I really didn’t like today, it was, undoubtedly, one of the worst days. Not because it was unlucky, or because it was my turn to get throttled by the higher ups, but because it was both of those things and I had to do them with a light hangover while wanting the day to be over three minutes into my shift.

The Jade Tower, the center of academia, of knowledge, and innovation, was only that if you subtracted all the corruption, bureaucracy, and the fact that there was no other academia. The Jade Tower was the only site of academia. Short of someone doing it at home like I did, it was literally the only legal institution of research in the prefecture, and in any prefecture.

And that singular nature meant being high up granted prestige, which meant that my senior was a knuckle-dragging pigheaded moron who blamed others for their failings.

Source one? This morning, where he chewed out the rest of our team for doing our jobs so well he couldn’t understand it and looked like a moron when he failed to explain our current findings to other peers, ostensibly to ensure resources are being wasted by people exactly like him, only that they were all like him, and no doubt using his blunder as some sort of leverage against him.

So that was nice. Great job. The unlucky part only started at midday, an auspicious time when we all sat in our cubbies and pretended like we had meals that didn’t make us want to jump out of our windows or, on the rare occasion, we went to pick up food from the nearby canteen.

Like all of the towers, the jade tower was tall, with very low gravity anywhere but at its lowest levels or on the lifts to the highest floors. A series of large empty shafts in its center lets you skirt from one floor to many others. Navigating its massive structure was disorienting for many newcomers, and the paths were not optimized for point-to-point but for density. The tower was the only institution, and there was a limit on its height and footprint, so it was built like a prison that wanted to hold the most people in the tightest space.

This meant the cantine was about a fifteen-minute float, or because floating was ‘undignified,’ a twenty-minute walk.

It was there, in line to buy some wrapped food and scarf it down for lunch, that a familiar voice asked me from behind me in line, “Hey, have you heard the news?”

I looked up, the looming figure with only slightly above average height clearly visible above me. Malakai the mad lad, Malakai the great, Malakai the man who liked reading books all day and found a job that let him do it more often then not. He was a good, if simple man, with short black hair and little in the way of showy bits and bobs, the only thing stand out was Malakai himself.

Malakai was tall, as was the norm on Luna, but where most people were made thin and twiggy, he was simply tall. He had the kind of build that told me if he had grown up under gravity like I had, he would have been a very big guy. That made him stand out among the scholars of the jade tower, many of whom grew up in at least partial gravity.

He wore, like the rest of us, a jade robe atop a lighter smaller robe, the larger robe open. It was a matter of taste what you wore underneath. I liked wearing pink, so I got away with it by having a cherry blossom pattern, while he wore a simple grey robe beneath with an elaborate sash of winding black lines like a tattoo.

“Moala-san. It’s good to see you again. I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but I would so enjoy conversing face to face, perhaps over lunch?” I asked him.

“Always so stiff, Akurēn-san; you know I don’t care for face; just call me Malakai.” He told me, like always.

But we were not at a bar; we were at work in an informal setting, and the jade tower was full of snakes. If I started to get buddy-buddy with Malakai in the open, they would try and slither toward me for status. Malakai got to pass on it because no one was interested in his field and because he wasn’t a noble, whereas I would get dragged for every possible thing in existence because I had theoretical connections like my family.

I didn’t care what they would think, but I did care about practicality when it came to snakes, so I would ward them off like I was carrying around a secretary bird.

It wasn’t like I could be the real me anyway, so I might as well cover my bases, dot my I’s and cross my T’s, as it were.

The two of us agreed, purchased our food, and settled down at a table. Several students were close enough to overhear our conversation, but none cared for our conversation; they were too busy using their time for themselves. Malakai got to talking before we even finished sitting down.

“So, your team lead chewed you out earlier, right?” He asked me, though his tone said he already knew the answer.

“Yes? Has that made the rounds already?” I asked him, not particularly caring that it would have.

“No, I just know what your lead is like. My lead gave me a talk, too,” he told me conspiratorially.

“That must have stung my problems with swine aside; your issues must be something else,” I told him.

“True enough, my hide is still tanned. It's not like she had much to skin me for, but just being near her scares the shit out of me,” Malakai said with a very slight shiver. “Anyway, enough of that, everyone got one. I think there's going to be a message later. This whole thing screams of cleaning house, and that means there’s going to be some kind of announcement. Someone big must be coming to the prefecture, so they want to push all the dirt under the rug.”

That was certainly something; it wasn’t a regular occurrence for sure.

“Why would someone come here now though? It makes no sense not to insult you, Moala-san, but it would simply be surprising,” I told him.

“Who knows why. It could be the unrest, could be the blockade, or that pink girl, the one that flies around all the time. I think it’s the headline from last night. Have you read the paper? They shot down some kind of UFO, but no one has found the wreckage. Spooky stuff, eh?” He told me.

I let out an anxious chuckle, “That’s quite silly. If they shot it down, there would be wreckage. What kind of tabloid are you reading? As for the rest, there’s always unrest, and the pink girl isn’t that big of a deal. I would know; I’m the expert on magical girls here. She's obviously here to fight evil by moonlight… Which doesn’t work, now that I think about it. Fight it by Lighthouse light? That one certainly doesn’t roll off the tongue.”

It sounded kind of goofy and certainly didn’t fit the feel.

“You do me a disservice. First. I’m the expert; you just like them a lot,” Malakai told me, holding up one darkly tan finger before raising a second. “She was literally spotted in the most recent incident firing on both sides. I'm not saying the guard does no evil, but that is not the kind of evil the themes mean.”

I felt a little turned off by that. I hadn’t been fighting the guards, not really. I had just taken a few potshots near them because they kept shooting at me while I was helping them.

“You’re pouting,” Malakai told me when I remained silent.

I was doing no such thing.

Probably.

I mean, I was doing something similar to it.

“Sure. Anyway, someone is coming. Sure. More importantly, an announcement means we get off early; a half-day would be nice,” I told him.

“It sure would. I’ve had to cut down on my reading, and I guess I understand why now. I wonder who's coming,” Malakai said thoughtfully.

Malakai, being Malakai, was a condemnation of life, the universe and everything. He had two passions, figuring out ancient Terran culture and reading books, which were perfectly balanced, as everything should be. It was like his own version of yin and yang, and anything but a balance made him very inauspicious.

“Probably some bureaucrat. I doubt the person is actually important. It's probably some administrative issue or noble spat gone too far,” I told him, taking a quick mouthful of soup, “Ish noh like the wage ish coming.”

Malakai looked at me, his face clearly not amused by me talking with my mouth full. He did not enjoy it, though I did, because messing with Malakai was always a little fun.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Manners,” Malakai scolded, “But indeed, a half day. Would you be interested in getting a drink after the announcement? I quite enjoyed the atmosphere. Eat out before a long weekend to salve our wounded souls?”

On that, I hesitated.

I didn’t mind Malakai; he was a buddy, perhaps even a friend, but he couldn’t really be a close friend. It wasn’t his fault. Obviously, he didn’t understand the contents of my head. I wasn’t willing to get closer because I couldn’t be more open. I couldn’t let them understand the real me.

Bandit, bless her funny little heart, already saw me for me. She had seen a truer self, and she was an outsider to boot. She didn’t have the same background. She had yet to see me for me, but I was hopeful in her. I could find someone who accepted me for who I was. I was not hopeful for the rest of my compatriots, not even the cultured Malikai.

Why was that an issue? Because the bar I had been chided into showing off was not exactly normal. Backroom girl's night? Out of sight, out of mind, but the fact that the doorway was rung by flags that told the less welcome demographics it was a safe bar for them had somehow gone unnoticed by all of them, and it was a ticking timebomb.

I liked going there and shattering that because one of my more vulgar acquaintances got tipsy and acted like a massive asshole. I couldn’t un fuck the situation if one of them started calling people something I would regret.

Worse yet, the questions would start after they connected the dots, and I didn’t think, ‘Oh wow, oh no! I did not know the bar was a gay bar. Whoopsies?’ would fly. One fuck up, and I was pinned between a moral collapse and social self-destruction.

And yet, on what grounds could I deny Malakai without either sounding fake or making more questions than I was willing to answer? I couldn’t see a reasonable answer that wasn’t just a cop-out. They could still go without me and the timer would still be ticking regardless.

As much as it made me squirm on the inside, I stilled my face.

“I would enjoy that greatly,” I told Malikai.

I had a feeling life was only going to get more complicated.

We finished our lunch with a hole in my gut; any question eating a hole through my spirit like acid.

This was every bit the mediocre outcome.

It was also not the end of my bad luck, for less than an hour later, a shadow darkened my door—or darkened the crack beneath it, at least—a firm two knocks telling me all I needed to know about their intent.

“Come in,” I called out, barely looking up from the papers as I tried to phrase them like a moron.

The door opened, and a second shadow darkened my door. A breathing shadow, anyway.

I looked up to see my cousin. My less-than-ethical cousin.

“It's good to see you again,” he told me, opening the door before walking in. He came in with a woman chained to him, her hands bound.

She was less than happy, and then again, both of them looked like they were less than happy, given that they looked like giant living bruises. They both looked like they had smashed the hell out of one another, though it was slightly healed, going from red to mottled as they aged.

“Cousin Ren. What brings you to my place of work… On a work day… Looking like you’ve been returned from the dead?” I asked him, less than happy to see my less-than-acceptable cousin.

“I am sorry to intrude, dead or not,” he told me, cooly, “though I’m saddened to see my dearest cousin so distrustful. I won’t bite little Haru.”

“Considering your state of undeath, you will have to excuse my disbelief in that. What brings you to my door? Something official?” I repeated, not in the mood to entertain.

Ren was frequently cool, though considering his status, that was par for the course for someone trained to do the bidding of a mass murderer with little in the way of remorse. They were like Bandit, but worse in all the wrong ways. They looked at almost everyone the same way; the only difference between a civilian and an enemy was the order to kill the latter.

I was also one transformation sequence from needing to defend myself.

“I am not, not truly, at any rate. I came to get an opinion on something and immediately thought of you. May I sit?” He asked.

“Assuming you need an opinion about agriculture, otherwise there is little in the way of help I can give,” I told him, not saying yes.

“Oh, but I think you can help with a little more than that,” Ren told me, snaking slightly into the room. His prisoner gave him a dirty look as he pulled her chain but followed him into the room, her mouth kept shut despite what she no doubt wanted to shout at him. He shut the door behind me.

“If you're not here on official business, then I’m not very interested in helping,” I told him, reaching into a pocket that was far deeper than it should have been and drawing out a slim vial.

I doubted he knew, but if I needed to defend myself, I would. It wasn’t like I could just jump out my non-existent window and fly off into the city. Some sticky foam was good enough for this, though. I didn’t need to bring out the big guns on a normal guy, even if he had artifacts, some simple restraint could just let me vault over the table past them.

“Scan him if you would. Get a look at his artifacts,” I asked my oracle Sun, our mind-to-mind talk zipping through my mind at the speed of teaching, unheard and unseen.

“Ugh. I suppose I can,” he answered, his voice disgruntled and hum-like. With a split-second pause, he scanned him before listing out, “They're not bound, obviously, but there are no power sources on him. The power glove is drained, and without it, the blade is worthless. There, happy?”

“Yes, your wisdom knows no limit Sun, you sarcastic ass. Thank you,” I told him in return as I awaited whatever Ren had in store for me, my face and body remaining aloof. If he couldn't use his blade he posed little in the way of direct threat, but I kept the vial ready. Just because I could blow his head off didn't mean I wanted to. I didn't like killing if I didn't need to when it came to normals, even the kind that were killers before they were ten, I had bigger problems for my bigger guns.

It was better to not draw attention, I had a comfy little life and I wanted the very minimum of interference in it. That meant no drawing attention on the day to day, and no giving decent answers to federal agents so they didn't visit on the regular.

“I need to ask you about your experience with artifacts. I went pocking around and talked with Takashi, and he told me about how they gave them to you to test,” he told me, pulling out the seat along the side of my cubby out and over to sit down; his prisoner got nothing, I only had one extra chair.

“Then he no doubt told you about how I messed it up and broke the key artifact, denying him of his future ‘glory.’ I’m not an expert. I barely knew what I was doing, so I got them tossed onto me.” I told him the truth, poisoned with but one lie. I had ‘broken’ an artifact, but the artifact did that on its own.

He got nothing, he saw nothing, and he asked, “But the fact they gave them to you means you understood something. I need to ask you a few questions, then I’ll be out of your hair,” he told me, cooly.

“And I don’t know much; they demanded I research it. I know nothing that would help you; I suggest you find someone who is actually knowledgeable in artifacts to tell you. Unless you’re going to ask a question so simple you could look it up in a reference book, then I can’t help you, and at that point, this would be a waste of my time,” I told him, insistent and annoyed.

There was a moment of pause, and then he asked, “Can people be artifacts?” He asked directly and with such intent and intensity that there was something about him that was sure that the answer was yes.

“Yes? The Archangels… Every Golem in existence? Both of them are people, and they definitely aren’t normal tech. We can’t replicate their bio-mechanical nature, why?” I asked, trying to see what he was trying to get at.

He had met my new best buddy; she had told me a blackbird was looking for me, and I knew a blackbird might be looking for me.

“Organic people,” he amended, “Can an organic person be an artifact?”

That one was a bit more pointed, but I could only guess what he was getting at. He had seen something and was guessing.

“No. Artifacts are explicitly not living. They function using the same principle but with different methods. A person could have an artifact, even have one inside their body, perhaps, but what makes an artifact an artifact is that it's not alive; it's inorganic,” I told him as if he was a moron.

That one wasn’t even a partial truth. It was why I was bad with artifacts, but I could still fuck around with bio-resonance. Resonance, both biological and in artifact form, had the same effect but from two totally different directions.

The only thing that came close was a monster, but I didn’t think they followed the same rules. After all, they didn’t follow the rules of any lifeform at all, as if bleeding concepts weren’t a giveaway. They didn’t have any liquid unless they did, no heart, no biological activity, but they were visually not artificial either. They were like resonance-shaped imaginary goo that spat on the idea of it needing to pick something real.

He looked at me, clearly not believing me, but not because he thought I was lying.

“I suppose… I suppose I’ll take your second opinion. You’re the second researcher today that’s given me the exact same answer,” he told me, “I won’t demand nicety; there is somewhere I need to be in an hour.”

He did not say goodbye or thank you; he simply got up and left, quickly drawing the door open and dragging the woman out with him; a single murmured, “Fucking shit Kuro,” quiet enough that you probably shouldn’t be able to hear it.

Despite the situation, her voice didn’t sound angry enough for her circumstances. There was something funny about that. She sounded more annoyed that he was dragging her around so quickly. Taking into account her not speaking, she seemed too complacent, and it didn’t seem to be because she was drugged.

I waited for them to disappear out of earshot before my face planted on the table. I let the tiny vial roll next to me as I raised my hands above the table.

“Phew. I’m going to need to ask Bandit a little more about what she did the other day,” I said out loud, not just for myself but for my oracle.

I was going to get the rest of the day off, but I was still going to need to stay un-transformed for most of it, and that sucked.

I just wanted to be myself, but I couldn’t be like this. At least there were no mirrors in my cubby, though with my shards unlocked, that mattered little when I could feel the entirety of my body.

I blocked it out as best as I could and finished my work before slipping out just shy of an hour later when the announcement came. Not caring enough about it to actually listen in person. I would hear more than enough tomorrow when the entire prefecture was rambling about how so and so was coming because of blah blah blah.

And so, like that, I found myself and a handful of work friends stumbling to the bar only to spot a transformed Bandit talking with researcher Lanhu, two sources of awkwardness for the price of one. Ren's words tickled in my memory. He had gone to two researchers, and the only artifact researcher in the jade tower, or rather the only one researching an artifact in the tower at the moment, was her team.

I wonder if she had gotten a showing from Blackbird, too.

I ignored it awkwardly. At least my two identities were separate, aside from Sun and Lilly; anyway, they knew, and they didn’t mind. Hopefully, Bandit wouldn’t mind that I was born wrong, either.