VLVL2 (9): Summary of pp. 130 - 153 (part 2)

[Tim Strzechowski]

Continuing . . .
 
In an abrupt narrative shift (we find out a few pages later that Takeshi is now continuing the story for Prairie, when he asks her, at 149.12, "what would you have done?") we return to the continuing adventures of Takeshi Fumimota, former kamikaze pilot, GR character, and freelance actuarial investigator. When last encountered in VL, Takeshi, in hippie drag, was on the run from an elite unit of unidentifiable "skip-tracers" who had pursued him with advanced aeronautical technology and ruthless efficiency to Zoyd's
Kahuna Airlines gig of death (65.24).

The song Zoyd was playing then might well serve as theme music for the adventure that has engulfed Takeshi when he picks up the story at 142.9. On contract -- "a ronin, or samurai without a master" (143.15) -- to Wawazume Life & Non-Life, whose CEO, Professor Wawazume is his mentor -- Takeshi investigates the "mysterious obliteration of a research complex  belonging to the shadowy world conglomerate Chipco" (142.10) by a Godzilla-like monster. Or might it be, asProf. Wawazume wonders, the work of a
"disgruntled environmentalist"(143.4), or as Takeshi suspects "a professional job" (143.6) -- an insurance scam? Takeshi investigates with Minoru, "a government bomb-squad expert. Not a genius, exactly, more like an idiot savant with X-ray vision." (144.14)

Takeshi and Minoru reminisce about their career down on the ground, paranoid about the involvement of their employers at a higher level, where "Far above them some planetwide struggle had been going on for years, power accumulating, lives worth less, personnel changing, still governed buy the rules of gang war and blood feud, though it had far outgrown them in scale."(146.26)

Minoru takes Takeshi, for reasons unexplained, to meet Brock Vond, now in Tokyo for an international convention of prosecutors. Takeshi turns out to be Vond's physical double (Vond's face is "a stressed and malevolent cartoon of his [Takeshi's] face" 148.28) and is impressed into duty as "a plausible head and shoulders in the back seat" (148.19) to outwit the enemies that Vond suspects lie in wait. Vond's car drops Takeshi off at the Haru no Depaato, where DL, disguised as Frenesi, waits for Vond.

The frame story intrudes again at 149.12 when Prairie answers Takeshi's question and suggests she would have "found a cab" and gone somewhere else. The sartorially-challenged Takeshi had appeared at the Retreat the night before, and reminds Prairie of Moe, eminence grise behind The Three Stooges.  DL picks up the narrative, aided by Takeshi's "color commentary".

DL mistakes Takeshi for Vond and, at "the hour of the cock" (151.11), puts the Needle Finger death touch on him as they perform what General  Jack D. Ripper, in _Dr. Strangelove_, in his maudlin conversation wth Mandrake, refers to as "the physical act of love", timing the stroke to kill Takeshi one year later.

Praire, bright girl who's obviously watched a lot of Tube, interrupts to wonder how DL could mistake the nude Takeshi for Vond; DL blames it on the contact lenses, not her prescription.

When Takeshi's orgasmic and Japanese screams alert DL to a mistake of incalculable moral magnitude, she flees, watched by Ralph and Two-Ton Carmine Torpidini. Disgusted that Vond has escaped, Roadrunner-like, from his clutches, Wile E. Ralph lets her go, knowing he will be able to find DL again later if he needs her.

DL returns to the Kunoichi Retreat in California, confesses her sin, begs to stay, and receives a second chance, assuming she will straighten up, flight right, and fulfil her true Ninjette destiny.
 
 
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