What is thrown, falls. As long as it has momentum, it won’t fall. Even if that momentum comes from being blown on the wind or drawn in by a magnet.
The definition of a planet as a magnet was one given to Earth, a planet from a past era, but it still applies to Fat Beach Ball. Powerful magnetic field lines link its north and south poles, enveloping FBB in a much larger magnetic shell sharing its ten-hour rotation period. Its magnetism exerts an unseen influence on other magnetic bodies. Since FBB spins, its magnetic field sweeps through space like a broom. If one could scatter iron filings around its million-kilometer span to illustrate, one would see them form lines that distort as they’re dragged around by the rotation.
Incidentally, electricity is generated by moving a magnet near a wire. Since Fleming’s discovery back on Earth, that has been found to also be true of electric wires and magnets throughout the galaxy, even those on astronomical scales. A rotating planet with an existing magnetic field will generate electricity in wires around it. Planets with wires forming a complete circuit around them are rare; more often than not, electricity is generated in the surrounding plasma.
In the most basic possible terms, plasma is an ionized gaseous object—or putting it another way, a vaporized electric wire. Despite existing as gas, it is possible for plasma to conduct electricity for the reason that the positive and negative charges are able to float around separately. The reason for that differs from place to place, so each form of plasma requires its own explanation, but around planets it is often due to two causes: first, bombardment by solar flares, and second, bombardment by galactic cosmic rays.
FBB has multiple icy moons. When Mother Beach Ball’s—MBB’s—solar wind strikes the surface of those moons, it ejects hydrogen and other substances as a plasma. While the plasma is not dense enough to be visible with the naked eye, it has a faint glow.
The plasma, drifting away into space from the small, low-gravity moons, finds itself completely free to depart for anywhere—only to have several forces start pulling on it from all directions. It feels the momentum from its satellite of origin, the pull of FBB’s strong gravity, the pressure of the solar wind, and the tug of the planet’s magnetic field lines sweeping through it.
Plasma streaming off the satellites will hang around at first, forming a donut-shaped cloud around FBB. Perhaps part of the reason is because the plasma is still too young to know what to make of itself out in the universe, but it’s also fair to say it's a matter of inertia. What is thrown, falls. If it has momentum, it won’t fall. Things that originate from satellites orbit alongside them. Even if they wanted to fall into FBB, they wouldn’t be able to do so.
However, that doesn’t consider the effects of the magnetic field. FBB’s field lines aggressively sweep up the plasma that obediently orbits the planet. Their incredibly fast ten-hour rotational period does not care in the slightest about the ionized gas molecules’ orbital periods. Since plasma is a vaporized electric wire, its molecules follow the magnetic field lines as Fleming instructed them to. Gaining momentum is only possible when there’s force, and that force happens to be in the passing magnetic line’s direction of travel.
With increased orbital velocity, the gas ascends. The ascending gas is pushed away by the solar wind, but it’s still difficult to set off for deep space along that route—FBB’s gravity is still holding onto it. That can’t be ignored because gravity influences how events play out, even if it isn't the most noteworthy force. The plasma wonders where it’s trying to go, but it could only be the place where the various forces balance in the planet's shadow.
FBB is a gigantic planet, but MBB is even more gigantic, so it casts a shadow that eventually tapers to a point. Plasma accumulates near the sharp tip of that shadow. Through various means, something like a thin cloud forms at a distance of about one hundred times the planet’s diameter. Ionized molecules anxiously gather there.
Rather, even at that distance, they’re still trapped by FBB’s magnetic field. Humans may describe it as a gathering space for plasma, but to the plasma, it’s more like a place it was herded and corralled. The magnetic field continues to tug on it, and with nowhere else to go, it grows agitated. Plasma doesn’t actually express emotion, but physically, it can express temperature.
The eddy current that forms in the gas giant’s shadow accumulates a large amount of heat. Heat can’t keep increasing forever, as humans and kettles throughout the universe both well know. In places where kettles don’t exist, it can also be observed in pressure cookers, rocket engines, nuclear reactors, stars, and so on, but the point is that if heat can’t disperse, the material will reach a limit and overflow. The same is true of the plasma within the planet’s shadow. To begin with, it is surrounded by vacuum, so it can’t expel heat very easily. It does what it can, but radiation is its only option for doing so. As the volume of hot plasma expands, radiating away heat becomes less and less efficient.
Now, despite holding immense heat, the events up to this point are what normally happens while a star is maintaining its composure. What if the star’s golden light greatly increased in power?
Even if one wanted to believe that couldn’t possibly happen, the truth is that it’s a frequent occurrence—a solar flare event. Flares are an emission of excess heat trapped within the star’s own twisted magnetic fields, and as a result, they cause a huge incident when they reach FBB’s vicinity as gusts of solar wind hundreds of times more powerful than usual.
Solar wind might be called “wind”, but in truth, it’s also plasma. What happens when the plasma gathered in FBB’s shadow nears its limit and then gets slammed with a flood of even more energetic plasma?
A shock wave. Like punching an overstretched balloon of scalding water, it sprays open in a way that’s hard to describe in a way other than “what else did you expect?” Boiling, high-energy plasma begins to cascade towards FBB like a waterfall. The Circs’ polar fishers refer to this phenomenon as Kageuchi hammering. When it occurs, plasma streams towards the planet at more than twenty times the speed of a pillar boat. Calling it an eruption might be more accurate, as the plasma has been clocked as moving between 400 and 800 kilometers per second.
Plasma cascades in, but it can’t fall directly onto FBB. The flip side of a planet’s magnetic field weakening with the square of the distance is that it becomes much, much stronger the closer you get. Plasma pours through the increasingly strong field lines, which shove it in the direction of the planet’s rotation. As it regains orbital momentum, it is pushed back up and reaccumulates, even though it wants to descend. (Speaking of which: the Circs’ base ships navigate beneath the zone where plasma is redirected back upwards so they aren’t bathing in the stuff.) However, the plasma has another option available: surge in around the poles. It couldn’t do this earlier, but the frenzied crowd makes it possible.
At the poles, the rotational speed is zero—after all, it is the intersection of the rotation axis and the surface. For that reason, moving towards the south and north poles, where the magnetic force lines are parallel to the rotational axis, means that the sideways pull disappears. In reality, that pull more or less stops mattering well away from the poles, since the magnetic lines are essentially perpendicular to the surface in the polar circles above 80° latitude.
Once the wave of plasma crests above that latitude, it comes crashing in. When that huge balloon in the sky pops, the high-energy particles it contained splash into the polar atmosphere, creating an extremely vivid, turbulent dance of light. The radiant energy of the aurora, released by that long, arduous process, normally amounts to one trillion, five hundred billion watts. Fat Beach Ball’s rotation serves as the generator.
It’s strange, but even now the Circs call falling through the atmosphere reentry, not entry. That is seemingly the case for much of humanity’s domain. It is a vestige of the old Anno Domini era, when humans still departed from and returned to a planet’s surface.
5 A.M., Day 113, Circ Calendar Year 304 — 100 km above the 1 atm level. High above a sea of clouds lit by the faint glow of dawn a pillar boat switched from suborbital to aerodynamic flight modes, having finished the reentry that swaddled it in high temperature flames. A soothing, artificial chime echoed through its control pits.
“Huh?!”
The chime was calm so as not to frighten humans, but the icon that flashed on the VUI was an orange that bordered on red. No sooner had Terra and Diode recognized the words “charge alert” did the biofluid gel turn a milky white. The avatar of the doctor woman suddenly appeared in their eyes.
“Barium sulfate has been added to the gravity buffer gel. You have either been shot with a charged particle cannon or exposed to a packet of high-energy cosmic plasma. Prompt, drastic measures have been taken, so please take action to escape—”
She was saying that the pilots were in a risky situation, not the boat. If the boat was in danger, the avatar wouldn’t have been capable of popping in to solve the problem just like that. While Terra tried in desperation to do something about it, another sound—this time high-pitched and compassionless—pierced through the biofluid gel. Diode, in the front pit, shouted before Terra could.
“It’s a fire damage warning for the hull! Terra-san, the boat’s hull is burning!”
“Huh, isn’t that because we just finished reentry proper?”
“Wrong place! It’s up top! It’s the top burning, not the belly!”
The pillar boat had already morphed from the apollo shape used for reentry into a plain spindle shape for high-speed cruising. Terra brought up a seventh VUI panel which displayed a blueprint of the boat’s three sides. Caution symbols filled the top view.
She raised her voice. “It’s totally charred. Rather, it’s like we’ve been cooking in an oven, or basking, maybe.”
“What’s basking?”
“It’s a behavior of animals called turtles, and it’s said they heat up the plate armor on their backs before a fight to increase their defensive power, and–”
“Okay, enough with the animal talk. It’s more important that we figure out what caused those burns.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
After zooming into the damaged area and checking the burn depth, the two nodded at one another.
“It’s a particle burn.”
“Yeah, and they’re coming from directly above us.”
At the moment, they were caught in a downpour of plasma from the skies. They had gotten a sense for it in the short time before reentry started, but they were in the thick of it from the moment they arrived on site.
Terra noticed one other thing. “The hull’s burnt, but it’s different from the reentry burn. It’s like only the surface was burnt. Maybe there’s not much heat transfer, despite the high energy?”
“Only the surface? So, it was just a light sear?:
“Yeah, it looks delicious. Crispy and well-done!”
“Erm... listen, don’t you think you’re taking this a little too lightly?”
Diode turned back to look at her. Terra raised an open hand to apologize.
“I just felt that we should really try to avoid panicking.”
“Uh-huh...”
“Lemme think. Countermeasures, countermeasures, uhhhh...” Her eyes knit in concentration. “A purée!”
“What?”
“I’ll coat us with purée!”
“What.”
“Sorry, I’m going to do that now! I’ll explain in a bit!”
Decompression. This time it was extraordinarily difficult, because she was changing one of the boat’s functions while keeping the boat’s shape unchanged.
She opened a slit along the right flank of the flying boat. The entire back rolled towards the thin seam running from bow to stern. Eating the surface and digesting it inside the boat was the retrieval process for damaged sections of hull. She opened another slit along the left flank, which renewed the surface by spitting out new clay that would harden on the outside.
She had to balance the rate that parts were chewed up on the starboard side and spit out on the port side, and furthermore, make absolutely sure that it didn’t interfere with either their cruising or fishing. The idea she had in mind was a coating of purée. It preserved the shape of the clay tube while keeping the outer layer rolling back into the ship before it hardened.
“Done!”
“Done...?” As always, Diode turned once to test the steering and thrust. “There doesn’t seem to be–” Just as she began to speak, something caught her attention. “No, it’s not done yet—you’re still decomping, aren’t you?”
“Yep!”
“The outer layer is constantly sliding. So, is this design something that isn’t one-and-done, but something that you’re constantly altering?”
“Correct!”
“Is that even possible?”
When Diode got excited and looked back, Terra could see her cheerful face, thanks to the removal of barium sulfate from the gel—which meant that Terra’s tactic of constantly recoating the top in a layer of fresh clay was indeed blocking the charged particles pouring down on them from space. She did her best to smile and confirm it was working as intended.
“Yes. Just did, that’s the result.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this before, though! More importantly, that’s a huge burden, isn’t it?!”
“Don’t worry. Leave that to me and focus on fishing, please!” With that reprimand, Terra closed her eyes. It took an immense amount of focus to keep the outside of a solid surface sliding.
“Then... I guess it’s fine if I leave the rest to you.” Diode faced forward and began searching for their prey by flying in an S-shaped curve, which inclined the boat left and right.
Terra suddenly became aware of the increased difficulty of her job. A pillar boat is never in level flight, not even for a second. It turns as they search for prey, climbs and descends in pursuit, and yaws when they spread their net. In other words, “top” constantly changed. It could be the back, the bow, the stern, the belly.
“Ah, look!”
Diode’s excellent long-distance vision soon set her eyes several hundred kilometers away, and she decisively pitched the seventeen-thousand-tonne mass into one of her skillfully performed aileron rolls. To Terra’s eyes, the horizon flipped; to her mind, the boat did. It was a potent assault on her semi-circular canals, which were attempting to reconcile the two in order to get the rolling layer on top.
“Mmm.”
“Terra-san, look, I set a marker! ...Terra-san?”
“R-right! Set a marker... Right? Right away.”
“No, I already set one!”
They descended into the blue and purple darkness, and floating in one section of that vast, dark sea was the pale white marker Diode set. Terra looked for it, her face just as pale—she was getting familiar with an experience she had never once dealt with up to that point.
So this is what decompression sickness feels like.
“Those are nishikigoi, aren’t they?”
Steeling herself, Terra looked over at the marker. Something was there. Off to their left-front, 85 kilometers away according to the marker, faint flashes ascended at high speed through a ravine between clouds that was so deep it threw off her sense of longitudinal distance. One, two, three—it wasn’t a school, but it seemed to be something.
“Yep—probably.”
“I’ll approach them, so prepare the net, Terra-san! One that we can toss up from below and trawl with!”
Diode’s strained voice sounded like a distant echo. Terra had heard those words somewhere before. If I’m not mistaken, it was back during our discussion when we went fishing for the first time. After the girl said that, Terra personally suggested deploying a purse seine.
And Diode’s response to that had been, “You sure you’re not an idiot?”
For some reason, she suddenly started to cry. Back then, the two were as distant as a mountain peak and the ocean floor. Now they were trusted partners tackling a troublesome besshu together. Terra never imagined she would be this lucky.
However, she couldn’t summon even half the skill she used back then.
“Trawl. Got it.”
The pillar boat flew like an arrow. Golden jets extended from the stern. That was where the net needed to hang. Huh? How did this go again? The ship’s nuclear combustion exhaust flared out in a full 45-degree cone behind them. What kind of magic was she supposed to use to deploy a dragnet now, without it getting caught inside and burning to a crisp?
Terra couldn’t tell. Her brain was being burnt to a crisp just maintaining the topside protection while Diode pitched forward and rocked the boat left and right. Suddenly the bow turned skywards and the two were pushed down.
“Approaching vector... alright, intersected. Do you see it, Terra-san? We’ll cross paths in 85 seconds. For the time being I’m on a direct intercept since we don’t know how our prey moves, but will that work with the net?”
The pillar boat climbed rapidly, aiming for the point the nishikigoi were expected to rise to. The plan seemed to be to catch one there. Terra was usually the one to shout “Our strategy!” and propose something, and it was the sort of thing they finished before they even started to fish. This time, it was Diode putting all the effort in.
Terra was giving everything she could, too, but this time her focus was entirely on dealing with the plasma particles piercing the boat’s nose. If she had to describe her difficulties, it was that recycling the entire hull from the tip of the spindle down the length of the boat was an immensely complex job. It wasn’t a matter of simply sliding the surface layer away. The boat’s entire frame was composed of the same material, and at no point was it allowed to change shape. Doing so would change its aerodynamics, and at this high speed, instantly send them into a tailspin.
“Terra-san! Where’s the net?!”
Net?
“Ah?! R-right, net!”
She hastily unraveled protuberances at back, placed where they wouldn’t interfere with the engines, into a pouch. In other words, all of the vertical and horizontal stabilizer fins became a fuzzy mess. The pillar boat suddenly decelerated in response.
“Terra-sa–”
Nng! Terra heard an incredibly pained groan and began worrying. Her tongue! She definitely just bit it.
In reality, though, what had happened was that a sixty-meter-long, twelve-thousand tonne creature with a large, wide-open mouth passed by and slammed into their flank. Thanks to that, the pillar boat was sent falling as it rolled upside down and began tumbling, trawling nothing in the process. The loosened net spread into a parachute, which luckily obstructed the particle stream and gave the two, who had fainted, a moment to recover without the boat exploding.
“Excuse me, but Terra-san? Kanna-san? What are you two doing?” Far above, while catching a single fish with a trawl on a magnificent direct ascent, Meika sent a transmission out of curiosity. “You appear to have performed a complex decomping, but is it possible you have not hardened the boat’s outboard wiring? Normally, one would resist a plasma shower with magnetic shielding, no...?”
Meika’s voice was distorted and hard to understand. For the first time that night, Terra caught sight of the beautiful aurora painting the polar night, where a pillar boat was cut through the skies as it soared from besshu to besshu.
It is because of magnetism that the plasma shower arrives at the poles to begin with. If not for that, it would rain down on the equatorial belts. It is also what allows a boat surrounded by a magnetic field to repel it. Terra hadn’t been able to think of that most essential of essential points because her preparation had been terrible, even before she ended up with decompression sickness.
Long ago, the term ‘outboard wiring’ had a different meaning, but at a gas giant in AD (Astro Duodenum) 8830, it referred to an electric wire coiled around pillar boats and other spacecraft to repel high-energy plasma. The circuit requires only a single decomp and removes the need to consider the boat’s orientation. The doctor’s worried avatar could calmed by an invisible force field repelling the particles.
The scene that played out moments after dawn was an example of the shamed awkwardness that accompanied the sporadic improvements to their boat afterwards.
“Um, Die-san, I really didn’t want to say it, but about the attack just now and the one before that–”
“Just go ahead and say it. I agree my steering is total garbage—I made a mistake with our trajectory and missed our catch.”
“No, you’re wrong! Well, you’re not wrong, but you’re wrong! You got blinded, didn’t you? The trajectory you took totally put MBB in your face the whole time, right?”
“That’s true, but a twister claiming they lost sight of their target because the star is in their eyes is an excuse a literal fossil would give. It wouldn’t pass muster even seven thousand years ago. If that’s what happened, then a damn idiot junkie only has herself to blame for not taking appropriate anti-glare measures.”
“It’s our first time in airspace where our star is glued to the horizon, so don’t you think that mistake was inevitable?! You’re not bad, Die-san! It’s the latitude that’s bad! Or–”
“Or?”
“Or it’s the decomper—so me—who’s bad. Right... an anti-glare fishfinder. So that’s what she meant by an anti-glare fishfinder. It was my responsibility to create the conditions that allow us to see our surroundings during a white night, you know?”
“Could you quit blaming yourself like that again? I heard Meika too, and I didn’t make the connection either!”
“I’m sorry, I’ll make one right now! I’ll stretch a shade and polarizing filter around us!”
Another scene, which played out moments after finally getting visibility squared away:
“Um, Die-san, sorry to bring this up again, but about the attack just now and the one before that–”
“Just go ahead and say it. I agree missing the ascending nishikigoi because we weren’t putting out enough power to have the speed for the intended climb was my mistake.”
“But we don’t know why you weren’t able to put out enough power, right? And it wasn’t just a throttling mistake, was it?”
“If I wasn’t putting out enough power, I could have compensated by building speed well before we started to climb, or looked around for a thermal. There were a multitude of things a truant like me could have done, but I’m flying like a larval twister who just put her ass in a pit for the first time yesterday.”
“That might be true, but looking at the numbers here, the problem is that our eight reactor cores are playing hooky, too! The nuclear fusion engines aren’t fully igniting. Why has it been so difficult to get them burning...?”
“There are three conditions for a nuclear reactor to burn, aren’t there? Temperature, pressure, and particle count, right?”
“Right. There aren’t any temperature or pressure abnormalities, and yet, some of the particle counts are strangely low... ah, is that also because of the plasma shower?”
“You strengthened the outboard circuit, though.”
“I did, but it’s different for the nozzles. The nuclear fusion exhaust spewing out meant that I couldn’t fully strengthen it back there! So, they’re still getting rained on by charged particles. The plasma’s falling down and... ah, that has to be it. Before it can start combusting, the fuel is getting hit by the plasma shower and de-densifying. It’s like trying to heat a bath with firewood that’s filled with termite holes.”
“What’s a termite—wait, that’s more animal talk, isn’t it? Save it for later!”
“Okay, I’ll tell you about termites some other time. Anyway, what we need now is a protective shield for the combustion chamber. I'll make one quickly—it really is just like Meika-san said.”
“Soooo if it’s how it’s going to be... Then the real problem was failing to study properly, as a Gendō twister, in the traditional Gendō art of polar fishing. Just like a certain woman named Diode!”
The conditions of flight at the poles were beyond anything they could have imagined before. As they flew on, they understood that Meika had given them genuine advice, a sickening amount of it. The reality that they had no choice but to accept that advice and follow in her footsteps, even if reluctantly, tormented the two.
Speaking of Meika and Chūya...
A body emerged from the abyss, twisting as it raced up the majestic fluttering glow of the aurora, mouth open as if to drink from the torrent pouring down on it; this was the besshu known as the nishikigoi. The means by which it propelled itself skyward couldn’t be stated with certainty, but it was clear that it somehow took advantage of the high-energy plasma shower.
Their vessel moved with precision, a contrast to the other vessel which both fumbled its trajectory and failed to accelerate.
“Embark we will // on our eighth pursuit!
Shadow the trail // of the whirling fish!”
“Steady she goes
Shadowing trail // of the whirling
fish!”
A call was loudly chanted by Meika, the decomper, and Chūya, the twister, chanted the response. They were in Gendō-style deck dress; Meika in a long-sleeved kimono and hair styled in a knot atop her head, Chūya in a crested kimono and hakama, hair in a ponytail down his back. They were intently watching a single besshu circle in the depths below, and on noticing it abruptly shoot off in a straight line, precisely matched its speed by accelerating towards the horizon in the same direction.
The nishikigoi climbed. It wasn’t a purely vertical ascent, to be precise, but it ascended upstream at a steep angle. As long as they knew the inclination of the fish's ascent—close to 80°—it was perfectly possible to chase it from behind. The two were doing exactly that, but they weren’t deploying a net right away.
“Proceed we will // with our eighth pursuit!
Cross ‘neath the tail // of the rising fish!”
“Steady she goes
Crossing ‘neath tail // of the
rising fish!”
Chūya chanted in response to the second call.The pillar boat passed just under the besshu. Their vectors intersected, and an instant before crossing–
“Couple we will // with our eighth pursuit!
Rub on the gut // of the soaring fish!”
“Steady she goes
Rubbing the gut // of the
soaring fish!”
As Chūya responded to the third chant, the pillar boat rolled upwards. It was a similar maneuver to the ancient Immelmann turn, except that the boat didn’t return to level flight. As they ascended near-vertically, they closed distance with the fish’s ventral section—the besshu’s gut. The pursuing boat rolled again and decelerated superbly to fly in tandem with the besshu. The fish made no effort to flee whatsoever.
Nishikigoi couldn’t see their bellies. That was the case for a number of besshu, but this particular besshu was the type with a field of vision that monitored what was above it. It was trivial to approach from below.
“Conclude we will // end our eighth pursuit!
Casting a throw // to the starbound fish!”
“Steady she goes
Cast out your throw //to the
starbound fish!”
The fourth response came. The previous three responses used the present participle, but the conclusion was in the imperative form. The reason for this structure was that the first three chants were the twister’s job to follow, but the conclusion was the decomper’s. That was the point where both standard fishing and ancient Gendō custom overlapped—once the catch was underway, the woman was under the orders of the man commanding the ship.
“Our chase concludes // with my one-and-only cast
Ensnaring the face // of the starbound fish!”
The net finally spread. However, they weren’t engulfing their prey from behind with a dragnet. The net ran along the length of the bow and used a rotating crossarm to swing in front of the besshu to forcefully snag the fish.
The nishikigoi is a forward swimmer, or rather, it is a besshu that specializes in darting. When a net made contact, the fish reacted to the stimulation with a burst of explosive power, launching the already supersonic fish to even greater velocities.
That was what made it a fools’ errand to cast a net from behind—it had to block the fish from the front. The instructions for the meticulous process of setting that up, developed long ago, were encoded in a chant to be performed and followed by a pair. Even then, the catch still was a toss-up. By that point, they had reached an altitude of over one hundred thousand meters and were only halfway through the lower end of the aurora. The space around them glowed with particles. A young girl, only three months out of her student days, swung her net through the downpour of plasma.
As Meika raised her voice, she sprung the crossbar and unfurled the net. A whispy white half-circle spread open and brushed the chin of the strange, slack-jawed fish. In an instant, the besshu coiled and sprang with full force, smacking their boat with its absurdly powerful tail fin.
Meika’s vessel immediately cartwheeled, air resistance shearing the net and crossarm from the boat as it careened away at an angle from the fish. Their prey disappeared as it whirled off into the distance.With the failure, two white points went their separate ways against the backdrop of stars and a curtain of light.
“Meika-sama!”
“There is no need to worry!” The girl promptly replied to the Zuijin, who was worriedly shouting for his master in a pillar boat that had fallen seventy thousand meters. “That fish was simply a touch defiant. Next time I will make the catch!”
Meika rubbed her face, which had been knocked against the control pit’s wall, and quickly pulled up the VUI. She bent the boat back into shape through decompression and looked up to a region of the sky above. In it, several spectator vessels and two accompanying pillar boats were on patrol.
“I can properly perform what I was taught by Mokuren and Rokujō, and what Kanna-san and Terra-san are doing makes no sense at all. Of course, that means I will win this! Let us embark // on a ninth pursuit!”
“As you wish. Let us embark // on a ninth pursuit,” Chūya replied, swinging the bow towards their next quarry.
The method the two were using wasn’t new, nor was it captivating, beautiful, or open to maneuvers that would leave one another speechless. It was an old method, passed down by a clan that believed something only needed to be taught once to be replicated again and again. But like a plant that had put down roots, it was a method certain to eventually bear fruit.