The smoke was letting up now, and Rao and his unexpected new ally were ready to meet the Light Sage’s threat with renewed vigor. A blur of motion issued from the right flank, near the General. Kaede narrowly dodged a spike of killing energy that would have taken an arm off, and promptly drove her sword into Daishi’s open mouth, the Sage one handseal away from completing a follow-up jutsu. As expected, the results were messy and the enemy’s body instantly went limp. She allowed herself to sneer in satisfaction at being the one to avenge Dear Leader, when she realized that something was wrong. The body started to melt in front of her, its flesh sloughing off and taking hair and skin with it until all she had was a steaming skeleton still held up in the air by her blade. With a snort of disgust, she flicked her wrist, sending the bones clattering to the ground, some of them splattering into the pile of stinking crimson left by the dissolving soft tissues.
“Watch out, Rao! This
nam-chang splint himself into living clones!” shouted Kaede as she blocked an attack from above by the Light Sage. She slammed the new enemy into the ground and stomped on its throat, producing a wet cracking sound. A moment later, she was forced to flip away, narrowly missing a handful of blazing fire seals what would have stuck like napalm and been impossible to remove. Through the lifting haze, both fighters could now see that the courtyard around them was literally peppered with Light Sages, all advancing with gleeful bloodlust in their eyes. “It’s that
kage-bunshin technique! They’re all actual living bodies, not just illusions,” she snarled, holding her sword at the ready. “One of the Cabal of Seven used it during the War,” she offered as an explanation. It would make sense – she had been one of the soldiers fighting alongside the seven missing shinobi who had taken control of her country during that time.
To a healthy shinobi like Rao, however, more flesh to rend meant more glory, and each body destroyed would mean less resources overall for Daishi, who would have to split his powers and intellect between the clones. Such a move would be his undoing, however! He charged a ball of dark energy in his hand and sent it out in a psychotically angry blast. The massive wave of the
shoryuken hit a nearby clone, ripping it in half as it charged forward and tearing whole parts of torso off of three others behind it. Dropping his magnetic flux, the deflective energy now coursed around his body and extended to Kaede’s, just in time for them to roll out of the way of a barrage of lightning arcs intermixed with the usual and obligatory rain of shuriken and kunai. Narrowly, Rao swatted away a spike of jagged crystal which shattered a chakra shield he raised a moment before, and the lethal stones crashed into a brace of clones, tearing their heads off. A shard of crystal had embedded itself in his shoulder, and he imperiously tore it out before launching forward and sinking his fists into another pair’s abdomens. The impact tore through their bodies and sent loops of already-decaying intestine splattering across the sandy ground of the courtyard.
Kaede meanwhile held her own, expertly rolling away from earth-rending attacks and deflecting narrow beams of lethal chakra away with her sword. The weapon was clearly not conventional, as it allowed her to not only freeze and shatter clone bodies she struck with it, but also send sprays of frosty death at attackers far off, turning them into hard slabs of ice. Clearly, the PRMC had invested a considerable sum in training her in anti-shinobi combat, and she was most likely not the only one. The help was welcome, but brought with it a sense of trepidation over what was to come if her homeland decided to strike.
</B>Meanwhile
The ground shook as Senna’s new mecha charged forward, raising its slab-sided sword in the air. Her newest invention was truly a spectacle to behold. The Killa-Can she had used earlier in the castle battle was a chunky, home-made-looking contraption that would have been more at home in an Ork’s garage than a Tenouzan’s workshop. In contrast, the Knight puppet was a streamlined, elegant-looking mechanized suit of armor built from the ground up to fight three-meter tall
Baelg-class demons used by the Hitokage.
Out of the corner of her eye, Yukiko glimpsed the sword bearing down on her exposed back and quickly abandoned her effort to split Keiji’s head open. With a deafening clang of steel on steel, she blocked the overhead blow from the Knight, her feet sinking into the ground slightly. Comparing sizes, the Knight had the advantage, but Senna would realize that there was some truth to the saying that the
samehada blades were “half chainsaw, half shark, all awesome”. With a whirring sound, the serrated teeth of the Kingslayer’s blade began to move, and with a blinding shower of sparks the blades ripped into the Knight’s sword, making their way toward the chest cockpit where Senna was!
But lest anyone ever forget about Keiji, he now swooped in low with a kick, slamming into Yukiko’s knee and forcing her to buckle under the impact. The imbalance made her and Senna drop their hopelessly fused blades and drove them apart. The Knight now began a series of lunging attacks with its rotating drill spear, pushing Yukiko back even further as she parried the strikes with her remaining sword.
A sudden crack from above was immediately followed by the sound of shattering metal as a .408-caliber bolt slammed into the chest section of the Knight and blew a hole in its upper torso. Circulatory fluid splattered on the ground and servo motors whined as Senna lurched backward, instinctively clutching at the “wound” on her mecha body, even if her physical body was relatively safe.
“Yukiko! We’ve gotta pull out! There’s a shitton of tanks coming up to the gates!” shouted Marie from above as she aimed another shot. The Knight lurched backwards again as the tungsten penetrator bolt tore through its forearm and slammed into the main chestplate. The armor piece fell to the floor, now exposing Senna in her cockpit. The situation was now critical, and if another bolt hit her body, well, she was finished. Switching the lance to the damaged arm, the Knight reached to an integrated holster on its back and pulled out another new toy the girl had been experimenting with – the Gauss-Bolter. Utilizing an array of chakra solenoids, this weapon could send projectiles downrange at a speed of a kilometer a second. The air fizzled with energy as she aimed at Marie and shot.
The castle superstructure exploded into a mushroom cloud of dust and flame so intense that even Keiji’s Byakugan could not penetrate for a few seconds. There was no sign of Marie, but now Senna had another concern. Yukiko took the moment to launch an attack with her blade, and Senna was now the one being pushed back by a flurry of blows, barely parrying with her drill-lance.
Back to Rao
“There’s still too many of them!” shouted Kaede as she flicked gobs of slushy, semi-frozen blood off of her sword and held it in front of her. She had not escaped being wounded as well, and several cuts and entry wounds on her arms and legs oozed blood, along with some burn marks on her torso. She was tiring and becoming weaker from blood loss, and although she and Rao had killed of dozens of the Daishi clones, they never seemed to cease appearing. Rao also had not escaped more injury, and was barely keeping on his feet. Slowly but surely, Daishi was chipping them down with the sheer force of numbers. Meanwhile, the Chancellor and Yui had not gone unnoticed.
Yui swung her
kanabo in a deadly arc which smashed open a clone’s pelvis, and it skidded to the ground to join a ring of dissolving corpses that were accumulating around her and Ami. But she too was wounded and tiring, and one of the clones took the opportunity to slam her from behind with a blast of gravitic energy, knocking her weapon from her hands and trapping her prone on the ground.
“Yui-chan!” shrieked Ami as she ran to her bodyguard’s side, trying in vain to drag her to her feet.
“No! My Lady! You have to run! I’m finished here! Go to the shinobi…” gasped the General, feeling more of her ribs cracking under the unrelenting strain of the jutsu.
“Yui, I…” said Ami, but at the moment, a thin loop of ninja wire snaked around her neck from behind and tightened like a noose, dragging her to her feet. She clutched in vain at the nearly translucent wire, gasping and sputtering.
“So it comes to this, dattebayo,” said a Daishi clone as he paced around Ami, who still struggled against her noose but was rapidly becoming weaker. “You know, I devoted an entire year of planning to kill the Raikage of Kumo, but Enishi-chan undid that in five seconds just by being there. Fortunately, I see that the rest of the shinobi are simply not up to snuff. A malnourished little waif with no tits, a boy-whore with dreadlocks, and a stupid cowboy stuck in the closet. Madam Chancellor, please understand that it’s nothing personal. Now, strangling is actually a pretty painful way to go, so I will do you a favor and simply stab you in the heart, dattebayo,” he said, pulling out a wickedly sharp knife and positioning the tip against her chest…
“Yippee Kay-Yay, mother
fucker,” said Rao, as she suddenly warped right behind Daishi and clasped a fist in the air. Instantly, the metal coils of wire wrapped around the Light Sage’s body, and all the rest of the Light Sage bodies in the area tugged at him and whisked the clones off of their feet. Rao now backflipped in the air, and again drew out a coin of his – a heavy fifty-thousand yen piece. The air surged with power as his invisible solenoids fired and drove the projectile at two kilometers per second into the mass of stuck-together clones, causing a massive implosion where they stood. The blast turned the mass of bodies into an explosion of body parts which flew outwards, splattering all present with blood and debris.
The ninja-wire jutsu was disrupted and Ami fell to the ground, unconscious. Yui instantly raced over to her side, ignoring the pain of her own battered frame.
Back to Senna…
The Knight lay mostly in pieces across the courtyard, and Yukiko stood on top of the smoking torso section,
samehada raised in the air and ready to strike the deathblow at Senna, who lay in the cockpit pointing her Kalash at the Kingslayer. Keiji lay on his side nearby, clutching at a wound on his abdomen. The veins encircling his orbits pulsated weakly as he dragged himself toward his companion, propelled by nothing less than feral rage.
“Why do you protect a woman like the Chancellor?” asked Yukiko, taken aback at the last bits of resistance offered by the young Tenouzan. “Do you not wish for a more equal world where people do not have to live in fear of a noble’s random whims?”
A hand-bolter blast echoed across the courtyard from nearby and a flower of crimson bloomed in the middle of Yukiko’s throat. As blood streamed from the hole, her grip wavered on her chainsword and it dropped to the side with a clattering sound. The woman sank to her knees and fell forward, her head landing in Senna’s lap. As the Tenouzan girl looked on in disbelief, the dying Kingslayer whispered something Senna could barely make out.
“Haikuno, don’t cry…”
“Hmmph,” snorted a familiar figure as he walked up to Senna’s cockpit and roughly kicked Yukiko’s body aside. “Oh god,
you again,” he sniffed, rolling his eyes at Senna. It was someone she would recognize well. The Daimyo Amakusa Ryuu zi Kaminari in the flesh. He wore an expensive suit and greatcoat trimmed with manticore fur, and in one of his hands, a “Contender”-model hand-arbalest in .30-06 caliber. As Keiji, Rao, Yui, and Kaede could now see, the exterior courtyard was now ringed with armored war wagons that had pushed through the barricade of ninja wire and were now unloading heavy troopers who immediately started to secure the courtyard and render aid to the survivors.
“The Chancellor is in need of immediate medical assistance!” shouted Yui, rushing over and carrying a still-unconscious Ami in her arms.
“Men! Get her in an armored ambulance and get her to the hospital!” snapped Ryuu to a group of nearby soldiers, who came hurrying over bearing a stretcher. As they carried Ami away, Yui collapsed to her knees, panting and spitting up blood.
“You’re hurt. Here, take this,” said Kaede, kneeling next to Yui and offering her a medicated handkerchief, which the woman gladly accepted. The Marsh General, although wounded, was clearly doing better than most non-shinobi would have given the fight. Meanwhile, Senna had finally unstrapped herself from the carcass of her Knight, and she and Rao now supported Keiji with their shoulders. Ryuu now turned his attention to the ragtag group in front of him.
“Well, well, well.
Three shinobi on scene and the Chancellor is in critical condition with an important foreign dignitary severely wounded. That sounds to me like gross incompetence at the very best, and malicious neglect at worst,” sneered Ryuu, a calculating grin on his face. “In fact, I can’t really be sure that you three didn’t
actively conspire with these so-called Kingslayers. I think we’re going to have to keep you all locked up until your trial,” he said, obviously gloating. “Guards, take them to the castle dungeon.”
“Daimyo Ryuu! These shinobi fought hard to save all of us! No one would be alive if they hadn’t been here!” objected Yui, coughing up a gob of bloody mucus.
“I can also vouch for them as well,” said Kaede, supporting Yui.
“General Gasai, you are severely wounded and are not in your right mind due to your injuries. And General Sumihara, I’d sooner trust the word of a Kingslayer than a Nork,” said Ryuu, turning away. A group of heavy troopers now surrounded the group, weapons held at low-ready. As much as any of them would have liked to fight back, they realized that it was impossible at the moment. There was nothing to do now but wait…
Later…
Dungeons of Castle Nagamasa
Central Takadama Province, Kaminari no Kuni
…0030 hours
The three shinobi sat, huddled, aching, and resentful, on miserable pallets of hay that did nothing to insulate them from the hard, cold, and damp stone floor of the castle dungeon. They had been stripped of their equipment and armor, and their wrists and ankles were bound by iron manacles that prevented the use of seals. Their only view of the outside was through a small, barred window on the door of their cells that occasionally let in the sound of distant screams and curses. It had been this way for hours, and they were starting to fear that no word of their plight had actually gotten to Kumogakure.
Keiji lay sullenly against a wall, his only comfort being a cool draft that issued from a small hole in the wall, likely an adjoining cell.
“Psst!” issued a whisper from the hole. Keiji’s eyebrows perked up.
“Hey! You’re the three shinobi, right?” asked a soft voice, definitely from the cell next door.
“Look, we have no right to ask this, but we’re begging you for help. Countess Kotone is being held in the lower floors. She sacrificed herself so we could be spared. Please, make sure she’s alright! We’ll pay you later!”
Before Keiji could ask any questions, the cell door suddenly opened, letting in four guards who carried truncheons and bolters.
“Oy, shinobis! You’re getting released soon. Your Sannin is here to come fetch you. He wants to talk with Greeny here up in the interview room,” said one of the guards, going up to Rao and undoing his shackles. “Come quickly now, this ain’t a luxury ‘otel!” he said, herding Rao out of the cell. As soon as the Jounin had disappeared around the corner, two of the remaining ones started to cast rather disturbing looks at Senna.
“’ey, this one’s a looker. I wanna have some fun with ‘er before we see ‘er off. You can ‘ave the seconds,” chortled a burlier soldier as he started to reach for her hair…
With a sickening crunch, the would-be molester’s skull caved in from the impact of an SA-14’s brass buttplate and he fell to the ground in a heap. The other guard, wheeling around in surprise, caught a face full of truncheon that shattered his teeth, before being brutally kicked in the throat. He fell over, convulsing. To Senna’s surprise, the remaining soldier’s face was somewhat familiar…
“Uggh, trash like this makes the Imperial Army look bad. The penalty for rape is death by hanging. These two clowns should feel lucky,” said the soldier, nudging the two bodies with his boot-tip. He looked at Senna now, undoing her manacles and gently helping her up. “I’m Corporal, well, now actually Lieutenant Balzer. We met before the assault – you fixed my bolter. I would’ve died without it, but instead I went on to capture an enemy position by myself and earned a really unprecedented field promotion,” he said. “Sorry I couldn’t repay you in nicer circumstances,” he said, now helping Keiji out of his bindings. “You two are free to go. Your Sennin arranged for a special carriage to pick you up and take you back to your village. I’d get out of here before whoever decided on your freedom changes their mind.”
. . .
“Jesus Saito, Hokoro, did three of those godrotting Kingslayers really come to the castle?” asked Masao, who paced around the room where Rao sat, in front of a small meal and a tankard of beer. “You’ll have to give me the full report back at Kumo. This is serious, though – now that they’ve targeted the Chancellor as well as the Norks and Bear, there will be many crackdowns across the country. The bakufuu’s retaliation against potential sympathizers will be swift and brutal. I have the bad feeling that this is what the group wants, however.
“Anyway, never mind about Daimyo Ryuu. He’s a petulant little shit, and as soon as he heard I was coming down to retrieve you he backed off. The Chancellor’s doing fine, the Nork General is back home, and so is the Crown Princess. You’re being hailed as heroes who foiled an attack on Lightning Country itself, and Nemoto Senna is being credited with the elimination of Nakamura Yukiko, one of the top ten wanted fugitive shinobi from Kirigakure. The Mizukage wants her to come to Mist and receive a shiny medal or something, too. Anyway, let’s get out of here. Keiji and Senna should be waiting in the carriage.”
<B>Elsewhere...
“Yukiko, I’m so sorry… Dammit!” sobbed Marie as she sat on a hill outside of the castle, some distance away. Her face was streaked with soot, dust, and tears, and her once stylish clothing was now torn and scorched. But she cared not for any of these things. Yukiko was dead. She had heard the shot, and saw her friend crumple to the ground, a lethal wound on her neck. And from the cockpit of that giant puppet thing, a little brown-haired girl holding a Karashnikov.
Why didn’t you just fucking kill her when you had the chance, Yuki?! You’re too nice… she thought with anger and despair. The worst part was that retrieving the body would be impossible. She had already been forced to retreat by the advancing formation of armored war wagons that was now ringing the courtyard. Daishi was nowhere to be seen, and now she was alone. “Those god-damned shinobi… Haikuno, you
baka, I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” she muttered through her tears.
“Marie…” said a voice from behind, and she felt a hand on her shoulder. She went for the pistol at her belt, when another hand gently stopped her. Turning her head, she could see the face of Daishi. He looked pale and was obviously wounded, but still managed an off-kilter smile.
“Daishi…” she said, breaking down into further tears.
“Don’t worry, Marie. We can’t bring Yukiko back, but don’t worry. We’ll kill them all. Each and every last one of them.”
[End]
This ends the mission for Rao and Senna. Please make your exit posts and request payment in the appropriate forum. Keiji, since you had wanted to do a small epilogue, you may continue in this thread. Find some way to slip away and go deeper into the dungeon…
