Waterstrider

Canvas Town, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fifthmonth, 1634 PTS

Wei made his way through the halls of the Hadal headquarters. This portion of the great building’s warren of halls and corridors was far less finely decorated than the areas he was more used to. Despite their wealth, the clan had limits to wasteful expenditure. Only in places where guests might visit or where the Matriarch and other high ranking clan members lived and worked needed to be luxurious.

His pace was leisurely, his demeanor relaxed despite the situation. Sirena had mobilized their forces, and he suspected that Karie might have already involved herself in the riots. Still, he was in no rush. Some of the clan’s other spirit refiners were already watching the border. At the moment, Wei’s duty was to defend the headquarters, so there was little he could do. If this were not the case, he would not have even made the effort to come down here. While this matter was potentially beneficial, it was just as likely for nothing to come of it, despite his best efforts.

He quickly made his way to the end of the hall. Had this been Canvas, a dungeon would have been located here, one of the many structures that aliens would inevitably classify as primitive, savage, or unrefined in some way. Wei had to agree. Dungeons had limited success in sealing away powerful martial artists. They were a thing of the past, while the detention cells of the Hadal Clan were the way of the future. Even he, as technologically illiterate as he was, could see this. He stepped into the detention center of the headquarters, and the two guards inside both stood to attention, bowing to him.

“Lord Wei! It is an honor to meet you!” called one of them, a sei man with features very standard to the family lineage. Wei didn’t recognize him, which meant he had to be a member of a branch family. The other man was clearly not Hadal at all, and Wei guessed that he had to be one of the servant practitioners who had sworn themselves to the clan in exchange for better techniques and training. He nodded respectfully to both of them, allowing them to calm themselves. He then turned to the only inhabited cells of the three located in the room.

The cell would have looked more in place in an technologically advanced setting such as the cell blocks of the Justice Office or the prison moon, but as it was a ways away from the parts of the headquarters that saw guests, the designers had chosen to build it for maximum effectiveness rather than for beauty. It was a rectangular metal enclosure, constructed of some advanced Staiven alloy that aliens weren’t even allowed to know the name of. Wei had tested it himself, and the alloy was so hard that he couldn’t bend or break it without the use of a weapon. As far as he could tell, it indeed lived up to the promise of holding even a spirit refiner, though he still couldn’t help but doubt the idea.

They had purchased it off the black market years ago when the Justice Office went through renovations and the contracted construction firm secretly removed some of the more valuable sections of the building rather than demolishing it fully.

If the cell had been constructed by a humanoid race, they would have placed a slat in the door or some sort of glass pane, so that one could see inside, but clearly the Staiven had no need for such things. After all, no matter how advanced the materials might be, there was no way they could restrain the senses of the soul.

“This is her?” he asked, his senses lightly inspecting the presence of the soul inside the room.

The guard nodded.

“There were three casualties just from bringing her in. Another two are currently receiving medical attention.” He winced before continuing. “I don’t think they’ll make it. The doctors were saying we have no antidotes for the poison.”

Wei frowned. He had known this would be a risky endeavor, but the toll was worse than he had anticipated.

He glanced at a display on a nearby wall, which showed an image taken from inside the cell. Within, a woman sat on a small cot, relaxing in a composed position. She was on the attractive side, but her close-cropped hair was unusual for a martial artist of either gender, much less a woman. Her head was pointed towards one of the walls, as if she were inspecting something. As he traced her gaze, Wei suddenly realized that she was looking directly at the wall he was on the other side, as if she were watching him.

He snorted, unfazed by the tricks of the younger generation. She wouldn’t be able to actually see through the wall, but she would certainly know that someone had arrived just from her soul sense. He turned his attention back towards the guard.

“Have you gotten anything out of her yet?”

The guard shook his head.

“We contacted you immediately upon our return. Nobody has entered the cell.”

Wei glanced at the screen again.

“Good work. Open the door for me.”

Wei saw the man’s facial expression shift in surprise.

“You want to go in there? But we weren’t able to cleanse her dantians. The poison will still be inside.”

“There’s no need to worry about that. Open the door.”

Holding back his shock, the guard swiftly complied, and the cell’s hatch slid silently open. As Wei entered, it closed back behind him, sealing the two martial artists inside with one another.

Wei clasped his hands together as he gazed down at the Bountian poisoner. She silently stared up at him with a confrontational look. When he was young he might have taken offense at it, but it was the nature of age to mellow a man’s emotions out. These days, Wei found that it took far more to anger him than it once did.

“Your name is Yun?” he asked, breaking the silence.

She merely grunted in response, continuing to silently glare at him, so he continued speaking, a light chuckle sneaking out from his lips.

“I apologize for the current situation. In fact, I merely told them to invite you to speak with me.”

Yun scoffed.

“A likely story.”

Her accent betrayed her origin, just like Wei’s information said. Not only did she have Bountian heritage, this Yun was likely a native, who immigrated from Canvas herself.

“I am Wei Hadal. Might I ask to hear your surname?”

Yun leaned back on her bed in a relaxed pose, her gaze moving away from Wei and towards the cell’s ceiling. It was a breach of etiquette, but he was not foolish enough to expect such social niceties from an assassin-for-hire, much less one his force had essentially kidnapped.

“No.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle again.

“I see. I suppose it doesn’t matter. No matter what your origin, it is of little relevance to us, as far from home as we are. That is what the Matriarch believes, at least.”

Wei personally, was more cautious, closer to a traditionalist, while Sirena had always been a maverick. Still, he trusted her judgment, and would follow her orders dutifully. Such was his duty as a loyal clan member.

Yun turned her head to glare again at him, her eyes narrowed. The look amused him. She was all too like a snake in a basket, ready to bite the hand of anyone who reached inside. Like the man, despite the fact that Wei was far more powerful than her, if Yun struck fast enough, he would almost certainly die, though she would soon follow after him. This was the advantage of a poisoner of her caliber, and it was why he had sought her out.

It was why some might have called him foolish for speaking to her directly rather than through a screen.

“Do you remember the target you killed by the spacedock?” he asked. “It was within a Celan restaurant, if you recall.”

At first he thought she intended to ignore him, but after a short pause he heard her voice speak up.

“I can’t say I do.”

Such a response was not beyond his expectations. He suspected she would similarly claim no knowledge of any of the few jobs she had taken on the station thus far. Wei had worked in an underworld organization for many decades now, and he had met plenty of personalities like hers before. Like all people, one simply needed to know how to deal with them.

“I’m sure,” he said dryly. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, but we had to pay quite a lot to deal with the matter. Suffice to say that the matriarch believes that you owe us a debt.”

Left unsaid was that implication that if the matriarch believed it, it was so. He expected that the girl was quick enough to catch on.

Yun scowled again.

“You clearly don’t just want to kill me or sell me to the Staiven, so out with it. What are you looking for?”

He smiled.

“It’s just a few simple favors. We have a list of names for you.”

She turned to glance at him.

“You’ll let me go, and cease interfering with me if I handle these individuals for you?” she asked cautiously.

“Indeed.”

It was, of course, a simple promise to make, but one he could not be certain he would uphold, and both of them knew it. Nor would she be able to claim she would not cause further problems for them in the future if she was released.

“And when I kill everyone on the list?” she asked.

Wei couldn’t help but crack a smile at her words. The girl’s confidence truly spoke of her youth. It tended to dissipate with age after one began to run into the walls of their own talent and luck.

“War is here,” he said. “There is always someone else who needs to be killed. I hear you’re interested in money?”

Though she was still facing away, Wei could see the corner of her lips curl upwards, and he knew he had succeeded. This Yun would make for an excellent addition to their forces, he thought, a piece which added a significant number of new options to their force.

He couldn’t help but wonder at the precedent this set, however. From a certain perspective, this could be considered as an orthodox clan seeking assistance from a martial master of the unorthodox path. It could severely injure their reputation and connections with the homeworld if information of it somehow got out.

As Wei watched Yun’s back, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was better to keep the snake trapped inside the basket after all. The only time one could feel safe from the venom was when the lid was closed tightly.

Wei, after all, did not wish to be bitten.

Staiven Imprisonment Methods: [Like most organizations of the Pantheonic Government, the Justice Office is run as a business, and expected to make profit. For this reason, convicts are put to work until their sentence is paid off, rather than mere incarceration or execution. Their labor is rented away to the corporations in the given system. Despite the risks and dangers, this system is utilized even for alien races with progression systems, such as those from Canvas. The sole difference is that such individuals are placed within more well-constructed cells and watched extremely closely. The reason that such effort is used is because the more powerful a given individual is, the more valuable the benefits that might be acquired from their labor, in theory. Such individuals are almost always shipped off to prison moons instead of being used on world or on station, as they will be forced by their isolation to comply. After all, even if one were to slay the guards and escape one’s bonds, the individual would remain trapped on the moon, unable to escape back to civilization.]