Disclaimer: This parody is a work of fan-fiction, and is distributed
purely for it's subtle political effect.  A-ko and all related
characters are copyrighted by Soeishinsha/Final-Nishijima and Central
Park Media and are not used with permission.  All original material is
copyright 1996 by Henry J. Cobb.  Permission is granted to browse and
redistribute this material, but not to modify it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Project A-ko: "Promise" Chapter IV: Thursday, Barter"
  By Henry J. Cobb

At class on Thursday, the dam seemed to be broken, the girls did not
fight, but rather greeted each other warmly.  Miss Ayumi even caught
A-ko and B-ko whispering back and forth in a discussion of which chapter
of which book the lecture was on that day.  "No, I'm afraid you are both
quite incorrect, please turn to chapter 17 of the green book and try to
pay more attention to class."

At lunch B-ko invited A-ko and C-ko into her circle.  A-ko, B-ko, Asa,
Ine, Mari and Ume cooperated by unspoken agreement to clandestinely
dispose of C-ko's lunch, while offering her edible portions of their
own.  But Mari did have to swallow a few small bits.

Poor dear, B-ko thought, I'll have to make this up to her.  Danger pay
is clearly warranted.

As they hurried back to class, the trashcan began to ominously smoulder
behind them.

That afternoon this new gang of six managed to tag-team Miss Ayumi,
turning her Markov-chains back against her.

As the class dispersed after school, B-ko walked with A-ko and C-ko, the
conversation turned back to superfighting and just how much the laws of
physics could be discreetly bent.

It was a discussion that C-ko felt mostly left out of.  While it was
somewhat fun to watch such acrobatics, it simply wasn't something she
could ever aspire to herself, thus she was the first to notice "Your
father's here B-ko".

B-ko rushed to her father's limo, it was highly unusual for him to come
by the school.  "Father?"

"B-ko", he greeted her "we need to rush home and change, we have a very
important dinner date tonight."

B-ko was unable to pry additional information about the nature of the
occasion during the remainder of the trip home, her father did not seem
evasive, merely excited and distracted.

This is somebody he's negotiating with, she concluded, I'm just along
for decoration and to soak up technical details.

It was a role she had played for as long as she could remember, the cute
obedient daughter, she helped fill in the human side of the Daitokuji
story, as the small quiet child of the widower.  As her ability to
comprehend complex situations had blossomed and Hikaru Daitokuji had
begun his climb to the top, she would occasionally whisper her
observations to him and she became a formidable secret weapon for him at
the negotiation table.

He would often schedule the most important deal making for dinners, just
to have an excuse to bring her along, but he played his cards very close
to his chest.

Oh father, why can't you trust me fully?, she pondered.  She loved and
trusted him more than any other human being.  When she had that eating
disorder a few years ago, he cut short an important business trip abroad
to feed her by hand and get her over the problem.  But when he plotted
for the alien spaceship he had told her nothing, even when she had it in
the palm of her hand.

B-ko enjoyed the challenge of piecing everything together when she was
tossed into these situations raw, and she enjoyed the chance to practice
at glamor, but she always felt a very junior partner.

As she returned to her rooms she bathed, did up her hair, dressed up
extravagantly and looked every bit the princess.  Perhaps if I overdo it
a bit this time, she schemed, he'll let me in on it a bit next time.

Hikaru's only reaction, when he saw her transformation was "Perfect, if
only your dear mother could have seen you tonight".

This must be even more important that he's let on, she realised.  He
almost never mentioned his wife, the pain was still too sharp.

As they drove up to the five star restaurant she realised it wasn't part
of their empire.  She double checked the interlocking directorates in
her head and concluded that either the person they would be meeting had
sufficient clout that her father dared not even suggest a change of venue
to keep the business in house, or the slight extra tinge of elegance was
needed for some reason.  Pity the food's never any good, I bet C-ko has
some relatives on the staff, she chuckled.

"Something amuses you B-ko?", her father asked.

"It's just the mystery of all this", she replied.

"An unfortunate oversight on my part", he said as they were escorted to
their table, "but here is the gentleman in question".

"Hi Hi" an obvious American greeted her father, he was dressed in a
style B-ko thought was southwestern.

"Bob Uber, I would like you to meet my daughter Biko Daitokuji", Hikaru
Daitokuji introduced them in English.

"Just call be Bubba miss, everybody else does."  Mr Uber announced,
warmly shaking her hand.

"Mr Uber has interests in Livestock, petrochemicals and Bio-tech"
Hikaru continued, taking the third seat, leaving B-ko and Uber facing
each other.

Most unusual, B-ko wondered at this, does he intend for me to at last
take a leading role in the negotiations?

Uber jumped in with "I do greasy stuff miss".

"Don't let the good old boy image fool you B-ko, Bubba's an absolute
genius, he's got three PhDs and is the worlds leading expert in neural
bio-feedback."

"Shucks miss, when your daddy here showed me some of your designs, I
just knew I had to meet you.  The way you used the dielectrics on the
casings of your neural interfaces to pull the frequency response in, now
that was shear genius"

As dinner continued, the conversation consisted mostly of Uber asking
B-ko detailed questions about her designs.  As he went further into
technical matters, his rough accent would often slip and an incredibly
precise intellect would show through.  B-ko was somewhat flattered, she
had never had a fan who could really appreciate her work, but she was
somewhat disturbed by how little her normally outspoken father
contributed to the conversation.  B-ko considered the matter, Uber would
obviously fill in many areas that the Daitokuji Financial group was weak
in, but what could her father offer him?  It would obviously be
something important, but would it be so important that it could not be
mentioned in front of herself?

Hikaru seemed most pleased at the general course of events and whispered
to his daughter in Japanese "Rich, young, handsome, brilliant, you must
admit, that he'll be the perfect match for you."

The chopsticks fell from B-ko's hand and clattered on her plate as she
adsorbed the impact of these words.  Oh, she thought, that's the nature
of this deal.

"What!" B-ko screamed back in the same language, "you mean to arrange my
marriage to this barbarian?"

"No, no, it's really nothing like that."  Her father flustered.

Switching back to English she threw at Uber "Touch me, and you'll die,
Die!, DIE!!!"  She would have slapped him, but didn't want to touch him.

As B-ko ran sobbing from the restaurant, she heard Uber say "Your gal's
got spunk Hikaru, I like that."

Hours later that night, B-ko was toying with her CAD work, moving a
single brace back and forth on the design of her attack helicopter, when
she heard a step at her door, she knew who it was, but she wasn't going
to speak to him now.

"B-ko dear" her father explained, "you're taking this all wrong".

As she heard him take a single step into the room, she spun in her chair
and threw him a look that promised severe internal injury as the price
for one step more.  Go ahead, she thought, make my day.

"I can see this isn't the right time" he said, carefully stepping back
to the door.  "We can talk about this later."

She waited until his footsteps faded down the corridor then slammed the
door, locked it, ran to her bed and tried vainly to find comfort in
sleep.

$Id: promise_chp4.txt,v 1.2 1996/06/29 06:03:20 hcobb Exp $