“A fool,” says the greatest warrior in the land, “plucks the leaves.”
We kneel in his home, around his table, staring at his food, unmoving, not daring to partake of a single bite. All the while, the makings of a brooding autumn storm slash the wooden estate, whipping the surrounding seas of rice paddies into a wrathful ocean of golden brown. The rain has not yet come, but it will soon. Every door is left open as if daring it to try. Candles and lanterns wage defiant war against the wind that fuels them. Howling gales tear through the nearby garden. Bamboo creaks violently. It fears its master’s mood tonight. A warning if ever there were one.
One I promptly ignore, because I’m not a coward. But I am cautious. Especially after the skyscraper, and doubly now that I’m in hostile territory. That this estate belongs to the Champion doesn’t make it any less of a prison.
He came from the capital drenched in the wrath of the coming storm. Bathed the entire coast in a comet’s light in the brief moments it took his meteoric descent to end at the steps of his home with a falling petal’s grace. He stopped only to leave his sandals at the door and fling a waterlogged parka into the hands of a servant with a grunted command.
Now he sits before me with jagged grey hair and bushy mustache slicked back by the rain. The most powerful man in the Section is an unassuming volcano up close, his roiling depths shrouded by dour ascetism. Fifty years old so they say, and Champion for twenty of them. Twenty long years he has spent atop the gladiocracy. Deflecting every challenge, inspiring every child, and facing the electronic eyes of an entire peoples at every step of the way. Unknowable pressure has hardened his jade eyes to an unbreakable degree. He misses nothing as he dissects us. I feel he understands more about me than even I do in the brief moment it takes his hair-raising attention to pass me by. His gaze lingers on Ajax fractionally longer than the rest of us, softening briefly. Then the face of our society returns, and Champion Fang reminds us all of what it means to exist in the presence of a living myth.
The spry old man I traded words with in that Metro Blockhouse elevator is nowhere to be found. Something in the past days has eroded his playfulness. Tonight, only the warrior king remains. And he is not happy to see me.
His lips move invisibly behind his mustache, projecting a loud voice so unamused it snaps the air like bone.
“But greater is the fool who abandons his garden entirely because he no longer has time to tend the roots,” the champion continues. “It seems I have made the error of leaving one garden most unkempt while tending to another. What a mess it has made in my absence.”
The full burden of Fang’s gaze falls to the only of us immune to the weight of his presence. Mori alone dares move as she unenthusiastically shovels rice into her mouth. Fang makes a noise of disgust and shucks the rest of his shirt away, replacing it with a white, sleeveless gi in due time.
He proceeds to mow each of us down in turn.
“A vagrant. A cleric. A prince. And the clown that leads them all. Never before have I seen four children manage so masterfully to sow so much discord in so little a time.” He turns his eyes on me last. Silences me with a single look when he sees the temper flaring in mine. “I told you to use your head, boy, not cut it off.”
My mouth opens of its own volition, a hotheaded response right on the tip of my tongue. Ajax interjects before it can get out.
“We had a substantial breakthrough in Bishop’s disappearance, sir,” he says, throwing a warning look in my direction. “We knew Shimano Heavy Industries was involved. We suspected Bishop was being held in that skyscraper. And because of the media’s silence on the matter, we believed we could only trust ourselves with the information.”
“Listening to this one all the while?” Fang asks, shaking his head in my direction. His voice rasps like sandpaper. “I expected better of my Section’s brightest than to follow a gloryhound into certain death.”
A very pointed clearing of a throat cuts the Champion to a standstill. Across the low table from the uncomfortable pillow I kneel on, my sister joins the spat with the grace of a rocket-powered sledgehammer.
“Champion Fang, with all due respect: my brother may be an idiot, but he’s not stupid. Nor did he act alone.” Delicately, Jolie removes her glasses and begins cleaning them on a corner of her ill-fitting robe. “Seeing as word of a missing fighter being found hooked up to ancient datasim technology in the basement of a Shimano skyscraper hasn’t made its way onto every stream in the Section yet, we appear to have been on the right trail. We couldn’t trust anyone. Not even our rightful ruler.” Her half-blind gaze holds unfalteringly against the older man. “When even incorrigible Fang will not bring such a crime to light, it makes a girl wonder what other secrets he’s hiding from his Section.”
Dead silence.
Mori chews quietly. My sister stares down the champion for excruciating seconds. Defying the most powerful man in our world with nothing but her words and wit. And in the end, she drags the first word out of him. Though it’s not much of a word at all.
“Hmph.”
Fang leans back on his knees. Eschews village tradition for comfort by shifting to sit in cross-legged position, leaving Ajax the lone traditionalist in the room.
“And that is why I entertain your presence,” he mutters, “instead of leaving you to the cells your actions warranted. None among you know when to hold your tongue.”
He says it like an insult, but his trailing tone hints of more to follow. One gnarled hand reaches up to stroke his mustache. Bushy eyebrows narrow, deepening the defined shadows of his eye sockets. A distant hearth lends us its warmth for the moment. But the fuel burns low. And the burdened lines on Fang’s face are creased twice as deep when his voice finally rises again.
Miles away, thunder ripples through the darkened sky.
“I have little patience for wordplay,” he begins. “What we will speak of does not leave this room. If it does, it will not leave this house.” His tone is the low rumble of a village rickshaw rolling over cobblestone. Heavy, pausing to collect words so that every thought he speaks arises with the wise cadence of a Confucian scholar. “In my youth… I left this countryside behind and journeyed to a steel mecca to make a name for myself. I learned many things in my time away from my home. That the world abroad is not so glamorous a place as the streams would have had me believe; nor as honorable. Yet I saw much potential in our land. I knew that with a firm hand, this Section could be a shining star amongst its peers.”
He stands and begins to stalk like an old, scarred tiger. Raising the hairs on the back of my neck as he pads behind me on a slow circle around the table, eyes on the ceiling planks and brewing storm beyond. “Never have I forgotten my roots, not even when faced with ludicrous opposition and a Section left rotted by my fickle predecessors. For years I have worked to bring the corporations to heel. I culled their influence and allowed common men to rise once more. Gave their children a reason to know that humanity was stronger than its greed.”
Fang pauses at a bonsai tree atop a nearby cupboard. His wrinkled fingers graze the leaves.
“But I could never fully excise their corruption. Like a trap, it waited. Like a virus, it grew. Now it disguises itself with decadence and curls its fingers through the heart of the Section once more. And it has never forgotten what I took from it.”
He plucks a single leaf from the tree before turning to address us plainly.
“Shimano Yor and his seven sons are but a symptom of the disease I have spent a lifetime fighting, as are their allies in the undercity. They desire the throne and will put their own puppet on it if given the chance. I have blocked them for too long. Outstayed my time as Champion. Yet not unlike you two youngsters,” he splits two fingers towards Ajax and I, “they have never been able to take it. There is only one path to doing so.”
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“Martial law,” Jolie says.
“Only the strongest shall rule,” Ajax recites.
They share a brief, flitting-of-the-eyes glance. I’m the only one who doesn’t miss it.
“Either my supporters have stopped them in the leagues, or I have done it myself.” Fang bristles at some memory. “They have failed time and time again. And now that they finally realize they will never win with their own power, they have begun engineering a solution that will do it for them.”
As he speaks, electric-blue projections spring to life from the ceiling, splitting our meals in half with images of the destruction in the Shimano skyscraper. Feeds taken straight from mine and Ajax’s JOYs as we battled Prazen. Jolie must have passed them along. I look to her for confirmation, but her wide eyes are already drinking in the centermost projection, one filled with a swirling datastream I was kicked through at just under supersonic velocity. In the next screen, the datastream twitches like a living organism as Prazen kicks the containment pod repeatedly in a soundless loop.
The old man retakes his seat with a tired grunt, resting a hand on one knee. Eyes closed, head bowing as he nods. “Bishop… is not the first of fighter of repute to disappear in our city. Nor do I suspect he will be the last. Shimano Industries has been taking and using them to develop what you saw in that skyscraper: a machine that can codify the essence of a human’s fighting experience and transplant that experience into another creature. It is my belief they are using this machine to train the puppet they have already chosen to replace me.”
“…Akis Prazen,” Jolie finishes. She pushes her glasses up with her middle finger. “The processing power required to simulate some kind of pseudo-consciousness, transplant human instinct itself, would be unimaginable. There’s a reason no one has ever tried to do it before. It would mean thousands and thousands of servers dedicated to that sole purpose. More than what was in that skyscraper. Millions… billions of credits in technical development.”
Mori scoffs. “When has money ever stopped a corp?”
Ajax looks to the champion for answers. “Why are you telling us this?”
“So that you understand the danger you have stumbled into.” Fang pauses, opens one eye. “And so that you understand the reason I am confining the four of you to this place until the entire matter is settled.”
Four unanimous voices explode into an uproar. Jolie jumps to her feet first, knocking a wooden cup of water to the side. “But the winter tournament-”
“We can’t just drop this!” Ajax snaps. “We’re involved-”
“Involved? That is one way of putting it. The corporation watches every one of your homes and universities,” Fang says, infinitely calm despite the molten vitriol rising in the room. “I cannot waste more precious resources defending you. If you return to the capital and your lives, it would risk you becoming bargaining chips for my enemies. Thus, you will remain here. Out of sight, and out of danger.”
“Just so the Shimanos can come sweep us up here when they’re finished with you?” Mori glares daggers at the champion. “No thanks, old man. You’ve abandoned the Vents to get fucked by Dynasty and drowned by corporate shit for decades. You said it yourself: that minor league schmuck wasn’t even the first to go missing. What exactly have you done to stop the corpos?”
“Curb your tongue, young lady, or I’ll do it for you.”
“I’d like to see you fucking try. Geriatric mumbo-jumbo kung fu-ass mystic. Everyone knows the leagues keep you propped up because they’re scared of what the world might be like if you weren’t in charge.” Her spoon impales the wooden table like a dagger. “Newsflash: some of us would rather have that world. And apparently you can’t even stop league fighters from being kidnapped out of your own goddamn tower. We’d be safer out on the street.”
Three of the champion’s fingers pinch tight together, gathering a dangerous pinprick of energy at their conflux while he glares back. “You have squandered a year’s worth of intelligence operations by some of the most skilled Assassins and Psi in this Section, girl. Do not speak to your champion as if I am some doddering vagabond from the undercity!” He rises, brooding, compacting that energy to a blackhole density without the slightest sign of strain. The entire room darkens as its flames are pulled towards the singularity.
For a single moment, Mori wavers at the sight. Fang sneers and snaps his fingers, dispelling the kinetic potential into a firefly swirl that flutters towards her face. Effortlessly winning the brutish contest of wills.
“You children forced my hand, made me choose between saving you or protecting this Section. I made the selfish choice. It may cost greater men and women than you their lives. Ridicule me again, and I will give you a lesson that you will never forget.” The gentle creases of his face, beloved by our lands, a permanency of my childhood, crinkle into the dark-ridged wrath of a gladiatorial warlord that I’ve never seen before. A face the cameras of our home never show. Yet it fits him too well. I know the moment I see it that it’s a face he’s had to wear for a long, long time. For whom? Our Section’s neighbors? The great councils and floating courts of Olympus? Fang’s crooked fingers curl inwards one by one. “I have not taken a student in years, but I have not forgotten how to teach. Nor how to break a disobedient mare.”
Jolie reaches out a hand to stop Mori before the shorter girl slaps it away. Mori’s defiance returns with the thunder. Subconscious elemental control summons splinters of lighting in the stormheads above as she jumps to her feet.
“You might be fine with letting a corporation trample on our home while you wait for everything to fall into place, champion. Just like you’ve been doing with the Vents.” Mori snatches up a fresh apple and tries to crush it in her palm. She’s not strong enough. But that doesn’t stop her from pushing on. “You wait, we pay the price. We suck up the rot of your city. The crime. The shit. It all ends up on our shoulders. And fuck if I’m going to wait for an old man like you, who can’t even fix the slums, to fix a problem bigger than the entire capital. I’ll do it myself.”
“Enough,” I growl.
It doesn’t take a ki fighter to pick up on Mori’s wrath. “You’re siding with him?” she snaps, whirling to glare at me.
My eyes stay closed. Hands in my lap. Mimicking a meditative posture, though I feel none of the calmness. I’m burning alive at the old man’s gall. Mori has a point. But I’m done making rash decisions. Fang is our leader, and tonight, he is right to caution logic. A week ago, I might- no, I would- have been the first on my feet. What does it say that I’m the only one left sitting now? Probably the wrong things. But my bruised hands and aching body know how out of my league I was against Prazen and Shimano. Ajax knows, too. We’d be worse than useless to the champion in our current states. Liabilities. The matter is best in his hands.
Or is it?
The thought eats at me as I growl out my response again.
“I said enough.”
I raise my gaze to find Mori staring at me, rooted in disbelief, unmarred apple in hand. Lips giving shapes to words that shred her like sandpaper to say.
“Fuck this,” she stutters. “Fuck you. I’m not going to stand around and let them win, not again. What has he ever done? What have any of you ever done?” There’s a personal pain mixed into her laughing, incredulous confusion. It spikes all the confidence and surety out of my lungs like a punch to the gut. She takes an unconscious step back towards the door.
“I thought you wanted to be a hero.” Her voice accuses me. “You just want to be like him.”
Thunder cracks in the fields. When the flash fades, her place in the doorway is empty, and rain whistles through across the threshold. I rise in silence. Ignorant of the champion’s disapproving glare and my sister’s worry as I stride over to the door, rest my hand on the frame, and look out over the stormswept paddies and ancient asphalt roads dividing them. It’s an endless expanse of wilderness and waving grains. No civilization save the distant village lights on the horizon. And no orange-haired firebrand in sight. Just a trail of rapidly-filling footprints in the muddy front stretch of grass before the estate’s white stone walls.
Another pillow scrapes the floor behind me. Waves of electric blue light wash over the room as Ajax activates his JOY.
“Mori is right,” Ajax says to Fang. “I am sorry. I cannot- I will not languish here out of sight while nothing is done.” Hints of desperation color his voice. “We will stay out of your way. But the capital is my home now as much as it is Mars’, Jolie’s. As much as it is anyone’s. Caution and patience are not the way to handle Shimano Heavy, not now.”
“Never did I think I would see the day you grew rash, boy.”
“This isn’t rashness, my champion. It is prudence.”
Fang’s legendary aura bristles to life in the middle of the room, raising every hair on my body with a ghostly, grazing touch of warmth. “One Venter will not be missed. If she flees on her own and is taken, it will be a loss. But it is one I will suffer.” My lips press into a hard line. “You three will remain in this estate. I will send servants to fetch your friend, but if they do not return, you are not to leave until I send word. As your rightful strongest and ruler…”
Fang pauses.
“Am.”
The aura redoubles.
“I.”
Triples. The energy he can draw upon would swallow my own like an ocean swallows anything. I cannot even feel envious. It’s a raw reminder of how far I really am from the summit.
“Understood?”
I hear the others fold. Rain stings my eyes and splatters my crimson hair as I shake my head, letting the storm stretch out my mane. I glance over my shoulder.
“I will find her,” I tell him. “I’ll be back before dawn.”