Air rushed over Peng’s craggy body, the bird’s reflection flickering in the ocean they were skimming over. Daisy kept Peng at a slower pace so that the rest of her team could talk without screaming over the wind.
“It couldn’t have been Hemiola, Natsuko, he’s dead,” Shuixing said. For Daisy and Sofiane’s benefit she added, “dimension-jumping accident.
Natsuko huffed. “I know that! But I’m telling you, I don’t forget someone’s eyes, and those were Hemiola’s looking out through that mask! And besides, who else would’ve known about your dimension-jumping research?”
“I hadn’t started the research before he was… gone. Even if the Yishang somehow brought him back—which I sincerely hope since it would mean dimension-jumping isn’t permanent—he wouldn’t know about my papers,” Shui said.
“Daisy did,” Natsuko replied.
Shuixing looked weary. “Yes, but Daisy…”
“Was being used by the Yishang,” Natsuko said. Up at Peng’s head, Daisy grimaced. “And if they did bring Hemiola back, or some version of him, don’t you think they’d wanna put him to use?”
The thought both frightened and excited Shuixing. She wasn’t confident enough in Natsuko’s accuracy to try and fit the hypothesis into any kind of theory yet, but it had some strange implications. For one thing, if the Yishang had resummoned Hemiola, they had not made him a Hero, as his name never re-entered the Use-Rankings. For another, the Yishang personally had designs on her research, which meant that whatever conclusions she’d arrived at on those pages were something the demi-gods themselves did not know or understand.
Shuixing had to park that particular train of thought in the station for now. Not least of which because it was tainted with megalomania. She was barely at the starting line for understanding what was going on, and as a scientist, self-important celebrations were nothing but a distraction.
“Another thing bothers me about the Hemiola hypothesis, Natsu,” Pechorin said.
“Ugh. What?”
“The ability kit of our mysterious attacker is entirely different. Additionally, Hemiola shouldn’t have been able to fight Daisy to a stalemate.”
“Well, I don’t know, maybe… maybe the Yishang gave him special powers when they brought him back!”
Sofiane snorted. “If you have to keep adding extra explanations to make your theory fit, you should just abandon the theory.”
“Whatever. I know what I saw, believe me or don’t,” Natsuko said.
Two things demanded to be fit together which did not seem to fit together, Shuixing thought. The first, that the Yishang wanted Natsuko to have her bottle badly enough to give it to her twice, with the second time proving that its special properties were not an accident. The second, that they wanted to steal Shuixing’s research of that bottle by using Hemiola—or whoever it was—as an errand boy. But then there were the inconsistencies. Why would they need Shui’s research if they had created the bottle themselves and already knew how it worked? And if they had sent someone to steal Shui’s research for him, why had that person turned around and used that research for their own purposes? Or was it the case that the Yishang were intentionally promoting the use of forced dimension-jumping? The latter raised yet more questions.
Shuixing couldn’t tell whether she was in heaven or hell. The stress of such an important breakthrough being just out of reach was maddening, yet she was all the more excited to make that breakthrough because of the mounting tension.
“By the way, Daisy,” Pechorin asked. “Where are we going?”
“Al-Nuwba!” Daisy announced cheerily.
“Uhh, why are we going to that sandpit exactly?” Sofiane asked.
He wasn’t fond of the desert. Sand always ended up in his clothes.
“We’re gonna need every advantage we can get, so first things first, I’m taking Natsu, Shui, and Pech to complete a mainline quest and get their stats back.”
Something about that idea made Natsuko’s skin crawl. It wasn’t that it was a bad idea, but having spent the past three years acclimating herself to progress being an unattainable pipe dream, finally completing the Scytheworm quest stank of rejoining the Use-Ranking rat race.
“Is your plan to beat up the Scytheworm and let us get the finishing blow?” Shuixing asked.
“Purrrrrty much, yup!” Daisy said.
“We don’t need your charity,” Natsuko said. “And besides, what difference is it gonna make if Hemiola can blow us up in one hit anyway? Or the other Heroes for that matter? Whoopdie-doo, I’ve got 16,000 hp to evaporate in an instant instead of 8,000.”
Pechorin had spent enough time in the hazy, gray-area space of poetry recently that Natsuko’s real intentions popped right out of her fake excuses. She was putting up barriers to avoid leaving her comfort zone. Ironically, it had been her all those years ago that refused to let her teammates rest on their laurels, always driving them to improve themselves. All of the first and most of the second-generations of Heroes were roughly equal in power, but Natsuko’s team had stayed on top for so long not because they were favored by the Yishang with intrinsic superiority, but purely through Natsuko’s relentless dedication to improvement.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Withering in Spring,
Fall hibiscus lies dormant
In dead leaves: A bud,” Pechorin said.
The poem was lost to the buffeting wind as Peng picked up speed and ascended into the sky. It didn’t matter. The poem was for him, not Natsuko. The outward form of her withering—laziness, cynicism, complacency—contained in itself the opposite forms of what had been and what could be. Everything in this life of illusions changed ceaselessly, so that a relentless optimist must some day become a bitter pessimist, but so too could they become an optimist again. The person that was “Natsuko” contained both possibilities.
Natsuko had done her part encouraging Pechorin when she was in full bloom those years ago, so, as he conceived of it, it was his duty to return the favor.
“Let’s fight the Scytheworm without Daisy or Sofiane’s help,” Pechorin said.
Everyone but Daisy looked at him like he was crazy, and then only because Daisy was flying the bird and couldn’t avert her gaze.
“Um, I appreciate the enthusiasm, Pech,” Shuixing said, “but we died to it several times even before we lost a whole lot of stats. Trying now would be suicidal.”
“We fought Sofiane’s team and nearly won, did we not?” Pechorin said.
“The word “nearly” is doing a lot of work in that sentence,” Sofiane said. “We only faced one Desperation Art and it nuked us instantly. Xiuquan and Baran both could’ve done the same and Gula’s makes all of her teammates invincible.”
“It’s a good thing the Scytheworm doesn’t have anything like that then,” Pechorin said.
“Isn’t it easier to just whack the thing and be done with it?” Daisy asked, genuinely confused why anyone would want to work harder rather than smarter.
Having spent the least amount of time with her, Daisy was oblivious to the Natsuko-whispering going on. If Pechorin explained what he was doing to Shuixing, she would understand, but Daisy and Sofiane were still wired for “numbers must go up as fast and efficiently as possible,” so the whole idea of gambling on a suicide mission instead of a guaranteed quest completion out of a sense of dignity and pride seemed ludicrous to them.
“Fuck it, let’s do it,” Natsuko said. “You, me, and Shui. No one else.”
“Why!?” Soifane said. “You’re gonna die and we’ll have to pick you up at 4am and hope no one else finds you first and then you’ll have even lower stats! Would you just accept the damn help, firecrotch?”
“No.”
They flew through the night and by daybreak were back on the mainland somewhere in South Tianzhou. Al-Nuwba City was another four or five hours of flying to the West, but everyone was suffering from lack of sleep, Daisy most of all, and so the motion to stop and rest passed unanimously.
Daisy set Peng down in a ruined village along a river. Rice terraces along the banks had drained dry and lay choked with weeds and flowers. Wooden huts were smashed to timbers, personal items littering the overgrown dirt streets. Monsters roamed the grassy hills nearby.
But no one had ever lived here, thought Shuixing. And no one ever would. This was an ideal abandoned village, created from the ground up to be nothing but an abandoned village. No Non-Heroes would move to it and rebuild because they had their own routines and habits that bound them as tightly as the Use-Ranking competition did Heroes. With a dim sense of ennui, Shuixing supposed that only Heroes and the Yishang truly created change, and she wasn’t entirely convinced about the former.
“That one looks pretty untouched,” Sofiane said, pointing at a two-story house hemmed in by the ruins of a stone wall.
“Good enough for me,” Daisy said, lumbering towards it like a zombie.
The inside was as dilapidated as the rest of the abandoned village and full of the person-less personal knick-knacks that an ideal abandoned village ought to have. Pictures of loved ones, pots and pans and books knocked over, torn clothing and rags. However, on the second story they were met with a beautiful sight: Two sets of beds. Messy, but still with sheets.
“Oh thank the gods,” Daisy said, falling straight down onto the closer one and just barely managing to kick her boots off before passing out. Unfortunately, she had also sprawled across the entire bed, and no one felt like interrupting their pilot’s well-deserved slumber.
“As gentlemen, it is our duty to offer up the bed to the mademoiselles,” Sofiane said. Pechorin grunted in agreement.
Shuixing waved her hands. “O-Oh no, that’s alright. You don’t have to—”
“Natsuko sleepy. Natsuko sleep now,” Natsuko said before crawling into bed and pulling the covers up.
Shuixing flashed the boys a sheepish smile and went to join her sleeping friend who she was already resigned to being a body pillow for. Sofiane and Pechorin left the room and went downstairs to a sitting room in the east wing of the house. Most of the furniture was dusty or broken or both, but against one wall was an intact sofa, wood with some thin rice husk matting. Warm, morning light beamed through torn curtains.
“Please take the sofa, I insist,” Sofiane said.
Pechorin shook his head. “It is the responsibility of seniors to look after their juniors.”
“In the Sibe-Lands, perhaps, but in Cascadia, we always privilege the comfort of our elders.”
“I know us Sibe-Landers are not as sophisticated as Cascadians, but perhaps you’ll do me the honor of—”
“Just take the gods-damned sofa, Pech. I’m gonna sleep on my spare clothes.”
Pechorin lay down. The sofa was hard and uncomfortable, which was perfect for him. He was tough and got along no matter what.
Below him, Sofiane lay down after setting down three layers of his clothes in order of least to most fashionable and lay down with his head on his pack. He folded his hands over his chest and shut his eyes. Pechorin did likewise, trying for a moment to sleep, but something nagged at him which he knew would not let him sleep until he asked.
“Sofiane?” Pechorin said.
“You wanna ask me about how I wooed Gomiko so easily?” Sofiane replied without opening his eyes.
“Perceptive.”
“So, what, you want the secret formula to how to whisk Natsuko off her feet?”
Pechorin opened his mouth without speaking. The answer was yes, but speaking that answer aloud was a vulnerable act. A humiliating act. If there was a polar opposite of dark, edgy, and mysterious, it was not cutesy, bubbly, and silly, it was the earnest admission of needing romantic advice. He couldn’t bring himself to it.
“I’ll save you the trouble of asking,” Sofiane said. “What I did is just basic flirting that happened to go pretty well, but that won’t work on Natsuko. She is an enigma for you to solve and for me to not touch with a 50 foot pole. You’re on your own there, bud.”
Pechorin grunted. That was about as satisfying an answer as he could have hoped and with that he found himself sucked down into the vortex of sleep.