Adamant Blood

As the sun spilled across the coliseum at a wide angle, Mark landed a good punch against Isoko. He almost broke his hand against her platinum face. She smiled. And then she trounced him in all physical ways. A punch that broke his ribs. A kick that sent him flying, breaking an arm. Mark eventually sat down and accepted the loss, and Isoko nodded, saying it was a good fight.

“You’re not using your full strength anyway,” Isoko said, “You could have pushed Union harder.”

“Maybe, but I certainly didn’t want to.”

Isoko shrugged. “Training is about pushing yourself.”

“I’ll probably end up at Healing Club next week,” Mark said, looking up to the arena seating, where the healers all chatted with each other as they healed everyone in the arena. “I wonder what they talk about all the time.”

Isoko said, “I won’t know for another month. Hopefully I can qualify for acolyte by then.”

Mark’s eyebrows raised. “I never asked, but how long are you in Citadel for?”

“I got here two months ago. I didn’t make it to the end of Sparring 101 last time. Hopefully I can make it this time and then get Chosen.” Isoko looked at Mark, sitting on the ground, and said, “Maybe I can even get a noble-assignment through Social Club.”

Mark grinned at that, saying, “Good luck with that. I’ll be rooting for you.”

Isoko smiled. “Thank you.”

Mark’s trend of losing fights continued. After the first hour of club Mark was almost all the way back toward the entrance. At the end of hour 2, Mark was only a few fights from being in the total losers bracket, but he managed to stay out of that area. Some guys near the entrance just lost fight after fight, except when they were fighting others that had to stay near the entrance. Mark was rapidly becoming one of those guys.

Class ended, and Mark got a marker over his head again.

As the crowd exited, Mark went against the flow, toward the instructors.

He was first in line to talk to Instructor Charms.

The Giant Strength woman frowned at Mark, as she said, “You need to use Union offensively against every single sparring partner. You used it against Isoko Kanno but not against anyone else. It is your main Power, and users of Union are cleared to use it on these fields, and that means offensively as well, if they can. You can do that too, so do so. Dismissed.”

Mark stood up straight with surprise, and then he bowed a little, saying, “Instructor!”

He walked away, feeling kinda funny.

As he walked back to his room, under the open sky, he looked at his arm as he activated Union, his heartbeat thrumming in the clear air, cycling ‘good’ and ‘bad’ with the world. A faint darkness held below his skin, but mostly the darkness was absent. It certainly wasn’t protruding out of his skin right now.

It wasn’t until he removed his clothes to take a shower that Mark truly looked at his clothes.

“Holy crap,” Mark said, seeing the giant holes in his shirt and pants, and all the blood. “Fuck. I’m really getting beat up out there, aren’t I.” After a moment, he told himself, “Tomorrow is the last day of sparring. I can do offensive Union tomorrow and see if I can stay in the club at all.”

Mark took a shower then put on new clothes. It was almost time for Etiquette Class.

- - - -

Instructor Wavecrash opened the class with, “Your valiant efforts within the Empire of Foodstuffs have failed to manifest a solution to the problems in the Empire. Now, you must run to another nation, and hope you can keep your people together and also be welcomed in that other land when you get there. Today’s class is about fitting into cultures you do not know. Half of you will be guardians of those other cultures, and you will be judging whether the other half of you get in, though you have your own problems. After lunch, which will be a collection of strange foods from Daihoon and otherwise, we will switch it up, and those who were the guardians will now become the refugees.”

Ah, Mark thought. So much for plans to break away from the kingdom.

Class was still fun, but it was sad to see the Empire fall offscreen.

At the end of it, Instructor Wavecrash said, “Humanity helps humanity; that is what we do and that is how we survive the monsters. Honor is just as important as knowing everything, or having the power to enact the changes you see as necessary. Theft is one of the worst things we can do to each other. All of these statements are true, and all of them have too many meanings for any one class to impart. The only way to learn them all is to go through life and learn, and you all have learned a lot here.

“I am ending this week’s class here.

“The Empire of Foodstuffs has fallen and everyone has secured new homes, such as they were able. Class for tomorrow is canceled. I will be handing out the Social Club invitations now.”

Mark was a little surprised by that, but not really. They had gone as far as they could with the scenario. Many other people in the class seemed a little excited. Some looked happy. Some looked disappointed, like Isoko. Mark was a little disappointed, too, but it was time to move on, he guessed, and he had lots of book-work classes to work through, anyway. Understanding Curtain Protocol and Two World History were big topics.

Mark’s phone flickered with a curling graphic of a scroll unfurling.

Mark Careed, you are cordially invited to the Cybersong Residence located at 4 Cleansed Road, in Citadel Freyala, beginning at 3 pm, Saturday August 8th, 2048. Attire is semi-casual. Basic brown or acolyte white is expected for all people currently enrolled at the Ecclesiastical Centers of Freyala.

- - - -

On the tram ride back to the centers, Isoko said, “I was hoping for another good lunch tomorrow! It has been nice playing dress up, though.”

Mark smiled a little bit. Isoko was easy to be friends with. “Are you going to try for a team selection thing at the party? Look for other people to party with on assignment, out in the world?”

Isoko squared her shoulders. “I suppose it would be a good time, yes. Will you do the same?”

“Not for a full team; not yet. I still got 7 months remaining here in Citadel. I’ve been told I can participate in training missions, though, if I can get a team together. That’s my goal in joining the Club. I’m not really sure how it all works, though.”

“Have you signed up for the COFR training mission board yet?”

“… Er. No? There’s a board?”

Isoko shrugged. “Many ways to kill a kaiju. Usually people sign up together for those things. I went on two already. They’re rather tame.”

“What did you get to do?” Mark asked, trying not to be too excited about it.

Isoko smiled a little, then said, “The first was around Avignon Island down south from here, not too far. It used to be a major metropolitan area in the old world, but now it’s a separatist community and walled off from the surrounding ocean. They’re devout Freyalans, and so Citadel helps them with patrols on the surrounding lands. The island has a bunch of tinkers so they know what is happening all around them at all times, but they don’t have the materials to waste killing monsters, so we get patrols there to help out. They sell stuff the world over. It’s cheaper for them to hire our Citadel than protect their own lands, or something like that.

“We fought bears.

“That’s basically all we did for 3 days.

“The second time was a roam around a mountain, in the Alps. A hiking trail from the Old World that used to be really popular. We had a guide who used to be a mountain climber from the Old World, too; that was why we went out there. I got to see some nice views and kill some rock monsters. The guide was truly young and crazy, even though he had been alive for the last 100 years. He was some secret True Healer, for sure…” Isoko looked away. “Or probably not-so-secret, actually. Everyone knows who the True Healers are.”

Mark was enthralled.

He wanted that.

Roaming the land. Killing things that needed killing. Helping people that he’d never meet, because he had put down a monster that could have proliferated their way, but now it wouldn’t, because Mark had been there. It was a nice thought.

Mark asked, “Had you ever been outside city walls before then?”

“No. Never. It was quite terrifying the first night in those woods outside of Avignon. They have these things in the trees that try to catch you and bite your head off. But it was amazing. I cut them with my sword and they fell to pieces.” Isoko smiled— “Oh! We haven’t sparred with weapons at all, have we?”

“Nope!” Mark said, “I’m not sure why sparring isn’t with weapons yet, but I hope I get to use them next week… if I can stay in tomorrow. I was getting thrashed out there. Thinking about dropping out next week, but Charms told me today that I need to use Union offensively against everyone, instead of just against you. Seems like cheating, though.”

Isoko laughed, and it was like cute chimes, her black hair swaying in the wind. “I almost faltered so many times! That trick with matching my footwork literally tripped me up!”

Mark smiled. And then he put away his smile, saying, “I’m still not comfortable using it on people. You’re not supposed to use powers on other people.”

“Bah!” Isoko asked, “How else is a brawny supposed to train if not directly against their biggest threat? A Natural against a Brawny is just whoever can line up a shot first, and except for speedsters the Natural almost always wins that race, but not always—” She got a bright look in her eyes. “Have you thought about the Villain Program? You would be good at that!”

Mark blanked for a moment. Then he laughed. “No fucking way!”

“What!” Isoko looked mildly offended now. “My grandmother is a villain in Tokyo. It is a very good life, keeping the superheroes on their toes. You can’t go sending the heroes out against all the big threats, you know. They might actually get injured.”

Mark paused. “Okay. First off: I want to hear all about that. But also no. I’m… I’m going to kill kaiju someday with a team. Not beat up people for cameras.”

“Of course! But you have to start somewhere, right? And all the villains are really heroes anyway when it comes to killing kaiju; everyone puts on the white when one of those shows up.”

Mark frowned a little bit… thinking.

Isoko shrugged. “My grandmother told me that there are two kinds of heroes; those that can wield the big swords, and those that pave the way for the guys with the big swords. I know I’m going to be a normal sort of monster hunter, wielding swords twice as long as my body and using at least ten different techmaker and artificer items to supplement what I can do. Maybe I can kill some house-sized monsters, but I know my future limits. That is why I am here, to get Freyala’s blessings. So I will be hunting monsters most of my life.

“But you’re aiming to be a big man, with a big sword. I can’t do that. And if you do that, then most of your time is going to be downtime. They’re not going to want to let you risk yourself against trash.” Isoko waved a hand, adding, “And that High Dragon has killed like… all the known kaiju on Earth, hasn’t he? Our next generation of heroes are going to be disastrously unprepared when kaiju start showing up again if that dragon sticks around, doing what he is doing for any length of time.”

Mark hadn’t thought much about Addashield’s Dragon in the last week, and that had been really nice. But reality crashed upon him again… And this time he held. He found it easy to think, and speak, as he said, “You’re probably right.”

“Of course I’m right!” Isoko looked out. They were coming up on her stop, soon enough. She quietly said to Mark, “I don’t like telling people this, but it is only fair since I know an unfair amount about you. My grandmother is Wandering Sage. She works with… She’s a part of Crystal Tower. The Villain Program. She’s a supervillain.”

The tram slowed to a stop right alongside Mark’s heart.

Crystal Tower?

With Glorious Man and Timeweaver and the rest?

Mark knew that they had a Villain Program over there, and he even knew what those programs usually entailed, but Isoko had that direct connection to the Crystal Tower? And a supervillain? The fu—

Ah.

But of course.

There wasn’t a single person here in Citadel Freyala that wasn’t special in some sort of way.

Isoko looked heavily concerned as Mark thought, and as the tram slowed down for her stop. She wasn’t concerned about the slow down at all, though. She was concerned about Mark.

Mark said, “Thanks for telling me… I’m not sure who Wandering Sage is, though. Can we talk about it tomorrow? I need to do… like… a lot of research into the Villain Program. We didn’t have one of those in Orange City.”

Isoko smiled as she stood, saying, “Yes. We can go somewhere for lunch tomorrow. It’s a date!”

And then she skipped out of the tram—

“Wait! Not a date!” Mark said, getting up out of his seat. He held onto a rail, hanging half out of the tram. “Not a date!”

Isoko was already laughing as she walked away, but she twirled once and waved, and kept walking.

Mark eventually sat back down. A few people on the tram were looking at him, but mostly they purposefully ignored him. Mark’s face felt red as he mumbled to himself, “Not a date.”