Lester Yong & Rosa Fontelera-Yong

CoESC Book 15-13.3: Return to Sender

It was just over three and a half paces between floors including the space in between. She started on the 99th floor and her target was the 417th. A bit more than a longstride away. Yuriko’s leap crossed nearly fifty paces up and as she kicked off against the wall, coupled with her Animakinesis pulling and pushing against the wall, she crossed the longstride in less than a minute.

Despite that, the response came faster than she expect...

CoESC Book 15-13.2: Return to Sender

Over the past week, Saki, Heron, and Gwendith found out the rat’s schedule and address. It turned out that Armando Malta was not in Dragon Fall City more than a few times a Season. He wasn’t based in this city after all. Instead, there was another city accessible through the Gate Consortium, but still within what was considered the ground floor of the Eternal Tower, called Chimeric Fields City. It could also be reached by travelling roughl...

CoESC Book 15-13.1: Return to Sender

Yuriko fought to contain an elated giggle, but on second thought, it wasn’t as if anyone would see her. Well, her incarnation body seated on a rock in the middle of a park might draw attention, but, oh well. She giggled. Then chuckled. Then roared in laughter.

Ambrosia.

Many, many problems could be solved with the potent stuff. She’d beaten herself up over losing several Ren of it to the Pure Lands once she knew how useful it...

CoESC Book 15-12.3: Quintessence

Atop a flat rock in Winderfield’s Central Park, Yuriko sat in a meditative pose. Her stay in Protectorate HQ lasted all of thirty minutes, most of it spent waiting. Her welcome had been colder than she expected for all the three heroes said. Though, perhaps, it was because of how busy the place was. Or maybe because something happened that necessitated a hurried response.

Either way, the receptionist gave her a thick bundle of papers....

CoESC Book 15-12.2: Quintessence

The Hidden Ruler sat on his comfortable throne, though it was just an ornate armchair with a high back covered in gilt and gemstones. The cushions were soft enough to ease the burden from his old bones, yet firm enough to give proper support. His days of being in the field were over, long enough that most of his opponents thought he had died or retired, but he knew he could still crush the heroes and villains of today. If he applied himself an...

CoESC Book 15-12.1: Quintessence

The man in the black suit was bald, heavily muscled, and, for some reason, wearing sunglasses indoors.

Hmmm, no, those weren’t ordinary sunglasses now that Yuriko extended her perception over them. They had electrical circuits and were powered by a miniature battery mounted on the temples and the rims. It made them look a bit bulky, however, and…were those speakers near the end pieces?

The man was taller than she was by about ...

CoESC Book 15-11.3: Weekend Busyness

The thought struck Yuriko as odd, and probably irrelevant. As she knew, Emma already had a fiance. She didn’t know the man personally, having already left the household by the time of the engagement. She heard that he was the founder of a technology company that was involved in the development of the Network, and he was based in the far western side of the continent, though she wasn’t certain if the region was part of the Republic or an al...

CoESC Book 15-11.2: Weekend Busyness

Earthsday morning and early afternoon was fairly mundane. Yuriko woke up early, ran Nessa around the neighbourhood while she practised her new Ennoia, then got ready to work at the Beans and Coffee Cafe. She did have to tell her boss that she could only work until four o’clock. The birthday party was at six in Winderfield, and she had to get into a cocktail dress that she found in her apartment.

It was a black and gold, off-shoulder a...

CoESC Book 15-11.1: Weekend Busyness

Yuriko heard sirens and the squeal of tyres burning on the road not a minute after she finished off the squigglies. She looked askance at Lightfoot, who shrugged and said, “Someone must have seen and reported the dismembered bodies on the road.” She shook her head, “Isn't it a bit cruel?”

Yuriko hummed. “Perhaps, but it was the best way to subdue them. I saw their body shifting capabilities were enough to close their wounds, an...

CoESC Book 15-10.3: From Beyond

The moment Yuriko felt her mind touch the Ennoia, both of her bodies stopped what they were doing and focused. Her true body was just about to take a hot shower but she turned off the showerhead, put her clothes back on, and walked up to the roof to train. With any other Ennoia, she would have meditation on her bed, but with the sword? That needed movement. Or so she thought, anyway.

When she opened the gate to enlightenment, and as she...

CoESC Book 15-10.2: From Beyond

‘What the eff?’ Weavemaster mumbled in his head as he watched the girl, Lilibeth, slice everything in half just by running through them. ‘Is that her real power?’

Weavemaster, Lance Hiller, had spent the entire afternoon observing the girl who he had seen by chance a week or so ago when he’d been out patrolling. That Lilibeth had been recommended by his friend, and erstwhile lover, Madeline to his place of work, had been a coi...

CoESC Book 15-10.1: From Beyond

Soundwave looked at his communicator and opened the message from an associate. He smoothly moved his car to the side of the road, flicking the turn signal just before he changed lanes.

“Really?” Lightfoot grumbled even as she pointedly looked at the side mirror that reflected the deserted street.

“What?” Soundwave blushed lightly. “Obey the traffic rules even if not doing so won’t be a problem. You never know, maybe so...

CoESC Book 15-9.3: Prior Engagements

A few longstrides into the river bank area east of Winderfield. This region of Neo Prism City was called Burmington and the southern part of it included both the Santana River as well as a coastline for the Endless Sea to the east. Past the southern tip was the Prism Bay that also abutten Neo Prism’s southeast area called Brookshield. About a quarter of Burmington’s area were docks, warehouses, and the low-income area which eventually turn...

CoESC Book 15-9.2: Prior Engagements

Yuriko carefully kept her expression neutral. She didn’t whip her head about, nor did she sweep everyone with her gaze. Her perception, if she pressed hard enough, could be felt, so she was also careful with how closely she scrutinised the people around her. It was the overcoat that moved by itself to mimic the feel of something pressing against it. And Yuriko couldn’t feel anything from it.

No threads of energy, no swirl of ambient...

CoESC Book 15-9.1: Prior Engagements

The someone inside her apartment was sitting on her bed. She wasn’t all that much taller than Scarlett. Yuriko’s current body, which was just a couple of inches shorter than her true body, had nine inches on the other woman.

She was clad in what Yuriko could only call, obfuscating clothes. Baggy trousers, dirty white sneakers, and an oversized hoodie that probably felt sweltering hot. It was less than a cycle until the Season of Fir...

CoESC Book 15-8.3: O R C

“You want me to go topless?” Yuriko asked with a little bit of incredulity, but really, Madeline had hinted at nude portraiture last week, so why was she surprised?

To her amusement, while she didn’t mind, it seemed that Lilibeth was a bit more modest than what her reputation indicated. While she was fine with having casual relations with Evan, she was in no way, shape or form, comfortable with exposing her body to others.

...

CoESC Book 15-8.2: O R C

The seal on the envelope was a weighing scale with a sheaf of wheat on one side and a bar of gold on the other. The wax seal was a perfect circle, though it had minuscule signs of being trimmed. Yuriko climbed to her floor and entered her room before she opened the invitation.

Inside was a delicate papyrus sheet with golden ink letters—not just coloured gold, but ink was real gold. Luxurious.

It read:

“Lilibeth Lawson, 2024-11-11 13:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post

CoESC Book 15-8.1: O R C

Over the weekend, while incarnation Yuriko was busy having fun setting hearts ablaze and dousing passions with cold water, her true body was cooling her heels in Junktown. She spent a couple of days in debauchery with Gwendith, Heron, or sometimes, both at the same time. After she sated her lusts, and after both of her lovers were happy and wrung out, she spent her time in meditation or training.

Connecting the Fifth Phase of Severing S...

CoESC Book 15-7.3: Daemonfyre

Scarlett woke up abruptly with her mouth tasting as if someone pissed in it, and her head as if a jackhammer was working to break it. She groaned and grumbled, “What the eff happened last night?”

The last thing she recalled was drinking a glass of the house special and boy did it taste divine. It went down smoothly, and afterwards…well, she woke up. The only sensation she remembered was the heat pervading her body and senses, and h...

CoESC Book 15-7.2: Daemonfyre

The space above the booths was thick with pinkish vapour. The people sitting in there were inhaling from a slender pot in the middle of the table—a hookah—and the imbibers were practically sprawled on their seats. A couple sitting in the back were casually petting each other, but they would not have been visible in the shadows.

In fact, in nearly every booth, two or three people were indulging themselves, though nobody had re...

CoESC Book 15-7.1: Daemonfyre

Michael leaned back and heaved a sigh of relief. He groped for a wet wipe to clean off his junk while his eyes didn’t leave the photo on his phone, as well as the dozen others on his personal computer screen. He asked his classmates to share their reference photos and he’d been staring at the minute variations ever since then. It had been a rough Watersday, Woodsday, and Goldsday, though it was only the afternoon of the latter.

CoESC Book 15-6.3: In the Line of Fire

“Lily, why are there naked pictures of you circulating in the Network?”

Yuriko stared at Scarlett for a long moment. Lilibeth’s friend had a stiff smile on her face while standing in front of her, hands on her hip. It was Goldsday midmorning, right before Walking for Fitness. The coach wasn’t here yet, and Yuriko had just arrived, but she saw Lilibeth’s friends clumped together next to a half wall. When she approached them, Sca...

CoESC Book 15-6.2: In the Line of Fire

On her roadhog, Yuriko circled around a large portion of Junktown, going from one borough to another. Her perception aura still caught a few bounty hunters lingering around. Her current reach, even with forty nine paces of it occupied by Damien’s memories, was at two hundred and forty one paces. She could triple that with her perception range but that would mean gaps in her perception. If she was looking specifically for something, that woul...

CoESC Book 15-6.1: In the Line of Fire

The return to Dragon Fall City took about half a day. It wasn’t because the roadhog she liberated from the gangers was slow; instead, there was a literal tide of bounty hunters after her. Yuriko should have cut her devices’ connection to REI-space, but she didn’t. Not because she forgot, but because she felt the need to…well, vent.

A longstride down the road from where she left the remains of the gangers, she encountered ...

CoESC Book 15-5.3: Societal Integration

Michael Stonereiz wasn’t sure, but he thought he was in love. His heart was racing, his lips were dry, and his palms were suddenly wet and clammy. His eyes were burning since he hadn’t blinked in a couple of minutes, afraid that what he was seeing was nothing more than a dream. Only when he registered the name Professor Mendez mentioned did he actually snap out of his daze.

“Lilibeth Lawson?” he muttered.

The burning drynes...

CoESC Book 15-5.2: Societal Integration

The earth parted easily against Yuriko’s Animakinesis, with the stones being ground to dust and tossed to her back. She only allowed her Radiant to consume part of the matter, allowing it to inflate her core and physique. Recovering from the incarnation split was going well, but it had only been a couple of days or so. She estimated she still needed a couple of weeks to recover her Anima reach, but she noticed the rate at which she expanded ...

CoESC Book 15-5.1: Societal Integration

Early the next morning, Yuriko pushed a button to ring a doorbell. It was in a single detached home a couple of blocks from her apartment, with an open yard filled with blooming flowers. She took a deep breath, appreciating the floral aroma but she could also detect the stench of canine feces in the odd corner or two. It was barely five-thirty in the morning, and the dawn was about an hour away, but this was the time noted in her dog-walking g...

CoESC Book 15-4.3: Creeping

‘Eff, eff, eff!’ Lightfoot thought furiously as she tried to catch the woman in the grey hoodie. She captured and expended momentum charges with every change in direction, barely keeping one long enough to push it higher before either swapping it out or absorbing it directly.

Soundwave, and most of the people in the Altered Crime Prevention Group, had a mistaken idea of what her power was. It wasn’t that she could absorb kinetic en...

CoESC Book 15-4.2: Creeping

The past couple of Cycles had been a strange and disquieting experience for Jeremiah King. Dozens of missing person reports, several mutilated bodies found, and nearly no clues on who did it. The Altered Humans were blamed by the fearmongers and the public, but as an Altered Human himself, he couldn’t really do anything to assuage the hostility. It wasn’t as if Altered Humans were a cohesive group. They were just normal humans after all: o...

CoESC Book 15-4.1: Creeping

Yuriko veered off the centre of the highway and slowed down on the shoulder. She’d done so quickly enough that she didn’t disturb any of the motorists, but she might have made a few traffic violations. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any traffic police or cameras in sight.

The whiff of daemonfyre lingered in the air. It was faint, barely more than a whisper, but it was potent and distinctive. It wasn’t exactly the same as th...