Chapter 7: 7. The Emperor VII – “This Floating Life”

The corporate samurai unsheathed their swords, angling them menacingly towards Kassandra.

“We’ve received reports that you’ve been in contact with the Restorationists,” the biggest samurai called out to her. He wore a straw cape behind his back, giving him away as the group of five’s leader. “Your employment for Zhanghai has been terminated.”

“I work for Patuxet,” Kassandra answered. Her fingers moved rapidly at her side, ready to activate her cultivation powers at a moment’s notice.

“Zhanghai is Patuxet,” the caped samurai corrected. “We’re doing our due diligence as Arcadia’s business partners by taking you to the State Police. I suggest you come quietly…but I’m not opposed to seeing how good of a fight you put up.”

The other four samurai smiled in agreement. Kassandra raised her fists. “Five against one, huh? Not exactly fair.”

Sunlight glinted off the five swords. “We’re not taking any chances-”

“Five against two!” Isaac yelled, raising his fist right as he activated his cultivation powers. It felt just as easy as Kassandra described - people don’t manually tell the legs to walk, they just do. Isaac didn’t manually activate the Rddhi - he wanted to use his cultivation powers, so he did. The red lights appeared in fist again, and with that superpowered strength he punched the caped samurai right in the back of the head.

As he crumpled, Kassandra remained shocked for just a moment before activating her own Rddhi power. The four samurai stumbled backwards in surprise for another moment longer, enabling Kassandra to blow away two of them with a succession of quick fireballs. The two remaining samurai, keeping their calm composure, split up and went after Isaac and Kassandra in individual fights.

The samurai slashed his sword, seeking to strike Isaac’s shoulder. He sidestepped it, the sword only succeeding in taking a few strands of hair. Isaac continued to bob and weave, his shoes sliding across the dirt below him. He had never fought a man armed with a sword before, but if he figured out how to defeat a living flamethrower, he could win here, too. As Isaac continued to dodge, the samurai grew increasingly frustrated; he slashed again, but this was with too much power and not enough control. Isaac easily dodged it, then slammed a powered fist into his temple. The sword clattered away as the samurai collapsed.

As for the other samurai and Kassandra - she was not the type of fighter to use the same strategy as dodging and waiting for the precise moment to strike. She charged her opponent, continuing to pound him with fireballs until one caught him in the chest. The force knocked the wind out of him and seared his torso; he dropped his sword and joined his fallen comrades.

The crowd screamed and ran off. During all the commotion, Isaac finally reunited with Kassandra. She took his hand and the two dashed off down the road, eventually arriving on the outskirts of town, where a rural road would lead them into the hilly countryside.

“Isaac, thank the Skyfather you’re okay,” she huffed out as they sprinted. “The samurai told me that Greg had been arrested and they traced a Restorationist sympathizer ring back to me. I told them we should take it outside. And well…I could’ve taken them all on my own, you know?”

She laughed, but Isaac could detect the fear hidden beneath it. “There’s a Restorationist cell in the town next over," she continued. "That’ll be a full day of walking and then some, but we can make it. We’ll join up, like I should’ve done a long time ago, and then we’ll go rescue Gregory-”

“He’s dead,” Isaac cut in, looking off to the side.

Kassandra came to an unexpected halt. Isaac wasn’t ready for that and stumbled a few feet forward; he only avoided falling because Kassandra still held his hand tightly.

“He’s…no, that can’t be true. How do you know that?”

“I was there when he died,” Isaac painfully admitted. “...three days ago.”

Isaac lurched forward when his friend gave a sharp tug on his hand, pulling him closer. Kassandra's eyes were wide. “He’s been dead for three days, and you never thought to tell me?!”

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m-”

Kassandra closed the distance and hugged him. Her arms wrapped around his back tightly, and she cried into his shoulder. “That idiot. You’re both idiots. But…you’re you. Had it been me in your position, I probably wouldn’t have told you either. I would’ve charged off without thinking, feeling so enraged, and maybe I would’ve ended up just as dead as he is. We’re a trio of big idiots, aren’t we?”

Isaac returned the embrace by wrapping his own arms around her. “He said he was sorry he couldn’t finish college after you spent all that money on him.”

The sobbing turned into something mixed with laughter. "He really is an idiot…” Kassandra wiped her eyes and then separated herself. She placed her hands on both of Isaac’s shoulders, and that look of determination returned to her eyes. “It doesn’t matter anymore. The past is the past. But let’s do this, Isaac. Let’s go to the Restorationists and change this country. If not for ourselves, then for Gregory, so nobody else has to die, so trios of children can enjoy peaceful views without fear. You with me?”

They stood on that dirt road in the middle of the day. Rolling clouds moved slowly across the blue sky. This would probably be the last day where it still felt like a warm summer. The only audience for Isaac’s fateful decision would be the few shacks dotting the road next to them.

The offer from the movie theater entered Isaac’s mind. What's the best way to fix a country? Join Reed and do it from within, or join Kassandra and do it from without? Change it from the inside, or topple the whole thing entirely?

Isaac couldn’t answer an abstract question like that. As many things did, it came down to a personal decision. He had known Reed for about fifteen minutes. He had known Kassandra his whole life.

“Let’s do it,” he said, full of determination. "I need to retrieve Greg's last message to me, though. We should circle around town and head back home."

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Kassandra nodded in agreement, but then Isaac noticed the way she smiled through the sadness. Running away from Patuxet, entering the wider world, and changing this country with Isaac alongside her - perhaps this was her dream all along.

The two headed off down the dirt road, and then the staring man shot Kassandra through the stomach.

Blood spewed out of her, covering the dirt road before him. As Isaac watched in horror, she stumbled forward, gave him a weak smile, then fell into the pool of crimson face-down. Isaac remained frozen in shock; the staring man, along with another man also dressed in a black suit and fedora, emerged from behind one of the shacks. A white glove covered one of the staring man’s hands, and that hand held the revolver. His companion also held his own. The two arrived on the dirt road and aimed them squarely at Isaac.

“My name is Officer Symanski,” the gloved man introduced in a gruff voice. “The populace would have nothing to fear from the State Police if they just kept their heads down. A man with nothing to hide has nothing to fear.”

“My name is Officer Ludvig,” his companion added. “Hand over the documents, and you two will leave here alive.”

The answer to that was obvious. “Not a chance in hell." Red lights erupted through Isaac's body as he activated his cultivation powers once again.

Symanski looked amused. He kept his finger on the trigger of his revolver without an ounce of fear. “Cultivation has no place in modern times. Who can move faster - you, or the bullet in my gun!"

“If I have to, then I will,” Isaac answered. But he knew Symanski had a point. Bullets tended to fly fast, and considering he hadn’t done any real cultivation training, his odds of escaping seemed unlikely.

But after all this, he couldn’t just give up. A good ten feet separated the officers and Isaac; he would need a distraction to close the gap.

“It’s two against one,” Ludvig called out to him with a shark’s grin on his face. “Just hand them over-”

“Two against four!” Fat Lou yelled, tackling Ludvig from behind. As he bashed Ludvig’s face in, his two followers screamed and charged Symanski. His pistol went off, but he only succeeded in shooting the ground; the two dragged him into the dirt and they all collapsed in a heap of fighting.

“Lou?” Isaac questioned. “Lou, let me take over, I can cultivate! You can help by patching up Kassandra’s wound!”

Right as Ludvig pushed Lou off of him, Isaac arrived and punched him across the face. Ludvig rolled away in the direction of his fallen pistol; right as he arrived, Isaac kicked him away from it. Isaac then moved to grab it, but Symanski slammed a shoulder into him, the two followers uselessly hanging onto his ankles.

But the distraction gave Lou time to reach Kassandra. He took off his shirt - and Fat Lou had an issue with being seen shirtless - and tied it around her stomach. “It’s funny,” he said as he finished the knot. “I only robbed you because I needed the money to pay the Zhanghai taxes. I’m drowning in debt. But then, after you whupped my ass, my boys helped me realize that I was going about it the wrong way. I was trying to beat you down, when I should’ve been punching up. Zhanghai’s in the wrong - I should be robbing them, know what I mean? When I heard you were fired for being a Restorationist, I thought, no way he’s one, he’s too much of a square. But…if you really are one…then you’re punching up as well, and maybe, just maybe, that inspired me a little. When me and my boys noticed the commotion at the schoolhouse, we investigated and followed you two this way, and let me just say - maybe even somebody small like Fat Lou can change the world, too-”

Ludvig snapped his neck. Even though his face had been twisted entirely, at least Lou looked peaceful when he died. But Isaac didn’t even have the chance to say thanks.

During the fighting, Ludvig had escaped a follower's grasp. Before Isaac could reach him, Symanski had retrieved his pistol and shot that follower through the torso; the limp body fell into Isaac and knocked him to the ground. He didn’t have time to warn Lou before Ludvig grabbed him. As Isaac got the dead follower off of him, Symanski shot the other one. When he went to fire on his last target, Isaac was already on him, delivering a powered fist to the bottom of his jaw.

The gun clattered away. Symanski sank to the ground, and Isaac dropped on top of him, ready to beat his face into a pulp. But then the officer held up his gloved hand. A tube filled with red stretched from the back of the glove and down into the black sleeve of his suit.

The gigantic weight of a Reverse Spiral crushed Isaac. His grip loosened, and Symanski pushed him off with ease. As the officer rolled away and got back to his feet, Isaac pursued him, but he felt like had been disconnected from himself on a spiritual level. He didn’t throw the next punch; he watched himself do it.

And then all the red sparks and energy disappeared. This was just a normal punch, one Symanski deflected with ease. Isaac watched himself get struck across the face. As he fell to the ground, the glove glowed, the symbol of a reverse spiral galaxy appearing on it. How Isaac knew it was reversed, he had no idea.

Symanski stomped on Isaac a few times; he felt his lifeforce drain away. The officer breathed ragged breaths, his suit all torn and dirty, and he wiped the blood off his face. Ludvig scooped up Kassandra; Isaac could just barely make out the slight rise and fall of her chest.

“Take her to the wagon,” Symanski ordered. “And bring her to the Castle for the interrogation. Take the corpses there, too. Oswald can use them. As for Gregory’s brother…” The officer eyed a nearby shack. “I’ll conduct his interrogation now. Where I can do it on my own.”

Ludvig nodded, then hauled away Kassandra. Isaac reached out for her, but Symanski stomped on his arm.

“You goddamn mutants,” he muttered. He held his glove up in pride. “Not so tough when I cancel out your spiral with a Reverse one, are you?”

Isaac had no idea what he meant. But he was also no longer conscious.

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