Their mother interrogated them ruthlessly about the contest, demanding at every point that they think of something they could have done better or differently, until at last she reluctantly granted that they had indeed made the best choices they could, given their utter lack of relevant knowledge. But they'd need to take another extra service to make up for the midnight service they'd missed. They offered no dispute, and resolved to make it up with a morning service the next day. The few hours before the sunrise service, they spent in their wide shared bedding. After they went out to explore the city, Ayano and Rika spoke with the High Priestess.
"I'm worried about this new closeness of theirs," Ayano said. "It seems so wrong, so against our ways."
"I know," said their mother. "But never before have there been such children. Their closeness galls me, yet what can we do but endure it? They are mighty fighters, possibly because of this very closeness, hard as I find that to credit."
"The weak have no place with Aku," said Rika in her slow fashion. "But they are very strong. In body and in soul. I know, for I have fought them all, one at a time and as a group. There is nothing weak about them that I have seen. Danger to the Waves might make them hesitate, but I have heard from Ayami and others many tales of the Samurai, and for all the evil he does, that is one evil he does not commit: he does not threaten those who do not threaten him or serve our Lord."
The others considered her words. "We need not consider the Waves a point of weakness. If what Rika says is so, the Samurai will not think to use them against the Blessèd Daughters, and no lesser person would dare their retribution," the High Priestess finally said.
Though an outsider could never have told it, Ayano's frustration was clear to the High Priestess, and she entirely sympathized. The greater world was filled with temptations to sloth and weakness, and even with the Waves to guide them (surely Aku-sent), she feared greatly that the children would fall at least a little to them.
.oO()Oo.
At that very moment, the girls were facing temptations, spread out across the downtown. Aki had just discovered a truly amazing new place, filled with screens and lights and stranger things; across the city, Ari stood in awe at the entrance to a truly vast learning temple; Ashi for the first time had stopped to actually examine the strange pictures outside what she gathered to be be some sort of entertainment centre. Avi was at the gym, but she'd opted for a random scenario, and been taken entirely aback by the result; Adi stood before something she thought was a small shrine, though to whom she was unsure; Ami had found herself in a truly peculiar situation with two young people, and wasn't quite sure how; and Aji was caught up in something she had no idea how to deal with.
.oO()Oo.
Aki stepped into the noisy, dimly lit space, and slowly walked the irregular paths made by the beeping, glowing machines, her face the only part of her readily visible in the strange, multi-layered area. The images on the screens were odd, some understandable, as with the shambling creatures the players were pretending to shoot with pretend guns (pretending… still such a strange idea), others less so, as with the little yellow circles being moved over yellow dots. She found herself drawn to the machines that more resembled other objects, such as the two-wheeled vehicles.
At one end of the row of pretend vehicles, Aki watched a new player put small discs into one of the machines, and turned to a boy beside her, a gangly youth in ill-fitting clothes of grey and green. "Excuse me," she said.
He looked her over with an odd, twisted expression she couldn't identify but didn't like. "Oh, no need to excuse you, hot stuff. How can Jen-ro help yah?" he drawled in a curiously deep voice that somehow sounded fake.
She decided to ignore most of that, having no idea how to react to it. "I want to know how to get those discs," she said, carefully keeping her tone neutral. Battles, services, contests, dealing with the Waves, these were things she understood, but broader social interactions were still something of a mystery at best.
He smiled wide, too wide, baring too much of his teeth for her comfort. "You need tokens, li'l bit? No prob, I got plenny," and he rummaged in his pants. "Here y'are," he said as he held out a palmful of the discs.
She looked at this, reluctant to accept, though not sure why. "No. I want to know how to get them," she said firmly.
His grin faded, and he stuffed the discs back in his pants. "Figger it out!" he snapped, clearly furious. "You stuck-up little rubber slut," he added as he stalked off, absolutely radiating hostility.
Another youth, similar in appearance to the first, touched her shoulder lightly, and she spun away from him, reflexes verging on precognition and movement close to teleporting. He raised his hands. "Relax, I'd just like to show you where to get the tokens." She followed him to a small machine. "There's a couple on each level. Most games are one or two tokens, the fancy ones are four."
Aki nodded. "Thank you," and he departed with a nod. After consideration, Aki chose to purchase twelve tokens. It would be enough to start on, and that odd combat simulator looked interesting.
It wasn't. Yes, it responded to her movements. Yes, it was diverting watching her on-screen self mirror her motions. But it was so, so slow! Trying to keep down to speeds it could handle was like fighting in water, but without the mobility. She walked through the many virtual opponents, then turned to see the crowd that had gathered, starting at her impossible moves. She bowed to them. "Are there more responsive games here?"
.oO()Oo.
Ari walked slowly through the vast temple, the scent of paper filling her nose and easing her heart. Naturally, she first sought the books telling of Aku and his rule, finally settling in before a low table with a dozen tomes. Not long after, she departed, sick at heart.
.oO()Oo.
Ashi took long, careful looks at the strange images. It was easy enough to make out the subjects, but they were weirdly flat and distorted in a way she couldn't understand. Impelled by her insatiable curiosity, she paid the fee demanded and entered the dim entryway, then found a seat beyond the second set of doors, vanishing into the darkness without even realizing it.
She'd arrived at the perfect time, the curtain opening on a group of men in red and gold. "We ride, men who are happy and free!" they sang, and the girl was entranced. Amazing, how different a stage show was from television or Temple plays, and she watched act after act. And as she watched, an idea began to grow.
.oO()Oo.
Avi stood on a small rock in a seemingly endless sky, her short hair ruffled by ever-shifting winds as other rocks wheeled about hers. The task was simple enough: Touch the people on other rocks without being touched. But the wind and the relative motion of the rocks made it more difficult than it seemed, leaping from rock to rock, and more than once, only speed beyond speed kept her from being tagged. Yet in the end, it was not she who won, but a being, a man she thought, with large flaps of skin between arms and torso. He was simply more maneuverable than she was in the bizarre environment. And deep inside, a new feeling began to grow.
.oO()Oo.
Adi stood before a strange, large metal wall with a vast array of holes in it. Through many of the holes, there were odd objects, locks she seemed to recall. She started to examine them, one by one. Large and small, different metals, different colours and materials, all with names on them. Strange. Were they offerings of some sort? Not to Aku, He required burned offerings. Some imaginary deity, or perhaps the petitioners were ignorant of the proper rites and offerings? That seemed likely, since even Ayami knew of only one copy of the Book of Aku. How sad, that no others knew the truth of His love and His Law. Once the Last Battle was done, they'd have to do something about that.
.oO()Oo.
The young man and woman were very good-looking, Ami noticed as they walked up to her while she stood on a street corner, facing away from traffic. "Hey, gorgeous," the man said. "My lady and I couldn't help noticing you, and we'd like to invite you to join us in a little fun," and he gestured to the whimsically painted many-floored structure she'd been examining.
Ami wasn't sure what sort of fun was to be had in the building, but wanted to find out, so she nodded. "Please," she said, and the couple led her inside. The lobby was well-lit and colourful, and her companions seemed to be known to the staff. She found herself swept along down a light blue corridor and through a dark blue door. Her eyes widened in delight, it was like a tiny Temple, there was even an idol and an altar! Torches, walls and ceilings of rock, it was like coming home! "It's wonderful!" she exclaimed. "But… there are no Sons of Aku. Should he… never mind, you must be of another faith. Please," she said to the woman, "will you lead the service?"
The couple looked to each other and grinned. This girl was totally into it, she'd be so much fun. Priestess, assistant and sacrifice instead of their usual priest and sacrifice would be a neat twist, and the woman nodded. "Certainly," she said. "But first," and she and her fellow undressed. "This is how we dress for services."
Ami shook her head. "I cannot. I am one with the darkness, and not apart from it." That earned a puzzled look, but the woman shrugged and began the simple service. It was very unlike the ones she'd known, but it was easy enough to follow. Then they stood, and the woman gestured to the altar, asking her to lie down on it. She touched the surface, and found it soft. "Why would I do that?"
The woman suppressed a laugh. "So we can sacrifice you, of course!"
The strange intonation puzzled Ami but did not distract her. Her skin and guts turned cold, and her face hard. "Blasphemers! Heretics!" she yelled as she reduced the pair to groaning heaps with carefully controlled strikes to organs and nerve clusters, then went on to wreck the false temple, her anger growing by the moment as she destroyed the papier-mâché idol, the plywood altar, the foam rocks, then hissed at her would-be playmates, "Do not return," before storming out of the room and down the corridor. "Your false temple is destroyed," she said to the receptionist. "Do not rebuild it."
.oO()Oo.
Aji had no clear notion of how she'd managed to get herself into this bizarre situation, or what to do about it. The pounding beat and flashing, pulsing lights made her head ache, and the actions of the many others weren't really anything she knew. A dance, she could have joined, but this…she didn't know what it was with the men bouncing in place and waving their arms, the women swaying their heads, caressing their midriffs, and sometimes sweeping their hair back or forward, but it was nothing she knew. So she did her best to find a wall, weaving almost at random through the crowd, both sexes dressed in ways to make her darksuit seem nearly as concealing as the normal Temple robes. Yet she persisted, with the occasional collision and subsequent apology, until at last she found a wall, and began to edge along it. There had to be a door and that was she wanted more than anything at that point.
The door proved elusive; she came first to a table laden with food, and large containers of drinks, sheathed in ice. She filled a paper cup, repressing the desire to snarl at the wastefulness it represented, then tasted the contents. Alcoholic, but not excessively so, a bit less than wine, she judged. One small cup, she knew, would do nothing to dull her fighting skill, or to cloud her mind. And it eased her thirst. And were those… brownies! She helped herself to one, savouring the sweet, rich taste in small bites.
Two young men spotted the latex-coated lovely, and grinned. One cup of vodka tea, a hash brownie, and she was visibly wobbly. The pair approached her, smiling in what they thought an ingratiating manner. "Hey," one of them said over the pounding music. "Want to go somewhere quiet?" The girl nodded sharply, and they led her up a curved flight of stairs, and through a heavy door into a dimly lit room, one with long couches and a platform that looked liked a large, velvet covered mattress.
Once out of the main room, Aji steadied and looked around; the dim red lighting and black surfaces were wonderfully homey, but the furnishings seemed terribly overdone by contrast. The men were looking at her oddly, and she wondered if they planned to waste her. She hadn't entirely understood Sulka's explanation, but she'd managed to grasp that it involved being touched in ways that weren't injurious but still very unpleasant. "Thank you," she said once her ears stopped ringing. "What's this room for?"
They grinned to each other then her. "Well, right now it's a place for us to peel that latex off you and…" She put their heads together with a bang and stalked out while they were still reeling, hurried down the stairs, and edged along the wall until she found the exit and managed to make her way back to street level.
.oO()Oo.
It was late afternoon by the time the girls returned to the Temple, barely before sunset service, and though the prayers helped, Ari was still deeply troubled; most could not have told, but to the others her heartsick look was clear as writing. "Something troubles you," the High Priestess said.
Ari conceded that. "In the learning temple, I read histories, thinking to learn more about our Lord Father. They… High Priestess, they all show Aku as a horrible tyrant and despot!"
The High Priestess nodded to that. "That does not surprise me. Outside of our faith, most see only Aku's strict laws and harsh punishments; they do not see the great love that lies behind them." The sisters nodded to that. All the more reason to keep their faith private, at least until after the Last Battle.
"I went to a place with entertainments very different from our songs and dances," Ashi said, "And I had an inspiration. We will likely need to travel extensively to find the Samurai, and travel is costly. And we are simply too distinctive to hide from him, especially with our reputation from the Dome. So my thought is that we seven could travel as a troupe of entertainers, make it known to all we meet that we seek the Samurai. We can hide our true purpose behind the masks of simple entertainers and martial artists, show our skills openly, and when the time is right, strike with surprise."
The High Priestess considered her daughter's words, then looked to Sister Ayami. "Is this a sound thought?"
Ayami considered the question. "Yes. Life on the road is hard, but no harder than life in our prior temple. They can earn enough to live on, and no assassin would ever actively invite the Samurai to attend a performance, or publish an itinerary. And summer is the best time to be an entertainer on tour, so they'll still be able to learn the basics of wilderness survival. We're very close to Night's Ebb, and that's the time to start that training."
Akane smiled at that. "I get the lessons too?" she asked, almost pleaded, and hugged her mother's arm at the confirmation. Then the sunset service, and after the lay Sisters departed, the rest fell to planning out acts.