Let Smirk see his handiwork and guess that he'd been here. If she wasn't already watching him from inside. He was more convinced by the second that she was toying with him. He was glad now that his friends hadn't helped him check this place out. And he had to concede that he'd often had the same doubts about Smirk that they held. Sooner or later she had been bound to tire of her feral pet. Had that time come now?

Brat emerged from under the walkway's canopy and floated toward that trash zapper. Its flank was crying out for him to paint some message for Smirk or at least a larger version of his gang insignia there. But that was not bold enough. Why not use all this wasted blank space at the back of the building itself? He smiled and approached the wall, but stepped on something lumpy and soft in the bed of washed-up leaves. Looking down, he brushed them aside with the side of his shoe, then hissed a profanity, backing off immediately. Again, he had been fooled about the stink he smelled, assuming it came from the trash zapper.

The leaves at his feet hid the bodies of dead pig-hens; heaps of them. And all of them looked crushed or mutilated in some way. One might have thought a cat had killed each one, and left them here as a tribute to its owner. But it would have taken an army of cats to deposit this many bird corpses here. Had someone shot them, and meant to zap them in the machine, but upon finding it inoperative simply dumped them on the ground instead?

Brat left the mound of dead birds, moved around to the opposite side of the trash zapper. The leaves on the ground were thinner here and he saw only a half dozen of the dead pig-hens, easier to step around. He kicked one out of his way as he approached a nice expanse of wall begging for his paint as a blackboard begs for chalk.

Allowing his artistic impulses to guide his hand, across the gray surface he sprayed a life-sized figure, like a blueprint for another of those statues, but with one arm raised in an obscene gesture. He chuckled. There were no features yet inside the head's outline. Well, the last door was 12-B, so why not paint a 13 on this figure's forehead? He was about to accomplish this, when a crunching sound distracted him and caused him to turn about quickly.

A crunching sound like feet crushing dead leaves.

The briefest flash of a figure, darting behind the opposite side of the trash zapper.

Brat became mindful of the handgun holstered under his jacket. He eased himself one stealthy step forward, leaning ahead so as to peer around the body of the disposal machine. If it was the member of some Beaumonde Square gang, with his pretty green paint and a white leather jacket his Mom had bought for him, and he was trying to defend his territory from this stray outsider, he was in for a real education in gang behavior. Or if this was a kidnapper, or even Smirk, they were in for some harsh brand of punishment, too.

While Brat was straining his hearing forward, another sound came from behind him. A metallic squealing sound. Loud, rasping, screeching. He whirled to confront it, his hand darting for his pistol, in time to see the great mechanical talons a second before they seized him in their grip.

Brat was lifted into the air and squeezed at the same time. The breath was jetted out of his lungs. Though his quick hand had slipped out his pistol, his arm was crushed against his chest and the weapon dropped from his fingers into the leaves below.

Kicking his legs, unable to cry out, Brat looked down and saw three things in the final moments of his young life.

He saw the cover of the trash zapper slide open with a grating noise. He saw the green bulb on its side come on instead of the red.

And in wildly looking around for help, as the mechanical arm lowered him toward that humming maw, he saw that a person was standing near the edge of the building, watching him calmly and making no effort to come forward and shut the zapper down.

A person with a huge red phallus painted on his front.

"Burikko suru" was the Japanese expression for this popular look. It meant, "to fake-child it."

His client's daughter and her three schoolmates were sixteen years old-Jeremy Stake knew that part already-but they all seemed shorter perhaps than they should have been, not even five feet tall, as if they had willed themselves to remain so petite in order to further their cute and child-like appearance. Stake wondered if they had undergone some process that, at least temporarily, would suppress their height to engender this effect.

They all had the same figure, too, as far as he could make out: slender, delicate, with coltish legs. The legs were particularly noticeable, because as part of their uniforms they wore very short, pleated tartan skirts in black and gray with a touch of blue. Their trim blazers were black, with their private school's crest emblazoned in metallic gold and blue thread. They wore white blouses and blue ascots.

"Hello, mister-I'm Yuki," said one of the four girls, smiling shyly, blinking her long lashes under a mathematically straight fringe of bangs.

He could already tell she was Yuki, because she was the only one without a kawaii-doll. Despite the sameness of their uniforms and bodies, there were small touches of individuality about the four friends (but if one looked at all the girls from their school, one would no doubt see these individual touches widely repeated). One girl wore white ankle socks. Another wore very baggy knee-high white socks, bunched up in folds that contrasted in an interesting way with her smooth brown thighs. Another wore knee-high white stockings that instead clung tightly to her calves. Yuki wore socks like these, but hers were a deep navy blue color.

"You're here to see my father, aren't you?" Yuki went on, when Stake had smiled and nodded to acknowledge her greeting.

"Yes," he admitted, trying not to let his eyes flick down to her legs again. Her thighs were glaringly empty. The other three girls had dolls resting on their laps.

Yuki had long blue-black hair and huge eyes that were both black and luminous at once. There was another girl of Asian origins whose hair was dyed a reddish color. A third Asian girl had her inky hair cut very short, but with bangs like Yuki. The fourth girl appeared to have a more Hispanic bloodline, her long hair bunched into two tails on the sides of her head, floppy like the ears of a cartoon rabbit, but her thin features had a kind of imperious sharpness that disagreed with the cute effect. Yuki's two Asian friends might have been going for pouty but came off looking bored or sullen. Stake thought that only Yuki really pulled off the soft, sweet, innocent look that they were all shooting for.

"It's about my doll, isn't it?" Yuki said. "My father is asking you to find it for me."

The girls sat on a marble bench within the garden-like courtyard of the company that Yuki's father owned. It was a cylindrical building hollowed by this open core, the bright blue sky of the planet Oasis showing far above them like a telescope's view of heaven, but it was a deceptive view. Beyond the walls of this structure, Punktown was anything but heavenly. At least this courtyard seemed like a microcosmic paradise. A double-helix sculpture twined up from the fountain at the center of the garden, reaching almost to the top of the building like a ladder. Brightly blossoming vines had entangled the bronze chain's loops. Encircling windows looked out upon this rising symbol, so significant to the work being done within the building's offices and labs. Stake had passed through a lobby area, and been directed to wait here for Mr. Fukuda to join him.

"I really shouldn't discuss the business I have with your father," he said to the girl politely.