Chapter III: Unfriendly Visitors III

Shizukana Gake

Heian Kingdom

The Great Plateau

Month of the Pangolin 2, 172 ,328 DE

The City Lord's face twists with rage. It is probably a tossup whether being called 'Bitch' or having 'kun' attached to it offends him more. Otoko no Kage grabs the City Lord by his shoulder and whispers something into his ear, but the City Lord angrily shrugs him off and glances in the direction of the Watch Tower.

One of the Shinobiyoru Tora's ventral turrets begins to spin toward me. It has four dorsal turrets and five ventral turrets, each one housing three cannons. An attack with all three of those guns would be enough kill everyone near the City Lord's mansion's gate.

Ichi, the okama, spins around to stare at the Shinobiyoru Tora for a second, before barking a command over his shoulder. "Pick up that idiot, Akira, and retreat to the City Lord's hovel."

After we returned to the Great Plateau from the bitch aunt's mountain, and I connected to the Mind Net, I found a message form Old Man Jones. It contained instructions on how to control the Mind Net more efficiently, and how to use the Watch Towers.

A long time ago, the shitty old man gave me what he calls 'access permissions' to control the Mind Net, and before he disappeared, he gave me access permissions for the Watch Towers. By using the Mind Net, I can control any Watch Tower from anywhere, and as a Triune, I no longer need any equipment to connect the Mind Net.

As I connect my Mind to the Mind Net, the physical world slows down. Everything around me turns somewhat blurry, and the image of a second landscape interposes over the top of the landscape of the Soma. The images of two worlds interposed one atop another make the outlines of both worlds appear hazy and blurred. Only, the Watch Tower is different. As in the physical world, it rises more than a kilometer into the sky of the Mind Net.

By focusing my thoughts, I bring up a control tome. Taking the form of a thick and massive tome, it appears as another translucent image overlaid on top of the physical world and the Mind Net's landscape. Old Man Jones said that he raised my access level Supervisor, but the control panel shows level as Supervisor III. Flipping through the page, I bring up the command page for the Watch Tower. Most of the entries on the page are so blurred as to be unreadable, but the entries in weapons control section stand out crisp and clear. I brush finger over the 'Status' entry, and it changes from 'Standby' to 'Active'.

As I push he Mind Net to the back of my awareness, the physical world seems to speed up once more. The image of the Mind Net's landscape fades to the point I can barely see it, but since I keep my Mind connected to the Mind Net, it does not disappear entirely.

I point toward the Watch Tower, and still moving slightly slower than the speed of my perception, the City Lord looks in that direction. As he sees the black and silver lightning writhing around the top of the Watch Tower's spire, his already pale skinned face turns bone white.

"Hey! Okama-kun! If you don't want to see that pot metal can sunk, you better the gutless bitch in charge of it to point those guns someplace else."

Looking back at me, the okama glares at me for a second, the as his follow my pointing finger, his mouth drops open. With a faint ripple in the fabric of the Soma, he flips his left hand over, and a black box appears in it. He has spacial storage device? Is it the silver ring on his left hand?

The okama holds the box up to his ear and mouth. His lips move but I cannot hear the words over the rumbling and screeching coming from the steam engine of Hoshi's wrecked steamer car. My human ears are nowhere near as acute as those of my true form.

The okama pauses to listen a few times, before speaking some more. After fifteen or twenty seconds, the battleship's cannons never fire, and the turret returns to its original position. A hatch opens in the side of the battleship, and the booms for a pair of winches slide out. The platform between the winches rapidly drops to the ground.

With his glare shifting between the platform, the Watch Tower, and me, the okama rapidly leads his group to platform. As soon as they all board the platform, it begins to rise. The okama fixes his glare on me, and it never wavers until the hatch in the battleship closes.

As dark smoke billows from the battleship's centrally located smokestacks, the huge propellers mounted in armored housings near the stern spin up to a speed that I have never seen on an airship before. They appear to be spinning at about three to four times the speed of the Silver Princess, and even though I have yet to modify the Silver Princess' steam engines or transmissions, their design is the same as those made for a racing yacht.

Vorn comes up behind. "We need to get Hoshi to a Physician."

Moving back to Hoshi, I find him unconscious. With my awareness, I carefully probe his wound. Between the Trinity thread tying off the artery and the tourniquet, his blood loss is temporarily minimal, but if the wound is not properly treated, he will still die. He may lose the leg no matter what.

Tia, can you heal him?

Tia cold answer slips not my Mind like an icy chill. My Power can heal him, but you would have to reveal my existence to the world.

As I feel Otoko no Kage's presence only a few meters away, I turn a cold stare on him. "Are you going to try to get in my way?"

I have yet to return the Watch Tower's weapon system to a standby state, and Otoko no Kage involuntarily glances in the direction of the Watch Tower. As he snaps his stare back onto me, a mix of odors fills his scent, but fear is clearly on of them. The message Old Man Jones left for me in the Mind Net said that the City Lord would be afraid to touch me as long as he knew I controlled the Watch Tower. It seems the same applies to Otoko no Kage.

Otoko no Kage frowns stiffly. "Okada Hoshi is a noble of this city. His fate matters. I will take him to the City Lord's personal Physician."

I step back form Hoshi, and the same threads of Yuan Qi, which Otoko no Kage used at the Eastern Escarpment, extend from him to Hoshi. The tendrils of Yuan Qi wrap around the unconscious Hoshi and lift him into the air. With Hoshi suspended in front of him, Otoko no Kage races into the courtyard of the City Lord's mansion, but despite the speed of his movement, Hoshi's clothes do not flutter in the slightest.

The City Lord has already disappeared, and Otoko no Kage dashes toward a side door of the manor. Apparently sensing the presence of Vorn and myself, Otoko no Kage frowns at us over his shoulder. The speed of his movement is not something that a peak Core Formation cultivator could match, but Vorn an I easily stay on his heels. We follow a twisting path through the back corridors of the manor.

Before he reaches each door, Otoko no Kage throws or slides it open with his Yuan Qi tendrils, but despite his speed, he does not even damage fragile shoji-style doors. His control over his technique is nothing short of masterful.

In an almost four meter wide stone walled corridor near the back of the manor, Otoko no Kage throws open a pair of wood doors. Polished slabs of granite cover the floor and walls of the room beyond. Free-standing shoji-style screens separate rows of beds lining both walls, and a few sick or injured human males and one human female lie in them.

"Fujiwara-sensei!" Otoko no Kage's yell causes two of the sleeping humans to start awake.

"Be silent! I have sleeping patients!" An even even louder shout than Otoko no Kage's blasts out from a door in the back of the room.

Bang!

The door slams against the wall, and an old man with a long grey hair and bush grey beard, presumably Fujiwara-sensei, stomps out. As his squinting eyes land on Hoshi, the old man pauses for a few seconds, and a web of what feels like polluted Psi stretches from him to Hoshi. The old man is a Mind Force user, and he seems far more skilled than whoever was in the battleship.

"What are you standing around for, Kage-kun! Bring him into the surgery!" The old man rushes and opens a pair of wood doors in the center of the back wall. He only seems to have peak Core Formation level Cultivation.

Vorn and I follow Fujiwara-sensei and Otoko no Kage into the room. More polished granite covers the walls and floor of this room. A shiny metal table sits in the center of the room and several drains dot the floor.

"Put him on the table." After pointing in the general direction of the metal table, Fujiwara-sensei pulls open the door of a polished metal cabinet. After he grabs a handful of needles and several slender knives, he rushes to the metal table.

"This boy needs to lose weight." Fujiwara-sensei cuts off Hoshi's tent-sized school uniform and drawers leaving the belt tied around the leg. While frowning, he makes careful incisions to open the area around the wound.

After a few moments, Fujiwara-sensei snorts and slices through my belt, which is still tightly tied around Hoshi's leg. "You did not need the tourniquet after sealing off the artery with Yuan Qi. No … That's not Yuan Qi. What in Diyu did you use to close this artery?"

With his eyes narrowing in suspicion, Otoko no Kage looks over his shoulder at me. "You'll have to ask Beast-kun what the power is. He's the one that did it."

"What are you talking about? You should know, I can't Cultivate, Kangan-kun."

As his face turns red, Otoko no Kage glares at me and bares his teeth that is nothing close to a smile. He does not seem to like being called a eunuch. "You little asshole. You want me to cut your balls off?"

While continuing to make small slice and stab the needles into Hoshi's leg, Fujiwara-sensei chortles. "You should show more self-control. Do you want to set a bad example for your juniors, Kangan-kun. Oh, excuse me. Kage-kun."

After staring indignantly at Fujiwara-sensei for a moment, Otoko no Kage turns a purely venomous glare on me. "Little bastard, if I kill you, while Grandmaster Jones is away, he's never know what happened."

I put on my best mocking smirk. "Are you really that eager to see what happens when the full power of Watch Tower's weapon system lands right on your head?"

Fujiwara-sensei cackles. "You're just a nasty as Grandmaster Jones said you were. Raymon the Beast. But you should be careful. That tongue of your is going to push some thin-skinned cultivator, who you cannot deal with, over the edge one day."

I shrug. "Shit happens. Since everyone is so talkative, why don't you tell me about the okama from the airship?"

Fujiwara-sensei and Otoko no Kage exchange looks, and both their faces darken.