Chapter 10: False Reunion

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  I admit it, I don’t remember much after the drones and the dragon exploded. I know my vision was enveloped by fire and red energy. I also have little flash memories of plummeting as the street I was on disintegrated beneath me, but nothing that I can truly put into words.

  I’ll say this much: Between the explosions and falling through what I would later learn were two whole city tiers, anyone else would have died. Naturally, as I am Lu Bu, I was merely knocked witless for a while.

  “His A.I insists he is fine and will wake up sooner than later. I guess it could be lying, but why?”

  I didn’t recognize the female voice, nor even the language, if I’m entirely honest. Whatever strange things the spirit had done inside my head came with all sorts of advantages, not the least of which was a comprehension of and ability to speak the local tongue. So far, I hadn’t really noticed it, but as I began to come to, I realised these were not the words of my language; I merely understood them as though they were.

  “His A.I also told us to keep at least ten feet back because he likes to wake up swinging, remember that?” This voice was male.

  “How bad could it be, he’s only level one?”

  Only.

  Only?

  ‘Who was this woman to think for even a heartbeat that she could look down on me?!’

  “Oop activity is spiking, he’s probably going to wake up soo-” The male voice didn’t get the chance to finish its sentence as I exploded into movement. I kicked myself to my feet as my eyes snapped open. I could feel nausea and a lack of equilibrium as I moved, but I have fought injured, or poisoned many times. I was confident I could push through the sensation and adjust as needed.

  The room I found myself in stank of oil and was cramped with rusted and shattered pieces of metal I didn’t understand the purpose of. When I say cramped, I mean cramped. The walls of the place were almost like those of a trophy or treasure hall, except instead of monster skulls, ornate creations, or even natural treasures, the walls held more of the same broken machinery that was scattered over the floor in haphazard piles.

  I took all this in, but it wasn’t what I was really focusing on. The honor of my attention was truly on the pair of people who shared the room with me. As expected from their voices, it was a man and a woman.

  Both were young, slight, and dressed in the same outlandish styles I had seen so far in this city. Tight pants, colorful and bulky overcoats atop shirts that barely covered anything. The man’s hair was a strange pulsing silver that spiked upwards, while the woman’s was possibly the first natural-looking haircut I had seen here. It was just regular black hair in a little bob.

  “Who dares to look down upon Lu Bu?” I snapped. In my homeland, all knew such arrogance was akin to courting death. “The Flying General.” That's me, by the way.

  “Cares not for your ranking systems and can crush both of you should I wish it.”

  Both of them took a surprised step back, and the silver-haired man raised his left arm, which flared out strange fins on all three sides of his forearm, while his fingers bent into an open palm claw shape. The arm was colored like flesh, but I could quickly see that it was some kind of lifelike metal.

  From each of his fingers, a small spark of lightning flowed into a singular ball of lightning Qi that sat within his palm. I have seen such techniques before, of course, but I have to admit the speed at which he called it fourth was rather impressive.

  Within my vision, the writing that had been plaguing me marked the technique as

  “Just chill out for a second, okay?” Said the man, pointing the hand clutching ‘Taser Orb’ in my direction. To which I only narrowed my eyes. I didn’t know what ‘chill out’ meant or what a ‘second’ was, but I resisted the urge to attack them. I admit it, It was just nice to see someone with the same kind of skin tone and normal-shaped eyes like my own.

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  There had maybe been a few regular-looking people on the street before I was attacked, but they had been few and far between compared to the myriad of unnaturally pale or dark people.

  The relief at encountering someone closer to myself lasted a few moments more, until the man took my suspicious silence as assent to continue, and he introduced the pair of them.

  “I’m Ji-Ho, and this is my sister Ha-Rin.”

  Once I heard their names, the obviousness of their Kimchi Peninsula ethnicity was clear in their features.

  “You said your name is Lu Bu? Can I call you Lu?” Went on the man in an obvious attempt to be friendly.

  “No.”

  As I conversed with the man, I kept an eye on both his hand technique and what the woman was doing. Women, by and large, are lesser warriors, but even for me, relying on such an assumption is an easy death sentence. I still recall the greatest of my daughters, Linqi, cutting a swathe through heroes and officers who thought to face her.

  Besides, even if this girl were merely cute trash, she could pull some cunning maneuver or exploit my lack of familiarity with my surroundings.

  “So..call you Lu Bu every time?”

  “Put down that technique,” I grunted back, ignoring his question.

  “Technique? Oh OH?! Back up against the wall behind you, and I will. I just want to talk, but I’m not going to put myself or my family at risk for it. I hope you understand.”

  I did understand, obviously I did. Who wouldn’t? The thing is though, just because I understood where the young man was coming from didn’t mean I cared. I seemingly complied with his demand by taking a pair of steps backward. This was of course a ruse. I both wanted to see if I could get within range of something I could use as an improvised weapon and was confident that a few extra steps wouldn’t stop me from closing the distance if I decided to.

  “I have questions”. I said flatly as I edged towards some sort of steel hand tool I could throw at the man. I wondered if the girl was onto me as she didn’t take her eyes off me for even a moment during the entire exchange. Naturally, knowing I was going to attempt something and stopping me from doing it were separate and very different things. I am The Ogre. You need a lot more than good predictive skills to thwart me.

  As it turns out, it didn’t matter; the spirit finally decided it was time to make an appearance lest I kill more people today. Seeing the form it chose to do so in nearly knocked me from my feet, such was the gamut of emotions that welled up within me. Hair like ink in the sun, eyes that twinkled with the most alluring of mischievousness, a figure that conjured terrible thoughts.

  As confused and disoriented as I was, it took longer than I like to admit to realize the spirit was who I was looking at.

  “Diaochan,” I whispered as my mouth became akin to a desert.

  You have no doubt heard the term ‘jade beauty’ in reference to women of fine features and stunning figures. If you were to use such a term to describe my Diaochan, I may well be offended by how woefully short of her such a description comes.

  As I Lu Bu stood above all men as a warrior, and The Red Hare ruled horses as a tyrant king, so too was my Diaochan amongst women of beauty.

  The first and most obvious clue that the impossibly attractive woman before me wasn't all that she seemed was that she was floating; the second was her age. While I never once saw a wrinkle upon Diaochan in the years we spent together, and her command of makeup was so grand that fox spirits used to come to her for advice on the matter. She did as we all must age, and this figure before me was not the woman in her mid-thirties that had been the last thing I saw before death. This was Diaochan as she had been when I first met her at the age of twenty.

  “Spirit,” I said as realization dawned on me. “Where have you been and what do you think you are doing by taking that form?”

  The spirit turned Diaochan's impossible smile upon me.

  “I am not trying to deceive you, master Lu Bu. After examining your memories, I have taken the form of the only person you both listened to and never attempted to betray. I thought it might make you more comfortable.”

  My mouth worked, but nothing came out. I was furious at the spirit, but also impressed at its ability to sift through my memories. You might think I'd feel violated at such an intrusion into my mind, but the practical applications of such an ability shone through to the pragmatic side of me.

  If this spirit could act as a sort of perfect recall for me, it might be more helpful than I had initially thought. Especially if I could make use of such an ability on captured enemies.

  “You know you are set to proximity mode, right?” Said Ha-Rin to the illusory Diaochan. “We can see and hear you right now, not just him.”

  The floating spirit confirmed that yes, she did in fact realize that, to which the pair of siblings shared an amused look.

  “Okay.” Went on Ha-Rin. “This just seemed like a kind of personal conversation, is all.”

  During all this, Ji-Ho reabsorbed his technique, and his arm returned to its original shape.

  “I have nothing to hide.” I spat. “But if someone doesn't begin telling me the things I want to know right now, I am going to get violent.”

  Ha-Rin shook her head.

  “You really think you are just the hottest shit, don't you? You are level one bro. Do you not understand what that means?”

  The false-Diaochan's eyes went wide, and she let out a panicked little noise. “Please, please master Lu Bu, please let me handle this.”

  ?

  He miiight be simping a little hard over his dead GF...

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