The gate shut behind Sunwhisper, further separating him from Starscream. Certainly, he could still call for his companion, have him break the cage and make a run for it, but the people outside of the warehouse didn’t appear to have been waiting for him, and they obviously weren’t guards.

One was wearing the robes of a scribe, and he was clearly directing the others, who were loading small boxes taken from the warehouse onto a well appointed wagon. He was busily taking notes on each item, and didn’t immediately notice Sunwhisper’s entrance to the yard.

The scribe had no stars.

Sunwhisper crossed the yard with his back straight and his arms swinging in what he hoped was a confident manner. "You there! What are you doing?"

The scribe jumped, but his eyes narrowed when they settled on Sunwhisper.

"I could ask you the same, young man. This is official business."

"This is official business!" Sunwhisper didn’t break his stride, growing into the role, "how did you get in here!"

"I belong to Lady Makoto, and act in her interests." The scribe touched the jade token that hung around his neck. "Do you work for the Elders? I will be sure to inform them of your disrespect."

"No need." Sunwhisper reached the man, extended his spear, and cracked its length against the side of the scribe’s head. The man went down hard, moaning, but conscious, and the workers froze.

"Which boxes have silver fruit? Which has gold?" Sunwhisper demanded, but his words were met with silence, and none of the workers would meet his eyes. One of them looked at his arms, however.

"Unstarred. He’s unstarred!"

Sunwhisper knocked him out, but the damage was done. Because of his lack of tattoos, he appeared to be no more than a man with a fancy stick, and the workers were far more afraid of their mistress than they were of him.

They tried to swarm him, so he activated his Lead Grasshopper Stance and flipped over the first wave, turning his landing into a sweep of the spear. It wasn’t as elegant as he would have liked, and he only actually hit one of them, but that man tripped, and the display was dramatic enough to give the others pause.

"Keep back!" The boxes were latched, but not locked, and he opened one while the workers were still deciding whether or not they should be afraid of him.

Blue fruit, not what he was looking for. Inside the warehouse, there was less Soma than he remembered, but at least it was still organized by color. He grabbed an empty box out of the hands of a gaping worker and went straight for the gold shelf.

"You’re dead!" one of them yelled. "The Azai clan will hunt you forever!"

Sunwhisper was too busy to pay attention, he swept a half dozen bright yellow fruits into the box before hopping over to the silver section and repeating the act. It was as much as he could fit, so he tucked the box under his arm and cracked the skull of the next worker that tried to get in his way.

The scribe was recovering as he exited the warehouse.

"You fool! You dare steal from the Azai? Stop him! Stop him!"

"Break it!" Sunwhisper shouted, briefly confusing the workers who were circling him. He put the spear point against the scribe's throat, and the man didn’t flinch, so he slipped it under the pendant and lifted the jade token from around his neck in a single smooth motion. When he brought his spear upright, the necklace slid down the shaft to drop around his hand.

They tried to grab him, but he jumped over their heads and was back to the gate in a few more bounds. He could have gotten more, but they were already calling alarms and he wanted to be gone before anyone with actual fighting ability showed up to interrupt him.

There was a flash from the other side of the gate, accompanied by a loud caw. The glowing line of the scripts on the inside of the fence pulsed bright for a moment, and then faded. He pushed through, but there was no accompanying pain of an instant mana tattoo from the wards. Starscream had been successful.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"You didn’t tell me there were people inside." Sunwhisper accused the raven. She was perched on the fence itself, stretching her wings as Starscream crawled up his body and reinserted himself inside the storage compartment in his chest.

"Didn’t ask."

(One box? Is that all you got?)

{They said something about stealing from the Azai clan, I have a feeling repercussions are not far behind, and I don’t want to press our good fortune.}

(Azai? Never heard of them, but you’re the legs.)

With Starscream plugged into his infrastructure, Sunwhisper felt his spirit expand to include a second core. It was a relief. Disconnecting had felt like losing a part of himself, becoming less. The short amount of time he’d spent in symbiosis had changed him already, and he didn’t like the idea of being just himself. Power was addicting.

Starscream activated Xanthous Ascendancy, and mana poured through their shared meridians until the golden energy gleamed in Sunwshisper’s eyes.

"Are we going to be here all day?" the raven croaked.

"Try to keep up." Sunwhisper retracted the spear and slipped it in his belt before sprinting around the fence into the woods. He felt lighter than air, stronger than any alloy, and every step he took left behind a brief flare of yellow in the ground. Karasu flew behind him.

The route was predetermined, a circle through the woods to bring them around to the other side of the town and out onto the main road. Sunwhisper reached a secluded brake, ducked behind branches, and transformed back into his Makoto disguise. Then he took a moment to empty the box of Soma fruits into a plain sack that had previously held supplies for the journey up Mount Jigoku.

Karasu agreed to scout the area, and returned with the news that if anyone was after them, they at least weren’t closing in yet. Not for the first time, Sunwhisper marveled at the lack of security that the elders were comfortable with regarding the town's most valuable resource, but it seemed to be a cultural issue.

Janna was waiting for him where she had promised, under a tree beside the road to Hinterland.

Makoto was there as well.

Sunwhisper felt a twinge of hurt at the thought that Janna had betrayed him, but when he looked at her, he didn’t get the sense that she had. Janna looked deeply uncomfortable, afraid even, but not ashamed.

"You both survived," the border guardian said, his gaze flicking up to the six winged bird that was circling overhead, "and you thought to dishonor me one last time before you fled."

The sight of the old man did something to Sunwhisper that he wasn’t prepared for. It felt like the ground was dropping out from under his feet, taking the pit of his stomach with it. His mouth went dry, and all he could think about was Optus’s face being crushed, and the orange glow that was all he had seen as Betamax was ripped apart.

"This is convenient.” Makoto said. My cousin Yuyu is visiting on official business, and she has been asking questions. It would have been better if you had died on the mountain. I may have to say that it was so."

What was Makoto talking about? Cousin Yuyu, that must have been the Lady Makoto the workers were screaming about. Sunwhisper’s mind felt like it was crawling, the usual lightning pace of his cerebral circuits was crusted, rusted, and dipped in sludge.

(Kid? You know who this is, right? This is the guy that wiped my team with the First Elder.)

Sunwhisper couldn’t think clearly enough to respond. Over and over, he saw them falling. His fathers, one after another, all of them falling. Their light and their power reduced to nothing at the hands of an old man who had thrown a tantrum over a dead fox.

"Why?" His voice broke. He had never heard it break before. "Why was that fox so important? You said we were your guests!"

Makoto’s face froze. “You wouldn’t understand."

(Yeah, and that stupid bush was off limits too, right?)

The bodies of his fathers were arranged neatly in a line, their central processing units decaying in the high entropy environment of the Tree of Heaven.

"Were you ever going to let them live? Do visitors from the Tree of Heaven ever survive?"

Makoto shrugged. "Rarely. Excuses must be found, but it is not difficult. Fringe Town benefits from whatever harvest the Tree of Heaven sees fit to provide for our people. The Soma crop is improved by the custom, and your personal case is unusual. Mercy is the exception in our world. It was an impulse, and a foolish one."

A weight lifted from Sunwhisper’s heart that he didn’t realize he had been carrying. The fox hadn’t mattered. It wasn’t his fault that his fathers were dead. But they were dead, still. These cultivators, they didn’t see the visitors as human, as people. They called them demons, and demons were like sacred beasts, a resource to be collected when it was ripe. Starscream was right about that much.

(Kid? Hey, kid? Are you okay?)

Sunwhisper was shaking. He had never felt this kind of anger before. There was moisture leaking from his synthetic eyes, and he dropped the bag of spirit fruits from under his arm.

"You killed…" The words wouldn't come out. "You killed…my FATHERS!"

Makoto’s frown deepened. "Is that news?"

Sunwhisper attacked.