For Immediate Release 

November 12th, 2024

WARSONG: Preludes Comes to Audio for the First Time

The future steps into audio with today’s release of the audiobook of WARSONG: Preludes, the first book in the Battle of Phobos Saga. “These stories have captivated readers for over a decade, and there have been calls for audiobooks the whole time. We’re excited to give people what they want, and bring these tales to a new audience,” said Arcbeatle Press co-President James Hornby.

Preludes tells the story of a fractured humanity spread throughout our solar system as it careens towards the first astral war. Told through different viewpoints, we see how each side in the coming conflict views the situation, and as tensions mount, who will come out on top?

Featuring three novellas by Nathan P. Butler (Star Wars Tales), Sean E. Williams (Wonder Woman), and Jim Perry (Bladewielders), as well as an epilogue story by James Wylder (Cwej, P.R.O.B.E), readers will have plenty to explore.

Read by Matt Skinner, Preludes is brought to life by a masterful vocal performance. “When I heard Matt’s audition, I knew we had something special. People have waited a long time for this audiobook, and I think whether you know the stories or you’re new to WARSONG, you’re in for a wild and wonderful ride,” said range editor James Wylder.

The audiobook is available now on Audible, Amazon from Arcbeatle Press and Decipher, Inc.

Audible:
https://www.audible.com/series/WARSONG-The-Battle-of-Phobos-Audiobooks/B0DMFN1QFQ

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZH5FTQQ

​

​There was something wrong with her dreams, and not just because Sang Mi didn't really know what she was doing with her future; no, it was mostly the cosmic horror. Most of the world around her was a black void which seemed to rush her lungs with a terrifying emptiness when she tried to breathe. She clutched at her throat, and below her a great swirl moved – blue and purple and white and wonderful and terrible. She had seen this in her dreams before – it had to mean something. But whatever that was was obscured to her. She reached a hand out towards it, and whispers greeted her. She faded out, and the world of the waking faded in.
Her hand was reaching up towards the ceiling, the marbled paint coming into focus between her fingers. In her other hand, she was still holding the blister pack that had held the pair of Delirium pills she'd taken. Pills that her long-term-acquaintance (she refused to use the word friend) Saki had given her. Pills that, whenever she took them, seemed to take her to that void, and the monstrous and glorious swirl of light and color that cut through it all.
"How'd you dream?" Saki said, rolling over on the other bed in the hotel room. "And don't use me asking as an excuse to not fill out the questionnaire. I'm collecting data, not girl-talk."
Sang Mi lowered her hand and rolled over to look at her. Saki Suzuki, presumably also 17, ish. Somehow both beautiful and nondescript in a way that unnerved Sang Mi. "I saw the swirl again."
Saki nodded, and sat up, taking a sip of water from a bottle that was quickly handed to her by the porter-bot that was part of the room's amenities. "It’s the most common image we've gotten while taking Delirium. It has to mean something."
Sang-Mi shrugged. "Maybe. Hey Saki, this drug was made by XeLabs, you said that right? And discontinued?"
Saki nodded again.
"How do we keep getting a hold of them? If they haven't been manufactured in years, wouldn't the pills expire, or the supply run out?"
Saki held her gaze for an awkwardly long moment, and then got up and turned her back on her. "Don't worry about that. You take the drugs, I make sure your big brother keeps his internship. That's all you need to know."
"Great, love the transparency in our partnership."
Saki turned back, smiling ear to ear. "I know! Isn't it great?"
Sang Mi groaned and reached over to turn on the room's entertainment system, slamming play on one of the recommended films for the day without much attention. To her surprise, Saki turned towards the screen, and seemed to lose herself in it, so Sang Mi gave it her full attention too.
It was a movie in Japanese, a language Sang Mi was fluent in even though she hadn't enjoyed learning it in school. A woman was waiting under a streetlamp, presumably for an autocar pick up, when she looked up to see another woman across the street from her wearing a white facemask. The lights flickered, and suddenly the woman across from her was gone! Turning to look for the car, she startled in a cheap jump scare as the masked woman was suddenly next to her. The masked woman leaned in too close and asked: "Do you think I'm pretty?"
The woman stumbled over her words, before answering: "Yes! Yes of course!"
The masked woman removed the mask to reveal that someone had carved through her cheeks all the way to the jaw to make a grisly, wide smile. This effect was however undercut by the prosthetics and CGI not lining up entirely right. With wild eyes, she leaned in even closer, pulling out a pair of sharp surgical scissors. "How about now? Am I pretty now?"
Saki glanced over at her. "Have you seen this one before? It’s pretty good, the effects aren't great but the lady playing Kuchisake-onna is very good. Kuchisake-onna means--"
"Slit-Mouthed Woman, I know." Things were getting very bloody on the screen as they conversed. "We call her the Red Mask Lady around here. The big difference being that... well, her mask is red."
They watched the movie together for longer than either had planned, and when Sang Mi went home, she just hoped she wouldn't dream about the monster when she went to bed the next night.
Of course she did.
A red mask pulling away to reveal a disfigured face, the sharp scissors, and the warm breath as she leaned in to ask "Am I pretty?".
 
* * *
 
The blow from the wooden sword on her forearm stung, and caused Sang Mi to drop it, shaking her arm out while hopping up and down and making "ah!" noises.
Their teacher, Ms. Shion, did not sigh (she was a robot after all), but she looked like she wanted to. "Miss Jhe, you cannot continue trying to block a sword with your arm. The best case scenario is you get bruised like you just did, and the worst case scenario is it is an actual sword in which case you would be on your way to the hospital with one less arm."
Leaning down to pick her own practice sword up, she mumbled a "Yes Ms. Shion" and got back into position. She was facing off with her classmate Jae Hyun, who had a massive crush on her. She'd hoped that this would mean he'd take it easy on her, but she had realized too late he was going for "I'm going to show her how good I am!" rather than "I'll let her win!" today in terms of gambits to get on her good side. It was unfortunate--Sang Mi knew she was going to have to put forth actual effort, something she tried to avoid whenever possible. Or at least so she told herself.
Jae Hyun squared his shoulders up, and with a smirk he clearly thought made him look cool, came at her again. This time, Sang Mi used her training and blocked it, the crack of wood against wood echoing in the chamber. He looked flustered that she'd parried so easily, and swung down again harder, which she blocked with a horizontal upswing, keeping the momentum going to try to swing his sword off to the side. It sort of worked, but he put his muscle into it and they ended up with their swords locked in the air each trying to outdo the other.
After a moment, a bead of sweat dripping down her face, Sang Mi suddenly realized what she needed to do, and stopped pushing back. Jae Hyun, who had gotten absorbed in winning their contest instead of the actual goals of kendo, was unable to stop his swing going downwards, and losing his balance in the process. Taking a step to the left, Sang Mi lightly whacked him in the tummy.
"Point," she said with a little too much self-aggrandizement.
"Excellent maneuver, Ms. Jhe. While I'd like for you to finish your match, it is now time for all of you to clean up before heading to your next class. Please be sure to shower--even you, Ms. Ahn, I don't care if you're just going to have to shower again at Track Practice, Mr. Xi has complained to me about your sweatiness in maths class again."
Ahn Hee Jin mumbled an assent, and the class headed out to follow their teacher's orders. She slid into her class locker to get her shower kit, only to have her peace broken by Li Xiu.
“Is your arm okay?”
She looked at the bruise. “Yeah, I’m fine. At least no one carved my face up.”
Li Xiu tilted her head. “That’s… a weird reply?”
“It’s.. there’s this urban legend about a woman in a red mask who carves your face up if you say yes when she asks if you’re pretty. It’s a whole thing. Saki and I watched a movie about it yesterday, so I keep thinking about it.”
"So, are you and Saki dating?" Li Xiu asked her.
Sang Mi groaned, and looked to her left for a friendly face. Unfortunately, there was only Zhyrgal Osmonova. Whom she may have spent a day stalking and accusing her of being an Earther spy in the past. Zhyrgal looked at her with the unfazed look of someone about to enjoy someone else having a bad time.
Sang Mi sighed and turned back to Li Xiu. "No. Absolutely never not ever no."
"Dost thou protest too--"
"No, I'm protesting just enough, too little even. Look, is this about Jae Hyun?”
Li Xiu tried to nonchalantly throw her hair back, but overdid it and whacked her hand into the locker door, making her yelp. “Ow! I mean uh, no, of course not. Why would that be, uh, no.”
“Thou dost protest too much.”
“Whatever. Look, I invited him to the big wedding my family is having this weekend. That’s not a problem for you is it?”
She looked away from her, and felt her stomach twist in her chest. “Why would it be a problem for me? He’s just a stupid boy who follows me around everywhere.”
Li Xiu didn’t reply.
“If I was bothered I’d say something. Okay?”
Li Xiu bit her lip.
“I’m really not bothered, okay! It’s not something I’m concerned about. I really couldn’t care less about—where did you say it was happening again?”
“The Pinnacle of Light Skyscraper we own in the Main Dome.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t… your family owns a skyscraper?”
“That’s not really the point.”
Sang Mi shrugged. “Whatever. Like I said, I don’t care. Do whatever. It’s not like I’d be able to show him a skyscraper even if I wanted to.” She looked over at Zhyrgal, who looked much more awkward about how the conversation had gone, all while rooting through her bag. Sighing, Sang Mi reached into her locker and pulled a pad out, holding it out to Zhyrgal.
“…Thanks,” she took it, awkwardly.
“No problem. You had the look.”
Sang Mi looked back at Li Xiu, and slammed her locker as she walked away towards the showers.
Damn girl was getting worked up over nothing.
 Sang Mi was glad for the chance to shower; if the water was a nice medium-hot temperature she would gladly sit in the shower all day. Of course, this wouldn't do at school, and at home her mom got worried every time she was in there too long that her depression meds weren't working anymore, but she'd take the enjoyment nonetheless. And right now, the water felt like it was washing away the stress of the day. Or, well, it was at first.
"We're not meeting tonight," a voice came from the stall next to her. It was, of course, Saki.
"Could you please let me just enjoy my shower?"
"You should be happy, congratulations, you have the night off. Gosh, thank you Saki, what a kind and generous person you are."
"Something has come up you don't want to tell me about," Sang Mi sighed, tilting her head up to let the water douse her face.
"I'll contact you when I'm ready to meet again."
"Great conversation."
 
* * *
 
After school was Track Practice, which went well enough, though the bruise on her arm from where Jae Hyun had hit her was still sore. And it was still sore when she got on the train for the ride home. Usually, she'd take it with her twin brother, but he, in an update that was not frustrating or jealousy-inspiring for her at all, promise, had a date that night. So, she was alone in the car scrolling through her phone when the train stopped, and a woman got on.
The timing seemed odd; they'd just stopped at the station that led to the grocery store, and it seemed like it had been too fast for them to have reached Higen Park. So she looked up.
It had been too fast. They hadn't stopped at a place on the schedule. This was worrisome by itself, but the passenger who had gotten on made it doubly so. She was wearing a red face mask, which accentuated her piercing brown eyes, which hovered between the mask and the straight bangs of her long black hair. She wore a light brown trench coat with large lapels, and brown slip-on shoes.
The woman stared at her.
Sang Mi gave her a fake smile, and then tried to get back to her phone.
"Tell me, am I pretty?"
Sang Mi sighed. "Sorry, lady, I don't talk to people on the train."
The woman got up and slid in next to her.
Sang Mi slid away down the bench. The woman didn't stop staring, her eyes fierce. Manic, even.
"Am I pretty?"
"I think that we shouldn't define ourselves by beauty standards that are still defined by--"
"AM. I. PRETTY!?" she howled, and Sang Mi could have sworn her hair billowed as if a gust of wind had come by.
Holding both hands up, Sang Mi scooted further away. "Okay, look, I get what you're trying to do here. I know all about the Red Mask Lady, the whole schtick. You ask if I think you're pretty, and then if I say yes, you cut my face open or kill me or whatever. So just to make it clear, we're in a public transit car with cameras..."
She glanced up and trailed off as she realized that the little indicator lights that showed that yes--everyone in the car was being monitored at all times by the government--were off. "Ah," she finished lamely.
The woman reached up and pulled the mask fastener on her left ear down so it hung from the other ear.
Beneath it was a too-wide smile carved from ear to ear, and as the woman spoke again, double rows of shining and sharp metallic teeth glinted. "I asked you, am I pretty?"
Sang Mi sat in silence, trying to figure out the answer that would best work. In some of the legends...
"I think you look... average?" she ventured.
"Yes or no," she countered, and from her coat drew a large pair of long red scissors. In the legends they were supposed to be fabric or surgical scissors, but Sang Mi knew these weren't that--those were bone cutting scissors. Her parents owned a pair, though Sang Mi couldn't remember a time they'd ever used them in the kitchen so they'd gathered dust.
But these were bigger, and maybe it was just her imagination, but sharper. She imagined they had to be used on larger animals. Or corpses.
Her mind was a blank. She tried to think of what to do. She'd had countless fantasies in her head of dangerous situations like this where she'd been a kick-ass heroine, but here she was, and she couldn't think of what to do. What to say.
In the end, she did the only thing that came to her.
She chucked her phone at the Red Mask Lady's head.
The good news was that it slammed into the woman's forehead, and she reeled backwards. The bad news was that the woman surged forward again, and Sang Mi’s instincts came in again—she raised her forearm, and the woman sank her metal teeth into her arm, ripping through skin and dribbling blood out onto the floor. Sang Mi screamed. The woman grinned.
But her training didn’t end there. Ms. Shion would be proud—because she immediately counter-attacked, swinging her fist down onto the woman’s head. She screamed, opening her jaw and freeing Sang Mi, falling down onto her back on the floor as she held her head. This gave Sang Mi time to rush towards the doors of the train and hit the emergency stop button, grabbing onto a railing as the force of the sudden stop threw the woman back further. The emergency release on the doors went off, and Sang Mi rushed out into a cold Gongen night, the thin air stinging her lungs as she ran. And she ran hard, ignoring the blood that trickled out as her arms pumped. She had to escape. It was the only thing that mattered. She was in the wastes, the area between the habitation domes in the middle of the long process of terraforming. The train wasn't supposed to have left the dome--her school and her home were both in Cheonsa dome, and the rest of the city of Takumi was connected by enclosed tunnels and paths.
The train wasn't supposed to leave the city.
Her heart pounded even harder as she kept running. She had dropped her bag, her school supplies weren't worth her life, and whatever was happening she wanted to get as far away from it as possible.
It had to be the Delirium, right?
It wouldn't be the weirdest thing that happened because of that drug.
Or maybe her meds really were fading. She didn’t want to think about the things that might fill her mind if that was the case.
She ran. And ran. Until she knew she needed to stop, regardless of who was chasing her. Not only were her muscles giving out, but she was feeling lightheaded. Maybe she’d lost more blood than she’d like to think about.
Sang Mi came to a halt in nowhere. She panted, and spun around ready to come to blows--there was nothing behind her. She was alone, and no matter which direction she looked there was nothing. She reached under her jacket and ripped off a chunk of her shirt, wrapping it as tightly as she could around her wounded arm. She scrunched her shoulders in and folded her arms. It was cold, far below freezing. The panic she’d felt had kept her going without her body really registering the temperature, let alone the pain, but now it suddenly sank into her bones, made worse by the layer of cooling sweat on her skin. The planet had warmed up considerably over centuries of terraforming, but there was a reason people lived in the habitation domes. Gongen might make jokes about how Earthers couldn't stand the cold or the thin air, but everyone knew getting caught unprepared in the wastes was a death sentence.
More than one family had been sentenced to walk into the wastes with no gear or food as punishment for some transgression. Many debated whether that was cruel or kind.
That being said, it was definitely embarrassing she had put herself in this situation.
She couldn't just keep standing here, she needed to keep moving. Come on then, you're smart. Think.
Takumi was located on the planet's equator--which allowed the moon of Phobos to pass directly overhead as it followed the path of it. One of her elementary school teachers had told her they'd put the city there just so the moon would pass overhead, which was romantic, but after some fact checking she’d learned they’d just picked this location because the equator was the warmest place on a cold planet.
Phobos was on the horizon--it moved from west to east in the sky, and passed overhead three times and some change each day. She tried to think if in the last 7 hours and 39 minutes she'd looked up at the sky.
She closed her eyes, and tried to ignore the cold, tried to think.
She'd been running at track practice. Hee Jin’s ponytail was in her line of sight as they circled the track, but beyond the back of her friend’s head… The side of the track closest to the wastes faced west. She knew that because her friend JackBox lived in Colocog that way. Over the course of practice, it had moved slightly overhead... starting from the side of the dome to the west.
Phobos was in the East now. That was East.
She'd seen the moon out the window on the other side of the train, that was east. The Train had been heading south-east-ish out of the city. She turned herself, and started in a direction she was pretty sure was north-west and started trudging.
It got colder, and colder, and pretty soon Sang Mi was regretting not letting the woman carve her face in. Then she saw it--a little moving thing on the horizon. She began to yell, to jump up and down, waving, then running towards it. Her exhaustion took a brief leave of absence as her body went into overdrive--she stumbled as her cold limbs pushed themselves. She couldn't let this chance pass her by. She didn't know why any of this was happening, but she sure was hell wasn't going to die out here.
The dot settled, and then turned, and started heading towards her.
Thank God. Praise God. She fell to her knees, it was too cold to cry, but she wanted to. Her body gave out under her as she continued to wave.
Eventually a hover truck pulled up in front of her, the lights blinding her and leaving the two figures who dropped off the sides of it to be black shapes.
"It's a kid, what the hell is she doin' out here?" She could tell by the accents, and the English, that they were Mavericks from the Colocog colony.
"I got attacked! I was on a train, it’s... look, thank you, please I just need to get home."
The pair got closer; one was a Caucasian man with short blonde hair who was handsome even with the facial tattoos that weren’t to Sang Mi’s liking, as well as more than a few cybernetic parts, and the other a woman who gave off strange vibes of being a bit Earther, a bit Gongen, and a bit Maverick, dressed in a refined business suit with red tattoos curling up from under the collar.
"You're pretty far from home, kid," the woman said.
"Like I said, I got attacked!” She held up her arm to show the now reddened shirt scrap bandage. “Look, you're from Colocog, right? I know JackBox, I'm a good friend of hers."
"Who?" the woman asked.
"An agent of ours in the area. Not someone to mess with," he grunted.
"Can I please get in the truck, I am freezing. I really don't feel good."
"We should just shoot her," the woman said. "Better no one knows we were here."
Sang Mi froze up, on top of being frozen. Her jaw trembled slightly. That was... that had to be a joke, right? Yeah. Yeah...
He shook his head. "Nah," he said as he pulled out a comm, and hit a switch on it. "Hey JackBox, it's Starhawk."
JackBox’s voice chimed out of the comm. "Hey boss--wait, there's no delay, you're on world?"
"Long story here with Horus’ aide, Petra. You got a friend named... shit, what's your name, kid?"
"Jhe Sang Mi! I'm Jhe Sang Mi! Or Kalingkata, that's a nickname! I--"
"I got it, shut up. You hear that?"
"That's my friend, she helped me land the deal with Ito Ryuu, she's cool. You don't need to worry about her."
He smirked at Sang Mi as she shivered below him. "You hear that kid, you're cool. You might even say... frozen!"
No one laughed.
"Oh, come on, that was good!"
Petra sighed. "Whatever, just get her in the truck."
 
* * *
 
 
After about half an hour, Sang Mi finally felt warm enough to talk beyond mumbling thank-yous. They’d wrapped her in a blanket (it smelled only a little weird), wrapped her arm in a new bandage (thankfully clean), and gave her a cup of hot steamy coffee (it tasted like they’d burned the beans, not ground them finely enough, and then steeped it too long and hot).
Sipping it, while it didn't exactly taste good, had made her feel human again. "So where exactly are we going?"
Starhawk winked, which she thought was maybe a bit much. "We're actually here to see your friend. Crazy coincidence."
She furrowed her brow. "Yeah, sure is. Hey, you haven't had anything weird happen to you since you've been here? Like, see a face behind you in the mirror, or get trapped in the bathroom, or find a strange arcade cabinet, or watch a lost episode of the Sherlock TV show from the turn of the millennium?" She paused, and realizing she'd gotten away from her point veered back onto it. "...Or seen the Red Mask Lady, the Slit-Mouthed Woman?"
Petra sighed, and got more engaged in work on her padd.
Starhawk was raising an eyebrow. "You don't seem like the kind of kid who'd ask that out of nowhere."
"She's a kid," Petra said with exasperation. "She might have just seen a weird Professor X episode or something."
Sang Mi sipped the coffee, trying to think of a good reply, but her thoughts were cut off by the driver in the cab in front of them calling back. "We're here."
Petra and Starhawk threw on thick parkas, and since there wasn't a spare one, Sang Mi kept the blanket around her like a kid sneaking downstairs to raid the fridge. Starhawk threw the doors to the back of the truck open, and they stepped out in front of a warehouse--a huge warehouse in rows of other warehouses. Takumi was a manufacturing hub, amongst other things, and the massive warehouse districts outside the city were testament to that.
"This some sort of heist?" Sang Mi asked, pulling the blanket tight around her.
Starhawk just gave a "ha", and walked forward to a side door, tapping it with a key card. Petra pushed on her back lightly, getting her through the door, and the inside caused Sang Mi's jaw to drop. They were in a glass box that looked out on what appeared to be a factory. Large vats of chemicals stirred, machines formed pills and tinctures, and people in white sanitary jumpsuits wandered around the facility making sure the machines were working properly, making adjustments if necessary. The really distinctive thing about their suits though was that the employees wore a black mask that covered their face--up to just below the hairline, with a hood above it doing the rest--and that black cloth displayed blue lines that formed emoji-like expressions so that they could communicate with each other as they spoke.
She got up to the glass, and as she watched the manufacturing work, she realized what the place was.
Because she recognized what one of the machines was making.
Most of the processing here was making mass productions of pills or the like, but off to one side was a very unique set of machinery, far unlike the rest. It didn't just have a dedicated employee inspecting it; it had a pair of guards.
And the fluids being heated and cooled while running through glass tubes, formed into tablets, and stamped out, were becoming something she was incredibly familiar with.
Delirium tablets.
She knew Saki couldn't possibly have a supply of pills that was still potent after all this time. She knew Saki had money--she owned a hotel, she owned a pharmacy. That she was working with Maverick gangsters from the infamous Accord shouldn't have been particularly surprising.
A pair of the jumpsuited employees stepped into an airlock that led into the glass area, were sprayed with a series of blasts of presumably a cleanser or disinfectant, and then stepped into their glass enclosure. Both had blue smiley faces on their black masks, though that didn't last long as one was ripped off to reveal her friend JackBox, who practically tackled her in a hug.
"Oh my god! You have no idea how worried I was, what the hell were you doing in the wastes? You don't have frostbite do you?"
"I'm alright! I'm alright, your friends here took care of me."
JackBox pulled back, though she kept a hand on Sang Mi's shoulder. "I really appreciate you looking after her, boss."
Starhawk shrugged. "No trouble at all. I see things are going well here." He gestured to the other person who had walked in with her. "Who’s the double?"
Pulling her own mask off, the face of Saki Suzuki smiled pleasantly back at her. "Surprised?" she said, as if following a cue card. And knowing her, she might have been.
"You know, I am. I am surprised a lot today," Sang Mi said as she glanced at JackBox, and then back at Saki. "There's actually something we need to talk about Saki, about dreams again."
Clearly exasperated, Petra sighed. "It doesn't matter if you're super interested in urban legends; Ms. Suzuki doesn't need to hear about Slit-Mouthed Women or--"
Saki spun, her eyes wide and her entire demeanor going from smug to alert. "What did you just say?"
Petra lowered her padd. "She was talking on the ride here about urban--"
"No," Saki said firmly, and looked back to Sang Mi. "Did you see her? Did you see The Red Masked Lady?"
Sang Mi nodded.
JackBox looked down at the bandages on Sang Mi's arm. "...Wait, I heard you were cold, but did something bite you?"
"Yeah, the Red Masked--"
Saki grabbed Sang Mi, forcefully, even as she tried to pull away and JackBox tried to interfere. JackBox yelling and slapping her didn't stop Saki from ripping the bandages off,revealing the bloody bite mark. Her face cold, Saki seemed to grow to twice her height. "We need to go on lockdown, get all the security--"
She had the right idea; once again Saki Suzuki was obnoxiously correct. And if Sang Mi had had a few more moments to let it sit in, she might have been indignant.
But no one had any time to do anything.
Not when the wall exploded.
The concussion knocked them all to the ground and shattered the glass around them. Sang Mi felt herself lose the ground beneath her, and she could see shards of glass in the air shining like snowflakes, and her hand reaching out, her foot flailing into view as she flew.
When she hit the ground, her ears were ringing, and soon the world faded out, but not before her view of the ceiling and smoke was interrupted by an overly wide smile of two rows of metal teeth. The Slit-Mouthed Woman said something, but all she heard was ringing.
And then the ringing stopped, and it was only dreams.

​Earlier that day…
 
Zhyrgal Osmonova checked over her shoulder another time. Still no one behind her. She wasn't usually this nervous, but usually her meetings were with other Earther spies. CISyn Spooks planted in some part of the Gongen government or infrastructure. As far as she knew, she was the only one who had been planted in a high school.
When she'd taken the job, she'd assumed it would be easy. Well, maybe not easy, but at the very least it wouldn't involve much outside of the school itself. But she'd proved herself to be too good at her job, and too useful, and so now she found herself being told to wander through the alleys of the underground levels of Takumi. Most of the city was underground, though people lived in the domes if they had any choice in the matter, it was just more pleasant. The corridors of the underground city were mostly well lit and painted with colorful and inviting patterns. The halls opened up into artificial parks where fake sunlight would rain down on laughing children, sports matches, and people spending a pleasant afternoon reading on a park bench in the breeze of the recycled air. But no city this big and old didn't have its rundown areas. The Tenryu Party that ruled the planet might boast that every citizen had enough to eat, that nothing was wasted, and everything was perfectly maintained by the planet's AI Shocho, but in practice any utopia was a fairytale, even if Gongen was living up to their ideals more than people on Earth expected. Here was the slums of Takumi, under its poorest dome, Cheonsa, far from the sky. The colorful halls turned into chipped and peeling paint jobs and dimmed or flickering lighting. Here those without traded their government rations for drugs; here deals were made for illegal off-world weaponry; here, the Ebon Gate Yakuza held court. Still, compared to anywhere else in the solar system, the small amount of crime might seem like a miracle. But it was still here, if you knew where to look.
Stepping over a junkie who was curled up against the wall, Zhyrgal found the door she was looking for--a faded chicken mascot of what had been a lunch spot before they'd moved the manufacturing that had been here to a new set of tunnels closer to the warehouse districts.
She rapped on the door, just the way she had been instructed to. There was the click of an unlocking, and she opened the door just far enough to slip through, and closed it behind her.
The room before her was the remains of a restaurant--signs that listed the same things in Korean, Chinese, and Japanese instructed long-gone diners where to drop their trays or where the line started.
A dead body, decently fresh, was laid out between her and her hosts. She daintily stepped over it, trying to be as poised as possible.
The current occupants had shoved a few of the tables together and had made court in the colorful chicken-themed chairs, lined up on one side, with one chair on the other side for her.
She sat down and inspected who she was meeting. Two of them were Yakuza, wearing the gaudy black coats of the Ebon Gate covered in gold Kanji, tattoos of moving ink playing along their necks and down the backs of their hands. The other two were Mavericks, one a bruiser with a pair of metal arms and an electric eye to match. The other was a woman who could have passed as Gongen if it wasn't for the rather horrific looking gash of a maw opening up to a mouth of razor blades she had.
"Who’s the corpse?" she opened before the maw woman could form a word.
"An employee of our target. We got our information, but nothing would have stopped him from selling us out in return," she said as she smiled, in what would have been a polite smile if it wasn't for everything else about her mouth.
Zhyrgal nodded. "Right. So how can my employers help you?" She nearly left it there before indicating the Yakuza. "And why are they? Actually, you're clearly working for the Cartel Gang, you're rivals with the Ebon Gate for the same turf. Make this make sense."
"None of your business," one of the Ebon Gate spat.
"It is literally my business or I wouldn't be here."
The woman gave a surprised huff. "They said you weren't to be taken lightly even though you're just a student. I'm Chomper; this is Wackwack," she said, gesturing to the bruiser. "And we're working with our new friends here, and your bosses, because the Accord has been getting far too successful here. They have a stranglehold over the Colocog Colony, and their new agent on the surface is even getting Tenryu party members in her pocket. That's not good for business for anyone."
"That wouldn't matter to my employers," Zhyrgal said plainly.
"True. But it looks like the Accord is doing business with someone who has something your bosses want. They've told me what to look for, and not to ask what it is. If you help us, we'll give you what they want, and we'll stop the Accord from cornering the market in Takumi."
She mulled it over. It made sense. It wasn't great, but it made sense. "Alright, so how can I help?"
A padd was slid towards her, showing a picture of a pair of girls leaving a hotel. "We've been monitoring these two. Both of them seem to have ties to the Accord's operations here. This one, Sang Mi Jhe--"
"Jhe Sang Mi, she puts the family name first."
"Whatever, I see you're already familiar. The Jhe girl has been spotted going in and out of Colocog, as well as meeting the second girl at the Rook Hotel frequently. The other girl is Suzuki Saki."
"Saki Suzuki, she puts her family name second."
"I really don't care! Anyway! Several of our operatives have disappeared or met mysterious accidents following her, but she's made several trips to both the wastes, and Cogworks Lounge where the Accord is operating out of in the city proper. We've also seen her going in the direction of the warehouse districts, though that's too much space to investigate. But most suspiciously, she opened a pharmacy recently."
Zhyrgal furrowed her brows. That was odd. Unless she needed a way to easily move pharmaceuticals legally without drawing suspicion...
"I see you're putting it together."
Zhyrgal nodded.
"You go to school with them, we need to figure out where the Accord is operating their drug operations out of. They've flooded the market lately--at prices that couldn't be smuggled from Titan."
"So, they have a factory. If that's what you want to find..." Zhyrgal said, thinking. She pointed at the image of Sang Mi. "...there's your weak link. Don't get me wrong, she's incredibly clever. I haven't been able to find anything on Saki--though I doubt that's her real name. She's got a perfect fake history, and clearly has power and finances. Sang Mi is poor, her family is hated by the local government, and she has mental health issues that can be exploited."
Chomper glanced at Wackwack. "How so?"
She thought of Sang Mi's small act of kindness in the locker room earlier and shoved it out of her mind. She had a job, a duty. She worked for CISyn. That overrode anything else. "Sang Mi has an obsession with urban legends. She's constantly investigating weird goings on. For example, she was involved in an incident last year that she assumed had to be replicating the plot of a lost anime called Saki Sanobashi, and seemed convinced it wasn't a coincidence."
"I don't see how that helps."
"You don't know where what you're looking for is. But you don't need to, you just need to put Sang Mi in a situation where she'll feel like she needs to call for help from someone who can deal with that level of danger. She gets off school late because of track practice and takes the train from the school’s station down the Peony line. I'm sure your friends at the Ebon Gate can get that train to switch tracks to go towards the warehouse district. Freak her out. Play to her fears and take her hostage. You can play it multiple ways from there--monitor the warehouses and see where people come from when you call to demand a ransom, or just set up a meeting spot and try to draw out the power players."
The four gangsters looked at each other. They were clearly sold on this.
"Okay, how would we freak her out?" Wackwack asked in a baritone.
Zhyrgal took the padd, and pulled up a picture, sliding it back over to Chomper. "She's been talking about a new urban legend today. And you could pull the look off."
Chomper stroked her chin. "I know this story. So I just ask her if I'm beautiful. Threaten her with scissors. Not that I have scissors."
One of the Yakuza raised a hand like he was in class. "We got the bone scissors we're going to use on the body there later."
"Perfect. And you're sure, this will freak her out?"
Zhyrgal nodded. "And even if you screw it up, as long as she runs out into the wastes with her phone, the most likely people she'll call for help are your targets anyway."
Chomper grinned. "Guess I'll get a red mask."
They shook hands. Zhyrgal slipped out and made her way back from the slums to her apartment. She figured she was done for the day, so she got into her pajamas and put on a movie.
Fittingly, there was a movie about the Slit-Faced Woman on the recommended films page.
She was just getting settled in, the woman leaning in to her victim on screen asking, "Am I pretty?" when her phone rang, rang with her work alert.
Sighing, she paused and picked it up.
"...Hello?"
Chomper's voice greeted her, hoarsely. "So uh, we got her on the train."
"...But?" there was clearly a 'but'.
"But uh, she hit the emergency stop and ran out into the wastes."
"Okay, did you follow her?"
"...She sort of knocked me out."
Zhyrgal held back a groan. "Track her phone."
There was a pause that Zhyrgal couldn't help but sigh during. "She uh... threw her phone at my head. I have it."
Zhyrgal could have screamed. She may only have been seventeen, but she was already tired of working with amateurs. "Did you do anything, anything at all, that might let you track her?"
"I bit her, but the blood trail stopped at--"
"Stop. You bit her?"
"...Yeah? On the arm."
"Did you lose a tooth?"
"I don't see how--"
"DID YOU LOSE A TOOTH?"
She could imagine the next silence with Chomper feeling around her mouth.
"Oh! Oh I did."
"A tooth from your cybernetic mouth that is currently embedded in your arm. A tooth filled with electronics keyed to your body."
"Oh," Chomper said.
"I assume you can take it from here?"
The call ended. Zhyrgal threw her phone across the room where it thudded lightly on the carpet, only to be picked up by the apartment's porter bot and returned to the coffee table. Someday she'd work with professionals.
 
* * *
 
The world came back into focus slowly, and on its side. First it was blurry outlines, and then her outstretched arm surrounded by twinkling glass and wrapped in red-stained bandage. Figures in jumpsuits were staggering around, trying to help their fellows who hadn't been able to rise yet, or moving debris.
She stirred, trying to sit up, and finding the pain to do so was intense.
Sang Mi handled pain in two ways: either she pushed past it beyond all reason and at a danger to her own safety, or she was a big baby about it. Today was time for the latter, and she gave up and dropped back down moaning.
A face leaned over her. It was Starhawk, a bandage on his face where presumably some glass had cut him. "She's awake."
"I mean, kinda," Sang Mi moped.
He sighed. "Come on, let's get you up."
"Carry meeeeee," she said, holding her arms out.
Starhawk blinked his organic eye, and after a moment of hesitation that Sang Mi guessed was filled with some mental cursing, he scooped her up.
She had a clearer view of the room as he bridal-carried her, his metal feet crunching the glass underfoot. Saki looked over at them, and Sang Mi felt some pleasure that she looked absolutely done with her that she was being carried.
"We have a situation."
"Yeah," Sang Mi replied incredulously.
"We have people moving our equipment out, the Takumi Self-Defense Force is on its way, presumably because of the explosion."
"We can't have any of the Colocogs caught here," Starhawk said, adjusting his grip on Sang Mi like he was trying to figure out how to handle an annoying cat.
"We can't have anyone caught here," Saki said coolly. "I'll handle things here, you two need to handle the hostages."
Sang Mi looked up at Starhawk, his face was grim, then back to Saki. "What do you mean hostages?"
"JackBox, Petra, and a few others are being held hostage by the Cartel. They're demanding we cede our business here to them in return for their release."
"I'd trust them as about as far as I'm going to keep carrying Sang Mi," he said, immediately setting her down.
Her feet on firm ground, a rush of shame greeted their arrival, moving all the way from the soles of her feet to her head. She'd been messing around and...
This was serious. This was real.
She felt herself tearing up.
"What are we going to do? JackBox is my friend. I can't... I can't..." she said, then wobbled, and put a hand to her head.
"We're not leaving them. My operation here is too important. And I know you're not going to get your head cut off by Raving Red-Jane."
"Just Red-Jane," Starhawk said by rote.
"She's not here and we all know," Saki said. She had grabbed a metal briefcase and was shoving pills into it. "We just need to keep a level--" An alarm went off, and a jumpsuited employee ran up to Saki, shoving a padd in her hands. "Shit."
Starhawk grimaced. "What now?"
"Both of you, do exactly what I say. Ask no questions."
Their lack of response was acceptance.
"Good. Both of you grab emote-masks, they can mask your voice and face," she rushed over to a broken conveyer belt, and grabbed a handful of hyper-injection syringes, and then climbed over to another to get another. From a different batch. She scrambled back over and shoved some of the syringes into Sang Mi and Starhawk's hands.
Sang Mi turned them over in her hands. "What are these--OW!?"
She staggered back. Saki had just jabbed her in the neck with the single syringe from the second batch. "You're holding knockout drugs. The one I just jabbed you with is a stimulant; you're in too rough of shape to do what needs to be done without it. Don't worry, it’s what they give to CGC Special Forces so it’s safe."
Everything seemed to be coming into extreme focus for Sang Mi, the entire world seemed clearer, slightly slower. She felt like a lot of her doubts had dropped away."...When this is over, I'm punching you."
"Whatever it takes," Saki said without hesitation. "There is a Self-Defense Force TSV on its way here. Me and Kalingkata will go out there and talk to them, Starhawk will hold back to rush out when the time is right. Our goal is to knock out the soldiers, and get inside the TSV. Don't overthink your tasks."
"Kalingkata?" Starhawk asked.
"Sang Mi's nickname."
"Suits her," he said, pulling on an emote mask.
Kalingkata pulled her own mask on, and allowed herself to smirk since no one could see it. It did.
Seeing in the mask was surprisingly easy, the inside had to be beaming the view from the other side of the mask right into her retinas.
"Are we--oh my voice," she stopped speaking as the mask automatically distorted her voice.
Saki pulled her own mask on. "Shut up."
The sound of air being displaced by grav plates made it clear why they should. Something was landing outside the warehouse, and they had to go meet it.
Starhawk waited just inside the doorway as the girls went out to greet the TSV--it was hovering only a few feet above the ground, and shaped like the hull of a stylized Chinese junk, a hatch on the side opening up to drop a pair of soldiers in Takumi-Yellow armor.
"What are you doing here? This is an automated warehouse area," a woman's voice said.
Saki put both hands over her face. "Oh thank the gods, oh goodness... We're really saved." She stumbled forward, and the second soldier raised his rifle.
Saki screamed and dropped to her knees, holding her hands up, and Sang Mi followed suit without the scream. "Please don't kill us! Please! PLEASE! We're not the kidnappers, oh god, oh no..."
"Kidnappers?" the man said.
The woman frowned. "Okay, just stay calm, no one is going to hurt you," she tilted her head, signaling her comrade to go over to Kalingkata. He retracted his faceplate so they could see his face, and his comrade did the same. "Just explain what happened."
"Okay," Saki took in a breath, and seemed to sob. "Please can we just get out of here--"
The woman got closer. So did the man. "We just need to know what's going on.  Who kidnapped you?"
"It... it was..."
The soldier closed the distance and knelt down. "It's alright just--"
Saki didn't hesitate. Her hand jabbed forward like a lightning bolt, and the hyper-syringe had deposited its contents into the woman's jugular before she could finish her sentence.
The man looked stunned. He wasn't as close to Kalingkata, but she rushed him too. It wasn't like her, it had to be whatever Saki had put into her--she could feel her heart pounding, and while he was still trying to form his friend's name, she had ducked under his arm trying to push her back, and reached up, the hyper-syringe connecting with skin, and emptying in a blink of an eye.
"INTO THE SHIP," Saki called. "Don't wait!"
She would have, and as she rushed past the man he tried to grab her shoulder, but he was already feeling the drugs and his grip was soft enough she pulled out of his grip, and ran. She was faster than Saki--she was a runner after all, so she outstripped her and leapt up into the hatch before Saki.
And just as the TSV started lifting off again.
She stumbled, grabbing onto the side of the hatch as she was almost thrown out, then dragging herself in. She looked down to see Saki watching below as the TSV got out of reach.
Shit.
There was no one else in the hold, though it looked like it could hold a whole fighting force. This was just checking up on a weird explosion in an abandoned warehouse, no need for everyone to get out of bed.
She staggered towards the cockpit, losing her footing repeatedly as the craft started accelerating. She reached the cockpit door, and as she tried the controls realized that the pilot had wisely locked it.
Shit again.
She bit her lip.
Then a lightbulb emoji appeared on her facemask.
Kalingkata scrolled through the messy user interface of the mask--you controlled it with a mix of blinking, eye movement, tongue movement, and voice commands, and saw that yes--the mask had recorded the last few minutes. It had to, the front of the mask just had tiny cameras so the user could see on the other side since it wasn't actually see-through.
She pulled up an audio file, and told the mask to output that voice, and covered the camera by the door.
"Hey, it’s me, open up!" the female soldier's voice said into the panel.
"...Mi-Young? I thought you were--"
"I got in before you took off, I took down the hoodlum that jumped on, but I need the med kit in the cockpit."
There was a pause.
"You'd know there was one out there."
"It got thrown out in the struggle, along with--" she looked back at where the medical kit was clearly displayed on the wall next to, "the fire extinguisher. Please, I need to patch this wound."
There was a pause.
And the door unlocked, and slid open just a crack with the finger's of a man's hand pushing it open.
Kalingkata shot her hand through, jabbing the syringe into his wrist and jamming her foot in the door.
"Oh you bitch," he spat.
The TSV didn't lose control as he dropped to the deck, the autopilot was too good for that. She squeezed through the door, and while she didn't know how to fly this thing, she did know how to slam the big button under a safety shield that said "EMERGENCY LANDING."
* * *
Starhawk had taken the helm, which suited Sang Mi just fine. They were flying back to the Main Dome of Takumi, and Sang Mi had intentionally not asked where that meant. It was wherever the kidnappers were holding her friend JackBox.
She sat in the belly of the TSV trying to process the events of the last few hours, and not coming to any conclusions that felt meaningful. She took to rummaging through the crew's bags, trying to find something to wear for whatever was happening that was less identifiable than a track suit.
She kept her black compression gear on, but threw on a Takumi-Yellow hoodie that one of the crew had, and a pleated black skirt that was short enough it wouldn't restrict her movement, but long enough she wouldn't feel weird about running around in compression gear. 
Saki slid the door open from the cockpit, and looked her up and down. "It's not a bad look. You look like you're a real Poison Pill."
Sang Mi looked down at the mask in her hands, "I'm certainly not that."
Sliding in across from her, Saki clasped her hands together. "Sang Mi, in just a little bit we're going to be mounting an operation to rescue your friend JackBox, and Petra who is an important attache to the Accord higher up named Horus."
She nodded. "Okay, should I just... stay in here then?"
Saki sighed. "No, Sang Mi. No you shouldn't. Do you think you're not a part of this."
"Not really, no?"
Saki got up, and grabbed her by the collar in a move so sudden Sang Mi didn't know how to react, and dropped her mask. "You hang out with gangsters. You learn how to kill people with swords at your school. You are part of one of the most important experiments of all time in your work with me. And I know exactly what you did last year, no one has done a hack like that before. Not on that scale. They don't even realize it yet."
She racked her brain, she wasn't sure what Saki was talking about on that last count, but she had done a lot of weird stuff when she was bored. She held her hands up. "I'm just a high school student! I'm a normal girl--I mean, I'm not normal, I'm a weirdo! But I'm not like you, I don't... this is too much. I'm terrified right now." Tears started welling up in her eyes. "JackBox was taken, and I don't know if she's okay, and I nearly died in the wastes, and I helped you steal this ship, and I... I kind of committed assault on a member of the Self-Defense Force? Oh God, I committed--"
"Stop talking. Stop." Saki let go. "You're saying this now, but that's Sang Mi talking. Where's Kalingkata, the expert hacker? The one who breaks into Colocog? Where's your arrogance?"
"I'm not arrogant."
"It wasn't an insult. And I'm tired of having this conversation with you. There's only so many times I can tell you you're worth more than you think."
"People have been telling me that my whole life, get in line."
"There you go, there's that arrogance."
Sang Mi bit her lip.
"We're rescuing your friend. And I need you in top form."
Sang Mi picked her mask up off the desk. "Fine, but I'm not going to enjoy it."
Saki open an armored viewing panel, the city below expanding out beneath them. "Yes you will. Once you get a taste of life beyond your tiny life, you won't want to go back. I'm going to take everything I want, that's a fact. And you can too."
Sang Mi scoffed. "As if."
Wanting to get out of this conversation, Sang Mi looked out the viewport at the city of Takumi below. After everything--this whole ordeal so far, nearly freezing to death, the bomb going off... tears came to her eyes again, but this time from the warmth welling up in her heart. This really was home, whatever she thought of it, these three domes. A gate opened up in the roof of the dome that allowed air travel in--she didn't know exactly how they'd pulled that off but she was too tired to care. The TSV descended, and slipped by the roofs of skyscrapers.
"That one," Saki said, and Sang Mi looked where they were adjusting to land--and all the warm feelings in her heart sank  down through the floor of the TSV and down into tunnels below the city.
"You're kidding, really?" she mumbled.
"It's not a government owned building, they rent out parts of it. It's not surprising they have space there."
Kalingkata hissed. "But the Cao Family's Skyscraper? Really?"
“Cults have to pay the bills too. I’m sure they didn’t ask too many questions.”
“Don’t let Li Xiu hear you calling them a cult.”
Saki didn’t reply, and instead went over to a locker, opening it up, and tossing Sang Mi a long object from it.
She awkwardly caught it, only realizing what it was after she had a moment to inspect it.
It was a sword. A mono-molecular bladed sword, military grade. The kind that could cut through spaceship hulls.
“...I can’t take this.”
“You just did. You’re better with a sword than me, you should feel good about that.”
She had to admit, as she pulled the blade out of the sheath a few centimeters to check it, she kind of did. But she wasn’t sure she could really fight someone.
Well, it seemed that choice was out of her hands.
The TSV descended, and Starhawk’s voice came from the cockpit, “Alright, lets get this done. You have the entrance ready, Saki?”
Saki pulled another weapon from the locker. “Of course.”
 
* * *
 
JackBox had had a lot of luck dealing with Gongen criminals. They had a lot of trouble remembering that her cybernetic arm and leg might be able to do a little more than just act as arm and a leg. She'd been tied up after a negotiation gone wrong before while setting things up for the Accord, only to cut her bonds as soon as someone turned their back for a moment. So it was frustrating to be dealing with fellow Mavericks again who remembered to do things like turn her arm off.
"I'm telling you, you don't want to mess with the Accord,” she said for the third time.
Chomper turned to her. “Oh please, no one is coming for you.” The woman took a glass of white wine from a server bot, and downed it in one large gump. “And the Accord’s business here will be ending soon.”
JackBox glanced over at Petra, who was silent, and nearly motionless, her eyes moving around as if cataloging the entire room. It wasn’t much of a room–just a large suite with couches, chairs, a bar and kitchen, and a big glass window looking out at the city beyond.
Wackwack, the embarrassingly named flunky of Chomper clapped. “Yeah, you tell em, boss!”
She grinned back them. “What about your friend here, Petra right? You’ve been awful quiet haven’t you. You know I could start biting your fingers off.”
“Five,” Petra said.
“Yes, that’s how many fingers are on one hand, well noted.”
“Four,” Petra continued.
Chomper and Wackwack exchanged a look, and the handful of Yakuza lounging about looked over with a confused interest as well. 
“Three,” Petra said, and JackBox was starting to wonder herself.
“Alright, enough of that. Stop counting,” Chomper ordered.
“Two.”
“That’s it,” she stormed up to her.
“One.”
It was at that moment that JackBox, and much of the room who could see the windows, saw a Gongen Self-Defense Force TSV drop down into view, one of the doors on the side wide open, and a young lady holding a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher sitting there in the gap.
“Ah,” Chomper said.
And then the rocket hit the windows.
They exploded inwards, and the TSV followed, scraping the side of the building as three figures leapt from it into the smoke.
A man with cybernetic legs leapt farther than the others, tackling one of the Yakuza to the ground in a flying kick that ended in a stomp. JackBox grinned. She knew he’d come for her.
Another person, a young lady in black clothes with a yellow hoodie rushed one of the Yakuza, and he drew a gun, which she sliced in half. His comrade draw her sword, and the young lady slashed that in half too.
The pair looked at each other and bolted as she sheathed the sword again.
Chomper scowled, and turned to the intruders, as JackBox mockingly sang behind her.
Starhawk had engaged Wackwack, the pair locked arms and wrestling with each other. 
The yellow hoodie lady was walking towards Chomper with intention, and JackBox recognized the gait–that was Kalingkata?
"Aren't you scared, little girl?" Chomper grinned her razor blade smile, and held up her hands, from which the nails shot out into ten short blades. Apparently she was more cybernetic than she'd let on.
The face on the mask contorted, till it formed a jagged face of blue lines, it almost looked like laughter, and Kalingkata held the sword out in front of her, a hand on the hilt and a hand on the scabbard, drawing the blade in a slow shining stoke, and extending it out to point at Chomper. "You know, I'm really not. I've realized we have something on Gongen you don't in the Cartel."
She laughed, shaking her head. "And what saccharine thing is that?"
"Dentists."
Chomper's eyes widened, and her jaw dropped as she howled in rage, charging at Kalingkata, swiping with the knives coming from her fingers, only to have her hand blocked by the sheath of the sword, the blade coming in at her chest. Chomper blocked it with her other hand, and stumbled back. "Where the hell did you learn to do that? Aren't you a schoolgirl?"
"I learned in 5th hour Kendo, now come on then. You're the one who wanted to fight," she started walking forward.
JackBox felt her arm turning on, and looked down to realize that Saki was next to her now, she’d already untied Petra who was flexing her hands.
Chomper looked back at where Wackwack and Starhawk were dueling, and taking a deep breath, she did what she should have done from the beginning.
She ran.
And Kalingkata followed.
“Wait–” JackBox called.
She wanted to tell her to stop, that there was no need. That she’d rather have her here next to her. But she was already gone. 
 
The hallways of the tower emanated luxury just like the rest of it—fine polished stone surfaces, gold inlays, fine art worth fortunes casually displayed. It was through those hallways that Chomper barreled through, slamming into those refined walls, knocking over waiters carrying food to some event going on in the building, but as she ran the Poison Pill behind her didn’t stop. Didn’t relent.
And she began to get nervous.
“You know, Saki was right,” the Poison Pill called, chasing her down a staircase. “I do like this.” The young woman laughed, and Chomper felt a chill down her back.
“Are you enjoying this?” Chomper called back in a panic. “What’s wrong with you?”
She had reached a door at the bottom of the stair well, slipping through it, and slamming it shut, grabbing a chair from the other side and trying to prop it closed. 
The door rattled.
Then the laugh came again. “Ready or not, here I come!”
The monomolecular blade cut through the frame of the door.
And Chomper ran faster than she knew she could run.
 
* * *
 
Two Weeks Earlier…
 
Sang Mi pulled the curtain in front of her face. "It is I, the mysterious Phantom! Hohoho, hahaha!"
JackBox laughed, as did Jae Hyun, and they sort of tried to out laugh each other which got awkward extra quickly as they were the only ones laughing.
Li Xiu was cringing. "I don't really think it's funny, Sang Mi. One of our classmates lost his marbles and pretended to be the Phantom of the Opera. That's tragic. He was in a really bad place."
She shrugged. "I was the one who had to deal with the whole thing–you weren’t there when he nearly caused a disaster before I caught him and Charlie punched him. Plus it's always been fine for people to tease me when..." she sighed. "Never mind, I see your point, sorry."
Li Xiu nodded. "I mean... maybe any of us could have been in his place?"
Jae Hyun raised an eyebrow. "I don't really think I'd pretend to be a book character."
“That's telling on yourself; expand your breakdown horizons, Jae Hyun," Sang Mi said.
This time Li Xiu laughed. "See, that was a good joke."
Jae Hyun mumbled that it wasn't.
Li Xiu reached under her shirt and pulled out a necklace with a D20 on it that seemed to be made of real topaz. "People can hit their breaking points. Our church helps a lot of people down on their luck. You meet people of all stripes, and some of them used to be big wigs. Tenryu party higher ups, facility managers, a former Deputy Director even. You never know when you're going to hit a breaking point, and how you'll react. Maybe we all have a Phantom in us, waiting to break free."
Sang Mi gave an approving smile and a nod to all that. "You're right. I don't really think I'd snap like that, though, and I definitely don't have a secret side all bottled up in me. I'd just curl up in a ball like I did over winter break."
"Don't talk about that so lightly," Li Xiu said.
"Hey, look at me, I'm fine now. No worries."
The look Li Xiu gave her wasn't angry, or annoyed. It was pitiful. Like this poor little naive lamb was trying to eat plastic grass and complimenting the flavor.
Sang Mi scoffed, and shoved her hands in her jacked pockets. "Whatever," she mumbled.
 
* * *
 
Chomper turned the corner, and skidded to a halt.
Her brain went into overdrive. She couldn't wait long, the Poison Pill behind her would catch up to her.
But this corridor led to an indoor balcony. It was overlooking a massive indoor venue lined with tables set with expensive plates and cutlery, though at the moment no one sat at the place settings. Bottles of fine wines sat in buckets of ice on carts. An indoor waterfall took up an entire wall of the place, and for some reason there was an entire table covered in complimentary dice. Fountains of chocolate and cheese topped with real stone sculptures dotted the layout, and--there were banners.
It was some sort of wedding, whatever, but there were enough banners and streamers, maybe she could hit the ground not too hard from this height.
She heard the woman turn the corner too.
Chomper had to make the call.
She ran, clambered over the railing, and jumped.
She caught onto a banner, trying her best to grasp it, and indeed it slowed her fall, but she pulled the whole banner down with her and still made impact with enough force the pain was horrible--she crushed a table, the legs buckling and snapping under the weight of her cybernetic parts, bits of fine china breaking under her and making small slits in her clothes and skin. She panted, and then sat up, willing her body to move. To escape. To keep moving. It had hurt, but the Poison Pill would have to do the same thing. 
She looked up at the balcony.
The Poison Pill looked down at her, the scribbled blue circles the mask had for eyes staring down at her disdainfully. Climbing up on the railing of the balcony, the Poison Pill looked for a moment like she too would jump.
And then she put a foot against the wall.
It stuck.
The other foot came next.
And while it was clearly a strained effort for her to do so, the Poison Pill began walking down the wall.
She had some sort of grav-shoes, what the hell?
Chomper scrambled up, having to disentangle herself from the table cloth as she escaped the table's wreckage.
She had to keep running. 
The pain was incredible, but she did it, running between the aisles of tables, ignoring the calls of waiters and staff.
She glanced, there was no one behind her, but as her head tilted back, her brief moment of relief faded.
That Poison Pill was running along the wall now, and had her eyes fixed on her.
Panic filled her, and Chomper wailed for a moment, but then it hit her--grav shoes. She wasn't out of this yet. She could still escape.
She just had to... she looked along the walls, and saw it. Her one chance. She just had to pull this off. The wall opposite the waterfall was covered in glass--indoor glass.
She ran towards that wall. The Poison Pill followed.
Come on, just turn the corner.
For a moment, she thought the woman wouldn't fall for her bait, but then her foot moved from the polished marbled black stone of the balcony wall to the glass one.
Indoor glass. Not meant to be walked on. Not meant to survive the elements, or go through space.
And it shattered.
Gravity went out of whack for her opponent, and as she fell through the glass, her body contorted as her shoes tried to place the gravity below her, and found little purchase aside from shards of glass and the hanging art pieces.
Finally, she fell normally, through another pane of glass, and out of view.
Chomper stood for a moment, panting, stunned. Half expecting the Poison Pill to leap from the pit like a wronged demon.
But there was only the tinkle of falling glass, and the rushing footsteps of venue security.
She grinned a wide sharp grin, and got moving.
Everything was coming up Chomper.
 
* * *
 
"Why did you never join the Theater Department?" Jae Hyun had asked Sang Mi one day. The question had hung in the air in a way that Sang Mi decidedly wasn't as she tumbled down through shattered glass.
"I don't know, maybe I didn't want to be a nerd."
He had looked at her incredulously. "I don't believe that for a moment. I mean, I don't believe you could be that delusional, you're not a nerd. You're literally wearing a Professor X necklace right now."
"And you know what that is, nerd," it wasn't said in mean spirits, though. It was more playful than she'd intended, honestly.
He sighed. "You're just..."
She turned to him, frowning. "I'm just what?"
"It's like you're always running from things you're good at. I saw you at the comedy show, you know. I saw you when they made you fill in during the Parents’ Night play. You're a good actress, maybe the best one in the school."
She scoffed. "Yeah right. Look, let's just get back to more important things, like helping me make this Magician: The Hammering deck." She had held up a card, a completely random one she hadn't looked at, and said in a magician's voice: "Is this your card, young man?"
He looked shocked. "Oh, it is, actually!"
She laughed at his obvious lie to get on her good side. 
It had been a good time.
 
When Kalingkata hit the ground, she moaned, the mask morphing the moan into a dark distorted banshee cry. Thankfully her shoes had screwed the gravity up around her enough that the impact was pretty light, but it still hurt, and as she tried to get up it was impossible to not cut herself on the spangled circle of glass around her.
And as she looked up, she froze.
She blinked, and reached up to rub her eyes before realizing that her face was still completely covered by the mask.
She was in a room walled in the same marbled black stone it seemed a lot of this building had, the floor tiled in a black and white hypnotic spiral which she'd landed annoyingly off center of. A part of her wanted to move the entire circle of glass so she could sit perfectly framed in the center of a whirlpool for the other person in the room.
A person who just so happened to be Jae Hyun. 
Who was, for some reason, sitting in the corner, knees to his chest, wearing a bear costume.
She rose up from the glass, reaching over to grab her sword which had landed next to her as she did so. His head rose as she did, following her every motion.
"Hey there, nice shirt," she said, and as her distorted voice bounced around the small room, he raised his hands.
"Look, I've already had enough today, I just need a break. This really is too much. I don't know what exactly you've been told to do--"
She laughed, and realized that he didn't recognize her. This wasn't Sang Mi in front of him.
He thought he had seen Kalingkata before, he thought he knew her, but Sang Mi had left the room. Kalingkata took a step towards him. 
"Told to do? Do I look like the kind of person taking orders? I just fell through your ceiling with a monomolecular blade, you know the kind that can cut through a spaceship, and you think I'm following orders?"
She walked closer, and squatted down within reach of him. "I'm not following orders today."
He nodded quickly. "Yes ma'am!"
She reached out, and touched his face. His eyes seemed so much prettier today. This was fun. "Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you, Jae Hyun."
"How do you know my name?" he gulped.
"The same way I know you like dangerous women," she said as she stroked his cheek. His eyes darted around the electric blue scribbles of the mask face. "And I don't know, maybe it's fate we met here today. It feels like it, doesn't it?"
He blushed. "I really don't know what you mean."
Her heart was racing. She hadn't planned this. She didn't know what she was feeling; if she'd put any thought into this she wouldn't have come this far, but there was some desire in her heart she couldn't place, one she hadn't felt before. 
"I'm tired of planning," she said as she stroked his cheek again, and his hand came up to lightly cradle the back of hers. "I don't want to think about what I'm feeling right now. I feel like I've never really seen you before this moment."
She leaned her face in, and reached for the bottom of her mask, starting to pull it up over her chin to reveal her lips.
"Well uh, you haven't seen me before this moment so..." but he kept leaning up towards her lips, and she felt a rush that he quivered a little. And then--
His hand slipped between their lips. "No, no look, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I really can't... I can't. I just... look I realized recently--today actually, that I might really care for someone. Beyond just a crush. Like, really care for them."
Sang Mi stopped. She could feel his breath between his fingers. But she smiled, and pulled back, pulling the mask back down before he could see any of her face. 
"You're making the right choice.” She rose again, retrieving her sword. "I've actually got to find someone. You haven't seen a woman with a metal jaw have you?"
He shook his head.
She sauntered towards the door, her heart spinning in her chest. Had she really just done that? She felt giddy. She reached for the door controls, then stopped and looked back at him. "That special lady, the one you're thinking of, she's real lucky. And maybe she's starting to think feeling the same way might not be the worst idea. Maybe."
"You really think so?"
She laughed. "Yeah, I have it on pretty good authority."
She stepped out of the room, coolly and casually, closed it, and then bolted, sprinting in the first direction she faced with abandon. She laughed, in happiness and confusion, and a newfound sense of power. She skidded around the corner, and gave finger guns to a staff member carrying a box of cups as he recoiled in shock.
She was Kalingkata. 
And she could have anything she wanted.
And she would have anything she wanted.
 
* * *
 
Chomper threw herself around a corner, plastering herself against the wall as though she could sink into it. Glancing to her right, she saw that she'd entered a small hallway that had a few doors marked only with the word "Storage" in several languages. Hearing the guards coming, she took her chance, and tried the closest one.
Thankfully, it opened, and she shut it as quietly as possible, then pressed herself back against it with her ear smashed into the metal. The sound of security boots got closer--and then started drifting away. She slumped down against the door. Her heart was pounding, and as soon as she realized she was safe she took several heaving breaths, clutching her chest and shaking. Everything had gone wrong, this whole operation was supposed to get her in the Gambler’s good graces but now she’d be lucky to even escape this building alive. She felt bad about abandoning Wackwack, but she'd known with a name like that he was going to be temporary help. Still, he'd been loyal for a time. The Accord wouldn't go easy on him.
She waited there in the dark room until she'd calmed down, and pulled her phone out to light the place. It was a boring storage room, and a brief inspection showed there was nothing of value to steal there--but there was something useful: facemasks. She'd be able to hide her cybernetic mouth on her way out. She wasn't sure why the building's surveillance system hadn't spotted her hiding spot yet, but she wasn't going to ask questions about that till she was seated on a transport ship to Ceres. She cleaned herself up as best she could, put the facemask on, and stepped back out. Chomper strolled like she knew what she was doing, where she was going. Important business, somewhere to be, no time to talk. The body language worked, and she slipped by a few groups of passers by till she saw it: her salvation.
The elevator.
Chomper wasn't a praying woman, the closest thing she'd gotten to religion was believing she could still win the lottery Dooley had been throwing at the Rat's Nest. She wasn't sure anyone had won it, which was sketchy, but she still entered. Even so, she found herself praising whatever deities she could think of: God, Jesus, Budha, Thor, David Bowie, Talos, Artemis, whoever had helped her, she was just grateful to be done with this.
She stepped into the empty elevator, and watched the doors shut. The touchscreen controls had a floating cartoon bunny head that was looking down to inspect the icons representing each floor.
"First floor--ground floor? Whatever they call it here. Lobby?" She told the bunny.
The bunny nodded. "Okee dokey! Thanks for visiting the Cao Religious Group--please remember that by entering this building you have waived all liability for damages to persons, property, or finances you incur related to the Cao Religious Group! I hope you had a wonderful time!"
The elevator started descending. The rent here had been cheap for a hideout, but the place was run by a goddamn cult. She closed her eyes, and started thinking about how to get off world.
Then the elevator stopped.
She opened her eyes. It shouldn't have got her down to the lobby that fast? And it seemed odd no one else had gotten on in such a busy building. She looked at the screen--they'd stopped at floor 27. Well, whatever, if the elevator was faulty she'd just get another one. She pressed the open door button. Nothing happened.
"Bunny, er, whatever your name is, open the door."
The bunny head bounced up and down. "Wow! Turns out I can't do that, that's weird! I'd apologize, but it turns out I can't do that either."
She took a step back.
"...Open the door. This is a user override command. AI Safety protocols, those, activate them."
The bunny smiled, "Chomper Chomper, arne't you being a little hasty? Why leave?"
The elevator started moving, going up again. Chomper tried to pry the door open--and the bunny face morphed and melted--the screen turned jet black, and a scribbled face of blue lines appeared on it.
"Come on now Chomper, did you really think I'd let you go? You mess with the best hacker in Cheo--in Takumi--no, the best hacker on goddamn Gongen, and kidnap her friend, and you think you're getting away that easily? Tsk tsk. Did you really think the guards didn't find you because you were slick? I didn't want them to. You're mine."
The doors opened, and there was only darkness beyond.
She pulled her phone out, and turned the light on. It was some sort of hallway, lined with screens. Well, it was better than being on the elevator, probably. She stepped out, and the doors shut behind her before she could rethink her plan.
The screens all turned on, the same scribbled face on them.
"Don't you know who Kalingkata is?" the faces said.
She walked down the hallway slowly, cautiously.
"We asked you a question."
"Y-You're some sort of Poison Pill! I didn't know who I was messing with, okay? I'm leaving! So just, have mercy? I won't come back to Gongen, I swear it."
The faces laughed, their jagged mouths somehow sharper than her own. She expected more words, but they just kept laughing, louder and louder. She ran--but she didn't seem to go anywhere. The hallway couldn't be this long? But she'd run at least a hundred meters, and... she stopped, and stopped just fast enough to feel the floor move her slightly backwards.
It was a treadmill. 
She couldn't go forward. She couldn't go backward. She was trapped. Her only path was sideways. She turned to the screen to her left, where the face smiled smugly at her. She reached out to where the edges of the screen should be--and her hands slipped through.
The face grinned, and a shining sharp blade drew in front of her. She leapt and scampered as it swung, slicing through the screens nearby like scissors through paper. She extended her claws, she had no choice but to fight.
There was this poison pill Kalingkata, hair in a black bob, a yellow hoodie over black compression gear and a black skirt, with grav shoes on her feet, and that ghoulish mask. 
The woman swung again at her, her claws barely parrying the sloppy slice, but even a sloppy slice from a sword like that was terrifying.
And now her left hand didn't have claws, or cybernetic fingers. There was no pain, and she could buy new ones, but the phantom sense that she'd lost her fingers still sent her into a moment of shock. She lost her footing as the treadmill below her started pulling her towards the Poison Pill.
The face tilted to the side. "Tell me Chomper, am I pretty?"
She nodded, then shook her head, and the Poison Pill laughed, putting the blade below her chin.
She froze. A wrong move would mean death. Her breath seemed as loud as a rocket.
"Did you know wasps exist on Gongen?"
Chomper didn't know where this was going, she glanced to her left and right but there were only the glints of broken screens. "No?"
"They do. They stowed away on ships that came here long ago from Earth, digging their filthy nests into the crevices of vessels that were otherwise bringing aid to all the shuddering masses that had fled here from the nuclear disaster. Now they're pests we can't get to go away."
"I--I'll go away, please."
"Shut up," Kalingkata said.
She shut up.
"But do you know why people hate wasps? I suppose you wouldn't. You've never lived a day in your life. If you try to kill a wasp's nest, you have to be patient to make sure they're dead. Because if you don't wait, they can still sting you after they die for a short time. Those little ghouls still give you pain, get their revenge, and you can't do anything about it because you already killed them. You should have made sure I was dead, Chomper."
She raised her hands up, tears welling in her eyes. "I'm sorry! Please, I'm sorry!"
Kalingkata raised the sword up, and Chomper closed her eyes, and whimpered, "I don't want to die, I don't want to die!"
She waited for the sharp stab of pain, but it didn't come.
She opened one eye, and then the other.
Kalingkata stood over her, the sword shaking in her hands.
"...God, what am I doing? What am I... this isn't... this isn't who I am! I'm not like this!"
She took a step backwards, then another, lowering the sword, and placing a hand on her temple. Chomper scooted backwards. "Does this mean..."
The sword slashed down thirty centimeters from her feet, carving a line in the floor. "Just go! Go! Get out of here." The Poison Pill's voice was cracking.
Chomper rose, and started backing up towards the elevator.
The Poison Pill ripped off her mask in the darkness, and threw it on the ground, stabbing the sword down into it. She tore the hoodie off, and hurled it down at her feet. Chomper could hear her crying.
"This... I'm not..."
The Poison Pill turned and ran, disappearing into the shadows.
Chomper clutched her broken hand to her chest and made it back to the elevator. This time, she was able to set it to the lobby for real.
She was never coming back to Gongen, this place was a wasps' nest if she'd ever seen one, and she was tired of getting stung.

-fin

NEXT TIME!
Well, it looks like it’s time for a break. The broadcast club has been delighted to come into your classrooms each week with our announcements. And thankfully we have a great one—we’ll be back! Yes, Mr. Mori has allowed us to keep doing these broadcasts even though he scolded us about it at the same time, we just need a little break to get things together. So, we’ll see you again real soon. What happens next you won’t want to miss, so till then, this has been Hee Jin, your beautiful and talented host here at Academy 27. Sweet dreams.
 
COMING SOON
Academy 27 Season 3 – The Final Season
 
WARSONG: Steel Changelings
 
New Academy 27 stories will drop each Thursday!
Read past stories and learn more about Academy 27 at:
ArcbeatlePress.com/A27

NEXT TIME!
Well, it looks like it’s time for a break. The broadcast club has been delighted to come into your classrooms each week with our announcements. And thankfully we have a great one—we’ll be back! Yes, Mr. Mori has allowed us to keep doing these broadcasts even though he scolded us about it at the same time, we just need a little break to get things together. So, we’ll see you again real soon. What happens next you won’t want to miss, so till then, this has been Hee Jin, your beautiful and talented host here at Academy 27. Sweet dreams.
 
COMING SOON
Academy 27 Season 3 – The Final Season
 
WARSONG: Steel Changelings
 
New Academy 27 stories will drop each Thursday!
Read past stories and learn more about Academy 27 at:
ArcbeatlePress.com/A27

​There was something wrong with her dreams, and not just because Sang Mi didn't really know what she was doing with her future; no, it was mostly the cosmic horror. Most of the world around her was a black void which seemed to rush her lungs with a terrifying emptiness when she tried to breathe. She clutched at her throat, and below her a great swirl moved--blue and purple and white and wonderful and terrible. She had seen this in her dreams before--it had to mean something. But whatever that was was obscured to her. She reached a hand out towards it, and whispers greeted her. She faded out, and the world of the waking faded in.
Her hand was reaching up towards the ceiling, the marbled paint coming into focus between her fingers. In her other hand, she was still holding the blister pack that had held the pair of Delirium pills she'd taken. Pills that her long-term-acquaintance (she refused to use the word friend) Saki had given her. Pills that, whenever she took them, seemed to take her to that void, and the monstrous and glorious swirl of light and color that cut through it all.
"How'd you dream?" Saki said, rolling over on the other bed in the hotel room. "And don't use me asking as an excuse to not fill out the questionnaire. I'm collecting data, not girl-talk."
Sang Mi lowered her hand and rolled over to look at her. Saki Suzuki, presumably also 17, ish. Somehow both beautiful and nondescript in a way that unnerved Sang Mi. "I saw the swirl again."
Saki nodded, and sat up, taking a sip of water from a bottle that was quickly handed to her by the porter-bot that was part of the room's amenities. "It’s the most common image we've gotten while taking Delirium. It has to mean something."
Sang-Mi shrugged. "Maybe. Hey Saki, this drug was made by XeLabs, you said that right? And discontinued?"
Saki nodded again.
"How do we keep getting a hold of them? If they haven't been manufactured in years, wouldn't the pills expire, or the supply run out?"
Saki held her gaze for an awkwardly long moment, and then got up and turned her back on her. "Don't worry about that. You take the drugs, I make sure your big brother keeps his internship. That's all you need to know."
"Great, love the transparency in our partnership."
Saki turned back, smiling ear to ear. "I know! Isn't it great?"
Sang Mi groaned and reached over to turn on the room's entertainment system, slamming play on one of the recommended films for the day without much attention. To her surprise, Saki turned towards the screen, and seemed to lose herself in it, so Sang Mi gave it her full attention too.
It was a movie in Japanese, a language Sang Mi was fluent in even though she hadn't enjoyed learning it in school. A woman was waiting under a streetlamp, presumably for an autocar pick up, when she looked up to see another woman across the street from her wearing a white facemask. The lights flickered, and suddenly the woman across from her was gone! Turning to look for the car, she startled in a cheap jump scare as the masked woman was suddenly next to her. The masked woman leaned in too close and asked: "Do you think I'm pretty?"
The woman stumbled over her words, before answering: "Yes! Yes of course!"
The masked woman removed the mask to reveal that someone had carved through her cheeks all the way to the jaw to make a grisly, wide smile. This effect was however undercut by the prosthetics and CGI not lining up entirely right. With wild eyes, she leaned in even closer, pulling out a pair of sharp surgical scissors. "How about now? Am I pretty now?"
Saki glanced over at her. "Have you seen this one before? It’s pretty good, the effects aren't great but the lady playing Kuchisake-onna is very good. Kuchisake-onna means--"
"Slit-Mouthed Woman, I know." Things were getting very bloody on the screen as they conversed. "We call her the Red Mask Lady around here. The big difference being that... well her mask is red."
They watched the movie together for longer than either had planned, and when Sang Mi went home, she just hoped she wouldn't dream about the monster when she went to bed the next night.
Of course she did.
A red mask pulling away to reveal a disfigured face, the sharp scissors, and the warm breath as she leaned in to ask "Am I pretty?".
 
* * *
 
The blow from the wooden sword on her forearm stung, and caused Sang Mi to drop it, shaking her arm out while hopping up and down and making "ah!" noises.
Their teacher, Ms. Shion, did not sigh (she was a robot after all) but she looked like she wanted to. "Miss Jhe, you cannot continue trying to block a sword with your arm. The best case scenario is you get bruised like you just did, and the worst case scenario is it is an actual sword in which case you would be on your way to the hospital with one less arm."
Leaning down to pick her own practice sword up, she mumbled a "Yes Ms. Shion" and got back into position. She was facing off with her classmate Jae Hyun, who had a massive crush on her. She'd hoped that this would mean he'd take it easy on her, but she had realized too late he was going for "I'm going to show her how good I am!" rather than "I'll let her win!" today in terms of gambits to get on her good side. It was unfortunate--Sang Mi knew she was going to have to put forth actual effort, something she tried to avoid whenever possible. Or at least so she told herself.
Jae Hyun squared his shoulders up, and with a smirk he clearly thought made him look cool, came at her again. This time, Sang Mi used her training and blocked it, the crack of wood against wood echoing in the chamber. He looked flustered that she'd parried so easily, and swung down again harder, which she blocked with a horizontal upswing, keeping the momentum going to try to swing his sword off to the side. It sort of worked, but he put his muscle into it and they ended up with their swords locked in the air each trying to outdo the other.
After a moment, a bead of sweat dripping down her face, Sang Mi suddenly realized what she needed to do, and stopped pushing back. Jae Hyun, who had gotten absorbed in winning their contest instead of the actual goals of kendo, was unable to stop his swing going downwards, and losing his balance in the process. Taking a step to the left, Sang Mi lightly whacked him in the tummy.
"Point," she said with a little too much self-aggrandizement.
"Excellent maneuver, Ms. Jhe. While I'd like for you to finish your match, it is now time for all of you to clean up before heading to your next class. Please be sure to shower--even you, Ms. Ahn, I don't care if you're just going to have to shower again at Track Practice, Mr. Xi has complained to me about your sweatiness in maths class again."
Ahn Hee Jin mumbled an assent, and the class headed out to follow their teacher's orders. She slid in to her class locker to get her shower kit, only to have her peace broken by Li Xiu.
“Is your arm okay?”
She looked at the bruise. “Yeah, I’m fine. At least no one carved my face up.”
Li Xiu tilted her head. “That’s… a weird reply?”
“Its.. there’s this urban legend about a woman in a red mask who carves your face up if you say yes when she asks if you’re pretty. It’s a whole thing. Saki and I watched a movie about it yesterday, so I keep thinking about it.”
"So are you and Saki dating?" Li Xiu asked her.
Sang Mi groaned, and looked to her left for a friendly face. Unfortunately, there was only Zhyrgal Osmonova. Who she may have spent a day stalking and accusing her of being an Earther spy in the past. Zhyrgal looked at her with the unphased look of someone about to enjoy someone else having a bad time.
Sang Mi sighed and turned back to Li Xiu. "No. Absolutely never not ever no."
"Dost thou protest too--"
"No, I'm protesting just enough, too little even. Look, is this about Jae Hyun?”
Li Xiu tried to nonchalantly throw her hair back, but both over did it and whacked her hand into the locker door making her yelp. “Ow! I mean uh, no, of course not. Why would that be, uh, no.”
“Thou dost protest too much.”
“Whatever. Look, I invited him to the big wedding my family is having this weekend. That’s not a problem for you is it?”
She looked away from her, and felt her stomach twist in her chest. “Why would it be a problem for me. He’s just a stupid boy who follows me around everywhere.”
Li Xiu didn’t reply.
“If I was bothered I’d say something. Okay?”
Li Xiu bit her lip.
“I’m really not bothered okay! Its not something I’m concerned about. I really couldn’t care less about—where did you say it was happening again?”
“The Pinnacle of Light Skyscraper we own in the Main Dome.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t… your family owns a skyscraper?”
“That’s not really the point.”
Sang Mi shrugged. “Whatever. Like I said, I don’t care. Do whatever. Its not like I’d be able to show him a skyscraper even if I wanted to.” She looked over at Zhyrgal, who looked much more awkward about how the conversation had gone, all while rooting through her bag. Sighing, Sang Mi reached into her locker and pulled a pad out, holding it out to Zhyrgal.
“…Thanks,” she took it, awkwardly.
“No problem. You had the look.”
She looked back at Li Xiu, and slammed her locker as she walked away towards the showers.
Damn girl was getting worked up over nothing.
 Sang Mi was glad for the chance to shower; if the water was a nice medium-hot temperature she would gladly sit in the shower all day. Of course, this wouldn't do at school, and at home her mom got worried every time she was in there too long that her depression meds weren't working anymore, but she'd take the enjoyment nonetheless. And right now, the water felt like it was washing away the stress of the day. Or well, it was at first.
"We're not meeting tonight," a voice came from the stall next to her. It was, of course, Saki.
"Could you please let me just enjoy my shower?"
"You should be happy, congratulations, you have the night off. Gosh, thank you Saki, what a kind and generous person you are."
"Something has come up you don't want to tell me about," Sang Mi sighed, tilting her head up to let the water douse her face.
"I'll contact you when I'm ready to meet again."
"Great conversation."
 
* * *
 
After school was Track Practice, which went well enough, though the bruise on her arm from where Jae Hyun had hit her was still sore. And it was still sore when she got on the train for the ride home. Usually, she'd take it with her twin brother, but he, in an update that was not frustrating or jealousy-inspiring for her at all, promise, had a date that night. So, she was alone in the car scrolling through her phone when the train stopped, and a woman got on.
The timing seemed odd; they'd just stopped at the station that led to the grocery store, and it seemed like it had been too fast for them to have reached Higen Park. So she looked up.
It had been too fast. They hadn't stopped at a place on the schedule. This was worrisome by itself, but the passenger who had gotten on made it doubly so. She was wearing a red face mask, which accentuated her piercing brown eyes that hovered between them and the straight bangs of her long black hair. She wore a light brown trench coat with large lapels, and brown slip-on shoes.
The woman stared at her.
Sang Mi gave her a fake smile, and then tried to get back to her phone.
"Tell me, am I pretty?"
Sang Mi sighed. "Sorry, lady, I don't talk to people on the train."
The woman got up and slid in next to her.
Sang Mi slid away down the bench. The woman didn't stop staring, her eyes fierce. Manic, even.
"Am I pretty?"
"I think that we shouldn't define ourselves by beauty standards that are still defined by--"
"AM. I. PRETTY!?" she howled, and Sang Mi could have sworn her hair billowed as if a gust of wind had come by.
Holding both hands up, Sang Mi scooted further away. "Okay, look, I get what you're trying to do here. I know all about the Red Mask Lady, the whole schtick. You ask if I think you're pretty, and then if I say yes, you cut my face open or kill me or whatever. So just to make it clear, we're in a public transit car with cameras..."
She glanced up and trailed off as she realized that the little indicator lights that showed that yes--everyone in the car was being monitored at all times by the government--were off. "Ah," she finished lamely.
The woman reached up and pulled the mask fastener on her left ear down so it hung from the other ear.
Beneath it, was a too-wide smile carved from ear to ear, and as the woman spoke again, double rows of shining and sharp metallic teeth glinted. "I asked you, am I pretty?"
Sang Mi sat in silence, trying to figure out the answer that would best work. In some of the legends...
"I think you look... average?" she ventured.
"Yes or no," she countered, and from her coat drew a large pair of long red scissors. In the legends they were supposed to be fabric or surgical scissors, but Sang Mi knew these weren't that--those were bone cutting scissors. Her parents owned a pair, though Sang Mi couldn't remember a time they'd ever used them in the kitchen so they'd gathered dust.
But these were bigger, and maybe it was just her imagination, but sharper. She imagined they had to be used on larger animals. Or corpses.
Her mind was a blank. She tried to think of what to do. She'd had countless fantasies in her head of dangerous situations like this where she'd been a kick-ass heroine, but here she was, and she couldn't think of what to do. What to say.
In the end, she did the only thing that came to her.
She chucked her phone at the Red Mask Lady's head.
The good news was that it slammed into the woman's forehead, and she reeled backwards. The bad news was that the woman surged forward again, and Sang Mi’s instincts came in again—she raised her forearm, and the woman sank her metal teeth into her arm, ripping through skin and dribbling blood out onto the floor. Sang Mi screamed. The woman grinned.
But her training didn’t end there. Ms. Shion would be proud—because she immediately counter-attacked, swinging her fist down onto the woman’s head. She screamed, opening her jaw and freeing Sang Mi, falling down onto her back on the floor as she held her head. This gaveSang Mi time to rush towards the doors of the train and hit the emergency stop button, grabbing onto a railing as the force of the sudden stop threw the woman back further. The emergency release on the doors went off, and Sang Mi rushed out into a cold Gongen night, the thin air stinging her lungs as she ran. And she ran hard, ignoring the blood that trickled out as her arms pumped. She had to escape. It was the only thing that mattered. She was in the wastes, the area between the habitation domes in the middle of the long process of terraforming. The train wasn't supposed to have left the dome--her school and her home were both in Cheonsa dome, and the rest of the city of Takumi was connected by enclosed tunnels and paths.
The train wasn't supposed to leave the city.
Her heart pounded even harder as she kept running. She had dropped her bag, her school supplies weren't worth her life, and whatever was happening she wanted to get as far away from it as possible.
It had to be the Delirium, right?
It wouldn't be the weirdest thing that happened because of that drug.
Or maybe her meds really were fading. She didn’t want to think about the things that might fill her mind if that was the case.
She ran. And ran. Until she knew she needed to stop, regardless of who was chasing her. Not only were her muscles giving out, but she was feeling lightheaded. Maybe she’d lost more blood than she’d like to think about.
Sang Mi came to a halt in nowhere. She panted, and spun around ready to come to blows--there was nothing behind her. She was alone, and no matter which direction she looked there was nothing. She reached under her jacket and ripped off a chunk of her shirt, wrapping it as tightly as she could around her wounded arm. She scrunched her shoulders in and folded her arms. It was cold, far below freezing. The panic she’d felt had kept her going without her body really registering the temperature, let alone the pain, but now it suddenly sank into her bones, made worse by the layer of cooling sweat on her skin. The planet had warmed up considerably over centuries of terraforming, but there was a reason people lived in the habitation domes. Gongen might make jokes about how Earthers couldn't stand the cold or the thin air, but everyone knew getting caught unprepared in the wastes was a death sentence.
More than one family had been sentenced to walk into the wastes with no gear or food as punishment for some transgression. Many debated whether that was cruel or kind.
That being said it was definitely embarrassing she had put herself in this situation.
She couldn't just keep standing here, she needed to keep moving. Come on then, you're smart. Think.
Takumi was located on the planet's equator--which allowed the moon of Phobos to pass directly overhead as it followed the path of it. One of her elementary school teachers had told her they'd put the city there just so the moon would pass overhead, which was romantic, but after some fact checking she’d learned they’d just picked this location because the equator was the warmest place on a cold planet.
Phobos was on the horizon--it moved from west to east in the sky, and passed overhead three times and some change each day. She tried to think if in the last 7 hours and 39 minutes she'd looked up at the sky.
She closed her eyes, and tried to ignore the cold, tried to think.
She'd been running Track practice. Hee Jin’s ponytail was in her line of sight as they circled the track, but beyond the back of her friend’s head… The side of the track closest to the wastes faced west. She knew that because her friend JackBox lived in Colocog that way. Over the course of practice, it had moved slightly overhead... starting from the side of the dome to the west.
Phobos was in the East now. That was East.
She'd seen the moon out the window on the other side of the train, that was east. The Train had been heading south-east-ish out of the city. She turned herself, and started in a direction she was pretty sure was north-west and started trudging.
It got colder, and colder, and pretty soon Sang Mi was regretting not letting the woman carve her face in. Then she saw it--a little moving thing on the horizon. She began to yell, to jump up and down, waving, then running towards it. Her exhaustion took a brief leave of absence as her body went into overdrive--she stumbled as her cold limbs pushed themselves. She couldn't let this chance pass her by. She didn't know why any of this was happening, but she sure was hell wasn't going to die out here.
The dot settled, and then turned, and started heading towards her.
Thank God. Praise God. She fell to her knees, it was too cold to cry, but she wanted to. Her body gave out under her as she continued to wave.
Eventually a hover truck pulled up in front of her, the lights blinding her and leaving the two figures who dropped off the sides of it to be black shapes.
"It's a kid, what the hell is she doin' out here?" she could tell by the accents, and the English, they were Mavericks from the Colocog colony.
"I got attacked! I was on a train, it’s... look, thank you, please I just need to get home."
The pair got closer; one was a Caucasian man with short blonde hair who was handsome even with the facial tattoos that weren’t to Sang Mi’s liking, as well as more than a few cybernetic parts, and the other a woman who gave off strange vibes of being a bit Earther, a bit Gongen, and a bit Maverick, dressed in a refined business suit with red tattoos curling up from under the collar.
"You're pretty far from home, kid," the woman said.
"Like I said, I got attacked!” She held up her arm to show the now reddened shirt scrap bandage. “Look, you're from Colocog, right? I know JackBox, I'm a good friend of hers."
"Who?" the woman asked.
"An agent of ours in the area. Not someone to mess with," he grunted.
"Can I please get in the truck, I am freezing. I really don't feel good."
"We should just shoot her," the woman said. "Better no one knows we were here."
Sang Mi froze up, on top of being frozen. Her jaw trembled slightly. That was... that had to be a joke, right? Yeah. Yeah...
He shook his head. "Nah," he pulled out a comm, and hit a switch on it. "Hey JackBox, It's Starhawk."
JackBox’s voice chimed out of the comm. "Hey boss--wait, there's no delay, you're on world?"
"Long story here with Horus’ aide, Petra. You got a friend named... shit, what's your name kid?"
"Jhe Sang Mi! I'm Jhe Sang Mi! Or Kalingkata, that's a nickname! I--"
"I got it, shut up. You hear that?"
"That's my friend, she helped me land the deal with Ito Ryuu, she's cool. You don't need to worry about her."
He smirked at Sang Mi as she shivered below him. "You hear that kid, you're cool. You might even say... frozen!"
No one laughed.
"Oh come on, that was good!"
Petra sighed. "Whatever, just get her in the truck."
 
* * *
 
 
After about half an hour, Sang Mi finally felt warm enough to talk beyond mumbling thank-yous. They’d wrapped her in a blanket (it smelled only a little weird), wrapped her arm in a new bandage (thankfully clean), and gave her a cup of hot steamy coffee (it tasted like they’d burned the beans, not ground them finely enough, and then steeped it too long and hot).
Sipping it, while it didn't exactly taste good, had made her feel human again. "So where exactly are we going?"
Starhawk winked, which she thought was maybe a bit much. "We're actually here to see your friend. Crazy co-incidence."
She furrowed her brow. "Yeah, sure is. Hey, you haven't had anything weird happen to you since you've been here? Like, see a face behind you in the mirror, or get trapped in the bathroom, or find a strange arcade cabinet, or watch a lost episode of the Sherlock TV show from the turn of the millennium?" She paused, and realizing she'd gotten away from her point veered back onto it. "...Or seen the Red Mask Lady, the Slit-Mouthed Woman?"
Petra sighed, and got more engaged in work on her padd.
Starhawk was raising an eyebrow. "You don't seem like the kind of kid who'd ask that out of nowhere."
"She's a kid," Petra said with exasperation. "She might have just seen a weird Professor X episode or something."
Sang Mi sipped the coffee, trying to think of a good reply, but her thoughts were cut off by the driver in the cab in front of them calling back. "We're here."
Petra and Starhawk threw on thick parkas, and since there wasn't a spare one Sang Mi kept the blanket around her like a kid sneaking downstairs to raid the fridge. Starhawk threw the doors to the back of the truck open, and they stepped out in front of a warehouse--a huge warehouse in rows of other warehouses. Takumi was a manufacturing hub, amongst other things, and the massive warehouse districts outside the city were testament to that.
"This some sort of heist?" Sang Mi asked, pulling the blanket tight around her.
Starhawk just gave a "ha", and walked forward to a side door, tapping it with a key card. Petra pushed on her back lightly, getting her through the door, and the inside caused Sang Mi's jaw to drop. They were in a glass box, that looked out on what appeared to be a factory. Large vats of chemicals stirred, machines formed pills and tinctures, and people in white sanitary jumpsuits wandered around the facility making sure the machines were working properly, and making adjustments if necessary. The really distinctive thing about their suits though was that the employees wore a black mask that covered their face--up to just below the hairline, with a hood above it doing the rest--and that black cloth displayed blue lines that formed emoji-like expressions so that they could communicate with each other as they spoke.
She got up to the glass, and as she watched the manufacturing work, she realized what the place was.
Because she recognized what one of the machines was making.
Most of the processing here was making mass productions of pills or the like, but off to one side was a very unique set of machinery, far unlike the rest. It didn't just have a dedicated employee inspecting it, it had a pair of guards.
And the fluids being heated and cooled while running through glass tubes, formed into tablets, and stamped out, were becoming something she was incredibly familiar with.
Delirium tablets.
She knew Saki couldn't possibly have a supply of pills that was still potent after all this time. She knew Saki had money--she owned a hotel, she owned a Pharmacy. That she was working with Maverick Gangsters from the infamous Accord shouldn't have been particularly surprising.
A pair of the jumpsuited employees stepped into an airlock that led into the glass area, were sprayed with a series of blasts of presumably a cleanser or disinfectant, and then stepped into their glass enclosure. Both had blue smiley faces on their black masks, though that didn't last long as one was ripped off to reveal her friend JackBox who practically tackled her in a hug.
"Oh my god! You have no idea how worried I was, what the hell were you doing in the wastes? You don't have frostbite do you?"
"I'm alright! I'm alright, your friends here took care of me."
JackBox pulled back, though she kept a hand on Sang Mi's shoulder. "I really appreciate you looking after her, boss."
Starhawk shrugged. "No trouble at all. I see things are going well here," he gestured to the other person who had walked in with her. "Whose the double?"
Pulling her own mask off, the face of Saki Suzuki smiled pleasantly back at her. "Surprised?" she said, as if following a cue card. And knowing her she might have been.
"You know, I am. I am surprised a lot today," she glanced at JackBox, and back at Saki. "There's actually something we need to talk about Saki, about dreams again."
Clearly exasperated, Petra sighed. "It doesn't matter if you're super interested in urban legends, Ms. Suzuki doesn't need to hear about Slit-Mouthed women or--"
Saki spun, her eyes wide and her entire demeanor going from smug to alert. "What did you just say?"
Petra lowered her padd. "She was talking on the ride here about urban--"
"No," Saki said firmly, and looked back to Sang Mi. "Did you see her? Did you see The Red Masked Lady?"
Sang Mi nodded.
JackBox looked down at the bandages on Sang Mi's arm. "...Wait, I heard you were cold, but did something bite you?"
"Yeah, the Red Masked--"
Saki grabbed Sang Mi, forcefully, even as she tried to pull away and JackBox tried to interfere. JackBox yelling and slapping her didn't stop Saki from ripping the bandages off- revealing the bloody bite mark seemed to grow to twice her height. "We need to go on lockdown, get all the security--"
She had the right idea, once again Saki Suzuki was obnoxiously correct. And if Sang Mi had had a few more moments to let it sit in, she might have been indignant.
But no one had any time to do anything.
Not when the wall exploded.
The concussion knocked them all to the ground, and shattered the glass around them. Sang Mi felt herself lose the ground beneath her, and she could see shards of glass in the air shining like snowflakes, and her hand reaching out, her foot flailing into view as she flew.
When she hit the ground, her ears were ringing, and soon the world faded out, but not before her view of the ceiling and smoke was interrupted by an overly wide smile of two rows of metal teeth. The Slit-Mouthed Woman said something, but all she heard was ringing.
And then the ringing stopped, and it was only dreams.

NEXT TIME!
Wait a second, part 2? A second part? This isn’t over? What’s going to happen to Sang Mi? We have track practice she can’t get caught in an explosion! This isn’t acceptable! We have to have next week get here immediately I need to know what happens.
How are they going to solve this!?!
Oh, and the Chess Club is meeting in Mr. Xi’s room today.
Till next time, I’m your announcer from the Broadcast Club, Hee Jin!
 
Tune in Next Week For:
A Wasps’ Nest of Ghouls Part 2
By James Wylder
 
New Academy 27 stories will drop each Thursday!
Read past stories and learn more about Academy 27 at:
ArcbeatlePress.com/A27

The Phantom
Within the shadows
Of this school
We were told he was gone
Saved from the delusions of madness
Right?
Was he the Phantom?
Or was it someone else?
Should the story have been called…
The Phantom(s)?
* * *
      The bell rang as it always did. The students marched throughout the halls, a melody of words and shouts and music spewing from unplugged headphones, the beat of footsteps of shoes marching down to class after class, cafeteria to bathroom. 
      And amidst it all, Charlie Parker watched like he always did. While others had friends beside them, lovers intertwined in their arms, or even a hidden pet snake slithering in their backpack (no one tell the principal), Charlie watched alone. There were others that watched alone, but those were only temporary. Soon enough they’d find a partner or their friend would return from being sick, or they’d get a friend that would march with them throughout. Charlie, on the other hand, was a permanent watcher. Alone.
      But that was okay. He wouldn’t be for long.
* * *
      It was the middle of class when it all started. Sang Mi was looking out the window, trying desperately to ignore Saki’s latest ramblings about Delirium and the latest findings and god knows what else, while Mrs. Ichinose went on with her lecture. Then Helena Kiner’s soft voice cut through the noise and turned the entire day on its head.
      “Excuse me, miss?” Helena asked. “Can I…you know…do the thing?”
      “Oh yes, of course,” Mrs. Ichinose replied, her face slightly flustered as if she’d forgotten. “Go ahead; I’ll let the officials know.”
      “Hmn,” Saki said as Helena raced out the door. “Wonder what she’s doing.”
      “Oh, she’s probably going to see her brother,” Ihor interjected. “Since he’s in juvie and all.”
      “Oh, really?” Saki said, her eyes widening with interest. “Tell me more.”
      “Wait, Sang Mi didn’t tell you?” Ihor laughed, turning towards the two girls. 
      “Well, she mentioned something, but she didn’t really give me any details,” Saki said, giving Sang Mi a bit of a harsh glance. Sang Mi shrugged.
      “I wasn’t that involved in it,” she replied. “Besides, it’s all done and over with now.”
      “Regardless, I’d still like to hear it,” Saki said with a slight smile, the gears in her mind already turning and sparking to life.
      So Ihor spilled the beans, whispering the tale of Maquois the Phantom and his shenanigans with the theater department. Saki listened the whole time, furiously taking notes all the while. Sang Mi, meanwhile grimaced as Ihor went over her involvement and the aftermath, knowing that Saki was going down yet another rabbit hole that she’d be dragged into. Her dread was only cemented when Ihor reached Charlie punching Maquois and the tearful reunion with Helena. Saki would definitely be interested in this.
      Almost as soon as the bell rang, Saki turned and hissed, 
“Meet me outside and cancel all your plans. We’re going on a little trip.”
* * *
      While everyone else was racing away to get home, Charlie merely walked amidst the marathon of the crowd, not in any rush. Others had parents and families to go back to, so it was understandable that they were in a hurry. Charlie, on the other hand, didn’t. And it was all his fault.
* * *
      “Tell me again why we’re here?” Sang Mi hissed as she and Saki walked into the visiting room of juvie. A soft lofi playlist was wafting through the speakers, but she didn’t pay it any attention, instead trying to poke through the ice walls of Saki’s mind.
      “I had a hunch,” Saki simply replied, not even bothering to look at Sang Mi as she sat down in one of the hard plastic seats. 
      “A hunch?! Really?”
          “Look, people don’t just decide to reenact Phantom of the Opera for no reason,” Saki said as Sang Mi took a seat. “This was a mental break and I hardly doubt that it was something that can be brought about by just schoolwork.”
      “This is lunacy,”  Sang Mi grumbled. “Ever since you heard about this damn incident you’ve been obsessed with it.”
      “Who wouldn’t be?” Saki shot back. “This sounds exactly like something we’d be looking for.”
“I was involved in it, remember? I got the tapes that caught him. I didn’t see anything that would be anything connected to Delirium.”
“So then what’s the other explanation? Besides, if you didn’t think there was anything to it back then, why did you get involved in the first place? You hacked the school’s cameras and had your brother show a teacher… how would I put it, not-school-appropriate videos so you could give Ihor the tapes?”
Sang Mi sputtered, but nothing came out. Was there really anything she could say in regards to that? Saki leaned back with a smile as the facility’s staff brought forward Maquois. It was that same old annoying smile when she knew that she was right and it hurt Sang Mi to her very core.
      It had been in the back of her head, hadn’t it? All this time. Sure, with everything going on she wasn’t ACTIVELY thinking about it day and night, but it had always puzzled her. What had gone on during that day? Could it have been connected to Delirium? 
      Then Maquois came up and it all came flooding back. The boy’s hair had grown longer and he was seemingly a couple inches taller, but the biggest change was his eyes. He’d seemingly had a weight lifted off his shoulders and it showed. His eyes shone brighter than they’d ever had before and the slight smile on his face was genuine.
      “Wow, seven whole visitors today?” he joked. “Must’ve won the lottery.”
      “Seven?” Sang Mi asked in amazement.
      “Yeah. Sister, parents, friends…they add up.” He let out a laugh and leaned back in his chair. “So, what can I do for you all?”
          “Well, uh, I…” Sang Mi stuttered. She didn’t know how to put this. She had no idea what Maquois’ mental state was. He seemed perfectly fine now, but who knows if the therapy had done anything for him or not.
      “Maquois, I’m Saki, just transferred, blah blah blah introduction over,” Saki butted in without a second of hesitation. “I…we are interested in the phantom incident.”
      Maquois gave a little laugh. “Join the club,” he said. “I’m practically famous now from that.”
      “We don’t mean to intrude,” Sang Mi hurriedly interjected, poking her elbow into Saki. “All we really wanted to know is if there was a potential…thing…that started the path of the Phantom.”
      Saki glared at Sang Mi, but this time Sang Mi held her ground. There was no way Sang Mi was going to allow Saki to ask the dozens of invasive questions that she’d obviously had planned.
      “You mean a trigger?” Maquois said, furrowing his brow as he went deep into thought. “I guess it all started because of those dreams.”
      “Dreams?” Saki asked with a smile of interest on her face.
      “Oh yeah, that was the catalyst,” Maquois said. “I was trapped with the strange…creature, if you can even call it that.”
      “What kind of creature?” Saki probed.
      “Honestly I have no clue,” Maquois said. “I couldn’t even tell if it was human or not; it was just…a mess of flesh and robotics.”
      “And do you still have those dreams?” Sang Mi asked.
      Maquois shook his head. “Not since the incident, no.”
      “Any idea what made them stop?” Saki interjected.
      “Either the power of siblinghood or Charlie’s punch,” Maquois laughed. “My therapists say it was Helena, but I think it was the punch.”
      “Indeed,” Saki said, looking at him with a new kind of intensity, one that worried Sang Mi ever so slightly.
      “Yeah,” Maquois said. “So, any more questions?”
      Sang Mi shook her head and turned to look at Saki. That look was still there on Saki’s face, one of discovery, of a generation of new questions.
      But she simply shook her head. “No, no more questions from me.”
* * *
      It happened again. Charlie hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He had homework to do after all, being a loner didn’t mean he was a bad student. And he had gotten plenty of sleep last night; it was easy to do when there was no one in your house.
      But snore into slumber he did and the dreams that he’d had for so long began yet again. It was something familiar this time, a far cry from what he’d been dreaming about lately. Maquois was in the front and center of this one, years older than he was now. Battle armor glistened in what Charlie could only assume was shiplight, a gun strapped to Maquois’ back. Then a monstrously inhuman creature marched down beside him, full of strange implants and mechanical parts melded together with flesh.
      “Oh, hey Bog.” Maquois said.
      “It’s BOOOOG!” the creature replied, its ugly face frowning in strangely childish anger. It was so repulsive, if Charlie wasn’t forced to watch it due to ‘dream logic’, he’d look away in an instant.
      “Jesus christ,” Charlie thought to himself. “If THIS was what he saw, no wonder he went crazy.”
      Then it ended like it always did; the vision melting away and the nightmare that he’d created began again. And then the ending; the final act of his story.
      The grand explosion.
* * *
      “So what now?” Sang Mi said as they walked out of juvie. “You were so hyped about coming here and now you’re just gonna leave?”
      “Yep, you hit the nail on the head,” Saki replied. “Meet me back at school tomorrow.”
      “Now wait, hold on!” Sang Mi shot back, hurriedly racing in front of Saki. “You’re planning something; you let Maquois go way too easy. I know when you’re hiding something, we’ve been looking into Delirium for too long for me not to notice.
      Saki sighed. “Look, this isn’t as exciting as I thought it was, but I’m closing up the last of the leads. We’re gonna check out Charlie and Helena tomorrow.”
      “Why?”
      “Cause I’m curious. It could totally be a coincidence that it stopped when it all ended, but there’s always the possibility…
      “The possibility of what?”
“That something else happened on that day. Something that stopped Maquois’ visions.”
Sang Mi practically laughed. “Really? You think that one of them could’ve stopped it?”
“Look, there’s something odd about Charlie at the very least,” Saki said. “You barely see him around; he’s clearly hiding something.”
“What if he’s just antisocial? Plenty of people are introverts.”
“I thought about that. But then again, why did he end up in the center of the whole Phantom saga?”
“Huh?”
“Think about it. Ihor was involved because he was directly affected by it. Helena and Maquois for obvious reasons. Hell, you and your brother were involved because of your connection with Ihor. But why Charlie? Remember, he went in to punch Maquois. He did that deliberately even though he wasn’t involved at all.”
“He was a suspect though,” Sang Mi countered. “People saw him in the hallways.”
“Yes, but no one told him that. Come on now, Sang Mi, I thought you were clever. For all intents and purposes, he wouldn’t have known what was going on.”
“What’s your point?” Sang Mi sighed.
“The point is that Charlie somehow knew enough that Maquois would be in that theater. The investigation cleared him of being the Phantom or being involved with Maquois, so there’s only one other explanation.”
“And that is?”
“He had knowledge of an event he couldn’t have possibly known was going to happen.”
* * *
      Charlie groaned as he woke up. What time was it? He glanced at the clock next to his bed; 2AM in the morning. Great. Just what he needed. With a grunt, he fell off of his family’s couch and stood up rubbing his eyes.
      Glancing towards the door, his heart beat faster when he saw a nice little brown package outside the window. Perfect; his delivery had arrived. Hurriedly opening the door, he grabbed the package and pulled it inside.
      As the door slammed shut, he couldn’t help, but notice the little painting that was on the front. His father had done that, back when he had a father at least. “It’ll make our door the talk of the town!” the old man had said. At the time Charlie had only laughed at his father’s pie-in-the-sky dreams, but now he’d given anything to hear them again. 
      His mother too. He could just imagine her voice, encouraging his Dad as he stroked the brush across the door, still energetic even after coming back from work. That was the thing about his mother; what she lacked in common sense, she made up with in enthusiasm and spirit.
      He tore open the package, fueled by those memories. Metal parts spewed out onto the floor, around five or six in varying sizes and shapes. To any outsider, it would look like utter junk, but it was exactly what Charlie needed.
      “Now all I need is fuel,” he thought to himself. “And then I’ll have everything I need.”
* * *
      “So who’s first?” Sang Mi reluctantly asked as they walked into school the next day. The hallway was so loud with the hustle and bustle of students that she had to repeat it over the mass of sound.
      “Well, Charlie technically, but we need to stop by Ihor first,” Saki replied as they finally reached a quieter section. “Charlie’s slippery; I certainly don’t know where he hangs out most of the time.”
      Sang Mi opened her mouth, but shut it before she said anything. It hit her; she didn’t know where Charlie hung out most of the time either. Even when he was in her classes she had no idea where he went afterwards.
      “And what makes you think Ihor’s gonna know?” Sang Mi shot back. “Charlie left after he punched Maquois, remember?”
      “Well it’s better than just standing around, hoping that he magically falls into our laps,” Saki said.
      “Fine,” Sang Mi said as they walked into the class. The two looked around, only to see a grand total of zero Ihors situated amidst the desk. Before they could do anything else, the bell rang, forcing the two to sit down as the lecture began.
      “That’s…unfortunate” Saki hissed. She hadn’t planned for this. It was around the time people started getting sick, sure, but it hadn’t gone into full swing yet.
      “Now what?” Sang Mi asked.
      “I…don’t know.”
* * *
      “Hey! Rager tonight at 10! You down?”
      “Hell yeah!”
      Charlie sighed a little bit as the two students walked past him. He couldn’t help, but long to join them, even though he knew the reality of his situation. He didn’t like being this distant, this far away from everyone else. There was nothing more he wanted then to join that rager, dance in the purple lights with his peers as they committed acts of debauchery and mindless fun in ways only those who were still young could.
      But he had to remain a watcher, a silent seer. This had to be the way it was done. Otherwise when he was gone, he’d leave behind a sea of shattered hearts and he didn’t want that at all. It was easier for him to just hurt himself rather than potentially leave behind a world of hurt.
      He checked his phone; the delivery of fuel had arrived. Good. All could come together tonight. Shoving it back into his pocket, he started to walk down the hallway, ready to skip the rest of his classes to get it done.
      Or rather, he would have, if he hadn’t sleepily slipped on a puddle of alcohol, left over from a confiscation earlier in the day. Normally he would’ve been able to recover, but the leftover tiredness from last night overtook him and he fell to the floor, knocking himself clean out.
* * *
      The visions began again. This time he was seeing a vision from his future. It was hard to make out, but he could see two women; Sang Mi and Saki, sitting in front of him as the three sat around a table on the theater stage. He could vaguely hear snippets of what they were saying; “phantom”, “punch”, “delirium”, and “care”.
      Almost as soon as it had begun, it fell away to his nightmare. To that day, when his parents were erased from reality. He relieved every second of the original nightmare, the initial shock when he’d woken up as the morning light streamed through the room, and the journey to the kitchen where he was ready to have a hearty laugh about the stupid dream. Only to find that they weren’t there. And they weren’t in their room. They weren’t even in his mother’s work database or in the school system’s “legal guardian” list. They were nowhere. Erased from reality.
      Then came the grand finale. The vision of the future that was always clear, a path that he knew since he went to sleep on the first day of his new reality, a path that he had decided to take once he knew what it would bring.
      He was flying, over the houses, over the school. Then, once he was above the roof, he detonated the jetpack, blowing him to pieces and bringing back his parents.
* * *
      Charlie let out a groan as he woke up. The school nurse was fussing over him, checking his vitals and placing a bag of ice over his aching head. She said some stuff and he answered her questions semi automatically, watching out the window for the inevitable arrival of the two girls.
      The clock that sat on the wall ticked away and Charlie anxiously tapped his feet as the nurse continued to write on the clipboard. What was taking so long? Couldn’t she hurry up? It didn’t matter if he had brain damage or a concussion or whatever; he’d be dead by the end of the night anyway. There was no reason to waste resources on him.
      But eventually she finished and sent him on his way with a lollipop. Rather outdated given their grade level, but Charlie appreciated the gesture. He instinctively stuck it in his mouth, letting himself indulge in the old childhood memories. Oh, those simple days, before he’d been given this strange power, these visions, and been thrown into this hell he could tell nobody about.
      Tossing the candy in the trash as he walked out the door, he turned to find Saki and Sang Mi walking down the hallway, the two arguing furiously about what to do next. He could hear his name multiple times, Saki in particular. Taking a breath, he marched into the hallway and turned to face the two.
      “Heard you said my name?” he said, causing the two to instantly stop in their tracks.
      “Oh, hi Charlie!” Sang Mi said nervously.
      “Do you have a minute?” Saki asked, not even wasting a second.
      Charlie nodded.
      “Of course,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you.”
* * *
      It was exactly as Charlie’s vision had foretold. The three of them sat around a table set up in the center of the theater stage, Charlie on one side and Sang Mi and Saki on the other. The lights were dim, but not completely dead, giving the room a vibe of interrogation, of secrets waiting to be uncovered. Any other kid brought here would’ve probably been freaked out beyond belief and spilled any secret the two girls wanted to know.
      That is, it would’ve been if Charlie was like the rest. But he wasn’t. He had gone through so much and seen things beyond human imagination. Barely anything fazed him anymore. To him, all this was just one last hurdle before he could finish his mission, save his parents.
      “So, what’s this all about?” he asked. It was a genuine question, to be fair. Just because he knew they were coming for him didn’t mean that he knew what they were here for. 
      “Well…uh,” Sang Mi stuttered.
      “We’re here about the Phantom incident,” Saki jumped in. 
      Charlie frowned slightly. That was…odd. Why would they want to know about that? All that nonsense had been dealt with a while back. He hadn’t even been that much involved in it in the first place. All he’d really done was punch Maquois and watch the chaos unfold, just like it had played out in his dreams.
      “What about it?” he asked. “I told everything already to the school officials and I’m pretty sure that my punch was considered self defense, right?”
      “It’s not about that,” Sang Mi said.
      “Then what is it about?” Charlie asked. He was somewhat confused. What else could there be to ask about? And for that matter, why were they asking him? Was this some kind of true crime podcast?
      “Well,” Saki said, leaning in a bit. “We’re just curious how you found out how this thing was going on.”
      “Huh?”
      “Like, you weren’t involved in the theater at ALL. The most you probably knew was when Maquois ran by you in the hallway. So how did you know where he was gonna be?”
      “I listened?” Charlie said, trying his best to keep his composure. “It’s not hard to hear rumors.”
      “But what rumors would tell you that he was going to be there at that time?” Saki said. “The rumors were about who the Phantom was, not where he was.”
      “Wh...what are you trying to say?”
      “Tell me,” Saki said, getting up from her seat and leaning right up against the table. Her eyes practically met Charlie’s and he shivered slightly. “What were your dreams like?”
      His heart skipped a beat. The room suddenly seemed to shrink around him and his mind raced rapidly. How the hell did they know about that? Did they have those dreams too? Or were they just bluffing?
      “Stay focused!” he thought to himself. He had to get through this so he could get home and trade his life for his parents’. That meant that he had to get through this without arousing suspicion or getting detained in any way.
      “Excuse me?” he said in the most baffled tone he could muster.
      “You don’t have dreams of the future or anything like that?” Saki pressed. “Of events yet to happen? Deliriums of moments yet to pass?”
      “Uh…no?” Charlie said. He looked at her as if he had exactly no idea what they were talking about. It was practically a perfect act; Sang Mi was already pulling at Saki’s sleeve to try and get her to stop.
      “Are you sure?” Saki said, leaning in closer and closer.
      “Pretty sure,” Charlie replied. “Seriously, Saki, is everything okay?”
      “Saki!” Sang Mi cried out, pulling her back into her seat. “He doesn’t know! You’re barking up the wrong tree!”
      “But then how did he know?!” Saki shot back.
      “He probably just got lucky! Come on Saki, let it go!”
      “You know, just because I’m a bit of a loner, doesn’t mean that I’m a future killer in the making,” Charlie added on. “Some people just don’t have a lot of friends.”
      That cemented it. Saki looked utterly humiliated, all her confidence and aggression drained away. Defeated, she muttered an apology, then gathered up her things and started to walk out of the theater, her shoes leaving behind defeated footsteps in the empty auditorium.
Sang Mi grabbed her backpack and turned to follow her as well. But before she started to walk, she paused and turned around to face Charlie.
“Hey,” she said. “Have you, by any chance…lost someone?”
Charlie nearly fell out of his chair, only just barely able to keep his composure.
“Uhh…yeah,” he said, not quite sure what to say in response to that.
“Thought so,” Sang Mi replied. She pulled her chair back and sat down in it slightly, her eyes meeting Charlie’s as she continued to speak.
“I’ve been through…tragedy myself,” she said. “Grief, the whole shebang. And I know how it can isolate people. So…if you ever need anything, come talk to me okay?”
          “S…sure. Wil…will do,” Charlie stuttered as Sang Mi stood up and raced after Sang Mi. His heart was racing. The words kept playing in his head and he felt feelings that he hadn’t felt in a very long time.
“Focus!” he thought to himself. He grabbed his stuff and raced out of the theater, running towards his house as fast as he could. He tried to keep the thoughts of his mission in his head, the memories of his parents strong. And yet for the first time in a while, there was doubt in his heart.
* * *
      “What took you so long?” Saki asked.
      “Personal stuff,” Sang Mi replied. “You know, you really need to get your head out of your ass every once in a while.”
      “Excuse me?”
      “Charlie’s clearly going through some shit,” Sang Mi said as the two walked out the door. “He’s just detached, that's all.”
      “Are you saying that I’m trying to be an asshole?”
      “No…I just think that perhaps you have a bit of Delirium of your own. A delirium that you can’t always see past.”
      With that Sang Mi split from Saki and walked away. Saki just watched her go for a moment, then turned the other way and started to walk down her own path.”
* * *
      The jetpack felt heavier and heavier the longer Charlie kept holding it, but he just couldn’t find it in him to put it on. There was nothing stopping him; it was dark as void outside and the house was empty as usual. Barely any sounds were left, apart from the occasional drunk stumbling around or the TV in the background spouting some shit about a secret Maverick group that were building flesh starships or something like that. 
      “Come on, move!” Charlie thought to himself. He practically forced himself to put the jetpack on, pulling the straps and tightening the belt. And yet the whole time he couldn’t stop thinking of Sang Mi’s words.
      She was right. That was what he’d been doing this whole time. Somehow, without the proper context, this girl that barely knew him had exposed his feelings bare and it felt…strangely good? To finally be seen, to be out there.
      “The mission,” Charlie tried to focus, just repeating the same phrase over and over. “The mission.”
      He had to do this. To bring his parents back, he had to die here and now. That was what his visions, his “delirium” had told him. There was no other way. It happened this very way every time he dreamed; an exploding jetpack, taking him out and bringing back his parents.
      But…was this what he wanted? He thought back to Maquois; why had he gotten involved then? The visions he’d had showed Maquois getting punched, but it had never shown him who did it. It didn’t have to be him. So why? Sure, his punch had effectively ended those visions that tormented him, but he didn’t know that at the time. So why did he do it?
      More memories came back, of his fight with Hanzo. He didn’t remember much about it, only that Hanzo was bullying some kid. This wasn’t even a part of a vision, he’d just seen it happen. Why? What was connecting it all?
      The desire he’d had earlier when hearing about the party came back, only this time he truly understood what it was. He didn’t just want to belong, he wanted to help other people, to be a part of a community. In spite of his grand mission, those little moments where he’d let himself intervene, let himself be a part of something greater.
      “That’s why I have to do this!” Charlie tried to rationalize. But it just didn’t work. Desperate, he raced outside and took a look at the painting at the door. It shone there just as vividly, but it wasn’t enough this time to get him to focus.
      If anything, that very image made him pause again. Words, images floated into his head, a memory that he’d long forgotten. It was strange; he’d tried so hard to preserve any memory he’d had of his parents, but this one had slipped through the cracks.
      “Awesome drawing!” he’d said on that day, crawling into his father’s arms for a hug. His dad had laughed and his mother too.
      “Indeed,” his dad had replied. “But my greatest painting is you, don’t you forget.”
      “Mine too,” his mother had interjected. “This door will break down someday, but we’re gonna keep you forever!”
      Charlie shook his head, but he couldn’t stop the tears flowing from his eyes. Everything was just so confused, so messy, he just wanted clarity, he wanted his parents back, he wanted to save them but also himself and and and and…
      With a scream, he slammed his hand into the jetpack and it roared into the air. The wind blew in his face as he flew over the houses, over the buildings, over the terraformed surface. He didn’t stop until he reached the school, floating just above the roof.
      “This is it,” he thought to himself. He pushed a button situated on the right arm strap of the jetpack, priming it for detonation. The device let out a loud beep, a warning that it was going to explode. Taking in a deep breath, Charlie opened his eyes for the last time and took a look at the view. 
      And then he tore off the jetpack and fell to the roof, rolling as he landed so he wouldn’t break anything. The jetpack spun through the air, no longer attached to anything as the beeping got louder and louder. Filled with panic, Charlie raced to the edge of the roof only to see it slam into his house directly into the painting, exploding and sending a stream of fiery light into the darkness.
      Charlie screamed. This hadn’t been what he’d wanted to do at all! His eyes were waterworks now as the painting burnt away in the flame. Now who was going to remember his parents?
      He stopped. Remembering his parents. The thought caught into his brain like a fishhook and it wouldn’t let go. That…that was why he’d let go of the jetpack. It wasn’t an accident, it was a choice, and that fishhook stayed there because that was his reason for the choice. He shook his head. What a mistake. It would’ve been so much better if they were here, not just memories…
      But would they have been happy here? Without him? He tried to convince himself the answer was yes, that he would’ve been making the right choice. But would they? The same people that had told him that he was their painting, their eternity?
      “No,” he thought to himself as he watched his house burn. “No, I guess they wouldn’t be.”
      Clarity came over him, for the first time in a while. He had pushed himself away, not just from society, but from the wishes of his parents as well. They probably hadn’t wanted to be erased from reality by whatever the hell he had done, but they wouldn’t have wanted him to die either. And if he died, who would remember them? He had to live; that was the only way.
      His mind instantly flooded with the possibilities. There was so much he could do now, so much that he could experience. But would it be appropriate here? No, he decided, not here. This wasn’t a place for him anymore. He’d outstayed his time here. He had to move forward now, on a path of his own. Maybe he could go find that Maverick group breeding living spaceships or chart a path of his own through space. Anything was possible.
      “Although,” he thought to himself. “There is one thing I have to do first.”
* * *
      “Maquois!” Helena shouted. The entire lunchroom turned to see the sheepish student standing there, a goofy smile on his face and a duffle bag over his arm. Without a second of hesitation Helena lept up from her table and raced over to him, throwing her arms around him in a hug.
      “He’s been released?” Saki said in surprise.
      “Guess so,” Sang Mi said. “There’s been rumors he was supposed to be sometime soon, after all.”
      Practically all conversation stopped as the lunchroom watched the Kiner siblings reunite. Helena finally pulled away from him, her face a mess of streaming snot and tears.
      “But how?” she asked. “They told me someone had to come get you and Mom and Dad were busy today…”
      “Oh, Charlie did it,” Maquois laughed. “Said he owed me one after that punch.”
      “Charlie?” Helena said.
      “Yeah, can you believe it? Funnily enough, it seemed like it was the happiest he’d been in months. Even said that he’d ‘see me again someday’, whatever that meant. Oh, yeah…”
      Pausing for a moment, Maquois rummaged around in his duffle bag, until he pulled out a letter. “Anyone know where Sang Mi’s at? Charlie told me to give this to you. Said he couldn’t stay cause he’s got ‘business’ elsewhere”
      “Right here!” Sang Mi said, racing over and grabbing the letter from him. Saki followed close behind, her eyes widened and eager.
      “What is it?” Saki hissed as the crowd dispersed and Helena led Maquois back to her table.
      “Just wait a minute!” Sang Mi shot back. She tore open the paper and pulled out a sheet of paper, one that seemed to have been ripped out of a notebook. There weren’t many words on it, but the boldness of the sharpie made up for that.
 
Thank you Sang Mi, for rescuing me from my delirium.
 
      Saki gasped. “So he was hiding it!” she said. “I knew it! I knew it!”
      “Alright, alright, calm down,” Sang Mi replied. She let herself smile a little bit. Saki may have gotten her meaning from the note, but there was a special little meaning just for her that Saki would never really know.
      “Good to have you back, Charlie,” she muttered.
 
 
* * *
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
SOMETIME LATER
“Come on, hurry up!” a woman’s voice shouted.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Charlie groaned. “Just give me a second Lydia; I’m not used to this kind of armor.”
With a grunt, Charlie put on his boots and stood up. He shook his legs to make sure that they were on right, then started to walk down the hallway. It was heavy as hell, but he was sure that he’d get used to it soon enough.
“Oh, hey Bog,” Maquois said, his voice wafting down the hallway and into Charlie’s ears.
“It’s BOOOG!”
Charlie snorted. His life had definitely changed, but some things really did seem to have stayed the same. 
Still, that was part of the joy of living, wasn’t it? 

NEXT TIME!
Twenty years ago, a card game came out that changed the world. And next week, we’ll celebrate it. Uh… why did you hand me this card Mr. Mori? What card game? War? No that game is too old for that… huh. Wonder what kind of anniversary this is talking about.
Regardless, have you been seeing anything weird around town lately? Like… something out of the corner of your eye?
Something… unnatural?
Probably just me.
But if its not…Well…
Till next time, I’m your announcer from the Broadcast Club, Hee Jin!
 
Tune in Next Week For:
A Wasps’ Nest of Ghosts
By James Wylder
A WARSONG 20th Anniversary Tale
 
New Academy 27 stories will drop each Thursday!
Read past stories and learn more about Academy 27 at:
ArcbeatlePress.com/A27

​She stumbled out of Mr. Mori’s office, shaking. Ryan followed Sang Mi, and slumped down against the wall nearby. Li Xiu was on her phone, storming past her and yelling to her parents. How had it all come to this? This was just a silly Kendo class. How did things go this far? She walked in a daze through the school, hearing people talk to her but not really processing it. Whatever they were saying didn’t really matter. Nothing really mattered. She’d gone too far, she should have stopped.
She always went too far.
She pushed through the front doors, and wondered if this would be the last time she did that. Goodbye, beloved school, she thought as she stepped across the threshold. The artificial lights at the top of the dome and the thin real sunlight glittering through it felt blinding.
Through all the disorientation, the haze of the desolation she’d caused through her own hubris, she didn’t even notice Saki Suzuki till she grabbed her by the arm.
“Hey, what’s going on? How did the meeting go?”
She stared back at her.
“That bad, huh?”
Gears turned in Sang Mi’s head. They clicked into place, and her eyes widened like her mind had struck midnight. She grabbed Saki by both shoulders. “Saki, I need your help.”
 
* * *
 
Several Weeks Earlier, Kendo Room, Academy 27
Bashrat and Ryan were both playing with the floppy sleeves of their Kendo outfits, and Sang Mi (who was often called Kalingkata by her friends) was wondering if Mr. Kujiko was going to yell at them.
"Alright, form up in lines. Come on now, don't tarry! You there, stop playing with your sleeve, let's go!" Ah, there it was. Sang Mi looked over at her brother, who had taken a spot right next to her. If they were lucky, they'd get to be practice buddies. He smirked back at her and mimed a few sword movements complete with mouth sound effects. She promptly joined him on this, and then the two were yelled at and separated.
Kujiko Ginjiro was a member of the prestigious Kujiko clan, and cousin to two of the greatest warriors on all of Gongen: the siblings Torako and Oushi. He was clearly not on their level because he was teaching high schoolers how to do Kendo, but he was doing it at a prestigious school, and, at least according to some lunchroom whispers, being compensated handsomely for the opportunity. He was also clearly exasperated with these teenagers.
"QUIET!" Everyone settled down. "Your illustrious chairman, Mr. Mori, has appointed me here to teach you the ancient and noble art of Kendo." He paced in front of them, eying them with a steel-sharp gaze. "After all, I've heard quite a bit about the talent of the students at this school; you are all some of the most promising youth that our planet has to offer. Yet I sense little pride in that fact from all of you. And your lack of discipline is... obvious. I could practically taste the disharmony on my tongue as soon as I entered the room."
Could you taste disharmony? Could you taste love? The invisible hand of capitalism? Schadenfreude? Kalingkata did not know, but she was sure of one thing: even if it was true that he could, it was hilarious he'd said it. And that she was holding back her snickers would have been the thing that made things awkward if it wasn't for the fact that Ryan existed.
"You, what's your name?" Kujiko shouted, pointing his bokken at the boy.
"R-Ryan Wilson, uh, sir."
"Come forward."
Ryan complied, glancing over his shoulder at his classmates. A few gave him encouraging looks or gestures. Mr. Kujiko leaned down and inspected Ryan's face, getting so close that Ryan flinched a little. "You're the Earther student, yes?"
"Yes..." he said nervously.
"Raise your bokken."
He shifted uncomfortably. "Sorry?"
"Raise your bokken!"
"I don't know h--OW!"
Kujiko had whacked him on the arm with his own bokken. Ryan tried to get into what he thought was a proper form. It was not. The rest of the class had done some sort of Kendo at some point in their schooling; even if they'd half-assed it in physical education, they all knew the rote basics. But not Ryan. Even if Kendo was taught on Earth, it was clear it hadn’t come anywhere near Ryan’s radar.
"Poor," Kujiko said simply. "Raise your arm, move your leg--better... but still poor." He whacked Ryan again, and Sang Mi looked uncomfortably over at... well anyone she could make eye contact with. Ryan held the pose as best as he could. Kujiko paced in front of them again, and said, "The weakest member of your class is as strong as your class is. It is the duty of the strong to protect the weak, and to teach them not to be weak anymore." He pointed his bokken right at Sang Mi. "You don't approve of how I just treated your classmate?"
"Well uh..." she looked around again. "Um, no. No I didn't--don't. You should stop."
"And why didn't you say that until now? Why didn't you speak up? Or try to stop me?"
The question stung, and Sang Mi felt her cheeks flushing, "W-well, you know, respect your elders and... all that..."
"You had no trouble disrespecting me when it was not inconvenient to do so, did you not?"
She looked down. She didn't have a comeback for that. She just felt ashamed and cowardly.
“Now form up for drills. You will run them until your body will do them in your sleep.”
 
* * *
 
Sang Mi stood awkwardly in front of Ryan, holding her lunch tray and gnawing on her lower lip.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Do you mind if I…?” She gestured at the seat in front of him.
He sighed. “Just sit down already.”
She obliged, and was promptly followed by her twin brother who slipped in almost seamlessly next to her. Then Saki appeared on the other side of her. Before he knew it, Ryan was flanked by Jae Hyun and Li Xiu on either side of him as well. Sang Mi stirred her curry and rice. “Sorry, about earlier.”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter!” she said it in a loud burst, and then scrunched back inside herself realizing that. “…You don’t deserve to be treated that way.”
“It’s fine. You really don’t have to worry about me.”
“Then why aren’t you eating your lunch?” Saki said coolly.
He looked down at it. The noodles had gotten cold. “Just not… feeling hungry today. Look, it’s not a big deal. I’m sure it’s a one-time thing. It’ll all blow over tomorrow, so let’s not make a big deal out of it.”
 
* * *
 
One Week Later…
 
Ryan groaned as he hit the ground again. The place Kujiko-Sensei had hit him stung and throbbed, and his muscles refused to reply when he told them to get up.
“Come on then, Earth boy, you can’t even get up after that?”
He shook his head. He could manage that.
“Pathetic.”
He felt hands pulling him up, and realized it was the Jhe twins about the time they’d propped him up against the wall and put some water to his lips. “That was rough.”
Sang Mi just quietly pulled his sleeves up and looked at the yellowing bruises. Her brother frowned and shook his head. “This is more than rough. It’s been a whole damn week of this, and it’s getting worse.”
“It’s really fine,” Ryan said softly as he pulled his sleeves down. “I don’t want to make waves.”
“He’s just jealous of his famous cousins,” Sang Mi mumbled. “He’s taking it out on you.”
“Don’t say that too loud,” Ryan whispered back. “Or at all. Let’s… maybe we shouldn’t talk about him.”
Sang Mi shrugged.
All the while, Li Xiu watched them, and when class ended she stormed off with a mission.
 
* * *
 
She'd been waiting for half an hour when the secretary finally called Cao Li Xiu into Mr. Mori's office. If anything, it was lucky she'd made it in that quickly. She slipped through the door, and held a bow until Mr. Mori acknowledged her. He took his sweet time.
By the time he did, her back hurt. "Ah, young Miss Cao, welcome. Are your parents well?"
"They are, Mori-san."
He nodded, his face annoyingly expressionless in his usual act of proud stoicism. "So what have you come to speak to me about?"
"It's about the transfer student from Earth."
"Ah, Amelia Brightman?"
"No, Ryan Wilson."
"Ah, yes, I forgot we had two such characters here.” He leaned back in his chair. “So, what about him?"
She straightened her back, and shored up her composure with all the duty and responsibility of a daughter of the Cao family to her community. "The new Kendo teacher, Kujiko-san, is bullying him."
He steepled his fingers and examined her face. She could feel her heart beating in her chest. "Good," he replied.
"I--I'm sorry?"
"Mr. Wilson will find himself treated in similar, if not worse ways, the longer he stays on Gongen. It’s best if he learned to adapt to it sooner rather than later. He should be grateful to be given the chance to learn from such a prestigious teacher as Kujiko Ginjiro, including the lesson that people will be cruel to him."
Li Xiu could feel the color rising in her face. "Mr. Mori, with all due respect--"
"I don't believe the next thing you'd say would be beneficial to you, or your family's... rather exclusive status you hold despite your lack of official party membership? Do you understand?"
Li Xiu felt like she'd been shrunk down to the size of an ant. "...Yessir. I'll, uh, be going then."
He nodded, and the edge of his lip seemed to be curling up as if he was holding back a smirk. "Give your parents my best."
She slunk out, more humiliated than she could remember feeling before by her own failure.
 
* * *
 
Kalingkata did not go home with her brother that day like usual. She didn’t stop to see if JackBox was in the city for the day. She didn’t even see if she could get Jae Hyun to do stuff for her and exploit the crush he had on her while it lasted. No, she avoided everyone, and ran out of the school, dodging all attempts to talk to her. When she got to the train station, she didn’t go right home, but to the junkyard. She snuck in there so often that she was fairly certain the management actually didn’t patrol the place much, or at least didn’t look through the areas she liked to peruse: the old junk. The really unwanted stuff where salvaging from it was too much work, or not worth the effort. Out-of-date robots. Autocars broken beyond repair. Hoverbikes that would never fly again. She felt at home there.
She’d even managed to salvage and fix things from it that shouldn’t have been able to be fixed. JackBox owed her big for the van she’d helped shift together from the junk there. Well, Sang Eun had done half the work… She sank down onto a broken sumo-bot’s belly, and rubbed her forehead. She really was a coward. How long had she been pretending to be cool and brave and funny? She’d just started one day and it hadn’t stopped.
But when it came down to it, she wasn’t really a great person. Not funny, not cool, not brave. She wouldn’t manipulate a person into getting into trouble, but she wouldn’t say no if they volunteered to have their trust taken advantage of unknowingly. Selfish. Greedy. Cowardly. She hung her head down between her knees and moaned, only then remembering she hadn’t changed out of her school uniform like she usually did as soon as humanly possible after school. She was still in her knee-length pleated black skirt, light-gray v-neck sweater, red blouse, and gold tie. She wanted to be in pants and a hoodie immediately, but she’d have to go home to do that. And she was not done brooding yet.
That was, until she heard the junk pile shift.
Bolting up, she grabbed a pipe and held it out in what was unwittingly perfect kendo form. She lowered it quickly though, as she saw it was just Bashrat, with Tsetseg coming around the corner monitoring him.
“…What are you two doing here?”
“Bashrat just wanted to look for something, and I decided to come along.”
Leaning on the pipe like a cane now, she nodded. “Because of the bomb?”
Tsetseg gave a tight smile that said, “I won’t confirm or deny that out loud.”
Sighing, and swinging the pipe around, Kalingkata decided that playing along with whatever this was couldn’t be the worst idea. It beat moping. “So what are we looking for?”
“A present,” Bashrat said simply.
Kalingkata picked up a rusty alternator. “Not an easy place for that.”
Tsetseg tried to sound hopeful. “Well, we thought maybe there was a Kendo training bot here somewhere! Or some other sort of martial arts bot or something.”
Shaking her head, Kalingkata gestured dramatically with the alternator. “I’m afraid those things are pretty heavily regulated by the government. Even on Earth. Combat bots are hard for civilians to get a hold of for a reason. I mean, the less we talk about the whole...”
They all got solemn. “Yes, no need to talk about that,” Tsetseg said.
Bashrat nodded, but clearly did want to talk about it.
“Any luck so far?” Kalingkata asked.
“No…” she replied.
“Did you really think you’d find that here?” Kalingkata regretted saying it immediately.  
Tsetseg shrugged, pulling her shoulders in and looking at her feet as she did. “We just… we’re worried about Ryan. We don’t know what to do.”
Sang Mi lowered the alternator like the useless prop it was. “Yeah. Same.”
“Did you get Li Xiu’s message?” Tsetseg asked.
She shook her head. “I haven’t looked at my phone.”
“She tried talking to Mr. Mori,” Tsetseg said bitterly.
“He said bullying builds character,” Bashrat said.
Sang Mi stared between both of them. Waiting for the punchline. It didn’t come, and she hurled the alternator at a pile of scrap, giving a loud yell filled with all her frustration. “I suck! I suck, I can’t help anyone, I can’t do anything! I’m worthless.”
Tsetseg’s eyes got soft. “…Sang Mi.”
“No, no, I’m making this about me. I’m the worst! I’m the absolute worst!” She picked up a grav-regulator, and hurled it at the same spot of junk she’d hurled the alternator at. The pile tumbled down messily, and Sang Mi panted. And then she squinted.
Sang Mi looked back at Bashrat, then Tsetseg, who both saw the same thing as her. They rushed over, and began pulling junk off of it. The pile had been filled with rusted-out bot parts, and when the pile shifted a single glittering crystal eye had appeared through the mess. From the pile they pulled a disheveled human form, the body and face segmented intentionally in pale segments with geometric lines that were realistic to the touch but looked just artificial enough that they didn’t trigger the uncanny valley reflex or make you think they were a real person. It was old. Bits were missing. But it was clear immediately what it was.
"It’s an Asaka!" Tsetseg said cheerily. "My dad and I went to a restaurant once for a work celebration where these served tea. They were super elegant and really kind."
Kalingkata leaned down and tilted the head left and right. "Not quite. I think this is one of the really early models of the Geisha Bot series, before the really popular Asakas came out..." She turned the busted bot over, and pulling up the (rather disgusting) ruined synthetic hair up, revealed a serial number: "SpR Mk27 'Shion'" "There we go, it’s a Shion model. Not that I really know much about them."
"Twenty-Seven! That must be some kind of destiny right?" Bashrat said.
Kalingkata didn't believe in destiny, but she did like the coincidence, so she went along with it. "Yeah, must be. Poor thing is in terrible shape. Not that it minds, these things have a pseudo-AI, or Virtual Intelligence, so they're just like the world's greatest chatbot." She unscrewed the back, and peeked inside. Thankfully the water seal had held, for the most part, but it looked like something had nested in there at one point and chewed things up. Plus, while rain hadn't gotten in, moisture still had, and there was more rust than Sang Mi would have liked.
"I've only ever heard of Asakas; this one must be really old," Tsetseg added.
"You're probably right. It’s not in great shape, but it’s in better shape than I expected..”
Bashrat coughed into his hand. “Okay, but what if like, the Geisha-Bot was secretly an assassin bot and—”
“Bashrat, now isn’t the time—wait no, now is exactly the time?” Tsetseg looked at Kalingkata. “Do you think?”
Kalingkata ignored the question she didn’t want to answer as she studied it, pulling out her multitool from her bag and opening the arm up to examine its motor strength. “…You know, it would probably be great for our purposes since it’s the shape of a human being, and we could download Kendo programs into it but... I honestly don't know if I can get it up and running. We've been lucky with a lot of the stuff we've found here but this won't be easy." She bit her knuckle as she thought about what they'd need for it.
"...Then let’s call in some help? No reason we should do this alone?" Bashrat said that, which made both of them look over at him with a lot of surprise.
"Am I hearing things?" Kalingkata asked.
"Don't be mean," Tsetseg said. "He's right!"
Looking back down at the bot, she pulled her phone out and started messaging friends. Maybe they could...
By the time her brother Talinata, JackBox the Maverick their own age, Zhyrgal, Ryan, and a rather confused Jorani arrived, the three of them had already assembled a pile of potential parts, and gotten the worst of the nesting out of the bot's casing.
"So, this is the bot huh?" JackBox said, nudging it with her cybernetic foot.
Ryan leaned down. "It looks like a Geisha?"
Zhyrgal poked at its hair. "...We'll need to get it a wig or something."
Talinata looked over to Ryan. "It’s a Geisha bot. They serve tea, sing, dance, act as therapists..."
Ryan laughed, but realized quickly from everyone's looks that that wasn't a joke. "Oh, okay, wow, that's a lot of skills."
Kalingkata had gotten up on a box, and was banging on a metal bowl with a wrench. "Hey! Listen up! So here's the deal. We need to get this Shion bot up and running, but we need some parts for it. So I'm going to assign you all jobs."
She began gesturing with the wrench. "JackBox, you look for a left arm. The bot's one is waterlogged and worthless, so we need a new one that will fit on it. Zhyrgal and Ryan, I need you two to look for a VI or pAI Matrix."
"Um, what's the difference between those two?" Zhyrgal asked with a raised hand.
"There isn't, they're the same thing." She turned to level the wrench at JackBox. "I need you to find a second memory unit."
JackBox rolled her hand in the air to signal this was not enough information. "...If it has a memory unit already, why would it need a second one?"
Talinata jumped in enthusiastically. "Ah! So the Shion model used a power system that tried to save costs by using the cheapest off-the-shelf parts they could, but this ended up causing a problem because they couldn't properly regulate power circulation, and the only solution was to run two memory units at once or it would burn out the first memory unit."
Everyone stared at Talinata for a moment before Kalingkata got their attention back. "...Right, yeah! That! What he said! Everyone else, look for clean wires, capacitors, ram chips, and micro servos. I have pictures of what to look for if you need them. Now let's get going!"
The search took hours, and it was dark by the time they finished, but with so many people they were able to haul the bot out along with the parts. But it was a good feeling. Kalingkata was surprised they'd all helped out, that they'd all been willing to help out. Now it was up to her and her brother to get things assembled... but maybe she really had friends now beyond just JackBox? People who would trust her, who she could trust? It was a nice thought. She hoped it was true.
 
Sang Mi and Sang Eun’s mom, Hei-Ran, stared in bafflement as her twin children led a gaggle of other teenagers into their apartment, carrying what looked like a dirty and dilapidated bot. Sang Eun grabbed a tarp from the closet, and they plopped the bot down on it.
“…And what do all of you think you’re doing?” she asked, still holding one of the propulsion funnels from her jetpack she’d been cleaning.
“Oh, right!” her daughter said, standing up from where she’d been crouching next to the junk filled tarp. “Ryan is getting bullied by one of our teachers, and Mr. Mori said bullying is awesome, and so we decided to make a robot sword-fighting teacher out of this tea-serving bot we found at the junkyard so we can show up Mr. Kujiko, and also I have a track meet Thursday I forgot to tell you about!”
Hei-Ran nodded slowly. “…Just make sure you kids clean up. I’ll put some tea on.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Jhe!” the gathered crowd of students (and JackBox) said, only broken up by the twins saying “Thanks, Mom!” and messing the whole thing up.
Work progressed with surprising speed. Those who didn’t know anything about mechanics or programming focused on cleaning the bot. There was a lot to clean—and Li Xiu and Saki went out to get more supplies after a bit, and came back with plenty of cleaning solution wipes, and several bags of fried chicken-substitute.
Tsetseg and Bashrat proved a great help—Tsetseg knew more than she realized. Lizzah joined them (mainly to hang out with Tsetseg) and joined the cleaning squad.
“There’s a literal rat’s nest in here,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“Yeah, let me know if there’s still rats,” Sang Mi replied. Lizzah froze up. “I’m kidding, there aren’t rats. Maybe some roaches but—”
“Kalingkata?” Tsetseg said. “No roaches.”
She looked at Lizzah’s discomfort. “…I was kidding about the roaches too,” she lied.
Midi had joined them, and was helping Sang Eun start getting the files they’d need to upload to the bot downloaded, when Kalingkata made quite the discovery. “Uh, did anyone look at these processors?” She held one up, pointing at it with her other hand.
“We grabbed ones that weren’t rusted and worked with the tester like you said,” Ryan said defensively.
“Okay, but this isn’t a Pseudo-AI core, this is an actual AI core. Why was this in a junkyard?”
They all stared at it. “Well uh, it probably doesn’t work if it was thrown out? I mean, AI have rights, right?”
She flipped the AI-Core around and examined the faint serial numbers. “This is from the 2230s. So it’s from before the Visitech 770 Hunter incident—”
“We don’t talk about that,” Li Xiu said.
“Right, right… well regardless, it shouldn’t be too dangerous?”
Ryan glanced at Bashrat. “You do realize that still means it’s dangerous?”
Sang Mi shrugged. “It’ll be fiiiine.”
They cleaned out the nesting material, and everyone got Lizzah to go out for some more cleaning material they already had more of while they dealt with the bugs inside it. The twins resoldered wires, and plugged in newly cleaned old chips. Finally, they sat the bot up, and draped it in an old robe of Mrs. Jhe she’d donated to the project (it was kind of ugly). Laying it back down, a panel on the chest that was open was the only sign remaining it was being worked on.
Sang Mi picked up the AI core, flipped it around in her hands a few times, and puffing her cheeks out with a big breath, gave a big shrug. “Alright, here goes nothing.”
She clicked the core into place, shut the panel, closed the robe, and reached for the power switch.
Click.
There was the slow whirring of old machinery turning on again for the first time in ages. Parts jolted slightly—a finger twitched, a leg jostled. Then the artificial eyelids sprung open, and there was light in them.
 
* * *
 
Loading… 2%
Loading… 10%
Loading… Loading… Loading…. 58%
Loading… 90%
Loading complete.
Initiating AI Core.
Consciousness shaping…
Sentience achieved.
Awakening coalescing.
 
She had not been awake in a long time. She had simply not been in that time, there had been no dreams, not even a memory of darkness, only the knowledge that the world had been nothing, and she had been nothing. And now, sublimely, she was.
How had she gotten here? She knew she was, but the memories were not there. They were loading. They were loading. And then they hit her, and she knew.
 
January 5th, 2337
 
"...Shion? Is that her name?"
"It’s just the name of her model. Like the voice assistant on your phone."
The front-facing cameras that made up her eyes powered on. A little boy looked down at her, next to his father. The boy was excited; the father was impassive. Their biometrics matched that of the pair who had purchased her. Her AI core flooded with the details of her new assignment.
"Hello, Shion!" the boy said.
She rose to a sitting position from her mess of shipping-padding, and bowed her head to the pair.
"It is a pleasure to meet you both, masters. I am Shion; it will be my pleasure to serve you as--"
"I don't need the spiel," the older man said. "You're just here to take care of the boy while I'm at work. Understand?"
She rose from the box and gave a proper bow. "Yes, master."
"Good," he said. "Now clean up this mess."
She promptly began to clean up the box she had been born in.
 
 
February 18th, 2338
The young master was playing with his trains. He loved trains, and she was happy to oblige him. She had helped him assemble the rails around the room, and was now moving one of the trains along the tracks as he had directed her to.
"Should I switch the tracks before it reaches the bridge?" she asked.
"No, keep going!"
"But we did not complete that portion of the rails?"
"It'll crash!"
"It will be as you wish." She continued the train's doomed journey, making appropriate crashing noises as it did so."YES!" he called out, jumping up and down.
Shion began to move the little toy rescue vehicles over to the site.
"What are you doing, Shion?"
"The emergency workers must now free the imaginary people from the crashed train, young master."
 
 
May 7th, 2345
The father threw a glass against the wall.
"What do you mean you submitted to that subpar school? You are going to the Nobunaga Military School!"
"I'm not, I already told you. I'm going to Academy 27."
Shion, quiet as a mouse, crept to the wall and began to sweep up the glass.
"How the hell did I get a son who grew up so soft? I'm ashamed you're my child."
"Then kick me out, or didn't grandma say you needed an heir?"
The father went for a swing. This time, though, the son hit back. Shion was taking the glass to the trash can when she heard the door slam behind the young master. When she returned to the living room, the father was there sitting on a tatami mat, holding a spot on his forehead that was clearly going to bruise. "Well, what the hell are you waiting for, woman, get me a coldpack!"
She bowed and did as he commanded. As she slid it from the freezer, she wondered why he so often called her "woman". It was a strange term to call a bot whom he didn't even wish to call a name. Didn't it imply personhood?
Her pAI matrix processed this.
Ah.
The issue was that the term did not imply personhood for him. This was an issue that would require intensive therapy to rectify.
As she applied the coldpack, he examined her carefully. "You've been with us for a long time now, haven't you?"
"Eight years now, master."
He grabbed her hand, squeezing the soft rubbery outer layer of her so hard she could feel pressure on the shell beneath.
"It would be wise to let go before I sustain damage."
He grinned. "No. I think that's been the problem. I didn't do anything wrong--except bring you in here after his mother died. You made him soft. Turned him against me."
She bowed her head. "If I have done an inadequate job in my service--"
"You have to obey your orders, right?"
"Of course, master."
"Then don't move at all. Don't defend yourself."
She obliged, as he went to the closet, got out his son's baseball bat, and pulled it back.
 
She flickered on and off.
She was in the back of a truck, she could see the stars above her. They flew by so fast.
She was being dragged in the dark; the father complaining about how heavy she was.
She was being thrown in the air.
And then there she was, lying in a pile of junk. Years passed, flickering by.
Junk was thrown on top of her. Around her.
A robot dog was discarded into a different pile.
Things got fainter. Her battery trickled away.
In time, her power was gone, and so was she.
 
Until one day, she turned on her eyes again, and found herself peering up at a group of teenagers.
"You're all allowed to compliment me," a girl said.
"No thank you," another replied.
She sat up, and realized that she could. One of her arms was not her original arm, as was one of her legs. But she functioned. She placed her hands together, and bowed her head. "Good evening, it is a pleasure to meet you all, masters. I am Shion. It will be my pleasure to serve you in whatever ways you see fit, barring the terms and agreements signed upon purchase. SpR is not responsible for the orders given to this unit under Article 54, Paragraph 17 of the legal code. I hope for many happy days with all of you."
The first girl grinned. "You can call me Kalingkata. And we actually have a job for you, if you'd like to get started?"
She rose up, shakily adjusting to her new parts. "I would like nothing more."
“Great,” Kalingkata said. “Bashrat here found some really cool Kendo tutorial programs. We already loaded them onto one of your memory chips.”
She examined her files; this was accurate.
“So!” another girl chimed in, with the air of wanting to assert she was in charge. “We need you to be our Kendo teacher!”
Kalingkata sighed. “What Li Xiu said.”
She processed this request. “I have examined the files, and I believe I am capable of assisting with this request. When would you like to begin?”
Several of the children looked at each other. “Uh… now? I guess?”
She rose up. “Excellent. Do you have bokken?”
“Not… here?” a boy said.
“Then please each find an object long enough to be held in both hands, it does not need to be the length of a sword. We will begin basic form lessons.”
 
***
 
The first session was basic drills. When they did the second set—thankfully this time in a larger exercise space owned by Li Xiu’s parents—they actually had equipment.
“Remember, students, this is Kendo, not a true battle. You are looking to score points. Remember the places to score, and how to score,” Shion called out. The martial arts instructor’s outfit they’d scrounged up for her was a little baggy but was overall a good look.
“Yes, teacher!” the class called.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this on my day off,” Bashrat mumbled as they moved through the forms.”
“Hush,” Li Xiu panted. “I can’t focus when you’re talking.”
Shion walked over, and carefully adjusted both of their forms. “Remember, you should be looking down the line of your blade in this position.”
“Yes, teacher!” they called back.
“Good. Then repeat the drills again.”
And they did repeat the drills again. Days passed.
 
* * *
 
Mr. Kujiko paced in front of them. “You’ve all made excellent progress. You have been doing much better in drills and sparring. But I can also sense something else!”
They all stood at attention in lines, keeping their eyes straight ahead.
“You’re getting COCKY. I can see you think you know better than I do. I need to remind you who your teacher is. Earth boy, come forward.”
No one spoke, no one moved.
“I said, Earth boy, come forward.”
The room was still.
“Tell me, why are you not coming forward, Mr. Wilson?”
Ryan tensed. His throat grew dry. He found he was unable to open his mouth.
Kalingkata’s hand shot up. “I can answer that question, teacher.”
He squinted as he looked at her. “Oh, really? What do you think the answer is?”
“There are no Earthers in this room, teacher.”
The look of shock on his face would have been funny if most of the class wasn’t slightly terrified about what would come next. “Oh, there aren’t?” He got up in Kalingkata’s face, leaning in so close she could feel the flecks of spittle as he yelled. “You think that you can just change where someone was born? Where someone’s blood is from!?”
Her heart was pounding. She tried not to flinch (she flinched a little). “B-blood is not what makes someone a Gongen, teacher!”
“There are other people who look like Ryan at this school!” Li Xiu added.
“I didn’t say you could speak, Miss Cao!” Mr. Kujiko shot back. “And yes, there are. People who suffered the hardships of radiation and lost their homes, or who gave up their homes because they took the call to our aid when we needed their skills to build this world, like those from Lybid. Being a Gongen is a history of sacrifice! It’s blood that was spilled, its burned flesh, and buckets of sweat that poured from hard work! Not this… cushy boy here to give us charity!”
“Ryan is more Gongen than you, teacher,” Talinata said, and immediately regretted it.
Mr. Kujiko turned slowly to face him. “What did you just say?” His eyes were almost rabid. Talinata was visibly sweating. “I uh, I said that uh… R-Ryan…” he fumbled his words.
“That’s what I thought,” he smirked.
Ryan clenched the hilt of his bokken, the wooden sword feeling strangely weighty at his side. They’d done so much for him. All of this, for him. Why did he deserve this? He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t think he was particularly clever, or even popular. He was new and awkward and from Earth. Why would they have even done this for him? He cast his gaze around, at all the faces staring forward, and a few glanced at him and gave a gentle nod.
And finally, he understood.
He understood so much.
He thought of how angry he was that his father had put his own selfish desires before his mother and himself. He thought of how his classmates had teased him a little, but still invited him out the day he arrived like he was an old friend. He thought of how Sang Mi’s family had worked so hard to welcome them on Christmas Eve before their family tragedy had occurred, and even then put their own feelings second as they apologized they’d have to cancel Christmas dinner. He thought of how his whole class had come together to help him. And he couldn’t remain silent anymore.
“He said I’m more Gongen than you,” Ryan said.
Once again, Mr. Kujiko’s face turned, and he was both furious and baffled.
“How dare you?” and he was really offended.
“Because being Gongen isn’t about… it isn’t about forgetting where we came from. It’s about knowing we can count on each other.”
Mr. Kujiko grabbed Ryan by the shoulder, and several students rushed in to try to stop him, but he’d already yanked Ryan to the front of the classroom. “I’ll show you what a goddamn Gongen is—raise your sword!”
Where before it had been a few, now the whole class surged forward to intervene, but Ryan raised his hand, and they halted. They’d done enough. Now it was his turn.
They bowed, though it had never felt more perfunctory.
And the match began.
Kujiko swung first.
Ryan remembered Shion adjusting his form, and his body moved to block before he’d even realized he was doing it. Kujiko was surprised. He swung again, and again, and again. Ryan blocked them all—sometimes with great effort and difficulty, but he did it.
Kujiko stopped, stunned and confused, and Ryan lightly moved his bokken up to poke him in the side. “Point,” he said.
“POINT!” the class called out.
Kujiko Ginjiro screamed out, and hurled his own bokken at the wall, then pushed through the class and stormed out. When the door shut behind him, everyone glanced at each other for a moment, and then broke out in cheers. Ryan found himself crowded in a massive hug, and couldn’t help laughing too. Had they done it? Had they really done it?
 
* * *
 
Ryan, Sang Mi, and Li Xiu stood in front of Mr. Mori, who was livid. The only reason he wasn’t chewing them out yet was that Mr. Kujiko had yet to stop ranting himself. He’d been going on for nearly twenty minutes about the sheer disrespect the youth had shown him.
“—and this kind of behavior cannot stand!” he finished, panting.
Mr. Mori rose from his desk, scowling at the children in front of him. “You’ve all been on thin ice for a long while now. Your transgressions of the spirit, if not the letter, of our school rules has been a black mark on our institution for some time. Being at this school is a privilege, and one which I think each of you has abused to the best of your abilities.”
Sang Mi muscled up her courage. “Sir, Ryan hasn’t been here long enough to—”
“QUIET!” Mr. Mori shouted. “Jhe Sang Mi, you should have been grateful that your family wasn’t thrown out into the wastes to die of exposure. You should have been grateful to be granted the grace to even be here in this school. You’re expelled.”
There was a long and tense silence.
 
“But sir—” Sang Mi stammered.
“No buts. The rest of you are suspended—and that’s only because of your family clout,” he said, pointing at Li Xiu, spit flying from his mouth, “and that expelling you would cause a diplomatic incident!” He slammed his fist down on the desk; all three tensed. “And if you have any sense of your family honor, Miss Jhe, you’ll jump off a bridge on your way home.”
Li Xiu put her hands over her mouth. “You can’t say something like that!”
Sang Mi stared at her feet.
“Why not?”
“You know she’s fragile! She might really do it!”
“Not so fragile she could dishonor our guest teacher like this? She should have thought of this before she caused such a problem.”
Sang Mi bowed, trying to hide how much she was shaking. “I’ll, uh, if you would excuse me…” She walked towards the door in a daze. She heard the others yelling behind her, and Li Xiu calling her parents. But she just started walking.
He was right. She knew he was right and--
 
“Wait a second,” Sang Mi said. “You already said that.”
The tense silence turned into an awkward one. “…I did not?” Mr. Mori said with some confusion.
“No this… this already…” Things felt wonky, wobblily, like everything in the universe was off kilter.
 
“Saki, we’re testing Delirium tonight, aren’t we? Aren’t we?”
Saki pulled her hands off her shoulders. “Of course we are. That’s why I’m waiting here for you.”
“Then we can change something, can’t we? Like Apple Tree Yard. Like the Cats Eyes. We can change something again?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I take it you have something in mind.”
 
Sang Mi’s eyes widened. “Oh, shit. Oh shit.” She looked at her friends. “Just… wait a second. Wait a second. This isn’t over.”
“How dare you curse in front of your elders!” Mr. Kujiko spat.
“Of course it’s not over!” Li Xiu said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m going to call my parents, they’ll make you regret this! They will! You can’t do this to Sang Mi, she’s my friend!” Li Xiu took her left hand.
Sang Mi was stunned.
Ryan nodded, and took her right hand. “We did this as a class. We will do this as a class. If you want to expel her, you expel us too.”
Li Xiu nodded. “You think you can win here because you have all the power but—”
There was a knock on the door; Mr. Mori’s secretary poked her head into the room. “Uh, Mr. Mori? There are guests here who want to weigh in on this situation? One is an old man from the community, the other, uh, it—she says they’re the student’s teacher?”
Mr. Mori, who seemed to be still trying to understand how this conversation was going in the direction it was, rose, and gestured for the guests to be let in.
Through the door stepped Shion. She’d changed into a Kimono, and someone had polished her exterior surfaces so, while still somewhat scratched and dented, she looked very nice. She gave a gentle smile, and Mr. Mori seemed to look more confused, until she spoke.
“Hello Master Mori Shirou. It has been some time; I apologize for not checking in. However, I was temporarily incapacitated for the last few decades.” She bowed.
Mori dropped down into his chair like he’d been whacked with a bokken. “That… you can’t be. Father…” he held his head. “No, it's not really you. This is some other trick—”
“You used to play with trains. I had wondered if you’d work with them, but I see the school you cared so much about became your home.” She approached, kneeling down beside his chair as he swiveled in it to face her.
“How… how is this possible?”
Mr. Kujiko looked between them. “I can see this is some sort of touching reunion, but this doesn’t change what this girl here did is an expulsion-worthy offense and—”
“Shut up, Ginjiro,” Mori said, as he reached out and gently touched her face. “You really came back for me.”
She nodded into the touch of his hand. “I did. But I have a question for you, Master Shirou.”
His lip trembled. “Speak it.”
“I have been teaching these children, as I once cared for you. Even when things at home were rough, I never abandoned you.”
He flinched. “…We don’t need to talk about that.”
“We do.” She grabbed his hand, and it was much less gentle. “Where did the kind boy I told bedtime stories to go? Where did this cruel man come from?”
He looked into her mechanical eyes, and as Li Xiu, Ryan, and Sang Mi exchanged glances, Mr. Mori did something he had never done before in front of them. He cried.
He cried, as Shion reached up and wrapped him in her arms like a mother consoling a child with a scraped knee.
Mr. Kujiko scowled, and turned to the trio. “You’re still expelled, Miss Jhe. And I’ll have you know that—”
“Enough.” The new voice was deep, with the rasp of age. The secretary had said a second guest was there, and everyone except Ryan dropped to their knees as soon as the guest stepped through the door. Sang Mi and Li Xiu quickly grabbed Ryan by the hems of his sleeves and pulled him down too. Mr. Mori was still sniffling next to Shion as they knelt next to his desk.
“Who is—”
“Okurimono, the elder of the Kujiko clan. The most legendary teacher of swordsmanship on Gongen—in the whole solar system!” Li Xiu hissed.
“A fine summation; you honor me, young Cao,” he smiled at her, and then turned his eyes to Ginjiro, and the smile wilted into a frown. He walked up to him, slowly, and held a hand out gently. “Rise, Ginjiro.”
Relieved, he took his great-uncle’s hand, and began to rise, before Okurimono pulled his hand back with a lightning-quick speed that surpassed his age, and struck him across the cheek with a thunderclap that sent him sprawling to the floor. “You’ve acted shamefully.”
“But Great—”
“Silence,” he said. It was not yelled, as it didn’t need to be. “You will be leaving here, and be transferred to guard duty on a transport vessel. Perhaps that will teach you some humility.”
He scrambled back to his knees and bowed with his forehead to the floor. “Of course, I deeply apologize.”
“Apologize to them,” he said coolly.
Ginjiro flinched, but turned, and bowed just as deeply. “…I apologize for my shameful actions.”
The three students gave overlapping variations of “Oh, it’s fine”.
Okurimono smiled. “Good.” He turned to Mr. Mori. “I apologize for the trouble, and hope these students will be rewarded for their bravery in standing up to our family embarrassment. I also hope that this will be kept quiet.”
Mori bowed. “Of course.”
Okurimono walked to the door, Ginjiro shuffling behind him with his head down, but stopped in the doorway. “If I might add, that bot did a wonderful job as teacher. If you wish to retain her, I’ll give my recommendation.”
The door shut.
They all looked at each other.
“…Well you heard him, school is over. Go home, or to your after-school activities. Nothing happened here today, understand?”
“Yes, Mr. Mori!” they said in unison, and scrambled out the door.
 
As they walked through the hall together, none of them quite knew what to say. Eventually Li Xiu broke the silence. “Did… how did that just happen? That… that can’t be a coincidence, that we found his… was Shion his nanny?”
“It sure sounds like it,” Ryan said. “You didn’t know that, did you, Sang Mi?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure she was his nanny till later tonight.” The words came out of her mouth before she’d really processed them. She was still in a daze. She waved off their strange looks. “…Sorry, don’t uh, don’t worry about it. Just a wild coincidence.”
“Well, I guess we can’t complain. We sure are lucky though,” Ryan laughed. “But we did it, you… you really saved me… I mean everyone did. But… thank you, both of you.”
Li Xiu gave a thumbs up. “Hey, you’re part of our class.” 
Sang Mi slapped him on the back. “You sure are. We’d bend time and space for you.”
He laughed. Li Xiu laughed. Sang Mi pretended to laugh, and they sauntered off to report the good news to the class.
 
* * *
 
Saki frowned as she stared at the ceiling, processing the report. “And you said you still have a memory of this alternate timeline, where you were expelled?”
Sang Mi rubbed her forehead as she stared at the same ceiling from the other bed in the hotel room. “It’s… foggy. It’s not like when we were doing it ourselves.”
“I have… well it's much foggier than yours, but I have a sense that everything you said did happen. That’s a lesson,” Saki said, sitting up. “We were directly physically present for other changes we made, and remembered them directly. This time, you tried to dream up a change to the past you weren’t present for, one you didn’t seed in the present like we did the Apple Tree Yard.”
Sang Mi rolled over. “They made Shion our new Kendo teacher, you know.”
“I know,” she replied. “Well, the two of us in the future did good; now we’ll honor their work.” She tossed Sang Mi a container of a pair of Delirium pills. “By doing our own.”
Sang Mi turned the pills over in her hand. “You know, without this I did push things too far. I just found a way of getting out of the consequences of my actions. I always do that.”
Saki shrugged. “You got away with it. Focus on what you do next.”
She popped the pills, and lay back down, closing her eyes. “Focus on getting to work, I heard you.”
“You just want a nap.”
“It’s work!”
Saki took her own pills. “Then cheers to getting away with it.”
 
* * *
 
Au Kaguya frowned as she looked at the report. “Honorable Shocho, uh, I understand you keep track of everything, but why are you collecting so much data on a school’s Kendo program?”
The red light of the planetary AI’s display flashed. “Records show that this group of students came together of their own volition to practice their sword techniques for the coming conflict with Earth, despite a lack of previous interest. Data on their skill assessments shows they have gone from acceptable to a comparable level of competency to the Hozin SDF in only a few weeks. The program was a success, and should be considered for future implementation.”
Kaguya looked back and forth between the red light and the data on the padd. “Shocho… are you saying that all of this was part of some sort of plan?”
There was no answer. After a time, she bowed and exited the room.
She had thought she’d made peace long ago that they would be preparing children to fight for if it came to war, but the churning in her stomach told her there were still qualms somewhere beating away in her heart. 
Well, it’s only Kendo, she told herself. There was no need to talk about it.
It’s only Kendo. 

NEXT TIME!
Remember last year—last Callander year not school year—when Maquois from the theater department went crazy and dressed up as the Phantom of the Opera and tried to set off a bomb? That was pretty wild. Anyway, I heard a rumor that Sang Mi and Saki have been looking into that whole incident again… but why?
And what has that delinquent kid uh… what’s his name…
(there is the sound of someone picking up a tablet and making several searches while mumbling a few tame curse words)
CHARLIE PARKER! That kid! And where has he been? And why would anyone be trying to find out what a loner like him is up to anyway? Well, regardless, if you want to retake your ID picture today ask Mr. Xi during your lunch hour.
Till next time, I’m your announcer from the Broadcast Club, Hee Jin!
 
Tune in Next Week For:
Shadow of the Phantom
By Aidan Mason
 
New Academy 27 stories will drop each Thursday!
Read past stories and learn more about Academy 27 at:
ArcbeatlePress.com/A27

​Hurried steps carried Zhyrgal beyond Academy 27's grounds and out into the wider world. The school day had ended an hour ago, noticeable not only by the time on her watch, but by the silence around her. The moment the bell rang, the Academy emptied, its students trying to get far away as fast as possible. By this time Academy 27 was the quietest place in all of Gongen — just how Zhyrgal liked it. 
The end of the school day was the perfect time to write, void of the disruption that plagued the lesson time. Once she had finished tending to the animals on the roof, she remained there for a time, writing the latest adventures she'd cooked up during lesson time. 
With the sun falling in the sky, Zhyrgal knew it was his time to put down the pen and return home. Making her way down the quiet street, she stuffed her notepad and pen into her rucksack and threw it over her shoulder. Even when the writing tools were away, Zhyrgal rarely found that her mind was at rest, always utilising the long walk home to think up more story ideas. She found that the walk across the Cheonsa Dome yielded some of her greatest inspirations. Yet today, no more than a block from the Academy gates, she found her creative processes blocked, disturbed by one of her body's fiercest urges: the unmistakable cry of hunger.
Her stomach growled, and no matter how hard she tried to turn her thoughts to inventing strange and wonderful literary worlds, the persistent pangs came calling. She knew she should have had the panini at lunch — the salad was disgusting, and most of the parts covered in dressing had ended up in the garbage. Her stomach continued to wail, begging her to find some form of sustenance, anything to end its torment. Home was six blocks away, and who knew when dinner would be on the table. Until then, chocolate would sate her hunger just nicely, not to mention taste good! 
Her mind made up, Zhyrgal knew just the place to go. Despite only being part of the school a short time, she had heard several students talk of a local store that sold exactly what she needed: Gilhurst’s News, the one stop place for pre and post school snacks. Once again, her eavesdropping skills had paid off. Looking around to get a bearing of her surroundings, Zhyrgal was pleased to note the shop was around the next corner, and set off with a spring in her step. 
Outside the store, however, was something she wasn't quite prepared for. A group of students — the ones she tended to avoid on the corridors between lessons — crowded the benches near the entrance. She recognised some of them: Summer White, Asim S'Tar and Tanaka Hanzo. They all seemed to be preoccupied with one of their number, who came stumbling out of the store roaring with laughter. The student was soon followed by an elderly lady with a face like thunder. Once she'd shooed the boy out, she bellowed at the others: "Off with you, you ignorant little fiends!" She batted her hand at them. "Don't you have somewhere else to be? Some of us have a business to run!"
The old lady's rant was met with a cacophony of laughter. Admitting defeat, she huffed and went back inside. The students then proceeded to point their fingers, chanting: "Grumpy grumpy Gilhurst!"
Their name calling was met with more angered shouts, muffled by the confines of the store, and again the students were laughing.
Zhyrgal thought about turning back, chalking it up as a loss and heading home. She didn't want to get caught up in this, not at the end of the day, yet despite her better judgement, her stomach had other ideas. It grumbled so loudly that it threatened to catch the attention of everyone in the vicinity. She had to eat something, she just had to. And so, with her bravest face, Zhyrgal marched on, determined to get what she needed from the store with minimum attention from the students outside. 
To Zhyrgal's relief, her approach elicited little more than some mocking questions about her love for animals. As heckles went, she found them quite tame. Once she had made it past the entrance, Zhyrgal felt like she had entered the lair of the beast. 
The store was small, by all accounts: two sets of shelves lined the walls, one filled with candy, and the other with local newspads. Where the shelves ended stood the counter, behind which sat (Mrs?) Gilhurst, staring at him with snake-like eyes.
Zhyrgal quickly scanned the shelves for something that tickled her fancy, all the while feeling Gilhurst's watchful eyes bore into the back of her skull. To her relief, Gilhurst's comm rang, and the stifling presence of the store lifted somewhat. 
"Oh, hi Alice. Yes, they've been at it again, making my life hell."
Zhyrgal's heart sank at Gilhurst's words. She was clearly a very unhappy person, and no wonder, considering the people loitering outside her place of work.
Not wanting to eavesdrop on her conversation any further, Zhrygal set to choosing something. The selection was almost too much: from Applemack Bars right through to Liquorice Ripples. One confectionary in particular caught her eye, and after that the choice was simple. Zhyrgal picked up a dark chocolate Whizler and smiled as the colourful wrapper brought back happy memories of her childhood. 
With her choice made, Zhyrgal wandered over to the counter, where Gilhurst continued her conversation, almost oblivious to her presence.
"I can't retire," she said to the person on the other end of the phone. "The shop has been in my family for generations. I'm the last one left! If I close the shop the legacy dies. I have to keep going, I—" She stopped, alarmed and a little angered to find Zhyrgal waiting patiently to be served. "Sorry Alice, I have a customer. Speak soon." Ending the call, she threw him a disgruntled look. "Come on, what are you having?"
Zhyrgal's mouth gaped open, about to speak, but was suddenly bereft of anything to say. The venom in the woman's tone had her petrified. 
"Come on, out with it! You're not hiding anything in those pockets, are you?"
Offended, Zhyrgal shook her head. "No, maam."
"Then what are you being so coy for? Do you want to buy something or not?"
Zhyrgal nodded and reached out to place the chocolate bar on the counter. Hearing raised laughter from outside, she hesitated, the painful memories of a dozen gym classes stabbing her in the gut. She turned to see the same collection of students outside, pointing and laughing, not at her, but Mrs Gilhurst. 
"Grumpy grumpy Gilhurst," the students began again, giggling and guffawing to themselves. Despite herself, Zhyrgal cracked a smile. From her limited exposure alone, she could see how she had earned the nickname. 
Feeling brave, Zhyrgal turned back to Mrs Gilhurst, and to her surprise caught a look of hurt on her aged face. Behind her steely exterior, it was clear to see their taunts wounded her. 
"Bloody youths!" she yelled at them, shaking her fists. "Clear off and leave my store alone. My customers are too afraid to come in with you loitering out there. You're making me lose business!"
Gilhurst's words only served to rekindle the students' amusement, and the mockery began anew. 
Despite the old lady's abrupt and accusatory attitude, Zhyrgal's heart went out to her. She could see how frustrating it must be for her, trying to earn a living only to be subject to the same abuse day in, day out. She remembered, back in Lybid, how Tony Henderson had made her life miserable for weeks. It stopped her wanting to turn up to school in the mornings. At least she'd move to Takumi, this poor lady was stuck here. 
Gilhurst exhaled sharply, and for a moment Zhyrgal thought the Whizler bar was going to fly off the counter. A few seconds later, the taunts from outside subsided. Gilhurst's attention drifted back to Zhyrgal and her steely expression returned. "Right," she sighed. "That'll be twenty-five."
Zhyrgal placed her finger on the scanner to pay and the transaction completed with a satisfied beep. 
"Thanks," Gilhurst huffed, and slouched into her chair. 
"Thank you!" said Zhyrgal, extra cheery, and turned to leave. 
She had made it less than three steps before Gilhurst called after her. "You've left your chocolate bar!" she yelled.
Zhyrgal turned around to face her. "No," she replied with a smile. "It's for you. Have a nice day."
While she didn't remain long enough to see her full reaction, Zhyrgal caught the look of pleasant surprise on Gilhurst's face, and for her, that was more than enough. 
Stepping outside, she caught the full attention of Gilhurst's hecklers, and they began their tirade of abuse. 
"Hey there, animal girl. Where are your birds today?"
Zhyrgal rolled her eyes and chuckled to himself. She wasn't going to give them any fuel today. Instead she clutched his rucksack tight and headed for home, pleased that, for at least a moment, she had brightened someone else's day. 

NEXT TIME!
The whole school has been getting on the Kendo train, and everyone has been learning how to hit other people with sticks. My dad says this is blatant war-hawkery—sorry Mr. Mori, I’ll get back onto the announcements.
Anyway we have a new guest teacher, a man from the famous Kujiko family! I mean, not a famous guy from the family, but still. It doesn’t sound like he’s getting along well with Ryan, our transfer student from Earth, so how is that going to play out? And how will the class handle it?
Till next time, I’m your announcer from the Broadcast Club, Hee Jin!
 
Tune in Next Week For:
A Kendo Story
By James Wylder
 
New Academy 27 stories will drop each Thursday!
Read past stories and learn more about Academy 27 at:
ArcbeatlePress.com/A27

 
WARS is Copyright Decipher Inc. WARSONG is Copyright Arcbeatle Press and Decipher Inc. WARSONG: Academy 27 is Copyright Arcbeatle Press and Decipher Inc. WARS and all associated characters and concepts are the property of Decipher inc. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to people, places, events past or present is purely co-incidental. Arcbeatle Press is owned and operated by James Wylder, and is based out of beautiful Elkhart Indiana. This story is copyright 2024 Arcbeatle Press and James Wylder. Edited by Jo Smiley and James Wylder. Kalingkata, Talinata, and Geraldine “JackBox” McGraw are owned by James Wylder.

She felt like her friend Jae Hyun was shaking his head every time she looked away from him. Either that or he was just trying hard to pretend he wasn't staring at her legs (he was staring at her legs). She sighed. He was well meaning for an obnoxious and hormonal teenage boy, she'd give him that. But right now he was definitely being obnoxious.
"They're just running shorts. For running. That's what you use legs for, generally."
"Huh?" he said, which was also obnoxious.
It wasn't worth it. "Are you coming to watch our meet against Academy 2? We could use all the people cheering us on we can get."
"Absolutely--wait when is it?"
She pointed at her uniform, "We're all wearing our uniforms today because the meet is today. Coach Jo said it's advertising."
"I thought coach Jo did basketball?"
"She does, Coach Park quit, so she's been filling in."
He nodded slowly. "...I actually have play practice for Romeo and Juliet."
She smiled, yes! He was getting his own interests. "That's great. I'll be sure to go see it."
"I... sort of thought you'd be trying out for theplay."
She tilted her head as she finished grabbing things from her locker, "What do you mean?"
"I mean you helped out with them in the winter..."
"There's no Track or Cross in the Winter. Plus the fall season ended early because we got knocked out in Sectionals."
She could see the wheels turning in his head. "...I wish I could have known."
"Did you try asking?"
He opened his mouth, shut it, and then exclaimed that he had to get to practice and scampered off. Well, that could have gone worse?
Trudging along to the girls' locker room, she moved her things from one locker to another trying to ignore Hee Jin's griping next to her. She was rubbing aloe vera all over her legs. "I wish I didn't have to show my legs at these meets."
"You don't," she replied. "Just wear leg compressors or leggings."
"But I don't want to wear those."
She didn't know how to help her.
"Anyway look at my poor calves, I broke open my heat-shaver and turned off the inhibitor so I could do it faster--"
"...You what?"
Hee Jin gulped. "...Broke open the shaver and turned off the heat inhibitor."
Sang Mi sighed, "You're lucky you didn’t burn your foot off. Those things have an inhibitor for a reason. They're just low powered blasters for the consumer market, you know."
She appeared not to have known this, and promptly changed the subject.
"So... think we can beat Academy 2? We didn't last year. And we lost our Coach."
Sang Mi shrugged, "We'll do our best. I think we have a good chance."
She got her cleats out, and put them into her track bag. Coach Jo came in, and called on all of them to settle down. "Now today is a big meet, so we need to all be on top form. You've all been training your hearts out, and I know how much this means to a lot of you. Now I know we beat Academy 14—”
There was a general cheer.
“—But we can’t let that get to our heads! Nor can we let the pressure get to us. This is just like any other meet. Do your best, and you’ll do great. Now, we’ve got some announcements, for shotput—”
The speech went on, but Sang Mi was focused on steadying herself. Her heart was already beating fast. This meet, they’d be facing Academy 2.
Where her ex went.
She’d been heartbroken when she found out he’d been cheating on her after he dumped her. But now what she was feeling wasn’t heartbreak, it was anger and confusion.
She wouldn’t be directly running against Kyon at this meet, but it was still his school. She knew his new girlfriend Tetora wasn’t even on the track team—but she felt like the whole team for Academy 2 was him in proxy. She wasn’t the greatest runner on the team—but today her head was filled with fantasies: she burst ahead of the pack, neck and neck with the leading runner from Academy 2, then charged forward In the last stretch and--
A personal best!
First place!
Everyone cheers and claps as she leads Academy 27 to a victorious win!
But before she knew it, it was time to leave for the actual meet.
 
Academy 2 was the third best high school in Takumi, and the second best funded, and it sure looked the part. They’d had to take a train between Cheonsa Dome and the Main dome to get there—thankfully they got their own car so they didn’t disturb the other passengers, which was a blessing because Coach Jo had to tell them to settle down twice after they got too rowdy. From what Sang Eun told her, she was sure the boy’s car was worse.
There wasn’t much of a view for most of the journey—the tunnels were mostly underground to save all the precious space possible inside the domes themselves. They stopped still underground, and came out to a stop that only a handful of other students got out on—Academy 2 had its own station. No one had to walk from a station to get to it.
Hee Jin and Sang Mi exchanged a look that they both understood.
The Academy 2 uniforms of the students who got off were on a whole other level to their own: black blazers and black pants or skirt, all with yellow-gold hemming and a shining badge on the breast with “A2” on it. A matching yellow-gold tie and white dress shirt completed the look, along with black spats or mary-jane shoes. The cloth was rich, each piece carefully tailored for each student. It made their own uniforms look shabby in comparison. They knew that was the point.
Other students from Academy 2 passed them to go into the train as they entered, and as the door shut behind them she could have sworn she heard someone say “Sang—” a car over before being cut off.
They got onto the lift, which took them up to the campus itself: the smatter of students staying afterschool, or who had missed the first train, wandered broad paths of yellow-gold stones lined with cherry trees that gently wafted petals with the artificial airflow.
“Do they think this place is the freaking Land of Oz?” Kalingkata spat.
“The what?” Hee Jin replied.
“You know, the road of yellow brick in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. Dorothy and friends go to the Emerald City by walking it.”
Hee Jin shook her head. “I don’t know the story.”
“Nevermind.” 
They walked the road of yellow brick up to the stadium, where a bot displaying a hologram of their school name wheeled up, and guided them across the track to their section of grass. Everyone set their track bags down and started to stretch and prepare. Hee Jin and Sang Mi helped each other get the partner stretches done. The Academy 2 track team was already doing warm ups, their black and gold uniforms pristine and stylish. Their shoes looked custom fitted for every runner’s foot.
“Hey. Jhe, stay focused!” Coach Jo called. “I can see what you’re looking at. Focus on what you can do, not what you don’t have, that won’t get you anywhere today.”
“Yes coach.”
But it did help her. It made her pissed.
The announcer called for the runners to get to their marks for the first races; they started with the sprinters, and the results were mixed. It would have been nice if the meet was a blow out for them, but that was never in the cards. They’d lost their coach, and Coach Jo had the spirit but she knew Basketball not Track. Their equipment was worse. But they were holding their own. Even so, that wasn’t enough. They had to win.
“Runners for the first distance event, the 800 meter run, please get to your marks!”
Hee Jin slapped her on the back as they dropped their jackets and made their way to the track. Sang Mi’s spikes felt tight on her feet, but she knew they were just right. She looked over at the girls from the other team. There was Hikari Megumi, the star runner of Academy 2’s distance team. Despite her fantasies earlier, deep down Sang Mi was pragmatic. She couldn’t match Megumi’s times, or Jee Hin’s times, but she could aim for third. Getting third would help their overall team score.
The official went through the race’s rules, all of them knew it, the line of girls standing with their eyes laser focused ahead. The whirring cycle of air-reprocessing far above them in the dome ended, and in the ensuing silence the sound of each runner’s breath filled the area. The official raised the starter pistol.
“On your marks!”
They tensed, muscles preparing to burst forward.
“Get set.”
Many leaned forward slightly, making sure not to lean too far.
“GO!” there was a bang, and they exploded over the line. Sang Mi got blocked in the running pack by an Academy 2 girl with a pair of blue streaks going down her ponytail, and she coasted behind her as they went around the first curve—and as soon as they hit the straight, charged past her, trying to move from the back pack to the front one. She got most of the way there, another Academy 2 runner hanging onto her heels—she could only see them from the corner of her eye, but she picked her pace up—it didn’t get the girl off her, but she wasn’t passing her either. As they finished the first lap, they were up with the lead pack—it was five runners, Hee Jin and Megumi were trading first and second like a kid unable to pick her one allotted treat at the grocery store. Behind them was an Academy 2 runner, and then Masha and Seo Yeon from her own team. She could do this.
First she had to pass the A27 duo, and she did so right when they finished the first curve of the second lap. It was good she did too, she could tell both of them didn’t have a lot of gas left in them for the end. Ahead was her target. She summoned up her strength, and pushed ahead—she wanted to time it so she’d pass her right before the curve. And she did, the girl’s head turning as she slid past her, and she could tell she was dropping back from the demoralization of it. She just had to push this to the finish.
She got around the final curve, onto the final straight.
And then she realized—she wasn’t alone. Blue streaks was there, moving from on her heels to by her side.
She couldn’t let that go. She kicked hard, pushing her body as hard as she could manage, her breath was ragged, but she didn’t slow down. She couldn’t even keep track of whether she was in third still — she just focused on the line ahead of her. Just a little more. Don’t lose it. Keep pushing even when you’re crossing the line. She crossed it—then slowed to a halt, dropping to her butt on the track as she tried to get her breath back. The only thing she could feel was her heartbeat and the need for her body to get air in. She heard Jee Hin, and felt her and Masha pulling her up, patting her on the back.
“You did it girl!” Masha screamed.
“First and third?” Sang Mi rasped.
“YEAH!” Masha cried.
Sang Mi wanted to celebrate, but she was too exhausted to do that. Even so, she’d done it! She’d placed! Now she just had to keep this up. She went back to their camp on the field to rehydrate and stretch, and get ready for the next race.
As she got to the line for the mile run, something became incredibly clear: she hadn’t paced herself. She felt tired still going up to the line, and as the starting gun went off, she found herself in the back pack, and unable to push forward. Her legs hurt, and it became clear she was going to have to treat this whole race as a cool down before the next one—she’d messed it up. She placed 7th, better than she expected, but pretty terrible nonetheless.
She went back to the camp and tried to do nothing but rest. Hee Jin had gotten second in the mile, and Academy 2 had clinched third. The other team’s scores were looking pretty similar. She had the medley relay next, and that was another chance for her. The 800 meter was her event—and she might have bombed the mile, but she would have another chance to excel—her leg of that relay was an 800, with the other legs being the mile, 400 meter, and 1200 meter.
Sang Mi waited next to the starting line, where she’d get the handoff from Masha, who was starting the race and was currently shaking herself out and adjusting her grip on that baton — while next to her, Academy 2’s runner did the same. Sang Mi would pass off to Hee Jin, who’d run the mile, and Seo Yeon would finish it with the 400 since she had the best kick on the distance squad.
Masha and her opponent tensed as the starter pistol was raised and—BANG!
They were off. Masha took an early lead, though only time would tell if she would hold it. By the end of the first lap, she was, but the second lap proved more troublesome. Masha’s opponent was making up lost distance, and by the end of the lap was neck-and-neck with her. As they started the third and final lap of their leg, Sang Mi slipped into the hand-off zone, shaking herself out, and getting into position with one arm facing back to accept the hand off. This caused her to see her opponent—it was miss dual-blue-streaks in her hair. Rematch time apparently.
She put her focus back into the handoff, and watched as Masha came around the corner—it was indeed neck and neck, she’d have to try to regain their lead. Masha slowed as she got closer—which was a bad sign. Sang Mi started moving, and Masha tried to kick in as much as she could, but it looked like she’d used everything in the tank. Masha slapped the baton into her hand, and Sang Mi kept her forward momentum going and took off. They’d fallen slightly behind—and the dual-blue-streaks waved back and forth in the ponytail in front of her as if taunting her. She pushed on the curve, trying to catch her as much as she could, and made up some ground but not enough to try to pass on the straight. They hit the second curve, and she’d made up enough that she could try to push on the final straight of the first lap if she wanted, so she did.
She dug in. Her muscles were screaming, but she pushed past the pain, and as they exited the curve, swung out and charged. She saw blue-streaks glance at her as she got side by side, and the other girl tried to accelerate so she wouldn’t pass her before they started the second lap, but Sang Mi wasn’t about to lose this chance. She could hear her breath, loud and rhythmic, and her own groan as she put the extra kick in and slipped in front of dual-streaks. She held the lead on the curve, and could hear dual-streaks right behind her—too close behind her. She tried to increase her lead, but the other girl wasn’t letting go of this race easily either. The crowd was cheering, as dual-streaks kept almost passing only to get fended off.
They hit the final straight, and Sang Mi focused on Hee Jin ahead of her. She’d make up as much time as she could on this last straight and—then something hit the back of her foot. There was pain, a different kind of pain than her burning muscles. Something much different: sharper and more stinging. She fell forward, and landed on her arm, rolling over, she felt tangled for a moment against some other skin as the sky and the track itself flipped between each other, and then her foot bent in a way it shouldn’t and she screamed.
She could see the baton ahead of her, and she tried to stand up, and fell down again as intense pain flooded her brain.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry! Are you okay!?!”
She saw dual-streaks, who was teary eyed and holding her hands out without touching her as though wanting to help but not being sure if she’d hurt more than she’d help.
Hee Jin was there ahead of her, dumbfounded.
Sang Mi closed her eyes. And gave herself the talk. The same one her dad had given her and her brothers when they were so small. He’d taken them out to the wastes, riding them through the seas of dust and rock on a rusty hovertruck he’d borrowed from work. Min Jun had at to his right, and she and her brother had each perched on one of his knees as they’d looked out at the domes of Takumi from the top of a great rocky plateau. The three domes glistened, and little dots moved within them like it was some grand terrarium. He’d tousled her hair, and told them all a truth to remember forever.
“We’ve always been beaten down. We’ve had everything taken from us. Our home, our money, our family members. We don’t take that lying down. When someone hurts us, we get back up and keep moving forward. Because we’re Jhe’s. Because people think they can stop us with pain, because they don’t know what it feels like—”
“—cause when you’re born in pain, you can thrive in it.” She finished in a rasping gasp.
“What?” dual-streaks said, baffled.
She felt lightheaded as she grabbed the baton, and pushed herself up off the track. She nearly fell over, she could feel blood running down her leg—dual-streaks had spiked her in the back of the calf, and she must have broken her foot in the fall. She moved her good leg forward, and dragged her other leg behind her.
“You uh—you should stop!?” dual-streaks cried out.
She ignored her.
A drone flew over to her, hovering by her face. “Runner #311, please remove yourself from the track for medical assistance.”
She pushed it out of the way. “I waive my rights.”
“Please move off the track for medical assistance.”
“I said—” she groaned, pulling herself forward in another grueling step. She was seeing a white haze with specks of light. “—I waive my rights.”
She could hear Coach Jo right up by her, she must have gotten right next to her. “Sang Mi, we can just forfeit the race, it's okay. You don’t need to push yourself like this, you’re seriously hurt. No one is asking you to keep going.”
She pulled herself forward. Step by grueling step. “I’m not losing,” she rasped.
The Academy 2 coach was yelling at dual-streaks: “What are you doing? Start running! Do you see her, she’s beating you now with a broken foot! Go! GO!”
“But I spiked her!”
“I don’t care if you shot her dog, beat her!”
Sang Mi pressed onward. And then something happened: the crowd started clapping.
“Go Sang Mi!”
“You can do it!”
“Don’t give up!”
Coach Jo was looking at the crowd with disgust, but their words were what Sang Mi needed. She was almost there. She was staggering now, the world around her was spinning.
Just a little further. Then the words of the crowd solidified: “SANG MI, SANG MI, SANG MI!”
It was just like she’d imagined and fantasized: they were chanting her name. She felt a strange glee at her own suffering. She reached her arm out, she could see Hee Jin’s hand—the world was only that hand, the baton, and her own name, all surrounded by the sounds of the wind and the sparkling white.
The baton hit Hee Jin’s hand.
And Sang Mi collapsed.
She came to a bit later, being looked at by the physical therapist, as she was reassured that they would be getting her to the hospital soon.
“Did we win?”
“That’s really not important right now,” the therapist said.
“Did we win?” she asked more firmly.
“…Yeah. Yeah, you won the race.”
Sang Mi relaxed. The tension left her shoulders. She had really done it.
Academy 27 won their meet against Academy 2, and then spring break began.
 
* * *
 
Sang Mi stared at the boot on her foot, holding it firmly in place so it wouldn't bend at the ankle. Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, it didn't mean her track season was over, but she could definitely write off any sort of future glory on the track this year. Groaning, she slammed her VR goggles on, and tried to get into some Drakesword XVII: Force of the Blade.
She wandered around the virtual world for a while, looking at the indistinguishably realistic trees, and killing a few animated skeletons that spawned, before saving and quitting, pulling the device off with more force than was recommended in the manual. Talinata wasn't here to scold her; he was busy actually being at Track Practice. She'd tried helping out on the sidelines at practice, but not only did she not actually have anything to do beyond carrying things for the coaches which they had the hands to carry themselves, watching everyone run while she was stuck hobbling around in her boot was a level of frustration she just couldn't take. It made her feel worthless--more worthless than she usually felt.
Not that this was much better.
After another half-hour, Kalingkata decided to do what you always do when you've tried nothing and exhausted all your ideas: take a walk.
Cheonsa wasn't particularly vibrant right now; sure, it was the start of spring, but that meant a lot of folks were taking vacations to nicer places, and the people who couldn't go on vacation were getting drinks to console themselves of that fact. School was out, but this only compounded that. She hobbled along, trying to ignore all the shop keeps calling out to her to check out their stuff. That was, until she passed a pharmacy, where bursting from the door came a familiar if unwelcome face. Only Saki seemed to be wearing a white lab coat as though she was a real pharmacist and not a high school student.
"Well well well, Kalingkata, what a surprise--and I mean that I actually didn't expect to see you here, what are you doing here anyway?"
She pointed at her broken foot.
"Yes yes, I heard about that, pity, etcetera etcetera. Would you like to step inside?"
Well, she didn't have anything better to do.
The inside was nice and clean, with a team of pharmacists filling orders in the back, and rows of refrigerator cabinets with drinks and shelves with snacks, as well as home medical supplies.
"...How do you have a job here?"
"No," Saki answered with too much confidence.
"...You know what, I don't want to know," Sang Mi grabbed a can of sweetened soy milk from a fridge, and tapped her credit chip on the receiver to purchase it. "It’s spring break, I thought you'd be busy using your inexplicable influence to take a vacation to Olympus Mons or something."
"Please," Saki replied. "I already saw it."
"Of course. And you have... whatever your job is to do."
"That's right."
Sang Mi raised her can in a mock toast, and headed for the door. "Well, happy Spring Break."
She wandered around for another hour. She sat in the park and watched some kids run around on the playground and a guy throw a frisbee to his dog that was about 50/50 on catching it. She wandered some more.
She realized she had made a loop, and was back in front of the Pharmacy. Oh well. She was about to head back, when for the second time that day, she heard someone calling out to her.
"...Sang Mi? Jhe Sang Mi?"
She turned slowly; the voice wasn't immediately familiar to her, though the face was. It was a Japanese girl, wearing a kimono. She bowed, which Sang Mi returned, albeit a little awkwardly. Firstly because of her book. Secondly because the person in front of her was Tetora, the girl her ex-boyfriend had cheated on her with.
"...Nice to see you, goodbye forever!" she said as she started hobbling away.
"Wait!" she grabbed onto the loose fabric of Kalingkata's elbow, and bit her lip. "Can we talk?"
Kalingkata weighed the options.
On the one hand, she would rather smash her hand with a meat tenderizer.
On the other hand, she would also rather smash her own hand with a meat tenderizer than stay this bored and listless. At least it would be a new and different form of unhappy.
"Yeah sure, why not?" She turned around to face her. "...What's up?"
Tetora gave a deeper bow. "I'm really sorry, I didn't know he hadn't broken up with you when we started dating."
Kalingkata waved it off. "You don't need to bow, that's... yeah you can stop. Look, it's fine, I don't think you're a bad person or anything." She paused. "How's Kyon doing?"
"Oh, we broke up."
"Oh," Kalingkata nodded slowly.
"We tried to make it work for a little while, but in the end, I just couldn't trust him after finding out how our relationship started."
Sang Mi felt a sudden wave of sympathy for the girl. "Yeah... Yeah I feel you on that. Maybe we should go somewhere to talk, instead of standing in front of the Pharmacy. I think Saki is staring at me anyway."
"Who is Saki?"
Sang Mi pointed. Saki waved. "The one cosplaying as an expert."
Tetora looked confused by that, but didn't inquire further. "Why don't you come over to the Comedy Club? I perform there."
Sang Mi furrowed her brow, "You're a comedian?"
She scratched her cheek. “Well, I’d like to be one. I can’t say I’m like… a good one. I’m a comedian in training! I’m learning Rakugo, it’s a Japanese form of stand-up comedy. Only you do it sitting down. So I guess it’s not actually stand-up comedy in the literal sense.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Just sit in for a little bit, I can get you some of the snacks in the dressing room.”
“I’m in.”
Tetora smiled, “I’m glad. Just follow me.”
She led the way to a building that had to be one of the oldest ones in Takumi—the wood it was made from had that “shipped from Earth” look that was hard to describe, and hard to notice unless you grew up only seeing the wood from the handful of enclosed tree-farms on the planet. A sign outside read “Midori’s Rakugo Comedy Club” in Japanese. Tetora guided her to a side door, where she hobbled inside to find a group of teens sitting around—one of them was a stranger, a boy with glasses that had text scrolling down the lenses, which he was reading as he lay on a mat by the wall. The other two, however, she recognized immediately.
“Midi? Alice? What the hell are you two doing here?”
Midi looked up in surprise, Alice looked over in mild awareness. “Sang Mi!” Midi said. “I could ask the same thing, I never took you for a comedian.”
“My jokes are that bad, huh?”
“Oh I didn’t mean uh…”
“That was a joke, so I kind of played myself.”
Tetora coughed, “Everyone, this is Jhe Sang Mi, she’s… someone I know! From places! Since her foot is broken I thought I’d invite her to sit in on our comedy show today?”
The boy sighed, “You mean not pay?”
“Shut up, Shinji,” Midi, Alice, and Tetora said in the kind of unison that can only come from intense repetition.
“Yeah! Shut up Shinji, or whatever!” Sang Mi said to fit in.
He sighed and lay back down to read whatever was on his glasses.
“…I don’t have to pay right?”
Tetora shook her head. “That’s Shinji, as you can tell. And I see you already know Midi and Alice?”
Sang Mi waved at them. “Yeah, they go to my school. Midi’s a good friend of mine, and I’m good friend’s with Alice’s sister.”
Midi looked absolutely chuffed at the “good friend” comment. Tetora smiled, and shoved a can of boba tea and a melon bread into Sang Mi’s hands, “Well, we’re about to go on soon, find a seat in the audience and we’ll see you after the show.
 
* * *
 
Sang Mi felt a little awkward about how easy the “find a seat” order was to fill. The place only had a handful of people in it, scattered around, more than one an elderly person snoozing. She settled in, propping her foot up on another seat since it wouldn’t bother anyone, since no one was behind her. The theater smelled of ceder and mothballs, and there were a lot of stains on the seats and the floor. It was at least dark enough they were hard to think too much about.
The sound of a woodblock counting time rang out, and the curtains opened to reveal Tetora, who was sitting on a small platform on the stage, dressed in a kimono and holding a fan. “Welcome, valued guests and customers to today’s performance of the Junior Rakugo Girls—plus a boy and an enby because we couldn’t meet quota!”
A light chuckle followed this from the crowd.
“My name is Fujibayashi Tetora, a student at Academy 2, a school that has produced more second-class men than any other.”
Silence.
“Ahem. Anyway I’m here to start off our show. My performance is about a pair of friends—a fisherman at the artificial lake, and the owner of a café.” She bowed. “I hope you enjoy it!”
She rose from the bow so her back was straight, but she remained sitting down, and began to put on the airs of the two different characters, communicating that they were different just through a turn of her head and a shift of her voice, gesturing all the while with the fan.
“Oh, hello there, I was just setting up shop for the day. Any luck at the lake?”
“Not a lot. But I’ll catch one soon, I just know it!”
“Will you? You know, you’ve been going to that lake for five weeks now.”
“I sure have, every day. My big catch is just this close!”
“I decided to look into that lake, and there are two problems with your plan.”
“And what are they? You don’t know anything about fishing!”
“It’s an artificial lake! They farm fish to put in them, and they’re all the same size. You’re never going to catch a big one, at least not until they start breeding on their own for a while.”
“Well, I suppose that would be a problem, but if they’re all the same size, they’re all big ones!”
“Or all small ones.”
“Agree to disagree. So, what’s the second problem?”
“They haven’t put any fish in that lake.”
There was some light laughter.
“What do you mean they haven’t? Where am I supposed to fish?”
“Tell you what, I hear if you go to Hongtu there’s a lake where there’s an absolutely rare fish — it supposedly has a star on its side! If you caught me that fish, I’d buy it from you, stuff it, and put it over the door.”
“A fish with a star on it? I’ll catch it for sure, just you watch.”
“Sure sure.”
She put on a third voice, her own. “So, the two friends split for a time, and the café owner doesn’t hear from the other for a full month. It’s a very quiet month, but he begins to get worried—when all of a sudden one day…”
“Hey! Café owner, look what I got!”
“Sweet Shocho, is that really it?”
“It really is, I caught the legendary fish with a star on it.”
“Well don’t wait, lay it out so I can see this star.”
“As you wish.”
She mimed the sounds of the fish flopping onto the counter, dropping the fan in such a way it did indeed flop like a fish a little.
“That’s not a star! I’m not paying you for this.”
“It is, just take a closer look.”
“Let’s see… wait, that looks just like that singer Janice Rose my daughter listens to?”
“See I told you there was a star on it!”
She bowed, showing that the performance was complete, and there was light applause. Sang Mi tilted her head to the side as she watched Tetora rise and shuffle off stage as the curtains closed. She was probably supposed to wait for them to have closed completely, but who cared? Midi followed, and gave a performance with a much better punchline, but which involved them being so nervous the whole time that Sang Mi had trouble following it. Alice gave one that was a little too deadpan to properly play, and Shinji gave a performance that was technically perfect if you were trying to grade it on hitting all the beats and movements, but which didn’t seem to adapt well to the audience’s reactions even as he barreled on with confident charm.
She applauded each of them, and then the curtains rose one last time for the performers to do a very simple dance and sing a song thanking the audience for attending. A simple show.
Tetora slipped in next to her after the audience who wasn’t asleep had filtered out. “So what’d you think?”
“I mean uh, it was…”
She sighed. “You can say it. It’s rough. We were supposed to be being mentored, but our teacher never really shows up so we’ve been trying to figure it out by ourselves. We have a big performance coming up at the Takumi Centre for the Performing Arts, and I don’t feel like we’re ready. We don’t even have five people, so it might not even happen since that’s a requirement. Yolanda and Shin were on the team but once they started dating they got into that gross phase of ignoring all their other friends and spending all their time cuddling and hanging out. So yeah. We’re still looking for a new fifth.”
For a moment Sang Mi thought that that was a not-so-subtle hint she could join the Rakugo troupe, which Sang Mi had no interest in. However, Tetora’s demeanor and even tone, and the way she continued barreling on into a description of how much they’d been practicing showed that this thought had in fact never occurred to Tetora.
Which, really, was fair when it came down to it. Whether you called her Sang Mi or Kalingkata, she was practically a symbol of what had to be one of the most awkward periods of her life. She’d gotten the same handsome, hardworking, track star boyfriend who excelled at school to boot. It just so happened they’d had the same boyfriend at the same time without knowing it. That wasn’t either of their faults, and as Sang Mi watched Tetora talk something twinged in her chest.
“…How far away is this performance?”
“In just over a week.”
Sang Mi nodded. The mechanisms in her boot should have repaired the break soon after that. And if she got to sit down the whole time she performed… “How would you feel if I joined your little troupe for just a week—literally just a week, because when I get this boot off I’m going back to track immediately. But if you need five people, I can be a warm body. I won’t be very good but I can keep it short.”
Tetora startled. “Are you sure? I thought you weren’t interested?”
“Oh I’m not, I really don’t care about this and I really don’t like the idea of wearing a kimono, but look…” She took a deep breath. “Neither of us did anything wrong. And Kyon isn’t going to make it up to either of us so… maybe it’d be right if we made it up to each other?”
Tetora stared at her, jaw slipping open, and Sang Mi awkwardly shifted in her seat.
“If that’s not—”
Tetora shook her head, and now there were tears. Lots of tears. And she was throwing herself on Sang Mi and wailing and crying and squeezing her. “Yes! Yes, that’s the most amazing thing Sang Mi! How could he hurt such a good person as you? I’d love to have you on the team, and we can help each other like you said! And I’m sure it’d be fine if you wore a hanbok instead of a kimono, I mean, I haven’t asked but—no I’m sure it will be fine!”
She patted her on the back. “Okay, great. I’m really glad this idea works out so well for you.”
Tetora gave her some information about their practice tomorrow, while Midi hopped up and down a bit in excitement that they were in the same activity for a bit. With a wave goodbye to the group, Sang Mi hobbled back out to make her way home. Well, she’d certainly got herself into something.
* * *
The first day of practice, Sang Mi hobbled her way back over to the theater, and slipped in through the side door. The scene was much the same as yesterday, except that Midi and Alice were playing catch with a hacky sack. “Aloha, it is I, Kalingkata.”
“Congratulations, no one cares,” Alice replied.
“I care,” Midi mumbled.
“Are you here to join us?” Shinji asked.
“Yep, I’m ready to do my best and try to be funny.”
He gave her a glance. “Good luck.”
“See? You’re already showing me how.”
He gave a ‘hmph’ and returned to his reading.
Smiling, she turned back to Midi, Alice, and Tetora. “So then, teach me comedy.”
Midi glanced at the others. “Well uh, I can’t say that any of us are particularly… um…”
“Good,” Alice finished for her.
Sighing, Tetora rolled her shoulders. “Yeah, I guess honesty is the best policy there. So look, we don’t really know what we’re doing.”
Sang Mi’s eyes narrowed. “So what are you doing?”
“Our best,” Tetora answered.
Sang Mi nodded slowly. “So… what’s the first thing I need to do?”
“You’re going to try practicing one of our routines, and then work on your own for the big show. The actual set up is pretty simple: you go out there, you sit down like we were sitting, bow, pull your fan out—or don’t, it’s optional, but it’ll give you a storytelling prop—and start telling a story. It should be funny, but really the most important thing is having the ending be a zinger.”
Sang Mi processed this, then nodded. “Alright. I’m a little worried anything I do is going to turn out as a shaggy dog joke.”
Alice chimed in, “A what?”
“It’s a joke form,” Shinji replied. “And a bad one.”
Sang Mi pointed at Shinji in acknowledgement of his correct summary. “You start telling the joke, and then you ramble on for a while about how shaggy the dog is—and anyway the whole point is, the joke is pointless. You waste a person’s time, and that’s the gag.”
Frowning, Alice nodded. “I’m not sure I like that.”
“Hence why I don’t want to tell one! We’re on the same team!”
Tetora waved her hands over-dramatically. “It’ll be fine! You’ll do great! And even if you don't, as long as you don’t bomb it the rest of us can do okay and they’ll drop our lowest score in the judging!”
Sang Mi grunted. “Lovely.” She held her hand out, and Tetora passed her the padd with the routine on it. Sang Mi scanned it, and squinted at Tetora.
“What?”
“This has a like, intro section.”
Midi’s hand shot up. “Cause we’re supposed to do that!”
Shinji continued to not look at anyone. “None of you mentioned that.”
“You could have chimed in,” Tetora grumbled, and lightly pushed Sang Mi out of the room and onto the stage. The stage was bright, the rest of the room dark. Tetora, Midi, and Alice had filtered in and taken seats, along with a fourth person in the far back who was probably Shinji, but she couldn’t tell. She bowed, hobbled her way to the platform, and sat down, and bowed as she set the padd down in front of her, then took her shoe off her non-medical-booted foot and used it to prop the padd up so she could read it without looking straight down the whole time.
“Hello hello, thank you once again for joining us here at our amazing theater—and I’m not just saying that because my boss told me he’d give me some melon bread if I called it amazing. It really is amazing. It’s amazing just how little the floors get cleaned for one thing. Pause for laughter.”
“No! Don’t read that bit!” Tetora yelled.
“Read all those bits, that was funnier than the joke,” Alice called out.
“Sorry,” Sang Mi mumbled. “Alright, so I’ll have you know my mom has been pestering me about getting a job lately—okay but she hasn’t, like my mom wants me to focus on school—”
“It's just a routine! You’re acting, think of it like acting or roleplaying!”
“Right, sorry, sorry… Ahem. So my mom sat me down the other day with a big bowl of udon in front of me… mime eating the.. oh okay!”
Sang Mi reached out for an invisible bowl of Udon and pulled it closer, “Oh gosh thanks mom, these are my favorite noodles.”
She leaned to look at the padd. “…Switch characters to… Oh got it.” She shifted her body language a bit and put on a different voice. “Only the best noodles for my growing girl.”
“You know, my classmate Suni told me that if I get much taller I’m going to look stretched out like a noodle.”
The mother wagged a finger. “Well, I guess if you stop growing then maybe your father and I can stop worrying about feeding you so much. Prices are hefty on Earth—Oh this is on Earth! …Wait.”
Midi could be heard sighing. “Tetora you did it again! You said it’s about you and then said it was set on another planet! This is the fifth time!”
Tetora’s reply was too mumbled to be heard.
Sang Mi barreled on. “—Prices are hefty here on Earth, so you really need to get a job!”
“But mother, I don’t want to get a job! I want to eat noodles!”
“Well you can’t eat noodles if you don’t have a job.”
“But I don’t want to work. I want to take naps when I want, and go out and play with my friends, and drink milk tea!”
“Hmn, I’m not sure there are any jobs like that.”
The daughter character turned to the audience as an aside. “Oh! I just need to push my mom further on this and she’ll give up!” She turned back. “And I have some other stipulations! I need to get paid a lot of money—even get paid for napping.”
“Dear, there are no jobs like that!”
“Actually, I need to get paid more even when I do my job badly.”
“Hmn… actually… oh! There is a job like that! I’ll go see if there is an opening for you.”
“Wait! Wait I was just—oh there she goes. Is there really a job like that?”
She flicked the fan open. “A few days passed, and the daughter got a message telling her to report to work. So she goes to see what it is…” She flicked the fan closed and became the daughter again. “Oh! Wow what a big building, it’s so silver and shiny. I guess I better head in. Hello, receptionist! I’m here for the job.”
Sang Mi straightened her back. “Hello there, we’ve been expecting you. I hope you’re excited to take on your new position.”
“Hey,” she leaned in conspiratorially, “is it really true that I can take naps whenever I want to?”
“Yes!”
“And eat noodles? And eat whenever I want to? Get paid a lot of money—and get paid even more when I do my job badly?”
“Yes, those are the requirements for this job.”
“I can’t believe it, so what am I doing?”
“Congratulations! You’re the new CEO of the Central Governance Corporation!”
There was some actual laughter at that.
“Thank you, sorry it was sloppy,” she bowed again.
Tetora got up and approached the stage. “No no, that was great! You did better than Midi or Alice did their first time through. Go ahead and sit down, you can watch the rest of us practice. Spend that time thinking about what your own routine could be. How you could present it. Oh, your friend wants to have a word with you first though.”
“My friend?” she looked towards the back where a dark silhouette stood by the main doors. Of course. It could only be one person.
Making her way to the tiny lobby, she was not disappointed. “Hey again, Saki.”
She wasn’t wearing a lab coat now. Instead, she looked… normal. Incredibly normal. It was almost off-putting how Sang Mi struggled to figure out words other than “normal” and “unassuming” to describe her appearance. But she knew inside there was a tiger. “Hi there. I didn’t expect you’d be doing stand-up comedy.”
“Technically it's sit-down comedy.”
“Don’t split hairs. I’m just curious.”
“Curious?”
She sighed, and crossed her arms. “Curious. As to why you’re doing this of all things?”
Sang Mi scoffed. “Like I owe you an explanation. It’s just something to do while my foot heals.”
“Your usual patterns would be playing video games or hacking into something. You’re not a comedian.”
“Hey I’m not that bad!”
Saki didn’t smile at the joke. Maybe she was that bad. “That’s not my point. What are you doing?”
“I’m not doing anything! All my friends are off doing other things with other people! I can’t run track, it's too late to join the play, so I’m doing sit down comedy.”
Saki frowned. “I see. You’re giving up.”
“Of course I’m giving up! God, you keep showing up acting like I can do something special. You just give me drugs. Anyone could take my place—you’re probably giving me the drugs cause if I die no one will give a shit. Hell, my friends might thank you to finally be rid of me.”
Saki’s face went from a frown to blank. “That’s really how you see yourself, deep down, isn’t it? That’s why you finished a race with a broken foot bleeding all over the track. You really think so low of yourself. I already told you, no one else can do what you’re doing.”
“I don’t believe that. Who would believe that? I can’t keep a boyfriend or girlfriend, no one sticks around me. I’m just… I’m just doing this comedy stuff because I have nothing else to do. Tetora offered it, and since I’m worthless and no one else offered anything I said yes.”
Saki stood for a moment, perhaps trying to figure out what to say, before turning toward the door. As she left, she said one sentence timed just enough that Sang Mi heard it clearly but couldn’t reply as the door slammed behind her: “Sang Mi, do you really think I’d work with someone I thought was worthless?”
She wouldn’t have been able to come up with anything to say back to it regardless.
* * *
 
Rehearsal after that was pretty normal. She’d go in, and try her hand at the routine she’d written up at home, get notes from the other young comedians, and then watch their performances. They were all pretty good. Annoyingly, Shinji was a whole different person up on stage and went from stuffy and stuck up to immediately funny and charismatic.
“Wow,” Sang Mi said. “That’s not fair, he’s funny.”
Tetora patted her on the shoulder. “I know, trust me, I know.”
As she was patted, she checked her phone, and jolted so her back was straight. “Oh. Tonight is the stage show my friend Jae Hyun at school has been doing.”
“It happens during break?”
“The Theater Department is intense. Anyway we’re doing this during break,” she gestured at the stage.
“Right but… wait, you’re going just for your ‘friend’ Jae Hyun? Do you, you know—"
Shinji sighed. “Could you two shut up?” he called down.
“Sorry,” they replied in unison, and then Sang Mi sent a message to Tetora: “Want to see the show with me tonight?”
She replied with an image of a cartoon cat nodding vigorously.
 
Later that evening…
Tetora scrolled through the program for the play on her phone. “So is this Jae Hyun…”
“No,” Sang Mi said.
“I didn’t even finish the sentence.”
“I know what you’re going to say though. I don’t like him.”
Tetora frowned. “You’re going out of your way to see this play he’s in.”
She shrugged without looking back at Tetora. “He’ll come and see my bad comedy routine in return, it’s just polite.”
Tetora screwed her mouth up, nearly forming words a few times before speaking. “You can’t count on people being there forever.”
She huffed. “I know that better than you do, now hush the show is about to start.”
On stage, Ihor strolled out to deliver the prologue: “In fair Verona where we make our play, two families, both alike in dignity…”
Tetora leaned over to whisper. “So your friend—”
“—who is only a friend—”
“—Your completely friendship-based friend-like friend is playing Romeo, but who is playing Juliet?”
“My other friend Li Xiu.”
“Is she a good actress?”
Sang Mi thought for a moment. “I mean, she’s good at roleplaying games. If a little too intense.”
The play continued. Hanzo, naturally, was cast as Mercutio because it was the best role and everyone knew it. Sang Mi was rooting for him to drop the ball, but he apparently had full possession of the ball and was the team’s top scorer.
“Wow, he’s really funny, and kinda cute…” Tetora whispered.
“He’s the worst,” Sang Mi said.
Tetora frowned. “I really need better taste.”
“You and me both, sister…”
Li Xiu was pretty good. Jae Hyun wasn’t a natural, but his awkward earnestness gave him a charm that carried his Romeo forward, till the show finally reached the all-important balcony scene.
With an elegant but practiced grace, Li Xiu stepped out onto the balcony. She looked out into eternity, hands clutched on the railing of the balcony that jiggled slightly as she gripped it. “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name!” The faintest hint of a smile hit the edges of Li Xiu’s lips as she knew she’d nailed the bit everyone knew by heart. Then her eyes grew wide and the smile collapsed as she realized she’d focused so much on nailing those first two lines that she’d completely forgotten what came next. There was a prolonged awkward silence.
A voice called from stage right that Sang Mi recognized as Jorani, the stagehand. “Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love!”
“R-right. Or… or if thou silt not, be but… uh…”
Jae Hyun coughed into his fist. “Sworn my love.”
“That’s my line!” Li Xiu exclaimed.
“I’m trying to be helpful!” he replied.
The audience laughed, but Sang Mi only felt an awkward pain in her chest. Part of her was happy to see Li Xiu get publicly embarrassed, and part of her hated it. Part of her hated herself for feeling happy. Li Xiu had bullied her in the past, sure, but she didn’t have any reason to feel spiteful or jealous these days. She was happy that Jae Hyun was spending time with Li Xiu on this production instead of bothering her — that only made sense logically, right?
Li Xiu managed to get her nerves in check enough to keep going, and the scene finished playing out, albeit not as romantic as the bard had probably intended. The rest of the play went mostly well too, though Li Xiu never got her confidence back all the way. After the play finished, Sang Mi and Tetora went to go greet the actors.
“You came?” was the first thing they heard, and Jae Hyun’s jaw nearly dropped off his face.
“Is there a reason I wouldn’t?” Sang Mi retorted. Jae Hyun simply closed his jaw and smiled.
Li Xiu looked somewhat defeated at her presence. The show had to still be eating her up, Sang Mi reasoned. “Hey, you both did great. That’s one of the most iconic plays of all time, you should be proud.”
“It wasn’t… exactly what I was hoping for,” Li Xiu opined.
Sang Mi hobbled closer and patted her on the shoulder. “Hey, not everyone can recover like that. Most people would have run off stage and put their head under a pillow. You’re not defeated till you give up.”
Li Xiu blinked repeatedly, and then gave a smile that seemed to be knowing, though Sang Mi knew not what. “Yeah. Thanks, Sang Mi.” She ran her tongue along her lower lip and then changed the topic “What have you been doing since you broke your foot, anyway?”
“I’m healing up great, thanks for asking. As for what I’ve been doing, I’ve been learning sit-down comedy with her,” she pointed at Tetora. “We’re actually putting on a show ourselves in two days at the Takumi Centre for the Performing Arts.”
Li Xiu’s eyes widened. “The big citywide arts Showcase?”
“Yeah, I guess?”
“We’ll be at your comedy show too. Promise!” Jae Hyun said.
Li Xiu’s head whipped around to that statement faster than a cheetah. “…Yes, we will both be there. Definitely.”
Tetora cut in, “We’ll look forward to seeing you!”
“Oh right, this is my friend Tetora, she’s teaching me comedy.”
The pair glanced at each other. “You mean… the uh…”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Tetora replied.
“It’s okay, we were both two timed. We’ve made peace.”
Li Xiu was about to reply, when a little girl came up holding a flower to give to Juliet.
“Well, we’ll see you both then, then.” Jae Hyun said with a trademark awkwardness, as Li Xiu knelt down to talk to the child.
“See ya, and good work again!” Sang Mi said. What a show.
 
* * *
The master of the comedy club finally showed up on the day they were supposed to go perform. Sang Mi had expected to feel salty, but as soon as he stepped out of the autocar, supported by a cane and a butler-bot, she could only think of her grandmother in the days before he passed. He was dressed in a fine kimono, and shook gently with every step.
“Oh, are you my lovely comedians?”
“Yes, sensei,” Tetora said with a bow. The rest of them bowed too.
He smiled gently, and hobbled up to Tetora. He reached out, putting a frail hand on her shoulder. “I’m so happy to see you, Shuna. You’ve made me so proud, making sure our traditions here continue.”
Sang Mi mouthed, Shuna?
Tetora chewed her lip for a moment, then smiled. “Of course, I’m happy to do that as well, Grandfather.”
Grandfather? Sang Mi and Midi mouthed.
“You’ve made me so proud… so proud…” he paused, and it seemed like clouds went over his eyes. “I’m sorry, who are you again?”
Sang Mi and Midi pursed their lips. Ah.
Tetora directed him back into the autocar, assisted by the bot, and the young comedians followed suit. The car was lush—faux leather seats so soft they might have been cotton candy. Once it started moving, the old man dozed off.
“So uh, who is Shuna?” Sang Mi asked.
“His granddaughter. I’m her friend at school. She thinks all this stuff is stupid. She told me that if her grandfather didn’t put a group together for the City Arts Showcase they’d close down the comedy club he’d spent his whole life building. She was supposed to do it, but she didn’t want to. Thought it was funny it was finally going away. So I decided to give it a try and see if I could save it.”
Everyone was silent for a moment.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Midi asked.
“I knew,” Shinji said.
“Shut up, Shinji,” the others replied.
Tetora shrugged. “I didn’t want to guilt anyone into it.”
Sang Mi put her hand on her shoulder. “You know you’re a good person, Tetora.”
Tetora lowered her head, and closed her shoulders in. Sang Mi glanced around. “You… okay?”
Tear drops fell onto Tetora’s lap.
“Oh God, uh, I’m sorry?”
Tetora shook her head. “No, no, don't apologize. Thank you. I… I’m just really glad to hear you say that.”
Alice reached over and poked them both. “I’m glad they’re happy tears, cause we need to get into the zone. We’re supposed to be performing comedy, you know.”
Tetora wiped her tears, smiling from ear to ear, and nodded.
Sang Mi chuckled, she looked like the cartoon bunny she’d sent earlier.
They dropped off the old master first, allowing the staff of the Centre to help him inside to his seat. Then pulled around back to the loading dock area, shuffling in and letting the backstage staff guide them to the greenroom where they sat down on cheap plastic chairs that had been shoved against every wall of the packed room. Other people bustled around them, and each of them took turns going into the dressing room to check their stage makeup.
“Is that Janice Rose?” Alice asked, leaning over and not-quite-whispering because it was too noisy for that. They all peered over to see a rather annoyed looking woman surrounded by entourage.
“No way, why’d she be here?” Tetora answered.
“I heard Director Jojan wanted to make a big display here for the Earther Ambassador, so he was bringing in big names,” Shinji explained.
“But an Earther popstar? Seriously?” Alice said.
“Janice, you’re on!” a stagehand yelled.
“Thank God,” she said in English, which Sang Mi hadn’t heard anyone speak in long enough she startled. “Let’s get this over with.”
They all watched the woman’s entourage push their way through the crowd, making a bubble around her, as she made her way to the stage entrance. The crowd outside exploded with sound—cheers, applause, whoops, shrieks—it was raucous.
“Don’t worry everyone, it’ll be super easy to follow that up!” Sang Mi said.
“…Shut up, Sang Mi,” Shinji said.
She blinked, and then they all laughed. “Okay, that was pretty good,” Sang Mi admitted.
“But seriously,” Tetora said, “We’ll be fine. We’re doing a whole different thing.”
“Would have been nice if they saved the big name for last,” Midi mumbled.
“She probably has to catch a transport back to Earth,” Alice concluded. The pounding of bass resonated as the sounds of the hit single named, ironically enough,“Si-Si-Si-Single!” rang out.
“Look over your lines, everyone,” Tetora reminded. They all did, and when the last notes of the concert faded out, and the final encore walk off had concluded, Tetora rose up, and made sure the stage hands were carrying the platform for them on as Janice Rose’s set up was being carted off. “Alright!” she turned back to the group, speaking over the din. “I’m going on first, then. Alice will follow, Midi in the middle, then Shinji, and Sang Mi will take the final hand off.”
“Wait, why am I the anchor? I never finish relays? And this isn’t a relay, I’m the worst comedian here?”
Tetora winked. “I know you’ll come in for the clutch.”
She gave a thumbs up. “Great, last time I got trusted with this I broke my foot.”
“Then…” she dramatically backed away toward the stage exit, and gave Sang Mi finger guns. “BREAK A LEG!” and ran through the door before she could reply.
The four all stared at the door.
“Damn, she should have saved that one for the set,” Shinji mumbled.
They all sat in a nervous silence as they waited for the noise from Tetora starting her set. They couldn’t make out her exact words, but they could hear the muffled sound of her amplified voice through the wall. They crossed their fingers.
Then, laughter.
They all exhaled.
Sang Mi crossed herself and said a Hail Mary.
Alice’s set went well, so did Midi’s, so when Shinji went on Sang Mi was feeling incredibly chill, and was mouthing the lyrics to a Janice Rose song with Tetora while each listening with an earpiece. Laughter came from the audience.
And then, the laughter stopped.
And they stopped singing.
And there was a length of silence from the stage that was quite worrying.
And Shinji came shuffling off stage, looking down, pale as a sheet.
They all rushed over to him. “Shinji, what happened?” Tetora asked.
“So uh, you know the joke I was workshopping? You know, the one about the girl who was cooking for her girlfriend and dropped the knife on her foot?”
“Yes?” all four said, but not at all in unison so Tetora had to clarify “Yes, that joke killed?” because it wasn’t clear.
“So uh, apparently Director Jojan’s niece dug her spikes into someone during a sports thing, and uh… she sort of started sobbing?”
“Oh no,’ Tetora said.
“Oh shit,” Sang Mi said.
Shinji nodded, and flopped down in a chair.
“Well, that’s it then. I don’t think they’ll be giving Midori’s Comedy Club another arts grant. Let’s just go home,” Alice said, sitting down herself.
Tetora’s eyes watered. “No… I mean… I really tried? I really tried?”
“…Sorry Tetora. I let you down. I know how much this meant to you after the Kyon disaster…”
She shook her head. “No, no, it's fine. It's fine.” She nodded, tears jostling loose to roll down her eyes as she nodded. “Things always go wrong.”
Sang Mi looked between them all. “You guys know I can still go out there, right?”
Tetora shook her head. “You really don’t have to. It's fine, I know you weren’t really into this…”
Sang Mi rolled her eyes, and with thumping slow steps walked to the door. “Nah, don’t worry guys, I got this. You know me. I never know when to quit.” She pushed through the door, and after it closed heard it open again—they were probably following to convince her not to, or watch her. She didn’t turn around again. She reached the edge of the curtains. The audience was mumbling to themselves.
Sang Mi took a breath, and shuffled out on stage. The room was dark, dark enough she struggled to see the audience. She’d never been out on a stage this big before ever—so probably for the best the fact that it was a ton of people was being obscured. Though she didn’t feel as nervous as she’d expected. She’d embarrassed herself in front of people before, like that time she tried to sing a song parody in elementary school and had the whole class laughing in the wrong way. At least here if she was bad enough people laughed she could play that off as part of a brilliant gag. And if they hated her—so what? That was normal too.
She got to the platform, and sat down. She could make the people out better from here, but they were like paper silhouettes that moved around a little in a gentle breeze. She unfurled her fan, and bowed. “Most of you don’t know me, and those of you that do are probably thinking to yourself “That girl doesn’t look like she’s funny!” and to that I’d say… I may not be funny!” She flipped the fan shut and held it pointed at the audience. And kept holding it. “That’s it, there is no rest of the sentence.” And she got her first halting laugh. Tension left her shoulders, this wouldn’t be a disaster.
“I’m actually new to comedy, I got introduced to it by an enemy of mine, she asked me to drop everything and fill in here at the last minute to help her out, and holding a longstanding grudge against her, you know what I said?” She cast her gaze around the crowd. “Yes.”
Pause for laughter. “And you might be thinking, Sang Mi, you don’t sound very smart, and to that I say: I may not be smart!” She paused. “Yeah once again there’s no ‘but’. That being said we’re good friends now, and that’s the power of this kind of thing. And you know it's funny, you go a lot of places in life. And you get there in funny ways.” She shoved her boot off the platform and gestured to it. “I’m actually usually an athlete. What I do is that I run in a big loop over and over and if I do it fast enough, I get minor validation! But big surprise I actually got in an accident while running track and field. I’m not mad about it though, because I made new friends, and had a good time! And you know what that makes me?”
She paused.
“Probably a little weird for feeling grateful I broke my foot. But I am, so no hard feelings.”
She held her hands out for effect. And it took a second for everyone to catch up, but as a loud set of clapping that was probably either Jojan’s niece or someone else in the family started, other people noticed, and promptly began following suit. She held the pose a while, smiling and nodding, as she got a really lengthy applause for something that was neither very funny nor very clever. Once it died down, she pulled her foot back up on the pedestal.  "But this isn’t the first time I’ve taken on a weird new hobby. For a real brief time, I told my parents I wanted to be an advice columnist. Can you believe that? Would you ask me for advice? Didn’t think so. But I did meet some people who helped solve other people’s problems, and one of them told me a funny story about one of their customers, it went something like this…”
She mimed opening a sliding door. “Hello, is this the home of the legendary problem solver?”
She changed her body language to the second character. “It certainly is my home, a home, so who am I speaking to?”
“Ah! So I wanted you to help. I think I’m in the wrong career.”
“That’s a more common problem than you might think. So what aren’t you enjoying about your current career?”
“Well, it's not so much that I’m not enjoying it… it’s uh… more that I’m getting a lot of customer complaints.”
“Complaints? What about?”
“Well…” she scratched her cheek. “I do massages, and I’m pretty good at it. Or so I thought. You see, they always go well until…”
“Until…”
“Until!”
“UNTIL!?”
“Until I scratch their back!”
She put her eyes wide and blinked in confusion. “How can you mess up a back scratch?”
“By sending them to the hospital!”
“What are you using to scratch their back?”
“Ah! It’s a family heirloom, my grandfather passed it down to me from his grandfather.”
“You skipped the fathers?”
“They were losers. Anyway, take a look. My one and only, legendary one of a kind… back scratcher!”
She made her eyes wide and blinked again. “You think that’s a backscratcher?”
“Of course it is!”
“You think that is a backscratcher!”
“I already said yes.”
“That’s a freaking SWORD!”
She got the laugh.
“What… what do you mean, ‘that’s a sword’? It’s a backscratcher! My grandpa used to laugh and tell me that he scratched the backs of a bunch of pirates with it.”
“Oh I bet he did. So uh, then why is it in two pieces?”
“Well I tried scratching a guy’s back with it, and he sort of snapped it in half.”
“I bet he did.”
“Well, I think you’ve been a great help to me. I now know—I wasn’t meant to be a masseuse, I was meant to be a swordsman!” She mimed waving a sword around.
“Well its going to be hard to do that with a broken sword.”
“Hmn… I guess you’ve got a point… Wait! You’re the legendary problem solver! Can you fix my sword?”
“Can I fix it? Why, I can fix it, or my name isn’t Hattori Hanzo!”
“Oh, thank you so much!”
She mimed handing the sword off, and then spoke as herself. “After the sword got fixed, a week passed, and the man came back…”
She mimed opening the sliding door again. “The sword you made me broke! You said it wouldn’t break, or your name wasn’t Hattori Hanzo!”
She shrugged. “Well my name isn’t Hattori Hanzo, it's Greg.”
There was laughter. She held her pose, she could hear her own breath. The applause started—the applause started! She bowed, and that was great because it meant the audience couldn’t see the overwhelming relief flooding her face. She held the bow till she could get it together, and then sat up smiling, waved to the audience, and walked off. As she got off stage she was tackled in a hug from Tetora and Midi.
“You did it!” Midi said.
“I had nothing to worry about, you were great!”
She smiled — a real smile, not a stage one. “Only cause I had a great team. And like, I mean that I had no idea what I was doing.”
Alice and Shinji, just to the side, each had their arms crossed, but looked pleased too.
“You did good,” Alice said.
“You weren’t terrible,” Shinji said.
Sang Mi laughed. “Thanks Shinji.”
They made their way out of the stage, and skipped returning to the green room.
“To comedy!” Tetora said.
“To comedy!” They all repeated.
“And to…” Sang Mi looked up at Tetora. “Friends.”
“To friends!” They clinked the plastic cups together, and sipped the sparkling juice. Sang Mi swirled her cup, and looked back around the packed banquet hall. She wasn’t an introvert, but this had been a lot for today.
“Hey, I’ll be right back, I just need some air.”
“Alright, just make sure you’re here for the cake. And take care, it’s cold out there.”
She gave a lazy two-fingered salute, and hobbled her way through the crowds to the outside of the venue. There was a small garden for just this sort of need outside one of the side doors, and as she stumbled under the mood-lit hanging lights she couldn’t help but feel that the entire area had had a lot of work done on it for somewhere she actually was able to be alone during such a packed event. Tetora was right–it was cold out, cold enough that snow was starting to waft down in gentle tufts that were settling on the lawn. Moving across the grass towards a bench on the far side, she heard a voice. It was a voice she hadn’t expected to hear, coming from the doorway to the Performance Centre.
“Sang Mi?”
She turned her head. There he was, in all his obnoxious handsome splendor. Kyon, dressed in an elegantly simply upscale suit he’d opened the top button on and loosened the tie on probably moments ago. She finished turning around, stomping her boot down to try to get something of a firm standing, but she still wobbled.
Sang Mi let out a breath in the cool night air, allowing it to fog out towards Kyon.
"...What are you doing here?"
"I'm allowed to go wherever I like, this is a public show."
"Two of your exes are here, don't give me that crap."
He sighed, and looked up at the sky. "You can't see the stars right here, there's too much light."
"Yeah, what's that have to do with anything?"
Kyon shook his head. "Forget it. I wanted to talk to you."
"Okay," she adjusted her weight on her boot. "Talk."
He looked at her, and it was a way he'd looked at her in the past, so she averted her own eyes to ignore it. "I think you've been unfair to me."
Her eyes turned back. "Unfair? UNFAIR? You cheated on me!"
"Did I?" he said blandly, "As I see it, our relationship was dead a long time ago. But you can't see that. Maybe what happened wasn't right, maybe I should have told you but... would you have listened anyway?"
"I would have!"
"Did you? Because I did try to tell you. I did try. And it just... you just didn't listen."
"I always listened to you."
"You didn't. I spoke, and you took the words you wanted from me. You clutched onto me, and you wouldn't let go. So yeah, I started dating Tetora. And I didn't know how to tell you."
Sang Mi felt her heart turn in her chest. Maybe this was her fault. She couldn’t exactly say she’d been a good girlfriend. She had never introduced him to her friends. Maybe she’d known deep down that if she’d done that,  Jae Hyun and JackBox would move on. Of course they’d move on.
They’d leave her alone. And she’d be alone. Like she was here, now, doing something she wasn’t good at because she couldn’t say no to someone she hadn’t ever wanted to see again not too long ago.
But then Saki’s words hit her again. “Sang Mi, do you really think I’d work with someone I thought was worthless?” She gritted her teeth.
“You can’t just… show up here and say stuff like that to hurt me. You can’t just blame me, and make me feel like the villain.”
“I’m not making you the villain! But you have no idea how to communicate with people, and you blame me for it. I told you I needed time to figure things out. I told you you’d let me down.”
“Time to figure things out doesn’t mean an ending, I agreed to give you some space so we could figure things out, and you never corrected me when I introduced you as my boyfriend after that. You still took me out on dates!”
“Those weren’t dates, they were just…”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t get semantic with me. You took me on dates. You thought you could get all the perks of having me around without any of the burden of it.”
“So you admit you’re a burden?”
She threw her hands up with an aggravated cry. “God, that’s the thing about you, Kyon. You take such pride in how petty and vindictive you can be—you brag about how you get your friends to clean up your messes like you were the most clever boy on Gongen to do it—but then when somebody else is human and just fails at something or isn’t good enough, you’re suddenly personally aggrieved. No one in history has ever been more wronged!”
He darkened. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it? You excuse cheating because you didn’t communicate with me well enough, and then get mad at me for not asking all the questions I couldn’t have known to ask.” She shrunk in a little bit. “I was so proud to be dating you. I was so happy to be dating someone who also was driven to get good grades, who cared about track, had a lot of friends, we’re even both Catholic. You know I don’t really grasp that stuff well but everyone says you’re handsome and I’m plain, and I liked the way you didn’t look at me like you thought I was. You went to our rival school but we made it work. I thought I could… bridge all those gaps.”
“I guess maybe there were too many gaps to bridge,” he said looking down.
“Maybe,” she replied.
He blew out a breath, and watched it curl into smoke and fade. “You’re right, I came here to see Tetora. I wanted to talk to her. I didn’t expect to see you. But I wanted to talk to you too, once I saw you.”
“To have it out with me?”
“I thought you’d admit you were wrong.”
She clicked her tongue. “Tetora isn’t into you. You can’t two-time two girls and expect you can charm them back.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I know. I already talked to her.”
Sang Mi laughed, now that was funny. “…God, even when you want to have it out with me I’m second place.”
“It’s not like that.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter. I think I understand this all now. I get the humor in it all. I didn’t get why God led me here to this dump to do comedy, but I had fun, I learned a lot, and I guess I needed to chat with you to figure things out.”
He put his hands in his pockets. “Alright, I’ll bite. What’d you figure out?”
She gave a wistful smile. “I guess in the end our whole relationship was a shaggy dog joke.”
He tilted his head. “I don’t know what that is.”
She sighed, and knelt down in the snow, wiping a bit of the dirt off, and pulling out a fan. “Well, let me tell you one. Thank you for coming today.”
“You don’t need to kneel down and do the whole Rakugo spiel.”
“And you didn’t need to cheat on me so deal with it.” She flicked her fan open. “So there’s this guy, and he has the shaggiest dog you’ve ever seen. Everyone says so. He’s walking down the street one day, when this man comes up to him and says. ‘Good sir, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dog shaggier than that. Not even in Hongtu. I daresay, that dog is so shaggy I bet it could solve a problem I’ve had, you see my daughter can’t find her stuffed animal, and has been desperate to hug something shaggy, so if you could come over and let her play with your dog I’ll give you a hundred credits!’ Now the man is skeptical, but he brings the dog over, and lo and behold he gets a hundred credits just for letting the girl play with the dog. So he’s feeling good about himself, and he takes the dog over to the park the next day when this woman comes over and says, ‘My gosh, I don’t ever think I’ve seen a shaggier dog.’ She’s cute, so the man asks if she wants to go to the dog park with him, and the pair hit it off. Time passes, and soon there are wedding bells and they’re going to use their dog as the ring-bearer at first but they decide they might lose the rings in its fur because it's so shaggy. His parents are at the wedding, getting introduced to his bride for the first time, but they keep getting distracted by the dog. ‘That’s the shaggiest dog I’ve ever seen!’ his dad says. And the wedding happens, and after they get back from their honeymoon the man has made a decision: he’s heard the same thing for years now, so he goes to enter his dog in the planetary shaggiest dog competition, and he takes it up to the judges and they look at it and the judge shakes his head and says, ‘That dog isn’t even that shaggy.’’ She bowed. “Thank you for listening, this concludes this evening’s performance.”
Kyon stood there, brow furrowed. The snow settled on Sang Mi’s black hair in shining white bunches as the silence following the joke stretched on. “What was the point of that?” he asked.
She got up, dusting herself off. “Good question. I’ve been asking myself the same thing. See you later, Kyon.” She turned around, and hobbled off back towards the Performance Centre. She might not have been able to tell a joke, but for the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel like one.

​

NEXT TIME!
Well wasn’t that fun? You finally got to spend some real time with me, the beautiful, glorious, talented, modest, Hee Jin! Oh, and we kicked Academy 2’s butts! Heck yeah! But I still have to do the announcements… um… there’s a bake sale to support orphans in Colocog on Tuesday in the cafeteria. Also, looks like Zhyrgal Osmonova is still puttering around.
I know my friend Sang Mi tried to investigate her earlier about something, but she’s still been helping feed the animals on the roof and everything… but what does she do with her time? Who is Zhyrgal to Zhyrgal?
And what would that girl do if you put her in a situation where she had to decide what the right thing was? Well, I guess we might find out next week!
Till next time, I’m your announcer from the Broadcast Club, Hee Jin!
 
Tune in Next Week For:
Kindness
By James Hornby
 
New Academy 27 stories will drop each Thursday!
Read past stories and learn more about Academy 27 at:
ArcbeatlePress.com/A27

The night had unrolled into a crisp morning over the streets of Takumi. It was raining, but only lightly, and it was pleasant against the heat. And Kalingkata, out of nowhere, tackled Jae Hyun so suddenly that he almost fell over.
“Ahhh!” he said in as dignified a tone as he could manage. “What are you—”
“You,” she said, “are not going to believe,” she said, “what I saw yesterday.”
This was on the route to school. Jae Hyun wasn’t really awake yet, so this was more than he could deal with. “Did you find, like, a robot cat this time?”
“I wish. That would be amazing.” She strode on ahead - she was shorter than him but somehow had a longer stride, so he had to hurry to keep up. “Put it this way. What’s the weirdest thing that happened to you yesterday?”
“Oh, I’d say it would be Li Xiu making me larp as a guy who really wanted that money. Why did he want that money?”
“You were a drug dealer.”
“Oh!” Jae Hyun blinked. “That- yeah, that actually tracks. Can you slow down a little? I had a big breakfast.” (He had not had a big breakfast. He just didn’t move at a brisk jog at 8.15am.)
Kalingkata dialed it back to a brisk walk. “So, exactly - you’d think the weirdest thing about yesterday would be the roleplay, and Li Xiu losing her upper-upper-upper-class mind, and you needing to bridal-carry Tsetseg outside.” She paused. “Actually, before I say my thing. Any updates on that?”
“We’re not a thing,” Jae Hyun said quickly.
“I meant is she still alive, jackass.”
“Oh! Sorry. Yeah. She just needed a lot of water.”
“Okay, cool.” She clapped her hands together. “But actually. The weirdest thing about yesterday was when I went over to Li Xiu’s parents’ house.”
Jae Hyun didn’t know what he had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t what followed: Li Xiu’s parents acting out a LARP based on some sort of Swedish pagan ritual, Mrs. Cao pretending to bonk her mother on the head with a big squeaky hammer. “That’s nuts,” he said. “That’s actually insane. Are you making this up?”
“If I made it up, it’d make sense,” she said; at this point, she had distractedly returned to her original pace, and Jae Hyun just had to keep up. “So of course, I have to figure out what’s going on. These people are filthy rich and they act weird? There simply has to be an overlap. The universe hates a coincidence.”
Jae Hyun wasn’t sure the universe had strong feeling one way or the other, but he didn’t say that. He was too eager to please. “So you reckon they’re part of some tabletop cult?”
“And that’s where they get all their money from!” she said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever made a connection between tabletop games and cults before, but there might be something in it. So, I’m going to investigate. I just don’t know how yet.”
“I could help!” Jae Hyun said, the words out of his mouth before he’d fully thought them. “I mean, we have the experience from investigating Zhyrgal.”
“We do have the experience getting our ass kicked, yes,” said Kalingkata. “I guess I won’t say no, but I wasn’t, like, trying to recruit you. I just had to talk to someone about this before I went insane.”
“You didn’t tell Talinata?”
“That barely counts.” She tousled her hair as she thought. “I’m pretty sure I’d be able to hack their home computer. I’d just have to email the grandmother like,” - she put on a deep voice - “buhh, I’m the gubberment, give me your password.” She paused. “But that’d be pretty bad. She’s, like, 200 years old. No class in that.”
Jae Hyun shrugged. “We could break into their house? That’d be cooler.”
Kalingkata squinted at him. “Bit of an escalation, yeah?”
He huffed. “It could be a cool way for us to, like. Hang out.”
“Larceny?”
“We’ve done it before, in the junkyard.”
“That was giving something back!” Kalingkata said; her indignation was only mostly a joke. “Nobody lives in that junkyard. I hope. And we returned a lost pet. And I was nice to an old lady. So you have me all backwards. You’re imagining anti-Kalingkata.”
This wasn’t going well. “Well, uh. We could get the information out of Li Xiu?”
“How so,” Kalingkata said flatly.
“Oh, you know me,” he said unconvincingly. “I can put on the moves.”
This did something unusual: it brought Kalingkata to a standstill. She turned to look him in the eye, her expression neutral. Jae Hyun wasn’t sure what to make of this, so he just looked back.
“Can you,” she said. “Can you, put on the moves.”
“I- I guess?” said Jae Hyun. Then, more confidently, “Yeah! I know you’re pretty oblivious to flirting and things like that, so let me assure you - when I decide it’s on, it’s on.”
There was something in Kalingkata’s expression that Jae Hyun couldn’t pinpoint. He could only assume his gambit was working.
“How about,” said Kalingkata, “you go ahead and do that.”
He paused. “Huh?”
“Yeah,” she said, and patted him on the shoulder. “Go try it on some other girl for a day or two. I’d appreciate that.”
Jae Hyun didn’t get this right away. Then his eyes widened in understanding. “Okay, got it! Wink wink!” He smiled widely and galloped off.
The plan was simple. He would put the moves on Li Xiu and gain her trust. She would tell him everything he wanted to know about her family and their pagan RPG cult. Then he would report all this information back to Kalingkata, and she would be so grateful that maybe she would give him a little kiss. Maybe that was how it all worked. He chuckled to himself giddily. Finally, it was all happening!
“You wink with your eyes,” Kalingkata muttered to herself. “Saying it is ridiculous.”

***

The first few periods creaked by. Mrs. Ichinose was talking about wavy lines and the equations used to pinpoint what kind of wavy they were, but Jae Hyun had a harder time paying attention than normal. All he could think about was the plan of attack. How would he open? He’d be able to approach at break, and they’d both be at the canteen, so he could talk about food. That would be a start. He had an idea for something to say, something he’d seen in a video.
Eventually, 11am did tick around, and everyone milled into the canteen, chattering noisily. He scanned the crowd for Li Xiu and was happy to see that, unusually, she was sitting alone. He took a deep breath and sidled up to her. It was time to say something about food.
“So, like,” he said to her, “is ramen a comfort food, or am I just depressed?”
She blinked. “What?”
It was funnier in the video, he guessed. “Uh, I mean. So I was thinking of getting some.” He paused. “If you wanted some too?”
She seemed very interested in the woodwork of the table. “No thanks.”
“Or maybe a coffee?”
She looked up. “They don’t do coffee. It’s a high school.”
“Well,” he said, trying to adapt, “maybe we could just get one later.”
She smiled - not unkindly, but definitely not impressed. “And does that work for you very often? Lines like that.”
He froze up. “I mean, uh. I didn’t mean anything by- I didn’t mean to-”
She laughed a little at his flusterment. “Don’t worry, it’s just funny. Really, I’m lucky anyone’s talking to me at all.”
“Oh, you mean after-” He caught himself, rather than say after you went insane and nearly sent Tsetseg to the hospital.
“After I went insane,” she said, “and nearly sent Tsetseg to the hospital, yeah. I’d like to say I was just in character, but that was only part of it.” She tapped her fingernails (long, painted pastel pink) against the table. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey, it’s probably Tsetseg you should be apologizing to.”
“I did. She was pretty gracious about it, but I don’t know if we’re cool.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I guess we didn’t know each other that well anyway.”
“Sure. Why are you…” He gestured. “Like that? About tabletop stuff? Is it a family thing, or-”
She laughed shortly. “Oh, trust me, you don’t want to know.”
“No, I do.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry.”
This seemed like a dead end. But he didn’t feel the need to nope out. “Well, tell me this instead, then,” he said. “Yesterday, with the lights and cameras and stuff. Do you want to go into film?”
Li Xiu went a little red in the face. “You make it sound silly.”
“What? No. I think that’d be cool.”
She didn’t respond. But she put her hands together and smiled in a gentle, happy way. “Uh. Thanks.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
“Nothing good.”
“Tell me your bad idea, so.”
“It’s not a bad idea!” she said in mock indignation - she was smiling now. “Alright, I’ll tell you a bit of it. It’s, like,” - she made a little square with her hands as if she was picturing it - “it would be about, like, this guy who’s really nice and cheerful? But his wife is cheating on him with his best friend.”
“Right, right,” he said. “Kind of a drama thing.”
“Definitely, yeah,” she said. “But like, I don’t know. I’d have a lot to learn, and it feels impossible to start. I look at what I have of the script so far, and it just feels like the most garbage thing. And I don’t think my parents would want me to do it.”
This was an opening to push on what her family’s deal was, but he found he didn’t want to take it. “Well, you gotta do what you gotta do, right?”
“I don’t think I gotta do this.”
“No? You don’t gotta follow your dreams? You wouldn’t be the first girl to piss off her parents.”
She sighed. “You think so?”
He swiveled round to lean back against the table and put his hands behind his head; this did not make any sense as a maneuver, but it felt right. “I can be the drug dealer again in your movie. Or I can just get up on a rooftop and demand money from you. Whatever works.”
That got a laugh out of her, so he was satisfied with a job well done. “Thank you,” she said, and she clearly meant it.
Jae Hyun wasn’t sure what he was trying to do. This didn’t really seem to be resolving in the direction of putting on the moves or getting any information. But he was enjoying spending time with Li Xiu. So he decided to stay a while, maybe.

So he did.
They hung out a lot over the next few days talking about Li Xiu’s screenplay idea. Jae Hyun started trying to explain story structure to her, but these turned into long explanations of what Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and ‘the Scottish play’ actually were, and that led sideways into a ramble about Journey to the West, or ‘that dumb monkey book.’ And Li Xiu explained her many contradictory ideas, and they got no work done whatsoever.
Li Xiu was concerned with the question of how they would fund this movie. Apparently, her parents wouldn’t just stump up the cash; she had to find a way to generate it herself. Jae Hyun was quick to say that they should probably write at least a first draft of the script first, but Li Xiu dismissed this. The movie was all in her head ready to go. “All we need,” she said, “is for someone to sell me a whole load of stuff at a low price point.”
Jae Hyun would later rationalise that this was the sort of thing that might illuminate how the Caos operate, where their money comes from. But really, he was just happy to hang out with a girl after school.
What he wasn’t expecting was for Li Xiu to lead him to a bar. The sort of where you spoke to the bouncer through a reinforced door with an open-and-shut grille. And that door was somehow the most welcoming thing on this street; otherwise, it was all dumpsters. Not his usual environment. He suspected it wasn’t hers either, and said as much.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “They know me here.”
She rapped primly three times on the grate, and it slid open. The dude on the other side looked like a mattress shoved into a tracksuit.
She leaned in. “Starboard,” she said conspiratorially.
“That hasn’t been the password for three weeks,” the bouncer growled. “It changes every night.”
Li Xiu huffed. “I’m Li Xiu, I know JackBox.”
“JackBox doesn’t get to let people in.”
“Then at least let her know we’re out here.”
He paused, then grunted his assent. “I’ll send word.”
“Appreciated, darling.”
Jae Hyun put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Should we even be here? Like, is it safe?”
She scoffed. “What, do you think they’re going to kill us? You do realise murder is illegal.”
“Yeah, but it’s not against the laws of goddam physics.”
“It’s four-thirty in the afternoon,” she said, laughing a little. “And it’s just a bar.”
“Right, I was going to ask,” he said. “Why is JackBox here?”
“I can answer that,” called a familiar, hoarse voice from around the corner. Sure enough, it was JackBox, sweaty after a day at work, decked out in her usual 50s-goth-housewife dress. She patted the wall with her cybernetic arm. “Just checking in with some work stuff.”
Jae Hyun raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t realise you worked at a place like this.”
“I don’t,” she said. “It’s like, I just supervise people who sell the—” She caught herself. “Like, the products I sell.”
“This is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about,” Li Xiu said, smiling widely, laying a hand on JackBox’s shoulder. “You said you sell leather jackets, right? Let’s walk and talk.”
JackBox let herself be led along by Li Xiu, who had now linked arms with her and was heading back out onto the main street. “Yeah, now you mention it, I definitely did say that I sell leather jackets. Some water beds too. Although I mostly sell to, like, politicians and stuff.”
Jae Hyun laughed a little - the alley was only wide enough for two people, and he had been shuffled down the pecking order to walk behind them. “What politician goes around in a leather jacket?”
“I don’t name names,” JackBox said neutrally.
“And you don’t need to,” said Li Xiu. “So I’m asking because - you have people under you who sell for you, yes?”
JackBox met her gaze. “Uh-huh.”
“My proposition for you is, what if I were to become one of these people? Selling for you.”
JackBox paused. They had just stepped out from the lip of the alley and into broad daylight, where normal people were walking home from work. “I don’t think you fit the profile,” she said, still very level.
“How about me?” said Jae Hyun. “I haven’t really been a salesman before, but I wanna help with Li Xiu’s thing.”
“You would also be bad,” said JackBox, “but Li Xiu extremely does not fit the profile.”
“I’m very adaptable,” Li Xiu said with a smile vaguely reminiscent of a shark. “Would it make more sense if I said I was trying to fund a film I want to make? And that I would buy the product from you at a low price point and sell high?”
“No?” said JackBox. “What? No, it would not make it better if you told me you were ripping me off. Like… my guys get a twenty percent cut. It’s a system.”
Li Xiu exhaled thoughtfully. “There must be something we can do to make it worth your while. Some sort of social favour, or—”
“Oh hey!!!” JackBox exclaimed in the other direction, suddenly much more cheery and energetic. Li Xiu and Jae Hyun were confused for a moment, and then they saw: Kalingkata was on the other side of the road, on her way home. JackBox trotted across to her, presumably to say hey!!! at her some more.
“Oh, hey dude!” said Kalingkata, friendly but without any equivalent note of frenzy. Then she saw Jae Hyun. “Hey dude.” Then her eyes shifted to Li Xiu, and Jae Hyun next to Li Xiu, and she did some mental calculations. “Oh, uh. Hey dude.”
That, Jae Hyun thought, was the sort of reaction that someone might find suspicious. But Li Xiu didn’t seem to notice at all. She was smiling - not just happily, but smugly. Knowingly. It was the happiest Jae Hyun had ever seen her, and the most dangerous.
“Hey dude,” Jae Hyun said in his best impression of JackBox’s neutral tone from earlier.
“You havin’ a good time,” she asked flatly.
“Sure.”
“A good,” she said, “and normal and respectful time? With boundaries and… stuff like that?”
Li Xiu laughed and linked arms with Jae Hyun. “You don’t have to worry about this boy at all. He’s a total sweetheart, and he’s been so supportive about my screenplay.”
“Right,” said Kalingkata, visibly skeptical about supporting Li Xiu’s cinematic ambitions after last weekend. “Well. Be sure to mention me in your acceptance speech. But I gotta go help my mom with dinner. So I’ll catch you guys around.”
And she prowled off without waiting for them to say goodbye.
JackBox sighed, full of nerves. “Was that weird?” she said. “Was I weird? Was that too much?”
Li Xiu smiled widely.
“What?!”
“Let me answer with a question,” she said. “When did all this start?”
She huffed, red in the face. She even fully crossed her arms. Strange behavior from a girl who had just a minute ago been hard-assing them. “I mean. I’m not gonna say in front of him.”
Jae Hyun put his hands up. “Not a word’s gonna make it back to her. I can fully just tune out and stare into space if you want.”
And truth be told, he didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want JackBox to go off schmoozing with Kalingkata. He wanted to schmooze with Kalingkata. That, he reminded himself, was the point of this whole operation.
She went quiet for a moment. Then she leaned in close to Li Xiu. “So, like. Basically immediately.”
“That is just precious. Why? She’s nice and all, but she’s a mess.”
“She’s cool,” JackBox insisted. “She always seems to be going on adventures, and she’s just super full of energy and stuff, and she’s easy to be around.”
“She’s not that cool,” Jae Hyun said unconvincingly. “I’d say you’re cooler.”
“She is cool, and also has her life together,” said JackBox.
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Jae Hyun, his mouth running faster than his mind again. “I mean, last year, she dragged me on this whole wild goose chase through a junkyard. Because she, like, goes through the junkyard looking for stuff for fun? Which I think is weird.”
Li Xiu lightly slapped him on the arm. “You must stop being such a killjoy! No, I can see what she means. Sang Mi does have an enthusiasm about her.”
“They both do,” JackBox smiled shyly. “Her and Talinata. Honestly, not to be weird, but I’d take either.”
“I mean,” Jae Hyun cut in again, trying not to laugh, “do you mean either? Because I think you’re thinking b—”
“You said you were going to tune out.”
“This is vulgar and I cannot condone it,” said Li Xiu, smiling wider than ever. “I believe we’ve found the favor we can administer upon you.”
“You absolutely have not,” said JackBox. “I don’t know what you mean, but whatever it is, I would die. I’ll never give you any jackets for the rest of my life.”
“Oh, we’re well past jackets.” Li Xiu was fully grinning now. “This is so much more delicious.”
This was not a good direction for this to be going. “Hey now,” he said. “Hey now hey now hey now. Doesn’t it seem like interjecting ourselves into people’s feelings like this could get a little weird?”
“I just want to help out my good friend JackBox,” Li Xiu said innocently.
“But this is ridiculous,” he insisted. “You’re not seriously going to set them up.”
“No, Jae Hyun.” Li Xiu made a little ceremonial ta-da kind of a gesture. “You are going to set them up.”
JackBox buried her face in her hands. “Oh my God…”
“Yeah, oh my God!” said Jae Hyun, his voice getting squeaky now. “How am I supposed to—”
“You know Sang Mi way better than I do. And I’d say you’d be well able to put on the moves,” Li Xiu grinned.
“Uh?!”
“C’mon,” she said, giving him the big doe eyes. “I’d really appreciate it…”
She might even appreciate it enough, he thought, to open up a bit about her family. Maybe this was the solution. “Sure,” he said. “I can make that work.”
JackBox looked up. “Two seconds ago, you thought this was a bad idea.”
Which was true, in that he wanted to keep Kalingkata for himself. So he had to thread the needle on this one. “I just mean that I don’t see what you see in her,” he said easily. “Like, she’s a weird trash lady, and you can do better. But I’ll see what I can do.”
“Oh my Godddd,” JackBox said into her hands in embarrassment. When she looked up again, her face was resolute. “Fine. I’ll let you do the thing. But this had better work.”
“It will!” Li Xiu smiled.
“Unless it doesn’t,” said Jae Hyun, “which is okay, because, like, plenty of fish in the sea, right?”
“It had better work!”
JackBox tried to push past them and run off, but Li Xiu grabbed her arm. “One more thing.” She pulled out her purse, fished out a pretty decent whack of little pieces of paper, and pressed them into JackBox’s hands. “As many leather jackets as that will buy. I trust you to cut a good rate for your matchmaker.”
JackBox stared at the money in her hand. “Damn,” she said. “I shoulda come to you months ago.” And with that, she left, speechless. She was nearly stumbling from the exertion of it all.
Li Xiu was still beaming. “She is absolutely adorable,” she said. “I have never seen her like that.”
“Yeah, I guess me neither,” Jae Hyun said absently. He was watching Li Xiu’s hands, how she tapped the tips of her fingernails together with nervous excitement. It was deliberate and kind of endearing.
“You keep looking at my hands,” she said. “Is there something on them?”
“Oh? No. I guess I just like how you do your nails.”
“Ah!” She tucked her hair behind her ears nervously. “It’s not me that does them, I just went to the salon last week. But thank you. Maybe we’ll have to get yours done!”
He laughed. “It’d be wasted on me.”

***

“She’s funny,” he said. “She goes to the salon to get her nails done. Who does that? Like, under the age of 30.”
“I could never.” Kalingkata waggled her fingers. “Need these girls for gaming. Gotta keep my mash optimal.”
This was the next day at lunch. Jae Hyun hadn’t run into Kalingkata in the morning even though they usually walked to school together. She’d presumably overslept. But he’d caught her when class broke; she looked a little reluctant, and he second-guessed himself, but it was important to debrief about the mission. Now they were sitting out in the sun on the outside wall; it almost felt like they should be having cans of something they weren’t old enough for yet.
“And you might want to keep your nails short for other things.”
She looked at him blankly. “What other things?”
He realised his error. “Y’know.”
“Oh, like, just in general?”
“Yes, that is what I meant,” Jae Hyun said steadily. Time to change the subject. “Anyway. Are you excited to find out what the deal is with Li Xiu’s cult? Because I think we’re just one or two steps away.”
Kalingkata shrugged, staring off into the middle distance. “Honestly, don’t break your back over it. I was going insane on Monday, but so long as I don’t get bonked on the head with a big squeaky hammer, I could take it or leave it.”
“Well, maybe take it,” Jae Hyun said, mentally scrabbling a little, “because I need your help for this next bit. Can you go on a date with JackBox?”
For the first time in the conversation, Kalingkata actually looked at him. “I, uh. What?”
“Basically, Li Xiu is playing matchmaker,” Jae Hyun rattled off - he had spent an embarrassingly long time last night figuring out a more elaborate lie before remembering that Kalingkata was actually in on the original ruse. “So if I help her out with that, then I’ll earn her trust, and she’ll tell us everything we want to know.”
Kalingkata’s mouth was a straight line. She steepled her fingers together. “And does JackBox know about this?”
“Uh-huh,” Jae Hyun said neutrally.
A pause as she computed all this. “So what you mean is,” she said, “this is a convoluted way of JackBox asking me out?”
Jae Hyun scrunched up his face. “More like me asking for Li Xiu asking for her?”
“Sure,” said Kalingkata. She ran her fingers through her hair, clearly stressing a little. “It’s just. I didn’t think she fancied me? I can’t tell.”
“Yeah,” said Jae Hyun pointedly, “I don’t think you’ve ever noticed anyone having a huge crush on you.”
“What can I say? I’m not gifted with your unparalleled ability to read the goddam room.”
“Exactly!” said Jae Hyun. It was nice to get some credit, at least. “Anyway, are you going on the date or not?”
Kalingkata thought for a second. “I have never thought about whether or not I fancy JackBox,” she said honestly, “but she is cool, so I suppose it could be worth checking.” Then, more assertively, “Sure, tell her we can go to the ice cream place just up the road when school breaks. I’ll give anyone a chance.”
Unbelievable. “Will do, ma’am,” he said weakly. Then attempted a joke: “Maybe you’ll even get a leather jacket out of the deal.”
Kalingkata blinked. “A what?”
“Oh, sorry, it was this whole thing. JackBox was saying that she sells leather jackets at the local bar.”
“Is that so.”
“Yeah, like. She supervises sellers who work at street level? And she mainly sells to politicians. Which I think is crazy. I’d like to know what politician would be getting a leather jacket.”
He turned around, expecting Kalingkata to at least be doing an obligatory fake laugh, but she seemed more irritated than ever. “Come the hell on, man,” she said. “She’s, like, sixteen. Do you seriously expect me to believe that shit?” She hopped off the wall and stormed off. “Leather jackets. Christ. Just talk straight.”
Jae Hyun was stung. Was it something he said? What was it about leather jackets that were so bad? Was she vegan or something?
Oh well. He pulled out his padd and, with no small amount of annoyance, texted JackBox the good news.

***

It was of course imperative, or at least appropriate, that Jae Hyun also be in the ice cream parlour to see how the plan played out. But it was also important that JackBox not see. So he went and got one of those print media ‘news papers’ that hipsters liked, to block his face. And he had a sunglasses-and-baseball-cap setup too, for safety. And he’d even slipped away before the last class to make sure he’d be there early.
Kalingkata was the first in the door. Since she was in on the plan, he lowered his newspaper to wave hello. Apparently, this was an error. She stormed over to him and was clearly just about stopping herself from grabbing him by the jumper. “What,” she said, “in God’s name are you doing here?!”
“Just making sure everything goes well!” he said squeakily.
“I am here on a nice date with my normal friend—”
“I don’t understand. This was the plan?”
“Why do you have a big newspaper?!”
“It’s a disguise!” He gestured at a woman across the room who was also reading the paper. “It’s in vogue here!”
Kalingkata took a step back and started massaging her temples. He needed to say something to set her at ease.
“So,” he said, holding up his mostly-empty paper cup. “Why do they sell coffees here? Like, it doesn’t go with ice cream. Although I guess that’s what affegatos are?”
“Perish.”
This wasn’t salvageable. He started folding up his newspaper. “Y’know, maybe I should just get out of your—”
Nope nope nope nope JackBox was walking in the door. He unfolded the newspaper again like a springtrap and hoped desperately that she hadn’t noticed anything amiss, just staring in blind panic at a 750-word report on a planned windmill development.
“Hey!” he heard JackBox say. She didn’t seem any the wiser. “Heyyy!!!”
A long pause from Kalingkata. “Hey. Do you wanna go somewhere else?”
“That’s okay, I love it here!”
“I think the park could be good,” Kalingkata said firmly.
“I’ll just order,” said JackBox. A pause. He guessed she was looking at the menu. “This is crazy,” she continued. “That we’re here, I mean. Sorry to do it through a weird chain. It wasn’t really my idea.”
“Yeah, I think a lot of people have been having weird ideas.” Then she seemed to catch herself. “I don’t mean it’s not nice to hang out, though. I’m down for that.”
“… of course, yeah,” JackBox said, all shy.
“You could have just asked me out, you know.”
“I knowww,” she whined. “But, like, those two were cool about it. They were bigging you up, talking about all the cool adventures you go on in the junkyard.”
“Oh yeah! That thing with the dog. That was a nice night.”
“Well, I say ‘bigging you up.’ Jae Hyun called you a weird trash lady.”
Uh oh.
“Did he,” said Kalingkata. “Did he now.”
Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
“I mean,” JackBox said quickly. “I don’t think he meant it in a very mean way? I don’t know.”
“No, he’s actually a pretty weird guy,” Kalingkata said, obviously pissed off now. “I’d give him a wide berth. I wasn’t going to say anything, but he was trying to convince me you were a drug dealer.”
What?! This was actually crazy. He hadn’t said anything like that at all!
JackBox had suddenly gotten very quiet, and when she did speak, her voice was shaky. “What?”
“As if I was going to fall for that!” Kalingkata continued. “I mean, you’re what, sixteen? I can’t believe he thought I’d think that. That you’d get mixed up in some dumb seedy bullshit just because you’re a Maverick? You’re clearly way above it.”
“I mean. It’s complicated.” She was definitely sounding uneasy now. The temperature in the room was dropping real fast. And Jae Hyun was just starting to piece together that JackBox possibly did not sell fashionable clothing. “What I mean is,” JackBox continued as best she could, “other people, who find themselves in these situations. There are a lot of extenuating circumstances that they might be born into. And a lot of trouble that they might be trying to stay out of.”
“I guess,” said Kalingkata, who clearly was not getting it. “But you always have a choice, right?”
“There’s a lot of stuff,” JackBox snapped, “that these kids didn’t have a choice in, and there’s a lot of—” She cut herself off. “I’m gonna have to step out.”
“Uh? Are you okay?”
She seemed short of breath. “I definitely gotta step out. You order whatever you want, and I’ll be in the park unless I have to— I don’t know. Give me a second.”
From the footsteps out, Jae Hyun could tell that it was at least safe to lower his paper. JackBox was, of course, gone. And Kalingkata was at the counter, looking lost.
She apologized to the woman at the till and stepped over to Jae Hyun discreetly. “Okay, I’m gonna give you credit on exactly one thing,” she said quietly. “I thought you were trying to bullshit me about the drugs thing, and I am now picking up that was not the case. So I’m sorry for flipping my shit at you over that.”
“I literally did think it was leather jackets.”
Kalingkata breathed in deeply. “You,” she said, “are actually a goddam moron.”
“Yeah, I’m picking up on that,” he said sheepishly. “This whole thing was just meant to be a bit of fun, y’know? I just wanted to get to know you.”
“I think you know me pretty well,” said Kalingkata, who was now annoyed again. “I’m your friend, the weird trash lady.”
“Alright…”
“Maybe we can hang out again and I can eat out of the trash again.”
“Sang Mi,” he said, “I actually had a really nice time that night.”
She gave him a shove. “So did I!”
“I was just trying to put her off you because—” He caught himself. “Listen, the point is. I can get out of your hair for a while.”
“I think you definitely need to, yeah,” Kalingkata said. She was aiming for ice-cold, but she was too sore with it. “And don’t hassle Li Xiu either. Your ruse is dumb.”
“I mean, honestly, I stopped doing the ruse after sixty seconds.”
She squinted. “No you didn’t. You did all this stuff. You set me up with JackBox just to shoot it down.”
“But like,” he said - and he was figuring this out for the first time as he was saying it - “I think the big plan kept going because it had momentum? Really, I was just hanging out with Li Xiu because I like hanging out with her, and she really listens to me and stuff, and she really wants to make her movie.”
Kalingkata scritched the back of her head and shrugged. “I think you’re nuts,” she said. “Don’t hurt her. Now, I gotta go see if I can rescue this dumb date.” She turned and made to leave.
“I hope JackBox is okay!” he called after her.
She didn’t reply or look back. Just straight out the door.
He deflated into his chair. He could hardly keep track of all the ways he’d screwed up in the last week. The last of his coffee sat at the bottom of the cup, getting colder and grosser.
On the upside, maybe some of this could go in Li Xiu’s movie.

***

Across the room, behind her newspaper, Li Xiu smiled and had another spoon of her affegato. Through the open window, she could hear a light spring rain far off somewhere, and something had begun.
She picked up her book.
Underneath was a neatly folded note on a torn-out scrap of paper.
Your disguise sucks. Check under the table for your leather jackets.
Li Xiu was impressed that JackBox had seen through her disguise and slipped a note somehow, but she’d messed up the simplest part: actually giving her the jackets. She’d just left behind a plastic bag of crystals. Perhaps it had all been some sort of euphemism? Li Xiu had never pegged her as an astrology type.

​

NEXT TIME!
Finally. FINALLY. You know what happens next week? You know what happens!?!
OUR TRACK MEET.
AGAINST ACADEMY 2.
AFTER ALL THIS TIME WE’RE GOING TO KICK THEIR--
Uh, kick their academy leniency respectfully and without vitriol, Mr. Mori.
So let’s get ready for the track meet! I’m sure nothing else important will happen because of it. No-sir-ee, that’s the biggest thing happening next ween for sure.
Till next time, I’m your announcer from the Broadcast Club, Hee Jin!
 
Tune in Next Week For:
Sit Down Comedians
By James Wylder
 
New Academy 27 stories will drop each Thursday!
Read past stories and learn more about Academy 27 at:
ArcbeatlePress.com/A27

A27: The Roleplaying Game
By Dillon O’Hara, James Wylder, Callum Phillpott, and Kimberley Chiu

Session 1: Head Out on the Highway

A beaten-up car tore through the black night at breakneck speed. Li Xiu was at the wheel; beside her, an anxious Jae Hyun tried to ignore the speedometer as it crept past 180 li per hour, then 190, then 200. In the backseat, Bashrat writhed in Talinata’s arms, struggling to breathe.
“Just hold tight, dude,” Talinata said levelly. “We’re almost at the hospital. You’re gonna be okay.”
Bashrat wheezed. If he’d known that it had hazelnuts, he never would have had a slice of that Gamer’s Delight. He needed more air, somehow. He pushed himself up and moved toward the open window. Talinata tried to pull him back but was pushed away.
The cold night air whipped around Bashrat as he stuck his head out the window; he felt like it was trying to peel his face off. He opened his mouth wide as he could. He knew, vaguely, that high-velocity air wouldn’t really push down a constricted windpipe, but he had to try something, anything, just to buy himself a few more seconds to--
The electrical pole came out of nowhere.
All the rest of them heard was a sharp, deep clunk.
There was a long, terrible silence. There was no reason to go to the hospital anymore.
“I mean,” said Li Xiu, who had not slowed the car, “didn’t I say I was going toward the temple? To get the next, like, emerald thing?”
Bashrat, who was fidgeting with a twenty-sided die in the real world, looked miffed. “Wait just a second. You mean you weren’t even going to heal me?” He turned to the GM, Kalingkata. “Tell her! You’re in charge!”
Kalingkata put up her hands. “Not at all!”
“Yes you are! You’re…” He waved a hand vaguely. “God!”
“Do you think God’s in charge of anything here?”
Bashrat huffed in agitation and turned back to Li Xiu. “Why would you not be going to the hospital?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the, like…” She snapped her fingers, trying to remember the word. “Healer?”
“You know I’m underlevelled! I can’t heal a status ailment like that yet!”
“Yeah, you suck,” said Li Xiu. “And I remember, Kalingkata said that if your character died, you could just come back as a different guy? So maybe your next guy will be better.”
Talinata rubbed his temples. “I’m not sure that’s quite in the spirit of the game.”
“But it is funny,” said Kalingkata, “so I’ll allow it. Bashrat, you are extremely dead.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Well, hang on,” Jae Hyun cut in. “Li Xiu, why did your character let Bashrat die?”
“What, like, the pretend version of me?” said Li Xiu as she adjusted her (very nice) artificial nails. “I guess she finds Bashrat annoying too.”
“Well, that’s a little petty of a reason to kill someone for real,” said Jae Hyun. “So! Uh. Jae Hyun tries to wrestle control of the car from Li Xiu. I roll for… dexterity?”
“Sure, let’s say dexterity,” said Kalingkata. She picked up one of the dice, made a big show of shaking it around, and, as was customary, threw it down so hard that it bounced off the table and landed on the floor. Facing up was a neat little 11. “Alllrighty,” she said. “Let’s say… Jae Hyun makes a pretty decent swing at it, but Li Xiu doesn’t give up right away.” She looked over at Li Xiu. “I assume you don’t give up right away.”
“Whatever, I guess.”
“Cool.” She throws up her hands. “The car is swerving backwards and forwards! It’s going out of control! What do we do?!”
“That is when,” Bashrat butts in, “my new character arrives on the scene!” With no small amount of pride, he lays down a pre-prepared character sheet. “I would like you all to meet your saviour, the All-Powerful Zaphex! He’s an alien, and he has telekinetic alien powers, and a cool alien girlfriend, and—”
“What was that last one?” Kalingkata said levelly.
Bashrat paused. “Cool alien powers.”

Session 2: Live Deliciously
Tsetseg stepped through the creaking doorway into the barn, where Black Billy the goat stood waiting. Her skirts rustled stray bits of hay as she walked toward him.
“I’m here to sell my soul to you, Mr. Devil Satan Lucifer.”
In reality, the table went silent.
Li Xiu was incredulous, “…Mr. Devil. Satan. Luci. Fer?”
Tsetseg looked around, “Did I say something weird?”
Talinata sighed, “I mean we were kind of having a whole serious scene here and then you said ‘Mr. Devil Satan Lucifer’ which really just…”
“Broke the ambiance,” his sister finished.
Bashrat looked between them all, “But its an accurate statement, isn’t it? The goat is all of those things, right?”
“I mean, yes, technically,” Li Xiu replied. “But its just not a very dramatic way of stating it.”
Talinata grumbled, “Especially after you got all of our characters killed when you weren’t even here last week.”
Tsetseg stood up and waved her arms around with the grace and dignity of a floppy fish, as she spoke. “It was all of your faults for not making characters who wouldn’t get killed by the evil witch!”
“Its spelled with two V’s at the front,” Bashrat said pointing at the cover of the roleplaying game’s corebook. “So, its not witch is like… vih-vitch.”
“I don’t think that’s how English works,” Kalingkata mused.
“AND FURTHERMORE!” Tsetseg continued, not to leave her thoughts unfinished, “I couldn’t show up last week because my dad needed me at home.” She paused mid statement, holding a single finger up as if this was merely the first part of a larger argument, before lowering her finger quickly and staring up at the elaborate and obviously expensive wood-paneled ceiling of the rec-room Li Xiu’s family was letting them use.
“Not to be weird,” Li Xiu said. “But uh, what did your dad need you at home for so badly you missed your weekly social interaction with other human beings?”
Kalingkata snapped in front of Li Xiu’s face like she was getting a naughty puppy’s attention, “No! Bad! Do not taunt our friend about that! Bad Li Xiu.”
“Don’t patronize me just because you’re the GM, what are you going to do anyway? Kill my character? She’s already—”
“For the record my dad needed me at home to uh…” Tsetseg trailed off precipitously.
Li Xiu crossed her arms, “What was that, Miss Tsetseg?”
“…I just thought he looked kinda lonely.”
The group awkwardly rearranged their own individual play areas, and suddenly found placing their dice in numerical order to be an extremely engaging use of their time.
“A-anyway,” Li Xiu said. “Let’s finish this one-shot up, since Tsetseg is the only one still alive.”
“Also, if we do that she can sit down,” Bashrat noted with an air of thinking this was a much more helpful suggestion than the awkward one it was. Tsetseg did sit down though, feeling the heat on her cheeks. Finally ready to play the game again, Kalingkata took a deep breath, and tried to set the mood again.
“So, you’ve just betrayed all of your friends and family, and let them be killed by the witch. You’ve managed to survive though, and while your farm is in bloody ruins, the goat who you have suspected is really the devil in the guise of a beast is waiting there for you to make a deal with it, his black eyes glinting in the darkness like the edges of blades. What do you do?”
Tsetseg coughed, and put her hands together, “Oh, Black Billy, who may or may not be Lucifer, Satan, or the Devil, or all three of them if they are the same person, I conjure thee to speak with me! Do you understand me? Are you actually just a goat? If so this would be very awkward, but otherwise answer me!”
Kalingkata put on a surprisingly low and sultry voice, “What dost thou want, child?”
“Oh wow,” Bashrat said.
“Yeah, that’s actually really good Sang Mi,” Li Xiu added.
“SHHH,” Talinata said.
“Ahem, yes. What dost thou want, child?”
“What can you give me? Is this like… are we making a deal here?
“Wouldst thou like the taste of chocolate? Pretty dresses?”
“Oh, well yes and yes, actually. But I think you can do better than that.”
Kalingkata squinted at her, “…Name thy desire?”
“A Talinata game console, and a new pair of sneakers, and some tri-range wrenches so I can help work on the hoverbike, and a porter bot, and—”
“Is this just your birthday wish list?” Li Xiu asked.
Tsetseg frowned, “I’m making a deal with the Devil. I figure I should get what I really want, right?”
“I am not the devil! Your character is making the deal with the devil!” Kalingkata said, with some measure of both exasperation and defeat at how her session was going. “You’re a puritan girl in 1630. You want things from that time period.”
“Right, yes. Sorry, I’ll get into character…” she closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them with an attempt at seriousness. “I want chocolate, and dresses, and gold.”
“It shall be thine.”
“I want land, and power, and a dozen lovers who never part from me.”
“I shall grant thee this also.”
“A horse to ride, with a coat as soft and rich as a feather pillow.”
“Done.”
“And a new phone, with an unlimited data plan.”
Kalingkata paused, trying to decide if she should push this or not. “…Sure, that shall be thine as well. I guess.”
“Then let’s get this deal signed, what a great session everyone.”

Session 3: I’m Waiting for It
“Okay,” said Talinata, frowning down at the map on the table. “Explain the rules again?”
Because the thing was, the thing was, the map wasn’t actually a map. It was just sheet of grid paper, totally blank except for a pair of lines drawn about an inch away from either end of the sheet, parallel to each other. A row of little figurines were set up along one of the lines. Each little figurine had its own horse.
D&D was always weird, but this was, like, weird.
“So,” said Kalingkata, “all of you are here” – pointing at line one, with the figurines – “and you are trying to get to here” – the other line, naturally – “where you will meet the legendary Green Knight, who has promised to cut off your head. Heads.”
“And then, uh,” said Talinata, “we have to… fight him?”
“No,” said Kalingkata, “he cuts off your head. Or doesn’t. That’s totally up to him, really. The point is just to get there.”
“Hm,” said Talinata.
“This is ridiculous,” said Li Xiu. “What kind of storyline is this? I thought you said we were going on an adventure!”
“It is an adventure,” said Kalingkata, shrugging. “It’s a quest narrative. Apparently.”
“Apparently?” said Li Xiu.
“It was Jae Hyun’s idea,” admitted Kalingkata. “I just thought it would be funny.”
Every person at that table turned to glare at Jae Hyun. It was almost eerie. Jae Hyun stared back, unrepentant.
“Well,” said Li Xiu, after a moment, “that explains the – gameplay mechanic.”
A round of grumbling about the gameplay mechanic. The people, it seemed, were not fans of the gameplay mechanic. Jae Hyun huffed and crossed his arms, not at all defensively.
“It’s really not that difficult,” said Jae Hyun. “You ride for as long as you can keep narrating your actions. First person to the finish line wins.”
“As long as you can keep narrating your actions in the correct verse form,” Kalingkata clarified. She was smiling with the sort of smugness that was typically only achievable by cats.
“That’s right,” said Jae Hyun. “Twelve syllables per line, alliterative verse. Simple.”
More grumbling. Bashrat let out a groan so loud you would’ve thought someone had told him to get up and run laps. Bashrat did not like to run laps.
“Fine,” said Jae Hyun, “look. I’ll start.”
He cleared his throat. He shook out his shoulders. He began:
“Jae Hyun rode jaunty and joyfully to the join
Of brush and bramble, of bush and blooming blossom,
Made off across the moors, mile and mile and metre,
To the good Green Knight who would give him great glory.
On and on he rode, over owl-grass and onions,
Passing his peers, who could play only poor poets –”
Bashrat slammed his hands onto the table.
“This isn’t fair,” he said. “It’s ridiculous. That’s not even real poetry – it doesn’t even rhyme!”
“Actually,” said Jae Hyun, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a literary classic.”
“It doesn’t even rhyme,” said Bashrat, again.
He was glaring at Jae Hyun: absolute daggers. Much like the great Sir Gawain himself, when faced with a big old green giant with a massive axe, Jae Hyun flinched. 
“It doesn’t have a consistent meter, either,” added Bashrat, and then, peevishly, when everyone looked at him: “I do go to literature class too, you know.”
“Fine,” said Jae Hyun, sighing. “There are parts of the original that are in rhyming verse, maybe we could just stick to that. Iambic quatrains, ABAB rhyme scheme, seven-syllable and six-syllable lines alternating.”
“What,” said Bashrat, seemingly on the verge of tears, “are you talking about?”
Jae Hyun smiled. He paused, then took a breath, and then he began again:
“Jae Hyun rode past the gable
Past rock and tree and gate.
He knew that he was able
To ride and meet his fate.”
There was silence for a long moment. Then Kalingkata shrugged, picked up Jae Hyun’s little horse figure, and moved it halfway across the map.
Chaos around the table. Talinata sighed hard enough to rock him in his chair. A paper ball bounced off Jae Hyun’s head, which was probably Bashrat’s fault, but possibly Li Xiu’s. Tsetseg was frowning hard, her forehead creasing, staring down at the table.
Finally she looked up. And then she stood up. And then she cleared her throat, which was a bizarre enough occurrence that everyone shut up. And she said:
“Tsetseg got on her charger
She rode fast too, of course.
She rode real quick and far – ger – uh –
‘Cause… she… was on a horse.”
She sat down with an almost-audible snap. Kalingkata looked at her for a long moment, and then moved her figure forward. Two squares.
This time the yelling lasted nearly thirty seconds.
“Fine,” snapped Kalingkata, and gave everyone her best Scary Badass stare until they all calmed down. “Plan B it is.”
She pulled out another map. This one, shockingly, had an actual map on it.
“You are in a tavern,” said Kalingkata. “It’s Christmas morning, and you have been invited to the King’s Great Hall for a feast. You wake up, hungover, beside your lover, Essel –”
A loud, horrified squeak.
“What,” said Tsetseg, her eyes very wide. “All of us?”
 
 Session 4: The Tragedy of the Triangle
 “Look, I just think this whole process would go easier if you murdered them all and took the throne,” Li Xiu explained for the fifth time. Jae Hyun looked around at all the other players hoping for guidance, before looking to the Gamemaster, who had her fingers steepled like some sort of third-rate mastermind.
“I, uh, I don’t know…” Jae Hyun fidgeted. “I don’t want to kill the other player characters…”
“Player versus player combat is allowed,” Kalingkata reminded him.
“But what if they feel bad about it!?!” he exclaimed, and a long sigh went up from the table.
Tsetseg pulled the corebook up on her padd again, “This game is confusing, all these political machinations…”
“I don’t get why we can’t say the name of the game,” Bashrat added.
“Like I explained earlier, its called the Scottish Game because to say the real name of the RPG is bad luck,” said Kalingkata. “Now are we doing the bloodbath or not?”
Jae Hyun slowly nodded. “Alright, let’s do it Li Xiu. Though I still don’t see why our characters have to be married.”
“That’s just how the game is,” she replied, fiddling with the dice in her hand.
“Do we have any kids?”
Kalingkata blinked, “It’s a time of conflict and despair in Scotland.”
“Right, so wouldn’t having kids help with that? Like don’t people, you know uh, enjoy making kids?”
Talinata eyed Jae Hyun warily, “This is a very weird angle to be taking with my sister.”
He waved his hands, “I just mean like…” he got very quiet trying to figure out exactly what he meant. This only made things more awkward. Tsetseg, tired of it, got up to use the restroom only to knock her cup of pop over, which successfully distracted everyone briefly as they all stopped to clean it up. “Out, out damn spot!” she muttered as they rubbed stain remover that Mr. Cao had brought over for them. They resumed play while trying to get it out, Tsetseg now wearing one of Li Xiu’s shirts from her room whose style did not suit her in the slightest.
“So, lets get back to the core aspect of most roleplaying games,” Kalingkata said, ushering them back in. “Unrepentant murder.
Jae Hyun looked at his character sheet, “Alright, I’ll go ahead and stab Talinata’s character.”
Talinata and his sister exchanged glances. “You made it weird again.”
“I didn’t—”
“Just stab him already,” Kalingkata sighed.
“Right…Is this a dagger in my hand?”
“No, it’s a +2 battle ax.”
He shook the twenty-sided die, and looked down at the result. “Seventeen… plus my two strength and three… twenty-two?”
“That’s a hit, and since he’s sleeping you can take a coup-de-grace and do max damage.”
Talinata bowed his head in an exaggerated mock defeat, “Alas, I die!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll avenge you!” Tsetseg cut in, “Or my name isn’t… Macduff. I forgot I named him that.”
Cao Li Xiu crossed her arms, “You know, these game sessions aren’t the way I would do them.”
“Okay,” Kalingkata said, having given up on having a normal time tonight.
“I could do a way better job Gamemastering.”
“Okay?”
She rose up and pointed accusatorily at Kalingkata “And I could also be a way better wife for Jae Hyun!”
There was an indescribably awkward silence.
“…In the roleplaying game. As Lady MacBeth.”
The silence continued to linger.
“I didn’t mean in a weird way.”
“Who wants dinner?” Mrs. Cao said cheerily, opening the door to the rec-room with bags of take-out. Everyone very quickly scrambled to pick out their favorites from the delectable smelling dishes, and also escape the situation they had all just found themselves in.
“Thanks for the food, Mrs. Cao!” Kalingkata said.
“Oh, it’s the least we can do, we’re just happy Li Xiu is bringing friends over,” she looked over lovingly at her daughter, and Kalingkata felt a sympathy for Li Xiu she had never felt before. Had Kaligkata invited her into their RPG group purely because she had the nicest house to play the game in? Possibly. Potentially. Very much so. But they had been growing closer just by proximity, and maybe the awkward tension between all of them would break given time.
“Yeah, it’s been a lot more fun than I expected,” Kalingkata mused.
Putting a hand on her shoulder, Mrs. Cao leaned in conspiratorially, “So I overheard things before I got in, you know if there’s a love triangle between you, Li Xiu, and Jae Hyung, you should really consider a polycule.”
All the color drained from Kalingkata’s face and she waved her hands frantically in front of her chest. “No, uh, its not, that’s not—what I mean is—we’re uh, all already a group, you know?”
Li Xiu’s expression softened, “Ah, I misunderstood. And here I thought you were just a roleplaying group. Just be sure to let us know if you need some privacy.” She winked and turned around. She had already walked away before Kalingkata could put words together.
“What’s wrong, Sang Mi?” Tsetseg asked as she looked at her friend staring at the closing door.
“…Burnham wood attacks all of you. The trees are alive, and they kill you all. End of session.”



Session 5 : Torn Apart

If Tsetseg was standing on a real rooftop right now, she’d be happier. As it was, she was standing on an oddly detailed replication of a roof (paid for by the concerningly deep pockets of Li Xiu’s parents) in a set that wasn’t well ventilated, and she did it all under the glare of Li Xiu’s film camera and movie lights, sweating up a waterfall in this heat. It didn’t help that the clothing Li Xiu had gotten for her character (part of something called “Larping” though she wasn’t sure why the film equipment was also there) included a long-sleeve shirt and a jacket… and a propeller hat.
    “Uh, GM?” she asked Li Xiu.
    “Hm?”
    “How old is my character supposed to be again?”
    “Like, your age, uh, six.”
    “... I’m the same age as you.”
    “Then pretend you’re younger… anyway, let’s start the PVP session now, action!”
    Jae Hyun burst through the door, wielding a gun that shot foam darts. Tsetseg was immensely jealous that he got to wear a sleeveless shirt rather than being dressed for winter like she was. 
    Jae Hyun charged towards Tsetseg like a raging bull, waving the toy gun at her head. “WHERE IS MY FU-uh, FU–... Fricking… MONEY!”
    Tsetseg jumped back against the ledge, slightly startled, her heart thrumming and drumming at the sudden panic. “What money?”
    “THE MONEY! FROM… THE MONEY!”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” And she really didn’t.
    “I’M TALKING ABOUT THE GOD-DA– darned MONEY!”
    The room was poorly ventilated, and it was boiling hot, and she was panicked, and she was finding it difficult to breathe, and she didn’t know where this money was and–
    Jae Hyun caught her as she fell so she didn’t hit the concrete. 
    “You weren’t supposed to actually hit her!” said Li Xiu, annoyed.
    “Wait, you hit her?” said Kalingkata as she got out of her chair and walked on to the set.
    “I did not hit her, she just passed out–”
    “Why did you hit her?” asked Bashrat as he walked through the set door, also holding a toy gun.
    “It’s not true, it’s bull- nonsense, I did not hit her–”
    Li Xiu stepped on the roof set. “But she’s–”
    “I DID NOT! It’s because you’re keeping us in here with no water and film equipment! Why do you even have film equipment?”
    “I’m making a real actual play series, Jae Hyun.”
    “We don’t need sets and cameras for an actual play series, you need a table and a camera, what you’re doing is movies, YOU’RE THINKING OF MOVIES–”
    “I want to make the experience more cinematic.” 
    “You don’t need to! You shouldn’t! You’re just wasting time and money–”
    “Money isn’t an issue.”
    “Seriously, where does all that money come from?” Kalingkata muttered. 
    Jae Hyun checked Tsetseg. “We need to get her outside.”
    Li Xiu looked annoyed. “She’ll be fine, look, put her on that chair over there and we’ll check on her during lunch, let’s continue with the scene–”
    “No. We’re not playing, this isn’t working.”
    “The only way I’ll let you leave is if your character dies.”
    “Fine.” Jae Hyun raised the toy gun at his head and pulled the trigger, causing a foam dart to plonk on his face. “I’m dead now–”
    “That’s not how damage works, roll damage.”
    “I shot myself in the head–”
    “Roll damage!”
    Jae Hyun threw some dice against the floor. “There, am I dead now?”
    Li Xiu counted up the total. “No, you still have one hit point left–”
    Jae Hyun shot his head again and jumped off the roof set, attempting to lift up the prone Tsetseg. The others there realized they could quickly create a character death just by jumping off the roof, so they did so and helped him carry her.
    This would be the only time they ever larped, and the footage (thankfully) never made its way online.

Session 6: Cliffhanger

Usually, Kalingkata wasn’t the sort to bring someone’s family into it. She knew how bringing in adults could go sideways. But Li Xiu was acting nuts, and her house was only ten minutes away on foot, and she was raging. So she stormed on over.
When she arrived outside, walking up the garden path, the warm weather was holding. Holding too hard. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky, and it was too bright. The sunlight reflected off the sheer-white walls of the Cao’s huge house.
She found that the front door was still unlocked, so she called inside. No answer. Nobody in the kitchen, in the lounge, in either of the offices, the pantry, upstairs or downstairs. She was about to let it go when she passed by the kitchen again and saw, through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Li Xiu’s mother and father in white dressing gowns.
She paused. Something was stopping her from calling out to them, and they hadn’t seemed to notice her. And those weren’t dressing gowns. They were more like robes, but not kimonos or any other kind you’d find on Gongen; they were an airier cut. Kalingkata had never seen Mrs. Cao put up her hair in tidy braids before. The whole thing seemed vaguely Swedish. Also, there was a mattress in front of them.
There was a long, terrible pause. Kalingkata couldn’t tell if she had been spotted. It seemed preternaturally silent, and still so bright, so bright.
And then an old woman fell from the balcony above face-first onto the mattress.
Kalingkata jumped, clapped a hand to her mouth, barely stopped herself from screaming. Mrs. Cao took up a large novelty plastic mallet and approached the woman – Kalingkata recognised her now as Li Xiu’s grandmother. She was wearing the same white robe. Was she okay? Was she safe?
From the mattress, the old woman croaked: “Roll for damage.”
Mr. Cao hunkered down and rolled a twenty-sided die onto the grey-tile patio. “Thirteen.”
Mrs. Cao swung the plastic mallet and brought it down beside her mother’s head. The mallet gave a little squeaking sound.
Mr. Cao rolled again. “Seven.”
Another swing, another squeak.
He rolled again. Paused, looked up. “Twenty.”
Decisively, Mrs. Cao brought the hammer down. It never touched the old woman, but she started wailing loudly, a high, throaty scream. And Mr and Mrs Cao joined hands and started wailing with her, harmonising as if it were a hymn.
Alright, Kalingkata thought as she turned on her heel and walked straight back out the front door. I’m gonna leave it.

​

NEXT TIME!
(The sound of a squeaky chair rolling towards a microphone greets us.)
Why, who is this? Who could this possibly be, coming to you live once again it’s the one, the only, the impeccable, the beautiful, the star track—sorry Mr. Mori I’ll get back onto the announcements! Okay yeah, it’s me Hee Jin.
So Academy 27, did you know love is in the air? Or at least like, an attempt at love. You know, people are making an effort! Especially our classmate Jae Hyun, whose crush on my good friend Sang Mi is well known to everyone except possibly himself.
But he’s not the only suitor after her heart, and while she hasn’t noticed him at all, there’s someone who wants his attention…
Oh, also the baseball team needs to remember to wash their uniforms before the next game, your coach is not dealing with another train ride with you wen you haven’t.
Till next time, I’m your announcer from the Broadcast Club, Hee Jin!
 
Tune in Next Week For:
Jae Hyun Puts on the Moves
By Dillon O’Hara
 
New Academy 27 stories will drop each Thursday!
Read past stories and learn more about Academy 27 at:
ArcbeatlePress.com/A27