WHO ARE YOU?
Yukiko.
Intrigue overcame anger, wheeling closer, and in that moment it returned
her touch. A ghost of a whisper, the strength of a steel spring coiled behind it, waiting to be unleashed.
WHAT ARE YOU?
The wind rushed beneath them, the raging storm nothing but a summer breeze, electricity tingling on their flesh as the lightning flashed. And then they felt pain, a series of deep thuds into their belly, piercing, venomous. Sleep curled out along their veins, and rage rose to challenge it, a scream building in their throats and spilling forth to fill the skies.
“You got him!” Akihito cried, swinging the blinding light overhead. The creature roared again, a faint tremor of fatigue underscoring the anger.
Kasumi leaned over her sights, braced the net-thrower against her shoulder. “Now!” Masaru yelled.
A sharp burst of compressed air. Sixty feet of tightly bound lotus hemp
spilled out into the night, gossamer threads as strong as steel, a choir of locusts
buzzing in their ears. The line spooled out from beneath the weapon’s belly,
weighted strands engulfing the bellowing thunder tiger like a spider web. Masaru was already leaping down to the deck, sending the motorized winch spinning. Kasumi fired the second net-thrower, another volley of lines closing over
the beating wings, pressing them tight against flanks now heaving with fear,
fight giving way to flight.
But too late. Too late.
The beast plummeted from the sky, blacksleep pounding in its veins and
knocking it senseless. It dropped away below the starboard railing, falling
down into the dark. The Child lurched sideways, dragged down by the colossal
weight as the winch lines snapped taut, motors screaming in protest. Cloudwalkers cried out in panic as the remaining engine strained to recover, Yamagata pouring on the fuel and pressing down on the wheel with the aid of his
navigator. The storm battered the ship, as if Raijin himself were furious at their
attack on his offspring. Several crew disappeared over the side, dangling by
their lifelines over the whistling drop to the ground hundreds of feet below. But
stubbornly, gradually, the sky-ship righted itself, limping back onto an even
keel.
“Get him up on deck, he’ll tip us over!” Yamagata bellowed.
The winches groaned and began reeling in the weight, lines smoking, engines
spitting fumes into the rain. The cloudwalkers hauled their stricken brethren
back on deck and then pitched in to help with the thunder tiger, reaching down
with gaff hooks to catch hold of the nets. Gradually the shape came into view,
curled tight in strands of black swaddling, narrowed eyes staring at the men with
toxin-clouded hatred.
Sweating and heaving under the weight, the crew eventually employed the
Child’s motorized cargo crane to heft the beast onto the deck. Rain sluiced down
in waves, freezing cold and relentless. Lightning arced dangerously close, their
ears splitting with the peals of thunder.
It took twenty men to drag the beast into the cage. Masaru urged caution,
warning the crew to be careful with the tiger’s wings. Akihito was foremost
among them, muscles stretched and humming, joy plainly written on his face.
Kasumi stood to one side, needle-thrower in her hands, watching for any sign
of awakening. She radiated a quiet pride, lips pressed into a tight smile. When the beast was locked behind bars, the bedraggled men gathered
around and cheered, slapping each other’s backs and saluting the brave hunters
and their grim captain, still hanging onto the wheel of his wounded ship. Yamagata saluted back, managed a weary grin. Masaru beamed like a proud
father, eyes aglow, disbelief still etched plainly on his face.
They had hunted an arashitora. A beast of legend, only a dream. And they
had bested it.
Only Yukiko hung back from the throng, sorrow welling in her eyes. She
watched the men dance and caper around the beast, feeling for its mind amidst
the blacksleep haze. Only the barest whisper of it remained beneath a blanket
of thick sleep, a smoldering cinder, a spark of blinding rage that burned her
mind when she strayed too close.
Indignity. Disbelief. Fury.
KILL YOU.
She could feel it fighting off the poison, fueled by a purity of intent. A promise to itself, to her, which bore it up slowly out of the blackness on a wind of
hate and rage. Not yet.
Not yet. But soon.