Chapter Text
"Sadayo, come into my office." Kamoshida pushed open the door of the nondescript building. He was angry. She could tell that by the screech of the hinges. By the way his hair was pushed back on his head. His foot on the next step down was the danger sign, the one that said he would drag her if she didn’t cooperate. Men loved dragging women up the stairs after all. "Did I stutter, Sadayo?"
No, you're just another angry and demanding client in a long line of them since I was eighteen. Unfortunately, you're the kind of client who wants something extra, despite your unwillingness to pay. I gotta find a new place to work.
"No." Sadayo swirled the remains of her beer. Half empty, she set it on the power transformer before grabbing a sprig of mint from the side pocket of her purse. Maybe it wasn't needed. Better to have wasted it in that case.
The interior of the building was the opposite of the boring brick walls and uncolored concrete facade. Poster after poster of women in maid outfits that didn't cover their legs, didn't cover their tits, didn't cover any of the parts of them that got dirty at work. On days they had to clean a building.
Sadayo shifted herself as she followed Kamoshida deeper into the bowels of the building. She stood up taller, pushing her arms in front of herself. She smiled at the back of Kamoshida's head, her eyes wide open. Her boss was another client. And clients loved Becky.
When her makeup was good and she didn't look her age.
When she bent over the right amount to pick something up off the floor.
When she said the right words to stroke or break an ego.
And here, sitting on a cold metal folding chair, when she looked the right amount of vulnerable for her boss. Kamoshida's office was putrid. Unlike Becky and the rest of the girls, he had no compunctions about where he did anything. He did everything in his office and it smelled like cum and sake spills. Becky though, didn't do anything except tilt her head to the side to let her pigtails fall in a way that showed off her neck. "What's the matter, Suguru?"
Kamoshida twisted his face into a cruel scowl. Which was a good thing and a bad thing. It meant he probably wasn't going to try and get free labor from her. It also meant he was going to yell. He slammed his hand on the desk, shaking the laptop towards the edge. Becky pushed the laptop in while Kamoshida pushed a sheet of paper towards her. He really wants to hammer home the money today, he has new paper. "The problem, Sadayo, is this complaint. You left their house dirty!"
"I explained to him extended rates. But he was in such a rush." Becky answered with a sweet tone to her voice, sucking on the sprig to keep the act up after a long day. Kamoshida glared at her, tapping on the sheet where it said there was a shattered pot. "The client did that during services. I told him it was a risk but he wanted it. And the customer is king you said."
"It doesn't matter what the client claims they want. You know better. If it's a cleaning job, clean then fuck." Kamoshida's fist slammed into the laptop's keyboard, sending keys flying. One hit Becky in the forehead and she collapsed back into Sadayo.
"I know how to fuck Suguru. I know how to clean. And the client made it abundantly damn clear which he wanted." Becky shattered into Sadayo as she crossed a leg, staring at Kamoshida. "Now, if you want to put on a maid outfit and get bent over a table, you can do it."
"Fuck it. Get the hell out. I'm clearing your calendar." Kamoshida grinned, twirling a finger through the end of his hair. Sadayo pushed a nail into her palm, the one she kept sharp. She put on her Becky smile. "Either you make them happy or me happy."
That's not gonna happen.
"Then you can get out." Kamoshida's finger jabbed through the air to the door. Sadayo groaned, lifting herself to her feet. It happened again. An internal though that got out.
It was kind of a mercy.
If bills and debt didn't exist.
"I'm changing and clearing out my locker." Sadayo resisted every urge to throw the chair at him. He was the one who came up with the extension plan scam. He was the one who always pressed them for more money. More hours with a client. Who cares if the next client got mad they were stood up.
Or worse, their maid whore showed up filthy and stinking of their last client.
"You have five minutes. I'd say send your friend in. But I doubt you can follow that order either. Useless slut, should have never hired you." Kamoshida's voice echoed down the hall as Sadayo swung the purse over her shoulder, the cheap plastic slamming against the wall. Anyone could go grab cotton, the miracle made it easy. Very few people had the skill to turn it into clothes anymore. “And send your friend in here, the one with the dye job.”
Get fucked.
Sadayo was in the locker room for two seconds when she threw the dress over her head. She got fired over a client who couldn't tip and bothered to complain that he had broken his own pot and ushered her out because he was a cheapskate. And now, she was going to get behind on bills. Again.
They were going to come and hound her. They were going to evict her. And if she was really behind, her loans were getting sold. And then she was fucked.
What's a whore to do?
"Sadayo, there you are." The one woman that Sadayo could call friend, Fabienne walked through the door. The person that could keep Sadayo from running forward and never looking back. "I saw your beer outside but no you. You really need to drink something better."
Fabienne would be a dream client, if she had the money for Sadayo. The kind that wanted Becky's specialty: girlfriend experiences. Some people just wanted to feel cared about, to not feel responsible for a while. To get held close and treated like they were the sun. They didn't rush her out afterwards either. Fabienne wanted that, it was clear from how she looked at the world outside and the pictures of kids on her flip phone’s home screen.
"I really need to quit." Sadayo sighed as she hurled her uniform into her bag. She wasn't giving that back to Kamoshida, he'd do something creepy with it. "Got fired. Wanna trade numbers to talk?"
"Sadayo, what do you mean you got fired?" Fabienne paused, one arm in her leather jacket. The woman's dyed white hair hung past her neck, the maid uniform underneath covered in a thin layer of dust. Sadayo shrugged about it as she pulled on an old sweater and sweatpants. "I know how much you needed this job. What happened?"
"Kamoshida. I have two minutes before he comes out here. And he's mad and looking for you." Sadayo sighed as she pulled her ratty jacket around herself. April night wind was brutal and anything was better than something. Fabienne shoved her clothes in her bag and with jacket half on followed Sadayo to the alley. And her missing beer can. "Son of a bitch, I wanted to finish it at least."
"Okay, but you didn't explain how or why you got fired." Fabienne pushed her arm through the other sleeve, zipping her jacket up to her neck. Sadayo flipped out her burner phone, looking through the contact list for all the people who had been up front about wanting to see her again. "Earth to Sadayo."
"I wouldn't sleep with him to keep my job. Even I have standards." Sadayo lied, her thumb resting on the home button. Her phone vibrated in her palm. "Kamoshida thinks that he can treat this place as his personal pleasure mansion. I'm not dealing with it anymore. If I have to find squatter housing for--"
Sadayo fell to her knees, a wave of nausea curling up through her. Fabienne had joined her on the ground, the earth shaking around them. A thick pressure settled around Sadayo's head, her body feeling like jelly. The scent of sweat, liquor, chlorinated water and sex filled the air. The Shinjuku alley was gone, replaced by a metal barred fence on one side and a daylit pristine lawn on the other. Everything trimmed short, the trees only a meter tall. The kind of thing that showed human dominion over plants.
The plants really hated it if you cut them short for that reason. They would die and something tougher and more disruptive would grow in its place. Sadayo pulled herself up by the branch of a tree, her knees wobbly. "Fabienne, what the hell happened?"
"I don't know. One minute, you're giving Kamoshida the riot act and the next..." Fabienne brushed dirt off her skirt, inspecting the fence. No gate, no door. Metal bars that went up five meters, rings of barbwire at the top. This screamed dangerous client. This screamed get out. This screamed the money wasn't worth it. Sadayo started walking along the edge of the fence. "Not the house?"
"I know you're still new at this line of work. But this? This is not a safe situation." Sadayo's fingers lingered near the fence, a tingle spreading from her finger tips up her arm. "The fence is electrified."
"I don't think I want to know why you know that." Fabienne tugged on the sleeve of Sadayo's jacket, dragging her away from the fence. And tearing a new hole in the jacket. "If we get out of here, you're staying at my place. So, I can fix that."
"What will the neighbors think about you bringing home a girl like me?" Sadayo shot Fabienne a grin. It wouldn't be a bad thing to have a different place to stay tonight. Fabienne ran the heat, the extra stipend for her kids helped with that. Fabienne chuckled at her. "Thank you."
"Considering the day you're having, it's what I can do." Fabienne's voice crackled and Sadayo's heart ached. She wasn't worth that, she wasn't worth tears. Sadayo kept moving along the perimeter of the fence, coming to a corner and avoiding Fabienne’s watery eyes. And found more unbroken fence. How did anyone get in or out? "I'm beginning to feel trapped here."
"That's the same thing I've been feeling." Sadayo hurried her pace, her feet finding paved stones leading up to the house. And a gate secured with a padlock the size of her head. "Okay. Fabienne, how many bad clients have you dealt with?"
"Not really any yet. They're mostly interested in the cleaning." Fabienne gestured towards the door. The ache in Sadayo's heart intensified as she looked at the clear dividing line between paved path and grass. That didn't happen in the last six years. It just didn't. "I've never even had a problem with Kamoshida yet."
"Well, if you're lucky you'll get out of here to have one." Sadayo offered as she stomped up the path. She didn't know what was going on but everything around here was wrong. Too perfect and manicured. A dream of the old world. "Let me do the talking, okay?"
"If you say so." Fabienne crossed her arms while Sadayo knocked on the door. A faceless woman with long pink pigtails in the same maid uniform that Sadayo had taken off answered the door. Thin bloody lines had been cut where her eyes were supposed to be. Sadayo started to take a step back when the maid grabbed her collar and yanked her forward with inhuman force into the house. "Sadayo!"
"We only need one replacement, sorry." The faceless woman slammed the door as Sadayo stumbled into a mass of pillows in a lowered recess in the floor. Locks and deadbolts slammed home in the door. More maids lined the walls, the same bloody horizontal cuts across their face. "Master will be here to interview you soon. Sit tight."
"I'm not here for an interview!" Sadayo threw a pillow at the maid, her heart aching with pain. She wanted to reach in and rip it out. Make it stop. Make all of it stop. "We somehow wound up here and then we couldn't leave for the stupid lock!"
"Dolls don't leave." A bassier voice answered, the room reverberating with its call. A man in the most 'this client will try to not pay' white suit Sadayo had ever seen walked out of a further doorway. His hair, his face, his voice, his filthy stench, it was all Kamoshida. His eyes were closed, but his eyelids locked to Sadayo's eyes. "Here to beg for your job back?"
Sadayo's body burned with anger and pain and the realization of what she would have to do. If she wanted to get out of this, she had to be Becky and stick to it. She forced her hands open from the fists they had gone into and the pain in her chest diffused into nothing. The eyeless bastard took a step towards her, a cocky grin on his face. "They always come back. They never have a choice."
"I just wanted out the door. What do I need--" Sadayo gagged on her words. She hated this. She hated begging at his feet. She hated him. He was every bad client in one. Kamoshida jumped down into the pillows, his legs spread over her. A keyring jingled on his waist. "Actually. I bet if I do this!"
Sadayo punched him in the crotch and her heart burned anew as he stumbled backwards. The maids around the room jittered, more bloody tears scraping from within their skin. Claws scrabbled within the maids, cloth and skin flying. Countless bloody eyes stared out of the holes at her. Kamoshida growled as he slammed into the wall, "You harlot! Dolls, tear her apart so we can make her limbs into a good toy."
And Sadayo couldn't move for the pain within her chest. Fear and terror surged through her veins, orange and glowing. The eyeless Kamoshida laughed from the wall he had slammed into, his keyring on the floor between them. If Sadayo could move before whatever was in the maids was free, she could get out.
"O dreg of humanity, o bearer of mankind's burdens. Your fate is ruled by cruelty and ignorance. Your heart a beacon that wants to sing. The future lies in the supposed wastes of your fellows. Confront the oppression aiming its bearing at you or become nothing. Choose."
"I want to fight!" Sadayo didn't know why she chose those words. She didn't know why her hand could move for all the pain in her body. She didn't know how it pierced her breast or why the pain faded when blood spurted from the puncture.
"Heroes rise from those anxious many denied a future. Power awaits thy call. Wield their fears. Engrave thy very heart!"
Orange veins ran across Sadayo's skin, glowing with a lighthouse's brightness. The door rattled behind her as Sadayo ripped her hand from her chest. A microphone in the shape of her heart and covered in blood lay in her hand. And she rose as the world slowed to a crawl, the maids' inner monsters showed their knife long fangs. Sadayo held her heart to her lips and issued her challenge. To the world. To the hand she was dealt. To the bastard who thought she would ever come crawling back to him. "I am Sadayo Kawakami! I am tired of my life being controlled by money, by society and by you! I'll be your Harlot!"
Long black strips of something wrapped around Sadayo, cocooning her within them. Comfort pressed down around her, pushing her into a ball that rose into the air. And then she felt every part of the cocoon, because it was her. She stretched out the shell around her until it burst. A black metal carapace surrounded her body, a second skin.
She stood taller now, her feet pushed up by heels ending in a spike that tore through the pillow underfoot. A corset with stiletto knives for ribbing hugged her waist. A tear in the center of the corset revealed a beating heart, pumping black liquid through the blackened steel armor. Sadayo for the first time that day, that week, that month, that year felt powerful.
And time resumed its normal motion as the maids turned to scrabbling balls of eyes, claws and teeth. She moved on instinct, slamming the point of her heel through it. Blue ichor sprayed out of the wound and onto her as whatever she fought turned into a single glass orb that flew into her armor.
The second one latched onto her arm with its claws, gnawing on her arm. It registered as pain somewhere in her brain. It wasn't that bad. It was however between her and the keys.
She slammed it into side of her corset, deflating it on impact with the stillettos. Another glass orb to go into Sadayo's armor. Sadayo rolled her neck, feeling metallic braids rub against her back. The door broke off its cheap hinges, Fabienne standing there in shock as the remaining two beasts ran towards her. The woman fell backwards as they leapt towards her fang and claw out.
"You won't hurt her!" Twin icicles fired from Sadayo's fingertips, piercing both of the monsters. Two more orbs clattered to the ground, rolling across the floor and into her heels. The eyeless Kamoshida had fled deeper into the mansion. Fabienne stared up at Sadayo in terror, her eyes jittering and her breath short. "Fabienne, don't worry. It's Sadayo."
"That sounds like you, but you--" Fabienne didn't have to finish. Sadayo ducked under the door frame another icicle forming at her fingertips. It pierced the lock on the gate, knocking it open. And then the power left Sadayo, landing her on the ground near Fabienne. Sadayo grunted, every part of her exhausted and weighed down by mere existence. "Okay, that's you. I thought I heard you screaming your name and then all that happened."
"It's crazier if you saw what I did." Sadayo tried to smile at Fabienne as the two of them stumbled through the open gate and back into Shinjuku. Where neon lights battled to be seen past screens of ivy. Where cherries draped off buildings and mint lined the gutters. Red lights and green leaves and home since before the New Year Renewal. "What the hell is going on?"
"I do not know, Sadayo! One minute we're leaving, the next we're there. And then you're some of sort of mecha femme fatale." Fabienne shouldered her purse as the two of them cut across towards the residential part of the neighborhood. "And despite all of that, you're still unemployed. Come on."
"You had to remind me." Sadayo looked at her flip phone. The home button had been replaced with a new button. A heart. She closed her phone. Now wasn't the time to try and press clients for dates. Too many questions and not enough rest. "You sure it's fine for me to crash? I can just continue home."
"You could, but I insist. I tore your clothes and you killed some sort of monsters. So, stay the night." Fabienne yawned, selling Sadayo by making her yawn as they climbed up the outdoor stairs, past scraping tree branches. "I'll even cook."
"Trying to keep me?" Sadayo shot Fabienne a smile, Becky slipping through for a moment. Sadayo shook it off, letting the smile shrink to a more normal size. "Thanks. Again. Not exactly used to people doing things for me."
"Well, neither am I to tell you the truth. But you took me under your wing. And you gave me the heads up to leave. If it weren't for the look in your eye, I wouldn't have listened." Fabienne unlocked the door to her apartment. A few scattered toys littered the floor, her television playing an infomercial to two sleeping children on the couch. One with straight white hair and the other with brown brown curls were curled up under a blanket. "Alright, you two. You know better. Maria, Maiko, go to bed. Mommy has a friend who needs the couch."
Sadayo stood off to the side as the two girls rubbed their eyes. The white haired child waved at Sadayo while the brown haired one stared. "Maiko, that's rude."
"But I was sleepin'." Maiko complained as she yawned. Despite the grumpiness in her voice she hugged Fabienne's right leg as Maria took the left. Neither seemed bother by the thin layer of dirt and dust on their mother's petticoat. "You're late."
"Mommy had to clean houses all afternoon and it was so much work." Fabienne put on a parent's acting voice as she ushered the kids towards a small hallway with only three doors. "Sadayo, put your jacket on the coat rack. I'll get to it when I wake up. You're welcome to the television while you sleep."
"I'd rather not, but thank you." Sadayo yawned, collapsing onto the warm couch. Cute kids at least. She wrapped the blanket around herself and hit the off button on the remote. And in moments she was asleep and dreaming.
A tree laden with every type of apple imaginable grew from a crater in the moon. The leaves swayed in an impossible wind as Sadayo stares at the tire swing hanging from a lower branch. A laughing woman rocked it back and forth, her mouth open in simple joy and with a scattering of toys beneath her feet. Featherman figures, puzzles, crayons, paper and way more handheld game consoles than any parent would permit in a home.
Sadayo can't help but size up the woman, the way she does everyone she meets. Straight black hair the flies out almost a meter behind her as she swings. A simple blue sweater over a modest black skort. The kind of client who didn't realize the real reason Sadayo was there was to have sex half the time.
"Hi there! Welcome to Akademia!" The woman's barefeet skim the ground, slowing all her motions till with a tire as a skirt, her hand reached out to Sadayo. A handshake. Way too polite to a whore. "You know, you look like you're confused. So, let's start with what Akademia is."
"You know, this is the strangest dream I've had in while. I thought that I told my boss to fuck off and then punched his clone in the balls. And then I turned into mechawhore and now I'm in a second dream where a woman is talking about school." Sadayo rubbed the back of her head, the ache in her heart returning. She pat herself on the chest as the woman giggled. "What has you so amused?"
"That you already want to bare your heart at the first sign of your archetype's power. You've declared who you are, loud and proud. Sadayo Kawakami, Harlot." The woman slipped out of the swing, grabbing one of the handheld game systems. "Each of these details an Archetype. This is the first one you have discovered."
The woman flicked on the device and in a bitcrushed voice it lectured Sadayo. "The Harlot. A woman who is both wanted and despised. Sex is her job and her sin. The root of the Archetype: Your first rebellion."
"Okay. So, you're telling me that I didn't dream everything that happened. That this is like that weird mansion with the fake Kamoshida." Sadayo watched as the woman considered one of the Featherman toys. A plastic icicle extended from a toy gun that the woman fired at Sadayo. She was surprised when she caught the tiny projectile on instinct. "Okay, are you going to explain any of what's going on? Because I'm cranky and annoyed and my heart hurts."
"I can bet, you ripped it out for a little bit earlier. Exposing your true self for the world, your audience of one. Let's start with introductions, because I know you, Sadayo Kawakami. You don't know me, yet." The woman winked at Sadayo, plucking the icicle projectile from between Sadayo's fingers. "I'm the librarian of sorts here in Akademia, you can call me Tao. You've taken your first step into the soul of someone twisted by their Desires. And there you accessed the power of the Archetype, calling upon the lore of your profession. And with that, you're going to be able to start changing the world."
"Say that I believe any of this, Tao." Sadayo noted the women's smile at her name being used. Noted, use her name, she loves that. Keep yourself on her good side is a good idea. "What do you mean I can start changing the world?"
Tao tapped the head of the Blue Featherman figure, turning it to the right. "Your Archetype is kind of like a sentai transformation. And the Twisted Desire of Suguru Kamoshida made that mansion you went to. And if you took that Twisted Desire, he'd lose all his motivation to be how he is now."
"So he'd stop being a sex extorting and scamming piece of shit?" Sadayo felt a grin etch into her face, her mind alight with the thought of him not harassing Fabienne next. Sadayo and Becky could deal with a shithead like him, Fabienne needed to be safe for her kids. Tao nodded in vigorous and hair flinging fashion. "Okay, how do I do it?"
"I have an important question for you first." Tao closed her eyes, straightening her back. Something important enough to put on a front to ask. The woman's silver eyes bored straight ahead, the laughing tone in her voice dead. "Do you believe that someone can come back from a mistake? Do you believe that someone could try to make up for their true sins?"
Sadayo took a step back, considering. No one had thought that about her. They had never considered that since she became an adult. Once a whore, always a whore. It was why she had traded Fabienne so many clients, keeping her from the stigma. Fabienne could rise above. "I think for some people it can be. Society won't let them escape some labels. Like mine. But that hasn't stopped me. Just made things difficult. Like I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow."
"The kind of answer I would expect from you, Sadayo." Tao hid her mouth behind her hand as she giggled. Sadayo grumbled but the librarian wasn't perturbed. "Then, I will emphasize something to you. All of what I teach you, it will be for nothing if you kill the eyeless Suguru or what lurks within. You have to do what I say and in order."
"Tao, if you know me, you know I'm pretty good at following client specifications." Sadayo's voice tinged with Becky leaked out and Tao fired the Featherman toy at her again, nailing Sadayo in the heart. "Geez, what was that for?"
"Because, I want to see Sadayo doing this. Not Becky. You bore your heart and said your name. Didn't you?" Tao's eyes flashed with yellow for a moment and Sadayo's heart froze. She nodded and Tao clapped. "Perfect! You are going to have to get to the treasure at the heart of what I'll call his Palace. A spiky and unholdable thing. Once you know where it is, you'll have to make Suguru scared you'll steal it. And then it won't be all spiky. And then... you steal it."
"And then I take it out the gate. Okay, that sounds simple and like it's going to be a pain. Like the eyeless maids that turned into teeth and claws and eyes." Sadayo shivered without the adrenaline of her Awakening. Tao nodded, her hair swishing around her shoulders. "What were those things inside?"
"They are Antibodies. All the ways a person pushes back against danger that are not healthy. They don't want to be observed too much, so when they are, they attack. Or when Suguru’s own Antibody makes them attack." Tao relaxed back onto the tire swing. "You'll learn how they're different later, for now you can fight those. Once you remove Suguru's Twisted Desire, you'll see some magic and I'll explain more. In the meantime..."
Tao held out her hand and the glass orbs that the Archetype absorbed appeared. She cupped them between her hands and opened the hands. There stood a stack of yen. Sadayo's eyes widened, guessing there was enough to push her bills and debts off for a little while. Not enough to get out of the hole but, it was something. "How did you?"
"Consider this, my incentive for you! Fighting Antibodies is hard work. And it's not like you don't already put your body on the line for work now." Tao placed the stack of crisp bills into Sadayo's hand, patting it. Each of them felt real as the last. "And when you steal Suguru's treasure, I'll have a bonus for you. Use that new button on your phone when you're ready to go back. And... you probably want a collaborator beyond my financial support and knowledge."
"But I have the Archetype and I don’t know of anyone else with it. Unless you can point me in the direction of someone?" Sadayo's thumb riffled up and down the bills. She didn't even know anyone who wanted to fight, she only fought because she was tired. "And give me more money to pay them."
"There's a smart woman, thinking about anyone you bring into this. I'll tell you this, now that you've bared your heart, others will follow. And once they do, you will have allies." Tao started swinging, her legs pumping as she climbed higher and higher. "And, the more you have on board, the more you can take out. Which will get you fair pay for all."
"If this turns out to be a pyramid scheme." Sadayo felt the world fall away to Tao's raucous laughter.