As we sat, waiting, I examined the gate and the palisade. Though the whole setup looked like a set from an old Kurosawa flatfilm— Ran, maybe—it didn't take much brains to guess that things were a lot more secure than they seemed. Maybe the façade of the gates and the fence were real wood—if I hadn't noticed the chrysanthemum pattern, I'd have wagered they were cheaper macroplast—but they certainly covered material a lot more resilient. Reinforced ballistic composite at the very least, possibly armored ferrocrete. Though it looked as though those carved gateposts would fall like bowling pins if Scott gunned the Rolls into the gates, I'd have laid a very big bet that even a light panzer would have difficulty taking down Ekei Tokudaiji's first line of defense.