New Orleans
"Trick!"
Sato Kiko cried. "I don't see the point to
this!"
"You don't see anything,"
Trick replied cheekily. "You're
blindfolded."
"Fun-ny,"
Ikku said. "Kiko's right, Trick. We lived here
while the renovations were being done. We already
know what it all looks like."
It was shortly
before dawn, and a black-clad Trick Star had
assembled his three boarders - the brown-haired young
woman, Sato Kiko; the blonde young man, Nagura Ikku;
and the symmetrically-featured dark-haired humanoid
robot, Sei - outside the front entrance to his pizza
store, 'Hey, Pizza!'.
There, he covered
their eyes with blindfolds and spoke loudly as the
few people who walked past at that time of the
morning cast bewildered glances in his direction.
"'Hey, Pizza!'
has been undergoing extensive renovations for the
last few weeks," he told them as he ushered his
companions through the doors one-by-one. "Now,
finally, all the hard work has paid off. This
morning, the store re-opens for business!"
He allowed the doors
to swing shut behind him and continued to push the
Robomen through the store. They felt their way around
the long, stainless steel benches that marked the
edges of the kitchen area and fumbled blindly for the
swinging plastic doors that separated the restaurant
from the room that they occupied at the back of the
store.
The doors were not
there.
Sei carefully and
silently counted his steps from the counter to the
back wall, where the walls had always been - but when
he reached out and felt for them, his fingers brushed
against a solid wall.
"Okay - you can
take off your blindfolds now!" Trick told them.
They did as he
suggested, and Kiko and Ikku each blinked several
times to get used to the bright light inside the
restaurant as it flooded against their eyes which,
when blindfolded, had become accustomed to the
darkness.
"Trick...?"
"Yes,
Ikku?"
"Is this your
way of telling us you don't want us living here
anymore?"
Trick smirked.
"I don't know what you mean, Ikku."
"The back
room's gone."
"What are you
talking about?" Trick asked. "The door's
right there."
Ikku turned to look
at Trick and raised a concerned eyebrow.
"Trick, have
you had too many of those weird South American
peppers again? It's a blank wall. Which is weird,
because the doors were there an hour ago."
Trick frowned.
"You're the
crazy one, Ikku," he said. "The doors are right
there."
"No. They're
not," Ikku responded. "Kiko? Sei? Can you
guys see any doors?"
"No," Sei
replied simply.
Kiko scowled.
"I have to
agree with Ikku, Trick," she said. "Are you
okay?"
"You really
can't see the doors, can you?" Trick observed.
"They're there! Ikku, try running through
them."
"O...
kay." Ikku faced the wall again and took several
steps backwards. Then, he started to run, as fast as
he could, until he hit the wall and fell back against
the ground, hard. "OUCH!"
Trick grinned.
"Kiko? Why
don't you try it?" he asked.
Kiko shook her head.
"Um, no."
she replied.
"Please?"
Trick asked.
Kiko opened her
mouth to refuse, but hesitated. She looked away from
Trick and stared at the wall.
"There is a
small - " Sei began to say, but he stopped as he
saw Trick vigorously shaking his head.
"Okay,"
Kiko said.
She took a deep
breath and two steps backwards, carefully avoiding
Ikku as he picked himself up off the cold linoleum
floor. She took another deep breath before rushing
forward - and as she moved towards the wall, a large
section of it receded with a loud hydraulic hiss,
then slid away behind the wall to the right.
Kiko ran through the
gap and found herself filling the space where the
back room had once been, but she was not in the room
she had been leaving in for the past few weeks. As
Ikku, Sei and Trick entered behind her, she took the
time to look around and her jaw dropped in amazement.
Instead of a tiny,
dark room filled only with a small television, an old
couch, a wooden desk and a computer, she saw four
rooms. A large central room with a new red couch and
two black leather reclining chairs; a massive plasma
TV mounted onto one wall; and a large corner table
with a brand new computer workstation on top of it,
next to which stood the beaming, two-inch tall robot Cog.
"Hi!" Cog
said enthusiastically. "Welcome to your new
home!"
"Home...?"
Sei nodded appreciatively. "This is a vast
improvement."
"Look!"
Kiko shrieked. She had rushed to one side of the
room, where three small doors were set into the wall.
"Bedrooms!"
One of the small
rooms was plushly furnished with a double bed in its
centre, with a wardrobe on one side, a lamp-laden
table on the other. She hurried to the next door and
opened it, and saw that it was a cramped - but
private - bathroom, with a toilet, vanity and shower.
Sei opened the third
door and found a second bedroom, much smaller than
the first - and instead of the large bed and
furniture, that bedroom contained only a pair of
bunks, each barely big enough to fit a single person.
"I call the
double bed!" Ikku said quickly.
"I don't think
so!" Kiko told him.
"But I called
it," Ikku pointed out.
Kiko let out a deep
sigh, walked towards her ally and placed her hands on
his shoulders.
"Ikku, I have
had to share a tiny, tiny room with you for
weeks. You smell. You make noises. You don't clean up
after yourself." She stared directly into his
eyes before she continued. "If you don't give me
the big, soft bed, I'll take something of yours that's
soft... and not so big."
"Kiko!"
Trick shrieked. "What did you just - ?"
"Okay!"
Ikku said. He quickly scrambled away from Kiko and
hid behind Sei. "You can have the bed!"
Kiko smiled warmly.
"Thank you, Ikku. That's very nice." She
faced Trick. "And thank you, Trick!"
She ran forward and
threw her arms around his shoulders, hugging him
tightly.
"I mean
it," she whispered. "Thank you."
"Yeah,
Trick," Ikku said as he cast his eyes around the
room again. "This is amazing, isn't it,
Sei?"
Sei nodded slowly.
"It is an
impressive home," he said, "but I cannot
stop myself wondering how this was built in place of
the small room we occupied until little more than an
hour ago."
"Well, you see
- " Trick began to reply, but he was interrupted
by a familiar voice echoing through the restaurant
and travelling into the just-revealed back rooms.
"Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah
SUGOI!" Kageki yelled as he saw the new
addition to 'Hey, Pizza!'. He hurried forward and ran
a circuit of the main room, taking only a second to
peer into each of the bedrooms and the bathroom.
"This is amazing, Trick-san! And the
restaurant, too!"
"Thanks,
Kageki," Trick smiled at the excited, green-clad
teenager. In more ways than one...
Kageki was so
excited that he bounced on the balls of his feet at
the centre of the room, jerking his head around again
and again to stare at all the bright shiny things.
Even the clean, white plaster walls seemed to amaze
him, and as Trick, Sei and Kiko all stared at him in
amusement, Ikku made his way to the couch and stood
on top of it.
"Now that
Kageki's here," he said seriously, "there's
something I want to talk to you all about."
They all faced him,
and Kageki calmed himself. He sat, cross-legged, on
the floor which, unlike the restaurant beyond the
hidden doorway, was covered with soft beige carpet.
"When I decided
to come back, you reminded me that I was meant to be
the team leader," Ikku reminded them. "I
have spent the last week coming up with a set of
rules that we all need to follow." He reached
into his pocket and pulled out four identical sheets
of paper. He handed one each to Trick, Kageki, Sei
and Kiko, then stood in front of the couch with his
hands behind his back. "Sei, what is rule number
one?"
"'No more
secrets'," Sei responded.
"Very good.
Kageki, what is rule number two?"
"'Be
proactive!' Good one, Ikku-sama!" he answered
excitedly.
"Trick?"
"Rule number
three is 'look out for each other'," Trick
announced.
"Rule four is
to... ask Kageki for more shrimp and anchovy
pizza?" Kiko offered without prompting.
"Exactly,"
Ikku said smugly. "We all need to ask Kageki
for... what?"
Kiko turned the
paper over so that Ikku could see what it said.
"You scribbled
that over 'trust each other and never act
alone'," she told him. Ikku blushed.
"I like 'never
act alone' better, Ikku-sama," Kageki remarked.
Ikku smiled at him.
"Me too, Kageki. Me too. But I really would like
some more shrimp and anchovy pizza... unless Trick
needs you to work...?"
"Trick-san?"
Kageki asked his boss.
Trick gulped down a
deep breath.
"Kageki...
doesn't work here anymore," he revealed.
"What?!"
Kageki and Ikku cried in unison.
"I received a
phone call from Kageki's father a week ago,"
Trick said. "You're going tomorrow,
Kageki."
All the excitement
and enthusiasm drained out of Kageki's face. His skin
turned deathly pale and he turned away from Trick and
Ikku. Kiko stepped forward and put her arm around
Kageki's shoulders.
"What does he
mean, 'you're going'?" Ikku asked.
"I'm leaving.
I'm going home," Kageki replied.
"Home? I
thought you lived at 'Hey, Pizza!', you're here so
often..." Ikku joked. He started to say
something else, but stopped himself as Kiko shot him
a concerned look.
"Kageki,"
she said softly. "Don't you live here in New
Orleans?"
Kageki nodded
slowly. "I do, but my father wants me to go home
home. To Tokyo!"
