How Does This Thing Work?

Lachlan blinked, stumbling mid-step on cold concrete instead of firm carpet, feeling like he'd just been whip-lashed into next century. Partly thanks to what looked like a hangar housing... some sort of orb-ish thing that looked like it'd either fly away, or unfold a ton of weaponry and possibly legs. Was that an open hatch on top?

"...What just happened?" He questioned the world in general.

"Finally." He blinked around at the voice to find himself standing by a group smaller than he'd been expecting without the technician-types Kyubi turned to talk to taken into account, a teenager—probably about eighteen—with dirty-blond hair and blue eyes regarding him coolly, his arms folded. "We've had to wait a long time for you, gaijin."

Somebody hadn't looked at himself in the mirror lately. Lachlan gave him a sideways look, one eyebrow lifting. "S'pose you're not the fellow gaijin I'm keeping company, then."

Obviously that was a little insulting, from the way most of the small crowd stiffened. The kid next to not-gaijin, all dark hair, eyes, and standard Nihonjin features, stepped forward, his eyes blazing. "Who do you think you are—?"

"At ease, Ari-san," Blondy cut him off without raising his voice, his eyes never leaving Lachlan's, "he's only an ignorant gaijin who arrived too late for orientation."

Prickly bunch. He tilted his head, playing along with the staring contest game. "You're not wrong, but neither am I. Unless I'm hallucinating, which I could be after that teleporting trick. Am I?"

"You filthy—" Ari spat, only for the fox kami to cut him off.

"Before you start brawling, let's at least know each other's names, hm? Our sixteenth member here is Bronnewhin Lachlan. Lachlan, this—" she nodded to Blondy and Anger-issues, "is Hirano Goudon and Takanashi Ariake. Ariake is going to be on your team, as one of your three other members along with Drake and Eden."

Watching Ariake's eyes blow wide was almost as comical as Shimizu's realisation had been. "What?" He practically exploded.

"Ari-bo, surely you knew not everyone could be on Gou-chan's team," Kyubi-sama outright patronised him with a smile too sharp to be called motherly. "Someone will have to work with the gaijin. You wouldn't leave Eden alone to the wolves, would you?"

Ariake flushed red enough she could've claimed she'd burned him with fire and not her words. To be fair, her nicknaming methods were brutal. "...Hai, Kyubi-sama." The glare he sent Lachlan almost matched the heat of his face.

Fantastic, I've made at least one enemy today. I'm already over my quota, and I wasn't even trying that hard. Internally sighing, he casually turned his attention to Hirano, who seemed indifferent to the whole thing. "Wouldn't happen to be related to General Hirano, would you?"

The teen considered him like a particularly annoying bug on his shoe. "He's my father."

Lachlan hummed. "He's a good man, from what I've heard."

Hirano sent him one cool glance and then ignored him completely, turning to the girl on his right, murmuring something about the Samurai program. Interesting, there were a few girls here, but he'd been under the impression Nihon didn't take them on as members of its force. Maybe they did things differently in the Shadow Corps.

Looked like he wouldn't get the chance to ask, though.

Kyubi-sama clapped her hands, finished with talking to the technicians about technical things, a woman saluting and walking quickly off somewhere. "Alright, I know you've all been waiting for this moment. You may enter your assigned Samurai cores, and we'll be activating them shortly."

Lachlan glanced between the uniformed group and the fox kami as they all saluted and headed off, and... was that the guy he'd run into earlier outside the president's office? He caught sight of someone short with white hair, too, before they all disappeared elsewhere, one of the girls taking the egg-pod in front of him. "We don't need suits or anything?"

She grinned at him. "Not for this, though you might want to put your pack somewhere. It might make sitting in the cockpit uncomfortable."

"Ah." He shrugged it off, taking a few strides back to put it by the wall. "So they stand up and walk around, or...?"

She laughed. "You're cute, Roku-chan. Your core's just over there, don't take too long."

"Ha ha." Did she plan to keep calling him that, or...? He started walking in the direction she'd indicated, eyeing a core that looked the same as all the others. "Do I ever get to know how this works, or are you just throwing me at it and expecting me to figure it out?"

"Tell you what, I'll answer all your questions once you're inside."

No wonder all the legends described kami as enigmatic types. He hissed softly between his teeth, hopping up a step on the side of the pod and peering in through the hatch. A pretty simple chair met him, not a lot of space around it and some sort of material pincushioned with holes lining the claustrophobically-tight walls. Smelled like leather and something more sharp-metallic.

"Are you alright, there?"

He glanced around to see one of the technicians smiling at him as she leaned over the side. "Looks cozy in here."

"It should fit you well," she reassured him, tapping at the hatch by his head. "Just pull on the handle here and twist it to the right to close when you're ready. Left is to open afterwards."

"Well alright then." He eased himself in, holding onto the lip briefly and settling in the chair before reaching up to close the lid. Not too uncomfortable. Made him feel like he was in a sci-fi movie, about to take off in a ship, though the only controls he could see were exactly two levers and zero blinking lights apart from a pair of plain flourescent strips up by the hatch keeping it from being pitch black.

How're you supposed to pilot this thing without controls or a viewport? He gripped the levers experimentally. Left leg? Right leg? I thought these things had weapons. "What, are we kick-boxing with the oni?"

A laugh responded to his mutter, and he nearly jumped, the crackle of a radio around the kami's voice belatedly catching up with him. "No. Not unless you want to, at least. These aren't the technological marvels you're thinking they are. The cockpit is really just an extra layer to keep you safe and control the amount of Core-En directed to you and the Samurai."

"Core-En?" He poked around, discovering some basic radio controls on the sides of the armrests, and what were probably speakers or microphones by his head that he hadn't noticed at first.

"Core Energy," she elaborated, "is a highly concentrated form of glimmer gathered using the celestial bridge, and the closest thing to the power of the God-core itself."

"I've heard of it— they started building those towers when I was a kid." Still remembered watching the news talk about the collapse of Rhinan's attempt and all the talk of attempted sabotage on Wilind's. And something about celebrations of the beginning of construction when he was too young to really understand much. "There was talk about harvesting it for power, like a source of electricity. You use it for these things?"

"Electricity." She snorted derisively. "Yes, that's what a Samurai is built on, it's why we call what you're sitting in a 'core'. Just like the world has a core that gives it light and life, so does a Samurai."

"They're... intelligent?" He doubted it. Nothing could measure up to that burning light, no matter how much power you drew and put into something. The God-core wasn't just some lightbulb. He should know.

His scars itched, and he absently rubbed at his left arm. Even the light that'd melted his skin off his bones hadn't held a candle to that core. He wouldn't call himself a religious type—hell, he was more the opposite—but you couldn't claim something was really just a big ball of unintelligent energy when you'd witnessed its molten omniscience firsthand.

"—yuurei is what lets you control it more intimately than a simple glimmer projection, so I suppose it has your intelligence."

Ah schnizzel, he'd missed half that. He shook himself, glancing around the cockpit. "So it's nothing to do with the pod? Just a glimmer projection?"

"Like that little dragon you whipped up," she confirmed, and he could hear the toothy smile. He kept forgetting she'd technically been Yuka. "But much denser. And its form depends on your spirit rather than what you imagine."

What, it'd look like a wolf? "I can't just make it a dragon, then?"

"Nope!"

Disappointing. And strange. "I've never heard of glimmer working like that."

"Core-En works slightly differently. For now just think of it like a yokai." She hummed. "Ah, there we are. Almost ready. I'm leaving for a moment, you can ask me more questions later."

A yokai... how? Visions of riding a glowing white ball of mist like a horse danced behind his eyes, and he rubbed at the side of his face as she clicked off, a little too tired to try figuring that one out. And hungry.

God, I need sleep. And food. He took advantage of the silence to rub his still-gloved and now itching-uncomfortably hands over his face. Train rides are exhausting.

He never had gotten to buy his LMFC. Miss my feckin' chooks, he mourned.

"Okay! Any last questions before you imprint forever on your Samurai and prevent anyone else from using it ever again?"

Hold on. "What?"

"No? Good!"

"Wait a minute—" He cut off as a pair of lights on the stems of the levers blinked green, a hum coming from all around him with an edge to it that lifted the hairs on the back of his neck.

"Flick the first switch on your radio controls to connect with the others of your team so you can speak over comms. There are external speakers, but honestly it's like trying to shout through a megaphone," she said, and he reluctantly did so. "You've been locked to minimum power, so just grip the throttles until they click, push, and all your questions will be answered."

He highly doubted it. But what else was there? So, flexing his hands around the grips and trying to ignore the feeling of a tidal wave hanging over his head, feeling a little like a kid in a spaceship again, he pushed.

The levers locked one measly centimetre from where they'd started, and that feeling died a disappointed death.

Well, this sucks a bit—

The tidal wave came crashing down. He barely had a moment to suck in a hissing breath as a glittering torrent poured out of the walls before he abruptly left his body in a jolt that had him clawing for purchase, his heart pounding, his soul ripped clean out.

He swore in a blind panic, stumbling onto his knees and digging his fingers into solid ground before he could comprehend that he was— that he'd landed on solid ground instead of hurtling through space on a round-trip to the God-core, his clearing vision staring at familiar concrete from a very unfamiliar angle. Am I... taller? As in metres taller?

And had faintly glowing hands covered by the kind of gauntlets you'd find on an ancient suit of armour?

"What in hell's arse is going on?" He pushed himself up, almost falling over again as his balance listed in odd ways, barely managing to steady himself in a half-kneel as he glanced around the rest of the hangar. And the suits of armour that'd taken up residence in it where the cores used to be.

"Amaterasu's light and wisdom," he breathed out, watching one fall flat on its face with a crash that shook the floor, a faint leaking glow wisping up. "What the hell am I looking at?"

"You really do know nothing," an unfamiliar voice with a level of scathing haughtiness thick enough to make a suit of its own said. "I can't fathom what Kyubi-sama was thinking, recruiting you."

Well, someone was a perfectionist— he wasn't the only one flailing around and failing at standing with this strange version of projection magic. He turned to look, finding a Samurai standing perfectly with no balancing issues whatsoever looking back at him with a blank helmeted face, a glow pulsing in its chest. Definitely his critic. "Not everyone's as much of a natural as you, whatever-your-name-is."

"I suppose you should know my name if we must be forced to work together. I am Nokami Eden. And You are an embarrassment."

He gleaned two facts from that. One, Eden was apparently not the name of a woman and someone should really tell the Nihonjin to stay away from using Angaelic words for their kids. Two, he was a monumental arse and rude about it, maybe because he'd been stuck with such a cruddy name.

Well, two could play that game. "Arigato-gozaimasu, Eddy. Appreciate the confidence."

Eden sputtered and someone else snorted, or else that was a glitchy crackle.

"Why am I in this team," Ariake muttered, loud and clear. He was probably the one with the epitome of a samurai suit, everything that could be pointy prickling like a cactus.

"Don't be so down on yourself," Lachlan advised. "We can stumble along together to the finish line."

"Unlike you, I wanted to make it to Kaijan at the head of our class," the teen fired back. "Now I'm stuck with two bumbling gaijin instead of in Goudon-san's winning team. So thank you."

He paused. "Kaijan?"

"Of course you have no idea what that is," Eddy sneered.

"Ah yes," Kyubi-sama's voice broke in before he could open his mouth, "You missed that. The team who performs the best overall will be sent straight to Kaijan, the others replacing those on our shores who we're also sending along. Some extra incentive to do well, you could say."

Had she been planning this even before she contacted him? He would've remembered if it'd come up in their conversation. Distantly, he was vaguely surprised to feel his hands curl around something while his projected ones remained as carefully still as he forced them to be. Somehow he'd assumed they'd all be winding up in Kaijan. Apparently, he'd been mistaken. "Interesting. Good to know."

"I thought so," she said blithely. "Alright, that's enough for today, cadets. Training will be tomorrow, and you'll get some proper quality time with your Samurai then. Now bring your throttles back to neutral. You should be able to feel your real hands if you concentrate."

Considering he'd done it just before, it wasn't hard to feel out his distant body and pull back, shuddering at the highly unpleasant sensation of crawling back into his own skin as the projection dissipated and left him in the faintly-rocking pod clonking back to the ground. He shut his eyes for a moment, kneading at his forehead and ironing out the pins-and-needles prickling of his scars. However this worked, it seemed hellbent on screwing him sideways. Better get used to it quickly.

He made it back out before most of the others, to his mild surprise, standing with Hirano—of course, prodigy that he apparently was—and the white-haired one whose face matched the disdain in Eden's voice, along with a couple others as they all trickled in to join Kyubi.

He glanced sideways at his teammate. Must've had access to a lot of bleach, because he still looked typically Nihonjin, apart from the freakishly pale amber eyes. Which pointedly flicked to bore through him behind a set of rectangular glasses in a look that immediately combined with his hairstyle to give Lachlan the impression of a white hawk fixating on a mouse.

Not the friendly type. Noted. He turned his attention back to Kyubi as Ariake and the tall one he'd run into before joined him, the kami going down the line and assigning team leaders. To no one's surprise, Hirano was appointed leader of his group. And last on the list, the oddball misfits....

"Oh, and you'll be this team's leader," Kyubi added, looking straight at Lachlan.

He threw a casual glance behind just to check before cocking an eyebrow at her. "You want to put the ignorant gaijin you picked up off the street of a dirt-poor fishing village in charge?"

Ariake looked like he was about to explode again.

"Yes." She grinned. "You'll be a perfect fit."

He looked at big and tall attempting to disappear into the floor despite his height, Eddy Owl-hawk watching him unblinkingly with an expression like he'd just licked a lemon, and Ariake silently grinding his own teeth into fine powder. "Well... hurrah."

This would end well.