Some things to know:

Kitsune is a Japanese word that literally means "fox". Traditional Japanese mythology holds that all foxes are magical. As they grow older, wiser, more powerful, they grow extra tails, up to a maximum of nine. Kitsune can be auspicious, mischievous, or downright evil. They can turn invisible, shapeshift into human form, possess people, and are usually associated with fire. I have included some illustrations.

Some other Japanese words used:

katana: long, slightly curved Japanese sword
wakazashi: short sword, like a katana but about half to two-thrids the length
shuriken: same thing as ninja star
mikado: a title used for the emperor of Japan. Literally means "the august gate", in reference to the gateway that leads into the imperial palace grounds.

Once upon a time, Gekijo was a man. This simple fact might serve to belie in you things you have heard or known about him, had you reason to know or hear of him, which hopefully you have not before this. But the real and simple truth is just that, incontrovertibly - once upon a time, Gekijo was a man.

Where it all began could be said to be his birth, but that is not where this story starts. It starts decades later, on a fall evening in northern Japan, some five-hundred years ago.

He knew what had happened the moment he walked in the room. Signs of struggle were everywhere, broken furniture, holes in the floor and the walls, an upset meal. She had put up a real fight. As fast as he had walked in the front door he was gone again, wakizashi clutched at his side, shurikens strapped tight in his coat.

The trail was easy to follow, it must have been a big crowd. Why he could only guess, he had more enemies than friends, but why mattered nothing right now. His swift feet sped him through the forest where the signs of passage were obvious, leaping over roots and dodging scattered brush and branches, broken or hanging.

He was a dark blur in the shadowed wood, barely huffing when he heard the noises ahead. He was approaching a clearing, and perceived the crowd there. There was dread in him. The question of why was again creeping into his consciousness, and the leaping light of flames, the sound of inhuman yips amongst the roar of human voices, gave him the edges of an answer he knew but would not look at.

Twelves years prior, her mother had died in childbirth. He had not loved her mother, but from the first moment he saw Tamashi's face, when he held her tiny body against his, felt the beating of her tiny heart inside her chest, when she wrapped her fingers around his thumb, he knew that from then on, there was nothing else in the world he would work for but her life, her honor, and her freedom.

He would not train her to kill. She was worth more than that. But he did train her, and she became an adept theif. They were on the run often, but Gekijo and Tamashi were partners by love forged in blood and fire. fealty and dedication. She did not question his love and he never found hers wanting.

And she stole. She hid, spied, pried, danced, charmed, cajoled and stole as much wherever and at every chance. She was twelve years old, and a virgin thief. It could be said she had been born for it, but to Gekijo he had made her that way, and centuries later he would not forgive himself for it.

He burst through the edge of the clearing, leaping fully in the air, and saw everything, even before anyone really perceived he was there. There were people, local villagers and tradesman, thronged around a slowly dying fire. The fire was the waning form of a nine-tailed kitsune - a spirit fox. Gekijo had heard that a malicious kitsune lived in this wood, that it had been terrorizing the town for some time, but had thought nothing of it. He was not afraid of kitsune, nine-tails or not, and this would be his undoing. The fading fox demon was perched upon a simple blade, a katana with a wrapped brown hilt, and withering under the drip splattering of blood from above - tied to a post, slashed at the throat, was the virgin theif. Tamashi.

Before his feet even hit the ground, Gekijo had his shiruken in hand and tossed them with deadly accuracy at those between him and the altar. There were cries and commotion then, and Gekijo used this confusion to get to the center of the crowd, just as the last flicks of fox flame sputtered and died on the katana's blade. His daughter was dead, her blood used in the binding ritual where the kitsune fused with the cold steel sword, yet in his head Gekijo could hear her voice - she was crying to him from within the sword, a cry of pain and sorrow, begging him to save her, to let her free. His hand snapped to the hilt of the katana and he cut the ropes holding Tamashi's body up and caught her as she slumped in his arms.

There were cries of objection. Gekijo looked up; there was a large booming man, pointing and yelling at him. Gekijo gently laid his daughter to rest on the ground, and turned to face the antagonist, katana blade out. Gekijo yelled back. The words are lost in time and in the end they did not matter; but they were words of anger, and what mattered then was the fox fire, erupting suddenly along the blade's edge, accompanied by the kitsune's howl.

The look in the other man's face was one of sudden fear. Gekijo did not hesitate, he slid lightly on his feet and leapt, slashing burning bright, cleaving him from clavicle to opposite hip. In was only a moment after this that he felt the dull thud in his back, and the clap of searing pain. He did not need ask what it was. There was a second thud, a third. Gekijo turned slowly, the flicks of flame receding in the sword's edge with a whimper, and looked to his daughter's face, and to the hunstman standing beyond her, bow still raised. Tamashi's body was motionless, but it was no longer the vessel of her soul - her racking sobs were clear in his ears from the katana's blade. Gekijo slumped eartwards, and died.

Hell is what you make it, and Gekijo's hell was to be strapped and staring at his sword daughter, as she was used to torture others, crying in objection, pleading for her victim's mercy. This alone was not enough, it seemed, as venom was also dripped on him, in his ears, his mouth, on his groin and his feet, but not his eyes. These were held open and his head restrained solidly, so he could never look away. The venom was the same he had used many times on his targets. His had not been the task of simply eliminating a target - it had been to send a message, and the agonized and wretched death the glass adder venom provided did just that.

Maphaes watched Gekijo during these administrations. The demon hung to the walls of the chamber, fingernails tracing lightly as he observed. Gekijo did not writhe or scream, plead or beg, cry, thrash or yell. He was solid, unflinching through it all. This was unusual, certainly, but not unique - there were other souls of intense discipline or stoicism, but Gekijo was different. What intrigued Maphaes was that Gekijo was not simply enduring the punishment, but seemed to be <i>imbibing</i> it. The longer it went on, the more horrible it became, Gekijo was absorbing it, making it part of him, angrier and angrier, like the cascading nuclear reaction in a melting pile of uranium.

Maphaes liked this. He smiled.

Hell is not an absolute or infinite thing - lies and misery never are. The resources of Hell even can become stretched, so that in the "endless" punishment there were in fact moments of respite, if you wished to call it that. Gekijo was in one of these moments, hanging in a place of oblivion, unable to see, hear or feel anything, only his own thoughts to occupy him, and these thoughts were not good.

Suddenly a dull red light throbbed into being in the void, and in its glow was the form of a face, with thin, sharp features, and a shock of dark hair forming sickle shapes clumped and piled on his scalp. Gekijo did not know Maphaes, and had never seen him before, but that was who appeared before him.

"Hello there, Gekijo. My name is Quinn. Do you like Hell?"

The question was far beyond absurd, goading the taciturn Gekijo to answer.

"No," he said, "I believed in reincarnation and karma. I dispensed justice; it was always fair justice. I expected to be rewarded on my death. And my daughter deserves better than this."

"Oh, but you are right about karma and reincarnation," said Quinn. Quinn was a name Maphaes had picked up off one of the damned; he liked it quite better than the one he was given. "When you died you were reborn here, in another state of existence, and you will be reborn again from here when the time comes. As for your daughter, the binding ritual was quite strong, but not impassable."

Gekijo looked this being deep into his eyes, unblinking. Quinn flinched only slightly. It was milky down there, insubstantial. "You can free my daughter?" Gekijo asked.

There was a slight pause. "Potentially," said Quinn.

"What do you want?" Gekijo asked. It was a natural question. These were not people of charity.

"I'm rather looking at a bit of reincarnation myself. I've been to the surface - <i>Earth</i> - a few times. I'd like to live there. Set up business. I need a crew."

"We can escape?"

"Slip out through the back door."

"When?" Gekijo asked.

"Now."

"And my daughter comes with us." It was a statement. Quin nodded. Gekijo did the same.

Slipping out through back door was one way of putting it. It was more like being born through a flaming cervix. Quinn had been preparing for this for a long time, and guided Gekijo along. The path was arduous, and Gekijo was blind and in pain through all of it. They trudged, slipped, stretched, doubled back over and over. Quinn shoved Gekijo into a hole of some sort and told him not to move. Quinn yanked him suddenly and they fell through open space that tightened on Gekijo in every direction, suffocating him. It was dark and bright at the same time, and then Gekijo was sure, sure that Quinn was chewing on him. He had put trust in a demon for the simple reason that it had seemed better than the alternative, but he had seen in Quinn the quiver, the uncertainty. He really had no idea what Quinn was doing.

The sensation of hot ripping grew suddenly worse. This was far worse than the torture from before, because it had been so obvious, without change or imagination, grounded in things Gekijo knew. It had been excruciating, but certain. Gekijo had no knowledge of this new sensation, no true perception of its source, how long it would last or if he was in fact being finally destroyed. When every fiber of him was searing, and he was ready to dissolve as particles dispersed into flames and then dust and ended forever, that was when his eyes opened with a clap, air shot into his lungs, his fingers grasped for solid anything, feeling cold metal bars and then fabric and his own clammy skin.

He was in something like a bedroom, he was on a bed. The light was bright and white and not from the sun or flames but a disk above him. Quinn was there, sitting.

Gekijo swore at him hoarsly, collapsing back on the mattress to stare at the bright disk, then averting his gaze to the wall as the dizziness was making him want to vomit. He closed his eyes, opened them, and his breathing slowly became normal. It was a while before either said anything, and then Quinn finally spoke.

"Welcome back, Gekijo."

"What did you do to me?" Gekijo asked, beyond his own sensibilities of self-suffering.

"I brought you back. You are alive again. Congratulations."

Gekijo felt himself over with his hands, then his attention snapped to where his daughter was calling him - the sword was laying on a nearby countertop, its simple blade and brown-wrapped hilt appearing as it always had.

Quinn continued, "Infusing your gestalt with flesh and blood as you remembered it was no small feat, as you can imagine. Some gratitude would be in order."

"Fuck you."

Quinn smiled. "Come out when you are ready to meet the others," and then he walked out of the room.

It was some time before Gekijo pulled himself from the mattress. He slowly flexed his limbs and muscles in turn, testing the feel of movement, of breathing, his fingers along his skin, the mattress, other surfaces. It was all real. He comforted his daughter's confusion; Tamashi had not understood all that had just happened but was glad at their release from literal hell, even if they did not know yet where exactly they had landed up. The kitsune asked if this meant they could start having real meals again.

Gekijo grabbed the sword and the blade sung as he moved it. Tamashi observed with a sense of subdued emotion that it was the first time they had touched in centuries. Gekijo wondered at the source of her perceptic faculties but had the answer before she responded. The blade did have an aura, consisting of both the inflow and outflow of Tamashi and the kitsune in tandem. This bothered Gekijo a great deal. There was nothing yet he could do about the kitsune, yet it was living in the closest possible proximity to his daughter that any two beings could ever share. The kitsune repeated aloud how hungry it was, and Tamashi concurred enthusiastically before checking herself. Gekijo asked her what she meant and she apologized. There was a brief moment of silence filled only with Gekijo staring at the edge of the blade as though an answer would be forthcoming, and then he moved out of the room.

There was a short, cramped hall which led into another chamber, small as well, but occupied with a collection of people, three men - or possibly you would say two men, plus something that might have been a man and might have been a large acquatic mammal wearing clothes and sitting in a protesting chair. He commanded the space of the room, hulking frame and prodigious gut, his neck and head one continuous unit, his skin pale to the point of being slightly translucent, like a grub's, and he was bald, but not just that, there was no visible hair on him at all, not on his arms, not even eyebrows or lashes. Beside him was a young man, not older than thirty, bronze-skinned and dark-haired, muscular in a tight white garment that did not cover his arms, shoulders or neck. He sat up straighter suddenly when Gekijo entered the room, eyeing the katana, flitting his gaze to Gekijo's face and back to the blade again. There was also an older man, sitting in another chair, stooped, muttering to himself.

"Where is Quinn?" Gekijo asked. He stood in the doorway, not stepping in. The bronzed one opened his mouth and said something, but it was in a language Gekijo had never heard before. There was a cunning edge in his voice, and an intelligence in his eyes. His body was compact, tightly strung, but his demeanor was more expansive than that. Gekijo could sense him reading him just the same as he was. It was then that Quinn entered the room through another door, a metal box held in both hands.

"What about my daughter?" Gekijo said flatly. "You were able to give me back my flesh and blood, yet she is still in this sword."

"Well, the binding ritual was actually pretty good, as I said. It'll take more time, more resources."

"Her flesh is steel, her blood is fire," croaked the old man in the corner. It might have been poetry.

"Just what I was going to say," said Quinn. "The next question is 'Where are we?' I have brouht you to a space that is just below Earth. Above us is a place Carlos here is familiar with but the rest of you have never been. Thus-" and Quinn opened the metal box and began handling out belts and something else, a clear vial with a needle at the end. Gekijo observed the bronzed one, who Quinn had indicated as Carlos, tighten a belt around his arm and then plunge the needle into one of the bulging veins. This same kit was handed to Gekijo.

"What is this?" His voice was tinged with a hint of offense.

"Enlightenment," was what Quinn said.

"You take it," Gekijo demanded.

"Yes, I made one for myself, too. I love the rush," Quinn said as he juggled a vial and the metal box, setting it down to perform the administration. "Bones, can you help Doc with his?" The big one turned and performed the procedure on the old man. Now it was just Gekijo.

"Go ahead, dad," Tamashi spoke to him, "It wouldn't be poison - this new life isn't going to end so soon."

Enlightenment wasn't liquid in a jar. Nonetheless Gekijo relented and performed the task just as he had seen the others do it. He felt nothing at first, but then Quinn walked over to a panel on the wall - it was to Gekijo's left and he hadn't seen it when he walked in, but it was flat and black and slightly reflective, until Quinn did something to it and suddenly it was a picture frame, but the image moving, shining brightly. Gekijo's entire vision filled with the scene, a faraway view of a landscape of green surrounding a river, with people like ants scuttling about at toil, and then he was slipping out of his control into it, the stark staring reality of it overtaking his consciousness.

It felt nothing at all like living a real scene and yet the images and sound overwhelmed his perception on all sides. Some of it was flat attacking informational input to his eyes and ears, and some of it was conceptual - layers of abstract connection and significance weaving and winding, smothering his mind like a blanket. The year was now Anno Domini 2002 by Western reckoning. The Japanese calendar was more complicated, based on the concept of "eras". It was currently the 14th year of the Heisei era, but this meant little to Gekijo beyond the fact that he had been gone for many hundreds of years. The world had changed greatly in that time. A new country had formed - the United States of America, as well as development north and south of it until the entire landscape of two continents was owned, conquered, liberated, exploited, and political lines were drawn across endless miles of desert, wood, jungle and plains. Something called electricity came under the control of man as fire had in millenia past, and the branches of human endeavor erupted out bigger, farther, faster than ever before. Machines could do the work of dozens of laborers, telegrams tooks meer seconds to travel hundreds of miles, and then telephones could carry a person's voice anywhere in an instant. Telephones became portable, cheaper, disposable, until everyone had one. There were computers - mechanical signficance analytical machines, operating on minute energies played against tiny puzzle mazes hundreds of times per second, then thousands, then millions. Bored children could do more mathematics faster than any scientist of the mikado's court in Gekijo's age. Automobiles, guns, drugs, airplanes, rocketships - and just years ago, the Internet, changing the whole world once again. Gekijo experienced this rushing inflow of information like drinking water, if the water was coming from a fire hose screwed onto and clamped over his mouth.

This new country called the United States of America had even fought and defeated Japan in war. A searing thunderclap of fire billowed into a mushroom cloud of dust, killing many thousands of people in a single instant. The idea caused the kitsune to howl in excitement. Gekijo imagined it prancing about the littered dead, devouring the stained and tattered souls too sick to flee or defend themselves.

Focus shifted more narrowly, to a single city: New Amsterdam, to be later renamed New York City, growing steadily around the conflux of two rivers and ocean harbor, becoming the second of three national capitals in the United States of America's young development. Through immigration, industry, commerce, art, New York City established and maintained itself as a global hub, being one of just a handful of cities that truly ran the world. Gekijo was satisfied to see that Tokyo as well was on that strata, glimpsing briefly the sprawling technocratic cybernetic organism that was his homeland capital, sprawling out along the Pacific shoreline and shooting spires up to brush the heavens. But the focus again was New York City, and Gekijo was shown street names, neighborhoods, landmarks and contraband routes, black market hotspots, local and international gangs, night clubs, orgies, brothels, gun fights, and the bookies making money off of every Yankees game. The view finally came to a single street corner in Brooklyn, and a streetlight. It was unlike the others around it, which were plain metal poles bending at the top to cast light directly down on the concrete. This one was black, wrought iron, with a faceted top of cystal panes set in iron frames, casting its glow in all directions. It was, it seemed, a thirsty lamppost, and what it wanted was blood. He saw himself cutting his own arm and dripping his offering on a part of the pole near the base, where dentils ringed the circumference just above the point where the pole flared out and fluted down to the ground. This was the key that granted passage into the earth, into the space where they sat watching a television screen, which was now blank.

"That was great," said Quinn, licking his lips. "Let's watch it again." He held up a remote and pressed play.

The video was different the second time. Gekijo was more personaly involved in events. He sailed a boat across the Pacific Ocean, landing in Pugent Sound. From there he crossed America, founding city after city in his wake. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, it was the kitsune's vulpine face in the cloud, its nine tails forming the base of the column, spreading out along the earth the devour the landscape, and Gekijo was above it all, filling the sky and laughing a long, crazed laughter Gekijo he had never known in his life but seemed so natural now. In a modern night club in Manhattan, Tamashi was a grown woman, beatiful and stunning, wrapped in a kimono of white and gold, singing a song like flowing silk while men with shadowed faces placed bids on her innocence. Gekijo was in a kimono of pure black, the thickest of cigars languishing in his hand. He was crimeboss of the five boroughs, operating from a hideout no enemy could ever find, beneath a lamppost no one could ever understand.

The video ended. Gekijo didn't know if it had been minutes or hours, but he became aware that he was sweating profusely. He stood to leave but there was almost no where to go. Into the cramped hallway, into the tiny room, he sat on the matress and tried collecting himself, but the pieces of him were scurrying away like beetles. He stood suddenly, lunging after where he saw the scuttling legs disappear to. The kitsune was chanting directions to him, where the beetles were going, how to forget them, how to execute himself - how easy the katana blade would slip into his belly and the three of them could all be free. Gekijo was on his knees, staring at the katana in confusion. Tamashi was yelling, crying, trying to talk sense into him. There was a thread of something Gekijo was certain of peaking just below the confusion. He grabbed this thread, and it was his daughter's love, pleading with him to pull together, and in this he found again clarity.

Cursed kitsune. He would be rid of it completely but not until he could somehow extract his daughter and give her life again. Gekijo rose to his feet, taking the sword in hand, and walked back out to the main chamber.

A conversation was under way. Introductions were in order. The language English - Gekijo found he understood it now. Carlos was a man, like him, deceased and damned and brought back to Earth by Quinn. Unlike Gekijo, Carlos had been killed only months prior, when he had been shot in a gang fight. Quinn was organizing them into a new gang, and Carlos was instrumental in his experience and knowledge in the workings of the New York underworld. Carlos had had the name Invincible and had thought himself to be be so - he had been prominent, seemingly untouchable, before the idea was disproven. Carlos couldn't go back to his old life - "I can't scare my mama just showing up like that," he put it - and was more than willing to take a piece back from his killers.

The old man called Doctor was another story entirely. He never seemed to say anything sensible and Quinn filled Gekijo in with a few details. Doctor had been a soothayer and a sorcerer in Asia Minor nearly three thousand years ago. Quinn had spent much time conversing with Doctor in Hell, and believed the man to be prophetic. Doctor could not take care of himself and would be residing permanently in the Den, this space beneath the lamppost.

Then there was Bones, who seemed to be listening through the entire conversation but said nothing. He, like Quinn, was a demon, and he seemed either bound or resigned or willing to do Quinn's bidding whatever. Gekijo liked Bones immediately. He looked into the large beast's eyes and saw something dark and deep, like an inverse gemstone down below miles of coal. There was something like a sense of pleasure hidden below Bones's seemingly expressionless face.

Then there was the question of Gekijo. He did not feel like sharing any part of his story. This was not what he did. Carlos asked him about the sword - he thought he had heard Gekijo talking to it. Gekijo was spared from any explaination when a hole opened in the wall nearest him, revealing a set of steep, dark, earthen stairs. He put up his guard, but Quinn told him, "No, don't worry, that's only Sweets. No one gets in that we don't want."

Sweets, Gekijo would learn, was a shortening of Sweet Atlanta, the sobriquet of the woman - technically, the angel - who walked down the steps into the Den. The image of Teutonic beauty, she was tall, almost a head taller than Gekijo, with straight blonde hair pulled back into a long ponytail. She was slim, but also strong, poised, something like a fighter or even a dancer. She was wearing a pair of large silver sunglasses that wrapped tightly around her eyes, more like a visor than simply eyewear. When she spoke her voice was smooth and dry.

"Well, the gang's all here," she said simply, to Quinn. Her lips had just the barest twitch of a smile, but she was otherwise difficut to read.

"And we were just getting to the part where you come in," Quinn said, "Tell them about the plan."

Sweet Atlanta began explaining, but Quinn quickly jumped in and told them all himself. Quinn was not interested in "staking out territory" or selling drugs on the streets bit by bit. The goal was generally libertarian in nature - to be free of Hell's claim on them and to indulge in all the pleasures Earth had to offer. All Quinn wanted was the money. The plan was to pinpoint where the cash was and intercept the flow, blasting through whoever was necessary. This sounded like a terrible plan to Gekijo. Survival in this field depended on service. Anyone who employed a ninja knew that the ninja could just as well take payment for their own execution. The ninja's service outweighed the inherent risk, or else the ninja found himself the target. A friend could become an enemy in an instant, but a friend could provide protection for a time. So it went everywhere in the underworld. A person who took only and never gave in any way would be the enemy of all.

Quinn brushed all this off. "We're demons. They can't touch us. And we have the lamppost. We'll be fine. More than fine - we'll be fucking rich."