Misaki stood on the gantry, spider limbs swaying like feathers in the breeze. She nodded to Kin, descended with Shinji, down onto the machine room floor, leaving him alone beneath those glittering, blood-red stares. The air crackled with expectation, fear, anger, bringing the taste of battery acid to the tip of his tongue, the contents of his stomach to the back of his throat. He tried to keep the tremors from his voice as he spoke.
“Brothers and sisters of the Lotus Guild. Brother Shinji bids me speak the truth here tonight. But instead I think I should speak of lies. The lie to which we were born, taught before we could crawl. The lie we swallowed and regurgitated and perpetuated every day. Blinded to others’ suffering behind eyes of red glass. Shielded from their agonies by suits of clockwork brass. The lie that skin is strong, and flesh is weak.”
Kin plucked at the metal he was encased in, fingertips ringing on the brass.
“I challenge you to look outside these walls and find weakness in the skinless of this city. In the men who stood tall as the shreddermen charged their lines, who fell burning from the sky as the Tora fleet ripped them to shreds, or sacrificed their lives to slow the Earthcrusher’s march. Who mourn their loved ones, even as they prepare to march south and face the darkness growing there by the moment. You show me weakness in that flesh. You show me strength in the ones who brought this nation to the edge of ruin.”
Uneasy murmurs floated in the darkness below, echoing on walls of stone.
“We have been lied to. By our leaders. By the Inquisition. By those who’d see the Endsinger rise, and all this world come to nothing. But more than that, we lied to ourselves. Placing the Guild above the people. The notion of Purity above the lives of innocent children. The lotus harvest above the blood of the gaijin. All of us are stained. I don’t know if that stain will ever wash away. I don’t know if they can ever forgive us for what we’ve done.
“But I know this: I know we have a chance to make a difference now. To take the Earthcrusher south with the Kitsune and the stormdancers, and send those demons back to the Hells. We owe it to the skinless. But more, we owe it to ourselves. We owe ourselves the truth: that we are no better than any outside these walls. That the suffering in Shima and Morcheba is a suffering of our creation. That we were wrong, and that we have to help make it right.
“You are my blood. We were raised to see each other as brothers and sisters. But we are also kin to the men and women outside these walls. And I ask you now, as your brother, to help me. To believe something good can come of all this, and fight to make it so.”
A hollow silence filled the machine room, the groan of engines and metal mouths the only sound. Finally, a lone voice rang out in the gloom, echoing from one corner to the next.
“And you will lead us?” Commander Rei cried. “You who betrayed us?”
“The First Bloom is dead!” cried another. “All we know is dead!”
A murmur spread amongst the throng; ripples on molten brass.
Shinji turned to the crowd, his voice rising above the whispers.
“Who would you have lead you?” he cried. “Who saved you? Who had eyes to see the truth, and the will to stand for what was right? Who laid the Earthcrusher low? Who saved you from madness? There is only one, and you know his name!” Shinji pointed aloft. “Kin-san!”
The words spread like fire on wet tinder—spitting and smoking at first, finally unfolding into bright flame. He heard them calling his name as they always did. As they always had. This cup before him, this choice he’d vowed never to choose. He didn’t want it—had never wanted it. He wanted them to stand on their own feet, speak with their own voices. They’d lived so long without faces or identities of their own, they couldn’t see the freedom just a breath away.
“Kin-san!” they called. “Kin-san!”
He looked down over the railing, destiny unfolding, life unraveling one thread at a time.
All of it. Again.
And again.
And again.
Hundreds of eyes, red as sunset, staring up at him with as much adoration as glass could muster. A sea of brass faces, stretching into dark corners, smooth and featureless. Walls of stone, dripping wet, the songs of engine and piston and gears blurring into a monotone hum, a broken-clock rhythm that seeded at the base of his skull and sent out roots to claw the backs of his eyes.
As if remembering the steps of some forgotten dance, he held his arms wide, fingertips spread, the lights of their eyes glinting on the edges of his skin. He stared at the gunmetal gray filigree embossed upon his fingertips, the cuffs of his gauntlets, the edges of his spaulders. The skin of rank, of privilege and authority. Everything they had promised, everything he had feared had come to pass. It was True.
This was Truth.
They called his name, the assembled Shatei, holding their hands aloft. And even as he drew breath to speak, the words rang in his head like a funeral song, and he felt whatever was left of his soul slipping up and away into the dark.
The multitude below fell silent. He looked down at the scarlet pinpricks in the dark, swaying and flickering like fireflies on a winter breeze. His voice was a fierce cry, hollow and metallic behind the brass covering his lips.
“Do not call me Kin. That is not my name.”