Honeycomb

The cold breeze of the evening brushed past through the drop of sweat that fell on a random alley. Before it could even touch the ground, a metallic object struck it on the center obliterating its spherical shape forming countless smaller drops.

Shwing. The sound of a blade having contact with the air activating friction.

Clang. The sound of a metallic object hitting another metallic object.

Plak. The sound of two metallic objects hitting the ground.

'Shit'.

The woman briefly looked back. She then continued running.

"Why?!"

"I don't know. Ehehehe." A creepy answer and a creepy tone was the reply.

The chase continued. For ten minutes, only the sound of hurried footsteps echoed throughout the empty alley. Occasional sounds of trash scattering and heavy panting resounded. Then a conversation was heard again.

"If I remember correctly, a diversion?"

"A diversion? My value is a diversion tool?!" The woman replied with her still-hurried breaths. Considering she's been running at full speed for more than ten minutes already, one can see that her stamina is not a joke.

"I don't know and I don't care. It has been a while since I let loose. The idiots finally released the home arrest ehehehehehehe."

"Damn it, damn it." Unfortunate was she. How comfortable her life was before this. Little did she know that whatever she did would eventually lead to something like the end of... perpetuality, death.

"Why did today have to be sunny?" She complained. She gathered the little water available. Strictly speaking, vapor is just but another state of water. Humidity should be a bit high, however, manipulating a bit of liquid was her ceiling.

This just denotes that ambience was doing its job.

Yes, she can also use ambience. Well, manipulate is a more accurate way of stating it. However, she still had yet to reach the even elementary so the most she could achieve is a single state manipulation. Having said that, molecular manipulation for her is an impossibility.

She can only manipulate liquid water because of the goldilocks zone-like space between the molecules. Vapor have too much of a space while solid ice have too little. That's what he said. Controlling water molecules with such distances would be hard for her meager ability. Her method is actually just sipping in ambience through and manipulating it like a parasite. It was not manipulating water itself.

Well, how she used anything is unnecessary now.

Blood flooded a part of the alley. It was unknown how but the person chasing after her caught up and immediately... killed her. Flesh splashed everywhere, an eyeball randomly hit a wall, her orifices count suddenly increased by a factor of a couple hundred and her limbs were barely clinging onto her body. One centimeter holes filled her body, her blood continued dripping. Like a clean honeycomb found on trees or random places the woman was.

...

Random noises created by the dirty flowing water under the manholes, the rats randomly screeching trashes and random night birds flapping their wings created a symphony only for this scene. In the center of them all is a bloody body hanging in the alley filled with holes with blood still dropping. The rope that was tied tightly on some of the holes, held the body hanging. Flies soon started flying around it. They penetrated the insides through the holes. They seemed to like the smell of this thing.

The morning came and a homeless guy who "bought" breakfast from a bakery somewhere drew the jackpot. Vomit mixed with the dry cold blood as he ran away and reported the scene albeit indirectly. He just committed a just crime after all.

...

"Lawson? I don't know the name."

Ayre then proceeded to continue his morning routine.

After a while, he reached his office.

"Ambience huh. Last night was pitiful. Hm? A notice?"

It was a letter. So unprofessional, he thought. The content was about a meeting that would be held in a few days which included both the Main Minister, Neru Wis and the current King of the Monarchy, Cyprian Lithnia XI. As an adviser about foreign relations to both, Ayre was required to attend.

"It has something to do with relations? Huh? Urket? Why?".

States of Urket was a large country situated on the east. Half of Reign Continent, the continent it was in, was comprised of the different states of Urket alone. As the name suggests, it is comprised of many states. More than thirty individual states can be counted, each with their own policies. Urket was, after all, ran by a federalist government. However, although Urket is ten times more bigger than Lithnia, Lithnia is richer economically. Urket was affected by the war on their south. It was an uprising, a civil war. They were still affected even though the war was not on their lands.

"What a bother." He scratched his head. Attending formal events was still too stiff for him. He still had to attend though.

He set aside the letter after reading what it contained, turned to look at the table. What met his eyes were the mountains of paper works. Requests, registrations, inquiries, schedules, all waiting for approval. Subpoenas, military dealings, and many more authoritative information, all on his table. And he had to finish it on the same day. Reports and also information drafting were things included in his scope. Along with the meeting that will happen in a few days time, Ayre had more than a handful of things to do.

Of course, those paper works are but a small part of his duties. He is, after all, the secretary of the foreign affairs of his kingdom. Heavy sounding words such as territorial sovereignty, integrity and the interest of his kingdom are the more occurring words in his job description rather than those almost negligible paper works. Although he might not look like it, Ayre is a member of the cabinet. He's just one of the many secretaries that provides assistance towards the members of the legislative body of the kingdom, hence, his position could actually be deemed as very high.

Speaking of job descriptions, there is someone across the oceans towards the east trying to do something out of his job scope.

"Huh? You are an ambassador of that country here. Why do you...isn't it supposed to be the other way around?"

"I know. I will just be visiting for a while. It will be acceptable as the resident representative of another independent country. Since you will be going there anyways, I should also go."

"It doesn't work that way."

"It does."

The other person was forced to comply through unmentioned means.

...

Evening came. Ayre slowly went out of his office. His composition was comparable to a haggard street dweller who's had enough of life. After finishing all of his work, he immediately headed home. After all, there was something he was planning on doing the day after. Moreover, he would also need to recover his energy after that day's hard work. His night went as usual as he started planning his schedule the for the next day. Well, he already had a general plan.

He would be showing his devout side again. It was time to ask Eryl even more questions.