A Difference in Values
The sight of a man in a snow-white chef's coat charging straight at us — that was the feint. The correct answer, right now, was to stay exactly where we were.
If we attacked as he closed the distance, he would turn his ability on us and cut us down. If we fell back instead, he would unleash it on everything around us and raze the ground itself. Either way, holding still was the only right move.
"Sapi!!"
Lebetri was planning to use her specialty — the Linear Leap — to close the gap in a blink and take his head. I simply stretched out a hand, sealing off the space she needed to launch. Every beat of it was the future I had already seen through my Foresight Eye.
"What are you doing?"
"..."
I kept my eyes on the man ahead, reading his next move. Sure enough, he slammed his charge to a halt — and the instant he did, I shifted hard to the side and pulled the pistol from my hip.
Bang!!
I fired. He swatted the round out of the air with his Chinese cleaver. But killing him with the gun had never been the point — the shot had done its job the moment his gaze turned to chase it.
Fwoosh!!
Sand whipped up around us as Lebetri tore into her Linear Leap at a speed no ordinary human could have hoped to follow. Her eyes were different this time — set hard with resolve. The same eyes she'd worn the first time we met, back when she fought that monster.
But the attack failed.
Fwaaahh—!
A crushing torrent of water pressure erupted around the man.
"Guh...!"
A water cannon — a shoving tool, nothing more, meant to knock her back. It wouldn't be a mortal wound, which meant she had to keep her head in the fight.
"Ha... there, a small demonstration of my ability. I am an ability user who commands water..."
"Is what you'd like everyone to believe. Not quite."
"I'm sorry?"
"Your ability reproduces the functions of cooking tools. The tool you were borrowing this time was a faucet nozzle. Paul White."
"How... do you know my ability? My name...?"
Paul's eyes wavered, and even the ease at the corner of his mouth drained away. Face someone who knew your name and your power, and anyone would arrive at the same thought — that the hunter and the hunted might have traded places.
And that was enough. Two seconds, while Paul's mind stood frozen. Information bought with the Foresight Eye was best spent in doses exactly that small. I looked at Lebetri.
"Sword!!!"
Before the word had even left my mouth, the beam saber came spinning in and smacked down into my open palm.
Thwack.
I closed my hand around the hilt and glanced back at her. "Thanks. I'll praise you later."
With that, I charged Paul, saber in hand, hammering him with an unbroken chain of strikes.
"Khh...!"
He had a means to finish me in one stroke. He just couldn't afford to play it. Open Burner Range — the technique that turned the entire floor into a colossal stove burner and incinerated everything for yards around. But with me pressed in this close, using it would only mean roasting himself to death alongside me.
My swordsmanship is nothing genius. But which lines he guards and which lines he opens — that was all laid out in the palm of my hand. When you walk into a fight already holding every answer, how much can a gap in technique possibly matter?
So what will you do now? Because as for me — past this point, I'm out of futures to watch. All that's left is the gamble.
I deliberately let a monstrous killing intent bleed off me, pouring every ounce of strength into my arm. Make him believe this was the single blow that would end it all — and I'd won.
"You're nothing but ingredients..."
Paul bent the water to wall off every line my blade's current arc could cut. Trouble was, none of those were my target. I hurled the beam saber clean over Paul's head.
In every future I could see, Lebetri wasn't there. But my gut said that if it was her, she'd come from this side anyway. If you're the one who builds futures I've never seen — then come!
"Got it!"
"Time to show that specialty of yours again, Lebetri."
Boom!!
A detonation cracked the air as Lebetri's boosters flung her forward, snatching the saber out of its flight. A sandstorm erupted from the spot she'd vacated, swallowing her movement whole.
The grit sheeted over Paul's face and his pristine coat — and in that instant, the wall of water shielding him caved in, pathetically easy. Just as I thought. The condition for his ability was cleanliness.
Paul's eyes scrambled a beat too late, groping for a counter.
"Wasn't this supposed to be a quality inspection?"
"What?"
I looked at him, letting a crooked smile pull at my mouth.
"Results are in. You've got no place standing in a kitchen."
Lebetri moved to take his head —
"Spare me!!"
Paul groveled, begging for his life on the spot. Jolted by it, Lebetri checked her swing, leveling the beam saber at his throat instead. Caving this fast... how spineless.
Blade still at his neck, she said only one thing. "Don't move."
Paul reached for something — of course he did. But he was caked head to toe in sand now, about as far from clean as a man could get. Which meant his ability was out of reach. If we spared him, we'd only have to fight him again someday. Still — better safe than sorry. Let me ask her.
"Are we sparing him?"
"He's begging for his life. It's just... pitiful."
"..."
Lebetri's gaze wavered. Her eyes weren't really on Paul anymore — they were fixed on something beyond him, as if she'd laid her old self over his body and was looking straight through it.
Truthfully, if it weren't for her, I'd have killed him on the spot.
"Fine. We'll let him live."
"Really?"
"But..."
Bang!!
I put a round through Paul's right leg, fully intending to shatter it.
"What are you doing?!"
"Now he can't come after us. And it's nothing a little treatment won't fix."
That was a lie. I'd downplayed the severity of my own shot for her benefit — wound care was my field, after all, and she didn't know the first thing about it. I holstered the gun and turned my back. One look at her, and after a long last glance at Paul, she fell in behind me.
For a long while, the only sound between us was our footsteps, and a hot wind dragged itself across the wasteland. Sand swallowed us to the ankles while the sun hammered down on our heads without mercy. We couldn't stop. We couldn't afford to.
Only one thing stayed razor-sharp in my head: we must not be late. Not before the flies came buzzing in thicker... Just a little farther. Head south, and the Fairy Forest would be waiting.
"Somebody, please — save me!"
A child's cry for help. The right move was to ignore it and keep walking.
Lebetri had already turned toward the sound — toward a place you could only call what used to be a village. Most of the houses lay nearly half-buried in sand, nothing left above the wasteland but rooftops and splinters of wall. And I already knew exactly what she'd do next.
"Let's check that place out."
"No."
"Why not?"
"We need to reach the Fairy Forest fast."
Lebetri considered it for a moment.
"There could be water. Food. And like last time, maybe even artifacts."
"The Forest is worth more. And villages like this don't have any of that."
"You haven't even looked."
"It's a hunch."
I knew how little logic that held. Which was exactly how rattled I'd become.
"You're not the type to argue from hunches."
"I decided to start today."
"Liar."
Lebetri pivoted and set off — not south, but for the village.
"We don't have time."
"How long does a quick look around take?"
"That quick look is what could make us late."
"And if we're late, then what?"
"..."
To tell her what would happen if we were late, I'd have to start by explaining how I knew. I sighed and let the thought turn over. Fine. Let this be a lesson, then — a chance to show her just how stupid that soft-hearted thinking of hers really was.
"Fine. Let's go."
"Thank you."
"..."
We ran for the village. From somewhere inside a collapsed building, the child's voice rose again.
"Please, save me!"
"Where's the voice coming from?"
"Follow me!"
We'd come this far vowing to save the kid, so the rescue itself, at least, had to be quick. This building — half of it swallowed by the earth — was where the child was trapped.
"Here, Lebetri."
She tried the door, but sand and a mound of stone had it wedged shut. She channeled power through the new output unit mounted on her prosthetic arm and heaved — rocks and sand came cascading down. A single child lay buried beneath the rubble. At the sight, Lebetri swept the debris away in a rush.
"Hey, kid. You okay?"
"Thank y—"
But in the very breath of that thanks, the child's eyes flooded with greed — and locked onto the hammer artifact.
Grab!
The kid snatched it up and bolted, then skidded to a panicked halt at the sight of me in the entrance. So I deliberately left an opening — a lane of escape, wide and inviting. And just like that, the kid fled off into the distance.
The hammer artifact wasn't something we truly needed. Worse, judging by its weight, hauling it around would only dull Lebetri's specialty — the Linear Leap. I laid it all out for her, certain she'd understand.
"See that? We save them, and the very first thing they steal is your property."
"I guess so."
"'I guess so'? That's it?"
She watched the child shrink into the distance. Watching her in turn, I said:
"Helping someone doesn't mean they'll come back to you good."
"I know."
Lebetri answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Helping is my choice."
"..."
"And I've been through this already — over and over. Even so, this is the choice I make."
"No... you really do sound like you've lived it."
"What?"
"Nothing. Just... a feeling I get."
The words jammed in my throat. In a world this broken — this filthy, this every-man-for-himself — thinking like that, so righteous and so naive, no one but her could survive it...
Seeing the look on my face, Lebetri said:
"Artifacts can be found again. If we hadn't gone, that child would have died."
Wrong — they wouldn't have. If anything, Lebetri, you're the one who killed them. The future as it was meant to run had that righteous fool saving this child. And you changed it.
By now, that kid has been marked by the ones hunting us — that hammer artifact must have caught their eye. And so they'll be caught, and slaughtered. You have no idea what a stupid stunt like that costs, Lebetri.
Saving the child wouldn't be hard. If I turned and ran back right now, I could still do it. The problem was the time it would burn — and every second of delay pushed up the odds that Lebetri would die. So there was nothing to agonize over. Between the child and Lebetri, I would save Lebetri. The answer had been decided from the very beginning.
The longer the thoughts circled, the harder I bit down on my lip. I need her. She has to stay alive. And for that, I could afford to throw away a child or two. But you — you probably never could.
We really do live by different values, the two of us.