Resistance Read Online Free

toned figure have captured the attention of everyone at the gathering, with the single exception of her quarry. Norio looks away deliberately, desperately wishing she were just another kaiju. And in doing so, he spots something far above him, silhouetted against the neon-hued night sky, something that actually makes his jaw drop. He sits up sharply. He blinks, shakes his head, and looks again.
    It’s real. It’s still there.
    With his left arm, he gently dislodges a Brazilian supermodel’s death-grip on his right, rises, and excuses himself. Ignoring numerous parting witticisms, he strides out of the pool area, through the lobby, away from lurking paparazzi, and into an elevator.
    A few minutes and several bribes later, Norio is on the Ginza Mikado’s roof. He runs, swiftly passing vents, chimneys, and a couple of intertwined off-duty cleaners. He finds the corner where he had seen it, standing on the roof.
    Where he had seen
him
.
    It doesn’t look like a statue. It looks like… him. Black cape, fluttering in the gentle breeze. That unmistakeable twin-pointed silhouette, perfectly framed in the cityscape around them, so many skyscrapers, so many people, so many stories.
    Norio clears his throat nervously, reminds himself he’s a billionaire, an action hero, and nobody’s fanboy. He struggles to say the word, feels ridiculous, but there’s nothing else to say.
    “Batman?” asks Norio.
    No response.
    Norio asks again, louder, and is met with silence once more. Rage wells up within him, and embarrassment, and more rage. Of course it’s not him. It couldn’t be him. He isn’t real. It’s so easy to forget that, in a world where nothing seems real.
    “Do you have any idea how much trouble you could get into, standing around in that costume?” he asks. “Not just with the bloody super-copyright lawyers, but with every passing supervillain who decides you’d make the perfect trophy?”
    “It’s just a mannequin,” says a voice behind him. Norio spins around just as the dart sticks into his neck. The night blurs, and Norio falls, heavily, staring through the all-enveloping haze at his assailant. She’s short, curvy, mid-forties. Very pretty.
    “Hello, Norio,” she says. “Sorry to do it this way, but I need to talk to you, and it’s so difficult to catch you alone. I’m—”
    “Tia,” slurs Norio, and passes out.

CHAPTER TWO
    Before waking up wholly, Norio makes the mistake of leaping up, ready for a fight – and hits his head. He is lying, he finds, on the lower portion of a bunk bed in a small cabin full of wooden furniture and ornate maroon drapes. He climbs out of bed, rubbing his head. There’s a lump on the top of his skull threatening to grow to epic proportions, and a dull pain on his neck, where Tia’s dart hit him. He doesn’t know whether the throbbing sound that fills his head is inside it, or all around him. The cabin is windowless, and in a few moments Norio realises that the slightly queasiness he feels isn’t because of unknown drugs in his body, but because the whole room is moving. He cannot tell from the shape of the cabin whether he is in a private train or jet. Or maybe a caravan? He notices that his clothes have been changed: he is now wearing a terribly loud Hawaiian shirt and a kilt. He wonders if this is a violation of his human rights. The shirt alone…
    The door opens, and Norio tenses, ready to attack.
    “Oh good, you’re up,” says Tia brightly.
    Norio waves a pained hand at his clothes. “Was this really necessary?”
    “Oh, you should have seen some of the other outfits we tried. We just didn’t have too many options in your size, sorry.”
    “What’s wrong with the clothes I was wearing?”
    “Nothing.” Tia smirks.
    “Well?”
    “Please don’t run berserk or anything – I hate sweeping up after myself.”
    Norio has seen news footage of Tias in action, taking on a militant base in Zimbabwe: a platoon of beautiful rifle-toting women in combat fatigues