Kitsune 2090

The Dust is everywhere. There is no escaping it. It is the angel that grants you your bliss. It is the devil that refuses to take it back. ~ Anonymous

It was a nice dream while it lasted.

Mind you, none of that running one’s fingers through golden fields or flying through the clouds with not a care in the world kind of bullshit (although those types of dreams existed as well). No, she had bought herself a very specific memory of a woman fucking another man hard, and was busy being in the role of the redhead when the first signs of dream-bleed became too apparent to ignore.

It started with the distortion of the natural environment, which usually required the least amount of detail to render. The room hazed lazily from one shade of sunset orange to that of hellish blood-red. Of course, she was too busy seducing the man to notice, the sleazy motel they were in not changing much in terms of its appearance.

As the dream-bleed got worse, however, details started to ‘pop’, like gaps in a memory deemed too inconsequential to process: one moment she would be kissing him passionately on the bed; the next, he was moving away from her, those broad shoulders coming into focus and nothing else.

Kryst stirred in her bed, her forehead creasing in confusion. Despite noticing these oddities in the dreamscape, she decided to continue with the dream. It had been an expensive memory, goddammit, one the shopkeeper had promised would be ‘an experience of a lifetime’.

Trust her to trust a random dream peddler, but she was used to worse distortions. Plus, the guy was kinda cute.

But things took another turn for the perplexing when the man had returned for seconds, climbing onto her at the foot of the bed, tilting his head to one side and flashing his gorgeous, hungry smile like a Kyoto minx.

Well, this was certainly not as advertised. She sighed. Sometimes, you never knew what you’d be getting from the bargain bin. She raised her eyebrows further when he let out a soft purr and stretched his body. By this point, she wasn’t sure if this was another attempt to seduce her or if she had been tricked into buying some sort of low-grade, animal rights’ fetish gone awry. The last straw, however, came when the front door of the motel room burst wide open and a police officer barged in, his gun drawn and shouting, “Drop the kitty, or else!”

Outside of this odd opera, Kryst hadn’t noticed the actual sirens rising amidst the rabble of the city, like low, beating thumps struggling to breathe above their station. They were subtle enough to keep her in her self-induced coma, with her own heavy breaths and wet sheets on her pale skin overpowering the senses both inside and out of the dreamscape.

Whilst a normal human’s brain would have worked overtime at interpreting signals and symbols whilst dreaming, hers had been dulled over the years from excessive Dust-use; numbed to the slightest alteration of details. Her mind was trying to warn her that something was amiss, but she was more interested in finding out if the police officer was there to chain her to the bed with his handcuffs for round three.

The Dust had fucked things up as usual. It was a viscous-looking gas that ran through transparent tubes, connecting a respirator strapped over her face to a small, box-like contraption no bigger than a regular holograph player. She appeared to be on critical life support with all manner of wiring running inside and under the bedsheets, but as Kryst continued to dream, her masked exhalations sparkled in golden shades of blue, like stars flaring and dying from distant galaxies.

Outside, the city vied for its own attention: bright, vivid neon and forked trails of lightning distracted against what was coming her way; its personality shimmering off the walls and painting her face with constantly shifting colours. Her apartment, by contrast, was still and silent, like a deep breath held for far too long. As a failsafe, a holographic display by her bedside started flashing in warning, emitting a low-sounding buzzer as it counted down from ‘2:59’.

Kryst smiled to herself, intrigued that maybe, just maybe, the police officer would be seduced by the redhead as well and this dream might develop into something extraneous. The title of the holodisk had read ‘Three Times the Charm’ after all, which she had assumed at the time was a simple typo. Imagine her surprise when the officer pulled the trigger on her ‘lover’, blowing his chest wide open in a splay of red before turning to her and saying in a low, levelled voice:

“Kryst, wake up. They’re coming.”

The lights in the apartment went on without her approval, like flood lights turned up to maximum. Something stirred and whirled noisily by her bedside, with the flashing numbers on the black box pausing in its countdown and then resetting back to ‘34:40’, the full duration of the original dream sequence.

Its holographic display flipped from ‘Bliss’ to ‘Full Awake’.

The woman’s eyes finally snapped open, shocked at being dragged back to reality. “Jesus, Crank. What the hell was that? I was in the middle of a–"

“You don’t have time. They’re coming,” a voice in her ear spoke, bearing the same similarity as that of the police officer’s. “You gotta get outta there.”

She froze as she sat up. “No… How did they–?”

There was a sympathetic pause on the other side.

“You’ve got about three minutes. Meet me at The Den once you get your shit together.”

Desperate to move, she tore the respirator from her face and left it gurgling on the floor, its final breaths of Dust evaporating into nothingness. But as she tried to stand, the first wave of the drug’s after-effects began to hit. “Jesus fucking Christ,” she exclaimed in pain, holding onto her temples and collapsing back into the sheets.

She knew that a rough landing was to be expected after an hour or two of sampling Dust, but a hard break like this, with her mind jolted out of the dreamscape so suddenly? She had only experienced this once before in her life, and was already dreading the next 24 hours.

Having little other choice, she forced herself to navigate the mess of her apartment like a drunkard in the dark, years of accumulated garbage hindering her quest for the front door. How much time did she have? Her head alternated between throbs and stabs as she hastily stuffed a duffel bag before getting dressed.

Turning around at the last moment, she let out a curse for almost forgetting the most important item of all: a small, spherical container, not unlike a regular capsule one would normally ingest. It glowed and swarmed about inside, like the same mist that flowed through those transparent tubes as before.

Dust was hard to come by nowadays. Doubly so for someone in her position. Pocketing it delicately, she declared into her earpiece. “Crank, I’m moving.”

But the lights in her apartment started to flicker, before being completely cut off .

“Too lat–zzz...” came the buzz back in her ear. Then, pure static.

“Crank... Crank?? Come in! Fuck!” she hammered the side of her head, before something more ominous caught her ear.

The sirens had stopped in the background, and now, mixed with the rain, heavy footsteps were hitting the pavement many levels beneath her feet. A half-battery of about 30 to 40 stormtroopers was flooding her apartment complex as she spoke, and she could picture every boot-print landing in the muddied water as clear images in her mind, mixed with her own feelings of incredulity and confusion.

This was too much firepower for a simple drug bust.

As if for emphasis, a gunship screamed past her window, Kryst marveling to herself that the NTMP were certainly not fucking around this time. She cursed out loud as another jolt of pain shot up her left leg at the very moment she decided to sprint towards the door. The Dust could be unpredictable at times, one moment granting its user superhuman senses, the other paralyzing your body and refusing to let go.

The whole situation felt wrong – did they really think she posed a threat?

“This is the Neo-Tokyo Metropolitan Police. Drop your weapons and any illegal dream-tech found in your possession. Lie on the ground and await breach. Confirm your compliance!” the gunship roared as spotlights flooded her apartment.

As her hand hovered over the electronic lock, she finally realised there was no way out. Troopers were pouring from the turbo-lifts at both ends of the hallway, and very soon, would be forming up at her door and priming charges.

She eyed her katana resting on the far end of the mantlepiece, gleaming and inviting her to carve her way out of this predicament. But then she realised that, to an extent, that it was the Dust telling her brain to resist. Better any chance at being able to plug in tomorrow than none at all… Right? She couldn’t tell, nor distill one thought from another these days.

Her firearm cluttered to the ground. She forced her hands into the air before willing her body down to its knees, her heart pounding rapidly at the thought of giving up the Dust after all these years. Maybe it was finally time to let go.

“Special Officer Kryst ‘Emilia’ Fawn, you have been held in violation of Section 377A of the Neo-Tokyo Judicial Code, and are to be remanded into our immediate custody. Confirm your compliance!”

“Confirmed,” she said, her voice hoarse, as though forcing it from her throat.

“Prepare for breach.”

“Kryzzz– Movement– end of hallway– Zzz," Crank’s voice suddenly crackled in and out of her earpiece.

“It’s a little too late for that,” she hissed back.

Instead of a blast of air hitting her face, however, Kryst looked up when gunfire suddenly thundered and flashed beneath the small gap of her doorway, followed by the screams of panic coming from the same voices as before, warning her to step away from this new, unknown threat. The gunship outside suddenly veered off with a roar, dowsing her apartment back in darkness.

Another few seconds and the pervasive silence was more horrifying to her than the thought of facing down a group of heavily-armoured troopers in chains. It didn’t help her nerves when there was a flash of movement across the thin, blinding sliver of light, backing her further into the depths of the apartment.

What was most worrying was the fact that she couldn’t detect any movement outside in the hallway in the same way that she could for the soldiers. It meant that whatever was outside was able to mask its Dust signature in some way.

Crank’s voice cut in and out over the radio, no doubt trying to warn her about what he saw that she couldn’t. She ventured a whisper in reply, hoping to call for help.

“Crank–”

But a sickening CRUNCH of metal cut her off, as the front portion of her apartment literally tore itself apart. Thrown back from the might of the blast, her eyes flickered weakly between the blackness and circles of light, with the ringing in her ears reaching a fever-pitch in her shock.

She barely registered the gaping hole that used to be her front door, or worse, the black, silhouetted figure that was now standing there. Slender and tall, it did not resemble anything or anyone she knew. And from the way it lunged at her with gleaming metal clutched in between its hands, Kryst realised the sudden irony of the situation she had found herself in.

She rolled to one side just as the blade descended upon her, ripping into the floorboards instead. Panic flashed across her face as the hooded figure charged in her direction and swung its blade with unnatural precision.

Her holograph player exploded into a million pieces after a slash at her head was deflected at the last moment, Kryst grabbing hold of anything and everything in the vicinity that would blunt the force of the attack. Amidst the shower of electronic parts, she landed a swift kick to the figure’s abdomen, sending him bounding backwards.

But it landed on his feet gracefully, like a cat...

In the faded light, she finally made out those unmistakable, slender limbs, elongated neck and hourglass figure, and identified him as a her behind that porcelain kitsune mask.

“What the fuck do you–!!”

But she was forced to fly backwards when another horizontal thrust almost caught her in the chest. Panic filled her mind when her back hit the glass wall and beyond it, she realised that all that remained was the neverending drop into the depths of the city.

She was running out of options here, when conveniently, a yelp of pain escaped her lips – the Dust chose that very moment to betray her. The assassin seized the chance to lunge forward, slashing low.

The air erupted in a shower of feathers as one of her pillows popped like a balloon, before her sheets were dissected in half after she threw up the bedsheets in a moment of desperation. The blade RIPPPED the linen like a hot knife through artificial butter, sending her tumbling over the side in another shout of terror.

Still, the figure locked on wordlessly and closed, its eyes flaring in shades of golden blue between those narrow slits, and Kryst finally realised why she wasn’t able to trace its movements in the same vein as before... it was a Dust user like herself, and she was about to die if she didn’t act fast.

The reappearance of the gunship gave her the perfect distraction. The figure recoiled for a second at the roar of its engines and the blinding floodlights trained upon on it.

“CEASE AND DESIST,” the craft blared from its speakers. “DO YOU COMP–??”

But its chassis erupted in a ball of fire, something having slammed into it externally and igniting the engine fuel in a brilliant show of amber.

The resultant blast devastated her apartment further, shattering the glass wall and sending them both scrambling for cover.

When her assailant had recovered, however, Kryst was ready. She exploded forward with a sudden burst of movement, managing to dodge the majority of its swings and landing blows of reply into its head and body.

Initially surprised, she soon discovered that the figure was wearing some sort of metallic protective carapace underneath its cloth overgarments, which dulled her attacks. And soon, it had recovered enough to begin retaliating at the same speed as before.

Kryst let out a yelp as her head narrowly parried avoided a thrust of the blade, before she was thrown backwards herself by a kick to her midsection.

Thankfully, she glanced sideways at her own blade lying in reach, thrown off its perch by the blast. Barreling to the side, she surprised the figure with a clash of metal that echoed throughout the room.

Forcing it on the defensive, it parried a slash with one of its own, but Kryst saw it coming. She leapt over in triumph, sending another kick square into its face – the figure went flying out of the window of her apartment, hurtling down into the unknown depths of the city along with the remnant shards of glass.

In the aftermath, the screeching, high-altitude wind was both a blessing and curse as Kryst collapsed to the floor, exhausted and the last minute or so a blur of images in her mind. As she stole heavy breaths on the floor, the same golden-blue flare dissipated from her eyes and the remains of the Dust capsule dropped from her lips.

What had she done? It was almost insane to consume Dust in such a manner, usually requiring the filtering of complex machinery. Now, in her desperation, she had possibly killed someone.

She considered the possibility that she had fought back in mere self-defence, but even then, there was no explaining the trail of bodies, tainted with Dust, left in her wake. One thing she knew was that she had to get out of there, and not just before reinforcements showed up – the side effects of consuming Dust in such a manner would now be amplified one hundred times.

Clutching at her side, she realized that the assassin had left her mark in the melee: a deep gash threatened to become worse if she didn’t tend to it immediately, and even then, it was still the last thing on her mind now that she could feel the Dust creeping further and deeper into her veins.

She needed help, and badly. Crank.

“Get– outta there. ZZZzzz– Ambush,” came his shouts of panic the moment she managed to patch through to him over the radio.

“Yeah, no shit,” she replied, gingerly stepping over glass and metal. “Crank, something’s happened. I–"

Making it into the hallway, she stopped herself mid-sentence at the carnage before her eyes. If she thought her apartment was in bad shape, the sight before her was a living hell.

Countless bodies lay limp and gutted, the remains of the assault team meant to bring her in had their limbs lumped off and their helmets detached from their torsos. How could one assassin do all this, she asked herself.

“Kryst, what the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But I think I just got myself into a shitload of trouble.”

Trying to push the barrage of questions from her mind, she limped towards the elevator at the end of the hallway, ignoring the pounding in her chest growing louder by the minute, the ravenous wind howling at her back mixed with the sirens still rising steadily in the background.