“You. Me. Maen. Bang buddies field trip.”
Raika blinks. “I’m in. Where?”
Kaena laughs, louder than normal and visibly overjoyed at the reaction. “Oh gods, I love it when you do that. That’s a great answer. Excellent work. Come on, let’s go find Maen.”
“Wait,” Raika says, stepping out a little shakily from the “cultivation” room she’s hijacked for herself. Her legs, re-refined and rebuilt as they are, are still a bit disconnected in her head, the minute differences needing a few minutes for her brain to adjust to. “Where are we going? I appreciate a good “bang buddies” invitation just about anytime, but you don’t strike me as a middle of the day sort of fellow.”
“And I’m usually not,” Kaena says, “though the more terrifying you get the more constant the temptation. A crime against red-blooded libido-ridden cultivators everywhere you slimmed down, though I’m glad it seems to have helped you move about easier.”
“We’re headed out, darling monster. Out and about. A day on the town, even! You desperately need new clothes, those replacement rags of the Division are not flattering on anyone but me, and I’m no metric to be measured against, you’ll just lose hope. And between you and me, I am sick and tired of all this palace food. Gourmet this, endless quantities of that, finest wines and sake- I just want an ale, something poultry-based off a street stall, preferably on a stick, and time to stretch our legs.”
“And I’m assuming that you’ve sashayed your way through the entire Empire’s bureaucracy, while somehow trapped in the same building as the rest of us, and solved all our pressing house-arrest issues?”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Raika, it suits you too well. Next thing we know you’ll remember how to snark, and then we’d all be lost. But no, I’m afraid that the millenia-old institution of our elders and masters remains alive and well as can be, and that we remain ever its humble charges, doomed to require an escort or a chamber to be placed in the rest of our lives.”
“Which leads me to Pai Jin here!”
Almost as if on command, they both round the corner of a hallway and come face to face with a rather flustered and disoriented looking guard. His Qi is about him, but it’s clear he’s holding himself back, because it smells plenty potent but he’s still sweating and seemingly a bit out of breath.
“Cultivator Kaena!” he says, standing more properly at attention as they come into view. He’s dressed in the classic uniform of the Imperial Soldiers, all technically cast beneath the Militant Division. Dressed in armor of steel and gold, lines of runes drawn over it and in it intricately, pieces of delicate crystal and humming electricity, Qi, and heat traveling through it visible to Raika’s senses, he looks every bit the part of an augmented warrior. His cultivation stands fairly high, rich and deeply scented of rich earth, ash, and the smell of wetness after rain, but his equipment magnifies him, making him look bulky, mechanized and glowing with power, equipped for violence at the slightest whim. The man himself is fairly nondescript, his features tanned and olive-skinned with curly black hair and bright blue eyes, but the armor (at least to Raika) takes him from a cultivator eight to a cultivator five (which is still a mortal ten, to be fair).
“I’ve been looking everywhere, you can’t just-”
“And here we are! Found, safe and sound, isn’t that wonderful? Your dedication is still so very admirable, Trooper Pai Jin, I’m sure you must be excited to put that energy to good use keeping an eye on us!”
“I- that’s-” he pauses, centering himself and taking a quick breath. She’s fairly sure that if his gauntlets weren’t so ornate and mechanical, he’d be pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just because the captain approved your request for supervised trips outside the palace does not mean you are free to do as you please. You must remain in sight.”
“Or perhaps you should be quicker about keeping me in view, hmm?” They give a little pirouette, smiling and clearly enjoying themselves. “I promise not to disappoint; I have been told I am a vision.”
He sighs, and does not bother to hide it. Raika can’t help but respect that a little.
“Cultivator Raika,” he says, turning to her. “This honorable Pai Jin will be escorting yourself, Cultivator Kaena, and Cultivator Maen into the town of Cragend, focusing on the local areas in direct view of the palace and the mercantile, lower city districts. Please be aware that my standing orders are to assess any potentially subversive actions as attempts to escape the justice of the Emperor, and that I am to attempt to restrain you should I feel it appropriate.”
…
Fuck it. Mask off for a minute.
“I am not a cultivator,” Raika tells him, letting her inhuman and purring voice come out from behind her fake “normal” tones. “And if you try to restrain me, I wish you only the best of luck, Honored Trooper Pai Jin.”
Mask back on, she smiles sweetly and gives him a little bow, her Truth and her ego both a little more comfortable with how he’s shifted his stance slightly, how his eyes have widened and then narrowed.
It’s really, really nice to be able to threaten people again, even if the mask has to stay on around anyone important or likely to make a note of it. “Polite when she needs to be” and “still a touchy subject but broken” are a thin line apart, but it’s almost fun to dance along it, doing her best to make sure she never shows too much.
Kaena, on the other hand, is beaming.
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“Oh Raika,” they say dreamily, fanning themselves with a hand. “The day you use that voice on me is the day I clear my schedule for a week straight. Come on, let’s go find your lucky lover.”
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Turns out, it’s pretty easy to convince Pai Jin of stuff when you have Kaena capable of fluttering their lashes at him and ever-so-subtly mentioning how poorly it would look on a review to his commanding officer that he strained an already difficult situation with the Division of Altered Cultivation after such lovely inter-Division cooperation and kindness.
It doesn’t sound like a particularly convincing argument to Raika, but apparently it’s enough for him. Either way, it’s what gets all three of them out of the damn palace with official documentation. For the first time in her life that she can remember, bureaucracy works out in her favor.
The city is vibrant.
She means that very literally. It fucking vibrates.
It’s undetectable unless she’s looking for it, which is saying something considering her senses, but once she hears it she can’t unhear it. The sounds of mining, drilling, of people walking over metal and stone, of constant building, of metal infrastructure vibrating with sound carried from fucking miles underground, all of it rings through the city. In some parts it makes for a pleasing backdrop, like a heartbeat and purr all at once, like the city is breathing and the people are moving in tune. In other parts, it’s fucking miserable, a background hum that sets her on edge, that she can feel ever so faintly in her bones.
The discomfort is very slightly offset by the fact that everybody stares at her in awe as they walk by.
Say what you will about Raika, but she’s the first to admit that she’s not afraid of looking good. The things power does to the world are often uncomfortable or painfully wrong in her opinion, the memory of the blood on her hands clear, but power itself has always felt good. Power to change herself, to be strong, to be worthy and now to transform herself literally into a thing of optimized artistry and pain and violence of the best kind.
And, hand in hand, power to be looked upon in a little bit of worship.
She’s been on the other side of the looks, seen only as something disgusting, so there’s some mixed feelings in her at the looks she gets now, but it’s hard not to feel at least a little good when people turn their heads to watch you walk by and flush with hormones as they see you.
Kaena makes no effort to hide themself, dressed in a more masculine attire than their usual kimonos but not foregoing an ounce of the gloriously floral patterning and bright whites and pinks they so favor, Hair tied up neatly and with a confident walk, they look like some visiting noble or an inheritor to an estate, giving smiles left and right and the occasional flirtatious wink here and there. Maen, meanwhile, looks around wide-eyed, dressed in simple robes of black and gold trim that she found somewhere in the palace and was overjoyed to get to wear, highlighting a few very pleasant features. Her ears swivel back and forth, tracking every noise as her eyes glaze over at every other food cart they pass, and it occurs to Raika this is probably her first time in any city outside of Paleblossom.
And Raika herself, despite wearing mostly modified standard-issue robes for the Division of Altered Cultivation, stands at well over a foot and change taller than anyone in the crowd, and fills out said robes dramatically.
Long, flowing dreads, their color gone from an original light blond to a darker color, with hints and streaks of red and orange, like a sunset in a hairstyle. Bright golden eyes that possess a cross-shaped pupil, fused from a mixture of spirit beasts she’s consumed and adapted. Rippling muscles along a lithe physique that’s only just starting to fill out again after her modifications, and a body shaped for running and fighting but with some particularly well-preserved assets.
The gluteus muscles are actually crucial for balance, stamina, and bipedal locomotion from an evolutionary standpoint. The fact that she has to use them to counterbalance a weight on her chest designed for the storage of biological fuel and optimized as shielding for her upper organs and that they’re particularly well developed beyond that is a note of optimized biological efficiency. And also something that Maen enjoys a lot.
Most of those they pass are in the Qi Gathering realm, though she’s surprised by how many she senses with more refined Qi she’s learned to identify as Foundational realm by scent and feel, and thus most of them are easily capable of sensing Qi.
Three gorgeous, powerful, clearly at least somewhat rich and unique cultivators walk the street, escorted by an exo-armored soldier of the Empire decked in proper enchanted regalia, all walk down the street, and they turn heads.
“Smile for the crowds, Raika dear!” Kaena says with a smile of their own. “Put them at ease! You look like the East’s sexiest berserker with all that posturing.”
“I can definitely second that last part,” Maen nods, giggling as Raika shoots her a look of betrayal. “What? Kaena is always right. It’s why they’re blessed with such good features.”
“Must be why I had to build all of mine from scratch.”
“No one likes a braggart, sexy,” Kaena titters.
“Is it bragging if it’s true?” Raika asks with an eyebrow raised. “You got genetics and cultivation. I had to sexy myself up out of meat. Waaaaay harder, and I’ve got tits way bigger than yours out of it.”
The banter goes back and forth for a while. It’s just… nice. Maen has them stop at every food stall, all of which taste delicious to Raika (though she notices that she tends to enjoy flavors that are a bit off, compared to her companions), and in less than an hour Kaena has had them go by three clothing stores and bought a ream of purple silk and six new outfits for each of them except Raika, who had to veto some of the more extreme options.
It’s a moment that couldn’t be more perfect.
Which is why it doesn’t come as a surprise to her when she smells tangerines.
The guilt is there. Enjoying this, rather than altering herself or plotting revenge, it all stings in a way she is bottling up, because in the end she is not alone and there are people who have aided her and who she cares about that deserve good things, who deserve to enjoy things, and whether or not she does, her suffering would hurt them.
It doesn’t block the feeling out entirely, but it helps.
But that guilt is always there. She’s had it in the back of her mind all day.
The smell is not simply present, it doesn’t just manifest like it has before. A whiff of tangerines and blood drifts to her out of the street, outside the store. She can see it from here. The instant she focuses on it she can smell the blood lingering. Can hear the humming, vibrating breath of the city, and how the sound of blows landing somehow lines up with it.
Worse.
She sees him. For a second.
Missing a shoe, because that shoe is under her bed, wrapped tight. Wearing a greenish, cheap set of clothes, half-ragged. One eye is empty, no pupil, no jelly, just a black, yawning pit in what used to be his face, but… the other is still there. Bright green pupil. Staring at her. Seeing her.
She almost goes down to a fucking knee, something in her trembling, but then he raises his arm and points into the alley, towards the thing she already knows is happening. Someone is being hurt, like they were hurt, like he was hurt, in that alley.
Yeah. Alright.
Before Maen can ask what’s wrong, soft touch on her arm trying to hold her, bring her back, Raika steps towards the ghost or vision or hallucination of her dead friend and the thing he demands of her.