heat finds a way to rise somehow
It felt freeing, somehow, to be out from within the enclosed walls of Japantown. The market zig-zagged across the terraces, paper lanterns lighting the way where shadows from the high rises loomed long, ringing the market like giant komainu warding away evil spirits. Going about her business, Daiya drifted from stall to stall, taking long glances at some of the objects for sale, asking about those that caught her eye.
A ways from her home neighborhood, here the blonde-haired teen could be like any one of the market's patrons. Only she wasn't here to grocery shop, nor as a tourist who needed a talisman or trinket to bring back to show off. A sharp gust from the street below caught her hair, blowing it enough to make Daiya tuck the errant lock behind her ear. A few cherry blossoms fluttered up from the trees that lined Kanzaki Streeet, catching her eye as they drifted on an updraft, reaching high toward the buildings around her.
If they had been komainu, then they were doing a pretty poor job of warding off evil.
How anyone could stand to walk past the tagged Tyger heads, omens of the armed spectres that stalked the streets of Japantown just as easily as in Watson, without feeling a dreadful sense of foreboding, Daiya couldn't understand. It felt a little too ironic to consider what she was here to do. Someone among the Tyger Claws must have a twisted sense of poetry, or she was going to feel very foolish in all the wrong way at the incense peddler.
"Do you have any Night Jasmine?" she asked the peddler, whose wrinkled eyes watched Daiya with that mix of curiosity and amusement that all older people seemed to have. The woman didn't hesitate, and that alone let the unsettling churn in her stomach calm. Just a little, long enough for the peddler to reach over her wares to pluck the bright yellow stick from the box of its siblings and hold it out. She shook her head, just enough for the pink highlights to swish around her neck, "So, I actually need you to burn it for me."
It should have relieved her to see the woman's acquiescence, but Daiya couldn't shake the feeling that had crept slowly over her shoulders from the first step into the market. Too late to turn back, she asked for the second part of the rumored signal, the one that the streetwise teen had learned about from her contacts in far less savory places than this. "And one of the omamori."
She pointed at it, the pale red design with the blue kanji, colors that would have looked pretty if she hadn't known their purpose. The peddler handed the charm to her, and this time Daiya took it, ready to wave her hand over the transaction pad and be done with the whole ordeal. A gasp escaped her lips as the old woman grabbed her wrist, bony fingers gripping the slender flesh underneath, to pass along one ominous piece of advice. "You may need something stronger than a charm, but I don't sell those here."
The woman laughed from her soft beak, cawing into perfumed air as if she was the real signal all along. It prickled every inch of skin that wasn't wrapped in protective layers, an armored weave shirt under her top. Daiya shook it off as she paid for her items, escaping her clutches and the aroma of the incense booth just enough to feel the oppressive air lighten in her lungs.
As crowded as before, the market didn't seem any different to the wary eyes that scanned them. Her ocular implants only did so much, so Daiya could only rely on her knowledge and intuition to place any Tyger Claws that might answer her summons, but if any had been hiding in plain sight among the market goers, they weren't making themselves known. She wandered over to the yakitori booth to wait out her sentence. Daiya hadn't come here to feel like a condemned woman, and looking at the food options proved much easier than contemplating the events set in motion. Still, no one could simply ring a bell and have a gang come running up to play anything but hardball.
"Are you one of them?" When the man sat down next to her, it seemed ordained. If nothing else, her churning stomach was karma enough for ordering the algae protein again, never seeming to learn from her past. Daiya had never encountered a man like him in her past, however, not one wearing that many scars as his sleeves and stubble. His Western looks, dark but with all the wrong tones for anyone mixed, seemed wrong for the Tyger Claws.
Maybe that, too, was her karma today.
"Because if they sent you, then I've got a message for your bosses."
