55 – Samurai dance

Mekano worked on the now inactive cube. The light in the room was very dim without Liù constantly providing that soft blue glow of her holograms, and the screens that made up the whole wall were filled with black command windows and only scant few lines of text.

“Mekano says you better stick with rituals and leave technology to somebody else.”

“Just delete that AI, will you?” Ishrin said, eliciting a laugh from the lizardman.

“I am interested in technology.” Lisette said, taking off her VR helmet. “It is so fascinating. I want to know more!”

“What? What have you been doing all this time?” Melina asked her.

“Reading.” The other girl said. “Using this strange… ‘haptic’ thing. It is impressive how quick I managed to read a whole book.”

Ishrin floated the VR headset to him and wore it. His face went from a smile to a frown in a span of a second. “You read this whole book? It’s a technical manual of 366 pages about router switches.”

Lisette nodded. “I did not understand everything that is written in it, but I found a helpful tool that suggested me more books to read.”

“I see them,” Ishrin said. “You added 52 more manuals to your reading list. What… well, as long as you have fun.” He tossed her the helmet back.

It was after a short contemplative pause that Melina spoke, voicing her thoughts about the revelation about the mountains.

“Why would someone ever make a device to end all life?”

“Who knows?” Ishrin replied. “There could be a thousand reasons. We will never know. Their creator is long gone dead and buried, or at least I hope he is. If he isn’t then he’s got some explaining to do.”

“Exactly!” Melina exclaimed. “Who would be so sick in the head as to make something like that?”

“Maybe the AI degraded, and it was never supposed to eradicate all life. Maybe it was a defense system. Maybe it was pest control. Or maybe it was built by an alien race who was hell bent on destroying all organic life. Think about it, there were no signs of anything even remotely human in the mountain. No beds, no rooms, no food or water systems… no toilets.”

Melina’s tail twitched. “Aliens like those exist?”

“Have you never seen a golem and whatnot?”

She nodded. “It’s different.”

“Not conceptually, it isn’t. If a golem can be made and powered, the same goes for alien life forms.”

She hummed. Golems needed magic to make them function, and she didn’t think that the mountain aliens ever had access to magic before they arrived in the realm. However, the example served to remind her about other life forms that do exist in nature (unlike golems that need to be built and animated). Lithoids existed, and all manner of spirits did too. What if there was a world where those were the dominant life forms, and normal animals were as rare there as these creatures are rare here?

***

“I want to learn technology, Ishrin.” Lisette said.

“Yeah, I figured you liked it. Here, I have been working on this while you were busy reading boring manuals. Try it on.”

Lisette gingerly took the strangely modified VR headset into her hands. It was much heavier and bulkier than the sleek one she was wearing, more rudimental. It was certainly an earlier version, but the thing that captured her attention was the series of magical lines and runic inscriptions that had been added to it. They were certainly Ishrin’s doing: thanks to the lessons on Runes he took from Dwymer and his own knowledge of rituals he built a headset that could be powered by magic. There was an empty socket at the top, small and round.

“Just plug a Tier 1 to 3 crystal in there, and you’re set. The headset has already got Mekano’s whole E-library in it, and I will ask Liù to pirate as many books as she can. Both manuals and fiction books.”

“Thank you.” Lisette said, removing her own loaned headset and cradling the new one in her arms. She studied it for a while, trying to understand how it worked, before burying her head in it with renewed vigor.

***

“Say, friend Ishrin, Mekano was meaning to ask you the other time but Mekano thought it was not a good idea. But now Mekano is curious. What happened to your body? You know you smooth-skins look all the same to Mekano but even Mekano can see that something’s different about you. You are not the same Ishrin, are you?”

Ishrin groaned. Here we go, he thought. “I was reincarnated. Check my molecular age.”

Mekano fiddled around with an instrument for a minute or two, after which his eyes went wide. “You are telling the truth! Molecular age below one year! Mekano is amazed.”

“Yeah,” Ishrin was unamused. “A racist god changed my race. Nothing amazing.”

***

“We need to warn the guild immediately. As soon as Mekano is done—”

Ishrin interrupted Melina before she could continue. “Listen I was thinking… Why don’t we get away? Go into another universe, the lot of us. One without the guild, or Syrma or the mountain or the stupid realm and especially no Dynasty coming to kick our asses. How about that?”

“Ishrin…” the foxgirl paused. She seemed to think about it for a moment, before steel determination colored her face. “You know we can’t do that .”

Ishrin deflated. “Yeah… I know. They would find us eventually.”

“Exactly. And what about Willow? What about the rest of the world? We can’t not go back now that we know what’s at stake. We need to warn them.”

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***

The small cube slowly lit back up. The light gradually returned to its surface, but the process was painstakingly slow. Mekano was done purging everything SPAWN related from Liù’s new body, and Ishrin couldn’t wait to finally be able to see his favorite pixie again. He missed her so much it was almost painful, especially after having lost her once already.

Before the process was over, however, a deafening siren began to blare. There was no precise point from where the sound was coming, none that Ishrin could pinpoint at least, but he knew that it spelled trouble. Immediately, in fact, Mekano left the cube where it was and went to grab one of his larger projectile guns from a hidden compartment of his desk. He also threw a pistol to each member of Ishrin’s party, except Lisette who was already equipped with a plasma rifle.

“Samurais. They have found me. We need to go, now!” Mekano said, almost growling, his vocal tic once again forgotten.

“What about Liù?” Ishrin immediately asked.

“Leave her. You must have tripped some alarms on your way here, Ishrin! We need to go!” Mekano replied.

“No!” Ishrin yelled. “You keep the booting up sequence going, you hear me? We’ll defend you. Girls, get in position.”

He forcefully grabbed Mekano and placed it on his chair, sitting at his desk. Turning around, he motioned for Lisette to cover the windows while he and Melina went to the door. It was closed shut, a great deal of mechanisms having kicked in as soon as the alarms went off to cut this little room of a lone apartment complex in the middle of nowhere off from the rest of the world. All the ceiling and wall-mounted guns were smoking hot and trained on the door.

“The outside is clear.” Lisette stated, looking around at the dried lake in the distance through the scope of her gun. Behind her, the floating blades danced in the air, reflecting her ready mental state.

Ishrin took out some powder from his inventory. If he could—

An explosion rocked the apartment, scattering the powder and toppling some of the shelves. Smoke and debris flew everywhere, and for a moment the visibility was none. Then the guns went off, unloading everything they had at the now destroyed door that laid off its hinged. Voices shouted outside, and both Ishrin and Melina fell into battle stances.

“Save mana.” Ishrin yelled, firing his pistol at an unseen target through the dust. “Only use magic when you have line of sight.”

Then they saw them. The guns were all out of commission, hanging loosely from their mounts, and the shadows advanced. They were Terrigeneans, but so modified as to almost be of another species. Chrome and prosthetics made up the vast majority of their bodies, and what was left was covered in paint, marks and tattoos. As one of them lunged inside, all in the room knew that the real struggle began now.

“How long?” Ishrin yelled, wrestling with the intruder. He yanked at his arm, and the whole thing came off with a yell of its user.

“Mekano is checking…” Lisette fired a plasma bolt that cut through the air. In its wake, the smell of ozone and a hollow torso. “One minute 20 seconds!”

Two more samurais stormed in. Another from the window, catching Lisette by surprise. His advantage didn’t last long, for while she had her hands tied by the weight of his augmented body, he didn’t know that her flying blades were free to move. He was quickly impaled from behind, strange yellow blood oozing from the wounds onto Lisette’s face. But he wasn’t dead. He tossed around and with an impossible bending of his arm pulled the blades out. Lisette gritted her teeth and launched herself onto the distracted offender.

While she and the infiltrator skirmished by the windows, shattered glass letting the moist and electrically charged air of the storm in, Melina and Ishrin too were engaged in their fights. Melina’s last two Air Blades had missed their target, the samurai moving too nimbly in the cramped space. She was struggling, but she was still a Tier 13, which was visible when the samurai thought it was a good idea to engage her melee. She caught the electrified blade with her bare hand and snapped it. She bared her fangs, and the light of the storm briefly lit the grin on her face.

“Mekano says you must have tripped some alarms!”

Ishrin used his telekinesis to deflect the colossal sword descending upon him. “Nope. We had a ritual up.”

“Then—”

“These aren’t even AQ mercs!” Ishrin continued.

“Shit. Ishrin is right. Mekano wonders: who sent them?”

Ishrin sidestepped the oversized axe, dripping with green acid. With one hand he telekinetically caught it, the hand movement only an aid to his power, while with the other he grabbed his sword in a reverse grip and slashed. The lizardman yelled and fell back, and another rushed in to pull him out and replace him in the fight. The power armor he wore sparkled. This one was going to be tough.

“I don’t know!”

Mekano said nothing, instead defending his station with his gun while also trying to work on the cube. After a while, he yelled.

“Mekano’s done!” The screens were all broken and sparks were flying everywhere, but out of all the light a familiar blue sight rose to the air.

“Liù! Can you give me a hand?”

Sure caaaaan!

The holographic pixie flew to Ishrin, all the while her cube body went to the other side of the room. While her physical body hit the lizard that Lisette was wrestling with so hard that it sent him flying out of the window, her hologram scanned the power armor of the other samurai. Suddenly it went limp, allowing Ishrin to hit him with a kick and clear the room.

“We need to get out!” Ishrin yelled.

“Mekano has a shortcut!”

As soon as he said that he did something, because suddenly in place of the sofa at the side of the room was a deep dark hole.

“You don’t want us to jump in there, do you?” Ishrin groaned.

Mekano nodded. “Mekano does.”

He disappeared in the hole without waiting for a rebuttal. Ishrin, Lisette and Melina looked at each other, and jumped.

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