"Ototo, watch my back," Akua ordered shortly. "And try not to get in the way." Tsukune nodded his affirmation of the order as he made contact with the rooftop, rolling to diffuse the force of his impact. He hit the ground running side-by-side with Akua, and split off to find a good vantage point of the operation zone.
Much had happened in the year since Tsukune had been rescued by his vampiric master; the training with Akua had been long and intense, but now he was being trusted to go on missions with the woman whom, over the last year, he had come to regard as an older sister. This one just so happened to be his first. He managed to calm his nerves by remembering his training. Just to be certain, however, he checked himself over. He was garbed in a lightweight suit of body armour, over which he wore a long black coat not unlike the one his master preferred to wear. He checked his weapons-his handheld crossbow was still there, as were his throwing knives, his gas pellets, his whip, his lines and his silver tanto. The weapons he had selected himself, not entirely certain what he would need for a mission. His arsenal would become less haphazard as he learned what tools he was most comfortable with using. All the same, he slipped the nigh-featureless white mask on over his face as he observed the scene going on below him.
The mission was simple: deal with a group of Ayashi who dared refuse to join Fairy Tale. Neither his master nor his surrogate sister seemed especially keen on the mission, but as the order came from on high, there was little and less they could do than obey. As Tsukune watched, the Ayashi came down the road leading to the plaza, seeming quite drunk. They stopped in the plaza as they saw Akua, standing there and waiting for them.
Watching his surrogate sister take on eight Ayashi at once really made Tsukune think about how much she had been holding back when she was training him day-in and day-out. She was all but still, and yet like a whirlwind, death came to those she faced. There was no trading of blows, no evasion and reaction-she simply struck, and their blood painted the walls. It seemed like the mission was an open-and-shut case. That was, of course, before Tsukune felt a vortex of killing intent approaching. "Akua-nee!" he shouted as he leapt into the plaza with her.
"What?" Akua spat, whipping her head around to glare at the boy whom she had come to see as a little brother.
"Jump!" he cried, and when she looked up, she saw why.
By the time the leaping werewolf impacted the plaza, the two vampires were in the air. Tsukune drew six of his throwing knives, three for each hand, and launched them at the werewolf as his arc neared its apex. Each of them hit, but the werewolf shrugged the injuries off. Until, of course, the lines connected to the throwing knives went taut, and launched Tsukune back at the werewolf, where he put both his feet into the werewolf's face. The werewolf staggered at that, and Tsukune leapt off of him, flipped back, and pulled.
In choosing his loadout for his first mission, his master had come by to help. He rarely got to see his master, instead spending most of the day with Akua, but that had changed the moment the first anniversary of meeting his master and becoming a vampire had come and passed. As his master put it, "Silver knives are undoubtedly better for hurting a yokai, but regular steel knives have more utility. "
"But Shisho, aren't most yokai immune to steel?" Tsukune had asked.
His master had given him a smirk and ruffled his hair. "Steel will pierce anything that doesn't have a carapace. Silver and cold iron halt the regenerative process most Ayashi and some yokai have developed, and there are a number of situations I can think of where such a thing is disadvantageous." When Tsukune had looked at him blankly, he had chuckled. "Think of it this way. Silver and cold iron hurts and doesn't heal. Steel hurts, and then gives you purchase."
Tsukune owed his master a debt of gratitude. He saw it now. The steel knives wouldn't come out because the werewolf's flesh had regenerated around the knife, so that his throwing knives were like hooks on a fish. When he was able to reel in the werewolf, he knew that metaphor to be more apt than most.
Unfortunately, Tsukune's luck ran out when the werewolf shook off the blow to its head and figured out what the eight-year-old vampire was trying to do. He grabbed Tsukune's lines and pulled.
It should be noted at this point that Tsukune was a vampire. Even with the Holy Lock, he was faster, stronger and more agile than any human, regardless of age. However, one thing that vampirism does not impart, no matter the bloodline, was immunity to Newtonian physics. This is relevant because the werewolf had significantly more mass than Tsukune, and so when it pulled the line, he pulled Tsukune with it, driving its half-canine knee into his abdomen, rupturing several organs in the process with the impact. Tsukune's eyes went wide with agony, and he coughed up blood before he went flying back into the building behind him.
"Tsukune!" cried Akua before she even realised she was doing it. She rushed over to the werewolf, eyes set on saving her little brother. She needn't have worried at that point, however, because Tsukune came running back out with a battle-cry and inhuman fury in his suddenly quite red eyes. He pulled out his tanto and rammed it into the werewolf where he assumed the heart would be. This is the point at which Akua ought to have been worried, not because Tsukune's conjecture on the subject of werewolf anatomy was wrong, per se; simply that he had not the correct tool for the job. To put it bluntly, the tanto was too short to fully pierce the heart. This left Tsukune in close proximity to a monster several times his age and mass that had gone feral due to the excruciating pain of having a silver-bladed tanto rammed into his body.
Fortunately, Akua jumping the gun on what was worrisome about Tsukune's condition proved useful, as just before the werewolf went to get its revenge, Akua's flying kick snapped its neck, killing it.
A few minutes later, as the two of them had caught their breath, Tsukune began gathering up his weapons, making mental notes of what worked and what didn't in preparation for the debriefing, as that would most certainly be one of the questions his master asked. Akua, on the other hand, was quietly furious. The mission was supposed to be a routine op, with only Ayashi to kill, not S-class yokai, and that irked her. The intelligence she had gotten about a mission had never been wrong to this extent before. She knew that she hadn't trained Tsukune to take on S-class monsters like werewolves, and so the fact that he was alive spoke volumes of either his potential or his luck-Akua wasn't sure which. But she stowed her anger to vent later. Right now, she had a little brother to look after.
"Tsukune-kun, are you alright?" she asked point blank.
"Still regenerating, Onee-sama," he said with a pained grimace. "The werewolf's knee did a lot of internal damage, but I should…be…fine…" With that, he promptly passed out on the pavement. Akua ran over to the boy and picked him up, carrying his unconscious body to the extraction point. And sure enough, there was Fujisaki hanging out of the helicopter, not smoking and looking genuinely concerned for once. He got out of the helicopter, picked up Tsukune from her arms, and took him into the helicopter. Akua got in after him, and the vehicle ascended.
"How is he?" Akua asked.
"He'll live," said Fujisaki. "But only just. We need to get him drinking blood more regularly-and not the blood bags he's been drinking from over the past year. He needs it fresh and often if he's going to be consistently regenerating damage of this extent. Though, this wasn't a difficult mission. What did you kids run into out there?"
"The Ayashi had a leader. A werewolf," Akua explained.
Fujisaki's eyes narrowed. "So our glorious leader sent you out after an S-class yokai?" he asked, as if digesting it. "Rest assured that this won't happen again. Stupid paranoid bitch almost ruined everything."
"What are you going to do? Gyokuro doesn't take orders from you," Akua pointed out.
"What I cannot do, the Masked King can," Fujisaki said enigmatically.
Tsukune awoke once again to the unfamiliar ceiling of the infirmary. He tried to sit up, but a gentle though firm hand kept him down. "Don't. Your abdominal muscles only just finished regenerating. We don't want to tax them into rupturing again."
He knew that voice… "A-Akua-nee?" he asked.
"Hai," she replied, standing up from her seat by his bedside and leaning over him, coming into his line of sight.
"Ah. Good. You're awake. Both of you," the familiar voice of Fujisaki Miyabi rang out. "If nothing else, at least your first mission will make a great story to laugh about later." His master leaned over him as well, nodding at what he saw. "So, here's the deal. As much as I'd love to make this a bonding exercise between the three of us, there is unfortunately the matter of the debriefing. Now, Akua told me a lot of what happened. The Ayashi showed up on schedule, Akua here minced them, and then a werewolf showed up-that you, Tsukune, decided to take on. Alone. While I'd love to commend you for your balls of steel on that score, I am obligated as your creator to ask you not to do that again. At least, not until you can go toe-to-toe with a werewolf and come out unscathed. That point, however, is a few years off."
"But…it was going to hurt Akua-nee…" Tsukune protested.
"And you thought she couldn't take it on alone because…?" Fujisaki said dryly. "Look, kid, none of us are heroes here. We're yokai-monsters. While heroes might fight alone, we as yokai are pragmatic creatures, which is why you see a lot of old yokai and not a lot of old heroes. And even if we were heroes, Akua here isn't called the perfect assassin for nothing, kid. She can handle herself. You, however, cannot. Not yet, at least." Fujisaki took a moment to let that sink in for the eight-year-old before he proceeded. "Now, as to the subject of your equipment. What worked, what didn't, and what can I work up for you that will work?"
"I tried the lines-and-knives trick. I'm too small for it to work right," Tsukune answered, wracking his brain for his other evaluations. "I haven't used the whip yet, and the tanto is too short. I need something with more reach than a tanto."
Fujisaki nodded. "That makes sense," he said. "I'll see what I can do. And the handheld crossbow?"
Tsukune's face reddened. "I…uh… It's just that I had the throwing knives, so…"
"So the crossbow feels redundant, is what you're telling me," Fujisaki surmised. "That's a fair assessment. You don't seem to like fighting at range, either, so I guess exchanging the other ranged options for more things to use in a straight-up fight would be more useful."
Tsukune nodded mutely. His master only smirked, got up, and walked out of the room where Tsukune even now lay prone.
"Right, then. I requisitioned a few things for you based on the debriefing of your first mission. Tell me how you like them," Fujisaki said as he led Tsukune into a room that was covered from floor to ceiling with weapons-the armoury, Tsukune remembered it was called. "The first item is this," Fujisaki said, taking a pair of fingerless gloves off of a rack. "What do you see?"
"It's a pair of gloves…" Tsukune said, not quite understanding the question being asked of him.
"Go deeper," his master instructed. "What differentiates this from every other glove? What makes this piece of clothing into a weapon?"
Tsukune was about to say something else, but he noticed that something shimmered in the light. Focusing his sight upon it, he now knew what it was. "Those are…wires?"
Fujisaki chuckled. "Close. Gossamer threads dipped in silver. Incredibly difficult to master, but one of the most effective in terms of fighting. I once fought against someone with that very weapon. It…wasn't pleasant."
"Ooh…" muttered Tsukune.
"Now, I personally don't think the weapon to be well-suited for you. I just wanted you to be aware of its existence, in the unlikely event that you have to deal with someone fighting with these. My advice to you if that happens? Don't play around. End it quickly, because every moment in which the wielder of the weapon is still alive is another moment you're going to have to make up for later. Ah! And addressing the issue of the length of the tanto…" He walked forth, and Tsukune followed two steps behind. There was a large case on a shelf near the back of the room, and it was to the case that his master directed him. He pressed a thumb to a lock on the box, and the acrid scent of Fujisaki's blood filled the room, but the top of the long, slim case opened to reveal a massive nihonto, long and slender and seemingly writhing in its case as the light dripped down onto its metallic surface, almost seeming to make rings like a rock skimmed on a lake of liquid metal. "This, Tsukune, is the end of all the problems you might have from a lack of reach. It's called an odachi."
Tsukune put his fingers tentatively around the same-and-silk tsuka, and began to lift it. In his hands, the length of metal was a tad unwieldy, but he had no problems holding it. In fact, it seemed to hum happily in his grasp. "Why is it humming, Shisho?" he asked.
"Oh? She likes you, does she?" Fujisaki said with a bemused expression. He hadn't told the kid that the sword was intelligent, nor had he told him that he was the first to wield the blade who didn't cause the intelligence within the sword to immediately begin shrieking at a psychic level. That the sword had, after all this time, chosen his protege to wield her… "You are truly exceptional, kid. Don't let anyone ever take that away from you." Fujisaki would almost have given up his two-hundred-year old plan for the eradication of humanity just to be a fly on the wall when that basic bitch Gyokuro found out that not only had the demonic sword Masamune chosen a wielder, but that that wielder was his heir…
The keyword, of course, being almost.
"So, that's the question of your main weapon taken care of quite nicely…" he chuckled. "Her bloodlust is a lot to handle, kid. Make sure she's fed properly and regularly."
"What does she eat?" Tsukune asked.
"Blood," said Fujisaki. Seriously, did the kid just sometimes not listen? "Do not draw her lightly, because she will demand blood before being resheathed. Just slit your palm on her blade. That's it…" he coached the kid as he grasped the sharp end of the blade and sliced open his little eight-year-old palm on it. The sword glowed a sickly green colour before disappearing entirely. "And no, giving her your own blood like that doesn't work. It would just give her indigestion. But at any rate, you just sealed the pact in blood. You are now her wielder. Wield her well."
"What's her name?" asked Tsukune.
"Oh, she's had a lot of names over the years. Zantetsuken, Excalibur, Frostmourne, Stormbringer, Saika, Soulcalibur, Junketsu… But in the form she was in when I showed her to you, she's most commonly known as 'Masamune,'" said Fujisaki offhandedly. "She has other forms she can take based upon the situation at hand. Speaking of which, you should be feeling the branding right about…now." Tsukune grabbed his arm in pain as it glowed the same sickly green, and then faded into black markings all up his forearm. "Now, summoning her takes energy, and as you learn to control your yoki, she will adapt to you, and take a form that is unique to you. Fair warning, however: she is a bit of a diva. Bringing her out to kill lower Ayashi will not do much to endear you to her in the slightest. Using her should be your last resort, when all else seems lost. Which is why I'm going to say that you should probably keep the whip handy. Throwing knives don't seem to be very much your speed, so I'll counsel you to keep what you do with them relatively simple. You should have at the very least five of every yokai-harming metal. Silver, cold iron, adamantium, mithril…" He trailed off. "At the end of the day, you are going to be running into yokai and Ayashi that can only be fought at range, like, for example, a cockatrice, relatively regularly in the next two years. I would counsel you to keep at least one ranged option on hand. That is, well, until you're old enough and strong enough to learn some magic…"
That seed planted in the boy's head, Miyabi continued to show Tsukune tools of the yokai assassin's trade, which he looked upon with growing interest. Miyabi guessed that the kid had never dreamed of the existence of half the shit he chose to show him. Poisons and poultices, mixtures and mutagens-all of these Miyabi took the time to let him ogle and wonder at. Of course, half this stuff was so situational that Miyabi found himself wondering why it was there to begin with, but he supposed that in the assassin's trade, it paid to be prepared.
"Shisho, about my armour…" said Tsukune as he sat down to talk with his master. Two months since his first sortie, Tsukune had three missions with Akua under his belt, and so Miyabi sort of expected his heir to seek him out for guidance at this juncture. In light of that, he had planned for the event of this meeting coming to pass.
"Yeah, kid?" Miyabi replied, placing a slim cigar in his mouth and lighting it with the aid of a wooden match. "What about it?"
"I…uh…I feel like it's too heavy," Tsukune managed to spit out. "With all the equipment I bring on these missions, the armour feels like dead weight to me, and I'd like to ask if there's anything you would suggest I wear in lieu of it."
Miyabi smirked, and said, "I've got just the thing."
"What the actual fuck are you wearing, Tsukune?" Akua asked, more exasperated and confused than actually affronted by what her adopted little brother chose to garb him in.
Tsukune looked down at himself. He wore high leather boots, leather trousers and a long leather coat with silver pauldrons and a high collar. His chest was almost bare beneath the coat, his harness clearly showing where he stored his throwing knives. And of course, it was all entirely in black. Well, save the pauldrons, of course. They were still silver, though it was doubtful that any silver had been involved in their construction. He adjusted the high-dexterity black leather gloves he was wearing, and looked back to Akua. "What do you mean?"
Akua just shook her head. So long as Tsukune could continue to fight, it mattered not to her how he attired himself. Well, that is, unless Akua superimposed the silver colour of his vampiric hair upon his human hair, which had grown much longer and tamer since he had been turned to vampirism. If she did that, she would choose to laugh if only to keep herself from crying. And then there was the fact that the outfit was tailored to an eight-year-old's frame, which made the entire thing just so much more awkward and strange, and so she decided to stop thinking about it altogether. "We're nearing the drop zone. Do you have all your gear with you?"
Tsukune nodded, pulling his long coat to the side to showcase the whip he kept there.
With that assurance, Akua hopped out of the helicopter that was to take them to their next mission objective. "This should be open-and-shut," Akua said as she walked towards a for the most part unassuming building. "We give the Ayashi holed up in here the chance to join us. We exterminate with extreme prejudice if the answer is 'no.' I'll take point. You take the other entrance. We shouldn't have to use your trump card this time, but step lively all the same."
"Hai," Tsukune replied.
Akua kicked the door down and sauntered in. The building moonlit as a bar for humans, but was in reality a sort of 'halfway house' for outcast Ayashi. To that end, she gave the room she entered into a clean sweep with her eyes and yoki detection. "So, this is the best you can do," Akua said mockingly as she stepped over the threshold. "A rundown little tavern in the midst of humans."
Soon, all the Ayashi in the building came in and stopped before her. "What do you want, vampire?" asked the one she surmised was the lead Ayashi, the owner of the building.
"Well, today's your lucky day," Akua said with a heavy current of boredom. She was an assassin, not a bloody diplomat! "Ever heard of 'Fairy Tale'?"
"Thanks, but no thanks. We're fine here. We're not going to go against the Three Great Dark Lords just because it means better accommodations," he said.
"You have truly no idea how much I was hoping you'd say that…" Akua muttered.
"What?" The next moment, the head Ayashi found his torso suddenly very much separate from his lower body. Then blood began to spray everywhere, and he fell to the ground, dead.
"Ototo! Now would be a good time!" Akua called. The back door exploded inwards, and suddenly kunai flew by her, striking more than one of the Ayashi in the head or heart. A few were silver, a few were cold iron, and was that…mithril she saw? It mattered not, for shortly thereafter, there was Tsukune, leaping into the fray.
Akua took the time to sit back and just watch the results of her training. His kills were not as…abrupt as hers were, but that was to be expected out of someone who had never mastered the Jigen-tou. What did surprise her was the developing sense of brutality that Tsukune delivered when he fought hand-to-hand. It was a strangely incongruous image-a small child no older than eight acting like the human conception of what a 'killing machine' was. Of course, compared to Akua when she wasn't holding back, his movements were sluggish and inexperienced and wasted a lot of energy, but there was almost a strange rhythm to his motions, as if he was dancing to music that only he himself could hear. It was almost mesmerising.
Roughly three minutes had passed since Tsukune's intervention when he ended the last Ayashi by stomping on its face. Akua had no choice but to be impressed by the kind of headway her ototo was making in terms of fighting skill, if not his fashion sense. "Commendable, if a bit sloppy," said Akua at last. Tsukune favoured her with a genuine smile at the praise she was giving him. "Come on. Our mission isn't over until this place is razed to the ground."
"Oh, I brought something for that," Tsukune replied.
"...What?" Akua asked, suddenly quite terrified.
"Yeah. I brought a jar of alchemyst's fyre along with me," the eight-year-old assassin explained. "In case we needed to torch the place."
Akua took a second to silently curse her grandfather, who thought it appropriate to tell an eight-year-old child, vampire or not, what alchemyst's fyre was, and then grant him access to the incredibly dangerous substance. She then took a moment to consider that she might as well make the best of the current situation, which led to her arm being outstretched to receive the jar.
Tsukune obediently gave her the jar, and she threw it into the wall near enough to the alcohol to make it, too, catch fire. Akua then led Tsukune out of the establishment, and they proceeded to the extraction point together. When the helicopter lifted off to return them to the flying fortress that was Fairy Tale's headquarters, Akua spied Tsukune picking at the high collar of the long coat he wore. "I think I like this outfit," Tsukune said. "It's lighter and easier to move in than my body armour…"
"Just don't get caught going to a cosplay event, ototo," Akua finally said. Those were her final words on the subject of how her little brother was dressed.
"So, out of curiosity, is there a reason you gave an eight-year-old boy access to alchemyst's fyre?" Akua asked her grandfather, her arms folded in a confrontational stance.
"I thought it was about time for him to learn the tools of the trade," replied the Shinso, looking up from what he was doing, but still puffing on that cigar. "If you have a problem with how I train my heir, please, voice it."
"Fine. Then how about this. Alchemyst's fyre is incredibly dangerous and notoriously hard to control once it catches. It's also one of the only things that can harm a vampire, which, in case you had forgotten, is the species of your heir," Akua spat. "It's reckless endangerment."
"Akua, do you know how often I join the other subdivision heads for poker night?" he asked calmly. "Do you know how often I go to casinos? Do you know how often I make bets when I haven't already fixed the outcome? The answer to all these questions is the same: I don't. I never leave things to chance. So, then, would it not follow that I actually do, as hard as it may be for you to believe, know what I'm doing?" He shook his head. "Don't worry, Akua. I won't make you lose another sibling. As strange as it might sound, I'm actually quite fond of the kid. That, and there's nothing I despise seeing more than wasted potential."
"And I'll have to trust you on that, won't I?" Akua sighed.
"No. I'll never put you in a situation where you have to do that. I'm simply asking you to have some degree of faith in my abilities," the other vampire responded. "After all, you of all people, the only one who knows who I truly am, should know just what I'm capable of…"
"Indeed," she conceded. "So, why did you give him kunai made out of precious metals? Those can't be cheap…"
"They aren't, but the look on that arrogant bitch's face when she sees the bill for our operations makes it all worth it in the end," Fujisaki said with his characteristic smirk. "And as long as the Masked King has anything to say about it, she'll continue to foot the bill, so to speak, until the promised day has come, and that day is many years from now. And yes, I'm aware that it's a bit reckless to keep making trouble for our 'glorious leader' like that, but then, by the same token, when it comes right down to it, who is more expendable? The puppet or the puppeteer?"
"As long as Tsukune doesn't get caught in the crossfire, I don't care about the politicking of my superiors," Akua said at last. "After all, I'm just an assassin."
"You know, a year and a half ago, you would have said 'Moka'. Has the kid truly usurped Moka's place in your heart?" Fujisaki remarked.
"Never," Akua hissed. Fujisaki merely looked at her with his impassive eyes until she managed to regain her composure. "It's simply that I've come to terms with the fact that Moka is going to end up in the crossfire, no matter what I do. I'd like to at least save one of my siblings from becoming a pawn in the great game of the world that bitch Gyokuro thinks she's playing."
"Fair," Fujisaki nodded, blowing out a ring of smoke. "Then, just this once, I'll give you a word of warning, from ancestor to descendant: Gyokuro's eyes have been on Tsukune since he was first chosen to wield the demonic sword Masamune. And even with all your power, you are not going to be able to protect him from the consequences of that twenty-four hours a day. If you want him to be able to survive on his own, then perhaps we ought to move up the timetables a little bit."
If the person he was talking about had been anyone else, the realisation that Akua came to in that moment would have had her on the ground and dying of laughter. As it stood, it came as a slap to the face and a punch to the abdomen simultaneously. "You didn't plan for him to be chosen as Masamune's wielder, did you?" she said in a terrified whisper.
"No, I didn't," Fujisaki confirmed. "But on the bright side, Masamune's influence should be able to speed up the adjustment process to the Shinso blood that flows through his veins, and so it should be perfectly fine to move forward to his special training."
"Wasn't part of the reason why the 'special training' had to wait that he was too green to be able to survive it?" Akua asked, still taken aback.
"She won't let it kill him," Fujisaki sighed. "And besides, his combat abilities have come to a plateau, and will not increase until he learns to control the energy within him. If he is to survive until the promised day, then it falls to me to teach him to use Masamune."
"And for that, he has to be able to control his yoki, doesn't he?" Akua asked.
"You know, it's poor form to ask a question to which you already know the answer," the other vampire pointed out. "But yes, the kid needs to learn to use both his yoki and as much magic as I can teach him between now and the day when he is ready to take on his mission. Rest assured, I won't throw him into that pit to do battle with Mikogami unprepared." The Shinso's expression didn't change, but suddenly the room felt that much colder. "Believe me: when the time comes for him to infiltrate Yokai Academy, he will know all he needs to about how true vampires do battle."
"For both our sakes, I hope you're right." And with that, Akua left.