4

The air field wasn’t far away, and it didn’t take that long for him to get there; he even managed to beat the rain, though he wasn’t sure it mattered. He felt curiously numb, but decided that was probably a blessing.

Tagawa’s jet was easy to spot, and as he drove up, the large, golem-like figure of Ehud was waiting beneath the shadow of the left wing for him - or just keeping a belated eye out for danger . It seemed like too little too late, but Logan didn’t bother saying anything, because the guy must have known that. There was nothing worse for a bodyguard than to fuck up on the job - and who should know that better than him?

That thought made his solar plexus clench again, so he stopped thinking that way.

Marcus opened the plane door for him, and he looked pretty much like his normal, muscular self, dressed all in black, save for his distressed brown leather bomber jacket. He had a small, pale diagonal scar on the right side of his face, about an inch away from his eye (or, in this case, his goggles), a souvenir from his tangle with the Berserker. Just by the way his eyebrows dipped, he knew Marc was squinting at him. “You okay, bud?”

Was it that fucking obvious? “Yeah, just tired. 'Dig the scar.”

Marc scowled, as if aware he was kind of changing the subject, but admitted, “Yeah, it’s kind of cool, isn’t it?  Mucho macho. I’m kinda hopin’ it doesn’t completely heal.  Makes me look tough.”

Logan snorted sarcastically. “Tough?  If you looked any tougher, you’d be beef jerky.”

“Damn right, muthafucka,” he agreed, leading the way into the plane, with an exaggerated walk that was half pimp caricature, and half duck walk.

In spite of himself, he laughed. “You’re such a spaz.” It was good to know at least Marc was back to normal, in spite of it all.

“Jealous.”

Marcus went back to walking like a normal person as they entered the spacious, azure and ivory hued main cabin, where Tony sat in one of the plush blue seats. He looked as supernaturally dignified as he always did, dressed in a neat, stylish tan suit that only he could pull off (anyone else would've looked like
a bargain basement competitor for the UPS man), paired with a white shirt, missing a tie. He had a few fine scars across his left cheek, mostly healed over and far too shallow to have gotten much attention, but there was a butterfly bandage on his left temple, covering what must have been a gash large enough to require stitches. He didn’t get up, but he did bow and say, “Konnichiha, Logan.”

“Konnichiha.” He bowed more formally, then added, “How are you doing?” Only after he asked did he realize he’d said it in Japanese.

“I’m well, thank you,” Tagawa replied in the same language. “What about you?  You look a little pale.”

Oh, was that what was tipping everyone off? “I didn’t sleep well.”

“Do you ever?”

He shrugged. “Not really.”

“You’re talking about me, aren’t you?” Marcus joked.

“Sorry,” he said, reverting to English.

“Yes, I’m sorry Marcus,” Tagawa agreed, jumping back to English as well. “It’s simply refreshing to speak to someone with Logan’s fluency.”

“Hey, I know.  He’s a natural born translator.” Marc threw himself in a plush chair across the cabin, and said, “So, what’s the skinny?”

Tony gestured for him to take a seat, and Logan did, across from Tagawa, so they were both covering alternate angles. (He was already thinking of this as bodyguard duty?) With a sigh, Tagawa folded his hands in his lap (one of them was sporting a bandage as well), and began. “Several months ago, my brother Tetsuo died. I heard of this long after the fact, as we were far from close - he was the first one
to disown me from the family. Anyway, Tetsuo never married, and he had no children, as well as no
will considered legally binding. So my remaining family decided to take it to court and get his estate
transferred to them legally, so the state would not take it. That was a mistake.”

“The state took it anyway?” Marc guessed.

While that had been his first guess as well, it also didn’t fit; it didn’t bring them to here. “The lawyers
found you,” Logan opined.

Tagawa gave him a small, approving smile. “Yes indeed, they found me.  Estrangement is only recognized in a court of law if it was done legally; therefore, I was asked if I wished to pursue my brother’s estate.  I said yes, only to keep it from the rest of my family.  As you might imagine, that didn’t go down well.”

“They want to kill you,” Logan sighed, running a hand through his hair.  Why did this sound so familiar?

Family was always a nice idea....in theory.  But in his, admittedly, limited experience, when things went seriously bad, no wanted to kill you quite like family, either.  Familiarity really did build contempt of a high order sometimes.  And in a family where everything was sacrificed to money and power, loyalty didn’t exist.  (Hell, he did sound like a sensei in a karate film.)

Tagawa nodded tersely. “I won the estate.  They now want my head on a silver platter.  Oddly enough,
they knew the ruling was coming down in my favor before my lawyers could notify me.”

Marc grunted knowingly. “Money talks, bullshit walks.  They paid somebody, or they've got someone on
the inside.”

“I suspected as much,” Tagawa admitted emotionlessly. He was certainly a cool customer, or maybe he was just accustomed to this shit after so long.  His dark, contemplative eyes locked on Logan. “You think the bombing was a warning?”

He nodded. “The scene was just too neat.  Bombings are messy, awful things; even if you’re an expert, an x-factor can throw it all off.  A shift in the wind, someone running into your set up - the car, in this case - someone inadvertently walking by and fucking it up, or setting it off prematurely.  But I’m convinced that  whoever this guy is, he's good;  he planned it as perfectly as anyone could've.  If he'd honestly wanted
you dead, you would be.”

“It still could've been a timer misfire,” Marc interjected, playing devil’s advocate.

Logan shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.  But if he'd just added a half brick more plastique - or got a car with a bigger gas tank - it would have sent that entire front window wall flying into the lobby at mach speed. Anybody not behind something made of thick lead or adamantium would've been pulsed like a tomato
in a blender. “

“Adamantium?” Tagawa said curiously. “You mean that theoretical metal alloy?”

Marcus snorted like he was making a joke. “Not so theoretical, Tone.” Logan felt a sudden shock of fear - he wasn’t going to just tell him, was he?  He figured Tony had guessed he was a mutant, but he’d never told him about...that - but Marc took a Glock out of his shoulder holster, and popped the ammo cartridge out, giving him a glimpse of the silver bullets inside. “Full adamantium jacket.  These rounds could punch right through a lead-lined bunker.”

Tagawa’s eyebrows raised considerably, and that was a hell of a reaction from a guy who almost never outwardly reacted to much at all. “They’ve mastered the synthesizing process?  How? Allegedly, it's an extremely volatile metal.”

Marc slammed the cartridge back in the gun, and slipped it back in his holster. “I have no fuckin’ idea. I pulled these bullets out of a base where … well, let’s just say they were a secretive group with an illegal agenda. The bullets are theirs, and I have a very limited quantity; I have no idea where they got them or how they were made. All I know is that I could shoot a helicopter out of the sky with these babies; they are the atom bombs of bullets.” Tagawa considered that with his usual measure of serene calm, dipping his head to the side. “Hell, I could even drop Logan with one of these. Well, for a little while, anyway.” He winked at him, making a joke, but then abruptly sobered and even looked slightly embarrassed.  Logan didn’t know why, until he realized that Marc must've been thinking that the last time - to his knowledge - that he'd gotten hit with an adamantium bullet was when Leonie was killed.  His solar plexus seemed to knot up again, and Logan glanced down at the sky blue carpet, determined not to think about it.

“I’m sure they’re very impressive,” Tagawa agreed. “If you have an extra, I’d love to study it sometime.”

“Precisely how big is the estate that you won?” Logan interjected quickly, wanting to get off this topic as quickly as possible.

A confused look briefly clouded Tagawa’s serene face as he realized Logan wasn't comfortable talking about this, but he adapted quickly. “In a monetary sense, it’s worth about one point two million dollars, American.”

Marcus let out a low whistle. “Not exactly chump change.”

“And since people will kill you for fifty cents, it's a big incentive as well.”

“People also try to kill Fifty Cent,” Marcus noted, deadpan.

“Keep your day job."  Logan rolled his eyes.  "So you say it’s worth over a million, but most of it isn’t cash, I assume.”

Tagawa shook his head. “He only had twenty thousand dollars in his two bank accounts that were
officially included in the tally. Most of his holdings are in property.”

“In Japan?”

“And Hong Kong.  His most expensive holdings are there.”

“Hence why you wanna go there?” Marc guessed.

Tagawa dipped his head towards him in a small, polite nod. “I’d like to liquidate those holdings as soon
as possible.  I have no interest in the money...I simply wanted to keep my poisoned family from enriching their own coffers.”

Poisoned family. Logan felt a slight chill, as he realized that fell very close to what he (no, the other Logan) had thought about the Yashidas in that dream (memory?). “You had to know that would piss them off royal.  It’s worse than if you wanted the money; that they could probably understand.  But you wanted it only so they couldn’t have it, and they have to know that.  It’s gotta be eating at them.”

“I admit … I probably let spite get the better of me.  But there’s something else I should warn you two
of, before you agree to this job.”

Marc slumped back in his seat with a sigh, equal parts wary and weary. “Don’t tell us - your family is a bunch of cyborgs from the future with cannons for arms?”

At least that got a small smile out of Tagawa. “Oddly enough, I think I could deal with cyborgs. No, I’ve heard rumors - only recently, therefore officially unconfirmed - that before his unfortunate death, Tetsuo had worked out a business arrangement with the head of a powerful Triad gang working out of Hong Kong.”

“Triad?” Marcus repeated in disbelief, sitting forward again. Although his shoulders were slumped, his back was tense. “You’re saying the Yakuza and the Triad are working together?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What could bring them together?” Logan wondered, thinking aloud. Although both were Asian, the Yakuza and the Triads played by similar but fundamentally different rules, and weren’t known for their cooperation - it would be the equivalent of the Crips and the Bloods suddenly deciding on a custody sharing arrangement of South Central, back in the day. “A common enemy?  And what did your brother die of, anyway?”

Tagawa gave him a strangely appraising sidelong glance.  He knew Tony liked Marcus, respected him - but Logan couldn’t shake the feeling that, while he obviously liked him too - he was constantly testing
and measuring him for unclear reasons.  Did he not completely trust him yet?  Did he know something he shouldn’t have?  “In this case, it’s rumored not to be a common foe, but a common profit.  When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, they basically destroyed all of the opium poppy crops - what remained, they used to fill their coffers. With the opium supply cut down to a mere trickle from alternate sources - mainly Pakistan and China - it quickly became obvious that fighting over such a limited supply was a
waste of resources.  They didn't so much work together but, rather, got out of each other's way.  As
soon as the Taliban was ousted, the poppy fields exploded, once again feeding the market.  Now there's plenty to go around, but supposedly Tetsuo showed at least some local bosses how much more profit there was in cooperation than in continual fighting for a share of the illegal drug market.  It's large enough that everyone can get a nice-sized piece of the pie."

"The Gandhi of organized crime?" Logan speculated, with a sarcastic snort.

"You could say that.  If Gandhi was overweight, balding, Japanese, and had a weakness for pin stripes."

"So, we have to assume the Triad and the Yakuza are working together to maximize the opium trade going through Hong Kong?" Marc said, simply laying it out all on the table.  "Does that mean they're friendly enough to turn against you as a whole?"

Tagawa considered it, then grimaced painfully as he shook his head. "I do not know for sure.  It's a possibility I thought I should warn you about."

"Shit," Marc breathed.  Seemed like an understatement. "I'm gonna need to go get my rocket launcher."

"You didn't mention how he died," Logan pointed out.

Tagawa gave him that tight smile again, like he had passed another test.  His eyes were bright but otherwise unreadable. "He liked to sample his own products sometimes, and the fat bastard had a heart attack."

"Overdose?" Logan asked, although it wasn't really a question.

He dipped his head as an acknowledgement. "As the coroner so tastefully put it, 'death by misadventure'."

"Could it have been a well concealed murder?"

"Certainly. There's simply no way to prove it."

"Oh, great," Marc interjected. "So if the Triad and the Yakuza working together ain't bad enough, you could be actually popping yourself into the middle of a secret vendetta?"

Tagawa's brow furrowed as he considered that, the crow's feet standing out in the corners of his eyes like bas relief. "I had not considered that before. I would like to think not. Perhaps this is more dangerous than I previously considered."

Marc shrugged, and slumped back in his chair. "That's why they pay me the big bucks. We just get in and get out, quick as we can, and maybe we can eliminate some of the bloodshed.  Might have to charge you
a bit more for expenses, you know.  Bullets."

Although that seemed to trouble him slightly, Tagawa made a spreading gesture with his hands that Logan knew was conciliatory. "Whatever you need.  Expense is not a problem."

"I know, Tony, that's what I love about you." Marc tilted his head towards Logan. "What d'ya think, bud?"

Although he glanced in his direction, Logan kept the corner of his eye on Tagawa. "I think we're gonna need a bigger boat." If nothing else, he knew that Marc would appreciate the 'Jaws' reference. "Yeah,
I'm in.  I've got no love lost for the Yakuza. If the Triad want to stand in my way, that's their risk."

Tagawa smiled approvingly.  Logan had the inexplicable, paranoid feeling that Tony had been counting
on him to say just that.

5

She walked into a sunlit kitchen, redolent with the smell of blackberry cobbler and tomato soup, suggesting her mother had been going through what she liked to think of as her sudden domestic phase.  It occurred somewhat randomly, but usually as the holidays neared, or when her grandmother was due for a visit.  It was always a strange thing to see her analytical librarian mother - whose general idea of home cooking was opening a bag of frozen corn to throw in the canned chili - go all domestic diva, running around the kitchen pulping home grown tomatoes in a blender or making dough for a pie. When she was a little girl, she used to love to help her, as Jean had caught on early that her solo cooking skills left much to be desired.  She was quite possibly the only girl to ever fail home economics.

The sunlight coming through the blinds left stripes like jail bars on the parquet floor, and she had the most curious feeling of dislocation.  She wasn't supposed to be here ... but where was she supposed to be?   She couldn't remember.  But then again, she couldn't remember arriving either.  She was simply here, as
if the beginning and the end of the entire world was encapsulated in this strangely stagnant sense of time.  She was always here; she had never been anywhere else.  There was nowhere else.

The sliding glass door was open, the screen door in place, and she knew from the smell of slightly charred meat wafting in from the backyard that her father was barbecuing. She headed out, sliding back the screen - which always stuck just a little, for reasons no one had ever been able to determine - and saw her mother and father sitting at the translucent plastic circular patio table, with what looked like a platter of cooked meat on the table between them, and glasses containing Bloody Marys set aside.  But there were several things wrong, although she couldn’t put a name to them immediately.

Their backyard near Watertown, New York, was relatively lush, but nowhere near as landscaped as
this, or as wide as this, with what looked like a reflecting pool wedged between large sculptured hedges, leading to a small grove of pear and dogwood trees.  Shrubs and wildflowers sprawled on all sides, with pine trees as tall as redwoods defining the outer borders, and it occurred to her this was a garden for a mansion, not a small, split level suburban home.  Also her father, Doctor John Gray, was not bald, but
now he appeared to be, the sunlight reflecting off his barren scalp like a halo.  Her mother, Cathleen, did not have long white hair either - it was naturally curly, and a reddish-brown color her Dad used to say
was “roan”, if only to gently annoy Mom.  But not today.

And since when did they ever drink anything stronger than wine?  Even then, it was reserved for special occasions, not backyard barbecues.  Children’s laughter seemed to echo from the trees, and she immediately thought of her siblings playing out in the forest … except that she had no siblings. She was very much an only child.

As she approached the table, her eyes focused on the platter in the center of the table.  It was burnt, charred beyond recognition, but oddly shaped; long and thick, curling up at the end, the meat breaking into five separate divisions at the end.  Sunlight glinted off the ends, and what she assumed to be the knife left in the meat was revealed to be some odd utensil curving out of it.  Three odd utensils, curved silver knives unaffected by the heat that had burned the flesh, and as she leaned in for a closer look, a startlingly familiar but out-of-place voice said, “That’s the bad part about passion, isn’t it?  It cuts both ways.  Love can be hate faster than most people think, especially if it’s a battle for survival.  But the best weapon is the one you least expect.”

Logan’s arm.  Logan’s severed, baked arm was on the plate.

She took a step back, repulsed, when the thought hit her: ‘I did that.  I burned him alive and tore him apart to make sure he couldn’t survive’. “No,” she said aloud, deeply confused. ‘He wouldn’t stop. It was him or me.‘  That couldn’t be true…was it?  She wasn’t sure.

“Well, you haven’t, not yet anyway,” the voice said again.  She looked up sharply, and saw Scott standing on the lawn, dressed in chinos and an open necked white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, his glasses completely black. He raised a glass towards her in toast, and she saw he had a Bloody Mary too. “Salud.”

It took her a moment to remember Scott didn’t drink. “What’s going on here?”

After taking a hearty swig from his glass, he shrugged, his lips still wet and slick with blood. (What?  No, no, that was tomato juice … right?) “I’m meetin’ your parents, honey pie.  Isn’t it all just sweet and cozy?” He gave her a smug, blade-sharp smile that didn’t seem to fit his face, and tossed his half full glass over his shoulder. It thudded to the lawn like a ten ton weight.

She glowered at him. “You’re not Scott.”

“Oh, I most certainly am not. Who the fuck is that?”

That forced her to remember. Why was it so hard to think?  It was like slogging through chest high mud, the dense kind that threatened to hold you fast and drag you down like quicksand. “If you don’t know who he is, why do you look like him?”

He scoffed, and for the first time, she realized her parents were frozen like statues. They weren’t real at all. “Don’t ask me. I’m empty; I’m just a mirror for your subconscious. I have been told whoever’s bothering you the most - whoever’s giving you a major case of the guilts - reflects in me.  But how would I know? That’s not my department.”

“I have no guilt over Scott. Why should I?”  Or did she?  She didn’t think so.  She didn’t think she’d ever felt less guilty in her entire life.

“Again, not my department, sweety-doll. But, it could be the old you.  Or maybe I should say the other you. There’s a lot of yous in there.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He shook his head and continued to smile in a way that was deeply patronizing. “You’re kinda new at this god thing, huh?  Let me clue you in - in the beginning, they’re all a little nuts.  Some of ‘em never grow out of it. Great power honestly fucks you up. But you don’t know that, ‘cause you’re in it.  And no one, while they’re in it, realizes how much it’s fucking them up.”

Now she was starting to remember, just a little, and it made her furious. “I am not fucked up, Bob. Maybe you are -”

“Whoa-ho, I am not Bob!  In fact, I am so not Bob you probably couldn’t comprehend it. But, to be fair, Bob would be the first to admit he’s really fucked in the head - shit, he lets people call him Bob!  That’s
no name for a god.”

“..Lets people?  So that’s not his real name.”

“Oh no, not at all; not even close. Have you ever read or heard any myths involving a god named Bob?” He then crossed his arms over his chest, and looked at her over the tops of his sunglasses … except there was nothing there, not even eyes; just a tangible void she could feel from this distance. It seemed to radiate cold like a glacier. “But that’s not what you really want to know, is it, hon-bun?”

“Stop with the stupid names. What do you want from me?”

“Want?  I have no wants. That’s a corporeal thing, or a coherent energy thing.  Not my bag.”

She thought she felt her stomach grow leaden and cold, but she wasn’t completely certain she had a body. “Am - am I dead?  Is this some kind of hell?”

He let out a throaty chuckle, and seemed genuinely amused.  She wanted to smash his face in. “No, you’re not dead, not yet - how could we being having this conversation if you were?  I have no interest in dead people. But Hell ..? That’s little more than a state of mind, so you tell me.”

Gods, he was a foul creature. Jean wondered if there was some way she could hurt him. “No, you tell me - what are you?”

“I am nothing,” he claimed, throwing his arms wide. “I am the balance of the universes.  Death gods aren’t the only elementals.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Of course I am. You know your physics, yes?  Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and every thing has an opposite as well.  Gods can kill each other, but in a Darwinian battle for survival, one god could theoretically be stronger than all of the others combined - and what would happen then? 
That’s no good in a manifold plane.  Now, grasp this: energy cannot be created nor destroyed, simply transformed - another basic law of physics.  Gods are, in general, coherent energy;  they can be
dispersed, lose cohesion, but not be destroyed … technically.”

She shook her head, angry that he was probably being obtuse on purpose. “You’re saying there’s a connection, is that it?”

“Yes indeedy do.  There had to be a way to balance out a truly omnipotent god, and there had to be a way to translate that energy into a different, risk free form.”  He pointed at his head, as if playing ‘Spot
The Loony’ with himself. “Voila!  Me. Sometimes I’m called an “eater”, yet I have many names ... none that I call myself.  'Myself' is a loose concept to me - I just am.  I take out the pan-dimensional trash.  Not ‘cause I wanna, you understand.  Does a fish want to swim?  Okay, bad example.  But you get what I’m saying now, don’t you?”

He was insane, and that just added to his chilling presence. “You’re saying you kill gods.”

He let out a sharp, short bark of laughter. “M’dear, I don’t kill anything.  I hunger, and I transform.  Don't you see?  I need energy to survive, and the only energy that’s ever really any good belongs to you things. In other words, darling - I eat gods for breakfast.  I have no ill will towards you, it’s not at all personal, but I need to feed. And I was given a “go out to lunch” free card, courtesy of Osiris.  I’m sorry to say you’re the fruit cup. Wait, no, I‘m not sorry at all.  But I bet you are.”

She scowled, trying to use her rage to cover her fear. “So you’re killing me because Bob ordered Osiris
to do it?”

“I’m not technically suppose to kill you, just burn off some of your power.  Still, I don’t take orders, certainly not from the likes of Bob, and neither of them are here, are they?  Sure, I like Sy; we elementals have a certain reciprocity thing goin’ on, know what I’m sayin’?  But hon, it’s just you and me right now.” He grinned, showing the yawning void inside of him. “Ya gonna fight me?  I hope you do. I’m the psychic equivalent of a Chinese finger trap - the more you fight me, the more you become irrevocably stuck. Every god has their limit.  Let’s say we find out what yours is, huh?”

She started backing towards the door, even though she knew she was in his mind - or maybe he was in hers, overriding her control.  She really had no idea which was which, as she had no true sense of self any longer; she felt curiously cut off from herself, surgically removed from her own mind.  But she wasn’t going to give up just because this psychopathic, sentient black hole told her she should.

Still, she thought she might have figured out one of the names the other gods called him: Ragnarok.

She wondered how Bob would feel when she finally fed him to it.