Yuriko pursed her lips at Elsie’s words. Her Mien was connected to the half-metal woman, of course, and the other’s emotions flowed into her mind as soon as they were created. The connection had formed suddenly and Yuriko nearly cut it off if not for the first spurts of fear, awe, and excitement that dribbled through. She constricted the flow so that she wouldn’t get overwhelmed, but the connecting thread turned out to be a great way to find out the other’s intentions.
As far as she could tell, Elsie was smitten with the idea of becoming an Ancient. Or a Mystic, whatever the distinctions were. She had mistaken Yuriko for one of those, but if the description she’d been given was correct, perhaps Mystics were just what the locals called nascent Ancients
She knew the woman was sincere in her desire, but what could she exchange for the boon of awakening her Anima? Yuriko didn’t have much Ambrosia on hand, barely a few drops gathered by her two beloveds sometime back, as well as the dregs of her original stash. It was nowhere near enough to force an awakening. She wasn’t even sure if Elsie Silverlock had an Animus Core, or if she had any kind of energy core in general. The locals who had ‘chronian gear did not have Elemental energy. Then again, that might mean they’d be able to begin the Ancient’s Way.
Hmm, but how did the early Ancients forge their path if they did not have access to prodigious amounts of Chaos? Damien did not, but his Seat of Enlightenment had not been recorded in his memories. Just as hers had been a fleeting memory that eroded over the years. Suffice it to say, Chaos was not a big requirement to awaken the Anima. It helped, but so did a lot of other things, like getting struck by lightning.
Hmm, that was a good idea. Lightning. Elsie already had the metal parts to channel it into her body and she could sense a little bit of that energy in her ‘chronian gear. But she would not use the girl as an experiment to see what sticks. She would not stoop that low.
Still, if she found out how she could awaken another without resorting to Ambrosia, it would help her initiate her other friends, too. Even a little bit of Anima reach was helpful, though it ran counter to the Imperial Path.
Hmm, as much as Gwendith was making good headway on finding out how they could function in this strange place, nothing quite beat information from someone who lived in it. She would not have learned how lucrative hunting these Scourge were if not for Elsie. Well, she would have learned later, but she would have lost out on tens of thousands of AC. From Gwendith’s preliminary investigation, they would need to move up in the world to access the information they needed. The nine million in their joint account would have worked if there were only one of them, but not with a group of seven.
Yuriko tapped her lips and answered Elsie’s question. “I need a guide.”
“For the city? Do you need a tour guide?”
“Not just,” Yuriko said. “For living in the city. My companions and I arrived her yesterday and already the intricacies of Dragon Fall City’s bureaucracy had us tripping up. We didn’t know those apartments were placed in a distressed location, for one.”
“Distressed? Yeah, any floor within the urban areas below two fifty isn’t in an upscale neighbourhood,” Elsie said.
“And yet we’re barred from going up,” Yuriko said. “Adapting to life here would take time, and who knows how many missteps we might take. I’d rather avoid the pitfalls if possible.”
“What does that entail?” Elsie asked cautiously, though her emotions betrayed her eagerness.
Yuriko smiled and the flow stuttered to a halt. Holding in a chuckle, she answered, “I’ll let Gwendith handle the details, but for now, accompany me.”
“Alright. Where are we going?”
“Oh, here and there,” Yuriko said evasively but obviously, Elsie caught on. Her eyes darted to the Scourge.
“You’re planning to hunt down more of those?”
“It wouldn’t hurt,” Yuriko admitted, “But mostly, I want to buy furniture for the apartments.”
“You’re a hundred levels below where you should be. Could’ve stayed in the mall,” Elsie said dryly.
“I got curious,” Yuriko admitted with a tiny laugh. “Ehe.”
“Great Autochron,” Elsie muttered. She shook her head and pointed at the Scourge carcass behind Yuriko. The Flensers had done its job and all that remained were white-grey bones.
But how would Yuriko carry them? She wasn’t about to put those filthy things inside her backpack along with the rest of her stuff. And guns!
Well, she did have coils of silk rope in her supplies. She could tie up all the loose bones and just leave the little bits?
Elsie pointed at the dead man’s pack. “There’s probably some baggies in there.”
Yuriko raised an eyebrow. Desecrating the dead? Well, they’ve already taken the man’s Flenser. Hmm, the right thing to do was find out the man’s next of kin and give them a portion of the earnings, wasn’t it? He died to fight off the Scourge, after all.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The older woman surprised her by reaching for the corpse’s gear. “There’s a spatially expanded bag made specifically to hold Scourge bones in every squad member’s gear. It won’t let anything but Scourge materials inside, and each back holds just enough for one full skeleton.”
“Convenient,” Yuriko commented.
Elsie shrugged. “Kill squads are formed to hunt down Scourge. It’s often a suicide squad, but most members are crazy, condemned, or heavily indebted and poor. They bring in a hundred Jin per member of the squad before any of them die, and the whole bunch can get their debts forgiven. The crazy are in it for the ACs, though.”
“Oh.” Yuriko nodded to the dead, “What about him? Should we find his next of kin?”
“What for?” Elsie asked, befuddled. “The corpo in charge of them has all the information, but it’s debatable whether any of their insurance claims will actually reach next of kin. If there are even many. Most get signed off their wills anyway.”
Yuriko nodded as Elsie pulled out a bag that looked much like her hip satchel, except far more shabby looking. She scanned it with her perception, but the same thing that prevented her from easily seeing through most things, ‘chronian gear, or far more likely, whatever the gear was made from. She had been sure it was some kind of steel that didn’t rust, but as she visually observed Elsie’s arm, she noted that the surface layer, the skin, of the ‘chronian gear flexed almost like real skin.
Constructs made of metal were not unusual for Yuriko, she’d seen two examples so far. The warforged and the Steelds. The latter was pretty much powered and moved using runescript enchantment and Arcana Weaving. Steelds would break down if they were brought into Chaos Founts too. As for warforged, Yuriko wasn’t sure what made them move. They did have some kind of motive spirit, quite like Fri’Avgi’s or Eli’Theria’s animating spirit but completely non-sentient. They didn’t think or feel but only acted upon orders by the Athrodius. Now those had animating spirits, or perhaps they were animating spirits that had taken control of their vessels? She wasn’t sure, and Damien had not been responsible for creating the warforged in the first place and only made use of them as occasional shock troops when it came to waging war.
As for the ‘chronian gear, there were no runescript lines on the surface, but since she couldn’t perceive the insides, she couldn’t properly inspect it. Although…
“Where did you get your ‘chronian gear?” Yuriko asked, feigning idle curiosity.
“Officially, from Autochronian Surgeons,” Elsie said, “from the Temples. There’s one in every megabuilding, but it's on the upper floors and for the upper crust.” The last words were laden with contempt, but envy was hidden deep within. “For us faceless masses, just plain geardocs.” Elsie looked up from where she was gathering the bones. They’d pulled the carcass away from the blood pool so that they didn’t have to wade into it. The blood itself dried and crusted over by the time the Flensers were done.
Wasn’t that a bit fast?
“Let’s go to the other body,” Elsie said once she collected all the bones. She didn’t seem bothered by touching the things, and from her view, the Scourge bones looked completely dry, as if they’d been exposed to the elements for years as opposed to just a few minutes. The Flenser’s work, she supposed.
“What about him?”
Elsie gave an offhand gesture, “One of the cleaners will take care of the body, identification, and the aftermath. We’ll just get in the way of due process. The tag can be submitted early to notify the corpo for a small bounty.”
Ah, so it was for the ACs. At least the woman was clear in her needs.
Since there was another body in the lift lobby, the two of them went there first. The poor man was still there, and Elsie quickly looted his Flenser and baggie, before they left for the Scourge dog’s body.
“What did you do to this one?” Elsie muttered as she eyed the state of the creature’s skull. Most of the head and face had its muscle cover melted off. Yuriko just shrugged. The blood poll had already turned to crust.
Since the first Flenser vial was still mostly full, Yuriko used that instead of the other one. That meant that the carcass was quickly stripped down to bones, and the two of them didn’t waste much time waiting. They picked up the bones and put it in the baggie.
“We should turn this in soon,” Elsie said. “The fresher the bones, the more they’ll pay us.”
“Do the bones corrode or something?”
“Probably. The corpos don’t pay as much if the bones are older than a day. They go from a thousand per Jin to half that or less.”
They returned to the lift lobby afterwards and Elsie pressed the lift call button. They didn’t wait long before the doors opened and they went in. The brunette didn’t touch the control panel, but her eyes, which had green irises, turned red for a moment, then returned to green. The lift moved up, and the indicator light revealed that the lift brought them directly to the Shopping District on the 101st floor.
“How’d you do that?” Yuriko asked curiously as the doors opened to reveal that they were in another lift lobby that was in the middle of the district rather than close to the edge.
“Spacewalking,” the woman said. “I bypassed the code that forbids this lift to bring us here. This is the highest it could go, however, as the physical shaft doesn’t go beyond here.”
“Spacewalking?”
“REI-space? You’re an immigrant, the bureau should have given you a primer for it?”
“I know what it is,” Yuriko answered, “though I haven’t explored its possibilities. The gun shop had only brought her to a simulacrum of itself after all. But then again, REI-space seemed to be the medium every device communicated with.
“If you’re interested, I can teach you?”
“Hmm, maybe.” Yuriko shrugged. “One of the others might.”
“Ah…you have to get geared though.”
“You mean put ‘chronian gear into my body?” Yuriko asked. “Then, probably not.”
“Ah, you’re a Body Purist after all,” Elsie muttered.
“It’s not that,” Yuriko laughed. “I doubt a geardoc would be able to cut my flesh anyway.” She flicked her belt knife from the sheath and into her fingers, spun the blade in a flourish then stabbed the point into the back of her hand with obvious force.
Thunk.
The point slipped off target and skittered off her hand. She held it up to show Elsie, revealing flawless skin.
“Is…is that a result of your aura?”
“Partially,” Yuriko admitted.
“Oh.” Even through the woman’s artificial eyes, Yuriko could see naked desire.
“Well, let’s go buy beds,” Yuriko said, and Elsie led the way. “Ah, after we sell these off,” she added sheepishly.
Elsie nodded, looking quite indifferent. But Yuriko could feel the thread connecting them thicken. It would let her know if the woman ever intended to betray them. Yuriko couldn’t be too careful, after all.