A/N: This is something I forgot to put in the last update. Someone under the name 'anon' sent me an untraceable review concerning my writing style the update before last. If you're reading this, I want you to know that I'm not offended by your observations, and that others have made that particular one before you. I'm fixing it, so don't worry. Criticism is valued, especially when it's constructive.
Without further ado, the next chapter!
Chapter Eleven: The Three Battles
"It won't take that long," Muta said confidently, still holding Haru as they watched Toto and the mysterious man talk for a while. "The guy's clearly a professional, and they learn to rest in short spurts."
"You have to, if you want to keep living," Haru agreed, clenching her fists slightly. After a few minutes of resting for both of them, Toto and the dark man got back to their feet, and drew their swords in unison.
"Is Toto really all that good?" Haru asked curiously.
"I don't know much about swords," Muta confessed as the two swordsmen began exchanging soft, testing blows, "but I've seen Toto do some pretty impressive things with that sword his old man made. He's pretty deadly with his left hand, and he's even worse when he uses his right hand."
"Then he should be using his right!" Natoru whined nasally. "We don't have time for him to play around with his prey!"
The blows were no longer polite, the two swords flashing brightly in the sun as the opponents nearly danced around each other, weaving and dodging with an innate grace.
Haru watched silently, her face void of any emotion as the two fighters began moving their duel up into the castle ruins, occasionally moving behind a wall that blocked their view. At some point, Toto switched to his right hand, since the sky pirate was obviously a master of the blade as well. The advantage slowly turned back to him, as he suddenly pressed the man in black against a crumbling wall on the same side of the cliff.
'It's a ransom he's after,' Haru suddenly realized. The king would surely pay handsomely for her to be returned to him, since she didn't have value for anything else, except as a fighter, and this was a little too much trouble to go through for a simple recruitment.
Wait, why should she care what some sky pirate wanted anyway? If she had any brains, she would just escape from these two while she had the chance.
It was only her concern for Toto that made her decide to stay at the last second before tensing her body to jump from Muta's surprisingly gentle grasp.
"Inconceivable!" Natoru exclaimed, watching the man very obviously push Toto away with a heave, change his sword to his right hand, and begin overpowering the black-haired swordsman again, knocking Toto's brilliantly forged sword from his grasp several feet below them.
'I wonder what type of sky pirate that man is,' Haru suddenly thought, watching Toto swing from between two walls, his body swinging from a bar that easily could have been between the two before coming to a somewhat clumsy landing in order to grab his sword again before facing his opponent.
The man in black, whatever type of sky pirate he was, chose not to chase his prey down via the stairs. Instead, he threw his sword firmly at the ground close to in front of the two walls, and leapt gracefully for in between them.
He flipped over it not once, but twice, and then back-flipped away from the walls to land solidly next to his sword, picking it up with one hand as he slowly straightened, Toto staring at him as the three on the hill did the same.
"Cat," Haru noted clinically. "He's either a cat type or a monkey type."
Muta started coughing terribly, but she could tell that he was really laughing.
"What do you mean, cat or monkey?" the arrogant little man asked suspiciously, making her raise one eyebrow in amusement.
"Haven't you ever heard of sky pirates, Natoru?" she asked him patiently. "They used to raid this kingdom one or two centuries ago, and they're all supposed to be shape-shifters."
"Don't be ridiculous," he snapped at her, his eyes turning back to the duel that was slowly starting up again. "There's no such thing as shape-shifters."
"If that's so, why would a guy that hides his face bother to pin an orange rope to the seat of his pants?" Muta asked sarcastically. "That's not the best way to avoid attention, last time I checked."
"Maybe he's demented!" Natoru defended himself angrily.
"Why not? It wouldn't be any stranger than the rest of this," Haru said softly, squinting her eyes a bit in order to focus better on the masked man's face. His white muzzle was far too pronounced to be a monkey, so it was more likely that he was a cat type.
The man in black ended the duel by using a strange series of strokes that neatly distracted Toto just before his sword was knocked away again. The stranger's blade was nearly pressed to the dark swordsman's heart as he slowly got to his knees, saying something intangible to the victor.
"Uh oh," was all Haru could think to say before hopping out of Muta's arms, ready to run to the swordsman's aid.
But then the gentle giant grabbed her arm. "Just wait. Toto's not in danger."
Haru was still looking at the man in black, so she could see him very deliberately knock the black-haired man over the head with his hilt, saying something softly as Toto fell to the ground unconscious.
"How did you know-" she tried to ask as Natoru screamed again, watching the stranger start running for where they were.
"INCONCEIVABLE!! Here, give her to me," the small man ordered, grabbing Haru's other wrist harshly. "It's up to you, Muta. Throw a big rock at him or something, but don't let him follow us any farther!"
"That's not very sportsmanlike," the giant protested, giving the girl a strangely encouraging look as he released her arm. "Besides, I bet Haru will have to hurt me if I pulled a dirty trick like that."
"Dang right I will!" she replied, pointedly glaring at the man trying to drag her up the hill.
Natoru stiffened slightly. "Fine!" he snapped. "Wrestle him into submission, then!"
"Now that, I can do. See ya later, Chicky," Muta said, winking encouragingly at her, motioning with one hand for her to go.
A little confused by the giant's behavior, she nodded before running off with Natoru.
"This is perfect!" the little man gloated. "Surely a guy that studies fencing won't have a clue on wrestling!"
"I wouldn't start celebrating yet if I were you," Haru informed him firmly as they kept running, her long legs enabling her to move faster than her kidnapper. "If sky pirates could be neutralized that easily, they wouldn't have gained such impressive reputations."
"He's not a sky pirate! He's a crazy guy in a suit! You just listened to one too many fairy tales!" he yelled at her.
"Maybe if you had listened to them, your mind wouldn't be so narrow!" she yelled right back at him.
"Don't you get it?!" he howled, brandishing his dagger at her. "I'm the one in charge here, not you! Just do as you're told for once, and keep that big mouth of yours shut!"
"Can't you think of a better retort than that?" she scoffed, easily batting his weapon away with one hand as she looked over one shoulder. "Look. He's caught up to where Muta is."
Natoru stopped running in order to look behind them. There was a sheer rock face separating them from the giant, but the black scarf that the mysterious pursuer was wearing over his head was barely visible. Muta was saying something, his posture fairly casual. Haru could only assume that the pirate was answering him back.
"Hurry!" the kidnapper hissed at her, pulling on her wrist like a spoiled child.
Haru sighed tiredly, and began running again.
But going for nearly twenty-four hours with no sleep, little food, and then all this running was starting to wear on her spirit. She felt dirty, with the salt of the sea and the sandy dust of the cliff clinging to her skin. Right now, all she wanted was to have a light meal, bathe in a mountain spring, and sleep under a tree like she had been able to do at home.
But that option was not available to her anymore, and she lamented the sad fact.
After five minutes of running uphill, Natoru suddenly collapsed into a heap, his 'captive' taking a few more steps before stopping, and looking down at him in disgust, shaking her head a little.
Haru looked down, a little stunned to see a figure dressed in black running up the same mountain path they were using. "Muta must have lost the fight. Our mysterious shadow is closing in fast."
"In… con… ceivable!" Natoru gasped in desperation, his small hands fumbling with one of his pockets to produce three long white bandages. "Sit… by that… tree!" he ordered her, holding up one of the bandages menacingly.
Haru shrugged, and sat herself down gracefully, secretly thankful for the chance to rest her legs. Natoru approached her, and started wrapping the bandage tight around her wrists.
She suddenly broke down laughing, actually falling on her side.
"Now what?!" he asked crossly.
"Y-your tying job!" she giggled helplessly. "It's hilarious!"
"How is it hilarious?!" Natoru demanded as he tied the bandage into place with a final knot.
Barely taking a pause between her giggles, Haru worked her hands loose in less than five seconds. "You couldn't even hold a three-year-old child with a tie like that! Didn't you even bother trying to learn how to tie up a captive?!"
"I didn't think it was needed," he grumbled, turning red with embarrassment as the slim brunette picked his knots loose with her fingernails easily.
"Of course it's needed, you idiot. Okay, you sit down, and I'll show you how to do it properly," she said with a silly smile on her face.
"Oh, all right," he sulked, taking her place underneath the tree and holding his arms and limbs out for her benefit. "But hurry! This guy's obviously good at swords and hand-to-hand combat, but I bet he'd lose in a battle of wits!"
Haru stared at him for a full second before taking his arms behind his back. 'Doesn't this guy realize that a soap dish could outwit him?!' "Okay, first of all, you pull the arms behind the captive like this. Then you cross the wrists, and very tightly wrap the bandage in a cross pattern over the wrists like this starting from the middle of the bandage, so that it will hurt the skin just by being there." She gave the bandage a final tug before quickly tying off the ends of the bandage. "There! Can you break out of that?"
Natoru struggled for thirty seconds before admitting defeat.
"Told you so. Okay, the easiest way to bind the feet is to just to tie the ankles together, but if you really want to make sure that a person's not going anywhere, then you wrap the bandage around the ankles a few times like this, bend the legs backward like this-"
"OW!" Natoru wailed as she dragged his ankles until they were touching the bandage wrapped around his wrists.
"- and then tie the ankle bandage to the wrist bandage in a secure hold." She quickly tied the ends off, and then stood back a few feet to admire her handiwork, which ended up looking a little like the small man had been taken in the hunt. "Perfect. I bet you could try for a week, and still not get out of that."
He flailed around like a freshly caught fish, panting heavily. "Okay, I get the idea now! Untie me, already!"
Haru smiled, and walked forward again to lean next to him.
But instead of reaching for the bandages, she fished the dagger out of his vest, and held it against his throat.
"You idiot," she whispered as his eyes suddenly bulged in fear. "Did you really think that I was going to just let you kill me? If you had such an issue with your brother and the king, you should have snuck into the castle on your own and challenged them. Getting a samurai's daughter involved in your stupid little scheme has raised your incompetence to an art form. But I do thank you for taking me this far from the castle. I'd have hated to stand trial for murdering the king."
Steady footsteps approached her from behind, making the girl look away from her trembling captive.
The man in black had stopped in his tracks a good ten yards away from the tree, his white muzzled mouth slightly open in astonishment. He was definitely a cat, she could tell that now, but she was a little puzzled by the fact that the black scarf that he had tied around his head, had no slits for the eyes.
Maybe being a cat was enough to help him see through the cloth, since he was obviously not blind.
Haru looked at him with narrowed eyes, and held the dagger against Natoru's throat again. "Don't come any closer, or I'll run him through," she threatened half-seriously.
The cat-man slowly shook his head in disbelief… and began laughing fit to kill.
"This isn't what it looks like!" Natoru said helplessly as he flushed darkly with embarrassment, which only doubled the strange man's laughter.
"Did someone change the rules of abduction while my back was turned?" the tall stranger asked her after a few minutes of mirth, in an accent that she had never heard before in her life. "Last time I checked, it's the victim that's tied up, and the kidnapper that makes the threats."
Haru sighed angrily, pointing at the hog-tied man with the dagger. "He didn't have a single clue what he was doing, so I demoted him. Do you want the little weasel? He's the one that cut the rope off the cliff and nearly killed you."
He carefully looked at the tying job that the slim woman had done, a slightly wicked smile on his muzzled face, which he tried to hide with one gloved hand. "Not really. My walls are getting too crowded for another stuffed trophy. I must admit that I admire your method of chastisement, Haru-sama."
"Thank you, but flattery's not going to get you anywhere," the brunette said simply, taking the last bandage and quickly wrapping it around Natoru's mouth so that neither of them would have to endure his useless babble anymore.
Pointedly turning her back on the new hostage, Haru kept the long dagger in one hand, playing with it absently. "You went through a lot of trouble to follow us," she said flatly, cutting across any further pleasantries. "Since the others weren't what you were interested in, I'll assume that it's me you want. Is there any particular reason you followed me all the way out here?"