If you've ever used public transportation, then you might feel the exact pain that I had to go through that day. The damn airship station was one of the things that I hadn't ever expected to visit.
I was established in Western Jewel. My new friends were there. My ex wife was there, somehow. It wasn't Los Angeles, but it was home. The most unfortunate part of moving while Lee was trying to work through her feelings for me was that she kept blushing. Clearly, the moon clan was going to let her go on this important mission.
Like they could stop her.
Just as clearly, she had gotten very comfortable. So when I came to talk to her she was sitting with Min.
"Hey aren't you supposed to be my spirit companion?" I said, nuzzling the beast.
"I try. But mistress needed help packing," Min said. "She decided to stop at some new boutique shop in town."
The spirit beast rolled her eyes. I could see a bit of lace poking out from underneath combat robes.
"I was going to say that I could take you to Resting Bitch Lace, where we could get you a sports bra. Maxine is very good at making sports bras."
She was super cute when she blushed. I was definitely going to let this one play out.
There used to be this thing about gays that came out in their late twenties. They never grew up being in relationships, so they had to kinda make their way through it like they were still in high school. It wasn't exactly like that when I left, but I remembered it well.
She was so awkward that it was cute.
The woman who I will remind you many times, was a stone cold killer, smiled at me.
"Hey," she said.
I fell into my old standby. Always be kind.
"Hey. I don't know what's happening here," I said, moving closer to her. "But I do know that I respect you as a person and as a cultivator. I wouldn't be where I am today without you.".
I tucked a strand of hair behind one of her ears. That had to have been intentional.
"So I don't know where this is going," I said. "But we can go as fast or as slow as you want. The last thing I want to do is to add more to your plate."
That was the right thing to say at the time and the gorgeous woman swooned. She reached up and pulled me in for a kiss. In the history of kisses, this was probably pretty sub par. She clearly didn't know what she was doing and it took me a second to get both arms around her.
The second kiss though? Now that the dam had broken? She was hungry and I was on the menu.
"Min," I said in between kisses. "Hold my calls."
"But you don't even have a phone ...ewww, humans!" She said before slinking away.
Things got a bit hot and heated there for a moment. Now I'm a gentleman and I'm not going to describe what happened when I should have been packing but whatever you think happened dial the spice back a little and you would be about right. She was inexperienced and we didn't get far but I did get to see that she was wearing one of Maxine's finest. Maybe it was the feeling of knowing that we would be at the same inn that night in a different city.
"Let's talk tonight when we get there," I said, coming up for air. "I think..."
"Shut up," she said, pulling me in for another kiss.
I was a simple man. I did what the hot lady said.
---
Min packed several of my outfits. Basically I was professionally homeless. The only little wrinkle in our space was that Egiya showed up. Xueyie was going to stay and train with Lorenzo and try to figure out the puzzle that was Xiran.
Egiya had been told by her mother that she was going to go and witness this. She might have thought that her daughter was needed. She was appreciated but when I saw her at the Moon Clam compound?
"Hey!" I said, shoving another scroll into my hobo bag.
"You know that we have better ways to do that, right?" She said. She clearly was wearing one of the options like a model. It was like a backpack but long.
"I like that design. I need one of those," I said.
On the other hand, I had put my own stuff into a small pouch, then attached it to a long stick. I was either a tramp or a hobo. I definitely wasn't a murder hobo.
"If you are coming, then we will be happy to have you," I said. "If you can tear yourself away for the length of time that we need to be away."
"That shouldn't be a problem," she said. "Also are you wearing a woman's robes?"
She looked at me and let me just say that I hadn't even paid attention to what I was wearing. Let's just say that my shirt has gotten on and off in the process of the morning.
Was I going to tell her? Hell no. Lee would tell her if she wanted and it would be evident if she actually went through with the lewd act of holding my hand. I mean based on what she had given us, we were heading to the imperial capital, district forty, wherever that was.
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She was already packed, having gotten the word.
"You're going to head home, tell your mother goodbye and then return with us?" I said. "That sounds good. Let's plan on meeting at the airship port."
"I will see you there," she said.
Lee was ready to go. She had grabbed nondescript robes that would let her blend in.
"You're still wearing my top?" She said. "It looks good on you... Is it alright if I say that?"
"That's good. I can see that you are trying."
We just stood there for a bit. Then we moved on.
A representative from the Mandarin came to speak with us.
"You have to understand how this looks s with the government. We don't want to look like we're competent. But if you're saying that you have actionable intelligence, I hope he's sending a squad with you," the man, who pointedly did not give his name despite the many markings on his robes, said.
I know that he was just being weird to mess with me.
"Well make sure that they dress like they are on vacation or something," I said. "We need to not draw attention to ourselves. Just arriving in the Capitol will stir up enough problems for us if what I'm hearing is right."
"Our blue coats know how to be discreet," the man said.
I'll bet they did.
"Well if they are going to help us, then they need to be with us today," I said. "We don't have long to get to these hot spots."
Left and said was the threat that they wouldn't actually show off and help out. I trust the government just a little bit. But really, the amount of times that I wish that they'd actually just do their job and let me not had to do all this shit.
I wasn't a cop.
I was just one guy trying to stick up for this little guy. And also to prevent unneeded deaths due to these demonic cultivators proclivity to kill.
Had blue codes gave me a little bit more information and a password so that they would know who we were. It would be pretty evident with my description as I was the only guy around to like curly hair but that was really on them. It was distinct. I could also go by having two female companions but we would see how that went.
Before long I was headed out myself. My spirit beast and I were making our way behind Lee. She had less to carry, having traveled more often and knowing what to expect. I felt like I was overprepared. But also there was still fast fashion around. Everything was made custom or made by effect in batches. So you really didn't really have a lot of choices when it came to what you were wearing.
To see the airships, you have to imagine a very nice blimp. Now once you have that steampunk image of a blimp I want you to imagine it's rewinding back in time a little bit. There was a lot of wood and a lot of rope. And the portion I was going to lift of the air, really looks like a bad cannabis balloon. Although it was very inflated, I just had the idea that it would not stand it forever.
Thank God I had that tactile telekinesis which would help me fly in the case of bullshit cultivators deciding to end someone's family line by destroying the public transportation system that I would be using. I could deal with far less things going sideways.
I wasn't hoping for something amazing, just looking for a silver lining in all this.
And honestly I didn't know if this was going to be a week or a month. I didn't have a map to the Capitol. Not only that, I didn't know how long the airship was going to take to get there. I guess I could ask, but it didn't seem like that was going to be something that normal people asked. Asked. Just got on and then when you arrived, you were there. According to Lee, there was a lot of food service there and it was expected that you would have your meals on the issue. This made me think that this airship was going to be going for a while if they had to restock at every port.
And honestly, I had lived most of my life for the past ever so long within a bubble. I was kind of excited to see what life was like in a different city and if there was the same amount of criminal underbelly representation as well as if the government actually was functional there. There's no way that I'd move just because social services worked, but I might be tempted.
Now if they had full health care and benefits and Universal based income? Then we might be having a little bit of a conundrum.
Egiya found us at the port.
"My mother said to wish us good luck and that she says that you better return me home in one piece," she said.
"We will bring you back in one piece," Lee said.
For the first time, both of them I'm wearing non-script ropes. They were still very pretty and I knew them both, but would be far easier for them to blend into a crowd. When everyone has amazing hair and looks like a movie star, it's less important how your face looks and more important what the recipe potties looking like. And with pretty dry clothing, it would be pretty easy to just not focus on that. For my part, I had to conceal what I felt was one of my best features. I had curly hair so Lee grabbed hooded towel for me to use while we were inside of the city. It wouldn't change much if someone was looking directly at me, but unless they were looking Charlie at me through my cloak, they wouldn't be able to discern that I was out of place.
Because I totally was a native of district 40 in the capital. And I totally was someone that already belonged there and but there for a while. And no, I didn't know anything about a commotion at that one Sect.
There was nothing to see here.
"Does it tell you about our rooms?" She said.
"Did we get adjoining rooms?" Egiya replied.
Both of them smile widely.
I didn't ask you know the answer to this though. I mainly found out that it was going to take us one and a half days to fly to the Capitol. This was a perfect amount of time for me to debrief the two of them and bring in the blue coats. I hope that those guys would show up soon though. Because from my understanding, the airship was only for anybody. It was only by the grace of the mandarins deep pockets that we had gotten such good birthdays and we did that to stay in the economy class with the rest of the riff raff.
Now when I say the word airship, I want you to think about a cruise ship in the sky. Because that is the most accurate depiction of what it actually showed up. Despite the fact that it was mostly made of metal and wood, it was large enough to be a small cruise ship. That was about when it took off. I realized that I have missed a lot and decided that I would take the tour with whatever I had become with Lee. My spirit beast would keep us safe and get those blue coats to come talk to us whenever they're ready.
I had no doubt that they were on board. I just didn't want them to interrupt the next time that I had to change my robes because someone was deciding that she wanted to kiss my chest.
Remember, two adults making out is totally normal. What's not normal is a spare beast deciding that they want to walk it on something that two consenting adults had decided was what the hell they want to spend the rest in. So after the ten-minute tour, we circle back around to our rooms and sat down to go over the training point of the next couple of days.
We lay down a good rhythm trying to tap into her strengths. With two of us at the Nascent Soul realm, the focus was on pushing what we could do into her cultivation as much as possible. She had this opportunity to work with us. She just cracked the second realm recently.
I decided that if she was going to make a move on me that night, that eventually we were going to have to talk to our handlers. Before the sun went down, I wanted to talk to the blue coats.
Min had finally nailed them down and personally requested them to come to our birthing. This is when we realized that they had given us two people to do the work of about five.
"You both have to understand that this isn't a personal vendetta. You're more than welcome to join us, I expected them to send someone a little bit more experience though, but that's fine. We can do it with what we have. Let's talk about how I think we should do this."