everything we want to
know.  And you will do it now, or we will cut you down like a wave man."  The
one in the brown and white...his mask stylized to look vaguely gorilla-
like...strode forward. Warden realized that the man was very large.  The rat
scampered away at that point, forcing him to fall back on echolocation and
feeling the vibrations of their heartbeats.
     "As I was telling her, I have no idea what you want..."
     They leapt at him.  Warden rolled to the left to avoid the large male
with the ape-mask, only to have the one in the frog-mask hop clean over the
lot of them and kick him with surprisingly powerful legs.
     He stumbled back, and one of the males, the one who was neither a frog
nor an ape, but some kind of finny thing, suddenly doubled in size, growing
spikes all over his body.  He attemped to skewer Warden with them, but a
simple split followed by a roll caused him to miss.  Warden bridged himself
to a standing position and sensed in disbelief as the five of them came
together on the other side of the roof in some kind of antic synchronization.
     "*Ape!*"
     "*Carp!*"
     "*Dolphin!*"
     "*Frog!*"
     "*Blowfish!*"
     The five of them were yelling out what Warden could only assume were the
names of the animals they were supposed to be dressed as...and he could
actually hear their heartrates alter as they did so.  They were very sincere
about this display of...he could only assume it was lunacy.
     Then the one who had yelled 'carp' at the top of her lungs hurled tiny
spikes at him.  He tried to evade them, but as strange as their display was,
they were moving at inhuman speeds, and he was unused to fighting without
weapons to parry with.  Three of the darts buried themselves in the flesh of
his forearm as he spun out of the path of the others...and into the reach of
the first woman, the one who had some kind of tracking sonar.  She slashed at
his legs with her razor-edged wheels, catching a glancing blow on his left
thigh as he reversed direction barely in time to avoid another of the frog-
man's punishing kicks.
     Warden couldn't quite fathom it.  Their seeming pretense was so baffling
that it confused him, and underneath it they were a formidable, and well-
trained, combat unit.  Even as the spiky one tried to slash him again with
his spines, the ape-masked one leapt on top of him, bearing them both over
the edge of the nigiri zushi stand and into the street.
     The crowd took one look at this and scattered. 
     Warden was surprised by this.  In New York, the pedestrians moved away
from the site of any violence, but once they felt somewhat secure they made
sure to try and see everything.  These people were fleeing...granted, it was
a rather more orderly flight than he'd expected, but they were definitely
uninterested in seeing what was happening.  They were even looking away, as
if mortified.
     The ape-masked man opened his mouth to say something, so Warden removed
his ability to feel his vocal cords, making them go slack.  Then he punched
him in the jaw and rolled out from under him so that the ape-man landed
first, with Warden on top of him.  He pulled back his fist to strike him
again, and the frog-masked man drove both feet into his back and kicked him
across the now-deserted street.
     He skidded to a stop against a tempora stand, and prepared to get up and
renew his attack, when he heard the sound of taser guns charging.
     "Freeze!"
     Warden latched onto the eyes of one of the people now surrounding him.
They all wore the identical blue and black uniforms he'd seen the night
before...on the men from the small police box in the marketplace.  There were
eight of them, and they were all pointing tasers at him.
     Of the lunatics in the spandex costumes, there was no sign.  He could
smell them moving rapidly away, to the south...and then the wind shifted and
he couldn't smell them at all anymore.  Warden considered his situation.  In
New York, he'd probably depend on his reputation to disconcert the policemen
enough to escape without doing any real harm to them...but these men didn't
know him, none of them secretly approved of him, and he'd have to actually
cripple a couple of them to escape.
     He put his hands up over his head.
     "I surrender."

====================== TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO ========================