Birds chirped and all that generic morning shit. If they had electric power already, this would be one of those days when Richie and co could theoretically benefit from a coffee maker. His eyes felt heavy and bloodshot, as though they were about to crack like fragile glass. Needless to say, he could barely keep them open. But, the promise of that coffee, and other luxuries on the horizon, was enough fuel to carry out the task before them. Richie knelt in a modified crawlspace of the stripped living room closet, the doors ripped off to make room for thick cables looping through the wall to connect Cuppy’s water wheel system to the generator they had constructed and entombed in this hole. It had ended up being the most direct way to in turn connect the rest of the system running throughout the complex, once he and Cuppy had rerouted all parts throughout the units to point only toward theirs. It had been a long time coming, and many clueless trips to the junkyard, but at last, the moment of truth was a few minutes within reach.
“Lug wrench.” Richie said, and Cuppy, laying on his stomach, face peeking over the hole, handed it to him from the toolbox Freyja sat next to, inspecting their tools.
“Here.” Cuppy said.
“Bolts.” Richie said.
“Yep.” Cuppy said.
“Sandwich?” Freyja asked jokingly.
“I wish.” Richie said, stomach growling.
“Yeah, our rations are a little thin.” Freyja complained.
“If you’ve got nothing better to do than pretend to take stock,” Richie said, popping up out of the crawlspace like a meerkat, “why don’t you use your wolf form to go hunt for some food in the forest?”
“I don’t want to.” Freyja said.
“Don’t be that fuckin’ roommate!” Richie growled.
“I’m kidding, sheesh!” Freyja said, standing and rolling her eyes. “Well, not really. I really don’t want to get off my ass and do anything productive in the slightest, but I am hungry, so, with great reluctance, I’ll go catch some food.”
“Take bro with you for safety.” Cuppy said.
“Isn’t he… indisposed?” Freyja asked, pointing to the clawed-open puppet.
“Oh yeah, that’s right.” Cuppy moved the puppet to a couch and brought over a duffel bag, revealing the contents to be all of the wood Richie had chopped when he unzipped it. “I’ll have you fixed up in a jiffy.”
“Cuppy?” Richie asked, having ducked back into his hole, unaware that no one was manning the toolbox, now leaning precariously on the edge, anymore.
Of course, it fell, dumping heavy metal objects on Richie’s head.
“FUCKING OUCH!!!” he roared.
Cuppy maneuvered and rotated the blocks, which he had cut into perfect squares and rectangles, around, fitting them perfectly into Cuppet’s shaved and refitted open torso like a sliding puzzle. His fingers worked diligently, weaving fine threads between the blocks like a great root network binding the wood in an airtight configuration into and as the marionette’s new chest. He spread his hands wide, and his threads drew tight. Freyja could smell an earthy scent about these strings, distinct from the usual wiry or yarn-like filaments Cuppy created. Cuppy saw her nose twitch, and volunteered an answer.
“I found out I can affect the composition and qualities of my strings based on my diet and what I take into my body. I read stacks and stacks of books brainstorming every possible application for the concept of thread I could think of. Cables, webs, bands,”
“Roots?” Freyja asked.
“Yeah. If I were to just use my patchwork surgical threads, my bro here wouldn’t truly heal any better than you or Richie. In fact, because dead wood doesn’t regenerate like living flesh does, he would heal even worse. I read that in geological structural engineering, when they want to shore up a loose earthen wall or slope to keep it from sliding into a road or causing avalanches, there are a few different ways they can do that. Retaining walls and nets are one thing, but a relatively unobtrusive way to minimize collapse is sewing bushes and such at the bottom of the slope. Plant roots are a natural, and surprisingly effective, binding agent that keeps loose soil stuck together. I hollowed out the logs Richie gave me and filled them with fresh dirt before I had you seal them back up with your blowtorch.” Cuppy said.
“You mean my breath.” Freyja corrected.
“Yeah, that.” Cuppy said. “That way, my root-type biothreads can literally take root inside the new material, and fuse it together more effectively. A bit of sealing varnish to finish the job, and you’ll hardly be able to tell big bro got chunked out.”
Freyja clapped. “Bravo.”
She stopped and thought a few moments. “Your threads change type based on what you eat?” Freyja asked.
Cuppy nodded. “Yep. If I want them to. I can either digest food, or will it into storage to infuse into my threads. I figured it out while you guys were still assembling the generator.”
“Is that why you were grazing on the lawn like a cow?” Freyja asked.
“Mostly.” Cuppy nodded happily.
Cuppet looked over its torso as the dirt-filled blocks wove together and became a solid new core, smiling vacantly as Cuppy brushed the sealing varnish over the repairs. Freyja took the opportunity to go tell Richie that she was heading out and would be back soon, and to get the plug-in broiler ready in her absence if she wasn’t back by the time they restored power. Before the words could leave her lips, though, she found him in a daze, slumped against the wall of the pit with his eyes crossed. She could almost see cartoon birdies circling his head.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Freyja asked, holding up three fingers.
“This many.” Richie flipped her off, eyes still crossed.
“He’s fine.” Freyja told Cuppy, and plucked Cuppet off the couch.
As the marionette was put on autopilot mode again, given full autonomy over itself for the first time since it had clashed with Luchesi and incurred its crippling injury, steam shot out between the gaps in its joints, making clunky clockwork sounds, and it stretched out its body. It looked at its hands as it wiggled each fingertip, and rotated its artificial cuffs and ligaments. As best as Freyja could tell from a living wooden doll, Cuppet appeared to be enjoying the sensations, and she guessed it felt good like stretching out first thing in the morning when you wake up did.
“Here you go, bro, you’ll need them more than I will if trouble starts.” Cuppy bequeathed both scissor blades to Cuppet, the eccentric swords sharpened and smoothed out since the chips that had been taken out of them in their last usage.
Cuppet took a blade in each hand and nodded at his brother and architect gratefully. Then, he and Freyja exchanged ready glances, and walked out into the backyard, jogging through the broken fence into the forest wilds beyond.
While the kids goofed around on the surface, Chikita and her sentient equipment crawled through the filthy tunnels of Station Bay’s combined sewer guts, pushing through a long darkened corridor somewhere near the wastewater flow Richie had dubbed the River Styx. The swordswoman could hear the heavy rush of those polluted rapids somewhere nearby, and feel them reverberating through the wall when she put her ear to it. She needed no torch to light the way - Yukihana’s arctic glow was a better sight aid than a cat’s own nocturnal vision. Although his counterpart, Chinokiri, still refused to come out of her shell, and thus deprived Chikita of her nicotine fix, she still found use for her lighter, using its flame to follow the windflow at the rare junctures where her katana’s instincts were conflicted. Still, as she felt herself come closer to invading the Faceless Man’s nest, she felt jittery and nervous. She told herself it was just because she wanted a smoke, but her familiars knew better - the waters beneath her frozen surface of stoicism were feeling pure animal terror creep up. This was a place people - no, no earthly living beings - should ever dare go, let alone to start shit with its king. It was not unlike the bubble of killing intent Luchesi had unleashed, or Chikita’s own that she had projected to match it. However, the feeling was more broad and muddled than the distinct cold shock of someone’s intense bloodlust. This was a diffuse, omnidirectional air of intense foreboding. If she had grown up in a modern era with internet access, she would have been the type to browse scary websites and online videos well into the night, lingering for hours on anecdotes about supernatural encounters, spooky places, or morbid facts about serial killers and disturbing unsolved mysteries.
During the brief time Richie had had internet access in his youth, neither he nor his mother anticipating that they could be located by way of their metadata, he had been that type too. And, well before the murderous cult that tore his life apart found him, Richie had delved into scary content well past his bedtime. The feelings that struck and clung to him hours after the screen went black and he was tucked in bed were a churning concoction of apprehension, dark curiosity, disgust, and a kind of malevolent innate memory of what it was like to be prey. Ghosts in particular had always creeped him out, as he remembered all too well years later when he crossed blows with the parasitic Phantom Pain. They were just plain unfair - incorporeal, immaterial, without earthly logic or biological mass. You couldn’t hit ghosts, and you couldn’t hide from them cause they could just pass through solid objects - including walls. And, given the sheer magnitude of just how many human beings alone had ever died, and were dying now, there were probably no few yards of earth you could walk that couldn’t breed restless spirits, moaning and rattling.
In short, this and other childhood phobias, and his fight or flight reflex now in his teenage years, had the particular feeling of an ambiguous chill going down the spine, and of his shorthairs bristling, just like Freyja’s wolfen coat when she sensed danger.
That feeling of haunting dread was chilling Chikita’s spine, like the antithesis to the metaphorical warmth Freyja felt when in the company of friends that her own element of the flames could not provide.
Chikita shivered.
We are within a few hundred meters of the source now, I can feel it. Yukihana cautioned. Chikita, I want to implore you one more time to think about this very carefully. Just because you CAN track down the Faceless Man doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
“We’re way past that, Yuki.” Chikita said, glaring down at her katana. “You know what he’s responsible for. I’m not about to let that go. I’ll level you at the fucking devil if I have to.”
Hypothetically, that might just be a preferable matchup. Yukihana said.
Somehow, Chikita could sense him shiver too.
Within a few minutes more of walking, a red glow caught their eye, and they stepped out of a recess in the far wall of the great chamber whose bridge Cuppy had crossed to save Richie, and which O’Gravy had chopped apart with an ax-like rainbow. The rubble, along with the rubble of the walkway the leprechaun had also collapsed, albeit accidentally, was still piled in the roaring sewer rapids, only visible under the corrupted whitecaps in moments between waves, or in how their addition to the topography of the river floor altered the currents in visibly noticeable ways to the trained eye. Chikita, who had navigated great rivers and other mainstays of the elements, had such trained eyes, and she raised a brow curiously.
“What the fuck happened here?” she asked.
It smells like those boys back at the complex. Yukihana said.
“You can smell anything unique under the literal shit in the air?” Chikita asked, honestly a bit surprised.
For lack of a better term. While I miss human form, being shed of a working nose has its silver linings. In layman’s terms, though, what I’m picking up is the residual auras released by a major conflict. The ones called Richie and Cuppy, I’m pretty sure they fought someone fairly strong here. Probably a monster from the fog, from the feel of it. Yukihana said.
“Good, then we’re getting closer, if the theories hold correct.” Chikita nodded, leaping across the gap and strolling up to the entrance to the red-lit power tunnel spanning the miles beneath the bay, out to the islands; the tunnel the Institute used to funnel and concentrate electric power from Station Bay’s grid into its Tracer system.
She stopped a moment at the threshold before she walked in, looking back over the ruins of the battle.
“Those kids were involved in something like this? Damn, maybe I’m not giving them due credit.” Chikita said.
Yukihana held his tongue. He was ambivalent on his master’s unclear and pragmatic stance on the exploitation of the power of magical beasts to close the gap between her own strength and that of her enemies’, but at the very least, the so-called ferals that they had hunted together so far had at least nominally started the fights, be it for resource competition, territory, or making the mistake of seeing Chikita as an easy meal. They had yet to encounter a passive beast and provoke a fight for its own sake, without an excuse to justify taking its soul. Nor had he asked Chikita if this was on the table. He sensed that Richie youth had something akin to yokai - supernatural entities, broadly speaking, in the native language of his and Chikita’s homeland - royalty sharing his soul. He doubted Chikita had made the connection between Richie’s tattoos and the presence of great power lying dormant inside him yet, and he didn’t intend to enlighten her just yet. There was no telling how she would react if she suddenly came to view the boy as viable and highly-efficient fuel for her own might.
So, while he was a poor liar in general, the reality that O’Gravy had done most of the structural damage to this place was a thankful out he could mention that only implicitly detracted from what Richie was capable of.
Actually, I feel that the damage did not come from the children’s hands.
“Oh.” Chikita deflated, and shrugged. “Oh well,” she chuckled deviously, “I like my pups meek anyway.” she licked her lips.
For god’s sake, woman. Yukihana chastised her.
“I’m just kidding!” Chikita said.
Are you? Yukihana asked; he didn’t sound convinced.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Nevertheless, the topic of Richie’s untapped well of incredible strength had been successfully sidestepped.
…
Freyja returned with a colony of rabbits slung over her shoulder, their necks all skillfully broken with wolfen jaws whose marks were left punctured around the throats.
“Soup’s on, kiddies!” Freyja beamed proudly, taking a handful of rabbits in either paw as she stood and smiled broadly, showing off her kills with arms outstretched in a t pose.
Cuppy’s eyes widened. “A-Awww….. Heckin’ dangit.”
Freyja’s ears laid back and she tilted her head. “You don’t like rabbit?”
“He likes them plenty.” Richie said, echoing up from the hole as he adjusted something. “Breathing and playful, preferably.”
Freyja blinked a few times, stuffed the rabbits behind her back, and smiled guiltily. “Uh… let me just… go put these back…”
Cuppy lassoed the rations from Freyja’s paws with his strings, and took stock of them. “No way, you’re just going to go bury them for yourself for later. They’re meat now, what’s done is done. Richie, you want to swap out for a minute?”
“So I can do your dirty work for you, skinning and gutting the meat to spare your delicate little feelings, and leave the generator I’ve spent hours of sweat and swears working on in your dopey little hands?” Richie asked.
“Yeah, that. Unless you aren’t worried about any stray strings in your food.” Cuppy smiled vacantly.
A wrench flew out of the pit at Cuppy, and Cuppet yanked his brother into a duck under the projectile by one of his own strings. The wrench flew off and hit Freyja directly in the tits.
“Oof! My girls!” she fell to her knees, eyes tearing up as she clutched at her chest.
“So are chest lumps like lady nuts?” Cuppy asked, tilting his head.
“Just get in the fucking crawlspace!” Richie growled, jumping out of the generator’s room, grabbing Cuppy by the hood, and chucking him down.
He looked at the pile of rabbits on the floor, at least a dozen of them.
“Nice work!” Richie whistled as he turned over the bodies, admiring the accuracy of the bitemarks as he took out his knife.
“Thanks.” Freyja said, crouched and huddled up on the floor, ass sticking up inelegantly as she cried silent tears of subdued pain. She gave a peppy thumbs up gesture.
Richie turned the knife - a floral, ornamental thing with a nonetheless keen pair of edges - over in his hand, and felt its weight across his palm.
Something else I picked up from my forgotten little vacation? Richie wondered.
He liked this knife, and he had a feeling it wasn’t just the nifty design. He didn’t realize he could feel nostalgic for something he’d barely had for any time at all. It must have meant something to him at one point or another.
He shrugged.
“Kali ma, bitches.” Richie proclaimed, twirling the knife over into an icepick grip.
-
The glow of the computer screen reflected in the lenses of Director Mason's shades, the frantic tapping of keys the only sound in the computer chamber. Each optic fed him a different half of the workspace normally co-managed by his dual assistants, and their visors. Without the girls, the task was significantly more time-consuming, and grueling. The nerves in the pads of his fingertips felt numb. The sun was already up. Mason knew this only from the screen display. It was windowless inside the sphere. He could hear the figurative cock crow, however, ringing the bell to signal the updated Tracer System's new test drive. Feverish, nonstop blood, sweat, and tears for this moment, when the Institute's technological might could conjure Tracers on command, no longer bound to ether fog pockets ushering in new foreign bodies first. Mason would no longer allow the ferals to make the first move.
He cracked his knuckles out.
I'll divert all power to the tunnel, and concentrate it there. No reason to stray too far from the nest for a warm up shot. Theoretically, the digital antibody should bind to any organic entity I set its sights on. An unlucky sewer rat should suffice for this test. No longer will justice be cheated by closing windows for materialization time. All those damn monsters who think they've gotten past the gate and are in the clear are in for a rude awakening.
-
Something's wrong. Yukihana said, standing rigid as the red glow of the power tunnel began to intensify and hum like static electricity, crackling in the walls.
"I know, I can feel it too. It's getting warm in here." Chikita grit her teeth.
Chinokiri was huddled in her pipe vessel, the antique silver kiseru shaking as if a vulnerable animal was exposed to the infrared scrutiny of a serpentine predator fixing them with a death glare. The fox could almost feel the proverbial forked tongue flickering at and across her nose. Chikita's knees felt rusted into a locked position, squating her down in an uncomfortable crouch that left her vitals, in particular, her back and neck, exposed to any coming attack.
"Yuki, talk to me, what's coming? Yokai? Void-spawn? Give me the deets, quickly if you can." Chikita said.
"There are many auras and anti-auras fluctuating through these catacombs. Whoever is orchestrating the psychic flow has a very tight guard on their intentions. If it's killing intent, they've masked their bloodlust with high concentrations of apathy." Yukihana said, finding his physical voice.
"Calm down, Chino." Chikita held her pipe close to her.
"Is the Faceless Man trying to disorient us?" she asked.
"Maybe. More likely, he's taking advantage of the defense mechanism those kids and the agent called the Tracer System. This heat - I don't know the right words for it, but it isn't natural in the slightest. Best likened to a synthetic aura." Yukihana said, huddling closer to his master.
"What do those suits want with a synthetic aura? I knew this era was immensely beyond our own in how far technology has advanced, but this straddles the line of the unbelievable. How can one man create something like this?" Chikita asked.
"Stay vigilant. I'm not sure how this is possible either, but let's worry about surviving first. From what I could surmise, these Tracers lock onto incarnating entities from other worlds and disrupt their materialization process at the molecular level."
"Translation?" Chikita asked.
"Total obliteration." Yukihana said.
Chikita clutched her katana tight. "Would it even affect the Faceless Man? He's no earthly flesh."
"That may be part of what makes these fetid sewers his ideal breeding grounds. He can avoid detection, utterly, while the beasts he wrangled into this layer of reality arrive just in time for the butcher. They feed on the remnants." Yukihana postulated.
The growing, humid heat was broken by a sudden ghostly chill, followed by wailing at the back of the tunnel. The lights flickered - and plastic bag-like, boneless facsimiles of human forms drifted up and past Chikita on the fell wind. Their ink dot eyes were as uncanny as ever. Chikita hunkered down into a defensive stance, but was ignored.
“Phantom Pains? Why are they here?” Chikita asked.
“Likely bottomfeeders sucking up residual traces of beings killed by the Tracers, or leftovers from the Voidspawn. Beggars can’t be choosers.” Yukihana answered.
“If they’re incorporeal too, why would they run from the Tracers?” Chikita asked.
“One of two possibilities seem most likely to me. The first is that they’re merely getting ahead of us to watch the fireworks and bottleneck any retreat on our part, so they can then suck up what’s left of us as I just said.” Yukihana explained.
“Gross.” Chikita stuck out her tongue.
“-or, they’re running from something else entirely. Something higher up on the food chain as far as spirits go.” Yukihana finished.
“Either way, unless another physical monster incarnated in the sewer system before the tracers went online, the only targets in the line of fire here are us, is that right?” Chikita asked.
“Precisely.” Yukihana said.
“So, if it’s now or never, we’re gambling it all on there being a yokai somewhere in this tunnel between us - and the Faceless Man.” Chikita said.
“Leaving the x factor - in which direction will the tracer seek out prey?” Yukihana asked.
Chikita wiped the blade clean with a cloth and flipped it into a sidelong grip, admiring Yukihana’s luminous sheen. “Always loved a risky gamble. Let’s go face danger head-on, like always.”
“You’re going to be the death of me.” Yukihana rolled his mental eyes.
-
The rabbit meat simmered in its kettle, the stew bubbling steadily. The smell made Richie’s stomach growl, and he knew that supper would soon be upon them. In the interim, there was another treat to celebrate.
“Alright Cuppy, start the water, moment of truth.” Richie gave the go ahead.
Cuppy yanked a string he had fixed to the water system out back, and the water storage tank began to feed its contents into the artificial stream, powering up the water wheel. It spun slowly at first, then gradually accelerated until it had a decent spin, visually not unlike a vertical pinwheel. The power was converted by way of the cables running through the house, into the generator they had established in the crawlspace, into electricity, and that electricity fanned out and lit the various outlets and appliances strung about the apartment. The overhead lights came on, the residual oven system that had come with the projects beeped to life, and a long neglected smoke alarm began bitching. Let there be light - and so there was.
Richie couldn’t help but let an uncharacteristic quiver of excitement and joy pass through him, carrying its own electric current, and he released the giddy energy with a corny “yippee!”, followed by a well-earned high five with Cuppy.
“My man!” Richie declared, transitioning from the classical high five into a bro fist.
Cuppy’s knuckles were worse off for it.
“Ouch.” Cuppy said passively, but smiled despite his bruised knuckles.
There was electric power now, and finally this apartment began to resemble an apartment for the increase in the standard of living. The home the three children had all sought was now more complete for it. What would come next would be all the luxuries modern life afforded the modern person - heat in winter, ovens and microwaves to cook meals by, bulbs to light the way when someone passed through the hall to answer nature’s call in the bathroom without being restricted to the meager glow of oil lamps or, in Freyja’s case, demonic shapeshifter night vision.
The basis for comfort in the Richie household had just evolved by one step. Maslow’s Pyramid was an Everest that the daring explorers would summit in good time.
Richie had read the hierarchy of needs in one of Cuppy’s many borrowed books. The tiering of human needs to wants spanned a building block bedrock of physiological needs - food, water, warmth, rest. The cornerstones of survival that most other living beings were perpetually trapped in. Above it lay safety needs, which perhaps only apex predators could aspire too. Even then, the mighty Nile Crocodile had no roof over its head. And from there came belonging, esteem, and, at the precipice of the potential of life, self-actualization, wherein one achieved their dearest ambitions and found their place in the world, whatever that may be to the individual. Richie had dwelt so long in the sphere of the bottom layer of this pyramid that the thought of reaching the heavens - his self-actualization - was a far-off mirage at best, deadly in its siren temptation. There was no room in a thieving survivalist’s heart for ambition, or the idea of some abstract, hippie-dippie contentedness on a spiritual level.
But now, in one fell swoop, and seemingly by chance and a little bit of well-placed elbow grease, tiers one and two of the hierarchy of needs had been climbed. Richie was well on his way to the heavens, he could feel it in his bones to some degree. His dragons felt it too, and their thoughts on the subject remained an enigma for now.
Food and rest were met - the forest provided everything the trio needed, and when the fruits to harvest ran thin, Richie’s own mastery of the art of theft could fill in the blanks to fill their stomachs. Now, safety and security too were also met, especially now that electric power had been bestowed to their little off grid commune. At last there might be leisure time to sort through the emotions he had been forced to neglect for so long. Now, perhaps, he could mourn his mother, and move on to a brighter future. Cuppy and Freyja - these could be the cornerstones to that unknown frontier in the third tier of Maslow’s pyramid - intimacy; friendship. With his physical needs safeguarded, now might be the time to nurture his long-starved spiritual core. Now was the time to live instead of merely survive.
He didn’t know how to be a friend - but, then again, he hadn’t known how to pick a pocket, or hotwire a car, or beat up an aggressor trying to mug him in some dark alleyway or rain clogged gutter before when all those challenges had been dropped in his lap. Now, at last, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Something he - and his dearly departed mother - could be proud of.
A pity, then, that the lights flickered and shorted out within less than a minute, kicking up tufts of electric smoke and making disturbing hot metal smells.
“The fuck was that?” Freyja jumped back, ears laid flat with startlement.
“Did a fuse blow? Are the breakers out?” Cuppy asked, scratching his head.
“Fuck’s sake,” Richie sighed, scratching the back of his head. “Alright, first thing’s first, we need to determine if the ball is in our court, or if it’s just incidental. There could be a power shortage in Station Bay beyond us and we just happened to have bad timing. One of you should go survey the town, see if anyone else is having electrical issues. Shouldn’t have to go far, a display tv in some strip mall or appliance shop will do just fine. I’ll stay here and troubleshoot everything on our end. If it is an oversight on our part, my guess is we just overloaded the system, and a single from-scratch generator isn’t enough to store the amount of power we need. I’d like to bring a tv in here at some point, if only for access to the local news - with the bizarre shit we’ve all seen and experienced going down, we’d be idiots not to see what’s managed to leak into local media coverage. Not even that shady Institute can keep a lid on high strange nonsense forever. If there’s a fog leak rolling in, or more bullshit monstrosities on the rampage, having a preview ahead of time is a great asset. Beyond that, I wouldn’t mind having saturday morning cartoons, and I don’t think either of you will disagree with me on that point. Now is the dawn of our expansion, when we decide how we’re going to shape our roost. That jester bastard, and the spook in robes he answers to have a home base somewhere, probably in the sewers, and we need one too if we’re going to match blows. This is our sacred ground, and we’ll draw the line here. Defend it. Protect it. Develop it.” Richie said.
Cuppy and Freyja looked at each other, both not quite sure how to process Richie’s sudden confidence, and clarity on what their next moves were. It was strange - but not unwelcome - to see him acting like a leader.
As it happened, the downtown area of Station Bay, and the districts above and adjacent to the power tunnel had all experienced simultaneous flickerings and outages too, though these would remain ignored and downplayed in the future. Of the cause, there would be no doubt soon enough. Mason had launched the updated Tracer system, as he had said he would, and the power difference in generating a mobile tracer versus a static one was exponential. The tunnel of red connected to the Station Bay sewers constricted its sniper scope, and Chikita was in its sights.
Luckily - or perhaps, unluckily - for her, she was not alone after all.
The tunnel lights were not the only things that were red. A pair of feline eyes, brimming with malice, materialized out of the far end of the tunnel, and a massive form began stomping toward Chikita and her enchanted items. The three presences she represented all shrank back and shivered together. There was another lifeform between them and the coming artificial aura cleanup program, that was for sure - but the lifeform in question was an even bigger threat. A slobbering tongue licked about huge canines and fangs, a toothy maw that seemed to be bottomless opening up like a hellish vista before the swordswoman as those heavyset jaws spread open, and a lion-like roar shook the tunnel. Heavy paws tread on the floor, and an insectile, pleated tail ending in a vicious barb, dripping scorpion’s venom, flitted about irritably, as though a housecat had spotted a bothersome insect and begun trilling after it. The monster filled the entire tunnel with its bulk, a circle of fiery red mane enclosing a brutish, ugly humanoid face whose feline eyes gave the whole visage an uncanny, nightmarish quality, like something conjured up by a fever dream.
The quadrupedal hybrid brute lumbered forward, growling and salivating like a waterfall. The stinger tail arched high over its back quadrant, shadowing its massive furred head, and it glared at Chikita with a predatory stare that put the basilisk’s to shame.
Manticore! Yukihana gasped.
The red light of the coming tracer, in the form of a halo of fire eerily resembling a red crown of thorns, grew behind the manticore, as Mason’s inaugural Super Tracer swept up the tunnel to feed. A swat of the armored tail was sufficient to throw the digital amoeba back, stalling it over a suspicious crack in the walkway. From this imperfection in the subterranean paving, a geyser of Black Rain spurted, the liquid corruption splashing over and encapsulating the tracer. In every shadowy drop was the whisper of a writhing lost soul, and the ghastly interference was more than enough to jam the proverbial signal. At Mason’s desk, the keyboard and other apparatuses began to tremble and smoke with electric arcs and sparks.
The Director recoiled as sharp jolts shot through his fingers and numbed his arms up to the shoulders. The sphere he occupied began to shake too, as though caught within a localized earthquake, and then the darkness within, apart from the glow of his exalted computer screen, was stained a deep blood red, the same as the power tunnel. The reverberation of the glitching computer system and the wild sparks flying from its keys seemed to echo grandly, as if in a deep chasm, and Mason felt an intolerable, claustrophobic sense of heat begin to creep under his suit and into his skin. He sweat profusely - a physiological response to having been mildly electrocuted? - and then was tearing at his collar for relief. He had the sudden absurd, yet terrifying image, of being a dreg of ancient Athens locked up in the dreaded brazen bull, to roast alive at the mercy of a great fire licking the bovine’s belly. Mixed nightmare imagery and physical sensations of burning, and of being confined, coursed through his body and mind alike, and he flew back from his seat as if thrown by the force of live wires. He struck his head on the floor, and fell unconscious.
The lingering resentment that swelled within the Black Rain from the Faceless Man’s boundless sea seeped into the Director’s dreams through the momentary connection the tracer system had cluelessly formed between him and that sea. A seed was planted.
As for the tracer itself - it glommed onto some microbial bacteria colony straddling the wall, and called it a day. The ring of fire tightened infinitesimally, and then vanished.
Chikita had time to wonder if, perhaps, both of Yukihana’s guesses had been wrong, and the Phantom Pains had in fact been running from the manticore at her front. Staring the metronome of its swishing stinger tail down, counting the space between her breaths, she realized it's what she would have done.
The maneater struck.