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 2)

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

======================== CONTINUED FROM PART ONE ===========================

     [Editor's Note: Unless specified otherwise, all dialogue in this part is
in Japanese.]

     At Narita, the airport that serviced Tokyo, a black aircraft with forged
credentials, a false flightplan and a masked transponder landed.
     Out of it stepped a man wearing a black eyepatch over his left eye.
Underneath it, glowing faintly, a red dot indicated the cybernetic implant
that had replaced it.  He strode out onto the tarmac and warmly wrapped his
servant and one-time mentor in a fierce hug.
     "Shingen-san."
     "Archangeli-san.  Welcome home.  How went New York?"
     "Not as I'd hoped...but the setback was only temporary.  How are things
here?"
     "The stage is set."
     "Excellent."  The man with the eyepatch placed his arm around Shingen's
shoulders as they walked to the car.  "Then all I need to do is place my
final clue."

               *              *              *              *

     In the back of the police car, Warden considered his options.
     The wrist-restraints they'd put on him were thick, but simple.  It
wouldn't be hard to snap them if he boosted his strength as high as it would
go, or even to slide his hands free by rotating his hands enough.  The
question was, should he?
     So far, in his time loose in Tokyo, he'd managed to get shot at by a
helicopter and attacked by people dressed vaguely as animals...and,
humiliatingly enough, he hadn't exactly been winning the encounter when the
Keisatsu showed up to arrest him.  Perhaps fortunately, perhaps not, they
thought he was some kind of Mongolian troublemaker, mainly because they
hadn't seen his assailiants and the natives of the Shinjuku wanted little to
do with any kind of trouble.  They had enough of their own.  So Warden was
left to his own devices...penniless, weaponless, and his only 'friends' were
people who'd be much better off if they had never met him.
     Well, at least *that* part was true to the Thomas Malfeas form.  What
had he been doing when Jimmy Willot found him?  Scrounging in dumpsters.
     Scowling, he decided to enjoy the ride for the moment. 
     "Hey.  Mongolian."  The thinner of the two policemen, the one who
chattered incessantly since they'd arrested him, gestured out the window.
"We're passing Akasaka Palace.  You should take a look...the Geihinkan's a
lot nicer than where you'll be staying."
     "I'm blind.  Why do you keep calling me Mongolian?"
     "That's what we call all the foreigners we arrest in Shinjuku.  Don't
want to call down the wrath of the 'People's Republic' by arresting too many
Chinese, after all."  The officer driving the car gave his partner a dirty
look, which Warden was amused to notice required no cultural translation.
The thinner of the two didn't seem to notice.  "You really blind?  You don't
seem blind."
     "Look carefully at my face.  I don't have eyes."
     That shut the thin one up for a whole minute, as he peered through the
plexiglass at Warden, trying to see through his sunglasses.  Finally he
turned to his partner.
     "I think he may be telling the truth, Hiroshi.  I can't see any eyes.
Surely a blind man couldn't have been behind that disturbance..."
     "So what if he's not?  He's a foreigner with no documentation we found
in the middle of the area, lying on the ground.  We'll book him for vagrancy
and deport him.  Case closed, people happy."  He was about to say something
else when the tattooed man landed on the hood of the car, katana drawn, and
cut the roof off of it with one slash.
     Warden sighed.
     It was just that kind of day, he supposed wearily.
     As the car swerved wildly into the next lane of traffic, Warden
backflipped out of it and into the air, landing on a nearby Fire Brand Beer
truck he saw through the masked lunatic's eyes.  At least this one didn't
seem to have an animal theme.  Warden could hear the police car slamming into
the guard-rail, but knew from tapping his sight that the swordsman was
already leaping onto a nearby car, and from that to the cab of the truck.
     He slid his wrists from the restraints, careful not to break the chain,
and then as the swordsman reached him, began twirling them in a loose flail
manner.
     "I don't suppose you people are ever going to stop coming?"
     "Nothing but death will release you from our grasp, white assasin for
the Eyes of Black!  Tokyo is ours, not a haven for aliens who would bring the
wrath of China down upon us!"  The swordsman slashed at him, cutting half of
the right cuff away with a slash; clearly that was no ordinary katana, or at
least not in *his* hands.  The tattoo pattern on his body was actually
vibrating*.
     Tokyo was sincerely beginning to suck, as Jimmy would put it.
     "*Ape!*"
     "Oh, for the love of..." Warden abandoned Japanese in that moment.  He
didn't care if they understood him or not; he was being jumped on a moving
truck by Otakuza hit men who looked and acted like animals...in the vaguest
and most stylized manner possible...and their leader, who acted like some
sort of techno-samurai and was the same kind of bully that Warden was born to
fight in the first place.  "All right then. You people want to fight someone?
*Fine*."
     As the Ape-mask leapt off his motorcycle to try and grab onto the truck,
Warden gave him vertigo.  Ape-mask missed.  Warden almost smiled, till he saw
the one who dressed vaguely like a fugu float over and save him from hitting
the ground.
     So he whipped the manacles like a bola directly into Fugu's face while
blinding him before it hit.  That sent the two of them slamming into the
ceramic highway barrier with a satisfying sound of smashed bone.  Part of
Warden realized it was petty to take pleasure from their pain.
     Most of him didn't care at all.
     The rest of them leapt off of their motorcycles at the same time,
leaving him to face their battle-cry...possibly the most annoying thing about
them.  Warden wondered why the driver of the truck didn't do something, until
he tried to see through the man's eyes...and found no one there.  Looking
through the swordsman, he saw elaborate machines that seemed to be reading
impulses from a set of devices implanted in the roadway.  The truck was
pre-programmed.
     One less thing to worry about, anyway.
     "*Carp!*"
     "*Dolphin!*"
     "*Frog!*"
     "*Iron Mask!*"
     Not for the first time in his life, Warden sorely regretted the lack of
eyes.  Not for sight reasons...he just found himself longing to blink.
     Before he could find an alternative expression, they rushed him.
     He spun over Carp's throwing 'scales' and under Dolphin's wind and fire
wheels.  Now that he knew what they could do, and there were two less of
them, it was easier to evade them.  He threw off Frog's aim so that the
bouncing kick slapped into Iron Mask's chest instead of Warden's, and then
followed up that kick with a one-inch punch to Iron Mask's sternum that
nearly flung him off the truck.
     Unfortunately, the man had a katana, and he used it to anchor himself to
the side of the truck by driving it through the passenger door.  Warden
caused Carp to go numb just as she flung her 'scales' at him, and smiled
grimly as they went into Dolphin's leg.
     He hated to admit it, but he really enjoyed hurting them.
     The truck took a turn off of the expressway and into a large factory of
some kind as Iron Mask pulled himself back onto the top of it, slashing at
Warden with his katana...just as Warden increased the pins and needles
sensation in his hands from holding onto a speeding truck by a sword grip.
     The katana swung end over end.
     Warden plucked it out of the air and slashed it twice, getting the feel
for it.  It was balanced differently than a hook sword...but if Iron Mask
could use it, Warden could too, now.  Satisfied that he knew how to use it,
Warden smiled at the battered Otakuza, who were beginning to understand, on
an intuitive level, that they'd been playing with the wrong man.
     "Now, as I tried to tell you before," Warden sighed, switching back to
Japanese, "I don't know *who* these Eyes of Black are.  My name is Warden,
and I'm from *New York*."
     He leapt up into the air, arcing over the length of the truck as it
pulled inside a nearby warehouse, and came down in the middle of them even as
he scrambled their senses into a dadaist nightmare of riotous sound and
blaring, nausea-inducing color.  He slapped Iron Mask with the flat of the
katana while driving a foot into Frog's stomach, then used the rebound to
slide his legs completely under Dolphin's and then snapped them to the left,
sweeping hers out from under her.
     The three of them fell off the truck, leaving Warden and Carp alone atop
it as it finally came to a stop at the end of its programmed path, directly
underneath some kind of bottling apparatus.
     Carp flung more of those scales, and Warden cut each of them in half
with Tetsukamen's sword.  Leaping to the side, he used the blade to cut the
roof off and kicked her sense of hearing up into the hypersensitive level,
causing her to flinch at the sound of metal screaming and tearing.
     Which made it fairly simple to flip her off the truck by upending the
roof.  'Looking' about the inside of the brewery, it was easy to feel cocky.
     Until the far wall exploded and the dozen or so men and women in black
gi clambered through the hole.
     "The Eyes of Black!" Iron Mask managed to drag himself to his feet,
drawing the wakiszashi on his hip.  Warden knew them by the ridiculous ease
they slid into the room, almost evading his hyper-sensitive hearing.
     "Onyx Eye," Warden translated into English.
     "Kill the Otakuza scum who serve Otomo!" shouted the Onyx Eye assailants
in Chinese.
     That was when the sports car rammed through the service entrance.
     "*Ape!*"
     "*Fugu!*"
     Warden shook his head in disbelief.  _Could this possibly get any
worse?_
     Then the sports car spun out of control...helped along by the driver and
passenger leaping out of it in order to strike dramatic poses along with the
rest of the Otakuza assassins...and slammed full-tilt into the bottling
apparatus, which spilled its load of bottled beer in a great wave of
shattering bottles and scattering glass.
     This was the point where Warden lost his temper.  Whirling the blade
around himself in wide arcs, he parried or sliced the barrage of glass
whenever it threatened to cut into him, and leapt up onto the framework above
the floor, using it like a spider in a web to cover the distance to the far
wall.
     Once out of harm's way, he dropped and 'watched' the fight between the
Onyx Eye and the Otakuza for a full ten seconds, panting in anger as they
flipped and weaved and looked very attractive and *barely hit each other*.
It was as if even the Onyx Eye...who were quite brutal back home...had
assimilated the strange desire for decorum and aesthetic that seemed endemic
here.
     It really, really annoyed him.
     So he reached out and blinded the lot of them, while turning their
hearing up.
     "I have had *enough* of this," he boomed, sounding to the combatants
below like the voice of God.
     And then he leapt bodily into the center of the fight.
     It became vicious very quickly after that.  Onyx Eye warriors slashed at
Otakuza, who abandoned the showy antics for animalistic brawling.  Everyone
tried for Warden, but between his swiftness and his ability to twist, alter
and shut down all the senses, it was practically impossible to do more than
graze him, especially in the shifting melee that rippled across the broken
glass on the floor and through the haze of alcohol fumes.
     Bones broke.  Masks shattered.  Skin tore.  Blood leaked onto the floor
and left oilslick patterns in the spilled beer.  Grunts and moans of pain
filled the air.
     And at the end of their bloody dance, there were but three.
     Warden stood facing off against two of them, bloody from a dozen shallow
cuts.  They looked equally hacked up.  Iron Mask still stood, his wakizashi
augmented with a chinese tien blade he'd liberated from one of the Onyx Eye
and his mask cracked on his face.  And on the other side one of the Onyx Eye,
a large, powerful woman with two kama clenched in her fists. She stood
defiantly, clinging to the wall with her feet.  Warily, each prepared to
attack.
     "This is insane," Warden spoke first.  "Look *around* you at all this.
What is it for?  *Who gains from this?*"
     "Don't seek to lull me, slayer for the Eyes of Black..." Iron Mask
spoke, but the woman on the wall casually interrupted.
     "He is not one of us...although he knows our arts, he does not bear the
mark."  She held up her forearm, where a chinese pictogram lay above a tattoo
of a black eye with a gleaming pupil.  Warden examined it through Iron Mask's
eyes.  "Or did you fail to notice him cutting down my best as well?  I am
Tarrun, Mother of the Shibuya Triad of the Eyes of Black.  And I believe the
_gwailo_ is right.  We are both weakened by this, and for what?"
     Iron Mask considered this.
     "Did you know of a renegade Otakuza base in the Tsukiji marketplace?"
     "No.  It wasn't until I heard from my sources in Shinjuku of your
attacks on the stranger that I even thought to move on you."
     "I was bait.  All along, I've been *bait*."  Warden spat it out angrily.
"There's no point to this fight.  I suggest we stop it.  If you really want
to continue it, however, I'm willing to go through both of you."
     "I'd like to see you..."
     "Oh, shut up, Otakuza braggart.  We three are the last three standing,
so we know how good we are.  What is your suggestion...I do not know your
name?"  The woman leapt down from the wall.
     "Call me _Warden_." He switched into English for a moment, preferring
that they call him by the name he knew rather than any translation of it.
Then in Mandarin he added, "I speak Chinese as well."  Switching back to
Japanese, "But I doubt our Otakuza friend would appreciate that."
     "You are right, Gaikokujin. I would not.  And I like this situation even
less, but my people are my first priority."  Sheathing his wakizashi and
dropping the chinese sword, he looked at Warden pointedly, but turned and
walked away.  Thenm in stilted and formal English, he snarled, "When next we
meet, white outside country person, I will have my sword back."
     "You can have it back now, if you want..."
     "Not unless I take it from you.  And now is not the time to fight, as
you pointed out. D o not worry...I will find you when it is time."  He tossed
the katana's scabbard over to Warden.  "Until I do, take care of it."
     He stalked off, stopping at the fallen Otakuza to make sure they still
lived...Warden already knew that Ape and Frog had been fatally stabbed by the
Onyx Eye who were dead around them, and the other three would live, but he
didn't bother to tell Tetsukamen.  Instead, the eyeless vigilante turned his
attention to the Onyx Eye leader.
     "Do you know of anyone who would gain from weakening both the Onyx Eye
and the Otakuza?"  With Iron Mask gone, he didn't see any reason to keep
speaking Japanese...and his Mandarin was better, from his longer association
with people who spoke it back home.
     "The People's Republic of China, perhaps.  After all, despite the
idiotic fears of the Japanese Government and their drooling puppet Emperor,
we refugees from the mainland have no love for the Premier, even after the
death of the Master Anchor.  We are exiles, and will remain so."  She
furrowed her brow in concern.  "I would not like to think of Japan under
their thumb as well."
     "No.  China might be your enemy, but it is not mine...and what would a
man claiming to be a god and a gathering of Otakuza outcasts have to do with
them?  Even *they* couldn't be working to bring the PROC to power in
Japan...it makes no sense."
     "A man claiming to be a god?"
     "It's a long story...and if you'll come with me, I'll tell it to you."
Warden saw the wariness in her posture, and heard the slight increase in her
heart rate.  She was interested in his story...and he found himself wanting
to tell it to someone.  Even the fact that they were calmly discussing such
things over the wounded and dead bodies of her own elite assassins didn't
bother him like it should...because at least the ways of the Onyx Eye were
*familiar* to him, and in this alien land familiar was better than nothing.
     "Lead on, White Ghost. You intrigue me."

               *              *              *              *	

     Night fell, as night always does, and they made the trip across town.
     Using the shadows and Tarrun's knowledge of the city, they cut across
Aoyama and the district around the Ote-Mon of the Imperial Palace, where the
"puppet Emperor" resided.  Tarrun briefly explained the history of that
unhappy institution.
     Unlike so many of the gods who returned at the end of the century, the
Kami of the Shinto faith did not try to marshall followers or gain power.  It
was as if they had already lost the battle that really mattered, and simply
sought to wait for the end with as much dignity and beauty as they could
manage, waiting in places of natural or fashioned beauty, surrounded by those
few mortals they deemed worthy to meet the end with. The thunder god Susano
No-Mikado chose Hokkaido, home of the Ainu, to meet his destruction, and
gifted the tribesmen with his infamous war fan as a final gift.
     Ameratsu o Mikami, however, chose the precincts of the Imperial Palace,
where her linear descendants lived. Before death claimed her, she beautified
the city in small but important ways, erecting the great statue and fountain
in the Tsukiji Market, cleaning the water and air of the Port of Tokyo.
     Her tragic mistake was an act of mercy and love.  The Imperial Family
was her family...mostly human descendants who had sat on the Chrysanthemum
Throne for the generations since Ameratsu had last walked the Earth.  She
granted them a boon of power and wisdom, "recharging" the diminished power of
the Imperial Family so that it might carry on for another thousand years or
more after her demise.  Even the otherwise normal men and women who had
entered the family by marriage were thus empowered.
     Which meant that when every paranormal on Earth died to stop the rape of
the planet by the other gods, the Emperor and all his kin, no matter how
far-removed, died as well.  This left Japan without even the pretense of a
legitimate successor.  Tsukihito, the man who now sat on the Chrysanthemum
Throne, bore no trace of Ameratsu's blood, and all knew it.
     Warden shuddered in sympathy as they passed by.
     They cut into Nihombashi, passing the black pole on the bridge that
marked the geographic center of Tokyo as defined by Ieyasu Tokugawa; in the
years since, no one had felt the need to argue with him, and even in 2024
that pole was called "Zero Kilometer."  Then they skirted the edge of the
Ginza, avoiding the upscale shops that threw off too much light for them.
     It was a bizarre tour of the city.  They avoided all the areas that had
people in them and made their way to the fishmarket district, to the Chuo
Oroshiuri Ichiba, where the one called Shingen had kept the Warden a
prisoner.
     Where any clues there were to have were to be had.

               *              *              *              *

     The two of them approached the scene carefully...the Keisatsu were still
there, after all, and while not exactly the most difficult thing either of
them had ever evaded, it made Warden uneasy; he was in the company of a
crimelord and avoiding the police, and it rankled.  Plus, Tarrun reminded him
of Varru'Ke, the female Onyx-Eye leader back in Manhattan...and she'd always
made him nervous.
     They clambered up the side, her clinging with her strange, almost
insect-like grip, and he increasing his strength and tactile sense until the
tiny cracks in the masonry felt gigantic.  When they reached the top and
climbed in through the hole he'd escaped from in the first place, he knew
what they'd find by the rotting smell.
     Dead men.  Dead Otakuza renegades, dead cyborgs...who were also Otakuza,
by the tattoos on their bodies...and as Warden half-expected, no sign of the
man who had tried to break him, the bald man called Shingen.
     "Many dead men...no obvious rhyme or reason to it.  What about this name
they called you..._Hoder_?  Does it mean anything to you?"
     "No...there must be *something* here!"  Together and yet apart, Warden
and Tarrun walked through the halls of the concealed chamber, stopping at the
door to the hidden room.  It was concealed, but he could feel the air moving
around the concealed edges of the door, and searched for a few moments for
what he knew must be there somewhere.
     A click, and the door opened.
     Inside the room, Shingen's dead body lay, his neck broken.  One of his
hands was sprawled out next to a go board.  Warden could sense the letters
burned into the far wall, symbols in the intricate katakana the Japanese used
to translate words and concepts from foreign languages into theirs.  He
didn't read them; it was too intricate a system for him to master without
normal sight to practice it.  He turned to Tarrun, who was examining Shingen
with interest.
     "The anchor of the infamous Underground Schools, trainer of Sentai
Bushikamen for many Otakuza clans...dead.  His neck snapped cleanly.  I never
thought I'd see the day.  Who could do this to an Anchor?"
     "I'm not sure, but there's writing on this wall.  Can you read
_katakana_?"
     "Yes."  She walked over to the wall.  After staring a few moments at the
scorchmarks, she frowned.  "The first one is _iie_...it means no, or not.
Then _mae_, which means in front of..._ke-sa_, the morning...I'm not sure
what those ones are, but I think it says _wa doko desu ka_ which would mean
Where is or Where was...and _dare desu ka_, Who?  I don't understand."
     "I think I do."  He looked down at the board and realized something.
Exactly half of the pieces were made of sound-reflective stone, a kind of
stone he'd sensed a few times before...they were made of Onyx.  One of the
non-onyx ones was unaligned, and it laid to the south and east of the board's
center...corresponding to the market itself.  And one of them....
     "I know who's behind this now.  And I know where to find him."

               *              *              *              *

     Ultimately, Warden left the market without her.  He knew that if he
associated with Tarrun any longer, he'd be forced to act against her.  After
all, she was Onyx Eye, and wherever they went protection rackets and gangland
activities sprang up.  But it wasn't his concern, he decided, because it
wasn't his home...and even though he knew it was a cop-out, he didn't damn
well care anymore.  He had enough to deal with, finding the bastard who'd
done this to him.
     He found himself clambering up the side of the Token Hakubutsukan, the
Japanese Sword Museum, entering as close to the top as he could.  He thumbed
his stolen katana away from the scabbard slightly in order to make it easier
to draw.  The darkness inside it really wasn't a problem for him.  Soon, he
found the staircase to the top floor.
     The door was open.  _I'm expected,_ he reminded himself, and stepped
inside.
     "So this is how it ends."  Warden used the sound of the speaker's voice
to find him.  "You know, I really expected that you'd be dead by now...or
that you'd have killed Tarrun and the rest of her Onyx Eye, along with
Otomo's Otakuza clan, leaving those I control to expand even further.  I
wasn't expecting your solution."  The man spoke English smoothly, a native
speaker.
     "It wasn't a game to me," Warden replied in the same tongue.  It had a
comforting familiarity.  The room was lit via power from a junction box
underneath the floor; Warden could taste the tang of electricity as he
crossed it.  Elaborate racks of archaic weapons lined the walls, most of them
smelling of the oil and lacquer that proper maintenance required.  The
speaker was a shorter man, well muscled, with an obvious cyber-eye that swept
the room in infra-red light; Warden could feel it warming his skin.  "So I
decided not to play."
     "Indeed.  I must say, I've gotten used to those who consider themselves
heroes.  None of them would have left such an obvious knot of corruption
intact."  Warden didn't bother to answer; instead, he reached out and tried
to remove his enemy's ability to see.  He couldn't.  Which confirmed his
theory nicely; his enemy was an Anchor.  Luckily, his sense of smell wasn't
what he'd 'heard' someone call an "Active Violation Effect"; Warden had the
man's scent now.  He'd know it forever.
     The room was surrounded in glass, and no doubt behind it the Ginza
spread out like a carpet of jewels, but Warden couldn't see it.  All he could
sense was the glass itself, vibrating slightly as they talked.
     "What's your name?"
     "Why should I tell you, Warden?"
     "Do you really want to be anonymous, after all this?  After the Otakuza
and the Onyx Eye and the Sentai Bushikamen, after all your games and traps, I
can hardly believe you haven't already told me."
     "But I did."  The man smiled...Warden could 'see' it in the patterns of
the sound of his voice bouncing off of the walls around him.  "The message
burned into the Otakuza hideout in katakana...'Where is the one who hides
behind the horizon?'  It was more than a map I left...it was a clue.
Granted, you aren't the mind my usual opponents are, but..."
     "I know enough to know you meant Horus. Are you claiming to be *another*
god?  Odin wasn't enough for you...was it, Lorenzo?"  It was Rebus' turn to
be silent.  "I've read Eugene Kwan's mind...it wasn't hard.  I know more
about you than you'd expect, Rebus.  I was just interested in getting close
enough to you."
     "As was I."  Rebus's smile exposed his teeth.  "Oyasumi nasai, Thomas."
     The anchor effect rolled out over the room, stealing the ultrasound
"picture" and with it, the enhanced speed, reflexes and perceptions that made
Thomas Malfeas into Warden.  The desk that had been between them creaked as
the man once known as the Ankh Killer leapt across it, his feet slashing
towards Thomas's face...
     Just as Thomas drove the borrowed Katana he'd taken from Tetsukamen into
the junction box, plunging the room into darkness save for the blinding
shower of sparks and arcing electricity blazing from the blade.
     "Aaahr!"  Rebus was blinded in his human eye, while his cybernetic
optics went fuzzy from the discharging electrical surge.  Thomas drove an
elbow into the man's throat, sending him sprawling onto the carpet.
     "You make people helpless, Horus of the Horizon."  Thomas' spit the
words while moving.  "But even without my powers, I am as skilled at the best
fighters I've ever faced...and I've faced the best the Otakuza and Onyx Eye
had to offer just today.  I can fight blind.  Can you?"
     Rebus rolled to his feet, his cybereye still bombarding his optical
cortex with static, and listened intently.  The sound of breathing in the
room was masked by the crackling of the speared junction box.  He closed off
his senses, using a trick old Shingen had taught him back when he'd been
merely a student, and tried to find Warden by the disturbances he made in the
air.
     Behind him!
     Rebus whirled, his fist a blunt instrument capable of breaking ribs like
kindling, but Thomas merely stepped an inch back and let it tangle in the
folds of his borrowed jacket, now draped along his arm like a matador's cape.
Then he pulled Rebus forward and tossed him into the window behind his desk,
smiling with satisfaction as the glass shuddered on impact.
     "Very...good...Thomas."  Rebus pulled himself to his feet.  "Tell me,
have you ever heard the term 'Fenris Wolves?'"
     "No."  Rebus tried listening for where the voice came from, but the room
was too cavernous; sound seemed to echo from the darkness.
     "Well, you were one of them, Thomas.  And for years, they kept you
anchored to that bed in the hospital.  The Conclave would have held you
forever, if not for a quirk of fate.  But I destroyed the Conclave, and in so
doing, I kept you free, Thomas.  You *owe* me."  Rebus' boot ground the
screen of his computer into fragments as he stepped around his desk.  "Is
this how you repay your debts?"
     "I have no idea what you are talking about.  And I don't care."  Rebus
got a block up in time to deflect a nasty slash-punch inches from his face,
and retaliated with a scythe-kick, but somehow his target turned that kick
into a toss that sprawled him out onto the floor.  He rolled to avoid the
foot that brushed less than an inch from his cheekbone and slashed out with
his arm, catching the edge of the heel and flipping Warden over...but he
didn't hear him land.
     "I have the layout of this room memorized, Warden.  There's no escape
from me in here."
     "Then I guess..." the sound of metal scraping against metal, "I'll have
to go through you instead."
     Rolling, Rebus heard the blade of the sword cut his desk in half.  The
edge of the metal made a small whistling sound as it slashed through the
darkness, and despite Rebus' training it found his face, slicing across the
edge of his cybereye and spinning him across the room.
     Rebus landed against the wall; he knew by the picture of the room in his
memory that it contained a no-dachi that had belonged to the Minamoto family.
Wheeling on his heels in the darkness, he reached out for where he knew it
would be and felt the handle in his palm.  It slid from the scabbard with a
low whine.
     The whistle drove in; Rebus blocked it with the no-dachi, then lashed
out with it.  He heard the sound of fabric tearing and knew he'd just split
his new couch in half.
     It was a ballet of sound.  The clashing of blade against blade, as each
man used sound and smell and the feel of moving air to try and find the
other, to deliver the killing stroke.  Rebus was as well-trained and athletic
as any man could be, and Thomas Malfeas was skilled in arts as esoteric as
any that existed, arts that compensated for the blackness that Rebus's
presence forced upon him.  They whirled and spun and struck and moved apart
and rushed in again, dancing in the darkness.
     Rebus pulled his blade down in a savage overhand strike and felt fabric
tear; he pulled it back with liquid dripping down onto his hands.
     "First blood is mine, Thomas."
     A foot caught him full in the kidney, sending him spawling back along
the length of the room and into the window again.  This time it shattered,
the polymerized layer between the sandwiched glass the only thing that held
it in any kind of place.  The moonless night outside provided but dim light,
but Rebus's teary human eye could dimly see the sweeping blade of the katana
catching starlight as Warden approached.
     _Just a little closer._  Rebus could see faintly now, and in that dim
blue light the slash across Warden's ribcage was jet black, a jagged line
down the length of him.  Not enough to kill him, but it would slow him down
enough.  Rebus grinned in anticipation of the kill.  It was sad to lose
someone who might have been so useful, but Warden had proven a little too
dangerous to allow to live.
     Warden suddenly stopped fifteen feet away from Rebus.
     "Interesting fact about you Anchors...when you get tired or distracted,
your range shrinks.  Did you know that?"
     Rebus's good eye widened.  He concentrated on extending the field...
     Warden flung the katana end over end like an enormous throwing knife.  A
normal person wouldn't have had a chance in hell of hitting anyone, but
Warden wasn't a normal person outside of Rebus's Anchoring field.
     The blade speared Rebus, driving straight through the lower abdomen and
coming out an inch to the left of his spine.  The window he was leaning
against shuddered with the impact, and then gave way, sending his body
tumbling backwards out of it.
     Warden rushed forward, ignoring the sudden weakness as he stepped full
into Rebus's sphere, which told him that the man wasn't dead.  He shoved his
head and shoulders out of the window, trying to get an idea of Rebus's
location, and froze when he heard a vicious chuckle.
     "I learned a lot from studying your exploits, Warden...even from your
enemies.  For instance..."
     Thomas heard a click, then the sound of metal springing.
     And he leapt, blind to Rebus's location, dropping as a normal man.  The
world came rushing in at him as he dropped, and then heard the fuse sputter
into silence, before the explosion effectively "blinded" him.
     Half-deaf, he felt rather than heard the slight vibration of high-load
wires below him, and he smiled.
     This was the part that was second nature.

===========================================================================

Next Issue:

     This is an Annual, there isn't really a "next issue."  However, the
adventures of Warden in Japan continue in Time Capsules Annual #1, "The
Darker Angels of Our Nature"!

===========================================================================

Author's Notes:

     Here's a translation of some of the foreign terms used in this issue.

Japanese:

     Bushikamen - Masked warrior(s).  Kamen is "mask" on its own.
     Chuo Oroshiuri Ichiba - The great fishmarket of Tsukuji.
     Fugu - Blowfish.  Specifically, a highly toxic variety of blowfish that,
when prepared correctly, is a top-line delicacy in Japan.  Prepared
incorrectly, it's fatal.
     Gaijin - Foreigner.
     Gaikokujin - "Outside country person," a slightly less rude way to say
foreigner.
     Geihinikan - The Akasaka Detached Palace, which is deserted in 2024.
     Kama - Scythe-like short bladed weapons, usually used paired.
     Katakana - One of four writing systems used to express the Japanese
language (the others are Hiragana, kanji and romaji).  Katakana are the
closest that native Japanese has to an alphabet (syllables rather than
letters, though), and are used to represent foreign words and concepts.
Katakana are also commonly found in writings intended for the less literate
(children, gaijin, etc) to help them sound out more complex words that they
may not have learned yet.  However, since any one combination of katakana can
map onto dozens of words/concepts, they're not useful for clear
communication. 
     Keisatsu - Police.  Literally, "Watchers."
     Kobun - Police "box," more of a substation.  Japanese police are less
centralized than most U.S. police, but strike a balance between walking the
beat and having a place you can be easily found by setting up numerous small
Kobuns.  Given the equipment of the Keisatsu in 2024, Kobuns are probably a
bit bigger and more heavily armored/protected than they are in the real
world. 
     Niombihashi - The "Zero Kilometer' that marks the center-point of Tokyo.
     No-dachi - A two-handed sword with a slightly curved blade.  An
executioner's blade.
     Otakuza - Mixture of "Otaku" and "Yakuza."  Otaku literally means "my
house," but has since come to mean any rabid fanboy of something.  The Yakuza
is the "Japanese Mafia."  Otakuza take the structure of the Yakuza but bring
in paranormals and a fanboyish fixation on Sentai and other heroic late 20th
Century ideas.
     Oyasumi nasai - Be at peace, Goodbye.
     Sentai - A genre of children's show featuring five-person teams of
brightly costumed superhumans.  Power Rangers is remixed Sentai.  A later
innovation was the addition to each team of an extra woman (3 men, 2 women
instead of the earlier 4 men, 1 woman) and a sixth team member.  The sixth
man tends to come and go mysteriously, and is not necessarily thematically
linked to the other five in his appearance or powers, but can be.
Fortunately for Warden, one of the other standby elements of Sentai, the
giant robot, was not introduced in this story.
     Tetsukamen - Iron Mask.  Iron Mask is the "sixth Sentai" of the Otakuza
Bushikamen. 
     Wakizashi - Most readers should be familiar with the Katana, and this is
the short blade that is traditionally paired with it.  Generally a backup
weapon or simply for style, as few katana-based fighting styles also employ a
second blade these days.

Chinese:

     Gwailo - "White ghost" literally.  Westerner.  Cruder variants, such as
"gwiper," exist.  Not that "gwailo" is exactly polite.
     Triad - A sort of cross between a criminal organization and a freelance
government.  Originally formed out of anti-imperialist revolutionary cels in
the 1800s, Triads quickly found there was better money in crime.  Exported to
the U.S. as Tongs (which have a stronger pseudo-governmental role since they
arose on the "wild frontier").