Dead or Alive
The word break carried a certain promise of peace and quiet, but the reality of the Rest Period was closer to the opposite.
The Rest Period was, in fact, when Sanctum was at its most alive. The reason was simple: the tens of thousands of pathfinders who should have been out in the Outer were all stuck in the city with nothing to do.
Merchants, prostitutes, con artists — they all spilled out onto the streets to court the pathfinders, hungry for the credits those men and women had bled to earn. Beneath the glittering neon signs, the shouts of drunks and the pulsing beat of pleasure-hungry music never ceased. A boiling cauldron of noise where chaos and revelry blurred into one. That was Sanctum's Rest Period.
The same was true of Santa's Rest Stop — with one clear difference. The noise that filled the place was not throbbing music, nor drunken laughter. There was only one sound that ruled the Rest Stop.
CLANG! KA-RANG!
The icy-blue shriek of steel grinding against steel.
"Don't give ground! Hold the line, Zero!"
"Easier said than done—!"
Between the short exchanges of speech, Ash's blade flashed. It was a simple horizontal slash, but the crushing weight behind it was anything but ordinary.
"Ngh!"
Zero, meeting the blade head-on, staggered — but he did not give way. That was the role of the Celestial Position in the Three-Point Formation.
"Wolf!"
At Zero's shout, the hulking Wolf surged to his side and barred the crashing blade. Their boots dug deep furrows into the packed dirt as they were driven backward — until at last, they held.
And that split second of endurance was an opening for someone.
SHWAAK!
A sharp blade thrust suddenly out between the two brothers. Anna had carved in from the flank and slipped her quick sword through the gap. At the same moment, Levina, claiming the opposite side, hurled a dagger.
Left. And right. A beautifully timed pincer striking from both sides at once.
"Hoh."
Facing it, Ash let out a short breath of admiration. He was clearly pleased with the combination. Of course, that didn't mean it was unavoidable.
In an instant, Ash's feet traced an uncanny arc across the ground, and his massive steel frame blurred like a phantom — slipping the supposedly airtight pincer by a paper's width.
The flawless-looking joint assault from Anna and Levina carved nothing but empty air.
And yet — why was it, that both women smiled at once?
"NOW!"
The moment Anna's cry rang out, a shadow rippled. Leto, who had smothered his presence the entire time and waited for his moment. As though he had existed in that very spot from the beginning, he swung his short sword at the exact place Ash had dodged to.
"···!"
Ash's optical sensors flickered. To keep the least martially gifted of them — Leto — as the final, decisive blow. It was a fresh play that even Ash had never considered.
"Haha! Not bad at all!"
Evidently delighted by the unexpected trick, Ash laughed out loud and thrust his blade straight at Leto's oncoming sword.
THWAM!
With a heavy bursting sound, Leto was flung a good distance away — twice the speed he'd come in with.
"Leto!"
"Levina! Levina!"
"Everyone, where are you looking?"
Just as they wavered at the sight of Leto flying away, Ash — stance already set — wrenched his hips around with almost violent force and swept his blade in a wide horizontal arc.
"The spar isn't over yet!"
It was no ordinary sword strike. The blue lightning coursing along the blade exploded outward in a vast fan.
KRRRR-BOOM!
A roar like the sky splitting open. Simultaneously, a ferocious shockwave engulfed the training ground like a typhoon.
"Kgh!"
"AAAGH!"
Zero and Wolf up front — Anna and Levina striking from the flanks. Everyone was swept up in that overwhelming wave of force and scattered into the air like autumn leaves.
KA-THUD-THUD!
Dust blossomed up all around. The killing intent that had filled the training ground drained away in an instant, leaving nothing behind but ragged breathing and low groans.
At the center of the chaos, Ash let his blade hang loose and checked the chronometer floating in his system window.
"Four minutes, thirteen seconds. Such progress in barely a week. Truly commendable."
Clearly pleased with the result, Ash nodded deeply and sheathed his blade. One by one, Team Blaze — sprawled across the ground — rose to their feet with faint groans.
"Uuugh···."
"Wow. I genuinely thought I was going to die."
"Still — we've finally broken into the four-minute range, haven't we?"
"Hehe. We have, haven't we?"
Brushing the dirt off themselves halfheartedly, they gathered in front of Ash. He swept his gaze slowly across their faces. They were a filthy, battered mess — but their eyes blazed bright.
"Zero."
"Yes, Eldest Senior Brother."
"As I've told you before, your flaw is that you're too honest for your own good. Holding the Celestial Position doesn't mean you must receive force head-on. At times, you must know how to let it flow past."
"···I will remember, sir."
Zero, his face caked with dust, nodded gravely.
"Next, Wolf. Moving forward at the critical moment was sound judgment."
"Haha! Really, now?"
"However."
Ash cut through his laughter.
"Once one move is finished, you must already be thinking of the next. Had you been even a little faster, you could have joined Leto in a combined strike at the final moment. That, I confess, was a shame. Mind it next time."
"···Ah."
Wolf's head bobbed in a huge nod, something clearly having clicked.
"Understood, sir!"
"Next — Anna. And Levina. A truly seamless combination."
Ash paused briefly, then continued in a gentler tone.
"That said, your breathing fell out of sync by the barest sliver at the moment of the joint strike. A faint time lag, shall we say. Adjust that gap alone, and you'll have a far more vicious combination on your hands."
"Uuu. The timing's a little tricky, you know. Would you go a bit easier on us, Eldest Senior Brother?"
"Whenever you wish."
"Levina! He says he'll go easy on us!"
Anna said with a wide grin. Levina bowed her head silently in thanks.
Finally, Ash's gaze settled on the end of the line — on Leto, who alone had been sent flying far afield.
"And last of all, Leto."
At the sound of his name, Leto flinched and looked up. The sunglasses hid his eyes, but tension was plain on his pale face all the same. Ash studied him for a moment, then spoke.
"Your footwork has come a long way, I see. Just now, I truly thought you'd sprung up out of the earth itself."
He even raised a hand, thumb pointed skyward.
"Your patience in killing your presence and biding your time — and the decisiveness of your strike the instant you saw your opening. Nothing to fault. Truly excellent."
Beneath the torrent of praise, Leto blinked rapidly for a moment — and then the boy's pale face flushed scarlet in a heartbeat. His introverted nature was evidently intact.
"Whoa, hey."
"Only the youngest gets complimented — feeling good, are you?"
Anna and Zero, who had been watching, called out teasingly. Wolf too, grinning ear to ear, thumped Leto on the back — bang, bang.
"Feeling good, hm? Hm? Well?"
The shy Leto, utterly at a loss, buried his head even deeper — but he couldn't quite hide the smile hanging at the corner of his mouth.
The burning heat of their brutal training melted into something warm, and that warmth spread across the training ground. That was the very moment Akina appeared.
BANG!
The back door of the Rest Stop flew open roughly.
"U-Uncle! Uncle Ash!"
She came sprinting toward him, PDA clutched in one hand, running fast enough to leave her gasping for breath. None of her usual mischief remained — only something that looked desperately urgent.
"Oh, Akina?"
Perhaps because of that, the lively atmosphere of the training ground sank in an instant. Ash lowered his stance to meet her, as she arrived before him before he knew it.
"What's the matter? Did something hap—"
Before he could even finish, Akina thrust the PDA's screen into his face.
"Look at this, look at this! Hurry!"
"Hm?"
His teal optical sensors turned to the screen. On the small display floated the request board that most pathfinders frequented.
"···The request board, I see. Looking for a bit of work, were you?"
Ash asked casually, thinking that with the Rest Period on, unable to go out to the Outer, she must have been browsing for jobs. But Akina shook her head violently. The girl's blue eyes trembled hard.
"No! It's not that! That's not the point — here! The red tab! Look at the emergency WANTED tab!"
Her shaking finger pointed at the top of the screen. Ash's gaze followed her fingertip. And in that instant — his optical sensors flickered furiously.
It was no ordinary list of requests. A red notice pinned to the very top of the board, its letters red as blood:
PIIIIIIIEEEE···.
A shrieking ring tore through his ears — a screech like an awl drilling into his eardrum.
"Hh—hhk—!"
Bark leaned his back against the damp wall, gasping for breath. The stench of blood and rotting sewage stabbed at his nose, but he lacked even the strength to gag — all he could do was keep wheezing out shallow, dry breaths.
Raising a trembling hand, he felt at his face. Damp. And sticky. Damp and sticky because of the blood streaming down from every corner of it — the trickle that had started at his left ear now soaked through his jaw and down to the nape of his neck.
But the eye was worse. His left eye was gone. Not merely darkened — the artificial eye had truly been torn out.
FZZT. FZZ-ZZT.
Sparks spat intermittently from the hollow socket, and each time, a skull-splitting headache crashed over him.
WARNING: SYSTEM CRITICAL
NEURAL LINK UNSTABLE
Perhaps that was why even the warning messages floating above his one remaining eye swam, blurred and doubled. His neural network was screaming — and each scream brought a headache bright enough to whiten the world before him.
But worse than the pain of his body was the regret that kept bubbling up, unbidden.
What a sight I am, huh. Like a goddamn idiot.
Bark sneered. Sneered at himself. What the hell had he been unable to let go of, that he'd done this? He could have just gone on living as he always had — stabbing a few backs here, running a few surveys there, groveling like the little rat he'd always been. If he'd just kept living the way he'd always lived, he wouldn't be in this state. If he'd just—
"Honestly, I'd come to think of you as a rather decent man."
"···Fuck."
Ash's voice seemed to coil around his ears. Why was that flat, mechanical tone so impossible to forget? Bark ground his teeth. That bastard's words — a decent man — were the whole problem.
"···Heh, heh-heh···!"
Spilling a laugh that meant nothing, Bark spat a mouthful of bloody phlegm onto the ground.
"They say a man who does what he's never done won't die a natural death. Guess the old folks were never wrong once."
No regrets. No — actually, he did regret it. Beyond all reason.
TAP. TA-TAP.
Then — footsteps echoed from the mouth of the alley. Not one set. Three. Maybe four. The muffled weight of the sound said cyberware — four passersby whose legs had been replaced too. Or rather, four pathfinders on his trail.
"Shit. You people really are fast as hell, every last one of you."
Cursing under his breath, Bark pushed himself up against the wall. His legs wouldn't take proper force and he swayed — but he couldn't stop. If he stopped here, he died. Or worse — he'd suffer something for which dying outright might be the mercy.
Flaring his right artificial eye, Bark hurried his battered body onward, pressing himself deeper into the dark, darker alley.
Thinking of Team Blaze. Turning over that warm, warm glow in his mind.