Runaway Ninja vs. Yakuza (5)
“Thrust!”
Leonard’s mana-charged roar rolled across Goldon’s plaza.
“That’s it! Faster! Thrust and pull back!”
Hundreds of people focused on Leonard’s voice as they swung their wooden spears. At the start everyone had been clumsy and slow, but the fruits of their labor were beginning to show—more and more of them were finding their form.
Leonard watched with proud eyes.
“Haha! You there! You’ve improved a lot! What’s your name?”
He laughed and pointed at a dark-skinned blond man.
“Hammerhead… John, sir!”
The man Robin called Hammerhead wiped the sweat from his brow. John’s movements were so steady that Leonard had singled him out on purpose.
“Looking good! Keep at it!”
It wasn’t high praise—just a light word of encouragement for a young man who was working hard and starting to get the hang of things. Yet that simple line made John beam like a child.
“Thank you! Thank you, Sir Leonard!”
Eyes already reddening, John swung his wooden spear with even greater fervor.
Several hours passed that way.
“Enough! Rest a bit, then we start again!”
The moment Leonard called for a break, John and the other young men collapsed right where they stood.
“Hah… hah…”
John was still grinning ear to ear even as he gasped for breath, as if he couldn’t contain his excitement.
“John, catch.”
Thwack!
Unis—the unicorn—tossed him a waterskin made of beast hide. John caught it lightly and drank.
“Whew. Thanks. I was dying of thirst.”
He pulled the skin from his lips and dumped the rest over his head. Sweat and sand washed cleanly from his face.
“You’re the only one having fun. Why are you smiling like that?”
Unis kicked the tip of his boot, sounding sulky.
“Because it’s fun.”
At that idiot answer she shook her head in disbelief.
“Everyone else is screaming they’re about to die. Don’t you resent being dragged here?”
“What’s the point of getting mad about something that’s already happened? It doesn’t change anything. Just think of it as learning self-defense.”
Unis snorted, speechless.
A week had passed since the four of them arrived in Goldon. Only John had adapted. They had all been caught trying to do the same bad thing, so where did he get off acting so confident?
“With our lives on the line?”
“Do we have to assume we’re going to lose?”
“...That’s not what I meant.”
“Goldon was next on the list after our village anyway. Think of it that way and just work hard.”
“...I wonder how Sis is doing. I used to hate her so much, but lately I keep thinking about her.”
Unis deliberately changed the subject, trying to forget the tragedy that kept rising unbidden and inescapable.
“Hmm…”
John scratched his head awkwardly, the image of her face surfacing for the first time in a while. His fiancée—and Unis’s older sister. He could still hear her clearly, the day their marriage was decided, screaming at him to bring more money. Unable to bear the pressure, John had fled the village with three others, including his childhood friend Unis who was now his sister-in-law. Under the pretext of guiding a traveler they had tried to shake the man down for a fortune. The result: all of them ended up training in Goldon.
“She’s fine, I’m sure. She’s probably stomping around the neighborhood bad-mouthing me at the top of her lungs. Don’t worry about her—let’s just focus on our own work.”
“Pfft. Just imagining it is funny.”
“Yeah. Let’s do this with a smile. Looks good on you.”
John stood and lightly tapped Unis on the head. At that casual touch her face flushed crimson in an instant.
“All right! On your feet! We start again!”
Before long Leonard announced the resumption of training, and the two of them drifted apart once more.
“Talk. What was Delbanas looking for here?”
“I-I don’t know the details either. It wasn’t my mission—it was my comrade’s!”
Thud!
Sayleen’s long awl dug into the fallen ninja’s toenail again.
“Aaaargh! Really! I really don’t know!”
Blood soaked the floor around the man bound to the chair. As expected of the Yakuza Slayer—no mercy in her hands.
“Mm…”
Orphe frowned, looking uncomfortable. I was watching with her, thinking I might pick up a few torture techniques for later use.
“You must have heard even a hint. Spit it out.”
“No! I never heard anything! I swear on my mother!”
Now the fallen ninja was even selling out his mother. Easy to swear on parents when you’re an orphan, I guess? That was the average for the orphan organization Snake’s Tail.
Sayleen watched him in silence, then stabbed the other toenail.
“Ghk!”
The man went limp like a squid and passed out. The splint on his right arm stood stiffly upright—an odd sight. After taking a hit from the Duck-Tenderizing Technique, that arm was closer to a tentacle than a proper limb now.
“Splash some water on him, if you would.”
A soldier who had been trembling nearby scooped a ladleful from a full bucket.
“Tch.”
I was starting to get bored. Sorry to hardworking Sayleen, but torture just wasn’t my thing. My jet kick and forehead flicks were probably more threatening than this.
“This is really fun, but I gotta take a leak! No choice!”
“D-don’t say that so loud.”
Embarrassed Orphe and I slipped out of the torture chamber together. A sweet ninja, considerate of the Yakuza Slayer’s mood.
“Robin. Have you gone back there since then?”
Orphe asked carefully in a very low tone. The way her face snapped right back to blank told me she was still a total poker face.
“No.”
The yakuza who had tasted even a fraction of my power couldn’t possibly leave me alone. Right this moment they were probably roaming around in groups looking for me. Delbanas himself was no doubt firing off that weird radar of his between meals and bathroom breaks. For now I had to at least force the enemy to waste manpower.
Go back and cut down a few more necks? Honestly not hard. But I didn’t think it would help much. The plains made it tough to pull out once you went deep, and the core officers stuck together in the center where I couldn’t get at them. In the end war was the only answer. Only in the chaos of a siege could I run wild. Even half-ruined and tiny, Goldon was still a fortress city—it could hold two or three hundred for a while. While they held, if I just killed the key officers, our odds would skyrocket.
That wasn’t really my idea—most of it was Orphe’s. She had pushed for an encirclement-and-annihilation formation and gotten nowhere. That was the real deal, and it pissed me off something fierce.
“Good. You don’t have to overwork yourself alone this time either. Let’s take it a little easier.”
Orphe grinned and clapped a hand on my shoulder, pressing down with quiet strength. Was she still sore that I had gone off on my own at Maple Leaf Village and when I beat Aileen?
Sometimes listening to Orphe didn’t seem so bad, so I went along. Honestly I didn’t have any brilliant wild cards of my own right now.
“But there’s nothing to do. Should I give Diana human lessons or something?”
“Diana? She’s probably playing with the village girls.”
She’d already gotten that friendly with the locals? Kids, I guess. Either way it wasn’t good news—another thing off my to-do list. I didn’t want to sit around listless in a tavern again.
“Bored? Then how about a spar?”
“A spar? Aren’t you busy with… that?”
I’d heard she was busy with something, but I couldn’t remember exactly what, so I just said “that.” A runaway ninja’s brain runs efficiently—unnecessary information gets purged in short order. Super brain-computer Shin Nobin.
“I’ve got time today. How about it? We get permission, head outside the walls, and do it without interruptions.”
“Missing subject makes that sound weird.”
To be honest, the gap between Orphe’s combat power and mine was like a mountain lion versus a squeaky mouse. I would gain absolutely nothing from this spar. Still, for the woman who had followed me without complaint all this time, I could make that much of a sacrifice.
“Sure. Let’s give it a shot.”
Helping my friend and housekeeper Orphe power up while inventing a new technique or two on the side didn’t sound half bad.
Orphe swung her spear and knocked my dagger aside.
“Haap!”
Nice kiai. I drew a decent one-handed sword I’d picked up in Goldon and swung.
“—Helicopter Sword Style.”
A technique I hadn’t used in a while.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-!
My endlessly spinning blade hammered her shield without mercy.
“Ugh…!”
Helicopter Sword Style. The name was ridiculous, but in a way it was an all-in-one offense-and-defense sword art. As long as the user had the speed, you could keep rotating like a helicopter rotor and pressure the opponent nonstop.
“Ahh, how dull.”
Orphe’s decision to raise her shield and focus purely on defense wasn’t bad. But to me—who had self-taught every martial art imaginable since childhood to become a ninja—it looked lacking. I needed to draw out her full potential.
“Is this the difference in ‘talent’? I’m actually yawning.”
Yaaawn. I’d meant to fake it, but a real one came out. Sitting around the torture chamber had been pretty boring.
Orphe’s eyes sharpened as the provocation finally landed. She had a surprisingly strong pride, this one.
“Hyat!”
Tracking the sword’s path with her eyes, she read the brief opening when my hand position shifted and drove her spear in. She really did learn fast.
Clang!
Of course I casually deflected the spear with the pommel.
“Your attacks are missing something. A kind of… soul.”
“Soul?”
Trying to explain it on the spot was hard.
“You know. That fighting spirit that wells up from deep in the soul… a kiai?”
“Do you need that for combat?”
“If you want to get as strong as me, it’s essential.”
“...So I have to shout ‘Wazabyot!’ too?”
“You hate it that much?”
“...Honestly, yes.”
She really looked like she didn’t want to. Still, the fact that a kiai made you stronger was true. Shouting a battle cry released adrenaline and heightened focus—science had already proven that on Earth. In the ruthless world of combat where every single move decided victory or defeat, concentration was critical. (Actually I’d just read it on TreeWiki, so I wasn’t totally sure.)
“It doesn’t have to be that. You just need a cry of your own.”
“A cry of my own?”
“Let’s start by naming your techniques.”
“...Like ‘Takoyaki Killing Method’?”
“Yeah. Stuff like that.”
“...”
She hated that too. This was no good, that was no good—what did she want me to do?
“For now, start with ‘Thrust.’”
“Thrust? Why?”
“Shout it loud while you thrust!”
I suddenly stabbed with the sword.
“Hat!”
Orphe blocked it with her shield at once. I was holding back, but it was still a surprise attack third-rates couldn’t have stopped. I guaranteed that with a little more real combat experience she’d get as strong as Kakkashi in no time.
“Th-thrust!”
I slanted her immediately fired spear aside. She was sharp enough to understand after hearing it only once. That was Orphe’s greatest strength.
“Louder, and again!”
“Thrust~!”
The heat of battle flushed Orphe’s face. A good sign.
“Add a technique name of your own! Something like ‘Death Thrust’!”
“That’s a bit…”
“Yah!”
“Gyaah!”
Hesitation earned her a solid hit. Orphe lost her grip on the shield.
“Think of it as for the sake of victory! Get your head in the game!”
“Ugh, damn it…!”
Orphe gripped the spear with both hands and charged again.
“Instant-Death Thrust~!”
“That’s it!”
Finally she got it!