"Not a single brick of this place was part of the original. Surface, that's all this is. Feh," Across the distance, she folded her arms, a bittersweet smile on her face, though her body trembled with a silent rage. Her voice shook as she spoke. "I wouldn't expect you to recognize the difference. After all, you were only with us for a little over a year."
Even though he left the Cranes all those years ago, the enmity between the Five School still ran deep. The monk elder was planted here. They'd seized everything from them, from the very land, their holy orders, the eyes of the people... He'd spent so long apart from this world, rediscovering the remnants with Balon, healing the mend with Zaofan, treading the dangerous mysteries anchored within Sasheem, the dream had become more real to him than the two thousand years of conflict. As Ochazuke knelt over the fissure, at last he understood the depths of her grief, for nothing remained of the Tiger School but memories.
"'Palace of the Tiger King,' nothing more than a hollowed out mausoleum for a world that no longer exists. Do you think the smarmy fucks who want to sell postcards and trinkets know anything about what happened here? About what any of this meant?"
Kenshiko rubbed the welt on her jawline, licking her lips as she moved forward, her pace hardly broken. Drawing up his right hand, Ochazuke's thoughts raced as she moved forward. Left. Right. Where would the attack come from?
"This is what happens if you don't fight, Zosui," Her right leg darted forward, arced up, and smashed over his left shoulder from above. "You'll lose everything!"
In blinding pain, Ochazuke roared as the world crumbled below him, and the Tiger dragged him forward into the abyss. Together they he passed into the darkness, grappling in that long fall through the concrete, all the while the sting of her fury pressed into him. Seizing upon the pain that she threaded through him with each pointed strike, the orchestration of agony disrupt his rhythm, and this close, there were no angle to cut off for counter attack. Everytime his guard expanded, she contracted and struck; every time he tensed she drew him off-line and created a new opening. Hard bone gnashed against his flesh. He lift his legs to guard and it was as if her limbs passed through his. He knew the course he must take, but so battered, his numb body would not respond, his body trapped in a silent prison of delirium where the passage of time fell seconds removed.
Everything came to an abrupt halt when they came crashing down on the steel walkway. Ochazuke coughed up blood from the knee buried in his abdomen. and at last Kenshiko threw him off. Entrenched in the cratered remains of what were once metal stairs, he buckled to his side, hacking clumsily as she looked over the place. Inlaid over the natural cave system far below the Royal Palace, endless rows of blinking consoles fed by steel cables lay under the working hands of freshly panicked technicians. Frightful screams sounded over the treading workboots, and a claxon rang throughout the makeshift facility. More than the chaos they had rained from above, it was apparent that they were not supposed to be here, and they scattered like discovered insects A stray glance at what the data carried over the cables showed why.
Arrayed over on the walls were two parallel images of the world. The continents lined on one slowly fed the other in a minute delay as they shift slowly. A screen of weather patterns gliding over the major regions of the world, fed into crystal clarity. A multitude of monitors littered the place, pictures of a world feeding into one collective. Images of well-dressed men speaking to their fellows; village girls arraying a fresh row of Capsule houses; A city that never slept under the winding path of neon lights; the migration of a herd of beasts searching for new grazing grounds; Drifting satellite debris cresting between the view past the moon.
This far above, the multitude of humanity and the wild. Each living presence as they crawled about the world from this distance indistinguishable motes where they lived their lives. Their paths could be traced with the utmost clarity from corner to corner, unawares they were being watched. The minutae of this blue planet, everything all fed out to a large communications array, and unmarked though it was, Ochazuke recognized it from the array fed to the Coldlight, the monitor feed was from the Galactic Patrol signal. The satellites arrayed to the defense of the Earth also turned a covert its view toward it.
Even where he stood over the world from the Lookout and felt the presences over the world in his meditations he peered over his fellow man, but this sea of humanity presented visually in this manner fixed in him in equal parts fascination and horror. Yet given there was another voice near, and hers was filled with disgust.
"Grinthorn's eye in the sky," Kenshiko snarled. "So that's what those Crane bastards were guarding under here."
"...Grinthorn...?"
"Already had the world in the palm of his hand, I guess that just wasn't enough. He wanted to hold a gun to every civilian's head just in case, and the Offworlders handed it right to him."
With her attention off of him for the moment, Ochazuke turned Kyokushin Keihatsu toward the signal array. It was an innocuous thing, a thin trace of energy that glid through silent circuitry, but with the fall of the Palatial Towers the integrity of the signal was less orderly, drawing and feeding right into the machines that drift above in a garbled mess.
When Evangeline had used the Creation to challenge the President's sovereignty, his power to see and hear everything upon the globe at a whim had been much diminished. Nobody could move a project like this without the capital- Then it hit him. The rot of his old order seeped deeper than he could imagine. He'd never made the connection until now.
"Kru...," Fighting between gasps, Ochazuke slowly stood to his feet. His ki would slowly realign itself, until then he would have to rely on grit. "...you can't..."
"Maybe he was smart enough not to get screwed over by the Xenos. But not enough to put everything in one basket." The static click of her talkie clipped on. "Are the charges set?"
"Think about what you're doing...!"
His limbs were heavy, and racked with agony, Ochazuke threw himself onto his feet, grimacing in pain through ragged breaths as he dragged himself after her.
"I have. That's why I'm the one who has to press the trigger." The detonator unfastened from her belt, all that stood between her thumb and the button was a plastic cap. As she grasped it in two shaking hands, she began to rise upward as she flew above the scattering personnel.
"The cave system...it runs further than the palatial grounds!" He plead desperately, "The inlet! The Shrine of Bya Kau...you'll have nothing to return to!"
"Your master already took that from me. This time, it'll be on my terms!" A mirthless, wistful grin spread over her face. Kenshiko's amber eyes twist as they fought to against the words she spoke. "The past for the chance for a future. A steep price to strike Grinthorn blind. I pay it gladly."
And when the bombs went off, a cacophony of immolating fury ripped through the foundations of the palace for miles around. The last shapes of an empire sworn to stand against the ages for a thousand years descended in a quagmire of symbols, ground to ash, stripped of their memory and meaning, for those who sought to follow in the steps of the ancient gods found nothing; in her rage, she reached out to slay them.