“Hake?” Kest’s voice reverberated through the blackness at deafening volume. “Are you here?”

  Wincing, I pressed my forehead to the lid of the Crucible Casket.

  When I opened my eyes again, I knelt on the kitchenette tile with my forehead pressed to the floor. A quick assessment of my Spirit sea showed a tightly formed new spiral, and a quick glance with Ki-sight showed no Spirit leaking out of the Casket.

  I popped to my feet.

  Kest was on the living room side of the counter. She grinned when she saw me and held out her prosthetic hand, palm up, fingers closed.

  “Ready for the unveiling?”

  “Sure.” I leaned my elbows on the countertop. “Of what?”

  “Hold this.” Her metal hand opened, and she gave me a gray lump of slag.

  Then she pulled out a cowboy revolver and pointed it at my fist.

  I took a couple steps back. “I’ve already been shot once tonight, so…”

  The lace in her eyes thinned with concern.

  “Somebody shot you? Again?”

  The way she said it made it sound like I ran into bullets all the time. This was only like the third time it had happened since I’d started working for Emperor Takeshi.

  “I mean, not bad,” I said defensively. “It was just a graze.”

  “Whatever.” She waved her flesh and bone hand. “It wouldn’t have hit you at all if you’d had this. Watch.”

  Before I could protest, Kest pulled the trigger.

  Without Ki-enhanced senses, I wouldn’t have been able to tell that there was time between the bang of the shot and Dead Reckoning’s freak out. It happened so fast that they sounded simultaneous to the naked ear.

  Instinctively, I threw out my empty hand and yelled, “Moldering bones!”

  But the bullet was already gone, splattering in a boiling lump of metal onto the tile. A drip of it splashed my bare instep and sizzled. The healing script tattoo jumped in, blazing almost as hot as the burn it was trying to repair.

  I looked at Kest. “Did you just slag that bullet?”

  “Molten Metal construct!” She bounced up on her toes, practically dancing with excitement. “The dross I gave you is imbued with it. Great, right? And it’s better than a bulletproof vest because it protects your whole body. Any metal projectile that comes within two inches of your skin will melt. Not as easy to do as it sounds.”

  “That doesn’t sound easy at all,” I said, but she wasn’t listening.

  “It took forever to stop the construct from just melting any metal that touched the subject, but I finally reconfigured it so it would react to metals moving over a certain speed. In theory, it could slag a knife if the attacker stabbed you fast enough.”

  Unless that attacker was a Nameless Ylef wielding Glass Spirit knives.

  “It won’t stop a composite bullet,” she was saying, “but those are still pretty rare. I haven’t heard of anyone using them since the Bailiff.”

  “What about ray gun blasts?” I asked, thinking of the henchmen at the club.

  “Plasma ammo?” Kest tapped her chin with one cinnabar finger, a faraway look in her lacy eyes. “An iteration that blocked any object with a reading of over a certain temperature. That would deal with Plasma and maybe solid projectiles that caused enough friction with the air. But you’d have to make the apparatus out of orichalcum to stop Plasma. Cost-prohibitive.”

  Tell me about it, I thought.

  “And Ice Spirit attacks would slip past without triggering the temperature defense. No, speed is the key. Hmm…”

  On her HUD, she pulled up a schematic drawing and started typing.

  The takeout container marked spicy w/fish cakes caught my eye.

  “Are you hungry?” I shoved the noodles Kest’s way.

  “Huh? Oh. No, I got some teppanyaki from the vendor outside the fabrication shop.”

  I snorted. “Metalheads.”

  “Are great? Yeah, I know.”

  “More like predictable.”

  “Oh yeah?” Kest finished inputting whatever she was working on. “Did you predict this, too, O all-knowing Death cultivator?”

  A pair of Coffee Dranks appeared in her metal hand, called up from the space ring she’d integrated into the prosthetic’s design. Beads of condensation dripped off the cans.

  “Still cold.” Her eye lace squirmed guiltily as she sat them on the counter. “I may have realized a block away from your apartment that this was the third time this week I flaked on our plans. Luckily, Exploding Star Grocery is open all night. Forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.” I shrugged. “Besides, it’s fun having a Metal-genius for a girlfriend. It makes all the smart guys super jealous and confused about what I’m blackmailing you with.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  She smiled and rolled her eyes. “You goof.”

  I put her ramen in the fridge cabinet, and we cracked open our Coffee Dranks.

  It was way too late for caffeine—or too early, I thought, seeing the time on my Winchester—but that was the way the business went. Ever since that first time back on Van Diemann when I almost made Kest hate me forever, the unspoken rule was that no matter which one of us messed up, we were officially back on good terms by the bottom of the can.

  Anyway, I could sleep when I was dead again.

  “So,” I said, nodding to the projector wall behind her. “Do you want to play something or watch a show or…?”

  “Or do you want to resonant cultivate?” Kest asked.

  I made a face. “Gross. Don’t girls ever think about anything but making out?”

  That got her laughing. She put both hands on the counter and boosted herself up so she could lean across and kiss me.

  “You’re such a dork,” she said.

  ***

  “You know what’s weird?” Kest angled her HUD screen so I could see it better. “Sometimes advancing to Ten and choosing a specialization can affect who you’re compatible with, even to the point where your cultivation doesn’t resonate anymore. But I think if we were to graph our increases over the past couple months, they would show that Malleable Metal and Cursed Death made us even more compatible.”

  “Graphs, right.”

  We were on the couch, me sitting up in the corner of the sectional, her leaning back against me with her legs stretched out across the cushions. I read her stats over her shoulder.

  Name: Iye Skal Irakest

  Spirit: Malleable Metal

  Height: 5'4"

  Weight: 109 lbs

  Age: 18.4 Ryuan years (Current Location), 15 Universal years

  Blood Type: AB

  Credits: 279,999.5

  Spirit Reserve: 652,478

  “My reserve is up almost forty thousand from earlier,” she said. “What about yours?”

  I wiggled my HUD arm out from between her and the couch.

  And whistled. “I’m catching up. Mine just rolled over to six hundred thousand total.”

  The odometer metaphor probably didn’t make any sense in this universe, but Kest got the gist. And considering that she’d seen my stats back when I’d only had slightly more Spirit than a rock, she knew how impressive the jump was.

  If I’d been thinking, I would’ve held my Winchester where she couldn’t see it, but Kest was too busy swiping around on her sleek new SignalSong to notice the severely depleted credits in my USL account.

  “There,” she said, giving her screen a final tap.

  A graph popped up.

  “I should’ve known you weren’t joking.”

  “These are our first resonant cultivation sessions.” She pointed to the smaller bars at the beginning of the x-axis. “We were getting maybe a couple thousand Spirit each time. Steady increase, steady increase, then boom! After we got back from Sarca, major leap.”

  I scanned the dates, looking for the gap she wasn’t mentioning.

  There. A month of nothing while Kest spied on the Technols and Warcry and I cleared skelebuddies from ruins on the opposite side of Sarca, followed by two more weeks of nothing after we got back from Sarca. Two weeks where I’d been careful not to say or do anything that made it sound like I wanted anything from her and where Kest hadn’t mentioned being mad at me or blaming me for making Rali leave.

  I must’ve been quiet for too long, because she craned her neck to look at me.

  “What?”

  To avoid telling her the truth, I asked, “Did you write down every time we made out?”

  Black lace faded into her cheeks. The Selken version of a blush.

  “It’s important to track your progress! Technically, these figures represent development on two fronts: our relationship and our kishotenketsu. It would’ve been irresponsible just to ignore it.”

  “That’s so Metal.”

  “You didn’t keep track at all, did you?”

  “I took mental notes.”

  “Hake, if you can’t identify major indicators of success, then how can you isolate what’s working and repeat it?”

  “Listen, while we’re on the subject of how great we are together—” I shifted her a little so I could pull the Crucible Casket out from between us. “—I’ve got something I want to ask you.”

  A fist pounded on the apartment door like a battering ram.

  Instantly, my paranoia kicked into overdrive—hit squads, revenge-thirsty family members, rival Dragons… So far, the only attacks I’d had to deal with in my apartment had been sneak attacks by assassins from rival gangs, but that didn’t mean a walk in the front door attack could never happen.

  I pushed Kest off me and jumped up. Covering my arms with my Death Metal shields, I beelined for the little hallway that led to the door.

  “Get behind the counter,” I told her over my shoulder.

  “Yeah right. I’m the immortal one.” Kest’s chain gauntlet appeared on her flesh hand, beading up from her skin and rolling together. A silvery halo of Malleable Metal Spirit glowed in the air around her as she readied an attack. “Anyway, didn’t you say you’d already been shot once tonight?”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m going to use you as a bullet catcher.”

  Outside, the fist battered the door again.

  Kest’s chain weight shot out and wrapped around my arm, jerking me to a stop.

  “Not me,” she said. “Here.”

  With her cinnabar hand, she pressed the lump of metal she’d imbued with that slagging construct to the Crucible Casket’s chain. The lump turned liquid and crawled down the links to form little vampire-fang spikes on the chain to either side of the Casket.

  Double Goth vibes.

  “Ultimate bulletproof vest, remember?” she said.

  “You really are a genius.”

  Another round of hammering.

  “Coming!” I yelled.

  In the entry hallway, I pushed Dead Reckoning out wider until I could see how many life points showed up on the other side of the door.

  One. Burning Hatred.

  “Let us in, grav!”

  My shoulders dropped about six inches from up around my ears. I let go of Death Metal and started Reclaiming the Dead.

  “Just a sec,” I told him.

  It took more than a sec to undo all those chains and locks.

  When I opened the door, Warcry shoved past me. He had on a suit, which was weird because as a ghost rank within the Dragons, he wasn’t required to wear one and usually didn’t. His orangey-brown hair was gelled, and his normal five o’clock shadow had been scraped back to one or two o’clock.

  Unlike me, Warcry acted comfortable in that get-up. Considering that his family was mondo-rich and he’d been the Intergalactic Fighting League’s Under-18 Champion before he’d gotten sentenced to the prison planet, he was probably used to wearing fancy clothes.

  I followed him into the living room. “Why are you so dressed up?”

  “Just got back from the CPA judiciary outpost on Shinotochi-Arba.” Warcry sauntered into the living room, arms up like he was walking into a cheering stadium. “The Dragons paid off the last of me sentence. You’re looking at a clean man, not a speck on his criminal record.”

  Kest cocked her eyebrow at him. “I thought you said you would never pay off your sentence. Something about wanting to disgrace your mom?”

  “This’s worse, isn’t it, Stumpy,” he said, smirking. “Now everybody in the galaxy knows one of the Big Five bought off Ma Thompson’s wayward little scag. It’ll be all over the hyperweb before sunup.”

  My HUD buzzed. At the same time, Kest and Warcry’s HUDs went off.

  The notification read 1 new message from Dragon Soulhome.

  I deleted it without opening. When the message came from the Eight-Legged Dragon HQ, it always said the same thing.

  “Emperor must’ve heard I was back,” Warcry muttered, glaring down at his HUD screen. “You lot just get an immediate summons, too?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “I have to change.” Kest let her chain gauntlet seep back into her skin and called an outfit with no welding burns or oil stains out of the space ring. “You should too, Hake. You know how mad the Emperor was the last time you showed up in street clothes.”

  “Ugh. Fine.” I dropped the Crucible Casket back inside the collar of my t-shirt.

  Asking my girlfriend to marry me was going to have to wait.

  e