EPISODE 2: Nerves of Steel — CHAPTER 1: Watched — PART 1

Episode 2: Nerves of Steel

Bastion stepped into the payphone and pulled out the card Arthur had given him.

It was still dark outside, a heavy cloak of fog blanketing the street. The town was silent, save for the occasional distant rumble of a passing car.

He stared for a long moment at the small black skull under the payphone’s yellow light.

Am I really doing this?

He wasn’t sure what other choice he had.

He inserted the ten zen coin and dialed the number on the green phone’s keypad. It rang only once before an exuberant female voice answered.

「Moshi moshi sukoshi! Thank you for calling the super secret hotline for the Dungeon Extraction Advance Division, Chairman’s desk. This is Becky speaking, how can I help you?」

Bastion held the phone away from his ear and stared at the receiver.

What the hell?

「Hello? Is anybody there?」

He jammed the phone to his ear and quickly answered, 「Y-yes. This is Kurosawa, Bastion.」

「Like, oh my gosh, the boss said you were going to call soon. Does that mean you’ve accepted his offer?」

Bastion took a moment to process Becky’s incredibly strange manner of speaking.

「Uh, yes.」

「Fabulous~! So, to get you started—」

「Wait, wait. Before we go any further, I have one extra condition,」 Bastion said quickly.

「Eh~? I’m like, not really able to accept conditions, but—oh, whatever, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Whaddya want, kiddo?」

「I want someone protecting my family. If monsters are coming after me, I want to know they’re safe. And someone watching my school too.」

「Ara~. So cute. We’ve already got Deadmen assigned to that, you know.」

「Oh.」

Did she just ara me?

「Anything else?」

「I guess not.」

「Fabulous. Come by Doctor Kojima’s office at the Inner City Athletics Center after school, ’kay? We’ll get started on making paperwork for ya. Officially, you’ll be interning for the university. We wouldn’t want people thinking we were making you a Deadman.」

「…You aren’t making me a Deadman, right?」

「Why, do you want to be one? ’Cause like, I can probably—ow, ow, ow. Forget what I just said. Just go to the athletics center, ’kay?」

Bip-bip-bip.

She’d hung up.

Bastion silently placed the receiver back in its cradle and stewed on the conversation.

He wasn’t sure if he should be disturbed, or just laugh.

Are all of the Deadmen like this?

He hoped the answer was no. He’d rather deal with the monsters if that were the case.

Bastion rested his forehead against the lip of the phone box and closed his eyes. He’d hardly slept a wink the night before, and now he felt drained.

His rendezvous with Yui had lasted until nearly midnight. They hadn’t said much—hell, they hadn’t done much—but Bastion couldn’t bring himself to part from her easily.

They only separated when a passing cop asked why a couple of teenagers were out so late. Not wanting to risk getting arrested for real, Bastion walked Yui home, then headed back to his own place three doors down.

During their time together, he’d briefly asked how her older brother was doing. Apparently, Yui had him chained to his bed at home—because the first thing he’d done after waking up in the hospital was try to storm into Bastion’s room and beat the hell out of him.

She hadn’t been sure what exactly had happened, but Yuki had been bellowing something about disrespect and defilement.

Bastion had declined to elaborate on her brother’s words.

But she’d also said something Bastion hadn’t expected.

According to her brother, a mage had stopped to heal them both.

It had to be one of the Deadmen. Healers were so rare that there was no way a healing mage would just happen to be near the site of a monster attack.

When Bastion had pressed Yui for more information, she hadn’t had anything more to share.

Upon arriving home, he’d been surprised to find both of his parents waiting for him. Then again, he shouldn’t have been. What sane parent would go to sleep while their child was out at night right after a monster attack?

The fact they’d let him stay out as long as they did was an incredible sign of trust.

That, and his mom and dad had always liked Yui. His mom had even taken to calling Yui her first daughter—and that hadn’t changed when Lara was born.

Yui was family.

Which was good, because other than that, Yuki was her only real family.

After retiring for the evening, Bastion still hadn’t been able to sleep.

Each time he closed his eyes, he saw the Gorespawn. Every shadow on the wall was a phantom, every whistle of the wind hid a monster.

Eventually, Bastion got up and found his dad watching mecha anime VHS tapes on the living room TV. When Kenji didn’t make him go back to bed, Bastion joined him on the couch.

The show they were watching had aired over a couple years ago,and the mechs looked less like the squat mobile weapons fielded by the Arken Federation and more like walking suits of powered armor.

They reminded Bastion of the mechs used in the Krest Civil War five years ago, and as he watched, he wondered if the designer of those war machines had been inspired by the show.

Those civil war mechs… weren’t they named after seven Demon Gods?

Fen’s words came unbidden to his mind.

“The problem is, someone out there is trying to figure out how to destroy Dragon Gates. This maniac wants to create honest-to-goodness demons. And frankly, it’s only a matter of time before he succeeds.”

The thought made Bastion’s stomach turn.

He’d just gotten involved in a mess far beyond his reckoning.

As morning neared, Bastion had asked his dad for some money, gotten ready for school, and struck out for the payphone. He didn’t want to risk his family overhearing something sensitive by making the call from home.

And now, as he leaned his head against the cool metal of the phone box, Bastion groaned.

This was all overwhelming.

Fen hadn’t appeared to him since their conversation in his Soul Chamber after the battle with the Gorespawn.

Bastion had been so caught up in the aftermath that he hadn’t thought to clarify what the small dragon expected from him going forward.

For now, he would do what he could to keep those around him safe—and find a way to make his dream a reality.

Bastion sighed and stepped out of the payphone into the cool morning air. He still had just over an hour before he needed to be at school.

Honestly, he considered skipping. But if the fuckers at the city thought he was a delinquent, he wasn’t going to give them a reason to throw the book at him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bastion caught movement. He jerked his head with a start, only to realize it was just a girl in his school’s seifuku uniform, walking her bicycle. She had distinctive silver hair cut in a bob, and Bastion felt like he recognized her somehow—but he couldn’t put a finger on it.

Was she watching me?

Bastion shook his head. He was being jumpy.

He wandered aimlessly for a while, until he found himself standing on the stony western bank of the Ota River.

The river was quiet, lazily rolling along beneath the morning mist. In the east, the sky had begun to lighten above the mountains.

Bastion took a small stone staircase down to the riverbank and approached the water. He absently picked up a flat, smooth stone and skipped it across the surface.

Skip, skip, splash.

He cringed as a flash of pain sprang up his side.

Dammit.

He was still recovering.

Even a healer’s magic can’t undo everything the Gorespawn did to me, huh?

Frowning, Bastion switched hands and tried again.

Plunk.

No pain this time—but he wasn’t left-handed. The throw felt awkward and off-balance.

What else am I going to do? he thought, picking up another stone.

This time, he consciously adjusted his stance, wound up his left arm, and tossed the rock.

Skip, splash.

He grinned. After years of practicing Karate, he felt supremely comfortable in his own body. If he couldn’t do something the normal way, he could always swap to southpaw and try again.

I wonder how far I could skip the rock if I used that Dragon Gear from the other day.

Despite remembering the pain of that experience all too well, Bastion couldn’t shake his curiosity.

So, he tried to activate it.

Nothing happened.

He frowned. Now that he thought on it, he hadn’t exactly activated the Dragon Gear on purpose during the fight. How much of that had been Exia’s blessing?

He tried to remember the feelings he’d had while fighting the Gorespawn.

Terror? Pain? Desperation?

Yeah, definitely those. But beneath all that, he’d felt something else. What was it?

The sun crested the eastern horizon, filling the river valley with warm golden light and burning away the fog.

Bastion sighed and plopped another rock in the water. It was time to get going.

When he turned around, he saw the same girl from before. She started walking again, pretending she hadn’t been watching him.

Bastion frowned.

What was her name again?

He knew her face, but couldn’t quite place her name.

Why is she watching me?

Maybe she’d heard about his encounter with the monster. Or maybe she was just intrigued by a newcomer on her morning route to school.

He had too much on his mind to worry about nosy classmates, so he quietly filed the thought away and started back up the riverbank.

As he drew closer to the school, Bastion began encountering other students. Most of them he vaguely recognized but had never interacted with.

A few certainly recognized him, though. With each step, Bastion swore he caught more snippets of rumors spreading like wildfire around him.

「…monster attack…」

「…look at those bandages…」

「…how did he survive…」

「…did he have something to do with…」

「…half-breed…」

Bastion kept his head down and ignored them.

Don’t give them a reason to provoke me.

As he reached the base of the school’s mountain, someone wrapped their arms around him from behind.

In the split second his brain didn’t know what was going on, Bastion nearly reached down to break the person’s arm.

But a moment’s hesitation kept him from doing something he’d regret, as the person grabbing him spoke.

“Bastion,” Yui said reproachfully, “why didn’t you wait to walk with me?”

He gulped bashfully and turned around in Yui’s arms. She was looking up at him with a pouting expression, breathing heavily, a bead of sweat glistening on her forehead.

Did she run here?

Bastion could feel the rumors around him intensify like the buzzing of cicadas.

Did she not care that people would talk?

“Sorry,” Bastion finally said. “I just needed some fresh air, so I forgot.”

She buried her face in his chest. “I forgive you. Just don’t forget tomorrow, okay? 「I don’t like walking to school without you.」”

Bastion nervously scratched his head. “Okay. I promise.”

How long is she going to hold me like this?

Someone cleared her throat nearby. Bastion spotted a small gaggle of Yui’s friends approaching like geese guarding their gosling. They looked positively pissed that Bastion would dare sully Yui with his unclean hands.

“Uh, Yui?”

She looked up, noticed her friends, and immediately let go of him, her face turning deep crimson.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

「You’re not the one who needs to apologize,」 said Hashimoto Akane, glaring daggers at Bastion and making it very clear who she thought should be apologizing.

Bastion shrugged.

Jealousy is ugly, Hashimoto-san.

He let them corral Yui away before sighing and continuing his journey up the mountain road.

A while ago, Bastion had seen a documentary on marine life. At one point, the film showed a shark swimming through a school of fish. No matter which way it turned, the fish parted around it, leaving a stretch of empty water in its wake.

That was how it felt, walking up the path to school.

Yui was the only fish stupid enough to get near the big, bad shark.

It would probably be for the better if she stayed away from me anyway.

As he neared the school gate, he blinked. The silver-haired girl was standing beside it, reading a book.

She’s still watching me?

He was so distracted by her that he didn’t see two male students approaching from the front until it was too late.

「Welcome back, Bastion-kun!」 Scott Miyazaki and Inuzuka Shigeru shouted in unison, ripping open their uniform jackets to reveal the Uroko word for welcome back written in black ink across Scott’s chest, and Bastion written in Tethic on Inuzuka’s chest—the letter o replaced by a heart.

Behind them, Inuzuka’s older sister, Jun, popped confetti.

Bastion blinked, then burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Less than a minute later, the principal’s voice came over the school intercom in a deadpan tone:

「Will Miyazaki-kun and the Inuzuka siblings please report to my office?」

Bastion was still chuckling when he reached the shoe lockers at the front entrance.

He hesitated after pulling on his uwabaki school shoes. If he put his street shoes away, what would he do in an emergency?

A part of him wanted to shake off the thought and laugh at the paranoia.

But what if a monster attacks me here?

If that’s a possibility, then why am I even here to begin with?

Aren’t I just putting everyone in danger?

The phone receptionist—her name had been Becky—said the Deadmen were watching the school. Could Bastion trust her at her word?

Was it worth the risk?

He hesitated a moment longer before slipping his street shoes into his bag. Just in case.