It might be 'does the breast stroke for days' for all I know. Or weeks. That said, given the 'Ryougi throws stuff' option, I don't see it as any worse than 'reactor blows up' as a dramatic shorthand for 'mecha is mission killed for reasons too complicated to worldbuild, much less describe', when the reactors supposedly won't do that. Though I guess airfoils could be made with her body and kimono.
He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision - he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath - 'The updates! The updates!'
--------------------------------------------------------
Garan no Dou
Ten Minutes Earlier
“They're a writing system used by ancient Scandinavian people. Also J. R. R. Tolkien and black-metal bands on occasion. Why?”
She nods, and puts her glasses back on. Librarian mode re-engaged. Don't I have sunglasses somewhere? In my jacket pocket, I think. I should repeatedly put them on and take them off, just to show her how annoying that is.
You'd need some quips, though.
That's the real problem, isn't it. God, I wish I'd had them when I took down that Predator drone. That would have been fucking awesome. It would crash on the opposite riverbank, and then I'd say something like Looks like this time the Predator...open bracket, puts on on sunglasses, close bracket...became the prey.
YEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHH!
Of course, no-one would have been there to see it, but it still would have been cool.
“Quite correct...” She gets out of her chair, which annoys me because I pretty much just sat down. She picks up the crossbow from the floor and the four remaining bolts from the table, and proceeds to hold both with a level of firearm discipline sufficient to make me wince. True, crossbows are not strictly speaking firearms due to their manifest lack of fire, but they have triggers and shoot things so the same rules apply. God damn it, woman, keep your finger outside the trigger guard. Do you have any idea how many accidents-
Secondhand smoke.
My apologies; I neglected to take into account her near-total lack of consideration for the health and safety of other people. Yeah, I'm immortal, but everyone else who works here is going to end up with lung cancer and die, and for once something won't be my fault.
“...but not entirely correct.” she continues. “Over there, if you please.”
I get up, and take my position where she indicates. It's on the other side of the trolley holding the tank, and it puts me, somewhat unnervingly, in line with the row of scorched puppets. I become acutely aware of what a target at a firing range must feel like. Ten metres away, she walks to a point directly opposite me, and takes aim at my head.
Her stance needs work.
No shit it does. God forbid she gets her hands on an actual firearm.
So, I take it this is how we're going to be killing time while we wait for the tank to fill up.
Seems that way. This somehow gives me the mental image of something a rich, empire-building colonialist might do in some European-controlled part of Africa back in the nineteenth century; shooting at one of their native servant-boys for amusement. Very Congo Free State, in my opinion. Bad old Leopold the Second, Mr. Kurtz and the ivory trade. Imperialism, ho!
“So, what?” I say, only half-sarcastically. “It's a writing system with widely-unknown mystically magical and/or magically mystical powers?”
“Yeah.” She says, flatly, and with a faint smirk that annoys me. “Pretty much.”
“Ah, but of course. Naturally.”
“Supernaturally.” she counters, as her glasses catch the light for a brief moment when she moves her head. “You'll find-”
She fires the crossbow.
Now, I'm not sure what the idea of doing that mid-sentence was; I guess it would sort of defeat the purpose of this exercise if she said when she was going to shoot. Needless to say, the bolt is where my eyes were focused on to begin with. The moment – the very moment – the bowstring is released, I react.
Subjective time slows. My vision sharpens, becoming hypersensitive, and all my other senses follow. For a brief, brief moment – since what is brief for me must border on instantaneous to an observer – the sensory overload becomes overwhelming. But almost as quickly as it does, I reach some kind of accommodation with it. It's not that there's a loss of detail. It's like the instinctive adjustment made by your eyes when moving from a dark place to a bright place. But there's more than that. As I move through the air – rendered thicker and more viscous to my accelerated perception, akin to moving underwater – there comes a strange sense of total awareness; of my surroundings, my body – everything. Not to have one's attention flit from place to place, but to see and to know all of it, simultaneously. And for a moment, a finely-sliced sliver of a second, I see it.
The golden-
Gotcha!
I am dropped back into real-time unceremoniously, but triumphant all the same.
“Mm-hm!” I say, failing completely to say what I meant to say, which was Ta-da!, or something to that effect. I can't help it, after all; it's difficult to talk when you're holding a crossbow bolt between your teeth. The aluminium – or whatever it's made out of; some lightweight metal – bolt is still vibrating slightly as I hold it, in much the same way as the blade of a throwing knife, recently embedded in a wall behind where you were just standing before you leant down to pick up your suitcase at an airport, heralding your impending plunge into an international world of intrigue and espionage. The point I caught it at is millimetres from the tip, which – going by the visible-light spectrum made up in gaffer tape along the length of the bolt – falls somewhere in the far infra-red, if I'm not mistaken. I take it out of my mouth, and hold it up. “Did I win?”
“-that among the myriad schools of magecraft, Runes are comparatively simple, but – if used skilfully – are also very powerful. Though I suppose, as something of a specialist, I might be biased.” she says, continuing her sentence from before. She takes off her glasses again, but this time folds them up and hangs them onto her back pocket. After that, she speaks again. “Now; did you win? That depends. Is your ambition to be a circus performer?” There's no malice in her tone, but that smirk of hers sours my mood instantly.
“No.”
“Then use your hands.” I look over at the water tank. It's still only about one-third full. At the current flow rate, I give it another ten or fifteen minutes. Aozaki goes on. “Theatrics do have value in combat. How much is variable. Against Araya? Not much.”
“Yes, I know.” I say, with perhaps more irritation than I intended. It's not like I'm going to show off while actually in combat. That's idiotic.
So why do it now?
It is a passive-aggressive manifestation of my innate suspicion that this woman has taken my money and is wasting my time.
It wasn't your money, though.
You are a pathetic excuse for a subconscious. Go and look at her breasts or something.
“I'm sure you do. In all likelihood, cumulatively you have more combat experience than me by an order of magnitude.”
“It doesn't count, though.” I find myself mumbling.
“On the contrary; it counts indeed. At least; it's my understanding that it should. Trouble is, I doubt that lot-” She points at me, and makes it very clear with a hand gesture who she's talking about. “-ever fought anyone like Araya.”
Oh, I don't know about that.
I think about Samantha Weaver, and Two Bluff, Arizona.
“Whatever.” I say, with a dismissive hand wave. “Anyway, is this all your crossbow test amounts to?”
“No.” She begins reloading the crossbow, using another one of the bolts which rest at her feet. I put the one I caught down on the ground. “We'll run through all of the arrows twice. The first time, all you have to do is catch them. The second, I'll ask you to catch them on a segment of a particular colour, which will change for each arrow.” Something about about the way she spoke about the arrows catches my attention.
“The arrows are different?”
“Very good, and yes, they are. An application of Runes, if you're wondering. This one,” she says, finishing her reload and pointing at the bolt pointing along the crossbow's bore axis, “has a tendency to change direction at random while in flight.”
“How is that even-”
“Are you absolutely sure you want to hear the explanation?”
A long pause follows, which she uses to unhook her glasses from her back pocket, and put them back on again.
“...no.”
She smiles at me, and fires the crossbow.
* * * *
Ogawa Mansion, Kayamihama
Normality is just one of those things. If you're prepared to look hard enough, you can find it pretty much anywhere. Mind you, in my case it tends to take a lot of effort. Having escaped from my short-lived imprisonment in a headache-inducing geometry exercise, I find myself in a headache-inducing apartment building. Even though – on recollection – it's likely that the dull, throbbing pain emanating from the back of my neck is a result of the blow that knocked me out originally, I'm still fairly confident in making that assessment of the place. The elevator is encased in a cylindrical shaft, which runs up the inside of a wide, cylindrical lobby. The lobby itself is bereft of furniture, and is made largely of stone. Polished and flat, like marble. The floor in particular catches my eye; it has some kind of pattern on it, disordered and chaotic, like sand of a thousand different shades of red and orange was mixed, shaken up and scattered out onto the floor. The pattern is hard to concentrate on, and seems to behave like some kind of optical illusion, appearing to move in places, but stopping once you focus your vision on it. Interesting as a curiosity, maybe. But there's more, and upon closer examination, the merely odd surreptitiously sidles over to become the maliciously bizarre. It's difficult to notice – that is, it's difficult to notice if you're trying to notice it – but the floor appears to be...sloped, oddly. I don't know how that works, if it's a trick of the lighting or perspective or something, but it does. The walls, too, seem to lean at slight angles out of the corner of your eye, only straightening up when you're staring directly at them. Definitely headache-inducing.
Makes one question the architect's mental stability.
That said, if she didn't have that abandoned building, I can see this as the kind of place Miss Touko would live in. It gives off that kind of impression. She's the type who'd get a kick out of messing with people by way of the architecture. A few metres out from the elevator, I glance back. It's still open, and the lighted array of numbers above the door informs me that I am on the tenth and final floor.
The penthouse, huh?
There is a corridor in front of me, and from down it I hear distant rainfall. I head along it out of equal parts boredom, curiosity, and a desire for some kind of perspective, or normality, or something like that. I need to get my thoughts in order. As I turn the corner at the end, the fresh air is a welcome relief, albeit cold and bearing a faint smell of ozone. A roll of thunder off in the distance, in belated accompaniment to an unseen flash of lightning, provides the reason for that. The corridor that runs off at an angle circles the side of the building, and is open to the outside through the space between the ceiling and the wall put there to stop people from falling to their deaths. Due to fortuitous positioning, there's no wind-driven rain pouring in on this side of the building. Sure is outside, though; it's really hammering down out there. Visibility's down to about a kilometre, but half a minute's worth of close examination of the surrounding skyline – anonymous high-rises as far as the eye can see, for the most part – reassures me that I'm still in Tokyo. Likely somewhere reasonably close to the centre of the city.
There was a storm forecast for this evening, wasn't there?
I have a gut feeling which tells me this is the same day, at least. So I've been out for a couple of hours.
Wonderful.
I find myself leaning against the interior wall, looking out at the rain falling in sheets. A sour expression crosses my face, though I think it might have been there already.
So, what now?
My first impulse is to get out of here. My experience has been that apartment buildings can be divided into two categories; the ones that contain flagrant violations of the laws of reality, and the ones that do not. To the latter category I'll ascribe the one I live in, while the former contains oddities like the Fujyou building. This one is in the former category. No arguments. The bizarre, illusion-like quality of the architecture is just the icing on the cake. Since getting out of the elevator and sizing up the surroundings, the Lines of Death visible on the structure of the building have been giving me a weird feeling. I'm not quite sure what it means, but there's definitely something abnormal about this place. Putting together the pieces from my last memories before blacking out earlier, it's not difficult to put forward the idea that a Magus is responsible for this present state of affairs. Hence, this building is likely to be a Magus' lair. Or workshop, whatever they're called. Since I only know one Magus – and I think if this was a practical joke of hers, she'd have jumped out and said 'boo' already – it has to be one I don't know.
Which is...a problem.
Yeah, you'd think so, right? Interesting, though; you would also think that my escape from whatever that thing was earlier would have been something to set some alarm bells ringing somewhere. That there should have been a welcoming committee of some description waiting for me when I left the elevator. Instead, nothing. Not to mention that whoever put me in there did indeed rescue me from capture and probable indefinite detainment courtesy of that bunch of thugs from earlier. Their intentions toward me remain unclear, and whoever they are, they've clearly deemed that I'm not worth the trouble of having them explained to.
“Well, then.” I say, getting up from my leaning position.
My thoughts have come around to a conclusion like this, which doesn't surprise me very much. Whether I'll be allowed to leave this place or not, I'd like my chances a lot more with some kind of weapon in hand. I begin walking up the corridor once more, this time keeping my eyes out for a non-vacant nameplate. See, these are apartments, right? Judging by the expense the builders of this place seem to have gone to – certain design choices notwithstanding – I reckon it's a good bet these apartments will contain kitchen areas. And there's not a kitchen I've seen yet that didn't have even a single knife to it.
A-ha.
I find one. Just one, at the second-to-last apartment on this side . Number 1004. One occupant, if the neat, lacquered sign next to the door is to be believed. A certain Mariko Shijima. I do my best to hide my wounded artificial arm behind my back, so as not to provoke difficult questions. Granted, I haven't really put much thought into how I'll explain this situation to Ms. Shijima, but I guess winging it can't go too badly. I push the button to trigger the doorbell.
No answer.
I try again, and then once more thirty seconds later for good measure. I knock on the door, too, just to cover all my bases. Nothing. I put my ear to the door, but the sound of the rain foils my efforts to hear anything from the inside. I give it a minute before deciding that she must be out.
In a way, I think, this is good. It saves me a lot of explanation. I focus my full attention on the lock to the exclusion of all else, find the necessary target, and wedge my finger – uncomfortably – between the door and the frame. I apply pressure-
-and the lock dies. Just as intended. I'm certain Kokutou would be reading me the riot act if he could see this, but, well, you know what they say about desperate times. Besides, it's not like I'm going to be walking out with a television or something. Unless Ms. Shijima is a kitchenware enthusiast, obsessive-compulsive or both, she likely won't even notice. The door opens inward at my push, and I step into apartment 1004.
* * * *
USS George Washington, Yokosuka
“Koenig. Do you have a moment?”
The man at the other end of the encrypted satellite call coughs before answering.
“It's not like Gentek is going to be doing anything for a while after this, so I suppose I do. How goes the hunt over in Japan?”
“Frankly? Awful. That's partially what I wanted to discuss with you.”
On McMullen's laptop screen, a grey-haired, bearded man in his late fifties wearing a lab coat with a Gentek ID on it furrows his brow slightly.
“Are you referring to that video you sent me? The one from the...er, what's it called...GAMEKEEPER deployment?”
“Yes.” McMullen adjusts his glasses, and takes a second to glance around the room. This medical bay on the aircraft carrier has been co-opted into a makeshift laboratory by him and his staff. They, as evidenced by the otherwise-empty room, aren't here at the moment. Most of them, McMullen's told to take ten for a lunch break, while a handful were flown back to Yokota to process Azaka Kokutou's corpse. The sealed laboratory case containing the POTEMKIN samples went with them, for obvious reasons. In the event the Japanese want to examine the body, they'll have to be allowed to, and in keeping with the story they've been fed, they will have to find evidence of an actual virus in her system to account for her death. POTEMKIN – DX-1110 to the pedantic – is what they'll find; a pseudo-BLACKLIGHT analogue created for purposes like these. It lacks some of the characteristic properties of the DX-1118 series – it won't create Runners or Walker populations, for instance – but it can replicate the vast majority of the symptoms displayed by BLACKLIGHT and REDLIGHT infectees, and, most importantly, it can do it without employing large proportions of gene sequences the patents on which can be tied back to Gentek. Somewhat ironically, it's actually a powerful biological weapon in its own right – just nowhere near the potency of the DX-1118 series. “That, and the test results I copied to you later on. You saw them?”
“You're damn right I did. This is turning into a farce, McMullen. First you have an unkillable lioness the size of a house, then you find out that not only is there no trace of the virus on it, the entire bloody thing is made of ash. A non-biological living organism, as if that wasn't a contradiction in terms to put all others to shame. It's ridiculous.”
“And yet it exists all the same. Though I'll admit that it makes MOTHER look pretty mundane by comparison.”
“To say the least. If the Old Man expects you to find some scientific basis for that thing's existence, I say good luck to you; you shall definitely need it.”
“That's what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Koenig narrows his eyes.
“Meaning?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“The myriad peculiarities of BLACKLIGHT and company. Would that be right?”
“I'm talking about things like that – how, for instance, Runners seem to be able to violate conservation of mass. The weight-disparity problem.”
“I would hazard that there's something akin to a tacit acknowledgement between you, me and a few of the other senior staff here that the viruses we work with and the established laws of nature are not always on speaking terms.” Koenig sniffs. “Even so, there does come a point where we can delineate the truly inexplicable from the merely unexplained, and this without a doubt lies on the far side.”
“Does it?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I'm sure you're just as aware of our position with respect to Blackwatch as I am. We're effectively contractors, brought in by Randall under the orders of whoever it is he reports to, so they can outsource some of their R&D. Obviously, there are things about the virus we haven't been told about. The events of today have thrown that into sharp relief. Do you remember what you and I were speaking about last month?”
A brief pause follows.
“Is this line secure?”
“I've seen to that. Blackwatch aren't aware of this connection.”
“Then, yes, I do remember.” The older man scratches his head. “An interesting story you told me. The last of the Hope Children. Elizabeth Greene's son.”
“Then perhaps you remember something else. We know that MOTHER is infected with fourteen variant strains. Now, they may not let us know what he is, but from what little information I've been able to discover, one thing we do know about PARIAH is that, upon admission to Vandenberg AFB in 1969, he tested negative for all traces of the virus.” McMullen adjusts his glasses again. “Sound familiar?”
“Indeed. You think he and FENRIS might have something in common?”
“I think the similarities can't be ignored. They're both male, which sets them apart from all other known Runners, which have been universally female. Neither of them possesses biologically identifiable traces of the virus, nor are there any physical symptoms of infection. In FENRIS' case, you might even say it no longer has biology to speak of – yet somehow it not only functions, it retains and displays abilities roughly cognate with what's been observed of Runners. You know what I think? I think the two of them might be the same type of entity. Something that is to a Runner what a Runner is to a Walker.”
“What; a Sprinter?” Koenig scoffs. “That's a dangerous amount of speculation there. As I recall, your knowledge of PARIAH barely runs to a paragraph if written down.”
“I know. But think about it. If you look through the documentation for CARNIVAL II, you'll get a brief for the use of a human population to test ethnicity-restricted biological warfare agents. That's what the documentation says, but the eventual result of the experiment turned out quite differently. MOTHER created a Walker population without any distinction between infectees. And afterwards, the notion of a racially-selective bioweapon was never again considered for development.”
“I know what you're getting at. You're saying that CARNIVAL II had an ulterior motive, that being the creation of PARIAH. All very well and good to postulate, but you have no way of proving it, nor any substantiative information on what it actually is.”
“I know. And it's unlikely I'm going to find out from Randall. But I'm certain of one thing; the anomalies we've seen in the virus – the weight-disparity problem, among others – they are the key to this. However we might be obliged to politely ignore them in the process of our research, there has to be a reason for their existence; some underlying phenomenon which produces them. We find that, we find a way to beat FENRIS – and what's more, we may also find out about PARIAH.”
* * * *
Yokota Air Base
“All right. What have we found out?”
The ops-centre is quiet now; voices are hushed, and the steady electronic hum of computers hangs over the room like a light haze. Shaw, standing behind the two analysts seated at their computers, looks down at their screens. The one on the left answers his question.
“Took a while digging up all the footage, but we've managed to draw up a timetable of Sabaku Ryougi's movements today. Like I said, traffic camera coverage is pretty thin in some areas – for instance, out in the subur-”
“Interesting, but not relevant. Where did he go?”
“OK,” says the one on the right, his computer screen displaying a street map of Tokyo with various points highlighted, “so this here is our first sighting of the car Ryougi used before switching to the four-wheel-drive later on. That there is the Ryougi estate, so we can assume the camera caught him soon after having left the house.”
“Too bad there's no camera coverage closer to the Ryougi place.” comments the other analyst. “It'd make this a lot easier.”
“Anyway, following him from there is relatively straightforward. The route they take is nothing out of the ordinary; no detours or sudden stops, or any other indications that they believed they might have been followed, or were otherwise under surveillance. Traffic cameras caught the same car at all these points.” He indicates a set of green 'X' marks on the map on his computer screen. Seen together, they form a line, stretching a fair way across the city. “The last camera that caught him was here, down in Shinagawa. After this, we lose sight of him for a while. The next sighting comes a few hours later, at this same intersection. From there, it's basically the original route taken in reverse, back to the Ryougi estate.”
“So, how far can you narrow down his destination?”
“In the time between the sightings at that last intersection, we can confirm that no other traffic camera in a ten-kilometre radius caught sight of that particular car. That doesn't rule out the possibility that they temporarily changed vehicles or used another means of transportation.”
“Still,” says the other one, “assuming they didn't do that, which is quite probable considering the way they approached it, their destination is roughly inside here.” He taps a key, and an oval shape – more like an egg, actually – is superimposed over the street map as a partially-transparent outline. Judging by the scale, Shaw estimates it at around a kilometre in length and a bit over half that at its widest.
“That's Minami-Shinagawa, correct?” he says, and receives a nod in reply. “It's pretty densely built-up that close to the Bay, if I recall. It's not possible to narrow it down further?”
“Not with what we've got. There are likely other camera feeds in the area – from shop fronts, bank ATMs and so on – which could help, but since they're not publicly owned, they aren't patched in to the Tokyo Met's MITSUKE system which we're piggybacking on. We'd have to go down there in person to requisition their footage.”
“I see. Good work, you two. Take five; get a coffee or something. I'll relay this up the chain.” At this, one of the analysts gives a mock salute before getting up.
“You got it, sir.”
The two of them quietly leave the ops-centre, while Shaw heads back to his own desk. He sits down at the computer, adjusts his wireless headset slightly, then puts a call through to Randall. It takes about fifteen seconds for their encryption software to be done with the handshaking, but eventually he's authenticated. On the screen, a window containing the humourless, scowling face of Lieutenant-General Peter Randall appears.
“General. We've got an intel update on FENRIS.”
“About damn time. What is it?”
“We previously acquired evidence indicating a physical meeting between FENRIS and Sabaku Ryougi. Now we have a rough idea of where that meeting may have taken place, and hence, of FENRIS' current location.”
“'May have' is not good enough.”
“It's the best lead we've gotten so far. Put it this way; if you decide not to, we're still going to follow up on it. ”
“Well, we'll see. How precise are we talking, here?”
“Down to less than a square kilometre.”
Randall nods, processing this.
“The drone can cover that, no problem. Where?”
“I'm sending you the details now. It's a fairly built-up area near the Bay, so if FENRIS' presence is confirmed, any military action has very high potential for collateral da-”
“Not as high as leaving it alive. At any rate, that's for us to decide.”
Will someone explain to this nutcase that this is a foreign country, and he can't just kill whoever he wants?
“Of course. Our concern is with the relative difficulty of information control as a result of military action.”
“There's no need to reiterate that. Winthrop and I have gone over it more times than I care to remember. It's been taken into consideration, rest assured. Where is Winthrop, anyway?”
“He's reviewing some of the evidence personally. I believe he'll be finished fairly soon.”
The Old Man narrows his eyes with suspicion for a few seconds, but then appears to accept this explanation.
“Is there anything else?”
“No, that was all.”
“Very well. Randall out.”
* * * *
Ogawa Mansion
The lights are off when I step inside. I hit the switch as I gently close the front door behind me, and light spills down from above. What's illuminated is a small entrance hallway, with sliding doors leading off on either side as well one at the end. The design of this place seems to be a mixed Japanese/Western style, and fairly upmarket as well, which isn't surprising considering the expense that seems to have gone into the rest of the building. Guiltily, I step up from the entrance onto the floor without taking my shoes off. I'd apologise if she were home, but at the moment I'd rather not spend the time lacing these down and then up again. Honestly, this place gives me the creeps, and the sooner I can put some distance between myself and it, the better. I step forward quietly, and try the doors on the side.
Left side: bathroom.
Not very useful. I guess you'd need Kokutou for this kind of detective work, but there's not really much to deduce from it other than that she's a single woman who lives by herself. Next.
Right side: empty.
An unused tatami room. Bereft of furniture, bedding, or anything at all, really. Looking into it, I'm struck by a strange realisation; nowhere in this apartment are there any windows. Not even one. It feels unsettling, and vaguely claustrophobic. As if this is is less of a living space and more of a cave, cut into the core of a massive cylindrical rock. I begin to wonder if that's normal. Surely, it can't be. There must something in the building code, right? A windowless apartment could be a fire hazard or somethi-
Wait.
I hear it. It's soft – soft enough that until now, standing close to the door at the end of the entrance corridor, I couldn't hear it at all over the rain. But it is definitely there. A voice. Someone speaking quietly, almost whispering, though what they are saying is indistinct. I freeze in the corridor, and consider my options.
If it's her, why didn't she answer the door earlier?
This is kind of a problem, then, isn't it? Since I've already kind of committed to breaking into her house.
“Hello?” I say, experimentally. No reply is forthcoming. I try it again, but still there's nothing. As far as I can tell, the persistent voice doesn't even pause.
Something's not right here. Apart from the obvious, I mean.
I pull open the door at the end of the corridor, and step in. My boots brush aside a empty bottle of something as I do; difficult to tell what in the dim light. The room is large, roughly split between a lounge area, a dining table in the middle, and a small kitchen off to one side. The only illumination – aside from the light coming in from the corridor – is the diffuse glow from a small flatscreen TV, over in a corner of the room across from the couch, playing with the sound muted. There is a light switch, so I flick it, and before long some bright fluorescents have the entire room lit up. With this done, I go over its contents. The place is messy, but not a total disaster area; the clutter mainly arises from empty cans and bottles of what appear to be various kinds of alcoholic drinks, as well as a couple of plastic bags containing empty fast-food containers. But that by itself isn't what catches my attention. Over to one side, sitting on the lounge, is a woman. A few years older than me; twenty-two or twenty-three, maybe. She faces away from me, but isn't looking at the television; rather, it's the wall that seems to have her attention. So much so, in fact, that she didn't turn her head or react in the slightest when I opened the door or turned on the lights.
“Hey.” I say again, but there's still no response, nor any sign of movement from her. I assume she's the listed occupant; Mariko Shijima. Unquestionably, though, she's the one who is speaking. I hear her more clearly as I walk over to the couch. She speaks, clearly, quietly and at an even pace, what seems at first to be a nonsensical sequence of syllables.
“-mu-mu-myou-yaku-mu-mu-myou-jin-nai-shi-mu-rou-shi-yaku-mu-rou-shi-jin-”
'-no suffering, origin, cessation or path.' And so on.
It's the Heart Sutra. She's chanting the Heart Sutra. And, as I carefully step around to the front of the couch, I see she's doing it in what are clearly her bedclothes. I don't think a camisole and panties are really considered appropriate attire for attaining the Perfection of Wisdom. More to the point, though, even standing directly in front of her, she still shows no sign of noticing my presence. Or of noticing anything, in fact; her eyes stare blankly ahead, unfocused, like someone in a trance. I hold out my uninjured hand in front of her, and wave. No response. I snap my fingers directly in front of her face and say, “Oi.” and there's still no response.
All right. What's going on here?
Call me a cynic, but I seriously doubt I'm dealing with a high-attaining Buddhist master in a deep state of meditation. She's got Hello Kitty underwear, for fuck's sake. It's simply not on the menu. No, this reads more like hypnosis. Some kind of mind-control thing like that. I edge away from Ms. Shijima, and make my way over to the kitchen. Whatever the reason for this, I don't really care to discover the fine details. Once I get a weapon, I'm out of here; out of the apartment, out of the building, and likely out of the entire ward depending on where this is exactly. I pull open the drawers, and have a look around.
Hmm.
A couple of butter knives. Better than nothing, but a long way from the best. Mixed in with them I find a steak knife, which is a little better. I'm not a fan of serrated edges; since I prefer slashing over thrusting where practical, they don't really appeal to me. Over in the sink, however, I hit the jackpot. Sitting in there is a rather nice stainless-steel santoku with a wooden hilt, its roughly triangular blade curving to a point six inches from where it begins. Not intended for combat, obviously – it's a kitchen knife, the general-purpose kind that you use for basically everything except when told not to – but, picking it up, I find the balance is quite good. The weight feels a bit weird, but I can make do. The lack of a scabbard to keep it in is an annoyance, though. I wash it off, dry it with a nearby towel, then stow it in the back of my obi, under my jacket. Feeling much better, I walk out of the kitchen and make to leave the apartment, when...
...I...
…stop.
On the television.
I saw something there, out of the corner of my eye, and it has seized my attention. Not that that's unjustifiable. Anyone else would do the same. It's not every day that a friend of yours gets to be on TV.
Silently, I return to the couch and the coffee table and the inanimate Mariko Shijima. I lean down, pick up the remote, and turn unmute the television.
“-as claimed a third victim. Less than ten minutes ago, a press release issued by the Ministry of Justice confirmed that Azaka Kokutou, 16, died as a result of rapid-onset symptoms of the biological agent used in the attack. Officials overseeing the quarantine ward at Yokota Air Base had this to say.”
'It is with great and sincere regret that we must announce this, for this news comes despite the most dedicated efforts of our medical team. Our sympathies, as always, are with her family, and families of all the victims. It is our fervent hope that no more lives are claimed by this terrible tragedy.'
“These sentiments echo earlier statements made by the Prime Minister.”
'Make no mistake – it is the position of this government that a biological weapon of this nature constitutes a Weapon of Mass Destruction, just as a nuclear weapon does also. We in Japan understand perhaps better than any other nation what that entails. The use of this type of weapon in a terrorist act is a crime against humanity, and this government stands in firm agreement with our ally, the United States, that such acts cannot and should not be tolerated, be they an outcome of domestic or international terrorism. We are very grateful for the technical and logistical assistance provided by the American government during the management of this crisis, without which it is likely there would have already been far more victims of these attacks. This government will be taking all steps necessary to ensure that the criminals responsible for these acts will be found and brought to justice as soon as possible, and that no more lives will be lost as a result of their cruelty, and their blindness to the human cost of their actions.'
“On that note, let us repeat the announcement made earlier by the Ministry of Justice. The two people pictured on-screen – Shiki Ryougi, age 18, and an as-yet unidentified middle-aged man – are believed to hold information highly relevant to the investigation of these attacks. The Ministry has urged these two people to come forward of their own accord by presenting themselves at their nearest police station. It has further been clarified that they are not under suspicion of any criminal activity – simply of possessing information that could be vital to the Ministry's investigation. Back to you.”
“Thank you. In other news, freak weather conditions in Yamanashi Prefecture. Forestry officials announced today that, only a few hours ago, what appears to have been a small tornado devastated an area of-”
I turn off the television.
For a moment, I look over at Mariko Shijima, still mindlessly chanting the Heart Sutra for no discernible reason. I mind myself tracing her unfocused gaze, and glaring at the same spot on the wall she seems to be interested in.
“Fuck!”
I turn around, and make a beeline back to the kitchen. I find her phone, nestled in between a pair of empty bottles on the counter. I remove the handset, and I call Kokutou.
No answer.
Why the hell does that idiot have his phone turned off now of all times?!
I put down the receiver. My usable hand finds its way back into the cutlery drawer I opened earlier, and my fingers close around the hilt of the steak knife. God, I want to stab something. Anything, doesn't matter. Put some holes in the wall for all I care. I manage to stop myself just in time; the realisation that this isn't my apartment being the deciding factor in the end. I bite my lip, and drive the steak knife through an empty aluminium can. Through a Line, in fact; I'm treated to the sight of the blade punching all the way through it while the metal tarnishes and decays in seconds.
“Idiot.”
I exhale, slowly.
He's probably perfectly safe, you know. Getting worked up over nothing.
Yeah, I know. I know. Fuck, this is ridiculous. I lose consciousness for a couple of hours and look what happens.
And Azaka...
I pick up the phone again, and this time, I call Miss Touko.
* * * *
Garan no Dou
“I need you to cut off my arm.” says Shirazumi. “For science.”
Aozaki pulls down her glasses and looks over the top of them. She's standing atop the small trolley on which the water tank is sitting. With her other hand, she's just turned off the valve which was pouring water into it. She hasn't filled it up to the very top, since cleaning up the displaced overflow would be a hassle. Three-quarters is enough for measurement purposes. After completing all the tests with the crossbow, Shirazumi has sat himself down at the small table nearby. He was drumming La Marseillaise on it with his fingers for a moment, before he came out with that unprovoked statement.
“Why?”
A brief flicker of annoyance crosses his face, and then vanishes, as if swept away by a broom. He gets up from the chair, then – on impulse, it seems – yawns and stretches his arms in a manner uncannily reminiscent of a cat. Then, he seems to pivot on one foot, turning to face her directly as she steps down from the trolley, while his other foot pushes his chair in under the table as he turns around.
“It's obvious, isn't it?”
“...no.”
“Ok. Ok.” His face cycles through about five different expressions before settling on 'uncertainty'. He looks at the floor. Then he looks up again. “I'm talking about clothes. If you recall, after that time I got incinerated-”
“-and turned into a giant lion.” adds Aozaki, wandering back over to the table and sitting down. “Sorry, it was a lioness, wasn't it?”
Another brief flicker of annoyance.
“Anyway, when I regenerated my body I had my clothes on, and that's including all the things I had in my pockets and so on, so obviously that regenerated too, but now – as you see – I'm not wearing those clothes, 'cause I stole these off Ryougi's brother, along with his money, car, et cetera...” He reaches into his jacket pocket, and pulls out the pair of blue-tinted, angular sunglasses he put there when he first walked into the office. He flips them open, and puts them on. “...GTA-style.” For a brief moment, he looks incalculably disappointed in something. Then, he takes off the sunglasses and puts them back in his jacket. “Anyway-way, the point is that I want you to cut off my arm.”
“I see. You want to see what regenerates – the clothes you're wearing now, or the ones you were wearing before.”
“Exactly.”
“What does that achieve?” she asks him, having half of an idea as to what his answer will be.
“Oh, I don't know; what did being shot at with physics-defying crossbow bolts achieve?” he says, with irritation. Aozaki herself is undecided as to the answer. There's no question he's downright freakishly fast, but establishing a basis for comparison with Araya is difficult. It's been a long time since she's seen him in combat, and that was at a formalised duel in London. Not to the death. To be honest, that kind of combat – melee fighting, for want of a better term – has never been to her taste. She's a puppet-user; it's a difference in philosophy more than anything else. Facts are, had it been the Touko Aozaki of a handful of years ago, eliminating Souren Araya – given time to prepare – would have been an evening's amusing distraction. As it is now – especially considering that any fight will take place inside Araya's workshop; on his home turf, so to speak – the odds will not be in her favour.
“Your answer?”
Shirazumi, by contrast, is an oddity to shame all other oddities. She has to shake her head at his impatience, before anything else. The awakening of the Origin is something she understands perhaps only a fraction as well as Araya does; as for a supernatural bioweapon developed by the American military, it may as well have fallen to Earth from a different planet. And he is subject to both of them. These aren't things that can be figured out in an afternoon. She has a theory about the anomaly in his weight, but in all honesty she'll be happy if she can get a handle on the mechanics surrounding that trick he pulled with the katana in his fight with Shiki's older brother. Discussing Runes is also useful; seeing whether or not he's able to use them will help narrow down the realm of possibilities as to how his body actually works.
“I have a theory. Let's suppose you could reduce everything about a person – molecular structure, chemical proportions, memories, et cetera – to information. And when the lioness eats someone, or something, it somehow gets and stores that information. And, with BLACKLIGHT, that information can be retrieved, and its source, recreated. You understand?”
“More or less. But how would you go about doing that? 'Retrieving' something.”
“It responds to my thoughts. It requires concentration, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works. I skipped over this earlier, but when I was at that restaurant with Kokutou, I used this kind of method to swap out my tongue with someone else's, using the records stored by BLACKLIGHT.”
Aozaki squints at him. A brief silence follows.
“Okay, I'll bite. Why the tongue?”
“There were pancakes involved. I don't want to talk about it.”
“Whatever. So, you think if you catch your clothes regenerating, you can get a better handle on this process?”
“More than that. See, the thing is, it's not like I up and ate my clothes. I was wearing them when I got blown up this morning. But, obviously, they would have taken them off to do the autopsy. Yet when I regained consciousness after...stuff...happened, I was wearing them again. So where did they come from?” He shrugs. “I don't know. Only place I can think of is that the 'records' that were used to reconstruct them came out of my memory of wearing them. Though I suspect I am probably talking an incredible load of bullshit.”
Interesting. It's beginning to sound more like his body's some kind of Ether construct...still, this is pretty advanced to be jumping straight into.
“Well, if you like, we can look into that later on-” The boy's face lights up like he's a kid at Christmas. “-but only after the preliminary tests have been completed.” His expression sours again, just as rapidly as it improved. Aozaki points at the tank. If BLACKLIGHT really does work that way, puzzling out where the weight of the things he's eaten actually goes is of paramount importance. “Basics first. Always and ever. Otherwise there may be side-effects not immediately apparent, which can get you killed. Or, in your case,” she adds, “temporarily inconvenienced.” He's about to protest when something happens to disrupt the flow of their conversation. A buzzing noise, from Aozaki's shirt pocket.
Another brief silence.
“You get reception in here?” asks the boy, skeptically.
“Some things even I can't explain.” replies Aozaki as she gets up from her chair, taking the phone out as she does so. She flips it open as she walks to door, and her finger hovers over the 'answer' button as she nears the door. She almost walks out, but comes to a realisation a few metres from the exit and stops in her tracks. She glances back at the seated Shirazumi.
“Even I'm in the stairwell, you're still going to hear everything, aren't you?”
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Screw it.” She answers the call, and raises the phone to her ear. The number is unfamiliar; caller ID hadn't seen it before. The area code is local, but that's about the size of it. “Garan no D-”
The voice that permeates through the phone, speaking without formality or introduction, is brusque, androgynous, and utterly, utterly familiar.
“Where's Kokutou?”
--------------------------------------------------------
Writing Shiki's first-person bits is tricky. I read over some parts after they're done and find she comes across as a less insane, less pop-cultured version of Lio. (Which kind of makes sense, when you think about it.)
Lio caught a throwing knife in his teeth in MSP2, and broke it with them, too. That was without BLACKLIGHT. Crossbow bolt? No problem.
If you're wondering why Lio's doubly enhanced reflexes - first by the Origin, then by BLACKLIGHT - are represented by a subjective slowdown of time, think back to the original game. Remember how when you select or switch between targets in Prototype, the game goes into really slow-motion? This is basically the in-universe justification for that. You can get so much mileage out of justifying gameplay mechanics like that it's not even funny.
Mariko Shijima in Apartment 1004 (more accurately, the puppet of Mariko Shijima periodically replicating the death of the original in Apartment 1009 some time ago) is chanting the Heart Sutra for a reason. If Shiki were to look around some more, she'd find that all of the puppets have been repurposed like that. The cycle of life and death has been put on hold for a moment, for reasons known only to the man who dressed like Kirei Kotomine before it was popular. If you're wondering - though it's pretty obvious, since she's the only one in her apartment and hence cannot be a murder victim - Mariko Shijima ordinarily dies from suicide.
Where's Araya during all this? Surely it's not in his interest to let Ryougi mess around in his apartments. Well, I'll say this; Araya is a crafty sort, and he has a cunning plan. He (much like our friend, PARIAH) is playing with different victory conditions to everyone else. Of course, Kaspar's set him up to fail by making Kurogiri an offer he couldn't refuse, but he doesn't know that yet and likely never will. Namely because he's going to get killed by Lio, who will win because he's the main character. On that note, actually....
In keeping with one of the themes of this story being a twisted parody of shounen manga, you may have noticed that Lio possesses several very characteristic protagonist traits. Firstly, he doesn't die when he's killed, and in fact has a tendency to power up and beat the people who just failed to kill him. Secondly, he can learn and acquire skills much faster than people who've worked for them their entire lives. Finally, after defeating opponents, he's able to come to an understanding with them, see their point of view, and work together from then on. Not to mention that he has a dark and troubled past, is an epic-tier bishounen, and fights for the sake of his friends. The catch is, of course, that the reason for all of these is that he's a flesh-eating, soul-eating eldritch horror wearing a human face, which itself has mental problems that would be more at home in Evangelion. But hey, everything comes with downsides. :P
Last edited by Dullahan; July 21st, 2013 at 04:38 PM.
Dullahan, I think the forum at your formating. ;~;
Originally Posted by Seika
F/GO SUPPORT
Author is now repairing formatting, please watch warmly until it is ready.
EDIT: Fuck this forum's WYSIWYG editor. Fuck it with a RAKE. Also, the formatting's fixed.
Last edited by Dullahan; July 21st, 2013 at 04:40 PM.
At this point my stomach started to hurt from laughter.
Last few updates were nice, but this one is glorious.
Lio is turning to be quite the feline Eldritch abomination.
Now will Touko bring out a ball ofintestinesyarn to see what he does?
F/GO SUPPORT
I like this update. Well I like all of them, but it's little things like the Heart Sutra being recited, and Ryougi knowing what it means and does, that really makes me feel you do real research on the areas and societies these stories take place in. This mix of military, horror, thriller, and even these little religious things all blend together very well and show you do real research. None of it feels fake or phony or like some sort of Anime Catholicism that you see all too often in Japanese works. After a while I've come to feel such things like that, Anime Catholicism and such, are really just excuses to be lazy and not do real research while relying on "Rule of Cool" or whatever to cover up laziness. Of course considering the amount of work done on figuring out Western names, none, that's probably to be expected.
But yeah I really do enjoy that everything here feels researched. The military aspects, the religious aspects, the supernatural aspects, etc. It all feels real and coherent.
You know it's kind of funny that a fanfiction writer, not even getting paid for his work and possibly having to deal with normal stresses like his job or school or whatever, really does research on things like this, but a group like Type-Moon, for all the research it does on things like legends for its stories, does such poor work on things like Western-style names (Luviagelita sounds like foreign gobblygook) and falls back on the Anime Catholicism trope to the point where it feels like _INO (*Insert subject* In Name Only).
In regards to Lio catching crossbow bolts, and that throwing knife you mentioned, how fast would his reflexes be? I think humans have a reaction time of around 200 milliseconds.
Last edited by warellis; July 21st, 2013 at 09:28 PM.
I agree with warellis on the research thing. It's great as always, though I do get some feelings of GET ON WITH IT given how little time has actually passed in-universe (Come on Touko, cut Lio's arm off for us, it'll be hilarious). How many words are you up to for the entire thing?
This update has brought it up to approximately ~330,000 words. If you're taking Cokesakto's KnK translation as a basis for comparison, MIAL is about 50-60k words longer than that.
Re: feelings of GET ON WITH IT - believe me when I say that I feel that more than anyone. I would like nothing more than to jump straight into the Araya fight; it's been too long since Lio tried to kill someone, and the ensuing clusterfuck will defy comprehension. The trouble is that there are just so many different parties at work here, and it will feel incomplete to me if I don't cover what they're all doing, where it has bearing on the plot. This is why the events of a single day are now one update away from matching The Brothers Karamazov. God, I need to speed this up somehow.
Thank you
But we love them for it. It's really too much part of TM's style, to the point where it just wouldn't feel the same if their foreign names weren't utter nonsense, or their depiction of the Church was accurate.
I would hesitate to put an actual number to these things. Like Lio pointed out, 'reaction time' isn't a single, discrete thing; it covers multiple different concepts which are tested in different ways. Still, we're talking about a guy who was able to put up a fairly decent showing against Ryougi in a knife fight with zero training, using nothing but pure instinct - and that was without BLACKLIGHT. As he is now, fighting a Servant is out of the question. Great Gold Lion Lio can beat Servants (provided it doesn't fall asleep first), but not the normal one. Right now, stats-wise, he'd be in the same tier that Demon Hybrids belong to. Below Kouma, though.
Last edited by Dullahan; July 22nd, 2013 at 02:33 AM.
Regarding Great Gold Lion Lio, what type of Noble Phantasms could kill it? Something like Excalibur or Ea? And what of magecraft, could something like Gandr affect it?
Great Gold Lion Lio has a non-standard concept of mortality. Asking what can kill it is not a question that will get you a useful answer. In the state you have seen it in, Ea or Excalibur would certainly be able to defeat it. I can't really say any more, due to spoilers. Kaspar will explain it in Cape Town, since PARIAH - having read ahead in the script, as usual - has already worked out what GGLL (and by extension, Lio's Origin) actually is.
As for Gandr, that's pretty much going to be like a bee-sting to an elephant. If Rin blasted it with one of her A-rank gem attacks, that'd do some damage.
Last edited by Dullahan; July 22nd, 2013 at 05:46 AM.
I agree with all of this.
Dullahan's world just seems so... rich.
Actually, I for one don't have a single problem with the pace of the plot. I don't get the "GET ON WITH IT" feeling at all, and I hope you don't rush anything. I know you said that you're not cutting or hurrying anything because you need to cover some things, but that still probably means that extra stuff that would be neat-but-not-critical would be bypassed due to the rush -- and I don't want to miss those things.
So please cover as much as you like and throw in anything you want. Seriously. Just about everything you'd typed, every POV, has managed to draw me in to eventually. And I just want more. More of everything! More of what we've seen; more of what we haven't seen; more of entirely new things that would add new things to the plot or incoming clusterfuck, etc etc.
Really, the only pace I would complain about, would be the rate of updating.
And even then, 1 year and 4 months to go 300,000+ words is better than you'd get from real-life books usually, I think. I've waited longer for less. Whats more, every time it updates after a long time, I don't get the sense of loss/confusion/disinterest that comes from the delay in time; sometimes after some time, you just lose enthusiasm for a story in between chapters. It's like waking up from sleep and feeling lethargic. Not so here; your chapters are such that I get drawn back in and engaged in the story quite nicely.
The telescope at one end of his beat
And at the other end the microscope,
Two instruments of nearly equal hope,
And in conjunction giving quite a spread.
Spoiler:
More comments:
I wonder if Pariah or the Three Kings can manipulate things enough to keep somebody from being killed by bullets. And if so, under what circumstances they'd do that. And also what other beings (like the spirit/god/thing at the mountain) can do this stuff.
What would this even be, really? Manipulating fate, chance, probability? A spell/blessing/curse against "entropy" -- entropy in the sense of "Dresden Files-style entropy curse" where this is like a good luck charm against getting killed.
Also: you have some hilari-awesome transitions.
I mean, you started off a section with "I want you to cut off my arm."
Also, having Lio's point-of-view on how Touko acts with her glasses was a neat touch. Same for a pov on Lio's mannerisms.
Aaaand finally...
Dear god.
What if there's no real limit to the retrieval/recreation of information/memory?
I mean, whats the difference between knowing/remembering the clothes you once were, and knowing/remembering a bazooka you once used, or gun you once fired?
What's the between knowing/remembering more esoteric things, like magical items... or thaumaturgy. ((This isn't even touching on the fact that magi have FAMILY CRESTS which record their spells... Absorbing that is just cheating.))
... Gameplay mechanics such as you having more ammo or more powerful ammo or more powerful vehicles when you've eaten enough of the appropriate people? Because its like you're consuming those guys in order to attune to their memories of being expert tank drivers or pilots. The more in sync you are with those memories, the better your piloting ability is... and the more your vehicle and its ammo is empowered.If you're wondering why Lio's doubly enhanced reflexes - first by the Origin, then by BLACKLIGHT - are represented by a subjective slowdown of time, think back to the original game. Remember how when you select or switch between targets in Prototype, the game goes into really slow-motion? This is basically the in-universe justification for that. You can get so much mileage out of justifying gameplay mechanics like that it's not even funny.
Eat enough fighter pilots and you'll be able to play Ace Combat in real life!
And also, oh god, Weisstein must have managed to turn his you-remember-and-learn/understand-everything-you-hear-in-the-Language-of-the-Birds Sorcery Trait into a truly unfair and overpowered ability, didn't he.
It's a bit of a leap to go from being able to perfectly pass on your thaumaturgical tradition because it uses a useful Language. Its another entirely to make that remember/learn/understand-what-you-heard thing apply to more than just the Language, and to then also be able to make things from it. Jesus Christ.
The telescope at one end of his beat
And at the other end the microscope,
Two instruments of nearly equal hope,
And in conjunction giving quite a spread.
Spoiler:
PARIAH/The Three Kings are not able to prevent someone from being killed by bullets. More to the point, they don't really care if some random guy unimportant to their plans (Akitaka) gets his soul eaten by invisible poetry-spouting snake youkai. That's why Kaspar was talking to it about how it might have been the snake-god inside the Yaegaki Shrine that was responsible - or, more accurately, one of its servants; the mishaguji. Obviously they have good reason to suspect that that the shrine's god might have the ability to do something like that, because - as they said - they know how a mishaguji operates in the singular.
The mishaguji do have an ability connected to manipulating probability. There will be more on this later.
FOR SCIENCE!
Think about it in terms of Shirou's tracing. This is a very good analogy, actually. Things Shirou has only seen or held cannot be traced perfectly - hence the one-rank downgrade in NP quality. The exception is Avalon, which can be projected perfectly because he has the complete 'records' of it, since it was inside his body for a significant length of time.
Thing is, everything Lio's eaten is technically 'inside' him, so...well, yeah. That said, knowing Lio, whether or not he'll actually be able to do any of this is an open question. 'Having an ability' is different from 'being able to do', and Lio is Murphy's Law incarnate, remember?
Mercer was able to do it on instinct without understanding how near the very beginning of Prototype, but if Lio puts some time into it, he'll crack the Disguise ability, which is essentially 'Tracing' another person's body over your own. Of course, it's not really Tracing - the process is very different to what Shirou does - but it's a decent lie to save spoilery explanation.
However; since, if you recall, Lio at present has no Magic Circuits (i.e. he hasn't eaten anyone who had them) doing proper magecraft at all is something of a tricky proposition. Well, more on that later.
BLACKLIGHT/REDLIGHT/PATER/et.c. actually doesn't have very much to do directly with Weisstein's Sorcery Trait. It's a product more of Weisstein's own peculiar genius than that of his forefathers.
Last edited by Dullahan; July 23rd, 2013 at 01:29 AM.
So... if Lio were to somehow bring out a rocket launcher with this ability it'll blow up in his face near-automatically? Fun for us readers, not so much for him ^^;
'Fae is Foul' - My SAO/ZnT Crossover fanfic (SB Thread) (FFN Link)
Well, maybe. Or maybe the rocket warhead will just dissociate back into ash the moment it's no longer in contact with Lio's body (a term which here includes the rocket launcher itself). Who knows? If he tries it, you'll find out.So... if Lio were to somehow bring out a rocket launcher with this ability it'll blow up in his face near-automatically? Fun for us readers, not so much for him ^^;
And if it's a TOW missile?
Just wait and see. There's no point in me going into details on the mechanics of ASHLIGHT or whatever Lio's bizarre BLACKLIGHT variant should be called if I'm going to explain them again in-story.
Besides, it's not like he's eaten a TOW missile yet, so it's a non-issue at the moment.
Last edited by Dullahan; July 24th, 2013 at 01:18 PM.
WHITELIGHT, duh.
Unfortunately, WHITELIGHT's taken; it's a thing in Prototype 2. Even though I'm basically ignoring everything related to P2 in writing this story. *shrug*
