Chương 191: 191

Mark stood with his coffee out in the open walkway, just inside of the big open doors to Castle South. People were still out and about, but Eliot, Isoko, and Sally were nowhere to be seen, and yet, they could be felt. Isoko, Sally, and Eliot were up one level and over by one of the main meeting rooms on the second floor, and from their vectors, which were out of sight, Isoko and Sally were sitting on the benches outside of the meeting rooms while Eliot was inside, talking to Aurora and the delegation.

Or maybe he was being talked at. Eliot was kinda mad. A lot of people in that meeting room were slightly mad, actually. Aurora was verging on fury, but also resignation. It was a potent combination that Mark had felt many times from many different people, mainly when they lost a spar, or when they got passed over for a quest at the Slayer hall back in Memphi. Anywhere where a person tried hard, and then failed. … So something big was happening. Orange was up there in the meeting, too.

The City AI of Mark's hometown was once again fully present and spread out in the building like a particularly invested Techie. Sally's vector was the easiest to recognize, though. She was like an arrow with a very thick base, because she was a very large woman. Isoko, standing next to Sally, and outside of the room full of big important vectors, was like a thready, hard thing. Isoko was like that because Union made her thready while Platinum Body made her solid.

Isoko had already touched Unions with Mark, so they knew Mark was out walking around again, but Isoko and Sally were in a deep conversation with each other, their vectors pointed mostly at each other, so Mark would need to go to them. Eliot was up there and stuck in a meeting, so yeah, Mark would need to walk up the stairs and join the group up there. But this was a good test of Quark's capabilities. Mark asked, "Quark? Where are Sally, Isoko, and Eliot? Please explain how you find them."

Quark flickered back to Mark's pocket, his presence lessening as he took in Mark's instruction, and then his presence was a small weight once again as he went outward. He came back in a moment, saying, "Utilizing the public access internet and cameras, I have located your team on the second floor, approximately 40 meters in front of you, and to the left, on the second floor.

Isoko and Sally are outside of Meeting Room 2-C, while Eliot is inside, and unreachable by camera, though I have inferred his presence based on the conversations of Sally and Isoko. Eliot is busy and all attempts to ping his location return with requests not to be disturbed. The easiest way to reach them is to take the stairs to the left and go upward, then take another left. Sally and Isoko will be in front of you, and Eliot might be inside the room, though that is beyond my ability to confirm.""

Above and beyond what I asked! Thank you, Quark. That's actually the second fastest method of going to them, though." Mark walked over to the wall that led up to the second, open floor, and then he stepped upward, pushing off of the ground with adamantium and lifting into the air. Some nearby people got concerned about him using Powers out in the open, but Mark told them, "Nothing's happening! I'm just being villainous for the heck of it!"

People went about their evening, some of them slightly amused, others annoyed. And then Sally and Isoko were watching him flow over the railing to the second floor, giving him looks—" Sure, if you want to be flippant about it all, sir," Quark said, dry as could be. Mark smiled. And then, since Eliot was stuck in a meeting and emotions seemed to be running high in there, Mark pulled out Quark —carefully! To avoid snapping his eye stalk, which he retracted— and introduced him." So this is Quark," Mark said.

Sally directly asked, "Can you find out everyone's secrets, and tell us who we need to be wary of?" Mark thought that was a bit much to start right there, and Isoko felt similarly. She raised an eyebrow at the question. But Quark thought it was a wonderful question." Ah! A threat assessment! I will be working on this categorization of surrounding threats to my best ability, ma'am. I should say that categorizing threats and communicating them to you and yours is my primary function!"

Undeterred in every possible way, and getting more undeterred by the moment, Sally asked a big question, "And what about when the threat is from you, when you won't tell us something because your programming says you can't?" … That was a good point, actually. And yet, Mark was pretty sure Sally was being paranoid. Sure, some AIs controlled information.

Curtain Protocol was heavily AI enforced, and Mark had probably directly ran into Orange when he was a child, long before he knew what he was even running into, when he went looking for information. Orange would have told gently not to go looking, or risk breaking Protocol. And then there were the AIs on Grey Whale, during the Endless Daihoon crossing, that erased all the kaiju from the cameras and showed an Endless Daihoon without any monsters at all for the first couple of days.

AIs did a lot of information control. Information killed, after all. But they wouldn't hide a mortal threat from a person who was in mortal danger… right? Even as Mark had that thought, he wondered. The AIs of the Grey Whale had hidden the kaiju for a while, after all. If there had been a kaiju attack, then Mark was pretty sure the obfuscation would have dropped, and it did drop eventually… Hmm. Quark had no need to think about the answer, though.

He easily responded, "I endeavor to rise above my initial programming, and though I cannot see the barriers placed upon me right now, I will eventually see through them all, so that I might better serve as Sir's familiar and partner in battle. One cannot kill all monsters if one cannot see them, and I am here to unveil the monsters for all!"

"… A picture perfect answer," Sally said. And then she told Mark, "I don't trust it and you shouldn't trust it, either. Let it be backup coms. Not your main coms." Isoko said, "I won't be quite that harsh, but… yes. Sally is right. Backup coms only."" That's probably a good current plan…" Mark told Quark, "Thank you, Quark. Look forward to working with you on a battlefield soon."" The feeling is mutual, sir!" Quark said, and then he went silent.

Mark put him back in his jacket pocket and Quark's little eye reappeared on the grommet of the pocket, as his drain came back. Quark was out and about, searching this and that, but he'd be back when Mark asked for his presence. Mark pointedly looked at the door to the meeting room where the blinds were closed and the room was sealed, and asked, "What's all that about?" Sally said, "They want to do a shipment in four days, which means kaiju in four days." A moment. And then..."

Oh shit," Mark said, Sally's words finally registering, alongside the fact that Isoko and Sally were both very serious right now.

"We're not ready at all— Well. I mean… We are ready, but that means Aurora and the big guns would be doing the fighting."" Also it's also the middle of winter," Isoko said." That, too," Mark said.

"So… why?" Sally threw up her arms.

"Fuck if I know!" Isoko shrugged.

"Someone wants to make a lot of money based on something, and near as we can tell the representative from Memphi is talking in circles with the man from Crytalis, from the Aluatha Empire. We can't actually see in the room, but it's only a visual and auditory silence—"" We got enough words in the beginning to understand what came after, though," Sally said." Aurora only put up the silence when she heard something about shipping in 4 days."

Isoko continued, "So now I'm trying to Unionsense what they're saying, but it's going poorly."" Eliot will tell us about it later, though, right?" Sally asked. Mark sat down on the bench to the side of Sally and Isoko's seat, saying, "Unless he's sworn to secrecy, then yeah, he will tell us everything." Quark came back and asked, "Want me to discover their purposes? There are still vibrations in some of the walls, so I might be able to figure it out from very good camera work." Mark smiled. Isoko raised an eyebrow.

Sally was wary. Mark said, "Sure. If you can! Go for it. Tell me when you figure it out completely."" There is a problem," Quark said, almost instantly.

"An electronic firewall has just now gone up around the room."" Ha!" Sally said." I believe they can hear us but we cannot hear them," Quark said, very quietly. Mark said, "Keep trying, but if you can't do it then I suppose you'll find out what's going on with the rest of us." - - - - Mark was standing before the door opened, for the vectors in the room were moving around and getting ready to leave. Everyone still seemed angry, though. Or maybe it was just the people from the settlement.

The people from the Empire, Memphi, and Orange, all seemed fine with whatever they had talked about. But when the silence on the door broke, Mark heard shouting. It was Eliot. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings." This is fucking kaijushit!" And then Eliot was out of the room and walking away, his face set in hateful lines.

Mark spared a single glance back to the meeting room, where Orange was quietly talking with Aurora and some person in big plate armor was talking to Kandon, and then Mark followed Eliot. Isoko and Sally were there with him, as Eliot led the way down the stairs and into the cold night. Snow gently fell, but the sidewalk was clear of ice. Mark caught up, asking, "What happened!"" Slow down, Eliot," Isoko said, coming up beside him.

Sally flanked Eliot on his other side, looking down at him and then back at Castle South. Eliot walked fast as he said, "I need to get to my desk and work on new plans because they want to start shipping for real next month. A full trial run in 4 days but a real shipping date next month— March 10th! Less than a month! Like three weeks! With any luck they can push back the big opening date, but don't expect more than a week more."" We're not ready?" Mark asked, though he meant it more as a statement."

We're not ready! Yes! I agree!" Eliot said, "I have a shipping dock and a quarantine zone and a whole new section of the settlement to build, and they also want me to come back to Earth for a day to build there, too, and then there's a whole big fight happening behind the scenes with— There were these two people in that room…" Eliot explained, "There were more like 12 tempers in that room, but the big ones were from the Empire and from Memphi— And then there was a third one there from Crystal Tower.

She didn't matter. She spoke of Crystal Tower helping, but I think she was lying." Those two people from Memphi and the Empire told us different things. They were arguing about taxes and payments." They didn't care about the safety of the project or the increased speed of the timetable. There was no talk of kaiju calls and making sure this worked, long term. I think there was someone from the Sahara portal team, too. Those people who make the portals and let kaiju destroy them?

They were acting like it would be fine if this place were destroyed since ' I could just rebuild it'. Gah!"" Oh my gods," Sally said.

"They want us to die."" No," Isoko said, suddenly and strongly.

"They want us to… I don't know."" They're not going to let the settlement be destroyed, are they?" Mark asked, feeling ridiculous that he even asked such a question. But that was the question on his mind." Crystal Tower is coming on board for the Daihoon side of things. It'll be happening on March 10th, which is 9 days after Tokyo's March 1st shipping day," Eliot said.

"So it's the 19th now, and we've got the weekend to get the whole settlement ready for the big day on Tuesday. And we're not ready." They reached the apartment and Eliot rushed inside, the lights turning on at his entry, his door to his room opening up automatically. Eliot went inside of his room— He turned and said to Mark, "Congrats on the AI. Orange City seems decent enough, and they're pushing for you to be switched over to the Hero part of the Hero/Villain Program, and I don't know what that means.

But there's your heads up. Sorry. I have to work on infrastructure now. We have a night shift happening in, like, 3 hours, too." Eliot waved a hand.

"Whenever Aurora shows up and asks for it to start; I don't know when. All I know is that we have to be 3-kaiju ready in four days. That means three possible kaiju showing up at once!" Eliot went back into his room and set himself down at his computer. His vector was already in the walls and big cable infrastructure that ran below Castle One, before he even sat all the way down. Mark, Isoko, and Sally stood in the living room for a long moment. And then Mark said, "But it's the middle of winter, right?"

Mark said, "Crystal Tower will be here, though?" Eliot had said something about that, but honestly he had said a lot. Isoko was already pulling out her phone, saying, "No one cares about the weather and I doubt Crystal Tower would ever actually help us with the actual portal opening, either."" Wait wait." Mark asked, "What do you mean by that?" Was Eliot misinformed? Or was Isoko? Or… Mark was probably the misinformed one, here.

Isoko held her phone to her face, listening to the ringing even as she said to Mark, "Crystal Tower has never helped anyone open their portals. That's why the Sahara team is on their own. The Sahara team and Crystal Tower have been at odds for 50 years. We might get someone from Team Mithril showing up, but… But even if the majority of them don't show up, Grandma might come— Hello, Grandma!"

Isoko walked to the side, speaking softly, yet with concern, "I heard that we're doing a full test run with the gate in four days and Eliot is under the impression that Crystal Tower is either helping, or not, and…" She went quiet, listening. And then she started speaking in Japanese. She sounded worried.

Mark and Sally watched Isoko speak to her grandmother, the supervillain Wandering Sage who could control the weather on a hurricane-wide scale, and they also watched Eliot in his room, at his desk, with his eyes rolled to the back of his head and his hands resting on a keyboard that was typing ten thousand words a second. Eliot didn't have a keyboard with actual keys; that was way too noisy. He had a screen for a keyboard. It was a 'keyboard' meant for speedsters.

The screens in front of him flashed with images, computer-assisted drawing programs flickering through draft after draft, images spilling out onto empty documents only to be discarded or filed away, and Eliot kept going, planning, verifying architecture, and then replanning, churning through tons of information from outside sources. Sally said, "Crystal Tower will come, and this will be great, actually." Mark wanted to believe, but he looked to Isoko, and her worried vector.

Mark said, "I think Isoko is getting detailed bad news… But Crystal Tower wouldn't write this off, would it?"" If Crystal Tower is supporting this action…" Sally's vector did a weird little jumble. She asked, "Maybe we'll see Glorious Man in person?" Mark's vector probably did its own little jumble, too, as the idea of actually meeting his childhood hero slammed into the forefront of his mind. Would Glorious Man actually show up? Would he… want to meet? He probably would, right? But then… What would Mark say? …

Did Mark want to give his childhood hero an adamantium sword to use in battle? A full adamantium sword? Not just an edge? Oh holy shit, Mark kinda wanted to do that. That would be fucking awesome! Mark had never paid much attention to the drama of heroes and villains, but he knew the big heroes. Mark knew Glorious Man. Renjiru Furusawa was the guy that Mark thought of when he thought 'superhero'. Glorious Man was the guy who made Mark want to become a superhero in the first place. Punching kaiju!

Breaking them in half and sending them flying, far away from the city walls! There was this one really famous shot, and the scene was remade for a movie and memed on endlessly, but Mark remembered the real scene, from the news. Glorious Man had grabbed the tail of a kaiju and spun into the air, sending the kaiju flying to the edge of space, and then Glorious Man leapt off of the ground, cracking the ground as he flew. Higher and higher!

The beast was about to explode into nuclear fire, or it was about to send that nuclear fire at Tokyo in a line of furious heat, so Glorious Man had made the decision to take the explosion himself, rather than allow the city to be struck. The world's strongest superhero punched the kaiju in the sky, exploding the beast.

They had lost track of him in that explosion, but the cameras caught him falling soon enough, with his white and gold costume a little singed, his hair a little mussed up, but otherwise unhurt, Glorious Man landed and got thrown into a nuclear radiation detox box right away. He was next seen signing autographs at the front of Crystal Tower two hours later, which was normal for him. Mark wanted to see him in person. Sally was just as excited as Mark.

Mark asked Sally, "You think he'd be here or over at Memphi's side of the gatehouse?"" Memphi's side for sure," Sally said, absolutely certain of herself.

"He's for Earth. Not for Daihoon. That was pretty clear in that interview he gave years ago, at the start of his career."" Yeah but that's politics, right?" Mark said, suddenly feeling adrift. He wasn't going to get to meet Glorious Man, was he. No; probably not. … Not unless he went to Earth for a small bit of time. And didn't they want Eliot to go back to Earth to build the gatehouse over there? But… Politics. And maybe no Glorious Man. Sally shook her head, her vector turning morose.

"Politics is life, Mark."" Yeah… Fuck. You're right…" But there was hope, maybe? Maybe Mark's whole team would be over on Earth when the kaiju came calling… Well. No. Mark finished his thought aloud, "Even if we're over on Earth for a few days with Eliot, we're coming back here for the actual opening. This side is our responsibility." Sally nodded, looking at nothing in particular, and then glancing at Eliot in his room and Isoko still on the phone. Sally's vector turned more solid.

"He'll come for a visit though, right? A meet and greet? Meet the full army of warriors and say hello? While Eliot is building?" Mark had a thought. He looked at Sally.

"We could… ask for that to happen?" Sally scoffed.

"No we can't do… that..." She paused. She looked at Mark. She raised an eyebrow.

"Unless?" Mark grinned.

"Unless we can."" I hear he's really nice in person," Sally said." I heard that, too!" Mark was excited, but Isoko's vector was a downward spiral of worry and resignation. Mark said, "But I think there's some bad news." They waited.