Chapter 8: All's Fair

Jaune had a problem.

Actually, he had two problems. Their names were QP and Aru, and for reasons he didn’t know and was too scared to ask about, they had both decided he was Romantic Partner Material. This wouldn’t have been so bad had they not been extremely good friends, and had they not decided to do so literally days apart from each other.

How big were these problems? Frankly however big they wanted to be. Aru, after growing big enough to fill her entire warehouse after an unfortunate incident with Krila’s voodoo mutterings, had begun to research how to reproduce the effect in her day to day life – strictly for reaching things on high shelves, she said, and definitely not because she’d enjoyed the feeling of having her cup size measured in gallons. QP, meanwhile, had not offered any explanations on how exactly she’d become large enough to have thumb wars with King Kong, but he was now acutely aware that she could do so any time it took her fancy.

Many people would have envied his position. Not many people deliberately went looking for problems, but when said problems came equipped with bountiful chests and smooth, trim thighs, exceptions could be made. But he was well aware of the saying that ‘a man who chases two hares (or a hare and a dog, as the case may be) catches neither’. His situation was the exact opposite; a man chased by two hares had no escape. The walls, however plush and enjoyable, were closing in.

But unbeknownst to him, Jaune had a third problem. And she had the biggest chest out of all of them.

“You’re with me today,” Yuki informed him over a breakfast of nondescript cereal. Nobody actually knew what cereal it was. They’d found it in the cupboards and decided not to ask questions. She pointed at him with her spoon, splattering milk on his lapels. She didn’t care. They weren’t her lapels. “Better wear your big boy pants today. Things are going to get intense.”

Jaune sniffed, mildly offended. “The pants that could contain my big boy haven’t yet been made.”

“Neither have the lips that could contain all that yapping of yours,” she fired back, looking mildly pleased. She liked a bit of resistance, particularly in the morning. It activated the neurons.

He shrugged, accepting it. “Well, whatever. I’m out. QP and Aru have both asked me on a date today. I have to decide who to go with.”

“And you’re going to stiff both of them and hang with me instead. That’s why it’s going to get intense. Hope you’re up to date on your health insurance.”

He frowned. Actually, insurance was one of the concepts he was struggling to adapt to in his new environment. In the old country, you just crawled to the doctor and they decided which organ they’d like to sell for the cost of treatment. According to Kiriko he technically qualified for pet insurance, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to take the word of a mad doctor like her, and he definitely didn’t want to leave himself to her tender ministrations in lieu of a less insane medical professional.

But as much as he hated to admit it, she was presenting him with a plausible out from his current dilemma. Until he really figured out what to do with the QP and Aru situation, getting hauled in by his unreasonable boss was a fantastic way of avoiding days where their dates clashed, if only because it meant he could shovel some of their ire onto Yuki instead of keeping it all for himself.

So he sighed and he nodded, knowing that he had just pissed off two very lovely, very dangerous women by doing so. But the important thing about those women was that they weren’t eating breakfast with him, and Yuki was. In yet another example of his present self shooting his future self in the kneecaps, he had gone with the path of least resistance.

At least he had enough honour to feel guilty about it – if only just a little.

“So, what’s the plan, boss?”

He fell into step with Yuki as she walked, which was a lot harder on him than on her. He wasn’t short – well, not that short – but she was a bit taller than him, with long legs and a purposeful stride. It really would have been easier if he’d slowed down, but he wasn’t quite sure she’d slow down to match him, and anyway, his natural military instinct was the match the beat of the person next to him. Learning to march in time was a difficult thing. Learning how not to march in time was even harder.

“Plan? There is no plan,” she said with a self-satisfied shrug. “And I’m not your boss right now.”

“Is that right?”

She grinned. “What, you don’t think I deserve a break from time to time? This is my day off. As of the moment I got up this morning, my authority meant nothing.”

“Would have been nice to know that when you ordered me to come with you,” he grumbled.

“Ordered? I didn’t give you any orders,” she said, with mock innocence. It was about as convincing as a child pretending to be a tree in a school play. “I just told you that you would. What, I’m not allowed to make predictions any more, just in case they’re true?”

As logic, it was deliberately underhanded and patently absurd. But it was logic, which put it a step above most of the things that happened in Ebimanyou Town. In most places, cause and effect were inextricably married to each other; here, they felt more like distant cousins who only saw each other at family reunions.

“Why bother dragging me out with you, then? I’m sure Tomato and Mimyuu would have hung out with you.”

“Yeah. Because I’m their Boss. Even when I’m not their boss.” She paused for a moment to let it sink in, and to make sure he had caught the implied capital letters. “They’re my underlings, and I’ll beat the hell out of anyone who messes with them. But they’re not my equals.”

“So you’re saying I am?”

“I’m saying you could be. Provided you don’t let it go to your head.”

He couldn’t help but wonder what that actually meant. His gut told him that Yuki seemed formidable, but when it came to actual results, there weren’t any that he could put his finger on. She had a gang, but it was mostly a collection of misfits who pursued their own specialist interests with varying levels of competence. Sometimes he ran errands for her, but the errands didn’t seem to further any grand criminal plan; all in all, Waruda just seemed like a gaggle of stray cats, doing what they could to live freely in the modern world. Was herding cats an achievement? Even if you were a cat yourself?

Yuki strode onwards, and kept her secrets.

She’d come out for the day dressed to impress, with a soft off-the-shoulder sweater and a pair of jeans so tight he was surprised she could fit into them without applying a stick of butter first. She had a half-moon earring clipped to one ear, and had finished off the outfit with a pair of peep-toe shoes.

There was also a faint whiff of perfume, but not as Jaune knew it. Most perfumes were just too strong for a wolf’s nose to find pleasant, but she’d picked something subtle and floral. It put him in mind of a meadow in early spring, all freshness without the overwhelming vibrancy of summer.

Ordinarily, Yuki was a functional, comfy kind of cat. She liked ease of movement, cheap clothes that she could customise, get torn and dirty in back alley fights, and then discard when she could extract no more use from them. She wore them well, but that was more a matter of practice and confidence than anything else.

For her to dress like she was now, he thought, was not because it relaxed her. The opposite, in fact. It was to stress him out. It was an unwritten statement of expectation.

“So, where are we going?” she asked.

As someone who’d struggled to stay half a step behind her for the last twenty minutes, Jaune did not find this to be a very comforting question. “What do you mean, where are we going? You’re in the lead. You’ve been in the lead the whole time.”

She grinned, something wicked and mocking. “A girl can get bored of always being one step ahead. Surprise me with your knowledge of our fair city. Show me my home through fresh eyes.”

“I wasn’t aware that hanging out with you came with a mandatory geography test.”

Even as he grumbled, he folded his arms and started to think.

Ultimately, there was nowhere new that he could show Yuki. Ebimanyou Town, while a spaghetti nest of strange alleyways and even stranger happenings, was not a big place., and all of it was Yuki’s stomping ground.

But there were still places she likely never went: the tourist traps. What seemed novel to a stranger in town was often just an eyesore to the locals, who had to live with them day-to-day and honestly had no good excuse to visit.

And if he had to pick a thing that drew tourists to the town, he had to assume the ever-present fairground and circus tent fit the bill. Usually, those were a strictly seasonal thing, dispensing entertainment to the masses and then moving on when their welcome grew thing, but Ebimanyou Town’s remained stubbornly rooted in the same spot, doing nothing much besides increasing the risk of sudden lion attack.

“The fairground, huh?” she murmured when he told her. “Sure, that’ll work. Haven’t been there since I recruited Krila. Let’s get moving. Oh, right.”

Her hand darted out like a snake, her grip closing tightly around his wrist. Steady hands, he thought. A little callused at the heel of her palm, where her revolver jerked back from the recoil.

“Scared I’ll run away?” he asked.

“More like I’m tired of having you lag behind. Make sure you’re ready to hit the stalls. We’re taking those fairground chumps for everything they’ve got.”

What followed would pass into Ebimanyou Town legend.

Yuki strode into the fairground like a sheriff walking into a corral for an intense mid-afternoon gunfight, hand on her hip and swaggering like a woman unafraid of death. She moseyed to the ring toss, and began to enumerate the tricks and traps laid out before them.

“Ring toss isn’t just about accuracy. It’s about judgement and knowing your limits. Some of those prizes are going to be damn near impossible for your skill level, and a couple are just damn near impossible in general. Take those out of the equation, and aim at what’s left. Winning isn’t taking home the biggest prize. It’s about taking the good bets,” she explained. “See that bear, for example. That’s a bad bet. The other two prizes are crowded next to it, and the peg’s offset. The window to actually hit it is tiny. But that other one two rows down is a good bet. Looks good enough to justify the cost of entry, might be winnable with a good hand.”

“That’s the most I’ve ever heard you talk about anything,” he replied, and lazily tossed a ring at the peg she’d indicated. It rattled into place without any trouble.

She snorted as he handed the prize to her; the bear wasn’t something she wanted for what it was, but simply because it could be won. “I like games. I like gambling. The moment you put money on it, the moment there’s some kind of risk… that’s where the thrill comes from. All these carnival games are a gamble, and I prefer to win.”

He shrugged. All Waruda had their odd passions. Apart from him, apparently. “Right. Let’s hit the tin can alley.”

“Unless you’re a baseball player, I wouldn’t bother. They usually weight ’em down.”

“Don’t think I’ve ever played baseball, but I have thrown a live grenade, and let me tell ya, you learn how to throw a hell of a fastball when you think it’s going to blow your arm off.”

One by one, they made the rounds across the stands, collecting a prize from each without fail. At first, the owners of the stands welcomed them with taunts and grins, eager to be the ones who’d bring their odd winning streak to an end; in time, each new face began to grow progressively more ashen, more timid than the last.

Yuki exulted in it. Dressed as she was in her pretty outfit and with a man on her arm, none of them could have guessed that she was the boss of Waruda. But before she left the fairground, they would remember her name, and give it the fear she felt it deserved. He smile was as sharp as a knife, but there was something beautiful and joyous in that honed edge.

“Saved the shooting gallery until last, huh?” he asked, setting down the small mound of stuffed toys they’d gotten. Yuki had won the lion’s share, but there were a few games where his raw physical power, tied with her strategising, had gotten them results. He’d had half a mind to hit the strength tester, but there was no prize for winning, so it was beneath Yuki’s notice. Maybe later.

“It’s too easy. No challenge, no risk,” she sniffed. “Any prize that’s actually winnable is too simple to give me any satisfaction.”

“Actually winnable?” he asked, turning a wary eye to the stall runner. Of course, it wasn’t unusual to incorporate a bit of cheating into a stall like this, but enough to repel even Yuki, who seemed to have cracked the defences of every other stall?

“They’re absolutely winnable!” the stall runner grumbled. “Just the other day, some weird blonde haired chick came by and cleaned out my whole stall. Barely said a word, either. You’d have thought I gave her an army rifle instead of a pellet gun, the way she fired the damn thing… It’s her fault I’m in the red this month! So if you’re going to say my game’s unwinnable, I wish you’d tell that to my bank manager!”

Jaune pressed a hand to his forehead, and went through his mental dictionary of Ebimanyou Town weirdos (which, coincidentally, included practically everyone he knew). None of them had blonde hair. He supposed that, in a town that bristled with oddballs, it was possible he’d just passed one by without realising they were on the list. Here, the weirdos looked like everyone else, because everyone else was also weird.

“You’re telling me somebody managed to shoot down Buff Bear with that peashooter you hand out, old man?” she said, pointing out a stuffed toy that was absurdly swole and flexing its abnormally detailed biceps. “The one with two inches of solid wood behind him?”

Sure enough, the bear had been bolstered by a sturdy balsa backrest. The physics of getting a stuffed toy to tip over that wall were not particularly favourable. Jaune idly took up one of the pellet guns that was lying unused, and began to turn it over in his hands: light, with a smooth bored barrel, crooked sights, and no doubt with an anaemic and inconsistent payload. Break action reload, too. Slow and clunky. Under normal circumstances, Yuki was completely correct; no matter how accurate your shot, the bear was simply not winnable.

But someone had won it. Someone out here, in this city, was good enough with a gun to win that bear. He licked his lips, which had become oddly dry.

“How about a bet?” he asked.

Yuki’s eyes narrowed; her ears perked up. The stall was of no interest to her, but now that Jaune was suggesting wagers, she’d been hooked right back in.

“Two rifles. Three shots each. You let us play at the same time,” he said to the stall runner, laying out his terms in sharp, clear sentences. “We’ll only fire at the bear. If we lose, you can take all the prizes we won from the other stalls.”

The owner blinked. Like all proud merchants, he had a mental abacus that weighed cost and benefit, profit and loss. Right now, it was working overtime. On one hand, nobody would bother making a bet like that unless they had a plan – and the rules were one player at a time, specifically to discourage people with plans. There was a decent chance he’d lose this bet.

But on the other hand… was that so bad? Buff Bear was meant to be unwinnable, but not too unwinnable; that was how you reeled in the suckers with big dreams. It was good for business to see one won from time to time. And if they lost, how much profit margin could be get from a mass of stuffed prizes they’d accumulated, and how much goodwill might he get for returning them to his fellow stall owners? The numbers slid smoothly into place. They glistened. He liked how they sat.

“You’ve got yourself a bet,” he said, and passed over another pellet rifle.

“Co-ordinated shooting, huh?” Yuki asked, sidling closer to Jaune. “Should have figured, coming from an army boy. If you can’t do it with one rifle, throw the squad at it and see what sticks.”

He shrugged, broke open the action on the rifle and loaded a pellet with quick, precise movements. The motion wasn’t too dissimilar to the old shotguns he used to mess around with in the corps. Of course, his actual talent was with more long-ranged munitions – his aim and observational skill were his only real standout qualities – but he honestly preferred to be in the thick of things. Couldn’t say why.

Next to him, Yuki loaded her rifle with slightly clumsier movements. He knew well enough that she often spent mornings out on the firing range, practising her groupings with her revolver, but he didn’t know how well her aim transferred to different weapon types. They’d see.

“You probably already guessed, but we’re aiming to hit it in the head with concentrated fire. I’ll shoot first, and you hit it while I reload. Should be able to create enough momentum to tip it over,” he said. Making sure your allies understood your plans was front and centre for a footsoldier. An unspoken plan always failed, because then only chance could arrange the pieces.

“On your mark, then. You’d better not miss the first shot.”

Without answering, he snapped the rifle up, aimed, and shot. The pellet bounced off the left side of the bear’s forehead, but he was already breaking open the rifle and reloading, Yuki’s shot hit the bear as it wobbled from the force of the impact, but not hard enough to tip it over the wooden barrier. He raised the rifle and shot again; this time, with his aim trained, he managed to hit the underside of the bear’s muzzle. Yuki’s second shot – a little slower than his – hit almost the same spot, reacting fluidly to the opportunity he’d created.

The fifth shot finally tipped the bear over. It didn’t quite make it over the wooden backing wall, but the shift in position caused it to slide forwards off the front of the stand, falling to the ground with a somewhat audible thud.

“Niiiiice groupings. I knew I kept you around for a reason,” Yuki purred.

He snorted. “What, it wasn’t for my good looks?”

She shrugged, her lips curling devilishly. “That helps, but honestly, might be a negative overall. I don’t think you’d do half as much fraternizing with the enemy if you were a little uglier.”

“As I recall,” he said slowly, “I only ended up fraternizing because you sent me over to QP, specifically to distract her.”

“This may surprise you to learn this, wolf boy, but when I said to distract her, I didn’t actually mean you had to give her a bone. I know that’s a rough concept for you canine types, but try and keep it in mind. Besides, that doesn’t explain the rabbit.”

“That one’s a long story. What does it matter, anyway? She doesn’t mess with Waruda. What I do with her is my own business.”

“Hmph.” Yuki’s expression left no doubt that she had other things to say on the matter, but they could wait until they’d gotten their prize. The whole time they’d been talking, the stall owner had been setting up a background noise of wailing and gnashing teeth, cursing them, the blonde-haired interloper of days gone by, and his own bank balance, which was currently receding even faster than his hairline. “We won, so pay up. I’ve got plans for that bear.”

If Jaune knew her at all, that plan involved tying the bear to a firework rocket and counting how many pieces hit the ground afterwards. But if that was what made her happy, then the toy had served its purpose.

“Alright,” she crowed, peeling the bear from the stall runner’s unwilling hands. “I’m satisfied. Was there anywhere you wanted to go?”

He blinked. Even though he’d been the one to set the destination in the first place, he hadn’t been expecting her to let him set the pace as well. He folded his arms in thought, and tilted his head back; as he did, his gaze was drawn inextricably to the sky.

“I can’t believe that after all that, you took me to the ferris wheel.”

Her eyes were half-lidded as she looked out of the carriage window, her chin resting on her hand. She’d crossed her legs one over the other; her jeans were tight enough that he could pick out the contours of her thighs underneath the fabric. Now that one of her feet was dangling lazily in the air, he could see she’d painted her nails – nothing fancy, just a coat of black, but still eye-catching.

“I wanted to see the town from up high,” he shrugged. “Just like you and QP do.”

It also gave him a chance to rest his back. The small mountain of stuffed toys they’d gathered wasn’t heavy, but it was irritating to try and compress it into one stable lump so he could carry it. Right now, the stuffed toys had a carriage all to themselves, an ultimate display of victory from the triumphant fairground champions.

“Dumbass,” she scoffed. “Don’t get me alone in an enclosed space and then mention some other girl’s name. It’s a wonder you got laid at all if you’re making mistakes like that.” She paused, her eyes locked to the window. “Why are you fooling around with her, anyway?”

He folded his arms. “What does it matter?”

“I’m just trying to figure out what the heck you want in a woman. She’s loud, obnoxious, she’s got no ass, and she’ll never love you as much as she loves pudding. Trust me, I know. What’s the draw? What’s she got that you go for?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but stopped. The mood, the tone… they weren’t what he usually expected from Yuki. The way she said things was rough, but it lacked the usual sarcastic, mocking quality she usually had. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she was genuinely interested.

Of course, no matter how interested she was right now, it wouldn’t stop her using anything he said against him in future.

“If it’s just generally what kind of women I like… I guess you could say I like them ‘big’,” he said, as non-committally as he could.

“Big? In what way?” Her ears flicked towards him, even if her eyes didn’t. “Are we talking chubby? Or just big boobed? She’s got a bit of a chest on her, but it’s nothing special around here. You can’t be talking height – that squirt barely comes up to my elbows.”

“Just… you know. Bigness. In general.”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “How big are we talking about?”

“About the size of a house? Maybe that big?”

There was a moment of silence as she tried to comprehend what he’d said, and he tried to comprehend why the hell he’d said it. Eventually, Yuki voiced the question they were both asking.

“Are you high or something?”

“N-no. It’s just a hypothetical,” he lied, his eyes darting from side to side as he tried to extricate himself from the hole he’d dug. “Just imagine… a really attractive girl. But she’s huge. Taller than the buildings. Imagine Aru like that. Or QP.”

The cat paused. He could see her chewing her lip, pondering something. She had lipstick on, he noticed. Deep red, the colour of precious stones. It went well with her warm skin tone.

“QP? As tall as a building?” she repeated, dubiously. “That… sounds like a bunch of crap, to be honest. Totally impossible. But I can’t help feeling like I’ve seen it before.” Her brows furrowed. “What a weird sense of deja vu.”

His smile – a nervous one, which he assumed any time he was in a potential confrontation with a dangerous and beautiful woman – became a touch more brittle. For some reason, it seemed like nobody could remember QP growing giant in the middle of town. It was definitely convenient, but it was too convenient, and it begged the question of why he could. Was it some kind of dream? But everyone he’d asked had a strange reaction to the topic, as if they were unsure of it themselves.

“...Alright. Say she could get as big as a house. What’s so attractive about that? Just about the only thing she could do is tread on you. And I could do that without growing an inch.”

“Don’t write cheques you’re not willing to cash,” he replied dryly. “It’s just… that sense of power, right? I like the idea of a powerful woman.”

She snorted. “There’s plenty of powerful women in the world. Not many of them are thirty feet tall.”

“I get that, but… it’s a different kind of power. Most ‘powerful’ people are politicians. They just step on people to get what they want. They and their governments just abuse the power they’re given, and they seek it just because they want to have it. QP, when she’s giant – I mean, if she were giant – wouldn’t do that at all. That’s what I like about her,” he said, fumbling over the words. “She’d be totally untouchable, but she’d never use that power for anything except protecting people and supporting them. It’d be a gentle kind of power.”

“...Are you sure we’re thinking of the same girl?” Yuki asked, cocking an eyebrow. “The only power that girl’s got is firepower, and she’s not exactly shy about using it.”

“That’s besides the point. I like the idea of a woman who’s powerful, but doesn’t need to abuse it. Someone who could step on you, but doesn’t, and supports you instead. That, and there’d just be more of her to go around.”

“You’re a weirdo,” she said. It was rough, but somehow not aggressive. A statement of fact, rather than a put-down. “A total nut job. A complete wack-a-doo, away with the fairies kind of guy.” She snorted. “And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m your ideal woman.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

A smile curled across her face, like a cat stretching after a long nap in the sun – satisfied and exulting in the sensation. “Take a look out of the window, wolf boy.”

Confused, he did as he was instructed. It was a fine view over the town; a hundred little buildings, lights, shops and trees. A microcosm of the world. She leaned close to him as he looked, leaning next to him with her arm braced against the carriage wall.

“You know why I live here? In this backwater town where the only major feature is a year-long funfair?” she asked. He could tell from her voice that an answer wasn’t required. “It’s because not a single one of those damn people down there would survive anywhere else. They’re all weirdos. This town is full of people like that. Any other place, they’d be the laughing stock of the city. But here, they all just do their own thing. And it works. That’s why I love it.”

“And this makes you my ideal woman because…?” he prompted.

“Because one day,” she said, her eyes gleaming, “this whole town is going to be mine. And when it is, I’m going to take the next town, and make it just the same as this one. And I’ll keep going, little by little, until those ‘powerful’ idiots in the government sit up and pay attention. That’s what Waruda is for. It’s a place where all the little outcasts, all the people who are just a little too weird or crazy to fit in, can go. All those towns, all those cities, even the whole damn country if I can – I’m going to make them all Waruda. We’ll make the whole world a place for people like us.”

She put her hand on his shoulder. It felt good there. Felt right. Her long fingertips brushed against the skin of his neck, leaving goosebumps where they lay.

“If you’re looking for a powerful woman, forget that pudding dog and the dumb bunny. Stick with me. I’m not some giant or whatever you’re dreaming of, but I’ll look after my crew no matter what. I want you in that crew. You’re smart, resourceful. We work well together. And I don’t know what you’re packing downstairs, but those two obviously see something in you that I haven’t yet. And I want to see it.”

She squeezed his shoulder. He didn’t know how to respond. His romance with QP had begun with raw attraction, and developed from there; with Aru, it had been a gentle and natural closing of distance. He hadn’t been expecting to be pursued, so openly and directly, by the woman who signed his paycheques. He was, not for the first time, entering a strange and entirely novel world.

“Is that why you wanted to ‘hang out’ today? Because you were planning on seducing me?” he asked.

“Huh? You kiddin’? I thought with all those stuffed toys and that bet at the shooting gallery, you were trying to seduce me. That was why I asked if there was anywhere you wanted to go – I was expecting you to suggest a hotel. When you told me you wanted to take a ride on the ferris wheel, I just thought you were one of those guys who don’t fuck without doing all the kissy shit first.”

He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Well, just for the record, I am that kind of guy.” Then he remembered his first tryst with QP, where they’d been carried away by the heat and scents of the moment. “Most of the time.”

She sat down next to him, and leaned against his body. Any more, and she would have been on his lap. Not that that would have been such a terrible fate.

“Well?” she asked. “I’m not going to kiss myself.”

He grinned dryly. “I bet you would if you could.”

“Yeah, because I’m not blind, and I’m not dumb enough to spoil the moment,” she scolded. “Now close your eyes, and count to ten. I’ll show you how a real woman kisses her man.”

He got as far as three before his mind went blank.

Later, he would remember feeling glad they’d put the stuffed toys in another carriage. Because the things Yuki did with her tongue shouldn’t be seen by innocent eyes.