That actually didn’t sound like the worst idea in the world. It would keep me from sitting around in the dark running through the last few hours over and over again, trying to wring some sense out of it.
“All right,” I said. “I’m gonna take a shower first.”
“Should do.” Warcry paused in scrubbing the blood off his mouth. “You look like some right handsome Burning Hatred cultivator gave you a bad dose of what you had coming.”
That surprised a laugh out of me. I couldn’t remember ever hearing Warcry crack a joke before. He smirked down at the sink like he was proud of that one.
I headed for the stairs.
“Oi, me room’s the one with the door shut,” he called after me. “Stay out of it!”
I found my stuff in a room at the opposite end of the hall from Warcry’s. Maybe Sanya-ketsu had let the servants know he and I couldn’t be in close proximity for too long without killing each other.
Whichever servant had brought in my stuff from the transport ship hadn’t had a very big job—the only thing I owned was an extra set of clothes. I used to have a shopping bag, too, to keep them in, but that high-class piece of luggage must’ve gotten trashed when the servants folded them and put them away.
The extra shirt and pants hadn’t been washed since Van Diemann, but they were cleaner than what I had on. I really needed to pick up some more clothes sometime. Having another set had seemed like a luxury after a month in what I’d had on when I died, but that wasn’t going to cut it now that I was supposed to be killing people for the Emperor all the time.
I dug the Proving Forge elixir out of my pocket and set it on the dresser, grabbed the cleaner clothes, then headed into the attached bathroom.
Sushi tried to swim in after me.
“Yeah, this isn’t happening.” I put my palm on her forehead and pushed her back into the bedroom. She strained against it, trying to shove her way back in.
“Sushi swims!” she yelled like a little kid throwing a fit.
“Not in Hake’s shower, she doesn’t. Not anymore.” It hadn’t seemed like a big deal for her to splash around in the water when I thought she was just a pet fish, but now that I knew she had a humanoid form—a gut-checkingly hot one—it was too weird. “You stay out here.”
She blew a raspberry at me, then swam over and flopped on the bed to pout.
After the shower, while I got dressed, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and had to stop and wipe the condensation off so I could see better. How normal I looked surprised me. Sandy hair, green eyes, on the wiry side. Almost exactly like I had when I was alive, just with some fading vine-whip scars on the left side of my face and more muscle mass. With his bad eyes, Gramps probably wouldn’t even notice the difference. Even Dad, who hadn’t seen me in almost eight years, would still know it was me.
I shook my head and pulled on my shirt. I don’t know what I’d expected. Something different, I guess. Someone unrecognizable.
When I got back downstairs, Warcry had cleaned himself up, too, changed and shaved his perpetual five-o’clock shadow.
Somewhere he’d found a leather motorcycle jacket to wear.
“Pretty cold out,” I said. “Do you think that’ll keep you warm enough?”
“Piss off.” He closed out of the video he’d been watching on his HUD. “Took you long enough. The fights’re probably sold out already.”
Lad’s Night
THE KOKUGIKAN WAS A fifteen-minute walk from Soulhome, a huge concrete building surrounded by smaller night clubs and bars all lit up with flashing neon. People filtered back and forth between the businesses there, buying drinks from walk-up windows, joining dice games on the sidewalk, or heading back into the arena to watch the fights.
“IFC qualifying?” I read off the marquee.
Warcry shrugged his leather jacket up higher. “Most a’ these capital city operations claim they are. The IFC lets ’em ’coz every now and then they turn out a decent contender.”
The fights were already in full swing when we made it inside, and it was standing room only. Warcry and I had to elbow our way onto the walkway behind the nosebleed seats. Luckily, there were Jumbotron-style screens hanging from the ceiling, so we could see the action.
IFC sanctioned or not, the place definitely seemed more legit than the last fighting pit we’d been to—the Heavenly Contrails’ Beauty vs. Beasts broadcasting location. The fighters walked in on their own instead of being dragged in from cages, and they wore shorts and gloves similar to what MMA fighters on Earth wore. No one looked like they were being held against their will, which made it a lot easier to enjoy the show.
I bought a couple greasy taco things from one of the vendors wandering the stands and offered one to Warcry. He turned it down. His attention was locked on the octagon below, and he studied every fighter like there was going to be a test later.
The ring was a lot bigger than the fight cages MMA bouts were fought in on Earth, about sixty feet across, so the competitors could really stretch their Spirits out and show what they could do. Unlike the all-out, live-or-die fighting I was used to, no weapons were allowed in the ring. The fighters had to get by on their Spirit and their martial arts. I saw a lot of kicks and takedowns I wanted to test out, and a lot of stuff I knew would get me killed if I tried it in real life. The rest of the crowd was really getting keyed up, but watching felt weirdly relaxing. Maybe because I knew ahead of time nobody was going to die.
The announcer was calling one of the last fights of the
