As Long as It Isn't Me!
As long as it isn't me!
Yuto, running in nothing but his loincloth alongside the other samurai, felt like he was losing his mind. Bandits — on the road from Kamakura to Kyoto, of all places?
And even if such monsters existed, who in the world could possibly be brazen enough to rob a shipment belonging to the Bakufu?
Just in case, the samurai the Bakufu had assigned as escorts had been stripped clean as well, and now they too were running in nothing but their undergarments.
"Damn it all!"
"We're finished!"
"What do we do?"
The samurai running beside him were in just as much trouble. If they returned like this, the best they could hope for was dismissal — in truth, they were as good as dead.
It had all started with something utterly trivial: a simple transport job between the Bakufu and the capital. They'd been idling in Kamakura, gathered in preparation for an attack, and had set out out of sheer boredom. Who could have imagined this would happen?
"Those were no ordinary men!"
"Could they have been Daehan?"
"Hmph. Damn them all! It looks like they're preparing a land invasion!"
That was the story they intended to tell — that they'd been attacked by an army. And hadn't that woman been there too? He'd only noticed after the fact: the small object hanging from the silver staff in her hand. It was unmistakably a relic of the 'Kurokin Hime,' passed down through legend.
Her descendant had appeared. This, too, was something worth reporting to the Bakufu — surely they would spare his life for news like that.
"Then. We'd best tidy things up, wouldn't you say?"
"I suppose so?"
The samurai understood each other without a word being spoken. Their task was obvious: silence every mouth that might tell a different story.
After running for a long while, they stopped together at the roadside to rest. One by one, the samurai secretly picked up stones — and soon screams and splashes of blood scattered across the road. When it was over, the only ones left standing were the samurai themselves, and the forest was littered with corpses flung this way and that.
Running relentlessly for two days, the samurai finally reached Kamakura.
When Hojo Nagatoki heard their report, he felt as though he might faint. Gold he had scraped together with such care — gone, every last piece, stolen outright.
"Forgive us! The merchants were in league with the bandits!"
What kind of nonsense was this? Nagatoki knew those merchants personally. Unless they intended to abandon Japan forever, their families were still living here, weren't they? The story made no sense whatsoever.
"Then how many were these brigands?"
"Forty men — and the 'Kurokin Onna.'"
"What did you say?!"
Onna, Hime — she was called by many names, but they all pointed to Haneul. More precisely, they were nicknames for the sword and the gun that Haneul always carried.
"This may yet prove to be an opportunity!"
Nagatoki reasoned that this Haneul must surely be a woman of considerable standing in Daehan. Capture her, and perhaps they could settle the question of the gold mine's ownership — and the matter of their debts — in one stroke.
Or better still, marry her off to some suitable child of the clan. Forcibly, of course.
"Recruit every samurai you can find. She must be captured!"
"Yes, my lord!"
That evening, five hundred samurai rode out from Kamakura in desperate haste. They had to arrive before the bandits vanished to wherever it was they were going.
One day of running a business, roughly speaking, and the conclusion was clear. These people were dirt poor. Genuinely, spectacularly poor.
"Wow. There's nothing here! Seriously? Isn't this a bit much?"
"All they have for money are these strange coins."
"Ha. Let's wrap up and head back."
"Won't they be waiting for us?"
"Why would we wait for them?"
I told them to come find me, didn't I? I never said anything about waiting around. And even if I had, they could wait somewhere else.
Guerrilla warfare does sound kind of fun, though...
"Can you lot run up a mountain wearing armor and carrying guns and ammunition?"
"How fast do you need?"
"Just faster than the enemy. That's all."
"Can we manage it?"
If not, we're completely done for, you know? Maybe this isn't something worth staking your life on?
We waited a little longer, and what do you know — not a single customer. Word must have gotten around.
"Ugh, nobody's coming and it's boring."
Not one soul had passed by since last night. It was morning, and apparently not even a wandering human in sight.
"Where is their base of operations? Even the army hasn't shown up?"
"That's what's driving me crazy right now."
So we robbed them, fine — but when exactly were they planning to show up?
"Ugh, let's go."
Dum-dum-dum-dum.
"Miss! Hoofbeats!"
Come to think of it, the ground did seem to be trembling a little?
"Why are you pressing your ear to the ground like that?"
"Like this, you can hear galloping hooves from much farther away!"
Ooh, a new technique?
"Alright, everyone! Looks like we've got customers! Get ready!"
"Our last customers?"
"I'd assume so?"
They were coming on horseback, so merchants they were not. Every merchant I'd seen so far traveled with their cargo loaded on horses.
There were plenty of trees in this forest — once they entered it, they wouldn't be able to gallop freely, would they?
"Let's try that guerrilla warfare I taught you."
"Yes, ma'am!"
There's really nothing to it. You just run through the mountains faster than the enemy. A very simple plan. Only these kids could pull it off — I doubt anyone else could.
"Alright, prepare to fire! Fire off a few volleys, then straight into the forest!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Move in your teams — regroup at our palisade!"
No telling how many would come, so we'd hold them off as best we could, then board the ship and head home. Plenty of the kids would be waiting there anyway — anyone trying to cut through the forest would get a nice hearty welcome of cannon fire before we left.
And if they complain? Well, what can you do. Do you have any evidence, sir? That's all there is to it.
Click.
Compared to the kids' guns, mine is awfully shiny, isn't it? It's practically a work of art.
"Will you be running too, Miss?"
"I'll probably run better than any of you."
You all have to run in armor with guns in hand, but I don't need armor, and I just keep my gun tucked away in subspace and pull it out when I need it.
"Still, be careful."
"Don't worry about me!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
Dum-dum-dum-dum.
How many of them were there, that the thunder of hooves just wouldn't stop? And wait — narrow as this road is, they're really charging down it in a single line?
"Aim for the horses! Fire!"
Ta-da-DANG! BANG! Ta-tang!
Thanks to the telltale smoke of black-powder rifles, they had to fire all at once on a signal. Otherwise, the smoke from the front rank would blind the slower shooters — they'd fire at nothing but their comrades' haze.
A mere forty-one shots rang out, but the sounds bleeding through the smoke were truly ferocious.
"Neiiiigh!"
"Uwaaagh!"
Crash-tumble-clatter.
"What the—!"
Thud. Thud. Thud.
These rifles had rifled barrels, so nearly every shot struck what it had been aimed at. And the targets had been the horses. Picture the aftermath.
"Huh?"
"What is this?"
When the smoke cleared, what met our eyes were the broken, twisted corpses of horses and men. And behind that barricade of the dead, a company of samurai stood frozen in awkward, immobilized confusion, the road cut off before them.
Click. Clack.
The bandits dutifully pocketed their spent casings, fed in a fresh round, and reloaded.
That's right. Lose a casing and you'll suffer for it badly back home. Very, very badly.
"Take aim!"
Click!
"Fire!"
Ta-da-da-da-da-DANG!
The samurai who had been standing there dumbstruck fell in another crimson spray.
"Dismount! The distance isn't far — run at them!"
"Charge!"
"There aren't many of them! Hurry!"
Recovering from the two volleys, the samurai abandoned their horses and came crashing through the forest.
"Then we move as planned!"
"Teams, scatter!"
Scramble-scramble.
We weren't about to just stand and watch, either. Ten teams of four melted swiftly into the forest.
I was already running ahead of them. As expected, the kids are slow — probably because of all that armor.
Still, they ran while reloading, fired, ran again, fired again — all things considered, they seemed to be managing.
"Uwaaagh! My casing!"
"Just keep going!"
"Sniff..."
Amid it all, someone had dropped their casing. I'd had the finger sections of the gauntlets made from leather, but clumsy hands were only natural.
It's not as if they could pull a scorching-hot casing out bare-handed, after all.
"No!"
"My casing!"
Casualties from lost casings were mounting everywhere.
Losing a casing, it turned out, frightened them far more than the enemy's arrows.
Thwit-thwit! Thwip! Ting.
The samurai were shooting back with their bows — but honestly, what kind of absurdly long bow is that? The arrows came wobbling through the air, and it looked less like a weapon meant to kill and more like something being flung in our general direction.
Ta-tang. Tang.
"Uwaaagh!"
"Gack!"
Their armor was so pitiful that just about anything punched clean through it. These people are way too weak.
The kids ran through the forest faster too. Why are they so slow over there? Is it because they're short?
Tang. Ta-tang.
"Uwoooogh."
"What even is this!"
Thwit-thwit-thwit! Ting! Titing!
They had numbers, sure, and plenty of arrows in the air — but you'd have to be spectacularly unlucky to die from this in open ground with nothing to hide behind.
What kind of weapon of war depends on luck?
Click. Tang.
"Huh? Isn't the chest supposed to be the tough part?"
I took careful aim and deliberately shot at a spot that looked solid, but when the smoke cleared, the man I'd been aiming at was gone too.
Then it was fire, run while the smoke drifted away, reload, fire again. I'd half expected us to gradually close the gap, trading covering shots side by side — instead, they just kept falling one after another from the front of their line.
"Does this count as war experience?"
We were running, shooting, doing... something, I suppose? It's probably just going too smoothly, right?
Wait — no, running through a forest in that armor was the unrealistic part from the start. It's practically full plate.
Honestly, if we just kept running like this, we could conquer Japan outright, couldn't we? We'd still need ships for supply lines, though.
Clank-clatter-clank-clatter.
There is no such thing as a stealthy guerrilla war here. The whole forest is filled to bursting with the clatter of steel plate.
"Waaaaagh!"
"Ugh!"
"Kraaagh!"
"Die!"
And those fools charging in while screaming their heads off — what exactly are they trying to do? The forest was not the nimble, elite small-unit guerrilla war I'd imagined. It was just a chaotic free-for-all.
What did I expect, really?
"Die!"
SKRAAAK!
"What did you just say?"
CRANG! Crash-tumble — TANG!
One samurai managed to get close and swung his blade — it skidded off the armor, and the kid booted him away and put a bullet in him for good measure.
Why is there an axe hanging off your waist, anyway?
"Take this!"
"Whoa!"
The samurai clawed their way closer one or two at a time, and eventually one of the kids, cornered by a warrior swinging a katana, yanked the axe from his belt and went to meet him head-on.
CLANG!
"Hup!"
Thwack!
"What the—?"
But seriously — what is wrong with these Japanese kids and their metalwork? I've noticed it before: the moment anything clashes head-on, it just snaps.
Look over there! The sword breaks, and the follow-up swing of the axe sends a head flying clean off.
War really does come down to gear. You absolutely must have the better equipment. Look at our kids — not one of them getting hurt.
"Uwaaagh! They're not human!"
"Demons! They're demons!"
"Run!"
In the end, the enemy fled. What a laughably one-sided battle. There must have been several hundred of them. They couldn't beat forty, so they ran?
Just how badly have anime and movies romanticized these people? The samurai really were nothing special.
First, those bows with zero practical value — after a few weak shots that kept snagging on branches, they threw them away themselves.
And their armor, whether shoddily made or simply too thin, let bullets pass clean through it even at long range.
As for the swords — one man blocked a blow with his armor and the blade simply bent and gave way.
"Miss, what do we do now?"
"No need to chase down men who are running away, is there?"
"What about their cargo?"
"I took a look — I don't think it's worth hauling off."
I'm sure someone, somewhere, could find a use for it, but the kids worked hard running around out there. Asking them to collect scrap iron as a reward feels a bit rude, doesn't it?
"Let's head back, rest up, and eat something good."
"Yes. I doubt anyone would even want that stuff anyway."
But for the kids, the problem wasn't those scraps of iron at all.
"Uwaaaaagh! I'm short six casings!"
"Please! Shouldn't we be heading back into the forest to look?"
"Sniff..."
The casing-losers stamped and wailed in anguish.
"I've got a great idea!"
"Huh? What is it?"
"Let's pool our missing casings onto one person!"
"What?"
"Only one person has to get scolded, right?"
Mayflies, the lot of them. In the end they gathered around, fighting over who would take the fall — all so that only one of them would have to die for it. I wonder how the enemy's supposedly elite warriors would feel, knowing this is what they were up against?