Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

There were, in fact, neo-petrol stations in the badlands. More to the point, it wasn’t the desolate landscape that Yuriko had expected. When everyone called the city’s outskirts the badlands, she expected desert conditions. Maybe not the sandy dunes that she’d come to associate with the word, but at least, it should be relatively deserted of humanoid lifeforms, right?

Nope. While the ground was made of reddish soil filled with cracks caused by drought, it was actually that way not because of lack of rain. It was that way because the earth was tough and the torrential rains washed away the softer earth. Well, Seasonal torrential rains, and thankfully, this already being the Season of Earth, the precipitation was gentle, lifegiving. Even so, nothing bloomed in the red wastes, but life found a way to prosper.

Humanoid, nay, corporate assisted life.

Instead of the usual farmlands, what existed here to produce vegetables and other greeneries were huge, vertical, hydroponic farms. They were small compared to mega buildings and skyscrapers, but big compared to apartment buildings. Each one was cylindrical, roughly a hundred paces in diameter, and half as much in height. This produced a relatively squat, and ugly building, and there was a hydroponic farm in each cardinal direction. Though she hadn’t seen any of the others, the one in District 12 that she was able to see almost as soon as she left the city limits. It was only five leagues away, and she had not been sure what she saw when she first saw it. But it was also clear that what she was looking for wasn’t in that direction.

The landscape was not flat, but there were roads that stretched out to connect every settlement outside anyway. Most of the roads were in disrepair. There were potholes, missing gaps, and even boulders and dried tree trunks blocking the road. But it was still a network that spanned across the badlands.

Yuriko and Fluffington had been on the move for another couple of days already. The neo-petrol stations were each about a couple or so leagues apart along the main arterial roads. The funny thing was that they weren’t manned, but controlled by programs through REI-space. She wondered if she could get free neo-petrol if she messed with the connections, but it was only a couple of hundred ACs per full tank anyway.

Fluffers had woken up even before they left the city, and he protested the sling carry. He wound up strapped to her back, looking over her shoulder with his tongue lolling out. Her backpack had been placed in the bike’s storage bin.

She wasn’t really sure what she was looking for, but since they were in a barren countryside, she spread her Anima perception as wide as she could. Her range was more than half a longstride now, and by driving slowly, she could take her time investigating. It was easy to overlook a void in her perception if she was going too fast, and while her strands of consciousness allowed her to pay attention to a hundred things at once, it was only a cursory focus.

As it were, they ended the day not finding much of anything. They drove off-road and found an overhang to shelter in. Yuriko spent the evening in meditation while Fluffy went out to hunt. She wasn’t sure what he could actually find to eat, but he came back with a bloodied muzzle. He seemed fine though, and he knew better than to try to eat the Scourge.

The next morning, they continued wandering around the wasteland. It could be considered a vacation, Yuriko thought, but the view wasn’t all that appealing. She’d rather lounge on a beach, on the sands underneath the shade of palm trees and sipping cocktails while her lover cuddled up against her…

Well, Fluffington was decent enough company, and now that he could manipulate his size, he made for a good hug pillow.

In the distance, the mountains dominated the skyline. She wasn’t sure how tall they were, but the maps she saw indicated that they surrounded the city entirely, with only a single gap to the north. There were a few spots that were low enough to build a road across, specifically in Districts 5 and 8, but the only real gap was in district 12. Dragon Fall City’s districts, aside from central which was a one-league circle surrounding Gate Consortium’s Tower, were pie slices labeled and positioned after the numerals of a clock. She hadn’t been able to see the District 12 gap until she left the city. The northern gap was used as the main channel outside the city, though she wasn’t sure where it led to. None of the maps and history articles really mentioned it.

For that matter, was the ground floor city of the Eternal Tower just Dragon Fall? Was this place a separate space from the rest of the Arcadia Region? She couldn’t find the answers anywhere within the city’s REI-space, and she supposed she’d have to get to the next floor to find out. For that matter, the citizens within the city couldn’t all be delvers or climbers, right? Elsie sounded like she lived here all of her life too.

The next day, they wandered all over the first to third districts. Well, the area that was within ten leagues of the city anyway. It was still a large space, and combing it for anomalies took time. And she still wasn’t certain if she’d find any, and if the pathways were time-sensitive. She was sure her companions would eventually find out from their own intelligence gathering, she had no patience for doing that. Besides, she was still growing her Anima reach at an astounding pace every day, but it was at the cost of purity.

Somehow, the ground level of the Eternal Tower was ideal for strengthening her reach. All of the disparate energies that lingered in the air, plus the strange restrictions of the layer, created a synergistic effect to the novelty of the entire thing. She was sure the growth wouldn’t last for the entire Season, but she was fine taking advantage of it now. The things her Anima used to expand weren't as pure as she’d like, and with the gobbets of pure Chaos her foray into the Primordial Chaos space her Anima had gobbled up with, it made for an annoyingly tainted Anima. Her efforts barely kept her Anima purity in check, and she was hovering between eighty-nine and ninety percent. Considering she’d gotten her Anima purity to almost a hundred percent before she reached Transformation, it was irritating to her perfectionist sensibilities.

However, refining her Anima purity could be done anywhere, whilst expanding her reach at such speeds could only be done in special places. Otherwise, she’d be lucky to have a growth of an inch a day. She supposed it was well worth the hassle.

With nothing much to find, they eventually ended the day in one of the neo-petrol station’s attached motels. While most of the roads were nearly empty, the radial roads weren’t all of the stations there doubled as rest stops for the huge haulers and their convoys.

Yuriko parked her bike in the parking lot, locked it and sauntered over to the lobby. The sun was just about to set, and she noted that there were nearly a dozen other motorbikes in the lot. None of them were ‘factory standard’ like here. She…wasn’t sure if she liked the aesthetics of the riders. The bikes had numerous decals along the side and the petrol tank, and nearly all of them had modified the seat to have a swooped back. It sorta ruined the bike’s sleek lines. Ah, they were Kanegawa bikes, though none were Bladerunners.

“Kanegawa Spears?” Yuriko muttered. The model was cheaper than the ‘runner, but not by much. The maximum speed was a bit lower, she recalled, but the acceleration was higher. She also stared at the exhaust mufflers, or rather, the sound amplifiers. Those things would make a racket whenever they pushed the throttles.

Shaking her head, she carried Fluffers in her arms and paid for their stay through the automated system in the reception. There was a receptionist, but the woman was only there for inquiries. Check-ins and payments were done through an Autotab kiosk near the entrance. Her device was given a keycode to allow her access to the rooms.

Somewhat eager to go to their room, Yuriko hurried towards the west wing and climbed up to the second floor. While her aura kept most of the dust from her body, she still had not bathed since the day before yesterday. The door opened after her visor sent the keypass, and she dumped Fluffers on the bed, where he yawned, circled around thrice, and plopped down. She headed straight to the bathroom, shed her clothes, left them crumpled on the floor, and headed into the showers.

The water was scalding hot, but it was just as she preferred. She sighed as the heat matched her internal temperature, and her muscles loosened as she relaxed. The only other way her stress could be managed is if she made love to Heron and Gwendith for hours. Still, the cost of the hot shower, while little, still bothered her sensibilities, so she only paid for the first ten minutes. Afterwards, she got out and put on a fresh set of clothes. She dumped her dirties into her backpack to get cleaned by the laundry function. She had to infuse Animus into the formations, however, since the ambient energies weren’t enough to charge it up. It was either the backpack kept its spatial expansion or it charged its reserves from ambient energy, and at the rate it was going, Yuriko had to feed it nearly a hundred lumens a day to maintain the formations.

Converting Radiant energy to Animus was always a chore, even if she could do it quickly. It was still an intricate process that required her to alter her state of mind. For that reason, she couldn’t just dedicate a consciousness strand to do it for her. She could allow her core to convert her Radiant energy to Animus, but it was slower than doing it herself.

Once dressed, she walked out of the room to head to the cafeteria, or what passed for it anyway. It was just a room with a bunch of vending machines and tables, according to the motel’s map. But when she walked in, she blinked at the occupants.

Almost as one, the people inside turned to look at her, while the speaker in the podium paused for a moment. They were clearly gang members, considering each of them had matching tattoos on their left cheek. It looked like a coiled hooded serpent around a pistol. A garish display.

With a huff, she ignored the attention and headed to the vending machines. The gang shook off the effects of her presence, and the speaker continued to do his stuff. He seemed to be ranting against another group called the trash bears or something to that effect. Yuriko barely paid attention.

Well, she would have ignored the goings on, except while she was pulling XXL Burritos from the machine, the cafeteria’s main doors, and the door that led to another hallway were flung open by gun-toting gangers.

They opened fire with barely a word, screaming mindlessly in rage. The bullets cut down a few of the snake-tattooed gangsters, but the rest reacted by throwing up the tables and diving for cover. The speaker at the podium died with dozens of holes through his body.

Yuriko huffed in annoyance as some bullets struck her Anima. Her aura negated all of the kinetic energy, and the bullets stopped just before they could hit her clothes, then dropped to the ground with plinking sounds.

‘Should I get three servings?’ she thought idly while the machine processed her order. The burrito wraps plopped down into the receiving chute, but before the third order could be processed, bullets hit the machine and totalled it.

“My dinner…” Yuriko muttered even as she turned to glare at the gangwar behind her, only to stop when she felt something that didn’t quite agree with her Anima perception. Her eyes saw men shooting guns, but her perception showed only a void. Except it was bigger than the void ‘chronian gear users normally had. If she had to put a finger on it, it was the shape that the Scourge had.

“Well, now it's personal.”