Odysseus watched the craft settling slowly onto the platform. Since the Air Boat was scheduled to land last, the boy could take in the scene with ease.
"Well, well... more equipment than you declared, isn't it?"
Just then one of the guards approached wearing an oily smile. The captain's epaulet on his shoulder, his sunglasses, his long waist, and his long thick tail stood out particularly.
'Katanathema Κατανάθεμα... in Han it was the Blessed Folk, was it?'
Those who had once been Teeming Folk but came to hold a new form upon receiving a god's blessing, or curse.
They were precisely the Katanathema, the Blessed Folk. When the one who served as their founding ancestor had too horrific a tale, they were sometimes called the Cursed Folk, with only the pronunciation changed, but in any case.
'Considering the long neck and waist, the thick tail, and finally the subtle stench... among the Blessed Folk, this one would be of the Galinthidai Γαλινθῖδαι.'
When Hera, god of the household, sought to prevent the birth of the great hero Herakles, a woman named Galinthias devised a trick and ruined the plan. Thanks to her effort Herakles was born safely, but Galinthias herself earned Hera's wrath and received a curse that changed her form.
Her neck and waist grew long, a thick tail appeared, and she took on the strange form of one who always went about giving off the smell of excrement.
And her descendants inherited her appearance and traits intact as well. The world calls them the Galinthidai. In Han, Weasel Folk, and in Gauri, weasel.
"If I do not misremember, the equipment on the way out was surely about half of this. Am I wrong?"
In any case, the Galinthidai... the weasel fellow did not easily wipe the triumphant look from his face. The eyes revealed beyond the sunglasses were, to anyone, the face of a swindler who had found his angle.
"They were lying about in the sky."
"Come now, don't be like that. Why act this way when we both know all there is to know?"
"Who knows. I have no idea at all."
But Captain Songha, facing him, was no easy match either. The one-eyed warrior with her right eye wrapped in an eyepatch stood taut against the guard captain. Toss a spark between them and a flame would rise at once.
"There will be plenty of others besides us who want to use this place. Let us leave it here."
Then the mood cooled with a hiss, like air let out of a balloon. The cause was the wad of bills Captain Songha slipped in.
And the amount glimpsed was far from small; it looked to be at least a million Pisti Πίστη. For the lower lives of the slums it was a sum ample enough to live on for a month or two.
"Hah, nothing to be done! I've no idea which fools dropped those in the sea, but finders keepers! Pass!"
And the moment those bills were sucked into his pocket, the guard captain raised both hands as though he had never hardened his expression. His beaming face was so bright that one wanted to smash a fist into it.
Odysseus' lips went crooked.
"Do we have to give him that?"
When every craft belonging to the expedition team had left the airfield, the boy asked over the headset. Wahahaha! The channel became a sea of laughter in an instant.
—Our Magician, so naive, whatever shall we do.
—Hah, first expedition and already this eventful; you can tell at a glance he's got the face of bad luck.
—Fuck, what kind of curse is that to lay on our precious magician. Somebody crack that son of a bitch's skull.
—Wait, I'll crack it when we get to the quarters.
Odysseus' mood grew a little more sour.
He had not asked because he did not know the utility or the necessity of a bribe. He wanted to know exactly what form the tacit agreement between expedition teams and the guard corps took.
—Realistically, picking up this many machines out at sea is impossible. You will have guessed that much?
"I know. But we weren't the ones who started the fight."
—Yes, we had no intention of picking the quarrel first.
"Is it because there's no evidence to prove it?"
—That would be one reason. Whatever bad history we had with those bastards, as far as this fight goes, we struck first. Even if it was their side that broke the unwritten rule first.
So because they had struck preemptively, they could not establish their standing as victims? And so they could not claim even the spoils won by punishing the enemy as rightful property?
'So that's why they were stripping the engraved team marks off one by one.......'
He had wondered, and so it was. That was the minimum measure for concealing that they had been won by killing people. Even if it was close to covering one's eyes and crying peekaboo, it was better than not doing it at all.
—Of course, even if we had been the ones ambushed, nothing much would change.
"Why?"
—Those bastards are a public order corps under direct government control, and we are a mere expedition team.
He had a rough grasp of it. As long as the hierarchy of power was clear, whether perpetrator or victim, it made no difference to them so long as they could squeeze money out. All the more so since expedition teams were beings that came into existence ceaselessly and vanished without rest.
"How dull."
At this rate, how did they differ from mercenaries who fought looking only at money? That a public order corps founded for the citizens had neither passion nor sense of mission was rather unpleasant. Those things were not worth the taxes they gorged on.
—It is dull.
"About how much is the set amount?"
—It differs a little by situation, but usually a few hundred thousand is what gets pressed into their hands. This time we gained so much that I gave them a thicker cut.
"Hmm."
So there was no fixed market rate for shutting a mouth. In any case, the habits of the thing called a bribe never changed however the era turned.
"I'll have to stack up some savvy, then."
—Heh, yes. I will seat you in first class, so learn well.
"Yeees."
That was the end of his immediate curiosity. Odysseus leaned against the Air Boat's railing and hugged the sniper rifle. He was tired.
"Kid."
Then all at once Odysseus realized he had dozed off. When he sluggishly opened his eyes, Captain Songha was snapping her fingers in front of him.
"Have we arrived?"
"At the quarters."
"Where are you going?"
"While they butcher the shark, I am going to sell those. Will you come along?"
Odysseus stirred his tired body loose and deliberated for an instant. Not much time was needed for an answer.
"I'll come."
"Good. Put the sniper rifle back in its place and follow me."
"Yes."
He had to replenish the arrows he had used, and he wanted to buy new things with the money from selling those. Odysseus suppressed all his weariness with that desire and followed after Captain Songha.
Since they would be traveling inside the city, it was good that he no longer had to wear the helmet and gas mask. Even if the price was enduring the smell of Captain Songha's cigarettes, even so.
"May I drive one too?"
"I do not hand the wheel to a brat without a license."
"Isn't it rarer to have a license in this trade?"
"Then I will amend it to a whelp without a single hour of driving experience."
Odysseus shrugged at Captain Songha's firm refusal. He had asked with the resolve of good-if-yes and oh-well-if-no from the start, so there was little disappointment.
Instead Odysseus' body went obediently to the back seat. It was, at that, the seat directly behind Captain Songha.
"I will escort you."
And above him Aran took flight. In place of fingers to drive an Air Bike, wings that could keep pace with one fluttered from her shoulder blades.
"Is Vice-Captain Aran coming too?"
"Because if all sorts of riffraff bastards latch on, things get bothersome."
"Ah, I see."
No wonder the faces sitting atop the spoils had changed.
Odysseus looked at those who had taken position atop the spoils in place of the original personnel, whose stamina must have been heavily spent. Aran and Flag of Team 2, Karna of Team 3, and several other combatants. Every one of them formidably skilled.
"Hey, kid. Heard you pulled something off."
"Come to our Team 3 next time. We'll treat you well."
"I'll think about it."
Red-haired Karna withdrew with a cackle, and Songha told him to hold on to her waist. The boy did not refuse her words. Holding the captain's waist, the boy set his feet on the folding footrests as well. VMM. His body was pulled lightly backward and then dragged forward again.
BONK. Odysseus' face bumped into Captain Songha's firm back.
"...This has a stronger kick than I expected."
"To make a remark like that and still try to take the wheel. Know that you will not go near a wheel for a year."
"Ah, that's not right."
Odysseus laid out at length how inefficient that judgment was, trying to persuade Songha. It did not particularly work, but that was of no consequence.
To begin with, if he had really wanted to do it he would have done it without notice. The bickering now was simply work toward maintaining, as long as possible, the child's shell he had ended up donning.
"Good grief. Did you receive a tongue in exchange for shedding the room-corner tribe? How can a tongue be this free?"
"I didn't say anything I shouldn't have; isn't that expression too harsh?"
"It is praise, praise."
"It doesn't much sound like it."
Pretending to grumble, he slowly turned his gaze to the surrounding scenery. It was a landscape he had already seen in the course of buying the bow earlier, yet it was fascinating still.
Katanathema roaming freely, unlike in the past; Kentauri, Satyri, and Harpyies mixed subtly in among them. And Harmons thriving between them under the guise of ordinariness.
And last, the slums' distinctive neon signs, garish enough to hurt the eyes, and alleys full of all manner of outdated trash.
"Something I think about now and then: it seems like a miracle that electricity reaches all the way out here."
"Of course it does. Think what the monthly rent is just to enjoy that one goddamn thing, electricity."
The occasional utility pole was plastered thick with advertisements and scrawls, and rats the size of forearms sometimes poked their heads out of filthy trash cans. And in the narrow alleys branching off the main road, junkies rolled about on the ground or prostitutes beckoned with fluttering hands, while fluorescent Graffiti asserted its presence on the ground and on building walls.
Truly a gaudy and vulgar era.
"It's also a question why they burn expensive electricity like that."
"For example?"
"Taken one by one the colors are pretty, but gathered together they're so intense they turn coarse instead."
Odysseus' soul was the sort more accustomed to full natural color, so it felt all the more so. However he thought about it, the vivid primary colors of neon signs and fluorescent Graffiti were not good to look at over long stretches.
"Well now, that's a remark like some young master's. Our kid, did your insides get swapped with some noble from an upper district?"
"......."
Flag, racing alongside, snickered. Since he had said nothing until now, Odysseus had assumed he could not hear the conversation, but apparently that was not so.
Struck by coincidence right at the heart of it, Odysseus' mouth closed.
"But kid, the people who live here aren't unaware of that. It's just that they know there's no tomorrow if they don't stand out even this way, so they give up refinement."
"...I suppose so."
"In the end, being able to act refined is power too."
Flag's laughter-tinged words, unlike their lightness, held a sage's insight.
Odysseus was quickly convinced. Being able to decide how one adorned oneself, and whether one might, was in the end a privilege as well. Just as in the past, when the prostitutes of Greece went about with their breasts bared while the noblewomen draped themselves in gold and jewels.
"The conversation ends here. We have arrived."
Just then Captain Songha lowered the Air Bike's speed. Those following in a row like beads of candy taking their brakes slowly came as a bonus.
"Everyone stand by. Yul, you... stick close behind me."
"Yeees."
Dismounting from the Air Bike, Songha wrenched open the steel door of a building deep in the alley. JINGLE! The bell attached to the door rang loudly and, right on cue, the neon sign at the entrance blinked on and off. MINI-MECHANIC. Quite an intuitive name.
"Fuck, who opens a door like—"
"Miniweaver. Raise the shutter."
"...Well, look who it is. It's Songha."
Standing close behind Songha, Odysseus examined the inside of the building. He caught a glimpse of a workshop full of every kind of tool and craft. Perhaps because it was not an arms dealer, it had a different flavor from the place where he had bought the bow.
"What are you here for today?"
"Selling and maintenance."
"How many?"
"Eleven."
"Eleven? Insane, which morons went and touched you?"
While he explored the interior, a woman in a sleeveless shirt with both arms replaced by machinery crossed them. Judging by Captain Songha calling her Miniweaver, that seemed to be her name.
"Megas! Open the shutter!"
"Which one?!"
"Both!"
"Yes'm!"
At Miniweaver's shout, another voice came from the wall beside the workshop. He had wondered why one wall was made of paneling that opened and shut; it seemed there were more people inside it.
CLANK- VZZZZ
Soon mechanical noise came from inside and outside the building. It was the sound of the workshop's side panel and the outer-wall shutter of the building right beside it opening.
"Put them in."
"Yes'm!"
"Yes, ma'am."
Odysseus stepped a pace away from the doorway and poked his head out toward the opened shutter. The space separated from the workshop by the paneling was quite wide and full of other vehicles. It seemed this side was a storage depot.
"I'll say it in advance: put out that cigarette before you come in."
"...How harsh."
"It's your intent to puff away in a workshop that's foul!"
"All right, all right, let's go in."
While the captain grumbled and stamped out her cigarette with her foot, the other members brought the Air Bikes inside through the opened outer wall. The space, roomy until then, grew packed in an instant.
GRAB
"Whoa."
As he stood watching, the captain, who was inside, caught his hood and pulled him in. Quick reflexes spared him a fall, but he could not avoid being dragged inside with his feet bouncing.
"Hah, you really did a proper job of it."
"Our downy-fluffed kid pulled something off."
Odysseus fixed the hood that had slightly choked his neck thanks to Captain Songha's pull.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Sis, you who own a workshop as splendid as the forge of the god Hephaistos. My name is Yul. I look forward to your favor from here on."
And then he waved at Miniweaver, and at that shameless display Songha's and Miniweaver's mouths opened slightly. The boy who had drawn out that astonishment merely smiled brightly, with an expression of knowing nothing at all.