[Anima Cores: 158]

Concentrate…

Concentrate, and…

His next fight – the final fight – was on the horizon.

The fight that would determine his future, and perhaps the future of the Wasteland itself.

But he pushed such thoughts from his mind as he entered the Dao. Now was not the time for his Ego to get in the way of his Animus. This time, he had to push through. There simply wasn’t time for anything else.

Come on… come on…

Thoughts of his companions dominated his mind as he sat, alone, in his quarters, knowing that they would be looking for him and wondering why he wasn’t training fervently in the hour before his duel with Mah-Jung.

But it was they who were responsible for his newfound dedication this morning. Once he’d woken up (and checked his very wet and slightly burning innards in the wake of his drinking session last night), he had stared at himself in the oval window of his room and found that there was fear there, hidden beneath his eyes. He knew just how strong Brother Jung was. But he also knew his secret – the ability to conceal his Qi energy from his foes – was now out in the open for everyone. Mah-Jung’s staring eyes in the wake of his victories had been a clear indication of his desires: he wanted the Cog to know he’d met his match. He wanted him to feel isolated and afraid.

But XJ-V was not alone. He was not isolated in this place, as he had once thought. Once-rivals had become fast friends, and his greatest allies had come to him in an hour that he thought represented their needs.

But he was wrong. It was he who needed them.

What right did he have to balk at the resistance he felt in the Dao? What right did he have to complain that it was too difficult to meditate in these trying times?

What right did he have to deny his friends the sight they all wished to see – him striking down Mah-Jung and starting the first step on the path that was meant for him. The path he had chosen.

Come on… come… on!

There was power he needed to draw upon. There were memories he still needed to see before he left. This was the final incorporeal hurdle he needed to mount, and something within him knew that it was more than simple necessity that drove him to fight against the strange, ghostly resistance that fought against him as he tried to peer into the mists.

Whatever it was, he would beat it. He had to.

He started by clawing at the mists and feeling the wisps of their spiritual innards simply coming away in his hands. He tried hurtling through them, running towards the globes of light that glimmered in the far distance, enshrouded by shadows. But when he reached them, his steel clad fingers felt only thin air.

He did not allow fury to cloud his judgment. Instead, he closed his eyes and palmed his chest, feeling the soul trapped in there glimmer in recognition.

“This was once your home, Yuwa,” he said aloud – his voice almost lost entirely in the clouded atmosphere. “Look at it now. I wonder, is it I who am afraid in this moment, or is it you?”

No reply was forthcoming. He chose to sit, feeling his body in the real world start to spark as the Dao attempted to penetrate his mind. His single body was no challenge for the energies of the infinite. The remnants of the Gods who had lived far before he was even a spark in Doctor Janus’s brain appraised him as a piece of silver meat. They sought nothing more than to consume.

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“I am… not here alone,” he said aloud, placing both his hands on his knees in the pose of the Eternal Dragon. “I have never been alone. And in the path I walk, I shall not be alone.”

He felt something growl within the clouds that engulfed him. Fiery eyes stared at his kneeling form with anger beyond human comprehension.

He did not look. He did not fear. He felt no emotion at all.

And yet he answered the fury:

“We are all connected,” he said.

Something snapped within the void then. Something saw, heard, and knew the words he spoke with intimate attachment. And XJ-V knew then that the being who was keeping the Dao closed to him was no God at all.

“I see you now for what you are,” he told the burning eyes glaring down at him. “Not for what you pretend to be.”

He raised a single hand, palm up, sleeve starting to burn away in the vision of the fiery, rage-filled eyes.

And in the depths of the Dao, where energy was never summoned from the realm of the real, XJ-V’s hand glowed with coiling sapphire lightning that defied all explanation.

The ruby coals watching him widened with panic. Now, it was the watcher who began to fade away.

But not before the Cog launched a Lightning Claw that speared clean through the clouds and struck the space between the ethereal eyes with blinding, searing light. The world of the unreal was instantly shattered.

XJ-V awoke on the ground of his chambers, doubled over in pain, his head fuzzy and eyes filled with static.

Outside were the sounds of those Disciples who were searching for him. He could hear their voices faintly – Arha being chief among them.

He slowly rose on one leg, smacking a firm hand against his hazy consciousness until, finally, he saw what he needed to:

Anima Cores: 160

“Rank 6,” he whispered to himself, smiling with dumb relief to know that he’d done it. He’d won the first bout of a battle that he had never thought he could.

And now, still slightly groggy, he rose to finish the fight.

…

Mah-Jung collapsed with a frantic gasp of air, his lungs heaving as they tried to absorb as much oxygen as possible, his eyes pulsing with knowing, frightful terror.

“S… such power…”

In the moment that the Cog had sent his attack flying towards his Dao-form, he had felt it.

The breath of a dying God.

“And… and He saw me,” Mah-Jung choked, trying to get a grip on the four-walled reality of his chamber in the Dragon quarters of the Colosseum. “He saw me…”

His Qi was slowly rising in his gullet, flowing freely now down his body, hunching his shoulders and pooling at his fingertips. He could already see little streaks of smoke wafting up from his nails.

There was nothing that could be done, he told himself as he clutched his shaking hands to his head, trying to keep the image of the machine-bound spirit from invading his consciousness, even though the scene was practically burned into his mind.

In the moment of impact, he had been evicted. His Qi had been rebuked. Utterly. Totally. As though his efforts to suppress entry into the Dao had been worth nothing at all.

“Was this what the Xu’Jan you slew felt, XJ-V?” the shuddering Disciple muttered through his hands. “Was this what the High Eagle saw when he burned your village…?”

“BEHOLD, WARRIORS OF RAMOR-TAI!” a voice then blared through the walls of the room. “OUR FINAL BOUT, A DUEL FOR THE AGES! MAN VS MACHINE! TOP TEMPERER VS COG CULTIVATOR! WHO WINS? LET THE DAO BE THE JUDGE!”

Mah-Jung could do little more than rise and slowly creep towards the dark corridor that led out into the arena proper. He passed those Disciples who were milling about, discussing who would come out on top. Those few Disciples who tried to reach towards him and wish him luck were repulsed by the sheer look on his face. It was something not even he could have described if you had asked him. Only a few Disciples after would dare to speak of what they saw etched in the champion Temperer’s features: futility.

So, when Mah-Jung finally stepped out into the light of the Colosseum's arena pit once again, he was absolutely alone with his thoughts.

“…is your wish to leave this place really so great?”

His eyes found those of his opponent standing before him. The Cog stood across the pit, meeting his stare with unblinking, fiery intensity.

That is why… I must end it, Mah-Jung thought as he assumed his Gong’bu battle stance. For good.

***

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