Akiko Gogli: The Underworld Tails, Chapter 2

Sometimes I wonder just how much I appreciate the weather in Kansas. People who hear me talk would, no doubt, say that I don’t appreciate it at all. They would base this on the fact that I bitch about the weather on a nearly daily basis. It is either too hot, too windy, too humid, or too dry. They don’t hear me piss and moan that it’s too cold or too rainy or too snowy, though, because I like all of those things and, frankly, I don’t think we get enough of any of it, which is why I bitch so much about the other stuff—which we seem to get far more of.

But Kansas does have one thing going for it: drama. I can’t think of anywhere else that I could get such a broad range of extremes. Our temperatures range from 0 to 105F in a year (and that’s not figuring in outlier figures where it has reached 112 and -20, in my memory, and even worse that has been recorded. The earlier numbers are sustainable temperatures, ones we might get for an entire week at a time). We get floods, we get ice storms, we get blizzards, and we get tornados (though, admittedly, I can’t think of any snowfalls I would classify as a blizzard in the last two decades). Drama! There’s never a dull moment in our weather system.

Within the last two weeks, we’ve had our first tornados, straight-line winds upwards of 50 mph (on a different day than the storms that brought the tornados), temperatures ranging from 80 to 28, and in the next 48 hours they are predicting that we’ll get the most significant snowfall we’ve had this “winter.” And this coming after it’s been averaging 50s and 60s pretty much since the end of January (I’ve been in shorts and t-shirts much of the last two months, and my flops have been getting far more use than they reasonably should for this time of year—see, there I go again, bitching about it being too hot. Though, really, it’s not hot, it should be categorized as too nice instead).

Last year our biggest snowfall came in the first week of May. Now, I love snow and the winter and the cold, but that was a bit ridiculous. For one thing, it killed pretty much everything with a flower on it. Just about the only thing that survived in our yard were the corn lilies, and I consider those a weed because they grow like weeds, they won’t die, and they aren’t that pretty. Most regrettably, it killed our tiger lilies, which are my favorite flowers, and that made me sad and their absence gave me just one more reason to hate the month of July (which is the devil’s month in Kansas—except for the part where my birthday comes, that’s the angel’s day, even if it is disgustingly hot and miserable).

But an end of March snow, I think I can get behind the idea of. So, Kansas Weather, to you I tip my hat for your crazy assed antics. Way to keep us on our toes, and I promise I won’t bitch about you again, at least through this weekend.

Akiko in the KGB

Akiko’s childhood was pretty unremarkable, really. She grew up on a dirt farm in Russia. Imagine “Fiddler on the Roof” without Topol to spice things up (whatever happened to Topol? He was huge there for awhile, doing Fiddler and then “Flash Gordon.” OK, maybe “huge” is a bit much, but I’ve seen both of those movies, so that’s saying something, anyway. And he’s not even dead yet, I just checked on the interwebs). Her times were tough, sure, but not that tough. Things were just tough enough to “build character” as my mother used to endlessly euphemize to me whenever I had to do something that I didn’t want to do when I was growing up, which made it a nearly daily mantra in our household. And, considering the breakdown of players in Gabe’s room, I guess it’s true. So far, she does have the most character. Or at least the most storyline.

One day, late in her teens, while she was standing in line waiting for her monthly ration of toilet paper and vodka, she caught the eye of a darkly clad, rather suspicious looking fellow.

Akiko standing in the necessities line (note the vodka bottle is an empty baby bottle)

This stranger approached her and, unbeknownst to her—since she was completely absorbed in the fun of queuing—slipped a piece of paper into her pocket. Later, when she got home and began to empty her pockets, which were brimming with flasks of bootleg vodka and massive wads of toilet paper (because Communism worked so well it long agoforewent the need for the cardboard rolls that make toilet papering a pleasant experience—at least that’s what the government sponsored newspapers argued), she found the note. It said, quite ominously, “We know who you are. Meet us at (insert name with lots of backwards letters and Ks) Street if you want to stay alive.”

Not surprisingly, Akiko freaked out just a little. She showed the note to her father and he sighed deeply upon reading it. There was something he hadn’t been entirely honest about. Nearly a decade earlier, to help make ends meet on their poor farm, Akiko’s Dad had taken a second job. Being a Cold War Russian stereotype, he had only two options: join the military and oppress somebody or join the KGB and covertly spy on or kill people. Preferring the idea of bringing harm to others subterfugidly, thus minimizing his own risk, he chose the KGB. For nearly a decade, he worked as a spy, pulling off some of the most boring missions imaginable—he was, after all, not what you’d call “spy stock,” being in his mid-40s at the time, so the KGB tended to send him on secret missions to swamp out the latrine and pick up some uppity up’s laundry from the cleaner—or whatever the stereotypical equivalent should be: perhaps some dowdy spinster with a washboard and rock down at the river.

Thus it was that Akiko was born into the KGB—this being the steadiest form of recruitment the agency employed: forced nepotism. She met her shady contact at an even shadier bar and, in short order, she was indoctrinated and trained as a lethal assassin. It’s also worth noting that she was Miss August in the KBG Swimsuit Calendar, which meant she was attractive enough to make the top twelve, but only attractive enough to be assigned to a second-rate Caesar month—one of the months people might not even notice they were in the midst of, thus not changing the calendar to until it was halfway over. After two years of rigorous training, she was sent on her first mission. In Japan.

After about a week of covert ops, Akiko learned the identity of her target: Mrs. Akiko’s Mom Gogli. According to the lengthy dossier, after leaving Russia, Akiko’s Mom had been swept up by the Japanese secret police (which may or may not exist as a government entity, I’m learning that the Japanese have a somewhat wacky system for their intelligence agencies, and I’m not entirely sure who their equivalent to the KGB or our CIA might be) in the hopes that she would be able to give them some vital information on the country’s inner workings. She couldn’t, obviously, since she’d been living in the middle of nowhere brushing potatoes while in Russia, but they offered her a job, which she accepted since she had no real prospects otherwise.

While a member of the Japanese intelligence system, she was approached by a mole working for the Yakusa, who tempted her to join their numbers with promises of free access to vending machines filled with used panties, designer condoms, and her favorite beverage, “water salad” (I’m not making these up, I swear. Also, I love the Japanese. They are wacky.).

After watching her estranged mother for far longer than she needed to (just long enough to be considered “stalking,” actually), Akiko decided to make her move.

Akiko hiding in an American mailbox, inexplicably in the middle of Tokyo

There really was no other way around it. In the dark of night, she crept into her mom’s house and quietly approached her bed. She paused for just a moment, not quite sure what to do next, and something surprising happened. Her mother spoke to her. And then she talked to her. And talked and talked and talked. My god, the talking (these are women we’re speaking of, of course, so that’s to be expected, I suppose). They talked for days.

Akiko sitting at her mother's bedside

Eventually, Akiko came to find out that her mother was dying of something—I’ll say Butt Failure, because it’s one of my favorite faux illnesses, it’s funny yet tragic—and that her father, spiteful old Russkie that he was, knew she was dying but wanted to be the one to cause her death before nature could take its course. Yeah, pretty screwed up. So, using his KGB connections, he arranged to have Akiko recruited and then sent on a mission to kill her own mother, just for the sake of vengeance. Possibly he took a little more head damage than was healthy while competing in that game show.

It sort of goes without saying that Akiko was devastated. And angry. Very angry. But her mother was dying, so she stayed by her side until her butt failed one last terrible, messy, disgusting, tragic time. Then, with nowhere else to go, Akiko swore vendetta on her father and was just getting ready to head back to Russia when she was shanghaied—toykoed, I suppose—by a group if ninjas working for the Yakusa.

Ninjas attack! (Yes, I know, they are wearing black dress socks. But that was the best I could do without actually coming up with a costume. Also note that one of the ninjas was standing in the toilet paper/vodka line. Something nefarious must have been going on there!)

After a very colorful action sequence, the ninjas convinced Akiko to join the Yakusa, and she did. But it only gets somewhat more complicated from there.

Video Note: After the last video's less than spectacular performance, we decided to rehearse for this one. After two rounds of rehearsal, I think you'll be able to see the clear benefit of a little practice.