The Cloud Dragon Emerges (2)
> [DATA RECALL: Sanctum Pamphlet]
> [DATA RESEARCH . . . NOW<<<]
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[END OF DATA RECALL]
"Old man!"
Akina's voice cut through the air, and Ash's mind snapped back to the present.
Sanctum.
The Gateway District.
That was where they stood.
"What are you standing around gawking at?"
Akina tugged at his steel hand.
"I was merely looking for a moment. The sight is strikingly unfamiliar."
"Hehe! It's dazzling, isn't it?"
Ash could not tear his eyes away from the panorama of Sanctum spread before him.
"...Indeed, it is."
The city unfolding before Ash was unlike any place he had ever known.
It was a city that made its own light.
Buildings rising dozens of stories pierced the sky in bizarre, fantastical shapes, and the screens and lettering plastered across their surfaces blazed in five riotous colors, seizing the eye at every turn.
And the spectacle did not stop at the scenery.
The surging crowds were every bit as resplendent. Nearly every one of them carried some piece or another of cyberware — arms, legs, even eyes catching the light. People whose flesh had been replaced wholesale with gleaming metal or carbon hurried along the roads, busy and purposeful.
To Ash's eyes, it looked for all the world like a procession of ghosts. A rather quaint impression, next to the fully mechanical humanoids.
But the splendor was only skin deep.
What truly seized Ash's gaze was something else entirely.
The people passing by him even now, this very moment.
The strange heat radiating from those countless bodies — that was it.
The Sanctum of the data cards had been an arena of desperate, wretched struggle. A hell where every moment was tormented by credits, where lives were sold by the won and the price wrung out in full.
And yet — look at this.
Not a single passerby had dead eyes. If anything, there was a bizarre vitality here he had never encountered before.
It was not an energy born of peace or comfort.
It was a life that bloomed from desperation — like a lamp on the verge of going out burning everything it had, one final time.
And so Sanctum overflowed with life.
It even gave the illusion that everything on the street was alive and moving.
"Truly, a wondrous world."
It was too dry to be admiration, too warm to be scorn — a complicated, weary lament.
"Old man!"
Akina roused him again, and Ash moved his stalled steel feet, letting the girl's hand lead him into the crowd.
Into that strange, feverish heat.
How long had they walked the main street of the Gateway District? At last, they arrived.
A violet neon sign flickered overhead, as if to welcome their footsteps.
When he pushed through the old iron door beneath the sign, faint music drifted out to meet them — rock music, utterly foreign to Ash's ears.
"Miss Akina."
"Yes?"
"Is this the right place?"
"Yep. This is it. Why?"
"I was told this was an inn and tavern, was I not?"
"What's an inn and tavern?"
"A tavern. A place that sells drink."
"It is a bar, though?"
"...If so, it appears little different from your workshop, Miss Akina."
And in truth, it was.
It looked nothing like what one would picture at the words 'bar' or 'tavern.'
The interior was far more spacious than the exterior suggested — but that wide space was crammed to the rafters with every manner of junk imaginable.
One wall was lined with cyberware of every description.
The opposite wall, with firearms.
On top of that, vehicle parts and bare engines alike lay draped beneath oil-stained cloths.
But surely they still had alcohol?
They did.
Behind the counter sat cheap whiskey bottles and beer bottles — perhaps ten in total, all counted.
"...".
It was, one might say, a profoundly wrong ratio. But rather than voice it, Ash resolved to observe first.
Just then.
Voices drifted out from behind the counter.
"Ah! AAAgh! Old man! It hurts! Are you even listening to me?"
"I don't listen to men weaker than myself."
"What the hell is that supposed to— AAAgh!"
"Almost done. Bear with it."
"Then at least put on some music! My ears are killing me!"
"What was that? Can't hear you?"
"AAAgh!"
An incomprehensible exchange.
They stepped a little deeper inside and peered behind the counter.
There lay a man sprawled on a crude medical bed, and an old man fitting cyberware into his arm.
"Grandpa Santa!"
At Akina's shout, the old man glanced over — saw Ash standing beside her, then turned his head back toward Akina.
A brief silence.
Then the old man smacked his own forehead.
"Damn it all. You went and did it after all. This mouth of mine is my own worst enemy."
Grumbling to himself, the old man bellowed:
"You! Stay right there! Don't you go anywhere!"
Old man Santa dug into his 'customer's' forearm with renewed enthusiasm, and the man's screams grew louder still.
Rock music and screaming.
The two blended together in strange harmony.
"Miss Akina."
Ash called to her then.
"Yes?"
"Is that elder the one you sought?"
"That's him."
"...I was told he kept a tavern. Why, then, does he perform cyberware procedures?"
Akina thought for a moment before answering.
"Hmm... because he can?"
"Oh?"
"Grandpa Santa knows how to do lots of things. They say he picked it all up back in his pathfinder days. So he sells weapons, fixes cars, does surgery, installs cyberware... anyway, that's how it is."
Why, out of all those many skills, was selling alcohol never among them, one wondered. It was beyond knowing.
While Ash and Akina traded this brief conversation, Santa finished the procedure and emerged from behind the counter.
"Damn it! Don't you ever come back!"
He flipped off the grumbling customer on his way out, then clamped a cigarette between his lips and lit it.
At the same time, his gaze settled on Ash.
"Hi, Grandpa!"
"You say hi? Well, I'm about as far from hi as a man can get."
Santa answered Akina without ever turning his eyes away.
And so Ash met his gaze in return.
He was, truly, a flamboyant old man.
A head shaved clean, a white beard trimmed short. A skull-shaped earring on one ear, and black sunglasses besides.
And what of the silk shirt embroidered with riotous floral patterns? It was so loud that staring at him for long left one utterly unsure where to rest one's eyes.
"...".
"...".
But Ash's stare was not on account of the attire alone.
The cybernetic body glimpsed beneath the flashy silk shirt was no crude, slapdash aftermarket job. Even one glance made clear that it was finely honed, top-grade cyberware.
Above all, there was the subtle flow of electromagnetic fields emanating from the cyberware that wrapped his entire frame.
The power of that 'electricity' Ash had only lately begun to sense was telling him: the old man before him was no ordinary figure.
A presence dense and solid, wholly at odds with the frivolity of his appearance.
Ash's optical sensors flared to life.
He is no ordinary man.
Reading the old man's dress and his eyes, Ash reached that conclusion.
"...So. This is your answer, then?"
Santa spoke at last.
Akina beamed.
"Yep! Introduce yourselves. This is Grandpa Santa. This is Old Man Ash."
Ash stepped forward slightly and bowed.
"I am called Ash."
At the unexpectedly archaic greeting, Santa cocked an eyebrow.
"Santa Claude. Bartender."
After the short exchange, both men fell silent once more. It was a subtle contest of nerves, each taking the other's measure.
But there was a girl entirely deaf to such things.
"Enough of that! You remember what you said before, Grandpa? Write my recommendation letter. Now."
Santa's brow furrowed.
Only then did he draw his gaze away and look at Akina.
"So. You're really set on becoming a pathfinder?"
"Obviously!"
"...With one scrap-metal humanoid for a teammate?"
"Old Man Ash is NOT scrap metal! Do you know how well he fights?"
Cupping both hands, Akina reenacted the battle with the Restman, mimicking Ash from the night before.
"And then he went like this! And — whoosh, shwick-shwick — and the guy got cleaved right in two! No, seriously, can you even believe that? Cutting a man in half with a pipe? Isn't that amazing? Isn't it incredible? So hurry up and write my recommendation letter."
Santa, who had been watching the little girl's adorable performance, grimaced. Then he smacked his forehead again.
"Aigoo... this mouth of mine. All talk, all talk. Why on earth did I ever make a promise like..."
For a long while he grumbled on.
The substance of his complaints was simple enough.
It seemed he had once promised Akina that if she brought back a 'useful teammate,' he would write her the recommendation needed for a pathfinder license.
No pathfinder in his right mind would team up with this young girl — so he had figured she'd give up on her own.
And yet, look at this.
The girl had gone and 'manufactured' her own teammate and hauled him in.
After muttering to himself for a while, Santa abruptly lifted his head, as if something had just struck him. He had found the blind spot in the bargain he had set.
He addressed Ash.
"Right. Ash, was it?"
"That is so, Elder Santa."
"Is Akina telling the truth?"
"Regarding what, may I ask?"
"That you're a useful teammate."
The answer was simple.
All Ash had to do was prove useless.
"You've heard the story, so you know. This girl means to make you her teammate and become a pathfinder. Frankly, I'm not thrilled about it. The Outer is about as brutal a place as they come."
Ash nodded.
"I concur. In truth, I only just learned myself that Miss Akina's purpose was to become a pathfinder."
"...Oh yeah? Well, that's convenient!"
Color returned to Santa's face.
The matter seemed likely to resolve itself far more easily than expected. What could be better than the scrap-metal humanoid withdrawing of his own accord?
But.
Ash's next words flew clean past his expectations.
"However, nothing changes."
His electronic voice was low, and resolute.
"I owe Miss Akina a debt. Should a man not repay the grace that was given him? Becoming a pathfinder was indeed beyond my expectations — but I am bound to repay this debt, and so I have no reason not to walk with her."
At this recitation, Santa's jaw hung open.
Then he turned to Akina.
"...Why the hell does your friend talk like that?"
"He has that side to him, doesn't he."
Santa shook his head, then spoke to Ash once more — his tone harder this time, nothing like before.
"Ash. Is it really worth insisting on?"
"It is."
"I see... Then there's no helping it."
Santa organized his thoughts.
This had never been how he'd intended things to play out.
"Akina."
"What!"
"You remember the deal, don't you? Bring back a 'useful comrade,' and I'd write the recommendation."
"Obviously!"
"A comrade, fine. Okay. Accepted. But now we have to establish whether he's actually useful, don't we?"
"That's what I've been telling you! He took apart a Restman all by himself—"
"Words alone don't tell me a damn thing, do they?"
Santa rose from his seat.
And he removed his sunglasses.
Eyes of machine-made glass flared with a cold, brilliant light.
"Come outside. Let's see just how useful you are."