Lester Yong & Rosa Fontelera-Yong

CoESC Book 15-23.3: The Broken Road

Yuriko bent low, her nose almost touching the ground. She pushed off to the side with her fingers, snapped an Edge at Monument, then clicked her tongue when all it did was create a two-inch wide gash, half an inch deep, on his ankle. The Monument wasn’t wearing anything, but it wasn’t as if he was naked either. His body was covered in obsidian armour, shaped by his power, though it barely blocked her Edges.

It was his flesh that was ...

CoESC Book 15-23.2: The Broken Road

The Living Monument’s form was larger than Yuriko remembered, but she didn’t miss the glint of gold around his neck. A collar similar to the Crimson Apes though it was thicker. The gigantic daemon’s grin was strained, and his grip over his quarterstaff tight. 

“How long has it been?” Yuriko asked idly while she condensed her Anima and left only her perception outside. 

“Years? Decades,” the Living Monument g...

CoESC Book 15-23.1: The Broken Road

Crimson Ape daemons. 

Yuriko froze for half a moment as she hadn’t expected something from her past would surface now. Well, not that she had much of a past. It’s just been over five years since her Atavism Ritual, and not only was she in another country millions of leagues away, but she’d also gained two bodies. So when she encountered something that should have been as equally distant from Astoria as the Great Continent was ...

CoESC Book 15-22.3: Searching for an Escape

The star-filled mists and the bridge were both familiar to Yuriko even if the current iteration was not identical to what she experienced before. Even more to the point, she was here with her physical body, and though there was the possibility of this being an Anima projection, that chance was minuscule considering her mastery of her own body and Anima. 

An hour of making sure her current companions didn’t die while letting them e...

CoESC Book 15-22.2: Searching for an Escape

Michael Stonereiz was just a hair away from freaking completely out. Not only had black ink marred his skin, formed ugly pictures across his forearm, but he and the other members of the cast were stuck in some Divines forsaken reflection of the venue. Those sick bastards might have known about this, and from the way the cameras were still rolling, they were banking on getting evidence. Oh, not the cameras the staff held, but the ones they were...

CoESC Book 15-22.1: Searching for an Escape

It was easy for Yuriko’s Anima to hook into the fabric of reality, tough as it was. Nearly half a year of living in Dragon Fall City had made some of her reflexes sloppy when it came to flying, but she adjusted quickly. She’d been able to fly even before she Actualised, though not as well as she could have now that she was in Transformation. Her incarnation body had less Anima to work with but even so, it was more than enough to carry her ...

CoESC Book 15-21.3: Hotel de Lune

Yuriko carried Michael and Victor along as she ran back towards the main building. 

Flick! Swish! Thunk!

While beheading the flesh golems hadn’t worked, it seemed that destroying their brain stems did. Invisible Edge was too fine to do the job properly, as ironic as that seemed to her, but she adapted by striking the same place twice using different angles. That effectively enlarged the cut and made it nearly imposs...

CoESC Book 15-21.2: Hotel de Lune

Hotel de Lune sprawled over an entire block, roughly two hundred paces to a side, and was seven storeys high, or at least, the main building was. The compound had five distinct buildings, each one at least three storeys high. The one that was right of the main one was the parking complex, though considering the nearly empty fields around the hotel, Yuriko wondered if that was even necessary. 

They walked towards the reception lobby,...

CoESC Book 15-21.1: Hotel de Lune

Reaching the abandoned hotel involved another one-and-a-half-hour bus ride from Jiran Station. The roads, for the first half hour, were well paved but afterwards, the roads got progressively worse. Narrower and spotted with potholes, the bus’s travel speed slowed to half of what it had been by the time they reached the sleepy town of Lockweed. The hotel was on the outskirts, roughly a couple of longstrides along the road that led into the to...

CoESC Book 15-20.3: Winding Road

The ARtrack train left the station, and it would take half the day to reach the country’s middle states. Yuriko wasn’t sure where they were going, and Lilibeth’s grasp of geography was sadly lacking. She hadn’t had the time to read up on it either, having thought that she would stay around the eastern seaboard. At the moment, she and the other cast members, along with the silent cameramen, and the show’s producer-slash-director, were...

CoESC Book 15-20.2: Winding Road

Just a bit more than three weeks had passed since the revelation of Yuriko’s child. She had not been able to peek into her circumstances, but the steady feedback assured her of the child’s continued survival. Confiding in her lovers had yielded some odd results. Gwendith didn’t seem to care, though there was an underlying jealous tone there somewhere. Heron…well…

“I wanted to give you a child,” he muttered right after she s...

CoESC Book 15-20.1: Winding Road

It took a bit longer to reach the rally point. It was Outpost Sigma attached to a resource biome, and all three ships had to dodge around pursuers for a couple of days before they shook them off. That they even managed to recover the Cyclops was a miracle in itself but the warden crew had angled the ship away from Omega and used what limited thrust they had to get the journey started. Yuriko’s Rascal and the Darlington Cross came back to pic...

CoESC Book 15-19.3: Conquest

Yuriko’s Nitsuda Civillian, an Aralian coupe car that cost her nearly twenty thousand Torries, pulled into the basement garage of her new apartment. After a few false starts, a couple of lost deposits, and a deeper review of the neighbourhood, Scarlett convinced Yuriko that a twenty-minute drive to school was acceptable if it meant a similar time spent driving to Winderfield. 

Oakmount Estates was her new place of residence. It wa...

CoESC Book 15-19.2: Conquest

It wasn’t as if the situation at Outpost Omega was a surprise. No, it was very much expected. The presence of the Hallowed Echoes hinted at it, though raiders were common. But Mazoga, and to a lesser extent Gujo, revealed that the Sylvanite battlegroup had been hired by another faction, Hartdel Defiant. Yuriko wasn’t sure of the details save for the fact that they were in an expansionist phase lately.

She wondered if they were aiming...

CoESC Book 15-19.1: Conquest

Yuriko gave Evan Andrews a flat look, then said, “What do you want?” 

The far edge of the boardwalk had a few stalls, but she had wandered over to a relatively empty garden that had some stone benches, decorative foliage, and small statues. There was a fountain with a statue of a naked woman holding a jar aloft, where the water should have poured out from, but the settings were off. 

As for Evan…Yuriko kept herself ...

CoESC Book 15-18.3: Oathsworn

“What is this about?” Yuriko asked, her tone neutral. From the sheaf of papers in front of them, she had an inkling of what it was. Darrel Schutter, her talent agent, introduced the two other men seated around the table. 

“First, this is Ignatio White, Pixel Fairy’s CEO.”

Ignatio was a slender older man with pink and gold hair, who was certainly wearing some kind of mascara, and probably some lip gloss. He was clad i...

CoESC Book 15-18.2: Oathsworn

Yuriko hummed in pleasure as her arms absorbed the impact of Mazoga’s blows. She was stronger than Yuriko expected, even more than she could expect from the woman’s size. She also couldn’t detect the woman’s Anima strength, though her instincts, and the reality of the situation, told her that they were weaker than she was, or even her Squires. 

But, as proven by the woman’s punch, she was stronger than expected, and Yuriko...

CoESC Book 15-18.1: Oathsworn

Captain Mazoga of Brokil gritted her teeth. Her tusks nearly pierced her upper lip if not for the fact that her practice had long strengthened her skin beyond the level they could be breached by careless application of force. Then again, Sylvanites’ upper lips grew so that there was a slight dent above the tusks, to avoid the very thing that was happening now—as long as one didn’t grind teeth anyway. 

Everything went wrong, it...

CoESC Book 15-17.3: Void Ocean

The first order of business was to repel the boarders. Once they were contained, Yuriko could follow the path back to one of the ships and take over.  

The incursion cylinders struck the outer hull and plasma torches along the end fired up to cut into the Darlington Cross. The passengers spilt into the hallways. Well, squeezed into them, actually. The enemies were large, bigger than Heron by at least ten inches. And because of ...

CoESC Book 15-17.2: Void Ocean

Spreading her Anima perception showed her the truth her eyes couldn’t quite believe. It was emptiness. Yuriko shook her head, muttering to herself. The Void, as she and Damien knew it, was the padding between the layers of reality. It was thickest between the Primordial Chaos and the combined realms of Thought, Ideals, and Desires, and contained a sort of negative energy, if it could be called that, that sapped away other energies. It wasn�...

CoESC Book 15-17.1: Void Ocean

The commercial shouldn’t have aired for another couple of weeks yet, Yuriko thought. But the odd thing was that the next day, Sunsday, as she browsed things on the Network, the ad popped out. She blinked at it in surprise. It was the racier version where she barely had anything on and the lightly tinted Mira-hi splashed across her face and bosom. 

“Miracle Hydration. For those hot and sizzling days.”

Hearing her own voic...

CoESC Book 15-16.3: Season's End

The next few days to the end of the Season passed quickly. The morning after the trial, while still cuddling in bed, Yuriko, Heron, and Gwendith continued their talk. 

“My libido in my incarnation body is just as high as my true body’s,” Yuriko admitted. “It’s been a struggle to contain it with my Will.”

“Poor baby,” Gwendith cooed. “You know we don’t really mind.” 

“I do,” Heron grumbled, ...

CoESC Book 15-16.2: Season's End

Ilvarra continuing to flirt with Heron amused Yuriko to no end. It wasn’t that she was jealous. She was possessive, that much was true. She wouldn’t even mind if Heron slept with the woman—

Wait…did she mind? 

The thought made her examine her emotions. Did she love Heron? Did she love Gwendith? It was hard to say with the Mien clouding everything in an aura of lust and pleasure. They’ve devoted themselves to her, so ...

CoESC Book 15-16.1: Season's End

Yuriko’s first reaction to losing her footing was to latch onto the fabric of reality with her Anima. That failed, as it often did, with the hooks sliding off the slicked canvas. A moment of annoyance, and a streak of bullheadedness, had her redouble her efforts. The points on the hooks sharpened and she put actual force, backed by Intent, into piercing the canvas. 

The points stabbed through and she secured herself in midair. It ...

CoESC Book 15-15.3: Talent Hire

Dinner turned out to be burritos. Yuriko glared down at the oft unsatisfactory meal found mostly through the vending machines around every corner of the mega buildings. This one, in contrast to the XXL burritos, was just about half the size. It was wrapped with a shiny foil, aluminium if she remembered the kind of metal, and was piping hot. A point in its favour already. The vending machine variety was warm straight out of the machine, not hot...

CoESC Book 15-15.2: Talent Hire

Darrel Schutter was a middle-aged man who looked like he averaged four hours of sleep at night. Yuriko and Scarlett entered the meeting room not quite sure what to expect, though an enthusiastic greeting, akin to one meeting a close friend after too long a parting had not been it.

“Miss Lawson! Welcome! Welcome! I have to say I’ve been looking forward to this meeting over the past couple of days.” Darrel stood up and circled aroun...

CoESC Book 15-15.1: Talent Hire

Yuriko’s modelling session for Madeline didn’t involve nudity this time. The clothes she wore were her regular school uniform though the art class professor directed her to wear it more…alluringly?

For one thing, her shirt was unbuttoned enough to show her collarbones, the tie was loosened so that it looked more like a pendant than an article to close the collar. Her left sleeve was rolled up to her elbow, while the right one was ...

CoESC Book 15-14.3: Mercenary

Yuriko didn't know what to expect.

The test site for the Millennium State’s mercenary qualifications was not in the city centre, nor was it the squat building at the very periphery of the city, halfway from the outskirts to the perimeter mountain range. It was a compound hidden within the folds of small hills, ravines, and ridges, and larger than it seemed considering that most of it was probably underground.

Yuriko arrived with...

CoESC Book 15-14.2: Mercenary

“Those Lawbringers blocked access to my Ennoia,” Yuriko said as she and her companions settled into the living room of the apartment they appropriated in Junktown. It was different from the one they used yesterday, knowing that punitive action would be taken after she killed the annoying rat. They moved several blocks out of the way and Saki layered the space with surveillance equipment and runescript enchantments.

“That’s troub...

CoESC Book 15-14.1: Mercenary

Yuriko felt the Ancient struggle to get up and for a moment, she eased up on the pressure she exerted. She looked at him for a long moment. This was the first time she met another Ancient, one that wasn’t her Squire, and she wondered why his Anima was so weak. He was in Actualisation, she could tell, but his strength was not on par with Gwendith or Heron. Judging on looks alone, he was at least twice their age. Not that he looked in his fort...