Gunshots cracked through the night air.
Natsuki spat out blood from a split lip as she reloaded her handguns and cursed as a few bullets left gouges in the concrete near her feet. She peeked around the solid metal drums she was hiding behind and returned fire with a vengeance.
Searrs had realised that they had someone watching them and had decided to set up a nice little trap to see who their intruder was.
And Natsuki had waltzed straight into it.
She was told that the virus she had implanted into the Searrs computers could take weeks to hack, encrypt and send data to their ghost servers and she had had nothing but dead end leads for the past few weeks in her own excursions, so she had jumped all too eagerly at the treat Searrs had dangled before her in the form of an apparently new informant willing to sell out Searrs for the sake of revenge.
She really should have known better.
Natsuki retreated back to assess her ammunition status and also her injury status. She had several (fortunately) shallow wounds from fighting off her armed ambushers and leaping through a warehouse window to evade capture and she was sure that she had broken something as she landed on the windscreen of a car on her way out of said window.
As for ammunition… she was running out.
She had already run out of kunais and she only had two full magazines and a military knife left. She then mentally took stock of her present situation. She was currently hiding behind metal drums that were sitting outside a series of abandoned warehouses that were situated on a fairly low cliff overlooking the churning waters of the sea. The only barrier that protected people and vehicles from falling off the cliff were some rusty metal railings.
Natsuki decided that making her way on foot back to her motorbike currently hidden in some shrubbery nearby was not an option as she would be too easy to track. Knowing that Yamada was on standby for emergency exits, she pulled out a flare gun and fired it into the night sky, not bothering to watch the red flare rise and fall in a graceful arc. Instead she rolled out from behind the metal drums and sprinted towards the gap between two nearby warehouses, knowing full well that there were two goons jogging towards her and raising their M16 assault rifle barrels to her level.
But they missed.
Natsuki leapt diagonally forwards to plant one foot against the wall of one warehouse and pushing herself off to give herself the leverage to fly towards the goons above their line of fire, she raised her Glocks into two surprised faces and squeezed both triggers simultaneously.
Landing lightly just as the two men dropped dead, she put her Glocks back in their holsters and grabbed the M16s the men had been carrying and hurried into the open door of the nearest warehouse. She headed towards an old, cracked and stained window where she could see a small group of unsuspecting Searrs soldiers, who were currently peering over a set of crates to see if they could see her – not knowing that she was creeping up behind them while putting the sling of one M16 over her head and arm whilst she carried the second M16 that she had picked up.
Taking a deep breath, she gunned the soldiers down through the window before jumping through it to drop down behind the crates amongst the broken glass, bullet casings and dead men. Keeping her head down, she paused to wait for any gunfire that would help her pinpoint the position of the remaining thugs. Cursing as she heard none, she realised she would have to hunt them down before any of them could go and report; she had to remain anonymous to Searrs.
With that thought in mind, she pressed herself close to the warehouse wall and turned a corner… only to literally walk into an enemy agent.
Reacting instinctively, she kicked the equally surprised man's SIG P226 out of his hands but was tackled to the ground a split second later as he also reacted and cursed when her assault rifle was knocked out of her own hands and clattered to the ground. But she did not have time to even think about finding the trigger of the other rifle slung across her chest as she was slammed to the ground and found the agent sitting on top of her, slamming his fist into her face and causing her head to snap back onto the broken glass on the concrete beneath her.
Fighting the dizziness and the darkening of her consciousness, she viciously returned the favour by slamming her own fists into his liver and spleen and feeling a momentary pause in his hits, she found the assault rifle butt and smashed it into the guy's chin before wrapping her hand around the grip, aiming and squeezing the trigger.
Struggling to her feet, Natsuki retched as she tried to fight off the nausea from having her head smashed against glass and concrete but still managed to glance at the now dead man to make sure he was dead. Once the world stopped spinning around her, Natsuki picked up the fallen SIG and resumed her mission to find the rest of the Searrs soldiers sent to kill or capture her. And it did not take her long.
The moment she turned the same fateful corner, she discovered that the enemy had had time to hide themselves in convenient locations to fire at her. Deciding that she only had one option, Natsuki started to run and chose not to stop moving – diving, ducking and rolling; and in doing so she managed to avoid being directly hit by bullets but found that she picked up fragments from ricochets and slashes or burns as bullets literally skimmed past her.
She was aided by the weather as the Heavens suddenly opened and heavy rain poured down above their heads, restricting the enemy's vision and giving Natsuki the sound cover she needed as she tracked several soldiers down and dispatched them one by one. Now sprinting towards one of the Searrs cars, she fired at a luckless fool trying to scramble into the driver's seat and then at the tyres to render them useless and without pausing to breathe, leapt up to throw her body across the bonnet, using the rain to slide easily across and avoiding the bullets that peppered into the side of the vehicle instead.
As soon as she landed, she continued running using the cover of the vehicles and then circling round them, smashed through a warehouse window and executed the two soldiers who had been firing at her. By now, she had abandoned the M16 rifle as it had run out of bullets and was dual wielding the SIG she had picked up earlier and one of her two remaining Glocks.
Natsuki crouched between the two dead bodies and as she went through their weapons, cursed as she found that they had also been running low on ammunition but took the moment to catch her breath. She winced as she realised that she had picked up a number of other injuries from the last few encounters – including a likely broken finger from a scuffle that had involved a heavy boot stomping on her hand in an attempt to disarm her. The sound of running broke her train of thought and she peeked over a row of wooden crates to glimpse a Searrs soldier who had just jogged into the warehouse.
"Takeshi? Gin?" The soldier whispered into his walkie-talkie and Natsuki cursed for the umpteenth time that night when his head shot towards the sound of his own voice crackling through the devices on his comrades' fallen bodies beside her… and when their eyes met, promptly opened fire.
Throwing herself sideways, she returned fire between the large crates but found that this goon was faster and clearly more experienced than his colleagues as he darted back out into the rain while shrieking more names into his walkie-talkie. As Natsuki struggled to her feet to run after him, she was only mildly pleased to hear silence from the walkie-talkies – confirming that she had succeeded in taking down all but one, because she had to throw away a now empty SIG. She sprinted after the man into the rain but found that he had stopped, turned and started shooting at her as he stood his ground while she almost ran blindly into his line of fire. Using the slippery ground, Natsuki slid onto her back to duck the shots aimed at her head and skidding towards him on momentum alone, she rapidly fired her gun at the figure blurred by the heavy rain.
Click! Click! Click!
Just as Natsuki skidded to halt, both gunslingers threw their now empty guns away in frustration but before Natsuki could draw her last Glock, the soldier pulled out his knife and leapt towards her with alarming speed. Natsuki only had just enough time to roll backwards onto her feet to avoid being impaled and managed to whip out her military combat knife to catch yet another swift stab with the serrated half of her blade. The grating sound made Natsuki instinctively grind her teeth but she pushed her assailant back with a solid front kick to give herself the millisecond to focus. She adjusted her grip on her knife so that she held it in a reverse grip and pulled up her guard like a boxer, knowing that as a smaller and lighter opponent, she had limited options in terms of going on the offensive. Her attacker had chosen to use his height and therefore reach to his advantage and was holding his knife in a hammer grip.
The next few minutes were a blur to Natsuki as she solely focused on getting out of this fight alive – the soldier's speed and obvious skill with the knife had already left Natsuki with several new open cuts on her already injured body. Natsuki blocked a punch with her free arm and driving her arm knife upwards, she aimed for her opponent's throat but once again he dodged the attack and she only succeeded in slicing open the skin at his jaw. She paid the price moments later when he immediately swung his knife down towards her left eye as her attack had left her defences open and at the last second, Natsuki moved to avoid her eye being skewered but it still cost her half her vision as the tip of the knife carved a path across the left eye.
She staggered back and on pure instinct threw up her left arm to block, knowing from experience that any trained killer would immediately exploit the new weakness. And Natsuki knew she was right the moment her forearm hit another forearm and a sudden lancing pain appeared in her left shoulder. She realised that she had managed to prevent a killing blow aimed at her neck arteries and without pausing, she too utilised the fact that the enemy had compromised his advantage of distance for what would have been a fatal or at least disabling attack, and slammed her own knife into his gut. The man's eyes bulged in both surprise and pain for a single moment, but it was enough of a distraction for Natsuki to let go of the knife to whip out her last gun – just as he used his knife (that had been shallowly embedded in Natsuki's shoulder muscle) in a desperate counter-attack as she pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The last soldier was thrown backwards by the force of the bullet entering his skull and as he sagged to the ground like a lifeless doll, he took the knife with him; pulling it out of a relatively shallow wound he had managed to inflict before he died.
Natsuki's arms dropped to her sides in sudden exhaustion before one hand automatically put pressure on the newest injury in her abdomen, just right of her navel, as she surveyed the bloodied destruction she had created. Taking a moment to gather her thoughts, she staggered backwards before looking down and watched her own blood seep through her fingers and mingle with the pouring rain. Her mind seemed to clear as the adrenaline-fuelled haze faded and she decided to make her way towards her planned exit point. She bent down to retrieve and re-holster her earlier discarded Glock and tried to straighten up again to take one step forwards, only to find herself falling to her knees.
Her whole body hurt like fuck.
She struggled to her feet and tried again but collapsed completely onto the hard unforgiving concrete. Grunting in pain, she managed to push herself up onto her elbows and tried not to guess whether the fluid she felt running down her scalp was rain or her own blood. She dragged her battered body as close as she could to the nearest railings and managed to prop herself up against one of the vertical poles. Tilting her head back, she closed her uninjured eye to mimic the other and tried to calm her laboured breathing through gritted teeth. She knew she desperately needed to get out of there before anybody caught her. Mentally preparing herself as she reopened her good eye, she pressed one arm against as many of the wounds on her torso as she could and used the other to hold onto the railing and tried to haul herself up. But her foot slipped on the now slick tarmac and she landed with a sickening thud back onto the ground.
The pain blinded her for a few moments.
And then she let out a guttural scream of sheer frustration into the crying heavy grey clouds above her.
Duran.
Out of nowhere, her mind called out to her loyal companion of ten long years.
Duran…
But there was silence. There was no howl to greet her, no drop in temperature and no clunking sound of metal upon metal as he fired at the enemy to protect her.
She was well and truly alone in this world.
A bitter humourless smile crept its way onto her bloodied face.
'Alone and in pain, eh? What's new, Kuga?'
One world-weary emerald eye watched as her laboured breaths created small puffs of steam that mingled with the falling raindrops before her.
Natsuki heard the rain pattering around her, she felt the rain pounding down on her and… she felt alive. In pain yet alive.
She had survived for a reason. She had fought tooth and nail to stay alive for a reason.
A pair of crimson eyes…
Natsuki struggled to her feet once again and took one final glance at the carnage before turning to look down at the churning waters.
Shizuru…
And threw herself over the railings.
The water was freezing.
She felt heavy.
The waves crashed over her.
She heard the screams, the gunshots and the skidding of tyres all over again.
'No. Not now. Up. Up!'
Natsuki's legs obediently kicked and pushed her up to break the surface. With her good arm she gripped the nearby cliff-face to stop herself from going under again and with her tired legs, she tread water. All she had to do was wait for Yamada to show up.
It was not long before he manoeuvred out of his hiding place with his motorboat and he could not hide the surprise on his face at her current state as he helped her out of the waters and onboard.
"What the hell happened, Kuga?"
Natsuki collapsed onto the deck of the relatively small motorboat in a puddle of diluted blood and grunted out one word, "Trap."
"Shit. We need to get you to old man Ryu… Hold on, Kuga."
Natsuki did not reply as Yamada sped the motorboat towards an old acquaintance she had visited numerous times prior to the end of the Carnival, when Yohko-sensei at Fuuka could not chase her down to bandage her up herself. It was the same bald and dry humoured underground doctor who had agreed to take in a traumatised Akane and, as always, without any questions asked... for the right price.
While Ryu was treating her, Natsuki fell silent and did not reply to any attempt at conversation unless truly necessary and was really only interested to know if the knife fight had cost her her eye. Fortunately, the wound was a very shallow cut (as were many of her other lacerations), with no appreciable damage to the surrounding facial muscles and none to the eye itself. It was the same story with her knife wounds with the most serious one to the abdomen – it turned out to be a shallow cut to the muscle only. She also had several broken ribs, partially fractured collarbone and two broken fingers.
Meanwhile, Yamada had disappeared after dropping Natsuki off at the front door of the slightly disgruntled Ryu, whose only complaint was that Natsuki had not visited him in a while. By the time Ryu had finished his work, Yamada returned with Natsuki's precious Ducati and some news that as far as his sources knew, nobody had been seen fleeing the 'Searrs trap' alive.
It was little consolation to the wounded biker, whose journey home had been an interesting one on account of only having one eye to guide her and having injuries restricting movement. However, no survivors meant no witnesses to verify the identity of the one sabotaging Searrs' plans. But Natsuki was beginning to wonder how long she would be able to keep this up; before she was identified, before Yamada was compromised and before she was captured or killed.