Sho, Crystal, and Aryu all took a sharp breath at the non-robotic person before them, dressed not in armor nor even adorned in mechanical gizmos or some other such devices. Just a man in canvas clothes with a long flowing leather coat reaching down to his knees. Crossed like an ‘X’ on his back were two short swords. His hands held what Aryu recognized as Ark 1 pistols. Each of them knew at once he was no fool, or at least, not fool enough to come out guns blazing.
“Decided to stop, have you? And I was so enjoying your singing.” A mish-mash accent, but much like Nixon’s when he first met him, he could not place it. The four said nothing.
“Well,” he continued, a look of caution and seriousness on his face, “what do you propose we do now?” Four non-responsive looks answered him. “Look, I know what state you’re all in. How weak and fragile you now find yourself. Let’s not waste time with false bravado, hmm?” He raised one Ark 1 to prove his point. Sho raised his shield slightly, and Nixon and Aryu tensed.
“Ha, any one of you is weak as a kitten now. Weapons of Focus or not, we really don’t need to try very hard to end this, now do we?” He indicated the circling army around him, and they all raised their weapons to face them. Aryu felt the beginnings of nausea tickle the back of his throat.
“What do you want from us, Sharp?” Sho said. The edge he possessed when first he’d met Aryu returned. Sho had an amazing battle high, and it was beginning to surface again.
“Sho, it has been a long time, hasn’t it?” He smiled and mock-bowed to the big man with the shield, but went into no further details of their relationship. “As you know, those two are wanted and I’ve been sent to ensure their apprehension. Mechanical devices can’t seem to get the job done. As for you and your mother? Well, that has yet to be decided.”
“We all go, Sharp,” Sho replied. “Willingly and together, weapons in hand.”
Sharp faltered. “Sho, I’m not a fool. In what world would I agree to that?”
“The world where you have nothing to lose if you do. You know me. We are people of honor. We have no issue with you, save for the company you keep. We’ll go willingly and peacefully with no resistance or trouble. When I last saw you, you were seeking the balance. You know we are the ones who can deliver it.”
Sharp didn’t have to wait long to measure his sincerity. In the circles of Embracers, Sho was legendary, as were Nixon Ash and Crystal. He knew they had a plan, but he also believed it had nothing to do with him. How much trouble would he get in letting them walk into HOME fully armed to see Izuku? Plenty was his guess, but that was an issue for another day. After the meandering plans of Izuku, Sho’s directness to giving Sharp exactly what he wanted was a nice change.
“I have a hard time believing you’ll be this pleasant for your journey. You are clearly at a disadvantage here. Why can’t I just command my forces to incapacitate you, take your precious weapons, and have it both ways?”
“Because you have to know that despite our current predicament, we are still three very skilled and very difficult opponents. All it would take is one of us to reach you. Then where would you be?”
Sharp looked them all over, reading each face and the weapons the three men held.
It was only when his eyes fell on the young one on the end, the one he was specifically tasked to acquire, that he saw the Shi Kaze for the first time. Time stopped.
Mr. Sharp just had his first lesson in the true power of the Shi Kaze, and the experience rattled him. One good slice and Boroha Sharp was a dead man.
Anarchy, but with a purpose. Lines drawn in the sand. Sharp agreed.
Now rolling across the landscape, Aryu hoped for a distraction, and a conversation about Mr. Sharp was as good a place as any to start.
“So, how do you know Sharp?” he asked Sho, who unsurprisingly was lost in some meandering thought and paying attention to nothing.
Sho sighed. “I met him a few times hundreds of years ago when Havens here were popular and I’d just taken up the charge of tending to this land. He traveled from place to place, seeking insight and information about everything and nothing. We once sat for hours with me telling him stories of my father and the things he’d done.
“I can tell you this: he’s a man I’d have called little more than a passing footnote on the world, directionless and I dare say boring in the grand scheme of things. That was the problem with the Power; it didn’t discriminate whom it infected with immortality. It took any who had the patience and the ability to learn its ways. So many came and went giving little or nothing to the world in return. Wastes of time and Power. They were one of the main reasons my father did what he did to prevent the abuse of the Power and try to keep it in the grasp of the truly special.”
Nixon and Crystal both managed a snide smile at the statement. Sho’s reverence of his father clearly was clouding his mind to the fact that Ryu was viewed by them as an unstable self-centered dictator who had committed a heinous genocide.
“My best guess is that the years have seen him wronged somehow and this is his answer to it. Justification is so simple to come by given enough time. He’s survived the last two Falls of Man, so he has good reason to be bitter. Most like
