63. Spin the Web, Lock the Prey

Anari

Anari once again turned down the invitation to play cards extended to her by her fellow assassins. Since the second trial of the tournament was over, everyone was taking time to celebrate and reset until the next round.

Sun Bai had his own agenda for the evening. He encouraged Anari to take the night off. Her first instinct was to call on Bodhi, but the monk would likely be celebrating with Ritsu and Ham Song.

While Anari knew that both herself and the monk had enough finesse to find a way to each other, she was also aware that it would be difficult for Bodhi to get away. For that reason, the spider didn’t want to spoil their evening.

So instead, Anari took to the Kawaii streets, her dark leather fringe swishing as she walked. Chibi characters from pastel billboards reflected on the surfaces of her round shades.

Even with nothing to do and really nowhere to go, Anari had all of this… excitement collecting inside her, conflicting with what she feared might happen if Ritsu kept gaining momentum. She couldn’t deny it anymore. She wanted to see him win.

When he made it past the wondrous and true trial by the skin of his teeth – when he took the time to bask in the moment, covered in sweat and reeking of exhaustion – that had been so iconic.

“Hey, Beautiful.”

Anari slowed her walk.

There was a vendor just outside of the entrance to the hotel. The top of his small card table was covered with immaculately folded T-shirts with the phrase: That’s my fry cook hero! stamped across the chest.

Anari turned and met a pair of scarlet eyes.

“I have the perfect size for you.” The vendor held up a shirt and shook it out. “Look, I’ll even give you a discount.”

He was a typical sun clone, albeit a little out of shape and on the shorter side. Despite his oily smile and gold tooth, Anari sensed that he was good natured and had an eye for business.

Gently, the spider said, “Sorry. I don’t have any money.”

“I’m open to trade,” he said. “Care to part with a token of Luck for the T-shirt of a lifetime?”

Anari shook her head with a smile. “Maybe next time.”

As she walked away, the sun clone called after her, “Watch out for him. The Fry Cook Hero’s gonna win this thing, you know. You just gotta have faith.”

Anari didn’t stop or look back. Still smiling, she whispered, “I do.”

I have too much of it actually.

The scenery changed the further from the stadium Anari traveled. She had chosen the path that would take her straight to the Heavenly River.

There were several blind spots in the foundation of the bridge where Anari had laid silken traps. They were there to protect any hapless spirit who had wandered too far. Every few days, Anari would check them.

Sun Bai hadn’t told her to do this. The undercurrent of moaning and buzz of spiritual tension that the spider felt whenever she drew near made her realize that the bridge was dangerous to be around. Those trapped essences had been there long enough to rot into lesser demonkind. With the right sort of pressure, that tenuous seal would break.

Anari prayed that they would be out of the province before those poor rotten souls came loose.

The grainy sand crunched under Anari’s boots as she walked out onto the shores of the Heavenly River. The bridge loomed overhead, the lights lining its pathway were bright, but often interrupted by the pillars of its foundation.

With her head down, Anari kept to those shadowy pockets, stepping out onto the illuminated sand only when it was necessary.

It would be impossible for you or me to tell, Dear Traveler, but the longer Anari walked, the more her guard dropped. Hardly anyone wandered this far along the shore.

And so, lost in the rhythm of her own steps, the spider’s thoughts wandered.

Too soon, Dear Traveler. Too soon.

Anari stepped out under a beam of light without dampening her stride.

That’s when she saw a spirit staring out at the water. The evening breeze caught in the wrinkles of his cheap lemon lime jacket.

He was in half darkness while Anari stood frozen under the artificial light.

The spirit turned his head, his mouth glowing behind a very tiny torch.

Sun Ritsu blinked through a cartoonish line of smoke and whispered the impossible.

“Anari?”

The spider was too fast for that. She had already dashed out of sight. Though she didn’t get far.

With her back to the pillars, Anari edged deeper and deeper into the blind spots while Ritsu fruitlessly checked under the patch of light where he could have sworn he saw her.

Finally, Dear Traveler, the sun clone gave up. He stomped out his cigarette and took one last look at the bridge overhead.

“It’s cold tonight.”

Anari was still watching, Dear Traveler. Whether Ritsu knew that or not, she did not know.

She simply held her breath while he removed his wrinkled jacket. Then he folded it and laid it in the sand right under the beam of light.

Ritsu stood up straight and stared down at the lemon lime windbreaker. Based on the rise of his shoulders, it seemed as if he was about to say something. Then the sun clone thought better and shook the notion from his head.

He lit another cigarette and went away.

When his footsteps could no longer be heard, Anari carefully approached the pile of clothes. She took off her leather jacket and tied it around her waist before replacing it with Ritsu’s windbreaker.

The spider sat down in the sand, soaking in the feeling of her hero’s warmth all around her. She breathed in his scent. It was like he was holding her.

Anari closed her eyes and sat with the feeling a little longer. She found it both painful and comforting.

That’s when a new sense began to creep its way into the spider’s little world of missed chances and suppressed emotions.

Anari stood up. It had been some time since she had a tail.

No matter. She would simply employ the network of webs she had installed along the underside of the bridge.

As soon as Anari prepared to spring, sparks exploded in her periphery. The spider backflipped into the shadows, flexing her fingers to draw out her silk.

Whoever her pursuer was, they happened to be just as acrobatic. They danced into the shadows with her, firing out some kind of solid extension. Anari was able to block, but not without detonating another star bomb.

The attacker managed to get the spider in a convincing headlock, but that was a mistake. When you have the shadows on your side, the last thing you want to do is let your opponent get a sense of your build and stamina levels.

Anari was used to tight holds and she used this one to assess exactly how strong and capable this spirit was.

Then she flexed her wrists, engaging her silk to draw her ankles up to the sky.

“Whoa!”

Together the spider flipped forward with her attacker, tumbling until the spider had her hands on the other’s shoulders and used all that momentum to hurl them into a pre-made web.

Once Anari was back on her feet, she snatched up the weapon that she had racked up a few bruises against. At first glance, it looked like a child’s toy baton.

“Hey! Give me back my staff!”

Anari looked up at the spirit who struggled against the well-crafted wall of silk.

“Why are you following me?” Anari raised the star-tipped scepter. “Sun Surina.”

But what was the spider thinking? She had other questions that had been weighing on her mind – on her soul – for months now. So she asked them.

“Nevermind. Why does Next Dimension have records of you?”

Suri gave a wry smile. “Same reason my employer has records of you, Anari the Spider, assassin to the most powerful self made real estate gangster tycoon in the Ninth Heaven.”

Anari got close enough for her mandibles to brush the underside of Surina’s chin. She grabbed the sun clone by the throat.

“Shut up.”

“But wait, I’m not done yet!” deliriously, Suri giggled against her restraints. “Aren’t you also a foreigner from a lost heaven known as The Melting World –”

Who does this meddling monkey think she is!

“Enough.” Anari roughly backed off.

Suri coughed while Anari grumbled, “Talking to me like you know me. You must have a death wish.”

Suri shook out the last few coughs. Once she caught her breath, she was back to antagonizing the spider.

“Here’s another thing that I know. Our employers go way back. They used to be friends. That’s all I can tell you about him. There, I gave you some information. Now I get to ask the questions.”

Anari didn’t relax, but she waited for Surina to speak again.

Surina leveled her gaze with the spider. “Does Sun Bai know who Ritsu is? Who he really is?”

Anari narrowed her eyes and said nothing.

“Sweet immortal peaches,” Suri breathed. “You don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Anari clicked her tongue. “All I know is that Bai wants the staff. Just like you did. He knows that Ritsu’s staff is a powerful relic. I’m assuming that your employer knows this too, which is why he sent you after it. Isn’t that right?”

“Saboteur. Get the staff out of your head. It’s not about the staff. It has never been.” Surina shook her head. “I’ve said too much.”

“No, keep talking.”

With a few quick flicks of the star-tipped scepter, Anari released Surina from her prison. Then she tossed the weapon back to its owner.

As a sign of truce, Anari sat down and crossed her legs. She gestured for the sun clone to do the same.

Surina scoffed before finally shrugging and taking a seat opposite of the spider, assuming the same position.

Without letting another second go by, Anari let Surina in on some of what she knew.

“Sun Bai is obsessed with building his bridges. He wants to protect them at all costs. That’s why he seeks the staff. I’ve known him long enough that if he truly felt threatened by Sun Ritsu, he would have done something about it by now. He hopes to negotiate the staff out of Ritsu’s possession. Without making waves or drawing attention to himself.”

Anari folded her arms. “Now talk.”

Surina looked down at her freed wrists and pondered on all that Anari had said. Finally, she offered, “You want a peach soda?”

After the sun clone set herself and the spider up with a cool caffeinated beverage to take the edge off, she was ready to freely give some intel of her own.

“It’s like this, the Compliant Rod is basically a toy stick in anyone else’s hands. Sure, strong fighters could make use of it, but only one spirit can unlock its true potential. And that’s Sun Ritsu. You and I saw it with our own eyes that day at the theme park when he grew it to its full length. And in fact, I would go as far to say that that wasn’t even as far as the Rod can reach.”

The sun clone guzzled down the can of peach soda while Anari took tiny sips and chewed on this information.

Suri was wiping the foam from her lips when Anari asked, “So what does that make Ritsu?”

The sun clone looked off to the side. “It makes him old.”

There was a beat. Anari expected Sailor Sun to elaborate, but when she didn’t, the spider prompted, “I don’t understand.”

“Let me put it like this. The uh… that pig that follows Ritsu around? He seem a bit grandfatherly to you?”

Anari thought of Ham Song. “Yes. He seems to… remember a time when the Ninth Heaven was different.”

Suri took another slurp. “That’s because his essence isn’t breaking down whenever he resets in the Lake. My employer thinks the same of Ritsu. He’s got a hunch that Ritsu has a very sturdy essence. Not many spirits have that these days, let alone sun clones.”

“What does your employer need a sturdy essence for?” Anari thought back to Bodhi telling her about Ritsu’s diamond body. This only cemented her faith in Suri’s claims.

“Selfish reasons,” Surina mused. “I know you don’t trust me, saboteur, but Yugo would never hurt Sun Ritsu. He just wants to –”

“Yugo?” Anari was grinning. “Would that be Sun Yugo by any chance?”

Surina gasped and hiccuped on the soda. She covered her mouth and groaned. “Damn it. I always run my mouth when I drink this stuff.”

“So he is a Sun.”

“Shhhh. Please don’t tell anyone.”

Dear Traveler, I don’t think there was ever a time when the spider felt so smug.

She told the thief, “Don’t tell anyone about this meeting or what you know about me.”

And if Surina went back on her word, Anari knew Bodhi would report back to her. She could rely on the monk to keep this sun clone in check.

Surina stood up, taking that as her cue to leave.

“Wait.” Anari called. “One more thing.”

Suri dusted the sand off of her starry pajamas. “Hm?”

“You called me saboteur. Twice. I want to know why.”

Suri shrugged. “It's how Yugo refers to you whenever you come up in our debriefs. I never asked him why.”

Then she left.

Anari had a lot of things to think about.

Sun Yugo.

She had never heard the name before. But Surina claimed that he and Bai were once friends. If that was so, perhaps it was this Yugo that Bai was really trying to protect his bridges from.

Anari knew almost all of Bai’s enemies. So if all of this were true, then it meant that Bai was holding onto a very, very big secret.

Think. What would keep him from telling me about a rival sun clone? What would make him be so cautious that he would never breathe a word of this old friendship? Not even going so far as to keep a file on him?

Fear. Paranoia. Those were Sun Bai’s biggest motivating factors.

But for as long as Anari had known him, Bai never feared other powerful entities. He always moved like he was the one in charge and all those above him were playing pretend.

So what was capable of scaring Sun Bai to his core?

The answer hit Anari hard.

She swallowed the lump in her throat as every piece fell into place. It all made sense now.

Bai would only be afraid of someone… like him.

The night sky winked its many diamond eyes. Sharing the cool air with suffocated moans of the trapped spirits, a lone Spider whispered her revelations into the dark.

“Sun Yugo is psychic.”