Aryu was the one to give a snide look this time. “Not too dedicated to the cause, is he?” He indicated the Shi Kaze to put his point across.
“No,” Sho answered. “His lot in life, I suppose. Even working for the other side, his commitment level is certainly lacking which as you can see I used to our advantage. That’s the issue with these kinds of Power users. Too scared to live, too afraid to die.” It was an aspect that Aryu had never thought of. Could you really become so blasé given enough time to let it happen? Perhaps Ryu wasn’t completely crazy after all.
They sat in silence as their vehicle stopped. Moments later the door of their mobile brig opened and Mr. Sharp, flanked by two large, silver autonomous figures, indicated they step out. They obliged.
“From here you board that plane which will take you the rest of the way,” he told them all, indicating a large, winged tube in the distance. The image of it and its questionable ability to fly gave Aryu the shivers. “On board are more security drones than you could ever hope to handle in your current state. It will take you back to HOME and whatever fate awaits you there.”
It was all bravado and they all knew it. Sharp had let them keep their weapons and armor, so he may as well have offered them a hot bath and a warm meal for all the graciousness he’d given them.
As they were taken to the waiting aircraft, Sho took the moment to express his contempt for the state of his land in a direct confrontation with Sharp. “Whatever your reasoning for doing this, Boroha, it’s wrong.”
Sharp never even faced him. “There is no right and wrong, Sho. Remember that?” He did. It was the overlying message he’d tried to express to Sharp during that brief encounter centuries ago. It seemed Sho couldn’t win a battle anymore if he tried.
With a shove from a burly android, the quartet was on its way to the next phase of their journey.
On board for almost an hour before it lifted off, Aryu could barely suppress the urge to throw up as the gangly beast lifted vertically into the sky. Sho and Nixon had been taken elsewhere, but without even a slot in the door to look out, they didn’t know where yet. A flaw in their carefully concocted plan, but not an impossible one to overcome. They knew what to do. For now, it was just a matter of waiting.
Crystal sat across from him. “Uneasy flyer?” she asked.
“Only when it’s not me in control,” he answered, grateful for her sudden need to strike up a conversation.
“Don’t worry. I once flew all the time in something like these. They’re harmless.” Harmless? Judging by what he’d seen every machine he’d encountered thus far in his life do, he seriously doubted that.
“Tell me,” she began, “what do you think of the Shi Kaze?” He looked at her questioningly. “I know you’re not a user of the Power, but how great it is couldn’t have escaped you.”
He looked at it in his hands. “I feel…something, deep inside myself. A flow of positive and negative. It’s disorientating, like a feeling that’s welcome and repulsive at the same time.”
She understood the feeling perfectly. “That is its specialty. It was how Ryu intended it to be, balanced in both the fantastic and horrifying, now magnified thanks to its sordid history. When you awaken to it more, you’ll see what I mean.”
“Yeah, about that, I don’t have any intention of awaking to anything, thank you. Nixon made it clear that at the first whiff of something amiss with me while I hold it, he’ll cut me in two and go back to sleep.”
“You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it though, how the Power can help you with what you want to do, kicking their robot butts?”
“Oh I’ve thought about it,” he said honestly. The ghostly beauty across from him could likely read any lie, so he wasn’t about to try. “But living and making it back to help my friend beats out dying at the hands of Nixon. I can’t do much to help if I’m dead. And for that matter, since he never got the opportunity to ask, do you know why it is he seems drawn to hunt me for no reason?”
Crystal shook her head. “I’m sorry I don’t. I was very surprised to hear he had awoken and was with you when first you came to me. I had hoped you two could answer that for me, but the looks on your faces told me you were just as clueless.”
She got up and sat next to him, her warm, white hand meeting his. “What do you know about my father?” she asked, pink eyes looking at him, finding places inside him he didn't know existed.
He was flustered by the action, but eventually managed to spit out, “I know it was his accepted responsibility to teach the art of the Power to all who would master it. Bring it to the world to see after it had been hidden for so long.”
She nodded in agreement. “Well that’s the pretty way to say it. Do you agree with him? That what he was trying to do was right?”
“Not according to Ryu.”
“To hell with Ryu!” she said forcibly, her hand almost crushing his with the action. There was still a staggering amount of strength in her even now. “Ryu acted like he always acted, foolishly and without thought to any consequence that didn’t involve only himself. I loved him, that’s true, and even I can’t agree with what he did. Sho says it was to stop the misuse of Power? Ha! Bullshit. It was to help himself and no one else. He needed to do something no
