Spires

“Some help, guys?”

A thruster-assisted jump carried him over outstretched limbs and weapons.

Away from the oni statues seemed the smarter move.

Cold spikes of pain continued to shoot from different parts of his body as the incorporeal echoes continued to swirl the gray all around him.

He landed in the mouth of a monochrome monstrosity.

Horrifying, but it would’ve been worse had the painting the monster emerged from been done in a realistic style.

He cut the gaping mouth, opening it up like the petals of those cherry blossoms.

The monster vanished, leaving black ink and torn paper on the floor.

Easier than he had expected.

He turned and fired his micromissiles.

Sculptures shattered.

Living paintings splashed dark ink and wet color across the floor.

The huge oni statues lumbered toward him on ground-shaking steps only separated by the rest of the smaller monsters.

“Seriously, no help?” he muttered.

The echoes of his relatives seemed to think that they weren’t needed.

He could feel their presences in the gray. Just on the other side of manifestation.

“C’mon, this is a ghost fight. Like, it’s made for you guys.” He winced. “I’m getting tired of the cold needles.”

He targeted the two oni statues.

Their carved faces were fixed in a rictus of anger, baring tusked teeth.

They raised their kanabos. Like his cousin Tessa’s except a lot bigger, if comparable in weight.

Stone thundered, falling like trees.

“Huh?”

The gray cleared around the monsters as if a bomb had exploded, sending shards and paint in every direction.

“Okay.”

He hadn’t expected the oni statues to attack the rest of the monsters, but he’d take it.

Throne room guardians.

He hadn’t known.

Whatever made things easier.

The echoes of over a hundred torture victims wailed in unison, driving him to his knees at the sudden assault that cut through his helmet’s auditory protections.

Cold. Rage. Bitterness that scoured at what felt like his soul.

The oni statues dropped their weapons to clutch at their ears despite those things not working in a biological sense.

A storm swirled in the fog around the statues.

He caught glimpses of disembodied men, women and children scratching and tearing at stone skin.

Their faces were twisted rictuses reflecting their horrifying fates.

Stone gray eyes flared with light that roiled his stomach to look at.

The storm calmed.

The oni statues retrieved their weapons and fixed him with baleful stares.

So much for the help.

He fired a second barrage of micromissiles, chipping away at the oni statues.

More durable than they should’ve been based on their composition.

No bets on the cause.

He knew through the gray that all the echoes had entered the statues.

They clashed across the throne room.

Stone kanabo crated the floor and smashed the walls.

Their quickness belied their mass.

Yet, he was still too quick for them.

The gray filled him with power. Artificial muscles in his power armor further enhanced.

Yellow flashed in swirling gray as he carved deeply into stone flesh.

He stepped out of the line of attack, letting the kanabo thicker than his thigh crash through the wood floor.

Raising his hardlight blade into a high guard, he ignored the spray of splinters from the oni statue’s back swing.

Yellow fell, gray rose.

The former shattered into a thousand disappearing pieces while the latter split in two.

The oni statue brought its suddenly halved weapon down.

Yellow light flared.

The stone weapon broke wood where it fell with stone hand still clutching it.

If it bothered the statue to be disarmed it showed no sign as it punched down at Alin with its stump.

He met it with a vertical stop cut, high to low, neatly bisecting the stone arm nearly all the way up to the shoulder.

Lunging low he swept right to left.

The oni statue toppled like a cut tree, sending gray billowing out.

Despite being down an arm and a leg it still tried to rise.

That baleful glare made Alin’s stomach clench.

A thruster-assisted leap carried him out of the path of the second oni’s kanabo smash.

Yup.

He had definitely failed to avoid damaging the Imperial Palace.

At least the throne was still—

Thunder cracked.

He muttered a curse.

The oni statue had hurled its kanabo like a gun fired a bullet, utterly demolishing what was probably really old.

The emperor could afford a replacement.

Maybe even have the spires rebuild it exactly as it had been.

Would that have been good enough for the Japanese?

He supposed it depended on their thoughts on the Ship of Theseus paradox thing.

The crippled statue reached out with its one remaining hand.

Wailing echoes emerged, plunging into the other oni statue.

The sickening light in its eyes intensified.

The oni statue charged.

Alin side-stepped, ducking beneath a clubbing stone arm to land a horizontal cut across its knee.

Hardlight blade cracked, barely scratching the stone skin.

He boosted out of its reach.

Micromissile barrage knocked it backward.

Helmet laser bored multiple holes through its neck.

Thrusters shot him forward.

Multi-weapon turned into a long-handled axe at the speed of cybernetic thought mid swing.

The blade shattered, but not before it cleaved through the stone.

The echoes wailed, erupting from the served neck like a pyroclastic cloud except it plunged him into bone-chilling cold as it engulfed him rather than instantly combust him via the intense leading wave of heat.

A cloud within a cloud.

That was what it was like as the echoes swirled through the gray.

He couldn’t touch them with physical weapons.

Certain knowledge he had gleaned from the gray.

He spat a curse.

Cold needles stabbed into him from every direction. In what felt like every body part.

“I— I can’t.”

He had one sure way to end it in an instant.

“Damn it, guys!”

Except, they were incorporeal, which meant they didn’t have physical bodies to drain to the point of collapse.

Draining them to the brink wouldn’t make a big difference. Even weakened, they’d keep attacking, which meant that the Quest couldn’t end.

“Do you really want these poor bastards as your new roommates in fogspace? Don’t you think they deserve—” his voice fell to a whisper, “the freedom I can’t give you?”

It started with a feeling.

The flash of movement out of the corner of the eye. The wind across the back. The brush against a sleeve. Murmurs just over the edge of hearing.

The tortured echoes’ wailing grew to a crescendo as if they too sensed what was coming.

Family.

Relatives that he had never known.

Killed and subsumed by the monstrous entity that had birthed him into existence.

Shrouded figures in the gray marked by their passing through the swirling wisps like sharks creating ripples and eddies on the ocean surface as they hunted rather than visible, physical forms.

The first, as usual, was all aggression and anger.

Young.

Filled with bitter rage at a life that should’ve been filled with epic deeds.

Superstrong fists beat at the wailing echoes.

Alin could almost hear the gunshot-like cracks. Never mind the fact that he was the only one with a physical body in the throne room.

Others leapt from nonexistence heralded by faint lights of color.

A myriad.

Every one on the spectrum.

He could almost see the glowing weapons striking down the wailing echoes. Shields of many shapes and sizes surrounding him in their aegis.

The bone-chilling needles savaging him vanished.

Warmth flooded him with relief like his favorite blanket.

The wailing echoes retreated toward the center of the throne room, gathering into a whirling tornado filled with every negative emotion Alin could think of.

The echoes of his relative pursued.

Superstrong hands plunged into the tornado heedless of the toll taken in return.

He could almost see heads and limbs ripped from bodies.

See fists plunged into faces and through ribs.

A long sliver of faintly glowing red light half again as tall as he was swept in a wide horizontal arc. It cut or broke bodies. He couldn’t tell. The wielder, he could almost see, seemed to look back at him with a dismissive toss of what felt like long, black hair that flowed well past her shoulders.

Teal walls appeared. Or had they been there from the beginning? Only revealed by gray wisps brushing against their faintly glowing surfaces. Four of them. From floor to high ceiling, boxing the wailing echoes in.

The end came quickly and he didn’t have to lift a finger.

“Thank you,” he whispered into the gray as their presences vanished.

Alone again.

He waited and received the spires notification.

Quest complete.

Universal Points rewarded.

Visit the nearest spire for the rest.

Yay.

He couldn’t quite find it in him to celebrate.

Drained.

He felt like his limbs were weighed down with iron weights.

Of course.

Why wouldn’t they be?

He had expended energy without taking any in return.

Not that he’d do it differently.

The echoes of the Five Evils’ victims deserved freedom even if only in oblivion. They didn’t deserve to trade an old prison for a new one.

The throne room was ruined.

Expensive-looking wooden floor was covered in craters. Holes filled the walls. At least they weren’t made out of paper.

Or was that worse?

Paper did seem easier to replace than wood.

The two oni statues lay broken. Pieces strewn everywhere.

The throne?

Well… it no longer existed.

Alin emerged from the Imperial Palace into a mass of pointed weapons and readied spells.

“Boy! What happened?” Kat was still in the command center a few blocks away according to his HUD.

“A sudden, but inevitable Quest.” He raised his hands to comply with the shout. One shout. One voice. Not a confused mess of multiple commands. Good discipline. “Please tell them I handled it.”

Silence.

“They’re going to check you for spiritual possession.”

“Okay,” he shrugged.

They lacked the levels and expertise to detect anything off about what was contained within his mortal shell.

The thought brought a bitter smile to his face.

To this day, every medical scan, through Skill or spell, always came back as human.

Only Ms. Teacher could detect the gray and even then she had said that it was difficult.

He had to pass a gauntlet of tests to get approval to go back to the command center.

A miko chanted a prayer and wiggled her torimono around him. A kannushi did the same, but used strips of paper with ink-written symbols. Cyborgs violated his privacy with scanner tech only made possible by the Skills possessed by their classed creators.

Pure tech or magitech?

The only way he could tell the difference was through the mana.

Otherwise form and function were identical.

“And so, I used my abilities, which are secret— for op sec reasons, I’m sure you understand— to release the echoes from their torturous partial existence. Of course, I regret the damage accrued by the throne room through this unfortunate and unforeseen occurrence.”

The general looked like he was chewing shards of glass rubbed against a skunk’s stink glands.

“Don’t worry, though. I don’t hold any sort of blame for not warning me about the possibility of a tormented ghost attack… and Quest. If you had known, I’m sure you wouldn’t have allowed me to go in there alone.” He regarded the emperor’s… assistant? The young man sat next to the general. “Here. I’ll give you half the Universal Points I got for cleansing your emperor’s, uh, lands.” A simple act of will brought up the exchange interface superimposed over his vision. He transferred the amount before anyone could say anything or refuse. He wasn’t a cultural expert, but he thought that by throwing the ball on their side of the court he made it so they couldn’t refuse or it’d be giving bad face.

Unless he had that wrong.

The Phoenix Dynasty and the cultivators were big on face.

It occurred to him that he had no idea if that applied in this situation.

The emperor’s assistant accepted the points for what it was worth.

A long, exhaustive question and answer session followed.

He bore the weight of it when all he wanted to do was get into comfy clothes and into a warm bed, preferably in Kat’s equally warm embrace.

Normally, he would’ve been the big spoon, but after that experience, the little spoon called to him.

Dreams of cuddling ran across the back of his thoughts like tiny sheep hurdling a tinier fence while he answered questions.

“He looks exhausted.” Kat’s eyes darted from Cal to his son significantly. “More than normally.”

They watched the not-interrogation on a huge flat screen on the wall in crisp 4k.

It was an ancient TV given what amounted to eternal life by the Skills of the people responsible for maintenance.

“He is.”

Cal agreed and he didn’t his powers to see that.

His son’s face took on that wide-eyed look when he was struggling to keep his eyes open and appear like he really wanted to pay attention to something that bored him to sleep.

“It’s a good challenge.”

“But… he just did a horrible Quest… solo,” Kat said.

“It was horrible, but not that difficult for him. Granted that was if he hadn’t handicapped himself. Regardless, I believe he handled it the best way for him. The psychosomatic wounds are healing and will be gone in a few days.”

“He had needle punctures, like, on every part of his body.”

“All closed by the healing gel,” he pointed out. “The worst of it now is just fatigue. Sure, it’s the worst kind of fatigue. But nothing a long rest and plenty of food and liquids can’t cure.”

“This is a waste of your son’s time,” Haruo grunted from where he slouched in a chair in the corner of the office as far away from everyone else he could be while still remaining in the space.

The command center had been once a police station.

They sat in a common area.

Long-dead police officers had used it long ago for their breaks and meals.

It was surprisingly packed.

Some of the people he knew or recognized, while most he didn’t.

Well… not exactly.

He knew them all.

Had files.

Some more secret than others.

Potential recruits.

Potential threats.

The surface thoughts of those he had never interacted with carried a similar train of thought.

They saw the gear Marloes and Dashing Bandit Celebration had from working with him and they wanted in.

Not just the gear, but the levels and experiences.

And all the rewards from Quests that trended to a higher standard than what they could expect to get staying in their local areas.

As usual, if they thought of the heightened challenges, it was just in that small voice of reason and common sense that their type tended to ignore.

He couldn’t be too upset about it.

People that lived the common sense life didn’t seek out the worst Quests and monsters just to level and grow stronger.

“Cruces-sama, did you know that there were still ghosts in the palace? Did the emperor’s people?” Dashing Bandit Celebration chirped.

He suppressed a sigh.

He knew for a fact that her high-pitched voice was an affectation.

She also insisted on her mahou shoujo name rather than her real one.

Well… she knew what she wanted, so he had to respect that.

Names were just made up words anyways.

He had insisted on the Threnosh calling him ‘Honor’ for years, so it wasn’t like he could throw stones from his glass house.

“There were traces from the ritual despite the good work your people did to cleanse them, but no, I didn’t know there were actual ghosts. You’ll have to ask the emperor’s people if they did.”

“I believe we can lay the blame for the ghosts on the spires,” Marloes said.

“Oh!” Dashing Bandit Celebration raised a hand. “I can guess! See, it’s like this… before there were always a ton of people walking all over the palace. Doing magic and using Skills. So, like, there was probably a trigger condition for the Quest. Which was only met when they emptied the place and Boy went in there by himself. I think it was like there was a maximum or maybe minimum strength level for the Quest.”

One of the mahou shoujo’s tanuki plushies flew into the room with a cup of chocolate.

She took the cup and sipped, but made a face. “Ew… not hot,” she held it up to the plushy, which looked at the chocolate. Steam began to rise after a few moments. “Thank you!” She patted it on the head before it flew up to the ceiling to join the other tanuki plushies in watching over their master.

Cal decided then that he really needed to put Eron on a mission with Dashing Bandit Celebration.

It would be fun for her and very embarrassing for him.

Yes.

That needed to happen.

He hadn’t collected on the oldest brother tax in some time.

“That sounds like a reasonable theory.”

He glanced around the room.

Several people, most of them really, had printed out resumes hidden somewhere on their persons. In bags of holding or normal ones.

Those things were useful.

Comparing their self-assessments to his file played a large role in where he ranked them for suitability on one of his teams.

A sharply-dressed woman walked in flanked by a pair of teenage assistants that presented as mere interns.

Obviously, they were not.

Though that had yet to become common knowledge among the community.

The boy and the girl were very superhuman.

Top level potential.

Of course, he knew about them despite the Japanese government doing their best to keep them secret.

They were testing him.

Mentioning something would reveal things about himself.

Thus, he pretended to be oblivious.

The woman inclined her head to him a fraction.

He returned it. “Princess.”

She said nothing and ignored the rest of the people in the room despite every single one rising to their feet and bowing. With one exception.

It wasn’t a slight, though it might have looked like it.

She simply didn’t do empty conversation.

Honestly, he admired that.

She was all about her responsibilities.

Much better than others that were always trying to butter him up for some kind of gain or advantage whenever he allowed them to notice him in the room.

The princess approached Haruo with her secretly superpowered interns in tow.

Haruo’s face was a blank mask as he stood and bowed deeply at the waist.

Cal felt a little bad for the man.

Bringing Haruo along had opened the man up to the ambush.

Marloes regarded the not-interns through narrowed eyes. She looked at him with raised brows.

She sensed something, but didn’t know what.

He shrugged.

Not his secret to share and it was better if the government believed he had no idea about their secret weapons.

Kids deserved to be kids for as long as possible before they were thrown at things like him.

Haruo knew, of course, even if no one had told him.

Cal thought of a saying from the ancient courts of his youth.

How did it go?

Game recognizes game.

Power knew power.

The teens studied Haruo with a mixture of awe and confused disappointment.

“You honor me, Hime-sama,” Haruo said.

“And you have ignored me,” the princess said lightly. “Politely and with good reasons always. I would thank you on behalf of my father, myself and the people of Japan for destroying that kaiju before it could burrow into Mt. Fuji. I was told that had it done so it might have caused an eruption that would have made the greatest in recorded history look like a water fountain.”

“I exist to serve everyone.”

“Yes, but it occurs to me that the generals forget that you are a part of that everyone. You must be served as well. It isn’t acceptable that we keep you in your bunker only to let you out to fight the worst monsters like you’re just a weapon.”

“I have no complaints.”

“Yes, yes,” she waved a hand, “I understand you’re concerned about the safety of the people, but there are measures we can take to protect them that are better for you than total isolation.”

A containment suit for one.

Like the kind Lucy wore.

Cal had given several and the Japanese government had made their own.

All of them worked.

The problem was Haruo’s transformation.

To date no one had been able to make a suit that could remain intact through that process.

There were magic spells and Skills that could be employed, but those only mitigated the radiation and its effects to an extent.

Sadly, Haruo had the potential to take out Tokyo and almost every living thing in it in his worst case scenario.

A nuclear meltdown to end all meltdowns.

Haruo was only sitting in the room for the princess to put him on the spot because he and the general trusted Cal to keep everyone safe in that event.

To be fair, Cal hadn’t given them much of choice even if he hadn’t spelled it out explicitly.

He agreed with the princess.

Isolation wasn’t good for Haruo’s mental state.

Haruo would never learn to trust himself around people without actually being around people.

Oh, but the risks were real too, so they couldn’t just dismiss those out of hand.

Time, practice and therapy.

Cal was confident that those would work eventually.

There was just no telling how long and Haruo needed to do it at a pace he was comfortable with.

Certainly, not at a pushy princess’ pace.

He nudged her slightly with a thought before her stubbornness overruled her empathy.

“You’re wise, Haruo-sama.” She nodded. “The people of Japan are fortunate that it was you and no one else that received your powers. My invitation will always be open. When you are ready. There are some that would benefit from your wisdom. Even if it is only to share your story.” She gazed at her not-interns with genuine affection.

That was good, Cal thought.

She saw them as people rather than weapons and she really wanted the best for them.

It was part of the reason why her perception of Haruo’s treatment in light, well, especially because his mental state was a direct result of his service to the previous emperor.

She felt guilt despite not being responsible for it in any way.

She had vowed that the teens wouldn’t be treated like weapons regardless of what anyone in the royal family, government and military thought.

“I— I would like that, Hime-sama. You honor me with words I don’t deserve.” Haruo bowed.

“Until then.”

The princess left, flanked by the teens.

Wide eyes followed her the entire way.

The boys and men, at least the straight ones, had eyes for a predictable part. Same with the girls and women, who weren’t straight.

Cal sighed.

Class effects magnified what was already there.

“She’s so elegant!” Dashing Bandit Celebration whispered.

“Poised,” Marloes said. “The rest is a perfectly tailored appearance. From her hair down to her shoes.” She looked to Cal. “A Skill for perfect poise and balance on those heels?”

“You’d know better than me.”

Mahou shoujos and their combat high heels.

“Probably a better quality one since she’s a princess. Maybe a total Skill that enhances everything from balance to posture to hair staying in place rather than individual Skills for each thing.”

Dashing Bandit Celebration raised her hand.

“I told you, please don’t do that.” Cal rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“I know.” She stuck her tongue out. “But it bugs you, so there!”

He would’ve been offended had the mahou shoujo acted younger than her age as an affectation.

But, no.

She was just genuinely like that and he had to respect her staying true to herself despite the negative reactions she drew from the more traditional elements of the Japanese combat scene.

Granted, many of the independent fighters had their quirks.

“Fine,” he rolled his eyes. “What’s your question?”

“I’ve been holding onto a Skill choice from the last mission,” she said. “I would like your thoughts. That is to say, please tell me which one to take.”

Marloes snorted. “I told you that you have to pick it yourself. Stop asking other people. No one wants to get blamed if you end up not liking your choice.”

He regarded his son up on the TV.

The not-interrogation was about halfway done.

He might’ve nudged it along to finish quicker, but he judged that it was good practice.

“Alright, tell me about your choices.” He pulled out a sheet of paper and pen from his bag of holding.

It didn’t take long for the others in the room to gravitate to the impromptu game theory session in an effort to show him they were smart and competent.

To her credit, Dashing Bandit Celebration welcomed all.

The clever young woman had positioned herself as a gatekeeper of sorts to Cal’s super secret and super profitable team program.

The much friendlier one compared to Marloes.

Cal gave the equivalent of mental shrug.

He was always looking for good candidates.

Part of him always hoped that he wouldn’t find any.

Better they stayed local and alive rather than going international and dying decades before their time to leave a widow and children behind.