Adamant Blood

Mark stepped into the third floor hallway and saw Isoko standing there, between rooms, wearing a bath towel and with her hair done up in another towel.

Isoko grinned as she saw him. She instantly teased, “ ‘You’re not some super rich person, are you?’ ”

That was one of the first things Mark had said to Isoko, after that first Etiquette Class.

Mark smiled. “I am not rich! I had no idea my uncles were until just the other day. I really should have put a few things together faster, back then, like when you spoke of your grandmother kidnapping a True Healer and how I had heard my uncle was a True Healer before.”

Isoko laughed, and then she walked into her guest room, apparently across the hall from Mark. “I’ll be out in a bit!”

“Sure!” Mark went to his own room and checked on his email and his messages in the meantime—

Isoko was suddenly there, fully dressed, by his door, saying, “You lost everything when you got summoned to Daihoon, yeah? Do we need to go get a new Slayer badge and junk?”

Mark looked up at Isoko, and paused. She was wearing a silver breastplate over a bright white shirt, simple cargo shorts, and ass-kicking boots. Mark got a weirdly proud feeling as he looked at her, in her paladin gear. He smiled, saying, “That breastplate looks good on you, Isoko.”

Isoko’s eyebrows went up as her face turned a little red. And then she grinned a whole lot and spun around, showing off, saying, “It does look good, doesn’t it!” She chuckled and stopped, adding, “I need to consider a villain costume. I’m thinking I’ll ditch the breastplate and get a feathered tiara to show allegiance to Freyala and the whole ‘princess’ vibe.” And then she walked out of the room, saying, “Now get dressed! I want to hit the road soon and you still need your badge, yes?”

Mark was still in his good clothes, but he could be ready rather fast. He started changing, calling through the open door, “I do need my badge! But we’re really going this fast?”

“I’m ready! Aren’t you?”

“… I suppose... I am?”

But was he? Soon, he’d be meeting bandits, even if they weren’t the ones who attacked him… Probably. Wolf Bayou was filled with exiled people… but not all exiles were bandits, right? Most of them were just people… But you didn’t get exiled unless you did something wrong.

Maybe he wasn’t as ready to confront bandits as he thought he was.

Mark pulled on his webweave, his tough jeans, and the tough shirt. He grabbed his phone and shoved it into his backpack along with a few other essentials, and then he stared at the white tokens that he had gotten from Ramirez. The white tokens went into the bag. With the bag over his back, Mark exited his room.

Isoko wore her own backpack. “Is that webweave showing under your collar! Are you rich or something?”

Mark rolled his eyes. “I need to say bye to my uncles— Er. Just Gabriel, I guess… But I’ll be back soon. Sorry I wasn’t here to greet you and introduce you.”

“I’m just glad to be here. The other option was the barracks, and I did not want that. Gabriel seems nice, too! He already offered to put me up long term here, but you and I will be moving on to this expedition when the time comes, yes?”

Mark got excited, saying, “I want to live in a flying castle.”

Isoko laughed wonderfully. “Me, too!” She added, “But those things are death traps for anyone who can’t fly.”

“Then we’ll simply have to get you a flying belt! I think I need one, too, in order to fly at any great height.”

Isoko looked charmed as she smiled softly. “That’s going to be one of my first big purchases. The cheapest models are 50,000 goldleaf, but I think the expedition will hand them out to whoever distinguishes themselves well enough. So that’s my first goal. The Slayer missions up till then will be to get some money of my own that I can spend with the support for stuff that isn’t covered. Entertainment, magical training, stuff like that.”

Mark felt suddenly secured upon hearing Isoko’s idea in person.

Mark had always had a vague sort of idea of joining a settlement expedition, of making some new place his new home for a while. Even before he got his Powers, he had wanted to do something like this. And now, he was.

He needed to stock up on resources, too, before they left.

Mark said, “That’s my plan, too.”

Isoko smirked. “While you’re figuring out who tried to murder you, and then confront them about it.”

“As well as that; yes.”

Isoko lost her smile. She said, “Inquisitor Lola and I didn’t get to talk much about bandits because everyone was talking about the settlement situation, but I know how to handle bandits. Since we have healing powers, we beat the ever loving shit out of them, heal them, and then beat them again. Repeat as necessary until they promise to change their ways. And then, we drag them before the city and hand them over and never think about them ever again.”

… Okay. That was a bit darker than Mark wanted to go.

Mark felt odd about Isoko’s solution… but it felt right? A little bit?

Just beat them up and hand them over to the authorities—

Oh.

Wait.

“They’re exiles,” Mark said. “They might not be accepted into the city. I got some clemency tokens from Mayor Ramirez, though. I don’t know what they mean, exactly, but I can give them the tokens if I think they’re worthy of redemption, or something like that, and they can do a year in a rehabilitative jail and regain citizenship. So normally you can’t handle bandit exiles over to a city… I don’t know what you do with a normal bandit exile. Just give them some help and tell them to stop attacking people, maybe.”

Isoko looked at Mark. She blinked a few times.

Mark was about to ask her what was wrong—

Isoko asked, point blank, “You want to be a monster slayer, or a justice-person, Mark? Deciding who lives and dies based on your view of the world?”

Mark felt a chill. “A monster slayer, of course, but I’m doing this whole thing to help other people. I’m never killing anyone.” He asked, “Why do you want to kill monsters?”

Isoko had a moment, and then she almost said something, but she walked down the hallway, saying, “Let’s spend the night in the wilds.”

Oh? What’s this?

A vulnerability?

Didn’t seem like a dangerous vulnerability, though, so Mark caught up, his voice a little higher as he teased, “Why do you want to kill monsters, Isoko?”

Isoko rushed down the stairs. “To make lots of money and have excitement and other good things!”

Mark laughed. “Untrue!”

Isoko suddenly stopped at the bottom of the stairs. She turned to Mark, and said, “I have a sister who should have survived the Tutorial, but she never came home. That was 5 years ago. Even if Riku ended up on Daihoon instead of coming back to Earth, 5 years is enough time to get back to us.

“So Riku is dead. I accepted this a while ago.

“But Addavein spoke of a two-layered mythology just the other week, of the elves of Endless Daihoon and their resurrection magics. And so… Before I met you and everything about this weirdness of this new chapter in life, my real answer to ‘what do I want out of life’ would have been making money and having excitement and all the good things out of life. But now I have a more solid goal… Maybe.” Softly, Isoko shrugged, then said, “Maybe… I can resurrect my sister. Doubtful, but… Maybe.”

Mark felt a lot of funny, good emotions, at that moment. He liked that Isoko was telling him a big truth like that. He liked it a lot. Because, truthfully…

“I wanted to never think about that stuff because he wrote it off as a total scattershot in the dark,” Mark said, “But I also want to know if resurrecting my own parents is possible. I’ll go on that trip with you.”

Isoko smiled softly. “Maybe maybe.”

A moment passed with Isoko standing there on the second floor landing, and Mark standing beside her.

And then Isoko continued down the stairs.

They ran into Gabriel near the door as though he had known to wait for them there, and maybe he had known to wait for them there.

Gabriel gave Mark a hug, saying, “Good luck out there. Do you want me to take you in the hovercar somewhere to start? Inside the city, I mean. I can drop you off anywhere you want.”

Mark smiled on Gabriel’s shoulder, saying, “We’re good. We’ll walk out and take the tram. And I’ll see you soon enough. Alexandro, too! This is just a week-long journey. I’ll be back.”

Gabriel pulled away, grinning. “You’ll need a real costume soon, Mark. Alex and I want to help when you’re ready for that.”

Mark chuckled. “I thought you guys like the heroes more than the villains.”

“We’ll make exceptions for you,” Gabriel said, happily. And then he turned to Isoko and said, “We’ll help you with your costume, too, if you wish.”

Isoko bowed a little, and said, “Thank you for the kind offer, but my family is already excited about helping me to make my costume when I pass all the courses for villain training.”

Oh yeah! She still had to do all of that, didn’t she, Mark thought.

They had excused Mark from those necessities of training.

“Of course, of course…” Gabriel said, “Good luck with those bandits, Mark.”

Mark grinned a little, though it might have been a wince. He shrugged. “It’ll be what it’ll be.”

And then he left, feeling odd.

Isoko walked beside him, but then she started jogging, her skin turning a bit platinum as she said, “Time to go!”

Mark raced to catch up, and soon found himself needing to Union with resilience and weakness to stay alongside her. She was faster than before.

“You’re faster!”

“I am!” Isoko said, laughing.

She outran Mark, easily, under the boughs of big trees, sunlight scattering through leaves and dancing upon her platinum skin. And then Mark cheated, his adamantium coins coming out and giving him four ‘legs’, instead of two, propelling him to speed.

Isoko ran faster, saying, “Good! I was hoping you could keep up!”

Mark smiled. He was still using coins to move here, on his Uncles’ driveway, because he didn’t want to ruin the driveway with little marks here and there. The coin-shape allowed for slippage and so it wasn’t nearly as fast as caltrops, but caltrops tore at stone and everything else they touched. At that thought, Mark wondered about Isoko’s increased weight in her Platinum Form.

And then he noticed that Isoko’s racing wasn’t causing a lot of noise at all. She was stepping really lightly—

Ah. No. She wasn’t stepping lightly at all. She was stepping really heavily, actually.

Isoko wasn’t pounding down through the concrete with her increased weight, and her shoes were doing fine, because every time she touched the ground the ground flickered with platinum. Every step was a platinum flicker across the ground, and her boots. She was doing some Tactile Telekinesis with her clothes as well as her footsteps, so that she didn’t ruin what she wore and to support her own weight.

And she was doing it routinely. Strongly.

She had grown a lot, and she was probably holding back.

“You can go a lot faster than this, can’t you?” Mark asked, surprised.

Isoko grinned, but then she slowed down and her platinum body faded away. They had reached the road. Mark walked alongside her, his coins vanishing back under the hems of his pants, and under his shirt sleeves. The tram was only a ten minute walk from here, so they walked.

Without any stressful breathing at all, Isoko said, “I’m still getting the hang of it, but yeah. I can get a surprising amount of traction and even a bit of extra speed if I’m focused on the direction. My modifier is up to 2.4 times baseline, and the deep scans at Citadel say I have a speed modifier now, too. Only 1.2 times speed, but 20% more speed is a lot, Mark.” She held up a hand and platinum flashed across her body. “I’m getting the hang of it and I think… I think Platinum Body is a lot stronger than I thought it was.”

Mark grinned. “And it’s pretty.”

“I’m gonna get all the sponsorships!”

“Oh my god! That’s right! They wanted me to go on that… whatever track it was with the Villain Program. You know… ‘Biglight’? ...No. That wasn’t it.”

Isoko looked away as she hummed, and said, “Spotlight track.”

“Yes! You need to go into the spotlight track, too! We can be on the spotlight track together!” Mark smiled wide. “I’ll be your henchman.”

Isoko had a weird moment. She froze. She turned back toward Mark and blinked, and then, in a delightful sort of way, her lips curved up, her eyes seemed to glitter, and she held back her head and laughed wonderfully. “Thanks but no thanks!”

Mark’s face fell. “What! Why not?”

“We can be on a team, Mark. No leaders or followers at all.”

“Oh! Well yeah. That works, too… But don’t supervillains usually work alone?”

“Oh oh oh!” With a haughty sort of demeanor, Isoko asked, “You’re shooting all the way to the top, are you?”

“Yes,” Mark said, without reservation. “I don’t want to break into banks or shit like that. But I’m okay with having a lair that people have to assault. I want a flying castle, Isoko. It’s probably a terrible thing to have and use, but I want one anyway. For at least a weekend, before it crashes into the ground.”

Isoko grinned wide. And then she started jogging. She wasn’t using her Powers, but she was running some, so Mark ran beside her.

Mark’s heart beat out the faintest black lines, mostly hidden beneath his shirt. No baseline looking would notice them, and that was all it took to adhere to Curtain Protocol.

Isoko spoke of monsters, and Mark did, too.

Soon, they made it to the tram, talking about monsters out there in the wilds of Memphi, in a tram that didn’t have many people at all. But there were some. Talking of monsters in public was fine, as long as you didn’t get too specific with Powers and capabilities. Mark spoke of fighting the big hydraturtle, though, asking what Isoko would have done differently.

“Run away and get someone else to take care of it,” Isoko said, easily and quickly. “I saw some of the things you said about it online. If it took you 15 minutes to kill while you ran away the whole time, then it is too much for me.”

“Okay well… Yeah. Valid.”

Isoko chuckled.

In a now-crowded tram, Mark and Isoko stepped out onto Northeast Rivergate Station, which was just south of the Northeast Rivergate. The place was a massive ‘town square’ like space, with a bunch of hunter shops all over the place. Guildhouses abounded in the district, and offices for Inquisitors and the police held beside each other on the inside of the gate. No restaurants, but there were lots of shops that sold backpacks filled with food to eat out there in the wilds.

The gate itself looked even more impressive from this side, with a wide, low slope of stairs that led up to a bunch of individual gates that went straight through the big wall. Those individual gates, each twice the size of a Giant Strength-type brawny, could be opened or closed at will. One massive, giant slab of black metal, on chains, held right above the individual gates, like a bar stretched across the entire thing. That bar could be lowered rather easily to block off the gates.

It was all kind of intimidating, and there were thousands of people hanging around a giant preparation area at the base of the stairs. A few fountains burbled here and there and people were dipping water out of those fountains, securing the water inside canteens. Most people were coming back into the city, down the stairs and into the square, and looking worse for the wear. Injuries wrapped with bandages, broken shields that were probably repairable, armor that was going to be trashed as soon as taking it off wouldn’t leave a guy nude. Some people were getting ready to go out. Those people looked pristine, yet rugged.

Some people even wore costume gear, but probably only because their costume gear was either easy to repair because of their Talents, or strong as all heck, due to the material makeup.

Mark saw two guys wielding giant-as-fuck swords over their shoulders and laughing with each other as they walked into the city. At that specific moment, that’s when Mark felt really good about going out, into the wilds, to kill shit.

As they walked to the Slayer’s gate-side office, Isoko mentioned, “I’m so ready for this.”

Mark smiled. “Me too!— Wait. You have no weapon?”

Isoko laughed as they got into line. “I’m a brawny! I can pick up an appropriately-shaped stick and use it like a sword.”

A few people were looking at them, at Mark’s civilian-like clothes and at Isoko’s paladin breastplate, but most people focused on Isoko rapidly and instantly. Not many people were in line for the Slayer station; most were waiting to the sides, for people in line to get their badges remade up front.

One guy to the side spoke up, “You two new around here? You’re looking for a group? We have openings for a healer.”

Without missing a beat, Isoko said to the guy, “We’re gunning for bandits and headed toward Wolf Bayou, killing monsters along the way. I imagine that is not a popular thing to do.”

The guy instantly reevaluated everything. He tipped his head, saluted with his fingers, and backed away, saying, “Never mind, ma’am. Good luck.”

A lot of people interested in Isoko all decided not to be interested.

But one woman behind Mark and Isoko said, “They give out free wooden swords for TT-use in a little shop by the right of the gate. They’re all based on models the shop sells.”

Isoko bowed a little, being completely professional as she said, “Thank you so much! We’ll give them a look.”

The woman smiled a little. “I hope you get whoever you’re going after. I haven’t heard much of a bandit problem, though.”

Isoko said, “It’s more of an attempted murder thing we’re going after. They might have just been bandits by opportunity.”

The woman’s eyes went wide. “Ohhhhh…” She nodded. “Yeah.”

Mark felt people hone in on them at the mention of bandits. He didn’t feel anyone’s attention-vectors turn into ‘kill kill kill’ though, so he ignored his Unionsense for the most part.

But at the woman’s comment, Mark asked her, “That happen a lot? Attempted murder and theft of goods?”

“Some people are just fucking stupid,” the woman said, waving a hand.

A few people nodded at that comment.

Mark didn’t know what to make of that, so he just nodded along with the others.

Mark had reached the front of the line, so he walked up to one of four different bank-teller-like booths. A servitor floated on the other side and a black dome-like device sat on the counter between the servitor and Mark. Mark had seen what the other people in line had done already, so he knew about what to do. The servitor spoke instructions anyway.

“Place your hand on the truthstone and state your name and birthday if you wish to receive a new Slayer badge. If you wish for a route in line with your badge, then ask for one.”

Mark put his hand on the stone, saying, “Mark Careed, May 3rd, 2030. Got a route headed toward Wolf Bayou?”

A little slot to the side of the truthstone flickered with red light and a hexagon of faux mana crystal popped out of the slot. It was black with red lines on the edges. On a slot on the other side of the black dome, a sheet of paper printed out.

“Please take your badge and requested route, Mark Careed. There are no red routes headed toward Wolf Bayou, but if you can make it to Wolf Bayou and come back, then you will have passed a basic Red advancement test, and will be advanced to Orange. Crossovers safe for red-ranked Slayers are at the towers, just outside of the gate. Next!”

With his badge secured, Mark walked outward. He had meant to say thanks to the woman who had spoken to them in line, but she was already getting her badge remade over there, as well. Isoko walked with Mark outside.

Isoko fended off 4 more requests for a party before the two of them got to the little shop giving away free sword-shaped bits of wood. Isoko got a simple meter-length thing with an edge that was quite sharp. The shopkeep said that it would keep an edge for a day on its own, as long as it wasn’t actually used. A Brawny had to Tactile Telekinesis on the stick if they wanted that edge to remain strong.

Isoko thanked him for his product and flashed it platinum, to check the edge. She cut a finger a little, and pronounced, “Oh! That’ sharp!”

The shopkeep laughed. “We got real swords, too! Those keep edges a lot longer. My Talent is Sharpening. If you bring me a sword that needs sharpening then it’s 5 goldleaf per sharpening.” She pointed to the sign over her that said the same thing, as she passed her other hand over a customer’s silver sword, and the silver sword turned a lot sharper. Mark didn’t see the guy pay, but he assumed he did, and the shopkeep wished him luck.

Soon enough, Mark and Isoko got through the gate, to the other side.

In the open air, walking down the stairs beyond the Northeast Rivergate, Mark teased Isoko, “Look how popular you are! That breastplate really does send a signal.”

Isoko laughed.

They hit the packed ground and sparse grasses beyond the gate’s staircase and started jogging north, with all the people, to get to the ‘crossover that was safe for Red ranks’. That space was at the towers that popped up here and there across the Mississippi. Soon, they arrived at a wide, brightly-lit tunnel that went under the river. People walked or ran in or out of that tunnel. The tunnel was divided into lanes; slow people and speedsters, it looked like.

Isoko paused at the descent, because some big ships plowed out of the giant bubblewall that screened the Mississippi. Those ships gathered bubbles like a child would pack bathtub bubbles onto their face, to make a ‘beard’, but these Mississippi bubbles turned the whole ship invisible. Isoko stared, wide-eyed, at the casual display of grand magics.

Mark smiled, saying, “Want to sit and watch for a while? Part of hunting is seeing the sights.”

Isoko breathed deep and seemed happy. Then she shook her head, saying, “Nope! I want to kill monsters and make money. The completion quest you got for a trip to Wolf Bayou is worth how much?”

Mark pulled the paper out of a pocket to look at it. He put it back away, saying, “Looks like 500 goldleaf.”

“So 250 for me. That’s less than a real kill quest, but… That’s fine? I need to get upgraded past Red anyway. The bandits were on this coast, though, right? The east coast? Wolf Bayou is on the west side. Are we using the tunnel? Or not?”

Mark looked up north, toward the wide Mississippi, and the land on this side of the river. Then he looked back to the tunnel. He made a decision. “There is no way those guys are scoping out the same place they failed to kill me. They moved, for sure.”

“You never know. They could still be there, waiting for someone else to walk by with millions in goldleaf floating around them.”

“Ehhhh! I don’t need to find them directly.” Mark started walking down the tunnel. “Let’s go to Wolf Bayou.”

Isoko was right there with him, whispering, “So you’ve noticed the people looking at us, right? Do you think any of them have scanners for goldleaf, too?”

Mark had noticed everyone looking at them, but he had disregarded most of what he noticed, because no one was out to kill him.

Some people out there definitely had scanners, though. Those people got real startled when their scanners went off as they looked at Mark.

“Some people have noticed us, yes, and some people have scanners, too.”

Isoko raised an eyebrow. “You see people with scanners?”

“Oh! Uh. Not that… Hmmm.” Mark said, “I don’t know if you can, but I know that I can use Union to sense… sort of like… directional vectors on people. I think I’m sensing their intent, or purpose, or sense of direction in life at that moment, or something. It’s not really the physical direction they’re going, but there is a lot of that going on, too. Mostly, I can tell the vector that a person is pointed in, when they’re near me. So, yeah, I noticed everyone so far. None of them seemed dangerous, but… Some people back there had the instinctive reaction to kill me, but no real desire to kill me. Others were more… a desire to get close? Those ones I noticed the most. And the greed. I noticed the greed a lot. Mostly though, people noticed you.”

Isoko walked with Mark, thinking deeply. Her vector wildly focused on Mark, and then on herself, and then on Mark, and then forward, and then on that guy over there who raced through the tunnel on the speedster track, moving fast as a blur and then vanishing behind them, back up into the sun. And then she actually looked to Mark.

“I don’t feel anything.” Isoko shrugged, adding, “I didn’t get the full Talent. I can certainly keep Platinum Body up and running full time now, though!”

“Glad for that, but I think you got enough of Union to get this part, too. ‘Seeing’ ‘vectors’ might be the base nature of the magic itself. When you use Union, you tie together various things in a Union, and then you decide what goes where in that Union. You didn’t get formless Union. Instead you were given, like, like, several hammers, or however you want to envision the specific tools of your Powers, and the hammers can certainly hammer, but they also have an innate form, and they’re an extension of your body. Simply by having a hammer at all you should be able to get a feel for how they… you know… feel?”

Isoko frowned a little.

Mark tried to think— “Oh! Proprioception! The feeling of understanding where your body is, and where it is not. You should have an innate proprioception of your Union ‘hammers’.”

Isoko was fine for a moment, and then she walked slower, her vector going in every direction, her heart beating and connecting to Mark, and then to everyone else in the tunnel, and then beyond—

Suddenly, Isoko’s vector was everywhere, pointed in every direction, and then her vector snapped. She slapped back into herself, faltering a little, but Mark was there, holding her up, smiling.

“… Huh,” Isoko said, her mind back inside her head, as she gripped Mark’s hand.

Mark recalled his own first expansion, when he had been sitting there with Lola in Healing Club, watching the brawnies down below do their thing. Had Lola seen Mark ‘expand and contract’ like Mark had just seen Isoko expand and contract? Perhaps.

Isoko might have a godly graft of power attached to her astral body, but it was still her astral body. She still stressed herself to a limit she had not known before now.

Isoko breathed deep, pulling in good from the world, and then breathing out bad, steadying herself as she blinked. “I read about Union... Never read about hammers and vectors, but sure, that works.”

Mark smiled. “I’m glad my shitty explanation could help!”

Isoko scoffed and walked on her own, saying, “It was a good explanation, Mark.”

Mark chuckled. “Do you have the vectors of understanding yet?”

“Not at all! But I will eventually.”

Mark was sure she would, too.