Quantum Cultivation

by Jace Kang

  “Their armor is made from durastrium,” Aya’s voice said. “It’s used in spacecraft and can protect against energy!”

  In the corner of his eye, a string of bolts zipped past him and struck another shocktrooper. The energy plinked into his armor with no noticeable effect, but it did provide a hole in the incoming fire for Ryu to root. He lashed out with a Water Whip, severing one’s minigun. Its rotating barrels skipped across the floor.

  His loss created another open space in the incoming spray of bolts, in which Ryu leaped, rooted, and whipped out again. Though the shocktroopers moved impossibly fast for their bulk, the latest Water Whip lopped off one’s outstretched arm, even through the armor.

  More energy pulses struck shocktroopers, doing little more than slow them a step, and Ryu turned to see Keiko shooting. Near her, Ken was running towards the nearest assassin.

  He had little time to worry about the boy when the shocktrooper whose gun Ryu had broken off closed in and ignited his energy blade. Ryu bobbed under his slash and landed a Splashing Hand into the man’s chest.

  Though the technique had shattered shocktrooper armor and wounded the wearer the week before, this blow sent the man flying back six feet, while only denting the breastplate. A Xingyi Fire Fist in the same spot would probably penetrate it. Ryu started to pursue, but the first assassin jumped in between them and sent a round kick towards Ryu’s ribs.

  It came fast, but not so quickly that Ryu couldn’t deflect it with a sweep of his arm and then lock up the leg. He went to sweep the other leg out, but the assassin leaped over Ryu’s attack and countered with a round kick to Ryu’s temple.

  Leaning his head back out of range, Ryu yanked the man’s leg back and sent him tumbling to the floor. The assassin recovered quickly, rolling to his feet. For a split second, his back was exposed, and Ryu went to close the distance.

  He pulled up short when a shocktrooper shot into the space where Ryu would’ve stepped. Another shocktrooper surged in on his flank with a heavy punch. Using Chen Taiji’s Cloud Hands, he redirected the attack, then stepped in with a Crashing Wave. His shoulder-butt slammed into the shocktrooper, sending the man sprawling. The armor dented, but absorbed the damage from the blow.

  Before Ryu could Watershape another whip, another shocktrooper engaged with a flying kick. Ryu spun out of the way, and the behemoth made cracks in the floor where he landed. But Ryu’s new position exposed him to the assassin’s punch, and it took all of his speed to avoid taking a hit to the side of his head.

  Three shocktroopers closed in, attacking in coordination. Unlike the first time he’d fought their kind, they seemed to be one step ahead. He managed to land a single attack on each of them, damaging their armor; but they all evaded his follow-up Fire Fists. Soon, their counterstrikes were landing, each blow of their metal-encased fists weakening his Iron Body.

  At last though, he had room to form a Water Whip. On his command, it lashed out and cut through another shocktrooper’s minigun.

  Though, why weren’t they using their light blades?

  A shocktrooper clambered in, but in his excitement to take advantage of Ryu’s pause, he left himself open. Ryu landed Butterfly Palms into the brute’s chest, damaging the armor and knocking the shocktrooper back.

  As the space opened between them, a shot came in. Before Ryu could react, it struck him in the left arm. Pain seared there, and as he was currently unable to root to the floor and redirect the energy, it took all his concentration to keep from losing consciousness. They’d baited him by sacrificing the one shocktrooper.

  With the effect of the blast stunning him, they closed in around him.

  As assassin leaped in and landed a kick to Ryu’s chest, hitting with much more force than the size of the man suggested. It sent Ryu careening back into a wall, and his vision faded at the edges.

  The last he saw, the shocktroopers were turning to envelope Siena, and the assassin had shredded Kentaro’s clothes as he pressed the boy back. Whether he’d cut flesh or not…

  Chapter 36:

  The Hacker

  W ith Aya locked out of the Ministry of Defense network forever, she couldn’t hack the shocktroopers’ armor. If only she hadn’t wasted Slash’s code on crashing that gunship! In the Peacekeeper’s EtherSpace, there were no internal force fields or other security measures for her to manipulate inside the lab. With nothing but the ability to keep the sprinkler system running, she felt utterly useless.

  Ryu was losing consciousness as the assassin fired stun bolt after stun bolt into him. All eight shocktroopers had turned from him and had now fanned out to take on Siena, Kentaro, and Keiko.

  Keiko! As much as Aya despised her sister, she didn’t want her hurt. Just what was she thinking, engaging against the Ministry of Defense?

  All Aya could do from here was analyze what was happening.

  Maybe find weaknesses in the prototype power armor.

  “Ai, create a simulation of Ryu’s current fight with the shocktroopers.”

  The nine-tailed fox appeared and bowed. Around Aya, her surroundings became the lab, where Ryu fought against the hulking brutes.

  Why had they chosen to engage hand-to-hand instead of pinning him down with fire? And when they’d fought up close, why hadn’t they used their light blades?

  She watched the simulation play back, noting how he’d hit them with a water technique, then attempted to follow-up with Xingyi Fire Fists which never landed. More importantly, the shocktroopers’ close combat skills improved the longer they fought Ryu.

  Of course.

  The Ministry of Defense wanted the power armor AI to learn Ryu’s techniques. Like the Peacekeeper combat AI she’d copied, it could both copy and come up with solutions. They’d even sacrificed their men’s health in order to do so. More impressively, it was becoming more obvious that the shocktroopers’ armor AI had networked them into a cohesive whole, coordinating their attacks to maximize their efficiency.

  Not even Ryu’s incredible martial skill could defeat eight shocktroopers and an assassin.

  Where was the other one?

  She shifted her attention to the present, where Kentaro had engaged the wiry man with a smooth transition between the various Xingyi Fist forms. His combination of punches were a thing of grace and beauty, but the assassin was just too fast with its cybernetic eyes and wired reaction time. Kentaro was losing ground, saved only by Keiko’s timely shots to distract the assassin’s killing blows.

  As for Siena, half her hair was singed off and the side of her face was burnt. The eight shocktroopers were moving to surround her, and even the five with live weapons weren’t firing them.

  Aya returned to the simulation to follow Siena’s fights. Flaming darts, electrical discharges, energy rays…all of the Elestrae’s channeling attacks had dissipated on the armor. The durastrium was well-known for absorbing various types of energy, which was why they used it to contain istrium cores in interstellar spacecraft.

  Back in the present, it looked like Siena had either figured that out, or was too exhausted to channel more. She held the same stance she’d started with when fighting Ryu that first day. Was the Ministry of Defense going to learn how to fight against the Elestrae people’s fighting arts, too? By recording and letting the AI—

  That was it.

  She’d studied the AI combat code from the Peacekeeper tactical suit. It was all algorithms. Algorithms that could be hacked.

  “Ai, take footage of Kentaro’s Xingyi Fire Form, create a reverse-engineered second form that leaves openings for his form to strike the areas which Ryu damaged, and then create a third form that the second form defeats.”

  Did that make sense? Would Ai be able to follow the commands? More importantly, would the combat code be able to come up with a solution?

  The fox spirit bowed. Six million simulations run. Form with the best chance created.

  Interestingly, it predicted the shocktroopers’ forms to resemble the Xingyi Metal Form, and the third to look
like the Xingyi Wood Form.

  Kentaro’s Fire to Temper Metal.

  Which the shocktrooper would probably use in reaction to a Wood attack.

  Metal Pruning Wood.

  “Ai, what are the odds of this best form?”

  One in three million, seven hundred thousand, two hundred and eighty-four chance of succeeding.

  Near-impossible odds, yet still better than what they faced now.

  First, she had to help Kentaro overcome the assassin.

  “Ai, project a copy of Bodhi from the maglift bay, and prepare to attack the assassin high with a Metal Path technique on my mark.”

  If the shocktrooper cameras saw the Wood Path technique, they would be prepared to use a Metal counter.

  Then, she hacked into Kentaro’s ear dot so she could speak to him on a secure channel.

  Chapter 37:

  The Purebred

  I f not for Keiko’s shots, the assassin would’ve finished Ken off by now. Armed with a gun and a knife, not to mention speed that rivaled Master Ryu, the wiry man had an answer to all of Ken’s attacks. Though the blade had sliced through Ken’s clothes, his Iron Shirt had only suffered the equivalent of a dozen paper cuts.

  Which was to say, it hurt like hell, even if it hadn’t caused any major damage.

  Aya’s voice spoke through his ear dot. “Ken-kun, this is a secure channel that only you can hear. I’m going to send Bodhi to engage the assassin. It should give you an opening. Whatever you do, don’t use Fire Path techniques until I tell you.”

  Bodhi?

  Right, the fake Transcendent. Would a holoprojection work on a Ministry of Defense assassin, with their cybernetic eyes?

  He just barely dodged a slash of the man’s knife, but left himself open to a follow-up.

  Then, the Bodhi holoprojection was there, robes flowing as it engaged with tenacious punches and kicks.

  Wood Path attacks.

  It forced the assassin to break away from Ken as the man avoided Bodhi’s onslaught with blinding speed. Apparently, the holoprojection had fooled the cybernetic eye.

  “Not too fast,” Ken whispered.

  Aya’s tone suggested she was rolling her eyes. “I know, I don’t want the assassin to learn it’s not real. Now go!”

  Ken watched the exchange of blows between MoD goon and holoprojection, waiting for an opening. Neither landed an attack, but the holoprojection was circling. In half a second, the assassin’s back…

  Ken surged in, stomping as he drilled a Xingyi Wood Form Fist between the assassin’s shoulder blades. Bone cracked and snapped, unable to withstand the changes that had come to Ken’s body from Advancing to First Rank in Metal. The man went limp below his chest and crumpled down on flaccid knees. An Iron Palm strike to the top of the man’s head compressed his spine, and he collapsed, unmoving.

  “Hurry, save Siena,” Aya said. “Stay a half-step behind Bodhi to his left, and launch your Xingyi Fire punches when he attacks with Xingyi Wood techniques.”

  What? All Ken could do was keep up with the holoprojection. It darted toward the closest shocktrooper, who stood at Siena’s back.

  Of course, just like Smith in the Peacekeeper tactical suit prototype, the shocktrooper armor AI learned combat from whoever it was fighting. Using Wood attacks would trick it into countering with Metal…

  …which would make it vulnerable to Fire.

  Within a split second, Bodhi launched its first attack, a knee attack from the rooster stance, followed by a driving punch.

  The shocktrooper spun and parried with what looked to be the circling guard of Xingyi Metal. As he set up with something akin to an Iron Palm strike, the movement of his arm left an opening in his defense, right where Master Ryu had dented the armor in his flank.

  Ken circled his fists, then drove forward as he spread his arms open. The motion penetrated the armor while the spreading rent it open. The following punch exploded through muscle and ribs, driving into the Bovine’s lung.

  Bodhi’s movement to engage the next shocktrooper counterclockwise in the ring had shielded Ken’s attack from view.

  Ken leaped to follow. Like the last time, Bodhi attacked with the Wood Form, and his target countered with an even smoother version of the Xingyi Metal Form. This time, it left an opening in his chest; and while Ken’s spreading motion didn’t tear open the armor, the ensuing punch pounded the weakened metal into the man’s heart.

  It was even easier with the next, since his hand had been severed by Master Ryu’s Water Whip. Ken’s fist punched through the weakened section covering the shocktrooper’s stomach, sending him reeling onto the floor.

  Two seconds had passed, and the three from Siena’s rear to right flank were down. Five remained. They started to move, the two to Siena’s left flank and one to her right turning to face Bodhi.

  Still on Bodhi’s right, mostly shielded from the surviving shocktroopers’ view, Ken correctly guessed Aya would continue counterclockwise spacing. Bodhi cut to the front, and when the shocktrooper followed, it exposed its dented rear armor. Again, a Fire Punch, supported by Ken’s new Iron Fists, smashed into the man’s spine.

  He hazarded a glance at Siena.

  Facing two of the shocktroopers, the Elestrae spoke a word, reached into her interdimensional space, and withdrew a pair of energy blades. Her opponents powered their own on, drove in and attacked, one slashing high, the other low. She back-flipped between the cuts while simultaneously sweeping her swords at their midsections. Their armor superheated on contact with her weapons, yet they both riposted with precise stabs.

  She landed on one foot, dropped her swords, and caught one’s wrist just above the blade emitter. With a twist of her hips, she used his momentum to pull him into his comrade’s stab. The first’s lurching motion drove his weapon through the hot spot of the second’s armor.

  As Ken finished off the next shocktrooper behind Bodhi’s feint, Siena did a back handspring, retrieved her swords and double-slashed through the last Bovine’s neck.

  The assassin shifted his guns from Master Ryu to them, then engaged the autofire. Dozens of pulses surged toward Ken, and another dozen toward Siena.

  Ken ducked beneath them, but tripped over a fallen shocktrooper. The assassin’s aim started to lower. This was it.

  The man split in half with a spray of blood and sparking of wires. The left and right sides of his bodies fell away, revealing Master Ryu.

  “Impossible.” Keiko gawked. “I can’t believe what I just saw.”

  The splintered Kappa cane lay at Ken’s feet, and he knelt down to retrieve it.

  “The gunship,” Bodhi said, pointing at the hole in the side of the building.

  The Ministry of Defense gunship was rotating, bringing its guns and missiles to bear on them.

  Chapter 38:

  The Cultivator

  W oozy from being on the receiving end of several dozen stun pulses, Ryu blinked away the haze in his vision. The way his limbs felt at the moment, there was no way he could reach the gunship with a Water Whip, and certainly not with his meager Fireshaping skills.

  He took stock of his pills, scattered among the bodies, warped columns, and upturned tables and equipment throughout the room. Two green Core-fortifying pills. A red Fire-energizing Pill. A yellow Earth Enriching Pill. And of course, the all-important sparkling violet and glowing blue pills that he needed to close the portals. His staff lay too far out of reach for him to use.

  “Get down!” he yelled.

  With the gunship only a second from facing them, its miniguns already whirring, Ryu leaped over a shocktrooper corpse, slid under a table, and scooped up the little red ball. Connecting to what energy he had left in his Core, he energized his meridians and flicked the pill through the opening in the building and into the gunship.

  Invisible to all but Ryu’s Wood Path sight, the energy of the pill blossomed out. Meant to energize the Fire Aspects of the body, they ignited the gunship’s missiles. The explosion rippled out, blasting shr
apnel from the hull into the building. The remains of the gunship hurtled downward. The floors rocked as it smashed into the building somewhere below.

  “Get the blue pill!” Ryu pointed near the maglift bay to where the precious treasure had rolled. Without wasting a beat, he dashed toward the closer violet pill near the gaping hole in the building’s side, scooping up the two greens along the way.

  Aya, now replacing Bodhi, joined Keiko, Siena, and Kentaro in following his finger with their gazes. They converged on the pill. Kentaro scooped it up…

  Only for Siena to slap his wrist down with one hand and catch the pill with the other.

  The boy looked at her in confusion, but no doubt she was just playing around like usual. Ryu beckoned to her.

  Pill in her outstretched palm, she backed away.

  “What are you doing?” Ryu demanded. “I need that to close the portals.”

  “I’m sorry, Ryusuke.” Tears now glistened in her eyes. “I have my orders.”

  Orders? What was she about to do? He strode toward her. “You’re not really a science envoy, are you?”

  “Stay back!” She opened her other palm, revealing a small disk.

  The holoprojection of a male Elestrae appeared in front of her. When he looked over his shoulder at Ryu, his face looked so familiar. Maybe because it was so similar to Siena’s. They had to be related.

  “I have it, Aran,” she said.

  “Good.” The Elestrae’s voice sounded beautiful, as if all the heroes from the past had come marching into the present. “Send it to High Command.”

  Send it? No! Ryu darted toward her, claiming the space between them in the blink of an eye.

  Following his lead, Ken moved to cut off her retreat.

  Siena spoke a word. The veins in the crystal beads around her neck lit up. The glowing blue pill disappeared with a barely-audible pop of air, and she collapsed to the floor.