For all we make fun of village bumpkins in the capital, they do get some things right. I could go on all day about the robes, their strange traditions, and their obsession with eating rice at every meal. And their general predisposition to sounding like they have sticks up their asses- can’t forget that. Ajax reminds me of it every time he starts waxing on about the moral deterioration of the capital. Only now that I’m out here myself do I understand why they act like the capital is the worst thing to happen since the plague that wiped out Section Z.
They don’t want people to come to the villages. If everyone who emigrated from the outskirts was nice and friendly when they arrived in the capital, this place would be filled with steel and skyscrapers instead of rice fields and wooden beachwalks. They act stuffy so they can keep the villages their own private heaven.
That’s the only explanation I can think of, at least. It doesn’t make sense how anyone could act as prickly as Ajax can if they came from a place like this.
The villages are beautiful. There’s no easier way to put it than that. The closer you get to the beaches, the more you fall under the salt-tinged enchantment of undulating palms, crashing waves, and golden sands as far as the eye can see. Every building is permutated in wooden squares with paper walls and grandiose thatched roofs. Yards are compact and walled in by white stone topped by black tile. Once you cross into the villages proper, everything is within walking distance. Seaside air and upbeat notes of instruments flow freely through the air. String lights hang over many of the streets and lanterns light the rest. There’s not a transport or car in sight; only sleek autobikes tucked into out-of-sight alleys. No way to fly except through a JOY. The villages are known for their handmade crafts and unique art forms, particularly theatre, but that doesn’t stop them from using JOYs for sport.
Closer to the beaches, the population grows younger, more free-spirited. Traditional robes and wooden sandals are less common sights. Neighborhoods run right into the seashore and wind throughout each other’s arms beneath the shadows of the palms. Public parks filled with fighting squares and gymnastic equipment dot the beaches. As nice as they are, they mark the boundaries of our tropical prison. To leave Fang’s home village would invite his wrath, and his servants watch us at all hours of the day.
A single-lane highway lined by thin Calypso trees divides the sands from the grass, though there’s plenty of overlap in both directions. The trees blur into an evergreen fence as I lean forward against my sister’s shoulder, sheltering my face from the wind. Her knees clench together as she guns the throttle of the autobike we ride. The machine leaps forward in response. Two white, orb-shaped wheels hurl us down the highway at a reckless speed, and the number on the speedometer only continues to grow. As does the grin that’s been plastered on my face since Jolie pitched the idea of touring the coast earlier today.
Even in autumn, high noon is a sordid, baking affair in the villages. Hard to tell it’s not still summer. Jolie pushes the bike as fast and hard as she can before reticently tapering our speed when we glide into the beachside sector. Cabanas and open-air studios line the clay streets on either side. Tourists and village natives dart across the boulevards between bikes like the one we ride. I lean back and balance with my hands behind me while Jolie continues driving us closer to the seaside. She’s hunched over the front console all the while, lost in her digital homeland. A dataspike stylus fills one of her hands. Innovator tech she made this week, she uses it to poke and prod at the console’s guts while her JOY floats worriedly over her shoulder, watching with its little holoprojector deactivated.
“You want to drive?” Jolie asks, nudging my foot with hers.
“What? No, no.” I laugh and lean back, letting the wind rake its fingers through my hair and pull it out to its full length. “It’s fun being on the back seat for once.”
I close my eyes and take in a deep breath of the salty humidity, only to jerk back awake when Jolie taps the brakes near an intersection. We weave between a pair of rickshaws and pick up the pace when we hit the sandiest streets closest to the beach. I lean beside Jolie and tap her on the shoulder.
“How do you like it out here?” I ask.
Her freckles bunch together as her nose wrinkles. “Too empty. Too boring. Too many people talking with that weird accent.”
“You really do need to get out of the office more.”
“Why are we making this about me?”
“So snippy.” I grunt and lean back, leaving her to drive in peace. “Look. All I’m saying is, this is the perfect place to show off a little bit. No one knows who you are here. You could reinvent yourself. Get a tan. Wear some seashell earrings. Whatever you want.”
Her ponytail tips towards the linked cabanas marking our destination, a beach bar impaled by a centuries-old sign of a stylized marlin. Known for its soda-infused specialties and JOYsport courts, it’s a popular beach attraction where even I can go unrecognized for a time. Only Ajax draws attention when we hit up the beaches.
“What if I don’t want to do any of those things?” she asks.
“We’re twins, Jolie. I can tell when you’re lying.”
“Tell me when they added that feature to your classes, and I’ll believe you.”
My fingers lock against the seat as she suddenly gooses the throttle one last time, kicking us forward in a blur of momentum that she transitions through a frame-tight kiraslide toward the last open space in the parking lot. Perfect throttling sends us drifting between rows of powered-down autobikes with mere inches for margins. Jolie’s a natural with the machine. As home at the controls as I am on a fighting square. She jogs the sticks and deepens the slide at its most crucial point, then cuts the engine back on for the briefest tap to send the bike purring sideways into its berth. Drifting kickback sends a wave of sand washing out over a nearby boardwalk.
Hot metal pings loudly as the engine begins to cool. Impressed, I watch my sister slap her hands together to clear off the sand. She swings a leg over the saddle to sit on one side with a very satisfied, very me smirk on her lips while she fixes her ponytail. I’m still blinking at our micrometer separation from the curb. My mind adamantly refuses to process the vehicular alchemy she just pulled.
“When did you learn how to drive like that…?” I ask, finally raising an eyebrow in her direction.
A proud flush colors her cheeks. “You know I like to mess around with sims.”
“Sims don’t teach you how to drive like that.”
Her lips press together in a prim, taunting smile. “They’re very good sims. And when I got bored of them, I started jacking bikes from ports in E-Town and racing trains on the expressway. Only once a month though.” White teeth slash through when she sees me swallow my immediate response. “I can be cool too, Mars. I just don’t insist on having a camera on me when I am.”
Before she can protest, I pat her on the head and brush her hair just out of alignment. “Congratulations. You’ve proven yourself worthy of the bloodline at last.”
“Hah. Is this where you tell me what secret Dad was really keeping locked in his basement?” She snorts and brushes my hand away playfully, moving a hand up to fix her hair once more. Her eyebrows narrow in disappointed annoyance when she finally realizes I stole her hairtie. Then it’s back to business as usual as she hops off the bike with a quiet hup.
She wags a finger back at me. “And before you ask about the bikes, I never got caught.”
Her long legs lead the way to the bar beneath a waist-wrapped towel and demure purple swimsuit. Pale white skin drinks in the heavy autumn sunlight from toes to hips. I ribbed her about the tan, but she did dress for the occasion. I’m still wearing what I was swimming in when she called this morning. Salt and sand stick to my arms where they dried during the ride, shaking off in loose clumps beneath my arms. I tug my shirt on while I slide from the bike. The borrowed fabric is aging, tattered, and stretched to its limits. Probably hasn’t left a closet since the old man was my age.
We head up to the bar’s front steps to the main deck of the cabana, kept propped an entire story over the beach by hurricane-proof stilts. Every side is open to the air without railings or safety measures of any kind. Bare feet dangle from the edges, swaying in the salty wind. Straw roofs and dry wooden construction creak around a begrudgingly modern bar. An oblong ring of seats surrounds the tap in the center of the platform around a cylindrical glass aquarium that connects straight to the ocean via an underground pipeline. Bright tropical fish swim lazy circles around the aquarium, watching human patrons loiter near cushioned chairs and open seating on the beach-facing half of the platform. At noon, the street-facing side is ravaged by direct sunlight. Completely empty.
Stream screens drawl on about capital and local news around wooden roof supports. Highlight reels of upcoming fights at the Metro Blockhouse fill most of the talk. Even the villages aren’t immune to the capital’s never-ending cycle of entertainment. No news of the university leagues interrupts the feed of information and statistics. With Ajax and I’s disappearance, those streams are having a hell of a time finding new content. I don’t envy their struggle.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Ajax and Mori are already waiting for us at a small collection of couches in the furthest corner of the cabana, cooling off as far from the sun as possible. Both are plastered in sand and tendrils of sweaty, unkempt hair; fresh from the JOYsport courts just off the cabana. Heads hanging back over the shoulders of their chairs as they labor for breath. Ajax’s grey haori, a light summer robe, drapes over one arm. Sweat streaks down his bare skin and satirically large sunglasses balance on the tip of his nose. Mori looks no less ridiculous beside him. Shaded by an immense straw hat, she rakishly picks at her teeth with a wishbone and plucks at the strings of a cross-chest swimsuit that leaves as much of her sun-starved skin open for tanning as possible.
My focus wanders to the nearby beach when a beachballarcs above the cabana platform. The court below is a simple rectangle filled with three JOY-powered players on each side. A wavering projection inside the net counts out the score of a nailbiting match. As I watch, one of the players, a middle-aged Duelist with sand-speckled hair, hurls a boomerang at the incoming ball. His redirection is perfectly applied. The ball ricochets off the team’s next player and up in a fifteen-foot arc where a wind elemental calls it straight to his hands for a pixel-perfect spike. It slams down into the opposing court like a bolt of lightning and play continues. All six fighters battle for supremacy, using their classes to attack the other team or safeguard their own members all while trying to receive incoming spikes and return fire with even greater accuracy. It’s a vicious exposé on multidimensional awareness that would be extremely difficult to teach on a fighting square.
A half-chewn wishbone cuts my ruminating short by waving in front of my face. Jolie’s already taken a seat on the couch beside Ajax, one leg carefully crossed over the other. I bat Mori’s toothpick out of the way and am about to take a seat at the last unoccupied point in our triangle when Mori reaches out and catches me by the pocket.
“Don’t sit yet. We’ve been waiting all morning for you to show so we could catch games with someone who can fly.”
“We’ve been playing for five days straight,” Ajax groans, head still tipped over the back of his chair. He stifles a cough. “You already blew my quota for the afternoon. My knees need a break.”
“What your knees need is some stims, AJ.”
Jolie clears her throat quietly. “We’re not here to roll around in the sand.”
Mori curls up from her chair, somehow manages to grab four mugs of rum in her hands, and slams three of them down on the wooden table between us with a resounding thunk. The other tips to her mouth. “Correct, Jojo. I’m here to drink,” she says.
“Yes, well, we’re not here for that either.”
“What else is there to do in this town? We’ve been coming here every single day. It’s the same story with anything in the boonies: all there’s to do is drink or bang.”
“I have pitched kabuki several times,” Ajax’s disembodied voice says.
“Fine. Drink, bang, or watch caked-up dancers swirl around in big floofy robes while delivering lines in unintelligibly slow dialect. That’s not any better.”
Ajax sits up at the insult, only finally realizing Jolie’s been sitting next to him all the while. “Just because you don’t appreciate art doesn’t mean you should ridicule it, Mori. There’s great value in studying the unorthodox. Even something as simple as playwriting might help you understand the key to a future battle.”
Her eyes almost roll out of her head.
“I’ve never seen kabuki,” I say before she can groan. “What’s your favorite?”
“The Scroll Gambit,” he answers automatically. Waves a dismissive hand when I glance over. “You’d find it a bore.”
“Very much so,” Mori sarcastically drawls, sinking deeper into her chair. She hoists her mug and raises a questioning eyebrow in our direction. “What’s it going to be, boys? You gonna leave a girl to drink on her own?”
We don’t, despite some grumbles.
Mori isn’t wrong. There hasn’t been much at all for us to do during the past week. We’ve been trapped in the village under lock and key and constant observation of Fang’s loyalists. Even getting an excuse to come visit the beaches was a stretch. Every day we waste here is a slow torture. The capital is turning on without us. Shimano Heavy Industries and the champion wage secret war against each other. Both sides draw closer to open conflict. And we’re stuck watching from the sidelines like disobedient children. It’s hell. My hands have been itching to punch something from the very first day, and the training dummies around the estate are poor practice.
“At least tell us you brought some good news,” Mori grumbles in Jolie’s direction. “You’ve been working on those bikes for days.”
Jolie spins her dataspike stylus in a quick twirl before sliding it behind her ear. “And I’ll be practicing no more. I managed to override the last of the autonav and geotracking software today. Mars and I rode all the way to Siuro Bay without getting any grumbling calls from the champion’s servants. I’d say that’s as good as we’re going to get. Riding home will take twice as long as the maglev, but we can’t exactly buy train tickets with the corporation watching...”
Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth as Mori uncurls from her chair with a catlike stretch, then makes a new home on the arm of mine. A flicker of annoyance flits through my sister’s eyes.
Loud coughing breaks the moment as Ajax suddenly doubles over, covering his mouth with a hand. Jolie forgets herself to a moment’s concern. “Ajax?”
“Fine, fine,” he coughs, waving her off. Another short choke escapes his chest before he clears his throat with a disarming grin. “Just swallowed down the wrong tube is all.”
He hides his hand well.
“So that’s it,” he says, distracting us from the fit. “We’re settled on this plan? Going back to the capital and finishing things for ourselves?”
“No one else is going to,” I answer.
“We’ll have to train up if we’re going to beat Prazen next time we find him.”
“I’ve got some ideas.”
“Hopefully more thought-out than your usual variety.”
“And here I was thinking you were starting to like the usual variety.”
“Just because they’re growing on me doesn’t make them any less terrible,” he snorts.
Mori loudly clears her throat when she finally picks up on the flickering annoyance in Jolie’s scrunching freckles, though she makes a point of winding a loop of my hair around one finger while addressing the rest of us. Jolie’s face tightens.
“I’m warning you all in advance, the Vents isn’t the nicest place,” Mori drawls. “It’s going to be worse down there now that Dynasty’s cracking down because of our raid. That means no changing our minds once we get to my safe house.” She looks to my sister. “Especially you, Jolie.”
“Do you have a problem with my coming?”
“More like you have a problem with the Vents. I’ve got ears.”
“Then I believe I’ll do just fine,” Jolie snaps. The air temperature plummets as she glares back. “Because as far as I can tell, I’m the only one of us who has been doing anything at all. The boys have done nothing but work out. You’ve been tanning from sunup to sundown. It’s been on me to figure out how we’re going to get home, how we’re going to stay under Shimano Heavy’s radar, and how we’re going to hit back at them.” She stands suddenly, dumping the rest of her drink into Mori’s with a curled lip. “I’ll be just fine down there. But thanks for the concern.”
She’s up and gone in a moment, headed down the steps towards the volleyball courts. Ajax makes to follow her. I stop him with a shake of my head.
“She doesn’t want to be followed,” I warn.
I watch my sister pass unnoticed behind the athletic bodies filling the courts. Arms tight and defensive around her chest as she heads on to the ocean, eventually unwinding the towel from around her waist and carefully leaving her glasses atop it before plunging into the breakers. Ajax’s fingers reticently curl inwards. His hand lowers. And then he turns to Mori.
“What the hell was that for?” he demands.
Mori simmers as she kicks back. “She talks shit about the Vents all the time. If she can’t handle a little coming back, she’s never going to make it down there.”
“That gives you no right to antagonize her.”
“You going to start ragging on me too, prince?”
Ajax shakes his head incredulously. “Is everyone an enemy to you?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Mori growls. Dumping her doubly full mug into mine, she mutters a slapshod excuse to leave and storms off in a storm of orange hair and sunburns, headed away from the ocean towards the long asphalt roads and paddies that separate the village center from its outskirts. Ajax blinks slowly against the oppressive sunlight, gradually catching my eye. I’m torn in opposite directions. My sister swimming angrily into the ocean, and the firebrand stomping her way across a clay street completely uncaring of the three autobikes that screech to a halt mere meters away from her.
“She’s so…,” he sighs, cutting himself off before he can finish the thought. “You know as well as I do, infighting…”
“…kills our uni team every year,” I finish. “Only problem is that none of us are the type to fold.”
“Mori agitated your sister on purpose.”
“And she’ll keep doing it. She picks on Jolie because it’ll get a reaction.”
“Then why keep her around? If it were anyone else treating Jolie like that at your gym, I know you’d have shown them to the curb long ago.”
Mori is little more than a dot on the sidewalk by this point. I stretch my sixth sense of ki to its limits to keep following her progress. “…She’s got as much of a right to this fight as we do. And I have a feeling she’s lashing out of a bad place. Pushing us to see if we’ll abandon her like others have.” I glance at Ajax. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“More than you realize, I do.” He sighs, long gaze, lost in an old memory. “I wanted to see if you did, and if you’d be honest.”
“I will if you will.”
His expression tightens as I cock my head to the side and tap a single finger against the arm of my chair.
“Jolie is shy. And she’s not good at being subtle, either. You could give her something to be confident about. Talk to her, at least. She’ll never make the first move on her own.”
Ajax looks to the horizon. The distant cries of gulls washes over us with a change of the wind. “I… have noticed,” he mutters. His head dips, bangs shaking once. “But I can’t do that. Not now.”
I pick up my rum with a shrug. “That’s what I thought.”