There's Something in My Veins, but I Can't Seem to Make it Work

 The days went quickly, and with them came extra tolerance training—for those struggling a bit with the core-state notches—in the dreaded "Ki massage".

He'd started calling them the hell simulators, himself.

Maybe he was a masochist, because he found himself standing there outside standard hours staring into the mockup of a core in the training complex that served as gym, glimmer artist arena, and torture chamber. Usually they'd finish their Guardian assignments and work out here for an hour or two until dinner.

Today, he'd dropped in for a quick extra session after dinner while Drake was off at tutorage, Ariake was off in town, and Eden had gone elsewhere. And today, at this hour, the gym was quiet.

He took a deep breath, and dropped inside.

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"If you go to five again, I'll make sure you never leave the nurse's office."

"Hai, Kaa-san." He lifted the rifle construction to his "eye" and did his not-quite scope, intuitive spirit-vision aim. "Wouldn't dream of it."

"Tch." And that was Eden, still giving him the cold shoulder.

"I— fine, see if I care when you overdo it."

"Ah, I know you'll drag me out if I do, Ariake-san." He dug himself more firmly into the dirt out of habit, taking in a slow breath and letting his feel of the world leak in more than his view of it. The glimmer constructions of buildings and trees rose around him, steady and static. Through them, distantly, he felt something move.

"We're not on a first-name basis, gaijin."

"You called him Roku once."

"What? No I didn't."

"Actually you did, though you were drunk at the time." He hummed, honing in on that sense. The feel of it wasn't living, but it was static. Must be his target, then. "How far out is the target?"

"Two targets. Drake will have them in range soon." A pause. "And I didn't."

"No, I remember it. You liked Drunken Sailor too." He took steady, even breaths, quietly pushing the throttles to 4-3 and keeping his jaw tight as sparkles flashed across his vision and sunk into his skin. "I should introduce you to a few more sea shanties sometime. Think you'd like them."

"Keep your gaijin songs to yourself." A pause. "Are you fine on three?"

"Just dandy." He gritted a smile. "Here's hoping I don't have to push it to four."

And right on cue, Drake shot into the "park", an ugly pair of oni half his Samurai's height and twice the height of the average man hot on his heels. Perfect.

Lachlan sniped them both in the head, the pair crumbling into light motes with almost disappointing ease. Well, that was anticlimactic. Poking his head up, he did a quick check, attempting to get a handle on anything else, distantly feeling his hands flexing lightly on the throttle grips. Only the scent of sun-baked dirt and the pulsing life of his teammates, that he could tell. "Is that it? We've got them all?"

"I think so," Drake responded.

"I'm not detecting any others."

"No, there are none."

"And no collateral." Lachlan brought his Samurai back down a notch, the claws prickling at the back of his neck easing. "We might have a perfect score here."

"They did crush a couple of cars."

"No major property damage, though." He stood, letting his rifle disappear, and picked his way over to Drake. "It was almost too easy. Are oni really this weak?"

"Only the weakest of them," Eden said, sounding slightly distracted.

"And it's a lot harder on foot. They have packs like this every day in Kaijan." Ariake landed on top of a building, peering over the swooping eaves at them through shimmering wires. "They have to have shifts through the night, and they call themselves lucky if thre isn't an invasion before the week's over."

"That's an exaggeration," Eden sniffed. "There are times when it's quiet. Why is Kyubi-sama not informing us that we've finished?"

He looked around, listening with his spirit again. On notch two he couldn't detect much, though. "You don't think she's planning to drop a surprise on us?"

The ground chose that moment to shudder.

"You had to say something!"

"Ah hell." He snapped his gaze up, a... something rising over pine-tree shapes of buildings to the east, past the park. "She would've done it anyway!"

A feminine voice chuckled over the radio. "But you have such a good sense of timing."

He chuckled back through clenched teeth. Mischievous spirits and their senses of humour. Leaping up and touching down lightly next to Ariake, he got a good look at... a massive creature with a lot of bristles and a row of wicked spikes lining its hunched back. "What am I looking at?"

"It's an onikaiju." The dread in Ariake's voice threatened to catch like a cold.

He took a deep breath. "We might have to compromise on the property damage for this one."

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Technically, he was meant to have a spotter for this.

He pulled his helmet firmly on, the hatch coming down with a solid, disturbingly final click as he shut it. And he took a deep breath, settling his hands on familiar grips.

Alright, easy does it. He gripped firmly, pushing the left to the first notch, a hum rising around him, and watched the counter tick up as glittering sparkles whirled into the cockpit. Barely a tingle.

Pushing it to two, he watched the counter wobble briefly and then hold steady. Already better than where he'd started. Alright, time for the real test.

Breathing in a lungful of sparkles, he pushed it to three.

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He crashed straight through a flimsy glimmer prop of a neon advertising board and skidded back-first across the road.

So much... for that property damage score.

"We can't bring it down! It's just too damn thick!"

Lachlan snorted to himself from his pile of glimmer-dust, maybe a tad woozy.

"Stop laughing and get up, gaijin," Eden's voice snapped at him.

"Ai ai, that's no way to talk to your team leader," he grunted, pushing himself up and thudding a mimicry of a cannon on his shoulder. King Ed could have his beams blasting away at its underbelly. He'd pick explosions any day.

"And you wonder why I don't respect you."

Apparently they were having this conversation now.

He sent a star into the thing's face as it snapped at a shining Ariake, the blast blocking out his view. "No I don't, actually. I don't wonder."

"You always seem so surprised when you don't receive it."

"That's funny. Because I don't remember being 'surprised'." It flinched away, but he could see cracks leaking glimmer next to the eye, and Ariake stabbed his massive sword into it. "You've always made it clear you don't respect anyone. You think you're so good because you came out of some fancy academy for perfect little boys and girls. That you should lead your own team. Am I right?"

"As I've always said, you're an arrogant fool, gaijin." The frosts of winter bit his ear as he sent another star into the onikaiju's head.

"Kettle calls pot black," he retorted. "Takanashi, Drake! See if you can get it to open its mouth in this direction."

Eden scoffed. "You believe you're fit for this, gaijin, when you're only a stray picked up off the street, not even housebroken. You will fall, and when you do, everyone with you will be dragged down."

Lachlan settled the star-launcher firmly on his shoulder and breathed in, keeping his eye on target as the beast roared. He took the shot.

"You don't belong here because you're a liability."

And he missed.

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The counter flickered unsteadily.

Jumping briefly up towards white as his hands locked around the throttles, it sent a couple of warnings flashing for just a moment. Just a moment, and then they settled. Three, he was alright with three. Three wasn't so bad as four.

He wanted to laugh at himself as he squeezed the handles, tingling prickles settling firmly into his muscles and threatening to grow teeth they could sink into his neck. A measly three, like he'd done a dozen times before, and the warnings flickered at him.

A liability, eh?

Firmly in the cockpit, he was acutely aware of the faint trembles twitching up his arms and distant whispers brushing along the corners of his mind as he pushed up the right. The one thing Ki had over glimmer was that it didn't mess with his obake senses so much. Until it was too late, anyway.

A liability can become an asset.

He set his jaw and kept a steady pressure on the lever, the pins nipping at his skin growing needle teeth and forming a swarm as it slowly inched up. The sparkles almost blotted out his view of the screen and the indicator starting to gyrate.

You don't overlook an old hammer just because the handle's chipped.

It flickered, but it didn't go into the white. It jumped up and down, and his teeth ground into his gums, but no warnings started blaring. He hit the top, and it held within the limits.

Baring his teeth in a grin, he clicked the throttle to four.

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"Shite," he muttered under his breath, clenching his teeth and settling stubbornly in. "Second time lucky, let's do this."

"And when you fail the second time?" Eden mocked him. "You could destroy it if you were capable of Spirit-state. But you aren't, gaijin, are you?"

"We're in the middle of a battle exercise, dammit, can you two shut up and focus?"

"I'll fail as many times as I need to." He saw the moment it began to open its mouth, Ariake flitting out of the way, Drake diving to the side. "Until I succeed."

He fired.

"And what if you never do?"

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He couldn't see.

The lights pulsed red and he couldn't see.

No. No, settle, damn you. He went rigid, pushing back the claws digging down his spine and spinning screams in his ears; flickering stars through the darkness and red blood instead of blood-red light onto his hands. He kept pushing the lever. Just needed to keep steady. Just needed to keep steady.

It flickered into the white.

And the controls jumped out of his hands.

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This time it hit, but the beast didn't go down, another building crashing under its wildly-swatting claws in a flood of light-motes.

He narrowed his eyes, Eden's silence squatting watchfully on the radio line, waiting. "Don't underestimate a man who's got nothing left to lose. If at first you don't succeed..."

Pushing it up to 5-4, he smiled and embraced the pain, levelling another shot straight into its glassy, fractured eye.

"Try, try again. Till it kills them..."

The onikaiju's head shattered.

"...or you."