Chapter 10: EAS's Criteria

“...We will be landing in approximately fifteen minutes. Please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts...”

The announcement aboard the private plane woke Paper Hero. He had managed to get some sleep during the flight. The business-class cabin he and Tea Immortal occupied had been specially designed for HL's senior personnel, with only a handful of spacious, comfortable seats set well apart. The tables in front of them were large enough to spread out a game of Catan.

Paper Hero glanced across the aisle at Tea Immortal, who was propping his chin on one hand and tapping at a laptop keyboard with the other. He looked rather listless.

“If I were you, I'd have used these past few hours to adjust to the time difference,” Paper Hero said.

Tea Immortal did not turn, still staring wearily at the screen. “Checking email counts as rest for me. I need very little sleep, and when I'm awake, I find it hard to leave my brain idle. Without some light mental activity like this, all sorts of tangled, complicated thoughts come pouring out the moment I close my eyes.”

“So that's your ability? A highly developed brain that never gets tired?” Paper Hero asked.

“No, my ability is controlling ‘wind,’” Tea Immortal replied. He saw no reason to keep it secret. “As for my brain, take ordinary people, for example. Some children are born with IQs above 160, the so-called ‘child prodigies.’ Every few years, one or two such children are born among several million people. Across the entire species, that probability isn't particularly low. I suppose I'm what you'd call a ‘child prodigy’ among mutants, who also happens to be an ability user.”

“That's certainly a first for me. If you weren't a prince, that organization called EAS would probably have dragged you into a laboratory long ago,” Paper Hero said.

Tea Immortal took no offense and smiled. “I know you've had contact with Time Attendant, which is how you know about EAS. But their criteria for evaluating ability users are very different from the usual ones. Ability users like you and me would probably both fall under ‘Molecular Influence.’ Our research value is only moderate.”

“Oh?” Paper Hero's interest was piqued. “Then what sort would be considered highly valuable for research?”

“I happen to have an example right here. Charles Rohl, known as Gunsmith.” Tea Immortal scrolled up and soon found a flagged email in his inbox. “He used to be an outlaw too, though there's no record of him ever being arrested. A few years ago, he was pardoned and joined the Royal Research Society in Tiandu. To put it plainly, someone made contact with him and ‘brought him into the fold.’

“Last November, he went to the Southern Cross Commandery for a conference. On the return trip, he vanished off the face of the earth, along with the plane he was aboard. The four-person team sent to search for him never returned either...” Something suddenly flashed through Tea Immortal's mind, fleeting yet perfectly vivid.

“What's wrong?” Paper Hero asked when he fell silent.

Tea Immortal paused. “Nothing. Sorry, something just occurred to me.” He resumed. “Time Attendant came to see me personally at headquarters in Tiandu, then sent me a private email asking me to help investigate this man's whereabouts. But I was pursuing a very cunning criminal in Australia at the time and couldn't get away. Then in December there was...never mind. In any case, Gunsmith is exactly the sort EAS takes a great interest in. His ability, ‘Alchemy,’ is classified as ‘Order Disruption.’”

“How is that different from the ‘Molecular Influence’ you mentioned?” Paper Hero asked.

Tea Immortal said, “For example, you can control paper in all its forms. This is actually a cooperative relationship between molecules. You're made of molecules, and so is paper. Since you and I belong to this category, you should understand that controlling a substance doesn't mean ‘ordering’ it around. It's a form of communication that lets the substance move as you wish, responding freely to your control. If you insist on ‘commanding’ a substance to move, you could strain until your nose bleeds and still do no more than bend a spoon.

“Our kind of ability is called Molecular Influence. Research into it has a very long history. Single-piece pure-alloy forming technology, for instance, is closely related to it. After more than a hundred years of research, further technological breakthroughs will probably be difficult to achieve.”

Tea Immortal gathered his thoughts before continuing. “Now take Gunsmith. By the usual criteria, he'd be a Normal-rank ability user. But his Alchemy...put it this way, turning stone to gold or earth to jade is well within his capabilities. He can turn any substance A into any substance B. Let your imagination run wild. A pair of sneakers could become a jar of peanut butter.”

“Wouldn't that make him a god?” Paper Hero asked.

Tea Immortal replied, “In theory...he could turn the Earth into a hair clip, or a ball of yarn. In practice, though his ability has no obvious limits, he himself does. I've heard it takes him about half an hour to transform something the size of a basketball. And the greater the difference in physical properties between substance A and substance B, the more time and effort it takes.”

“I see...so his ability isn't really useful in a fight, which makes him Normal rank,” Paper Hero said.

“Yes, but you can imagine its research value. Conservation laws, symmetry...his ability can transcend these established principles of physics. We merely ‘influence’ matter, while he fundamentally ‘changes’ it. The difference is so enormous...it's enough to give me a headache.”

Paper Hero changed tack. “Then which category does Blood Owl belong to?”

“I should be asking you that,” Tea Immortal said. “As far as the organization knows, you're the only person who's survived a direct confrontation with him.”

Paper Hero fell silent. He had no idea what Blood Owl's ability was. What had stayed with him, above all, was the sheer terror. That brutal, bloodthirsty fiend had killed everyone in his path through fighting alone. In theory, fighters who relied entirely on their physical capabilities ought to be at the greatest disadvantage in combat, but Blood Owl had completely shattered that belief for Paper Hero. The reasoning was simple. Suppose someone spent ages summoning a paper beast to claw a mountain down, then someone else came along and smashed an even taller mountain apart with one punch. It would be obvious who was stronger.

Seeing that he had nothing to say, Tea Immortal stopped trying to guess his thoughts and returned to the idea that had just flashed through his own mind. That ability user whose entire body was black had mentioned “the knowledge in the minds of your four colleagues.” Those words meant he had killed four HL members. Plenty of people in HL knew my royal background and my name, but anyone who knew I was a Fierce-rank ability user must have been fairly powerful or held a fairly high position. Very few personnel have gone missing for unknown reasons in the past six months, and the four sent to investigate in South America disappeared together, with no bodies found. (Note: Darkwater's absorption does not completely destroy a body. John DeSoto's body was thrown into the river, Ikeda Nozomi's was disposed of by Darkwater, and the four HL members left in the rainforest were later disposed of by cannibals. Tea Immortal somewhat misunderstands what Darkwater means by “devouring.”) The timing fits too...so that fellow most likely “devoured” them...

Then could Gunsmith's disappearance also be connected to this black ability user? Following that connection, could he be linked to Tian Yi as well?

But I'd also received intelligence that someone higher up wanted Gunsmith arrested in secret. Perhaps the disappearance of those four people and the flight that vanished before them were all just a cover story for the outside world. Has Gunsmith already fallen into the hands of authorities acting without my knowledge, with layer upon layer of deception laid down simply to deny EAS a chance to intervene...?

...

While the two men aboard the private plane were each preoccupied with their own unanswered questions, the scene shifted to a bookshop on a small street in Chicago.

The shop door swung open, and a young man with a fair, clean-cut face walked in.

The owner, sprawled in an armchair, took his feet off the desk and, for once, offered an opening line that sounded reasonably human. “Mr. Gu, what a pleasure.”

Gu Wen pulled the iron plate from his shoulder bag and flung it onto the tables pushed together in the middle of the room. They were almost covered in books, and the plate knocked several stacks right over. His smile was somewhere between a sneer and a wicked grin. “Pay me back, you bastard!”