Sign of the Dragon (Tatsu Yamada Book 1) by Niall Teasdale (e reader TXT) 📕

little old Japan, supposedly, I ended up in the military police. Did that for five years. Fifteen years after I joined up, my term of service was done, so I walked out of the military and into the TYMPD. I requested Chiba because… Because I don’t really fit into Tokyo society.’

‘Makes two of us. I can’t believe you’re twice my age!’

Tatsu laughed. ‘What can I say? I like them young. You got any plans for today?’

‘Not until I need to go to work. Uh, correction, I do have plans, but they don’t involve going out or anything.’

‘And I suppose they involve not letting me out either.’

Kobayashi smiled and nodded. ‘I’m not even letting you get dressed.’

Tatsu rolled her eyes. ‘I guess that’s fine with me, but…’

‘But?’

‘How about you get dressed? I kind of want to see some of those costumes you say you made.’

‘Okay. I can do that.’ Thoughtfully, Kobayashi sucked milk substitute from her spoon. ‘Considering the age difference, I think we’ll start with “naughty schoolgirl.”’

Tatsu gave a shrug. ‘Fine, I’ve never been a lolicon before.’

~~~

After naughty schoolgirl – western style, not Japanese, with a pleated microskirt – there was naughty maid – with a frilled microskirt and exposed breasts – and then naughty nun. The dominatrix outfit had come out a couple of hours before Kobayashi had to go to work, and they had had a lot of fun with that one.

Now the outfit was ‘buck-naked cage dancer’ and consisted of a pair of slingback pumps, but this time it was for professional purposes. Tatsu watched from a safe distance as horny Chinese refugees sat around cheering Kobayashi on and dropping tips. You could tell when one of them transmitted a payment because Kobayashi would turn in that direction; they were basically paying for a better view. The tips were in the five hundred to a thousand yen range, according to Kobayashi. She sometimes got more from Japanese tourists who did not know better. Less and she would basically ignore the giver.

Tatsu had decided to accompany Kobayashi to The Hole for two reasons. First and foremost was the desire to continue their day of debauchery once the dancer left work. However, Tatsu had taken several walks around the club, listening. So far, the transition from Zima to Vasilev seemed to be going smoothly. No one was hinting at possible gang wars. No one was talking in a way that suggested the assassin had been found or even identified either.

When a couple of bouncers appeared to extract Kobayashi from the cage, the dancer waved for Tatsu to follow as she was escorted to the club’s backstage area where the dancers changed for their performances. Tatsu considered both ‘changed’ and ‘performances’ to be in air quotes. She had been back there before on a couple of occasions, though she had been working in both instances. Chasing someone through the changing rooms after a stabbing had been an interesting experience. This time, things were a lot more calm.

And watching what was basically a stripper put clothes on was a strangely surreal experience. The room was far from quiet. Girls shouted at each other in several languages or chatted in the same languages at closer range. There seemed to be a general air of camaraderie about the place. Everyone here was in the same boat. Everyone danced in various states of undress for tips. The club did not pay a basic wage to the dancers – it provided a platform for them to earn money from the customers and the government provided the basic wage. The fact that Kobayashi earned enough to keep herself in a home and food and have a bit left over was an indication of her talent.

‘Back to my place?’ Kobayashi asked as she pulled on her panties.

‘I thought we’d find somewhere a little more comfortable,’ Tatsu replied.

‘Such as?’

‘There’s a love hotel down the street. You can decide the theme and it’s my treat. I may be a machine, but your floor is murder on my back and knees.’

Kobayashi giggled. ‘Well, yeah, same. It’s not like those apartments were really made for acrobatic sex.’

‘They’re barely made for living in.’

‘So, why do you live in one? There are better buildings in Chiba, and I bet you could afford one.’

‘It does what I need. Mostly. On occasions like this it’s less than perfect, but then we have love hotels.’

‘You know they almost regulated those out of existence.’

Tatsu nodded. ‘But then Izanami came along.’

‘Huh, yeah. What would we do without Izanami?’

Get through a week without a visit from ‘mother?’ That was Tatsu’s first thought, but… ‘We’d all be dead or in a concentration camp.’

‘And you fought Rasputin’s robots. That had to be… I don’t know. All I ever got was horror stories in the guise of history lessons.’

‘Probably not far from the truth.’ The general dislike of full-body cyborgs stemmed from two causes. While cybernetics were not entirely uncommon, most people had trouble with total-body replacements since it blurred the line between man and machine. Behind it all, however, was the Cyberwar when killer robots had stormed across much of the planet. People still associated robots with death and internment, and full-body cyborgs were too close to being robots for many people’s comfort. ‘He built some very nasty machines. And we built some very nasty machines to counter them, though they were mostly aimed at killing other robots. If something can stop a robot, a human is easy.’

‘That’s depressing.’ Kobayashi was fully dressed now, if the relatively minimal, largely translucent outfit she was in could be called dressed. ‘Let’s go find ourselves an interesting room to spend the night.’

~~~

The hotel was called Dream Castle and, externally, it looked like a castle, sort of. It was basically a block of concrete like every other building