Chapter 73: Monsters Stick Together

Mio

“Mio-chan. Mio-chaaaan.”

“Oh. Yes?”

She wasn’t used to that. Nana called her Onee-san. Shizuka called her little sprout. Mori said Mio-san like she was filing a report.

Nobody used -chan. The closest thing was OG, but even then that was a stretch. Nobody talked to her like they’d been friends for years.

But Chigusa did.

“You know you’ve made a very big name for yourself out there.” Chigusa walked backward through the tunnel, chemical stick casting green light across her grin. “Party killer. Freak. Monster.”

Oh?

The hunger’s voice.

Chigusa tripped on a crack, laughed at herself and turned ahead. “Oops.”

Mio halted. “Monster?”

“Monster, yeah. Although I prefer ’queen’ or ’baddie’.” Chigusa kept walking forward. “Or my favorite: divergent.”

She had to be joking. Mio waited for the laugh after. It never came.

Chigusa turned around, raised her palm. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing.”

Behind Mio, Enokida had stopped too.

“Oh, does that bother you?” Chigusa stepped closer. They were inches apart. She smelled like tangerines. The ones Mio’s mother used to pick out at the grocery store, turning each one over in her hand before choosing.

“It’s okay.” Chigusa’s voice dropped an octave. “Monsters stick together.”

Oh.

I like this one.

Her palm was still out, waiting.

Mio raised her left arm, paused before they made contact. Put it down and raised the obsidian one instead.

Chigusa reached forward and their hands met. Her palm was warm. Mio expected the flinch. The comment about the texture, the look. Everyone before her had given at least one.

Chigusa didn’t.

Mio liked that.

Chigusa smiled and pulled her along.

“Chigusa-san.”

“Call me Chi-chi.”

“Chi…chi.” Mio tested the new name. The corridor expanded beyond the darkness. “What class do you have?”

She was swinging Mio’s arm around like a pendulum.

“Class? What class?”

“You know already. I was a healer once. What are you?”

“Ah, you were F-grade weren’t you, Mio-chan?”

It’d been so long she almost didn’t recognize it.

She nodded in silence.

“Weak integrated folks are stuck with generic, standard classes. Us stronger individuals branch into fancier ones.”

Mio had never bothered to learn.

Chi-chi noticed the scrunch of Mio’s face. “For example, you have enforcers like Kaito-san. And then elemental conjury, mana weavers, the whole lot.”

“So what are you?”

“I’m like Mori-san. She controls thermal heat. Me? Matter manipulation, but I manipulate the fabric between silk and thread.”

Chi-chi’s free arm came up. The thread around the wrist began pulling at the edges, purple energy guiding it. Then she whipped the wall. The concrete gave way like butter.

“Cool yeah?”

Monster like me.

“Yeah. That explains why you’re dressed like it’s winter.”

“Bingo. Even though it’s warmer now. My tits ache.”

Mio made a sound.

“You do laugh.” Chi-chi let out one herself.

Chi-chi walked faster, pulling Mio along now. The way Aoi used to when they got together at the train stations, before everything. She could barely keep up.

“Come on, we’re slowing down.” Her commander mask was back on.

Enokida picked up his pace too.

He’d been quiet. So had Jii.

That was okay. It was okay.

There was light now at the end of the tunnel. They’d been walking over train tracks for what seemed like an hour.

“Life signature ahead,” Enokida said, eyes glowing. “Let me get a closer reading.”

He stepped forward, passing by Mio and Chi-chi.

“This one is weak.”

They picked up the pace. The corridor narrowed, then widened, then narrowed again like the station was breathing around them.

Pipes ran along the ceiling in bundles, sweating the same warm moisture as the walls. One had burst open. Water pooled at their feet, ankle-deep and rising.

Chi-chi didn’t slow down.

The tunnel spat them out onto a platform. Warped benches hung from the walls. A departure board overhead displayed destinations in characters Mio couldn’t read, arrival times ticking backward.

The giant crab was hunched over something in the corner. Pincers the size of car doors. Armored shell slick with moisture from the sweating walls.

[Ironshell Crab — B-grade]

[HP: 15,000/15,000]

It hadn’t noticed them yet.

Behind it, pressed flat against the tile, a little girl.

The grin was gone. Chigusa let go of Mio’s arm and the thread was already unspooling.

The giant crab swung.

Chigusa caught the pincer with a loop of thread, pulled it sideways, and threw the whole limb into the wall. She was past it before the crab recovered, scooping the girl off the tile with one arm.

“Mio, hold her.”

The girl landed against Mio’s chest, shaking, face buried in Mio’s jacket. Mio held her with the obsidian arm. The girl flinched once, then gripped tighter.

Before Mio could turn and help, the giant crab was limbless and bleeding to death.

The sleeve of her forearm was gone. That’s all it took. Six seconds.

“Oh,” she grinned. “I forget that crabs are mush on the inside.”

The Life Bloom swelled where the crab had fallen. Mio pulled it in without thinking. Twenty-three thousand. Warm and clean.

Jii had made her way into Mio’s hair to see the whole show, her yellow eyes brimming.

The girl tugged on Mio’s jacket. Small fingers, shaking.

“Mommy is down there.” She pointed past the dead crab, into a corridor that dropped deeper than the platform should allow. “She never came back.”

Chi-chi crouched to the girl’s level. Tucked a strand of hair behind the kid’s ear.

“Stay close to the lady with the metal arm. Don’t worry, she won’t bite.” She winked at Mio.

The girl took Mio’s hand. The obsidian one. Her fingers barely wrapped around two of Mio’s.

Mio paused.

It was strange. Every living thing Mio had ever seen through the Engine had a bloom. Delvers, civilians, monsters, Nana. Even the slimes in Shinjuku had values. Never zero, nothing.

This girl had nothing.

“Chi-chi, normally my Engine shows bloom—I mean, life energy on all living things.”

Chigusa glanced down at the girl, then back at Mio. “Hoh?” She turned. “Enokida, what’s your ability say?”

He shrugged. “Mine only scans incursion monsters. Humans are out of the equation.”

The girl’s hand tightened around Mio’s fingers.

The Engine had also miscounted the hostiles back at the entrance. Eight where Enokida read three. Now a B-grade crab that fit neither total.

Maybe the Engine was running out of fumes.

They walked deeper.

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