What makes you think that it’ll all work out in the end / afraid to feel that I don’t have to try and pretend / I’m immortal / immune to all that is wrong / just keep on wishing
It’s mine / it’s pure and / as decent as I can make myself / inside / we all know
Only the strong survive #1
Sometimes it only took a little nudge to bring Mai out of one of her spasms. Sometimes it took just a hug from Mikoto, a grin from Yuuichi, a good meal or a song played on the radio. And then, sometimes…sometimes it took a big fat fucking shove.
Mai supposed that she had recovered quickly enough from her most recent one that it could be placed in the former category. She also supposed, as the storefront window of the scandalous little clothing shop exploded outward and Chie and Aoi dived to the ground, that as a nudge in the right direction, this was some big fucking overkill. If there was any trace of bitterness or depression in her system, it evaporated along with about seven townies standing outside of the storefront window at the time of the explosion.
(Chie and Aoi would later become the official Sole Survivors of an event that would never be named, but would be remembered by the town’s inhabitants for centuries to come regardless. More than a little bit of bitterness would emerge from the townies on account of the fact that it was tourists that survived, while many of their friends and family were practically vaporized in the explosion, on top of that; but Mai’s vacation ended long before the time that was necessary for such bitterness to fester could pass).
She chanced a single glance at Mikoto, whose face was remarkably impassive considering she had just witnessed the deaths of seven-odd people, and considering that Mai had a feeling that if she looked carefully, she could probably spot pieces of about a dozen more.
Mai chose not to look carefully, but she did dash towards Chie and Aoi; the latter was just now picking herself up, but the former was already up and walking; Mai saw blood running down the back of her legs from what she could only assume were cuts on the front, and the back of her shirt was pretty well burned off, leaving a pretty ripe-looking burn in its place, but aside from that, she was unhurt. Physically, anyway.
Mai noticed that as she approached, Chie gave no indication of perceiving her presence, even as Mai shouted out their names frantically. Mikoto came trotting up behind them a few seconds later, just as Aoi managed to get to her feet, still in a daze. She hadn’t yet caught up with the present, but she would in a moment. She hadn’t even registered that she was falling out, in a big way, of her skimpy little swimsuit that she must have been trying on. The swimsuit had a huge fray at the right shoulder, as well, probably from falling over, Mai gauged. It would snap soon. Again, Aoi took no notice. She latched her hand onto her forehead, groaning.
“Mai?” she frowned. “What are you doing here? What hap—” she looked over her shoulder and her sentence simply fell away. “Oh, god.”
The bodies of the dead were little more than burned husks, except for one piece of them: The explosion, which hadn’t dropped below shin level, thanks to some solid construction on the foundation, had left the husks’ feet and ankles intact. Completely intact.
This made the burned corpses undeniably human. Their feet; their name-brand sneakers, their trendy heels, their painted toenails—one of the feet was so freshly un-painted that there was actually a small flame eating at the shiny, flesh-colored toenail—they belonged to people, not vaguely-human objects.
And Chie couldn’t take her eyes off of them. Mai wanted to go to her, but in the next instant, Aoi was latched onto her like a vice or a certain persistent cold. She wasn’t screaming, for which Mai thanked whatever god happened to be listening (however privately certain she was that whichever deities typically paid attention to the earth were all sitting on the pot about now, or watching porn, or whatever it was that a god did when it couldn’t bear to look anymore), though the girl was making small noises between her teeth. It sounded vaguely like a frightened dog learning to whistle, Mai thought in some sadistic niche in the back of her head.
Son of a bitch; somebody needs to move Chie before she loses it. Mai felt tears rising to her own eyes, which she kept focused firmly away from the bodies. People were starting to gather around now, and none of them made any sort of motion to help Chie. Nobody recognized her; just another out-of-towner, the fewer the better. She came here to stare anyway, right? Let her stare. Mai, being from something of a small town herself, recognized this mentality immediately, but she couldn’t sympathize with it, not at all; this recognition had, in fact, an inverse affect on her: Before long, she felt that familiar little niggle of hatred, of pure, focused rage creep into her eyes from the back of her mind. Familiar from before. From
mikoto dear god how could you my god im going to fucking
…from before.
“Mai?”
She wanted to turn, but the weight around her shoulders wouldn’t let her. Yuuichi.
“Ma…shit, Mai! What the hell is—”
“Forget about me,” Mai shouted, though she desperately, desperately did not want to. All at once she wanted nothing more than to be comforted rather than to comfort, to be held rather than hold.
Is this what you’ve been reduced to, Mai? something in the back of her head mused. Just a pathetic little lost cat? Is that all?
…no. “Forget about me, Yuuichi, get Chie! Get her away from here!”
It was barely a second after the words left her mouth that Yuuichi passed her at a full-out sprint; like he’d been ready to rescue Chie as soon as he saw the devastation unfold in front of him, and that he was just waiting on her permission. Mai heard Shiho sigh a little as Yuuichi left her. Too fucking bad, bitch, Mai thought angrily, suddenly possessed with the overwhelming urge to slug the girl.
Brave Private Yuuichi once again threw himself in on top of the proverbial grenade as he ran to Chie; in front of her, replacing her view of seven-odd burned corpses with manicured toenails with a view of his chest. This, at least, was his intent; Yuuichi was assuming that as she was really seeing, as she stared so intently, anything in the present at all.
“Come on, Chie,” he said quietly, putting his hand on her shoulder about as gently as Mai had ever seen. “Let’s get you out of here.”
She didn’t move; it was like her feet had been soldered to the ground when she turned her back. There was no kind of fear in her eyes; none of the horror or regret or revulsion that some of the other townies were experiencing. Her eyes were at about half-mast, completely neutral. Right now, we may as well be on Mars; she’s not seeing anything that’s happening here, Yuuichi thought. Mai saw him tighten his grip on Chie’s shoulder, putting a little bit of force on it, trying to lead her as he
led me
yuuichi is so kind
might lead a timid puppy.
At that point, Mikoto snapped out of whatever trance had been keeping her ensnared, and without any sort of pretense, she…tip-toeing was nearest thing to it, but she wasn’t trying to be quiet…went up to Chie from behind, tugged on the back of her shirt.
“Come on,” she said quietly, and suddenly all eyes—all of them, even those of the Townies—were on her. “They’re dead now. There’s nothing that you can do.” There was a dead hush, as though she’d just declared something completely obscene. Maybe she had, and a moment later anger began pouring off of the locals in waves that could kill a man if he wasn’t careful.
Then she walked back to Mai, her own eyes towards the ground. She had certainly lost her spunk all at once, though she wasn’t nearly as…shocked, for lack of a better word…as everybody else seemed to be. “Let’s go, Mai,” she said quietly. “I’m hungry.”
Mai knew Mikoto very well. She knew her, quite possibly, better than any human being still alive at that moment, but she couldn’t…she couldn’t quite place that look on her face.
No, you know exactly where you’ve seen that look before. That innocent little lost puppy look that she gets on her…when she’s done
takumi evaporates in a cloud of neon green
yuuichis lips arent soft theyre gone
something awful.
Mikoto, Mai thought in a sudden, gut-wrenching moment, did you—
Mikoto looked into Mai’s eyes somberly, and Mai could have slapped herself if she didn’t have a one hundred and twenty pound bag of trauma strapped to her chest.
Mikoto was feeling the exact same thing she was. Horror, but more than that, sadness. For everybody present. Mai’s throat tightened, and she mouthed, “I’m sorry,” at Mikoto, who only nodded a little and started walking the other way.
It could be said that this moment was truly the point in which the town turned against their group: Chie began to respond to Yuuichi’s movements, just enough that where he guided, she went; Mai whispered to Aoi, “we have to go now,” and the girl detached herself from Mai, seeming to have recovered herself fairly well. She whispered, thank you to Mai, who nodded with a smile and then went to Chie, took her hand, finally nodding to Yuuichi, who caught up to Mai.
They all walked away from the place where more than twenty people died, horribly. Nobody could claim that it was their doing; they didn’t even know what happened. But the sight of the six of them just walking away from something that they, and only they of all people had survived, pushed the townsfolk beyond the point of caring about things like “fault.”
But the six of them didn’t know that. They just started walking away, back towards where the van was supposed to be. If they had cared to listen closely—which they didn’t—maybe they would have heard the first few muffled phunks of a silenced sniper rifle being fired into the roof of a house. Maybe they would have even known what to make out of it.
But they didn’t.
Reito murmured, “My God,” gaping at the bodies with a kind of morbidly fascinated revulsion.
Midori turned her head away. She had no urge to see any more death than what she’d already seen in her lifetime; there was more of it in her memory than most people would have guessed looking at her.
Akira watched the townsfolk, paying attention to how they observed the death around them, how they dealt with it. Who looked passive and who looked frightened. Two of them; both large men in golf sweatshirts, looked remarkably impassive about the scene in front of them. She locked their faces into her mind.
Natsuki jammed on the brake, hard and sudden enough that were the van not equipped with anti-lock brakes, they would have probably skidded into the strip-mall’s storefront. As it was, all of the passengers of the van except Akira went flying forward until their seatbelts locked up around their chests and necks. Midori and Reito gave a noise that was fairly analogous to a pair of twins being strangled; before they could protest, though, Natsuki looked at the two of them intently. “Get out of the van.”
“What?” Midori sputtered, rubbing her neck. “Why?” In truth, she protested more because she didn’t want to go out there than because she didn’t want to stay in the van. At that moment, she wasn’t entirely sure where she wanted to be.
“Because everybody’s out there, and I think they’re in trouble.”
Akira nodded. “The way the townsfolk were staring at them was not something I would want to be on the receiving end of,” she said. “Something’s happening, and you two should go investigate it.”
“Nuh-uh,” Natsuki and Midori said at once. They gave each other a look, and Natsuki proceeded, “You’re going along as protection.”
This wasn’t precisely what Midori had planned on saying, and it showed in her eyes as she stared at Natsuki in disbelief. “Protection?”
Akira sighed. “You are determined to go alone, Natsuki?”
Natsuki nodded as though she hadn’t heard Midori, and then turned to face forward again. “Everyone out.”
“Natsuki,” Reito murmured, “You don’t even know where it is you’re going.”
“That’s true,” Akira agreed. “You don’t. Do you see that house up ahead? The one with the brown tile at the end of the next block?”
Natsuki nodded.
“There.”
Natsuki took a moment to study where Akira had indicated. After a moment, a small, bitter grin slid onto her face. “How long have you been having your Okuzaki clan watch us, Akira?”
The shorter girl grinned a little herself; possibly her first genuine smile all day. “Long enough to be embarrassed about not being able to prevent Shizuru’s kidnapping.”
“You didn’t want to blow your cover, huh,” Natsuki didn’t sound angry, but it was a docility that spoke volumes of her true rage; both at Akira’s clan, and the girl in general. In the back of her mind, though, she understood vaguely that in the grand scheme of things, the Okuzaki clan’s anonymity was more important than the safety of any one person, to them. She couldn’t honestly blame them for not butting in. She would have made the same decision.
But it’s Shizuru, and that makes it…
Makes it what?
Inexcusable?
“Waitaminute,” Midori said, suddenly excited. “You mean to tell me that the Okuzaki clan of Ninja is still…God, that’s one of Japan’s most archaic…and you…”
“Shut up, Midori,” Natsuki said mildly. “You can be an anthropologist later.”
“But…”
“Later.” Natsuki actually smiled, feeling a little better as Midori’s overwhelming obsession with her profession once again stole her away from the morbidity of their present circumstances. “Out. All of you.”
“Natsuki…” Reito began, but Natsuki didn’t let him finish.
“You too, Reito. Shut up.”
A very special talent that many women possess that most men lack is the ability to end a conversation without really ending it; without any sort of “this conversation is over” or “piss off,” they can speak volumes via some mystic combination of their tone and their aura pertaining to the current status of their conversation. Men are only just perceptive enough to pick up on it, usually; in this case Reito felt it pummeling him like a desert wind.
He got out of the car without another word, because he knew that if he was going to speak again, he would probably say something he would regret later; like, “yes, ma’am.”
The last one out of the car was Midori, who lingered for a few moments.
“Natsuki, you’d better not be planning on doing what I think you’re planning on doing,” Midori said evenly. “Because if you are…”
“Yes?”
“If you are, then you shouldn’t. It’s a mistake, and a big one.”
“If the professor were in danger,” Natsuki asked as mildly as she had before, “wouldn’t you do the same thing?”
Midori gasped, froze for a moment, and Natsuki realized that she’d struck a nerve; though which one, she wasn’t entirely certain. Before she could ask, the door slammed shut and Midori walked way at the pace of a privately raging woman.
And even so, in spite of inviting the rage of an untold number of people in that town, and among her friends, in the span of five minutes, as soon as Midori was clear of the car, she jammed down the gas pedal. Behind her, the first ambulances and fire trucks began to arrive, and she thought, too little, too late.
The story of my life.
Funny, he thought. Usually, when you shoot a man, he starts to stain a darker shade of red. This time, it’s the opposite.
It’s only a job. Stop being introspective; that’s something that puddle-of-angst snipers do. A commonly accepted fact in Minoru’s world was that puddles of angst rapidly got over themselves, or they became puddles of blood in short order. Even during the lazy years—he had actually seen snipers die because they were too busy angsting over the people they were killing, or being introspective over the meaning of life through a bullet, or some such nonsense. He was happy to be removed from that, dammit. Get a grip on yourself.
Minoru took a moment to remember to pull the slide on the side of the gun back again, dropping the old shell, chambering a new one. The really high-caliber weapons needed to be manually cocked—an automatic mechanism was frailer than a manual one, and these things kicked like a motherfucker—certainly hard enough to bust up a badly put-together system.
The next person he thought less about. He was only a couple feet away, and Minoru put a bullet through his skull without bothering to think about how he couldn’t see panic through an IR scope. He didn’t give a fuck. He was a sniper, not a philosopher, and this was only a job.
A red blob appeared on his scope in about five places in the house; it started out very small for a moment, but only a moment, during which Minoru was positively baffled.
That was, until he realized that the people were slowly starting to blend into the blobs of red.
Fucking space heaters you’ve got to be SHITTING ME. It took Minoru all of five picoseconds to understand that these guys had definitely been forewarned as to his presence. He wondered for a moment if he’d been betrayed, but realized he probably hadn’t been.
Minoru Alder was not generally a lucky man, or if he was, he didn’t tend to bother about it. He was a firm believer that luck got a man killed if he relied on it too much. In fact, he mostly took luck as just another form of skill; something that he set up by himself and just happened to fall into place a little better than he had planned on. In that respect, he was a little like a spoiled child; he had come very close to dying a few times, but as a general rule, things for him had gone pretty well during his lifetime. Besides, a lot of times, those near-death experiences had more to do with his ex-wife than anything else.
Today, though; today was different. Today, Minoru Alder was a very, very lucky man. He started searching, slowly, for targets in the house, frustrated that he had to go so slowly because with each second he wasted, any targets—they were moving around to distract his aim, somebody fucking warned them which meant that he couldn’t get a solid shot on any one of them. As he did this, for just the barest second, something flashed in his eye. The kind of flash that you got from a laser aimer or light off of metal. For the barest instant, he was blinded, and in that instant, he thought, laser aimer…?
He flung himself to the roof of the building instinctually, and in the next instant, a bullet whizzed above where his eye had been in the instant previous. Off to your left, he thought, and then: What the fuck? They have another sniper?
He thumbed his radio. “Hey, you over there,” he said, praying that Scratch-ass hadn’t chosen now, of all moments, to go sit on the pot. “I’ve got an enemy sniper on me; I think that guy from before relocated. Can you see him?”
There was no answer, and he rolled over about a yard and a half, also by instinct, an instant before another shot cracked through the wall where he’d been. One second-two-second-three-second-roll or die. That’s how long it takes a guy to throw a bullet in the pie. A nonsense rhyme he’d made up one night when he was drunk, a night he commonly regarded as the best drunk of his life, mostly because the rhyme had saved his ass more than a few times.
Son of a bitch now is NOT the time to be taking a shit, scratch-ass!
Three-second roll or he rolled and another bullet cracked through the wall.
Fine then, fuck you right back. Minoru hadn’t had an old-fashioned sniper duel in years, but he still knew how to do the dance. I am almost forty years old, and I’m willing to bet you’re not more than twenty, by the way you shoot as fast as you can he rolled over reload.
Also, he’s got… Minoru glanced at the wall in front of him and gauged the size of the hole as best he could. He couldn’t get a real measurement, so he filed it under the really fucking big class. The same kind as he had. And an IR scope—that’s how he can see me through the wall.
Something like betrayal niggled at the back of his head, and he shoved it out of the way for the moment. Now was the time to—roll two feet to the right as pieces of brick showered him painfully—think.
This clip holds six shots. There are four bullet holes, and the one that almost took off my head at the beginning.
Then, immediately after, a number of thoughts at once:
How long will it take him to reload?
Is it really the same gun? Will it hold more?
What if he’s fighting with one in the chamber?
What if he’s not?
What if you can’t roll over in time?
He rolled over twice and one more bullet cracked through the roof, and then all of the thoughts vanished. He stood up, looked straight through his scope, and saw exactly who he was looking for—a red blob in the window across from him, half-calmly yanking the clip out of his rifle, grabbing a new one, and
squeeze.
Dropping to the ground, with a big fat fucking hole in his head. Minoru lowered the gun, grinning with satisfaction, to see who exactly it was he’d killed.
He couldn’t really see very well, to be fair. The building was far enough away from him that it was hard to make much out, but he did see one thing very clearly.
He’d just shot the other man in black.
Son of a bitch, he thought, but not so much because he was rapidly coming to understand that he’d been betrayed.
Rather, he cursed to himself in that instant because he knew that there were plenty more Men in Black, and even if none of them were presently watching him, they’d be gunning for him soon enough. Nobody who has the kind of resources to throw out a man at will has only one Man in Black.
It was that, he thought, and the fact that he didn’t have a way to get out of town. He hoped he still remembered how to hotwire a car. There were no idiotic thoughts of vengeance in his mind—he knew better than that. Now, he thought, was the time for running. Fast.
He started by running for the roof exit.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Just like before.
Trouble was, it had been so long that “before” was starting to become blurry in her mind. It had been a long time since she’d fought anybody outside of a dojo, and she didn’t honestly know how up to par her skills were.
Then use your head, fuckwit, and don’t fight if you don’t have to.
She shook her head and got out of the car, shut the door, but didn’t lock it. There was nothing inside to steal, and it was better to be able to get in quickly in a pinch.
Or is it better to lock it so that somebody has to break a window to lie in wait for you?
Either one could get you killed, but you can’t do both.
She sighed, a little depressed at her inability to decide; she’d never been this bad before, had she? Of course not. She was nervous. Nervous that she’d mess it up, and then
head in pieces on her blouse and the floor behind
some unnamed evil may befall Shizuru. She made sure to mentally shout unnamed, to drill it into her head.
In the end, she locked the door and stuffed the keys in her pants pocket; they were tight but secure there. Since the car had an electric lock, she could unlock it on the run and be much safer.
She crept through the yard between her and the house as quickly as she could; she was creeping more out of habit that was, much to her delight, steadily beginning to creep its way back into her mind. She pulled out her cell phone and her gun about midway through, and dialed Shizuru’s number again. She picked up on the first ring and said, in a remarkably calm voice, “Hello?” As though she had no idea at all who was calling her.
“Where are you?” Natsuki asked in a hushed voice as she squinted to see inside the window of the house that was facing her. A moment later, satisfied that she wasn’t being watched from that side, she started to move, quickly but quietly, towards it.
“I am in the basement. There is a window nearby, but I can’t get out of it.”
“Where is the entrance to the basement?” Natsuki pressed herself against the wall of the building.
“I don’t know.” A pause, and Natsuki started inching towards the door. “Are you coming to rescue me, Natsuki?” A tone of…amusement? Disbelief? Condescension?
Natsuki didn’t say anything for a moment. Her heart was now hammering in her chest for more than one reason, and her grip on her gun—right handed, as always—was very, very tight; her finger was locked right on top of the trigger, but the safety was still on. Incidentally, her thumb was on that.
“I guess I am,” she said quietly into the phone.
“How should I take that, Natsuki?” Shizuru’s voice was as calm and solid as a frozen lake, though nowhere near as cold.
“Please,” Natsuki whispered, her breath coming in shorter breaths now, more rapid. “Not now.”
“When, then?”
“Later. Just not—”
“Who are you?” The man’s voice wasn’t particularly afraid considering he was only peeking his head out the door, which covered the rest of his body. Natsuki closed the phone immediately and dropped that hand to her side, twisted her body so that her gun was behind her back.
He was staring at her in the way that all armed people stare at other armed people: Nervously.
She doubled her gun hand back and aimed it at his head. She saw the barrel of a shotgun peeking out of the door, saw it freeze as her weapon lined up with his head.
“There are about ten cops two blocks away,” he said carefully, his eyes locked onto the weapon with a kind of nervous fascination.
“I’m sure they’d be delighted to find you with a nineteen year old girl locked in your basement,” Natsuki countered. “Move. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”
“Why? Is the girl down there worth the lives of eight men to you?”
That hit her deeper than he’d intended for many reasons and on many levels, but she managed to keep her face deadpan. “It’s not a question of worth right now. You people are in my way, and if you don’t move, I’ll deal with you.” She let it sit at that, pulled the hammer on her weapon back; this was strictly for effect, as the weapon could be fired without touching the hammer.
“Could you kill all of us, do you think?” he mused.
“If you’re speaking ethically…” Natsuki grinned. “I’ve killed more than eight people in my lifetime. The person downstairs has killed many more than I have.”
He frowned, and Natsuki narrowed her eyes. “Count of three. If the gun doesn’t hit the ground and I don’t see your whole body, hands in the air—” she didn’t get to finish the sentence; he vanished into the door. She cursed and clicked the safety off of the gun, and leapt up onto the nearby windowsill. After a moment’s hesitation, she clicked the safety back on the gun, flipped it so that she was holding the barrel, and shattered the window with the butt before dropping back to the ground.
A moment later and another reversal and safety click later, she was inside. She moved slowly now, her footsteps nearly silent, her weapon held out in front of her in a two-handed grip, her left hand cupped under her right. The house was completely silent, though the door had closed itself behind her with a small click. It seemed that her distraction had done very little overall.
Natsuki moved very, very carefully, sweeping each room for people, doors, hiding places, before she moved in full view of it, acting with a skill borne from years of paranoia.
She found herself, shortly, in a hallway. The hallway had only three ways out: A door to a kitchen on her right; a staircase straight ahead—long, wooden, and a little creepy in its utter straightness—and where she’d come from.
She swept the kitchen. Left. Cabinet and Fridge. Right. Wall and window. Up. Tiled ceiling, light. Down. Cabinets.
The house was utterly silent.
She moved into the kitchen. There was only one exit: A staircase. Downward. Bingo. She began to advance, never losing her sense of caution.
Step.
Step.
Something creaked behind her. She whirled around and had about half a second to dive forward and left before the man she’d seen earlier fired his shotgun straight into the kitchen. The buckshot pellets sprayed a wide pattern, carving a rough ellipse in the wall behind her. A pellet grazed her shoulder, making her wince.
She didn’t let him get off a second shot. His eyes widened a little as she went flying towards him, moving on instinct rather than intelligence. Intelligence would have been to shoot him. Instinct was to land a solid kick in his midsection, buckling him. His breath left him in a woof, and she followed it up with a flat-palm to his nose. He didn’t drop his shotgun, but blood gouted and he staggered backwards, shouting in pain.
Still eyeing the shotgun, she used his momentary incapacitation to grab his gun hand with her free one. She straightened it out as best she could in the half-second she had, and drove her gun hand butt-first into the elbow, which broke with a sickening crack.
“Ichi!” another person up the stairs. He had an axe. She wouldn’t have so much luck with hand-to-hand fighting an axe; therefore, it was instinctual to her what she did next, too: She raised her weapon and fired once, twice, three times into his body, aiming for the chest with the first shot.
Natsuki Kuga carried a rather unrealistic weapon for somebody of her size: It was technically a Heckler and Koch Mark 23 SOCOM, (a military weapon that her contact had bitched about for months before he finally accepted her payment—very hefty payment—and gave it to her) but it had been more accurately described earlier as an “Illegal howitzer.” It’s .45 ACP rounds were specifically tailored for stopping power at range, probably under the assumption that anybody that it was being fired at was also a man with a military-class physical training.
At the range that Natsuki was at, about ten feet, it really did act like a howitzer. The man’s chest exploded backwards; then his right arm at the shoulder, then the corner of his head. The stairs behind him were instantly slick with what used to be inside the man, and Natsuki looked away. It was enough to make anybody look away; she had been prepared to kill him, but not that gruesomely. The man at her feet shouted something, and she walked away from him, told him absently that he should “kick the shotgun into a corner and leave now, before I shoot you.” She knew he’d complied when the door slammed.
The descent down the stairs was easy. There was no blood soaking this staircase. At the bottom, there was a man who just stared at her; she pointed her gun at him, and he shrugged and opened the door.
And there was Shizuru.
“You’ve come to rescue me,” the girl said a little bitterly. “How wonderful.”
“Let’s go,” Natsuki said quietly. “Now.”
Shizuru nodded and started walking towards her, and then the man spoke. “Did you have to kill Nayo?” he asked.
Natsuki nodded to him.
“He was more with them than he was with us. He was truly desperate.” The man looked at her with sad eyes. “I am sorry to see him die, but I can appreciate his death nonetheless.”
In that moment, Natsuki had no coherent thoughts. Only the undeniable impression that maybe this man was, somehow, more of a warrior than she would ever be.
Or maybe it was the opposite.
Maybe it was that what blocked this man from being…whatever it is that he wanted to be…was far stronger than whatever blocked her from…
Shizuru said, “I’m very sorry about Nayo,” quietly. “And about Nobu and Keitaro as well.”
The man shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault, Shizuru Fujino.” He gave a small bow. “Nobu and Keitaro least of all. We think they were taken out by a sniper.”
Shizuru frowned. “A sniper? Whose?”
He gave her a bitter smile. “How should I know?”
Yeah. How should you know? You’re just the one who does the killing.
Or the dying.
“Thank you for everything,” Shizuru whispered, her voice tight. Natsuki saw tears in her eyes. The man nodded back, not looking at her, and then said, “Go. We’ll try our best and escape; don’t you worry about us.”
She nodded mutely, and then looked at Natsuki strangely.
Natsuki didn’t understand, but somehow felt that she’d done something horrible in that instant. Later, Shizuru would deny it, but for now there was zero comfort on that end.
“All right, then,” Natsuki said. “Lets go.”
So they did.
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