LotS/The Story/Days of Wu/Wu Tenchu's Schooldays

Wu!"

"Yes?"

The teacher loomed over the boy's desk, clasping its edges with big, thick hands. His forearms -- each a meaty club, like a leg of lamb -- twitched as his fingers whitened. Some of Wu's classmates claimed Mr. Anderson was a former thugby player. According to playground rumor, that sport banished him because he tore a fan's spine out. The boy liked that story. It showed a laudable cynicism for the education system.

"This is not the assigned reading!"

He tapped the upper edge of Wu's datapad. The screen displayed long paragraphs of text, in lieu of the short stanzas which adorned those of his classmates.

"The rhyme was ill-conceived." The boy glanced up into the man's eyes. His face was impassive. "The poet wields dactyls as weapons of blunt force trauma, and I reject her contention that all people are born equal. As a child who's derived superior intellectual capabilities from his genetic makeup, I find the notion trite and offensive."

Mr. Anderson blinked at the small child. Perhaps his colleagues had prepared him for this most unusual pupil, but it was quite different to actually hear such discourse coming from a five-year-old's mouth. He turned the datapad round and tapped the screen. A heading appeared in bold text.

"Assassination reports?"

"They were declassified yesterday. I'm not violating any imperial laws."

The other children were watching. Mr. Anderson swept the room with a glare, and their heads dropped back over their work. He grunted and turned to Wu Tenchu again.

"What's this?" The teacher's fingertip pressed down on a small thumbnail image in the corner of the page.

A diagram expanded until it filled the screen. It was a strange combination of poorly drawn stick-figures and precise lines and trajectories, marked with mathematical symbols.

"The assassin's method was inefficient," Wu said, "so I constructed a better one."

"Go see the headmaster."

"Very well."

A dozen scans sweep the room, scouring both of us. Their displays are subtle. No holographic screens blare their findings. But the artworks behind Noir shift in accordance with their discoveries. There's a vase that would have defied any collector to say it wasn't conceived on Earth during China's Ming Dynasty. Now its painted figures move, revealing the artful pretense. My own invention, created for practicality and ego. A little test of genius. The colors and patterns of a courtier's robes confirm my identity and humanity. This comes as little surprise, though I welcome the news that I haven't been replaced by an android without my knowledge. The man's hat changes hue when the psionic examination is complete. My mind is unclouded, beyond the grasp of any psychic intrusion or conditioning. A later addition to the technology -- this one an admission of past failure.

The figure on the next vase is far more curious. A noblewoman stands in a lavish garden, her beautiful face and gorgeous gown wrought from simple strokes of blue coloring on the crisp white background. Tiny birds flicker around her. Perspective turns their flock into a swarm of insects, an azure cloud which seeps into her sumptuous garments until bird and fabric are indistinguishable. It takes me a split-second to identify this permutation from countless others. The scans have disclosed nanobots woven into Noir's clothing, miniscule machines that mend and bolster his garb. The technology is advanced but not beyond the reach of Sian science. What intrigues me is that the woman's skin is unblemished. Noir's technology is worn, not embedded. No cybernetic systems pulse inside his flesh and grant him his strength, speed, or toughness.

The woman wears five bracelets on her left arm. My opponent is, at least in part, human. But her right arm is angled downwards, thwarted. The alien tissues defy examination. Interesting... Most interesting... Very few known species can mate with humans and produce offspring. Of these, none resemble the being I saw on my screens when gunfire stripped away his clothes.

A black stone clicks on the board. I watch Noir with redoubled scrutiny. His eyes meet mine, perhaps in challenge, or else curiosity of his own.

"I want your lunch!"

Kwai's friends encircled Wu Tenchu, cutting off all avenues of escape. Wu assessed them in his peripheral vision. Three were flabby, two tall but lanky. None were strong in his estimation. As an intellectual exercise he calculated the force he would need to break their knees or ribs, and decided that he had nothing to fear from them as long as he struck fast and hard. But Kwai himself was another matter. The boy towered above Wu. His bulging muscles and acne-slathered face told of botched hormone therapies.

"Your lunch!" he repeated.

Wu glanced down at his lunchbox as though becoming aware of it for the first time.

"My mother isn't a good cook," he said. "You would find this meal unpalatable."

Kwai snorted. A yellow-green blob shot from his left nostril, trailing a rope of snot. It dangled in front of his chin, swaying back and forth, a disgusting but almost hypnotic pendulum.

"Give me it!"

Other children were gathering from across the playground, massing a safe distance beyond the ring of bullies. Their faces bobbed beside the flabby and gangly bodies like an audience glimpsed between the curtains in the school theatre. Some of them grinned, filled with the glee of former victims now made spectators at another's suffering. Others looked around for a teacher. Those who knew Wu best wore quizzical expressions, and wondered what would come of this. Kwai had been stealing lunches ever since he returned from his dubious medical treatments. During the lunch hour he crammed his mouth full of every comestible he could buy from the canteen or snatch from smaller children, consuming a significant portion of his own bodyweight. But he hadn't stolen from Wu Tenchu before -- and many looked on with bated breath to see what would happen.

"Here." Wu handed him the little blue lunchbox.

Children gasped at his surrender. Some sneered. A few seemed disappointed. Kwai looked around, brow furrowed as his hormone-addled brain tried to comprehend their emotions. In the end he shrugged and brandished his prize above his head. Then he brought it back down and opened it.

His eyes widened. His mouth fell open.

"It's... It's..."

One of his burly comrades came over to his side and stared into the container. He yelped.

"It's a bomb!"

There were screams. Some of the onlookers ran across the playground, shrieking, wailing, or even laughing. Others surged forward -- disbelief suppressing caution.

"Throw it away!" Kwai's friend said. "Throw it away!"

Wu Tenchu whistled. Steel bands shot out of the lunchbox with a series of neat metallic clinks. They wrapped around Kwai's fingers, holding them fast against either side of the box, and slid into newly revealed recesses. Kwai shook his arms. But the bonds held firm. He stared at his friend, mouth agape, eyes beseeching. The other child fled -- barging his way through a pack of smaller children, scattering them like skittles.

"Wu!" The snot pendulum swung this way and that. "Wu!"

"I recommend that everyone withdraw to a safe distance," Wu Tenchu said. "Now."

The children looked at him, looked at Kwai, and dispersed. Their exodus swept through the playground.

"Wu!" Kwai stared into the lunchbox, where the digital clock's red numerals continued to count down. "Turn it off! Turn it off!"

"Turn what off?"

"The bomb! Turn the bomb off!"

"There's no bomb."

Kwai looked up at him. The snot dangled motionless, as though it too were stunned. He stared back down at the clock, left eyelid twitching, acne-covered face caught between horror and relief.

The countdown reached zero.

The 'bomb' flew from the box, a slab of metal launched by a powerful spring. There was a crunch and a splat. Wu Tenchu winced. It appeared that he'd miscalculated its strength.

Kwai fell onto his knees and bawled. Crimson gushed from his nose. A haphazard assortment of smashed and disarrayed teeth hung loose in his bloody maw. The strand of snot still dangled there, slathered in red.

A man with two natures. Two origins? Two voices. Yes... The human and the bestial. An enigma in black, one who defies the keenest scanners and databases the Sian Empire has to offer. What are you, Noir?

I could give a signal and alert troops stationed nearby. Dozens. Hundreds. They'd storm my home and engage him. But that would be foolish. I've seen what he's capable of, and I'd only be calling them here to share my tomb. Even Ham couldn't stop him. Nor could the weapons that lined my trap. It will take greater countermeasures, and the sacrificing of one stone for another.

"Sit down," the headmaster said.

The boy closed the office door and walked to the chair in front of the desk. The headmaster's glare followed him as he went. Wu sat down and reached towards the bowl of candy.

"No!" Doctor Shinju's fingers clamped around his wrist. "Those aren't for you."

Wu shrugged his shoulders and rotated his hand against the headmaster's thumb, freeing it from the man's grasp.

"Wu, we've been more than patient with you."

"Have you, sir?"

"We've tolerated your constant insolence, disobedience, and disruptions-"

"A competent headmaster wouldn't have allowed a student to flout his authority like that."

"Wu!" Shinju's face reddened, till his vulture-like proboscis resembled a strawberry flavored lollipop. "The superintendent said we had to make allowances for a child of your intelligence... But this is too much! Maiming another pupil!"

"He tried to steal from me. Me. It was... unwise."

"This afternoon you'll be flogged in front of the entire school, then expelled."

"Oh? It's a shame you won't be there to witness my chastisement."

"What?"

"Because by then you'll have been arrested-"

"Wu! How dare you!"

"...for embezzlement."

Doctor Shinju's face froze.

"I... I don't know what you're..."

"Your quickening heartbeat says otherwise. As does the blood draining from your cheeks."

"I..." The headmaster collapsed back into his chair, deflated. "But..."

"If you wish to steal school funds to pay your gambling debts, that's no concern of mine. I've examined the programs you've annexed resources from, and found them to be lacking in intellectual value. But I will not allow you to discipline me like a common miscreant."

"Kwai's parents..."

"Should remove their son from school until his medical issues have been properly addressed."

"I... I..."

"I shall take your repetition of the first-person singular pronoun as acquiescence."

Wu Tenchu picked up the candy bowl, rose from his chair, and left the room. Three weeks later, the man in ornate robes came to offer him a place at the academy.