Not even half a day had passed after Novac's all-seeing sniper left his post in company of the Courier before the Legion arrived. The assassins had left the great Fort on the Colorado early the previous afternoon after an exhausted scout had reported the deaths of their comrades at the hands of the Profligate and her allies. Unfortunately for all parties, malicious timing dictated that the hammer would fall at the least opportune time, well after Min's departure and before Novac's defenses could reorganize.
Kohta sat in his room methodically cleaning his newly acquired hunting rifle, losing himself in the smooth motions of the polishing cloth and the familiar scent of gun oil. Under his experienced hands built up residue and grit slowly gave way, leaving the workings of the firearm cleaner then they'd likely been in years. He'd bought the rifle using most of the caps Saeko had earned from selling the pistol Min had taken from the fallen legionaries; the rest had gone towards the box of carefully inspected ammunition that sat beside him.
Kohta had never been a religious person, pretty much the norm in secular modern Japan. His parents had taken him to the local temple to celebrate various festivals and he had drunk new sake and toasted the New Year with the monks and their visitors, but he'd never been a Buddhist. Yet in the maintenance of his arms, in the smooth whisper of soft-cloth over blued steel, Kohta found a meditative peace. The thoughts and emotions that besieged his troubled mind fell away and Kohta savored the void as his skilled hands reassembled the hunting rifle.
It is a testament to Kohta's focus and to the depths of his meditation that it took several seconds after the first shots fell on his ears for any visible reaction to occur. The mobile hands slowed and stopped, ceasing to move at all after completing the reassembly. Then, like light restored to an empty house, Kohta blinked and changed.
Gone was the careful young man, tending to his equipment; in his place sat the worshipper of war, the creature that had inflicted human death before, and ached to do so again.
"So soon, eh?" The gunman said aloud. "Well, Mother always said that hospitality was important…"
Moving quickly in efficient motions, the gunman fed five rounds of .308 ammunition from the box by his foot into the rifle's clip, and filled his pockets with loose rounds, mentally making a note to buy extra clips after the fighting. Standing from his desk, he chambered the first round, and made his way to the door.
Listening carefully at the door, he heard the ringing sound of footfalls on the crumbling concrete balcony, forcing each door open and searching the room before moving on. A smile spread over Kohta's face as he moved at a right angle from the door, crouching behind a hastily overturned table and aligning the iron sights of the rifle with the space a foot back from the door. Pausing, the gunman waited for his prey to come to him.
Outside of the dim hotel room where the Japanese teen lurked, the Legion assassins had struck the under defended town with the fearful discipline of seasoned combat veterans attacking an unwary target. Of the two former soldiers who still resided in Novac, only Manny Vargas was actually in town – Ranger Andy's weekly visit to Ranger Station Charlie had gone on for slightly longer than usual, and he'd decided to spend the night there. Manny had left the sniper's nest in the old sculpture's mouth to take a brief siesta in preparation for the night shift he planned to take later, and had forgotten to inform Kohta of his decision before leaving his post. The first sign that something was wrong in Novac was when the chain link door to the motel parking lot slammed open. The shooting started soon after.
Kohta didn't have to wait long – a good thing, from his perspective. His veins practically jangled with the adrenaline, and his foot tapped the tension into the carpeting as nervous impulses caused minor muscles in his face to spasm. Finding nothing of interest in any of the neighboring rooms, the prey (two of them, judging by the footsteps) approached his door, the last one on the floor. They were coming closer, closer…
The door next to him slammed shut, and heavy boots stomped outside on the balcony. After a brief pause, during which Kohta thought that he heard gunshots to the west, outside the motel, the knob rattled as the enemy waiting on the other side tested it. Finding it locked, the knob was released, and a body crashed heavily against the shabby door. Weakened by years of exposure to the elements, the lock popped under the sudden force and the door slammed open. The hostile doubling as a ram came charging in hard behind the swinging door.
The foe was dressed in armor that was identical in color, but of a slightly better quality than that worn by the men Kohta had met in combat outside of Novac. The crimson of the Legion was unmistakable, as was the trademark machete, unsheathed and brandished high.
The gunman held his fire as the prey item moved across the empty room, moving to check the closed bathroom for cowering occupants. When the second legionary moved across the threshold, shotgun held loosely around waist height, Kohta opened fire from behind the overturned table.
The bullet sped from the hunting rifle's barrel, chased by a concussive thunderclap of superheated air and noise. Springing across the intervening space faster than the sound heralding its loosing, the cone of lead and copper easily punched through the thin metal and padding of the converted football helmet worn by the rearmost legionary, passing through the bone of the skull with only slightly less difficulty. The bullet passed cleanly through the head of the legion-man, exiting above his ear and killing him before he realized that he was under attack.
His comrade, younger behind his recruit armor then the gunman who brought rifled death, turned back, and fell as he overcorrected, his forward motion twisting his left leg around and popping the knee from its joint. He fell on the heels of his fallen brother in arms, screaming like a gelded bull. Foolishly, the novice released his machete, clutching at his offended knee and forgetting his foe as pain blossomed up his leg.
The gunman stood above the fallen legionary, and watched the survivor writhe dispassionately for a brief second. Stooping, Kohta picked up the sawed-off shotgun from beside the legionary he'd already killed. Checking the load, he slung the rifle over his shoulder and knelt by the collapsed legionary.
"So… There are two ways we could do this." The casual tone of Kohta's voice contrasted with the surging emotions running rampant through him, and with the familiar grin smeared across his face, although his rushed speech indicated the enthusiasm that the teen brought to the task. "We can do this the hard way, or the easy way. The easy way involves you answering my questions, and receiving a clean death in exchange. The hard way does not. Which would you prefer?"
"Profligate shiteater, I am of Caesar! To help you in any way would be a direct insult to the mighty Caesar, and his legion!"
Kohta gently turned the shotgun in his hand. "I thought that you might say that. In that case…"
The gunman looked up from the weapon in his hand, and locked eyes with the younger man. Without breaking eye contact, the gunman aimed the sawed-off at the soldier's uninjured knee.
"Wait, I t-" Whatever the legionary had wanted to say was drowned out by the thunder of the shotgun. The recoil forced Kohta's arm up into the air, trailing smoke from the short barrel. The ringing in the gunman's ears, at first deafening in the small room, faded away, replaced in his ear with the screaming of the crippled legionary.
"So, let's start, shall we?" Kohta asked, still not looking away from the legion-man's contorted face. "Can you tell me how many of you are here?"
Through gritted teeth, the legionary damned his tormentor to hell, and hoped that his woman came down with smallpox. Kohta grimaced – the other legionaries were sure to be here soon – the whole encounter had been quite noisy. Time to get serious.
"That wasn't very nice, was it, Legionary-kun? Not nice at all! It hurt my feelings… Which means that I'm going to hurt you again!" Smiling, Kohta pined the legionary's left arm, and ground the shotgun into his palm. Without bothering to ask any questions, the gunman pulled the trigger.
Kohta dropped the shotgun on the ground, unslung his rifle, and left the room. There were twenty (less two) legionaries in his town, he didn't know where Saya or Alice were, and it was time to kill.
Behind him, the legionary gasped for air, even as his lifeblood burbled free from his perforated limbs and wrist stumps. His own machete had been used to hack his hands off, before the dull blade was slammed down into his neck. It hadn't cut the jugular vein or carotid artery, and had only partially cut his windpipe, but it barely mattered at this point. The legionary saw the short bespectacled demon wave goodbye on his way out, and close the door as he left the bloody hotel room.
Kohta slowly worked his way down the balcony, moving quietly but as quickly as possible, keeping his eyes peeled for crimson armor. The young man had barely made it past the adjoining room's gaping door before a trio of legionaries emerged from the motel office below. The three jogged to the base of the stairs to the second level of rooms, where they joined a waiting pair of their comrades. Through a hole in the concrete, Kohta could see that another pair of legionaries were covering Manny's door – apparently the man was still holed up somewhere back in the bowels of the motel.
The five legion-men at the base of the stairs began to move up the stairs. Between the rusted iron bars of the hand-rail, Kohta noted that two of the ascending legionaries carried sawed-off shotguns, while the other three were only armed with machetes. The two legionaries armed with shotguns were in the lead, with other three following close behind. None of them wore the more polished armor that the legionary back in his room had worn, and none made any attempt to find any sort of cover or to move as a unit. Considering the repeated gunshots and screams, Kohta was forced to conclude that these legionaries were hopelessly new, or horribly incompetent.
Mentally shrugging, Kohta quickly checked his load: The clip was in place, and a round was chambered. Whether stupid or new, the legionaries were dead – the living dead couldn't keep him away from his love's side; how could mere thugs separate his beloved Saya from his sheltering arms? The very arrogance almost made Kohta twitch with anger, and so it was without a hint of regret that he opened fire on the exposed legionaries.
Unfortunately, Kohta's ire had distracted him enough to forget the hand rail that ran the length of the motel's balcony. Instead of piercing the first legionary's kidney, Kohta's first shot ricocheted off the railing, and buried itself in the faded asphalt below. Instantly, the two legionaries equipped with shotguns turned in the direction of the ricochet and returned fire, spraying the parking lot and balcony with buckshot. The other three hostiles, tightly grasping their machetes, sprinted up the stairs and turned the corner, and saw Kohta.
"Kill the unbeliever!" "For Caesar!"
Kohta turned and rolled away from the railing as buckshot sailed over his head and imbedded itself in the wainscoting behind him. As the three crimson-armored foes turned the corner, Kohta returned to his squatting position, with his rifle pointed towards the enemies at about crotch level. As the three began to run towards him, screaming death threats and battle cries, Kohta realized that trying to kill any one of them probably would result in the other two reaching him. Not for the first time, Kohta fondly recalled his former weapon with its much greater rate of fire.
Chambering another round, Kohta sighted on the rightmost legionary's leg, and fired. Even as the man began screaming from the pain instead of bloodlust, Kohta worked the bolt and fired at the central legionary. This time he missed, but the man stumbled all the same, and got in the way of the leftmost legionary, who yelled and shoved his staggered comrade back towards the newly-crippled legionary by the hotel's wall.
A second blast of shot came from below, perforating the decaying concrete directly behind Kohta.
The Japanese teen realized that his position had become untenable. As the two uninjured legionaries neared, Kohta swung the rifle over his shoulder and fled back the direction he'd come, back towards the thoroughly bloody room where he had cleaned his rifle with expert care only a few minutes before. The rifle wasn't going to be of much help when the two much larger and stronger machete-equipped legionaries closed. The shotgun and machete he'd left behind in the room, though, would almost certainly help.
Scrambling in through the gaping door, Kohta hastily slammed the decrepit plywood door closed, and promptly tripped over the mutilated body he'd left in the middle of the room. Cursing, Kohta scrambled across the floor towards the shotgun. Grabbing the weapon, Kohta opened the breech to check out the load – to his disappointment, only a single barrel was loaded, and no other shells were evident.
Closing the shotgun, Kohta turned and faced the door, waiting for his pursuers to enter. A long moment passed, silent but for muted cries and screams from outside, and the rapid stutter of a fully automatic weapon coming from the direction of Manny's room. Then, for the second time that day, a booted foot slammed into the door, popping the lock out of socket and sending the door slamming into the wall. Unlike the first time this happened, Kohta didn't bother waiting for his enemy to approach – a round of buckshot blasted out of room 207, directly into the first legionary's right arm.
The heavy pellets tore deep into the meat of the man's arm, shredding muscle and imbedding in the bone. The hand holding the machete loosened as tendons tore in the forearm, and the entire arm wrenched about with a cracking noise as one of the two bones in the lower arm gave way under the hammer-blow of force from the shotgun's blast.
The second legionary, his way into the room blocked by his wounded comrade, saw the Profligate's surprisingly skilled ally drop the shotgun and hastily begin reloading his rifle. With a snarl of a predator in striking range of helpless prey, the legionary shoved the injured man towards the foe, and followed close behind, machete in hand.
To his surprise, his keening comrade tripped over something and fell almost immediately. His eyes tracked downwards instinctively, and widened in surprise at the sight of the impediment. Merciful Caesar, who would dare to desecrate one of the Legion in such a fashion? Angered almost beyond reason, the legionary sidestepped around his fallen comrades, both injured and dead, and rushed towards the short little bastard, who was about to get an objective lesson in the power of the Legion, and the folly of opposing the crimson tide!
Kohta chambered a round into his hunting rifle as oncoming legionary rushed him. His weapon tracked upwards, centering on the man's chest as the machete swung downwards. Kohta fired, and the bullet flew true, accompanied by a cordite halo, directly through the flimsy armor worn by the legionary. Only a fraction of a second later, the side of Kohta's head erupted in pain as the machete smoothly sliced downwards through his scalp, through his ear, and down into his collarbone. Stunned by the pain, Kohta fell to the ground and passed out from the pain and rapid blood-lose, desperately hoping that his angel was safe and that the legionaries hadn't gotten their hands on the pinkette.