The limousines stop, and Nipponese people start to climb out. Dark-clad, unfunky, they stand around awkwardly in the middle of the party/riot, like a handful of broken nails suspended in a colorful jello mold. Finally, Hiro makes bold enough to go up and look into one of the windows to find out if this is who he thinks it is.

Can't see through the smoked glass. He bends down, puts his face right near the window, trying to make it real obvious.

Still no response. Finally, he knocks on the window.

Silence. He looks up at the entourage. They are all watching him. But when he looks up they glance away, suddenly remember to drag on their cigarettes or rub their eyebrows.

There is only one source of light inside the limousine that's bright enough to be visible through the smoked glass, and that is the distinctive inflated rectangle of a television screen.

What the hell. This is America, Hiro is half American, and there's no reason to take this politeness thing to an unhealthy extreme. He hauls the door open and looks into the back of the limousine.

Sushi K is sitting there wedged in between a couple of other young Nipponese men, programmers on his imageering team. His hairdo is turned off, so it just looks like an orange Afro. He is wearing a partly assembled stage costume, apparently expecting to be performing tonight. Looks like he's taking Hiro up on his offer.

He's watching a well-known television program called Eye Spy. It is produced by CIC and syndicated through one of the major studios. It is reality television: CIC picks out one of their agents who is involved in a wet operation - doing some actual cloak-and-dagger work - and has him put on a gargoyle rig so that everything he sees and hears is transmitted back to the home base in Langley. This material is then edited into a weekly hour-long program.

Hiro never watches it. Now that he works for CIC, he finds it kind of annoying. But he hears a lot of gossip about the show, and he knows that tonight they are showing the second-to-last episode in a five-part arc. CIC has smuggled a guy onto the Raft, where he is trying to infiltrate one of its many colorful and sadistic pirate bands: the Bruce Lee organization.

Hiro enters the limousine and gets a look at the TV just in time to see Bruce Lee himself, as seen from the point of view of the hapless gargoyle spy, approaching down some dank corridor on a Raft ghost ship. Condensation is dripping from the blade of Bruce Lee's samurai sword.

"Bruce Lee's men have trapped the spy in an old Korean factory ship in the Core," one of Sushi K's henchmen says, a rapid hissing explanation. "They are looking for him now."

Suddenly, Bruce Lee is pinioned under a brilliant spotlight that makes his trademark diamond grin flash like the arm of a galaxy. In the middle of the screen, a pair of cross hairs swing into place, centered on Bruce Lee's forehead. Apparently, the spy has decided he must fight his way out of this mess and is bringing some powerful CIC weapons system to bear on Bruce Lee's skull. But then a blur comes in from the side, a mysterious dark shape blocking our view of Bruce Lee. The cross hairs are now centered on - what, exactly?

We'll have to wait until next week to find out.

Hiro sits down across from Sushi K and the programmers, next to the television set, so that he can get a TV's-eye view of the man.

"I'm Hiro Protagonist. You got my message, I take it."

"Fabu!" Sushi K cries, using the Nipponese abbreviation of the all-purpose Hollywood adjective "fabulous."

He continues, "Hiro-san, I am deeply indebted to you for this once-in-a-lifetime chance to perform my small works before such an audience." He says the whole thing in Nipponese except for "once-in-a-lifetime chance."

"I must humbly apologize for arranging the whole thing so hastily and haphazardly," Hiro says.

"It pains me deeply that you should feel the need to apologize when you have given me an opportunity that any Nipponese rapper would give anything for - to perform my humble works before actual homeboys from the ghettos of L.A."

"I am profoundly embarrassed to reveal that these fans are not exactly ghetto homeboys, as I must have carelessly led you to believe. They are thrashers. Skateboarders who like both rap music and heavy metal."

"Ah. This is fine, then," Sushi K says. But his tone of voice suggests that it's not really fine at all.

"But there are representatives of the Crips here," Hiro says, thinking very, very fast even by his standards, "and if your performance is well received, as I'm quite certain it will be, they will spread the word throughout their community."

Sushi K rolls down the window. The decibel level quintuples in an instant. He stares at the crowd, five thousand potential market shares, young people with funkiness on their minds. They've never heard any music before that wasn't perfect. It's either studio-perfect digital sound from their CD players or performance-perfect fuzz-grunge from the best people in the business, the groups that have come to L.A. to make a name for themselves and have actually survived the gladiatorial combat environment of the clubs. Sushi K's face lights up with a combination of joy and terror. Now he actually has to go up there and do it. In front of the seething biomass.

Hiro goes out and paves the way for him. That's easy enough. Then he bails. He's done his bit. No point in wasting time on this puny Sushi K thing when Raven is out there, representing a much larger source of income. So he wanders back out toward the periphery.

"Yo! Dude with the swords," someone says.

Hiro turns around, sees a green-jacketed Enforcer motioning to him. It's the short, powerful guy with the headset, the guy in charge of the security detail.

"Squeaky," he says, extending his hand.

"Hiro," Hiro says, shaking it, and handing over his business card. No particular reason to be coy with these guys. "What can I do for you, Squeaky?"

Squeaky reads the card. He has a kind of exaggerated politeness that is kind of like a military man. He's calm, mature, role-modelesque, like a high school football coach. "You in charge of this thing?"

"To the extent anyone is."

"Mr. Protagonist, we got a call a few minutes ago from a friend of yours named Y.T."

"What's wrong? Is she okay?"

"Oh, yes, sir, she's just fine. But you know that bug you were talking to earlier?"

Hiro's never heard the term "bug" used this way, but he reckons that Squeaky is referring to the gargoyle, Lagos.

"Yeah."

"Well, there's a situation involving that gentleman that Y.T. sort of tipped us off to. We thought you might want to have a look."

"What's going on?"

"Uh. why don't you come with me. You know, some things are easier to show than to explain verbally."

As Squeaky turns, Sushi K's first rap song begins. His voice sounds tight and tense.

I'm Sushi K and I'm here to say

I like to rap in a different way

Look out Number One in every city

Sushi K rap has all most pretty

My special talking of remarkable words

Is not the stereotyped bucktooth nerd

My hair is big as a galaxy

Cause I attain greater technology

Hiro follows Squeaky away from the crowd, into the dimly lit area on the edge of the shantytown. Up above them on the overpass embankment, he can dimly make out phosphorescent shapes - green-jacketed Enforcers orbiting some strange attractor.

"Watch your step," Squeaky says as they begin to climb up the embankment. "It's slippery in places."

I like to rap about sweetened romance

My fond ambition is of your pants

So here is of special remarkable way

Of this fellow raps named Sushi K

The Nipponese talking phenomenon

Like samurai sword his sharpened tongue

Who raps the East Asia and the Pacific