Chapter 3: Sairi Kaneda
What the hell was Lu Xun THINKING!!?’ That’s what was going through my head while running the streets of Tokyo. Zhou Yu had me by my wrist, and frankly, it was HARD keeping up with him. He was probably almost as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog. I could tell because at maybe five or six different times, I almost fell face flat on the concrete.
You know, I never noticed until then. “Notice what,” you ask?
Okay, listen, you know Tokyo is the capital of Japan, right? Well, during my stay in Tokyo, BEFORE all of this started, the streets had cars going in every and all directions and you could barely walk without bumping into someone. After the gators came along, Tokyo was a ghost town. Not a single soul in sight…besides Zhou Yu.
Well, we were MILES away from Ayaka Ally, and Xun…
I started to wonder what had happened to him, if the gators had made mince meat out of him, or if he was able to escape.
“Oh, Xun…” I whispered to myself.
I stopped and snatched my hand back from Zhou Yu. He stopped and faced me.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I starred into his eyes. “We HAVE to go back. We HAVE to help Xun.”
“What!?”
“You heard me! Xun needs our help, he can’t fight those gators alone!”
“WE can’t fight them, either. Do you want to die, or-“
He stopped; either that or he lost his train of thought.
He sighed. “I can’t help.”
“Why not?”
“I…I wasn’t there during the trials and…I know nothing except for what Xun told us.”
I was confused, but after a while, I figured it out. “You’re from AI too!?”
He sighed and nodded. Apparently he wasn’t too proud of it, ‘cause after I asked that, his eyes showed a terrible pain.
“I WAS from AI, but…” He sighed again, “After Jannete told us the results of her research, I wanted no part of it. So, I…showed myself out.”
“Got the boot, huh?”
“……Yes.”
Jackpot! Ding ding!
See, I had heard from my mom, after she presented her report, that someone had gotten fired for supporting her. Now, here’s the good part. My mom got fired the next day, THAT means, if my hunch is correct, THIS bum here was fired MINUTES after she finished her presentation.
I started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“You…got…fired…minutes…after…you…heard…my…mom’s...
report!!” I said between bursts of laughter.
“So?”
I calmed a bit. “You are REALLY bad at your job, aren’t you?”
He blushed.
I must’ve hit a BIG nerve, ‘cause when he blushed, he went volcano lava red. Seriously, his whole face went that way.
“It…it was for a good cause!” he argued.
I had a comeback for that too, “A cause that seemed to have given you the pink slip.”
His face got even redder, probably redder than MY face after I ate an ENTIRE jar of red hot chili peppers.
…Don’t ask about that. It was a dare. A very STUPID dare at that.
“Can we PLEASE change the subject?” Yu asked with his hand on his forehead.
“Oh, alright.” I said kind of bummed out.
I was having so much fun picking on him about him losing his job, which it made me forget how worried I was about Xun.
“Thank you. Now-“ He didn’t get the chance to finish, why? I’ll give you two guesses, first one don’t count.
If you guessed “gators”, step on up, ‘cause YOU, my friend, are correct!
We heard their growling coming our way, so, we decided to give OURSELVES the boot and get the fuck outta there. Unfortunately…we didn’t get very far, at least, not until I fell into an open manhole, which means I fell into Tokyo’s main sewer line, and, DAMN it’s gross. I’ve seen military toilets cleaner than that sewer.
Seriously, there was mold EVERYWHERE! And, not to mention, the amount of GARBAGE!! Oh…I get sick just thinking about it.
“Sairi! Sairi, are you alright?!” Yu asked from above.
“What do YOU think?! I’ve fallen into a godforsaken sewer!”
“Not too well, I’m guessing.”
“Watch it, smartass!”
-------------
It took Zhou Yu four minutes for him to join me. FOUR MINUTES!!! It took him four frikin’ minutes just to get his ass DOWN the ladder to join me. I’m surprised the gators weren’t cowing down on Zhou Yu a-la-mode. I guess they gave up.
Actually, now that I look back on it, I’m not surprised he took so long. The ladder was covered with sewer water, which meant it was slippery. One wrong move and he would have either fallen into the water, which would NOT have been pleasant, or cracked his head on the sewer’s iron surroundings.
Well, we moved out…to where, I had no idea, but walking through it was NOT fun. …Why? You’re asking me WHY? Could you even possibly BEGIN to guess how MANT dung piles I stepped on? More times than Guilmon can eat.
“By now, we should be below Warehouse Fifty-one near the Tokyo Bay docks.” Zhou Yu reported after a good six hours of silence.
Now, how he could know where we were in the city from the sewers is BEYOND me. I didn’t even think we were in Tokyo at that point. I figured we had found an underwater shortcut to Hokkaido.
Getting to another island by a sewer line…interesting, no?
Well, above us was another manhole, the twentieth one we came across. Who knew Tokyo had over ten ways to get into a nasty, goddamned sewer.
I checked my watch. It read two-fifty a.m.
I yawned. I was pretty tired, especially after running for dear life for God knows HOW many hours, but I did NOT want to fall asleep in a sewer.
Why? Again with the stupid timing of the word “Why”.
Well, let me explain…so hopefully there will be no more stupid questions about this.
The two of us were in a SEWER!!! In the six hours of being there, we saw over thirty rats! There are people who snore, and those who sleep with their mouth open…I am one of the mouth-open-while-sleeping people. Now, think. Would I like seeing a rat’s ass sticking out of my mouth? No? Good. I’m glad you understand.
Well, getting back to us, the ladder at this manhole looked a little slippery as well, and Zhou Yu went first.
I groaned a little. ‘I hope he doesn’t take as long getting up there as he did getting down here,’ I thought with annoyance, ‘Maybe I should’ve gone first.’
I sighed. “Don’t take too long, okay. The less I have to stare at your ass the better.” I called.
“You don’t HAVE to look you know,” he replied, “You COULD be a look-out for those gators, you know, just in case any of them followed us down here.”
“Where the HELL do you think we are, New York?”
------------
This time, it only took a few moments before we were standing in front of Warehouse Fifty-one, the last wooden warehouse left in Tokyo.
You see, after World War Two ended, Japan had lost over a thousand warehouses, filled with valuable supplies. It was then that Japan decided to tear down all, except for Fifty-one, wooden warehouses and replace them with metal ones. No one knows why they left Warehouse Fifty-one standing…I guess it was too much money to get rid of ALL of them.
We were there, but we just stood there. We were frozen. Stiff. Couldn’t and wouldn’t move.
As we starred at the ancient building, we saw, at least, twenty gators outside the warehouse door.
TWENTY GATORS!!! Ten plus ten gators! Nijyuu gators!
‘Just how many people did AI experiment on, the whole city?’
I shuddered at the thought and pushed it away. Now was NOT the time to think about that, we needed to find a way INTO that warehouse, hopefully finding the weapons we might need.
“We need to find a different way in; the front door seems to be out of the question.” Yu whispered to me.
I nodded and tried to slide past him, not even thinking to pick my feet up. Zhou Yu kept a keen eye on the gators.
Suddenly, he pushed me! “Run,” he whispered, “They spotted you, run.”
So I ran. I didn’t really CARE where, I just wanted to get the fuck out of there.
I ended up running all the way to Warehouse Forty-one. I looked around for a way out of my situation. Ahead was a wall, about five feet high, and behind it, a window.
‘It’s a good thing I hit five foot seven.’ I thought with pride.
I ran towards the wall and climbed it. Standing on the top, I starred at the window. Then I jumped through.
By now, I’ll bet you’re thinking, “You are one CRAZY bitch, you know that?”
Well, after I went through the glass, I fell to the ground, though I didn’t really land on my feet.
I ended falling back and hitting my head on the corner of what felt like a metal crate, or, was it a wooden crate? Either way, I ended up blacking out.
But…you know, I learned something that day. These gators’ hearing is SUPER enhanced, right? They can’t seem to hear whispering, right? So, why can they hear the smallest of shuffling? I’m thinking, selective hearing. They hear what they want to hear…it’s just weird that they don’t want to hear small voices. Get my drift?
