Her outfit emphasized her figure well. She really was as trim as a model and positively brimming with femininity.
The intimidating girl frowned. “I ‘surprised’ you?” she parroted. “Don’t tell me you’re on a ship bound for a floating city and you don’t even know what Asura Frames or nanomachines are.”
“I mean, I just got my invitation today,” Shanti replied meekly.
The girl scanned her up and down. “Hm.”
She certainly made no effort to hide her forwardness, and it made Shanti a little uncomfortable. “I don’t know why or anything,” she said, desperate to escape the awkwardness. “I’m just nervous.”
“That’s stupid,” the girl stated haughtily. “Obviously it’s because you have a high aptitude for nanomachines. No one in the world is more in demand than people like you. Tell me your name.” She did. “Shanti? Well, Shanti, I’m Xueli, family name Zhou, and once you receive your nano-augmentations, I implore you to join my team. I can promise you’ll be treated with the utmost respect and courtesy.”
“W-Wait, what?!” Shanti stammered. Her brain hadn’t quite processed everything yet. “Th-This is way too sudden!”
“I value efficiency. We’re in too much of a crisis to waste precious seconds with formalities and bureaucracy.”
“I don’t even remember half of what you said! Nano-augwhats?!”
“The migrant sages have developed next-generation technology that allows one to undergo nanomachine transplantation, and as your fitness adapts and grows, you become able to do things that were previously impossible,” the beautiful Devicer ranted as Shanti stared blankly. “The search continues in my home country, but there simply aren’t enough individuals with the appropriate compatibility. Not even I, Zhou Xueli, warrior and patriot, have managed to fully staff a support team. Thus I was forced to extend my hunt abroad.”
“How do you even know I have any kind of fitness, or compatibility, or whatever it is?!” Shanti shouted. This Xueli girl was evidently as open-minded as a brick wall. “Taeyang said the Mark V was in China, so that’s where you’re from, isn’t it? I’m not leaving Indonesia!”
“This is getting us nowhere.” Xueli sighed. “Nationality and borders will be the death of all of us. Eventually we’re going to have to throw petty tribalism away and fight together if we ever want to stand a chance against the other side, and I’ll drag the world kicking and screaming to cooperation if I have to. I’m doing you a favor by giving you the chance to help me without the temper tantrum. Don’t forget it.”
Odd encounters aside, the ferry reached its destination safely.
The city of Al’iksir floated in the Java Sea just outside of Jakarta Bay, a monumental construction upon which a ten-kilometer circle, referred to as the central block, had been built in the middle. In the center stood Central Tower, a three-hundred-meter-tall edifice that functioned as the heart of the city’s entire infrastructure. The outer block circled around the edges and formed the exterior circumference of the settlement. From above, it had the appearance of a water lily, and these artificial communities dotted oceans all over the world, including Japan.
Shanti saw many humans, but she paid them little attention, because her eyes were immediately glued to the elves. She’d never seen the otherworldly race in person before, though she knew about their ears, striking beauty, and extraordinarily long life spans. The migrants who had come to Earth were apparently all brilliant minds among their people.
And Shanti didn’t just get to see them. She talked to them. The elvish man who greeted her was the perfect gentleman, and he guided her through the city with geniality becoming of one. She saw droid testing sites, farmerless farms, state-of-the-art medical facilities, and their giant source of power that they called a Prayer Wheel.
After the tour, the elf took Shanti to a pristine room in Central Tower, where he carefully went into detail about nanomachines and compatibility. “That is to say, Shanti,” he continued, “you have a very precious gift. Our request to you is that you undergo nano-augmentation and aid us in our research.”
It was all just as predicted. Shanti froze up and struggled to find her answer. Meanwhile, the foreteller herself, Zhou Xueli, leaned against a wall nearby with a cheeky, know-it-all grin on her face. It irritated Shanti, and she didn’t want that smug face in the corner of her eye when she gave her reply, regardless of what it might be.
“Can I...have some time to think about it?” she asked finally.
“Of course,” the elf replied. “It’s gotten dark, though. We can prepare a room for you to spend the night in.”
And so it was decided. Shanti had just gotten off the phone with her mother a few hours ago, letting her know she was safe, and now she was going to have to make another call to ask permission to stay overnight in the middle of the ocean.
She dialed the number and sighed, hard and heavy. She tried explaining as much as she could about nanomachines and fitness and all that, but to her mother it was all technical mumbo jumbo, so Shanti only found herself wondering why she’d even bothered in the first place.
Overall, the phone call went about as well as it could have. When it was over, Shanti mumbled helplessly to herself, “What am I supposed to do?”
“Easy. You take the augmentations and join me. It could be the best decision you make for your otherwise bland and ordinary life.”
“You be quiet!” Shanti snapped. Her patience with the Devicer girl was wearing thin. “You’re in the army like Taeyang, right? Don’t you have a base or squad or whatever to report back to?!”
“Oh, I’ll be fine. I planned on staying the night,” Xueli replied.
Shanti groaned. “Of course you did.”
“My team’s area of operation primarily covers the Chinese coast, extending only as far as the East and South China Seas. Why would I be all the way down in Jakarta if not on explicit business?”
“To...rescue us?” Shanti asked.
“A good guess, but if that were the case, I would have arrived later into the invasion. It was just luck that I happened to be visiting Al’iksir at the same time.”