White Hawk and Sable Swan: A Martial Romance of the Far Future - Part II

This is the second part of an ongoing serial, written in honor of the Swords of St. Valentine initiative. Here is Part One. Updates every day.

It was evening already. The air was pregnant with youthful chatter. It seeped down the concrete alleyway and mingled with the trash, fluttered aimlessly around his jeans and designer sneakers.

“Are you ready, Mr. Li?” asked his second. It was a new man today, short and dumpy with an anxious look on his face. The organizers were fast on their feet. Anything for Li Wei.

Li Wei unhooded himself, unzipped his white jacket, and pulled it off to reveal his bare chest, his lithe shoulders and lean chest. He spread his arms and let a smile play across his lips. Just for show. He was the champion, after all.

“Born ready,” he smirked.

His second signaled. The hired hands wheeled the screens up. High-quality nanoweave, designed to simulate holofield conditions as close as possible. To turn the streetlight itself into a calibration tool.

Li Wei fought back a shiver and a scowl of annoyance. It was colder than it looked, and being as supple as he was, he had very little in the way of insulating fat.

“Where’s my suit?” he snapped. “I said I was ready, so where are your men at?”

His second held up his hands, a pitiful look on his face.

“Technically, Mr. Li, I w-would like to remind you that the s-synthsuit is the property of the Nishin Conglomerate…”

One of the hired hands dropped the black briefcase in front of him and walked away. Li Wei’s scowl deepened, and he folded his arms.

There were goosebumps around his elbows. He hated it.

“Well, don’t just stand there, man. Are you going to do your job, or not?”

“Yes, Mr. Li. I’m sorry, Mr. Li.”

His second made the appropriate motions of apology, bowing abjectly, then touched his fingers to the access lock and opened the briefcase. He removed the synthsuit, a shapeless thing as smooth and dark as unmixed ink.

“Your, ah, undergarments, Mr. Li.”

Li Wei flashed him a black look, then slipped out of his pants and briefs. The short man knelt, then touched the corners of the synthsuit to his legs.

It stuck, then clung.

“Synthsuit recognised,” said an agreeable, sexless voice from all around him. “Authorized user: Li Wei.”

The nanoweave screens lit up in recognition. The familiar chill ran up his ribs and back, and he turned his gasp into a deep breath, right as the synthsuit sealed his nostrils and eyes in complete opacity.

“Profile loaded: White Hawk.”

There was no way he was meant to be breathing.

“Calibrating.”

There was no way he was meant to be seeing.

The darkness stretched, then jerked in sickening spurts like a crushed water-hose, spraying spumes of rainbow light. The geysers went off in his head like bombs.

“Approximating simulspace conditions.”

A feeling of infinite depth swallowed him whole, like the maw of some vast beast. He felt like he was falling through his feet, anchored in inverse, clipping straight through the concrete.

“Projecting external features. Ascribing attributes.”

He swallowed, once, twice, to remind himself to keep calm, to surrender to the cold crawling feeling around his groin and in his inner ears. This was normal. He had done this so many times…

Then, at last, after an entire minute, he was back in the alleyway, on his own two feet. But this time, in his armor. The shining white armor, graceful and pure, that existed so long as the augmented light shone on him. As long as he stayed in simulspace. Within these screens, and the warehouse nearby. The scene of battle.

“It’s… it’s good to see you, White Hawk,” said his second.

Li Wei stared at him, then shoved his dumpy head aside and stepped through. Like the cloth banners of some ancient general, the screens began to move with him.

#####

Xu Hai stood in the babbling crowd like a bruised reed in a stream. The abandoned warehouse echoed, steel creaking from every corner. She could still smell the ointment on her face and ankle.

“The Red Arhat,” chirped the girl next to her, a thin and wiry specimen with long slender fingers. Her cheeks were gaunt and her hair was straight to a fault, but her eyes were bright electric blue. “Do you think he has a chance against the White Hawk?”

Of course she had auglenses. Everyone had auglenses, it seemed, except for her. Father didn’t want her to have them. Probably just a ploy to keep her deprived.

Xu Hai glanced to the side and opened her mouth, then realized that her neighbor had already shifted her attention to some other imaginary simulspace thing. She pulled her holophone out of her pocket, scowled at its actual weight, then gestured her way to the camera function. She raised it in both hands.

The simulspace pylons stood at each corner of the ring, rising straight up like the ruins of some futuristic gate in miniature. The canvas floor was almost blasphemously plain in comparison.

“Hey! You in front! Hands down, bitch!”

The fight was about to start. If she craned her neck just right, she could almost see the challenger.

“Too poor to get some proper lenses?” came another voice from behind. “Then don’t watch, you stupid whore!”

She squinted, muttering curses all the while. The Red Arhat blurred, then came into sharp focus, letting her see almost every detail of him in miniature.

He was a tall lean ascetic in flowing crimson robes, seated in meditation, with a maple-brown rosary around his neck and bright yellow sleeves. The red mask he wore was featureless, save for the nine orange dots arrayed in a square on his forehead. In his hands was a red staff, capped at both ends with brass. Two gilt dragons ran the length of his weapon, curling around each other, four-fingered claws locked in combat. The staff lay across his crossed legs like a daughter.

None of it was real, of course. The outfit was far too imposing, too perfectly arranged, to actually exist. It was all a trick of the light. Of simulspace.

But within the pylons, attuned to false reality by their impossibly expensive synthsuits, the Red Arhat and White Hawk would feel each blow of their imaginary weapons like real wood and steel. The suits would protect them from bruising, stop their bones from breaking and their skins from tearing, keep them from all harm - but it would channel every bit of projected pain right through.

Strong men died here. They threw up and frothed and screamed in agony, from the aftermath of twenty impossible wounds, all in spots already technically severed, or beaten beyond sensation.

It was the only sanctioned bloodsport left in Neo-Quming, and there wasn’t even any blood. This was all that was left of the wulin. Of the martial forest, the great meeting of pugilistic minds. The jianghu was two men playfighting in a ring, for money.

It was enough to make her want to tell Father that he was right.

“He’s here! The champion!”

Excitement stirred the crowd like congee. Heads went up. Auglenses grew brighter, turned red, saving the memory for all time. Even her hecklers shut up.

And as Xu Hai watched, trying to keep herself steady through the swell of cheers and screams, the White Hawk ascended the steps and waved.