9

Once again, Murasame had done its job perfectly—well, almost. The blade had fulfilled all but one aspect of its reputation.

In the end, its victim had died with a smile on his face.

"I'm really pretty lucky."

He'd thought that he'd managed to escape. And maybe that was true, to a point. The teen wouldn't be worrying about anything for a long while, wherever he was. In his last thoughts, he'd thought that he—and the Group—had slipped out of Akame's reach completely.

Unfortunately, he'd left something behind.

The kid was actually shaking.

"Are we sure this'll work?" he asked. "I know you've been doing this for years, but—"

"Just a year," said the figure beside him. "But that's been enough time for me to figure out exactly what I'm doing." Its head turned; stared at the kid. "Try to relax, okay? You're shaking. It's okay to get a little tense, but you'll need to calm down if you want to survive in this group."

"It's just—what we're about to do…"

The figure sighed. "I guess I can't nag you about it too much. I was the same way the first time I went on one of these trips…" It paused. "Wait. Get down!"

Almost silently, it melted into the grass, its form becoming invisible. The kid tried his best to follow suit—and froze, as a pair of boots tramped by.

Neither of the two spoke again until the footsteps had faded into the distance.

The figure was the first to speak. "Okay," it said. "That was the last guard." It looked back at the kid. "Ready?"

"Uh…"

"Go." Suddenly the figure was gone, flashing across the darkness towards the building in the distance. The kid blinked once in shock, then rose to his feet and followed as well as he could. He'd thought he was fast, but next to this…

When he finally caught up, the figure was already standing by an open door. Something inside the doorway ignited with a faint snap—a lantern, the kid saw, as the darkness was replaced by a faint orange light. He shut his eyes briefly; they'd spent an hour in the dark just watching the building, and now the faint light seemed like an explosion.

When the kid's eyes had adjusted to the change, he saw that the figure was no longer alone. There was another person standing in the doorway. In a smooth motion, that person tossed a bag into the air.

The kid was almost brained before he realized that the bag had been tossed in his direction. Barely suppressing a shout of surprise, the kid caught the bag, and stumbled backwards a few steps. The clinking of the contents of the bag left no doubt as to what was in it.

"There's more where that came from," the person said. "Enough that I don't feel like carrying all of it. You're going to help me with the rest."

Nervously, the kid nodded and stepped forward. As he did, he looked back at the figure, who appeared to be standing in place doing nothing. He opened his mouth to call out—

"Don't worry about him. He's doing his job."

After some hesitation, the kid looked away and followed the person into the darkness of the building.

Even with the lantern light to guide him, the kid still felt as if a box would shoot out of the darkness to trip him up. With a clumsy lurch, he avoided a sudden vase, then weaved around what appeared to be a pagoda made out of mahjong tiles.

What were bags of cash doing in a place like this? It seemed more like a warehouse for some twisted antique store.

"Hey!" The shout came from deep within the building. "What's taking so long? We don't have time for this!"

"Sorry, it's just…why put everything here?"

"I really don't feel like finding out," the person said, "and I doubt you do either. Now come on"—he grunted; hefted a bag—"we've got five of these suckers to move."

The kid ended up with four bags, because the person, as he put it, needed to light the way so the kid's "sorry ass" wouldn't trip over a shadow. Then the pair left—one of them carrying a lantern and whistling merrily, the other staggering in his wake.

When they finally reached the door that they'd entered through, the kid saw a certain figure standing in place. It had been at least ten minutes since the kid had first walked through the building's entrance. Had the figure moved at all in that time?

Just as the thought crossed the kid's mind, the figure turned and walked towards him. "I'll take some of those bags. You look like you're about to fall over."

As soon as he heard the words, the kid practically threw two of the bags at the figure. Things had gotten to the point where he wasn't even going to bother pretending that he wasn't having trouble.

In a movement that was almost scarily effortless, the figure caught the bags, slung them over his shoulder, and turned to the other person. "Ready to go?"

"Sure, but we're getting a head start."

As the kid ran after the person, he gave up trying to pick his outline out of the darkness in front of him. Instead, he just tried his best to run in a straight line, and to avoid tilting over from the weight of the bags he was carrying.

The kid risked a quick look back over his shoulder—where was the figure right now? He was pretty sure that the distance they'd covered more than qualified as a head start. Even if the figure started running at the speed that the kid remembered, would he make it in time? He squinted, but couldn't make anything out over the distance and the darkness.

A voice spoke from beside him. "You probably shouldn't run like that while carrying those bags," it said. "You'll fall over."

But wait—that voice belongs to—

The kid could only look at the figure in shock. "But...you were back there," he huffed out, as they ran side by side. "Did...did you even wait for us to run?"

"You really want to know the answer to that?"

"Well..."

When the two finally reached the thicket, the other person was already waiting there. The bag that he'd taken was lumped on the ground; the lantern smoldered quietly next to it. "You didn't have to slow yourself down, you know," the person said. "Though I don't have any problems with having my ego kept intact for the night—getting outrun by you every other time is humiliating enough."

"Guess I'll have to make up for it next time," the figure said, dropping one of his bags next to the one on the ground. He picked up the lantern. "How about you help me out and take one of these bags?"

The person groaned. "Sure," he said. "Anything for teamwork." He picked up both bags and put them over his shoulder, after a bit of struggling. "Guess there's no hope of outrunning you now."

"Speaking of teamwork," the figure said, "I think it's time to tell him." He turned his head slightly in the kid's direction—there wasn't much of a doubt as to who "him" was. "Can't have been easy working with two nameless 'people', huh?"

Honestly, the kid had been too busy trying to keep up and not trip to let his partners' namelessness bother him, but he nodded in response anyway. He supposed it would be nice to have some way of referring to these two other than "the fast one" and "the lazy one."

Ahead of him, the person stopped and turned around. "This isn't a great place for introductions, but I guess I'll start. My name is Ozawa."

"Nice to meet you, Ozawa." The kid waited for the figure to reveal his own name, but when nothing came from that direction except for an expectant gaze, he realized who was expected to continue. Tomeo took a breath, and told them his name.

Both the figure and Ozawa stopped moving for a moment as they exchanged glances. Then, they snorted simultaneously and started laughing, a sound that—after a night of stealthy whispers and muttered curses—was almost too loud for Tomeo's poor ears. "...what?" he asked. Didn't they care about getting caught anymore?

They stopped, though a few giggles escaped them now and then. "Sorry," Ozawa said. "It's just that I've been telling this guy here that if he ever found another 'T', he'd have to open a restaurant."

Tomeo was beyond confused now. "...why?" he said slowly. What else was there to say?

"Well, think about it. It'd just be the perfect name, wouldn't it? Just say, for example...Tomeo and Tatsumi's Quality Grill."

The town found the bodies in the morning.

Maybe "found" wasn't quite the right word, actually—it would probably have been harder to miss them, where they were. Whoever had decided to grace Umeura with the decorations had placed them directly on the town's main gate, hanging in full view of all. Even the most unobservant person would have found their eye caught by a swinging motion as a certain something hung in the wind.

And then, of course, there were the words gouged into the wall, cut so cleanly that anyone who saw them couldn't help but wonder what kind of blade had made them:

Murderers.

For the rest of the day, no one talked about anything else. Every conversation centered around the grisly discovery, whether the participants were kids who hadn't seen the bodies and didn't know what 'muh-duh' was, or the most cynical old codger.

People wondered who the victims had been. No one in town recognized them; after a while, most decided they were outsiders who'd come to Umeura and found a bit more than they'd been expecting. Where had they come from? Who had they been? Had they truly been murderers, or had they fallen prey to one themselves? Some found it a little hard to believe the bodies—both of teenaged boys—belonged to the maniacal, laughing murderers that everyone was imagining.

Zank the Executioner. Akame of Night Raid. These were the monsters that the Empire had grown to fear, not barely-grown boys.

No one knew that one of those monsters was in the very same town, watching their reactions to her handiwork.

Akame didn't really need to know the specifics of every conversation, of course. As a matter of fact, she barely needed them at all. She was much more interested in watching the people near the main gate—specifically those who chose to leave.

Some had left for obvious reasons. Akame had watched a man bolt out of the Umeura Inn, practically dragging a woman and a little girl behind him as he headed for a nearby carriage, and she'd seen a pretty familiar tax collector cowering in the back window of another carriage. She'd expected that—finding two dead bodies in a town tended to shake it up a little.

But there were the others to consider, too, people who just seemed to be sauntering out for a walk, or taking their carriage out for a spin. Akame doubted that the two Group members she'd found had been the only ones in Umeura; the Group was big enough that they could afford to have a third person for each scouting party, one to alert the higher-ups if anything happened to the more active members. It would be nearly impossible for her to tell just which of the bored-looking people leaving was that third person, but that didn't matter. Only one thing did.

One way or another, the Group would find out about this. And when they did…

She remembered a case that had been in one of Najenda's files. A town had caught two boys attempting to stage a raid on one of their farmers' silos, and had given them a nice stretch in the local jail in return. A few days later the two were inexplicably gone, a gaping hole blasted in the wall of their cell. Footprints had been found around the destruction, prints that belonged to at least three distinct people...maybe more.

Similar cases had occurred across the Empire. Every so often, a delinquent of some kind would captured and brought to justice—only to be broken out again by some mysterious group.

Akame had a feeling she knew exactly which group was responsible. As much much as she hated to say it, she had to admit: even if this was a collection of murdering scumbags, it was a collection of murdering scumbags who watched each other's backs. She hadn't seen that kind of loyalty much, both in her time as a member of Night Raid and as a servant of the Empire.

But that loyalty had its own pitfalls, too. Akame knew that from experience.

This was a Group that was terrified of seeing one of its members at the hands of another—and would do anything to fight that terror. But that begged another question: for a Group that sent five of its members to break out any member as soon as they were captured, what would they decide to do to a town that had killed two of their own?

"Sorry to bother you, but..."

For a moment, Tatsumi was tempted to ignore the voice. Eventually he sighed, turned, and looked at the speaker, some new guy whose name he couldn't remember at the moment. "Did the Leader send you?"

The guy nodded. "We're ready to move." He turned to leave, hesitated, and turned back. "Look, man...I heard about what happened. If you want, I can say that you're getting ready, buy you a little time until you're okay—"

"No." Tatsumi stood up. "Thanks, but I think you should join the others. I'm sure there's some plan for you guys to follow."

It seemed entirely too long before the guy finally turned and left. Tatsumi watched the doorway, made sure he was gone, and sat down again. Until I'm okay, huh?

He closed his eyes.

The report had been as clear as it had needed to be. He'd never seen a body hanging from a rope before, but it was easy enough to imagine the dangling arms, slumped shoulders, and the head—tilted at an impossible angle…

Until he was okay?

Tatsumi opened his eyes and stood up once again. This time, when he checked the doorway, it was to make sure that his sword was leaning where he'd always left it. He strode towards it, picked it up, and strapped the scabbard to his belt.

Kind as the guy's offer had been, there was no way he would've been able to buy enough time for Tatsumi to be okay. He wasn't sure if any amount of time would be enough. But that didn't mean he couldn't start by destroying the people who had taken his friends from him and strung them up like bags of sand. As he started for the doorway, he knew that one thing was for certain.

Someone in Umeura had killed Tomeo—and when Tatsumi found out exactly who that was, he would be the one to kill him.

Then, maybe, he could start feeling okay.