"There's a lot of dead things in there."
My pronouncement prompts the rest of the samurai to look at me before we all turn back to the broken border fort. "They're..." one of the others starts, swallowing loudly, "uh... normal dead things right? Not... moving around still?"
Our collective attention turns to the speaker, "I... have no idea," I tell him slowly, "I mean, I'm going by scent. I have no idea if they're moving or not... Is that something that can happen?" I know there are a couple of methods of raising the dead in Naruto, but I've never heard of legit zombies being a thing before. Of course, I've never heard of not-Europe being a thing either.
Moving together again, we all turn to look back at the fort. "Why did you have to go and ask that, Hiroshi?" one of the others asks, addressing the fellow worried about zombies, "You know we're going to have to go in there to find out what happened. Now I'm going to be seeing the bodies move out of the corner of my eye the entire time. Thanks for that."
"Enough," the captain sighs, "Let's get moving. Hiroshi, no more flights of fancy, please?"
"What?" Hiroshi asks as we start towards the fort again, "It's a legitimate concern!"
###
The front door to the fort, a single-person sized slab of metal set into a deep recess in the stone wall of the fort, is stuck closed. The damage to the fort shifted the frame enough to pinch the door in place, rendering it inoperable.
Fortunately, we don't need it. The destruction of the fort is bad enough that we can slip inside through the roof around where the stone has cracked it open. Things start getting interesting as soon as we approach the damage, though. The roof is covered in rubble from the fortress being broken open, indicating that the jagged pinnacle of stone came up from underneath the fort instead of being dropped on top of it.
Inside, the scent of dead bodies becomes almost overpowering. With an effort of will I keep from vomiting at the smell of rot. Thanks to Hiroshi I can't help but think of the fort itself as the perfect setting for a horror movie. The only light in the fort is the sunlight leaking through the roof around the mass of stone that caused the damage, and what we've brought ourselves.
At the captain's order we split up to search the fort. The typical border fort has three floors above ground, one below ground, and a standing garrison of twenty-five. If the fort is thought to be in a place very likely to be attacked, that number can more than double.
By the number of bodies we're finding, this was one of the more heavily staffed forts. From the way the bodies are laid out, and the blood spatter, the garrison fought hard, and accomplished little for it. The occasional kunai and shuriken stained with blood indicates pretty clearly what the people who did the damage were.
I head deeper into the fort. My eyesight is better than any of the others and less hampered by the low light, so it makes sense for me to search the deepest and dimmest parts. Most of the bodies I pass are crushed or broken by blunt force, even through the soldiers' armor. Stone and mud are scattered around even more liberally than the disposable weapons, indicating a lot of ninjutsu use.
It's in the basement that I first find something that stands out. A single body lying face down on the floor wearing, instead of the breastplate that is standard issue for the Iron military, a ninja's mesh and padded cloth armor.
Kneeling down, I take a more careful look at the corpse. Nothing really to see from the back, though. No wounds or identifying marks, though there is a place where I can see where a pouch on his belt was cut free. Gently, I roll the body over onto its back, a position that's much more informative.
Several broken arrow shafts protrude from the ninja's chest, having punched through his light armor. The ninja's throat has been slashed open. Looking around briefly, I can spot another body not too far away with a bloody wakizashi in hand, their head crushed by a rock the size of a bowling ball. A little further away is another corpse, this one with a broken bow lying near them, a kunai lodged in one eye.
I sigh and turn back to the ninja. Their forehead protector has the symbol of Iwagakure etched into it, but the symbol has been carved through in a single deliberate stroke. "Captain!" I call, my empowered voice carrying through the fort better than it should.
What the hell...?
Something glinted on the floor that I just catch out of the corner of my eye. Kneeling again, I examine the blood stain that was hidden under the ninja's body. Almost completely covered in blood, and blending into the rest of the stain, is a disk of metal maybe an inch and a half across. Taking a few steps back from the body, I take my water flask and rinse off what turns out to be a coin.
The rest of the team arrives just in time to provide the extra light I need to get a good look at the coin. It looks like it's made out of gold, one side stamped off center with the profile of a man wearing a laurel crown of a style that makes me think of ancient Rome. The other side is stamped with a slightly more on-center eagle with spread wings.
"What do you have, Rho?" the captain asks as he and the rest arrive.
I gesture at the corpse, "Iwa missing nin, a couple of the soldiers managed to get one, though they paid for it. He was lying on this." I hand the captain the coin.
He shines his light on it, holding it close to his face, "This looks like a Tauden coin."
It takes me a moment to place the name. It's the not-Europe empire on the far side of the Land of Earth. The direction these missing nin came from.
"What the hell is one of their coins doing here?" I ask softly.
The captain shrugs, "I don't know."
"Can't be anything good," Hiroshi points out grimly.
"Probably not," the captain agrees. "but that will have to wait. We have ninja to catch. When we do, we can ask them about it."
###
We leave the fort behind, moving as fast as we can while still allowing Mayumi, our tracker, to do her job. Honestly, she's impressive as hell. A ninja can outpace a mundane horse on foot and keep that pace up for days. So it should come as no surprise that when a purpose-bred, chakra-empowered warhorse decides to really move, that we'd be pulled over for speeding on any American highway. And Mayumi can follow tracks at this speed. My senses are quite literally inhuman, and I can't see shit. Mayumi clearly knows what she's doing, though, as she leads us through the frozen hills and mountains of Iron in winter.
We've been riding for hours, silent, when Mayumi signals for us to halt. Our horses stop on a dime, sliding along the surface of the snow for short distances to avoid throwing snow over whatever Mayumi has spotted.
She dismounts and she and her horse move forward carefully, examining the ground. They discuss their finding quietly for a moment before turning back to the group. "Captain, they split up here. The main group went that way," Mayumi points in the direction we've been heading, "one separated in that direction." She points almost ninety degrees off of where the rest had gone.
We all turn to look in that direction, nothing but snow, stone, and mountains in the distance meet our gaze though.
"What's in that direction?" one of the samurai asks after a moment.
"Something like half the country," Hiroshi drawls. "Then some water, then the Land of Snow."
"Lots of little mining villages," I comment, "some refinery towns, and at least two major warehouses for chakra metal ingots, and who knows how many smaller ones. What?" I ask at the curious looks I'm getting. "I lived in one of those little mining towns before I came to the capital. Anyway, that list is just what I can come up with off the top of my head. And it depends on the idea that they don't take off in another direction at some point. These are ninja, they may have headed in that direction just to throw us off before circling around to their real goal."
The captain groans, "And that way?" He points in the direction the rest of the missing nin headed in.
"The other half of the country..." Hiroshi is interrupted before he can keep going by the samurai riding next to him slapping his helmet.
"He isn't wrong," the samurai who smacked Hiroshi points out reluctantly. "All the larger towns and cities, including the capital," he shrugs, "the majority of the population of Iron, really."
"Do we know how many missing nin there are?" the captain asks reluctantly.
Mayumi shakes her head, "They're traveling to disguise their numbers, which isn't hard when running on top of the snow."
The captain sighs, "Leave the lone runner. He's headed away from people, and alone he can cause less damage. And we can't afford to spare anybody to go after him when we don't know how many ninja we're going to be fighting."
Everybody nods, it's a sound tactical decision.
Even if I can't shake the feeling it's exactly the conclusion we're meant to reach.
###
I let out a warbling whistle and the little team grinds to a halt. I've been connecting to the world via mana breathing every so often since our targets split, trusting Cloud to keep us with the rest of the samurai while I focus on drawing in mana. That this also keeps me topped off for the fight is more than just a bonus.
I miss Sclamhaire and my armor.
Those detection sweeps have finally paid off. Just inside the edge of my range are eight beacons of mana, rich in chakra. Taking a moment to focus, I try to pry more detailed information out of what I can sense.
I'm still learning to analyse what my vastly improved mana senses can pick up. Studying the mana though, I start to tease out more meaning. The chakra feels... heavy. Solid.
The rest of the squad have waited patiently while I work through what I can detect. "Eight presences ahead of us, near the edge of my range. Lot's of chakra, which I think is earth natured."
"Those sound like our targets," one of the other samurai murmurs, I think his name is Jiro. "What's the terrain like?"
I glare at the man, "How the fuck should I know? It's not like I can see them, I just feel that there's something there."
"Then what good are you?" He's smirking like it's a joke, but I'm not finding it overly funny. "And should a little girl like you be using words like that?"
"Fuck off," I tell him flatly.
Before I can keep going the captain cuts us short, "Enough. Rho, where are they?"
I point in the direction of what I can feel. Mayumi glances down at the tracks again, then in the direction that I'm pointing and shrugs, turning back to the captain, "It's the right direction."
"Are they moving?" the captain asks, frowning in thought.
I take a moment to close my eyes and check the mana beacons again, "No. They're moving around a little bit, but they're not going anywhere."
"We'll approach at a trot," the captain decides, "Once we have confirmation that these are the nin we're looking for, we'll take them at a charge. Bows first, when they run shoot them in the back. Try to take at least two of them at range so we're not outnumbered. If you can kill more, good. Once we're in among them, split them up and take them one on one. Once you've finished with yours, help one of the rest of us. Questions?"
"What if they don't run?" Hiroshi asks.
"Then we shoot them in the front."
###
As ordered, we prep our weapons before we move out. I pull my bow from where it's tied to Cloud's saddle, and take the moment of calm before we ride out to string it. In an interesting departure from planet Earth samurai, we Iron samurai don't use the same kind of bows. On Earth, samurai used what's called Yumi bows, layered bamboo creating a longbow with a grip that's off center towards the bottom allowing it to be shot from a saddle without the horse getting in the way. Iron samurai use something much more like what Mongolians used on Earth. A short bow that while unstrung appears almost like a loop of wood, just broken in one spot. Stringing it creates a winged M shape, the extra curves providing the bow with a draw weight well in excess of its size. Additionally, our bows are made of metal instead of wood, using a process that I'm not even going to pretend to understand, the result being a bow that would actually be impossible for a normal human to draw.
The rest of the samurai handle their own preparations and then we set out at the ordered trot. Minutes later we approach the people who's mana I sensed. None of us are surprised to see eight people dressed as ninja, complete with forehead protectors that I can see are slashed through, around a small fire trying to take shelter next to a low ridge.
The moment we have them in sight, our horses accelerate to a canter, then a gallop. The ninja spot us almost immediately. We're samurai, sneaking up on them was never going to happen, which is why we don't try.
Rising in my stirrups, I fit a solid metal arrow to the steel wire that serves as a bow string. I hook my thumb around the wire, wrap my index finger around my thumb and pull the string back as far as I can, inhaling as I do. The specially placed metal plate on the inside of the thumb of my gauntlet keeps the wire from cutting into my skin. My bow is smaller than the others'. I'm eight, and even with a smaller bow and vampire enhanced troll muscle, I still need to use my mana reinforcement technique to get the strength to get a full draw from it.
Being smaller doesn't stop the arrow from cracking through the sound barrier when I release the string along with my breath.
The rest of the samurai release with me, every single one of the arrows travelling even faster than mine. The arrows have to move this fast to have any hope of hitting a high level ninja. And even as fast as the arrows go, most of us still miss.
Mine takes a nin in the chest, knocking him from his feet. Another arrow punches through one of their legs as the ninja dives out of the way. The rest are dodged or deflected with kunai. At least, none of the tools that come into contact with an arrow survive the experience.
I'm not really surprised at the results, none of us are dedicated archers. The only reason my arrow landed is the plethora of sensory and reflex advantages that normal humans just don't have, even in the Elemental Nations.
The arrows did their jobs though, and two of the ninja are out of the fight, leaving our numbers even. We only have time for a single shot, and I just manage to drop my bow and draw my sword before we're among them.
Cloud has already picked out our close range target and quickly takes me to them. My swing at them is deflected upwards by a desperately drawn tanto knife. The ninja is still knocked off balance by the combined force of my swing and Cloud's charge.
He recovers quickly, but I have a moment to actually look at my target and take his measure. He's a large man, about six foot. He's heavily muscled, and has a grim look on his face as he quickly moves to re-engage.
He doesn't smell right though.
Shit, for a moment I forgot what I'm fighting.
Mana surges into my eyes, and the figure approaching us is suddenly a collection of human-shaped stones. I signal Cloud with my knee as I frantically look around for where my target may have gone. Cloud spins and rocks forward onto her front legs, firing off a double, hind-legged, chakra empowered kick into the rock clone, which explodes into fist sized stones, pebbles, and dust.
My eyes are drawn to an unremarkable patch of ground next to us, which is the only reason I manage to respond in time. The ninja erupts out of the ground like he's on fucking springs and tries to lay open Cloud's neck under her barding. I swing downward aiming to take his hand off, but he jerks backwards, so I settle for knocking the tanto out of his hand.
Cloud responds to the attempt on her life the moment her hind hooves hit the ground again, rearing up. She pivots on her hind legs, flailing her front hooves at the ninja, knocking him to the ground. He rolls to both sides at once as Cloud drops to all fours, almost on him. One of him rolls to the right and darts in the direction of his lost knife.
The real him, as obvious to me as the sun in the sky, thanks to my doujutsu, rolls to the left, then rolls a few more times to clear a bit of distance and comes up making hand signs. A moment later the ninja spits a shotgun blast of sharp stone shards at us. I turn my head away from him to take the peppering of stone on my helmet, my armor shrugging off the jutsu like so much rain. Cloud comes out of it slightly worse, but only a few scratches worse. Which to an animal of her size means little to nothing.
Also, why do jutsu always come out of their mouths? Fire jutsu I can kind of get, fire breathing is a classic. Water is also sort of understandable. Sort of. But this guy just spat a bunch of rocks at me! Why were those in your mouth? And even if they weren't until the jutsu finished, why would you want them in there at all? Isn't there anywhere else you could make the rocks come from? Like the ground?
Weird mid-combat thoughts aside, Cloud and I ignore the illusionary clone and pivot towards the real ninja. Cloud, with all four hooves on the ground, lunges forward with all her chakra enhanced strength, and chest checks the ninja off his feet. There's a perfect moment as Cloud impacts him, his eyes going wide with surprise and his arms flung forward. Mana surges through my system giving me the speed to respond as it's happening, so while his hand is right there, my sword flicks out and his right hand flies away from the rest of him.
The ninja hits the ground hard, gasping for air either from hitting the ground or Cloud hitting him. Cloud, being on the ball like she always is, sort of hops forward, one of her front hooves landing on his left hand, crushing it.
At this point he's basically harmless, he can't perform ninjutsu without hand signs and can't outrun us if he tries to flee, so I glance around to see how the rest of the fight is going. The better fighters have finished their fights and the two of them, the captain and Mayumi, are moving to support the others.
Hiroshi, though, isn't getting support, which he really needs. He's fighting on foot, his horse is off to one side favoring his front left leg, the smell of horse blood coming from that direction making the problem obvious. He's currently trying to fight two earth clones at the same time, and only pulling it off because they're sticking close enough together that he can keep both of them in sight at once. Unfortunately, the reason they're sticking together is because the real ninja is sneaking up behind him while her clones keep him distracted.
Shit! Mayumi and the captain are already helping the other two of our squad, and there's nobody left to help Hiroshi, and if somebody doesn't...
Right. I'm supposed to.
"Cloud, guard!" I order as I pull my feet free from my stirrups and hop up to crouch on her saddle. My wings spread and I jump. On my way up, I pluck my mental bow string, shifting an earth clone's foot off it's intended landing spot, knocking it off balance. Something that Hiroshi takes advantage of to focus solely on the other for a moment, and maneuvers to put one of them in the way of the other. At the height of my jump a single beat sends me rocketing downwards at an angle and speed that only someone who can fly could manage. I hit the ninja around the middle, quickly pulling my wings in so I don't land on them, and we both go tumbling across the ground.
We end our rolling with me on the ground and the ninja on top of me. She smirks as she pulls free a new kunai from a thigh pouch, but pauses as I grin back at her and let go of my sword. Something I've noticed about martial arts in the Elemental Nations is that there's no grappling here. There are some throws from standing, samurai have a lot of them in the, 'You've Lost Your Sword Mid-Battle and Need to Survive and Get A New One' category, but nobody has any real concept of a ground game.
Something I fully intend to take advantage of.
The ninja stabs downwards with her kunai, and I slap her hand off to one side letting me trap it under my other arm. She'd leaned forward to put her weight into the stab, which gives me the opportunity to wrap a leg over her shoulder, her neck in the crook of my knee. My other leg hooks a knee over the first leg's foot, then I straighten my back, leaving only my shoulders touching the ground, and squeeze while keeping her arm trapped in a classic triangle choke. Her face turns red, and the arm she still has free is desperately slapping at my leg. Keeping her arm trapped with one of mine, I manifest my athame in my free hand. A moment later she goes limp as the athame crunches through her skull-
Elemental Affinity
-and get my first significant elemental gain. Over the last year I'd taken out more than a few bandits who had donated their own affinity to my quest to be a mistress of all elements. They'd been small though, and I still had no clue what they'd actually contributed, the affinity, or affinities, still too weak to accomplish anything.
This is different though. This is a fully trained ninja's developed affinity. It's earth, and stone, and endurance, and defiance of all things.
I can't wait to experiment with it.
Now isn't the time though.
I roll to one side so I'm sitting on top of the ninja I'd just killed, my athame already returning to my soul. Picking up my sword again I check on the others. The two earth clones had vanished with the death of their creator. The other fights had ended just as quickly, the ninja unable to compete two on one.
I climb to my feet and go to check on Hiroshi and his horse. Hiroshi seems fine, if tired and a little embarrassed about being unhorsed. The horse on the other hand could be in trouble. A deep cut across the upper left foreleg is weeping blood down the limb. I'm no healer, but I've had the same basic first aid training that all samurai get. Just enough to keep yourself or another alive long enough to get to the people who know more. Even that much medical knowledge is enough to tell me that this could be trouble.
"Medic!" I call, and the samurai rescued by the captain hustles over dismounting smoothly as he arrives, the captain, Mayumi, and Jiro following along behind still mounted.
I get out of the medic's way, leaving him and Hiroshi to fuss over the horse, and join the others. The captain nods to me as I reach them, "Any other injuries?"
Various cuts and bruises are reported, but nothing too bad. Full armor against light weapons is kind of unfair. And we're trained to keep ninja from getting the chance to use the sort of powerful jutsu that would punch through it. It doesn't always work, but it works well enough. The worst injury is a cut across the forehead just under the helmet rim on Jiro, something he seems to realize as soon as it's reported.
"Get unhorsed like the coward, little girl?" Jiro sneers at me.
I narrow my eyes at him, before dismissing him completely to focus on the captain, "I left Cloud guarding the prisoner I took when I went to help Hiroshi. Any other prisoners?"
Mayumi nods, "Both the captain and I managed to incapacitate our first targets."
I don't say anything, but the glance I shoot at Jiro says enough. He doesn't say anything this time though, and looks away swearing at me under his breath. I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to hear what he's saying, given the way neither the captain nor Mayumi respond.
I'm glad I can though, some of the things he's saying make me glad I can't be disarmed. Even so, I'm going to be careful about being alone with him.
A few minutes of rough, in-person, after-action reports later, the medic joins us, "I've bandaged the wound and given him a broad spectrum antidote just in case, but for the moment it doesn't look good. He's in no danger of dying, but the blade cut into the muscle. He's going to have to stay off it until it can be looked at properly. Which means he can't be ridden."
"So we're limited to the speed of a man on foot and a limping horse," the captain sighs. "Put the prisoners and bodies in scrolls for transport and let's get going. Home is going to be a much longer trip than we thought."
###
Clean up doesn't take long. The bodies and prisoners are searched, stuffed into prisoner or storage scrolls as appropriate, and then we're on our way. About the only good thing that's happened on the trip back towards the capitol is that it doesn't start snowing. And since that's less something good happening and more something bad not happening, I'm calling it a wash.
The only thing of interest that we found is a bunch more Touden coins. None of the survivors would explain where they got them when we asked nicely, so the captain decided to leave the whole mess to the interrogators whose job it is to worry about this stuff in the first place.
Hiroshi and his horse, who's name I still haven't gotten, slow our travel pace to a crawl. The horse is limping along on three legs, and Hiroshi walks along next to him. I'm not sure which of them is slowing us down the most, but in the three days we've been traveling since we captured the ninja, our pace maxed out at an amble.
An amble with frequent breaks to let the horse rest.
It's going to take us another week to get back at this rate.
I've spent the last day or so contemplating what I'd need to do to figure out healing via Script. Just in case a miracle occurs and I can figure it out in a few days, instead of months to years, so we can get home faster.
I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I don't know nearly enough about... anything to do with healing to have any hope of pulling it off even with years to work on it. I'd need a rather extensive medical education to even know where to begin. So either I go to medical school, which if I do I'd rather do in a more modern world, or I find some power that can heal without me having to know what the hell I'm doing.
The only one I can think of is the Uzumaki bloodline that heals people that bite the user. With my regeneration I wouldn't even have to worry about getting scarred to all hell. On the other hand, I don't really want to kill Karin or her mom, so that's out.
So in spite of my utter lack of optimism towards my success, I keep pondering the idea of Script healing. Mostly because it gives me something to do and the other option is looking at the desolate snow covered landscape. And that's not a good idea because it's not snowing due to a complete lack of cloud cover, so snow blindness is a thing we have to worry about.
I've actually gotten to the point that I'm riding along with my eyes closed and relying on my sonar and mana senses to keep track of what's going on around...
What the hell?
"Captain!" I yell from my position towards the back of the group. He turns in his saddle to look at me and I point ahead of us, "There's something like twenty people, mounted on samurai horses, coming straight for us." Samurai horses are easy to identify, they're the only mounts with as much chakra as their riders.
The captain turns forward to look at the direction that I'm pointing, "Backup?" he mutters low enough that I almost miss it. "What's their ETA?" he asks louder.
I take a moment to consider their pace and the rate at which they're closing before giving an answer, "Ten minutes? Fifteen if the terrain is particularly rough between us and them. Seven if it's smooth and down hill the whole way."
The captain nods, "Right, well we can't evade them, so we don't really have much of a choice but to wait and see."
We all shift uncomfortably in our saddles, our mounts stomping their feet and flicking their ears. I make sure that my katana is loose in its sheath, just in case. Otherwise, like the captain says, we can't do much but wait and see.
Roughly ten minutes later we find out.
Twenty mounted samurai ride over the hill in front of us in two ten-person columns. Several of them are wearing flags on their backs, long strips of cloth attached to tall upside down L shaped frames. I recognise the mon on them as being from several different noble houses. Nowhere on those flags is the Daimyo represented.
Which, while granted I'm still trying to wade my way through my politics lessons, shouldn't be a thing. All samurai are sworn to the Daimyo, taking those oaths are part of the graduation ceremony.
So what the hell is going on here?
The two columns of samurai split as they approach us, riding to either side before reining in and turning to face us, leaving us surrounded. Without my signal Cloud turns to follow the samurai as they pass us. My hand rests on my sword hilt as I tense in my armor just in case whatever bullshit is happening here turns... violent...
I'm more than a little surprised to find myself facing Koji sitting on the horse facing me as part of the encirclement.
What the hell is he doing here?
It's some small comfort that he looks at least as surprised to see me as I am to see him.
We don't get the chance to talk though, as back where the captain stopped, the leader of this new group of samurai is facing him and starts talking. "Captain Morita," the newcomer addresses the captain in a powerful voice that isn't shouting, but carries like he is, "I have orders to retrieve your prisoners and secure the bodies of the invading ninja."
"Who's orders?" my captain asks, sounding cautious.
"Orders from Lord Kitagawa!" He sounds incredibly proud and more than a little full of himself, "Lord of Clan Kitagawa! I'm afraid I can't take no for an answer, Captain."
My little band of samurai tense at this pronouncement. My hand tightens on the hilt of my sword. I really don't want to get into this fight. If all of us were mounted and uninjured, I still wouldn't want this fight. We're outnumbered more than two to one, and those aren't odds you fight, those are odds you survive. Maybe. If I had Sclamhaire and my armor I might be willing to take on this group. I'd honestly be more willing to take them on if I were alone, at least then I wouldn't risk friendly fire from using my voice for crowd control.
But with Hiroshi on foot, his horse down a leg, the rest still battered from the fight with the ninja, and me a little over half full on mana, no. This isn't a fight that we can win.
Fortunately, the Captain seems to agree with my assessment. At least on our current chances. After a moment of silence he calls back to the rest of us, "Hand over the scrolls."
Keeping my right hand on my sword I use my left to free up the prisoner and storage scrolls that contain my two victories. Carefully, one at a time, I toss them to Koji. Who looks more than a little relieved as he catches them.
The captains are saying something else to each other, but Koji coughs before whispering under his breath soft enough that even the people on either side of him wouldn't be able to hear him. I can though, and I didn't know he had any idea how bullshit my senses are, "I know you haven't picked a side yet, Rho. But you might have to at some point. Just keep in mind you'd do very well with your abilities on this side."
Before I can respond, Koji and his group are called to order by their captain, and ride off, leaving us to continue on at our slow plodding pace. Koji gives me a significant look over his shoulder as he rides by, leaving me more than a little confused in his wake.
I mean...
There are sides?
###
Two weeks.
Two fucking weeks.
That's how long it took to finally get back to the Capitol. All of us were thrilled to be back and finally able to get out of armor for longer than a night. Cloud and the other horses all but sprinted for the stables, probably to get a better rub down than we could give them in the field.
Really, I think they have the right idea, so I'm headed for my room to take my armor off. Then I'm going to the hot springs reserved for samurai. And I will beat anybody who says I'm not allowed because I'm still a cadet into the ground like a tent peg with my bare hands. Then I'm coming back to my room and sleeping for as long as I physically can. I'm hoping for at least a week.
I'll put a pressure script around my bed if I have to.
I'm just glad that I'm not the Captain. He has to go explain to the generals why he handed over our prisoners to somebody else. Granted, I'm not sure if our orders included returning with prisoners and bodies, so he might be able to get away with it on that technicality. It will be on a technicality, though.
Still, not my problem. A fact that fills me with endless joy.
I've never resented my quarters being on the third floor before. I always liked the view, and I've found myself enjoying high places quite a bit since... I'm not actually sure when that preference showed up. I don't remember liking them in DxD, but I was so focused on getting out of that nightmare that I wouldn't be surprised if I missed a lot of things.
Thinking about what I've stuffed into myself, there's a lot of things that could be responsible for it though. Wings, crow demon talent, catness. Too many options to pick from.
Finally I reach my room. I take a moment to slump against the door, before pulling myself upright and pressing two fingers to the door next to the knob. Channeling mana through the tenketsu in my fingertips and speaking a few words of Script pops the door open, disabling the locking Script I keep on it. I push the door open, already loosening the ties on my armor. I'm trying to decide if it would be easier to put the armor straight onto the stand, or drop it on the floor and clean it up later...
What the hell...
In the middle of the free space of my room is a cream colored siamese cat as large as a medium sized dog. She's standing on her hind legs, seeming completely comfortable there, and wearing a single layer kimono of a dark grey color that contrasts very nicely with her fur. The green obi is pretty nice, too.
She presses her forepaws against where the front of her thighs would be on a human and bows ninety degrees. Her tail flirting back and forth in the question mark position that means she's happy to see me. The forward pressed whiskers of a feline smile, reinforces that image.
"Princess," she purrs in perfectly understandable Elemental Common. I'm pretty sure that her mouth shouldn't be able to make those noises, but she doesn't seem to be letting that slow her down, "I am Nell. I have been chosen to greet you by the Elders, and invite you to meet with them."
I'm not nearly as surprised as I probably should be.
At least she doesn't have the nya verbal tic?