Chapter 68 - The Calm Before the Storm 3

The hem of a black dress brushed silently across the floor as Findriel rose from her seat.

"Leaving?" Ash's low electronic voice sounded.

"I should. I got what I wanted."

Her reply carried the distinct satisfaction of someone who had accomplished her purpose.

Slipping the black gloves she had left on the bar back onto her hands, she said, "Foundation will stand in Vortex's way, but we won't be able to stop every hitman. Unlike Sanctum, the Outer is vast."

"True enough."

"Please kill as many of them as you can."

She spoke as though making a passing remark, but the substance of her words was anything but casual.

"John Priest too, if possible."

Ash rose as well. His massive steel body blocked the rest stop's old lights, casting a shadow. He met the scarlet eyes looking up at him head-on.

"It sounds as though you want me to weaken Vortex."

"Wouldn't that benefit us both?"

Ash merely shrugged. Taking it as some form of agreement, perhaps, Findriel's lips stretched into a broad smile.

Lowering the veil she had lifted over her head, she spoke in a near whisper.

"I enjoyed myself today. I'll see you again."

"Next time, the drinks are on me."

That concluded their conversation. Findriel turned away without hesitation. At her movement, the bodyguards who had stood like statues opened the rest stop's door. Cold air stirred the hem of her dress, and she stepped outside.

Just then.

BANG!

Behind her, something long suppressed burst forth like an explosion, shaking the quiet rest stop. The clamor held down by Findriel's presence seemed to have erupted all at once.

"Hey! How could you bring up the mom thing right then?"

"Was there a problem?"

"A whole fucking lot of them!"

"Eldest Martial Brother, were you in some sort of difficulty?"

"Zero! What did I tell you? I said we should stand behind him like those bodyguards! Presence matters at times like this!"

"Presence. To think I overlooked that. I still have so much to learn..."

"No, Zero. You needn't regret anything of the sort..."

"Oh? Booze! Mister, can I drink this?"

"No."

"Aw, why not? Just let me have a sip!"

"I said no."

A boisterous uproar.

Findriel stopped involuntarily and turned to look through the gap in the open door. Beyond her thin veil, the rest stop had returned to its own noisy, lively world.

The humanoid she had been speaking with moments earlier was arguing with a small girl while holding her hand, while the sword-wearers exchanged opinions about escorts and bodyguards.

Warm.

Noisy.

A scene that, in some ways, seemed full of unguarded openings.

An exchange of feelings of which not even the smallest fragment could be found in her own life.

Findriel kept that clamor within her red-eyed gaze, even as she climbed into the luxury sedan whose door a bodyguard held open.

"... They seem so close."

The words escaped her without thought.

"I'm jealous."

She forced herself to turn away, then spoke quietly toward the driver's seat.

"Drive."

The luxury sedan began to glide forward in silence. The rest stop's cheap neon sign receded farther and farther into the distance.

Findriel turned to look back once more, toward the place she could no longer hear, but where the clamor surely continued even now.

* * *

After sending his companions, who had suddenly swarmed in, back out to the backyard, Ash returned to his seat.

Standing before him, Santa remarked casually as he cleared away the glasses, "Didn't think you'd snap up that ambassador offer."

Ash raised his head to look at the old man.

"Why do you say that?"

"Why else? The timing's bad."

Having put away the glasses, Santa immediately took out an ashtray and lit a cigarette. Tiny red embers broke away beneath the lights.

"As you know, Foundation's about to enter a takeover war with Vortex. Offering you an ambassador position at such a delicate moment..."

"Means they intend to draw me into that war, does it not?"

"... What? You knew?"

Ash nodded slowly.

"Then why did you accept?"

"Because the outcome is the same."

"Huh?"

"The fact remains that we—no, that I must face Vortex. In that case, would it not be better to have a dependable ally? As they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Santa was briefly at a loss for words. He merely let out a small, incredulous laugh and took a deep drag on his cigarette.

"If they're going to use you anyway, you might as well use them for all they're worth?"

"I am simply fulfilling my duties as an ambassador."

"Same difference."

Santa tapped the ash from his cigarette and continued, his artificial eyes gleaming behind his sunglasses.

"Funny thing to say when I'm the one who introduced her, but don't trust that Findriel woman too much. She's a hell of a lot scarier than she looks."

Ash merely nodded at Santa's earnest warning. Then a question occurred to him.

"Master Santa. How long until the active season begins?"

"Hmm. Hard to say. The weather forecasts are all over the place. Less than a week, though, that's for sure. About... four days, maybe?"

"Four days..."

Four days might be a long time to some, but for him, preparing for a threat already at his doorstep, it was scarcely an instant.

"I must hurry the preparations."

Ash's optical sensors glimmered narrowly, as though foreseeing the coming storm.

* * *

The night of Findriel's visit, Ash took Akina to the rest stop's rooftop and had her sit down. Judging that her physical training had given her a sufficient foundation, he had finally decided to teach her the first steps of an internal art.

And now, Ash could not contain his astonishment.

Akina truly was a genius.

"..."

His optical sensors flashed rapidly in disbelief.

In a single hour, Akina had fully grasped the energy of all things—something Zero had barely begun to sense after days and nights without sleep. Her progress far surpassed all common sense, beyond anything Ash had witnessed even in his life in the Central Plains. Calling her a once-in-an-age prodigy would have been no exaggeration.

If only that had been the end of it.

There was a problem.

She was a Technomancer who had undergone cyberbrain conversion.

He could not sense the Hundred Convergences point at the crown of her head, where she should have received the energy of heaven. Nor could he detect the slightest meridian response at the Gum Intersection point in her upper gum or the Receptacle of Fluids point beneath her lower lip, which should have linked the flow of internal energy.

Where the breath of life should have passed through points every human ought to possess, there was only the chill of alloy components.

"Ah..."

This was no mere blockage of energy. Mechanical components had severed the body's meridians completely. It was an absolute, irreversible break.

Never mind circulating energy—it was a wonder she was alive at all.

Suddenly, Ash recalled being told that cyberbrain conversion carried enormous risks.

'Could these severed meridians be the reason?'

To gain a mechanical brain at the cost of severing the very flow of energy that formed the foundation of human life...

Faced with this unforeseen obstacle, Ash let out an involuntary troubled hum.

At the sound, Akina opened her eyes, emerging from meditation.

"Mister, what's wrong?"

As concern flickered in her clear eyes, Ash struggled to compose his tangled feelings.

"Hmm... Miss Akina. The thing is..."

His optical sensors blinked a couple of times. Choosing the gentlest tone he could so as not to hurt her, he spoke in his electronic voice.

"Your body is not suited to learning most of the supreme martial arts I know."

Ash carefully explained what he had discovered about her condition. As a result, all he could teach her was a basic method of energy circulation and breathing, closer to a health-preserving practice than anything else.

But the girl beamed.

"Oh, is that all? You were being so serious, I thought I had some fatal disease! So I can still learn something useful, right?"

Her voice was brighter than ever, as though she were comforting him instead.

"It's fine! I'm a Technomancer, remember? What would I even do with lightning and clouds coming out of a sword? I couldn't use any of that in cyberspace anyway."

At that instant, Ash's optical sensors flashed.

"What did you just say?"

"Huh? Um... it's fine?"

"After that."

"I couldn't use it in cyberspace?"

"Precisely!"

Akina was a Technomancer. Her battlefield, then, was not the physical world.

In that chaotic sea where hundreds of millions, trillions of pieces of data raged like a storm, martial arts were not what she needed to keep from losing herself.

Realizing that simple, obvious truth, Ash spoke hurriedly.

"I have thought of something I can teach you."

"What's that?"

"The Tao."

Ash's voice could not have been more solemn.

Akina, however, was anything but.

"The Tao? What's that?"

That innocent question left Ash momentarily speechless.

What was the Tao?

Could there be a harder question?

"... That is difficult to answer clearly. My own learning is still incomplete. But..."

The humanoid Taoist, looking rather excited, uttered electronic words that sounded like a passage from scripture.

"There is a Taoist teaching: 'Attain utmost emptiness; hold firmly to stillness.' It means to empty yourself and preserve profound tranquility. Empty your mind so that nothing can shake it, and in stillness alone, contemplate all things returning to their source."

"... What does any of that actually mean?"

"It means you may be able to resist the Echo Effect."

At those words, Akina's blue eyes trembled violently. The smile vanished instantly from her playful face. For a Technomancer, the weight of the 'Echo Effect' was greater than that of any sword or bullet.

"That's... possible?"

"I cannot be certain. But it will surely help. It is a teaching about not losing yourself."

Now settled directly in front of Akina, Ash sat cross-legged like her and continued as they faced each other.

"The Clear Mind Stillness Art I am about to teach you was originally a health-preserving practice and Taoist chant used by the Taoists of Kunlun to train their minds. It not only replenishes vitality and keeps the body healthy, but also serves as a form of mental cultivation to keep one from losing oneself."

Akina tilted her head at his explanation. Many of the terms were entirely unfamiliar, but she waited without complaint for him to continue.

"The method is simple. Breathe slowly and focus on my voice, just as you did when sensing the energy of all things."

Shutting off even his optical sensors, Ash began to recite slowly in a low electronic voice. Though it was surely no more than electronic sound flowing from a voice module, it carried a mysterious quality that gently calmed the listener's heart.

"Heaven speaks not, yet shelters all things; earth speaks not, yet bears all things..."

It was no longer the sound of a machine.

It was a melody.

An ancient song passed down across the vast expanse of time.

Akina listened as if entranced. Miraculously, the countless thoughts that had been churning through her mind began to subside as though they had never been there.

Her impatience for revenge.

Her fear of the Echo Effect.

Even her bitterness at her limitations.

All those waves of emotion seemed to sink quietly beneath a tranquil surface.

"The highest good is like water, benefiting all things without contention..."

Sanctum, a city where thousands of noises tangled together.

Following the guidance of the humanoid Taoist, the girl whose brain had been replaced by a machine sank quietly into herself. At some point, Ash's Taoist chant became the only sound Akina could hear.

Above them, the golden aurora enveloping Sanctum was slowly fading, as though dissolving into the night sky.