Waterstrider

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

“Hold on,” said Orion, “I don’t think I caught that right.”

We were seated around the long table in the meeting room, a group composed of myself, Rachel, Orion, and Jihan. The Sect’s Elders, as well as the Iron Palace Leader. It was, in essence, a war council.

Hearing Orion’s words, Rachel gave him a demonic grin.

“Was he unclear?” she asked. “We’re attacking their headquarters.”

There was a lengthy pause, before Orion spoke up again.

“Would you mind if I asked why we’re doing that?”

“We don’t have a choice,” I said, and Orion went quiet as he noticed the tone of my voice. Even with the concessions from the clan, I was not happy about this.

“We agreed to send four squads of meridian establishment and foundation refinement practitioners, six core formation practitioners, and three spirit refiners. That means us, Jihan and his squad, and the rest is on you.”

Orion frowned, but did not dispute my decision any further. He knew that it was a pointless effort. Jihan, meanwhile, still had an impassive expression on his face. He had already mentally committed.

“Your first priority is to complete your mission, or at least to seem as if you are doing so.”

At this, he seemed to be catching on to my intentions.

“Your second,” I continued, “Is to minimize casualties as much as possible. If anything, we would want this to fail, but we can’t risk antagonizing the Hadal Clan too much, so you will need to actually make an effort.”

He nodded, but still seemed uneasy. I couldn’t blame him for that. After analyzing his expression for a moment, I turned back to Rachel.

“Let’s discuss the details,” I said. She nodded, and gave me an apologetic look.

“I have the official blueprints, but can’t be sure whether they’ve renovated the interior layout since then. I expect that my model will only be fully accurate for the building’s exterior.”

“Show us what you have,” I said.

She nodded, and with a flourish, the image of a stack appeared. As always, Rachel’s visual provided an excellent depiction of the location.The headquarters of the Heirs of Ottrien were on the lower half of the stack, but closer to the middle than to the bottom. This, I thought, would greatly increase the difficulty of the attack.

“According to the plan, we’ll be going in from below,” she explained. We had ended up with that role following the extensive discussions with Wei. “The Hadal forces will come from above, and the mercenaries from the flanks.”

Jihan and Orion frowned, hearing this. To come from above or the side, one could easily arrive by aero, and run quickly to get to the location. To arrive from below was far more difficult, when one could not blend in to the surroundings.

“Most of it,” she explained, “has the layout of a normal office building, but there are armed guards, defensive checkpoints, and fortifications. Previously, they didn’t bother to even look over who went in and out, so long as they were Celan.”

She glanced over to me, and our eyes met. I could see mirth buried in those faux-amber depths.

“I expect the tighter security measures were because they were worried you or I would try to sneak in. Ever since we tried to kidnap Astna they’ve been extra careful about who goes in. This has allowed the clan to schedule their attack for a time when the Heirs’ Vice-Leader Deuvar is present. Of course,” she smirked, “I would be surprised if the Celans didn’t know of the planned attack. That’s where most of the danger comes from. We can’t tell whether they will change up the security measures or not based on that knowledge.”

The rest of us at the table were all listening intently. I and Jihan were unphased by the information, in part because I had already heard most of it before, from Wei. Orion, however, was less able to keep his cool.

“How many enforcers should we expect?” he asked, a bead of sweat slowly dripping down his brow. It seemed he was nervous, I thought. This did not surprise me. Though he was quite talented, he was still only a core formation practitioner. And unlike me, he lacked a sufficiently powerful movement technique. Alone, he couldn’t hope to last more than half a minute against one of the war machines.

Rachel shrugged in response. “Hard to say. I’ve yet to see evidence of them moving any enforcers to the area, which I would think either means they haven’t yet begun to make their preparations, or that they feel confident in the defenses that they already have.”

“Perhaps they intend to move past the Canvas Town border again while most of the strong forces are occupied,” I suggested. If they felt their headquarters would be able to hold off against the attack, this would be the best move, in my opinion. The clan would wish to fall back to protect their interests if the enemy penetrated deep into their territory.

“Either way,” said Rachel, brushing past my speculation, “we’ll need to make the attack regardless. So be wary of enforcer ambushes, because I would be surprised if they lacked any squirreled away somewhere. Don’t worry, though. We’ll largely be in one group. It’ll be Cyrus and Jihan’s job to handle the enforcers. You and your men will handle the footsoldiers.”

As she spoke, her eyes remained fixated on Orion, who nodded, some of his concerns alleviated.

“Is that the extent of our current plans?” asked Jihan.

“We intend to use a more loose plan, shifting according to our needs, since we aren’t sure what exactly we’ll be facing. For ingress and egress, we are still working on the plans. Suggestions would be appreciated, if either of you have any,” she explained.

“We should be moving out some time in the next few days, so make sure your subordinates are ready,” I said.

Sensing my tone, Jihan and Orion stood, offering a short bow and clasping their hands.

“Yes, Sect Leader,” they said. I nodded, and the two filed out of the room to get to work.

After they left, I sighed.

“There will be a lot of casualties, even in the best case scenario,” I said. “I suspect we’ll start having to put the children to work to keep up.”

Rachel shrugged. I glanced over to her, realizing for the first time that she was currently wearing an odd, altered version of her sect robes, that had been recut to more resemble a dress than a martial uniform. She was leaning relaxedly over the table, seemingly held up by one elbow.

“We always intended to use the former gangsters as cannon fodder, and to send them into battle until they died out, and were replaced b y the disciples we trained up. Besides, everyone needs to grow up eventually.”

I turned to face her.

“That’s not the problem,” I said. “I would simply prefer to maximize their training time until they at least reached the meridian establishment realm. It’s barely been a month since they began.”

Rachel shrugged.

“We can always train more. It isn’t as if ambitious youngsters without any backing are a scarce resource on the station.”

I sighed again, looking off into nowhere, as if I could see myself as I was in the past. A cold, scared young man sitting on the street in the rain.

“I suppose.”

These thoughts lead my mind astray, and I found myself thinking of my disciples. Just this morning, I had trained Han and Qian in my most important technique, and Shadowblade in what I felt was obviously a fool’s errand. He had learned it excitedly, even after I had banned him from using it until he reached the meridian establishment realm. If he was going to learn an odd technique, I thought, it would be better for it to be something like the disguise art that Blake had-

Suddenly, my eyes went wide as an idea flashed into my mind. If we were able to sneak into the district, our mortality rate would be able to be greatly lessened. I was a formless practitioner, and Rachel could create illusions. Why couldn’t we disguise ourselves as Celans, at least from a distance? Sure, it would be dishonorable, but I cared not about such trivialities. This was, after all, an unorthodox sect. Everyone already expected us to act in such a way. I smiled.

Rachel glanced over to me, noticing the shift in my expression.

“Did something happen?” she asked.

“I had a thought,” I said. “How feasible would it be for you to disguise our force as Jobu?”

Rachel paused, considering the idea, and then her expression warped into a grin of her own.

“I feel we can make that work. Your disguise will be the only particularly convincing one, however. And we might need to acquire props and prosthetics to make it work.”

I nodded, having anticipated this issue. Still, in the crowds of Tseludia during certain times of day, sneaking a few odd looking individuals around at a time was a more than feasible task.

Rush Hour on Tseludia Station: [Though the Staiven are blind, and thus pay no attention to the on and off cycles of the station’s dome light, their sleep schedule, presumably due to the will of their dead creators, quite similar to that of the humanoid races. It is a roughly 25 hour cycle. As the vast majority of the station’s population is Staiven or humanoid, the trend of largely synchronized low activity periods followed by high activity ‘day’ periods is simply a part of station culture. Because of this, the concept of ‘rush hour’ exists, when a large percentage of the station’s inhabitants wake up and walk to their workplace, or leave their workplace to return home, rendering the streets extremely congested for a period of time. The sole exceptions to this trend is the spacedock, which is bustling at all hours, and Otan, where shifts of drones are constantly moving around. Of course, a city as widely inhabited as Tseludia is never truly in a slumbering state, and many live on their own schedules, with no care for how the majority of the population spends their time.]