Ronin Trip
Book one: For want of a rune.
Chapter one: Mercenaries, outsourcing at its finest.
FN: (Firecat note) Hi to anyone who's reading this. If you've realdy ready my FF7 fanfiction "Twilight Perfection" posted by way of thegr8sephiroth then I welcome you back, though I've got a different editor this time. For those of you who aren't familiar with my works, with any luck you'll find my particular style of writting enjoyable, either way please leave reviews about what you liked and what you loathed. Also forgive my crude way of doing scene breaks, asterisks and dashes aren't working.
It was a relatively small carriage that made its way down a mostly unused path. The voice of one who didn't have the slightest care about being overheard echoed out from inside it. "Are you sure we're going the right way?"
A quite confident voice shot back its response at once. "Of course it's the right way, we took a left turn at the Tigerwolf Mountains; this path can't lead anywhere but straight to the capital." There was silence for a few moments, and then the first voice came back. "Hey, have any of you guys ever seen a tigerwolf? 'cause I've seen a lot of things but I've never seen a tigerwolf."
A different voice responded this time. Judging from its higher timbre, its owner was obviously female. "You should know how humans are by now, James. They don't need something to actually exist to name a building or landmark after it. Think about it..." Apparently the owner of the first voice did, because for a while there was silence. At least until all of a sudden a group of horses came charging out of the hills to encircle the carriage.
The four horses pulling the carriage came to an abrupt stop and a figure who had apparently not been holding onto anything was thrown out of the carriage. A moment later a second figure emerged, but instead of falling, this one jumped out. It did so over the fallen body without a moment's hesitation.
He was obviously a nay-kobold; he wore a red jacket with a red shirt underneath, red pants, and red gloves, but his red hat did precious little to hide his feline features and crimson fur. His beaming blue eyes turned to inspect the fallen body and then he slapped himself in the face. "Oh man, what was I thinking? Everyone and his great grandmother knows that a cat isn't suppose to leap over a dead body or else..."
The sentence was finished by the formally prone figure as she rose to her feet. "It gets back up, with a taste for blood." She wore a white jacket, shirt and gloves, with black pants. Her dark brown hair was parted by a streak of white that had nothing to do with age, at least one would guess based on her face, if it weren't for her red eyes.
They marked her as a vampire, and guessing a vampire's true age was like trying to guess the number of stars in the sky. A moment later another figure got out of the carriage, though he did so without any sort of unnecessary antics. But this man didn't need them to get attention; he stood over six feet tall, and his bright silver hair hung down past his shoulders.
He wore an impressive midnight black outfit with various sliver symbols engraved in it, and his golden yellow eyes were completely empty of fear. They were almost equally devoid of anger as well, and what little they held was aimed not at those who had waylaid them, but at his travelling companions.
"You two and your games. These riffraff need to be dealt with straight away. We can't be late for our appointment. Come on out everyone, we've got some work to take care of." A few moments later three more people left the carriage. One of them was a man, doubtlessly a Harmonian from the gun he carried. He had blue eyes, dirty blond hair, and wore a brown coat and pants. It was possible to see a hint of a scarlet tie and navy blue shirt but his cloak covered most of them.
The other two were female, one of which took up position next to the Harmonian holding a coiled flail in her hands. She was wearing a blue outfit that matched her azure hair, while her leaf green eyes and pointed ears made her elfin heritage quite clear. The last woman stood beside the tall man in black, she wore a green outfit that covered her from neck to knees. A small crossbow was mounted on each of her wrists.
The tall man who was apparently in charge looked at the various mounted bandits, and sighed. "You should all get the hell out of my sight right now. Or you'll have to deal with the Prophets of Destruction." The lead bandit rode his horse up close to the tall man and glared down at him. "Yeah right, there's no way you're the Prophets of Destruction." The tall man sighed, then slowly moved his left hand, not towards the longsword he wore on his back, but for his right glove. "Really?
Maybe if we read the runes and predicted your futures, would that make you believe me?" The black glove the tall man wore on his right hand came off and every single one of the bandits took a step back in shock at what they saw. "My name is Alexander Diamondclaw, but I had hoped you would already know that." The woman in green casually pointed her crossbows at a pair of bandits. "Florence Bastien." The nay-kobold opened up his red jacket revealing row upon row of knives resting in various hand sewn pockets. "James Firecat."
The vampire licked her right hand as all ten of her fingernails grew in length and sharpness transforming into claws. "Mirri Catwarrior." The Harmonian man looked down the length of his weapon at the bandit leader. "Cal Wright." The elf uncoiled her flail with tender and slow movements as if it was not a weapon of metal but a living serpent. "Devi Skye."
The bandits all urged their horses to take a couple of steps back, the idea that they just might have chosen the wrong people to attack well and truly dawning on each and every single one of them at damn near the exact same moment. "We can talk this out..." Alexander brushed aside the words like a morning mist. "No, I'm afraid the time for talk is over. Your mere appearance will probably prove to be enough to make us late, and in our line of work that costs us money, so we're going to take our lost profit out of your hides."
Alexander raced forward and used his great height to grab the man right out off of his saddle, then hurled him at the ground. James yanked out the two knives that wore on his belt crossed his arms in the process, then using the momentum generated by uncrossing his appendages to speed the pair of blades on their way. They sailed through the air, and two bandits clutched their shoulders in pain as the weapons landed on the ground.
Cal quickly shifted his gun around and another bandit fell from his saddle with a bullet hole in his right leg. Devi turned, spun, and lashed out her flail wrapping it around a bandits leg, and then gave a hard yank dragging the man to the ground. Mirri jumped into the air, then dove down like a bird of prey landing behind a still mounted bandit.
She leaned backwards, wrapped her legs around her target, and proceeded to keep leaning back till she lifted the bandit out of his seat and tossed him through the air. The "battle" did not last very long at all.
- - - - (Scene Break)
The imperial soldiers looked at the carriage in surprise. It was fairly small, but it was being drawn by a truly impressive procession of horses. As they took their second look at it, they noticed the only the last four horses (those closest to the carriage) were properly attached to it, the other's were simply tied to them with coarse rope.. "HALT!" As the vehicle stopped, a man got out. He looked at the guards and casually smiled as he walked past one horse after another till he was finally face to face with the pair of guards.
"Hello guardsmen. My name is Alexander Diamondclaw from the Prophets of Destruction. I'm here to see the Emperor." He reached into a pocket and at once produced a document to exactly that effect, which also bore the imperial seal on it. The guards might or might not have been able to make sense of it all, but they both knew that not lightly did the Emperor give forth documents bearing his mark.
"Of course sir, we'll open the gate and let you in at once." Alexander nodded and turned his attention back to the carriage, then he lowered his hand down abruptly, as if he intended to slice air itself with his bare appendage. "Oh, we have something for you also when being late to a party gifts are simply a must..."
A moment later, several bodies who had been strapped onto the top of the carriage fell from it. Each and every one of them had their hands tied behind their backs and was dressed in nothing more than their undergarments. "Now all of you are going to play nice and not try to escape aren't you?"
All of the captives blanched white and nodded like men possessed. "These thieves tried to impede us in our journey, so we took their horses, their weapons, and their clothing to make up for the money that Emperor Barbarossa would be right to withhold from us for arriving late. I'm sure you can find a jail cell to toss these miscreants into without trying too hard. Now then, mustn't keep his majesty waiting any more then we already have."
Alexander used his great height to easily mount one of the two foremost horses and gave it a light slap on the rump to put it in motion. The guards to their credit managed to get the gate open before Alexander's mount ran headlong into them.
- - - (Scene Break)
The Emperor's palace was filled with just about every conceivable form of opulence, and this was especially true of his throne room. The six Prophets of Destruction walked side by side and graciously bowed to Emperor Barbarossa, though they did not actually touch their heads to the ground as would have those who were his subjects. He nodded and beckoned them closer to his gilded throne, one of them in particular.
"Alexander Diamondclaw, is that you?" Alexander took a few more steps closer so that he was within arms reach of the Emperor. Emperor Barbarossa was growing old, and his face showed it, several wrinkles were noticeable in his face, grey flecked his black hair and his blue eyes were slightly clouded. "There is no other."
The Emperor nodded slowly. "Yes. You have been lucky, the years have been kind to you." A woman with green eyes and blond hair, standing to the left of the Emperor's throne looked closely at Alexander, as if she was trying to see him with more than just her eyes. "So this is the great Alexander Diamondclaw?" A man who was not quite as tall as Alexander but still of impressive height with black hair and brown eyes standing to the right spoke up at once.
"In the flesh Windy, he and his companions are not easy to forget. Though as the Emperor said, he and his men have born the passage of time quite well." In response to the man's compliments Alexander gave something that was obviously not a bow, but his head went down farther than an ordinary nod would have taken it. The Emperor sat back as straight as he possibly could.
"Where are my manners, let's see now, do you still fashion yourself a general?" Alexander smiled slightly and turned to face the five behind him. "I saw no reason to abandon the self-imparted rank, Your Majesty. I am a master tactician in command of an army of six with the strength of six thousand." That drew a somewhat askance look from the woman, but neither the Emperor nor his other companion were surprised by it.
"Very well then General Diamondclaw, to my left this is my Royal Court Mage Lady Windy, and to my right is..." Showing an impressive lack of tact (and common sense as well) James piped up, cutting in while the Emperor was taking a moment to gather his breath and thoughts. "General Teo McDohl, it's been a couple of years but since I haven't forgotten him. I doubt any of the others have either.
His armored calvary were some of the best fighters I've ever seen, discounting the times we've seen our reflections." To the nay-kobold's luck, the Emperor chuckled rather than ordered him beheaded or some other grisly fate. "Ahh the exuberances of youth. Yes, I believe you worked with General McDohl in the war which kept me on this throne. I thank you for that, and it us the reason that I have called for you again.
You see much like during the War of Succession, for some reason my empire has become rife with bandits recently. Also in the north, Mayor Anabelle and the United City States of Jowston rattle their sabres hoping that any sign of true weakness from within they can exploit from without. Of course with General McDohl guarding our northern borders we have little to fear from them, isn't that right?"
General McDohl nodded to Emperor Barbarossa . "No force on the face of Suikoden has yet discovered how to stop my armored calvary." The Emperor returned the nod, then his attention was once again fixated on Alexander. "Sadly there are only so many generals of McDohl's quality in the world. I have two problems that require a truly excellent general to oversee them, and only one excellent general directly on hand, so I decided that I would simply have to acquire another.
That is of course where you come in Alexander. If memory serves, you more than excelled at tasks the likes of which I now need someone to handle. After all, I would no sooner order General McDohl and his armored calvary to mow down a bunch of footpads and cutpurses then I would try to kill a fly with a battle axe. You are more like the rapier, able to perform precision strikes quickly and skillfully."
"As I remember it, in the last war it was the rapier used skillfully or even simply a knife in the gut that gave the battle axe room to swing freely. If you wish us to track down bandits, then it is my supreme pleasure to tell you that some of them had the bad luck to run into us on our way here. At this very moment they should now be currently residing in whatever jail cell the guards we handed them over to tossed them into."
The Emperor laughed long and heartily at that turning his attention to his Court Mage. "See Windy? I told you the Prophets of Destruction were just what we needed. We haven't even put ink to their contract yet, and already they're at work solving our problems!
This calls for a suitable recompense. I shall inform the servants at once and before the sun has finished setting we shall have a great feast laid out before us! After all friendship is to be more treasured and celebrated then any amount of gold. Don't you agree?"
Five of the Prophets of Destruction nodded enthusiastically. Cal gave a single shake of his head, saw that on either side of him people were nodding, and then began to nod himself.
- - - - (Scene Break)
"So you're the great Alexander Diamondclaw? I am Commander Kraze. Emperor Barbarossa said that we would be working together in the future. I hope that you live up to your reputation." Alexander needed only a single look at Commander Kraze to instantly wish that he had been seated next to Emperor Barbarossa with as much distance between him and this man as possible.
Kraze had the look about him of someone who wanted to give off the air of being a military man, but ended up failing due to the fact that he had never done any decent military work. He had black hair, and an impractically well cared for pair of black hairs below his pointed nose and above his equally well cared for beard.
Real military men tended to look like they had just finished killing people, not grooming themselves. A few people falsely assumed the same thing of Alexander, but the fact of the mater was that his long silver hair was simply the result of completely ignoring it till it stopped growing. So he responded to Kraze's veiled question with the gruffest tone of voice he could muster.
"Believe me, I exceed my reputation, mainly because there are precious few who survive my skills long enough to comment on them." That done, Alexander turned his attention back to something more interesting: the food. He grabbed a haunch of lamb and proceeded to tear into it with his bare teeth.
This of course drew a startled 'oh my' from Kraze. Alexander proceeded to devour the entire thing before bothering to reply. "When you're used to chewing shoe leather in the field, well cooked meat doesn't pose much of a challenge to your teeth." Further down the table the other Prophets of Destruction were likewise availing themselves to the empire's finest food prepared by its best cooks.
Devi put down a bunch of grapes she'd been munching one after another to shoot a smile at Cal. "So what do you think of the food?" Cal reduced the leg of some bird to a single bone, tossed the bone over his shoulder without a care and answered her question while reaching for another one. "It's free." Of course if you wanted to see a real spectacle then further down the table there was James and Mirri.
Someone had made the innocent mistake of seating them across the table from one another. This was perfectly acceptable way to seat couples, but for those two it conflicted with the main point of having a feast, to eat. As a vampire Mirri subsisted on a diet of blood, and roughly 98-99 of the blood that she drank came from James' throat. So right in front of a great many of the Scarlet Moon Empire's most important nobles, James leaned across the table so that Mirri could lean over far enough herself to sink her teeth into his neck.
For some reason people were finding this sight a distasteful one, and not at all conductive to dining. "Mirri I think we're making a scene." Syllable for syllable what came out of Mirri's mouth was the following. "Wood ent he heh hurst hime!" Of course if Mirri had bothered to pull her fangs from James' throat and remove her tongue from the base of James' neck, it might have come out more intelligibly. Possibly something to the order of "it wouldn't be the first time."
Mirri, of course, showed the callous disregard for everyone around her that noblewomen were known for. James Firecat on the other hand simply excluded the childlike innocence and mentality of one who was starting to suspect that he just might be doing something wrong, but wasn't about to stop unless told him to.
Not that the nay-kobold had made himself a great many friends when he'd extended his claws and used them to spear several small fish before gulping them down one at a time at a rate of two bites each. Of course since it was the Prophets of Destruction who were the cause of the celebration, they saw no particular reason to amend their behavior to the suitability's of the other guests.
They were simply hangers-on at the Prophets' party. So in traditional mercenary fashion the Prophets focused on getting what they could while the getting was good. They certainly enjoyed the party by the time it was over.
