De Ja Vu

I never really felt tense… I just kind of felt anxious. Anybody whose been in that situation knows that those two things are different.

Tense was when you were dreading it, when you felt maybe it might not be the place you want to be.

When you felt trapped by what was coming.

Anxious was when you just wanted it to hurry up and get here because you were tired of worrying about the stress of doing the motions. Doing the things that keep you alive.

That’s the space a person whose never been in a fight would never know exists.

That place of inevitability. When you know the fight is coming. When you know you’re not the person who gets to run from it or avoid it. When you’re definitely getting punched in the face.

It’s not where, really. It’s when.

Everybody’s got a plan…

Til you get beat the fuck up the first few times.

Then you realize there is no plan. The plan is don’t die.

That’s always the plan.

“Alright, so I’m gonna drop you off, like I said. Right outside of Mookie’s.”

“Yeah… I mean, I didn’t know you were gonna go send me to talk to Mookie the fuckin’ Butcher like day one…” I said, looking around as we drove down LeMonica Avenue.

The evening sun hit my eyes in flashes between buildings as Dvar’s convertible made its way down the expressway.

My braids were doing a dance behind my head as he floored it. The feeling of acceleration thrilled me.

He brought us into Thread traffic, slowing as he found his space among the other cars, bringing us to an easy roll as he sat back comfortably like a king beside me.

I glanced over at him, across the now white seats of his dark blue car.

He’d changed into a white button up, gray slacks and dark brown shoes. His wide shoulders, thick with easy power.

Relaxed.

His wrist resting on the steering wheel, just beneath his wooden bracelet.

Onyx ring on his finger.

Every now and again throwing his gaze at me slowly.

Appreciating me without changing his expression.

It was intimidating.

It made me blink my attention away, sitting back on that white seat, letting Thread’s evening light splash over me in flashing ribbons.

Until we curved around the cityscape and it was all golden.

Just letting myself forget everything for a moment.

Just one…

Times like this I was infinite…

“Right there…” Dvar said, softly.

I turned to look at him.

“That’s where it starts,” he said, lifting his right hand from his knee, turning it over as a whirling sparkle of resonance danced above his palm.

My eyes lit up at it, watching as he let it play freely above his palm, that onyx ring on his finger glowing an intense white.

“Peace…?” I asked.

“Something like that… that’s what you’re looking to find. Or the hardware won’t matter. You’re still gonna lose.”

I watched the resonance fade as he set his hand back down on his knee. Returned his eyes to the road and carried on driving.

He rested his elbow on the door and steered with a finger.

We didn’t say much more than that.

Not until that long stretch of highway ate up some time, Thread rolling by on the right, the ocean on our left, and the sun spilling down from that odd view above.

Cupped by water and the city… a tunnel of golden light.

Like dharma was saying: This is where you are.

And I accepted it.

“I can make peace with that…” I said, nodding. Feeling a tear roll down my right cheek as I looked away from Dvar and out at Thread.

“Good boy.”

I exhaled a weak laugh.

“So Mookie.”

“So Mookie,” I nodded, chewing my lip, letting it slide free. “So what’s the plan? You’re the boss. Boss.”

He smiled, “The plan is… you can’t just walk up and ask a Yakuza Lieutenant for a fight. There’s tradition here. The moment you walk in everyone is gonna know what you’re there for. That’s the point. That’s where it starts. The game. That’s the game you have to win.”

“Huh?”

“Pretend to be somebody cooler than you are,” Dvar shot back, rolling his eyes.

“Is that what you do?”

“…Yes. Pretty Boy. That’s the game. The social game. THE game within the game. You don’t just win in this world with force, or money, or…” He stopped ranting at me.

My eyes were wide. Suddenly pieces of this highly motivated man were coming together.

“Y-… you don’t have to…” I started.

“No. It’s… It’s fine,” He said, turning us onto an offramp.

We made our way into Thread again around the entertainment district it looked like.

The whale was back.

And there was full on advertisements for luxury experience services. Holo plus psychedelic experiences for the mind.

There were second and third life pavilions.

Get in touch with your previous incarnation clinics.

Then the usual cosmetic parade of things nobody fucking needed.

The entire place was alive with every kind of dopamine sucking, happiness draining, beautiful, lovely, euphoric thing I could think of.

And to think… if I turned off my third eye it would just be Indo-Japanese architecture and people walking around like picture perfect episodes of TV shows.

All of them faking it to achieve a greater height. To get to the top of a like in a category in a box about a niche of a thing of a place.

Holy shit…

“Welcome to hell,” Dvar said. “The land of pretending… Where the Yakuza can’t even beat each other up in public without a story.”

“What. The. Fuck…” I said, looking around as we slowed to a twenty-five mile per hour crawl.

In a row of beautiful cars. Driven by beautiful people.

“This is what the upper side of society in Thread is like. One big pissing contest of wealth, luxury, opulence and navel gazing.” Dvar said, rolling his eyes. “I grew up in this hellhole.”

“Jesus fuck, dude… I’m sorry.” I said, looking around.

“You’re sorry? Why do you think sometimes,” he said, then snarled, reaching over and grabbing my face.

My eyes went wide as he pulled me across the car.

Actually fucking letting go of the steering wheel.

To grab my face and pull me close.

Wait. No. Let me rewind. I was in shock.

To grab my neck, and yank me over to him.

He used my fucking throat like a handle.

“Why do you think sometimes I just wanna hurt you?”

Staring me in the eyes while he held my throat.

Not squeezing. Just letting me know my life was in his hands.

And the car was still rolling.

It all became clear.

I wasn’t just a fetish. I was an experience.

A luxury of a very, very wealthy man.

The thing money couldn’t buy…

Suffering…

He threw me back against my door and took the wheel again.

“Nng! … ow…” I exhaled a slow, shaky breath.

That escalated quickly.

I looked him up and down and tucked into my seat, frowning.

“So listen to me… you’re an extension of me. I don’t care what you have to go through in there, you get the duel and you win. Understand?”

“… Yes sir.”

He smiled, “Keep pushing,” breathing a laugh.

I smiled right after.

“I’m…” I shook my head, lifting a hand in mock surrender, “I’m fuckin’ with you, buddy. Relax.”

“You will be.”

“Really?” I said, dropping my hand. “See, we were having a moment… then you had to go all gay on me.”

Dvar slowly turned his head to look at me as we got to a red light and he stopped.

“… Pretty Boy, I am gay. Of course I went all gay on you. That doesn’t even make sense.”

“You sound like me right now.”

“You’re contagious,” Dvar said sharply, and turned his attention forward as the light went green.

“Wait, was that a compliment?” I asked, squinting.

“Yes!” Dvar said quickly, exasperated. “Look. Mookie.”

“Mookie.”

“Right.” He grumped. “He’s not into boys. At all. He thinks Softboys are a blight on Thread. Kinda hilarious in a nearly eighty percent male society, but whatever. We’re allowed our opinions.”

“That never weirds you out?”

“What?” Dvar stopped to say.

“That there’s that few females here.”

“No.”

“I’ve never understood that.”

“You don’t understand women. They’re here.”

He pointed, upward.

I followed his point.

One. Two. Three- can’t see the rest, moons.

“The moon?” I asked.

“Yeah. All those ones you don’t know about? Remember Sunless?”

“Yeah…” My eyes tick-tocked around in thought, putting all the pieces together. “Oh. OH! Wait! All the chicks fucked off to Sunless and start a Ninja Vampire Society!? Aww, man… Bloodsuckers… little on the nose, isn’t it?”

“Look, Kiddo. I don’t make the rules.”

“But they make cakes.”

“I don’t. Make. The rules.” Dvar said, “You’re talking about really old Chaebol’s here. All started traditional then those traditions broke off in weird ways. I did my part. I united three…”

“Lakshmi took the other two… Including said affiliated Ninja Vampire Chicks.”

“Spot on. Anyway. Again, Mookie. Don’t interrupt me.”

“Right.”

“Mookie’s all about tradition. He’s serious Bushido… understand me. Serious modern bushido. He doesn’t like the softboy aesthetic. He hates clones that are made that way. All soft boys are clones for the most part so that means he hates clones.”

“But that’s not true… most clones aren’t soft boys,” I pointed out.

“I know that. You know that. Mookie has only ever existed in the billion dollar club. Where every clone is a soft boy. Like you.”

“So I’m fodder to this guy.”

“Exactly. Expect bullshit.”

“Fuck.” I sighed, suddenly realizing why he’d gotten me such nice clothes.

“Right. So you’re going in representing me. You’re going to go in. Compete in his softboy event and request a duel at the end. He knows it’s coming. We all know it’s coming one day. He turns down a duel he’s dead anyway.”

“You want me to kill him?”

“No. Just humiliate him. Like a man.”

“But he’s gonna humiliate me.”

“Yup. You’re right.”

“I’m not about to get … like… a pine cone shoved in my ass or something, am I?”

Dvar threw his eyes at me.

“Why in God’s name would someone do that to you?”

“I dunno. You rich fuckers are into weird shit.” I said, screwing my face up as I glared at Dvar.

“How would you know?”

“I don’t. That’s the problem.”

“Well. Consider. You’re my property. Everyone knows that by now. He’s not going to make your stay comfortable, but there are limits to what he can do, considering he knows who you are and why you’ve come calling.”

I nodded at that. It at least set me at ease.

“Long as I’m not about to get peanut butter eaten out of my ass by a chimpanzee or some crazy shit.” I sighed with relief.

Dvar gave a quiet, breathy snicker.

“That’s the other thing I like about you. You’re funny.”

I smiled at that. Turning my head away from him to look out of my side of the car.

We pulled past several fusion restaurants, another experience bar, a choose your own adventure park and then tucked into the glowing, pearlescent parking lot of Mookie Ranch.

It was what you’d expect a ranch to be if it was a video game in real life life.

I had to remember my third eye made everything seem weirdly hyper real.

And people could do what they liked with that.

Liberties were taken.

It wasn’t big, but it was interesting. The big barn to one side was a as one would expect, only it looked like a tech fusion business park. In the shape of a barn. So did the restaurant beside it. Like someone’s cyberpunk future of what they thought a techno pork business would be.

“I’mmona hurl.” I said.

“I know right? Kinda like tron bought a hot pot. That’s Mookie for you.”

I looked down to see Dvar’s ink change.

“Does it hurt getting live-tattoos?”

“Like absolute hell, but…” He shrugged, hopping out of the car at the same time I did.

I noticed the Wild Petal in my clothing come to life with that orange light, matching in tone with the petals.

All the way down the seams of my clothing. Every stitch. Twinkling in that light.

Not gonna lie, I felt kinda cool.

I fell in step behind Dvar, two paces and one to the right, walking with the same confidence as him as we approached.

“Remember, we are who we choose to be. We’re here to make an impression. Get a duel. And then we leave.”

“How do I keep you out of it?” I asked.

“Ahh… I guess you’ll have to act without me but remember you represent me. Choose who you pick a fight with carefully… Or let them choose you.”

The game… Right.

I could do that.

It was just like my favorite movies, right?

Pick a role. Play it hard as fuck.

Let’s go.

I steeled my expression.

“By the way… We’re not just gonna speed past the part where you kissed me in my god damn mouth.”

“Shut up. You enjoyed it.”

“Fuck you,” we said at the same time.

“I knew you were gonna say that. Odd.” Dvar said.

I just shut up and pouted.

He didn’t look back when he said, “That’s right… pout about it.”

“I hate you right now.”

"In public," he reminded and I shut up.

That made so much more sense now as I looked at the pools of fakery surrounding us.

Up ahead, the line of high dollar patrons waiting to be let into the hot pot. All twinkling in their best. All cloying for attention. Some even recording themselves to a live audience of people paying attention to them.

Other people who had parked beautiful cars out front on the 'good side', were walking past those poor line-dwellers. Like we were. While the line dwellers recorded us.

We walked past all of them.

They stared.

Some called Dvar's name.

Guess I was best boy now.

Gross.

I heard voices tittering about.

Slowly the gravity of Dvar started to become apparent to me.

In the faces of the people who understood the underground.

They knew and they stared at him.

And then they stared at me.

My eyes tick-tocked around for a second before I remembered myself. Remembered the social game and just locked my gaze on the back of Dvar.

I wasn’t me. I was Dvar’s weapon.

I could mask…

Deja vu.