Same Bed, Different Dreams
>> AKINA: Oh, it connected! Mister! Did you get there safely? Or are you still on the way?
>> ASH: I arrived some time ago. But what brings you to send a voice transmission all this way?
>> AKINA: Hehe. I just wanted to try it. We've never done anything like long-distance comms before, you know? We're always stuck together.
>> ASH: Hm. Fair enough.
>> AKINA: How's Underland? Is it really that different from Sanctum? Like, is it super grimy and gross? All dark and gloomy?
>> ASH: I couldn't speak to the grime, but gloomy it certainly is.
>> AKINA: Hehe. I wanna go see it sometime too. Oh, hey—about that... hmm? What's that noise?
>> ASH: The wind.
>> AKINA: Since when does the wind in Underland sound like gunshots?
>> ASH: It is a strong wind. More importantly, what were you going to say?
>> AKINA: Ah, right. In a little while I'm starting the data transfer with Dullahan oppa, so I won't be reachable. I just wanted to tell you in advance.
>> ASH: I... see.
>> AKINA: Yeah?
>> ASH: ...Safe travels, then. Give my regards to the little one.
>> AKINA: Mister. What are you doing right now? I keep hearing weird sounds.
>> ASH: The wind.
>> AKINA: What, is there a typhoon down there? There's no way an underground city has typhoon-grade... Ah! The oppas are calling me! I'll contact you again once the transfer's done! Bye!
KWAANG!
As Ash closed the comm channel within his system, a hail of bullets came screaming in from behind, and he ducked into the mouth of an alley.
Ta-ta-ta-tang!
The spot where he'd been standing a moment before was riddled like a honeycomb, chunks of wall crumbling away in a whisper of dust.
"Ash, sir! Over here!"
Following Siren's shout, he threw himself into the depths of the narrow alleyway.
The two of them were being hunted. To put it more precisely, they were being chased by a small army of people all bearing the Rest-Men's mark.
Jenny's workshop had been a trap, plain and simple. Ash's decision to vacate the premises immediately had therefore been the right one. But that didn't mean he'd escaped every threat—it only meant he'd moved before the encirclement could properly close.
"Madam. I believe it's time I asked."
"Asked what?"
"Exactly how massive a betrayal you committed. It seems every last Rest-Man in Underland is converging on—"
—They're here! They're over here!
The words weren't even out of his mouth. Above their heads, a Rest-Man standing on a rickety overpass was pointing straight at them, and in the same instant a rising murmur swelled from every direction.
"...Then let's move. Now."
Siren clenched her teeth at those words. Enemies everywhere. At the end of the alley ahead, certainly—but also on the overpass above them, and on the rooftops besides. The city, tangled like a spider's web, was slowly but surely closing its threads around the two of them.
Idiot. Complete idiot.
And Siren knew full well that this entire mess had bloomed from the seeds of her own past.
A few years topside and you forgot everything? This is Underland.
Had living on the surface really wiped it all from her mind? What this place was. How easily things like friendship and loyalty bent, cracked, and betrayed you here.
The thought had no sooner formed than the memory surfaced: herself, bravely volunteering as guide. What on earth had she been so confident in, accepting that commission so blithely?
Look at the situation now. Hadn't she become nothing but dead weight?
Dead weight—to the very 'Ash, sir' she respected more than anyone!
"I'm sorry."
The self-recrimination churning in her chest burst out of her. Even as she sprinted blindly onward, the apologies kept coming.
"I'm sorry, Ash. Because of me—"
At that murmur, Ash glanced over his shoulder and answered. Though his answer was, perhaps, a little beside the point.
"I've been meaning to ask you something. Why do you insist on acting like this?"
"I'm sorry—... I'm sorry, what? What do you mean?"
"Why you only behave this way in front of me. Around everyone else, you seem to have plenty of backbone."
"..."
"And why are you apologizing at all? If anyone owes an apology, it's that woman Jenny. You're the victim here. Same as I am."
Ash turned his gaze forward again.
"So spare me the self-flagellation. You have something more important to do first, don't you?"
As it happened, a fork in the road opened up before them. Ash gestured ahead.
"Which way?"
At his calm question, Siren pushed down the emotions that kept turning the blame back on herself. Ash was right. She had a job to do.
Pathfinder. That was exactly what Siren was for.
"...This way!"
She chose none of the paths at the junction—she already knew every one of them dead-ended. Instead, she picked the massive steel pipelines that crawled out from the buildings' outer walls and spread across the city like a spider's web.
Watching her leap onto the pipeline without a moment's hesitation, Ash floated up lightly after her.
—They're on the airline! Shoot!
Rest-Men opened fire from below, and from rooftops at roughly the same height—but the densely tangled pipelines were as much excellent cover as they were a road.
The two of them ran the pipes like acrobats, skimming along on the very edge of balance, at times vaulting the gaps between buildings entirely.
Suddenly Siren, running ahead, raised one hand and flashed a series of hand signals—the code pathfinders used among themselves.
[ACCELERATE] [LEAP] [RIGHT]
Ash read the meaning in an instant and matched her stride, pushing his speed higher. They arrived at the pipeline's terminus—and the two of them hurled themselves into the air at the same moment.
Whuum!
Two silhouettes cleaved the open air, leaping so far they seemed to tear the atmosphere itself. From below came the Rest-Men's cries of disbelief—because the distance those two had crossed left human capability embarrassingly far behind.
The moment Ash landed on a rooftop that had looked comfortably distant, he was already lunging right, blade sweeping toward a Rest-Man who stared back with a face full of panic.
Shk!
A short, wet whisper of cloth, and the man's body came apart at the waist and dropped. In nearly the same breath, Siren cut down the Rest-Man standing on the left.
"Next?"
"We have to cross there!"
She pointed at the long suspension bridge that connected two buildings across a dizzying gap. It was not a safe road. A dozen-odd Rest-Men had already dug in along the span, muzzles trained in their direction.
Ash's optical sensors flared at the sight.
"I'll take point."
At his word, Siren closed in behind his back without a word of protest. The two swordsmen did not hesitate. Holding their improvised formation, they threw themselves at the bridge.
Ta-ta-ta-tang!
As the torrent of bullets came shrieking in, Ash's sword began to move as if dancing. Deflecting incoming rounds out of the air, he charged headlong into the men holding their ground on the span.
"You insane tin can bas—"
The man at the front was cleaved apart like a sheet of paper before he could finish. Another panicked and jammed his gun up in a hurry, only for Siren's following blade to take his wrist off at the joint.
"AAAAGH!"
Screaming through the pain, the man lost his balance and plunged beneath the bridge—and his figure vanished into the city's darkness in the blink of an eye.
Perhaps that gave someone an idea.
—Push! Shove the bastards off!
One of the Rest-Men bellowed, and at his cry the rest—terror boiling over into strange, strangled shrieks—abandoned their guns and attempted a melee. If a fall meant death either way, they must have reasoned, then grappling was actually the better bet.
It was, as it turned out, a catastrophically wrong calculation.
Close combat on ground as unstable as a suspension bridge was a stage where the gulf in strength and skill revealed itself in the starkest possible terms.
KWAJIK!
A hulking Rest-Man lunging at Ash took a single shoulder strike; his chestplate caved in and he was flung backward off the span, plummeting into the dark below without so much as a scream.
That was the beginning. Ash did not stop.
He swept the bridge like a storm made of blades. Every time his sword drew a horizontal line, someone died—without exception, you could safely say.
Siren was no idler either. She struck with surgical precision at the joints and vitals of anyone who came close, breaking their balance so Ash could punch through all the more easily. And when survivors somehow clung to life in Ash's wake, finishing them was her share of the work too.
"KRAGH!"
A Rest-Man took Siren's kick to the ribs, staggered sideways, and dropped straight off the edge.
And so the two of them advanced, shattering everything that barred their way—until they reached the far end of the bridge.
When at last they crossed over, Siren wiped the blood from her mouth and looked back. Rest-Men were already swarming onto the span in pursuit.
Siren grinned at them.
—Wh-whoa!
—Don't!
—Fuck, don't you DARE!
—STOP!
Siren did not stop. She hoisted her sword high and brought it down on one of the aged support cables holding the bridge aloft.
The old, corroded steel cable swayed drunkenly. The terrified Rest-Men opened up in a frantic hail of fire, but on a bridge pitching and rolling like that, proper aim was a fantasy.
Amid the storm of bullets—all of them missing—Siren swung again. Down came the blade, and down again. And then, at some moment—
Thock.
The cable parted.
—AAAAAARGH!
The bridge, its balance gone, plunged downward with a great scream of tearing metal. Or perhaps that scream belonged to the Rest-Men riding it down.
Only then did Siren let out a dry breath.
"Haah... haah..."
As a cyborg she had no earthly reason to be winded, but the successive waves of desperate, close-pressed combat had left her breathing ragged despite herself. She steadied her breath and spoke to Ash.
"...I think we've lost them, for now."
Sweeping the blood from her blade in a single wide arc, she pointed somewhere deep in the gloom of the city.
"One more block from here, there's a safehouse I used to run. The Rest-Men won't know about it, so let's hole up there first and—"
She was already moving as she explained—and in that instant, Ash stepped into her path.
"Hm? Ash, what is it?"
Siren looked up at him, puzzled. Ash gave no answer. Nor was he even looking at her.
He was staring at a point far away—high up, atop a towering pipeline structure, in a place where the darkness lay thickest of all.
Following his gaze, Siren lifted her head too. A single figure stood there. Upright. Arms folded.
"...A ninja?"
As if he'd heard her murmur, the man spoke.
"A strange turn of events. I came running certain it would be Elder Brother Rudolph—and instead I find two faces I've never seen."
Ash returned the question.
"You know Rudolph?"
"And what, might I ask, is your relation to Elder Brother Rudolph?"
"None at all."
"...Hm. That's not an answer I expected."
"Then—do you intend to keep conversing from up there?"
At Ash's words, the ninja released his stance and vaulted off the structure like an acrobat mid-somersault, his silhouette dropping straight toward the ground. And, uncannily, his landing made no sound at all. Just as Ash's own never did.
"A pleasure to meet you. I don't have anything you'd call a name, so I hardly know how to introduce myself—but at some point, people began calling me this."
The man who had touched down rose and lifted his head.
"Zero. That's what they call me."
So spoke the ninja wearing the tiger's mask.