Old Man Mori, in his late sixties, remained pretty muscular from working hard every day. He gestured back towards his automobile repair shop, not that he could see it from inside the SuperQuickly. “I tell you, Yuriko, there’s something fishy about those biologists studying the mountain.” His garage was on the road to Odewara town, in a small industrial park, about halfway between the konbini and the edge of the town.

  Yuriko rang his items through the till. “Aren’t they just scientists brought in by the prefecture to study the ecology of the mountain?” She replied innocently. “The bears have been acting up lately. Besides, they look like normal people to me when they’ve come into the konbini to buy things.”

  “Well…” Mori hesitated. “Some of them might be scientists, but they sure travel with big assistants. They have some pretty big American and Japanese guys hauling equipment for them, like your American employee.”

  “You mean, Travis?”

  “Yeah. The man is huge.”

  “He is big,” Yuriko said, “but I guess I’m used to him. They do have a lot of equipment, from what I’ve seen in their trucks out front. I would want a Travis-sized guy to haul it up the mountain, too.”

  “I’d have to agree with you on that.” Mori cackled a little. “But remember, my garage is right across from the old warehouse where they are storing their gear. Those guys have to be the hardest-working government workers I have ever seen. They drive out early and work long days. I’m not even sure if they go home.”

  “I like that,” Yuriko joked. “Hard working government workers – my tax dollars actually at work!”

  “Hah! Hah! Ha!” Mori laughed hard and then coughed a few times.

  “You should see a doctor about it; you’ve had it for a while.” Yuriko’s voice dropped. “You’re not smoking anymore, are you?”

  “I quit, but I’m glad a beautiful lady is concerned about my health.” Mori grinned. “I’ll go see the doctor if I’m not better next week.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Yuriko finished bagging up the food Mori had bought in the store and handed it to him. Mori came in every morning to chat a bit. He and Aya Suzuki were one of a dozen or so morning regulars. Half of them were seniors who needed some human contact, which Yuriko happily provided. Aya had helped her recently with a runaway girl who needed a temporary home.

  “You keep an eye on those scientists at the warehouse, Mori, and I’ll keep a tab on them when they’re here.”

  “I’ll do that,” Mori said. “See you tomorrow. It’s back to work for me now. I’ve got a radiator to change out in an old Toyota.”

  “Take care,” Yuriko spoke to Mori’s back as he headed out.

  Yuriko would let the special forces operational detachment based out of the warehouse know that Mori had noticed them. They just needed to keep a lower profile. The old man was harmless, like most of the locals, but anything different in the area drew attention. She was just glad he trusted her to share gossip with.

  The Imperial Management Agency had requested additional security for the mountain from the military as they were already spread thin. A JSOF fourteen-man operational detachment or ODA now protected IMA technicians installing additional monitoring devices on the mountain and would act as a reaction force if required. These detachments were loosely modelled on the American Green Beret team structure, and Yuriko, Rick, and Travis were previously all in the same detachment. She and Travis had actually been invited out to visit the detachment in the evening to share information. They would just have to make up an excuse if Mori saw them there.

  *****

  Yuriko parked her little Nissin hatchback at the warehouse's office entrance. Travis had popped into the konbini as her shift ended, and she had driven them both there.

  Travis bumped his head against the car's ceiling again. “One of these days, you have to get a bigger car,” he complained. “Any SUV would do!”

  “It’s big enough for me, and I like how it handles. Besides, a little bump isn’t going to hurt that thick skull of yours, as we know from experience.”

  “If I recall correctly, you were driving the Humvee when we went off the road, and I smashed my head against the door.”

  “That’s what happens when the lead vehicle hits an IED, and I’m saving our asses. Good thing you wore your helmet.”

  “Let's just not do that in your hatchback. I’m not sure I’d survive.”

  Yuriko had to smile a little. They had to shoot their way out of the ambush, but her frantic driving had given them a good position to break the ambush.

  The office door opened, and a tall black man stepped outside. He wasn’t as heavily built as Travis, but he definitely had a bigger smile, and he carried himself confidently.

  “Welcome! I’m Abraham Johnson, the assistant detachment commander.”

  “I’m Yuriko Morimoto, and this is my partner, Travis Sanger.”

  Abraham shook hands with both of them. “The major wanted to meet you, but he got called away for a priority planning meeting at Fort Patton. He really wanted to meet, too.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Major Fredericks and I haven’t seen each other in a long time.”

  “He said the same thing. It’s an honour to meet you. The rest of the guys here feel the same way.”

  Yuriko knew what came next. She didn’t really like it but tolerated it. Her reputation within the special forces proved both annoying and handy.

  “You’re still pretty famous, Yuri the—” He caught himself before he called her nickname, then saw her nod her head in assent. “…Viper.”

  “It’s not something I like to talk about,” Yuriko said. “I just did what I had to do to save my detachment.”

  “I can totally understand. It would have been rough.” He gestured towards the open doorway. “Come on in, let's introduce you to the guys.”

  Yuriko went in first. When Travis walked by Abraham, he whispered to him. “Yuriko really doesn’t like to talk about it, but I can fill you in a bit. She saved my ass that day too.”

  “I would appreciate that,” Abraham whispered back.

  Travis hadn’t thought about that day in a while, but all the members of their JSOF detachment, except Biggs, had made it out because of her. Their detachment had been pinned down by a machine gun and rifle fire from a ridge with mounting casualties. Yuriko had taken a desperate action to break the ambush by deciding to climb up a narrow slot in the ridge face that only a smaller person could fit into. She had stripped off most of her gear, taking only a grenade, a pistol, and a boot knife. Working her way up the tight chute, she had come on the flank of the ambushers. Her grenade took out the machinegun crew, and she had emptied her pistol into the riflemen, taking a deep graze to her side in exchange. The last two men she had killed with her knife in a brutally close fight. She had killed six men and badly wounded two others. Yuriko’s unit considered her capable before this event, and no one outside the detachment questioned her abilities after it. She was the detachment’s small and deadly pit viper.

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  The office area inside was lit with fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling, with a faded linoleum floor, and devoid of furnishings. A few of the rooms had cots in them and a few folding tables and chairs. She saw a pot of something cooking on a hot plate in the office kitchen. From the smell in the air, it was chili. A single desk with a notebook computer and neat stacks of paperwork occupied the manager’s office. Yuriko guessed it was where the major had set himself up. Abraham quickly led them through into the warehouse on the other side of the offices.

  The warehouse was a large space dimly lit by light fixtures high above the bare concrete floor and dirty skylights. A portable stereo filled the area with Japanese pop music from a Hiroshima radio station that played American and Japanese music. The area was mostly empty except for two long parallel rows of folding tables and another set of tables set against a wall in a corner. Wooden crates and military storage boxes were stacked by the tables. Rifles, a machine gun, and other gear were spread out on the tables. The members of the ODA busied themselves inspecting, cleaning, and packing their gear after a full day of patrolling.

  The corner table had a couple of IMA technicians manning computers hooked up to a bank of large widescreen displays above them. The displays had a large overhead map of the mountain displayed in the middle, with the rest of the area gridded with dozens of tinier windows showing live images from the forest around Mount Kumotawa. In the opposite corner of the room, Yuriko noticed a large green quadrupedal robot, something she had never seen before.

  “Gather around, people. Our guests are here!” Abraham announced. The members of the ODA team stopped what they were doing and began collecting around their assistant leader.

  Yuriko noticed more than a few of them were assessing her but trying to be innocuous about it. After all, they knew they were meeting Yuri the Viper. She knew she wasn’t the stereotypical model of a large special forces soldier. Travis blended right in with the crowd.

  “This is Yuriko Morimoto and Travis Sanger.” Abraham gestured at the two of them. “A number of you have been inside the SuperQuickly and might have met them already, but this is our official introduction to our IMA liaisons. They’re here tonight to answer questions you might have about our situation and the mountain for us.”

  The gathered soldiers gave a round of greetings as they shook hands with their visitors.

  “Thank you for having us over today,” Yuriko said. “I know Mount Kumotawa and its very real legends have probably been a surprise for everyone. Travis and I certainly had our eyes opened when we learned about it. Places like this are not supposed to exist, but they do. You haven’t experienced a Confluence yet, so Major Fredericks invited us here to answer any questions your IMA briefings might not have covered. The Confluence is dangerous, so the more you know about it, the better.”

  The operators were a well-educated bunch due to the selection criteria for JSOF, and they asked intelligent questions. After Yuriko described her disorientation from walking in the Confluence and her first few yokai encounters, she knew she had their attention. The soldiers recognized their real first-hand experience, and the questions became a steady stream. Yuriko answered most of the time, with Travis pitching in when he needed to. Their information about their monster encounters particularly interested the crowd. Travis talked about how the Confluence interfered with electronics and radios. After about 40 minutes, the questions died down.

  “That wraps it up. I hope you guys took notes,” Abraham joked. “Thank you, Yuriko and Travis. That was some good info.”

  The operators gave another round of thanks before they began to disperse. A couple of them went to the office to prepare dinner for the team.

  “I saw you guys looking at SMULE in the corner there, our robot support mule.” Abraham pointed at the quadrupedal robot Yuriko had noticed earlier. “We’re one of a few units trying out these pre-production models. The prototypes were really noisy and awkward in the field, but Smiley is working out pretty well so far. Not that we’ve had a chance to take it out on the mountain, being undercover and all that.”

  “Smiley?” Yuriko asked. She then noticed a big, happy face painted on the robot's front chest below its rudimentary head, which served as a sensor platform.

  “It’s the happiest robot, as you can see,” Abraham replied. “Let’s have a closer look at it.”

  The three of them approached the robot, and Yuriko saw it was about two metres long and stood about a metre and a half high on four stalk-like metal legs which ended on wider rubberized feet. A tubular metal framework surrounded a boxy rectangular body to provide numerous attachment points for hardware or cargo panniers on the sides and top. An automatic grenade launcher currently occupied the top of Smiley with a large magazine in an automated mount.

  Travis’s eyes gleamed with excitement to see it up close. He ran his hand down the tubular frame. “So they finally got these things working. I tried out an early one at a lab years ago. I loved the tech. It was kind of cool but not very practical at the time.”

  “Yeah. I was skeptical about Smiley, too, but he’s proven to be pretty handy so far.”

  “He?” Yuriko asked.

  “You get a little attached to it as it is like a big dog or a donkey following you around. And it talks. We figured it was a he from its voice. Listen for yourself.”

  “Smiley, wake up.”

  A small green light blinked on in the head of the robot, which was mostly sensors, including a 360-degree camera array. “Good evening, Abraham,” the robot said in a deep, synthesized voice.

  “Authenticate new user, Yuriko. Make sure it gets a clear view of your face.”

  Yuriko stepped forward. “Nice to meet you, Smiley.”

  “New user, Yuriko, registered,” the robot spoke in its electronic voice. “Good evening, Yuriko. Speak ‘Help menu, Smiley’ if you require assistance with commands.”

  “Smiley isn’t much of a conversationalist,” Abraham said. “But he can haul 100 kilograms for twenty-five kilometres over rough terrain at a human walking speed. Right now, he’s in support weapon mode, so the grenade launcher takes up about 50 kilos with its ammo, but he can still haul a pile of supplies. This model actually has a fire control system integrated with a quad-copter drone to act as a remote spotter for the grenade launcher. We can also add external battery packs to double his range at the expense of cargo capacity.”

  “That sounds useful,” Yuriko said. She was always a little unsure about new tech, but Abraham’s confidence put a great deal of doubt to rest.

  “Where’s the remote-control unit for the unit?” Travis eagerly said. “It probably controls the grenade launcher and the drone too?”

  “You got it!” Abraham smiled, having figured Travis to be a techie. “Hey, Nomura, do you want to bring Smiley’s tablet over and show Travis how it works?”

  A Japanese soldier picked up a ruggedized tablet and brought it over to Travis to show him the controls.

  “While they’re playing with the tablet, why don’t you take Smiley for a walk?” Abraham enjoyed the opportunity to show off the unit’s new toy. “This is where they really improved it. No one has to guide it with a remote in the field most of the time now. Smiley, follow Yuriko.”

  “Smiley will follow Yuriko,” the robot said.

  “Try walking around the warehouse,” Abraham suggested.

  “Sure,” Yuriko replied.

  She began walking towards the centre of the warehouse, deliberately passing behind some steel support pillars. The robot waited for Yuriko to move three metres away and began to pivot around on its legs with a low mechanical whirring of motors, a sound which wouldn’t travel very far. It walked in a smooth gait behind her, dodging the support pillar while keeping its distance behind her. Yuriko did a complete circuit of the interior, moving around stacks of crates to further test the robot before stopping in front of Abraham again.

  “Smiley, stop following.” Abraham pointed to a spot nearby. “Smiley, park here.”

  “Smiley will park at the designated position.” The robot moved to the spot he had pointed to and stopped there.

  “Smiley, sleep.”

  “Smiley will enter standby mode.” A red light blinked on a few times then went out as the machine went dormant.

  Yuriko spoke to Abraham. “Smiley’s a pretty impressive piece of technology.”

  “You can see why we’re happy with it. It’ll definitely help in the field.” Abraham thought for a moment. “I know you guys weren’t planning on staying, but do you want to join us for dinner? We’ve got plenty of cold beer and chilli to go around tonight. It isn’t too spicy, as even Nomura has seconds.”

  “Can we stay for dinner, Mom?” Travis exclaimed. “I’d like to try out Smiley too!”

  “Big toys for big boys.” Yuriko smiled. Travis had been the tech guy on their team, even if he did pack the light machine gun. “Why not? It’ll give us a chance to know each other better.”