It doesn’t take long to find her.

Ki fighters have been touted as budget-brand Psis since the day one of my ancestors realized that every life signature reveals hints of its owner’s moods within the sparks. Careful inspection and razor focus in the mind’s eye can uncover emotions, and with practice, even glimpse the uppermost thoughts through the kinetic sense. I’ve never had the talent to use my ki for more than the basics. Flashy lights and showstoppers are more my style. But it wouldn’t take a master of the esoteric arts to track the raw fury spilling out of Mori’s seams.

I burn through the stormclouds a few hundred feet over her head, surrounded by howling darkness. Flipflopping gales threaten to rip me out of my flight path at every moment. Harsh sheets of rain slap against my forehead. Individual droplets sizzle and evaporate when they touch my skin. Basic white aura shrouds me, kept to a low burn and minimal light. For once, I’m aiming for control. Not to please the champion- though I can feel his invisible eyes on my back- but because I’m devoting every bit of focus I have left to following Mori’s erratic, zigzagging path through the paddies below.

She’s aimless, and she’s only getting faster. Racing at a sprint through permutations of square paddies bridged by muddy footpaths and an endless grid of streets. Rare homes blink like lighthouses over the fields. Everything bows to the storm. Puddles coat the road with a mirrored finish. It’s a dismal, terrible hour. And I’ve seen enough storms in the capital to know just how long one can brood in place. This is just the beginning.

Mori’s haphazard path winds through foothills and floating gardens. Her splashing steps scare off the local wildlife; wolves and squirrels caught out in the swelling flood. It’s only a few miles into the uninhabited paddies, when I finally leave my worry of the champion behind, that her furious pace begins to slow. We’re somewhere on the north side of the village now, deep in the outskirts. A wilderness tamed only by infrequent streets. Electric-blue brilliance winks through the curtains of rain beneath me as her JOY powers on. Lightning illuminates her from the arms. Then it builds into a globular orb that floats beside her head, drying and warming the drenched braid that hangs down one side of her chest with electric heat.

The thunderball shifts back as her head tilts up, looking at me. Eyes narrowing. I can tell from the hardening in her stance. She shouts something inaudible to be snatched by the wind. I surrender to gravity’s grip and drop through the storm, cutting my aura back on for a stumbling landing right in front of her. Sudden heat washes over my half-robed chest as I fall into her light. Not a single drop of rain falls in a five-meter radius around her. The downpour hits a field of her elemental control of water, streaking down the sides of an invisible snowglobe.

Dripping water splashes against Mori’s feet when I land. Disgust fills her face.

“You just don’t know when to give up, do you?” she sneers. “Bitch.”

“You knew I was following you.”

“Yeah. Hard not to when you’re literally glowing.”

“Why didn’t you stop?”

Mori’s hand clenches around the apple she stole from the table. There’s a single bite mark in it. She makes another and chews on it like it’s made of screws before spitting the remainder at my feet. She points to where the apple flecks hit the road.

“I have a mess I need to clean up.”

I raise a tape-covered hand at her chest. “Where are you going?”

“Where I belong.” She shoves the rest of the fruit into my stomach. “Keep your goddamn apple. Real ones taste like shit.”

Bare feet slap against the rain-smeared asphalt as she stalks past. The sound comes to a stop a few paces down the road. Her insulating bubble goes with her. I shift on my heels, watching her while the rain drenches me anew. I blink quickly to clear the water from my eyes. Mori keeps her back turned to me. She stands alone in her dismal light. Cracked concrete beneath, wind-whipped waves of rice on either side, and an empty highway running to the horizon in front of her. Dark stormclouds consume everything. Curtains of rain hem our vision. Splinters of color break out in the distance as a high-rail maglev burns for the village center. Her neck cranes as she watches the technological comet disappear. Borrowed village robes stretch tight over her thin shoulders like drapes as water doubles their weight.

“I thought you guys were going to make a difference,” she murmurs, almost inaudible above the storm. “That’s why I stuck around. When I saw you and Ajax, I thought I finally had a chance to fix things. Hit back at the rich fucks that bend the whole Vents around their wrists.” Wet hair slaps her skin as she shakes her head. “I should’ve known better. You watch sunsets. You don’t even know the shit I live in.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Heavy rain pours in the silence between us. I look down to my hands. Taped-over fingers curl inwards one by one.

“How could I?” I ask.

Bitter wrath wrinkles her lips as she wheels on me. “We live in the same goddamn city! Don’t talk like you’re not the capital playboy, Mars Mons. You don’t get to pretend you don’t know. You’ve been to the Vents. You’ve sat in the fight clubs. Watched us beat each other up for a few credits in the rings. You’ve seen the drugs, the stims. The alleys and what fills them. Everyone up there says it, and I know you’ve said it too: nothing good comes from the Vents. Isn’t that fucking right?!”

There’s so much personal pain, guilt, and hurt wrapped up in her lashing accusations that I can’t even make a response at first.

“And what am I supposed to do about it?” A shocked laugh forces itself out of my chest. “What am I supposed to do about an entire city, Mori?” My hand curls into a dripping fist, wringing the rain out of its folds. I bite back my disgust at how simple it really is. “Even if I try to fix things, I’m just a second-rate fighter with first-rate dreams.”

“You don’t have to be that,” she snaps. “The Mars I see on the streams isn’t that. I thought he was supposed to be a hero. Someone worth helping. A good person.”

“Even good people can’t fix everything.”

She jams a finger into my chest, rising up on tiptoes. “But at least they try! They don’t eat up Fang’s shit about patience and nod along while the world falls around them!”

Something in me stirs at her words. Fire, the righteous embers that burn on in her, pushing me to rise to the provocation.

“You have people you care about like family. I do too,” I say. I lift her finger away. “My sister,” I take that finger and point out into the storm, “would never forgive herself if I died back at the skyscraper. I’m not going to leave her in this world alone. Not going to let her get thrown off some goddamn highrise because I pushed us into trouble. We barely survived the last time. What happens the next? When Fang isn’t there to save us?”

Mori takes another step back on her own. Her foot sinks ankle-deep into a puddle. Small shoulders lift in a drowned shrug.

“I’ve seen how this ends before,” she says. “I lost everything and everyone I knew because a man in charge preached caution. For years I thought he was right. But caution doesn’t stop the bad guys.” A disbelieving laugh escapes her as our gazes meet. “All those times I watched you; never thought you’d be a coward.”

Last month, last year’s me would have never taken that challenge lightly. But things are different now.

Because she’s right. It’s easier to not look down.

It’s easier to do the easy good, the comfortable good, than the one that actually will make things right.

It’s how our world got here in the first place; one compromise at a time.

“Give me something better to trust, Showmaker,” she says, gunmetal cold. “Or I’m doing things my way.”

I take in a long breath. Let it out just as slowly.

“Trust in me.”

I hurl the apple out into the fields, losing it to the shifting rice. It splashes out of sight.

“Trust in me, Mori,” I repeat, letting the words fill in as they spill from my heart. “Not the guy I am, but the guy I’m trying to be. The one you *want* to believe in.” I quietly say. “You were right. I did want to be like the old man. He’s all I’ve ever looked up to. But just because he’s powerful doesn’t mean he’s right about everything. His way… it’s how we ended up here in the first place. Picking between the lesser of evils, one good deed at a time.” I shake my head. “I’m done doing things his way. I want to- I *will* make a difference, no matter what, because it’s the right thing to do. I know I haven’t don’t the best job of it so far. I’m selfish. I’m prideful. I get things wrong all the time, and rush into situations way over my head. I’ve got an ego…”

Her eyes roll.

“…but I can change, too. I’ve been changing, because I will be that hero someday- the kind of hero even you can believe in.” I hold a hand out to her, palm open. “All I need is a chance to prove it.”

Then I breathe out, hair drifting over my face.

“If that’s not good enough, I won’t stop you from leaving.”

Mori watches me like I’m evolving in front of her very eyes. Reevaluating my worth. Or maybe just her estimation of my ability to speak. Hell if I know. But it changes something in her too. Softens that anger, bleeds it out. And in the end, she ignores my outstretched hand and takes two fingers and pushes them very firmly into my sternum, cocking her head to the side.

“That’s more like it,” she says.

I let out a silent prayer of thanks.

“Good. And for the record,”

One of my hands takes hold of her forearm wrist before she lowers it. The other cups her cheek and pulls her into breathless kiss, lifting her onto her toes. A sharp intake of breath through her nose. A surprised sigh passes from her mouth to mine before our lips mold together, then languidly pull back.

I tap my forehead against hers. “I’m not a coward.”