**make sure to read the intro 'The New World' before you start here :)

***

"Argh!"

Hsiao woke up with a start, gasping for air.

His hazel eyes zeroed upon the moonless sky above.

He did not need anyone to tell him where he was. He could tell it right off the bat. A skill he'd mastered over the years.

Judging by the ear-splitting honking sounds, those distinct roars of overworked machinery, those white beams flashing down from a corner of the Sky's city floating not so high above his head, and wait... was that disturbing smell burning tar? And what is this foul taste on his tongue? It tasted as if he had eaten a rusted iron bar for brunch.

Being unable to endure the harassment his six senses going through, Hsiao slowly sat up on the crystal-matted track, his bones snapping and shoulders creaking in the process. Slowly his vision returning as he tried to to pick up details from the blurry world around.

If he could remember it right, this was not where he was when he closed his eyes.

He tried to process some last memories he had of the day but couldn't quite remember anything about how he came to be sitting on a spaceship track.

Without letting him bother much, his vision cleared on something oddly familiar approaching him on the tracks. His eyes went wide at how the very pink-in-color flying platter was speeding towards him. He could feel how his stomach churned and his heart literally stopped upon realizing the flying platter was not coming to a halt, lest slowing down.

Speaking of the heart. It might or might not have already stopped. But Hsiao himself was not very sure about that.

A vision of a giant of a man raising his own dagger against him, even skillfully dogging his counterattack and proceeding to sink the vicious blade which he had done a good job in sharpening for hours, across his heart was still fresh in his mind. Then everything blurred around him as if looking through a glass to the heavy rain and the last thing he remembered was grasping onto the carved wooden handle of the sharp thingy as his knees hit the solid ground, hopelessly giving in to the pain.

He could not quite pinpoint how things turned out this way. As far as he knew he was the one winning the game.

But for sitting on a busy spaceship track, he was not in a position to argue on that. If the dagger had not killed him yet the coming ship would do it unless he moved fast.

Summoning all the strength left in his cramped body, he tried to get onto his feet. He placed his palms flat on the crystal-matted track, supporting his aching bones to lift him up.

But for a change, he could not quite transfer any pressure to the ground as he was supposed to do to get up. Once he looked down to see what was wrong with his palms, he could not quite see them down there. It seemed like they were rather sunk into the solid material somehow.

With a howl, Hsiao shot up from the ground.

And the speeding pink platter whizzed through his well-built frame.

"Wha-WHAT--?"

His mouth fell open and even after a long pause, of silence from his end and an unusual rush from the cosmos's end, of course while a few other flying objects making their way across him, he could not quite summon a word to speak.

His hands sneaked up to his chest expecting to feel the familiar carving, the one that he had used to adore since he was a child, on the handle of the cursed merchandise, now perching at a weird angle through the withered flesh.

But he could feel no carving, not even a piece of wood for the handle up there.

His eyes lingered on his chest and all he could witness was his toned muscles, slightly see-through yet heaving just fine as they ever did. Not even a sign of an assault was to be seen down there. He hugged himself, hands tightly wrapped around his upper body like a python prying its prey, his body giving in as he clashed back to the ground.

The dagger had gone. So was the deadly pain.

So was the atomic and anatomic presence of himself.

"What the HECK!"

wc-706