TRICK OR TREAT 3
Siren.
She was a woman with a short bob of hair.
But her appearance now was utterly unrecognizable.
Not a trace remained of the anxious, scatterbrained girl she'd played at being in the lobby of Halloween Entertainment.
Standing before Ash was a swordswoman steeped in blood and madness, humming a tune atop a mound of corpses.
Even now, a cold killing intent radiated from every inch of her body.
And yet, what first caught Ash's attention — unexpectedly — was Ifrit, standing beside him.
"...Ha."
From the moment she'd identified the other woman, she hadn't moved a muscle, her face frozen solid.
At first he thought she might be rattled by the appearance of Siren, the rank-one idol — but there was something off about that explanation. The usual frivolousness and clamor were gone without a trace, and rage had poured itself into the empty space left behind.
A volcanic fury, ready to erupt at any moment.
Ash could tell something was seething inside her.
Does she hold some personal grudge?
His question answered itself quickly.
Because Ifrit, who had been hiding in the darkness, sprang to her feet and strode straight into the cavern.
"N-Noona!"
Jack O'Lantern's desperate cry echoed out, but Ifrit, consumed by rage, didn't hear him.
Or heard him — and ignored him.
She marched forward until she stood fully revealed in the cavern.
The three women, each taking their rest in their own way, turned their heads at once — and reacted in three entirely different fashions.
One sniffed; another simply lost interest and looked away, regarding her the way one regards a pebble on the roadside.
Still, the one standing at the center — Siren — deigned to acknowledge her.
"Hello there, Senior."
Ifrit's answer to that greeting was a fitting one.
"Hey, you fucking bitch. I distinctly remember telling you. Get rid of that arm. Now."
A double-barreled blast of profanity with no warning whatsoever, but Siren's languid expression didn't budge.
She raised her right arm for display.
A slender, pale arm that at a glance looked no different from an ordinary biological limb.
Only on closer inspection could one see the faint seams of cyberware glinting beneath the silicone skin.
But something about it drew the eye far more than that: the wave-patterned tattoo running from shoulder to wrist.
One look was enough to tell it was a priceless masterpiece.
"That damn arm, that damn arm."
Siren's voice was as clear and cool as birdsong — the content, however, was not.
"Whatever are you talking about, Senior? This arm is mine. I paid a fair and honest price for—"
"Say what, you corpse-arm bitch."
Siren shut her mouth.
"What, don't like hearing it? What can I say — you are from Restman, aren't you? Selling corpses to bankroll your little idol act. Feels good, does it?"
"Senior."
"Oh. Are you broadcasting right now? My bad. But honestly, everyone who matters already knows, don't they?"
As the venom flew back and forth,
Ash posed a question to Jack O'Lantern beside him.
"What in the world is this about?"
The answer came from Dullahan.
"Undine? You mean the Undine who—"
More text continued to scroll across his visor.
"...And this woman is wearing it."
"Unbelievable..."
Ash asked no more.
The short exchange had told him everything — why Ifrit burned with fury, why she despised Restman, and what today's affair was truly about.
"So what's your point?"
Just then, Siren's voice rang through the cavern.
"Did I kill Undine personally? No, I didn't. If that arm means that much to you, then pay credits and buy one yourself. Quit cursing me out and making the whole mood ugly for nothing."
"You little—! Does that mouth of yours have a hole in it or what...!"
"Oh, right. You're low on funds these days, aren't you? Since you crashed and burned."
Siren's black eyes swept her up and down.
The advertising copy etched across every inch of Ifrit's body glittered, dazzling to the eye.
"Wearing that many ads around, I guess you make something? Word is you don't even turn down whatever requests and product placements come your way."
"You must be real interested in me, huh? Knowing all that?"
"Then how about an ad for our Witchcraft? There looks to be a spot open on your chest."
"Ha! If you want it, sure. 'Siren is a Restman mongrel who chewed on corpses' — how's that? To your taste?"
The two women's quarrel grew uglier by the moment.
"Ah, screw it — we're pulling out too!"
Jack O'Lantern bolted from cover.
Dullahan silently followed at his back, hurrying toward Ifrit mid-standoff.
At the sight of two men emerging from the darkness, the women of the cavern let out snorts of laughter.
"ROA? What's with their roster, anyway? A washed-up has-been idol plus a driver's guild — what did they think they'd accomplish coming all the way here?"
"They said her spark's gone. Guess it's true?"
But ROA wasn't about to sit through the barbs in silence.
"Yeah, up yours, you old hag."
Before anyone noticed, the situation had shifted into a three-against-three standoff.
Perhaps the tableau struck them as sufficiently provocative, because swarms of camera drones came swarming through the air, circling the six men and women facing off atop that mountain of corpses and sea of blood.
Then Ash laid a steel hand on Akina's shoulder, where she'd been hiding beside him.
"Ah, So-jeo."
At his low voice, the girl turned her head.
"I shall step away for a moment."
Akina nodded.
"Okay! Come back victorious!"
It was anyone's guess what he was supposed to be victorious over, or how — but Ash nodded all the same.
"So I shall."
With those words, Ash moved.
Into that standoff, swollen taut to the point of bursting, a single swordsman made entirely of machine stepped into view.
His entrance was quieter than anyone's before it — and yet his presence was so considerable that every gaze swung toward him.
"Good evening."
The deep electronic hum drew split reactions.
Everyone on this side — Ifrit included — wore triumphant grins, while everyone on that side frowned in bewilderment.
Siren's reaction was neither.
Her response was, how to put it —
It brought their first meeting flooding back.
"A-Ash — Ash nim?! How did Ash nim even get here—?!"
Siren stammered.
Not a shred remained of the woman who'd been mocking her opponents moments ago. Awkwardly hiding her bloodstained blade behind her back, she wore the flustered face of a girl who didn't know where to look.
At that sudden, staggering transformation, everyone in the cavern froze for an instant, unable to string a sentence together.
"...What the hell? Is she lagging or something? Why's she acting like that out of nowhere?"
Jack O'Lantern muttered.
Ifrit looked equally dumbfounded, her face a portrait of disbelief as she glanced back and forth between Siren and Ash. On Dullahan's visor, dozens of question marks flickered into being and vanished, over and over.
Witchcraft was no different.
"Hey. What's wrong with you?"
"Siren!"
The two women hissed urgently, but Siren seemed to have gone deaf to their voices. Her gaze was locked on one person and one person only: Ash.
Even that — shyly, out of the corner of her eye.
Yet Ash did not waver under that burdensome stare. From the very beginning until this very moment, only one thing had ever mattered to him.
"This cavern, as it stands now..."
Ash intoned quietly.
His optical sensors finally turned toward the blushing Siren.
"Was it your doing?"
No emotion rode the question at all.
No anger. No contempt.
It was purely a question for grasping the situation and sizing up his opponent.
The relationship between Ifrit and Siren? Intriguing, but that was all. The two women's emotional squabbles meant nothing to Ash.
Only the most fundamental question mattered: were those three women a threat, or not?
At Ash's dry question, Siren answered in a fluster.
"Yes! I killed most of them!"
Pointing at a corpse as though showing off a trophy, she went on.
"Look at that cross-section over there. Pretty clean, don't you think? He probably didn't even feel any pain. Actually — when I cut him down, I was referencing one of your videos, Ash nim! The, um, the part at one minute seventeen seconds — you twist your body and do that big horizontal slash! Of course I couldn't copy it properly, but... so? It still came off pretty cleanly, right?"
Like a disciple begging praise from a beloved master, she spewed out her skin-crawling words with a bright, innocent face.
But Ash didn't so much as flinch.
"Let me rephrase the question."
"Ah — yes, yes! Please do!"
"Never mind how you killed them. Why did you?"
"Ah, that's—!"
The two women of Witchcraft clamped their hands over Siren's mouth — but Siren was faster.
"Our intel got leaked!"
"...Intel?"
"Yes! The Nexus Port intel! It was originally transmitted to us alone, but then these people — oh! Those people! You see those corpses over there? They weren't actually Halloween Entertainment people at all. They were from some other Society — I don't know which one — so really this was just, how do I put it, a cleanup? No, wait — counterintelligence?"
Seemingly unaware of what she was even saying, Siren rambled on in a jumble, all the while stealing glances at Ash's reaction.
But it had produced a definite result.
One that could even be called tremendous intelligence.
"Hold on. So you're telling me every one of those corpses down there was an industrial spy?"
Industrial spy.
At the word Jack O'Lantern blurted out, everyone present went pale.
Internal competition within Halloween was one thing — a technology-theft war with outside Societies participating was a matter of an entirely different order.
Before long, this region would inevitably become a contested battleground where the megacorps' proxies ran rampant.
"...So that's why 'Baba Yaga' wasn't with them."
Ifrit glared at Siren, heart-shaped light blazing in her eyes.
Witchcraft had four members.
But only three were gathered here now.
They'd expected a blood-soaked battlefield from the start — so they'd left the Technomancer behind.
"In that case."
Ash let out a low electronic hum.
It drew every eye in the cavern.
"Then you have no reason to bar our road — is that not so?"
The answer came from the woman in white, who had been trimming her nails all this while.
"Right. We've no reason to stop Halloween's people. But that Senior of yours picked a fight out of nowhere, so—"
"That is answer enough."
With that curt reply, Ash turned on the spot and walked back into the dark passage from which he'd come.
A short while later,
Ash emerged again.
This time with a small girl in tow.
"I take it the situation is roughly clear. So we will be on our way. I don't imagine these words suit the act of ferreting out and executing spies — but regardless, you three she-roes have my thanks for your labors."
Ash, entirely unbothered, took Akina's hand and crossed the cavern as casually as a man strolling through his own backyard.
The amusing part was that Akina, glancing endlessly around at her surroundings — and even bowing a hello to Siren at one point — looked utterly bewildered the whole way across.
Then, in passing Ifrit's side, Ash spoke without ceremony.
"Not leaving?"
There was no emotion in the words.
Instead, there was bone in them.
I have no intention of being swayed by your personal grudge. Remember your original purpose. — a silent pressure, pressed home in two words.
She understood exactly what he meant.
That was why she bit her lip.
Forcing down the fury that had been roaring in her chest, Ifrit shot Siren one last glare and shouted.
"Let's go!"
The tension that had seemed ready to detonate at any instant scattered to the winds in that moment. Dullahan and Jack O'Lantern shrugged once each and passed through the cavern after her.
And it was at precisely that moment that Siren, still standing dazed, called out to Ash.
"Wait! Ash nim!"
Somehow, it was a desperate cry.
"You're just — you're just going to walk away like this?"
Somehow, it was also a mournful one.
"We met like this — that's fate, isn't it?"
Ash stopped walking.
Not out of agreement with her words — rather, it was the sense that here was someone whose mental state seemed somehow off, and that silence would be the wrong response to it.
"Was there something left you wished to say?"
At his words, Siren clasped her hands together, fidgeted with her fingers, and flushed pink at the cheeks.
She was beautiful enough that, for a fleeting glance, she might have passed for a woman fallen in love.
But one look at the corpses strewn at her feet, at the blood caked across her entire body, said she was far closer to a madwoman.
Which, in truth, she was.
At last, Siren worked up her courage and opened her mouth.
"If — if it wouldn't be any trouble... could you possibly cross blades with me? Just once. Even just the once."
The two women of Witchcraft buried their faces in their palms.
Ifrit and ROA had no idea what was happening and simply stood there, dumbstruck.
But Ash was not among them.
As he'd seen before — she truly did love the blade.
Her bearing suggested she loved killing things with it rather more, but still.
Ash studied her for a long, silent moment, his gaze boring into her.
Then —
A low electronic hum reverberated through the cavern.
"Your proposal is, in fact, intriguing."
Just as Siren's face began to brighten at the unexpectedly positive response, Ash's words continued.
"But a duel with no stake is nothing but empty exercise. Mere wasteful sport — and I have no intention of joining in a woman's sport."
He paused for a beat, then said quietly, as though a rather amusing thought had just occurred to him.
"So — how about a wager instead? One that could profit us both."
Before anyone noticed, Ash's gaze had come to rest on Siren's arm.
That right arm, with its striking wave-patterned tattoo.