Sang Mi has become obsessed with urban legends. But when she runs into the monster from one of those tall tales, the greater universe is going to close in on her. Sang Mi has been living a peaceful life at school, but this is a universe of WARS, and things are about to get dangerous... This week we have the complete version of the story we started last week. If you want to just jump to Part 2, click here! You can catch up on other Academy 27 adventures for free HERE! You can download the story below in PDF (also for free!), or keep scrolling to start your adventure...
A Wasps' Nest of Ghouls, by James WylderPart 1: The Red Mask LadyThere 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. Part 2: Into the HiveEarlier 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 School AnnouncementsNEXT 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 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, Geraldine “JackBox” McGraw, and Magician: The Hammering, are owned by James Wylder. Saki Suzuki was created and owned by Taylor Elliott.. Professor X was created and is owned by Paul Cornell.
0 Comments
A Wasps' Nest of Ghouls |
a27_s2_13_a_wasps_nest_of_ghouls.pdf | |
File Size: | 771 kb |
File Type: |
A Wasps' Nest of Ghouls, by James Wylder
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.
School Announcements:
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
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. Professor X was created and is owned by Paul Cornell.
You can catch up on other Academy 27 adventures for free HERE!
You can download the story below in PDF (also for free!), or keep scrolling to start your adventure...
a27_s2_12_shadow_of_the_phantom.pdf | |
File Size: | 904 kb |
File Type: |
Shadow of the Phantom by Aidan Mason
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?
School Announcements:
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
You can catch up on other Academy 27 adventures for free HERE!
You can download the story below in PDF (also for free!), or keep scrolling to start your adventure...
a27_s2_11_a_kendo_story.pdf | |
File Size: | 752 kb |
File Type: |
A Kendo Story, by James Wylder
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.
School Announcements:
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
Arcbeatle Press
We're a small press working to create stories by many diverse and spectacular talents.
Archives
October 2024
September 2024
August 2024
July 2024
June 2024
April 2024
March 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
August 2023
July 2023
April 2023
March 2023
October 2022
September 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
October 2021
December 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
Categories
All
10kd
Academy 27
April Fools
Halloween
Interview
Press Release
Shotgun Angel Games
SIGNET
WARS
Warsong