BA3 - Chapter 29

“No,” I whispered, feeling control of TuTu_tk fading away, like quickly losing gravity. Dokun’s ma munje closed in, trying to push mine out. The cold fear in my stomach pulled on my consciousness, trying to anchor me back in my body but I resisted.

Desperation took over and I released all the red munje from my stores like a squidling inking to escape. My munje clashed with Dokun’s and little zaps of lightning burst around TuTu_tk like a ship in a storm.

“We need more lift,” Mae said, her voice calm in an attempt to keep me level.

I took a deep breath and aimed my working grip-claw up to the chute, then released a quarter of the stored en to warm the air. We lifted out of the cloud and feeling returned to my other dangling limbs. With that feeling came a flood of ma munje—Dokun’s. So, it had lost out to my red munje. What was this powerful magic?

Movement below caught my attention, and I turned the camera to point at a row of Enjiho lined up at the perimeter. Their arms raised in unison, pointing at me. Flashes went off all at once on the firing line and bright energy zipped through the air.

I pulled my bottom legs up under me and made my profile as small as possible, then gave another flourish of en to heat the chute. The energy—whatever it was—sailed under me with a horrible vibration that made my teeth clench.

The chute above nearing its max temperature before it combusted, and we weren’t rising fast enough. The trail of munje was a clear giveaway of our location even if we hasn’t lost our reflection spell, so hiding wouldn’t be easy. We were out of ry, low on en, and short on options.

Except maybe one.

Dokun’s ma flowed in through my legs and followed me through the air. There wasn’t enough space inside the little body to harbor it all, but I could use it. The Enjiho were lining up for another shot, but I wasn’t going to give them a target.

I rotated the locks in my lower legs until they could spin freely, like a propeller, then shifted my body until my tiny abdomen was upside down. This position was uncomfortable for the chute holding arms since they were pinned at an awkward, outstretched angle, but there was nothing to be done for it.

With the chute expanded more like a sail, I spun the lower legs, creating lift at just the right moment. Energy blasts roared under me, sending lances of shooting pain through my skull. My connection to TuTu_tk blinked out of existence for a fraction of a second, then reconnect. What was that power they used?

My heart pounded in my chest but I kept my focus on spinning my little machina legs as fast as they could go. The ma munje drained out of me as we shot up through the sky and into some low hanging clouds that seemed to be sent by Jigu herself.

The mist obscured us, and the energy blasts from the Enjiho went wide and scattered until they finally stopped. I twisted my body and let the gripping legs hang down once more, then pumped en into the cooling chute.

“That was unbelievable,” Mae remarked when we’d glided several meters without interruption.

I smiled, feeling proud of how I’d handled the escape.

“I don’t believe in Jigu, but your luck has become statistically improbable.”

The wind carried us and I enjoyed a moment of peace. It was warm in my bed roll, but cold out in the open air of the last autumn night. Though the machina body didn’t feel temperature the same way, the stark contrast sent a shiver down my spine.

The en counter in the corner of my vision read twenty percent and I grimaced. We were still fifteen kilometers away from Anbura, and truly out of options this time.

“We could always go get her,” Mae offered.

I scowled. ‘What time is it?’

She hummed. “Too early for anyone else to be awake. Two in the morning… and you still haven’t slept.”

‘I’ve gone without sleep before. We’ll be fine without it, but we won’t be if we can’t get TuTu_tk back.’

Wind gusted from the north, pulling the chute along sideway. I flexed out my legs and rode the current, doing my best to angle us back home. It was a lot more difficult than when I’d practiced back home with the first two prototypes.

“We’re close enough now that I can take over if you want to head outside. Ko-nah mentioned traps in the surrounding hills, so I’m sure we’ll both want your full attention on navigating those.”

I refrained from groaning at her reminder. Traps set by someone that powerful were sure to do wonderfully creative things. Slowly, I released control of TuTu_tk to Mae, but retained her vision for just a moment. Without feeling her limbs, or slender body, I flew weightlessly through misty darkness. This must’ve been what it was like when the body’s essence departed in death.

I watched for just a moment longer, then pulled myself back into my body on the floor of the dorm. I was heavy, and bulky, with aches and pains in all the places I’d overworked the day before. I flipped back my top sheet and rolled up to sit.

With my mind free from immediate peril, a more distant one took its place. I would have to talk to Ena when she woke up—likely before breakfast—and I would need a story so simple it wouldn’t set off her angry, spell infused floors. My tired mind idle wondered if Min-hwan had something similar, yet more subtle, in his office.

I grabbed my Anbura robe and dressed quietly, then stepped out of the room. The halls were dark save for a soft glow lining the floor next to the walls. It was just luminous enough for me to see where I was stepping. I hadn’t the energy to waste on using Tk_the shoot with all the traps I could encounter so I opted for the stairs while I squeezed the very last bits of energy through my first level band for zo and ry.

No one intercepted me on the way out, and the massive front door was left unlocked—at least from the inside. The night air was cold and moist against my face. When I exhaled, a puff of crystalized breath carried away on the breeze. I stared out at the grounds for a moment, my fear-fogged mind struggling to process everything we’d seen.

‘What if that man next to Dokun was trying to help him find the one on the train? What if Dokun was angry he hadn’t found him yet?’

“I don’t know,” she replied in a whisper.

‘He sent an entire army of Enjiho to take us down, though… that’s a bit suspicious, isn’t it?’

“It is,” she affirmed, then lit up my vision with a blue arrow. “TuTu_tk’s likely landing zone marked. It’s getting gustier, so I might even make it into the grounds.”

I took off at a jog in the direction she’d pointed. ‘What did you get from that Anglish on the screen?’

She giggled. “English, Jiyong.” She paused, then returned with a serious tone. “It seemed to be a list of terror attacks. I documented the dates and locations—but there was a troubling line I caught just before he switched the display. Its date was set in the future.”

Disappointment bloomed in me. Half of me had hoped Dokun wasn’t a bad man. He’d been so kind and done so much for Kokyu. He’d wanted to do more for me and my family, but his guilt had kept him away.

‘What was the date?’ I turned my attention to the underbrush as I reached the tree line. I waved my hand over the dividing line with fingers spread, dropping ry like sparkling purple diamonds over the plants. The spell burst and faded as it touched the plants and dirt, but no glow remained. It was likely clear to pass.

“It’s twenty days from now, and the location said Kobayashi Performance Hall. I wasn’t able to get too much out of the computer before his AI defenses activated, but there were other lines—I’m assuming locations—set with the same date and time as Kobayashi. The lines with dates in the past had an… incriminating hash associated with it which read simply: executed.”

I took a calming breath, trying not to overanalyze the information. ‘How certain are you now that Dokun is behind these terror attacks?’

“Ninety-six percent. I didn’t find any type of probability analysis associated with the dates set in the future, which means he wasn’t predicting them.”

‘And if he’s not predicting them, but has such detailed documents on the attacks…’  I didn’t have to finish it to know what this all meant. Dokun wanted to ban fifth level munje users—make everyone register their progress and be examined. He wanted to make it illegal to become as powerful as he was, and he was using these attacks to advance that agenda. He was using the Rabatasan to fuel public ire towards TK_McKingDude, and using powerful mercenaries on the side to imbed fear of misuse of power. He created the Enjiho and employed the elderly and disabled, he funded free public transportation, and I was sure there was so much more that he’d done—but all for his true end goal: domination.

He was working the country from several different angles and knew exactly what he was doing. And here we were, in the final stretch of his campaign for power, fighting against ten years of his careful guidance.

I felt as though I was on the edge of a precipice with a pool of monsters below. On my ledge, safe and terrified, I could watch the chaos below without being concerned for it—until the monsters learned to climb, of course. Ena would push me over that edge, or I could step off willingly with my own plan.

I moved through the forest, pushing aside branches and avoided hanging chimes. TuTu_tk was within a kilometer, and I could feel the pull of my munje in her. I reached out, sensing her weary little body. Mae had told me machina didn’t become weary, but I could feel it in her. The joints in her slender legs trembled from lack of fuel. The cold battered her with ever burst of wind, constricting her movement.

“The machina does not have a mind of its own, and doesn’t feel these things. You feel them,” Mae reminded me once more.

I tutted. ‘Just like there’s no Jigu or TK_sea god name, right?’

Mae’s likeness appeared in my vision, rolling her eyes.

“Tell me how you really feel,” I whispered with a smirk.

It was nice to have a distraction from the harsh reality of what we were up against. I focused on making my way and stopped to search for traps again. My ry dissipated without a trace, indicating it was safe. Maybe Ko-nah was wrong.

The counter in my vision for TuTu_tk’s distance dropped meter by meter as she descended closer. The foliage was too dense to see her, but I could sense her and the depleted munje. I recycled the zo from my reservoir into ma, preparing to retrieve her from whatever tree she crash-landed into.

“I’m not going to crash,” Mae said, flustered. “I’m going to set her down nice and easy.”

“Mm-hmm,” I said with a grin. She was being overconfident.

“Wonder where I learned that?” she asked, sarcastically.

I blew a raspberry. “Please, which little beam of ry light was demanding I return them to the koreanstitute_TK[JH1] , and that I was a bad person for stealing? Who thought they could manipulate my zo so I could fight better? Who was it—

“All right. Let me concentrate or I will crash.”

I rocked back on my heels, silently enjoying my victory. The counter slowly hit twenty meters, nineteen, eighteen—then plummeted. At ten meters I heard a rustle-clank-clankin the tree above as the branches trembled.

“Oops…” Mae whispered with a sensation like a cringe.

I shook my head with a sigh, then released the newly refurbished ma up into the branches. I closed my eyes and reached out for the slender body of TuTu_tk[JH2] (I seriously hate this name. It can’t be named this). I stretched, like grabbing at something a little too far overhead, then found her. My ma latched onto her chilled frame and I set about climbing down.

I knelt and helped unhook her parachute, then opened my sleeve to receive her. The bot twisted and folded until she was straight as a rod, then slipped up to my back. Chills ran over my skin where her freezing metal touched, but I suppressed the shiver.

Footsteps crunched on dry pine needles behind me and my heart leapt into my throat. I twisted and contorted TuTu_tk, getting her into shape to lie flat against my back. I winced as her diamond claws dug into my skin, anchoring her in place against my spine and across my shoulder blades.

“Who’s there?” I called to the darkness.

“I was about to ask the same,” Ena replied.

The bushes rustled and parted, revealing the grandmaster flanked by two, burly enforcers. She looked at me with a judgmental smile for what felt like hours. I shriveled under her gaze and bowed my head.

“I couldn’t sleep, Grandmaster.”

She hummed. “So, you came out here to do what exactly?”

“I wanted to walk to clear my head. There’s a forest like this on the grounds of Bastion, and it calmed my nerves to be among the tall trees after how long I’d spent at the arborum.” She scowled at the word, and I amended to use the Japanese equivalent.

“I see,” she finally said. “Well, if you’re awake now, you can answer questions now. Come along.” She turned back for the school.

“But, my instructors,” I stammered, my fear waking up at the thought of being alone with her with no real plan. What I’d discovered tonight would be incriminating enough for her to execute me—if Dokun willed it. How could I hide this?

She looked at me over her shoulder, a menacing glare narrowing her gaze. “Is there a problem?”

I bowed lower. “Just that my instructors may want to explain the plan. I am but a student—”

She whirled on me, moving faster than I could see. “And you’re the poor sap who will be carrying it out, are you not?”

“It?” I asked, pretending not to understand the implication.

She cooed as one would to an idiot child. “Oh, you really have been left in the dark. That’s why your lie lines didn’t fluctuate; you didn’t even know enough to tell one.”

I looked down sheepishly, trying to force a blush into my cheeks. I wasn’t going to fight her assumption. The less informed she thought I was, the easier it would be to skirt the truth. Maybe we weren’t in as much trouble as I thought.

She smiled, but it never reached her eyes. “You still have plenty to tell about the attempted abduction, so… Shall we?”