Chapter 4: Judith
Akira frantically tries to suck in a breath through whatever it is that's obstructing her mouth. Unfortunately, her impromptu gag seems capable of completely blocking any airflow, as she feels fabric against her lips and her own lungs creating a vacuum in her mouth.
GET IT OFF!
She grabs at her upper lip, her fingers finding a soft crease attached over her nose and across her cheeks. She can't find any purchase as she searches frantically for something to pull.
Her fingers grab behind her ears, and she screams bloody and raw as her skin tears open from ear to ear, her whole face a fountain of coppery redness. The pain is excruciating, so sharp that tears pour forth from her eyes, and Akira has never felt so alive! No blade she's ever held between her fingers could compare to the sheer rush that overtakes her, as blue fire ignites around her.
The flames lick up at her, not hot but ice cold, and she can feel them tickling her lips as they brush away her blood. A shame, she hadn't had the chance to enjoy the taste yet. The fire lifts up and up, off of her body and forming into something above her.
A figure forms from shadows out of the flames, human-shaped yet utterly ephemeral. Pitch black skin is wrapped up over and over by sand-colored cloth, bolts of fabric mummifying her. The covering is loose, hanging off of her figure without a care for preserving her silhouette-like figure's modesty, one strip simply cupping her breast, a round yet featureless thing. Her arms are wrapped tight, with cloth dangling from her fingers as she carries in one hand a twisted dagger, and in the other, her fingers are curled tight in fist, clenched around the scraggly curls of a cartoonish severed head. Her neck and face are completely covered by her bindings, only glowing red eyes piercing out from the darkness behind her only clothing.
"I am the enemy of Syria, slayer of Holofernes. JUDITH!"
Akira lets her grin stretch her face to its fullest, something she hasn't done in a long time. Her smile is all teeth, her eyes as sharp as the dagger that's clutched tight in her right hand. It's a long, thin thing with a tapering blade and an I-shaped hilt, the crossguard mirrored by the pommel. Ideal for slicing. A Baselard.
"Who the hell are you!?" Kamoshida stumbles back a step. "Guards, put her down!"
Akira whips around, the round puffs of shoulders' sleeves dancing in the corner of her eyes as she lifts a brass bracelet up to catch the blade of a knight's sword. Her grin twists again into something malevolent as she ducks under its guard and smashes her foot down, her wide and low heel crushing the metal of its boot like a paper bag. She reverses the grip on her dagger and yanks the knight down by its breastplate before slicing through that hideous mask, the two halves falling to the ground as the whole hulking creature collapses to dust.
Two knights remain.
One of them convulses and drops into the floor in a pool of red and black shadow, before rising back as—is that fucking Jack O'Lantern?! Why is a Jack Bros. character…? Questions for later.
Akira feels her skirt swish around her ankles as she twists her body into a low crouch, the whish of movement tickling her bare leg through the slit that cuts all the way to her hip. She lunges forward, startling the Jack before stopping short and swinging her leg up, kicking her dress high as she smashes her foot down onto the floating pumpkin head. Before he can get back up, she shoots down and slices his head clean through, and he turns to dust.
The knight that had been threatening Ann lunges at Akira with its spear, and Akira twists out of the way. The speartip grazes her, but she doesn't feel a thing through her corset, the brown laced-up piece armoring her torso like the world's strongest leathers. Akira grabs the shaft of the spear and pulls, kicking the knight in the chest with her plain brown shoes, the heel making a gong sound against the breastplate. The knight twists and takes the shape of… an unassuming little fairy girl.
Said fairy girl proceeds to shoot lightning from her fingertips, shocking Akira and causing her arms to lock up in their elbow-length cream-colored sleeves. She grits her teeth through the tingling pain, her heart beginning to race with excitement as she reaches down deep to find that energy from before.
"Call my name, and remove thy mask to use my power," Judith's voice, so familiar yet sounding completely foreign, echoes in Akira's head. She grins, only now realizing her face mask had somehow reattached itself to her. She reaches with her left hand behind her right ear and tears it away.
"JUDITH!"
The legendary harlot springs forth from the flames around her, and a word Akira had never heard before springs to her mind. "Eiha!" At her command, Judith swings forward the severed head in her right hand, and red and black flames engulf the Pixie. "Drown in it!" Akira cries, and the creature's screams die in a burst of dark fire.
At some point in the fight, Akira had moved all the way to Ann's side of the room. She turns to His Ridiculous Majesty Kamoshida and sneers, and the coward scampers and scrambles away and out the door. She snorts derisively and turns to Ann.
"What… what was that?" Ann looks at her, wide eyed and mouth agape.
Akira looks at the chains holding Ann captive. The weight of her dagger in-hand doesn't feel like enough to break them. She'll need something stronger.
"Judith!" she shouts, tugging off her mask again and summoning her companion. Tiny bursts of Eiha shoot out at the shackles, which rapidly rust and degrade. The chains around Ann crumble to dust as she pulls herself free, looking down at the raw and angry marks on her wrists. An hour of tugging and yanking on her bindings must have done a number.
"What just happened? What happened to you!? And… what are you wearing?" Ann shoots off rapidfire questions, most of which Akira doesn't know how to answer. As for the one she can.
She looks down at herself and swings her hips around, surveying her new attire. A beige dress skirt down to her ankles, met at her waist by the tight curve of a brown laced-up corset, pushing up under her breasts atop a sandy blouse, the round, wide neckline of which dips low enough to tease the top of her cleavage and shape of her modest breasts. Her sleeves puff at the shoulders and come down to her elbows, hands exposed and brass bracers wrapped about her wrists and halfway up her forearms. Lastly, a sandy brown-colored scarf the same color as her face mask wraps around her neck, the two arms of which trail behind her down to her butt.
"What, you jealous?" Akira asks with a quirk of the eyebrow.
"I mean, kinda?" Ann waves her arms in the general direction of Akira's outfit. "But how did you get it!? And where are we, anyways? What the hell was up with Kamoshida-sensei just now?"
Akira shakes her head with a shrug. "I can't tell you, but I do know we have to get out of here. If more of those monsters show up, I'll have to protect you."
Ann clicks her tongue. "Well, I didn't exactly get a good look at where they took us…"
Akira grins toothily, although Ann wouldn't see it save for the crinkling of her eyes. "Then I guess we just tear this place up until we find the exit."
"Ugh, this castle is… disgustingly pretty," Ann hisses, as the girls sneak quietly through a kitchen area.
Akira's inclined to agree. The red and gold decor, the marble tiling, the carpeting everywhere. It would be much prettier if it weren't squirming with an aura of sleaziness. This is Kamoshida's Castle after all, and that creep has no compunctions perving on teenage girls.
There aren't too many of those bulging knight-things around, which Akira is grateful for, mostly. It means she doesn't have to fight while worrying about keeping an eye out for Ann, but it also means she can't predict what the security in the place is looking like. Kamoshida had been ordering the knights around, so he must have raised some kind of alarm when he ran off with his tail between his legs.
That mental image has Akira smirking under her mask as she looks out into another hallway. Through the door on the other end, she can see the entrance hall they came through.
Akira grabs Ann's attention and nods towards the doorway, before slipping through with uncanny deftness. Something about this place, or maybe about herself, has made moving about quietly like second nature. She can feel her feet gliding noiselessly over carpet, her heels muffled before they can clack against marble.
She doesn't see any knights in the hall, so she makes for the large castle doors.
Unfortunately, they don't budge even an inch.
"Come on, come on…!" she whispers as she pulls and tugs on the intricate brass handles, but she doesn't get even the rattling of a lock. It's like the door was never meant to be opened to begin with, which is impossible since she and Ann had just walked in like they were invited.
Hadn't we been invited though?
In a twisted way, it made sense. He'd made passes at both of them. If he wanted them inside, he'd leave the doors wide open. Once they were in…
"Damn it," Akira hisses under her breath. Ann rushes over, and Akira already puts a finger to the girl's lips. She gets that the blonde is scared out of her wits, but there's only so many times one girl can shut up another before losing her patience. Thankfully, Ann swallows her loud protests, and Akira scans the entrance hall. She spies another hallway, this time with a staircase leading down.
As they proceed towards it, Ann manages to whisper, "Where are we going?"
"Castle had a moat, right?" Akira responds, slipping down the stairs to find a sturdier, heavy looking wooden door set into the wall. She tests the door handle. Unlocked, good, she thinks with a grin as she pushes it open. "Moats mean plumbing, and plumbing means an exit."
"We're leaving through the sewers!?" Ann screeches, and Akira hisses again as she yanks shut the door behind them. The new pathway they find themselves in is certainly dark and dank enough for it, with plaster and marble replaced with stone, mortar, and brick.
"Quiet, remember?" At the sound of rushing water, Akira quirks her head. "Actually, we might have a river to follow, convenient." She turns to Ann. "No, we aren't going through the sewers, though we should be ready to, if it comes to it. I was thinking more along the lines of a service exit or even a manhole to the outside."
Ann gapes in shock. "Wow, you're really smart! I never would have thought of that."
Akira bites down a remark that would have come off as worse than just a little snarky. "Don't worry, we're getting out of here one way or the other."
The sewers—because after stepping through the threshold, there was no denying the stench in the place—had a massive river rushing through the center, with barred cells lining the two walls. Several lowered drawbridges criss crossed over the rushing water.
"Well, at least we won't make any noise having to lower these things," Akira cracked as they raced across the boards.
"This place looks abandoned, and it stinks," Ann complains, holding a hand to her nose.
Akira eyes the overgrowth of moss and mold on all of the walls, the rust clinging to the various pieces of metalwork. She could see why Ann would think that. But…
"Do these bridges feel sturdy to you, Ann-kun?" she asks as they're crossing over another on their way down into the depths.
"How the heck should I know!?"
Akira stops for just a moment, and stomps the heel of her shoe against the wood. It creaks, just a bit, but it holds sturdy. "This is hardwood. And it's maintained. It would rot clean through if this place was as abandoned as it smells."
"Can we just keep going already? I just wanna go home," Ann whined.
"I getcha, but the complaining's not going to get us out any faster."
"Neither is asking if the bridge is good or what have you!" she fires back.
"If these bridges weren't safe to cross, then we'd—"
"I GET YOUR POINT, LET'S JUST KEEP GOING!"
"...hello? Who's there!?" A small, distant voice calls out from further in.
Ann gasps. "Is there someone else down here! We're coming to help!"
Akira would have protested against acting too quickly, but Ann was already running, so Akira follows after her towards a barred cell with… something strange and small inside it.
"A monster cat!?" Ann cries in alarm. Akira blinks at the fairly literal descriptor, but it's not really inaccurate. The little thing inside the cell is vaguely cat-shaped, but with a head the size of a football, and roughly the same shape. It's decked out in a black and yellow costume that reminds Akira of those really old western comics, where the one guy wore an all black outfit with a yellow toolbelt. Superbat, or something, she wasn't really into comics.
"I am not a cat!" the cat-like thing protests. "My name is Morgana. Fairest lady, and lady thief, please help me out of this cell! The key is right there!"
Ann starts protesting, but Akira's already snatching the key before she's really stopped to think about it. It's not like Morgana was half as threatening as the giant knights who turned into tiny things, he was already a tiny thing and he wasn't hailing King Kamoshida or attacking them.
"We just wanna go home!" Ann cries, as Akira turns the key into the lock.
"Here you go." The door of the cell swings open as Akira gestures for Morgana to step out.
"Why, thank you, lady thief!" Morgana performs the world's tiniest bow. "As a gentleman, it is my duty to repay this kindness you've shown to me." He jumps in the air, giving a little wave. "I can show you the way out!" His voice takes on a far more excited, childlike timber than the 'gentlemanly air' that was previously so discordant to his appearance.
"Seriously!? Why didn't you just say so!" Ann's clearly panicking, but Akira has bigger things on her mind.
"Oh my goodness you're so adorable!"
"Gah-! H-hey, I'm not some… toy!" Morgana protests as Akira scoops him up in her arms and squishes her masked cheek to his big oblate head.
"Uh," Ann replied smartly.
"You're so soft and squishy and your little scarf is so cute, Mona-chan!" Akira squeezes his little torso tighter against her shoulder as she nuzzles him.
"I-! Um-! I-It's improper for a lady and a gentleman to-to- JUST LET GO OF ME PLEASE!"
Akira pouts and releases him, and he falls, landing on his feet with expected grace. "I'm sorry, Mona-chan, I just couldn't help myself!"
"You think he's cute?"
"It's MOR-GA-NA!"
Ann and Mona said simultaneously.
"I know your name is Morgana, but doesn't Mona sound cuter?" Akira asks.
"I've just met you, and you're already blowing away my expectations-" Ann blinks, as if just realizing something. "Holy crap, I never asked for your name!"
Akira cocks her head, thinks for a moment, and realizes, oh, yeah. "I think we got distracted by the whole, castle, knights, and pervy kings, thing."
She smiles, then frowns, lowers her mask, and smiles again, all teeth and squinting eyes. "Kurusu Akira, at your service!"
A/N: Judith: From the noncanonical Book of the Torah, the Book of Judith, a woman who saved the Jewish people from a wicked Syrian king, by seducing his sadistic general, then waiting for him to become intoxicated with bread and wine, before cutting off his head with the help of her handmaiden.
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