Twenty Two

Quan opened her mouth to scream, only for nothing to come out. On the contrary, something rushed in. She sputtered and choked on the strange foul-tasting substance that streamed in through her open mouth.

Yet she did not die. Her body seized and twisted, but she remained alive and conscious.

Perhaps she couldn't die? Or was she already dead and this was hell?

The last thing she remembered before arriving in this place were those cultivators at the gate. Captain Kang had warned them to halt. The three women had ignored him. They had dismounted from their horses, but continued walking towards the gates – before leaping over them in a single bound.

Quan had been nervous – terrified really - but she had obeyed when the captain had instructed them to load their guns in preparation for battle. She'd even managed to bring it up and aim her own at the three strange women – who had seemed honestly surprised by the move.

Captain Kang had repeated his warning as the members of the militia faced off against these invaders.

Then… the fear had come. It had been all consuming. Paralyzing. It was so bad, Quan had honestly thought her heart might explode within her chest. It was almost a relief when one of the women walked forward and backhanded her into a wall.

She didn't remember anything after that. Just darkness.

Then she was here… in this hell.

Suddenly, she was ripped upwards and out into open air, before being thrown onto a cold concrete floor.

"Alright, that's the last one."

The transition had not been gentle. Not at all. Confused and cold, the militia woman looked around. At first she had thought she was in the Apart Ment. But a moment's observations precluded that. The Apart Ment was warm and inviting. The architecture here was superficially similar, but more… cold. Utilitarian.

Further investigation also showed that she was not alone. Other people lay scattered around the room. People she recognized. Other members of the militia, all of who were just as cold, naked and confused looking as her.

Then she looked up and her blood turned to ice as she saw who had ripped her from the pool.

The Overseer was here, clad in his massive armor. He loomed over all of them like some kind of inhuman metal demi-god.

"Alright you sad sacks." His booming voice was a harsh rumble, like two boulders gridning against one another. "Do you see that goop that's all over you? That's called Panacea. A healing agent that I have strictly limited amounts of. The stuff covering you right now was my personal stock. All I had left. As I am now, if I suddenly lose… oh, I don't know, an arm tomorrow, I can't grow that back."

Quan's mind was slowly catching up. She must have been wounded when the invading cultivators had hit her. And the Hidden Master had used a precious resource to save her? All of them?

"As you might imagine, that reality is rather displeasing to me. So please, rest assured that when I say that I'm in a bad mood, I mean it."

She knew she should have been thankful that the man had saved her. And she was. Unfortunately, that took a firm backseat to just how terrified she was of him.

"So please, don't beat around the bush. Don't bullshit me. Tell me straight up, why, when three hostile cultivators rocked up to my town, none of you even attempted to stop them? Not one of you fired off a shot from the very expensive tools I provided you with?"

Quan hung head in shame, an act echoed around the room.

The truth was, she had no answer to give. She'd tried to do as she'd be instructed. To repay the Overseer's efforts on behalf of their town with loyal service.

But she'd been so afraid. It was all she could think of. Like a rabbit that froze before the wolf, rather than continuing to run.

"The fault is mine sir."

The Overseer's head turned towards the speaker with deliberate slowness. "Is it now?"

Kang stood tall. Naked as the day he was born, he appeared to Quan as a man amongst men in that moment.

The old guard didn't flinch as the Overseer's intimidating mass strode over to him.

"While, as captain of my militia, and the man in charge at the gate that morning, I'm inclined to blame your subordinates' failures on you - unless you ordered them not to defend themselves, I think I can spread the blame to the lower ranks as well.

Kang was unruffled. "That only doubly compounds my failure. As a captain and their trainer."

That made the Overseer pause.

"Explain."

He spoke in a tone that brooked no argument. It was the angriest Quan had ever seen the bizarrely jovial cultivator.

Yet Kang remained unphased.

"The cultivators employed their killing intent sir. Something that rendered the militia defenseless. As their trainer and commander, I didn't account for it."

"Killing intent?"

"Yes." Kang nodded. "As guardsmen we are trained to resist it. Through exposure. It is the first step in guard training, as it weeds out those weak enough that they may never resist it."

The cultivator's voice was dangerously quiet when he next spoke – and Quan worried Kang might not be long for this world.

"And you didn't bother with this step because?"

He didn't flinch though. "I had thought we would be fighting spirit beasts alone. Which, while capable of killing intent, is rarely so directed as that of a cultivator's."

"Fuck." The words came out as harsh hiss from the Overseer's helmet. "So you mean to tell me that my guard force is effectively defenseless against any cultivator that might show up?"

Kang did not hide or obfuscate.

"It is."

The Overseer's arm lashed out, so fast that Quan barely saw it move.

Yet when it found its destination, Kang was left unharmed. Instead, the Overseer's hand had created a fist sized dent in the wall just over the mortal's head.

"Kang. Fix this."

"I will." The man bowed. All the way to the floor. "I thank the overseer for his mercy and benificence."

The cultivator shook his head. "Save it. I just want this problem solved. I assume you'll need a cultivator for this exposure training."

From his bowed position, Kang nodded.

"An, help him."

Quan had barely noticed the presence of the second cultivator in the room, stood in the shadows as she was. When she finally stepped out of them, her face was pasted with a sneer. One aimed at all of them.

"It will be my pleasure, master"

The man in question nodded. "Good. Now all of you. Out."

Despite being totally naked, Quan was thankful for the opportunity to escape as she stood up along with the others.

They were almost out the door when the Overseer spoke again, not even turning to regard them when he did.

"Wait. Kang."

"Yes, my lord?"

"What's the drop-out rate for failures. Those who can't adapt to killing intent?"

Kang cocked his head in thought. "One or two per training batch. So about one in twenty."

Silence reigned.

"Nope. I can't afford that. Not after the investment I put into all of you. Especially not with trouble headed our way. I need every gun I can get." He turned to look at them. "If someone breaks, just keep going until they unbreak… or break permanently."

"…Yes, my lord."

"Go."

The mortals fled.

Truth be told, as she walked through the halls of the Hidden Master's inner sanctum, Quan couldn't believe they were all still alive.

Healed by the master's own hand.

Yet despite her thankfulness, she was glad to have escaped. This had been a reminder that, for all his eccentricities, Master Johansen was still a cultivator.

And they were mortals.

She'd never heard a man sound so cold.

-------------

Jack tore off his helmet and rubbed a tired hand across face as he set about draining what was left of the Panacea before it turned… foul.

Had he just made a mistake?

Forcing people into a do-or-die training regime would certainly be a hit to his reputation with the locals. And with the weapons he'd provided them… well, it was a good thing he always wore a helmet when he was out on the town.

It would only take one person snapping because of the death of a loved one to see his brains spread across a dirt road.

Speaking of which, I really need to have the town make the transition to concrete roads. Preferably before it next rains.

He shook his head. Too much to do and not enough time to do it.

So… had he made a mistake? Made an emotional decision rather than a logical one? Sure, his anger usually ran cold, but he knew it was all the more intense for that fact. He'd almost wanted to kill Kang in that moment.

Because this was a major fuck up. The army he'd been hoping to rely on and supplement his own strength was currently defenseless. And more Marble Cloud Sect goons could show up any minute. Sure, he knew that was unlikely - it would take time for them to realize Men was overdue – but it was still a possibility.

Kang's looking at a demotion in his future, Jack thought. That's for certain.

Still, the blame wasn't all on him. This was part of the problem with not actually being a cultivator. He had gaping holes in his knowledge. It was inevitable that things would slip through. Sure, he'd tried to fix that with Lin, but at the end of the day, she was still just a peasant girl. Her time as a prospective cultivator gave her more insight into the world than some, but not nearly as much as an actual cultivator.

"It's not my fault."

Ah, speak of the devil, he thought.

Lin was stood in the corner, and in direct contrast to her usual teasing demeanor, she sounded absolutely terrified.

"I know."

It was almost amusing, the look of total surprise that ran across her face. Because if he didn't miss her guess, the girl had been ready to bargain for her life.

Of course, that surprise quickly turned to smugness.

Which to be honest, he preferred. Sure, he knew said smugness was just a cover to hide that she was still scared of him – knowledge of his origins be damned – but it helped him feel more normal in his private moments.

More to the point, he felt that smugness was becoming more 'real' with each passing day that he didn't… well, kill her for her insolence. It was part of why she kept poking at him verbally. It wasn't unlike a kitten poking an older cat to try and find the limits of its patience.

Lin was testing his boundaries day by day. And discovering they ran a lot wider than she'd ever thought possible.

Still, all that went out the window in moments like this. Which only reinforced his decision to get intimate with her. It would have felt too… forced, given the power imbalance between them.

"So, what are you going to do about all this?" she asked.

"Kang will fix it."

She nodded. "That will take time though."

"Time we likely have." He finished draining the Panacea, leaving just an empty hole in the floor with a drain at the bottom. "You aren't wrong though."

He paused. "I need to upgrade An."

And maybe Ren.

This fight had been a wake up call. It had given him the realization that he couldn't just rely on conventional force. Things he knew worked. No, if he was to survive in this world, he'd need to make use of the local wizardry.

At least, a little.

"Hello? Is this working?"

Speak of the… other devil, he thought as a tinny voice chirped from his helmet.

"Oh Empress, I feel ridiculous, talking to a…" The voice continued as she placed his helmet back on his head.

"I can hear you."

"Eep!"

He chuckled. That had been a surprisingly girly sound from a woman who'd just murdered one of her fellows and could bend steel with her thighs.

"Ah, yes?" the merchant coughed, trying to recover her dignity.

"You were calling because?"

Then her voice was all business, unfamiliarity with the radio he'd provided her with bedamned. "I believe Men should be waking up soon."

That was good.

He rolled his shoulders, feeling the powerful muscles within pop. "Well, let's go talk to her then."

---------------

Men woke to pain.

Looking around, she found she was in a box. One made entirely of stone and utterly devoid of any other features. Not even a door.

So how did she get in here?

She made to stand before staggering like a drunkard. Scowling, she used a nearby wall for support as she levered herself slowly up, her… everything burning with the exertion. She also noted that her outstretched limb had been bandaged, and looking down she found that… the rest of her body was too. Even the bits hidden beneath the thin shapeless dress she now wore.

That served to remind her of the circumstances of her defeat. The fire and flames. Unbidden, her fist clenched tightly, the bandages creaking as they strained against her skin.

This then was a prison cell? They thought mere walls sufficient to contain her?

She would show this hidden master the folly of such arrogance. Already she could feel her strength returning to her. She raised a fist, prepared to shatter the wall in front of her and make good on her escape - when a voice came from overhead.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." That hatefully familiar voice spoke. "At least, not unless you can survive half a mountain falling on you. You can't survive that, can you?"

The hidden master was mocking her.

"Where are you!?" she raged, searching for him.

"Far away from you. Which is why I'm speaking to you through a mystical device."

Men scoffed. More mystical devices. It seemed the hidden master was full of them.

"Where am I?" she grunted.

"Buried." The man had the audacity to sound bored. "Pretty deep too. I dug this shaft and constructed this holding area especially for you. You know, while you were taking a nap."

It was as she suspected. This was a prison cell? Yet rather than lining it with ki restraining stone, the hidden master had instead chosen to bury it so deeply that if she chose to compromise her prison, she would be buried alive.

"You shameless dog, I am a princess of the Marble Cloud Sect." She shouted at the walls of her cell. "You dare treat me like this?"

Even as a prisoner, she had the right to a certain quality of jail cell. Not even the Marble Cloud Sect's most hated enemies would dare treat her this way. Forget sex. Forget the man's value to the sect. She'd kill him for this. Once she got out of here.

"I do." Again, he dared to speak with that droll bored tone. As if speaking to a child. It made her blood burn. "Because you cost me something rather valuable today, so I'm less than inclined towards mercy."

She had? That was… good? He had expended some kind of resource in his fight with her. Probably one of the mystic artifacts he seemed so fond of.

"I knew a male could not command so many elements with his ki alone," she mocked, seeking to get under his skin. Then her tone turned serious. "Even if I do not escape this pitiful jail cell, my mother will kill you for this."

"Maybe," he allowed. "But it will be a while indeed before she finds out what happened to you."

Men laughed. "Fool, she's already on her way. With a host of cultivators and guards from the Marble Cloud Sect at her back."

That seemed to make the disembodied voice pause. Men grinned, reveling in the man's no doubt horrified surprise.

"You're bluffing," he said finally. "If you were traveling with your mother, why did you show up at my gates with only two companions?"

"Ha, I had no desire to wait for the slowest of our entourage to move. Cultivators moving at the speed of mortals? It's insulting. No, I ranged ahead."

"And got your ass kicked."

The man's words came as a mutter, so quiet he had a feeling she wasn't even supposed to hear them.

She screamed in rage, as her skin burned and ached in indignation. "You would do well to beg for mercy, male!"

"From what?" he asked. "Some paltry group of five lowly cultivators?"

"Twenty scions! My mother and my aunt. Sect leader and elder respectively. Four thousand mortals as well!"

"Really? Well, those lowly scions must be pretty tough if they're stronger than you."

He dared!?

"None within the sect bar the elders are stronger than me. Still, those lowly disciples number enough to destroy your little hovel without my mother or aunt needing to lift a single finger."

"So they're weaker than you? Pretty substantially too, from the sounds of things." The man murmured, as if speaking to himself once more. "That's good to know."

Men paused in confusion.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to give me in exact numbers how you square up to your mother and aunt would you?"

That just left her even more confused, still she answered.

"I am hardly a match for my mother, she is the sect leader for a reason, but soon I will equal my aunt."

Once more, the voice paused, and for just a moment, Men thought that he had finally come to realize just how doomed he was. Perhaps his next words would be a desperate plea for mercy?

One she would not grant. Not after what he'd done to her. And her boon companions.

However, his next words were not a plea for mercy.

If anything, he sounded contemplative.

"Maybe. We'll never know. Because you met me first."

Men frowned as the man's last words were finished with a strange click. After another few minutes passed and no more words came forth, she realized he had turned off whatever mystic device he had been using to speak with her.

A shame. She would have liked to elucidate him more on how doomed he was.

As it was, she needed to get to work. Meditating to recover her strength. She would not wait for mother to rescue her. No, she would martial her power and tunnel back up to the surface in a single leap.

She just needed to gather her strength.

She was just settling down to meditate, when she heard a series of clicks from the walls around her.

"What is-"

Then her world became fire.

--------------

Jack felt the explosion all the way from his office, the sensation echoing up through his feet.

"That was short sighted," Ren said from her position on one of his couches. "She could have been used as leverage against her mother."

"Perhaps," Jack acknowledged the cultivator woman's point.

It was possible he'd just made a mistake. He wasn't a strategist after. Still, it wasn't like he'd done it for no reason.

"Could you guarantee she wouldn't escape?" he asked, turning toward the blonde.

She pursed her lips. "No. Not with the resources on hand."

"And did you have any means to restrain her?"

She looked reluctant, before shaking her head. "No."

"Yeah." He nodded. "And because of that, knowing our luck, she would have escaped my prison at the worst possible moment for us."

Ren looked like she wanted to argue, but couldn't. After all, he wasn't wrong. That didn't necessarily mean he was right, but he wasn't wrong either.

"And, he continued, "if we had released her as part of some kind of hostage exchange, could you guarantee she wouldn't have become a recurring problem for us later down the road?"

He didn't know when Ren had become part of his 'us'. Perhaps when she'd killed for him? By doing so, she'd certainly made an enemy of the Marble Cloud Sect.

"It's almost guaranteed." Ren said. "As a clan heiress, she could not have let the cause of so much lost face go unanswered."

Yeah, he had a feeling it was that sort of world. Suddenly Lin's words on the Imperial family conducting nine-fold family executions didn't seem quite so excessive to him.

In fact, they seemed coldly practical. Because it ensured you didn't end up with a pissed off family member – or sole survivor – training themselves up and coming back for revenge.

Unfortunately, executing people to the ninth degree of familiar relation wasn't an option for him. Because he didn't have the means. Or the stomach for it.

Whatever, it was done now. Which meant he had to deal with the consequences.

"Well, we just killed the current leader of the Marble Cloud Sect's daughter." His fingers drummed across his helmet's metal surface. "So she's not likely to be amenable to any kind of de-escalation of hostilities."

Ren shrugged, but still looked a little uncomfortable. "It was unlikely she would have gone for it anyway. The Marble Cloud Sect are a proud clan. They would not back down on the matter of you claiming some of their territory."

Good, then he'd been right to not fuck around when removing one of their pieces from the board.

"That means we've got two weeks to prepare," he said.

So I better continue not fucking around, he thought.

It was time to pull his finger out and get ready for war.

-----------

Jack watched as a member of his militia collapsed into a boneless pile, yet not a single person on the parade grounds around them reacted.

Mostly because they had their own problems to contend with.

An was apparently giving them the ki treatment. He said apparently, because he couldn't feel a thing coming off her. Yet he wasn't blind to the discomfort all of his 'sergeants' seemed to be feeling. A discomfort that only seemed to grow the closer they got to the cat-woman.

All of the sergeants were exempted from this little 'ki resistance' exercise, but he'd be damned if they were going to get away without a small taste of what the recruits were being subjected to.

After all, any one of them could have pointed out the hole in Kang's training program.

"How are they coming?" he asked the man.

"They will be ready by the deadline." The former captain spoke smoothly and professionally, despite the steady stream of sweat dripping from his forehead.

"Good. Continue your work."

The sergeants took his dismissal for what it was, practically scampering away. Which was good, because he wanted to talk to An 'alone'.

Sure, they weren't technically 'alone' because she needed to be in relatively close proximity to his militia to subject them to her ki, but he doubted they could hear anything but internal screaming.

…Shit, that made him sound like a villain.

He shrugged.

"An, I've got something for you."

It was rather amusing, as her features turned from stern taskmaster to excited young woman as she bounded over to him.

Jack grinned as he presented his newest gifts to her, held within a box specifically created for the occasion.

"It's one part of your reward for beating Ren to first blood in the previous fight."

The woman quirked an eyebrow at him, as she reached into the box, pulling out one of the revolvers held within.

"One part?" she asked.

He smirked, though she couldn't see it though his helmet. "I think you know what the other part's going to be."

"I do? I… oh…" Her voice trailed off as she blushed a bit, before bowing. "I will be in your care, Master."

He simply nodded, even as he inwardly hoped that he wouldn't be needing 'care' of his next rendezvous with the voracious young woman.

Medical care.

He was brought back to the topic at hand as the cultivator read the inscription on the barrels of the weapons.

"Bevel bladed long pistol, plus one?" It was rather cute how her ears twitched in confusion. "Master, I do not see any blades? Are they hidden through a mechanism?"

"No," he shook his head. "Give the inscriptions no thought at all. They are simply a little in-joke from my homeland."

An cocked her head, and he knew she was dying to ask him questions about his origins, but she visibly held herself back. Instead she focused on the weapons that had just been presented to her.

"See this, here?" He pressed one of the latches on the weapon and the revolver mechanism slid out.

An's eyes widened. "It's like a break action."

Jack paused. He supposed it was, in a round about way.

"It's a little more involved though," he said. "See this? It feeds new rounds into the barrel with each pull of the trigger. So you get six before you need to reload, rather than one."

"So many," An breathed.

Jack shrugged within his armor.

It wasn't actually many at all. Even the piece of shit Krell-Custom he'd run with as a baby gangbanger back on Earth had held a good thirty shots in its leaky little powercore.

Truth be told, he'd wanted to transition to proper magazines for this gift. The problem was that, while the magazines themselves were simple enough, the exact mechanism of a shot cocking a new round escaped him.

He knew it could be done. He also knew it would be blindingly obvious when he figured it out.

He just… had to figure it out. Which meant more time searching for examples of those weapons in action. Which was more complex than one thought, because putting the words 'firing mechanism' or anything similar into his suit's search function invariably resulted the AI locking him out – with a warning that his immediate supervisor would be warned about his actions once contact with a comm bouy was reestablished.

Which would never happen, so he wasn't too worried about it. Still, it made searching for stuff to copy more difficult.

"Come on, I'll show you how to load, fire and clean it." He summoned something new into his hand. "These are called speed loaders. You could manually load each new bullet, but I think you'll find it's much faster."

The rest of the hour went much like that. With An reveling in the use of her new toys. Truth be told, seeing how enamored An was with her new guns, he could only hope she wasn't too offended when the militia all received their new revolver action rifles in a few days.

Whatever, he thought. I'll just have to take some Viagra meds and painkillers, before sacrificing my body on the altar of horny cat girl once more.

When she was finished with her latest round of shots, he moved up to her. "Alright, it might be a bit of a pain to do, but when you take a new shot, you need to make sure this bit holding the bullet is perfectly lined up with the barrel. Otherwise a bunch of the gases will escape and the shot will lose power."

And most likely burn your hands in the process. As he'd discovered more than a few times while creating prototypes of the finicky piece of shit An was holding.