“Any leads yet?” Izu asked, staring down at him with a frown.
“If I’d found anything, don’t you think I’d have told you?” Koya spoke slowly, annunciating every word and lacing it with as much scorn as he could.
Izu’s brow wrinkled, as though trying to figure out if he was being insulted or not. Finally, he nodded and wandered back to his brother, who was throwing around one of his Water Blades and cutting branches off nearby trees.
With his outlet for ridding himself of his anger now gone, Koya was left to stew over his failings once again. He just didn’t understand where he’d gone wrong. He’d gone back to the Dungeon and began looking for traces of Essence left behind by the clan member who’d stolen the core.
Essence had a way of lingering, especially if it belonged to a Martial Artist. The problem was that he hadn’t counted on all the other Water Essence interfering. So by the time he’d been forced to leave the clan’s territory, he’d been no closer to discovering who’d stolen the core. As the days passed, he began to despair that he’d never find the culprit.
“Watch where you’re throwing that thing. You almost cut my arm off!”
Koya looked up to see Izu glaring at Kozu. He could clearly see that Izu’s sleeve had been sliced open, but he couldn’t see any blood.
“It’s not my fault you were in the way!” Kozu replied, folding his arms and glaring back in turn.
“Enough, both of you!” Koya yelled, getting to his feet to intervene before it came to blows.
For a pair of near-identical twins, the two sure didn’t seem to get along all that well, though who could blame them. If he had a look-alike that he was constantly being compared to, he wouldn’t like them either.
“He started it,” Izu said, looking sullen.
“And I’m ending it,” Koya said, placing a firm hand on his shoulder.
He’d made his decision on what they should do next. It would do them no good to keep hanging around here. There was a village about a week’s walk from here if they made good time. Sure, it was under the control of the Diadei clan, but the Shah would sometimes go there to trade. If they were lucky, they might find refuge there.
“We’ve stuck around here long enough. Now come on,” he said, removing his hand from the bigger boy’s shoulders and heading towards the path.
“Where are we going?” Kozu called out as the two of them hurried to catch up with him.
“Hopefully, somewhere we can start over,” Koya replied, feeling his resentment growing.
Whoever had stolen that core might have given them the slip for now. But if he ever found out who it had been, he would make them pay. Dearly!
19
There were two of them, a man and a woman, both 1st Dan Yellow-Belts. Roy immediately recognized them as Shah Sima and Shah Kenji. He wasn’t sure if they’d seen him or not, but he was now trapped in this alleyway until they left. Even dressed in new clothes and sporting a Belt, he would be instantly recognizable by his large frame and light brown hair.
He could feel his heart racing as he tried to find some way out of his predicament. First, he had to find out what they were doing here. Had this been a Felrin village, he could understand, but this was Diadei territory, so it made no sense to him. Last he’d checked, the two clans were on bad terms and on the brink of outright war.
“Geon, any ideas?” he asked in a hushed tone.
“Well, if I were to guess, I’d say they’re hunting for whoever stole their Dungeon.”
Roy grimaced as he realized his position was even more precarious than he’d realized. If the two Shah clan members saw him here, after he’d been presumed dead, walking normally and sporting a Belt, they would assume it had been him. They would have no way of knowing that he’d bonded with the core, but they would assume that he was an enemy agent who had been sent to infiltrate the clan and give away their secrets. At least, that was the conclusion he would draw, were he in their position. Either way, it wouldn’t end well for him.
Slowly inching forward, he peeked around the corner of the alley and saw the two of them heading right for him. He felt his heart seize up in his chest as Kenji’s eyes flicked in his direction, and he quickly pulled back, making a dash for the other end of the alley. He still wasn’t sure if he’d been seen or not, but he couldn’t stick around here.
“Hey, you!”
Roy froze halfway down the alley as the familiar voice of Kenji called out behind him. Kenji had been one of Koya’s friends, though not a particularly close one. That hadn’t stopped him from picking on Roy at every turn, and his companion Sima wasn’t any better. He could feel their auras as they moved to block the mouth of the alley, and though it opened on the other side, they could catch him before he even made it halfway there.
“Can I help you?” he asked, only partially turning his head so as not to show his face.
Outwardly, he projected a calm and collected demeanor, but inwardly, he was on the verge of panic.
“You seem kind of familiar, have we met before?” Kenji asked.
“And why did you run when you saw us?” Sima’s question came right after his.
He could hear them, slowly moving down the alley and closing the distance between them.
“Geon! Help!” He thought, fighting desperately to remain calm.
“No reason, just in a hurry,” he replied, starting to move away from them. “And I don’t think we’ve met before. Now I apologize, but I really must be going.”
He heard a light gasp from behind him and inwardly cursed. He’d slipped up. No self-respecting Martial Artist would apologize to total strangers, but seeing as he’d spent his entire life doing so, especially to the Shah, it had slipped out without him meaning to.
“There’s…no way,” Kenji said, sounding shocked. “Hey, you, turn around so we can see your face!”
Roy flinched and prepared to run. He knew he had no chance of escape, but if he could make it out of the alley, perhaps someone might help. Just as he started moving though, he heard the sound of boots slapping against the stone and knew it was only a matter of seconds before they had him.
“The cores! Quick, use the cores!”
It took Roy longer than he would have liked to figure out what Geon meant, and when he did, he felt his heart sink. He’d been counting on them to push him closer to 2nd Dan, but now he would have no choice but to use them.
Growling in frustration, Roy whirled on the spot, dragging the box of cores from his robe pocket. He could now see both Kenji and Sima, their faces set in grim determination, but they both stopped short when they saw his face. Their hesitation gave him the opportunity to open the box and hurl all four cores right at them.
The two instinctively threw up their arms to block, but it wouldn’t do them any good. Roy still didn’t have a proper Projected technique, but he did have something he’d been working on alongside the Exploding Fist. He’d actually gotten the idea from his first failed experiment in creating the technique and now he implemented it.
In the blink of an eye, he’d cycled Essence up to his right hand and pushed it outward, forming it into a rough ball. Normally, it would take him a couple of seconds to do so, but now he was short on time. It would be extremely unstable, but he didn’t need it to hold together for long. The entire scene passed in the span of a handful of seconds, but to Roy, it felt like ages.
Both Kenji and Sima’s eyes were locked on the cores as they drifted closer, their feet already beginning to glow with the signs of a Movement technique. But it was already too late. Roy hurled his makeshift technique right at them, then turned and dashed for the alley exit, pumping Essence through his body to give himself a burst of extra speed.