Then there was another voice, just as loud as the first. Okubo Tokugawa shouted back at the new challenger. “Do not listen to him! The Grimnoir are evil!”
“The Chairman says we’re evil… Well, he’s right. We are evil. I know the Pathfinder’s here because I AM THE PATHFINDER! I answer to the Enemy. I’m bringing it here right now. You hear that, Dark Ocean? I am your worst nightmare.”
“No!” The Chairman’s voice shook the world. “Destroy him! Kill him!”
“Go look to your Imperium schools and see. We’re already there. We’re all over the Imperium. You want a fight? Come get some!”
The Chairman extended his hands and lightning blasted upward into the sky.
There was another horrendous boom, much closer and stronger now. The windows cracked. It was as if the man falling through the air had suddenly accelerated. He fell quicker than any bomb, streaking downward impossibly fast. No amount of concentrated magic from the Movers could turn that aside. He hit the ground so hard it caused a massive explosion of earth. It obliterated a huge circle of the parade grounds. The Chairman disappeared beneath a rolling cloud of dust.
“In the name of Dark Ocean, protect the Chairman! Go!” The Iron Guard were running for the exits, trying to get to their Chairman’s side. One leapt through the cracked window, launching himself into the crowd four stories below because it was the most direct route.
Hayate scowled. “Fascinating.”
“Are you mad?” the leader of the Iron Guard shouted. “That is how they destroyed the Auspicious Dragon! We are being attacked. The Enemy has returned! We must protect the Chairman!”
“Indeed.” Hayate stroked his chin as he thought it through. Perhaps Toru had not been mad after all. It was either a brilliant deception by the Grimnoir for some unknown tactical reason, or something much, much worse. Either way, the truth would be discovered and justice would be satisfied. “And the Chairman is an immortal super wizard. Do not dishonor him by thinking you can protect him when he cannot protect himself.”
“But—”
“Remember your training, Iron Guard! Preventing the arrival of the Enemy is our greatest single mission. You heard the invader. We have been infiltrated. Send word to the schools.” Hayate turned to his own aide, who had been trying to appear even more innocuous than his master. “Dispatch shadow strike teams to every Imperium school. Investigate everyone. If anyone tries to stop you, kill them. If we are turned away, firebomb the schools to ash.”
And with those words, the sacred eradication mission of Dark Ocean began anew.
UBF Traveler
“It isn’t working.”
“Damn it!” Schirmer hit Fuller’s infernal device with a wrench. “How about now?”
“Nothing,” Fuller said. He was so excited that the inside of his bubble helmet had fogged over, so he was having to put his head at a really weird angle to see the instruments.
Schirmer whacked it again. “Damn it!”
Lady Origami found it fascinating that the greatest magical mind in the world and a man who could build any mechanical device out of junk and spare parts were reduced to beating on their invention like chimps with rocks. “What is wrong with it?”
“I failed to take the current lack of thermoenergy available in the omnilocators into—”
“It’s frozen,” Schirmer translated.
“Oh? Is that all?” She placed her gloved hands on the machine’s housing. She’d never understood the science behind how magic worked. She had grown up in a home where her extremely pious father had believed magic was the interaction between the spirits which dwelled in all things. So his talented daughter was simply gifted in talking to the fire spirits, and that was how she had thought of her Power ever since. It seemed to work well enough for her. “Yes… The fire inside is very dim. Should I wake it up?”
“Uh… Yes, please, but gently,” Fuller answered.
“Sure.” She concentrated. Fire dwelled inside everything. Sometimes it just needed to be agitated. Within seconds, the interior of the device began to glow with a warm yellow light. The electrical lights began blinking on Schirmer’s instrument panel. The ball on top of the device started spinning. “How is that?”
“It’s working! It’s working!” Fuller exclaimed as the device began to emit an ominous hum. “Thank you!”
“Begin sweeping,” Schirmer ordered the two UBF men. “Aim it at Shanghai first, then work it up and down the coast, then inward. I want to hit every school in China!”
She was disappointed. She had hoped the magical beams it released would be visible. But nonetheless, it was a good thing that she had come down to see off her Heavy. Whatever would these people do without her?
BANG!
Everyone lurched and nearly fell as the Traveler shook from the impact. Lady Origami fell and slid across the floor, but her safety line kept her from falling out the open door. One of the UBF men was not so lucky, and he went rolling over the side. His line snapped taut, so he did not fall the seventy-five-thousand feet to his doom, but instead he was dangling, flapping in space, ten feet past the ramp. Schirmer grabbed that rope and began tugging the screaming man back from the abyss.
She sensed the intrusion into her ship. Demons made their own sort of fire, deep within. This one was tiny, but it was inside the Traveler now, and it was growing. When the Imperium vessels could not climb high enough to shoot them with bullets, they’d started launching demons at them instead.
Warning buzzers began to sound. They were losing altitude. The demon was attacking the interior of their ship. It was inside the third cell of the port bag. It sensed her and shrieked in frustration. She concentrated hard on its internal fire and made the demon explode. It took even more magic to keep that fire from spreading, but there wasn’t anything she could do about the original damage.
The suit was clumsy, making it difficult to stand, but she did. She rushed over and took hold of Fuller’s device and helped the other UBF man struggling to aim it. Sullivan needed this to work. She would not let him die in vain.
BANG! BANG!
More demons. They were tracking in on the ship, punching holes, and ripping the Traveler from the sky.
BANG!
Free City of Shanghai
Father… Please help me. I need your strength. Banish this ghost from my soul. Free my limbs so that they may work. Do not let me die a failure. Help me achieve the dreams of your Dark Ocean.
Toru opened his eyes. There were black clots in front of his vision, and then he realized that they were merely dirt clods resting on the glass of his helmet’s visor. He was lying on the grass of the parade ground.
The imposter stood above him, his sword drawn. Apparently the show was over and the time of his execution was at hand. Yet, the imposter was looking to the sky.
And then there was a terrible crash.
They were blasted with a rushing wind and then a wall of dust, dirt, and grass.
Now was his chance.
Father! Grant me your will!
And then Toru was filled with light.
The light scalded him. It burned like the sun. The invading ghost inside his mind screeched, wilted, and died.
The imposter was silhouetted above him. A shadow in front of a searing second sun. The invader in Saito’s mind was older, stronger, and far more entrenched. It did not shrivel and die before the onslaught, but it hissed and thrashed as it was scorched by the light of truth.