Chapter 3

1 Bisco lay prone atop a dune, adjusting the magnification on his cat-eye goggles, observing the enormous wall that towered white in the desert night. Painted across it in big, friendly looking letters was WELCOME TO IMIHAMA, THE CITY OF LOVE! punctuated with the smiling face of the Imihama mascot, Immie. Situated above the words to and of were two imposing machine-gun installations, presumably placed by someone who had not read the message below. Beyond the wall lay the sleepless city of Imihama, its neon glow painting the sky a kaleidoscope of colors. At the center of the urban sprawl, the enormous tower of the prefectural bureau jutted into the sky, subjecting the lesser buildings around it to its magnificence. At the very top stood the pink rabbit Immie, pointing proudly to the heavens. The Rust Wind, however, had taken its toll on the statue’s painted face, and now rust-colored blood seemed to drip from its eyes and mouth. The fortress city, Imihama. The walls were supposedly created first, in an attempt by the people of Saitama to stave off the Rust Wind, and the city formed within them. There, humanity could experience ever so slightly what had been lost—and forget the constant threat of the Rust for a time. “Tsk. Why’d they have to build this thing right in my way?” As Bisco lay peering at the city walls, a chameleon made its way smoothly across his motionless body, over the top of his goggles, and toward his face, whereupon Bisco sucked the animal into his mouth and chewed. Leaving its wriggling tail there on the sands, Bisco pulled up his goggles and slid down the dune toward a tent below, where light spilled out from within. The Rust Wind. A blight upon humanity that ate away at the flesh of the living. The techniques required to investigate its cause had long since vanished, disappearing into dust along with the rest of human civilization. People knew it was the result of a massive explosion caused by the fruits of old Japan’s technological prowess, a superweapon named Tetsujin. However, beyond this, rumors fit for the script of a B movie disaster film ran rampant. Some said it exploded in an accident while undergoing research for a new type of experimental engine. Others claimed war broke out between the Tokyo government and a renegade group of ultra-capitalist megacorporations. Some even told of humankind and aliens wiping each other out in mutually assured destruction. Whatever the cause, the result was clear. An enormous hole marked the spot where Tokyo once stood, and from it spewed the corroding wind that blanketed the entire country. That wind reduced all of humanity’s finest achievements to rust and continued to blow to this day. With the constant specter of death looming over them like a thundercloud, humankind found solace in filthy lucre and dubious faiths. They erected tall walls along the prefectural borders to keep the Rust Wind at bay. Within them, they could escape the dismal truth of the world. The Northern Saitama Iron Desert was perhaps the location most touched by the apocalypse. This land had once represented the greatest industrial powerhouse in all of Japan, but now it was a wasteland. When Tokyo vanished, the wind emerged from the crater and whittled down every last factory, workshop, and power plant, until nothing remained but endless stretches of iron sand. Farther south, beyond the crater, it was not known whether the prefectures of Kanagawa and Chiba were even inhabitable, let alone whether any structures remained. All told, Saitama was the farthest south most folks dared to tread. The road to Imihama from Gunma was fraught with peril, as Lead Sharks and Scorched Eels stalked the land. It was about a four-day trip by crab, and today was the fourth day, on a relatively cool summer night. “Ah, you’re back, laddie!” As Bisco entered the tent, the beady-eyed old man turned to him, still stirring a large, steaming pot. “So? What did you see? Any vigilantes out there?” “No. Security doesn’t look tight at all. I guess the wanted posters haven’t gotten here yet.” “Hyo-ho-ho! Gunma and Imihama have always been at each other’s throats! Particularly the previous governor’s…” “Stop right there, Jabi. I’ve heard enough of your stories to last me a lifetime. Anyway, it’s time for your medicine. Take off your clothes.” Bisco removed his cloak and tossed it haphazardly aside. Jabi lifted his spoon to his mouth to taste the broth, ignoring his words. “Jabi! How many times do I have to tell you?! We check your Rust first! Then you can eat!” “Calm down, sonny, I’m just giving it a little taste! Let me have my pleasures before shuffling off this mortal coil!” “You shuffling off your mortal coil is exactly what I’m trying to prevent,” replied Bisco. “Now stop complaining and get over here.” Faced with Bisco’s overpowering glare, Jabi submitted and meekly removed his cloak and top. Bisco nimbly removed the bandages from around the old man’s upper torso, revealing the Rust eating away at his withering flesh. “…” Bisco frowned. He ran his finger over the Rust infecting his master’s skin. It started at his neck, going down his right shoulder and covering the top of his arm and most of the right half of his chest. “See, laddie? Nothing to worry about! I’m fit as a fiddle! I can even raise my arm, look!” “Don’t talk nonsense. I’m surprised it hasn’t snapped off. I don’t know how you’re still alive.” Bisco administered an injection made of wortshrooms, before replacing Jabi’s bandages. “We don’t have much time left,” he muttered under his breath. “Once it reaches your lungs…” “Don’t look so down, Bisco, my boy. Here, have something to eat! Mmm, dee-lish!” Jabi quickly put his cloak back on before tasting the stew and pouring it into a bowl. “You’re in for a real treat tonight; there’s tons of rat fat in it. Eat it all up, or you’ll be too weak to draw that bowstring when it really matters!” It was like his imminent death was of no consequence. Bisco sighed at his master’s flippancy before sitting down cross-legged on the sand and taking his bowl. Tonight’s meal was an ocher soup made by mincing the meat of ironrats and sandworms, making them into dumplings, and stewing them with dried hen-of-the-woods mushrooms. The modest meats were the result of the day’s sand fishing, a method consisting in firing paralyzing nettle arrows into the sands and netting any curious critters that took a bite. Of course, most of the creatures that lived in the sands were so infected by the Rust as to be rendered nigh inedible, and their meat tasted overwhelmingly of iron, but Bisco was in no position to be picky. There were certainly dos and don’ts when it came to Mushroom Keeper cuisine. For example, when cooking sandworm, it was important to steep it in water to remove all the sand particles. The longer you spent preparing it, the better it would taste. “…Ugh! Agh! Gah! There’s something bitter in this!” Bisco coughed. “Are you sure you gutted it right?” “You’re not supposed to chew it, my boy! Slurp it down in one gulp, like me!” “Don’t give me that crap. You just can’t chew because you’ve got no teeth!” “Hyo-ho-ho!” The shriveled-up, goggle-eyed old man cared not for such things. This was the hero of the Mushroom Keepers, the man who took Bisco in as his own son and trained him to be a master. Jabi gifted Bisco with his own bowmanship, techniques that had earned him the title of Godbow in earlier life, and that gave Bisco skills far beyond his years—and none could ride a steelcrab like Jabi could, either. And yet even he could not prevent the Rust from eating away at his body. He didn’t have much time left. “Jabi, normal mushrooms aren’t gonna cut it anymore. We need to hurry up and find the Rust-Eater before it’s too late.” “…” “Once we get past Imihama, there’s no more checkpoints. It’s a straight shot to Akita.” The Rust-Eater. A miraculous mushroom that could cure the Rust instantly and return damaged flesh to normal. Even among the Mushroom Keepers, it was thought to be a myth. They told stories of how it had been used to save a dying village about to be destroyed by the Rust, but the only person who still remembered where it could be found and how to make it grow was Jabi. “Bisco.” “Huh?” Bisco looked up from his meal, slurping down a rat’s tail from the corner of his mouth. Jabi, who usually lived in a world of his own, smiled with an uncharacteristic air, and his words were gentle and deliberate. “I’ve taught you all I know. About mushrooms, crab riding, archery… With the bow, I daresay you have me beat, in fact.” As Bisco listened to his master speak, his expression hardened. “It’s just medicine you were never any good at, heh! But even so, there’s no other Mushroom Keeper alive who can do the things you can. There’s just…one more thing I’d like to say.” Jabi paused and looked Bisco dead in the eye. “Bisco, when I die…” “Stop it.” “Bisco, listen to me…” “No, stop it! Shut up!” Bisco slammed his bowl of stew on the floor and rose to his feet. His teeth were clenched, and behind his pointed glare, his emerald eyes trembled. “What do you think we’ve been working for? Why do you think we snuck through all those checkpoints? It was all for you—don’t you realize that?! Or do you not care if the Rust kills you?!” “Hyo-ho-ho… That was fun. Remember Chiga, at Mt. Hiei? We used that cable from a cable car to swing over that checkpoint, remember…?” “What do you think this is, a field trip?!” Bisco roared, grabbing Jabi by the lapels and glaring daggers at him. But those daggers seemed to get swallowed up by Jabi’s gentle eyes, and Bisco could do nothing but bite his lip and let him go in frustration. “…I’m not dragging you along just so you can die on me,” he said, spitting out the words, before pulling on his cloak and heading to the door of the tent. “Next time I catch you talking shit like that…I’ll tear you a new one.” With one last look at Jabi, Bisco walked out into the night, angrily zipping shut the flap behind him. The flames of the stove flickered, and Bisco’s neglected bowl cast a dancing shadow onto the floor of the tent. “…He’s such a good kid,” murmured Jabi to himself as he cleaned up the bowls. “But, Bisco, soon I’ll be gone, and there’ll be no one left to take care of you.” After that, someone… Please, someone… Jabi could not finish his thought. He simply stared down into the flames with his large black eyes. Bisco’s cloak billowed as the wind scattered dust and sand into the air. Shielding his eyes, he went around the back of the tent, where the giant crab was milling about freely. “You eat yet, Actagawa?” asked Bisco, peering into the animal’s feed bucket. Sure enough, it was empty. Bisco didn’t know whether crabs ever felt stressed like humans did, but he had never known Actagawa to be unruly, at least. He was like a brother to Bisco, and the two had known each other since they were very little. Bisco sat down against Actagawa’s belly and peered up at his inscrutable features. “…Look at you, Actagawa. Nothing ever gets you down, does it? Must be nice. Wish I was a crab, too… Actually, scratch that. I couldn’t stand carrying people around on my back.” It was unclear whether Actagawa was listening. There was just a faint pop as he blew a bubble from his mouth. Bisco chuckled, before drawing his cloak over his body and nestling into Actagawa’s embrace. There, he closed his eyes. Bisco had almost managed to fall asleep when there was a sudden movement as Actagawa rose. Bisco rushed back to consciousness before leaping to his feet, alert, and signaling for Actagawa to get down. It was as though a loud noise had rang out in the night. In the desert, there was an ominous presence, and it was obvious to a seasoned Mushroom Keeper such as Bisco that something very unnatural was approaching. Bisco stared out over the sands toward the source. There in the sky, a large, eerily silent shape of some kind was gliding directly toward the camp. “What is that…?” Suddenly, there was a burst of sound, and something sliced through the air with such an intensity that it woke Bisco up the rest of the way. He pulled down his cat-eye goggles to see a long, thin white tube, with smoke shooting from the rear, hurtling toward Actagawa. “What the…?!” Bisco drew his bow, lined up the object, and fired. His arrow struck the tube dead-on, and it wobbled a bit in the air before falling to the ground and detonating in a massive explosion. “A rocket?!” Bisco’s sweat glistened in the fiery light of the blast. “Dammit, what’s going on? Actagawa, protect Jabi!” After watching him leave, Bisco turned his attention back out over the desert, where the light from the blast illuminated an enormous military aircraft in the distance. As it sailed through the air, kicking up a ton of dust behind it, Bisco could see something strange and soft squirming around between the two wings, with two antennae atop its head. Painted onto the spiral shell on its back was a familiar star-shaped logo. “Matoba Ironworks…! But why?” “Bisco!” shouted Jabi, grasping Actagawa’s reins. “The puke’s coming—hide under Actagawa, quick!” As if on cue, the snail seemed to inflate before launching a horrible-looking pink liquid right where Bisco was standing. He broke into a dash, moments before the noxious fluid hit the ground behind him and started to eat away at the very sand beneath his feet. The liquid closed in on the fleeing Bisco, melting rock and bending steel. Bisco reached Actagawa and crawled into hiding just as the acidic gunk poured down on the crab’s back, sizzling and giving off white smoke. However, Actagawa’s formidable shell managed to fend off the vomit bombardment, successfully protecting his two masters. The dark shadow flew over them and continued on in the other direction. “An Escargot Plane,” Jabi shouted over the roar of the engines as he cast a glance toward the rapidly dissolving tent. “It’s not in Imihama’s colors. What’s it doing here?!” The Rust Wind caused any precise mechanical equipment to clog up and stop working almost immediately. These days, many prefectures adopted so-called animal weaponry, which used organic engines created from new and exotic life-forms. These life-forms evolved naturally to be resistant to the Rust Wind, and manufacturing companies were quick to put them to good use. The Sand Hippos from earlier were another example of this. This bomber, however, was of a much larger scale, utilizing the near-limitless energy of a mollusk known as the platinum snail to achieve flight while carrying a hefty amount of weaponry on board. “It’s coming around, Bisco! Your arrows ain’t gonna leave a scratch! Get to Imihama, pronto!” The Escargot Plane bore down on the pair once more and, with a puff of white smoke, released another missile. Bisco watched as Jabi expertly aimed his bow and shot it out of the sky. “What do you have against us?! Why are you following us?!” he said, grinding his teeth. As he ran, he grabbed an arrow in retaliation and pulled back his emerald bow. Anger flooded his heart, and the veteran Bisco let his attention wander, just for a moment. Suddenly, a sharp pain ran through his foot. He had been so distracted by the Escargot Plane that he had failed to notice the eel that leaped out of the sands and sank its fangs into his ankle. Bisco let his arrow fall, and the Escargot Plane turned its attention on him. He immediately crushed the eel with his fist, but the poison was beginning to take effect, and already Bisco could feel his leg going numb. “Dammit, my leg…!” The plane aimed the two machine guns atop its wings at Bisco and fired. But a small shadow leaped across the desert and pushed him aside at the very last moment. “Ah…!” The plane’s guns left a trail of little holes in the ground. Along with the roar of the engines overhead, there was the sickening sound of tearing flesh, and the sand was streaked with blood. After the Escargot Plane passed, the moonlight illuminated the tattered cloak of the fallen shadow. “Bisco… Run…” “Nooo! Jabi!” screamed Bisco as the Escargot Plane came around for another run. The snail’s slimy head glistened under the night sky. Bisco’s green eyes shone. His hair bristled with rage, and he glowered up at the heavens with a look of pure enmity that would stop the devil himself in his tracks. He slowly pulled back his bow to full draw, putting everything he had into this one single arrow. “You bastaaaard!” he roared. There was a flicker of light as his arrow split the sky. It struck the flank of the plane as it was banking, right in the center of the star-shaped logo of Matoba Ironworks. The impressive iron plating buckled before yielding entirely as the steel poison arrow passed clean through and out the other side, disappearing into the night without even slowing down. The fuselage of the plane was bent in two like a snapped twig, as though a huge cannonball had crashed into the side of it, denting its thick armor. This wasn’t something that could just be called a good shot. This was something more. Something beyond a level a human should be able to accomplish. The Escargot Plane groaned and scattered pink venom everywhere. It shook its head from side to side in pain at the unexpected attack and at the fungus eating away at its body. There was a great Gaboom! as the mushrooms exploded in size, tearing off the iron plating, and the Escargot Plane fell to earth and crashed. Like a skimming stone, it bounced off the sand and skidded nearly fifty meters before finally coming to a halt, whereupon it went up in a ball of flames. “Jabi! Jabi! Oh god, the blood… Jabi, stay with me! Don’t die!” As the flaming wreckage lit up the landscape, Bisco ran over to Jabi and tried to hold him in his arms, but as his hands touched warm, wet blood, his face went pale. “Uuurghh… I told ya to run, son! I could have taken that thing out in one shot… Well done, my… Guh! Gah!” His white hair was stained red. “Don’t talk, Jabi! I’ll get you to Imihama; we’ll find a doctor there! Jabi would… Jabi would never die in a place like this!” “What…a niiice…shot…” Jabi’s eyes glazed over as though he was dreaming, and he babbled incoherently. “That arrow was you, you know. Flying through the air, breaking down everything in your way…” As he met the eyes of his favorite student, he continued as if in song. “…Find your bow, Bisco. Find the bow for you…” His trembling finger brushed softly against Bisco’s cheek, drawing a line of blood. Then the last of his strength left him, and he fell into unconsciousness. Bisco cradled the old man in his arms and sobbed silently. Two, three teardrops wet the desert sands, then on the fourth, Bisco dried his eyes, fastened his dying teacher to his back, and leaped atop Actagawa’s back as the giant crab galloped over. “I’ll save you, Jabi! Don’t you die on me!” Any vestige of the tears he just shed were gone, the stains swallowed up by the scorching sands. Bisco’s eyes were enveloped in the fires of determination as Actagawa shot across the dunes like an arrow toward the neon lights of Imihama.