He gestured at the six men surrounding him. “I have a feeling that isn’t a request?”
“No. But it will be easier on everyone if you come peacefully.”
The air crackled, and a shadow blotted out the sun. Ryu looked up.
Two large figures plummeted from the skyscrapers. They landed to either side of him.
The impact shook the ground and sent webs of cracks rippling through the concrete. They stood head and shoulders taller than him, and were twice as broad. Their polymer-plated armor made them appear even larger. A six-barreled minigun sprouted from a compartment in one’s forearm, though without any feeding belts of ammunition.
The onlookers who had the presence of mind to flee did, though most screamed and cowered as fear rooted them in place.
“On your knees, hands on your head!” one of the new behemoths ordered.
A machine? No, behind the visored helm glared a pair of brown eyes. When Ryu gripped the ground with his toes and reached out through the moisture, he sensed the Core, albeit a weak one, of a living being.
“No!” Captain Oyama grabbed at the one man’s gun, pulling it down.
With a snarl, the giant shoved her away, his brute strength sending her out of the circle of her soldiers and careening into the crowds. He raised his weapon again. “On your knees. Hands on your head.”
Ryu smiled. “Sir, if you shoot and miss, you will hit these bystanders. Or your friend.” He dropped through the beefy arms of the soldier behind him, who’d tried to wrap him up. Ryu back-rolled between his would-be captor’s legs, popped up to his feet, and slapped both palms into the man’s back with Splashing Hands.
The armor shattered, and the man staggered forward, crashing into his comrade. The first extended his arm, and the minigun’s six barrels whined as they started to spin.
Did this man not care for the onlookers? Like all Cultivators on the Water Path, Ryu had trained in the fundamentals of the Metal Path. Metal generated Water, after all, and even untrained initiates started the rudiments of Iron Palm. He dashed in and rooted to the ground. Guiding Qi to his fingers, he knifed his hand into the whirling barrels. The weapon locked up and jolted free of the warrior’s arm mount.
And mangled Ryu’s digits.
Pain blossomed in four fingers. He took a deep breath and calmed his mind with the Water Path’s Placid Pool to block it out. He directed Qi up and down the six Hand meridians and collaterals, sensing the pathways. No broken bones, just a few partially torn ligaments. Gritting his teeth, he yanked his hand back, minigun barrels still entangled in his fingers.
The two huge men stared at him, looked at each other, and after exchanging nods, turned to him. In unison they clenched their fists, and red blades of energy sprouted a meter and a half from their wrists. They closed with admirable speed, attacks coordinated in a flash of lights akin to an old sci-fi movie.
Ryu lifted the minigun into the path of the blades, which severed the metal barrels like a newly sharpened sword through exposed flesh. With the cut so close to his fingers, the weapon’s heavy stock unbalanced his hand. Before the barrels hit the ground, Ryu flipped the minigun remains over. The next hack of the energy blade sliced through the gun’s body.
A flick of his wrist sent pain jolting through his fingers, but dislodged the mangled metal. He executed a back-hand spring and landed out of range. One second was all he needed to focus. With his good hand, he used a Watershaping movement to draw water vapor out of the air. Bending it to his will, it coalesced into a molecule-thin whip and snapped it across the men’s blade emitters. The light blinked out.
In their moment of shock, Ryu used a Crashing Wave shoulder-butt on the closest, shattering his armor and launching him into the second. Both landed in a heap six meters away.
The remaining onlookers gasped.
One of Captain Oyama’s men was first to regain his wits. “Take aim!”
His comrades came out of their stupor and levelled their weapons at him. If they were so foolish as to fire, and he jumped over or ducked under the barrage, six innocent bystanders would be injured.
“No!” Captain Oyama’s voice came out weak from among the crowd.
“Fire!”
The Code of Rivers and Lakes necessitated Ryu protecting the innocents, even if it meant getting hit. He reached into the fold of his robes and plucked a green Core Fortifying Pill from the interdimensional space in his internal pocket. He flicked the glowing green pearl into his mouth and swallowed. Warmth filled him, energizing his meridians and strengthening his Core.
Six beams of blue light shot out. As a Cultivator of the Path of Water, channeling the Path of Wood came easily. He rooted to the ground and sank his stance. The energy surged through him, like the time when he was a stupid child and stuck a fork into an electrical outlet. He buckled to his knees. The edges of his vision blurred as all faded to black.
Chapter 3:
The Hacker
E ighteen-year-old Aya was Earth’s greatest criminal, and nobody even knew.
Not her parents, who tried to pretend she didn’t exist, while lavishing affection on her sister.
Not the Sentinels, Repairers, Filers, and Operators which mistook her for one of them inside the EtherCloud.
After all, they never saw her real body, the one which had the dubious distinction of belonging to the only XHuman who ever hacked up phlegm.
Turned out, she was quite good at a very different kind of hacking, as well.
So much that she was one of only three or four civilians who’d seen
