Lester Yong & Rosa Fontelera-Yong

CoESC Book 14-17.1: Blood of the Forefathers

Yuriko’s confident smirk disappeared almost as quickly, because as soon as the gunmen said those words, something else happened. Her Mien’s grasp over their minds remained—at least, she thought it did. But their bodies suddenly uncoupled from their brains’ control. Almost as one, the seve...

CoESC Book 14-16.3: Corruption

To say it took the rest of the day for the gangsters to reach their hideout wasn’t quite true, Yuriko decided. They headed towards the mountain, but really, pick any direction to go and technically, one would be headed towards the mountain wall surrounding Dragon Fall City’s perimeter. It loo...

CoESC Book 14-16.2: Corruption

Warm water flowed down Emmanuel Silva’s hairy back, his body hair the same shade of navy blue as his head’s. Unlike his other Durandir kin, however, he didn’t like sporting a beard. He wasn’t one of the common masses after all. The shower drone scrubbed every inch of him, making sure last...

CoESC Book 14-16.1: Corruption

Yuriko ducked underneath a ganger’s swing. The truncheon whooshed above her head, but the rotter also had the same speed boost as the one from before, and far better control of his momentum. The truncheon paused just above her head and he slammed it down.

Unfortunately for him, and a goo...

CoESC Book 14-15.3: Empty Steads

With the bullets flying through the air, it wasn’t as if Yuriko could simply sit down and eat. Besides, Fluffers would also need his nutritious, if bland tasting, burrito, too. Some stray bullets smashed up her third one, but it also damaged the machine, and now it was spitting out food like a ...

CoESC Book 14-15.2: Empty Steads

There were, in fact, neo-petrol stations in the badlands. More to the point, it wasn’t the desolate landscape that Yuriko had expected. When everyone called the city’s outskirts the badlands, she expected desert conditions. Maybe not the sandy dunes that she’d come to associate with the wor...

CoESC Book 14-15.1: Empty Steads

A couple of days had passed since Yuriko’s bar hopping. After Kansaki, she’d gone to a couple more bounty hunter bars, each one practically a mirror to the other. They were separated by hundreds of longstrides and she had to spend a pretty penny for neo-petrol. Not that she learned anything n...

CoESC Book 14-14.3: Boots on the Ground

Wearing a blue sweater and grey tights, along with a pair of sneakers, Yuriko certainly didn’t paint a picture of a mercenary. She had a backpack on and was finally using her Autovisor after Elsie helped her secure the connections and adjust it to her tastes. It automatically connected to REI-s...

CoESC Book 14-14.2: Boots on the Ground

The wind flowed through Yuriko’s hair as she drove her Bladedancer across the highways. She’d just left her tower but didn’t really have a destination in mind. She was currently on the same level road as the hundredth floor of a mega building, but she was looking to get to the higher roads....

CoESC Book 14-14.1: Boots on the Ground

It had been about a week since Yuriko met and sparred with Tiger Lao for the first time. The days somewhat blurred together after the first two, turning into an amalgamation of concrete, bright, neon lights, mindless television shows, and the gritty feel of Junktown as she made her walkabout. An ...

CoESC Book 14-13.3: Looking for Answers

Yuriko didn’t hesitate as she flew. Her Animakinesis dug into the asphalt and propelled her across the street. Her tendrils dug into the walls, simultaneously hooking, pushing, and pulling so that she rounded the corner faster than she could have if she was just running. Her foot touched the ro...

CoESC Book 14-13.2: Looking for Answers

Elsie’s eyes could barely follow what happened next. Oh, she could replay the video recording, one that she remembered to activate just a bit too late to catch the start of the spar, but even so, she was doubtful that she caught everything that happened. From what she pieced out later, Sifu Lao...

CoESC Book 14-13.1: Looking for Answers

Tiger Lao shook his head, “Lady Davar, I cannot answer your question. Not because I don’t want to, but because I do not know the answer. I know not where the passages to enter the lower floors are, nor do I know what needs to be done to pass through. I know only a few things, and I’m afraid...

CoESC Book 14-12.3: Mystic Arts and Where to Find Them

This time, Elsie kept her motorcycle running at a low speed, barely faster than someone could run. With good reason too, Yuriko supposed, since the path they took went through narrow alleys littered with trash, excrement, and bodies. She figured most were alive since she could see their torsos mo...

CoESC Book 14-12.2: Mystic Arts and Where to Find Them

She did not, of course, take Fluffington with her. Not because she didn’t want to, but the lazy mutt took over the newly delivered bed and mattress and refused to leave. While she could have forced him, the emotions he sent through their link, warmth, comfort, and love, pretty much melted whate...

CoESC Book 14-12.1: Mystic Arts and Where to Find Them

By the time Yuriko and Elsie finished their errands, it was well into the afternoon. Elsie led her to a building in the Shopping District where they could deposit the bag of bones. It was near the central restricted area and was clearly labelled: Acquisitions.

From there, Elsie asked Yurik...

CoESC Book 14-11.3: Incursion

Yuriko pursed her lips at Elsie’s words. Her Mien was connected to the half-metal woman, of course, and the other’s emotions flowed into her mind as soon as they were created. The connection had formed suddenly and Yuriko nearly cut it off if not for the first spurts of fear, awe, and excitem...

CoESC Book 14-11.2: Incursion

Wild thoughts rampaged across Elsie’s brain, bouncing off the sides of her skull and slowly, but surely, overheating her mind. She had followed Blondie all the way down to the tenth floor, perilously close to Junktown and Scourge incursions.

True to her expectations, one such incursion h...

CoESC Book 14-11.1: Incursion

“The blade destroyed the flesh but the bone resisted it,” Yuriko muttered. “Is still resisting it…” she amended when she saw its skull slowly turning red hot.

The creature howled its pain, but it didn’t stop what it was doing, eating the man’s ‘chronian gear while he strugg...

CoESC Book 14-10.3: Red Zone

‘She’s going into the Yellow Zone?’ Elsie thought with a bit of dismay. She’d been following the gorgeous blonde for half the morning already—part of Wild Fang’s directive to figure out what the foreigners wanted. The blonde had been wandering around the First Hundred Shopping Distric...

CoESC Book 14-10.2: Red Zone

The store was clearly different from Blacklight Threads, Yuriko decided. It was more like those she’d experienced back in Bresia and Herrera City, though it still had its idiosyncrasies anyway. For one thing, the antechamber wasn’t all that big. It was just shy of four square paces, and the r...

CoESC Book 14-10.1: Red Zone

The morning found Yuriko back in the lift lobby closest to their apartments. The evening and the night had been spent sharing what knowledge they’d gleaned from the REI-space through the Autotabs. The first piece being what REI-space was. Or rather, what everyone was saying about it. Simply put...

CoESC Book 14-9.3: Intratower Politics

The screen opened in front of Elsie’s eyes as her call to the Big Boss, Wild Fang, connected. The screen showed the boss’ face, though it was still and was really just a picture rather than a video.

“Evening.”

“Silverlock. I caught the alert. What’s going on?”

�...

CoESC Book 14-9.2: Intratower Politics

The thug’s fierce jabs proved no detriment to Heron’s defence. His mastery of the Ennoia of Winds allowed him to track each and every minute deviance to the punches’ trajectories, making it trivial to interpose his palm. It had only been the first strike that had startled him. The power beh...

CoESC Book 14-9.1: Intratower Politics

When Heron stepped up, the thugs’ grins widened. Yuriko huffed in annoyance, though she noted that at least half of them changed their focus towards Heron rather than keeping it on the rest of the group. There was this woman at the back who kept her automata eyes firmly placed at her and Gwendi...

CoESC Book 14-8.3: Green Zone Troubles

It took an hour for the metro to reach the L5 station. It was only twenty-five longstrides as a straight line, and Yuriko certainly knew that the monorail train she and the others took had a speed that was much higher than what she was used to. It moved at nearly a hundred longstrides an hour, as...

CoESC Book 14-8.2: Green Zone Troubles

The lift floor indicator read 456 just before the doors opened. Yuriko and the others piled inside, and they practically filled the entire space. But that was fine. The entire wall was filled with lift doors, and the only thing that distinguished it from every other kind of door was that it was m...

CoESC Book 14-8.1: Green Zone Troubles

“Well, this is interesting,” Yuriko muttered, “and annoying.”

Across her vision, with the visor on her face, she had been looking around the immigration lobby. But after a couple of steps towards the exit, a rectangular box popped up before her eyes. Someone started talking, and th...

CoESC Book 14-7.3: Dragon Fall

The first few fields to fill were simple enough, simply her name, age, sex, country of origin, and others of a similar vein. There was also a fill for associated organisations, and one of the examples given had been the Adventurers’ Guild, so Yuriko took out her hexagonal badge and held it up f...

CoESC Book 14-7.2: Dragon Fall

“...so what did you come to Dragon Fall City for?” Mathias eventually asked after a few minutes of small talk that included anecdotes from his home country. Not much of what he spoke of about this city felt real to Yuriko, except for the fact that small details in her surroundings had been na...