EP.2 — Mountains of Corpses, Seas of Blood (3)
Somewhere in the back alleys of Underland.
There, three swordsmen stood with their backs to one another, watching every direction at once.
One was the idol of Halloween. One was the ninja of Underland. And one was a humanoid whose entire body was pure machinery.
Their appearances were as varied as the blades they carried, yet the aura flowing from their bodies was strikingly alike.
A killing intent that gleamed, sharp as a single honed blade.
Pressed down beneath that intent, the Rest-Men and the ninja—and the mercenaries of Memoriphilia who had revealed themselves soon after—all wavered and staggered.
That so many gathered in one place could remain so still was surely owing to their razor-sharp spirit.
—······.
A hair-trigger standoff where no one dared open their mouth first.
Ash let out a low electronic hum.
"The situation is about to descend into chaos. Do not let it sweep you away and lose sight of our true purpose."
Zero answered him.
"I must wake my second brother first."
"The second, you say?"
"The wolf mask."
"Good. Let it be so."
At that, Siren handed the data chip she was carrying over to Zero.
"I will handle the two remaining ninjas and Memoriphilia, so that you may wake your siblings with ease."
"Then what of the Rest-Men···?"
"I'll take them."
Siren said.
"..Let me take them."
Her gaze was fixed on Jenny, who was staring back with a stricken face.
Ash glanced briefly at Siren, then gave a small nod.
"It's settled, then. I will take the other ninjas and Memoriphilia, the fair maiden takes the Rest-Men, and you wake your siblings in the meantime."
"Understood."
Thus ended their brief division of roles.
"Then···."
Ash leveled his blade.
"Let us begin."
The words had scarcely left his mouth when the three swordsmen lunged in their separate directions like lightning.
It was a signal of sorts.
Shattering the taut silence, everyone gathered in that place began swinging what they held, each for their own purpose.
As if to render that fleeting stillness meaningless, an unexpected storm of violence erupted like a bomb going off.
Gunfire and screams, the shriek of blades cleaving the air.
Barbed accusations and curses flung at friend and foe alike.
In an instant, the dark alley transformed into a pandemonium where life and death crossed paths.
And through all that chaos, two swordsmen ran like shafts of light—Ash and Zero.
—The ninja has the chip! Kill him!
A Memoriphilia mercenary bellowed.
But he never got the chance to kill the ninja.
"I shall cover you!"
Because Ash was already there, closing in before anyone realized it.
—KA-GANG! KA-GA-GANG!
Racing ahead, Ash batted away every threat that barred Zero's path. He might have been a wall forged of steel.
Sheltered behind that guardianship, Zero charged at his sibling—the ninja wearing the wolf mask.
—KAA-ANG!
Their blades met in the empty air.
Was it the shockwave of the clash?
Or the sorrow still lodged in his heart?
Zero's sword trembled, fine as a spider's thread.
But his sibling, the wolf mask, was different.
"Hm. Strange things keep happening of late. And who might you be, young master, to wield 'Big Brother's' sword?"
"..You do talk a funny game, little brother."
Truthfully, the conversation meant nothing now.
So Zero ended it with those few words and silently swung his blade.
To bring his sibling's memories back.
Ta-da-da-dang!
Between the two ninjas, countless trajectories of swordplay were drawn and erased, drawn and erased again. Every one of them was a form of the Cloud Dragon Thirteen Swords.
But there was one clear difference.
The difference lay in their state of mind—one meaning to harm, the other not.
The wolf-masked ninja scattered his strikes without restraint, carrying the iron will to kill the man before him, no matter what.
Zero's sword was different.
Now and then its tip wavered; at times it carried more force than necessary. His heart wavered at having to cross blades with his own flesh and blood.
"Ha!"
Then, a great electronic cry rang out.
It was Ash, single-handedly holding off both ninjas and every one of Memoriphilia's mercenaries.
His optical sensors flared as they turned toward Zero.
"Steel your heart!"
Ash's shout tore across the chaotic battlefield and slammed into Zero's mind.
"Who do you think you'll save with a sword that dull? Do you truly not know what your siblings need most right now?"
Ash's words struck Zero like a thunderbolt.
It was a rebuke.
And at the same time, a teaching.
He's right. This is no time to be drowning in sentiment.
Zero understood.
This was no moment to ruin everything over such trifling feelings of his—and in an instant, the turbulent emotions that had been wrapping around him guttered and died.
His sword no longer wavered.
The aura flowing from his body settled, bit by bit, into stillness.
"Little brother."
Murmuring those few words, Zero addressed his sibling like a warning.
"This will hurt a little."
That was all he said.
Zero's frame became a single streak of black lightning, hurling itself at his sibling.
"What—?!"
Startled, the wolf-masked ninja hastily scattered a flurry of strikes, but Zero no longer received them.
He deflected, twisted, opened a gap, and bored into it with relentless precision.
The momentum shifted in the blink of an eye, and the ninja had no choice but to fall back. Retreating in a blind scramble, at some point he lashed out, convulsing, with his blade.
"Die!"
It was an attack—and, for a single heartbeat, an opening.
His eyes gleaming with sharp focus, Zero slipped past his sibling's wild swing by a paper's breadth and closed the distance.
In the same motion, he thrust his blade forward.
Thud.
Zero's sword pierced his sibling's heart, dead center.
"G-guhk···!"
Ash, who had been watching the scene from the corner of his eye, cried out in sheer disbelief.
"Wait—that is not how you wake someone, killing them!"
To that electronic voice, equal parts flustered and exasperated, Zero answered as he drew the blade from his sibling's chest.
"We do not die from this much."
He caught his slowly collapsing sibling by the collar, then pulled back the hood draped over the wolf mask.
And into the data-implant socket at the back of his neck, he drove the kill switch.
A click echoed through the alley.
Now standing close enough to embrace him, Zero spoke the wake-word in a low voice.
"Everything you have endured was nothing but a dream."
At those words, the wolf mask convulsed. Soon his sibling clutched his head and let out an incomprehensible scream—then went limp and crumpled, unconscious.
Gently lowering his sibling, now entirely senseless, to the ground, Zero slowly drew the kill switch from his neck. Then he made his way to Ash's side.
Ash, deflecting even now the bullets flying in from every direction, let out a short electronic tone.
"It went well, then?"
"Yes. Thanks to you, young master."
"Two remain now. Who is next?"
"My third sibling—the rabbit mask."
"Understood. We begin at once."
The two swordsmen shot forward in unison.
Their next target was the woman wearing the rabbit mask.
What is this?
Jenny could not believe her eyes.
..How did it come to this?
Jenny could not, would not, believe the carnage before her.
The Rest-Men who had come along had numbered no few—at least several dozen, easily.
Now barely half of them remained.
Because every one of them had been cleaved in two—or into even more pieces than that.
Blood flowed from the dead like a river.
And standing proud amid it all, there was only one figure. Siren.
At the sight of her, Jenny stumbled backward without meaning to.
"Going somewhere?"
At her retreat, Siren spoke.
"We still have things to talk about, don't we, unnie?"
Siren's face, as she said it, was the very picture of cold blankness.
Until only moments before the battle began, Siren had been trembling like a small, terrified animal.
She had whimpered and wept that the ninja was after her, begging to be saved, her voice thick with tears.
A truly delightful sight, it had been.
Watching the sister who had once sparkled like the stars in the sky get trampled back down into the gutter again—it had been wonderful content, the kind that made a smile bloom all on its own.
But all of it had been an act.
A lie.
From the moment those two swordsmen appeared out of nowhere, Siren had changed. She had become that witch of Halloween Jenny had glimpsed now and then through her PDA.
Only then did Jenny understand.
That she, along with every single Rest-Man, had been dancing in the palm of that girl's hand all along.
Watching Siren approach with slow, unhurried steps, Jenny clenched her teeth.
"Shoot! Kill that traitorous bitch! Somebody, please—kill her!"
It was a scream, nothing less.
Following that scream, the surviving Rest-Men opened fire.
A vicious baptism of bullets rained down on Siren.
But not one of them touched her body. She moved so fast she was all but invisible to the eye.
Instead, it was the gunners who died.
Each time Siren's comparatively slender blade swept through the air, another Rest-Man lost his life.
One sword, slaughtering an entire firing line?
To Jenny's eyes—eyes that had spent a lifetime in the back alleys of Underland—it was a scene she simply could not believe.
And even now, Siren kept closing in.
Wielding that long blade, tangled with steel and flesh alike.
"Eeek!"
Jenny raised her pistol and pulled the trigger. Jealousy and longing, all of it mixed into that festering inferiority complex, rode the lead bullets as they flew.
When the magazine ran dry, she slapped in a fresh one.
And fired again.
At the monster.
At everything she had ever wanted for herself.
At the woman who had betrayed her.
At Siren. At Anna.
As if vomiting up everything she had kept bottled in her chest, she swapped magazine after magazine and kept her muzzle trained on Siren.
But everything, in the end, runs out.
By the time she had spat out her last bullet, Siren was standing right in front of her.
Having killed every last Rest-Man.
Still gripping the blade, blood dripping from it in fat drops.
"Unnie."
"Hyeeek!"
Scrambling backward in a panic, Jenny fell hard on her rear. That ridiculous sight, Siren looked down upon in silence, standing perfectly still.
Jenny couldn't stand that gaze.
So she screamed.
"What! Why are you looking at me like that! Why are you looking down at me! Why do you get to be the one on top!"
Her tirade went on and on.
"Must be nice! Being so special! The idol of Halloween! Fine, you're an amazing swordswoman, congratulations! So what, is that supposed to impress me? You're just here to brag about how well you're doing, are you? You traitor! You think I'm some kind of joke to—"
"Stop it already."
One short sentence cut Jenny's tirade clean off.
"..What?"
Anna lowered her stance.
Then she met Jenny's eyes.
"Don't pin the weight of your life on me. Yes, we were close once—but we were never so close that either of us owed the other a life. Don't you think what you're saying right now is a little ridiculous?"
"···!"
"You're just bitter, unnie. Because I don't scrape through Underland's gutters with you anymore."
Siren's quiet words drove into Jenny's heart like shards of sharpened ice.
They struck true.
It was a truth she wanted to look away from—a truth she knew better than anyone, deep down.
"And another thing—why do you keep calling me a traitor? You're the one who betrayed me."
Jenny had nothing to say.
So, Siren rose to her feet.
Just then, Ash and Zero appeared at her side. Slung across their shoulders were the three unconscious ninjas.
"Fair maiden. It is time to go."
"Yes, Ash-nim."
With that, Siren turned away.
"We should head to the safehouse for now. I'll guide you."
"That was precisely what I meant to say. Though···."
Ash lowered his head, looking at Jenny, who stood as though her soul had left her body.
"You mean to leave her like this?"
"What do you mean?"
Ash regarded Siren for a moment, then slowly shook his head.
"It is nothing."
"Then let's go. I'll lead the way."
As if bound by a silent pact, the three swordsmen turned together and left the blood-drenched alley behind. Their footsteps faded, little by little, into the distance.
Jenny stood rooted to the spot, staring blankly at their receding backs.
At some point—
A strange sound began to leak from her lips.
"K-kekek······ k, kheheh···."
That eerie sound, caught between weeping and laughter, echoed endlessly through the blood-stinking mouth of the alley.