by Jace Kang
“At the rate portals are opening,” Master Ryu said, “we don’t have weeks.”
Did that mean he’d assail Peacekeeper Central soon? Would that be the end of Ken’s training?
“As I said before, if you get me to a hub inside the building, behind their countermeasures, I can physically jack in.”
Master Ryu peered through the trunks in the direction of Kyoto Central, then took a deep breath.
“Wait,” Ken said. “You were able to get us out of the building with your hacking.”
“By taking control of their cameras and projectors to hide the real you and create fake images. I won’t be able to do that until you get me to that hub. And that’s just the beginning. I still have to deactivate the internal force fields, and I won’t even know if I can until I get there.”
Master Ryu looked to Siena. “The Peacekeepers let you see the pills, right?”
She nodded.
“Would they let you in again?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. Getting out with them is another matter.”
Movies from the Age of Greed danced in Ken’s imagination. “I have an idea.”
With a single nod, Master Ryu met his gaze. “Go on.”
Ken looked to Siena. “That illusion channeling. Could you create the image of the pills?”
“Yes, but it would only look like them.” Siena spoke several nasty-sounding words, and a glowing blue pill appeared in her hand. “It would only fool human eyes. Anyone doing a deeper scan would be able to see through it, and I guarantee I would be monitored the whole time.”
Master Ryu patted him on the head. “It’s a start. Keep thinking. In the meantime—”
“Attention all citizens,” the female newscaster said, voice muffled by the trees.
Ken tilted and craned, but couldn’t see the skyscraper through the branches and trunks.
“Here.” Aya pulled out her projector.
An old part of Kyoto, overlooking the Kamo River, appeared in the air between them.
“There were two more murders last night. The first was on the banks of the Kamo River near Shijo at approximately midnight. The victim was thirty-nine-year-old Akihiro Kovacs. A warning to all viewers: the images may be graphic.”
The scene panned in on a man lying under a bridge. Red fluid soaked into the gravel, and from the way his legs were splayed wide, the blood appeared to come from his anus.
Ken shuddered and squeezed his buttocks closed.
“Kappa,” Master Ryu said.
“What’s that?” Aya scrutinized the image.
“They’re creatures that live in rivers. Some are good, some are bad. The bad ones try to steal Cores by reaching up through humans’ anuses.”
Ken scratched his head. “Why do they want Cores?”
“Just like we can speed our advancement with yokai Cores, they can advance with ours.”
“Wait,” Ken said. “But you said XHumans have weak Cores.”
“The portals have been closed for over a thousand years, so they don’t know that.” The master turned to her. “If you do the same trick you did to identity the Tofu-Kozo, I am sure you will see several at that timestamp, attacking the poor man.”
The newscast scene shifted to a long temple, one which Ken knew well through stories of the great warrior Musashi Miyamoto. It zoomed in on pieces of bone and flesh scattered in pools of blood. Ken shuddered.
“Peacekeepers found the second victim’s body at Sanjusangendo. Like Michiko Zhang the night before, Kayoko Kalinov was dismembered. They place time of death at 20:00.”
“Same time as the first,” Aya said.
Ken looked to the master. “What did this?”
“It could be any one of a number of powerful creatures coming in from the World of Rivers and Lakes, looking for human flesh.”
“Why?” Ken asked.
“Some crave human flesh, and the humans here are far less able to defend themselves than the ones in the World of Rivers and Lakes.”
The newscaster continued, “We believe those two murders are connected, whereas Mr. Kovacs’ death does not follow the patterns of any of the others that have occurred. After three nights, there had not been new victims whose bellies were bitten out.”
Ken turned to Aya. “Can you figure out where this one will strike next?”
“Not with just two datapoints.” Shaking her head, she held up two fingers.
“It will likely be near the same place,” the master said. “And they’ll hunt as a pack. That’s Kappa habit.”
“In other news,” the announcer continued, “Ryusuke Ishikawa is still missing.”
The image flashed to Master Ryu, in clothes he’d never worn.
He snorted. “I’m going to have to get one of those outfits.”
“You’d look good in them.” Siena winked.
The newscaster continued: “His last confirmed sighting was in Central around 18:00 three nights ago, but drone surveillance may have placed him last night around 22:23 near the Kamo River and Sanjo 3rd Street. This makes him a potential suspect in the death of Akihiro Kovacs.”
The footage showed a figure in the same clothes they’d just depicted on Master Ryu, walking along the banks.
Aya cursed. “This must’ve been captured by the Peacekeeper drone monitoring the Tivari.”
“Not the Ministry of Defense?” Ken asked.
She shook her head. “They wouldn’t share their footage with the news.”
Master Ryu pointed straight up. “How could they tell from high up?”
Aya pointed at the image. “The Peacekeepers must’ve programed an algorithm to study your body language, and extrapolated.”
“Where are the rest of us in this footage?” Master Ryu asked.
“Edited out. The Peacekeepers are probably trying to get identity information from our nanochips.”
Ken glanced among them. “Master Ryu and Siena don’t have chips, and mine was shorted out. What about you?” He looked to Aya.
She grinned. “I’ve hacked my chip’s file in the Peacekeeper’s servers. It clones whoever I come into close contact with, so it’s constantly changing, and they can’t tell where I am. In the meantime, there’s an emitter in my home which makes the Peacekeepers’ Analyzers believe I’m there.”
“Why didn’t you do that to my chip?” Ken asked, “Instead of having me subjected to a bioelectric jolt?”
Aya shrugged. “It took me months to program my own and bury it deep in their servers.”
“So you could be paying for meals instead of me.” Siena giggled.
“It wouldn’t be ethical to steal from others.” With her tone defensive, eyes wide, and head shaking, Aya placed a hand on her chest.
“Right.” The master chuckled.
“Will they be able to identify us?” Ken asked.
Aya twirled her finger in a circle. “I’m sure they’ve figured out that one of us is you, just because you were seen with Ryu during his escape. But me, I don’t think so. It might take time for them to find Siena, because the MoD and the Peacekeepers don’t cooperate with each other, and between them they don’t have much information on the Elestrae mission on Earth, anyway.”
“Nothing we can do about it now,” Master Ryu said. “Let’s practice some Earth Path today, so that we can fight the Kappa down by the river tonight.”
“Will they come back into this world?” Ken asked.
“Knowing their kind, they likely stayed on this plane and are hiding beneath the waters waiting to ambush lone people. Now, what kind of Path do you think they follow?”
“Water Path!” Ken said, bouncing up and down. It was obvious.
The master nodded. “Yes. And what phase controls Water?”
“Earth!”
“Yes. Water is formless, shapeless. Its nature is to adapt and flow.” The master swam through a form that looked somewhat like the Yang Taiji style he was teaching to Aya. “To quote a great master: Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water wi
ll wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.”
Ken shivered. Every time he heard those words, his heart pounded in excitement.
“Who said that?” Siena asked.
Ken and the master spoke at the same time:
“Bruce Lee!” Ken said.
“Lao Zi, the founder of Daoism.” Master Ryu continued with his form.
“What?” Ken cocked his head. “Bruce Lee said training in martial arts was learning to be like water.”
Low to the ground, the master’s circular spreading of his hands looked beautiful. “Bruce Lee borrowed heavily from Daoist principles—the same ones which we use to Cultivate.”
“You know of him?” Ken asked.
“Of course. I was weak and bullied as a child, so I looked up to him. His actual quote was, Put water in a cup, it becomes a cup. If you put it in the bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in the teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be like water.”
Siena yawned. “Are we going to learn this form you’re doing?”
“No.” Master Ryu paused in his motions. “Since Water takes the shape of its container, our goal is to become the container and control it. That’s why Earth controls it. The ancients dug ditches to harness the flow of water. In the same way, Earth Paths can contain Water Paths.”
That made some sense. Ken scratched his head. “How?”
“Water takes the path of least resistance. You allow it to come into places while taking control of it elsewhere. The Kappa’s Path of Swirling Limbs involves wrestling. They like to immobilize their opponent so that they can steal their Core. We counter by tricking them into going where we want them. Now come.”
Master Ryu brought them to a stand of large trees. “Each of you put your back to a trunk, then take one small step away.”
They all did as they were told.
“Now, fall backward and let your shoulder blades hit the tree. As you make contact, arch your back like a turtle and throw your arms out to the side.”
Ken exchanged glances with Aya, but both nodded and obeyed. The thud against Ken’s back felt therapeutic, as if he were breaking apart knotted muscles.
Siena scrunched her forehead. “That doesn’t seem nice to the tree.”
“Imagine that you’re just getting to know the tree better.” The master smirked.
Blowing hair out of her face, Siena complied.
Soon they were all thumping away at the trees while Master Ryu walked among them, adjusting their positions. Every now and then, Aya would hack up copious amounts of phlegm.
“Take another step away from the tree,” Ryu said after a while, “and fall back into it.”
The impact was greater, though not painful. Aya, however, winced each time.
“This is the very basics of Ditang Fist. It’s the style of falling, fighting on the ground, and getting back to your feet. Close to the ground, it’s Earth in nature, though since Earth is the Mother of Metal, it has the Metal aspects, too: basic Iron Shirt training. Before you can fall all the way to the ground, you must start small so as not to injure yourself. Especially Aya, with her lungs.”
As if to emphasize his point, she coughed again.
“With practice, you can even fall into someone and hurt them,” Master Ryu said.
Like Jackie Chan in The Drunken Master. Ken grinned.
After moving one more step back from the tree, where the fall did sting a little, they continued practice through late morning, followed by meditation into the early afternoon. Ken realized that visualizing the flow of Qi helped to rid his body of the aches and pains from all the falling. At some point, Siena disappeared and came back with food, which they ate.
With their full bellies, Master Ryu told them to rest for a half hour.
“When we’re done digesting, I’ll teach you the basics of Mongolian wrestling. I don’t know the Kappa’s Path well enough, but this style of wrestling is close. I—”
A siren went off.
The familiar female newscaster spoke again. “Alert: by Ministry of Defense orders, all citizens should avoid the area around Jodojiko Bridge near Ginkakuji.”
Aya swiped her hand through the air, and her projector brought up a map. Kyoto’s gridded streets came up, with a red dot marking the bridge.
Ken peered at it, but he wasn’t good at reading maps.
“That’s very close, only a five-minute stroll away.” She chewed on her lip and looked up. “Do you think they found us?”
In the near distance, aircraft propulsion hummed. Ken focused on the source. A sleek gunship hovered not far away, its mirrored surface reflecting the sun.
Six shapes dropped from it, and power armor whirred.
Ken’s stomach twisted. Would the woods provide cover against them?
In Aya’s projection, images appeared of a short stone bridge spanning a narrow canal. Six shocktroopers in power armor moved to surround it, miniguns at the ready.
Ken scratched his head. “What’s going on? We’re up here, and it looks like they are targeting someone under the bridge.”
The image blinked out, replaced by the head of an attractive female newscaster. “The Ministry of Defense has cut our feeds. All citizens are warned to stay away from the area.”
“I need to see who they are attacking,” the master said.
Chapter 20:
The Cultivator
R yu raced down the path. He knew if there was a constant in the universe, it was that Kappa hid under bridges. The way this authoritarian society worked, the last thing Big Brother wanted was to let the brainwashed populace to know that yokai were more than just old fairy tales.
Though now that humans had made contact with alien species, perhaps they’d just explain them as some unknown beings from a different star system.
But no, it was a Kappa. Ryu had seen a flash of the telltale cup of water on its head, its turtle shell, and its mottled green skin. Capture it, and he’d find out where their portal between here and the World of Rivers and Lakes was.
At the temple’s sand garden, monks were studying the designs he’d drawn for Aya’s and Kentaro’s pair meditation. He ran past them and to the gates, ignoring their stares. From there, it was just a few minutes’ sprint to the bridge. When he got within two hundred feet, he paused between two buildings and watched.
The six shocktroopers had formed a perimeter, wrist miniguns hot. A gunship hovered about a hundred feet above. The green form of the Kappa was submerged, its shell barely visible from Ryu’s vantage point. Given the small size of the green patch, there was likely only one.
“Come out with your hands up!” the shocktrooper closest to Ryu yelled.
Nothing.
With a snap of his wrist, the shocktrooper who had spoken sent the men to engage. Their power armor hummed as they drew closer. The miniguns on their wrists whirred and spun.
Unlike a Tofu-Kozo and many other yokai, Kappa would likely be harmed by energy weapons. If the soldiers killed it, it would be that much harder to find its comrades and the portal it had used. Ryu dashed toward them.
“You have three seconds. One.”
The men’s heavy boots clomped on the pavement, sending ripples through the canal’s waters, but the green blob didn’t move.
“Two.”
They were within ten feet of it. Its form sank deeper into the water.
“Three.”
Still no response. The men came to a halt and pointed their miniguns.
Connecting to the canal through the vapor in the air, Ryu skidded to a halt and swept his hands upward in a Watershaping technique. The water in the trench slashed up, knocking the two men closest to Ryu back.
“Fire!” the leader yelled.
Energy bolts sprayed out toward the Kappa.
Flowing into another Watershaping technique, Ryu transformed the sheet of w
ater into a prism, wrapping around the yokai like a donut. The bolts fizzled as they struck the barrier, sending out a cloud of steam.
After a moment, they ceased fire and advanced deeper into the thickening fog. The lead shocktrooper leaped as if he had Light Foot training, vaulting over the ring of water and shooting into the center. He landed behind the soupy curtain of mist with a splash.
Twirling in a circle and shooting his arms out to the side, Ryu sent the ring of water blasting outward, then sucked the heat out of the area and into a Fire Path’s Blazing Globe in his hands. The fluid crystalized into ice, freezing the three advancing shocktroopers.
He unleashed the Blazing Globe at one of the shocktroopers who’d been knocked back earlier, just as he was gaining his feet. It sent him sprawling back onto the ground. His armor glowed from the heat.
Ryu dashed toward the bridge.
The second shocktrooper had climbed to his feet and now turned towards him. He raised his minigun, which started to spin and whir. In his other arm, he ignited the energy blade.
Reaching him, Ryu slapped the man’s minigun arm with Splashing Hands. The blow shattered the armor there and dislodged the weapon. It hit the pavement, the spinning barrels spitting sparks as they clattered over the stone. The shocktrooper he’d flattened with the Blazing Globe rose up to a knee, took aim, and shot.
Ryu yanked the closest’s arm, fingers finding purchase in the armor’s dents. He twirled in a circle, dragging the soldier around to serve as a shield between him and second. The energy bolts plinked into the power armor, while Ryu’s yank sent the first man’s blade stabbing into the second. The point found a gap in the joint between the torso and arm. It skewered its victim, who grunted. In the same motion, Ryu shoulder-butted the first with a Crashing Wave. More of the armor cracked and splintered, and his opponent collapsed.
By the time Ryu reached the outer edge of ice, the first immobilized shocktrooper was just breaking free. Before he could move, Ryu punched him in the chest, fist enforced with a Water Blast. It crushed the armor and sent the hulking brute crumpling to the ground.