more than any other city in the world. It seemed to rise up out of

the island like a mutant crystal, many faceted and multileveled,

throbbing with heavy metal energy. And the Ginza was its power

chord, the decadent heart of the leviathan.

Kanno crushed his cigarette under the heel of his black suede

boot and stepped off the sidewalk onto the street. He did not look

like a sorcerer tonight. He was dressed in sharply creased black

slacks, gathered at the ankles, a black shirt, and a black, raw silk

jacket with the collar turned up, his long hair tucked underneath.

He wore a black fedora with a purple hatband tilted rakishly over

his forehead and expensive jewelry—a gold watch, a diamond ring,

and a diamond choker. Just another young urban swell, lousy with

money, out for a good and dirty time.

Several scooters “breezed” him as he crossed the street, missing

him by fractions of an inch as they whined by on either side of him,

their riders looking like rock and roll Huns in their renaissance

punk chain-mail leathers and glittering, concha-studded lycras,

their faces invisible behind insectoid helmets with polarized visors.

The sleek little scooters were shrouded in plastic, aerodynamic

bodywork, and powered by thaumaturgic batteries, their paint

schemes rendered in ultra-bright metallic colors. Kanno didn’t

flinch. He merely kept walking steadily until he reached the

opposite sidewalk.

The Ginza was once Tokyo’s most exclusive shopping district,

with the city’s largest concentration of expensive boutiques,

department stores, fancy restaurants, hostess bars, and coffee

shops. Its name meant “silver mint, ” but though there was still a

lot of coin being minted here, it was of a rather different color. The

Ginza was now Tokyo’s combat zone, a multileveled monument to

modern decadence. There were theme bars catering to various

elements of the pre-Collapse nostalgia craze, where one could enjoy

the atmosphere of the American West, complete with floor shows,

brawls, and staged gunfights or joints styled after Saigon bistros,

where the patrons dressed up like mercenaries and fondled B-girls

in slashed skirts. There were tattoo parlors, peep shows, gambling

casinos, discos, whorehouses, drug emporiums, in short, something

for every jaded taste. Provided one could afford it, of course.