Page 19
Panel 1
Legend: Boston
Close-up of Auley’s sister, Mona Hanlon, dressed casually, probably at home. She is on the phone.
Mona: Auley! My favorite half-brother! How’s Japan? How’s our other twenty thousand bucks?
Panel 2
Legend: Tokyo
Auley, in shirt sleeves, is sprawled on a bed in what looks like a hotel room.
Auley: Not ours yet. I talked to little brother—well, I’m ninety-nine point nine percent sure he’s little brother. He tells me I’m chasing fairy tales. I was pretty amused.
Panel 3
Close-up of Mona.
Mona: So what’s he like? I’ve never met a Japanese half-daemon.
Panel 4
Close-up of Auley.
Auley: He’s human this time. What’s he like? Go to any college town in the world and you’ll find one. Long hair, earrings, jeans, sandals with socks. Very cerebral, talks a lot, good English, big words.
Panel 5
View of Mona sprawled in a chair, looking at a piece of paper.
Mona: Did he look like a guy who would tear somebody’s arm off? Supposedly he tore somebody’s arm off.
Auley (offstage, through the phone): Oh, yeah, he actually mentioned that. That was the original Inuyasha, the previous incarnation. He cut his brother’s arm off with a magic sword.
Panel 6
Close-up of Mona, reading from the paper..
Mona: No, dear. It was this Inuyasha. Your anthropologist. About five years ago. He was a grad student working a dig on Hokkaido, the north island of Japan. A guy came at him with a butcher knife. Little brother pulled the guy’s arm off with his bare hands.
Panel 7
Close-up of Auley, on the phone. He looks shocked.
Mona (offstage, through the phone): Funny coincidence. The guy he "disarmed" just got killed—slashed more than a hundred times. Be careful, kiddo . . . anthropology is apparently a tough field . . .