My first dinner in the Vents is a jury-rigged summertime feast that fades into candlelight as soon as the sun begins its slow trawl towards the horizon. With only a thin angle to pierce down the intra-city airshaft, day is a short-lived luxury for the hideout’s residents. They savor the light like any overcity children. Taking the beauty for granted, too young to remember the smoggy underworld that lives on around them just a few concrete walls away. Goes to show just how well Mori runs the place. After we finish an awkward meal of deep-fried mystery meat, the youngest leave to scamper and chase each other in games of JOY-powered tag while we retire to one of the higher balconies that shakes like it was welded by a first-year metal elemental working with his eyes closed.
While Jolie sets about syncing her JOY to a spread of stream screens held together by electric tape and questionable soldering, Mori commands Ajax and I to start washing our leftover dishes. Apparently our skills in the art are lacking. It only takes a minute of watching us fumble around for her to assume command and dive elbow-deep into the bubbles while grumbling something vitriolic about overcity privilege. It’s not my fault machines have been hard at work excising the plate washing gene from human DNA for the past five centuries. Ajax isn’t helping much, either. Our elbows clash constantly. His scrubbing pauses at the most illogical intervals when he diverts his focus to fix the poor metalwork we stand on, and he’s always scrubbing the wrong direction. Waxing off when he should be waxing on.
“Martial mysticism,” he scoffs, when I try to explain the difference between the two. “It doesn’t matter which way you wipe if the result is the same.”
“I knew you were an ends kind of guy, not a means.”
“We’re just washing dishes. You’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I?”
“You’re not cleaning is what you are,” Mori growls, shoving her way between us. A fresh sponge slaps into my hand. “Stop bitching and get back to work.”
One by one, the hideout’s resident children clamber their way up to our high balcony to greet Mori while we scrub. Every one of them leaves her a gift. The oldest come first, depositing data sticks and stacks of metal credit chits for her and distrustful glares for us. The youngest bring more flowers and trinkets and accessories themed after various JOY classes. Hairbands and necklaces are the most common. Only one visitor breaks the mold; a late-twenties man with a slight limp who enters the Wallbang well after dinner. Completely out of place amidst the squalor of the Vents. Slicked-back fade, well-dressed in overcity fashion, trenchcoat and gloves, everything expensively fitted. Crystal-blue hololenses over his eyes, and an old-friend smile for Mori when she drops down to meet him. A golden jackal’s helmet hangs unworn from a small lanyard at his waist. Of everyone in the hideout, I suspect only Ajax and I would recognize the casual lethality with which the man carries himself. He’s a professional. The two exchange words and a hug out of earshot below, and he takes her airboard when he leaves.
Ajax hooks a questioning eyebrow at me. I just shrug and shake my head. Everyone’s got their secrets.
We retire to a fireplace on a lower balcony as the night wanes on. Sounds of children playing echo past us. Insects chirp in the vines. The fire pops like a loose joint as it settles into its burn. Shifting wood sends a fresh wave of heat and smoky scent rolling over us. Forming a chair for himself out of the side of the air shaft, Ajax leans back and looks beyond the edge of the platform, watching the kids chase each other between grass and lanterns.
“It’s all children,” he says, more to the night than to any of us.
Mori nods, melting into her chair like wax. Her bodysuit is rolled down to the waist in the late hour; shoulders covered by the ratty, thrifted jacket of a Concordia University first-year. Blue, red, and white color it in geometric shapes. No telling how she really came by it, but Ajax’s eyebrows arch faintly at the sight.
“I started this place myself,” she says. “Life is shitty. The Vents is shittier. We all need someone to help pull us out of the gutter.” Her voice trails off, chin coming to a rest in her palm. Gloved fingers curl around her cheek. Lazy, drifting embers entrance her half-lidded eyes. “I picked most of them up on my jobs. Alleys. Dumpsters. Brothels. The Shocks.” Venter slang for the abandoned sectors. “Sometimes their parents have to choose between drugs or food, so they dump them on bridges. Makes the choice easier, right?” A harsh laugh escapes her chest. “A fucking toddler doesn’t know what the hell a railing is for.”
She glances left when one of the oldest, a teenager with sharp brown hair and a hawkish nose, wall-jumps his way past our balcony, headed for a higher exit from the hideout. “I don’t run everything on my own, not anymore. We take care of each other. They do a good job, the older ones.”
Ajax winds a loop of liquid steel around his ring finger, quiet as a poet. “They know that you’re not always going to be around.”
Silent agreement is the only answer. Crackling warmth takes the place of their voices. The fire shifts again. Mori moves with it, twisting in her chair to find where I’m sitting. One of her eyebrows arches at the sight. “You’ve been quiet.”
I have, though it’s been a team effort. The tiny Iros toddler weighs down my chest with every breath from where she fell asleep in my arms. Her puttering snores make quite a convincing argument against disturbing her rest. Even in sleep her little teeth gnaw at my sweater. I’d think it were cute if I hadn’t bought it in the villages as a souvenir. Hell, who am I kidding? It is cute. Damn the sweater, I can always buy another.
Outwardly, my shoulders lift in the smallest shrug possible. “Just enjoying the quiet.”
I brush a hand through the little girl’s hair for surety. Mori yawns and stretches, one careful eye on the child.
“Didn’t take you for the kind. More of a spotlights and galas type.”
“Haven’t been to a gala yet.”
“Really. Mars Mons, king of the college leagues, has never been to a gala. Color me surprised there’s something you haven’t done.”
“Galas are… you know…” my vocabulary flatlines when the toddler gurgles contentedly, still asleep. Jolie fills in for me automatically from across the room.
“-prestigious,” she finishes. “Galas require invitations from pro fighters or outright being one. Mars’ reputation is in a peculiar spot that disincentivizes said fighters.”
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Ajax yawns. “Everyone knows who he is, but no one wanted to attach their name to the textbook definition of second best when we were freshmen. And when he’ll be inviting himself in a year or two, there’s not much point to investing in him now. Pros are in it for the brand. They like long-term investments, which means bringing the youngest uni prospects under their wing. An invitation often leads to apprenticeship, which means everything you do, your sponsor gets partial credit for.” His eyes fall to me, a playful grin on his lips. “That’s the logical explanation, at least. I heard he declined something on the order of fifteen minor leaguers this year. Told each and every one of them that he made the news, not the footnotes.”
Mori chuckles at that. “I bet you’ve been to one.”
“A few,” he admits. “Every year in the villages, there is a winter tournament just like the capital. Only graduating students are allowed to enter, and for the last twenty years, Champion Fang has always invited the victor to accompany him to a yearly summit of champions on Olympus. We represent the evolution of our Section and show its growing strength to our peers.”
Jolie’s eyes widen. “You’ve been to Olympus?”
“Only that once. It was too short a trip- such a beautiful place, but entirely vicious. Wild geography, too. Very different from home.” He looks around our quaint surroundings, gaze softening. “I think I prefer places like this. Even neon can be a sight for sore eyes.”
A content, murmuring hour passes while Jolie and Mori alternate asking Ajax about Olympus, the ancestral birthplace of the JOYs. I close my eyes and focus on my breathing, the silence, the crackling fire, and simplicity of the air. Every child of the Sections knows the stories of the flying city and its layered vistas. I don’t need to hear them again, but listening to Ajax describe its interior in his oddly specific details adds a charming dimension to the legends. He always focuses on the small things. The smells, the colors, the tastes. How the beaches of the first layer gave him a tan even deeper than the villages, how he shared octopus noodles with junior apprentices from parties of other Champions, their curious dialects and strange accents that made his own seem perfectly in place. He loses us in memories of walking through the otherworldly vistas and sitting beside the champion in battlefields built amidst the clouds themselves. I swear his eyes glass over at one point, but it might have been a trick of the fire. When I look again, he is as he always is. Dispassionate, collected, witty. An ever-sharpened blade that cannot be allowed to show weakness because the best never do.
I only notice that their conversation turned back in my direction when their voices physically do. Mori and Jolie share a knowing glance, not at each other’s throat for once. I start paying attention right as the Venter finishes her thought.
“…could never tell he’s good with kids,” Mori is saying.
I wave two fingers in her direction. “Hm?”
Jolie waves a dismissive hand. “Nothing you need to hear. Go back to daydreaming.”
“My own sister lying to me. Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Mars, I started lying to you the day I convinced you a canola was a real plant.”
“What? It is a real plant.”
Mori chuckles and rolls her eyes in the most dramatic head-turning fashion possible, dropping her voice an entire octave just to mock me. “Yeah Jojo, where else would they get the oil from? Canada? What the fuck is a canada?”
“You joke, but he said something eerily similar once upon a time,” Jolie mutters, pushing her glasses up. “Enough about canola and Olympus, though. We’ve washed enough dishes and burned enough logs tonight. It’s time to plan. As nice as this place is, the longer we wait, the longer Shimano Heavy will have to finish whatever they’re trying to accomplish with Prazen and Bishop. We should be counting time in hours. Not days.”
“The old man filled us in on their intentions,” I say. “They’re doing all this to make Prazen powerful enough to take the throne by force. Down in that lab, he told Ajax and I he was going to feed us to the computer. And there were whole stacks of fullcases connected to the medical pod they were keeping Bishop in.”
Jolie’s head bobs in agreement, scattering the projection beside her into a cascade of electric-blue particles. “If we only get Bishop back, they can keep kidnapping more fighters. Ending this for good means taking down Prazen, too. Possibly even gathering enough information to condemn their entire project. The question is where to start, because we don’t know where either Prazen or Vex are operating now.”
Rising from his chair and melting it back into the floor, Ajax pads over and makes a small motion with his hand, flattening out the arm of my seat into a wide bench. He perches on it with fingers steepled in front of his mouth. “The champion wasn’t wrong about our little adventure in the overcity. I’m sure it burned a lot of potential leads. Anything connecting to SHI through that deal with Dynasty will have been scrubbed out of existence. They’re too clean to make a mistake like that twice.”
Jolie flicks a projection out to hover between the four of us, displaying a holographic map of the capital. Several of the districts glow with subtle highlights. Green for the Electric Town, white for the Glass, a sickly orange for the Vents. Mori bristles at the sight.
“True. We’ve definitely lost all of our old trails,” Jolie says. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t find more. While we were jacked into the Shimano mainframe, I stole as many unencrypted files I could from their servers. I wasn’t able to get much- just a few tera’s- but I’m going to pull an all-nighter and start sifting through it when we’re done here. With luck, I can connect enough pieces to their project to get us another location to check out. But I don’t believe in luck. So that’s where you three come in.” She looks to Mori. “There’s still one loose end that we haven’t pursued: Vex’s middle man in the drug deal.”
Mori hooks an eyebrow at me. “That the mook you were looking for?”
“Black hair, gold eyes, about the same age as a uni first-year. That’s all we saw of him,” I grunt back.
Jolie nods in agreement. “You’re the native Mori, and you know enough about Dynasty to make regular hits on their operations down here. It would help us most if you could check every contact you have, see if anyone’s heard word about him around the Vents.”
Mori throws her a tired salute. “Aye aye, captain.”
Jolie turns to Ajax and I next. “You two are our fighters, so your job is…”
We both cross our arms and nod along, expecting an incoming compliment. Jolie shoots us down without even noticing, lost in her JOY.
“…to train like your life depends on it, because even though I was watching from fifty stories up, I saw how badly Prazen wrecked both of you at the same time. You’re the goddamn top two fighters in the university leagues.” She clears her throat and raises a finger, making way for the no-nonsense authoritarian-Jolie voice that instinctively has me cringing into a defensive shell. “It’s time to start acting like it. We’re counting on you to carry us through everything Shimano Heavy throws at us, so by the time I pull some database wizardry and find us our lead- and I will find one- you’d better be over this whole…” she waves a dismissive hand, “…not meshing phase, whatever it is. You’ve fought in teams before. Figure it out. And if you need help, come get me from my JOY. I’ll tell you exactly what you’re doing wrong.”
Flabbergasted silence and crickets answer for us while the fire crackles. Only for a moment though. Jolie knows how to push my buttons better than anyone else. Before I know what I’m doing, my chair is almost upending itself as I spring to my feet. Ajax’s intervention barely keeps the seat rooted to the floor. My aura roars to life as a grin slashes across my face, only to sputter back out when the Iros toddler wakes in my arms with a plaintive cry. I almost trip over my own feet shushing her back to sleep. I set her down gently in my chair with a face flushed red from embarrassment. But the moment she’s down for the count, I turn and slide a foot down in a confident stance, arms crossed as throw a wink at the bemused duelist perched beside me.
“Come on, Ajax. It’s time to train.”